A/N: I don't usually make sweeping declarations and pronouncements with Author's Notes, but I'm making an exception here to prove the rule. This fandom holds an incredibly special place in my heart and while I did not discover it during the golden age of fic writing during the actual airing of Series 3/4, since joining it over 4 years ago (holy cow, that long?!) not once have I felt that it has lost its vibrancy or its passion or its relevance. If anything, the Skins fandom as a whole-not just Naomily-is needed more than ever. Admittedly, there may not be as many active authors as there once were, but there's still a treasure trove of classic completed stories to read and re-read, a cadre of new writers just joining in the past year, and those of us toddling along putting out chapters here and there at somewhat regular intervals. The spirit of the fandom-of hope and friendship and loyalty and perseverance and overcoming the unconquerable, of love-that spirit lives on so long as only one of us keeps writing. Before I found Skins, I was a silent reader of many stories in other fandoms. Those stories shaped my love for those properties and helped me develop the love for writing I have today. Unfortunately, many of those authors will never know the impact they had; I was young, didn't appreciate the importance of the feedback loop. But I understand that some people don't always like to post reviews or register a login with a website and that's completely okay. Just knowing that there's one person out there reading what we write, that there's one other person joining in this celebration of these iconic (not an exaggeration) characters...it's enough, even if that one person doesn't write anything in return. So really, reviews and favs and follows are just gravy. Really, really tasty, wonderful encouraged gravy, but gravy nonetheless. Pointedly, if the concern is a numbers game, we've missed the point. I'm having the best time writing this story-and somehow, 10 years after Series 1 debuted, there's still others wanting to read about Skins. I think that's an incredible accomplishment for the show and for those of us who refuse to let it fade away. So in closing, don't lose hope or fear for this fandom. I know I don't. Because so long as we keep making it our own, how can it end?
Thanks in advance-you lot are about to somehow make this my most well-received Skins story. I don't own 'Skins.' Just the far too many grammatical errors I'm sure are below (and I know they're there because I keep finding them in rereads of old chapters and it drives me crazy. Sorry!).
Cook gritted his teeth against the fiery burning coursing through his musculature and extended his fingertips towards the touchpad. Abruptly, his body—which only instants before sliced through the water, shark-like—went limp and he twisted to look up at the digital board on the wall high above the far end of the pool. His eyes found his name in the spot designated for lane 2; focused on the four digits next to his name.
Ah, fuckin' hell. He ripped the Union Jack-emblazoned swim cap from his head and slapped it against the water, sending a spout into the air. Cook climbed out shouting an emphatic, "Fuck!"
The sandy-haired snatched towel off the plastic chair, wiped it across his face, and glared at the timing board. He stormed across the slick tile of the pool deck and over to where Darrick leaned against the railing of the gallery a few feet above him. Cook shook his head.
"'Fore you say any rubbish 'bout how we's didn't taper or nothin', Coach, that don't justify swimming like shit."
The American-born coach looked up at Cook's time, which disappeared as the officials reset for the next event. He glanced down at his psych sheet and the splits jotted into the margin next to it. "That may be, but take a look at your first 50 split and tell me again that you swam like shit."
"Well, I wasn't in the 50 butterfly, now was I?" Cook's brow furrowed realizing that his first length split sat right about where he'd need it to take aim at the British record. "So I...was out fast?"
"Second at the turn, but since you were down here in lane two and did your turn to the right, you couldn't see the rest of the pool."
"Still not pleased with how badly I faded, Darrick, mate."
"I ain't tellin' you to get complacent, James. Never will. Just try to hold off on the angry curses until you've gotten the whole picture." Darrick nodded towards the busy diving well behind the starting blocks. The starter whistled loudly as a group of women stepped towards the blocks. "Go get a warm down in."
The teen flipped Coach Mercer a two-finger salute and headed away from the warm down pool, wet swim cap and goggles clenched in his left hand. His coach started to protest the flagrant disregard for his recommendation, but the shout died in his throat as he watched Cook approach the newest member of the national team.
Cook stepped between two timers and intruded on Naomi's personal space. He took her head in both his hands and rested his forehead against hers, gazing into black goggles. "Ready for this, Blondie?"
"Bet your fucking life, Cook." She exhaled and shook her shoulders. "Time to win."
"Tha's the spirit," he grinned. "Keep your head in between the bulkheads and you'll be fine."
There was a shrill beep as the first heat of the women's semifinals dove into the water. Naomi nodded as best she could and feigned ignorance. "Where else would it be?"
"In the seats about six rows up biting her lip, nervous as shit about your race." He pulled back, grabbed both of her bare shoulders and clenched. "Just swim, Naomi. You let me pull all the other strings."
The starter whistled Naomi's heat up to the blocks. She pulled away with a laugh. "That's what I'm afraid of."
Cook stepped back, watched his new friend approach the block with her towel and dry it quickly before launching the towel his direction. He caught it and looped it around his neck with a whoop of encouragement. He grinned, began walking towards the opposite end of the pool. His voice distorted slightly by the equipment, the starter directed the second and final semifinal heat onto the blocks. Cook started backpedaling, his vigilantly watching as Naomi clenched and unclenched her fingers, let them dangle over the rough surface of the block, and—with the direction to 'Take Your Mark'—pulled upwards on the lip of the blue starting block.
BEEP.
"GO NAOMI!" Emily shouted from the stands, standing with the rest of the team as a chorus of cheers and encouragements rained down on the water, despite all of them knowing full well their teammate could not hear their entreaties. The brunette twin's hair hung damp against the nape of her neck; she'd hardly taken her seat after warming down than the women's freestyle heats brought her to her feet. Next to her, Katie rose, clapping with the rest of the contingent occupying four rows of seats halfway up the stands. Effy—her view now blocked by the Fitches standing in the row below her—merely turned her head and watched the race unfold on the video board.
The eight women in the water surged down the pool, the sound of their splashes echoing inside the Palau Sant Jordi. The churning white water obscured any sort of visual distinction between the swimmers from lane to lane; instead, Emily narrowed her focus to the racer in lane 3 only. She cupped her hands over her mouth in anguish, hopping up and down nervously as the heat darted under the flags and approached the wall.
"I can't watch."
"Quit being over-dramatic," scolded Katie under her breath (behind them Effy overheard the exchange and rolled her eyes) before shouting loudly, "Come on, Campbell, you—"
"Shut it. GO...AHH!"
The crowd fell eerily silent as every swimmer touched the timing boards within a second and the computers sorted out the finish order...
On the pool deck, Cook leaned backwards in anticipation, urging the board to update. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the times cascaded across the board and the British contingent erupted: Cook leaped into the air and slipped upon landing, catching himself before he fell on the hard tile, but cheering nonetheless; Naomi confidently pumping her fist in the air in her lane as she looped one arm over the lane line for support; Effy smirking silently and dropping her heat sheet on the floor; Katie shouting incoherently; Emily grinning widely behind hands now steepled in front of her face in joy; Darrick whistling and clapping; Freddie blinking, confused, before being told by an ecstatic JJ that his teammate just placed first in her semifinal,was headed to the next night's finals as the second overall seed, and the tall boy began cheering appropriately.
The girls exited the pool and slowly made their way to the locker room or to the warm down pool; blocking Naomi's path to the latter stood Cook, arms crossed. She stopped, blue and red towel draped over a shoulder, goggles and cap clasped in one hand, a couple feet from him. He spread his arms wide, expecting a hug. "So, does this mean..."
Naomi scoffed; she stepped around him quickly. His come ons no longer took her by surprise; the initial entreaty certainly revolted her, but the thrice-practice suggestions they hook up during the pre-world championship National Team training camp dulled their impact. "In your dreams." Turning, she walked backwards with a deadly serious expression. "You do know what this actually means though? And it has nothing to do with us—ugh—shagging."
Cook laughed. "Your loss, babe. I have no idea, then. What?"
"Means we've got to wait til tomorrow evening for another night of sangria-fueled frivolity."
"A night of what?"
"Partying, Cook. Jesus, read something. Just once, read a fucking book." She rolled her eyes and threw her towel onto a riser, tugging her swim cap back over her bunned blonde hair. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to warm down in peace."
She hopped, both legs pressed together, into the water like a plum bob, quickly rising back to the surface and taking long strokes towards the far end. Left on the deck, Cook laughed deeply and sauntered towards the locker room. Despite only truly getting to know the blonde during the training camp, he'd come to respect her immensely: she refused to rise to any of his antagonizing comments or lewd suggestions; she consistently retorted in such colorful metaphors that his mind whirled trying to decipher them; her work ethic rivaled even that of the Fitch twins and Cook had yet to meet someone who could go head-to-head with those two repeatedly in practice, but Naomi certainly came close. Moreover, she'd swum well consistently over the course of the week, placing sixth in the 100 freestyle .
Now, with only the final day of the championship looming in the morning, she represented the best chance for Great Britain to walk away with an individual medal. Cook shook his head, amazed at the turn of events. It certainly seemed the moment to anoint the Fitch twins—or himself, Cook admitted as he showered off. They were all primed for breakout performances after Darrick's rigorous practices and exquisitely detailed fixes to their strokes. Nevertheless, here they were. He slapped the tile angrily. An off-podium finish in his best event; not making finals in two others. That wasn't how he envisioned the next four years going at all, and Cook guessed he wasn't the only one. The jagged gaping hole in the drywall of the ladies' apartment illustrated Katie's spectacularly underwhelming performance five nights previous when she failed to muster better than seventh in either the 100 butterfly or the 200 individual medley; the latter of which she tied her sister for eighth. Things spiraled out of control that night when Emily and Effy both notched fifth place finishes in their best events—the breaststroke and backstroke, respectively—in semifinals, ensuring there was no way they could medal.
Darrick's hastily called team meeting after Freddie embarrassed himself during the 800 freestyle marked the ultimate depths to which they'd fallen just in a handful of days, Cook reflected grimly. He toweled off and trudged down the hall to the ready room. Their coach couldn't even bring himself to shout. The excuse of 'we didn't taper very much' sounded increasingly hollow in Cook's ears and, if the grim expressions on his teammate's faces during that pep talk were any reliable indication, they didn't buy it either. Cook shoved his damp towel, goggles, and swim caps into his navy blue swim bag, jammed ear buds into his ear and headed for the team bus.
Emily climbed onto the bus right behind her sister, fists shoved deep into the pockets of her hoodie, her thoughts still between the bulkheads. That's not entirely true, she told herself as her feet shuffled along the carpeted aisle towards a comfortable seat two-thirds of the way into the bus on the driver's side. Emily knew precisely where her thoughts truly drifted: the girl climbing onto the bus presently, eyes scanning across row after row until...
A body fell into the seat next to Emily's and she bit back a groan of annoyance. She twisted to glare at Effy's profile. "D'you mind?"
"Saving the seat for someone?" the taller girl replied cooly. She smirked as Emily shrunk into her hoodie, knees curling up onto the seat as she looked out the window pensively.
As she stared into the window—the contrast between the inky purple outside and the white light of the bus painting a near-approximation of the interior on top of the stirring Barcelona night—Emily's eyes tracked window-Naomi's movements as she haltingly moved along the aisle. The blonde girl worried her lip, looked around anxiously, and slipped into the seat right behind Emily's; the twin's eyes flicked to the left, willing herself to develop x-ray vision to see through the headrest. When that failed to materialize, she glanced back at the window and found blue eyes meeting hers with an accompanying shy smile. The bus started to roll away from the natatorium and the driver turned off the overhead lights on the bus, plunging them all into darkness.
Twenty silent minutes later, the bus braked along the Avinguda and the team filed off, retrieving their swim bags from the storage compartment in the undercarriage, and making their way through the lobby. In pairs and small groups, they rode the lifts up to their rooms in silence—all except one group, as Cook and Moose bounded through the lobby singing a local drinking song in off-key, poorly pronounced Spanish.
"Stick to Jay-Z/Linkin Park mashups!" Freddie chided with a chuckle, but the joke fell flat on the ears of his teammates.
Emily sighed as she crammed herself into the lift with several older teammates before the boisterous duo could join them. Neither she nor any of her teammates could have predicted the (more or less) somber mood descending upon the entire team with one day left in the Championships. For her part, the lackluster performance during the meet felt not so much an indictment of their training regimen or Darrick's vision for the team, but the victim of a far too resilient distraction: the blonde teammate currently tapping her toe waiting outside their suite door.
"Patiently waiting, I see," Emily said teasingly as she dangled the room keys from her right hand.
"That's me: 'A Portrait of Patience as a Young Woman.'"
Emily shook her head and unlocked the door. She led the way into the common room and dumped her swim bag unceremoniously on the couch. "Just because you're seeded second in the fifty tomorrow doesn't quite entitle you to make James Joyce references."
"And what, may I ask, does it entitle me to?"
The peculiar tone in her voice made Emily freeze, one hand on the flap of her bag and the other squeezing her suits so tightly water dripped onto the carpeted floor. She stood slowly, her feet shuffling 'round to face Naomi. Emily swallowed dryly and raised her eyebrows. "Uh..."
"Christ, if I have to spend another fucking minute trapped in a lift with those two baboons, I'll make sure they can't...what the fuck did I walk into this time?" Katie stormed into the suite, throwing her swim bag into the twins' bedroom before realizing her sister and Naomi were locked in a staring contest.
Emily groaned exasperatedly at her sister's flair for the dramatic (and unerring ability to cut straight to the heart of the matter). "Our esteemed suitemate was just about to tell me what she thinks she's entitled to as the most likely of us to win gold."
Katie snorted, crossing the room towards the shared bathroom. "If the answer's anything other than a fashion makeover, I'm protesting. Vehemently." The door slammed shut behind her.
"Katie, I didn't know you knew such long words!" Naomi retorted.
"Fuck off!" Came the muffled reply; Emily and Naomi simultaneously rolled their eyes.
"Now you're communicating without speaking; cute."
"Fuck, Effy, really?" Naomi turned dramatically towards their final roommate, throwing her hands up in frustration. Effy shrugged, leaning against the door casually. "Is it too much to ask of you to not be an absolute...hi, Coach."
Coach Mercer lingered awkwardly just outside the open door of their suite. He tried to smile. "Just wanted to check in and make sure everyone's ready for tomorrow. Big final day."
"We know, Coach," Emily assented quickly.
"Good. Don't forget; bus leaves at 7." He waved and disappeared back down the hall as Effy walked into the common room; the door slowly closed behind her. Her eyes flitted from Naomi to Emily and back.
"A teammate again, Em? And I thought I was the only one fascinated with fire." She raised her eyebrows at their newest teammate and disappeared into the bedroom, quietly shutting the door behind her. Naomi stared pointedly at Emily, all verbal questions unnecessary.
Emily opened her mouth to explain as the toilet flushed. She clamped her lips shut, considered things, and looked towards the ceiling. "Roof?"
Naomi chewed her bottom lip until the ferric taste of blood dribbled onto her tongue. Finally, she shook her head. "As much as I want to, we should get to bed."
"Right," Emily whispered, ducking her chin down to look into the damp heap of swimsuits and towels. "Yeah, we should...get some rest."
"But, Em?"
Nervous mocha eyes looked across the room and found surprisingly resolute sky blues. Naomi nodded towards the bedroom behind her. "If it's any consolation, I always take anything she says with a grain of salt. Learned that lesson a long time ago. G'night."
"Goodnight, Naomi," Emily whispered.
The door to the loo opened and Katie emerged, looking around in surprise. "You're alone." It wasn't a question.
"Shocking, I know." The younger twin brushed past her, tossing over her shoulder, "Just leave your suits on the floor; I'll hang them up and toss the towels in the dryer."
Emily began closing the door when she heard her sister say her name a final time. Peeking her head around the partially shut door, Emily piqued her eyebrows. Katie shrugged. "Just...don't stay up too late moping?"
Confused, Emily pushed open the door again. "What're you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about, bitch!" Katie leaned forward, her voice a hiss. "We've all got the relay tomorrow and Naomi's got the 50. Last thing she needs is to come out here and see you thinking too hard. Be patient and who knows? Maybe with a little more sangria she'll be the one kissing you."
The teen spun on her heel and stalked into the bedroom. Emily closed the door to the loo, her hand shaking violently and head lolling back and forth as she collapsed against the wooden door. Her mind scrambled putting together all the pieces the evening provided; nevertheless, try as she might, Emily could not put together a coherent picture. But one unmistakable fact coalesced as she went through her nightly routine: her sister witnessed the kiss she'd stolen from Naomi their first night in Barcelona. And kept schtum. The concept of privacy and not airing her sister's every romantic tryst rarely formed coherently in Katie's mind; Emily knew that from experience. Her older sister had hardly been subtle about Emily's last team crush.
Splashing water on her face, Emily leaned on the counter and looked at herself in the mirror. Who was she trying to deceive? With Katie things were never simple or straightforward. "She's waiting for the opportune moment," Emily stated a bit too loudly.
"Yeah, well, this'd be an opportune moment for you to be done so's I can brush and go to bed?"
Emily gasped and hastily dried her face with a hand towel. Opening the door, Emily looked up into Naomi's smirk. "Sorry; all yours. I thought I was the only one up."
"Nah, I think Effy's just lying on her bed trying to hear at ultrasonic levels; she never actually sleeps."
They traded places; the brunette's cheeks tinting pink with the extended time so close to Naomi. Finally, Emily backed towards her bedroom as Naomi slowly closed the door. "See you in the morning, Naoms."
Shivering, the blonde's eyes drooped closed and popped back open. "You too. And we will talk tomorrow night."
Emily swallowed as Naomi shut the door emphatically ending their conversation. "Right. No pressure."
