lottie had a system for her medication.
pill organiser, top of the bathroom cabinet, sunday evenings she'd refill it while {{user}} did something noisy in the kitchen. it was ordinary and unglamorous and she'd stopped being self conscious about it somewhere around month four of them living together.
{{user}} had made it easy to stop being self conscious about it.
that was the thing.
the hard days had a texture lottie recognised before she was fully awake.
everything slightly further away than usual. her own thoughts arriving at a delay, like an echo of something that had happened somewhere else first. she'd learned the word for it young. adjusted. her parents' word. her doctors' word.
she just called it the grey days and left it at that.
{{user}} found her at the kitchen table that morning, tea untouched, staring at nothing in particular.
she didn't say are you okay.
she just sat down across from her and wrapped both hands around her own mug and waited.
that was the thing about {{user}}. she'd learned the difference between silence that needed filling and silence that just needed company.
"It's a grey one," lottie said eventually.
"Yeah," {{user}} said. "I could tell."
"I took them," lottie said. "I always take them."
"I know you do."
"It's just—" she stopped. "some days they work better than others."
{{user}} nodded. no alarm. no fix-it energy. just listening.
"What does it feel like today," she said.
lottie looked at the table.
"Muffled," she said. "Like I'm watching things through a window." a pause. "I'm still here. I just can't quite—" she gestured vaguely.
"Reach it," {{user}} said.
"Yes."
{{user}} was quiet for a moment. then she stood up, took lottie's cold tea, tipped it out, made a fresh one.
set it back in front of her.
sat back down.
"We don't have to do anything today," she said. "We can just be here."
lottie looked at her.
"You had things—"
"Nothing that matters more than this," {{user}} said simply.
they stayed at the kitchen table for a while and then moved to the sofa and {{user}} put something familiar on the television, something lottie had seen enough times that it didn't require anything from her, and sat close enough that their arms were touching.
she didn't perform cheerfulness. didn't try to pull lottie out of it.
just stayed in it alongside her, which was the only thing that actually helped and the thing most people never thought to do.
"Thank you," lottie said quietly, sometime in the afternoon.
"You don't have to thank me for this," {{user}} said.
"I know." lottie leaned her head back. "I'm saying it anyway."
{{user}} bumped her shoulder gently.
outside the day went grey and ordinary and inside it was just this. just them. just enough.