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Sam/Deena-Combo of 2/19. Walking through an apple orchard with your partner/Aw, you're blushing. No, I'm just cold.

Thank you, anon, for the excuse to write pure, unadulterated, sappy, sappy fluff.

Since the breaking of the curse, Shadyside seems to have let out its first exhale in over three hundred years. The grip around the throat of the town might not have belonged to Sarah Fier, but it was there all the same, fingers tightening a little more each year until everything -the people, the buildings, the land itself- had been choked within an inch of its sad, pathetic existence.

But now…now Deena can’t help but notice the subtle changes, the things she doubts most of her neighbors will even pick up on at all. The burst of reds and oranges as the leaves continue to change colors, blooming like tiny sunsets even in the moments before death, turning a color other than the drab gray that seemed to permeate everything. The air smells cleaner, crisp and cold with the promise of frost on the window sills and a future of smoke curling from chimneys. Bird song and playful squirrels and dogs that wag their tails rather than growl distrustfully at passersby and that red, red moss that Deena sees everywhere now, as though it’s following her. Or maybe she just never noticed before, never had a reason to, especially since she was too busy noticing the cracks in the sidewalks instead, the past due bills stuffed into the mailbox, the way the pantry always seemed to be bare.

And while some of those things are still hanging around, the feeling of that hand around her neck seems to be loosening too, now that her father seems to have finally found a decent job. Now that Deena has her own after school job lined up just in time for a holiday she might actually care about this year.

Though she’s really going to miss moments like this one: Sam’s hand in her own, the two of them walking side by side, the result of an unexpected phone call that had caught Deena still lazing around on a Saturday morning with no plans ahead of her, her heartbeat changing rhythm in time to the sound of Sam’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Do you want to-” And Deena hadn’t really needed to hear anything after that because yes, the answer is always yes when it comes to Sam and any chance she has to spend time with her and Deena can’t even be mad that the rest of that sentence had apparently been, “check out the orchard outside of town.”

The place is made for tourists, not teenagers from a shitty town thirty minutes away, but Deena doesn’t mind that either. Two months ago she wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this, with all these smiling families and people road tripping to make a special visit to what is essentially just rows and rows of trees but right now…it’s not so bad.

It’s one of those places where you pay to pick the apples and carry them around with you while you force your kids to take cutesy pictures that make it look like your entire family doesn’t want to murder one another -something Deena considers herself an expert on now that she’s seen three such mothers attempting to wrangle her brood into exactly that photo- but she does have Sam’s hand wrapped tightly around hers and the early afternoon sun is filtering through the leaves and across the crown of Sam’s head in a way that makes her look ethereal and perfect and what, exactly, does Deena have to complain about?

“This is kind of a scam, right?” Deena smirks, because complaining is in her nature and she’s got the woven basket dangling from her other hand. “They’re practically making us do the work for them. And we have to pay to take these stupid apples home.”

“I’m not sure it counts as a scam if we get to take the apples home with us,” Sam points out, tipping her head back so she can study the branches arching over them, the rounded apples dangling just out of reach unless one is feeling particularly enterprising enough to jump up to grab them.

It's been just long enough since…everything that the bruises have mostly faded from Sam’s temple and jaw, that the shadows have lightened under her eyes, that she’s started smiling again like she means it and not like she feels bad about the impulse. Deena lets her gaze settle on Sam’s profile, tempted to do so many things, but she settles, for the moment, on just letting the feeling of Sam’s hand in hers reassure her that all of this is real.

“What do I need with five pounds of apples?” Deena scrunches up her nose, genuinely confused by the idea. “It’s not like I remember how to, like, bake a pie or something. Sarah Fier was a little too busy to pass that trick on.”

Sam laughs, shaking her head. “Maybe if you ask her really nice, she’ll fill you in. Maybe she has more time now that she’s not haunting an entire town.”

“Hey, she wasn’t actually the one who-”

“Oh, I know,” Sam assures her quickly, pulling her hand free from Deena’s so that she can let it settle against her hip instead, her fingers curling around the loops of Deena’s jeans to hold her firmly in place.

As though Deena would ever think about going anywhere else.

“I just like when you get all fired up about it,” Sam adds with a mischievous grin, eyes bright. “It’s kinda cute.”

Deena lifts her eyebrows like the brush of Sam’s touch, the feeling of her words twining their way through her rib cage, doesn’t fill Deena with a rush of heat, a flutter of excitement. She’s starting to lose track of some things, like all the little ways that she falls in love with Sam every day, or the number of times that she’s been lucky enough to press her lips against Sam’s, to pull her in for a kiss. But there are so many things Deena knows she will never forget: this moment and every one that she might be lucky enough to have after it.

“Cute,” Deena says as flatly as she can, certain she’s not fooling Sam in the slightest. There’s no way that Sam can’t read her like a book, a story brought to vibrant life by a smile and a brush of fingertips on skin. “I don’t think so.”

But Sam’s smile doesn’t fade and she only looks all the more pleased with herself. “Look. You’re blushing.”

And, yeah, Deena can feel it, the heat that is radiating from her skin and is likely strong enough to make the world around them think they’ve bypassed autumn all together. Sam’s words and her gaze aren’t really doing much to help the situation either.

“No,” Deena protests uselessly. “I’m just cold.”

Sam lifts her eyebrows, her skepticism clear as day. Still, Sam doesn’t call her out on this rather obvious lie. Instead, she just pulls Deena closer, a hand around the nape of her neck, the other still pressed against the spot where a scar is already knitting the skin together and kisses her. It’s getting easier, these moments, when they’re in places other than Deena’s car or her bedroom or the back of a movie theater showing whatever the fuck to an otherwise empty auditorium, when there’s no easy way to forget the world around them. But the uncertainty is slowly starting to slide away, the hesitation chased off by the always vivid reminder of how easy it is to lose someone, and so Deena loses herself in Sam instead, letting the empty basket fall to their feet as she puts her hands to better use. Sam’s cheeks are cold beneath her palms and Sam’s lips taste like the cinnamon from the cider they’d had before starting their trek into this orchard that Deena is feeling slightly fonder of now and Deena kisses her again and again and again just to make sure she gets every last lingering bit of sweetness.

“There,” Sam says softly, her breath a whisper against Deena’s lips, against her cheeks. “That should help warm you up.”

Deena swallows, shaking her head. “Nope. Still cold. Keep trying.”

Sam seems happy to oblige.

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