Chapter Text
The summer of 1984 smelled like gasoline, hot pavement, and developing chemicals.
Downtown Los Angeles never really slept. Even at two in the morning, Ellie Brooks could hear sirens somewhere beyond the apartment windows, muffled music from passing cars, couples arguing in the alleyways below. The city breathed constantly. Loud and messy and alive. Yet, somehow she loved it for exactly that reason.
The apartment she shared with her older brother sat above a laundromat on a narrow street littered with overflowing bins and flickering neon signs. It wasn't much. Cracked cream walls. Crooked cupboards. Pipes that groaned every time someone showered.
But it was theirs.
Ellie sat cross-legged on the floor beside the coffee table, dozens of scattered Polaroids surrounding her like fallen leaves. Some were blurry. Some overexposed. Some accidental masterpieces she couldn't stop staring at.
A cigarette burned slowly in the ashtray beside her, forgotten.
She held one photograph closer beneath the lamp. An old man feeding pigeons outside Union Station.
Not smiling. Not posing. Just existing... That was always her favourite kind.
"You're doing the staring thing again"
Ellie glanced up.
Her brother leaned against the kitchen doorway in grey sweatpants and a white vest, dark curls damp from the shower. Robert, Robbie to everyone except angry landlords and debt collectors, looked permanently exhausted these days. Twenty-seven years old and carrying the weight of about fifty.
"You've been looking at that photo for about ten minutes", he added.
Ellie shrugged slightly. "it's good"
"It's a pigeon"
"It's composition"
"it's a bird" he remarked, with an incredulous tone.
She rolled her eyes, though the corner of her mouth twitched upward.
Robbie wandered over and nudged her foot aside with his socked one before collapsing onto the couch behind her. Springs creaked violently beneath him.
"You eat today?"
"Mhm".
"What'd you have?"
Silence.
"Ellie...."
"A pickle..."
Robbie let out a long, dramatic sigh toward the ceiling. "You can't survive on coffee and pickles"
"Watch me". Ellie said defiantly, peeking her eyes through her long, dark hair towards her brother.
"You're unbelievable". He sighed.
But there was no anger in it. There never was.
Their parents had left years ago in the slow, disappointing kind of way - not dramatic enough for movies, just messy enough to hurt forever. Their mother moved to Arizona with a man who sold insurance. Their father disappeared somewhere up north after one too many failed business ideas and broken promises.
So Robbie became everything else.
Brother. Parent. Provider.
He worked brutal hours fixing cars at a garage near Echo Park, came home smelling like oil and cigarettes, and still somehow found time to make sure Ellie chased her stupid impossible dreams.
Even when they couldn't afford them. Especially then.
"You hear back from the gallery?" he asked eventually.
Ellie shook her head.
The tiny local art gallery in Silver Lake had rejected her portfolio three weeks ago. Politely, of course. They'd called her work "emotionally observant" before telling her it lacked "commercial appeal".
Commercial appeal. Meaning not glamorous enough. Not bright enough. Not fake enough.
Everyone wanted perfection. Nobody wanted the truth.
"I'm going to get there eventually", she murmured, mostly to herself.
Robbie studied her for a second from the couch. "You will"
Simple as that. Not maybe. Not hopefully. You will.
Ellie swallowed hard and looked back down at the photographs before he noticed the sudden shine in her eyes.
A rapid knock sounded against the apartment door moments later before it swung open without permission.
"ELLIE!"
Amanda Rivera arrived like sunshine entering a blackout room.
She burst inside carrying two grocery bags and enough energy to power half the city, dark curls bouncing wildly around her shoulders. Gold hoops flashed beneath the kitchen light as she kicked the door shut behind her.
"I bring gifts", she announced dramatically.
Robbie groaned immediately. "If that's tequila again, I'm throwing you both out."
Amanda gasped. "First of all, rude".
She dropped onto the floor beside Ellie and started unpacking the bags. Cheap wine, instant noodles, film rolls, a fashion magazine, and a single sunflower stolen from somewhere highly illegal-looking.
Ellie laughed softly. "You definitely stole this"
"Borrowed"
"You can't borrow flowers."
Amanda ignored her completely, grabbing one of the Polaroids scattered nearby.
Her expression softened immediately.
"You took this?"
Ellie nodded.
Amanda stared at it for another moment.
"That's what i mean, El"
"What?"
"You make people look real", Amanda spoke softly.
Ellie looked away instinctively. Compliments always made her uncomfortable, like wearing someone else's clothes. Amanda noticed anyway.
"You do", she insisted. "Everybody else takes pictures of what they want people to be. You take pictures of what they are"
The apartment fell quieter after that.
Outside, the rain began tapping softly against the windows.
Amanda leaned her head onto Ellie's shoulder whilst flipping through more photographs, and Robbie disappeared muttering about making grilled cheese for the "starving artists".
For a moment, Ellie let herself sit inside the warmth of it all.
The tiny apartment. The rain. Amanda's Perfume. The sound of Robbie humming badly in the kitchen. The scattered photographs around her feet.
It wasn't glamorous. But it was hers.
And somewhere deep down beneath the unpaid bills, rejection letters and exhaustion, Ellie still believed life was waiting for her.
She just didn't know yet that everything was about to change because of one photograph taken beneath carnival lights.