hey could you write an Elliot Anderson imagine where he has a nightmare and wakes up freaking out and crying and the reader helps calm him down and comforts him? x
A/N: Getting this ask made me the happiest person alive, I don’t know how else to describe it. I’ve wanted to share my writing online for so long and I’m finally doing it, so thank you to anyone who’s ever liked, reblogged, replied, messaged, anything!! This makes me so happy! <3 <3 <3
(Also, I know that I was technically asked for an imagine, but here we are and I’m giving you a fic.)
PhantasmElliot Alderson x ReaderWords: 794Warnings: Nightmares, mental health issues, swearing.
It was cold, absolutely frigid. Your semi-conscious brain tried to make sense of everything that was pulling you from sleep but it couldn’t. The pulled aside blankets, the thrashing, the stillness, the thrashing again, and the ragged, heavy breathing only started to make sense when you came to and opened your eyes.
Elliot.
Elliot- it’s Elliot.
It’s Elliot.
You forced yourself upright and all of a sudden it was easy to stay awake and focus. Elliot was sweating profusely, the sheets he had kicked to the foot of the bed seemed drenched. His pulse would have been booming if you had felt it. His breathing was irregular and he seemed to gasp for air.It was terrifying.You didn’t know what to do. What were you supposed to do? What could you do?
As you reached out to touch him, one of his arms caught on a pillow. In a second, he began flailing against the pillow, ripping it out from under his head. It was thrown across the room. Something fell and banged against the floor.
You tried to place an emotion to the screaming, but you couldn’t. It was just screaming.
Instinctively, you pulled back and tensed up. And then regretted it.
He punched the mattress and screamed, he punched the wall and screamed. He still wasn’t awake.
You winced and tried to grab his hands, “Elliot- ELLIOT!” It was useless, neither the screaming nor the punching stopped, “ELLIOT!!” His fists began to collide with your forearms, your upper arms, your shoulder. It hurt. But it also hurt to see him like this. You let go as he wrenched himself away from you and fell off the side of the mattress.He woke up and the screaming didn’t stop. He began pounding the floor with his fist. The screams turned into words and the words turned into “fuck.” You tried going to him, you scrambled across the bed to reach him.You tried talking to him, you tried using your words, but your speech was broken and scrambled, “Elliot, stop- stop it- please stop.”“Fuck, fuck!” He sounded angry in the way that anyone with a raised voice sounds angry. Fear was an emotion you expected, but not anger, which scared you.He didn’t stop while you tried to reason with him, “Please, please, you’re going to hurt yourself.”“- fuck fuck, fucking f-fuck!” You didn’t think he cared.“Elliot, please!” you were desperate, “Elliot!”
He turned his head away from you when he began to cry. Nonetheless, you caught glimpses and could see the shine on his cheeks and the redness in his face. You reached for his fist, but he didn’t stop. Your hand slammed into the floor with his and you had to force yourself to not let go.“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered.You leaned as much of your weight as you could onto his arm and fist and finally forced him to stop. There was a moment without sound. The air was stagnant.“Elliot?” your voice cracked. His shouting was replaced by hushed whimpering. His fist unclenched, but he didn’t stop holding your hand. The room was quieter now. It was almost too dark to see, but your eyes had adjusted quickly and now you didn’t want to move away to turn on the lights. It didn’t matter if it was midnight or midday, you could comfort him all the same. Slowly, still unsure, you reached out and put a hand on his face. Surprised, his eyes locked onto you like he’d forgotten you were there. He looked at you, above all scared but also confused and exhausted. He had scared you too at first, but that was okay. What he needed now wasn’t more fear. You moved off the bed to sit on the floor beside him, “I’m here, it’s okay.” Letting go of his hand, you leaned in and wrapped your arms around him. In less than a second, he’d clutched you to his chest and tucked his head into the crook of your neck. He cried quietly and he cried sporadically.“It’s okay,” you repeated in a whisper. “It’s okay.” He didn’t say anything because he didn’t have to. You stayed until you fell asleep right there on the floor. Elliot didn’t sleep, but he held you and it felt almost the same. You stayed there until he kissed you on the cheek to wake you up. Then on the lips, once you were awake. You stayed there until the early afternoon, letting the room fill with sunlight and the sounds of cars and people and the street. When you finally got up it was more to make brunch than breakfast. Halfway across the room, his voice made you stop and turn.“I love you.”
For Tomorrow
Elliot Alderson x Reader
Prompt: “Please stay with me.” & “You make me feel alive.”
Words: 1988
Warnings: Light swearing, drinking
Schrödinger wondered: "when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?" He posed the scenario of a cat within a closed system, a box. It could, prior to observation, be either dead or alive. Since keeping the box closed staved off determining the state of the cat, it actually became both dead and alive. He also argued that any observer could not be in this state of quantum superposition, as observing one’s condition immediately decided one’s condition. It would be impossible to test the theory.
Elliot was calling. Your phone was ringing. You hadn’t yet answered it. Until you did, his condition would remain undecided.
“You make me feel alive.” Well– that’s a relief. But more so than it already did, his voice sounded harsh and unused.
“Thank you,” was the first thing you could think to say. There was a sense of urgency behind what he was saying.
“It’s true,” he wanted so badly for you to believe him, you could see that. But you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to tell that the strain in his voice didn’t come from feeling alive and well.
“Are you okay?”
There was no pause before he spoke, “No.” He didn’t say anything else and neither did you. He hung up.
You had stepped out to take the call while meeting a small group of friends at a bar downtown. Downtown actually means as close to downtown as you could afford. The paint was peeling and it wasn’t on purpose, the floor was warped and sticky from all the spilled drinks, the chairs groaned dangerously, and the tables appeared to be more of a delicate balancing act than something to rest your elbows on. The friends themselves weren’t old friends, but they weren’t new friends either, they weren’t really friends at all. They were people who’d invited to you a shitty bar in a shitty neighborhood so they could justify drinking on a weeknight.
You walked back inside the bar and picked up your things before saying, “That was my boss. I gotta go.”
“Awwww, that’s a shame,” someone slurs, half drunk, “we were about to order a round of shots!”
You’re done with these people, “All the more for you guys, right?” They cheer at that, an uncoordinated chorus of hollers and whoops. You make your exit.
Elliot’s apartment was a number of blocks away that would have been inconvenient if you were wearing heels. But luckily, you didn’t care enough about what these people thought about your appearance to bother with dressing up.
A week ago the apartment building’s door had broken and the building owners either didn’t care or didn’t have the money to fix it. Either way, you didn’t need to be buzzed in. Then you ascended the front steps and four flights of stairs before making it to apartment 4E. It took only a gentle knock for him to open the door.
“Hi, Elliot,” you smiled. He smiled back.
Even if you hadn’t dressed up, you’d still put some effort into your outfit. “Were you out?” He questioned, observant as ever.
You shook off your shoes, coat, and bag as you responded, “I didn’t want to be. It was some crappy place a few blocks away, with people I barely know and frankly didn’t want to. I’m glad you called.” He closed the door and you noticed how dark the room was and how tired he looked. Life had exhausted him, drawn away all resources and all energy and left him here to deal. His eyes were rimmed in red and lines seemed to have been sketched in and around every feature of his face. He looked at you like he could finally take a breath. He didn’t have any words, but he didn’t need to explain it. His hand reached out and took yours. He rubbed a finger into your palm, and then on the back of your hand. Then he looked back to you. It was heart-wrenching, the way his head was slightly tilted wearily, the way he pulled his eyebrows together and turned his lips down just a smidge. It was subtle, but you could tell how done with the world he was. You reached your other hand to touch his cheek and his eyes darted all over your face. He kept giving you that look as he stepped closer. He needed this. His arms wrapped around you, he leaned down to rest his head on your shoulder. It was like the tug in your heart had pulled him in and how he was holding onto you for dear life. He didn’t want to move, he wanted to stand like that forever. He didn’t need to take on the world or his problems if this was all he had to do. If he could just hold you like this all day- then maybe everything would just resolve itself. When you pulled away there were tears on his face. Carefully, he leaned in making sure to keep his eyes open long enough to watch yours close as the kiss began. It was slow but loving and meaningful. Elliot wasn’t a sloppy kisser, he wanted to cherish every moment and feel every second of it. It grounded him.
Kissing him, however much you loved it, seemed selfish right now. There were more important things at hand, “Elliot-”
He could guess what you were going to say, “Tell me about the bar. Why was it so crappy?” It used to piss you off when he would use you as a distraction. You didn’t understand why, his reasoning behind it. It was because you could take his mind off everything. He could listen to you talk for hours if you had that much to say. He would ask you a thousand questions to get you to speak. He would play a hundred songs to get you to dance, say a hundred things to get you to respond. It wasn’t that you were distracting, it’s that you were so separate from all the negative things in his life that they could just vanish while you were there.
“Are you sure?”
He looks you in the eyes. Somehow his austere stare comes off as loving and gentle, “Yes.” After one last kiss, he takes your hand and leads you across the apartment to his bed. He lays down on top of the sheets and you lay down next to him. He doesn’t stop holding your hand.
“You want to hear about the bar?” You ask after a moment of silence.
“Go for it,” he whispers in response.
“Well for starters-”
It was heaven to be there with him. Absolute heaven. Is heaven different for everyone? It could be. Heaven is simple, you think. Whatever it is or isn’t, it’s simple. For you, heaven is a person. For you, heaven is a listener. Heaven doesn’t have many words but heaven has a sense of humor. Heaven wants to do better and wants to be in control. Heaven cares completely and loves deeply. Heaven is Elliot.
Conversations like this are a blessing. It’s hard to get Elliot to talk, but occasionally, if you let him, you won’t have to, “Where do you think those people from the bar are now?” He asks.
“Oh, I don’t know,” you answer, “drunk, probably.”
“That’s a given,” you can hear the small laugh in his voice.
“They might still be at the bar.”
“It’s been almost an hour,” he reasons.
You’re still lying side by side, as you were when you first arrived. You haven’t so much as picked up your phone since you got here. You’ve most definitely lost track of time.
“Time flies by when you’re having fun,” you joke.
“Is that what they think is fun?” He asks. “Drinking to excess, throwing up, passing out, having a hangover?”
“What’s the alternative? Sobriety? The world’s too much for some people to handle.” You know Elliot can understand this, that’s why you brought it up. Thinking about it, actually, that’s the very reason you’re here.
“They’ve numbed themselves with superficial social interaction and chemicals.”
“They don’t see the world as it is.”
“And more importantly,” Elliot tells you, “they don’t care.” He’s right.
You let the room be silent before speaking again.
“There are so many things you can do with your life.”
“What do you mean?” His question is one stemming from curiosity, not an actual lack of knowledge. Your conversations have become a way to be around each other, not just a means to an end.
“There are so many things you can be, so many choices to make.”
“You mean how people choose to live?”
“Sure. How people choose to live.”
“You’re right. People can be any number of things. But how much of that is something they chose and how much of it was chosen for them?”
“Does free will exist? Is that what you’re getting at?” It’s difficult to decipher what he’s trying to say, he’s being vague on purpose.
“No, not really. It’s just- sometimes things happen that dictate how your life will play out from then on.” You’re catching on to what he means. He shifts a bit uncomfortably. The mattress dips subtly, the sheets rustle.
“And sometimes you don’t have a say in it,” you finish.
His voice comes out as a whisper and you can’t tell whether or not that’s what he intended, “Exactly.”
It feels like you could fall asleep here. Right now. Elliot’s shoulder is against your cheek, your head is leaned against him. The room is silent save the quiet sounds of life. Elliot’s breathing is slow and calming. The world seems to revolve around him. Your world does, at least. The quiet of the room can be attributed to him, to his silence. He’s taught you that you don’t need anything more than a person’s presence to love them. There are countless ways to tell someone how you feel without having to say it. Remember that always.
You’re unbelievably comfortable and it’s his bed you’re in. You’re at total peace and it’s him you’re lying next to. You love the world only because he’s in it.
It feels like heresy to speak, but you do so anyway, “Are you awake?”
“Yes. Are you?”
That makes you smirk and you can tell that he is too, “Yeah, what time is it?”
He groans, the sound of someone not completely lucid, “Don’t know.”
“I’m gonna check.” You lied. You don’t move. You want to get up and go look at your phone, but…
“Why?” He makes a compelling point.
“I have to go eventually.” You reason, trying to work up the nerve to let go of his hand and sit up for the first time in hours.
“I mean it,” he urges, “you don’t have to.”
“Do you really want to have a discussion about what we do and don’t have to do in today’s society right now?” You joke.
“I’m being serious.”
“Elliot-”
He cuts you off, “You could stay, with me, please stay.” You remain silent. “Please stay with me.”
He sounds so small. His voice is minuscule. But it’s undeniable proof that he wants you. You don’t care about properly considering his request or processing the ramifications, you want to stay here with him forever. You’re convinced.
You sit up-
“(y/n)-”
-and cut him off with a kiss.
“Stay with me for everything.” He whispers.
“Through the night.”
“Until the sunrise.”
“For tomorrow.”
“And the day after that.”
“For all our days.”
“Through the years.”
“Until the next life.”
“We could be together even then.”
“We will.”
“Until the mountains move.”
“Until the sun swallows the Earth.”
“We’ll see the Andromeda galaxy together.”
“We’ll see the whole universe together.”
“I love you, (y/n).”
“I love you, Elliot.”
And then you slept. Together forever. And ever. And ever.
All The Little Things
Elliot Alderson x Reader
Words: 725
Description:
A narration of what life is like with Elliot.
Warnings: Nightmares, mental health issues.
There are some parts of the world that feel completely hidden. Private places. Places shared only through whispers. Places no one goes. It seems that the universe has sprinkled these about with care, in a moment of sympathy for mankind. You find one of these places and it becomes all your own. Quiet, blissful, calm, they lie on the fringes of society. Out of sight and out of mind. They are nesting places, where one can ponder and observe without the threat of disturbance. You can take your stress and your worries there, but that’s your own doing. The places themselves have no ties to this world, it seems, no bearing on its past, present, or future.
Elliot’s apartment feels like this sometimes. The whole world seems to fade away, allowing you to sit and watch without having to partake. You can sit by the window and watch the street outside. Its people walk and run and jog. They chatter and sulk and move about. Its cars speed and crawl, honk and flash their lights. Its houses are tall and short, stacked and standalone. Its people move in and out of these houses, opening and closing doors. Lights turn on and off. Drapes are drawn and undrawn, curtains cover rooms and reveal them, blinds are opened and closed. The street has birds too, that dart, swoop, and sing. At night, the street has rats and raccoons that skitter and hiss and scare. Some people come out at night, too. Deals are made, money is paid. Sometimes there’s snow and sometimes there are puddles. Children make snowmen, bullies kick them down. The sidewalk scrapes knees and forms cracks. The world turns. Earth orbits the sun. Life moves on.
When you leave Elliot’s apartment, you often feel guilty for rejoining the world. Guilty for becoming just another person on the street, for becoming just something else to observe.
You love your time spent with him in that room on the fourth floor, high above your worries, fears, and cares. In the mornings, you can wake up slowly to the sound of his breathing and the feeling of his skin against yours. He can look so peaceful at times, his lips parted, almost smiling. His chest rises and falls, slowly and steadily. Pure bliss. Sometimes you wake him up by tracing a finger over his palm and up his arm, drawing patterns in his shoulder. Sometimes he can’t sleep and stays up all night, silent in the dark. Sometimes nightmares wake him up, drenching the sheets in sweat and making him scream and scream. And scream. Sometimes, after screaming, he’ll start to cry, but sometimes he won’t. It worries you the most when he doesn’t. He’ll stare at nothing, with a single expression on his face. An expression of fear, pain, anger, panic, terror, grief, loss, disdain, and often sadness. Sometimes, when this happens, he lets you hold him. You wrap your arms around his shoulders and he wraps his around your waist. Sometimes he stops crying. Sometimes he just cries quieter.
In the afternoons, you could do any one of a thousand things. Sometimes Elliot is on the computer, and sometimes he simply passes the time with you. After particularly exhausting weeks, you might spend the entire day together sleeping. He’ll hold you close and whisper all the ways that he loves you until his voice fades away. Some days he doesn’t seem to have the willpower to do anything, let alone speak. Those days are okay too, Elliot’s love can be a silent one, and it often is. You know he loves you in a thousand little ways: when he listens to you ramble and vent, when he holds your hand, when he smiles at you for no identifiable reason, when he laughs at your jokes, when he asks for your opinion on things, when he looks up from the computer just to see you, when you ask him how he’s doing and he’s honest, when he makes eye contact and he doesn’t have to be, when he eats dinner with you, when he tries to be better for you. You love him. You really do. Elliot is in all the little things of your life. He’s a quiet kind of person, and though his love may be quiet too sometimes, you know it speaks volumes.
