Kō woke up early still lying on the living room floor in front of the television. The sun had not yet risen. Rolling over onto his other side and pulling the cover over his head, he could not remember ever waking up this early in his life - at least not on his own. Listening for movement in the quiet darkness, he detected nothing, not even a sound, except for a light snoring coming from Callie's room. Neither Kei nor Callie was awake.

Of course they weren't. They had stayed up late talking and doing god only knows what else. He had fallen asleep therefore he had no idea what had happened between those two. Hopefully, a whole lot of nothing was what went on. Kei did not seem interested in women or sex so he wasn't too worried about it. That guy was so not normal. Surely Callie wouldn't be into someone like Kei. Besides, he had murdered her to discover if she was an Ajin.

Kō's plan for last night had been to stay in the living room, to be as near her as possible to keep Kei as far away from her as possible. He didn't want Kei to hurt her again; or do anything else to her body. His need to protect her was mostly out of jealousy because he wanted to be near her, but whatever. None of that mattered anyway. In the end, he had failed because he could not stay awake.

"Dammit, dammit," he grumbled, punching the floor as self-loathing set in.

Hopping up from the floor, Kō went outside. Shivering in the damp, cool predawn air, he took off running not only to warm up but to work off the tension seizing his body and making him antsy. He ran until he was sweating enough that his t-shirt stuck to his body. It felt great to be out of that prison where Kei had put him. Bastard. Despite being able to move around freely in a wide open space, he still suffered from a caged in feeling he could not shake. The sneaking suspicion that this sensation would be a constant in his life from now on made him agitated.

Ajins were still human beings. Why the hell couldn't people just leave them alone to live their lives like anyone else? It's not like he wanted to kill people or had to drink their blood or something like that. One thing he agreed on with Kei was that he wanted to life a pleasant, quiet life. However, he did not want to do it alone. And certainly not with Kei. Callie though could be a different matter entirely. Thinking of her only added to his restlessness but in a completely new and unsettling way.

After stripping off his shirt, Kō dropped to the ground to do push ups. A picture of the pretty older woman formed in his head. She was gentle and kind, sweet and nurturing. That heartless prick Kei didn't deserve to be in the same room with her. If that asshole touched her last night...well, he could not bear to think about it to figure out what he would do to Kei. He continued doing push ups until his triceps and biceps burned. His arms were shaking like trees in a hurricane each time he forced himself up. He attempted to do one last push up but his shuddering arms gave way to send him crashing into the ground face first. At least the tall grass under him made a soft cushion to plant his face into.

Immediately his mind started to supply him with images of Kei holding Callie in his arms. Lips touched, hands roamed, and Kō was gripped with nausea. If he was going to think about something like that, couldn't his brain have the decency to put him into the picture instead of Kei?

"Fucking, Kei," he muttered, panting to catch his breath. "No. No fucking Kei. Ugh!"

Her doing that with Kei was his worst nightmare. Flipping over onto his back, Kō proceeded to perform sit ups. This time he purposely centered his imagination on her. He started to fantasize about what she looked like naked. He couldn't help it. Seeing her in those tight little yoga shorts and a form fitting lycra tank top yesterday had given him all needed to fill in the blanks of what she looked liked underneath. She didn't wear a bra except for sports bras. She didn't need a bra really. Her breasts were a bit on the smallish side, round and firm due the muscle mass supporting them. They would make a good little handful he was sure. His sordid musings quickly turned to ponderings of if her areola would be a brownish or pinkish color or maybe a shade in between. Would her nipples be large or small? Pointed or flat? He grunted with the effort to continue doing sit ups despite his painfully contracting abdominal muscles. Gritting his teeth, he pushed past the torment of his aching belly until his body refused to allow him to continue. His empty stomach spasmed due his overzealous workout. Leaning to the side, he vomited stomach acid that burned his throat and mouth. Once he was through retching, he rolled over a few times despite the pain it caused him to distance himself from the disgusting mess.

Kō stretched out his body to lay spread eagle in the grass on his back staring up at the sky above him that had turned a glorious blue with the rising of the sun. He had no idea how long he had been out here but obviously it had been a while. Raising his head to place his hands under it made him groan in agony when his sore abdominal muscles flexed. His breathing was still labored from his vigorous exercise. The anxiety gripping him had subsided to be replaced by debilitating tiredness.

Wearing himself out physically had done nothing to still his mind. His imagination ran rampant, concocting images and scenarios he knew he should not be thinking about. He liked Callie. He wanted her for more reasons than sex but that was all he could think about at the moment. Did she sleep naked? He pictured Callie lying on her bed in the little house, her nude body wrapped in a white sheet. He chuckled thinking about her sprawled half way onto her belly with her mouth hanging open, snoring up a storm. It had been difficult to believe that terrible noise was coming out of her, but he had heard it for himself. The outlines of her breasts, her butt, and her shapely thighs would be evident under the thin cotton barrier. Her body was unlike anything he had seen in the racy magazines Kei had brought to him to entertain himself in that makeshift prison cell.

Callie was so nice and polite, especially to him. Women of any age usually ignored him. He was painfully aware of the fact that he was not particularly smart and more than a little clumsy. She treated him like a real person, not a moron. He had fallen in love with her at first sight. How could he not love her? This time it was no mere crush like he had on the girls his age. Callie was a grown woman, beautiful and confident. Most of all, he liked that she saw him as a human being and didn't make him feel like more of an idiot than he already thought himself to be. He sighed sadly. As much as he wanted her, he doubted she would ever want him.

"Dammit," he grumbled, slamming his fist down on the ground. He grunted from the movement because it caused a surge of pain through the overworked muscles of his upper arm.

Kō licked his lips that were getting chapped due to dehydration and being exposed to the stomach acid he had vomited. He grimaced at the sickeningly sour taste coating his mouth. Gross. His body desperately needed water. Time to get up and go to the house.

While walking, Kō used his still damp t-shirt to wipe away some of the copious amounts of sweat flowing down his body. He swiped at the rivulets coursing down his forehead before the salty fluid could get into his eyes to sting them. On his way up the stairs, he tripped and hit the wooden planks of the porch hard right on his chin. The impact was like getting punched by a championship boxer. His teeth snapped together with so much force he feared he had chipped a couple of them. Stars of white light appeared behind his eyelids and burst like fireworks. Now his head ached in addition to the rest of his body. To make things worse, he had fallen flat on his belly at the feet of the woman he had been daydreaming about.

"Wow, you really are a klutz," Callie giggled, bending down to assist him with getting to his feet. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he muttered, unable to meet her gaze. Humiliation made him feel like his face would be consumed by flames at any given second.

"Oh," she gasped, taking his chin between her thumb and forefinger. "You cut yourself."

"It's no big deal," he assured her, reaching up to touch his chin. Pulling back his hand, he saw that his fingertips were coated with blood. He became aware of the wet warmth of blood flowing down his neck. Tipping his chin downward, he could see drops of blood that were dripping onto the porch. "Shit."

"It's pretty bad," she commented, taking him by the wrist to lead him inside. "Let me take care of it."

"No, really I'm fine," he argued but compliantly followed her. Dizziness swamped him unexpectedly, causing him to stagger slightly.

"Oh, oh, hang in there, sweetheart," she murmured, ducking under his arm to hang it over her shoulders while using her body as a prop to hold him up. "You hit quite hard back there. You might have a bit of heat exhaustion as well. You're also dehydrated. I know what I'm doing. I'm a nurse remember? You do as I say. No arguments."

"I'm sorry," he apologized, leaning on her heavily because his knees weakened under him.

Kō's knees buckled, betraying him completely at the door of the bathroom. He arms went around her shoulders to hold himself up while hers encompassed his waist to keep him from falling to the floor. As much as he willed his body to move, he could not help her as she dragged him to the shower, easing him down to the floor. His vision blurred, and he saw two of her while she struggled to prop his limp body against the wall behind him. A strangled cry escaped his desert dry throat when she turned on the water that was freezing cold and stung his hot skin like icy pellets.

"I need to bring down your body temperature. I'll be right back," she told him before running from the room.

Moments later, Callie returned with a bottle of water. He took the bottle from her, greedily draining its contents.

"You overexerted yourself," she chastised him, kneeling beside him on the shower floor. She blinked furiously as the water rained down on her from the shower head. "What were you doing out there?"

"A little exercise. To work off some frustration," he replied, raising his eyes to her face. "I think I can take things from here. Thank you. Can I have another bottle of water?"

"In a minute. I need to give you something to replenish your electrolytes as well. But before that, I need to check this laceration under your chin," she explained, tilting his chin upward with her fingertips pressed lightly to his jaw on both sides of his face.

Kō closed his eyes to keep the water from splashing into them. He concentrated on the sensation of her fingertips gliding over his jaw, chin, and neck. When her hands slid down his neck to his chest, he held his breath. Her touch was tender like he thought it would be. She must have been a really good nurse. Undoubtedly her patients liked her.

Kō's eyes opened so he could see her. The white t-shirt she was wearing had gone transparent from the water. The areola was a light brown with a pert little nipple in the middle poking at the material that was see through. Mystery solved. The frigid water pouring down on him did not prevent him from developing an erection. Although the moment was completely inappropriate for such a thing, he could not stop his body's reaction to seeing what he had recently been fantasizing about. Her hands moving over his body was not helping him at all causing him to develop a throbbing ache that extended to his lower abdomen and thighs. So much for the old cliché of taking a cold shower to get rid of unwanted sexual arousal. He jumped at feeling her hands roaming expertly over his ribs to examine them for breaks.

"Mmm," he grunted, grabbing her wrists when her searching fingers tickled his intact ribs.

"Are you in pain?" she asked, worry evident in her voice.

"It tickles," he groaned, pulling her hands away. He had been enjoying her gentle manipulation until she tickled him. Now his body would be oversensitive no matter where she touched him. "I'm fine. Really. I'm not dizzy anymore either."

A whole new set of problems had taken hold of him pushing aside the faintness and pulsing headache.

"Well, I'll leave you to take a proper shower. The bleeding is stopping from that cut on your chin so I think you'll be okay with a couple of butterfly stitches. I'll also have a drink ready for you," she told him, standing up to leave him alone.

Kō shakily stood to his feet when the door closed behind her. Once his pants and underwear were removed, he soaped up to wash away the sweat and stench. Since he could not rid himself of the hard on any other way, he took matters into his own hands, biting his lower lip to hold back his moans. Sweet relief came with the assistance of his active imagination that had been awarded a boost by seeing her breasts through her shirt. Afterwards, he dried off then wrapped the towel around his waist because he had no clothes to change into.

Pausing at the bathroom door, the warmth of a blush covered his face due to the guilt rising inside of him. He was embarrassed and battling the guilt of thinking such lascivious thoughts about her while bringing himself off after she had been trying to help him. Despite feeling ill at ease, he went to the kitchen where he saw her stirring a packet of powdered mix into a glass of water. The mix turned the water an electric green color.

"What's that?" he asked, suspicious of the neon colored fluid in the glass. Surely she wouldn't try to poison him. She was not like Kei. At least he didn't think so.

"It's a sports drink. In most basic terms it will replace the salts you sweated out so that your body can continue relaying electrical impulses like the ones that keep your heart beating and the neurons firing in your brain. You know, the important things that keep you alive," she explained, suddenly staring off into the distance. "But I guess it doesn't matter. If you died, your body would just heal itself replenishing those anyway. I just can't allow that to happen. I suppose it's something built into me. I'm accustomed to saving lives. Not taking them."

"I suppose so," he murmured, picking up the glass from the counter to drink it. He was really not in the mood to die today. Kei had killed him enough times in succession that he was good for a while on the whole dying and coming back to life thing.

"Look up," she kindly ordered him, taking the backing off of what looked like a strip of thin, clear adhesive tape.

"What's that?" he asked, gritting his teeth while she pressed it onto his chin making the cut burn like she had poured salt into the wound.

"Butterfly stitch. Nothing more than a band-aid really," she told him, adhering another one to his skin to keep the wound closed.

Kō could feel her body pushing lightly into his while she inspected the cut carefully. His arms longed to encompass her waist, but he kept them held stiffly at his sides. She had changed into a dry shirt but her hard nipples were poking through the fabric to scrape across his chest every time she inhaled and exhaled. He leaned back against the counter when the room swirled around him.

"All better?" Callie smiled up at him before stepping back a few paces.

"All better." He closed his eyes, pressing his fingertips to his forehead. How could he have been such a pervert and thought such awful things about her, treating her as a mere object?

"Kō, are you all right?" Callie questioned him, pressing her hands to his face.

"I'm fine. Why?" He opened his eyes to see the evident worry on her face.

"You're so red. Your breathing is labored. Are you about to faint?"

Kō did feel a little swimmy in the head. "I might be."

"Come on. You need to lie down." She tucked herself under his arm to support him, leading him to her bedroom.

"Wh-what are you d-doing?" he stammered when she pulled him to the bed.

"Kei's still asleep in the other room. I would prefer that you lay on a comfortable bed rather the floor. You need some rest." She placed her open palms on top of his shoulders to push him down on the bed.

"Callie," he murmured, leaning forward to press his forehead to her belly.

"What is it?" She embraced him lightly with her arms around his shoulders. Her fingers raked through his hair like she was petting him. He didn't care if she thought of him as a pet or a kid or whatever as she continued to stroke his head, her fingernails scratching his scalp ever so slightly. Her touch was calming. It felt great too.

"I'm sorry, Callie," he groaned, placing his hands on her waist. The dizziness worsened, making him feel nauseated too. He did not want to throw up again, especially not on her. Doing that would make him die of embarrassment. That would be a worse way to go than poisoning or drowning.

"For what?"

"I-I, uh, I feel sick. I don't want to - "

"Lay back," she whispered, assisting him with reclining to a prone position on the bed. "The feeling will subside if you rest. Get some sleep."

Kō was sure she had treated many patients the same way, holding them with the same loving kindness as she did him while lowering his body back onto the bed. He grunted when her hand slipped from under his neck after his head was positioned on the pillow. Her hands were cool and smooth. She pressed her palm to his forehead once again to check his temperature. Her palm felt good against his overheated skin, and he had wanted her to keep it there. His hands stubbornly held onto her hips while she hovered above him on all fours. He did not want to let her go. Unfortunately, he could feel his grip slipping while the drowsiness crowded out his consciousness. Going to sleep was frighteningly similar to the last few seconds before dying. As he drifted away, the whirring whine of nothingness starting to deafen him, he felt her lips brush over his forehead.

"Goodnight, sweet Prince," he heard her whisper.

"Callie, don't leave me. Please stay. I don't want to be alone. I'm scared." Kō feared the words had been only a thought before he lost his battle with the encroaching specter of sleep. Perhaps they were better left unsaid anyway.