Only Hope - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2


"…me?" I asked softly.

The man nodded.
"Okay," I said gently, "But we won't both fit on the couch. Comfortably at least."

The word "oh" fell from his lips in disappointment.

"I mean… it's okay," I reassured him with a smile, "Come with me," I held my hand out to him. He took it almost warily, and I helped him to stand. He held the blanket with his other hand as I led him into my room.

"D'you want something different to sleep in?" I asked him, noticing his tight black jeans.

The man nodded, smiling.

I pulled another pair of pajama pants out of a drawer, handing them to him. I turned around, busying myself with something on the nightstand so I wouldn't be looking at him while he changed.

"Okay, thank you," I heard his soft voice behind me.

"Don't worry about it," I responded with a smile. I took his jeans from him and set them on top of his shoes. He'd removed them and set them neatly in the corner of the room. I couldn't help but smile at the way he looked, his glasses and slim frame combined with my clothes being too big for him. He blushed and smiled slightly when he saw me looking at him.

Once we were both in bed, I covered us both with the sheets and a couple extra blankets. I didn't need them, but I knew the man was still cold. He lay facing me, his glasses sitting next to the gun on my nightstand. He reached a tentative hand to my arm, gently as if he was trying to pull me closer.

I moved closer to him, and he smiled. He turned over so his back was to me. I draped an arm over his slim frame, holding him against my chest.

"You're warm," he said in a voice so quiet I almost couldn't hear it.

I couldn't help but smile.

"I feel safe," he said, even quieter.

"You are," I told him gently, "No one can hurt you here. I promise. Maybe in the morning you can tell me what happened?"

He nodded, snuggling back into my chest. My head was resting on the pillow, so close to the man that his hair was tickling my nose, but we weren't quite touching. He leaned his head back so it was resting in the crook of my neck, my lips almost pressed against his soft hair.

"What's…" I heard his barely there voice, "What's your name?"

"Ray," I breathed.

"Thank you, Ray. For saving me."

I couldn't help but smile, even though I knew he couldn't see it.

"I would never do anything different. What should I call you?" I asked him just as quietly.

"Mikey."

"Mikey," I repeated, feeling the way the syllables fell from my lips. "You know something?"

"Hmm?"

"You're lucky. So incredibly lucky to be alive. It was Frank that saved you, not me."

"No," he said with as much as force as it seemed like his quiet voice could handle, "You did. You could've just let me die."

"Why would I do that?"

"Everyone else did."

"Oh, Mikey…" I breathed, holding him closer.

He sniffed slightly, and I thought he might've been crying. Turns out, I was correct. His slim body shook slightly with each breath, as if he was trying to hide the fact that tears were falling from his eyes.

I moved my arm slightly and found where his hands were clutched to his chest. I simply put my hand over his, our arms overlapping perfectly.

"You're okay now," I whispered against his hair.

He sniffed again.

I could feel him shaking slightly, shivering even. As if he was still cold, despite my arm over his body and his back against my chest. With his thin frame, I didn't doubt that he was. It didn't help that it was the middle of winter. He hadn't been wearing a jacket, either, when he'd come to my door. I could only imagine how the wetness of the blood on his shirt combined with the wind outside had frozen him to the bone.

But he was safe now. As long as he was with me, no one could hurt him. He already looked so fragile, and as he lay there shaking I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and hold him against me forever.

I found myself wondering where he'd come from. I wondered where he'd been, who he'd been with. Did his friends abandon him? But then another possibility flashed through my tired mind. Maybe his friends are dead. Maybe he's the only one that was able to get help.

I couldn't decide which was worse.

…

When Mikey had finally fallen asleep, I didn't remove my arm from around him. When I woke up the next morning around eleven, he was still sleeping. I decided to let him sleep. I slipped out of bed, tucking the covers back in around him. I got yet another blanket from the closet and draped it over him, folding it in half so it was like two.

I smiled when he shifted slightly, his head resting on his delicate hands. I left the room, glancing back at him one last time before I went into the kitchen. I put a pot of water on the stove to heat it. When it was boiling to my satisfaction, I made myself a cup of coffee. I breathed in the familiar smell as I sat down at the small table.

Not long after, Mikey emerged from my room, a blanket wrapped around his body. His hair was messy, and his glasses were perched precariously on his nose.

I immediately got up and made him a cup of coffee too.

"Thank you," he said with a smile, taking the steaming mug from my hands.

"Hopefully it'll help warm you up."

A light pink painted his cheeks, "You're really warm too."

I couldn't help but smile.

"If it's okay with you, can you tell me what happened yesterday? And if you're okay with it, I need to take a couple photos too."

Mikey nodded.

"This is highly unconventional, sitting here in pajamas like this, but… it's better here than at the station, I say. As long as I record the conversation, it's perfectly viable for use in court."

"C-court?" he asked nervously.

I nodded. "If we catch the person that did this to you, and you decide to press charges, you're gonna have to testify."

"Oh… I…" he tucked his lower lip behind his teeth.

"It's okay," I told him, "I'll help you."

"Okay," he breathed with what sounded like relief.

"D'you wanna do it now or wait a bit?"

"Can I… Can I wait… just… just a bit?"

"Of course," I told him softly.

"Thank you," he said with a shy smile.

I watched as Mikey sipped the coffee in his hands almost carefully. The blanket was still draped over his shoulders, and it was tugging the collar of the shirt down slightly, exposing some of the smooth skin of his chest.

"Look," I said softly, turning toward the small kitchen window, "It snowed while we were asleep."

"Wow," he breathed, smiling.

He got up. His coffee was still in his hand and the blanket was still over his slim shoulders as he walked over to the window. I couldn't help but smile, too. When I moved next to Mikey, I noticed the shimmering white reflected in his glasses.

"It's beautiful," he breathed, gazing out the window toward the snow.

"Yeah," I replied just as gently, my eyes never once moving from his face, "It really is."

…

"Okay," I started, "I know it's cold, but I've gotta do it."

"If it helps, I'm okay with it."

Mikey smiled, but shivered slightly, as I set the cold metal down on his chest. It was like a ruler, you could say. But at a right angle.

"It's just like CSI," he giggled quietly.

"But you're not dead," I added with a smile.

"You're right, I'm not. So what does this do exactly?"

"Well," I said, turning on the camera, "It just makes it so that when we take a look at the pictures, we can tell how big the wound is."

"Oh. That's pretty smart."

I chuckled, "If we didn't, we'd be freaking out about cuts that look deep, but are less than an inch. This doesn't apply to you, but in the forensic sense, our anthropologists can figure out what kind of knife it was."

"They're that good?" he looked at me with astonishment.

"Well, if it was a dead body, we wouldn't have a testimony, so they'd take tissue samples and stuff to see if they can figure out what kind of metal it was, or even if they can find the other person's DNA."

"That's so cool," he smiled, "Now tell me about what you do."

I laughed, "It's not that interesting."

"I bet it is. Come on. Please?"

"Okay, fine."

Mikey's smile grew.

"I'm basically your standard-issue police officer, nothing particularly special. Spend most of my time sitting in the car waiting for people to do something wrong, y'know how that goes."

"Have you ever caught any big criminals?" he asked, his eyes shining behind his glasses as he put his shirt back on and sat up next to me on the couch.

"No one too big. A couple drug dealers. No one you'd have heard about though. They don't really put what I do on the news."

"Oh," Mikey's face fell with disappointment for less than a second before he was genuinely smiling again, "But I still think it's really cool that you're a cop."

"You really think so?"

He nodded.

"Well then, thanks," I told him with a smile.

"Have you ever… um… have you ever killed anyone?"

I shook my head.

"Y'know," I said, looking over at Mikey, "I kinda hope I never have to."

"Why?"

I shrugged a little, "I guess because I've worked with people that have and… it seems like the first time, it… it kinda messes you up, I think. You've gotta go through this whole psych evaluation process… and therapy and stuff. And… I don't think I'd ever be able to do it. Some cop I am, huh?" I added with a chuckle.

"I think that's really cool," Mikey said quietly, looking down at his hands.

I looked up at him.

"What?"

"No, really. I do. I mean, you're ending someone's fuckin' life, y'know? It's like… Shit, man. It's crazy to think about. Especially because… well, someone tried to do that to me. I was laying in the middle of the fuckin' street, thinking about all the shit I'd never done."

I didn't know what to say. Everything he was saying was resonating with me for some reason, like nothing I'd ever heard before.

"I could see the blood on my hands and I was thinking about all the things my hands haven't done, y'know? I was like, 'I can't die now. I've never held hands with someone.' I mean, can you fuckin' imagine? That was gonna be my last fuckin' thought. You know how sad that is?"

"It's not sad at all," I told him gently.

He was seated next to me, looking down at his hands in his lap, my shirt large on his slim shoulders. The only thing I could think of was the fact that he'd never held someone's hand.

So I did the only thing I could think to do.

I moved my own hand so it was gently holding his, our fingers laced together.

"How does it feel?" I asked him softly. He looked up at me and smiled broadly.

"Absolutely perfect."