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rebel!ellie x preachers!daughter!reader
✞ summary : you, the preacher’s daughter, falls for the school’s rebellious out lesbian. shame, faith, and first love collide in a slow-burning secret romance that threatens to ruin everything - unless you’re brave enough to choose it.
glass saint
✞ cw : religious themes, internalised homophobia, fem!reader, emotional repression, drug use, language, emotional vulnerability.
✞ wk : 4,500
✞ 1 > 2 > 3
you grew up believing heaven was measured in obedience.
pressed skirts, bowed heads, and whispered amens. that was the currency of salvation. your father taught you that. he didn’t say it so much as live it - voice steady at the pulpit every sunday, always dressed in some shade of holy, his faith shining like a sword in the dark. you were raised like a precious thing. protected. sheltered. moulded.
so when you came to saint agnes girls academy - the all-girls religious boarding school nestled in the woods just outside ashland - you already knew how to keep your mouth shut and your knees together. you already knew the words to every hymn, every psalm, every prayer. you already knew who to be.
but nothing could have prepared you for ellie williams.
you’d heard of her before you ever saw her. the whispers started day one. “don’t sit near her.” “she’s a freak.” “she got expelled from three schools already.” “she kissed a girl and told the priest to go fuck himself.” you told yourself you didn’t care. that she was just another lost soul on the edge of ruin.
but that was before the chapel incident.
it was the third week of term when it happened. wednesday evening mass. you were sitting in the front row, back straight, cross necklace gleaming like polished silver in the candlelight. ellie stumbled in halfway through the sermon - late, of course - and didn’t even pretend to be reverent. she slouched into the pew behind you, her uniform a mess: tie loose, shirt untucked, black hoodie poking out from underneath her blazer. her shoes, beat up and definitely not regulated, clunked against the floor as she kicked them up onto the wooden bench, arms stretched wide like she was crucifying herself.
you didn’t mean to look. you really didn’t. but you couldn’t help it. something about her demanded to be seen.
her eyes met yours halfway through father matthews’ reading from leviticus. you hadn’t realised she was staring. her gaze was piercing; sharp, amused, knowing. and when the priest read, “thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination”, ellie smirked.
then, quiet, low, just loud enough for you to hear, she muttered: “guess i’m going to hell.”
you flushed hot all over.
not because you were scandalised.
but because your thighs pressed together, tight.
you didn’t speak to her for weeks after that. you avoided her when you could. she always seemed to be somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be: behind the science labs smoking weed, or carving something into the underside of a desk in ethics class, or passed out in the sun with headphones on during choir practice. people gave her a wide berth. the teachers tolerated her only because she was too smart to flunk and too stubborn to punish.
but you were different. you couldn’t ignore her.
because she was the only thing in this place that made you feel like you were unraveling.
and you hated that.
so the first time you talked to her, it was out of spite.
she was lounging outside the dormitories, sitting on the hood of one of the school vans with a sketchpad in her lap and a cigarette between her lips. the sun was setting behind her, turning the clouds violet and gold.
you stood over her with your arms crossed.
“you’re not supposed to smoke on school grounds.”
she didn’t look up. just exhaled slow and said, “you’re not supposed to lie, either. but i bet you do.”
you stiffened. “excuse me?”
ellie finally looked up. her eyes were green and wicked. “you think no one notices you staring? you practically drool every time i walk past.”
“i don’t-“
“relax,” she said, smirking. “i’m flattered. daddy’s little saint wants to be a sinner. cute.”
you slapped the sketchpad out of her lap.
it fell to the pavement, flipping open to reveal a half-finished charcoal sketch.
of you.
you turned and walked away before she could see your hands trembling.
from that day forward, she started talking to you like it was a game.
little things. snide comments in the hallway. winks from across the dining hall. notes slipped into your locker with things like “tell me again how you’re not gay while you keep staring at the girls in the locker rooms like that.” or “confession at 7? you should really bring up the way you stared at me in theology today. real unholy.”
you hated her.
you hated the way she made you feel.
you hated that she could say those things so freely, like she wasn’t scared. like she’d already made peace with the part of herself you were still trying to drown in scripture.
but the worst part? you started writing back.
the first note was angry. accusatory.
i feel sorry for you.
her response?
that’s funny. i touch myself to you.
you nearly set it on fire.
but you didn’t.
you kept it in your bible. right next to the book of james.
the slow burn wasn’t fire at first.
it was silence. stolen glances. unspoken tension.
it was the way she sat behind you in chapel, always one pew back, always close enough that you could hear her breathing. it was the way your skin burned when she brushed past you in the hallway. it was the fact that you started watching her hands in class, long fingers smudged with ink, drumming against the desk, always restless, always creating.
and then it was anger again.
one day in ethics, when father matthews launched into another homophobic diatribe, ellie laughed. loud. too loud.
you turned around in your seat, furious.
“can you show some respect?” you hissed.
ellie leaned back, one arm slung over the back of her chair. “for what? a bunch of bigots using god to hide their hate?”
“he’s a priest-“
“he’s a coward.”
you stared at her, your face burning.
“you’re disgusting.”
she smirked. “and you’re a liar.”
that was the first time she kissed you.
not there. not then.
but later, that same night, when you found her sitting on the chapel steps, legs outstretched, blunt in hand, sketchbook resting against her thigh. you meant to yell at her again. you meant to tell her to leave, to stop tormenting you, to act like a decent human being.
but when you opened your mouth, all that came out was:
“why me?”
ellie didn’t look at you.
she exhaled smoke and said, “because you’re the only one who looks at me like you want something you’re not allowed to want.”
and then - quiet, almost soft - “because you hate me the way i hated myself.”
she didn’t wait.
she just leaned in, fingers curled under your jaw, and kissed you like it didn’t matter if the world burned down around you.
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