It hadn’t even been two years, but Elijah had discovered that each season brought it’s own distinct kind of melancholy. There was winter, with the holidays where he gathered together with the broken remnants of his family; spring, with the promise of new beginnings, and the anniversary of one awful end; summer, when everything was supposed to feel light, but it really just felt empty… It was coming up on his second fall, and Elijah didn’t think it had any right to hurt as much as it did.
He just kept thinking: Noah should be getting ready for his second year of college now. Elijah always imagined his little brother following in his footsteps and going to NYU. He’d be an English major, or maybe Art History, because of the two of them, Noah had always been the more creative one, and he would take his teenage angst and commit his pain to paper.
He could be moving into his dorm right now. Elijah and Annie would be helping him. Annie would go through the pains of making his bed, and organizing his desk, and Noah would collapse on the bed halfway through moving, claiming he was done for the day and they could just buzz off please. He would say it with a smile, though, and Elijah would roll his eyes and remind him that they were just a matter of blocks away as they left him to his peace.
… It was kind of a nice thought, actually, and Elijah smiled sadly despite himself.
It probably wasn’t healthy, the way he kept envisioning alternate futures, but lying alone on a lumpy futon, chasing sleep in a quiet room that wasn’t really his own could do that to a man. He’d heard Annie come home, heard her run the shower before making her way into their - her - bedroom. It felt right that this would be the kind of night they wouldn’t speak to each other; he felt raw and vulnerable in a way he couldn’t understand, that made him feel soft and desperate and infinitely safer tucked away on his own.
He hadn’t expected to hear a knock at his door, and though she didn’t wait for his confirmation, he wasn’t sure he would have denied her. And when he heard the tone of her voice, the whisper of unshed tears, his resolve crumbled completely. He didn’t even say a word - just scooched over on the mattress and lifted the corner of the blanket as a sign for her to crawl in next to him. It felt, for the first time in a long time, that they were on the same wavelength.
Seeing the spare room being inhabited, almost made her worse. Made her remember all the bullshit that had lead to Elijah sleeping in the spare room, all the fighting and crying and trying to make everything feel okay. Which just added to the drowning feeling that seemed to have formed in her chest. All the more reason why she needed to pretend, pretend that this was some other reality where everything had gone to plan, where everything had worked out for them and they weren’t fighting to stay afloat.
Annie wasn’t sure what she would have done if Elijah had denied her request, there was a small part of her that was sure that she would have crumbled on the spot. She knew herself that this probably wasn’t the kind of thing that was supposed to be allowed in their current situation, but she just needed someone to hold her. Someone to tell her that everything was going to be okay when it felt like everything was crumbling around her.
As soon as Elijah had lifted the edge of the blanket, she all but dived into the bed next to him. Curling up against his side, letting the tears fall from her eyes as she breathed in the comforting smell of Elijah. He’d been her rock for so many years, this was her reaction to anything. To lean on Elijah, even now that they were so broken she couldn’t help herself.
Annie wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling herself closer to him. Trying to stop herself from crying, just long enough to try and explain what was wrong with her. ‘’I couldn’t take being alone tonight...’’ She managed to choke out. ‘’I really hate being alone...’’ Annie admitted, rubbing at her eyes with her hands. ‘’I’m sorry..’’
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