Work Text:
Summer vacation; a time for students to kick up their feet and hang out with friends, and maybe even earn some cash from summer jobs. For Elliott, it meant work, not a summer job, but picking up any and all extra shifts he could now that he had the morning free. A coworker called out sick? Elliott would cover. Someone on morning shift was going on vacation for a week? Just ask Elliott, he’s got your back.
He didn’t want to pick up those shifts, then again who wants to do extra work, but summer was the time where he could make cash to survive the school year, when his days were cut in half by ‘meaningless classes’ as he wasn’t going to college. This summer, however, was different; his sister wasn’t there anymore, leaving a gap in the income that the bank account would normally have filled. He’d figure it out, even if it was hard, he’d figure it out, after all no one else was going to fix his problems for him.
Throughout his first month of summer vacation he worked ten double shifts; a new record for him. He was used to the long hours by now, picking up quite a few throughout the school year, but this, this was starting to be too much for his already frail body to handle.
The next month he passed out at work, not once, not twice, but a total of four times. His boss was, understandably, worried about him and forced him to stop taking double shifts and even got him to take a day or two off a week. The days off didn’t last long, he would still pick up shifts left and right, but he made sure it was on his ‘day off’.
The last month of his summer vacation, though a sad one for his bank account, was a sigh of relief for his body. His boss knew when school started back up, her daughter was the same age as Elliott, and changed his hours back to normal a week before school started so he could have sometime to enjoy his break, even if it was only a week.
The night before school started, he was looking over his account details and found that he had made enough money to cover rent for almost five months, not including groceries and other necessities, just plain rent. And that was all that mattered to him, he had to keep the apartment, not for himself, no, he didn’t care enough about himself, but for his sister. This was her apartment, she was the one who found it, she was the one paying rent when he was too young to work, she was the reason he wasn’t sleeping on the streets. He’d keep the apartment for as long as he lived, but with all the stress on his body, that may not be for as long as he had hoped for.