fic: lighter fluid (skins, tony/effy)
lighter fluid
it runs out in the end
fandom: skins
disclaimer: not mine
rating: nc-17
word count: 808
pairing: tony/effy, slight tony/michelle
summary: the flames can only dance for so long.
notes: incest. sexual situations. underage characters. drug usage. character death. spoilers through 1x09.
-
junk floats on polluted water
an old custom to sell your daughter -
(siouxsie and the banshees)
-
It’s not that she doesn’t have anything to say. It’s never that.
-
“I don’t know just where I’m going,” she doesn’t say, and her head spins instead of records reflected in the mirror.
Cars race down the lane, whipping around bends, red car, red car, red car, red, bus -
She vomits, fingers curling around white porcelain.
Her chest aches.
-
She turned fifteen around a purple frosted birthday cake. “Happy Birthday,” they all sang, and Mum cooed, “on the count of three!”
She blew the candles out.
She wished to relight them. She snapped her fingers twice.
-
Tony's eyes still are closed.
-
She likes to finger herself in the shower, hot water beating down her back, head against the cool tile of the wall -
She never makes a sound.
He used to listen anyway.
-
Sometimes she dreams her hands are bound, outstretched. Her tongue licks her lips, devil dog, blue flames and Tony might be leaning against the wall.
The hospital gown doesn’t brush her knees; it rides her thighs instead.
Women dressed in black crack twigs, and Daddy, Daddy, shakes his head. Tony might lean. This is your funeral pyre, child.
-
There was a morning -
“Where’s Mum?” Tony asked, a sharp bite of apple beneath his teeth.
Daddy didn’t answer, mumbles from behind the newspaper; his wrist twitched.
“Aujourd’hui maman est morte,” Effy stated, cool monotone, “Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.”
Tony laughed and Effy smiled.
“What the fuck?” Daddy grumbled.
-
She knows he thinks she’s clever.
That smile’s not just for show.
-
She dropped E one night and her skin prickled under the lights, stretched tight across her bones and she arched her back against the beat of the music.
She could feel it everywhere; her pulse ached between her legs.
Later, slipped beneath his sheets, the sun rising, she came with a broken kind of moan, her panties to the side, his fingers wet.
He gripped the back of her neck; he kissed her for the first time - quiet, then a lick of his tongue.
Her hips bucked -
His answered back.
-
Mum says patience like a virtue.
Effy sticks to counting cars.
She eyes the oxygen tank - there’s no smoking here.
-
“Say something,” Tony grunted.
She didn’t; she cocked her head to the side and studied him, unblinking.
He left his hands poised on his hips, a slightly awkward stance; he grew hard as she stared and his breathing had turned ragged, just a little.
She raised her chin, slow smile spreading - no teeth.
She leaned back on her elbows, the mattress creaking, her chin still held high and spread her legs.
“I’m judging you,” she whispered as he slicked his cock against her cunt.
Strands of his hair got trapped in her mouth as he roughly thrust in -
His hand skidded off her hip, a hopscotch step.
Her throat burned.
-
She drinks water from a paper cup and sits in an orange-backed chair.
The television in the waiting room warns of pregnant drug smuggling mules in Mexico.
Daddy shakes his head and says, “this world.”
-
There was an evening -
“You ever talk?” Jal asked, slouched low in her seat.
Effy had looked up slowly -
“I like to fuck my brother,” she said, each word pronounced carefully and clearly.
Chris laughed.
“You’re fucking weird, you know, mate?” he said.
She smiled wide; Tony kissed Michelle, hard.
“Is that, like, some kind of Freudian joke or something, eh?” Sid asked.
She smoothed her skirt across her knees and didn’t say a word.
Tony hadn’t either.
-
His heartbeat beeps in the empty room.
His skin looks dull - she thinks of ghosts and rattling chains; who can exhaust a man? she whispers.
Tony always did like Sartre best.
(We all have our love letters).
-
“I always liked you best,” he once said, mouth moving over the bare skin of her back.
-
They pronounce endings in numbers and clinical terms - read: collapsed lung, internal bleeding, time of death.
She paints her fingers along the wall while Mum sobs and Daddy coughs.
See, Josh had been a punishment for their transgressions in the past, but this -
His name should have been Sid, and hers - it should have been Nancy.
That’s how these things work, right?
“Bloody Shakespearian,” she tells the wall.
Tony would have laughed. Clever girl.
-
She counts pills on her tongue, like one, two, three, repeat, and the numbers climb and the ceiling falls.
“And I guess that I just don’t know,” she quotes, her voice distant and faraway.
She flicks the lighter once.
Her eyes close.
-
fin.
footnotes:
"I just don't know where I'm going" & "And I guess that I just don't know" from Heroin, Velvet Underground.
"Aujourd’hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas." translates as "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I can't be sure." from The Stranger, Albert Camus.
"Who can exhaust a man?" from Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre