He rarely looks at me.

My heart beats slowly. I wash the little sick cat at the animal shelter. It meows as I dip it slowly in the basin and start to scrub gently.

He still looks the other way.

The others. The call him such awful things. He looks strange, I'll admit. Is hair is crystal blue. His eyes are a strange green. He rarely talks. He seems intimidating.

There is no reason to insult him.

My father hates him. He wants to bulldoze the shelter to make a new hotel. My family is a rich one. And a part of me wants to help him.

But he doesn't.

He has told my father -and me- that he will die before the shelter falls. He means it.

I love him for that.

My father wants to kill him. I can feel it.

He wants to kill my father. I can feel that, too.

I scrub to hard. The cat hisses. I take my hand away just before I get scratched.

His hand touches my shoulder. My heart stops.

I want to turn, to see his face, but I can't. I'm paralyzed.

He doesn't want money.

All the other business owners I've met. They were willing to sell their businesses - their lives - to my father. They would take my father's money and go to Florida or the Bahamas. Then, a week later, they're back, starving and looking for work. My father had their soul. Their food source. Their life.

He won't take money. He hates my father's money almost as much as he hates my father.

His hand wraps around me. My heart begins to beat again, in a hurried rate.

He touches my hand. My heart is a machine gun.

He moves my hand to the sponge I had been using. I see what he is doing, and I pick it up. He moves my hand to the angered cat. It calms down. It knows the boy is a friend. He gently places the sponge on the cat's wet back and moves my hand back and forth.

The cat purrs.

The clock ticks.

My hand moves over the animal's back.

My heart beats faster…and faster…and faster.

He lets go of my hand. I continue to scrub.

My heart returns to normal.

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Okaie dokie, so that was my first - and maybe the first ever, as I've never seen another - Chaos and Tikal fan fiction. So, did anybody see the references to Sonic Adventure?

Please read and review. If you find another fic with the same pairing, tell me please!