#maybe han seok is dropping him off during vacation in europe huh

[helianthus21]

for the Early Adoption/Always Brothers AU ✨ following @nalivaa's idea that Han-seo was introduced to the Jang household earlier in this one so a younger, even less patient Han-seok decided he was just Not Gonna deal with a whole stupid toddler so he dropped him of at an orphanage (where Vincenzo found him<3 (there's a lot of details that don't,,, make sense so just posting on tumblr for now)

When Han-seo was dropped off at the orphanage, Vincenzo had already been there for a while.

The weeks, months, years had bled away his hope that his mother would ever come back for him, and the realization had poured like molten lava around his heart and, hardening, turned it to stone. Since then, he had kept to himself, glaring away every well-meaning kid that approached him with doe-eyes, kept everyone at arm's length because he hated the world, he hated his mom, he hated himself.

Other kids came and went.

Kids with similar fates as Vincenzo’s. Kids without parents. Kids who were all alone in the world. Kids who were angry like him, empty like him, lonely and lost. 

But Vincenzo didn’t care about their fates. Because nobody cared about Vincenzo’s either. 

Because most of the kids here, Vincenzo found, were here because their parents had died, and not because their mom dropped them off somewhere only to never show up again.

Kids left and came. Some ran away. Some got adopted, by young couples, rich couples, middle-aged couples. Couples whose gazes drifted right over Vincenzo because Vincenzo wanted them to. His mom hadn’t wanted him, and so Vincenzo didn’t want anybody else either.

Mostly, Vincenzo never even learned the names of the new kids. They’d be gone soon anyway, and their stories were all the same. So when a young boy walked right into the orphanage one day, an even smaller boy tucked in his arms, Vincenzo didn’t even lift his head from the little figure of a bird he’d been carving from a chunk of wood while everybody else was out on a field trip.

“Stop crying,” said the boy. It’s possible he’d been saying more to the younger before that, but it was the sudden sharpness in his tone that made Vincenzo prick up his ears.

Turning his head slightly, he chanced a glance at the pair. The older of the two looked younger still than Vincenzo, and what was strange about him was that he was dressed very formally: instead of streetwear, he was wearing one of those little suits for kids that Vincenzo had worn only once, when his mom had made him attend the funeral of his grandfather. Back then, Vincenzo had found it very confining, the suit. He’d kept pulling at his sleeves and his collar, but this boy seemed to feel right at home in his clothes, confident even.

The other boy, the smaller boy, was indeed crying. Vincenzo must have simply blocked it out before.

“You’re just useless, you know? Stupid,” continued the boy in a voice that was in stark contrast to the words he spoke. The sharpness gone, it was like he was just stating a simple fact, like water is wet, the sky is blue. “Stop crying,” he said again. “Nobody wants you anyway. So this is the best for everyone, you see?”

Between the sobbing, the boy hiccuped, “H-hyung.”

The older boy, the brother, as Vincenzo assumed now, slammed his fist on the table, right next to where he had placed the younger. “Cut that out!” The venom was back in his voice. “I’m not your brother! We’re nothing, not even by half from now on. Got it? Bye forever.” 

Vincenzo looked around. None of the adults were in the room at that hour, just old man Don who was too drunk most of the time to notice what was going on in the world around him. 

There was no one there to witness how another little boy was abandoned at the very same orphanage. No one to witness his fate, the beginning of his story, except for Vincenzo. 

Vincenzo, who watched the older brother walk past him, out of the orphanage without a single glance back, looking much lighter now, like a burden had been lifted from him. 

And the little boy continued sobbing. 

Vincenzo abandoned his woodwork and stepped closer to the table. The other boy had pushed a chair to the table and climbed onto it to be able to place his brother there, but Vincenzo could reach it without any help. He had a round face, the boy, red from all the screaming, with puffed cheeks that made him almost look cute, and head full of dark hair, curling slightly behind his ears. He, too, was wearing a little suit, and Vincenzo wondered if they had indeed been at a funeral. Looking at the boy now, he couldn’t be much older than 2 years. Maybe less. 

"Nobody wants you, huh?" 

The moment he spoke up, the boy stopped crying. 

Not because all his tears were dried up, Vincenzo guessed, but rather because listening to Vincenzo seemed to take up all his attention. With big eyes, he tracked each and every movement Vincenzo made like it was the most interesting thing in the world. 

"No mother, no father? A bastardo of an older brother?" He shot a venomous look at the door through which the boy had disappeared, moments ago. When he turned back to the boy, though, he made sure to keep his face neutral. "Well, you’re in good company. Nobody wants me either.”

Tears welled up again in the boy’s eyes but he stayed silent and that was almost more tragic. And for the first time in a long time, Vincenzo felt something in his chest change shape. Like a crack running up a stone. But nothing can break stone, can it?

This boy, though.

This boy was like him, more so than any other kid that shared this fate, it seemed. This boy was wrong, like Vincenzo – no! This boy had something about him that made other people cast him out, discard him like yesterday’s trash. This boy, who was only beginning to learn how to speak or walk on his own two feet. No, it wasn’t his fault that people couldn’t accept him. 

So, before the thought had even reached his mind as anything more palpable than a mere idea, Vincenzo had already made a decision.

“Let's just take care of one another from now on, huh?" He stretched out his index finger and the little boy reached for it, little fist closing around it with surprising strength. Vincenzo smiled. The stretch of his cheeks felt foreign on his face. "I'll take care of you." He turned the word around in his mind before he said it, "Dongsaeng."

It felt right. 

The boy tilted his head at him. "T'seng?" 

"No. Not me." He tapped his palm against his own chest. "I'm Vincenzo."

"'Cenzo."

Vincenzo crinkled his nose at the messy pronunciation. The word must feel foreign on his tongue, too. "Actually, for you it would be hyung,” he decided instead. “Can you call me hyung?"

The boy laughed, and forgotten seemed all the tears he had spilled just a minute ago. "Hyung!"

His chest almost hurt from the debris behind his ribcage. "That's it!” he agreed. “There you go."

Vincenzo would remember that day, as clearly as when it happened, for the rest of his life.

Han-seo, though, would forget how exactly he came to be at the same orphanage, right when Vincenzo had needed him most. He would forget the older boy, no longer his brother but a stranger now, who abandoned him at the very doorstep where Vincenzo lost his mother. He was still too young, then, to remember. He would’ve forgotten that he and Vincenzo had ever been anything other than brothers, too, if not for the other kids and the adults at the orphanage reminding him that legally, biologically, they were not. 

It didn’t matter to them, anyway.

Not until a new couple entered the orphanage, and their gazes didn’t just drift over Vincenzo.

#ofc what happens after is vincenzo throws a fit when these ppl want to adopt him #and refuses to go anywhere without his lil bro<3 #and they get adopted together obv #vincenzo #early adoption au #always brothers!au #jang han seo #how old is everyone exactly? #who knows definitely not me lmao #actually i'm thinking han seo like 1.5 years and vin sth over 8 #that's basically the ages of my cousins so i have a reference #not me picking don as a surname/nickname to get out of the question #whether they are in italy or in korea #maybe han seok is dropping him off during vacation in europe huh #maybe that's why vin is already thinking in italian lol #idk idk don't ask me