bye bye bi party

[and_survive]

As she hopped into the driver's seat, Ellie wondered if she was under-prepared; her hand had automatically gone for the row of tapes, and then drummed over them as she waited for Blue to get in the other side. She didn't know if she had the right mix for this, which was especially difficult as who knew what precisely this was. They were ditching the party, and they were... well, she could think of more than a few things, and none of them were specific to a location. But then, should she have something in mind? Her place, not her place -- Hywel was right out -- somewhere. She remembered Blue noting her front seat's lack of scandal, and thought about scandal.

Should she have made a mix? Was that weird, or presumptuous, or presumptuous and weird? Making a mix for doing... well, she didn't know how much. But looking at Blue getting in, at the piecemeal ensemble she had on, she knew the answer was, at the very least, a lot.

"So," she said, trying for lightness, not sure how close she got. "Where to?"

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[and_survive]

"So- there's the infected, right," Ellie said, toying with the next button down as she figured out how to put it. "They bite you, the fungus gets in you, you go insane, you go nuts and run around biting people."

She took a breath, and then undid several buttons in a series, so she could shrug her arm out of her shirt and hold it up, awkwardly, bite turned toward Blue, not sure how close or far to hold it.

"Only, um... I never did."

[formicine]

Ellie says the infected, and Blue's eyes go a little more serious. She can't help watching Ellie's hands, nervous at the button of her shirt, eyes flickering down and back up.

Blue takes a little breath as she shrugs off one side of her shirt and holds out her arm. It feels good to be revealed to, trusted: not the same but not totally different than removing clothing. Intimate. But it doesn't make it less strange to see Ellie's arm scarred, little white bumps clustered over just that patch of skin. She hears what Ellie's saying about having never gotten sick and gone nuts, but it still looks like she should be taking her to the hospital.

"So, you're resistant to it," she says out loud as much for herself as Ellie. Blue can't help but reach out and run her thumb over Ellie's forearm, just under the bite, soft. If it was going to hurt her, she thinks, it would have by now. "Does it hurt you?"

[and_survive]

She hadn't specifically thought about it, until now, but she couldn't remember the last time someone else had touched her arm. A few people had seen it, but not touched it. She felt oddly nervous about it in a way quite separate to their respective states of undress.

Maybe a little linked. It was its own kind of intimate. There was a lot to that bite.

"No, it just- it just feels like my arm," she said. "It just looks, you know. Gross."

[formicine]

Blue lets out a tense breath, a little relieved that at least, if it's going to make Ellie feel awkward, it's not physically bothering her. She looks at it, and looks at her, and takes it all in. It's disquieting to look at the bite, and Blue feels a little awful about that not just going away magically and immediately, but it also isn't gross, not really.

Blue's done gross. She's dragged one of her best friends' decaying bodies from his rusted car in a magical forest, and she's watched him relive that death. She's watched Adam's eyes go black and felt the way knife crunched through hand when she had to pull him back; she's held Persephone's cold, un-Persephone-like body in her arms. That walker version of Beth, slit wrists and half-crazed eyes, that was gross. Half the ways that silent gray Darrow came up with to show her her mother or Gansey or someone else she loved dying were gross. KIRIN torturing her friends is gross.

Ellie -- Ellie isn't even a little gross.

"It's not gross to me," she says aloud. "I mean, maybe -- a little weird?" she admits, for the sake of honesty, "just to think about? But I'll get over that. It's something you survived. It's something that means you're you." She runs her hand more boldly up the side of Ellie's arm over her bare shoulder. "And I like you."

[and_survive]

It was in her mind to protest, at least some, to suggest that it was at least a little gross, maybe more than a little weird, or that whatever it was it wasn't exactly attractive. Even the re contextualization, of it being something she'd survived... she wasn't convinced survival was her most attractive quality, either. Would never give it up, or stop fighting, but she didn't think that was pretty.

But there was Blue's hand, running up her arm and shoulder, touch on skin that was almost always hidden these days, goosebumps following in its wake, and what she could actually manage was a swallowed, "Yeah?"

[formicine]

Blue's the first to admit how attractive she finds Ellie, but it's never been pretty that catches her eye first. With Adam it was his kindness, the quiet way he was different than his peers; and it was him setting that aside that lost her interest, too. With Gansey, she'd been caught unawares by the firey part of him, the part that wants to be, do more, like she does.

With Ellie, her fight and will and spontaneity had caught her first, even before looking too long at her in her tux at prom or laughing over concerts and summer and terrible puns. It's not something she should have had to do -- survive things -- but her toughness is still amazing.

She smiles, a little mischievous at the way she can steal Ellie's words, and Blue leans in to kiss her shoulder. "A lot, actually..."

[and_survive]

"Oh?" Ellie said, shoulder dropping a little, an unconscious -- or at least, semi-conscious -- sort of invitation, head to the side. She liked that. She liked a lot. She liked that they followed the fact of her arm and what that meant with this. Staying alive was finding things to fight for. This seemed like a pretty good thing to have on the list.

"You're not bad, either," she said.

[formicine]

"Mmhmm," she affirms, tugging Ellie a little closer to her with her other hand and sucking a soft kiss at the bared line of her throat.

"Not bad," she echoes, with a huff of a laugh against Ellie's skin, not pulling back an inch, but tipping her head just a little to raise an eyebrow at her and feigning a pout. "I see how it is. A girl gets half naked in a truck for someone, geez..."

[and_survive]

She should probably have an immediate response to that, something cute and flirty, but Blue's lips on her throat and the simple fact of her, as she said, half naked in her truck, it was the enemy of clear thought.

"Maybe a little more than that," she conceded, lifting her hand to run her thumb along the lower lip Blue had stuck so invitingly out, before leaning in to nip at it. "Maybe it's the half."

[formicine]

There's something about that little gesture, Ellie's thumb on her lip, that shivers right into her, and she blinks softly, still until Ellie nips at her lip and she hisses a pleased, sharp breath. "Maybe," she echoes back with a smile, catching her for another kiss.

"Oh, the half, huh?" She grins, playing at the strap of her bra. "Maybe you should show me what you can do with half and we can see about the rest."

[and_survive]

It was a hell of a thing, to go from her arm to this. Not even that, to go from this through her arm and back to this, just a bump on the road, just as a thing that had happened that wasn't the definition of her. She liked that.

She liked the way the strap of Blue's bra moved when she toyed with it a lot more, the hint of it, the way it shifted over bare skin and promised that it could be, perhaps, more bare than that.

"Oh, I gotta work for it?" Ellie said, settling her hands on Blue's waist, stroking up her sides. "I can work for it," she decided, tipping her head to find Blue's neck.

[formicine]

Blue grins at the teasing, then chews on the corner of that grin as Ellie shifts forward to stroke her fingers up her sides. She arches just a little bit into it, her soft climbing touch comforting and frustrating at the same time. "Yeah," she says. "You think I let every girl I date get this far?"

It's a joke, of course, because Ellie's the only girl she's ever dated. Besides Adam, she's the only person Blue's ever dated, certainly the longest (not to mention the most contentious); everything they've done is the first time Blue's done it, past the point of almost-kissing. She has no map for this place, just rumors of explorers who have had similar adventures, and a whole lot of paths to pick between, each as intimidating and inviting as the next. Well, Blue's always been a fan of adventure.

Then Ellie's kissing her neck again. There are a lot of things Blue has been capable of figuring out about herself: how sensitive her neck is is not one of them, and she flushes at the whimper it pulls from her, blinking wide and tipping her head up to give Ellie more access.

[and_survive]

She supposed if you were worried about that sort of thing, a girlfriend who previously hadn't been able to kiss anyone for fear they'd die was a relief. Ellie was not especially concerned, because it seemed like a shitty thing to have a problem with. The past was the past.

The future, now, maybe sometimes that crossed her mind, but certainly not right now, with Blue tipping her head and making of her neck a long, inviting curve, and whimpering absolutely deliciously. Because fair was fair, Ellie gently bit it.

[formicine]

Blue takes in a quick breath at that. Not quite, she'd argue, a gasp, because she doesn't think she's the kind of person who gasps, but if someone were to argue it she probably wouldn't be able to cohere semantics right now. There's an interruption the sharpness cuts into the shivery warmth of kisses along her neck that makes the answering flood of sensation keener.

"That feels. You feel really good," she encourages, and bites her lip, feeling silly even as she feels good. Right now every nerve feels desperate and wanting. She's not sure how you do this, what comes next, what Ellie wants to come next, but she's sure she wants to be touched more.

Blue wraps her arms around Ellie's waist and tugs her closer, lifting her head to kiss her on the lips.