Gn Farmer - Tumblr Posts

Omg hi! May I request something with harvey and gn!reader in which they are in a game of truth or dare with the other balchelors/rettes and one of them dares the farmer to kiss the doctor (farmer and harv are not necessarily in a relationship yet but they are close friends...or more ?)

Drink water! XD

Hello!! This prompt was a lot of fun to do, and Harvey is so cute! Thank you for the request anon, I really appreciate it! I don't have a beta reader unfortunately, so this might have typos or awkward phrasing (english isn't my first language agh) but I hope you enjoy anyway!! This one took me a bit longer, sorry about that! Also I drank water just for you, anon <3

2329 words, foul language, alcohol consumption, general dumbassery. GN!Farmer, implied Sam/Penny, a little suggestive at certain points but this is overall pretty tame, it might be a little ooc near the end but i tried my best whoops, manipulative Haley(but it's for everyone's benefit, don't worry), uhhhh did I miss anything? OH YEAH someone eats a spoonful of mayo sorry about that LMFAO

Harvey doesn’t like drinking anything that isn’t wine.

Wine lets him unwind—it loosens up his tense, stressed muscles, and after one glass, he’s usually set for the night. He doesn’t go crazy. He doesn’t drink liquor.

The Farmer, however, apparently does.

They’re squeezed in on the loveseat between Elliott and Shane, with one arm thrown over the back of the cushions, and they’re intermittently stealing Shane’s beer to down a few gulps at a time. As their doctor, he’s concerned, but as their boy—as their friend—his nerve endings are singed, and an uneasy feeling is building in his gut.

If he was an idiot, he’d blame the feeling on the nasty liquor Alex and Haley brought to the farmhouse, deep brown and thick like molasses on the way down. Unfortunately, he’s more self-aware than that.

Which means he knows that the sudden stab through his chest when the Farmer leans in a little too close to Elliott—harsh and thrashing, like a green sludge cloying up his throat and gluing his tongue to the back of his teeth—is just jealousy.

Maru and Abigail cheer loudly on his left, piled onto the couch with Sebastian and Sam, and part of him wishes he’d stayed home. He could’ve faked sick, maybe, and blamed it on the cold slowly blowing in from the ocean during this time of year. He’s never really liked the winter season, anyway.

But then he’d have missed this, and even though watching the Farmer eat up the attention from Shane and Elliott is keying him up more than any surgery he’s ever had to perform, he never misses Thirsty Thursday.

‘Thirsty Thursday’ is what the Farmer calls it. They coined the term with their old group of friends back in the city, or so he’s been told. Rules are simple: once a month, everyone brings a bottle of alcohol to one person’s house, and they spend the whole night getting plastered while playing drinking games. The game is different every time.

Today's game of choice is truth or dare—or strip.

Everyone is in varying states of undress, and he’s already lost his vest, his tie, and both of his shoes. There’s a pile of clothes building in the middle of the living room, and eleven pairs of shoes scattered between half-empty bottles of alcohol.

Thankfully it doesn’t look like he’s going to be losing anything else, because the group has abandoned their attacks on each other in favor of ganging up on the Farmer, who’s still fully clothed. Their boots are still perfectly laced, strings untouched and swinging to-and-fro. He watches them like pendulums, and takes another sip from his cup.

Alex flops back on the floor and throws his arms up in defeat.

“I give up, this is impossible,” he shouts, and Haley pokes him in the side with her foot.

“Quit being dramatic, you big baby,” she scolds him, raising an eyebrow with all the judgement of an angel at the gates of the afterlife. She's always scared him, a little. Too keen, knows too much, sees too much. Reads him like he's a children's book.

“Oh come on, there’s gotta be something they won’t do.” Sam yells across the room, his laugh as boisterous as ever. Harvey winces. His ears always get more sensitive when he’s drunk.

The Farmer tosses their head back and laughs, the sound ringing sharply in his ears. Harvey licks his lips, and rubs off any residual alcohol clinging to his mustache with the back of his hand. The hair scratches his skin, and it grounds him, if only a little bit. He likes their laugh.

“Oh, I think I’ve got one,” Penny says suddenly, sitting up and pointing at the Farmer with an eager look on her face. Harvey knows for a fact that she’s stone-cold-sober, and he honestly can’t believe she’d even show up for Thirsty Thursday, given how she feels about alcohol, but maybe the fact that she’s been glued to Sam’s arm all night has something to do with it. He won’t ask. “Farmer, truth or dare?” 

“Bring it on, Pen. Dare,” the Farmer says.

“I dare you to eat a spoonful of mayonnaise.” Harvey’s face twists in disgust immediately, and the volume goes up to a hundred. Everyone’s laughing because they’re sure they wouldn’t. Not even the Farmer would do something so disgusting.

Harvey knows otherwise.

He watches with unsurprised horror as they lean forward, elbows on their knees, and give Penny a wild grin with their tongue bitten between their teeth. He wants to do that.

“That’s it?” Their voice is like a gunshot in the living room, silencing the group for half a moment before, like vultures to a corpse, Sam is jumping up and rushing into the kitchen with Alex and Leah hot on his heels. 

Within thirty seconds there’s a jar of mayonnaise sitting heavy between the Farmer’s thighs, and Emily is handing them a spoon. Harvey’s pretty sure at least seven of them are yanking their phones out of their pocket to video the whole thing, and while he gets it, he’s seen the Farmer do much worse.

He’s no longer surprised by anything they do. As their doctor, he’s well aware of the shenanigans they get up to during their free time, and if he’s being realistic, eating a spoonful of mayo is probably the tamest thing they’ve done in his presence.

It’s still fucking gross though. Harvey snorts to himself, watching the look on their face when they twist open the jar and dig their spoon into the devil’s condiment. Even when they talk a big game, he can read them easily. Harvey chuckles a little bit at the slightly green tinge on their cheeks as they bring it up to their mouth, and close their lips over the spoon.

They barely manage to get it down, to the resounding cheers of glee and disgust around them.

“Holy shit, you actually did it!” Sam cackles, shoving his camera in the farmer’s face. They flip him off and he devolves into a fit of giggles.

Sebastian gags behind him, shaking his bangs out of his eyes and flopping back down on the couch behind Harvey. “That was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“I don’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted,” Shane muses, holding his beer far out of reach from the Farmer’s grabby hands. “Nuh-uh, don’t even think about it, Farmer. You did this to yourself, and I don’t want your mayo mouth on my drink, go get your own.” 

The Farmer whines petulantly, and Harvey gets up on his knees to pass the bottle of cranberry juice Penny brought for the punch mix. There’s just enough leftover to wash down the taste, and the Farmer plucks the near-empty jug out of his hands gratefully.

“Oh, my savior, thank you.” They guzzle the rest of the jug without preamble, and in their haste, a single drop trickles from the corner of their lips and down their chin. Harvey watches it like a hawk, eventually losing sight of it under the collar of their shirt. He wonders how it’d taste to lick it off, and immediately turns his eyes to the floor.

His ears burn.

“That was disgusting, don’t make me do that ever again,” The Farmer says, and Emily throws a pillow at them. It bounces off of their head harmlessly, and Shane catches it as it falls to the floor.

“We didn’t make you do anything,” Shane reminds them dryly, leaning back into the cushions with a smirk. “You could’ve just taken off your boots or something.”

“But they have to protect their honor!” Leah laughs, sea-blue eyes bright and twinkling as she throws her arm over Elliott and the Farmer’s shoulder from behind the loveseat.

“Oh goodness, I can still smell it on your breath.” Elliott jokes, dramatically yanking himself out of Leah’s grip and leaning far over the arm of the loveseat.

“How do you think I feel?” The Farmer snaps at him without a trace of heat in their voice, and Elliott snorts into his palm.

“Well, if that didn’t work, I’m out of ideas.” Penny shrugs, sitting back against Sam’s chest. 

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing,” Sam agrees. “Anyone else?”

Silence follows, and Harvey almost gets ready to collect his clothes from the pile, when Haley raises her hand.

“I’ve got one more.”

“Can’t possibly be worse than making me eat mayo, so go ahead.” The Farmer shudders, setting the empty juice jug on the coffee table with a hollow thunk. Harvey settles back down, his heart making a distantly similar sound.

Haley cocks her head to the side, her hair swaying in front of her calculating blue eyes. “I dare you to kiss Harvey.” 

Harvey doesn’t like a lot of things. 

He doesn’t like liquor. He doesn’t like coral, or salmonberries, or the cold. He doesn’t like when the Farmer goes into the mines and comes back with a new gash on their skin, or a fractured bone in their limbs. He doesn’t like Thirsty Thursday.

He keeps his eyes glued to the Farmer, and desperately ignores every other pair of eyes currently digging into his skin. They’re probably all talking, but his ears have lost all functionality. The world sounds muffled and faraway, like his head is underwater.

“I, uh…” The Farmer stutters, and Harvey’s pulled back to shore. He hangs onto every syllable, his gut clenching, waiting for the sucker-punch of rejection. When it comes, he’s going to have to pretend to be normal about it, but everyone will stare at him with that glitter of pity in the backs of their eyes that he hates so much— “I’d have to brush my teeth. Harvey hates the taste of mayonnaise.”

Harvey’s lower jaw unhinges itself from his skull and falls into his solo cup with a splash.

He shakes his head, pushing his glasses higher on his nose. “I’m sorry, come again?”

The Farmer shrugs, but they won’t meet his eyes. “I mean, if you’re cool with it, I just have to brush my teeth. It was my dare, why should you have to suffer for it?”

They glance at him, at his lips, and Harvey’s launched to cloud nine.

“I—okay. Go brush your teeth then.”

The Farmer nods stiffly, their cheeks and ears flushing as they stand up. “Cool. Be right back.”

He looks up, suddenly afraid, and glances across the coffee table at Haley. She’s grinning, her teeth glinting like a lioness who just caught a gazelle in her jaws. Harvey rubs the back of his neck, his skin burning.

There’s a few hollers from the guys behind him, and he’s pretty sure Alex and Leah have both clapped him on the back. He didn’t even do anything.

“Okay!” The Farmer calls, their voice echoing down the hall and entering the room a few seconds before them. Harvey stays rooted to the floor, his wrists aching from leaning back on them for so long. His palms are probably indented with the texture of the rug beneath him. His eyes don’t stray from the Farmer as they walk around the couches and every forgotten bottle littering their living room floor. They crouch down in front of him, settling down on their knees, and Harvey’s brain finally catches up with him.

This is actually happening.

The Farmer is going to kiss him. He’s going to pass out.

“So, um. How do you want me to…?” They ask, and he thinks about it for a moment before realizing they’re looking at Haley. 

“You can’t figure that out for yourselves?” Haley asks, her voice sharp and cutting.

The Farmer’s hands flap around chaotically as they sputter, searching for an appropriate defense. “This is your dare! How am I supposed to know, I can’t read your mind!”

“Farmer.” Harvey sets his solo cup on the coffee table. “You didn’t brush your teeth just to argue with Haley, did you?”

It’s the fucking liquor. It always makes him lose his filter. It gives him confidence, but it chases his inhibitions away and makes him bolder. He’s impatient, and he’s been dancing around this ‘will-we-won’t-we’ thing he’s got going with the Farmer for months, and he’s sick of it. 

Another round of hollers and gleeful exclamations bounce off the walls, but he’s not paying attention anymore.

“No, I didn’t.” They say quietly, and they’re not paying attention anymore, either. “So how do you want me to do this?”

Harvey swallows hard, his eyes flicking down to their lips. “How do you think I want you to do it?”

“Messy,” they whisper, cupping his jaw in their hands, and he might as well be delirious. “But that’s not really appropriate when we have an audience, so you’ll have to settle for a little less.”

“Guess you’ll just have to do it again when there’s no audience,” Harvey hisses, and then their lips are on his. There’s condensation from the beer mixing with the sweat on his palms, but he brings his hands up to grip their waist anyway. They shiver against him, breathing slowly through their nose, and Harvey pulls them closer.

They taste like toothpaste, and feel like silk in his hands. He squeezes once, trying not to groan into their mouth, lest he put on a show for the rest of the group, but they rearrange themselves against his lips, and suddenly his glasses are digging into the bridge of his nose.

He yanks himself away, barely taking a breath as he tears his glasses off his face and tosses them onto the coffee table with a clatter. He pays it no mind. Someone whistles. Probably Sam. He drags the Farmer back in and slots their lips together, clicking together like puzzle pieces as they sling their arms over his shoulders. 

He slips his thumb under their shirt, just barely, and their voice rumbles deep in their chest.

He loves Thirsty Thursday.

Hi moot! Hope you're doing well! <:)

Can i request about pilot harvey meeting the farmer (GN) ? (Those HCs about the bachelors archieving their dreams is living rent free in my head for a while )

Maybe harvey taking a break from aviation after an accident and spending some time in pelican town to rest ? 👀

It could be HCs or a little oneshot, whatever you're comfortable with!

(If Anything just sorry in advance)

Hey moot! This one was a monster, and it took me fucking ages(sorry abt that), but I hope you like it all the same!!

Bachelor/ettes Achieving Their Dreams is here.

3296 words, mentions of scarring, burns, fire, some swearing, and Pierre's relationship with Abigail is pretty... not nice. GN!Farmer, Pilot!Harvey. Half edited, so excuse any awkward phrasing or typos. I tried my best. :') This one is pretty lengthy, so it gets a cut. Enjoy!

When the creatures of the valley are sleeping, and the streetlights lining the town square still glow faintly, Harvey wakes up and starts his day.

Like clockwork, he rolls out of bed to wash the sleep out of his eyes and shock his body awake with a shower. It’s a routine he picked up in the early years of his career, when he was lowest in seniority and always stuck with the longest and earliest flights. Sixteen years later and he still does it, even though there’s no reason to wake up early anymore.

Hopping out of the shower at half past five, he wrings the water out of his curls with a towel, and plucks his glasses from where he left them folded neatly on a washcloth. He wipes vapor off of the lenses with it, holds them up to the light to make sure they’re dry, and then settles them on his nose.

The world turns clear, and a flash of pearly white at the front of his bangs catches his attention. Harvey frowns.

He’s lucky his hairline isn’t receding just yet, but he scowls at how his age is starting to show in the streaks of white, in sharp contrast against the rest of his chocolate brown hair. He flicks a dangling curl away from his brow, and leans in close to the mirror, eyeing his jawline in disappointment. He runs a palm over the curve of his cheek, and sighs.

He needs to shave again.

Well, need is a strong word, because he doesn’t—not anymore, anyway. But old habits die hard.

That takes at least ten minutes, and he’s been shaving every other day for half of his life, but he’s still nursing a nick under his jaw as he walks into the kitchenette. The apartment is cool compared to the sauna he’s made of the bathroom, and his skin blooms with goosebumps when he opens the fridge.

He drags out the almost empty carton of eggs from the back of the top shelf, and pulls a pack of bread from the other side. There are two slices left, not counting the ends. He sighs, and knows he’ll have to pick up groceries from Pierre’s in a few hours when the shop opens. Harvey digs the last of his coffee grounds out of the cabinet above the stove. He’ll need to pick up another bag of those as well, and his head twinges at the thought. His grocery list is getting longer the more he thinks about it.

He shakes the thoughts away. Coffee and food first, before everything else.

He fries up the last of the eggs, toasts and lightly butters the bread, and sits at his tiny dining table with a full mug. The window beside him is closed and the curtains are pulled, but the cloth is sheer enough that he can look outside and see the world slowly start to wake up. There are chittering finches in the tree branches, a brown rabbit hopping through the underbrush of Jodi’s backyard, and if he straightens up enough, he can see pure white gulls gliding over the deep stretch of blue beyond Pelican Town’s beaches.

He eats slowly, gazing out the window as the sun finally rises above the mountains and bathes the valley in soft yellow light. 

Harvey smiles and pulls the curtains back. It’s still too cold to slide the window open—the valley is just three weeks out of winter, and you’d have to be a madman to subject yourself to the early morning chill—but the warmth of the sun should reach him through the glass just fine. He picks up his mug and takes a swig, settling in for his breakfast overlooking Pelican Town.

The peace is short-lived, however. By half past 8, his dishes are empty and clean in the rack adjacent to the sink, and his computer is on the table, open to a 3-day-old email from Steph, his coworker. He scrolls up to the beginning of the message and skims over it again.

Hey Harv, just checking in again. How are you doing these days? How are your arms? Has your back healed? I’m sure you’re following doctor’s orders, but I wanted to check in to be sure. By the way, I talked to Ricky yesterday, and he says he’s doing good, but he hasn’t heard from you in months. I don’t mean to pry, and you know I don’t mind the radio silence, but he’s your best friend, Harv... Reach out to him, will you? He misses you. We all do. Even the trainees have been asking about you (I think they just miss getting drinks on your dime though). Take care of yourself, maybe go outside for a bit, you old fart. I’ve heard the weather in the south is lovely this time of year. Send me some pictures, okay? Talk soon.

Harvey sighs and runs an exasperated hand over his face. 

How is he doing?

His back still aches occasionally, but Caroline’s aerobics class helps with the worst of the pain, and the burns on his arms healed a long time ago. The scars are a nasty reminder, sure, but his skin doesn’t feel tender to the touch anymore.

Point is, he could schedule a physical tomorrow, and his doctor would clear him for flight by the end of next week—but that’s kind of the problem.

Harvey looks at his coat closet. In the farthest corner, hidden under his uniforms, his model kits collect dust. He threw everything in there when he first arrived in the valley, and he’s pretty sure he’d have to lean all of his weight back just to get the door open. He goes tense when he hears an engine in the sky, but he doesn’t look up anymore. 

Harvey pauses. 

When did he stop?

He glances at the time, and closes his computer with a sigh. His chair makes an awful screech against the tile as he stands, and he beelines for his dresser, yanking the top drawer open to grab the first barely presentable thing he sees. An old university t-shirt; one of the few with no holes. 

He tosses it on his bed, swipes the top pair of jeans out of his hamper, and unravels his robe.

Harvey gets dressed quickly and only spares himself a quick glance in the mirror to check that everything is sitting fine. It’s certainly not the picture of professionalism expected by his employers, but they’re not here, so as long as he doesn’t look like he’s just rolled out of bed, that’s good enough.

Harvey slips on his most comfortable pair of shoes, shoves his wallet and keys in his pocket, and steps outside.

The sun assaults his pupils as he makes his way down the stairs, and he squints against the glare until his eyes adjust. It’s nicer out now, and he breathes in the sweet smell of tulips—Evelyn’s flowers of choice this year for the planters lining the square. The dogwood trees are also blooming, leaving the cobblestone littered with white and pink petals. Harvey closes his eyes and inhales slowly, feeling peaceful.

“Shit!—”

Harvey jumps, his eyes flying open in surprise at the sound of wood thunking against glass, heavy like a gong. A few birds leap from their perches in the trees, and a squirrel dives under a bush. He turns to Pierre’s, searching for the source of the sound, and finds a stranger with a giant crate in their arms, fighting to balance it as they reach for the doors. 

Harvey realizes that it is not one, but two crates. 

Stacked on top of each other. 

One of them is starting to tip over.

“Woah, woah!” They yelp, and Harvey moves without thinking.

The grit of the wood presses against his palms as he heaves the top crate out of their arms, and he looks at the stranger with a smile.

“Uh, hello,” Harvey says. They blink, perfectly silent, and he grimaces. “Sorry, you looked like you were going to lose it.”

It’s not as smooth as he’d like, but it does snap them out of whatever trance they were in.

“Oh, no! Thank you for saving it, it would’ve been bad if I lost that one. It’s, uh.” They smile, and there’s an anxious edge to their voice. “That one’s full of eggs.”

Harvey blinks down at the crate, and then the pavement. “I can’t imagine the mess that would’ve made.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Pierre would ever buy from me again.” They wince. “He probably wouldn’t let me near his shop at all, actually.”

“That man does know how to hold a grudge.” Harvey glances at the doors, the glass glinting and reflecting the bright morning sun directly in his eyes. He blinks hard, willing the after images away. “I’m just here to pick up some groceries, but would you like some help bringing these in?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to, but I’d be very grateful if you did, stranger.” They smile. Something warm settles in his gut at the invitation.

“My name is Harvey,” He says sheepishly.

“It’s nice to meet you, Harvey. I’m the new farmer.” Harvey doesn’t bother mentioning he never met the old one. They nod at the dirt path leading to the bus stop, and he glances over his shoulder. “I moved into the farmhouse down the road a few weeks ago.”

His eyebrows wrinkle a bit. “You moved in a few weeks ago and I’ve only just met you?” 

“I’ve been pretty busy. The farm wasn’t in the best shape, so I’ve been clearing the land, and trying to raise enough money to restore the farmhouse.” The Farmer lifts the crate in their arms a bit. “Hence the crates.” 

Harvey looks down at the crate in his arms. “How many chickens do you even have? There’s like fifty eggs in here.”

“I started off with two, but I’ve got eight now. They make a lot.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Harvey readjusts the crate, a burn building in his arms. He’s surprised it took so long, though. Maybe the aerobics class is doing more for him than just fixing the back pain.

Harvey nearly topples backward as the front doors swing open, but rights himself at the last moment. The crate of eggs remains safe in his arms, even though the glare that Abigail fixes him with makes his knees weak, and the sword strapped to her hip doesn’t help, either.

“Harvey,” she grits out, and he thinks it might be a greeting? 

He doesn’t have the opportunity to reply, though, because she levels the farmer with an even nastier scowl, and storms off toward Marnie’s. Pierre appears just then, keys in hand and a matching scowl on his face. Harvey doesn’t have to wonder where Abigail got it from.

“Fucking brat,” Pierre spits, jamming the keys into the front doors to unlock them as Harvey and the Farmer share an awkward look.

“Uh, rough morning, Pierre?” The Farmer asks.

“That would be the understatement of the fucking century, Farmer.” Pierre waves them in, and Harvey follows dutifully. The general store is always warmer than it is outside, and in the winter that’s a boon, but right now Harvey can already feel sweat clinging to the nape of his neck. He rolls his shoulders back, and that helps only marginally. “What have you got for me today?”

“One crate of eggs, one of produce.”

“Good. Set them both on the counter. I’ll get my scale and ring you up.”

“Yes sir,” The farmer heaves their crate onto the counter beside Pierre’s register, and Harvey sets the eggs beside it as gently as he can. When he looks up, the door to Pierre’s home is swinging shut.

“Wow. This spat must’ve been really bad if Pierre is cursing,” The Farmer muses, crossing their arms and leaning against the counter. 

“I've never seen him this angry.” Harvey heaves a breath. “I wonder what happened this time.”

“I'm not close with either of them, so I couldn’t guess.” The Farmer shrugs.

“I didn’t think you were,” Harvey whistles. “Certainly not Abigail, with the way she looked at you. What did you even do?”

The Farmer sighs. “Lewis thinks it’s because she wanted to buy the deed to the old farm, and is pissed that I got it through birth.” 

“And what do you think?” Harvey asks.

They shrug again. “I’m not about to hunt her down to find out.”

“She’d probably cut you down if you did,” Harvey says grimly, shuddering at the memory of the sword gleaming on her hip. The Farmer chuckles. 

“She could certainly try.” The Farmer rolls their eyes, a smug smile playing on their lips, and Harvey suddenly gets the sense that he is very, very out of his depth. They look at him curiously after the silence stretches for a few moments longer than necessary, and Harvey swallows hard.

“Groceries.” He says intelligently, and the Farmer’s eyes slowly crinkle at the edges. 

“That is what you originally came here for.”

“I should go do that.”

“You should.” The Farmer nods, their smile unmoving, and Harvey stiffly makes his way to the end of the first aisle.

He can feel the Farmer’s eyes on him the whole way, his eyes skimming the shelf as he tries very hard to ignore the prickling heat climbing up his neck. He slips out of sight, rubs the back of his neck as the feeling disappears, and starts looking for his coffee.

The door in the far corner of the shop swings open again, and Pierre waltzes back into the store with an easy smile on his face. Harvey really should be used to the mood swings by now, but when Pierre’s entire personality changes with the breeze, the whiplash is enough to leave everything spinning.

“Sorry for the wait, Farmer. My scale wasn’t where I left it.”

“Oh, no worries, Pierre. I’m in no rush.”

“No offense, but I don’t believe you,” Pierre jokes. “You’re always in a rush.”

“Not today, thankfully. I’m spending the rest of the day at the beach.”

Harvey hears Pierre clunk his scale on the counter. “The beach? It’s still a bit too cold to take a dip, isn’t it?”

“Oh no, I’m not going swimming, I’m fishing.”

Harvey’s never been the type to eavesdrop, but the store is small and they’re not even ten feet away, so he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter, does he?

He frowns. It’s a poor excuse and he knows it.

He refocuses on the bags in front of him, and sighs. Pierre has a small selection of coffee, and it’s expensive, but it’s better than Joja. Harvey shudders. He would rather pour hot wax on his own tongue than buy coffee from Joja.

Harvey grabs two bags of beans, stands up, and plucks one loaf of plain white bread from the top shelf. He glances down at everything in his arms. He probably should’ve grabbed a basket.

“Alright, that's the last of it!”

“Thank you, Pierre, I appreciate it.” Harvey perks up.

“Oh no, it’s no trouble at all. Your farm is already doing a lot of good for the local economy, even with that cursed Joja Mart across the river.” Harvey nearly snorts. No one in town is as vocal about their hatred for the big blue building as Pierre.

“Give it time, Pierre. It’ll close down eventually.”

“In a perfect world, it never would’ve opened in the first place.”

“Have a good day, Pierre,” The Farmer calls over their shoulder, and Harvey tenses when he realizes the sound of their steps is getting closer. Harvey looks up, and the Farmer is smiling at him, half concealed by the rack as they peer around the corner. “Hey.”

“Uh, hi again.” Harvey manages a tiny wave past everything in his arms, and the Farmer’s smile widens.

“Just wanted to thank you again for the help,” The Farmer says warmly. Harvey opens his mouth to reply, wanting to say something about it being no trouble, but they’re already dipping out of sight. Regret sours in his throat. 

But then they’re reappearing a moment later, still leaning past the corner of the aisle like they’re in some goofy movie poster, with a basket hanging from their hand. “Need a basket?”

Harvey wonders if the twitch of his lips is visible under the fluff of his mustache, and walks up to them. “I do, thank you.”

“I think this is the least I can do, considering.” The Farmer holds it out to him, keeping the handles out of his way as he dumps the bags of coffee and bread into the basket. “I would’ve lost a lot of income if you hadn’t lent me a hand when you did, so thank you.”

“It wasn’t any trouble.”

“Maybe not, but I appreciate you all the same. It’s nice being out here, surrounded by people who actually give a damn about each other.” Harvey stares at them in surprise. “Even the nicest people in Zuzu wouldn’t have given me a second glance.”

“You’re from the city?”

They nod. “Not by birth, but yeah. I was living in Zuzu for a few years until now.”

Harvey takes in their sunkissed skin, and the sturdiness of their arms. They look like they’ve been in the fields for years. “I never would’ve guessed.”

“That’s probably a good thing.” They hold his basket out again, and Harvey takes it.

“Thank you, Farmer.”

They smile, and the flecks of dirt on their face catch his eyes like diamonds. “You’re welcome. Have a good day, Harvey. It was nice meeting you.”

“You too,” Harvey mumbles as they finally leave, the bell above the doors cheerily punctuating their departure. 

It takes him a long time to shake himself out of it, but he manages eventually. Harvey plucks a few extra things off the shelves, and when his basket is appropriately heavy, he makes his way to the counter where Pierre is busy separating eggs into cartons.

“Morning, Harvey,” Pierre greets him familiarly, and Harvey nods his head.

“Morning, Pierre.” Harvey clunks his basket on the counter. “Can I get two cartons of eggs too, please?”

Pierre checks him out quickly, and Harvey is out of there two minutes later with his arms full and his wallet a little lighter.

He climbs up the steps to his apartment, and pauses at his door. He looks up toward the bus stop; squints hard to see past it. The trees block most of his view, but he can still make out the hint of open farmland between the branches. Harvey blinks and turns to his door, his keys jingling obnoxiously between his fingertips as he unlocks it and steps inside. He’s being weird.

He sets his bags on the kitchen counter and starts unloading his groceries.

Later, just past noon, Harvey is sitting in front of his computer, once again failing to type up a worthwhile reply to Steph. He gets a sentence down, maybe two, and then he’s grumbling to himself and deleting everything again. And again. And again.

And again.

Harvey thunks his head against the tabletop in defeat, and groans loudly.

“This isn’t working,” Harvey mumbles, as if the world needed any confirmation. 

He sits up, his forehead aching faintly, and looks out the window. Beyond the square, beyond the thick line of trees, he can see the ocean glittering under the sun, deep blue and endless.

All it takes is a tug in his chest, and Harvey gets up, puts his shoes on, and walks out the door.