Your hands, your hands,
Fall upon mine as waves upon the sands.
O, soft as moonlight on the evening rose,
That but to moonlight will its sweet unclose,
Your hands, your hands,
Fall upon mine, and my hands open as
That evening primrose opens when the hot hours pass.
— John Frederick Freedman, Hands
For all that he teases her about how well he knows her, Wisteria wonders if he has any inkling of just how much everything comes into sharper focus for her when he enters any room.
He’s not the only observant one, between the two of them.
“Darling.” His thumb rubs circles on the back of her hand, a gesture as familiar as breathing after the countless times he’s done so. “You’ve been deep in thought for a while. Care to spare your lover a moment to share what’s on your mind?”
She looks at him, drawn from her absent staring at the expanse of the park he’s taken her to.
In the splendor of autumn, deep within the golden boughs and quaint streets of his hometown, she can see how well the season suits him. Despite his initial unease at returning to Golden Grove, Baxter seems to be holding up pretty well, an unspoken weight lifting off his shoulders as he takes in the - in his own words - largely unchanged streets and the woods that surround them. His eyes are soft as ever when they glance over at her, a familiar deep brown that keeps her grounded.
Her mind wanders down odd paths and tends to float away from the present, like the pale clouds that her own eyes are reminiscent of. Her friends have always teased her that one day she might float too far out of reach for any of them - in fact, she has almost done so, the year that she silenced herself for fear of being a burden on Terry, Miranda, and Cove.
And yet, Wisteria realizes, that same wandering cloud always has a place to come home to. It’s the deep earth and ancient heartwood that her heart sings for, as a small bird coming home to roost on the tall branches of an old oak tree.
“You,” she replies, fingers entwining tighter with his. “I’m thinking about you.”
I think a worryingly large amount about you. Of your hands, of your eyes, of the way your smile feels more tangible instead of dreamlike when you look at me. I wonder why you’re so fascinated with me, when you’re much more interesting.
But Terry told me that it’s normal to think that much about people that you love.
She has noted long before how easily some of her statements can make him flush, for all that she didn’t mean to do it. Wisteria watches with no small amount of interest at the red that creeps over his cheeks. It’s a mystery to her how he seems so surprised at times when she’s always been direct about her affections.
One day, she hopes that Baxter Ward will no longer be so startled at the notion of how he’s wanted.
To his credit, he recovers in record time. With a crooked grin on his face, he tugs her closer. She scoots across the park bench, heart skipping a beat (or several) when his fingers hold her chin in place to tilt it up.
“Only good things on your mind, I hope?”
She crinkles her nose up at him but doesn’t deny it, making him chuckle under his breath. “Just thinking about how your hands sometimes tell me more than your words, you smooth operator.”
He stills against her as she blinks up at him. “Oh? And pray tell, what do they tell you?”
And you call my stare intense?
One of the things she appreciates about him is how long he’ll wait, for her to articulate her thoughts. Back in the summer of their youth, she’d been an impulsive teenager, but her words have become more spare as the years have passed. The confidence with which she says her ‘blunt’ statements is now reserved only for the closest of friends and family.
It’s one of the things that comes with adulthood, she supposes. Rarer smiles, rarer words; she doesn’t want to be too much, cramming herself into something more easily digestible. But Baxter doesn’t want it easy , he wants her.
She has to remind herself of that, sometimes; if she doesn’t, Baxter will make sure she doesn’t forget.
Guess we’ll have to keep reminding each other.
A few beats pass between them. Yet despite the force of his gaze, she never feels threatened. And so she speaks. “When you’re nervous, your hands do this.”
Wisteria copies the gesture with his thumb, keeping her attention solely on his face. The way his breath wavers as the pad of her thumb circles on his skin makes her swallow.
“Indeed?”
She nods, looking down at their joined hands, the way his long, tapered digits seem to dwarf hers. “It comforts you. I’m… glad.”
That she could be a comfort to him in times like this.
It’s not dissimilar to the way she clutches the straps of her messenger bags, and plays with them, whenever something makes her antsy. He’s been holding her hand almost the entire time they returned to Golden Grove. On the flight - business class, because this is Baxter she’s talking about — more and more of his subtle gestures that scream I need comfort started up.
This is a trip they’ve been planning for weeks. It took her moving back closer to her childhood home for him to admit, over dinner, how he wonders from time to time about his old friends.
And so, come a time when their schedules could both afford a small vacation, Baxter Ward takes her to see his town.
A homecoming, after all the years that he’s spent running from the people he’s left hanging. After he reunited with her earlier last year, Wisteria’s a witness to the careful — always so careful, and a little afraid, but he’s trying and I’m so proud — overtures he’s made towards her friends and family. The people in Sunset Bird, who he left confused and maybe a little saddened, after the summer he left.
I was the saddest, she thinks to herself, once the fury that turned my vision red had cleared. But you were all alone, while I had-
Baxter drags a hand through his fringe, pulling her back from memory lane. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth at the gesture. “And when you’re unsure of what to say, you do that.” She laughs under her breath at the narrowing of his eyes. “Or the way you run your fingers along the edges of your clothes, or tug at your collar.”
“You do know everything, don’t you?” His voice is far too light for the simmering heat in his stare. She knows what this entails.
It makes her heart pound, but as he told her before, more than once: Wisteria’s always been attracted to a roguish man. And she brings out that side of Baxter, easy as dancing is to him.
“I watch you, a lot.” She mutters, distraction coming in the form of his arm now encircling her waist. His hand is warm, even through the layers of her clothing, dressed as she is for the season. “Does that bother you?”
“Oh, Ria.” Laughing low in his throat, Baxter’s free hand tugs at the length of her braid. If she doesn’t watch out, she knows that he’ll undo it, fond as he is of the ink-black strands. “Surely, you know me better than that. We’re rather in the same position. I watch you a lot, too.”
It’s rather unfair, she thinks, how quick he is to rob her of her breath with just one look. When she eyes him, wordless, he pulls her onto his lap. Public park be damned, it seems. He meant to show her the place where he used to ride a bike, carefree as a child, with his younger friends and the ballet dancer who first caught his heart. She’s always been curious about Qiu Lin, and the way Baxter spoke of their love for their neighbor.
That’s always the thing with Baxter Ward, isn’t it?
He has a way of spinning the simplest of childhood memories into something out of a romance novel, even if he’s only the observer and not the participant.
This is the furthest thing from her mind now that he has her astride his long legs.
“When you’re this quiet,” he breathes, smile all wicked and face bright. “And uncertain of what to say next, you’ll avoid my eyes and pinch your brow - like so.” She does exactly that, making him laugh. As his chest rumbles, she grabs his shoulders, digging her fingers into the fine fabric of his turtleneck.
His lips crush against hers, and she sighs into his mouth. By the time they part for air, she's holding on to the front of his clothes like it's a lifeline and she, a drowning woman.
As always, he’s happy to let her be as rough as she ends up being with his clothes. The indulgent smirk on his face makes her want to act up.
Wisteria glowers at the dark material when she realizes how it covers his throat. “Right.”
Only to stop short when he speaks, voice low in her ear. “And you’ll stare at the birthmark on my neck like it holds all the answers to your questions. Hmm?” He cups the back of her head as she ducks, the fabric of his sweater a shield between her burning face and the rest of the world. She sits still against him; the rest of the world fades around them, until all that she can sense is the hammering of his pulse, the spice of his floral fragrance, and the comforting warmth he gives off.
So fucking distracting.
And she nods against him, not trusting the right words to come to her.
Baxter hums in satisfaction; she can imagine his face as he tilts his head. Pretending at his effortless nonchalance, even as his heart jackhammers much like hers.
“Thought so.”
This incorrigible man. He’s lucky he’s so damn cute.
He doesn’t let up. As his hands wander down her sides to rest on her hips, she feels his lips move against her skin.
Once she looks up, he pounces.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, well aware of how flushed the tips of her ears are. “Have I told you how much comfort you bring me, when I long to run from the things that frighten me so? You have quite the power over me, impossible little siren.” He leans in, letting his teeth catch her bottom lip, making her breath stutter. And then there’s that undeniable smirk she feels as he sighs. “It once vexed me, but I must confess: I am utterly besotted with the way you distract me.”
With how hard her fingers dig into his clothes, she’s almost worried she’d tear them up. And yet she suspects she won’t be entirely apologetic about it.
“… Good,” she exhales against him, their breaths mingling. A bracing warmth against the chill of autumn. Wisteria supposes she’ll never have to worry about being cold, when he’s a living furnace. “I guess you knew, huh.”
“You are worried for me, I am aware.” He presses a kiss, light as a butterfly, on the tip of her nose. “You’re very sweet, you know?”
She cocks her head, then demurs. “You’re sweeter.”
It doesn’t even bear much thinking, the words just tumble out. She adds, “But yeah. You were holding on to me quite a lot on the flight.” And even now, his hands never quite leave her, always resting on her back. If his arm isn’t already around her waist, or her fingers entwined with his. Baxter is a very tactile person, she’s long realized, even when they were younger. “You look like you’re feeling better now, though.”
“Hm, I wonder why.” He shares a dry look with her. “But I am doing rather well now, I must admit. This place feels smaller now.” The latter words are almost too low for her to hear. “To think that I once circled these same paths with a bicycle, with them…”
Leaning back, she takes in the view once again. It’s an alien view, for she’s never really left the seaside even when she moved out of her mother’s home and found her own place. As a few stray leaves blow across the pavement, she admires their colors. They’re all pretty shades that she’s more familiar identifying with a sunset across the horizon, shining over a boundless expanse of rippling water.
The dark-haired man below her, his eyes like molten honey, further completes the picturesque place.
“This is a nice place to play in.”
She tries to imagine it: young Baxter, cheeks fuller and small face bright as he puts foot to pedal, zipping past this bench. His friends’ laughter, high-pitched and childish. Would he laugh openly, to join in with the other children? Wisteria stifles a chuckle, and decides that he’s closer to smirking his amusement.
“What are you smiling about, I wonder?” He tugs her back against him, not that she ever left his lap. When her eyes flicker back to his face, he raises a brow.
Returning his look, she lifts her shoulder in one careless shrug. Might as well explain her thoughts to Mister Curious. “Just trying to imagine a kid — you on a bike, racing your buddies. I bet it was all black and white, and your helmet all fancy.”
Baxter snorts, briefly covering his mouth. “You’re correct in that assumption. I was no racer, however. Such exploits were more the territory of Autumn and Renee.” Hmm, she supposes not, remembering his words about how proper he was expected to be. As he looks down at her, his cheek dimples as he grins. “Much like you are no surfer, despite your proximity to the Holdens.”
“You and Cove are never going to let me forget how I fell off that surfboard, aren’t you?”
Well. It was only last summer, so it’d be pretty hard to forget. What she didn’t anticipate was how the two men would join forces to poke fun at her. Traitors.
He has the audacity to chortle. “No,” he sing-songs the answer, though he wraps his arms tightly around her waist. “I was a tad worried, however, before I remembered that you know how to swim much better than I do. Had I been there with you, perhaps I would have caught you, much the same way I came to your rescue across that log on our hike.”
“Oh no,” she intones, mock-serious. “Whatever shall I do, without you? Freshwater and saltwater, I’ve got so many choices to take a deep dive in, here.”
His answer is a full-bodied laugh. Throwing his head back, he leans against the back of the bench and jostles her on his legs. He’s quick to steady her, though his laughter doesn’t subside. A few of the most adorable snorts she's ever heard intersperse between his giggles.
Wisteria once again wonders if she’s this good at comedy, or if Baxter is just easy to please.
And then she promptly decides she doesn’t care; it’s wonderful; to hear him so unrestrained is a gift. She cups his face in her palms, leaning in enraptured, soaking up his joy. Unfiltered, his laughter is something she ought to bottle up and save for a rainy day. It's hot peppermint tea with just the right spoonful of honey, drunk before a roaring fireplace, shared with the one who holds her heart in his hands.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” she scoffs, lowering her lashes and pretending to think. “Remember that time you clung to me when the tiniest crab ran over your foot? I think you need me more than I need you.”
Baxter just bares his teeth at her, unrepentant and warm and all hers. He reaches up and engulfs her hands in his. “That’s all true, Wisteria. I implore you, do continue to be my valiant protector against the horrors which lurk in the sea.”
“Nah, you can just borrow Cove for that.”
“I doubt Derek would appreciate me taking away his boyfriend when I already have you here.”
A third voice rings out, interrupting her would-be retort.
“Looking really comfortable there, Baxter Ward.”
Neither of them is the type to jump apart, even caught like this. She simply turns enough to watch the stranger - to her, at least - sidling up the path. Her brows rise, appreciative, at the tousled deep red hair and freckled, elfin face. Now this is one pretty lady.
She arches a brow at her partner, the urge to tease returning full-force. “Say, Baxter. How did you have a crush on Autumn, when your other friend’s this pretty?”
The pretty lady blinks, owlish, at her; her cheeks turn pink even as she smiles politely. “You’re not what I expected. Wisteria, was it? I think we’ll get along pretty well.”
She feels a deep sigh against her. Baxter’s chest heaves, dramatic as ever, as he grasps the front of his shirt with his palm. “I did not come here to reunite with my friends, only for my partner to be stolen away from me.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” she scoffs, even as she hears his friend snicker. So much for dignified first impressions, they're already a pair of clowns in front of his childhood friends. “I was only questioning your taste as a thirteen-year-old.”
“Ah, but you slander yourself. You were my next crush, as a fourteen-year-old.”
Goddamn it. He has a point there.
“Autumn would be interested to hear more about that, once they get here.” Renee inserts herself into the conversation, pinning her childhood bestfriend with her stare. “They’ll be here pretty soon, with their girlfriend and Tamarack.”
“That’s wonderful.” He coughs, tilting his head to meet Renee Murray’s eyes. And she can see it: the uncertainty tensing his features, in the split-second before it passes and the distant smile that hurts her comes to the fore. "I see that life has treated you quite well."
She sucks in a breath and pokes his cheek hard, making him drop the act.
It’ll take a while for him to get past his initial, instinctive reaction to pull away . Not when there’s still guilt weighing down on his shoulders for the friends he abandoned; as she hears it, he was… unavailable at a time when they needed him most.
‘I was caught up in my own self-loathing, but the way I utterly forgot about their struggles was unforgivable in my eyes.'
Baxter makes an aborted motion to hold on to her, when she scrambles off his lap. She silences his worry with a quelling look, holding her hand out to him once she’s straightened up. The fragility of his smile has never been clearer, except for these moments, and she swears to protect it in any way possible.
For all that he’s afraid of facing his friends, he’s fearless when it comes to showing his affection for her. There is no hesitation when he places his hand — and his trust — in hers, squeezing her tight before he stands.
Feeling Renee Murray’s attention on her, she turns and observes her. She sees a firmness on this woman’s face as she approaches her old childhood friend, only to turn to Wisteria. And then, it softens when their gazes meet, and her lips curve up in response. There’s no resentment in those eyes, she can tell that much.
A good sign, perhaps. These are the people who saw Baxter in his childhood, who were there for him as much as he allowed them to be, back when he was a ‘stuck-up’ boy.
Wisteria very much wants him to reclaim a piece of his boyhood, stolen from him by the years of dismissing his place within this town.
His fingers tighten around hers, once more, the pad of his thumb running across her skin. A wordless thanks.
“Renee,” her love, faltering yet so brave, begins to take the first step back towards his friends. “It’s been quite some time since I last saw you.” He takes a fortifying breath, and continues. “Thank you for accepting my email.”
A sudden wind rustles the fallen leaves at their feet, nipping at their noses and cheeks and heralding the coming of changes that are a long time coming. She takes a look upwards, lifting her free hand to capture a golden leaf out of the air. As the two friends reunite, Wisteria presses her lips to this little incarnation of fall.
Please let him be alright.
She opens her palm and lets the breeze take it away, carrying all her wishes for the years ahead. Healing, for the man beside her; more kisses shared underneath this same sky, throughout all the seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Him, surrounded by all their loved ones and flourishing like a tree soaking up a gentle rain.
The worst has come to pass, and here they are now. Though all things may end at some point, there are countless little ways to begin anew.
From here, there’s nowhere to go but up.