Work Text:
Eva’s 14 when she knows it’s not just boys. Jonas and Ingrid are a jumbled mess inside her head and it’s all one big cliché really.
Because the first time she and Jonas kiss she feels her heart ache all while it pounds against her ribcage with excitement and the butterflies start killing each other before they’ve properly taken flight.
And she often wonders if this is what the magazines mean when they tell her love is complicated.
The night after her first kiss with Jonas she recalls the one time she kissed Ingrid. It was right before her best friend went on her first date with Jonas. Eva remembers something snapping that night right when Ingrid pulled away and told her how excited she was to kiss for real.
She’d never forgotten the sting of the girl’s words just like she’d never forgotten the distinct taste of Cherry Coke lip smacker mixed with the saliva on Ingrid’s tongue as it timidly met hers.
It hadn’t lasted long enough for Eva’s liking. Which is partly why kissing Jonas was so different. For real not because he was a guy, Eva wasn’t raised like that, but because there was a certainty to it.
But that certainty left whenever he did, always leaving Eva feeling deeply alone and sick to her stomach with guilt.
As much as she fought it Eva still ached for Ingrid until long after their friendship had shattered, when what was unbreakable and over 5 years long became an unfixable tragedy and an entire group of girls that she used to call her friends giving her nasty looks.
-
She can’t pinpoint the exact moment she goes from being in love with Jonas to simply loving him but it doesn’t leave a void like she thought it would.
Because Noora Saetre makes her feel better without really knowing anything about her or the awful person she is.
Because Noora Saetre accepts her friend request and texts her a compliment in Spanish every morning and night to help her get her grade up.
And because sometimes when they’re sitting beside each other in class and by miracle the sun is shining, the light hits Noora’s eyes in way that makes Eva sigh without meaning to and other times they hold hands and it almost feels more intimate than her secret meetups with Jonas used to.
So when she and Jonas inevitably crash and burn it’s okay in a way. She falls apart for a while but it’s okay.
Because Noora is there to love every piece of her.
But then there’s William. And in a way Noora’s gone. She still goes to school, she still joins them at parties, her and Eva still hang out, but it’s vastly different. She doesn’t fill the void as well as she used to.
And for the first time Eva ponders that maybe the fact that there is a space that needs to be constantly filled up by people for her to be okay isn’t such a great thing.
So while Noora falls in love with William she works on that.
She also drunkenly makes out with a lot of girls at parties.
She also does more than just make out with Vilde. She ends up liking it.
Vilde makes her do lots of things not by asking but by being.
She makes wine into Eva’s new alcohol of choice by hating beer. She makes Eva forget bits and pieces of Jonas, the way he smelt, felt, tasted, touched by being everything he isn’t.
The first time they make out without any alcohol in either of their systems Eva realises it’s not as simple as she intended it to be.
She doesn’t mean to fall for the girl underneath her but before she realises it she’s been floored.
-
Eva’s bisexual.
She comes to this conclusion the first time she finds herself naked and on top of Vilde. She decides she won’t tell people about it unless it becomes inevitable.
It’s a few months later when her mom comes home from work right as Eva’s nursing her wounds. She’s not wearing a shirt and the entire right side of her ribcage is starting to colour blue.
Her mom gasps and drops her suitcase and Eva starts crying again as the woman takes the piece of cotton from her shaking hand and finishes cleaning the cuts on her face.
Eva knows the inevitable has arrived with her.
“I was climbing down Vilde’s rain pipe and fell.”
“And why didn’t you use the door, honey?”
Eva just knows her mom would find this all amusing, considering her own infamous window, if her daughter wasn’t sitting on the counter with dried up blood- and tearstains on her cheeks.
“I couldn’t leave through the door because she doesn’t want her mom to know I go over there.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m sleeping with her. Well, was. I think I’m gonna stop it.”
“I think you should stop too.”
Eva frowns but her mom isn’t finished.
“I don’t want you sleeping, or doing whatever, with people who make you a secret, okay?”
Eva sniffles again as she nods, “Takk, mamma.”
She doesn’t start crying again until her mom runs her fingers over the forming bruise and kisses her temple.
It takes 3 days of locking herself in her room and leaving the girl on read for Vilde to knock on her window and softly kiss every inch of the bruise like it will make the skin go pink again. And by the time Eva’s come undone beneath her they’re both crying silently.
“Vilde, det gjør vondt.”
Eva doesn’t think she sounds like herself when she says it. Almost like this is a fictional story about two other people and she’s in front of her laptop watching it with a bucket of ice cream and tears in her eyes.
She thinks she would actually prefer that to living it.
Because Vilde starts rambling about the amount of time it takes for a bruise to disappear and her mom seeing a new guy which would mean less of her at home and-
Eva pulls herself out of the girl’s embrace and gets out of bed in less than a heartbeat. She only winces for a second as pain shoots through her torso.
“Look at me!”
Bruised, naked and crying.
“It’s not the cuts and bruises that hurt, Vilde.”
Vilde doesn’t dare look at her for even a second.
So the next thing Eva does is tell her to leave.
And watching Vilde oblige without putting up any sort of fight definitely hurts more than the fall did.
Vilde starts kissing boys again at parties and Eva stops attending them altogether.
-
Noora’s back home.
William isn’t.
Noora calls her to tell her this the second she’s off the plane and she can hear the girl’s tears through the phone.
Eva was over Noora.
She really isn’t.
At first, Eva thinks, Noora looks the same way she did before she left but looking closer something’s different.
It’s in the way she barely musters a smile when she catches Eva looking at her, their eyes never quite meeting.
It’s in the lunches she no longer prepares for Vilde and herself.
It’s a 2 am call in the middle of a panic attack where all they do is breathe together.
Eva knows Noora is sick like she was before Madrid but she doesn’t know what to do about it because Eva isn’t like Noora. She doesn’t make her own lunch, she buys something unhealthy in the cafeteria or goes out for kebab with the boys.
But when she sees the way Noora’s hand shake as she writes something down or types a text and can’t help but notice the fact that her part of the apartment’s food cabinet is used by everyone but Noora herself, Eva decides to start trying. She starts buying healthy snacks that she would never eat herself in a million years and brings them to school to hand out.
And maybe they’re not eaten every day but it’s better than nothing. At least it makes Noora smile and squeeze her hand.
It happens after months of slow progress in the kollektiv’s kitchen.
Her best friend is cutting vegetables Eva doesn’t even know the names of but will surely get through eating any day if it means Noora eating them as well.
She watches her reach for the cupboard with the scale in it before pulling her hand back like she’s burned it on the handle. And she smiles right at Eva as she slides all of it into the pan at once.
Eva thinks she looks radiant in the light of the exhaust hood. And she feels too much pride to put into words.
That, and the way Noora’s smiling at her like this is all that matters, are what make Eva hop off the counter and halt inches away from the girl.
She turns her head and Eva just knows she’s gonna try to break the tension the sudden close proximity of their bodies caused with a dumb comment or even a fact about one of the gross vegetables in her pan.
“I loved you long before he did. And I’ll never quit. Jeg er stolt av deg. Hver dag.”
Noora opens her mouth as if she’s gonna respond before closing it again. And then opening it again. Eva can’t help but chuckle a little. She looks like a fish.
A speechless fish with tears in her eyes.
And then Noora’s lips against her own make her forget about anything and everything else.
When they both pull back for air she’s the speechless one.
“Takk.” Noora chuckles softly before biting her lip, eyes scanning the food like it’s the most interesting thing in this room.
Eva just smiles, nods and returns to her spot on the counter.
It takes Noora a good 5 seconds of stirring the greens before swiftly walking over to position herself in between Eva’s legs and get on her tiptoes to connect their lips for a second time.
“I love you too.”