Famous: A Malec AU Fanfiction

Chapter 38

They had to adopt him.

Those were Alec's first thoughts when he walked out of the orphanage. The little boy, he hardly spoke any English, but he had one of the sharpest tongues. Alec had been able to see from the dark glint in his eyes that he was intelligent, perhaps more intelligent than Alec ever would be.

Alec had never seen anything like the bright light in his eyes. It was a different light from the sort that was in everyone else's eyes.

He picked up his phone to dial Magnus's number. Of course, he had it memorized. He stopped short when the screen flickered to life on his phone. He had forgotten that he had set it to vibrate, Raphael always disapproved of phones suddenly going off when they were filming.

Magnus had called him during the time he had been in the orphanage, and he had left a message. With a twinge of guilt, Alec put his phone to his ear to listen. What if something had happened with Max at school?

There was the sound of his own voicemail before the message came.

"Alexander, Alec," there was a very tired edge to his voice, which squeezed at Alec's heart with worry, "Um, I'm not home right now. Ragnor, he had to be taken to the hospital. You don't have to come if you are busy, but I just thought that I should let you know where I am. Call me back when you can, or not. It's up to you. Max is fine."

Alec had barely heard most of the message. All he could hear were the couple of words that had popped out instantly. Ragnor, hospital...

And how tired Magnus had sounded, almost as if he was on the edge of tears. Alec had never seen Magnus cry, he had never seen him about to cry.

He called a taxi over, heading for the general local hospital. He paid the driver ahead of time.

The smell of antiseptic was everywhere. There was no escaping the sickening sweet scent, mixed in with the smell of disease and even blood being drawn. He hated all of it, he had always disliked hospitals in general. Magnus knew that it would follow him around for a while, it would linger on his clothes no matter how much he washed them. He was barely thinking about that at all.

The nurse had come out a while ago, but her words had seemed so far away. He didn't catch all of them.

"Overworked...lungs...everything we can."

The first person he had called had been Catarina. She had picked up immediately, and once Magnus had been able to get out what had happened, she had been in a complete panic. Magnus knew that Catarina had once been a nurse, before she had switched her path before she had gone to medical school. When he had told her that Ragnor had started coughing up blood, she had been on the very verge of hysteria. She had hung up when he had been in the middle of a sentence.

He had left Alec a message a while ago, when he hadn't picked up his phone. Alec and Ragnor had barely talked, but it still felt right to let him know. Magnus had been sitting in the too-small, plastic chair for so long. He had lost track of time in the hospital. Gods, how he hated hospitals.

"Hey," a voice suddenly came, warm and familiar. Magnus looked up, almost expecting to see Alec. He felt a twinge of guilt when he realized that it was Catarina instead.

Her clothes were uncharacteristically wrinkled, and papers were hanging out of the fold jammed under one of her arms. It seemed as if she had simply dropped everything and run right out of her office. Magnus felt so much gratitude towards that.

"Tell me everything," she said, dropping into the seat next to him.

Magnus ran a hand through his hair. He had done it so many times that now it was sticking up everywhere. He let out a long breath before he continued on.