we will grow old as friends
a chidi/eleanor fanfiction, written for @enragedbees for @tgpsecretsanta exchange! Happy holidays, and happy new year! I hope you enjoy!
Rated: Teen and Up Audiences
Summary: Eleanor has a soulmate. He isn’t her soulmate, of course. But it still seems like she should like him more than she likes, say, Chidi. Not that she likes Chidi. They’re just friends. Obviously.
The entire concept of soulmates is weird.
Like, what are the odds that there’s one person in the entire freaking universe that’s—what? Destined to be your perfect match? To fill in all your missing pieces? To love you automatically? To stand by you no matter what? Eleanor finds that incredibly unlikely.
Of course, she also finds it unlikely that she actually belongs in an afterlife literally called the Good Place. So maybe soulmates are an odd choice to nitpick, when her entire existence is a little bit incomprehensible.
She’s been dead—gosh, it’s still weird to even think that, she’s dead—for a couple weeks before she really gets a chance to really think about soulmates. Too busy hiding her dark past and discovering Jason’s identity and meeting Chidi and starting ethics lessons and getting caught by Tahani and—anyway, her “soulmate,” apparently, is a guy named Mark.
Mark is…well, he’s kind of everything Eleanor would have expected in her soulmate. If, you know, she was a thirteen year old girl who believed in sparkles and fairytales and liked cookies and puppies and the concept of the Disney Channel. Mark is tall, with thick, curly hair, bright eyes, and a quick, flirty smile. He was a doctor when he was alive, a pediatric surgeon, no less. A full on do-gooder who saved kids’ lives as a day job and volunteered to clean oceans and walk helpless puppies or something in his spare time. He died saving hundreds of people’s lives during some natural disaster, to top it off, and left all his money to charity. A little excessive, if you ask Eleanor, but still undeniably the Good Place’s most eligible bachelor.
“So why doesn’t it feel right?” Eleanor huffs, slumping low into a beanbag in Jason’s unfortunately named Budhole. He’s not really listening to her as far as she can tell, utterly focused on his football video game whatever.
Tahani tisks, not entirely unkindly, but it’s kinda necessarily harsh when she says, “Well, darling, he’s likely not your soulmate. Just like Jason"—here her expression twists—"most certainly is not mine. You don’t belong here, so why would your soulmate be here?”
“Okay, fair,” Eleanor says. “Rude, but fair. Even so, though, he seems like he should be my soulmate. We like the same things, we have the same sense of humor, we’re compatible levels of attractive, and yet—nothing.”
“It’s probably because you’re in love with Chidi,” Jason offers nonchalantly, not even taking his eyes off the screen, leaning into some kind of move he’s making in the game.
romaincrisis
stormborns
origamiaround
gummygunk
jacobvanloon
dededos
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
