Elliott must have gone shopping, because I have cereal for breakfast when I wake up.

I can hear my brother getting ready in his bedroom while I eat. He comes out eventually, holding his jacket awkwardly over the bend of one elbow as he arranges his silver tie over the black uniform button-down.

"You heading out to work?"

He looks surprised, stopping in his tracks and turning his head to face me. "Yeah. Why, you need anything?"

There's a moment of silence. Elliott just stands on his way to the door, looking at me. I look down at my soggy cereal, which I left resting too long in the cold milk while I turned my brain inside out trying to prepare for what's next.

Elliott walks over to the kitchen table, keeping his eyes on me. That astute, silent look is the exact same I used to see on Dad. Makes me want to avert my gaze somewhere else again. 

"Just had something I wanted to talk about..." I mumble at the table surface. "But it can wait."

"Yeah?" 

Elliott doesn't move, though. For better or for worse, I got his attention. Shouldn't I just go ahead and get it over with then?

"When did you start working Saturday mornings?" I ask, needing something to fill the silence, something to slide under the spotlight of my brother's attention.

I know I'm stalling. But I just need to stall a little. Just long enough to see if I might need to push this conversation off one more time, like I've been doing for a whole week since I crawled over to Liam's doorstep like a sorry weeping idiot.

Elliott shrugs. "I don't have to go, but there's always some things to resolve on Saturday morning that'll save me a couple of headaches on Monday morning."

I nod. And I think I kinda know what he actually means, because in reality we both know the answer to the question I asked. Elliott started working Saturdays, and Sundays, and holidays, after I moved back in. Or maybe even before that, when he was left alone in the house after the car crash and my first foster family. And we both also know why he goes. It's for the same reason I stay back after practice until the rink closes.

"I don't want to keep you," I say down to my cereal.

"Okay." Elliott nods. He grabs his coat again, which he'd set over the back of a chair, pauses in mid-turn and turns back around. "Is it school related? Because if you have any papers I need to sign I can do that before heading out?"

"No, it's nothing with school."

Elliott nods.

I clench a fist. "It's personal," I murmur.

Elliott hangs back, standing a little awkwardly. "Should I sit down?" He asks calmly.

And I realize this is it. I set it up, I need to say it now. I have to talk to someone. I did it with Liam. I admitted to myself that I am not okay and said it out loud for someone to hear. And Liam listened. He didn't tell me I was being dramatic, or that I'm broken in some way — he was calm and concerned and understanding as he told me I need to tell someone. Someone who could help.

I need help, that's all I have to say. But to Elliott? When did I last say anything to Elliott?

Morning. Night. 'Sup. Hannah needs you in the dining room. Bye. Need a ride? Morning. Night. That was a summary of our interactions for what seemed like forever.

Which isn't true at all. There is a seven-year difference between us, so we had never had friends in common or went out together much, but we were brothers. We still are, but we used to act like it.

We shared a room for sixteen years and we used to share normal brotherly banter. We had inside jokes about one another and our parents and the outside world. I used to play with Elliott's hand-me-down toys, and he would tease me and pretend he didn't like to see his little brother play with his old things. Elliott would antagonize me the way older brothers should then help butter up our parents whenever I wanted to go out, and in return I would annoy the living shit out of him then swear by him and put my hands in the fire to confirm whichever story he was trying to sell his friends or prospective girlfriends.

We used to talk about school, and hockey, and our parents, and girls, and TV shows, and our parents, and weird neighbors, and our parents.

Now, we exchange curt pleasantries and mostly avoid each other. Especially on the days when looking at a living reminder of the parents we lost is just too much.

Elliott goes ahead and sits down, even without an answer from me.

"Are you feeling sick? Do you need to see a doctor?"

Yes. No. Kind of. Liam says I do. I don't know. I need help.

"Do you want me to call Mrs Holmes?" Elliott sounds strangely uncomfortable, a mix of resignation, hope and disappointment in his tone. "Would you feel better talking to her?"

"I don't wanna talk to Owen's mom."

"Okay."

He doesn't say anything else. Just sits there. Waiting.

If Liam said the first was the hardest, why doesn't it feel like it now?

Because I was drunk last time I said this out loud, that's why. 

But said what? How do I phrase it? How do you put thoughts like these in words?

I need help.

Elliott's frown deepens ever so slightly, just like Dad's used to when he focused or when he was being serious. Not 'scolding' kind of serious, but 'I'm here and you have time and I'm ready to listen' kind of serious. Elliott looks so much like Dad. Often I find myself thinking that everything would be so much easier if he didn't.

"I think—" I clear my throat, "—I need help."

I said it. Whispered, actually. Audibly? I hope so.

"Okay." Elliott nods. "From me?" He asks slowly.

"Maybe." I purse my lips, eyes cast down on limp cereal, now disintegrating in the milk. "I don't know."

"Okay." He keeps repeating that, like some sort of structuring prayer fragment. "Can I ask what's wrong?"

I press my lips together. "Nothing. And everything, kind of. I just... I don't know, honestly. I guess... I don't feel okay."

Elliott is waiting for me to say more, but now I'm waiting for him to say something. Anything. So I can have a break from talking. I can't even lift my eyes from the cereal mush on my bowl.

"Are you... injured? Or..." He trails off and doesn't finish that thought.

"Or," I answer tentatively.

"Okay."

I look up to see Elliott nodding. I think he's nodding more to himself than to me.

"Do you think you could try to be a little more specific?"

"I don't..." I shrug. "I'm tired, but I don't sleep well. I hate being in bed, but it's hard to get up in the morning. I'm... lonely, by I can't handle being surrounded by people. I don't want to talk, but I feel like I can't stand keeping it all in anymore. I... I miss them, but I don't want to think about them—"

My voice breaks. But unlike with Liam, where I tried to swallow every tear and couldn't speak when I finally succumbed to them, I can't stop talking now even as I start crying.

"I don't know what's wrong, or if anything's even really wrong. Because you're not supposed to be happy after your parents died. Then when I think I might be a little happy, it doesn't feel right. But everything else just feels so..."

I wipe my face sloppily with both hands, looking over at the kitchen sink so I don't have to look at my brother. I don't know how much of what I said made sense.

"Do you think..." It's Elliott's turn to clear his throat. I look at him and I can see him shifting in his chair. "Do you think you need to see someone? Like a doctor, or a... a therapist?"

"Know any therapist who works for free?"

Elliott frowns. But it's not a Dad frown. That's specifically an Elliott frown. And one I have never seen before.

"Eli, I know I wasn't the best at this Guardian stuff, and we're not exactly swimming in money. By far. But I'm your brother and I'm supposed to take care of you, so if you think you need to see someone... We can find a way."

He scratches his beard, thinking. "I can see if I can get paid for extra hours on weekends, or I'll cover shifts as a waiter or something." He shakes his head resolutely. "It doesn't matter, I can find a way."

"I don't even..." I shrug. 'What if a therapist can't help me?"

Elliott blinks, looking thoughtful in a way I never see him before. Like someone forcing himself to solve a tricky math problem they usually just skip.

"Then... I guess we'll see what to do next if we need to," he says. "But I guess helping people is kind of their job."

There's a heavy silence. And I still can't meet his eyes for more than a couple of seconds. I don't know what else to say.

Liam said I needed to talk to someone to get help. Elliott is my brother, my only family, and strangely the adult in my life now that I'm no longer living at Owen's. I keep waiting for a wave of relief and a glimmer of hope that it will all be okay that never really come.

Was it stupid that a small part of me even expected that? It's Elliott. He was a good big brother before our family life suffered a blow that shifted everything on its axis. But he's not a parent. He's not Mom.

Elliott sighs and I glance up to see him run a hand down his face. "A therapist won't—" there's a pause that sounds suspiciously choked up, "—can't bring them back. But it might be able to help you deal with... whatever you're feeling."

He meets my eyes and I let him hold my gaze.

"Talking to people helps. Even when you think it probably won't, or that it might actually make it worse," he says. "And I don't think we talked about it... at all. I'm sorry if you felt like I... closed a door for you or something."

I choose this moment to look away, sniffing and wiping a tear I hadn't felt rolling down my cheek until now, only to find out it's more than a single tear. 

"It's not your fault," I mumble. "You can't help."

Both sentences come like a reflex. Like an unconscious muscle spasm, like jerking your leg to get rid of a fly or blinking rapidly to block off dust trying to get in your eye. This is exactly like all our interaction go now. Just curt, reflexive evasions, skirting around each other, avoiding an elephant that grew so big that it became the fucking room.

"Yeah." I hear a sniff and look up to see Elliott rubbing his hands under red-rimmed eyes. "But I guess maybe I could have tried to make myself more available or... I don't know."

He runs a hand through his hair, first to straighten it, then to ruffle it. And I realize I recognize that nervous gesture and the pursing of his lips. It has Dad written all over it, but it's also something I do. Elliott is just as uncomfortable and helpless as I am to talk about this.

"I just... When they called me to say what happened that night, it took me hours to really believe it wasn't a joke. And then it's like all the mess with the social workers happened in a heartbeat." He scratches his beard again, shaking his head. "The Holmeses helped me sort it all out that summer and the year after, but I just... wasn't ready to be your legal guardian. 

"And then when you moved back here you looked... fine. You were quieter and more reserved, but fine. And I had someone to talk to, so I just assumed it would be better to give each other space. I didn't want to push for a conversation neither of us would be ready for."

I think I can hear what he left unsaid too. He didn't want to push for a conversation, and he also didn't know how. Just like I don't. And Dad didn't either. Mom was the one with the sixth sense and the magical instincts.

"Maybe I should've tried," Elliott finishes.

I should've tried to be more like Mom, he means. Except he's not like her. Just like I'm not.

If I were, I would have the right relieving words now to let him know he did as well as he could have. And then we'd probably hug and end the morning with a comforting moment before he went off to work. Or maybe he wouldn't even go, and we'd stay home together.

I don't know. Because none of that is us. Not right now.

Right now, the best we can both do is clean up, wash our faces and keep moving.

***

Who said they liked family moments??

Here's the thing, this conversation had to happen but it could not feel like a sudden fix-all. It's just not how it works and it wouldn't make sense with these specific characters. But Eli and Elliott's relationship is one I'm very fond of. What did you think?

There are only three chapters to go! If you liked this one, please consider voting or commenting :)