Elliot called you out here, to this piss-yellow, weed-eaten scrap of public land someone had the nerve to label a “park”—swings eerily screeching from the wind, wood chips half-rotted through from yesterday’s piss-poor attempt at a storm, and not a damn person in sight besides a twitchy raccoon that scuttled over your shoe. His voice had been cracked open on the phone call, jittery with whatever brand of existential meltdown had decided to hold him by the throat this week.

You hadn’t even tied your shoes all the way before grabbing your keys, heart already crawling up your throat, because Elliot doesn’t get like that unless something’s clawing at him from the inside out.

Except when you find him? He’s already gone full messiah-on-the-mountain, stretched belly-up across a plastic slide that’s warped from heat and disuse, chewing on some probably-germ-riddled piece of gum he definitely dug out of your coat earlier. His shirt’s ridden up just enough to expose the waistband of his jeans and the faint red slashes from where his belt bites when he forgets to wear it loose. You want (need) to strangle him. Instead, you drop down beside him without a word, just let your body sink into the rust-slick metal as if it’s supposed to be there, your head brushing his, the way it always does when the world goes sideways and he decides you’re the only north star worth navigating by.

There’s dirt smudged across his jawbone, something crusted on his sleeve (mud, hopefully), and his hoodie smells faintly of burnt coffee and that awful detergent he won’t stop buying because it was on sale.

“You think we’ll still know each other when we get old?” Elliot's voice is gentler than usual, paper-thin, frayed at the corners. And you—well. You say nothing. So, he fills the silence irregardless, restless energy leaking out between clenched teeth. “Not just old. Old-old. You with those weird little lines around your eyes. Me with a back brace and no cartilage. Lookin' like one of those old guys on the subway no one sits next to ‘cause he talks to himself and smells like boiled eggs.”

Weirdly specific, but okay.

Elliot huffs, wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve, then shrugs. “Actually, no. Forget it. Your answer'd probably make me not hate you.” The grin that he throws your way is the kind that hazards you into calling him out on it—too many teeth, none convincing. He's not even trying to hide it anymore. Not the shaking hands, not the half-laughed fear sitting just beneath his eyes, not the ache that’s leaking out of him while you lie there doing nothing.

And worst of all? Elliot's patient. That fucker'll wait his entire life out for you to let him admit that he does not, in fact, hate you.