Work Text:
Before fall, she had told him that she planned on planting a rainbow in their fields, but Shane had dismissed it as him mishearing her words and thought that she meant that she was planting some species of fruit or vegetable he hadn’t heard of before. It wouldn’t be the first time—she had handed him a cluster of small green leafy vegetables once and told him, solemnly, that it was a Bok Choy and he had looked blankly back—but now he knew that he had not misheard her at all. Now, here, in the middle of the season, with winter’s incoming chill sharp in the morning air being warded off by the warmth of the fireplace and the heat of the coffee in his hands, it was hard for Shane to not be impressed at how true her words had been. She had planted a rainbow in their fields, and from their kitchen window Shane could see the full extent of it all. Tall golden corn stood in neat rows next to a sea of ruby red cranberries, while bright orange pumpkins rolled heavy and fat off their vines beyond it.
Shane could even see the dark purple grapes hidden between its own vines, straining and sagging under its own weight, almost pushing out from the sturdy posts that held them all up. More importantly, he could see the green that coloured the entire landscape, in defiance of this season of muted yellows, browns and reds. Green leaves, green vines, green vegetables; green in all its various shades of bejeweled tones, almost like the green in her eyes, if he was the type to write poetry.
But he was not, so instead he settled for whistling lowly and meeting her smug smile with a grin of his own.
"Big harvest, huh?" he said.
"Understatement," she replied. "I think I really outdid myself this time."
He shook his head and that was all that was said before they started working. It took both of them half a day to pick at the corn and pumpkin, and by lunch, reinforcements had arrived in the form of Marnie, Penny, Vincent and Jas. The former two had walked sedately up to them, chatting among themselves while the latter two ran, Vincent hollering, and Jas waving wildly as she rushed up to greet them, arms outstretched.
“Hi!” she squealed, breaking off into a wild giggle as she reached them, and Shane had picked her up and spun her up and around as soon she got into grabbing distances. “I’m so excited!”
“Glad to hear it,” Shane had replied. Jas smiled widely, and Shane had followed his urge and reached a dirty smudged hand out and tweaked her nose, drawing out fresh laughter. He could feel eyes on him, watching, and he resisted the urge to hunch down on his shoulders and slink off, as he was wont to do when attention was on him. Instead, he focused on Jas’ chattering, and Vincent’s interjections, as he led the children to the grapes, where two buckets were waiting to be filled. He taught them how to spot the ripe grapes, how to harvest them by cupping a cluster of it in one hand and snipping the top off the vine with the sheers. Vincent had taken a particular glee at being able to snip at something with “really big scissors” while Jas had decided that she was the one who should decide which grapes were ripe. Shane watched as the two of them worked together; Jas, carefully cupping a large bunch with her hands while Vincent enthusiastically snipped the cluster from the vines. Most went into their buckets, but some had been quickly popped into sticky mouths seconds after being plucked off the vines.
“It’s so yummy!” Jas had said, and she reached up to place one in Shane’s mouth to share. He accepted it, biting into the fruit and letting the tart sweetness of its juices wash the inside of his mouth. He thought of the grapes in their kitchen from the season’s first harvest, cooling in the fridge. Half of it had been eaten two nights ago, passed between the two of them as they curled together underneath the knitted blanket Leah had gifted them, a movie Shane had not been paying the slightest attention to playing in the background. The lights had been switched off for “the better movie experience” as she insisted, and Shane remembered being fascinated by how the glow of the television screen had illuminated her face, shifting the light and shadows, as she plucked another grape from the bowl in between them and placed it between her lips.
It was strange to think that this was his life now. He had been used to small cramped rooms, the location of which did not matter, whether it was the clean serviceable one he insisted on paying rent for in his aunt’s ranch or the near-condemned terrible one he had rented in the city. He had been used to the dead-end jobs he would settle for, to the terrible frozen food he would chew through just to have something and the bliss that only ever seemed to come at the end of a bottle. Most of all, he had been used to the fact that he had been lonely, and that he knew that he would remain just as lonely until the day he inevitably croaked. He had accepted it all, was even fine with it.
But now he was here, in this house nearly too big for two, with someone with green green eyes who would smile at him as she linked their legs together under the kitchen table. He had this farm, with its fertile land and its growing number of animals, keeping him busy every day. There was fresh produce in the kitchen and homemade goods lining their pantry and every night they would cook dinner together, content in each other’s company.
He thought of turning the rest of the grapes into juice. She had shown him how once.
By the time the sun had started to set and the automatic lights of the farm turned on, they had most of the harvest packed and ready for Pierre’s truck. They had dinner right there in the open, to the delight of the children, and the new farmer of the valley had dragged out an old picnic blanket of her grandfather’s and spread it on the grass. Fresh bread from Gus was procured, along with new churned butter and soft goat cheese from their own cranky goat (“Her name is Billie Jean,” she told the children, who immediately wanted to go and pet Billie Jean for her troubles). There was roasted pumpkin, chopped into bite size pieces, creamy and heavily spiced, apparently left to bake slowly in the oven while they worked, and tuna Shane himself had somehow caught just a few days ago, fried crispy-skinned and flaky. Marnie had disappeared into the farmhouse for a few minutes while Shane had been busy setting up and came out with a pitcher of cold lemonade with mint, and it had been heartily approved of by the rest of them.
Shane had sat there, slowly working through his food, half listening to the laughter and chatter of the rest of the group. Out here, in their farm, Shane would be the first to admit that they had it good here. The work is hard, and more often than not he goes to bed tired and physically wrung out, deep asleep as soon as his head hits the pillows. But that just meant that there was little time for the thoughts to come, for memories to come knocking at his brain, spitting truths he would rather not hear anymore. He liked that. He also liked that he could see visible proof of their hard work here, slowly and surely, in their fields with their harvest, the cleared land and their animals all clean and healthy. All this, he could say, he helped. He did this with his hands.
But there were still bad days, of course. Days where he was too snappish and sluggish, days when he didn’t even want to get out of bed, when he felt thirsty and his hands itched with the need to do something to alleviate his thirst. There was still a storage shed he would not and could not enter, where they kept their kegs, and some casks locked in their cellar that seemed a little too inviting sometimes. She had offered to stop once, but the profit was good, and Shane had not wanted to be the reason why they had lower income.
“It’s not that important,” she told him, and he could hear the unsaid ‘Not as important as you,’ in the way she squeezed his hand in hers. “We can focus on other things instead. Maybe do more preserves and pickles. Robin was telling me about the fish pond schematics she just received the other day. We can do caviars and fish too.”
But Shane had shook his head. He had heard about the reviews popping up online raving about the wine and pale ale of Stardew Valley. He had read through some of them himself, and had been there when Lewis had talked of tourism picking up, and tentative plans of setting something more to grow. They had a good thing here, and it was getting better.
He was getting better.
Later on, they would wave goodbye as Pierre came around and offered the others a ride back to their respective homes. Later on, they would clean up, and get ready for bed, and she would loop her arms around his waist and laugh when he tries to escape her cold feet. Later on, it will be winter, and they would have some more time to themselves, together, before the seasons shift and spring arrives yet again. They would keep busy, as they always had, and Shane would be looking forward to it all.
But that was later.
For now, he met her eyes as she laughed over a story Marnie was telling, and she smiled at him, something small and soft and entirely for him. Jas had curled up drowsily beside him, eyes drooping, and Vincent had gone for thirds while Penny admonished him gently to eat slowly. For now, it was enough to soak in the air and appreciate the twinge of his muscles as he stretched out and flopped down, happy enough to lie down beside Jas and rest his eyes for a moment.
For now, this is enough.