Work Text:
“Sometimes you just gotta lie on the floor, you know?”
“I really don’t.”
It’s a lying on the floor kind of lifetime for Terezi. She feels an intimate connection to it; it’s seen the worst of her breakdowns like no one ever has. It comforts her at her lowest. It holds her up from sinking straight into the ground forever and ever and dying from heat stroke while down there.
Maybe the relationship isn’t healthy, but whose is? The floor has been there for her, she can’t say that about anyone else.
“I’ve been there for you.”
“Shut UP.”
The floor doesn’t ask her to get up. It doesn’t care if what she’s wearing is nice or not or nothing at all. It doesn’t care if she got plastered last night with faygo or sleep deprivation or bad decisions.
“Please get up.”
“I will not.”
A deep sadness is weighing her down. It is sourceless, all encompassing, and it really fucking sucks. All she wants to do is wallow in it on the floor, okay?
“Nope.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Hmm.”
Kanaya left. Now Terezi’s alone. Good. This is what she wanted. Why does it feel so awful?
She sighs. She’s been alone with her feelings enough times to chart exactly what the next twenty four hours will be like. For about six she’ll be on the floor. The next three will be spent in her bed, trying to fall asleep. Then she’ll get hit with a manic desire to do something spectacular then it’ll blow up in her face and everything will be useless like it always was-
“She’s in here.”
Ugh.
“It’s no use guys, I’ve got terminal sad bitch disease.”
“Nonsense. Dr. Vriska, what is your professional opinion?”
“What?”
Rose sighed. “Never mind. Just get her other arm.”
With Vriska yanking one shoulder, and Rose doing something slightly more polite than yanking up the other, Terezi was lifted bodily off the floor. She offered absolutely no help.
Her feet dragged on the ground as they carried her out of the house. Rose showed a little exertion but Vriska apparently had a lot of practice dragging limp bodies around and was doing fine.
“This is fucking stupid.”
They all ignored her, and picked up an inanely normal vein of small talk.
“I’m being fucking kidnapped… from my own home…”
Kanaya led the way, her dress swaying in the wake of her hips. Terezi’s heart beat a little faster but it just made her feel worse. What was a troll like her doing with a girl like her? It was a waste. She deeply considered herself a waste of space.
She let her head go limp, and stared at the sidewalk passing her by. She surprised herself by crying.
It was silent, and she didn’t really feel anything or any kind of release with it. It just came with a sudden swell of that undefinable sadness that surrounded her like a fog she didn’t have the energy to fight through.
She felt like this most of the time.
“Here we are!”
Kanaya stopped and Rose practically dropped Terezi into the chair that suddenly appeared beneath her. She took a snif; this was a cafe?
“I’m really not in the mood-“
“It’s ok, you don’t have to be.”
Sometimes she resented Kanaya for the way she effortlessly recited just the right thing to say. It didn’t make her feel better, but it didn’t make her mood worsen at the forced trip into society.
Vriska went in with Kanaya and left her and Rose at the table. She was still huffing.
“Can you give me some sunglasses? I look like shit.”
Rose produced a pair, “Are you sure you look like shit?”
“Don’t fuck with me I’ll cry.”
With the sunglasses on she looked a little less like shit. She didn’t feel any better but she imagined the strangers passing by and staring did. Embarrassment hit her like a wall. She was just dragged out of the house, fuck, everyone must have been staring.
What’s wrong with her, really? She tried over and over again to force it out of her, to be a good person, to just… not be so fucking miserable all the time. She’s tried to atomize it, to scrub it out of her anatomical structure, to completely separate herself from it. When that didn’t work she leaned into it, and she kept leaning and leaning and eventually she realized she was in free-fall.
She’s still in free-fall.
Vriska came back with drinks. A dark coffee for Rose, Black tea for Kanaya, and a pink lemonade for herself. She set a cup of ice water with a straw in it in front of Terezi.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“What.”
“I just get some water? You’re drinking the pinkest fucking thing I’ve ever seen!”
“So?”
Terezi slammed her hands on the table, “I WANT ONE.”
Fully aware of how ridiculous the situation was, Terezi stormed into the cafe, cut the almost non existing line, and ordered a smoothie.
“What kind?”
She paused, feeling tears well up in her eyes, “the pink one,” with a voice crack on ‘pink.’
Kanaya was in there, waiting for whatever she ordered. She didn’t look over, or give any indication that she noticed something amiss. The only thing she did was gently tap Terezi’s hand with hers when she walked by her side. Terezi reached over and squeezed her hand, and relaxed a little bit when she squeezed back.
It was their little signal; ‘I care for you’.
They waited, hands clasped. A tiny idyllic cafe wasn’t the worst place to have an emotional breakdown, she thought, but she could do better.
“An airport would be better.”
“Hmm?”
“If I was in an airport in one of those little snack and whatever stores this would be more cinematic.”
“Cinematic? I suppose so,” after a short pause she continued, “have you been spending time with John lately?”
Terezi snorts, “Yeah. Is he rubbing off on me?”
Kanaya sent another squeeze to her hand.
When they walked back to their table Terezi remembered to feel like shit. It was always these fleeting moments of happiness, never enough and as soon as she noticed it was gone. Back to gray.
Rose and Vriska were arguing about something, she couldn’t even summon the energy to care. She remembered times when the two of them lit her up and their banter was just too contagious to ignore. Why can’t that be now?
What’s wrong with her?
All the stuff they were doing to try and make her feel better only made her feel worse. It made her feel abnormal, like there was just some sort of barrier between her and the rest of the world that she couldn’t breach.
Next they dragged her to a park. Figuratively, this time. Vriska kept an arm around her waist but she was carrying her own weight.
It just… made her feel like shit, again. She knew that everything was so alive and happy here, she just felt out of place. The bright sky, the vibrant plants, the sunshine, everything has this muted quality that was put in place against her will. She knows she should be enjoying this, but she just can’t.
Aimless conversation flows around her like sand. She considers this a talent of hers; to feel all alone surrounded by people who love her.
She feels so much, and at the same time nothing at all. That’s a talent of hers too. Her head is unbearably loud, but with nothing coherent. It’s just noise, and the real world in front of her is being swallowed up by the static. She takes a breath, and feels heavier on the exhale. She sniffs, and the grass is green and the sky is blue and she is so hopelessly gray.
Tears fall of their own accord, and she doesn’t want them to see but she desperately wants them to understand.
And they don’t see. She’s good at hiding it. They won’t, they never will, not unless she…
reaches out to tap Vriska, and without a word she leans back to press against Terezi. Rose scoots forward a bit and wraps her arms around Terezi’s waist, and Kanaya reaches an arm around Rose to rub Terezi’s shoulder. Just small movements, back and forth; a thumb against a palm, a head against a neck, a breath against the world.
Despite everything, Terezi feels warm.