Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ In the Dark Room ❯ Possession ( Chapter 15 )

Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Studio Gainax production, its characters created by Hideaki Anno. They say the word, and this story ceases to exist.

 

 

In the Dark Room: Possession

 

By Midnight_Cereal

 

From her seat in front of the television Asuka Langley Sohryu heard Mariko Buick at the refrigerator, lightly shaking something. "Hey, whose soda is this in here?"

"Don't touch that. That's mine."

"Oh. Sorry."

Asuka didn't bother feeling guilty or selfish. Everything else in there was fair game. She liked that particular brand of cola, it was fairly expensive, and she just didn't feel like sharing that. Just that.

"Ooh! Mangoes! I can't remember the last time I had one of tho-"

"Don't touch that. That's mine."

Mariko may have groaned or murmured something, but the volume was up pretty loud. "So...this vegetable juice in here, that's yours, too, I'm guessin'?"

That was Shinji's. He made a bigger fuss about her downing the rest of his Itoen than she thought he would, and decided on the two liter carrot juice jug rather than the liter he usually purchased when they went grocery shopping. This was the closest thing Shinji Ikari had to an indulgence since...well...ever, to be honest. He was good person, wasn't he? Shouldn't he be allowed one thing that was untouchable, one possession that was his and his alone?

"That's everybody's. Knock yourself out."

Just didn't feel right telling her 'no' three times in a row...when did I become such a bleeding heart? The Second Child uncrossed her legs beneath the low table and winced. Why were her calves so tight? She didn't do anything today, if you didn't count the hours that the young photographer had damn-near talked her ear off. Asuka was unsure at first, but now she was certain: there was nothing interesting about Wiggle Stereoscopy.

 

It wasn't that she didn't like Mariko...it was just that the girl was disturbingly, unfailingly kind. She was always smiling, always listening, always taking other people's feelings into consideration; it was like living with the film negative of Rei...and now she was thinking in terms of photography!

Mariko got annoyed occasionally, but outside of the rare sigh or swear...did she get mad? Did she get really mad? What set her off, what was she scared of?

What happened to her mom?

Asuka, on a daily occasion, perhaps out of habit, found something to rue Shinji Ikari for. In the week that Mariko Buick had moved in to their flat removed a few kilometers from the center of Tokyo-3, he had brutally killed Asuka with kindness. And the reason he had done so sat down and folded her legs beneath one of the table's adjacent sides, setting her full cup down. Why was a large portion of the front of her shirt orange?

"Oh..." Mariko looked down at her chest and pulled at her stained white top. "Guess I knocked myself out, I guess. Cup was pretty full."

"You pig," Asuka said as she turned back toward the screen. On it, a girl, impossibly, sickeningly cute, shouted something, was encased in white light, and emerged with enough firepower hanging from her shoulder to sink the U.N.'s Pacific fleet.

Mariko laughed Asuka's words off. Of course she would. This girl would laugh off The Rapture. Where the hell was Shinji?

"I think he was meeting a friend or something." Then Mariko took another sip.

Asuka did well not to turn back. Her eyebrows, unfortunately, did not cooperate, and knitted. "He said that?"

"...no," Mariko answered after a second, and the blue-eyed girl took inventory of the green-eyed girl's hesitation. The Sixth Child thought that she was perceptive, that much was clear. "Asuka, why else would he be out on a Friday night? I mean...instead of being here with you? Or going out with you?"

"Shinji doesn't have any friends."

"I don't believe that."

Asuka scoffed. Softly scoffed. "You're a people person, Mariko, I can tell. But you're going to have to live here longer than a week to know that boy better than I do. A whole lot longer."

I don't believe that.

"You think...he's made some friends?"

Mariko paused as she set down her cup, considering Asuka's question, and then just pursed her lips and shrugged. Great, now she wants to shut up...

"What are you getting at?" Now Asuka was looking at her, no longer bothering to seem uninterested. No, don't you shrug your shoulders again!

"Asuka...everyone needs friends. Even cute, growing young men..."

The German's mouth hung open with a slack-jawed half-smile as Mariko's words hit her. "Y-you think he has a girlfriend?"

You think he's cute? Stop shrugging!

"Well...no. He seems loyal to you. Is he loyal, Asuka?" Then Mariko smiled, thinly. "I mean, you know him better than I do..."

Stop it. Stop making me want to punch you.

"The class rep is pretty chummy with him."

"Yukie's chummy with everyone." Yukie was chummy with everything that breathed and reproduced. She was loud, demanding, perhaps a bit arrogant and a little self important, negative qualities she counterbalanced with unerring goodness, reliability, charisma...

...and a body that seemed as if it was poured into a school uniform that could not hide the sweeping curves of her torso, the fullness of her calves, or the blossoming chest that unfailingly reminded Asuka of a phone conversation she had overheard Kaji having one day, where the word 'melon' was used at least thirty-seven times...

Asuka then remembered her trip on the train, that day she had met Mariko. Yukie had been on that train with her boyfriend. They had been standing close to each other, holding hands, and smiling. Oh, how they were smiling...

"Besides, she's already seeing someone," It was Asuka's turn to smile thinly, "and she has real loose socks, if you know what I mean."

The other girl blinked at Asuka, but said nothing. "Mariko, never mind. My point is that she and Shinji have nothing going on."

They had better not.

"Well, I said he was going out to see a friend, Asuka."

Uh-uh. Mariko wasn't worming out of this. "That isn't what you implied."

"I was implying a lot of things. I'm just saying he's out tonight, and I don't think he's alone."

"And I'm just saying that he isn't-"

"I'm not what?"

For the next ten seconds Shinji Ikari held his forearm up to block Asuka's half-hearted blows. Mariko was in position to have seen him come in. Why didn't she tell Asuka he was standing behind her? How long had he been standing behind her? Mariko was playing at some game, and Asuka was going to find out what. However, she was satisfied with just interrogating Shinji, at the moment.

"You didn't tell me you were going out."

He had half passed Asuka, paused, and then turned to face her. "I was just walking around." He shrugged and the Second Child took the silent interval to smirk in Mariko's direction. By the time the German was again in Shinji's face Mariko was laughing it off in the corner of her eye.  "It wasn't like there's anything to do around here."

Some deliciously and terribly risqué things were at the tip of Asuka's tongue, but she bit it back and settled on, "Boring is as boring does, right Shinji?"

He smiled, tensely, for some reason. "You'd probably know better than I do." He smiled as he said it, and she was about to ask 'what did he mean by that?' when he walked further into the apartment and looked at Mariko...and then down at her shirt.

"I was gonna change it after the commercial break." The black-haired American tugged at it again. "It really looks that bad?"

"For a kindergartner at nap time?" asked Asuka, "No. For a seventeen year-old girl who's going to pilot mecha for the premiere government research institution in the Eastern Hemisphere..."

Mariko looked up coolly. At Shinji. She then pouted. At Shinji.  "I didn't know it would bother you this much,” she said in a low voice, Mariko's sultry voice, her sexy voice.

I didn't know she could sound like that...

"What a shame, Shinji. I thought all boys liked dirty girls in wet t-shirts..." Without further preamble, Mariko crossed her hands over her stomach to finger the edges of her shirt, and began to pull upward and over her head...

What the hell is she doing?!

"That's alright!" Shinji blurted out, and Asuka swore that he was making a conscious effort to keep his eyes from falling out of his he-

"DON'T LOOK AT HER!"

"I won't even wash a load until later tonight! Keep it on!" His eyes found Asuka's. "Please keep it on..."

Mariko drew the edges of her top down again, not enough, however, to hide the pleasantly defined line running down the middle of her hard, flat stomach. "Are you sure?" she asked, eyebrows knitting in disappointment.

Though the Second Child stood perhaps two meters away from the son of Gendo, he flinched as if he could feel her hard breath on the back of his neck. "Oh yeah."

Asuka remained standing and watched his back as he left the living room mumbling something about sorting the whites and bleach. When he had slipped into his room, she snapped to Mariko...who was still looking back to where he had been in the hallway! "What were you doing?"

It must have been the sharpness of the red-head's demand that lured the taller girl's gaze back to the living room, because Mariko had turned back quickly. "Just proving you right. And I think you are right. He wouldn't do anything behind your back."

"So you want me to thank you for that? That's what you want?"

Mariko finally sobered a bit and let go of her shirt, letting it fall back around her waste, "C'mon, Asuka. I wasn't being serious. I mean..." she gave a short laugh, "besides, it's kinda your fault. You shouldn't have told me how fun it was to tease him like that-"

"Don't do that again."

Mariko's sterling smile faltered...

 "But...but I was just-"

"Don't. Do that again. Don't."

...and then disappeared.

"I'm sorry."

Don't touch that. That's mine.

End of Possession

 

A/N: Didn't plan on writing this. *shrug* Oh well. I'm still going to write that Battle Royale Omake. I promise.

 

Random A/N: Oh, I don't know…something about hams?

 

Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.

 

Next Chapter: Heaven or Hell: The ITDR AU Battle Royale Crossover