"What do you mean you didn't bring a tent?" Riley asked, incredulously. Chase just shrugged a little. "I heard you asking Tyler for his and thought the tent situation was taken care of. What's the big deal anyway? I don't mind tent sharing."
Riley groaned a little. "It's not a big deal, if we had a regular tent. Unfortunately, the tent I borrowed from Tyler was the one he had when he was looking for his dad. It's literally big enough for one person."
"So? It will just be a tight squeeze. It's not like we're not best friends. At least I'm not a complete stranger." Chase said nonchalantly.
"Yeah, best friends." Riley echoed, looking away. It was true. He and Chase were best friends. Riley had a secret though, he was in love WITH his best friend. Well secret was probably untrue as at least one other person knew. Shelby Watkins, their friend and teammate wasn't dumb nor was she blind. She picked up early on that Riley had feelings for Chase but being the ever gracious friend she was, didn't say anything. Riley groaned internally. This was going to be a long trip.
Ever since going back in time to the age of dinosaurs and beating Sledge, they ended up creating a new timeline, or perhaps dimension would be a more apt description. The asteroids that Sledge was towing never fell to earth, never killed the dinosaurs. The Amber Beach Dinosaur Museum was now the Amber Beach Dinosaur Zoo. They now lived amongst the dinosaurs. Thanks to some intelligents power rangers, both present and past, they found a way to travel to each other's dimensions when needed. Unfortunately, thanks to a small mishap, there was now a velociraptor loose on Earth Prime. Since Riley was the raptor ranger and thus the 'Alpha', he and Chase were sent to track her down.
"Hello, earth to Riley. You okay, mate?" Chase asked, waving his hand in front of the green ranger's face, bringing him back to the present. Riley shook his head, snapping out of his thoughts. "Huh?" He asked. Chase chuckled. "I asked if you thought this was a good place to make camp for the night. If so, I can start making a fire if you want to get the tent set up."
Riley looked around at their surroundings. They were somewhere deep in a forest. He didn't know where exactly they were on earth prime but it seemed to be as good a place as any to start their search. "Yeah, this will work."
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Hours later and stomach full, Riley sat around the campfire, looking at the stars. If it wasn't for the fact that they were there on a rescue mission and for the fact that Chase had a girlfriend, Riley thought this trip would be romantic. Just him and Chase in the middle of nowhere, enjoying nature. Riley smiled and sighed at the thought.
"What's on your mind?" Chase came up and sat beside him. He handed him a cup of tea. "It's the best I could do with what we got."
Riley took the cup, blew on it and then took a sip, "Just thinking that if we were here for any other reason, it would make a pretty good vacation. Keeper knows we deserve one." Riley chuckled. "Speaking of, since we don't know how long we're going to be, what does Kaylee think of you disappearing for who knows how long?" Kaylee was Chase's girlfriend and knew he was the black ranger. As much as Riley wanted to be jealous of her, she was just too nice of a girl.
"Didn't you hear the news, mate? Kaylee and I broke up." Chase replied. Whatever response Riley was expecting, it wasn't that. He was in the middle of taking a sip of tea and ended up spraying it everywhere. "What?" he sputtered. Chase chuckled and handed the younger ranger a napkin. "Yeah, When we became active rangers again and reformed our bonds with the energems, we broke up. She wants to be an astronaut and was accepted at the space academy and as long as I am a ranger and bonded to my energem, I'm not going to age. We both love what we are doing and didn't want either of us to have to sacrifice our dreams so we decided to just be friends."
Hearing that Chase was single again made this ball of emotion start to grow in Riley's chest and made him feel all warm. Chase was sitting close and Riley could see the campfire dancing in Chase's eyes, illuminating them even more, making them even more beautiful. Riley realized that he was sitting there staring into Chase's eyes and neither of them saying anything. He cleared his throat and stood. "It's getting late and if we want to get an early start tomorrow, we should probably head to bed."
"You go ahead." Chase said. "I'm going to wait for the campfire to die a little and then I'll put it out." Chase watched Riley disappear into the tent and his thoughts wandered back to how beautiful Riley's green eyes looked in the fire light.
