Stardew Valley Fanfic Writers Guild

Without the gold and the ref ^^

Ethan had been face to face with too many doctors in the last three months. Specialists in windowless rooms. Surgeons in bright ORs. Residents on the recovery unit. Every single building looked the same. Decorated with almost identical posters and boring artwork. The same smell of antiseptic and despair lingering in his nose long past his departure from the building. 

He sat on an exam table, toes grazing the tile floor as he kicked his left foot. There was a poster on the wall across from him, something about proper handwashing technique. Twenty seconds of scrubbing to ensure cleanliness. Daisy had one in the barn hand washing station, his brain supplied uselessly. Not as clinical—it was clearly handmade with those stupid expensive markers she had and laminated. Something about whimsy, she would tell him if he were to ask. 

Twenty seconds of active scrubbing makes for clean farm hands. 

His sister sat across from him. Her legs crossed at the ankles, phone in hand as she pulled up her list of questions for the orthotist. The doctor had been talking to her for twenty minutes at this point, explaining detailed answers to questions he would’ve never thought to ask.

How often should the padding be replaced? Is there a brand of moisture-wicking sleeve you’d recommend? What's the protocol if it gets too tight after a PT session? 

Having a cast was easy. Neon green that had been replaced four times now and drawn on each time by his sister and boyfriend and Vincent and Jas. It was a date on a calander—whether that be another surgery scheduled or the day it came off entirely. Temporary. Something that would go away and he would simply go back to normal.

Of course, that wasn’t true.

The brace was fine. Objectively, it was quite impressive. A marvel of modern medical engineering, the orthopedist and orthosist had both said, with hinges that could be adjusted as range of motion improved, lightweight polymer, padded where it hit the joints. She talked Ethan through the straps, the wear schedule, the signs to watch for. Daisy took notes on her phone and asked her questions and came up with about a dozen more.

“You okay, bubba?” Daisy asked, breaking Ethan out of his thoughts. 

He blinked rapidly, gaze turning from the hand washing sign across the room to his sister. “Fine,” he responded in the flattest voice he owned. 

She frowned. “I’m sorry. I just—”

“Yeah.” He didn’t let her finish, just cast his eyes down to watch as the doctor approached with the neck strap for shoulder immobilization. 

“Your care team informed me that you’re beginning to regain movement in your shoulder,” the doctor began, fastening the strap to the forearm of the brace. 

“Uh,” Ethan swallowed, focusing on the way the strap tightened around his neck and back around. “Yeah. A little.”

It hurt, every time he attempted to raise his shoulder during PT. Despite that, there seemed to be no way around doing it. Struggling with pain shooting down his arm and back and tears in his eyes as the therapist helped him raise his elbow parallel with his shoulder. He couldn’t hold it up on his own yet, not for longer than a second or two, but it was something. 

"A little is good," the doctor said, making a note in his chart. "We'll want to keep building on that. The brace is designed to support the joint during these early stages, but it won't do the work for you."

Ethan nodded, not trusting his voice.

"Range of motion exercises, twice daily minimum, in addition to your scheduled PT and OT sessions." The doctor glanced at Daisy. "I know that sounds like a lot."

"We can manage a lot," Daisy dismissed, already typing.

We. 

Ethan stared at the handwashing poster again. Twenty seconds of active scrubbing.

The doctor finished adjusting the final strap and stepped back, giving Ethan room to look down at his arm. The brace was black, sleeker than he'd expected, the hinges at his elbow and wrist gleaming faintly under the exam room lights. His hand—paler and smaller looking than it used to be, fingers slightly curled in even at rest—sat cradled inside it like something being kept safe. Or contained. That felt like a better word to describe it.

"How does that feel?" The doctor asked.

Ethan tried to flex his fingers, the joints barely moving despite the grand amounts of effort it took. He pressed his lips together, vision blurring at the exertion until his fingers moved ever so slightly. The brace held firm, unyielding in a way that felt almost reassuring and almost suffocating at the same time. "Fine," he muttered, eyes remaining at their stare down with the handwashing sign.

"Any pinching, pressure points, anything that feels off?"

"No. It's fine." He could feel the unwarranted frustration beginning to present itself in his voice. 

He could feel his sister glaring at him. Her gaze boring directly into the top of his head like he was a little kid who just said something they weren’t supposed to. “Sorry,” He mumbled under his breath, grabbing his brace-covered elbow with his left hand. 

Only then did he look up at her, her gaze immediately softening at the sight of his bloodshot and glass eyes. She didn't push. Just held his gaze a beat longer than necessary, then looked back at the doctor. "Is there anything we should watch for over the next few weeks? As far as adjustment goes?"

"Some soreness as he adapts to the new range of support is normal. If you notice any numbness, tingling, or discoloration that doesn't resolve within an hour of removing the brace, that's worth a call to our office. In the event of an emergency or something that feels urgent, you're always welcome to visit your local doctor, " He handed her a folded pamphlet, which she added to the small stack already living in her bag. "Otherwise, we'll see him back in four weeks to reassess the hinges and make any adjustments."

Four weeks. Another appointment. Another exam table, another poster, another version of this same conversation.

"Great," Ethan quipped. The word came out hollow even to his own ears.

The doctor either didn't notice or chose not to comment. He shook Daisy's hand, then Ethan's and left them to gather their things.

Daisy slid off her chair and grabbed Ethan's coat from the hook. The one she had sewn the right sleeve shut on, pinning it back and fastening against the side with a row of snaps herself weeks ago, leaving room for the brace to sit against his body without fighting fabric for space. She held it open for him, and he shrugged his left arm into the sleeve, letting the rest of the coat settle over his shoulders and right side, brace and all, tucked against him like it had always been part of the design.

Neither of them commented on it. They hadn't needed to discuss it in weeks — just another small adjustment that had become routine, the kind of thing that used to feel like a loss and now just was.

"Ready?" She asked, once he was zipped up. He didn’t respond with words, just followed her out the door into the hall.

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。

The afternoon grey was quickly turning to evening pewter as Daisy pulled the truck into the slush covered driveway. Fat, lazy snowflakes had been falling off and on all day. Not enough to make a difference on the wet asphalt winding up the mountains of the valley, but enough to add a fresh, new layer atop the already accumulated precipitation. If this were a different lifetime, Ethan would’ve thought the landscape surrounding his new home was absolutely beautiful. 

Ethan shifted in his seat, already dreading the production that getting out of the truck, or doing much of anything at this point, had become. He reached for the door handle with his left hand, twisting carefully at the waist, mindful of the rigid plastic shell strapped around his torso under his coat. The brace dug into his hip bones if he moved too fast, a constant reminder to slow down, take it easy, don't twist like that. He'd been told it would come off soon—a few more weeks, maybe—but for now it was just another layer between him and the rest of the world, stiff and unyielding under his clothes.

He swung his legs out first, planting his feet in the slush, then pushed himself up and out of the seat in one careful motion, brace keeping his spine locked in place the whole way. Daisy was already around the front of the truck by the time he was upright, hovering without quite suffocating, the way she did now.

"I'm good," he said, before she could ask.

"I know." She didn't move away, exactly, just fell into step beside him as they made their way up the path toward the house, slow and careful over the slick ground. The cold made everything worse. Made the brace feel colder against his skin, made his shoulder ache deeper, made the short walk from the truck to the door feel longer than it had any right to.

The second they were inside, Daisy shrugged off her jacket and kicked her boots next to the door as she muttered something about needing to ‘rest her eyes’ before making dinner in a few hours. Ethan knew immediately that meant his sister was going to be dead to the world on the sofa for the foreseeable future, and the probability of her actually making dinner was about fifty percent. 

Ethan stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment. Goober trotted up to him after greeting Daisy, pressing his nose against Ethan’s left hand clamped against the back of a kitchen chair. He listened to the faint sound of movement upstairs, quiet footsteps moving towards the grandfather clock at the top of the staircase and down. 

Sam appeared then, still clad in his JojaMart uniform from his shift that morning. “Hey, handsome,” Sam gave his boyfriend that oh-so bright smile he so longed to see. 

“Hey,” Ethan breathed out in relief, savoring the feeling of his boyfriend crossing the room and standing on his toes to kiss his lips. 

"How'd it go?" Sam asked, pulling back just enough to look at him, hands settling on Ethan's hips like he was checking for damage by touch alone.

"Fine," Ethan dismissed. Despite how much he wanted to protest, he let Sam unzip his jacket to get a look at the new brace on his arm. Sam gently turned it in his hands, getting a look at the dark metal front and center against his boyfriend's arm. “It’s… okay, I guess. Weird.”

"Hmm, well, you look very metal and very hot, so... Silver lining!" Sam grinned, already stepping back toward the counter, energy ratcheting up several notches the way it did whenever he'd been alone with his thoughts too long. "Okay, so, so much happened today, you're not even gonna believe it—"

"We saw each other this morning, baby."

"I know, but so much happened since then." Sam held up a finger, counting off. "One: Sebastian texted me like four times about that boss fight he keeps losing in Prairie King, and he's still mad. It's been a week, I told him to just look up the strategy online and he said, quote, 'that's cheating', which, sir, it's a video game—"

"Sam."

"—Two: Penny asked me to help her move some boxes for the library thing with Elliott’s book on Saturday, which, fine, but she also asked if I could 'keep Vincent and Jas occupied' while she does it, which I think means babysit, but she didn't say babysit—"

"Sam."

"—Three, and this is the big one: George stopped me in the road today to tell me my hair's getting too long and I should 'see a professional', which, first of all, rude, second of all, it's not even that long—" Sam ran a hand through it, as if to prove a point, even if his fingers snagged through the gel holding his mullet in its usual style, "—and four—"

"Sam." Ethan caught his sleeve with his good hand, tugging him back in. "Breathe."

Sam blinked, then laughed, a little sheepish, his shoulders dropping. "Sorry. I just— I missed you. It's stupid, I know we literally saw each other like six hours ago—"

"It's not stupid." Ethan pulled him back in, pressing his lips to Sam’s forehead. "I missed you too."

Sam stayed there for a moment, forehead against Ethan's chest, before pulling back with a soft exhale. "Okay. What's number four?" Ethan asked, smiling down at him.

"I don't even remember anymore. You ruined the momentum."

"Tragic,” Ethan teased, grinning. The real thing, his eyes lighting up as Sam looked into those sparkling eyes and went softer than Ethan had a word to explain. Sam stood on his toes once again to press a lingering kiss against his boyfriend's lips.

Goober chose that moment to headbutt Ethan's leg, apparently unwilling to be ignored any longer. Sam let out a laugh before he crouched down to give him the attention he was demanding, scratching behind his ears while Goober's tail thumped against the floor.

"You wanna sit down?" Sam asked, glancing up. "I can make, like, hot chocolate, or—"

"I want to go for a walk."

In a different lifetime, one where he wasn’t partially disabled and wouldn’t be cleared for his normal amount of exercise for a very long time—if ever—Ethan would’ve spent the next few hours in the gym. Lifting weights until his arms ached before sprinting on the treadmill for multiple miles in an attempt to shut up the static in his head. No matter how much his decaying muscle mass craved the burn of an old routine that had been ripped away from him in one solid tackle (okay, it was three at once), he was stuck with a walk in the snow that would take double the time any exercise would’ve this time last year and a mountain more of pain after.

Sam looked up at him properly, taking in whatever it was Ethan's face was doing. Grief and sadness mixed with the overstimulation of the day. Whatever had been sitting in his chest since the exam room, since the brace was tightened on his arm, since we can manage a lot said by his sister with complete certainty and the four week countdown to another version of the same appointment. All of which he, regretfully, couldn’t be present for despite how much Ethan had insisted that it was fine. He didn’t need to see him like that. Not with the unfounded anger and the grief over what once was and the attitude directed at those who didn’t deserve it.

"Okay," Sam said simply. He straightened up, Goober trotting off toward the living room with a put-upon look but settling in his spot on top of Daisy’s legs. "Lemme change real quick, I'm not walking around in this uniform. I smell like the JojaMart deli counter."

"You don't have to come."

"I know." Sam was already heading for the stairs, fast, like he didn't want to give Ethan time to actually argue. "Two minutes."

Ethan opened his mouth to argue, on principle, because that was usually how this went and found, for once, that he didn't have it in him. “Wait,” He called out instead. “They trusted you at the deli counter?”

Sam laughed, already halfway back up the staircase. “That was number five!”

Ethan just laughed, shaking his head in disbelief that he could get something as good as Samson Russell and waited for his return.

Two minutes had turned to ten, as it always did with Sam. Taking entirely too much time to pick out an outfit that consisted of half stolen clothes from Ethan’s side of the closet. Sam’s side just kept getting fuller each time he slept over despite the fact that he did not live there. He’d gotten distracted by his phone twice and Cheesy once, finally reemerging into the kitchen with the orange menace cradled in his arms like an infant and his phone illuminated in his right hand as he scrolled.

The two ended up walking without much direction as the snow continued to fall lazily. Down the gravel road towards the cindersap. Past the barn with the new calves, growing bigger each day. Through the orchard of apples and peaches and cherries, laying dormant for the season as snow accumulated in impressive piles against their branches. They ended up passing Marnie’s Ranch, waving to the woman and stopping for a quick conversation about the appointment and how Daisy was getting on since hitting fourteen weeks along in her pregnancy. 

They continued without much direction, Sam’s arm wrapped around Ethan’s good elbow as he chattered on about whatever was happening in that pretty little brain of his. A new song he’d been messing with and how the melody was giving him difficulty. Whether Abigail’s hamster was actually evil or not, or if he just didn’t like him. How Vincent kept asking for more and more elaborate Winter Star gifts as the month went on and trying to convince Jas to do the same. Ethan didn't say much. Didn't need to. Just let the sound of Sam's voice fill up the space where his own thoughts had been sitting too loud.

The snow picked up gradually. Snowflakes growing denser, falling faster, the wind starting to pick at the edges of their coats. By the time they reached the old community center, sitting overgrown and half forgotten at the edge of town where it was once vibrant and bustling no matter the season in their childhoods, the gentle snowfall had turned into something closer to a wall separating them from the warmth of home. 

“Well,” Sam sucked in a burning breath, letting it fog out before them with a dramatic exhale. “That escalated quickly.”

"We should head back," Ethan declared, pulling on his boyfriend’s arm in the direction leading towards the town square. His back was starting to burn, accompanied by the shooting pain running down his arm into his numb fingertips. He just wanted his bed and heating pad with the cat a warm, comforting weight against his chest.

"In this?" Sam tightened his grip on Ethan's arm, steering them both toward the building's overhang—the only real shelter for several hundred feet in any direction. "We'd be walking blind, dude."

They huddled under the eave, which did exactly nothing against the wind whipping sideways, sending snowflakes everywhere at once. Sam glanced at the door. The boarded hammered in places where glass and siding had rotted and shattered, paint peeling and exposed foundation covered in ivy, one window cracked but mostly intact despite the abuse of the elements and neglect from the town. Ethan watched the idea form on his face in real time.

"...We could just go in."

"Sam."

"I'm just saying." Sam grinned, a grin that knew exactly how stupid it sounded. "It's right there. Gotta be warmer than out here. What, you scared?"

"I didn't say that."

"So we're going in?"

Ethan looked at the door. Looked at the snow, which had gone from pretty to genuinely concerning in about ninety seconds. Looked back at the door.

"...Fine." He reached past Sam and shoved at it. Surprisingly, it gave way easier than either of them expected, swinging open with a groan of old hinges. Like it was expecting them. "But if something jumps out at us, I'm using you as a shield."

“Wow, so romantic, pookie.”

Ethan and Sam had been inside the old community center together before. When they were both children, 9 years old when the building was still used and maintained and seen at the heart of good ol’ Pelican Town. When the front room had a fish tank as big as the Zuzu City Aquarium and the arts and crafts room was stocked with anything the town’s children could dream of and the kitchen was used to feed those in need. Ethan looked back on those times fondly in the depths of his worst moments.

Now, the community center was nothing except for splintered wood and dusty floorboard and home to about a thousand different species of insect. The inside of the community center was colder than the world they'd just left, somehow. Dust hung thick in the grey light filtering through cracked windows. Their footsteps echoed too loud against warped floorboards. The entire place smelled like mildew, reminding Ethan of the way their basement was back at the house. Despite the nostalgic feelings of young summer days, a chill ran down his spine as if they were being watched.

"This is so cool," Sam whispered, already wandering toward the center of the room, awe winning out over self-preservation as usual. "Like, this is exactly the kind of place I'd want to film a music video—"

"Sam."

"—super atmospheric, it’s giving 'abandoned building but make it aesthetic' which is exactly the vibe—"

"Sam." Ethan's voice came out lower than he meant it to. He'd stopped walking.

Sam turned. "What?"

Ethan didn't answer right away. Something had shifted the second they stepped inside. It was subtle at first, easy to write off as just the temperature change, the dark, the general wrongness of an abandoned building they most definitely shouldn’t have been trespassing in. But it was getting louder now. Not a sound, exactly. More like a hum just under his skin, low and warm and alive, coming from somewhere deeper in the building.

"You feel that?" He asked.

"Feel what? It's just cold, man—"

"No, I mean—" Ethan shook his head, trying to find words for something that didn't have words. "Something's... here."

Sam's grin faltered. "Okay, don't… don't do the spooky voice thing, I will actually lose it! I’m not built for horror movie stuff—"

"I'm serious."

And then, from somewhere off to the left, past a sagging doorway much deeper into the building, came a sound. A chirp. Small. Bright. Curious, almost. Both of them froze.

"...Was that," Sam asked very quietly as he cowered next to his boyfriend, "a bird?"

Another chirp answered it. And then another. A whole little chorus of them, warbling and trilling back and forth, getting closer.

"That is not a bird," Ethan croaked, huddling in closer despite the fact that he couldn’t really bend at the waist.

"Okay, we're leaving—"

"Wait—" Ethan's feet, against every instinct of self preservation screaming at him to run, were already moving toward the sound. Toward the doorway. Toward whatever was on the other side of it, glowing faintly now, golden light spilling out around the frame.

"Ethan— Ethan, what are you doing?!"

He pushed the door open.

The room beyond had no business looking like it did. Where the rest of the building was dust and decay and collapsed shelving, this room was… finished. Completely renovated. Warm wood, neat shelves, soft golden light humming from no visible source. And scattered across every surface, perched on shelves and windowsills and the floor itself, were a dozen small, round, impossibly soft looking creatures with leafy caps and enormous dark eyes, all of them turning, in perfect unison, to look directly at Ethan and Sam.

For a long moment, nobody—nothing—moved.

Ethan and Sam stood in that doorway staring down a flock of fruits. All different kinds, Ethan’s brain supplied uselessly. After a too long moment of silence, they began chirping. Trilling. Jumping up and down like they were excited to be visited by two grown men ready to sprint out of the building and never look back.

"Okay!" Sam exclaimed, voice gone thin and high. "Yoba, those are— those are fruits. Those are little fruit guys. Why are there little fruit guys—"

"I don't know! I know as much as you, Sam!"

"—and why are they looking at us like that—"

"I don't know, Samson!"

The nearest one—a round, bright green apple with a leafy cap that flopped to one side—hopped closer, chirping something bright and rapid, head tilting at an angle that was somehow deeply expressive despite having no discernible face features beyond two enormous eyes that seemed to squint as if they were filled with utter joy.

Ethan felt it again, that hum under his skin, except now it had a shape to it. Something like curiosity, warm and open, radiating off the little creature in waves. Not threatening. If anything, it felt like—

"It's happy to see us," Ethan breathed slowly, almost as if he didn't quite believe his own words.

"How do you—"

"I don't know. I just… I can feel it."

“That makes so sense, Ethan!”

Another one chirped from somewhere near the back wall, and three more answered it, the whole room dissolving into an excited little chorus, bouncing and trilling and crowding closer, completely unbothered by the fact that two full grown men were standing frozen in the doorway looking like they'd seen a ghost. Maybe they had. Maybe these were ghosts and they were hallucinating them to look like little fruit creatures who were going to possess them—

"Okay, I need you to understand," Sam began very carefully, not taking his eyes off the nearest one as he took one small step backward and pulled Ethan with him, "that I am one hundred percent freaking out right now, and the only reason I haven't run is because you have a broken back and I'm not leaving you."

Ethan rolled his eyes. "Thanks."

"Anytime."

The green one hopped closer still, close enough now that Ethan could make out the texture of its leafy cap, the faint golden glow that seemed to come from somewhere inside it rather than off its… skin. That wasn’t the right word, was it? It chirped again, softer this time, almost questioning, and reached one tiny stick-like hand toward Ethan's brace covered arm hidden beneath his jacket.

He didn't move away.

"Ethan—"

"It's fine. I think it's—" He swallowed. "I think it knows. About the… I don't know how, but. I just… holy shit, Sam."

The little creature's chirp shifted, lower, almost soothing, and the warm hum under Ethan's skin pulsed once, gentle, like a hand on his shoulder. For the first time in three months, something in his chest didn't hurt. Something that terrified him to the core. 

The green one, while chirping happily and still not moving entirely away from the vicinity of Ethan's arm, suddenly turned, calling out something short and bright toward the back of the room. The others answered, and as one, the whole little crowd began to move, hopping and rolling toward a far wall, chirping insistently over their shoulders like they were waiting for Ethan and Sam to follow.

"Are they…" Sam swallowed, eyes scanning the little pack of fruits filtering past them and towards the entry of the community center. "Are they leading us somewhere?"

"I think so."

"Should we follow the creepy fruit ghosts deeper into the haunted building?"

"...Probably not."

Neither of them moved away in the opposite direction as the last of the fruits went by. If anything, Ethan found himself drifting towards them, the warm hum guiding him forward with a pull he couldn't quite resist, Sam trailing half a step behind with the energy of someone who'd already mentally accepted his fate and would do anything for the impossibly tall man he had practically fused himself to.

The far wall came into view, one that used to hold a bulletin board of help wanted signs and informational flyers about community events. Mounted on it, glowing with that same golden light emanating from inside of the little fruits, was some kind of… plaque. Golden, ornately carved, covered edge to edge in symbols neither of them recognized in what looked like a child’s sprawl in a poorly held crayon. Swirling, looping characters that seemed to shift and glimmer when looked at directly, like they were alive in some way the rest of the room wasn't.

The Junimos gathered beneath it, practically vibrating, chirping up at the plaque and then at Ethan and Sam and then back at the plaque, the chorus growing louder, more insistent, more—

"Okay, they're getting kind of intense," Sam said, voice climbing. "Ethan. Ethan. They're getting really intense. I’m scared they’re going to sacrifice us—"

He was right. The warm hum under Ethan's skin had shifted. Still not painful, still not bad, exactly, but big. Swelling fast. Too fast, like a wave he couldn't see the top of, ready to take him under with the tide. The chirping had gotten louder, faster, more of them joining in, all of it directed at the plaque like they were demanding something, and Ethan couldn't read a single symbol on it, couldn't understand a word of what any of them were saying, and it was getting to be too much, all of it, the appointment and the brace and the cold and now this—

"We need to go," Ethan stumbled over his words, and himself, as he tried to pull Sam towards the front door.

"Finally, yes, agreed, we’re going! Come on!"

A small purple one—grape shaped yet comically large if it were one, the smallest of the bunch and practically glowing with excitement—bounced directly into Ethan's path, chirping something high and rapid right up at him.

He didn't think. He just reacted. Scooped it up in his good hand, some primal abort, abort, take a hostage and run instinct overriding every higher thought process he had. He bolted for the door, Sam half a step behind him, both of them moving faster than either of their bodies had any business moving. His back screamed and his arm ached, something he knew that he was going to regret tomorrow. But that didn’t matter in the moment.

Behind them, the chorus of chirps shifted. Sharper now. Higher. Wrong in a way that hit Ethan square in the chest even as he ran, even as he didn't fully understand what he was feeling, only that it hurt. Not physically, not like the braces or his back or any of the pain he'd gotten used to, but somewhere else entirely, somewhere he didn't have a name for.

They burst through the front door and into the snow, the storm swallowing them whole, and didn't stop running until the community center was nothing but a dark shape behind them, engulfed by the falling snow and vast abyss of the white sky.

Sam skidded to a halt first, breathing hard, hands on his knees. "Okay. Okay, what… what just— Ethan."

Ethan stopped too, chest heaving, snow already collecting on his shoulders and in his hair. In his good hand, cupped carefully against his chest, the small purple creature had gone very still. With wide dark eyes blinking up at him and a leafy cap drooping it let out one small, mournful chirp.

The bell above the door jingled, barely audible over the jaunty country music tune blaring from the jukebox. That was odd, which was why it caught Elliott's attention immediately. Everyone in town was already here, with a few exceptions. Penny never ventured into the saloon, nor did the Mullner family, and Caroline never accompanied her husband, Pierre, who was currently engaged in a lively conversation with Mayor Lewis. There were a few others who made appearances in the Stardrop Saloon only rarely, but by this point in the night it didn't seem likely they'd turn up.

He found himself immediately transfixed by the man standing in the entrance— not because he was totally unfamiliar, which he was, and not because he was conspicuously handsome, either. He was, on the whole, fairly average: black hair that was neither short nor long, average height, though a tad on the short side for a man, and a slender build that was not overly skinny. He was the sort of man that Elliott wouldn't look twice at, if he were passing him on a busy street. No, what drew his attention was the way his alert, dark eyes carefully scanned the room, his gaze alighting on each patron for just a second before moving on to the next, not even flinching when he made direct eye contact with Elliott, who was staring rather shamelessly. His face remained impassive, his lips pressed together in a slightly downward curve that was not quite a frown. His lips were not thin, nor were they full, Elliott noted, before he realized how long he'd been looking at them and shifted his focus to the man's outfit. It was, like the rest of him, totally inconspicuous: plain black t-shirt, jeans, a dark green hoodie, and a pair of scuffed white sneakers that had seen better days.

Leah said something to him, but he didn't quite parse what it was. When she didn't receive a response, she turned and followed his gaze.

"Who's that?" she asked, tilting her head curiously as they both watched the man wrap up his scan and make his way to the counter to order.

"I don't know," Elliott murmured distractedly. "He seems rather odd, don't you think?"

"What?" Leah shot him a confused look, raising an eyebrow. "He looks pretty normal to me. A bit on the plain side, but that's not a crime."

Elliott pursed his lips, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he gathered his thoughts. While he did so, the man accepted a glass of dark liquor from the bartender, Gus, and made his way to an empty table in the back corner of the room. He sat with his back to the wall and flicked his eyes to the entrance for a moment, then lifted his glass to his lips and took a sip, grimacing slightly from the burn of the alcohol. He never looked down at his drink, never watched his fingers as they drummed listlessly on the wooden table. In fact, his eyes never stayed in one place for too long, constantly roving about the room as if he expected someone to jump out at him at any second. In this fashion, he ended up making eye contact with Elliott again, his brow furrowing for a moment before quickly smoothing out again.

To ease some of the awkwardness, Elliott gave him a friendly wave, which was quickly acknowledged with a curt nod before those restless eyes were on the move again.