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neil-neil-orange-peel · 1 month

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An Epilogue (and a Prologue) P1

P2 | P3

Vyvyan had been waiting outside his uncles’ house for about ten minutes. He was sat in his new car – a yellow Ford Anglia – smoking a fag, so it wasn’t as if any nearby pig could accuse him of loitering on the streets. He’d bought some red paint to paint flames down the sides of the car yesterday from a bloke called Harry the Bastard, and the pots were sat on the backseats alongside his bin bag of possessions. This was all he needed to move out of Hammersmith. Well, a paintbrush would be handy as well, but Vyvyan reckoned North London would have paintbrushes too.

When the boredom finally began to set in, Vyvyan knew he couldn’t ignore what he’d come here to do any longer. His legs were already bouncing with restlessness. Alright, he told himself. Time to let the bastards know. He’d waited until the last minute as it was.

Mr Harrison, good humoured as usual, was in his corner shop to leer at Vyvyan as he made his way through to the flat. Vyvyan had learnt at a young age not to take the man’s temperament personally – he effed and jeffed his way around interactions with anyone he knew couldn’t afford to stand up to him. Today really was the day Vyvyan should sock him one, but he supposed that wouldn’t be awfully considerate to his uncles. He settled for a nonplussed scrunch of the mouth instead.

“Tell ‘em I want some rent!” Mr Harrison snapped as he started on the staircase to the flat.

Vyvyan flicked the Vs over his shoulder in response. Rent? For a place like this? Vyvyan certainly wouldn’t be paying rent if he lived in such a dilapidated hovel, even if he could afford to, and he knew for a fact that his uncles couldn’t. Paying to live here was like paying rent for your prison cell – who in their right mind would do that? Parasitic bastard…

The steps up to 11 Mafeking Parade were steep ones, but they never took particularly long to climb. Soon enough, Vyvyan found himself staring blankly at the green, peeling paint of the front door. He raised his right fist and knocked three times. There was a crashing sound from within. No turning back now. He breathed in deeply.

About thirty seconds later – which was longer than Vyvyan would have spared for most bastards to get off their arses and let him in – the door flew open, bringing him face to face with Richard Richard. He grinned; all previous apprehension washed away.

“Hello, Uncle Richie!”

Richie’s face, arranged into that aloof sneer he regarded most inhabitants of Hammersmith with, morphed instantly into wide eyed, manic delight. His left hand unclasped from what Vyvyan was fairly certain had been a fist, in celebration.

“Vyvyan! Hello! Come in, come in!” Richie said, stepping back to invite Vyvyan over the threshold. “Young man, have you grown again? You really must stop this, you know – you must be as tall as Eddie now!”

Vyvyan smirked to himself – it had taken less than a minute for Richie to comment on his height; that must’ve been a new record. It was nice to have someone to fuss over him though, he did have to admit… not to Richie’s face, of course, but to himself. With Richie being such a fussy soul – he was currently wearing his frilly pink apron – there wasn’t anyone better suited to the task in Vyvyan’s mind. They made their way along the gloom of the hallway, heading for the kitchen.

“I am eighteen now,” Vyvyan said.

“Oh, I know,” Richie said from behind him, and he sucked in a rather dramatic breath as if to emphasise it. “You’ve grown up so fast…”

Eddie was sat at the kitchen table as Vyvyan came in, last week’s copy of The Hammersmith Bugle resting in his grip. At the sound of the stomping footfalls much too heavy to be Richie’s, he turned to greet his nephew with a wave.

“Alright, Vyvy?”

“Alright, Uncle Eddie.” Vyvyan took the other seat at the table, his back to the conservatory. “And, uh, it’s Vyv now actually.”

Eddie nodded, smiling proudly. “Right you are, Vyvy.”

Richie rolled his eyes behind Eddie’s back as he moved over to the sink.

“Don’t mind your uncle, Vyvyan – he’s only got a two second memory,” he said.

Vyvyan snorted. “’S alright, doesn’t really matter with you two anyway.”

He missed the touched look his uncles exchanged at this comment, choosing instead to stare at the splintered wood of the kitchen table. Vyvyan wasn’t any more interested in the knackered old thing now than he’d been the last thirteen years he’d had tea at it, but pretending he was meant he could put off telling his uncles the news just a little longer.

How exactly should he broach this subject with them? It wasn’t as if Vyvyan had come with bad news – he wasn’t fourteen and on the run from the pigs after nicking from the local off-licence – this was good news. Everyone thought so. All his teachers, even Miss Naylor the social worker, had said so. This shouldn’t be difficult.

A soft clunk on the table in front of Vyvyan interrupted his brooding and he blinked, taking in the chipped teacup that had materialised before him. He glanced up to see Richie hovering by his side. He nodded in recognition.

“Thanks.”

Vyvyan barely noticed the green colour of the tea inside the cup as he sipped. There was very little he wouldn’t eat or drink, and this tea was loaded with sugar – even if there were pieces of bark floating around the cup too. He was sure it was his dustbin like attitude to food that had endeared him to Richie from the word go.

Eddie, for his part, had never quite understood his nephew’s ability to consume just about anything he could fit into his mouth. It was the kind of spectacle that made you want to down a pint of brake fluid before washing the taste away with some good toilet cleaner – and Eddie often had. Watching Vyvyan sup the cup of horrors now – not missing the smug look Richie was giving him in his peripheral vision – Eddie finally folded his newspaper and put it down. Richie gave him a pointed glance.

“Uh…” Eddie said.

Vyvyan’s eyes darted over to him and then over to Richie. Smart kid was the sprog. Both Richie and Eddie smiled indulgingly at Vyvyan, which they could both then tell by the scrunch of his nose he wasn’t taking at face value.

“Everything good with you then, Vyvy?” Eddie asked him.

It appeared Vyvyan’s nerves had trickled out into the rest of the room. He supposed his uncles weren’t used to seeing him doing boring, grown-up things like contemplating and hesitating. Really, he was making this far more painful than it needed to be. Eddie was starting to get that guilty look in his eyes – the one Vyvyan first remembered seeing that Christmas his mum had thrown his Beano on the fire.

“Yeah, yeah… better than good actually…” Vyvyan said, glancing back down at his teacup.

Richie and Eddie exchanged another look.

“Oh?” Richie said, moving to stand by Eddie. “Have you got yourself a girlfriend, Vyvyan? What’s her name? When can we meet her?”

“Oi, you!”

Eddie grabbed at Richie’s arm in an attempt to curtail the pervy thoughts clearly racing through his mind. In a rare moment of self-awareness, Richie caught himself and shuddered out of his fervour.

“I only meant-”

“I think we all know exactly what you only meant, Richard. Vyvy can show us his bird when he’s ready.” Eddie winked conspiratorially at Vyvyan. “I can lock him upstairs when she comes ‘round if you want.”

Richie gasped. “Edward Elizabeth Hitler! Don’t be so foul in front of your nephew!”

Vyvyan snorted his way into a laugh, the involuntary shudder spilling the green tea over the table. His uncles were barking up completely the wrong tree here. He had the power to end or prolong this. Richie and Eddie looked like they didn’t know whether to laugh with him or offer some kind of counsel.

“I’m sorry – your faces – it’s not a girlfriend,” Vyvyan said.

He mopped up the spilled tea with the hem of his shirt, which he could tell Richie appreciated.

“Such better table manners than you, Edward.”

“So what is it then? What’s better than a new bird?” Eddie asked.

There was a hint of panic brewing in his voice; Vyvyan knew he was his Uncle Eddie’s most vulnerable weak spot, but it still surprised him when he saw it written so starkly across the man’s face. Richie raised a curious eyebrow. It was time for the crunch. Vyvyan took one last sip of his tea – he really hoped he hadn’t bigged the news up too much now. He chose a splinter on the table to stare at and willed laser beams to erupt from his eyeballs.

“Well, basically, I’m going to uni,” he said.

There was a second – a painfully long second – of stunned silence. In that second, Vyvyan considered both cannonballing out of the window and drilling his way back into the corner shop. This was why saying nothing was easier. This was why slinking off into the night without a word was what everyone else in this bloody family did-

Then Richie and Eddie started shouting and cheering, an incoherent cacophony of pride, and Vyvyan realised the flat, as always, was safe. A grin was spreading across his face before he even looked back up at them.

Eddie got to his feet abruptly, knocking his chair into Richie and cutting off his current stream of: “Eddie, our little Vyvyan’s off to university! Eddie, can you believe it, Eddie!? Eddie-” He ambled over to Vyvyan and slapped his shoulder. Vyvyan wasn’t going to say anything, but he was sure there were tears welling up behind his glasses. His uncle let out a high pitched, hysterical giggle, the kind of noise Vyvyan didn’t often associate with Eddie. Not an Eddie who hadn’t just downed fifteen pints of lager in one lunch hour, anyway.

“Thank god for that,” Eddie said, strangely breathless. “For a moment there I thought you were about to announce you’d knocked someone up!”

This probably should have offended him, Vyvyan thought, but it didn’t, so he laughed instead. Who cared? He knew emotional bollocks was hard for Eddie – bloody hell, it was hard enough for Vyvyan. They couldn’t all spurt this gooey stuff out at will like Richie. Eddie was blinking quite rapidly, appearing for all intents and purposes like a child who hadn’t yet learnt to speak properly.

“Vyvy, I- I- we-”

Vyvyan reached up to pat Eddie’s hand, which hadn’t retreated after the proud slap and was still clasping his shoulder.

“I know,” Vyvyan told him.

Eddie gave Vyvyan’s shoulder a meaningful squeeze. This was all turning out brilliantly, better than Vyvyan had dared to let himself hope for. Sure, he hadn’t seriously expected either of them to react negatively to the news, had he? At least, not seriously negatively. He’d worried they might object to him leaving for adventures outside of Hammersmith, where he couldn’t just pop in to see them when the mood took him. A small part of him had worried they’d hardly react at all. But no, they were proud of him. Proud.

Good god, Vyvyan was going to have to watch himself if he didn’t want to go all girly on them. Richie hoicked the other chair across the kitchen floorboards with a screech.

“Vyvyan Basterd!” he said.

He was fanning his face with the Bugle, as if he’d just run a marathon. Eddie rolled his eyes, his hand still not moving from Vyvyan’s shoulder.

“Here we go…”

“Young man, you must tell me absolutely every detail this instant!” Richie said as he sat down. “Do you understand? Do you? Do you realise how abso-fucking-lutely-bloody-bollocking MARVELOUS this is!?”

Yes, somehow, Richie was sweating, his limp hair already soaking up the first dank streaks of it. His shirt was beginning to lose its opaqueness; his lazy eye was unfocused; his smile was wide, and manic, and mental– fucking mental – exactly the way Vyvyan had always loved him.

Fucking mental. His fucking mental uncles. He started laughing all over again.

#the young ones #tyo #bbc bottom #vyvyan basterd #eddie hitler #richie richard #fanfic #wips #an epilogue and a prologue

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neil-neil-orange-peel · 1 month

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An Epilogue (and a Prologue) P2

P1 | P3

“Now, you listen here, young man,” Richie told Vyvyan an hour or so later. “If some stuck up, toffee nosed little bastard gives you any gip, you send them ‘round to us. We’ll sort them out, won’t we, Eddie?”

“That’s right. We’ll taste test the toffee for you – see if there’s any licqueur in it,” Eddie said.

Richie nodded. “That’s right. We’ll taste test the- What?”

They had Vyvyan sat on the sofa as the two of them – well, Richie, mostly – hustled and bustled between the kitchen and drawing room, dispensing whatever pearls of wisdom popped into their heads. For two blokes who’d never been to university, Vyvyan thought they had an awful lot to say on the matter.

“I’m talking about the children of Lords and Ladies, Edward,” Richie said with an eyeroll.

Eddie frowned. “You what?”

“It’s alright, Uncle Richie,” Vyvyan interjected, unable to suppress a smirk. “I don’t think they’ll be many of that lot at Scumbag College.”

He and Eddie grinned the family grin. Richie finally ceased his hustling and bustling and sat down beside Vyvyan, his eyes miles away, his mind clearly running. He started gnawing on one of his knuckles before his head snapped up again.

“Oh! Oh!” He gesticulated madly at Eddie. “Eddie, get the thing!”

“The thing?” Vyvyan repeated.

“Yeah, what thing?” Eddie asked.

Richie pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “The thing, Eddie. The very important, just-to-show-how-much-we-love-you, supposed-to-be-for-Christmas thing!”

Recognition flickered in Eddie’s eyes. “Oh! That thing!”

He hurried out of the room. Seconds later, Vyvyan heard his boots clunking on the staircase and then the floor above. He scrunched his face up and scrutinised Richie.

“You got me a Christmas present in September?”

He wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or suspicious. It wasn’t as if Richie, Eddie, or even Vyvyan, if he was being honest, were fantastic present buyers. To be fair, it was hard to be on a budget of 50p.

Richie laughed and wiped a greasy strand of hair from his forehead. “July, actually. There was a strange Glaswegian fellow at the carnival this year. Yes, couldn’t understand a word he was saying … although the fact Eddie was smashing his face in with a bottle at the time didn’t exactly help.” Vyvyan snorted at this. Richie continued, “Anyway, we found the thing in his coat pocket afterwards. It’s fortunate we can give it to you as a going away present now, really – I’m not sure the little bastard would’ve survived another four months in Eddie’s room.”

Vyvyan’s face lit up. “The thing is a living thing?”

There was a crash upstairs, and then the muffled sound of Eddie swearing. Now Vyvyan was very interested indeed.

“Oh, bollocks!” Richie mimed zipping his lips in frustration. “Me and my mouth. You didn’t hear anything!” He got up and marched to the doorway. “Eddie, for goodness sake, will you hurry up!?”

Moments later, thunder sounded on the stairs and Eddie burst back into the kitchen, panting like he’d just gone three rounds in a boxing ring. Tiny, freshly red scratch marks adorned his right cheek.

“Git!” Eddie shouted at his jacket pocket. He straightened himself up and walked back over to Vyvyan. “I’m afraid he’s not the nicest little thing on the planet, Vyvy, but you know how to handle yourself. Merry, uh, starting university very soon day?”

He rummaged around in his top pocket and produced what looked like a brown clump of something rotten. Intrigued, Vyvyan rose to his feet. On closer inspection, he noticed the brown clump was vibrating and squealing in Eddie’s fist. Whatever it was, it was furious. Vyvyan’s mouth formed a small ‘o’.

“What is it?” he asked softly – or as softly as Vyvyan Basterd was capable of, anyhow.

“It’s a guinea pig,” Eddie said.

“Am no bloody guinea pig, yeh daft egg head!” a surprisingly deep Glaswegian voice answered back. “Get your wee rodents right, why don’t yeh! I’m a hamster!”

Eddie’s jaw tensed – and then tensed a bit more when the hamster bit down on his thumb. He grimaced.

“You sure you want him? Like I said, not the nicest little thing…”

Vyvyan nodded vigorously. “A talking hamster? You bet your life I do! That’s the most completely brilliant thing I’ve ever seen!”

He held his hands out and waited eagerly as Eddie shook his own hand over them, trying to dislodge the creature’s teeth. From over in the kitchen, he noticed Richie wincing in sympathy as he cleared up the mugs, though it seemed he was content staying as far away the thing as possible. Vyvyan could imagine he’d told Eddie he was much too sensitive to handle feral beasts. But Vyvyan knew he was made of stronger stuff.

At last, the hamster landed with an “umph!” on Vyvyan’s palms. Eddie breathed out slowly and cradled his bleeding right hand. The hamster itself shuffled around a little on the new pale skin it found itself upon, grunting under its breath. Vyvyan watched, utterly enraptured, until it finally turned to just the right angle and he spotted its eyes.

They were intelligent. Unnaturally so. The two of them stared at one another for a moment, and the world halted.

“What you looking at, you little wimp?” the hamster asked him.

The world started turning again.

“I don’t know. Shall we find out?” Vyvyan asked back.

The hamster shuffled once more. “I bite, yeh know, pally.”

Vyvyan laughed. “That’s alright – so do I.”

He eyed the hamster menacingly and grinned – and was impressed when it held its ground. What was this? Was this understanding? Had Vyvyan found common ground… with a hamster?

Back in the kitchen, where Eddie was running his crimson hand under the cold tap, Vyvyan could overhear Richie conducting a not-so-well-hushed inquisition:

“How long has that thing been talking for?” he asked.

Eddie found himself a piece of old kitchen roll to dry his hand. “I don’t know, since not long after it was born, I suppose?”

“You mean it’s been talking the entire time we’ve had it, and you didn’t even tell me!”

“Well, I thought you might have noticed!”

“How many hamsters do you know that speak the Queen’s English, Edward!?”

Before things could escalate, Vyvyan cleared his throat and walked over to them. He was still grinning. No one had seen how he’d done it, but the hamster was safely secured in the front pocket of his denim jacket.

“I’m calling him Special Patrol Group – SPG for short,” Vyvyan said. “We’ve got a deal: I pierce his forehead like mine, and he’ll play ball. Isn’t that right, SPG?”

“Aye, aye,” SPG said. “But you better make me look good, laddie.”

Eddie flexed his injured hand. “Well, I can’t deny the name fits. If I’d known I could get away with driving a nail through your head, I’d have done it weeks ago, mate!”

“Tough luck, baldy,” SPG said.

And then he actually chortled. Eddie sucked in a breath as he glowered at the hamster. A vein in his forehead started pulsing. Clearly sensing some kind of surreal brawl between man and rodent was about to break out, Richie put a hand on Eddie’s arm to calm him down.

“In all seriousness, though,” Vyvyan said. He swallowed and looked both his uncles straight in their eyes before continuing, “Thank you. For all of it.”

He could hear his heart beating in his ears. How SPG wasn’t being juddered back and forth against his chest was truly beyond him.

Richie teared up. “Oh, Vyvyan…” He got out one of his rotten handkerchiefs and blew his nose. “You know the flat is always open to you, young man – day or night! Come rain or shine!”

Eddie rolled his eyes at his dramatics.

“There’s no need to thank us, skip. It’s what we’re here for,” he told Vyvyan seriously. “Besides, we’re just a couple of sad old bastards. We haven’t always got it right – we haven’t usually got it right, come to mention it.”

Richie swatted his arm.

“So? At least you tried,” Vyvyan said. “You’re better bastards than most, Uncle Eddie. And I’ll be back soon to visit. Promise.”

Eddie smiled at him. His uninjured hand jutted forwards, as if he was going to pat Vyvyan’s head but then remembered the tri-hawk – and the fact he was no longer six – and stopped himself. His arm lingered between them for a moment, then bowed back to Eddie’s side. He inclined his head awkwardly. Now it was Richie who rolled his eyes.

“Dear oh dear, do I have to instigate everything?” he asked, and shoved Eddie towards Vyvyan.

Somehow, the two of them caught one another in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall – which was lucky, since Richie’s shove had evidently come as a shock for Eddie, who stumbled into the hug, and wasn’t something Vyvyan had been expecting either. He heard SPG complaining from his sandwiched position in the middle, but he didn’t care. The little shit could suffer it.

To Vyvyan’s surprise, instinct took over, and he crushed Eddie in a death grip – like he really was six again, and Eddie was the grown-up person who could save him from whatever trouble might befall him. His throat swelled with something hard when he felt Eddie grip him back just as tightly. Somewhere to the right, Richie hummed in smug satisfaction.

“What a bunch o’ wimps,” SPG muttered from inside Vyvyan’s pocket.

~*~

Edward Hitler and Richard Richard watched from the window as their nephew drove off in his new yellow Ford Anglia. They stood in silence as the car reached the end of Mafeking Parade, turned a corner, and disappeared.

An almost foreign tranquillity had descended over the flat in the last few minutes. Richie was dabbing at his eyes with his handkerchief when he noticed Eddie remove his glasses to wipe something suspiciously wet from his own eyes. This time, Richie let it pass uncommented upon.

“Our Vyvyan, off to university,” he said instead, calmer than he’d been all afternoon.

“He really is gonna become a doctor,” Eddie said. He was smiling. His face was aching, he was smiling so much. “He’s the first one in the family to leave Hammersmith, as far as I know, try to make something of himself…”

“And he’ll be alright, won’t he, Eddie?” Richie left the window and wandered back into the kitchen to unfasten his apron. Whatever fannying around he’d been doing in there before Vyvyan’s arrival didn’t seem important now. “I mean, I know he’s an adult now and this is very exciting, obviously, but you do think he’s making the right decision, don’t you? You are happy about this?”

Eddie chuckled to himself, bathing in the lonely strip of afternoon sunlight the window let into the drawing room. He was still staring out at the world.

“Richie, I’m over the bloody moon. And he can’t make any worse decisions than we have, can he?” Then Eddie sighed and turned away from the window. “Or Pauline…”

Richie crept up behind him and wrapped his arms around his middle, bringing his chin to rest on Eddie’s shoulder. Neither of them spoke for a moment. They both watched the world outside. Hammersmith roared on beneath them: casual, ordinary, full of laughter, and full of tears. Eventually, Eddie turned his head and kissed Richie’s greasy hairline.

“I love you, Rich. I hope you know that,” he said.

Richie gave him a squeeze. “Of course I do, Eddie.” He kissed his shoulder tenderly for several seconds. “I love you too.”

Eddie nodded to himself, distracted but content. Richie’s face popped up again by the crook of Eddie’s neck. His former soulfulness had morphed into a pervy leer. He trailed his hands down to Eddie’s hips and spun him around gently, so they were facing.

“Now, young man, how about we take you to bed so I can tend to your injuries?” he suggested.

Eddie smirked at him. “My terrible, possibly life-threatening, hamster-inflicted injuries, you mean?”

“Mmm, the very same,” Richie purred.

They kissed, and Eddie pulled the curtain across the window, blocking out Hammersmith altogether. Richie raised an eyebrow and brought one of his hands upwards to trace circles over Eddie’s nipples.

“Feeling frisky, are we?” he asked.

“I just don’t feel like the stairs,” Eddie said. “Not in my current, weakened state.”

He smiled and let Richie guide him to the sofa, undo his fly, kneel in front of him… and the rest, of course, was just between the two of them. From here to eternity.

#the young ones #tyo #bbc bottom #vyvyan basterd #eddie hitler #richie richard #spg #fanfic #wips #an epilogue and a prologue

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