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The first time he met the farmer, it was early spring and he had crept out of his basement room for food--soda, and cereal, or pizza rolls, or whatever his mom had stashed in the freezer when she'd last gone grocery shopping. It was early afternoon and he was tired, squinting against the bright sunlight shining through the windows.
He gathered up the food he'd selected and turned around to head back downstairs and skidded to a stop: there was his mother, looking a little apologetic, smiling and standing next to a stranger who was entirely too tall for his own good.
It was more than weird to see a stranger in Pelican Town. He wasn't sure most people even knew this place existed.
"Seb," his mother said, pleasantly, gesturing towards the stranger. "This is the new farmer who just moved in. He's going to be living just down the mountain from us."
Sebastian eyed the new farmer up and down--he didn't look much like a farmer, really. He was over six feet, but skinny and slump shouldered and pale and looked like he was trying to make himself smaller than he was. He looked like someone who would be at home doing a back office job, something with computers. His hair was long and kind of greasy, his fishbelly skin was breaking out, and he was wearing thick framed glasses.
"Farmer. Right." Sebastian replied. "Hi. I have things to do."
It was difficult to squeeze himself past the farmer and his mom, but he managed it, slipping down into the cool darkness of his basement room and locking the door behind him. His heart was pounding--he didn't like being around people, much less /new/ people. He felt ill.
The farmer continued to show up, maybe once or twice a week, from then on. He was friendly with all of Sebastian's family and seemed to almost follow Robin around like a duckling--not that Robin seemed to mind, either. She took the farmer under her wing and helped him out when he had questions, put antibiotic cream on his fresh, gross blisters, fed him when he came hungry to her house. Demetrius seemed to like him because of his interest in science, and Maru was excited to have someone who would tinker with her robots with her--as for Sebastian, he tried to stay away, but sometimes he couldn't avoid seeing the farmer.
It was always dramatic when the farmer showed up. He always bumbled around like he wasn't used to his long, gangly limbs and bumped into things, knocked pictures off the walls, broke one of Robin's vases. Sebastian couldn't even count how many times he had heard a loud /thud/ from the upstairs, followed by the farmer's shy laughter and Robin asking if he was okay--because the farmer had knocked his too-tall head against the doorframe again.
Summer was harder for the farmer than spring had been. It was definitely obvious that he had been an office worker at that point when he showed up, burnt to a crisp and dehydrated, at the carpenter's door. Robin ushered him inside and got him water and went looking for aloe vera, and Demetrius took that time to lecture the farmer on how best to /not/ get burnt, what kind of hats were best, proper ventilation and hydration--lecturing was what Demetrius did best.
Sebastian watched from the shadows the whole time, a ghost that appeared at the doorway and saw his family fawn over this sunburnt stranger. He felt, distinctly, a lonely ache in his chest: they spoke to this stranger more often and with more kindness than they ever showed to him.
"Have you met that farmer guy?" Sam asked him one day. He was playing on his handheld, fingers flying across the buttons. Sebastian was leaning over his shoulder to get the best view of the screen, trying to use the natural shade of the tree behind them to block out the sunlight glaring off of it.
"He's only, like, best friends with my mom," Seb mutters under his breath. "You missed a mob down there."
"Oh. Thanks," Sam's character turns around on the screen. "Yeah, my mom really likes him, too. Says he's a 'nice young man'. I think she just likes the fresh produce he drops off. He's not so bad, though. Gets along with Vincent and Jas."
"I don't think hes going to last," Seb says, finally. "He didn't even know how to use sunscreen."
"Yeah." Sam's screen flickered with a little victory message. "Alright, you wanna go practice?"
Fall was, in Sebastian's opinion, one of the best seasons. The frogs were out in droves, croaking eerily through the rainy nights, and it was cool and cloudy enough that he felt safer venturing out by the lake to smoke. He loved the way the leaves crunched under his feet and the way the rain felt on his shoulders and, more than anything, he loved Spirits' Eve.
The farmer was there, of course, like he was at every festival, but Seb had to double take to realize who it was. He was bundled up in a scarf and a jacket, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, and he'd started growing a scruffy beard. His hair was even longer than it had been before, brushing his shoulders, and he'd wedged a hat onto his head, beneath which he peered out of his bottlecap glasses. He looked a little ridiculous, honestly, but he was probably dealing with the unfamiliar cold snap as best as he could. Seb wondered if he had much more than just a fireplace in his house. Not that it mattered.
The farmer was going around and greeting everyone, and most of them seemed happy to see him: Granny Evelyn even going to far as to put her hand on his arm and pat it, a smile on her face, Haley welcoming him with a sidehug, Jodi beaming up at him. Sebastian scrunched down further into himself, shoving his own hands into his pockets and scowling at the skeletons.
Of course, inevitably, the farmer came up and settled next to him, a too-tall, too-warm bulk at his right side. "These are pretty cool, huh?" the farmer offers, his voice a little goofy, breathless.
Sebastian shrugs his shoulders, "I guess."
"There's a lot of these in the mines, surprisingly. I didn't think there would be so many monsters when I came here; I always thought that kind of stuff was fake," the farmer is talking without any consideration of whether or not Sebastian actually wants to /hear/ it. "They weren't. I've learned a lot since coming here."
"Whatever," Sebastian mumbles and, glancing up through his hair, is gratified to see the farmer look a little hurt.
The farmer takes a step back, "It was nice to see you," he says, waits an awkward second for a reply that doesn't come, and then walks away. Sebastian's shoulders hunch further when he hears Penny's happy exclamation upon seeing the farmer.
The farmer didn't show up very often during the winter. There were a couple of days he came to ask Robin to upgrade something on his farm, but he was absentee other than that. Sebastian was irritated at himself for even thinking about the farmer, but it was to be expected, really. How could he show up every day during the busy farming season and yet be absentee when there were no crops to be tended?
He was wandering out of his room again when something came up on the edge of his vision, too large and bulky to be anyone in his family. He takes a hasty step back and raises an arm in--what, self defense? before realizing it's the farmer, dressed in a heavy winter coat and scarf, scruffy beard grown bushy and large and covered in frost, hair longer than ever. Sebastian drops his arm, embarrassed, and the farmer takes this as permission to step closer.
He holds out something in his gloved hands: it's a frozen tear, icy and bluish and emanating coldness. "I saw it was your birthday, on the calendar," the farmer says. He's beaming through his beard. "I thought you might like this."
"Oh," says Sebastian, dumbfounded. He takes the tear--its even colder when he touches it. "It's my birthday today? I mean.. I guess it is. Thanks. This is nice." It's more than nice, it's one of his favorite things, and he wonders where the farmer managed to find it.
"I'm glad you like it," the farmer reaches out and, very gently, touches Sebastian's hand. He moves away then, and smiles again. "I'll see you later. I have to go check on my chickens. Don't want them to freeze to death."
He's out before Sebastian can really process what happened, and his heart beats a little in his chest--is this why everyone likes the farmer so much? He shakes his head. It was just a nice gift. That's all.
Spring came in a rush, grass bursting through the ground and flowers blooming on the trees and dandelions popping up everywhere you stepped. It was the perfect time to tune up his motorcycle. Spring nights were when his anxiety was the worst, really--the raucous laughter, everyone excited and full of energy, the press of people so sudden after a long, lethargic winter. These were the nights he had to escape the most.
A long shadow falls over him while he's stuck under his motorcycle and he thinks /Demetrius/ irritatedly, sliding himself out from under his bike to see what demands his stepfather has for him now, and--
Well, he's surprised to see it's not Demetrius, but even more surprised to see that it's the farmer. He's changed, since winter, shaved off his beard and cut his hair close to his head for the new warmth of spring, and so much is different too. He's gone from slump-shouldered and skinny to straight-backed and bulky, arms bulging with muscles built up from a years worth of hard farm work and mining. Had this been hiding under his bulky jackets and coats all fall and winter?
The farmer beams at him, cheeks dimpling. "I've never seen you out here this early, before," he says, and it should be offensive, but it's not. "Is this your bike?"
"Um," his mouth his dry. "Yeah. I was just changing the oil. Sometimes I like to ride to the city, you know. Get away from... everything."
The farmer nods, "I get it," he says, hooking his thumbs in his pockets. "Sometimes it gets to be too much."
"Yeah," Seb says. He is distinctly aware of the awkward silence building between them. "You could probably come on a ride with me, someday," he says, and immediately regrets saying it--not because he would dislike going somewhere with this farmer, but because that's his alone time, and maybe this is too weird, too forward--
The farmer just smiles again, and those deep dimples draw in Sebastian's gaze. "Sure," he agrees. "I'd like that."