Reverse BB fic: Let it Burn
[Let it burn]
Author: flister
Artist: lazarusgirl
Link To Art: http://lazarus-girl.livejournal.com/184503.html
Word count: 3600
Rating: R
Warnings: Spoilers for season 4 (are they still spoilers?!)
Disclaimer: I don't own Skins. This is a work of fanfiction and is not for profit.
Summary: Set in the middle of season 4, Naomi and Emily are stuck and neither of them are doing a good job of working things out.
Notes: Thanks so much to L for helping out with this and talking it through with me when I didn't know where to start! Plus her mix is AWESOME. You should definitely check it out.
You're fucking staring again. And, right, you wish you could actually just fucking stop it but you can't, okay, so just chill the fuck out, yeah?
It's not even nearly a pep talk and you snort before tipping the dregs of your now warm Carlsberg down your throat and dropping the glass back onto the bar a little too forcefully so that it attracts the attention of some bloke next to you who's waiting to be served and, when he takes a second to look at you, he grins.
You roll your eyes because, honestly, you're well aware that you look like shit so you give him your best smarmy fake smile (one that you remember being able to do so so well once upon a time) and swivel around on your chair until you can't see him anymore.
And so your gaze wanders back to where it had been fixed minutes before only to find the object of your staring is no longer there.
You panic immediately, jumping down off the bar stool, and feel your neck and cheeks fill with an unpleasant warmth as you scan the vicinity wondering why the fuck you allowed yourself to be distracted for even a second. Though most of your brain is thinking shitshitshit there's a part that's still mocking you, saying, Ha, for someone who's had at least two stalkers before the age of eighteen you think you would have learned something from them and you close your eyes for a second to steel yourself.
That's when you hear it, that noise you've heard from across classrooms for the last five or so years, whilst sitting in the park passing a spliff around and enjoying the best of what summer had to offer Bristol and whilst you were sweaty and coming down and so almost completely content that you knew you could get lost if you just fucking let yourself. You know that sound. From up close and far away. You know it.
She laughs again and you know she really means it because it catches in her throat a bit and it goes a little high-pitched and scratchy and you just can't help but smile.
Then you remember that it isn't you this time who she's laughing with and your smile fades as quickly as it grew and you open your eyes.
Turning to the left you catch a glimpse of her hair and realise she's a little too close to where you've been lurking so you weave your way through some bodies to the other side of the bar and find a better seat, actually, and settle in again as you order another pint. With a sambuca. No, a tequila. No, fuck it. A sambuca. You manage to get your order out and pay whilst keeping an eye on what's going on across the bar and you're sort of impressed they're still serving you because you must seem like a right spaced out muppet at the moment.
You'd smoked two spliffs this afternoon after bashing out a decent morning of English revision (not that you feel you need to do it, you know it all backwards) but you find it's the only thing in your life that isn't making you wish that you didn't actually have one so you try to keep your mind fresh so that it doesn't atrophy entirely before exams start. With the amount that you're smoking and drinking you need to make sure that you're at least functioning for some of the day.
It's better when Cook's around because then you can share spliffs instead of smoking them by yourself (which makes you all sorts of introspective and then more sorts of totally monged and one time you had a conversation with the pizza boy for ten minutes about whether spicy food was actually good for your health just because you really hadn't properly talked to anyone for days) and sometimes he strokes your hair as you cry with your head in his lap and sometimes you play slaps just to feel something.
(You don't know if you feel better when you hit him or when he hits you. All you know is that his eyes have lost their boyish brightness and you wish that you'd been there to be a decent friend to him and that now all you have to offer him is a place to hide and a selection of disgusting flavoured teas that your mum stashed behind the cereal before she buggered off.)
He doesn't know where you are tonight and you don't fucking well plan on telling him. Nor have you told him about the numerous other times you've done this or the conversations you've accidentally-on-purpose listened in on or the fact that you fished our your darkest hoodie so that you could blend into the background. He doesn't know and he doesn't need to know. No one does.
You sip through the head of your beer, well aware of the fact you're steadily running out of money and refuse to think about how much you could flog those tickets to Goa for because there's no fucking well in hell that you're going now. Goa was a nice dream for a while. But then that's what normal people do, isn't it? Go travelling with their girlfriends. But then they probably talk to their girlfriends about their concerns and don't fuck random girls they meet on secret trips to University open days and then lie about it right to their girlfriends' faces.
You used to like that you weren't normal but now you wish, beyond anything, that you were.
The sambuca has started to look unappealing and you twist around in a circle on the bar, glancing down quickly and then looking right back up. What you can see, though, makes the shot essential to your existence, and you lift it to your lips, down it, slam it back on the bar and wipe your lips without once looking away.
There's a hand on her arm - a small, feminine hand with longish, painted nails that are scratching tiny circles tight around her elbow where you know she has a small scar from when Katie opened a cupboard door too forcefully when they were eleven and it hit her with the corner and it bled for fucking hours, I'm telling you, and only after Dad came back from the gym did they bother to take me to hospital - I could have lost my arm. Think yourself lucky I didn't - it is my good one, after all... and that girl doesn't know that story or how you kissed it after she told it to you and said that you were fucking glad because she's sort of crap with her left and you'd earned a squeal and slap on the bum before being flipped on your back and the rest of the memory is too fucking amazing and painful at the same time that you dig your nails (mostly dull from biting them, but still jagged enough for you to feel them) into the palm of your hand just to pull yourself out of it before you go any further into it.
There's a half smile then before she's ducking her head, too long bangs falling into her eyes, and pushing away from the bar with a squeeze of the girl's hand (the one that had basically just been touching something she had no right to touch) and heading towards the toilets.
You stiffen as you realise the ladies' is behind you and stare into your pint as you feel the sambuca swish around in your stomach, filling you with a sickly warmth you don't want anything to do with.
Taking a breath and looking up you catch sight of the girl who's waiting, grinning coyly into her drink, swishing the ice cubes around with a small black straw and, for a moment, you wonder how good your aim is and if you could hit her square in the face with your pint glass if you chucked it now while the bar staff have left you a relatively clear line of sight.
When the thought doesn't please you in the slightest (much like all the other times you've imagined doing something similar) and you find yourself recalling the rehearsed speech that you've been writing ever since you started following her, the one that goes, You think it's good now, don't you? You think, wow, she smiled at me. And you wonder if it's actually you that she's looking at and when you realise it is it feels like your body's on fire. Like, the good kind of fire where it starts in your stomach and then spreads out, all the way to your fingertips and down to your toes and suddenly, just because of one fucking smile, you're warm all over, all the time.
But then you realise that you can't stop the heat and you're burning from the inside out because every little thing she does feels like it's a part of you and it's actually been years, fucking years, of feeling like this and you just want it to stop, just for a second, so that you can feel the cold again, so that you can breathe your own air.
Except... except when you do that, when you stop for a second and let her warmth leave you, you'll realise that you can never get it back again. Not really. And you know you'll never be warm again, never see that smile, the one that's just for you, because all she sees when she looks at you is the coldness and she'll never understand that she did it, she did it all totally without realising and...
You stop there. You still haven't quite finished the speech because you don't really know how this ends. Because you're both still in it when you don't understand why she just won't get out of it and let you go and put all this behind you both (not that you ever could but she could have a life without you - she's making a fucking good start of it right already.
She's back from the bathroom and whispering in the girl's ear who's nodding eagerly and then grabbing her hand and being led back towards the dancefloor.
You bite your lip, wondering if you'll be able to see from where you're sat, and you're just about to get up when they appear right at the edge of the throng and you settle again even as you see her reaching down to thread her fingers together with the girl's before pulling them up to settle on her hips.
They're side on to you so you can see her in profile and you see the other girl grinning like she's just won a fucking prize and you nearly bolt for her then because she has no idea how much she's not winning. She'll know soon enough when she's left looking miserable as she's abandoned at the end of the night, all riled up and ready to go and just fucking ditched like she's nothing (though maybe if she's lucky she'll get a couple of snogs or a thigh between her legs for a few minutes or a roughly squeezed tit). No, you think as you try to slow your heart down again, there's nothing you need to do here. She's going to do it all for you.
You feel a wave of tiredness hit you then and you wonder how long you can both keep doing this before it becomes properly mental (if it isn't already) and you wish you could talk to Effy about this but she was too busy being more mental than the lot of you so she's not exactly a useful ally at this stage.
It sucks, actually, how you came properly close to having some real friends for a change and an actual relationship with the girl you've loved for forever, and you don't find yourself questioning Effy's actions as much as you once did. Not that you'd do the same (a sense of loyalty towards your mum always seems to be the first thing you think of before you really consider it and that stops you right there in your tracks because you have no intention on ruining her life as well as your own) but you sort of get it. You think that perhaps it was Effy's way of being brave and you're discovering that everyone has their own ideas about what that means.
You're looking right at your girlfriend's way of being brave right now, noting with disgust (and if you're totally honest a tiny bit of excitement but you're rarely honest so you're not starting with that one, thanks very fucking much) how she's running her fingertips around the bottom of the girl's far too short dress, tracing a line that she knows she won't cross and that the other girl hopes she will.
But you know she won't, or at least you were sure she wouldn't until you watch the flat of her hand plant itself firmly on the back of the girl's thigh and start to work it's way upwards, all the way up to her arse.
You feel dizzy and you grab the bar for support as you watch them sway together to a song that's all but faded into the distance now and you feel a little bit like another small part of you has died.
You wonder what her fingers are touching as you watch - whether they're just cupping a cheek or whether they're sliding inside the back of her knickers and round to the front where she's...
You find you can't look. For the first time this evening you willingly look away, turning to your pint and forcing yourself to take a few large gulps.
This is damaging, all of this. You can't do it any more. You just can't.
Fuck her. She can do whatever she likes - whoever she likes. Whatever. But you're not going to sit around and watch it any more.
You down your drink and turn round on the stool, jumping down and, when you look up, just for one last look as you're about to go, you find that the hand in question is now back on the girl's hip and you almost sigh in relief until you let your gaze stray further up and you freeze.
She's staring right at you. Right fucking at you. Standing deadly still as the girl pushes against her for a slow dance hug sort of thing that she doesn't really respond to other than to keep her hand on the girl's hip.
What you realise all too quickly is that there's no surprise on her face - she's staring, yeah, but she's not fucking shocked to see you staring right back at her - and you get that you've been played.
It takes about another five seconds for you to become really fucking angry (which is coupled with the shame of being caught and the way you just feel like a total fucking idiot because you hate to be made a fool of, especially by her) and you tear yourself away from her, not wanting to look at her face for any longer than you already have, and barge your way towards to the exit as swiftly as possible.
You manage it in a blur and the cold air that hits you when you get outside does nothing to clear your head but you suck it in, wondering if you were actually sort of close to having a panic attack. Instead of a paper bag, though, you have fags, so you fumble around in the pouch of your hoodie for your battered packet of Mayfair and only once you've lit one and taken a toke do you feel yourself start to calm down.
Only a bit. Only for a second.
Because then the door to the bar is opening behind you and hits the wall with such a wallop that you almost feel it and you don't need to look around to see who's behind you.
"So," Emily starts. "Enjoy the show?" She's slurring and you actually just can't have this conversation now so you don't look around, take another puff, and then shake your head.
"Fuck off, Ems. Go back to your slapper, yeah?" You start walking slowly but there's the clack of heels behind you and you bite your lip because there's no way that this is going to end nicely.
"Oh right. So, you can't take your eyes off me all night but you can't turn around now that you've been caught out? Fucking courageous of you, Naomi. Though not a huge surprise, obviously."
You want to kick yourself for not being as stealthy as you'd thought you were being but it's too late now. You've blown your cover and you look like a dick and she's just... well she's never going to take you back now.
"Seriously, Ems. Let's do this when you're not hammered and fresh from feeling up some girl right in front of me, yeah?"
"Oh," she starts, still following you, and you can almost feel the way she's narrowing her eyes at you and crossing her arms as she moves. "Would you have rather we did this on Monday when you followed me to Flamingoes? Or how about last week when you watched me snog Alex in that alley in town?"
You stop still then, cigarette in hand hanging limply by your side, and you feel like your brain is shouting a million different things at you all at once. The one thing that's loudest, though, is that she didn't just know you were there tonight - she's known you've been there the whole time. Or at least for several more times than just this evening.
"How long have you...?" you manage quietly and she sniffs as you hear the sound of a fag packet being pulled out of her bag.
"Since the first time, Naomi. You are really fucking shit at stalking someone. Trust me, I know."
You manage a small smile then, hearing a hint of one in her voice.
"Yeah, well. You were never that good at it yourself. Honestly, just because you're short you're pretty fucking noticeable."
"Bitch," she says, but it's with humour, and it feels like the nicest thing she's said to you in months.
You almost turn around then but you feel like if you did then you'd be breaking this spell that you seem to be under and you think that if you saw her face right now then you wouldn't be able to hold it together and you're barely doing that as it is.
You take a puff of your fag and consider saying sorry but you leave it too long and then she's speaking.
"Look, Naomi," she starts, then exhales smoke which you feel hit the back of your neck and it very nearly melts you, right there on the pavement, mainly because you didn't realise she was actually that close - that she could stand being that close to you. "You need to not do this anymore, okay? I can't... I can't fucking deal with stuff if you won't give me the space to."
You want to scoff and let her know that dealing with stuff doesn't exactly mean getting off with randoms at pubs but then you did something far, far worse for a similar reason so you know you can't say a single fucking thing about that.
So instead you bite your lip and nod.
"Okay," you manage, just above a whisper.
Then - and it's such a surprise you almost jump right out of your skin - you feel a small, cold hand reach down and grab yours, just holding on and squeezing gently.
"I'm not making any promises, okay? But I'm not ready to let you go just yet. But I'm not ready to forgive you either. So can we please just... just hold on. Just for a little bit longer."
You're crying now - you knew it would come - so you nod and squeeze her hand back.
"Thanks," she says and you feel like the world's biggest cunt all over again. "Right, I'm going back in. And you are going home. And I will see you there later."
She gives your hand one last squeeze before she lets go completely and the clack-de-clack of her heels get quieter as you stand there, frozen, until the door opens and closes somewhere in the distance and suddenly she's gone again.
You release the breath you didn't realise you were holding and chuck your fag butt to the ground before immediately reaching for another, smoking half before your feet remember how to walk again and start leading you home.
The feel of her hand in yours stays with you for the walk and you can't help but feel a little bit like you've reclaimed it. Like it almost belongs to you again after you so very nearly lost it.
It's not hope you feel as your stride picks up but a sort of grim determination. You don't know how it it'll end, all this, or even if it ever will but you're through with running away and hiding and of all the things she's asked you this one seems like the most important.
It's mixed together with all the requests to be brave or to be the person that Emily believes in or to share your life and your bed and your heart with her.
You're going to wait, just a little bit longer. And, maybe by then you'll know how to finish your speech. You owe that much to Emily - to find all the words you needs to say and get them clear in your head.
You can do this. You've loved her since you were twelve, for Christ's sake. The least you can do is figure out a way to wait for her. Again. For as long as it takes.
Author: flister
Artist: lazarusgirl
Link To Art: http://lazarus-girl.livejournal.com/184503.html
Word count: 3600
Rating: R
Warnings: Spoilers for season 4 (are they still spoilers?!)
Disclaimer: I don't own Skins. This is a work of fanfiction and is not for profit.
Summary: Set in the middle of season 4, Naomi and Emily are stuck and neither of them are doing a good job of working things out.
Notes: Thanks so much to L for helping out with this and talking it through with me when I didn't know where to start! Plus her mix is AWESOME. You should definitely check it out.
You're fucking staring again. And, right, you wish you could actually just fucking stop it but you can't, okay, so just chill the fuck out, yeah?
It's not even nearly a pep talk and you snort before tipping the dregs of your now warm Carlsberg down your throat and dropping the glass back onto the bar a little too forcefully so that it attracts the attention of some bloke next to you who's waiting to be served and, when he takes a second to look at you, he grins.
You roll your eyes because, honestly, you're well aware that you look like shit so you give him your best smarmy fake smile (one that you remember being able to do so so well once upon a time) and swivel around on your chair until you can't see him anymore.
And so your gaze wanders back to where it had been fixed minutes before only to find the object of your staring is no longer there.
You panic immediately, jumping down off the bar stool, and feel your neck and cheeks fill with an unpleasant warmth as you scan the vicinity wondering why the fuck you allowed yourself to be distracted for even a second. Though most of your brain is thinking shitshitshit there's a part that's still mocking you, saying, Ha, for someone who's had at least two stalkers before the age of eighteen you think you would have learned something from them and you close your eyes for a second to steel yourself.
That's when you hear it, that noise you've heard from across classrooms for the last five or so years, whilst sitting in the park passing a spliff around and enjoying the best of what summer had to offer Bristol and whilst you were sweaty and coming down and so almost completely content that you knew you could get lost if you just fucking let yourself. You know that sound. From up close and far away. You know it.
She laughs again and you know she really means it because it catches in her throat a bit and it goes a little high-pitched and scratchy and you just can't help but smile.
Then you remember that it isn't you this time who she's laughing with and your smile fades as quickly as it grew and you open your eyes.
Turning to the left you catch a glimpse of her hair and realise she's a little too close to where you've been lurking so you weave your way through some bodies to the other side of the bar and find a better seat, actually, and settle in again as you order another pint. With a sambuca. No, a tequila. No, fuck it. A sambuca. You manage to get your order out and pay whilst keeping an eye on what's going on across the bar and you're sort of impressed they're still serving you because you must seem like a right spaced out muppet at the moment.
You'd smoked two spliffs this afternoon after bashing out a decent morning of English revision (not that you feel you need to do it, you know it all backwards) but you find it's the only thing in your life that isn't making you wish that you didn't actually have one so you try to keep your mind fresh so that it doesn't atrophy entirely before exams start. With the amount that you're smoking and drinking you need to make sure that you're at least functioning for some of the day.
It's better when Cook's around because then you can share spliffs instead of smoking them by yourself (which makes you all sorts of introspective and then more sorts of totally monged and one time you had a conversation with the pizza boy for ten minutes about whether spicy food was actually good for your health just because you really hadn't properly talked to anyone for days) and sometimes he strokes your hair as you cry with your head in his lap and sometimes you play slaps just to feel something.
(You don't know if you feel better when you hit him or when he hits you. All you know is that his eyes have lost their boyish brightness and you wish that you'd been there to be a decent friend to him and that now all you have to offer him is a place to hide and a selection of disgusting flavoured teas that your mum stashed behind the cereal before she buggered off.)
He doesn't know where you are tonight and you don't fucking well plan on telling him. Nor have you told him about the numerous other times you've done this or the conversations you've accidentally-on-purpose listened in on or the fact that you fished our your darkest hoodie so that you could blend into the background. He doesn't know and he doesn't need to know. No one does.
You sip through the head of your beer, well aware of the fact you're steadily running out of money and refuse to think about how much you could flog those tickets to Goa for because there's no fucking well in hell that you're going now. Goa was a nice dream for a while. But then that's what normal people do, isn't it? Go travelling with their girlfriends. But then they probably talk to their girlfriends about their concerns and don't fuck random girls they meet on secret trips to University open days and then lie about it right to their girlfriends' faces.
You used to like that you weren't normal but now you wish, beyond anything, that you were.
The sambuca has started to look unappealing and you twist around in a circle on the bar, glancing down quickly and then looking right back up. What you can see, though, makes the shot essential to your existence, and you lift it to your lips, down it, slam it back on the bar and wipe your lips without once looking away.
There's a hand on her arm - a small, feminine hand with longish, painted nails that are scratching tiny circles tight around her elbow where you know she has a small scar from when Katie opened a cupboard door too forcefully when they were eleven and it hit her with the corner and it bled for fucking hours, I'm telling you, and only after Dad came back from the gym did they bother to take me to hospital - I could have lost my arm. Think yourself lucky I didn't - it is my good one, after all... and that girl doesn't know that story or how you kissed it after she told it to you and said that you were fucking glad because she's sort of crap with her left and you'd earned a squeal and slap on the bum before being flipped on your back and the rest of the memory is too fucking amazing and painful at the same time that you dig your nails (mostly dull from biting them, but still jagged enough for you to feel them) into the palm of your hand just to pull yourself out of it before you go any further into it.
There's a half smile then before she's ducking her head, too long bangs falling into her eyes, and pushing away from the bar with a squeeze of the girl's hand (the one that had basically just been touching something she had no right to touch) and heading towards the toilets.
You stiffen as you realise the ladies' is behind you and stare into your pint as you feel the sambuca swish around in your stomach, filling you with a sickly warmth you don't want anything to do with.
Taking a breath and looking up you catch sight of the girl who's waiting, grinning coyly into her drink, swishing the ice cubes around with a small black straw and, for a moment, you wonder how good your aim is and if you could hit her square in the face with your pint glass if you chucked it now while the bar staff have left you a relatively clear line of sight.
When the thought doesn't please you in the slightest (much like all the other times you've imagined doing something similar) and you find yourself recalling the rehearsed speech that you've been writing ever since you started following her, the one that goes, You think it's good now, don't you? You think, wow, she smiled at me. And you wonder if it's actually you that she's looking at and when you realise it is it feels like your body's on fire. Like, the good kind of fire where it starts in your stomach and then spreads out, all the way to your fingertips and down to your toes and suddenly, just because of one fucking smile, you're warm all over, all the time.
But then you realise that you can't stop the heat and you're burning from the inside out because every little thing she does feels like it's a part of you and it's actually been years, fucking years, of feeling like this and you just want it to stop, just for a second, so that you can feel the cold again, so that you can breathe your own air.
Except... except when you do that, when you stop for a second and let her warmth leave you, you'll realise that you can never get it back again. Not really. And you know you'll never be warm again, never see that smile, the one that's just for you, because all she sees when she looks at you is the coldness and she'll never understand that she did it, she did it all totally without realising and...
You stop there. You still haven't quite finished the speech because you don't really know how this ends. Because you're both still in it when you don't understand why she just won't get out of it and let you go and put all this behind you both (not that you ever could but she could have a life without you - she's making a fucking good start of it right already.
She's back from the bathroom and whispering in the girl's ear who's nodding eagerly and then grabbing her hand and being led back towards the dancefloor.
You bite your lip, wondering if you'll be able to see from where you're sat, and you're just about to get up when they appear right at the edge of the throng and you settle again even as you see her reaching down to thread her fingers together with the girl's before pulling them up to settle on her hips.
They're side on to you so you can see her in profile and you see the other girl grinning like she's just won a fucking prize and you nearly bolt for her then because she has no idea how much she's not winning. She'll know soon enough when she's left looking miserable as she's abandoned at the end of the night, all riled up and ready to go and just fucking ditched like she's nothing (though maybe if she's lucky she'll get a couple of snogs or a thigh between her legs for a few minutes or a roughly squeezed tit). No, you think as you try to slow your heart down again, there's nothing you need to do here. She's going to do it all for you.
You feel a wave of tiredness hit you then and you wonder how long you can both keep doing this before it becomes properly mental (if it isn't already) and you wish you could talk to Effy about this but she was too busy being more mental than the lot of you so she's not exactly a useful ally at this stage.
It sucks, actually, how you came properly close to having some real friends for a change and an actual relationship with the girl you've loved for forever, and you don't find yourself questioning Effy's actions as much as you once did. Not that you'd do the same (a sense of loyalty towards your mum always seems to be the first thing you think of before you really consider it and that stops you right there in your tracks because you have no intention on ruining her life as well as your own) but you sort of get it. You think that perhaps it was Effy's way of being brave and you're discovering that everyone has their own ideas about what that means.
You're looking right at your girlfriend's way of being brave right now, noting with disgust (and if you're totally honest a tiny bit of excitement but you're rarely honest so you're not starting with that one, thanks very fucking much) how she's running her fingertips around the bottom of the girl's far too short dress, tracing a line that she knows she won't cross and that the other girl hopes she will.
But you know she won't, or at least you were sure she wouldn't until you watch the flat of her hand plant itself firmly on the back of the girl's thigh and start to work it's way upwards, all the way up to her arse.
You feel dizzy and you grab the bar for support as you watch them sway together to a song that's all but faded into the distance now and you feel a little bit like another small part of you has died.
You wonder what her fingers are touching as you watch - whether they're just cupping a cheek or whether they're sliding inside the back of her knickers and round to the front where she's...
You find you can't look. For the first time this evening you willingly look away, turning to your pint and forcing yourself to take a few large gulps.
This is damaging, all of this. You can't do it any more. You just can't.
Fuck her. She can do whatever she likes - whoever she likes. Whatever. But you're not going to sit around and watch it any more.
You down your drink and turn round on the stool, jumping down and, when you look up, just for one last look as you're about to go, you find that the hand in question is now back on the girl's hip and you almost sigh in relief until you let your gaze stray further up and you freeze.
She's staring right at you. Right fucking at you. Standing deadly still as the girl pushes against her for a slow dance hug sort of thing that she doesn't really respond to other than to keep her hand on the girl's hip.
What you realise all too quickly is that there's no surprise on her face - she's staring, yeah, but she's not fucking shocked to see you staring right back at her - and you get that you've been played.
It takes about another five seconds for you to become really fucking angry (which is coupled with the shame of being caught and the way you just feel like a total fucking idiot because you hate to be made a fool of, especially by her) and you tear yourself away from her, not wanting to look at her face for any longer than you already have, and barge your way towards to the exit as swiftly as possible.
You manage it in a blur and the cold air that hits you when you get outside does nothing to clear your head but you suck it in, wondering if you were actually sort of close to having a panic attack. Instead of a paper bag, though, you have fags, so you fumble around in the pouch of your hoodie for your battered packet of Mayfair and only once you've lit one and taken a toke do you feel yourself start to calm down.
Only a bit. Only for a second.
Because then the door to the bar is opening behind you and hits the wall with such a wallop that you almost feel it and you don't need to look around to see who's behind you.
"So," Emily starts. "Enjoy the show?" She's slurring and you actually just can't have this conversation now so you don't look around, take another puff, and then shake your head.
"Fuck off, Ems. Go back to your slapper, yeah?" You start walking slowly but there's the clack of heels behind you and you bite your lip because there's no way that this is going to end nicely.
"Oh right. So, you can't take your eyes off me all night but you can't turn around now that you've been caught out? Fucking courageous of you, Naomi. Though not a huge surprise, obviously."
You want to kick yourself for not being as stealthy as you'd thought you were being but it's too late now. You've blown your cover and you look like a dick and she's just... well she's never going to take you back now.
"Seriously, Ems. Let's do this when you're not hammered and fresh from feeling up some girl right in front of me, yeah?"
"Oh," she starts, still following you, and you can almost feel the way she's narrowing her eyes at you and crossing her arms as she moves. "Would you have rather we did this on Monday when you followed me to Flamingoes? Or how about last week when you watched me snog Alex in that alley in town?"
You stop still then, cigarette in hand hanging limply by your side, and you feel like your brain is shouting a million different things at you all at once. The one thing that's loudest, though, is that she didn't just know you were there tonight - she's known you've been there the whole time. Or at least for several more times than just this evening.
"How long have you...?" you manage quietly and she sniffs as you hear the sound of a fag packet being pulled out of her bag.
"Since the first time, Naomi. You are really fucking shit at stalking someone. Trust me, I know."
You manage a small smile then, hearing a hint of one in her voice.
"Yeah, well. You were never that good at it yourself. Honestly, just because you're short you're pretty fucking noticeable."
"Bitch," she says, but it's with humour, and it feels like the nicest thing she's said to you in months.
You almost turn around then but you feel like if you did then you'd be breaking this spell that you seem to be under and you think that if you saw her face right now then you wouldn't be able to hold it together and you're barely doing that as it is.
You take a puff of your fag and consider saying sorry but you leave it too long and then she's speaking.
"Look, Naomi," she starts, then exhales smoke which you feel hit the back of your neck and it very nearly melts you, right there on the pavement, mainly because you didn't realise she was actually that close - that she could stand being that close to you. "You need to not do this anymore, okay? I can't... I can't fucking deal with stuff if you won't give me the space to."
You want to scoff and let her know that dealing with stuff doesn't exactly mean getting off with randoms at pubs but then you did something far, far worse for a similar reason so you know you can't say a single fucking thing about that.
So instead you bite your lip and nod.
"Okay," you manage, just above a whisper.
Then - and it's such a surprise you almost jump right out of your skin - you feel a small, cold hand reach down and grab yours, just holding on and squeezing gently.
"I'm not making any promises, okay? But I'm not ready to let you go just yet. But I'm not ready to forgive you either. So can we please just... just hold on. Just for a little bit longer."
You're crying now - you knew it would come - so you nod and squeeze her hand back.
"Thanks," she says and you feel like the world's biggest cunt all over again. "Right, I'm going back in. And you are going home. And I will see you there later."
She gives your hand one last squeeze before she lets go completely and the clack-de-clack of her heels get quieter as you stand there, frozen, until the door opens and closes somewhere in the distance and suddenly she's gone again.
You release the breath you didn't realise you were holding and chuck your fag butt to the ground before immediately reaching for another, smoking half before your feet remember how to walk again and start leading you home.
The feel of her hand in yours stays with you for the walk and you can't help but feel a little bit like you've reclaimed it. Like it almost belongs to you again after you so very nearly lost it.
It's not hope you feel as your stride picks up but a sort of grim determination. You don't know how it it'll end, all this, or even if it ever will but you're through with running away and hiding and of all the things she's asked you this one seems like the most important.
It's mixed together with all the requests to be brave or to be the person that Emily believes in or to share your life and your bed and your heart with her.
You're going to wait, just a little bit longer. And, maybe by then you'll know how to finish your speech. You owe that much to Emily - to find all the words you needs to say and get them clear in your head.
You can do this. You've loved her since you were twelve, for Christ's sake. The least you can do is figure out a way to wait for her. Again. For as long as it takes.