#I can't blame Viv for hating to talk about it when I feel too sick to even mention it happened in the story

[mcalhenwrites]

I'm responding to AO3 comments, and I'm going to add something here that I didn't in that comment, regarding Gideon and Vivian: While it is extremely fucked up that Gideon responded to a starving teenager he didn't know stealing food by hitting him on the back of the skull, it's even more fucked up when you realize that by that point, the only means Vivian had to make money and feed himself was sex work. Which he resorted to frequently. And the power imbalances and inability to consent were double. 1. Vivian was a minor, and you can bet the men he bed were old enough to be adults. Some might have been near his age, but again: Vivian was a minor. 2. Consent is never present in a situation where your survival depends on sexual activities. In this case, Vivian needed food and clean water and sometimes shelter, and these were not provided for him. So Gideon can fuck right off with his "theft is wrong" - what did he want Vivian to do? Die? Sell himself some more? It's a shame that Vivian came to care for him. Mind, it being revealed later that Gideon also physically punished Viv if he slipped into his native tongue too often is just. Y'know. Another level of fucked. Lots of levels of fucked here.

[xxisxxisxxis]

Gateway Drug | Part Ninety-One [PT. 1]

A/N: Part 2 coming tomorrow.

Words:3k

Warning(s): explicit language, mentions of drug abuse, mentions of miscarriage, sexual situations

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NIKKI

I stare down at the small, black and white pictures of seemingly nothing except a tiny, tiny little blob, except for one picture which is marked with “4 months” on the back, February 14th, 1986, in white marker in Vivs’s handwriting, one picture out of seven, each with dates…she doesn’t say a word to me, and she didn’t before she handed them over. She just chunked them in my lap and went from there.

I don’t know what to ask, because I don’t know what to say.

“Are these…?” I finally get out, looking at her.

She’s got tears in her eyes, and it slowly starts sinking in.

These are fucking kids--well, tiny little embryo kids, or whatever.

“These are your’s?” I ask next and she nods.

When the hell was she ever fucking pregnant?

I check the dates again…

1983.

1984.

1984.

1985.

1986.

1986...the back of it says “twins.”

“Where was I when all of this was happening?” I ask her, and she licks her lips and breathes out.

“I don’t know, Nikki, where were you?” She replies lowly.

I look at her for a moment, trying to decide if she’s serious or not.

Then she digs in her purse and pulls out a paper, unfolding it before going through the list of dates assigned to each ultrasound image, reciting to me--in my own words from diaries--my whereabouts around the time she lost each one.

I take it that she’s already skimmed through a diary or two already.

I get angrier and angrier with each line, shaking by the time she starts on, “1986--you were unconscious while me and Andy McCoy were trying to resuscit--”

I throw the pictures and they all split from each other and scatter around her, cutting her short.

“None of this is my fault, Vivian!” I scream at her, my heart feeling as though it’s rotting behind my ribs. “I didn’t fucking know!”

“How could you fucking know when you were so damn hig--”

“You came home in ‘83, from that appointment and told me it was a false-positive test and you had just gained a little weight. I wasn’t on smack in July of 1983. In fact, I went a little while on just Tylenol and beer while I was tampering off my heavy meds the doctor prescribed for my shoulder. So you could have fucking told me then what the fuck was happening, instead of shutting down and shutting me out for three goddamn months!” I’m crying without realizing it until hot tears prick down my cheeks, my skin uncomfortable as my nerves singe from my boiling blood. “I loved you, I had just married you for Christ sake--I was happy and excited to be at that point with you and you fucking left me for three months! You’d barely let me touch you, you wouldn’t come out of our room, you wouldn’t wanna go out, I’d sleep on the fucking couch or crash at Robbins or Tommy’s because you’d tell me you just wanted to be alone, and all along I thought it was my fault because I went to that fucking party with Tommy instead of staying with you the night of our wedding and you were just making me pay...and then when you were put on medication I thought it was my fault, too, because I thought you’d figured out I was tampering with smack, and I just…” I’m up and pacing, hands in my hair…

Amber doesn’t say a word.

I think Viv broke her, too, because she looks like she’s trying to find the right thing to say.

Maybe she’s hoping we can talk this one out on our own.

But I don’t want to talk anything out.

Not right now.

“I didn’t tell you about them because I was scared you would cope with the pain the same way you’d coped with pain for years. I was afraid you’d drink and drug yourself and leave me to deal with it by myself, and I didn’t want to put that on you, so I just dealt with it myself.” Vivian admits, her voice cracking.

“Vivian, you haven’t dealt with it, though.” Amber quietly interjects, softly. “You haven’t dealt with it. You haven’t allowed yourself to heal.”

“When were you going to tell me about this?” I shakily ask, trying to swallow down the lump in my throat.

“When you died.” She says next, honestly, her tone a dead giveaway that it’s not something she’s proud of, but it’s the truth. “I was just gonna bury the pictures with you, just in case you had random kids coming up to you in the next life, you’d know who they were, I guess.”

I feel sick to my stomach at the confession, my whole body repulsed with the fact that she’s managed to hide this the past four years.

“Nikki, if you need to take a break, we can,” Amber assures me.

I’m getting the fuck out of there as fast as I can, just desperate to get some air that Vivian isn’t breathing her demoness presence into, and the second I get free, I'm puking my guts up in the hallway. 

I know I had a reason to be angry with her, she hid that from me, like I'd hid so much from her. She thought she was protecting me, though, and I just didn't want her to leave me because I was a pussy and a piece of shit--and I knew it. 

I was more pissed at myself, though, because I knew I'd put her in the position to feel like she couldn't come to me and tell me she was pregnant, let alone had lost it, even before I was on smack. 

She knew how I handled shit--either drink, do whatever drug was accessible, or both. 

When heroin and crack entered the picture, that just cemented her will not to tell me about it. 

I think the biggest elephant in the room, though, despite her being pregnant with Duff's baby at that point, and me and my thing with Vanity and all the other women, and her hidden pregnancies, was the fact she never wanted to get married to me that fast, and I knew it. 

I knew it the day we got married that she didn't really want to, she was just trying to make me happy, and I fucking let her do it because I was so terrified that I was going to lose her if I didn't go as far as I could to secure her to me. 

The amount of unnecessary bullshit she could've bypassed had I just taken a step back and told her we didn't have to get married if she didn't want to...I often times think it would've saved her a lot of heartbreak. We could've broken up when shit hit the fan with smack in '84, I still would've lived through my bad OD in '87,  probably, and we could've gotten back together when I cleaned my shit up--that is if she would've waited for me...and that's why I didn't let up. Because "if she waited" wasn't good enough. I didn't want "if." 

I wanted her. 

So I married her, knowing she didn't want to, and instead of proving her wrong and giving her a relationship to question why she ever second guessed vowing an eternity together with me, I put her through hell, treated her like shit, abused her, endured her abuse, wasted each other's time, hurt each other, ruined each other more and more than what we were when we got into the relationship. 

And that was my first indiscretion against her. 

Marrying her knowing she wasn't ready.

By the time I finish puking, I'm leaning against the wall, taking deep breaths, hearing Vivian crying, still in Amber's office. 

I squeeze my eyes closed, my palms roughly wipe my stray tears. 

Despite being sober, the little fuck that is Sikki is trying to claw out of the box I've put him in for over a month, now. 

Just the faintest, "leave her," echoes in my mind. 

"Fuck you." I audibly tell him. 

"She never wanted to be with you in the first place. Why do you think her body refused to carry your fucking kids? Because she hates you so much that it'd be an abomination to have your little hell rats." 

"Fuck off." I argue, again. 

"And just think about it. The timing of this one she's got now...she was getting her brains screwed backwards right next door to you while you were keeling over. It was like she knew what was about to happen and she was celebrating the fact she wouldn't have to fucking deal with your shit ever again." He taunts, getting more and more of his scraggly hand out of the box, the lid cracking open to reveal his white, sallow skin and dark eyes. 

"Fuck off." I gritt out once more. 

"What's wrong? You don't think she'd do that? After all the times you've admitted she's an evil bitch from the pit fires of hell? Because I think she'd do it. In fact, I bet she'd stare your overdosing carcass in the eyes, screaming out his name in ecstasy, while dripping cum at the mere fact you were dying." 

I slam the lid of the box back down, crushing his boney, track riddled fingers, making him curse me. 

I refuse to listen to his bullshit anymore. 

Vivian loves me. She wants to be with me. She'd be gone by now if she didn't, and I wouldn't blame her. 

1 9 8 1

"Ummm…" I trail off, watching her closely, lickikg my lips, my hand grabbing at the curve of her hip over the comforter she's got pulled up to her chest, her head in the crook of my elbow, looking up at me, awaiting my answer. "...I don't know." I say, honestly. 

"As theological as you are and you can't tell me whether or not you think Aliens are real?" She asks and I roll my eyes. 

"I don't know, miss honor roll, you tell me." I counter and she grins. 

"I think the universe is too big for it to just be us." She informs me. 

"Ah, says the one who also believes a heaven and a God exists within the same wide range of universe." I reply and she hits my bare chest with the back of her hand, gently. 

"Shut up." She says, shaking her head a little. "Is it not reasonable to think there's more than just us?" 

I think about it for a moment. 

"I wouldn't be surprised if aliens are real, I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't." I admit, rubbing my eye for a second. 

"What about God?" She asks next and I try not to laugh in her face. 

"I'm almost one hundred percent sure that God doesn't exist." I state. 

"How do you know?" She says, blinking emerald greens at me, as if what I'm about to say about her imaginary friend she's been brainwashed into believing in, is going to make or break her.

"I'm not sure, baby, I just think...fine, tell you what, I wouldn't be surprised if God were real, and I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't real." I give her the benefit of the doubt. 

"I'd be surprised if he weren't." She tells me. 

"Yeah? Well, how do you know he is real?" I question her, next, a teasing smile on my lips. 

"I don't know, you can't see him or hear his voice audibly, but you can feel him." She explains the best she can and I raise my brows. 

"You can feel God?"

"Well, yeah." She replies, her finger tracing along the few bits of chest hair I've got and I lick my lips for a second before leaning down, kissing her. 

"What about now?" I ask, grinning as my hand pushes away at the covers over her to run against the smooth skin of her thigh and she smiles just a little before pressing her lips to mine, one of her hands threading in my hair with her other arm snakes around me, pulling me on top of her and I chuckle lowly, nestling between her legs while we get hot and heavy with our tongues and teeth.

Both of us let out satisfied breaths when I slide into her, her eyes fluttering closed, brows furrowed slightly, head leaning back as her nails bite into my arms. 

I pat myself on the back and trail hot, wet, sloppy kisses along her clavicle before pulling out of her again, a little shudder going up my back from the tight, soaking heat between her legs. 

When I start building a slow but hard rhythm, her legs are locking at the base of my spine, her arms hugging at my back, pulling me to her as, "Nikki," slips from her lips. 

"What about now?" I ask in her ear as I force myself as deep into her as her body will let me, and she whimpers out, "yes."

A sadistic little pat to my ego causes a pull at my lips, my hand wrapping around her throat as I stare down at her, her nails clawing down my back, tears in her eyes as I thrust back into her…

I kiss at her lips, her cheek, her jaw, moving my hand from her throat to kiss her neck and I swear I hear the faintest, barely inaudible whisper of, "I love you," but decide I'm just hearing things...

Present

I squeeze my eyes shut, the smell of my puke wafting in my face, making me take several steps back to catch my breath. 

It's hard to swallow the fact that I really let myself be convinced for so long that I'd let her fuck my life up, to the extent of blaming her for my life actually being fucked up.

"Fuck." I curse at myself, raking my hands down my face. 

How the fuck am I going to make this right with her? 

How the fuck is she going to make this right with me? 

She's pregnant, with Duff's kid or whatever, and then BAM! just drops this shit on me that she's actually been pregnant multiple times from me and never mentioned losing any of them to me. 

I know it's my fault that she didn't tell me. I know it is. Am I going to admit that to her? Fuck no. Am I hurt over her not telling me anyway? Yeah, I am. 

If I wasn't in sobriety penitentiary, I'd probably be out and about trying to find something to numb and distract me…

I don't know what to do. 

But I do know one thing for sure: I'm not in love with her anymore, but I love her, and I'm pretty sure she feels the same exact way about me...but it's not like we can't get back to that place we were in when we first got together, it's just gonna take some work...a lot of work.

I huff out a breath, taking a moment to get my shit together, mentally. 

Do I go back in there and finish out today or just try again next week? 

I think on it for a minute…

"Fuck it." I say out, shakily, weakly, tears break past my lash line once again, 

a far cry from that tough motherfucker I swore I was for years. "Just fuck it."

Fuck this.

Fuck her.

And fuck me.