FIC: the acceleration of gravity (Skins; Emily, Effy, Naomi)
Title: the acceleration of gravity
Chapter: Prologue and Chapter 1
Fandom: Skins (Emily, Effy, Naomi)
Rating: PG
Word count: 3,400
Summary: Emily returns to Bristol after being away for several years. An AU S7 fic that disregards the Naomily reconciliation in episode 4x08.
Author's note: So I originally wrote this a million years ago under a different title, when S4 aired, and took it down after I abandoned it (and the fandom) completely. But then season 7 of Skins happened, and I realised my original concept worked way better with the events of Effy's two S7 episodes, so I'm re-writing it to suit. See if I get any farther this time around.
---
Prologue
The sky is dark today; it’s heavy, like your mood. It looms low over the landscape which flickers past like a film reel -- each telegraph pole punctuating each new frame, as you watch your journey along the M4 play out before you like a movie you can’t rewind.
It has a gravity to it, home. You were so sure that it was just some sentimental notion -- home is where the heart is, or some bollocks -- but halfway around the world, you could feel the tug of its orbit, just as you feel it now. It’s drawing you back.
The closer you get, the more the tightness in your chest dissipates, and you think, bitterly, that it feels more like resignation than relief. A silent recognition that this is the inevitable conclusion of a journey that took you everywhere and nowhere all at once.
You look around at the sad figures that surround you, sandwiched tightly together on this bus that’s going nowhere. You’d feel sorry for them, but they’re doing better than you are, you think as the view outside of the grimy window slowly morphs into something you’re beginning to recognise.
You might as well be going backwards.
---
You go away and expect everything to have changed, but on the surface, it all looks the same. It’s the scale of the city that has shifted -- you feel like a stranger in a strange land, and wonder, vaguely, if it’s not you that is irreversibly altered. The thought conjures images of spring cleaning -- of the day you found a dusty box of your childhood belongings (the ones that a covetous twin hadn’t destroyed or claimed), and remember how these objects were at once so familiar and so foreign. You remember how the toys seemed like miniatures; they felt so tiny in your hands, so fragile where they had once been substantial. Returning feels the same way, and it reminds you, yet again that you are different than you once were.
Even so, you remember things as they were three years ago, and stupidly get off at the bus stop near your old house on Dibstall Road and curse yourself for forgetting, muttering all the way as you trudge your heavy pack to the other side of town.
You see familiar faces in the passers-by, and realise only on the second glance that they are not the faces that you thought they were. It jars you to remember that so many of the people you knew back then have moved away or are just plain gone. You even think you see her once or twice, think you catch glimpses out of the corner of your eye, but as far as you know, she doesn’t live here anymore and wouldn’t want to see you anyway. She has probably moved on and wouldn’t care to be found, and you’re not even sure you have the energy to try.
---
---
Chapter 1
The garage door is open, of course, and your dad is in there, clattering around with some new fitness contraption or another when he spots you slouching up the drive.
“Emsy!” he exclaims, looking up, tripping over himself and knocking over his tools as he comes jogging out to meet you. “Jenna, love,” he yells back at the house, “Quick! Emsy’s come home!”
You barely manage to drop your rucksack from your shoulders, offer a smile and a “Hi, Dad,” before you’re pulled into a tight hug. It feels good; it’s the most normal you’ve felt since stepping foot inside city limits after two and a half years. He hasn’t changed, not a hair, though you note how his Fitch Fitness t-shirt is more worn than the last time you saw him in it. You suppose he hasn’t printed new ones since the business went under, although he evidently hasn’t quite let go. You relax into the hug and are thankful that he will never change -- he will always be the same bumbling man-child who will always smell vaguely of sweat and floral fabric softener, and who will always, always be excited to see you.
He releases you from his vice grip after several long seconds and you step back, only then noticing the cool figure of your mother over his shoulder, leaning up against the house, silently regarding the scene in front of her.
“So you decided to come home,” she greets you, and the hug she offers has none of the warmth of your dad’s. You nod into her shoulder before pulling away, standing awkwardly opposite her.
“You’ve lost weight,” she remarks, and you shrug. “Well, best get some food into you,” she starts, gesturing towards the house, “Come in, then. Come in.”
---
Your mum’s cooking, it seems, is another constant in a household that (despite your mum’s refusal to acknowledge it) thrives on conflict and upheaval. You find it oddly comforting to know that it hasn’t yet, and may never improve. Tonight’s offering is a thin broth that tastes vaguely of celery and ham, and a soggy quiche with altogether too much tinned asparagus. Your dad, of course, thinks it’s mint.
You manage to yawn and nod your way through dinner with nothing of great consequence being said, your parents mostly talking quietly to one another, and your dad cooing over the food. When they do address you, for the most part they mercifully keep the conversation light -- Katie is at work, and apparently hasn’t yet had the inclination to move out, and James is, not surprisingly, at Gordon Macpherson’s. Your dad inquires after your most recent destinations, those since your last postcard, and, at this, your mum thinly veils her displeasure at your overall lack of correspondence.
When she can no longer contain herself, she sighs, and fixes you with a stony gaze, “To be honest, Emily, I don’t even really know what to say to you,” reproach not absent from her tone.
You decide to retreat, rather than engage. “Don’t start, okay?” you plead tiredly, “I’m exhausted. Is it okay if I go up and get some sleep?” at which she continues to look on expectantly until you add, “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
Thankfully, she relinquishes, and motions toward the stairs, “There are still two beds in Katie’s room.”
You don’t miss the subtle barb, but choose, for tonight, to ignore it. You kiss your dad on the cheek and head towards the stairs, ascending with heavy limbs towards your old room.
---
It’s strange being back in here. It was barely your room at all -- you really only lived in this house in the brief window between breaking your stasis at Naomi’s and leaving Bristol altogether. There are still two beds, though, on opposite sides of the room -- Katie’s under the window, the other against the inside wall, neatly made and untouched. That corner of the room, your corner, is almost like a dollhouse, a diorama. The bedspread isn’t one you recognise, and you think it seems fitting, even now, that while she didn’t remove it completely, Emily’s Bed has to conform with the whole that is Katie’s Room. This room is unmistakably Katie’s, though it is tidier and more grown up than a Katie three years ago would have it (gone are the posters and photo collages), but you regard the room like it is a stranger’s. You let your fingers trace over perfume bottles, make-up, jewellery, a dog-eared copy of Gone with the Wind, as though trying to re-learn the essentials of the girl you once knew as intuitively as you once knew yourself.
---
You are vaguely aware of someone bustling about in the dark, but it’s her unmistakable petulant huff that wakes you up.
”Fucking nice, this is. You disappear for god knows how long and then come back unannounced and just, like, move back in or something,” she begins without so much as a greeting, and you hear her stumble, followed by the dull thud of her heels being dropped to the floor.
“This is my room too,” you reply hoarsely, rubbing your eyes with your wrist as you sit up, noting that you are fully clothed on top of the blankets, ”sort of.”
“Not for, like, two years or whatever,” she counters, crossing from the centre of the room and flicking on the light, “you’re just bloody lucky I didn’t throw your bed out with the rest of the stuff you left behind.”
You just nod and sit on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with your elbows on your knees while your eyes adjust to the light.
“Well?” she asks, and you raise your eyebrows questioningly.
“Fuck sakes,” she mutters, beginning to sound exasperated, and all but lunges toward you. “Come here you stupid cow,” she exhales before pulling you up roughly into a tight hug.
You close your eyes and relax against her, and it’s strange, you think, how you fit together like this. You were never perfect compliments, twins never are, you suppose, and you and Katie were never quite alike enough to get along. You are mirror images of one another; you have always been at odds.
“Christ, you’re a bit bloody skinny,” she remarks as she pulls away, giving you the once over, “Ems, you look a bit shit, babes.”
You nod again and regard her silently.
Katie is brassier than when you left. Bronzed. Every inch of her is polished, primped and preened, and she seems to cast an artificial golden glow around her. It’s a bit of a stark contrast to your grown out, sun bleached hair and freckled skin. You look down at your faded black jeans and worn out canvas sneakers. Once you’d have forgiven people for mistaking you for one another. Today you’d be surprised if you were recognised as sisters, let alone twins.
“And what about you?” you ask, and she looks taken aback and ready to take the offensive, “You look like a bloody tangerine.”
“I what? Graham says I look well fit,” she shrieks, glancing down to adjust her tits as a retort.
“Graham?” you ask in surprise, “From mum’s work?”
“Yeah,” she replies, suddenly coy, “from work.”
Your shock is palpable, but you say nothing as you sit back on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah, well,” she continues, scarcely concealing the challenge behind her eyes, “I needed a job, didn’t I? The wedding planning went to shit, and you fucked off. One of us had to help out mum and dad. How else is dad going to reopen the gym?”
“He wants to reopen the gym?” you ask, no less surprised.
She looks at you like you’ve grown a second head, “Christ sakes, Em,” she scoffs, throwing her hands up, “he’s been planning this for ages.”
“I’ve been away,” you answer simply.
“Yeah, I fucking noticed.”
“I’m back now, Katie,” you say firmly, looking her right in the eye, “can we please just try and get along?”
She’s still standing in the centre of the room, and she regards you for a long time, “I fucking missed you, you know?”
“I know,” you reply, letting your head drop down into your hands, still able to feel her watching you from across the room. “I missed you too,” you finally tell her, and it’s true enough, when you say it.
She relaxes then, and turns off the light, shuffles around until you hear her getting into bed.
“Goodnight, Ems,” she says softly.
“Goodnight.”
After a long pause, she sighs, “Next time, say goodbye, alright?”
---
---
It’s funny, you think, standing in the kitchen doorway some days later, how comfortable you are being on the outside looking in, and you wonder when it was that you came to be a stranger in your own house. It’s not a new feeling, you realise, as you watch your family carrying out their morning ritual -- your mum and Katie are making coffee and toast respectively, dancing around one another with their movements choreographed. While they are clearly much closer now, in some ways you have always felt like this.
Your dad is trying unsuccessfully to help James tie his school tie, and Katie turns to watch and laughs. It’s a picture perfect little family, much to your surprise, and you can see no place for yourself in it. You are musing on that thought when your mother looks up, her eyes going steely when she sees you, her smile stiff.
“Good morning, Emily,” she says to you with a formality that has no place in her relationship with Katie, and you wonder, now more than ever, if you are truly strangers to one another. You mumble a response and shuffle to the coffee pot, then stare quietly into your cup as they bustle about you.
“Any plans for the day, love?” your Dad asks.
“Like a job hunt,” Katie suggests derisively, and your mum chimes in, coolly noting that Katie pays rent, these days.
“Yeah, maybe,” you sigh, standing to exit the kitchen, “I’m going for a walk.”
---
When you trace it all back, you find it impossible to pinpoint where it all went so wrong between you and your mum; between you and Katie. You wonder if it all happened in those first six minutes, the ones in which Katie was out greeting the world and you were yet to enter it. Your mum is always so quick to remind you that you are the younger twin, that you are the introvert, the sensitive one. The one who was speeding down a dangerous path and who could never make the right decisions for herself. The one who kept secrets and told lies.
And your mum has good instincts about people, that’s the worst part. It simultaneously stings that she doesn’t know you at all, and fills you with dread that one day she will actually be proven right. You remember the day of that tragic barbeque, when Naomi had shouted, for all the world to hear, the admission of what she had done. The blow of the public declaration, the worst one -- that a girl had died because of her callous rejection -- was nothing compared to knowing that your mother now knew the truth. That, really, she had been right all along.
And it makes you wonder -- you’ve wondered every day since selling your moped and buying your ticket out of here -- if it was all your fault; if there was a point, in all of that, where you could have just said stop.
There was really nothing you could have done, though. So much back then was so far out of your control that you couldn’t even tell if it was you that was spiralling down, or if everything was crashing down around you.
---
You’re broken out of your reverie when you become aware of a familiar figure taking a seat beside you, and it goes part way to confirming your suspicion that if you sit on the same park bench long enough, you will see the whole world pass you by.
”You could have at least stayed for the funeral,” is how she greets you, and you’re not taken aback, not really. You never would have expected pleasantries and a hug, not from Effy.
“I know,” you answer with a bowed head, “and I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need,” she replies, “it’s water under the bridge.”
You catch her eye briefly, before turning away again, taking a long drag from your fag, “Is it?”
She nods soberly, “Some things just need to be.”
You’d forgotten, in the time you’d been away, just how sage Effy can be, how she can cut you down to size with just the simplest of statements. She’d lost the plot not long before you went away, but had been slowly improving. She was getting back on track when things took a turn and got so much worse. You regard her silently out of the corner of your eye, wondering how, three years after losing Freddie, she could make it all sound so simple.
“I wasn’t a very good friend to you,” you admit quietly, after a long pause.
“You had other things going on,” she offers, turning to face you, plucking the cigarette from your fingers.
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” she admits, “but I had people around me. I had Panda and Katie,” she pauses then, “I had Naomi.”
You can feel her scrutinising your profile, those blue eyes always searching, seeking out little cracks that she can weasel through to get to the rotten core of things. You wonder what it is she finds there, and you wonder what she brings back with her. Perhaps, you think, this is Effy’s sickness: morbid fascination.
When you don’t respond, she continues, “And anyway, what could you have done?”
Of course you wish it was that simple, you really do. She’s right, really -- you were stuck in your own mess, and didn’t have a place in hers. You’ve wasted so much time trying to figure out what you could have done differently, how things could have turned out better, for everyone, only to realise that, ultimately, there was just too much that was out of your hands. That none of it was your doing in the first place.
You shrug off the question and glance sideways at her, “How are you now?”
“Back on the rails, you could say,” she answers matter-of-factly, her tone light.
You nod, “I’m pleased to hear it.”
And again you feel those eyes boring into you, “Are you?”
You look at her then, solemnly, wearily, and shake your head, “I’ve just been away.”
“And now you’re back.” It’s a statement, not a question, but you respond all the same.
“Yes.”
She just nods, and finally faces away from you, “So I see.”
There is silence then between you, and it hangs heavily. You have come to learn with Effy, that there is always more that is left unsaid.
Finally, though, it is Effy who breaks the silence, “She’s not here with me, you know.”
You look at her, perplexed, “Who?”
“Naomi.”
“Why would she be with you?”
Effy smiles easily, as she explains, “We’re flatmates in London, I thought you knew.”
You shake your head, “I don’t know anything, really.”
“She hasn’t been home in a while,” she adds, and at this you simply nod as she continues. “Said she might visit her mum next month, if she doesn’t book many gigs.”
It’s strange to hear Effy volunteer so much information unbidden, and you wonder vaguely what she’s asking from you in return. You wonder at her last point, but stay silent. Finally, she asks a direct question, “Are you really not going to ask about her?”
“No,” you answer simply, and you can feel her waiting for you to continue, so you elaborate. “It’s done Effy, it’s over. We’ve hurt each other too much.”
“So you admit that you hurt her, then?”
Your gaze turns sceptical, “Do you have an opinion?”
“I’m not offering one.”
“You are though, aren’t you?” you contest gently, and she smiles her serene, acerbic smile. “You think both parties were at fault.”
“Aren’t they always?
You exhale roughly though your nose and let your head fall forward in frustration. “Yeah, I suppose they are.”
Silence falls on you both yet again, and you are left swimming in your own head.
“You should see her,” she prompts gently, and you smile bitterly.
“Why?” you ask. ”After all this time, what does it matter?”
She holds your gaze and then falters. “You should she her,” she repeats firmly at the ground, and stubs out the fag you’ve been sharing.
“How long are you in town?” you finally ask, placing another cigarette between your lips to ease your discomfort.
“Until Sunday,” she answers, extending her hand for the fag you’re offering, “to see mum and have the quarterly review at the loony bin.” Her smile is ironic, “The usual shit.”
You smile back, “Will I see you before you head home?”
“I hope so,” she says earnestly, and you believe her.
There is something in her expression that warms you, and the sensation reminds you of what it feels like to be in the company of people who just know you.
“Yeah,” you smile sadly, realising that Effy may just be the only person left who could really make that claim, “me too.”
---