The California sun kissed their skin as they sat beneath the tree in Magdalen's backyard, soft sighs of content leaving lips coated in sweetness. The leaves above cast soft shadows across their faces, making Michael seem all hard angles, and only softening the lines of Magdalen's delicate features. Pomegranate juice dripped down their chins, quick hands swiping at the skin and pulling at plastered smiles.

A comfortable silence drifted between them, Michael picking at the too long blades of grass that itched at the skin bare between the holes in his jeans, while Magdalen hummed some unknown tune; perhaps it was happiness made song.

Magdalen leaned away from the rough trunk of the tree, casually casting a glance toward Michael.

"You know the creation story?" She offered, the silence broken before taking one last bite from her fruit and tossing the skin. "Adam, Eve, magic tree, all that stuff."

"I've never read the bible," Michael shrugged, sucking the crimson sweetness of his finished fruit from his fingers. He reached for a low hanging branch to pluck from it another.

"Uh, well," she began, "we were just talking about it in class. I hadn't read the story since I was little, but we read it again and I realized that the fruit, you know, the forbidden one? It never says what it is."

A small laugh left Michael's mouth before turning to look at Magdalen, a curious glint in her eye.

"What? I was just curious as to why everyone says it's an apple when, right there in black and white, it just says 'fruit.'"

He set his jaw, an action, she'd come to notice, was almost always followed by a period of deep thought.

"Latin's a thing that carries over into multiple religions, right?"

She nodded, pushing a stray blonde hair behind her ear.

"Evil in latin is malum." He placed another handful of seeds into his mouth, swallowing before continuing, and reveling in the way she eagerly awaited his response. "Apple, is something like mala. I guess it just got lost in translation over time. Thus, the legend of the forbidden apple."

A proud smirk pulled at Michael's lips as Magdalen smiled wide. He always did enjoy the look of awe on her face that followed his spouting of random knowledge in response to her odd questions. A common occurrence he'd grown to particularly enjoy.

"How do you always have the answers? I swear, you're like a walking encyclopedia," Magdalen laughed, leaning back to let her head fall into his lap. After a moment, she hummed in thought.

"What?"

"If you had to pick what the fruit would be, what would you pick?"

His fingers brushed over the smooth skin of the scarlet fruit, now almost fully eaten as it sat in the palm of his hand. He thought of the way the leaves tickled his skin with each one he plucked away, almost the same as when Magdalen's hair would brush against him with each small breeze. And, if he dared, thought she'd probably taste just as sweet.

You.

"I don't know, what would you pick?"

She closed her eyes as she thought, opening them only for them to land on the round fruits dangling above her. "Pomegranates. In mythology," her eyes moved to the blue ones already gazing back, "they spoke of the nectar of the gods. Ambrosia." She elaborated with a dramatic wave of hand. "Pomegranate, fruit of the gods..."

But truly, my forbidden fruit is already you.

ᝰ

authors's note !
update as of 10/16/2020:
hey guys! along with the change
of name, i decided to change a bit
of imagery as well. i feel like
pomegranates make much more
sense to use than peaches, seeing
as i'm setting up their dynamic as a
sort of hades & persephone type
thing. anyways, hopefully i'll get
back to updating soon!