ellie kisser

You weren’t completely irritated by the attention, just didn’t know what to do about it. Ellie was fucking sick, everyone knew that. Her hollow eyes and protruding bones seemed to define even more as days passed. One thing you really wanted to know was what the hell could they be giving to her? Or rather, what was she spitting out? Girls around you were taking valium, infermiterol, lexapro, zoloft, seroqual…

You even knew that in other buildings they were people given shock treatments. But Ellie seemed numb to all earthly things. She looked like a corpse but air surrounding her promised that she was some sore of an immortal deity. Why was she here? For how long has she been here?

The gossip you’ve heard was that Ellie was here before you, and before many others. However she would never leave her room until around the time you came.

Were others noticing this too? The nurses didn’t seem to be paying attention. Although if A patient were to develop some sort of violent act towards another patient, they would be sent to a way more strict “gulag” immediately.

You didn’t know if this was even safe to mention to any of your psychiatrists. They were already shoving pill after pill because of your paranoia. Ellie was just a ghost. They wouldn’t believe she suddenly decided to develop something humanly towards you, a schizophrenic patient whom experienced hallucinations, insomnia, paranoia and got violent before being treated.

After supper you quietly got up to go to your room. A girl followed up beside you, she was quite young and dealt with anorexia. You found it hard to look at her. She was just a young girl, she didn’t deserve any of this at all.

“Hey y/n… um, do you have any laxatives… They stopped giving me any. I really don’t feel good..”

“Lily they don’t give me that stuff… and I do swallow. Most I can give you is like…Tylenol. Which will do nothing for you unless you feel sick.”

“…Ugh these nurses are fucking driving me insane. No one is giving me anything, they offered me fucking plum juice. They think it’s a fucking joke I hate this place.”

Lily’s voice was rather high pitched but she sounded scary when she was mad. To you though, everyone seemed to turn into monsters the second you could feel them getting frustrated. Suddenly you felt a tight grasp on your arm, Lily’s nails dug dip into your sensitive skin, causing you to flinch in pain.

“Fucking let go of me!”

Lily’s grasp felt like a vice wrapping around you. Your head started to spin as she screamed into your face.

“I fucking hate this place! I hate this place I hate this place!”

Lily’s nails left a deep scratch mark on your skin as she was pulled away and tackled to the ground. Your arm now had three thin and bleeding stripes. However you were too pulled away by everything once you saw it was Ellie that pulled her away. You were standing frozen like a deer in headlights.

“Shut your fucking mouth..” Ellie murmured as she held Lily down. The nurses came rushing. One of the male nurses sighed as he tried to inject some liquid into lily’s shoulder.

You did what you do best and hid inside of your room.

Now you were laid down on your mattress, staring at the ceiling again. You traced the scratch mark on your arm absentmindedly. The sounds of doors being knocked and a nurse gently whispering “checks” into the rooms could be heard. The walls were probably made out of styrofoam or something. You heard yourself swallow, then sigh. The Benadryl didn’t seem appealing today. It never did really but something was making you feel as if someone was watching. The thumps of your heart were ringing in your ear. You wiped your sweaty palms across your shirt. Eft taping, vortex breathing, it just wasn’t helpful. You were in a mental hospital for fucks sake, how is any of this normie shit going to help me, you thought.

Your door pushed open, light spilled into your room. A bright flash was blinding your eyes as you heard a small “checks” before the nurse disappeared again. However the door was left ajar.

The room you stayed in was the last one to get nightly checks. You could go out into the corridor without getting caught. You had wandered around at night before, and got caught by the nurses on night shift but they didn’t care much about you. Acting docile was a great tool. And surpassing your urges to strangle a nurse was too, a great tool.

You slowly slipped out of the room bare feet and padded over to the hallway. This place looked a lot better in the dark, the large windows casted coffin shaped shadows. The air itself felt easier to move in. You stopped in front of the room Ellie stayed in.

Something seemed to pull you in. You caressed the doorknob before slowly pulling it down. To your surprise she hadn’t locked it. She had a habit of locking the door so nurses would end up having to try 50 different keys. At some point they painted Ellie’s door’s key so they wouldn’t be wasting time. But they no longer needed it because it seemed Ellie didn’t care to lock it anymore.

You slipped in, the ground was cold to the skin yet it felt comforting. Ellie was standing at the edge of the room. Her gaze flickered up to you, she seemed kinda surprised actually. Though it disappeared quickly.

You padded towards her slowly, there was no shame anywhere in this place, especially not between you and Ellie.

She reached for your arm, gently spectating the mark Lily left.

“…Thanks..by the way. I was too…confused to act so.”

Ellie started circling around you. You felt too self aware all of a sudden, as if something pulled you back into your body.

“If you fought back it would’ve been worse.”

You nodded before sitting down on her bed. She seemed to make you dizzy beyond ways you could understand. An enigma, you thought.

Ellie stood unmoving in front of you. You tried shutting your mind off incase Ellie had some sort of brain reading ability. She seemed to be good at reading people.

“…Ellie…do you feel anything?”

Her soft breathing crowded your ear. There was nothing else to engage with.

“…like what?”

“Like, anything at all. Violence, happiness, gloominess, a headache?”

“…No, do you?”

“I feel the desire to be comforted.”

Ellie sat beside you on the mattress. It creaked weakly beneath the weight of yours and Ellie’s. Her eyes were nailed on your neck.

“Comfort…Why?”

“That night when you were in my room, I felt…comforted. When you touched me and licked my neck. I felt like it was a necessity.”

Ellie stood quiet. She shifted slightly closer to you but said nothing.

“Why did you do that? I mean how did you even sneak in? What were you feeling?”

You were purging out questions that Ellie didn’t know the answers of herself. Her emotions have not been named yet. A unique error of a human she was.

“I feel hunger…”

You turned to Ellie, she was so close. you could pick up the small sparkle of light reflecting on her retina. Her breath brushed your chin.

“You make me feel satisfaction.”

You didn’t know what to say. This was the most you heard Ellie talk, it made you feel dizzy.

You were so close, her nose was almost touching yours. Maybe it was, your reality was blundered by Ellie.

You closed your eyes and let out a shaky breath.

“Ellie…please comfort me.”

It felt like lighting, You felt Ellie push you down onto the mattress. Lips on yours, almost like you were being held down. You couldn’t understand if her hands were on your shirt or underneath. You felt yourself shaking nonstop. Grabbing her hair and pulling her closer till you were both out of breath. “I want to give you the satisfaction you’ve wanted…”

Your head was pounding like crazy. All of a sudden you felt hot. The sound of the sheets were like waves crashing in your ears as you squirmed. Ellie rubbed between your legs continuously as she devoured your mouth. You felt like a bomb about to explode. Everything was shaking, turning into voices and shadows. Ellie was also breathless but she wasn’t stopping. She seemed almost out of control. You held onto her wrist that was rubbing you. She slowed down and pushed hair out of your face.

You felt a droplet itching the top of your lip so Your tongue darted out like a reflex. The taste of pure iron filled your mouth. Ellie lifted herself off of you to quickly go grab tissues. A few drops of blood landed on your pale blue shirt.

“Sorry it happens…”

You murmured. You wanted to take deep breaths but the blood was making you feel sick. Ellie cleaned it up for you. Then made small cylinders out of tissues to block your nostrils with. You took in deep breaths with your mouth.

Everything seemed to substitute and slow down. You held onto Ellie’s arm for some support. She gently guided you to lay down on her chest. Her heart was faintly beating. The continuous rhythm and Ellie’s caress lulled you to sleep.

week 2

the snow keeps falling in soft steady waves over the next week, blanketing jackson in quiet white and making the days feel shorter and colder. ellie finds herself knocking on your door more often than she plans, boots stomping snow off on the porch with a dull thud. one afternoon she shows up with her hands shoved deep in her jacket pockets, breath visible in the freezing air. ‘smelled something cooking again,’ she says, voice casual as she steps inside, snow melting off her shoulders onto your floor.

you welcome her in with that same bright smile, the fire crackling warm behind you. ‘hey ellie, come in. it’s freezing out there. you want some tea or something? i just made stew if you’re hungry.’

‘yeah, sure,’ she replies, rubbing her hands together to warm them. ‘smells good. you trying to feed the whole town or what?’

you laugh softly and ladle some into a bowl for her while you chat. ‘i’m still getting used to the portions here. everything feels like it’s for a group. how are the patrols going in all this snow? i went out yesterday and it was brutal.’

she leans against the counter, arms crossed under her heavy jacket, spooning stew while she answers. ‘same as always. slow and shitty. snow hides tracks but it also hides clickers. you holding up okay with it?’ her tone is dry but there’s a hint of real curiosity underneath.

‘i’m managing,’ you say, handing her a chunk of warm bread. ‘here, take this too. and an extra scarf if you want. i have spares.’

she takes the bread and scarf, rubbing the back of her neck with a gloved hand. ‘you’re too nice for your own good, you know that? you don’t gotta keep feeding me like this.’ but she doesn’t give them back, pocketing the scarf instead.

‘i like doing it,’ you reply with a shrug and a smile. ‘makes the cold feel less lonely. you can come over anytime.’

she mumbles something like ‘yeah, maybe,’ voice low and guarded, but her eyes flick to the way your sweater hugs your chest when you turn. the conversation stays light after that, her throwing in a couple sarcastic jokes about jesse’s terrible card playing skills before she heads back out into the snow, the warm container in her hands and that familiar throb starting low between her legs again.

that night with fresh powder piling on the windowsill she’s back at her kitchen window again, curtains cracked just enough to let the cold air seep in. you’re touching yourself slow under the warm lantern light, fingers teasing your swollen clit in lazy circles before pushing two fingers deep inside your pussy, back arching deep off the mattress, mouth open on quiet breathy gasps that fog the cold glass near your window. ellie unbuckles her belt with cold-stiff fingers, spreads her legs wide on the old kitchen table, pants shoved down around her boots. her hand slides between her thighs, fingers finding her own soaked cunt, rubbing her clit fast and hard while she watches every roll of your hips and every pretty twitch of your thighs. the sight of your glistening wet folds, the sharp arch of your back, the way your tits move with each ragged breath pushes her over quick and hard. she cums all over her fingers, biting her lip bloody, thighs shaking violently, breath ragged white clouds in the freezing kitchen air as her cunt clenches around nothing.

on patrol

she starts drifting toward you around town without thinking twice. you mention heading to the stables through the deep drifts the next morning and she’s already there brushing her horse, snowflakes caught in her auburn hair. ‘had stuff to do anyway,’ she shrugs when you wave at her, voice dry. ‘you getting the hang of the cold yet or still freezing your ass off?’

‘still freezing my ass off,’ you laugh, walking over. ‘but it’s not so bad with good company. you coming on the next supply run?’

‘probably,’ she says, bumping your shoulder lightly with hers. ‘someone’s gotta make sure you don’t get lost in a snowdrift.’

you figure it’s nothing. just normal small town neighbor stuff and smile back at her without a second thought. i mean, it’s common to see people at the stables right?

home

one afternoon, ellie is over, as she usually has been. while you’re busy in the kitchen making tea and chatting about nothing, she slips quietly into your room for just a moment, you figure she’s just going to the bathroom. she knows her way around your house already, after all. her heart pounds as she grabs a pair of your dirty panties from the laundry basket, the fabric soft and still carrying your warmth and faint intimate scent from the day. she shoves them deep into her jacket pocket, face blank and casual when you hand her the hot mug a minute later.

‘thanks,’ she says dryly, voice even as ever. ‘this place is starting to feel like home already. you gettin’ to know everyone?’

‘yeah, slowly,’ you reply, smiling. ‘it helps having sweet neighbors like you stopping by.’

she rubs the back of her neck again, ears a little pink. ‘don’t get too used to it. i’m just here for the food.’ but she lingers a few extra minutes by the fire before heading back out into the cold, the stolen panties burning a hole in her pocket the whole way home.

ellie’s home

the second she closes her own door behind her, the cold house feels too quiet. ellie leans back against the wood for a second, heart still racing, then pulls the stolen panties from her pocket. they’re still warm from your body, the fabric soft and carrying that intimate scent that makes her head spin. she brings them straight to her nose, inhaling deep as she stumbles toward her couch, already unbuckling her belt again.

‘fuck. you smell so good,’ she breathes against the cloth, voice low and rough. she drops onto the cushions, legs spreading wide, and presses the panties firmly to her face while her other hand dives between her thighs. her fingers slide through her soaked folds, rubbing her swollen clit fast and desperate as she breathes you in with every inhale. the scent of your pussy mixed with the memory of you moaning across the alley pushes her over the edge quick and hard. she comes with a choked groan, hips jerking, thighs trembling while she keeps the fabric pressed tight to her nose, riding it out until she’s shaking and breathless in the cold room.

even after the first orgasm hits she doesn’t stop. she keeps the panties pressed to her face, inhaling deeper, letting your scent fill her lungs as she slides two fingers inside her still throbbing cunt. she fucks herself slow and deep this time, curling her fingers just right while her hips roll up to meet every thrust, imagining it’s you underneath her instead of her own hand. soft curses and broken whispers spill out against the fabric. ‘fuckfuckfuck..’ her second orgasm builds slower but crashes harder, leaving her curled on the couch, thighs clamped around her hand, face buried in your stolen panties as she rides out the aftershocks with shaky breaths and quiet moans.

she stays there for a long time afterward, eyes half closed, lazily rubbing the damp fabric against her cheek and lips. the cold air in the room finally starts to bite at her exposed skin but she doesn’t move right away, savoring the stolen piece of you like it’s the only thing keeping her warm.

taglist ; @fettywhopper @chxrryvalxntine @bigbatnose

You have held this position for long enough that you no longer remember auditioning for it. It is simply the shape your life took, the way water took the shape of whatever contained it — and the container had been built early, built well, built with the specific architectural intentions of a family that understood reputation as infrastructure. Your mother's voice on the phone, still, even now: how you present yourself is how the world will treat you. Your father at the dinner table, the particular set of his jaw when he disapproved of something, which was a language you had learned before you learned to read. The church on Sundays, the handshakes, the careful and cultivated performance of a family that wanted to be seen a certain way and had impressed upon their daughter, through years of repetition and example, that this was not performance but truth. That what you showed was what you were. That the distance between the two was not something you acknowledged.

So: what you are.

You are the girl at the centre of every room you walk into, the fixed point around which other things arrange themselves. You are the one people check before they laugh, the one whose opinion lands first and lands heaviest. You are the good clothes and the straight spine and the lip gloss reapplied between every class, the face that is always composed and the voice that is always level and the expression that gives away exactly what you want it to give away and nothing else, curated with the precision of a gallery that knows which pieces to put on display and which to keep in the back.

You have a boyfriend. He is tall and square-jawed and belongs to the correct social taxonomy, which is the thing that matters most about him, if you are being honest with yourself, which you are not, which is something you are very practised at.

You have friends. They laugh when you laugh and follow where you lead and occupy the space around you like punctuation — useful, structural, there to make the sentence make sense. You are fond of them the way you are fond of things you have always had. You don't think about them in the spaces between, the way you don't think about breathing. They are simply there, and you are simply glad, and the feeling is warm and uncomplicated and sits at a manageable distance from anything that could be called intimacy.

Your life, in other words, is a thing that has been arranged. Carefully. Over a long time. By hands that were partly yours and partly other people's, and you stopped being able to tell which parts were which sometime around fifteen and haven't tried to untangle it since.

It is, by any reasonable measure, a good life. A correct one. Properly fitted.

You don't look at the seams.

And then there is the other thing.

The thing you have been not-thinking about with such regularity and such focused determination that the not-thinking has become its own kind of thinking, a negative space shaped so precisely like the thing you're avoiding that it functions as an outline.

Her.

You had seen her before you'd seen her, which was the way these things always worked and the thing you would never say aloud to a living person. She had existed in your periphery for a while — another body in the hallway, categorised and filed and dismissed with the automatic efficiency of a brain that has been trained to sort things quickly. Dark clothing, beat-up shoes, the particular energy of someone who operated just outside the social ecosystem you inhabited, neither fighting for entry nor visibly wounded by the lack of it. The kind of person you looked through rather than at, the way you looked through glass.

The first time you'd actually looked: October. A Tuesday, or maybe a Wednesday — the specific day had since blurred at its edges, details worn smooth by the number of times you'd turned it over. You had been walking to class and she had been walking in the opposite direction, board tucked under one arm, reading something — actually reading, an actual book, in the middle of a crowded hallway, navigating entirely by some internal pedestrian sonar, which should have been annoying and was inexplicably not. The book had a rocket ship on the cover. She had a streak of what might have been paint on her jaw and hadn't noticed. Or had noticed and hadn't cared. You could not, in the moment, determine which.

She had looked up.

Not at you — or not at you, not deliberately, just the reflexive upward glance of someone checking their trajectory, the automatic course-correction of a person navigating by peripheral vision. But for the half-second before she'd looked back down, her eyes had passed over your face, and something in them had been entirely, disarmingly unperformed.

That was the word. Unperformed. Like looking at someone who had never learned the choreography, who moved through the world in the original steps before anyone had told them how it was supposed to go. It was the most alien thing you had ever encountered in a school hallway. You had thought about it for three days and then told yourself, firmly and with conviction, that you had stopped.

You had not stopped.

The dynamic that followed was the result of a logic you understood at the time and have stopped examining since: she was a problem in the way that things you couldn't categorise were problems. The solution to that kind of problem, the one your life had trained you to reach for, was distance. Elevation. The careful and practised deployment of cruelty not as malice but as architecture — a wall that was also, from the outside, a statement of your position. A reminder, directed partly at her and partly at yourself, of what was what.

It worked. Or it worked the way things worked when they were functionally effective and fundamentally insufficient. She flinched, sometimes, or almost flinched, or did the thing that was more controlled than a flinch but lived in the same neighbourhood. And something in you registered it and did something you didn't look at directly.

The problem was the other times.

The times she didn't flinch. The times she looked back at you with those eyes that didn't perform and said something dry and quick and sideways that arrived in your chest at a completely unacceptable angle, finding a gap in the architecture, slipping through before you could close it. The times she laughed, which was — the way she laughed was not the kind of laughing you had learned, the socialised, considered, context-appropriate kind. Hers was a whole-body thing, a sudden and unguarded eruption, the kind that had no interest in being observed and therefore carried some quality that observed things rarely had. Some quality that made you want to look at it longer than you were allowed to.

You didn't know what to do with that.

More specifically: you knew exactly what to do with it, which was nothing, which was what you had always done, and it had always been sufficient before, and now it wasn't, and you didn't have another plan.

What you did know — the thing that had settled in you like sediment, slow and gradual and now at the bottom of everything — was that you could not stop thinking about her. And that this was a sentence that meant something. And that what it meant was something you were not, at this time, prepared to mean.

So you kept it in the same place you kept everything that didn't fit the arrangement: somewhere below language, below examination, in the unlit room you walked past every day and did not open.

You did not open it.

You were not going to open it.

You were absolutely, categorically, structurally—

"Y/N."

You came back into the room like a stone dropped into water: sudden, graceless, displacing everything around the point of re-entry.

Asher's room resolved itself around you — the posters, the desk, the lamp throwing its amber circle against the far wall, the general aesthetic of a person who wanted you to know he had taste and had curated his surroundings accordingly. He was sitting on the edge of the bed across from you, the ice pack you'd been holding to his face somewhere on the bedside table now, the ice long since melted into usefulness. His nose had committed to a new shape for the time being, swollen across the bridge in the specific way of something that had been hit hard and recently, the skin around it beginning the slow, declarative process of bruising.

You were supposed to be helping with that.

You had apparently stopped helping with that somewhere around the part where your brain had walked itself down a corridor you hadn't meant to enter and lost track of the present entirely.

"You've been somewhere else for like twenty minutes," Asher said. Not a question. The particular delivery of someone who had been trying to get your attention for long enough to have passed through patient and come out the other side as something with edges.

"Sorry," you said. The word was automatic, clipped, an incision and not an expression of feeling. You reached for the ice pack, found it defeated, set it back down. "I was thinking."

"About what?"

"Nothing." You smoothed your hand across your skirt, an old tic, the physical equivalent of a comma. "It's not important."

He looked at you. Asher's looking was a different quality of looking from most people's — it had a narrowed, acquisitive quality to it, like he was checking inventory, running a count, making sure everything that was supposed to be there was accounted for. "You've been weird since lunch," he said.

"I'm fine."

"You're doing the thing."

"There's no thing," you said.

"The face thing," he said. "Where your face does—" he gestured vaguely at your face, which you were fairly certain had not been doing anything, which was precisely the point, which was exactly what you'd been trained to guarantee. "You've been doing it since the cafeteria."

The cafeteria. The word landed at the bottom of your stomach.

"I'm fine," you said, and the second one came out flatter than the first, filed down to its barest functional surface. "I'm sitting here, aren't I? Drop it."

"Was it the thing with that girl? With Williams?"

You said nothing.

"Because I handled it," he said, and the handled it carried a specific weight, a satisfaction with itself that settled against your skin the wrong way, like a fabric worn backwards. "She won't be bothering you."

"She wasn't bothering me," you said, before you could route the sentence through any of your usual filters.

A beat.

Asher's eyes did the narrowing thing again. Slower this time. More deliberate.

"Then what was it?"

"It was nothing," you said. "She had something, I gave it back, it was ten seconds of my life. You don't need to—"

"Are you thinking about her?"

The question dropped into the room like a match.

You opened your mouth.

You did not have time to decide what to put in it.

"Because you've been checked out since that cafeteria thing," he said, and his voice had shifted register, had moved out of the conversational and into something that lived closer to the ground, heavier at its base, the vocal equivalent of a hand pressed flat to a surface to steady it before pushing. "And I want to know if it's because of her —"

"Asher—"

"Because I'm telling you, Y/N—" he was on his feet now, and the room was suddenly smaller for it, the walls closer, the lamp's amber light less warm and more jaundiced, "— I am telling you, if you've got some kind of soft spot for that — for that girl, who is clearly — I mean, it's obvious what she—"

"Don't," you said.

He didn't.

"She's a dyke," he said.

The word hit the air and stayed there.

Your hand moved before the rest of you had agreed to it.

The slap landed across his cheek with a sound like a door slamming in an empty house — clean and final and reverberating in the silence that followed, filling every corner of the room, bouncing off the posters and the amber light and the walls that had gotten too close. The impact moved through your palm and up your wrist and into your arm, a straight live current, and your hand hung in the air for a moment after, suspended in the ringing quiet, before you brought it back to your side.

Asher's head had snapped sideways with it. He turned back slowly.

His face was a study in something you had never put there before. Not the anger — that was already building, you could see it coming in the way weather came in, on the horizon, gathering — but underneath it, in the layer before the anger had finished assembling itself: shock. Genuine, unperformed, structural shock. The expression of a person who had been certain of the floor plan and had just found a room they didn't know was there.

You looked at him.

He looked at you.

The room between you was a held breath.

And something was moving in you — not the anger, or not only the anger, which was there, running hot beneath the surface — but something older and less nameable, something that lived in the unlit room you didn't open, that had heard the word and come forward, pressed itself against the door, rattled the handle with both hands, and you could not let it out, you could not look at it, you could not stand in this room for one more second with his face and his word and the way the amber light was suddenly unbearable —

You moved.

Your bag was on the chair by the desk and you crossed the room in four steps and had it over your shoulder in two more, your hands moving with the automatic efficiency of a person whose body had decided what was happening before their mind caught up, gathering the scattered pieces of your belongings from the desk and the floor with the rapid, urgent precision of someone evacuating, which was what this was, which was what you needed this to be.

"Y/N—" His voice, behind you. Recalibrating. Looking for the script to this scene and finding nothing. "What— what did I— what are you—"

You did not answer.

The door opened. The hallway on the other side was ordinary and lit and completely indifferent to what had just happened inside the room, which was exactly what you needed from it. You pulled it shut behind you, and the click of the latch was the smallest possible sound for something that needed to be a wall.

His voice came through it, muffled. Your name, twice. A question you didn't stay to hear the end of.

You walked.

The hallway stretched ahead of you and you moved through it with your spine straight and your chin level and your bag over your shoulder and your hand, at your side, still faintly stinging — a small, bright, persistent signal, a reminder of what you had done, which you could not take back, and could not explain, and were not, under any circumstances currently available to you, prepared to examine.

The exit was at the end of the hall. The door was heavy. You pushed through it and the afternoon outside was cold and open and the sky above it was the particular shade of grey that had nothing to say for itself, that simply was, vast and uncommitted and not asking anything of you.

You walked into it.

Your hand was still warm.

You did not think about why.

The street was the same street it had always been.

This was the thing about your neighbourhood that you had always found either comforting or suffocating depending on the day — its absolute, unwavering commitment to being itself. The same oak trees lining the same pavement, roots pushing up through the concrete in the same places they'd been pushing for years, slow and patient and entirely unbothered by the infrastructure they were quietly dismantling. The same houses behind the same fences, the same amber windows in the early evening, the same smell of someone's dinner and someone's lawn and the particular quality of air in a street that had decided what it was a long time ago and saw no reason to revisit the decision.

You walked through it and felt, as you sometimes did, like a figure moving through a painting that had been finished without consulting you.

Your hand had stopped stinging.

You were thinking about that. Specifically, you were thinking about the fact that you were thinking about that — the stinging, the absence of it now, the way your palm had felt in the half second after the slap, which was a word you were and were not prepared to apply to what you had done, which you had done, which had happened, which was a set of facts you were in the process of arranging into something that made sense and finding the pieces uncooperative.

Why, you thought, and it was the cleanest possible version of the question, stripped of all its context, just the word sitting in the middle of your head like a stone in an empty room.

Why had you done that.

The answer that offered itself first was the easy one, the one that fit inside the container of your existing self-concept without requiring any renovation: he had been rude. He had used a word you found distasteful. You had standards. You had been raised with a specific and detailed understanding of how people were supposed to speak in your presence, and he had violated it, and your hand had enacted the consequence with the swift, impersonal efficiency of a clause in a contract being enforced. That was all. That was the whole of it. That was a thing that made sense and had clean edges and required no further excavation.

You held this explanation up. Turned it over.

It was the right shape. It covered the right surface area.

It was not, in the way that things sometimes were not despite every effort, enough.

Because the word had landed and something had happened in you before your hand had moved — something underneath the distaste, below the standards, in the unlit room, at the door — something that had heard the word applied to her specifically and had reacted not with the measured, considered disapproval of someone with aesthetic objections to poor language but with something that was faster than thought and angrier than principle and entirely, devastatingly personal.

Applied to her.

Her.

And there it was. There she was. The thought of Ellie Williams arriving in your head with the inevitability of a tide that hadn't asked permission, the same way she'd been arriving all day, all week, in the in-between spaces and the unguarded moments, a frequency your brain had apparently been tuned to without your knowledge or consent. Ellie in the cafeteria — close enough that you'd felt the warmth of her through your clothes, close enough that you'd heard her breath change, close enough that the world had contracted to a very small radius that contained only the two of you and something electric and unnamed that had absolutely not happened and that you were not thinking about.

The warmth of her.

The thought arrived and your stomach turned — a complex, compound motion, not a single thing but a layered one, a reaction built of several reactions stacked on top of each other and inseparable at this point, and you pushed it away with both hands, pushed the whole thing back into the dark with the focused, practiced revulsion of someone who had found something where it wasn't supposed to be and was removing it by its edges, carefully, without looking at it directly.

Gross, you thought, and the thought was a door. Absolutely not. No. That's—no.

You were not thinking about how close she had been.

You were not thinking about the warmth.

You were not thinking about her at all, in fact, because she was Ellie Williams, who was a footnote, a nuisance, a loser with a cracked skateboard and a battered journal and paint on her jaw — probably, you had not checked — and you were you, and the distance between those two coordinates was not just geographical but categorical, dimensional, a gap so fundamental that the concept of a bridge didn't apply, and this was fine, and you were fine, and the street was the same street it had always been, and you were almost at the door.

You were fine.

The house received you the way it always did: with the specific warmth of a place that had been heated to the right temperature and filled with the right smells and arranged to the right standard and maintained in that state through consistent and deliberate effort, the warmth of a home that was also a performance, comfortable precisely because the performance was so well-rehearsed that it had long since ceased to feel like one.

The hallway was clean the way it was always clean, which was to say immaculately, which was to say your mother cleaned it the way she did everything — with the thoroughness of someone who understood that the surface of things was not superficial, that the surface of things was, in fact, the entire argument.

She was at the dining table.

She was always at the dining table in the early evening, at this specific hour, in this specific light — papers spread in front of her, reading glasses she claimed not to need sitting on the end of her nose, the small neat cup of tea at her elbow that had been part of this image for as long as you could remember, as structural to the composition as the table itself. She looked up when the door opened, the way she always looked up, the automatic maternal orientation of a woman whose inner compass pointed toward you regardless of what else was happening, and her face arranged itself into the particular expression it kept specifically for your arrivals: warmth, relief, assessment, all running simultaneously.

You offered her a smile. Tight. Calibrated.

Her eyes moved across your face with the patient, practised speed of someone who had been reading you since before you had learned to edit yourself for her, and who retained, despite all your editing, a fluency in the original text.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"Nothing," you said. The word was a reflex, smooth as a worn stone, something you'd produced so many times it had lost all friction. You set your bag down by the stairs and unwound your coat with the careful, unhurried movements of someone who was fine and had nothing to conceal and was simply coming home on a regular Tuesday. "I'm just tired."

She held your face in her gaze for a moment longer than the answer warranted. Then she settled back, the way she settled when she'd decided to let something go rather than chase it — not because she believed it, but because she understood, as the two of you had understood for years, the location of the boundary and both stood on their respective sides of it.

"Were you at Asher's?" she said, picking up her pen, returning to her papers with the smooth transition of a woman who could hold two conversations with different parts of herself simultaneously.

"Yes," you said.

And there it was — the thing her face did at the mention of his name, the small, involuntary brightening, a kind of light that came on behind her eyes like a lamp in a window, warm and welcoming and pointed outward, toward the future she had apparently already furnished and moved into while you were still standing in the hallway.

"He's such a good boy," she said, and she said it the way she said things she believed completely — without inflection, without self-consciousness, with the confident serenity of someone stating the position of the sun. "His family, too. You know his mother and I were talking after church last Sunday—" she turned a page, didn't look up, the conversation apparently requiring only a fraction of her available attention because it was, to her, that settled a subject, "—she said he talks about you constantly. Constantly. I told her, I said, Karen, that boy is going to marry my daughter, you watch."

The word marry entered your body through your sternum and detonated there.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. It was a small, interior explosion — the kind that happened in the bones, in the walls of things, in the load-bearing structure — and the aftershock moved through you in a slow, seismic wave, rearranging the furniture of your immediate future in your head into an image you stood in front of and looked at and could not locate yourself inside.

Married. To Asher. In a church, presumably, which was the only kind your mother had ever acknowledged as real, before God and family and the entirety of the social world you'd been raised inside, standing in white beside the jaw and the crossed arms and the word he'd said today in his bedroom, the word that was still somewhere in the air of that room, sitting at the bottom of the sentence it had been dropped into, unchanged by your having left it behind.

Married. To him. For the duration of a life that stretched ahead of you like a corridor you hadn't chosen in a building you didn't recognise.

"And you know what I told her," your mother continued, serenely, turning another page, "I said that the most important thing a young woman can do is find a man who is grounded. Who has direction. Because the world will tell you all sorts of things about what you should want—" she glanced up briefly, the glasses catching the light, "—but at the end of the day, a good home and a good husband are what last. Everything else is just—" she moved a hand, lightly, dispersing smoke, dismissing the everything else with the efficiency of a woman who had long since sorted it into a pile she didn't visit, "— noise."

You looked at her.

At the way she sat — straight-backed, settled, entirely at home inside this life that had been built room by room over decades, furnished with the right things in the right order, a cathedral built to a blueprint she had received and trusted and reinforced every Sunday in the actual cathedral, alongside your father and his handshakes and the community of people who all agreed on what things were for.

You thought about the corridor again. The one that stretched ahead. The doors in it — one of them already labelled, apparently, from the outside, by hands that weren't yours.

Something in you that lived in the unlit room pressed against the door with both palms.

You smiled.

It was a good smile. It had been refined over years of deployment in exactly these situations — warm enough to satisfy, tight enough at the edges to signal the conversation's preferred length, communicating fine in every available register with the convincing fluency of someone who had been saying fine since before they knew the word for what they weren't saying instead.

"Ha," you said. Which was the shape of a laugh without being one. "Yeah."

Your mother looked at you.

You picked up your bag.

"I've got homework," you said. "I'm gonna—" you gestured upward, at the ceiling, at the stairs, at the room above and the door you could close between yourself and this conversation and the corridor and the labelled door and the word in the amber-lit room and the warmth you were not thinking about and all of it, all of it — "go up."

"Dinner's at seven," she said, already returning to her papers, the subject filed, the lamp in her eyes still burning warmly for the future she'd already moved into.

"Okay," you said.

You went up the stairs.

Each step was a measured, deliberate thing, the kind of walking you did when you were aware of being watched even though you weren't, the spine straight and the pace even and the hand trailing the banister lightly, barely, the performance of composure delivered to an empty staircase because you were not, at this time, capable of switching it off.

The door of your room at the top. You put your hand on it. You opened it. You went inside and closed it behind you and stood with your back against it in the dark for a moment, the dark that was full of your things, your room, the space that was yours in a house that was otherwise a collective endeavour in a life that was otherwise a carefully maintained arrangement.

You stood in it and breathed.

The word was still there. It had followed you up the stairs with the faithful, patient persistence of something that knew you couldn't outpace it — just a word, just four letters, just something dropped in a lit room by someone who had no idea what door it would rattle when it landed.

And your hand.

The faint ghost of the sting, still there if you held your palm up in the dark and paid attention to it, a memory of a motion your body had made without consulting the rest of you, on behalf of something it hadn't named, in the direction of a girl you weren't thinking about.

Married, your mother had said. In the bright, certain voice of someone who had looked at the future and found it satisfactory.

You stood in the dark of your room.

The door was closed.

The unlit room inside you was still.

You breathed.

You did not open it.

The cafeteria was doing what it always did at lunch, which was to say: performing itself.

The noise was a living thing, a creature with no single body and a thousand mouths, conversations layering over each other in the specific acoustic chaos of two hundred people occupying the same space with varying degrees of social purpose. Trays and laughter and the scrape of chairs, the low persistent hum of the ventilation system that you had stopped hearing sometime in ninth grade, the distant percussion of someone dropping something metallic near the kitchen. It was the same as every day. The same temperature, the same smell, the same quality of light coming through the high windows in those thin, institutional strips.

You sat in the middle of it and felt none of it.

Or felt it the way you felt weather through a window — registered its existence, acknowledged its reality, remained behind the glass. You were in your seat at the centre of the table, which was the correct seat, the load-bearing one, the one the table organised itself around the way rooms organised themselves around fireplaces, and your tray was in front of you, and you were performing lunch with the automated fluency of something that had been doing this for long enough that it no longer required your actual presence to function.

Around you, the table was at full operational capacity.

"—because obviously she's going to show up in something completely tragic," Madison was saying, with the satisfied authority of someone delivering a verdict at the end of a very short trial, "because she has been making the same tragic choices since seventh grade and consistency is her brand at this point—"

"The colour blocking," Andrea said, mournfully, shaking her head the way people shook their heads at things they found aesthetically irredeemable. "The colour blocking alone—"

"Friday is going to be a field day," said Chloe, with the bright, anticipatory energy of someone who found social carnage recreational, which she did, which they all did, which was a fact about them that you had never examined too closely because it was also a fact about you, or had been, or was today at a reduced capacity because you were behind the glass and the glass was load-bearing. "Jake's parties always bring out the most inspired fashion decisions from the most unqualified people—"

"We should do a ranking," Madison said. "Like an actual list."

"I'll bring a notebook," Andrea said.

They laughed. The laugh was a shared instrument played in perfect three-part harmony, the laugh of girls who had been laughing together long enough to have developed a signature, a frequency, a sound that functioned as a closing bracket around everything they'd decided didn't count.

You smiled. You produced the right sound at the right moment. You were, to any external observer, fully present, fully participant, a note in the chord.

"Oh," Andrea said, transitioning with the smooth pivot of someone moving between two equally important subjects, reaching for her water with one hand and her phone with the other, the gesture of someone who was about to deliver information they had been waiting to deliver and was timing it for effect. "Apparently Asher's going to be there Friday."

The table's temperature didn't change.

Yours did.

Something moved through you — starting at the base of your spine and travelling upward in a cold, straight line, vertebra by vertebra, the way cold moved through metal, the way a current moved through something that hadn't consented to conducting it. Your hand tightened around your fork. A reflex, minute, invisible to anyone not specifically looking for it, which no one was.

"Yeah?" you said.

The word was hollow. A cup with nothing in it. You filled it with the right intonation, tilted it at the right angle, and it passed.

"Mm." Andrea looked at her phone, already moving on. "Heard it from Tyler, who heard it from Jake, so—" she made a gesture that communicated the reliability of that particular telephone chain and left it at that.

The table continued. Madison said something. Chloe agreed with it. The chord played on.

And you sat in the middle of it with the cold still moving through you, still travelling its straight line, and thought about Asher, and then thought about this morning, and then — because the two thoughts were connected by something taut and thin and painful as a wire pulled too tight — thought about this morning in the specific, involuntary, unwanted way that flashbacks operated: without warning, without permission, without the courtesy of a door you could choose not to open.

It had been between first and second period.

The hallway had been its usual organised flood, the tide of people moving in the predictable patterns of a school between classes, and you had been moving through it with your bag on your shoulder and your head in the space between yesterday and today, not entirely in your body yet, not fully present in the physical fact of Wednesday morning. The thinking had been soft at the edges, unfocused — the slap, and the sound of it, and his face in the amber light, and the door you'd pulled shut, and your hand in the cold air outside —

You'd heard the footsteps behind you.

Heavy. Purposeful. The specific rhythm of someone covering ground quickly and not bothering to be incidental about it. But the hallway was full of footsteps, full of purpose, full of people going places with the focused urgency of people who were already late, and you hadn't — you'd had no reason to —

The hand closed around your arm like a vice being tightened.

The world lurched. Your bag swung. Your body went backward — physically, actually backward, pulled off its forward trajectory with a force that scrambled your balance and your breath in the same motion, a hand on your arm with the closed, unyielding grip of something that had decided in advance how hard it was going to hold and was not in the business of revising that decision.

You hit the wall of the corridor beside the lockers.

Not hard. Not hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to be a thing that left a mark that wasn't hidden, but hard enough to understand the geometry of the situation immediately: your back against the cold metal of the lockers, his hand still on your arm, his face too close, too large, filling the available space between you with the particular enormity of someone standing at full height over someone who had been yanked off their axis.

Asher.

His jaw was a ledge. His eyes were doing something that had no warmth in it at all, that was all compression and heat, the look of something that had been building for seventeen hours and had been waiting for a surface to press against.

The hallway moved around you. People passing. Eyes sliding past and away in the specific pattern of a crowd that had sensed something and made the collective, instantaneous decision to be somewhere else, to see something other, to not be a witness to this particular Tuesday morning in this particular corridor.

"What was that yesterday," he said.

Not a question. A statement with a question's punctuation, the syntax of something that had already decided the answer wasn't going to be satisfactory and was asking anyway, for the form of it.

"Asher—" Your voice came out wrong. Thin. An instrument played at the wrong pressure. You hated that. You hated the sound of your own voice going thin, going small, going the direction it went when the thing you'd spent years building — the spine, the chin, the level gaze, the composure that your mother had engineered and you had maintained — started coming apart at its rivets under a specific kind of weight. "Let go—"

"I'm talking to you."

"I know, I just—" You pulled. His grip tightened. Not violently — not in a way that announced itself, not in a way that performed its intention — just with the quiet, terrible adjustment of something calibrated to meet resistance with equivalently increased force, the hydraulic logic of a thing that had no intention of releasing until it decided to. "Asher, please, you're—"

"Why did you do that." The low register. The one from yesterday, before the word, before everything — the one that was its own kind of pressure, a hand pressed flat before pushing. "You left. You hit me and you left and I want to know what that was."

"I'm sorry," you said.

It came out before you'd built it — unarchitected, unintentional, a breach in the wall, the word spilling through the gap with the undignified urgency of something under too much pressure for containment. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I did that, I'm sorry, it was— I wasn't thinking, it was just a reaction, I'm sorry, Asher, please—"

You were aware, somewhere behind the apology, of the thing happening in your body that was separate from and louder than the words: the alarm, bright and animal and pre-verbal, the one that had no language, only physics — the ancient, bone-deep calculus of something that had identified a threat and was firing every available circuit toward a single output. Get out. Get out. Get out. Your heartbeat was a fist against the inside of your sternum, too fast, arrhythmic, tripping over itself. Your vision had sharpened at the edges the way vision sharpened when the body had overridden the brain and taken the controls, when survival had stopped consulting comfort. The corridor was too bright. His hand on your arm was a world with its own weather, a small terrible climate all its own, and the people flowing past were a river you could not reach and the wall at your back was cold through your sweater and —

The burning started at your eyes without your permission.

You felt it arrive the way you felt nausea arrive — with the nauseating clarity that it was coming regardless, that the body had made a decision and the mind was late to the meeting. Your eyes filled. Not over. Not yet. But full, brimming, the structural integrity of the composure you'd built cracking along a seam you hadn't known was there, and you hated it, you hated it, hated the tears the way you hated anything that proved you were less solid than you'd constructed yourself to be.

"Please," you said again, and the word broke slightly at its centre, a hairline fracture, barely audible. "Please, I'm sorry, just— let go of my arm, please—"

A beat.

Another.

The grip released.

All at once, like a sentence ending. No gradual loosening, no negotiation, just the hand opening and withdrawing and suddenly your arm was your own again, and the cold air of the corridor was against your skin where his hand had been, and you were already moving, already turning, already finding forward with the desperate, unbeautiful urgency of something freed from a trap that understands the trap could close again.

You didn't run. You were too trained to run. But you walked the way you would have run if you'd allowed yourself, each step carrying the weight of the one that wanted to be faster, the corridor floor passing beneath you in a blur of cream linoleum, and the bathroom door at the end of the east wing was a destination and then a surface and then a thing you pushed through without stopping, and then you were inside and the door was shut—

You stood very still.

And the composure came down like a building.

You came back to the cafeteria the way you'd come back to Asher's room yesterday: in pieces, reassembling in sequence, the present returning in layers like signal clearing on a bad line. The noise first, then the light, then the table and the tray and the three girls around you who were now debating the relative merits of the DJ Jake had apparently booked, a subject that was unfolding without any requirement for your involvement and would continue to do so.

Your hand was on your arm.

You noticed this as if from a slight distance, the way you noticed things in your body when you'd been somewhere else — your fingers curled against the sleeve of your sweater, pressing gently, with the instinctive and self-soothing motion of someone pressing on a bruise to confirm it was still there. You were pressing on a bruise to confirm it was still there.

You moved your hand away.

The bruise was there regardless. You'd seen it this morning, in the bathroom after, after the stall and the composure and the putting yourself back together in the mirror with your makeup and your chin and the architecture of your face rebuilt piece by piece in the fluorescent light — you'd pushed your sleeve up and seen it there on your arm, already present, already decided, a constellation of pressure mapped in purples and greens against your skin in the shape of four fingers that had not asked permission and had left themselves behind anyway.

A souvenir. The body keeping records that you hadn't agreed to keep.

You pulled your sleeve down. Smoothed it.

"—because obviously if Tyler comes, then Jordan comes, and if Jordan comes—" Chloe was saying, with the narrative momentum of someone deep in a social map they had memorised, "— he whole thing becomes completely different, vibe-wise—"

"Different how?" Madison asked, leaning forward.

"Different better or different worse?" Andrea asked.

They had not looked at you in three minutes. This was not unusual. The table had a rhythm, and the rhythm accommodated your silences as long as your silences wore the right expression, which yours did, which was the face you'd rebuilt in the mirror, returned to service, performing at the required capacity.

Your sleeve was smooth over the bruise.

Your tray was in front of you.

And your eyes — doing the thing they did, the involuntary, low-running background scan, the search function that operated without your instruction and returned results you hadn't asked for —

moved across the cafeteria.

And found her.

Ellie was at a table on the far side of the room, her lunch tray pushed slightly to one side in the way of someone who had decided the meal was secondary, a comic book open on the table in front of her — actually open, actually being read, in a school cafeteria, with the focused and complete engagement of a person for whom the room's social architecture was genuinely background noise and not a performance of it being background noise. Her jaw was resting in her hand. Her other hand was curled around a drink she was not drinking. She'd turned a page. Her hair was doing whatever it did, which was whatever it wanted, because she was Ellie Williams and her hair had not received the memo about maintenance.

The bruise under her eye was still there.

From yesterday. From the parking lot you hadn't been in and had heard about through the specific osmosis of a school that processed information at the speed of weather. The bruise that had been the colour of a fresh storm system when you'd seen it in the bathroom this morning, that you had looked at and felt your jaw do the thing it had done, the involuntary pull of a muscle reacting to something you hadn't told it to react to.

You looked at it now, from across the cafeteria.

And thought about this morning. About the corridor. About four fingers and the shape they'd left.

You pressed your sleeve against your arm.

On the other side of the cafeteria, Ellie turned another page, completely unaware of being looked at, completely unaware of you, consuming her comic with the peaceful and entire absorption of a person who was, in this moment, exactly where they wanted to be.

Something moved in your chest.

Small. Unnameable. A frequency in a register you didn't have a word for, that lived below language in the place where the unlit room was, pressing against the door with both palms the way it had been pressing since yesterday in the amber light when a word had been said and your hand had moved before the rest of you had agreed to it.

"—Y/N, what do you think?"

You turned back to the table.

Three faces, pointed at you, waiting with the expectant patience of girls who had asked a question and assumed its answer was coming.

You smiled. The good one. Calibrated and warm at the edges and absolutely watertight.

"Definitely," you said.

They accepted this. They moved on. The chord played.

You picked up your fork.

Across the cafeteria, Ellie Williams turned another page.

You did not look again.

You looked again.

The ceiling had nothing new to offer.

Ellie had been conducting a thorough visual survey of it for the better part of an hour and could confirm, with the authority of someone who had now memorised every hairline crack and water stain and small imperfection in the plaster above her bed, that it was exactly the same ceiling it had always been. It offered no insights. It had no opinions about her situation. It simply existed above her in its flat, pale, unhelpful way, doing what ceilings did, which was nothing, which was the same thing Ellie had been doing for the last fifty-three minutes and was beginning to find philosophically untenable.

The room was Friday-night quiet. The specific quality of quiet that existed on Friday nights when you were seventeen and not going anywhere — a quiet with texture to it, a quiet that was aware of itself, that carried the distant awareness of things happening elsewhere, the low bass frequency of a world in motion beyond the walls of a room where someone was lying on their back staring at plaster.

Outside, the sky had gone the deep, committed blue of early evening, the last of the daylight pressed out thin at the horizon like something being slowly extinguished. The streetlight outside her window had come on an hour ago and was throwing its orange geometry through the gap in the curtains, a long parallelogram of amber light stretched across the floor, reaching toward the foot of her bed like something trying to get her attention.

She ignored it.

She looked at the ceiling.

The party, she thought, would be loud. This was a fact about parties that she felt was underappreciated in the general cultural discourse around them: they were loud. Wall-to-wall sound, the kind that pressed against the inside of your skull and made thinking feel like wading through wet concrete. The music would be the specific genre of music played at parties, which was music that had been engineered for maximum impact at maximum volume and minimal everything else. There would be people she didn't know doing things she didn't care about in rooms that smelled like beer and someone's idea of a good time.

She hated parties.

This was not a recent development or a complicated position. It was simple, foundational, load-bearing: she hated parties the way she hated pop quizzes and mandatory participation and the particular social algebra of rooms full of people performing versions of themselves at high velocity. She had always hated them. She had a well-developed, extensively field-tested, deeply principled objection to them. She had told Greg once, with the conviction of a woman nailing something to a church door, that she would rather spend a Friday night watching a documentary about deep-sea geology than go to a party, and she had meant it, and she still meant it.

She meant it.

She was absolutely certain she meant it.

You'd never get in anyway, loser.

Ellie closed her eyes.

The ceiling, deprived of her attention, ceased to matter. The room went dark behind her eyelids, and into the dark — with the faithful, infuriating punctuality of something that had been making this journey multiple times a day for seventy-two hours — came you.

Not dramatically. Not in any way she could build a defence against. Just: the bathroom, and the fluorescent light, and the way you'd been standing at the mirror when she'd walked in, assembled and composed and completely, transparently, heartbreakingly not fine. The pink at the rim of your eyes. The way your jaw had tightened at the sight of her bruise, a reflex, a small and involuntary mechanical thing, the body reacting before the owner could redirect it. The corner of your mouth moving toward something it decided not to become. The lip gloss, and your fingers in your hair, and the particular way you'd said there's a party to the mirror, to the wall, to the air three inches to the left of any acknowledged intention —

The party you hadn't invited her to.

The party she wasn't going to.

The party that was, she noted, checking the clock on her phone with the forensic attention of someone who had been checking it every eleven minutes for the last hour, starting in approximately two hours and forty minutes.

She put the phone face-down on the mattress.

She looked at the ceiling.

You'd never get in anyway.

The thing about that sentence — and she had turned it over so many times in the last three days that the surface was worn smooth, that she knew the weight and temperature of every word in it — the thing about that sentence was the anyway. The anyway was the tell. The anyway was the structural giveaway, the load-bearing word, the one that did not belong in the mouth of someone who genuinely didn't care. You said anyway when you were patching something. When the sentence needed reinforcement that the content alone couldn't provide. You said anyway the way you said it's fine — to close something that wasn't.

She had a thesis about this. The thesis lived alongside all the other things she kept in the basement, and it was responsible for a not-insignificant portion of her current ceiling-staring.

She sat up.

Not purposefully. Not with the decisive, forward momentum of someone who had made a decision. More like a plant moving toward light — unconscious, cellular, the body preceding the brain by several seconds and the brain arriving after to find the body already in motion and making the pragmatic choice to catch up.

She sat on the edge of the bed.

Her room sat around her in its Friday night configuration — the band posters casting their familiar shadows, the guitar against the wall with its fracture line running soft in the dim light, Gerald on the desk in his eternal posture of not having feelings about anything, which Ellie was beginning to find aspirational. The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling above her had started their slow, patient luminescence, the three of Orion's Belt burning their quiet green, small and faithful and entirely indifferent to what she was about to do.

She looked at her wardrobe.

The wardrobe looked back.

"I hate parties," she told it.

The wardrobe had no response to this.

She stood up and opened it.

The outfit took seven minutes. This was not because she agonised over it — she was constitutionally incapable of agonising over clothing in the way she understood some people to be constitutionally incapable of parallel parking, a fundamental incompatibility between the self and the task — but because she had to find the specific jeans, the good ones, the ones that weren't ripped at the knee for reasons of deliberate aesthetics but were ripped because she'd actually fallen off her board in them and they'd become ripped jeans through lived experience rather than retail decision, which was philosophically important to her. She found them under a hoodie she'd forgotten she owned. She pulled them on. She looked at the band shirts on the hanger, ran her eyes along them, selected the Hole shirt on the basis that it was clean and had a structural integrity she trusted.

She looked at herself in the mirror on the back of the door.

Same Ellie. Bruise under the eye now in its second act, moved from the deep purple-red of the first two days into a yellowish, fading thing, a painting that had decided to dissolve. Hair doing what it did. Green eyes that were currently performing the specific expression of someone who had made a decision they were not entirely prepared to defend.

She picked up her jacket from the floor.

She found her shoes.

She put her hand on the door of her room and stood there for a moment — one breath, two — in the threshold between the room and the hallway, between the ceiling and the ceiling's alternative.

You'd never get in anyway.

"Watch me," she said, to nothing, to the room, to the three stars above her making their patient, useless green light.

She opened the door.

The hallway was dark.

The house at this hour was a different architecture from the daytime version — smaller somehow, the shadows thickening the walls, the familiar surfaces reassembled by low light into something that required more careful navigation. From downstairs came the sound of the television, the low blue murmur of it, a news anchor's voice cycling through the cadence of whatever disaster the world was processing tonight with the same unhurried professionalism it processed all of them. The laugh track of an old sitcom cutting across it. The specific acoustic mix of a television keeping someone company in the way television kept people company when the house was otherwise quiet.

Ellie moved down the hallway with the practised silence of someone who had done this before. Not often. Enough. She knew which floorboard outside her room caught if you stepped on it too close to the left edge and distributed her weight accordingly, a calculation performed without conscious thought, the body's memory being more reliable than the brain's in certain areas. She knew the third stair from the bottom had a voice, and she skipped it. She knew the front door needed to be lifted slightly in its frame while the handle turned, or it dragged against the weather strip and announced itself to the whole house.

She knew these things the way she knew the texture of the park's concrete, the weight of her board, the precise angle of a kick turn in the dark.

At the bottom of the stairs, she paused.

The living room was an amber-and-blue tableau: the television screen painting the room in shifting light, the couch a landscape, and on it — in the posture of a man who had been watching television with firm intention and had been defeated by the Friday evening in the specific, gradual way that Friday evenings defeated people — her dad.

Joel was asleep in the way he always fell asleep in front of the TV, which was emphatically and without embarrassment, his head tilted back at an angle that suggested a conversation between him and gravity that gravity had been winning since approximately nine-thirty. One hand still held the remote in the loose, residual grip of someone who had meant to keep watching and had been overruled by their own biology. His chest rose and fell with the deep, even rhythm of someone deep in it, far from the surface, not coming up anytime soon.

On the TV, someone was explaining something about interest rates. Joel did not appear to have opinions about this.

Ellie stood very still in the doorway between the hallway and the living room.

She looked at him. The way the television light moved across his face — blue to amber to blue — softening him the way sleep softened everyone, dismantling the daytime version and leaving something quieter, something that reminded her of photographs from when she was small. The lines of him. The familiar geography of a face she had known her entire life.

She felt a brief and specific kind of tenderness that she would absolutely not be examining right now.

She looked away.

She moved through the room on the outer edge, close to the wall, where the floorboards had better manners. She picked up her board from where it rested against the wall by the door with the careful, two-handed reverence of a person handling something that mattered. She tucked it under her arm.

The front door: lifted in the frame, handle turned, eased open with the millimetre-by-millimetre patience of someone for whom this was not their first mission and who had the spatial memory of every groan and catch in the mechanism. Cold air arrived through the widening gap, the night pressing in at the edges, carrying the smell of late October and concrete and somewhere, distantly, someone's woodfire.

She stepped through.

She eased the door shut behind her.

The night received her.

The street at this hour was a different country from the daytime version, re-lit by the amber logic of streetlights, familiar surfaces made strange and interesting by the removal of the sun's context, the way darkness was always an editor — cutting the extraneous, leaving the essential, making the ordinary into something you could look at longer without knowing why.

Ellie stood on the front step for a moment.

The air was cold and clean in her lungs, a cold that had the particular quality of October air that had been waiting all day and was now getting on with it. The street stretched in both directions, the amber lights in their patient rows, the pavement shining slightly from rain that had passed through earlier in the afternoon and left the world marginally more reflective.

She set her board down.

The wheels met the pavement with their familiar greeting — that first rolling sound, the small percussion of urethane on wet concrete, a note she could have identified blind, in a crowd, at any hour. Her foot found the deck. Her other foot pushed off, once, and then she was moving, the cold air filling in around her, the streetlights pulling her forward one by one into their circles of amber and releasing her into the dark between them.

She was going to a party.

She hated parties.

She was going anyway.

The board hummed beneath her, faithful and fast, and the night opened up ahead like something that had been waiting to be entered, and the party was twenty minutes away, and you were probably already there, and the bruise under Ellie's eye had faded to yellow at the edges but still announced itself when the light hit it right, and she pushed off again and let the momentum take her, let the cold air drag at her hair and the familiar physics of forward motion do what it always did, which was make the thinking simpler, which was make everything that lived in the basement feel momentarily, mercifully far away.

She skated.

The city moved around her, indifferent and luminous and vast.

Somewhere ahead of her, a party was beginning.

Somewhere in it, probably, you were standing in the light the way you always stood in the light, like it had come specifically for you, like it had been waiting.

Ellie pushed off harder.

The wheels sang their low, continuous note against the wet pavement, and the streetlights came and went above her like a countdown, and the night was cold and wide and completely uninterested in her odds.

She went anyway.

"—are you serious right now—"

Your voice had teeth in it. The good kind, the kind that had been sharpened on something real, that weren't performing their edges but had earned them, and they were out, all of them, because the alternative was doing something with your hands that you'd already done once this week and lightning didn't strike the same place twice, or it did, but you were trying to be better than that, you were actively in the process of trying to be better than that, and it was going poorly.

"Y/N, I'm telling you, it was nothing—"

"Nothing," you said, and the word in your mouth was a coal, a bright burning thing, "—she was practically in your lap—"

"We were just talking—"

"With her hand on your chest—"

"She's just—" Asher spread his hands, the universal gesture of a man buying time while his brain caught up with the situation, "—she's just like that, she's just friendly, you're being—"

"Don't," you said, and the word was a wall, a sudden vertical thing dropped between his sentence and its destination, "—do not tell me what I'm being."

The party churned around you, indifferent and enormous and entirely disinterested in the specific geography of your disaster. Jake Brown's house was at capacity in the specific way of a Friday night party at capacity — every room a different weather system, the music a living creature occupying every available cubic inch of air, the bass a second heartbeat running under everything, slightly too fast and slightly wrong. People were arranged in the configurations that parties produced: clusters at the walls, bodies on the makeshift dancefloor in the living room, figures on the stairs treating the staircase as stadium seating for the event of everyone else. The smell of beer and something sweet and underneath it the humid, close smell of too many people in too many rooms.

You had wanted to be here tonight.

You had needed to be here — needed the noise and the crowd and the specific analgesic quality of a party, which was its ability to replace the inside of your head with the outside of everyone else's, to drown the thinking in decibels until it was temporarily, mercifully inaudible. An escape. An exit hatch from the week that had been sitting on your chest since Monday morning like something with mass.

Instead: this.

Instead: Asher across the room, twenty minutes ago, his hand at the small of a girl's back, her fingers spread against his chest, the two of them arranged in the specific geometry of people who had decided something about the available space between them. Twenty minutes ago. The sight of it landing in your chest not with the shattering, dramatic impact of something unprecedented but with the dull, leaden thud of something that had, somewhere below the level of language, been anticipated.

He was still talking. The words were coming out in the specific formation of words deployed defensively, arranged to cover as much ground as possible with maximum velocity, the verbal equivalent of someone throwing their coat over a puddle and asking you to pretend the puddle wasn't there. It was nothing, you're reading into it, you're paranoid, you've been weird all week, I don't know what's gotten into you—

His hand reached for your waist.

The touch landed and your body's response was immediate and architectural — a recoil, not dramatic, not violent, but total, a full-system rejection, every part of you that his hand made contact with contracting away from it the way a plant contracted from the wrong kind of light.

You shoved him.

Both hands, flat against his chest, one sharp motion, and the drink in your other hand went with it — a wide, amber arc that described a perfect parabola through the air and resolved itself against his shirt with a sound that was deeply satisfying and would cost you something later and you did not currently care.

"Y/N—"

You turned.

The crowd that had assembled itself around the two of you— hungry-eyed, phone-adjacent, the specific alert stillness of people who had scented something interesting and positioned themselves accordingly, turning the radius of your disaster into an informal amphitheatre — registered your turn and readjusted, a ripple moving through the watching bodies. Whispers ran between them like electricity between contacts, quick and bright and fed by what they'd seen, and you felt the weight of them the way you always felt being watched, which was completely and in every direction, the awareness of eyes a second skin.

You had approximately ninety seconds before this became a story.

You were already moving.

The crowd thinned near the front door — people having migrated inward toward the heat and the noise and the action, the entrance hall thinning to stragglers who hadn't committed to the party yet or had committed and were now reconsidering. You put your shoulder into the space between bodies and pressed forward, moving with the fixed, forward-facing momentum of someone who had identified a destination and was not taking questions about it.

The door was ahead. The night was on the other side of it. You needed to be on the other side of it.

You were almost —

The collision happened without warning.

A body, coming from the outside as you were going toward it, the door opening inward at the exact moment of your arrival, and the impact was solid and immediate — shoulder to shoulder, the jolt of two trajectories meeting without negotiation, your bag lurching on your shoulder. You stumbled a step. Your mouth opened, already loading the full payload of the last forty-five minutes behind the first word, ready to discharge it at whoever had just —

You looked up.

The word didn't come.

The loading stopped.

The party kept going behind you, the music still its thumping, wall-to-wall creature, the crowd still whispering, Asher somewhere behind you still wearing his drink — and in front of you, framed by the open doorway with the cold of the night at her back and the party's light falling across her face from the front, stood Ellie Williams.

Something happened to you.

It was small. It was instantaneous. It was the kind of thing that happened in the body faster than the mind could run interference — a loosening, somewhere in the chest, a single beat of something that was not any of the things you were currently made of, the knot of the last forty-five minutes releasing one thread before you caught it and pulled it back, before the architecture reassembled and the walls went up and everything that had briefly, accidentally, involuntarily softened in you re-hardened into something you could stand behind.

Your eyes moved over her. Once. Just once — down and up, a half-second inventory, the jacket and the jeans and the band shirt and the bruise under her eye that had faded to a watercolour version of itself and was still there, still present, still making its editorial comments. The skateboard tucked under her arm. The cold air in her hair.

Something. Something. You nailed it shut.

Your eyes went flat.

"Move," you said.

Ellie moved. Stepped sideways without thinking, her body compliant before her brain had processed the instruction, and she watched you — you felt her watching you, felt it the specific way you always felt her watching you, like a frequency you'd been tuned to against your will — as you stepped past her and through the door and out into the cold of the Friday night.

The door swung shut behind you and the party became muffled, the music reduced to its bass skeleton, the human noise compressed to something shapeless and distant. The cold met you immediately and completely, the air wrapping itself around you like a correction, and you stood on the front step and breathed it in and felt the knot in your chest pull itself tight again and then tighter.

The street was quiet. Residential quiet, the Friday-night version, the one where lights were on in houses and the pavement was wet from the earlier rain and the streetlights were doing their amber, patient thing up and down the road in both directions. A normal street on a normal night, indifferent to the event happening in the house behind you and equally indifferent to whatever was happening in the cavity of your chest.

You walked to the kerb.

You sat down on it.

You put one hand over your face.

The darkness behind your palm was small and close and yours, and you sat in it for a moment — just a moment, just the length of a few breaths, just long enough to let the sound of the party exist at a distance and the cold work its way through your jacket and the knot in your chest do whatever it was going to do — and then you heard footsteps.

Slow. Uncertain. The specific acoustic quality of someone approaching in stages, someone whose feet had committed to the direction before the rest of them had caught up with the decision. They stopped very close to you and then produced nothing — no voice, no preamble — just the fact of themselves, present and silent and slightly awkward, the way people were awkward when they had followed an impulse and arrived at its destination and found no script waiting for them there.

You moved your hand.

Ellie was standing beside you.

She was not looking at you. She was looking at the road, at the specific empty rectangle of wet pavement that lay before the two of you, with the focused, studied attention of someone who found the road very interesting and had not just jogged to catch up with her bully who was sitting on a kerb with her hand over her face outside a party.

You looked at her.

She did not look at you.

You reached into your bag.

The cigarettes were at the bottom, under your phone and your lip gloss and the folded receipt from the coffee you'd bought yesterday morning and hadn't thrown away for reasons you weren't going to examine. You found the pack by touch and drew it out, and then the lighter — old, slightly dented at one corner, the metal worn at the edges from years of hands that weren't yours, lifted from your father's jacket pocket sometime in October with the casual, practised ease of someone who had done it before, who had learned the skill from necessity rather than intention.

You put the cigarette between your lips.

You lit it.

And the whole time — the whole practised, unhurried sequence of it — you kept your eyes on Ellie. Level. Unblinking. The gaze of someone who knew they were being watched and was declining to accommodate it, watching instead, measuring, conducting an assessment that lived somewhere between judgement and something less nameable, something that hadn't been given a room yet and was standing in the hallway.

Ellie was looking at the road like it was the most important road she'd ever encountered.

The silence between you was a weather system. It had pressure and temperature and the specific quality of something that was building toward precipitation.

"You look lost," you said.

Your voice came out flat. Default register. The kind of flat that was a choice.

Ellie's jaw shifted. She was deciding something. You watched her decide it. "I live here," she said.

"You live on Jake Brown's street."

"I live on a street," she said. "All streets connect. I followed the grid."

"You followed a girl you don't like to a party you weren't invited to."

She looked at you then. Finally. Her green eyes did the thing they always did when they arrived on your face, which was the thing you didn't have a name for and had been filing under irrelevant for six months, which was to land — not to scan or assess or perform looking, but to simply arrive, and stay, with an attention that had no performance in it.

"You said I couldn't get in," she said.

"And yet."

"And yet," she agreed.

The cigarette smoke drifted between you, thin and pale against the dark, dispersing into the cold air with the leisurely indifference of something that had no agenda. The party murmured behind the walls of Jake's house, bass-heavy and shapeless. The street was quiet in both directions.

Ellie lowered herself to the kerb beside you.

Not gracefully. With the particular, angular, slightly grudging motion of a tall person sitting on a low surface that they have assessed and found structurally inadequate. She sat with her knees up and her elbows on them, her board resting against her legs, staring at the road again, and the two of you occupied the kerb in the specific silence of people who have been placed in each other's vicinity by a series of events and are now negotiating what that means without addressing it directly.

You squinted at her.

She didn't look.

You took a drag.

"Your form is terrible," Ellie said finally, still not looking at you.

"My—"

"You hold it too long," she said, with the authority of someone who had opinions about everything and was distributing them freely. "Between drags. You're just letting it burn."

"I didn't realise you were an expert."

"I'm observant."

"You're annoying," you said.

"Also true," Ellie said, and the corner of her mouth moved, just fractionally, in the direction of something it decided not to become, and the movement was infuriating in the specific way that things about Ellie Williams were frequently infuriating, which was that you couldn't look at them directly without something happening in your peripheral vision.

You held the cigarette out.

You didn't know why.

Or you did know why, which was worse, which was the thing you were not currently in the business of knowing.

Ellie looked at the cigarette. Looked at you. Conducted a brief, visible negotiation with herself. Then she took it, with two fingers, and brought it to her lips with the careful, slightly too-deliberate motion of someone who had done this fewer times than they were attempting to project, and drew on it.

The cough was immediate and total. A full-body event, the kind that brought her forward over her knees, one hand pressed to her mouth, the kind of cough that had clearly been waiting for its moment and had chosen this one with no particular mercy.

You stared at her.

"Observant," you said.

"Shut up," she rasped, clearing her throat with the dignity of someone who had none available.

"You've never smoked before."

"I've smoked before."

"When."

"Before," she said, with great conviction. "Recently. Multiple times."

You took the cigarette back. "You nearly coughed out an organ."

"That was a choice," she said. "I was choosing to cough."

"You chose to nearly die."

"Recreationally," she said. "I do it for fun."

Something moved in your chest. You pressed it flat. "You're an idiot," you said.

"Known quantity," she agreed.

The smoke drifted. The street sat in its wet amber quiet. Somewhere in the house behind you, the bass changed pattern, shifted into something else, and a ripple of reaction moved through the party muffled by the walls, a hundred people responding to the same beat in the same room and none of it reaching you out here except as vibration, as feeling without context.

You passed the cigarette back. She took it with more caution this time, drew on it with the restrained ambition of someone who had recalibrated their expectations, managed it without disaster.

"So," Ellie said.

"So," you said.

"Do you actually smoke or is this also recreational."

You looked at the cigarette. At the ember at its tip, burning its small, reliable burn, consuming itself from the lit end toward your fingers with the patient, incremental progress of something that knew exactly where it was going. "I don't know," you said, and it came out more honest than you'd meant it to, flatter and more real, a sentence that had skipped the usual editing process and arrived unreviewed.

Ellie was looking at you.

"I needed something," you said. "An outlet." The word tasted insufficient. Like the label on a container that was holding something the label wasn't designed for. "Something to do with—" you moved your hand, vaguely, a gesture in the direction of everything.

"Your hands," Ellie said.

You looked at her.

She wasn't being unkind. She said it the way she said things when she wasn't performing her intelligence, just operating on it — simple and direct, the observation landing without a frame around it.

"Yeah," you said.

She nodded. Looked at the road again. "You don't seem like the type," she said.

"What type do I seem like."

"I don't know," she said. "The type that doesn't need outlets. The type that's already—" she paused, and in the pause she was choosing something, and you watched her choose it, "—already contained. Like everything's already in the right place."

The laugh that came out of you was small and involuntary and had no warmth in it — not the intercepted almost-laugh from the bathroom, not the compressed, managed kind you'd been dispatching all week, but something rawer, something that had come up from below the architecture and escaped while the door was open. A real sound, briefly and accidentally real, there and then gone.

Ellie looked at you. Something in her expression moved.

"Yeah," you said again, quieter. "Well."

You passed the cigarette.

She took it. The ember glowed orange between you, a small bright point in the dark, and the smoke rose in a thin, pale column and dispersed, and the street was very quiet, and the party behind you was a low, distant planet, and the two of you sat on the kerb in the specific gravity of a moment that had been accumulating weight for longer than either of you had admitted to and was now exerting the pressure of all that unacknowledged mass.

Ellie's shoulder was close to yours.

Not touching. But close in the way that close had started to feel like its own kind of contact — the heat of another person across a narrow strip of cold air, the body's awareness of proximity running its quiet, unauthorised computations. The gap between you was a held breath. It was a word that hadn't been said yet. It was the pause before the last note of something and the note itself, compressed together, indistinguishable.

She was looking at the road.

You were looking at her.

You were looking at the line of her jaw in the amber light, the way the streetlight caught the edge of her cheekbone above the fading bruise, the bruise that had been put there by hands you knew and the thought of which sent something through you that your body registered before your mind got a vote. Her profile in the dark. The slight furrow between her brows that was there even when she wasn't thinking about anything difficult, a permanent notation, like her face was always in the middle of working something out.

She turned.

Found you looking.

The space between you did something. Not a contraction — something more total than that. More like an erasure. Like the distance had been a word on a page and someone had drawn a line through it, slow and deliberate and irreversible, and now there was just the line, and the two of you on either side of it, close enough that the cold air between you was no longer cold.

Her eyes dropped.

For a fraction of a second — a unit of time so small it barely qualified as duration, so small it might have been imagined, so small it could have been retracted and denied and filed as nothing — her eyes dropped to your mouth.

Came back up.

And you saw it. You saw it the way you saw the pink tip of her ear, the way you saw her jaw tighten at the sight of your bruise — the things she didn't know she was showing because they happened below the level of the performance she wasn't running. And the thing was: you weren't running yours either.

At some point in the last twenty minutes — the kerb, the cold, the cigarette, the cough that had dismantled what remained of the atmosphere — you had set it down. The assembly. The spine and the chin and the level gaze and the careful, constant, vigilant curation of what your face was allowed to do. It was down. It was somewhere on the pavement behind you, and you were here without it, without any of it, just you on a wet kerb in the dark next to Ellie Williams and six months of something you'd been calling nothing pressing its full weight against the door of the room you didn't open.

The door opened.

You closed the distance.

Your mouth found hers and it was — it was soft, devastatingly, disarmingly soft, soft in the way of something that had not been built for performance but for feeling, a contact so different from anything you'd expected from a girl made of sharp edges and quick words and a skateboard and a bruise that it knocked something loose in your chest, something structural, something that had been holding a shape it was no longer willing to hold. Not a collision. Not a question. A statement, low and certain, pressed from your mouth into hers like a word you'd been holding between your teeth for so long you'd forgotten it was there.

She made a sound.

Small. Almost nothing. The sound of something that had been waiting with the patience of a person who had given up on the thing arriving and was now confronted with its arrival and had no prepared response. It moved through you like a current finding a wire.

You pressed closer.

Your hand came up — not directed, not decided, just the body following the logic of the moment with more honesty than you'd allowed it in months — and found the collar of her jacket, curling into the fabric, not pulling, just holding, just anchoring yourself to the physical fact of her the way you held onto things when the ground was uncertain. And the ground was extremely uncertain. The ground had ceased to be a reliable concept. The ground was the wet kerb and the amber light and Ellie Williams and the warmth of her mouth against yours in the cold October night and nothing else was currently registering on any available instrument.

Her hands were at her sides.

You could feel this — feel the absence of them, the specific and somehow devastating quality of hands that didn't know what to do with themselves, that had arrived somewhere without a map and were standing very still, fingers slightly open at her thighs, waiting for instruction that wasn't coming, existing in the helpless, unguarded way of something that had been ambushed by a feeling and had not yet developed a strategy for it. The most unarchitected thing about her. The realest thing. The thing that undid you in a way that the pressure of her mouth alone had not, that found a gap in whatever was left of your defences and walked through it without even meaning to.

You kissed her like you were answering something.

Like the question had been open for six months in the space between every cruelty you'd dispatched and every almost-laugh you'd swallowed and every time her eyes had landed on your face and stayed and you'd looked away first — like all of it had been circling this, like this was the centre of gravity that everything had been orbiting, and you had finally, helplessly, irrevocably fallen into it.

She kissed you back.

Tentatively at first — then not. Then with the careful, wondering quality of someone finding their footing on new ground and discovering it would hold their weight, her mouth moving against yours with a warmth that built the way fires built, from the inside out, from the small caught point of heat outward in every direction, and her hands — her hands finally moved, one of them rising from her side with the slow, uncertain quality of something that had been granted permission it hadn't expected and wasn't sure how to use, hovering at your arm, not quite landing, the ghost of a touch that couldn't commit to itself.

The cigarette had long since gone out.

The party was not a real place.

The street had stopped being a street.

There was just this — just the kerb and the amber light and her mouth and your hand in her collar and the six months of gravity finally having its way, finally collecting what the universe had apparently decided it was owed, and you let it, you let it, and that was the most terrifying thing of all, that you were not fighting it, that you had not fought it, that some part of you had put down your arms before you'd even reached the door.

You pulled back.

Not far. A breath's worth. An inch of cold air between your mouths, and your eyes opened and hers were already open, had been open, looking at you from the distance of almost-nothing with an expression you had never seen on her face before and that you would spend a long time afterwards failing to fully describe — stripped of every layer of performance and deflection and quick-witted armour, just Ellie, just her face in the light with the bruise under her eye and her collar still held in your fist and her hands finally, helplessly settled at your waist like they'd been navigating toward it the whole time and had only just arrived.

The night sat around you.

The streetlight held you in its amber circle like something precious and fragile and not yet named.

The bass from the party thudded through the walls of the house behind you, felt more than heard, the rhythm of it like a second pulse running under everything.

Your hand was still in her collar.

Her hands were still at your waist.

Neither of you moved.

The cold air between your mouths was the thinnest possible barrier — barely a boundary, barely a distinction, barely enough to constitute the space between what had happened and what was still happening in every register except the literal one. And in every one of those registers, it had not stopped. In every one of those registers, it was still going, reverberating outward in every direction from the point of impact like a bell struck once in an empty room, the sound of it filling every corner, bouncing off every wall, refusing to diminish.

Something had shifted. In the ground beneath you. In the architecture of the room you didn't open, whose door was now not just open but off its hinges, lying somewhere in the dark, and the light from inside it was falling into the hallway, and you were standing in it, and you could not step back into the dark because the dark no longer had you.

You looked at her.

She looked at you.

The night looked at both of you and said nothing.

What have you done.

perm taglist :: @cinnamongirlsev , @m0on1ight1 , @pain-in-the-ashe , @nebulamor , @liztreez , @les4elliewilliams , @andieprincessofpower , @letmebeurbaby , @ph4rmacyfa1rie , @kmhbygss . . . comment (here) to be added <3

The University of Wyoming was a fine choice for those that didn’t exactly have the means to go to an out of state school, but still wanted to do something other than settle right down to start a family straight out of high school. Plus, the University of Wyoming was just far enough away from her – well, their – hometown of Jackson to provide the feeling of somewhat spreading their wings. The drive from Jackson to Laramie was about five hours and forty minutes on a good day. 

Lovely Laramie, deemed to be one of the top left-leaning areas in Wyoming, all things considered. Which was cool. So far, no one had attempted to smite Ellie for being a lesbian. At least, not that she was aware of. 

She was in her fourth and final year now, and yeah, Ellie’s life really hadn’t changed much from high school. She was still heavily invested in the same comic series. She still occasionally got high and played video games with Jesse. She still put on Jurassic Park whenever her insomnia was giving her a particularly rough time. She still carried a tattered journal around with her – which had more sketches than words within the pages. 

Her amount of free time these days, however, was little to none. Ellie was just months away from having a B.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Hopefully, that goddamn piece of paper would be worth the exhaustion and ever-present dark circles. 

If she could just get through these final two semesters. Which, at this rate, seemed solely dependent on whether or not she could find this fucking textbook. 

Ellie had been wandering around the goddamn motherfucking university bookstore aisles for probably over twenty minutes now, with zero goddamn motherfucking luck. Her patience was rapidly wearing thin, along with her will to live, and any motivation to succeed. She could tell due to the way in which her inner monologue was getting ugly, her thoughts almost embarrassingly cynical.  

Even so, Ellie kept pacing back and forth throughout aisles that she had already looked in, as though the textbook that she needed would suddenly appear if only she just wanted it bad enough. 

But it wasn’t a want. It was a need, because the first round of exams were coming up fast, and Ellie wouldn’t be able to pass the damn class without the required book in question. 

Ellie was just a little at fault for her current predicament. But really, she could push the blame onto the fact that her professor was a total dick. He seemed to be around Joel’s age, maybe a little older, but the difference in personality was stark. He probably got off on the fact that he taught at a collegiate level. Ellie had only known him for a few weeks so far, but she was kinda getting the idea that he was sexist, too. He had made some comment on the second day of classes about men being better at math, from life experience. He had followed it with a quip about women’s shopping habits, finding Ellie’s gaze and giving her a pointed look. And a wink. As if she looked like the type to spend her weekends blowing her money at the mall, or whatever. 

So when the guy had gone on and on about a textbook that he had written and gotten published the previous year, Ellie had tuned him out. It was available for purchase at the university bookstore, blah blah blah. They only carried a certain amount of copies each semester, yadda yadda yadda. 

And yeah, Ellie was never too diligent about her textbook ordering. It usually took place after Jesse got on her ass about it – Mr. Political Science Major whatever – but even so, Ellie had gotten lucky by never really needing to break the bank too terribly due to textbooks. 

Plus, up until this point, all of her professors had actually been really fucking cool. A little crazy, sometimes, but cool. The Department of Physics and Astronomy was a cool one, with people that were genuinely interesting. Most of the time, her professors provided pages instead of making students spend money on overpriced books. Or, Ellie was frequently able to get lucky, finding online files of scanned books instead of actually having to purchase them. Score. 

Until this particular class, with this particular professor. When Ellie had found out that he was making his own textbook a required material for the class, she had – admittedly – held off on purchasing it purely out of spite. 

Because seriously. There were no other ways to access the reading aside from spending the fucking money at the university bookstore. Renting a textbook wasn’t even an option. He had opted out of allowing them to do that. It was obviously just a greedy tactic to put more money in his pockets. So yeah – Ellie had held off. As a result, she had completely and utterly screwed herself over. 

Because she needed the textbook now. Desperately. And not a single copy could be found. 

“Oh, fuck me,” Ellie mumbled under her breath. Her Converse squeaked against the floor as she came to an abrupt stop, checking over the shelf once more. Nothing. Not there. 

She skimmed the section, then backtracked and looked over it again more thoroughly, as though it would suddenly spawn if she kept searching. Nothing. Limited copies, out of stock. She was shit out of luck. 

“Shit. Shit.” 

Maybe the book was in the next aisle over. Except it wasn’t, because Ellie had already checked three times. But maybe if she checked again.  

Ellie rounded the corner, but halted almost immediately once more. This time, her quick stop was due to the fact that the aisle was no longer empty. Someone was standing there now, lingering, looking over the books on display. 

Ellie’s agitation manifested physically, hands moving to grip the strap of the worn bag that was slung over her shoulder. She didn’t have class today, and therefore didn’t really need to carry her backpack with her, but it almost felt awkward to walk around without it. By this point, the faded bag adorned with space pins was practically an extension of her being. She tried not to huff audibly, stepping closer to where she needed to be in order to scan the shelves once again. Even so, Ellie remained carefully spaced away from the other person – a girl with an armful of books and a canvas tote bag with a floral print. Ellie spared a glance in her direction, but only to observe the books in hand. They appeared to be regular, fiction books. Not textbooks. What a stark contrast it was – someone leisurely shopping for books to read for fun, while Ellie paced the store and felt as though she was genuinely fighting for her life. 

With a slight, involuntary shake of her head, Ellie focused her eyes back where they needed to be, attempting to zero in on something that wasn’t even there. 

The other person started to slowly make her way down the aisle. Ellie took a step closer to the shelf – the sort of awkward dance you do when orbiting the same space as another, while trying not to intersect. Ellie’s gaze remained firmly fixed upon the area she was searching, even when she felt the air shift as the girl moved around her. 

“Oh, I love your shirt.” 

It took Ellie maybe a second or two to register the fact that the words were for her, despite being the only other person in the aisle. The sentence had been spoken as though the words left the other girl’s lips like a surprise – like she had been caught off guard by the design printed on Ellie’s shirt, unable to be restrained from making a comment. 

Instinctively, Ellie’s head dropped to take in her own appearance. She couldn’t even remember what clothes she had grabbed from her floor and tugged on this morning – jeans, an old T-shirt – and briefly wondered if she was being made fun of, or something. 

But no, the words spoken sounded genuine, and the smile that the girl was wearing when Ellie finally looked at her face looked genuine, too. Shy, almost, but genuine. 

“Oh. Uh, thanks,” Ellie replied, giving a slight nod to punctuate the interaction. 

Her nod was met with a mirrored action, the other girl still a casual distance away from Ellie. Close enough for conversation, far enough to be polite. 

“I love Radiohead,” the girl – you – enthused, tone soft. 

For some reason, Ellie glanced down at her shirt again, and then back at your face. “Yeah?” 

Ellie wasn’t sure why she continued to feel so caught off guard. Maybe she just wouldn’t expect someone like you to compliment her on a Radiohead shirt that was too old, too worn. You – with a floral bag, pink shimmer dusted over your eyelids, and… 

Ellie’s eyes darted down – yes, glittery nails – before flickering back to your face. She cataloged you quickly, and then instantly felt guilty for it. She was generalizing, for some reason, and she didn’t know why. If she was being judgy, it was because she was already in a bad mood. Anyone could listen to any type of music. And Radiohead wasn’t even anything crazy. It was incredibly normal. It wasn’t even niche. 

No. She just wasn’t used to being randomly complimented by strangers, especially when she was stressed out of her mind. 

“Yeah,” you replied with a nod, smile growing along with your confidence in the conversation. “Like, so much. One of my favorites by far. All of my friends can’t stand their music, I swear.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve even met someone in real life that actually– It’s a cool shirt.” 

Like an automatic reaction, the corners of Ellie’s lips twitched. Talking about music she could do, though she wasn’t typically met with much enthusiasm about the topic from those in her life. 

To anyone in passing, the quick exchange of words might’ve sounded ridiculous. Silly, even – or dorky – considering the fact that both girls were speaking as though they had discovered some unknown, underground thing. And yet, for some reason, it felt like they had.  “Yeah? Thanks,” Ellie muttered, fingers flexing around the strap of her bag. “They’re cool. Uh, good, I mean. Really good. I like their music a lot.” 

“Me too. So did Bowie. I mean, did you know that David Bowie was a fan of Radiohead, too?” 

“No shit?” 

“No shit,” you confirmed, adjusting your tote bag. “It’s… yeah. Cool shirt.” You smiled like you were saying goodbye, and then you turned and left the aisle. Just like that. A fast interaction, and though you moved on quickly, there was a lingering sweet scent left behind as evidence of your presence. 

Ellie blinked, her gaze lingering on the empty spot momentarily. 

It hadn’t been a bad interaction. It was probably one of the more successful random encounters with a stranger that Ellie has had. Normally, she might’ve rolled the interaction around in her mind, overthinking and picking away at it until it inevitably made her cringe in the middle of the night But it had been brief, and Ellie had no choice but to focus on the task at hand – which was feeling more and more bleak by the second. 

Eyes back on the shelf, Ellie knew that she was screwed. 

There were maybe a hundred things that she would rather do than go to the help desk and bother a student worker, but Ellie was out of opinions, and out of luck. 

Ellie trudged her way through the bookstore, a dull ache beginning to form behind her eyes. She waited in line for over fifteen minutes. When she was finally up, the humiliation ritual of inquiring about the textbook at the desk ensued.

The guy behind the desk – clicking away at the store computer – was chewing his gum almost aggressively. He talked with the accent of a frat boy, and would probably much rather be in some rundown, overgrown, shitty lawn playing beer pong at a darty than answering Ellie’s question right now. She didn’t even blame him. She didn’t want to be there, either. 

“Uhh… What’s the department, again? Anthropo–?” 

“Astronomy,” Ellie clarified, and she wasn’t sure if she managed to hold back an eyeroll or not. “Department of Physics and Astronomy. Should be under–” 

“Ah, yup. I see it. It’s right here.” The guy chomped on his gum, looking at Ellie almost expectantly. 

“So it’s here?” Ellie questioned, though she was desperately trying not to get her hopes up. She was bad at that, in retrospect. She always told herself not to get her hopes up, while they were already taking off. Up, up, and away. 

“Yeah,” the guy replied, his focus moving back to the computer screen. “Well, no.” 

Ellie’s stomach plummeted. 

“It’s not physically in the store,” the student employee clarified, leaning casually against the desk. “But we can order more copies. They supply–” 

“Yeah, yeah, order it,” Ellie interrupted, already fumbling for her wallet. She absolutely hated this. She hated her professor, she hated wasting her free day, and she hated that she was about to pay for a textbook that had one too many zeroes tacked onto the price. 

The guy chewed his gum. Tapped his finger on the wireless mouse to click, the sound almost making Ellie wince. “So, if we order it for you… it should arrive here in about… three to four weeks–” 

“Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking–” 

“Sorry, hi, I’m sorry. What book are you looking for? The theories reviewed…?” 

Ellie’s head turned at the addition of a third voice in the conversation, a voice that her mind only registered as familiar due to the earlier interaction. 

It was you. Again. 

Ellie didn’t even know what expression her face decided to make, but apparently it was one that caused you to scramble for words. 

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to listen. I was just waiting in line, and I heard, and I recognized the book title. I’m pretty sure– No, I know that I have that book–” 

“No, it’s–” Ellie’s attempt at a reply was futile.

 You took a step closer, physically inserting yourself into the situation. “You can have that copy, seriously. It’s not like I have a purpose for it.” 

Ellie blinked, nearly dumbfounded. “You– Seriously?” 

“Yeah, oh my god. If you want it, it’s yours–” 

“Jesus, you’re– I can pay for it, or return it, or both–” 

“No, no, please.” You waved your hand, pairing it with a shake of your head. “Seriously, you’d be doing me a favor by taking it off of my hands. It’s not a big deal, I promise.” 

“You’re sure?” Ellie questioned, her eyebrows pulling together. What the hell was your deal, anyway? Complimenting a random stranger and then swooping in to save her ass like it was nothing?

“I’m positive,” you affirmed. “I work at a bookstore downtown. We do, like, book trades and stuff? We take used textbooks and everything, so. I promise. You’d be doing me a favor, you know? Less inventory for me.” You gave a halfhearted shrug, your words sounding more confident than your expression looked. 

Ellie thought it over – quickly – but it was the employee guy’s loud, incessant gum chomping that caused Ellie’s feet to move right out of the line. “If you’re really sure,” Ellie muttered, her gaze flickering over your features. “You’d kinda be saving my ass.” 

“Dude, no. I promise, it’s fine. I obviously don’t have it with me, but I can get it to you. Um…” Your sentence came to a pause, and Ellie’s brain soon caught up. For some reason, though, she stayed silent. 

“Do you have…? I could give you my number, or social media, or– You know? So I can drop the book off to…?” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Phone number works,” Ellie replied, reaching to pry her phone out of her back pocket. “But, uh… I can pay you for the textbook. I don't want you to just, like, give it to me. I was gonna pay for it anyway, so–” 

“I want to ‘just give it to you,’” you interjected, your lips tugging into a smile that looked way too genuine to be aimed at a stranger. Ellie’s gaze dropped to it, before she met your eyes once more. You were kinda–

“Just take it, seriously. I can even get it to you later today, if you want. Or tomorrow, if that works better? Just let me know, we can meet up somewhere easy.” By this point, you were typing your number into Ellie’s phone as a new contact. You were holding your books against your chest with one arm, both hands free to type. Your grip on the device was a careful one, your fingers tapping almost gingerly. Ellie didn’t know why she noticed that detail, but she did.

“Okay. Okay, yeah, that works,” Ellie muttered, her eyes dropping to take in the sight of your information, which was now displayed upon her phone screen. She read your name, and then read it again. It suited you, Ellie thought. But then she nearly shook her head, because what did she know? “I mean, tomorrow works… if that’s cool with you?” 

You smiled again – like you had been doing a lot during this quick interaction – and gave an enthusiastic nod. “Absolutely. Just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.” 

When you smiled, it was almost as though your entire face smiled, too. Which… was sort of the point of smiling. Like, when someone’s face shifts, obviously their entire– Whatever, whatever. Still. Your cheeks were just… And your eyes sort of did this thing… 

Weird. Fucking weird. Ellie would’ve scoffed at her own thoughts, but she didn’t want you to think that she was scoffing at you. She also didn’t normally overthink that sort of thing. Your smile was, like… cool, or whatever. 

“Yeah, okay.” Ellie’s phone had returned to its place in her pocket, and her lips held the flicker of a smile. “I’ll, uh, text you?” 

“Yeah. Please do.” 

Ellie left the university bookstore before you did, as you appeared to still be browsing. She was leaving empty-handed, but her mind was occupied and her phone was now the holder of new information. Your name, and your number. 

Ellie’s bag was comfortable against her back, strangely grounding. She had glanced over her shoulder to catch one last look before pushing through the exit doors, and you had been flipping through some book – still balancing all the others like it was second nature. 

Yeah, please do. 

That’s what you had said when responding to Ellie saying that she would text you. Yeah, please do. 

Please do. Please do. Please do. 

Stop. 

It had been a totally normal, quick exchange. An interaction born purely from your own politeness, it seemed. It didn’t matter that you made a lot of eye contact with Ellie. Or that you kept smiling in that… way. Or that you smelled good. Or that you had said, yeah, please do. Of course you would say that. How else would you give Ellie the textbook if she didn’t text you? 

Dumbass. Idiot. Dumbass. 

But a lot of other people in the line seemed to be having textbook trouble, too. Clearly you had been nearby if you had heard what was going down. You didn’t offer to give anyone else a textbook. But maybe you didn’t have any of those textbooks. It was all entirely coincidental, surely. Ellie was not going to be one of those desperate fucking creeps that mistook kindness for interest. Absolutely not. It didn’t matter that you were actually sort of really pret– 

Weirdo. Weird. Don’t be fucking weird. 

Ellie’s feet carried her down the campus path, the walk completely familiar to her at this point in her college career. As she walked, she mentally cursed and scolded, telling herself not to overthink anything. 

The issue with Ellie, however, was that when she was at the point of actively having to tell herself not to overthink something… it was already too late.

・｡ﾟ𝜗ৎ

gotcha. wasn’t sure if i should save your contact as ‘radiohead girl’ or ‘textbook girl.’ i’ll just go ahead and save it as ellie. 

That was the first text that you had sent to Ellie’s phone after she texted you to tell you her name, and to make a plan to meet up so that she could grab the textbook from you. 

It had ended up being the next day, as it was previously decided. The simplest option was to just meet up outside of the university bookstore, so that’s what you had done. 

You smiled a lot again. And made a lot of eye contact again. And smelled good, again. And when you had handed Ellie the textbook, your fingers had brushed for maybe a fraction of a nanosecond. 

Ellie had made some stupid, mumbled, self-deprecating joke about the whole thing – she couldn’t even remember what she had said, there was no way it had actually been clever – and you had laughed. Not a pity laugh, or an awkward laugh, but a genuine laugh. Like your genuine smile, and your genuine words. And you really did smell good. 

Nothing to read into, Ellie kept telling herself as she continued to scroll through the text thread. Because, yeah, there was an entire string of messages. It didn’t stop at the details to briefly meet, or the texted thank you’s after the departure. Nope. It had been a handful of days now, and the two of you had exchanged… more texts than Ellie had expected, honestly. 

“Do I even want to know what you’re looking at?” Dina questioned dryly, flopping down onto her couch next to Ellie. 

Ellie instinctively shifted, tilting her phone screen away from Dina. Obviously, that caught the dark haired girl’s attention. 

“Um, hold on,” Dina said, her eyebrows raising. “What was that? That little phone angling thing that you just did?” 

Ellie paused, her gaze flickering away from her phone just so she could roll her eyes. “Ugh, oh my god. Dee, seriously, don’t start–” 

“If you are still texting that girl and you haven’t told me about it, I might seriously kill you,” Dina deadpanned, her leg pressing against Ellie’s as she shifted closer. 

Ellie shot Dina a glare, but it was nowhere near intimidating. “You wanna start going through my phone bill, too?” 

“Yeah, actually,” Dina shot back, now wearing an easy grin. “Let me see what Joel is paying for.” 

Ellie rolled her eyes again. “Ugh. You’re the worst. Like actually.” 

Dina ignored Ellie’s words, pressing closer against her side and attempting to catch a glance at the dimmed screen. “Why won’t you even let me see? Come on, let me take a peek. There’s no way your flirting can actually be that bad–” 

“I’m not flirting, holy shit,” Ellie protested instantly, her finger jabbing at the button to lock her phone. The screen went dark, and Ellie’s walls went up. “I’m not flirting. Why would I be– We’re just talking. It’s not… We just like the same music.” 

Dina’s eyes narrowed, her expression a mixture of suspicion and amusement. “Right. Just like how two years ago, you were just hanging out with Cat when you would go over to her apartment and let her draw on your arms and make out with you.” 

That made Ellie’s eyes widen, her fair complexion instantly tinting red. “Jesus Christ. Shut the fuck up. What is your problem?” 

“I’m just saying–” 

“Yeah? Well just say nothing. Jesus. And don’t… don’t bring up Cat,” Ellie muttered, shooting Dina a look. “I thought you were finally done with all the shit talking.” 

Dina furrowed her eyebrows, a playful smile flickering on her lips. “Was that shit talking?” she mused, returning Ellie’s look with one of her own. “I think that was just the play of events, honestly. I thought you were over her.” 

“I am. Obviously." Ellie scoffed, sinking down more into Dina’s couch. The worn gray fabric was so familiar at this point, Ellie’s body nearly molded into it. “And I was before she even graduated. It was never going to work long term, we already knew that.” Ellie’s words were coming out begrudgingly, her eyes fixed on her lap. “It’s just… fucking irrelevant, okay? This isn’t that. And she isn’t Cat, so–” 

“But she’s a someone, then?” Dina interrupted, her gaze searching Ellie’s expression almost expectantly. 

Ellie blinked. “Well, yeah, she’s a fucking person–” 

“Smartass. You know what I mean. Come on, indulge me a little. You never do this.” 

Sometimes, Ellie rolls her eyes so much that a headache starts to form. “I never do what?” 

“This,” Dina enthused, gesturing to Ellie’s phone. “Texting like you’re on a time limit. Tapping at your screen to check notifications. Smiling when you get a–” 

“That is not what I’m–” 

“Is she flirting?” 

At Dina’s question, Ellie paused with her lips parted. Because, admittedly, she didn’t know. And she was trying not to think about it. Trying not to even consider the possibility, really – because if she considered the possibility that you might potentially be flirting with her… Ellie would have to consider the fact that she might possibly somewhat sort of slightly want you to maybe possibly be flirting with her. And she wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t. 

“I don’t– No. Probably not,” Ellie mumbled, her words coming out with a huff as she tried to shrug Dina away from her side. 

“Probably not?” Dina echoed, clearly trying to swallow down a laugh. “What do you mean, probably not? You don’t even know?” 

Ellie dropped her head against the back of the couch. “I’m, like, pretty positive that she’s not. Why would she even– How do you even tell? No, Dina, she’s not flirting.” Ellie closed her eyes, silently willing the conversation topic away. She should ask Dina about Jesse. See how that would make the other girl feel. 

“You can’t tell me no while simultaneously telling me that you don’t even know how to tell,” Dina pointed out, tucking her legs underneath her. Her gaze remained fixed upon Ellie’s face, though Ellie’s eyes stayed firmly shut. “Let me see your phone.” 

“Fuck off.” 

“Ellie. Why do you, like, act like it’s the end of the world if you get feelings for someone? You’ve been solo since Cat. If you have a pretty girl texting your phone, then by all means–” 

“I don’t have feelings for anyone, Dina, holy shit. She gave me a textbook,” Ellie replied. Because she did not have feelings for a girl that she had only known for a few days. Did not have feelings for a girl that she’s only seen in person twice. So what if she’s been texting you a little more than she originally anticipated? So what if you’ve already followed each other on Spotify? So what if she found herself sketching the curve of your smile in her journal, before feeling stupid and ripping the page out, promptly throwing it away? So what if her embarrassment spiked not even thirty seconds after that, so she retreated back to the trash, pulled the paper out to rip it up, and then threw it away again? 

“You didn’t deny the fact that she’s pretty, though,” Dina tested carefully, her tone soft yet knowing at the same time. 

For a beat, Ellie was silent. 

“She’s not flirting,” Ellie mumbled. 

 “Prove it,” Dina replied. 

Ellie cracked her eyes open, squinting at her friend. “What?” 

Dina was already staring at Ellie, her eyebrows raised. “Prove it. Let me see. And if the messages don’t seem flirty, I’ll leave you alone about it. For real.” 

Ellie and Dina stared at each other, both wearing different expressions. The silence that filled the air indicated that Ellie was trying to come up with some other rebuttal, but had nothing. All she did was breathe out, and Dina’s expression transformed into one of triumph. She was making grabby hands for Ellie’s phone before Ellie could even muster up the energy to protest. 

Ellie unlocked her phone – the passcode being the number of her favorite Savage Starlight issue – and dumped it into Dina’s waiting hands. The texts had already been pulled up, which prompted a satisfied hum from Dina. Ellie’s expression twisted, same as her stomach. She didn’t like… this. What she didn’t like even more, though, was the small seed of curiosity that had been planted inside of her from Dina’s stupid words. 

“‘I’m glad we met,’” Dina read off, and Ellie quickly recognized the words as something that you had sent her. 

“That’s normal,” Ellie grumbled, looking down at her thighs. “That’s being nice. She’s, like, friendly, or whatever.” 

“Uh huh,” Dina replied, unimpressed. “Friendly. What about… ‘I took my break at work early to listen to the song you sent…’ You’re sending her songs?” 

“We like the same music,” Ellie defended once again, her cheeks rapidly growing warmer. Her gaze darted to Dina, and then to her phone – currently held captive – before she focused her attention back down to her lap. 

Dina shook her head, continuing to scroll. “‘You’re actually like the funniest person I’ve ever met–’ Ellie. Ellie.” 

“What?” Ellie snapped defensively, cheeks flaming as she met Dina’s eyes. “It’s– She’s just–” 

“She’s flirting with you. There’s no fucking way that she’s not. I know flirting. This? Right here? It’s that.” 

“Yeah, you sure do,” Ellie mumbled dryly, too on guard to hold back the subtle dig. “She’s not, okay? Leave it alone. Give my fucking phone back.” 

You were not flirting. Ellie was sure of that. And even if you were? She didn’t exactly know what that would mean. Ellie didn’t do this – the thing that she seemingly kept being unable to define. Ellie did… familiarity. Ellie did accidentally falling for a friend, because her brain seemed to often take feelings of comfort, safety, familiarity and turn it into something else. 

 Yeah, you were pretty. Ellie could admit that. But that didn’t have to mean anything. Ellie didn’t spend extra time thinking about random girls just because they had a pretty smile. Ellie didn’t get crushes on random girls based on random interactions. And this was not a crush. It wasn’t. Dina was just being Dina, sticking her nose into things and acting like she knew best, as always. She did frequently have a knack for making Ellie second-guess herself. 

Once Ellie’s phone was returned back into her grasp, she managed to get Dina to change conversation topics. She was in the clear – temporarily – until half a joint later, when your name once again became the topic of conversation. 

An orange glow peeked through the blinds, Dina’s apartment growing more dim as the sun went down. Ellie exhaled, blowing smoke towards the ceiling with her head tilted back. “What if she is flirting?” 

Dina snorted, reaching to grab the joint that was hanging precariously between Ellie’s fingers. “I already told you that she was. It’s pretty obvious. Just… flirt back.”

“Flirt back,” Ellie echoed, staring at the ceiling. She wanted to go back to her own apartment soon – back to her posters, lights, and glowing stars. She was more relaxed, but her mind was far from clear. “You say it like it’s so… fucking simple.” 

“Isn’t it? It’s just texting, Ellie. She’s interested, I’m telling you. Just give it a shot, or something. If it backfires, just stop texting her. Easy.” 

It was dangerous, really, the tiny flutter of optimism that seemed to exist within Ellie over the next couple of days. Dina’s advice didn’t go ignored, as much as Ellie wished it had. So… Ellie leaned into the idea of texting you. She already had been texting you, but she was reading it a little differently now. Maybe your compliments and fast replies really did mean something. Maybe Ellie wanted it to mean something. 

It was too perfect, really. The text conversations were effortless. You seemed to click, getting each other’s humor and finding an easy flow of banter. Ellie had even mentioned the idea of seeing each other in person again – to actually hang out – and you had responded and said that you would love to. 

It was never supposed to be anything – just a stranger being kind and throwing Ellie a lifeline by giving her a textbook. Now, though, Ellie was scrambling for her phone when it vibrated – because she no longer kept her phone completely silenced – and abandoning her essay in favor of checking your reply. About three minutes ago, during a stream of back and forth messages, Ellie had asked if Friday would work for the two of you to finally, actually hang out. 

Two weeks of consistent texting paired with some mental shoving from Dina, and Ellie was actually feeling pretty good. She unlocked her phone easily, the mere action of muscle memory now. 

i can’t do friday ): i’m so sorry ugh. weekends are kinda tricky for me because that’s when i go to visit my boyfriend. 

Wait. 

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. 

Boyfriend. Boyfriend? 

Ellie rubbed her eyes. Reread the message. Rubbed her eyes again, a little harder that time. Reread the message. 

The words weren’t changing, though. Boyfriend. 

“What the fuck,” Ellie mumbled, eyes strained from her lack of blinking as she stared down at her phone screen. She scrubbed her hand over her face, her stomach twisting uncomfortably. 

Boyfriend? What the fuck were you talking about? 

Ellie stared at the message as another minute went by, as though she didn’t even know what the word boyfriend meant. Or what the concept of that was. You. And. A. Boyfriend? You had one of those? You weren’t–?

Ellie felt sick. She was going to kill Dina. 

Ellie:

ah, gotcha. no worries. another time, then, whatever works. is your boyfriend far?

Ellie quickly learned, much to her displeasure, about James. James, your boyfriend of six – yes, count them, fucking six – goddamn years. You were locked in with James for the long haul. 

James was currently going to school in Colorado, a little over three hours away. Therefore, your weekend visits to Colorado to visit your boyfriend. 

After that reveal, Ellie had to pretend as though her entire world didn’t tilt on its axis. She had snapped at Dina for putting the whole flirting idea in her head in the first place, while simultaneously trying to act as though it were no big deal. Dina had grimaced in response, offering a shrug and a quick laugh. 

Oops, Dina had said. Seemed flirty to me. 

Right. Totally no big deal. Ellie was fine – barely even thought about it, honestly – and it was no big deal. 

She kept texting you. She couldn’t just ghost you after learning about the existence of your boyfriend. It was the start of a new friendship, and Ellie would be a shitty person if she dipped just because you apparently weren’t a lesbian with a knack for flirting with her in a way that made her want to be flirted with. 

You were her friend. She was your friend. You were friends. Ellie did not have feelings for you. She waved it off to Dina every single time it was brought up. There were no feelings. Only friendship feelings. Platonic, normal, mundane feelings. Ellie could be friends with you, easy. It was chill, Ellie was chill, the whole situation was chill.

・｡ﾟ𝜗ৎ

March.

“Okay, I definitely accidentally got too drunk,” you announced, steps uncoordinated. Ellie’s gaze was already trained on you, watching as you slumped down onto the couch next to her. It was Dina’s couch, and you were currently the only two occupying it. At your words, one corner of Ellie’s mouth slightly tugged upwards. 

Dina was having a party. She always called it that, regardless of whether she had invited three people, or twenty. She was on good terms with Jesse as of late, but the uptick in social events didn’t falter regardless of her relationship status. 

Currently, though, the kitchen was the spot to be, because that’s where the alcohol was. Everyone seemed to be lingering in there, as Ellie could hear the loud talking and shrieks of laughter. 

“Why are you sitting alone?” you spoke again – a valid question. “You’re, like, Dina and Jesse’s third musketeer. You should be in there, doing all of the socializing, and stuff.” 

Ellie’s gaze flicked over your facial features as you spoke, a faint smile twitching on her lips due to the way in which you were slightly slurring your words. You were definitely drunk, though your glassy eyes had already given it away. At your question, however, Ellie was quick to shake her head. 

She didn’t love the idea of packing herself into Dina’s tiny kitchen, filled with people that she had heard the names of, but had never seen the faces for until now. 

“Oh, brother.” Ellie exhaled, doing this fake exasperation thing that she always did when you were intoxicated and she was trying to pretend as though she didn’t find you amusing. “Could say the same to you. You keep wandering in here like that–” 

“Shut up, it’s different,” you insisted, lifting your plastic cup to your lips. Jesse had brought some multicolored pack, and you had chosen a pink one. “I keep coming in here because you’re in here. I don’t know anyone except for Jesse and Dina, and that’s only because of you. I’m, like, a pity invite. It’s weird if I’m in there with everyone without you.” 

“Yeah, a pity invite.” Ellie snorted, rolling her eyes. “You’re not a pity invite. I wanted you to come, anyway.” 

Ellie’s gaze dropped, watching as you tapped the side of your cup with your painted nails. 

“Don’t say that,” you muttered, lips twisting in an effort to hide a smile. You did that a lot, Ellie noticed. Or you bit the inside of your cheek. Ellie recognized it, because she had the same habit. 

Your volume had gone a little quieter, though, just after a few words. You were looking at your drink, not at Ellie. You were thinking about something, and Ellie had a pretty good guess about what that something was. 

“You could’ve gone to see him, you know,” Ellie pointed out, her voice lowering to match your own. 

James. You could’ve gone to see James. 

All throughout college, Ellie had learned, you spent practically every single weekend with James. Within the last few months, however, those visits had dropped to maybe… every other weekend. Recently, you hadn’t gone to see him at all. This was now the fourth weekend in a row that you had decided to stay in town to make plans with Ellie, instead. Not that Ellie would complain, because she wouldn’t. 

She liked having you around, liked hanging out with you. Ellie could tell that the whole ordeal was placing a strain on you, though, and she tried not to feel guilty. It’s not like it was her fault. She wasn’t trying to pull you apart from your boyfriend. You kept initiating plans with her. Ellie wasn’t doing anything. 

When you immediately released a sharp breath at Ellie’s words, she nearly startled.  

“Oh my god,” you huffed, flicking the plastic in your hand. “Am I not allowed to stay in town without it being a thing? Am I not allowed to have friends?” 

“That’s… No, that’s not what I–” Ellie cut herself off, feeling slightly alarmed due to the fact that the annoyance in your tone was genuine, and not just playful. She shifted the bottle of beer that she had been holding to her opposite hand, already trying to decipher if there was an actual issue, or if you had just gotten the wrong kind of drunk. “I was just saying. You know you don’t… have to drop things with him every week to hang out with me, or something.” 

You seemed stubborn with the way that you continued to stare down at the liquid in your cup. “I know that. But I’ve been with him for– You know? That’s years of, like, only hanging out with him. I can have a friend. Seriously, it’s not a big deal. I don’t know why people keep acting like it is.” 

Years. Years that you had been with James, and years that you had gone without having a lot of actual friends, admittedly. Your hometown friends never really kept in touch. You were friendly enough with the people that you worked with or had classes with, but nothing really clicked. You mostly just hung out with James. And his friends. Until Ellie. 

You had told her, after several months of friendship, that she was genuinely the best friend that you had ever had. 

Best friend. Honestly, Ellie considered you to be that for her, too. Something just worked. And that was the real fucking kicker. 

Now, Ellie was familiar with you. There was that aspect of familiarity and comfort within your relationship – your friendship. 

She tried. Ellie had really, really tried. But that little flutter of feeling that she had felt towards you after the two of you had just met felt so fucking small and insignificant to how she felt about you now. She knew you now, and she noticed things about you. Things that she never meant to notice. 

Genuinely, after finding out that you had a boyfriend, Ellie was fine to just develop a friendship with you. And for a bit, she had been good at it. But you just… kind of got her in a way that felt natural, and safe. 

And yeah, Ellie had started noticing things. Like the smile that you always did when trying to not laugh at one of her jokes. How your perfume always lingered when you left her apartment. Your side profile when you were seated passenger in Ellie’s truck. How your laughter just… filled spaces. She just… noticed things. And she felt things. Things that she honestly hated herself for feeling. Leave it to Ellie to fall for a straight girl in a committed relationship, like some sort of pathetic cliche. 

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Ellie mumbled, her fingers picking at the label on her beer. “Nobody is saying that it’s a big deal, just that–” 

“No, like, I’m actually sick of it. I’m allowed to have a fucking life, aren’t I? Or does my identity always have to be attached to my boyfriend?” 

Ellie watched as you rolled your eyes and took a sip of your drink, her eyebrows drawn together. She couldn’t decipher if you were annoyed with her – which would be a first – or if you were annoyed with your boyfriend. Or maybe something, or someone else. It was a bit confusing, and you weren’t usually confusing. 

Ellie had heard you rant about a million different topics, but she had never been the reason behind one of your foul moods. Ever. The idea that she could potentially be impacting your mood right now, making you anything less than happy, made her feel rapidly defensive. 

“Jesus. I didn’t mean to… fucking hit a nerve,” Ellie mumbled, uncomfortably shifting a bit on the couch. 

Her response was obviously not well received, because it prompted a glare from you. 

“It’s not a nerve. I’m just… Whatever.” You huffed, rolling your eyes once more. You pulled your legs closer to your body, your physical retreat a representation of your mental one. “It’s stupid. Just, like, nevermind.” Your words were spoken in resignation, mumbled under your breath. 

Ellie didn’t know how the hell to proceed. Providing comfort, especially socially, was not one of her strong suits. At least… not anymore. Maybe when she was younger, with less inhibitions. But now? Ellie felt like she was fumbling in the dark. Especially because you were never like this with her. 

And yeah, the idea of you being annoyed with her made Ellie’s stomach twist uncomfortably. Then she felt weirdly guilty. She hadn’t meant to upset you, if that’s what it had been. Her free hand twitched against her thigh as she tried to think of how to salvage this interaction, her beer neglected. 

“Hey– I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry,” Ellie muttered, still watching you out of the corner of her eye as she finally sipped on her drink. It was warm, unpleasant going down. 

Your exposure seemed to falter. 

“No, it’s–” You cut yourself off as you forced out an exhale, shaking your head. You rolled your shoulders back, finally meeting Ellie’s gaze. “No, it’s not you. I’m sorry. I’m not, like, annoyed with you. I’m just being a bitch… which is apparently a common theme, lately.” 

Ellie’s eyes followed your hand as you rubbed at your cheek, her own fingers twitching again at the sight. Your makeup had faded a little, and your skin was probably warm from being intoxicated. Ellie let out a breath, eyebrows still furrowed. 

She was still confused, and still felt a little lost on how to respond. Regardless, she knew you well enough to recognize that you were trying to get a grip on your attitude. It made her feel bad, for some reason. 

Your clarification that you weren’t annoyed with her caused Ellie’s form to relax a little bit against the couch. It made her heart do some stupid thing, and the relief that she felt was annoying. 

“You’re not… being bitchy,” Ellie muttered. She didn’t really want to press you about it, but she felt as though she was missing some serious context. As Ellie spoke her next words, she tried to sound casual. “What do you mean, though? Lately?” 

When Ellie voiced her question, your chin dropped, attention going back to your pink cup. 

“Nothing. It’s just, like, weird. I don’t know. Because I used to… like, not have much of a social life? I mean, aside from James. But now I have a social life and I’ve been having fun and I have friends–” You almost raised your cup to take a drink, but the action was halted. Instead, your eyes found Ellie’s face once again. “And, like, I don’t know. I feel weird about it, I guess? Like… I’m not attached to his hip anymore, and I sorta feel guilty. Even my parents think I’m like, fucking up my priorities, or whatever. Like, saying shit about how I should be focusing on building my future now instead of dedicating so much time to my friends… or whatever.”  

Ellie tried to ignore the way in which her heart did another stupid thing at the indication that she had a part to play when it came to you having a social life and having fun. Even though you were drunk, you were speaking carefully, trying to articulate your thoughts while simultaneously trying to play it off. Ellie’s eyes were glued to you, her fingers picking idly at the label on her beer bottle. 

“Well… that’s bullshit,” Ellie replied, her words paired with a slight wrinkle of her nose. 

“Yeah? You think so?” You perked up, crossing your legs as you drank once more. The tension was slowly seeping out of your form, your expression shifting to one of a more curious nature.

“Yeah, I think so,” Ellie replied softly, her tone matching yours. She did think it was bullshit.

 “I swear, my parents seem like they want to slap a scarlet letter on me just because I’m, like, forming my own identity away from James. Like I’m doing something wrong. I swear, they think he’s too good for me. Maybe they’re right, I don’t know. They probably are. But it’s fucking annoying.” 

“Aren’t your parents just… old-fashioned, or some shit?” Ellie attempted, trying to find the right words to say. Ellie didn’t think that you were doing anything wrong. Or that anyone could be too good for you. That was her opinion as your friend. Because that’s what she was – your friend. She was listening to you and offering support as a friend. 

But her thoughts were annoying lately. 

“Yeah, kinda.” You hummed, carefully tipping your cup to swirl the liquid inside of it. “It’s weird with them. Sometimes they seem so traditional, but other times, they don’t. They’re so unpredictable, I swear. I never know what reaction I’m going to get with them.”

Ellie was trying to sound nonchalant, so she brought her beer to her lips before she spoke again. “You’re not… doing anything wrong, you know? You’re not a bad person.” 

“I could be a bad person,” you countered, your tone still soft. “Maybe I’m just good at hiding it. Maybe I only show you the best parts.” 

Ellie swallowed thickly, watching as you tilted your head to the side. It was hard to look away when your gaze lingered on her. It felt hypnotizing, or something, the way in which you always seemed like you were studying her. Even now, with the obvious signs of intoxication painting your features, it seemed as though you knew something that Ellie had yet to figure out. 

“I know you,” Ellie replied, one of her eyebrows raised. “You’re not a bad person.” 

“But I have been sort of a shitty girlfriend lately,” you mumbled, attention shifting to your nail polish. 

“You’re not a shitty girlfriend,” Ellie found herself saying. Her mind was fighting with itself, frustratingly so. She really had to think before she spoke. 

“How would you know?” You retorted, your words laced with amusement as your gaze returned to Ellie. You traced your finger along the rim of your cup, the last lingering bit of tension escaping you. 

Your sentence wasn’t a jab whatsoever. Logically, Ellie knew that. You had no idea about her feelings. You were simply referring to the fact that Ellie didn’t know James, didn’t know your relationship, didn’t know the version of you that was a girlfriend. 

It shouldn’t have stung. You obviously didn’t intend it to – you didn’t know. But still, it did. 

A scoff left Ellie’s lips, her gaze drifting to the label that she was working on peeling away from the glass bottle. She attempted to swallow down the lump that was steadily growing in her throat. “Because I know you.” 

Ellie did know you. She wouldn’t outwardly admit it, but Ellie studied you – whether she intended to or not. She knew what made you tick. She knew what made you laugh. She knew what made you cry. She knew how you could work yourself into a spiral, and then talk yourself out of it. She knew the way that you thought, and the tiny things that you did. She knew your mannerisms, vocal and physical. 

She knew you. 

She knew that you weren’t a bad person. She knew that you weren’t a shitty girlfriend. Even so, she couldn’t help but wonder what you were like around James. In private. During the late hours. Couldn’t help but wonder who you were as a person when you were alone with him. Ellie’s fingers squeezed the beer bottle just once, briefly. 

“For less than a year,” you pointed out dryly, but you were smiling now. 

Ellie hated herself for the way in which your reply made her feel. Yeah, you hadn’t even known each other for a full year yet. Meanwhile, you had several years with James. The two weren’t comparable. Ellie shouldn’t fucking be comparing them, it was gross of her. And yet–

Ellie didn’t understand her thoughts about you. She didn’t get it. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking like this, not about you. She knew it was wrong, and she repeated it to herself probably a million times already. But every time she looked at you, every mental scolding just faded to the background, and all that was left was you. It was kind of gross. Stupid. 

Ellie was pretty sure that she was steadily developing heart palpitations throughout the course of your friendship so far. 

“I don’t mean that in, like, a dismissive way,” you clarified, and Ellie knew that she had gone quiet for a few seconds too long. “About saying that we’ve been friends for less than a year? I’m not undermining our friendship at all. I’m just… being self-deprecating, I guess. Like if you knew me for longer, maybe you’d–” 

“I doubt it.” Ellie winced at how hoarse she sounded. She already knew what you were going to say, though, and she already knew what she thought. She took a drink, the alcohol doing very little to help the dryness of her mouth. 

She was a little embarrassed about her apparent prolonged silence, too. That was the problem with Ellie – when she got stuck in her head, it was difficult to get herself out. You were always good at pulling her out – whether or not you intended to be. 

You rolled your eyes at Ellie’s response – it had probably been a little too fucking earnest, or something – but your smile captivated most of Ellie’s attention. You sipped from your cup, wiping at your lips after. “Well, good. I’ll hold you to it. Like, not disliking me, I mean. As we keep being friends, and stuff.” 

Your words came out awkwardly. Drunk. Ellie didn’t have it in her to make fun of you right now. It felt dumb, struggling this much on Dina’s couch. Still, Ellie really didn’t want to go and join everyone else. 

Hold you to liking her? Ellie didn’t need to be held to that. She already liked you. Maybe a bit too much. 

“But I have potentially been a shitty girlfriend lately,” you continued, clearly still having something on your chest. “And you saying that I could’ve gone to visit him instead of being here wasn’t exactly helping.” You didn’t glare at Ellie that time, you just gave her a pointed look. 

You were circling back, trying to sound lighthearted about it. Either you were concerned about smoothing over any tension that could still be lingering, or you really did have something that you wanted to talk about. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Ellie rushed, sounding a tad breathless. Jesus, she really could not get a handle on her motherfucking tone. 

“I know, I know.” You shifted, your shoe bumping against Ellie’s. “You just didn’t want me to feel like I had to come to the party to hang out with you. See? I’m drunk, but I can still comprehend things properly.” 

Ellie probably would’ve smiled at your comment, but she felt as though she may be having some sort of mental breakdown. Interactions with you were supposed to be easy. They were, usually. It was her own brain that was fucking things up for some reason. 

“Yeah, I know you’re drunk,” Ellie muttered, though not unkindly. 

“Just saying. I know how you meant it, don’t worry. I know I’m venting a lot. But I’m venting to you, not about you. Trust me, Ellie, you’re never the problem.” Your words were sincere, your tone soft. Ellie knew that you said it because you meant it, and therefore, it held some weight. It probably meant a little more to Ellie than it really should’ve, though. 

“You’re always venting to me,” Ellie attempted, trying to pull herself out of whatever weirdass mood she was in. 

“Oh, don’t be a dick.” Despite your words, your lips tugged into a smile that was born out of amusement. “I know that I do, okay? It’s… Actually, you’re annoying. Look, sometimes writing in a journal is too much work. My hand starts to cramp.” 

Ellie’s eyes roamed over your features as she watched your expression shift. Once your playful insult registered, Ellie managed to morph her chuckle into a scoff. “I’m annoying? You’re the one that calls me at, like, three in the fucking morning just to talk.”  

“Do not use that against me,” you warned, still lighthearted. “Besides. That was… like, literally only twice. Shut up.” You quickly took a sip of your drink, Ellie catching the scent of liquor and something sweet. 

Ellie’s lips twitched. “Not twice,” she corrected. She leaned more comfortably against the couch, taking a longer swig from her beer. Still, the bottle was mostly full. “More like three times.” 

Not that Ellie had minded. 

You tried to swallow it down with your alcohol, but a laugh escaped you anyway. “Oh, actually shut up. You answered, so. Each time, might I add. That means you’re not allowed to complain.” 

“Hey. You’re the one that called.” Ellie’s free hand shifted to fiddle with her sleeve, tugging it better into place. 

Your gaze was glued to her for a moment, a faint smile ghosting over your lips. “Yeah, I did,” you replied quietly. 

You took another sip – well, downed your drink this time, really – before you spoke again. 

“He really is perfect,” you muttered, gingerly wiping a droplet of alcohol away from the rim of your cup. “James, I mean. Like. He’s perfect.” 

Ellie blinked at the abrupt shift in conversation. She wasn’t supposed to be bothered by your words, so her jaw worked as she made an effort to keep her expression neutral. “Huh?” 

Your teeth sank into your bottom lip, and Ellie watched as you chewed – probably anxiously. You must’ve been doing that a lot lately, because Ellie could see the faint indents where your lipstick would usually be perfectly smooth over your lips, and the tiny tears of ripped skin. She felt freakish for noticing. 

“Just… the way that he is, you know? Kind. Driven. How much he takes care of me. His morals. He’s, like, so respectful… and just, like, genuine,” you murmured, still swiping your finger over the rim of your cup. There was no reason for it, but Ellie knew that you tended to fidget, just like she did. “He offered to help me with my student loans, you know. With the money that he’s getting from his dad’s company. I said no, obviously. I could never say yes to something like that. But… still. The way he offered, you know? Like it was the easiest thing in the world. He’s just… yeah.” 

Ellie swallowed, still trying to get rid of that lump. Unfortunately, the beer wasn’t helping. 

She knew all of this. Ellie knew that he was respectful, the apparent epitome of chivalry. She knew that he called himself a feminist. She knew that he was socially aware, and took politics seriously. She knew that he was a very devoted guy. Devoted to you. 

Ellie drank, trying to keep her thoughts in check. 

“He’s a good guy,” she replied, words slightly muffed as they had been mumbled over the lip of the beer bottle. “Good boyfriend,” Ellie added, the words tasting more bitter than the alcohol on her tongue. 

“He really is. He really is.” 

Surely he actually was, like you said. Ellie didn’t really know James, despite being your friend for several months now. They had never even been properly introduced. She had seen him from a distance – in passing, sometimes. Like a transactional here’s your girl, when you would be leaving Ellie to go see James. Sometimes it was the opposite. 

You never complained about him much, either – which was one of the reasons why Ellie had been so thrown by the conversation tonight. If you had any issues within your relationship, Ellie had no clue about them. There had been only one time that you had called Ellie crying about some fight that you had with James, and one time only. One time in seven months wasn’t too bad, especially compared to whatever the hell Jesse and Dina always had going on. 

So Ellie figured your relationship must be pretty perfect, all things considered. Untouchable. Solid. 

During the times that she had seen him in passing, Ellie had watched him. Of course she had. She observed the way in which you never had to open a single door for yourself. The way in which he always reached to take your purse from you, always offering to carry it no matter how girly it was. He would wave to Ellie, even, if he was picking you up from her apartment. 

Ellie almost would’ve been annoyed by how good he seemed– by how perfect the relationship appeared to be – if it wasn’t for the fact that Ellie truly thought that you deserved it. In Ellie’s eyes, you deserved the world. It just felt unfair that James was the one that got to give it to you. 

Sometimes, she wished that she could just hate the fucking guy. 

“Yeah,” Ellie agreed quietly. She had straightened her posture a bit, beer resting firmly against her thigh. Feeling on guard was seemingly a common theme for whenever Ellie was sat on Dina’s couch. 

“God, he’s actually perfect. He’s so good.” You nearly folded in on yourself, your elbows pressing into your knees as you dropped your head into one of your hands, though your drink still remained carefully held in your other. “I’m such an asshole. Maybe I should call him, or something.” 

“You aren’t,” Ellie responded quickly. She sat up more, her back no longer resting against the couch, as though it could balance out from the way in which you were sitting. “And you’re drunk,” she added, an almost desperate attempt to keep things from progressing. Her fingers found the paper label again, and she began to pick. 

“Yeah. Yeah. Definitely drunk. Not drunk enough to use it as an excuse, but I appreciate the attempt,” you replied, offering a wry smile.

 Ellie couldn’t help herself – she smiled back, even though you were sort of giving her conversation whiplash tonight. Usually when you got drunk, you just laughed about stupid shit. Which, honestly, was the same thing that you did when you were sober. You didn’t normally get worked up like this whenever you were intoxicated. 

“I just… I don’t know why I’m being all… you know? It’s not like he cares that I’m here, anyway. He’s not bothered by it. He fucking loves that I have you as a friend, you know that? He encourages me to hang out with you guys. He’s, like, happy that I’m… I don’t know, stepping into my own, I guess? I don’t– Am I repeating myself? I just think that– Hey.” 

Your rambling came to a halt once your gaze landed on Ellie’s fingers, subconsciously peeling away at the paper on the glass bottle. 

“Oh my gosh, I always do that, too,” you enthused. “Whenever there’s, like, a paper label or sticker on something, I have the worst habit of messing with them. I literally always peel them off.” 

Ellie paused. She glanced at you, her green eyes meeting yours, eyebrows jumping slightly at the shared habit. “You do?” 

“God, yeah. You know when a bottle or something is wet from condensation? And you peel at the label, but the paper like… shreds into those tiny pieces and just sticks to your fingers?” 

Ellie took a moment to process your question, because your knee was pressing against hers now. Neither were bare, both covered by clothing – but it was comfortable. When Ellie managed to register your words, she nodded as a breath of amusement fell from her lips. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Those little pieces get fucking everywhere.” 

It was such a stupid conversation, and Ellie was incredibly grateful for it. She would willingly listen to you talk about anything right now, as long as the topic wasn’t your goddamn boyfriend. 

“Exactly.” You grinned, pupils dilated from the alcohol. You were still you, though. You always were. “Oh, oh, oh. Have you ever been somewhere and they have those… plastic table covers? I fuck those up bad. I don’t even realize how bad I tear at them until it’s too late.” 

Ellie snorted, pausing as she tipped the beer back once more. “Oh man. Yeah, I’ve definitely done that.” 

“Like, do not invite me to your party if you’re gonna have one of those. Especially if you intend on reusing it. ‘Cause you can’t, not after I get my hands on it.” 

Ellie rolled her eyes, but it did little to distract from the grin that was tugging on her lips, mirroring your own. “Yup. I swear, I do the same.” 

“Of course you do. We have so much in common, I swear.” 

Ellie’s cheeks were warm, she knew that much. It was a simple sentence, really. You were good friends, had been for months now. Of course you both had things in common. But still. The way that you said it just made Ellie feel so–

It was stupid. They were just basic, mundane things. But your words, paired with your unwavering gaze, made her feel things. 

Ellie never really liked to be the center of attention. She didn’t like the feeling of having eyes on her – but your eyes were different. Your gaze wasn’t intimidating, or harsh like a spotlight. Your gaze was warm. Knowing. It made Ellie feel secluded and comfortable. And maybe you weren’t even actually seeing Ellie in the way in which she thought you were – but it sure felt like it. Maybe it wasn’t that deep… but against Ellie’s better judgement, she wanted it to be. 

“Yeah, we do,” Ellie said, one corner of her mouth lifting slowly. “Good thing I spend most of my time with you, then.” 

“Yeah, good thing.” Your tone was soft, but after a breath, you changed gears once more. “And he really is happy for me, you know? Like, he always asks about how you’re doing, too. What plans we have, if we’re doing anything fun… He even asked if you had a boyfriend before, which–” You huffed out a dry laugh. “Maybe he was going to suggest a double date or something, I don’t–” 

“He… doesn’t know?”

Ellie’s stomach lurched, the alcohol not sitting well. It was a small remark – you were rambling again – but it rang loud and clear in Ellie’s ears. James didn’t know that she was gay. Why? Did you just not think it was important information to tell? Which, fair, but– 

There was no way that he was homophobic, not based on the way that you spoke so highly of him. So why? It felt like a gut punch, for some reason. Maybe, honestly, Ellie should’ve been relieved. She always had some weird sort of paranoia that James could just… tell. Like he had some secret knowledge about her caring about you, or something. So that meant that he didn’t, right? 

“Um, no. I mean, I guess not. I’ve never directly mentioned it, so. Like, that’s not really the point though, is it? It just hasn’t come up. It’s not like I would’ve been like, hey, here’s this new lesbian friend that I have. It’s– I mean, I just didn’t want him to… Like, I don’t know, why? Is it a big deal, do you think?” You were squeezing at the pink plastic in your hands, so that must’ve meant that you had finished your drink. 

Ellie’s mind was spinning, her eyebrows furrowed. Was it a big deal? She didn’t know. You really kept throwing her for a loop tonight, that was for sure. In all honesty, it was odd even having her sexuality be a topic of conversation. 

Ellie shifted on the couch, but her knee still remained pressed against your own. She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to figure out what to say. Why did it bother her that you hadn’t told your boyfriend about her being a lesbian? 

She didn’t know how to verbalize it in a way that made sense. So, her reply was simple. “Uhh… I guess not.” Ellie shrugged, her short nails scraping over what was left of the peeled, paper label. “It just– Do you think it’s weird? That he doesn’t know?” 

“Um, I didn’t– I didn’t think so. I can tell him, if you’d prefer. I just…” You hesitated, your gaze flickering between Ellie’s face, and her fidgeting fingers. “God, am I talking normal? I feel like I’m slurring a little. Or like I’m losing my voice.” 

Ellie was still slightly reeling, but she leaned in with quirked smile as you switched your train of thought. “Definitely slurring,” Ellie deadpanned, before settling back against the couch.  

You blinked, rolling your eyes only after Ellie cracked another smile.

“Well, whatever. Listen to me anyway,” you instructed. “It just didn’t come up organically at first, you know? And then as time went on, it just… felt weird to mention it out of the blue? Plus…Honestly, I don’t know. This friendship is just really fucking precious to me, El. I don’t want everything to suddenly, like, start being analyzed–” 

Analyzed. 

Ellie was thinking less about your words now, and more about what it meant for her. Analyzed. Yeah, okay, she could see that. She was safe like this, maybe. If James knew about Ellie, maybe he would figure out her feelings, too. Then things would definitely be ruined. Maybe it was better this way. 

Plus, you had called the friendship really fucking precious. 

“Precious?” Ellie echoed, repeating the word before she could stop herself. 

“Yeah, precious. The most precious,” you replied, without even a moment of hesitation. The thing was, Ellie knew that you would say the same exact thing even if you were sober. 

A smile washed over you, the genuine kind that Ellie found herself thinking about more often than she should. But just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. Your eyebrows knitted together as you spoke again. “Maybe I am a shitty girlfriend. That’s bad, isn’t it? Isn’t James supposed to be my one and true best friend? I mean, he was. For years. But the other day, I heard best friend and I just… instantly thought of you.” 

In all honesty, it was a bit of a juvenile conundrum, but Ellie could tell that you were genuinely stressing yourself out about this. Especially considering how much you were going on about it. The two of you never spent this much time sitting around and talking about James. 

“I can’t tell if I just feel guilty because things are different now, but it’s normal, or if I’m actually, like, wrong?” 

Ellie tilted her head, gently tapping the bottom of her beer against your knee. “Sounds like you’re just having an identity crisis, or some shit,” Ellie said, feeling completely out of her depth. 

You snorted at Ellie’s words, a bitter sort of amusement taking over your expression. “Identity crisis,” you repeated, like the words were more weighted than Ellie had meant. Really, she didn’t know what the fuck she was saying. Clearly, though, it had struck some sort of cord within you. “Jesus, you have no idea how on the nose you actually are.” 

Ellie’s eyebrows raised, and she moved her beer away from your knee. She was listening intently, an almost morbid sort of curiosity washing over her. Because what the fuck did that mean? Ellie didn’t want to push, but she also wanted to know what you meant.

“What do you mean, identity crisis?” 

You squinted at Ellie. “You’re the one that said identity crisis,” you countered, as though you hadn’t just agreed with her. 

Ellie rolled her eyes, but her lips twitched in amusement anyway. “Yeah, I know that. But–” Ellie paused, trying to find her verbal footing. She hadn’t really expected you to agree, and now she didn’t know how to proceed. “You said that I didn’t know how on the nose I was.” 

Your lips parted, as you clearly had your retort ready. Instead of responding, though, you just paused. Closed your mouth. Swallowed. Your eyes remained locked with Ellie’s, and it made her feel just a little antsy. She stayed still, though, not able to be the first to look away. You were deciding on what to tell her, Ellie knew that much. She wondered if it was something negative. You always seemed hesitant when it came to things like that, never wanting to indulge in the details of bad things. 

“Yeah,” you muttered, inhaling after a long beat of silence. “Yeah, you are. Because I–” 

“There you guys are.” Dina leaned her hip against the doorway, looking exasperated. Her hands ran through her hair as she pushed away from the painted frame. Ellie barely had time to get a firm grasp on her beer before Dina collapsed onto the couch, filling the small gap between you and Ellie. “The party is actually happening in the other room, you know.” 

It took all of Ellie’s willpower to keep her from releasing a groan of frustration. She stiffened as Dina pressed against her side, and moved to wipe her fingers against the thigh of her own jeans. The paper label that she had been anxiously picking at had now rolled into bits, sticking to her skin. 

“You could’ve come and found us earlier if you really wanted.” Ellie shifted slightly against the worn couch, a slight creak betraying her subtle attempt at withdrawing more into herself. 

“I always want you around,” Dina drawled, resting her head against Ellie’s shoulder. Ellie’s gaze darted to you – you had straightened up, holding your empty cup near your lap like you still had to be polite, or something. “But I know how you are,” Dina finished, giving Ellie a pointed look. 

Ellie released a scoff, her gaze drifting to the ceiling. “What the hell does that mean?” 

Dina merely rolled her eyes in return, sitting up as she lifted her head away from Ellie’s shoulder. 

“Thanks again for inviting me, Dina,” you murmured, your smile natural. 

“Of course,” Dina replied. “Surely you guys are having so much fun on my couch. At least, I guess, Ellie has a friend to be a wallflower with.” 

“Oh my god.” Ellie scowled, glaring at the ceiling. 

“I am having fun,” you quipped softly, to which Dina laughed. 

“Yeah? You’re having fun engaging in Ellie’s moping?” 

“What the hell, I’m not moping–” 

“Definitely not moping,” you defended lightly. “Besides, a party on the sidelines is still just as enjoyable, especially with good company. Really, Dina, I’m having fun. Thank you for letting me come.” 

How you could be so goddamn poised after practically working yourself into a frenzy, Ellie had no clue. She ignored the flutter in her chest, instead focusing her eyes on Dina. “See? See? I’m not a total fucking drag.” 

Dina groaned, though her antics were purely out of fondness. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Have fun, wallflowers. You know where to find us if you decide to socialize somewhere that’s not my couch.” 

Dina pulled herself up, pausing just momentarily to squeeze Ellie’s shoulder and exchange a cautious glance. Ellie knew what it meant, and she hated it. It was always the same thing, like Dina was silently advising Ellie to not get too close to you. As if anything would happen, anyway. It was sort of fucking annoying, how Ellie had only ever thought you might be interested in her because of Dina’s persuasion, and now Dina acted like a total guard dog after finding out about the existence of your boyfriend. 

Ellie had repeatedly told Dina time and time again, it wasn’t like that. At least, not on your end. But Dina didn’t need to know how Ellie felt. Not even Ellie’s journal knew much about it. 

Ellie watched as Dina made her way back to the kitchen, her appearance being praised by the friends in the other room. Ellie felt your hand on her knee then, and she startled. 

“Are you okay?” you questioned tentatively, eyebrows drawn together as you looked over Ellie’s face like you were scanning for something. “I feel bad now, like I’m totally holding you hostage. I’m the one being mopey. If you wanna go and–” 

“Nah,” Ellie interrupted, her gaze flickering down as you removed your hand from her knee, dropping it into your lap. “I’m good. You’re not holding me hostage, trust me.” It didn’t matter how many people could be in a room, Ellie would still only want to talk to you, anyway. Therefore, she was perfectly content to sit and listen to you, no matter the topic. “I don’t really care about the party, anyway.” 

“Yeah, I figured,” you muttered, giving a wry smile. “Still, it’s sweet that you always, like, indulge Dina and Jesse. I don’t know, it’s cute. You’re a good friend.” 

“It’s just easier than trying to argue with them, honestly.” 

“Jesus, do you ever take a compliment? Like, without deflecting?” you asked, eyebrows raising as you tilted your head, feigning scrutiny.  

Ellie found herself subconsciously tilting her head to mirror you. “That’s– I do take compliments.” 

“Right, sure. Just not from me, apparently.” 

Ellie rolled her eyes – muscle memory – though her mind was preoccupied. 

A good friend. Ellie, a good friend. 

Yeah fucking right. If she was such a good friend, she wouldn’t be having these feelings. She wouldn’t have an idiotic crush on you. 

She was crushing on you. More than that, probably. She knew that, she wasn’t stupid enough to try and deny that fact. If anything, she was stupid for having a crush on you in the first place. 

She didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with her. Was it the way you looked at her? The way you spoke to her? The way you always seemed to pay attention, even when she didn’t expect it? 

Fuck, she was hopeless. 

Her head was a mess. She felt embarrassed for being dumb enough to catch feelings despite everything. She felt frustrated that she could not get you out of her goddamn head, no matter what. And… there was some other fucked up feeling there, too. Something that spiked whenever she was reminded that she wanted something she absolutely could not have. 

A good friend. Sure. As long as you thought so, she supposed.

・｡ﾟ𝜗ৎ

───────────‧₊˚⊹

notes ! omg. if u actually made it to the end of this... lmk. reader's pov is next chapter so u will get to know her better!! there were a lot of things sprinkled in throughout this chapter that actually have a lot of meaning + will be important later ♡ i have been working on this series for so long, i was nervous to finally start rolling it out tbh!! with that being said, i am dying to talk ab this so let's chat ab it if u have any thoughts !!

・｡ﾟ𝜗ৎ series taglist ! @vahnilla @sawaagyapong @liztreez @ssshhh-imreading

𝜗ৎ One !

'I didn’t know that I was capable of all of this.'

𝜗ৎ Two !

'What if I’m not a good person? / You always say that I am  You don’t really know me at all now / I think that I’m not who you think I am.'

𝜗ৎ Three - coming soon !

'Want it to mean something though / And we never quite knew how to be honest  Honest to God, I should go.'

𝜗ৎ Four - coming soon !

'Always could count on you there / It’s probably wrong that I never was honest  Honest to God, I was scared.'

𝜗ৎ Epilogue - coming soon !

'Someone will love you.'

What if you had been scheduled for patrol that day, so there could’ve been another person searching for Tommy and Joel, potentially finding them sooner? What if you had been able to get to Ellie sooner, before Joel’s beaten, lifeless, bloody corpse had been burned into her eyes? What if the snowstorm that day hadn’t been as bad? 

What if Tommy had shown up to the farmhouse two weeks earlier than he actually had? 

The farmhouse, in all honesty, had somewhat originally been Dina’s idea. If you had more truths pulled from your unspoken thoughts, you–admittedly–resented the idea of it at first. A younger version of Ellie–one that had bright eyes and an easy laugh–hated farming tasks. She found them boring. Thought the isolation of a farmhouse, away from town, sounded lonely. 

Steadily, Dina sold her on the idea. Lonely transformed into peaceful. Boring turned into kinda nice. You couldn’t fault your mutual friend, but you grew worried. Worried that the idea of a farmhouse would be less of a solace, and more of an escape. Worried that the concept started to resonate more with Ellie because she couldn’t bear to meet the eyes of those around her in Jackson–couldn’t bear to continue to face Jesse’s parents on a daily basis. Worried that Ellie couldn’t bear–just as you couldn’t bear–the way in which Tommy had started to look at Ellie less like a family member that needed to be protected, and instead more like a faulty weapon–a gun that failed to fire in a crucial moment of war. 

Shortly after Seattle, you moved into a farmhouse outside of the Jackson gates with Ellie. 

Timing. 

If Tommy had come two weeks earlier than he had, when Ellie had that short burst when she was actually sleeping through the night, maybe she would've stayed. You had seen her smiling at a photograph of Joel that week, and her eyes hadn’t looked so dazed. Maybe if Tommy had come then, the outcome would've been different.

You knew though, really, that wasn't the case.

Ellie was unwell. Lost in a grief that she hadn’t even begun to comprehend. Traumatized. It's not like Tommy's words suddenly rewired her brain. No, she had only needed to be pointed in a direction. Needed a push.

She would've slipped away regardless, in any sense. She wouldn't have lasted long. It was a horrific truth that you had worried yourself sick over. You knew it. You knew it, and yet, you couldn't help but mull over the different possibilities. The way in which things could have unfolded, but didn't. Always back to those terrible, horrible, enticingly cruel what-ifs. 

You always did carry the habit of overthinking.

Ellie would frequently smooth her thumb over the crease between your eyebrows, with a tsk and a shake of her head… a faint smile tugging on her lips. "I can literally see you thinking. Now you're starting to stress me out," she would say.

I'm sorry, you thought silently to her now. It's hard when you're not here.

Love can't fix everything. It's an unfortunate lesson that you've had to learn time and time again. You could love Ellie like your life depended on it–maybe it did–but it wouldn't take away her nightmares. You could squeeze her, hold her tightly like it was the last shred of anything that mattered, but it couldn't put back together everything that she had lost.

It wouldn't make her eat. It wouldn't make her sleep.

But it didn't stop you, either. You loved her–hard. More than anything. Easier than breathing. You loved Ellie with every inhale, every exhale, every single blink of your eyes. 

And she loved you, too. God, did Ellie love you too.

Even when she couldn't find the words. Ellie loved you in the way in which she would allow you to take her hand and lead her to bed, even though she knew that she wouldn't be sleeping. She loved you in the way in which she would remind you to take breaks, despite the darkening circles underneath her own eyes. She loved you in the way in which her book of puns remained on her bedside table, meaning she would recite off the most stupid ones in the dark of your shared bedroom–anything to hear you laugh before you were lulled into your slumber.

Ellie might stay awake–red matter and gore on her mind, the sound of impact and pain ringing in her ears… but you giggled before you fell asleep, and she was glad for it. 

Yeah, she loved you. There was never any doubt about that.

But it couldn't change anything. And it didn't.

Because one morning, you woke up without your lover’s arms wrapped around your form. You woke up, and the bed was cold. Missing her. Bedding slightly askew, like Ellie had just slipped out from under the covers to make a quick trip to the bathroom, or to retrieve a glass of water. 

You knew, though. The realization caused by the absence of her body next to your own rapidly washed over you with a vile wave of sickness. Regret. Guilt. You should’ve known, should’ve figured, should’ve done something. 

Realistically, however, you knew there was nothing that you truly could’ve done, anyway. Ellie had left without a word. No note. Nothing. It wasn’t your fault, but you felt as though it was your fault, even though you knew that it was not your fault. Still–you had been asleep. You had gotten no final words. No last, lingering glance. No goodbye. No kiss. No squeeze of the hand. No quiet promise. 

You knew–in your heart that you loved Ellie very dearly and deeply with–that was how she had intended for it to go. The semblance of an easy goodbye–one lacking tears, desperate pleas, and hands that refused to let go. Ellie chose that. You knew that she did, that her departure was intentional, but the weight of it all still hung over your head. 

Surely, Ellie had planned it. At least somewhat. 

Any other night, you were prone to stirring whenever Ellie would stir. Every shift from Ellie was something that you were extremely aware of. When nightmares plagued her mind, you stayed up with her–talking, holding her, kissing her forehead. When she got up to pace in the kitchen, you followed. Lingered until she wanted your hands, your words, your reassurances. You were in tune with every single breath, every single beat of Ellie’s heart, every fiber of her very being. Any other night, you would’ve known. Any other night, you would’ve felt her shift–felt her sliding out of bed and you would’ve gone with her. You could’ve had a conversation, or at least kissed her one more time before you were left to desperately chase any lingering indication of her presence throughout the farmhouse. Any other night, you would’ve stirred due to Ellie’s movement, and you would’ve gone with her. Santa Barbara, or wherever else she may have ended up, you would’ve followed that girl to the end of the goddamn world. 

But you knew, exactly due to that reason, why Ellie had chosen that night in particular. 

The day had been good. Not just good in a wishful way–it had genuinely gone by without a fault. The two of you had wasted time that day, just sitting together in the grass and watching the sheep. Ellie had a moment where she had laughed so hard, her cheeks tinted pink. That evening, she had twirled you in the kitchen. (You had wondered–torturously, every single day since her absence–if her leaving was premeditated, or if she had just woken up and realized that she had to go. With how Ellie had been staring at you while she had twirled you around the kitchen, and with how her hands had settled on your hips, maybe she knew. At least, maybe there was an inkling of her knowing at the time. Like she was taking it in. Silently saying goodbye to the moment, while you were blissfully unaware.) You didn’t like to drink–not much, not anymore, especially after Ellie’s habit of it had picked up–but you had a few glasses that night. Just for fun. The two of you had showered together–soft kisses, healing touches, and dim lighting. You had been so gentle with each other, as you always were, as you lathered each other up and then washed everything away. You were cuddling before slumber hit you, you knew that much. But you never felt a shift. 

Maybe it had been the long hours spent outside, or the alcohol, or the shower that had relaxed you down to your bones… that had caused you to sleep so heavily that night, you didn’t wake up as Ellie left. And you hated yourself for it. 

And yes–you knew, deep down–that had most likely been the plan. Ellie didn’t want to say goodbye. She didn’t want to see you cry, or hear you plead with her. You knew that she did not want those things–not out of cruelty, but the exact opposite. Even more than that, though, you knew that Ellie didn’t want you going with her. And you would’ve. In a heartbeat, without a second thought, you would’ve joined her journey. 

You knew that Ellie didn’t want that. Couldn’t bear it, most likely. So, she left you to sleep. Left you at the farmhouse, without any final words. Left you safe and sound. Left you alone. 

The grief was all-consuming. 

You cried for her. Endlessly. You were sick over it. Like the rug had been pulled out from under you, the floor falling away from your feet, you felt like you were quite literally flailing. You loved her. For years, you had loved Ellie. Every single night, she had been there. 

She had comforted you through every single one of your nightmares, even when hers were surely worse. She had made sure that you were always eating, even when she couldn’t stomach anything at all. She knew more about space than anyone you had ever met, and spoke so confidently about dinosaurs… even when she stuttered on the name pronunciations. She painted with steady hands, her loved ones nearly always the subjects. She laughed at the same puns that she had laughed at when she was fourteen. She helped you name every single one of your sheep, and always referred to them as such. She made the boring things fun. She kissed you like she meant it every single time, because she did. She called you babe–her voice soft, and her gaze even softer. She tended more carefully to your wounds than she did to her own. She was your best friend. Your girlfriend. Your girl. And just like that, she was gone. 

You missed her. You were worried sick. You wanted her. You loved her. 

Your girl, your girl, your girl. 

Your girl was no longer. It felt impossible to survive. 

The world was cruel, and Ellie had never been given a break. You wanted that for her though, so terribly. You wanted the sun to break through the clouds. You wanted the rainbow after the rain. You had a fucking bone to pick the universe, forget the one that it had thrown you. Ellie Williams deserved better, and you would say it with your dying breath. You hated seeing what the world had done to her. You despised it. Spoke out loud to Joel about it, hoping that he could somehow hear you, as if he could offer you acknowledgement from beyond the grave. 

Everything ached. Sometimes, you were sure that you were genuinely going crazy purely due to the not knowing. You didn’t know where Ellie was, not really. You didn’t know if she was okay, or injured, or dead. 

But, truth be told, you were convinced that she was alive. 

Even on your very worst days, you had a twisted sort of optimism that Ellie was alive. You were so convinced, in fact, that you were nearly certain of it. You were sure about your girlfriend’s longstanding survival, because you were convinced that if she were to die, you would feel it. Like everything in the world would somehow stop, no matter how far away she was from you. Like your body would feel it–perhaps with a hitch in your breath, or a prickle at the back of your neck. You and Ellie were so intertwined, sometimes you were convinced that if her heart were to stop beating, yours would simultaneously cease, too. 

Regardless of your potential delusions, you grieved her. 

Nearly everything of Ellie’s had been left behind at the farmhouse. Of course, she didn’t take many of her belongings with her–why would she? 

You found solace in a gray hoodie. It was battered, truly. Ellie’s had it for years, as most people hold onto things for as long as they possibly can (just like you do with her) because items in this world are precious. Even so, Ellie’s dedication to the hoodie was practically admirable. The fabric was entirely worn–lint and little fuzzbulls littering the expanse of it. Tiny holes were worn within the fabric. Still, she had worn that thing dutifully–and now, you held onto it like a child that clings to a blanket for security. 

Your relationship with the hoodie was a tricky one, though. You wanted to hug it close to you each night, to give yourself some sort of comfort from your girlfriend… but you didn’t want the material to start smelling like you instead of her. You could very much use her soap, but then it wouldn’t be the real thing. Fraudulent. 

For the first few days of Ellie’s absence, you had been in a daze. You slept with the hoodie tucked carefully within Ellie’s side of the bed, exactly where she would be. The hoodie was now your lifeboat, taking up the space that Ellie should’ve been filling. You didn’t eat, you didn’t sleep. You had begun to mirror your missing girlfriend. 

That had been weeks ago. A few months? 

Staying on the farm wasn’t feasible, you knew that much, even if you weren’t in the most sensible state of mind. It was a lot of land–you couldn’t manage that and the animals on your own. It wasn’t necessarily safe to be on your own like that anyway–at least, in your opinion it wasn’t. You didn’t prefer it. 

For the first few days after Ellie’s departure, you had been lost within your emotions. Eventually, you knew that you had to do something. You didn’t go after her. You didn’t seek out Tommy for more information. No. Despite your own personal feelings, you would keep yourself safe, because you knew that it was what Ellie had wanted for you. You would do it for her. 

Jackson was safe. You went back to Jackson. 

Others had helped you, various trips of lugging belongings and leading animals back to the secured safety within the walls of the town. You moved back into your old place. You saw Jesse’s parents, and spent large amounts of time with Dina and her baby, JJ. He looked so much like Jesse, that sometimes it made you feel sick. 

Despite your departure from the farmhouse, you were adamant about leaving it in very fine condition. Supplies were left behind, just in case. The most valuable things of Ellie’s, you had taken to Jackson so that they could be kept safe and not be abandoned. Some things though, you had left behind. Some changes of clothes, items for getting clean… and a note. 

Nothing that would jeopardize Jackson, or the safety of the people. Just a simple nod in the right direction, just in case. 

You know where to find me. 

Just in case. Just in case Ellie really was alive, like you swore that you could feel in your bones. Just in case she decided to return. Would she? You didn’t know. You didn’t like the possibility of yourself being abandoned, and quite honestly, you didn’t view it as such. The unfortunate truth was that the situation was much bigger than yourself. Bigger than Ellie, and bigger than your relationship. You were hurt. Angry. Devastated. And yet, you couldn’t help but be understanding. Because, once again… you knew. 

The days passed by slowly and painfully, but they also managed to blur together in a haze of grief and loss. You felt weighted by it all, consistently aware that you very well may never see Ellie again. You could tell that they were trying not to do so, but people were treating you like a widow. You felt like one. Every sound in the world was bland compared to Ellie’s voice, or the way in which she would laugh when she was truly comfortable. It felt as though your heart and mind could not agree on any sort of feeling. You couldn’t get used to it, the loss of her. Your girlfriend was essentially a ghost. A ghost that you couldn’t let go of. 

And the farmhouse. 

You couldn’t get rid of that, either. 

Maria was fed up with you, you could tell. All of your coming and going. You made trips to the farmhouse–obsessively at first, and then had to be talked down to once every couple of weeks–just in case. Just in case Ellie had been there, or whatever your mind had managed to convince you of. Yes, you had left a note, but you frequently feared that it wouldn’t be enough. Again, it was your overthinking. You could also tell that Maria was tired, and her threats to put you on lockdown were in vain. Half-hearted. As long as you were safe (god forbid she lost someone else) and not potentially leading anyone back to Jackson, well… there wasn’t much that Maria could do about it, was there? You were too stubborn, apparently. Stubborn like Ellie. You had heard her mutter it once as she begrudgingly relented. 

As for the current state of your being, your mental state was… shaky. Even after time had gone by, you didn’t feel normal, didn’t feel steady on your own feet. But how could you, when half of you was missing? 

And there was that thing about timing, again. How things manage to work out, or how they don’t. 

You were at the farmhouse–lingering. 

Curled into your old space on the bed that you had formerly shared with Ellie. In Ellie’s spot was her pillow and that hoodie. Your eyes were shut, because you could imagine her presence better that way. You would not forget her face. Could not. And–you were not crazy, you would testify until you were blue in the face–you were speaking to her. 

Of course, Ellie wasn’t actually there. Of course, she could not actually hear you. Maybe, most likely, you would never be able to actually speak to her ever again. You spoke to her anyway. Stomach twisting, a weight on your shoulders, and tears forming quickly behind your eyelids–you spoke to her. Until, entirely by accident and due to the exhaustion of managing your own emotions, you had fallen asleep. 

For how long, you didn’t know. 

You jolted awake, however, due to the familiar yet startling sound of one of the wooden floorboards creaking. Before your eyes even managed to snap open, your arm had practically lunged for Ellie’s side of the bed. You had instinctively reached for your girlfriend (or rather, where she should’ve been) over your own weapon. Stupid. 

Your eyes snapped open, your blood going cold as your mind rapidly worked to process the sound. It was quiet now, but you had heard it. The house was old, settling often, but you couldn’t excuse the sound away. You reached for your gun that you had discarded onto the bedside table, and then you froze. 

Another creak. 

Like a slow, cautious step. 

You weren’t alone. You shouldn’t have come alone. You should’ve stayed in Jackson. Should’ve played with JJ over lunch, should’ve maybe finally attempted to have a proper conversation with Tommy for the first time in months– 

Footsteps, definitely. Downstairs. Not confident ones–or at least, careful ones. 

You were good at being quiet, good at cautious, usually. You slowly pulled yourself away from the bed, heart pounding as you gripped your weapon. You knew where to step, and where not to step. Without a sound, your back hugged the wall as you slowly approached the bedroom doorway. 

Your mind, however, was not being cooperative. You had no idea about the state of whoever was making those noises. This could be bad. This could be it. 

The thought caused you to falter. Maybe this should be it. Maybe it was your time (timing) and you should just relent and seek the end and see the end and let it be. Maybe, for once, something would be easy if you went down without a fight. 

You could see the indication of a human just below the stairs. You couldn’t decide whether or not you should die. You slowly crept down the stairs. You didn’t know if you had the energy to plead for your life. You raised your gun anyway, pointing it directly at the approaching figure. 

And then, every bit of air left your body. You went rigid, head dizzy. Eyes wide, the corners of your vision went hazy. Blurry. You were frozen, shoes rooted to the wooden floor as your eyes met a pair of green ones. 

Had you been killed that quickly, that Ellie was now coming to greet you in the afterlife? Had you actually gone insane, as you had admittedly pondered the possibility of a few times before? Were you stuck in a hallucination? In a dream? 

Almost immediately, your hands began to tremble. You gripped your gun tighter, not faltering with the angle in which you were holding it–pointed directly at her, a lethal shot if you were to make it. 

You were still. Ellie (?) was still. Real? Not real? You didn’t know. You couldn’t breathe. You didn’t even blink, afraid that it was false imagery and maybe the sight of her would vanish if you even briefly closed your eyes. If this was a hallucination, and your last chance to ever see your girlfriend (?) you would prolong it at any means necessary. You did not move, in case she would disappear, because you could not lose her again. 

Wide, green eyes. Hard to read. A slow hand raised. 

“You’re–” 

The word choked out of you before you could comprehend it, though it sounded more like a gasp for air. Were you suffocating? Or had seeing her actual (?) face for the first time in months finally given you back your ability to breathe? 

Your voice–even the slightest, strained sound of it–made Ellie’s heart pound almost painfully in her chest. She missed hearing it. Her ears felt like they were ringing. She was more focused on you, rather than the fact that you were aiming a gun right at her. No matter that part. You were directly in front of her, and Ellie couldn’t even speak. She’s dedicated multiple journal pages to you alone. She’s thought about what she wished that she could say to you, over and over again. Went over it in her head. Wrote it down. Whispered it to herself whenever she was trapped, waiting for a horde of an infected to pass. But now? Speechless. Terrified. Guilty. Unprepared. 

Ellie had expected an empty farmhouse–which, for the most part, it was. She had expected, maybe, a door slammed in her face. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t this. Not you, right here, right now. Though… it’s what she had come back for, wasn’t it? And yet, she hadn’t let herself fully believe it until now. She didn’t exactly believe it still, but it was happening. Her eyes were glued to you like you were an entity of her own salvation. 

Both of you–unmoving. It appeared like a silent stand off, when in reality it was merely two people that were unable to process what was right in front of them. 

“I–” 

Ellie’s voice cracked as she attempted to speak, hoarse from a mixture of emotion and strain. She swallowed hard, and tried again. “I…” 

Your eyes were watering. Had you blinked yet? 

The house was a confusing sight for Ellie. Some things there, some things gone. The air was thick with tension, despite the lack of ill-feelings. 

It was instinct, the way in which Ellie’s eyes quickly darted over you, as if taking inventory. Quick breathing, chest rising and falling rapidly. Frozen, rigid limbs. Shaky hands, clutching the goddamn weapon that you were still pointing at her. Not out of malice, Ellie knew. Your eyes were still wide. The sight of your dark circles made her stomach lurch. Ellie’s mind was a mess, as she had no idea what to say to you. Not to mention the fact that she hadn’t had a genuine conversation with someone in… quite a while. 

“I didn’t think you would still be here,” Ellie managed, a crease forming between her brows as she continued to study you. A truth. She did not, necessarily, expect to find you here. Did she hope for it? Yeah, more than she’d fucking like to admit. But as for the reality of it? 

The sound of Ellie’s voice hitting your ears prompted a visceral reaction from you. A sound that you had thought that you would never have the privilege of hearing again, yet you hoped for it and yearned for it every single day since she had left. 

Your physical falter did not last long, as breathless words spilled from your lips. “I thought you were dead.” A truth? You couldn’t be sure anymore. 

Ellie’s throat tightened as you spoke a full sentence. Dead? Ellie had died maybe a thousand times over throughout the last couple of years or so, but she would still find her way back to you. Anyway, she wasn’t dead. Very much alive, judging by how deeply her bones ached. 

Fingers curling into fists, Ellie’s shoulders tensed. She managed a small nod, maybe. She wasn’t sure if it translated. “I’m not.” 

“Guess not,” you croaked quietly. 

It was too much–the situation–for both of you. You looked terrified, which made Ellie feel like she had to throw up. You were standing relatively close, but you felt so far. Ellie wanted to feel your skin beneath your own, to feel some sort of warmth, but she was hesitant. 

It was the longing, really. The longing mixed with guilt that was making Ellie feel so sick. 

She tried again. “I…” 

Finally, you slowly lowered the gun. You stared at her, waiting for your brain to tell you if it was real or not, because you’ve had the same dream of seeing Ellie again countless times–only to cruelly wake up alone. You were in a daze, maybe you had been since the first time that you had woken up alone. Ellie’s attempt at speaking, though, seemed to snap something within you. 

You blinked, like your brain finally registered her presence. “Ellie?” 

Ellie sucked in a breath, her fists getting tighter. She hadn’t heard her name spoken in… how long? Hearing it from you–spoken softly, with so much fucking care, even now… it was going to undo her. Immediately, it was going to undo her. How many times had she wished to hear you say her name like that again? How many times had she desperately tried to imagine the real thing, or heard it in her dreams? Ellie swallowed hard, trying to keep her composure. She didn’t know how to interpret your expression, and that made her uneasy. 

“Yeah?” Ellie replied, voice straining against the growing lump in her throat. 

For some reason, that did it for you. 

“You’re– Oh my god.” Your feet carried you with more urgency than you had moved with for months.

Ellie’s form was rigid with uncertainty–her body instinctively stiffening at the first touch. She was overwhelmed–so fucking overwhelmed. Ellie had previously been prepared for the worst, while desperately hoping for… something good, or at least anything other than the worst possible outcome that she had been somewhat anticipating. The worst possible outcome–which was… what? You telling her to leave? You being gone? Dead? 

Your body collided into Ellie’s, a force that neither of you were prepared for, yet didn’t pull back from. You hastily wrapped your arms around her, burying your face against her shoulder just as the first sob escaped from your lips.

Ellie’s form softened, just a little. Just barely. Like it was always meant to be, her arms wrapped around you in return–at first loosely, and then tight around your waist. She squeezed you once, briefly, as if her life depended on it. Maybe it did. 

You clung to her. You were crying. Ellie hated herself for it. 

Your body convulsed with each sob, causing Ellie to close her eyes tightly. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip–hard–as she silently and desperately willed herself to keep it together. 

Ellie swayed on her feet, and it took her a moment to realize that you were faintly rocking her. Just as Joel used to do in moments of comfort, or how Tommy did after Joel’s death. You were sobbing against her shoulder, your form trembling, and yet you were instinctively swaying with her–your automatic attempt at comfort. Ellie bit down on her lip even harder, squeezed her eyes shut tighter. 

Every one of her senses was screaming you. The feeling of your hair. The warmth of your skin, even through the clothes. Your scent, so fucking familiar and comforting and fuck, Ellie wouldn’t cry, she would not–

“Fuck,” Ellie rasped, tightening her arms around you. Months of anguish and solitude were rapidly threatening to take over, the kind of breakdown that she hadn’t had since the beach, now approaching her much quicker than she would like to admit. 

The sounds of your breathing mixed together in the otherwise silent farmhouse–shaky, ragged, uneven. 

It took a long moment of you clinging to Ellie to realize that, technically, you didn’t even know where you stood with her. Truthfully, you never took her leaving as a breakup. You knew that the situation, and Ellie’s struggles, were much bigger than that. Silently, in your head, you still always referred to her as your girlfriend. It was only then, at that very moment, did you suddenly feel unsure about your standing. It felt trivial, compared to everything else, but the weight of it was there. 

Just as quickly as you had initiated the physical contact, you pulled away. It was sudden, like a silent, regretful apology for rushing forward and touching her like that. Ellie’s arms fell back to her sides, her body feeling numb. 

“Sorry,” you mumbled. You raised fists, quickly wiping at your wet eyes with the backs of your hands. 

Ellie watched the movement, her fingers twitching restlessly at her sides. She wanted to reach for you, but she was in the exact same boat as you. She couldn’t just come back after months, and assume that she had a place with you. Couldn’t assume that you had waited for her, or that you would still want her. 

The trepidation from the both of you was fueled by circumstance. Individually, you both knew that your hearts still beat so strongly for the other person–for them and them alone, completely and wholly. Ellie knew that you were it for her. If you would not have her, she would not bother you, but her heart would remain to be yours, even if it went unused. You knew that there wasn’t a single universe where you could manage to be pulled away from Ellie. She was your person, through and through. Not once, despite every single emotion you had felt after everything, had your love for her faltered. 

You both knew that, but the situation was unprecedented. 

After dropping your hands away from your eyes, you stared at Ellie. Ellie stared back, biting the inside of her cheek. Your eyebrows were furrowed, your expression extremely troubled. You were shaking maybe even more than Ellie was. 

Ellie knew that you must have questions. A lot of them. Maybe you were going to yell at her–she would probably deserve that, too. She wouldn’t fight it. Even so, she wanted to comfort you, somehow. Wanted to soothe the dark circles that looked worse now, compared to several months ago. Wanted to grab your trembling hands in her own. 

She owed you answers. A lot of fucking answers. And yet, still, Ellie didn’t know what to say, what she could say, what she was even capable of explaining at this time. 

In a strange way, Ellie was better off now–after the beach–than she was before the beach. Her real, true, grieving process had begun as she lingered in the sand and the salty water, the physical pain so horrible that she thought she might just die there with the waves sweeping her away. 

She did not die. 

Joel was dead. Abby was alive. That ended something, while simultaneously started something. Acceptance, she supposed, while she was still in Santa Barbara. And fuck Santa Barbara, by the way–which is something that Ellie would probably eventually tell you if you allowed her to stick around long enough to do so. 

“How–?” you attempted, causing Ellie’s eyes to snap back to your own. 

“I just…” 

Ellie closed her eyes, her chest rising and falling as she forced a breath. 

In the brief, quiet moment, you continued to study her. 

Ellie was pretty cleaned up, all things considered. It made you wonder where she had been before this, if she had cleaned up specifically before there was a chance of seeing you. Her face still looked slim, in the way that it had become after Joel’s death. You could spot new scars across her skin. Faint scratches on her cheek that still had a lingering of red–somewhat new? Her hair was starting to grow out, just a bit. Her collarbones were prominent, too prominent, you almost wanted to shove some food into her mouth at once. A scratch near her collarbone. Ellie’s skin held a red hue… damaged–sunburn, it looked like. Her hands looked rough from use, and her– 

The sound of a sharp inhale caused Ellie’s eyes to fly open. Before she could determine why you had gotten so startled, you were closing the gap between your bodies and gingerly grasping her left hand. Your free hand hovered above the spot of Ellie’s missing ring and pinky fingers. 

“Ellie, what–” you breathed out, cradling her hand in your own like it was something that you needed to be careful with. 

Sometimes, Ellie had nearly forgotten about the injury, only to be brutally reminded in the most sudden, painful moments. She had adjusted rather quickly, because she had no choice. Still, she had to fight the instinct to jerk her hand away from your own, the urge to physically retreat in order to hide the raw, ugly truth of her injury from you. But she didn’t. 

Ellie clamped down on her expression, and watched your face carefully. She held still, allowing you to gingerly turn her hand over in your grasp, inspecting the healed wounds without prodding at them. Ellie’s cheeks felt hot, but she didn’t look away from you. 

You tilted your head to look at her, eyes wide with concern that you just couldn’t hide. You shook your head slightly in a silent question, your eyebrows knitted together. 

Ellie gave the slightest nod in return. Later. 

You swallowed hard, accepting her silent answer while trying to suppress the feeling of sickness that was rapidly taking over your body. Not due to the sight of her hand, but because you absolutely detested thinking about Ellie in pain. You couldn’t fathom what she could’ve possibly been through, and it made you want to cry all over again. 

You released your hold on her hand, allowing Ellie to retreat it. Your focus switched to her other hand, and you repeated the touch by carefully grasping for it. Partly just holding, and partly examining. You gingerly traced over the lines of her hand–breathing softly, eyebrows furrowed. Your gaze was fixated upon Ellie’s right hand, and Ellie’s gaze was fixated upon your face. 

The bite mark that Ellie had gotten on her right hand had certainly not been as brutal as the bite that she had originally gotten on her forearm. It had been smaller, not as deep, and therefore healed differently. Not as jagged or rippled. Honestly, it went undetected. 

But with the way in which you were so intently tracing her skin, turning her hand over and studying it, Ellie felt as though you were able to see through the surface. Like somehow, you just knew. 

“The bite,” Ellie started, her voice quiet and rough. 

Immediately, your head snapped up. “The what?” 

Ellie blinked, breath hitching at the eye contact. At once, she felt stupid for even mentioning it. “It– My hand.” 

“You’re… You got bit again?” 

You sounded a touch bewildered–maybe you could’ve been pissed if you had more energy and were in less shock. You focused your attention on her hand once more, as if you could seek out the mark. 

To be entirely honest, that bite was something that didn’t even cross Ellie’s mind. At this point, it was ancient history. A non-issue at the time, and a non-issue now. With everything that had happened, it was the very last thing on her mind. But now, seeing your concern, and your intense focus… it made her skin crawl a little. 

Silently, you were spiraling. 

“Yeah,” Ellie rasped, slightly flexing her fingers as you turned her hand over, her palm facing up. “I’m still immune, I swear,” Ellie attempted. 

You paused, your eyebrows twitching upward. “I know,” you muttered, slowly raising your gaze to meet Ellie’s eyes. “But can you stop testing your luck? You fucking… stress me out.” Despite your words, your tone was soft–voice slightly breathless. 

A faint huff escaped Ellie, like she almost felt a hint of something that resembled amusement. The comment was so utterly you, she almost couldn’t handle it. She fucking missed you. So much. 

“Trust me,” Ellie muttered, her gaze flickering across your facial features. “It wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.” 

You went briefly still, the corners of your lips just barely twitching at her dry, weak comment. Gingerly running your fingers over Ellie’s, your expression twisted. You dropped your hand, and took the smallest step back from her, despite how much you just wanted to be closer. The lack of touch was painful. 

Ellie’s hand flexed, wanting to grab your wrist or your hand and just touch you, to let herself feel safe. 

It was stupid, really. She had abandoned you, yes. But Ellie hadn’t intended for that to be what she had done. She didn’t want you to feel abandoned. She wanted you to be safe. 

“Ellie…” 

“I know.”

Minimal words were being spoken, but you understood. Of course you did. And it was enough to cause you to frown as you wrung your trembling hands. Ellie practically mirrored you, shifting her weight. 

You inhaled, trying to find any of the words that you had mulled over during her absence. Something eloquent, or understanding, or the right questions to ask. But instead, all you came up with was– 

“You scared the fucking shit out of me,” you managed, your voice breaking as you spoke. You wrapped your arms around your own torso, and Ellie ached to replace them with her own. “I thought– I really fucking thought–” 

“I know. I know, I know. Fuck, I know,” Ellie replied, her right hand raising and hovering near your arm. 

“And like, just now,” you clarified, swallowing thickly. “I heard fucking footsteps and I thought– Like, the gun–” 

“I know,” Ellie repeated, though she really, genuinely, had not expected you to be at the farmhouse. “I wasn’t– I wasn’t thinking.” 

“No shit?” you croaked. There was a hitch in your voice, something that could’ve been a very wry, dry huff of amusement, but it was entirely too faint. 

Ellie caught it anyway. 

“Yeah. Yeah, no shit. I wasn’t– I just wanted…” Ellie bit down on her bottom lip, scared to say the words, in case this was it. 

Thankfully, you knew her. You always were the more sensible one, anyway. 

“Ellie,” you said, repeating her name once more. Almost like you couldn’t hold yourself back from saying it now, due to the fact that she was actually in front of you and could respond, rather than you crying it into your pillow or pleading her name to the night sky. Ellie relished in it, wanting to hear nothing else for the rest of her life. 

You swallowed thickly, fingers digging into your own arms as you continued to hold yourself. “Is this– Are you really here? Is this–?” 

Before your sentence was finished, Ellie was nodding. She clenched her hands into fists, pulled her lip between her teeth, forehead creased–but it did absolutely nothing to relieve the lump of emotion building within her throat to the point of being overwhelming. 

“Yeah,” Ellie muttered, managing a slight, jerky nod. “Yeah, it’s–” 

You took a small step closer, your arms loosening around your form. 

“Like, are you– This is for real? You’re here?” 

“Yeah–” 

“You’re home? Ellie, are you home?” The words left you with a sob, as you took another step toward her, your face twisting due to the sudden onslaught of tears. 

“Yeah,” Ellie replied hoarsely. She shifted on her feet, right hand rubbing over her left wrist. “Yeah, I’m–” 

“You’re home for real?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’m– I’m home. Okay? I’m fucking… I’m home.” 

The sob that you choked out was one of relief. Your arms found Ellie quickly, though she found you just as fast. Ellie buried her face in your neck, inhaling the scent of you. The scent of comfort, the scent of familiarity. The scent of home. 

You squeezed Ellie tight, and then mumbled an apology, to which she shook her head. Of course, there was so much left to be said, and so much left to be explained… but that could be later. For now, you clung together, gently rocking each other and relishing in the fact that–despite everything–there could still be this. 

It was a start, at the very least. Something sacred and real and pure to hold onto. 

Ellie was home, and she could breathe again. You both could. 

. . . . .. . . . .

slowly, she got better. it took time and it took you telling her, once, that the silence made your brain do things. once she did, her messages became unbearably tender. tiny updates throughout the day, pictures of things that reminded her of you, half-finished thoughts sent at three in the morning because she suddenly missed you too much to stay quiet about it.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie treats facetime like the sacred thing it is. there are loose scheduled times that you two try to keep but honestly it just happens whenever it happens. she'll be deep in research at midnight, papers spread everywhere, and you'll call because you just got off your shift and she'll always answer immediately, without hesitation. sometimes you two talk for hours. sometimes you two just exist together on screen. her at her desk, you wherever you are, neither of you saying much. just there, present. it's more than enough.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie has fallen asleep during your calls more than once and this embarrasses her deeply. you have a collection of pictures and screenshots, evidence of her sleeping like a log. one of them has her drooling slightly on her notes. the irony is, you're statistically the more frequent offender; you've fallen asleep on call more times than either of you can count, but ellie's cases are documented and that's what matters. she has pretended, every single time, that it didn't happen. you have let her have this because you sense her embarrassment.

͙͘͡★ will watch you do your skincare routine with her chin in her hand and not say a single word. you prop your phone up against the mirror and just talk, rambling about your day, about your students, about whatever is happening in your busy head at eleven pm. she listens and watches carefully every single time. something about the domesticity of it does something to her that she couldn't name even if she tried.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie who sometimes plays guitar on call because you ask her. at first, she refused but you asked again and then asked again after that. she caved eventually and now it's a thing. her, her guitar in her lap, her phone propped somewhere nearby, playing quietly while you listen. if she's feeling particularly daring she'll even sing a little, just a bit. she acts embarrassed every time, but she's not that embarrassed anymore. she loves it and she loves that you love it.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie who secretly saves every photo you send her, every single one. selfies, coffee pictures, random screenshots, your classroom decorations, your dog, your lunch. it doesn’t matter. her camera roll is basically just evidence that she’s deeply in love with you.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie never gets used to missing you, but also never stops feeling grateful that she gets to. missing you means that she gets to love you and to her that’s worth every ache.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie struggles with the distance more than you do, even if she doesn’t always know how to say it. she isn’t clingy exactly, but she needs and craves closeness. she just feels the distance differently than you do. you miss her terribly but you can hold yourself together with words, the connection sustains you as long as it's there.

ellie needs the words and the physical. she doesn't need much, she just needs something. kissing your temple while passing behind you in the kitchen, feeling your fingers play with the baby hairs at the back of her neck, you, specifically, scratching slow circles between her shoulder blades... she especially misses all the tiny unconscious intimacy.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie who genuinely cannot believe she’s dating you, like actually. sometimes she’ll just look at you and think what the fuck. the prettiest girl she’s ever seen is talking to her... willingly. that's crazy.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie gets sent a lot of pictures per week of your newest coffee creations. little foam flowers, hearts, leaves... one time, somehow, an actual swan. most of these look a little curious but that's okay.

ellie 🦕

oh i know that coffee is fire

you

you don’t even like coffee so how would you know...

ellie 🦕

the barista is gay as hell so i know actually

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie especially loves when your hands are visible in the photos you send her. when she can see your rings, the chipped red nail polish, the little ink stains you get from correcting papers. sometimes there’s glitter stuck to the side of your hand from classroom crafts or faint marker smudges near your wrist. all these tiny traces of your life she’s grown so painfully fond of. tiny fragments of a life she wishes she was standing inside of instead of only witnessing through pictures on her phone.

she stares at those pictures longer than she means to because she misses your hands terribly. misses the feeling of them in her hair, your fingers softly tracing shapes against her arm while talking or the outline of her tattoo, misses holding your hand while walking somewhere with no rush to get there.

sometimes she catches herself staring at a picture and thinking how badly she wants to hold your hands again. not even for long, just once.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie thinks you’re beautiful in a way that actually disorients her a little. especially because you’re not just hot — you’re sweet. she does think that you’re the hottest person alive but also the sweetest. and somehow the combination completely ruins her. because okay yeah your tits are incredible but you also remember little things she says in passing and send her voice notes when you walk home and talk about your kids so lovingly and suddenly she’s sitting there like damn... i’m doomed.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie who sends you bouquets of flowers quite frequently. she found a flower shop near your house and even though they didn't do house deliveries, she got them to do it somehow. the florist on the other end of that call was charmed within thirty seconds when ellie first called and agreed to deliver a bouquet to your house.

it started because you had a terrible week. like genuinely awful — double shift at the café, a difficult class, one of your kids was having a hard time and it was breaking your heart, and you mentioned it to ellie scattered across three different conversations that she was paying close attention to even when she didn't say much.

the flowers arrived next day. you just got home from your classes when your mom called you to the door and there it was, a bouquet of pink flowers with a little card.

"you're doing really good. i mean it. - e"

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie after that, it becomes a thing, though not on a schedule. it just happens when it happens, which somehow makes it more devastating each time because you never see it coming. tucked between the stems there’s always a tiny little note. in it it's not her handwriting, but definitely her words.

"obviously. you studied for two weeks straight. - e"

“i kissed you in my thoughts did you felt it... -e"

"that bus driver will go to hell. -e"

"i beleaf in you -e"

“for my favorite teacher ♡ -e"

"you're worth every mile between us. -e"

“sometimes i think the universe made you specifically for me. like okay. pretty girl who smells like coffee and oranges and kisses me softly. alright man. - e”

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie once opened tiktok late at night and got one of those tarot readings that are now flooding her fyp thanks to you. the woman in the video was saying something like "YOUR PERSON IS A STUBBORN FIRE SIGN WHO MISSES YOU EVERY NIGHT. YOU WILL BE SOON TOGETHER ONCE AGAIN." she was already prepared to scroll past it but she opened the comments and noticed your profile picture in the comments, dead serious:

"i claim this energy ✨🧿"

she laughed so hard she had to put her phone down for a second. still, she found the whole thing weirdly endearing... it was just so painfully you. romantic and earnest without embarrassment. you love things wholeheartedly and openly in a way ellie still still isn't fully used to.

okay, maybe the universe is speaking directly to her girlfriend through tiktok tarot readings. WHO is she to judge.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie teases you relentlessly for your tarot habits but also listens with complete seriousness whenever you start explaining them. she'll sit there nodding while you talk about crystals and energies and card pulls like you're presenting groundbreaking scientific research.

sometimes, she'll pretend to be skeptical just to hear you defend it harder. she even lets you do readings for her and acts deeply unimpressed about it. "this is bullshit.... okay, pull another card though."

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie is incapable of saying goodnight first, you've noticed. no matter how tired she is, no matter what time it is, ellie will not be the one to end the conversation. you have to do it every single time, and even then she always sends one more thing after just in case.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie misses your country’s summers so much it physically pains her, even though she spent the entire time complaining. she genuinely hated it. your room had no AC, only that loud ass fan that sounded like a plane preparing for takeoff and barely helped at all. secretly, she loved feeling your skin warm and sticky against hers. both of you were always too overheated to fully cuddle but still found a way to touch each other somehow; a leg thrown over hers, your fingers sleepily scratching her stomach, her face tucked into your chest at 3am while the fan rattled violently in the background...

she complained about it and yet, she would give anything to be back in your bedroom right now. she misses those horrible sweaty nights more than she can explain once she’s back in jackson.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie randomly sends you songs, and you do the same. it's like another form of communication at this point.

ellie’s are usually late night sends with absolutely zero context. just a link, no caption. just the song and the implication that she heard something and thought of you or thought of herself or thought of the two of you and couldn't not send it.

you send her songs too, even though your music taste is a tad different than hers. she listens to every single song carefully because a song you love is information about you and she wants all the information about you she can get.

your contributions to this arrangement include playlists with titles like songs to kiss me to when you see me again and, inexplicably (or not so inexplicably if she thinks about it), multiple tracks from the shrek soundtrack.

you

this is the greatest song of all time

ellie 🦕

disespectfully i disagree

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie cannot, under any circumstances, maintain a single linear conversation and neither can you. this is a ongoing issue. you will be mid-sentence about something important and one of you will say something that reminds the other of something completely unrelated and suddenly you're three topics deep with no map back. many important conversations have been lost this way. every discussion becomes like ten different discussions stitched together badly.

the solution you implemented, after one too many "wait what were we talking about" moments was the parentheses system because otherwise neither of you would ever finish a story.

you say parentheses out loud and whatever comes after is a detour. you're allowed to go as far off road as you want but when you close the parentheses, you go back, no exceptions. and it works! you actually finish conversations now... occasionally.

both of you say the word “parentheses” out loud constantly because both your brains work at the speed of light apparently.

“PARENTHESES. did i tell you dina and jesse are dating again?"

“okay so my professor said— wait, parentheses. remind me to tell you what happened at the café afterwards.”

of course, you forget to close the parentheses half the time anyway. you absolutely enable each other’s tangents too, neither of you are helping the situation AT ALL.

͙͘͡★ the issue now is nested parentheses, which happen constantly and were not accounted for in the original system design.

"so the kid did the funniest thing— PARENTHESES this reminds me of what you said about the museum tours— PARENTHESES wait that also reminds me of— okay i have THREE parentheses open right now."

"well, close them in order?"

"i don't remember what order i opened them in."

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie actually loves listening to your brain jump around topics though. loves seeing how excited you get when you remember something halfway through another sentence. she thinks it’s very cute!

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie gets sent approximately eight hundred tiktoks per day. genuinely an alarming amount considering you are both busy adults... you send her tiktoks like you're being PAID per video sent. ellie wakes up to at least five notifications minimum on a slow day. she's completely baffled by it, but she still watches every single one, always.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie on the other hand, is an instagram reels person and this is genuinely incomprehensible to you. you receive reels from ellie that were funny approximately four to six months ago. memes that have been dead and buried and mourned.

you

ellie. this meme is from february

ellie 🦕

okay? it's funny

you

it was funny... in FEBRUARY

ellie 🦕

it was funny in february and it's still funny now

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie who receives a good morning texts from you every single day, without fail. even if it's just "gm <3" at 6am while half asleep. ellie wakes up to them and her whole morning is different.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie quietly opens her camera roll and just looks at your pictures for a while when the missing gets particularly bad. she always avoided cameras, even before meeting you. always turned her face away or groaned whenever someone pulled out a phone, but now she wishes she had documented every ordinary little moment that felt infinite at the time. she regrets not taking more pictures so much.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie is a composed person... generally. she acts all cocky over text until you tell her “i’ll send you something later” and suddenly she’s typing like her hands are vibrating because they, in fact, are. her body just responds before her brain can do anything about it. she genuinely shakes in excitement when she knows you’re about to send boobs or ass, like a damn chihuahua. pacing around her room and checking her phone every four seconds.

you figured out very early that you have an extraordinary amount of power in this specific situation and you use it responsibly (well... no.)

ellie 🦕

i was in a meeting????

you

i know 😚

ellie 🦕

ok so you did that on purpose

you

it was on purpose yes

ellie 🦕

i hate you

you

booo you don't

ellie 🦕

were you actually thinking about me or

you

literally yes. i'm thinking about you alllll the time <33

ellie 🦕

okay

i don't have another meeting until 3

you

LMFAOOO

ellie 🦕

what

you

nothing nothing 😇

you're so cute i can't stand it

ellie 🦕

i'm not cute

so about that 3pm window

you

yes els

yes okay 😭

ellie 🦕

cool cool cool

i mean

good

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie literally gets hit with longing at the the most mundane moments that have no business making her feel like this. like, when she's doing the dishes, or when she hears a song you love, or when she wakes up from naps and reaches for you before remembering... just yearning and daydreaming all day long.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie has a moment, just a few months in, where she genuinely cannot see how this works long term and it terrifies her. she almost texts you about it at 2am. instead, she stared at the ceiling for an hour and then send "i really like you" completely unprompted. you answer immediately "i really like you too ILOVEYOUUUU <3333 go to sleep. long day tomorrow"

and the crisis passes, just like that.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie owns an “i ♡ my girlfriend” pin. it’s clipped onto her backpack right beside the one joel got her for her birthday a few years ago. she looks super proud every time someone points it out and will talk about her awesome girlfriend—you, of course. it has never been removed and it will never be removed. it will be on that backpack until the backpack disintegrates.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie gets a summer position doing guided tours for children at her local natural history museum. this is objectively perfect for her and also a disaster because ellie is great at information but not so great at children, or so she claims. she called you in a quiet panic on her second day.

"there's so many of them and they won't stop moving and one of them just licked a bone?"

obviously, you immediately appoint yourself as ellie's unofficial child-wrangling consultant. you had been handling this exact category of chaos for some time now, so you gave her the tips you'd collected the hard way. the advice starts coming in unprompted, but ellie listens to all of it and takes notes.

"okay, if a kid won't stop touching the display, what you do is give them a job. tell them they're the official display guardian. suddenly it's their responsibility to protect it."

ellie tries this the next day, and it miraculously works.

͙͘͡★ so, this becomes a thing. ellie encounters a child situation, texts you, you provide a strategy, ellie implements it, and it works most of the time, so she ends up using your techniques constantly.

“okay guys, if you can hear me clap once!” and suddenly twenty children are listening to her. holy shit. witchcraft? maybe.

ellie starts looking forward to having problems just so she can ask you about them.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie by the end of the summer is genuinely good with the kids on her tours. like actually really good. she crouches down to their level and speaks to them like small intelligent people and gets them excited about bones and fossils they did not care about in the first place.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie has a contact photo of you that you hate with your whole entire heart. it was taken during autumn. you're sitting on a park bench, mikey in your arms, laughing at something off camera — something she said, probably, though neither of you can remember what. you were not aware that she was taking a picture; your hair is messy from the wind and your mouth is wide open mid-laugh, your nose scrunched the way it does when you laugh. mikey is looking at the camera with his whole little face.

you've asked her to change it an ungodly number of times but ellie genuinely loves that picture so much that her eyes go a little watery when she looks at it for a long time.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie is not a words of affirmation person in general EXCEPT with you over long distance. because she can't touch you or show up the way she wants, so she has to say it. and every time she does, you stores her words up like treasure.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie is not sending nudes. this is a non-negotiable that she established early and has maintained with great conviction. she's glad that you respect that completely and never make her feel weird about it.

you, on the other hand, have no such convictions. you send her nudes like you're sending a good morning text. she receives these and has to take a minute because holy fuck? she loves receiving them, loves them BAD. but sending things back? uh, that's an horrifying concept. she just doesn’t feel fully comfortable with it at first, not because she doesn’t trust you —she trusts you completely— she’s just awkward and weirdly shy about it.

the first time ellie sent something, it was completely unannounced. just a mirror picture of her in her sports bra after coming back from the gym.

she slowly starts getting more confident over time, little by little. at first it’s just mirror selfies in sports bras. then maybe the waistband of her boxers peeking out low on her hips, maybe a blurry picture of her stomach while she’s laying in bed... she always sends what she's comfortable with and nothing more, so, her face isn't showing in most of these pictures.

the no face rule is also firm and you think it's actually really cute.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie spends like twenty minutes deciding whether or not to send a picture only for it to be the tamest thing you’ve ever received in your life, but to her it feels insanely vulnerable. she gets embarrassingly proud of herself afterwards too, trying to act all casual while clearly waiting for praise.

ellie 🦕

so

was that like. cool or whatever.

you

i almost passed out in the middle of the grocery store

ellie 🦕

okay relax

you

NO because why are you casually sending me stomach like that ??? happy pride to ME !!!!

need you so bad phone sex isn’t enough anymore actually i’m being serious

and then you said the most explicit shit she ever read.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie gets so flustered when you’re explicit because she never expects it despite the fact that you have literally been dating for ages. you’ll say the most insane out of pocket thing imaginable and she’ll just stare at her phone blinking slowly with her cheeks burning bright red. she secretly loves knowing she can affect you like that, loves when you lose your mind over the smallest things she sends. she still genuinely can’t believe you want her that much.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie is, however, extremely and immediately down for phone sex every single time. her consistency is actually remarkable... this is not something she needs convincing about AT ALL. she's down for it literally every time, there is no situation where she’s turning down phone sex. you could text “u busy" and she’s already plugging her headphones in. the contrast between "will not send a single picture" and "phone call? yes. right now? yes." is something you find both hilarious and incredibly her.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie has a name for you when you're grumpy. it started because you called her once when you were in a sour mood that had no single cause, just the accumulation of a long day. she listened to you rant for minutes before saying, very calmly:

"okay, miss trunchbull."

you got grumpier immediately, which made her laugh. and you cannot stay grumpy through that laugh, you've tried, and it's physically impossible, but you were determined that day so you stayed grumpy a little while through sheer force of will before it cracked you open.

so, she calls you miss trunchbull just when you're grumpy because it makes you grumpier first and then not grumpy at all. it's the most efficient method of fixing your mood and she uses it without shame.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie almost cried tears of joy when your old phone finally died. not because she hated it or anything — she had defended that thing for months actually. “it’s still working” she’d say every time you complained about storage or battery life or the camera quality resembling active surveillance footage. it served you well. it was a good phone. she harbors no ill will toward it whatsoever.

but the second you texted her my phone finally gave up she sat up so fast because okay, that meant you were getting a new one… a better one. with a better camera, probably. which meant she got to see you in HIGH DEFINITION.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie was genuinely stunned into silence for a second the first facetime call after you got the new phone. because suddenly there you were, her girl. all pretty and alive looking on her screen. your face clear and detailed in a way she hadn't seen in months. she could see the exact shade of your eyes, the little moves your eyebrows made while talking, the texture of your lip gloss. the tiny beauty mark in your face that she used to kiss all the time.

her eyes went embarrassingly wet.

obviously, she became immediately unbearable afterwards.

“wait hold on move closer.”

“lemme see your makeup.”

“baby your skin looks crazy good on this thing, what the fuck?"

“wait, smile again”

“okay now turn your head to the side please— wait, you got a new piercing?"

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie did not come pre-assembled for this relationship. opening up —about feelings, mostly— did not come naturally to her. it took time, an embarrassing amount of time, by her own private admission.

joel miller raised her, so one can do the math.

early on she'd go quiet when something was wrong and you'd be on the other side of it not knowing what you'd done or what she needed. more than once you asked are you okay and got yeah and had to decide whether to believe it or not. sometimes you pushed gently and sometimes you waited, but you got good at reading the difference.

she's quite good at it now. not perfect, and she's probably never going to be perfect, but now she'll tell you when something's wrong and she'll tell you what she needs and she'll say it was a bad day and instead of just not saying it and hoping you somehow know.

you think it's one of the bravest things about her, and you love her a little more for that.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie thinks loving you feels a little like adding honey to bitter things. the bad parts don’t disappear completely, but somehow they become easier to swallow.

you are, very literally, the sweetness of her life.

since you got into her life, her days started feeling softer around the edges simply because you were in them. she notices it especially on bad days, because even when everything feels exhausting and frustrating, there’s still this quiet thought in the back of her mind:

i can call her later.

and somehow, that makes everything feel a little more survivable.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie doesn't talk about you much with joel. not because she doesn't want to, it's just kind of weird, so she keeps it brief. like, she mentions you occasionally. "she's good" when he asks about you. "yeah, we're good" when he asks how's everything between you two. joel doesn't push much and she's thankful for that. still, somehow, he ends up knowing plenty about you anyway through little things she mentions.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie whose lockscreen is a strip of those vintage photobooth pictures with three frames.

in the first, the two of you are side by side, just looking at the camera, her arm around your shoulder

in the second frame, you've turned toward her, one of your hands grabbing her face with absolutely zero gentleness, and you're kissing her cheek so hard she has her eyes closed. her expression is somewhere between laughing and suffering, even though she was delighted.

in the third one you're sitting in her lap and you're kissing her properly.

she’s changed phones twice and somehow the lockscreen always stays the same. she's never changed and never will because you look so pretty in it. she's told you this more than once and she's not saying it to be nice, she's saying it because it's just true.

once she admitted very quietly that she likes it so much because it captured you exactly as she remembers you, just loud and sweet and all over her in the most loving way possible.

“i dunno,” she shrugged afterwards, all awkward about the vulnerability. “you just look really happy with me in them. i like it.”

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie sends you a picture immediately every single time she sees hello kitty and spiderman together anywhere. doesn’t matter where she is. random stores, at the shopping, on gas stations, when she's doing her groceries... you best believe she’ll stop dead in the aisle to take a picture.

ellie 🦕

thought you should know we’re apparently luggage now?

ellie 🦕

you and me

ellie 🦕

i got these two. they reminded me of us

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie stole your hello kitty plushie before leaving. technically, you let her borrow it while she stayed in your place, but one day she left with it tucked under her arm and never gave it back.

in her defense, she fully intended to tell you before leaving. then she forgot. she got back to jackson and unpacked and there it was, sitting in her lap looking guilty as hell. you discovered the theft like four days later.

you

ellie. WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?

turns out, she underestimated how emotionally attached you were to that thing. she should've known, of course, since it was very obviously beloved. poor thing looked like it had survived several wars. one eye missing, fur all faded and discolored, stuffing slightly lumpy from years of being held too much. maybe that’s part of why she loved it immediately.

eventually, after a long dramatic exchange where you accused her of kidnapping and demanded visitation rights that she had to pay, you relented.

you

okay okay okay… you can keep her

take care of my daughter please ☹️

now it sits on her bed in jackson like it belongs there. she uses it as a pillow sometimes, mostly when the missing you thing gets particularly bad. not because it’s comfortable but because it smells like you. like coffee, your shampoo, and that sweet clean scent that clings to your sheets. every time the smell faded a little more she genuinely felt devastated.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie cannot peel an orange without getting nostalgic.

it’s genuinely baffling to her how specific the memory is, too. every time she peels one, the memory just hits her. the juice on your fingers, the smell sharp and sweet in the warm air.

it's this really specific memory: the two of you sitting outside in the sun, eating oranges like two elderly people with nowhere to be and nothing to do. you beside her, handing her a piece before she asked.

you’d peel them together and leave little piles of orange skins between you while talking about absolutely nothing.

it was genuinely nothing. no special occasion, no milestone. just a random afternoon in your backyard eating oranges in the sun because you insisted you needed “vitamin D and enrichment,” so you dragged ellie outside with a bowl of oranges.

she'd been so hot that day, she remembers. she'd also been so happy, but she hadn't said that part out loud.

every time she peels one, she immediately gets hit with this horrible ache in her chest because suddenly she could practically hear your voice again in her ear.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie has a locket with a tiny photo of you inside it.

you both do. they're small matching ones in silver, heart shaped and worn from constant use — your idea, which she called cheesy and agreed to in the same breath.

inside hers there’s a tiny picture of you on one side and a picture of the two of you together on the other. inside yours, the same. just ellie where you were. the photos are cut unevenly because you were laughing too hard while trying to trim them with tiny scissors.

she touches it constantly without realizing.

when she’s stressed, her fingers drift there automatically. when she’s tired. when she’s thinking. when she misses you. she’ll rub her thumb over the edge of it absentmindedly over it.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie knows the distance is hard and ugly sometimes. there are nights where missing you sits so heavy in her chest she genuinely doesn’t know what to do with herself besides call you and listen to you breathe for a while. there are days where the time difference frustrates her so badly she has to put her phone down and walk around the block before she starts feeling too miserable about it.

but still, underneath all of that there’s certainty. quiet certainty, but certainty anyway.

it won’t be like this forever.

maybe she’ll come back to you, or maybe you’ll come to her. maybe it’ll take longer than either of you want, but it will happen because she’s sure of it, like the way she’s sure the sun rises every morning in the east. it's not blind optimism, just faith. in you and in what this became. faith in the fact that loving you has rooted itself too deeply into her life to ever become temporary

she doesn't know when it will happen and she's made peace with it, mostly. the logistics are complicated, after all. visas, flights, money, schedules and a thousand more small bureaucratic obstacles that stand between two people who just want to be in the same room again.

she knows all of them by heart. she's been working through them one by one, but she doesn't talk about it much. doesn't say i've been researching flights or i asked about visa requirements again or i've been putting money aside every month since i got back. she just does it without fanfare.

you know, anyway. you can tell by the way she says when instead of if. always when. from the very beginning, it has always been when.

when i visit.

when you come to jackson.

when we're in the same place again.

when i see you again.

when, when, when.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie works so hard for it too. probably harder than you realize. taking extra shifts at the museum and saving money whenever she can, researching programs for once she graduates and jobs late at night when she should be sleeping.

she's building a bridge back to you, piece by piece. slowly but surely.

͙͘͡★ bittersweet!ellie once told you, after one particularly difficult night apart:

“i don’t know exactly how yet. but i know i’ll find my way back to you.”

and she meant it with her whole heart.

───────── ⋆ ˖ ─────────

⋆｡° ⋆ ˖ a/n:

honey-sick because... homesick. but honey. because she misses you and you’re the sweetness of her life. get it... 😚 maybe it sounded better in my head BUT WHATEVER. maybe i’ll rename this part later hehe

this was originally written as a little extra or as companion piece for my one shot bittersweet, but honestly i think it can be read as a standalone too. it’s basically just ellie and reader being painfully in love across several time zones and trying to survive it <3 also this is my first time writing in this format so i genuinely have no idea if i did this correctly LMFAOOOO but i had so much fun writing it. these two mean everything to me actually. like genuinely i think about them all the time

i wrote this in one sitting and didn't proofread it so the tenses are probably all over the place i’m SO sorry i’ll probably fix them later. or not..

anyway thank you so much for reading ♡ and if you have any requests or thoughts about these two PLEASEEE send them my way because i will take literally any excuse to write more of them 😚 mwah

You didn’t know what to do.

You sat there and let her bawl her eyes out. God knows she needed it.

“Oh, Els, come on.” You reached out and tucked a loose strand of her auburn hair behind her ear, “you know you deserve a better date. Someone who won’t make you pay for everything while knowing you’re only in college yourself.”

Ellie sniffled, wiping at her face roughly with one hand, “I know… but it sucks because most girls out there just want a—” she hiccuped and started sobbing loudly into your chest again, “—they just want someone who can take care of their needs and I want to be that someone.”

“Oh… oh, there you go.”

You patted her back, a little awkward but you mainly felt sorry for the poor girl. You know how deeply Ellie loved when she fell in love.

Flowers and chocolates and love letters.

She was a hopeless romantic.

She wasn’t rich. She barely earned enough to pay her half of rent but you knew she had a big heart. If she couldn’t afford an actual bouquet, she’d make a paper bouquet from scratch, and that was more romantic to you than any kind of real flower.

Ellie sobbed harder into your chest. Your arms came around her, embracing her gently. “It’s okay, shhh…”

“I just wanna be loved too.” Ellie said, voice almost so miserable you just wanted to cuddle her in your chest and never let her go.

“Yeah, I get it. Everyone wants that.”

After a little bit of sitting there with her, you moved. Ellie blinked at you with her teary eyes. You reached back and grabbed a bottle of water from your bedside table. You uncapped it and offered it to her.

“You’ve been crying for a while, Els, you gotta drink some water now.”

Ellie whined and shoved at it weakly, “don’t wanna.”

“But you gotta.”

Ellie groaned, almost as if annoyed but not really and finally wrapped her fingers around the base of the bottle, taking it from you. She took a sip, then another.

“You really gotta start getting to know someone first before you date them, y’know?”

“But I do.” Ellie defended, voice almost whiny.

“No, you don’t. I guess you take them out too fast.”

Ellie paused, thinking about it.

“I guess so.”

You sighed, “alright, we’ve spotted the problem. Next time, let yourself court the girl for a bit before you jump into trying to take her out on an expensive date.”

Ellie pouted. “But what if she thinks I’m some cheapskate?”

You flicked her forehead playfully, “you’re a master at attracting gold diggers because of your dating antics.”

Ellie capped the bottle of water, and quietly gave it back to you. “But then, what if when I’m trying to get to know that girl, she gets bored of me?”

“Why’d she get bored of you?”

“I’m not exactly the most interesting person on the planet.” She paused. “For starters, I don’t know what to talk about if it’s not my art, my journal and… comics.”

You stifled a laugh.

“Hey! Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m sorry, it’s— you’re really cute.”

The words escaped before you could stop yourself and now you both were left blushing, and the proximity between you both was suddenly so… clear.

“Thank you…”

You nodded, looking away as if your face wasn’t a dead giveaway of how flustered you felt in the moment.

“But I’m serious. I’m really not that interesting of a person if I’m to be honest and I don’t know if most girls even like that sort of stuff…”

“Well, you might eventually find someone who likes that kinda stuff. You just gotta be patient.”

Ellie huffed and face-planted into a pillow, “I hate being patient!”

You smiled, “too bad, Els. Good things come to those who wait.”

Ellie didn’t respond, she remained like that with her face pressed into your pillow. You nudged her with your foot.

“Els? You alive?”

No response.

You nudged again, “Ellie.”

She groaned in response.

“You alive?”

“Barely.”

You rolled your eyes, “you can’t move into my bed forever.”

She groaned again. “Maybe I can.”

“Your coping mechanisms are so weird.”

“They work.”

“You’re literally sobbing into my fresh bedding.”

“I’m marking territory.”

“What are you, a puppy?”

Ellie didn’t respond verbally. She just made a whining sound that very much did sound like a puppy’s. It made you roll your eyes. You snatched the pillow away, forcing her to look at you. Her eyes were a little swollen from crying and there were tear tracks drying on her freckled face. You sighed, wiping at her cheeks with your thumb.

“You can’t be moping around forever.”

“But I can.”

“And it’s not healthy.”

“Healthy.” Ellie snorted. You felt embarrassment crawling up your neck. “You eat snacks for meals.”

“Shut up!”

Ellie grinned, smug.

“You’re impossible.”

She pulled the pillow away and tossed it aside. It bounced off the edge of the mattress and plopped on the floor. Ellie didn’t look back. She crawled on top of you and laid there, her long legs tangling with yours as she wrapped both arms around your waist. She rested her face on your plush chest, getting comfortable.

“Am I hard to love?”

She didn’t look at you when she asked you that, and somehow that made the question hurt more. Your heart squeezed, trying to formulate an answer. Then you answered,

“No, you’re not hard to love.”

“But—”

“Ellie, you’re not hard to love,” you stroked her hair idly, “you’re thoughtful. You make handmade gifts.”

“Because I’m broke.”

“That’s besides the point.”

“That’s absolutely the point.”

You shook your head with a sigh.

“Ellie, you notice things about people that others don’t and the little things that you do, like listening to someone when they’re ranting instead of just waiting for your turn to speak, they make you special. You’re one of a kind.”

The silence that filled the room right after you’d said that made you want to handcraft a coffin and crawl into it for the rest of the summer.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, you’re fine.”

Ellie grinned, cheeks red, but she looked so fucking smug.

“It’s okay if you think I’m attractive.”

“Ellie, that’s not what I—”

“I mean, I’ve known you for longer than any girl I’ve been on a date with so… would you wanna go out with me?”

“Ellie…”

“Would you?” Ellie pressed, swallowing thickly as the nervousness started crawling up her spine.

You pulled her closer, “yeah, okay, I will. Try not to talk my head off about dinosaurs.”

Ellie flushed. “I wouldn’t!”

“Sure,” you drawled.

“So when do you wanna go out?” Ellie asked.

“Whenever you wanna.”

“Right now?”

“It’s 2 am.”

Ellie blinked. As if there was nothing wrong with going out on a date at 2 am.

You sighed softly and pushed at her, voice tired and sleepy, “go to bed.”

“Oh, my heart. You wound me.” Ellie said, mockingly grabbing her chest.

You rolled your eyes, lips twitching in a smile but you kicked her off your bed this time, curling up into a tight ball.

“Go to your room, turn off my light when you go.”

Ellie crawled back in your bed and kissed your forehead, “alright, princess.”

Your eyes snapped open, wide. “El—”

“Goodnight!” Ellie said loudly, switching the light off and leaving— you could hear her laughing as she left down the hall.

So what if you wanted to date your roommate?

There were only two possible ways things could go. A: You both end up being perfectly compatible and live together happily forever, get married and have two cats together. Or… B: you both become a classic situation of doomed yuri, and live in complete tension and awkwardness for the rest of your lives because moving out while relying on such a little paycheck was near impossible for the both of you.

You’d really hoped this wouldn’t fuck up.

If you hadn’t been really sleepy, maybe you’d even decline her on her offer but Ellie looked so fucking cute like an excited little puppy, and you couldn’t reject her when she was already heartbroken because some Jessica broke her heart.

You hated that you were smiling in the dark like an absolute idiot. You were so gone.

You grabbed your blanket and pulled it over your head hastily, squeezing your eyes closed.

The dress you wore flowed down your waist perfectly. It wasn’t anything too gorgeous, it was simple and pretty in its simplicity. You turned once, then twice.

“Lookin’ so good, princess.”

You heard Ellie at the door.

You looked over. She stood there dressed in a loose graphic tee— looking like she picked the one that looked the least embarrassing. You smiled before you could stop yourself. She looked absolutely adorable in her little boy clothes. You crossed the room in a few strides until you were standing only a few inches away from her. You put your arms over her shoulders.

“Hi, baby. Lookin’ so good too.” You said with a little wink.

All air seemed to evaporate from Ellie’s lungs the moment you leaned close and said it. She wrapped one arm around your waist instinctively, “o-oh?”

“Yeah, baby, oh.” You giggled, “you smell good. You wore the cologne you only save for your special occasions, awww!”

Ellie’s face was resembling a fresh tomato.

“Stop, you’re so embarrassing!”

“I’m the one that’s embarrassing?” You giggled, leaning closer until your nose brushed hers, “you look like you spent all night staying up and cleaning your shoes.”

Ellie’s eyes widened, “how do you—?”

You pressed your finger to her lips, “shh, don’t say another word.”

“You’re teasing me.” Ellie mumbled.

“Am I now?”

“Yeah, you are.”

“What are you gonna do other than point and pout?”

Ellie’s eyes flashed with something you hadn’t seen ever before and before you knew it she had you pinned against the wall of your room, her hand gripping your waist as the other held both your wrists pinned above your head— expertly enough for you to know she’d done this before.

You stared at her, lips parted in awe and eyes wide with shock.

“That’s what I thought, baby.” Ellie kissed your jaw, peppering more kisses down your neck as she pulled you closer.

Your eyes fluttered shut, throwing your head back slightly to allow her more access to the sensitivity of your neck. Ellie’s chapped lips sucked a pretty dark hickey on the side of your neck.

You whimpered, opening your eyes just for a second to make eye contact with her before you felt one of her thighs shifting between both your legs. She started moving it slowly, letting your clothed heat rub against her.

It didn’t take you long to start grinding back against her, letting your stupidly soaked cunt drench the cotton of your panties as you rubbed yourself on your date’s thigh.

“I need you, Els…”

“You were the one teasin’ me just a bit ago, and now you can’t take a little of your own medicine?” Ellie asked, tone playful.

“I wasn’t doin’ any of this!”

“Maybe.”

Ellie kissed you, swallowing all your protests, not that you wanted her to stop either because she felt so good in the moment. She guided you to the bed and laid you down, pausing just for a moment, holding the hem of your dress.

“May I?”

You blushed. Fuck.

Asking for consent this gently was so hot.

“Yeah.”

Ellie pushed your dress up to reveal your soaked panties and kissed your thighs, spreading out the span of her kisses along your inner thighs before she finally slipped the garment down your legs, exposing you bare to her eyes.

Ellie kissed the mound first, rubbing it with her hand. “There… she’s so pretty.”

You blushed, “I need you, Ellie…”

“How badly do you need me?”

You reached down and pushed your pussy lips open using one hand. Warm, wet arousal slipped between your folds and trickled down. The sight alone could turn on any lesbian.

Ellie cussed under her breath, “fuck, she’s drippin’ for me.”

She rubbed your clit with one hand, using the other to finger you. She licked the length of her two fingers first before she gently stuck them inside.

She moved them in and out gently, curling and uncurling as she searched for that one sweet spot that would have you cumming within seconds.

She wasn’t rough. Not at all.

She was the gentlest anyone had ever been with your body.

Your fingers dug in the sheets, chasing the way she fingered you. She curled again— brushing your g-spot effectively. You gasped, cumming before you even realised.

Ellie didn’t stop, she kept her fingers going. She moved up, and pushed your dress up further until your chest was exposed. She tugged your bra over your tits, letting your perfect breasts sit at their natural place.

Her tongue found them first, circling a nipple to perk it right up. She played with your nipple— sucking and biting freely.

“You’re so gorgeous, I can’t get enough of you.”

Your arms wrapped around her. Her thumb pressed on your clit, fingers still pumping steadily in your cunt.

“She makes the best sounds too.” She said, referring to all the wet sounds your pussy was making.

Her words only made you more and more embarrassed.