A/N We're a quarter of the way to a hundred so here's a LOOONG chapter!

Phil found himself at his front door panting as if he was inhaling his last breath. He sighed, clutching at his locked chest, his heart rapidly beating for freedom inside. Barely keeping his lungs in control, he let himself in and collapsed onto the corridor's floor. He looked to his left, staring gloomily at the tattered sofa- it's cover a faded beige, fraying at the edges. He could make it if he tried but staring down at his easing legs, he knew it would not be worth the pain.

He had run.

That was why he was so tired out. His legs burned from years worth of neglect and his eyes were watering from the simple pressure of the wind against his face. He hadn't run since childhood and even then he had not been the sporty type, happy to sit inside and chat with his friends.

Running was not an activity Phil would ever think he would partake again. He clearly didn't have the income to get a gym membership, nor would he want to and his new-years resolution of 'getting fit' had been forgotten a day or two ahead. He hadn't believed he would do it when he made it, anyway.

Phil couldn't collect his thoughts. He had been running. Running away. Running faster than he ever had before. Why? What was to be so afraid of? Dan wasn't going to harm him, he couldn't. But, Dan had harmed him. His heart had been weak and now it was crumbling.

Dan wasn't getting out of that cage.

Phil's stomach growled, filling the empty silence- and the occasional heaving- with a dreadful sound. He thought of going to the kitchen, it was closer than the sofa after all but when he got there, he knew he wasn't going to sit down again. The thought was too much to bear. He tried to think of the food, he needed to eat.

It only made him feel sick.

Lately, his savings had gone up. He had bought so little. He had bought nothing, in fact. Everything in his cabinets dated from weeks back. It was on positive, at least. One droplet in a sea of water.

Sitting here was doing him no good so, with the little energy he had gained from his ragged breathing, he clambered to the sofa and collapsed down and leant his head back, giving him an all too clear picture of the ceiling. He wasn't quite sure how you got rid of mould. He had never been bothered by it before so why now was it causing the thin hair on his arms to stand alert.

He shuddered.

He fondled around for the television remote and switched it on. Static. What else had he expected? With nothing to distract him, his thoughts reined him in. He was barely in the land of the living anymore. He wondered, for a moment, if that was what death was like, simply trapped in your thoughts for the rest of eternity.

He chuckled darkly, he shouldn't have been thinking these things. He was tired and Dan had rubbed off on him a little too much. Dan. He groaned. Why had his own mind had to travel to Dan? He had run for a reason but it seemed his physical exertion had not been for much, his mind seemed perfectly fine in bringing the images back even if second-hand.

Phil only wished he could do something, anything. He knew better than that, though. He wasn't a martyr, he didn't fight for much and he certainly was not a strategist. So far, he had come out lucky. And, he was grateful for that. He had found Dan, even if he wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing.

But, Phil was normal. Plain and simple. Just like another 90% of the population, he was as normal as the person beside him. He was still him, he was still as unique as a person could be- his DNA altered so little that his looks and characteristics are negligibly different from the next person.

That didn't mean he couldn't fight for he wanted. He just didn't have the energy too. Or the will. He liked to talk, to spread the world, to smile at people who deserved a smile. He had never had this before.

He had never been the one who couldn't smile.

He had had a plethora of emotions over his life. He had been sad, it was unavoidable. So what was this? Devastation. Maybe. He felt the same as he would if his mother had died.

Did that make Dan family?

Maybe.

Phil looked up, staring into the static of the screen. Losing his own mind in the insanity inducing squares as they darted around the screen, a mix of grey's and blacks, melding together to make an ugly blur. It almost represented what he was feeling.

Almost.

He didn't think he could describe what he was feeling. How were you supposed to describe a feeling more unfamiliar to you than it is to everyone else? Everyone has their fair share of heartbreak so why was Phil taking it so badly?

Or was he?

He was confused, each thought ending in a question. Each answer prompting another question. What could he do now? An idea struck, hard and fast- speeding past only enough to get a glimpse.

But, Phil held onto it. Held onto it like his life depended on it. It might as well have, his happiness depended on it. Life and happiness were not all too far apart. The idea was stupid and Phil understood that; he understood the risks that came with it too.

He didn't care.

He didn't care at all.

He just needed to tell the zoo that was Dan was his. He could pretend to be a trader or a transportation. All he had to do was claim Dan had been stolen from him (he neglected the fact that he needed proof in some vague hope that the zoo was lax about those things).

They would return Dan back to him and they could runaway together. They could go to a place where they would both be treated better. Phil could work a job he loved and Dan would be allowed to work too. They would make new friends, both Neko and human. They would have their fantasy.

But, that was all it was: a fantasy.

It wasn't going to work. Nothing was going to work. He would do it anyway. He would do anything for Dan. He loved Dan; Dan was his family.

Phil slept on his idea, unable to even think of moving his legs again, falling into sleep on the damp sofa, wondering just how the sofa got damp. It wasn't him, surely. The only thing it did for him, though, was wake him up as he fell off it, bashing his arm on the coffee table with a large clang. Nothing broke, thankfully, apart from a small bit of his dignity but he was happy to give that up if it meant that he didn't have to pay to get it repaired. Or go without a coffee table, he could do without it but it made a nice footrest.

The walk to the zoo wasn't nearly as traitorous as the run back. His legs burned with yesterday's workout but they did him a favour in keeping him up for as long as he needed them too. He wasn't willing to wait, anyway. He wanted to exhaust all of his options and now was the time.

After this, he doubted there would be any more options to exhaust.

Looking at the clock on his way in, he found it was early but not nearly as early as the day before. He was glad, he needed to sleep. He could count easily the number of hours he had had in the last week. It wasn't many. He kept on waking up, shivering. He was unsure why. And, sometimes, if he lay the wrong way, it would press too hard on his side and the pain he thought was long gone returned.

Once he did this, he would need to solve that problem. He could only be glad that the man hadn't returned yet. It was as if he knew that Phil was too stressed. How funny. Although, Phil really presumed it was because he didn't want to be caught. He could get a new victim, he was sure there were some more gullible people around.

He hadn't ever gone to an office at a zoo before and it was something he didn't particularly like. He put it off to nerves, mulling over the worst case scenarios. It wouldn't be too bad if he got arrested, at least then he knew he couldn't do anything for a reason better than he was too dumb to think of anything.

The main office, the name neatly printed on a small plaque above the door, was a small thing. It's walls made of metal, close to that of some of the enclosures. Phil smiled slightly at the thought that they treated their staff like the animals. He really shouldn't have been smiling, it wasn't something he should have been smiling about. But, he deserved the luxury right now. Even in his misery, it didn't mean he couldn't smile at all. A frown would only make him feel weaker, dragging him to the floor by the curve of his lips. A smile kept him upright as if the puppeteer's strings hung from each corner.

He knocked before entering, heeding to the bored 'come in' he was greeted with. He timidly looked around the office. It was decorated sparsely, a generic painting of a fern hanging behind the office desk and the floor space taken up by the table and the old-fashioned computer lying on top of it.

'Hi.' Phil began, taking a seat opposite the woman behind the desk, who didn't seem to have any qualms about scowling at him for the entirety of his appearance. She didn't even bother to speak but Phil didn't care. This wasn't about the customer service, this was about the lack of security.

The brunette started him down, her bob hanging around her face to make her jawline almost aggressively sharp. Phil continued, he could only comprehend the silent threat as one to continue. 'I would like to enquire about one of the new Nekos. He was stolen from me as I was transporting him to a complex in Washington,' it was where his mum lived and it was an easy lie, 'but on the way, someone unlocked my van and took him. I saw him in the exhibit whilst looking for him yesterday and I came to get him back.' He ended his sentence a little too forcefully but nonetheless, the woman looked unfazed, filing through some flimsy files until she found a sheet, covered in black ink- the words barely distinguishable.

She read it quickly, squinting to read the small print. 'I can only do that with proof of custody, sir.' Her words were venomously slow as if she wanted to inconvenience him.

'I'm sorry, I was part of the transportation team meaning I have no proof. Please believe me,' he begged, 'my boss will fire me and I need to keep this job.' He sounded desperate enough. It pleased him, he was a good actor when he came to it. Although, his real desperateness probably had some play in his role. The woman only sighed and shook her head.

'Sorry, it's policy. No proof, no animal. Now, is there anything else?' She almost sounded hopeful, hopeful he would say no. But, Phil wasn't giving up just yet.

'Please! I can't lose him, he was stolen. How was I supposed to stop that? I'll get you proof when he is given onto the next complex so please trust me and let me have him.' He hoped that he sounded convincing enough but it didn't seem it mattered. The woman wasn't listening. She was skimming through some paperwork, getting on with her day's work without listening to a word he said.

'Please.' He tried, grasping at her hand. The woman flinched, her steel eyes darting up to meet Phil's. Ripping her hand away, she spoke- low and threatening, an equivalent to a dog's growl.

'I know what you are doing. I can see past your lies now get out before I call the authorities and report you for hoarding a Neko.' Phil, apparently, had not been convincing enough. He scampered out without looking back, he wasn't going to risk it for such an obviously stuck-up woman.

Or a woman who was just obeying the rules, he would like to think it was the former. He shouldn't have been disappointed, he really shouldn't have. The outcome was inevitable but he had tried. And that, at least, prided him a little bit. The moment he gave up was the moment it was over and he knew Dan was never coming back.

He still had hope, it wasn't snuffed out. Not yet. Phil, staring across the park in the direction of Dan's enclosure, knew that it wasn't going to be snuffed out whilst he was still here. He was going to fight, even if he was too weak to land a hit.

It was the only thing he could do.

word count: 2204

published: 08.09.17