The red glowing numbers on the clock read 2:37 AM. Tino stared as the seven changed to an eight. How long had it been since he'd gone to bed? He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember a lot of things these days. Flipping onto his back, Tino forced his eyes closed, cloaking himself in an artificial darkness. It had been too long since he'd last slept, but the chaotic swirl of his thoughts and the little lights that danced behind his eyelids drove away all possibility of sleep. The din of angry traffic filtered through his window despite it being so early in the morning (or was it late at night? He didn't know anymore). Tino sighed and opened his eyes. 2:39.

The bed was uncomfortable. The summer heat made his hair damp with sweat, which transpired slowly into the pillowcase. A night of tossing and turning had left his arms and legs tangled in the clingy sheets which were also becoming damp with sweat. His light blanket had bunched into odd lumps that refused to flatten out no matter how much he tugged at the ends. The stale air smelled like the dirty laundry strewn across the floor. Tino closed his eyes again.

He didn't know what was causing his insomnia. As far as he was concerned, his life was perfect. He had no pressing financial problems, no failing classes, friends that he liked and that liked him, and a fairly decent childhood. He was a poster child for the happy go lucky college student. The only clue he had that something wasn't right was a restless feeling at the back of his brain that surfaced every time he was alone. The feeling made him want to talk in third person omniscient; to dig around an obscure antique shop until he found the meaning of nostalgia; to run away from his life and never look back. The feeling was strongest in the early morning when he was trying to sleep. The feeling hated sleep.

Making an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, Tino threw off the sheets and shoved himself into a sitting position, shaking slightly. A bottle of sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed sat innocently on his bedside stand. He grabbed it and twisted the cap off with practiced ease. The bottle was empty.

Sighing deeply, Tino replaced the cap and tossed the bottle carelessly onto the floor where it joined his textbooks and clothes. The lack of sleep was making him a little lightheaded but he couldn't face the prospect of wasting another sleepless night in bed. Swinging his feet over the side of the bed, he grabbed the nearest T-shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head before exiting the bedroom. A gulp of cold water later and Tino was out the front door with nothing but his keys and wallet in the pockets of his pajama pants.

The dark rundown stair well was deserted as expected. A hobo watched suspiciously from the sidewalk as the blond student in sleepwear emerged from the gated entrance of the apartment at an unholy time of night. Tino paid him no mind.

The night was yellow with the sodium light of streetlamps as Tino paced without direction through the city. He paid no mind to the sound of his scruffy sandals slapping the pavement, the loud drunken laughs of late night party goers emerging from their nocturnal nests, the calls of prostitutes hanging on the street corners. In his head, the repetitive lyrics of Mad World replayed like a broken record. It's a very very mad world...

Tino didn't keep track of how long he wandered aimlessly through the city. A cocktail of fatigue and monotony had him feeling as if he was living his life in third person, as if he was watching himself from above. He vaguely registered that the street names no longer looked familiar but he didn't care. All he cared was that the restless feeling was subsiding, step by step, until it dissolved into nothingness.

Tino plodded on until the sky began to glow in the east before he stopped to assess his situation. It didn't surprise him that he didn't know where he was or that the dilapidated area he had wandered into looked somewhat dangerous. Across the street, a boarded up warehouse cast its long gloomy shadow over the cracked cement sidewalk. Under the shadow, a hulking giant of a man sat hunched over on a bus stop bench. The man didn't look to be much older than himself and seemed to have gotten the same amount of sleep. He was not dirty enough to be a hobo, not tattooed enough to be a delinquent, and not visibly armed. All in all, he looked pretty approachable.

Staring unabashedly, Tino suddenly found himself inexplicably curious as to why the person was at the bus stop at such an early hour. He didn't know how long he had been walking but he guessed it couldn't be later than four in the morning; no bus would come around for at least another two hours.

Ignoring the cautionary voices in his head, Tino crossed the street towards the stranger. The man didn't look up as Tino stopped in front of him. "Mind if I sit here?" the gruffness of his own voice surprised him.

The man looked up at the question and grunted a terse "Nhn" to the affirmative.

Tino fell into the seat next to the stranger and let his head loll back over the bench's wooden back. They sat in silence for a few minutes. "So why are you here? Can't sleep?"

The man looked at him in surprise as if he had not expected Tino to talk to him. " ' guess, 's that why you'r' he'e?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Tino turned his head without lifting it. At first glance, the man looked as it he was glaring at something on the ground but closer inspection revealed that he was just squinting. He was well built, obviously handsome but visibly tired. The early morning light casted artistic shadows across dips and hollows in his sculpted face which lent him a rugged air. The near invisible blond stubble that dusted his strong jaw up to his high cheek bones accentuated the look. Dark bags telling of sleepless nights and overexertion hung under his eyes. He could not have been older than his mid twenties but the deep worry lines that cut into his forehead made him appear well into his thirties. "Something bothering you? Want to talk about it?"

The stranger looked at him contemplatively for a moment. "Why?"

"I don't know, no reason I suppose. But what have you got to lose? I don't know you, and you don't know me. Maybe it'll be good for you to tell someone about your problems, get them off your chest, whatever they are." Tino gestured at the barely lit sky. "I don't know what you have do or where you have to go but nothing is going to open for a while. We have plenty of time."

The stranger dropped his unintentional glare to his hands and didn't reply for a long time. Just as Tino was about to give up hope, the man spoke up, " 'lright then. Wher' d' you wan' me to start?"

"I don't know. It's your story. Start wherever you want."

The man sighed and ran a large hand through his blond hair. " A'right then." he repeated, and began his tale in his awkward fragmented speech. Tino stared at the gradually brightening sky as he listened to the man's story. It was a sad tale, almost too cliché but slightly magical all the same. The man had been an orphan from the age of 13 and had been bounced from foster home to orphanage faster than he could blink. He had become an emancipated minor at the age of 17, had dropped out of school, and had taken janitorial jobs and the like until he was 21 when he decided to finish school. Since then, he had found a flexible job at a furniture company that paid well and treated him like family. The money had been enough for him to rent a little studio and the flexible hours had allowed enroll in a community college. Everything had gone great for a while but then the recent downturn in the economy had caused him to be laid off. His scramble to find a new job forced him to drop out of school again and he'd fallen behind on his rent. Just yesterday, he'd received an eviction notice. In Tino's opinion, the only thing missing was a pregnant girlfriend off to the side.

Tino wasn't sure why he had made this stranger tell him his life story or what he was going to do about it now. He felt bad for the man but he wasn't too sympathetic. He didn't even pay to attention to much of it. All he knew was that he missed the sound of stranger's deep staccato words when the man fell silent and that he didn't want this barely morning encounter to end. As the city woke and shook it's limbs, a companionable silence fallowed between them.

Tino shook his head. The feeling in the back of his head was back stronger than ever. It whined inaudibly in his ear like an invisible mosquito and made the unreachable spot between his shoulder blades itch at the same time. It made him want to do something drastic; change something meaningful; build something new. But what?

The sky had brightened considerably and the stranger stood to leave. "Thanks for liste'ing to me." he said before he made to go.

Tino couldn't understand the strange sadness that came over him at that moment, nor the urgency with which he said, "Wait. Don't go." The stranger looked bac,k surprised, while Tino blushed a deep shade of red. "You can m-move in... with me... if you want." The small blond looked away, belatedly realizing how creepy his offer was, "Until you find a new job that is! Not that I'd kick you out of course! But after you find another job, you'll be able to get another apartment and, and..." Oh God I'm rambling. Tino clamped his mouth shut and blushed an even deeper shade of red.

The stranger's lips quirked slightly, "you don't hav' to p'ty me."

"I'm not pitying you!" Tino snapped, and stopped, slightly taken back at his own exclamation, "it's just that I have an extra room that I'm not using and you seem to need it a lot more than I do. You can view it as payment for the story. I mean, I feel kind of bad for making you tell me about your life when I can tell you're not a man of many words and it's not... it's not bad to accept an act of kindness once in a while you know? So what do you say?"

"Are 'ou not afrai' o' me?"

"Yes, I mean, no." Tino shook his head, momentarily confused. "I mean no; I'm not afraid of you. I can see why people would be afraid you, but no I'm not afraid of you."

The stranger blinked and shook his head in a bemused manner. "You oug't t' be. You don' ev'n know my name."

"Yes, but-" Tino looked away, unsure of how to respond.

The stranger smiled, "Thank you f'r offe'ing though. I appr'ciate it. Goo' day t' you no'."

Tino didn't move from his spot on the bench as he stared after the stranger's retreating form. It felt weird to think of the man as a stranger after the guy had told the his entire life story, but he was right; Tino didn't even know his name.

Tino tore his eyes away and forced himself to looked at something else. It was still fairly early in the morning; a café a block away was just opening its doors. There would be more than enough time to hail a taxi to take him home. His stomach twisted at the thought; despite the fact that he'd been out all night, he didn't want to go home. His gut burned with an emotion he couldn't quite place. It was reminiscent of sadness but he couldn't be sad. Not because a stranger had refused to move in with him. No, there was no reason to be sad. Tino decided to wipe his eyes anyways.

It was perhaps half an hour later, when the world had bustled fully to life, that Tino finally felt motivated to move from the bench. The sleepless nights had finally caught up with him and as he swayed a little as he got to his feet. Vertigo threatened to black out his vision as he stumbled towards the closest major street in search of a taxi.

His feet didn't stop when he reached the edge of the curb.

The probability for tragedy was high that day. Time seemed to slow to a snail's crawl for Tino as the blare of a car horn filled his ears and the gleam of sunlight on the approaching car reflected into his eyes. Every detail seemed painfully clear; the screech of the brakes, the scent of burning rubber, the terrified shock in the driver's eyes through the windshield. He barely registered the large hand that gripped his arm and yanked him out of the vehicle's way. Fear and shock were the last things Tino remembered before he blacked out in the arms of his stranger.

Tino woke to the sight of florescent lights and medical equipment. A telltale prick on his wrist alerted him to the IV dripping clear liquid into his veins. Somewhere to his side, a machine beeped in time to his heartbeat. The stand next to the bed held a small pile of colorful get well cards from his more considerate friends, whom he assumed had come to visit while he had been asleep. Those and the single daisy sat in a clear glass vase were the only things that defied the sterile professional atmosphere of the hospital.

"Yo're awake."

Tino started at the sudden sound but recovered quickly. He tried to sit up only to be hit by a wall of dizzyness so he settled for smiling blearily at the man that had saved his life. "Yeah."

The stranger's face was crinkled with worry. "Yo've been asleep fo' two days. Yo' alright?"

Tino's closed his eyes and let the news sink in. It didn't bother him as much as it should have. "Yeah," he exhaled, "I'm alright. Thanks to you. Thank you." He looked into the stranger's blue eyes, pleased to find genuine concern there. "You didn't have to visit me you know."

The stranger broke eye contact to stare at the sheets instead. "It's okay. I don' hav' anywhere else t' be."

Tino felt like kicking himself for being so insensitive. "Oh, that's right isn't it?" he let out a soft hum in though, "My offer still stands, you know. I meant it when I said I don't mind you moving in. I kind of owe you now anyways, what with you saving my life and all." The stranger still refused to meet his eyes, "And I never did apologize for forcing you to tell me about your life either." Tino added softly.

The stranger shook his head. "You didn't forc' me t' tell you. I tol' you 'cause I wante' to." Tino felt strangely giddy at that and he turned to look at his companion, surprised to find him looking a little red. "And if you're sur' it's no troubl'," he continued in his mumbling baritone, "I s'ppose I'm in n' place to reject y'ur off'r." The giant looked away, clearly embarrassed, "M' name's Berwald b' th' way."

The little Finn smiled wide as a surge of foreign contentment swept through him. "Nice to meet you Berwald, I'm Tino."

Now, as Tino burrows deeper into Berwald's sleepy embrace, he's pleased to say that the restless feeling has never bothered him again.