The neighborhood had an old, easy charm, nothing curated, only worn sidewalks and the kind of fences people forgot to fix. The kind of place with cracked sidewalks and lopsided fences, where fall clung to every branch. Pumpkins sat in rows on porches, some carved with jagged grins, others painted with careful brushstrokes. Skeletons lounged on lawn chairs and dangled from trees. Somewhere, wind chimes made of bones, or maybe just enthusiastic metal, sang in the dusk.
Blair wore a black skirt, fishnets, black heels, and a leather jacket that offered zero warmth but looked incredible. Fingerless gloves completed the look, one with an additional hole in the thumb that annoyed her the whole walk.
Ashar didn’t need gloves, or a coat, or the knit beanie she made him wear anyway “for disguise,” which made him look less like an otherworldly sex deity and more like someone’sInstagram boyfriend.
He didn’t complain. When they held hands, Blair tried not to notice how warm his skin was, or how his fingers fit around hers like he’d done it before. Like he remembered it from another life.
They stopped at a food truck glowing gold beneath a string of twinkle lights. She ordered hot cider, and he got one too.
She looked at him, “It’s part of the aesthetic.”
Blair took her cider, her fingers brushing his for a second. The cup felt too warm in her hands, as if it might melt, like she might melt.
He took it without a word, fingers curling around the paper like it was something important.
On a bench between the trees, they shared fried dough dusted with cinnamon sugar. They tore off pieces, not quite looking at each other as they licked the sweetness from their fingers. It almost felt like high school, but more fragile, more real.
Ashar laughed at something she said about pumpkin spice being a government conspiracy.
“I don’t understand everyone’s obsession with pumpkin spice,” she said, licking sugar from her thumb. “The smell is fantastic, but apple cider is the superior taste by far.”
Blair tucked her knees up on the bench and leaned into his side like it was the most natural thing in the world. But under it all, under the cider and the lights and the shallow fall air, she still felt it.
The static beneath her skin, the countdown, the goodbye, quiet and heavy, and waiting at the edges. They didn’t speak much on the way home, because they didn’t need to.
They walked close, shoulders brushing. Every now and then,Ashar would look at her like he was trying to memorize her silhouette against the amber streetlights.
Blair pretended not to notice. She didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to make it real, but she was already grieving him.
* * *
That night, when they undressed, it wasn’t hurried. No fumbling, no frantic heat, just slow movements, quiet as breath. It wasn’t about lust, it wasn’t even about need, it was something softer.
Something Sadder.
It was worshipful.
Ashar stood in front of her, bathed in golden windowlight, and Blair reached for the hem of her shirt like she was unwrapping something sacred. Her hands trembled, not from nerves, but from the weight of what they both knew: this might be the last time.
He helped her, peeling the fabric over her head, his knuckles grazing her ribs like a kiss. She undid his buttons with shaking fingers, revealing skin in slow inches, inked, warm, impossibly real. His chest rose and fell like he was trying to stay calm, but his eyes never left hers.
When they were bare, she didn’t cover herself, and he didn’t look away.
He touched her like she might vanish, palming her hip, tracing her collarbone, reverent in every motion.
Not just want, not even love, no, this was something older, something bigger, like she’d always been carved into him, long before this night.
Then he kissed her, slow, unhurried, like time didn’t matter.
Blair curled her fingers in his hair and pulled him with her tothe bed.
The kiss deepened, and with it came a shift, Softness, yes, but also ache.
Longing, sharpened into something knife-edged.
Ashar moved over her, slid between her thighs with the kind of reverence reserved for gods and dying stars.
He didn’t tease, he didn’t speak.
