Work Text:
“The moon goes over the water.
How can the sky be so tranquil?
She sets about slowly reaping
the river’s ancient tremor
while a young frog takes her
for a tiny little mirror.”
Federico Garcia Lorca, Half Moon.
-
Rei's apartment is a quaint little thing, relatively new, but poorly structured. The wooden floors creak incessantly with every step that Asuka takes, and the walls shudder whenever a door is shut. She's not sure when it was built—the early 2000s, maybe—but, whenever it was, the builders should have put a little more effort into it. Maybe they just didn't think anything would still be around by then.
The heater is busted, and the apartment has a draft, but the rooms are small, and it is still stiflingly hot to be within such close proximity to another body at all times. When Rei exhales, Asuka can feel it on her neck, even from opposite ends of the room, and, when either of them showers, the entirety of the apartment becomes bathed in steam.
"Would it have killed you to move somewhere with actual living space?" Asuka bemoans one day.
And Rei raises her eyebrows and just barely twists her mouth and says, "Why don't you just move back in with Ms. Katsuragi?" and it is so achingly annoying—who taught Rei to be so annoying all of a sudden?—that all Asuka can do is cross her arms and scoff and stop talking to her altogether.
Until nightfall, and then, they only speak out of necessity. Only to ponder upon—and inevitably argue over—whether they should order pizza, or otherwise to find out where the TV remote is. To make snide accusations as to who might have lost it. And, often, to complain. To complain about the available channels on Rei's half-busted TV, the frequency of commercials, and the clichéness of the romcoms they watch. This is done mostly on Asuka's part, but Rei has her moments. They are just quieter, more secretive. Half-buried.
Asuka ends up stealing not only Rei's pajamas, but every article of clothing that can be deemed somewhat acceptable from her small wardrobe. She takes the bed, too, and makes Rei sleep on the floor. She takes Rei's calculator, Rei's shower utilities, and Rei's bland and crustless sandwiches from the refrigerator, even when they're marked with her name and an "ASUKA—DO NOT STEAL, PLEASE." She figures she needs to get comfortable living here somehow, and, well, to live here comfortably, everything needs to be half hers. Otherwise, it's like she's reliant on Rei, a thought so unbearable she forces herself not to think it because it's not true for a second and it's her apartment too, now, anyways.
At night, Rei settles with a resigned sigh onto the creaky, hardwood floor, and Asuka pretends to be comfortable in her stolen bed. They don't say goodnight to each other. They don't say anything at all.
-
In the mornings, they brush their teeth side by side, half out of competition and half for efficiency's sake. On days when Rei finishes first, Asuka makes ugly and contorted faces at her through the mirror's reflection. They take turns in the shower and change with their backs to each other, anxious, hands fumbling. Sometimes, when Asuka finishes first, she will just barely look over her shoulder. Not out of any kind of lust or secretive desire, but purely out of curiosity. Rei's bare shoulder is pale and without blemish. Porcelain, alabaster, glass, whatever. When she lifts her arms up to pull her shirt on, Asuka can see slightly developed muscle rippling through her upper back.
She turns back around with a red face, and thinks, Gross. Would it kill her to get some sun once in a while? And then thinks, God, what the hell is wrong with me?
They race to and from school, and take different routes. They arrive at NERV headquarters together, avoid each other for most of the day, and return home with a grim sort of acceptance. Dinner is sometimes cooked, usually ordered, and wolfishly scarfed down within minutes—partly due to work exhaustion, mostly so that they don't have time for conversation.
Every silent moment is tense and thick and waiting to be broken by some argument or other. Every conversation is grenade-like, everything always has just a little time before it all blows up.
It's been two weeks.
-
The bedding situation must be uncomfortable, but Rei is too stoic to complain and Asuka too stubborn to apologize. Too stubborn to apologize, but not so much as to not feel stabbing guilt whenever she hears Rei toss and turn on the creaky, hardwood floor.
"Can you stop moving so much?" Asuka eventually says with a huff. "Your stupid floor keeps making noise. It's been keeping me up all night."
Rei's back is turned to her, but she hears her let out a sigh. "I'll be still," she says in that dutiful and obligatory way she says things, and Asuka feels a little nauseous, but she turns around and closes her eyes and tries to pretend that there is no floor and that this isn't Rei's apartment room and that none of this is happening at all.
They'll take turns in the shower and race to see who can finish the fastest. Rei has cut her time down significantly since the last time, but Asuka has managed to skip half of her usual hair routine in retaliation. She scrubs viciously, frantically, not wasting a moment on the unnecessary. When she pulls aside the gauzy, waterproof curtain, Rei is standing on the other side of it.
Asuka's face is already reddened from the heat of her shower alone, and now she's certain it must be doubly so. "What are you doing?" she hisses. She hopes all her contempt and disgust comes through in her words. She hopes it smacks Rei in the face.
Rei's face is blank and relatively unchanged from its usual state. "I won," she says, "by thirty-four seconds."
Briefly stunned, Asuka sputters, "You did not! We, we still need to get out the door-!"
But Rei is already walking towards her front door, and Asuka is still in her bathroom, wrapped in a towel. Rei ends up making it to school first, and Asuka shows up on time, but not early. The humiliation of defeat burns her up for the rest of the day. She keeps it in her head during her classes, adds to the fire, so that it's still scorching by the time she gets to see Rei.
They are standing outside the school, next to the fields, and Asuka's hands are on her hips. A power stance, it's called.
"You-!" Asuka makes vague, violent gestures. "You can't just get dressed while I'm in the shower! It isn't fair like that!"
Rei takes a step back, but remains mostly expressionless. "How so?"
"Whoever takes the last shower loses, that way, obviously! We should be changing at the same time, like we used to," Asuka complains, and then, hurriedly adds, "so it's fair."
Rei raises her eyebrows. "Only because it's 'fair'?
Any fire that Asuka has been attempting to feed has become quickly extinguished
It is replaced by crushing, sickening anxiety and racing thoughts, at the forefront of which is, How could she know?
"Of course it's because it's fair!" she shouts, reigniting. "Why else would I want to change next to a perv like you, who creeps up on me while I'm in the shower?"
"You had a towel on," Rei points out in meek defense.
"And what if I didn't?"
Rei tilts her head, and muses, "Why would you care? What difference would it make?" and Asuka has to remind herself that Rei is just strange and alien and there's no use in trying to get her to understand normal things, like not walking in on people who are showering, so she really shouldn't bother condescending to her level, anyway.
"Whatever," she scoffs. "Maybe we shouldn't compete at all, if you're just gonna cheat."
But they get to Rei's apartment that evening (Asuka taking a separate route so that they wouldn't have to walk together), and do their homework side by side, on Rei's bed. Asuka is scribbling furiously, doing equations mentally, performing to the best of her ability the way she's always had to, and Rei is doing it at an even pace, checking her equations as she scrawls them out. She finishes three minutes after Asuka does.
"There," Asuka breathes, beaming with pride, "I win."
"We have to make sure that our answers are correct, first," Rei points out with just a touch of amusement. "To be fair."
They check the equations together, leaning over each other's shoulders, silent and tense with concentration.
Reluctantly, Asuka is made to erase two incorrect answers from her page. Rei has no mistakes. Typical.
They fall asleep side-by-side on the bed, tonight. Only to see who can fall asleep the fastest. Asuka fails at this, too.
-
The shower competition continues, but now they both wait in towels on opposite sides of the curtain. When they finish, they dress together in front of the mirror, partly so they can be sure who finishes first but mostly because Asuka feels she has some kind of point to prove: that she can be just as calm and without embarrassment as Rei is. That she has nothing to be embarrassed about.
If her objective was to showcase a lack of embarrassment, she is failing miserably. At least her face was hidden when they changed back-to-back. Now, she is blatantly red, and fumbling with her clothes, almost dropping them a few times. She is mostly focused on trying to keep her attention on anything that is not Rei or Rei's reflection. She can see her in her peripheral, and hopes with all her might that Rei cannot see her seeing her.
When they're done, Asuka doesn't bother to see who finished first, and races out the door without bothering to fix her hair.
At school, they mostly avoid each other, interacting only when necessary. It isn't difficult; Asuka has already learned to do this with Shinji, and Rei doesn't pop up in her line of sight, much, anyway. Entering NERV headquarters together in front of everyone, on the other hand, feels wrong, even though it shouldn't, because they're just teammates in the same living situation, and they're both girls, and why would it be wrong for them to go to work together, anyway? It's not as though they hold hands or whatever, though they do hold the door open for each other sometimes, but even that isn't a kind gesture so much as it is a show of dominance.
Still.
It feels nauseatingly domestic. Even more so when they walk back to the apartment together, Asuka having abandoned her alternate route solely for efficiency's sake. No matter what pace Asuka ascends or otherwise descends to, Rei is always next to her, matching her footsteps in kind. It's infuriating. She aches to storm off half the time, or, better yet, take some kind of subway, but competitiveness and stubbornness prevent her. She will not let Rei think she has won.
They continue to finish their homework together side-by-side, a pillow placed between them so that there's no opportunity to cheat. Asuka struggles to walk the borderline between being quick and being correct, an inbetween that Rei balances with ease. She finishes before Asuka does, and has her calculator ready in hand. Neither of them have made any mistakes, but Asuka still loses, as matter of the course
They continue to sleep next to each other, too, the pillow now acting as an indicator of each half of the bed. Asuka sleeps facing away from Rei's general direction, refuses to turn to the side even when she knows it would be easier and more comfortable and even though she needs to move at some point in the night.
She wastes valuable resting time in this way.
-
(And what's worse is that when she does fall asleep, late into the night when the tension finally leaves her shoulders and her eyelids become heavy, she dreams of Rei's foggy reflection, bare and porcelain and alabaster and glass.)
(In the dream, she reaches her hand out and-)
(-wakes up nauseated and heavy with shame.)
(She thinks this must be what condescending adults in her life have referred to as a sexual awakening. She figures she must not be doing it right.)
(It's one of the first things in her life that she hasn't done right.)
-
But she learns to make a habit out of it. Out of all of it. The showers, the dressing situation, and, occasionally, even breakfast in the mornings. Rei cooks two eggs on her small and stained stovetop, and Asuka brews and pours two cups of coffee, one black, one with milk and sugar. They still argue, sometimes—over what to cook, what to watch on TV, what shampoo they should buy—but it is more domestic than anything else.
She makes a habit out of Rei's dry monotone, which Asuka soon discovers is rife with a strange and slightly crooked sense of humor that most people just don't take note of. Everything she does or says is either blunt and obvious, or otherwise has some kind of hidden barb or joke behind it that only Asuka is clever enough to figure out, and that makes her feel special. Makes her feel smart. She and Rei both, she must admit, are geniuses, maybe even on the same intellectual level. A level above everyone else.
At night, she talks to Rei, insisting to herself that this, too, must be done out of necessity. Humans need contact, after all, though sometimes she isn't sure that's what Rei is.
"I needed to get out of Misato's apartment. He just, he kept hiding from me, like a wimp, you know, the way he is. But. After a while, it just made me feel kinda scary. Like I was something to be hidden from."
Rei is silent for some time, processing. Asuka imagines cogs turning in her brain. Then: "I don't think people hide from you, Asuka," she says softly, and Asuka is about to protest, but then she adds, "I think most of us are preoccupied with looking for you."
Asuka used to find her strange, but she is becoming familiar.
That, or Asuka is becoming strange, too.
-
At some point, Asuka stops denying herself the sight of Rei's reflection. This is due in large part to Rei's lack of shame in doing the same.
And she was wrong, she realizes, to call it a sexual awakening. In fact, there is nothing sexual about it. Which isn't to say that it's not humiliating—because it is. But not because of any perversion or desire. The intimacy of Rei's attention embarrasses her more than the nudity. It's as if she can see past Asuka's body, to the less pleasant thing underneath.
-
Because Rei's gaze is a penetration, as weird and Freudian as that sounds. It is without judgment or revulsion, just a kind of invasive clarity. It rests on Asuka when she sips her coffee in the morning, messy-haired and bleary-eyed. It follows her creaky footsteps, sweeps across her reflection in the fogged mirror after showers, and lasers through her back in corridors. It manages, somehow, to walk the line between comfortable and uncomfortable. Safe and unsafe.
And, now, it is resting on Asuka's shoulder as she finishes her nightly dose of homework. Rei is already done with her own—was done three minutes ago—and peers over Asuka like she imagines a concerned mother would, though that sounds even more uncomfortable and infinitely more Freudian.
"Can you, like, stop?" Asuka slams her pen down, whipping around to face Rei. "I can't even concentrate with you staring at me like that."
Rei hums gently, and Asuka can feel it on her neck. "My focus is on your arithmetic, Asuka. Not on you."
But she's a liar and Asuka knows it. Is maybe the only one who's ever known it. She's a liar, and what's worse is she knows she's lying, and, more importantly, she knows Asuka knows she's lying. Counts on it. Maybe delights in it.
Asuka swallows hard, considers Rei's proximity to her face, and wills herself not to turn around. "You are so full of shit," she whispers, but it's not half as biting as she hoped it would. It sounds, to her horror, vaguely flirtatious.
Rei shrugs. "I'm full of many things."
"Mostly shit."
"Numbers fourteen and twenty-four are incorrect."
"Suck my dick."
Lately, their conversations follow a pattern that has become less volatile and more teasing. Somehow, the latter feels more dangerous than the former.
-
"Does it bother you when I stare at you?" Rei asks one night in a hushed whisper, cutting through the thickness of their shared silence.
Asuka can't see her, can hardly hear her. Their room is pitch black. Their bed is too wide and Rei, too far from her. She scoots closer to Rei on the bed, tosses the pillow onto the floor, and whispers, "No."
"No?" Rei sounds slightly taken aback.
"I'm used to it," Asuka answers easily. "Boys at school stare at me all the time. I don't mind."
"Ah," Rei says.
They settle back into silence, and Asuka becomes acutely aware of the lack of a pillow between them. It reminds her of the dream, with the mirror and the foggy reflection of the alabaster statue of a girl. It almost makes her want to reach out and-
"Do you like it when I stare at you, then?"
"What? No," Asuka whispers, flustered. "I just-I don't mind it, is all."
"Ah," Rei says.
A pause.
"Do you like it when boys stare at you? I don't."
Asuka groans. "Goodnight, Rei."
"Goodnight, Asuka."
-
It does not occur to Asuka to ask whether Rei meant that she didn't like being stared at, or that she didn't like Asuka being stared at.
By the time it does, it's too late, anyway.
-
Her school attendance is a formality more than anything—she's already learned everything the teachers have to offer, has become more educated in her fourteen years than most of them have become in their entire lives—but, if nothing else, physical education, at least, is worth her time and efforts.
Swim class is especially so.
Rei stands at the edge of the pool, awkward and gangly and curled in around the edges, her hair soaked and flat and plastered around her head, and she has never looked so pale and sickly and young in her entire life, and Asuka is thinking: I should kiss her.
I should kiss her. I should kiss her. Her hands twitch and her skin feels empty for it. She should kiss her.
Instead, she gets a running start, and tackles her into the pool.
-
Her red hair drips periodically onto the desk in the detention room.
When she is freed from captivity, she is sort of surprised to see Rei standing outside waiting for her, but mostly she is not. For Rei to not have been present for the walk to headquarters would have been much weirder, would have been very off in an imperceptible way that things sometimes are. She is still gangly and awkward as ever—in this moment, doubly so—but she is beautiful, too.
"What did you come to pick me up for?" Asuka mumbles bitterly, red around the ears and kicking the floor half-heartedly.
"How else would we race to NERV?"
"Well, yeah, but. You didn't have to wait for me. Have you just been standing out here the whole time?"
Rei shrugs. That's as much an answer as any, Asuka thinks.
"Idiot," she scolds, but it's all soft around the edges. "I committed a violent assault against you and look at you, waiting outside for me like a puppy."
"'Violent assault,'" Rei echoes, her mouth perking up almost imperceptibly. "You pushed me into a pool, and I was not injured."
"Yeah, well, schools are dumb about that kind of thing."
Rei does not ask her why she did it, which is much more nerve-wracking than if she had, because Asuka can't help but wonder if it's because she already knows. Does she know? No, Asuka assures herself. She doesn't know. Couldn't possibly. If she knew, Asuka would probably never hear the end of it. Because Rei gloats. And this is the very irritating thing about her (one of many), because if Asuka were to mention this to other people, no one would believe her, but Rei gloats all the time. She keeps it subtle and blanketed with raw stoicism and a lack of expression but Asuka knows, deep down, how proud she feels of herself. The first child. The blood-hungry little prodigy girl.
"Were you angry?" Rei asks. She sits down in the grass, silently invites Asuka to take a seat next to her. In the distance she hears faint back-and-forth kicking of a ball, bland feminine chatter, blander masculine chatter, sportsmanlike shouts. It occurs to her for the first time throughout their conversation that they are not the only two people on the face of the Earth. It also occurs to her, fully seated in the grass, Rei's gaze penetrating her (in a completely non-Freudian way), that this conversation is going to last longer than she'd like.
Dramatically and half-jokingly, she flops backwards onto Rei's lap. The sun is bright and hot on Asuka's face, her legs sprawled out and itching from the blades of grass and the leaves and the bugs. She feels like a perfect teenager.
"Your anger." Rei brushes back strands of red hair with careful, quiet fingers. "It's hot. Red."
Asuka hums, tilts her head back. Her eyes are hooded and unfocused.
"It uses you. You become like a vessel, when you get angry," Rei continues. "Like you're being controlled by something. Powered by a heat source."
"Well, aren't you poetic?" Asuka sneers.
Rei ignores this. Her fingers trace circles in her scalp. "I wonder. It inspires you. Energizes you, cradles you. Does it keep you warm?"
Asuka reddens, once again reminded of the intimacy of Rei's attention. How long has she been watching Asuka, pondering to herself, and coming up with bad poetry and uncomfortable theories about her? Guessing at her intentions, performing a psychoanalysis she wasn't aware of? It angers her. She half wants to slap Rei, and half wishes that Rei would keep looking at her. She wants to tell Rei about the real reason she pushes her into pools and sleeps next to her at night.
"Save it for your psych classes next time," she says under her breath instead.
Rei shrugs, and says nothing. I guess, Asuka thinks bitterly, she's reached her word quota for today. I probably won't get another word out of her until tomorrow morning. What a waste.
She doesn't dream of Rei, or the mirror, tonight. Tonight, the privilege of an entrance in Asuka's slumber is reserved only for her late mother.
--
Things get harder from that point on, and she doesn't even know why, but they just do. She gets her period, and her synchronization rapidly decreases, and she loses, and loses, and loses. Loses battles, loses trust, loses blood. Everything is an agony. Everything is a half-closed wound that tears open all the time.
Rei is especially so.
Asuka can tell, even if no one else can, how highly Rei thinks of herself. Rei is a winner. A polite, preachy, perfectionist prodigy who keeps all her wounds inside and covered and un-re-openable. She makes Asuka sick, and
At night, curled up beside her, sometimes Asuka thinks about spitting on her, or shaving her head, or finding all her books and ripping them to shreds upon shreds upon shreds. She doesn't do that, mostly. Usually she just cries, and only half-muffles herself. At some point, Rei will stir, and she will turn around and look at Asuka with her bleary eyes and say something along the lines of, "What happened?" and
I want you to comfort me, Asuka wishes she could say. I want to get close to you and to lean on your shoulder, and I want you to let me. I know it's not your job, and I'm not your problem. I want to spit in your coffee tomorrow. I hate you. If you were worth anything, you would kiss me on the mouth. I know I'm acting out of line.
Asuka doesn't say anything at all, and Rei doesn't make any more attempts to comfort her. The remainders of these nights always end up as tense and awkward as they were when Asuka first moved in, if not doubly so. And, in the morning, things will not have gotten any easier.
-
Though, one night, many nights later, when Asuka finally does get the courage to lean on Rei's shoulder, it goes something like this:
Rei is soft, wide-eyed, thoughtful, and she says like a revelation, "You trust me." and Asuka is sniffling, face crumpled, wrecked in the aftermath of another nightmare, and she replies, "Shut up."
"I meant that this—feels like a demonstration. Of trust."
"It's not like I love you or whatever."
"I know."
"I'm just afraid." Asuka brings her knees to her chest. "God. Does a wind-up doll like you know anything about being afraid?"
Rei doesn't give an answer to that one.
-
Asuka begins to get the sinking sense that everyone is becoming wildly disappointed in her. Nobody says this to her face-to-face, obviously, because they are all afraid of her just as they are disappointed, but she knows it's true nonetheless.
She blames the big, stupid robot. The stupid synchronization score. Her stupid biology. How is she, a teenage girl who is very much alive, supposed to develop a "connection" with a big, stupid, lifeless toy? Her fists clench and unclench. Her palms are raw and bloodied and dented with fingernail imprints, these days. She keeps dreaming of her mother, and she is starting to think she preferred the awkward Rei-mirror-fantasy thing. Everything is horrible and awful and on the verge of collapse.
-
But Rei is the same as always. They will sit together at breakfast in the mornings, and she will stare at Asuka, eyes lidded, hair mussed. She wears an over-sized T-shirt and probably nothing else. She sips at her coffee—the coffee Asuka made for her—and looks at the table mostly but sometimes her eyes will meet Asuka's for a blip of a second and then she'll turn her gaze back away and mostly it's inconsequential but Asuka is thinking: why won't you kiss me already?
They race to school, but they seem to rarely make it on time these days. They waste time poking at each other, verbally jabbing in search of weak spots, trading insults that are in reality just compliments, which are in turn just flirtations.
Everyone else must at least suspect. She and Rei are too superior to be ashamed, too obsessed with one another to be subtle.
Sometimes, now, Asuka will try to avoid crying in the middle of the night and sometimes she will trigger it on purpose. Sometimes Rei will come to her rescue and sometimes she won't. It reminds her of something a child psychiatrist told her a long time ago, about cries for help. About how they only attract people the first few times, but then they have to cover their ears.
They walk to NERV together and skip awkwardly and like lovers. They change out of school uniforms into battle uniforms with their backs turned, and every time Asuka glances back, Rei meets her gaze.
-
Why won't you kiss me already? Kiss me already. They are standing together in an elevator now, not quite facing each other. Kiss me already. Asuka's stomach tightens. It feels like they are on the verge of something. She feels empty for it, empty and hollow and, well, why won't she? It would only make sense, wouldn't it? That they would kiss? Otherwise, there is practically no point to it all.
Asuka leans against the wall, arms crossed. She is just about ready to say something, because, if she doesn't, who will, and then:
"If you don't open her mind to her," Rei says, "your EVA will not move."
-
Asuka's hand is red and stinging within the next minute. Peculiar, how much it hurts. She almost nearly wants to talk to Rei, maybe make some sort of apology—but she knows that would hurt worse.
-
Her moving out is a silent, awkward, dreadful affair. Rei stares at Asuka in a way that feels like a violation even though it's not, and it's not like Rei is doing anything wrong, technically, besides being a cunt and reminding her of her dead mom and her 6-year-old self and blood and the moon and the hanging dead, forever and ever and ever.
She can't stop looking at the welt on Rei's left cheek.
-
She lies in Misato's extra bed and finds that it is too large and cold and half-empty for comfort. The room is eerily silent without the sounds of pages turning or the occasional sigh coming from her left. She cries at some point, but no one comes to rescue her. Nobody is nearby enough to hear her, maybe, but she supposes, if they were, anyway, they would probably just have to cover their ears.
Which isn't to say that she wants to be rescued. She doesn't like to think about it much, but, when she does, she chalks it up to her just wanting to be loved. Which isn't, like, weird or anything. Everyone wants to be loved. Asuka is better off alone, obviously, just because that's the way it's always been, but everyone wants to be loved. Everyone except Rei and her mom, she guesses.
But Asuka is different from everyone—she is well-equipped for this kind of life. Making it on her own is just what she's used to, or was, before she became Rei's roommate.
I should call her, Asuka thinks, and then hates herself for it. And then, before she knows it, she is throwing back the covers and walking quickly, cold and shivery, down one of Misato's too-long hallways to where she knows her phone is hanging off the wall.
She dials Rei's home number, shy and half-stumbling on it, her thumb feeling entirely too large and clumsy for the tiny buttons. Then it rings and it rings and it rings and—she's probably asleep. She's probably sleeping so well now that Asuka isn't there to kick her and swallow up all her space. It rings and it rings and it rings and it rings and then it—stops. It cuts to old-sounding white noise, a faint cough, and then, "Hello?"
Asuka's heart catches in her throat.
"Misato?" Rei's voice is bleary and crackling with lack of sleep. "Is something happening?"
"Rei," she croaks out awkwardly.
There's a pause over the line. Then, "Asuka?"
"Uh-"
"Is something wrong?"
"Not—really."
"Not really?"
God.
"It's just," Asuka tries. "Uh, I wanted to tell you. I'm really sorry." And it sounds all strange and odd-toned and half-baked like that, coming from her mouth.
Another pause. "At four in the morning?" Rei whispers.
"Well," Asuka says with a spark of annoyance, "if you'd have preferred I not say it at all…"
Rei doesn't say anything to that.
"Go fuck yourself," Asuka finishes, and slams the phone back on the wall dramatically.
She walks the long, dreary walk back down the hallway. She crawls back into Misato's extra bed, her whole body trembling. She chalks her shivers up to the cold. She pulls the blanket over herself. She squeezes her eyes shut. It's another few hours of anticipation before she's able to calm down, and, eventually, she realizes that she is waiting to hear the phone ring again.
She falls asleep waiting.
-
In the morning, she finishes her shower too quickly and fixes an extra cup of coffee.
-
"What happened?"
Asuka narrows her eyes. Shinji is as much an intrusion as he has ever been.
"What do you mean, 'what happened?'?"
"I mean, like." He scratches his neck nervously. "Between you and Ayanami. What made you move out?"
Asuka sips her coffee and finds that it is too weak for her liking. "Roomate stuff. God, what are you so nosy for?"
Shinji fiddles with his fingers. "Well, it seemed like you guys used to be really close and stuff. I was talking to her about it earlier, actually-"
"Rei?"
"Uh, yeah."
"What did she say?"
"Just that you guys were, like, having a rough time and she didn't know why." A look comes over his face, and a nervous smile perks at his lips. "What are you so nosy for?"
For his sake and safety, Asuka ignores this. "Was that all?"
"Well," Shinji says, and then looks around a little anxiously, "she also told me that you used to—um. Look at her. Like, while she was getting changed and stuff." On seeing Asuka's reaction to this, he quickly backtracks. "Not-Not that I blame you, or anything. Ayanami is definitely-"
On this note, she slams her chair back and storms out.
-
Asuka figures it's about time she finish what she started in the NERV elevator.
-
But it's difficult. Rei is entirely too good at avoiding her and acting like she isn't. At ducking past doorways, hiding in rooms that Asuka cannot justify going into. At leaving a room before Asuka enters it. Asuka cannot help thinking about her, so she thinks again about spitting on her, or shaving her head, or ripping all her books to shreds upon shreds. She thinks about shoving her into pools and backhanding her in elevators.
These are the things that keep her up at night. The thought of punching Rei right in her smug little doll face. She thinks of cruel things to say, things like, Why would I ever be looking at you? She thinks about calling Rei a creep and a pervert and a liar. She thinks about calling Rei in general. Just to tell her that she is pale, skinny, ugly and boyish and that Asuka wishes she would just die, and she thinks of crying over the speaker and repeating and repeating, How could you?
Asuka tells Misato that she needs to speak to Rei, and that it is urgent and that, yes, it has to be right now, and Misato shrugs and tells her that Rei is actually pretty unreachable most of the time, and, fuck, if that isn't the truth.
She tells Shinji that Rei is a liar, even though she can see in his eyes that he doesn't really believe it.
She lies awake at night and burns alive, planning, praying that something, anything, will bring Rei to her so that she might settle things once and for all.
But, when the phone starts ringing down the hallway, she cannot help but wonder if the wrong prayer has been answered.
-
"What do you want?" Asuka sneers.
"Asuka?"
"Don't 'Asuka' me."
"I wanted to talk to you," Rei says matter-of-factly.
"Well, I'll tell you what, Wondergirl—I don't appreciate-"
"Tomorrow," Rei cuts in. "In the fields. Behind the school."
Perfect, Asuka thinks. No witnesses.
"Misato has told me that you've been wanting to speak with me," Rei continues, and Asuka just burns alive at that.
"I've been wanting to do a little more than that," Asuka says, but then Rei, ever-elusive, has already hung up.
Asuka clenches her jaw, digs her nails into her palms. It's fine. It's fine. They'll settle it tomorrow. It's fine.
-
Against the backdrop of the fields, Rei is as beautiful as ever. She is awkward and nervous-looking, but she is beautiful, too.
"I've waited for you," she says in her soft monotone. The whole world feels stiller than usual.
"I've been waiting for you, too," Asuka spits before she can hardly stop herself.
"I didn't know that you would be awake when I called. I hoped you would be."
Asuka hates the way that makes her feel inside.
"You," she says with malice, and marches up to her, all self-righteous and full of bluster. "Shinji told me all about what you told him, so don't even bother trying to defend yourself. First of all-!"
"Shinji?" Rei's eyes widen. "What did-?"
"-you've been going around telling people that I stare at you, which I don't, and even if I looked at you while you were changing it was because you looked first-"
"I wasn't," Rei croaks, cutting in, "saying that to-"
"-and, besides, like, who would even want to-"
"It wasn't my intention to-"
"Fuck your intention," Asuka spits, and pulls her shoulder back, and lands one, hard, on the side of Rei's face.
-
It's not half as satisfying as she would have liked.
-
She scratches mindlessly at the detention room desk. Rei sits beside her, eyes lidded, face blank and unchanged besides the bruise that's starting to form.
"They told me that this might lead to your expulsion," Rei states without looking at her. "Combined with the pool incident."
"Good," Asuka says.
"I told them not to worry about it," continues Rei flatly. Asuka looks at her, trying to take in any hint of an expression, but there's nothing there to be found.
She sits back. Huh.
"Why?" she whispers finally, arms crossed, trying to make it look as though. Well. She's not quite sure.
"You know why."
Rei is fiddling with her fingers. That's something that Shinji does, Asuka thinks, and wonders if Rei is nervous.
"When you called me that night, I thought that you might have been crying," she goes on in her dry, dry voice. "I wanted to listen, but the conversation seemed unproductive from that point on."
Asuka scoffs at that. "So you hung up on me and blabbed about me, like," she lowers her voice, "staring at you, while you-"
"I didn't say it like that," Rei says, louder now, and even though her tone isn't that different from usual, the shock of it still shuts Asuka up.
"Well, pray tell, Wondergirl, what did you say it like?"
"Between that, and the crying to me in the night, and then everything, I thought that perhaps you." Rei's face reddens, visibly, and she doesn't quite finish.
Asuka settles back uncomfortably. She's catching Rei's drift, and she doesn't quite like it. She doesn't really even know what to say to it.
"It's not like I love you or anything. It's just that I'm afraid."
"I know."
"But I do. Love you, I mean."
"I know."
It is so characteristically hurtful of her that it doesn't hurt at all. Asuka scoffs lightheartedly. "Well? Don't you have anything else to say to me?"
Rei does not engage in the playful conversation. She sits slightly hunched, and her fingers tap against each other.
"I'm afraid, too."
-
Asuka moves back in as messily and strangely as she left.
-
Perhaps Asuka has always been strange.