Brady reached into the fridge, his paw picking out the strawberry flavoured milk he'd decided on. Hefting the sugary drink, the wolf let the transparent fridge door swing shut of its own volition. He strolled up to the front counter, placing his selection onto the tabletop and smiling politely at the cashier. The fox behind the counter quickly scanned the few items, giving a friendly smile right back as he bagged them up.

     “That'll be fifteen thirty-four, thanks." He said cheerily. Brady resisted the urge to scowl at the price of a few snacks, but he passed over his card and tapped it, satiating the capitalist god. He gathered his bagged items and headed out of the store. In his pocket, his phone buzzed for the sixth time.

     You're being a child, answer me. The screen read. The wolf swiped on the text to open it, seeing a long row of similar messages preceding it. He hadn't sent one in a few days now.  

     Look I'm sorry for everything that happened between us, but silence won't make it any better. Text me back? The next message popped through as he was looking at the list, and Brady sighed. He stopped where he was, bringing his thumb up to type.

     Please don't text me again. I don't want to fix it. Thanks for being my friend for all these years, have a nice life Oliver. He hit enter, before switching his phone to airplane mode and wandering back over to the parked car. He was at the halfway point between his hometown and Melbourne, stopped at a conveniently placed service centre for snacks and a toilet break.

     “Ollie still texting you?" Max asked, the cheetah leaning casually against one of the doors of Brady's car. The wolf just nodded, pulling out the lemonade that had been requested and handing it to his boyfriend.

     “He'll tire himself out, eventually I think." Brady said with a shrug, dropping the bag through his open window onto the passenger seat. He leaned over to Max, kissing him tenderly on the cheek. “I got all my favourites, so you can know now if this will last. I just can't be with someone who doesn't share my taste in snacks I'm afraid." He said with a grin, causing Max to giggle.

     “We'll make it work baby, I can learn to love them." He replied, before kissing Brady right back.

     After the disaster of Paul's party, Brady had gone home and fallen straight into bed, terrified. He woke up with a headache, sweating and sore, sometime past twelve. He'd called Max immediately, and the cheetah had come right over. The two had talked the day away, and Max even had dinner with Brady's family, which was weird and awkward. Brady told Max all of it, how scared he'd been, what Ralph had done…even how much he'd liked it. Max had been…apprehensive. He was a little hurt at first, but not overtly emotional, and eventually understanding. The two worked out together what was best to do, opting for a total break. When Oliver had next texted him, Brady explained he was done, and hadn't replied back until today. Paul had messaged him once, saying that he hoped everything was cool, but the wolf ignored it. He'd also received one lone text, from a number his phone didn't recognise.

     Just mind your own fucking business. He presumed it was from Ralph, and Brady deleted the text as soon as he'd read it. The tiger frightened him, and he just hoped he never had to deal with him again. The thought of Jake and his parents being in the same town as a heroin dealer was a little off-putting, but he thought that Ralph would leave his family alone. And Jake was a smart pup, he'd be okay. And if not…well, he knew who to ask for help.

     Max was coming down to stay for a little bit, Brady still had a week until classes actually started, and they planned to spend the time getting to know each other better and exploring the city. Max had only been a few times, mostly for footy games, and Brady wanted to show him the works. It'd be fun. The wolf found himself able to place a good deal of trust in Max, despite the fact they'd technically only been together for a week now. It was something about the way that the guy let down his own defences, he was naively unafraid of letting Brady close, and the wolf found it refreshing. He was tired, tired of everything; tired of parties, tired of lying, tired of gossip, and manipulation. But mostly he was tired of all the guessing games, of not knowing what people wanted from him. Of not knowing how or why things happened. Since opening up about his friend, Max had been much more forthcoming, and Brady found it easy to reciprocate that.

     “Mhmm." He murmured, pulling back out of the kiss for air. “We should really get going, there's another two hours until we're home. If we're really lucky we might hit peak-hour traffic, which adds like…a whole 'nother fucking hour onto it." He rolled his eyes, pulling open the passenger door and offering the seat to Max, who nodded and slid in.

     “Why thank you." He said with a smile, pulling his seatbelt across. As Brady walked back around to the driver's side, he couldn't help himself from beaming. He really liked Max, and couldn't wait to set up elaborate dates while he was staying. The four hour distance might be tricky, but the cheetah was moving down at the start of next year to study anyway, so things would get easier then.

     “Righto." Brady said as he fell into his seat, starting the car up. “Let's go beautiful."

And they left.

Gah, so I finished it. Finally. Took me ages to write this last chapter, I've been super busy and it's been killing me to not finish it. My Uni graduation film is happening, I have a new job, a new boyfriend, all the new things. Woo.

So. I wanna say a little bit about this story here and now, but I'm thinking I might do a journal-type update in a few days, just on my current state as a writer and how I'm feeling about it, including these last two stories. But that's for then, this is for now.

So, this story was…oddly difficult to write. The last thing I wrote, if you're familiar, is called Welcome to the Family (Such a terrible title, lawdy) and was for the most part about coming to terms with being gay. It ended like, super dramatically though and I didn't really like that. I don't want to write melodrama, at least not yet, and that got very over-the-top. So I wanted Home Again to end more…quietly. And I think it did, I just finished editing chapter fifteen as I write this and I think I'm…happy…ish…with it. As happy as I'll be anyway.

I gotta say, I ummed and ahhed over whether or not Brady would end up leaving, but I thought writing a whole story only to have it end with the main character doing heroin and fucking his life up might be a bit of a dick move. Writing the stuff with Ralph was interesting though, and I wish I had more to say about him.

I was most happy with Oliver, Jake, Wendy and Max, as characters. I felt some of the others got neglected, and I made some ah…mistakes. Set up a side story involving Jake's old friend which went literally nowhere. Feel bad about that, it was a stupid filler chapter and I know it. Chapter four, for the record.

But aside from that, I liked these characters. I enjoyed writing this and more importantly I learned a lot from it.

If you've read it this far, thank you! Thanks so much for keeping with it, and if you've commented or fave'd or any of that thank you even more. I don't mind criticism, and any you may have given is well received (I have a good story involving grammar-correction, for the record).

I have an idea for something else to write (Another reason I wanted to finish this), but I need to think it over more. I got some advice from a great writer on here, who told me about planning out stories and plot points. I've applied that to a much larger project I'm writing (One that this audience isn't right for I'm afraid) and it's worked out really well. I need to keep better notes for whatever comes next.

I hope I conveyed the sense of the dying town in this. I really wanted to show how a country town is a lot like a well, it can be wonderful to have, but one little accident and suddenly the whole thing is poisoned. I think I could have done more to convey that, but it would have needed to be a larger story I think.

Also, I'd like to apologise for the start of chapter fourteen too. Someone smarter than I pointed out that drunken people aren't typically so lucid as to able to say deep things such as “It's dangerous to confuse children with angels" but I couldn't resist. It's a line from my favourite movie, and I'd just re-watched it…I was weak.

Anyway. I've taken up enough of your time. Thank you for reading, I really hope you enjoyed the story.

-     -   Pietus

      PS - For those who are interested: Home Again was written in the font 'Anonymous Pro', at 16pt, with 2.0 spacing. Each new paragraph had a blank line preceding it. It is 54,154 words long excluding this post-script. It has 246 pages in my word file. 246,157 characters (no spaces). 6,667 lines. 1,166 paragraphs. I'm kind of a nerd for stats, so there's some for you <3