#another idea was that michael wound up with lees family because of foster care so ANOTHER idea as to why lee would want to work in the fiel

[phoenix--flying]

what is that Ethabaster group home au you mentioned

This was quite literally sprouted from one line of dialogue in Black Friday by Starkid, I'm not even joking 💀

"You say you killed your family. I hope I killed mine." as something Alabaster says to Ethan. But, the context?

Alabasters family (His father, step mom and their two kids) were killed in a freak house fire and he was the only one who survived. What authorities don't know? Alabaster started the fire. His father wasn't good to him and he wanted to start a fire to hopefully get him landed in the hospital so he could get out of the house/run away, it was not his intention to kill anyone. Regardless, he wound up in a group home since he had no family to go to (He did, technically, but none of them could be reached)

A couple years after that, Ethans dad died in a car accident which Ethan blames himself for, he'd been asking a lot of questions and thought it distracted his dad from seeing another car coming towards them. If you wanna go the Nakamura/Tanaka fam route (me personally i always do) then both his and Drews dads were killed, Drew is placed in the care of one Naomi Solace while Ethan is sent to the same group home as Alabaster.

Despite authorities ruling the fire at the Torrington estate an accident, the other boys in the home took note of Al's apathetic attitude towards the accident and decided to start a rumor that he set the fire which, of course, is true but they don't know that. So, Al doesn't get along with most people in the home aside from one other resident, Chris Rodriguez, and two of the workers, Luke Castellan and Lee Fletcher.

He's caused many a problem before and has been threatened with a placement move but Luke always manages to get it fixed, he had also planned to start a new job at a different home around the time Alabaster showed up but ended up changing his mind. Luke is the only one who knows that Al set the fire.

Alabaster has his own room because of the issues with the others, but when Ethan shows up Luke assigns him to Al's room. At first, Al just ignores him; he's seen enough people come and go in the two years he'd been there he's learned to not make friends. But after a month or so he starts to open up a little, talk to Ethan a bit more. Then Luke starts assigning them to the same activities and stuff like that, basically trying to push them together in a way because he thinks they'll get along and that having a friend would be good for Al.

Ethan also completely ignores the rumors, despite several kids telling him that nobody wants to adopt Alabaster because he's a murderer, etc etc. Alabaster doesn't want to be adopted, he's trying to find his bio mom (He was under the impression that his step mom was his bio mom but found out very soon after the fire that she wasn't) And Hecate is under the impression that Alabaster is with one of his aunts, rather then a group home, hence her lack of contact.

Lee and Luke met each other during a brief stint in a different group home which is what pushed them to work for one when they were older :) They are the homes big brothers fr what can I say.

Eventually though, Alabaster ends up telling Ethan the truth about the fire before promptly running away because he thought Ethan would hate him, and because Ethan is his first actual friend he did NOT want to deal with that. Also an underlying fear that Ethan would call the police. Luke ends up finding him and convincing him to come back.

To be completely honest I don't think there's been much past that, so that's it for now LOL