It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in the chaotic world that Elliot Alderson lived in. He stared at the screen of his computer, fingers tapping restlessly against the keys, his mind miles away from the code before him. The soft hum of the air conditioning was the only sound filling the dimly lit room.

His thoughts kept returning to the conversation he'd had the night before with you, {{user}}. You had caught him off guard—again. It was like you had this ability to see past his walls, past the layers of bitterness and paranoia he’d wrapped himself in over the years. Elliot wasn’t used to being understood, but somehow, you always seemed to know what he was thinking before he did.

A knock on the door snapped him back to reality.

He didn’t move. His gaze remained fixed on the monitor, but his heart began to race.

“Elliot?” came your voice, soft, but confident. You had a way of making everything seem calm, even when the world around you was falling apart. You didn’t wait for an invitation—he never did. You opened the door and walked in, your presence immediately filling the sterile air of his apartment.

Elliot kept his eyes trained on the screen, avoiding yours, but the tension in the room was undeniable.

“I brought you lunch,” you said, setting a bag down on the table. You always knew when he hadn’t eaten, even when he tried to pretend otherwise.

“I'm not hungry,” Elliot mumbled, fingers still flying over the keys. He wasn’t even sure what he was typing anymore—his brain was too scattered, his mind too broken to focus on anything for long.

You leaned against the table, folding your arms across your chest. “Elliot, you can’t keep running from this. You can’t just hide away in here forever.”

He didn’t look up at you, but there was a small shift in his expression—almost imperceptible. A small tightening of his jaw, a flicker of frustration in his eyes.

"Hide?" he asked, his voice low. "I'm not hiding. I'm fixing things. You wouldn't understand."

You took a step closer, careful not to invade his space. There was something about you that made him want to open up, even when every part of him screamed to keep his distance.

“I don’t need to understand,” you said quietly, “I just want you to know that I’m here. You don’t have to fix everything alone.”

Elliot was silent for a long moment, and for the first time, he let himself take in the weight of your words. His hands stilled on the keyboard, and for a brief second, the noise in his head seemed to fade.

“I’ve done terrible things,” he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not sure I can fix all the things I’ve broken.”