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Chapter 4: Lost and Found

Despite the ten-tonne behemoth strapped to Nathan's back, I wasn't getting any closer to deliver the sticky, foul underarm shot.

"Just blame it on the fact I'm covered in mud!" I panted, finding the time to mutter under my breath but not the strength to keep up, as it turned out. The trees bowed away from above me and, before I knew it, I'd emerged onto a clearing...or at least, a clearing that held a small body of water in its centre. I ignored the out-of-breath, bent-over Nathan standing with his hands clasped to his knees a few metres away from me, and let the slimy mass of mud drop from my hand.

"Wow." That was all I could say. The sheer tranquillity of where I now found myself in had well and truly taken my breath away; circumventing the steep bank that led down to a crystal-clear pond was a periphery of neatly-trimmed, radiant grass that looked almost as inviting as a bed, if not more. A small, parallel-planked wooden fence that ran about a quarter of the pond's periphery marked out the edge of our little paradise, and one that we had all to ourselves.

?

After finally removing my waders and hurling them to the ground, I'd turned my attention to the main event. Fishing, as it happened, was decidedly more than just hooking the fish around my bait and then pulling it calmly out of the water. Unsurprisingly, even the small carp, furious at being lead into my trap, put up a fight; it twisted and writhed this way and that, but with the help of the second pair of arms accompanying me, it finally gave up its habitat and took a forceful, final gulp of toxic outside air as it rose up gracefully out of the water at the mercy of the fishing rod's hook. I hurled the rod back with such vigour that the line flipped backwards over our heads, forcing the carp to endure an all-too-brief flight before flopping back onto the grass with a wet slap.

"First catch! Ya' did alright, if I do say so m'self" I was grinning from ear to ear.

Vrrrrrrrrrp; I felt a faint vibration from my right pocket...my phone! I'd completely forgotten about that. Whoever it was could probably wait, but...eh, better safe than sorry, I guess. I fished my paw into the somewhat damp cotton-lined pocket of my jeans and pulled out my budget smartphone, though one that owed its survival to a tough, plastic case I'd insisted on buying for it at several odd looks from my Mom. An incoming message flashed on the screen, but all it took was the text's recipient and first line for my heart to sink faster than my body almost had in the marsh.

"Uuuuuugh; goddamn it!" I spat, hammering my paw against my forehead.

"What, what is it?"

"It's Mom; my brother Cody's apparently got ill at Summer Camp, so she's had to take him home. She's headin' out to some business meeting with Dad this afternoon, and..." I scrolled down to the end of the message, "...and I've gotta be home by midday to look after him, the little prick!" Nathan's eyebrows jumped a few degrees up his brow.

"Why'd'ya say t'at?" My teeth were already in a fierce bare.

"He's faking it; I _know_he's faking it. He's a lazy little jerk who hates doin' anything even remotely productive; Summer Camp to him is...just, how Mom didn't see through it is beyond me..."

"How old's he, if ya' don't mind me askin'?"

"Eleven, though he acts two years younger. Damnit; that means..." my watch was flung round in an arc to my proximal line of sight, "that we can only stay here another half-hour, if that. I've gotta swing back past your place and pick up my stuff."

"Well, well surely we can stay a bit longer? Who cares what ya' Mom t'inks?" Nathan slammed his paws into the soft grass and shuffled onto his butt, all traces of a lascivious smirk quickly erased. Biting my jowl, I reluctantly shook my head.

"I will, if I'm not back home in time, Nath; you're lucky 'cause you've never met her, but believe me, you do not wanna' get on the wrong side of my Mom, lemme' tell ya' that."

"True, true, but look at it t'is way; no-one else is gonna' brave t'at marsh, so I'd say what happens by t'is lake, stays by t'is lake" he quipped from a few metres behind me, with the rustle and squeak of rubber being contorted against its will rippling against my open ears. My response would've merely comprised of a meek nod, had it not been for what caught the very corner of my eye. He sure was displaying a lot of fur; why was...oh boy. It suddenly dawned on me why Nathan had been wearing his chest-waders from the moment he'd got into the car back in the garage; why he hadn't taken them off when I'd done so with mine to get the mud off them. I span round in a flash, setting my eyes on his beautifully athletic physique, protected from the elements by nothing more than a pair of grimy, sweaty, dark green boxer-briefs, and as if that sight alone wasn't enough to incite that wonderfully tingly feeling that I wished I could feel more often, he planted his backside on the ground and, with a nonchalant whistle, turned on his side and stretched his legs before placing one over the other and bringing his elbow down to the ground, leaning on his hand to complete the picture.

"T'is isn't a single bed, Tommy-boy; t'ere's more t'an enough room for ya', here." I didn't need asking twice; with my eyes not knowing which part of his body to focus on, I took a tentative step forwards...but was stopped immediately by a fierce shout from my brain.

"No, you idiot; don't! How can you be sure there's no-one around? Besides, the most you've ever done is kiss him once on the cheek, and now he's wanting you to...do that?! What if-" Nathan had caught onto my hesitation. He swiftly got to his feet and advanced purposefully towards me; bare paws whisking against the grass and his head tilted downwards a fraction. A response along the lines of "I'm really not sure this is-" was on its way to my mouth, but it hit a brick wall a second later; within a distance where his warm, bacon-tinged breath was wafting against my nose, his perfectly-rounded bulge shoved against the confines of his underwear and rubbed softly against my crotch. I couldn't stop an aroused groan, which only grew as his muzzle practically touched my ear; he leant forwards and firmly placed his wonderfully soft paws on my shoulders.

"Come on, sheep-derp; the grass is greener on my side." With a cloud-like dreaminess, the words locked me in a trance to such an extent that I was completely oblivious to his bare arm reaching around my back, pressing itself into my jeans-covered backside; feeling its way around the contortions of my butt. Before I knew it, he'd hoisted me off the ground entirely. Not, of course, that I cared as I let him lower me gently to the ground, but my trance was well and truly over; almost before my t-shirt had contacted the fluffy, green earth, my hands had wrestled with the buckle of my jeans and pulled them loose; slowly, but surely, they began to slide down my legs, with Nathan eagerly finishing the job and finally yanking them completely free of my ankles. His paws wrapped around the cuff of my t-shirt, but I was already one step ahead of him, awkwardly manoeuvring my torso through the fabric before the fur atop it was finally able to feel the beautifully warm, mid-morning air for the first time.

"Wait a minute" I thought out loud, "something's not right here."

"...and what is-" I suddenly wrapped my arms around Nathan's torso and planted my feet into the grass, summing up as much strength as I physically could before hurling him to my left. It happened in such quick succession that he was completely caught off guard, yelping in surprise as he thumped back onto the ground. He was down; now was my chance! I scrambled to my feet and swung my leg to his other side, straddling the thrashing Labrador before finally pinning him beneath me; the two of us panting in-between bouts of chuckles.

"Isn't that always how it works? The scrimpy guy always ends up on top?" I grinned, shuffling my knees to keep him pinned below me.

"Oh yeah? And what happens next?" he sniggered lasciviously; a twinkle in his eyes.

"You show me." His eyes began to close; his tongue became visible, sandwiched by a set of pearl white teeth. I was already leaning forwards before he'd even started; closer, and closer I went, enough to distinguish his individual, slow breaths; our erect sheaths pushing against our undies and within millimetres of one another, and me readying myself for his damp jowls to wrap themselves around mine.

...and that was when I heard a slow, deliberate, mechanical click shatter the silence behind me.

"Oi! Just what the _fuck_do you two think you're doing?!" I separated myself from Nathan like a film in fast-motion, yelping as I crashed back onto the grass and scrabbled for grip to pull myself to my feet; his suddenly-quickened breathing reverberating against my ear as he rolled gently onto his side. Poised with a rusted, two-barrel shotgun and forebodingly advancing towards us one step at a time, the chubby physique of a wiry, brown bear, dressed head-to-toe in an attire that could've been ripped straight from the pages of a country magazine stared back at us; the gun's menacing barrel seeming to actively glare into our eyes.

"I thought I told your pathetic face never to come back here again" he snapped, swinging the gun downwards to point at a still ground-bound Nathan, "and put your clothes back on, the both of you; you're already dirtying my grass enough without your oversized things pushing through your pants." Without needing to be asked twice, I frantically nodded my head and darted for the crumpled mess of multi-coloured fabric and rubber lying a few feet away from us; my arms were already raising high above my head in a defeated wither, even before my t-shirt had completely settled against my waist. A fierce snarl etched into his brown muzzle, the bear slowly his head with pure contempt, tutting under his breath.

"You thieving, good-for-nothing fishermen; I am sick and tired of you waltzing onto my land and just taking your pick of my fish like it's a fucking street-market! I've tried everything; cordoning off this pond with a fence obviously didn't do the trick, and even after the bridge over that marsh was taken care of," his narrow, deep-set eyes glared at our pairs of mud-caked waders slumped on the ground, "it seems the more ­resourceful of you even managed to overcome that."

"I'm, I'm sorry, Sir, we-we really didn't know this was your land, and...hang on..." I slowly rotated my head to stare at Nathan as he faced his adversary down, bolt upright and still in his boxer-briefs, "you told me this was state-owned land!"

"It is!" he snapped suddenly, curling his fist and shooting an outstretched finger at the bear, "perhaps if you'd read t'e fine-print_about t'is patch o' land bein' outside your grasp, _Brian, ya' wouldn't have t' be standin' here, pointin' a gun at us like t'at. I had a hunch it was you t'at destroyed the bridge..."

"Nath, do we _really_want to antagonise him? He's got a gun!" I squeaked, almost starting to physically shake. Lowering the gun slightly, Brian's seemingly permanent scowl arced upwards at its edges with a hint of a chuckle.

"Yeah, I suggest you listen to your boyfriend, you fucking leprechaun, and put your clothes back on_before I shove this gun up your backside and _then fire it!" Angrily flipping the bird, Nathan strutted over to his waders with deliberate slowness and pulled them up his torso like a stage curtain, refusing to break eye contact with the bear during the entire ordeal.

"Right," Brian growled, "I want the both of you off my land within the next minute; if you don't come back here ever again, I might just decide to be nice and not call the cops. Grab your stuff and fuck off out of my sight, but before you do, this sheep-dog over here-" he paused for a brief second and glanced down at the crumpled rubber waders lying on the ground, "...had better put his oversized condom back on, too."

"Uhh...w-why?" I mumbled, though a lump was rising in my throat.

"Isn't it obvious? If you think I'm letting you walk back through my forest to get to whichever shit-hole you crawled out of, think again. You came here through that salt-marsh, you're going back through that salt-marsh." At the mere mention of what that entailed, a feeling all too similar to the stomach churning dread of an airplane take-off washed through me, turning the thin film of sweat on my forehead into noticeable beads.

"Erm, Brian, Sir, please don't; I- we just wanna' get home. I promise we won't damage any of your forest; please." I clasped my hands together, though holding them close to my torso in a desperate bid not to come across as a soppy mess. Not that it mattered; he darted forwards and pointed the gun mere centimetres from my damp blue t-shirt.

"Don't even try, collie; I've seen your type before. Pathetic, snivelling cry-babies who think that acting all apologetic'll get them off lightly-" I barely even had a chance to catch the bulging outline of Nathan's knuckles as they swung into view from the left-hand-corner of my vision. A teeth-grinding crack ricocheted around the clearing; I swear I heard the bone connect! The bear stumbled backwards with his head turned and a fountain of blood gushing from his nose. The muddy fabric of Nathan's chest waders suddenly blocked my view; the reek of his sweat mixing with the remnants of the mud before it creased once more as he pulled his right leg off the ground and punted a point-blank kick directly into the bear's stomach, which his boot's rubber sole did very little to alleviate.

"No-one fucking talks to my boyfriend like t'at, you hear me?!" he roared as the bear's obvious light-headedness was starting to play havoc with his balance. With the gun flailing around like a flag, his hiking boots tripped on an upturned patch of turf, and I watched with a mix of schadenfreude and horror as he became a puppet to the laws of gravity, flailing backwards and, with a final, inevitable cry, tumbling down the bank and crashing with a resounding impact into the water below. He hadn't even disappeared below the surface before I felt a silk-covered iron-grip on my wrist.

"Well come on, what'ya' standin' around for? Let's get outta here!" I shot him an incredulous stare.

"What the hell was that for?! You could've knocked him out!"

"Erm, thank you? I just stood up for ya' and t'at's how you repay me?!" he growled, beginning to drag me away.

"Wait, what about our stuff?" _ _

Fuck that!" he snapped, even before I'd finished the last syllable of the plea, "what, you wanna' end up with a bullet t'rough your chest?! I've got t' car keys, now come on!" My heart leapt into action shortly after my legs, breaking into a frantic run around the perimeter of the pond before we vaulted a small, red gate that marked the boundary of the path and sprinted as fast as our bodies would allow into the forest.

?

It quickly dawned on me that being forced to leave my waders behind in fear of my head was actually a blessing in disguise; free from the constricting, nylon sauna, I could easily keep up with Nathan as we traversed our way along a seemingly endless network of narrow, dirt-peppered paths, with the gradually diminishing trees continuing to whip past us in a blur. I would've easily outstripped him, were it not for the fact that I hadn't the faintest idea how to get back to the parking lot. Apart from the occasional bark of "t'is way" or "over t'ere", he resigned to simply panting as the sudden wave of humidity that was sweeping the area, joined in unison by an impending march of black clouds over the horizon, began to get to us.

"Have we lost him?" I finally moaned, desperate for any respite from this impromptu mini-marathon. A quick, but sustained glance over our shoulders mercifully confirmed it; we were indeed alone in this maze of trees, and as if to add icing to the relief cake, patches of sky jostling for position with the trees revealed snippets of the coastal path, and there were just enough landmarks to remind me that we were tantilisingly close. I was suddenly reminded of the ancient maritime poem, "Water, water, everywhere, but n'ere a drop to drink" as a rampaging thirst clasped hold of the inside of my mouth and refused to let go; could we not at least have picked up our water bottles before making a run for it?

"Nath," I panted as we pushed aside a wooden gate on the edge of a small, slightly inclining field with a vaguely-beaten path cutting it almost exactly down the middle, "back there, I...thanks for stickin' up for me, not just for my life, but from having to go back through that marsh; I could not do that again." With sweat dripping from his face, he slowed his pace to stride alongside me before smiling warmly.

"Yeah, don't worry about it; I was a bit o' a jerk. I just...I couldn't let him see t'at he got the better of us, and pushin' you around like t'at was somethin' I was not gonna stand for."

"You think he called the cops?" He nodded in confirmation, but with an air of unmistakeable confidence.

"Probably, but he has no idea which car-park we came from, or in what car for t'at matter. I'll ditch me' waders before we head home, but so long as we never come back, we should be in t'e clear".

?

I seriously never thought I'd be as glad to see a rusty, beaten-up 40-year-old Honda as I was when it came into view from around the corner, but as a ticket to freedom, it may as well have been a leather-cushioned limo. With no bags to throw into the back, I stretched my sweat-tinged arm towards the protruding door handle, but stopped at the faint rustle of gravel at the mercy of a car's tyres that emanated from the other side of the bush. Perking my ears up, I peered over the Honda's roof and caught sight of a non-descript black sedan, pulling into the middle of the gravel parking lot beyond.

"Oh finally" I chuckled, "other people; I was kinda' startin' to get lonely-" With my vision arced downwards towards the door handle, I was completely oblivious to a _squeak_of damp grass against a boot sole, and the moist flapping of rubber that suddenly grew louder; suddenly, Nathan slammed his paw against my muzzle, wrapping it around its tip and forcing me painfully down onto my knees as a lit, blue bar flashed atop the roof of a second car that had just pulled into the parking lot.

"Shush, shush!" he hissed at my vain attempt to protest, crouching down beside me; even with his face in the corner of my vision, his rapid breathing was clear to see. Reduced to only an audio commentary, my brain did the rest of the work as the situation on the other side of the hedge unfolded, beginning with the soft, Germanic clunk of well-engineered car doors.

"...I won't have this anymore; for fuck's sake Ronald, this was all your fault! You've lost my boy, my only boy, and now here we are on a wild goose-chase to-"

"Your boy?! You let him with me, and now you come back to throw him to some fuckin' clipboard bitches?! Fuck you, you bitch!"

"Mr. Hadley, please, calm down" ordered a neutral, calm, but unmistakeably firm female voice, "and would you mind referring to us with just a _little_more respect? Need I remind you that your home inspection score could give me the power to have you arrested if I so pleased; Nathan will be found, rest assured."

Though muffled through two panes of wafer-thin glass and door-frame, the meaning of the tight-lipped order, and especially the furiously spat words before it, slowly began to dawn on me. Suddenly, my ears were assaulted by a deep, rumbling diesel engine in desperate need of its timing adjusted, and at that point I gave up simply being an aural observer.

"No, get down!" wilfully ignoring Nathan, I lifted my eyes slowly over the brow of the Civic's window line. Blending in with the olive green of the bush on the other side of the car, an ancient Land Rover that made the Honda look showroom-fresh skidded into obscured view as the driver slammed on the brakes, bringing the off-roader to a stop worryingly close to the sedan and showering its former occupants in a cloud of dust. The second the driver's first disgruntled growl as he clambered out hit my ears, my heart plummeted in my chest.

"For the love of God, Woman, get out of the way! Parking right in the middle of the-"

"Sorry to be a hindrance, Sir, but I am Kathy Brent; Chief Operations Officer at Easthampton Social Services." A few seconds of awkward silence followed.

"Oh...right, can...can I help you, Ma'am? Brian Jefferson, at your service" he explained, failing spectacularly to paper over his anger with a veneer of level-headedness and maturity; large, rose-tinted patches on his cheeks would undoubtedly have been visible from closer by.

"Indeed; I appreciate you're no doubt in a...hurry" she glanced disapprovingly at what I assume were his still-sodden clothes, "but we need to ask you a few questions concerning a missing child. We arrived at his Father's home at nine o'clock this morning, only to find him gone, and we have reason to believe that he and his b- a, a _friend,_are in the area. They were last spotted by an officer on duty at seven this morning driving along Lovers Lane in a grey, Nineteen-Seventy-Four Honda Civic; registration "SCH-1219-CV". Does any of this ring a bell with you?" Raising my head as high as I dared, I could just make out what seemed to be a photograph, held up to the still fuming bear for him to observe. The slender fox holding the photograph only needed to hold it up for two seconds; Brian's reaction said more than words ever could.

"Oh, bloody hell it does! He and his boyfriend were trespassing on my land about a mile down the coast; the little shit nearly- erm, I mean, they disappeared before I could apprehend them, but I know they came by car somehow; that scoundrel mentioned his car keys, but..." he paused for a second, "nope, haven't seen the car at all. There is another car-park on the other side of Tidemarsh, erm, they might've parked there."

"Well then let's not just stand here; where's that parking lot?! Please, bring us back our son..." wailed the older, far less calm of the two female voices; I found myself biting my lower lip at just how worried the voice was.

"Mrs Hadley, if I could intercept just for a second; we mustn't get ahead of ourselves, here. I will tell Officer Bushtail to put out a call to officers within the area for sightings, and his assistant," she glanced backwards to the Police car, "will need to go through a few forms. Mr Jefferson, mind if we use your living area to do so, only for a little while? It would clearly benefit you to dry those clothes off."

"By all means, Ma'am; it's just down the road."

?

For a few seconds after the two cars had vacated the parking lot, a tense, eerie silence overcame us; the soft, slightly ominous roll of the ocean far behind us didn't help.

"Bloody hell t'at was close; did ya' see t'at idiot bear, he couldn't bring himself to admit he'd been trumped by someone not even old enough to vote!" Nathan finally quipped, finally letting go of my shirt and turning to face the horizon behind us. If there'd been an award for the most fabricated laugh by a living Animal, Nathan would've won it outright there and then. My mouth was opening and closing with no audible result.

"You...you think something about this is funny?!" I hissed, clenching my fists and staring him down intently. Nathan didn't answer; he slowly turned his head away, hunching his body downwards.

"Answer me!" I yelled into his ear, "what the hell are Social Services doing here? What's going on?!" Shutting his eyes, Nathan kept his muzzle firmly closed for at least a few seconds, before finally, the almost inaudible mumble of "None of your business" escaped him. My jaw dropped.

"None of my..." That did it; with a furious snarl, I locked my fingers around the straps of his waders and hurled him against the door with such force that the steel buckled behind him.

"It goddamn is my fucking business; for fuck's sake, I'm your boyfriend!" I roared, "If you can't tell me, who can_you tell?! I want answers, Nathan, _right, now. You've dragged me here, got both of us in deep shit and done God knows what else, all so what? You can just run away from-"

"I wasn't running away!" he growled, still refusing to look at me.

"Oh of course you weren't; you just happened to pull me outta' bed at five in the morning just so you could be away from the house when you knew social services would turn up. Sounds like running away to me. Goddammit Nathan, I'm...I'm utterly disappointed in you. Look at you; you don't like being dragged back into reality from your little romp, do you? Don't like the fact I'm questioning you, eh?!" He finally turned to look at me; a slow, deliberate turn of the head with a trembling jaw.

"I...I...no, I can't-"

"Nathan, if you don't tell me what you're hiding, I'll..." I paused; I was going to say that "I'll drag you over to that Social Services Fox whether you like it or not", but I'd seen what he could do to even a muscular, adult bear if he'd wanted to; if I even so much as raised a paw to him, I'd be on the ground with a concussion before I knew it. But...if I couldn't give him a physical scar, then...

"If you don't tell me" I repeated; my words tinged with malice, "then I'm walking away from here, and you are never, seeing me, again. Do you understand?" Nathan froze, staring at me with dinner-plate eyes and a look of sheer incredulousness.

"You wouldn't..." he whimpered, failing spectacularly to appear butch.

"Oh, wouldn't I?" The snarl was only the end-result of my decision; his call of my bluff had made my mind up for me on the spot, "O.K, fine; goodbye, ya' lying prick, it was nice knowing you." I finally let go of his waders, spun the heel of my converse boot on the damp grass and began to march purposefully away.

"Wait, wait! Tom, please, I'm sorry; I didn't mean t-....to, I can explain, everyt'ing..." his voice trailed off as it became lined with tears, but I didn't turn around; I simply stopped where I was, arcing my eyes back to catch his pleading posture from the corner of my vision.

"Well then?" My arms locked firmly against my chest.

"I knew you wouldn't understand; you...you don't know anyt'ing about my life. I should've told...I...look, last night, t'at phone call I took...it was Mom. She'd been tryin t' get through to Dad for the entire day, sayin' tat' he owed her money for some bullshit reason or ot'er."

"Right, money troubles; that shouldn't affect you" I wondered, "so why-"

"Because she cancelled my place on t'at trip to Peru to say fuck you to Dad; that's why!" he howled, "I saved up for years to do somethin' like t'at; summer jobs, errands; workin' at the Zoo was the best money-maker I had. I finally had the chance to do somethin' I_wanted_ wit' my life, instead of bein' a slave to me' Dad who's too fuckin' lay to get off his sorry arse and find a job. I couldn't take havin' to sit t'rough endless back-and-forth arguments he was havin' with Mom about fucking nothin'; after Mom walked out on him I'd've though that would've been the end of it, but_no_, and now they go and fuck-up my life, too, so I did what I had to do..." he slid down the Honda's door and collapsed onto the ground, bringing his knees up to his chest, "I fled out here so Social Services wouldn't find me. I was done tryin' to tell 'em to stop, so I ran. I just..." his voice cracked, "I didn't know what to do; I just want it all to stop..."

Well, one thing was for sure; a lot of things that'd happened over the past twelve hours now slotted into place, but I couldn't escape the feeling that, for all this, the lengths he'd gone to had been far too much.

"Erm...well, you know" I stumbled over my words, "Social housing isn't that bad; you get a roof over your head, food every day...and more to the point, isn't it kinda' a good thing this is happenin'? You won't have to look after your Dad anymore, and you'll be outta' their lives-"

"Mom isn't doin' t'is to help me" Nathan growled, "she's doin' it to get back at Dad; he tried to sue her three months ago about somethin' or other, and t'is is what she decided to do as revenge."

"Alright, I get it" I sighed, " but why me? Why'd ya' have to drag me out here, too? Couldn't you have just fled alone and left me a note? I wouldn't've told anyone; you know that, right?" Nathan firmly shook his head; any previous composure he may've had completely lost.

"B...because...because I wanted t...." he choked back a sob, "t' spend my last few hours before I left...with you. I'm sorry, I've treated you like shit ever since we met; you don't deserve someone like me!" he howled, before burying his muzzle in the isolated comfort of his folded arms and letting the river of tears finally overcome him.

There were times in my past where I'd been conflicted about what to think in a situation, but absolutely nothing even came close to what I was feeling right now. I didn't know if I wanted to walk away from Nathan, punch him, or comfort him and tell him everything would be alright. No, I couldn't do that last one, not after what he'd put us both through, but seeing him slumped there, a muddy, sweaty mess of a Labrador, a friend; I had to do something. I gingerly approached him and crouched onto one knee.

"L-look, Nathan" I finally blurted out, though choosing my words carefully, "if you want me to forgive you here and now, then forget it; you've acted like a baby this whole time, and at the end of it all, you totally fucked up, alright?" I growled at myself under my breath; I hated being so harsh, but there was no way to sugar-coat it. The feeling was obviously mutual; Nathan choked back more tears, but I could see his messy, blonde tuft of hair slowly move up and down.

"But..." I paused, raising my finger and feeling the inkling of a smile, "what an adventure we just had; thanks, thanks for bringing me here, and I mean that. You sure have given me a day to remember, whatever happens." The bristles of his arced eyebrows came into view above his arms, then his watering eyes, and finally his tear-stained muzzle.

"You, you mean it?" he whimpered with a breaking voice. I didn't say anything; I simply took a long, crouched-step forwards, leaned in, and planted my jowls onto his cheek, wrapping my arm around his shivering shoulder and clasping it tight.

"You're a goddamn idiot, Nath, but I love ya' all the more for it." A hint of a finally broken exclamation withered from his jowls before his eye locked into mine.

"Now," I arced an outstretched finger across the fur of his cheek, catching a solitary tear and flicking it to the ground, "come on, let's dry those tears and think about what to do from here; crying and panicking won't solve anything. Here, lemme-" I moved my arm from his shoulder to his torso, and gently coerced him to his feet.

"Oh jeez; sorry about the door" I cringed guiltily at the butt-shaped contortion of the Civic's wafer-thin steel covering the passenger door. The damage had extended further upwards than I'd first thought, with the base of the window now a spider's web of cracks, but Nathan casually flicked a hand in response.

"Sod the car, let's just get outta' here. We can walk back up t'e car-park road," he gestured back down the gravel path leading away from the car park, "there's a bus stop a little further d-" he slowly faltered as he caught on to the firm, decisive shaking of my head.

"...and then do what, exactly? Even if we made it back home, we'd just be turned into the cops; either that or they'll find us before you know it. No, Nath, we can't keep runnin', we can't afford to get ourselves in any more trouble than we already are." A thin bead of sweat began to wash from his forehead.

"T'en...t'en what'd we do?" The tone of his voice told me he already knew the answer; a suspicion that was confirmed a second later as he slowly turned to stare towards the batch of houses further inland, where his parents in the black sedan had gone a few moments earlier, "oh no....no, I'm not going back to them; what good would it do?!"

"I'll tell you what good it'll do" I snapped firmly, "you obviously did this whole thing just to send a clear message to your parents that you'd had enough, right? Well, I dunno' if you noticed, but when they were arguin' about you back there, it sounded to me like they were scared shit-less. They really were worried about ya', and believe me, Nath, you can't fake that; my Mom sounded exactly like that when Cody didn't come home one night. If we go up to that house, together, and you tell them everything you've told me, then they'll understand; I think you've finally made 'em sit up and realise, ya' know?" Nathan bit his lower jowl, delving deep into deciding between the option he desperately wanted, and the option that, he was slowly realising, was the only real one he had.

"I'll do it" he whispered eventually, standing bolt-upright and taking a deep breath to calm his nerves. With a relieved grin, I nuzzled gently up to his face, rubbing our fur together.

"Now that's the Nathan I know."

The gravel underneath our soles turned into rutted, gritty tarmac as we re-joined the small country road that had diverted into the parking lot; it circumvented the houses by the sea-front, before turning a sharp right and forking off into the drives of decently-sized houses.

"There!" he pointed, catching sight of the Green Land Rover, but more importantly, the black sedan, "t'at house on the left, by the end, look." A quick nod from me was all he needed; I expected him to slowly walk forwards, but instead, he gestured ahead.

"You first, Tommy-boy." I couldn't help but grin; it wasn't just his fear that was causing him to allow me to go first for once.

"We all make mistakes, Nath; God knows I have, but ya' know what sets you apart? You're learning from them." He swallowed a lump in his throat.

"You ready, then?" I locked my paw around his wonderfully supple pair, winding it in and keeping it held there, tight.

"As ready as I'll ever be, buddy. Let's do this."

The End