Pacifier

🍒 Della 🥀

"Elle," he said softly, "elle love its 1 in the afternoon," i could hear the smirk in Sam's voice but when i rolled over, eyes half shut, sulky even in my sleep I saw his frown etch a little deeper.

My body was heavy and I was weak, pathetic feeling, brimming with grief. Grief which was too much for me to handle or accept.

It hurt, physically, in my chest and my ribs and my temples. It weighed my hands down. Made my fingers feel as if they weren't really mine. As if none of me was really me.

"Cmon little one up you get ey," Sam chuckled slipping his hand beneath me on the bed and heaving me up into his arms before I'd had a chance to protest. But I didn't protest and I didn't intend to. I didn't have the energy to and I didn't really have the energy to try and wriggle free, crawl back beneath the covers where I had been hiding from the world. This tiny little world in which I now lived alone with Sam.

I looked back at him blankly but I did as he said and shuffled to the edge of the bed, my feet grazing the floor over the edge.

"You'll feel better wi some food in yas lass," he said, "christ your brother would kill me if he could see you now you know..." he said, his eyes flickering over me, glowing with sympathy and then suddenly startled and wide, a sheepish smile creeping up onto his lips as he shook his head and held his hand out for me to take,"ah shit like, a dint mean it like that Elle," he said probably hoping for a smirk or something, any kind of reaction from me, but he got nothing, I merely followed him quietly and let him lead me to his kitchen.

"Brew?" he asked, "beans on toast?" he threw a couple more options at me, eyes sparkling with concern every time he turned from his cupboards back to me.

"Don't mind," i said quietly, wondering how i was going to stomach anything at all when all I could think about was her and the thought of her now made me feel sick with guilt.

"Ease you in with a brew ey?" he offered me a softer smile then. I couldn't get my head around his relentless smiling anymore. At first I had thought it was to trick me, to lure me into trusting him, but now I wasn't so sure.

This felt like the sort of relentless smiling you do to stop a friend who is drowning in sorrow from sinking too low. If he was the enemy he wouldn't be trying so hard to help me float. He wouldn't care at all.

But this was caring.

Everything about the way he had been with me for the last two days was caring. Relentlessly so.

Even when I was teary eyed and pathetic, not talking, not eating, not sleeping. Barely able to sip a cup of tea, being sick after a sip of water because I was allowing myself to despair with my grief.

"Thank you," I said quietly, sort of hating myself for letting the words slip out, for thanking him for anything when he had torn me from my family and held me here against my will. My Nana Ru had died terrified for my life because of him and here I was with a pathetic little thank you lingering on my lips.

"Why does that feel like it shoulda been a fuck you instead..." he smirked, unnerving me the way he seemed to have been able to read my mind. I didn't realise that actually all my turmoil was sitting pretty on my face, the most unforgiving of glowers he'd ever seen.

He could read me like a book because my instincts were crumbling and my defenses were down.

"Try some toast for me Elle," he said gently, nudging a plate towards me. He didn't sit down with me, instead busying himself behind me, clearing up or something, giving me the space to struggle on my own, but when I didnt even make an attempt to eat he turned around. "You haven't moved Della," he said, a little louder, a little more firm.