Work Text:
The sugary sweet color of pink on the carpet isn’t blinding, but it’s kind of annoying. Yet it’s the only solace that Eva has as she sits beneath the foot of the bed. Looking at someone straight in the eye right now will just let her fold like a deck of cards.
“I’m so glad we get to be bunk buddies, Eva!” Diana’s voice is gleeful. So is the slight tripping on the linoleum. “Don’t let all the mean comments get to you, okay? Especially Grace’s. She could stand to be a lot more nicer, you know?”
Eva hears herself respond, but even she couldn’t decipher it. Instead, she looks at the carpeting. Focuses clearly on how the pink’s actually interwoven with a peachier color, multilayered up close. Her breath hitches, and suddenly she wants to tear the carpet to shreds.
“You didn’t need to be scared of revealing your talent.” Diana’s voice rings everywhere and nowhere.
Eva traces shapes on the grooves of the carpet. Soft to the touch, not as soft as the carpet she’s been bestowed. They’re planets, at first, then squares. Something in her subconscious eventually morphs the shapes into numbers, and her stomach churns at the sight.
“It’s a cool talent, if you ask me.” The gentle hesitation is evident. Diana, unlike her, wasn’t great at withholding truth, anyway. “Like, you do math competitions, that’s so cool.”
“It’s not just that.” The words fly out of Eva’s mouth without hesitation before she realizes her mistake. Clamps her hand tightly on her mouth before she says anything more complicit. She’s already in hot water, why implicate her more.
“Oh? Really?”
The concern doesn’t sound fake - Diana, completely honest and innocent, didn’t seem like the type of person who would feign concern - but it’s nothing Eva wanted to contend to. She looks up and focuses on the wallpaper. A deep purple to contrast the pinks that it surrounded. Tacky salon paintings plastered on top of it, as if forcing Diana in this rigid box of conformity. It’s at least more appealing, more comforting than the literal whiteboard that covered Eva’s walls.
The sound of a thump on the bed. “Well, what is it then?”
Would she even understand? If these game organizers - whoever they were - were going to fit everyone in prisons of their Ultimates, then how would anyone follow her pain?
“I’m all ears, Eva. You can tell me.”
Eva hugs her legs, wishes that she could melt through the carpet. Liar, mathlete, it all lead to pure isolation, anyway. Did the difference matter?
The buzzing in the air blares. “So, you’re not going to talk?”
Of course not. She’s already ruined her chances to reinvent herself. Be someone other than lame old mathlete Eva who didn’t matter. Someone only heard through equations and formulas, never breaking character. This is what she gets for wanting to extend beyond her meager script. If she could reverse time, maybe she’d fare better as anything other than herself.
She’s so stupid for pretending.
“No...” because what else can she say? Burning bridges before they’ve ever been established, a constant throughout her life. She covers her head low, holding her breath and hoping - praying - that she doesn’t cry. But crying’s for losers.
It compliments being a mathlete. That’s how Diana would put it, if she were harsher. Or more honest.
She doesn’t notice Diana’s presence beside her until she hears a thump on the floor. Her head snaps to attention, and Diana’s sitting in front of her, with that perpetual smile stuck in her face. The UTP would be stupid to consider cosmetic surgery as noteworthy for a cosmetologist, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Diana just had that skill baked into her. “You don’t have to talk tonight, okay? Just as long as you’re safe.”
“Easy for you to say.” There’s already a bounty on her that she can’t take back.
Diana’s smile droops down. She leans just slightly closer, hands balled into fists. “Hey,” she says, “it’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s your talent. Be proud of that!”
She’s so focused on the wrong problems. Funny if it wasn’t so painful. “I know...” because what’s one more lie piled on top? She’s not losing anything else, anyway.
“And...” Diana taps on her chin, and it’s apparent she’s struggling to find anything kind to say in her words. “I still believe in you. It’s just one lie.”
“It’s a dumb lie.”
Diana shrugs. “It’s not the worst lie in the world. I’ve heard plenty worse.”
This feeble attempt of comforting her wasn’t doing any favors. Eva’s fingernails dig crescent on her knuckles. “Then your threshold for lies must be low.”
Diana’s smile returns, this time a gentle proclamation. Gentle urging that couldn’t pierce through the shit that was her flimsy shield. “If that makes you a bad person then wouldn’t that mean we’re all bad people?”
For Wolfgang to preach otherwise? They’re saints compared to her. Saint Eva, queen of awful decisions and worse luck. A liar who couldn’t even do that correctly? What good is she?
And what good was Diana for proposing that she was anything other than a fraud who couldn’t stand up for herself correctly? She’s now nothing but a common enemy, backed into a corner until someone decides to strike back. Diana was only reaching out to her in pity. Nothing more.
“You’re not a bad person,” Diana repeats.
And the threshold for this nonsense is already at her limit. If she’s going to bombard all these useless platitudes to make Eva feel better, than why bother? It fixes zero problems and offers zero solutions except suck it up. You might be a loser who can’t even branch out of your loser talent whose loser brain decided to dig a deeper hole to make yourself unlikable by everyone, but at least you can say that you like yourself enough to ignore literal danger staring right at your face.
Yeah, right.
Diana, she smiles at her.
She can’t stomach any more of this positive crap.
Eva stretches from her position on the floor, the ache in her bones apparent the second she stands up. A more athletic person would recover better. Clearly, she’s not meant for more. The carpet returns to its former glory, the solid vague pink that it camouflaged itself. “I’m going to bed,” she states, her voice losing all semblance of tone, as she makes her way to the couch. It be rude just to take a bed that isn’t here’s, anyway.
She sees Diana reach out her hand before retracting it, the worry in her eyes so apparent before she scurries herself back to the bed. "You sure you want to sleep there? Just for tonight?” Diana’s doe face tilts, and Eva wants her to stop playing dumb for just one second. “You sure you won’t get back aches?”
Eva sits down on the couch, her hand sinking into the fabric. “I’ll be fine.” It’s fancier than normal, but couches were lifelines for her, napping in college libraries between writing research paper after research paper that amounted to little more than unnecessary fodder in the eyes of academics. In the eyes of the UTP.
The doe eyes snap into attention, morphing into an understanding nod. “Well. Whatever works for you.” She’s already fluffing her pillows, so plain compared to the rest of her gaudy set up. “If you need anything, you know who to talk to, okay?"
Eva grumbles. A “yeah” before she positions herself on the couch, head on the armrest. Her face meets the tacky purple wallpaper. On closer inspection, there’s a faded trace of other colors, pastels that only dot the purple landscape but never fully encompasses it. Her finger taps on each of these extra colors,
“Do you need the lights off? I can’t do without them. People say it’s bad for your skin, but I’ve only found that it does more good than harm.”
“Do whatever you want.” She can’t see her face, anyway. Eva perches her glasses on the armrest, hoping they don’t fall.
“Okay.” There’s the hesitation in her voice again. The space for Diana to take her easy shot at ridicule. Eva braces the cushion of the couch for the impact before she’s greeted by a “good night, Eva,” instead.
Eva swallows her answer. Tries to close her eyes and drift to sleep, yet her mind is plagued. Clouded in the looming judgment of everyone else, so ready to pick her clean. Food for wolves to chew on. All for the price of being scared.
Her mind does nothing to quiet the thought. Adjusting her sleeping position now will just lead to more aches in the morning, yet restlessness threatens her to fall over the sofa. Sleep on the hard, cold floor. It’s better conditions than living like this.
Is this how Damon feels? Scared and alone and against the world? Is that why he stood up to her side? She thinks just how trapped Damon was, hands tied to defend her brash declaration in the worst possible way. How tight lipped he was with the rest of their classmates, defeated in nothing but silence.
Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe he knows how she feels, deep down.
The lights don’t turn off. The pastels, clear as day underneath the wallpaper.