Chapter Text
She debates wearing her hair down for once, or even trying on one of the strange ruffled dresses in the dead girl’s closet. Decides against it. No point in trying to look nice.
She delays the long walk to the main hall as long as possible, dreading the moment when she will have to interact with other people. Be social, Dina begged her yesterday morning, after she asked whether Ellie was going to the dance and received only a grunt of refusal. Her hand on Ellie’s arm, a brand. Means nothing. She’s like that with everyone. Be my friend.
So Ellie is here, being Dina’s friend.
The hall is lit from within, glowing with the strings of warm yellow fairy lights that hang from the cavernous ceiling. As Ellie gets closer, stomping through the powdery snow, her ears are assailed by the sounds of laughter and high-tempo folk music. Pretty damn close to the whole town must be here—on festival nights like this, even the children are allowed to stay up far past their bedtimes. Entering, she scans the crowd of dancers for familiar faces before deciding that dancing is not, and will probably never be, her style.
Instead, she leans against the bar, where scar-faced Veronica gives her a broad, misshapen smile and pours her two fingers of whiskey—and then, with a wink, a little bit more. Ellie smiles gratefully and takes a swallow, letting the warm burn travel down her throat and into her stomach. Immediately, everything feels better—brighter, softer—and she remembers what Joel told her on one of their interminable nights camping in the middle of nowhere: Don’t ever let yourself get too reliant on this stuff, alright?
She’s careful. Although, now that she’s responsible for fuck knows how many deaths, what used to taste like fermented shit now sits like a balm on her taste buds, driving all the wretched thoughts out of her head.
She’s watching the swaying backs of the dancers, their clasped hands and galloping feet, when she finally spots the person she’s not quite ready to admit that she’s been looking for: Dina, glowing in a tight purple long-sleeved shirt and jeans, arm in arm with Andre as they gallop gracefully through the final steps of a square dance. Her smile—Ellie wishes, not for the first time, that they had a camera. Or a mall photobooth. Just for Dina, no one else.
She feels the corners of her lips turn up. To compensate, she grabs her glass, taking a gulp of whiskey so large it makes her eyes water. Dina’s turning, arms over her head, grinning at Andre as he spins her around like the king of ballroom dancing. Will that be the next boyfriend?, Ellie wonders, and then immediately hates herself. Andre makes some joke that causes Dina to throw her head back in laughter, and Ellie burns, the whiskey worming its way into the ventricles of her stupid, stupid heart.
She nods her head along to the music, tries to get into the spirit of the thing a little bit. Can’t really stop grinning, all of a sudden, not when she remembers Dina in the stables the day before yesterday, swaying her hips from side to side and humming along tunelessly to a Pat Benatar song as she shoveled shit.
Her burst of good humor evaporates when Jesse decides to sidle up beside her, sliding his own glass of rye absentmindedly along the bar. Which isn’t fair, because she really doesn’t mind Jesse. He’s nice most of the time. When she’s not in a mood like this. Right now, though, she hates everything about him. His stupid enormous biceps, practically bristling through the fabric of his threadbare t-shirt. His stupid ruggedly handsome face with its well-defined jaw and hawklike nose. This guy—her friend, she reminds her traitorous heart—-this guy who Dina apparently likes so much, they just can’t stop breaking up and then getting back together.
She nods at him, feeling awkward. Can he sense the irrational dislike prickling just under the surface of her skin? She can’t really hold it back completely, not with the whiskey trickling through her veins. She feels herself bobbing slightly away from him and makes a conscious effort to stand up straight, the way they taught in military school. Shoulders back, eyes forward. On the dance floor, Dina and Andre are executing some kind of complex, fluid spin, his hands on her waist and her arms locked around his shoulders.
“I hate these things,” says Jesse in a conciliatory tone. Can probably tell she’s uncomfortable, but has the wrong guess as to why. Trying to make her feel better. He’s a nice guy. It’s not his fault she’s so fucked up.
She huffs out a breath, laughs a little despite herself. “Tell me about it.”
“Your old man really laid into me today,” Jesse says conversationally, and Ellie feels the familiar burst of anger, a hot, reckless feeling swarming in her chest. She can already guess what the fight was about.
“What happened?” she asks, looking directly at Jesse for the first time. Maybe this is really what he wants, a chance to tell her how weak and vulnerable she is. How even her “old man” knows she’s not up to doing the patrols the way the rest of them are.
“Another big lecture about my patrols,” Jesse tells her, chuckling a bit. “Don’t go here, don’t go there—it’s funny how involved he gets whenever you’re scheduled to go out.”
The nice, rational part of her knows he doesn’t mean any harm by it—he’s touched by how much Joel cares for her. They all are. The first few weeks they were here, after they came back from the Firefly Hospital, Ellie heard whispers about it all over town. How sweet it was, a man like Joel caring so much for a little girl like Ellie. How he was just what a father should be.
Trouble is, she can’t afford to be anyone’s little girl.
Especially not someone who selfishly destroyed her only chance to make all this shit actually mean something.
“Yeah,” she says, wondering if Jesse can sense the frustration and embarrassment that colors her tone. Maybe he does, since he drops the subject almost immediately, nodding instead to the center of the dance floor.
“She’s, uh…putting on quite the show,” he remarks, appreciation warring with a bit of resentment in his voice. He nods out to the center of the dance, where Andre chooses that moment to dip Dina almost to the floor. Her body curves toward the earth in a graceful purple parabola, only Andre’s hands keeping her from falling. Ellie feels another stab of irritation, tries to swallow it down.
“I give you guys two weeks until you’re back together,” she says, going for casual and knowing. After fifteen or so of these bouts of off-and-then-on-again, she prides herself on having learned to recognize the pattern. First Dina will call things off and say that she and Jesse are on autopilot, whatever that means, and that she can’t stand it any longer. Then they’ll go through one of these frosty periods, like right now, when neither one of them can look the other in the face and a single glance is enough to provoke an all-out screaming match. And then, after a few days or weeks, something intense will happen to draw them back together—most likely raiders or Infected—and Ellie will be on the outside again.
“Not gonna happen,” Jesse demurs, smirking, but Ellie knows he’s already looking forward to the next reconciliation. Who wouldn’t?
The crowd bursts into scattered applause as the guitarist plucks the last few notes. Jesse turns to Ellie, full of newly rekindled hope. Gross.
“She uh…say something to you?”
Ellie lets out a derisive chuckle. “Make it one week.”
She’s so busy imagining them getting back together, resenting it, and then hating herself for resenting it that she doesn’t even have time to brace herself before Dina is upon them, cheeks flushed, glowing with a sheen of sweat. Her top clings to her torso, hugging her taut stomach and the outlines of her breasts under thin cotton.
Ellie is so very, completely fucked.
“Ellie!” cries Dina, “hey!” She ignores Jesse completely. “What took you so long?”
“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?” Ellie says in her nonchalant voice, the one she learned from Joel. Dina crowds into her, blithely ignoring the boundaries of Ellie’s personal space as always. Ellie can’t breathe. She tries to focus on anything but the warm animal scent of Dina’s sweat and the way her hand is splayed across Ellie’s shoulder as she leans in, grabbing what remains of Ellie’s whiskey from the bar and downing it in one gulp. Her right hand comes up automatically to hover just short of Dina’s hip. She’s pinned to the bar, a butterfly under glass. Couldn’t move if her life depended on it.
“Dina,” says Jesse, flatly. The last breakup was a particularly bad one, Ellie knows, though not in detail—Dina’s stopped recounting them to her.
Dina nods now, brusque, already turning away. “Jesse.” It somehow manages to be a one-word dismissal. “C’mon,” she says to Ellie, taking her hand and lacing their fingers together as she leads her out into the crowd. Ellie follows, unresisting. All the nerves in her body have migrated to her hand, sparks traveling up her arm.
She’s like this with everyone, Ellie has to remind herself every time Dina grabs her by the shoulders or slips a hand onto her knee. It doesn’t mean anything.
She’s getting awfully tired of shit not meaning anything.
“Hey,” Jesse calls out after them, “don’t forget, we’re heading out early tomorrow! Get some rest!”
“Yes, sir,” Dina says contemptuously, turning around to aim a sarcastic salute in Jesse’s direction, rolling her eyes for Ellie’s benefit. Ellie can’t stop herself from smiling. Her cheeks ache.
“You’re such a dick,” she says, pretending to disapprove, Dina’s hand in hers as they turn to face one another.
“Come on,” Dina practically purs as she fastens Ellie’s hands around her waist,”don’t you start with me.”
Wouldn’t know where, Ellie thinks, and then—
She doesn’t know what she was expecting from this—maybe that they would just face each other and sort of bob from side to side, as a couple of other pairs of same-sex friends are doing? Certainly not that Dina would pull Ellie’s unresisting arms around her waist and wrap her own arms around Ellie’s neck, pulling their bodies flush together. Ellie can feel heat rising to her face, her heart throwing itself against her ribcage like it’s trying to break her open and escape. She wills herself not to do anything embarrassing.
“Okay,” says Dina, her breath fanning out over Ellie’s face. Ellie has to resist the insane urge to lick away the sweat glistening on her forehead and the bridge of her nose. “I have a very serious question for you.”
A half-second pause, in which Ellie’s heart stutters—she knows—-only to start beating double-time again when Dina teasingly asks: “How bad do I smell?”
It’s an old game, one they used to play during afternoons at the lake, at least in part because it grosses other people out so much. An old game they used to play before Cat, and that whole weird icy period where Ellie and Dina weren’t really friends, which Ellie still doesn’t understand.
Ellie leans forward obligingly, angling her face into the corner of Dina’s neck and getting a whiff of sweat and cedar and Dina. Not an entirely pleasant smell, but for some insane reason, it makes Dina all the more appealing. Ellie wants to bury her face in Dina’s armpit, in her stomach, in her—-
Shut the fuck up.
“Like a hot pile of garbage,” she lies, grinning challengingly at Dina, who takes that as a cue to wipe her cheek sweat all over Ellie’s face.
“Ugh!” Ellie says, pretending to be upset. “Gross.” Her cheek is wet, the skin where Dina touched her tingling. She can feel herself smiling too wide now, almost manic, and has to bite down hard on her own lip to contain it.
“You love it,” Dina breathes, and then her arms are even tighter around Ellie’s neck, her head resting on Ellie’s shoulder as they revolve slowly to the music, and after all the infected and murderers and cannibals and nights spent shivering in sub-zero temperatures, it’s pretty funny that this might just be the thing that finally does Ellie in.
It’s cruel, what Dina’s doing to her. Even more so because Dina has no idea. She’s as oblivious to Ellie’s pain as she is to all the eyes that follow her at every meal, every time the whole town gathers together like this. Dina, the most beautiful girl in the settlement. The most beautiful girl in the whole fucking world.
“Every guy in this room is staring at you right now,” Ellie murmurs. She can practically see Jesse and Andre salivating from here. Not to mention every other knucklehead on patrols, and probably half the old-timers, too. Dina's popular.
Dina’s nose brushes her neck, their hips flush together.
“Maybe they’re staring at you,” Dina whispers into her neck, and it’s all Ellie can do not to shiver. She shakes her head. Two women dancing together should be a turn-on, maybe, but men don’t look at Ellie the way they look at Dina. Never have, never will. Besides the obvious differences in their appearances—Dina’s lithe and graceful figure next to Ellie’s too-tall, lumbering awkwardness—there’s also some vibe Ellie gives off that any non-rapey man can easily read as “not an option”. Yet another way in which she’s a freak.
“They’re not,” she says, shaking her head, hating herself.
“Maybe they’re jealous of you,” Dina suggests, which is so nonsensical that Ellie doesn’t even know where to begin.
“I’m just a girl,” she tells herself as much as Dina. “Not a threat.”
She means it as a light, self-deprecating comment, the kind that should mark the end of the conversation. Instead, Dina pulls back and just looks at her, her gaze so intense that Ellie’s knees buckle a little. She reaches up a hand to push Ellie’s hair out of her eyes.
“Oh, Ellie,” she breathes, her hand sliding around the back of Ellie’s neck, “I think they should be terrified of you.”
Her eyes slide down to Ellie’s mouth, their faces so close together that Ellie only has a split second to wonder if what she thinks is happening is really happening before it does.
Kissing Dina isn’t like kissing Cate or Riley. It isn’t like kissing anyone. For a moment, Ellie is frozen, and then her brain completely shuts off and she is kissing Dina back, soft and gentle and yet somehow more than anything else she’s ever felt—a pleasure so intense it almost feels like pain, like the cold shock before a burn sets in. Ellie’s whole body is ablaze, flames licking their way from her face all the way down to her toes, molten lava pooling in her center. She thinks nonsensically of rockets blasting off, of Sally Ride.
When Dina pulls away, Ellie can’t stop smiling. It isn’t until Seth approaches that she remembers that they’re standing in the middle of a crowd of people. A very large crowd of people. A very large crowd of people that has pretty much stopped talking and dancing in order to stare at them.
“Hey!” Seth barks, “this is a family event!”
Ellie’s mind is still so blissfully blank, she couldn’t come up with a good comeback even if she tried. She’s lucky she still remembers her own name. She cringes a little at Seth’s strident tone, her newfound social anxiety getting the better of her. Dina, on the other hand, seems totally unbothered.
“Sorry,” Dina says offhand, laughing as if she can’t possibly imagine what the problem is. Dina never cares what other people think of her, never even stops to wonder whether or not they disapprove.
Seth continues to stare them down, looking from Ellie to Dina as if he’s never truly seen them before, his features marred by a mixture of confusion and disgust.
“Sorry!” Dina says again, laughing a little, her left hand still clasped tightly in Ellie’s fist, and Ellie couldn’t regret this moment if she tried. She doesn’t even hear the rest of whatever Seth is saying to them, doesn’t hear anything until Seth says it. Names her, what she is. Another loud-mouthed dyke.
That's when she turns and makes for Seth like a heat-seeking missile.