Jacob’s Ladder
A/N: MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING (blood/selfharm/suicidalideation) I have wanted to write this for a long time I think Elliot could be so good to someone who needs his help. Please use your discretion on whether you are in a safe enough head space to read this. Much Love XX
Suggested listening: Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Radiohead
You hear the door unlatch. You press your back harder into the wall behind you trying to be as small as possible. The tears have been coming for nearly an hour now. Your chin shakes against your knees and you grit your teeth to ride out another wave of loneliness that encircles your ribs and bubbles up through your throat in a guttural sob. The only sound in the apartment is you fighting the emptiness in a dark corner. You had rubbed the blurriness out of your eyes long enough to send a text to Elliot.
‘it hurts’
He hadn’t responded, but you hear his footsteps now as he closes the door behind him and wades into the darkness surrounding you, guided by your cries. The heaviness of him beside you doesn’t register until he’s pulling you away from the wall and exchanging its support for his. He is hesitant at first, the way you approach a wounded animal, not sure how it may react. When you are in this state the only thing you feel is the itching under your skin, the drive to tear at it until whatever lays underneath can run down your arms in thick stripes of blood. Not many people see this side of you. None, now that you think about it.
Even with the solidity of Elliot’s shoulder under your head you cannot take your eyes of the small blades lined up squarely in front of you on the floor, glinting from the light of the lamp on the side table across the room. As if sensing it Elliot takes your hand in his.
“Can you move?”
Soundlessly you shake your head, no. Tears are still flowing, you take a shaky breath.
“I can’t move. If I move it will be to those.” The razors pulled you to them promising sweet release.
“I get it.”
Could he? Could he really know the way you broke? Sure Elliot had his struggles with addiction, but there was a difference between killing your insides and tearing the outside to shreds. Elliot answers these questions by shifting out from under your weight to slide his arm behind your back and reaches the other one behind the crook of your knees to lift you from the ground. You find yourself parallel to your bed staring at the wall and the soft glow that landed on it from across the room. The familiar scent of your bedsheets quells your tears, but Elliot’s body heat is missing now. You hear him shuffling around your apartment for a while before he turns of the lamp and comes to lay facing you on the other side of the bed.
Now it’s just the two of you, fully clothed on top of the covers staring at each other. You're silhouetted by the moonlight that finds its way into the window at your back. Elliot’s eyes wander your features, your eyes are swollen from crying, your frame rises and falls with the ins and outs of each breath you take. Without thinking you reach across the quiet place in between you and find his hand.
“It doesn’t go away.” Your voice is barely more than an exhale but he understands.
Elliot hesitates again as he plays with the cuff of your long sleeve shirt. Experimentally he pushes it up, then he glides the fabric over your forearm up to your elbow and traces his fingertips lightly back down to your wrist. The moon glints off of your skin exposing silvery white raised parallel lines that interrupt the flow of you skin.
Almost as quietly Elliot whispers, “Jacob’s Ladder.”
His reaction strums at the chords behind your heart. He presses lightly with two fingers against your pulse.
But then his touch is gone and he’s lifting himself off the bed. You can’t help but wince, he’s leaving you. In one fluid movement he’s pulling his hoodie off and then the t-shirt under neath. You exhale as he lays back down in front of you again. You can see faintly the marks across his body. The small circular scars up his arms, must be cigarets. The deep cut that's freshly healed on his abdomen. The thick scarred tissue bunched under his clavicle on his left side, presumable a gunshot. He had pain too. Gingerly you reach out to feel the raised skin, he shivers but allows you to proceed.
Before your hand can wander much more he captures it and slowly brings it to his cheek. You raise your eyes to his and he, for the first time in your life, looks at you like he understands.
Elliot leans closer to you so that you're sharing breaths.
You whisper into the darkness, “Are you real?”
He doesn’t speak he just meets your lips with his and that’s enough for tonight.
