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Nick clutches his drawing bag tightly as he tries to balance out the weight of the big duffle bag that is slung around his shoulder. He looks out and down the road of his boringly average neighborhood, nervously yet anxiously awaiting the arrival of his friend, Jason, who saved his sanity this summer. Nick had been talking to him the last day of school about this summer and how boring it was going to be for him. Being the caring friend that he is, Jason offered a break from boredom to take an adventure on the open seas to the Caribbean with his parents on their restored antique sail ship. Nick, of course, said yes but it took almost a three-hour beg-a-thon with his mom to convince her to let him go. She made him promise to call her every time they docked to rest or get more supplies and to also call her when they get down there to make sure he made it safely. With Jason's help, Nick convinced his mom that he would be ok.

A sigh escapes Nick as he finally gives up trying to hold the duffle bag and sets it down on the ground next to him. As he bends over a few blades of grass rain down in front of him.

"Grrr..." Nick starts brushing the top of his head, trying to get out what grass he had missed.

Along with his promise, Nick's mom also made him mow the front and back lawn as well as trim some of the bushes lining the edges of the front yard and fix the broken hinge on the front gate. In his hastened state, Nick didn't pay attention to the greenery he was making fly all over as he was completing his tasks so he can be ready for Jason and his parents on time.

A lumbering SUV packed with stuff in the back and on the cargo rack on top catches Nick's attention and he gives up trying to fish out the last few blades of grass in his head fur and excitedly picks up his duffle bag. The dusty vehicle stops in front of the house and Jason hops out.

"Hey, Wolfie, You ready for some adventure?!" He says, smiling, as he helps Nick with his duffle bag.

"Oh yeah!" Nick says in a boyishly excited way.

Jason chuckles as he packs the duffle bag in the back with the rest of the bags then slips in the back seat.

"What?" Nick asks as he hops in next to his friend.

"You, you're funny. So you've never gone on a trip anywhere outside of the state before?"

"Nope, never."

"Well, you're gonna have fun."

"Hang on guys, we're takin' off." Jason's Mom says as she puts it in drive and pulls back out onto the road.

On the way to the docks, Nick's excited high starts to wear off and he begins to doze off a little. It is still a little early and he didn't really sleep that much last night because he was so excited, that coupled with all the work he did on the front and back lawn drained what energy he had left.

"Wow, you're sleepy already?" Jason says as he pokes Nick's tilted head a bit.

Nick shakes his head and he looks over at him. "Yeah... well I didn't sleep much last night... I was kind of excited plus my mom made me do a bunch of yard work before I left."

"That's ok. You can take a nap when we get everything on board and packed."

"So where are we gonna be sleeping?" Nick asks as he rests his head back a little on the seat.

"Well we're gonna be sleeping in the crew's quarters at the bow of the ship and my parents are sleeping in the Captain's quarters at the stern where it has the cool window facing behind the ship."

"Cool." As Nick starts to doze off a little he begins thinking to himself. 'I wonder what it's gonna be like sleeping in the same room as him...' That thought stirs up those strange feelings again and he sort of looks over at Jason through a squinted eye, trying to pretend to be asleep. Jason is just looking out of the window at the cars passing them, going the opposite way, as they merge onto a larger road toward the docks.

'I wonder if he feels the same way I do...' That's pretty much the last thought that goes through Nick's head before he falls asleep.

Nick slowly awakens due to something tickling his snout. As his consciousness gradually comes back he swats at whatever keeps landing and tickling the tip if his nose though he doesn't open his eyes. By about the tenth or eleventh time, Nick finally catches what was bothering him. His eyes open quickly as he lets go of Jason's paw. In his kneeling position in front of Nick, Jason starts laughing.

"C'mon sleepy head, we're here!" Jason says after his short laughing fit.

Nick sits up a little bit and Jason leans back to allow him to do so, on account of him being almost snout-to-snout with him. Nick rubs his eyes a bit and looks around. All of the bags and things were gone.

"Yeah, we let you snooze while we loaded everything up; don't worry, I left your drawing bag with you." Jason says as he motions to the thin, rectangular bag about the size of a pillow with a small pouch in the front for pens, pencils, ect.

"Now come on! You've gotta come see the ship!" Jason exclaims while he shakes Nick's leg a little then hops out of the SUV.

Gripping his drawing bag now, Nick yawns as he turns toward the open door and stretches his legs out in front of him then slips out, Jason shutting the door after him.

"It's at the end of the dock. Wait 'till you see the inside, my parents did an awesome job!" Jason starts boasting as they walk side-by-side down the gently swaying wooden dock, passing various vessels from small, two-person fishing boats to large crabbing rigs.

Nick's eyes widen as they reach the end of the dock and stop in front of a big sailing ship tied off in four different places. Jason looks over at him and smiles as he sees his friend's reaction.

"I know, isn't it so cool!"

Nick just slowly nods in agreement as he looks the ship over. Two massive masts hold up an impressive web of white sails, nets, lines and horizontal beams that cascade down to the deck and bowsprit that protrudes out from the front of the ship. Smaller jib sails flow up the head mast and down onto the bowsprit and flap lazily in the calm breeze. The ship is clad in a beautiful dark wood that almost seems to have been frozen in time and hasn't aged a bit. Lighter colored, polished wood trim and carved decorations adorn the outside of the ship like an extravagant dress and outline various portholes and railings.

Finally, Nick is tugged out of his awestruck gaze of the beautiful vessel in front of him by Jason's paw grabbing his own and towing him along to the boarding ramp.

"Come on, you gotta see the inside!" Jason says with a hint of excitement as he pulls his friend along.

Nick almost blushes as he is brought up the boarding ramp and on deck. Jason lets go of his paw and kind of sprints over to the door leading below deck, opening it and standing there to hold it open. He motions for Nick to come over and go in. Slowly, Nick makes his way across the deck while drinking in all the details of the old ship. No stone is un-turned in the restoration of the beautiful vessel as Nick passes various wood benches and storage barrels that all look to be hand made. He finally makes it over to Jason and walks through the doorway, Jason following him and shutting the door.

"Wow..." Simply is all Nick can say as he steps down the stained wood stairs and into the kitchen. Almost nothing looked modern except for a couple essential cooking appliances and a fridge. Oil lamps lit the room and more lit the hallways leading toward the bow and the stern.

"This is... awesome..." Nick finally says; the meticulous attention to detail Jason's parents took in restoring the ship overwhelming him. The ambiance of the room almost made you feel like you were back in the early days of exploration; barrels of various liquids tied down under an old wooden counter and fresh grains hanging up to dry above an antique wood-fire oven. Jason nods as he stands next to him.

"I know. My parents spent a lot of time working on it. They said that when they're too old to go sailing I get to have it."

"Really?"

"Yep, My dad is teaching me how to sail and navigate on the sea."

"Cool."

"Come on, let's go check out our room so you can set your drawing bag down then I can show you the rest of the ship."

"Ok."

Nick follows Jason as he walks around an island counter in the middle of the kitchen and starts down the flame lit corridor toward the bow where the crew's quarters is located. After passing different portals leading off to storage rooms, washrooms, or stairways leading down to the lower portion of the ship, Jason stops at a door almost at the end of the corridor on the right.

"This will be our room for the next month and a half." He says as he lifts the old wooden latch and pushes the door open. Nick follows him inside.

The room is fairly simple; a bunk bed on the far side from the door placed against the left wall, a big clothing closet bolted against the wall to the left, and a large chest on the floor against the wall to the right. Light radiates in from a small portal window modified into the hull of the ship and situated about four feet from the floor between the bunk and the right wall.

"So which one do I get?" Nick asks as he walks up to the bunk bed.

"Well, I thought I'd let you have the bottom so you wouldn't have to worry about falling off if the ship starts rocking a bit... unless you want the top, then go right ahead."

Nick looks the bunk over and weighs the options for a second.

"I think I'll take the bottom." He says as he sets his drawing bag down on the bottom bunk's modern mattress.

"Ok then, let's go check out the rest of the ship and find my parents."

"Sounds good." With that, they both leave the room, Nick following Jason down the dimly lit corridor again.

After giving Nick the grand tour of the whole top of the ship and below deck, Jason takes him down to the bottom where the main hold and the modified engine bay are. They find Jason's parents in the engine bay inspecting a large metallic monster with hoses and wires protruding from it.

"Hey Mom. Hey Dad. Sleepy head's awake now." Jason says, chuckling a little as he walks up to them. Nick glares at him and gives him a playful little shove.

Jason's dad looks up from a clipboard he's checking off.

"Hey guys. We're just about ready to set-sail. I'm just making sure the bio diesel is going to get us there if the winds don't cooperate with us."

Nick cocks his head a little.

"Bio diesel?"

"Yep. You see those big drums over there?" Jason's dad says, pointing to the stack of black painted drums.

Nick nods.

"Those are filled with used cooking oil that I've collected from various fast food restaurants and filtered so that it can run in this modified diesel engine. The reason it's called 'bio' diesel is because the exhaust from the engine won't harm the earth at all."

"Wow, that's really cool." Nick says, impressed by his ingenuity.

"Just doin' my part for the earth." Jason's Dad says as he turns his attention to the clipboard again.

"Come on. Let's go up top so we can watch the docks as we head off." Jason says as he tugs Nick along with him again. Nick follows along compliantly.

"We'll be up there in a minute!" Jason's Mom shouts after them as they start up the stairs to the middle deck.

On the way to the top deck, Jason stops at their room again to grab a camera he packed with his stuff and Nick grabs his drawing bag. Jason turns to Nick and aims the camera at him as he picks up his drawing bag.

"You're my first picture for the trip." He says before he snaps a shot. Nick manages to get in a half smile before the picture is taken.

"And probably not the last." Jason smiles as he slings the camera strap around his shoulder. He puts an arm around Nick's shoulder and gives him a friendly hug as they walk out of the room and make their way to the top deck.

As they emerge from below deck a slight breeze gusts across the deck and pours over and around them, Nick shivering a little in its wake.

"Wind's pickin' up. Looks like we'll cover a pretty good distance today." Jason says as he walks up to the edge of the boat near the boarding ramp and leans on it. Nick walks over next to him and nervously peers over the edge and looks down at the water as it lazily slaps about the hull of the ship and the dock. Jason looks over at him and watches for a moment.

"Are you afraid of water?" He asks finally, genuinely curious. Nick looks up at him.

"No... just afraid of falling into it from here..."

"You do know how to swim, don't you?"

"Well... sort of. I swam a little in the pool at the school but the guys there made fun of me and... Well... I just left." Nick says as he backs away from the railing edge a little.

"Why'd they make fun of you?"

"Because I'm a scrawny little loser..." Slight depression starts to kick in as Nick flops his arms to his sides and looks down at himself.

Jason starts to chuckle a little as he turns to him and crosses his arms. Nick looks up with kind of a hurt expression on his face.

"Aww, no, no, no. I'm not laughing at YOU. I'm just laughing at how stupid those guys are."

Jason says, reassuringly, as he puts his hands on Nick's shoulders and looks him in the eyes.

"You're far from scrawny and definitely not a loser."

Nick blushes a little bit and looks back down.

"Seriously, look." Jason steps close to Nick's side and places a hand on his abs. Along with the warmth of Jason's hand through the thin, black tee shirt Nick's wearing, The sudden physical contact and closeness to his friend makes the fur on the back of his neck stand up a little.

"Tighten your abs."

After taking a silent moment to compose himself, Nick looks down at Jason's hand and tightens his abs as hard as he can. Jason smiles as he presses his hand against Nicks tightened abs then pokes at them a bit with a paw finger, eliciting a slight yelp from his friend as it tickles him and makes him jump a little. Jason chuckles a bit.

"Sorry. See, you're not scrawny. You've got muscle. Why I'd bet you could beat me up if you wanted to."

"No I couldn't."

"Well, you'll probably be able to when I'm done teaching you how to help me sail this ship with my dad." He says as he ruffles Nick's head fur a little.

"Why wait until then?" Nick growls playfully, pushing him a little. Jason puts his hands up in surrender.

"Hey, I've gotta be in one piece to help my dad you know." He says, laughing. Nick chuckles a little.

"Guess I'll have to kick your butt later then."

Jason's mom and dad emerge from below deck.

"Hey guys. Ready to say goodbye to the mainland for the next month and a half?" Jason's mom says as she walks up to them. Both Nick and Jason nod.

"Alright then, let's get the anchors untied and head off." She says as both her and her husband walk over to the boarding ramp and start down it to untie the docking anchor lines.

After they navigate the ship away from the docks, Jason goes about helping his dad set the sails and plan the course for the day while Nick just wanders around the deck with his drawing bag, looking for inspiration. While sitting on the steps leading up to the raised deck on the stern, Nick watches Jason pull down on a rope to add an additional sail to the already open ones. Now, without a shirt Nick can see Jason's well-built muscles in action. The scene sparks his imagination and he starts gracing the paper with his drawing pencil.

After getting all the required sails up and adjusted with his dad, Jason slings his shirt over his shoulder and walks over to Nick, who's finishing up his drawing. He sits down next to him and leans over a little to look at the drawing.

"I see you're getting into the spirit." Jason says, smiling.

"Yeah, this whole ship kind of reminds me of pirates and stuff like that so I decided to kind of draw you as a pirate." Nick says as he finishes some of the muscle shading on 'pirate' Jason, who's gripping a sword at his side and holding his other hand against his brow to look out at something on the water. Nick had positioned the light source so that it allowed for maximum muscle structure shading and still looked like an angle of the sun.

"Wow... you know how to draw the body very well." Jason states as he leans over a bit more, almost against Nick's shoulder, to get a better look.

Jason's scent suddenly overrides Nick's senses while he is marking down his signature at the bottom of the picture. He stops mid way through, forced by his mind to close his eyes and fill his lungs; resisting the urge to bury his muzzle into his friends' neck and take an even deeper snuff of the musky aphrodisiac. This doesn't last long as Jason shakes him and abruptly ends his mesmerized state.

"Hey, you ok?"

Nick opens his eyes and shakes his head a little; gathering his composure back up.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry, just thinking about something. There! All done." He says as he finishes signing the picture and hands it to Jason after, carefully, removing it from the clipboard. Jason takes it and smiles, as he looks it over.

"Cool, I like the sword." He sits back and looks up at Nick. "You wanna head down to our room so we can unpack and I can pin my pirate self up on the wall?"

Nick nods, smiling. "Sure." He then packs his various drawing pencils, eraser, and clipboard into his drawing bag.

They both stand and walk over to the doorway leading below deck, Jason pausing on the way to inform his dad that he is going below deck to unpack.

After unpacking their stuff into the tall clothing closet and the chest, Nick and Jason go about making their beds; Jason pins the picture Nick gave him up on the wall next to his pillow on the top bunk. Nick lies below, sorting through his drawings and organizing the folder he keeps his finished drawings in.

"So whaddya wanna do?" Jason says as he pops his head over the side of the bunk to look down at Nick.

"Well... I was thinking of taking a nap." Nick responds after failing to stifle a yawn then letting it out.

"Oh... ok." a hint of disappointment in Jason's voice.

"Well I guess I could stay awake for a while if-"

"No, it's ok. You can sleep. I'll go see if my dad wants me to help him with something." Jason interrupts him, jumping down off the top bunk and landing softly on his footpads.

"You sure? I mean, I don't mean to be lazy, but..."

"No, it's ok. Sleep, fuzz butt." Jason chuckles as he pulls his pillow down from the top bunk and whacks Nick with it, leaving it over Nick's head as he walks out of the room. Nick growls playfully as Jason leaves but sighs once he is gone, pulling the pillow off of his head and setting it behind him next to the wall.

'I feel stupid now... I came with to have fun with him but I'm just sleeping. I'll make it up to him tomorrow.' Nick thinks to himself.

He sets his drawing bag down on the floor at the head of the bunk then rolls out and stands up to undress. Once he stripped down to bare fur, he slips back into bed and covers up, facing away from Jason's pillow he'd forgot about. As soon as sleep had taken him, Nick instinctively rolls over toward Jason's scent, hugging the pillow and burying his muzzle into its soft body.

Nick's 'nap' turns into deep slumber as his dreams toil about scenes from all the times he had been hanging out with Jason and had that feeling come up in his mind. Brief flashes of what Nick wanted to do with Jason at those moments flicker in between them, Nick hugging, cuddling, and even kissing Jason at times.

The day goes by quickly for Jason as he gets caught up with helping his dad replace all of the thimbles in the rope holes of the back up sails stored in the bottom hold.

Night begins to fall and Jason says goodnight to his dad, who's at the helm, then goes below deck to his room. Nick is still out of it. He had turned over in his sleep with Jason's pillow and still had his arms around it, his head more on Jason's pillow than his own. Jason smiles and chuckles a little as he quietly walks up to the bunk and kneels down next to Nick. He watches him sleep for a minute before placing a hand on Nick's shoulder and gently shaking him.

"Hey... Hey Nick, wake up."

Nick blinks open his eyes after a moment and squints up at Jason.

"Hey... What time is it?" Nick asks groggily.

"Late." Jason answers with a slight chuckle. "You've been sleeping all day."

Nick's ears droop a little bit as he closes his eyes again. "I'm sorry... I know you probably wanted to hang out with me."

"It's ok, I know you were really tired. Just try to get back to sleep so you can get up tomorrow and begin your sailor training." Jason says, mocking an official tone for the 'sailor training' part.

Nick's ears perk back up a little as he gives kind of a tired laugh. Jason reaches over and grips an edge of his pillow. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to have my pillow back so I can go to sleep as well." Suddenly, Nick realizes that he had been cuddling with Jason's pillow. A strange twinge of nervousness springs up his spine and extends to his arms as he props himself up, with a slight bit of shakiness, to allow his friend to take the pillow.

"Oh... um... sorry, I thought I had put it back on your bed."

"It's ok, fuzz butt. Now go back to sleep." Jason says as he, playfully, ruffles Nick's head fur then hastily climbs up on the top bunk to avoid getting swatted at.

"Heh... yeah..." Nick cuddles up with his own pillow and closes his eyes again, glad that his friend didn't seem suspicious as to why he was cuddling with his pillow.

The two shipmates settle in and Jason blows out the lantern. Though Jason is soon fast asleep, Nick laid there on the bottom bunk, awake, as he toiled about what feelings he had been recently experiencing.

'He's my best friend... maybe he'd understand if I talked to him about it... on the other hand, he might hate me for feeling that way towards him...'

He sighs as he rolls over to face the wall. 'I don't know what to do...'

The rhythmic sound of Jason's breathing coupled with the soft purring growing in his throat help Nick distract himself from the dilemma his feelings have put his mind into. Soon, he too is fast asleep and dreaming.