Title: The Best Part of the Day
Pairing: RussellxEd
Rating: G
Summary: This was Edward's favorite part of the day, though he would never admit it.
Warnings: None, if you know who Russell is.
This was Edward's favorite part of the day, though he would never admit it. When the sun was slipping in that liquid way behind the horizon, when blue faded to purple, purple to pink, and pink to orange down the gradient of sky, and when Russell came in from the orchard, his shirt long abandoned and tossed over his shoulder.
His lover's hair would hang limp with sweat over one eye, obscuring what Edward knew to be a beautiful face, but never saw. Dirt would be smudged over his visible eye where he had tried to wipe away his perspiration and he'd be carrying a basket of lemons in one hand.
There was something hilarious to Edward about the way Russell could look so masculine, all sinewy limbs and lean muscle and sweat and dirt and determination, and still be swinging a basket at his side like a little girl on her way to a picnic. He would, of course, be sure to point that out.
Russell would take care to mutter an appropriate curse in return and ask just when Edward planned on going home. And he would always think he could detect a flash of panic over his lover's face when he asked, as if he was attempting to gauge how serious Russell was. Edward had at some point over the last year managed to seep almost undetected into Xenotime - one suitcase, a forgotten item of clothing, a book or a journal, one new bit of redirected mail at a time and Russell had never once sincerely asked him to leave.
He would, of course, claim that he needed help around the orchard and that was why he had let Edward stay so long. It didn't matter that the older boy avoided working in the trees almost as much as he avoided returning occasionally to Central to deliver a report to The Bastard. It didn't matter that Russell had never asked for his lover's assistance.
And Edward knew it. And so he would make a point to temper the teasing he did of the younger man at the end of the day. Russell would attempt to only make the lightest of short jokes and pretend not to notice that Edward was there waiting for him on the porch every evening when the sun was starting to go down, glinting off braided hair and automail in a way that made him hold a bit more tightly onto the basket of lemons to be sure to not drop them.