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Abby’s hands are calloused and rough, more similar to sandpaper than skin. That’s all Ellie can bring herself to focus on in this moment, her eyes squeezed shut tight against the blinding pain incoming.
The initial chop was almost painless—like snipping a hangnail or plucking a hair. Now, Abby has Ellie’s arm sandwiched between her bicep and her ribcage, fingers wrapped around her wrist in a firm grip as she holds her injured hand under a dry faucet. Her back is to Ellie, her shoulder blade nearly brushing Ellie’s cheek.
“Just breathe,” Abby mutters, her voice still slightly hoarse. She glances at Ellie over her shoulder before using her free hand to turn on the old water spout.
Nothing happens for a long while, just a quiet creaking filling the air. Then old, probably less-than-safe water gushes forth and pours over Ellie’s hand. She chokes down a pained cry, the sound strangling in her throat and coming out as a strained groan as her forehead falls against Abby’s back. Abby’s quick to turn off the faucet and wrap Ellie’s hand in her stripped-off shirt, both hands cradling Ellie’s firmly.
She loosens the clamp she has on Ellie’s arm and turns to face her, her gaze fixed down on the now blood-soaked fabric. She hasn’t met Ellie’s eye a single time—not when Ellie spared her, and not when she turned back and bent down to sling her over her shoulder either.
Ellie wants to demand why ; why turn back for her? Why adjust her grasp on the kid just to make room for her? Why waste her limited energy on hauling Ellie into the boat, tucking her in beside Lev before climbing in herself?
Nothing comes out. She just rasps something that may be gratitude, following as Abby stands. She watches numbly as Abby takes her uninjured hand and moves it to cradle the other, finally letting go of her. Ellie finds her eyes following every movement of those calloused palms, as if entranced.
Ellie trails behind Abby and Lev. Abby has one of her hands on Lev’s shoulder, holding him close and glancing down at him constantly. He’s in even worse shape than Abby is, his shirt hanging off his shoulder and his skin clinging to his bones. There’s a moment where he looks over his shoulder at Ellie before Abby turns his head back forward.
The Catalina Casino is swarming with Fireflies. The three of them are stopped at the door and they talk to Abby for a long time. Ellie feels her skin crawl when Abby looks back at her, her sharp eyes gleaming in the soft glow coming from inside the casino. Then the Fireflies at the door gesture for them to come inside and that’s that.
Abby seems to notice Ellie lagging behind as they walk the carpeted halls. Then, just like she’s been holding Lev, she loosely loops her arm around Ellie and grasps her shoulder. Her hand is warm and heavy, her palms scratchy against Ellie’s bare skin. Ellie should pull away, say something bitter and cold, not let Abby touch her like she knows her. She should —but she’s so damn warm and the murmured, “you feeling okay?” that follows makes her stomach ache in an almost pleasant way so she doesn’t say or do a damn thing.
They’re all separated for checkups. Ellie finds herself looking around the crowded ballroom floor everytime the medic stops asking her questions, searching for Lev and Abby in the sea of people. Cheap, dry clothes are shoved into her hands and she feels numb as she changes, ducked behind the sheer curtain they’re using to separate the cots.
The sweats are just a touch too big and the shirt feels like fire against her scrapes. She nearly cries when the medic unravels the shirt wrapped around her hand, the sight of her mangled fingers making her nauseous. The medic carefully wraps the stumps of her pinkie and ring finger in bandages, circling it around her palm over and over.
With a bare granola bar and a water bottle in hand, Ellie is sent with another group of strays towards trucks outside waiting to ship them off to the various hotels on Catalina Island. She’s looking around again, standing on her toes and peering over heads, looking for Abby . She feels a disproportionate amount of panic building in her chest when she hears it:
“Where is she? Where did you send her? You need to keep her with me. No, I don’t care about your fucking numbers. Give all three of us one room, I don’t fucking care. Where is she ?”
Abby . It’s like she’s tuned to it, to recognize her voice even through a sea of people murmuring. She feels herself moving through the crowd before she realizes she’s taking the steps, shouldering past people like a fish stuck in a net. Abby’s arguing with a Firefly, holding Lev close to her side, her strong features twisted up in frustration.
Those blue eyes snap straight to her, as if she had been searching for her in the crowd the whole time, her focus never fully on the Firefly in front of her. She gestures some more, says words that Ellie misses, before the Firefly is waving Ellie over. Abby has her arm around her shoulders again, that intense gaze fixing on her now-clean face.
“You okay?” she asks, far too concerned for a woman Ellie tried to kill countless times. Her hand moves from Ellie’s shoulder to the back of her head, effortlessly angling her to look up. “You look cleaner.”
Those three words send an impossible amount of heat soaring through Ellie’s chest. She nudges her head out of Abby’s grasp to look away before those painfully knowing eyes see her flush scarlet.
Abby, Ellie and Lev are hauled onto the back of a truck, tucked in on benches beside the other soon-to-be Fireflies. Abby’s arm isn’t around her shoulders anymore, instead focusing on Lev. Her shoulders are slightly hunched and she’s slightly turned away from Ellie. Her voice is too low to hear in the packed truck, and Ellie finds herself focusing too closely on the nape of Abby’s neck.
It’s taken her far too long to realize she doesn’t have her long dutch braid anymore. Instead, her hair is shorn, sticking up at odd angles around her ears in unorganized cowlicks. It almost makes her hair look brown instead of the dull blonde Ellie knows it is. She’s stared at enough pictures to know.
She feels the fleeting impulse to reach out and brush her uninjured fingers over the fluff. It’s cleaner than it was before, washed of mud and sand that had been caked into it by the end of their fight. It looks like it would be soft to the touch, like patting the K9s in Jackson when they killed a runner in a particularly gruesome way. She manages to hold back only because she doesn’t want to startle the wolf and get bitten.
Ellie looks out into the landscape of Catalina Island instead. She imagines the time before the Outbreak, of rich women in thin dresses and old men in patterned shirts roaming the streets with their luggage in search for their hotel. She looks down at the water bottle in her palm, pretending for a moment it’s fresh and clean and not speckled with dirt.
The room they’re escorted to is indeed too cramped for three people. Abby barely even notices. There’s two beds, both twin-sized. She sees Lev to one, kneeling in front of him and palming his face, inspecting him in a tender way that makes Ellie nauseous. She’s nauseous a lot, lately. The kind of nausea that comes with constant wanting.
Ellie drifts through the room, coming to a stop near the corner where an old painting hangs. It’s plain and simple, just a few lines on the canvas. She remembers Joel explaining it to her, once, when they were staying in a ruined hotel. “They’d mass produce ‘em in factories. Every other room’s got the same one. It’s not all that special, kiddo.”
But Ellie, who had grown up in the cold walls of a military institution, found it beautiful. She doesn’t now: it just looks like cyan lines on a white background.
She’s startled by a hand grasping her shoulder and turning her around. Her own shoots out on instinct, gripping the offender’s wrist so tightly she can feel the pulse under their skin.
It’s just Abby, of course, but how strange is it for it to just be Abby?
“Take the other bed,” she says. It’s not a kind offer, more of a command. Ellie shakes her head a bit, running her fingers through her hair.
“I don’t mind sleeping on the floor,” she says, her voice quieter than she expected it to be. Abby stares at her for a long moment.
“Fine,” she says gruffly before turning around and stripping the empty bed in one fell swoop, pulling off the thin comforter. Her brow is furrowed as she folds it in half before laying it on the floor. Ellie can see the knobs of her spine as she crouches down and she feels that inane impulse to reach out and touch again.
She grabs the pillow off the bed and tosses it down on the shabby palette on the floor. Wordlessly, she toes off the slippers the medics must have given her before laying on the almost-bare mattress. She lies with her back to the wall, facing the door and Lev.
Ellie is slow to crouch down. Her bruised knees sing with pain but it fades quickly as she lowers herself down onto the blanket.
It’s the most comfortable sleeping place she’s had in over a year. The pillow is soft and cool against her split cheekbone. She closes her eyes and can almost imagine the stiff floor being her bed in Jackson, warm with the body beside her. She reaches across the short carpet, laying her bandaged hand against the unforgiving fibers. She thinks, for a moment, that she might cry—then she’s asleep.
Abby can’t stop watching her.
Ellie seems so much smaller now. She walks with her shoulders hunched, her head bowed. Her gaze darts from face to face, those wild green eyes fearful and dangerous in equal measure. She looks about ready to lash out at anyone who gets too close, like a feral dog backed into a corner.
She seemed so much larger in Santa Barbara. Maybe it was her anger, swelling her to the height of a mountain as she wrestled Abby into the shallow shore waters. Her teeth had been bared, her hands shaking as she gripped her knife tight, her forearms bearing down on Abby’s with so much force she may as well have been creating a new form of gravity. One that weighed down everything with pain and rage.
She keeps an eye on her. At meals, she watches the way she guards her food with her forearms, her head bowed down as she shovels the plain food into her mouth with her unmarred fingers. Abby glares at people who pass and stare, watching her eat like a feral animal—then again, she can’t really blame them. She’s watching her just like they are.
She resents her for seeming so small. Where was the girl who hunted her relentlessly, stopping for no one and nothing to find her? Who lied and tricked and beat her way to information, anything to get closer? Why was she being so meek ?
Then she remembers the way Ellie had looked as Abby carried a limp Lev towards the boat. She had, and still has, no idea why she looked over her shoulder that day. Maybe she had been alarmed at the sloshing of water, terrified Ellie had changed her mind. Maybe she heard the pained way Ellie was breathing, panicked and thick with tears. No matter the reason why, she had looked back and seen a wounded animal. Like a deer someone made a bad shot at and left to die, Ellie was kneeling in the water and making half-hearted attempts to crawl after Abby. She should have been wary or at least angry . She shouldn’t have to care: Ellie was a monster, wasn’t she?
Then she thought about the unending dread and pain she had felt strung up on that post, wishing anyone would save her or end her suffering… and someone had. With the intention to kill her, maybe, but Ellie had still set her free. She had let her return to Lev. She had let her go.
So against her better judgement, she adjusted her hold on Lev until she could cradle him in one arm—not that it was hard, he’s small for his age—before trudging through the briny water. Ellie had looked up at her, her face bloody and streaked with mud, her shoulders sloped low with her hands hanging limply in her lap. Abby had only wanted to help her up at first, then Ellie stumbled on her first attempt to stand and Abby found herself bending down and hoisting the smaller girl over her shoulder. She shouldn’t have been able to, not in her state, but she didn’t feel like herself then.
She’s being meek because not only did she show mercy, she got it right back and something tells Abby that was something she didn’t know how to handle.
“Take the bed tonight.”
Ellie looks at Abby as if she had clapped in her ear, head swiveling around. They had been sitting on a bench in a quiet hallway in the casino, waiting to be assigned jobs.
“What?”
“Take the bed,” Abby says again, looking over at Ellie. She shrugs as she crosses her arms and leans back against the wall. “I’ll tough out the floor tonight. We can take turns.”
Ellie stares at her unflinchingly. Her eyebrows are furrowed, confusion etching lines into her forehead and curving her mouth into a frown. Then she slowly nods, looking down at her hands.
“Sounds like a plan,” she says. She’s starting to sound like herself again; at least, how Abby imagines she sounded before this. More sure of herself, less afraid to talk. Less meek . She looks less like the doe she had seen half drowned in the tide and more like the fox that had followed her across the United States, too.
They’re both assigned to patrol, although in different areas. Abby is sent to the boats to patrol the coast— ”You’ve got the shoulders to row.” —while Ellie is assigned to the Casino. She doesn’t look happy about the assignment, but she holds her tongue.
They’re both given Firefly pendants. Abby puts hers on without a second thought. Ellie hesitates longer, her thumb tracing the shape of the wings slowly before she loops it around her neck then tucks it into her t-shirt.
During dinner that same day, Abby listens to Lev rave about his classes while keeping an eye on Ellie. She’s sitting a bit less strained now, her shoulders relaxed and her pace a bit less frantic. She can’t find it in her to feel shy when Ellie’s eyes flick up and meet hers.
“What?” she says, her voice a little sharper than Abby’s expecting it to be. Despite her tone, Abby finds the corners of her mouth curling into the barest of smiles.
Lev has stopped talking, instead shoveling his food into his mouth. Ellie and Abby are staring at each other from across the table they share, Abby sat straight with her arms crossed and Ellie with her elbows on the table, head tilted up.
“Nothing,” Abby says, genuinely. She shrugs a bit and looks down at her own food. She’s mostly finished, having eaten most of it while waiting for Ellie and Lev to get out of line.
Ellie is silent and Abby is sure there’s something brewing, a blow up that’s a long time coming. Instead, Ellie’s hand enters her field of vision and drops a roll as well as a heaping spoonful of her stew onto Abby’s plate. Then another, and one more spoon, until Abby’s plate is almost refilled.
Then she’s standing and leaving the table, carrying her empty tray to the installed basins at the edge of the casino floor. Abby watches in unmitigated shock as Ellie washes off her tray and hands it off to someone standing nearby, her heart pounding in her chest.
She looks down at her new food. There isn’t much she can do but bend her head down and eat it. It isn’t warm anymore, but it’s still better than nothing at all.
“Why did she do that?” Lev asks. He’s still looking in the direction Ellie had disappeared in, his dark brows furrowed.
Abby shrugs and says around a mouthful of roll, “don’t know. Don’t care.”
Oh, but care she does. It’s the same reason she cared when she saw Ellie crawling through the water; the same reason she cared about Ellie’s dangling fingers; the same reason she cared when they were separated at the trucks.
She simply can’t help it.
Ellie is laying on the bare sheets when Abby and Lev return to their room. Lev takes his rightful place in the fully dressed bed and Abby makes her way for the palette on the floor.
Ellie is lying facing the window. Abby catches a glimpse of her face as she sits down on the floor, her eyes widen open and simply trained on the glass. She has to bite her lip to keep from saying something, from acknowledging her awakeness—then Ellie speaks anyway.
“You’re an idiot.”
Her voice is thick, cracking just so on the “i” in idiot. Abby stares at her for a moment before laying down slowly, her back against the ground and her gaze fixed on the ceiling.
“Why?”
The room is quiet. She feels bad for Lev, for having to overhear this. She can only hope the Fireflies can find space for him with the other kids in the Avalon soon.
“You just are,” is all Ellie gives for the rest of the night. Abby stays awake for a long while, rolling over every single way she could possibly be an idiot in her mind like a marble between her fingertips.
For most of the day, Ellie doesn’t see Abby. Her patrols don’t start until the afternoon and they last until dinner, while Abby’s begin at the crack of dawn and last until mid-afternoon. She always stirs first thing in the morning when Abby’s moving around the room as quiet as she can, but it’s never quiet enough. Ellie never says anything, just watches her silhoette in the dark as she pulls on her layers in preparation of sailing out into the Catalina Island bay to keep an eye out for brave raiders or struggling future Fireflies.
She always goes back to sleep. When she does fully wake up, it’s usually mid-morning, sun streaming in through the curtain-less windows and making her uncomfortably warm. Lev was usually gone by then, too, off to class; first-aid training, the history of the Fireflies, practical skills, all that. It’s even quieter now that he’s out. She can get ready as slow as she wants before having to trudge out to the Casino to stand guard, uselessly, on the perimeter.
It’s truly a peacekeeping job more than anything, keeping an eye on the Fireflies milling about and making sure no fights break out. She gets a gun, at least. It makes her feel less stupid.
Sometimes she catches a glimpse of Abby when she and her team are docking. Her usual post has a perfect view of the coastlin and Abby isn’t hard to spot, even from a distance. Her hair has started to grow back, finally that warm dark blonde instead of a dusty brown, the uneven strands brushing her temples and flaring at the nape of her neck. She’s starting to fill back into her regular figure, too, her routine and the extra food Ellie’s been sneaking her bringing her back to her true Abby intimidation.
She watches a little longer than she should, sometimes, as Abby ropes the boat to the dock and unloads. Once, Abby caught her staring and waved at her. Ellie felt so ashamed she went and begged some pasty guy inside to switch posts with her for the day so he could “get some sun on him.”
It’s strange, Abby looking like herself again, because she doesn’t really look like herself. At least, not the Abby that Ellie memorized—the hateful, wrathful girl with a scowl and blood spattered on her face. She smiles more.
“You should grow a rat tail.”
Abby looks up as Ellie drops her tray and sits down. They’ve fallen into a routine of sitting together for dinner, tucked away in a corner. Sometimes Lev joins them, but he seems to be really enjoying having friends his age who aren’t brainwashed.
“What the fuck is that?” Abby says around a mouthful of whatever was served for dinner.
“It’s a pre-outbreak thing,” Ellie says as she sticks her fork in her food and rests her elbows on the table, leaning slightly forward. “I dunno. You, like, braid a little bit of your hair and trim the rest and let the braid grow super long.”
“Why the hell would I do that?” she asks, but she has a smile crooking the corner of her mouth as she crosses her arms.
“To add some interest to—” She gestures vaguely to Abby’s slightly floppy, slightly wavy hair— “that.”
“My hair looks fine,” Abby snorts, raising an eyebrow at Ellie before going back to her food.
“Just a suggestion.”
Ellie doesn’t know exactly when they started talking like that. It was between the time where Ellie stopped having to wrap her missing fingers and when Lev moved out of their room.
“You need to trim your bangs,” Abby points out after swallowing a bite, pointing at Ellie’s forehead with her fork. “They’re gonna get in the way soon. Gotta have a clear view if you ever want to graduate to sniper.”
“Whatever. Shut up.” Ellie wordlessly spoons half of her protein onto Abby’s plate, laying it evenly right beside her half-finished meal. “Maybe I’ll do it tonight.”
“I can help you,” Abby offers, shrugging a bit as she eats what Ellie gives her without a “ thanks” , not wanting to shatter the unacknowledged routine. “So you don’t fuck it up and end up with a duster for bangs.”
“Fuck you,” Ellie says, but she’s laughing under her breath as she shovels her food into her mouth.
So that evening, after showering off the Catalina Island sun and donning her sweat shorts, she sits on the edge of the toilet. Abby stands in front of her, between her knees, her brow furrowed in concentration as she carefully picks out the pieces of Ellie’s fringe.
Ellie never really thought of Abby as a detail-oriented person, but she supposes she has to be. No one meticulously builds strength and evades a hunter without being able to pinpoint exactly what she needs to do.
If this had been a few weeks ago, she probably would’ve felt a spike in her heartbeat as Abby lofted the scissors from her first-aid kit. Instead, her eyes flutter as Abby grasps her chin and gets to snipping, and that’s that. No panic, no fear.
In reality, the whole process most likely takes less than a few minutes. To Ellie, in the cramped space of their shared bathroom, with Abby looming over her and softly breathing against her face, and the steam from her shower beading on her skin, it takes hours. She can’t bring herself to close her eyes, instead zeroing in on the cleft of Abby’s chin. There’s a small scar just underneath it, and Ellie spends the quantum hours imagining how she got it.
Did she trip over a gnarled root as a kid, following her father and other Fireflies through a crowded forest, busting the thin skin on the ground?
Did she pick a zit to death, peeling at a too-fresh scab over and over again until it became a small cut instead of a freckle-sized bump?
Did Ellie give it to her, in one of their countless fights? With her knife, or her nails, or maybe just with a sharp headbutt?
She’s just about to ask but then Abby’s pulling away, ruffling Ellie’s bangs a bit before setting her scissors back down in its rightful place in her first-aid kit.
“There,” is all she says, then she’s leaving the bathroom. Ellie just stays sitting where she is for a while, resenting the heat churning in her chest that threatens to turn her face scarlet.
She splashes her face in the sink before following Abby into the room. There’s no more palette on the floor, both beds made. Ellie sits on the edge of her bed, watching the muscles in Abby’s back flex as she pulls a tanktop on over her head. As she watches her shoulders shift under her skin, she feels something bubbling up in her chest as her mind clouds with the memory of that same shoulder folding her in half as she was hoisted up and out of the water.
Ellie, all her life, has had very little time to think before she speaks. All of her thoughts just tumble out of her mouth, skipping straight from her mind to her lips without a moment to hesitate or reconsider. Living with Abby— really, living with Abby —has not changed this.
“Why didn’t you leave me?”
Abby pauses. Her back is still to Ellie as she adjusts the hem of her shirt before she looks over her shoulder at Ellie, a small crease forming between her eyebrows.
“Huh?”
“In Santa Barbara,” she says, her voice wavering a bit under Abby’s intense stare. She’s turning around fully now, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wardrobe. “You turned back. You helped me up. Why?”
Abby stares at her for a moment that stretches for days, her jaw set and her sharp blue eyes boring into her. Ellie can almost see the gears turning in her head, wondering how she should answer.
Ellie had always thought, deep down, that Abby would sell her out to the Fireflies; out her as the immune girl that got the majority of their organization slaughtered, the one with the cure in her blood and bones and brain. It hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t click with the way Abby wraps her arm around her shoulders or palms her head to check on her when she comes back from rare hunting trips with bruises.
“I thought you were pathetic,” Abby admits. Ellie is already bristling in indignation, but Abby keeps talking before she can start yelling. “Not—that sounded bad. I just… you looked so upset . You were covered in blood and mud and god knows what else and you were just staring at me. Your pupils were so dilated your eyes damn near looked black, you were struggling to breathe, you just—you looked so defeated .
“And… and in your own fucked up way, you saved me . I couldn’t… live with myself if I just left you there to bleed out or get sepsis or discovered by the Rattlers. I knew I had the capacity to carry both you and Lev, so I just… did.”
Ellie can only stare. Abby’s face is slightly flushed, the skin of her arms turning white from where they’re crossed tightly, her gaze fixed on the old hotel carpet. She almost looks sheepish , which is an expression Ellie never thought she’d see.
Ellie swallows hard, struggling against the lump in her throat. She attenpts to clear it as she looks away, rubbing the back of her neck. She can’t find the right words to respond, all sounding too bitter or wanton or thankful, so she just lays down with her back facing Abby’s bed.
Soon after, Abby turns off the lamp and climbs into bed, and that’s that.
Abby is haunted by a lot of things. The sight of her father on the ground, blood and grey matter smeared on the floor, for one. Finding her friends dead one by one, some in worse shape than others. The Rattlers separating Lev from her, torturing her. The belief that she was gonna die on that beach, dehydrated and aching and dazed.
One thing that’s been coming back more frequently, however, is this: Ellie whispering her name. She had heard it a few times while Ellie was on her tail, in dark warehouses and thick forests. She’s almost sure Ellie didn’t realize she was doing it, but she remembers. She remembers the raspy quality to Ellie’s voice, the desperation, the need . Abby, Abby, Abby, Abby.
It loops in her dreams. Again and again and again, the whispery tone surrounding her like a swarm of flies. It makes her skin crawl and her face hot in equal measure, always waking up soaked in a cold sweat with her hair slick against the back of her neck.
What she does not expect is to hear it when she’s awake .
When her mountain of bad memories are keeping her awake, she either reads or heads to the impromptu training gym the Fireflies set up. Tonight is one of the nights she reads, her shoulders hunched as she sits cross-legged on her bed with the pages angled towards the window for the bare light the moon offers.
The first time she hears it, she’s sure she must have dozed off while reading a particularly droning paragraph. Abby .
She rubs her eyes with a quiet groan, slowly closing her book. Maybe she should just lay down and go to bed. Uneasy sleep is still sleep, after all, and—
“ Abby. ”
Abby’s head snaps around, her brows furrowed. Ellie is sleeping with her back to Abby as always, her arms curled around her head, her auburn hair sticking up between her fingers. She’s snoring now, the sound muffled in her pillow, before it happens again.
“ Abby. Abby .” It’s not quite the same as it was back then, less desperate and more slurred in her sleep. It still has the same effect, her skin breaking out in goosebumps and her stomach swimming.
Abby sets her feet on the floor, slowly pushing herself off of her bed and taking the few short steps to reach Ellie’s. She crosses her arms tightly and leans forward, catching a glimpse of her sleeping face.
Her dark lashes fan out against her freckled cheekbones, her hair splayed out across her face, her breath disturbing the wispy strands. Her thick brows are slightly furrowed, in confusion or frustration… or maybe it’s that all consuming anger from before, the one that morphed her into a wild animal that bit and clawed and snarled.
“ Abby .” Her nose wrinkles, her lip curls. She says it with venom, albeit a sleepy and subdued venom. It’s almost cute.
Her hand trembles as she reaches out. Her body is acting on its own accord as her fingertips brush Ellie’s hair away from her face.
The reaction is immediate. Ellie’s wild eyes snap open and she sits up sharply, one hand fisting Abby’s shirt and the other holding a knife to her jaw. Jesus Christ.
Abby grimaces as she wraps her fingers around Ellie’s wrists, not pushing her hands away but just keeping them from causing any damage. Ellie is breathing harshly, her hair swinging back and forth in front of her face, sticking to her chapped lips.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ellie says. Her voice is hoarse, not quite ready to be used.
What the fuck is she supposed to say? Oh, no biggie, just watching you sleep and impulsively touching your face, my bad!
“Abby,” Ellie mutters, the fist in her shirt tugging her closer. She stumbles, her knee hitting the edge of the bed and one of her hands leaving Ellie’s wrist to catch the headboard. “What the fuck were you doing?”
Abby opens her mouth, closes it again. She shakes her head and tries to pull back but Ellie doesn’t budge. The knife is cold against her skin and it makes the hair on her arms stand up.
“Sorry,” is all she can manage to get out, her voice low and quiet. She swallows hard and squeezes Ellie’s knife-wielding hand. “Can you… not? Hold that there?”
Ellie stares at her and she doesn’t move. She doesn’t loosen her grasp, she doesn’t lower the knife. Abby feels like her head is spinning.
“I’m sorry,” Abby says again, her voice a low murmur. “I couldn’t sleep, and you were talking in your sleep. I was just checking on you. Got carried away.”
Ellie’s expression melts from anger to softer confusion, her head tilting slightly. Her hands slowly fall before she stows away the knife under her pillow once more. “I was talking in my sleep?”
“Just… a little.” Abby, Abby, Abby .
“Fuck. Sorry.” A sheepish smile is crooking her lips as she looks away, running her fingers through her hair as she rests back against the headboard. Abby pulls back, both feet on the floor and her hands to herself.
“I’ll… uh, let you go back to bed,” Abby mumbles, rubbing the back of her neck as she backs towards her bed. Ellie glances at her, watching her sit down out of the corner of her eye. She clears her throat and shifts, crossing her arms as she turns to look at Abby.
“What was I saying? In my sleep?”
“Not anything specific.”
“No?”
“No, not really.”
“Oh. Cool. Uh, good.”
Abby leans her elbows in her knees, clasping her hands as she scrutinizes Ellie. “Why? What were dreaming about?”
“What? Nothing.” She answers too quickly. She’s fidgeting with a hair tie, her shoulders are slightly scrunched up to her ears, her face is just slightly red.
Abby. Abby. Abby.
“You were saying my name.”
“What?”
“In your sleep. What you were saying, it was my name.”
Ellie shifts in discomfort.
“Oh.”
“What were you dreaming about, Ellie?”
“Nothing!” Ellie shifts again. She tucks her hair behind her ears and groans, sinking down and covering her face. “Like, nothing , it doesn’t matter. Shut up!”
“Were you dreaming about me ?”
“ No .” Ellie goes dead silent for a while. Abby just watches her, never tearing her gaze away. Ellie’s face flushes scarlet the longer she stares and she groans loudly. “ Fuck , okay, yes, I was. It was fucking humiliating, alright? It’s not like I want to have a wet dream about you! I’m as weirded out—”
“You had a wet dream about me ?”
“Is… that not what you were assuming?”
“Why in God’s name would that be what I assume?”
Abby laughs, long and hard, covering her mouth and doubling over. Ellie is complaining up a storm, groaning and whining with her face buried in her pillow. Abby recovers first—mostly, she’s still chuckling a bit—and slides off her bed, kneeling on the edge of Ellie’s bed and grasping her shoulders.
“Ellie—”
“No, leave me alone,” Ellie whines, trying to shrug Abby’s hands off as she claws for her pillow before covering her head.
“ Ellie . C’mon, look at me,” Abby mutters, bending down and coaxing Ellie to turn over. She clings to her pillow, keeping it clamped against her face. “God, you’re so fucking annoying. C’mere.”
She manages to turn Ellie over fully before she’s prying the pillow from her hands. It’s a bit of a fight, Ellie thrashing and trying desperately to stay sheepishly hidden. It takes one powerful yank to finally free it. She holds it up above her head as she braces her free hand on the mattress.
Abby was going to say something , she knows she was, but gazing down at Ellie has halted all her thoughts in her head. Her hair is splayed out around her head like a halo, some strands sticking to her temple or her lips. Her chest is heaving as she breathes, her face is so red it practically glows and her eyes are wise as she stares up at Ellie.
She was , yet instead she’s dropping the pillow somewhere off to the side and then moving her hand to Ellie’s jaw. She curves her fingers around it slowly, her thumb gently brushing over her cheek and tracing the splatter of her freckles. She’s never seen her face this close—not when it’s still and calm, at least.
Ellie opens her mouth to say something now but she never gets the chance. Abby drops to her elbow to the mattress and crushes her lips against Ellie’s. A sharp, panicked noise escapes Ellie and her hands fly to grab onto Abby’s shoulders. She’s sure that Ellie’s going to shove her off, even when she wraps her fingers in Abby’s shirt. Then she’s yanking her down on top of her, throwing her arms around Abby’s neck and meeting her kiss with fervor. Abby sinks her weight into her, her hand sliding from her face to her hair and grasping tight. One of Ellie’s hands curve around the back of her head as she tilts her head, her tongue brushing the seam of Abby’s mouth.
Abby smiles a bit, her eyes fluttering open just a bit— Christ, her eyes are open? —before she parts her lips. Ellie responds eagerly, her tongue slipping past to slide against Abby’s. Abby groans into it, the sound rumbling deep in her chest as her fingers tighten around Ellie’s hair.
She can feel Ellie smile just before she pulls away. Abby stares down at her, panting hard.
She wants to say something, anything. She needs to. Abby takes a slow, shuddering breath as she runs her fingers through Ellie’s hair.
“Was that… okay?”
Ellie grins and Abby’s heart sings . She feels heat swoop right through her at the sight of it, teeth bared and the corners of her eyes crinkling into crow’s feet. Abby finds herself smiling back, a flush creeping up her neck.
“Yeah. It…”
Ellie struggles for the words for a moment, tilting her head go and fro. Then she’s grasping Abby by the back of her head, her fingers burying into Abby’s short hair and yanking her back down. Her mouth is warm, warm, warm and Abby is long gone