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So maybe smoking in Ellie’s house again wasn’t the best idea, considering last time Joel had definitely smelled it, but when Dina showed up late in the evening with three joints hidden in her pockets and disgustingly sweet maple candy in a paper bag in her hands, it wasn’t like Ellie was gonna turn her away.
It had been a long, long week, and they deserved to relax, she reasoned. The candy was a plus; she was still pretty new to this whole thing, and the dryness in her mouth had really gotten to her the first time, and hey, free food.
Free food while she’s high . Even better.
So now, there they were, sitting on her bed, passing one back and forth while a record spun in the background. She wasn’t too out of it just yet, but she was getting there fast. The song was getting better, even though it was her least favourite on the album, and the green of Dina’s shirt wasn’t brighter, exactly, but it was better too somehow.
She watches her friend take another drag. Dina showed up in an old hoodie and her coat, both of which she had since thrown across the room, and with her hair down around her shoulders- a rarity for a girl who complained at times that she would just chop it all off if it wouldn’t stay in its ponytail. She smokes slowly, holds the burn in before blowing it out gracefully in a way Ellie doesn’t know how to replicate. Dina always makes fun of her for not knowing how to smoke. She’ll learn, she guesses.
“Where did you even get this again?” Ellie sighs, the ends of her words tied together slightly.
“Eugene. Don’t ask me where he got it,” she responds. She’s pretty clearly less high, but whether that’s her having more experience or just chance or whatever is anyone’s guess. Ellie can’t hold back a stupid little giggle, which then sets Dina off, and they’re laughing and shushing each other, and Dina sets her head on Ellie’s shoulder and she can feel the vibrations from her laughs down in her own chest. Weird.
“Be quiet, he could still hear us. He has like, bat hearing. Echoes. Echolocation.”
“Not my fault you live in your dad’s shed.” Dina rolls her eyes, laughter slowly trailing off into a comfortable silence. “That’s still weird, by the way.”
“Fuck you. If I still lived up there , we wouldn’t be able to do this .”
“Excellent point.” Dina lies down next to her and lazily moves her arms against the blankets like she’s making a snow angel. Ellie just laughs again and flops down to do the same. How did the blanket get softer ?
They get to talking once the high has really started in. Dina’s been itching to get back on patrol, but she can’t seem to pick up shifts lately. Ellie, meanwhile, has been prepping for her own run, starting on the weekend. She’s just excited to pick up some new comics- there’s a bookstore along the way that she’s pretty sure has been practically untouched. Dina hums her approval.
“Oh, by the way, I brought you something else.” She shuffles over to her coat, reaches deep into a hidden pocket on the inside and pulls out two thin books, both brightly coloured and glossy like a magazine. She tosses them casually, and Ellie, intrigued, leans over them to read the titles.
“Okay, I get this one-” she lifts the first, some animal science series that did a special edition on dinosaurs- “but you lost me here.” The other seems to have another cover stapled onto its front, something boring like business.
Dina grins wickedly. “Open it and find out.”
Ellie does as she’s told, and her eyes immediately widen to the size of plates. “Dina!” she almost screeches, and flings the magazine back at her. It lands at her feet as Dina laughs, open to a shot of two women in outfits and positions that leave very little to the imagination.
“What? I thought you might appreciate it,” she huffs. “Not like it’s easy to get around here.”
“I can’t just keep that in my house. What if Joel or someone finds it?”
“Hide it,” she shrugs, and sits back down. “Unless you really don’t want it. I bet I could trade it for a good price.”
Ellie considers this for a moment before mumbling, “Shut up, I’m keeping it.” It’s not like she didn’t have a point- it was a luxury hard enough to come by. Bill was fucking lucky. She stands on shaky legs and stuffs it into a crack between her bed frame and the mattress, and then, to shut herself up, she swipes a candy from the bag on the bed and stuffs it into her mouth. “Fuck, these are kind of fucking disgusting.”
“I fixed your stupid cotton mouth, didn’t I?” Ellie just cocks her head and nods, making a face. Her eyelids are getting a bit heavier. It’s not bad weed, all things considered.
“Where did you get that?” she ventures, sliding closer to Dina on the bed. They’re both sitting up again, but she doubts that’ll last for long.
“I already told you, Eugene.”
“No, I meant the porn.” Normally, she’d be a lot more weird about this. It’s a nice change, to not feel her face burn as she talks. It’s a feeling she’s grown all too used to when she’s around Dina.
“Oh, there was this shop a couple weeks ago. Out around Brighton Pass. I just took a shit ton of stuff, honestly.”
“Nice.”
“It was really cool in there. A lot of flags and shit. Like, rainbows everywhere.” Dina trails off for a minute. Ellie’s fine to let her.
“That’s your flag, right?” Dina starts.
“What, the rainbow ones? Yeah. And that pink and orange one too.” It’s been a few years since she’s figured that out, since she’s had the words and the symbols for what she’s always kind of known. She didn’t know there were so many goddamn words for it all. All she cared was that she got one for herself- lesbian , she was a lesbian- and that she had stolen a tiny rainbow pin from a gift shop on patrol, but hadn’t quite worked up the courage to stick it on her bag yet. Or tell Joel, because apparently, that used to be a really big deal in the old world.
“Big, badass Ellie Williams gets the pretty pink flag,” Dina giggles, and Ellie laughs a little too, because everything is a little funny right now, and also sideways. Nope, she’s just sliding down the wall.
She adjusts herself and takes another drag. “I actually get two, because I’m the best. You don’t get any. Fucking loser.”
“I get one, too,” Dina exclaims indignantly, turning to face Ellie again. Her face changes, suddenly, like she hadn’t meant to say that.
Ellie immediately tries her best to recall the words and the other flags, to match them up correctly. She sits up to stare directly at Dina. “What? Which one?”
“I don’t remember.” Dina’s lying through her teeth, and Ellie can always tell because she rubs at her right cheek when she lies. She doesn’t look panicked, though, just surprised at herself, so she presses on. She’s got to know.
“Yes, you do, tell me,” she pleads, eyes wide and dramatic. “Please?” She drags out the word and leans a hand on Dina’s shoulder, shaking her. Dina laughs and pushes her away.
“Dina. Which one?” Silence. Dina grins smugly- she knows the not knowing is killing her.
“Guess,” Dina orders.
“Okay, well, I will, but I’m fucking high and my memory sucks.” Ellie considers it for a minute before starting. Dina continues to smoke as she talks.
“So it’s not the same as mine, you like guys. Or is it?”
“It’s not that one.”
“It isn’t the- the pink and blue and white one, I don’t think, you’ve always known you’re a girl.”
“Yep.”
“And it’s definitely not the one with the grey and purple on it, because I know for a fact you really like sex-” Dina throws her head back and laughs- “you won’t fucking shut up about it, so it’s not that one for sure.”
“Right on all counts.” Her voice is a little lower, a little raspier, and a teasing, self-satisfied tone is buried in it under the smoke. Ellie shivers despite herself, and Dina pops another maple candy into her mouth before speaking. “So what’s left, Ellie?”
“Uh, is it the yellow one? With the pink and blue?” There were a lot of flags, and even if she was stone-cold sober she’s not sure she would be able to remember all of them to guess, let alone half of the meanings.
“Close.”
“Ugh, just fucking tell me! Why do I have to guess?” She throws her arms into the air, grunts when one knocks against the wall and holds it to herself, pouting. Dina laughs at her, but passes her the joint, and she takes another puff even though she knows she’s probably high enough for the night.
Dina has never been one to mince words. “I’m bisexual, Ellie.” There’s no shame in her voice or face, and Ellie wishes she had the same confidence, but she’s heard too many people use her as an insult to be loud about it. She instantly makes a stone-cold sober oath to herself to punch the lights out of anyone who tries to make Dina feel like that.
“So that’s…”
“Pink, blue, purple.” She grins. “Objectively the best one.”
“Hey!”
“No competition.”
They sit in silence for a minute. “I don’t remember what that means, though,” Ellie admits. For some reason, her heart is pounding. There seems to be so few people like her left, and she’s hungry for any scraps of conversation or explanation she can get.
“I like everyone.” Dina shoots her this self-assured smile and runs a hand through her hair, making it even messier instead of fixing it.
“So nobody is safe,” Ellie jokes. Dina punches her arm as they both dissolve into laughter again. Ellie realizes the music has stopped, but she’s feeling too lazy and comfortable to get up and change the record just yet.
“It’s not like I’ll just date anybody. I have high standards, you know.”
“Was that a pun?” Ellie mutters, before slipping into a tone as serious as she can muster with the haze around her mind setting in. “Really, though, good for you. Twice the options.” She eats another candy, not because her mouth is dry or because she’s enjoying them, but she’s kind of starting to get hungry and they’re close by.
She’s up again, searching for the next good record, when Dina adds, “And I’m sure. I’m not confused about it.”
“Yeah, I believe you. Not gonna say I get it or anything, because I don’t, men are fucking disgusting-”
“Not always true-”
“And I’d rather make out with a clicker-”
“Sexy.”
“But yeah. How did you figure it out?” An idea occurs to her. “Oh my god, who were you with?”
“What? Nobody!” Her face turns a slight red, and it’s so out of character for Dina to be embarrassed over this that at first Ellie assumes she’s lying.
“Come on, you can tell me.”
“Nobody,” she responds firmly. She looks so adorable like this, awkward and uncharacteristically unsure with her wide brown eyes- Ellie pushes that thought way back into the recesses of her brain. Part of her questions why she has to anymore. Dina likes girls .
“Okay, sorry. But you definitely had a crush on someone,” she goads.
“Ugh, we’re not doing this tonight!” But she’s laughing, and Ellie wonders if Dina’s doing the same thing she herself often does, desperate for this secret community yet terrified of rejection. The last time she’d tried to talk to one of the only other women like her in town, she’d stuttered and stumbled so badly that she’s sure the older woman will never want to interact with her again.
“I think we are,” she grins. “You always made me talk with you about boys, so this is revenge.” Dina groans, still smiling, and lays down with an arm over her eyes. Ellie plucks the joint out of her fingers- she could use the anxiety dampener, anyway.
“So, who was it?”
“Who was what? Do you mean the first one, or the latest one, or?”
“There’s been more than one?” Ellie exclaims, fumbling the joint. Dina, mercifully, takes it back.
“Well, you see, people typically date more than one person in their lives, so it would make sense that-”
“Shut the fuck up, the first one. Who was she?” Dina just purses her lips, like she’s actually considering not telling her. “I’ll tell you about mine if you tell me about yours.”
This was new- she didn’t talk about her past, let alone the very few people she had loved, but she was willing to try, right now in the coziness of her own house and the safety of her best friend. The promise seems to make Dina more sure, more excited, and the words spill from her lips freely. “So her name was Rachel.”
Ellie gasps before Dina cuts her off. “You don’t know her, she lived back in New Mexico.”
“Fuck, I thought you were talking about Rachel Farrier.”
“Yeah, I know you did, you had that look on your face like you were gonna make fun of me.”
“I was. She’s like thirty. And married.”
“Anyways,” she exaggerates, “her name was Rachel and she was my sister’s... friend’s... little sister. Or something.”
“That’s a mess.”
“Eh, it was fine. We were thirteen, and I remember going swimming and sitting under the dock with her, and she made some stupid joke and laughed, and that was when I knew I wanted to kiss her.”
Ellie gives a loud wolf whistle before giggling stupidly again. “And then what? Did you make out under the docks?”
“No, dumbass, we didn’t. I didn’t kiss her. I didn’t even tell her I liked her. We left New Mexico three weeks later and I never saw her again.” Her tone isn’t as sad as it is contemplative, and she takes a last drag off the joint before putting it out. Ellie groans in protest, but Dina just flips her off. “You’re already high enough. We should be saving these.”
“Whatever.” Ellie’s stomach flips suddenly as she realizes she’s going to have to talk next. “Well, I promised, so. The first girl I fell for was back in Boston.”
“What was her name?”
She takes a deep breath, only partially to clear her rough throat. “Riley. We were roommates in that boarding school I told you about-”
“Oh my god, you were roommates ? Ellie, you dog !”
She just rolls her eyes. “And we were fourteen. I knew I liked her when we got into this really bad fight, and this guy got on top of me and started punching the shit out of me with his stupid rings- that’s how I got this scar. She got up, dragged him off me and fucking pummeled him into the dirt. He never spoke to us again.”
“That’s badass,” Dina breathes, and her eyes are shining, her pupils wide.
“She really was.”
“Did you ever tell her?” The question she’d been fearing.
“Uh, kind of. Not really.” Ellie scratches the back of her neck before continuing. “We, uh, snuck out, and we were dancing, and. Um. I kissed her. And then, uh.” Even three years after, her throat tightens at the memory. She’s had her time to grieve, but she thinks that maybe it will always hurt a little. It’s not every day you watch your first love die in your arms.
“Is this that girl who got bit, before you met Joel?” Dina asks gently.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
They sit in the silence for a minute or so before Ellie changes the subject. “Do you have, like, a type, or?”
“I mean, kind of? Doesn’t everyone?” She hates that they’re both answering questions with questions, but there is so much to know. Dina looks away again, but she’s biting back a small grin as her hair falls back into her face. “Usually tall, strong, kind of stoic, but... knows how to have fun. It’s really the same with men or women. Freckles are cute, too.”
Ellie tries not to think about her own face for a minute.
“It’s kind of weird, but with boys, I’d rather flirt with them, be bold, but if it’s a girl, I’d sort of want her to come to me, you know?” Ellie does know. Talking to girls makes her palms sweat and her heart beat loud in her chest, and she can see how someone wouldn’t want to face that if they didn’t have to. She just does it because somehow, being the one who’s approached makes her even more unsure.
“What about you?” Dina asks, smiling and turning to look at her again.
“Oh, uh.” Dina’s laughing at her again, but she’s not as embarrassed as she would usually be in this kind of situation. It’s probably the weed. “I mean, yeah. I probably do.” There’s an awkward silence before Dina silently raises an eyebrow- go on .
“Uh, brown eyes. Dark hair. I usually fall for girls who are shorter than me, but that might just be because I’m just so incredibly tall-” Dina shoves her- it’s a sore spot between them. She used to be taller, and reminds Ellie of that all the time- “and also, I know literally everybody says this, but confidence is fuckin’ hot.”
“Oh, agreed.”
She feels like Dina’s waiting for her to continue, but she’s got to shut herself up or she’ll spill something she’d rather keep quiet. “I don’t know, I just really like girls.” There’s more- scars and bravery, tan skin, watching a girl fight- but she knows that going on would give Dina all the ammo she needed to make fun of her for the rest of her life, and also to be able to tell about the massive crush she’s had on her for the last year.
It’s still not quite enough to save her. “Sounded like you were describing me for a minute there, Freckles.”
Oh, nope . Shut it down, shut it down. She’s not about to lose her best friend because Dina’s fake-flirting with her again, and she’s also really unfairly pretty like this with her hair messy and her face still kind of flushed, and she also likes girls but she does not like Ellie . She wouldn’t. The panic is vague and displaced and soft at the edges, which is a hell of an improvement from the episodes that Dina usually starts. It’s barely panic at all, just a slow worry, and the more she thinks it over, the less it probably matters.
The rational part of her brain shuts it down. “What about your first kiss?”
“It was with Mark, and it was awful, you know that,” Dina scoffs. Just like that, the tension is gone.
“I meant your first with a girl.”
“Oh,” she murmurs, shifting in her spot. There’s that awkwardness again, for a second time. “I, uh, haven’t yet.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She won’t quite meet Ellie’s eyes, but she’s smiling. The blush is back in full force, too. “I can’t imagine it’s all that different from kissing a guy, though.”
“I mean, maybe.” Ellie’s not sure herself- not like she’s ever done it with a boy- but it’s got to be at least kind of different, right? Most other things are. “The, uh, mechanics are probably the same.”
“Yeah, but it would probably feel different,” Dina muses. “What’s it like kissing a girl?”
“That’s open ended.”
“You can at least try to answer my burning questions.”
“Fuck off.” What’s it like? Amazing. Like someone had told her the answer to something she didn’t even know she was asking about. Like magic, as dumb as that sounds.
“Great,” she mumbles. “It’s... pretty great.”
“Yeah, but what does it feel like? I know kissing is great, I’ve done it already.” She fiddles with her bracelet. “I’d guess it’s softer than with a guy? No beard hair.”
“Uh, yeah. It’s like, where guys are all angles, girls are... softer.” Except not really, because there are guys who don’t have the muscles Ellie does, and girls she knows who are stronger than most men, and facial structure is a thing.
Fuck, this is difficult, and fuck, she’s kind of really high. The universe has slowed down, and it’s like someone turned up the saturation. This is normally where they’d both start to settle down and just relax in silence, throw a movie on and forget about it, but this conversation is blazing a fire through her veins and she never wants it to end.
“I bet it’s nice.”
“It’s hard to explain,” she mutters. “It’s not something you can just put into words, I guess.”
“That makes sense.” Dina is definitely more sober than her, which makes no sense, because she’s smaller, but also makes total sense because she’s more used to it. Dina moves to take another candy, but there’s only a few left now, so she just sort of sighs and throws them in the corner on top of her hoodie.
“Out of weed, out of candy- what’s even the point?” she laughs, and at the same time an idea pops into Ellie’s head, and it’s terrible, and right away, she wants it. Dina notices, because she always does.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she blurts. Nice. Incredibly obvious lie. She’s too high to lie. That rhymes. She giggles to herself, and that probably makes her sound even less believable.
“What are you thinking about?” Dina’s voice has dropped to a whisper.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a lie!” Dina glares at her, falsely indignant. “Tell me, Williams.”
“No.”
It’s completely unfair, the way she sighs, tosses her hair and makes puppy eyes at Ellie. God, sometimes it’s like she knows what she does to her. “Please?” Her face is burning. “For me?” Fuck it.
“I was thinking…” Ellie starts, propping herself up on her elbows. “I can’t tell you what kissing a girl is like.”
“Right.”
“But I could... show you.” It sounds dumber coming out than it did in her head, and her voice is quiet and rough from the smoke and the nerves. It is a terrible idea. She watches Dina closely for her imminent refusal.
But Dina doesn’t say no.
Instead, her lips part slightly and her face turns pink. She looks away, twists at a strand of hair and looks up at her before replying, “That doesn’t sound too bad.”
Holy shit.
“So we just…?” Dina shuffles closer to her, almost in her lap, and lays a hand on her thigh, and her touch burns there. This is a terrible idea. She wants it so bad, though. And Dina seems like she wants to give it to her.
Ellie just stares before realizing Dina was actually asking something. Permission. Right. “Yeah, that’s good. And, uh, it’s like. You can put your hand here.” She guides Dina’s other hand to her shoulder like they’re preparing to waltz. It’s a good excuse to keep looking at her face, her lips, her brown eyes.
“Your eyes are really red,” Dina giggles, and she’s close enough that her breath tickles her face. She’s really going to do this.
“I’m not that high.” She rolls her eyes. She kind of is, though.
“Shut up and kiss me,” Dina whispers. Ellie feels a lot like she might explode, so she lifts a hand to her best friend’s face, runs a thumb along her cheek, and leans in to meet her.
It’s not a long kiss. Dina’s lips are soft, and she responds, but carefully, experimentally. Ellie is sure to be gentle. It feels like any movement would break this bubble, send her back into a normal universe where this never happened. Reluctantly, she pulls back slightly to see Dina with her eyes still closed and lips parted.
Her eyes open, and she leans in to press their foreheads together as a brilliant smile breaks across her face. “That’s… kind of amazing.” Her hand travels up from Ellie’s shoulder to the back of her head, and her other one traces circles on Ellie’s thigh.
Ellie, in the meantime, has become too breathless to do anything but stare. On impulse, she blurts, “Wanna do it again?”
Before she can even think to apologize, before the panic starts ringing in her head, Dina nods quickly and pulls her back in. There’s a slight edge to her kisses now, a confidence she found in the first one and brought along. She kisses like she’s learning something from it, which Ellie guesses is the point; slow and thorough and warm. She tastes like maple sugar and weed. Ellie loses herself completely in it.
The weight of the hand on her thigh disappears, and Dina is suddenly on top of her hips. What universe did she stumble into? Can she stay here forever? The hand in her hair pulls her in deeper, somehow, and trying to contain herself is so, so hard, because she doesn’t want to scare her off, but she also just wants her so bad , and she has for a long time now. Dina’s lips part, and Ellie feels the brush of her tongue against her own mouth. It takes everything in her not to moan out loud, and she ends up with a choked whimpering noise instead.
“How’m I doing?” Her eyes flash open. Dina is grinning at her, looking perfectly comfortable in her lap with her hands tangled in her hair.
“You lied,” Ellie breathes. “There’s no way you haven’t done this before.”
“I haven’t,” she insists before kissing her again. “It’s just- you were right. Mechanics are the same.”
Ellie probably has a joke for that, but it’s gone from her mind when Dina shoves her to lay flat on the bed. She meets her lips again eagerly, and suddenly her hands are running along Ellie’s sides under her open button-up.
“Is this okay?” she murmurs against her lips. Is it okay? She’s been wanting this for- fuck, too long. She chokes out a quick “yeah” and feels Dina grinning into the next kiss.
She hasn’t moved her hands, one still on Dina’s cheek and the other lying uselessly at her side, grasping the covers to keep her cool. Dina fixes that- grabs her other hand and pulls it to her hip, moves it there over her tank top.
“You’re allowed to touch,” she jokes. Ellie’s still not sure, so she gently wraps that arm around her waist to pull her closer still, and the gasp she gets from that action is probably the greatest thing she’s ever heard.
Their kisses get deeper quickly, and their hands get more and more bold. Ellie gets the hang of where Dina wants her, and Dina’s clearly a fast learner when it comes to how Ellie wants to be kissed, to be touched. The little sounds she makes spur Ellie on, and before long she’s worked up the nerve to flip Dina over and hold herself above her where she’s more comfortable.
She takes a moment to admire her like this- her eyes wide with something like shock, like satisfaction, her long hair thrown across Ellie’s pillows, her lips red and wet. Ellie presses a different kind of kiss to her cheek, soft and small, and Dina smiles back at her, and she smiles at Dina, and something feels so right.
She’s so beautiful.
She’s not hers.
The electric truth of it shocks Ellie out of the moment, and she sits up to give Dina her space back. She feels like she has to say something to break the tension. “Like I said, it’s... pretty great.” She offers a small smile, scratching at her arm. “Now you know.”
Dina blinks, and she looks confused, almost hurt. Her brow furrows, and now Ellie’s thinking about kissing the spot where it wrinkles, but she can’t think about that, because Dina is not hers. Now she can’t stop thinking about kissing Dina. She doesn’t get to just do that. This was a mistake.
“What are you doing, El?” Dina asks in a small voice.
“What do you mean?”
Dina looks away again, pushing herself up onto her hands and fixing her hair. Just like that, it’s over. Stupid, stupid. They’re never gonna talk about this again. This is gonna ruin one of the few good friendships Ellie has.
“I like you,” Dina admits softly. “And I’m pretty sure you liked that.” She’s always so direct. “I didn’t show up here to just waste a bunch of candy and good weed and magazines on you when I could’ve just kept them for myself.”
But . Where’s the but? There’s always a but.
It never comes.
“I wasn’t expecting this , I mean- I was just hoping… maybe you felt the same.”
“I do,” Ellie exclaims without thinking, “I really do, I just. You don’t really like me, do you?” She’s got to smoke more often if she gets this confident when she’s high.
“Ellie, why would I say I did if I didn’t?” She laughs. Ellie’s seen this smile on her before, but never because of her- this awestruck thing so full of love that she usually reserves only for her dates. “Yeah, I- I really like you. I’m glad you kissed me.”
“Me too.” She sits in awe for a second, but ultimately she can’t resist. Ellie shoots a crooked troublemaker’s smirk at her and repeats in a purposefully low, raspy voice, “Wanna do it again?”
Dina’s eyes widen and her sweet smile becomes something hungry. “God, yes.”
Ellie leans back over her with a smile and presses her down into the bed, and they continue just where they left off.