FIC: disintegration [4/4]
Title: Disintegration
Author: Eskimo Jo
Rating: T
Warning: Substance addiction/use, language, sexual situations.
Disclaimer: The names of all characters contained here-in are the property of Skins, Company Pictures, & Channel4. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
Full notes in Part 1
And so the pattern has repeated once more.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
But she needs to break something.
The airport is small, but busy. She's standing there, taking it all in, Emily's small hand nestled in her own. It's full, noisy, and people seem to be moving so bloody quickly that they're blurry. It's like time is going slower for her than the rest of the world, like in a film. But she knows better. This is much more likely to be an acute anxiety attack, but she doesn't feel too warm, her breathing is even and her heartbeat doesn't feel like it's about to thump itself to death against her sternum. She fingers the boarding pass she printed out at home, it feels damp. She lets Emily lead them both to the queue for Ryanair.
She vaguely hears her mum behind them, pulling along her luggage. And Katie is yapping about something to Ems. Everyone seems excited, it's buzzing in the air around them, but it never quite soaks in like it should. This is Goa, for Christ's sake. Beach parties, relaxation, nothing but Emily for 4 months of absolute bliss.
“What are you doing?” Naomi suddenly asks, turning to Katie abruptly.
“Excuse me?” The mild offense in her tone makes Naomi almost roll her eyes.
“In the next few months. What are your plans?”
Emily shoots her a curious glance, but it's there. The doubt, the fear. It's like Emily's 6th sense has everything to do with expecting every move Naomi is about to make before she even knows it herself.
Naomi knows that right know Emily is talking herself into ignoring her instincts. They know each other so well it may actually be perverse, because, well, Emily's instincts are spot on. Always.
Katie shrugs nonchalantly, tossing her hair over her shoulder like she hasn't a care in the world, like things are just going to fall into place despite all their combined experience to the contrary. “Nothing specific worked out yet.” She pauses, glances between her sister and Naomi and the pitch in her voice changes distinctly. “Why?” She knows too. She's suspicious.
The blonde turns her face from the twins' prying view. “Just wondering. Jesus.” She grips the boarding pass tighter and feels it poke into her palm as it crunches up. Plastering a smile on her face, she turns back to Emily and quickly places a chaste kiss on her cheek as they walk. It's supposed to be reassuring, but maybe it's really just overcompensation. No, it's nice. It's nice. It's the way it's supposed to be.
The security check is just ahead, looming over the crowds like some metaphorical monster, but Naomi assumes it's just more of her imaginative overreaction to this entire situation. Her mobile vibrates insistently in her pocket and she stops, unlaces her hand from Emily's and fishes it out. There's a single text.
I fucked up.
She finds it a little amusing that she has to double-check the sender because it really could have been any one of them. Effy Stonem. About fucking time. A wave of relief passes from her head to her toes. It's warm and calming. But then something settles in its wake, a cold sort of heavy sickening feeling. Katie is unaware, picking her nails in a decidedly unladylike way. Emily's eyes are darting every which direction around the airport, like she's trying to take it all in, like a puppy on its first day at the park. She's also blissfully unaware. Naomi prays for a good minute that Katie grabs for her mobile too, receiving some similar text from Effy.
Nothing happens and it just seems like they're randomly loitering in the foyer, for no particular reason. Perhaps it seems suspicious and any moment, burly security will tackle them and escort them outside, and bar them from the flight. There shouldn't be this much doubt; she shouldn't be constantly daydreaming of a way out of this holiday. That's not okay. She's not okay. She feels a need to stay, if not for herself, for Effy and Cook. But that's just fucking bonkers and she knows this too. She should go to Goa, but it just feels like she's running behind, grasping at Emily to try to keep up, hoping the love of her life will tug her along forever. But lately she's been running in place as Emily gets farther and farther away. It's not right. Chancing a look at her mum is a bad idea; she knows this as soon as it happens because her mum's eyes are already on her, studying, searching.
“Something wrong, sweetheart?” It's soft, and too knowing. Everyone knows too much. Everyone except her, it appears. She ignores her mum, her attention rapt on her girlfriend.
There's a long pause as Emily finally focuses on her girlfriend's face. It literally takes 4 seconds after that for everything to click into place. The redhead shakes her head slowly, and almost imperceptibly.
Her eyes begin to water and the resulting guilt settles uncomfortably into a familiar place in Naomi's gut.
“Please.” Emily says just that single word, but even that is too much to hear. She accompanies it with a stronger, more defiant shake of her head, as if pure will alone can alter the pre-decided path. It's fate perhaps, to break Emily's heart. It doesn't seem to matter how hard they both fight against it, it always ends up the same.
“Wait for me,” Naomi tries, almost flailing for hope, fighting against inevitabilities. And it's a stupid request because that's all Emily had ever done: waited for Naomi to catch up.
“Will you love me, til then? Forever, Naomi?”
There's a pause that says more than any words could. Naomi wants to promise that, wants to scream affirmations of everlasting love. But reality holds her back, doubt, uncertainty. Truth. Instead, she remembers how she had been the first and only one to visit Effy in hospital the last time, until she had assured an uncharacteristically nervous Katie that Effy was actually all right to be seen; how Emily has support, of all kinds and Effy has barely a mother at most. Responsibilities. Habits. They're merely weak justifications for the action she's about to commit to. And aren't they really just the same thing? Things you must do. She purses her lips tightly and wills the quiver to subside. Her eyes sparkle with the birth of tears. They never escape but Emily sees it anyway.
She looks down, shakes her head slowly, a minuscule movement really. It causes Naomi's pressed sob to catch in her throat. They both know what's next.
“It's over?”
There's no reason for it to be a question. The answer is already clear. There will be no struggling to keep up any longer.
So Naomi runs the other way. It's just what she knows how to do.
After she leaves Emily at the airport with tears slowly burning trails down her cheeks and her chest so painfully constricted that it feels like crushing punishment, she knows immediately she can't stay. Not in Bristol. Not in her - no, their - flat. Not with her fucking mum who doesn't know what the fuck is happening. She runs, but not because she's scared this time. No. She's running towards something instead of away from it, even though it may not seem like. Even though she feels twisted and tangled, turned upside down. There's something there. Maybe it's just a justification. Maybe not. She needs to save them both. The cycle has to end.
She keeps running, intent on a destination.
She needs to see Effy, sort it out; that's the great, selfless reason she abandoned the love of her short life in the airport. It suddenly seems far too impulsive and not that great after all. But she doesn't unpack her luggage. She scrapes the heel of her hands across her flushed and tear-strained cheeks and just insists that the taxi goes straight up the A38 instead of taking a right at Hereford, as she should. The driver drops her at Temple Meads instead. She gives him a hefty tip for the speed which he delivers her. She almost makes it to the ticket machine before her mobile rings, louder than she recalls it doing ever before, flashing her mother's number and she realises that she has 4 missed calls in the span of 20 minutes.
“What?”
There's some whinging about running away, being scared, not having to force things too quickly and all of it just goes in one ear and out the other. Naomi knows it's not about those things. Maybe it had been at one time; maybe a year ago such an insightful and motivational speech from her mother would have been helpful. Now it just rings hollow and redundant. This habit can't be broken, but at least she can break Emily's, even if it breaks them both in the process. Emily can move on, smarter, stronger. And Naomi knows she's broken, and she needs to be fixed. But in order to put things back together she has to break it all apart, into pieces.
Habits. People. There's no winning, just life. She doesn't have to worry about straggling along behind any longer. She knows she loves Emily too much. It sounds weak and clichéd, but she knows she has to let go before it kills them both. She feels like she just knows too much for her own good.
She impatiently interrupts the tirade and informs Gina that she's not coming home again, at least not for a while. She fingers the wad of bills in her pocket that had been meant for blissful, drunken nights in India as she speaks. The ticket machine prints out a one-way ticket to London, to Goldsmith's really. She insists that the university will take her, and comes clean about never really deferring the offer properly. She had decided on doing that from an internet café in Goa, probably. There's anger, a cold, quiet sort, that escapes from her mother's voice when she asks if she had ever really been planning on leaving the country. An indignant “Yes” echoes around her when she almost screams into her mobile.
Gina says nothing in response, just sighs in that resigned, almost disbelieving parental sort of way that let's Naomi now that she's the worst kind of disappointment. The call ends not long after that with a forced “I love you, sweetheart,” and Naomi's non-committal reply.
For some reason, when the call ends, she wills it to ring again. But it's not her mum's number she wants to see.
The train rattles along through the English countryside.
I fucked up.
She stares for what seems like a good ten minutes at Effy's text that caused her to abandon Emily, and the good life she knew. Three simple words. Painful in their raw honesty. But not the three words that are supposed to decide a person's life-path. Dialling the callback number, she puts the phone to her ear and waits.
The line opens. There's a pause and neither says a word. Naomi figures this is all part of the new Effy, or the old one. She can't decide. Doesn't seem to make a difference one way or another.
“I fucked up too,” Naomi states, not bothering with pleasantries. She can hear Effy's breathing on the other end of the line. That's enough. “I fucked up well and proper, Eff.” She wants to explain what happened. How she loved someone so much that she couldn't love them properly anymore; how it becomes too much. But that was all gibberish nonsense and likely wouldn't help mentalcase Effy sort
things out any faster. The simple explanation would involve the tangible basics: leaving Ems at the airport, trying to shove her ticket into Katie's balled fists as she ignored the hatred that flowed from her face, ignoring her mum's disappointed and gutted yet pathetically oblivious stare. Her breath hitches instead, choking a sob out against her will.
“I didn't love him.” Effy's voice cuts through the cacophony in her head. It's toneless, empty. Absent of everything, and she realises that Effy had never not felt anything despite her claims - not until now.
Everything else had just been a ruse because she had never sounded as hollow she does now, like the words are echoing around inside an empty shell.
“Eff?”
Effy continues as if she's talking to herself. “Not properly. He died for me, like it all meant something important and I couldn't even love him like that. How fucked up is that? Well done, Elizabeth. Well fucking done, you useless slag.”
“Effy. Stop it.” There's a cold chuckle on the other end of the line and it sends chills straight through Naomi's body. “It's not your fault, you know that right?”
The chuckle grows louder but still just as vacant... until it abruptly stops. “Does it matter?”
There's a hint of disbelief in the tone of the question suggesting that Effy does consider it her fault, but it is ignored. Her actual question hangs in the air. Does it matter? Naomi doesn't know what matters and what doesn't anymore cos the whole world has gone completely tits up and things like love -real pure love-- are thrown away while a pathetic loneliness and solitary existence seem to be taken up, again and again. Does anything matter? Naomi struggles for a response, even something placating, no matter how false. She opens her mouth and loses hold of whatever words she had planned to say. There's a click and the line goes dead before she replies. Just as well, maybe. She dabs the corners of her eyes with a tissue and sniffles, swallowing down what she knows is another sob.
The train lurches languidly and Naomi is struck with memories suddenly: of open days, betrayals, college excursions to London, summer breezes, picnics, and, strangely enough a feeling of lightness, of a heavy weight being lifted, or maybe just pushed aside for the time being. She knows better than to believe running will be any different this time. But if her problems never catch up, it can't be that bad. There are other people who have worse ones, and she knows she has to do what she can to help them. Dreams, illusions. Fanciful delusions. She grasps onto them as some sort of security for the upheaval she's about to send her life into. Scrolling through her contacts, past Sid and Freddie, Cook and Panda, her mum, her broken love Emily, she settles on the single solution. She presses talk and waits, letting out a nervous breath right before it connects.
“Hi, Ms. Stonem. It's Naomi again.”
THE END
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Author: Eskimo Jo
Rating: T
Warning: Substance addiction/use, language, sexual situations.
Disclaimer: The names of all characters contained here-in are the property of Skins, Company Pictures, & Channel4. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
Full notes in Part 1
And so the pattern has repeated once more.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
But she needs to break something.
The airport is small, but busy. She's standing there, taking it all in, Emily's small hand nestled in her own. It's full, noisy, and people seem to be moving so bloody quickly that they're blurry. It's like time is going slower for her than the rest of the world, like in a film. But she knows better. This is much more likely to be an acute anxiety attack, but she doesn't feel too warm, her breathing is even and her heartbeat doesn't feel like it's about to thump itself to death against her sternum. She fingers the boarding pass she printed out at home, it feels damp. She lets Emily lead them both to the queue for Ryanair.
She vaguely hears her mum behind them, pulling along her luggage. And Katie is yapping about something to Ems. Everyone seems excited, it's buzzing in the air around them, but it never quite soaks in like it should. This is Goa, for Christ's sake. Beach parties, relaxation, nothing but Emily for 4 months of absolute bliss.
“What are you doing?” Naomi suddenly asks, turning to Katie abruptly.
“Excuse me?” The mild offense in her tone makes Naomi almost roll her eyes.
“In the next few months. What are your plans?”
Emily shoots her a curious glance, but it's there. The doubt, the fear. It's like Emily's 6th sense has everything to do with expecting every move Naomi is about to make before she even knows it herself.
Naomi knows that right know Emily is talking herself into ignoring her instincts. They know each other so well it may actually be perverse, because, well, Emily's instincts are spot on. Always.
Katie shrugs nonchalantly, tossing her hair over her shoulder like she hasn't a care in the world, like things are just going to fall into place despite all their combined experience to the contrary. “Nothing specific worked out yet.” She pauses, glances between her sister and Naomi and the pitch in her voice changes distinctly. “Why?” She knows too. She's suspicious.
The blonde turns her face from the twins' prying view. “Just wondering. Jesus.” She grips the boarding pass tighter and feels it poke into her palm as it crunches up. Plastering a smile on her face, she turns back to Emily and quickly places a chaste kiss on her cheek as they walk. It's supposed to be reassuring, but maybe it's really just overcompensation. No, it's nice. It's nice. It's the way it's supposed to be.
The security check is just ahead, looming over the crowds like some metaphorical monster, but Naomi assumes it's just more of her imaginative overreaction to this entire situation. Her mobile vibrates insistently in her pocket and she stops, unlaces her hand from Emily's and fishes it out. There's a single text.
I fucked up.
She finds it a little amusing that she has to double-check the sender because it really could have been any one of them. Effy Stonem. About fucking time. A wave of relief passes from her head to her toes. It's warm and calming. But then something settles in its wake, a cold sort of heavy sickening feeling. Katie is unaware, picking her nails in a decidedly unladylike way. Emily's eyes are darting every which direction around the airport, like she's trying to take it all in, like a puppy on its first day at the park. She's also blissfully unaware. Naomi prays for a good minute that Katie grabs for her mobile too, receiving some similar text from Effy.
Nothing happens and it just seems like they're randomly loitering in the foyer, for no particular reason. Perhaps it seems suspicious and any moment, burly security will tackle them and escort them outside, and bar them from the flight. There shouldn't be this much doubt; she shouldn't be constantly daydreaming of a way out of this holiday. That's not okay. She's not okay. She feels a need to stay, if not for herself, for Effy and Cook. But that's just fucking bonkers and she knows this too. She should go to Goa, but it just feels like she's running behind, grasping at Emily to try to keep up, hoping the love of her life will tug her along forever. But lately she's been running in place as Emily gets farther and farther away. It's not right. Chancing a look at her mum is a bad idea; she knows this as soon as it happens because her mum's eyes are already on her, studying, searching.
“Something wrong, sweetheart?” It's soft, and too knowing. Everyone knows too much. Everyone except her, it appears. She ignores her mum, her attention rapt on her girlfriend.
There's a long pause as Emily finally focuses on her girlfriend's face. It literally takes 4 seconds after that for everything to click into place. The redhead shakes her head slowly, and almost imperceptibly.
Her eyes begin to water and the resulting guilt settles uncomfortably into a familiar place in Naomi's gut.
“Please.” Emily says just that single word, but even that is too much to hear. She accompanies it with a stronger, more defiant shake of her head, as if pure will alone can alter the pre-decided path. It's fate perhaps, to break Emily's heart. It doesn't seem to matter how hard they both fight against it, it always ends up the same.
“Wait for me,” Naomi tries, almost flailing for hope, fighting against inevitabilities. And it's a stupid request because that's all Emily had ever done: waited for Naomi to catch up.
“Will you love me, til then? Forever, Naomi?”
There's a pause that says more than any words could. Naomi wants to promise that, wants to scream affirmations of everlasting love. But reality holds her back, doubt, uncertainty. Truth. Instead, she remembers how she had been the first and only one to visit Effy in hospital the last time, until she had assured an uncharacteristically nervous Katie that Effy was actually all right to be seen; how Emily has support, of all kinds and Effy has barely a mother at most. Responsibilities. Habits. They're merely weak justifications for the action she's about to commit to. And aren't they really just the same thing? Things you must do. She purses her lips tightly and wills the quiver to subside. Her eyes sparkle with the birth of tears. They never escape but Emily sees it anyway.
She looks down, shakes her head slowly, a minuscule movement really. It causes Naomi's pressed sob to catch in her throat. They both know what's next.
“It's over?”
There's no reason for it to be a question. The answer is already clear. There will be no struggling to keep up any longer.
So Naomi runs the other way. It's just what she knows how to do.
After she leaves Emily at the airport with tears slowly burning trails down her cheeks and her chest so painfully constricted that it feels like crushing punishment, she knows immediately she can't stay. Not in Bristol. Not in her - no, their - flat. Not with her fucking mum who doesn't know what the fuck is happening. She runs, but not because she's scared this time. No. She's running towards something instead of away from it, even though it may not seem like. Even though she feels twisted and tangled, turned upside down. There's something there. Maybe it's just a justification. Maybe not. She needs to save them both. The cycle has to end.
She keeps running, intent on a destination.
She needs to see Effy, sort it out; that's the great, selfless reason she abandoned the love of her short life in the airport. It suddenly seems far too impulsive and not that great after all. But she doesn't unpack her luggage. She scrapes the heel of her hands across her flushed and tear-strained cheeks and just insists that the taxi goes straight up the A38 instead of taking a right at Hereford, as she should. The driver drops her at Temple Meads instead. She gives him a hefty tip for the speed which he delivers her. She almost makes it to the ticket machine before her mobile rings, louder than she recalls it doing ever before, flashing her mother's number and she realises that she has 4 missed calls in the span of 20 minutes.
“What?”
There's some whinging about running away, being scared, not having to force things too quickly and all of it just goes in one ear and out the other. Naomi knows it's not about those things. Maybe it had been at one time; maybe a year ago such an insightful and motivational speech from her mother would have been helpful. Now it just rings hollow and redundant. This habit can't be broken, but at least she can break Emily's, even if it breaks them both in the process. Emily can move on, smarter, stronger. And Naomi knows she's broken, and she needs to be fixed. But in order to put things back together she has to break it all apart, into pieces.
Habits. People. There's no winning, just life. She doesn't have to worry about straggling along behind any longer. She knows she loves Emily too much. It sounds weak and clichéd, but she knows she has to let go before it kills them both. She feels like she just knows too much for her own good.
She impatiently interrupts the tirade and informs Gina that she's not coming home again, at least not for a while. She fingers the wad of bills in her pocket that had been meant for blissful, drunken nights in India as she speaks. The ticket machine prints out a one-way ticket to London, to Goldsmith's really. She insists that the university will take her, and comes clean about never really deferring the offer properly. She had decided on doing that from an internet café in Goa, probably. There's anger, a cold, quiet sort, that escapes from her mother's voice when she asks if she had ever really been planning on leaving the country. An indignant “Yes” echoes around her when she almost screams into her mobile.
Gina says nothing in response, just sighs in that resigned, almost disbelieving parental sort of way that let's Naomi now that she's the worst kind of disappointment. The call ends not long after that with a forced “I love you, sweetheart,” and Naomi's non-committal reply.
For some reason, when the call ends, she wills it to ring again. But it's not her mum's number she wants to see.
The train rattles along through the English countryside.
I fucked up.
She stares for what seems like a good ten minutes at Effy's text that caused her to abandon Emily, and the good life she knew. Three simple words. Painful in their raw honesty. But not the three words that are supposed to decide a person's life-path. Dialling the callback number, she puts the phone to her ear and waits.
The line opens. There's a pause and neither says a word. Naomi figures this is all part of the new Effy, or the old one. She can't decide. Doesn't seem to make a difference one way or another.
“I fucked up too,” Naomi states, not bothering with pleasantries. She can hear Effy's breathing on the other end of the line. That's enough. “I fucked up well and proper, Eff.” She wants to explain what happened. How she loved someone so much that she couldn't love them properly anymore; how it becomes too much. But that was all gibberish nonsense and likely wouldn't help mentalcase Effy sort
things out any faster. The simple explanation would involve the tangible basics: leaving Ems at the airport, trying to shove her ticket into Katie's balled fists as she ignored the hatred that flowed from her face, ignoring her mum's disappointed and gutted yet pathetically oblivious stare. Her breath hitches instead, choking a sob out against her will.
“I didn't love him.” Effy's voice cuts through the cacophony in her head. It's toneless, empty. Absent of everything, and she realises that Effy had never not felt anything despite her claims - not until now.
Everything else had just been a ruse because she had never sounded as hollow she does now, like the words are echoing around inside an empty shell.
“Eff?”
Effy continues as if she's talking to herself. “Not properly. He died for me, like it all meant something important and I couldn't even love him like that. How fucked up is that? Well done, Elizabeth. Well fucking done, you useless slag.”
“Effy. Stop it.” There's a cold chuckle on the other end of the line and it sends chills straight through Naomi's body. “It's not your fault, you know that right?”
The chuckle grows louder but still just as vacant... until it abruptly stops. “Does it matter?”
There's a hint of disbelief in the tone of the question suggesting that Effy does consider it her fault, but it is ignored. Her actual question hangs in the air. Does it matter? Naomi doesn't know what matters and what doesn't anymore cos the whole world has gone completely tits up and things like love -real pure love-- are thrown away while a pathetic loneliness and solitary existence seem to be taken up, again and again. Does anything matter? Naomi struggles for a response, even something placating, no matter how false. She opens her mouth and loses hold of whatever words she had planned to say. There's a click and the line goes dead before she replies. Just as well, maybe. She dabs the corners of her eyes with a tissue and sniffles, swallowing down what she knows is another sob.
The train lurches languidly and Naomi is struck with memories suddenly: of open days, betrayals, college excursions to London, summer breezes, picnics, and, strangely enough a feeling of lightness, of a heavy weight being lifted, or maybe just pushed aside for the time being. She knows better than to believe running will be any different this time. But if her problems never catch up, it can't be that bad. There are other people who have worse ones, and she knows she has to do what she can to help them. Dreams, illusions. Fanciful delusions. She grasps onto them as some sort of security for the upheaval she's about to send her life into. Scrolling through her contacts, past Sid and Freddie, Cook and Panda, her mum, her broken love Emily, she settles on the single solution. She presses talk and waits, letting out a nervous breath right before it connects.
“Hi, Ms. Stonem. It's Naomi again.”
THE END
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