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She’s so goddamn beautiful, Ellie thinks, not for the first time.
“Shotgun?” Dina asks, raising the joint again.
“Starting to think you just wanna kiss me,” Ellie mumbles, shifting closer with a smile. In response, Dina takes a long drag and presses her lips to Ellie’s, forcing the smoke into her mouth. She feels Dina smiling as she ends the kiss.
“Would it be so bad if I did?” Dina raises an eyebrow.
Ellie pretends to consider this for a moment. “I guess you’d be allowed.” Dina bursts into laughter and falls against her shoulder. Ellie wraps an arm around her, grinning, and picks up Dina’s hand to take another hit off the joint still held in her fingers.
“How’re you feeling?” Ellie asks.
“Stoned.”
“No, about tomorrow, stupid.” Ellie takes the chance to look at Dina, made gold from the dawn. It glitters in her hair, in her eyes, lights every freckle on her face in fiery beams. Ellie thinks she gets more beautiful every time she looks at her- it’s part of why she looks at her so often.
“Hm, pretty good. Not every day you get married.” Dina hides her excitement well, but with Ellie watching her it shines through as clearly as if she had been jumping and screaming. She cuddles into Ellie’s arm, wrapping it around her shoulders and then sliding her hand into Ellie’s.
“You’re most excited about the dress, though, right?” Ellie laughs.
“More excited about you in that suit.” Dina smirks at her, kissing her knuckles. “I mean, damn , El.”
“I get the impression you’re already thinking about consummating the marriage.” Ellie matches her expression, leaning in, gunning for another kiss.
Dina jabs her in the side instead, making Ellie pull an offended face and try to cross her arms, but Dina’s already under one so it just looks ridiculous. “We’ve practically consummated every fucking room of the house-”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Ellie laughs. She kisses Dina’s cheek and uses the opportunity to steal the joint back. “I don’t think that’s what that means anyways,” she mumbles as she takes a hit. Dina shrugs.
There’s a minute of quiet calm, Ellie holding Dina and watching the sunrise, before Dina asks, “How did you know you loved me?”
“Okay, getting deep out of nowhere.”
Dina giggles. “I was just wondering, you don’t have to answer.”
“No, I will,” Ellie decides. When she knew? She was sixteen when she realized she liked Dina, but she gets the feeling that's not what Dina is looking to hear about.
“Do you mean when I liked you or when I loved you?”
“Loved me,” Dina says decisively.
“Pfft. Easy.” Dina lays her head against Ellie’s shoulder as she tries to gather her thoughts. “After- after what happened with Joel, you remember what you did?”
“I took care of you,” Dina responds quietly, somber all of a sudden.
“You did. You stayed with me and made sure I ate and helped me when I freaked out.”
“So it was then? When I was helping you?”
“Not exactly.” Ellie remembers the exact moment, because the force of it had hit like a train. They’d been dating for almost a month, and even through her all-encompassing fog of depression and grief Ellie had been constantly thankful for her, constantly struck by her caring and her easy forgiveness.
“When I told you I wanted to go to Seattle,” she explains. “I told you what I wanted to do, said that you didn’t have to stay, and you didn’t even hesitate. You looked at me and said okay, you were coming too.”
“You go, I go,” Dina mumbles.
“Exactly. That’s when I knew that I was gonna do anything for you. I remember thinking, man, I’m really in love with her for real .”
Dina smiles, looking down at the porch underneath them. “That’s sweet.”
“What about you? When were you sure you loved me?”
Dina considers this for a moment. “It wasn’t until after Seattle.”
“So I fell first.”
“Of course you did, look at me.” Dina smirks. Ellie rolls her eyes, but laughs and silently agrees. “Anyways. We were getting pretty close to Jackson, about a week left to go, I think.”
“You were miserable,” Ellie remarks. “I remember that.”
“Yeah,” Dina agrees. She’d been feeling just as bad as she had in Seattle, except now she was usually conscious to experience it, and it had been hell. JJ had always been very dramatic, Ellie thinks fondly. “And you and Tommy searched everywhere for painkillers that weren’t gonna be expired enough to kill me. You came back one day totally freaking out, so excited, and showed me the bottle, and I got all excited-”
“And it wasn’t painkillers, it was Ritalin,” Ellie groans. “God, please stop reminding me.”
“I think it was very sweet of you to try and help me stay focused,” Dina teases. Ellie hides her face in her hand and groans louder.
“But after that you showed me that you found vitamins for JJ and I, and that was better.” She smiles. “And do you remember what happened after that?”
“Not really,” Ellie admits. “We… went to sleep?”
“You told me to close my eyes, and when I opened them you had put all these little wildflowers you’d found in front of me. They were beautiful. You didn’t find the right meds, but you helped, and I kind of realized that… that’s what you do. You offer what you have, even if it’s only a little, like something to make me smile when I really needed medicine. And I think that’s beautiful, and I knew I could spend my life with someone like that.”
Ellie smiles at her feet bashfully until Dina turns her head for another kiss. She obliges, chasing her lips for a second one as she pulls away.
“While we’re being super deep,” Ellie murmurs, “what are you really most excited for?”
“About being married to you?”
“Yeah.”
Dina considers this, then turns to her. “How am I supposed to just pick?”
Ellie kisses her again, letting her hand stay on Dina’s cheek. “You’re the best.” She smirks. “I am gonna make you pick, though.”
“I will, I’m thinking!” Dina laughs. She rests her head against Ellie’s.
“Is this supposed to, like, transfer the thoughts?” Ellie asks.
“Shut the fuck up for five seconds, you absolute idiot.”
“You’re so nice to me.”
Dina sighs as Ellie breaks into laughter. She looks up at the pink sky, turning more purple as the day breaks. “I think I’m most excited for being able to talk about it.”
Ellie gives her a confused look. “What do you mean?”
“Like, I’m gonna get to go up to people and say, hi, this is my wife, my wife is very handsome today, get your hands off my wife !” Dina points menacingly at the air for her last point, and Ellie tries her best not to giggle. “I know we know we’re together, and I know that we mean it every time we say we love each other, but it just feels like it has more weight. ‘Wife’ sounds way more serious than ‘girlfriend’. People are gonna go, oh, wow, they really do love each other, they’re choosing each other for the rest of their lives. It feels nice to let everyone know we found where we’re meant to be and what we want our lives to be like.”
Dina turns to her. “Are you crying?”
“No!” Ellie splutters, wiping away tears. “I just- eyes are watering, this weed sucks.”
“Oh, I made you cry,” Dina coos, clearly relishing Ellie’s embarrassment. Ellie rolls her eyes as Dina rubs her thumb over her cheek with a shit-eating grin.
“Fuck off, I was gonna say something nice and you ruined it, you completely ruined the moment.”
“What are you most excited for?” Dina asks brightly, as if nothing had happened. Ellie sighs with a smile.
“I’m excited for…” She ponders it, thinking about how she wants to word this. The weed doesn’t help. “I guess it’s the whole promise thing.” Dina quirks an eyebrow in question.
“I know you already tell me all the time that you’re not going anywhere, but… I get to wake up next to you every morning and know you’re always gonna be there. It feels like you’re telling me you’re willing to keep putting up with my shit for as long as I have to. We’re gonna be a team for all of it.” She sniffles, then half-whispers, “I’m never gonna be alone again.”
She feels Dina slipping out from under her arm, and for one terrifying second she thinks she might’ve finally scared her off, but then her small hands are cupping Ellie’s cheeks and pulling her into a kiss so deep and desperate that it feels like Dina needs it to breathe. Ellie feels her shoulders untense and sinks into it eagerly, drinking her future wife in with a slight tang of salt and weed on their lips.
Dina has a point, it does sound way better.
“I love you so, so fucking much,” Dina tells her when they break apart. She rests her head on Ellie’s shoulder, and Ellie can see she’s started to cry too.
“I love you more.” As they sit there, Ellie subtly snuffs out the joint on the porch. Dawn has almost ended, and the sky is a pastel indigo. They’ve got last-minute work to do today- Dina with checking the decorations, Ellie with checking in on the food (and learning to tie a tie herself, although she hasn't told Dina that yet). They’ll figure it out together.
“We’re gonna be such messes tomorrow,” Dina sniffs into her neck.
“Maybe you will, I won’t.”
“You’ll be in tears before the rabbi gets three words in, El.”
She’s right. This is better than Ellie ever, in a million years, could have possibly imagined. Someone like Dina promising her life to her, trusting her with a future that she wants to share? It’s nothing short of magic.
For once in her life, she’s so incredibly excited for tomorrow.