Archive of Our Own

MatchMatzo: lul

Travolo_: what??

axterxci: ???

strgame: ellie ur pretty

Dr_Roe: game sucks

PlasmaPlayer: LMAOOOOOOOOOO

bigbootybagel: turn cam on

kaclyd: its on the next left

Flocksoy: left

ThatMisterNan: ♡♡♡

agathaCrispy: ♡♡

Redbird2133: LUL LUL LUL

ObsidianOstrich: WRONG WAY

BlueBlueBloo: other way!

vanDir4D: right side

dark__horse__: RIGH T

phoneatingbear: Go left!!!

beancity: andkfkfkfmf

chayyim_: ♡♡♡

BoxNavy: did you see my tweet?

“Thanks for the sub, Coolgabe,” she said, glancing quickly at her chat.

They were being more active today than usual, with more people tuning in than she was used to. She was happy to see the numbers going up, even though she knew they were only showing up for the trendy horror game she was trying to power through.

She stared at the death screen for what seemed like the dozenth time in the last hour and sighed audibly.

The chat box was a whirl of messages—both supportive and disparaging—flipping by almost faster than she could keep up with. A message popped up from Jesse on their mod channel asking if she wanted it on slowmode. She texted him back an affirmative.

“‘You suck at this game,’” she read aloud.

“It came out today!” she said. “Sorry I’m not a fucking genius at it.”

She took another moment to read the chat.

“Link, link,” she said. She clicked on the link they were sending her and opened it up to another streamer’s page.

It was some little boy who seemed to already be working on a speedrun for Haunted. He clipped through a wall on the level she was stuck on, a glitch that presumably hadn’t been patched yet, and was at the exit in seconds. She cleared her throat and turned back to her main monitor.

“Okay. He’s good. But he’s one guy.”

“‘He’s a kid,’” she read.

“Do you know how crazy good kids are at games these days? That doesn’t mean anything.”

“‘You just suck.’” Ellie laughed.

She restarted the level again and tried going right this time. Fucking chat trying to trick her into going the wrong way. Who even included a maze level in a modern horror game? She was starting to doubt the actual quality of the game—people flocked to anything horror related in October.

She watched the view count jump to a hundred more viewers. Whatever keeps them watching, she thought.

“‘Cam on,’” she read aloud. She scoffed and shook her head.

“No, guys, not today.”

FoxitFancy: WHYYY

Grumplepuff: LOL

nickye: u missed a secret

ya11ive: Why Not :(

Despayeeto777: D:

AlterSpectrumx: y not :(((

Elsaroo: COWARD

theythem_bones: D:

Ellie laughed at her chat’s antics.

She heard a plate clanging behind her and winced, hoping her mic didn’t catch it or that maybe the game’s audio managed to mask it. She had told her she was streaming today and that she had to be quiet.

“Sorry, guys,” she said. “Maybe later.”

Sham584: TURN IT ON

shredves: I’ll unsub if you dont turn cam on

fortunelittle: we want to see :)

khaseoli: !!!!!!! PRETTY

NickYZZ: ♡♡♡♡

HollowYourself: the next part is easier if you just finish the mazd its not bad just keep oging you can do it

godsidnee: CAM ON PLEASEEEE

sam4erclone: TURN CAM ON TURN CAM ON

Sky_w4lk: ??????????

Adonivanne_: TURN IT ON LUL

s2araha: omg

raspmorton: go left here now!!!

hueOddyssey: ITS A HORROR GAME WE WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE

Ellie ignored them for the next few minutes, focusing on getting past the level she was at for now.

Haunted was the newest single player story-based horror game that had been sweeping in popularity for the last few days even before release. Both streamers and channels on other video platforms were hamming the game up, and reviewers with early access all generally had favourable impressions.

Ellie supposed she was a bit of a variety streamer when it came to the games she played—she didn’t stick to any particular kind of game usually, though she generally leaned toward early 2010s console titles. She had a decent following as well, and most importantly it was a consistent following despite the diversity in her channel. That meant that people generally tuned in to watch her instead of the games themselves. All things considered, she thought she was doing quite well for herself.

She heard another bang in the kitchen.

“Gimme one sec, guys,” she said, before putting her mic on mute.

“Could you keep it down over there?” she yelled.

“Sorry!” Abby yelled back from the kitchen.

BradlynnArts: LUL

snoozincopter: forgot to mute lmao

FreeTheSeal: FACECAM

ElQwert94: WHO

Zicadian: owO

fanshiiii: did u forget to mute?

Ellie darted her gaze to the mute button that she had indeed forgotten to click. Shit.

“Yeah. Shit. Forget about that.”

She clicked the resume button on her pause screen and kept playing, commenting now and then about the progression of the story and asking chat where to go next whenever the solution didn’t immediately come to her.

She tried not to let them pressure her into doing anything she wasn’t fully comfortable with, but it was an interesting position to be in. Over three thousand people were watching her on an average basis and she was just one girl; hard as she tried, it was sometimes hard to ignore them.

340CatCat: CAAAAAM

ReandFear: facecam pls :)

swoocemister: face cam or unsubbing

ey8a115: FACE CAM

She swore under her breath. Fuck it.

Ellie switched her windows for a second to turn her camera on. It was already attached and set up, just in case she ended up in a situation like this. She supposed a part of her was expecting this reaction considering the number of new viewers who were watching. Whenever she watched another person playing a horror game, she appreciated the added touch of getting to see their reactions herself.

Her face popped up on the bottom right of the screen. It was dark outside already, with the days getting shorter and shorter, but she had a pretty decent lighting setup thanks to Jesse. Her face was illuminated by her ring light, and she was backdropped by half of her bed and the door to the hallway.

“Hi,” she said, her smile growing as she saw chat’s messages about her. They always talked about how good and pretty and cute she looked and she knew that was the kind of thing anyone with a decent following got whenever they showed their faces. Despite that, she still hadn’t mastered stopping her face from flushing under the attention.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “It’s on. Are you happy?”

Maree_co: ♡♡♡♡♡

anow17: YES

c_hlobu: yes yes

beeszsz: ♡♡♡

elcrypt94: YESSSSS

tubit: POG

“Fuck you guys.”

She read a few more messages, some of them wondering if she’d gotten a new camera.

“Yeah, I got a new camera,” she said. “I just set it up today. You’re so lucky it’s actually working.”

She clicked back onto the game and continued playing. By this point she had proceeded past the maze based on trial and error alone and was able to progress more than half of it that way. Chat had become more amiable after her camera went on, and they guided her patiently the rest of the way until she finished the level and went onto the next one.

She straightened up her posture for a second and winced as her back ached. Then she checked the time.

“Might be a good time for a break now,” she said. Some people on chat were complaining but it seemed like most were agreeing with her. She had been streaming for almost three hours.

“Okay, guys. It’s time for a pee break. Take five minutes to get a drink or something.”

She put up her AFK screen after shutting off her camera and muting her mic.

She was planning on going for a couple more hours at least. It was past six already, which explained Abby making a racket in the kitchen. She had such a rigid schedule Ellie wondered if she gave herself any time to have fun. Not that she’d ever bring that up to her—they weren’t on the best terms with each other.

She passed by her in the kitchen on the way to grab a drink. All of Ellie’s stuff in the fridge was on the higher shelf, and all of Abby’s on the lower. Abby had explained to her once that they didn’t have to do that; they could save a lot more money if they just shared some of the basic stuff like milk and bread. Ellie had obstinately denied her suggestion, even if it was a really good one, just to be difficult.

She grabbed her orange juice and drank it straight from the jug, snickering internally knowing that Abby fucking hated it when she did that.

“I have an exam tomorrow morning,” Abby said, not looking up from her phone. She was sitting at their breakfast table with her empty plate pushed to the side.

Ellie raised a brow and otherwise said nothing.

“Don’t stay up too late.”

Ellie ground her teeth. She hated when Abby said underhanded shit like that; pretending like she was looking out for her when she was obviously trying to tell Ellie she better not keep her up doing her stupid stream. She knew Abby looked down on what she did—after all, she wasn’t the one enrolled in med school.

“You should be taking your own advice,” Ellie said, taking another sip of juice.

Abby paused from tapping on her phone for a second before starting again.

“Is there a problem?” she said nonchalantly.

“No,” Ellie said. She twisted the cap back on the jug and shut the fridge roughly before stomping away.

Fucking Abby and her stupid fucking fuckface always pissing her off.

“By the way,” Abby said, before Ellie could reach her room. Ellie stopped midway down the hall and winced. She should have ignored her and kept going.

“Have you seen my dumbbells? The blue ones?”

Uhh.

“Uhh… No,” Ellie said.

She quickly took the last four steps to her room and shut her door, leaning back against it and exhaling a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. Stupid fucking Abby knowing where all her shit was all the time. Ellie took a mental note to help her loosen up a little by trashing her room or something.

“Hey, guys,” she said after she unmuted. She turned her camera on and put her headphones back on.

“Okay. Where were we?”

---

She was streaming the next day as well. Tried as she did, she ended up a lot more tired than she expected last night and turned in early without beating Haunted.

That didn’t mean Abby was right, though. Not at all.

After all, she had taken her time to update all her programs and software that morning, and even set up the new gear Joel had gotten her, including that new webcam. With all her new stuff and a monitor she’d gotten herself as a treat, she was ready to sink her claws into streaming at a regular schedule.

When Jesse had moved back home to New York and Dina had moved out to go to grad school in Italy of all places, she needed a new roommate since she couldn’t pay rent all by herself and sure as hell wasn’t gonna get Joel to help her. Around the same time, Joel had reconnected with an old buddy from college, Jerry, who happened to have a daughter around Ellie’s age who was looking for a place in Seattle.

Ellie had expected a naive freshman who she could be a big sister to or something, someone who she could have late nights in watching shitty movies together and go to concerts with. Having spent the last four years of her life primarily focusing on passing her merciless physics program, she was ready to take a break for a bit and start having an actual social life. Her new roommate was supposed to signify a bright future for her.

Instead, she got Abby.

Abby Anderson was four years her senior and four inches taller than her. She had every modicum aspect of her life organized in a very tight and concise schedule—something Ellie had observed the first couple days they lived together and had subsequently confirmed when Abby left her planner out on the table once. Ellie’s eyes almost bugged out of her skull. Overall she had concluded med school would probably kick her ass.

More importantly, she also concluded that Abby was not Fun.

Her dreams of late night movies and getting shitfaced at concerts with her new best friend hadn’t disappeared completely—she could still go out and find somebody else who’d want to do that with her—but the chances of doing so had significantly diminished. It wasn’t like Abby ever showed or said anything about what she thought about Ellie’s lifestyle, but now that they were roommates, Ellie felt an unsaid expectation that she should get her own shit together as well.

While Ellie was making spare change being the modern equivalent of a clown on the internet playing video games, Abby was in med school getting a doctorate. The pressure was palpable.

Ellie had grown to inexplicably hate her perfect and probably toned guts as a result. And it didn’t fucking help that even when Ellie was being a piece of shit to her, she was always so nice.

“No! Fuck!” she yelled at her monitor as it flickered on and off. She smacked it a couple times but the screen only flickered off as it died entirely. She had just started the stream for the day, spending the early afternoon setting everything up.

Her old monitor had been showing some issues for weeks, which was why she had ordered a new one. It was supposed to come today, but she’d been checking her phone all morning and didn’t get a single notification that it had arrived.

She looked at her main screen—she could keep going with just her one monitor, but she liked having two. She turned her camera on for a second to update her viewers. Her face blew up on the screen that was working and she sighed in frustration as she had to drag chat over a part of it.

She took a second to look at the viewer numbers trickling in. There were less than a couple dozen people tuning in and chat was as slow as it was gonna be.

“My monitor just broke,” she said sheepishly.

A wave of concerned messages passed. She chuckled as a couple people expressed their willingness to send her their own.

“Yeah I know. I should have seen this coming. I really thought I had a couple days left.” She rubbed her nose in frustration. She had already started… she couldn’t back up now that she’d shown her face, even when so many of her watchers would be supportive of her choice.

“Look… Here’s the plan. I can try to—” She was cut off by a knock on her door. Fuck’s sake.

She got up and opened her door a hair’s width.

“What?” she hissed. “I’m streaming!”

“Give me my stuff back,” Abby said. It looked like she had just come in judging by the backpack still strapped over her shoulder.

“What stuff?” Ellie said, pulling an innocent look. Abby raised a brow.

“My stuff, Ellie,” she said sternly. “The dumbbells? My fucking hat? Really?”

“Your hat?” Ellie said.

Oh yeah. Her hat.

“And I know you’ve been taking my socks,” she said. “Like, one of each pair.”

“What?” Ellie said. She shook her head, tamping down the urge to laugh. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, Ellie. Why would you?”

Ellie glanced behind her at her chat. She couldn’t see what they were saying from all the way by the door, but she saw the sudden influx of messages wondering what she was doing.

“Look, I’ll look for all your stuff later okay? I’m still streaming.” Ellie made to shut the door in Abby’s face but Abby held it back with a hand, pushing it open even wider.

Ellie gripped the door and pushed it again, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Go away, Abby!” she hissed.

Abby’s mouth was a thin line as she glared at her.

“My stuff.”

“Okay, okay,” Ellie said, shoulders slumping. “I get it.”

“You have a package downstairs,” Abby said, before letting the door go as Ellie shut it closed. She really fucking wished they had locks in their apartment.

She went back to her desk and winced at all the messages.

sawdustBunny: monkaS

g_o_n_zo: who were you talking to???

Kray396: she’s in trouble :(

gatsuchan: What r u playing today?

AscendedFlame: WHO WAS THAT

lindezzy: who

ai_mac: girlfriend

TechnoToast: was that your gf

dalur5k: ??????

CiGuy: landlord omegalul

alba27: who was that 👀

Ellie gritted her teeth and forced a smile.

“My roommate,” she said plainly. She ignored the way that chat seemed to go crazy at that, focusing instead on changing her setup to work with a single monitor. The package Abby mentioned was probably the new monitor she’d been expecting, and when she checked her phone her suspicion was confirmed. Shit.

Stupid Abby being right all the time. Who did she think she was? And so what if Ellie took her shit sometimes? It wasn’t like she was using any of it.

Ellie knew she preferred the gym downstairs and rarely worked out at home, and it wasn’t even cold enough out yet to wear a hat. And the socks—well. Okay. Ellie had done that just to piss her off.

When it started to take a little longer setting up than she wanted, she went back on camera. She fixed her irritated-looking expression and willed her face into a pleasant, calm, demeanor. Abby wasn’t going to ruin today’s stream, no sirree.

“Sorry, guys. Could you bear with me a little longer?”

She explained to them her situation and they seemed supportive enough. Thankfully, though that depended on how one would look at it, there was a smaller turnout today than last night, with people mostly tuning in from time zones where it was already evening and they’d already clocked out at their nine to five jobs.

“I’m gonna grab my monitor downstairs and we can open it together. How’s that sound?”

An enthusiastic response.

“Okay.”

She checked the time; more and more people were only going to start showing up. She surmised she probably had enough time to go down, get her package, and come back up with a minimum amount of complaining on chat’s end.

She got up and quickly made her way out of her room, sliding into her sneakers and jogging to the elevator, leaving their door unlocked behind her.

Down at the lobby, she exchanged quick pleasantries with Peter and finally obtained her package. The box was lighter than she expected.

It was waiting for the elevator to come back down that was taking forever—she was fit enough, but she wasn’t risking taking the stairs to the tenth floor with her precious monitor in hand. She tapped her foot impatiently, her mind wandering again to Abby’s admonitions.

She couldn’t help the growl of annoyance that escaped her the exact moment the elevator opened up to an older lady who nearly jumped at the sight of Ellie.

She lowered her head and murmured an apology as the woman stepped around her and out of the elevator. Ellie took her place and slammed her elbow onto the close door button. Even the slow way the elevator‘s doors closed was adding to her irritation.

When she got back inside and into her room, she nearly dropped her box on the carpet floor.

“Abby!” she yelled.

No response.

“Oh my god,” she hissed, placing the box gently by her desk and taking a seat at her computer.

Her mic was on mute, but she had completely forgotten to turn her camera off.

Chat was having a party.

grillMasterxBBQ: raid lul

goodsmeller: come back :(

DreadrosS: ♡♡♡♡♡

TastelessFaus: how long have you lived together?

AcuraPurple: MED SCHOOL SOUNDS HARD GOOD JOB

puterfacient_gropeclown: OMEGALUL

Saint_65: LOL LOL LOL

ampersand17: ellies gonna be maaaaaad D:

Echooes2: ???

GrilledGuy: wh

Vayngo: LUL

Sailorfruits: What school?

hit_the_quan_8000: WHERES THE GAME

C0TTT0: wheres ellie

dearsears: ??????????

pon_fresh: UR HER

GoAwayTwitchForgotMyEmail: hi

GentlBlue: are you finishing haunted today

ChiillingInHere: LUL ellie ur gf is funny

Ellie’s knuckles popped as she curled her hands into fists.

She was gonna fucking kill her.

“Abby!” she shrieked.

She heard a thump on the other side of the wall and her door burst open.

“What? What’s wrong?” One of her earphones was dangling out of her ear, the other still plugged in.

“You went in my room?!” she yelled. “Not cool!”

“I just peeked in!” Abby said. “If you gave me all my shit back I wouldn’t have to do that!”

“I told you I was gonna work on it!” Ellie felt her face heating up.

She swiveled around in her seat and ended the stream. She wasn’t in the mood anymore.

She winced, realizing she should have ended it before she called Abby over. Now they had half of their argument forever immortalized on the vod.

The chat was certainly confused, though some of them expressed their amusement at their little show. Most of the messages, to Ellie’s immense chagrin, were asking to see Abby again.

She rubbed her fingers on her temples, trying to will her anger to calm down. She had promised Joel that she would work on her short temper, but ever since Abby had moved in with her, every day was a huge fucking struggle.

She turned back to look at Abby, who was still standing by her door looking at her phone, tapping away. Probably gossipping about her to her stupid friends.

An idea popped up in her head. Chat wanted to see more of her? Ellie would gladly give them what they want.

“You owe me now,” Ellie said, crossing her arms.

Abby looked up from her phone and raised a brow.

“Ellie,” she said, gesturing to her room with her phone. “Give me my shit back.”

“I’ll give all your stuff back if you stream with me.”

Abby opened her mouth as if to say something, but she paused for a second before laughing.

“What?”

“You heard me. My viewers love you. Why? Do you not want to? You scared?”

Abby scoffed.

“I’m not scared. I’m busy, Els. I have, like, actual shit to do.”

“I guess I’m keeping all your socks then,” Ellie said childishly, turning back around in her seat dismissively.

“And your weights. And your hat.”

“So you admit you took them.”

Ellie pretended to busy herself at her computer.

“You’re the one who owes me,” Abby said, her usually level voice taking on a hint of annoyance.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you stealing is rude? I’d have given you whatever it was you needed if you’d asked.”

Ellie clicked her mouse louder.

“You’re not letting this go, are you?”

“Stream. Friday at seven,” Ellie said.

Abby wasn’t a pushover, not by any means.

But she was nice.

A moment passed.

Abby sighed.

“Fine! Okay, I’ll show up. But give me my stuff first.”

“After.”

“Ellie. My stuff.”

“After. And you have to apologize. For coming into my room like that.”

“I have to apologize? You apologize!”

Ellie turned around in her chair again and glared at her.

“No. You.”

Abby scoffed and looked around her room, like she was looking for an answer to Ellie’s behaviour on her furniture. At this point though, Ellie knew she had already gotten used to Ellie’s deliberate obtuseness. It practically slid off of her like water off a duck's back—it was how Ellie managed to get away with so much shit and Abby hadn’t moved out yet. Though it wasn’t for Ellie’s lack of trying.

“Okay! I’m sorry I went into your room and made all your viewers like me way more than you. Your turn.” She crossed her arms, waiting for Ellie to speak.

Ellie doubled down on her glare.

“Sorry I took your stuff.”

Abby’s shoulders relaxed. She nodded.

“Okay. Great. Friday at seven then.” She gave Ellie a warning look. “You better find all my stuff by then.”

“Whatever,” Ellie said, turning back to her desk.

Now she had to think of how to humiliate her in front of thousands of people.

---

By the time it was Friday night, Ellie had set up her equipment well in advance. She hadn’t gotten any games ready, though if the chatting stream cut short she would keep going without Abby. She was planning on asking Abby hilariously embarrassing questions—that is, if chat didn’t beat it to her first.

Abby had the courtesy to knock on her door this time.

“Uhh,” Ellie said, brain momentarily short-circuiting. “Are you wearing that?”

Abby looked at her room, raising a brow. So Ellie might have tidied up a bit; she didn’t have to be so shocked about it.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

“It’s just ’cause chat’s like…” Ellie said, unable to find the words for a moment. She went back to her desk and pulled the second chair she’d dragged in from the kitchen next to hers.

“They’ll probably like. Say inappropriate stuff,” she said, eyeing Abby’s bare arms.

“It’ll be fine,” Abby said, taking the seat next to her.

“Are you sure? There’s still some time if you wanna change—”

“Worried about me?”

“Wha—? Worri—No! I—No,” Ellie spluttered.

Fuck this.

She turned to her computer and started the stream. She tagged the stream as “Just Chatting” and waited for viewers to show up.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re just gonna talk to them,” she said. “Like you so kindly did the other day.”

She had gone back to watch the mess of a vod the stream from Monday had turned into before promptly deleting it. But knowing the internet, it probably existed in another form in some far corner. Thankfully she wasn’t huge enough of a personality yet for anyone to particularly care, and it hadn’t resurfaced and led to anything unsavoury about her.

If anything, the five minutes Abby had sat down and talked to her chat had done her more favors than not.

As she had suspected, Abby had done more than “peek in” on her stream. She sat by her desk, found the unmute button, and had a full blown conversation with some of her viewers. It was innocuous talk, mostly with Abby introducing herself and what she did. It seemed like she was about to say something about Ellie when she’d suddenly gotten up, muted the mic, and left. A few seconds later Ellie had shown up looking thunderous.

A couple dozen people popped up and immediately chat was a whirl of excited messages. She turned her camera on and held back a sigh, reaching up to adjust it so their heads could be level with each other. Ellie was not short, god damn it.

“Could you move a bit—There,” she said. Great. They were perfectly in frame.

She turned to Abby, who was smiling at all the messages on the screen.

Bankake: ABBY

fairynoc: VOD

SoundCrash1: omg

alchemilly: vod vod vod

lobster_belover: !!!!!!!!

ruiner84: FINALYYYYy

rough_j4zz: vod

weef_bellington: :D

axel404: <3 <3 <3

niceguy730: is abby short for something

ashyyyFay: sdlkjkgltkgf

FMangooses: vod

Cellotyx: vod lul

legodude15: <3 <3 <3

axLOLtle: abby is not short

Ellie turned the mic on.

“Hey,” she said. She leaned back on her chair and waited for a few more people to trickle in before she started making introductions.

Quite a lot of them were enthused to see Abby there, and so far none of them had said anything that horrible to either of them.

Ellie backtracked for a second. She supposed she wanted them to say fucked up stuff. That was the goal, right? She shifted on her chair.

Abby seemed to be enjoying all the attention.

“Did you wanna play something?” Abby asked.

“Oh. Did you?” She didn’t seem like someone who’d be interested in video games.

“You probably thought I’ve never held a controller in my life,” Abby said, eyes still on the monitor.

“What?” Ellie said. It sounded a little too forceful.

“Before I moved in with you, my old roomie, Manny, had a… I think it was a PlayStation. Three? I think,” Abby said. “I played with him sometimes.”

“Oh,” Ellie said. “Cool.”

Chat was still scrolling by at a regular pace. Some of them were already asking questions.

“Did you— What did you play?”

Abby leaned back in her seat and seemed to think for a moment.

“He had a few fighting games he was awful at. Tekken. Street Fighter. I’d beat him all the time and then he’d declare the PS3 was off limits until I learned how to stop being a sore winner.”

Ellie smirked.

“Honestly, most of the stuff Manny played were RPGs. Like… He had this whole campy series about a samurai. Samurai something.”

“The Lonely Samurai?”

“Yeah. That was it!”

Her smirk had grown into a full blown grin and she found herself exchanging smiles with Abby.

Ellie turned back to look at chat and cleared her throat.

They had passed five hundred viewers already and it kept growing steadily.

“Hi, guys,” she said, greeting them again. “This is Abby. She’s my roommate.”

milktea950: “”””roommate”””””

get_crepuscular: Hi

Vodoka: WOW

Zinniagal: <3 <3 <3

doccockass: how long have u been roomies?

veikuro: hello

cascatellii: new person new person new person

s2arah: where did u meet :eyes:

Demothens: HIIIII

imCatTea: abby marry me

Gentl_slav: wow hot a what

anteater52: ABBY R U SINGLE

Ellie resisted the urge to cover her face with her hands. She caught a glimpse of herself on the webcam and straightened her shoulders, realizing belatedly that she was curling into herself in mortification.

Abby was laughing.

“Our dads know each other,” she said.

“Oh. I should probably say the question first, right?” she added, turning to Ellie.

“If you want,” Ellie croaked.

“Someone had asked how we knew each other. I was looking for somewhere to live and my dad told me his friend’s kid had a place here in Seattle, so. Oh shit, I probably shouldn’t say that.”

“No, it’s okay,” Ellie said. “They already know where I— we live.”

“Isn’t that kinda creepy?” Abby asked her, brow raised. “No offence to you guys.”

“Seattle’s a big place. As long as we don't get into specifics.”

Abby seemed unable to shake the concern from her face even as she nodded in understanding.

“Okay,” she said. “Well… I got into a med school here and I had to move all the way from Salt Lake City. I grew up there.”

“Someone asked why you wanna be a doctor.”

“My dad’s a doctor,” Abby said plainly.

Ellie knew that. She thought that was an overly simple reason to pursue something as big as that. Though in all fairness, she only wanted to work for NASA because she was a huge space nerd as a kid.

“Is it hard?” Ellie found herself saying. “Medical school.”

Abby shrugged.

“It is what it is. I’m in my third year, so it’s gotten a lot easier compared to the first year. But you have to stay on top of everything or else you’ll have a hell of a time catching up.”

Ellie scratched her neck, feeling a little bad she’d gone out of her way to force Abby to go on stream with her even when she knew she was busy.

“I’m here now? Well, yeah,” Abby was saying in response to someone in chat. “Ellie asked me to.”

Ellie flushed.

“I mean. She blackmailed me.”

Ellie stepped on her foot.

Abby blinked, barely reacting.

“How long have we been roommates?” Ellie said. “About half a year.”

They continued to answer questions from chat like that, with most of the questions targeted at Abby. She answered them all graciously and kept things vague like Ellie suggested.

“Do they know what your plans are?” Abby asked her.

Ellie shrugged.

“It’s not really their business.”

“Yeah, but I answered all these questions about me. What about you? What was your program?”

“Uhh…” Ellie glanced at chat and back at Abby. Her elbow was on her desk and she was leaning her cheek on her hand, looking at Ellie curiously.

“I did astronomy and physics,” Ellie said. “I wanna try getting an internship at NASA.”

She felt oddly self-conscious about it, like she was confessing something personal and not a very basic aspect of herself. She supposed she was used to being the one STEM kid in her friend group, so actually talking to someone trying to get a doctorate in medicine had somewhat unexpectedly put things into perspective.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was really fun, actually.”

“Why astronomy?”

“I always liked it… Ever since I was a kid,” she said.

“It started with this comic. Savage Starlight?”

Abby shook her head.

“Never heard of it.”

Ellie glanced at chat. Some people recognized the name, and she was encouraged to keep going.

“And then Joel got me some stuff since he saw how much I enjoyed it. He got me that telescope.” She nodded at the shelf by her window where the toy telescope was standing. Abby hummed.

“And on my fifteenth birthday he brought me to this science museum. It was when we lived in Jackson.” She grinned at herself at the memory.

“He convinced one of the curators there to let us into one of these reentry capsules—like the room astronauts sit in when they come back to Earth,” she explained to Abby.

“It was pretty fucking cool.”

“He must really love you,” Abby said, eyes soft.

“My dad would do the same for me. Except in hindsight I think he only brought me to all those zoos and science centers so he had an excuse to go himself.”

“Where would you go?”

“He liked bringing me to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake.”

“I’ve been there,” Ellie said. “We passed by on the way to my uncle’s.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. We got to pet the giraffes. They’re so cute.”

“Oh yeah, they still do that. Honestly, our trip wasn’t as pleasant. One of the zebras had gotten sick right in front of us.”

“Oh shit,” Ellie breathed. “Was it okay?”

“It turned out it was pregnant,” Abby said. “No one working at the zoo had any idea since it had just been brought in.

“My dad’s got this hero complex. He volunteered to take a look at it since their in-house vet had stepped out for a few hours.”

“I can see why our dads would get along,” Ellie said.

Abby huffed a laugh.

“Right?”

They exchanged looks for a moment, and Ellie was unable to stop herself from smiling. Abby had managed to find the one thing that always lifted her mood: talking about Joel.

She found herself noticing things about Abby that she’d never realized before. Her eyes were a blue she’d never seen before—dark, almost grey. And hair she’d always thought of as brown was actually a lot closer to blond. She always had a couple strands loose, too, and while Ellie would suspect they might be intentional, they could easily have just slipped from her neatly braided ‘do after hours hunched over her work.

“I didn’t know you had dimples,” Abby said.

“What—”

“Right here.” She poked the side of Ellie’s mouth with a finger.

“I—”

Her phone buzzed on her desk and she hastily grabbed it. It almost slipped from her fingers as she turned it to look at the screen.

It was just a message from Joel checking up on her.

She looked back up from her phone and at her monitor. Chat was having the time of its life. The numbers had gotten stable around the two thousand mark, but the rate the messages were popping up hadn’t seemed to slow down at all.

ItsHallbert: i think they forgot us

Valuable_Increase: What did you do for your undergrad Abby?

baeby_baer: YO ANSWER MY AUESTION OMG

12_Notalongtime: …

ManyRabbits: get a room

Zexurge: ellie where did u grow up

sharkicane1298: how much is tuition in seattle????

vabygo: i have a brother whos in vet tech. any advice?

CowbastionDior: LUL ROOMMATES

hancebond: my boyfriend just broke up with me thanks for streaming this today guys :(

awowowuga: how old are u

Cthulouson: ???

juniper2246: how many times do i have to ask my question :///

neodomestic99: KISS

actuallysad_1: hellooooooooo

010203zerofour: HEY What did I miss

octogotto8: OHHHHHHHHHHH

hegaylian: gay

holyholly: ive been to hogle zoo!!!!!!! everyone there is nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FtraintoFtown: kiss or i unsub

ducks4sale50cents: i wanna pet a giraffe :)

Rx_namix: How long is this stream going to be?

Ellie ignored how Abby’s eyes were still on her and how she found her heart inexplicably pounding out of her chest. What the fuck was that?

“You should answer a couple more questions,” Ellie said, pretending to focus on chat.

She looked at the time on her monitor—they’d been going for over an hour already and Ellie hadn’t even noticed.

“Don’t you wanna ask me something?” Abby said.

Ellie hazarded a glance at her again, but she was looking at chat amusedly.

“Okay.” She chewed on her lip for a moment, trying to think of a good question.

“What kinda music do you like?”

Abby laughed.

“What? Why’re you laughing? You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to,” Ellie said defensively, crossing her arms.

“No, it’s nothing,” Abby said. “It’s a good question.”

Ellie waited for her answer. She felt overly conscious of chat now, like they were sitting in on something they shouldn’t be. But if she ended the stream now, Abby wouldn’t have a reason to stay.

Wait. What?

“I listen to a lot of classical artists. I have all these CDs my dad passed onto me; Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy. And I’ve been getting into jazz lately. Don Smith and Frank Garcia are my favorites.”

Ellie almost missed her answer, finding herself a little too preoccupied with her conflicting reasons for getting Abby on stream in the first place—or not on stream?

She couldn’t find it in herself to ask any of the stupid questions she’d thought of during the week now that Abby had seemed to be a completely different person than she’d thought.

“Not that I’m not open to other kinds of music. You like that punk rock band right? Thoughts Twenty?”

“Yeah…” Ellie rubbed her neck in embarrassment. “They’re supposed to be performing here next month.”

“Is it your first time seeing them?”

“It would be,” she said. “I don’t know about going since everyone ended up bailing.” She forced a laugh.

“You should still go! I’ll come with you,” Abby said.

“What?”

“I’ll come with you,” Abby said, eyes light with amusement. Was she fucking with her?

“Are you fucking with me?”

“No!” Abby laughed again.

She was totally fucking with her.

“I have reading week next month. Come on! It’ll be fun.”

“A-are you sure? Aren’t you busy?”

“I’ll make time.”

Ellie looked for any indication that Abby was pulling her leg, but it was like trying to find cracks on a perfectly painted surface. She would be the first to admit she wasn’t the best judge of character, but Abby was stringing her along like she’d never been before.

“Okay.”

And Ellie couldn’t believe she was letting her.

She ended the stream soon after that, barely glancing at chat except to say a few goodbyes. They seemed ecstatic enough that Ellie was happy for them, even when she was finding it hard to describe what she was feeling for herself.

“That was fun. We should do it again,” Abby said. She had helped Ellie drag the chair back to the kitchen and the harsh fluorescent light wasn’t making her look any less warm when she said it.

“I don’t know if I’ll be doing another one…” Ellie said, her face heating against her will. Now that it was just the two of them, she wanted nothing more than to go back into her room and stay there for as long as physically possible.

Abby’s expression fell an infinitesimal amount, and if Ellie didn’t find herself unexpectedly aware of every little move Abby was making she might have missed it.

“Your stuff,” Ellie said.

She quickly went back to her room and found the shoebox she’d stuffed all of Abby’s things into. Her hat was the hardest thing to find—she’d found it nestled under her bed behind all her boxes of comics. She looked at the knitted beanie in her hand for a moment, stroking the thick wool. It was soft.

“Thanks for finding my hat,” Abby said, making Ellie nearly jump. What was she doing?

She opened the box to put the hat inside and found a warm hand wrapped around her wrist.

“Do you like it that much?”

“Sorry I took it,” Ellie said sheepishly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s getting cold again. You can keep it.”

Ellie scoffed. Abby’s hand on her wrist was like a brand.

“It’s yours.”

“And now I’m giving it to you. A ‘thank you’ would be great.”

Ellie curled her socked toes on the carpet.

“Thanks.”

Abby finally let her go and took the box with her, leaving Elie standing in the middle of her room with her new hat.

“Good night, Els.”

“Night.”

---

The next few weeks were nigh unbearable.

Abby was still as busy as always, and she wasn’t at home as much as she was out either at school or the gym or some other commitment Ellie didn’t have the balls to ask her about. Even their sleeping schedules didn’t line up, with Ellie being awake most of the night and asleep by the time morning hit, just when Abby had woken up. So it was unlikely they would actually come across each other.

They had lived the better part of a year like that, with their scarce interactions being civil at best and cold at worst—mostly on Ellie’s end. Now, Ellie found herself being painfully aware of it when they bumped into each other, or when she heard Abby’s muffled voice five feet across from her on the other side of a wall. Ellie nearly kicked herself.

She had to get out more.

“Where are you going?” Abby asked. She was in their living room with her textbooks laid out on the coffee table. She preferred working at her desk, but lately Ellie noticed she’d found a good spot in the middle of their apartment. Not that Ellie minded; she herself spent most of her time in her room.

“Just out,” she said.

She paused by their shoe rack when she noticed a mailing tube leaning against their closet.

“This yours?” There wasn’t a label on it that indicated who it belonged to.

“Yeah,” Abby said, getting up from the table.

“My ex sent it,” she said.

She opened the package and unrolled a thick sheet of paper with a carefully painted landscape of Salt Lake City on it.

“Damn,” Ellie said, feeling herself bristle. “He’s good.”

“He’s okay,” Abby said, smiling fondly at it.

“I’ll be out late,” Ellie said, pulling her shoes on. She patted her jacket pocket to check if her hat was inside.

“Got your hat?” Abby said, as if reading her mind.

Ellie pulled it over her head and made for the door.

“Wait.”

Ellie stiffened when Abby turned her around and straightened her hat, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“There. You look much better now.”

“You sure you’re not fucking with me?”

“I fixed your hat, Ellie. Do you think I am?”

Ellie glared at her. She could feel her cheeks heating up and she tucked her face under her collar.

“Whatever,” she mumbled. “Thanks.”

“Text me when you’re on your way back,” Abby called behind her as she shut the door.

In the six months they’d been living with each other, they hadn’t exchanged more than a couple prompt texts about rent. Her last message from Abby was asking her if she wanted to go out with her college friends. Ellie had ignored it.

Ellie glared at the faceless icon Abby’s contact was defaulted to.

She found herself in a bar she’d never been to before. She didn’t recognize anyone, which meant nobody recognized her. Not even the girl who sidled up on the seat next to her and started to chat her up.

“I’ve always wanted freckles,” the girl was saying. She was cute in the dainty sort of way, confidence radiating from every part of her.

She leaned close to Ellie and traced her cheek. Ellie winced and pulled away.

“Oh, sorry,” the girl said. Ellie didn’t think she’d even introduced herself.

“What was your name again?”

The girl blinked her unnaturally long lashes at her.

“Caroline,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Ellie.”

They had a few more drinks, making small talk like that. It was nice, talking to a complete stranger about nothing of particular consequence—Ellie let herself go into autopilot, politely accepting Caroline’s request to take it to the club across the street.

The club was packed even on a weekday night, the music shaking the whole building. She could barely take a step without bumping into somebody, partly because she’d gotten herself more than a little tipsy.

She let Caroline pull her closer to her—she smelled good, like the kind of perfume you could get at those tacky lingerie stores Dina liked to frequent. Ellie always felt so out of place in those stores, always so conscious of her own femininity or lack thereof, like she wasn’t being a girl the right way. Here, in a club full of faceless people, she felt more like herself. She embraced the anonymity, the quick exchanges that never led to anything the next morning; the transiency felt fucking great. She had no idea what had led her to do quite the opposite to make money.

She wrapped her arms around Caroline’s waist—she was thin and soft, and Ellie felt like a gust of wind could push her off her five inch stilettos and onto the filthy floor. Their bodies molded into each other and into the rest of the people around them until Ellie couldn’t distinguish where she started and where Caroline ended. Caroline took her face in her hands and held their faces together, reaching for a kiss just as the music halted to a stop as the song ended.

“Wanna go to my place?” Caroline murmured. “Or yours?”

Ellie blinked her eyes open and saw Caroline looking at her with heated eyes. She very nearly pushed her off when the brief silence brought a moment of sobriety to her clouded brain.

“What time is it?” Ellie asked.

“What?” Caroline’s expression morphed into one of genuine confusion.

“The time,” Ellie said, pulling herself away from her.

“Who cares what time it is? Come on El, let’s just have fun.”

“Don’t call me that,” Ellie said, her voice slurring against her will.

“Woah, Ellie. You okay?” Caroline brought her closer to her.

“Let go of me,” Ellie said. “I—I need to go. Where’s my stuff?”

Caroline guided her gently back to the booth where she didn’t remember dumping her stuff in. She bumped onto the seat and managed to find her jacket in the blinking lights. She grabbed her jacket and put it on, batting Caroline away when she tried to help her.

“Ellie?”

She patted her pockets, looking for her phone, and sighed in relief when she felt its solid weight and it flashed on. It was past midnight. Shit.

“Ellie, come on. Stay,” Caroline said.

“My hat.”

“Your what?”

She managed to turn the flashlight on and shined it onto the booth. She checked under the table and in between the seat cushions, but her hat wasn’t anywhere.

Ellie turned to the club and found it utterly full of people.

“Fuck.”

Caroline stepped into her space.

“What’s wrong? We can go somewhere else.”

“No,” she hissed. Caroline widened her eyes and took a step back.

“No. I’m sorry. I have to go,” Ellie said apologetically.

Caroline took a good look at her and shrugged.

“I hope it works out,” she said knowingly, then walked back into the crowd of people.

Ellie stumbled out of the club and into the cool air outside. The downtown streets were still bustling with partygoers and barhoppers, and even the club Ellie had left had a sizable line of people waiting outside.

She cursed herself. She could check the bar she’d been to earlier. She looked across the street and could see through the windows that it was packed; she doubted it’d still be there.

She checked her phone again and sighed as she sent a text.

---

She must have been standing by the hallway for almost five minutes, keys in her hands, when Abby opened the door for her.

Abby blinked at the bright light of the hallway, squinting at Ellie with a groggy look on her face. She couldn’t blame her; she was standing outside their apartment like a weirdo at two in the morning.

“Hey. You okay?”

Ellie pushed past her and kicked her shoes off, hearing Abby shut the door behind her and locking it with a click. She zipped her jacket down and stopped midway.

“You didn’t have to get up.”

“I thought I heard something,” Abby said. She smiled sleepily. “Light sleeper.”

Ellie put her hands in her pockets, guilt inexplicably creeping up at her from the emptiness she found.

“Go back to bed,” Ellie said.

She sighed. She had sobered up on the taxi ride back and wasn’t as drunk as she really wanted to be. She was having second thoughts now, her mind clear enough to judge her own actions. Why didn’t she stay with Caroline?

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Ellie’s mouth bent into a deep frown, and to her frustration, she felt her eyes burning.

“Hey,” Abby said softly.

The harsh light of the foyer was probably doing nothing to help Ellie hide herself. She took a step back when Abby moved closer to her. She willed herself to move, to turn around and go back into her room, but she found her feet stuck to the floor and arms loosely wrapped around her, like Abby wasn’t sure if she would fight back or something.

“You look so sad.” Abby exhaled a short laugh.

“What happened?”

Ellie leaned into the solid weight of her. For the first time in ages, she felt light.

“I’m such an asshole,” she murmured into Abby’s shoulder. She smelled like their detergent—the one thing Ellie was willing to split between them.

“Why? You got rejected?” Abby said.

Ellie curled her hands in her pockets.

“Your hat. I lost it.”

Abby pulled back a second to look at her. Dragging her head back felt like trying to pull a rock by a measly piece of string. She focused on the doorknob over Abby’s shoulder.

“That’s why you’re upset? It’s just a hat.”

Ellie groaned and curled herself back into Abby, shutting her eyes. She was fucking exhausted.

“I wish we were friends,” Ellie found herself saying, her voice muffled by Abby’s soft T-shirt.

“We are friends.”

Ellie meant to shake her head, but her shirt was just so soft. She rubbed her face into it harder.

“You’re drunk, Ellie.”

“Mmmm.”

“Come on.”

Abby helped her zip out of the rest of her jacket and dragged her to her room, one of Ellie’s arms looped over her shoulders.

Abby dumped her unceremoniously on her bed and she landed face down on her pillow.

“Get some sleep, okay? I’ll cook you breakfast if you’re good.”

Ellie curled her fingers into her sheets, her mind flashing with images of the next morning. Abby? Cooking her food? Her stomach flipped in on itself.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Your bed, your mess.”

Ellie flipped over onto her back and tried to find Abby’s face in the dark. It wasn’t fair—she couldn’t see her at all, but the light from the hallway meant Abby was witnessing her in this shitty state. She was probably laughing at her in her head.

Ellie hated that she cared so much about what Abby thought of her. She knew she was shit at words, at trying to put together the messed up pieces in her head into something coherent, something she could look at clearly that told her the answers she was looking for. She hated that it took so much work just trying to understand herself.

It was so much easier to say that she hated her. She hated her so fucking much.

“I fucking hate you,” Ellie said.

“Go to sleep, Ellie.”

When she shut the door behind her, Ellie found herself engulfed in darkness.

---

The morning after, Ellie had found a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast on their table. Abby had gone to class.

Things between them had shifted somewhat, or at least that’s what Ellie thought. It seemed like something anyone would expect after helping another person who was drunk into bed.

Ellie didn’t feel as strong of an urge to compare herself to Abby anymore. She found herself disparaging her own shortcomings less and less, like in the little things like when she stumbled over her words during a stream or when she didn’t get as high of a view count as the night before.

And even in the big things. Like the fact she was slowly coming to realize that what she felt for Abby wasn’t something she’d ever expected to feel.

She swore at herself for having said all that stuff to Abby under the guise of being drunk; at least Abby hadn’t given her any indication that she suspected otherwise.

She wished they were friends? She winced. Really?

In fact, aside from the occasional times they’d unavoidably bump into each other in the hallway on the way to the bathroom, Ellie was starting to see less and less of her. But she couldn’t just go up to her and ask why.

“How’s it going, kiddo?”

“Oh, you know.”

A beat passed. Ellie checked her phone for a moment to see if Joel had accidentally hung up. He was still on the line, the photo of the two of them from her birthday last year staring back at her.

“Ellie, I’m calling you because I don’t know.”

Ellie shrugged, realizing belatedly that Joel wouldn’t be able to see her.

“It’s the same as always.”

“So you’re doing good?”

“Sure.”

“How’s Abby?”

Ellie got up from the couch, almost knocking over the bowl of candy on the coffee table she’d been working on. Abby had brought in one of those boxes of chocolates that turned dirt cheap once November hit. She had given half of it to her class and brought the rest home.

Ellie glared down at the plastic wrappers scattered on the floor.

“She’s fine.”

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive, kiddo, but please feel free to be more specific.”

“She’s fine. We’re fine. She has—”

“Yes?”

“She has reading week next week,” Ellie said, starting to pace. “And we’re like, going to this stupid concert.”

The silence that followed was long enough that Ellie sincerely thought Joel hung up on her for real this time.

“Joel?”

“You’re going to a concert? Together?”

“Yeah— Why— You don’t have to sound so happy about it!” Ellie crushed a wrapper under her foot and it crinkled audibly.

“That sounds fun, kiddo. I hope you have a great time.”

“Mm-hmm. Thanks.”

Ellie stopped for a second to look out their balcony door. It had been overcast all week. It looked like it was gonna rain.

“So you two are finally getting along, huh?”

“Joel.”

“You know, I’m glad you’re finally warming up to each other. It’s about time. Jerry called me up the other da—”

“Joel.”

“—how Jerry is. Never spits it out; he’s too nice. I got it outta him anyway and he says that—”

“Joel.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re good. She’s… I’m just—”

I’ve been a total dipshit of a roommate for the last six months and now that we’re actually talking I think I like her, like, like like her, and I don’t even know why it just kinda happened and I still wanna punch her in her stupid fucking fuck fuckface but also not as much anymore, wasn’t exactly something she could drop on Joel on a Tuesday morning.

She sighed.

“Jerry said—if you’d let me finish—that Abby was having a good time. And I believe her.”

Ellie leaned her forehead against the cool glass of their balcony window. She watched as she exhaled and her breath made a foggy shape on the glass in front of her. It was warm inside.

“You better.”

Joel chuckled on the other end, and then he switched the subject.

---

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t fucking know them!” she said. She got up to clear their dishes from the table.

“But they’ve been wanting to meet you for ages.”

“No.”

“Remember when I asked you last time?”

Ellie winced.

“That was different.”

“Care to explain how?”

‘Cause that was when we spoke an average of three words to each other per week.

Ellie cursed under her breath.

“It just was, okay?”

“Yeah. You left me on read that time.”

Ellie’s shoulders tensed, and if she put the plate on their dishrack a little harder than necessary, Abby didn’t say anything. Instead, she got up and took her place next to Ellie and started drying the dishes.

“Are you busy that night?”

Ellie could say yes. She wasn’t planning on streaming that night.

“I’m streaming.”

“No, you aren’t.”

Ellie shot her a glance. She looked pretty sure of herself. Since when did Abby know her schedule?

“Then why would you ask if I was busy?”

“It’s called being considerate.”

“Wow, congratulations on being the nicest person in the world, then,” Ellie said forcefully.

She let Abby take the knife she was holding from her gently so she could dry it. When their fingers brushed momentarily, Ellie wanted to scream.

“I don’t know if you have other plans,” Abby went on.

Ellie could say she did.

She sighed.

“No, I don’t.”

“Then come.”

She turned the tap off. The kitchen was filled with a deafening silence as she waited for Abby to put the last dish in its place and turn on their kettle. She didn’t know when she stopped giving a shit about dividing what was whose. It was all theirs, now.

“Do you want me to owe you?”

“Huh?”

“Like, if you did this. For me. As a favour.”

“It sounds like—” she stopped for a moment, suddenly overly conscious of how close they’d gotten. Not as close as the night Ellie had come home drunk, but she found herself flushing. When she tried to take a step back, the counter behind her nudged her lower back. She looked away from Abby’s stupidly blue eyes and glared at the wall behind her shoulder instead.

She tried again.

“It sounds like you’re doing it more for your friends.”

“We’re friends.”

Ellie scoffed.

“Since when?”

“Since we started sharing a roof.” Abby took a step closer.

“Roommates aren’t always friends.” Ellie crossed her arms.

“What about when you covered rent for me that one time?”

Ellie shrugged.

“Same thing.”

“Since you had me stream with you, then.”

“You owed me.”

“Okay. That’s fair,” Abby said, smiling a little. “Since you suddenly became a big fan of sharing.”

“I’m saving up.”

“Since you started waiting for me to get home before you went to bed.”

Had she been doing that?

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Since you started cooking bigger portions.”

“I’m just bad at measuring.”

Abby laughed.

“Since you don’t look at me like you wanna stab me all the time. Since I see you outside of your room more than not. Since I’ve finally seen you smile.”

Ellie swallowed dryly. The kettle Abby had turned on was already boiling, the steam coming out of it in a harsh burst. She rubbed her arms; it was cold in the kitchen, and her tank wasn’t helping any.

Abby had been looking at her amusedly the whole time, like they were playing a game. She supposed they sort of were—though what kind it was and whether either were willing participants wasn’t entirely unquestionable. At the last part, her eyes softened and her expression turned sincere, shedding the thin layer of condescension that Ellie always hated her for.

“Come. I promise they’re super nice.”

Ellie looked her dead in the eye.

“Nice enough. I know they’ll like you.”

“If you’re trying to sweet talk me—”

“Is it working?”

Ellie scoffed. She wanted to slap herself—it was totally working.

“Ellie, you’re so funny.”

Ellie raised a brow.

“Fuck you,” she said mildly. Her arms were still crossed. She didn’t resist the urge to start tapping her foot impatiently.

“You’re so smart, and pretty, and cute.”

She bit her lip, the urge to smile taking her by surprise.

“You’re such a genius, a master at video games, and—what was it you called it? Being an internet clown.”

She bit her lip harder and forced a glare.

“And no matter what they say about them, I think you’re actually a really useful lesbian! You always help out around the hou—”

Ellie uncrossed her arms and pushed her hard, unable to mask the unappealing snort that escaped from her. Abby had taken a step back to put some space between them again, and she was smiling again, a real one. They looked at each other for a moment, and Ellie thought it was a little too cold inside for the tinge on Abby’s cheeks.

“If I do this for you…”

Ellie paused for a moment to think.

“If I come to your dumb dinner party, then you have to do what I tell you for a whole day. I pick the day.”

Abby tilted her head to the side in contemplation.

“Do I get to know in advance?”

“Sure.”

“Are you gonna make me do something fucked up?”

Ellie gasped mockingly.

“I thought you said I was nice.”

“Did I? I said you were funny. And smart. And cute.”

Ellie hummed.

“Not nice.”

“I won’t make you do something fucked up.”

“Good—”

“At least, not according to my standards.”

Abby shot her a look.

“So you’re coming?”

Ellie felt herself relaxing, giving in. Abby was looking at her with such hope in her eyes she couldn’t help but crack up a bit, and when Abby blinked in confusion, she grinned at her. She was like a puppy. A big, terrifying puppy who could probably snap her in half if she wanted to, but she didn’t, and instead did nice things like cook her breakfast and put up with her shit and took care of her and called her cute.

“Sure. Why the fuck not?”

She didn’t even have enough time to react when Abby closed the distance between them. She wanted to cringe, to run away, to let her do whatever it was she was about to.

Abby reached for the cabinet behind Ellie and grabbed a mug. Then she made herself a cup of tea.

“Thanks, Els. I owe you,” she said, before making her way back to her room.

When Ellie got into hers, she pushed her face into her pillow and screamed.

---

She’d said the party was just going to be a small gathering at her friend Nora’s place somewhere uptown. Nora was also Abby’s classmate, but they’d known each other since high school. Nora lived with her mom and her aging grandfather in a quiet neighborhood that was surrounded by suburbia and not much else.

When Ellie opened the door to her, she greeted Abby warmly, completely bypassing Ellie. They hugged like old friends, and Ellie thought she was looking at her over her shoulder with a lot more hostility than was warranted from essentially a stranger.

She and Abby had arrived last, which was mostly Ellie’s fault, though she’d rather die than ever admit that.

Abby had been looking for this sweater Ellie had never heard of or seen before, and she’d gone and accused Ellie of adding it to her collection from last time, which—if not rude as fuck—wasn’t even true.

That is, until Ellie pulled said sweater out of the back of her closet after Abby had let it go. It was dark green and had been easily camouflaged under all her black T-shirts. It smelled clean, a fact which she had observed from an acceptable distance between her nose and said sweater. There was no contact whatsoever with the sweater aside from her hands on it, and her face, really far from it, at a normal, non-creepy distance away.

Then she dug a deep hole in the mountain of clean laundry that had accumulated in her closet over the last week or so and buried it again. And when she stood up over it she felt a manic urge to perform a fucked up eulogy or something. Here laid Ellie’s dignity. It lived a long and fulfilling life and tragically passed away, poor and alone, in her closet in Seattle. She kicked the pile.

Nora greeted her next, with less warmth in her eyes, and led them to the living room where the rest of Abby’s friends were.

Immediately, Ellie felt overly conscious of being the youngest person there. It wasn’t by much, but it was intimidating nevertheless, especially when everyone knew each other and she didn’t know any of them.

Except Abby, obviously.

“Hey, guys. This is Ellie.”

“Hi, Ellie,” a guy said. Ellie knew he was Owen from the pictures in Abby’s room.

“I’m Owen,” he said, pointing at himself. “This is my girlfriend, Mel.”

Mel waved shyly. She looked nice.

“Creepy looking guy is Manny.”

Manny smiled at her and happily flipped Owen off.

“That’s Leah. Jordan. Nick. Whitney. Nora, obviously.”

“Hey,” Ellie said. She put her hands in her pockets.

Abby took her jacket off and motioned at her.

Ellie shook her head.

“I’m good.”

Nora led Abby back to the hallway and Ellie was left standing there in front of all their friends.

“Come sit,” Owen said, patting the seat next to him on the couch.

“You look like you’re about to bolt,” Mel said.

“What? Don’t leave yet, Ellie,” Leah piped in. “I have so many things to ask you.”

Leah nudged the disinterested Jordan next to her, and he murmured something that sounded like an encouragement. He was sitting across from Nick, who was similarly engrossed with something on his phone. Whitney hadn’t even looked up from her game to greet her.

Ellie gingerly took the place Owen had offered her. It was a bit of a squeeze, with him and Mel already taking up real estate. Ellie had to take her hands out of her pockets and suddenly didn’t quite know what to do with them.

“Is that a tattoo on your hand?” Mel said, leaning over to look at her behind Owen.

“So what’s it like living with Abby?” Leah said, a huge smile on her face.

“This is an open forum for complaints,” Manny said. “Trust me, I know what it’s like.”

Ellie looked between the three of them for a moment. She caught Owen’s eye and he rolled his eyes mockingly. Ellie felt an unexpected camaraderie with Owen, who seemed like a decent guy, if not a little plain and, well, too normal. She had no clue what Abby had seen in him.

“Yeah,” she said to Mel, unrolling her sleeve a bit. “I got it when I was eighteen.”

“I always wanted some ink myself, but it’s fucking hard to choose what, y’know? Does yours mean anything?” Manny asked.

“Well… Yes and no. My ex-girlfriend designed it, so she sort of thought about what it meant and shit. I just mostly think it’s cool.” They didn’t need to know any more than that.

“So what would you say it means, then?” Mel said. “Not to pry,” she added.

Ellie shrugged. She stroked the fern creeping from her hand up to her forearm.

“The moth,” she said, pointing to the crook of her arm, where the tattoo was hiding under her parka, “is supposed to be about… hope? They’re attracted to light. I know it’s just instinct for them, but I see how people can choose to see it differently. Like, finding the light in a dark tunnel.”

She shrugged again, acutely aware that Nora and Abby had walked in while she was talking.

They took a seat across from her, and Abby offered her a bowl of popcorn. She grabbed a handful and stuffed it in her mouth.

“My dad used to say that a lot,” Abby said. “It was his go-to advice for everything, even when it didn’t make any sense—at least not at the time. ‘Look for the light,’ he‘d say.”

“That’s really cheesy,” Ellie said over her mouthful.

“Uhh… Did you hear yourself five seconds ago?”

Ellie took a piece of popcorn and threw it at her.

Leah clapped her hands once, making Ellie nearly jump.

“Well, that’s that,” she said, before getting up and leaving the room.

“What’s what?” Abby asked, raising a brow at Ellie.

Ellie took another handful of popcorn as Owen changed the subject.

“So what do you do, Ellie?”

“I stream,” she said.

Owen looked at her questioningly. Mel elbowed him on the arm.

“Excuse this dinosaur,” she said, ignoring his “I’m younger than you!”

“She livestreams. On the internet. Do you have a lot of viewers?”

“It’s getting up there,” she said.

“How much does that even make?” Manny said.

“First of all, that’s a rude question and you don’t need to answer it,” Mel replied for her. “Second of all, I also would like to know how much you’d make from that.”

“It’s alright,” Ellie said. “I still have savings from my job from college. And my dad helps out sometimes.”

“Is it fun?” Owen asked.

Ellie snorted.

“Yeah, it is. You get used to it. Chat—people who watch and message on the chat box—can be sort of hectic, but I wouldn’t be where I am without them.”

“Maybe I should get into this streaming thing,” Owen said to Mel. She shot him a dull look.

“Beats working at a carshop,” he said.

They went on having conversation like that, at an easy-going pace that Ellie found herself comfortable with. Her anxiety had abated somewhat, and when she hazarded a glance at Abby, who’d been mostly quiet, she was looking at Ellie.

What? Ellie mouthed.

Abby smiled and shook her head.

“Dinner’s ready,” Whitney said, peeking her head in from the hallway.

Nora had been toiling away in the kitchen and had dragged Whitney along to help her, and Ellie quietly appreciated how well she was handling making dinner for so many people. She’d have broken down ten minutes in if she was hosting something like this by herself.

“Eat up, guys,” Nora said, taking the head seat at the table. Ellie was seated to her left, with Abby across from her.

“Thanks for this, Nora,” Ellie said.

“You’re welcome,” Nora said, smiling at her. Her disposition seemed to have taken a sharp turn from when they’d first met. She passed down a plateful of potatoes and Ellie took it gratefully.

“Nora’s the best cook out of all of us,” Manny said next to Ellie. “Probably glad to see some edible food for once, huh?” He winked at Abby, who rolled her eyes.

“I am not that bad,” Abby said defensively at the wave of laughter around the table.

“I don’t know…” Manny said. “Remember the lasagna?”

“Oh my god, what lasagna?” Leah said, forking half the salad bowl on her plate.

“You don’t wanna know, Leah,” Owen said.

“I don’t think she’s that bad,” Ellie said.

All heads at the table turned to her.

“What?”

“Really?” Manny said. He threw his head back and laughed.

“I think you’ve got some explaining to do,” Owen said to Abby.

Abby was looking resolutely at her plate, seeming to have chosen to mind her own business.

“You got her to cook you something that actually resembled food?” Jordan said.

Ellie looked at them and felt her face heating at the attention. They’d only started sharing whatever it was they’d cooked for themselves recently after an unspoken agreement between them. Ellie didn’t think it was any better or worse than what she typically made herself. If anything, it was always nice having someone cook for you.

Especially if it’s Abby? she thought. Ugh.

“I guess.”

Manny howled with laughter again, like the concept was so unbelievable to him it needed to be expelled somehow.

“You seem to have improved a lot on the roommate front,” Nora said. She took a sip of wine.

“I’m sure it’s all ‘cause of Ellie’s influence,” Mel piped in. “You have a lot to live up to, huh, Abby?”

Ellie knew Mel was just trying to be nice, but she had no idea how she’d gotten it in the completely opposite direction.

“Whatever you guys say,” Abby said.

“Oh, yeah, right. Right. We’re right all the time,” Manny said, nudging Ellie on the arm and squinting at Abby.

“Typical Abby manipulation tactic,” he mock whispered to Ellie. “She’s planning something.”

Ellie decided to help her out a little.

“It’s been fine living with her,” she said. “More than fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” Owen said.

“Ellie, blink twice if she’s holding you hostage,” Jordan said.

“I heard you’re seeing Thoughts Twenty this weekend?” Nick butted in.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “She wanted to come with me.”

“Fucking lucky,” Nick said.

“I’m glad you’re taking care of each other,” Mel said.

“She’s adopted you then, hasn’t she?” Jordan said.

“Huh?”

“Like that one kid—what was his name?”

“Oh,” Manny said, tapping his fist on his palm. “Uh… Yara and uh—”

“Lev,” Mel said.

Ellie looked at them questioningly.

“Abby was tutoring these kids in her undergrad and they sort of grew attached,” Owen said.

“Owen.”

Abby was looking at him with an expression Ellie couldn’t pin down.

“Let me tell you, we did not see that one coming,” Nick said.

“She’s not the nurturing type,” Leah said.

Ellie did not like the direction this conversation had gone in.

“Don’t say that,” Mel said.

“So what’s it like being Abby’s newest little sister?” Jordan said, a huge grin on his face.

“I—What?” Ellie said. She put her fork and knife down, and it hit her plate with a clang.

Manny was laughing again, wiping tears from his eyes. Ellie was starting to get more than a little irritated at him.

She looked at them incredulously, wondering if she heard Jordan right, but they had all continued talking without waiting for an answer from her. Even Abby was laughing along, and she felt the thing inside her that had barely been hanging on break.

She cleared her throat and looked at her half-full plate. The food looked delicious still, but her appetite had left her entirely.

She excused herself for a moment under the guise of going to the bathroom. She didn’t even notice her legs had taken her to the front door until she saw a flash of light from a passing ambulance piercing through the french door’s glass. Her hand was curled around the cold brass of the doorknob.

“Bathroom’s the other way,” Abby said.

Her fingers tightened around the doorknob and she pulled it open.

“Could you tell Nora and them thanks for the food?”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I think I’m gonna get the fuck out of here.”

Abby stepped around her and pushed the door shut.

“Now? Why?” she said, though Ellie didn’t notice a hint of confusion in her expression.

“What? What do you want?” Ellie said.

Abby averted her gaze to look at the wall over Ellie’s shoulder, her mouth a straight line.

“I asked you a question.”

“What does it matter to you if I’m leaving? What the fuck do you want?” Ellie said again, heatedly this time, and she couldn’t stop herself from pushing Abby on the shoulder. Abby crossed her arms and otherwise didn’t budge.

Say something.

“Because if it’s something they said—” Abby started.

Ellie barked a laugh.

“—they’re just like that. It was a joke.”

“A joke? Oh! Okay, a joke. I’m fucking dying laughing here!” She laughed dryly. Her thoughts were scrambled in her head, like if she wasn’t paying enough attention she’d lose the thread that she was barely managing to hold on to.

“You’re being immature, Ellie,” Abby said. Ellie rankled, feeling like a scolded child. The heat in her chest flared up again, in stark contrast to Abby’s placating tone, which only seemed to fuel it further.

“Just come back and sit with us. I can tell them—”

“What? What’re you gonna say?”

Abby looked at her firmly.

“That I’m an immature piece of shit, right? That I’ve been an ass to you, actually, but you can’t say that to my face, can you?”

“I don’t think that about you—”

“Aw, poor Ellie, she should be so grateful to have you to take care of her—”

“You’re putting words in my mouth—”

“You’re just so nice and smart and everyone fucking loves you—”

“Really?” She laughed dryly. “That’s what you—”

“You’re fucking laughing at me ‘cause I’m the fucking joke—”

“You know that’s not true.”

They glared at each other for a moment, neither of them budging. Ellie noticed the dining room across the hall had turned quiet, and she cringed at the thought of everyone hearing them arguing.

“Tomorrow,” Abby said, breaking first.

“I still owe you.”

“I’m leaving,” Ellie said, turning back to the door again.

“And then you can do whatever you want,” Abby said.

“Kick me out if you hate me that much.”

Ellie curled her fists around the doorknob until her knuckles turned white.

“Fuck you,” she growled, and left Nora’s house, slamming the door behind her.

---

She knew they’d effectively made nothing into something. But Ellie couldn’t explain herself; she couldn’t find some logical thread that connected the points in her head to form a semblance of something… that wasn’t an insane picture of her current emotional state. Her frustratingly fragile, easily triggered emotional state. Jordan hadn’t even said anything incriminating—but the possibility of it, of her imagining it all. It had made her so terribly embarrassed and ashamed all at once. Of course she was nothing to her. Then she went ahead and fucked it even more.

She’d felt this way before too, a couple times, the real times, but not like this. This was volatile and explosive and it was all coming from someplace inside her she didn’t even know existed until last month. Her head hurt thinking about it too long. Her chest was empty and full at once. She couldn’t think straight. She hated it. She hated her.

And she couldn’t fucking get over it.

Ellie had gotten to the venue first. She hadn’t seen Abby at all since last night, the only indication that she’d come home was the plateful of breakfast Ellie had started to become accustomed to seeing on weekend mornings. She wiped the plate clean, but only because she barely had any dinner the night before.

Thoughts Twenty was on the upswing in terms of popularity, and while they were on their way steadily, they were still obscure enough to book shows at the smaller venues—something Ellie knew wouldn’t last long. It was a small hall mostly dedicated to the local scene’s artists, and dually acted as a favoured bar during the day.

Ellie had lined up as soon as she arrived, managing to snag a position by the front. She sighed in relief; at least if they met up in line they wouldn’t have to wait long.

She was looking forward to seeing Keith and Alec in person—having only ever seen them on recorded live shows, she knew they were the real deal. She supposed it was sort of unusual for her to be such a fan yet only attending an actual concert only now, but there was always a first for everything. She was excited—unbelievably so—and yet her heart was thumping hard in her chest for the entirely wrong reasons.

It had been raining sparingly for the last ten minutes or so when an umbrella materialized over her head.

“Aren’t you cold in that?”

“I’m fine.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re doing anything I say, correct?”

There was the rustle of a jacket next to her.

“That’s the deal.”

“Stop talking.”

Abby exhaled a short laugh through her nose.

The rain continued to pour down over them, intensifying even more and getting everyone else in the growing queue soaked. Ellie thought she heard lightning. She was ignoring the way her shoulder was progressively collecting all the rainwater, and she belatedly realized she had stepped away from Abby when she’d arrived.

It didn’t seem like Abby noticed it at all, but she didn’t give Ellie any warning when she wrapped her hand around her arm and pulled her closer to her so they were both tucked safely under the umbrella. Ellie glared at her and pressed herself even closer to Abby, since that’s what she clearly wanted. So what if she was half doing it out of spite and half that other thing she didn’t like to think about? Abby watched amusedly at the wave of conflicting emotions that were clearly evident on Ellie’s face.

They were soon ushered into the venue, the line that had formed hours before the show having quickly deteriorated once the doors were opened. After Ellie handed their tickets, somebody elbowed her on the side as they rushed past the crowd to get in. She cursed at them rudely.

“You okay?”

“Asshole,” Ellie grumbled.

“You wanna go up front, right? We should hurry.”

“I’m fine.”

“Come on,” Abby said, taking her hand in hers. Ellie found herself blanking out, unable to find the words to rebut Abby’s “You’re so short.”

They squeezed through the crowd, which at this point had become a tangled mess of limbs and frankly a lawsuit waiting to happen. Ellie tightened her hold on Abby’s hand, a spike of anxiety running through her unexpectedly. Abby squeezed back reassuringly.

When Abby wound around a group of kids who didn’t seem to notice that Ellie was effectively tied to her, Ellie couldn’t stop herself in time before she crashed into one of them.

“Watch it, bitch!” the kid said.

“Fuck off! Get out of the way,” Ellie said back.

She pulled hard on Abby’s hand and Abby stumbled back next to her, breaking the wall the kids had made.

“What’s going on?”

The kid who’d cussed her out was shorter than Ellie, and she snorted as he had to crane his neck to look at Abby in the eyes. She gave him some credit for not flinching, at least not overtly.

He glanced at the two of them and then at their joined hands and scoffed before rolling his eyes and turning back to his friends, ignoring them entirely.

Well, that was one way they could settle in.

“We don’t have to go up front,” Ellie said, raising her voice now that the relatively small room had them packed like sardines in a can, probably over capacity than was strictly safe.

Abby stopped at a spot near the emergency exits by the side of the stage. They weren’t at the edge of the crowd that they couldn’t see any of the band members up close, but they also didn’t have to worry about getting crushed on all sides. It was a good fucking spot, actually.

“Should have gotten you a stool or something,” Abby said, her breath warming Ellie’s ear. Ellie let her guide her in front of her so she could get a better view.

“Is that your thing now?” Ellie said. “Making height jokes?”

She almost regretted saying it when Abby finally let go of her hand and left it hanging limply by her side.

“No,” Abby said. “I think my thing is trying to cheer you up. Is it working?”

Ellie kept her mouth shut and watched the crew on the stage double checking the setup. It looked like they were almost ready to start.

She was excited for the concert. Of course she was. It was Thoughts Twenty—she’d been following their journey for years now, had known them even in their obscurity, had always supported them. And now they were finally getting recognized and she was at the last intimate show they’d ever have before they blew up the way she knew they deserved. But she would be the biggest liar in the world if she didn’t admit that when the crowd moved forward and her back pressed flush to Abby’s front, it was so thrilling she wanted to die.

She was so giddy. Fucking giddy. Like a little kid. When Abby went with it and rested her chin over her shoulder, she was pretty sure she did die. In fact, it was impossible that any of this was real at all. Her dying would be the only explanation, and now they were actually toting her lifeless corpse out of the venue and she was in hell. Or that other place.

“What are you doing?” she managed to croak out.

“Waiting for those guys with the funny hair to come on stage.”

“You can’t just do whatever the fuck you want and think I’d be okay with it.”

“So you’re not okay with it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ellie said.

“It sounds like you did.”

“Well I didn’t,” she said heatedly. What the fuck was she even saying? Every word that was coming out of her own mouth seemed to do nothing but convince her that Abby had been well and truly fucking with her. She was a dumbass.

“What I say goes,” she tried again. “And I said I didn’t say that.”

“Sure,” Abby said.

Ellie glanced at her, her side profile showing a truly valiant attempt at suppressing a smile. Fucking Abby.

Before she could say much of anything else, the lights shut off and Keith and Alec popped on stage, and immediately her eardrums were straining from the cheering crowd behind her. She whooped along with everyone else, waving at Alec who actually caught her eye and waved back before grabbing the microphone and starting their first song. Even the screeching feedback from the mic that had everyone groaning didn’t ruin the moment for her; the interaction alone had made coming here all worth it.

The tightly packed hall had turned into one mass of sweaty raving teenagers, moving this way and that with a mind of its own. She knew better than to resist the push of people from all sides, letting her get swept up in the wave of movement. Still, Ellie could have very nearly lost her balance even at the spot they were in had Abby not kept her anchored.

It felt fucking exhilarating; her adrenaline spiking as the beats grew faster, the riff of their guitars louder, her eardrums straining to take it all in.

She could feel the bass in her chest, her legs were starting to strain from standing for so long, her feet stumbling on others as she swayed and jumped and pushed and pulled with the single mass passing for a crowd of people.

She was sweating by the time they’d gotten halfway through the setlist, her hair sticking to her face and her neck hot.

She took the brief intermission as a chance to finally let herself check on Abby. It was hard to make any conversation, least of all in a place like this. But she looked happy enough, like she didn’t mind that Ellie had stepped on her toes a hundred times in the last hour. She wanted to know what she was thinking.

“What are you thinking?””

“What?”

Ellie decided to rephrase it.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Abby blinked at her, a peculiar expression passing over her face for a miniscule second.

“I’m thinking… that you have interesting taste in music.”

Ellie scoffed a laugh.

“Okay. What else?”

“And that I think I like them,” Abby said.

“You have to tell me the truth.”

Abby snorted.

“Fine! I think I can grow to like them. How’s that?”

“What are you thinking about when you look at me?”

Abby’s eyes widened. She couldn’t run from this one, Ellie thought. She was fenced the fuck in. Say it and then fuck off. Ellie would deal with everything else later.

“Right now? I think you need a shower,” Abby said. She was being evasive—not surprising.

“Okay.” Ellie turned back around to face the stage. She’d gotten an answer.

“Ellie.”

Ellie swallowed, unable to find her voice. She ignored the pressure in her chest, the urge to throw up bubbling from her stomach.

How long was the intermission supposed to be?

“Ellie, look at me.”

Abby placed her hand on her shoulder gently, like she was petting a wild animal. Ellie wanted to flinch, but suddenly all her energy seemed to have sapped from her body, like her adrenaline rush was already crashing—and devastatingly so.

Ellie let Abby turn her around to look at her. She couldn’t look her in the eyes even as Abby fussed over her, tucking her hair behind her ear and wiping the sweat off her face with her sleeve. Like a big sister. She was actually a really good one, all things considered. Ellie smiled a bit at the thought.

Abby frowned deeply.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. She bit her lip, her eyes burning. “Me, too. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I—”

“Abby, seriously. Stop. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Abby said again. “If you would listen to me—”

“Just forget it. After this. Let’s just enjoy the concert.”

“Ellie, would you shut up and listen—”

“Here? Now? Really?” Ellie said, her mortification put aside for a moment and replaced by that sharp anger, which was far more comfortable for her in its familiarity. She pushed Abby a little, even though they were surrounded by people and she had nowhere to back up to.

“I said forget it!” she said sharply.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” She pushed her again.

“Ellie, just listen to me. We can go—”

“I don’t wanna go!” She curled her hands into fists.

“I wanna stay!” Another push.

“I want you to shut up and I want you to kiss me!”

Abby had wrapped her hands around her arms to stop Ellie from hitting her any further, so she couldn’t even cover her face with her hands as the meaning of what she’d just said dawned on her.

Ohhhh fuck.

“Fuck.”

“Okay.”

Once again the lights shut off to signal the end of the intermission. The lights that lit up the stage could have been the same blinding intensity, the speakers right next to her could have been as screeching loud as they’d been the whole night, and Alex might’ve even been looking for her again, out in the crowd.

She wouldn’t have known though, couldn’t really.

Instead, she was facing the opposite way, her eyes were shut, her heartbeat in her ears, a warm hand around her neck, and Abby’s taste in her mouth.