Adopted By Fall Out Boy (FOB fanfic)

One

The dimly lit room was filled with sleeping children. Each one had a different story, different fears, different hopes.

I couldn't sleep. It was only my second week here, and despite the comforting words of the staff and other children, not one could convince me to speak above a whisper. It's easier if I am quiet, people like an obedient child. They like the young, happy ones.

Lucky for them, I'm neither. I'm 15 and full of self hate and depression. I block  out the world with my cheap headphones and relatable Fall Out Boy lyrics. I've put that band at the center of my life for years. They made the pain go away, they made reality not as bad as I made it out to be. I loved them, and it felt like they loved me back. It seemed odd that no one else had an obsession like me.

All the other sleeping kids had lost their parents in a tragic accident, died in a fire, natural causes, horrible things for 7 and 8 year olds to comprehend. Mine was nowhere near theirs. My father was the drinking type, angry at the world and hungover enough to sleep through Sunday night football without even noticing. My mother was always a stressed person, and she was always trying her best to keep everyone happy and safe. The bills stacked up, and a few times we had to live in the alleyway next to the mini Mart.

I thought that everyone had times of extreme poverty, and ours was just taking a little longer to get out of. But when I wrote a report about where I lived, I learned that only bad people lived in boxes and not to tell anyone about our situation from then on. I had the best friend a freak like me could get. His name was Gabriel, and he was an angel as his name implies.  He was popular with everyone, but I was lucky enough to catch his eye. He protected me, and I made him laugh with my snarky comments and stupid puns. He complimented my eyes every day, even when they'd lost all feeling and glow. He understood when I didn't talk to him and when I would come to school with long sleeves in 90 degree weather. He didn't like me doing things like that to my self, but be wanted to keep me happy.

When his popular status was stripped away, I was there. I kept him safe and helped him through the rest of freshman year.

He kind of forgot about me after the incident.

It was 5 now, and a bit of the summer sun peeked out from the ground. I decided to get ready.

I quietly watched the sun come up for another hour, and one by one the younger children came and sat next to me. They were still sleepy, and some of them leaned on me after dozing off.

Time skip

Breakfast was always a hectic time of day for us. There were the loud ones, the quiet ones, the ones that ended up crying over who got the most sausage. There were only a few older kids, and they all sat together. Despite their odd breakfast clique, I sat next to a ginger boy named Shawn who didn't mind my silence. He was 8 and arrived only hours after I did. He seemed to like the bands I was listening to after sharing ear buds a few times. He was mostly into the Beatles, his dad's favorite band.

We didn't do much in the summer. Every Wednesday we would go swimming, and every Monday we would go to the library. Both were pretty nice and I could sell the ebooks I had worked on with the internet available there. I loved to write and I always got As in English from it. I was the go-to if anyone ever needed a report done in 30 minutes or less.

Today was friday, and from what I had overheard, today was an adoption day. It worked kind of like speed dating. The parents would have about 5 minutes to talk with each kid, and then move on to the next. A few of the kids from last time had gotten lucky and were taken home to wealthy, happy homes.

On the bus ride there, we were told not to have any electronics out and to look as good as possible. Shawn and I looked to each other. I took a wipe out of my small backpack and wiped his chocolatey face off as he started to pull strands of my space buns out to give them a more natural look.
He was surprisingly good at doing girl's hair, and I was surprised when, to calm his nerves, started to french braid my coppery brown  locks when he had first arrived.

"Are you nervous?" He asked. I shook my head yes, not willing to lie today. "It's okay. No one last time was very nice to either of us, so this time all of the nice ones are gonna come."

His logic was childish, but I accepted it.

We arrived at a green pasture much like the ones on The British Baking Show. There was a petting zoo and a large white tent in the middle. I doubted there was any pastries in there.

Shawn seemed scared of the crowd, so I held his hand as he cowered behind me. We stopped to pet a rabbit or two and went right to the tent. We made sure to get a seat next to each other and listened to the Beatles in peace.

When the 15 minute bell sounded, I started thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all of the new failures and the people I'll dissapoint. My breathing sped up and my hands started shaking. Shawn had seen me have a panic attack once before at one of these adoption days, and he immediately took my phone and shuffled it to Lullabye by Fall Out Boy. I started taking deep breaths while he rubbed my back with is tiny hand.

By the time it started, he had calmed me down enough to talk to the potential parents.

The first person was a very fat man. His beard was unkept and he smelled strongly of sour cream and onion chips. He didn't seem interested in a girl who refused to smile or liked any of his confusing video game references.

The second was a Christian Texan mom, with her bleach blonde hair and dazzling smile. Every ounce of her was covered in some sort of chevron print or a sequin cross. She definitely didn't like my 'unsure' on the religion question in the packet.

A few more people went by, and I started to lose hope again. I was too old for most of the people looking, and I felt even worse when I saw Shawn making every one of them smile with his shaggy hair and funny little comments. He knew what they liked.

A guy farther down the line was wearing a black fedora, which made me smile for the first time all day. I focused on the thin lipped woman in front of me.

I heard a laugh from farther down the line. It sounded familiar, but I brushed it off.

After talking to a young woman with intricate dragon tattoos all over her arms, the man in the fedora sat down in front of me with a big smile. His light brown hair peeked out from his hat, and he wore a denim jacket and a black t-shirt.

"Hi, I'm Patrick."