Chapter Text
(Cover art by phillypumpkin)
Harvey thought he had built a stone fortress around the part of him that used to hope – for anything, really. Fame, fortune, a chance at a soulmate. He thought he had walled off that part of himself, starved it of oxygen and sunlight and nutrients until there was no chance of growth. Of life.
He was wrong.
For the first time in a long time, Harvey reluctantly acknowledges that a fragile, delicate kind of hope has bloomed in his chest. It is nothing more than a seedling – a thin stem, see-through leaves, fully at the mercy of the animals around it. But still, stubbornly, despite his best efforts, it grows.
Harvey stares himself down in the bathroom mirror, eyes narrowed. There’s a light flush on his cheeks from his mad dash from Claire’s farm to his house. A sheen of sweat covers his face, but he ignores it. The white dress shirt rubs against the spot between his shoulder blades that has always felt a little heavier than the rest of him. His soulmark.
He toys with one of the buttons on his shirt, considering. Is it worth it? Can he stand to see Claire again if he takes off his shirt and sees only that detestably lonely forget-me-not inked on his spine?
He doesn’t even know what her flower, her soulmark, would look like next to his, though he’s spent more time than he cares to admit wondering. Her wide, slightly crooked smile and long brown braid have always reminded him of a sunflower, but sometimes the soulmark doesn’t really match the person. He prefers not to know Claire’s flower. Actually, he prefers to find out when he sees it next to his on his back.
He takes a deep, shuddering breath in. Be brave, he thinks. And even though the eyes that stare back at him in the mirror are fearful, Harvey reaches down.
He unbuttons the top button of his shirt.
---
Earlier that morning, the day had dawned almost too beautifully to be real. Harvey was objectively aware of this – he knew that the sky was a piercing cerulean. He knew that the birds were singing, that a warm breeze was drifting lazily through the town, that the perfume of Evelyn’s flowers filled the air.
He knew that it was the perfect spring day, and he resented it.
Any other day, Harvey would relish in the weather. He’d go for a long walk or maybe start a vegetable garden on his back patio. He’d roll up his sleeves and spend long minutes with his eyes closed, focused on the feel of the sunlight on his hair and the wind brushing against his arms.
Just not today.
Today, Harvey leaned over his bathroom countertop, grimacing slightly to himself as he shaved away the stubble on his cheeks. Today, Harvey shrugged on his light blue suit jacket and accidentally fastened his bow tie just a little too tightly. Today, Harvey sighed to himself as he stepped outside of the clinic and began the long walk to the festival grounds for the Flower Dance.
He had little patience for the yearly soulmark rituals involved with the Flower Dance. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind it so much if he had ever even encountered a potential soulmate, but as it was, the way matched couples were required to display their soulmark bouquets, filled with truly mind-boggling varieties and quantities of flowers, left a sour taste in his mouth. Only the threat of a potential health emergency coaxed him into attending.
It was enough of a shock to wake up on his eighteenth birthday and realize that his soulmark wasn’t in a visible place, like everyone else he knew. Finding out that his flower was called a forget-me-not, of all things, only added insult to injury. Harvey, a child of divorce, carried an intense fear of being left behind, forgotten, and now he had to carry a symbol of that around with him for the rest of his life.
It felt like a cruel joke.
The joke only got worse as time wore on. Within a week, Harvey’s best friend had a second kind of flower in her soulmark – a clear sign that she had already met a potential soulmate. As the years passed, Harvey watched his friends’ bouquets grow. It was taboo to pry about soulmarks, but he knew that they were curious about his seemingly unmarked skin. It was humiliating to let them think that he had no soulmark, but it was worse to tell them that he only had one small, blue flower.
For the first ten years, Harvey let himself ride a never-ending roller coaster of hope and disappointment. He always kept small hand mirror in his pocket so he could easily check for new flowers after meeting someone new. He would nervously excuse himself to go to the bathroom, a bubbling, queasy kind of hopeful feeling in his stomach. And every time, all he saw in the mirror was his one lonely forget-me-not.
A small, blue joke of a soulmark.
Then again, if it wasn’t for his soulmark, he may never have left Zuzu City. Wouldn’t have moved to Pelican Town and met Claire. He tired of constantly wondering if some stranger he met in a bodega, in the emergency room, while buying a cup of coffee was his soulmate. He tired of the disappointment that came with constantly looking behind him to check his soulmark.
Somewhere deep down, Harvey knew that his decision to move to the valley was less like a level-headed professional choice and more like pulling the chute in a panicked escape attempt, frantically fleeing a falling plane. But at least here, he could forget about meeting new people. Forget about his soulmark. At least, for most of the year.
He walled off the part of him that used to hope and starved it of sunshine and nutrients until whatever had once bloomed there wilted and died.
So – Harvey didn’t have much patience for the Flower Dance. Lewis insisted that it was a cause for celebration, a chance to cheer on the matched soulmates whose bouquets bloomed riotously on their arms, their legs, their necks. Never mind the fact that Harvey and a few other townspeople always sat on the sidelines. Never mind the fact that the festival clearly made Claire uncomfortable during her first year here.
Harvey arrived at the Flower Dance alone, ignoring the beautifully decorated clearing. Evelyn had gone all out, as always, and he knew that if he looked carefully, he would find flower arrangements representing each paired couple in the valley along with the usual display of spring flowers. Elliott and Leah’s combination of roses and dandelions, Evelyn and George’s lilies and saguaro flowers, Emily’s daffodils and Sandy’s sweet peas. It was too painful to look, so he searched for Claire instead.
When he finally found her, she was standing next to Maru and Penny, wearing a white dress and gesturing wildly with her hands as Maru bent over, laughing. Penny, reserved as always, smiled lightly and rubbed Maru’s back. Harvey made his way over, one hand raised in greeting and a smile plastered to his face.
“Oh hi, Dr. Harvey!” said Penny, nudging Maru gently.
Maru straightened up, wiping a tear from her eye. “Hey, doc. How’s it going?”
“Same old, same old,” said Harvey, his mustache twitching slightly.
“Hi, Harvey.” Claire stepped towards him with a smile and hugged him. For the first time all day, he relaxed a little bit. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed gently.
“Hey there,” he said, smiling down at her. She stepped back and glanced up at him, then gave Maru and Penny a quick look that must have communicated something, because next thing Harvey knew, Maru cleared her throat and mumbled something about browsing Pierre’s stand.
He and Claire were alone.
She bit her lip a little nervously, and Harvey suddenly found himself swept away in the warm rush of his affection for her. He admired her resilience, her sense of humor, her generosity. If his gaze sometimes lingered on the patch of freckles on her shoulder or the thick brown braid that dangled between her shoulder blades, he chalked it up to a general concern for her health.
In that moment, Harvey was grateful for the stone wall he had built in his mind.
He knew that if he hadn’t walled himself off, he would have been sick with hope after he first met Claire, his heart pounding just like it had when he was a teenager and absolutely positive he had just met one of his soulmates.
If Harvey hadn’t walled himself off, he knew he would have run to his mirror after she first brought him a cup of coffee on a hot summer’s day. To get you through paperwork season, she had said, with a crooked smile. Something in his chest very nearly cracked open at the sight, but he stubbornly pushed the pieces back together again.
He didn’t let himself think too deeply about the fact that he couldn’t see her soulmark, either.
They took turns cooking for each other. Claire was admittedly the better cook, willing to play with flavors and proportions and colors, but Harvey’s eye for detail and precision made him an excellent baker. He lost count of the times that he found himself curled up on the couch with her after sharing a meal, making fun of some reality show or imitating documentary narrators together, feeling utterly at home.
If he ever allowed himself to hope, he would have realized that he was falling for her the first time she let him braid her hair, or when he heard the rumor that she had financed a new house for Pam and Penny.
He would have realized that he was falling for her the second she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, on this brilliantly beautiful spring day, and asked him to dance with her.
“Just for the informal part,” she said, blushing furiously.
A genuine smile replaced the stiff grimace on Harvey’s face. “Claire, I would love to dance with you,” he said.
Right on time, Lewis called for the dance to begin.
“Well... are you ready?” Harvey asked, holding out one hand.
“I was born ready,” she said with a laugh.
“Then let’s do this,” he said, unable to stop smiling at her. He did his best not to focus on the slight gap between her front teeth or the way that her bangs were curled away from her face as he led her to the dance area. They joined all of the other couples on the dance floor, both matched and unmatched, and Harvey carefully placed one hand on Claire’s waist. She smiled up at him, stepping in closer. Inside his chest, his heart fluttered, and he couldn’t tell if it was caused by her proximity or the faint scent of honeysuckle in the air around her.
“You look handsome today, my friend,” she said with a teasing laugh as they settled into a rhythm.
He couldn’t help himself; he blushed.
“You look nice, too,” he said, a little awkwardly, but still smiling. “I like your hair today.”
Before he could stop himself, he lightly brushed a strand of hair out of her face. Her breath caught ever so slightly. He’d braided her hair before – it shouldn’t have felt like a bolt of lightning moved through him when he touched her, but something was different.
Inside the stone walls in Harvey’s mind, something shifted.
To distract himself from the way her arm brushed against his, he took a deep breath and focused on the steps. He never was a particularly good dancer, and the added distraction of Claire’s scent, Claire’s laugh, Claire’s light touch didn’t help things.
The dance was over almost as soon as it began, and the few unmatched villagers were relegated to the edge of the clearing to watch the rest of the festival. Claire gave him a wry smile as they moved off the dance floor, joining Linus, Jas, Vincent, and a few others. The matched couples in the clearing began to move through the ritual dance, including flourishing reveals of their soulmarks. Harvey shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably, unable to watch, and wandered around the clearing, doing his best to finally admire Evelyn’s work.
He distracted himself for several minutes, furiously trying to tamp down the little seedling of hope that had burst through the soil during his dance with Claire.
All of his efforts were rendered useless, though, when he looked over at her and saw a small bunch of forget-me-nots in her hand. She smiled to herself as she rearranged a few of the blooms, and he felt the careful apathy that he had maintained over the past five years slip away once and for all.
A lump caught in Harvey’s throat as he watched his best friend holding his soul flower. She couldn’t know that it was his flower. There was no chance. When she glanced over and saw him looking at her, the smile she gave him might as well have been the sun. As Harvey smiled back, that stone wall that Harvey had built in his mind fully cracked open. Sunlight streamed in, and the little sprout immediately began to grow.
The rest of the festival passed in a blur, but Harvey caught up to Claire as she left the grounds. “Can I walk you home?”
She smiled up at him. “Of course.”
They waved goodbye to the other villagers and took the path north to Claire’s farm. Claire shared some of the gossip around town; namely, that the roses in Lewis’s bouquet weren’t actually Marnie’s soul flowers. Harvey grimaced – nobody’s soulmark should be subject to gossip. Noticing the look on his face, Claire changed the subject.
“I’ve been thinking about it, and I think our next dinner night should be only desserts.”
Harvey flinched. “Excuse me?”
“Well, yeah. I think it would be fun,” she said, with a coy glance at him. “Chocolate is good for you, after all.”
“Yes... in small amounts,” he said, reeling. “You do know that eating only dessert for a meal is incredibly unhealthy, right? I am a physician, after all. I need to set a good example for my patients.”
She laughed. “Okay, Mr. Microwave Meal Man,” she said, teasing him gently enough that he didn’t even think to take offense. His shoulders relaxed.
“Fine, fine, I hear you,” he said, chuckling. “How about a compromise?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“How about...we still eat dinner, but we have two desserts instead of one. That gives us choices, but we’ll still eat something with nutrients.”
She laughed, agreeing, when they finally reached her farmhouse. Harvey smiled to himself when he realized that Claire had been going for the shock factor – he had completely forgotten his former discomfort over his soulmark. It had, at least, been nice while it lasted.
She took one step up her porch stairs while Harvey remained on the ground, bringing them almost eye-to-eye with each other. His breath hitched as he stepped closer to her. Seemingly out of his control, one of his hands rose up and rested on her waist.
“Thank you again for dancing with me today, Harvey,” she said, placing one hand on his upper arm. “It made this Yoba-awful festival a little more bearable.”
He gave her a small smile. “Thanks for asking. It was sincerely the highlight of my day.”
Her thumb rubbed circles on his shoulder, momentarily distracting him. She took a slightly shuddering breath in, and he leaned in closer until they were mere inches away from each other. There was nothing more that Harvey wanted than to tell her how he felt, how the small seedling of hope had finally taken root. There was nothing he wanted more than to kiss her, to show her exactly how much he cared for her. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t as broken as he thought he was. Maybe he just hadn’t met the right person yet.
Maybe he just hadn’t met her yet.
The possibility hung in the air between them, a glittering, shining thing.
Harvey opened his mouth to tell her everything he was thinking in the gathering dusk of that Pelican Town spring evening.
But it was too late. In the blink of an eye, that shimmering possibility winked out and all of his fears came flooding back. He was, in that moment, forced to confront exactly what it would mean if she wasn’t actually his potential soulmate. If he still had only one small, blue bruise of a soulmark on his back. He couldn’t bear the disappointment again: he had to find out if his soulmark had changed before pouring his heart out.
The tension that had coiled between them snapped as Harvey stepped away with a small sigh.
“I should be getting home.”
“Oh... okay,” said Claire, blinking rapidly. Harvey did his best to ignore the subtle slump of her shoulders and the way she suddenly focused on her shoes.
“I’ll see you on Friday, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ll see you then. Get home safe,” she said, already turning her back to him.
He stood there for a moment, flinching at the quiet click of the door behind her.
Unable to wait for another minute, he turned and ran to his apartment.
---
Harvey finishes unbuttoning his shirt with shaking, cold fingers, and carelessly lets it fall to the bathroom floor. It feels as though somebody has opened a bottle of champagne in his chest, like an explosive spray of alcohol is painting the inside of his ribs.
His palms are clammy, and he pauses, both hands planted firmly on the countertop. This is his last chance to turn back. To continue living with the semi-blissful ignorance that has followed him for the past five years. To choose: is it better to know whether or not Claire is one of his soulmates, and to regret the answer? Or is it better to never know – to keep her at a distance but never face the bottomless disappointment of seeing only that lonely flower between his shoulder blades yet again?
Harvey looks at himself in the mirror. He has a good life here in Pelican Town. He does work that he cares about. He has friends that he cares about. He reminds himself that, soulmate or not, his life is meaningful. The expression plastered to his face is panicky, so he tries his best to smile at himself.
Either way, she’s still your best friend, he thinks. He closes his eyes, remembering the way she looked holding a bunch of forget-me-nots, smiling at him. His flower. His Claire. He opens his eyes, resolute. He needs to know – even if there’s only one more flower, it’ll be enough. He turns around and pulls a tiny hand mirror out of one of the drawers so he can see his back.
What he sees in the mirror makes Harvey’s whole world tilts on its axis.