fic: nothing and nowhere is golden, emily/paige
Title: Nothing and Nowhere is Golden
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1599
Summary: Paige doesn’t see Emily much, now that swimming is over.
Warnings: Self injury - it's not graphic but it's there. Vague spoilers for 3x11.
A/N: Second part in my E/P series, after She's the Sea I'm Sinking In. This section isn't happy, and I'm not sure I did Paige justice with it. I can't figure out how to make it better though, so here goes. (I may have just started a fluffy Emily/Paige/Spencer thing to cheer myself up. This is clearly what you're meant to be doing in grad school.)
Paige doesn’t see Emily much, now that swimming is over.
She makes sure not to see Emily - to face away from her table in the cafeteria, to be texting someone when she walks by in the hall. It’s not easy: Emily pulls at Paige, and she feels it more in turning her back.
She tells herself that it’s bound to stop, that if she fights long enough she can beat anything.
(This might be a lie. The pull is as stubborn as she is, and every time she thinks it’s gone she hears Emily laugh and it flares in her until there’s no room left to breathe.)
The pool opens Tuesdays and Thursdays from three to six.
Paige doesn’t miss a day. Other people come sometimes, sophomores from the boys’ team, random adults, but more often than not she has the pool to herself. She likes it best that way; things make sense when she’s alone with the water.
Her father has Coach Fulton write up a workout plan. Each day Paige does ten minutes more than it asks of her.
You may win at meets, but breakthroughs happen in the offseason.
Emily gets into the lunch line behind Paige.
“Hey,” she says. “How have you been?”
The line is long - it’s lasagna day - so there’s no escaping a conversation.
“Can’t complain. You?”
“I’m good. I hear you’ve been hitting the pool pretty hard. After my relay spot?”
“They say competition brings out the best in people.”
“In that case, how about training together sometime?”
Paige is quiet too long, caught between reason and the thing Emily brings out in her, the thing she’s trying not to put a name to. Emily looks down; Paige can feel her folding into herself.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to. Coach just thought it might be good for us.”
“No, I want to.” That’s the problem, Paige thinks, how much I want to. “Company would be nice. I’m at the pool pretty much whenever it’s open.”
“Great.” Emily takes her tray, turning toward her usual table. “I’ll see you soon.”
Paige watches her go, feeling the weight of Alison’s glare.
The sermon that week is about the limits of God’s forgiveness.
Paige isn’t sure she believes; she’s not like her father, with his bedrock certainty. His God is more real than the house they live in, than the family he wakes up to every morning. She isn’t sure she believes but she’s also not sure she doesn’t, and when the priest speaks of sin against nature tightness spreads through her chest.
After the service, people gather in the parking lot. Paige stands to the side as they shake her father’s hand and tell him how pretty she’s turning out to be.
Her smile freezes when talk turns to moral decay, the liberal agenda and all its perversions.
In gym Alison takes to dressing slowly - to spending as much time undressed as possible.
Paige tries not to see but she can't help it. Alison is there all the time, forcing her way into Paige’s field of vision. Her skin looks as smooth as she is cruel; want rises in Paige, sharp and desperate. She slams her eyes shut but the image is there inside her eyelids.
She realizes that maybe Emily isn’t the problem. Maybe something inside her is wrong.
“Like what you see, you freak,” Alison whispers, close enough her breath tickles Paige’s ear.
On bad days Paige lets herself sink down into the pool. Underwater everything is smooth and still. Her mind quiets and there’s just the beating of her heart, the pressure building inside her lungs.
She sits on the bottom for as long as she can, watching light dance the line between water and air.
That’s how Emily finds her the first time she comes. Her face appears above Paige, shimmering along the surface.
Paige chokes in water. She shoots up, spluttering.
“Are you ok?”
Emily is kneeling at the pool’s edge.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“What were you doing?”
Paige shrugs, water rippling around her.
“I like it down there.”
Emily just looks at her. It’s an intense kind of looking, like there’s a riddle to her Emily’s trying to solve.
“Anyway,” Paige says, “were you going to swim?”
Emily nods and dives in, graceful as always. Paige knows the moment she breaks the surface - it feels different, sharing the water with her.
They swim an easy 50 before Emily starts picking up the pace. Paige matches her stroke for stroke; she revels in the stretch of her arms, in delaying the moment Emily pulls ahead. Only it doesn’t happen - they touch the side at the same time, and Emily’s breathing is the more ragged. Paige had another gear left to shift into, and it’s a rush, proving that if she works hard enough she can actually change things, that she isn’t destined to always be second best.
They swim for over an hour, going through the workout Paige had planned and then racing a few times for the fun of it.
When they’re done they sit on the pool’s lip, feet dangling into the water.
“I don’t remember you being this fast,” Emily says.
“I wasn’t.”
“I may really have to watch my back for the relay, then.”
“Nah. I’m never going to catch you in butterfly. I’d love to swim the backstroke leg, though.”
“I think you’ve got it next year. Caitlin’s graduating, and if you keep this up you’ll beat her times anyway.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I do.” Emily catches her eye. “You’re really good, Paige. You must know that.”
Paige sighs, kicking at the water.
“What is it?”
“I just never seem to be good enough for my dad.”
“Then he’s an idiot.”
Emily moves a hand to Paige’s knee, and though the air is cold Paige feels warm all over. She smiles at Emily and Emily smiles back and it becomes the kind of moment that can lead to something. So Paige thinks, at least - it feels the way she’s always imagined those moments, electric and giddy and dangerous, like a fuse has blown in the logic that patterns the world, leaving endless possibility.
The possibility doesn't materialize, though, because the pool door opens and whatever was building between them shatters. Emily jumps up, grabs at her bag.
“I’ve got to go,” she says, and Paige can read nothing in her eyes.
The dreams start that night, the dreams about Emily kissing girls.
It’s never Paige she’s kissing - even in dream Paige doesn’t get to know how that feels.
It’s an accident the first time it happens.
Paige is in the shower, shaving, trying to forget what she dreamed last night. It’s stuck in her head: Alison kissing Emily, winking at Paige over Emily’s shoulder. You might as well watch. You’ll never get to taste.
There’s a burning in Paige’s chest and another between her thighs and she’s trying so hard not to acknowledge either of them that there’s no attention left to guide her hand. The razor slips; there’s a burst of pain and then red stains the white of her bathtub.
Paige doesn't notice. Her mind has gone perfectly, blissfully blank.
It’s not an accident all the times after that.
When her father tells her she needs to try harder, when her grandfather dies and her mother can’t stop crying, when she’s drowning in thoughts of Emily. All those times it’s a way to survive.
Paige needs to feel in control of something, even if it's just how much she hurts.
It changes the way she inhabits her body. She learns to move with care and avoid things that might give her away. Her ease withers; tension coils in her muscles even when they’re at rest.
It changes the way she is with people, too. She learns to make her words cut so that no one has the chance to look too closely at her.
She tries not to talk to Emily.
Alison is the one who sees.
Paige is late to gym, has to ask her math teacher about retaking a test and so it’s just Alison in the locker room when she gets there. Alison doesn’t rush - she's above punctuality, apparently - but Paige shucks off her clothes with abandon, forgetting the secret scarred into her skin. It’s only once her gym uniform is on that she realizes what she’s done; she looks at Alison, exhales in relief at Alison’s focus on her cell phone.
Who knows what would happen, if someone like -
“Nice rash you have there, Pigskin. Hope it’s not catching.”
And just like that, Paige’s world shatters. Alison knows: it’s there in her tone, in the perfect brutality of her smile. She knows but she won’t speak it yet, because she knows as well that there's power in words when they go unsaid.
Alison glosses her lips. They glisten, pretty and bright.
Paige hates herself for looking.
They play soccer that day.
Alison guards Paige. She’s lazy at it, like there’s no need to compete, like she thinks she’s already won. Anger boils up in Paige, overwhelming her fear.
She sprints for a pass near the goal. Alison shoves her from behind; Paige shoves back harder, sending Alison to the ground.
Paige has a line to the goal but Alison’s body is in the way. She takes the shot. The ball goes in, but that’s less satisfying than the feel of her foot against Alison’s back.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1599
Summary: Paige doesn’t see Emily much, now that swimming is over.
Warnings: Self injury - it's not graphic but it's there. Vague spoilers for 3x11.
A/N: Second part in my E/P series, after She's the Sea I'm Sinking In. This section isn't happy, and I'm not sure I did Paige justice with it. I can't figure out how to make it better though, so here goes. (I may have just started a fluffy Emily/Paige/Spencer thing to cheer myself up. This is clearly what you're meant to be doing in grad school.)
Paige doesn’t see Emily much, now that swimming is over.
She makes sure not to see Emily - to face away from her table in the cafeteria, to be texting someone when she walks by in the hall. It’s not easy: Emily pulls at Paige, and she feels it more in turning her back.
She tells herself that it’s bound to stop, that if she fights long enough she can beat anything.
(This might be a lie. The pull is as stubborn as she is, and every time she thinks it’s gone she hears Emily laugh and it flares in her until there’s no room left to breathe.)
The pool opens Tuesdays and Thursdays from three to six.
Paige doesn’t miss a day. Other people come sometimes, sophomores from the boys’ team, random adults, but more often than not she has the pool to herself. She likes it best that way; things make sense when she’s alone with the water.
Her father has Coach Fulton write up a workout plan. Each day Paige does ten minutes more than it asks of her.
You may win at meets, but breakthroughs happen in the offseason.
Emily gets into the lunch line behind Paige.
“Hey,” she says. “How have you been?”
The line is long - it’s lasagna day - so there’s no escaping a conversation.
“Can’t complain. You?”
“I’m good. I hear you’ve been hitting the pool pretty hard. After my relay spot?”
“They say competition brings out the best in people.”
“In that case, how about training together sometime?”
Paige is quiet too long, caught between reason and the thing Emily brings out in her, the thing she’s trying not to put a name to. Emily looks down; Paige can feel her folding into herself.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to. Coach just thought it might be good for us.”
“No, I want to.” That’s the problem, Paige thinks, how much I want to. “Company would be nice. I’m at the pool pretty much whenever it’s open.”
“Great.” Emily takes her tray, turning toward her usual table. “I’ll see you soon.”
Paige watches her go, feeling the weight of Alison’s glare.
The sermon that week is about the limits of God’s forgiveness.
Paige isn’t sure she believes; she’s not like her father, with his bedrock certainty. His God is more real than the house they live in, than the family he wakes up to every morning. She isn’t sure she believes but she’s also not sure she doesn’t, and when the priest speaks of sin against nature tightness spreads through her chest.
After the service, people gather in the parking lot. Paige stands to the side as they shake her father’s hand and tell him how pretty she’s turning out to be.
Her smile freezes when talk turns to moral decay, the liberal agenda and all its perversions.
In gym Alison takes to dressing slowly - to spending as much time undressed as possible.
Paige tries not to see but she can't help it. Alison is there all the time, forcing her way into Paige’s field of vision. Her skin looks as smooth as she is cruel; want rises in Paige, sharp and desperate. She slams her eyes shut but the image is there inside her eyelids.
She realizes that maybe Emily isn’t the problem. Maybe something inside her is wrong.
“Like what you see, you freak,” Alison whispers, close enough her breath tickles Paige’s ear.
On bad days Paige lets herself sink down into the pool. Underwater everything is smooth and still. Her mind quiets and there’s just the beating of her heart, the pressure building inside her lungs.
She sits on the bottom for as long as she can, watching light dance the line between water and air.
That’s how Emily finds her the first time she comes. Her face appears above Paige, shimmering along the surface.
Paige chokes in water. She shoots up, spluttering.
“Are you ok?”
Emily is kneeling at the pool’s edge.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“What were you doing?”
Paige shrugs, water rippling around her.
“I like it down there.”
Emily just looks at her. It’s an intense kind of looking, like there’s a riddle to her Emily’s trying to solve.
“Anyway,” Paige says, “were you going to swim?”
Emily nods and dives in, graceful as always. Paige knows the moment she breaks the surface - it feels different, sharing the water with her.
They swim an easy 50 before Emily starts picking up the pace. Paige matches her stroke for stroke; she revels in the stretch of her arms, in delaying the moment Emily pulls ahead. Only it doesn’t happen - they touch the side at the same time, and Emily’s breathing is the more ragged. Paige had another gear left to shift into, and it’s a rush, proving that if she works hard enough she can actually change things, that she isn’t destined to always be second best.
They swim for over an hour, going through the workout Paige had planned and then racing a few times for the fun of it.
When they’re done they sit on the pool’s lip, feet dangling into the water.
“I don’t remember you being this fast,” Emily says.
“I wasn’t.”
“I may really have to watch my back for the relay, then.”
“Nah. I’m never going to catch you in butterfly. I’d love to swim the backstroke leg, though.”
“I think you’ve got it next year. Caitlin’s graduating, and if you keep this up you’ll beat her times anyway.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I do.” Emily catches her eye. “You’re really good, Paige. You must know that.”
Paige sighs, kicking at the water.
“What is it?”
“I just never seem to be good enough for my dad.”
“Then he’s an idiot.”
Emily moves a hand to Paige’s knee, and though the air is cold Paige feels warm all over. She smiles at Emily and Emily smiles back and it becomes the kind of moment that can lead to something. So Paige thinks, at least - it feels the way she’s always imagined those moments, electric and giddy and dangerous, like a fuse has blown in the logic that patterns the world, leaving endless possibility.
The possibility doesn't materialize, though, because the pool door opens and whatever was building between them shatters. Emily jumps up, grabs at her bag.
“I’ve got to go,” she says, and Paige can read nothing in her eyes.
The dreams start that night, the dreams about Emily kissing girls.
It’s never Paige she’s kissing - even in dream Paige doesn’t get to know how that feels.
It’s an accident the first time it happens.
Paige is in the shower, shaving, trying to forget what she dreamed last night. It’s stuck in her head: Alison kissing Emily, winking at Paige over Emily’s shoulder. You might as well watch. You’ll never get to taste.
There’s a burning in Paige’s chest and another between her thighs and she’s trying so hard not to acknowledge either of them that there’s no attention left to guide her hand. The razor slips; there’s a burst of pain and then red stains the white of her bathtub.
Paige doesn't notice. Her mind has gone perfectly, blissfully blank.
It’s not an accident all the times after that.
When her father tells her she needs to try harder, when her grandfather dies and her mother can’t stop crying, when she’s drowning in thoughts of Emily. All those times it’s a way to survive.
Paige needs to feel in control of something, even if it's just how much she hurts.
It changes the way she inhabits her body. She learns to move with care and avoid things that might give her away. Her ease withers; tension coils in her muscles even when they’re at rest.
It changes the way she is with people, too. She learns to make her words cut so that no one has the chance to look too closely at her.
She tries not to talk to Emily.
Alison is the one who sees.
Paige is late to gym, has to ask her math teacher about retaking a test and so it’s just Alison in the locker room when she gets there. Alison doesn’t rush - she's above punctuality, apparently - but Paige shucks off her clothes with abandon, forgetting the secret scarred into her skin. It’s only once her gym uniform is on that she realizes what she’s done; she looks at Alison, exhales in relief at Alison’s focus on her cell phone.
Who knows what would happen, if someone like -
“Nice rash you have there, Pigskin. Hope it’s not catching.”
And just like that, Paige’s world shatters. Alison knows: it’s there in her tone, in the perfect brutality of her smile. She knows but she won’t speak it yet, because she knows as well that there's power in words when they go unsaid.
Alison glosses her lips. They glisten, pretty and bright.
Paige hates herself for looking.
They play soccer that day.
Alison guards Paige. She’s lazy at it, like there’s no need to compete, like she thinks she’s already won. Anger boils up in Paige, overwhelming her fear.
She sprints for a pass near the goal. Alison shoves her from behind; Paige shoves back harder, sending Alison to the ground.
Paige has a line to the goal but Alison’s body is in the way. She takes the shot. The ball goes in, but that’s less satisfying than the feel of her foot against Alison’s back.