[Trigger warning: depression. To be honest, I myself had to take a break writing this, so just read whatever you know you can, or just skip the stuff in between the line break-five stars thing I have]

ELIJAH 

The incessant ringing of his phone dragged him from his nightmarish sleep. Elijah groaned loudly and forced himself to look at the caller ID because he only had his ringer on for a few people when he went to sleep at night. For a few moments, he didn't recognize it.

Then, with a jolt, he did.

"Fraser?" he said into the phone. "What's wrong?"

Fraser was a social butterfly who always had bad jokes for anyone who'd listen and didn't seem to take many things seriously. Elijah had always believed that it was by sheer miracle that the excessively cheerful guy and Logan had survived each other as roommates for nearly two and a half years now.

But Fraser's voice at that moment was only very quiet and very serious.

"I think you should come down," he said.

*****

Elijah knew that driving in a blind panic was never a good idea, but try as he might, he couldn't calm himself the whole three hours it took to drive to Logan's apartment.

This wasn't the first time he had taken this drive. Every few months - or weeks, if it was really bad - Fraser, Logan's roommate, would call Elijah, usually in the middle of the night, and kindly request he come and take Logan home for a while.

He remembered three months into Logan's first semester of college, when Fraser had first called him in a slight panic. Logan had locked himself in their apartment bathroom and hadn't left for nearly a day. At the time, Elijah barely knew who Logan's roommate was, but ever since that incident, he had come to respect him and even rely on him to make sure his brother was okay when he couldn't be there to do it himself.

Fraser hadn't told him much over the phone this time. Just, I found him without a jacket freezing his balls off on the balcony. Dude tried to throw me off when I asked if he was okay, but I got him to calm down for now. Just thought you'd want to know.

Elijah got to his apartment at three thirty in the morning and took the steps two at a time to the right floor. He only had to knock once before Fraser opened the door for him.

"Hey, man," he said, smiling at him tiredly. There were dark circles under his eyes, but he greeted him genially like they were just two friends hanging out. "Good to see you."

"Thanks for calling me." Elijah looked over his shoulder into the darkened living room where there was a figure slumped on the couch, covered haphazardly with a blanket.

Fraser turned to follow Elijah's gaze. "Yeah, I tried getting him to go back to his room but he wouldn't, so we compromised on the couch. Don't turn on the light though, he really doesn't want it."

Elijah felt uncomfortable hugging anyone other than his family, but he suddenly felt the huge urge to hold Fraser in a bear hug because he didn't know how else to tell him that he would never, ever be able to thank him enough. It wasn't Fraser's job to look out for Logan, yet he did it without ever being asked.

Elijah cleared his throat and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "Fraser, thanks for-"

Fraser turned away and waved a hand. "Don't worry about it. I'll just be in my room, I've got a paper due in five hours." He dropped his voice to a low whisper. "And, uh, maybe don't mention my name. He's kinda pissed I called you."

He left and Elijah was alone with his brother.

Logan hadn't looked up when he first came in and didn't look up as Elijah crossed the room and sat down next to him. He stared blankly into the carpet, unmoving.

"Logan, what's wrong?" Elijah asked, his heart breaking at the sight of him looking like he used to after his hospitalization four years ago.

When Logan didn't answer, he tried putting an arm around his shoulders, only for Logan to flinch away and say breathlessly, "Please don't touch me."

He was saying please.

Something was very, very wrong.

Elijah held up his hands. "Okay, I won't. As long as you talk to me."

But he didn't reply.

"Look, I know we didn't really part on the nicest terms but-"

"I don't know, Elijah," he whispered abruptly.

Elijah suddenly didn't want to know whatever it was, but he asked, "What don't you know?"

Logan bent over, forearms pressed into his knees and his forehead pressed against his scarred wrists so Elijah couldn't see his face anymore. In a broken voice no louder than a breath he whispered, "Elijah, what is wrong with me?"

All too clearly, Elijah remembered their fight, his words to Logan. Guilt clawed its way down his throat into his ribcage.

"There's nothing wrong with you," he said instinctively. "I'm sorry. I should never have said that."

But deep down, he knew the sudden change with Olivia living with them had jolted something loose inside of Logan, something he had managed to keep stuffed deep inside of himself for the past four years. Something wasn't okay, and it wasn't going to get better with just a few words.

"What if something inside me is just permanently fucked, and I can't fix it?"

"There is nothing you need to fix," Elijah said firmly.

Logan didn't seem to hear him. In a hollow, defeated voice, he said, "I don't think I can fix it anymore."

"Logan, look at me. You are not a machine," Elijah said. "It's not like there's some broken part in you that you can screw back in or smash into place. People - you don't fix them. They just need time to heal."

"You sound like Dr. Chandler. But you know what?" His fingers gripped his hair tight. "She was wrong. It never really heals. It feels like - like a giant hole that keeps getting ripped open."

His voice cut Elijah like a jagged piece of glass, wet with blood and tears.

"It's just too much, Elijah," Logan whispered, his voice breaking. Tears began sliding into his hands. "I snapped at Fraser just now and I almost got Blake killed because of my bright idea and I always make Olivia cry and I - I don't hate you," he sobbed.

Despite the way Logan had initially pushed him away, Elijah pulled his little brother into his chest and tucked his head underneath his chin and held him tight. "I know. It's okay."

"It's not okay," he wept. "Am I ever going to stop being like this?"

Elijah wanted so desperately to give him reassurance, to tell him he would get better, to somehow put all of Logan's fears behind him, but that was something only Logan would be able to do for himself. Those things were only questions Logan would be able to figure out with some time.

"One day, you'll know the answer."

"I can't wait that long."

"Well, I can. I would wait until forever with you," Elijah said. "So when you think you can't, I'll help you."

"Nobody can wait forever," Logan whispered. "One day you'll wake up and realize I'm just too much."

"Don't say that." Elijah felt hot tears sting his eyes and he swallowed past the constriction growing in his throat.

He wasn't going to cry. In the beginning, he could never hold it in and always cried when Logan cried, but that made it even harder for them both to stop. 

"I love you, okay?" he said. "And I don't care what you think you're like or what you say. It's not going to change that. Ever."

Elijah's breath caught in his throat and he felt the tears threatening to spill over, but he kept going. "I don't know why you keep thinking I'll make you do this alone, because I won't. So just be quiet about all this you'll-think-I'm-too-much BS. You're my brother. And brothers don't just give up on each other."

There was a small silence and then in a quiet voice, Logan said, "I don't want to give up either."

Elijah held him tighter as a little relief flooded into his heart. "Good, because I won't let you."

Logan didn't say anything else. His tears slowly faded to gentle hiccups and then quieted altogether. It was only when he didn't reply when Elijah shook him that he realized he had fallen asleep.

*****

Elijah put the blanket properly around Logan and walked out to the balcony, where Logan had been standing when Fraser found him.

He looked down into the quiet street below the railing and wondered what Logan had been thinking when he was standing here. Was he looking for an answer? A way out? Just waiting for Fraser to find him and call his brother for him?

Elijah folded his arms up on the cold metal and finally let the tears out, watched them slide down his nose and drop off the balcony until he couldn't see them anymore.

It was moments like these that he wondered what it was about their father's violence that had managed to break something in Logan when Blake and himself had come out not unscarred but not utterly hopeless either.

Maybe he had taken one too many blows. Blake was younger - by some luck their dad was more averse to hitting his youngest son, though it wasn't impossible. And Elijah was older, bigger. If Elijah had a black eye or a split lip, it was usually the case that their father did too. Maybe Logan had just been the safe middle ground.

Elijah grimaced and pressed his fingers to his temples. He hated trying to imagine what on earth Mario Russo had been thinking. Those thoughts weren't a sane person's. They were ugly and twisted and Elijah felt dirty even trying to understand them.

He heard the balcony door open behind him and turned to see Fraser slowly amble in, twisting the top off a beer can and taking a huge gulp. Without looking towards him, he held out another one to Elijah. "You want one?" he asked.

Elijah wiped his lingering tears and shook his head. "I don't drink."

Fraser chuckled under his breath and set down the offending beer. "You and Logan both. What is it with you brothers? You two part of the AA or something?"

"Did Logan tell you that?"

"Nah. He flipped out when I asked him what his deal was."

Elijah suddenly felt another stab of respect for Fraser. He and Logan had obviously had their fair share of arguments, yet Fraser had toughed it out and still stood by him, even talked about it casually like it was all water under the bridge.

"Our dad..." he said, feeling like he owed Fraser an explanation. "He used to drink. So we don't."

Fraser nodded his head and took another swig from his beer, and the two of them silently stared down from the balcony at the people going by.

"He loves you, you know," Fraser said suddenly.

Elijah shook his head. "I just wish he knew I loved him."

"He knows that too."

"He doesn't," Elijah muttered. "He doesn't know that I would do anything for him. I would actually die for him and that moron tells me I'll wake up tomorrow and decide I don't want to love him anymore. I mean, what - what is he thinking?"

"Maybe he just needs a little reassurance," Fraser said softly.

"Just wish that reassurance would sometimes get through his thick head," Elijah grumbled.

After a few minutes of silence he said, "Look, Fraser, I'm sorry about relying on you so much like this. I know he isn't your responsibility, and it can't be easy seeing him like this."

Fraser was quiet for a moment before he said, "I didn't originally plan to room with a stranger."

After those words, he went silent for so long that Elijah was just beginning to wonder if he was supposed to say something when Fraser went on.

"My best friend from high school. We were supposed to be roommates. We wanted to go to college together. He seemed excited. Happy. Full of future ideas."

Elijah's stomach tied itself into knots as he realized the direction the story was heading.

"Sleeping pills," Fraser said slowly, drawing out the words as if that would help him make sense of it all. "A person has to be in a really dark place to choose that as their only option."

He downed the rest of the can and opened the second. He took long swallows, not speaking until he had finished that too.

"I thought it was going to kill me, but it didn't. And I wondered for a long time why I wasn't dead, too."

Elijah had asked himself the same thing more times than he could count.

"Until I moved in with Logan. And then I knew. I was still here to be with people that thought they were alone."

Elijah wished he could take a life lesson from the guy standing in front of him. He had gone through an enormous amount of pain and loss, yet the smile never left his eyes. These days, Elijah looked in the mirror and only found frown lines and tired, weary eyes.

"But there's one big difference between Logan and my friend," Fraser said in a lighter voice, pulling Elijah from his thoughts.

"And what's that?" Elijah asked.

Fraser looked back through the sliding door where Logan was passed out on the couch, and a sad smile played on his lips. "Logan lets you know if he's hurting. And personally, I'm glad he does."

I spent ALL morning wondering if I was going to post this. I always feel kind of anxious putting Logan out there because:

#1, that was me two years ago. Everything from the unkind words that I'm not proud of, to the sudden mood shifts, to the overwhelming terror that I would never get better - it's all there. It's all real.

#2, all of Logan's thoughts are genuine because they were mine, but everyone's experiences are different, and I don't want to offend anyone with the way I write. I'm not a perfect writer so sometimes I portray things in a way that makes sense to me but someone else might think is insensitive, or I might diminish something accidentally. If anything I write does do this, I apologize because I don't mean it, and definitely leave me a comment, I am open to criticism and I WANT to write this better :)  

The next three updates will be this MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, and FRIDAY. 

For next time: Elijah has a set of rules...and Olivia is not too good at following them...