Ann walked with a bounce in every step, the cool air exciting her as it blew stray strands of hair from her face. It had been an intense summer, especially with the power outage they'd experienced at the Inn a few weeks ago. Without any air conditioning, her clothes clung to her sweat glazed skin every night, and the heat made everyone in the Inn irritable. She could still hear Gray's curses and grumbles through the thin walls, as he tossed angrily in his bed in the middle of the night and Kai hissing at him to keep it down.
Her braid whipped like a pendulum as she breezed past a wooden sign with the words 'Derry Heir Ranch' sloppily written with black paint. She snorted every time she walked past the sign; Samuel had named the farm as a final jab to Thomas for conning him. She could only imagine the mayor's face when the farmer had so confidently announced the name of his ranch, and how distraught he must've been the day after when Samuel hung up his entrance sign.
Serves him right for being slimy.
Despite the initial murmurs that Samuel was making a mockery out of farmers with a ranch name like Derry Heir, he'd managed to prove himself a serious rancher as he reached his second anniversary in Mineral Town. His land was clear of the stray logs and weeds that once overtook the farm and instead replaced with rows of newly planted autumn crops, and few stalks of last season's crops. Samuel stood in front of his field, back towards Ann, arms crossed as he admired his work from afar.
"Ah, so that's why you haven't passed by the Inn today!" Ann said into his ear as she poked his side, hoping to startle the farmer. An impish smile played at her lips as he jumped and turned back at her.
His expression softened once he'd caught the playful gleam in her eye. "Oh, yeah. Been trying to get all these new seeds in. Once I clear out the last of these tomatoes, I'll be all ready for the new season!" Sweat droplets adorned the sides of his face, alongside streaks of dirt from when he'd wiped his soil-covered wrist against his forehead.
"Working hard, I see." The waitress teetered on the balls and heels of her feet, her hands clasped behind her back.
This didn't go unnoticed by Samuel. "You're in a good mood."
"Well, why wouldn't I be? The Harvest Festival is in a couple of days, Sam! I've been craving soup since the weather cooled down, and I mean, I know plenty recipes, but..." She nodded her head, brows knitted as she crossed her arm in a matter-of-fact manner. "It's all about the atmosphere, you know?"
The farmer gave a good-natured chuckle. "Oh man, all I can think about is how busy the Inn must be these days. All the people who are coming in from out of town. I think I bumped into, like, three of em' today."
Ann's smile fell from her face at the mention of work. "Yeah... it's usually not hard for me to keep up, but I've been a little off lately and although Dad doesn't really dig into me about it... I just feel bad making things harder for him when he picks up my slack."
Samuel snorted at the sentiment. "Yeah, I'll never forget how you looked the week leading up to the fireworks festival. You looked like a pinball, bouncing table to table." He waved his finger in a zig-zag motion, chuckling slightly. His grin fell once his eyes flickered back towards Ann, who'd given him a half-hearted sneer in response.
"Hey... don't feel bad about it. We all have our off days." He rested his hand on her shoulder, give her a gentle shake. "You wanna go down to the spring?"
Ann's expression lit up. It was always her who'd suggested going down to the Goddess Spring during fall season last year, and each time she was met with protest. It's too cold. The spray of the waterfall is only going to make me colder. It's freezing up in the mountain. Like the other men in her life, none of them could remotely tolerate the cold.
"... My water's been reeking of sulfur lately. I know it's good for you, but I really can't stand the smell. I'm hoping I can wash my face in the spring."
Her face contorted in horror once she'd caught the end of Samuel's sentence. "You can't wash your face in the Goddess Spring! Are you insane?!" She ducked her head, clasping her hands and raising them towards the sky. "Oh, Harvest Goddess, please don't lump me in with this idiot! Whatever offense you take, take it from him, not from me!"
A hearty laugh erupted from the farmer's throat. He took his place in front of Ann, imitating her gesture, his head ducked only a foot away from hers. "Oh, Harvest Goddess, don't believe a word she says! She's told me of all the times she accidentally dropped half eaten snacks in the spring and wrote them off as offerings!"
The waitress' head shot up, her braid flying and slapping against her back. "Hey, I only did that when I was a kid! It doesn't count!"
His head bobbed up as well, a mischievous grin playing on his lips. His rich brown eyes locked with her own, twinkling in the full moonlight. Her breath hitched at their closeness, and her hair rose on the back of her neck. A faint blush glowed onto her cheeks as his expression softened slightly.
Samuel straightened his posture with a hop, extending a gloved hand out to Ann to help her up. She blinked, partially stunned by the feeling that washed over her a moment ago. She hastily shook it off and took his hand, pulling herself up.
"So, you wanna go or not?"
She said nothing in response, but instead spun around and took the lead towards the Goddess Spring, her familiar braid swinging as she did so.
X
"Why do you like the Goddess Spring so much anyway?" Samuel sat hunched over at the edge of the pond, twirling a long strand of grass around his finger.
Ann leaning back in a relaxed position, with her arms propped behind her for support. "I just do." She shrugged with indifference. "You're so lucky you get to spend all your time outside. I like working with Dad and all, but I get stir crazy during the rainy season. I hate being cooped up for too long."
"Fair enough."
The waitress' eyes wandered over to Mother's Hill. The peak was sometimes visible during the day through a gap between the shrouds of tree branches."We used to play in the mountains all the time as kids. Well..." Ann's lips tightened as her eyes fell back onto the water. "Until the accident."
Samuel's heart sank a bit once he realized what she was referring to. He'd overheard tidbits and pieces of the story from the countless gossips of Anna and the other older women of Mineral Town. From what he'd overhead coupled with his own deductions, he'd learned that Gotz's family had passed in the mountains, from an accident that the villagers unoriginally dubbed "the accident".
"Hey, don't get all straight-faced on me." She touched his shoulder with a nudge. Samuel could feel her fingertips graze down his arm as her hand fell slowly. "Our parents were pretty worried for a while. When Gotz announced he'd look over the mountains, that's when we were allowed back up here."
The sensation of Ann's touch still lingered on both his mind and skin, and those thoughts alone kept Samuel from properly responding to Ann.
"I have a lot of happy memories here. We'd meet up in the mornings and we always had to come back before sundown. We were always making up some dumb game to play." A nostalgic grin stretched across her face. "One time, we were pretending to be at war. It was Gray and Rick versus Karen and me. I'd come up with this brilliant idea to use pebbles as ammo."
"Oh no..." A smile crept onto Samuel's face as well.
"Yeah, you can imagine how that went. I found a rock that was just a tad too big and hit Rick square in the nose. He started crying and he had a nosebleed. We got into a lot of trouble for that." Ann let out a good-natured laugh. "It would be Rick, wouldn't it?"
"I'm just thinking about how much that must've hurt. Rocks?"
"Oh yeah, it was bad for the rest of us too. I looked in the mirror the next day and I had little black and blue spots all over my body. I remember Gray getting me really bad on my side." She straightened her posture, twisting her body slightly as she pointed to a spot right below her ribs.
"Sounds like you and Gray were the roughhousers of the group." Hearing childhood stories about Ann and the rest of the young adults of Mineral Town always amused Samuel. It was fun hearing what they all used to be like when they were younger, and a part of him liked to imagine and wonder what it would've been like if he'd grown up alongside Ann. Would things still have turned out the same?
"Yeah... whenever we got together." Ann placed her hands flat on the ground behind her, leaning back. "His parents used to ship him to Saibara's during the summer every now and then. He'd always throw a fit about having to come out here, but we knew he secretly loved it here." Her eyes looked up towards the sky as a reminiscent grin played at her lips.
Samuel knew it too. Gray vehemently complained about the "boonies" every chance he got, but for someone who didn't like the town he lived in, he sure spent a lot of time walking around and visiting a certain someone...
His eyes travelled up towards the night sky. There were various dark hues of purple, blue and green blended amongst the dark foreground of space, with thousands of white and gold stars peppered across. "It always looks so fake to me."
"Huh?"
"The sky." Samuel nodded towards the vast darkness above them. "It looks like a painting or a screen. I've been out here for so long, but I can never get used to how vivid the stars look. I thought it only ever looked like this in movies."
Ann couldn't wrap her mind around the concept. This is the only sky she'd ever known and looked far from fake to her. "What's the sky look like where you're from?"
"It... doesn't look like anything. It's just black nothingness, with a star or two if you look hard enough." A melancholy expression washed over his face. It was almost depressing to remember a time where the night sky was just a hazy black void with a couple stars speckled along. Before Ann could catch his expression, his brows softened and he met her gaze.
"All the time? Not just when it's cloudy?" Her heart sank at the idea of such a sad nighttime sky.
"All the time." He affirmed.
Ann said nothing in response.
"Hey, don't get all straight-faced on me." Samuel teased, repeating the phrase Ann had used on him earlier. A playful smirk curled onto his lips and he balled his hand into a fist and gave her cheek a gentle nudge with his knuckle.
Ann's expression lightened as she moved her head away from his fist, lowering his hand with her own. "Oh, is that the best you can do? I know you can hit harder than that." She raised a taunting brow at him.
"You don't want me to unleash that sort of power." He shook his head in a matter-of-factly manner, scrunching his face pensively as he rubbed his chin with his index finger and thumb.
"C'mon! I can take it, now hit me like a man!" She turned her cheek towards him, leaning closer as she tapped her face with her finger, signaling him to take a shot.
"All right..." He gave a defeated sigh. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
Flick.
"Ow!" Ann squealed, sucking in her cheek in an attempt to soothe the pain surging through the side of her face. "Do you exercise your fingers too?!"
"Ah, don't be soft. I didn't flick you that hard."
Her teeth clicked.
Samuel reached over and ran the back of his index finger softly up and down Ann's cheek. "Heal, heal frog's little tail. If you don't heal today, you'll heal tomorrow."
The waitress' blinked, stunned by both his action and his choice of words. "Huh? Frog's little tail?"
"It's just a phrase." He dropped his hand from her face and leaned back nonchalantly. A careful observer would note the faint hue of red adorning his own cheeks. "My parents used to say it to me as a kid, whenever I got hurt."
Ann dropped her head, refocusing her gaze onto the woven denim of her overalls. She could feel her own face burn with embarrassment — what was there to be embarrassed about? — and her fingers curled around the grass beneath her hands. There's that feeling again. The feeling of her heart diving down to her stomach before leaping back up. The feeling of her hairs on her body rising up from her arms up to her neck. Her throat tightening up for a moment.
Something had been bothering her for the past week now. Something she couldn't pinpoint nor explain. For the past week, something clouded her mind during the work day, and when it did it caused an order to be wrongfully remembered, a drink to spill or a glass to break. All she could seem to look forward to was getting off work and spending time doing whatever she pleased. Was it that she no longer liked working?
No, of course not. Work was fun for her. Work was never a chore. Ann enjoyed catching up with regulars and hearing tales of former glories or mundane stories of everyday life. She loved hearing travelers enthusiastically describe all the sights they'd seen and the strangers they'd encountered. Throwing in new spices or vegetables into an old recipe excited her. Even washing dishes and wiping down counters had become therapeutic for her. So what changed? When did something she enjoyed become something she wanted to get out of the way as soon as it began? When did work become hard for her?
"Ann? Ann, you okay?" A gentle nudge of the shoulder brought Ann out of her ruminations, and once she'd caught Samuel's concerned stare, her cheeks colored crimson in embarrassment.
"S-Sorry!" Ann shot forward, no longer leaning back and crossed her legs, placing her hands on her thighs and gripping at her denim pants. "I've been spacing like this a lot lately... I'm not really sure why."
Samuel straightened his posture, leaning forward to get a better view of Ann's face. "What's up? Tell me what you're thinking."
Nervous laughter erupted from the waitress' throat, and she sheepishly shook her head. She evaded his worried eyes. "It's... weird. I can't really put it into words... You wouldn't get it." Her voice lowered and Samuel nearly didn't catch the end of her sentence.
The farmer placed his hand on Ann's knee, lowering his head to get a peek at the eyes she was trying so desperately to hide. "Well... just try your best and I'll put the words together."
"Well... I don't know. Maybe I don't like working anymore. I know I should, and I did! But lately... all I can look forward to is getting off. I get so sad the days I have to work long shifts and don't have time to go out and do what I like."
"... Maybe you're just overwhelmed by how busy it's been lately and how little time you've had to play. I used to be able to pass by Doug's a lot more, but I had to focus on all the orders and shipments over the summer." Samuel fixed his gaze to the quiet flow of the Goddess Spring waterfall. "The last time we got to spend as much time as we used to was a little over a week ago, right? When you came over and we stayed up until 2 am talking and eating the snacks you brought over."
Ann's chest tightened. She'd almost forgotten how nice that night felt, and she realized she wanted nothing more than to be able to do that every night.
"We can do that again if you want. We can do it all the days you close late if you don't mind losing a couple hours of sleep." He flashed a grin. "I know I don't."
It was a little more than a week ago when they'd spent that night at his house, crumpled on the floor in laughter watching a movie neither of them cared enough to remember the plot of. Their conversations had been much more interesting anyway. Ann wasn't sure at what point the two of them had fallen asleep, but the low hum of static from the off-air channel had woken her up. She pulled herself up from the coffee table she'd fallen asleep on and she nudged her partner awake. Soon after she was gathering her things as a groggy Samuel walked her home, giving her a goodbye hug that lingered longer than usual.
The waitress brought her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. "I don't either."
"It's settled, then. We'll have designated movies nights and gorge on popcorn and as many snacks as we can get from the General Store." The farmer plopped backwards onto the ground, stretching arms above his head until he heard his bones crack, then relaxing onto the grass. "Man, I'm tired. I could just fall asleep here."
Ann looked over as Samuel placed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. "If you're tired, we can go home." Although she enjoyed every second of his company and their newly decided "movie nights", she felt guilty keeping him up. After all, waitressing didn't hold a candle to the intense amount of physical work it required to maintain a farm.
Without opening his eyes to look over at her, he began. "No, I'm fine right here. If I go home, we won't get to spend any time together."
She knew he'd mean that in a platonic way - It was platonic, right? - but the idea of wanting to spend time with her regardless of how exhausted he was made Ann's stomach do happy flips.
She allowed herself to lay back onto the grass, propping herself up in a way that she'd be able to watch him as he slowly let himself fall into slumber. If he insisted on staying here, she'd at least let him rest before waking him up and walking him home.
Walking him home. As if he'd ever let me. Mineral Town was a safe place, and Ann would walk home alone for years, long before she'd even become a teenager, but Samuel insisted on walking her home every. single. time. It didn't matter if he could barely keep his eyes open from exhaustion, or if it was an inconvenience to walk all way to the Inn just to walk back home, he'd always make sure to accompany Ann to the Inn before making his way home. Originally, this had angered the waitress. Are you trying to say I can't protect myself? Do you think I'm weak or something? She had screamed at him one night he insisted on walking her home from the beach. Of course not, you're not weak at all! But it's just for my peace of mind! I just need to know you walked into your house safe and sound! Besides, let's save the poor creep who tries something the trouble of a broken nose from your mean left hook. His response alone completely lightened the atmosphere around the impending argument and she couldn't help but to let it go. She loved these accompanied walks home anyhow, because it meant that Ann was truly never alone.
The redhead watched as Samuel's chest gently rose and fell and her eyes traveled upward towards his resting face. His skin had become increasingly tan from the repeated sun exposure, and sun spots were speckled across his cheeks and nose.
Ann had pointed one day at the Inn that Samuel had randomly developed freckles, and Doctor Trent had interjected and mentioned that what the farmer had across his face was not freckles, but instead sun spots, from the amount of time he spent in the working in the sun without proper protection. This caused Doctor Trent to go off on a health tangent, reminding Samuel that if he didn't use the proper protection against the sun rays, he would be damaging his skin and could end developing diseases down the road. She could the sun spots had faded since she first noticed them, and it could be credited to him using sunscreen from then on.
Her eyes were drawn up to his bushy brows, the only that were perfectly angled and gave him a sort of angered appearance. His hair was always falling out of his hat, no matter how many times he'd brush it back before placing his hat on. It'd always find a way to slip forward and out of his hat, framing his face. His face free of any expression. His cheeks always ate up his eyes each and every time he smiled and his brow would always raise higher than the other when he was joking around with Gray. Something about his presence... always made her heart feel light.
Her heart suddenly dropped to her stomach and a cold sweat broke out throughout her body. No. No no no. Don't think that. But the realization has already been made. She loved being around Samuel and whenever they were apart he would flood her mind. She'd find herself peering over the kitchen archway every time she heard the inn doors creak open, in hopes that the farmer would be walking in. Whenever it was him, she'd quickly finish whatever she was doing and rush out to greet him. She'd linger around him as long as she could before Doug gave her a silent glare to get back to work. She found herself enjoying their walks home not because she didn't like to be alone, but because he'd always give her a tight embrace when the night was done. Every touch excited her and she found herself searching for excuses to put her hands on him. No. No.
Ann liked Samuel. She liked him a lot. This relieved her as much as it terrified her.
"You're staring at me real hard, Ann. Did an ant crawl onto my face or somethin'?" Samuel opened one eye, a smirk creeping across his lips.
"Geez!" The waitress shook violently, his voice breaking the silence of the night startling her. Blood rushed up towards her face and she shot up, pulling her braid forward in an attempt to seem nonchalant. "I was just looking at your sun spots. They've faded a bit."
The farmer lifted himself off the ground, bringing his fingers up to his cheek. "Oh, really? Well that sucks. You seemed really excited about them when you thought they were freckles."
Ann placed one hand on her chest, clutching at the hem of her overalls in an attempt to steady her racing heart. She stared at the subtle ripples of the Goddess pond as she regulated her breathing in an attempt to calm down.
Samuel noticed this and raised a brow, leaning forward to catch a better look at her face. "What's wrong, Ann? Did I scare you that much?" A slight mischievous grin played at his lips as he studied the smaller girl's expression.
Don't act weird. You'll make it too obvious. Ann gave a nervous laugh in response. "Y-yeah, actually! You really startled the hell out of me, y'know!" She furrowed her brows and her eyes flickered towards him. "Were you really pretending to be asleep this whole time?"
He let out a good-natured laugh and Ann's heart swelled at the sight of his open mouthed smile and puffed cheeks. "Sorta! I heard you moving and I wanted to see if I could scare you."
Their eyes locked and Ann could feel the heat rising to her face. "Hey, I think I figured out what's been bothering me at work."
"Oh, really?" His eyes gave a playful gleam and he straightened his posture, as if they were about to play a game. "Let me guess, it's the stress of the upcoming Harvest Festival, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Ann dropped her hands from her overalls and shot him a hopeless smile. There was no way to avoid it, as much as she would've liked. It was only a matter of time before she developed a crush on him. "It is."
Author's Notes: Wow can you believe it? I finally finished revising this one-shot. Now I changed it from an outright love confession to more of a crush realization, because I wanted it to be a sort of sister fic to GLaT. I struggled so much with this one-shot because I really wanted to highlight Ann and Samuel's friendship dynamic, and I wanted this fic to be dialogue heavy and fluffy as well. I'd been struggling with writer's block for at least two years now, and I can only churn out an update every year or so, which has been super depressing, but at least I got a stroke of creativity today and was able to finish this after having it in the works for so long.
If you enjoyed, please leave a review!