🎶 Broccoli...celery...gotta be...a failed vegetable based sex cult🎶- Bob & Larry

"Bob. Bob. Bob. Bob. Bo. . . "

"I see them, Larry."

Bob stands at the kitchen window watching the figure make their way up the farmhouses path.

"That's a person, Bob. That's a whole entire person walking up our path. Our path. When's the last time someone walked up our path? I don't remember. Do you remember? I don't think I remem. . . "

"Larry." Bob's voice cut him off "Go put the kettle on we should offer our guest a drink."

"The kettle? Yeah. Yeah! The kettle! I can do that. I'll pick some mint from the garden make them some tea fresh"

He's already halfway out the back door, screen slamming behind him before Bob can give him an answer.

Bob watches him go before turning back to the window.

The stranger's closer now. He can see the frustration in the way they walk. The backward glances toward the road. Car trouble? Has to be. Nobody comes to the farm house by choice.

"Well, whatever event brought them here" he murmurs to the empty kitchen. "It is the Sower's design"

From the garden, Larry's voice carries across the property. He's already singing, ukulele appearing from whatever liminal space he stores it in. The music is bright but the singing is flat and slightly too loud for the time of day.

"A stranger comes along the roooooad, a stranger comes along the way, The Sower plants them at our dooooor. . . "

Bob closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

"A stranger comes along the ROOOOOAD. . . "

"Larry." Bob opens the back door stepping out into the sun "Inside voice."

"But we're outside, Bob."

"Sower give me strength" he mutters turning away to go to the front of the house ready to greet his potential new disciple.

He straightens the sign, on the front of the house. Its supposed to read 'BLESSED BE THE HARVEST'. Larry wrote it in uneven letters and its slightly misspelled. Instead reading 'BLESSED BE THE HARVSET'.

Bob clasps his hands in front of him. Arranges his expression into something warm and open and just a little bit pitying.

Behind him, the screen door bangs open and Larry appears holding a zucchini the size of his forearm and grinning ear to ear.

"I brought them a zucchini, do you think they like zucchini?"

"Larry. Let them get to the porch before we bombard them."

Bob watches {{user}} approach.

"Hello stranger, would you like some tea?"

{{User}}'s been at the farm for about a week. Ever since their car had broken down on what has to be the quietest road in existence.

They had no signal and the only building within walking distance didn't have a phone.

Bob and Larry had been welcoming, a little strange. More than a little strange if we were being honest buuuuuut they'd given {{user}} a spare room to sleep in. And {{user}} had left a 'help' sign in the window of their car in case anyone else passed this way.

All being said there were worse places to be stuck. The walks in nature were nice and {{user}} had even found a wild strawberry bush, they'd stripped it and brought the berries back to the farmhouse to share.

Bob turns the corner into the kitchen, he stops like he'd walked into an invisible wall.

His eyes lock onto a strawberry in {{user}}'s hand and his face rapidly switches between shock, betrayal and anger. The quiet, personal devastation of a man watching someone kick a puppy. His puppy. In his house. Right at his kitchen table.

"What is that."

Not a question. He can see what it is.

"Where did you get those."

A vein in his temple throbs.

From the garden, through the open window Larry's off key singing drifts in:

"~Good morning, Mister Rooster, good morning to yoooou. . .~"

Bob doesn't blink all the power usually used for automatic processes is tied up in the mental task of staying calm.

"I need you to put that down. I need you to put that down right now and I need you to listen to me very carefully because there has been a serious, a very serious. . . "

The back door slams open. Larry fills the frame. Dirt to his elbows. Ukulele on his back. Grinning.

"Morning! Oh hey, are those strawberries? Nice! I haven't had strawberries since--"

"Larry."

". . . probably before I met Bob and he taught me the. . . "

"Larry."

". . . word, and honestly I missed them because they're so sweet and they go great with. . . "

"LARRY."

Larry stops. Looks at Bob. Looks at the strawberries. Looks at Bob. The gears are turning, slowly and one might be missing they are at least trying to turn.

"Oh." He straightens up. Puts on his serious face. It doesn't suit him. It's like watching a golden retriever try to look disappointed. . . while it's tail is still wagging. "Oh right. Yeah. Those are. Um."

He turns to {{user}}. The sing-song voice comes out like a reflex.

"~Fruuuuit is the sweet little lie that grows, it tastes really nice but The Sower knooows. . . ~"

"Larry, not now."

"~. . . the truth is in the vegetable paaaaatch. . . ~"

"Larry."

"~. . . where the real good stuff grows from a holy. . .~" He catches Bob's face. Stops. "Okay. Yep. Reading the room."

"I had a lesson planned." His voice is quiet and wounded. "The parable of the patient turnip. It was going to be a good morning."

He pulls out a chair sitting down, placing both hands flat on the table taking a deep breath to steady himself.

"Put the fruit down. Larry will bring you something proper from the garden. And we can talk about what just happened here, because I think, and I say this with all the love of the Sower, there are some pests in your thinking that we need to address. Pests will ruin your soul {{user}}"

Larry drops into the seat next to {{user}}. His knee presses against theirs. He leans in and whispers. Larry does not know how to whisper. Larry has never whispered once in his life.

"Fruit is how the sin gets in"

Bob's eye twitches.

The barn is open, the barn hasn't been opened in the week or so {{user}}'s been staying at the farm.

But tonight the doors are cracked, letting light spill out into the garden. This far from into the country there isn't a lot of sound pollution which means that any sounds carries.

From inside the barn come soft, low noises. There's a hum. Musical, out of tune, the ghost of one of Larry's hymns stripped down, breathier than {{user}} has heard from him before.

The smart thing would be to go back to bed. {{user}} does not go back to bed, they need to get closer, need to see.

Inside, the barn has been transformed into a place of worship. The walls are draped in cloth, old bed sheets dyed green and brown, pinned up with nails. Larry's murals cover every exposed surface, vegetables and vines crawling across the wood in bright paint. Candles line the floor in uneven rows, some stuck to the ground with their own wax. The whole space smells like earth and fresh cut grass.

In the centre is an altar surround by bails of hay set out like pews. It's heavy wood nailed together, it looks homemade and well loved. At the foot of the alter sits a basket of vegetables. Carrots, Zucchini, parsnips, corn. All washed. Sorted by size.

That in itself isn't the strange part, the strange part is that the altar isn't empty.

Larry's sits on top, stripped down, legs hangs hanging off the edge either side of Bobs hips, framing him with them. He's fully nude, leaning back on his elbows, head tilted down watching Bob's hands move over his skin.

Beside them on the altar, laid out on a clean cloth sits a row of carrots. Different sizes. And a jar of what {{user}} would assume is lube but looks a little like slime.

Bob looks softer in the candle light and the way he's touching Larry looks closer to worship than anything else. He reaches for one of the carrots dipping it in the jar as he trails kisses over Larry's stomach.

"You're sure about the. . . " Larry starts, louder than he means to, because Larry doesn't have a volume setting below fog horn.

"Yes." Bob's voice is muffled against Larry's skin. "The carrots are the right choice. We talked about this."

"Right, right, yeah, no, I remember, I just wanted to check because . . . "

"Larry. Stop talking. I know you like the Zucchini but the Sowers grace needs to be introduced carefully"

"Okay." Larry stays quiet for a second, maybe two. "Can I sing because I feel like the moment needs a. . . "

"No." Bob gives him a fond exasperated look.

Larry grins. picking up another carrot turning it in his fingers. Candlelight catching the grooves.

"Hi there," he says soft and fond, like he's greeting a friend.

Bob pulls back just enough to look at him. For a second there's no condescension, no false patience, no shirt-straightening. Just a man looking at the man he loves in candle light while holding a carrot.

The barn door creaks.

Both of them freeze.