Just 'Cause It's Easy (Part 1/2)
Title: Just 'Cause It's Easy (1/2)
Pairing: Naomi/Emily, Naomi/Effy
Rating: R
Summary: It wasn’t supposed to end at all, she thinks. Thinks that in a better, fairer world, she would have married Emily.
Disclaimer: Not my universe, not my characters. But boy oh by do they fill my heart.
Someday I'll find the mind to mend it
and make dry these eyes I've gotten wet.
'Cause it's bad to do what easy
just 'cause it's easy.
- Oats We Sow by Gregory and the Hawk
“Are you in love with her?” Effy asks her quite randomly one night. Well. As randomly as an Effy Stonem question can get. They sit outside her house on the front steps, sharing a fag and bourbon. Though Effy had been hogging the bourbon all night and Naomi was quite content with keeping her L&M between her fingers. It’s what usually happens with them. Separate but together.
“Can we not talk about her?” Naomi asks, winces at the sudden gust of cold air that hits her knees. She hugs them closer together, puts the fag back between her lips, and inhales slowly.
“Everything’s simpler when you’re in love,” Effy says.
“The fuck,” Naomi responds, uncertain as to what kind of answer that is. But honestly, what the fuck kind of sentence is that? “Things get complicated when you’re in love,” she says.
“No,” Effy stands by her opinion. As always. “Things get simpler.”
Naomi knows Effy hasn’t been the luckiest in love. Knows that Freddy wasn’t the one, just the right guy at the right time when she was with Cook, the wrong guy. Strange how wrong people seem so right, how right people seem so wrong. It had looked so very nice at the beginning. Endearing and well-suited but in all honesty, with the snowballed effect of hurting Katie, Cook, JJ and even the two themselves, that relationship had been doomed from the start. Love, Naomi considers Effy assumes, is doom itself. And so she can’t understand.
“I can’t understand,” Naomi says, dropping her cig and squishing it with the tip of her shoe, “Half the things you think about love and relationships.”
Effy smiles. Naomi thinks she’s going to say something. She doesn’t. Half the time, she usually doesn’t. Well. More than half the time, she doesn’t. Only takes another swig from the bourbon, leans down and kisses Naomi, lets her taste the liquid on her lips, smirks when the blonde licks at her lower lip.
Naomi’s cell goes off.
She considers not answering it. Can hear from the ringtone that it isn’t family. Then, and she swears it’s probably an ulcer or cyst on her brain, a flash of fantastic red flows through her mind, like an ocean, overwhelming her, drowning her, sinking her. Emily. She pulls away from Effy, reaches into her pocket and checks the ID. Emily.
“Are you in love with her?” Effy asks again in that cool, nonchalant way and if they weren’t the only two out here, Naomi would even think she wasn’t the recipient of the question. She doesn’t answer. Knows that Effy doesn’t even really want an answer, anyway. Instead opens her phone, presses talk, slides it up her cheek to her ear.
“Emily?”
“Naomiiiiii,” Emily’s slurring, music blasting in the background.
“I can’t hear you, where are you? Go outside,” Naomi states the obvious. Curses herself. Wonders why she even cares. Later she’ll ask herself why she didn’t just ask Emily what the hell she wanted, get the conversation over with.
There’s some rustling heard, some ‘excuse-me’s and cat calls in the background. One sultry woman’s voice comes particularly near the phone, “Hey there, you here alone tonight?” and Naomi clenches her teeth. Avoids Effy’s eyebrow raise to this.
“Can you hear me now?” Emily asks, bursts out laughing when she draws the connection between that and those tediously annoying cell phone commercials.
“What do you want?”
“Can you come pick me up?” Her voice hitches at random bits of the question, and Naomi hears there’s something wrong. Just knows. And suddenly it’s like the past five months haven’t happened, and she’s right back where she started. Maybe she never left.
“Where are you?”
~
She finds her flirting with four blondes at once. A miniscule redheaded in a sea of gold.
It bothers her and fuck, she wishes it wouldn’t. Feels the familiar tinge of jealousy seep back into her, collapsing her lungs, contracting her windpipe. No one belongs to anyone, the voice says in her head, and she grits her teeth as she approaches them, believing in that sentence now more than ever. Grabs Emily by her jacket collar, tugs her away from the crowd.
“I’d probably just break your heart,” Emily was slurring.
“Awwwww,” one of the blondes was saying, twirling a curl of her hair around her forefinger, obviously misunderstanding Emily’s truthful statement. Where does she find these bimbos?
“Come on,” Naomi says gruffly, gripping Emily’s jacket harder, pushing her to her car, “I’m getting you home.”
“Naomi?” Emily’s disoriented, blinks rapidly, can’t believe, in a million years, Naomi actually came.
“Get in the car,” she says, unlocking the door, opening it, the irony of the symbolism of Naomi Opening Up not exactly lost to her.
Emily sways, her feet light and head even lighter, she feels like she’s going to collapse anyway, but hesitates, opens her mouth to say something. Then she catches the blonde’s eye, sees there’s no time for hesitation tonight and really, she was the one who called her for a lift home anyway. She gets in.
They drive.
Stupid. Stupid, Naomi thinks. So fucking stupid that it had to be like this. That is had to end like this. It wasn’t supposed to end at all, she thinks. Thinks that in a better, fairer world, she would have married Emily. Thinks that in a better, fairer world, the redhead wouldn’t find alcohol so easily.
“Christ,” Emily mumbles, rubbing her temples slowly, her head lulling from side to side on the headrest. “It smells like a fucking bonfire.”
Naomi swallows, almost nervously. Remembers how Emily got her to quit. Remembers how she picked smoking back up the moment they...
Remembers how she replaced smoking with drinks instead, with gum, with hair twirling, with nail biting, with sex. With sex. A lot of sex. Her lips twitch, and she wishes she could dig into her pocket and shake out a new cig. On the other hand, she swallows, a slowly-rising feeling of guilt begins to sink in, and she feels like a slag when she smokes around Emily now. Feels like the worst, the absolute worst human being in the world, careless and callous and gritty. She hopes, and hates that she hopes it, that the redhead doesn’t see the blue packet in her coat pocket.
“Thank you,” Emily mumbles, turns and lifts her bangs to rest her bare forehead against the cold window.
Naomi grins, because it’s cute. She was also cute. Always. Even when she was fourteen in that ridiculous dress that Katie no doubt picked out for her, giggling like the schoolgirl she was on the lawn. “Everything alright?” she asks.
“Was dancing,” she mumbles again, takes off her seatbelt momentarily to take her jacket off. Naomi tries not to look at Emily’s bare shoulder. Fails. “Flirting got out of hand. Jealous girlfriends.” She pauses. “Jealous boyfriends,” she laughs.
Naomi wants to crash the car. Ram it into a wall. Whatever makes this drive end faster. Because fuck it she doesn’t want to hear about Emily grinding up against other women, doesn’t want to hear about Emily swaying against others, touching others, letting them touch her, maybe even tugging the sporadic hot one into the bathroom stalls. Fuck she doesn’t want to hear about any of it. Emily sighs in a way that makes Naomi grip her wheel that much tighter.
“Are you angry with me?” she asks in that quiet mouse voice.
“No, Emily,” she says with clenched teeth, “I’m not angry with you.” She’s furious. But Emily doesn’t need to know that. She pauses and wonders when ‘Em’ stopped and ‘Emily’ began.
Silence for the next ten minutes.
“Were you fucking Effy when I called?”
The car swerves, Emily’s right hand immediately collides with the car door handle, stilling her already shaky body. The screeching of the tires catch only the ends of Naomi’s ‘Fucking hell Emily Fitch!’
“It’s a valid question!” Emily shouts.
“No, it is not!” Naomi yells back, pulling a sharp right turn, “It is not a valid question and it never will be!”
Emily licks her lips and pushes them together, deciding, for the moment, to shut up. Silence again.
Naomi doesn’t even know how she knew. Because fuck it’s not like they hop around town holding hands and throwing wreaths and candy to the needy children. It’s not like. She pauses. Well. It’s nothing really. Just a casual fuck. And even then it isn’t exactly casual. And even then they don’t fuck much. “It’s none of your business anyway,” Naomi grumbles, feeling like she should get the last word in this.
“I forgot,” Emily says, “You tend to keep things to yourself.”
There’s acid dripping from those words, carefully selected and evenly distributed to each syllable. Naomi knows Emily doesn’t know just how much her phrases tear her apart. Doesn’t know how often she hears them right before she goes to bed. Doesn’t know how many times she hears Emily whisper ‘I love you’ when she climaxes, whether the redhead is there or not.
Oh fuck this. She slows the car down, puts her hazard lights on and parks in an empty parking spot.
“Why did you call me?” Naomi says more than asks, her voice breaking.
“You know why," Emily says, sighing. Feeling more and more pathetic. "Why did you come?” she asks, closing her eyes, willing her twisted head to stop. Willing this night to just be over. She doesn’t regret calling her, only that she hadn’t done it earlier in the night, before the shots, before the dancing, before flirting with the empty faces, all the girls just as tall as Naomi, none as beautiful, none as beautiful.
“You know why," Naomi says. Their eyes find each other. "You know why."
~
It doesn’t feel like cheating. Because honestly how important can any of Naomi’s nights with a half-present Effy be when her heart was with the redhead all along? How important can Emily’s nights be with those girls when they were chosen because of their height and hair colour?
Because, Naomi considers, when she shuts the car engine completely and reaches for Emily’s neck, Effy might have been onto something earlier that night.
~
“I love you,” she moans when she comes.
“I love you too,” she groans in response, because it hurts.
Part Two