Meh. Random something.

The wind slipped up through a small opening between the top of my sweater and the bottom of my scarf, sending a freezing draft against my neck and a shiver down my spine.  This weather was practically unholy.  Barely the end of September and already the threat of snow.  "This place is Hell," I muttered, pulling my hat down around my ears, "and it's about to freeze over."

I pulled out the keys to my apartment building as I rounded the corner.  It was already far too late; I'd spent too much time at Gene's house after the card game had ended.  Now it was nearly midnight and almost pitch black on the side-street my building was on.  I took the four steps up to the door with small hops to try and warm my feet up a bit and had to stop before I could even get my key in the door.  

Huddled up in the small alcove of the entrance to our building, was a boy, fast asleep and curled tightly into the corner as far from the entrance of the little indentation of wall as he could get, a backpack clutched to his chest.  His feet were blocking the door.

I squatted down beside him, looking over the dirty, torn jeans, the too-large jacket and the hat that was pulled down around his ears.  His cheeks were smudged with dirt and the soles of his shoes seemed worn-down and ready to give.  I reached over and touched his shoulder, giving him a gentle shake.  "Hey, wake up."

He jerked into full-awakeness all at once, his hands shoving my arm away even as he tried to stumble onto his feet: a feat he didn't manage and just ended up pressed farther back into the corner.

"Hey, relax.  You lock yourself out?"

He stared at me as if I hadn't spoken english to him, then looked away from me and shook his head a little.  "No, sir," he mumbled, so low I barely heard him.

I smiled a little to him.  "Next time someone asks... lie.  If nothing else, there's laundry rooms on every floor which are a damn bit warmer than out here."  I offered him my hand.

He looked back at me, brown eyes wide in surprise.  He shied away from the hand for a moment, then reached up and took it, helping me help him to his feet.  He was taller than he'd looked before, older too.  He stood easily to my shoulders and was probably somewhere in his mid-teens.  

I put my key in the lock and opened the door, motioning him ahead of me.  He took two steps into the laundry and stopped, looking around as I stepped in behind him.

"It's warm in here."

"Either that, or it's just really cold outside."  I smiled to him again.  "Come on."

He followed me to the elevator and stopped outside of it.

"What's the matter?"

"I... smell."

I rolled my eyes a little and gently grabbed his arm, pulling him inside and hitting the button for the fifth floor.  "Seriously, when someone's trying to help you, you really shouldn't resist so much."

He blushed and adjusted the backpack on his shoulder.  "I'm sorry.  Thank you."

"Don't worry about it."  The doors opened and I stepped out.  He followed behind me.

"Where is the laundry room?"

"Come with me.  You're staying with me tonight, that was just for future reference."  

His cheeks colored again beneath the smudge of dirt, but he didn't object as he followed me to my apartment.  

I opened the door and moved inside, closing and locking it once he was inside.  I walked past where he'd stopped in the entranceway, dropping my keys onto a table and turning on the lights.  "Come on, didn't your parents ever tell you not to hover in doorways?"

He kicked off his sneakers before treading farther in, stopping again just inside the living room.

"Jesus, kid, relax.  Go get a shower, okay?  I'll make us something to eat and get you a clean set of clothes to sleep in."

He didn't move.

"Bathroom's the door on the left there," I told him, pointing.  "Now go get clean or I will make you sleep in the laundry room."

He blushed once more, but obediently went to the bathroom.  The door closed and I heard the lock click once he was inside.  

I went into the kitchen to see if I had anything that was still mostly edible.  I'd been out of town on business for the past two weeks and hadn't had much time to go shopping.  I didn't.  All I had was some sour milk, leftover spaghetti, and frozen chicken.  Not exactly the food of the gods.  I decided on my backup: pizza delivery.  I called the pizza place down the road, placed my order, then headed into my room and scrounged up a pair of sweats and a sweater for my houseguest, leaving them on the floor just outside the bathroom before changing into another set of sweats and then taking up a seat on the couch to wait.  

It was almost a half an hour later (the pizza got there ten minutes earlier), when the boy emerged from the bathroom in the baggie sweats and moved hesitantly to the living room.  His hair was blond and hung down around his jaw.  He smiled a little to me when I looked up at him.  "Thanks... it feels really good to be clean again."

I smiled to him.  "You look a lot better clean."  I nodded towards the kitchen.  "I ordered some pizzas.  Grab a slice and come sit down, we can watch a movie before bed."

"Thanks."  

I watched him go into the kitchen and then come back out, sliding down to sit on the couch with me.  I hit play on the movie and ate my own pizza, watching him out of the corner of my eye as he scarfed down his slice.  He probably hadn't had anything much better than the current occupants of my fridge in a while.

He had two more slices after I gave him my blessing to eat what he wanted, then he settled down into the corner of the sofa, only half watching the movie, the rest of the time he was starting to drift to sleep.  

I finally shut off the movie and moved over to him, touching his cheek.  "Hey.  Don't fall asleep like that, you'll get a crick in your neck.  Gimme a second to get you a blanket and a pillow, okay?"

He nodded sleepily and uncurled himself from the small ball he'd made on the other end of the sofa.  

I came back and laid out a spare pillow against the arm of the sofa and unfolded a blanket my mother had sent me last Christmas that had yet to be used.  He smiled to me when I handed him the blanket.

"Thanks for this... all of it."

"Don't worry about it, kid. Get some sleep, okay?"  I ruffled his hair a little and headed back towards my room as he laid down on the sofa.  

"Hey..."

I stopped and turned around.

"My name's Mica."

"Nice to meet you, Mica.  Sleep well."  I shut off the lights and headed into my own room.

Saturday morning came with a burst of sunlight and a howling wind that shook the glass in the window.  I refused to be hurried out from under my blankets, pulling them up over my head to hide from the sunlight.  There was a small knock on my door.  "Hey, Mister?"

I pulled the covers down enough to peek out from beneath them.  The blond boy in the doorway stared at me for a long moment, the brown eyes curious, but not daring to ask.  "Yeah, Mica?"

"I... I was going to go... but my clothes... they're gone."

"Oh."  I pushed the blankets down a little more and pushed myself into a sitting position.  "Yeah, I sent them out with mine to get cleaned.  They'll be back later on."

He stood there awkwardly for another minute, then nodded and stepped away, shutting the door behind himself.

I stood up and went to the door, opening it.  "Hey, come here."

Brown eyes looked at me, then he came back to the door and looked away from my face.

I grabbed his forearm and pulled him into the room, shutting the door.  I pulled him to the bed and sat on the edge of it, holding him between my knees and looking up at him.  "What's the matter?"

He shook his head and wouldn't meet my eyes.  "Nothing."

"Did you sleep well?"

He nodded.  "Yes, thank you."

"Kiss me."

His arms tensed in my hands, but he didn't move to hit me.  He didn't move at all.

"Mica."

He swallowed and looked at my face.

I watched him, then he slowly shifted, bending over and gently brushing his lips across mine.  I smiled to him.  "Not there."

He tensed more and pulled at his arms.  I tightened my hold.

"Please," he whispered, trying to pull his arms away again.  "Don't."

"Kneel."

"Please... Mister..."

I gripped his arms tighter and he gave a hiss of pain.  "Down."

He moved down, kneeling against the bed.  I let go of one of his arms and touched his cheek, sliding my fingers into his hair.

"Good boy."  I pulled him towards me and smiled.  "Buck up, Mica... it's a small price to pay."

"Please, don't..."

"Do as you're told."

"NO!"  The boy sat bolt upright on the sofa, gasping for air and staring around the unfamiliar room.

I jumped myself in the kitchen and blinked, staring into the living room.  "Mica?  Are you all right?"

The boy's head whipped towards me and he gripped the blanket tighter against his chest, his eyes wide.

"Mica?"  I stood up.

"Please don't!"  He shut his eyes tightly, turning away.

I stared and didn't move.  Not wanting to alarm him further, I stayed where I was.  "Mica, it's all right.  You're safe here.  Nobody's going to do anything that you don't want."

He was shaking, but I still didn't go to him, waiting for him to calm down.  I watched him until his trembling subsided and he noticed that I didn't come closer.  He took a few deep breaths and looked up at me.  "I'm sorry."

"Don't be.  It was just a dream.  Are you all right?"

He nodded a little bit and laid back down.

I moved over and stood behind the couch, leaning against the back of it and looking down at him.  I smiled to him.  "Want to talk about it?"

He shook his head and blushed.  "No.  I'm all right.  I should probably go soon."

"Well, give it a little bit.  I did a load of laundry this morning and added your clothes to it.  They're in the dryer now, should be done soon."

"Oh, okay.  Thanks."

"Come and have some leftover pizza for breakfast.  You gotta help me finish it, or else it'll go back in my fridge."

He smiled sweetly and combed his fingers through his hair.  "You sure know how to spoil a kid.  I'll be looking back on this in a week like I hit the lottery."  Mica pushed himself up, folding up the blanket in a few easy moves and laying it against the other arm before following me into the kitchen.

"Where are you from?"  I asked, sliding down into my seat again and sipping my coffee.

He looked elsewhere as he slid down into a seat across from me.  "Just... you know, around."

"I'm not going to turn you in."

"I know."

We sat there quietly for a few minutes.

"I had a dream about you last night," I told him, sipping at my coffee.

He looked up at me and quirked a brow.  "Yeah?"

I nodded.  "Yes.  It was... stimulating."

His brow furrowed a little.  

I smiled.  "Don't worry, I don't make it a habit of trying to understand my dreams.  They're just dreams."

His shoulders let out a little tension I hadn't noticed he was holding and he nodded.  "Yeah... you weren't in my dream."

"Well, I'll consider that a good thing, after seeing your reaction to it."

He smiled a little.  "Why are you being so nice to me?"

"Because, if it were me... I'd want someone to be nice to me."

"What do you do?"

"I work in advertising."

"Do you like it?"

"Not really."  I smiled to him.  "But it pays good, and I get to travel, so it's not that bad.  What do you want to do?"

His smile faltered and he looked away.  "I wanted to be a veterinarian.  But it doesn't matter much now."

"Why not?"

He shook his head.  "Because I don't exist anymore."

I watched him curiously as he poked at the cold piece of pizza on his plate.  He hadn't taken a bite yet.  I started to say something, but my timer went off.  "Oh, that's the clothes."  I smiled to him.  "I'll be right back."  I stood up and went to get the laundry, closing the door to my apartment.

"Oh, Keith!"

I looked up and down the hall.

"Keith, I heard all that commotion coming from inside your room," my neighbor said, coming towards me.  

"It was nothing, Ms. Hadly.  I just had the television on too loud."

"I could have sworn you'd brought home a guest last night.  I heard you come in."

"I think you're mistaken.  Though I was a little drunk when I got in last night, maybe I was making enough noise for two people." 

The woman stared at me as if she were about to call my bluff, but I just smiled.  "If you'll excuse me, I have laundry in."  I turned away before she could say anything else and went to get the laundry.  When I got back to my door, she was gone.  

Mica had eaten his pizza and then cleaned up after himself, and me, much to my amusement, and left the kitchen looking better than it had since before I left town.  He was sitting at the table with his own cup of coffee.  "I hope you don't mind me drinking some."

"I don't, it's all right."

"Would you like help?"  He indicated to the basket of unfolded laundry.

I laughed and set the basket down on the table.  "Well aren't you just the perfect little house-boy."

He smiled lightly and stood up, picking up a shirt from the basket.  "I used to help my mom with the laundry."

"And the dishes?"  I asked, looking at the sink.  

He gave a little nod.  "Yeah.  My parents both worked, so I took over a lot of the house-stuff when I got home from school."

"Oh?  What did your parents do?"

Mica set the folded shirt aside and grabbed another one.  "Coke, mostly."  He kept his eyes trained on the seams of the shirt.  "Dad drove a truck when he wasn't flipping out, and mom worked as a waitress at a waffle place."

"Is that why you left?"

"I wouldn't have ditched them.  They needed me."  He looked up and I could tell he really believed it.

"I'm sure they did.  But then why..."

He picked up a pair of pants and his hands were trembling as he folded them.  "Because they're dead."

I watched him as he picked up the last of the items and added it to his neatly folded piles, then just stared at them.  

"Hey, I have a proposition for you."

He looked up at me and forced himself to focus until he was actually looking at me.  "What?"

"I'm not any good at this household stuff.  Can't cook, can't clean, and I'm all around just not very good at taking care of things around here.  If you stay here and take care of that stuff for me, you can have free room and board, and I'll give you like a hundred extra dollars a week towards your schooling."

Mica stared at me through the locks of blond that had fallen into his face, looking more confused than anything else.  "But.. you don't even know me."

"If you were going to murder me in my sleep, you had plenty of opportunity last night.  Besides, it's damn cold outside and I'm not sure how I'd feel about myself if I just let you go back out there to freeze to death."

He swallowed a little and lowered himself back down into his chair, then looked at me again.  "You're sure?"

"Of course.  We'll have to go out grocery shopping, though, because I have no food in the apartment to speak of... and if anyone comes to the door and asks, we'll tell them you're my nephew, but other than that...."

"I have to know one thing first before I agree," he said, looking very serious.

"What's that?"

He smiled.  "Are you allergic to anything?"

I listened to the phone ring.  Once.  Twice.  He answered on the third ring.  "Hello?"

"Hey Mica."

"Hey Keith," I could hear the smile in his voice.

"I ran into an old friend at work today, is it okay with you if I bring him home for dinner?"

"Yeah, no problem, there's almost always leftovers."

"All right.  We'll be there in about an hour."

"Okay, see you then."

"Bye."  I hung up.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you're not living with your nephew so much as you're married to him," Thomas said with a smile.

"Can't bring you home if he only made enough for two, you know."  I smiled to him.  Mica had been living with me for almost three months now and was proving to be an almost perfect and completely unintrusive housekeeper.  He'd even started a small business on the side, where he mainly did most of the peoples' laundry from the building for a very reasonable rate.  If he kept this up, he'd be off to veterinary school in no time.

"Good point."

"I'm going to go get some coffee before we leave.  I didn't sleep really well last night."

"Oh?  Have a 'friend' over?"

"With Mica in the other room?  How heartless could I be?"  I smiled to him.  "No, just... bad dreams."  Not so much my dreams, but Mica's.  More often than not, he woke up in the middle of the night, panicked and crying.  He tried not to wake me, but he usually did and I would lay there, just listening to him until he fell back asleep.  Last night had been particularly bad.  It'd taken him nearly two hours to get back so sleep, practically sobbing the whole time.  We never talked about it come morning, not that I hadn't tried, but he always just shook his head, said he was fine, and ignored any further attempts at dragging the cause out of him.  I'd finally just stopped asking.  

I poured myself a cup of coffee in the breakroom, watching the news anchors discussing the most recent tragedy: a school bus sliding into the divider on highway 147.  

"And now, from the national sector.  Police in Sacramento are still searching for one Mica Kittiwake."

I looked at the screen and nearly dropped my coffee.  On the screen as the newscaster talked airily of the brutal murder of his parents, was a slightly younger, smiling picture of Mica.

"Police found large amounts of Mica's blood in the home, but still have not found the boy's body.  At current, Police Chief Rudolph is calling for any and all information to locate the missing teen.  If you've seen him, please call..."

How many people do I know that watch this news?  Would anyone in the building call?  

I left my coffee in the breakroom and hurried back to my desk, grabbing my coat.  "Let's go, I have to get home."

"Where's your coffee?"  

"It's too late in the day to drink coffee, come on."

Thomas got up and followed me out to the cars, heading over to his own so that he could follow me home.  I got out my cell and dialed home.

"Hello?"

"Mica, you were on the news."

Silence.

"Mica?"

I heard him breathing, the slow, scared breathing that he did sometimes right before he fell back asleep.  

"Mica, talk to me."

He swallowed.  "I-I'm here."

"Good.  Stay there, don't answer the door for anyone.  I'll be there in less than half an hour."

"Keith..."

"Mica, stay there, all right?  Just wait for me."  I hung up and twenty minutes later, was parked outside of my building.  Thomas was right behind me, falling into step with me as I hurried into the building.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine.  I just want to get home, it's been a long day."

I unlocked the door and headed inside, looking around.  Mica looked up from the kitchen table and I could read the fear on his face.

"Hey."

"Hey," he said, offering a small smile.

"Hey," Thomas said, waving a little.

"Oh, right.  Thomas, this is my nephew, Mica.  Mica, this is my friend from college, Thomas."

"Nice to meet you," Mica said, always polite.  

"Same here, kid," Thomas slid past me and slapped him on the shoulder.

Mica forced the smile to stay on his face as I hung up our jackets.  The table was set for three people.

"Dinner is almost ready.  About ten more minutes."

"Great.  Thomas, will you excuse us?"

Thomas nodded and I gently took Mica's upper arm, leading him back to my bedroom and shutting the door.  As soon as the door was closed, Mica started shaking like a leaf.  "Keith, what am I going to do?" he whispered urgently, wringing his hands together.  

"Calm down, first, it's all right.  We don't even know how many people saw the report... it was on in the middle of the afternoon, most people are still at work.  Besides, you haven't done anything wrong."

"Except for fleeing from a murder scene, leaving my parents to bleed to death..."

"Mica, there wasn't anything you could do."

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked like the encasement of misery, wrapping his arms around himself as if he'd never be warm.  

"Look," I said, moving over to sit beside him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders.  "Not one person in this building doubts for one second that you're my nephew.  Not to mention that the photo they showed of you is several years old.  We're going to keep doing what we've been doing and not change a thing.  Nobody's going to put the two together."