#wrm1225

Zhenya looks up from where he’s hunched over, a pumpkin carver in his hand. He’s actually rather proud of his handiwork, truth be told—he’s managed to pack in a lot of detail, now that he’s experimented a little with how much to carve out and what to leave behind.

“What else I’m supposed to do?” Zhenya asks, pointing. “I already do this.” He turns one of the pumpkins he’s already finished toward Sidney, a stylized version of the number 71 missing from the pumpkin skin.

It’s… maybe not the prettiest pumpkin in the world, but it’s readable, at least.

“So you have two pumpkins all about you,” Sid says, and Zhenya can tell he’s trying not to laugh.

“You want pumpkin for you, you carve yourself,” Zhenya tells him, pointing at the handful of other gutted pumpkins on the table.

Zhenya might have gotten just a little carried away at the farmer’s market that morning, but what’s done is done.

Sid sighs and sits down at the table, pulling one of the empty pumpkins toward himself. “Fine. Do you have stencils?”

Zhenya grabs the stack of stencils he’d printed out, handing over one with an 87 on it that matches his 71. “This one for practice. Then you do face.”

“I’m not doing my face,” Sid says. He tapes the stencil on the pumpkin, using one of the tools to trace the outline of the design into the skin.

Zhenya waves the stencil of Sid’s face in the air anyway, setting it next to Sid’s arm. “You change mind, I know. Get jealous of pumpkin with my face, he too handsome.”

Sid rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, and that makes Zhenya smile, too.

It’s quiet then, save for the music Zhenya had put on. It only takes a few more minutes for him to finish his gourd self-portrait, but when he looks up at Sid to show it to him, Zhenya pauses.

Sid’s concentrating hard on getting the outline just right, his brow furrowed a little, eyes determined. His lips are moving just enough for Zhenya to tell he’s mouthing the words to the song on the radio, and when Sid licks his lips, Zhenya can’t stand it.

“He finished,” Zhenya says, and when Sid looks up, Zhenya can actually watch Sid’s expression turn from interest to surprise and then thinly-veiled amusement.

Okay, so maybe Zhenya needs a little more practice with carving—at least that’s a good excuse for buying so many pumpkins.

“It looks just like you,” Sid says, and Zhenya glares at him. His forehead isn’t quite that big, thank you very much.

“What yours look like?” Zhenya asks, walking over to Sid’s side of the table.

He should have known. Sid’s only just starting to carve out chunks of pumpkin, and the stencil was transferred perfectly, the lines of the 7 smooth and straight even as Sid’s started to cut it out.

“You do pumpkins before?” Zhenya asks, and Sid stares at his pumpkin, looking guilty.

“Only a few times, when I was younger,” he says. “Not every year.”

“You help me with pumpkin?” Zhenya asks after a moment, a little sheepish, but then Sid looks up at him and smiles.

“Yeah, let’s see what we can do.”

Zhenya’s self-portrait is unsalvageable, and in the end they have to call it a day. But they do put out the numbered pumpkins onto the front porch, little battery-operated tea lights stuck inside to make the 87 and 71 glow.

After much deliberation, Zhenya puts his other pumpkin in their bedroom, setting another little tea light inside so that it acts like a nightlight when the lights are off.

“It’s ambience, Sid,” Zhenya tells him with a smirk after Sid yelps upon seeing it.