No additional warnings for this scene.
They sat together. The sunlight filtered through the clouds, shifting and hazy and full of dust and bugs and sparkling light that fell but did not land on the green grass, sometimes bright and sometimes dull as the clouds moved above changing the landscape without touch or awareness, creating the puzzles across the lawn that they watched in silent contemplation and companionship. They sat on a bench nearly touching, as always almost but not quite joined at the hip, hands resting to themselves and unmoving, nothing crossing that divide but shared experience and understanding, sighs swallowed and comments held in the unexpected moment of autumn when the summer haze moves off with the clouds leaving a crisp brilliant shine to everything. This was that moment of change, the wind pushing it along, the men watching quietly, the bugs humming in expectation of winter and the birds circling on the breezes playing tag with leaves torn free of their anchors, the trees solidly buried in the ground and reaching up to the heavens, to the clouds above that framed them and never rested even as the trees below stood firm and permanent and changing by slow degrees and not by impulse. The light dimmed then brightened and the sounds of the village beyond drifted lazily towards them but the men did not move, settled, content, waiting for nothing in particular and needing nothing more than what they had then on a cold, hard bench built for practical purposes and not flights of fancy or romance.
One looked down, his soft brown eyes scouring the grass field in front of them, his movements slow. He knew this time and this place and saw it every year, the change and the smells of autumn tripping over the wind and chasing away the mindless heat of summer and this was a particularly special time because he was alive, more alive than he thought he knew how to be, his feet sitting on the dying grass that felt the chill of the earth before the tug of the wind and would soon brown and whither and retreat under the frost and snow, and this same grass that he was pushing down with his motionless feet would come back like he did, after a tragic lull, full and green next spring and ready for him to return here, to this bench, to wait for autumn again. Perhaps he hoped that the man next to him would be there again too, a force of nature more like the clouds for his strength and life-giving energy, who for once was placid and content and smiling at the world in front of him, his hands calmly pressed against his knees and his eyes bright and glossy like the sunlight blooming clear in the sky.
They shifted in tandem as the clouds moved off and autumn arrived, and the smaller man gently tapped the other’s shoulder, smiling in wonder at things he had spent his whole life observing but never seeing in full, and as he smiled he looked at leaves sailing by above them and stretched out for them like a child might, believing they would answer his beckoning call because it was a perfect world, after all.
Perfect, cold, warm, and beautiful, and it was all more than life because it was a moment shared that could never be captured again, but was worth a lifetime to pursue.