saylor

🫐 writing ➛ 18+ ellie williams gf

[urcursebreaker]

burning body waiting. (ellie williams x fem!reader)

warnings for this chapter: 18+ content, graphic violence/gore/blood and animal death.

chapter 1: blood-soaked beauty

ᖭི༏ᖫྀ

The floorboard creaks under your featherlight footing. You drag yourself to a fluid halt, cautiously analyzing the drab sunroom.

The crooked, off-kilter shelf; a ratty, blood-crusted sheet draped over it. A murky puddle of rain water reflecting the forlorn, dim winter sun, plumes of old motor oil dancing in an iridescent swirl. A lopsided, rusty tricycle. A pile of chipped cement bricks.

Nothing of use; and no one to hear your misstep.

You exhale shakily, resuming your calculated strides. You shuck the grimy, makeshift curtain away from the shelf, deftly pocketing a stray razor blade and half-used roll of duct tape.

After surveying the room and gathering what you need, you shove through the dry-rotted back door, the frigid breeze cascading through your unbound hair.

"Shit," your teeth clatter over the curse; the cold, penetrative rain aiming spears of ice straight through your bones.

You tighten the soiled fur-lined coat you had stolen from your brother around your frame, adjusting the shotgun slung over your shoulder. The rain soaks through the corduroy and saps your hair to your face.

You shield your eyes from the ferocious patter of rain and give the collapsing back porch a brisk once over, before making a run for the darkening tree line.

Mel had informed you of a vacant trailer park they'd encountered on their last sweep, just through the thick of the dense forestry. They'd killed the lingering infected on their way through, a few runners feeding on the steaming carcass of a horse.

She assured you there were no live cordyceps in the area, so they'd deemed it safe enough for you to loot it alone, as long as you returned to base before night descended and followed the precautions they established after Nora's death.

This was the final step of your initiation into the WLF; endure a loot run, alone, and with minimal supplies. Then you were officially one of them.

You and your brother had arrived in Seattle a month and a half ago, where you were grudgingly taken in by the Wolves after incidentally stumbling into one of their self-made traps.

After confirming you weren't a Seraphite, they'd permitted you shelter in exchange for your faithful camaraderie and proof of your usefulness. Which, even after all this time, you were still laboriously proving. You had to double your efforts to solidify your value in order to compensate for your brother.

He had his own beneficial qualities, but his blindness limited him to organizing and rationing stock, refurbishing broken supplies, and cleaning everyone's weaponry. Nobody wanted to risk sending him on a mission when there was a highly probable chance he wouldn't make it back.

So you had to act as two people when exploring the outside world.

The canopy of leaves give you decent coverage from the relentless rain as you move swiftly through the heavy greenery. The sun would set in precisely two hours, granting you sparsely half an hour to get to and search the sight.

The thought itself sends you into greater motion. You break into a sprint, hopping over fallen, mold-shrouded logs and winding around the towering, western pines, until the rain mutes to a dull sprinkle.

The trees eventually open up to unveil an expansive clearing. About a dozen overgrown, warped mobile homes dot the field, shadowed by swaying tall grass and curling canary.

You stop idly to catch your breath and do a cautionary visual sweep of your surroundings. It's all nearly peaceful; the distant span of rolling mountains. Silence, but the water dripping gently off the leaves, the bristle of the dew speckled grass. Wet vines billowing with the wind.

You rummage through the first few without difficulty; they were filthy and crumbling, but free of any infected or evidence of death. The trailer park was likely abandoned in the wake of the outbreak.

You collect an impressive variety of canned foods; beans, corn and even a dented can of mandarin oranges, alongside a few rolls of toilet paper and a box of unopened bandaids. You even found a collapsed bookshelf and salvaged a few books, snagging one for yourself to indulge in during your watch shift. You only allow yourself the selfish luxury as a celebration for you upcoming place among the WLF, once you return with the goods.

You begin to search the fourth to last trailer, this one partially seeping into the sunken, mossy earth and caving at the roof. Half of it was obstructed by the collapsed ceiling, but in the reachable area you find a toolbox under the sink, dump the miscellaneous screws and bolts into your backpack, and hook the baby hammer you find to the belt loop of your worn, bootcut Levi's.

You slip out of the trailer once you gather the necessities. A mockingbird chirps, it's tweet eerily reminiscent of a human whistle, it's wings beating overhead as it soars across the field and into the encompassing trees. You wipe your dusty, damp palms on your pants uncomfortably, glancing around before regaining your footing and making your way toward the neighboring trailer.

You're vigilant as you scan the interior, the birds song unsettling you deeply. It rung as if it were warning you; as if it were fleeing. You make sure to take the apple-cutting knife you spot on the counter.

You were sidling out of the derailed door when you heard it, plainly and resolutely; a sharp whistle from your left.

You freeze. Your hand subconsciously jerking to your holster.

Silence.

The pines creak. The grass wisps faintly.

Another whistle, this one long, melodic, and from your right; closer.

You duck into the brush, your heart hammering wildly against your chest. You withdraw your gun, fishing the stray bullets out of your pocket, loading it with trembling fingers.

The grass rustles forcefully from both sides, followed by a series of coded whistles, all nearing by the second. Your breaths heave from your lips in panicked spurts, as you crawl under the latticed underbelly of the trailer, mud plastering to your elbows, your brothers coat.

Seraphites. Fucking Seraphites.

You'd rather it be a herd of infected.

Especially when you hear a dog's frantic, frothing string of furious barks.

"She was just over here. She can't be far," a male voice boom's authoritatively, too close for comfort. "She's close."

The mud must be deflecting the dogs of your scent, as you can make out their nearby blood-thirsty sniffing. You quietly lather it on your face, smearing it all over your exposed skin, suppressing your labored breathing.

Two Seraphites enter the trailer you're tucked beneath. The floor screeches precariously under their footing, inching closer to where you lay. You shimmy toward the small gap on the opposing side of the crawlspace, accidentally slicing your cheek on a stranded, dangling pipe in your attempt to avoid them.

You grimace, stifling the whimper rising in your throat, the split searing your cheek, hot blood leaking down your face.

It's only a few seconds later when the previously sedated, off-course dogs begin to bark ravenously, harmonizing as they bound for you in a frenzy.

They must've smelled the blood.

You curse openly now, clambering for the small opening, shredding it open with your adrenaline-piqued strength, stumbling to your feet and dashing down the hill.

"There she is!" Someone hollers, followed by a stampede of Seraphites hurdling behind you, gunshots renting the evening air.

Bullets whistle by in whirs as you stagger zig-zaggedly away from them, the dogs barking intensifying as they speed through the slick grass.

"Fuck," you seethe, tearing through the terrain, toppling down the hill, nearly losing your balance. You manage to shoot over your shoulder without falling, clipping a Seraphite on her waist, sending her plummeting to the ground.

More resounding gunshots. Exchanged shouts. One of the dog emits a loud, wounded whimper.

You run far and fast enough that you lose the dogs for a couple of minutes. You press yourself against a wide berthed tree and breathe raggedly, painfully, rubbing a heap of mud onto your gash, blanketing the blood in it.

You barely have time to catch your breath when a twig snaps to your left.

And you barely have time to react before a body is pummeling into you, knocking you to the rain-sullen floor, eliciting a grunt out of you.

You blindly wrestle the man off of you, stabbing him directly in the gut with the knife you'd thieved. He gets a powerful punch in despite the wound you'd inflicted, your head reeling back, slamming into rock.

The world spins around you, blood coats your tongue, but you stab him again, twisting it up and penetrating an organ, a guttural scream tearing through his throat. It weakens him enough that you manage to shove his body weight off of you, and he rolls onto the wet moss with a thud.

He reaches weakly for your ankle, and you flip the knife, bringing it down on his skull with a deafening, sickening crunch, as it spears through scalp and drills through bone.

You don't bother beholding the gruesome scene or dislodging your new weapon from his head; you turn away from the act you'd committed and hobble away, vision distorted and mind fogged from the impact of his attack.

You slip the fully loaded shotgun off your shoulder and cock it, creeping back toward where you had fled. If you didn't kill them all now, they'd track you back to the base.

There were five that chased and fired at you; two of which were accompanied by a hellhound. One of the dogs was seemingly injured in the crossfire, leaving one dog, and four Seraphites, if you exclude the woman you'd momentarily impaired. The man you killed must've been stationed in the woods, meaning there had to be more located somewhere.

You do all the calculations mentally, your shoulders strung high in alert, eyes feverishly darting around, assessing the vicinity. The sun was setting, darkness eclipsing the trees.

Another cycle of distant gunshots ricochet through the forest, from where you had run. No dogs barked. Everything around you remained unmoving. Your fear had taken you far.

Eventually, you arrive back to the yawning field. The trailers were pierced with steaming bullet holes, blood spattering the rusted metallic sidings. Three Seraphites stand back to back in the opening, including the pixie-cutted woman you'd shot, muttering apprehensively amongst themselves.

You crouch behind a bush, aiming at the cluster of people. One of the dogs lay unmoving and rigid, face-up in the grass, a puddle of blood accumulating around its body. Your brow pinches in bewilderment as you notice a Seraphite girl sprawled lifelessly beside it.

And another one, by the feet of one of the living soldiers, his gun clutched tautly to his chest. He flickers his gaze around dubiously, frightfully, mimicking yours and the others confusion.

You take advantage of their preoccupation with their uncounted for enemy and lock in on the befuddled man, zeroing in on his head. You steady your hold, let it linger on him, before pulling the trigger.

It blasts through him, brains and blood exploding through the air, birds flocking from the trees with high-pitched guffaws. You'd already vacated your spot when the other two began listlessly shooting in that direction.

You seek new lodging behind an abandoned CRV, studying them from a new angle. You zone in on one of the women, finger hovering over the trigger, when two gunshots erupt. Seamlessly killing each of them.

You hesitate for a brief second, before deigning to head back the way you had come, not wanting to cross paths with the dangerous, exceptional force that had swept in and took each of them down one by one.

The past gunshots ring perilously, hazily in your ears. You lethargically flick the drying mud off of your face, trudging through the forest, still wary of any potential threat, as the person who'd been capable of single-handedly decimating that entire group of Seraphites was still wandering through these woods somewhere with the knowledge you were alive.

You're nearing the old farmhouse you were scavenging earlier when a soft, hesitant, questioning whistle sends you halting in place. You tuck yourself behind a tree, scouting for the source of the noise. They repeat the whistle, more insistently.

You shift to step out from behind the tree when a calloused hand clasps over your mouth, steering you into a lithe, toned body. You struggle against the firm, strapping grasp, hot breath fanning your ear.

"Quiet." A soft, raspy female voice murmurs lowly. Arm secured around your waist, anchoring you to her blood-soaked front. Her words tickle your cheek as she whispers, "We're not alone."

You reluctantly concede, only lightly squirming in her oppressive hold. Fearing that if you refuse to comply, she'll aim her wrath at you next. Loathing that she can feel the trepidation emanating through you, the rapid thundering of your heart against her arm.

Boots rifle through the damp leaves, the hushed footing sloshing through mud. Your wheezy breathing escalates as your unknown captor leisurely maneuvers around the tree, grasp on you unyielding as she expertly avoids the prying Seraphite.

"Shh. Easy now." The woman mutters with lethal, calm calculation. The soft, fatal edge filtering her tone sending an unexpected, quavering shudder through your icy body.

You nod stiffly under her sweaty palm, and she marginally appeases her bone-crushing grip on you. She slowly, deliberately removes her hand from your mouth, absentmindedly dragging it down your chin, her rough fingers ghosting your jaw.

You anxiously glance down to find your heels on top of her scuffed boots and stumble off of her in alarm. Her hand catches your waist, grave-cold digits inching up your jacket, clawing at bare skin, as she yanks you back behind the tree.

You make to glance at her in a conjunction of gratitude and terror, but she had dissipated seamlessly, whirring by like a vengeful phantom in the night as she stations herself behind an adjacent tree, back plastered to the moss-cushioned, sappy trunk. Elaborately designed switchblade in hand.

She eyes her target, deadpan, excluding the twitch of her bruised under eye. She presses a trembling finger to her chapped lips, slicing a cautionary glare at you.

You sardonically hold your breath, emphatically puffing your cheeks, and you swear you discern an amused lilt to her lips. Or perhaps it was just the waning, dimming sun light, glazing over her slim figure, quelling dancing shadows across her battered face.

Whatever it was vacuumed out of her face, overcome by a grim, stoic solidity, when the Seraphite inched hesitantly in her direction. She creeps around the base of the tree as he rounds it, leisurely prowling up to him.

It happens briskly, lightening-quick— you blink and she was fisting his unruly hair and hauling him back, baring his throat to her— which she drills through efficiently and relentlessly, blood spraying in jagged spurts, sprinkling her wrath-warped face.

Another whistle cuts distantly through the humid air.

She's already slipping through the night-shrouded greenery before he even falls, his gurgled, floundering whimpers following him down as he thuds to the ground, blood still sputtering out of him, large frame twitching.

She disappears through the vast darkness of impending nightfall, her bloodied knife glinting faintly, distantly in the minute moonlight, as she takes determined strides toward the source of the second whistle.

Horror clutches your heart and squeezes unabashedly as you linger, the man's lifeless body still pulsating with the remnants of life it harbored.

You cast a suspecting glance around, the brush tranquilly silent, death idling in the dampened air.

And then you throttle back the way you were originally headed, wanting to put as much space between you and the ominous woman as tangibly possible, in case she returned, regretting keeping you alive.

You don't make it very far.

An arrow soars through the air and strikes the back of your thigh, puncturing flesh, narrowly missing the bone. Searing, white-hot pain bursts through your body as you slam to the ground with a sharp cry— your scream ricocheting through the trees.

You clamber for purchase, using your arms to crawl through the dense mud, dragging your injured leg dejectedly. The pain scathing, shooting up your body in fissures of agony, as you seethe through your teeth, the full arrow protruding from your skin.

You hear the whistle of a second arrow and duck. It spears through the earth inches from your head. You speed up, using your unwounded knee to push you forward, colorful dots edging your vision.

Twigs snap all around; muffled shouts resounding through the forest, an electric current of danger thrumming through your numbing body, as you drag yourself weakly, futilely.

You halt under a curling, dripping fern, fumbling for the arrow gauging your thigh. You take a few deep, alleviating breaths, before ripping it from your leg, stifling a scream at the scathing pain. Crimson saturates your pants, blooming in a dark pool.

Seraphites are storming by urgently, mud flicking off their boots. You remain unnoticed by a quad of them that hurdle by.

For a couple minutes it's silent. You don't move, afraid that if you shift even slightly, you won't be able to suppress the noise that would leave you at the blistering, twinging agony.

You think you're remotely safe, shielded from searching eyes, superficial wound already sealing.

That is before your head is unexpectedly cracked against something colossal, and your wisked away into a world of unfathomable darkness.

ᖭི༏ᖫྀ

Drip.

Your finger twitches, pulse thumping in the pads.

Drip.

Your heartbeat thunders through your skull, the drumming nearly muffling the faint noise. Your face spasms; the mobility slowly begins creeping in, though your mind has been reduced to a vacant chamber of incoherence.

Drip.

The hairs on the back of your neck stiffen. A keen awareness begins to slither back into your numbed body; you're not alone. Your mind may be buzzing, it's cognition still restoring by the second, but your body tingles under watchful eyes. You remain frozen.

Until a boisterous crackle sends you lunging up, triggering a sharp intake of breath. You gasp for air, shaking violently, your vision still murky from earlier's collision.

Through your fragmented sight and a stream of dense smoke, you decipher a red figure. They hover just across from you, the small, roaring fire the only barrier dividing you from the eerily, predatorily still stranger.

You blink rapidly, disorient. "Who are you?" you bleat, voice hoarse with misuse. You attempt to lift your hands as a last resort of protection, to find them bound in front of you. You wriggle them senselessly, panic bubbling in your chest, the thick, tethered rope rubbing your skin raw.

The figure's head tilts inquisitively. "Who are you." A husky, feminine voice drawls.

That voice...

You gulp, saliva syrupy like molasses. It's the girl; you knew from the way her voice alone sent a bolt of hot, electrifying shivers up your spine. "You," you breathe softly, licking your teeth, the taste of your own blood relinquishing on your tongue. "You're the girl. You helped me."

The figure straightens, rigid, arm dangling off her thigh as she crouches before the fire. Though you can't directly see her eyes through the haze, you can feel her gaze penetrating through you, prying you apart piece by piece.

She's silent for a moment, before picking up a stick and delicately prodding the flames, the smoke lightly defusing, the embers flickering. "I was going to kill them all anyway." She informs blithely, shrugging with one bandaged shoulder.

You could see her clearer than before, now; she was doused head to toe in crimson. Blood billowed down her sharp face, dripping to the floor in slow but ferocious spatters. The blood accentuated the verdant-blue of her crystalline eyes, dull and piercing yours. "I could tell you weren't one of them. And I don't kill just for the fuck's of it."

You sit in uneasy silence, studying her outline apprehensively. She withdraws her switchblade from her pocket and continues, "Which raises the question; if you aren't one of them, who are you?" She asks conspicuously, as if to herself, as she begins sharpening the blade.

You hesitate, your mouth dry as you reluctantly offer her your name. You know better than to share anything beyond that; the WLF had everyone under lockdown. Abby believes Nora's murder was a targeted, vengeful attack, and had warned all of you not to disclose your ties, in case you stumble upon someone who knows the killer.

"Do you move alone?" The woman interrogated unabashedly, peering down at the knife as she ran a dirty rag across its shiny surface.

"No," you admit, swallowing harshly, shaking your head. "It's me and my brother. He's blind, so I go out and get supplies, he protects our stuff."

Half truths are the most believable lies.

"Where did you two come from?"

"Ohio," you respond baldly. "We left with our family, but. It's just us now."

She pauses to assess you for a moment. "I lost someone too." She mutters, haunt dwindling in her eyes.

It's your turn to analyze her. Even caked in grime and unapologetically coated in her victims blood, she was beautiful. Her mussed auburn hair was partially tied back out of her angular face, her features neatly carved like a statues, emphatic and naturally alluring. Her eyes were a brewery, swirling with color and indistinguishable emotion, framed by expressive eyebrows, one of them slitted.

Maybe it's wrong to look at her— the woman who'd shamelessly, brutally wiped out dozens of people before your eyes— and notice these things.

But you've always been an optimist.

You can tell by the wariness glinting in her eyes that she doesn't share that sentiment.

"I'm sorry to hear that," you whisper sincerely, sorrowfully, gulping down the lump of emotion cementing in your throat.

She glances away, her jaw clenching. A muscle spasms in her blood-spattered neck. "Yeah," she whispers tightly, the word emitting from her lips in an unintentional seethe. "Yeah, I'm sorry too."

There's an awkward duration of silence.

"So..." you snort, and she startles at the noise, glancing up at you in bewilderment. Her swampy blue gaze roving over your slick face. "Can you maybe untie me now?" You lift your bound wrists in emphasis, arching a brow, trying to appear undeterred by her astute stare.

Her eyes brighten vaguely. "Why? You don't like it?" She teases monotonously, a frail smirk tugging at her cracked lips. Your cheeks tingle with warmth at the insinuation, and you shift, coyly angling your face away from the blood-soaked beauty.

"Not when it's against my will, no," you respond, half-quipping.

"But when it's not?" She raises a challenging brow, that sort-of smirk still pulling at her lips.

Against your better judgement, a conclave of butterflies erupt in your stomach, fluttering around. It's evident that she's just joking, which, in contrast to her rumpled, grizzly appearance, is funny in itself. The fear you felt around her from before seems to have dissipated and been replaced by a morbid curiosity.

"Untie me and try again. We'll find out."

"Huh," she coughs out a sheepish laugh, sliding her thumb across her lip, ridding the blood that had dripped there. She's silent for a moment, before pointedly clearing her throat. "That wound was pretty gnarly." Her voice comes out in a ragged breath.

You smile to yourself at her sudden timidity, glancing down at your thigh. Crimson blossomed through the bandage enveloping your wound— she must've dressed it herself, when you were unconscious. Which means she must've also...

"Did you carry me here?" You question in disbelief. She must be insurmountably strong if she was able to move your dead weight...

"Yeah," she clears her throat again, eyes uncertainly darting between you and her blemished green backpack. She grazes a finger over a tiny spaceship pin clipped to the front contemplatively. "It wasn't very far from where you dropped."

"Ah," you chirp airily, nodding slowly, watching her unzip the front pouch and unveil a sack of cashews. "Well... thanks."

She hums noncommittally, tossing the sack of nuts to you. You eye her warily, awaiting her curt nod of confirmation, before ripping it open and gratefully popping a couple in your mouth. She watches you eat mutely, blankly.

A gentle stream of dewy morning sunlight begins to beam through the torn netting of the rusted window, softly illuminating your previously shadowed surroundings. It's the garage of the farmhouse you were looting before.

The loot.

Your chewing slows, and you cast your gaze around frantically in search of your bag. And your guns. They're no where to be found.

"I left all your stuff there," the girl states knowingly, shrugging at the look of pure panic on your face. "It was too heavy for me to carry both you and you're stuff. We'll go back for it once the sun rises."

The implication she'd be accompanying you made a part of you uneasy; but on the other hand, you were thankful you wouldn't have to relocate your things all alone.

"Okay..." you reply dubiously, flexing your bound wrists, the muscles beginning to ache. "When am I getting these off? It's not like I can hurt you. I'm unarmed."

She shoves off the concrete and to her feet with a soft grunt, absentmindedly rubbing her side, wincing at her own touch. She shoulders her bag, smiling down at you wolfishly. The orange glare of the dimming fire reflects off her blood-stained face. "Not yet."

ᖭི༏ᖫྀ

You examine your reflection in the rippling water. A cracking layer of mud mutates your face, greases your hair. You cup a handful of oil-contaminated water and splash it into your face, rubbing vigorously, the now wet rope heavy against your wrists.

Sunlight gleams through the overhead awning of leaves, ricocheting off the water. The morning birds chime in benign song; the rest of the encompassing world silent, save for the gurgling of the stream. Fog creeps in from the distant forestry; dew speckles the frost-tipped grass.

You pat the dampness from your eyes with your sleeve and glance at the woman. She's half-submerged in the pond, plumes of blood roiling off of her, tainting the water a murky crimson. She scrubs her blood-crusted arms vehemently, grimacing, pointedly disregarding you.

You waltz over to the large, upturned rock where she'd draped her coat, moving slowly and methodically as to not disengage her from her trance. You toss your coat down beside it and unlace your boots, setting them aside, eyes trained on her carefully, still afraid that one wrong move could send her lurching.

On the trek here, she'd been passive and silent, her face ghoulish and tense. It was as if with the rise of dawn came the fall of her peace; there was tension in her jaw, and determination in her strides. Though she'd been the one to suggest accompanying you, she seemed suddenly inconvenienced by it, like she was in a haste to finally be rid of you.

Which, gladly. You didn't want to be tied up and leashed around any more than she wanted you trailing her and nosing her plans.

She may have helped you, nursed you back to health, but you didn't forget what she was capable of; the mass destruction at her singular hands.

You wanted to remain on her good side, or whatever side emboldened her to save you, for as long as you could; at least until you were released from her clutches.

You peel off your socks and keep the rest of your clothes on— a soiled green camisole and blood-stained Levi's— and hesitantly breach the shore of the cold water, creeping toward her unsurely. You gasp quietly when the icy water rises to your midriff, raising your goose-pimpled arms over the surface, teeth clattering.

"How are you not freezing!?" You yelp as you dive into a breaststroke, swimming past her, shivers wracking your body. You spin around and float on your back, exhaling obnoxiously. It's hard to move without using your arms, but you manage to keep yourself afloat with just your legs.

She glances at you furtively, her eyes flickering between your face and your chest, before chagrinly dropping back to her arm. "It's not bad," she mumbles mundanely, her skin raw and blistering from her violent scrubbing.

You notice a bold tattoo curling over the length of her forearm. Curiously, you inch nearer to her, taking in the ink. It's a detailed moth atop

a long, winding fern.

"Cool tat," you chirp, absentmindedly extending a finger and lightly caressing the thick line of ink. She stiffens but doesn't recoil, her lowered eyes meeting yours uncertainly.

"Thanks," she says gruffly, simply, retracting her hand, eyeing you for a prolonged second before returning to her scrubbing. This time she soaks a cloth she must've cut from her shirt. She half-heartedly sweeps her hair off her neck and runs it down her back, blood beading off in loud droplets.

You take a step back and fully duck yourself into the water; despite its nearly debilitating chill, it was refreshing— the mud and blood flaking off and floating in particles around you. You aggressively massage the water into your hair, digging out the caked-up grime to the best of your ability with your bound wrists partially disabling you.

You break the surface with a gentle gasp for air and find the woman staring at you. Except this time, instead of sheepishly breaking your gaze, her stare remains resolute. Her eyes leisurely rove over your face, where water drips languidly from your lashes and scars brand your skin, and down your chest, where your nipples are peaked from the cold.

You feel them harden further at her gaze, as it seems to indulgently trace the shape of them. You swear you detect a hitch in her otherwise steady breathing before her eyes wander, slowly, back up to your face, darkening when they meet yours.

She doesn't say anything, her now mainly bloodless face masterfully blank. You tentatively take a couple steps closer, the ground rough and littered beneath your feet, until she's practically peering down at you. Freckles form a vast constellation on her cheeks and nose, a light smattering dusting her face. A nearly microscopic scar mars her lip.

"You never told me your name," you say pointedly, raising a brow, projecting an illusion of confidence. Her eyes dart to the roguish smile splaying on your lips, and you lick them subconsciously, the rancid tang of dirty water dissolving on your tongue. "You know mine. Doesn't seem fair."

She contemplates you for a second, craning her chin up, donning a faint smirk of her own. "Ellie."

You sink deeper into the water, shielding the entire upper half of your body, peaking up at her. "Well, Ellie," you taste her name on your tongue, drawling it out deliberately, precisely, as you attempt to swim backwards. "It's not very easy to swim with no hands."

"Then stop swimming." She states matter-of-factly, and you roll your eyes, gliding towards the shore nonetheless.

But on the way up, your knee grazes something sharp, and you hiss a curse, wincing internally. You dip your fingers into the water and fumble for the object, forcefully yanking it out of the mud where it's lodged.

It's a thick shard of glass.

You glance over your shoulder at Ellie, blissfully unaware and dragging the cloth down her reddened face, before pocketing it covertly and marching up the shore.

You linger for a moment, water dripping out of your hair and off your seeping body, before wringing out as much as you could and calling, "Gonna go piss, be right back!"

Ellie doesn't respond. You take that as your cue to go, hurrying through the dense tree line and crouching behind a hefty bush. You strain your neck to peak at her through the branches, assuring yourself she's still preoccupied, before pulling out the shard and sawing into the rope.

You saw and saw and saw, slowly but surely cutting through the rope, its grip loosening by the second.

A twig snaps behind you.

You swivel around swiftly, freezing in horror as Ellie stares down at you, her switchblade unsheathed. You hadn't heard her wading through the water; she'd moved silently and stealthily.

Her face is blank, that expertly devoid expression she'd tailored when hunting down those Seraphites plastered on.

She reers the knife back, the only sign of life the twitch of her upper lip. You close your eyes and brace for the impact; this was it. You should've played the long game, gained her trust, earned your freedom. Now she was going to slaughter you like the rest.

You flinch at the grunt that tears through her lips as she brings the blade down.

Only instead of agony, blade breaking flesh, your hands snap to the ground, free of unbearable tension.

You fearfully squint down at your wrists; the rope now split in half, cuffing your wrists but no longer knotted before you. You stretch them apart, rolling your shoulders, looking up at her with pure, undiluted trepidation, gulping.

She meets your gaze unapologetically and throws your coat down at you. "Let's go," she says dispassionately, cooly, already turning away and marching up the hill. "Your stuff isn't far."

. . .

[andrew-garfielld]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022-) S02E06 | "Smallfolk"

[violentdelightsbaby]

i met you there in texas, somewhere on the thoroughfare on the side of the road in some torn up clothes

[urcursebreaker]

Was reading your last chapter and I’m totally missing you! Will there be a new chapter drop soon?

No rush of course.

gonna post this for everyone because i’ve gotten a couple questions— there will be more chapters, i promise!! i still continue to write. i’ve just been super busy and haven’t written much, but trust it’s coming❤️ thank you all for your kind words, it means so much to me :) new chapter coming soon!!!

[urcursebreaker]

burning body waiting. (ellie williams x fem!reader)

read chapters one, two, and three here.

warnings: 18+ content, canon-typical violence, gore, angst, graphic smut, scissoring, fingering, use of marijuana. | word count: 11.7k.

chapter 4: match in the dark

❝ the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it. ❞ — richard siken.

. . .

The stories always say that love is something you fall into.

For you, it's always been a bludgeoning, throttling force, bone-shattering and breath-robbing; sudden and violent and jarring.

So why does this feel not like a punch to the gut but a slow and tortuous ailment of your health? An intrusion of sickness and vein-pulsing agony?

Instead of pummeling you with a lethal blow, your feelings for Ellie crept and slunk through your bones, a terminal parasite, malignant and festering inside. Until it was a sure thing. A cancer. Until your veins were blackened with heady need. Until there was a dark, frothing plague teeming from your heart, hammering to a consistent tune.

Ellie, Ellie, Ellie.

Or maybe you don't love her.

Maybe it's some third sinister thing. Living in the cracks of cruelty that stretch between friend and lover.

Last night, after baring witness to Ellie's breakdown, the sound of her wailing, heaving sobs followed you into a tenuous sleep.

You dreamt of a young girl, a smattering of freckles garnishing her sun-kissed face and arms, familiar, mossy blue eyes brimming with unshed tears. She clutched a watch in her fist, it's face splintered, cracks like lightening fracturing across the broken surface. She lurched it into the rapid waters of the river she stood before, her eyebrows pinched in earnest, chest heaving.

"Why are you so sad?" You had asked the girl, your voice a whisper in the wind, not fully belonging to you.

The girl only released a long, heavy breath and pivoted away, marching down an unmanicured path of ferns and overgrowth. She grew taller and leaner as she strode away, until the figure that dissipated through the line of trees was one you have slept beside. 

And now you are woken up in that damn 7/11 to that same girl firmly shaking you.

Except now she's older— and a new scar marred her lip. A new slit cleaved her brow. And a new, harsh edge of ferocity contoured her face— still so young, in a world that would never allow her to be.

She had to shake you a few times before you came to, snapping awake in a bleated panic, lurching up. She was huddled over you, a finger to her lips, a solemn alarm flaring in her pale eyes. The overhead vines careening from the high rafters billowed gently with the breeze; the serenity of it deceiving to what prowled the weeds.

"To the left," she mouths meticulously, and you nod, carefully slipping out of your sleeping bag, heart drumming ceaselessly.

She unsheathes her switchblade and slinks away, her eyes trained on the glassless wall as she stations behind a counter, distractedly gesturing for you to follow.

You slowly retrieve your shotgun from the littered floor and pocket a shiv you crafted the night prior, shooting brisk glances over your shoulder as you inch to Ellie's side. A faint whistle rises from the swaying grass.

Fuck. More Seraphites.

They must be tracking you, if they're spreading this far into Seattle. They tend to lurk on the outskirts, basing along the edges of the city so they can terminate anyone who attempts to get inside.

You never heard of them abandoning posts before. Killing over a dozen of them must have earned you their vengeance.

Ellie must have a similar thought, for when you reach her side, she whispers, "I should have gone to their base and killed every last one of them." Her face was grim and hard with fury, jaw barred, as she glared over the counter in the general direction of the whistle.

You follow her gaze and your muscles tense. The piercing afternoon sun glints off the metal tip of an arrow— aimed directly at you.

"Get down!" You shout jitterly, just as the potent snap of the bows tension unleashing splits through the silence of the day. You shove Ellie down and duck over her right as it spears loudly through the chipping wall behind you, where her head had been precarious seconds before.

She looks up at you with wide eyes, her knuckles gleaming white against the shine of her blade. Her momentary shock morphs into a scowl that manifests on her face.

She shrugs her shotgun off her shoulder and aims it for the weeds— blasting through the first outline of a human that she sees without a second thought. Thickets of seared, chunky blood burst through the air, followed by a series of sharp, undulating whistles. Your ears ring boisterously from the gunshot.

You sense movement to your right and crawl past Ellie— who clips another Seraphite, her body rocking with the force of the shot— to investigate. Fortunately, your backs are covered by two withstanding, cavernless walls, leaving only the hole to the right and the sizeable gap overhead.

Ellie seems to have the other wall covered.

You use a rusting shelf as a barricade, crouching, shiv in hand, the blade biting through the cloth you wound around the bottom. You turn it over in your hands, tongue prodding your lip, casting furtive looks above you every couple seconds to ensure nobody inflicted an unexpected aerial attack.

Arrows rain down, piercing the walls, clattering off the concrete. Gunshots boom thunderously, reverberating through the vacant city, paired with the guttural screams of those they met. You chance a peek at Ellie to find her completely unscathed, propped on one knee, squinting through the thick scope of her rifle. She must've swiftly exchanged weapons while you were looking away; always efficient.

You swivel back around and feel the tiny hairs on the nape of your neck raise at the shaved head poking through the whirling canary, only about ten feet away. You hold your breath and flush your back with the shelf, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

He slithers into the room, bow drawn, frame veiled by a cloak seeped with rain water. Brutal, discomfiting burn scars eclipse half of his face, as if he were lowered, sideways, into a pit of roaring flames.

Back at the Front, everyone always refers to the Seraphite's as Scars. It's starting to make sense why; you had never seen one this close before.

He puckers his lips to whistle, and you deign that as your opportunity, before he summons another Scar. You spring out from behind the shelf and drill your blade through the side of his neck, tearing through tendons. "Gotcha!" you breathe sardonically.

His large body crumples in your arms. You lower him to the floor with a dull, sappy thud, blood instantly pooling across the concrete, lapping at the tips of your boots.

An insistent whistle echoes closely from the weeds he emerged from, and you mutter a curse, hoisting up your gun and loading it with bloodied fingers. You're about to shoot the nearing figure when a brutish man descends from the crater in the ceiling— landing on top of you.

"Fuck!" Your scream of raw surprise rips through your throat as you plummet under his weight, your arm twisted unnaturally and agonizingly beneath his body.

He yanks you back by your hair, peeling your body off the ground with ease, and you wrestle with his unyielding grip, grunting as you squirm and peer at him over your shoulder. His eyes are crazed, a deep, rigid scar splitting his cheek, fatal determination overtaking his face.

You think fast, hastily fumbling for the blade in his companions sputtering throat, writhing under his formidable hold, your breathing sparse as he crushes you. "Feel Her love," the man growls in an accented drawl, his pick-axe reered back, poised to strike.

You successfully dislodge your blade just in time.

You arch your arm back as forcefully as you can from the obstructive angle, nicking him in the chest— just enough for him to stagger back and graze his digits over the superficial wound— and for you to crawl out from underneath him.

You only make it up to your knees before the handle of his pick-axe is caging your throat, crushing your windpipes, a hoarse whine wheezing from your lips. He hauls you back, and you flail for the bar compressing your neck, feet aimlessly lashing and kicking the floor. "El—"

Dots swim and flood your vision. Your flickering pulse rattles droningly in your skull. You can't breathe. You're dying. You're going to die. You're going to—

"Don't you fucking touch her!" Ellie bellows.

Suddenly, the pick-axe falls from your throat, clattering with a resounding echo to the floor, and you drop right along with it. Through the haze of your disjointed vision you see the previous keeper of your fate— Ellie's switchblade protruding from his head, before he slams lifelessly to the floor.

You rake in breaths hungrily, the sudden, painful burst of oxygen blazing like fire through your lungs. You claw listlessly at your throat, as if that will stop the blistering burn, or vanquish the coppery tang of blood rendering your tongue.

Ellie then shoots his already deceased body twice— his immobile carcass lurching, jolting with the swift bullets— and doesn't spare the dead Scar a second glance before shooting the one approaching in the weeds with masterful precision.

He thumps to the ground with a muffled groan of anguish, and his departure is followed by a wave of dense, apprehensive silence.

Ellie lingers in that taut, defensive stance for a moment, her shoulders tense, face lined with concentration as she sweeps her gaze over the sprawling field. Eyes skittering over the towering buildings in a speedy examination.

And then her eyes fall to you, alarm leeching the color from her sharp face. She quickly lowers her gun and bunches her stiff shoulders. "Are you alright?" She demands brusquely.

You nod skittishly, chest heaving with your rapid, hungry breaths. "Fine," you croak out, voice hoarse and gravelly, scraping out of your raw throat.

She nods absently, slinging her gun over her shoulder and bending down to fist the knife puncturing the man's head. She gives it a forceful, ruthless tug, his upper body heaving off the blood-blemished ground. A harrowing crimson cascades down his skull, glistening over her fingers. She yanks it out of him with a second, ardent jerk, and he slumps onto the floor, his own gore splattering repellently through the air. She surveys the blood and bits of cartilage on her blade before calmly wiping it off on her pants.

You scarcely register the disturbing scene of the Seraphite's you downed together.

Ellie's callousness must be wearing off on you. The dark pond of sudsy blood gathering around your feet ignites only a faint ripple of disgust in you; and a hint of knee-buckling relief, that you had someone so unapologetically cutthroat at your defense.

She offers you a steady hand and you take it. She hauls you to your feet, and you waver, your grip unabashed and bruise inciting. "Are you okay?" You ask attentively, a tremor underlying your tinny voice as you eye her top to bottom.

On the exterior, she's untouched by harm, and the relief that floods you is instantaneous.

"I am if you are," she says with a dim smile, surveying you for injury in turn. "We should get the fuck out of here, though. You sure you're good?"

"I'm fine," you offer a meek, hopefully reassuring smile back, unhanding her. You clear your throat and discard your broken, useless shiv on the floor, your breathing evening out. "Lead the way, my noble Knight," you tease with a shaky grin.

She rolls her eyes with affection and mimics a flourishing bow. "Yes, my Queen," she snorts, before pivoting away, heedlessly overstepping the dead body of your attacker and trudging for the opening she'd been guarding, her backpack already slung over her shoulder.

Your scratchy, cackling laugh scorches your throat, but you stifle the dizzying pain, her responding laugh, breathy and chittering, making the hurt worth it.

It was the sweetest thing you have ever heard. So light and natural and opposing to the violence she had wielded mere minutes ago to protect you.

As you trail after her, trusting her direction without question, you think you'd let her be as mean to you as she needed to be if you could hear her laugh like that again.

Which may be the scariest thing of all.

• • •

ELLIE

Her resolve was dissipating through her fingers. Now particles, everything she fought for was reduced to inconceivable dust, streaking through the wind, escaping her clutches.

She had destroyed versions of herself, tapered off past selves, trimmed and manufactured herself into this precarious thing that she was now.

A shell, filled by a need to take back all that had been stolen; a vessel for her grief and anger. She felt like she lived and breathed the horror that clung to her insides, fermented and congealed, taloned rage clawing it's way out of her with every step she took closer and closer to reclaiming the vengeance she was owed; the debt that was due.

But now the calamity in her mind has quieted. Her pain felt distant and hushed; it watched and whispered. She was never truly liberated from it. Only when she's with you does she feel that boulder lift, that bone-crushing mass of misery eased off her soul. But it's hearty weight lingers phantomly, etching itself into her bones.

She glances at you through the waning firelight, your thoughtful expression dim in the flickering amber glow. Your eyebrows are skewered, lips pursed, eyes indulgently roving over the pages of the tattered book splayed across your lap.

She had no idea how you found the room to store useless objects. From your brothers stuffed childhood bear, a chunky, faded hot-pink cassette player, to a couple weathered, worm-eaten books, you seemed to carry only your indulgences.

When she was fourteen, her backpack was similar. It overflowed with graphic novels and worthless trinkets. Joel had everything they needed, carrying double his weight in supplies. Despite everything she'd seen, despite everything he did, he gave her a simple life. One she could not envision herself pursuing ever again, without him there to urge her on.

She wonders if your brother was that guiding light for you, too, a match in the dark, as Joel had been for her.

She looks at you, and she wonders if you have ever truly been alone.

You perform with a buoyancy and easiness she cannot replicate. Either you have never known suffering at all, a portrait of innocence under a brush of death; or you knew it too well, with an intimacy that left you unblinking and acclimated to its sharp edges. When it tried to cut through you, it's relentless knifing was fruitless, it's slashes meeting metal, sliding off the shine of your armor.

Do you even know it's there? That even though you are not brutal and unforgiving— as she herself had become— remaining steady and balanced under the ruthless beat of the worlds bitter drum was a shield in itself?

She both admires and envies your ability to let it all roll off your back as it's hurled at you.

"What?" You drawl at her notably indiscreet examination, amusement seeping into your tone like liquid gold, eyes unstraying from the pages— though she can see, even from the distance that separates you, that your eyes are bright and swimming with it.

For months now, she has locked her feelings down, imprisoned them behind walls of adamant, impenetrable steel. Had deliberately tailored a mask that would keep them from slipping through.

And then there's you. Feeling unabashedly and unapologetically and, unknowingly letting her know she can do it, too. That you see the wounds that gauge her soul and do not flinch at the sight of blood. That you see the hurt that shines in her eyes and do not pity the tortured girl, but embrace the wrath of the killer that torture had birthed.

Being understood was once something she ached for. But now that someone is starting to understand her, to see through the defenses she constructed, she is afraid. She is terrified of being seen, of being known.

Almost as much as she fears being alone.

She is facing that fear day by day, and it is just as fucking scary as she anticipated.

She was cripplingly alone, and she felt the aftershocks of it belting through her. She's a lost, untethered soul, searching for its other end, though the thread had severed and all that remained was remnants of fragmented, disjointed memories, and rippling regrets that would never be ironed out.

She has nothing to return to; no home, no person. Instead, she keeps coming back to that hollowness inside, where the grief is stored, and fed to the flames of rage that blaze there. It is the only consistency she knows now. Even you are not a promised thing. Not when you had a brother somewhere out there waiting for you.

And not when she had a list of lives to end.

You are not enough to mend the gaping hole inside of her; you will never match the shape of that gauge. No one will. No one can replace the things he taught her, gave her.

But at least now... when she lays her head to rest, there's a beaming voice, illuminating the shadow-shrouded void of her mind. Beckoning her toward the light.

And it's yours.

She fights the darkness. Wrestles out of its restraints— the guilt and sorrow that anchors her down— and runs to that voice, desperate for the sun.

But the darkness always seems to win in the end.

"Ellie?"

Your soft, tentative voice lulls her out of her clouded thoughts, and she averts her gaze from the fire to look at you. She blinks the dark specks away and discerns your earnest face. Your attention is honed in on her now, the book dog-eared and closed in your lap, head tilted inquisitively. "Where'd you go?" You ask quietly, your voice a whisper under the crackling embers.

She feels her head shaking before she even forms a response. "Nothing. Nowhere," she insists, blinking rapidly, stroking a spectral scar on her forehead. "I'm just tired. How's your book?" She urges casually, craning her head back and resting it on the tree stump of the sprawling oak behind her, studying you.

A big, unadulterated grin contorts your face. Your cheeks dimple, smiling teeth luminous in the firelight. Her heart skips a beat at the mirth glimmering in your eyes. "So good. It's my favorite. I've read it six times," you chuckle at the look of disbelief that slips through the cracks of her facade and continue, "My mom used to read it to my brother and I a lot when we were kids."

She nods, plucking the grime out of her fingernails, swiping her tongue over her teeth. She glances down at her hand to conceal the warmth rising to her cheeks at the sight of your infectious smile. There is no other way to describe it; it is debilitating, impossible not to mirror.

"What's it about?" She murmurs, ducking her head, her emerging smile evident in her tone. She hopes the shadows eclipse her face from your view.

"Oh, it's just a collection of fables," you sigh contently, wistfully, reclining back, clutching the fraying book endearingly to your chest. You sway your knees back and forth, feet planted to the ground, peering up at the star-speckled sky before tilting your head to face her. "Do you like to read at all?"

Ellie yawns gingerly, extending her legs out in front of her, staring down at her muddy, threadbare Converse. "I used to read comics. There was this series I collected... Savage Starlight?" She winces as she pronounces the humiliating name.

Your responding gasp is so sudden, an animal audibly skitters through the weeds. You lurch up in astonishment, wisps of staticky hair fanning around your shocked face. "Wait, really? My brother loved those!"

Ellie laughs, and you visibly loosen at the sound. She pretends not to notice. Just as she pretends not to feel the warmth budding and blooming in her chest, a sprout of something gentle taking root in her heart.

"Yes," she huffs out, rewarding you a vague smile. You were the only thing that made her feel like she could smile anymore. "I read them all. Probably more than 6 times, actually. So. I got you beat."

"Pfft," you bat a hand of dismissal, rolling your eyes playfully, laying back down— resting your head on a smooth, upturned rock, leisurely prying your book back open. "Does looking at pictures even count as reading?"

"Comics have words!" Ellie protests defensively, straightening.

Your boisterous laugh echoes through the dense forestry, booming out of you, as you drop the book and cradle your stomach, rolling over with the force of your guttural laughter. "You are so easy to rile up!" You cackle tearily, wiping your eyes.

Ellie snickers. "You're an ass," she chides, laughter bubbling in her chest, threatening to escape her sealed lips. She threads her fingers through her unruly hair, sweeping the russet strands out of her face. You jeeringly stick your tongue out at her, and she flips you off, earning her another one of your exuberant laughs.

"Read your book," she scolds with a raspy chuckle of her own, pointing at the now discarded fables. She rummages through her backpack, the sound of your stifled giggling following her as she fishes out her journal.

She waits a couple minutes, until you're helplessly engrossed with your novel, your brows once again pinched in concentration, before thumbing through her journal, flipping to that tarnished, browning page. Her eyes flicker over the names she memorized distastefully, that familiar anger burning bright.

Abby

Nora

Owen

Mel

Jordan

Manny

Whitney

She absently ghosts her fingers over that taunting, four-lettered name. Abby. Her throat swells with grief, searing-hot anger boiling in her stomach. The condemning red marks slashing through the names of those she already killed grant her only momentary satisfaction. It's not enough to quell the hatred the unmarked name at the top sparks within.

Nora she killed weeks ago. She let the spores smother her lungs, debilitate her of breath, ring her dry of any vitality and will to resist her tragic fate. Then she took a pipe to her head. Over and over. Just as Abby had done to Joel. Just as she would do to her.

Then she killed Nick, and Jordan, after the Wolves tailed and captured her. They beat and chained her to a counter, as if a pair of copper-rusted handcuffs would restrain her— would save them from her blinding wrath. The scar she brandished him with was rigid and pink and poorly stitched, dismantling his otherwise smooth cheek. She told him that stopping her from extracting her revenge would be futile.

Then she broke free and stabbed him persistently, with ferocious, vehement arches of her arm, until his blood had coated her face in fine beadlets and puddled in heaps that sapped her feet to the floor.

And, most recently, she killed Whitney. At the hospital, where she took you to bed and tasted every glorious inch of you, high with adrenaline, pulsating with want.

She told you she took out a few infected.

But it was only Whitney there, alone, guarding the sewage system, swaying to the boisterous music that reverberated through the concrete-walled boiler room. She slit her throat and kicked her into the murky, sludgy water. Then shot her twice just to insure that she did not inexplicably survive.

After the night you shared, a part of her was horrified of you unveiling the deplorable, merciless acts she committed. She did not know if she could face you. She slaughtered a person in cold blood and touched you with the stained hands that did it.

She left, just in case you found that bleeding body floating in the basement, and turned terrified, accusatory eyes on her. She did not know if she could bear your disdain. Or worse— you being disgusted by the harrowing life she has dedicated herself to.

Because she could not change.

She has a purpose, now.

To take everything from those fuckers. Leave them with nothing as they did her.

She's going to take and take and take. The life of Abby's friends, crushed and squandered beneath her foot. The solid foundation of security they built, ripped apart at the seams, until walls topple and plans expire— until all the Wolves are scurrying through the wastelands, tails tucked, howling for mercy.

She abandoned the safe, armed walls of Jackson for this mission. Nothing could jeopardize it; not even her captivation with you.

Fortunately, you never found Whitney's body.

She should've been relieved. But when she stumbled upon you again, in that blossoming valley, there was spite there, and for a completely different reason. One she never considered; that you were truly scathed by her abandonment. She thought you would be better off without her; better rid of the sucking parasite leeching the good out of you with each moment she spent in your presence.

"Hey, Ellie?"

She snaps the journal closed briskly, sucking in a sharp breath. She thought you had fallen asleep; you had not shifted or spoken for an impressive duration of time. Especially for you.

"Yeah," she responds groggily, scratching her head, slipping the journal back into her bag, the list temporarily forgotten. She glances up to find you gone.

She staggers straight to her feet, calling your name, her tone dripping with apprehension. "Where are you?"

"Shh," you instruct quaintly from the shadows, whispering meticulously, "Over here."

She peers through the darkness encompassing the camp you'd assembled together, trailing your voice, conveyed through the cloying, nectary wind. The warming spring breeze fetters her hair.

She deciphers your figure in the tall, swaying canary, your stature hunched and diligent. "Come here," you whisper urgently, loudly, beckoning her over fervently. She reaches for her gun but freezes when you make a noise of disapproval.

Instead, she follows your voice, curiosity and concern weighing the scale in equal measure. "What is it?" She rasps quietly, cresting your side. Your eyes are trained intently on a small, shapeless shadow, lithely prowling the weeds.

"Come here, kitty," you drawl sweetly, clucking your tongue, drumming your thigh. The small creature pauses its strides, slowly lowering itself to the ground, giving an impassive lick of its paws.

"It's a cat," you mutter to Ellie, as if she had not already gathered that.

She refrains from rolling her eyes. "I can see that. Why were you even over here to begin with?"

You pointedly disregard her, taking a heedful step forward, crouching to be level with your new feline friend. "Come here, sweet thing. Come on. It's okay," you lull in a reassuring tone, patting the ground insistently. The cat only stares at you.

You sigh, arms draped defeatedly over your knees, frowning. "Okay. Never mind. Go back, please, I think you're scaring it."

"What?" Ellie snaps, and the cat startles, bracing it's paws in the dirt, back arched. "No way. Animals love me."

"Kay, well, it was coming to me before you came over here, stepping on every single branch you could find." You argue flippantly, shooting her a glare.

"It's your fault, you're the one who called me over here, dick!" Ellie defends airily, waving her hands.

You clap a hand over your mouth to conceal your automatic chuckle. Your rumbling shoulders and escaping snorts give you away. "Okay, okay, fine," you chortle breathily, shaking your head. "God, that look on your face never gets old."

She groans out a husky laugh, falling back a few paces, propping a mocking, insulted hand over her heart. "You are evil."

You flash her a sinister, lippy smile, mischief twinkling in your eyes, before averting your focus back to the cat, who had inched closer while you argued.

"Yes, that's it. Come here, baby," you click your tongue in a series of encouraging noises, and the cat— ears perked, nose sniveling— prances over to you, as if you waved a heaping bag of treats.

You tenderly, dubiously scoop the cat into your arms. Though acutely tense, it allows you to hold it, claws hesitantly retracting from your sleeve, piercing green eyes slitted and alert. "She's hurt," you inform, scratching it's matted, furry back. You slowly ascend to your feet and nod back toward the camp, following Ellie as she begins to trudge back. "I saw her limp by and followed her over here. Do you have some more gauze?"

"For the cat?" Ellie drawls incredulously, shooting you a look over her shoulder, stepping over a cluster of unearthed roots.

"Uh, yes? She's small, it won't take much." You assert, hiking the cat up as it starts to thrash and mewl anxiously. "Please?"

She wanted to tell you no, but she found that it was impossible to form the word— especially when you were gazing at her with sheer hope, head tilted pleadingly. "Fine."

"Woohoo!" You exclaim triumphantly to the cat, softly stroking between its luminous eyes with your thumb, easing its trepidation. It whimpers, pink nose prodding your jaw, pawing at the latticed hem of your tank top. "She said thanks, El-Bell!"

"How do you know it's a she?" Ellie asks as you enter the fire-illuminated clearing, the light casting ominous, flickering shadows over the deep, towering pine trees.

You shrug, hoisting the cat by its underarms, promptly spinning it around and baring its tattered, grimy belly to Ellie. "Yeah. You were right. Girl." She concedes with a grimace.

Ellie resumes her original position as you perch cross-legged across from her, planting the knotted cat in your lap. She's coated in a sweep of sleek, midnight black fur, so sumptuous it reflects the moon's sapphire glow. Her green eyes are unnaturally bright against her dark coat, penetrating through Ellie as she unpacks her gauze.

"I'm getting it," she mumbles to it warily, and it pivots away from her with unnecessary drama, curling it's tail.

"Don't be rude," you reprimand the cat, who ignores your scolding and persistently licks her splintered paw.

"Here you go," Ellie says, tossing you the gauze and medical tape. "You better hope your little friend doesn't get hurt again. I don't have enough supplies to fix her boo-boos."

She swears the cat fucking glares at her, before curiously, reluctantly sniffing at the gauze.

You must have seen it, too, for you giggle smugly. "What was that about animals loving you?"

"Shut up," Ellie grumbles, leaning back, hiking her knees to her chest. Exhaustion weighs heavy on her eyelids. She surveys you, bleary-eyed, as you scoop the cat into your arms and gingerly pry the wound, a pained shriek tearing from it's tiny body.

"Shh, it's okay," you comfort genially, petting her back as you fumble with the gauze, lightly encasing her wounded paw. "See? Almost done, already."

The cat relaxes in your gentle grasp, allowing you to seal the bandage around her paw. Ellie herself is nearly lulled to sleep by the pacification in your tone— the soft, honeyed melody of consolation rolling off your tongue.

"All done," you state quietly, pressing a forbearing kiss to her nicked ear, delicately peeling her out of your lap and placing her on the ground. "Be free, little one."

The cat lingers, staring at you nearly contemplatively. She blinks slowly, languidly, before swiveling away and skittering through the craning grass, disappearing through the trees.

You watch her go with a bleak, placid smile, the wind whipping your hair. Then you turn to Ellie. "You sleep, I'll keep watch."

She opens her mouth to refute, but you slice her a cutting, silencing look. "You're actively falling asleep as we speak. I'm good. You rest. I want to read some more, anyway," you insist blithely, dusting off your pants and walking back to your previous spot.

Ellie merely mumbles a response, her head already drooping. She falls into a brisk, fitful slumber, so tenuous that the snap of a twig could send her lurching. For once, she does not dream. Visions of terror did not cleave her conscious or beat her breathless. She saw only the flicker of light through her eyelids, and the quiet fragility of her own mind.

Until a faint meow has her bursting out of her slouch, eyes darting frantically around the clearing.

The black cat has her uninjured paw primly resting on Ellie's thigh, peering up at her expectantly with eery, incandescent eyes. Upon her attention, she nimbly removes her paw and demandingly rubs her head against her leg instead, another tinny meow ringing out of her.

"She's back. And I think she wants to lay with you," you explain humorously over the pages of your book— now nearly finished.

"Oh?" She replies in bewilderment, as the cat spins and pads her feet a couple of times before nestling into her side, resting her head on her dark paws.

"Can I come lay with you?" You murmur sleepily, casting fleeting, cautious looks at her as you stow your book away. As if already bracing for the sting of her rejection.

Ellie's heart throbs perniciously in her throat; she swallows in trepidation, sweat gathering on her palms. "Yeah. Yeah, of course," she forces out, wiping them on her jeans, straightening. Even after viewing your body after dark and eating your pussy, you make her nervous as fuck.

Even more so now that she knows how good you taste. And how perfect you are. Now she's burdened the knowledge that she cradles something precious in her hands, and she could unintentionally destroy it.

"I added some wood to the fire," you announce wearily, words punctuated by tiny, bursting yawns, as you adjust your oversized corduroy jacket around your shoulders and clamber over to her, a sheepish smile transforming your fatigue-dulled face.

"Come here," Ellie finds herself muttering, mimicking your exhaustion, spreading her legs and gesturing to the grass-cushioned ground beneath her. The cat still pressed into her, undeterred by her shifting.

You crawl delicately into the space between her legs, smiling through the yawn splitting your face, drawing a yawn out of Ellie, too. "Want me to keep watch again? You need to sleep some more," you say, reclining back against her chest and comfortably situating yourself, humming richly in unsuppressed delight.

Ellie wraps her arms around your shoulders, steering you back into her embrace, resting her chin on your mussed head. The affection should not come so naturally; she should not instinctively reach for you. It's not good.

Not fucking good at all.

"No," she whispers navally into your ear, eyeing the blazing fire through the tendrils of your unbound hair, that gleam with the dwindling light. "You sleep. You didn't sleep at all last night."

You tense fragmentarily in her grasp, muscles tightening under her arms. You hesitate, before craning your head back to face her, eyes searching. "You didn't either..." you whisper heedfully, lifting a hand and resting it on her forearm, stroking soothingly.

She had suspected you heard her cries last night. Instead of the confirmation making her feel ashamed, she felt... free. You saw the depths of her despair turn inside out and you did not cower at the hideous, wretched pain she unleashed.

"I never do," she replies baldly, swaying you gently, mouth hovering near the crest of your ear. Your thumbs tenderly caress the scars garnishing her arm, your eyes fluttering blissfully, your body sinking into her warmth. "Just sleep."

The lack of resistance proves just how desperately you needed it. You are whisked into a precipitated, fragile sleep, your breathing light and measured, your frame tucked up and slumped into her chest.

Her mind wanders only briefly to the violence lurking in its dark crevices, as she watches dense tendrils of smoke arise from the tamed fire, whirling and cascading toward the abrasive, glistening night sky, polluting her view of the stars.

She fantasizes of a smoldering house; a massive fire roaring from its pits, erupting in rippling flames that smolder the caving ceiling and dissolve the weak floorboards. She imagines the sear of blistering skin and the melting screams of anguish, of those who had incinerated her heart. She envisions all the relics and archives of her past being licked up by the fire and consumed by the glaring, ravenous heat.

Then she glances down at you, your blank, unconscious face illuminated by the flickering, dim orange glow. Something inside her softens, and she knows, grievously, that she has become malleable and pliant under your molding hands.

She stares at the slumbering, unbothered cat before returning her gaze back to you.

All of her hatred seems an afterthought to what she had right in front of her.

• • •

YOU

Blood pools on the fractured pavement. Firefly laps at it ravenously, her whiskers tinged crimson. "That's disgusting," you scowl disapprovingly, snatching her off the ground. She hisses in protest, clawing aimlessly at your sleeve, eyes crazed with hunger. You tap her bloodied nose reproachfully. "Bad."

She nips at your finger and you relent with a hearty sigh, placing her back on the ground. She skitters behind the rotting carcass of a clicker, it's head blown off in odious, blossoming cordyceps, pulsating dimly in a puddle of venomous blood. It's the first of hundreds.

You lift your head and examine the carnage that laid, revoltingly and obscenely, before your squinting eyes. Dozens upon dozens of butchered infected— cleaved into indistinguishable bits, sputtering blood, gushing decayed organs and crumpled flesh— piled in the lush street.

"What the fuck happened here?" Ellie drawls with a surprising amount of disgust, eyebrows furrowed as she ascended from her crouch, kneading a clump of clotted blood between her fingers.

You gulp down the thick lump of trepidation bulging in your throat, fretfully shaking the tremor out of your hands. "Don't know. It's gnarly, though," you respond, fighting the wobble out of your tone.

Truthfully, you recognize this distinctive gore.

After your parents tore each other to bits, Zander adopted a newfound disdain for infected. Before, he humanized the restless, ungovernable creatures— sympathized with their fucked up fate, to be killed and morphed into a monster.

But after the accident, he hated them. He found impressively disturbing ways to terminate them. Eventually he founded a signature method; to slice them into pieces as your parents had done, unbidden and under the influence of the infections debilitating madness.

This was him. You know, in the deepest caverns of your soul where your joint grief was stored, that this was his doing.

Not to mention the ragged Z carved into the blistered, yellowing flesh of one of the dead runners. You kick it's gnarled, unseemly body over to hide the exhibiting brand from Ellie, curling your lip with rehearsed repulsion. "Gross," you whisper, though internally, relief swarms your nerves, cacooning your apprehension in a warm blanket.

He is alive.

And the mark signifies that he is leaving signs for you to find.

"I'm just mad they beat me to it," Ellie complains under her breath, glowering at the expanse of cadavers cloaking the broken road. She tips your chin up, extracting your lingering gaze from the reeking bodies. "You good?"

You brush her off with a forced, invigorated smile. "Yep!" you chirp, nodding robustly, side-stepping a clicker. "At least we don't have to deal with all of them. Whoever did it, we should thank. Saved us some ammo," you craft your words meticulously as not to unearth your burrowed truth.

Ellie studies you a moment before dropping her hand. "True," she eventually yields, eyes wandering to Firefly, who was attacking a cord of muscle that protruded from the gaping stomach of a dead clicker, gnawing at the tough tissue. "Get your batshit cat. We're losing daylight."

"She's a perfectly normal cat," you retort, though your rebuttal is contradicted by the face you make. You grimace as she swats at a springing cordycep, growling ferociously. "Firefly! Stop that!" You shout, snapping your fingers.

Her ears twitch, head lurching up, green eyes wide. She is deathly still. You snap again, and she darts after Ellie skittishly, following her lead.

You chance another look at the wreckage, toying with the gold wedding band dangling from your throat. It was your mother's. Zander wore your fathers matching one around his neck. You usually kept yours stowed in the pits of your backpack, but you needed that touch of home.

Ellie had lifted your hair and gently latched it around you without questions asked, a hint of understanding in her eyes. You were grateful for her silence in that moment. Usually it unnerved you when she didn't speak. But in that moment it felt like a gift as opposed to a punishment.

"Where are we heading?" You question plainly, tucking the wedding band under your shirt, the memories a wild, unleashed zoo animal, tranquilized and thrown back into its enclosure. The ring is damp with your incessant, sweaty fidgeting.

"There's a place up ahead I like to go. Thought we could rest there for the night," she replies vaguely, glancing furtively at you, then the cat, her lip curling. "I still can't believe you named that thing Firefly."

"It's a cute name," you grumble back, sweeping your sweat-glistening hair off your neck and fanning the hot skin. "You could've come up with something too, you know."

This morning, you had awoken in Ellie's arms, jovial and recharged. For the first time in months, you had an uninterrupted, rejuvenating sleep, one that added a spring to your step and an effortlessness to your trekking. The cat was curled snugly in your lap, her affectionate purrs vibrating against your legs.

Ellie was stiff-necked and ill-tempered for the better half of the day, massaging the tension out of her shoulders and grumbling her responses.

"What should we name her?" You had asked, sprawled on your back, hefting the cat into the air as if she were a wailing baby in desperate need of motion and entertainment.

"Dramatic?" Ellie had quipped dully, and you rolled your eyes skyward.

"What about... oh!" You jerked upright in excitement, still cradling the cat in your arms. "Firefly."

An indecipherable emotion passed over her, tension lining the contours of her face. A hint of contempt glimmered in her eyes, and it felt like she was glaring down her nose at you, judging you like God weigh's pupils of sin, even as she sat at your eye-level. "Don't tell me you believe in that Firefly bullshit, too?"

Her reaction both intrigued and befuddled you. You possessed minimal knowledge on the Fireflies beyond the basics— that they were a reformed militia group that was majorly massacred by a man, who resulted in the death of Abby's father— and that she recruited a few friends to go after said man.

And someone was hunting them down for his murder. You had lost Nora and Jordan to the spiteful hands of his avenger; which is the only bright side to being excluded and shunned from Abby's circle— you were not involved in the man's murder, meaning you will not be involved in whatever vengeance they earned themselves.

Every now and then, back at the base, they get a few former Fireflie's filing in to join the Wolve's. Isaac— the focal overseer and governor of the WLF— was wary of stragglers that claimed past allegiances to the Fireflies, but welcomed them anyway, if they guaranteed to defend the base and protect his established citizens, as you and Zander pledged to do.

"No. Not at all. All of those stupid groups are bullshit," you agreed ardently, shaking your head in aversion, stroking Firefly's tummy. "I meant the actual insect, fireflie's. I just think they are so pretty at night. And I swear I could see the moon reflecting off her. Just seemed fitting."

Ellie had paused the sharpening of her blade. She analyzed you in the dewy, clouded sunlight, combating the interest off her face. But it flashed too late for her to conceal; her eyes lit up. "What other groups do you know about?" She asked carefully.

You shrugged, feigning indifference. "Like the Seraphites," you hummed, finger-combing Firefly's shiny black coat. "And I've seen another group around here. But I think they were just travelers."

Ellie said nothing, resuming her survey of her switchblade. She polished it with a tattered cloth and studied it, and that was that, the subject abandoned.

Now, Ellie snorts, peeling back a looming, overgrown branch to allow you passage. "Nah. That's your cat." She says as you saunter by, even as the cat pads after her, nose tipped to the air, breathing in the sent of damp soil, heady rot and the faint, sweet traces of a budding spring.

You trudge along the rocky, uneven path, bricks and shattered molasses-brown beer bottles specking the dirt, holding hope tight to your chest.

After stumbling upon Zander's mess, all the worry you harbored for your brother had ebbed away. He's alive. You hope the others are, too.

Even if you are not amicable with a large number of his group, a couple of them treated you fairly. Whitney was the closest thing to a friend you had there; she always tracked you down in the mess hall and shared her lunch. She even alternated her watch-shifts with Manny to join you on yours when she could, and shared her access card to the armory to practice shooting with you.

When you had first arrived, you scarcely knew how to use anything beyond a hand-gun. She trained you on a variety of firearms when your free time corresponded; you owe the new capabilities that kept you alive on this expedition to Whitney. She was the only one who never made you feel bad about it. She simply demonstrated for you without comment or judgement.

You hope whoever was sent to retrieve you— if anyone at all— was safe. Though, considering that Isaac didn't even send out a search party for Owen when he went missing, you doubt that he would gamble the life of his prized soldiers just to find a meaningless girl who was bullied and deluded out of his faction.

Clearly it did not stop Zander from looking for you, if the mutilated bodies of those infected were any indication. It could not be a coincidence. You know it was him. You just know it.

A strange part of you just hopes he doesn't find you yet. You have an intuitive, twisting suspicion churning in your gut, that this tenuous thing between you and Ellie will snap if anyone, or anything disrupts it.

You have a feeling that in finding him, you'll lose her. And you don't know what that means. You don't know where you're supposed to go from here; but you know that you can't just let her go.

With that, you saunter up to Ellie and flash her a winning, mindless smile, slithering your hand snugly into her back pocket. She tugs you flush into her side with a finger curled in your belt loop, and you stumble into her with a stunned laugh, Firelfy at your heels. You wish things could stay this easy.

You look at her and find strength beyond what had been forced upon you— a strength to fight for a better future.

• • •

Tangled, warm white Christmas lights dimly illuminate the abandoned teen-girls bedroom. Peeling posters are plastered to the walls, fraying with age and weathered by earth's course battering. A threadbare beanbag chair collected dust in the corner, the once vibrant purple now grimy and muted with time. Cobwebs edge the corners of the room in a luminous sprawl, their thick tendrils sparkling under the light.

You could see why Ellie found comfort in this place.

A black rack of CD's lined the desk, where the residue of ripped and prodded band stickers marred the refined oak. A thick coating of dust blanketed the surface. Your eyes flicker from the impressive album collection to the hot-pink poster board taped haphazardly to the closet with leopard print duct tape. Emboldened words scrawled in bright marker and glitter gel pens jut out in bubbled letters— MAISIE'S SUMMER BUCKET LIST 2003!

You avert your attention back to the desk, and the stack of mussed, tattered sketchbooks. The black covers are stained with charcoal and splotches of solidified paint, pages scattered. You rummage through one idly, thumbing through the doodles that range from gleaming sunrises to descriptive depictions of infected in a variety of stages, flowers blooming from their skulls instead of cordyceps.

You hum, grazing your pinkie over the elaborate drawings. "Have you seen these? They're..." you trail off in bewilderment when you glance up at what had captured Ellie's attention.

The dead body of a fallen solider.

Ripped camo dangled in tattered strips from the skeletal frame slumped against the unhinged door. It's jaw was missing, baring decaying teeth. Flies rattled in its hollow skull and buzzed busily about its frame. Ellie crouches and examines the chain enveloping it's neck. "They were a firefly," she informs you bleakly from over her shoulder, smoothing a thumb over the raised design etched into the pendant.

She rips it off it's neck sharply, and an involuntary screech bursts out of you when the head rolls off the body with a sickening crunch, thudding to the floor, sending up a cloud of dust. Ellie watched it fall with disinterest, holding the necklace up to you. "We should put it on your cat," she says, glaring pointedly at Firefly, who nestled herself into the bean bag and chewed on something dead she scoured, tail waving lethargically.

"Go ahead. I'd wait until she's done eating, though, or else she might maul you."

She releases a long-suffering sigh but ascends from her crouch, jingling the pendant tauntingly in your face, eyebrows raised. You laugh as she pursues Firefly with rightful caution. Her deliberate movements do not stop the cat from freezing and glowering at her, dark fur elevating.

"It's okay," Ellie drawls with no conviction. "Relax, dude."

Firefly makes to dart away, but Ellie swiftly wrestles her into her arms, holding her firm, as she hisses and screams in protest, squirming. "Come here, little devil," she grunts out harshly, sloppily clipping the pendant around her neck. Firefly swats violently, nicking her with a razor-sharp claw.

Ellie relinquishes her grip and Firefly wastes no time scrambling away, scurrying under the half-dilapidated bed. Her brilliant green eyes flare with menace from the shadows, narrowed at her.

"The shit I do for you," Ellie clicks her tongue and brandishes the furious scratch that superficially sliced her arm.

You ignore the jest. "Should we get rid of... of..." you stutter, gesturing at the body apprehensively, shifting from foot to foot. "That?"

Ellie nods, and you follow her to where it's rotting. She carelessly scoops up the skull and chucks it out of the gaping hole in the wall, before bracing her hands on the remnants of its body, leveling you with a look. You scramble to aid her, mustering a confirming nod back.

With joint effort, you shove it over the edge of the building. You peer over the jutted lip of the bedroom; numerous stories stretched between you and the pavement. Mist gathers in a dense, ominous cloud, shielding your view of the ground below. The bones clatter and deconstruct until they're engulfed by the haze. You were so far up, you couldn't hear them break against the earth.

You glance at Ellie to find her already observing you.

"What?"

She simply shrugs and rises, dusting the loitering essence of death off her hands, changing the topic with a fluidity that came with her consistent avoidance. "We can either try to fix that bed or sleep on the floor. Take your pick."

"I don't think Firefly would appreciate it if we took away her hiding spot," you quip, and it was settled.

The day was not yet done, but you set up camp regardless. Both of you maneuver in a pleasant silence as you unbundle your sleeping bags and roll them over the stained, carpeted floor. Ellie positions hers a whopping ten feet away from yours, the distance nearly offensive. "What are you doing?" You ask in disbelief, pausing your bed-making to gawk at her, open-mouthed.

"What?" She snaps in alarm, glancing around, looking for tangible evidence of her misdeed.

You point at her bed roll incredulously. "Why are you so far from me?"

She tenses and flicks her gaze away, her bag sliding off her shoulder and to the floor with a hefty thud. "I didn't want to assume you'd want to sleep by me."

You blink fervently. "Ellie."

She watches uncertainly as you punctuate her name and drag her sleeping bag next to yours, until they're close to overlapping. "You literally had your tongue inside of me. Stop being weird all of a sudden."

She visibly reddens, a vicious blush blotching her cheeks. You open your mouth to continue, adrenaline coursing through your veins, when she charges at you and cups a silencing hand over your mouth, a pained smirk tugging at her lips. "Just stop!" She hisses, her lips a wobbling line as she resists a grin of her own.

You chuckle and stumble back, licking her palm. She blanches and releases you, wiping her spit-damp hand on her jeans, her sudden movement sending you plummeting to the floor. You drag her down with you, your breathy laughs mingling as you collapse in a tangle of limbs onto the sea of slippery blankets.

You both burst into another fit of laughter when Firefly growls at all the commotion. She pads out into the foyer, swaying her tail with sass.

"Do you ever shut up?" Ellie mutters lowly, laughter clinging onto every lulled syllable, as she props herself on an elbow and gazes down at you, running a finger over your bottom lip.

You smile, and she traces the shape of it.

"Do you want me to?" You whisper humorously, and her thumb joins her finger in its exploration of the curves of your face, stroking your cheek with an unlikely tenderness that had the power to undo you.

"Never," she mumbles back, applying a chaste, shapeless kiss to the corner of your mouth. It's not enough. She deigns to pull away but you sling an arm over the back of her neck and hold her in place, lips seeking hers with repressed fervor.

She groans into your mouth, the decadent sound rumbling through you, alighting a glimmering need within. You increase the speed and intensity of the kiss— her noises an invitation for more— and propel yourself up with a hand plastered unsteadily to the floor, combing your fingers through her hair with the other.

Her hand rests on your throat, the pressure existent but not imposing, as she guides you into a languorous dance with your tongues. You buck your hips up to sate the craving for pressure and she slips a hand down to your waist, guiding you up and into her.

"I want you for real this time," she blurts breathlessly, words blasting into your tingling, swollen lips. Her eyes are teeming with earnest, pupils so dilated with lechery, they reflect you, doe-eyed and wanting. "No interruptions. I don't fucking care what it is... I'm not going to stop." She utters the words with quivering determination, fumbling with the button of your jeans.

You desperately nod your assent, arching up to assist her in removing your jeans. She brushes fluttery kisses to your exposed midriff where your tank top had ridden up, hurriedly tugging your jeans down, until they pooled at your ankles. She shucks them over your cowboy boots and hurls them to the side.

Your heart hammers with anticipation, core throbbing at the sight of her absolutely unraveled with yearning. Ever since that night in the hospital, you've wanted more. Needed more. You were just as fucked up by your need for her. It consumed you, ate you from the inside out, until all that was left was a thirst that could not be quenched without her hands on you.

"Fuck me, Ellie," you demand hoarsely, winding your hands up her thighs and shakily unbuttoning her jeans as she looms over you. She arches back and unabashedly shreds off her shirt as you hike down her jeans, unveiling small, supple breasts and hard, tantalizing nipples.

You kiss up her pelvis, across her toned, bruised abdomen and to her sternum, licking a slow stripe over one of her nipples and swirling it on your way up, eyes trained on hers lasciviously. You nip and suckle at a spot on her neck and she cranes her head back, hiccuping a sharp cry. She pants and lulls her head as you kiss and nibble the bared column of her throat, her hands roaming up the front of your body, palming your tits through your shirt.

She lifts herself off of you momentarily to kick off her jeans over her Converse, discarding them quickly, before she's back on top of you.

She's framed by the dying daylight penetrating the gaping hole behind her, her eyes flickering over you hungrily. She glides her hands under the hem of your tank top and yanks it over your head, tousling your hair, rejected with all the other articles of scattered clothing.

She pries your legs apart forcefully, and you squeak, as she pulls you closer to her. "How do you want it?" She croons gravelly, voice rich with heady desire, eyes honed in on your face with predatory focus. As if she could take every hint of pleasure you show and have it for herself. She straddles your pelvis and slowly, faintly swipes her pussy over yours, your clit throbbing at the contact. "Like this?"

She cradles your leg in her arm and drags her pussy across yours again, this time with more force. You bite your lip to suppress a whimper at the delicious sensation. "Or do you want me to really fuck you?" She thrusts against you hard for emphasis and you choke back a stunned moan, jerking.

"Yes," you breathe carnally, hair fanning around your head, mouth agape— all subtly gone with the wind that billowed through the room and cooled your slick skin.

"Yes, what? Use your words," she demands, hand encasing your throat, rocking into you with that same jarring force, another moan escaping you.

"Fuck me," you pant, nearly drooling, the husk of her words a fuel to the kindling that was her pussy moving against yours, "Please just fuck me. I need you, Ellie."

She smirks haughtily, wicked satisfaction gleaming in her blue eyes. "That's my girl," she praises knowingly, leaning down until her mouth brushes your panties. She sinks her teeth into them and tears them straight off your body, her hand never abandoning its anchoring hold on your throat. The movement was so effortless you could feel yourself dripping, the duality of this woman stupefying you.

How she could go from awkward at your flirting, to claiming your body as if it were a land she possessed and ruled in the matter of minutes.

You whimper unintelligible nonsense, unable to form coherent words to convey your debilitating need. Wanting her feels as natural and essential as breathing. Explaining it is nowhere near as simple.

She removes herself from you just to slide her own panties off, repositioning herself between your legs, holding your leg to her chest. She offers no warning before she grinds her bare, wet pussy into yours, the skin on skin making tingles of pleasure erupt through your core.

It was nearly too much.

You emit a shuddering moan and arch your back as she returns her calloused hand to your throat and slams into you, rolling her hips, your clits rubbing and chafing. "That's it. Fuck," she hisses out, her tattooed arm stark against your thigh as she hoists it to her, using it to drive into you with fierce precision, your pussy's slapping together stickily.

"Oh my fucking god," you mewl dumbly, tits bouncing, as she angles her hips and relentlessly drives her pelvis into yours, her breaths clipped and high-pitched. You undulate your hips and grind up into her, meeting the ferocity of her thrusts, your juices coinciding and glistening on your thighs. "Ellie."

"Fuck, yeah," she pants blissfully, peering down at you. "You feel so good."

She leans over you, slapping a hand next to your head, folding your leg up to your chest, the position allowing for better movement. She grinds into you from the new angle, your clits gliding and throbbing, and you feel yourself ascending higher and higher, toward that peak you nearly met the other night, at the hospital.

She fucks you nearly senseless, your frame wracking with her thrusts. She burrows her face into the crook of your neck, hot breath ghosting your skin, tiny grunts departing her lips. She grazes her teeth over the flesh and you shudder, her hand that was planted to the floor snaking up and finding yours, interlocking your fingers.

"I'm gonna cum," you whimper into her mussed hair, writhing beneath her, choppily grinding up, your muscles tight. You use the hand that's not intertwined with hers to fist her hair and reer her head back, until your faces are level, gazes locked. Both of you are heavy-lidded and pupil-blown, her eyes brimming with that same pleasure that was mounting in you.

"Cum with me," she orders breathily, your noses compressing, and on demand your body convulses and a blinding white light shreds through your vision, an uncontrolled moan belting out of you as she continues to fuck you through your orgasm.

"Fuck," she groans without restraint as your pussy's squelch, a cry leaving her as she reaches her own peak, her eyebrows furrowed, a dimple surfacing between her brow. She breathes into your open mouth, and you claim it as your own, granting her fleeting kisses through the aftermath.

Not a single thought filters through your head. Nothing beyond her drenched pussy, resting dormant upon your slick thigh, and her lips eloping with yours. You don't even know where to begin when it comes to processing the unprecedented feeling that roared throughout your body, or the swelling off your heart.

Neither of you say a word, your harsh, heavy breathing mingled and protruding the silence. Ellie peels herself off of you, her legs shaking as she thuds to the sleeping bag adjacent to you, her damp forehead pressed into your bare shoulder. She peppers a few kisses over it before falling back, expelling a deep, contented sigh.

You angle your head to face her, a dazed grin splitting your face. "What. The. Fuck. You've been holding out on me," you muse dreamily, playfully swatting at her.

She snickers huskily, scratching her head, propping it on an elbow. Her bare chest glistens and heaves with her labored breaths, as she reaches under the broken bed and slips out a shoebox. She dumps the contents out on her abdomen— a packet of finely minced weed, rolling sheets, a mini box of matches and one pre-rolled joint. "You smoke?"

"I have. Don't do it much though," you admit with a sheepish chuckle, watching her. She licks the length of the joint to insure its sealed before slipping it between her lips and lighting a match, bringing it to the tip. She waves out the tiny flame once smoke billows from the end, taking a measured, steady drawl.

She closes her eyes briefly at the sensation before passing it to you. Her lips quirk as you survey it dubiously before holding it hesitantly to your mouth, sucking in. Her smirk morphs into a resounding laugh when you sputter out a choppy haze of smoke, a profound burn blistering your lungs.

"That shits gross," you cough gutturally, passing it back, batting the swirling smoke out of the air. "You keep that stuff here?"

"No," she responds, smirking, inhaling another graceful heap of smoke. Exhaling slowly. You watch her watch the tendrils churn through the otherwise still air. "It was here when I found this place. Whoever lived here before was stashing it," she glances to the summer bucket list, "Maisie was a stone-er." She chides, flicking the ashes off and taking another hit.

She is noticeably put at ease. Her muscles are relaxed, and her smiles form innately and without dictation. As if all her worries have been laid to rest, now that she got to feel you.

It had the opposite affect on you.

The dark, possessive thoughts that have been circulating your mind like vultures preying on rotting roadkill did not flea at the taste of her.

All it did was amplify your morbid longing.

You snuggle into her embrace and rest your head against her drumming sternum, entangling your sweat-glowing legs together, fusing your bodies. She holds the joint to your lips and you take a drag, careful not to invoke another coughing fit, and she takes one after you, blowing precise, opaque O's with the smoke. She gently runs her fingertips up and down the length of your arm, clutching you to her.

"Can we do it again?" You blurt, angling your head up to face her, and she pauses her stroking. She says nothing as her hand winds down your arm, coasts over your hip, and creeps between your legs.

You suck in a breath when two fingers collect the wetness pooling at your entrance and drag your slick to your clit, rubbing delicately, the feather-light application of pressure evoking a whimper out of you. You squirm and rock into her hand, and she chuckles on a weed-laced breath, "Mm. You want me to fuck you again?"

You nod frantically as she works your pussy with her fingers. She sits up suddenly, taking you with her, until your spread in her lap. She holds the joint between her lips as she uses one hand to palm your breast and the other to expertly thumb your clit, smoke coiling from her nostrils. "Needy fucking girl," her approving groan is muffled by the joint, as she inches her fingers down your wet folds, teasing your entrance. "You want my fingers again?"

"Please," you whine, as reeking smoke tickles your earlobe and wafts into your face, the hand that wasn't easing fingers into your cunt slithering down to keep one of your legs spread, curling around your thigh, kneading and caressing, the joint between her massaging fingers.

You reach back to feather your fingers through her hair, riding her hand, breathy gasps escaping your lips. "Mhm. Good girl," she praises gravelly into your ear, curling her digits inside of you, stroking that sweet spot.

You tug helplessly on her hair and crash your head back onto her shoulder, arching desperately as she makes you cum for the second time, this time drenching her rough fingers.

She doesn't stop there. She maneuvers you out of her lap and sprawls you onto the bed roll, your legs spread, pussy gleaming and sated before her devouring eyes. She braces your thighs in her arms, takes a hit, and exhales onto your clenching pussy, the faint gust stimulating your throbbing clit. You moan and attempt to inch away, but she pins you down and eats you stupid, until her chin is dribbling with your juices, her sardonic smile highlighted by the cum glistening on her lips.

After she was done, she unburried herself from your legs and licked the juices off her lips, eyeing you sensually. She acted as if she were about to go right back down, when Firefly began scratching at the door insistently, meowing manically. Both of you redressed, hefting your tops and underwear back on.

You let the cat in and enveloped yourself in the near-translucent, cotton sheets, observing her as she tiptoes in, sniffing the air. She follows the scent to the crumpled joint on the floor, nosing it curiously. Ellie clicks her tongue in reprimand and tosses it over the side of the building before she tries to eat it. The last thing you needed was a high cat.

After discarding the joint, Ellie plops down on the hazardous edge, swinging her legs. She looks at you from over her bruised shoulder. "Come on," she urges, patting the space next to her.

You oblige, the sheet trailing you as you wander over to her. She takes your hand as you gingerly lower yourself beside her, effortfully prying your gaze from the dizzying height.

The mist had cleared with the days dissipating humidity, revealing the enchanting sweep of ocean that spread before you, dark waves emphasizing the curve of the earth. The sun gleams amber like a glass of whiskey caught in the light, painting the clouds a mass of colors, descending toward the seam of sky and sea.

You avert your attention back to Ellie. Her eyes are sealed, brown lashes fluttering with the breeze, tawny hair cascading with the salt-tinged wind. Her freckles are emphasized by the golden, showering glow, gilding her features. You sit on your hands to keep yourself from tracing them.

Firefly inches over, perching next to you, her green eyes mirroring the setting sun. You close your eyes and drop your head onto Ellie's shoulder, wrapping the sheet around her.

There's a prolonged beat.

And then she tilts her head and rests it on yours, hand gripping your thigh proprietarily. You don't even hesitate. You slide your hand over hers and stroke the bruises blossoming on her knuckles, smiling to yourself.

taglist: @elliesexual @jottedinklings @a-little-bit-of-everybody … let me know if you want to be tagged for updates

[hotvirgin]

[wasted9rain]

shes the only thing i need atp

[urcursebreaker]

burning body waiting (ellie williams x fem!reader)

read chapters one and two here

warnings for this chapter— graphic blood/gore, alcohol, overall adult content | word count: 8.8k

chapter 3: animal instinct

WINTER

2 years ago

Burgundy and pink wax dripped poignantly down the slender candles, pattering on the grimy, unfinished wood floor. The winter wind howled ominously, whistling through the cracks of the deteriorating shack, the battered, peeling Hole poster you half-heartedly pinned up fluttering with it.

Hot tears trailed down your cheeks, warming your wind-numbed face. You adjusted your mother's lavender cardigan over your shoulders, her lingering scent growing fainter alongside the memories of her voice as the days without her pressed on, ceaselessly. The Cranberries blared disjointedly through your staticky headphones, your shaky fingers drumming to the beat against your walkman.

Do you know you made me cry?

Do you know you made me die?

It is the lovely thing

The animal, the animal instinct

You squeezed your damp eyes shut and craned your head back, resting it against your mounted wall of sketches, humming softly to yourself. The cold had raked phantom talons through your spine, chilling you to the core.

The dim candlelight flickered as the shack door abruptly, forcefully swept open. You deliberately disregarded the pulsing presence occupying the threshold, the snow billowing in fiercely around his broad, heaving frame.

Zander hollered something incoherent over your boisterous music, the shack walls vibrating at the intensity of his voice.

You swiveled away sulkily, somberly tucking your knees to your chest, staring out the splintered window. Snow fell gracefully like an all-white hour glass, plodding and dense. Snow that you spent hours fumbling through in search of him.

He grabbed you, shaking your shoulders rapturously, your teeth clattering at the violent judder, panic contorting his features. You shredded off your headphones and shot him a withering glower, swatting him away. "What?" You sniped heartily, lip curled.

Your brother's mutilated, gauged eyes were concealed by a strand of fabric you'd cut from your sheets, enveloped around his head in a makeshift blindfold. Recovery was torturously slow. The wounds were open and gaping for weeks, baring soulless, fleshy caverns to the world. The memory of those black pits penetrating through you blankly sent a shudder of repulsion trickling up your spine.

Blood still oozed from the punctures in the delicate, healing flesh. It'd been months.

Then again, it had been months, and you were still waiting to wake up from the nightmare; to burst out of your tucked sheets, your mothers tender smile illuminated by the morning sun, as she smoothed back the hairs from your forehead and murmured a reassuring, "Just a dream, baby. It was all just a dream."

Your dad would be planted on the porch, sipping his scalding black coffee. Zander would be in one piece, zig-zagging through the fields of corn, chasing you with a laugh.

"Don't do that!" Zander bellowed in outrage, his severe, deep voice extracting you from the depths of your memories and reverberating through your shack, one of the candles winking out from the gust of his harsh breath. "Don't what me, fuck ass! I couldn't fucking find you!"

His hands vehemently patted your features, before pinching each of your numb cheeks. "Ow! Asshole!" You exclaimed, thrashing your head out of his unyielding grip, slapping his hands.

"I thought something happened to you. I know you're pissed off at me, but you cannot do that!" His voice had magically escalated, spit lurching through his barred teeth.

"Where else would I go, Zan?" You drawled acidly, rolling your eyes, heedlessly flicking off your walkman and popping out the cassette tape you found crammed under your parents bed, labeled in fraying marker: "OUR MIX."

"I can't see you," Zander breathed raggedly, dismay lancing through his tone, as he braced both hands on your shoulders. The pain in his voice gave you pause. "I can't see. I had no idea where you went..."

Guilt bloomed and sprouted in your chest, bubbling up your throat. You uncomfortably gulped down the apology simmering at the tip of your tongue, steeling your resolve. The thought of him flailing absently, desperately through the snow, screaming for you in terror, blind to the treacherous scenery and any potential harm.

All because he'd left without telling you.

Fresh tears surfaced in your eyes— not from the paralyzing remorse that mental image ignites, but from the reminder that he had left.

You seethed out a trembling breath, belligerently shoving him off of you. "And who's fault is that." You speared accusingly, glaring at him, a pit of dread yawning open in your stomach.

All you wanted was your brother. He was all you had left. All your friends had left you. Your parents were dead. He was the only remaining scrap of your untethered family.

And you thought he'd left you.

It'd been a cruel, unforgiving winter, snow knee-high, wind glacial and penetrating. Every day a cutting, bone-chilling cold. The furious flurries of snow so dense and strenuous, only the few feet ahead of you were visible if you dared trek the winter plains. You and Zander promised one another to never, ever leave the house without notifying the other, for safety reasons. Made an effort not to leave alone at all.

Yet you awoke that morning to a creeping silence. The wind rattling the bones of the hollow houses vacant carcass, the beams groaning emptily.

And a note. Tucked into the dry-rotting pages of your leather-bound notebook in a nearly unintelligible scrawl, reading vaguely:

Don't look for me.

You'd spent hours enduring the vicious blizzard, feet and hands plump and swollen and pulsating with frostbite, in search of him. Rummaging through all the snow-sunken debris within a three mile radius of the old house you were squatting at.

Thinking the worse. Thinking he'd took it a step further from impairing himself to deflect the harrowing scene he'd been bestowed. His eyes may be gone, however, the haunting memories did not die with his sight.

They plagued his slumber every night. He screamed and thrashed and begged the God's for peace.

Unfortunately for him, God abandoned them a long, long time ago.

Zander's hands fell dejectedly to his sides, wind-chapped fists clenching stiffly. He was silent, his lips pursed, chest heaving. Knuckles white. He composed himself before muttering regretfully, "You didn't see what I saw," he mused your name grimly, "and I am so thankful for that."

His fists unfurled, then closed. Wound back into taut balls. Opened, flexed. Closed. Sweat glistened on his calloused palms despite winters unapologetic chill. "If I had to go back, I'd see them and lose my eyes all over again, just so you don't have to see what I saw."

A deep frown transformed your face, a furrow stippling between your brows. You staggered toward him, planting an anchoring hand on his shoulder. The physical contact, the palpable confirmation that you were there, hearing him, seemed to alleviate his trepidation, a deep breath dispersing from his peeling lips.

"Zander..." you began cautiously, surveying the flakes of melting snow clinging to the front of his corduroy jacket in a shameful attempt to avoid the blindfold that ominously concealed the evidence of the terrors he'd witnessed, and the horrific truth that coincides with it. That they're gone. It's just you and him now. "I need you. I... I don't know how to do this on my own," your voice broke on a hideous, gurgling sob at the admission.

Zander's face crumpled. He leaned in to scoop you into an embrace, which you stealthily side-stepped, sniffling in disdain at the audacity. "Don't touch me. Were you really going to leave me without a fucking word?"

He swallowed ruefully, staying silent. You prompted him with an exasperated, biting, "Zander."

"I left a note," he muttered sheepishly in response, cheeks a chagrined flush. You scoffed bitterly as he crammed his hands into his pockets and continued, "It wasn't meant to happen that way. I- I wasn't leaving you. I would never, ever leave you. Ever." He swore faithfully and with enough conviction to ease your apprehension.

You would have never believed he'd leave you, before he did. It seemed reasonable he'd decide having a little sister to protect was a gamble with survival; no logical person wanted an extra mouth to feed, let alone a snarky, combative teenager to provide for.

"Really?" You blurted dumbly, tearily, voice hoarse with misuse, earlier's frantic screaming and sobs straining your vocal cords. Feeling smaller under the weight of all the uproaring emotions than you would've liked to. "Why did you go?" You croaked, using the sleeve of your sweater to smudge off the snot accumulating at the tip of your nose, mustering an ounce of dignity.

He didn't respond. He fumbled for you and enveloped your shivering frame with his big arms, crushing you to his chest; this time, you didn't protest, sinking into the damp, familiar fabric of his coat and hiccuping body-wracking sobs into him, letting him whisper false, ferocious promises.

Later, you come to find out, where he was heading to so cryptically. For a month prior to his sudden departure, he'd been sneaking off in the night to convene with a band of soldiers based on the outskirts of the deserted neighborhood you were residing in.

They told him they were part of an even larger organized group. They told him they had space for two more, plenty of supplies to spare.

And they told him they call themselves the Washington Liberation Front.

• • •

MID-SPRING

NOW

Rain patters down fiercely, thunderously, the heavens spewing an angry, roaring down pour. You grimace at the enormous crater splitting through the earth, a rigid canyon dividing the road, a public transit half-submerged in the mucky water. Obstructing your path.

"Fucking Washington," you mutter vexedly to yourself, craning your head back to examine the encompassing, collapsed buildings, squinting against the harsh rainfall.

You spot a rope dangling from the edge of a shattered window, mumbling reproachfully as you mount a concrete barrier and leap for it. Grunts flea from your pursed lips as you hoist yourself up to the dilapidated second-floor of an old commerce building.

Breathing labored, you plant yourself in one of the rusted office chairs, spinning around with a breathy chuckle. You rotate the chair back around to survey the shadow-shrouded view from the gaping hole in the wall, everything desolate and soggy.

This morning, the sun had blazed bright and true, gleaming through the window, illuminating the warm room you and Ellie had refurbished.

Now it seems the weather went to shit shortly after you noticed her absence, because now, you're drenched head to toe in glacial rain water, teeth clattering, nose tingling— and cripplingly alone.

You ignore the pain clanging through your chest at the passing thought, jarred by the solitude, the supposition of her abandonment. Is abandonment not a common practice? One shared despite religion or ones unspoken personal devotion? Something we all unite in? Snakes shed skin. People move on.

Will you keep pushing and pushing, begging to be worth fighting for? Will you keep proving yourself to people who've already decided you are nothing? It seems your life is an unabashed, consistent cycle of disappointing people. Over and over. Until they leave.

Ellie is no exception. You spent the morning over-analyzing every interaction you had with her, reflecting on every word you uttered, every ghost of a touch against her skin, down to every expression you donned, trying to pinpoint precisely where you went wrong. What you did to scare her off.

You chalked it up to her deeming you helpless. She had to save you numerous times. Had to haul your unconscious body across an active battlefield. Did sweeps of the building while you languished. Did most of the killing where infected were involved. Maybe she tired of your incapability, your inefficiency.

Maybe she got the relief she needed, and now you were useless to her, a worn toy casted aside.

You suppress the doleful thought. Force the notion that you're only insulted because she left you after sex; when in actuality, you'd be hurt either way. It feels like no matter what you do— the joy you sacrifice, the strength you wield, the precious parts of you that you bare without reluctance— it's never enough to make anyone stay.

Your mother taught you that kindness was a weapon in itself. If you wield it against your enemies, they'll falter at a glimpse of tenderness.

But you understand now that she was spoon feeding you morality; there's no home for altruism in this world. Violence is the true conqueror. The only way to survive, is to instill fear in those who cross your path.

Being soft in the face of brutality, honest in a web of lies, and tender-hearted at the end of a vengeful bullet has gotten you nowhere. You've been met with nothing but heartbreak and wrath. Snarls and gunfire. Skepticism and punishment.

One good beating heart is not enough to mend the fragility of this corrupted world.

Ellie had shown glimpses of herself, where the good festered underneath the thick layers of indestructibility she'd built around herself. You had a lick of it and now you wanted to rid her of it all, peel the sharp edges and rough plains from her one by one, learn the hurt that made a monster. Nestle yourself beneath her skin, coil around her bones, live in the casing of her ribcage.

The disturbing thought infiltrates your mind, looming like a dark, depraved shadow. You grit your teeth, massaging your temples, trying to banish the deranged image out of your head. It's always been either absolute disinterest or full blown, disabling obsession for you.

You're teetering toward the ladder.

Her brutality had captivated you. And that tongue...

You rapidly shake your head to banish the obscene thoughts. "Focus." You drawl to yourself slowly, examining the view. The forward operating base was around five miles onward. The only way left to go was back. Back to your brother. Back to the WLF.

You sigh heavily and study the jilted office, in search of anything that could be useful in getting you across your barricaded path. When you find nothing, you bravely measure up the distance between you and the neighboring building.

Close enough.

You wind up, hefting a placating breath, before leaping for the building. You narrowly make it. Your brain rattles with the force of the collision as your stomach slams into the crumbling ledge, soot and rubble clattering to the battered concrete below. "Fuck," you breathe hoarsely, weakly lifting your body up, wrists wobbling feebly.

You allow yourself to lay there for a moment, eyes closed, rain misting your face.

When you open your eyes, your body lurches in terror at the veiny spattering of spores curving up the wall and over the ceiling.

And the distinctive blood-chilling clacking of a clicker.

• • •

The waning evening sun peaks shyly through the overcast clouds, dimly illuminating the sprawling field before you. Wildflowers sway clemently with the breeze, soggy moss cushioning your hitched steps from earlier's relentless rain. Small, white butterflies flutter along the long, wisping coils of grass, their presence a promising sight.

But the dewy meadows damp, whimsical beauty could not outweigh the ugliness you felt rotting inside.

You try not to think about the excruciating pain lancing up your side. Disregard the blood gushing rapidly from your abdomen, the deep, dire crimson seeping through multiple layers of clothing.

Your fingers are drenched a thick, dooming red where you apply significant pressure to the oozing wound, limping aimlessly for the ivy-swathed, overgrown watchtower, sitting dilapidated at the edge of the clearing. Hoping you can preserve enough energy to make it to the top, where you can rest and get an adequate view of where you need to head at dawn.

You're nearing the splintered ladder when a whispered crunch sends you whirling in alarm. Your gun is nimbly drawn from it's holster, stance broad, the hairs raising stiffly on the back of your neck.

The drumming of your heart slows, blood roaring tumultuously in your ears at the freckled face staring back at you.

Ellie is frozen in place, arms up defensively, battered features contorted in authentic shock. Her muddy blue eyes are bright with consternation, flickering over you uncertainly.

Surprise, surprise, you think gratingly.

She startles when her gaze lands on the harrowing blood stain exuding from your jacket. "What happened—"

She cuts herself off when you flip the safety switch.

"You scared the shit out of me, you know. I thought you were one of those creepy fuckers," she quips breathily, her arms still raised, a hesitant smirk tugging on her mouth.

You don't smile back. You drag your gaze over her analytically, blankly, rage simmering low in your gut.

That untamable anger must bubble to the surface, glimmer darkly in your eyes, for Ellie's expression changes— you watch the light-hearted but uneasy amusement dwindle and leech from her face, a veil of vigilance draping over her.

"Easy, now," she murmurs cooly, warningly, carefully dropping her hands.

"Don't move!" You demand viciously, lurching forward, the gun a hazardous few inches from her face.

Her throat bobs with a swallow, hands half-lowered. "Hey," she whispers softly, though the warning in her tone was withstanding.

The gentle delicacy in her tone only ignites the already festering fury. "Stop talking." Your voice disperses from your lips with cold, lethal calm. Unfamiliar, that quiet violence rolling off your tongue.

It tastes good.

Her eyes dart between yours dubiously; regret tinges her cheeks a faint flush. She utters your name gently, taking a reluctant step forward. You let her, the gun trained on her forehead.

"It's just me," she says feather-lightly. As if one wrong breath would blow you off the edge, send you plunging to the deep end.

Maybe she was right to heed you like a rabid animal, uncaged. You feel like a dog downed, sick and trembling with want, deserted by its owner. Tail tucked and ears perked, belly down on the porch, waiting for the screech of tires on gravelly tarmac.

It takes you back to the day Zander disappeared. The memory so potent, so painful, you can presently feel the bite of winters bitter cold carving into your bones.

As your thoughts drifted, a hollowness creeping into your eyes, Ellie had inched closer without you realizing. She hovers only a couple precarious feet away, her fingers grazing the barrel of your gun. Your grip shakes violently, lip quivering.

"It's me." She repeats firmly, urging you to lower the gun. Your muscles naturally comply to the movement, until the gun is hanging limply at your side.

"I know," you respond dully, words ringing hollow, even to yourself. "I know."

She stares at you contemplatively for a moment, before her gaze droops to the gleaning wound. "Need some help with that?"

"I need to get going," you mumble absently in reply, pivoting away from her, her honed attention spearing through your back. Exhaustion was gradually, heavily weighing on you from the blood loss. The emotional turmoil from the memory of your brother, who's absence is growing palpable and leaden, like a boulder smothering your lungs, was making pressing on increasingly difficult.

You need to get back.

"Let me look at that first." She nods toward the blooming, shapeless stain.

You glance down at the wound indifferently. The blood is pouring out of you in heaps, flim and clots dribbling down your pant leg. "What the fuck," you gasp out, staggering, blood-blemished hand cradling the pools of crimson. Dots speckle your vision, and you plummet unsteadily to your ass, inching back as Ellie approaches, concern etched across her face. The tall grass engulfs you, it's embrace crisp and prickling.

"Fuck, am I gonna die?" You blurt, eyebrows furrowed, as you lift your faltering fingers and examine the near-black blood coating them.

Ellie is a looming shadow as the setting sun descends tranquilly behind her, rays radiating off her fraying ridges, the light off-setting the grim lines of her face. You squint up at her, and she crouches at your side, throwing off her backpack, fervently rummaging through it.

She fishes out a roll of gauze and a near empty bottle of alcohol. "Lay back for me," she directs in earnest, a hand on your shoulder carefully leaning you back, your body bolstered by plush, uncut grass.

You watch her silently, heavy-lidded, disorientation a dull drumming throughout your skull. The grizzly flesh around the wound is numb to the prodding of her insistent fingers.

She abruptly freezes, blood coating her calloused hands.

"What?" You rasp, fright gripping your heart and seizing at the look of dismay tainting her face.

She's silent for an imperative moment. Time ticks tediously, a shadow of fear contouring her expression.

"What?" You repeat breathlessly.

"Are you infected?" She asks after a long, apprehensive pause, attentively studying your injury. Blind to the scratch marring your shoulder.

Her composure bewilders you. If she truly believed you were infected, wouldn't she be scrambling away? Terrified you'd turn at any moment and take her down with you?

"No," you whisper, shaking your head, eyelashes fluttering in extortion. The hidden wound on your shoulder throbs perniciously at the lie. Your hand fumbles for hers, both grimed and caked in thick coats of drying blood, working in tandem to apply pressure to the wound. "I-I fell."

Her expectant stare roams over your paling face, urging you on. You swear her grip tightens imperceptibly on your hand— maybe in comfort— though it was likely just the excessive blood loss and trauma of the brutal injury warping your senses.

It hurt to speak, breaths leaving you in sharp, uncontrolled spurts. "I- there was a- a clicker," the words wheeze out of you. Instead of fleeing at the mention of your implied encounter, Ellie positions herself closer, draping over you almost protectively, holding a hand to the wound while the other cradled the back of your neck, propping you upward. "I tried t- to run. Jumped to another building but I- I missed, landed on a pipe."

That part is true. You left out the part where the clicker's talon-like hand scraped down your shoulder, grazing the flesh— enough to leave a scar. Enough to potentially inject venom.

She nods curtly, jaw set in determination, the warmth of her hand momentarily abandoning you as she picked up the alcohol and popped the cork.

She soaks a grimy cloth with it, casting you a fleeting, nearly apologetic glance before urging your hand aside and bunching it against the wound. You seethe, burning agony searing through your side, but you don't look away. You watch your blood soak the fabric, the alcohol tainted red, dribbling down.

"Why did you leave?" You ask deliriously, head lulling, words slurring. The pain almost doesn't register anymore. Neither does the shame the pathetic question should've brought.

She says nothing, not a flicker of emotion passing through her face, as she holds the wet cloth to your skin and stridently tears the medical tape with her teeth. She sloppily patches the cloth to you, hands swift and brutal, expression bleak and thoughtless.

"Alright. Lift your arms for me," she murmurs gravelly, a thick husk in her tone, fingers edging the bloodied hem of your camisole. You comply, a shudder wracking through you at that low voice, the one that had talked you through your shared obscene acts. Ordered you to ride her thigh, praised your dripping pussy...

"Good," Ellie drawls, leisurely, deliberately hiking your shirt up to avoid disturbing the wound. Her pale eyes probe yours, dissecting the rage and hurt that froths there in tumultuous waves, crashing against the surface, pooling there even with your effort to hide it.

She slips the shirt off of you, tossing it aside. Her eyes drag to your heaving breasts, as if an anchor of temptation was towing her gaze down. Her nostrils flare with her stuttered breath, mouth parting, as if in memory of how it felt to seal her lips around your budding nipples.

You arch your back under her attentive stare, your breasts grazing her front. Her eyes close briefly at the sensation, a breath stealing out of her. Her hand slithers up your waist, pausing before it reaches your tit, thumb smoothing over your hot skin.

"Don't move," she directs hoarsely, the bristle of the surrounding grass reducing her tight voice to a faint whisper.

She tilts you back further to examine the wound, and you whimper at the movement. "I know. I know," she murmurs distractedly, securely wrapping the bandage around your waist, the rough pads of her fingers dancing across your exposed skin, igniting a distant wave of pleasure in the pit of your stomach.

The wind escalates, whipping your hair out of your face, unveiling the pulsating mark on your shoulder. You forgot that you were supposed to be concealing it when she was looking at you like that; like you were a tempting meal and she was a person emaciated. Something delectable to be devoured.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck—

Your stomach roils with dread at the very moment she sees it. The ravaged, torn flesh is upturned and caked with blood, a golden, poisonous liquid seeping from the scratch, glimmering under the sun.

She's shell-shocked, unmoving.

"Ellie," you start hesitantly, fear creeping into your tone, as you rigidly sit up using your uninjured arm.

To your surprise, she doesn't stagger off. She slumps back defeatedly, studying you.

"It was just a scratch. I didn't think..."

She leans in, inspecting it. Solemnity twinkles in her eyes.

They dart back to your face, and the sadness there scares you for the first time since the encounter, the thought of your fragile mortality a lurking, creeping presence, clouding your mind.

You could die.

You open your mouth, tears brimming your own eyelashes, when Ellie forcefully cradles your neck and jerks your head to the side, baring the fizzing mark. "Stay still," she demands coldly, and you do, stiff with terror under her harsh hands. Half expecting her to put you out of your misery right then and there.

Her mouth unexpectedly connects with the wound, lapping up the blood, a startled moan squealing out of you at the intrusion of her tongue upon the tingling claw mark. "W-what are you doing—" the words tumble out of you in abject horror and confusion, your shaking hands planting on her shoulders, attempting to wrestle her away.

She suckles on the tenderized flesh, another moan hiccuping out of you, as she slides her fingers into your tousled hair and cranes your head further, licking ferociously.

"What the fuck!" You exclaim boisterously, mustering all your might to shove her away. She stumbles back, raking in a deep breath, crimson staining her lips, dribbling down her chin, venom glistening.

She flinches as she spits it out, her face rigid with determination. "I need to suck the venom out," she breathes, blood dotting her nose, smeared gruesomely around her mouth.

Understanding dawns on you, infiltrating the fear coursing through you. You nod reluctantly, permissibly, and she smiles, blood brimming the crevices of her teeth. She tucks a tendril of hair behind your ear, leaning in, her lips hovering a breath away from yours, watching the way they twitch at her nearness.

Earlier's resolve and resentment fade away as she peppers slow, ghoulish kisses down your jaw, your throat, the seam where your neck meets your shoulder. Her hot breaths skate across the injury, and you cup her head, shifting your shoulder to allow her better access. Her lips graze the wound, the brush of them nearly intimate, as they rove it over before latching onto a spool of gold-laced blood, suckling it in greedily.

"Shit," you whisper shakily, fighting the desire out of your voice, pain and pleasure coinciding at the warm sensation.

"Mm. Almost done," she mumbles into your skin dully, hand languidly slithering out of your hair and down your chest. You mewl, squirming when her thumb tweaks your aching nipple on its descent to your waist, holding you in place.

She shouldn't be doing this.

You know, by not only touching the venom but drinking it in, she's risking her own life to potentially save yours.

Which is so at odds with the way she left you without word just that morning.

She pulls away, spitting a thick wad of spit to the side, slowly running her sleeve across her tainted mouth. Blood blemishes the fabric, but she doesn't look at it, her eyes trained on yours.

You stare back, navally breaths spurting out of you, your cheeks buzzing at her attention, nipples hardened at the chill. It was nearly dark, dusk swathing the sky in subdued, swirling purples, the sun an amber pin-needle stabbing through the shadow-shrouded treeline. The darkness paints the blood marring her lips a near black, her breaths equally as heavy, unmeasured.

Crickets begin to chirp, the weeds undulating with nights restless creatures. Everything is quiet. Tranquil.

But not the storm brewing in Ellie's watchful eyes. Staring into them is turbulent and enrapturing; they beckon like a sea at night, moonlit and inviting, the air thick with electricity, waves battering a mean cliffside.

You tentatively extend your hand, thumb delicately plodding her bottom lip, ridding the blood there. She observes you closely, a smirk on her lips, and you scoot forward, hand dropping to her jaw.

"Ellie..." her name comes out a fragile whisper; concerned. "What if... what if you're... infected too, now?"

Her jaw clenched, the tendons flexing under your hand. Her eyebrows furrow, and she lightly shakes her head. "That's not possible," she whispers stoically back.

When you say nothing, confusion contorting your face, she scrunches up the sleeve of her jacket and leisurely lifts her tattooed arm between you, the winding moth design dark and elaborate.

The dense layer of ink did not conceal what lie underneath. The raised, marred skin expanding across her forearm, frail and wrinkled. You don't know how you never noticed before.

"What happened?" You mumble plaintively, caressing a gentle finger down the length of the rigid scar, speaking soft and cautious, afraid one wrong move would send her bolting, like a feeble, knobby-legged fawn caught in headlights.

She gulps audibly, breaking eye contact, eyes falling to your mercifully stroking hand. "I got bit. When I was 14," she informs callously, with a lack of emotion that did not equate her dismal words.

She traces a pensive finger over the scar, your hands brushing, an electric current hissing to life at the incidental contact. "So did my best friend," she continues bleakly, heartlessly, "Except she turned. And I never did."

You store the sacred information in a pocket of your brain; taking the tenuous piece of herself she willfully offered and handling it preciously, like an artifact to be glassed and admired, acknowledged from afar and with reverence. Knowing it's monumental and a rare, fortunate token in your treasure trove.

Grief for a little, less-scathed Ellie shades your heart. The thought of her harboring such a ghastly, horrific past; witnessing her friend transform into a beast she could not fathom.

You choose your next words carefully, not wanting to bestow a worthless apology. Sorry won't bring her friend back; won't mend the fractured pieces losing her had shattered. "You are very strong," you comment meaningfully, inching your hand off her pulsing wrist, splaying it upon her racketing heart. "Such a strong girl."

She swallows again, effortfully, as if forcing down the lump that had gathered there. "It's nothing," she says tightly, clearing her throat, stroking a thumb across your hand, where it rests gingerly on her chest. She remains silent for awhile, and you let her; whether the silence be to mull over her thoughts and meticulously craft her next words, or just as a space to exist in the quiet, in the now.

A loan bird soars overhead, the shadow of its feathery, nimble body spanning across the grass. It caws distantly, as if responding to the singing insects, the night breeze.

"I forget about it sometimes." She mutters suddenly, scratching the scar sheepishly. You see it now, the solemnity that her tone was void of— the despair kindled in her eyes, faint but flickering, like dying embers in the snow. As if she was just now remembering, the pain born anew, unsheathed from a hidden holster.

"I forget the worst things, too," you share benignly, honestly, removing your hand from her and tucking it under your chin timidly. It doesn't scare you to admit this to her; even though usually, there's a nagging voice, a phantom at your side, tittering that it's all going to be used against you, your own dull truths sharpened into blades aimed for your back.

"Until they spring up unexpectedly and ruin that moment. I can never fully escape it," you continue, shrugging.

Ellie stares at you a moment, that foundation of grief crumbling, reconstructed with hardened fury. One old and bone-deep. One that had resided in her, fed off her for some time. A slash of silver vengeance strikes through her eyes.

"It wasn't one of the worst things. Not even close," she declares without the malice you expected. Stated purely as a tragic wrong she had every intention of correcting.

She possesses an air of anger, even when she's placid, calm. You sensed it when you met her. When she was nothing but an eclipsed figure, disguised by the blood of her victims and the roaring of the flame she tamed. There was a darkness that leered over her shoulder, a honed presence waiting to strike, something hungry for violence. An itching lodged beneath her skin, only sated by bloodshed.

You can feel it now, the violence a living, breathing part of her. Even if it's tucked soundly into sleep, in the caverns of her soul. Even if right now she's looking at you like you hung the moon, like you are a temple to be honored, there's still that kill-switch, an inclination to snap and destroy. People ruin beautiful things all the time.

"Stop looking at me like that," Ellie insists softly, brushing a loose lock of hair out of your face.

"Like what?" you mumble absentmindedly, watching her bloodied lips quirk into a half-smirk. She leans in close, close enough you can count the freckles spattering her cheeks, her response a breath ghosting your lips.

"Like you fucking want me."

Your lips crash together in a symphony of need, your body awake and alive with desire, regardless of the wounds. You bask in the soft groan that grumbles out of her and into you, patiently, gingerly drawing your lips together. The metallic tang of your own blood violates your tastebuds as your tongues move ardently in tandem, slow and savoring, deep and searching.

Her arm envelops your waist, steering you nearer, and you melt into her firm embrace, chests constricted, hips aligned, the kiss long and languid, mouths leeching and hands claiming.

It feels right in the wrongest way. Like home, where the household is neglectful and thrumming with darkness under its floorboards, evil thriving behind closed doors; but still home. Where you're meant to be, where you feel you belong, even when you're petrified.

You straddle her hips and maneuver her backward, until she's laying on her back. The tall, coiling grass tickles your arms as you plant your hands on either side of her head, lips foraging. You roll your hips and she hisses a muffled curse when you grind your pelvis against hers, her hands roaming up your waist, masterfully avoiding your sealed wound.

It was instinct to move your body in time with hers. To get lost in the plush warmth of her mouth, that addictive, kindling pleasure between your legs.

But there was another instinct, humming to life in your core, slinking through your bones; one that came with living in this world, where danger lurks in every shadow.

That instinct must flare to life in Ellie, too, for her lips detach from yours, head canting. A faint crunch rings from the towering grass, and both of you are up in a minute, her gun drawn. You hurriedly tug your top back on, grimacing as you incidentally chafe your injury.

Stars speckle your vision, a migraine splitting your skull at the sudden shift of position.

"We should get inside," Ellie states breathily, sweeping a cautionary gaze over the dark meadow, before lowering her gun and pivoting to face you.

Dried patches of blood smirch her face as she scans you. "You good?"

You nod wearily, exhaustion ricocheting through your body. She must see your ailing face, for she hoists your unblemished arm over her shoulder and drawls, "I got you," partially alleviating the straining of your abdominal wound.

"Thanks," you grumble, slumping your weight into her. Allowing her to aid you across the lumpy field, toward a rusting twist of warped, wired fence, a hole yawning open in the center.

You're about to cross it when a dim orb shimmers before you. It twinkles, off and on, drifting by.

"A firefly," you whisper tenderly, smiling at the sight, despite the creaking of your bones, the misery lugging on your limbs.

Ellie starts to smile, too.

But she's not smiling at the firefly.

• • •

You stare into the steely face of the Bull, it's gold-encrusting fading. Vines dangle in snared tendrils from its protruding horns, the eroding, bleached bronze Bull overlooking the once country-themed bar. It was preserved due to being welded out of pure iron, withstanding the worlds fatalities, surviving the bombs and disease.

It's hollow slits for eyes leer right back at you, a cold, inhospitable welcome.

You waltz inside, disregarding it's looming heed, giddy at the indication of alcohol. You could knock back a few shots right now. To numb the now mellowing pain ambushing your body, and to calm your swarming mind.

You couldn't stop thinking about what Ellie told you. That she was bit— and lived. At the cost of carrying a heavy, harrowing memory through life with her.

Your mind wanders to Zander. Images of the now sealed over craters of his missing eyes flashing through your head. The way the blood had poured from him in alarming, unbelievable heaps that day, his eyes dangling from cords of tissue, hanging against his cheeks.

How could a person bleed out their body weight and miraculously survive?

How could a person get bitten and never turn?

You glance at Ellie uncertainly from over your impaired shoulder. She creeps into the bar with less enthusiasm, hand instinctively relaxing on her holster, thoughtfully scanning the place.

Tattered, dirt-blemished Texan flags hang from the low ceiling, dancing with the breeze whistling through the glassless windows. The walls are paneled with polished, dark oak, dusty black and white portraits either lining the walls or cracked on the unfinished wood floor. Depicting an array of Southern-America scenes, ranging from bull-riders to mane-flowing horses to western movie posters, pistols blazing, hats high.

You smile subconsciously, running your fingers over a painting of a girl about your age, wedged onto a stool, gloved hands milking a cow, a long, golden braid sloping down her back, her mischievous face craned toward the viewer. Her bell-bottom jeans hang low on her hips, gleaming red cowboy boots toeing the dirt.

You wriggle your toes in your own boots, the cowboy boots wearing and scuffed— a pair that belonged to your mother. "This place is in really good condition," you state aloud, eyes sweeping over the floor-to-ceiling bar, where bottles tipped and half-full and some broken, edged the shelves.

A lone cowboy hat, caked in grime, sits on the debris littered counter.

You gasp, swiftly shaking it off, wood chips clattering to the floor. You secure it on your head, the brim minutely misshapen. You adjust it and exclaim, "How do I look?" Sweeping your arms in an inelegant flourish, grinning crookedly at Ellie, who shakes her head in light amusement.

It reminds you of when Zander and you were little. He would force you to play a game where he was the deputy and you were the zombie that violated the Western town. He'd tackle you to the ground and bind your wrists with tethering thread, until you screamed and pouted to your dad, who scolded him for being rough.

"That's our baby, son," he'd tell Zander, always gentle in his authority, patting his shoulder paternally. Pointing to where you crouched in the grass, hopping in chase of a frantic butterfly, grinning ear to ear, the game forgotten— your cheeks still glistening with tears.

Zander would turn away at night in your shared bed, grumpy, furious that you ratted him out. Until you'd scoot closer and whisper into the balmy room, "Bubby, what's wrong?"

He would always ignore you. And you always scooched even closer, unruffled by his anger, sucking on Blue Bear's ear, resting your head on Zander's arm. You'd fall asleep there, chewing noisily on his bear, tiny body draped across him.

And you'd wake up back on your side of the bed, his face smashed into the pillow near your head, arm slung across you, as if naturally protecting you in his sleep.

The fond memory blooms and withers as soon as it sprouts. Zander always took care of you; even blinded, he put you above all else. You can't even stomach the thought of his worry at the news you were missing.

Glass crunches poignantly under your boot as you round the bar and pick up the nearest bottle of Vodka; nearly full. "Well, shit," you snort, popping the cap, taking a brisk swig straight from the bottle, wincing as it burns your throat on the way down. You spin around to Ellie, who was leaning against an intricately-carved wood pillar, watching you. "Want some?"

She contemplates your offer, before snatching it brazenly out of your hands, taking a controlled sip. Her head tilts as she surveys you. "You almost died today, and you're here, smiling like an idiot."

You shrug half-heartedly, stealing the bottle back, gulping down greedily. You smile uneasily at the repulsive, stinging taste overwhelming your tastebuds. "Happy to be alive, I guess."

"It's not a life worth living," she teases plainly, gesturing wide, emphatically to the sickened world.

You eye her diligently, tracking the sharp edges and soft planes of her face. "I disagree," you say quietly, crooking a knowing smile, sauntering off, swaying your hips.

The entrance gives way to an expansive saloon, a second, broader bar lining the back wall, tables dotting the spacious room. Fraying murals of rolling, sweeping mountains of Montana paint the perishing walls. In the center of the space is a mechanical bull, buffered by a barred platform.

"Oh my god!" You blurt animatedly, flailing for the bull, vodka splattering out of the bottle as you run with little consideration of your injuries.

You leap over the encompassing ring and size up the off-kilter bull before hoisting yourself onto it, flinching at the shooting pain careening up your side. "Zander always wanted to ride one of these! He was obsessed with the whole cowboy thing when we were kids."

You turn to face Ellie only to find her gone, a swirl of dust lingering where she once stood. "Ellie?" You holler, concern lacing your tone, tongue dry.

As if in response, the string lights overhead flicker and buzz raucously, illuminating the dark, decimated space. It's only a second later when the bull beneath you whirs to life, jerking suddenly, a clamorous sound emitting from you as you lurch for the handle on the synthetic saddle, gripping your hat to steady it in place.

Ellie emerges from a half-door leading to a dim back room, her face gleaming under the warm-hued lights. "I didn't think it would actually work," she admits, strolling over and leaning her hands on the railing, watching with a smirk as you struggle to maintain balance.

The bull is choppy and delayed due to age and unuse, yet it's belligerent movements are still sharp and undulating, the lag not enough to anchor you down without exploit. You shift your hips and bare your weight down, encasing your legs around the sides, wires and metal protruding from the matted, faux fur.

"That's it. Look at you," Ellie chuckles huskily, clapping, the praise in her tone awakening a string of tingles up your curved spine. Those sparks erupt into a raging hot flame when she drawls just loud enough for you to hear, "Ride it just like that."

Your head tips back on a dramatic groan, hips grinding into the jilting bull. "Fuck, what are you trying to do to me?" You giggle jubilantly, coyly, one hand planted on your hat, her unwavering attention spearing through you.

The bull screeches to a halt, it's rusted mechanics boisterous, the abrupt motion sending you careening off its back. You collapse to the matted floor with a thump, seething at the agony rocketing up your stomach, a faint dollop of crimson blooming through the bandage. "Ouch," you sulk, rubbing it half-hazardously, propping yourself on your elbows. Vodka still in hand.

The brim of your new hat obscures Ellie's impending figure as she heaves herself over the railing and stands over you. Her smirk is roguish, a formless dimple surfacing on her cheek. She rinsed earlier's blood away, but a nearly unintelligible crimson stain discolored the skin adjoining her mouth.

"Come here," you instruct softly. She's undeniable under the waning, golden lights, her mussed brown hair gleaming an auburn red, her eyes as blue and incandescent as you'd ever seen them, like ocean spray on a desolate beach.

She lowers herself just enough to suspend over your reclined frame, one knee planted between your spread legs, arms pinned on either side of your hips, caging you in her company. The imprisonment of her arms was a desirable iniquity; a preferred confine.

"Kiss me," you purr airily, as she crawls across you, descending her wanting lips onto yours on the cusp of your request.

You writhe beneath her, canting your chin to meet the divine ferocity of her desperate, animalistic kiss, your delighted moan muffled into her mouth.

Her lips detach from you just as swiftly as they had met yours. "Does that need re-bandaged?" She nods to the blood leaking through your top, a flush rising to her cheeks, as if fevered by the taste of your spit saturating her lips.

You snort. If you didn't know any better, you'd think she was flustered, your unabashed need for her making her shy. "No. I hardly feel it," you assure with a wispy laugh, wiping the dampness from her mouth.

She lingers there a moment, seemingly relishing in your nearness, before she ascends to her feet and extends a hand.

"Come on," she clasps your forearm and hauls you strongly to your feet, her hot breath reeking of liquor and something promised as it fanned your alcohol-warmed face.

You hover close, smiling mindlessly, looking at those damn lips. Imagining them snaking down your body, kissing you in forbidden places, eliciting unspeakable, ballooning pleasure within you.

That faint scar twitches upward under your amorous observation. "What?" She rasps, hand still encasing your wrist, the veins in her forearm fluttering.

You press a pliant, affectionate kiss to her lips and snake your arm out of her lenient grasp. "Nothin'," you muse blissfully, cheeks taut and sore from the strength of your grin, as you slither out of her residence.

She watches you slink away, rooted in place, as if frozen in disbelief by your easy display of endearment.

You hoist yourself onto the bar, all loose-limbed and unflappable, swinging your legs. "So what's our next move, then?"

She trails after you pensively, positioning herself between your legs. She sizes you up, from the shape of your thighs filling out your soiled Levi's, to the cleavage heaving at her from the brim of your dirty, lace-embellished top.

"What is it you think you want from me," she husks, craning her head with predatory calculation. "You want me to play with this pussy again?" Her hand slithers up between your legs and cups your clenching cunt through your jeans, sending you arching back in surprise. "Or is there more?"

Your heart drums mercilessly. Of course it's more. It's beyond her conception; the animal instinct that claws ravenously up your body and demands control whenever she's near, voracious for a sinking of teeth, a swallowing of her whole.

Of course you cannot tell her that when she's around, there's an incurable hunger, festering in the depths of your belly, chanting, I am hungry I am hungry I am hungry, for a taste of your darkness, a glimpse of its creator.

Of course you cannot say she is the catalyst and the maker of the peace you fabricated falsely for yourself. And that you want her to keep ruining all the ruined things you've built yourself upon.

So all you can you say, voice shaky with resolve, is, "I want you."

A grim understanding overtakes her face, varnished by varying shades of disappointment. Like you just asked her for the one thing she could never give you.

She takes a telling step back, distancing herself not only physically— imperishable walls of iron erect around her mind, barricading you, powerless and wailing on the other side.

"We should find somewhere to rest for the night."

She's gone before you're even off the counter, her shift in demeanor churning the alcohol sizzling in your gut.

That night, in the shadows of a grass-swept 7-Eleven, she sleeps with her back to you, her silence a skewering condemnation, prying open the scab of the wound her abandonment from that morning had opened.

Leaving you confused and, once again, wondering where you went wrong this time.

Maybe it's better this way.

You have to get back to Zander. Back to the base.

You don't have time to mull over what you said wrong.

You're in your own sleeping bag a few feet from her, watching her back inflate with unconscious, frantic breaths— like she's drowning in her sleep. You extend your arm across the space separating you, toying with a tendril of grass, circling it around your finger until the tip purples.

Sleep never graces you with its presence. You lay like that for hours, the tall crass whispering outside the broken window, the buildings groaning, Ellie's breathing labored but soft, the only noise the occasional bristle of her sleeping bag as she twitched and squirmed.

Until, with a suddenness that dropped your heart, she lurched up with a painful gasp, wretched, snotty sobs hiccuping out of her. She fumbles for the oversized, creased leather jacket she had draped over her as she slept, cradling it to her chest, unleashing ghastly cries into the fabric, covering her tear-slicked face.

Her back heaves with the force of her weeps as she bends over the jacket, rasping out hideous, wounded-animal like noises. You stare in horror, pain twinging in your heart at her palpable grief— wanting to comfort her, but being too coward to disrupt her unchained emotions.

She's nearly smothering herself with the jacket at that point, and you're about to intervene, jump up and rip it from her reddened face, when she comes up for air, gulping down hitched breaths.

You close your eyes in alarm, not wanting her to know you were awake, witnessing her meltdown.

"I'm sorry," she whimpers shakily, the hopelessness in her tone saved for the solitude of night, the unjudging eyes of the moon.

For a moment, you fear she's apologizing to you for the punishing silent treatment, so you crack open a heavy-lidded eye to peak at her.

She's thumbing the collar of the jacket, whispering into the flannel-liner inside, inhaling deeply. "I am so sorry. I am so sorry," she tips her forehead against the tag, rocking back and forth, muttering an indiscernible name, like a forgotten prayer.

She bows over it for so long, her tears muffled by the fabric, you wonder if she fell asleep while sitting up.

Just as the thought passes through your mind, she lays back down, cuddling the jacket to her chest, breathing harshly, appearing smaller than you'd ever seen her.

This time, instead of letting exhaustion cast you under its spell, you lay awake in the night, ready to face whatever dawn may bring— an empty bed, a lost companion; or a kinder tomorrow.

One that didn't tear you apart the way Ellie seemed to be torn as of now, her broken pieces discarded on the floor, unsalvageable— forged into an anger blazing like a loaded pistol.

Ready to load off at any given moment.

[urcursebreaker]

burning body waiting. (ellie williams x fem!reader)

read chapter 1 here | wattpad

warnings for this chapter— graphic gore/mentioned death, trauma, sexual content, thigh riding, oral (f!reader receiving), fingering (f!reader receiving), a bit of angst. | word count: 10.4k

chapter 2: a lesson in grief

Ellie

Two fucking days.

It's been two fucking days, and you're still here, an incessant thorn lodged in her fucking side.

She intended to lead you to your belongings and part ways without as much as a departing word; which was a display of kindness she didn't feel internally in itself. She could've just left you in that deteriorating garage with nothing but the gaping wound in your thigh and the mud-stained shirt on your back and let you crawl your way back to your gun.

Could've just left you in the forest to rot away in a puddle of your own blood.

But she fucking didn't. And she's really fucking pissed off about it.

When she killed those Seraphites it was purely for her own twisted gain; cleansing the already corrupted earth of those vile, cultish fucks was her honor. They were simply obstacles between her and the few sparing miles stretching to Lakehill. She never meant to be your Knight in shining fucking armor.

You would've been a perfect distraction for her to slip away unnoticed. While the Seraphites were preoccupied with tearing the trailer park to pieces to locate you, she could've saved her ammo, preserved her strength, darted right on by without them having even known she was invading their territory.

But then she heard your scream of pure, undiluted terror ricochet through the woods.

Admittedly, and only a little regretfully, she was going to disregard it. It wasn't her fight. She wasn't the dumbass who had walked directly into an open field of untouched goods.

But then she fucking saw you.

Running clumsily but lightening-quick down the hill, arms waving wildly, raw panic contorting your face, tears streaming down your mud-slicked cheeks.

Her heart had twinged at the sight. At the thought of your naïveté; how you likely celebrated the discovery of unopened canned foods and partially stabilized lodging and dusty comics and working tools. How you likely let yourself feel a flicker of hope, happiness, at the vast supplies.

She didn't feel sorry for the random woman who'd fallen victim to her hope; she resonated with the scared little girl that glinted in said woman's eyes.

You were lucky that little girl within you was still alive at all.

Maybe it's fucking weird or whatever, but there was a part of her that felt obligated to protect that tiny shred of innocence she saw. Like it was something she owed to her younger self.

Now, she assesses you thoughtfully from over her shoulder, her grip loose but present on her switchblade.

You wrestle the weight of your shotgun and overflowing backpack, face sweat-slicken and scrunched in extortion, eyes trained hazardously on the rocky hill, concentrated on not toppling over. Your hair is unbound and tousled, coiling from the humidity, damp from earlier's rain.

She thinks of you the other morning, in the pond. Water beading down your soft face, darkening your murky hair. Your tanktop transparent and clinging to every crevice and curve of your body. Your nipples puckering against the thin, sheer fabric. Spurting breaths unconsciously fleeing your wet, slightly agape mouth, lips shining with spit and oily water, eyes fluttering.

Something in her tightens and coils at the thought, before methodically unraveling and spreading through her limbs. She shivers, discreetly flexing her fingers, redirecting her attention forward and picking up her pace.

"How much further?" You groan breathlessly, shrugging up the strap of your gun. "My calves burn."

And just like that, the carnal fucking thoughts dissipate. She screws her eyes tightly shut, expelling a deep breath. "Not too much longer. Gonna make it?" She shoots in bland amusement over her shoulder.

You groan again, tipping your head back, letting the guttural sound echo through the swaying trees. "Where are we even going again?"

"There's a hospital up here." She responds vaguely, gesturing idly ahead with her inked-up hand.

"The hospitals were the first places to be raided, you know that, right?" You breathe conspiratorially, tucking a strand of hair out of your face.

"Obviously I fucking know that," she grits out defensively, and you chuckle at the spearing look she stabs at you. "But it's been rehabilitated like six fucking times, so, who really fucking knows what's there."

The truth is, she couldn't give less of a single shit about medicine or injections or the sealed away cure to fucking cancer. Lakehill Seattle Hospital is one of the Washington Liberation Front's many bases. Even if Abby isn't there, one of her fucking cronies might be; and if it's empty, there will be plenty of signs carelessly thrown around that will lead her straight to where they've scurried off to.

She's killed one of them; and there were however many left standing between her and Abby left to go.

She wants her blood. She wants it to stain her hands, wants to taste it in the crevices of her teeth. She wants to take it slow; disable her with a shot to the leg. Pin her to the wall as she writhes and gripes in pain, pleading for mercy, spewing meaningless apologies. Take a club to her head over, and over, and over again, until her face is an unidentifiable, sinking pile of mush.

Just like she did to Joel.

There's only one thing she wants more than to beat her to a pulp, watch the light vanish from her eyes.

She wants to teach her a lesson. A lesson in grief. Let her feel how it feels to lose someone. Many, many someones.

To lose everything.

She wouldn't stop until the Liberation was up in flames at the match she struck. Until every member that weaved the group together was untethered from its seams. Until every mark they made on this stupid fucking earth was erased, deconstructed.

She was going to find, and she was going to kill, every last one of them.

But she had to get you out of the way first. She couldn't get you involved, couldn't drag you down her relentless warpath. She wasn't totally uncivilized; it was just a matter of deviating from you.

Your lingering presence went unspoken; she didn't comment on your overstay, and you didn't elaborate on why you're still here, a persistent jab in her fucking back. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to discard you, to tell you to fuck off.

It's not that she had any doubt you could hold your own; if you were trekking Seattle alone save for the company of your blind brother, you must possess an air of endurance, have a useful arsenal of skills. Surviving alone is one thing. Protecting yourself and someone else is another.

Joel did it. And the both of them narrowly evaded death with every day they confronted the outside world.

You must be pretty fucking awesome to have made it this far— that is if you were telling the truth.

"You said you were from Ohio, right?" Ellie questioned bleakly, modestly. She wanted to inquire without blatantly prying. You'd kept your personal information under lock and key, clearly only divulging what you'd thought was necessary to appease her. She could respect that.

"Uhuh," you hum absently, licking the sweat off your upper lip, patting your forehead dry with your blemished sleeve. "Like a year ago."

The rest of her interrogation falls short when they crest the hill they'd been ascending, the expired cities lamented, desolate barrenness greeting them unbiddenly. Dark clouds loom in a dreary overcast, shadowing the crumbling, half-toppled buildings. The sparse buildings that do stand are garnished in overgrowth, shriveled vines and coils of cordyceps spattering up their walls. Runners grunt down below, aimlessly roaming the clearing. Ellie soaks it in critically, already internally noting points to avoid, the best trails to take.

"Wow, cool view, huh?" You blurt boisterously, a bright grin plastered to your lips. You dangle your forearm over Ellie's shoulder, leaning your full weight into her, your panting fettering her ear. She tenses, slicing you a glare, before averting her gaze back to the unlively city.

The sun peaks shyly through the clouds, illuminating your beaming expression. You take it all in with plain interest, eyes devouring the sight before you. "I've never seen Seattle from up here," you muse in amazement, marveling at what Ellie deemed unflattering scenery.

Lakehill gleams like a beacon under the sunlight, the mirror panels radiating a sharp glare. "There," Ellie points to it obscurely, taking a couple calculated steps down the hill. Toward the growling, twitching infected. "We should make it by nightfall."

Your eyes flicker from hers, and the steep, impending hill. Your lip curls idly in disgust. Ellie shifts her weight, sinking into the soil, eyeing you closely. She unwaveringly extends her hand, not removing her gaze from yours, hoping she's translating reassurance through her eyes and not the impatience she feels churning inside.

You eye her hand uncertainly, the hesitation ripe and blooming on your face. After a moment of consideration you take it, reluctantly eloping your hand with hers, your eyes still cautiously trained on her.

You're extremely expressive; every emotion paints your face when you feel it. Ellie didn't need to know you long to know this about you. She liked it. Liked being able to tell if you're lying. Liked knowing something she said made you fight your amusement...

Ellie realizes she'd been staring at you, immobile, unblinking, and rapidly shakes her head. She gives your hand a reflexive squeeze before clearing her throat and swiveling away. She says nothing as she attentively maneuvers you behind her, steering you around upended rocks, guiding you over dry-rotting logs.

Your pant leg catches on a suspended branch and you squeak, stumbling forward, your grip tightening on Ellie's hand. She skitters forward, instinctively throwing her arm out in front of you, barring you from tumbling down the hill.

"Careful." She drawls quietly, studying you as you breathe alertedly, your hand imprisoning hers in a vice grip. Her eyes loiter on you for only a second before she's resuming her strides down the winding hill, proceeding carefully, overly conscious of the crevices of your palm, fused with hers.

She tries not to focus on the tangible thrumming of your pulse against her wrist, or the sweat lapping between your conjoined hands. She tries to focus on not tripping, and hurling you both into the midst of wandering, fiending infected.

But the way you keep crushing her hand with each unbalanced stride is slightly distracting. She swears there was a time where your thumb brushed over her knuckles, and whether intentionally or not, she found her heart rate skyrocketing at the delicate caress.

What a fucking loser.

One girl touches her for a split second and she nearly explodes. Doesn't help that the girl is pretty.

Like really fucking stupidly pretty.

Acting right is hard enough when all she has the energy to entertain is the hatred festering in her heart. Acting right when a pretty girl is holding her hand and trailing her like a lost, grateful puppy is another kind of self-control entirely.

You release her suddenly, snapping her out of her stupor. She watches as you twist away with a grunt; drilling a blade through the gnarly, decomposing eye socket of a runner. "He snuck up on us," you breathe harshly, eyebrows furrowed with disdain, as you gyrate the knife slowly, penetrating the writhing cluster of cordyceps sprouting from its gaping hole for an eye.

Ellie watched blankly as it crumpled to the ground with a series of disgruntled chokes. Inwardly, she's horrified that she'd allowed her thoughts to drift so far she'd missed an attack.

"Motherfucker," she snarls furiously, the anger more at herself and less at the mindless infected, shredding your knife out of its deformed head and shoving it back into your hand.

She storms down the remainder of the hill, not even glancing back to confirm you're following, her face scathing with humility, her bones tingling with irritation.

She could hear Joel now; don't ever let your guard down. Luck is what's kept you alive all this time, and it's gonna run out.

If he were here she'd tell him luck wasn't the reason she was still standing.

It was him.

ᖭི༏ᖫྀ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

You

You examine the tray of untouched medical tools in fascination, picking up a scalpel and turning it over, admiring its polished shine. "Looks like there is some stuff here," you admit half-heartedly, glancing at Ellie.

She hovers in the corner of the vacated operation room, her shotgun loaded and braced by both of her hands. She nods curtly, noncommittally, her eyes darting over the expansive wall of glass.

She'd been adjacent to silent your entire downtown journey. After the incident on the hill, she acknowledged you a total of three times; each time being a swift, cursory sweep of her gaze after an encounter with infected, just to ensure you weren't bitten or injured, before whipping back around and continuing her dedicated avoidance of you.

Her shoulders are high-strung, a crisp clarity steadfast in her eyes. You're halfway through your clearance of the first floor, and this is what she's done; loomed in the corner and observed. She looked like she was waiting for something to leap unexpectedly from the shadows and rip the gun out of her grasp.

Though it was blatant she was uneasy, you didn't dare question her apprehension. You had a feeling that if you called attention to her current state, she'd snap.

She seems fragile; not like a piece of pristine, hand-painted porcelain, but like a bomb without its pin, waiting to erupt.

"Ellie?" You drawl tentatively, and she jolts, flicking her anxious gaze to you. "Do you wanna split up to cover more ground? Come together with what we find?" You offer meekly, teetering a line of safety and coaxing her out of her mood-spell.

She blinks. "You look around. I'm gonna clear the rest of the building. I saw some spores outside, so there's probably some fucking infected in here somewhere."

Out of fear of how she'll react if you insinuate that she requires your aid, you don't offer to accompany her, even though you should. Especially if the enormous, pulsating spores you saw winding up the exterior of the building were any indication of what lurked within. "Sure," you chirp with forced invigoration, flashing her a tight, agreeing smile. "Be careful!"

She files out of the rusted double-doors without another word, as if she were a Venus fly trap, waiting for its prey before snapping open its haunches.

You frown warily as you watch her go, one foot ready to stride after her, the other rooted in place.

Of course you choose to stay. You've already taken many risks just by following her all the way out here. You won't risk making her regret letting you.

For the past long, laborious hours of enduring Ellie's quiet, simmering rage, regret for staying has muddled your thoughts.

It's just that after the ambush at the trailer park, you felt strangely wronged. Like it was staged, put on just to test you. Seraphite's do not stray far from their bases; meaning you'd directly trespassed on one. You find it difficult to believe that Abby was sending you into enemy territory unknowingly, and the thought of her blindsiding you makes the already minimal contents in your stomach churn.

The trust you harbored for the WLF was already  precarious; though they were hospitable enough to give you a place to stay and a sliver of their rations, it wasn't without forfeit. You'd confiscated your dignity to comply to their orders, to slave away at their command. They tripled your watch shifts and withdrew your bathing privileges if you failed to report something you saw. You'd jeopardized your safety, obliging when they sent you out on detrimental, useless expeditions to check an already cleared garage on the outskirts of camp. Just to cement your place in their uncompromising group.

Zander, your brother, seems to have immersed himself into the group seamlessly. He besotted Owen and Abby within two days of your arrival; by the end of week one he was already cozying up with them in their tent, indulging in their classified stash of whiskey, their rowdy, boisterous laughter blaring throughout the late hours of the night.

At 3a.m. he'd routinely fumble into the tent and plummet to the rumpled sleeping bag next to you, his breath reeking of alcohol, his slurring words too loud as he bid them goodnight. Every time, you let him believe you miraculously slept through the noise, before swiveling over and shooting him a slicing glare he couldn't see.

"Could you be any louder?" You'd say, overselling the mild irritation you felt at his intrusion to compensate for the fact he couldn't see the disapproving frown blossoming on your lips.

"Could you be any boring-er?" He'd singsong back, fidgeting with his socks, peeling them off and tossing them to the corner. "You could join us, you know. Get to know them a bit. They're pretty cool."

And every time you'd decline. Not because you're a tedious prude who loathes social interaction.

Because the one time you did intend to join them, you were clearly not welcome.

When you benignly chipped into the conversation, or forcefully chuckled at their admittedly unfunny jokes, they would exchange covert looks. Sometimes, you'd catch Abby's eyes analyzing your face, her expression hard, her mouth twisted as she watched you throw back the whiskey that she offered you, unprompted.

You were thankful for the shelter, the semblance of protection, but you were not going to feign companionship with people who were consistently questioning your usefulness, contemplating your personality, debating if you were someone they wanted to accept into their inner circle. Which seemed to be made up of every single one of them except for you.

By facing their challenge and putting yourself through their warped initiation process, you stupidly hoped you'd return, that they would gain a newfound respect for you, shower you in approval, and finally perceive you as the soldier you have the full capacity to be.

Yet, you narrowly made it out alive. If it weren't for Ellie, the cruel but kind stranger, you would be dead. Do you even have the right to wish for their respect? Their acceptance? Did you even have the right to grapple for belonging in the conditions of this world?

For now, it's comforting enough to know that at least your brother has found his place among them; to know he's cared for beyond just existing as an open mouth to feed, beyond being a liability that drains their resources and has yet to prove serviceable.

He's their friend. You're his desperate, too-eager-to-be-liked little sister, laughing at all the wrong times and budding in when you aren't addressed.

So here you are, all these conflicting thoughts warring for dominance in your mind: you want to go back to where you know it's moderately safe, by your brothers side, where there's food and an assured place to rest your head.

But you also want to plunge further down this uncharted path. Want to follow the freckled stranger through the thick of the dejecting forest, see where her blinding determination will take you. Let her lead you through the sad, true state of the world.

It was time to sate your unquenchable curiosity; time to find the belonging you'd been seeking. Time to find a place like home.

Though you doubt you'll find it with the hellbent girl, she'd already taught you things you'd never known, shown you places you'd never seen: she may not be the most reliable companion, but you discovered something new with each hour you trudged by her side.

And that was better than repeating the cycle of unspoken scorn back at camp. At least for now.

A deafening gunshot ricochets through the sky; reverberating through the building, rumbling the floor, disrupting the stillness of the vacant hospital. You pause where you were rummaging through a squeaky laboratory cabinet, fear seizing your heart. You stagger clumsily up to your feet and rush to the closed door, peaking out through the sliver of zagged glass.

Ellie had been gone for over an hour. Time had slipped like refined silk through your fingers; she should've been back by now, and you should've noticed earlier. What if the Seraphites had sniffed out your trail and followed you here?

Anxiety creeps in, lodging icily in your chest, fizzing like half-melted frost. You should be there, fending them off alongside her. What if she dies, or gets bit, and you have no way of getting back to your brother?

Flashes of her, doused in crimson and death glinting iniquitously in her wan eyes, easily, remorselessly moving through the motions of murder after murder, filter through your mind. Quickly dissolving any apprehension and concern you had for her.

You had an eery suspicion she wasn't on the receiving end of that gunshot.

A slight smile subconsciously tugs at your lips as you pocket the vial of mystery liquid you found and withdraw your blade, hazardously peeling the door open, the hinges screeching even at your deliberate slowness. You wince at the splitting noise, glancing down both ends of the long, empty hallway.

Another gunshot rents the muggy afternoon air, followed shortly by another. You can't precisely pinpoint the distance of the sound, but it must not be far, for a bird perched on the glass-littered windowsill flocks away with a loud, disgruntled chirp.

You sheathe your knife and instead scoop up your shotgun from where you'd leaned it on the wall, doing another cautionary sweep of the floor you were on. As expected, it was free of any infected or Seraphites.

You're about to do a second clearing of the abandoned surgery room when the main double doors to the floor boom open thunderously, sending you reeling back, fumbling to aim your gun at the intrusion.

Ellie hovers there, chest heaving with her strained breaths, her eyebrows furrowed as she surveys you with faint recognition in her eyes.

"Jesus, Ellie!" You curse through barred teeth, glowering, dropping your aim to the tarnished concrete floor. "You scared the shit out of me!"

She sniffles, blinking lethargically, smearing the faint spatter of blood off her gleaming forehead. "Sorry," she mumbles noncommittally, smoothly sliding her blood-tainted crowbar into her backpack from over her shoulder.

"You okay? Was that gunshots I heard?" You press unapologetically, taking a couple hesitant half-steps toward her, your eyebrows crinkled in concern as you analyze her from head to toe. She's unharmed, save for a variety of new bruises budding on her face.

"Yeah. A couple infected," she states vaguely, sniffling sharply, hurriedly rushing by. The gust of her forceful strides feathers the hair out of your face, and you stumble over your feet as you march after her.

"Only a few? That's good." You pry bleakly, airily, her impressive muscles straining against her shirt. Her dusty, dark-washed jeans accentuate her legs and ass as she strides with purpose toward the rows of deteriorating rooms.

You swallow harshly and avert your straying attention upward, her loosening half-bun bouncing with her movements. "Yeah," she replies absently.

Silence.

After a moment she clears her throat, coming to an abrupt stop; you nearly collide into her back, gripping her waist to stabilize yourself.

"Sorry!" You squeak, nervously snapping your hand away, the pads of your fingers tingling from where they'd touched her. Your cheeks heat coyly as she flashes you a haughty, knowing smirk.

"The rooms upstairs are in decent condition. There's beds and stuff. We should settle there for the night." She says, her head canted to examine the view from one of the expansive, glassless windows, the dewy sun gradually dipping below the horizon.

"Sounds good to me," you chime, offering a meek smile, watching the sunlight enhance the streams of deep, pacific-blue splitting through her crystalline irises.

Her eyes steadily settle back on you. You have to physically resist the urge to bawk at her acute, engrossing stare, your smile strengthening sheepishly.

She visibly suppresses the careful smile blooming on her own lips, her mouth twitching, before she gulps and swivels back around, declaring a simple, "Get all your shit and meet me upstairs."

You stick your tongue out at her back and oblige.

ᖭི༏ᖫྀ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

The twinkling stars glisten beyond the grimy window emphatically, brightly. The moon's a beaming cuticle crescent, hanging low, the caverns and craters glaringly illuminated by its intense glow. The hollow, desolate buildings sit eerily across the idle city, creaking stridently with the breeze.

Back at the farmhouse in Ohio— the one with the peeling, floral, yellow-wallpapered walls and splintered mahogany stairs; your childhood home— your mother used to creep into you and your brothers shared room, sandwich herself between your already cloistered bodies on the dingy mattress, and envelop each of you with a tattooed arm.

In which both of you would groggily nestle in close, already hanging onto every word about to flea from her lips.

Every night, she'd tell you about the world before it was upturned; before the pandemic swept in.

But specifically, she'd always veer back to the sky. How much it changed since death waged a war over the earth and ultimately claimed a brutal victory.

Her voice direct and soft, she always pointed lazily out the window and lulled wistfully, "See the stars? How close they feel? How bright they are?" and when you'd both nod wearily against the gentle thrumming of her heart, she'd say, "That's the one thing I like better than I did before. Before, the city lights were so bright, you could barely make out the stars through the pollution. Now, they look like they're in reach."

She'd ruefully, dreamily extend her fingers, urging you to mime her, and trace the shapes of the stars, you and Zander following suit, chuckling.

"And having you guys," she'd add swiftly, rubbing maternal, alleviating circles into your arms, glancing at each of you with a doting smile. "If the world hadn't ended, I wouldn't have met your daddy, Zan. Then I wouldn't have you or your sister." She'd smile solemnly at the thought and peck each of you on the cheek before squirming out from under you and sneaking off the bed, where you were already dozing off.

There was always a bright, gentle smile plastered to her lips as she reminisced on the luxuries and simple complexities of life back then. You and Zander couldn't help but smile, too, at the thought of what life could've been like.

After, she'd study your sleeping faces before inching out of the room and down the boisterous, exposing stairs and outside. To where your dad was keeping watch. Your dad was always outside, stationed on the porch, shotgun propped against his leg, whiskey in his bandaged hand. She'd curl up on his lap and kiss his face numb, fall asleep there as he scanned for any wandering infected or worse; heartless scavengers.

His hand was always bandaged. Always.

Zander told you once that before you were ever born, and shortly after his mothers death, him and your dad were trekking through an overgrown ice rank when a clicker sprung on him unexpectedly— and shredded a thick, gnarly chunk out of his hand, tendons and all.

He said he'd seen it all happen with his very eyes; saw the venom of the bite fissure and bubble against his blood, saw it solidify into the scars on his skin.

But he never got sick.

Ever.

You assume it was just another drunken lie, a story he'd fabricated, a creativity he'd inherited from your mom.

Especially after he got infected on a raid; went rabid and frothing at the mouth, growling pleadingly for your mother just to shoot him.

But she'd been bitten too.

And instead of pulling the trigger, they'd ripped each others throats out, ate down to the bone, clawed one another into unsalvageable, gory pieces. They'd devoured each other. So violently and grotesquely that neither of them even fully turned; the cordyceps withered and died before they could even officially transition, because there was scarcely a scrap left for them to feed on.

A small part of you found solace in the notion that they were dead, as opposed to walking deadly among the living. You felt at peace knowing that if there's an afterlife, they were there together.

Zander didn't share that sentiment.

He was the one who found them. Jumbled, tethered shreds of chewed flesh, heaps of bones, two rotting, skinless heads. He'd only been able to identify the remains because of the torn layer of your mothers tattooed skin and the detached, scarred hand of your father.

He returned to the camp you had set up, where you were perched impatiently by the dimming fire, encompassed by two young men and a little boy your parents fostered on the expedition through Illinois. The men laughed raucously, stirring their canned beans. The little boy repeatedly kicked up a half-deflated soccer ball; the constant thud of his knee against the ball grating your nerves.

The look of pure devastation and horror in Zander's eyes will eternally be seared into your brain; will forever brand your thoughts, claim your nightmares. He didn't have to say anything; couldn't say anything, his jaw clenched so tight, he fractured a tooth and his gums started bleeding.

You were only fifteen at the time. He'd strolled right past your heaving, seizing frame, where you'd fell onto the ground and unleashed blood-curdling screams, until you vomited all over the frost-tipped grass. The men rushed over to you, hollering, shaking you fervently, the little boy hovering a safe distance back in tactile fear, ball weakly tucked under his arm.

None of them checked on Zander, who'd sealed himself off in your shared tent. To this day you curse them for that; even though rationally, they were clearly terrified, bewildered by your outburst, having not witnessed what passed between you and your brother.

It wasn't until a deep, petrifying scream of fatal agony split through the smoke-hazed sky, that the men released you and dashed for his tent.

You were lucky enough not to see the outcome of your parents brutal death.

But the luck must've ran out. It must've thought it let you off too easy.

For when they hurriedly unzipped the tent, you had an unobstructed view of what knelt inside; Zander, two blades protruding from the holes where his eyes used to be, gallons of blood pouring down his cheeks, drenching his shirt a red so deep it was nearly black.

The world went silent, a high-pitched ringing cleaving your skull. No noise escaped his open, blubbering mouth, where he projected chunky bits of blood and flim. The little boy rightfully scampered off, and you never did end up finding him.

There's a featherlight knock on the door to your chosen room and you're thrown from the trenches of your harrowing memories. You blink harshly, hot tears slithering down your cheeks, as you tighten your grasp on Baby the blue bear.

It was Zander's old baby bear; a faded, graying blue bear, missing a beaded eye, the ears crinkled and sullied from drool. The droopy stomach stitched and partially hollow from all the stuffing it's lost over the past twenty years.

He'd passed it down to you for your sixth birthday, claiming that he, twelve years old, was a man, and it was time for who was once named 'Barney' the blue bear to belong to someone who could love him. He'd seen how you'd enviously pined after Barney, the way you'd watched curiously as he tucked Barney into bed next to him at night. Most mornings, Zander would wake to you snuggling the blue bear. You never had a childhood object of your own to latch onto as you slept.

You always only had your brother.

He let you rename him to make him your own, and you chose Baby. That was always how your mom and dad addressed you; never by your name, and it filled you with immense joy. You thought it would make him happy, too.

For Zander's birthday a few years ago, you tried to gift Baby the blue bear back to him as a playful joke, as he was turning twenty-one and you thought he would find humor in marking adulthood with his old childhood friend.

Instead, he'd ran his fingers over the fraying bear, felt the groove of its missing eye, and slammed him to the ground, storming away without another word.

You're embarrassed to admit you waste substantial bag space to store the blue bear. But it's times like these, where you're separated from Zander and far from safety as you know it, that you're glad you kept him around.

Ellie says your name. Cautiously, like you'd call a stray cat, unsure if it will lunge an attack or roll over and bear you its belly.

You jolt, whipping around, finding her lingering a few feet away, her hand extended as if she were reaching to touch you. Her eyes dart to the bear clutched frightfully to your chest and back to your tear-slicked face.

"Is that a teddy bear?" She cocks a brow, her tone jesting and nonjudgemental despite the disbelieving look on her face.

You sniffle and aggressively swivel away, scowling at her in the reflection of the window. "It's my brothers," you say defensively, embracing him in your lap, resting him on your crossed legs.

"How old is your brother again?" She muses, the mild humor growing in her tone as you glare daggers at her. "Right. Anyways," she expels a huffy laugh, tossing her hands up in surrender as your glower sharpens.

She continues, unaffected by your irritated stare. "I found a heater in my room. There was a generator downstairs, I'm gonna try to kick that shit on. I was gonna ask you if you could stand by the heater and tell me if it works while I pump it."

You wipe the snot off the tip of your nose, humming and nodding softly in agreement, hopping off the disjointed hospital bed, your socks thumping into the concrete. You lay Baby down on top of the debris-flaked sheet and trail after Ellie, as she'd already whisked out of the room before you'd even responded.

"I'll run down there real quick, just yell if anything happens, okay?" She instructs swiftly, and you nod, slipping into the room next to yours, where she was staying.

The room was impressively put together compared to the others; a pair of white sheers dangled from the crooked overhead railing. There was no mobile hospital bed, just a full-sized mattress strewn across the middle of the floor. A rusted, transportable heater resting on the rubble of a broken nightstand.

You waltz over and plug the knotted cord into the collapsing outlet, bouncing on your heels as you watch it sit there, unmoving. You decide to move it off the debris, tugging it off the splintered wood, grunting at the unexpected heaviness.

A few minutes pass before a frail fluorescent light flickers on from the hallway; followed by the sputtering of the heater, before an orange light flashes on and a wave of dusty heat gutters out, blasting you in the face.

"Oh! Oh, Ellie, it's working!" You shriek in surprise and triumph, jumping up and down giddily, clapping your cold hands in delight. You scamper to the door and scream out, "It's working!"

You cough and bat the swirling plumes of dust out of the air, squinting and smiling to yourself. Ellie rushes in, a hint of relief blooming on her face. "I saw the lights come on," she informs breathily, saddling up beside you, warming her chapped hands in front of the musty heater.

You mimic her, reaching out your hands, turning them over, making sure the heat reaches every crevice. "This room is in pretty good shape," you tell her, examining the dull, cracked painting of a golden pathos mounted to the wall, the old box television face down on a pallet of wood. It looks like it was likely rehabilitated but shortly abandoned.

"Yeah," she huffs, a weak display of laughter, wriggling her tense fingers. "I'll take the other room, so you can have the heat."

"How chivalrous," you giggle, rolling your eyes humorously. She flushes at the joke, her cheeks rosy beneath the smattering of freckles. "You aren't trading me, dummy. We'll share the room."

"Are you sure?" She blurts quickly, her eyebrows elevated in befuddlement.

You provide her a warm smile. "Of course. If that's okay with you...?"

"Yes!" she exclaims brazenly, clearing her throat in mortification at the volume and urgency in which she agreed. "I meant, yeah. Cool."

You chuckle openly at her humiliation. "I've always wanted to have a sleepover!" You babble in exhilaration, hoping to quell her discomfort.

"Yay," she deadpans, monotone, though there's still that particle of a smile as she watches you skip out of the room, heading back to collect your belongings.

ᖭི༏ᖫྀ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

It takes an hour of cleaning up before the two of you are ready to settle for the night. She swept shards of glass off the floor, depositing them out the window, letting them rain down in a series of echoing shatters. You wandered the dimly-illuminated hall and collected the cleanest blanket you could find, beating the sheet against the air, dust and drywall flaking off.

You and Ellie worked together to drape it over the mattress, deigning to lay atop of it as not to touch the drying blood blemishing it. She wordlessly claims the right side, the side nearest the window, as she stands by it and begins to undress.

She shucks off her collared, unbuttoned shirt, unveiling her filthy, once white tanktop. You catch yourself staring intently as she releases her hair of the bun, short, choppy brown waves of hair flowing down the length of her neck. She kicks off her grubby, tearing Converse' and turns to face you.

Her eyes flit over yours for only a millisecond before you're dropping your gaze, clumsily peeling off your jacket and heedlessly tossing it to the floor by your boots.

Ellie reclines on the mattress, crossing her ankles, resting her head on one arm, closing her eyes briefly. You leave her to rest as you crouch down and pillage through your backpack, extracting Baby from where you'd shamefully shoved him back inside after getting caught cradling him.

You twist back around, jolting when you catch Ellie staring down at you from the length of her nose. You languidly, hesitantly, crawl across the mattress, training your eyes on hers as you plop down on the empty spot next to her.

You immediately realize how small the bed is.

Your sides are essentially conjoined; forearms brushing with each breath, legs resting up against one another, as both of you lay there in silence. Neither of you try to sleep. You analyze the ceiling, the pipes and wires suspended from the exposed plywood. Holding your breath each time she incidentally grazes you, warmth flaring in your belly at the whisper of a caress.

You feel a puddle of sweat accumulate against your back, grease your forehead, dampen your skin. You're not sure if it's from the heater or the awareness of her body flush with yours that's making you hot.

You squirm in discomfort, stretching a leg off the mattress, unbuttoning your jeans. Ellie's head snaps over at the movement skittishly, as if jarred by you moving as opposed to only bristling.

You angle your head to face her, smiling sleepily as you leisurely undo each button. "S'it okay if I take these off?"

She swallows. Watches your hand undo the final button, before dipping into the waistband, lifting your ass off the mattress and slowly wriggling them down. Her fingers twitch at her side, tickling your thigh— you shudder, nibbling your bottom lip in concentration at the ghost of her touch, staring into her eyes, the intimacy of your nearness emboldening you.

"Go ahead," she blurts suddenly, chagrinly, fully flipping over onto her side and away from you.

You kick your wrinkled jeans onto the floor, rolling over to face her back, your breaths fanning the nape of her neck. Her shoulders and back heave with each forced, deliberate breath. You count the tiny moles pocking her neck and revealed shoulder, fearing that you had misread the unspoken.

You'd seen how she's been looking at you.

Every time you demanded yourself to extract your attention off of her, you could feel her penetrative eyes in your periphery, could feel them roving you over in a thorough, self-serving inspection. Meticulously eyeing you up and down, as if committing your image to memory, retaining the curves of your body and the makings of your features.

Like the other morning in the pond, when she took you in with torturous precision, the sensation of her carving eyes branding you in phantom proprietary marks. You could still feel the heat of her stare in all the places she'd touched you with her eyes.

She devoured the sight of you like a predator observes it's prey; ravenous but patient. Thirsting for blood, but fiending for the hunt.

There was definitely attraction on your end. She's the scariest but most beautiful thing you've ever seen; a treasure trove beaming with riches and thrumming with traps. She's like an avalanche, the snow is iridescent and glittering under the sun but it's also hurtling at you at a deadly pace.

You thought the attraction was reciprocated from the impact you had on her just by teasingly flirting; she'd flush and awkwardly spin away to shield the embarrassment creeping onto her face. Maybe it was just making her uncomfortable, not flustered.

Your eyes begin burning with exhaustion, the fatigue causing your eyes to droop, your galloping heart rate steadying— when Ellie's voice cuts raggedly through the silence.

"What about your brother?"

"Hm?" You question drearily, shifting, your lips nearly pressed to her shoulder. "What about him?"

"Isn't he expecting you?"

"Huh?" You bleat, flinching when she whips back around, tucking her arms beneath her head as she studies your face. There's only a few, precarious inches separating you.

"You said you were traveling with your brother," she utters, glancing down at Baby, compressed between your sweat-sleeked bodies, your only true barrier.

At that, she lifts him off the mattress, admiring him plainly, before setting him down above your heads and imperceptibly inching her hips closer.

"Yeah," you reply, fumbling for the lie you'd construed, taking it by the ends and tying it into an intricate bow. It's difficult to focus when you're only inches apart, her even breaths tickling your lips, her eyes attentive and abutting. "We have a camp. Not too far from that old house. He's not expecting me to come back for another few days. I told him I'd be gone awhile."

"Mm. He must still be worried about you, hm?" Her voice is husky and low as she drawls the words tiredly, blinking at you slowly, your lashes nearly chafing.

"Maybe. Or he can sense that I'm in good hands," you mutter teasingly, flashing her a coy smile when she seems to liven up at the insinuation.

"Yeah?" She murmurs, eyes flickering over your face, evaluating for any sincerity.

Your heart threatens to burst out of your chest at her nearness, her raspy voice. You nod timidly and hum a simpering, "mhm."

She pensively wets her lips and your eyes absently trail the movement of her tongue. You feel yourself gravitating closer to her, your bare thigh hiked up against the rough surface of her jeans, your pelvis aligned with her thigh, your lips a breathscape apart.

"Ellie?" You whisper gently.

She smiles grimly. Your name drawls from her lips in a deep, devastatingly soft rumble, the pads of her cold, calloused fingers dubiously coming up to brush your cheek. "You're so pretty."

A light, delicate gasp bursts unexpectedly out of you at her cool touch, your eyes fluttering shut. The praise sends a shiver up your spine. Her thumb unfurls to trace the shape of your lip.

"Look at me," she mumbles, and you obey, the unannounced authority in her gentle command sending your eyes snapping back open.

Her pupils are dilated, darkness infiltrating her tantalizing eyes. She runs her rough fingers contemplatively down the curve of your bottom lip, dragging it out in fascination.

You blindly part your lips for her access, humming in delight when she takes the right of passage, easing her thumb past your welcoming lips.

She inhales sharply as you draw your tongue across the crease of her thumb, sealing your lips around her knuckle.

"Jesus fucking christ," she breathes in awe, her fingers firmly clasping your chin as she indulgently thrusts her thumb in and out, watching it disappear into your plush mouth.

Her free hand slithers up the hem of your cami. Following the dip of your waist. Diligently gliding down and spanning over the curve of your hip, roaming to your backside. She cups your ass, suddenly steering you closer, the force behind her claiming touch igniting a deep-rooted flame of desire within you.

Your responding whimper is muffled against her thumb, and she chuckles darkly, slipping it out. A lecherous string of saliva bridges from your lips to her thumb. She considers it for a moment before taking it into her mouth, sucking it clean of your spit, her cheeks hollowed and eyes lust-filled as she gazed back at you.

"Ellie," you repeat gutturally, her name departing from your lips in a desperate whimper as she torments you with her slothful, patient movements.

She removes her thumb from her mouth with a potent pop. "Come here," she directs, greedily snatching your face into her hands, hungrily slamming her lips into yours.

The kiss was addictively electrifying. Lightening seared through your body in lascivious bolts, kindling warmly in your belly, as you feathered your fingers through her auburn hair in a fruitless attempt of fusing her into you. You match the dire intensity of her lips, duplicate it, eagerly inviting her tongue into your wanting mouth.

You carefully ascend off the mattress, sitting up, your lips never detaching, hands never abandoning one another; roving each other fervently, as if the other will evaporate if not constantly palpable in each others hands.

You lift a leg and straddle one of her thighs, cautiously hovering over her, not wanting to bombard her; though your pussy was pulsating, reflexively bucking in the air, craving pressure. Ellie must sense this, for she viciously seizes your hips and forces you to fully bear your weight down, a groan of pleasure rumbling from her lips, vibrating against yours.

You mewl, gently sinking your teeth into her bottom lip, nibbling sensually, before drawing it out. She huffs in surprise, arching off the bed to follow your lips, one arm propping her up, the other gleaning up your waist, holding you in place, her tattoo stark against your pliant skin.

She begins grinding her knee up and you squeak out a stunned moan, your lips unlocking from hers in a carnally sticky pop as you throw your head back at the delicious sensation of her jeans against your wet pussy. "Fuck," you pant out, giggling, planting your trembling hands on her flexing shoulders. "That feels so good."

She grips your hips assertively, guiding you into a grinding rhythm against her thigh, another whimper fleeing you from the friction.

"Yeah?" she mutters, and you nod robustly, crashing your slick forehead into hers, breathing into her open mouth.

"Yeah," you reply airily, shortening your jumbled response with another kiss to her lips.

The sensation was blissful and new; you were inexperienced save for the few times you'd played with yourself when you got a rare spout of privacy, and the time you jerked off a man you were traveling with when you were sixteen.

You'd never felt anything like this before; the way your skin erupts with goosebumps in the wake of her touch, the way your lips tingle with desire, the puddle pooling in your panties at the unfamiliar, pleasurable pressure building in your clit.

You instinctively increase your pace at the mounting pleasure, bucking your hips wildly, sloppily, threading your fingers through her hair and deepening the kiss. She delicately pulls away, sweeping her veiny hands up the length of your bare back, hiking your shirt up.

You pause and wordlessly lift your arms. She smiles roguishly, masterfully peeling it over your head, the static tousling your hair. She tosses it to the side without regard, her mouth agape as she admired your puckered nipples.

"Fuck," she seethes in disbelief, grounding the curse through gritted teeth, winding her hands up your stomach to ardently palm them in her hands. You moan as her thumbs tweak your hardened nipples, massaging expertly, another labored "fuck" exiting her watering mouth as she stares intently at your exposed breasts.

"You like that?" You taunt with a dreary, blissful smile, resuming your thrusts against her thigh as she nods, quickly engulfing an arm around your waist and pulling herself up to level her mouth with one of your breasts.

She peers up at you questioningly from beneath stern eyebrows, her eyes captivating and tainted with need. You nod feverishly, the exhilaration and desperation for her holding you hostage, held at gunpoint by your ripened desire.

She wastes no time latching her lips around your aching nipple, the feeling of her hot tongue sending you arching back, a raw, animalistic sound shredding from you. "Ellie, please," you breathe, unsure of precisely what you're begging for. More? More of her. More of her tongue. More of her hands?

Yes. All of the above.

"What do you want?" Ellie demands, one of your tits in her hand, the other slick with her saliva as she vigorously kisses up your sternum, nipping at your collarbone, dragging her tongue up your throat, your sweat relinquishing bitterly on her tongue.

You cradle her head, stroking her hair, angling your neck to allow her better access as she plants ticklish kisses along your pulse. "You. I want you," you plead gratingly.

You can't believe this is happening. That the girl who'd killed dozens without remorse or pause was the same girl touching you now, with bloodstained hands.

And you can't believe that you loved it.

She must share your disbelief, for she pulls away soberly, her eyes glowing with lucidity, clearer than before, when lust-muddled. They flicker between yours searchingly. "Are you sure?"

You graze your knuckles down her face in a smooth caress, looking down at her. "Yes," you assure with a loose smile, basking in the way she closes her eyes in comfort at your gentle touch.

She lingers like this, eyes shut, cheek resting in your hand, her breaths labored. Long enough for you to start worrying that she regrets what the two of you had started to do.

Those creeping fears slither back to their enclosures when she grips your thighs, suavely flipping you over and onto your back, your legs spreading around her waist, your thighs in her arms.

You hiccup on your breath at the swift, abrasive motion. Her hands clasped around your thighs; your legs bared for her, revealing to her the damp spot blossoming on your panties.

"Is this for me?" She teases, running a finger over the top of your panties, the featherlight touch making you squirm. "That's a good girl."

You nod sheepishly, your cheeks heating in humiliation as she snickers and slowly, promisingly, tugs them down, heedlessly shucking them over her shoulder.

"You're so fucking wet for me," she states quietly, prying your legs apart further, examining your pussy, soaked and constricting at the wicked gleam of satisfaction on her face. "I need to taste you."

Holy fuck.

All you can do is nod passionately in agreement, your heart drumming so thunderously, it's nearly twinging in agony, your pussy screaming to be appeased.

She inches back, hoisting your legs over her shoulders in the process, lowering herself down to meet your cunt. She's kneeling on the ground now, at the foot of the mattress, her breaths fanning detrimentally over your slick cunt, the faint contact making your legs snap shut— or try to.

Ellie grunts in disapproval, wedging your thighs back apart, eyeing her feast, hunger dwindling in her eyes, as if she didn't know she was starving before she had the meal laid out before her.

She uses her fingers to part your wet lips before diving in, licking a thick stripe along your entrance, gathering your juices and dragging her tongue to your pulsating clit. You unleash a heinous, strangled moan at the sensation, as she prods and suckles your bundle of nerves.

You uncontrollably writhe into the strokes of her tongue, chasing the escalating pleasure, the tension in your body coiling as she sucks and slurps with exuberance, devouring you.

She hums richly, smoothing her hand over your stomach, forcing your hips onto the bed. She thrusts her tongue into your entrance, maneuvering around your clit, swirling it along your folds, not leaving an inch of you untouched. You shakily rake your fingers through her hair, your breaths coming out in disjointed bursts, face twisting in pure pleasure.

You didn't know how it could get any better than this.

Until her finger prods your slick entrance, massaging it gently, her lips unabashedly sucking your clit as she delicately eases her finger into you, your tight walls stretching and expanding to welcome her.

"Oh my god!" You yelp at the invasion, pain and pleasure coinciding, as she leisurely inched her full index finger into you, curling it inside. You moan wantonly as it plucks a sensitive spot within you, your hips bucking up primally on command.

"Just like that," she declares, her words muffled by your pussy, nearly incoherent beneath the sound of her tongue lapping up your juices, her finger disappearing into your cunt. "Just like that, baby. Fuck my fingers."

At that, she slowly slips in a second one, the pleasure overshadowing the pain, now, as you squint down at the sight of her, burrowed between your thighs, ravenously licking and sucking, her tattooed arm dripping in your juices as she curls her digits in and out of you skillfully.

Her method of hunting seems to bleed into other aspects of her life; she's relentless with her prey, doing what needs to be done, whether it be to kill them or to make them come undone.

You can feel yourself begin to unravel at the seams; your body convulsing with your impending orgasm, teetering so close to the edge you're already halfway dangling off. "I- I think I'm—" you cry out, straining off the bed, clamping your thighs around her head. "I'm gonna—"

She removes her lips and fingers from you altogether. You whimper in protest, desperately shifting your hips into the air, begging for contact, your now fading high lost.

Ellie's lips gleam with your juices as she grins depravedly. "Not yet."

You frown somberly, even as she ascends to her knees between your legs, hovering over you, her mussed brown hair draping across her cruelly amused face. She plants a hand on the side of your head, fiddling with the button of her jeans, leaning in to press another kiss to your pouting lips— when a high-pitched scream shreds through the otherwise quiet air.

Ellie efficiently clasps her slippery hand over your mouth before you can bleat out the noise of befuddlement at the tip of your tongue. Her head is snapped toward the barricaded door, body eerily still, even her previously labored breathing completely silent.

She meets your wide, apprehensive eyes with a steady stare. "Shh," she says softly, as she hesitantly peels her hand off of your mouth.

She creeps off of the mattress stealthily, crouching, as she half-hazardously drapes the sheet over your bare figure. She shrugs on her stained collared shirt over her damp tanktop, tugging on one of her converse. You scramble to assist her, rapidly tying her shoe as she slipped on the other one.

Once you were finished, you fumbled for your top and panties, hugging the sheet to your chest, that paralyzing scream an ice bucket dousing the fire of your arousel. Now all you felt was dread, and faintly foolish, like you were senseless for actually believing for one second that you could just... let go. Forget about the horrors.

You're gracelessly yanking on your top when Ellie halts you with a hand, giving your shoulder a brisk squeeze. "You stay here. I'll go check it out." She's donning her baggy, brown leather coat, backpack already slung over her shoulder, loaded shotgun in hand.

"No. I'm coming with you." You scoff in objection, tugging on your underwear, crawling toward your backpack.

She strokes her palm across the bend of your protruding ass. "Come on. Please just stay here, alright?" She announces exasperatedly, defeatedly, shrugging a lame shoulder when you toss her an agitated look.

"Why? Why can't I come with you?" You demand, brows furrowed, as you stumble to your feet weakly— your thighs wet and quavering— and shove your feet inelegantly through your jeans.

"Stop— stop." She grips your wrist belligerently, growling the order, her earnest face looming close to yours.

"I don't want you to go alone!" you plead skittishly, anxiously chewing your lip, gesturing animatedly with your hands.

Ellie straightens at your admission, clearing her throat, pink blooming on her cheeks. As if her lips weren't still shimmering vulgarly with your juices; as if she hadn't just nearly eaten your pussy to climax. Her hair disheveled from where your fingers had clawed through it.

"You should keep watch from the window. That scream likely just drew all sorts of shit from the dark. Make sure nothing gets in this building, okay?" She instructs calmly, her scarred lip twitching as she glances toward the door, which you'd blockaded with a dresser. "I'll go check out the noise and come right back."

You consider intensively before grudgingly agreeing with a nod. "Fine," you remark sharply, strutting over to the dresser, where she stumbles after you in surprise of your compliance. You know she just wants to get away from you. Again.

This time, there's more substance to it, more of a sting. The last time she'd rushed away from you you'd taken it less personally; it was alcohol on a paper-cut, as opposed to alcohol on a gaping wound.

You avoid her gaze as you take the left side of the dresser, her taking the right, shoving it away from the door with a loud shrill against the scuffed floor.

You walk away mutely once it's done, wriggling your jeans back up as you pursue your own gun, buttoning them hastily and scooping it up, striding over the mattress and toward the window. You unlatch the expansive glass and aggressively slide it open, requiring more strength due to the rust.

The frigid breeze cascades through the window, your tousled hair billowing with the wind, cheeks instantly tingling at the chill. You prop your forearms on the mucky windowsill, gun in hand, the stars glimmering vibrantly. The air cooling your sweaty skin.

You can sense Ellie's lingering presence in the room, her shifts from side to side creaking the floorboards. You disregard her, closing your eyes, embracing the fresh air, the rustle of the vines coursing up the outer brick of the building.

She eventually clears her throat. "I'll be right back," she announces, reaching for the doorknob, her gaze still burning through your back.

"Okay."

She falters. In the reflection of the glass, her mouth flounders open and closed, something akin to guilt contorting her face. "Be careful," she chooses to say, the door screeching as she shoves it open, glancing at you conclusively from over her shoulder.

"Bye." You respond blandly, not breaking your concentration from the sky.

"Seal the door back up behind me." She demands while departing, not sparing a glance.

Once the door hisses and seals shut, you allow yourself to sink to the ground, your stomach churning with unease. Both because you feared the source of that scream, and because Ellie had just made you feel things you never could've imagined. And now that you've been shown a glimpse of your primal side, you don't know if you'll ever be able to revert back.

You only hover at the window for a few minutes before sealing it back up, retiring your gun back to its original position. You muster all your might to push the dresser back in front of the door.

Once done, you slink back into bed, the room chilled enough now that even with the heater you can comfortably slip underneath the sheet without overheating. You brace your sleep-heavy head on your arms and face the door, waiting for Ellie to return.

Or at least that was the original plan. You don't know how it happened; the exhaustion must've outweighed your concern, for you passed out shortly after laying down, the abyss of sleep consuming you.

You startle awake the next morning, lurching up with a jolt. The sun streams gently through the sheer, white drapes, particles of dust glistening in the dense air.

The first thing you notice is the lack of Ellie.

Her backpack is gone. The heater is off. The dresser is pressed up against the wall; the door ajar. A morning bird chirps from the receptionist desk outside the room.

You swivel to face her side of the bed in alarm, as if you'd magically just missed her laying there, only for it to be empty.

Except it's not totally empty.

The blue bear lays in her stead, carefully splayed across her spot, his fading blue skin clear-cut against the patch of dried blood soiling the mattress.

[urcursebreaker]

don’t mind Pedro Pascal single-handedly keeping the “Found-father” trope alive and breathing

[softchaoticmuse]

“So, THAT is your comfort character?”

*points at the dead fictional man with a tragic past and unresolved trauma*