Girl With One Eye - Part 1/?
Title: Girl With One Eye
Pairing: Naomi/Effy (eventually)
Rating: Some strong language and sexual references, for now i'd say PG-13 but excpect R in the future.
Word Count: 1,500ish
Disclaimer: i obviously don't own Skins, although if i did my life would be sooo much better :P
Summary: A fic about Naomi and Effy, from Effy's pov. Been having some trouble with 'A Place To Hide' so i thought i'd have a go at something else. I don't think that this fic is gonna be too long, maybe 5 or so parts. Title and cut from Florence and the Machine's 'Girl With One Eye'.
I push my way through the throng, sweaty bodies pulling at my clothes, my long hair catching in jewellery and other people’s fingers. This is life how it should be lived, fast and free and easy. Cook understands to a certain extent, he gets my need to escape, to lose myself in these places - or at least he used to, now he’s too busy tearing himself apart. This place is as close to a faith as I have; it’s so like religion, the way that they all gather here, moving together, mouthing the same words, feeling the same feelings. The lights flash and change - blue, green, red, orange, blue, green, red, orange. The pulse of this place, so alive, lies in the music and the lights and the heaving of the sweaty crowd - I love it.
I lose myself in these people, lose myself in their throbbing, pulsating movement and it’s good - one of the best things in the world. I work my way towards the bar and end up with a drink thrust into my hand before I can even part my parched and cracked lips. My throat burns and tears from the tarry smoke that surely coats it after all these years; I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, time isn’t relevant, but I do know that I’m craving a nicotine hit. I can feel the monster growling and roaring inside of my chest, it wants to be sated, to be satisfied with every inhalation and I want nothing more than to grant it. I’ve always imagined this need as some physical manifestation inside of my chest; an angry, scaly beast with firey eyes and breath of smoke, it’s skin the colour of burning buildings. Even before my first spluttering inhalation I had this need inside of me, but back then I had nothing with which to bargain, nothing to silence it with. Now I have a hundred things, each one satisfies this monster - just for a little while.
I dance until my knees buckle, until the sweat pools in the angular hollows of my body, until the only thing keeping me going is the white powder consumed half an hour ago. It may have been more than half an hour ago, it might have been days ago, it might never have happened. I catch a glimpse of peroxide blonde whipping between the pulsating bodies, but I can’t tell if it’s a memory or a dream.
I fuck some guy in the bathroom at the club. With every crash of his hips into mine I stare at the ceiling and try to remember who he is and how I got here. The blonde flashes before my eyes, but this time I know it’s in my head as it fades and I’m left with just the cold tiles against my back and his clammy breath on my neck.
I get home when it’s almost light, I don’t know how, and fall onto my bed. My eyes sting when I close them, sting from the smoke and the booze and the fact that I haven’t slept in three days. It’s alright, I’m used to it. It’s amazing what the human body can suffer when it gets used to it, subject yourself to anything for long enough and it will just give in, cave like every other weak person in this world. Throughout my life so many people have given up, given in, around me that I’ve come to think that it might be the only option in this life - sooner or later we all give up, so we may as well live without care for now.
I sleep for a while, I don’t know how long, it might have been a few hours or a whole day but it’s light outside when I finally open my sticky eyelids. I fell asleep with my makeup on again and it stains my face and my sheets alike. I look in the mirror and I'm a hideous caricature of myself, the girl who is so broken on the inside with a face that matches. The mascara and eyeliner smudged beyond recognition, lines cut through my foundation from the sweat of last night. I pull my dress over my head, feeling the soreness in my shoulders that always comes after a busy night of dancing and fucking, and walk to the bathroom in nothing but my underwear. My so-called mother will be passed out in her room or on the sofa and everyone else is gone - they gave up, just like everyone else.
While I’m in the shower I watch the steam in the air, curling and billowing like the smoke I’ve inhaled a thousand times. I imagine it filling my lungs bit by bit, imagine it swirling in the dark cavern of my chest until it starts to seep from my mouth. Until every time I talk wisps of it escape from between my cracked lips, the heat of it grating over my tongue until I stop talking again, just so that people won’t stare at me anymore. I imagine them putting me in a glass case when the smoke starts to flow from every pore, from my burning nostrils, from behind my eyes. I imagine people filing past to look at me, staring and pointing and whispering to their terrified children about me.
I push my soaking hair from eyes and turn to face up into the stream of hot water, it feels like pins against my face, and I take solace in the burning and the suffocating water. If I stayed like this for just a little longer, I wonder, would I stop being able to breathe, would I pass out and fall under the steady stream of liquid, hitting my head on the edge of the tub. Would I lie there and turn blue, would it take hours for anyone to notice that I was gone, would anyone ever notice? Would my alcoholic mother forget all about me and just leave me to rot under the eternal flow of water?
When I’m back in my room I check my phone, something I rarely bother to do, and words appear before my eyes:
Can we meet? Naomi x
I stare at it for a minute, not confused just blank. That little seemingly inconsequential x at the end worries me, is something more than meaningless drinking and drug taking expected, does she need to talk, for me to give advice? I don’t know if I can even do it. After a few more minutes, in which I’ve lit and smoked a cigarette, I text back:
Come over. Effy
She knows where I live, she’ll probably be here ridiculously quick so I pull an oversized t-shirt over my head and settle on the window sill. I see her sauntering up the street in that way that is so Naomi and was clearly created purely so that people would know, not just suspect but KNOW, that she doesn’t give a shit what you think. Truth is Naomi cares, she cares so fucking much that I think it hurts her, that’s why she tries so hard not to - because if she didn’t care about other people, what they think, what they feel, then surely life would be so much easier wouldn’t it? I could have told her not to bother, but it’s hardly my place to interfere, it never is. These people - at college, on the street, in my fucking house - they can do whatever the fuck they want, ruin their fucking lives if they like, just so long as they don’t try to take me down with them.
Half an hour after Naomi got here I’m half a bottle of vodka and 5 smokes down, and all she’s said is hi. Maybe she won’t expect too much from me after all, maybe she doesn’t want me to help, to drag me into her life. Then she looks at me, eyes a piercing fucking blue that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before and for a second I think that maybe I can see what Emily sees in her. Then a cloud of sadness washes over them, tears threaten on the red rims and she says something which is clearly so expectant, so needing in its tone that I know she wants something more.
“Ef, what do you do when you feel as if all you want to do is tear out your own eye?”
She claws at her face as she says it, and that’s when I realise that maybe mindless drinking isn’t the solution after all, not for her. I take her hand in my own - something which I am incredibly fucking uncomfortable with, because all I can think to do right now is to stop her scratching at her face and leaving long and angry looking scratches all over it - and take another swig of the vodka.
“Me? I tear it out.”
------
Let me know what you think, i've been thinking about doing an Effy fic for a while and my current 'Place To Hide' writers block has led to me finally getting round to it.
Pairing: Naomi/Effy (eventually)
Rating: Some strong language and sexual references, for now i'd say PG-13 but excpect R in the future.
Word Count: 1,500ish
Disclaimer: i obviously don't own Skins, although if i did my life would be sooo much better :P
Summary: A fic about Naomi and Effy, from Effy's pov. Been having some trouble with 'A Place To Hide' so i thought i'd have a go at something else. I don't think that this fic is gonna be too long, maybe 5 or so parts. Title and cut from Florence and the Machine's 'Girl With One Eye'.
I push my way through the throng, sweaty bodies pulling at my clothes, my long hair catching in jewellery and other people’s fingers. This is life how it should be lived, fast and free and easy. Cook understands to a certain extent, he gets my need to escape, to lose myself in these places - or at least he used to, now he’s too busy tearing himself apart. This place is as close to a faith as I have; it’s so like religion, the way that they all gather here, moving together, mouthing the same words, feeling the same feelings. The lights flash and change - blue, green, red, orange, blue, green, red, orange. The pulse of this place, so alive, lies in the music and the lights and the heaving of the sweaty crowd - I love it.
I lose myself in these people, lose myself in their throbbing, pulsating movement and it’s good - one of the best things in the world. I work my way towards the bar and end up with a drink thrust into my hand before I can even part my parched and cracked lips. My throat burns and tears from the tarry smoke that surely coats it after all these years; I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, time isn’t relevant, but I do know that I’m craving a nicotine hit. I can feel the monster growling and roaring inside of my chest, it wants to be sated, to be satisfied with every inhalation and I want nothing more than to grant it. I’ve always imagined this need as some physical manifestation inside of my chest; an angry, scaly beast with firey eyes and breath of smoke, it’s skin the colour of burning buildings. Even before my first spluttering inhalation I had this need inside of me, but back then I had nothing with which to bargain, nothing to silence it with. Now I have a hundred things, each one satisfies this monster - just for a little while.
I dance until my knees buckle, until the sweat pools in the angular hollows of my body, until the only thing keeping me going is the white powder consumed half an hour ago. It may have been more than half an hour ago, it might have been days ago, it might never have happened. I catch a glimpse of peroxide blonde whipping between the pulsating bodies, but I can’t tell if it’s a memory or a dream.
I fuck some guy in the bathroom at the club. With every crash of his hips into mine I stare at the ceiling and try to remember who he is and how I got here. The blonde flashes before my eyes, but this time I know it’s in my head as it fades and I’m left with just the cold tiles against my back and his clammy breath on my neck.
I get home when it’s almost light, I don’t know how, and fall onto my bed. My eyes sting when I close them, sting from the smoke and the booze and the fact that I haven’t slept in three days. It’s alright, I’m used to it. It’s amazing what the human body can suffer when it gets used to it, subject yourself to anything for long enough and it will just give in, cave like every other weak person in this world. Throughout my life so many people have given up, given in, around me that I’ve come to think that it might be the only option in this life - sooner or later we all give up, so we may as well live without care for now.
I sleep for a while, I don’t know how long, it might have been a few hours or a whole day but it’s light outside when I finally open my sticky eyelids. I fell asleep with my makeup on again and it stains my face and my sheets alike. I look in the mirror and I'm a hideous caricature of myself, the girl who is so broken on the inside with a face that matches. The mascara and eyeliner smudged beyond recognition, lines cut through my foundation from the sweat of last night. I pull my dress over my head, feeling the soreness in my shoulders that always comes after a busy night of dancing and fucking, and walk to the bathroom in nothing but my underwear. My so-called mother will be passed out in her room or on the sofa and everyone else is gone - they gave up, just like everyone else.
While I’m in the shower I watch the steam in the air, curling and billowing like the smoke I’ve inhaled a thousand times. I imagine it filling my lungs bit by bit, imagine it swirling in the dark cavern of my chest until it starts to seep from my mouth. Until every time I talk wisps of it escape from between my cracked lips, the heat of it grating over my tongue until I stop talking again, just so that people won’t stare at me anymore. I imagine them putting me in a glass case when the smoke starts to flow from every pore, from my burning nostrils, from behind my eyes. I imagine people filing past to look at me, staring and pointing and whispering to their terrified children about me.
I push my soaking hair from eyes and turn to face up into the stream of hot water, it feels like pins against my face, and I take solace in the burning and the suffocating water. If I stayed like this for just a little longer, I wonder, would I stop being able to breathe, would I pass out and fall under the steady stream of liquid, hitting my head on the edge of the tub. Would I lie there and turn blue, would it take hours for anyone to notice that I was gone, would anyone ever notice? Would my alcoholic mother forget all about me and just leave me to rot under the eternal flow of water?
When I’m back in my room I check my phone, something I rarely bother to do, and words appear before my eyes:
Can we meet? Naomi x
I stare at it for a minute, not confused just blank. That little seemingly inconsequential x at the end worries me, is something more than meaningless drinking and drug taking expected, does she need to talk, for me to give advice? I don’t know if I can even do it. After a few more minutes, in which I’ve lit and smoked a cigarette, I text back:
Come over. Effy
She knows where I live, she’ll probably be here ridiculously quick so I pull an oversized t-shirt over my head and settle on the window sill. I see her sauntering up the street in that way that is so Naomi and was clearly created purely so that people would know, not just suspect but KNOW, that she doesn’t give a shit what you think. Truth is Naomi cares, she cares so fucking much that I think it hurts her, that’s why she tries so hard not to - because if she didn’t care about other people, what they think, what they feel, then surely life would be so much easier wouldn’t it? I could have told her not to bother, but it’s hardly my place to interfere, it never is. These people - at college, on the street, in my fucking house - they can do whatever the fuck they want, ruin their fucking lives if they like, just so long as they don’t try to take me down with them.
Half an hour after Naomi got here I’m half a bottle of vodka and 5 smokes down, and all she’s said is hi. Maybe she won’t expect too much from me after all, maybe she doesn’t want me to help, to drag me into her life. Then she looks at me, eyes a piercing fucking blue that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before and for a second I think that maybe I can see what Emily sees in her. Then a cloud of sadness washes over them, tears threaten on the red rims and she says something which is clearly so expectant, so needing in its tone that I know she wants something more.
“Ef, what do you do when you feel as if all you want to do is tear out your own eye?”
She claws at her face as she says it, and that’s when I realise that maybe mindless drinking isn’t the solution after all, not for her. I take her hand in my own - something which I am incredibly fucking uncomfortable with, because all I can think to do right now is to stop her scratching at her face and leaving long and angry looking scratches all over it - and take another swig of the vodka.
“Me? I tear it out.”
------
Let me know what you think, i've been thinking about doing an Effy fic for a while and my current 'Place To Hide' writers block has led to me finally getting round to it.