Overlap

Eponine

🌨️January 2020🥀

The new year had not been kind.

Johnny had come home for Christmas to find Sarah gone. All her things packed up and moved to her parents house, all his things left, looking lonely in a half empty house he had briefly called home.

Nothing but a note which didn't really explain why.

He hadn't had the heart to dampen Christmas with the news and so he had made excuses for her come Christmas morning when he had arrived home alone and the two of us had spent the festive period chewing our cheeks, keeping secrets that were eating away at us.

I had guessed his. I'd broken the rules and caught him in the kitchen offering to help him with the washing up. He hadn't told me everything but he hadn't really had the chance to get his head around it himself, and then when he had asked me what my excuse for looking so torn up on Christmas was I had shrugged my shoulders and lied.

Told him it was nothing much, just Niall stuff.

But it was much more than that.

Wed hugged eachother tightly and I'd stolen his flatcap, replaced it with a stack of fairy liquid bubbles on his head and we had done as we had when I was a little kid and he was the reluctant older brother. We'd linked pinkies and sworn "you and me against the world."

And now that was what we found ourselves doing again, January 3rd in the kitchen of his half empty house, Van and Louis in the next room packing up his own things, taping up the boxes of records and books. Shoving clothes in a suitcase for him to take to Lou's which would be his house from now on too.

"Are you alright?" i asked him softly, pulling away from his hug in the front doorway.

The weather outside was crisp and cool, the late morning sun golden across the glass in the windows. It distracted from the emotional hangover he wore on his face and I hoped it was doing the same for me too.

"Aye love," he smiled a tired smile and tried to make it last, but he didn't let go of my arm and he held me there for a minute just looking down at me, eyes I couldn't read. So I knew that he wasn't. I knew that this was his brave face. "Long as av got you ey," he said his smile faded but his eyes flickered with a fondness that stirred the softest of smiles on my own lips.

"You and me against the world int it bean," he said splitting a grin and laughing at me, a warmth in his eyes that told me I'd been right to split a grin myself and raise my pinky out for him to swear that.

"Me n you against the world," i rolled my eyes, silly smile on my lips, feeling daft and full of love for my big brother who never seemed to know how much he meant to me. How he was always in the right place at the right time always unaware that he was saying exactly the right thing.

And just now, this was another of those moments.

One of those moments he didn't realise how much I needed him. How grateful I was to have him holding onto me even if it was just for a moment. And even if it was in the most heartbreaking of circumstances.

"Don't laugh bean I'm bein serious like," he chuckled pulling me in for another hug, "it really is," he said holding onto me tightly in such a way that I couldn't tell who he was holding on for.

Was it him needed the hug or me?

Could he tell that my heart was breaking too?

"I know," i said softly nuzzling into his chest, feeling little tears threaten my eyes so I closed them, nuzzled into his jumper a little deeper, tickling his chin with my hair.