Happy Autumn Equinox

[byslantedlight]

I've been feeling distinctly un-autumn-y, or even looking-forward-to-autumn late-summer-y this year, which is weird because autumn is perhaps my favourite time of year. The weather around here just doesn't seem to have got there yet, although there are a few leaves on the turn.

Today though, I'm feeling a bit more autumn-y: looking forward to crisp cold days (yeah I know, this is England, we'll be lucky...!) and lights shining against the encroaching darkness, and the smell of fallen leaves and bonfires. Maybe because it actually is raining a bit today, and because it is actually the autumn equinox too - from now on, days get shorter and shorter, in lads'-land, and its fair game to imagine B/D all cosy in thick jumpers, and hot showers, and lovely things like that.

Come to think of it, I had a wee autumn-based storylist up at Palelyloitering:
Autumn Afternoon by PFL
Autumn Leaves Falling by Anon (ProsLib)
Autumn Rain by Jennifer Lyon
Cider with Bodie by Lizzie
Fade Away by Agentsophisticat
October by Rowan
Point of Law by Verlaine
Redemption - of a Sort by LilyK
Third Friday of October by Dana Austin Marsh
The Wolf-Price by ER (ProsLib)

I've not read any of them for ages (or some at all, and I've just added a couple from a quick search on ProsLib) so no guarantees... I'd love some more autumn-y feel stories to read, if anyone's got any recs! (Not bonfire night, or Halloween yet, just... leaves turning, jackets needed... *g*)

Oh! And whee - I found an autumn fic that I started writing myself. Maybe if I get my skates on over work I'll see if I can do some writing... *g*

Autumn Leaves
by Slantedlight

Autumn already, yellow and red and dead upon the trees, scattered dry across the grass and turned to muck and slime in the gutters. All that life, all that colour, and it meant nothing now... There was bloody in the gutter as well, a dark stain that refused to shift itself, sitting as it did upon the old leaves and other dross. But it would rain tonight, as it had every other night this week no matter how fine the day, and by tomorrow even that would have disappeared.

A body in the morgue, another loose end tied up, one less mess to clean up some other time.

"She would have killed you," Bodie said, striding up behind him, and Doyle raised his eyes briefly. Caught.

"There must have been some good to her!" He glanced one last time at the brief brilliance of the leaves in the park, turned and began walking back to their car. "Morgan liked her, and he was no fool."

"Not what Alice would have said."

"Yeah, well... Alice wasn't exactly an angel herself." I thought I knew you...

"No one is, mate."

Doyle shook his head, but he didn't say anything, and he kept walking. It wasn't the first time he'd been made a fool of by a pretty face, but he was more tired of it than he'd ever been. Liz had seemed funny and smart and all the time she'd been plotting revenge. When would he learn?

A gust of wind blew up at them suddenly from behind, skittering dry leaves around their feet and ahead of them on the path, and he pulled his sheepskin closer around him, hands tucked in his pockets, fisted hard enough that he felt his nails digging into his palms.