Thanks to everyone who read and to Ghostwriter, Callisto's Moon, and MelsieR for reviewing. Things are starting to come to a head, even if Jamie doesn't particularly appreciate it :).

Jamie winced as he turned his head, his neck protesting fiercely. It had been awhile since he'd fallen asleep on concrete, and he now remembered why he preferred to avoid it. Sunlight was streaming in underneath the barely-raised door of the storage unit, probably what had woken him up, and—

"Oh, shit." He jerked upright, forgetting all about his neck. The sun had just been starting to sink when he'd stopped in yesterday. If he'd been here all night Alex was going to kill him. And then ground him forever. And then probably kill him some more.

He shoved himself to his feet, whacking his forehead on the handlebar of his bike as he did so because yeah, that was how his life went, and then swore again as he had to grab the bike to keep it from falling and nearly overbalanced himself.

Damn it, he hadn't even meant to miss curfew never mind fall asleep!

He'd come out of his room after Alex had left for work yesterday—after the whole so-called-conversation about his nightmares avoiding Alex had been kind of high on his priority list—and after trying and failing to eat the dinner Alex had left for him had decided to go for a ride to to clear his head. He hadn't been paying very close attention to where he was going, but when he'd ended up on this side of town he'd decided that he might as well stop in and make sure that things were still okay with Grandma's storage locker. There was a race he wanted to enter in a couple months, and it would suck if something happened to his dirt bike and he didn't find out in time to fix it. The bike had been fine, though, and then he remembered sitting down, and...

Maybe Alex wouldn't be home yet? He felt a glimmer of hope at that thought because the sun was definitely coming up pretty early these days, but when he checked his watch it was way past the end of Alex's shift. Because the universe hated him and of course it was.

He was so very, very dead.

Jamie sighed and raised the door of the storage unit, taking an automatic cautious look around before wheeling his motorcycle back out. Getting caught sleeping here would get him and maybe even Grandma in a whole different kind of trouble, and that was on top of the trouble he was bound to be in with Alex when he got home.

He shut and locked the storage locker, shouldering his backpack quickly before he put his helmet on. Home, or straight to school? According to his watch he was late for first period and Alex wouldn't be happy about that either, but Alex was probably already so angry that it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Unless by some miracle Alex had gone straight home from work and straight to bed and hadn't even noticed that Jamie was missing?

Jamie snorted even as he swung a leg over the seat and started his bike. He'd had plenty of foster parents where that would have been a safe bet, but Alex wasn't one of them. Odds were that he'd stuck his head in Jamie's room to wake him up as soon as he'd gotten home, and even if he hadn't done that he'd definitely have noticed when Jamie didn't surface for coffee and breakfast.

Most of the time Jamie was kind of...it was kind of okay that Alex paid attention.

Today was not one of the those days.

Traffic conspired to get him home quickly, because that was also how his life worked. If things had been different and he'd had any chance of beating Alex home, he'd have hit every red light in the city. But just because going home was the smart thing to do right now didn't mean that he was looking forward to getting yelled at, and he bit his lip as he turned into the driveway. Maybe he was still okay. Maybe Alex had got caught up in a big emergency at work. He'd stayed late on shifts before when that had happened. Not that Jamie wanted there to be any emergencies, obviously, but...

Alex's car was in the garage, though, and the door from the house into the garage flew open as Jamie was parking his bike. Jamie gulped at Alex's glare.

"Get in here now."

Very incredibly dead. And even if he knew that Alex wasn't going to actually hurt him, he still fumbled getting his helmet off and couldn't have climbed the couple stairs up into the house any slower if he'd tried.

"Keys," Alex snapped as soon as he was inside, and Jamie didn't dare do anything else except drop them into his outstretched hand.

"'m sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't mean to."

"Where the hell were you?" Alex demanded as if he hadn't heard, sticking the keys in his pocket.

"I fell asleep. I didn't mean to," Jamie repeated. "I went for a ride to clear my head, and it just...happened." He shook his head. "I didn't mean to."

Alex's jaw worked and then he stepped forward, and Jamie flinched automatically when Alex reached for him. And then went rigid when he realized that Alex was hugging him. Grown ups didn't hug him. His friends did, sometimes, but that was different.

"You don't ever scare me like that again, do you understand me?" Alex said, releasing him again and taking a step back. "I was about to try calling Sonja, your friends...you know damn well you aren't allowed to stay out all night unless we've talked about it first. And we've had a few conversations about leaving notes too, haven't we?"

Jamie was still more than a little confused about the hug and couldn't do much more than shake his head. "I'm sorry."

Alex stepped aside and gestured sharply behind him. "Go to your room. I'll be there in a couple minutes."

"But first period—"

"I'll drop you off with a note after we talk. Don't worry, you're going to have plenty of free time to catch up on anything you miss in any of your classes before then."

Yeah, like that was what Jamie was worried about. Not that he was going to smart back right now; he didn't need to get himself grounded for a billion years instead of just the million that was already coming. He ducked around Alex and made a beeline for his room, curling up on his bed automatically.

Alex didn't make him wait—wait and maybe sort of panic a little—for very long, at least, knocking on the door a few minutes later before entering and taking a seat at the foot of the bed. He'd brought that book with him, though, and Jamie didn't much like what that was bound to mean.

"Now, tell me what happened," Alex ordered.

Jamie shrugged and fiddled with his comforter. "I went for a ride after you left for work yesterday. I wasn't really planning to go very far, but I didn't feel much like eating, and..." He shrugged. "I don't know, I just thought it would help me think a little."

"And you didn't leave a note because?"

"I thought I'd be right back." He'd meant to be right back, it just hadn't worked out like that. "But I ended up going further than I planned, and then I was right by Grandma's storage unit so I stopped in to check on things, and I guess I must have fallen asleep after I sat down." He hesitated. "I didn't mean to, really."

"Not having slept well for a couple days didn't help with that, I'm sure."

Jamie ducked his head again. His nightmares were stupid and pointless and he wasn't going to talk about them ever no matter what Alex thought.

"And maybe it wasn't the best idea to go for a ride when you were that tired, either."

"I didn't feel tired when I left," Jamie protested. He hadn't even felt tired when he'd sat down, really, he'd just...it had just happened.

Alex didn't look appeased. "And where did that come from?"

"What?"

Alex shifted closer and Jamie tensed automatically, but he only ran a thumb across Jamie's forehead lightly and Jamie realized that he must have given himself a bruise this morning. "Oh. Nothing."

"Jamie."

"Really, I just bumped my head on the handlebar of my bike when I got up too fast this morning. It was stupid."

Alex frowned and got to his feet, gesturing for Jamie to follow, and Jamie wasn't too surprised that he got an ice pack out of the freezer. Jamie didn't think it was a bad enough bruise to really need ice, but whatever. Not the thing to argue about right now.

"You know you're grounded, right?" Alex asked as he handed it over. "Even if you didn't mean to, staying out like that was completely unacceptable."

Jamie dropped his eyes, squirming in place a little, but it wasn't as if it was news. "I figured."

"Two weeks, and you've got a book report on two chapters due before you get your keys back. Understood?"

"Two chapters?!" Jamie almost dropped the ice pack as he jerked his head back up. The fact that he was only grounded for two weeks was actually kind of surprising since punishments usually got worse when you repeated an offense—maybe Alex was letting him off a little for it being an accident?—but two chapters before he could have his keys back was completely horrible. Especially on top of the finals coming up at school since Alex made him actually read the chapters before he wrote anything. "But Alex—"

"But nothing," Alex interrupted. "This was not your first time disappearing overnight, and I thought I made it clear back in January that that was never supposed to happen again."

"But..." He shook his head and tried to come up with an out. "What if I have work or something and we have different schedules? The buses don't run all night."

"Then we'll talk when it happens. Until then your keys will be staying with me."

Jamie scowled and crossed his arms over his chest.

Alex mimicked his posture. "We can make it three chapters if you'd like."

Jamie's scowl deepened, but that stupid he was not, and he finally sighed. "Fine."

"Thank you. And put that ice back on your forehead."

Life was so not fair.

Alex uncrossed his arms and gestured at the refrigerator. "Why don't you have a quick sandwich, and then you can grab a shower and get changed before I drop you off at school."