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Out in the little country town he lives in, everyone who knows Austen will tell you that he was made for the summertime.
The boy is obsessed with his garden. The moment the snow melts, he’s outside digging around in the dirt. The neighbours don’t even knock on the door anymore, they just head straight to the backyard if they need to borrow a cup of sugar. And there are a lot of neighbours who come looking to borrow some sugar (or a trowel, or an extra pail, or, one infamous time, a hand with getting something down from a tall shelf).
See, if Austen loves summer, summer loves him right back. The way he looks when he’s out in the yard, on his knees in the dirt? It’s enough to give a girl the chills even in the dead of the midday sun. At least, that's the collective opinion of every lady in the HOA. The sunshine burnishes his hair golden, lights his eyes to match the bright blue of the clear, cloudless skies, and the sheen of sweat on his skin just makes the muscles in his arms more obvious when they flex. He is, in short, a local treasure, and a highlight of the summer months.
Austen knows nothing about his local heartthrob status, although he'd be embarrassed if he did. This is especially because, while he likes summer well enough, it’s not actually his favourite time of the year.
In truth, the season that Austen is most excited for will always be what comes after the golden months of the middle of the year. His joy comes when the leaves start to shift from green to red and gold and the birds start heading south.
Autumn is harvest time, you see, and while he loves growing vegetables, he also loves eating them. You can’t do much more with a flower than look at it, but a zucchini or a nice squash can make for a good meal. That's what he tells people, at least. The real reason why Austen loves the fall is a simpler one: autumn time is when she returns to him.
The first sign comes when he’s cooking a stew on a September afternoon, warming a pot of apple cider on the side to drink later. The sunset streams through the kitchen, gilding the blond wood of his cabinets with copper and bronze like something out of a fairy tale. Steam is rising from the stove, carrying warm notes of cinnamon and spices to blend with the savoury fennel and tomato of dinner. Austen’s stomach rumbles in anticipation of the feast he’s going to treat himself to tonight.
He’s just finished turning the burner down to let the pot simmer when an icy breeze curls over the nape of his neck, despite the fact that all of the kitchen windows are shut tight.
Austen leaves his stew simmering in the pot and heads upstairs to get a sweater, smiling for no good reason. The furnace in his house is working just fine, but he knows he’ll start noticing cold spots soon.
When he comes back to the kitchen, several of the cupboards are hanging open, even though they were all shut when he left, and his ladle is lying on the ground.
“Sorry. I should have left a smaller spoon out for you to taste with.” He murmurs as he picks it up.
No one answers.
That’s alright -- it’s still September. The nights will only get longer from here.
By the time October comes around, Austen starts to stay up later than he should. There’s always some mediocre TV series to binge; something not engaging enough for him to care about the plot holes, but addictive enough to keep him awake late into the night. Or day in today’s case, given the grey light of false dawn filtering through the windows when he gets to the end of his latest series.
Austen rubs his eyes as he stumbles down the stairs to get a glass of water, and he nearly misses the last step when the shadow of a moving person flickers through his peripheral vision.
His heart rate spikes, his breathing speeds up, and his palms start to sweat, but Austen knows this isn’t fear. Oh, it could be. It should be frightening, to have an unidentifiable something dog his footsteps when he’s at his weakest, his most vulnerable.
But it’s not. Of course it's not.
When he crawls back into bed, Austen can hear the trees creaking in the wind, and the moaning outside his windows almost sounds like someone calling his name. He drifts to sleep feeling someone’s eyes on his back and feels safer for it.
The deeper into October they get, the more she’ll have come awake. He’ll be able to see her soon. At least, when she lets him.
In the fashion of her kind, she’s not the straightforward sort. No, Austen’s ghost (because that’s what she is) likes to tease him. She’ll haunt the corners of his vision when he’s just finishing a yawn, or flicker over his shoulder for half a glimpse when he’s washing his face, eyes blurry with water.
She calls herself Cordelia, and he calls her “my love”.
He doesn’t know why or how she comes to him. There’s no rhyme or reason to when she shows up, and he’s never looked for one in case finding out makes the magic stop working.
All he cares about is that her smiles are kind, that her eyes are as dark and all-consuming as the spaces between the stars, and that, when she touches him, it settles something in his chest that he didn’t even know was restless.
It’s not always Halloween when she finally joins him. Sometimes it’s a few days before, sometimes a few after. The uncertainty means that he tries not to fret until the first full moon of November. She always makes fun of him if she catches him wringing his hands before that.
To keep himself from being too embarrassing, he stays busy. He cooks enough to fill his freezers, goes running, tries to finish the scarf he started knitting last year. Thoughts of her are never far from his mind, but he does manage to fit other things in between and around her.
He’s gotten so good at it that she actually manages to surprise him this year. Granted, he’s fresh out of the shower when she materializes, and the room is fogged up with steam, but still.
Still, he drops his towel when he hears a whisper of “Darling” and then finds himself being spun around and pressed up against the sink to be kissed within an inch of his life. Shock keeps him frozen for a moment, but then a cloud of petrichor and rosemary wafts around him. Suddenly, it clicks. She's here.
He lifts shaking hands to cup his lover's face in his hands. Her clothes are buttoned up all the way to her chin, but she's preternaturally cold. The humid air of the bathroom is nothing in the face of the touch of the underworld that she carries with her. Austen doesn't care what temperature she is; she’s solid. He can touch her.
“Finally,” he gasps into her mouth between kisses. “I missed you.”
“I never leave, you know.” Cordelia says, brushing his bangs out of his face. “Just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I’m not here.”
“It’s not the same when I can’t feel you.”
The gentle slide of her fingers through his hair tightens into a tug. It’s not painful -- more a demand for attention than a rebuke.
“Do you feel me now?”
With a gasp, he gives in to her, tilting his head eagerly.
He feels her lips curling into a smile when she presses them to his throat, dropping a line of sharp little kisses down his neck.
“Austen,” she purrs, giving his hair another pull. “I asked a question.”
It takes him a moment to replay her words in his mind, another to form a reply. She waits patiently until he manages to say, “Yes, I feel you.”
“Good.” He whines when Cordelia bites him with bruising force, then sighs when she gentles the pain with a kiss, mouth a hot smear against his collarbone. “I have to say, this is the best you’ve ever been dressed for my arrival.”
“But I’m naked?” His laughter cuts off into a moan when she rocks her still-clothed thigh into his stirring erection.
“Naked is a very attractive look on you. Convenient, too,” she says, pushing her thumb into the purpling bruise she’s kissed into his skin. “Although our location leaves much to be desired.”
In the space of a thought, she’s swept him off his feet and into her arms with otherworldly strength. He shivers and clings to her, arms looped around her neck as she bears him off to the bedroom.
He falls to the bed, his laughter helpless and so very bright because this is exactly where he wants to be: under her, touching her, pressed chest to chest and thigh to thigh and heart to heart. What more could he want?
When he says as much, she clicks her tongue.
“You could want so much more, darling,” she says, but there’s a gleam in her eyes that says she’s charmed.
“Like what?”
“Like this.” She’s already crawling up his body, pushing his shoulders down so that she can settle her knees on either side of his head. Just before she shifts her weight, though, she pauses. “Or maybe your tastes have changed while I’ve been away?”
Her smile is playful, but it doesn’t hide the note of uncertainty in her voice, like he might not want her like this.
“No!”
An inarticulate plea blurts from Austen’s mouth as he grabs her hips and pulls her down. The space between her thighs is a heaven that he’s been dreaming about for months. Her skin is cool on his palms, but when he noses at her curls, he finds the warmth he was looking for. He slides his tongue between her folds and tastes her, laps at her until her slick is flowing and her thighs clench around his head.
“That’s it.” One of her hands comes down to tangle in his hair again, and he moans happily. He tries to make it last, dragging the flat of his tongue over her slit in slow strokes and pressing soft kisses to her clit, but Cordelia is having none of it.
“Give me more, Austen,” she commands, and he could never deny her anything. He closes his lips around her clit and sucks. She moans, and he knows he’s doing well. A charge is building in the air around them, shivering over his skin and telling him that she’s close.
He runs his hands over her legs, cups her ass and pulls her closer, encouraging her to grind down and take what she wants. She takes his invitation and then some, riding his face without care for his comfort. He’s smothered in her, drowning in her honey, and god, but he wants her to come in his mouth more than he’s wanted anything else. More than sunsets, more than autumn leaves, hell, more than he wants air.
When she comes, she cries out his name, and it’s the sweetest thunderclap he’s ever heard. He keeps licking her as she rides out the tremors of her climax, alternating between delving his tongue into her and circling her clit as the aftershocks fade.
“Enough.” Cordelia lifts herself off of him, and it leaves him blinking and stunned for a moment. Something about his look of confusion must be endearing, because she laughs and bends her head to lick her wetness off his cheek, smearing the rest of his face clean with her hand. “Sweet boy. My sweet boy.”
He turns his head and presses a fleeting kiss to her chin. “That’s right. I’m yours.”
With a giggle, she catches his mouth with her own. They trade kisses languidly, pausing only briefly when she shifts to stretch out on the bed beside him. It feels natural to let his hand curl over her side, running down her ribs to the dip of her waist. She laughs when he does, pulls away to flick him in the chest.
“That tickles!”
“Sorry,” he says, looking not at all apologetic. She hums, looking at him knowingly, then kisses his cheek.
“Well. I’ll let it slide since you just took care of me so well. What would you like me to do for you?” She shifts, nudging her thigh between his own, and Austen flushes hot. A million possibilities flash through his head as he recalls all of the fantasies that he’s had since she was last in his bed. In the end, though, there’s one thing he’s wanted more than anything else.
“Could you...” He bites his lip, because even though she’ll probably say yes, she still might say no. “Could you take me?”
“Austen, don’t look so shy.” Cordelia grips his chin firmly and tips his face up to kiss his frown away. “I told you: you can want more.”
He chases her mouth when she breaks the kiss, steals one more press of lips before he says, “I don’t want to want too much.”
“There's no 'too much'. You could want anything.” She cradles his face in her hands. Her eyes are dark as pitch, but oh, how they burn. “Austen, you can have everything."
"But should I?" He looks away, unable to meet her gaze as he continues. "You're amazing. You're this beautiful, graceful, powerful spirit. You walk through shadows and fly and speak to the birds and do magic, and me? I'm just a guy."
He trails off, mouth going soft with sadness before he regroups.
“All I have to offer is myself and only for a couple months a year because I can't follow you wherever you go in springtime.”
"Austen." Her thumb brushes tenderly over his cheek, cool against his skin. “I don't want you to follow me where I go in the springtime. Not for many, many years.”
“I miss you terribly when you leave, though."
Cordelia looks like she's about to cry.
“Austen, please don't--”, she starts, but he knows that she’s going to say something frustratingly, desperately sad, and he doesn’t have the strength to bear it. He darts in and kisses her quiet, trying to convey all of his heartache in this one gesture.
When they break apart, he rests his forehead against hers, breathing hard. With his eyes still closed, he says, "I will join you one day. No one lives forever."
She swallows hard and replies, "I'll welcome you when you do. But you're not to do so even a day before you're meant to."
"I won't." He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly through his nose. "I promise. I won't."
"Good."
They pause, letting the moment settle.
Then, Austen laughs. If it’s a little subdued, neither of them point it out.
“Back to our previous topic," he says, trying a smile on. "If I can want anything, then what I want is you. Just you.”
“Alright, dearest. You can have me.” Cordelia smiles back at him as wiggles free of his embrace. With a playful pat to his rear, she says, “Roll onto your stomach.”
“Can’t we do this face to face?”
“Austen, I can manifest a cock, or I can brace your hips at the right angle to make this pleasurable, but I can't do both right now.” His lover coughs, looking like she’d be blushing if she were still human. “I was eager to return to you, so I rushed things a bit. I’m not at full strength.”
"Don’t feel bad! I’d rather have you here sooner!" Austen catches Cordelia’s hand before he flips over, kisses her knuckles in apology for making her admit something embarrassing. He knew he’d been asking too much.
“I want to give you what you want.” Cordelia sighs, but there’s a smile in the way she speaks, however rueful it may be. “We will do this face to face. I like it that way, too. Just … maybe in a few days? The full moon will help.”
“Yes. But right now… ” Austen gets on his hands and knees, then looks over his shoulder at Cordelia. “You want me like this?”
“Perfect.”
Cordelia gets onto her knees behind him. Her hands wander the familiar planes of his back, travelling down until her fingers dip into the valley at the top of his ass. It’s soothing, but Austen is eager for more. He hisses her name, pleading.
“Alright, no need to fuss.”
She kisses the dip of his spine, then spreads him open. There’s a touch of cold fingers at his opening, and she whispers something in a language that Austen can't quite understand. The words don’t seem to have any consonants or vowels as they shiver through the air, and the strangeness of them makes the hair on the back of Austen’s neck rise. He’s only uncomfortable for a moment though, because then the spell takes effect. Then the familiar blunt weight of Cordelia’s cock is pressing against his hole, and he’s slick where he wasn’t before, giving way for her as easily as if she’d fingered him for hours.
Austen sighs as she slides deeper, savouring the stretch as she sinks into him. It’s so much better than his fingers and fantasies. He pushes back, wanting more of her in him, faster.
Cordelia swats him playfully. “You’re in such a rush tonight!”
“Yes!” He shoots back. “I missed you!”
Her laughter ripples through the air, then she snaps her hips and bottoms out. Austen’s eyes roll back in his head and he moans, but Cordelia doesn’t give him more than a moment to enjoy the feeling before she’s moving again. She sets a fast pace, ruthless and sure, and every time she fucks into him, it feels like something in Austen has come home to roost, has laid its head down and sighed in long-denied contentment. His body aches with how good he feels, but it’s not quite there. He needs something more.
“Cordelia,” he pants as he reaches back to grab at her hand on his hip, trying but unable to find the words for what he wants, too sex-fogged for speech. She understands him anyway.
“Shh, alright.” She squeezes his hand, then leans forward. Her chest presses against his back and her fingers wrap around his neck. They’re not tight, not choking, just holding him still, her touch an apology for all the times she could not in the summer and the spring.
“I’m here now,” they say, louder than words or vows. “I’m not letting go.”
He covers her hand with his own, squeezes in suggestion. He knows she doesn’t need this, but he wants. He wants her handprint on him, wants to trace it with his fingers in the mirror tomorrow and the next day and remember that he's hers.
“Please,” he says, and with that one word she hears everything else he wants to say.
She kisses the back of his neck and tightens her grip on his throat, and he ascends. Each fingertip is a brand on his skin, an ache that lights up brighter and brighter as he struggles for air that’s not coming. He bucks his hips, claimed and full of her, teetering right at the edge of something wonderful.
“Do you feel me, dearest?” Cordelia purrs. She rocks slowly forward, nudges her cock up against his sweet spot and asks again, “Do you feel me?”
Austen shouts soundlessly, electricity crackling through his veins, thoughts full of nothing but her, and yes, yes, yes. He doesn’t want this to stop. He wants to live in this moment, with her in him, over him, claiming him; wants to stay here forever, if only she’d let him. But he’s only human.
Cordelia fucks into him again, and every muscle in his body tenses as he chokes on a strangled cry. His orgasm roars through him as he comes untouched, hard enough that he sees stars. She lets go of his neck when he comes, but keeps fucking him through the aftershocks, milking his prostate until he’s got nothing left to give.
“Gorgeous,” she murmurs as she drags her fingers through the mess on his belly, rubbing it into his skin. “You did so well for me, Austen.”
He can feel her pull out of him, moans distantly at the sudden emptiness, but he’s too fucked out to do anything but catch his breath and let Cordelia take care of him for a while. It’s not until she’s cleaned them up and gotten the both of them tucked under the covers that he manages to get a full sentence worked out around the fuzz of afterglow.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she says, nuzzling her face into his hair.
He smiles up at her, and he’s struck by joy at the fact that he can have her like this, that he can touch her again, see her again after another long summer alone.
“What are you looking at?” She asks playfully, as if she’s confused about what he’s gazing at with such focus.
“You,” he says, reverence in his voice like he’s saying a prayer to something divine; which he is, in a way. He tips his head to kiss her cheek. “I’m looking at you.”
“Look all you want,” she says with an indulgent laugh, like it’s that easy. And maybe it is.
Maybe he doesn’t have to worry about the inevitable coming of spring just yet. It’s only October. He has weeks and weeks to hold her and laugh with her, to feed her the food he’s cooked and drape her in the clothes he’s made. He doesn’t have to worry until the snow starts to melt.
He has time.
“Good night,” he says as he closes his eyes, and means “I love you.”
“I’ll be here when you wake,” she replies as she tugs the blankets up higher around their shoulders, and means “I love you too.”