"Looks like it's time to rake the leaves" for Laura/Robbie (and Hathaway if you like!)
Well I had the loveliest time writing this! (And it finally feels like Fall here!) Thanks for the prompt. It’s mostly just Laura and James but that’s because I am toying with the idea of writing lots more Autumnal stuff with all three of them. I am all in favor of a new oft used tag on AO3 being AWP (Autumn without plot, the perfect fic to read and write on a chilly day while drinking pumpkin coffee.)
(Here’s the prompt post in case anyone else wants to write some sweet Autumnal fluff) :D
Laura fills the french press and sets the kettle to boil. A particularly loud gust of wind woke her to find only one man at her side and, used to being warmed on all fronts, felt cold and padded downstairs in search of coffee and James.
She leans sleepily on the sink and peers out at his jumpered but barefoot form on the patio. Though he keeps his hair short these days the wind is strong enough to have whipped it in all directions and he has to be freezing as he wraps his arms around himself, hands only out of his pajama pockets long enough to cup a cigarette, which takes three tries before he lights it successfully. As the kettle boils and she pours the water into the carafe, she imagines herself going out to him and beginning the old familiar lecture that calls to mind the lungs of smokers in autopsies. She isn’t proud of her scare tactics, but she only uses them because she’s scared herself. It is only recently that her own small happiness has become all the larger for the addition of James, and all the attendant worries that come with adoring and cherishing another person are now hers.
But as she pushes down the plunger she worries only about his bare feet and cold hands. She pours a cup, wraps herself in a blanket from the sofa and pushes the sliding door open just as James is putting out his cigarette. His hands go back into his pocket and he gives her a half smile, eyes still bleary with sleep and nose red from the wind. She sets the mug down on the arm of the long Adirondack bench and goes to him. She opens the blanket and takes him into her arms, feeling him shiver slightly. She holds him to her tightly, protected briefly from the cold, pressing her nose that has gone icy into his jumper breathing in the smell of cigarettes. She hates that she loves it for all that it reminds her of him. She turns her head and fits herself into the crook of his arm, cheek against his chest she catches his heartbeat in one ear while the wind sounds in the other, and watches his breath just above her head turning to mist. He clasps his hands behind her lower back and in doing so pulls her closer.
“Morning” he mumbles into her hair, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “Weather’s turned on a dime.” He’s lifted a hand out from under the blanket to smoothe down her hair as the wind whips it around her face. “Proper Autumn now” he says. She rocks back and forth slightly to warm them both. “Your coffee will get cold”, she says breaking out of their cocoon and settling herself on the bench. “My coffee?”, he perches next to her, swallowed by the blanket. She shifts closer to him, taking in the lift of his eyebrows, the slight tilt of his head, the crinkle of a smile in his eyes. It’s the simplest things with James that seem to spark and catch. How many cups of coffee has she or Robbie made him? And yet they always seem to warm him so. “Yes, well yours and mine” she says matter-of-factly. She cups the mug in her hands and lowers her face to it breathing into it so that the hot steam billows up, tickling her nose and cheeks.. She takes a sip as James settles beside her and pulls the blanket over the both of them. His hands curl around hers and she relinquishes the mug. He takes a sip as she shifts to pull up her feet and tuck them under his flannel clad legs. His winces a bit at the iciness of her toes then chastises her in mock affront, “that’s cold!” “Oh, you’re fine,drink your coffee”, she says her dismissive tone betrayed by her barely stifled smile. She burrows her toes farther to rankle him, but also to be close enough to pull her knees up into a makeshift ledge on which to balance the coffee that he hands back to her after generous gulp. There’s another great gust of wind, and he wraps an arm around her back bracing her shoulders against the cold and looking out at the leaves caught in tiny cyclones across the yard, then looking back to her he retrieves a tiny yellow leaf from her hair and leans back sighing, enjoying the slowness of the morning and says, “looks like it’s time to rake the leaves.”
