cool cat. — elliot (euphoria) x reader. fluff!
warnings/tags: none rly. swearing, mentions of weed, poor description of it tho so ur safe. fluffy meet cute in hs. ruemaddy friendship w reader mentions. nate jacobs mention. booo.
notes: not proofread. fully intend to make this a series when they’re in college, but i needed to make an intro to so it makes sense in my (self indulgent) canon universe. reader wears a lot of black. this is set in hs, but they’ll age, don’t worry, we’re not sixteen forever. i think that’s all. sloppy ending though bc i started getting lazy. soz. this is so lukewarm and boring sorry.
𐔌՞ ܸ.ˬ.ܸ՞𐦯 ty for reading ! also pls ask me to write stuff if u liked this. thankzz
—
“dude…how the fuck did you make purple?”
you first met elliot in art class during sophomore year; eyes red, sleeves shoved up to his elbows, and a worn out, rounded paint brush in his right hand, sopping with primary blue acrylic paint. he was new. at least, you think so. most of the years at east highland consisted of being within arms reach of your middle school friend group, and then fading into the background anytime without them, focused on making your own way out of your own personal hell. you didn’t really make the effort to talk to people very much since rue and maddy were at your fingertips at the tap of a screen. the others were there too, but those two were who you kept close. it was easier to keep to yourself than to share yourself with someone new.
it wouldn’t surprise you in the slightest if he’d been here since freshman year going unnoticed by you, although who could miss the reek of weed and cigarettes on him that was barely masked by the synthetic scent bubble that wafted towards your way. vanilla, sugared raspberries… the scent alone was enough to deter you from the focus on your work, yet you couldn’t help but scan his appearance with a curious gaze that was hidden by a poor attempt to keep the questions at bay. black roots peeked from under his bleach blonde curls, and tiny sun-kissed sunspots were sprinkled across warm olive skin, drawn over with various tattoos that went past his sleeves. it’s beyond you how a sixteen year old got away with the face and hand tattoos, let alone the obvious high. then again, rue showed up more than half the time just the same. minus the tattoos, of course. that is unless you count the shitty stick and poke smiley faded on her right ankle that matched your left.
“yo. deadass, how’d you make purple?” he asked you again, snapping you out of your thoughts that left you frozen for a solid five seconds, averting your eyes back to his brown ones that looked to you with a sense of urgency. so puppy like despite being so faded, like blushed porcelain full of coffee. “i’m tryna make a sunset over here and all i got is red, blue, and yellow.”
you blinked at him before looking over at his paper, raising an eyebrow ever so slightly. the class had just done an introduction to color theory, which he’d clearly missed out on, painting the entire sky blue in broad streaks, and harsh lines outlining what seems to be a messy sketch of a skyline view from a rooftop. in all honestly, the sketch itself wasn’t so bad.
“it’s just blue and red.” you answered plainly, dipping your brush back into the plastic palette that you’d set out for yourself, letting your gaze fall back onto your own work whilst elliot made an audible ‘huh?’ sound.
“what? like, mixed?” he questioned, brows furrowing as he leaned over a little too close, invading the pretend line of personal space imposed by your chairs and the face that the edge of your shared table met with his. elliot looked at your palette curiously, his eyes switching back and forth from his and yours before looking at you expectantly for an answer.
“uh…yeah.” you replied, dipping your paintbrush into the old yogurt container full of water beside the palette, wiping the excess off against a paper towel. you weren’t above explaining something so simple, though you’d keep your own comments to yourself about how the class just learnt this about twenty minutes ago. “like, blue…” you dipped the tip of your paintbrush into the blue, finding a spare spot on your palette, dabbing it into to the plastic, repeating the cleaning of your brush and doing the same with red, mixing them together. “and red. and then if you want it more red, or more blue, you just add a little more of each.”
elliot looked like he was listening. kind of. it’s hard to tell when it he was gazing into space in the direction of your palette, but still, he nodded, chapped lips puffing air in a small trill. “shit. yeah. yeah, that…that makes sense.” he said, turning his head towards you, checking out your appearance with a once over. “go figure you’d know so much about color. you know…with all this goin’ on.” he made a gesture towards your person with his freehand, doing a little circle motion before twiddling them as if to mimic the motion of sparkles.
“…what the fuck does that even mean?” you asked him, a bit coldly, shooting elliot a weird look. it wasn’t out of annoyance, nor was it lost on you as he clearly gestured to your penchant for all black, and thick eyeliner. the words that left your lips, however, came with an underlying defence. it wasn’t out of the ordinary that somebody had something to say about your appearance. nate jacobs make it a point every single day before lunch time to make you the punchline of some emo-ended joke, and maddy came to your defence like clockwork every time. she was the one who taught you how to do your eyeliner after all.
elliot eased back a bit at the way , eyebrows shooting up as he shook his head, lips pursing downwards as he slid back into his seat. “nothing. it’s cool. you do your makeup like a cat. a cool cat.” he responded, a smile cracking at his lips in his attempt to make you less upset by his words, or rather him. not that you were, but there were two sides to this interaction. “you know, like the queen song?”
you stared at him blankly, and before you could say anything, he was singing the lyrics to you as a way to amuse you, tutting out the beat in between words. “cause you’re a cool cat, dunununun, tapping on the toe with a new hat, dununuh, ooh, just cruisin’ driving along like a swing king, feeling the beat of my heaaaart.”
admittedly, it’s charming. the way he smiled, and tried to make you laugh because he thought he’d made you upset. it’s endearing, really, and you can’t help but chuckle at his antics, making his smile grow wider, eventually letting out a small laugh with you. “yeah, you like that?” he asked you, leaning back against his seat, his painting long forgotten as he turned his attention to you.
“it was alright.” you answered, rolling your eyes as you set your gaze back on him, turning your head just slightly as his lazed off the top edge of his seat, half slumped back. the moment your eyes met, he smiled up at you, lips pulling lazily to reveal smile lines hidden under his facial hair. that was your first chance to catch the details you’d missed the first time. x’s on eyelids, an apple tattoo under one of his eyes, and nonsensical japanese characters that framed the top of his forehead. the more you looked at him, the more curious you became, and taken by the contrast of his appearance to his voice; to his charm, and to his kindness. your brain couldn’t figure him out just yet, but that’s what making friends was for. maddy and rue always told you it didn’t hurt to meet new people. that’s kind of part of the point of getting older.
—
you talked amongst a bit more for the rest of class, helping him with his sky as he praised you on how much better you were at art than he was, exaggerating how your work should be in museums ‘or some shit’, as he’d say. he helped you wrap up your paint palette for the next day, and rinsed your yogurt cup out, along with the used brushes. you told him you could do it yourself, but he argued that it would ruin the all-black theme you have going on, and ‘we can’t have that’.
“all my clothes came from the thrift, or if they’re new, i trashed them all while skating, so it doesn’t really make that much of a difference.” elliot spoke, drying his hands with a paper towel as you collected your belongings. he pointed to your plethora of bag charms, chuckling. “what the fuck are those?” he asked you, slipping behind you as he leant down to grab his backpack.
you scoffed at the question, looking down at the gaggle of bag charms you carried around every day with you. “they’re my babies.”
“your babies?” he playfully snickered, looking down at them. he was tall. and lanky. this much you noticed by how his clothes draped on him, two sizes over. “this one looks like it bites ankles.” he pointed out, pointing to the labubu with its teeth out.
“you look like you bite ankles.” you shot back in jest, scoffing back.
“tch. wouldn’t you like to know?” elliot responded, his lips tugging into a slight smirk as you stood there with a feigned look of disgust. “i’m kidding. i swear. i’m not a creep.”
“right. sounds like something a creep would say.” you replied smartly, heading towards the door, gently pushing past him with your shoulder.
elliot stifled another laugh, following you a few steps behind. “yeah, well, i’m gonna stand here and keep a respectful distance from you and watch you leave, just to show you that i’m not a creep.” he called out to you, making your head turn back, face filled with amusement that you failed to suppress.
“whatever. stalker.” you snickered back, shaking your head as you turned away, walking towards your next class. “i’ll see ya.”
he let out a laugh, low and raspy, hands pushing into his pockets as he kept his end of his own bargain, waiting for you to leave before making his own way out. “yeah…yeah, i’ll see you.”
for the rest of the day, you thought about elliot. you thought about him as you drove home, and as you texted the youruemaddy group chat telling them about how some guy talked to you in class, and how he had all these tattoos, and he smelt like weed but also weirdly of some fruity vanilla mall body spray. the funny thing though, you never got his name, and never gave yours, assuming the start-of-class attendance was enough to key you in on who was there that day. then you also remembered he was too blazed to remember the basics of a color wheel, and you only turned your head up at the sounds of your name being called. so really, it was anyone’s guess. or rather, it was rue’s, but she’d forget thinking of telling you once maddy went on about her drama with nate on the three way call.
