It was nearly Dawn, before Rae and the strange boy arrived back to his foster home. The newly passive pod-boy seemed even more exhausted than Rae, likely because of his injuries, but had shown no signs of hostility since they left the woods. Rae was beginning to feel a strange sense of trust towards the boy. But he was also deeply concerned for who he could be, and what kind of predicament could cause him to fall from the sky in a ship.

"Ok, hold on to the fence for a sec while I undo the gate. Listen we need to be very quiet, or I could get in trouble, and you could get discovered. You don't want that right?" Rae whispered, and smirked at him, holding up his finger to his lips.

Rae was a very animated sort of person, even while sneaking, as counter intuitive as it may seem, largely as the result of having a vivid imagination. An imagination which stemmed from his extraordinary senses that he was incapable of shutting off. For people who can experience life more intensely than others, so too can they imagine more vibrantly.

The boy groggily shook his head in agreement, as Rae leaned his newfound patient against the fence, and unfastened the gate. The bigger, dark-haired, steely-eyed boy from the sky looked up at Rae with a tired expression. At this point he could not argue, nor protest Rae's directions; and so, Rae simply pulled the taller limper body onto his shoulder, and snuck them both across his backyard to Jamie's fortress of solitude. He had found a new hobby: smuggling strangers to safety.

He opened the door and flicked on the light.

Elva had turned her storage shed, in the backyard, into a kind of tree fort for Jamie a few years ago. The siblings all shared such close space with each other, all the time; so whenever she could, Elva tried to give them some extra spaces to relax. She had renovated the shed with her professional skills acquired from her time as a Legion Mechanic and an Electrician.

The shed had been insulated, installed with a fold-out bed, shelves for Jamie's ever growing comic collection, and a TV with a movie player inside. Though it was not very spacious, it was separated from the house by quite a distance as well as having a lock on the door. Rae thought this was the best place he had to accommodate this silver-eyed stranger-in-need, though he still worried about his condition, and not taking him to a hospital.

"This will have to do for today. I'm exhausted..." Rae thought, as he wobbled drained of energy.

"Ok lie down," Rae said, as he opened the foldout and laid the boy down. "There's only one bed... so we will have to share. I've gotta get some sleep, and I can't leave you out here by yourself."

Rae turned to lock the door, and when he pivoted back to also get some rest, he was surprised to hear small breaths already emanating from his guest's mouth. The boy had already passed out.

"Damn he either is really tired, or falls asleep really quick!" Rae thought, in a jealous way.

Rae had frequent problems with insomnia and falling asleep, likely as a result of heightened senses and anxiety problems. This was one of the reasons he had been using Tranqs; of course, the other being that sometimes he just wanted to forget, if only for a few hours, some of the dreadful memories life had thrown at him. Tranqs were a temptation to which the battered boy had often succumbed. Rae knew they were a selfish shortcut, but he substituted them for happiness anyways, despite his guilt.

"Lucky," Rae thought, as he moved the sleepy stranger's arms and legs so as to lay down beside him. "Today's my day off so it should be ok. I doubt anyone will be looking for me. Plus, I locked the door."

Rae's mind performed it's nightly routine of worrying about the worst scenarios that could possibly befall him. But as he did, he felt the warmth of the stranger, and his mind quickly became nervous, even embarrassed, in a different sort of way. He had never slept in a bed with anyone, and experiencing it now, in this way with someone he just met, felt unnerving to him. Rae went flush in the face, and turned away from the boy onto his side, moving away from him as far as he could without falling off. Rae did not want to be disrespectful, and also it was making him uncomfortable.

"Stop being an idiot, what's wrong with you?" Rae criticized himself in his typical fashion.

There was no one harder on Rae, than Rae. Despite what Roland's idiotic and likely self-serving rumors suggested, Rae had never done anything sexual nor romantic with anyone. He had no concept of what those feelings were even like. He had never been given an opportunity to even think about what he might desire in that respect, neither by his peers who found him disgusting, nor by himself who internalized their disgust. He was so sure no one could ever love him in that way, so how was it he was thinking about this just now?

As experienced as he was with the ways of people, particularly those that desired to hurt him, he was equally inexperienced in what he himself desired. This was the primary reason he was so shocked and embarrassed that he felt, what he believed, was physical attraction, if only briefly, towards the boy behind him. He had never assumed he liked other boys, —but there was always a nagging suspicion that he might.

Rae shed one last single tear, as if to finish his quota for the day, at the realization of this possibility. This too was just another curse for him to bear, at least he thought so. It was not as if society in this modern era shunned this behavior inherently, but he had never even met anyone who openly showed this kind of attraction. And there was certainly no one at his school, that he knew of, which shared this revelation. Rae thought this was just another reminder from life that he was alone, separated, and could never live in the world of his peers. It was forbidden for him.

"Only one day left, before my last year of school, and this weird shit happens?" Rae thought. "Oh shit... that's right... I was going to..." The memory of what he had originally set out to do last night came back to him. "I'm a shitty person."

His ears slumped, his tail curled, and his knees bent up to his chest. Rae finally closed his eyes and drifted to sleep. Even though his mind was wrecked, his heart was nervous, and his body was tired; somehow, his dreams that night were not nightmares... he dreamed of a falling star.