Adopted by Phan

Chapter 114- Alt. Ending 1 Part 2

­­­­Dan's P.O.V.

6 Years Later

"Phil! Where's Phoenix's bag!?" I heard a yell of 'I don't know!' from upstairs and I sighed to myself, looking down at Phoenix's confused and somewhat apprehensive look.

At six years old he had grown to be incredibly independent, taking off as soon as we had let him go to kindergarten. Both Phil and I had clung on for a little too long, but he was our baby after all and we wanted something to remind us of Jay.

And he did that, everyday. He had grown into an incredible likeness of his mother, with the same blonde hair and green eyes, freckles and small stature. He had taken on her personality too, strong willed and determined to get his own way, no matter what it took. He also had the same intense stare, his eyes almost captured your soul and you couldn't look away.

The first time he did it I burst into tears because it reminded me so much of her.

The wound that was Jay was still incredibly sore. I knew that I would never get over her death and there would always be an aching hole where she had been, which couldn't be filled by anything, as much as we tried to do exactly that. She was gone, and I could never forget that.

Anais hadn't forgotten either, she still came around every few weeks (occasionally with one of Jay's school friends) to help take care of Phoenix so Phil and I could record undisturbed together for a little while without worrying. She had told us that her and Jay had been together as a couple for at least a few months before her death and that just made everything sadder, knowing that we had lost a daughter and she had lost a partner, a best friend and a girlfriend all at the same time.

It was Phoenix's first day of school... of his second year. He knew exactly what was coming and ever since we had woken him up at 7 o'clock, he had been fighting us tooth and nail to not go back to school. As much as I wanted to give in I knew he had to go, legally and for his own benefit, but sometimes I just wanted to keep him back and home school him.

Phil and I knew that we didn't have a capacity to home school him but we had thought about it anyway, abandoning the idea when we saw what it took to be allowed to home school a child. Public school was better for him anyway, where he could make friends other than his little brother.

Yes, we had adopted again.

When Phoenix was four years old, on the anniversary of Jay's death, Phil and I officially adopted another little boy after 6 months of wrangling the legal system to try and let us keep him. His name was Jax.

He was a baby from the streets, the mother long dead and the baby left in the care of some of the people Jay used to know who couldn't give him a proper home. When the baby was six months old roughly, as they never got an actual birthdate, someone showed up at our front door that we would never forget, asking for help.

Jax pleaded with us. He had known of Jay's death and the birth of her child, somehow, how we didn't exactly know, and he wanted us to take on this new charge. He had said that he didn't know where else to turn and the baby would have died otherwise, of starvation or of exposure. We took him without a second thought.

We had been thinking about adopting again for a few years, but we never got around to actually doing it, what with taking care of Phoenix, working and everything else on top of that, but when Jax came to our door there was no hesitation. There was no way that we could leave a life out in the cold when we had the means to take care of it.

And so baby Jax came into our life. On the street he had been called Jacob but Phil and I decided against that, instead naming after the boy that had ultimately saved his life and who turned down the offer of coming to live with us.

We had offered a place to stay for a while but he turned it down, instead saying that he was leaving the country to find a life elsewhere. He said he couldn't stay anymore, not when there was no one who needed him to protect them like he had done for Jay. And so he said goodbye, and we hadn't seen him since.

Baby Jax, now two and a half years old, was officially ours after hours and hours of paperwork, house inspections and questioning. The legal work was more complicated because we didn't know his parentage but we got through eventually with a little bit more effort.

Now with two young children, we had to work harder than ever to support them. We still did YouTube which was our main source of income, but on the side we both had part time jobs in local shops to bring in a little bit more and provide the best for our boys.

Our channels had been fluctuating a little over the years, subscriber numbers dropping and then rising again over the space of a few months. Although the channels were still growing it didn't bring in nearly as much money as it used to, as people moved on to bigger and better things and leaving us behind.

We had known it would happen one day, when YouTube stopped being popular, and we knew we had had a good run on the site, making the most of it while we could. Many of our old friends, Louise, PJ, Chris and Cat including, had long stopped making videos as they didn't bring in the need revenue and had moved on with their lives. We rarely kept in contact.

It was sad seeing them move on but there were a few still out there making the most of what they had left, Mark, Jack and Felix being the main culprits. Their channels were still growing hugely, going up a million subscribers every 6 months or so and although things had slowed, it was still going well.

As for Phil and I, well I was 32 and Phil was 36, so things were getting on a bit. We were still the same bubbly, sometimes stupid teens (kinda) as when we had first met, and we had still never let go of all of the good things that had happened. We still called each other bear and lion and I had a feeling that the names were going to last for the rest of our lives, reminding us of when we were younger... quite a bit younger.

Phil still dressed in his button ups all the time and my wardrobe was still full of mostly black clothes, not that it didn't stop me stealing some of Phil's stuff, but not a lot had changed. We were still Dan and Phil and I supposed we would always be Dan and Phil, although now it was Dan and Phil plus 2.

And looking down at the little boy clinging onto my hand and scowling, stomping his feet on the ground and Phil standing at the top of the steps with a Thomas the Tank Engine backpack in hand and a toddler clinging to his leg, wailing loudly with his dark brown hair bouncing everywhere, I smiled.

I could truly say that we were happy.

Thank you Jay.