Alastair found out that the teen's name was Deo, and he had run away from home after a bad argument with his family. Well, Alastair assumed it was a bad argument, considering it had made Deo run away. But then again, after what he had gathered from his small conversation with the other teen, he could have run away purely because he wanted to cause a fuss. Deo seemed like that sort of rich kid to him.

"Do you want to go home, now?" Alastair broke their comfortable silence as they walked.

They had had to relocate, not wanting to get into more trouble being around that drunk when he awoke. Alastair had wrapped his ratty old-new blanket around Deo, trying to make the boy stand out less. If he was like a white dot on a black page before, now he was a grey dot.  He had considered making the boy change into one of Alastair's spair pair of clothes he had tucked away in his school bag, but he figured that he had been nice enough - to a stranger. 

"...no." Deo shook his head as he brushed red strands of hair out of his eyes. Alastair considered lending him a hairtie.

With a painfully slow exhale of air, Alastair rubbed at his temples. He had been hoping that Deo would want to go back to the comfort of his home after the reality check he had gotten, and under the guise of being his benefactor, Alastair could have a warm place to sleep tonight in lieu of his bus stop bench. Sweat trickled down his back.

Not that he wasn't warm enough already.

He surveyed the occupied benches around them. 

There.

He pinpointed one further away from the others, tucked away in front of a wall. A whimper, a few tears and (finally) the remainder of his cigarretes later, Alastair had secured them a new bench. He gave himself the liberty of a self-satisfied smile as he flicked his hood back over his head, covering his features as best as he could. 

"Well?" He tilted his head up so Deo could see his shit-eating grin, "Aren't you going to sit?"

***

Assuming Deo's personality, Alastair had prepared himself for a night of telling the other kid to shut up, but (to his delight), the teen fell asleep as soon as they'd huddled close enough under the blanket to make a cocoon of warmth. Deo was careless, if anything - they'd known each other for a grand total of two hours, and he was already trusting enough to just fall asleep. 

Alastair shivered, a headache pulsing behind his eyes. His head felt heavy as he let his eyes close.

He drifted in and out of sleep for the rest of the night. By the time morning came, he was feverish - shivering uncontrollably as he nursed his head in one hand, keeping a careful eye on the world around them as people began to wake and leave the comfort of their homes. The other benches were pretty much clear, but Alastair wasn't taking his chances; he would rather be overly cautious than not cautious enough.

There was no one to save them out here, if anything were to go wrong.

Alastair finally pulled his gaze from their surroundings as Deo stirred beside him, displacing their blanket as he uncurled into a stretch. Alastair grumbled as cool air kissed his skin, the warmth escaping as quickly as the morning cold set in. Although the freshness of the cold cleared his head a little, the sudden change in temperature coaxed a sneeze out of him.

Deo's stomach grumbled beside him. Alastair raised his eyebrows as the other boy flushed with embarrassment. 

"Have you come to a decision yet?" He could really do with a nice meal right now. Maybe Deo would offer him something if he decided to go home.

Deo's brow crinkled as he thought, staring at Alastair so intently that he probably would have looked away if he had had the energy to.

"Yeah, but you..." He paused, studying Alastair with heavy amber eyes, "Are you okay?"

Alastair propped his head up on his palm, his fingers splaying on all-too-hot skin, a smile tugging at his lips in an effort to look (at the very least) borderline ok. He knew how he must look - pasty skin adorned by dark half-moons under unfocused blue eyes - but (momentarily) he hoped that Deo was as unitelligent as he feared him to be.

"I'm fine. You, sir, on the other hand look like you're about to fade away from hunger any moment now!" He teased.

Deo watched him as he leant  down to grab the fallen blanket from the concrete.

"You don't look-" Alastairs world tilted, a torrential wave of dizziness washing over him, "-HEY!"

Suddenly, the ground was far too close for Alastair's liking, but as darkness crept over his vision, he couldn't find it in himself to care that he was very possibly about to makeout with the concrete. 

He was out before he could process the arms wrapped around him.