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The sky’s cloudy, as it normally is when they meet. Though the summer sun isn’t blocked out completely (Alfred wouldn’t let him take over that easily) it seemed to wan and pale in unison to the skies around it. As the occasional thin cloud passed over it, pale shadows casted over the ground beneath it, making for a quite cool Thursday afternoon.
These shadows are most interesting to watch in a cafe by a busy street, as dozens of people with dozens of lives constantly make their way up and down the cobbled sidewalks and oftentimes swerving into the road to get ahead of the crowd due to the lack of moving vehicles on the road. However, the bumbling gauze of life that seems to overlay the avenue isn’t their current topic of interest.
"It looks so...sturdy," Summer muses, eyeing the trinket in curious delight. "What do you think would happen if I tried to bounce it on the table?"
"Alfred." Autumn’s eyes look up from his newspaper, the present scowl he has on his face reaching Alfred through the glare despite the rest of his face being covered by the paper. "Please don't attempt to bounce the universal timepiece on a table."
“You’re no fun, Artie.” Deflating from being shot down by the man across him, he sinks onto the cafe table. “I’m sure the universe can forgive us for getting one crack on it.”
“And just what do you mean by ‘us’?” Arthur scoffs. “I have no part in whatever damage you do to the object that ensures that time itself keeps flowing through this planet.”
“Ugh.” Alfred groans - a mutated, demon of a sound that’s forced through the guttural depths of his throat. “This whole thing is boring, I mean, all I do is the same thing every year - I’m surprised I haven’t died from boredom yet.”
Arthur’s brow furrows, slightly hurt by the statement. “Well, I’m certainly not forcing you to stay with me here if I’m such undesirable company. If being like this is so utterly repetitive for you, why don’t you just drop the pendant off and leave every year?” His eyes stare into the blue ones across from them, fearing their reply.
Alfred bites his lip, there are a lot of things he could say to that.
—Because I love you. Because you’re all I know. Because you’re anything and everything and all I’ve been able to do since the start of time is meet you again and agai—
“Never mind, sorry.” Under any other circumstances, Alfred would’ve liked to push the season even further. But they both know that it’s only a matter of minutes before it’s time to pass the baton. “Just forget it.”
Arthur seems to understand, returning to reading his paper with an acknowledging grunt. It seemed to be their thing, fighting - always these little spats that were either solved within the desperation of the hour they got to see each other every year or broiling arguments that left gaping holes where warm sunshine and calming winds should’ve been.
He didn’t want that. Not now. Not when there were only minutes left before they’d have to part ways again.
A small breeze cooks up in the air, and Arthur folds up his paper and sets it down onto the table. “Seems like our clocks are a bit off - I’m starting a few minutes earlier this year.” He holds out one of his hands expectantly as Alfred shoots up into an upright sitting position.
“No way!” Alfred complains, somewhat incredulous. “We’re the seasons, how would our clocks be the one’s that are wrong—“
“We’ve been doing this for millennia, Alfred,” Arthur says coolly, but the disappointed look on his face gives it away. “Just a minute or two off of one year won’t kill us.”
It’s true, it wouldn’t.
Since the beginning when nothing existed but the blue ocean and protozoa that feebly drifted across the planet’s surface, all Alfred knew was to head eastward. There were endless steps through days and days of sunshine and clear skies with a pendant in his hands before he’d stop at a certain point - always the same point - and he’d look up to find him waiting there.
The personification of autumn - or, to him, Arthur.
Since the first crack of sunlight over the horizon it was an endless sift of hellos and goodbyes. A young girl - Spring - would pass the pendant to him when it was time for the flowers to dry into crisps and for toes to skim the edges of water over piers, and he would pass the pendant onto Arthur when it was time for leaves to turn into colors of fire and winds to cool into a pre-winter low.
Since the first crack of sunlight over the horizon, all he knew was to meet him at that one place, again and again.
And, somewhere along the way, he fell in love with him.
From a small patch of land amongst a world of sea, that place grew and flowered until it was paved over to be walked past by all kinds of lives. It was their meeting place, their haven, the sixty minutes they got to spend together every year - no matter how much their hearts yearned, begged, and ached for it to last just a fraction longer.
Yet, to everyone else, it was just the change of seasons.
Autumn came like a chilly blanket that blew out summer's heat with almost celebratory gusto, putting sweaters over people’s backs, hot chocolate on their shelves, cracks in their lips, and crunches in their steps.
Yet little did they know that autumn was a grumpy old man who liked early mornings and bitter tea. Little did they know that autumn read books of timeless love and fairy folklore, sang like the songbirds perched on spring's branches, yet spoke like the fire he breathed into the swaying foliage.
Little did they know that autumn had a smile that rivalled even the light of summer, and that it was the most beautiful goddamn thing Alfred had ever seen.
And he wanted to see it for more than just a brief flash from across a coffee table.
It’d been something brewing within him for the past few years. The fact that he could end the cycle right then and there, shatter the seasons and have them reduced to a pair of humans that could live life as they pleased. The dream was always there, just in reach, trapped within the confines of the glowing pendant he was about to hand over right at this very second.
All he had to do was shatter it.
But couldn’t do it.
In a million years, he still couldn’t do it.
All his hesitations are whittled into the split second he pauses before dropping the timepiece into Arthur’s awaiting hand, watching the orb of light within it change from a blazing yellow to a cooling orange as it came into contact with Arthur’s palm.
“Thank you, Alfred.” He curls his fingers over the pendant - still warm from summer’s heat - as if it were his most precious possession, and Alfred feels like suddenly those fingers were around his heartstrings. “Happy Halloween, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.”
Alfred feels the corner of his lips lift into a toothy grin. “And a Happy Valentine’s Day.” He slides his hand over Arthur’s free one, a motion that came as naturally as the change of seasons to them.
He wanted him to know - how much he wanted to let his hand linger, how much he wanted to pull the other down and kiss that heart-wrenching pout right off his face, how much he wanted to shatter that damned pendant to pieces and laugh at how the world wouldn't turn on without them.
But they have duties to do.
They’re seasons, after all.
“See you soon, sweetheart.”
Arthur smiles then, and Alfred feels it breathe life into him for a second longer - like blowing onto the dying embers of kindling in a campfire. Autumn stands to bend over the table, hand travelling to lift Summer’s golden bangs from his sun-kissed skin and plant a kiss of his own onto his forehead. “See you soon, love.”
His lips, despite how cold the rest of him is, are warm and pleasant against his brow. Alfred shuts his eyes and melts into that warmth in the split second before a breeze blows past and then Arthur is gone with a crest of autumn leaves that now tumble feebly through the air and flitter down the busy street.
Alfred allows a moment or two to pass before the first tear curves like a dewdrop from the corner of his closed eye, his slightly parted mouth twitching slightly.
They’ll meet again.
Outside of a small cafe between a flower shop and a secondhand bookstore.
Their little rendezvous.