⋆˚꩜｡Charlotte ⋆˚꩜｡

warnings : gn!reader x natalie . mostly fluff . nsfw , mdni . dirty talk / praising . legal age . cursing . knives (pumpkin carving) . tattoos / needles . AU .

notes : tried not to make it repetitive to the last one, hope i did a good job @_@

you can find the request here ꨄ︎

it starts with a door banging open so hard the halloween garland you bought at the dollar store flutters off its thumbtack and onto the floor. october wind follows nat into the apartment, curling around her boots like a cat that might bite. she’s got three paper grocery bags balanced on one hip and a stubborn look on her face like she dared the morning to ruin her mood and the morning lost.

“babe,” she calls, like a hello and a warning.

you’re in the kitchen, sleeves shoved up, already fighting a losing battle with the french press. you turn in time to catch the grocery bag she tosses at you. it’s weirdly light. you look inside and find an obscene amount of tiny decorative gourds and an apple cider donut with half a bite missing.

“oh my god,” you say, mock-betrayed.

“quality control.” she shrugs. her hair is wind-tangled and her nose is pink from the cold. it makes her look softer than she’d admit. “and the gourds were on sale.”

“no one needs this many gourds.”

“we do,” she says, and kisses you quick, like it’s a habit, a reflex, the most natural thing in the world. “now our place looks like a pilgrim threw up in here. very seasonal.”

you put the gourd bag on the counter next to the other two, which are full of actual food - sweet potatoes, a loaf of sourdough, a wedge of fancy cheese you would not have bought if she hadn’t looked at you with those eyes and said “c’mon, it’s autumn.” there’s cinnamon sticks and a bag of cheap coffee and the smell of cold air still clinging to everything. you lean into the draft and nat leans into you.

the apartment is unusually quiet. upstairs, someone’s replacing their windows and last week they made the hall smell like dust and primer. across the street, the tattoo shop is doing a flash sale on little bats and ghosts and it’s got a line out the door. your place is a third-floor walk-up that tries hard - plants you keep forgetting to water, a thrifted rug that nat insists is “ugly in a sexy way,” a couch that dips in the middle so you end up touching even when you don’t mean to. you moved in together in late summer when the days were too hot and everyone was tired of pretending they weren’t. it’s october now, emphatically. the light knows how to be gentle. it comes in honeyed, angles across nat’s cheek. she looks like she belongs in it.

nat pulls the donut from the bag and holds it to your mouth. you bite. cinnamon sugar crackles under your teeth.

“we should get more of those,” you say around it.

“we will,” she says. “i told the lady at the stall we were doing a fall festival in our living room.”

“are we?”

“we are now.” she nudges your hip with the cabinet door, toes off her boots and misses the mat entirely. “i also invited your mortal enemy.”

“who?”

she grins. “laundry.”

“god,” you say, hand to your chest. “at least let me die on my own terms.”

she rolls her eyes and starts unpacking the groceries, emptying out pockets of her oversized jacket as she goes. she sets down a lighter, two crumpled receipts, and a leaf, the kind that’s so red it looks fake. she smooths it like it might break. you watch her, warm in the belly with the donut and the way she moves through your space like it’s hers. like it’s yours together.

“we’re getting a pumpkin,” she says suddenly, as if continuing a conversation you forgot you were having. “like an actual pumpkin. and we’re carving it. not some bullshit with a skull. a classic face.”

“you’re so traditional,” you say, glancing at the way her black nail polish is chipped and the smear of sugar she licks from her lip.

“don’t make fun of me,” she says, smiling. “let me have this one thing.”

you hold up both hands. “i’m literally thrilled. i love knives.”

“hot,” she says immediately, satisfied.

you make coffee and nat makes toast. she slices it thick and smears on the ridiculous cheese, drizzles honey, sprinkle of salt like she’s been on a cooking show exactly once. you sit on the counter and your knees frame her hips. she wedges herself into that space and hands you half. you both eat slow, no plates, crumbs sticking to your fingers. she keeps glancing over your shoulder to the window like she can’t stand not being outside and in the blanket-soft air at the same time.

“we have to go to the market before the nice apples are gone,” she says, mouth full.

“nice apples,” you echo, teasing. “you’re such a snob.”

“say it again,” she says, squinting her eyes, amused. “i like when you’re wrong.”

she finishes first and slides the plate into the sink where it will sit until one of you is annoyed enough to deal with it. she peels herself out from between your knees, tugs your sleeve. “come on. the gourds need friends.”

“we have, like, seventeen friends,” you protest, looking at the counter where a small army of knobbly little gourds and tiny pumpkins has gathered.

she kisses the corner of your mouth. “you don’t get it,” she says, and you do, actually. you do more than you can say.

the farmer’s market is chilly-but-not-cold and makeshift in the way all good things are. twine bunting, a guy with a guitar who only knows three chords, a stand selling jams with labels written in careful cursive. you hold hands partly because you like it and partly because the crowd is thick with dogs and strollers. nat’s thumb sweeps against your palm like she’s thinking of something she won’t say yet.

she smells like your laundry detergent and cigarettes and that lotion you bought because the package had a leaf on it. she picks through apples like she’s assessing gems. “no bruises,” she mutters. “no weird soft spots. they should be cold.”

“so picky,” you say, and then you see her face when she finds one that is exactly the right kind of red and you swallow the joke because you want to keep the quiet look of triumph she gets sometimes.

you get a small pie from a stand where everything looks like it was baked by someone’s mystical grandmother. nat gets a cider and you share, passing the paper cup back and forth and making faces at how sweet it is.

you stop at the last stall, the one with pumpkins piled high. there’s a kid in a puffy coat trying to pick up one twice their size while their dad pretends not to notice the strain. nat crouches and knocks on pumpkins with her knuckles like she can hear their souls.

“this one,” she says finally, settling on a not-too-big, not-too-small one with a dependable shape and a decent stem. she cradles it like a baby and then shoves it into your arms. “carry our son.”

“our son is heavy,” you complain, but you’re already swaying him back and forth like you’re about to sing a lullaby and nat is laughing with her whole mouth.

it’s easy to spend the whole day like this, going slow, pretending the world is only as big as the blocks between the market and your street. there are crunchy leaves and every dog is wearing a bandana and your fingers go numb around the cup. nat keeps kissing you like she’s tasting autumn on your tongue and finds it agreeable.

when you get home she pulls the big metal bowl from under the sink, the one you use for popcorn and chaotic salads. she sets the pumpkin on the table and holds out her hand for the marker. you watch her draw a face with care, triangular eyes, a smile with three blunt teeth. she bites her lip when she concentrates. it’s ridiculous how hot that is.

“okay,” she says, stepping back to admire. “let’s make a mess.”

she does the top and you do the scooping and she laughs at the way you grimace when your hands go wrist-deep in pumpkin guts. she takes a picture of you scowling with your fingers covered in string and seeds; later she’s going to set it as your contact photo without telling you.

“save the seeds,” she says, practical, like she grew up on a farm and not in a collection of places that only recently let her rest. you rinse them and pat them dry and toss them with oil and salt and a little cayenne. when you put the tray in the oven, the smell that starts to bloom is so good you both stand there for a second, trying not to drool.

you carve the face and nat claps like a child when the first triangle eye falls away. “he’s handsome,” she declares when you’re done, and you’re still laughing at that when she lights a tea candle and sets it inside. the room goes golden and the pumpkin face winks like he’s got a secret.

“okay,” you say, “i kind of get it.”

“i know,” she says, smug and a little shy, and then she adds, quieter, “i like doing this with you.”

you lean against the table and tug her close until her hands bracket your hips. “me too,” you say into her hair. “even if our son is a little lopsided.”

“he gets that from your side,” she says into your neck.

the city changes in a way you can feel under your shoes. someone strings lights around the trees on your block and the coffee place down the street starts making something called an autumn fog. you go twice and nat gags at your order and then tries it and grudgingly admits it’s good. she always does that - resists just long enough to make the surrender cute. you love her for it, for the way she keeps edges even when she’s soft with you.

you bring home a bundle of dried flowers, snagged from the sale table at the market: little strawflowers, eucalyptus, wheat stalks. you stick them in an old glass jar and put them on the window ledge. nat says they look like a haunted bouquet and you say thank you. you tape the red leaf she found to the fridge and it curls at the edges in a way that makes you a little sad and a little grateful things don’t last. she kisses the top of your head and you don’t say the quiet thing you’re thinking about time and how sometimes it feels like the thing you’re dating, how sometimes all you want is to hold still together.

you start making a soup every sunday. it isn’t a rule, but it becomes one anyway. you roast things and pretend to be precise and then you’re both tasting from a spoon and arguing about more salt. it’s domestic and silly and something in your chest unclenches.

“i want your sweaters,” nat says one night while chopping onions, and you swear almost purely out of reflex because your eyes are stinging. her hair is up and you can see the notch of her collarbone, the small scar you traced with your tongue the first time she let you. “i want to steal them all.”

“well,” you say, “it’s mutual theft.”

“it’s called sharing,” she says, sounding very wise about it, and then you lose track of the conversation because she starts crying at the onions and trying to look tough about it.

later, you sit on the couch with bowls balanced on your knees, eating too hot, blowing on the spoon between each bite. outside, someone’s having a smoke and the thin ribbon of it drifts in. nat gets up, opens the window, lets the chill lean inside. she sits back down and tucks her toes under your thigh. your pumpkin glows from the coffee table and your son is indeed lopsided but it’s fine. the apartment smells like cumin and toasted seeds and clothes drying on the radiator.

“movie?” she asks.

you know what she’s going to say. she’s been trying to get you to watch the same dumb slasher since september. “i thought you only liked art films.”

“i contain multitudes,” she says gravely, then grins. “plus i like when you jump and pretend you didn’t.”

“i don’t-”

“you do,” she says, already queuing it up. she leans into you as the screen goes dark. she kisses your jaw and then your cheek and then just sits with the line of her body pressed into yours, her breathing slow and even. you slip your hand into her hoodie pocket. she laces your fingers. you pretend the drums of the soundtrack aren’t making your shoulders rise. when the first jump scare comes you do, embarrassingly, flinch. she pretends not to notice, which is worse, because then you’re waiting for her to make fun of you and she doesn’t, she just squeezes your hand until you relax.

“you okay?” she murmurs, even though she knows you are.

“yeah,” you say, feeling a rush of dumb love, bubbling and warm, a stupid carbonated soda feeling that goes to your head.

she kisses you then, really kisses you, not the quick skate-by ones, not the distracted peck while stirring a pot. she turns, puts a knee between your legs on the couch cushion, tilts your chin. her mouth is soft and sure. she kisses you like she means to, like she’s choosing you again. the movie blares a scream. you both ignore it.

“see,” she says, when she lets you breathe, “so brave.”

“shut up,” you say, but you’re smiling into her next kiss.

rain starts visiting more often. you learn which windowsill drips and which corner of the bedroom smells faintly like the thrift store when it’s damp. you hang your coats on hooks by the door and they never fully dry. nat starts wearing a beanie that makes her look a little like a long-lost member of a 90s band you pretended to like in high school. you steal it so often she eventually just says “it’s ours now” and then steals one of your flannels in retaliation.

one saturday morning you wake to the sound of nat flinging open the curtains like a dramatic victorian heroine. you’re not in bed - you fell asleep on the couch last night, mid-episode, and your neck reminds you you’re no longer a teenager. “look,” nat says, voice reverent enough to pull your eyes open. she’s silhouetted by the window, all edges and messy hair, and outside, the world has gone into full color: every tree an explosion of orange, yellow, red, like a cartoon of autumn got painted over your block.

“holy shit,” you say, because there’s not a more useful thing in your mouth.

“we’re going to the park,” she declares, already pulling on boots. “we’re going to roll around like idiots.”

“we’re going to get wet,” you point out, because it rained last night and the ground is probably a sponge.

she shrugs into a coat, kisses your forehead, smells like toothpaste and coffee you didn’t even notice she made. “then we’ll come home and make grilled cheese like adults.”

you end up doing exactly that. the park is full of other idiots with the same idea. people are tossing leaves in the air like confetti. a couple is taking very serious engagement photos; nat walks behind them and makes a face at the camera that’s going to surprise them later. you chase each other like you’re kids. you collapse on a damp bench and share a thermos of coffee that tastes faintly like metal. nat keeps putting leaves in your hair. you keep letting her.

on the walk back you stop at a thrift store because the window display has a sweater that looks like it should come with a crackling fireplace and a dog. inside, nat finds a brown leather jacket that has lived three lives already. she slips it on and looks like a vision you can’t quite catch - a bit dangerous, a bit soft. she turns in the mirror, catches you staring. “don’t say it,” she teases.

“say what.”

“that i look silly.”

“you look pretty,” you say, automatic with a smirk.

“asshole,” she says, but she’s grinning.

you get the sweater. she gets the jacket. at the register, the guy gives you a discount because “you two are seasonal as hell.” you decide to take it as a compliment.

you and nat have lived in a lot of apartments in a lot of ways, but this is the first one that feels like you bought it a plant and you’re trying to keep it alive. the hallway smells like someone’s perfume, the elevator always has a note you can’t quite parse. you make a cheesy playlist and put too many songs on it. she laughs at the title and then adds one anyway, no comment.

you make a list on the whiteboard by the fridge:

- pumpkin patch (done)

- haunted house (you cross this out immediately with a note: fuck no)

- corn maze (nat adds, weaponize confusion)

- bake something (underlined)

she adds in tiny letters in the corner: get a tattoo together maybe?

you circle maybe three times and draw a little heart. “we can get a leaf,” you say later, over dishes, trying to sound casual. “or a tiny pumpkin. or a gourd.”

“absolutely not a gourd,” she says, then glances at you, hopeful. “but… a leaf could be cute.”

“we could get matching ones,” you say, and your heart tries to rattle out of your ribs for a second and run down the block.

she looks at you like you just handed her a secret. “okay,” she says, soft. “yeah. okay.”

on the second wednesday of october, you decide to try making apple crisp. nat appears in the kitchen doorway and watches you with her arms crossed, pretending she isn’t there to help but absolutely there to help. “do you want the music?” she asks, already picking up your phone.

“yes,” you say, because cooking without music is just math, and she puts on that band she loves, the one with lyrics that sound like someone wrote them on napkins in a cigarette break. she sways, hip checking you lightly when you mismeasure the sugar. “too much,” she says.

“there’s no such thing as too much,” you say confidently and then add a little more, because you are who you are.

she peels apples with alarming speed. you cut butter into tiny cubes and pretend you’ve done this before. the kitchen fills with that fall smell - browning sugar, cinnamon, the promise of something you’re going to burn your mouth on because you can’t wait. nat climbs onto the counter and swings her legs. “tell me your favorite october,” she says suddenly, unprompted. she does this sometimes, opens a door in the conversation to someplace you didn’t know you could go.

“this one,” you say, almost before you think it through. then you blush, because maybe that’s cheesy. “or… the year my aunt took me to a pumpkin walk and there were lanterns everywhere. we drank hot chocolate that was too hot and licked the lid and burned our tongues.”

“this one,” she echoes, looking a little sideways at you. “you mean it?”

“yeah,” you say, pouring the crumble on top of the apples, letting it fall like gravel. “like, it feels like an obvious answer, but it’s true.”

she leans forward, grabs your sleeve, pulls you between her knees. “i’m gonna kiss you every time you say something like that,” she warns.

“okay,” you say, uselessly.

she kisses you, and the oven ticks, and you hear the upstairs neighbor laugh through the floorboards. the world has many rooms; you’re grateful for this one.

you go to a bar with cheap beer and fake cobwebs and nat leans over the sticky table to whisper gossip in your ear like you’re both at a high school dance. you go to a bookstore that smells like someone’s attic and buy a copy of a spooky novel you both pretend you’re brave enough to read at night. you go to the corner store at midnight for more candles because you let the last one burn too low and now your candleholder is ruined forever (nat calls it “art” and refuses to let you throw it away).

you go to a corn maze because you lost the whiteboard war and nat has a smirk like she knows exactly how annoying she’s about to be. it’s windy and the sky is so blue you want to pocket it. you both pretend to follow the map but end up just wandering. nat leads; you pull her back by the back belt loop when she takes a turn that has the energy of “i totally know where i’m going” and she absolutely does not. she laughs and laughs, head thrown back, free, and you think, not for the first time, that you would follow her anywhere and also maybe you shouldn’t tell her that, or she’ll take you to hell just for the story.

you come home smelling like hay and sugar and somebody else’s bonfire. you shower, lazy, and then stand in the steam while nat writes hi on the fogged mirror like a dumb ghost. she draws a little pumpkin next to it. the steam curls your hair and her lashes clump together and she wipes a heart in the fog and puts your initials in it and then groans at herself and wipes it away.

“we’re disgusting,” she says, pleased.

“so gross,” you agree.

on a thursday, you both sleep through your alarms. neither of you is a morning person; you never have been and nat absolutely refuses to try. the light is gray when you finally drag yourselves out, and the air has that knife edge that says winter is clearing its throat. you both work from home that day, laptops going hot, but every time you look up you catch the other looking back. nat stands at your desk and sets a mug down and it’s the good mug, the one with the little chip on the rim that you always pick anyway.

“you okay?” you ask, because she’s quieter than usual, moving through the apartment like someone’s watching her.

“yeah,” she says. “just… i don’t know. the season change thing. makes me feel like i’m skipping a page. like i missed a cue in a play.”

you reach, hook a finger in her belt loop, tug her close. “you didn’t miss anything,” you say, even though your hands are cold and your words come out like you’re trying them on. “we’re right here.” you press your forehead to her sternum. you feel her breathe.

“okay,” she says. then again, softer. “okay.”

halloween creeps up the way it always does - slow slow slow and then suddenly it’s everywhere and your neighbors have gone insane with the fake spiders and someone has a skeleton hanging by its ankles in their window. you do not commit to a costume the way you promised you would. nat assembles one out of your closet two hours before you’re supposed to go out: a hastily cut-up t-shirt, eyeliner smudged into something that looks intentional, a safety pin through nothing useful. she looks like she always looks, only sharper, as if someone turned up the saturation.

you wear a cape, because why not. nat bites your shoulder through the fabric and you make a noise you will deny later. you end up not going out at all. someone is throwing a party that promises six kinds of punch and a fog machine and you intend to go, truly, but then you sit on the floor to lace your shoes and nat sits behind you and wraps her arms around you and rests her chin on your shoulder and you sit there for a long time without moving. the party goes on without you.

you watch a scary movie you both pretend is not scary. you turn all the lights off and set the pumpkin on the windowsill so it watches the street. every few minutes a group of kids goes by in costumes and shrieks and someone’s mom yells “slow down!” and someone’s dad says “who wants more candy?” and you feel this swell of everything, this ache of how good ordinary can be.

nat pauses the movie halfway through and says, “i want to take you out,” like the words hurt her teeth because she doesn’t like wanting things out loud. “somewhere nice. like with cloth napkins. like a real date.”

“we’re always on a real date,” you say, sliding your fingers under the waistband of her sweats, just enough to suggest something. she lifts a brow and you retreat. “i mean, yes. yes, a place where i have to pretend i know which fork is the salad one.”

“the smaller one,” she says, relieved you didn’t laugh at her. “we’ll go next week.”

“i’m gonna order the most expensive dessert,” you threaten.

“i’ll tip extra,” she counters. “not because of you. because of me.”

you both grin and then you let the movie run and nat tucks herself into your side like she always does when she’s too buzzy to sleep. later, you blow out the pumpkin and the room smells like warm wax and cinnamon and the kind of smoke that isn’t from a cigarette.

november isn’t here yet - it’s hovering in the doorway - but the first frost comes one morning while you’re both still in socks in the kitchen. nat is mid-rant about something small and righteous - people who don’t let others off the train before they get on - and you’re nodding along, pouring coffee, when you glance out the window and see it: the roofs like someone dusted them with sugar, the grass imitating glass.

“hey,” you interrupt, pointing. “look.”

nat goes quiet in that immediate way she does when something outside herself gets her attention. she steps closer to the window and you stand behind her and wrap your arms around her shoulders, chin hooking over. the frost throws the light back. the breath you both let out fogs the glass a little.

“frost,” you say.

“yep,” she says, and you don’t move, and then you do, turning her in your arms and kissing her there in the too-bright kitchen, coffee halfway poured, the sound of someone dropping a pan downstairs adding percussion. it’s a soft kiss, not the kind of kiss that promises anything except this exact moment. when you pull back, you feel weirdly shy.

nat is smiling, small, like something she’s holding just for herself. “i love you,” she says, too casual to be anything but true.

you feel the words hit you, familiar and new. “i love you,” you say back, as if you mean it for the first time and also the thousandth, because both can be true.

“okay,” she says, like you’ve just entered into a pact. “let’s go outside and freeze our asses off.”

you grab coats. you go down the stairs. the frost crunches under your boots and it’s like the world is made of candy. nat sticks her tongue out to catch nothing because she’s a weirdo. you take a picture of the way her hair glows in the light and later you will look at it while you’re supposed to be working and feel your stomach go warm.

and then one night, sometime in the middle of the month without a name, when the windows are fogged and your playlist has looped and the pumpkin has started to collapse in on itself in a dignified way, you end up kissing in the kitchen like you’re both starving.

it starts with an argument about nothing - a dish left too long, a sock in a weird place, the way nat disappears into her head sometimes without telling you she’s going - and you say something unhelpful and she makes a face and you take a breath and say, “i’m sorry,” before it can become a thing. it dissolves like sugar. she steps into you and you step into her and then there’s the sharp-sweet scrape of her teeth on your lower lip and your hands are at her waist and her fingers are in your hair and she says, “hey,” like a warning and a promise and then you are both pressed up against the counter, kissing like you’re trying to climb inside one another.

she tastes like the orange you split after dinner, pith bitter on the edges. you tilt her head and kiss her jaw, the warm spot under her ear. she makes a sound you could put in a jar for winter. you’re still in your socks and one of hers slides on the floor and you laugh into her mouth and that breaks something open. she lifts you onto the counter and steps between your knees and it’s a simple movement but it knocks your breath out.

“tell me what you want,” she says, voice going low around the words.

you blink at her, overwhelmed, but this is the part you’re good at with each other, the part where you say the thing. “you,” you say, heat flaming high in your cheeks even though you’ve done this so many times. “want your hands on me. want you to keep kissing me. want to-” you swallow, okay, say it- “feel you everywhere.”

she nods, like you’ve passed a test you were going to pass anyway. “okay,” she says, and you don’t know how she does it, how she makes okay feel like a spell.

her mouth finds your throat and she licks a stripe up to your ear and you shiver so hard you almost drop your grip on the counter. she’s careful, always careful, but not reverent; she bites, she sucks, she leaves little marks because she’s territorial in the way that’s more this is mine than i own this. her hands slide under your shirt, calloused fingertips on your stomach, and you clench around nothing because the anticipation is a whole body thing.

“so pretty,” she says, not like she’s trying to flatter you, but like it’s a fact she’s remembering out loud. “always so pretty for me.”

you curse, embarrassing. she grins against your skin and drags your shirt up and off in one smooth, practiced move. she learns you every time like the map changes, like you change. her mouth finds your chest, slow, not teasing exactly but unhurried, like she knows exactly how much you can take. she sucks, gentle at first and then firmer, and you arch into it, frantic in this quiet, kitchen-lit way.

“bed?” you manage, and she shakes her head once.

“here,” she says.

she kisses down, mouth hot on your stomach, and you’re clutching at her shoulders now, fingers digging in where leather would be if she were wearing that stupid jacket. she looks up at you, eyes gone dark, and you nod. you don’t even know what you’re nodding at; it’s a blessing anyway.

she gets on her knees. the floor is probably cold; she doesn’t seem to care. she mouths at the inside of your knee through your sweatpants, little scraping bites that make you squeak. she slides your waistband down painfully slow, watching your face, and when she finally gets where she’s going you swear again, uncreative, and she laughs.

“you’re so loud,” she says, like a compliment.

“you like it,” you breathe.

“i do,” she admits, and then she puts her mouth on you and any coherent thoughts you have wander into traffic. she is thorough and mean in the best way, using her tongue like she’s writing a letter you’re going to keep under your pillow. she slides her fingers under and over and into, not rushing, letting you push into her hand, letting you decide how greedy you want to be. she looks up every few seconds, just to watch your face, just to make sure she’s making you fall apart. your hips jerk and she pins you, not hard, just a reminder.

“nat,” you say, like a plea, like a prayer.

she hums and the vibration makes you stutter. she crooks her fingers just right and everything in you goes bright and hot. she keeps you there, hovering, the edge a thin line she’s good at walking with you. “say it,” she murmurs, mouth slick against you.

“please,” you say, already trembling. “please, baby, please.”

she gives you what you ask for. she always does. she pushes you over and the world drops out. you come hard, sharp, falling into it like the first time every time. you see static behind your eyes and the kitchen flickers and you grip the counter so tight your knuckles hurt. you feel the laugh she swallows against you when she pulls you through it, dragging it out, greedy in the way that makes you love her more, and then gentler, softer, coaxing, like there you go, i’ve got you.

you sag, panting, dizzy. your hands shake and your socks are weirdly half-off and you start to laugh because the human body is a disaster and nat rests her forehead against your thigh, breathing like she just ran a fast mile. after a second she stands, cracks her knees, winces, and you both laugh harder because yes, you’re young, but you’re not that young.

she kisses you, slow, and you taste yourself on her tongue and its own thing sparks low in you. you tug her closer by the waistband and return the favor because you like the symmetry, because she’s watching you with her mouth slightly open and her pupils blown and you want to put that look everywhere. you slide your hand down, over, in, do it the way she likes it, the way she taught you with breathless interruptions and “right there, don’t stop,” and “yes, just like that.” she leans her forehead into yours, lashes trembling, whispering your name like a dare. you set a rhythm and she follows and then you speed up and she breaks a little, sweet, and you feel the moment it happens, when she goes from okay to oh. she grips your wrist, not to stop you, to anchor, and then she goes quiet in the way she does when it hits too good and then she makes a sound you want to keep somewhere safe and she’s gone, shaking, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut.

you hold her through it. you kiss the corner of her mouth. you whisper good girl, and she laughs, surprised and pleased, and bites your lip, which is how she says thank you without saying thank you.

you breathe together until breathing makes sense again. the pumpkin in the window is a weird collapsed monarch, still trying to glow. the floor is cold under your toes. the room smells like cinnamon and sex and the faintest memory of burnt toast. it’s ridiculous and perfect.

“counter… disgusting,” nat says again, fond, voice ragged.

“incredible,” you correct, stretching with shaky legs. “also, i think i pulled something.”

“same,” she says, wincing, then smirks. “worth it.”

“completely.”

you clean up. you drink water and pretend it’s a ritual and not the bare minimum. you put the kettle on and then forget about it and it shrieks, you both jump and laugh at each other. you stack the dishes you didn’t wash earlier. nat presses her forehead to the back of your neck while you stand at the sink and it makes you shiver in a way that is less sexual. she wraps her arms around your waist, you sway and the world narrows to the circle of her body.

“i’m happy,” she says into your shoulder, like it’s contraband she’s smuggling across a border.

“me too,” you say, because you are, because that’s not a small thing.

the days edge toward that flat gray that will be november, but you wring every bit of color you can out of them. you go to the tattoo shop together and get tiny leaves on the inside of your wrists, not matching-matching but obviously a pair. the artist is sweet and calls you “love” and asks, “how long have you been together?” and nat says “a minute” with a grin that makes the word feel like a lifetime. you hold hands during, even though it doesn’t hurt that much. after, you press your wrists together like you’re checking for a pulse.

you buy more candles because you’re reckless. you stick more leaves in books to press them. you try a new soup recipe and it’s weird but you eat it anyway, then you order pizza and eat it leaning against the counter, each slice folded. your playlist is now the same cheesy title but; (deluxe edition) and nat has added even more songs with weird titles, you don’t complain.

one night you string fairy lights across the ceiling and the room becomes something else, softer and not trying so hard. nat scowls at the lights until one flickers and then she looks like she wants to apologize to it. you lay on the floor under them and hold hands and point out which bulbs you think are the most heroic.

“what’s the plan for winter?” nat asks, not nervous exactly, just… curious about the shape of it.

“more soup,” you say. “more sweaters. more stupid movies. kissing in snow. making our bed a kingdom. getting one of those space heaters that looks like a tiny fireplace and pretending we’re rich.”

“hot chocolate,” she adds. “mittens. pretending to like hockey.”

“we don’t have to pretend,” you say. “we can just not like it.”

“okay,” she says, soft, smiling into the ceiling.

you turn your head and look at her in the fairy light. she’s got a small frown line from thinking and a smudge of something on her cheek and a mouth you swear you could write poetry about if you were a different, worse person. you lick your thumb and wipe the smudge and she rolls her eyes and kisses your thumb and you both make a face and then laugh. outside, someone walks their dog and you can hear the collar jingle, somewhere, far off, a siren wails and then stops, and here, in this apartment that sometimes smells like onions and sometimes like old smoke and always like you two, nat shifts closer until your shoulders touch.

on the last sunday before the month turns, you make pancakes that are more like little cakes and less like pans. you ruin the first one and call it the sacrificial offering. nat plays a song that is so obviously a november song that you add it to the october playlist out of spite. you both wear socks with holes and make fun of each other’s toes. you open the freezer and a bag of peas falls out and bursts and you stand there surrounded by peas on the floor like some kind of vegetable horror show until you crumple into laughter so intense you have to sit down. nat takes a video of you cackling and later texts it to you from three feet away.

you go for a walk even though it’s colder than yesterday, because the sun is still pretending it cares. you stop for coffee and hot chocolate and nat burns her tongue and refuses to admit it and you kiss her anyway, reckless. you pass a yard with an inflatable turkey already up. the leaves are committing to their bit, falling in clumps, and you kick through them like kids. nat finds a leaf that looks like a star and puts it behind your ear. you leave it there until it falls out in the shower.

that night, you light all the candles because you like the melodrama. nat flicks the lighter three times for one stubborn wick and each time you say “nice” in a fake stoner voice until she hits you with the dishtowel. the pumpkin is done for, skin sagging, smile no longer charming. you carry him carefully to the compost bin like he’s a fallen hero. “goodnight, sweet prince,” nat says, solemn, and you snort so hard you scare a cat you didn’t know was nearby.

back upstairs you curl into each other on the couch, and watch the first fifteen minutes of three different movies without committing. you end up not watching anything, just talking, the kind of talking that doesn’t have to be about anything to be about everything. nat tells you a story about a halloween when she was a kid that starts out funny and sidesteps into something that makes your chest ache, and you put your hand on her knee and squeeze, not interrupting, not fixing, just there. she finishes and shrugs like she’s embarrassed to have told it, and you say, “i’m glad you were a kid who made it here,” and she looks at you like you put a hot drink in her hands on a cold day.

“me too,” she says, after a second.

you kiss. it’s a good kiss. slow, unhurried, like there’s really no where else to be, because there isn’t. her hands are warm on your jaw. your fingers slide into her hair. the lights blink, one of them going out permanently, and nat says, “rude,” against your mouth.

“we’ll get more,” you say.

“yeah,” she says. “we will.”

the calendar will flip and winter will come and the radiator will clank and you will both complain and then learn how to like the cold again. but right now, it’s still autumn. you did the things you thought you would and some you didn’t, and there’s still more to do, like wake up tomorrow and make coffee and argue about knives and kiss in the kitchen again. you will buy more gourds, even though you said you wouldn’t. you will make soup and music and plans.

nat falls asleep on your shoulder, mouth open a little, hair in your face, and you sit there holding up the weight of her and the night and the season like you’re strong enough. turns out you are.