#the pure joy on his face has my heart in a fucking vice grip

[downtherabbitholewithlucy]

Look at this 'lil cutie smiling in the background🥰🥰🥰

[shadi612]

Happy Valentine's Day, darling pandom! Here's my (very belated) remix of UC and a little bit of a gift for my favourite fandom  

AO3 (x)  (1/?)

(I found love) Where it wasn't supposed to be

I.

“What a scam”

This is not how she wanted to spend Valentine’s Day. Or any other fucking day for that matter.

Because you see in all her twenty-four years on this earth she never had to do this before. Not even as a stupid sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. She’s never been careless (Not with this).

Then again, she never expected she would be:

A) In the middle of bloody Maine. B) In love with one of the town’s most dangerous men. C) Standing in front of a whole aisle of pregnancy tests on bloody Valentine’s Day, of all days. D) All of the above.

And you might ask Why she’s here on valentine’s day if she was in a long-term relationship with a man that never passed an opportunity to show her off to the town? Because said man had texted her that afternoon with a quick apology that their night of “debauchery and other vices” would have to wait and some rambling about an urgent job that she hadn’t paid much attention to as she texted Matthew back to let him know she wasn’t too devastated about it. Her mind was too busy worrying about other things, namely whenever or not she should get a very specific item from the pharmacy.

Which brings her back to the same thought again and again: These things are expensive.

Really expensive.

They were overpriced pee sticks, for crying out loud. And what's the difference between them? Paying an extra five dollars wasn’t going to change the outcome, was it?

She's not dumb or delusional, as the townspeople would often refer to her behind her back. Jill knows the signs that have obnoxiously hung over her head these past few days.

She's late. Three and a half weeks late. It's far too much time for her to blame it on stress (and wouldn't you be stressed if you shared your life with Matthew? Stress had become a default mode for her mind and body during the last two years. And, sadly, this wasn’t one of those times when it would go as easily as it had come.)

Add in a newfound state of fatigue mixed with a persistent soreness on her chest and the ever-suspicious bouts of nausea at unexpected moments and you'll get yourself a big, red flag. If someone came up to Jill and told her that these things had been happening to them, the first words out of her mouth would be “congratulations”. The sincerity of her words would depend on who that poor soul was.

But she also knows she’s not pregnant because being pregnant would unleash hell on her life. She’s buying the test so she can finally get Arabella off her back.

(“Oh, sweetheart” Bella’s voice had rumbled across the bookshop’s bathroom three days ago with a hint of ever-present sarcasm mixed with genuine concern.

“I used to be a nun. I know a girl in trouble when I see one” Jill had only managed to throw her a quick glare before emptying her stomach on the sink for the second time in less than four hours).

She would take the bloody test and get it over with and then maybe she would grab some Gatorade and crackers to soothe the persistent stomach bug that’s been ruining her mood for weeks (because that’s all there is to it. A bloody stomach bug).

"Close your eyes and think of England" she spits between clenched teeth before knocking a few tests into her basket with an impressive amount of determination.

She can do this.

Isn’t this some sort of milestone for your twenties? Going on a drinking binge, getting an apartment, a pregnancy scare and only a scare…

These are normal things. 

For the sake of appearances, she adds in some magazines and nail polish to her basket. She's under no illusion that this little piece of gossip won't be all over town in a near future but Jill's incredibly adept at playing pretend by now. And when she’s proven right (because she’s not pregnant. She commands herself not to be pregnant) the buzz will die down on its own accord if she just decides to not care about it in the first place.

The waiting line's short, even for Storybrooke. Jill easily spots Mister Gold and David Nolan ahead of her in the queue line, one of her hands reaching for the magazine she had taken before and she eyes it without much interest while partially listening to them. Maybe it would help her calm down.

“Two Valentines. Sounds like a complicated life.

“Oh, no, I-I just couldn't decide.”

So that was still going on, surprising absolutely no one.

Her ears filter out most of the men’s conversation once her eyes landed on the rather … colourful items the pawnbroker held on his own basket. She does not need that particular mental image. But there’s nothing else to do so she entertains her frayed nerves with some colourful and hilarious what ifs during the queue line in another attempt to calm down until the two men are out of her sight.

Mister Clark smiles at Jill when her turn comes and he’s a sweet man, she knows that much about him but the feeling gnawing at the pit of her stomach keeps getting worse and worse by the minute. She’s on the verge of running and just sending this entire thing to hell so she can go back to denial land when he offers her the bag with a smile. Idly she asks herself if pharmacists have their own version of a Hippocratic oath when he doesn’t comment anything about her peculiar purchase.

“Miss? Are you-”

“I’m fine” Her voice comes out rushed and squeaky as she hands him the money and politely tells him to keep the change. If the man has anything to say about her behaviour she doesn’t hear him while she sprints for the exit door like a red-handed thief.

The buzzing sounds of the streets make her peacefully numb to the outside world, just her and her spiralling thoughts walking into the night.

  II.

 Jill stumbles into the empty apartment with a heavy heart, a queasy stomach and feeling incredibly grateful that nobody can see the mess she’s now with her shaky hands and laboured breaths.

She’s not afraid, she’s panicking.

God, she can’t be pregnant.

What is she supposed to do with a child? She had been the only child born to two parents that cared more about the status their little bundle of joy would bring them than they did for the girl herself. What kind of mother could she ever become if she had grown up starved for love and attention from the two people that were supposed to give it to her unconditionally?

And what about the father? Maybe she could learn to love the child and avoid the mistakes her own parents had made with her but what about him?

He loves her, she knows that much.

He loves her in a possessive, passionate way that easily veers into obsession. An obsession she returns fully. But it’s the kind of love that could easily drown them both if they weren’t careful.

Nobody around them thinks they’re going to make it. They’re each other’s ruin they said. And god, she knows they’re doomed in so many ways, how bad they’re for each other in other ways but she also knows she’s happy. She’s so fucking happy.

He makes me happy is all that comes to her mind when she looks down to her white-knuckled hands gripping the bag on her lap.

There's a ring on her finger. 

It's simple but elegant and she found it a few weeks ago in one of her drawers, tucked inside a black velvet box resting peacefully between her earrings and one of his watches.

Jill had grown used to these tidbits of random affection, little presents and colourful boxes popping up around her as tokens of affection, so with a sigh of exasperated fondness she grabbed the box and opened the lid with giddy fingers. It could be a new necklace to replace the one she had lost a few days ago. Or maybe a nice bracelet to go with her pearl earrings…

This was different.

The ring’s cut was not the one you would find in a casual gift. It was far too elegant and well thought of. This type of cut worked for a very specific situation. 

He wouldn’t, would he?

Jill had sat on the bed for a good five minutes inspecting every inch of the ring before marching over to the living room where Matthew was sitting in the kitchen island with a cup of steaming coffee on one hand and the paper in the other. He wasn’t going to propose, of course he wasn’t. He wasn’t the “marrying kind” like Mrs. Redford used to say with an unhappy scrunch of her nose but for the sake of Jill’s mental peace she needed him to say it himself.

“Morning, darling” his eyes looked up before she had fully sat down in front of him, a smirk planted firmly on his face when he noticed how Jill held the ring at arms length as if its mere proximity burned her.

His face gave nothing away, just pure smugness. 

Typical, she huffed and slid the box across the table to him. She would be as stubborn as him if she needed to.

"Well?"

"It's yours"

Yours. 

It was her ring because he was proposing to her.

The frown on her face deepened as she stared distastefully at the ring on the table. He was doing it to drive her mad, she was sure of it. Only Matthew would be capable of turning a proposal into a headache. Couldn’t he be a grown-up about this? Couldn’t he have the guts to at least decently ask her Would you marry me?

No big romantic gestures needed, just a simple question.

"You're proposing to me?" Matthew raised an eyebrow at her, obviously amused at her reaction "You can't" she replied quickly as she realized she didn’t want to know his answer after all.

The frown on his face told her he wasn’t pleased with the situation either.

"Why not?" And now he was pulling the surprised card, acting like this kind of behaviour was acceptable. That she was being irrational by not understanding and playing along with it.

"Because!"

“Use your words, love” Matthew was even willing to throw her own words against her, leaving her to scold at him in disapproval. She hadn’t brought up the idea of marriage once, not even as a joke. This was all on him. 

Well, he could take his precious ring and shove it. 

“You’re impossible” 

“So I’ve been told” God, he was never going to take a single thing seriously in his life and she was stupid to think he would. Jill huffed out her anger and disappointment when she stood up, fully intending to lock herself in their room for the rest of the day or find something appropriate to throw against a wall to let out her frustration before strong arms wrapped around her waist and pressed her against his chest, effectively keeping her in the spot.

“I don’t feel like playing anymore, Matthew” She squirmed against him, slapping his hands away in a useless attempt to free herself.

“I know that being with me it’s not easy. That I’m not an easy person” his breath was hot and soft against the shell of her ear, making her squirming worse when he wouldn’t budge.

Damn him, damn him to hell and back for doing this to her

“But you must know that nobody ever had me the way you do” she had stopped fidgeting at the last part of his speech.

Jill knew. She knew perfectly well that he would kill anyone that ever wronged her and would burn the world if she asked for it. And she knew that for her (and her only) he was trying not to. He was trying to at least control himself for her like she was willing to let herself be free for him.

And she wasn’t about to say that she regretted it.

This man would be her downfall in the same way she would be his. He would make her crumble to ashes and rise again time after time with only the idea of them as an anchor.

He must have taken her silence as an invitation to slip the ring into her left hand and kiss the nape of her neck to put an end to their argument.

Jill couldn’t find the words quick enough as she turned on her heels to face him so she nodded slowly with a watery smile as her own promise of a forever finally slipped past her lips quietly “And nobody will have me the way you do, Matthew”.

(She did not cry, there just was a twinkle in her eyes as his lips kissed her like she was the air and he was suffocating)

This was her life now. With every messy decision and uncertain step she had taken in the last two years she –and only she- had sealed her fate with the golden band on her finger.

They said pick your poison so I chose you.

And maybe Jill is plenty of things but she’s always been someone capable of taking responsibility for her actions and her screw-ups, so she forces herself to walk into the bathroom to bite the bullet and face the music.

She lasts all of ten seconds before she throws the bag in the cabinet under the sink as far as it’ll go and fifteen before she calls Bella in the middle of what’s probably a panic attack.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up” The one time she needs Bella is the one time she decides to put her phone away.

It goes straight to voicemail the three times she rings her up and all it manages to do is frustrate her to the point she’s about to pull her hair off when she throws the phone on the couch.

Wonderful, just bloody wonderful.

Bella was going to owe her one and Jill was going to cash in that check big time once she was done panicking.

The dramatic schoolgirl she once was possesses her the moment she reaches over for a cushion to scream her frustration into a good five times before her responsible adult self kicks off the girl into the back of her mind and marches her self-pitying self into the bathroom.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.

The words on her head are a pattern. It’s something methodical she can relay into and distract herself as she goes through the motions the test requires.

She doesn’t think she could have done it if she didn’t distract her mind. Any other time she would chastise herself for using such a cliché but those two minutes until her phone alarm buzzes are the longest wait on her life. The entire experience feels surreal to her, as if she was watching someone else sitting at the edge of the bathtub and stare at the test on the counter with everything else happening at both slow motion and fast-forwarding before her eyes when she stares at the test on her shaky hands.

It’s positive.

  III.

 The pink line stares back, mocking her.

 “Fuck”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

She wants to laugh. That was exactly what had gotten her here.

How could she be so stupid? They didn't use condoms every single time anymore and she had been off the pill for almost a year. This sort of thing was bound to happen.

So here she is, sitting on the edge of the bathtub at 2:00 am staring at a positive pregnancy test. Same test she’s been staring at sporadically for at least two hours now in between puking her guts out and cursing everything she can think of, said test among them.

The positive test. It's positive because she's pregnant. She's pregnant. Jill Redford is pregnant. She's carrying Matthew Kensington’s child and-

Matthew.

Matthew's going to be a father and that's a new load of information she needs to process.

Blimey.

Matthew is...

Well, he’s her Matthew. He's fire and impulsiveness and wildness packed in with a mop of brown curls and green eyes.

He's also ten years her senior, for crying out loud. This isn't the first time she's reminded of that fact but right now it perches itself on her shoulders like a heavy burden as she stares down at the stupid little stick on her hands.  Matthew is thirty-three to her twenty-four. He must have thought about this sort of things, right?

Oh, who is she kidding?.

Matthew is not the first person that comes to mind when she thinks of father material. He's not on her top five. Not even on her top fifty.

She loves him. She loves him against every reasonable impulse she has. And because she loves him she knows that parents are a delicate subject.

("They were gone one day. Vanished on thin air and never came back" Those were the only things that came up about the subject during one of their late night talks. Lucky, Arabella and his boys had become the family he needed after a rather peculiar childhood at the orphanage. A patchwork family she now was part of. She had no interest in knowing about people that had hurt him and he had no interest in sharing it.)

And oh god, Matthew and a child that will rely on him for guidance and love and to teach them the difference between right and wrong? Don’t make her laugh.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. She can’t think about this now. She can’t think about how deeply fucked they are at this moment.

She needs to find a way out of this. The first thing that comes to mind in her desperate state is that if she’s not pregnant then she doesn’t have to worry. Tests gave out false positives all the time, so if she took another one and it came out negative then she wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Problem solved!

Half a gallon of water and three positive pregnancy tests later she’s back to square one. Also known as “completely fucked” and “up the duff”.

An upset sob comes out from the back of her throat once she slides down to the bathroom floor. It was useless. She can’t avoid it any longer and she’s so upset at everything that all she can do is let the frustrated tears run down her face freely with her arms wrapped around her knees.

[delicrieux]

lowkey jealous [ eggsy x reader ]

warnings: chavs, cussing

words: 1914 (oops)

prompt:  May I request an imagine for Eggsy Unwin from Kingsman? Preferably before he was recruited into kingsman and he was living with his mum. Could it be where him and the reader are friends and are deeply in love with each other but don’t want to say. Eggsy takes the reader to a club for a night out and he gets extremely jealous because other men try it on with Y/N, leading him to tell her how he feels? Sorry it’s a bit vague. I absolutely adore your writing and I love you ❤️ (anon)

a/n: anyone know kelly from misfits???? it’s her!!

MASTERLIST KO-FI.

“Oh c’mon, (Name),” Her hand lands on your naked knee and squeezes reassuringly. “One smoke, yea? Nothin’ will happen from one bloody smoke, promise.”

Underground rave clubs are not exactly your favorite, but you suppose they do have their own kind of charm, and this one specifically called ‘Hive’ is the closest to your neighborhood so your good Christian mother can be sure her daughter is at the very least close by. The walls are littered with graffiti, sticky from smoke and sweat as the deafening chatter and booms of music rattle your bones and eardrums before you actually get used to it. Smoke. So much pink and neon smoke, bright lights that create mirages on the ceiling and on people’s skin. Girls trot around either with dresses barely covering their Gucci coochies or wearing a simple shirt and trousers not giving a single fuck about how they look. One cannot even reach the bar at this point – it’s merely a crowd of unruly teens and young adults that want either what’s on the counter or what’s below it.

You sit in one of the quieter corners of the Hive, eye the dancing crowd and grip your drink in your hand tightly. Your friend with hoop earrings and a dress that reveals too much for such cold weather, Kelly, squeezes your knee again and tries to catch your gaze. You avoid it. You try to avoid her, too. Not that you don’t fancy her company, you do, really – the two of you have been friends since middle school and she is the influence of every bad decision you have ever made (and you are immensely grateful for that) – but you came here with Eggsy and he had gone to the loo about twenty minutes ago. Perhaps if he was simply one of your guy friends you hung out with at times, this would not be a problem. But life has a funny way of fucking you over, and now you sit on a plushy couch that no doubt some high couple screwed in, imagining how your crush is receiving a blowjob from some random girl in the men’s bathroom.

“I’m not in the mood, Kelly.” You tell her. She, however, doesn’t even plan on backing off. Her eyes trail your somewhat sad face and then shoot to the ground of happy people. She notes some chick’s making out in the crowd, evaluates the situation before turning back to you.

“Listen, yea? He’s a fokin’ prick. He invited you, yea? And where’s he now? Hmm? Hmm?” Finally, your eyes meet and your throat squeezes tightly, “He’s a fockin’ loser, I told you, yea? What did I say when I first saw him? Git. Now I’m not gonna sit here and watch you start crying over Eggsy fokin’ Unwin.” Her hand leaves your skin to take out a lighter and a pearl white cigarette from her purse. She offers one to you, “I have somethin’ stronga’ if you wanna.”

“No, no…” You shake your head to emphasize, “Listen, yea? If you see ‘im, tell ‘im to—“ Before you could finish someone slid into the seat next to you and you immediately snapped your head to the side. With a happy jump you recognized the figure to be male – Eggsy?! – but soon your hopes are crushed, almost like the time when you realized this wasn’t a date, merely a friendly outing. An unnamed chav took a seat by Kelly too, except she looks way more open to the idea of possibly making-out. Kelly’s Chav slides a hand over her shoulder and whispers something in her ear, she laughs and smacks him playfully before taking a puff of her cigarette. The one next to you is much more gentleman like – minds his distance, appears just as uncomfortable in this situation as you do, but you know people like him. They only appear friendly and harmless, when in reality, when you glanced up at him you saw nothing but pure hunger in his eyes as he appreciated the curves of your body with notable awe.

“Wassyoname, love?” He leans in so you could hear him better.

“Good.” You state, grabbing your purse, “Last name Bye. Now excuse me while I kindly fuck right off.” You say and stand, having had completely enough of everyone’s bullshit today. Mostly Eggsy’s, though. Yeah, definitely Eggsy’s.

“Oi, (Name), where the fuck are ya’ goin’?” Kelly calls after you. Your chav stands up to follow; his fingers grasp your hand and with a harmless laugh he turns you around to face him.

“Woah woah,” He says. You try to jerk your arm away from him but he doesn’t let go, “I was only goin’ to offa’ you a drink, love.”

“Take your hands off her before I fucking break them.”

You almost wanted to scream his name right there and them, from joy of course, but then you recalled how he basically left you on your own with Kelly so you frown instead. Your chav’s interest shoots over your head to glare at the slightly shorter pottymouthed boy your age. He pushes you out the way, and doesn’t do so gently either; you stumble to the side and nearly plop back down on the couch.

“Yea, and who the fuck are you?” The chav inquires.

Eggsy doesn’t back down. His face distorts into anger and in the dark room with such violent lights he appears even scarier, “Her fucking boyfriend, bruv, so I suggest leaving before I make you.” With an easy motion Eggsy’s palms ram into the chav’s chest and push him. The chav takes a step back.

“You wanna fokin’ go, kid?”

“Eggsy.” You call him, but it falls on deaf ears. Kelly’s chav stands up, cracking his knuckles. This is a situation you have been plenty of times, namely because of Kelly, but this is the first time you see Eggsy so genuinely pissed off—

Wait. You blink. The world stops for a split second along with your heart; the music drowns and becomes a distorted beat, the lights glimmer brilliantly as Eggsy raises his fist, ready to plant it straight into that dickheads face before kicking his friend in the shin. Did Eggsy say…That he’s your BOYFRIEND?! The world falls into motion and you release a scream when Eggsy does punch the chav and kick his friend and the two tumble.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Egi?!” Kelly screams. Eggsy looks at you whilst the chav’s collect themselves and their pride from the dirty floor. Hurriedly, and making sure to hold your purse tightly, you sprint forward, grab him by the hand and bolt into the dancing crowd that welcome you with open arms. Hot. Unbelievably hot and at least nine people are squeezing you from all sides. You try to move forward but it’s hard to push through; you hear shouts somewhere behind you and you pale in horror, quickening your step and praying that no one will accidentally grind on you, or vice versa. Eggsy’s hands land on your waist and you feel his chest on your back, his breath on the side of your neck as he gives you a gentle push forward to keep you moving. Scratch that, perhaps grinding on him specifically wouldn’t be the worst idea. If you weren’t scared shitless that some arseface will pull a knife on him, you’d probably be turned on.

Thanks to Eggsy’s tactical maneuvering skills, you are finally able to take a deep breath of fresh air as the metal door of the club shuts behind the two of you. With the back of your hand you wipe the sweat from your forehead and the arch of your brow. Eggsy seems in a similar shape. Once your eyes connect he grins cheekily, no doubt recalling how skillfully he knocked that loser out. Cigarette smoke greats your nostrils and you are reminded that you’re still in a danger zone. With a tired huff you shake your head; Eggsy releases a dry chuckle and his arm snakes around your waist. With that, the two of you turn to the direction of your house and start pacing.

It’s silent for a short while, at least until the club is in a safe distance and your thoughts of how nice his muscles are and how he referred to himself as your significant other takeover. You suddenly turn to him. Curious, he asks “You alright, (Name)? That dickhead didn’t touch you, did he?” His first worried tone turns harsher as it springs with anger.

“What? No, no, I just…” You stop walking. Confused, he stops too. “Where the fuck were you? Like, you disappeared for almost an hour…”

“Oh…” He blinks, “About that…” He scratches the back of his head and your heart tumbles to the pit in your abdomen, “My mate Charlie was thowin’ up all over the bathroom floor. Tried to help the bastard.”

“Oh.” Is all you can utter. You bite your lower lip and conveniently don’t notice as he laser focuses on it. Well, BJ’s were within the realm of possibility; after all, Eggsy’s a really good looking guy. “Well,” you finally squeeze out, “thanks for saving me, or whatever…”

He smiles, a smile that gushes with pride, “Anythin’ for you, love.”

“Anything?”

You never thought you’d see the day when Eggsy Unwin is thrown off by something you had said; his expression stiffens, that cocky smile fades as he stares at you hard, unwilling to say anything even if he wants to or not. You gulp. The air feels hot again, hot in ripples that splash on your skin. The growing urgency for action – either to say something or do something – is becoming almost impossible to subdue and you start getting anxious. You hadn’t expected your question to be met with such stunned silence. Eggsy finally catches himself, the wolfish grin returns to his face and he ticks his head to the side, “That’s right.” He says, making sure to look you directly in the eyes, “Anythin’.”

“As like, in a friend way—“

“Do I look like a fucking friend to you, love?” He cuts you off, “What am I? Kelly?”

Still unsure, you let a hopeful smile slip on your face. “Then-“

“Honestly, (Name).” He leans in - “’Thought it was pretty obvious.” – and finishes with a kiss that tastes somewhat of alcohol and mint bubble gum. You respond without a second thought; the whole world fades into the back of your mind as the only thing real is him. His touch. His scent. His hands roam around your body, unable to stay at the same place for too long as if afraid he won’t have enough time to map out your skin perfectly. The kiss loses whatever innocence it had, if any, and turns raw and passionate and you realize this was the kind of kiss you could tell no one about. The kind of kiss that made you realize that you were never so happy in your life.

When you do part for air – it is you mostly gasping and your fingers pulling playfully on his hair, - in a raspy voice you ask, “Is your mum home?”

His iris, dark and subdued with hunger, searches your face for a lie before a smirk pulls on the corner of his lip and he replies, “No. Why? Plans of stopping by?”

“Do you like sleepovers?”

“Only if you’re the one sleepin’ over.”

requests are open!

[conretewings]

-This Ends Now-

A short-ish fanfic based on my future headcanon where Guzma and Plumeria have Fern. They have to go to Melemele Island for some supplies and run into some people they neither expected nor wanted to… -Warning-lots of angst, implied child abuse and language ahead

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“We’re almost there, honey.”

“You talking to me or the munchkin, Plumes?”

“Both, I guess. Although she has been whining less than you about how long it’s taking.”

“Yeah Daddy! No whining!”

“Great, now y’all are ganging up on me. I have not been whining! I’m just hungry. …And I don’t like this ferry. Thing’s been makin’ weird noises.”

Plumeria rolled her eyes but gave Guzma a small smile, turning to show Fern the school of Alomomola that were leaping from the waves created by the boat zipping through the clear, bright waters as they all stood on the ferry’s deck among the other passengers.

The three of them were traveling to Melemele for the day to do some shopping for supplies that were out of stock at their usual stores back home. It was also a special day for little Fern, as it was the first time in her almost four years that she had left Akala’s shores. So excited had the toddler been that it was all she had talked about since they had told her the previous night.

She wriggled in Plumeria’s arms, counting the fish Pokemon before turning her head and gasping in delight, “Mommy look! Is that it?!”

Plumeria glanced up to see the mountains and other features of Melemele quickly growing closer on the horizon, “Yes, that’s it.”

“Daddy daddy hold me up I wanna see!” Fern cried, holding her arms out toward Guzma, who grinned and scooped her up, setting her on his broad shoulders.

Her small, golden eyes grew huge as she clung to her father’s head, trying to get herself as high as possible, “Woooooow!”

Between the balmy, perfect weather, the day’s adventure ahead, and the two people he loved most by his side, Guzma felt his spirits soar higher than the flock of Wingulls drifting overhead. He put his free arm around Plumeria and pulled her close, smirking at her, “Where to first, beautiful?”

“Well…” she smiled back at him, “Since you’re hungry, I guess we’ll grab some food before we start shopping…” her smile faded, “I’m actually surprised you were so relaxed about coming here, considering…everything.”

Guzma’s own smile dropped, realizing at last what she was talking about. Looking away, he was quiet for a minute before saying, “Whatever. Ain’t like anyone’s gonna remember me.”

-Once they arrived, after a bite at a local diner and shopping for several hours, Plumeria had taken Fern to the bathroom while Guzma waited outside. Leaning against a palm tree near the mall’s entry doors, he gazed out over the nearby beach, watching the tourists baking themselves in the sun, kids playing with their Pokemon, and the general bustle of the city streets. He had been right; not once since they docked had anyone seemed to recognize or treat him any differently. For this he was very grateful-the last thing he wanted was for today to be ruined by someone trying to start shit over things that had long past.

Letting his eyes fall shut, he was just thinking of texting Plumeria to ask if they had fallen in, when a wavering voice said his name. Eyes snapping back open, he whipped his head toward the sound, wanting to be wrong, but there she was, mouth half-open in shock, hands clenched over her chest.

He could scarcely breathe but managed to sputter out, “M-Mom?”

“Guzma-! I-we haven’t spoken in nearly two years!” she shuffled over to him, trying to hug him and he shrank away, but she didn’t seem to notice, “I…I’ve missed you, son! Why don’t you ever call? Talk to me please! Where are you now? What have you been doing? What-”

“Whoa, whoa! Mom, slow down,” he pulled out of her vice-grip of a hug and stepped back, trying to focus on all her questions when one suddenly stuck out, “Wait-I have called, like a dozen times but…he always picks up and I ain’t talkin’ to that piece of…” he stopped, rubbing his face hard and breathing deeply before looking back up, “Didn’t he ever tell you?”

His mother blinked in confusion, “No…I had no idea.”

“Tch! Figures…” Guzma spat, lightly kicking a nearby trashcan.

“Oh Guzma, it’s fine. He’s very busy with his job and I’m sure he just forgot to tell me.”

“Forgot to tell you that many times?” he retorted, “C’mon Mom! It was on purpose and you know it. He hates me and doesn’t want you talkin’ to me either! Face it, there is no way in hell that he didn’t pull-”

His voice seemed to catch in his throat along with his breath as his father rounded the corner toward them, “Petunia, you were supposed to meet me-” the man froze at the sight before him, then his gaze hardened, “Well, well. Never thought I’d see you around here…son.”

Guzma felt ill, all of the demons lurking in his mind and heart roaring to the surface, choking out his voice and sending him flying back to his youth, all the darkness there clawing at his senses until there was only raw, agonizing fear left. With great effort and picturing a tiny, gold-eyed angel beaming up at him, he wrestled those thoughts away, managing to bring himself back to the here-and-now and clenched his fists, grey eyes flashing with contempt, “Don’t call me that, you piece of shit.”

Petunia held her hands up, “Stop, please! Edgar,” she pleaded to her husband, “I haven’t seen my sweet child in so long! Please just be nice!”

He spat, “Nice?! After how he just spoke to me? After everything he’s done? I don’t see how you think that’s possible. Listen boy,” he jabbed a finger at Guzma, “I don’t know what you’re doing back home, but if you came crawling back here looking for help, you can forget it!”

Guzma threw his head back and barked out a bitter, cold laugh, “Oh, fuck you! Trust me, I wasn’t! I would never ask your pathetic ass for help! I’d rather eat shit than-”

It was then, at the worst possible time, he heard it; a sound that normally filled him with joy and pride now brought only horrified dread.

“Daddy! Daddy I found you!” Fern squealed, running up to him and latching onto his leg.

Gasping, her eyes filling with tears, Petunia reached a shaking hand out, “Oh-oh my goodness! Is she really-?! Oh Arceus she’s beautiful! We had no idea..! Honey why didn’t you tell us?!”

Guzma felt sick with dismay as he swiftly scooped Fern up, “I never-”

Suddenly coming around the corner, Plumeria sighed, “Sorry we took so long. She spotted a display of toys she had to play with…”

She stopped, startled to silence by the scene before her. From everyone’s position and with the trees and pillars of the nearby fence, Guzma had been the only person she’d seen until that moment. Leaping back into action, her instincts kicking in, she grabbed Fern and stepped back, turning her body so it was between them and her daughter. She had never actually met nor even seen his parents, but she could see it in their features, feel it in her bones, see it written across her husband’s face-she knew the stories, had seen his scars, and right now the only thing going through her mind was how to protect her precious girl.

“Guzma?!” she growled, and he immediately moved to place himself between them and his parents, mind racing.

“Plumeria, get her outta here. We’ll meet up-”

“Bah! So you got some girl knocked up. Why am I not surprised? It’s no worse than anything else you’ve pulled!” sneered Edgar coldly, “She may be related to me, but no bastard kid’s a granddaughter of mine.”

“Edgar! Stop!” sniffled Petunia.

“How dare you-!” Plumeria snarled, cutting herself off as she realized Guzma was moving in his direction.

Taking several strides toward him, Guzma felt nor heard anything but the blood roaring in his ears; not Plumeria telling him to back off, not his mother pleading for them to stop it. He saw nothing, not noticing the other people near them staring-the only thing he knew at that moment was the pure, undiluted rage that moved his feet and arms, making him ball his hands into fists, ready to beat down the pile of human garbage that had just derided the most precious thing in his life. He raised a fist, ready to strike, ready to take vengeance for all the blows he had suffered, all the agony he had been through-when one, small sound cut through the churning storm in his soul, a beam of light in the darkness.

“Daddy stop!”

He froze stock-still, hand still poised in mid-swing and slowly turned his gaze toward Fern. Her large eyes wavered with the fear and uncertainty of a child that doesn’t understand what’s going on, but nonetheless knows something’s terribly wrong. As he looked, she began to tear up, and it was then he realized something that made him even more sick than the man before him.

His own daughter was scared of him.

Squeezing his eyes shut, ashamed, he lowered his fist and exhaled, all the fury and energy leaving his body. Edgar snorted, “Go on, take a shot. I’d love to let the police know you did.”

Guzma drew another breath, opening his eyes and glaring him down, “I’m sure you would. But I’m gonna have to disappoint you one more time,” he walked back to Plumeria and Fern, looking down at the toddler and smiling gently, “Sorry, Cutiefly…Daddy promises never to do that again in front of you, okay?”

Fern nodded hesitantly, but as he leaned over to kiss the top of her head and ruffle her hair, she giggled and relaxed a little, smiling up at him again. He brushed a few stray wisps of her ink-black hair behind her ears, the same hair that graced his own head but he had bleached for years to try and distance himself from the man he now felt it was finally time to confront. He ignored the angry threats and tearful pleading behind them and to Plumeria murmured, “Head to the docks. Grab tickets for the next ferry home. If I don’t show up on time, leave anyway and I’ll grab the last one.”

“Mommy, daddy, what’s going on? Who are those people and why are we leaving?” Fern wondered, looking up at them with again tear-filled, confused eyes.

Plumeria kissed her, whispering she’d explain later, then took a quick glance at her watch. She bit her lip, “The next one will be the last one, at least that’ll take you anywhere near home.”

“Then I’ll swim! Or something. Just get Fern and yourself outta here. Please Plumes…just go.”

She nodded, then abruptly grabbed his collar, pulling him in so their faces were millimeters apart. Her gold eyes narrowed dangerously, “I don’t know what you’re planning, but take it easy. I do not need Fern to visit her father in jail. Am I perfectly clear?”

He glared back at her, stung, “For fu-for heaven’s sake P! You think I want that either?! You think I haven’t grown up, at least a little? Give me some credit, jeez…now go on. Get our kid somewhere safer.”

Plumeria let go, realizing she had been a little harsh with him, but knowing there was no time now to sort it out. So, she simply nodded and hurried away. Guzma watched them go, Fern twisting so she could see him. It nearly broke his heart to see her reaching one small arm out and calling to him before they vanished around a bend in the street. Petunia shuffled in their direction, holding out her arms, sobbing, “Oh no-please! Come back! I just…” she covered her face with her hands, “Why Guzma? Why can’t I know my own granddaughter..?”

He gazed at her, then momentarily flicked his eyes to his father, steeling his heart again for the confrontation he knew he was going to have to deal with, “Because of him.”

His mother wiped her face, slowly turning around and walking back towards her husband, then started to move past him. As she did she said, “We need to talk later…”

Edgar sighed and rubbed his forehead, starting to reply before Guzma said sharply, “Hey!”

Glancing at him with a mix of disinterest and annoyance, his father replied, “What?”

“You, me…” Guzma pointed to an empty area of the beach a short ways off, “We need to talk now.”

The peaceful sigh of the waves lapping the sand and gentle cries of circling Wingulls created a peaceful scene in stark contrast to the tense animosity that was Guzma facing his father. They occupied a small strip of beach well away from any prying ears, shaded by a stray cluster of palms near the water, the wind whispering through them only adding to the strange juxtaposition. Neither man had spoken for a minute, Edgar crossing his arms impatiently as he watched Guzma pace back and forth, hunched over and hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts.

Finally the younger of them turned and said, “God I fuckin’ hate you.”

“So when you said you wanted to talk, what you meant is you wanted to whine at me. I don’t have to put up with this.”

Guzma’s face split with an ear-to-ear grin, but the kind of wide-eyed, rage-filled, borderline psychotic smile that had used to send his grunts scattering and make anyone else step back in fear, “Oh no, I really, really think you do ‘cause you see…” suddenly standing to his full height, he strode over to his father, looming over him, “I got some shit to say, and for once, you’re gonna be the one who has to listen.”

Edgar’s eye twitched, refusing to let his son see that he was, for once, mildly afraid. He knew all about the things Guzma had done, the people he’d hurt for the smallest, if any, transgression, the lows he’d stoop to get what he wanted; what was to stop him from harming anyone, even his own father? His mouth was set in a hard line as he too stretched himself to stand as tall as possible, “Fine. I’m listening.”

There were many things Guzma wanted to say; so many things. He wanted to scream at him, rant, tell him what a worthless, vile excuse for a parent he was, to tell him just how much he hated him for everything he had done. He wanted revenge for all the suffering, the pain, the nightmares. He felt his hands involuntarily clench into fists, a part of him wanting to just beat the pulp out of the man-

But again, visions of an angel with black hair and an impish smile swam into his conscious.

Fists still balled but knowing he could control himself now, he silently thanked those thoughts and jabbed a finger in his father’s face, “I’ll never ask for forgiveness from you for all the shit you put me through, ‘cause I know damn well you don’t give a fuck. There’s only one thing I will ask-forget you ever saw my daughter.”

“I-wait what?” asked Edgar, genuinely confused.

“Forget. You. Ever. Saw. My. Daughter,” Guzma repeated, enunciating every word, his tone icy, “You said she was no granddaughter of yours, well, tch! You ain’t no grandfather to her. In fact, just forget about me and my family.  Don’t try to find us, don’t try to communicate with us, just leave us the hell alone.”

“And what if I refuse?”

“Then there ain’t no place in this whole goddamn world you can run where I won’t find you.”

Edgar glared, “Are you threatening me?”

Guzma leaned in closer, closer than he thought he’d ever have the mental fortitude and courage to, but even far away, Fern gave him strength he never knew he had, “I am fuckin’ promising you.”

“Fine! Whatever. Like I said, she’s no family to me,” turning on his heel, Edgar started to leave, throwing one last cutting look and remark over his shoulder, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re no son of mine, either.”

Guzma bent down and scooped up a rock, gripping it so tightly he was sure it’d crack in his hand, wanting so desperately to fling it at the retreating man’s head. His breath came out in great, stuttering gasps, his limbs shaking slightly, trying to decide what to do as his target moved farther away. Ultimately, he let out a roar of frustration, spinning and hurling the rock out into the sea.

-Plumeria stood on the docks near the ferry’s loading ramp, Fern in her arms and her usual stoic expression on her face. She turned to glance at one of the deckhands as he told her and several other passengers they were going to be leaving in exactly five minutes before looking back further up the bustling docks.

Fern wriggled and asked for probably the dozenth time, “Where’s daddy?”

“He’ll be here, sweetie.”

As she spoke, she saw several people stumble sideways, some dropping their bags or boxes and heard annoyed shouts, only to spy a tall head of white hair darting and dodging through the crowd, not always successfully. She couldn’t help but smile; destruction in human form, he was. Fern squealed with joy and held her arms out with an enthusiastic chant of ‘daddy daddy!’ as Guzma trotted up to them, panting hard.

“H-hey ladies-you need an escort for your trip? You know how sailors can be!” he smirked, earning a sour glance from a nearby seaman.

Plumeria raised an eyebrow and asked, “How’d it go?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it. Not now, maybe not ever. I dunno.” He scooped up Fern and held her tightly, burrowing his face in her hair-she smelled like her berry-scented shampoo and he sighed, already feeling his soul beginning to heal a little.

Plumeria nodded, knowing there was no point in pushing the issue and stepped forward to hold them both. They stood like this for a moment before she asked, “You okay, G?”

His eyes clouded, “Honestly? No. But…” he freed one arm to encircle her shoulders, soaking up the warmth of the two people he loved the most, “I think I’ll be alright.”

[lucretiars]

Cherry by Nico Walker

“The taste comes on first; then the rush starts. And it’s all about right, the warmth bleeding down through me. Till the taste comes on stronger than usual, so strong it’s sickening. And I figure it out: how I was always dead, my ears ringing.” I’m standing in the confines of a gorgeously-lit, delicately-balanced bookstore in the second story of the historic Fine Arts Building in the heart of downtown Chicago, light pouring in from the early-autumn golden hour, the crisp and clean pages of this novel jutting smooth and warm in my hands. At the lazy hour of 3:00 pm I’ve got the place to myself; the setting surrounding me a complete juxtaposition of the content my eyes are scrolling through—and this is the line that hooks me. Sober, save for the lingering coffee buzz that gently gripped hold just a few hours ago, I am suddenly hurtled into the body of a war veteran, addicted to heroin, riding a high and planning his next bank robbery. This is the world of Cherry, Nico Walker’s debut semi-autobiographical novel written over the course of several years from the Federal Correctional Institute in Ashland, Kentucky.

Cherry exposes the wrath of Walker’s unnamed narrator, leading readers down a walk through hell, a tender spectacle, an absurd dream, an intimate terror, a candid gut-reaction. There is a bleak disillusionment in the narrator’s trajectory, which allows readers to directly experience the grueling effects of PTSD and addiction. In our narrator, we meet the rough and tattered exterior of a deeply introspective and sensitive person. Mimicking Nico Walker’s literal state behind bars, his created main character wears the façade of the contrast between a metal jail cell trapping a living, breathing human inside.

The foreword of the novel drops you directly in the drug-addled, reality-grappling lives of our narrator and his partner Emily. Coalesced between discussing the plan of that day’s impending bank robbery and ruminating on how they imagined their recently adopted dog would help them get their lives together but now they’re merely “dope fiends with a dog”, the narrator takes a particularly large hit of their vice of choice and wakes up to Emily stuffing ice cubes into his underwear to shudder him awake. The narrator, though a bit disheveled, makes a crude joke about his hygiene and brushes the experience off like nothing, insisting to Emily to hurry up and get her hit in before she’s late for class. While there are glimpses of true affection and observations so saccharine and resonating, Emily and the narrator are distorted in an enabling and detrimental relationship; the kind of relationship that makes you understand the sheer power of denial.

Continuing in the foreword, still written through a backwards-told “ending at the beginning” tactic, our narrator is trudging swiftly yet lightly through the alleyway veins of an unidentified Midwest city after completing a robbery for the umpteenth time. Police sirens gradually piercing louder and louder to symbolize their looming arrival, the narrator unexpectedly finds a moment of contentment in the chaotic purgatory that is the life he knows now and the fate he is yet to endure. He finds a calm pocket of time to marinade on the simplistic hidden beauty of the dreadfully mundane reality around him, remarking, “The sirens are coming up Mayfield now, and the grass is like a teenage girl. And the stoops!—the stoops are fucking wondrous! That’s a fuckload of starlings gone to war over a big wet juicy bag of garbage—look at them go! This is the beauty of things fucking with my heart. I wish I could lie down in the grass and chill for a while, but of course this is impossible, the gun in my hat could be a little obvious, the money sticking out of all my pockets too.” Through these scattered musings, I found myself reflecting on those past moments that suddenly, when we fear something actually really fucking bad may be about to happen, or we fear the possibility of reality becoming so twisted and wrong, we suddenly find gratitude in the minuscule speckles of beauty around us. And through Walker’s brutal, tender, and grippingly honest narrative, these bare slices of time—the impossible-to-name fleeting moments of life that keep us from completely losing it all when everything is falling apart—are unraveled through Cherry.

To be frank, the largest appeal of the book when I first picked it up was the process in which it was created. Nico Walker, still currently serving an 11-year sentence for robbery, crafted Cherry over four years behind bars. In his acknowledgements, Walker outlines the severely manual process of communicating with his publisher, Matthew Johnson. Each edit and recommendation given to Walker was expressed through weekly allotted phone calls. Unable to bring even a pen or paper along for documentation, their discussions were to be memorized and then divulged back in his cell. Walker writes, “The manuscript wasn’t so much a manuscript as it was a plastic bin full of paper. Every page has been rewritten one hundred times over. There was no Word file. It had all been done on a typewriter.” Somehow, this seemingly insufferable feat emerged with such power. Walker’s dialogue is crafted with such rhythm and realism that it mimics an old friend spouting the tales of their life to you at a party, drunk with grace and ease. But buried in the nature of what Walker is actually spouting to us is deep unease.

At the start of the novel, Walker introduces two widely juxtaposing quotes. The first, by Elizabethan playwright Thomas Nashe from his 1600’s play Summer’s Last Will and Testament reads:

“Such use these times have got, that none must beg, but those that have young limbs to lavish fast.”

And, by popular country singer Toby Keith from his Americana southern anthem “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”:

“And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you.”

Though worlds apart, these contrasting lines set the stage for Walker’s approaching journey. Initially used by the army in attempts to indict inspiration and patriotism in its soldiers, the fake plastic spectacle of the red-white-and-blue vomit becomes a comment on the brainwashed nature of American pride. Walker’s inclusion of Mr. Keith’s phony lyric at the start of his novel exposes a harsh reality to this otherwise overplayed tune. Often referring to it merely as “that Toby Keith song”, the narrator is resistant to the patriotism of his fellow soldiers. In an already hollow and alienating battleground, this further detaches him from his surroundings.

Intermixed with code-heavy language in the Iraq scenes, the authenticity of Walker’s war scenes will surprise you. Mingled in the muddles of mechanistic day-to-day routine, our narrator faces harrowing sights and experiences that force him to dig into the reality of who he is at the core. A la Full Metal Jacket, the army scenes are at times darkly comedic and other times so shrewdly acerbic, exposing each comrade our narrator interacts with as a true individual so nuanced that there’s no way they weren’t real. Amongst them are Specialist Grace who looked like Jean-Michel Basquiat and had an 18-year old wife waiting for him at home, Sergeant Bautista, to which our narrator gets stuck in the almost dull routine of draining the abscess on his ass every night while he plays Madden, and a man who was only referred to as “Arnold”, who had dreams of being a computer genius and “bringing down Bill Gates”. It’s disclosed that all three of these men will not be alive when the narrator goes home, and Walker writes with such viscous detail as if to honor their memory.

Sprawled across six parts: “When Life Was Just Beginning, I Saw You”, “Adventure”, “Cherry”, “Hummingbird”, “The Great Dope Fiend Romance”, and “A Comedown”, readers are rapt along the narrator’s tour through love, violence, crime, and everything in between. The novel’s trajectory mimics a drug’s high—the initial excitement, the hidden fear, the gentle roller-coaster crescendo, the exhilaration, the subdued serenity, the banality, the regret, the car-crash decrescendo, the reality.

Walker writes with such an unexpected tenderness that even though his experiences were nothing short of foreign to me, I was catapulted into the perspective of the narrator’s psyche. Chapter Fifty-Two, the entirety spanning one long paragraph (Walker’s chapters range from quietly sparse to compressed and bursting) begins and ends with the sentence, “There was nothing better than to be young and on heroin.” In-between the graphic and miserable terrors the drug wracked on the narrator and Emily, Walker’s prose delicately weaves in the joy, bliss, and wildness they both experienced, reminding me of Mark Renton and his crew in Trainspotting. I believed Walker’s narrator felt paradise and passion in the transitory moments of his addiction. That harsh truth illuminated through these pages transform “The Great Dope Fiend Romance” from merely a staggered semi-autobiographical account of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll to a stark observation of the reality that is the opioid epidemic. And as a part of the whole that is Cherry, this honesty becomes even more heartbreaking sandwiched between the terrors of going to a war way too young and naïve and resorting to crime as a means of coping. Walker writes about the emergence of the narrator’s newfound vice: “I don’t imagine that anyone goes in for robbery if they are not in some kind of desperation. Good or bad people has nothing to do with it; plenty of purely wicked motherfuckers won’t ever rob shit. With robbery it’s a matter of abasement. Are you abased? Careful then. You might rob something.”

In a brief wholesome moment after treating his dog to a Wendy’s cheeseburger, Walker remarks through his narrator, “She reminded me of myself, insatiable.” In this fleeting reflection towards the close of the novel, I began to understand the gravity of the narrator’s losses and residual search for meaning. After experiences in combat stripped so much of himself away, the blissful yet impossibly impermanent highs he continued to chase with drugs, love, and crime were simply insatiable. Everyone can relate to experiencing the act of yearning, and I think that Cherry illustrates the simple notion of yearning for middle ground. Between the mundane and the chaos there is harmony, and without explicitly expressing it, the narrator pines for something solid to hold on to. The voraciously unquenchable lust for purpose.

Cherry feels like a process of dehumanization, but dispersed through even the bleakest moments, there are searing glimpses of human fragility and vulnerability. Through Walker’s narrative, I followed his character down a slowly sinking spiral, floating between some warped sense of hope only to find it disguised in obscurity. I was left wishing, grasping for a light at the end of the tunnel; but sometimes, there is no light. For Nico Walker, maybe there will be. But to write with purpose is to write the truth, and in his echoing honesty there is beauty.

“I was feeling melancholy, but it was a calming melancholy. Life was fucked but I was good. This was what I knew. And fate was fate. My heart was full and life was precious.”