a/n: Someone asked on my tumblr (binickandros) if I were planning to include the other characters in this, and the answer is YES, everyone from the book will eventually end up here. Tom shows up in chapter 16, then Julie a little after that, and Rae (kept that change from 2020) a little after that. Just they got a lot of shit to work through before that. :)

Love comments! Thank you!

if i could make days last forever
if words could make wishes come true
i'd save every day like a treasure and then
again i would spend them with you
Jim Croce, "Time in a Bottle"

Interlude, June 30 - July 17
Nick was angry at first, annoyed by how weak he was and pissed off that it was his own clumsiness that had nearly killed him. He sulked and grumbled and avoided her as much as he could in the limited space available, but she was, if nothing else, persistent.

Slowly he came out of his funk, thanks to plentiful food, fresh air, sunshine, and her, always her, her brilliant eyes and her wicked smile. The scent that lingered on her pillow when he woke hours after she was already up. The perpetual scrim of flour that seemed to coat every surface in the kitchen.

She forced him outside, first on slow little rambles to the lakeshore and back, but then on longer and longer walks, until they could rightly be called short hikes. She pointed out plants edible, medicinal, and just plain pretty. She made him wear sunscreen and bug spray and reminded him to drink regularly from the canteen he carried. She laughed at his stupid jokes and never failed to tease him when he needed to lighten up.

As the hot, golden days passed they grew more comfortable with each other. She told him of her life after her father died, how she'd fled back to New Orleans and the Deaf community there had taken her in like no time had passed. When she was ready to move on they shuffled her from city to city, guiding her gently north, to New York City and all the options it presented.

She talked about Sarah with a sort of wistful nostalgia, and he got the sense that while she still loved her and always would, she hadn't been in love with her for a while. Maybe it stopped the moment Sarah had uttered those fateful words about having a deaf kid, but he suspected it had been happening well before that. She'd been comfortable in her life, happy at the restaurant and content to not examine the gritty details of her marriage.

It was a complacency he could appreciate, maybe more so because he'd never experienced it himself. He'd always been restless, ready to move on to the next thing, even on the one or two occasions he'd fancied himself in love. The only time in his life he could remember being content to stay put was…right now. In a dead man's cabin with a woman he'd met in a dream.

He told her anything she wanted to know about his life, including about Rudy, and his anger at what he'd seen as abandonment. About the group home, the early months there when he'd been so furious and alone, then the years learning to read and write and sign, when he'd finally discovered his voice.

He told her the meaning of his name sign.

They took trips into town—daytime only, and never, ever to the pharmacy—and raided clothing stores, the library, book stores, a candy shop that left them both giggling and giddy like children on Halloween. They found puzzles to replace the ones in the cabin they'd already worked and he taught her how to play Sudoku, which she despised and bitched about, and in retaliation she made him do yoga with her every morning.

Which, it turned out, he actually liked. It helped him grow stronger and more flexible, closer to the way he'd been before his encounter with Ray Booth and company on the road outside Shoyo, and sometimes, sitting in the sun and reveling in the silence as he concentrated on his breathing, he felt maybe, from the corner of his good eye (or the bad one, he wasn't sure) a glimmer of what Mother Abagail spoke about in his dreams.

Because the dreams continued, for both of them. Mother Abagail urged them on to Nebraska, but also told them to take the time they needed. Flagg didn't appear again in person, but he was always there, a dark, lurking presence out in the corn, or sometimes along the road. Nick dreamt of that, too: the ribbon of asphalt laid out before him. The sudden, helpless fear of being grabbed from behind. But now when he saw that ring flashing toward him from the dark, behind it was a familiar, leering grin that seemed to stretch too wide.

Some days they spent quietly, perched at either end of the couch, facing each other. Usually they would read, swapping off trashy romance novels as they finished them, and those days were maybe his favorites. She would sit with her knees drawn up, or sometimes with one long leg stretched toward him. He would often rest a hand on her ankle or her shin, and she never stopped him or pulled away. He would use his thumb to stroke the inside of her ankle and every once in a while he would catch her with her eyes closed, basking in the touch like a cat might.

He felt like he'd never grow tired of touching her: an easy caress along her arm; a teasing twitch of her hair; a light hand on her hip as he eased past her in the kitchen or the hall. He knew he'd never grow tired of watching her, her expressive face and graceful body and flying hands. The way her eyes lit up when she was happy and her mouth went soft when she grew more wistful. He loved making her laugh and he got a kick of how excited she became over ladybugs or dragonflies or a pretty sunset.

As the days passed he realized more and more why Flagg's initial offer had been so repugnant to him. It wasn't just the inherent wrongness in owning another person against their will (which was…abhorrently wrong in and of itself), but also it was because of just how much he wanted her. All of her, without a single rough edged smoothed for his convenience. He wanted her highs and lows, softness and sharpness, sweetness and ferocity. The intimacy that came with quiet and with noise, with touch and with absence.

She was messy and thoughtful and picky and kind, bossy and generous and whip-smart and funny, a beautiful storm of complexities and riddles, and he loved learning all of it. All of it but whatever lurked behind her eyes sometimes when she spoke of her life before, when she spoke of the years after her parents died. When she spoke of her father. He shoved Flagg's voice (Ask her!) out of his mind and concentrated on the moment, because at the end of the world, that was all you could really count on.

Sometimes, he'd later think, the two weeks he'd spent recovering from a beating, an attack, accidentally shooting himself, and the subsequent major infection were the happiest he'd ever been.

July 8
"Hey." He poked her arm so that she looked at him. "You see that?"

She frowned. "See what?" she signed one-handed, the other hand on the car's steering wheel.

He grinned and pointed toward an approaching billboard. She ducked her head to read it, then fixed him with an astounded stare.

"No!" she said. "No way!"

"Yeah, yes, come on! It'll be fun."

"Do you know how many horny perverts probably stopped in there to have one last wank before kicking off from Captain Trips?!"

He smirked. "Go out with a bang, I guess."

"No."

"Come on!" He jostled her arm. "I'll go in first. If there's a single body in there, we'll leave. I promise." He bent his head to rest at the crook of her elbow so that he could look up into her face.

She glanced down at him with an annoyed sigh. "Goddamn puppy eyes."

"I'll do all the dishes for the next…three days."

She snorted. "You can't stand up long enough to do the damn dishes."

He'd only been back on his feet a few days, and she was right. He tried a different tack. "It's Sunday."

"You haven't blasphemed in weeks," she said, fighting off a smile. Another huff, this one laced with laughter. "Fine. But you go in first. And you do the dishes."

"Yes! Absolutely, dishes for me. I'll pull up a chair if I have to."

"And if you get too tired, we're leaving. You're not using up all your energy wandering around a skeevy sex shop."

"It might not be skeevy. Here, that's the exit."

She took the exit and followed the signs to a low brick building with a giant XXX sign on the roof and a potholed gravel parking lot. She eyed him. "Sure. Doesn't look skeevy at all."

"I'll be right back," he said. "Wait here." He hopped out of the car and limped (though only a little bit now) to the door. Gave it a tug. Then a harder one. Looked back at her and shook his head.

"The things I do for you, Andros," she muttered. She got out and locked the car behind her. "Closed?" she signed.

He nodded. "Seems less likely there'll be dead pervs inside a closed skeevy sex shop, don't you think?" He grabbed one of the large rocks that edged the parking lot and tossed it through the glass door. "Alarm?" he signed with a glance back at her.

She shook her head. "Doesn't seem to be. Thank goodness. Last thing we need is a gang of zombie cops catching us breaking into the sex shop."

"We've been over this, Kai. It's not that kind of apocalypse." He used another rock to clear the glass from around the doorframe, then carefully stepped through to unlock it. "Wait here. I'll check it out just to make sure."

He disappeared inside. She wandered around a little, humming that song from just before it all went to shit. She kicked a piece of gravel so that it pinged off one of the tires.

"Baby, can you dig your man…" she murmured. It was almost like she could hear it—but then she realized she could. It was coming from inside the store. A working radio? That seemed impossible. Stations had stopped broadcasting weeks ago.

Nick appeared in the doorway and beckoned her inside. "All clear. Holy shit, you have got to see this place!"

He held the door for her and she slipped past him into the store, then stopped short. "What the…?" There were probably a dozen big-screen TVs mounted to the wall showing a variety of movies. Between each one was a mannequin modeling a different type of fetish gear: leather harnesses, full-body PVC suits, puppy play getups (she shuddered; that was a big one on her no list), and the old dominatrix standard black corsets, thigh-high boots, and whips.

"Wow," she said. "I had no idea small-town Arkansas was so…niche with its kinks."

"Me neither. This is wild. Hang on, I think the control for all these TVs is back here." He beckoned her to follow him deeper into the shop and ducked behind the counter. A moment later the TVs went off, and so did the music. She let out a sigh of relief.

"This place is actually—really nice," he said with a confused frown. "I was expecting, like you said, something skeevy, but they've got like handmade, custom shit back here. Look at these." He pointed to a display of spreader bars. "They've got blacksmith marks."

She lifted a brow. "You sound like a connoisseur."

"Of sex toys? No, not really. But I worked with a blacksmith in Minnesota a few winters ago, so I know good metalwork when I see it."

"A blacksmith?!" she said. "Like from a medieval village or something?"

He shrugged and she followed him as he wandered down an aisle. He paused to pick up an improbably-sized dildo, study it with a skeptical expression, and replace it on the shelf. "In theory, yeah. Blacksmithing hasn't changed much, really. A lot of towns in ranch country have them. It's not like they make swords and shit. More like horseshoes and repairs."

"That's cool, though. I guess a forge is a good place to spend a Minnesota winter." She frowned at an even more improbably sized dildo. "Not to sound like a prude, but where exactly does this go?"

He stopped next to her and they appraised it with equal care and gravitas. "I guess—some places are stretchier than others?" he finally said.

"I don't think any of my places are quite that stretchy."

"I don't know," he said with a wry smile. "I've seen you do yoga when you aren't dumbing it down for me."

She elbowed him in the stomach and they kept walking. "Maybe I'm not the best judge of that anyway," she said. "Penetrative sex isn't…" She trailed off and waved a hand. "It's not what really does it for me."

He reached out to adjust a bottle of lube with a thoughtful nod. "Women who sleep with women seem to be more aware of that than women who've only been with straight men."

"Hm. Lots of women enjoy penetration, though."

"Well, true. But women who've only been with straight men…" He hesitated. Shrugged. "It's been my experience that unless they spend a lot of time"—he gestured toward a vibrator—"exploring on their own, they don't always realize that penetration isn't necessarily the…best way to get off. It's like…I don't know." He blew out a breath and cut her a quick glance.

"Don't worry about offending me," she said. "I'm interested. Go on."

"I just don't want to sound like I think I know more about women than women do. That's not what I mean."

"I know it's not. It's okay."

He took a moment to gather his thoughts. Then, "I think a lot of women who've only slept with straight men, or only spent time with…cishet depictions of sex think that that's pretty much all there is to it. Maybe some oral, but only as a precursor to vaginal sex. But women who've slept with women, yeah sure they might get off from penetration, but they know there's a whole lot more to it than that." His mouth moved in an awkward grimace. "Or so it seems to me."

She gave him a long look. "Cishet?" she finally said.

A shoulder rose and fell. "I dated a gender studies major once. It was interesting." He held up a pair of nipple clamps, and she shook her head in a definitive no. "I kept reading about it after we broke up."

"Oh." She took the clamps from him and returned them to the display. "Well…I think you're probably right. Mostly, anyway. It's hard to make broad generalizations about sex, but." Her head tilted thoughtfully. "That's been my experience, too. And also my experience before the first time I slept with a woman."

"When did you realize you were bi? If that's not too personal."

She laughed. "I think we're well beyond that. I was a teenager, but—I lived in this tiny town in Louisiana, and it wasn't exactly…friendly. So I dated a few boys and lost my virginity to one and wondered if that's all sex was. What was the big fucking deal? People were willing to destroy their entire lives just for that?" She shrugged. "It didn't make sense."

"Until…?"

"Until the first time I was with a girl." She blushed a little. "After my dad died and I went to New Orleans. She taught me…" She blew out a long breath. "A lot. Sex with men was better after that."

"See?" he said with half a smile. "Like I said."

"Nick Andros, giving Dr. Ruth a run for her money." She held up a truly tacky red negligee, and he gave her a thumbs down. "No? Come on. I could tease my hair and everything. It'd be a look."

He took it from her, as she'd done with him and the nipple clamps, and hung it back on the rack.

"But nipple clamps are okay?"

He shook his head. "Not really into pain."

She pointed to one of the harness-clad mannequins. "What about leather?"

"Not that either. It just seems impractical."

"I always thought so too. Though I do like a good corset. Just not a leather one." She flipped through a rack of DVDs, but all the titles made her roll her eyes. "How about you? When did your great bisexual awakening arrive?"

He frowned a little and straightened the DVD display she'd left askew. "I don't know. I lost my virginity when I was fifteen to a much older woman who I think thought of me as a sort of pet. Not like"—he gestured toward the puppy play mannequin—"but…someone cute and amusing. And moldable."

Her mouth opened. Closed again. "Nick, that's—"

"I know. But I didn't really think of it like that at the time. But anyway then sometime around like seventeen or eighteen I watched My Own Private Idaho and my whole life changed."

"It was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie for me."

He made a face. "The show was so much better."

"We're not talking about quality here, bud."

He acknowledged that with a brief tilt of his head.

"So you think straight women not enjoying sex is because of men?" she said as they wandered down another aisle.

His mouth quirked. "Why are you asking me questions you already know the answer to? Men, the patriarchy, bizarre Puritanical American values—take your pick."

"All true, but sex positive feminism has plenty of pitfalls of its own. A guy on Tinder once told a friend of mine if she didn't send him nudes she was being a bad feminist, because real feminists embrace their sexuality and find nudity empowering."

"Christ, what a tool. I guess it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation."

"It always is," she said with a sweet, poisonous smile, "for women."

"Pretty shitty."

"It is. But I can't imagine it's easy out there for a brown-skinned, bisexual deaf mute kid with a leather daddy kink."

His good eye went wide. "I do not have a—"

"Just checking!" She tried to smother her laughter and failed. "I'm just trying to figure out what you're into, that's all."

He huffed, but he wasn't actually offended. "Right. What's it to you anyway?"

She cocked her head to the side in a challenging sort of way. "Curiosity, I guess."

"You know what they say about curiosity and cats."

"Curiosity killed the cat." Her lips curved. "But satisfaction brought it back."

"Exactly," he said, and smiled so that his dimples appeared. He took a moment to select a feather off a colorful display of them and stepped closer.

She eyed him with suspicion. "I hate to be tickled."

"Relax. No tickles, I promise." He ran his fingers through her hair, separating a chunk of it into sections, and began to braid the feather into it. When he was done he stroked the pad of his thumb around the curve of her ear and down the side of her neck. She shivered.

"There," he said. "A souvenir of our field trip to the weirdly kinky sex store."

"And here I thought we'd picked out the dick-shaped twinkle lights."

"We can get those too," he said with a grin.

"You spoil me, Nick, you really do."

"Nah, you got me the giant teddy bear at the candy store. Dick-shaped twinkle lights are the least I can do."

They were grinning when their eyes met, but her expression changed. Turned inward and thoughtful. "Do you ever wonder what it would've been like if we'd met before all this?"

"I thought we weren't supposed to do that."

She gave a quick shake of her head. "Right. We aren't."

"You've been married the last five years."

"True."

"And five years ago I was kind of a prick."

She made a face. "So what's changed?"

He threw a dick-shaped keychain at her, but she dodged it, giggling. "I'm kidding. I can't imagine you were ever a prick."

"I was. An arrogant prick with a chip on his shoulder. But I grew up, and I think now…" He trailed off, and she cast him a questioning look. "Now I'm more the type of person a woman like you would want to spend time with."

"A woman like me. Hmm." She glanced over her shoulder, toward the front of the store, and when she looked back at him he felt something shift between them, like a curtain settling into place. "We should get going. Your limp's getting worse."

Internally he sighed. He'd crossed some invisible tripwire that sent her running. "It's fine. Barely hurts."

"Yep. That's why you just winced when you shifted your weight."

"I did not—" He did it again and grimaced. "Yeah, okay, it hurts a little bit, but I swear I'm fine."

"Good. Then you'll be able to do the dishes when we get back—since that is what you promised to get me in here." She turned to go, but he caught her arm to stop her.

"Kai—what just happened?"

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

He thrust his hands out in a gesture of frustration. "You know exactly what I mean. We were talking, having a good time, and suddenly you disappeared."

"I'm right here," she said. At his look she rubbed a hand over her face and fought back a sigh. "I just think we need to be careful, that's all. We've barely known each other two weeks and in that time we've been through a lifetime of shit. It's easy to mistake—relief—at being alive, or—that adrenaline high—for…something that isn't there."

He shook his head as she went on, and when her hands fell back to her sides his mouth moved in a slow, rueful smile. She could be maddening and contradictory and obstinate, and while normally it was part of why he was so crazy about her (yes, even the stubbornness), that particular explanation didn't pass any sort of smell test. "Bullshit."

She blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Bull. Shit. You're not a coward, Kai. Stop acting like one." He brushed past her and half-limped, half-stomped to the door. Stopped to yank a pack of penis-shaped twinkle lights off the rack and kept going. She had the keys, and the car was locked, but she wouldn't be surprised if he tried to walk back out of sheer stubbornness.

She followed him slowly, dragging her feet as she went. No, she wasn't a coward. Not usually. She'd screamed in Flagg's face even as the fear cramped her stomach and chilled her blood. But this thing with Nick (whatever it was) was different, and part of her would rather face a thousand Randall Flaggs at his scariest than one Nick Andros on an average "I'm so goddamn considerate it's gross" Tuesday.

"Never should've said yes to the sex store, dumbass," she muttered to herself.

Too late now. The damage was most definitely done.

Things had been tense between them all afternoon. She'd retreated to the bedroom with a book as soon as they got back, then emerged a few hours later to make dinner. He did the dishes. She took a long bath. They'd barely said three words to each other, and it was making him nuts.

He wandered out onto the back deck to find her in one of the Adirondack chairs, a mug of peppermint tea cupped in her hands, watching the sun set over the lake. When she saw him she used her foot to nudge the other chair his way.

"Nice night," he signed as he sat.

She just nodded and sipped her tea. The scent of citronella floated from the candle she had lit to keep the mosquitos away. The flame danced in the breeze and overhead the sky put on a show. He kept casting her looks from the corner of his eye, but she just watched the sunset, expression mild. Finally he let out a silent sigh.

"Kai, look, about earlier—"

She set her tea aside and held up a hand to stop him. "You were right."

His hands fell to his lap in astonishment. "I what?"

"Don't let it go to your head," she said with a brief quirk of her lips. "I just mean—you were right about me being afraid, and blocking you out. I am afraid."

"Of me? I told you—"

"No, not—not that you're dangerous or something." She sighed and pushed to her feet. Wandered toward the edge of the deck and turned back to face him. "I thought you were going to die. Not—completely. I hadn't resigned myself to the idea. But…it was a definite possibility. You were so fucking sick, and you weren't getting better no matter what I did."

He stood and took a few careful steps closer. "But I did get better. I didn't die. I'm not planning on dying any time soon."

"Well no shit, Nicholas, neither am I!" She threw her arms out in an encompassing gesture. "I don't think anyone who died of Captain Trips was planning for that, either."

"Okay, okay. You're right." He scrubbed the hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, okay?! I'm sorry I fucking shot myself and didn't even realize it and then nearly fucking died. It wasn't exactly part of my life plan."

She could tell he wasn't mad at her, so she let him rant.

"Ray Booth tried hard enough to kill me; I didn't have to help him out! What if you hadn't been there? Would I have been able to get the gun out in time?! Would he have finished what he started out on that road? I don't know! I don't like thinking about it."

He drew in a long, shaking breath. "I don't know what would have happened to me if you hadn't been there, either during the whole thing or after, when I was sick from it. If you think that makes me…weirdly attached to you…like some sort of Florence Nightingale syndrome…then I don't know what to say. Yes, I'm attached to you. Yes, it's partly because you saved my life. But that isn't the only reason. That just means I know I can count on you when shit really hits the fan. You aren't going to lose your shit or flake out on me or dump and run."

"I wouldn't do that," she said.

He gave her a careful look. "Not anymore."

She rocked back on her heels like he'd scored a hit. "That's fair." She crossed her arms over her middle. Uncrossed them again. "So what is your life plan at this point?"

His mouth quirked. "Right now? Just trying to convince this girl I like that I haven't imprinted on her like a baby duck."

"I never said—"

"You kind of implied it."

She scuffed the wooden decking with the toe of her sneaker. "So you like me?"

He yanked at his dark curls and grimaced. "Shut up, please."

"Nick…" She caught him by the shirt to tug him closer. "I'm just trying to be careful."

"I know," he said. He tucked her hair behind her ears. "Careful's fine. I appreciate careful. Just please stop shutting me out. I'm your friend if nothing else."

She rested her hands on his hips and dropped her forehead to land against his sternum. He stroked his palms over her smooth hair and down her back, then wrapped his arms around her. They stood like that a long time, as the sun sank behind the trees and dusk melted into night. The nearly full moon brightened and the candle lent everything a soft golden glow.

He pulled away to cup her face in his hands. Her pulse quickened, and she almost pulled away, but when he lowered his face toward hers, he merely pressed a kiss to her forehead and let go. He smiled and rubbed his thumb along her cheekbone, then took a step back.

"You wanna go find a place for our new twinkle lights?" he said.

She grinned. "Yes, please."

"Next time we go we should grab one of those dick-shaped cake pans."

"Babe, if you want cake, just ask. We don't have to visit a sex shop for a novelty pan."

He thought that over. "Can we visit for other novelties then?"

"What type of novelties did you have in mind?" she said with a quirk of her brow.

His mouth moved in that slow, lazy half-smile. "Maybe we should have that conversation when you're feeling less cautious."

what better place for a serious conversation about sexuality than an oddly kinky sex shop in rural Arkansas?