"Bao! Bao Wu!" The boy closes his eyes. Trudges away from his desk, away from the school work provided to him by his tutor this morning, and lingers outside of the office that he's been commanded to never ever enter unless commanded to. "Bao Wu!" This gets him moving and he gingerly opens the door, peeking inside. His father stands, tall and menacing as ever, before the fireplace, staring into the depths of the flame licking at the wood.
His father barely acknowledges his presence before beginning to speak, still standing with his back to him, arms crossed behind him. Bao stands anxiously and listens to the Chinese pouring from his father's mouth, trying to properly understand everything he's saying. But it's intimidating, and scary, especially for a young child, but Bao tries. He truly does. "Do you understand, boy?" he snaps, looking up when Bao nods blankly. "Then return to your room. I will be in to see you later."
He's taken out on a job then. Witnesses his father handle what has to be illegal business from the car, money exchanging hands just to be replaced with bags full of things he's sure he doesn't want to know the origin of. His father talks a lot on the ride home but Bao does his best to ignore, to focus on anything else than the frightening words coming from his mouth. "Do not tell your mother," is the last thing his father tells him before Bao dives out of the car and runs inside.
It's not the last time, however. At least once a week, he's forced to accompany his father on these secret missions, watching from afar as the transactions occur. The more it happens, the more accustomed he becomes to the process, sometimes even commentating it in his head. "Yes, Mr. Wu, this all looks perfect," he tells himself, mocking the voice of the man opposite his father. "Thank you for your business. Same time and place next week?"
But then... one day it all goes wrong. The men seem jumpy, his father annoyed. Bao sits quietly in a corner of the car, watching with wide eyes as the car stops with a skid, missing the usual stopping spot by a few inches. His father gets out, ignoring Bao's wide eyed, fearful stare. Smoothing his suit jacket down, he heads for the men waiting. Within seconds, gunshots ring out and Bao yelps as he's grabbed and pushed down, his father now out of sight. "No, no!" he cries out, struggling to get free, see his father, but there's nothing for it- the guard left with him won't let go so he's stuck, panting for breath and listening for something, anything- a sign that his father isn't dead on the street somewhere.
He yelps when the car door is forced open, folding himself in even smaller on the floor, but then hands leave him and he's able to sit up, dazed, as the car peels off, skidding even worse before catching traction and eating up the pavement as it races away. Bao swallows hard as he looks at his father, sprawled out over the seat, shirt stained under his jacket. Red drops pour from his slack fingers and Bao realizes it's blood, his face paling before he's grabbed by the guard and dragged closer. "Keep your hands here," he snaps, pressing Bao's shaking fingers to the worst of the red. "Press down! Now!" He listens, trying to ignore the awful squelching noise under his skin and the painful noise his father makes, body tensing before going limp once more.
He sobs, sure his father is dying under his fingers, but unable to do anything but sit there, numb and frozen while the guards make phone calls, have tense conversations that make very little sense to him. He gasps when he realizes his father is awake, watching him. "Good boy," he chokes out, blood sputtering from his pale lips. "Good boy... Bao."
It's the first time his father's ever paid any sort of actual compliment to him. Bao fears that it will be the final time, but somehow- someway, his father survives. He's weak and bed-ridden for a week, but when he's healthy enough for it, the 'business meetings' continue. The only difference this time is Bao is left at home, anxious and scared until his father returns home, safe and in one peace.
Until the day he doesn't come home. Not death, but something about as bad. Bao learns his father has been arrested for racketeering, tax evasion, pretty much every other crime a person could list. Everything happens quickly- Bao finds himself getting moved out of his father's house to his mother's much smaller apartment. He doesn't know her, or his grandmother, they are quiet and tense around each other, any familial intimacy missing between them from all of the years they've spent apart. He knows she thinks he's spent so much time with his father that he's going to turn out to be a miniature drug cartel leader like him, but Bao doesn't want that. Still has nightmares sometimes of blood dripping through his fingers, and the visual of his father in prison.
School is the only thing that makes sense to him, even if he's not always the greatest at it. He's not interested in serious relationships, despite his mother and grandmother sometimes pointing out females in his classes that they think would be good girlfriend material for him. He grows more and more confused as time passes and he realizes the only people who really catch his eye are the more athletic types in grades ahead of him, muscular and self-assured during practices that he sometimes sits up in the stands to watch. He grows more and more confused and uncomfortable as he realizes what this means. He doesn't like girls. He only finds himself attracted to other boys in his school. He closes his eyes and pinches his nose- as if being a somewhat nerdy, awkward, Chinese boy wasn't enough... Now he has something new to separate him from everyone else.
So he keeps to himself even more, careful to keep his eyes- and his desires- to himself. He stops going to practice, spends his free time either at home or tucked away in a corner of the library, reading and dreaming about his future. His mother brings new men around a lot, the relationships almost always starting off warm and promising, then quickly devolving into arguments and abuse- sometimes emotional, a lot of the time physical, Bao's fingers often curled around a phone, waiting to press the number for local police whenever he awakens to more arguing. So he has no good example when it comes to such matters- only the few memories he has of his parents when he was very young, before his mother had enough of his father's business and left him, just for his father to use his money and influence to obtain custody after a bitter, lengthy court fight.
His grandfather and his aunt visit regularly, enforcing their influence on both him and his mother, but Bao only pretends to listen to them, nodding wearily as needed. His father will be in prison for many years to come and he can tell neither of them really cares about him- if they did, he wouldn't still be trapped in this apartment with his barely there mother, all they care about is having someone to continue on the Wu name. One night after a particularly lengthy visit from there, his mother visits him, cupping his face and searching his eyes. "You look so like your father," she finally says, anger and exhaustion warring in her tone. "Do not let them dictate your life. I will support anything you decide to do, but that."
Her words remain with him. She's little more than a stranger to him, but he trusts her just a little more than the criminals that he shares blood with. He has a little more than a year left before he can graduate high school, but a plan begins formulating as he digs deeper into biology and chemistry courses. Ever since he was in the backseat of that car, blood has frightened him. He can still see it leaking through his fingers, promising death and turmoil for all around him, and he wants to overcome it. Needs to leave it behind him. So he decides to become a phlebotomist, easily getting accepted into a college after keeping his grades high in everything but especially in his science courses for the rest of grades 11 and 12. As soon as he's old enough, he goes to the secretary of state office in downtown Port Charles with as much paperwork as he could find on himself and starts the proceedings to change his name. It feels like it takes forever, but finally Bao Wu is just a memory and Brad Cooper is ready to face the world.
He excels in phlebotomy training, his hand only a little shaky the first few times when he takes blood and performs all of the testing that it requires, a quick study with all of the diseases that it's required of him to learn. He gains his certification easily enough, and has his choice of hospitals in the area to come work on a trial basis, but he sticks with General Hospital, the one who he'd done his training in, close to home but far enough away from the Chinese Quarter that he's not too concerned. His grandfather had passed in the years since he'd last seen him at his mother's house, and his aunt had all but faded from all memory since. His father is still rotting in prison.
Moving out of his mother's apartment is the first thing he does as soon as he has a couple of paychecks saved up, and even if he just ends up in a railroad apartment where he sees his neighbors more often than he'd like. It's here that he has his first real experience- sharing kisses and curious touches with this 20-something guy behind the building, both of them fine with keeping everything quiet. When it ends abruptly a few days into it, Brad is almost relieved, still finding himself out of his element with such things. He buries himself once more in his work and everything returns to normal, even with all of the drama and silliness at General Hospital, mostly thanks to Britt Westborne, who apparently sees something in him, something he doesn't like because she begins treating him like her partner in crime, sometimes stopping just to gossip with him about those around them, sometimes asking him for help with things a little out of the range of permissibility or legality. Something he's both uncomfortable with and completely used to.
It all crashes down around him when he turns a corner one day and bumps into something solid and warm, folders and phlebotomy case flying from his hands and clattering over the tile floor. He stares at them all, frustration growing within him, before he looks up and meets the warmest, softest eyes he's ever seen. All he can do is gape as the new intern he'd been gossiping about with Britt a few hours earlier, Felix DuBrois, apologies profusely, scrambling around to collect all of his papers for him, stuffling them back in the folder before rushing over to grab his case while he kneels there, in shock and useless. "Are you ok?" Felix asks him. "I'm so sorry, I should watch where I'm going, but Epiphany has us all running so ragged-" He cuts himself off and reaches forward, patting Bao on the shoulder awkwardly. "Hey, that was a pretty hard collision. Did I hurt you?"
Bao blinks hard, reality crashing into him as he looks away from Felix's worried eyes, feeling how his skin is flushing hotly. "No, I'm fine," he forces out, taking his things from Felix, wishing that the man doesn't notice how his hands are trembling. "Uhh, thank you. It's my fault too, I should've been watching where I was going..."
Felix lets him go and steps back, smiling abashedly. "I'm glad you're ok. I feel like I owe you one though. Maybe we can get a coffee later or something. And not the gunk they pretend is edible in the break room." He turns to leave, then stops short and heads back. "Hey, what's your name, though?"
He's never really said his chosen name outside of college; had always been Bao Wu, the paranoid, elusive young man with regular nightmares about blood and prison, struggling every day to overcome his fears. But the more he stares at Felix, the more he wants to be someone new. Someone brave, with a somewhat stable homelife, who knows how to just be, how to love, how to live around people without wanting to hide like he'd always been forced to as a child, with very few friends.
"I'm Brad Cooper," he finally says, blinking hard and taking Felix's hand, shaking it solemnly as they stare at each other, a small smile teasing at Brad's lips for the first time in he's not sure how long.
"Nice to meet you, Brad Cooper," Felix says and Brad realizes he really likes the sound of that name, especially on Felix's lips.
As Felix reluctantly lets go of him and turns to continue his rounds with a quick wave over his shoulder, Brad hugs his folder and case to his chest and lets that smile overtake everything else. He takes a minute to compartmentalize the warmth tingling down his fingers, the pink blush coating his cheeks, and how fast his heart is beating, and thinks this could be the start of something truly beautiful.