AN- hey, I rushed to put this up before work so it's not perfect. Please don't be a grammar nazi or a dick about it. I'll fix it later.

Also mild dub con warning at the end of the chapter...kinda, not really dub con. It's more like Nigel didn't ask but Adam didn't bother to stop him or mind. Whatever, here's your warning.

OoOoO

Every day he woke up was like being in a dream for Nigel. After months of sleeping anywhere he could in short uncomfortable bursts of panic, Nigel now slept in a California king sized bed soft as Heaven's clouds with a man who had the face and ass of an angel. He drank hot coffee every morning and ate cereal with cold milk. Yeah, it was canned milk but Nigel couldn't remember what fresh milk tasted like anyway so he didn't really give a shit. If he really wanted to eat something else, the house's many pantries and cupboards were fully stocked with a wide variety of ingredient though Adam hadn't touch most of it. He had a rather select diet for some reason, sticking to it the best he could even now. Nigel had eaten more bran and mac&cheese in the last week than he had in his entire life. Failing that, Adam had an entire room filled from ceiling to floor with canned and dried food, and apparently, a rather large garden out back. Nigel was not too proud to admit that he had made obscene sounds while eating a humble tomato and more than just a few in one sitting.

There was a wine room too, one any master sommelier would happily give away his own mother to own. Looking at the bottles, even Nigel knew enough about wine to see it was premium shit. There were decade old, dusty bottles of Bordeaux and properly chilled bottles of expensive Champagne from France, a large variety of dark lush reds from Italy and Spain, and a lot more New World wines in the mix than Nigel thought there would be. Probably because they were trendy and god forbid, the third course of whoever the fuck the pretentious bastard was serving up be not in vogue. Kegs of beer were kept here too, the barrels in small batches and lacking any corporate logo, meaning they were homemade brews. Nigel made a mental note to keep an eye on Adam and make sure he didn't try to drink any of it.

Liquor had its own designated areas as well with not a drop of cheap rotgut to be found in the fully stocked bars. Even the cordials were top shelf, something not often seen much less bought in such wide variety or amount. Nigel was pleased to note that all the vodka was French or Finnish, not one Russian brand in the mix. The scotch and whiskeys available were all old enough to legally drink themselves, and were Nigel's preferred pick of poison. As tempting as it was to drink himself blind and stay that way for a very long while, Nigel didn't dare do more than experience the bottles through his eyes, ignoring the room from that point on after he had a look around.

The house's interior was always cool and crisp, the air conditioning and heating keeping the house a balmy yet steady 65 degrees Fahrenheit, because Adam preferred to wear layers though it always felt too cold to him. Because he could, Nigel showered twice a day, scrubbing his skin until it was shiny and pink from the glorious heat, and wore clean, sweet smelling clothes that were warm and soft from being laundered on a regular basis. Nigel didn't know what the fuck he had done to deserve this, but he owed what was left of his soul to someone. He just hoped they wouldn't show up anytime soon to collect it.

Living the dream now, Adam and this place were fucking surreal to experience after being on the run and lost for so long. Nigel kept expecting to wake up in some forsaken hole of a drug den with a needle in his arm, or finally figure out that he was actually dying. That this was all a flash in a pan, that he was high as fuck on some pill or powder, or finally losing the last bit of life as his brain shut down from lack of blood and oxygen. If the latter were true, he didn't want to think about that next part. He knew what happened when someone died whether they were bitten or not. From what he had gathered out in the real world, not everyone did. A bite hastened the process in leaps and bounds, but they were all infected with the virus, every last one of them.

Nigel had stumbled across this gem accidently-on-purpose. Before the world ended, Nigel had been a very bad man who took what he wanted, killing or removing anyone in his way to get it. After the world ended, Nigel tried to do the exact same thing, but his careless violence had almost literally bitten him in the ass, his former victims picking themselves off of the ground to come after him. Fresh dead was a hell of a lot harder to kill a second time and escape than their more putrid brethren. All those muscles were still fresh from being alive just moments ago, moving the hungry corpse forward faster and stronger. If Nigel hadn't been wearing leather at the time, he would have become one of them soon after. Adam had been right in his assessment that humans had dull teeth, something Nigel was very grateful for. He had come away from that learning experience with bruises and a terrible knowledge that they were all fucked in the end.

The house was as safe as it could be in this new day and age, Adam doing wonderfully simple things that worked. The sand filled water bottles that filled every window and were cemented into place on either side of the glass turned out to be a form of soundproofing, along with all the grey foam on the walls. Nigel had also been informed that they would help keep the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter, putting less demand on the solar panels if the hydropower from the watermill was effected by drought or freezing. As an added bonus, they also made the windows bulletproof, the rendered useless glass sandwiched between impact absorbing sand. Nigel wasn't sure about the import of that last part until Adam told him in that monotone voice of his that it would be useful if someone living tried to break in. After that Nigel quit questioning Adam's reasoning for doing things, listening intently to the odd but ingenious man.

The world had become Adam's workshop, everything in it now a tool to be used. With no limitations due to money or anyone around to tell Adam not to do otherwise, the electrical engineer applied his craft in any direction he chose. The internet was gone but there were bookstores everywhere, ignored and left mostly untouched by panicking people who were more focused on hoarding food and water than the written word. What Adam didn't know, he learned, reading anything that might help him survive longer. Information central that was formally a living room with its walls full of top-of-the-line, lightweight flat screen TVs was proof enough of that, Adam studying up on home security, camera angles, and raiding quite a few Radioshacks and Best Buys for what he needed.

Nigel didn't like to look at the monitors, often keeping his head down whenever he passed by them. Every morning and again in the evening, Adam made it a point to check in on the situation going on outside and keep a log, noting if it were the same dead or new looking ones circulating in the area. He had some ongoing theory of migration about the walkers, mentioning something offhand in that way of his about a herd of them on the move. Though he knew he should ask about that, a moving herd of anything that wasn't cattle never good, Nigel couldn't bring himself to, not wanting to envision that sort of thing or admit it was real. It was bad enough it existed. Adam didn't seem too concerned about it, but then he never did about anything really. Nigel didn't know if that was a good thing, a bad thing, or an Asperger's thing.

Though the entire house was wired, Nigel made it his own habit to still check each and every room, including the closets, while Adam took his morning shower. Little genius that he was, Adam had informed Nigel that he had a computer program of his own creation in place, that if there was an intruder of the undead kind, the monitors would go red and pull up the room it was in while warning lights went off in all the other rooms. All anyone alive had to do when red lights started to flash was glance at a screen, one usually mounted on the wall in every room in plain view, and know immediately where the threat was coming from.

The perimeter of the house bothered Nigel the most, the dead getting caught on the black cast-iron fence every so often, the damn thing more decorative than useful. It kept the dead out well enough, but the living would be able to climb right over it with little issue. Nigel didn't like the walkers standing there on their borders, staring sightlessly at the house. He hated it especially when Adam aired out the house for health purposes via the roof's entrance once a week. At one point, the three story readapted farmhouse had had a lovely spacious porch complete with herb and edible flower garden on the second story so that one could lounge in the great outdoors and appreciate the woodland view without being bothered by pesky nature.

During his stay here, Adam had raided an entire section of several hunting stores, putting up outdoor canopies tented with camouflage tarp that stationary hunters liked to use so deer wouldn't notice them. Anyone alive would cringe at the unusual eyesore, Adam doing a through but not aesthetically pleasing job of securing it, but to the dead, anyone outside on the porch was invisible from behind tarps of mossy oak, breakup, and shadow grass blades. The living could peek out but the dead could not look in. Adam liked to go out there to look at the stars and peer through space via multiple telescopes he had out there, filling up whole notebooks with his observations. Apparently one of the bonuses about the apocalypse was that all the light pollution from the cities was gone and one could look up at the night sky they were truly meant to see. Nigel didn't give a flying fuck, keeping quiet and low to the ground by the door while Adam was out there, usually with his hands over his ears. As oppressive as the sound absorbing interior of the house could be at time, it was better than being outside and hearing the dead milling about, clicking their teeth from time to time. The wetter ones squelched when they moved while the older one creaked, drying out tissue snapping as bones grounded together. Nigel didn't know which noise were worse, or how Adam could stand out being out there and hear it over the wind.

The flickering monitors were also a constant reminder that Adam hadn't felt the need to clear the immediate areas around the house or the small towns near them because of his methods. He found it easier to just take it slow and easy, moving around the dead like some strange ghost in his spaceman suit, taking what he needed and leaving in peace. The dead didn't follow him like they would another human being because they didn't register that he was there at all. To their rotted out senses as far as they were concerned, he was just another skinbag wandering around and knocking into shit, looking for something to eat. If Adam felt that there were too many undead in one area to navigate through safely, he simply set up a kitchen timer somewhere he wanted them to be and let the damn thing go off. The undead would flock to it and stay there until the timer ran out of batteries or it got broken. Adam would simply wait for them to clear out and then go about his business. He only used the guns with their potato silencers or his trusty sledgehammer on the undead if he had to reach into a small space they occupied like a car or cubicle for something he needed. His survival based around it, Adam wouldn't risk the integrity of his suit.

Coexisting with the dead didn't sit well with Nigel, but Adam had left New York City of all places, one of the most densely populated places in the world and made it out alive in one piece to come here and set up shop. As much as Nigel didn't like his methods, he was smart enough to recognize that they worked and they worked for a reason. Instead of his Asperger's being a hindrance in this new kind of norm, it was Adam's saving grace, logical thinking and patient observation winning out over sentimentality or emotionally rash decision making. He didn't have to like it but Nigel could respect it and even better, reap the benefits from it and appreciate how lucky he was to do so.

Now that he had breathing room and a moment to stand still, Nigel acknowledged how fucked up he was now, way more than before. When he had been king of his own self-made kingdom, people lived and dead by his whim and words alone. He had been a violent and cruelly selfish tyrant with a terrible intelligence and education that kept him out of jail and three steps ahead of any sort of law enforcement, local and international. He had been untouchable, invincible even.

And then the dead got up off the ground where Nigel had put them and came after him with a vengeance. He'd had to rely on other people from time to time. He'd even tried to do the group thing but that shit didn't work when everyone was dumber than you and clinging to the old way of things. Almost all the old leverages didn't matter or work anymore. Hell, they used money as toilet paper now for all it was worth. No one wanted recreational drugs, couldn't risk getting fucked up or careless. The ones that did, died quick and messy. Pot could make you too loopy and slow, cocaine could make you quicker but more careless and hellishly paranoid, and anything hallucinogenic was like committing suicide in technicolor. Cigarettes were his only vice cause they were still everywhere with most of their consumer base too dead to care anymore about nicotine, but Nigel had gone cold turkey with everything else, going through withdrawal on top of trying to stay alive long enough to be miserable through it.

The only thing people were interested in was painkillers and anything first-aid, and Nigel hadn't dealt in pharmaceuticals, for more than one reason. During his room checks, Nigel had found more of enough of them here in this house, though that didn't come as much of a surprise considering who it had belonged to. Nigel was sure they could run a half way decent hospital based on all the equipment at hand and the amount of medical supplies and kits he had found in various hiding place throughout the house. He had yet to find the kill room, knowing deep down that there was one somewhere hidden in the house. Old habits died hard, especially ones developed in formative years. Adults tended to use the same hiding places they did as children. They just got better about the locations and the methods of subterfuge.

Nigel didn't want to think about his brother, though it was hard as hell not to with reminders staring back at him everywhere, from the style of the furniture to the designs on the flatware. Thinking about family made him dream about his baby sister, like his nightmares weren't bad enough now. Reliving a bitter cold that never truly left him was evil enough, but remembering the effort he'd made to vomit after finding tiny milk teeth in his soup bowl and his starving body unwilling to give up that tainted nourishment was what truly took his breath away with keen pain every time. Those nights he curled himself around Adam, usually waking the poor man up with his cursing or to his shame, begging.

There were times he would scream but at least he didn't cry…

...like his twin did when he dreamed about Mischa.

OoOoO

Living with Nigel turned out to easier than Adam expected or worried himself about, the man not trying to change anything about his routines. He didn't even comment on the little things Adam needed to do to keep himself happy and sane, like watching his show while eating or doing his self-assigned chores in a certain order on their designated days. Nigel went to sleep when Adam did, woke up with him, and ate whenever he did as well. He followed Adam around but made no attempt to interrupt or interfere with his work, seeming happy enough to just sit near him and watch Adam while he worked on new projects like weapon design or outlined ideas for future projects he had in mind now that he had another able body to help him. He even let Adam talk for great lengths of time, only nodding from time to time or prompting him to continue whenever Adam stopped for air or remembered to apologize for rambling on. Adam hadn't realized how much he had missed speaking to another human being until Nigel showed up, even though most of the conversations were one sided. After their talk that first day about being a team and discussing living arrangements, Nigel had spoken little since then, seeming happier to let Adam talk himself out about whatever was on his mind.

The only thing that bothered Adam about Nigel was that man liked to touch him constantly, but it was something Adam found himself getting used to and even starting to like now that it was an every day thing. Following Adam around wherever he went in the house, Adam could count on Nigel holding onto the back of his shirt or sleeve and trailing after him, much like a tiger following a house cat. He even sat outside the bathroom for him, picking up where he left off when Adam was done. They slept together now as well, which had been disconcerting at first.

Not bothering to ask permission as he climbed into Adam's bed uninvited since that very first night, Nigel preferred to lay his head in his lap rather than use a pillow, bodily curled around Adam while he read before going to sleep. He also had nightmares, loud ones but not all of them involving the undead as far as Adam could tell, Nigel often speaking in another language in his sleep to people who weren't there. Nigel never wanted to talk about them with Adam afterward, the few times Adam had reminded himself to be polite and ask how he was doing. He would just hold onto Adam too tight until he would have to wiggle out of the man's hold so that he could breathe and not bruise.

Unsure of what to do, Adam would usually sit up then and read aloud to Nigel because that is what his own father had done when Adam was young and prone to nightmares after his mother had died at the tender age of eight. Nigel didn't seem to care what he read as long as he did so aloud and was allowed to put his head back in Adam's lap and burrow into his body heat the best a fully grown, muscular man with long limbs could.

Then there were those nights that reading didn't help Nigel at all and he would take the book from Adam to throw over his shoulder, much to Adam's ire. Instead, he would pull Adam's pants down and take him into his mouth, whether Adam was hard or not. Also disconcerting, but Adam would soon lose himself to the heat and suction, and if he wasn't hard to begin with, Nigel fixed that with his tongue. Though he didn't like being woken up, Adam was beginning to like those nights best, Nigel not wanting him to do anything but lay there while he sucked him off, his strong hands keeping Adam's shaking hips in place.

Feeling overloaded but in a good way as he curled his body over the source, Adam especially liked the feel of Nigel's hair between his fingers, the silvering locks softer than they looked and fragrant from all of Nigel's bathing. He really liked the sensation of his tip scraping the back of Nigel's throat, and the way the slick passage would constrict and spasm around his shaft, Nigel practically choking himself like he was desperate to make him come. Inexperienced and overwhelmed, Adam never lasted long, intently watching normally thin lips become puffy from sudden overuse and friction as they created a wet seal at the base of his cock. After swallowing his load down, Nigel would lick him clean, with slow laps until Adam was oversensitive and squirming beneath Nigel, desperately tugging at his hair to stop.

On nightmare nights, Adam knew Nigel would do the same thing to him in the morning as soon as he woke up, milking his cock empty again with renewed vigor and upsetting Adam's schedule by making him late for everything he had planned out that day. He was learning to work around it though, Adam finding out that he liked this sort of intimacy and was proud of himself for learning to be flexible in the face of such sudden change.

They would go to sleep for a time soon after these events, both sated but in very different ways.