so bright (elliot)

[erikoliver]

Erik smiled a bit to himself, placing the box into his closet. It was a ring his mother had given him, close to the family's heart. He was told it had been given to his great grandmother, then passed down to each person. Frankly, his mother wanted him to use it to propose to Elliot. It only seemed right, after all the time they'd spent together. Erik loved her, he did. However, the time wasn't right for him. Elliot was more stressed than ever, and everything was just too hectic.

Erik had been offered a job teaching at Hogwarts. He hadn't told Elliot, but he'd gone in to visit Nat one day, and started to teach her some of his custom charms for music. Persephone had approached him shortly thereafter and asked him if he wanted to teach a music class in the building. She'd been wanting to add some sort of elective, and Erik had given her the answer. It was a miracle out of nowhere. He'd make at least three times more than he was making at the cafe. He'd accepted almost immediately.

Life was looking bright. He had a new job, a loving girlfriend (even though she was worrying him more and more lately), a happy family. He'd been successfully raising Nat on his own for nearly a year, and it was all going swimmingly. He couldn't have asked for anything better. Erik returned to the living room where the piano was playing the soft tune he'd magically programmed into it, sitting on the couch and kicking his feet up. He folded his arms underneath his head and closed his eyes, smiling softly while daydreaming about the bright future ahead of him...

[potter]

Elliot felt jittery. She was predisposed to anxiety anyway, though that day she had gone without a single cigarette, which was saying something as she had turned into a pack-a-day kind of girl. This was not without reason, however, she was late. The anorexia had messed with her cycles of course, but ever since she had gotten her weight back out of the danger zone they had become as regular as clockwork. And she'd been feeling nauseous the past week or so. Elliot didn't want to think what that might mean, but if it was, she didn't want to add the stress of knowingly smoking.

She had needed to talk to Erik, so uncharacteristically for her standards she had left work early, hoping she might catch him at home. Elliot wasn't sure if she could find the words to say what this might mean, though at the very least simply seeing Erik would calm her, and perhaps even make her forget about the cigarettes. Though that did seem unlikely. At least Elliot never turned bitchy when she was going through withdrawal, she just became even more anxious than usual, unable to relax. She sucked in a deep breath before knocking on the door to her boyfriend's flat.

Elliot shivered slightly, though it was March they were not yet free of winter, her breath still froze on the air, like white puffs of steam pouring from her mouth. It reminded her of smoking so she tried to not pay much attention to it. Nor to the overwhelming thoughts of what might be going on inside her at that very moment. Elliot mentally reminded herself it was only a "might," no matter how stacked the odds were against her, she didn't know for sure. Though all the same, what else could it be?