At the lake house, in the early morning before any sunlight illuminated and the dew had yet to form, April woke up and left Andy in the bed to sleep. Cool air and the faint pitter patter of her feet on the floorboards were the only company in that hour, but April didn't mind it - Andy's sweatshirt feel nearly to her knees anyways and was plenty comfortable. Crossing her arms, April trudged out to the den and tried to make out the sofa in the dim light.

All throughout the night April had been racked with a host of dreams. Some of them were pleasant, one even looked weirdly far in the future, but a few nightmares interspersed with the rest had made sleep after that hard to come by. April couldn't even remember any of them but that vague, uncomfortable feeling was still there and she needed to be alone with those thoughts.

Sitting down on the couch, April pulled her legs up so that she could remain tightly curled around herself in the twilit room. One of those dreams in that far-flung timescape April dreaded thinking about was particularly haunting and almost more so than any nightmare. In it, despite the strange blurriness regular to her dreams, April could see a vivid picture of herself walking inside a house to find Andy holding a small bundle in his arms. This dream version of herself was smiling brightly, something she couldn't picture doing for anything, and for an instant April knew exactly what Andy was holding. It scared her. The thought - the thing - terrified April to the core.

Whether or not they actually did that, she couldn't get it out of her head. That's how she woke up in a blind panic, almost sweating as bad as Andy, and stepped out into the chilly Lake Michigan air. Even though she knew it would entirely be her decision and that April herself wouldn't ever be guilted into anything that life-altering, that wasn't it. The real fear of it was the consideration - the horror of maybe, actually, thinking about it.

Getting off the couch, April opened the door to the cold breeze outside and stepped onto the wooden deck. Leaning her back against the house, arms still folded to compensate heat that her bare legs sorely missed in that chill, she tried to think of almost anything else. Work wasn't worth spending more than a moment considering and she didn't feel like thinking about much else. They were just married, and that was pretty cool, but knowing the two of them that wasn't going to be like everyone else's idealization or her own imagined eternal loneliness. It would be different. Strange, definitely, but it was likely to just be them. They were going to be just April and Andy - just the two of them. That's how it was supposed to be, and that's how it would work if it could work at all.

"Hey," a voice said to her, quiet and tired.

April must have missed hearing him walk out and been so trapped in her thoughts that she ignored the sound of the door opening just to her right. Andy's tousled hair and pleasantly exhausted face greeted her.

"Morning," April answered with a dull, even tone.

"Why you up so early?" Andy asked, still leaning against the door with one hand before walking out.

"Thinking," April said tersely.

"Oh, okay," he responded.

Standing awkwardly in the middle of the deck, Andy put his hands around his stomach. Because April had taken his sweater he was sitting out in the morning with only a pair of pajama pants and a thin shirt to ward off the cold. Since it was a good enough excuse to do so, April walked over to him and pushed away his arms and slipped hers around his waist. Resting her head against him, those thoughts - that future - returned and didn't seem so bad.

"What were you thinking about?" Andy asked a little hesitantly, maybe more than April would have liked.

"Stuff," she said in yet another simple deflection.

"Sure, sure," Andy gave in and she felt him nodding. "You wanna go inside? It's, like, super cold out here."

Looking up at him, Andy's face was searching her. Whether he asked her, and if she told him had he actually asked, it didn't matter. Something was digging deep into the back of her mind and refused to leave, almost like a houseguest with too many secrets to hide and a penchant for squatting. That dream - that little dream-baby in Andy's arms - was burrowing unwelcome but real. April hadn't ever thought about something this serious for this long, and so hard, in all of her life. Nothing felt as adult and gross, but real and possible, as that.

But maybe that would have to wait for another day, another day when the sun was actually in the sky and they weren't freezing against each other's skin, since April gave Andy a blank stare that he returned with that grin only he had. That same toothy, bright smile she didn't like thinking about because seeing it was so much better and so much more real than anything else April could muster up. April wondered if maybe, somehow, some of those things in her dream could come true. But that didn't last long, because the moment she felt the first drop of rain on her shoulder an overwhelming desire to get inside as quickly as possible took over.

"Yeah, let's go. It's starting to rain," April said matter-of-factly, keeping an arm around Andy as she opened the door.

She likely wouldn't tell him what she had been thinking for a very long time, if at all. Something about bringing it up scared April a little in the same way that her own thoughts on the matter were frightening, but that was for another day. That day, with the rain pouring down onto the deck and smashing against the glass of the windows, April wanted to go back to the covers with Andy and forget that she considered those things at all.

The sounds of rain splashing in and smacking against every inch of the house followed them throughout the day, from the moment the clouds in the sky stoppered the rising sun to the break of night once again it kept coming. So they stayed in bed, every few minutes one of them rolling over and on top the other with a hungry gleam in their eyes. At first Andy still seemed worried about what April had been thinking, but after sleeping another hour and waking up to find April staring at him, waiting, the worry seemed to drop away.

Though they napped and slept in, lazy and awkward sex sprinkled throughout, the rain kept on. It was constant, and so was that sound - the sound of the rain moving against the house. When April went out to get a drink and something to eat for the two of them, she was reminded of the sounds she made walking along. The rain sounded familiar but something wasn't quite right. The water moved in droplets on the roof like little feet walked on carpet and wood.

April pretended she was thinking of her own footsteps.

a/n: I don't say this enough: I love all y'all - all the readers - so much. Also I'm sure this whole back-to-back episodes thing next month (!) will only drive me further into a spiraling insanity!