Stardew Valley, High School/College AU, war
His sandwich was properly awful; a thin slice of ham with some jam and crumbly bread. Sam sat in the school library amongst too many bookshelves with stories no one wanted to read. His backpack was tossed to the side, blue like his mood, with barely any notebooks inside. He didn’t care much for school performance, but, to be fair, at that point, no one else ready did, either.
Despite being careful, everywhere around him lay crumbs and as he picked one of them up, he noticed a stain on the sleeve of his jumper. It was sticky and red, from the energy drink he’d had earlier. He stared at it for a while. The librarian frolicked around her little kingdom somewhere where he couldn’t see her, humming; she must’ve already forgotten he was there as he should’ve been gone to a class somewhere, and he just hoped she wouldn’t suddenly appear giving both of them a heart attack.
He took the jumper off and flung it in the backpack’s direction. He missed and it landed in a dirty corner where he saw too many spider webs for him to ever believe it was cleaned on a regular basis. Sam didn’t pick it up.
The sandwich was awful, but he kept on eating because Vincent had made it. Ever since their dad left for the army, their mom wasn’t herself. It wasn’t the first time he was sent away, but it was the first time it caused the air in their house to become harrowing and dense enough to be on the verge of suffocating Sam the moment he stepped through the door. Sam didn’t really know what it was about; the only thing he knew was that it was the first time he actually heard the words “dad” and “war” in a single sentence, and he didn’t like it. Vincent knew something was off just enough to quietly become older than he should have been. His bed was always made, his toys collected, and his shoes tied. When mom didn’t get out of bed in the morning, he would bring her a glass of tap water and sometimes leave food on the kitchen counter. At first, Sam thought he did it by accident or forgot to put it back, but after a while, he realized, the yoghurts and carrots and chocolate bars were actually for him; a 5-year-old’s rendition of a display of motherly care.
This time, it was a sandwich. It was the worst sandwich in the world, properly awful, but Sam loved every bite immensely and cried over the scattered crumbs when he finished.