Well hello from sunny Bath. Just done our first show here which was great, so I got all inspired and finished this chapter. I would like to draw your attention to my latest discovery, a hidden gem of a story called Half Asleep by RuinMyLife. Check it out if you haven't already, coz Im loving it. So in honour of Ruin and of random dedications I would like to send this one out to all of my readers who are med students - there seems to be quite a few of you. Enjoy - Hypes xx

I don't own Skins, but I'd like to buy it dinner sometime...

25. What Is This Feeling Called Love?

Naomi

So this was love then was it? The thing I'd sworn I would never let into my life. And then Emily had come along and made me want it more than anything. But hell, do I now understand the phrase 'be careful what you wish for'. Panda should have warned me, she's been doing it for years. But then again watching some of the crazy stunts she pulls off in the show makes you realise that Panda is fucking fearless. She probably thinks this shit is fun. Love, I mean isn't it supposed to be all fluffy kittens and rainbows, and traipsing through meadows in floaty pastel coloured dresses, whilst some craftily hidden opera singers serenade you with 'The Flower Duet' in the background? Not this, this is fucking terrifying. Addictive, and terrifying. It's like that first moment when you're in an aeroplane and you hit turbulence, and your heart lurches as your tiny metal bucket that should never be up there is the first place gets buffeted by the forces of nature, and all you can think is 'is this it, is this it, is this the moment when the plane drops from the sky and we go hurtling unstoppably towards the earth?' This is the way I feel every time Emily looks into my eyes as she makes me come. Is this it? Am I gonna crash now? Except you eventually get used to turbulence. I don't think I'll ever get used to this.

Of course it is fucking sensational. We've been at this festival a week now, and I think I'm losing my grip on reality. Every morning I wake up to her, and every morning I just can't stop myself reaching for her, and needing to explore her more and more. Afternoons we might train, or hang out with the other guys and go see bands or street theatre groups, ususally finding at some point that we have to come up with some excuse to go back to the truck and get naked. And every night at the stroke of midnight we become the lovers and the fighters of our show, playing to packed houses screaming with enthusiasm. We egg each other on, the audiences egg us on. The whole troupe are just loving this stand. One night Cook got so carried away he actually did his dance naked. It brought the fucking house down. I wish Anthea could be here to see how much we've grown, though I know Effy emails her photos so she can keep track of our progess. I like to think she's laughing. After the shows we'll head off into the darkness, still high on our adrenalin, seeking new friends and new experiences, but it won't belong before I am consumed by Emily once more, and the pair of us will tumble back into our bed determined to get some sleep until an accidental locking of eyes or grazing of skin on skin pulls us straight back into the turbulent air of our love.

It's a surreal existence, we are living charmed lives. Out there in the real world people are going into offices, emptying the bins, arguing with the kids about vegetables, working the night shift in Sainsbury's, doing all the normal things that make the world go round. And where am I? Dancing about and swinging off stuff for a living. And locked in perpetual sexual combat with the most beautiful girl in the world. You'd think I'd be more grateful right? And I am. I can't actually believe how lucky I am right now. And that's my fucking problem.

I've always been scared of love and commitment. Just ask my mum. I'm not saying it's her fault, but we always moved around so much that no sooner had I made myself a proper friend as a kid, I would find myself getting ripped away from them again as we picked up and took off somewhere else. So I stopped making them, spent most of my chilhood and early teens as a loner, told myself I liked it that way. Independence above all else. I figured it made me strong, and I wanted to be strong. Of course when I met Cook all that changed, Mum had finally stopped wandering so much so that I could have a crack at getting some GCSEs and A-Levels. He was the only person who got through to me, cause I'd watched himself put himself on the line for me when I was a complete stranger, and I couldn't even begin to think of letting him down. And a kind of love blossomed between us, we cared about each other and loved working together but there was enough distance between us for it not to get too scary. I guess he's always been part of the reason why I've been able to get away with not investing to much emotion into my lovers. I had all I needed from Cook and we had a reason to stay together without all of the complications of romantic love. It was a low risk strategy, and I liked that.

It was what I'd hoped for with Emily. Another best friend and working partner. Another solid addition to the family I'd been carefully constructing around me for the past few years. But that had all been thrown to shit from the first time we performed together for Anthea and the others back in rehearsals. Ever since then I just been dragged inexorably by her massive gravitational force, until suddenly I'm in her arms, in her bed and in her body every fucking second I can be. I'm powerless to do anthing about it and that's what scares the shit out of me. Anybody else and I'd have been running by now. Even during those amazing two weeks with Cassie, the only thing that allowed me to fling myself into our affair with such abandon was the knowledge that come the end of the fortnight I would be safely back on the other side of the world. Extreme, I know, but it seemed to work from me. But however fucking scared I get, and that's pretty much more scared every time I let her see me, I simply can't run away from Emily. I need her too much. I haven't actually asked her to move into the truck, but she's been there every night since she promised never to leave me, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

This morning I woke up and she wasn't in the bed. I was still only half awake when I started to panic, feeling around the empty spaces beside me like some fucking idiot. My heart was racing as I struggled to force myself into full consciousness, so I could start the hunt for the woman I simply couldn't let go. She hadn't broken her promise, had she? She simply couldn't break her promise. She wasn't allowed to do that. Imagine how stupid I felt when I found her, standing just a few feet away making me breakfast in bed. She was looking down at me fondly, she must have seen the whole fucking thing. She seemed to think it was charming, I felt like the most pathetic needy little shit alive. For fuck's sake Campbell, pull yourself together. This is Emily Fitch, hypercool conqueror of women's hearts. Carry on like this and surely it was only a matter of time before she would grow tired of my clinginess. I knew that my behaviour would have made me run a mile, so why wasn't she?

"It's OK, honey, I'm here," she said reassuringly, coming to sit beside me on the bed.

"I'm sorry, this isn't me," I muttered. "I just..."

She silenced me by kissing me gently on the lips.

"Don't worry," she said soothingly, reaching down and stroking my cheek, distracting me from her new found Effy-like abilities to be able to read my every thought. "I think I'd be exactly the same. It only makes me love you even more."

I reached out for her like a child with a grazed knee reaching out for its mother, needing her comfort to make the world alright again. She scooped me into her beautiful embrace and held me close to her beautiful breasts, and I clung onto her as if she was a superhero who'd just saved me from danger and was flying me to safety. Except she was my danger as well as my refuge.

"How are we going to do this, Ems?" I asked her. I was naked, and vulnerable, and barely knew how to function any more.

Emily peeled my face away from her chest, and looked unwaveringly into my eyes as a beautiful warm half smile lit up her features.

"Together," she said simply.

The thing that scares me more than anything is also the thing that I adore most in the world. I came undone at her words. There was one thing that had the power to overcome the fear, and that was the love itself. I released Emily from my vice like grip and lay back down on the bed, groaning with pleasure as she followed me down and parted my lips with one of those kisses that only she can give me. I pulled at the T-shirt which was the only thing she was wearing, I needed to feel her skin on mine. When my hungry eyes finallly rested on the unparallelled beauty of her naked torso, I thought I was going into cardiac arrest. Just as when I was concussed and my brain felt too big for my skull, now my heart felt too big for my chest. There was just too much love in in it. I feared it was going to burst. Emily's lips left mine and started to travel across my neck and shoulders, and down my arm. She moved her weight down my body and the top of her hip bone pressed against my rapidly dampening crotch, as one hand traced delicate patterns around my nipple, and the other supported her as she kissed and licked the soft skin inside my elbow. It was indescribably erotic, an unprecedented passion exploding within me as every millimetre of my flesh that was in contact with hers felt like it was burning...burning.

"Oh fuck, the toast," said Emily, jumping up and running to deal with the flaming conflagration under the grill, as the whole truck started to fill with the smell of burning. "Sorry, Hun. I'll make you some more."

"No," I said without any further explanation. All I could see was cutest bum in all existence as she went about her naked firefighting duties. Fuck me, the whole truck could go up in flames and all I would see would be that bum.

"Just fuck the fucking toast," I called to her. There were other far more important fires that needed her attention. Like the one between my legs.

"Your wish is my command, angel," she said, throwing the blackened corpses of the bread over her shoulder, not caring where they landed. Oh fuck the fucking fear. This love was the only thing that mattered. She came to me. She put her lips all over my body. She put her hands inside me, where they belonged. She fucked me and made love to me at the very same time. Every gorgeously filthy physical sensation amplified fourfold, by her unwavering gaze which told me I was the most precious thing in her universe. She was pushing herself hard and deep into my willing body, producing wave after wave of the unbelievable sensations that only she could bring, and yet at the same time I felt like she was wrapping me in a blanket of the warmest and most beautiful love that could exist between two people. A love I never thought I'd have the right to call my own. I was crying out for more. Literally. Screaming her name over and over again. Feeling the suspension of the truck rocking under the intensity of our passion. Is this it? Is this it? Is this the moment when I drop from the sky and go hurtling unstoppably towards the earth?' But Emily kept me flying, her beautiful brown eyes holding me steady through the turbulence. Higher and higher until just at the moment when I began to wonder whether it was actually possible to die of pleasure, she sent me freefalling. I clung to her once again, as my body rocked violently into orgasm, but she wouldn't let me get away with a retreat into the purely physical. She grabbed my hair and pulled my head back until she could see me. Until she could see right through me to the centre of the sun that shone only for her. There was no escape. She was witness to the total disintegration of one Naomi Campbell in the face of the most terrifying power in the universe.

"Fucking hell, Naoms, you were amazing," she whispered breathlessly against my skin. "That was so fucking beautiful."

She raised her head and conquered my eyes once more.

"I don't know how it's happening," she continued, "but it just keeps getting better and better."

"I know," I said quietly, tears starting to form in my eyes. "I don't know how much more I can take."

"Hey, it's OK, honey," she said softly, kissing my eyelids as I started to shake. "I'm here for you. I'll always be here for you."

"Seriously, what are you Emily?" I asked her. "Some kind of extra-terrestrial? A chosen one or a superhero, cause no-one else had ever come close to making me feel like this."

"I'm just a girl," she laughed, stroking my face with gentle fingers which belied the power with which she'd been using then just moments ago.

But you're not just any girl, are you Emily Fucking Fitch?

"I love you so fucking much," she whispered gently.

I knew she meant it, I knew I wanted it, but still the screaming terror wouldn't die. The screaming terror that the very next moment would be the moment that I'd lose her.

"I don't let people love me," I said honestly.

"So why do you let me?" she asked.

I knew exactly why. Something had happened last night which made me remember exactly why I had closed myself off to love for so long. A simple moment when we had been out and about on the last night of the festival had released a memory I'd been viciously repressing for years. I had to tell her. It was the only way I could move forward. The only way I could break down this barrier of fear. The only way I could understand this feeling called love, and take the chance to win her heart forever.

"Can we go somewhere?" I asked.

"Where?" she replied.

"Anywhere."

If anyone wants a soundtrack for Naomi's fevered brain in this chapter listen to 'Feeling Called Love' by Pulp, it was certainly in my head when I was writing it. A bientot, my lovlies xx