Fic: Rules for Living
Title: Rules for Living
Fandom: Skins
Pairing: Emily/Naomi, JJ
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have no legal claim on these darlings, and I'm fairly certain that's in everyone's best interest.
Summary: In which Emily makes no excuses and honesty's the only ethic worth abiding by.
Notes: I make no excuses either! (Unless it’s for Britishisms or lack thereof; too much schooling back and forth, especially in literature, confuses a person.)
So she’s helped JJ with the whole virginity thing and is rather pleased with herself, really. Especially since certain parts of her life have gone a bit to shit. (A bit; eating freshly buttered toast in an enormous purple sweatshirt, sharing impersonations of crap psychiatrists, and watching little upward twitches usurp the face of JJ’s mum have made her winningly optimistic.)
She’d had this tickler of an idea that maybe she and JJ could understand one another from the moment he’d showed her his matching cardboard packet of STUN and babbled on endearingly about overstimulation before fainting dead away - not pervy dramatics like your regular teenaged cock-wagger (Cook, she imagines, would thrash about in faux seizures for a good three minutes, or maybe stand there snorting laughter) - and if she hadn’t already been enamoured by the full-on sincerity of him (which, of course, she had; JJ was just the sort of person you recognised as a keeper on first count), she would have become, right then. He’d been awfully heavy, totally impossible to budge, and she’d had to smack him a bit, firm taps, both cheeks, to bring him round, and he’d gone into a whole new spasm of chaotic, apologetic sputtering once she’d recollected for him the events of the preceding minute, but still she’d thought, the entire time, God, he just is, isn’t he? And also, Why aren’t I?
And later, watching him produce meds from his pockets like some new-age Mary Poppins, she’d thought about all those pills rattling about his head and how it couldn’t possibly be healthy, however often he consumed his vitamin C (and that’s another issue entirely; god only knows what sort of damage he’s done to the inner lining of his esophagus - her throat, she’s sure, will be raw for days). She’d thought about how he could pretty much save her life one second (never mind how she’d wound up choking to death to begin with; she’s swearing off all things fizzed, this day forward) and plunge into fatalistic melancholy the next (as if she’d really just abandon him to his meds at the top of that hill; as if her decision to spend time with him were really so transient or revocable). And then he’d gone on and brought up normal - which, god, she’d really met the mirror, hadn’t she? - and bloody well shared his deepest fantasies, and that whole bit about Freddie and Cook and Effy had been so fucking heartbreaking. (Well, at least until she’d flashed him her tits. She’s pleased with that too, in a you ballsy bitch! sort of way. Always wanted to be responsible for something so blatantly forward and ridiculous, and she couldn’t have hoped for a more receptive audience.)
In any case, by then she’d come to all sorts of conclusions. Not just the meds fucking around with his neurons and synapses and red blood cells, is it? People, too. Or, maybe, she’d thought, people, more. And already she was standing the two of them up in her head like identical paper cut-outs of the same thing, which was to say: slightly fucked, fundamentally decent, always getting knocked about for no good reason (well, reasons being fear and lack of normalcy and apprehensions of inferiority, which weren’t entirely dismissable, but still: no good). And already she’d processed the bulk of his imaginary normal day and comprehended the one request within her basic power to fulfil, and she’d thought, well, I could help with that. Casually, without any real depth of intention, but not dismissive, either. Because she’d told him to ask for things - which was her own, frequently disobeyed, advice-to-self (it mostly played, on end, to rare effect, in the stereo-sound recesses of her brain) - and he’d asked immediately to see her tits (breasts, he’d said), which was. Well. Brilliant, really. And how could she not respect that? Instantaneous, bold-faced honesty. Cheeky, but undeniably sincere.
Because Emily has already spent too much of her life telling lies. One lie, mostly, over and over again, but the guilt and the remorse and the shame of it is killing her. It’s no trouble being gay, she’s realized. It’s trouble being honest. Also: brave, strong, assertive; all those fine militaristic qualities. She thinks about all the ill-deserved shit she put Naomi through (the whispers, the glares, the outright dirty insults) while she was pining and lusting and fumbling around for a clue, and she feels like shit for letting Naomi just take it. (Well, not that Naomi couldn’t sling it with the best of them, but Naomi shouldn’t have had to, that was the thing.)
She thinks about what the world would be like if lies were somehow, magically, abolished, if half-truths and deliberate omissions and careful cover-ups were dead on arrival and people could know for sure that they were getting all the facts, and she thinks it would be wonderful. Well, disastrous at first - generations of buried secrets, animosities revealed, broken hearts galore (maybe her broken heart) - but, after that. Relief. Just immense, immense relief. Because people would know exactly what they were to each other, and why, and no one could be blamed for simply being.
In this hypothetical, color-bright world where Naomi says things to her directly and isn't quite so put upon and holds her gaze for no particular reason (isn't trying to determine, for instance, whether they're drunk enough or high enough or fucked enough to, well, fuck), Emily doesn't need STUN or dark underground club tunnels or JJ's frenetic babbling to help her spill the beans. She gets up on a cafeteria table and hollers for silence and says, Hello, I’m Emily, and I like sex with girls. She kisses Naomi right in front of everyone, full on the mouth, with copious tongue, and holds her hand sans catflap. She wakes up with her every morning - before her, even - and watches her sleep and plays idly with her hair. And if it doesn’t work out at the end of everything, they’re both okay because they understand precisely why. And if it does work out. Well.
But, so. She’s not there, is she? And people in this real, steel and cement, world are going to go on being absolute dicks to one another because they can’t trust a soul - well, except JJ (who is, by all professional accounts, mentally damaged) - can they? So really, now, she’s got two options. They are: 1) live according to how things ought to be (that is to say, complete, revelatory, no-holds-barred honesty), or 2) muck about as she has done (false starts and lies, inside and out). Option Two, she’s fairly certain, is utter shit.
Which isn’t to say she’s entirely sold on Option One either - she really doesn’t want to go it alone - but she’s been experimenting a lot lately. Blurting things out in tandem with her persistent mental track, diving headlong before her defences kick in. And, unexpected outings of sexuality notwithstanding, she hasn’t come up empty. (Just last month, if she had been asked to conjure up a perfect day - not normal so much as perfect - losing her virginity to Naomi, well, that would have been right at the top. And that’s happened, now, hasn’t it? Even if not much else has happened since. But she’s winningly optimistic. There’s so much time.)
So maybe the easy stuff hadn’t turned out easy. (Katie and Freddie, for crying out loud, and the look in Katie’s eyes, like she’d been kicked in the ribs, like Emily had gone out and killed someone; clearly, there’s a crapper load of stuff to sort out.) And, conversely, letting JJ see her tits again hadn't been all that hard.
Well, she’d ribbed him over his teddy pyjamas, and he’d been nervous as fuck at first (nervous-excited; flattering, really), but she had already decided - sitting out on the curb where Katie had left her (Fuck’s sake, Ems, I just… I can’t deal with this right now... Sit the fuck down and don’t move), hearing the dejection in JJ’s voice, but also, remarkably, the hope - that, of the many things she could do (and had done), spontaneously granting a sincerely voiced wish wouldn’t be the worst one. And then there’d been the wreck of his room, his airplane models, his shelves of toys, his wall, with, like, every single insecurity and desire and dream scrawled all over it, a veritable spatter-board for his heart, virgin-virgi-virg printed desperately above his name like a bad tattoo. No, it hadn’t been difficult at all. Awkward, maybe, definitely - she hadn’t gotten off, not even close - but it hadn’t been about her this time, and that was all right.
(She hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be weighed to near immobility by the pressure in her chest, a million-and-one unspoken wants combusting all at once and rushing outward. She hasn’t forgotten the sound of it either, the gasps and pants and remnants of rainfall all hitching and starting and ratcheting higher, the smell of damp woods, small fire, damp girl. She’s pretty sure she’ll remember it, barring Alzheimer’s, ‘til she dies.)
So.
So what if she’s in for it with Katie and the rest? What had JJ said? Shitification. She’ll cry a bit and break a bit, guaranteed, but what’s an ideal anyhow if not something to be worked toward? (Maybe the truth is that things have never been more straightforward.) She’s already managed the art of honest confession through wooden doors. And she’s thinking she's never met a door that wasn’t meant, at some point, to open.
Fandom: Skins
Pairing: Emily/Naomi, JJ
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have no legal claim on these darlings, and I'm fairly certain that's in everyone's best interest.
Summary: In which Emily makes no excuses and honesty's the only ethic worth abiding by.
Notes: I make no excuses either! (Unless it’s for Britishisms or lack thereof; too much schooling back and forth, especially in literature, confuses a person.)
So she’s helped JJ with the whole virginity thing and is rather pleased with herself, really. Especially since certain parts of her life have gone a bit to shit. (A bit; eating freshly buttered toast in an enormous purple sweatshirt, sharing impersonations of crap psychiatrists, and watching little upward twitches usurp the face of JJ’s mum have made her winningly optimistic.)
She’d had this tickler of an idea that maybe she and JJ could understand one another from the moment he’d showed her his matching cardboard packet of STUN and babbled on endearingly about overstimulation before fainting dead away - not pervy dramatics like your regular teenaged cock-wagger (Cook, she imagines, would thrash about in faux seizures for a good three minutes, or maybe stand there snorting laughter) - and if she hadn’t already been enamoured by the full-on sincerity of him (which, of course, she had; JJ was just the sort of person you recognised as a keeper on first count), she would have become, right then. He’d been awfully heavy, totally impossible to budge, and she’d had to smack him a bit, firm taps, both cheeks, to bring him round, and he’d gone into a whole new spasm of chaotic, apologetic sputtering once she’d recollected for him the events of the preceding minute, but still she’d thought, the entire time, God, he just is, isn’t he? And also, Why aren’t I?
And later, watching him produce meds from his pockets like some new-age Mary Poppins, she’d thought about all those pills rattling about his head and how it couldn’t possibly be healthy, however often he consumed his vitamin C (and that’s another issue entirely; god only knows what sort of damage he’s done to the inner lining of his esophagus - her throat, she’s sure, will be raw for days). She’d thought about how he could pretty much save her life one second (never mind how she’d wound up choking to death to begin with; she’s swearing off all things fizzed, this day forward) and plunge into fatalistic melancholy the next (as if she’d really just abandon him to his meds at the top of that hill; as if her decision to spend time with him were really so transient or revocable). And then he’d gone on and brought up normal - which, god, she’d really met the mirror, hadn’t she? - and bloody well shared his deepest fantasies, and that whole bit about Freddie and Cook and Effy had been so fucking heartbreaking. (Well, at least until she’d flashed him her tits. She’s pleased with that too, in a you ballsy bitch! sort of way. Always wanted to be responsible for something so blatantly forward and ridiculous, and she couldn’t have hoped for a more receptive audience.)
In any case, by then she’d come to all sorts of conclusions. Not just the meds fucking around with his neurons and synapses and red blood cells, is it? People, too. Or, maybe, she’d thought, people, more. And already she was standing the two of them up in her head like identical paper cut-outs of the same thing, which was to say: slightly fucked, fundamentally decent, always getting knocked about for no good reason (well, reasons being fear and lack of normalcy and apprehensions of inferiority, which weren’t entirely dismissable, but still: no good). And already she’d processed the bulk of his imaginary normal day and comprehended the one request within her basic power to fulfil, and she’d thought, well, I could help with that. Casually, without any real depth of intention, but not dismissive, either. Because she’d told him to ask for things - which was her own, frequently disobeyed, advice-to-self (it mostly played, on end, to rare effect, in the stereo-sound recesses of her brain) - and he’d asked immediately to see her tits (breasts, he’d said), which was. Well. Brilliant, really. And how could she not respect that? Instantaneous, bold-faced honesty. Cheeky, but undeniably sincere.
Because Emily has already spent too much of her life telling lies. One lie, mostly, over and over again, but the guilt and the remorse and the shame of it is killing her. It’s no trouble being gay, she’s realized. It’s trouble being honest. Also: brave, strong, assertive; all those fine militaristic qualities. She thinks about all the ill-deserved shit she put Naomi through (the whispers, the glares, the outright dirty insults) while she was pining and lusting and fumbling around for a clue, and she feels like shit for letting Naomi just take it. (Well, not that Naomi couldn’t sling it with the best of them, but Naomi shouldn’t have had to, that was the thing.)
She thinks about what the world would be like if lies were somehow, magically, abolished, if half-truths and deliberate omissions and careful cover-ups were dead on arrival and people could know for sure that they were getting all the facts, and she thinks it would be wonderful. Well, disastrous at first - generations of buried secrets, animosities revealed, broken hearts galore (maybe her broken heart) - but, after that. Relief. Just immense, immense relief. Because people would know exactly what they were to each other, and why, and no one could be blamed for simply being.
In this hypothetical, color-bright world where Naomi says things to her directly and isn't quite so put upon and holds her gaze for no particular reason (isn't trying to determine, for instance, whether they're drunk enough or high enough or fucked enough to, well, fuck), Emily doesn't need STUN or dark underground club tunnels or JJ's frenetic babbling to help her spill the beans. She gets up on a cafeteria table and hollers for silence and says, Hello, I’m Emily, and I like sex with girls. She kisses Naomi right in front of everyone, full on the mouth, with copious tongue, and holds her hand sans catflap. She wakes up with her every morning - before her, even - and watches her sleep and plays idly with her hair. And if it doesn’t work out at the end of everything, they’re both okay because they understand precisely why. And if it does work out. Well.
But, so. She’s not there, is she? And people in this real, steel and cement, world are going to go on being absolute dicks to one another because they can’t trust a soul - well, except JJ (who is, by all professional accounts, mentally damaged) - can they? So really, now, she’s got two options. They are: 1) live according to how things ought to be (that is to say, complete, revelatory, no-holds-barred honesty), or 2) muck about as she has done (false starts and lies, inside and out). Option Two, she’s fairly certain, is utter shit.
Which isn’t to say she’s entirely sold on Option One either - she really doesn’t want to go it alone - but she’s been experimenting a lot lately. Blurting things out in tandem with her persistent mental track, diving headlong before her defences kick in. And, unexpected outings of sexuality notwithstanding, she hasn’t come up empty. (Just last month, if she had been asked to conjure up a perfect day - not normal so much as perfect - losing her virginity to Naomi, well, that would have been right at the top. And that’s happened, now, hasn’t it? Even if not much else has happened since. But she’s winningly optimistic. There’s so much time.)
So maybe the easy stuff hadn’t turned out easy. (Katie and Freddie, for crying out loud, and the look in Katie’s eyes, like she’d been kicked in the ribs, like Emily had gone out and killed someone; clearly, there’s a crapper load of stuff to sort out.) And, conversely, letting JJ see her tits again hadn't been all that hard.
Well, she’d ribbed him over his teddy pyjamas, and he’d been nervous as fuck at first (nervous-excited; flattering, really), but she had already decided - sitting out on the curb where Katie had left her (Fuck’s sake, Ems, I just… I can’t deal with this right now... Sit the fuck down and don’t move), hearing the dejection in JJ’s voice, but also, remarkably, the hope - that, of the many things she could do (and had done), spontaneously granting a sincerely voiced wish wouldn’t be the worst one. And then there’d been the wreck of his room, his airplane models, his shelves of toys, his wall, with, like, every single insecurity and desire and dream scrawled all over it, a veritable spatter-board for his heart, virgin-virgi-virg printed desperately above his name like a bad tattoo. No, it hadn’t been difficult at all. Awkward, maybe, definitely - she hadn’t gotten off, not even close - but it hadn’t been about her this time, and that was all right.
(She hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be weighed to near immobility by the pressure in her chest, a million-and-one unspoken wants combusting all at once and rushing outward. She hasn’t forgotten the sound of it either, the gasps and pants and remnants of rainfall all hitching and starting and ratcheting higher, the smell of damp woods, small fire, damp girl. She’s pretty sure she’ll remember it, barring Alzheimer’s, ‘til she dies.)
So.
So what if she’s in for it with Katie and the rest? What had JJ said? Shitification. She’ll cry a bit and break a bit, guaranteed, but what’s an ideal anyhow if not something to be worked toward? (Maybe the truth is that things have never been more straightforward.) She’s already managed the art of honest confession through wooden doors. And she’s thinking she's never met a door that wasn’t meant, at some point, to open.