Dex has a lot of siblings.
None of them have red hair.
Dex is a foster kid.
Oh gosh.
I mean, I love the idea of a whole gaggle of lanky red heads making Dex crazy and teasing him about his boyfriend (And literally everything)… But!
If he’s a foster kid, his focus and his temper, his skills at fixing everything… It all becomes something about proving himself, about being useful so his family will keep him.
Even after he’s adopted (I can’t stomach the idea that he didn’t) he’s so afraid of losing what he’s got. He’ll fight to keep them, he’ll fight to be so good that they’ll never regret him.
Eventually, he settles in, his parents and siblings reassure him he’s theirs until it sinks in, but, that drive to being doesn’t really go away. Neither does the anxiety.
I like to think finding hockey, finding the SMH in particular, helps. The family of choice atmosphere of acceptance and belonging smoothing out the edges of his first semester anxiety induced hair trigger temper.
His family checks in often, making sure he doesn’t have a chance to feel like they’ve forgotten him. To others, it might feel/seem like smothering, but for Dex it’s a reassurance.
Oh gosh, I could go on and on (especially if you want to get into how many families he went through/How old he was when he gets adopted/How he team reacts/How his family reacts to the team…), but I just have a lot of feelings about this.
Oh god! What if he has a biological little sister, and he refused to be separated from her, and his temper freshman year was because it’s the first time they’ve been separated!
Stop me, my feelings can’t take it!
Plot twist
Published
just moving along like everyone else 