hii sorry if this is a weird request but i’m currently struggling with an eating disorder (anorexia) and i was wondering if you could make something where ellie comforts reader throughout their eating disorder? it’s okay if not and once again i apologize if this request is weird 😭 thank you! ❤️
a/n: i’m very sorry for responding to your request so late. this is such a sensitive topic, i’ve struggled with an ed before as well and it was the lowest point of my teen years, i hope that you find your way out of the dark and to the light (mini tlou ref sorry lol) and i hope that you can find comfort in my writing. <3 I haven’t written in forever so I apologize if it’s horrible, but this was the first request I’ve seen to make me actually wanna write after months and months of writers block and depression, I hope it brought you some comfort.
Ellie noticed everything about you, she noticed the way your eyelashes would flutter when the sun hit your face just right in the morning, she noticed how you liked exactly one teaspoon of honey in your tea, the way you spun your favourite vinyl after particularly hard days, she saw you, like, really saw you and sometimes that frightened you because it meant, she also saw the parts of yourself you tried to hide from her like how you pushed your food around more than ate, how you drank more water than the average person, how you’d flush red with embarrassment when she’d walk in on you weighing yourself or looking at yourself from different angles in the mirror.
At first, it really frightened you, question after question raced through your brain on a never ending loop.
Would she still want to be with me if she knew? Is this too much for her? She’s already been through so much, she wouldn’t want another burden, right? She probably thinks I’m stupid, huh? Does she know..?
What you didn’t know was that, Ellie had been through the exact same thing… just under different circumstances.
After Joel’s death, it was almost like her appetite was buried with him. At first, she couldn’t tell whether or not that her appetite loss was a result from grief or if it was a form of her ‘punishing’ herself for letting Joel die the way he did, for letting him die without her ever forgiving him, for him dying without ever being able to make up for lost time. Either way, she didn’t feel like eating, she skipped meals under the guise of ‘being tired’ or ‘picking up extra shifts’, Tommy and Maria’s food rotted away in the fridge just like how she had rotted away in her room.. until you showed up.
You were like a warm ray of sunshine in her otherwise grief stricken life, your smile made her feel content, a thing she never thought she’d feel again. After a few months of knowing you, she slowly began to eat again, small at first but then gradually, she was having full meals just so she’d get to run into you at the cafeteria and maybe even eat with you.
She didn’t notice the way you’d push your food around or the way you’d watch people eat more than you yourself did because she was too busy watching you. She loved the way your hair brushed your cheek when you leaned in to tell her some cheesy joke you’d heard Tommy tell Jesse, she loved the way your eye would crinkle a bit when you’d giggle at some stupid joke she made, she especially loved the way you’d sometimes get too shy to look at her in the eye after she teased you.
It wasn’t until one afternoon that she noticed the way you had barely eaten and she only noticed because she had been watching your lovely hands gently hold the fork while the other balled up a napkin into itself. That’s when she began to grow uneasy.
She wasn’t uneasy in the loud, panicked way she’d felt so often in her life.. this time her concern was quiet, gnawing in her chest. The kind that made her fork pause halfway to her mouth as she finally looked away from your hands and really looked at your plate.
Her stomach twisted, the sight of your plate looked all too familiar.
She didn’t say anything at first, she told herself that she was reading too much into it, after all, everybody did have off days but the excuses felt… flimsy, hollow because she knew that they were just that, excuses, the same excuses she’d made before meeting you. The ones she still sometimes made because old habits die hard.
She cleared her throat and watched the way you cut your foot into smaller and smaller pieces, how you nudged them around like you were trying to convince yourself more than anyone else around you that you were eating. How you took extra long sips of water between bites that never quite made it to those pretty lips that she could never get enough of. How your shoulders tensed when you noticed her eyes lingering on your plate.
For a moment, Ellie was back in her room, sitting alone at the quiet table, stomach empty, head full of noise she couldn’t quiet. She remembered Maria’s worried glances, Tommy pretending not to notice while he grumbled about Abby, Jesse’s worried looks as he’d dump out the rotted, untouched food from her fridge, and the guilt that came with knowing those were rations gone to waste. Then she remembered how badly she’d wanted someone to just see her without forcing her to explain.
Her throat tightened before she faked a laugh at one of Jesse’s cheap jokes.
After the two of you left the dining hall, she cleared her throat once more and softly spoke, “Hey.. you okay? I-I mean, I.. I noticed you didn’t really eat in there.. stomach bug..?”
You startled, eyes flicking from the snow covered ground to her pretty eyes, “Yeah, totally fine, just wasn’t hungry. You know how I hate eating vennison.. poor deers.. you know?” You tried to laugh it off.
Ellie nodded slowly, even managing to crack a forced smile, pretending to accept the answer even though it sat wrong in her chest. She didn’t push, instead, her hand found yours in the dark of the alley on the way to your house, her hand felt warm around your freezing one.
She didn’t say anything else but she squeezed your hand once.
You walked the rest of the way in silence, snow crunching softly beneath your boots. When you reached your porch, you hesitated, fingers tightening around hers like you were afraid to let go.
She noticed that too, of course she did.
“Hey,” she said quietly, stepping back onto the porch,” You.. you can always talk to me, you know that, right? L-like, I know.. I’m a total idiot when it comes to all this emotional crap but.. I really do care about you, you mean.. you mean more to me than you can even begin to imagine, ugh, that sounded so sappy..”
A soft giggle slipped past your lips and managed to nod, “I know.”
She pressed your hand to her cheek for a brief moment, warm breath ghosting your palm, “Good.”
Later that night, when you were curled up beside her under one too many blankets, Ellie traced slow, absent-minded circles on your arm. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“You ever notice how I’m weird about food sometimes?” she mumbled.
Your chest tightened, you had noticed. You noticed the way she sometimes handed her breakfast to Jesse, how she gave her jerky to Jesse, and how she sometimes skipped dinner and opted to stay in her room.
“I used to think I was just.. that, weird,” she sighed and rolled onto her back, eyes fixed on the ceiling, “I thought I was alone, Joel was gone.. I didn’t see the point in surviving just to survive if it meant the one person..,” she cleared her throat,” if it meant he was gone.. but then you showed up..”
You rolled onto your side and looked up at her, your arm making its way onto her stomach, tracing a faint scar.
She turned to look at you then, to really look at you.
“I know.. I know you’d never come out and say it directly to me.. and I don’t want to sound l-like I’m accusing you of anything.. but just know this, you don’t have to, you don’t have to carry everything alone.. not while I’m here at least.
And for the first time in a long while, you had hope.
After that night, Ellie was more attentive.
She knew that recovery was a process, not a single conversation could fix everything, but she was in it for the long haul, after all an eating disorder wasn’t something she could kill with an arrow and it wasn’t something she could pummel into the ground.
Instead, she’d check on you in subtle ways like making sure you ate your food without pushing you to scarf it all down, making sure you weren’t skipping meals by going with you to each one, and making sure you felt beautiful no matter what the scale said.
She’d also let you know that she was there for you in subtle ways like a hand on your back when you passed by, brushing your hair out of your face, kisses to your hand and forehead, and lingering near you during meals.
You were never a burden to her, you were never stupid to her, you were never too much because she knows where you’re at and she knows that recovery is possible, as hard as it might be, she wants to repay you for bringing her out of her own hell.
Ellie noticed everything about you, the good, the bad, the parts you tried to hide, and she didn’t care about labels or judgments. All that mattered to her was you. All she had ever wanted was to be here, right here, with you because she loved you.
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