A/N: For Kate. Thanks to Morgan for pre-reading.
"There's always a siren / Singing you to shipwreck / Steer away from these rocks / We'd be a walking disaster / (...) / Heaven sent you to me… / We are accidents waiting to happen…"
– Radiohead, "There, There"
It was early November in Bristol, and the suffocating humidity of summer had finally lapsed. The park was unrecognizable in its new vivid state, the green of the trees having faded completely into the red, orange, and yellow vibrancy of late autumn. The area of the park which she remembered—the small patch of earth where Freddie had roared at her hallucinations and she'd clung to him tightly in the grass—was isolated and empty, separated from the children playing tag and the adults walking dogs by an off-path collection of trees.
Nineteen felt different. Effy couldn't remember a birthday celebration this boring since primary school when nobody came to her party. Yet the calmness of the event did not devastate or dissuade her, it was blissful and inviting and she wouldn't have preferred anything else.
Her eighteenth birthday had been spent at a warehouse rave with Pandora. She'd been high on coke and ecstasy, swaying back and forth with a half-empty beercan, eyes closed and lipstick smeared from a brief but messy encounter with a university student in the unisex bathroom. She might've accepted a laced blunt from a Welshman with spiky pink hair. She might've scraped her knee on the pavement outside and let the blood drip down her legs and stain her torn tights. She might've given Pandora a hickey in the cab ride back to her parents' house and slipped a curious hand under her nightgown when they were getting ready for bed. There were a million things she might've done and she could only recall them now in hazy, altered fragments.
A year ago, she wouldn't have been able to stand the reality that she would make it to nineteen. Five years ago, she wouldn't even consider it a possibility. Now, everything was going so well. All the demons she'd been outrunning for as long as she could remember had finally seemed to come to a halt behind her, no longer pulling on her hair or nipping at her heels. Even her bad days didn't feel nearly as awful as the best days of her worst years had felt. Yet there was a pessimistic anticipation deep within, the unshakable conviction that she was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It was hard not to feel like she could ruin everything at any given moment. She wasn't the type of girl who could sustain a life so idyllic. She was self-destructive and messy and she'd been the Bristol club scene's most notorious slag since she was barely thirteen. But Freddie was so patient. He sat with her in the waiting room outside of her psychiatry appointments. He checked the locks on the windows and doors late at night when she woke him up paranoid. He remembered her mum's birthday and went with her to visit Tony in Cardiff.
She never felt like she was doing enough in return. She tried to make them breakfast but she burned the sausages black while she was trying to open the can of beans. She planned him a surprise birthday party but J.J. had accidentally told him in advance. She got his name tattooed on her hip and bought uncomfortable lingerie and expensive salon waxes and he told her that he loved her even if she was bare skinned in day-of-the-week knickers with stubbly legs. She didn't understand why he loved her so unconditionally and it terrified her.
"I love you," he whispered into her hair.
"I love you too," she said. She meant it. Even if it terrified her, she meant it.
A/N: You can also find me on Tumblr (caucasianbuttslut).