Chapter 3: Fall (Lexa's PoV)
The leaves turn yellow, red, and eventually brown and her paintings take on a hundred new shades of color. I come home to find her with a pencil in her hand and realize the signs of dying trees inspire her, although I keep those specific words to myself. She smiles when her eyes move up from the paper to meet mine, and when I kiss her, she tastes of cinnamon and chocolate.
It sends a warm wave through my chest and I kiss her again.
She puts her sketchbook to the side and presses her hands over my cold ears.
"You're freezing," she says, and I'm not (there's only a slight chill outside) but I don't object because she pulls me onto the couch and into her arms. Her cheek feels warm against my forehead.
"It's not that cold outside," I mumble against her. "We could go for a walk."
"But…it's cold," she answers, and I sit up to see her face scrunched up into something close to a pout. It makes me chuckle and I press my lips against hers.
"We can take a shower when we get back to get warm again," I whisper against her mouth and apparently that's all it takes to persuade her.
We walk through the forest and her earlier reluctance seems to have disappeared completely. She raises her head to look at the warm colors surrounding us, and there's a level of appreciation in her gaze that I could never completely comprehend.
It makes her radiate, locks of blonde hair waving in the occasional gust of wind, blue eyes shining against the brown of the forest floor, and her lips tugged in a smile.
I look at her and it takes my breath away, and I wonder if it's the same thing she's feeling as her eyes roam the colors of the forest.
But she's an artist; she appreciates the shades of orange on the leaves that fall to the ground, she recognizes the way the branches move in the wind, and she's probably already thinking about how to replicate them on a canvas.
She's an artist, and yet I feel like I know beauty when I look at her.
The fresh air burns coldly through my nose and into my lungs, but I hold her hand in mine and it keeps us both warm. The leaves crunch under our feet and I'm vaguely aware of the fact that we're outside, but my mind feels clouded in peacefulness, blinded by the realization of having her next to me. We talk of trivial things and my breath catches whenever I make her laugh.
"Come on," I say after a while, pressing a kiss to her cold cheek. "Let's go home."
Later that day she tugs me into the shower. A hint of the cold remains on her skin as she presses her body against mine, and I close my eyes at the blissful feeling. The warm water crashes over us, sliding into all the curves and creases it can reach, and the way her eyes sparkle makes me lose all sense of time. She brushes the side of her face against mine and I lean down to kiss her neck gently. Her arms circle around me and somewhere in between the steady fall of water and our embrace, she whispers,
"Fall is the embodiment of your beauty."
And I whisper I love her.
When she climbs into bed next to me that evening, bare feet padding over the floor and only wearing an oversized T-shirt, I am already warm under my side of the covers. She kisses my cheek, moving her lips along my jaw and eventually my neck as she buries her face into its crook and snuggles her body close to mine. Her cold, bare feet press against my calves like two blocks of ice and I let her.
"For body heat," she mumbles. "We gotta keep each other warm when it gets colder at night." I smile at her explanation and hum softly. She sighs contently when my arms move around her and I silently hope that sleep won't find me tonight.
Her breathing reflects off my neck and all I want is to hold her like this, forever.