Work Text:
The sun crawled slowly over the horizon, painting their kitchen in all the colours of a winter morning, blues mixed up with dim orange in a dance of light and dark.
Tyler has already been awake for an hour and a half; he has his street clothes on, picked out yesterday evening to match with Taylor and freshly ironed by him this morning. The dining table was set, breakfast steaming from the old pot.
He nods to himself, checking another point off his mental list of morning tasks, and, having nothing else to do, decides it’s about time his sister got up.
Skillfully avoiding the floorboards he knew for a fact would creak, Tyler walks upstairs to their room and yanks the door open, only slowing down at the last second as to not damage it. The digital clock standing on their desk read 6:48 am, and, counting the bus ride and the time it’d take them to eat, they will easily make it on time for their first period, if his sister got up right now.
“Tay,” he shakes the ladder to the top bunk, where his twin sister was still sound asleep like nothing really mattered. “Tay, get up, breakfast is ready.”
Tyler is 12, and, while he has been praised repeatedly for his untypical for his age maturity, he has never been particularly known for his patience.
“Tay!” He shouts, climbing onto the first couple of rungs, just far enough to tug off the blanket off her in one not-so-graceful yank. It falls to the floor with a soft thud, and he hears his sister squeak at the sudden gust of cold air – they, still, didn’t have any heating in the house.
If Tyler doesn’t figure something out fast, they wouldn’t have any next month, too.
“Breakfast is ready.” He repeats, now when he knew for sure his sister was awake as he picks up the blanket and folds it neatly, placing it on their desk. She throws him a sleepy look from over the safety rails – did she not sleep well tonight, again? – and starts to slowly climb down.
Promptly, Tyler leaves and comes downstairs, back into the dimly lit kitchen, where freshly cooked breakfast was awaiting them. He wasn’t the greatest of cooks yet – at least he doesn’t think so – but it’s all he could give them in their situation and Taylor keeps praising him endlessly for his skills, so, he supposes, it’s enough after all.
He hears quiet footsteps coming down the stairs just as he ended placing food onto the plates.
Except for one.
The third plate stood at the head of the table, empty.
“Is Mom not coming down today?” Taylor asks him, almost casually so, rubbing off sleepiness from her eyes. The question is innocent, and, really, unnecessary; she knows he checked. He always did.
“No,” Comes his answer with a shake of his head. He takes his place and picks up the fork without looking at her. “I left her a note on the table, though.”
Taylor only nods, sitting down on her regular place beside him.
Over the years, Mom seemed to get better, even if only bit by bit.
Some weeks, rare and far between, she would almost be what she was before it, and Tyler would come back home from baseball practice to find her at the stove cooking dinner, four plates set on the table. She would smile at him and ask him to come get Taylor, and he’d scurry up the stairs to find her and tell her that Mom was back.
At the table, she would ask them if they saw where their Dad was, and they would have to lie through their teeth and tell her that he worked a night shift tonight.
“Strange,” She would say, eyebrows knitting much like Taylor’s did whenever she was deep in thought. “He works a lot lately.”
They let her concern dissolve with empty reassurances and sugarcoated words, sickly sweet mortar keeping them together, settling on enjoying what they had now.
And apart from the empty fourth plate across from them, those evenings felt normal in the way things rarely did.
Usually, though, when Mom couldn’t find the strength to leave her room, Tyler left a note for her that food was ready, and that she could find it in the fridge whenever she felt hungry; he checked on her when he could and left her water at the bedside table every day, pleading her to not forget to drink it like the day before.
‘Distant’ doesn’t feel like a good word to describe her, but it’s the only word Tyler can think of.
He would come back home late, hands still smelling like freshly cut grass from mowing their neighbour’s lawn, exhausted from school and practice earlier that day, and he would waste no time waiting around to empty the dishwasher and get started on dinner for them. He would put something stupid on the radio as he works, until Taylor would come along to offer her help that he, every time, refused. They would eat together, just the two of them, and Taylor’s chatter would distract them temporarily from how silent their house has become in the past couple of years.
When there was nothing else left to do, he would come to the laundry room and watch the clothes roll in the washing machine, just so he had some sort of noise to drown out the crying in the next room over.
They eat in silence, forks scraping against porcelain.
“Do you have to stay out late today, again?” Taylor asks him, out of nowhere; it’s a little stupid, she recognizes, words said just to fill in the silence, because she knows the answer already, by heart.
“Yeah,” He nods shortly, thinking the question was simple curiosity. “I have practice, and then I need to-“
“That’s not what I meant,” she interrupts him, prodding at the food in her plate with her fork awkwardly. Only when he looks at her, head cocked to the side, does she get the courage to continue. “We just haven’t spent much time together lately, you know?”
Tyler opens his mouth to object, but Taylor beats him to it. “Not that- I mean, I know that you need to work and stuff… but you’ve just been so, I don't know, distant lately.”
The word feels like a bucket of cold water poured onto him, drenching him in choking, burning guilt. The one thing he did not want to be described as, not by Taylor.
Of all people, God, not by Taylor.
“Sorry.” He can’t help but mutter, the word utterly useless and tasting of sour shame on his tongue. Just a word to excuse the people who already screwed up.
“Yeah, it’s fine, you’re doing it for us, right?” His sister laughs, but something in her laugh tells him that he was one of those people.
When did he, as the years passed by, start losing sight of what, undoubtedly, mattered most?
And more importantly, how could he ever make up for it, when they were struggling to stay afloat as is?
“That’s not an excuse.” Tyler counters, dejected, his throat dry despite the water he just drank a minute ago.
But what other choice did he have other than to grit his teeth and figure it out, like he always did?
“Don’t worry about it, really, Ty, I understand-“
“I promised to take care of you two, didn’t I?”
That day, the day when the reality of it all finally sank in, 6 feet underground, he squeezed her hand tightly, swore to himself nothing would tear them apart. Not even this.
How could he forget?
“Yeah, and you’re doing great! Really, it’s okay, it was just a random thought-“
“…I’ll figure it out.” He says with finality. “I promise.”
Taylor stays quiet for a second or two, watching him closely, before a smile slowly spread across her face, gentle and warm like her smiles always were. There is concern, and there is love, and then there is trust – all mixed together in the way she looks at him like he hung the moon and the stars by just saying that he would.
He never understood what it was that he did in his previous life to deserve a sister like the one he got.
“...okay.” She comes back to her plate, putting the food onto the fork with more confidence than a minute ago, and Tyler is floored, because how and why and where does she find the strength to trust him so wholeheartedly, even though he hurt her?
He turns to finish his breakfast, but still feels the need to clarify: “I mean it.”
Taylor nods.
“Yeah, I know.”
Another promise is all he can afford to give them right now, and as they put the dishes in the sink to deal with them after school, he is filled with a new kind of determination.
After all, Tyler has never broken a promise before, and he isn’t planning to anytime soon.