/Author's Note: Ready for another oneshot exploring an oft-unexplored character pairing!? I'm sure you are, or you wouldn't have clicked this! :D This prompt once again comes from Singkatsu: Dirk & Marian, from Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar. I tried going for something a bit more serious and nuanced with this piece (read: angsty), so I'm eager to hear your thoughts. Leave a review and let me know! Thanks! End Author's Note/
In Vino Veritas
In Wine There is Truth
#
He assaulted the air around him with liberal amounts of lavender, peach, and moondrop, nearly emptying the colourful bottles. If Marian wouldn't take notice when Dirk approached her wearing one of his older brother's perfumes, she would have to if he wore all three. One can't have too much of a good thing - that was how perfume worked, right?
Dirk was at an impasse. The tall, svelte, honey-haired café waitress was very much so a woman; while Dirk, in her chestnut brown eyes, would always be a boy. Nothing more. Even without her dainty cocktail hat, Marian towered over Dirk and his feathered alpine cap; and admittedly, that was the least of his problems.
Zephyr Town's annual Wine Festival rolled around on a cold autumn day and found the two Zephyr Café employees manning the wine-tasting stand. She hadn't reacted to the cloud of perfume he had arrived in, other than a subtle wrinkle of the nose and an otherwise cheery smile.
"A Pinot Noir makes an excellent companion to a wild salmon main course, which is a popular meal for Autumn," she said to one customer, who seemed instantly charmed. "If you want a crispness to your wine, Chardonnay works exceptionally well," she told another, as he drank in her words like nectar. "You can count on a sweeter German Riesling if you're tackling an udon soup – the flavor balances the spice of the broth."
Marian sold all of the bottles she had out on display. Dirk could barely pronounce their names.
The day moved into its coda, the villagers packing up and vacating the town's square, leaving a faint smell of grapes and berries and sugar hanging in the air. The town's famous windmills gyrated creakily; the wind slowed as the day got later.
"Dirk, could you bring in the table cloths?" Marian asked, just as they were in the middle of packing up their own things and moving them into the adjacent café. He did as he was asked, and Joan congratulated her employees on another successful and profitable festival day before the little old lady doddered in for an early sleep.
Inside the empty café, Dirk stored their earnings in the cash register and locked it; Marian brought in a crate of unsold wine bottles.
"I think we deserve a reward for a job well done," Marian tittered, placing the crate on a table and seating herself at it. "Care to join me?" Dirk nodded, and did so, his heart racing uncomfortably. Zephyr Café, already negligible as far as size was concerned, never felt smaller; the walls seemed to be closing in on its two sole occupants.
"Do you have a preference?" Marian perused the crate.
"Um, any of them is fine. I like… all of them."
"You like 'all' the wines? Every single one?" Marian teased, a hint of mischief betraying her sweet disposition. She proceeded to pull out a bottle of Merlot andpoured a glass each for herself and Dirk. It was a shade of dark, intense red that reminded Dirk of blood; the association instantly made him feel childish, and so he laughed a man's laugh and drew his glass towards himself.
"Cheers!" Marian removed her cocktail hat, but with it, her smile seemed to fall. She stretched her long legs out beneath the table, her periwinkle dress hugging them oppressively. As she drank deeply in the dark café, the muted light of the autumn sun illuminated the lines and shadows creasing her face, and Dirk felt infinitely younger.
Dirk braved a gulp of the alcohol and resisted a gag; he decided he did not like wine.
"That one's never a big seller out in the country," the older woman remarked, reading his facial expression, "I used to enjoy it nightly when I lived in the city, however." She swirled the contents of the glass around, stirring up memories as she did. She took another gulp.
Dirk had never heard his co-worker speak of her life in the city; the life she had left behind to run a café with her grandmother in a backwater burg. He yearned to know more, and said so.
Marian recounted tales of her family, her friends, her jobs, her days, her nights. Her pushy parents, her boyfriends, her heartbreaks. She talked well into the night, until she had emptied herself of memories and had reached the searing bile of raw, unearthed emotions. She could no longer find words but only coughs and hacks and heaves as tears flooded her eyes and peppered the wooden surface of the table. The sun had set, and without the cosmetic touch of its light, Marian's hair looked less like golden honey, and took on the appearance of dull straw.
Dirk felt his stomach drop at the sight, and words failed him, crowding the inside of his head but resisting the push out his mouth. In one final act of foolish, abhorrent childishness, Dirk stood and silently left the café, his glass of wine virtually untouched.
He ran home and went directly to bed, without a word to his older brother. Dirk squeezed his eyes shut, urging unconsciousness to replace consciousness; dreams to replace the image of Marian's bleary eyes.
…
That night, Dirk dreamt of Marian; he dreamt of taking her to lavish restaurants in the city, where he would order impressive-sounding wines (with nonsense names like "Zémzélouz" and "Chamerre Lamerre" that required him to scrape the back of his throat to pronounce). He dreamt of the clink of their glasses as they leaned back in their chairs, drinking deeply under the starlight. He dreamt of twirling her around on a dance floor, his eyes level with hers, her cocktail hat and smile both in place, where they should be. He dreamt of kissing her soft lips, tasting the wine's residue, which in his dreams tasted like nectar and sugar and not the earthen decay of the Merlot that had dried in the corners of his mouth.
He kissed her again and again and again; he wouldn't allow a single cry to escape her lips.