It took Castiel a full twelve hours to forget about his odd passenger the night before.
In that time, he had gone to work (remembered Dean in his passenger seat), visited the shelter (a couple of new kids had come in, and their protective nature reminded Castiel of the night before), bought himself lunch (with the twenty dollars he had never asked for), visited Alfie in the hospital, and then forgot about everything else.
Because Alfie was not well.
The younger boy had been resting when Castiel entered the room, eyes closed, rise and fall of his chest even and slow. He seemed to be in a much better shape than last night, when he had been gasping over the phone.
Castiel sat himself in the one cushioned chair of the room. Alfie did not acknowledge his presence.
It was not unusual for a person living in a large city to be mugged. Fights were spontaneous, violence was, for some, unavoidable. Not with Alfie. Nobody had anything to gain from a scrawny teenager in a McDonald's uniform. It must have been something else.
Alfie sported a cut over the bridge of his nose, and stitches over one of his eyes. The other was purple and swollen, and his bottom lip had split in the middle. Castiel pointedly looked at only his makeshift brother's face. Even if the boy was covered in a wool blanket, Castiel would not be able to stop imagining the series of events that had led up to Alfie's stabbing.
The boy's eyelids parted, revealing slivers of dark focused on the paneled ceiling for a few moments, blinking slowly, before he turned his head towards the windows. Midday sunlight filtered through the glass panels, reflecting brightly off of the white walls and waxed floors. Alfie glared at the sun, sighed, and then turned away, eyes landing on his visitor for the first time.
"Castiel," Alfie acknowledged, and Castiel nodded in return. The boy's voice was stronger than it had been last night. He found a control on the side of his bed and held down a button. In time with a mechanical whir, the top half of the mattress raised Alfie's torso into a sitting position. "How are you?"
"Better than you, it would seem," Castiel retorted, because here Alfie was, sitting in a hospital bed, and asking about somebody's well-being rather than his own.
"So it would seem," Alfie agreed solemnly, and raised his hands to gesture towards his body and the wires hooked up to it, "I'm alright though. They're moving me to long term today, just until I'm able to function properly by myself again."
Castiel nodded, looking around the room for any document or receipt that could help him estimate the price. If Alfie was going to stay in the hospital for more than a day (with the therapy, drugs, and equipment Castiel was sure he would need) the cost would build high.
"When they give me options, I always take whatever is the cheapest," Alfie said. His gaze never left Castiel's face, "I'm working very hard to heal, Castiel. And the moment I'm released I will go directly back to work." Alfie worried too much. He would never heal with all the stress.
"Just don't push yourself too hard. You know that I can pay for this and whatever else you need. I don't want you to come back here again for something we can avoid." Alfie nodded and smiled, close-lipped, tight.
"Thank you, Castiel. I won't."
"You've been through too much to let something this small take you."
A knife in the gut was not particularly small, but neither of them mentioned that.
That day, Castiel skipped his visit to the shelter. Nine more hours of work, even on minimum wage, had the power to keep Castiel's brother out of debt. Alfie's life had been difficult enough already, and the added stress of the economy could not possibly help.
Castiel liked to think of himself as Alfie's protector. They had been young together, during Alfie's first experiences in the system. It was a boy's home, a complete dump. It belonged to the state, and was never funded enough for the kids that lived there. At least five boys per room, the place was overcrowded, and, managed by anybody who would work for little, it was employed mostly by criminals. Alfie had been one of the last arrivals, dropped off, sobbing and pleading, by his mother.
Crying in the home was not allowed, but Castiel had been at class that day, and the warden had found Alfie first. It was luck that had the boy assigned to Castiel's room. With nothing more than a couple of school supplies and a pair of stolen sneakers, the five boys of room B had shut down their home. It had been Castiel's proudest moment, but he had made mistakes -big ones- and he had nearly given up on himself, along with everybody else. Alfie was the single person who always believed, and Castiel decided early on that he would always give Alfie something to believe in.
He refused to give up on his brother now.
Castiel worked himself into an exhausted emptiness that night on the bus. The system was calming. Open the door, close the door, hit the buttons, turn up the radio, watch the traffic light, drive.
There were no odd customers that night.
11:30 pm public radio news report:
"-So, you may want to stock up on food and water, and prepare for electrical outages throughout the city. This weekend, you should also prepare for heavy rain, wind, and possible flooding that may come along with Hurricane Gracie. We may not be getting the brunt of the storm here, but it can't hurt to be prepared.
Now, in a suspected continuation of the gruesum warehouse murders from these past few days, forty-three year old Don Harding was found beheaded three miles from his home and workplace in Windholm County. It is thought that he was murdered about a day ago, and, although there are signs of a struggle between Harding and his killer, security footage has been erased and Harding's fingernails appear to have been cleaned. This is the third in a series of murders with no apparent connection between the victims, besides the conditions surrounding their deaths. More on this story as it progresses.
Stay tuned for a brand new episode of Animal tales, in which we'll be analyzing two poodles and talking about the mating processes of Betta Fish. This will be followed by a brief list of tips for the upcoming storm."