“mom…” elliot’s voice was a rasp, though not quite as bad as his older brother’s had developed into. “are we almost there yet?” the dingy conversion van that the gallagher parents used to cart their children around was rocking him like a ship; making it harder to stay awake. ( cw for child neglect/abuse under the cut. )
“little while longer,” she responded, and her voice was as tense as her hands on the wheel. it felt like they had been driving around the san fernando valley for hours on hours now, and even at five elliot’s confusion deepened further, the more the sun began to descend from the sky again. he couldn’t understand why they just couldn’t go home. the little two bedroom apartment might not have been much, barely enough room for all of seven of them, but at least his twin mattress pushed into the corner of the kitchen didn’t make him car sick.“ ‘m hungry,” he murmured, even though he knew that was a dangerous thing to say aloud. saying that you needed something was a quick way to annoy his mother, especially when she was concentrated on something else. sure enough, she reached back to shove him away; and elliot fell out of his crouch between the driver’s and passenger’s seat, hard on his butt. “you think i’m not hungry?” she spat back with only a modicum of her normal heat, the annoyed anger that came out when her ‘ducklings’ weren’t silent little atm machines. it was a mark of how normalized this was for him, that elliot’s first thought after this was ‘huh, she must be tired’. “i told you, wait a little longer. your dad is hooking something up for us tonight.” the next words out of her mouth came out in a rush, “we might sleep at this ah, fun hotel for tonight. or we might go camping. doesn’t that sound fun?” elliot couldn’t remember if he’d ever camped before, but movies made it look like fun, so he gave a noncommittal small nod. he watched his mother relax and let himself relax as well. good, not mad anymore. “good, good,” she said, tone distracted as she reached out to adjust her driver’s side mirror. “then tomorrow morning, zeke and ev have a six am call time, so i’ll need you to watch the twins.” she fixed her eyes on him in the rearview mirror, so she could watch him nod again. “good. i feel really good about this one,” she said, almost to herself. “i think it’s gonna be that big break for us.” settling back, sitting between the two captain’s seats in the midsection of the van, elliot leaned his head against one arm rest, looking tiredly up at his older brother; eight and holding one of the twins while she slept, and wondered who ‘us’ was.
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