pushing it down and praying
synopsis: it's only a question if somebody brings it up. abby keeps pushing it down and praying it goes away─until she can't anymore.
content warnings: internalized homophobia, ow*n, emotional distress, comphet!abby, anxiety, strained relationship dynamics, references to violence and infected (post-apocolyptic setting), forced proximity, reader is abby's lesbian awakening, abby x lesbian!reader, angst with happy ending.
Abby doesn’t notice the exact moment it starts to rot.
It’s not dramatic. It isn’t a slammed door or a shouted fight that finally cracks something open. Just small changes she ignores until they stack up into something she can’t unsee.
Owen stops looking at her like he wants her. Starts looking at her like she’s just there. Like she’s become part of the background he doesn’t need to think about anymore.
His jokes land sharper than they used to. Half laughs that don’t mean anything. Abby laughs anyway because it’s easier than asking why she suddenly feels like she’s not enough.
She tells herself it’s nothing. That it’s just a phase between them.
She keeps telling herself that.
—
Abby notices the shift long before she lets herself name it.
It starts quietly, in the middle of ordinary days, slipping into moments that should mean nothing. She’s sitting beside Owen on the bleachers overlooking the WLF yard, his knee bumping hers while he talks about something trivial—patrol routes, maybe, or Isaac being in a mood again—and Abby is nodding at the right places without actually hearing him. Her attention drifts, pulled by something she doesn’t consciously choose.
You’re across the yard, leaning against the railing, laughing at something Manny just said. The late afternoon light catches you like stained glass caught morning sun, all color broken across your shoulders, softening the hard edges of everything around you, and Abby finds herself staring. Not casually. Not the way you look at a friend you’re fond of. It’s heavier than that, her gaze lingering as if she felt something familiar in a place it didn’t belong.
When you glance up and catch her looking, Abby jerks her eyes away immediately, heat creeping up the back of her neck.
She tells herself it’s nothing. Just distraction. Just fatigue.
Owen nudges her. “Hey, you even listening?”
“Uh- yeah,” she mutters, too quickly.
But she isn’t. She could pretend though.
—
That’s the first time she feels the flicker of something like unease, thin and sharp beneath her ribs.
You’ve always been there in the edges of her life in the WLF, close enough to feel like gravity, close enough that she can turn her head and find you already looking at her like she matters. Like she’s not something to be managed or endured, but something to be understood.
It happens again, and again, and again.
You brushing past her in the hallway, your shoulder grazing her arm, and Abby freezing mid-step because the contact lingers in her mind far longer than it should. The warmth of you seeps through the fabric of her sleeve, and she finds herself replaying it hours later, lying in bed staring at the ceiling, irritated at herself for caring.
You handing her a canteen after training, your fingers brushing hers, and Abby’s stomach tightening unexpectedly. She pulls her hand back too fast, hoping you don’t notice, hoping no one notices, as if there’s something to hide.
She starts noticing everything. Like your presence rearranged the air and she didn’t know where to stand in it yet. Your voice would always soften when you’d ask if she’s eaten, if she’s sleeping enough, if her injuries were healing properly. You looked at her like people look at altar pieces they aren’t sure they’re allowed to touch.
It shouldn’t matter.
It matters too much.
Abby tells herself this is just what close friends feel like. She repeats it like a rule she’s trying to memorize. You’re important to her, that’s all. You’ve always been close. There’s nothing strange about that.
Except the explanations don’t stop the way her pulse jumps when you laugh, or the way her chest feels hollow when you leave the room.
—
Owen notices something before she does, or maybe he always knew and doesn’t care enough to be gentle about it.
“You two are glued together all the time,” he says one evening, more irritated than usual.
Abby swallows, trying to sound as casual as possible, there’s no reason she shouldn’t be.
“She’s just a friend.”
“Yeah,” he replies, but there’s something dismissive in the way he says it, like he doesn’t quite believe her.
He starts getting colder after that. More distant. Watching her like he expects her to slip up somehow.
She starts paying attention to herself, measuring her behavior, trying to act normal. She leans harder into the relationship with Owen, tries to be more attentive, tries to remind herself that this is what she’s supposed to want. Let’s him pull her closer when he wants. Let’s him kiss her, determined to feel something real.
Sometimes it works.
Most times it doesn’t.
Sometimes, shamefully, her mind drifts, and she wonders what it would feel like if it were you instead.
And she hates herself for it.
She pulls away early one night, muttering something about being tired. Owen sighs, annoyed, and turns over. Abby lies awake afterward, staring into the darkness, her stomach twisting.
She whispers a quiet apology into the silence, though she isn’t sure who she’s apologizing to—Owen, herself, or something larger she feels like she’s disappointing.
—
The breakup isn’t explosive. It’s tired. Frayed.
They argue over something small, something that shouldn’t matter, but the tension between them has been building for months. Owen says she’s distant. Abby says he’s unfair. He tells her she’s not the same anymore. She wants to ask him what that even means, but she already knows.
Because she isn’t the same- not to him at least.
Because she’s been carrying something she doesn’t understand, and it’s pulling her in a direction she’s afraid to examine.
When it ends, she expects to feel devastated. She expects grief, regret, something heavy or final.
Instead, she feels… like she can breathe again.
Not relief exactly. But space.
And in that space, her thoughts fill immediately with you.
That’s when the panic rises.
There were parts of her she treated like they had already been condemned. She didn’t know how to separate wanting something from believing she was allowed to have it.
Without Owen, there’s nothing to hide behind. No structure, no distraction. Her feelings don’t have anywhere to go except inward, and they grow louder in the silence. She catches herself watching you more, and this time there’s no excuse left to cling to.
She starts avoiding you.
At first it’s subtle. Taking a different path through the stadium. Leaving conversations early. Volunteering for patrols she knows you won’t be on. Each time she does it, guilt settles heavier in her chest, because she sees the confusion in your eyes.
You look hurt.
She hates that.
But being near you feels worse, because the pull is undeniable now, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. She tells herself distance will fix it, that if she pushes it down hard enough it’ll fade. She lies awake at night, staring at the ceiling, repeating silent prayers she hasn’t said since she was younger.
Please let this go away.
Please let me be normal.
Please let me stop thinking about her.
They don’t work.
—
The day it finally breaks open, it’s not planned.
It’s a supply run that goes wrong in the most boring way possible—bad intel, wrong building, too many infected in tight hallways that were never meant to hold this many people.
You’re assigned to the same team, and the knowledge sits heavy in her stomach. She keeps her distance, keeps her focus forward, tries to ignore the way your presence hums at the edge of her awareness.
The building is narrow, stale air thick in the corridors. You move carefully, clearing rooms one by one. Abby keeps her breathing steady, clings to routine, to muscle memory. It’s easier than thinking.
Then the infected rush the stairwell, and everything dissolves into noise and motion.
She loses sight of you for half a second, and her heart lurches so violently it nearly comes out of her throat. She finds you again quickly just as you both duck into a storage room, the door slamming shut behind the two of you as she blocks it with something heavy.
The silence afterward feels too loud.
The room is small. Dust hangs in the air, drifting slow like incense after a service no one stayed for. And the only sound is your breathing and hers, uneven from adrenaline. You’re standing close—she realizes this is the closest she’s been to you in weeks—and Abby becomes painfully aware of every detail. Every familiar thing about you that she’s missed.
Her chest tightens.
“You okay?” you ask, heaving.
“I’m fine,” she replies, breath stuttering, hand still on her weapon.
You study her, and she knows you see through it. You always do.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
The words are gentle, but they land heavy. Abby looks away, jaw tight, guilt pressing down on her.
“I thought it was the breakup,” you continue, glad you’re stuck together so she’ll finally talk to you. “But… it feels like something else.”
Her throat tightens. She wants to lie again, but the space is too small, the tension too thick. There’s nowhere to hide. She knows you know something’s up, you’re too smart not to notice.
Because the truth is standing right in front of her, close enough to touch, and she’s terrified of what happens if she finally admits it.
Her eyes flick to yours finally. That’s a mistake. Looking at you is always the mistake.
There’s a smear of dust on your cheek, a small cut near your lip. Nothing serious. But she stares at it like it like it’s personally offended her.
“That’s not what this is,” she answers abruptly, but it’s weaker now. Less certain.
“Then what is it?”
There it is. The question she’s been dodging so hard she’s practically made a new life out of avoidance.
What is it.
Abby opens her mouth, closes it again.
She thinks of Owen’s face when he looked at her after he suspected something was up.
She thinks of how she’d never seen you look at her with disgust. How you look at her like she’s something you don’t want to miss a second of.
She thinks of all the years she’s spent trying to force herself into shapes that don’t fit.
Her voice comes out rough.
“I can’t—”
She stops.
Her throat tightens.
You take a small step closer, cautious now. “Abby, please talk to me.”
Something in her snaps at that. Not anger. Not exactly. More like pressure finally finding a seam at your plead.
“I can’t be around you right now,” she chokes out, and it sounds harsher than she intended. “I can’t think when you’re this close to me.”
Silence.
Your expression changes just slightly, confusion flickering into something sharper.
“…What are you talking about?”
Abby laughs once, but there’s no humor in it. “You don’t get it.”
“Then help me understand,” Comes your sharp reply.
There were things in her she was scared to let reach the surface, like they might become real if spoken aloud.
Abby steps forward before she can stop herself.
The space between you thinning. The storage room feels even smaller, the air suddenly too warm.
“I broke up with Owen,” she states.
You nod solemnly, the guy was an ass and you could definitely treat her better, but you hated seeing her this upset about it.
“I know.”
She swallows.
“I didn’t want him.”
Your brows knit slightly. “You- oh...”
The way you say it, like you’re waiting, like you’re unsure of what comes next.
“I didn’t want him,” she repeats, quieter now, “and I kept pretending I did because it was easier than admitting to what I actually wanted”
Your eyes don’t leave her face.
Abby’s hands curl into fists at her sides.
“And then I realized something,” she continues, voice breaking just slightly on the edge of control. “And I’ve been trying not to look at you, or talk to you because if I did I’d—”
She stops again.
Breath shakes once.
“I’d know.”
There’s a beat of silence so heavy it feels physical.
Then your voice, softer now.
“Know what, Abby?”
Her eyes finally meet yours fully, and she doesn’t lie this time.
“That it’s you,”
The admission felt like relief and terror all at once. There was nothing in it she needed to undo afterward.
Your breath catches slightly, just enough for her to notice.
Abby looks like she might bolt immediately after saying it. Like she’s braced for rejection so hard her whole body is already halfway out the room.
But you don’t say anything, you just look at her.
Like the answer’s been standing in front of you this whole time and you’ve been waiting for her to catch up.
“Abby,” your sweet voice curls around her name like a prayer.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admits, voice barely holding together. “I don’t know what this is. I just—when I’m near you… everything feels right.”
You take a step closer to her with certainty.
“You don’t have to know everything right now,” you say.
Her breath stutters.
“That’s not fair,” she whispers.
“Neither is avoiding me,” you mutter, but there no actual bite in your tone.
The reminder stings but she definitely needed to hear it. She hates that she caused you pain in any capacity. She’ll do anything to make it right.
Her eyes flick down to your mouth before she can stop herself. And something in the space between you changes.
Abby doesn’t really decide. The silence stretches, and she reaches for you almost absentmindedly, fingers brushing your sleeve like she needs something solid. You don’t pull back. That’s what undoes her.
She leans in slowly, hesitant, close enough to feel your breath before her mouth finds yours. The contact is soft, unsure, more like she’s testing the reality of it than committing to it. She pauses there for a beat, waiting for the doubt to rush in.
It doesn’t.
Your hand lifts slowly, like you’re giving her time to change her mind, and settles lightly along her jaw. You’re not holding her in place, just anchoring her there, your thumb brushing once, absent and gentle. The softness of it cause her to let out an unconscious sound against your mouth, that she probably would be embarrassed about under any other circumstances. Instead the nervous edge in her shoulders eases as she leans a fraction closer without realizing.
The kiss deepens only slightly, still careful, still quiet, and when she pulls back, it’s only to breathe. She doesn’t move far. Your foreheads stay close, the space between you warm and fragile.
“I’ve never—” she starts, the words catching.
“I know,” you murmur, so quietly it almost disappears between you, and the understanding in it settles her more than anything else.
Her hand lingers where it rests against you, fingers curling a little as if she’s afraid the moment might disappear if she lets go. The tension that had been coiled in her chest begins to loosen, replaced by something calmer, more certain.
“I don’t want to mess this up,” she says, voice low, the admission almost fragile.
Your thumb brushes along her cheek in a gentle pass, more instinct than intention. “Then we don’t rush,” you murmur. “We can just stay like this.”
The words settle into her, simple and grounding. Abby closes her eyes for a moment, feeling the tightness she’s carried for weeks ease in a way she didn’t expect.
When she leans in again, the kiss changes. There’s less hesitation this time, more trust in the space between you, and the warmth spreading through her chest feels unfamiliar in the best way.
Outside the storage room, the noise is still there, just farther away now, like it doesn’t quite reach them anymore.
Inside, Abby stops trying to think her way out of it. She stays close to you, not pulling away this time, like she finally trusts what’s happening between you without needing to name it.
Her breath catches once, and your name slips out of her before she can stop it, more like relief than anything else. She doesn’t correct it, doesn’t step back, just stays there with you for a moment longer like she’s finally allowed to.
Later, it won’t feel like a moment of clarity, just the first time she stopped fighting something that had always been true. She’d spent so long pushing it down and praying it would go away, like that alone could change what she felt.
a/n: shoutout to Lizzy McAlpine for inspiring this and absolutely ripping my heart out of my chest✌🏼 this song has just always felt wlw to me guys, idk makes way more sense this way. Hits close to home too coming from a comphet lesbian, sigh😔
P.s Sorry for mentioning ow*n at all🤢 it was just necessary for the plot pls forgive me.
