Sea Glass (And the surf's rough tongue): a fic by ooh_barracuda
a/n: helloo ! have tumblr now ! yay! cataloging all my fics here. an ongoing longfic that has become a bit of a comfort project :-)
Fandom: Stardew Valley
Pairing: Dr. Harvey X Reader
Rating: Explicit (18+)
Word Count: ~20k (chp 6/?)
Warnings: Suicidal Ideation, Substance Abuse, War, PTSD
★──★──★──★──★──★──★──★──★──★
They had been friends, once. Attached at the hip.
Harvey Elwood, the doctor's son with the stutter and the soft heart.
Ellis Bell, the aspiring poet, all snaggle teeth and spite.
War tore them apart. Ellis was drafted the summer he turned 17. Harvey, disqualified from service, was forced to stay in Pelican Town. So he took up his father's trade and busied himself. He worked. He grew up. He made himself a life, a simple one, and he forgot all about that dark-haired boy and their days on the beach.
But Ellis Bell has come home.
★──★──★──★──★──★──★──★──★──★
Harvey sits at the reception desk of the clinic, sipping at a coffee with too much creamer, wishing someone, anyone, would die. The clinic clock above the door ticks dutifully away towards noon, and no one arrives — maimed, sick, dying, dead, or otherwise. This is not exceptional. The most dramatic of injuries were the skinned knees of children, the drunk trip-ups of Shane, swollen tonsils, and the administering of flu vaccines… He loves his job, he truly does, but it grew repetitive: Here, sport, don’t cry! Here’s a lollipop, a bandaid, a pat on the back!
Pelican Town is a small, incestuous sort of place, everyone a second-cousin, a childhood friend, or a brother a half-lifetime removed. Harvey referred to all of his patients by their first names; anything else would be an insult to some dull, generational pact. He had served them, just as his father had served their fathers, just as his grandfather had served their grandfathers, on and on forever. Doctor Elwood, the latest of a dozen identical Doctor Elwoods, was sitting at the latest of a dozen identical reception desks on an unexceptional Tuesday in July.
His only company is Maru, who eats a salad in the lobby, watching some oversaturated dating show on the overhead television. The two do not talk. Eight hours of daily polite conversation was too much to maintain; they had grown into comfortable ghosts haunting one another, a word here, a word there.
(And your mother, how is she? The weather…yes…the rain…)
Quiet, mostly. What more was there to say?
On the television, a man professes his love melodramatically, soaked with likely-staged rain. Harvey watches as the victim of his monologue interrupts him with a fierce kiss and a swell of violin music. He sighs. Maru skewers a crouton with her fork. The clock ticks. A milky film gradually forms over the surface of his coffee.
Harvey stares at the door, willing someone to walk through. Someone miserable, someone beaten, someone shot! Anyone, anything, bleeding, so he could shrug on his coat and rush over savior-like, angel-like, and do something, Lord, anything! Just one sucker, maimed and messed up, just for him. Anything, really, anything, but another case of the flu.
...
...
Will our doctor get his beaten, miserable man?
Read More to find out!
