#{c; eli}

[asher-writes]

If I never see you again, you can be anything I want

Just a little writing drabble. Inspired by "23" by Noah Kahan. This album is taking over my soul.

Oh, also life update, I got engaged.

Anyway, here's some brotherly abandonment introspection. Warning for slur used by a disabled person to describe themself in a negative way. ish

WIP: Out of Sight and Mind

--

The smell of cigarette smoke tended to remind Eli of his brother. The heat of the evening, the thickness of the air, summer as a claw pressing down on the setting sun. And the smoke, burning embers in still air.

He should be here.

There's a raucous party inside the pub; cheering and singing and dancing. The music poured out to the pavement where Eli sat, watching the last of the day - his birthday - turn to a night that he can do nothing but sleep through.

Alone, as he had been for many years.

"Elijah?" He pulls the lead weight of his neck to look up at the worried expression on his mother's face. "What are you doing sat out here?" She spares a glance at a man smoking on the wall, a figure that Eli had gently shaped into his absent brother.

"It's quieter," he makes no move to stand, a long and arduous process, and instead leans his head back against the wall. Still sober. The last time he'd seen Ari, he'd smelled of whiskey and it had put him off trying the stuff - even on his first legal night of indulgence.

His mother straightend her skirt, all but gliding her way to the steps, where she sat down carefully and with a grimace. It was not the life for her, on dusty streets. "Is this about...?" she trails off. The name was wrong anyway, it always would be in her mouth. Eli had thought many times whether the truth would bring Ari home, but if there was one promise he couldn't bring himself to break, it was this.

"It's too loud in there, and I don't want to drink, I just want to go to bed."

"Elijah, it's your birthday," she tutted, as if dealing with a fussy child. A memory that he wouldn't ever grow out of. "You should drink, and have fun."

"This isn't fun," he pulls in the air. The man smoking the cigarette disposes of it into a metal tin on the wall, then slides past them both silently into the bar. With it, he takes Eli's imagination, and it feels unfair. His teeth grit, nails scratching into his palms. He can taste the remnants of smoke in the air and his own fury, silent and wet in his throat.

"You do miss her, I should have known," she tutted "...we're all grieving Elijah, even now, but you should live your life."

"I am trying to," if he could have stood with any gusto, he would have. He reaches blindly for his cane and stabs it into the gravel, grunting as he lifts himself up. Pain crawls like a rodent up his legs and hips and back, it scurries and scratches and jerks, until he can breathe again.

His mother waits patiently for him to make a point, watching her son struggle to stand upright. "...but every fucking room still has her in it." His mother looks up at him with pursed lips. "Every fucking conversation is still about her, somehow, it's been a decade, and still-"

"Elijah-"

"I can't even have a birthday party, because people think I don't know that I'm the cripple kid with a dead sister."

"Elijah!" His mother stands the way tornados rise. "That's a horrible word," she tempers her own storm, though he can see her lips tremble and her eyebrows twitch.

"I am what I am," he sat on the wall, already exhausted. His voice shrinks whilst his annoyance grows, trembling along his tongue when he speaks. "And if by some miracle she ever came back, I wish she wouldn't." A well built within him, and he imagined his brother. It felt odd to refer to him by old names and assertions that no longer applied to him.

He could imagine Ari leaning against the wall, maybe he would even be happy. Smoking a cigarette and teasing him, telling him it all goes downhill from here. Maybe he wouldn't smell like alcohol, and his hair would be trimmed.

If Ari never came home. If he never saw him again. Well, then he could be anyone Eli wanted him to be. He could even be a big brother.

"I'm going home."

"Elijah, it's your party."

"And I'm very grateful, but I am tired, and I wish to sleep." His mother stepped back with a frown.

"You sound just like Olivia," she meant it as an insult. In his head he corrects her. His name is Ari. And he's gone all the same.

"Good night."

[wexarexmadxhere-archive]

@guiltlost​ || Stiles & Eli 

Eli pushed the front door open and tossed his backpack next to the front door as he kicked it closed. “POPS!” He called out looking for Stiles as he made his way towards where he could hear Stiles. He was clutching his new Lacrosse jersey in his hand as he made it to Stiles. “Guess who made the team at tryouts today?!”

[brxkenwarrixrs]

@villainousxrealm continued from ( XXX )

Eli chuckled, “Well I don’t know if you’d actually call it a present...” He placed file down on her desk.  He had stuck in a single lily flower he had gotten for her just on top of the papers that the DA needed to be delivered today.  He had gone with a lily over a rose because he thought a rose would be a touch to rom-com cliche.

[othermagicsa]

Something Surprising || Harry and Eli

@brxkenwarrixrs

Apparently walking the hall while being Harry Potter was something that wasn’t okay with Umbridge. Her little squad of Slytherins always kept their eyes on him no matter where he was, Fred and George had given him a spell earlier that morning to use on the gang to give himself some space and freedom to breathe without being analyzed. He cast the spell creating a long stretch of extremely slippery ice underneath his stalker’s feet. 

His peace wasn’t long as the snake in pink clothing clear her throat. “Ahem.” Making that same sound she made when she interrupted teachers. “Mr. Potter, you know you’re not to be using magic on your fellow students.” 

[duncanxjackson-blog]

@eli-livingston

After seeing her family, Duncan needed to get out of the doom and gloom that was Strange Magic at the moment. Her parents had darkened the rooms mourning those they had lost. Duncan was mourning herself, but she didn’t need to be surrounded by the darkness that was her home. Knowing that Cameron was okay, she went to see the next person she wanted to make sure was alright. Not even bothering to knock she walks into one of the many rooms in the hospital, finding Eli a small smile playing on her lips.

“All work and no play? What happened to my best friend?”

[starsndevotees-a]

@idyllicism

Eli could have never guessed just how much he’d regret walking into the wrong room until this moment right now. With the proper chart in hand, he made his way into the correct room with a scowl. “I’m sorry for the delay. I walked into the wrong room. That-- was certainly infected.”

[asher-writes]

Silence

WIP; Out of Sight and Mind

Ari is referred to as "Liv," as it's set when he's a teenager, just after he runs away. His family mourn his loss. Eli-centric.

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial

--

The silence echoed. Every room still as dust, haunted by acknowledgements that couldn't be made, by words best kept lodged in their throat.

Eli kept standing outside her - his - room; dwarfed by the doorway and wondering how he never noticed that the walls were so bare. His own room had paint from his younger years, and drawings stapled to the white walls, and his bedding had colour. His sister's - brother's - room wasn't like that. It was empty. The bedding was black, the walls were white, the furniture was bare of any identity. Not so much as a scratch mark.

He'd never known this house to be silent. As a child, his mother's voice had carried through every room. Since Liv had become a teenager (would he have a new name now?), that had been two competing voices in endless arguments. It usually ended whenever his mother said, "...you'll upset your brother."

Eli was not upset by raised voices, or arguments; he was more likely to be annoyed that the two of them seemed incapable of talking. One always had to be right, and the other had to be wrong.

It was peaceful now, at least. But at what price?

His knees began to ache with his own weight, but he couldn't find it in himself to leave the bedroom, so he sat on his brother's bed and stared at the empty walls. His clothes were still in the dresser, the faint smell of cigarettes lingering somewhere, poorly disguised by oils. But it was all so empty, it could have been anyone's room. It had always been absent of Liv.

Eli tried to remember ever seeing his brother happy. Tried to imagine a time when this house wasn't full of arguing. The silence drew on, and still he expected him to walk through the door all the same, to tell him to get off his bed. To shout that he's not allowed in her - his -room.

He picked up his brother's pillow and held it close to his chest. Should he have told his parents the truth, that Liv was gone but not dead? That, somewhere out there beyond the wall, he lived? Or was Liv right that this was a secret for the grave?

He'd never seen his brother scared until he'd hugged him goodbye. Had never seen him cry before, or heard him apologise. The way Liv had shaken and sobbed had confused him, angered him, scared him. "Just stay," he'd thrown his hands in the air in exasperation, "...then you don't have to be upset!"

But Liv had gone. And now he was here. Crying into a pillow. When had he started crying?

He said they'd see each other again one day. That he'd be different, that they'd both be different, but that was okay. He wondered who his brother would be by then, who he would be by then.

He wondered if it would ever come.

[asher-writes]

I wish we could love.

WIP; Out of Sight and Mind

Context: Ari, who has returned to his hometown following his parents death, was a teenage runaway who faked his own death to escape abusive parents. This is a conversation between him and his brother about being in love for the first time since he left, and the childhood that pushed them apart.

Neptune is Ari's childhood best friend, who he loved but dragged into some shit situations.

Edward is Ari's current love interest.

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial

--

"I loved her, and I haven't loved another person since," Ari whispered with intense soberness to the ceiling. His eyes were red in the glare of the morning sun, yet dark as if the night had never left him.

"I know," Eli sat down with surprising tenderness in his voice - a moment of peace he rarely had, given only for the expressive heartache Ari rarely showed. Not even time could truly sever a brother's love.

"It feels...wrong, somehow."

"Because you love him, or because you're loved at all?" Ari breathed in the air, and it turned into something sickening in his stomach. Nausea fell like waves upon him, his hand finding his forehead just to press down, feel less like every piece of him was falling away.

"I suppose I don't have a leg to stand on, to be upset she lied to my face...after leaving her."

"It broke her into pieces, but it pushed her to her own freedom."

"I was a chain on her."

"You were," it was solemn, truthful, "...you pulled her downwards, and letting go was the only way she'd see the sky again." Ari felt the tears burn, hearing it spoke so plainly. "But you were a teenager, forced to make decisions no teenager should have to make - it'd hardly a blame you chose the wrong one."

"You never forgave me." What if he hadn't changed, what if all these years were a mirage, and he only ended up breaking Edward the way he broke Neptune?

"I never understood." Ari pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes and begged the tears to stop. His body felt hot with the want to curl up in a ball away from Eli, from Neptune, from everyone. He'd hardly had a second of silence since he'd got to this god-forsaken place. "But I overheard you talking to Edward, and I do now."

"I never wanted you to know."

"I know," Eli's voice cracked, "...you subjected yourself to years of my anger to protect me from the truth."

"I wanted you to have good parents, and they loved you-"

"But they hurt you."

"It made me stronger."

Eli shook his head "...not stronger, traumatised, look at you Ari; a boy tells you he loves you, and you feel like it's the end of the world, that's not strength, that's pain."

"I just don't understand."

"You are so much more lovable than any of us have ever made you feel," Eli's voice shook with a deep tremble that reminded Ari of thunder rumbling through the sky. The natural order, disturbed by a tremor in the humidity. "Alicia is better at this than I," he laughed with discarded mirth, "...you are my brother, and you came here for me knowing it would tear you to pieces, and I love you."

Ari didn't know what to say, his mouth opened and closed, but the words burned and stopped in his throat. He desperately wanted to say it, to tell his little brother he would jump in front of a bullet for him, that he'd tear apart the world to keep him safe. But he didn't. He looked at Eli with something dejected and fearful, and just prayed that he understood.