MAYBE IT'S ME, OR MAYBE IT'S YOU
pairing: Eva Šilović x Nikola | Nix summary: After the exchange of "I love you"s with Jakov, Eva's guilt makes her face the conundrum within. (set in late s1) w/c: 1.2k a/n: first sram fic but more coming!!!! hopefully masterlist read on archive of our own
‘Volim te,’ Eva thinks. Ich liebe dich. I love you.
When Jakov said it a few days ago, she said it back. She hesitated, for a moment, but she still said it.
Eva wondered if it made her a liar.
The girl in the mirror has brown hair, brown eyes, freshly-plucked brows, her lips tinted the shade of the lipstick Nora recommended.
She looks like Eva.
She looks unchanged.
Eva thought you could see the secret on her, like a wound or a scar. She almost wished it – it would be easier if she could just point to it. If she could see it, the fatal flaw, but she couldn't. The girl in the mirror was as any other, and Eva herself couldn’t tell anything was off.
She loved Jakov, though. She did. She did. It wasn’t a lie when she said it back. But she hesitated and that’s something she can’t take back.
It was as if her life shifted in that moment between Jakov’s confession and her response. A lifetime loved, trapped in the length of a breath.
She thought of Jakov, of his safe arms and gentle kisses. He was a smoker, he was a bit of a junkie, but he was kind. He was loving. He was hers.
She didn’t deserve it. She knew she didn't.
Eva thought of Nix.
She shouldn’t have.
But she did.
She thought of the stolen glances, of the texts she hated to find herself smiling at, of the need to keep it hidden. Keep him a secret. Something hers, to own.
He wasn’t hers, of course. He was Ines’s. They shared a moment – nothing more. A moment.
The girl in the mirror knows, though. Class starts in five minutes and Eva’s reflection has judgement in her eyes and knows she deserves it. Knows the cruelty of her actions, made worse by the guilt that she has to force upon herself to feel. Knows that she can tell herself she loves Jakov all she wants, but her eyes will still look for the familiar blonde hair in the crowded hallways, still seek out that grin that made her falter in the first place.
The bell rings. Eva makes it just in time, slotting in beside Nora, who rattles off complaints about Roko as if it were any other day. It continues, on and off throughout the class and then some during their break, and only gets worse when the two of them sit outside.
‘They’re annoying,’ says Nora. ‘The whole lot of them.’
Eva follows her gaze. The boys are sitting on a bench, manspreading and cracking up at jokes she’d bet money on not being funny. They were arrogant and self-absorbed, and the girls drooling after them should’ve known better. Should know better.
Eva should know better.
‘You okay?’ asks Nora.
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘You seem distracted.’
‘I’m fine,’ is the only response Eva offers. She tears her eyes away from the group as Nora begins talking about her fears for Tina and her obsession with Roko, the worst of them all, but Eva doesn’t hear it. The image is burnt into her retina: Nix, sitting at Roko’s side, so carefree and careless, as if they hadn’t—
‘I’ll see you in class.’
‘Where are you going?’
Nora chases after her but Eva is quicker and she loses her within a couple turns. The school is still new, she’s still learning it, but she gets to the bathroom that’s the furthest away from her next class and locks herself into a stall, pulling her legs against her chest, her bum uncomfortable on the flimsy plastic toilet seat.
Nora doesn’t know, she tells herself. There’s no way for her to know. She hasn’t admitted it to a soul – she’s hardly admitted it to herself.
She loves Jakov, she tells herself, too. She doesn’t like Nix.
She doesn’t like the way he greets her in the halls, the way he sees her even when she’s trying to seem small. She doesn’t like that he gives her attention. She doesn’t like that he knows the right words to say and she certainly doesn’t like the way his hands feel on her chin, and she definitely doesn’t want to—
Someone enters the bathroom. Eva holds her breath as they do their business and flush, then wash their hands and leave her alone again.
She tastes salt on her tongue and wipes her face, checking her makeup on her phone camera. Her eyes don’t linger on it long enough to judge her.
The bell rings and Eva rests her head against the toilet tank. It’s cold, and she can hear the piping, and it’s probably the most disgusting thing she could’ve done, but it feels fitting.
All she wants is to be seen. To be appreciated. To be looked at with love, to be treated with it, too. To not be told I love you and then disregarded because she doesn’t hold someone’s attention long enough. She doesn’t want to feel sheltered. Hidden. And she wants to… She wants to do more. To be more.
She wants to go partying with her friends and not worry about the judgement waiting from her boyfriend. She doesn’t want to have to hide what she’s doing, where she’s going – she shouldn’t feel the need to do so, in the first place. she doesn’t want to be sidelined by a best friend. She wants to be cherished – she wants to be looked at and be seen.
And Nix—
Eva stops herself.
This is the kind of thinking that gets her in trouble.
Instead, she goes back to class, slots into her place next to Nora as if nothing had changed, and tells her that she was feeling sick. Nora doesn’t follow up on it, even though Eva can see the cogs turning. They don’t know each other that well yet, maybe she doesn’t know what Eva’s hiding. Maybe she can’t see right through her.
Yet all Eva can feel is the tingling on her treacherous lips, on her skin that wants to be touched, on her neck that wants to be kissed by someone who’s forbidden to her. Someone who always looks at her like she matters to him, even though she shouldn’t.
When they’re done for the day, Eva walks home. It takes longer and she ignores Jakov’s texts but she needs the space. She needs time to herself, to think.
And when the text comes—the one that shouldn’t—she feels her heart fluttering at the sight of it. The wrongness of it all, barely there. Nix, checking up on her, because he saw her running off during their break. Nix, worrying about her, when they shouldn’t even be speaking.
And Jakov? He doesn’t text her after she says she needs space. He doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t ask if there’s anything he can do.
He doesn’t do any of the things she needs.
And when she falls asleep, it’s Nix’s name that pops up on her screen wishing her good night.