A/N: I'm not sure if this is the final chapter of "Disembodied" or not.

I like the ending, but I'm torn on whether I want the rehabilitation aspect in here at all.

For the first hours, she's just glad to speak. Even when it's Ann, if the nurse asks a question she isn't relegated to controlling her thoughts and being unable to say a single thing to anyone. Telling her to go away and leave her alone is a refreshing change of pace, even if it scares April that she might go back into that state. After all, she was like that for a few hours and now suddenly nothing? She just waits for her brain to drop out from under her again and everything to become a bleary-eyed, cloudy mess once again.

But it doesn't happen.

In the flood of streetlights, Andy kicks up dirt and bits of loose sidewalk on his way back to Burly's place. He knew it was inevitable, but he liked sitting there and talking to April. Now he just feels like he was being a creeper, a crazy old guy who constantly wanted to be around her when she was trying to push him away. It's a miserable feeling, and it's worse than just earlier that day when Andy wanted to wallow in his sadness beer.

That was before he learned that April was having problems, though. That was before she had a stroke. He still doesn't really know what that is or what it means, for the most part, but she seemed so helpless and tiny when she just sat curled in a ball in that hospital room. It was completely different from any other time he'd seen her. Normally she's who she is, and that's April and never changes, but like that - without that basic function - she seemed so unlike herself. It's weird to be thinking all of this, but it's an excuse to think about April and he's given in to being this creeper at least for a little while. Then he can go back to being ignored and trying to forget her.

He covers the corner to Burly's street in long strides, looking down at the pavement with squinted and fogged eyes. He pushes the door open loudly, forgetting if Burly's even home, and flops down on the couch without grabbing a beer this time. He might not have even closed the door behind him at this rate, and he wants to go to sleep but can't stop staying up thinking what he did wrong.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe he didn't do anything wrong, but it was wrong enough that April hated him for it. She didn't seem normal, or at least she seemed weirdly dark and ironic in a really strange way, but he liked that about her. She was cool and funny and never seemed to care what other people thought of her. Something's there, but he can't quite piece it together because he's just spiraling into dumb, sad thoughts he needs to get out. When he picks up a guitar and strums all the songs sound dreary and bland and remind him of April in the way that shitty college kids write songs. That makes him hate all of this even more, because try as he might he can't stop thinking about her.

He's thought about it before, what it'd be like to kiss her. There are other corners of his mind, ones he's less proud to admit ownership of, where he's thought of her before, but the one he goes back to in public is how she'd be the warmest little body when he hugged her. April might have really cold hands, but she wouldn't let go of him and that's all that mattered. And when they kissed she'd have that shy smile he loves so much - just dimples propping up and that prickling at the back of his heart every time she does it - and he'd get to feel her lips shifting against his. He's a romantic sap, sure, but he's so enraptured in this thought that it takes a few more seconds before he realizes someone's knocking at the front door.

They're light, little taps that make him wonder if he's about to open the door to a serial killer.

Instead, or maybe exactly like that, he opens the door to see April standing there. She's holding her elbow and looking away from him and it's maybe the most childish, innocent thing he's ever seen that it makes him feel like shit for thinking of her like this. Especially so when she hates him.

"H-Hey," she says, not looking up. "Sorry for showing up this late, I just... they let me out and-"

"I'm glad," he nods and fingers the edge of the door more, watching her lips move a little into a smile before darting away. "I mean, I'm glad you're out. That was scary."

A few seconds pass with a little howling wind outside. She might think he's an idiot for thinking that. In fact, she definitely does. But he's already said it, so there wasn't any taking it back. This wasn't a video game - he couldn't just load up a save or reset and try everything over again. He was just coming to learn that.

"It really was," she agrees. More silence as she shuffles her feet on the welcome mat just outside the threshold.

"More for you, obviously, but... I mean, you were probably super scared and I'm sorry. I just, I dunno, it was really-"

"Can I come in? It's kind of cold," she rubs her arm and looks over her shoulder. She's just wearing that thin blue t-shirt from earlier in the day and he feels like such a dick for making her stand out in the cold like this.

"Oh, duh, obviously," he steps far to the side and April makes her way inside.

She stands in front of the door and looks up at him, finally. "I, um, I have rehab stuff for the next few months," she shrugs, "and I'm not sure when it'll be over. It's just to make sure I work through any speech im-imped-impediments or something."

"Sure," he nods, standing against the wall behind him and suddenly wondering why she's here. "Did you... what's up, then?"

"Why'd you leave earlier?"

He sighs out loud and slouches back into the wall more. "Because I, uh, I realized how weird I was being," he scratches his beard and chuckles. "I was being really creepy, wasn't I?"

"How'd you figure that?" she asks him with a curious shift of her eyebrow.

"I mean, I stayed up telling you stupid stories and pretending like we were doing okay when," he laughs again and looks down. "You hate me, so-"

"Andy, let me tell you a story," April breaks in, still holding onto her arm and shifting up to crossing both of them over her chest. "There was once this girl who really, I mean really, liked some guy. Other people thought he was an idiot or an asshole, but he always tried to make the girl smile. She didn't really like that he made her feel that way, at first, and she lashed out like a little kid a lot. She didn't get what it was at first, because she thought a lot of people were terrible and the only way to get through life was to be as ironically detached as possible, but he was real and awesome and made her like things for real."

Andy blinks a few times, trying to process her story. It sounded really sweet, but what did it have to do with him? Why was she telling him a story now?

"She made a few big mistakes because he made a few small ones," April takes a deep breath and her eyes seem to wander all over his face. She searches him and that makes his shoulders slump a little. "Neither of them were really fair to each other, but the girl seemed to think he was hers despite never making a move. And she just had something terrible happen to her, and she knows things like that happen to people now. Not just other people, but her. And this guy was there without question, and he stays around until she's better. Because he's good like that. So, she wants him to know that she doesn't hate him."

He looks up to her and April's gotten just a bit closer to him. "What?" he asks because he's honestly confused by this whole story, and it sounds eerily familiar.

"I don't hate you," she gets out and releases the tension in her arms to let them fall at her side. "Andy, I don't wanna do th-this anymore. I just... just, I just... fuck it."

He means to say something, to ask her what she meant, but April slinks forward with an almost preternatural haste. Andy doesn't have much time to react before her arms are around his neck and she's pulling him down. Down, down, down until she's kissing him. Her hands go deep in his curls, tightening fingers and pulling a little, and his hands immediately go to her sides where she does feel so warm. Her lips are warm and she's trembling a little under him.

Then she breaks away and looks up at him, her fingers still moving a little in his hair. Andy matches her stare and there's so much there, and maybe he's taking advantage of her but she's cupping his face soon after and thumbing the skin of his cheek like he's imagined so many times. She looks at his lips again and before he can protest she kisses him again, and again, and this time she somehow moves closer to him. Before long her legs are so important and wrapped around his waist, his arms tight at her sides and then holding her close to him. She kisses him fully, and makes a wanting noise, and before long they're sent tumbling onto the couch.

He wakes up at an obscene hour with a small blanket draped over him and the other, much smaller and warmer body tight up on him. Her naked back feels so strange against him, but in a fantastic way, and when he touches the indent of her spine with a light feathering of his index she shivers. Turning around, April's tired eyes are bright and warm brown again as she smiles and kisses him. It takes him a solid ten minutes to recover from that kiss, just like the others, and makes him feel like shit for being so indifferent to her all at the same time.

"Y'know, I d-did come over here for a reason," she smirks.

"Oh, so this is just a one time thing?" Andy asks with a small smile and she chuckles.

"God, shut up," she smacks his chest but burrows closer to him until she has to look up through messy bangs to see him. "I have rehab and basically school I have to go to for a l-little while, and the doctors said I should... should, sh-should have someone to help me."

"Oh, cool," he nods, brushing his nose against hers and makes April smile again. That's honestly so wonderful a feeling he exhales all the energy he can before he's overwhelmed by that feeling of total adoration again. "Who were you thinking of?"

"Really?" she gives him an incredulous look.

"Really what?"

"Dude, I want you to help me," she says with a huff, but never moves away from him.

"Whoa, really?" he asks, dumbstruck and unable to come up with much else to say.

"Yeah, really," she bumps into his chest and has that little, shy curl to her lips again. "You're the coolest person I've ever known and if anyone's gonna help me figure out how to l-lose this and spell right, it's you."

"I mean, I'm not smart-"

"That's what you say," she touches his chin, moving her finger up to his cheek where she holds on with her palm. "You say that, but you're smart where it counts, y'know?"

"Not really," he chuckles again, focusing on her hand and her thumb moving now.

"That's okay... just, I want h-help, okay?" she says so small and quiet that it reminds him of her on that cot, all tight up in a ball around herself.

It makes him tighten his chest and brush his mouth against hers, trying to memorize how that feels. "I'll do everything, then. If we have to stay up for, like, weeks if it means you'll get better then let's do it," he says with a grin before thinking better of it and adding, with a low voice, "let's do it."

April smiles and her legs brush up against his again.