AN~ thanks so much for all the lovely reviews my dears ^3^. I'm surprised that so many people ship this it's awesome :D just glad all of you like it so far ^^

"Rise and shine Russ my boy! We got us a big day planned!" My eyes shot open as I bolted up right at the voice.

"Woah~ a little jumpy there aren't we?" Nate chuckled, taking a few steps back from the mattress. I sighed, quickly calming down after I realized it was just Nate. I'd been so on edge last night I barely slept. The whole time I was expecting a walker to burst through the door, or some looters to come by and kill us. It didn't really help that I don't quite trust Nate yet either.

"I'd love to let you sleep all day Russ really, but I need your help." I threw the thin blanket back and grabbed my shoes from beside the bed.

"Yeah what do ya need?" I asked, looking up at Nate as I tied my shoes. He appeared to have been up for a while now.

"The tires." Nate said like it should have been beyond obvious.

"Come on." He turned and nodded to me. After a moment I'd finished with my shoes and was following Nate out to the diner to the parking lot.

"I've found some tires, and parts that we can salvage, just need some help getting them off." He tossed me the tire iron from before and helped me loosen the bolts for the car. After a few minutes, Nate looked over at me.

"It's probably not a bad idea to strip these cars of any working parts, we might need them later. Or we could trade them if it comes to that."

"Probably not a bad idea." I repeated. I thought over his sentence for a moment.

'He's talking about the future like we're going to be together for a long time.' I rolled the thought over in my head, and finally decided to ask him about it.

"Nate." He glanced over to me, then back down at the hood of the car.

"You're still taking me to my gram's, right?" the corners of Nate's lips turned down, but he offered no reply to my question.

"Well didn't you say that's what you'd do?" his head shot up from the car and he whipped around to face me, slamming the wrench down as he did.

"Russell you know your Gram's dead right!?" I jumped a little at his sudden outburst. I hesitated a moment before continuing, not wanting to set him off.

"You don't know that and even if she is that's where you said you would take me, we had a deal."

"We HAD a deal!" his face softened a bit before he continued.

"Russell I let you go out there and you'll be eaten alive! You're beyond lucky that you hadn't already been walking that road before I found you!" I saw the fury growing in his eyes again and I took a step back. I wasn't sure what he'd do if he got pissed. Not wanting to find out, I decided it would be best to drop the subject for right now, I needed him to cool off.

"Nate it's fine, we can talk about this later alright man-" I was cut off.

"There's nothing to talk about!" he growled, taking steps towards me.

"Russell man, look at me. We can drive by the house if you really want, but there's not going to be anything but the dead there."

I didn't say anything in reply, not wanting to get him riled up again.

"Right, well let's just finish up on these cars, we shouldn't be out in the open for too long." A smirk found its way back on his face, and he chuckled a bit.

"That 'a boy, keeping your head in the game I like it." He patted my shoulder before going back to work.

In another hour or so we'd replaced the tires, filled them with a hand pump (which was literal hell might I add) loaded the parts, and supplies we'd found into the back on the truck, and not too long after we were once again driving.

Nate had decided to play some music again, unfortunately he only had two CDs in his truck so it was just the same ten songs on loop the entire time.

After we'd been driving for a while I decided to bring up my Gram's house again.

"Nate, I uh-?"

"If you're asking about your Gram's, don't." looking over at him I found a scowl etched into his face. He was angry, but I realized it wasn't directed at me.

"Can't we just look?"

"No Russell are you trying to get us both killed?! That house is probably swarming with Geeks by now."

"It's a farm house. No one's around for miles how coul-"

"Russell I don't know what the hell you were doing in that little group of yours that you didn't realize this, but the entire goddamn planet is swarming with the dead now there's no place untouched!"

"You think I don't know that?! And that has nothing to do with this just drop me off-"

"Shut up Russell! We're done talking okay done!" I flinched slightly, my eyes scanning over his face. We sat in silence for a moment, before I decided to speak again.

"Why do you care so much?" Nate's gaze remained focused forward, not even acknowledging my question. I huffed softly, realizing it was useless to argue and turned to the window.

"I can't…" I turned as Nate started to speak again.

"I just can't risk losing you too."

AN~

okay so I need to ask something. what do you want me to do with this story now, if anything. do you want me to just write a bunch of one shots, do you want me to continue from here, or maybe just do one more part and have it be a bunch of different short stories? or what. / i'm not sure what you want D:

((it's like 4 in the morning my brain is doing weird things))