Sorry, it's been a while. I've just started working on two new shows and I don't have a whole heap of free time. But in a way the wait is kind of appropriate given what's to follow here. I hope you enjoy it.

I don't own Skins, but I miss it when it isn't there.

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25. It's The Waiting I Can't Stand

Naomi

It had taken me pretty much two days to shake off the repercussions of Katie's coming out party, though I suspected the embarrassment I was suffering over the way I'd behaved would take a good while longer to shift. Emily was a total sweetheart of course, when is she not? She assured me that she found my drunken antics cute, and that she had been there herself many a time before. There was no time to dwell, for tonight I had to move on to new challenges. I was to be subjected to my first Fitch Family dinner as Emily's official girlfriend, and I was more than a little nervous to say the least. Despite Jenna's appearance of grudging acceptance, I still felt that she would relish any slip up, and welcome any evidence of my unsuitability for her beloved Emily. There was also the ticking time bomb of Effy and Katie's relationship. Katie had managed to get Emily to invite Effy as her best mate, but they were going to have to come clean soon. The whole fucking peninsula must know about them by now, and if she heard about it from idle gossip, Jenna was going to go ballistic. Katie had to have gotten her fiery temperature from somewhere, and it certainly wasn't Rob.

"Alright there, Naomi love?" he asked, pulling me into one of those famous hugs as soon as Emily and I walked into the dining room. "How's all that study going?"

"It's going pretty good," I said, reeling off a bunch of figures that I was fairly certain were going over his head.

"Nice to have a brainbox in the family," he grinned.

My eyes shot involuntarily over towards Jenna. I wasn't sure how well she would take to Rob's arbitrary inclusion of me in their family. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she left it at that.

"Not just brainy, but well fit too," added James enthusiastically. "I don't suppose you've got a sister?"

"Sorry James," I told him. "I'm one of a kind."

"You can say that again," grinned Emily, wrapping her arm round my shoulders and kissing me on the cheek.

Again my focus slipped over to the matriarch, wondering how much she could handle before she would snap.

"Why don't we all sit down?" she grimaced through her rictus grin. "I've made us a lovely swede and lentil soup to start."

Emily had warned me about her mother's strange ideas on healthy eating, so I made sure I'd had a massive lunch to stock up. Still, I was grateful for the distraction. Effy still had her tell tale smile plastered all over her face, and I knew it wouldn't be long before someone brought it up. She was hardly known for being such a little ray of sunshine. I stood back up and offered to help Jenna dish out the soup, ignoring Emily's smirk at my blatant over-trying.

"You seem very perky today, Effy," said Rob.

"Well life has been rather lovely lately," grinned Effy.

"Glad to hear it," beamed Rob in reply. "You know you're almost like another daughter to me."

My eyes widened in horror as I realised that Effy and Katie were holding hands under the table. It felt like all my senses had gone into overdrive, and time was slowing down the way it does when your car's about to crash making me hyper aware of everything.

Well not quite everything.

"Fuck," I said, as I spilled hot soup on my hand, dropping the bowl I was holding into the soup pot.

Emily was on her feet in an instant.

"Are you alright, babe?" she said, taking my hand and wiping it clean with a napkin.

"No lasting damage," I said, struggling between my adoration for my caring lover, and my need for decorum in front of Jenna.

"Sit down, Naomi," said Jenna, seeming grateful for having a concrete task again. "I'll finish this off."

She waited until everyone was served and had taken their first nervous sips of the dubious concoction in front of them, before dropping her next bomb.

"So Katie," she said, her voice laced with intrigue. "We haven't seen much of you over the last week. Have you got a new love on the horizon?"

Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto the burgundy haired twin, grateful for an excuse to stop eating their soup.

"Aw shucks, you've gone and found me out," replied Katie deadpan.

"Well," said Jenna excitedly, eager for some heterosexual news. "Who is he? When are we going to meet him?"

Katie rolled her eyes, and glanced sideways at Effy, whose lunatic grin told her everything she needed to know about her partners willingness to come clean.

"It's not a he," said Katie, pulling their joined hands from under the table and placing them in plain sight. "It's Effy."

There was a moment's deathly silence, allowing me the time to do a full sweep of the table and take in the various reactions to the news. Emily was smiling supportively at her sister, a calm pillar of strength. James was smirking to himself, his eyes rolling lazily back into his head, no doubt imagining something smutty. Jenna lost her grip on her soup spoon and it clanked noisily as it fell back into the bowl beneath her, whilst her eyes filled with something I couldn't quite put a handle on. Panic maybe? Rob's face registered surprise, followed almost immediately by acceptance.

"No wonder you've been smiling," he said to Effy, punching her affectionately on the arm. "You're a lucky girl, managing to catch yourself a Fitch."

"I know," beamed Effy. "Katie's an amazing woman."

"Well, I would say welcome to the family," replied Rob. "But seeing as you're practically family already, why don't you come and give your old Dad a hug?"

Effy went willingly. Not even enforced parental affection was enough to distract her from her happiness.

"You going to make sure and take care of my little girl now aren't you?" said Rob.

"With my very life," replied Effy, leaving us in no doubt that she meant it.

"Well I think we should get some of the good wine out," said Rob. "Have a proper celebration. What do you think, Jenna love?"

Jenna was staring at the table, her head resting on a bridge of her outstretched fingers. She looked stunned, and kind of broken. On Rob's cue, she raised her head, and looked slowly between Emily and Katie.

"Both of you?" she said hopelessly.

"Effy loves Katie, Mum," said Emily calmly. "Like really loves her. Don't you want Katie to be loved?"

"But, both of you?" repeated Jenna, still stuck firmly in her loop of disbelief."

"I think you're just going to have to face it, Love," said Rob. "Apparently it's quite likely that if one twin is gay then the other will be too."

"Well it's not quite as simple as that," said Effy. "There have been a number of studies done, and the one things they all have in common is that the incidence of a shared homosexuality is much higher in monozygotic twins than in dizygotic twins like Emily and Katie. Initial results showed a rate of sixty five point eight percent for monozygotic and thirty point four for dizygotic, although later studies adjusted the figures downwards due to the likelihood of twins that already had an interest in sexuality being more responsive to surveys on the matter. But several results have implied that the incidence of shared homosexuality are higher amongst female pairs than amongst male pairs."

Effy ground to a halt as she realised almost everyone was snickering at her little lecture.

"Being doing your research, darling?" smirked Katie.

"I may have looked into the subject a little," confessed Effy sheepishly.

"I think it's cute," said Katie, nudging their shoulders together.

I began to wonder if me and Emily looked as fucking soppy as those two, and was about to embark on working out a strategy to change that. Seriously, they looked so fucking sweet together they put strawberries and cream to shame. It was beyond me how anyone could question the wisdom that they belonged together, but Jenna was determined to give it a damn good try.

"So what you're saying is that it's not necessarily a twin thing if they're not identical?" she pressured.

"I don't care about the bloody statistics, Mum," countered Katie. "All I know is that I fell in love."

"Look, I know there's not that many decent blokes round here," sighed Jenna. "But that's no reason to settle for second best."

"Effy's not second best," exploded Katie. "She's fucking wonderful. No bloke's ever made me feel the way she does."

"What about Adam?" said Jenna triumphantly. "You were totally in love with him."

"Who's Adam?" frowned Effy.

Katie oozed with the confidence of a gambler who knows she's got the winning hand.

"My mystery admirer," she grinned. "We didn't know his name so we made one up for him."

"Now he really loved you, Katie darling," said Jenna. "Remember all those beautiful things he wrote to you. I've never seen passion more beautifully expressed."

"You showed your Mum the letters?" said Effy, raising her eyebrows.

"I was eighteen," shrugged Katie. "Emily was off getting her gay on. I wanted to have someone to get excited with."

"Maybe his situation has changed. What if we try to get in touch with him? What if he came back for you?" said Jenna desperately.

"He won't come back for me?" laughed Katie.

"You don't know that," insisted Jenna.

"He won't come back for me, Mum," said Katie. "Because he never left. And he wasn't a he. Adam was Effy, and she's right here for me. Just like she always has been. I freaked out when I found out, and pushed her away. And most of that was cause of the bullshit you'd laid on Emily. It made me believe I couldn't be happy with Effy, when I could have been with her all this time. You're right. I was totally in love with her, and now that I've finally admitted that, I'm damned if I'm going to let you take her away from me again."

"You wrote those letters?" said Jenna, looking like she was falling deeper and deeper into shock.

"I did," said Effy. "And I meant every word."

Clearly Effy was more eloquent on the page than she was in speech, because Jenna looked like she had been affected by her words almost as deeply as Katie had.

"But they were so beautiful…" she said, her resistance seeming to collapse in on itself like a red giant imploding to become a white dwarf. "Everything was so perfect."

"It still is," said Katie. "Except now it's real."

"And you?" said Jenna, turning suddenly towards me. "Is that how you feel about Emily?"

I had never read Effy's love letters, but then I didn't need to. She may be a woman of mystery in all her other affairs, but when it came to Katie, she was an open book. I knew that Effy and I were blood sisters in passion, equally captivated and entranced.

"I fell in love with her the moment I saw her," I blurted out enthusiastically. "And every second I spend with her only increases my certainty that she is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with."

"I just don't understand how it works," said Jenna.

"Yeah, you do," said Emily, flicking her eyes over to her Dad.

Dinner was abandoned shortly afterwards, Jenna declaring that she needed some time alone. Rob and James gleefully cooked themselves a frozen pizza, and retired to watch some football, whilst the four of us girls decided on a booze and fags approach to the evening, and found ourselves outside under the solar lights in the back garden, drinking beer and sharing the cheeky spliff that Effy had inevitably produced from about her person.

"Well, that went well," said Emily bemusedly.

I knew from what she had told me that she had dealt with a lot worse from her mother.

"I think I might have broken her," said Katie.

"Mommy's little princess all loved up with evil Effy?" said Emily wryly. "I think that might just about do it."

"It's going to be alright," said Effy.

"You reckon," scoffed Katie.

"She understands," said Effy, meeting with sceptical glances from both the twins.

"It's true," I said. "Deep down she understands what it means to love like this. That's how she knew that 'Adam' loved Katie. She won't be able to pretend that Effy doesn't love her now. Eventually she will have no choice but too accept it."

"So when will 'eventually' be?" said Katie snarkily.

"It took you long enough," shrugged Effy.

"Oh, but I am so going to make that up to you," said Katie, jumping into Effy's lap and kissing her breathless.

I knew something wasn't quite right when Effy pulled away from it, and motioned Katie to sit beside her, instead of collapsing into her desires like she usually did. I noticed the affirming glance that passed between her and Emily, and felt a knot twisting tightly in my stomach.

"I've arranged for Huw to take you and Thomas out to sea tomorrow," said Effy. "I'm gonna be needing the boat. I've got stuff to do."

"Smuggling stuff or Ninja stuff?" said Katie casually, as though either of those things were a perfectly normal activity. God, I hoped it was smuggling stuff. Wait a minute. Smuggling?

"I knew it," I exclaimed.

"Knew what?" demanded Katie.

"I knew you were a smuggler," I said to Effy.

All three girls just looked at me as though I'd announced my recent discovery that the sky was blue. Clearly Effy's 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy didn't exclude working it the fuck out for yourself.

"Ninja business," said Effy calmly, and the bottom fell out of my world.

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The first strains of light were beginning to show in the sky beyond Emily's open curtains and I hadn't had a wink of sleep. Four in the morning, and I had done exactly the same thing I had done last time she had gone away. Gone to her room to immerse myself in her, the scent of her, the look of her things around me. I had gone to wallow in the essence of her that still lurked in her bed despite the fact she wasn't there. I had tossed and turned the whole of the two hours I had been there, finally turning in after staying up late and smoking myself stupid in the Fitches garden. Katie and I had demolished a few bottles of wine, but the alcohol-induced coma I had been aiming for had eluded me. I had been reduced to scrunching up the duvet and wrapping myself around it as if it were the flawless body of my love. My love, who was God knows where…

I hadn't even said goodbye properly. I don't know why, but it hadn't really struck me as I got up to meet with Huw and Thomas that she would be gone by the time that I got back. I didn't even know how long she was going to be away. They were out of range for mobile signal, and I didn't dare ring Effy's satellite phone in case they were in the middle of something. There was a whole troupe of circus girls tying wonderfully efficient knots in my stomach, and I only lasted a few seconds more before I thrashed about in the bed again and turned to face the door. The door that I was desperate would open and reveal a tiny piece of Fitch sized perfection.

Imagine my surprise when it did just that.

"Oh God," I cried out in relief.

"Keep your vagina on, blondestuff," came Katie's cheeky reply. "I figured you weren't going to be doing much sleeping either."

"Not even a nanosecond," I admitted.

"Well shove up then," said Katie.

She walked over and got into the bed with me, immediately snuggling into my side. Ok, so she wasn't my twin, and I'm guessing I was no Effy either, but it made things feel a little less empty.

"So how big a hole have you got in your heart right now?" she asked me.

I had to admit I was struggling to find an image big enough.

"As big as a really fucking big thing," I said.

Katie laughed affectionately.

"You know for such a fucking smart person, you totally let Emily melt your brain," she said.

"Letting her doesn't even come into it," I said. "She'd do it anyway. Resistance is useless."

"I know how you feel," she sighed.

"You're just better at hiding it," I laughed.

"Well I'm not a soppy-assed dork," she asserted.

"Sure about that?" I teased her.

"You need to shut up," she said, snaking her arm around my waist. "Effy doesn't talk so much."

Slipping into the comforting warmth of our substitute bodies, the pair of us were able to doze restlessly for a couple of hours, but soon enough we found ourselves staring at the ceiling again. This body was so close to Emily's, but it wasn't her, and it wasn't enough. I'm pretty sure Katie was feeling the same way.

"Fuck this shit," she said suddenly. "I'm getting up. Are ya coming?"

I couldn't think of anything better to do, so I went along. Katie made us a couple of bacon sarnies, and then we walked across the fields to the dunes.

The sun was well up revealing a beautiful morning by the time the efficiency of my photographic memory and its automatic triangulation betrayed me.

"What are you smirking at?" said Katie.

I could literally feel my boiling blood as it rushed into my face.

"Ha ha, it's something filthy, isn't it?" teased Katie.

"Emily and me…" I stuttered. "The first time… we…"

"Here?" snorted Katie. "God she's just so fucking outdoorsy."

"It was pissing with rain too," I snickered.

"Jesus, what's so wrong with a nice warm bed?" said Katie, shaking her head.

"I couldn't help myself," I confessed. "She's just so fucking gorgeous. I needed her so badly."

"Well she is a Fitch," said Katie smugly. "Effy's the same. Sometimes she just can't get enough of me. It's beautiful."

I turned to face the sea. Even though it was still just over the horizon, I could hear its song calling to me.

"They are coming back to us, aren't they?" I said urgently, needing some of Katie's ballsy confidence to reassure me.

"Of course they are," she said, taking my hand. "Our girls are fucking badass."

We walked hand in hand towards the waves, cresting the final dune and heading down towards the beach. Neither of us said much as we wandered down to the shore, lost as we were in daydreams of our ocean-going heroines, sending out our love into the vast ever-shifting expanse of the water. My time here had changed me in ways far more subtle than the obvious one. Since being with Emily the ocean had changed its meaning for me. I'd had the edges knocked of my intellectual appreciation, and now I was growing to love it the way Emily and Thomas did. I was learning to understand it on a whole new level. It was becoming a part of me. I'm not even sure how long me and Katie stood there just watching it dance and listening to it sing, but all that time I was offering it a silent prayer to keep my honey safe. I just fucking hoped it was listening.

Without even speaking, Katie and I moved as one when we eventually turned and drifted along the beach. We wasted another couple of hours drinking tea at Cook's shed, but in reality we were just waiting. Everything about today was going to be just waiting. Katie had already called her assistant Carolyn and told her she was looking after the shop today. I don't think she could have focussed on anything today either. I hadn't even thought about attempting to do any work myself. I knew it would be pointless. Much better to spend the day drifting with Katie. At least she knew what I was going through, and I didn't have to lie to her about why I felt so feckless.

Lunchtime was spent sharing yet more wine at the clifftop pub, and then the next couple of hours sat on the cliffs looking out over the Worm's Head, soaking up the sunshine and sharing the occasional spliff. We were nicely buzzed, but we didn't want it to go any further than that, especially as the next phone call we would get might be coming from a police station. Katie started talking about how she wanted to branch out, and start opening shops in other towns, giving her a measure of independence from the loving stranglehold of her family, and about maybe moving out and getting her own place. I listened keenly. Her plans were distracting my mind from locking in on the one thought my brain kept trying to force upon me. What if they got caught? What if Emily wasn't coming back?

By late afternoon we had made our way down to the harbour and were taking afternoon tea at Rita's. All of a sudden I felt Katie's hand close over mine.

"How you holding up, babes?" she said.

She moved her hand, and I looked down at my own to see the napkin I had ripped to shreds.

"I can't stand it," I said, looking into her warm brown eyes that all of a sudden looked way too painfully similar to Emily's. "I can't stand this fucking waiting."

"Get used to it," replied Katie, and I was taken aback by the matter of factness of her tone. "This is who you are now."

"What do you mean?" I frowned.

"Look around you," she said. "You are carrying on a tradition almost as old as humanity itself."

I did as she said and looked around the other customers in the café. Apart from a couple of obviously tourist families, the rest of the clientele were mostly women of varying ages.

"They're waiting for the boats to come in," said Katie. "Wherever there's an ocean, you'll find the women who wait. It's been the same for centuries, women sitting and waiting for their men to come home from the sea. Hoping that they'll be safe, hoping they'll have had a good catch, hoping the weather hasn't taken them. Hoping their lover will come back to them. We're used to thinking that the people who go to sea are the brave ones, but these women are just as brave. Of course it's not the same these days with all the technology to keep people safe, but you can never be one hundred percent certain. Effy and Emily know that, they know never to take the sea for granted, but still. And yet day after day these women find a way to cope, to support their partners, not to let the worry show. That's us now, Naomi. Effy's lived on boats since she was twelve years old. It's who she is. She's not going to change. And Emily, well… you know…"

"Yeah," I said with a wry half smile. "Fish genes."

"It used to share the shit out of me when we first moved here," said Katie. "When she started surfing, and I watched her going into those waves so fearlessly. She looked so tiny against all that angry water, I was terrified it was just going to sweep her away one day. I couldn't stand the thought that I might lose her. But no matter how much I would bitch at her about it, I couldn't keep her away from the water. I had to learn to live with it. And now I'm having to learn it all over again with Effy. It's not easy, but to love her is to understand that she needs this, to fight my fear for her. To give her a reason to come home."

She was right. The women who waited were brave souls indeed, and Katie Fitch was a champion.

Some time later we were sitting on a bench overlooking the harbour. Effy's berth was still empty, and Katie and I were still spending wordless minutes staring out to sea, as we watched the other boats coming home, and the men and women who sailed in them come ashore and return to the bosom of their families. Trying to find other things to do with my hands before I smoked myself into an early grave, I had started playing with my Swiss Army knife. It had started with just absent-mindedly stabbing it into the wood. But then my subconscious had taken over and fifteen minutes later I found myself staring down at the words I had carved into the bench. For Emily. My testament for Emily.

"BE BRAVE."

I felt Katie's eyes upon me, and looked up to see her smiling at me. I smiled back at her, an unspoken sisterhood strengthening between us. No words were needed. We held the gaze for a moment longer, then turned to look back out at the sea.

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I'm sorry if any of you were expecting some action packed adventure chapter, but I always knew I wanted to write this moment from the perspective of the women who were left behind onshore, cause I think it's a story that needs to be told.

I've spent a fair amount of time waiting this year. Waiting for people to wake up, not knowing if they ever will, or if they will be the same person if they do. Miraculously, luck has been on our side, and both Cat and SJ came back. But like so many things in life, recovery is complicated… Cat has had to take a little trip back into the hospital (she's out again now), and SJ will be there for some while yet, so your continued love and support is much appreciated. Cause in the end, that's what this story is all about. It's not about me, it's about two very brave young women that deserve all the love that we can give them. And we're all about the love here on HyperFitchedWorld. Trust me, life's too precious a thing to waste it being mean-spirited and cynical. Keep being beautiful…