Work Text:
Jeff loved Elli.
It was so easy to do. She was so cute and kind and sweet. She was hard-working and humble. They worked together all day with an easy sort of camaraderie. Everyone in town thought they made a sweet couple. They fit together like two peas in a pod. Things with Elli were natural, certain, comfortable.
And Jack?
Everyone in town loved Jack. It was impossible not to. He was strong, handsome, generous. He breathed new life into the village. Even the stern Gotz loosened up, laughing more than Jeff had ever seen.
It wasn't strange for Jeff to look forward to Jack’s visits to the bakery. It wasn't strange for it to be a bright point of his day when the bell rang and Jack walked in with his easy smile. Everyone looked forward to seeing Jack.
And surely it was envy that had Jeff’s eyes sliding over Jack’s toned abs and tanned skin at the Sea Festival. Jeff’s diet mainly consisting of butter and pastry had started to show in his 30s, after all.
Everyone was well pleased when Jack won the Harvest King title. It was simply nerves about performing in front of the village that had Jeff's heart racing as he played the ocarina next to Jack, even if it was only Jack’s smiling eyes that he ultimately noticed.
The panic that Jeff felt as the villagers started gossiping about a spring wedding for him and Elli was strictly a desire to honor Ellen's memory. Of course. She meant so much to Elli and to him, and, even as the other young couples in the village began to marry, Jeff didn't want to rush anything. It didn't seem right to think of such things while Elli was still grieving.
Even as Popuri came to the bakery to breathlessly share the news of her pregnancy with Elli, hinting loudly about what a good mother she would make, Jeff hesitated. He couldn't think why, dwelling on it until Jack came in to buy a cake and all thoughts of a blue feather blew right out of his head once more.
And when Jeff dreamed of living on a farm, he told himself it was about freedom.
And when he got too drunk watching the door for Jack’s visit to the bar, he told himself it was his age.
And when he spent the Fireworks next to Jack, he told himself it was just because Elli had gone off with her friends and left him. And when Jack bent his head towards Jeff, laughing, joking, his profile lit by the shower of color above them, it wasn't love that exploded in Jeff’s chest. It couldn't be. Love was what he felt for Elli: staid, predictable, warm. It was the change in the seasons that made him dizzy, the lingering heat off the sand that made his skin flush and sweat.
Jeff proposed to Elli the next day. He had gotten the blue feather from Rick’s shop the moment he opened. They were engaged before lunch. They were married before the end of summer.
Everyone in the village teased him for taking his time, but Elli was quietly rapturous, and that's all that mattered to Jeff. When Jack stopped by with a whole basket of fine eggs to congratulate the happy couple, it must have been friendship and gratitude that made Jeff's heart thump against his ribs.
And when Rick moved out to the farm, setting tongues wagging, Jeff’s discomfort was just that it was…unusual. When Jack and Rick invited everyone to the farm to watch them swear themselves to each other before nature and the Goddess herself, Jeff told himself that the hollow feeling in his chest was just how unnatural it was. And, when he went and witnessed the true love between them under a blazing blue fall sky, Jeff told himself he just needed to get used to it. And as the village accepted it, Jeff told himself he was just old-fashioned, and he just needed more time. Wasn't he always slow? Wasn't he always careful?
And when Jack’s visits to the bakery continued to be the brightest point of Jeff’s day, he kept on pretending not to know why, even as winters slipped into springs into summers into falls.