Chapter Text
A new farmer was moving to the valley.
Sebastian was among the first to know. His mother had been out of the house for weeks in preparation - hacking weeds, dusting cobwebs, restoring wood and fences until they looked like new. Sebastian tried not to care, but the curiosity had swallowed him like a macrophage, until he stowed away his pride and asked her what was up. The news had seemed, overall, pretty underwhelming.
Whispers began to flutter around the streets not two days after Sebastian found out. Overnight, it had gone from a boring secret to the only thing anyone could talk about. Sebastian had been asked every possible variation of the question “Did you hear that the late farmer’s grandson is moving in?” by anyone who still bothered to speak to him these days. Caroline in passing on Thursday; Emily at the Saloon on Friday; Jodi at Sam’s house on Saturday, while Sam was in the bathroom and a muggy awkwardness hung over the kitchen.
Sebastian pitied the guy, honestly. Everyone in town already had their own vision of who he was and what he’d be like, and most had already attempted to stake their claim over him. Willy was hoping to teach him how to fish. Pierre had ordered a bulk shipment of spring seeds in anticipation for the extra sales. Mayor Lewis seemed to want to adopt the guy as his own surrogate son. That was a lot of pressure for a stranger to live up to, in a population of ~30 where there was nowhere to hide.
Sebastian wasn’t exempt from the curiosity. The parasitic rumour mill had infected his own brain, and naturally, he had his own pre-emptive biases that he’d workshopped in private - though he hadn’t gone so far as to mark a stranger as his territory. Mostly, he’d just wondered what kind of person would voluntarily move to Pelican Town from the city. The guy was an escaped cog in the same Joja machine that recently rolled into the valley with intent to kill. Sebastian understood the desire to escape his corporate shackles, but to move out here? As far as Sebastian was concerned, it was just a different prison cell in a prettier coat of paint.
He had inherited the farm, sure, but it wasn’t like there was anything on the farm. The old farmer had died three years ago in the winter, and so his crops had withered and his business had sunk. All his grandson had inherited was a plot of land and a pipe dream. Sebastian had rolled it over in his mind, and concluded that the only kind of person who’d be willing to start over in a dead-end town was someone going through a mid-life crisis. But he couldn’t have been that old, on account of the grandson thing, so Sebastian had decided he was maybe late 30s (when you’re 23 and living in your mother’s basement, late 30s basically sounds like mid-life anyway).
Sebastian pictured someone like Elliott, maybe a little older - someone with the bigger part of themselves figured out, but missing some key portion, some critical piece of their heart that forces it to rattle rather than pulse. Someone old enough to be jaded, but still naive enough to believe that Pelican Town held the answers they’d been seeking over the years.
Sebastian was as ingrained in the valley as moss between the stones. He’d lived there long enough to see the faces show up, bright with hope, and leave with a few more wrinkles than they came with. He knew that people like Elliott and the new farmer never found themselves here. They all eventually wound up in some dank corner of the city with backs too sore to carry the burden of a big dream. On that basis, Sebastian had no interest in meeting the guy. He didn’t care to memorise another face that would simply come and go; another train passing through a station.
So, in the last week of winter, his life proceeded as usual. Work, sleep, food whenever he remembered. Pool on Fridays, band practice on Saturdays, cigarettes by the lake. His mum would come back from the farm late at night, sweaty and dirty and exhausted. He'd hear her clopping around upstairs while he lay awake in the darkness, trying to pretend he didn't notice.
Come new year, the fabled farmer had arrived. He wasn’t what anyone had expected.
Sebastian might have been among the first to know about him, but he was among the last to actually meet him. It happened five days into the spring. He was in the Saloon, as was customary on Friday nights - positioned by the pool table in the side room, at the perfect alignment to see everyone who entered and left via the front door. Sam stood opposite him, experimenting with a top spin technique in an attempt to sink the twelve-ball in the back left pocket. Sebastian was trying not to laugh at all the ways he already knew it would fail.
The front door creaked open, and two heavy boots stirred up dust on the wood. They were wrinkled at the ankles and caked with a thick layer of mud, pressed into every crevice of the detailing around the platform. Sebastian’s eye followed them up along the line of similarly-muddy denim overalls, up past the collared red shirt, even further past the sagging weight of a giant backpack slung over one shoulder. All the way up to the stranger’s face.
He looked… young. A little older than Sebastian, but not by much. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d already had the life sucked out of his eyes. Actually, his eyes were kind of nice. Big and brown, set deep into his face above diamond-edge cheekbones. They looked open. Welcoming. Not weary or pitying or judgemental, like so many of the eyes that Sebastian had come to know.
Sebastian tilted his head. Huh.
“Um. Seb?”
He blinked.
“It’s your turn,” Sam said.
Sebastian stiffened.
“Right.”
He must have been staring for a while, because the expression Sam gave him landed squarely between curiosity and concern, and it was only when he turned to follow Sebastian’s gaze that his back shot up rod-straight.
“Oh!” Sam waved an arm, so vigorously it looked weightless. “Farmer! Over here!”
The farmer turned in their direction, gave Sam a nod of acknowledgement, and then beelined for the opposite side of the Saloon instead. Sam’s posture sank.
“Hmph.”
Sam angled his body back towards the table, but his eyes lingered on the space behind, where the farmer was flitting from person to person like a celebrity on a time crunch. Sebastian pretended not to notice.
The pool balls were scattered in a formation of chaos. Sebastian circled the table, a cat sizing up his prey. His side was solids; Sam’s was stripes. By his assessment, the six-ball was the obvious choice to aim for. It already hovered close to the right middle pocket, a short distance from the cue ball without any obstructions in its path. Sebastian bent over the table to align his shot as precisely as possible. The cue ball was flung straight towards the six, and sank it easily.
He glanced up, anticipating some reaction from either Sam or Abigail. Instead, he saw the farmer shoving a pizza under Sam’s nose. Both of Sebastian’s friends were distracted by the offering.
“Aw, yeah,” Sam said. He took the plate and held it out for Abigail to see, as if there was any ambiguity as to what it was. “Pizza time!”
The farmer shoved an arm into his backpack and retrieved a glistening purple stone (who the fuck was this guy, Santa Claus?). Abigail gawked as it was slipped into her hands.
“Thank you!” she said, caressing the sharp ridges with the quirk of a smile. “This is my favourite stone. It’s so pretty.”
Sebastian felt for the cigarette packet in the pocket of his jeans, just to make sure it was still there. Before he could announce that he was slipping out for a smoke break, the farmer stalked over to his corner of the Saloon and planted himself right in front of Sebastian.
“Oh,” Sebastian said. “You just moved in, right? Cool.”
The farmer said nothing; didn’t confirm or deny the information, didn’t ask Sebastian’s name, didn’t even bother to introduce himself. All he did was stare.
Sebastian was usually comfortable with silence. This silence made him squirm.
He cleared his throat. “Out of all the places you could live, you chose Pelican Town?”
The farmer was still staring at him. Sam and Abigail were staring too, now; he didn’t look, but he recognised the familiar weight of their eyes, heavy and imposing. The room was suddenly ten degrees too hot. Sebastian wouldn’t have minded if he melted into the floor right then and there.
But then the farmer’s hand dove into his bag again, and Sebastian’s own gift was presented to him, glistening in the Saloon light. Sebastian stared, dumbfounded, for several seconds before he had the sense to accept it.
It was a frozen tear. A rounded crystal with a sharp point, alleged to be the frozen tears of a yeti. Sebastian used to forage them from the mines and leave them as offerings on the tombstones in the graveyard. Until the elevator stopped working, and so he was forced to cling to the shallower levels where he could take the ladders up and down before anyone noticed he was missing.
“Woah. I really love this.” He eyed the farmer, cautious. “How did you know?”
The farmer said nothing.
“What kind of a name is Rowan, anyway?” Sam said.
It was mid-afternoon on Saturday. The boys were sprawled out on Sam’s bed - Sebastian on his back with a comic, Sam on his stomach with a game console in his hands - coexisting in what had been silence up until about ten seconds ago. A cluster of instruments sat on the floor beside them, untouched. It was hard to practice for a band when they didn’t even know what genre of music to make (Abigail had suggested electronica, Penny had suggested pop, and Jodi had suggested country music. Sebastian much preferred rock over any of those, but it was Sam’s project first and foremost, so he refrained from insisting.)
Sebastian thought Rowan was a cool name, honestly. It sounded like the name of a fantasy protagonist; someone with snow-white hair and a few dark secrets tucked away in their back pocket. But he didn’t want to give the impression that he liked the farmer, because that felt entirely antithetical to the persona of apathy that he’d been trying to cultivate. So he said: “Yeah, it’s kinda dumb.”
Sam rolled over onto his side, back colliding with the adjacent wall. “I thought he was gonna be some boring old guy. Like a John or a Joe or something.”
If Sebastian was any less sick of talking about the farmer, he might have laughed.
“Yeah,” he said instead. “Same.”
“But he’s like, super different to what I expected. Like, kinda cool. But also kinda weird?”
The revelation that Sam also had expectations about the new farmer was new, and quirked the line of Sebastian’s brow. Sam had never been the kind of person who dwelled on gossip and rumours. Not that Sebastian had room to judge, given that he himself had fallen victim to the sweeping rotor blades of the rumour mill. But something about the way Sam talked about him sank in Sebastian’s gut and settled there, like he’d swallowed a brick.
The words themselves weren’t anything noteworthy - mundane observations at best, and unflattering remarks at worst - but there was a certain cadence to his voice, and a skittishness to the way he glanced up after speaking, which hinted at a deeper truth. An intrigue. A reverence, even. Like he didn’t want to say he was curious about the farmer, but he was testing the waters to see if Sebastian would react the same way.
His console had also been stuck on the loading screen for the past five minutes, an observation which Sebastian stowed away without comment.
“Where do you think he goes during the day?” Sam asked.
“Who cares?” Sebastian said. It came out harsher than he had intended. He swallowed around the weight of his guilt as Sam shrunk into himself, very slightly.
“I dunno,” Sam said. “Just wondering.”
It was absurd to be bothered by something he couldn’t prove, something he’d concocted in the dark laboratory of his bitter, delusional mind. But he was irritated enough lately with all the buzz around the new farmer, without having to cop it from his own best friend, too. Rowan (the name was starting to sound dumb to him, the more times it popped up in his mind) had sunk his talons into this town before he even sunk a boot into the soil, and it was taking an agonisingly long time to dislodge them. He was around every corner, under every shadow, buried in every whisper around town.
Sebastian was over it. People would move on eventually, just like they did from any other fad, but it couldn’t happen soon enough for his liking.
Still, at present, he was much more unsettled by the loss of Sam’s gorgeous, sunny smile. He couldn’t stomach the idea that his own darkness was the cause. So, he employed the best tools he had to do damage control.
“I just mean that it’s probably boring as shit,” he tried. “What do you even do on a farm? Till soil? Water crops? Sounds pretty dull.”
It was enough to press the spots of light back into Sam’s eyes.
“See, that’s what I thought, too,” Sam said. “But then he brings us, like, cave loot. Like where is he getting that from? On the farm?”
Sebastian shrugged. “I guess so?”
“Maybe I’ll ride my skateboard up there someday. See if he’ll give me a grand tour of the place.”
“Why don’t you just marry the guy, then?”
Sam laughed. “You know what, maybe I will.”
Sebastian was definitely delusional, because that same voice in his head insisted that Sam sounded a little too earnest.
He wouldn’t admit that he was jealous. Not even to himself. But deep down, at the absolute rock-bottom of his consciousness, he knew.
He knew by the way Rowan's presence started to irritate him. Sure, Sebastian had already been a little put off by the hype around the new farmer, but not like this. Now, the sound of boots on the pavement would prompt him to walk a little faster. Now, the gifts he received (which always seemed to be Sebastian's favourite things; what the fuck was up with that?) went straight into Sebastian's desk drawer instead of staying on display.
Yet no matter how hard Sebastian tried to avoid him, or how transparent he was in his attempts to deter him, Rowan would keep showing up anyway. He wouldn’t actually say anything. He’d just run into Sebastian somewhere – around town or by the lake or in his own damn kitchen – and stand vaguely in Sebastian’s path until Sebastian said something. Most of the time, Sebastian would keep it short, and Rowan would move on pretty quickly (‘I don’t really know you’ always seemed to suffice). But sometimes, he’d keep standing there, and it was disconcerting enough that Sebastian would feel the need to keep talking until he was alone again. He’d stand still for a little while, watching Rowan run off into the distance, before he’d carry on with his day, a little grumpier than when he woke up.
He felt batshit crazy. Everyone else seemed utterly enthralled by the guy, and no one ever mentioned how strange he was, or how desperately he was trying to ingratiate himself with the townsfolk. It was like no one even noticed. Like Rowan had swung a pendulum the moment he landed in the valley, and Sebastian was the only one who wasn’t hypnotised.
Sam was no exception; well and truly ensnared by the same chokehold that Rowan somehow had on the rest of the town. He'd mask it behind a thin veil of nonchalance, but his fascination was obvious. Rowan became a feature in the random, spontaneous thoughts Sam would share in lapses of silence. Rowan's gifts gradually filled up Sam's bookshelf as spring trudged on, propped in the empty spaces between unbroken spines - a few assorted gemstones, a little vase of tulips that's surely wreaking havoc on his nose, and a glowing tigerseye with pride of place in the centre.
Rowan would always show up to greet them in the Saloon. Or, not to greet them, because the guy never actually spoke, but to wordlessly distribute his stash of acquired loot among the patrons. He had the Santa Claus cosplay mostly down - complete with the sack, the red shirt and the air of unsettling mystique - but with muddy boots and a flat smile that couldn't be called jolly so much as courteous. He showed up to their band practice too, once. Sam asked him what kind of music he liked. His answer had been experimental noise rock. Sebastian spent the rest of the weekend seething over the discovery that he and the farmer shared a music taste.
Sebastian felt like a child being forced to share his favourite toy. It was stupid and irrational, and he had enough sense not to voice it to Sam, because he knew he was entirely in the wrong. Sam was allowed to have other friends. Hell, he already did. He had Abigail, of course, who'd been close with both of them since childhood. He hung out with Penny from time to time, and had her locked down as his default partner for the ridiculous dance they were forced to do every spring. On certain occasions, he even hung out with Alex, at festivals or on sunny days when both of them happened to end up at the beach. Sebastian couldn't fathom what the two would possibly talk about, given that Alex's only personality trait was gridball player, and Sam knew next to nothing about gridball - but he seemed to make it work anyway.
That's just how Sam was. He marched in an endless parade of energy and optimism and charisma, and he was practically impossible to dislike. The problem was that a hideous, selfish part of Sebastian had always clung to the knowledge that he was Sam's first choice. He knew Sam best; he was Sam's first port of call when he needed company, even though Sebastian declined more often than not. He didn't have to say yes, because Sam would come back to him regardless. Sam was stable. Sam was a guarantee.
But now, he was starting to fret that he didn't have that luxury anymore. Because even when they hung out, and Rowan was nowhere to be seen, his presence persisted in some bizarre metaphysical sense that Sebastian couldn't shake. He was there in the conversations they had, both the spoken and the unspoken words. He was there in the songs they wrote and the music they blasted for 'inspiration'. He was there in the cobblestone pathways down from the mountains to the town square, ingrained like a fixture. Moss between the stones.
And the irony was that Sebastian had begun to push Sam away because of it. In true Sebastian fashion, he was too weak to handle the rejection, and that weakness distorted itself into an ugly, irritable monster that speared its tendrils through his bloodstream, down every limb. He blew Sam off more often. He was curt with him when they spoke. He was easy to anger, quick to flee, his hair-trigger temper now thin as a spider’s thread.
Sam didn’t notice, because of course he didn’t. It was just Sebastian being Sebastian. And that was Sam being Sam.
Sam and Abigail were practicing for the band today.
Sebastian didn’t go. He had been invited, and Sam had emphasised that he really wanted him to be there. It was Abigail’s first practice, after all, and she couldn’t get a feel for the rhythm of the band if only half of its original members were present.
It wasn’t that Sebastian didn’t want to be there. The band might not have meant as much to him as it did to Sam, but it was still cool to be part of something. Plus, now that Abigail was in it, he’d have a buffer in case things with Sam started to go off the rails. (Sam had floated the possibility of inviting Rowan to be the drummer, and Sebastian had frantically – and, consequently, very eagerly – insisted that they ask Abigail instead. Sam’s response had boiled down to a very unsubtle wink-wink-nudge-nudge, which made Sebastian want to crawl out of his own skin. Thankfully, she’d agreed, so the hit to his pride had been worthwhile.)
But when Sebastian had tried to get ready this morning, his body hadn’t cooperated. He’d managed to drag himself out of bed at the third call of his alarm, and even made it all the way over to his dresser; but then he’d paused, hand poised inside the open drawer, trapped by some sudden paralysis that had him in a vice grip.
And so began the process of talking himself out of it, as he had always been so dangerously good at.
He had work to do. A lot of work. Several fast-approaching deadlines that he couldn't wriggle out of if he wanted to keep his reputation intact – which he did, because reputation was everything for a self-taught freelancer. He had a module to complete by tomorrow, which meant that to afford spending an entire day at Sam's house, he would probably have to pull an all-nighter to get it done. His sleep schedule was already in the shitter, his health was declining, his focus was in short supply. Anything that would exacerbate those details was surely a terrible idea.
Not to mention that the thought of hanging out with them just didn't excite him at all. It was getting more and more exhausting to be around Sam, and Abigail was nice enough, but her presence was only really likely to make it bearable rather than explicitly worthwhile. Being there with her was better than being with Sam alone; but being without either of them was the best option of the lot.
He didn't bother to tell them that he wasn't coming. None of his excuses would have worked. If he claimed to be sick, they'd show up unannounced to check on him, and his lie would be exposed (one of so many perils of living in a small town, where everyone's houses were walkable to one another's). If he told them he didn't feel like hanging out, they'd pester him relentlessly until he caved ('just come for an hour or so', they'd always insist, and then they'd hound him if he tried to leave that quickly). If he told them he had to work, they'd call him boring and insist that band practice is a way more valuable use of his time (no one took his job seriously; he'd come to expect that much).
What made it worse was that he knew all of those things would come from Abigail. She was always the driving force when it came to peer pressure in their trio. When it was just Sam and Sebastian alone, Sam would be totally understanding. And that's what killed him the most. He knew Sam would mimic Abigail's vindictiveness, follow her lead when she insisted that they drag Sebastian out of his cave kicking and screaming; but deep down, he'd just be sad, and Sebastian ached at the thought of having to witness that in real-time.
So he couldn't tell them. He couldn't face it. He threw on a hoodie and sweatpants, settled himself at his computer, and got stuck into his work.
It took less than two hours for someone to barge into his room.
Sebastian didn’t remember leaving the door open, but he must have, because he didn’t hear it creak before noticing a tall figure over the top edge of his computer screen.
His heart plummeted, at first. Shit, maybe he was wrong. Maybe Sam was the driving force, the one seeking him out. Or maybe Abigail was outside, or she'd already seated herself just out of Sebastian's view, waiting for Sam to do all her dirty work. Either way, they were onto him, and Sebastian had to face the conversation he'd tried to delay.
He started mentally drafting all the possible excuses he could give Sam for skipping practice without a heads-up. 'Sorry, I forgot', or 'Sorry, I have an urgent deadline to complete by tomorrow', or 'Sorry, the only things you talk about lately are Rowan and the band, and it's kind of grating on my nerves, and I'm also maybe kinda jealous even though I don't want to admit that to you aloud, because that means you'll ask me why, and I don't want to confront the answer to that question, even though deep down I already know, and it scares me.'
But then he glanced up, and – contrary to everything he had ever felt about the guy before - he was actually kind of relieved to see the top of Rowan's dirt-speckled mop instead of Sam's gelled-upright blonde hair.
“Oh,” Sebastian said. “Hey.” And then, because he didn’t want to be chewed out for being rude– “Gimme one sec.”
Ordinarily, when someone entered his room, they would start babbling to him. It didn’t matter what he was doing, nor how important it was. But when Rowan stepped into the room, he was silent. And maybe Sebastian should have been unsettled by that – to know that someone could enter his room so easily without him knowing, and stare at him for Yoba-knows-how-long until his focus waned enough to notice – but in a weird way, he appreciated it.
Sebastian wrapped up the sequence of code he’d been in the middle of.
“Okay,” he said, wringing his hands. “Sorry about that, I just needed to finish what I was working on.”
Rowan stood still.
“What are you working on?” he asked.
Sebastian blinked. Words. That was new.
“I do freelance work as a programmer.”
Rowan nodded, and lapsed back into silence. In the quiet, a notification blinked to life in the corner of Sebastian’s screen, accompanied by a beep. He skimmed the text.
Sam: hey hey! you still coming to band practice?
Sebastian's heart – which was only just recovering from the last little scare – plunged back into panic mode.
“That was an instant message from Sam…" he said. "I guess he wants to hang out.”
He didn't really want to admit to Rowan that he had blown off Sam and Abigail without a word. Not that he owed Rowan an explanation at all, but that silence remained a powerful force; if Sebastian wasn't careful, it could have wrapped its claws around his neck and wrung him out for every word he could possibly consider saying.
Sebastian clicked on Sam's message, just as two more notifications popped up.
Sam: we ended up going to abby's cause mom was complaining about the noise
Sam: it's a short walk if you want us to come pick you up (^_^)
Sebastian's posture deflated with a laboured exhale.
“Ugh… I don’t really feel like going out today.”
He really didn’t want to see them today. He didn’t want to see Rowan, either, but it wasn’t like he had much choice in that matter. He just wanted to be alone, wrapped up by the dark walls of his basement room like a serpent in the undergrowth, lurking unbothered and out of sight.
But the universe had it out for him, because the door clicked, and Robin stepped into the room with a sheepish smile. She eyed Rowan first.
“Oh, hi Rowan,” she said. She turned towards Sebastian. “Sebby, I know you don’t like it when I come in here… but I ran into Abigail at the store and she said she was looking for you.”
Sebastian grumbled.
“Did you tell her I’m working?”
“I did… but she said she’d probably stop by anyway.”
Sebastian's blood rose to a dangerous heat, on the verge of simmering.
“No one takes my job seriously," he griped. "No one ever bothers Maru when she’s working at the clinic… does everyone think I’m just surfing the web all day?”
Demetrius called to Robin from upstairs. She ducked out of the room to answer. The door swung shut behind her.
“Why don’t you want to see your friends?” Rowan asked.
Sebastian blinked at him for a moment. He was still getting used to hearing Rowan talk.
“I like having friends. I just need a lot of time alone to balance out the social stuff." He sighed. "Sam’s the opposite… he goes crazy if he’s alone for too long."
That much was true. Sam might have been mostly understanding of Sebastian's fast-draining social battery, but that didn't mean he could relate. It was also precisely the reason why Rowan was able to crawl under Sam's skin so quickly, with such ease.
Sebastian's blood – which had already begun to simmer – was abruptly brought to boiling point. All that relief he'd felt upon seeing Rowan's face was being rapidly siphoned out of him, making way for a bubbling cauldron of resentment.
"Maybe that’s why I like computers so much… they’re engaging, straightforward, and unselfish." He glanced up, his stare hard. "Quite the opposite of a lot of people I know.”
There were many people he could apply that statement to – but currently, the worst culprit in his life was the one standing right in front of him.
Engaging: Rowan was boring. He left one boring job in the city to take on a boring job in a boring town. He didn't have any hobbies outside of farming and fishing and inserting himself into everyone else's business. He did not seem to care much for two-way conversation, despite being capable of talking, as Sebastian had recently learned. His inventory of social skills primarily consisted of giving gifts and patiently listening.
Straightforward: Rowan was a cryptic enigma who wore the same blank expression and greeted everyone with the same blank wave of his hand. Sebastian supposed it was hard to be straightforward when you didn’t say a fucking word.
Unselfish: Rowan had barrelled into this town and taken over like he owned the place. He monopolised everyone's attention, he shook the ground they walked on, and he never apologised for it. Perhaps 'selfish' was a slightly unfair assessment, but Sebastian was feeling bitter, and bothered, and that was what came out of his mouth.
As if to prove his point, Rowan said nothing. His expression was an empty shell; lacking in anything detectable, anything living. He was here, in Sebastian's space which he had forced his way into, wordless and hollow. Boring. Cryptic. Selfish. The valley's token cryptid who thought he could win others' favour with spontaneous offerings. Sebastian wondered if he noticed that all his gifts had been ashamedly stashed away.
“Well, I should get back to work…" Sebastian said, when the silence started to seep into his bones. "I need to get this module finished by tomorrow.”
Rowan left. He didn’t say goodbye. Sebastian looked down at his hands.
The irony wasn’t lost on him, that any of those three words could perfectly describe him too.