"What do you think the universe has planned for us?"
Sypnosis: A journey of figuring out what you and Ellie are.
Contains: swearing (if you're sensitive), angst, fluff, ellie is a bitch, sexual tendencies but no hard core smut (I'm edging you guys), kissing, grinding kinda??, a whole lotta Ellie's thoughts, Joel is presently dead but he will show up in memories, Reader is delusional. This story contains lottsss of metaphors, similes, and the use of the word 'little.'
Author notes: This took me so long because i literally put my heart, soul, and ass into this. I researched, searched for synonyms, increased my vocabulary (whaaaattt??)
Recommendations are appreciated.
chapter 1 chapter 2 chapter 3
Her breath felt tangy against her lips, a wet gloss hovered over them; chapped, cracked like a drought. Tainted with her whiskey breath. Curtains of rain adorned the window, and droplets fell as they scanned over her face. They blurred the scars, the burns, the proof of each and every fight she had won or lost, and they decorated her pale skin like tally marks. It wasn't a supernatural creature awakening her, and if she did believe in them, she'd believe you were one of them.
Your sun-kissed skin, the silhouette–like embodiment you carried, and the whistles from men you've always received along the pathway of your carefree, naive life that you've somehow managed to embellish with flowers, swans, bows, and whatever girly things you were into. You could bend the air around you like pipe–hot, tea–whistling, and fire–alarming warnings with that sweet voice of yours.
You could sink her below Earth's crust, pull her from the arctic circle, and it's long winters into the tropic of cancer—where you were born in the summer solstice.
When your delicate, spirited, and cold fingers brush over her freckles, lighting each one in a glow, in a whisper, she gawks over your fragile, almost transparent skin. You look like a porcelain doll and easy to break. Something supernatural. The prettiest entity or anomaly she'd ever seen.
You really were something.
Instead it was the loud and screaming sun—bright even above the gray, saddened clouds—waking her up from her own little universe, but not without an annoyed groan. She was so damn close. Dreaming about being in the stratosphere, falling out of the world and disobeying the law of gravity, she almost reached the stars.
Now the sun seeps through the cracks of angry clouds taunting her, wondering what it'd take to get her out of her little trance that maybe—just maybe—there was actually a precious, innocent girl who in the end was actually just a girl, waiting for her. Begging for her to fall back down into the plush of her arms from whatever black hole is drawing her away from the girl and into self–destruction. Lord knows, maybe she'd even prefer it.
Because maybe she deserved it.
The way her viridescent, mafioso eyes stared at you, waiting for you to take an action, or most likely to waste it on an aspiration that you never had the possibility of winning. Your chances are low, and her presence always lingered with the cold press of a gun to your temple—metaphorically speaking of course.
Don't let her see you're struggling, comply with her needs, forget yours, and for God's sake find your rhythm.
Make a damn move in this life–sized chess game. Roll the dice, hope for the best, gamble which Ellie you were going to get as you played Mae Josephine to her Al Capone and do not profane her lifestyle of being an outlaw—just sit and look pretty.
Don't let the rattles and drums alarm you. Listen to the jazz of your pathetic life.
You've been burdened with her heavy soul, and how much baggage she held over her shoulder blades. Sharp, it almost hurt to embrace her. Your nails skimmed over her skin as they ride along the curves of her spine, feeling her arch just a few inches to know she isn't just a fallen angel being held in the arms of divinity, aka you.
Could you remember that she was also just a girl? One who was trapped in a flammable void, on the brink of igniting an environmental phenomenon.
You continued to orbit her planet like a satellite, staying far from the threshold you kept yourself placed in, damned to hush her sobs into a tiny snore as you cradle and rock her worries away. Never straying too far from the very fiend who tore your dreams into pieces, naming them impossible when the only thing you've asked was to be loved.
Those memories she tells you to forget now blink past your eyelids like celluloid film. The wind lifts your hair, the sun beams over your skin to emphasize the light in your veins, your nerves—it carries you to the shore as you write your wishes into a bottle, when you wave goodbye as the ocean takes your wish in it's hymn–like swishes.
Sun flares sharp as a blade spear through the window like a magnifying glass, warming and simmering the space of your shared bedroom with it's after showers intensity. Taking in the greenhouse effect, it was almost peaceful. Streaks of light drape in over the stained glass, scorching her skin as it shines brighter than ever.
Reminded her of somebody she knew.
Just outside, you're deep in a slumber.
Fetal position, curled up like a pangolin—a bear hibernating over a coat of autumn leaves tarnishing with other debris. A cold blanket of white snow outside in contrast to your warm, unconscious skin.
She's nervous to step out of the bedroom. She prepares herself to be yelled by you, yet you never do. Instead you always run back to her like a lost dog who found it's way home. With those dolly eyes.
With every step she takes—resonating a grace cluster, loud and panicking—she hears past arguments, sees the suffered hot tears against her shameful and flushed cheeks, and they stain the walls and the wooden–tiled floor with its bleakness. Trudging down memory lane—it hangs like a chord progression—the floor rots beneath her feet like a wildfire to be tamed. Pessimism filled the halls of your shared apartment and whispered of resentment that would never end—a perpetuity stitched in silence. You were always there. Amidst the black smoke after the fire cooled. Inhaling the smell of burnt firewood, savoring in what was left to be saved, you dipped your tongue out to catch the falling ashes—to taste and feel the scorch of Ellie's disastrous consequences.
An unredeemable girl who cannot be saved in this labyrinth path of fields; heavenly with rows of orchids, daisies, and roses among the constantly shifting weather. Where they were subdued eternally in the middle of her head, where just outside she remained a speculation of misfortune.
Lost in her head just as much as she was. Both of you were dying to get outside of the chaos that gated the fields tying the girl she used to be firm to the ground, and all she needed was to take the hand of somebody wanting to cut the strings.
You were dressed in linen—a blue velvet color, and looking like an orchestral interlude.
Stained eyes that gave you that natural eyeliner look, and how peaceful you looked to be burdened with her. Flowers bloomed around you and the pout of your lips, filling her nostrils with the distinct smell of you.
The curve of your back shaped like the heart of a valley, and no matter how old you'd grow to be, she knew you'd still be full of life.
Stand tall if not taller than the Sierra Madre.
She crouched low as she brought her tatted arm up to your cheek, brushing the hair out of your pretty face. Clear as day, lashes like butterflies, beaming with energy despite how belittling she made you feel, and you still get back up and run to her with your hind, little legs.
Your eyebrow twitches and a grimace pulls your full, heart-shaped lips waking to her rough, slender fingers in silent apology.
She never apologizes. You never speak about the night before.
"hey babe," she presses her cold palm against the small of your back, massaging your half–asleep body. Dragging her fingers to the back–opening of your silk nightgown, sinking into your soft skin as she sent sparks below your flesh, firework thrills into your vessels, a tiny smile molded over her face. She loved to corrode your skin with goosebumps.
"hey," your voice sounds staticy, breaking frequence in the sweetest melody. The rasp in your voice at the end of war, like a comfortability after a fallout. Earth collasping in on itself with it's instrumental 'end of the world' trombones and trumpets. She'd bathe in it as if it were a lagoon.
"You look pretty," she unleashed her gaze from yours as it slithers down the lustrous, slippery slope of your body. Her fingers grab a piece of your nightgown, rubbing the fabric diligently over it's satin quality—she hums, "I like this on you. It's cute."
Your eyes are still softly closed, and a smile is plastered to your lips as you relish this feeling—feeling like an old married couple.
"Thank you," like you need her approval.
But the roughs in her throat—like the rocky mountains, what you thought was good intentions in her fingers as they misled and lured you even closer into the eye of her storm. Degradingly enough, it hushed you to sleep, it gave you purpose and reason. However stripping you of your dignity, and keeping you at bay during her occasional 50 feet catastrophic, and ravenous oceanic waves.
She huffed out a breath of air as you opened your eyes to stare into her wandering ones. Diving into a puddle of thoughts as she bit her lip. Her eyebrows are creased, like maybe she might just feel sorry for the other night.
You lift up onto your elbows, legs dangling in the air like the loose jewelry around your neck: a cross, a heart–shaped locket with ellie's face inside, and your birthstone laying in the crease of your cleavage. Your toes curl as you feel the chill wind from your ac unit breeze through them.
"Something on your mind?"
"No," she glances towards you for a second. focused.
"You want something to eat?" she's already standing up, "I'll go out and get us something."
Your voice cuts through with consternation, taken aback.
"Love you, I'll be back." She bends down to press a kiss to your head, smelling your hair with it's cheap, Pantene smell.
A blink from your lashes and she's gone.
You're bent over the counter, contemplating God as Amy Winehouse sings into your ears and through the circuits of your earbuds.
"I don't know why I got so attached," her jazzy voice fills your ears, letting you fall into the syrupy sound as she lulls you around and keeps you up like a puppet.
You hum the melody with it's soulful sound, finally pushing you out of the ordinary world and into a new opened door. One filled with R&B, catching you in a dance, a rollercoaster of all your awarenesses. You're moved by her voice. Out of the darkness, you release the tension over your shoulders because at least... you are awake, you are aware.
"It's my responsibility, and you don't owe anything to me."
Your stomach rumbles along the constant passing thunder; rolling in, they speak to you in poems and songs.
You crack three eggs over the pan—a lightning bolt outside after each break. Sounding like a laugh, like it's making fun of you as she shreds your mental being.
"But to walk away, I have no capacity."
You've never been where others have been, you've never heard the same melodies others have heard in the same key. Your passions don't grow from the root of a tree, but they are born within the tragedies of your life—without them you'd never dream this big—as large as the paramount sign as it chimes with it's glittery lights. Written like an Edgar Allan poem.
Your food is already plated over a slab of silver–rimmed porcelain. Seated at the counter as you hear the door rattle with fumbling keys, and she walks in like she hadn't been gone for awhile.
She's holding a small bouquet of gardenias—your favorite, your signature flower with it's hopeful meaning. In her other hand she held a bag full of chinese food, and a dragon breathing fire plastered the plastic bag, a classic, a homebody.
You're still dressed in your nightgown, hair disheveled in a way she found attractively luring. She wanted to put her lips between the crook of your neck, between your legs.
Until her eyes trailed down to your plate.
"What is that?" completely deadpanned, and unfucking predictable.
"Eggs," you replied cautionly.
Placing the food and flowers in front of you, she marches around the counter from where you sat, picking up your plate of food with no care, because well, she throws it into the sink.
It crumbles into pieces as the ugly, sharp sounds fill your ears—causing you to flinch and you're frightened as they fly into the air.
A tear rolled down your eye to which gets wiped away by the cold press of her thumb.
"What did I fucking tell you huh?"
Every damn time you think something will get better, it springs on you like a jack-in-a-box. The compexities in your relationship stood rather taller than the simple life you wanted to breathe in. Instead you're overflowed with abandonment, loss, and holding onto a hope—and immense leap of a hope—that maybe you can change her.
She begins pulling out the food hastily, sliding it over to you as she slaps her palm to the table.
So you opened the lid of the food she bought you with shaking fingers.
The sound of glass breaking still drummed inside of your ears—slicing arteries as it makes passage down into the pit of your stomach.
A sigh falls from her lips, because she knows you. She pretends she doesn't, but she does.
You have an obsession with moroccan lamps, you love watching Breaking Bad with her, she knows you religiously listen to Lana Del Rey. You make handmade gifts, you play mom whenever she needs you to.
Her boots thud against the floor one step before the other, and she wraps her arms around you. Holding you in place, telling you it's going to be okay as her strong arms soothe your back, tuning the ache in your heart just a little lower.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she whispers into the hair covering your ear. She feels the strands get caught between the cracks of her lips—kinda like you—a little rabbit caught in between the bricks of her teeth, like a trap.
"I shouldn't have done that, please forgive me," she continued to ramble on as you broke into muffled, quiet sobs.
"I love you so much. I know I'm angry, I know, I know, God I know. But I want to be better, I want to love you better than anybody can. One day I'll put a ring around your finger, and we'll be okay. Please just bear with me," the last sentence loomed over the both of you like a broken halo, and she stood tall in between your thighs like a fallen angel as she held you close, even breaking into her own little sobs because even she wishes she was better than this.
You both knew what she was speaking of from her last words, but nobody ever let the name fall from their lips—it stayed encaged in between your teeth like a prison, and it hummed a little tune among a strum of a guitar.
"If i ever were to lose you."
You just wanted to rest, lay in a bed of wildlowers, and let the air of lemongrass waft around both of your restless souls.
Instead the trope you are begins from friends to lovers, and now you both aren't good for one another. You are refused any straightfoward answers in the quandary, makeshift ward invading your minds that you've almost grown accustomed to, and you begin to decline into the smog. You're forbidden the easy passageway—bright with floating lanterns—of sentimental resolution and you're shoved into a torrent of tears as they whisper 'just deal with it.'
You wondered whom it was from above whispering the truth, the reality that you so blandly wanted to cover up with a facade. How credulous of you. But really. Who was it making your life this miserable and keeping their anonymity sacred to them?
Perhaps Paula Fox? And her tragic storytelling?
You're out in the streets, of your little, western neighborhood.
2am, low temperatures sent unpredictable shivers down your spine, and it made you ecstatic, nervous, and ready because you've prepared yourself. The smell was gratifying after the storm with farms from afar, minerals invade your nostrils like the scent of the inside of a rainstick.
Celestial showers wash above your head, cupid is there.
The puddles beneath your feet glow with the curve of your smile like bioluminescent shores.
Ellie is walking besides you as she watched your skin gleam bright. The sun is on the opposite end of the world, but she swears your hair is highlighted golden.
You're so pretty wearing her Guns N' Roses hoodie—a band you couldn't care less about despite it's popularity.
"Want to get slushies, and you know, like dangle our feet over the bridge on Shorevale?" you're practically skipping in glee, and she can see the way your eyes crease with genuine, careless youth; standing tall like Grand Teton. She'd hike miles to see it.
Summer is fading away, but you still wear shorts, she wanted you to impart on her your logic. How unworried you were as sounds of tibetan bowls echoed around you, and in the distance North Platte River's velocity has increased just as her beating heart.
Her nerves jumping, her eyes bouncing everywhere and never landing against yours. Palms sweaty, self–doubting, reaching for the stars as she nods to your request, but not without a little laugh—shaky and breathless like she'd been holding onto the oxygen for way too long before she breathed out carbon dioxide, and into the atmospere it went—where her heart already landed.
Your slushy is in your hand, and her eyes focus as you lower your body, letting your legs fall over the rushing water.
The stars fall over your shoulders, placing you both in another plane of existence where only you two stood. Young and reckless, obsessed with the autumn breeze as it breathes through the fabric of your clothes, pulling you into the sky like an invisible cloak, or a magic carpet.
"You're unusally quiet today," you stare at her, and just finally her pastoral, emerald eyes meet you halfway. Debating on looking towards you, or up above towards the stars as they dance and ring like bells. They blinked at her just as you did, waiting for an answer.
Well. It was because today was THE day.
She didn't say that out loud of course.
You grab her slushy sitting beside her and now she looks at you, watching your lips wrap around the plastic straw of her drink—she'd enjoy it a little extra now.
You turned your face away to take a longer sip but she caught it in between her calloused fingers. Years of progression chords marking the tips of them.
"Yeah, whatever. Strawberry is gross anyways."
"What?" she spoke breathlessly, "You're impossible."
"You're smiling," you spoke with a melodic lilt in your voice. Heat rose to her cheeks like volcanic lighting, like the beginning of the industrial revolution as it caused temperatures to rise.
You laugh and she showers in it. It swirled out of your mouth, and it hung in the air from the sustain pedal of a piano, and it sounded like a triad—a musical harmony. Your voice echoed through her ears like a subliminal and in her eyes, light pillars fell down onto you with their crystal ice lights.
The skies spun as Earth rotated, and your eyes never left the stars, but hers would occasionally glance at you.
4am was read over her watch.
Neither of you wanted to move, but to just keep talking about stupid information the other hadn't needed to know. Over the past hour, she had explained the lore of her favorite sci-fi movie, showed you the constellation of your zodiac, and procrastinated how she'd tell you that she was head over heels over you.
Something she'd never admit: the pages and pages of poems and journal entries inside of the nebula–hard–covered diary she held a little too close onto. Maybe because it sustained sketches of you, or graphic thoughts of what she'd want you to do to her. What she'd want to do to you.
"You know insects used to be bigger than cats like 299 millions years ago?" Her arm laid beneath her head as she begins to settle into this little bubble of friendship. Her eyes are wide, genuinely being herself as her nerves let loose and into the sky like fireflies.
"What? No way," the back of your palm gently slaps her obliques, and you can feel her flinch just slightly, but you don't push any further.
You don't want to make her nervous.
"No, I'm serious," she trails back to what she was saying, "During the Carboniferus Period—Bro, there was like large fucking dragonflies called Megan...iz..opera?" (Meganisoptera), "Shit I don't fucking know how to say it, but I just know that it had something to do with the oxygen. It used to be higher back then."
"Wait dragonflies are actually pretty cool."
"And the milipedes were nine feet tall!" her hand shoots up as the end of her sentence speaks louder, and she looks over to see the disgusted expression over your face.
"Jesus, you can't handle a nine feet millipede?"
"Ellie, You can't either."
"You haven't seen me play God Of War."
She watches you smile and she breaks.
"I have another fact," she snorts with a finger in the air, shoving humor into her little situation she did not want taken care of. She'd shove her feelings back inside if she could, but not when you keep looking prettier everyday.
A sigh falls from her lips, and you can see the condensation from the pale moonlight. It ignites it's matter into fire, heat, and all things hot and ready to implode on itself.
She shifts up, holding a bar from the fenced bridge she's debating jumping off of and into the fast waters of North Platte River. The bar is cold and feeling damp along her slender fingers. She waits for you to sit up with her.
And you do just that as you shift closer, knees and thighs almost touching, the concrete is cold against the plush of your thighs, and it's sediment sticks to your skin like it owns you. Wyoming owned you. The western, country life kept you at bay and it washed your worries away, but now you were concerned as you stare at your best friend—the same girl you'd do anything with.
Her lips were pursed in thought, her button nose was highlighted beneath the North star, and her auburn locks faded into the night's darkness—stardust glimmered over her cheeks, or you could say freckles but that's boring.
"I like you," and her head turns just a bit away, trailing off into the trees because oh yeah trees are so interesting, I wonder what could be in that forest over there?
Your hand slides over her thigh and over the back of her palm; she looks below, watches you intertwine your fingers around hers, and she lives for it.
Those fireflies of nerves that she once released? They came shooting back into her skin and implanting freckles over her body as she restrained the action of jumping in glee.
Your other hand lifts a finger, and you turn her jaw closer to you with it's pink–polish.
Then your lips were on hers, and for a moment you were in control—just for a bit until her soul retrieved down from the skies and back into her body. She let go of your hand, using both of hers to wrap around your beautiful face. You both became breathless. She wanted this for so long, she waited so damn long. You could let her steal a breath, a muffled little moan, a smack of your lips, and you could wait another damn second to breathe too, right? You could, couldn't you?
She gave you mercy, gave you a second to breath.
Of course you fucking wanted more. Greedy little thing.
So she pressed her lips to the crook of your neck, found that sweet spot, and she already knew how desperately you wanted to thrust into the air. Give her that cute, submissive look with your eyebrows creasing up like your chasing for something you've been waiting for, and she couldn't deny that, not when the stars sparkled into your eyes, reflecting off of that beautiful gloss she found herself lost in.
She obsesses over the feeling of your delicate nails inching from the lows of her back, up into the sharps of her shoulder blades.
One of her hands rest at your waist, slowly encouraging you to sway your hips into the rhythm of her kiss, and her other hand crawls to your bare knee, feeling the goosebumps grow beneath her dedicated hands as her lips suck and suck and suck, and God knows you're both going to hell as she marks you up while embroidering a purple stain over your creamy, soft skin like it's the devil's mark—a subtle foreshadowing of just the kinda girl she'd be in the future
Then she slowly opens your legs, and you break away from the kiss with a cute, little laugh.
What a damn loser, you thought.
"Damn, Ellie. Take me on a date first," her cheeks are flushed like a tree squeezed a cherry over them, and her hand brushes the back of her neck as a smirk crawls up her face.
Her apple watch read 5am.
"I want to," you press a kiss to her cheek, the corner of her lips, and God, you're getting her riled up again.
"But people go on morning runs. On this very same route, silly."
"Sorry, got ahead of myself," she laughs quietly. (acting like she's not butthurt and disappointed)
You sigh with the prettiest smile, and the sun is on the edge of the ground, warming the skies slowly with it's hazel, morning glow. Your head is perched over her shoulder, and she feels your chest against her arm and it shivers, so yes, she is still turned on and replaying that moment like a vinyl over a record player. How could she not?
Do you know what you do to her?
She's the happiest, most luckiest girl in the world right now. She'd bow to you if you asked, loved you like you deserved, spend her last savings on you because you were a deity, and she wasn't tripping on hallucinogenics as she thought so.
"What do you think the universe has planned for us?" you stared over the rushing waters, listened to the morning doves as they awaken your neighborhood. The wind kissed your cheeks, and she wrapped her arms around you like a blanket of comfort with all things unsaid. The air was crisp, her breathing was empathetic, and all charged up energy in the air wired through the both of you, connecting you both into your own little, delusional world. Maybe if you both had each other, nothing bad could happen.
She hums, and she thinks.
For a moment you think she's serious.
"A black cat and a German Shepard or something, I don't know."
"Oh, wow," You roll your eyes, but you love her.
divider credits (thank you!!) : @uzmacchiato
(yes i listened to lana del rey as i wrote this)
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