A/N: The title of this fic comes from Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress. Many thanks to orysbaratheon and malintzin for beta-reading and brainstorming with me!

1.

The Ranger touches down on the surface of Edmunds in a cloud of red.

Dust coats the windows, obscuring the view of the new planet. For a moment Coop sits motionless in the cockpit, feeling like he's back on the old in his truck, waiting out a dust storm. The feeling's strong enough to make him reach instinctively for a mask to cover his mouth and nose, glance sideways to check the kids do the same.

"Is everything okay, Cooper?" TARS asks from behind him.

Not Tom, not Murph, and it hurts, like the old dream of the crash.

"Yeah," Coop drawls. "Everything's fine."

TARS doesn't ask what percentage of honesty that was, but it's a pretty safe bet the robot knows it wasn't anywhere in the range of 100%.

Coop cuts the shuttle's engine and immediately the loose red topsoil settles back to the ground, with it the memory of dust storms eroding old American towns as he peers out at the planet Murph sent him to. Go, the aged woman told him, and he did, as he hadn't when the little girl begged him Stay.

Go find Brand.

Well, he's gone and found her-with astonishing ease, considering the mission that put Amelia here in the first place was anything but. Then again, this time he was sent by the woman who solved the gravity equation. Although even the savior of the human race has room for error, he thinks, feeling the pull of a grin at the corner of his mouth; Murph thought she'd be down for the long nap, but Amelia is very much awake, standing not thirty yards away outside her habitat module, the Stars and Stripes billowing in the breeze, squinting at the Ranger.

"…making the air, in fact, more hospitable to human lungs than Earth's," TARS says, and Coop registers, belatedly, that the robot has been rattling off percentages of nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2, while he gawks. "Life support will not be required."

"Yeah. Kinda gathered that from Brand not wearing a spacesuit."

Coop pulls off his helmet, peers out the dirt-streaked windshield as he fumbles with buckles and clasps of his harness and oxygen pack. Amelia looks better than a woman has any right to in ill-fitting scrub bottoms and that oversized navy blue hoodie she favors.

"All right then, Einstein," says TARS, and Coop doesn't have to look back over his shoulder to know the sarcasm light's blinking on the robot's display. "Since you're so clever, you obviously don't need me to tell you the climate conditions on the surface."

"Dryer than Miller's, warmer than Mann's."

"Sixteen degrees Celsius," TARS practically pounces on the opportunity to show off-smug bastard.

"Really."

He would've guessed colder, actually, from the way Amelia hunches into the sweatshirt, one hand tucked deep into the front pocket, the sleeve pulled down over the other which she raises to shade her eyes against the sun's glare. As TARS goes on about humidity and wind speed, Coop's thoughts aren't on the climate of Edmunds, but on how small Amelia looks, slender frame swimming in the baggy hoodie and the vast barren landscape stretching out behind her and her encampment as far as the eye can see. (He knows now, better than he ever has, how infinitesimal they are in this universe.) Small…and alone.

Coop yanks off a glove and, still holding it, waves at Amelia. Her hand leaves her brow to return the gesture. Tentatively, as if she doesn't recognize who she's waving to. Probably the glare, but it occurs to him, too, that the tech of his Ranger's decades more advanced than the shuttles she's accustomed to. The last thing she must expect after their goodbye is for him to land on the planet in a spaceship from the future. Hell, his death must have been an even surer thing to her than Edmunds'.

So why the hell's he still sitting here? He punches the button to open the cockpit.

"What's the gravity?" he asks TARS, noticing as he stands that the bulky flight suit and boots don't weigh him down like they ought to after the duration of the flight, short as it was, in zero G. "Less than Earth's?"

"Slightly The difference should be too negligible to notice. I believe, Cooper, that is simply a spring in your step."

"Course it is. I finally have someone to talk to besides a smart-ass robot."

It's not the first time since he announced his plan to hijack a Ranger and leave Cooper Station that TARS has made insinuations about Coop's eagerness to see Amelia again. Although insinuate is putting it mildly. There was nothing subtle when he stated that, should Edmunds be dead, then Coop and Brand will be the only two of their species on the planet with the responsibility of perpetuating the human race.

Do you have a setting for Sound Alarmingly Like My Father-in-Law? Coop said in retort. TARS pretended not to understand the sarcasm as his humor setting was too low, but wisely avoided making jokes that were so on the nose for the duration of their flight.

Not that Coop wouldn't have-or hadn't-gone there in his own head already. Which is why he doesn't go there again with TARS, but climbs down from the Ranger on the side opposite Amelia and focuses on cooling his own jets.

We love people who have died. Where's the social utility in that? Amelia's voice, passionately pleading her case for going to Edmunds instead of Mann's, echoes in Coop's mind. The answer was-and still is-none at all. Especially when there are hundreds of human embryos to propagate humanity.

Even if sometime during their mission he did start to think of her as Amelia.

He doesn't say her name as he rounds the nose of the Ranger, though she does say his. "Cooper?"-pitched high, lilting upward in question, hardly more than a whisper. He almost misses it as he closes his eyes to listen to the gravelly crunch of the alien soil beneath his boots, the long intake of the first clean, natural air into his lungs have taken since blighted, burnt-out crops began to poison Earth's, and the release of it again.

Opening his eyes he sees Amelia lower the hand from her brow, slip the other from her pocket to hang at her sides, fingers flexed; her shoulders straighten to form sharp angles beneath the sweatshirt; her dark eyes widen in a pale face that goes a shade whiter. As if she's seen…

"I'm not a ghost," Coop blurts out, hands open in a conciliatory gesture as he advances toward her.

"Well-" He stops short. It was me, Murph. "Not your ghost."

Amelia's eyebrows pull together, confusion evident. Coop laughs a little at himself as his gaze drops to the ground, his boot dusted red as he toes at a pebble. Now of course that don't make a lick of sense to her. Will anything?

"Hello, Dr. Brand."

Metallic limbs lumber into Coop's periphery, but he doesn't glance away from Amelia.

"TARS?" Amelia's tone is still surprised, but belief's starting to creep in now, if the beginnings of her smile are any indication.

Coop smirks. All the incredible things they've experienced since they went through the wormhole, and the biologist's mind apparently draws the line at robot ghosts.

"Oh sure," he says, "it's the robot you're happy to see."

But he doesn't begrudge TARS-well, maybe just a tad, when Amelia's hand goes out to touch the smooth metal affectionately.

"TARS was my knight in shining armor."

She cuts her eyes at Coop, the flicker which he thinks might be mischief too brief for him to decide whether it's any more real than she believes him to be, before they darken again, holding his gaze as she did before he jettisoned from Endurance.

Until TARS draws her attention back to him. "That sounds like the premise for an early twenty-first century literary parody novel. King Arthur and Robots."

Amelia looks a little askance-the reference to the early twenty-first century as something from the distant past?

"We can have book club later," Coop cuts in, approaching. "Speaking of robots, plural…where's Thing Two?"

Not until after the question leaves his mouth does it occur to him that CASE might've met a grim fate, leaving Amelia totally on her own here. Not that he was the most conversational of companions.

To his relief she replies, "Following up on some of Edmunds' data. Probably started back to camp when your shuttle flew over."

Her voice doesn't falter over her lover's name, though Coop tells himself it's foolish to read too much into that. If he learned anything about her during their time-lifetime-together, it's that Amelia, for all the depth of feeling that made her believe Edmunds' planet was the right one, keeps her emotions under control like only one other woman he's known.

TARS offers to find CASE. "That is," he adds, turning away from Amelia, "if you require nothing further, Cooper?" The sarcasm light blinks.

"Get on outta here, Slick."

TARS goes, and they watch in silence as he shrinks into the distance, the grey of him almost camouflaged by the hues of the rocky landscape and flat-topped mountains on the horizon, except for the occasional glare of the sun off the metallic sheen. Much as he wanted to be alone with Amelia, Coop starts to regret sending him away as the minutes pass and he realizes he must figure out, yet again, how to proceed. He watches her hands go back into the pocket of her hoodie.

"Those real mountains this time?" he tries.

A poor joke not even he can bring himself to chuckle at. Worse, in poor taste. Amelia's cheek flickers with the attempt to keep emotion at bay, though her eyes belie her sadness at the memory of Miller's planet.

Brave as always, she gives a slight smile. Says, "Real as I wish I could be sure you are."

Before Coop can reply, Amelia shuffles nearer to him, withdraws one hand from her pocket to press against his chest. He stands still, watching the flicker of emotions in her eyes, heart beating faster against her fingertips through the fabric of his flight suit.

"You are here," she murmurs, after a moment, or an eternity. Does time hold any meaning any meaning for him at all now? "I don't know how, but you are."

"Kind of a long story." Or is it? He covers her hand with his own where it still rests against his chest, weaving his callused fingers together with her tapered ones. "I guess if we've got one thing in abundance here, it's time."

"And rocks, and wide open space, and according to the data, an abundance of animal life. But yeah." Amelia gives his fingers a little squeeze. "We do have all the time in the world."

They smile at each other, she looking up at him expectantly. Keeping hold of her hand, Coop turns, pulling her with him as he strides toward the hab.

"I don't know if it'll make sense to you. Hell, I'm not even sure how much sense it makes to me, and I was there. But I'll do my best to explain."

"Like you said, we have time-"

"So TARS and I, we fall through Gargantua-"

"Cooper, you just got here-"

"And we just keep falling and falling. It's like…Alice In Wonderland."

They're at the door now, and he opens it, dropping her hand and gesturing for her to go through first. She does, giving him a look of incomprehension over her shoulder. Or impatience?

"You know-down the rabbit hole," he goes on, following her inside.

He pauses to scrape his boots on the threshold, just as if he were back home, in a vain effort to minimize the dust tracked in. Amelia toes off her shoes, kicking them out of the way less tidily than he's accustomed to from her; the door shuts behind him and he bends to undo the straps of his own boots, talking all the while.

"Then suddenly I'm in this weird room that goes on and on…"

He balances on one foot to pull off a boot, feeling foolish under Amelia's watchful stare, arms folded across her chest.

"A tesseract," he amends, for the scientist. "I just…float there for..." The second boot thunks to the floor. "Years, I guess. I'm 124, they told me afterward."

He straightens up, feeling every day of it.

"And the whole time I'm in the tesseract I can see Murph-"

"Cooper."

Amelia's voice is firm now, as is her grip on his shoulders and the door at his back as she pushes him against it, and her mouth on his. Coop is too surprised at first to kiss her back, too surprised to do anything at all, in fact, but stand there gawking at her. Which, he thinks when she tilts her head back to meet his eye, a glimmer in hers, is probably exactly what she intends.

"Will you ever learn when not to talk?" she asks.

"Yes ma'am," Coop says, and stoops to kiss her again.

He wraps his arms around her, tight, her waist slender beneath the bulk of her sweatshirt, pulling her against him as she presses him into the door, bruising the knots of his spine. Her hands rest on his chest, then drift upward to stroke his neck, resting on the beat of his pulse at his jawline.

It's that particular touch that gives Coop no illusions about what brings this on. In their time, Amelia's just lost her father, her lover, and she's been all alone on the planet-albeit with a robot. Who wouldn't be desperate for human contact after that? He is, after being suspended in space and time, able to see but not to touch Murph until it was time for both of them to go their separate ways in the universe. And Amelia Brand is the one person in it who can understand that, without his explanation. Which of course is why Murphy sent him to her.

Tongues meet, hands wander. For all their talk of time being on their side, this is sure happening in a hurry. Not that Coop's about to put the brakes on it; he needs this as much as Amelia does. Has done, since long before he stumbled upon NASA and agreed to embark upon this mission. Donald knew that, with all his admonishments to make nice with any pretty single gal within a fifty mile radius of the farm.

That's not at all how it went with Amelia, but it seems like that's just fine with her, as she tugs the zipper of his flight suit down to his waist, yanks the hem of his white cotton undershirt free, and slips her fingertips underneath. Coop's belly hitches inward at the cool of her touch against his skin. When he unwraps his arms from around her to slip his arms out of the flight suit's sleeves, breaks the kiss to peel the t-shirt off, she makes a dismayed sound-and looks it, too, he sees when he opens bleary eyes.

"You want it off or not?" he asks, chuckling, and thinks she sees her roll her eyes just before the shirt momentarily covers his face.

When he emerges, though, they're raking over him appreciatively, fingers exploring the planes of bared torso, too, till they're trapped between them when he returns to kiss her again with a renewed urgency.

One hand cradles her head, clutching her fine short hair between his fingers; the other skims over her ass, slipping beneath her sweatshirt, pulling it upward as she did his t-shirt till he notices the metal of the zipper digging into his chest, then his hand leaves her head to pull it down. Underneath she wears a ribbed white tank top, no bra-Why would she, here, alone?-and the dark pinkish-brown of her nipples shows through plainly. He cups her breasts through the thin cotton, thumbs teasing the already pointed tips, his own body hardening in response. Amelia grunts out his name and God's through her teeth, pulling him with her until her backside collides with an obstruction in the middle of the room. A cryosleep pod. They exchange briefly amused glances before Coop hoists her up on top of it.

There's a pause in the makeout session for them to shed the rest of their clothes, Coop feeling stupid again as he does the one-footed jig to take off his socks, trying not to stumble over the pile mounting on the floor, though at least this time Amelia simultaneously struggles to wriggle out of her scrub bottoms and panties in a sitting position. It's been so long, he almost forgot how awkward sex can be. He feels like a teenager-which, he supposes, is preferable to feeling 124.

That feeling lasts only for a moment, though, replaced by something else entirely as Amelia reaches for him, drawing him to stand between her knees as she perches at the edge of the pod. She touches his face, fingers brushing back through his cropped hair, a softness in her dark eyes which Coop's only seen when she talked about Edmunds. His hand settles in the hollow of her hipbone as she wraps her legs around him, the other supporting him on the pod as he leans over her to kiss her neck.

He looks up at her again as he enters her, and it's all he can do not to come right away when she looks back at him with the same look of awe and joy that he saw when he reached out to her across space and time and she placed her hand, so trustingly, in his.

Does she recognize, in this moment, that it was him? He doesn't know.

But when he lets go,content with the knowledge that time has no meaning once you've existed outside of it, he takes her with him.

They don't say much afterward, as they dress again and share coffee, which is exactly what Coop expects from Amelia. Silence isn't always his preference, but so long as it's not the awkward kind, which this isn't, then it suits him just fine. Anyway the robots return to the bunker before too long, TARS' voice dispelling the quiet before the door is all the way open.

"You were correct, Dr. Brand. CASE saw our Ranger's descent. I found him making his way back to base camp."

"Hello, Cooper," says CASE. "I'm pleased you and TARS survived Gargantua. We would have been here sooner, but TARS told me everything, and he wanted to know about Dr. Edmunds' data finds."

Amelia gives CASE a sympathetic look.

"Good," says Cooper, pushing back from the table, draining his mug as he stands. "Maybe you can explain it to Dr. Brand while TARS and me unload our gear."

"You mean you didn't?" TARS asks on their way out, the blinking light confirming Coop's suspicions that TARS had not stayed out with CASE as long as he had because he'd missed his fellow robot's company.

He knows good and well he shouldn't rise to the baiting, that he should just tell TARS to take the humor down a notch, but doing what he should just ain't in Coop's nature. Turning back toward his hulking metal companion, ensuring with a glance that the bunker door is closed, he gives in to a smirk.

"Let's just say you might've been correct about the spring in my step."

"No," TARS says.

Coop's brows go up. "No?"

"It wasn't in your step."