#overwhelmed?? poverty is overwhelming not reaching the last week of the month is overwhelming | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yesimwriting · 5 months

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okay but after the whole lucy gray thing we know coryo was done with “love” and everything BUT what if during the following year of thg he ends up falling in love with another tribute also from district 12 and he’s just going through it bad (again) however he somehow ends up actually getting the girl in the end, maybe even buying her way into the capitol

A/n I've been thinking about a very specific part of this since i first read it but i told myself no more fic writing until i finished at least one of my essays for finals seasons 😭

also ik in the book (and it's implied in the movie) that after the events of the book he lives with the plinths, but let's pretend he lives on his own with access to the plinth fortune for privacy

ik that makes it sound like it's smutty, but it's not lol

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Proximity aggravates distance. The closer you are to something, the more damage any remaining space causes.

The few feet dividing the two of you have no right to jab at something inside of him the way it does. It's bad enough that instead of going to bed after a long night of fulfilling his apprenticeship duties under Volumnia's watchful eye, he stopped by your apartment. Only one floor away from his.

For months, the only thing holding the two of you together had been memories of those few nights before the Games.

Coriolanus's attempt to remain indifferent towards you had quickly failed, and his backup plan of learning to loathe you had proven to be just as useless. So he settled on letting you unabashedly take his hand whenever fear overwhelmed you and committing the way your kind eyes watched him to memory.

You're looking around the room--his room--openly, eyes darting from the mahogany surface of his desk to the details elegantly carved into his bed frame.

His fingertips itch with the uncertain desire to reach for you. You've only been in the Capitol for about a day and a half. Less than 48 hours. But the move, the beginning of a program for certain, qualifying victors and their families, had been planned for months.

You shouldn't feel like a phantom that'll vanish if he lets go for too long. "What are you thinking about?"

The question grounds you the same way it did last time he asked. You do your best to hide it, but you're still adjusting, still surprised that he managed to find a way to bring you together again. Just like he promised. Your doubt isn't personal, a fact he has to remind himself of.

"I'm just..." You tilt your head slightly, gaze retreating from the royal blue wallpaper and silver trim of his bedroom walls, "Analyzing."

The comment is followed by an easygoing smile that pinches at something in his chest. His new apartment, the penthouse of one of the largest buildings in the city, another gift from the ever flowing well that is the Plinth fortune, still reeks of former poverty. The few things that hint at the personal are hidden behind layers of desperate wealth so thick the items might as well be standard.

A lifetime spent in 12 means that there's no way you can read between the lines. He can't decide if your perspective will make this room look worse or better. It's a nice bedroom, definitely grander than any bedroom you've stood in before...but it's understated. Maybe even disappointing to someone like you.

"Analyzing?"

You turn fully, "A bedroom says a lot about a person."

"You might get more out of analyzing my study," an oddly school boy worthy partial truth slips out before he can stop himself, "I think I've been spending more time there than here recently."

You shake your head once, eyes landing on the crimson red vase filed with crisp white roses his grandma'am had gifted him on his last visit. Her pride and joy now more than ever. "I'm seeing all I need."

A hint of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. It's the most genuine expression that's slipped past him in weeks. When he first worked out a way to bring you here, some doubting part of him wondered if the draw he felt towards you would still exist in person.

Less than two weeks after your victorious departure from the Capitol, he had searched through your files and found your address. He had written the letter in a moment of weakness and only sent it after deciding that writing a letter to never be sent is the only thing more pathetic than writing to you in the first place. He had spent the week following that wallowing in self loathing until an age-stained envelope arrived at his door.

"And what are you seeing?" He keeps his tone light. This is ridiculous. He dragged himself and his family out of a gutter clogged by the casualties of war. Coriolanus is stronger than fleeting emotion now. Your opinions on his room can't possibly affect him.

If he were to simplify what brought you here, to the Capitol, to him, he could blame it on his bedroom. The urge to see you, to figure out some way the two of you closer together before your undeserving district could swallow you whole in an attempt to make you like them, would flare up whenever he received one of your letters.

Those urges, however, had never burned him. Not until you wrote about wanting to see him out of the most curious nostalgia you'd ever felt. You wanted to see him in a way that'd let you know what his room looked like, in a way that'd let you guess at his favorite color.

He takes a few steps forward, making the conscious decision to not reach for you. You've never rejected his advances, not even when he instinctually intertwined your fingers after picking you and your family up from the train station. You had scolded him after, telling him that you'd hear no end of it from your mother. It took a lot of focus for Coriolanus to not smile at that. You spoke of it like it would've never occurred to you to just pull your hand away.

Your eyes shift from end of the room to the other. Coriolanus moves carefully, passing you before sitting at the edge of his crisply made bed.

"Before you make your decision..." You turn instinctually, expression so polite and expecting he almost doesn't know how to bear it. His hand briefly pats the space beside him in a silent invitation. "So you can see it from all perspectives."

Your head tilts slightly, and for a moment, Coriolanus can practically feel your rejection. Then you move, sock clad feet treading over smooth white-gray marble. You sit next to him so assuredly, anyone else would have taken the way you neatly fold your hands in your lap as politeness instead of a display of nerves.

Your family's presence makes you less pliable. It's a factor he's willing to work around considering that you would've never left them to come to the Capitol. And even if he had managed to talk you into it, your nostalgia and homesickness would've made you more of a ghost to him than before.

At least the position your family's in is uncertain enough to allow for some leeway in the social norms that you cling to. However, every once in awhile it hits you that at the end of the day, he's still a boy that you're close to, which means that it's your duty to create the distance necessary to keep everything proper. Leaving your bedroom in the middle of the night because said boy knocked at your door and then entering his room in his empty penthouse is something you would've done under normal circumstances.

But your connection isn't that black and white. If it was something so simple, he would have been able to sever it the night before your Games.

"It makes all the difference," you agree warmly, and only somewhat sarcastically. You give yourself another second to take in the space, "I like it."

He can tell that you mean it. "I haven't fully settled in yet."

You shrug, paying him little mind, "There's something about it that just feels like you."

Coriolanus shifts his focus to the ground. You can't possibly mean it in the way that he sees the room, as a reminder that he still doesn't fully fit into who he's become.

"I've been meaning to pick up a few things," he says, "Tomorrow, after my classes, I was thinking about browsing some paintings." Another half truth. He had been meaning to. Mrs. Plinth had instructed him to visit her art dealer whenever he had enough free time to pick out a few pieces to demonstrate his taste. He'd been putting it off as a dismissable task, but it feels like a safe way to give you your first taste of life in the Capitol. "If you'd like to help me pick some out."

You smile, eyebrows pinching together in a way that's just barely noticeable. You're as interested as you are puzzled. "I'd like that." Relaxing enough to let your hand rest between the two of you, you beam, "I don't know if I'd be much help, but I'd like that."

He'd be willing to get anything that caught your eye. Paintings and vases already with such an exclusive art dealer hold more or less the same level of standing, anyway.

Coriolanus moves his hand slowly, careful not to startle you before his fingers can settle against your own. You instinctually turn over your palm, intertwining your fingers. "I trust you."

You stare at him with wide, understanding eyes. Sometimes when you look at him, really look at him, Coriolanus is struck with the feeling that you can see right through him. It's an irrational feeling, that every good action and cruel deed is reflected in his eyes. Moments like this make it hard to be near you. They also, however, make the thought of adding distance between the two of you unbearable.

"I have an early class."

You dip your chin forward in an attempt to accept what you're considering a dismissal. "Right, you must be tired." The words sit between you for a long moment.

Your free hand presses into the silk of your still new pajamas. You shift like you're going to stand. His hold on your hand tightens before you can move away. You still.

He's being ridiculous. There's nothing about this situation that warrants his inability to look at you. "Stay here." His thumb runs across your knuckles. "With me."

The words are soft enough to be a request, but there's not enough space between them for questioning. He cautiously lifts his head enough to take in your reaction.

"What?" It's a display of shock more than an actual question. Coriolanus squeezes your hand even tighter. You don't try to get him to let go, but you do shift away just enough to create the reminder of distance. "You know I can't."

His other hand reaches forward, settling against your wrist. "Why not?" He doesn't mean for his voice to come off as raspy, as desperate as it does.

You swallow, attempting to straighten your spine in an attempt to offset the instinctual urge to hide your face. This isn't a topic you're even comfortable implying. "My mother would kill me if she so much as found out that I came up here so late, let alone..." You trail off, head dropping to your lap. "Stayed here."

He envelops your hand between both of his. "She knows we're friendly."

You look up just long enough to imply a pointed not that friendly. "It's--" You blink, eyes darting from to your joint hands and then finally to the ground. "You know it's..."

Coriolanus leans forward. The shift is small, just enough for his knee to brush against yours. "It's what?" He keeps his voice low, a barely there whisper that comes off as so innocent it nearly circles back to anything but.

You glance up, so wide eyed and flighty he's reminded of a rabbit. The level of precaution you're exuding can't just be about your mother's opinions, can it? He studies your expression openly, taking in the set of your eyebrows and the way you steadily press your lips together to avoid speaking without thinking. At least some part of you believes in your mother's concerns.

The realization strike shim so quickly he has to focus on keeping his expression neutral. Your bond is so much more than just coming together on a random night where exhaustion's already clouding his focus.

It will happen between the two of you. Eventually. But not yet. You've barely entered the Capitol and every aspect of your life has become vastly different than what you're accustomed to. If he were to attempt to cement any relationship between the two of you like that now, you'd be too overwhelmed or you might think that that's the only reason he brought you here.

He learned early on that it's best to introduce adjustments to you slowly, giving you enough time to hold onto ideas before enacting them. Anything of that nature would work that way too.

"I haven't been able to see much of you." He focuses on your hand, still resting safely between both of his. The words came out too quickly, a flash of some genuine sort of emotion that claw at him on the way out. With you, sometimes a glimpse of feeling works wonders.

Your thumb draws gentle patterns against the side of his hand. "You're busy." He relaxes his hand, turning over his palm. You place his hand on your knee, fingers tracing the natural creases etched into his skin. "You're important."

The way that last word comes out makes an uncertain warmth crawl up his neck. "I--I've wanted to see you more." Another thing he means so much it turns his stomach to admit it.

Your nail drags down a line that cuts across the length of his hand. "Me too."

He bends his fingers slowly, moving in until he's trapped your pointer finger against his palm. "Then stay." You twist your finger enough to express some lighthearted irritation, but not enough to count as a real attempt at escaping. "If your mother says anything, I'll explain it to her." You glare at him without any true aggression. "She likes me, doesn't she?"

Coriolanus already knows the answer. She credits your survival to him. You had mentioned that in a letter once, telling him that she insisted you pass along her gratitude after discovering that the two of you had started to correspond regularly.

He also saw the way she reacted to realizing that she had made it to the Capitol. Your mother's family had once been part of the wealthier side of 12. You're part of a recently fallen line of mine owners, a fact that your mother has only pretended to let go of. He saw a hunger behind her eyes that reminded him of a warped version of his own.

Coriolanus gave her back the pride the war had stolen from her family name tenfold. He owes her this much.

"She'd trade me for you in a heartbeat." He hears the grin in your voice more than he sees it. Your family means the world to you, which means he's subjected himself to seeking your mother's validation and winning over your two younger sisters.

It's not the way he'd choose to spend his limited free time, especially with you standing right there, but he's endured worse for less of a pay off. "Then she'd be a fool."

You fight to hold his gaze. "I doubt that."

Your eyes are pools of honest, unfiltered affection. The care that you're watching him with makes it hard to swallow. The instinct to press, to dig and claw and tear anything that could be hiding an ulterior motive into shreds makes it hard to take a full breath. You've always worn your heart on your sleeve. You're not a flighty songbird that uses its charm to distract its prey from its fang-like talons.

"Stay." Again. So breathless he almost doesn't recognize the word as his own.

The deliberation is transparent behind your eyes. You're considering it, but you're still not convinced. The hesitation stings in a way he doesn't understand. "I don't want to give her a reason to not like you."

So softly spoken he's shocked by the way the words manage to feel like a nail being hammered into his chest.

"She's let you stay with other people before." The response is too sharp, too sudden. He should refocus and think through what he's about to say. Coriolanus knows that it's easier to get you to agree to something through the use of honey sweetened words and displays of patience. "You wrote about him."

The confusion that briefly etches its way into your expression threatens to quell the uncomfortable swell of jealousy tightening his chest. "Warren?" The name makes tints the air between you with something acidic. "That was--different."

Your explanation adds an edge to the pressure in his chest. "Why?"

"We weren't--" You cut yourself off, the instinct to placate him and your desire to not start a conversation you can't finish battling each other oddly. "We were never alone." You squeeze his hand as best as you can. "He's a family friend and I only stayed over when my mom had to work late and I was too young to be alone for so long, so I haven't stayed over in years. And--and he shared a room with three of his siblings and his parents checked on us constantly."

He frowns, unconvinced. The lack of approval has you clinging to him, adjusting your hold on his hand as you gently trail your knuckles against the inside of his wrist. "I do miss you." You stare at your hands. "I know it's weird because we're--y'know--closer than before, but I-I do miss you."

The expanding wave of tension in his chest begins to deflate. You're good at that, at redirecting and soothing without even realizing it. A talent that had contributed to his original desire to loathe you. "I understand that." He runs his thumb over your knuckles. "Things aren't going to get less busy. That's why I want to use all the time we have."

You nod slowly, a hint of understanding making its appearance in the set of your brow. "I know."

"What you wrote," he begins, too aware of how much he means the question that follows, "Did you mean it."

"Of course I did." Not an ounce of hesitation, of uncertainty.

He turns your hand over before shifting his fingers up the inside of your wrist. "You wrote about wanting to see me."

"I did..." The pad of his thumb gently makes its way up your forearm. Your even breathing falters. "I do."

Coriolanus lets himself look up just enough to take in your expression. "Then stay." He swallows, too aware of the sudden dryness of his mouth. "Please."

You glance up at him through your lashes. There's a softness there that jabs at him. "Okay."

He lifts the back of your hand, carefully brushing his lips against your skin. "You mentioned wanting to see a library."

You wrote about it once. A brief mention in one of your letters of the small room in your school's office that served as a sort of communal study space with a few books stacked on a small shelf. Your longing had been clear.

Nodding curiously, you agree, "Yeah?"

"I could leave for my classes a little earlier tomorrow, you could come with me." The proposal comes out slowly, his own suggestion taking him by surprise. "My driver could bring you back, that'll give you time to meet the tutor that's being sent over for your sisters, and then when I get back we'll look at the paintings."

You immediately grin, "Really?"

He finds himself smiling back, pulling your arm closer. "Whatever you want."

You beam. "I'd really like that."

"Good," he affirms with a nod of his head that's a touch too forward. He regrets it almost immediately. "If you like it, I might be able to get your own tutor to meet you at a library."

Part of the still uncertain victor program relies on setting up the victor and their family with a new life. Education plays a role in that. Placing any one of you in an actual Capitol run institution is far out of the question. For everyone's sake. Even if the thought of sharing a classroom with someone from 12 didn't horrify the Capitol parents, you and your siblings wouldn't be able to just jump in. It's not that he views you as unintelligent, but District 12's education system isn't exactly on par with the Capitol's.

"That sounds nice," you sit up a little straighter, excited by the prospect, "A part of me kind of misses school."

Another aspect of your personality that he had learned about after your Games. You like school for the sake of it. "I'll check on the arrangements tomorrow."

He clears his throat before you can do more than just nod, "It's getting late."

Coriolanus carefully sets your hand down on the comforter. You awkwardly shift, now more aware of what you agreed to than ever. "Right," you push yourself to stand, "You need your sleep."

He pulls back his sheets before you can think about it even further. You crawl into the provided space without looking at anything in particular. He's quick to join you beneath the safety of plush bedding before leaning over and turning off the bedside lamp.

Darkness floods the space. There's something about the absence of light that makes things feel heavier. The potential intimacy of the situation sneaks up on him with no warning.

This isn't a loss of control. It can't be. It was his idea, he had pushed and convinced you to stay here. He's aware of everything that's led up to this moment, but that's not enough to stop him from wondering if this is something than he should have known better than to embrace. He had accepted the familiar, fickle knotting of his stomach once before.

Steady warmth presses itself against his arm. He blinks, head turning a second too quickly. Your hand has found his. Coriolanus relaxes, allowing himself to fully relax against his pillow. You pick up on his shift, reflecting it by laying down as well.

For someone that had been so hesitant, you seem to know what to do better than he does. You pull his arm towards you, gently trailing your fingers against the exposed skin. Heat crawls up his neck.

"Goodnight," you mumble, voice already drowsy.

Coriolanus lets out a long breath. He grasps your hand, bringing it back to his lips before settling back into the position the two of you were in before. "Goodnight."

#the hunger games #coriolanus snow x reader #coriolanus snow #the hunger games x reader #the ballad of songbirds and snakes x reader #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #coriolanus x reader

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dandelionrevolution · 2 months

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I’m not sure how reliably I’ll be able to keep up with it, but I’ve been wanting to start posting weekly or monthly Good News compilations, with a focus on ecology but also some health and human rights type stuff. I’ll try to keep the sources recent (like from within the last week or month, whichever it happens to be), but sometimes original dates are hard to find. Also, all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.

Anyway, here’s some good news from the first week of March!

1. Mexican Wolf Population Grows for Eighth Consecutive Year

““In total, 99 pups carefully selected for their genetic value have been placed in 40 wild dens since 2016, and some of these fosters have produced litters of their own. While recovery is in the future, examining the last decade of data certainly provides optimism that recovery will be achieved.””

2. “Remarkable achievement:” Victoria solar farm reaches full power ahead of schedule

“The 130MW Glenrowan solar farm in Victoria has knocked out another milestone, reaching full power and completing final grid connection testing just months after achieving first generation in late November.”

3. UTEP scientists capture first known photographs of tropical bird long thought lost

“The yellow-crested helmetshrike is a rare bird species endemic to Africa that had been listed as “lost” by the American Bird Conservancy when it hadn’t been seen in nearly two decades. Until now.”

4. France Protects Abortion as a 'Guaranteed Freedom' in Constitution

“[A]t a special congress in Versailles, France’s parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to add the freedom to have an abortion to the country’s constitution. Though abortion has been legal in France since 1975, the historic move aims to establish a safeguard in the face of global attacks on abortion access and sexual and reproductive health rights.”

5. [Fish & Wildlife] Service Approves Conservation Agreement for Six Aquatic Species in the Trinity River Basin

“Besides conserving the six species in the CCAA, activities implemented in this agreement will also improve the water quality and natural flows of rivers for the benefit of rural and urban communities dependent on these water sources.”

6. Reforestation offset the effects of global warming in the southeastern United States

“In America’s southeast, except for most of Florida and Virginia, “temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled,” due to reforestation, even as most of the world has grown warmer, reports The Guardian.”

7. Places across the U.S. are testing no-strings cash as part of the social safety net

“Cash aid without conditions was considered a radical idea before the pandemic. But early results from a program in Stockton, Calif., showed promise. Then interest exploded after it became clear how much COVID stimulus checks and emergency rental payments had helped people. The U.S. Census Bureau found that an expanded child tax credit cut child poverty in half.”

8. The Road to Recovery for the Florida Golden Aster: Why We Should Care

“After a five-year review conducted in 2009 recommended reclassifying the species to threatened, the Florida golden aster was proposed for removal from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Plants due to recovery in June 2021, indicating the threats to the species had been reduced or eliminated.”

9. A smart molecule beats the mutation behind most pancreatic cancer

“Researchers have designed a candidate drug that could help make pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, a treatable, perhaps even curable, condition.”

10. Nurses’ union at Austin’s Ascension Seton Medical Center ratifies historic first contract

“The contract, which NNOC said in a news release was “overwhelmingly” voted through by the union, includes provisions the union believes will improve patient care and retention of nurses.”

This and future editions will also be going up on my new Ko-fi, where you can support my art and get doodled phone wallpapers! EDIT: Actually, I can't find any indication that curating links like this is allowed on Ko-fi, so to play it safe I'll stick to just posting here on Tumblr. BUT, you can still support me over on Ko-fi if you want to see my Good News compilations continue!

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newstfionline · 10 months

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Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Global hunger enters a grim ‘new normal’ (Washington Post) While the fact that there wasn’t a major increase in global hunger between 2021 and 2022 could be viewed as a positive sign, there are a lot more negative trends to be gleaned from the United Nations’ annual flagship report on global food security, which was released last week. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that between 691 million and 783 million people faced hunger last year. The midrange of that calculation, about 735 million, is 122 million more people going hungry than in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic shook the world. This year’s report—“The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023”—also found that nearly 30 percent of humanity, or roughly 2.4 billion people, lacked access to adequate food in 2022, while an even greater number—3.1 billion people—were unable to afford a healthy diet. It projected that by the end of the decade, despite significant poverty alleviation initiatives, some 600 million people will still be chronically undernourished, a blow to U.N.-outlined goals of eliminating hunger by 2030. Qu Dongyu, director general of the FAO, said in a statement. “This is the ‘new normal’ where climate change, conflict, and economic instability are pushing those on the margins even further from safety.”

Air quality warnings return in U.S. as Canada deploys troops for wildfires (Washington Post) Canada deployed its military to help overwhelmed local authorities and emergency workers fight intensifying wildfires, which have burned nearly 25 million acres of the country’s land so far this year and prompted authorities in parts of the United States to issue air quality warnings. The Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian Coast Guard will deploy to British Columbia, in the west of the country, after the province submitted a request for federal assistance that the Canadian government approved, it said Sunday. Smoke from the fires turned the sky orange in parts of the U.S. East Coast last month, prompting local health authorities to issue air quality warnings and ask people, especially the most vulnerable, to stay indoors. Parts of the U.S. Northeast, Midwest and South, as well as the Great Plains, were forecast to reach air quality levels Monday that are unhealthy for vulnerable people, including Pittsburgh, Chicago and Nashville, according to AirNow, a tracker maintained by a group of U.S. government agencies. Parts of Iowa and cities on the northeast border with Canada—including Cleveland and Buffalo—were expected to experience “unhealthy” air quality levels, according to AirNow. Louisville, the most populous city in Kentucky, was under an Air Quality Alert on Monday.

Rumbles in Alaska (1440) Alaskans spent the weekend experiencing an uptick in seismic activity, with a series of volcanic eruptions from the remote Shishaldin Volcano Friday followed by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake late Saturday morning off the southwestern coast. The volcano is nestled in the middle of the sparsely populated Aleutian Islands, part of the archipelago making up the Alaskan peninsula. Shishaldin started exhibiting low-intensity eruptions Tuesday but began Friday with a burst that sent an ash cloud nearly 40,000 feet in the air. Meanwhile, the Saturday earthquake was the strongest to hit the area since an 8.2 magnitude quake in 2021. The region sits along the northeastern ridge of the “Ring of Fire”—a set of tectonic boundaries that encircle the Pacific basin, giving rise to numerous volcanoes and frequent earthquakes along its perimeter.

Weeks of extreme heat are straining aging infrastructure. (WSJ) A streak of 110-degree days is frying Phoenix, and an unrelenting heat wave is punishing Texas and other parts of the South. Some of the hardest-hit areas will face hotter temperatures in the coming days, forecasters say. The heat wave is testing the U.S. electric grid, which is being asked to deliver more power for running air conditioners without much of a break for routine maintenance. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a nonprofit that monitors the health of the bulk power system, says large portions of the U.S. could face blackouts this summer.

American Paychecks Grow, Europeans Become Poorer (WSJ) Americans’ growing paychecks surpassed inflation for the first time in two years, providing some financial relief to workers, while complicating the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tame price increases. Inflation-adjusted average hourly wages rose 1.2% in June from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. That marked the second straight month of seasonally adjusted gains after two years when workers’ historically elevated raises were erased by price increases. Europeans, meanwhile, are facing a new economic reality: They are becoming poorer. The French are eating less foie gras and drinking less red wine. Spaniards are stinting on olive oil. Finns are being urged to use saunas on windy days when energy is less expensive. German meat and milk consumption has fallen to the lowest level in three decades. With consumption spending in free fall, Europe tipped into recession at the start of the year, reinforcing a sense of relative economic, political and military decline.

A National Treasure, Tarnished: Can Britain Fix Its Health Service? (NYT) Fifteen hours after she was taken out of an ambulance at Queen’s Hospital with chest pains and pneumonia, Marian Patten was still in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in a ward. Mrs. Patten, 78, was luckier than others who arrived at this teeming hospital, east of London: She had not yet been wheeled into a hallway. For months, doctors at Queen’s have been forced to treat people in a corridor because of a lack of space. As the ambulances kept pulling up outside, the doctor supervising the E.R., Darryl Wood, said it was only a matter of time before nurses would begin diverting patients into the overflow space again. “We’re in that mode every day now because the N.H.S. doesn’t have the capacity to deal with all the patients,” Dr. Wood said. As it turns 75 this month, the N.H.S., a proud symbol of Britain’s welfare state, is in the deepest crisis of its history: flooded by aging, enfeebled patients; starved of investment in equipment and facilities; and understaffed by doctors and nurses, many of whom are so burned out that they are either joining strikes or leaving for jobs abroad. Interviews over three months with doctors, nurses, patients, hospital administrators and medical analysts depict a system so profoundly troubled that some experts warn that the health service is at risk of collapse.

Riots in France Highlight a Vicious Cycle Between Police and Minorities (NY) Years before France was inflamed with anger at the police killing of a teenager during a traffic stop, there was the notorious Théo Luhaka case. Mr. Luhaka, 22, a Black soccer player, was cutting through a known drug-dealing zone in his housing project in a Paris suburb in 2017 when the police swept in to conduct identity checks. Mr. Luhaka was wrestled to the ground by three police officers, who hit him repeatedly and sprayed tear gas in his face. When it was over, he was bleeding from a four inch tear in his rectum, caused by one of the officers’ expandable batons. Mr. Luhaka’s housing project, and others around Paris, erupted in fury. He was held up as a symbol of what activists had been denouncing for years: discriminatory policing that violently targets minority youth, particularly in France’s poor areas. And there was a sense that, this time, something would change. Instead, the relationship between the country’s minority populations and its heavy-handed police force worsened, many experts say, as evident in the tumultuous aftermath of the killing in late June of Nahel Merzouk, 17, a French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent. After multiple violent, publicized encounters involving the police, a pattern emerged: Each episode led to an outburst of rage and demands for change, followed by a pushback from increasingly powerful police unions and dismissals from the government. “It’s a repeating cycle, unfortunately,” said Lanna Hollo, a human rights lawyer in Paris who has worked on policing issues for 15 years. “What characterizes France is denial. There is a total denial that there is a structural, systemic problem in the police.”

Wind-fanned wildfires force thousands to flee seaside resorts outside Greek capital (AP) Wildfires outside Athens forced thousands to flee seaside resorts, closed highways and gutted vacation homes Monday, as high winds pushed flames through hillside scrub and pine forests parched by days of extreme heat. Authorities issued evacuation orders for at least six seaside communities as two major wildfires edged closer to summer resort towns and gusts of wind hit 70 kph (45 mph). The army, police special forces and volunteer rescuers freed retirees from their homes, rescued horses from a stable, and helped monks flee a monastery threatened by the flames.

Russia blames Ukraine for attack on key Crimea military supply bridge that kills 2 (AP) Traffic on a key military supply bridge connecting Crimea to Russia’s mainland came to a standstill Monday after one of its sections was blown up, killing two people and wounding their daughter. Russian officials blamed the attack on Ukraine, but Kyiv officials didn’t openly admit it. The strike on the 19-kilometer (12-mile) Kerch Bridge was carried out by two Ukrainian sea drones, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said. Ukrainian officials didn’t claim responsibility for the attack, which is the second major strike on the bridge since October, when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections. The $3.6 billion bridge is the longest in Europe and is crucial for enabling Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine during the almost 17-month-long war.

Russia halts wartime deal that allows Ukraine to ship grain (AP) Russia said Monday it has halted an unprecedented wartime deal that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed more people into poverty. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced halting the deal in a conference call with reporters, adding that Russia will return to the deal after its demands are met. “When the part of the Black Sea deal related to Russia is implemented, Russia will immediately return to the implementation of the deal,” Peskov said. Russia has complained that restrictions on shipping and insurance have hampered its exports of food and fertilizer—also critical to the global food chain.

China’s youth unemployment hits record high (BBC) As China’s post-pandemic recovery falters, last month 21.3% of 16 to 24 year olds in the nation’s urban areas were unemployed. The second largest economy only grew 0.8% in the three months, with demand for Chinese goods falling while local government debt and the housing market skyrocketed.

13 found dead in flooded tunnel as South Korean storm toll rises to 40 (Washington Post) Thirteen bodies were recovered from a tunnel in South Korea as the flooding death toll across the country rose to at least 40. Cars were trapped in a tunnel underpass in Osong near the city of Cheongju, about 70 miles south of Seoul, when the Miho River burst its banks on Saturday. More than 10 vehicles including a bus were flooded and 13 people were killed, with nine rescued at the scene, the Ministry of Public Administration and Safety said in a statement on Monday. Up to 23 inches of rain has fallen on South Korea since Thursday, triggering landslides and road collapses, wiping out crops, and damaging homes and other buildings.

#headlines #news

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gaiuswrites · 3 years

Text

King of Cups || Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Tower

Archive: ao3 | masterlist | two

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: You’re apart of the Refugee Relief Movement, an intergalactic organization providing aid throughout the systems, and you find yourself assisting at a resettlement camp in Lothal when disaster strikes, changing your life forever, intertwining your path with that of a certain Mandalorian bounty hunter.

Word count: 3.7k~

Rated: Mature

Warnings: descriptive violence, blood/injury mentioning, danger, mature language

Notes: Hi y'all, welcome. This fic is going to be set during Season 2 of The Mandalorian, and will be what I like to call ‘canon adjacent’. ALSo, this chapter is very much so Reader focused, setting up the scene and the general pacing of the story, but naturally, Din will be more and more featured as things progress. I’m a sucker for backstory and a slow burn, so ye be warned. Please feel free to reach out to me. :) I’d love to hear from you lovely little beans. Be safe out there, friends.

Lothal was a planet all too familiar with occupation.

You remember seeing a quote somewhere that read ‘Look no further than Lothal if you want to see what happens when the Empire takes control of an entire world’; and although the Imperial chokehold had loosened when the Empire fell, the planet, even all these years later, still found itself gasping for breath.

Off world migration from the Core Worlds had been popularized since the expansion of the Imperial government bureaucracy, which brought booming business opportunities for the fortunate few, but as the rich became richer, the poor grew poorer. The Lothalites were forced out of their homes, off their own lands—refugees on their own planet; forced to resettle and relocate with nothing but the clothes on their back and the possessions they could cram into their pockets. The only heirlooms passed on from generation to generation were that of poverty, tall tales of former splendor, and the greatest of ancestral traumas: disillusionment.

The truly desperate turned to crime, and what couldn’t be solved by back-dealings and blaster fire was managed with fear mongering and the bitter flair of xenophobia. There was always a species to blame, and it was always the one who seemed to be doing better off, no matter how slight the margin.

Greed. Fear. Despair. These are the currencies in which the galaxy trades.

And so it was then, and continued to be, cycle after cycle. History, always finding clever ways to repeat itself.

On bad days, pollution still loomed heavy over the atmosphere—remnants of the fires from the Imperial occupation still clinging on to Lothal’s weary bones. She had been stripped during that time; gutted and strung up by her feet to dangle from the Empire’s meat hook, exsanguinated slowly, drop by drop, until she had nothing left to give. Her resources and minerals and ore and water and seed, robbed. Pillaged.

She’s free from it now, but the scars remain— the planet remembers. Her people do not forget. Like muscle memory, they all ungulate to this synthesized rhythm they can’t seem to shake, day in and day out, wandering. Forever unsettled.

The planet had always had a diverse population and had become something of a safe haven for other abandoned people fleeing their home worlds, determined to find somewhere - anywhere - for them to survive. Lothal provided that for them. It wasn’t rich or bountiful by any stretch, but it was simple and safe—safe in the way hidden things in plain sight are. One could blend into the crowd of many, unique faces, of all races and backgrounds; you could be anonymous, if you wanted. You could be free.

That’s how you’ve found yourself here in Jortho. You had been with the Refugee Relief Movement for the better part of what felt like forever, and they had transferred you to this planet not six weeks ago. You were out on rotation; the RRM sends someone new twice a cycle for the span of a month or two to varying locations to supply rations, aid with the influx of refugees, organize resettlement lodgings, and generally be of assistance when and where you could. However, your tenure on this temperate planet was coming to a close, and soon you’d be flying back to the headquarters on Coruscant before being bounced to another post somewhere out among the stars.

You love your job. You know it’s unpopular to say, but you do. It’s fulfilling and impactful and indescribably special. The individuals you meet, the stories you hear, they’re invaluable— priceless and precious, like handmade trinkets crafted by the fingers of a child; you press them all to your heart, holding them there. You’d be lying if you said it didn’t get to you— the weight of it; the plights of all of these people, all of these lives, burdening your conscience. It isn’t always painless— you aren’t immune to it. Even so, on most nights you manage to sleep easy, tucked away aboard the transport freighter you flew in on with the batch of settlers newly assimilated into town knowing Maker, at least you were doing something— anything— everything you could.

And really, to call Jortho a town would be an insult to all towns everywhere—but ‘town’ has a certain charm to it that ‘refugee camp’ simply did not, and it gave the people hope. Pride, even. That they belonged somewhere.

You suppose that’s all anyone wants. To belong.

A feather soft gust of wind tickles the golden blades of prairie grass as the sun, bleary and tired, starts dipping from the sky. The crickbeets begin their song early, trilling, sensing Lothal’s moons still coyly tucked away, hiding somewhere along the horizon. A smile adorns your face, private and serene, as you bring a bowl of broth up to your lips, humming when the warm liquid meets your tongue. You sigh, contented, taking in the sights before you; how the dusk blurs the aromatic air, making it opaque, the shuttles docked across the way from you casting long purple shadows onto the flat plains, the snowcapped mountains in the distance bordering the cant of the planet’s surface, nestling Jortho in a shallow valley.

You feel calm, at peace, and take another sip.

An easy moment passes, and it’s the last one you get before silence stalks up from behind you.

You don’t notice it at first, like any patient predator, it goes undetected: the white noise, the nothingness— until finally, you do and then suddenly it’s everywhere. On top of you. Smothering you. Goosebumps stipple your skin and you bristle. The insects have stopped chirping. The breeze has stilled. The air hangs dead.

And then—

Chaos.

You’re hit with a blast of crushing heat, the sheer power of it picking you up off your feet and onto your side, sending your body careening into a nearby structure. Your shoulder takes most of the blow, but your neck still snaps backwards unnaturally, the back of your head colliding with the stone wall behind you with a dull thwack. You let out a groaned cry at the impact, the wind knocked out of your lungs as you crumple to the ground.

For an instant, your vision goes white, stars popping and fusing out in front of your pupils, and it’s like you can feel everything and nothing all at once, hollow but overwhelmed, and all you want to do is close your eyes and drift asleep— Maker that would feel like a luxury, just right here on the damn dirt. And you almost do, you almost let yourself slip under and sink— until you hear a piercing scream from somewhere close.

Immediately your eyes shoot open, desperately blinking away the blurriness that threatens to over take them, and you try pushing yourself up by the heels of your scraped hands, failing once - twice - before finding your footing. You’re shaky at first, uncoordinated and dizzy and redownloading bipedalism, before that sweet drug of adrenaline starts to course through your veins and finally, finally, you take in your surroundings.

The ships that once stood across the field are gone, obliterated, and in their place only metal ribcages remain—empty carcasses like dead birds splayed on their backsides, imploded from the inside out, their bits strewn all around you.

Your breathing comes hard and heavy, fighting down panic, and cloudy eyes search through the thick black smoke billowing up in stacks, trying to pin point the source of the scream you’d heard just moments ago. You cough a strained wheeze, sputtering against the charred air, and wade your way through the debris— it’s only then that you realize the magnitude of the explosion. It’s not just the landing bay, it’s half the kriffing village. The buildings that neighbored the airfield had been decimated, burning roofs and crumbling fixtures, homes collapsing onto themselves, scorch marks and shrapnel branding the outsides of the shanties left standing.

It looks like a battlefield. You’ve seen holovids of this—what war can look like, how it can ruin a people… But you’ve never had to stand in the middle of it, head on.

Your heart drums against your chest as you break into a hobbled run, desperately scanning the area for any signs of life, up and down, left and right, straining against the waning daylight. It’s then that you hear your name, urgent and frantic, and you whip your head in it’s direction, knees nearly buckling in relief. You immediately recognize your friend Hareem, brandishing her arms at you, waving you over to her.

“Thank the Maker, you’re alright!” the Balosar cries out, trembling hands finding purchase on your shoulders, bracing you. You don’t know if its for your benefit or her own, but either way you’re grateful for the grounding pressure; for the first time since the initial blast, you feel solid, like you won’t just float away, atomized and weightless. Worried, you look her over. A sliver of fresh scarlet blooms from her scalp, a small line trickling down past her temple, but she otherwise looks relatively unharmed. You grasp onto her wrist, squeezing firmly.

“What the hell happened?” You ask, voice low and pitched, wide fearful eyes drilling into her.

“T-There was a man-” And she shakes her head, mouth clamping shut, deep wrinkles framing her face.

“Hareem,” you reassure, giving her another squeeze. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.

She tries again with a steadying inhale, “I-I saw him. A-a man. He had a device with him, and he set charges, and Maker I don’t know— I don’t know— it went off a-and he ran towards the center of town!” The Balosar is in hysterics, tears spilling down her dirty cheeks, and it takes your brain a moment to catch up, to wrap your mind around the words she’s stuttering out.

A man.

Device.

Charges.

A bomb. This wasn’t an accident; this was an attack—and he’s still kriffing here. You cup her cheeks, thumbs rubbing against the pale skin, smearing away the blood that’s nearly dripped to her chin. Your friend’s gaze is flighty, everywhere and nowhere, and you try giving her a smile, but you’re not quite sure you manage it.

“Hareem? Hareem. Hey, shh, you’re okay. You’re alright…” You peel your eyes off her to glance around hurriedly. “We need to find cover.”

///

You’re holed up in one of the few remaining homes on this side of the encampment, crowded into the small space with three other survivors. All four of you, packed in and silent and petrified. Unsure of any further threat, you stay completely still. Helpless. Laying here, idle, for whatever awaits you behind that feeble, wooden door. You feel like prey for the wicked, just passing the time.

Minutes inch along like this—or maybe its hours; time moves eerily different when you’re attempting to become invisible—and eventually, you almost begin to relax.

Almost.

But a new sound breaks the din, hard to recognize at first, indistinct from all the commotion outside their hut, but you hear it. You all do. The youngest of you, a teenaged Devaronian, grips onto the hem of your shirt, knuckles creasing with anticipation. You tense, spine going rigid. Footsteps. They’re slow, guarded, but they’re getting closer. You bring an arm up, for all the good it’ll do, creating a human shield in front of the boy at your side. Closer. Someone behind you muffles a whimper. Closer. A Bardottan you hadn’t even met until today let’s out the faint whisper of a prayer, lips barely ghosting over the phrases. Closer-

and then, nothing.

They’re here. You can sense him, see his shadow sweep across the gaps in the entryway. You all hold your breath, as if the air is being syphoned out of the space… And the door is flung open, nearly breaking off it’s hinges as it slams into the inside of the house, shuttering the rickety walls with a jarring bang.

You don’t know who looks more astonished: you four, or the Mandalorian before you, dripping head to toe in silver plated armor, pointing a blaster directly at your head.

“Where is he?” He asks, hard edged and modulated, and it’s more of a demand than a question—but he lowers his weapon all the same, holstering it at his side. You gape at him, guppying wordlessly. “Volcur X’elo. The bomber. Where?” He hasn’t moved an inch out of the doorframe but he’s still managing to loom over you, completely filling up the archway, shoulders set and impossibly intimidating.

You gulp, finally finding your voice. “In town, i-in the center of town…” Kriff, you had not idea if that intel was good or not, but it’s all you think to say. Seeming satisfied with your answer he turns on his booted heel, cape whipping behind him, leaving just as soon as he arrived. The dust barely has time to settle as the door teeter’s on its hinge, its rusty squeaks filling the void in the Mandalorian’s wake.

“Fuck,” you hiss, exhaling a breath you didn’t realize you were holding, doubling forward, propping your palms up on your knees.

///

After deliberating it with your group, you all come to the agreement of braving it outside. Better to be out under the open sky than die under a concaving apartment, clambering over each other to get to the exit. After all this, at least your dignity was still partially in tact— normally, you reckon you’d chuckle dryly at that. But you don’t.

Can’t.

You lead the pack through the mazelike streets. The sights that once seemed so familiar after weeks of living here become like strangers to you, and you sleepwalk through Jortho, snaking down paths marred by rubble and fallen wreckage— you haven’t seen any bodies, but maybe that isn’t true. Maybe you’re just too scared to notice them. Maybe they’re there, hovering just outside of your peripherals, haunting the corners of your vision…

You keep your head fixed forward, jaw clenched.

Your feet move on their own like this, only vaguely aware that the red-skinned boy still hadn’t let go of your tunic. You forge on. Have to. You have to. Your only purpose on this kriffing planet was to help these people, to bring them aid, and if that means simply planting one foot in front of the other, then so be it. You take side alleys, double backing here and there, ducking under canopies, looping around yourself, only stopping when you catch a glimpse of beskar, the orange setting sun glinting off the surface of his helmet.

And he’s not alone.

You freeze suddenly, as do the rest, and the Devaronian bumps into you, stumbling under his lanky legs. Some paces in front of you, the bounty hunter has the other man, this Volcur X’elo, by a punishing grip on his shoulders, shoving him forcefully out in front of him; his wrists are bound and he’s fitful without the stabilization of his arms, his feet staccatoed and flailing wildly beneath him as the Mandalorian marches him forward.

The wind shifts, and on it you can hear the bomber rant madly, only catching snippets of the vile nonsense that spews from him.“- like swine, they are a plague to the system! And they must be purged from this planet, and the next, and the next— every last filthy one!” You spare a glance to Hareem, to find her watching the scene in hypnotized horror, but your eyes snap back at the sound of something maniacal, drawing your attention. It’s laughter. The zealot begins to laugh a twisted, mocking cry that makes you want to vomit. “You might have me in binders Mandalorian, but you’re too late. You’re too late. This isn’t over!” He’s practically giggling, gleeful and demented. Disturbed. “You’ve only found one.”

Your blood runs cold.

Only one? Oneoneoneone, one what-

The realization hits you with a punch to your gut. He’s only detonated one of his bombs. Somewhere, nearby, there must be another.

Without another word, the Mandalorian whips the smaller man around, pulling him sharply by his collar to collide with his breastplate, completely dwarfing him with his beskar frame. “Where is it, X’elo?” Nothing. Only laughter. High pitched, terrible roars. He tries again, patience ebbing. “The bomb. Now.” X’elo’s head tilts back and he howls another crowing shriek, keeping private his own sick joke, as if clutching a secret to his chest with slimy hands.

The bounty hunter had heard enough. He clearly wasn’t getting anything more out of him, and with a quick strike, he rears his blaster and pistol whips the terrorist with it. The body drops. Volcur X’elo crumples, unconscious, blood streaming from where he was struck. You hear the Bardottan behind you stifle a cry with her fist.

And with that, Lothal’s sun disappears completely, stealing away the last of it’s light as it furls into itself, shrinking out of sight. The dark ushers a new wave of dread, creeping over Jortho like a miasma, poisoning the very air.

The Mandalorian wheels around, searching for his heading in the labyrinth of the town. Others have gathered now, poking their heads around corners, stealing glimpses through windows. He turns, his head on a swivel. “Where is your power generator?” he demands, addressing the small crowd, but you’re all too stunned to speak. “Anybody. Generator. Now.” There’s something new in his voice, something muddled, and it takes you a moment to interpret it. It’s desperation, you realize, tinny and deep through his vocoder, and with a surge of adrenaline you move forward, furthering yourself from your group. You swallow. “I-Its this way.” Upon hearing your voice, he spins around, his visor latching on to you, and with a nod you both set out.

“Watch him,” the Mandalorian growls past his shoulder, stepping over the bounty’s limp body.

///

You’re still not really sure how he knew where it’d be, you wonder to yourself, gravel crunching under foot as you both trudge on, an eery quiet settling over them. You’d say it was a lucky hunch, but judging by the way the Mandalorian carries himself, you doubt luck had much to do with it.

You had led him to the power generator hub on the other side of the sad excuse for a city, traveling in tense silence, and when you came upon that tall, bulky machine he sprang into action, circling it until he found what he was looking for. The bomb. You stood back, rooted there, and after some grunting and rewiring— or maybe he just hacked at it with a vibroblade, you had no idea; his wide frame engulfed his work and you couldn’t tell what he was up to, all you knew was that his methods proved successful— the man managed to disarm the second device. You had thought you noticed his shoulders release, slumping with relief, after the red flashing lights on the rudimentary interface flickered and then went dark.

And so here you are. The two of you, bathed in the bright light of Lothal’s twin moons, their bellies hanging full in the blue-black night, illuminating the trail of blood staining the dirt beneath your boots as the Mandalorian roughly drags the body by his ankle behind him— through the exploded rubble, through the fragmented lives of the people around you, already displaced and estranged. They’ll all have to move, you think, pack up their lives, or what little is left of them, and relocate. Again. The thought sinks in you like a stone, sobering you.

Even with the weight of a fully grown man to lug, the bounty hunter is still a few long strides in front of you and your eyes are trained on the unconscious form, taking in the way his mouth lolls open like an animal, his hair matted with thick blood, eyes rolled back into his head. You’re talking out loud before you even realize it.

“How sick do you have to be,” you mumble, transfixed. Your voice, it’s not angry; no, shock has effectively robbed you of that— it’s not anger, but bewilderment. Quivering, broken bewilderment.

“H-How hoodwinked and warped you’d have to be, how disturbed... For you to think like that. To do all... all this...”

“Hey,” his gruff voice shakes you from your trance, and you blink up at him, tearing your eyes off the body. “Focus,” he urges, and you can only nod dumbly back at him, suddenly feeling a ripple of nausea slither through you.

The ramp to his ship is lowering as they come upon it and you plant yourself at the base, feet seeming to stop on their own accord, and frankly you’re not really sure why you’ve even followed him this far in the first place— always a step behind him as he hauled his bounty all the way through the vestiges of Jortho, across the arid prairie to where he first touched down. Maybe it’s because you feel untethered, unmoored, and all of his steeled surety is like a lighthouse, a beacon, guiding you away from the rocks.

He heaves X’elo up the ramp and you’re left standing there, staring unseeingly into the durasteel, becoming more and more aware of the ringing in your ears. The longer time passes, the more it’s as if you’re underwater, the background blurring into the foreground, sound gargled and far away. A high pitched buzz pinches your ear drums, and it takes you a moment to realize the Mandalorian is calling out to you, trying to get your attention.

“— Dala.”

Does he sound annoyed? Kriff, you think he might... If you had your wits about you, you might be able to recognize it. But as it stands, you don’t. You’re not here, not all of you. You’re splintered. Suspended.

“Hmm? Sorry, what..?” Your mouth is as dry as Jakku— parched desert tongue darting across your cracked lip, tasting soot and ash and something metallic. Brow furrowed, you touch a shaky finger to the flesh and when you pull it back, crimson red dots your skin.

Oh, you think, numb. Huh.

Your eyes skitter back up to the Mandalorian, towering over you, nearly at the apex of the incline, and his stance is broad and his fists are clenched. You’re almost positive he’s glaring down at you through his visor, and you don’t even know the man, can’t even see his damn face, but you can tell he’s peeved— Maker, just how long had you been ignoring him?

A scratched noise comes through his helmet’s vocoder and his next words are clipped, punctuated. “I said, do you have a way off this skug hole?”

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hyuniebaby · 4 years

Text

Pink Carnations

Pairings: Sehun x Y/N

Genre: angst

One shot. Y/N is sick but I can’t say what her sickness is... 🤐

A/N: I’ve had this idea for a while but I didn’t expect it to be this long. Honestly, I wished I could’ve made this shorter but I got too lazy to edit some parts... I didn’t want to write the death part so I cut that part out. I also want to take this time to applaud fanfic writers for dedicating so much thought and time to write their pieces. I almost gave up halfway because it got too long. I honestly think my max words when writing is 2k LOL 😅 Anyway I hope you enjoy this!

You were lying on your towel wearing your two piece bathing suit while you closed your eyes. It was summer and what perfect way to spend the day than to lounge under the sun after a tiring week, right?

It was perfect until your peace and quiet was disturbed by someone plopping down beside you. You didn’t have to open your eyes to know who it was. You know his faint but distinct smell.

“You know, if you just wanted to sleep, you could’ve just stayed at home and did that on the comfort of your bed,” Sehun says.

Without opening your eyes, you answer, “But there’s something different with the air at the beach! Plus, the sound of the waves calm me down.” There was a soft smile on your face. It was evident you were content right now.

When Sehun didn’t answer, you opened your eyes and peeked at him. He was staring right at you. He was looking at you intently as if you had the answer to the poverty problems of the world. You couldn’t help but feel your heart skip a beat because of his gaze.

You were about to say something when you both hear a girl shrieking. Both of you had trailed your eyes to the source of the sound. One of the girls playing beach volleyball landed on the wrong foot and she was cradling her foot in agony. Sehun was quick to approach and lend her a helping hand.

The sight made your heart swell with pride. You were proud of your best friend for having the sweetest heart. He was always willing to help anyone in need. You were extremely happy to have a best friend like him.

He offered helping the girl walk back to their cottage. At first the girl was leaning on Sehun while she was limping. But after a few steps, Sehun suddenly carried the girl bridal style. You knew he was just helping the girl, but the sight left a bitter taste in your mouth.

You frowned. Why were you feeling this way? Sure, you had this small crush on Sehun. He was sweet, nice, and attractive. But it was just that, just a crush. You didn’t allow it to bloom into something different because, well, he was your best friend and you knew he didn’t feel the same. It doesn’t bother you though, because, again, it’s just a crush.

Even when he had been in and out of relationships, you never felt jealous or bitter. You were always supportive in his love affairs. So why were you suddenly feeling this way? She was just a stranger on the beach who needed help. There’s literally no reason to feel jealous.

You clear the frown on your face when you see Sehun jog back to you after carrying the injured girl. You give him a smile instead. He goes back to his previous sitting position.

“You’re such a gentleman,” You coo while pinching his cheeks.

He immediately leans away and groans. “I would’ve done the same if it happened to you, dumbass.”

And there it was again, your heart was skipping a beat. Usually Sehun would just answer sassily when you tease him but every now and then he’d say something that would make your heart flutter.

You feel your blood rushing to your cheeks. Instead of acknowledging what he said, you mutter, “I’m not a dumbass!”

He snickers at your reaction. You scowl at him, ready to give him a punch but you stopped your movement when a female interrupted your bickering. “Uhm, excuse me.”

You both look up at the lady.

She faced Sehun. “I’m a friend of Anne, the girl you helped earlier. She wanted to give you this,” She hands a letter to Sehun. Sehun just smiles and the woman took it as a cue to leave. She goes back to their group of friends.

You watch Sehun as he opens the folded paper. You wanted to peek into it so badly but you respected Sehun’s privacy so instead of looking at the paper, you observe Sehun’s face. His curious look was replaced by a smile. He momentarily looks back at where Anne was. She didn’t notice the act since she was surrounded by her worried friends.

Sehun looks back at you and grins. “Come on, let’s get you home. You’re going to get sunburned.”

That wasn’t what you were expecting him to say but you didn’t want to dwell on it. You start collecting your things. Sehun stands up and waits for you. When you’ve gathered all your belongings, he offers his hand to help you stand up. You reached for it gratefully. He guides you back to his car and drives you back home. And just like that, you two were back to bickering best friends.

After that eventful day on the beach, you hadn’t spared a thought on what happened that time. It was unimportant anyway. Weeks had passed by already and it was so easy to forget about that particular day since none of you talked about it again.

Until one Sunday afternoon.

You were binge watching the TV series your coworker, Junmyeon, recommended. You were halfway through the fifth episode when Sehun sent a message telling you to meet up with him for dinner. Normally you’d decline, especially since you were getting hooked to what you were watching, however, you remembered you actually forgot to buy groceries. You literally only had chips and a bottle of juice left at your place, so you agreed.

Sehun had told you to meet up at the diner you both frequented. Sundays were your lazy days so you just opt to wear a hoodie on top of your shirt. You didn’t even bother changing your shorts to pants anymore. Besides, it was just Sehun you were meeting. And he’s seen you in much worse clothes.

You went to the diner on the dot. When you got there, you weren’t even surprised that Sehun wasn’t there yet. He’s always been late to everything. You got used to waiting for him.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, you hear a particularly loud laugh from a girl entering the diner. You looked up to see who it was. But instead of focusing on the girl, your eye immediately landed on Sehun. He sees you sitting by your usual seats and heads over to your direction, the girl in tow.

Typical of Sehun to tag you along on his first date with a girl. You resist the urge to roll your eyes at your best friend. He grins at you. “Hey Y/N, remember Anne?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.” You smile sheepishly.

“Sehun helped me at the beach a few weeks ago. I, uh, got injured for twisting my ankle,” Anne says.

Oh. It was the girl he carried bridal style. For some reason, you felt a tug at your heart.

Despite the bitter taste in your mouth, you offer your hand to shake and a smile. “Oh, hi Anne! Nice to meet you. I’m Y/N. Sehun’s best friend.”

She shakes your hand in return. “Sehun has told me a lot about you!” She beams.

Huh? Was this not their first date?

Confusion was evident in your face so Sehun explains, “We’ve been going out for a while now.”

He always tells you everything. It’s like he couldn’t hold himself back. So you wanted to ask him why he didn’t tell you about dating her for god knows how long. What’s so special with Anne this time?

You notice her blush at whatever Sehun whispered to her ear. There was something about the sparkle in their eyes that made you feel so uneasy.

You tried not to grimace or show any sign of discomfort when they subtly look at each other when they think they weren’t looking. What was absolutely difficult for you was when they both made an effort to include you in whatever they were talking about. Under normal circumstances, you’d be happy to be included in the conversation, because, well, you always had a lot to say in a variety of things. But this time, you felt like you were tongue-tied. Too occupied with the weird feeling you were getting.

You observed that they were getting along well. Sehun doesn’t open up to strangers quickly. It takes around two months for him to actually start warming up to people. This was one of the reasons why some of the girls he dated didn’t last long. Not only was he reserved, he also has an intimidating aura. So you were a little taken aback to see him be this close to someone who he met just a few weeks ago.

There were times when you caught Sehun gazing at Anne in some type of way. The type of look that could make any woman’s heart melt if you looked long enough. The sight made your heart ache so much. You really weren’t sure why you’re feeling this way, you’ve never really viewed Sehun as someone you could romantically be involved with. You thought you just liked his personality.

So when Sehun sends another loving smile at Anne and she blushes profusely, you suddenly feel so overwhelmed that you choked on air. It was so embarrassing. They both looked at you with concern but instead of brushing it off, you excused yourself, telling them you weren’t feeling good. They insisted on driving you home but you declined, not wanting to watch them ogle at each other for longer. But you don’t tell them that. You just assured them that you’ll be fine. Your home was just a few blocks away, after all.

When you got home, you immediately went to bed, hoping that this weird feeling goes away with a night’s rest.

Since then, you declined Sehun’s invites. It was embarrassing to admit that you felt jealous over something so simple. You spent your days and nights in the office to get Sehun out of your mind. This wasn’t new though. Your work required so much time from you especially during the end of the month and Sehun knew that. You had to work on multiple reports and presentations that sometimes you couldn’t go home if you wanted to. The only consolation for you was that you have Junmyeon and Jongin that helps you with your tasks.

When Sehun stopped inviting you to eat out or hang out with him and Anne, you felt relieved. At least you didn’t have to pretend to be okay in front of them. But you shouldn’t have been too complacent, because one Saturday night, Sehun came knocking at your door.

“Are you okay? Is there something wrong?” Sehun asks as soon as you open the door.

You were stunned to see him, but you knew Sehun, he wouldn’t just stop talking to you just because he was in a relationship. He wouldn’t accept any reason for silence on your end, except if it was work, and right now, your hectic days were over.

“I’m fine, Sehun. You know how busy I get during the last days of the month.”

“But it’s already a week after your busy days,” He frowned. “And you haven’t sent a single message to me at all.”

You winced. He has a point, whenever you’re done with your “busy days”, you always seek Sehun out — to party or to hang out, whatever. He was always there to help you destress.

Right now, you don’t have an excuse to Sehun so you remained silent.

“Is there something wrong, Y/N? You can tell me,” Sehun says softly.

“Just tired of work,” You sigh.

“Then let’s watch a movie? We can order pizza too!”

You contemplate, was it a good idea to have Sehun so close?

Before you could even respond, he spins you around and gently pushes you inside your home. He sits you on your couch and props your leg on the coffee table. You couldn’t help but smile at him. He even knows the exact position that you do when you’re watching TV.

He sits beside you and gets the remote so he can choose which film you’re both going to watch. You stare at him as he carefully scans the list of movies. He really looks breathtaking no matter what angle. You wonder why it took you this long to acknowledge the feelings you had for him. He has a girlfriend now and they look like they’re getting along better as compared to his previous lovers. It was too late. The thought sends another uncomfortable sensation. Your vision was getting blurry and you looked away from him before you could even spill a tear.

When he has chosen a movie to watch, he stands up and dials the number of your favorite pizza parlor. You sigh in relief as he moves away, subtly trying to rub your eyes and get rid of the tears that were starting to form. You have to clear out whatever feelings you have for Sehun tonight, otherwise, you might just have to say goodbye to your friendship with him. You have to get through this night.

When Sehun comes back from the call, he scans your face. You looked so sad and so much thinner now. “You must have been so stressed over work,” He notes sadly. He gently pats your head as he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll let you rest after this. We can hang out tomorrow again and go shopping or something,” He pulls you closer and gently pushes your head so you’re leaning on his shoulder. You feel your heart flutter. You can smell his cologne in this position, and somehow it gives comfort to you. You let him hold you for the rest of the night, deciding that this was going to be the last time you’ll let him. For your sake and for Anne’s sake. You didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

The night went surprisingly well. At first the both of you kept quiet while watching the movie but when the pizza came, the mood suddenly lightened up. You both abandoned the movie as you started arguing over which food was better: pizza or pasta. Of course, you were on pizza’s team while Sehun whose taste buds can’t appreciate the flavor of pizzas kept on proclaiming pasta as the best food ever. The argument ended when you asked him, “Why are you eating pizza then? The pizza parlor served pasta as well! If it was ‘the best food on the planet’ then why are you here stuffing yourself with pizza?” which shut him up. You grin as he got silenced. To celebrate your win, you get to have the last slice of pizza. The night ended as you laughed at him while guiding him out of your home. What you weren’t aware of was the smile he was hiding when his back was turned to you. He was happy to have made you laugh before the night ended. He hated when you were sad. He cared for you and loved you more than what you think, but just not in the way you wanted him to.

You start hanging out with Sehun and Anne more ever since you vowed to eliminate your feelings for Sehun that night. The only problem was that every time you spent together with them, you felt your heart ache. Yeah, it sure was easier to say you’ll get over your feelings for him rather than actually doing it.

As winter came, you found yourself becoming more attached to your coworkers, Junmyeon and Jongin, since you’ve been dragging them when you spent time with Sehun and Anne. They knew about your feelings for Sehun and it was much easier not to slip up when they were around. The downside was that they were always giving you sympathetic glances when the couple displayed their affection. When they did this, you really just wanted to punch them. One time you almost punched Jongin for it but for some reason you felt too weak to do it. In fact, when the season changed, you became sickly. This wasn’t new, you always had colds whenever there were changes in the weather, but for some reason, this time felt different. There were days where you couldn’t get out of bed. There were days where you couldn’t stop coughing too. Junmyeon suggested you get checked up by a doctor but you always found yourself pushing it for next time.

One cold afternoon, you were at work with Junmyeon and Jongin. The day was slow since you’ve all finished with your tasks on time. You were all chatting about how it was the first time in months that work wasn’t stressing you all out. At one point, the conversation went to sports and you’ve started to mindlessly scroll through social media since you weren’t particularly interested in their topic. One post caught your eye, Sehun posted a photo of him and Anne kissing. You felt a pang in your heart as usual. You’ve witnessed them do this countless times already within the months you’ve hung out with the couple but every time it doesn’t hurt less. You try to fight back the sob that was about to spill out of your mouth but you ended up coughing instead. You covered your mouth with your handkerchief as you coughed and coughed. Junmyeon came immediately by your side, asking if you were okay. You waved a hand and just nodded. When you were done with your coughing fit, you lowered your handkerchief. Normally, you would just automatically put it back on your pocket but you caught sight of a reddish color on your white handkerchief. Was that blood? Your eyes widened a little but you tried not to be a little obvious since Junmyeon and Jongin were looking at you with concern.

“I’m taking you to the doctor after work. You can’t put it off anymore, Y/N. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve taken a lot of days off. In fact, you’ve called in sick more times this month compared to the last three years.” Junmyeon gives you a pointed look. You noticed Jongin bobbing his head up and down in agreement. You sighed heavily but agreed nonetheless. After all, you were worried quite worried too.

When your shift ended, you, Jongin and Junmyeon went together to the hospital. When you found a doctor who was available to check up on you, you were grateful that Junmyeon and Jongin weren’t in the doctor’s room so you were also able to tell him about the coughing and the blood that you saw on your handkerchief. The doctor, Dr. Han, wanted to run a series of tests on you once you explained whatever symptoms you were feeling. You were beyond anxious at this point because you coughed out with blood! He was stripped off of any emotions while talking to you and you didn’t know what to make off of it.

In the middle of your conversation, you get a call from Sehun. You ask Dr. Hand if you could take the call and he nods his head wordlessly.

Initially, you wanted to stand up and leave the room so you could talk to Sehun privately but your body felt so heavy, so instead you find yourself angling your body so you weren’t facing your doctor.

“Hello?” You answered the phone call, your throat suddenly feeling dry.

“Hey Y/N! Junmyeon said you’re in the hospital, do you want us to come over?” He asks, voice filled with concern.

Us. Of course, he and Anne were a package deal now.

It took you a few seconds to answer and you could hear Sehun panicking on the line while Anne was trying to calm him down.

“It’s just a check up, Hun.” You heard them let out a breath of relief and you wanted to smile but you started coughing again. You can still hear them on the line but you couldn’t answer because you couldn’t stop coughing so you ended the call. You also felt like it was so hard to breathe suddenly. You were feeling lightheaded too. When you covered your mouth with your hand, you felt something solid coming out of your mouth. What was that?

Dr. Han rushed to your side, he tried to listen to your lungs using his stethoscope and you saw him with widened eyes then he rushed to the door to call a nurse before your vision turned black.

When you woke up, your throat felt so dry. It was so hard for you to breathe even with an oxygen mask attached to you. You look around the room and see Junmyeon and Jongin on the sides of your bed. When Junmyeon noticed your movement, he immediately went out to call for a nurse while Jongin held your hand.

“What happened?”

Jongin looked at you sadly. “You had a coughing fit while you were with the doctor. The next thing we knew, you were unconscious and they were hauling you out of the room… The lab results came out a while ago and…” he trailed off. “I think I should let your doctor explain…”

The way he worded it and the way he looked made you feel so uneasy. You were scared. Were you going to die?

When Junmyeon re-enters the room, the two males share a look of sadness. Junmyeon goes by your side and reaches out for something in his coat. You watch him curiously. He hands you a single pink carnation.

That was odd. Why would he hand you a flower? This was the exact same flower that Sehun gave as a corsage when he took you to prom. It was quite a special flower for you personally because that night was a magical night for the two of you. You smile softly at the memory of him telling you how pretty you were and how your dumb ex boyfriend was a fool to let you go. You remember slow dancing with Sehun and him holding your hand to help you as you walk in heels. That night, he made you feel so special. It might have been the night you started to have a crush on him.

“What’s this for Jun?”

He doesn’t say a word, just presses a kiss on your forehead.

As if on cue, a group of doctors come into your room. It was weird to find five doctors in a single room. Even weirder to find one of the younger doctors a little bit more enthusiastic than the others. And where was Dr. Han? Why isn’t he here too? You don’t know what to think. An enthusiastic doctor meant good news, right? But this much doctors must mean that you were in serious trouble. You frown at the thought.

The doctor with a deep dimple started relaying your name, age, and the symptoms you’ve told Dr. Han a while ago. The enthusiastic doctor gives the eldest doctor a set of envelopes with your lab results. He frowns upon looking at all your results. You gulp.

The eldest doctor wipes the frown on his face and reaches a hand to you. “I’m Dr. Jung, I’m the attending doctor assigned to you. This is Dr. Kim Minseok, my resident. The three over here are interns.”

You just nod your head at them.

“Before anything else, I just want to let you know that your case is quite unusual and rare,” Dr. Jung says. Then he turns to the interns and asks, “Someone describe and explain the results to Ms. Y/N.”

The enthusiastic doctor goes closer to you, “I’m Dr. Byun Baekhyun. This is your x-ray film. There is swelling on your lungs which was one of the reasons why you were feeling chest pains and difficulty in breathing,” You were confused because whatever he was showing you definitely doesn’t look like your lungs at all. Dr. Byun points at the film somewhere in the lower right part. “These are… roots. These are stems and these are flowers.”

Wait, what? Was he joking? Because if he is, it’s literally not funny.

He carries on and says, “As Dr. Jung said, your case is extremely rare. You have the Hanahaki disease. It’s a condition where a person coughs up or throws up petals and/or flowers when they suffer from unrequited love. There aren’t many studies about it since it’s very rare. The last recorded case was 12 years ago. Studies say that there are two ways for it to be cured, first is to have that person love you back romantically and two is to undergo surgery,” He pauses and looks at Dr. Jung, “Dr. Jung has operated on the last person who had the disease. He surgically removed the infection on the patient’s lungs.”

The tallest among the intern doctors pipes up and says, “The success rate for the surgery is quite high. However, according to studies, the surgical removal of the infection also removes the patient’s feelings for their loved one. In extreme cases, they could even forget about that person and the patient could lose the ability to love again…”

Dr. Kim Minseok then says, “We understand that this might be very hard for you so we would like to give you time to think on how to proceed with this. However, based on your tests, the carnation seeds have already spread out to your body and have attached to some of your tissues. This is quite the dangerous stage…”

“How much time do I have left?” You ask weakly to Dr. Jung.

He clears his throat and gently says, “Around two weeks to a month. The infection has spread throughout your body already. You almost choked from the carnation that bloomed in your lungs…”

You nod in understanding. “Thank you, doctors. I’ll… let you know my decision soon,” You gave them an unconvincing smile.

“If you need anything else, you may call for me, Dr. Byun, Dr. Park or Dr. Zhang,” Dr. Kim says as he points at the interns. They all bow their heads before they exit your room.

Once the doctors are gone, you feel Junmyeon and Jongin squeeze your hands. You almost forgot they were there with them being so silent all throughout the conversation. You take a peek at their appearances and notice that they both look so… dejected.

“Hey, don’t be sad guys. Everything’s going to be fine.”

They don’t look convinced but they tried to crack a smile just so you won’t feel bad.

“Does Sehun know?” You ask no one in particular.

“He came here a while ago. He looked like a mess so we told him we’d go look out for you tonight. He didn’t really want to leave you. I told him he could at least pack some of your stuff so you can have something to change into later. When he left, that’s when Dr. Kim came by to update us on your status and condition. He’ll be back here soon though,” Jongin answered.

“Please don’t tell him. This is embarrassing.”

“Y/N, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“He’s not going to magically fall in love with me, you know. And he’s in love with someone else. He’ll be burdened if he knew he was the cause of this!” You cried.

Even when you were this sick, you still thought of Sehun. You know he’d blame himself if he knew what your condition was.

Jongin looked softly at you. It’s his first time seeing you this vulnerable. Seeing one of his closest friends cry like this in a hospital no less, made him want to cry too.

“Le-let’s tell him I have lung cancer instead,” You sniffed.

Jongin nods wordlessly. He didn’t want to upset you further.

After a few minutes of silence, Junmyeon asks, “If you insist on not telling Sehun, I’m assuming you will be having the surgery then?”

“I’m going to think about it…”

Truth be told, you didn’t want to get surgery, if that meant possibly forgetting Sehun. You can’t bear the thought of not knowing Sehun. Sure, you wanted to get rid of your feelings for him for so long but you don’t think everything will ever be the same once it’s gone. Not to mention the possibility of not being able to fall in love again. How terrible life would be without knowing or remembering how to love?

You would very much rather die knowing that you’ve truly, deeply, genuinely loved someone than live without remembering how to love at all.

When Junmyeon saw the tears in your eyes, he knew then that no matter what he says or does, you won’t be getting that surgery. He, Jongin and Sehun will have to witness how you’re literally going to die from pain due to heartache.

#exo angst #sehun angst #exo fanfic #exo fanfiction #sehun fanfic #sehun fanfiction #oh sehun #sehun fluff #exo fluff #exo sehun #sehun x reader #sehun x you

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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #236: “I Want to Be an Avenger!”

October, 1983

Spider-Man -- An Avenger -- ?

Y’know, march of time and all that but this doesn’t seem as surprising as it once did.

Not much to say about this cover. It doesn’t have a lot to say about the issue other than ‘SPIDER-MAN INSIDE’ but boy does it say it.

But, oh, the logo changed and its snazzy! I quite like it!

So recent going-onses for the Avengers. Thor and Iron Man quit the team for personal business. Hawkeye broke his leg and is on medical forced-to-leave. Scarlet Witch and Vision were called in as reservists and Vision immediately got damaged by a crossover and has been in a robot-coma ever since. Starfox joined the team.

But in more positive news, they totally kicked the Wizard’s ass last issue and it cheered everyone up.

So the issue starts on a lazy summer day.

Scarlet Witch is on monitor duty, scanning for any ‘this looks like a job for the Avengers’ type calls. And multi-tasking by also thinking of her tubed husband.

Captain America takes his turn standing watch over the comatose synthezoid.

And for some reason, Cap leaning on the tube like that cracks me up.

Starfox spends his downtime trying to hit on Wasp.

His pickup line is so bad.

Wasp finds it charming in its misapprehension although it could also be the sexy beams Starfox emits from his brain.

And She-Hulk is taking a bath in a large barrel in the Avengers’ rec center, which they have. Maybe its the super hot bath?

She(-Hulk)’s also multi-tasking by looking up apartment listings while she soaks but finds that everything on the NY listings is either too small or too ritzy.

It be like that sometimes.

Jarvis comes into the rec center barrel bath area with iced tea for She-Hulk, trying to politely avert his eyes. But the intruder alarm goes off and she(-Hulk) tells Jarvis to hand her a towel and runs off to his flusterment.

Between Tigra and She-Hulk, I think poor Jarvis is getting overwhelmed with rad ladies on the Avengers.

The Avengers assemble in the main foyer and found that someone just barged in the front door and disabled the security tentacles with some sort of odd, artificial webbing.

Who could it be?

Who could possibly break into Avengers Mansion under the mistaken impression that its actually a cool way to impress them while asking for a job, showing that he’s learned nothing in years?

Could it be the person who expressed interest in joining in the previous issue? And who is also on the cover of this issue??

Yes.

Honestly, though, what an amazing splash page!

Also, spectacular and no-adjective.

Spider-Man knows how to make an impression.

Not a good one, certainly. But the Avengers aren’t going to forget the time he was casually chilling above the dining table.

And Pete isn’t going to forget it either. He’s going to wake up in a cold sweat years later still mortified at himself.

I also love it when the title of the issue is something someone said but since it has to be emphasized to make it clear its the title, they suddenly start yelling in the middle of a conversation.

She-Hulk has no patience for Spider-Man’s nonsense and grabs him off his web hammock to yell at him for barging in.

Spider-Man: “Well, I’m not exactly uninvited! Your buddy Thor asked me to join the club just a few months ago. Sure, I’m a little slow in replying, but I’ve had a busy season!”

And then he snarks about She-Hulk just wearing a towel because Spider-Man loves low hanging fruit.

SURELY, Spidey knows that offers usually expire, right? A few months ago is forever in comic time and Thor himself isn’t even on the Avengers right now.

I guess, in fairness, he has his reasons.

Besides his usual perpetual poverty liking the sound of a thousand bucks a week.

As he later muses to himself, Black Cat has been hospitalized because she tried to help him and he feels obligated to pay for her not-cheap medical bills. And he’s already quit grad school to spend more time earning but his freelance paychecks are nothing compared to an Avengers salary.

He’s being an incredibly presumptuous dick... but for a good cause.

And its just like Spidey that he has a good reason for being a jerk that he’d never mention leaving everyone to think he’s just a rude goofus.

What a shame.

Anyway, back at the present, Spider-Man asks where he enlists but Cap tells them that unfortunately their roster is full up. The sixth spot is being held open for Hawkeye when his leg stops being broken (and you think he was moany about being sidelined while his leg was broken, imagine him learning that he was replaced, eesh).

Cap does suggest that Spider-Man could join Starfox in the trainee program but Spidey throws a fit.

Spider-Man: “Trainee program?!? Hey, I’m Spider-Man, remember? I was sticking to walls when you guys were still looking for a clubhouse. I’m no green rookie!”

Starfox: “Green -- ? I take offense at your tone, Spider-Man!”

She-Hulk: “There’s nothing wrong with being green.”

Pffft.

As an actual rookie who is physically green, She-Hulk doesn’t care for that phrase, maybe.

She-Hulk and Starfox possibly beating up or more likely being embarrassed by Spider “will punk the entire X-Men in the not too distant future” Man is interrupted by a priority alert that goes ARROOOOOOOO

... Is it the Nixon alarm?

Why haven’t the Avengers fought Nixon’s head on a war mech yet??

Spider-Man offers to give them a hand if their priorities are being alerted but with this particular alarm, Wasp decides its best if they stick to the rules.

And then She-Hulk chases Spidey out by throwing a chair at him.

Spider-Man: Well, that was certainly a wash-out! Maybe I shouldn’t have come on as such a wise guy... Maybe I should have come to the door all humble and contrite. Nah, they wouldn’t have believed it was me!

.... Hah.

But he sees the third-floor of Avenger’s mansion opening up to launch the Quinjet and fount of good decision making that he is, he decides to jump onto the Quinjet as it launches.

Spider-Man: Whew! This baby is really starting to pick up speed! I feel like I’m in a wind tunnel. My sticky fingers can hold onto just about anything under normal circumstances... boy, I wish these were normal circumstances! I wonder if this was such a good idea.

No, Pete, it wasn’t.

But your inner monologues do add a bit more joy to this issue so I forgive you.

Inside the Quinjet, She-Hulk notes that the controls handled a bit sluggish right after take-off but eh whatever the problem disappeared after they went supersonic.

Huh. I wonder if Pete is ok.

Anyway, Captain America, She-Hulk, and Starfox are headed towards Project Pegasus.

Since it hasn’t come up in Avengers yet, Project Pegasus is a government research facility that seeks out new types and sources of energy. And Cap helped organize their security force back in Marvel Two-in-One #42.

The priority alert wasn’t the highest priority. Just a code-five, indicating a low-grade emergency. But it didn’t come with any details so Cap is vexed.

Three Avengers should be enough for a code-five but problems at Project Pegasus tend to balloon into worse problems.

You wouldn’t think a research facility would attract so much negative attention but as Cap points out, there’s a lot of people who have a vested interested in making sure energy stays scarce, expensive, and presumably non-renewable.

And considering that the oil companies like Roxxon are EVEN MORE BLATANTLY EVIL in the Marvel U, yeah, uh, bad shit is going to occur.

Also, Project Pegasus doubles as a place to jail supervillains so their powers can be studied.

So, yeah, Pegasus having a priority alert probably means a headache.

So these three Avengers are going in but Wasp and Scarlet Witch are on stand-by just in case.

The visit to the super secure research station goes off to a bad start when guards rush the Quinjet when it lands because a foreign object was detected on the undercarriage.

Of course it’s Spider-Man.

But before he can be arrested for breaking into a secure facility, his spider-sense buzzed.

It’d be a bit confusing if it wasn’t buzzing before though. He has a bunch of rattled guards pointing guns at him right after some unexplained emergency has happened.

That doesn’t set off the Peter Tingle at all??

Anyway, since the buzz is pretty intense, he figures that its warning him of something “a lot more dangerous than the lecture Cap’s going to give me!”

Hah!

He doesn’t manage to warn anyone before a tremor knocks (almost) everyone off their feet with a THROOM

Spider-Man is still standing because he loves Elton John forewarned is forewarned and he can stick to things. And to his surprise, Cap manages to stay on his feet.

Cap: “It’s just a matter of knowing how to react and how to brace yourself, Spider-Man.”

Hah!

That’s So Cap.

Spider-Man asks if he realio trulio can’t give Cap a hand with this situation. Y’know, since his spider-sense probably will come in handy. Cap isn’t sure because of the question of security but Spider-Man has an idea there.

See, he’s been here before!

In Marvel Team-Up Annual #5 he helped save the dang place! They can ask chief of security Wendell Vaughn (who is also known as Quasar but probably not to all the people in this scene?).

Unfortunately, Vaughn quit a couple months back. Oops.

But since Cap vouches for him the guard driving them to the lower levels is like ‘eh whatever.’

The power of a Cap vouch is not to be underestimate and never to be used for evil.

They’re headed to the thermal research dome because its the last known location of new security chief O’Brien. And where he sent the alert from. AND where the recent quake came from.

That’s good multitasking.

They reach the blast doors sealing off the entire level.

Because yes, not only did O’Brien send an alert, he also sealed off the entire level and now something’s jammed the lock.

They have no idea what could be locked behind there but they do have a Spider-Man and Starfox asks him if he’s getting a bad feeling about anything.

Spider-Man isn’t getting any bad vibes, deeming it safe to go inside.

Y’know, this is an amazing way to use Spider-Sense that they could do more with. I always love it when Spidey basically exploits the sense for things other than combat dodging.

Like when trying to figure out how to turn off a device he didn’t understand in Avengers EMH, he just went around almost yanking wires until he found one that didn’t set off the ‘OH MY GOD YOU’LL DEFINITELY EXPLODE IF YOU DO THAT’ buzz.

Anyway, it being probably safe, Cap tells She-Hulk and Starfox to open the door.

Which they do, with gusto.

And a GRU-U-UNNG

Inside the ruins of the thermal research dome, a bunch of semi-conscious technicians lie about in heaps.

Some Project Pegasus security personnel fan out to do administer first aid while the Avengers look for O’Brien.

Makes sense. The nameless extras help the nameless extras so we don’t go ‘hey are the Avengers dicks for only talking to people with names?’

O’Brien is pinned under an arc of steaming rock which Cap starts chipping in half with his shield while She-Hulk, Spider-Man, and Starfox - all people who could lift that rock - just stand and watch.

Or heck, maybe its not supposed to be a random rock arc. Maybe its attached to the floor. Still though, She-Hulk, Spider-Man, and Starfox could probably break it more easily than Cap does.

Teamwork makes the dream work, guys and She-Hulk.

Spider-Man recognizes O’Brien’s green and also green Not-Iron Man armor from newspapers and realizes that he’s the Guardsman.

That just makes O’Brien sad.

Guardsman: “Aye, I am... or I was. The state this armor’s in, no one’ll ever be callin’ himself the Guardsman again! As of now, I’m just plain Michael O’Brien.”

The Michael Formerly Known as Guardsman starts to Explain It All.

He had come down to the thermal dome to watch the thermal dome researchers sink a new magma tap.

But molten rock came shooting up from the tap hole, which is a thing that’s definitely not supposed to happen.

Oh, and some molten men (but not Molten Man) climbed out of the hole and started trashing the joint.

Plain Michael O’Brien realized pretty quickly that he was the only one who could stand up to these hot men so he signaled for help, hit the evacuation alarm, and sealed off the level from the rest of the project so the problem was contained.

And then he got mobbed by the hot men and got his ass kicked. Turns out that his armor was pretty useless against lava men.

Oh, yeah, Cap recognizes them as lava men from his description.

Spider-Man: “Lava men? You have to be kidding, Cap! Lava men? I don’t believe in lava men!”

Cap: “Belay that, mister! I’ve been up against lava men -- and they’re nothing to joke about! You’d better thank your stars that they left -- !”

You might also remember that Cap has been up against lava men allllllll the way back in Avengers #5. Technically the first adventure he had with the Avengers after officially joining them.

It was also the issue where Thor stoically sank into lava without changing his expression from his default vaguely annoyed one.

Anyway, O’Brien tells the Avengers that the lava men battered their way into the maintenance section since they couldn’t escape to the rest of the facility.

It’s a real good news bad news situation because there’s no one for them to hurt in there and also its a straight shot into the nuclear research dome.

And we don’t want any kind of meltdown there.

Cap decides that this looks like a job for AVENGERS to ASSEMBLE towards. And more than the three plus special guest star they already have.

MEANWHILE, over in New Orleans at an important meeting that definitely would be bad to interrupt, Monica Rambeau (secretly the Avenger known as Captain Marvel but not the dead guy version, true believers) is applying for a small business loan.

And then she gets a bzzt on her radio watch for an Avengers emergency.

Oh no, what of her small business loan!

And also: what small business is she starting? I think I heard at one point that she ran a fishing business with her father?

But what of her small business loan!

Well, Monica agrees with her bank guy Mr. Hillbee that its an alarm watch and that its reminding her of another pressing engagement so hey is there a lot more that they have to do here?

Luckily, all that’s left is for her to sign the documents.

Phew, I’m very used to superhero stuff interrupting a superhero’s civilian life and then them angsting about it. It’s actually a relief that Monica was able to finish up at the bank before dashing off to a phone booth to take a radio watch call with Scarlet Witch.

Wanda tells Monica that they just received a call from Cap(tain America) telling them to get to Project Pegasus. Wanda tells Monica that they’re in transit now and asks if she can join them.

And then the line goes dead before Wanda can give coordinates.

Because Monica just followed the radio signal back to the Quinjet.

She apologizes that it took her so long (!!) because she had to stop at home first to pick up her costume.

Wanda marvels captainly “And I thought my brother, Pietro, was fast!”

Ha ha amazing.

I love Captain Monica Marvel’s ridiculous powerset.

She’s even talking right into their radio so she can communicate from outside the Quinjet.

Wasp, Scarlet Witch, and Captain Marvel arrive at Project Pegasus where they’re briefed of the lava men situation by some of the security staff.

Captain Marvel nyooms ahead lightspeed dash style while Wasp and Scarlet Witch lag behind by taking a high-speed railcar.

Dang, Project Pegasus is big.

I just flipped ahead pages to see how long it takes Captain Marvel to join Cap(tain America)’s group and its a bit.

I guess maybe there’s some overlapped time going on though.

Meanwhile, two technicians in research dome D-2 (called the Compound for some dang reason) ignore all the various alarms and such that have been happening because they’re super into their project. And are possibly mad scientists.

They have the intensity.

But they’re working on... Dr. Croit’s stabilizer? And apparently its vibratory pitch was changed by the tremor that happened? Unbeknowst to them, Captain Marvel just nyoomed by outside and the proximity of her energy form activates the device and the silhouette of some guy leaps out proclaiming FREE!!

Back at the Avengers side of the plot, Cap(tain America)’s group has encountered some lava men.

Spider-Man: “Hey, Cap... I take it all back! I do believe in lava men! I really do!”

Hah.

The lava men are between the Avengers and the nuclear dome so Cap starts thinking of ways to flank them so they can keep them away from it.

She-Hulk starts trying to plow a hole through their forces and... uh.... ok. Cap has Starfox just fly around and annoy the lava men because they’ve never seen a flying man before and its just freaking them out.

Really.

Cap asks Spider-Man to use his webbing to throw up some barriers in the lava men’s path.

Spider-Man: “Heck, I can do better than that, Cappy! Just a couple spritzes of webbing, and these little hotheads won’t be going anywhere for hours!”

Cap: “No, you young fool! Don’t you see what you’ve done!”

Throwing web on the lava men makes them panic because it seems like there’s a lot of stuff that they’re not familiar with and all of it alarms them. When they’re alarmed, their body temperature raises and can get up thousands of degrees.

So they just melt loose of the webbing and now they’ve learned not to be afraid of the webbing at all and they can’t use it to corral them.

Spider-Man: “Would it help if I said I’m sorry?”

Cap: “It would help if you’d follow orders! The Avengers is a team! If you want to be part of the team, act like it! Otherwise, stay out of our way!”

Yeahhhhh. I mean, most of the time. You have your fair share of idiots doing their own thing in the Avengers because all of these guys have egos you wouldn’t believe. But generally they can agree to work as a team.

And Spider-Man, of this era, isn’t much of a team player. Not like Wolverine or Batman ‘i work best alone, bub’ type of not a team player where they’re lying about not being good at teamwork because they like being surly and dour because they think it makes them more interesting. But Spider-Man mostly works alone and is used to just doing whatever he thinks the best idea is. And he has the proportionate speed and reflexes of a spider so he can do whatever he thinks the best idea is way before you can tell him its a bad idea.

That’s why Spider-Man makes so many bad decisions, because he can make them faster than good sense can catch up [citation needed].

Anyway, as he is NOW, he’s not a good fit for the Avengers.

Then again, neither was Hawkeye and they let him join. Makes ya think.

Back over at surprise man out of a box lab, the surprise man was Blackout.

He looks like he’d be an electricity themed villain but apparently his element is darkness. Annd he debuted in Nova annnd this is his second appearance?

At the end of his debut story Nova #19, Blackout was apparently sucked into the Darkforce dimension, a fate that Dr. Croit’s stabilizer had been invented to prevent.

So I guesss.... the stabilizer’s settings were altered by an earthquake and then it was powered by ambient energy from Captain Marvel zipping past and it managed to stabilize Blackout, yanking him free of the Darkforce dimension?

I guess??

As far as villain returns go, its not the most ridiculous but it is a bit contrived.

Blackout has no idea where he is and rants about how he’ll level the place if that’s what it takes to find his way out and in a more acceptable contrivance, he happens to be passing Moonstone’s cell when he says this out loud to nobody in particular and she likes the cut of his jib.

Moonstone: “Sounds like you’re a man after my own heart!”

Moonstone tells Blackout that she’s been locked up here so Project Pegasus could study her powers and that they want to use her the way they would have used Blackout but hey what if they join forces and get some comeuppance.

Blackout: I don’t know if I should trust her... But something about her voice is so reassuring.

Yeah, that’s what we call a red flag, you dingus.

Are we back to the days where some dudes will just villain because a lady bats her eyes?

Anyway, the locking mechanism is too complicated to figure out so Blackout just squeezes it until it explodes.

Um. Okay.

-checks wiki-

The wiki says he’s only supposed to have normal human strength but Blackout himself claims that his body is a living generator of black star energies.

Which apparently means he can squeeze an electronic lock to death. I dunno.

Freed from her cell, Moonstone leads Blackout to what they can do next.

Meanwhile, the Avengers are still struggling with the lava men two levels below. And the fracas has reached the corridor to the nuclear dome. Its now or never but the numbers are too overwhelming even for She-Hulk.

Spider-Man manages to leap above the fray and get forgotten in the confusion but doesn’t find that he can do much. He tries webbing the door to the nuclear dome shut but the lava men don’t even bother opening it when they can melt through.

Hmmmmm not a good showing for a guest starring so far...

When the lava men succeed in melting through the door, a blinding light shines through and the lava men kneel down and start bowing to it.

Ohhhhhh, I get it! They’re not trying to cause a meltdown! They just want to worship nuclear light!

... No? I don’t got it? Okay.

The bright light is actually Captain Marvel who took a shortcut to the nuclear dome to reach the Avengers.

And the lava men are really enamored with her, proclaiming her the lady of light foretold in legends.

Captain Marvel just kinda rolls with this and asks them whats the deal with all the rampaging and destroying.

Lava man: “We did but strike back, radiant one! Our village, deep beneath the Earth, knew peace -- until the surface men bored into our midst with their machines. We could not allow this attack to go unanswered. We only used our powers to stop the invasion!”

Wait, isn’t this the plot of the Jetsons movie?

Cap(tain America) smoothly slides in, diplomatically, to announce that then the surface people beg forgiveness and that this has all been an unfortunate misunderstanding that he pledges shall be put right.

And like how Cap’s clout got Spider-Man into this story, Cap borrows Captain Marvel’s clout to back up his diplomacy roll, saying “The Lady-of-Light will tell you that I speak the truth!”

It’s a good thing that Monica wouldn’t go mad with power.

Also, Scarlet Witch and Wasp show up, while Spider-Man snarks that they “missed the end of the movie.”

But since we can’t have pat resolutions given the subplot that was happening while the Avengers were distracted elsewhere, in the Compound, it turns out that Blackout and Moonstone have freed Electro and Rhino. And Moonstone has a Big Evil Plan.

Blackout: “Pay them back? Yes... yes, we must. But how?”

Moonstone: “In the best way possible! We��re going to bring this place to its knees -- by seizing the nuclear research dome!”

But that’s where the Avengers are! Silly villains, you’ve double booked!

Also, I wonder if the universe cosmically influenced Moonstone to get two Spider-villains involved on the one day that Spider-Man was tagging along.

I also wonder what Moonstone is thinking. She’s the ‘know when to fold ‘em’ villain.

Hmmm... Putting Electro and Blackout side by side makes Blackout look like Electro’s grumpy younger brother.

All kinds of good decisions have been made!

Follow @essential-avengers for more thoughts on villain couture. Also like and reblog so I can feel like I did a good job.

#avengers #lava men #Spider Man #Captain America #She Hulk #Starfox #the Wasp #Scarlet Witch #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging

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glitterslag · 5 years

Text

First Time for Everything - Roger Taylor x Reader

Summary: In which Roger inadvertently becomes co-parent to a four year old before he’s even finished university. Oh, and he loses his virginity in the process.

Word Count: 8k

Warnings: single mum, broken family, bad relationships with parents, difficult sexual themes, period typical attitudes, homophobic language, poverty, some angst. Smut (virgin!roger, oral - male and female receiving -whipped cream), some language

A/N: First of all I wanna say thank u to the absolute lejond who requested this: you really unearthed a kink I didn’t know I had.

This, as usual, has turned into a bit of a Whole Other Thing. I’ve wanted to do a single mum oneshot for a while, and thought it would go really well with virgin Rog. Plus Roger with a toddler = automatic cuteness.

As y’all know I struggle with writing smut, and so I tend to quit while I’m ahead. Because of that, I’ve only included oral, and not the whole shebang. Plus, I felt like it was in keeping with the tone when Roger finds himself a bit overwhelmed with all the new sensations. I think we’d all agree that that still counts as losing virginity, though.

I’ve got to say I’m really proud of this. I think it might be one of my favourite things I’ve written since “Funny How Love Is”. It would be great if you could give it the same kind of feedback 🥰🥰

Enjoy xo

★★★★★

You had Robbie at sixteen.

Your parents sent you away to a Catholic institution for the duration of your pregnancy, as people often did back then, such was the scandal of being found out pregnant and not married. They had wanted you to give him up for adoption when he was born but you refused, and after meeting her grandson, your mother had relented.

They’d given you a little money to set yourself up, but insisted that you couldn’t stay with them. Too much shame on the family. You sometimes speak to them on the phone but it’s always strained, especially between you and your mother, and you always end the phone call feeling just a little sad, and empty.

Now twenty, your little boy is nearly four, and you’re living in a box flat in a tower-block in the middle of London. Roger’s just moved in next door.

He’s a student, just moved out of halls, making him the same age as you. It’s a strange realisation, to look at him. Realising that your life could have turned out a lot differently, had Robbie never been born.

You’re expecting him not to be very nice. People usually aren’t, not to a young single mother. Not one whose dye-job comes out of a packet, and who lets her four-year-old tricycle up and down the wooden hallway at all hours of the day. But he’s positively lovely.

That’s what Robbie’s doing, when Roger moves in.

“S’cuse me, little man.” He says, holding a cardboard box aloft as he waits patiently for your son to get out of his road. “That looks fun.”

And then:

“Hello,” he’s saying to you.

You feel him check you out, eyes travelling from your face down and then back up, and then back down again, all the way this time. The routine you know too well. You get it from nearly every man you meet. He doesn’t leer at you like most men, though, and you think to yourself that that’s something.

“Get out of the man’s way, Robbie.”

“Is your big sister bossy?” Roger asks him knowingly.

You swallow and start to say something.

“She’s not my sister, she’s my mummyyy!” Robbie declares before you can, throwing his hands up in the air.

You laugh and scoop him up. There would come a time when he might not be as proud to say that about you anymore, but for now, he would remain blissfully unaware that his unmarried twenty year old mummy wasn’t supposed to have a three year old baby.

Roger looks at you hard for a second, and you cuddle Robbie to your chest as you wait for his response, almost using him as a shield in in between the two of you, nervous. But there’s no need to be.

“Oh. Sorry.” He says easily, quickly disguising any judgement with a sunny smile. He sticks his hand out. “I’m Roger. How do you do?”

★★★★★

Over the months, you two develop a close neighbourly relationship. He comes over to fix your leaky taps, change lightbulbs, rewire the smoke alarm. As you get to know and trust him more, you eventually entrust him with Robbie some afternoons when you have appointments – doctors and dentists, things you can’t avoid.

One day, Roger’s complaining about his hair becoming too long and his roots showing and so on, and so you offer to do it for him, free of charge, as a favour. He says yes.

If he’s feeling dubious, he never shows it.

You come over that afternoon armed with all your gear, and when he opens the door Robbie charges past him shouting “Rogerrrrrrr!”, disappearing into the flat before Roger can even say hello.

“Have you got an old t shirt you don’t mind getting ruined?” You ask, eyeing the silky button up Roger’s wearing halfway undone to his belly button.

“Sure,” he says. “I’ll go and get changed.”

The door to his room is open a fraction, and you peep through the crack as you watch him pull his shirt over his head and search for another one. He’s standing with his back to the door, and you admire his wiry physique, lean muscle rippling as he shrugs on a faded old Breakaways t shirt. You snap out of it before he can notice, and busy yourself corralling an excitable Robbie, setting him up at the kitchen table with his crayons and his juice.

You pull on washing up gloves and bleach Roger’s dark roots first, making sure not to get it on the ends and frazzle them.

“How’d you get so good at this, anyway?” He wonders as he watches you loading the product onto the brush in his bedroom mirror.

“My housing benefits don’t exactly cover trips to the hairdressers.” You say, gesturing towards your own bottle blonde head. “How light do you want to go?”

You show him the colour chart on the back of the packet, and he calls you “very professional”, about which you’re pleased.

You notice the crack in his bathroom window as you take him through to wash his hair, covered over with an old Woolies bag but still leaking freezing air into the flat. You don’t say anything.

You make him sit on the floor with his back to the tub, leaning his head back as you support it in one cupped hand, using the other to angle the shower head over his hair.

“Just like a real salon.” He quips, and you grin.

You massage the shampoo into his hair and he groans in relaxation.

“I love having people play with my hair.”

Maybe it’s because you’ve not had any action for such a long time, but the noise does something to you.

You dry him off and then it’s time to cut. You trim his fringe last, squatting down in front of him and frowning with the concentration of trying to cut straight, and you’re a bit nervous being this close to him. He keeps making silly faces to put you off, though, and soon he’s got you giggling like no one else can.

You gently blow all the hair off the back of his neck and he lets out another little strangled moan.

”Sorry” he says quickly, embarrassed. “Jus’ tickled is all.” You bite your lip.

“Right, of course.”

★★★★★

The next day you see him in the foyer when you’re both down checking the post. You compliment him on his new hair, and he tells you he’s been thinking.

“You should cut people’s hair in the tower block.”

“What?”

That boy has had a few crazy ideas since you’ve known him, but this has to take first prize.

“It’d be cheaper than going to the hairdressers.” He points out. “Plus you’re really good at it, you could make good money.”

“What would I do with Robbie?”

“Well you’d be doing it at home, wouldn’t you? He’d be there.” He says, matter-of-factly.

“Or..”

He trails off.

“What?”

“Or I could take him. While you’ve got appointments.”

You gape at him.

“I- I could make you some posters to put up if you like?” He continues when you don’t say anything. “There’s a photocopier at uni I could use. Use it to make stuff for the band all the time. ”

Perhaps against your better judgement, you reach over and hug him. He feels warm and solid, smells clean and good and you realise you’re welling up.

“Thanks, Rog.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” He says, using his Robbie voice on you.

“No need to get upset.”

“I love you.” You mumble.

Maybe you hadn’t realised it before, but it’s true. The boy’s gold.

He puts his hand on the back of your head, stroking your hair.

“Love you too, darling.”

★★★★★

He comes over one night to borrow flour.

He’s started letting himself in at this point, using the spare key you’d given him “for emergencies only”. He always knocks to announce himself first, but you can guarantee he’ll be strolling in like he owns the place whether he gets an answer or not.

“Where’s the tyke?” He wonders when there’s a distinct lack of “ROGERR!” the second he walks through the door.

“Started at nursery this week.” You announce proudly.

“Christ.”

“Yeah.”

“Nursery.” He repeats.

“Yeah.”

“Already?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ.”

You can only grin back, chest puffed out with pride.

Anyway, he needs plain flour.

“Since when do you cook?” You ask sceptically, raising an eyebrow at him from the sofa.

“Got a date tonight.” He grins.

“Ooo.” You say, setting your cup of tea down on the coffee table so you can turn yourself properly to face him. “Is it that girl?”

“Tracy, yeah. She’s coming to my place for dinner.”

“Big step.”

Roger hadn’t had a girlfriend for the time you’d known him, and at first you’d suspected him of being more of a one-and-done kind of guy. But even though he was often coming in late from the pub or the club or wherever, there had been surprisingly little activity of the female kind coming from within the walls of his flat at night.

“Yeah, well. We’ve been on a few dates so far and it’s gone well, so I thought I’d invite her over to mine, y’know. Take things to the next level.”

You try to hide your disappointment.

“So do you think tonight might be the night..?” you trail off, but Roger knows what you’re insinuating.

He grimaces.

“Maybe…”

“Maybe?” You repeat. “What do you mean?”

He looks hesitant.

“Look, if I tell you something, do you promise it won’t leave this room?” He asks.

“Yeah.”

“Do you swear?”

“Roger,” you begin. “I’m a single mother. I’m stuck inside all day and my only friends are my son, the woman at the post office who I go to collect get my benefits from, and you. Who am I going to tell?”

“Right, of course.” He nods, eyes closed. One of his hands is out on the kitchen table to steady himself, the other on his hip. He hasn’t been able to stand still since he walked through the door.

“What is it? Just tell me.”

He takes a deep breath, and then he lets out a big puff of air.

“I’ve never slept with anyone before.”

★★★★★

You fight to keep your expression neutral as you process what the hell he’s just said.

A virgin?

Him?

How was it possible?

Roger was the best looking man you knew, and the kindest. And it was obvious he was popular, especially with women. It just didn’t add up.

“You’re not saying anything.” Roger says nervously, and you blink up at him.

“I guess I’m just..” You search for the right word. “Surprised.”

He closes his eyes and nods in agreement.

“Roger, how?!”

It’s the only thing you can say at this point.

He huffs a laugh.

“Well, if I’m honest, I was never very popular in school.”

“You weren’t?”

“They, um,” he lowers his voice, as if someone might be listening. “They called me a poofter. And, erm… other things.”

“Oh.”

To be honest, it didn’t come as much of a surprise to you, that people had called him that. It was horrible, all the same, but not surprising.

In fact, there had been a while when you’d even wondered the same. It might explain his gentle nature, you’d thought, if he was gay, and the lack of dating, and the fact that he’d never tried anything on you, even though you’d been close now for such a long while.

Not that you were cocky - not anything of the sort, but still. Most men would try it on with you, and even though you mostly wished they wouldn’t, you couldn’t say it hadn’t hurt when Roger didn’t try to go there at all.

“Was never really into rugby or anything like that.” He explains. “I played tennis, and I was alright at football, but I was never on the team, or anything. They all - the other boys – they- they’d laugh at me. In the showers?”

The ends of his sentences are going up like questions, and he looks like he’s having a hard time swallowing. You wonder whether this speech is something he plays over in his head often.

Whether it helps him justify it to himself.

“For being skinny. Y’know? And I was always a head shorter than everyone else ‘til I was about 17.”

“I’m sorry, Rog.”

“And then by the time I got to uni, I’d lost my confidence, I suppose.” He says it with a sad laugh that makes your heart sink.

“And it wasn’t the flirting that was the problem. I’m good at that-”

“I don’t doubt it.” You cut in without thinking.

He looks at you for a moment and your cheeks heat up, and then he’s looking at the floor again.

“And, well, I just never actually got around to any of… that.”

He makes an airy gesture with his hand.

“Why don’t you just get drunk and do it?” You offer. “No one would know any different.”

“Nearly did a few times.” He admits. “But when it came to the crux of it, I just couldn’t go through with it. Too nervous about stuffing it up.”

He gives a watery laugh.

“Oh, Roger. Why didn’t you tell anyone how you felt? Girls would be understanding.”

“You might be,” he reminds you. “But not everybody. I just felt like they’d all laugh at me. It’s completely acceptable for a girl to still be a virgin at 18, 19 20. But a guy? It’s just embarrassing!”

“Well that’s just a double standard-“ You cut in.

“Do you not think I know that?!” He says in frustration, and you butt in again, before things can get too heated.

“Anyway.”

He looks up at you expectantly.

“What are you going to do?”

You mean about Tracy, but he takes it more generally.

“I don’t know.” He says miserably. “I guess I’ll just have to stay one forever, now. I mean it’s just too mortifying at this point-”

“Oh it’s not that bad Roger for goodness sake, don’t wallow in it.” You scold him. “At least you aren’t me.”

He’s taken aback somewhat by that.

“What on earth d’you mean?”

“Well it’s not as if I get any action, is it?”

Bless him, he’s really looking at you as if he has no idea. And you’d be flattered, maybe, if the whole thing wasn’t so exasperating. You try to explain.

“At least you didn’t do it once or twice when you were sixteen, be unlucky enough to fall pregnant and then get saddled with a kid.”

You say it through your teeth, glancing around as if Robbie might hear you all the way from nursery school.

“And now that’s gonna be me for the next eighteen years, isn’t it?” You say it with a laugh that all of a sudden feels too close to a sob. “Until he grows up. Moves out. And then I’ll be what? Nearly forty? All before my life can even start.”

“Hey, come on-” Roger’s saying, sounding like he’s regretting starting this whole conversation, but you’re on a roll now.

“And it’s not like I’ll ever get married now, is it?”

You smile sadly, looking out of the window instead of at Roger, because you’re afraid that if you look at him directly, you might cry. For some reason he seems to be have that effect on you.

“Shot that horse in the face when I split up with his father. And no one’s gonna want me with him are they?”

You jerk your head towards Robbie’s empty bedroom.

“Oh, love..”

“Jus’ baggage, isn’t it?” You mumble, head down, staring into the dregs at the bottom of your cup. “No-one wants used goods.”

You can see Roger’s face out of the corner of your eye. He looks so pained. You’re too afraid to look up.

“Or at least, they don’t want me for the right reasons.” You sniff and continue, face set hard. Determined not to crack and cry. “Some of ‘em just think single mums are these slags they can do anything they want to.”

“Hey, enough.” Roger says stiltedly, voice strained. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.” You insist. “That’s all they ever want me for. And all the ones who are any good are just put off by it. ”

You shrug and look out the window again, eyes fixed on the tower block opposite. There’s a woman in one of the windows, rocking her baby to sleep.

There’s nowhere else to look, so you just close your eyes.

“It doesn’t put me off.” Roger says in a small voice.

You hear him slowly coming over, feel the dip in the sofa cushion as he sits down next to you. He puts his hand on your knee.

“What d’you mean.” You say, forcing yourself to open your eyes and look up at him. His blue eyes blink earnestly back at you.

He takes a deep breath.

“All of that- it would never put me off from wanting to date you.”

Your mouth drops open.

“What?” You whisper. “Really?”

He nods, moving his face close to yours.

You can feel your heart in your mouth.

His hand is still resting on your knee. It’s burning a hole through your jeans.

“I would date you too, you know.”

He swallows.

“I guess we could both help each other out, then.” He says hoarsely.

His lips are inches from your own. You drag your eyes away from his to look down at them, pink and wet. Ready. You can feel his breath on your cheek.

All you would have to do is lean in, and his mouth would be on yours.

Just then, you hear a sudden knock at Roger’s front door out in the hallway, and you spring apart guiltily.

“That must be her.” You mutter, turning away from him.

Roger’s rubbing the back of his head.

“She’s early.”

You stand, taking your empty cup over to the sink. He stays where he is.

“You better go and answer her.”

“Wait-”

You shake your head, bending down to search through the cupboards as he slowly stands and comes up behind you.

You push the bag of flour into his chest. He stares down at it dumbly, barely remembering it was what he came in for.

Tracy knocks again.

“Good luck.” You swallow.

He nods faintly, looking so lost you have to turn back around again, pretending to be busy at the sink.

“Let me know how it goes.” You say over your shoulder as he leaves.

But you don’t want to know. Not even a little bit.

★★★★★

You manage to stop yourself from going round until after you’ve dropped Robbie off at nursery.

You’ve been dying to see Roger all morning, but you were worried that things might have gone well the night before, and Tracy might still be there. The prospect of walking in on something you didn’t want to see was enough to deter you until the afternoon. A stab of jealously twists at your gut just thinking about it.

“So,” you say apprehensively as you walk in. Roger looks around from where he’s standing at the stove. “Did you?”

He shakes his head.

You make a noise of dismay.

“What happened?”

“Bottled it.”

“Oh no!”

He nods, grinning bashfully.

“Well you’ll just have to do it next time.” You say, taking a seat at the kitchen table. You’re trying not to look too relieved.

“Not sure there’ll be one.” He says casually.

“Why?”

He scratches at the back of his head with the spatula. Something he only does when he’s nervous. His t shirt has ridden up at the bottom, exposing his soft tummy. You look away.

“What happened?” You press.

“Think she was starting to get the vibe I wasn’t interested.” He says quietly. “Just saw her as a friend.”

“Because you weren’t pestering her for sex on the third date?” You frown. “God what is she, a bloke?”

Roger laughs.

“Not… just because of that.” He says leadingly. Nervously?

What was up with him?

“Then what?”

He dumps his eggs onto a plate, scraping out the pan before he spins around to answer you. He takes a deep breath.

“Because I couldn’t stop talking about you.”

He says it quite earnestly, matter-of-factly, even, and you stare at him, studying his face for any sign of a joke. You find none.

You feel your entire body go warm.

“Let’s go on a date, then.” You whisper.

“Ok.”

He says it steadily. You’re fighting to stop your voice from shaking.

“When?”

“This Saturday.” He throws out, coming to sit down opposite you with his plate.

Scrambled eggs on toast, HP sauce splattered messily all over them. Just how he likes it.

“What would I do with Robbie?”

“Could you get your mum to look after him?”

You snort before he’s finished saying it.

“Unlikely, Rog.”

“Well could you get a babysitter?” He suggests, voice thick through a mouthful of eggs.

“That costs money, Roger.” You say patiently.

It’s hard for people who don’t have children to put themselves into your shoes. Thinking like that doesn’t come naturally to them. They aren’t used to having to automatically come up with the Reasons Why Not.

“We could just..” He waves his fork around. “Have one at home. Y’know, with him here.”

You scoff.

“Yeah. And what a great date that would be.”

“Well it would be.” Roger says. “Robbie’s my little mate.”

You smile at that.

“ ‘sides, it would be quiet without him around.”

“Yeah.” You say suddenly. “Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it?”

The smile’s growing on your face. He grins back.

“It’s settled, then.”

★★★★★

“Mummy’s going on a date, Robbie.” You say to him, playing with his toys at your feet as you get ready in front of the mirror.

“Date.” Robbie repeats back to you, smiling uncertainly. He doesn’t know what it means.

“Roger?” He says, looking up at you hopefully. You smile.

“Yes, that’s right. A date with Roger.” You say, and he gives you a toothy grin, placated. “What a clever boy you are.”

You’ve no idea what he’s cooking. He did pop round this morning to borrow an onion, but apart from that, you’ve no clue.

You’re nervous.

“ROGERRR!”

Robbie runs inside before you can say anything as usual, and it takes you a minute to notice Roger’s wearing a tie. Top three buttons of his shirt unbuttoned as always, but a tie all the same. And he’s combed his hair.

You’re touched by the effort he’s gone to.

“You look nice.” He comments, as he pulls the door back all the way to let you inside.

“Thanks. So do you.”

He’s got wine, and apple juice for Robbie. He’s made him fish fingers and potato smileys, and spaghetti Bolognese for the two of you. At your encouragement, he gives Robbie a little bit of spaghetti on his plastic plate (you’ve come with a bag full of his things so he doesn’t fuss about the disruption of his routine).

“I’m trying to get him on to Grown Up Food.” You explain in a whisper.

It doesn’t feel quite like a date. More like old friends having dinner after not seeing each other in a while. You saw Roger this morning, but it’s been a long time since you’d had time to sit down and eat something together.

Honestly, you don’t mind it. You were worried there was going to be this weird tension there, now that you’d put a label on the occasion. But it just feels natural. Like catching up.

At one point, Roger reaches across and takes your hand over the table, threading his fingers through yours, and even though it takes you by surprise, you don’t let go. It feels nice. You eat the rest of your meals with one hand.

Robbie gets tomato sauce all over himself, naturally, and you realise it’s probably almost time for his bath anyway.

“Roger bath me?” Robbie pleads after dinner, tugging at Roger’s sleeve and you hesitate, looking up at him.

“I don’t know..” You start

“Want me to give you a bath, bud?”

“Yeeahhhh!” Robbie yells.

Roger looks at you triumphantly.

“Can you do it?” You ask, doubtful.

“Course.” Roger says. “We’ll be fine, won’t we mate?”

“Yeah yeah yeah!”

You sigh and relent.

“Alright, I’ll do the dishes.”

“Mummy’s only next door in the kitchen, Robbie.” You’re saying to your excited toddler moments later, after having unpacked all his bath stuff and giving Roger the walk-through. He’s pulling at Roger’s hand, impatient to get on with the fun.

“Don’t get the water too hot.” You tell Roger soberly. “And don’t fill it up any deeper than his tummy. Oh, and don’t let the water out until after he gets out.”

He shoots you a quizzical look.

You lower your voice.

“He’s thinks he’ll get sucked down the plug hole.”

“Gotcha.” He says solemnly, and then gives you a little wink and a grin. Your stomach flutters.

“Come on then, little man. Bath time.”

You leave them to it and clean up the kitchen. For a bolognese, Roger’s managed to get through pots and pans in Biblical proportions. And he’s got sauce splattered all the way up the tiled walls. You sigh.

You can hear Robbie squealing and splashing, both of their laughter floating down the hallway, and you realise you might have drawn the short straw.

You’re sweating by the time you finally finish up, and walk through to the bathroom to check on them.

They're in such a bubble of their own that they don’t notice you at first, don’t hear you coming to stand in the open doorway, leaning against it with one hip. You fold your arms. You’re trying to keep a hold on the grin that’s threatening to spread all over your face.

Roger’s got Robbie sitting up on top of the sink, wrapped up in a fluffy towel, and he’s brushing his teeth for him.

“Open wide, Robbie, that’s it- no, don’t bite my finger - good boy. Nice and clean, hey?”

In that moment, you’re struck with the realisation that Roger’s become a man while you weren’t looking. That somewhere along the line, he’s changed from that haphazard, clueless uni student you’d known when he moved in, and turned into this mature, capable man. You’d like to believe that Robbie has something to do with it.

You think that maybe he’s more of a man than any guy you’ve gone out with before. Maybe even more of one that anyone you’ve ever known.

You want to make him feel like a man. Tonight.

You know it’s time.

You clear your throat a little and he turns, grinning brightly. You smile, throat suddenly thick with an emotion you can’t place. You walk over and lay a hand on his shoulder.

“My boys.” You murmur.

Slowly, deliberately, you lean up and press a kiss against his still-smiling lips. It’s quick and chaste - Robbie is there, after all - but it’s romantic as hell.

You pull back and look at him. His eyes are shining.

“Mummy kissed you!” Robbie shrieks before bursting into a fit of giggles, doubling over on the sink, and instead of ruining the moment it just makes it better. You’re laughing too, and so is Roger, picking him up and lifting up high.

“Yes she did!”

He kicks his little legs in the air as Roger spins him around the bathroom, positively squealing with childish laughter.

“And now I’m gonna kiss you TOO!” You shout, lunging for your son and pressing kisses all over his chubby face, screaming his head off all the while.

“Mummy no!”

“Yesyesyesyesyes!”

★★★★★

You all have to do the bedtime routine together.

Getting Robbie into his pajamas, watching his night time cartoons for an hour and then reading him his bed time story. You put him down to sleep in the spare room and watch a film in the meantime, hoping that by the time it’s finished he’ll be in the floppy stage, so you can just carry him back through to yours and put him down for the night and he won’t stir.

“It’s a sleepover.” You’d told him as you were through changing him into his pajamas, while Roger set up the telly ready for Magic Roundabout.

“Sleepover.” He’d repeated, bouncing excitedly.

He’d fallen asleep barely a page into his bedtime story.

You and Roger cuddle throughout the film, your face set on fire the entire time. It’s the first time you’ve been this close to him.

When it finishes, you carry Robbie next door, tucking his warm, sleeping body into bed and kissing him on the forehead. He doesn’t stir. You quickly check your hair in the hall mirror before creeping back out, letting yourself back in to Roger’s flat.

He grins lazily at you when you come in. He’s lying sprawled across the sofa with his feet hanging over the arm, still watching TV with a glass of wine in his hand. He looks loose and happy.

“Hi.”

He leans over to put his glass on the coffee table as you walk towards him, opening his arms for you to fall into him. His body is so warm.

“Is he fast asleep?” Roger mumbles into your hair.

“Out like a light.” You confirm.

He hums.

Finally alone together.

“What d’you wanna do now?” He asks.

It’s casual, but you know better. You can feel the excitement thrumming under his skin. It’s like a live current. It’s contagious.

“What do you wanna do?” You counter, playing his game.

“You know.” He murmurs, lips skimming the outer shell of your ear.

The electricity jolts through every part of your body, sending his words right down to your toes. You feel every single hair on your body stand on end.

You shiver.

“Hey, we haven’t had pudding!” He shouts suddenly, and you jump a little, pulling back to look at him in surprise.

He looks genuinely annoyed with himself for forgetting.

“Pudding?”

“Yeah!”

“You made pudding?”

“Yeah! Well, no. Not made. Bought.” He says, quickly rolling off you to cross the kitchen.

“It’s alright, Roger, you don’t have to-”

He’s yanking open the fridge door before you can stop him, hunting for the forgotten dessert and you roll your eyes and smile.

Once Roger had an idea, there was no slowing him down. He always did like everything just perfect.

“I got strawberries!” He shouts over his shoulder, waving the packet around.

Not your favourite.

You weren’t about to tell him that, though.

You stick him a weak thumbs up from the sofa as he ratches around for bowls and spoons.

“Thought it might be romantic.” He explains with a smug grin as he tips them into two bowls at the kitchen table.

“Tonight’s already been romantic.” You assure him. “Have you got chocolate?”

“No, sorry. Did you want some?”

“That’s ok.” You say, trying to hide your disappointment. You walk over to sit with him at the table.

“I might have pouring cream?” He offers.

“That’s ok, Rog-”

“No really, I’ll go and have a look.”

You let him go, staring down at your strawberries gloomily. If you could’ve had chocolate sauce, it might not have been so bad.

You ate strawberries all the time while you were pregnant with Robbie, always craving for them at the most bizarre times of night. Ever since he was born, however, you’d just never fancied them in the same way again.

“I’ve got squirty cream?” He half-yells from inside the fridge, and your eyes light up.

“Aw yeah, wicked!”

He laughs.

“Great.”

“D’you want some strawberries to go with that cream?” Roger teases when you spray half the bottle into your bowl.

"Shut up, I like it.”

You end up getting a lot of it all over your face, and Roger takes great pleasure in watching you trying to wipe it off.

“Oh for god’s sake, get here.” He says, after you wipe at your cheek in vain for the fifth time. “You’re not even getting anywhere near it.”

He licks his thumb and wipes at your cheek, scooping up all the whipped cream from your chops. Without thinking, your hand shoots out to grab his own, and you lick all of it off his thumb, relishing the taste. You fucking love whipped cream.

Your eyes snap open when Roger makes a strangled noise of pleasure, and you realise you’ve inadvertently turned him on.

You smirk, swirling your tongue around the tip of his thumb, making sure you get every last drop. He throws his head back and groans.

“Oh, come on.”

You laugh and pop your mouth off him, looking at him in faux-innocence.

“What? I was just making sure I got it all.”

He digs his palms into his eye sockets, his answering grin was tortured.

“How much longer are we gonna drag this out for?”

You look at him in disbelief.

“You were the one that suggested dessert!” You argue.

“Yes, and I’m now very much regretting that decision.”

His hands are still over his eyes, so he doesn’t see the lightbulb go on in your head, and the wicked grin that follows it onto your face.

“I’ve got an idea.” You say, voice low. He looks up at you.

“What now?”

“How about we bring dessert into the bedroom?”

★★★★★

“Sorry I haven’t tidied up in here.” He mumbles as he trails in after you, surveying the mess before you. “Didn’t exactly think it would get to this.”

“This is lovely, Rog.” You say as you sit down on the bed, thumbing at the blanket with a wistful smile playing on your face. It’s a patchwork quilt, warm and worn, thrown haphazardly over the bed. The grey sheets are all peeled back and rumpled, and there are pillows strewn about all over the place.

“My mum made it for me.” He mumbles again, looking embarrassed. You smile, rubbing your finger along all of the different textures.

You realise what he’s said too late.

“Roger..” You say, whipping around to face him, standing above you beside the bed with the cream bottle still in his hands. “You do want to do this, don’t you?”

His eyes fly open wide.

“Yes!” He almost shouts, and you have to stifle a giggle. “Shit, sorry. Yes. I just, I only meant - I didn’t expect you to let me- y’know - on the first.. date.”

You shift slightly on the sinky mattress.

“What are you trying to say?”

“Oh, no no!” He backtracks, putting the food down on the bedside table and plopping down next to you. “No, god. I don’t mean it like that. ”

He stares earnestly into your eyes.

“Are you nervous?” You whisper, glancing sideways up at him.

“No.” He says steadily. “Not with you.”

“Good.”

“Are you?”

“A little.” You admit.

But it’s a good kind of nervous. The kind you haven’t had in a very long time.

You love him.

Maybe not in that way, not quite yet, at least, but as a friend.

And maybe soon as more.

You love him.

And so you close your eyes, lean in, and kiss him.

★★★★★

“That’s cold!”

Roger squawks as you squirt a squiggle of cream down the middle of his bare chest. You cackle, running a finger through your mess before bringing it to your lips to taste.

“Mmmm.” You exaggerate, closing your eyes in mock-rapture as you suck the cheap foam from your fingertip.

“Where else are you gonna put it?” Roger asks eagerly and you grin.

“Patience.”

You have to hold his hips down to the bed to stop him wriggling as you suck and lick the sweet cream from his nipples, his chest, his belly-button. He’s moaning and giggling with every swipe of your tongue, and there’s a dark patch growing in size on the front of his stripey underwear. He’s rock hard, straining at the waist-band, and you can see his bright pink tip poking out of the top.

You decide the fun’s not over yet.

“My turn!” You declare, pushing him so that he rolls off to the side, flopping down on your belly in his place. “Now you’ve gotta do it to me.”

You flip onto your back and close your eyes, grinning while you wait for him to plan his attack.

“Don’t get it in my pubes.” You remind him. “And don’t put it anywhere near my vagina.”

Roger’s the first person you’ve been totally naked with, lights on and all, since Robbie was born.

You love your marks and scars - they remind you of Robbie - but it had been hard to accept that your body was changed permanently, and at such a young age, too. For the first year or so, you could hardly even be naked around yourself.

With Roger, everything was different. His face when you’d first taken your top off, so full of this quiet awe - it was enough to make everything you’d been worried about fade into background noise.

You jump when he spurts the cream onto your lips.

You resist the urge to poke your tongue out and clean it off, because the next thing you know he’s climbing over you and kissing you deeply, the sweet taste filling both of your mouths.

Neither of you can stop giggling, smiling against each other’s lips, teeth clashing together and breath merging into one.

After he’s licked you clean (and sucked a strawberry out of your belly button), he decides he wants to pay you lip service in another way.

So far, he’s taken all the foreplay in his stride with a quiet self-assurance, but now you’re getting towards the real thing, he’s suddenly nervous.

He stops between your legs and looks up at you, a little unsure of what to do next.

He’s lying on his belly, legs bent and crossed behind him at the ankle, in nothing but his y-fronts and a pair of purple socks.

You feel him mumbling your name into the inside of your bare thigh, following it up with a sweet kiss against your skin.

“You okay?” You wonder, propping yourself up on your elbows to look down at him.

“I’m not sure what to do.” He admits, burying his face into your leg and blowing out a big huff of air. It tickles.

You try not to giggle at him, arms folded under himself and his face planted into your thigh.

“Just do what feels natural.” You tell him, stroking his blonde head and he groans, frustrated. “You’ve been doing good so far.”

“What if I do rubbish?” He argues. You laugh at that.

“Half of you are rubbish at it anyway.”

“That’s not very encouraging-”

“Look, all I’m saying is that practise doesn’t always make perfect.” You remind him gently. “You’re a good kisser, you’ll be good at this as well.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Just do what feels right, you’ll pick it up in no time.”

He looks up at you then, one cheek still resting on your leg. His breathe tickles against your skin.

You get an idea.

“Come up here.” You say. He looks at you confused, but you haul him up by the arm nevertheless, until your faces are level.

“Give me your hand.”

He hands it over, mystified.

You take the palm of his hand and bring it to your lips, kissing him there once first, gently, to make him smile.

“Do it like this.”

You say, and then you move your lips and tongue against the palm of his hand, simulating oral sex, in just the rhythm and pattern that you like it.

“Sthee?” You muffle into his hand. “Juth’st like tha’ ”

You look up at him to check if he’s taking it in. His cheeks are turning a dark shade of red.

He nods stiffly and starts moving down your body.

“Got it.”

“The clit is-”

“I know where it is.” He snaps, and you nod, leaning back against the pillow to let him get on with it.

He does it just like you showed him.

You knew he’d be a fast learner, but you didn’t expect him to pick it up quite so quickly, and quite so well.

He’s so eager to taste you, pushing your legs open wider, pulling you onto his mouth so you’re flush up against his nose and lips. He groans against your clit when you push and grind against him, and the vibrations send shockwaves straight through you.

“That’s so good, Rog.” You’re telling him, stroking his hair as he groans into you. “Just like that.”

“Yeah?” He breathes, taking a break to turn his head to the side and suck a dark bruise onto your thigh. “Am I doin’ good?”

“So good.” You repeat, eyes squeezed shut and your nails digging into his shoulders like you’re trying to kill him.

You let him carry on until he makes you come, shaking and grinding against his face, pulling him closer by the back of his head. He moans as you tug at his locks, cleaning you up enthusiastically.

His tongue soon becomes too much against your sensitive heat. You push him away with your foot, and he props himself up on his elbow, grinning.

“How was that?” He asks, turning his head to wipe his wet chin off on his shoulder.

“Come ‘ere.” You murmur in answer, hauling him up towards you and pulling him down for a deep kiss.

“That good, ey?” He mumbles against your lips, and you shut him up by kissing him harder.

“Your turn.” You’re saying next, anxious to move onto the next thing as you push him off and move to get on top of him.

His breathe hitches as you push him down against the pillows, and you stop just before you move to slip off his boxers.

“Has someone done this to you before?” You wonder.

His eyes don’t move from your face. His chest is rising and falling rapidly under you as you trace a finger along the waist-band of his underwear. You feel his cock twitch.

“No.” He says breathily.

“Get ready, then.” You say, moving to finally pull his underwear off but then his hand shoots out and stops you.

He’s gripping your wrist tight, face anxious.

“Are you okay?”

“I won’t-” He starts, glancing up to the ceiling as if he’s having to will himself to say it, “I won’t.. last long, if you do that. At all.”

You breathe a laugh.

“That’s the point, Rog.” You say. “If you finish now, you’ll be able to last longer when we fuck.”

“Oh.” Is all he says, laughing at himself self-consciously.

You lean up and kiss him again, trying to reassure him. He’s still grabbing onto your hand tight.

“Ready?” You ask, thumbs hooked inside his waist-band.

His skin is fever-hot.

“Yeah.”

He’s right. He doesn’t last long.

Not that you were expecting him to, but still. It’s quite satisfying how quickly he’s coming uncontrollably into your mouth, hips stuttering and unable to stop himself from thrusting all the way down your throat.

“Oh god, oh god, oh fuck.” He’s whispering like a prayer, body twisting on the mattress below you as you take all of him, nose pressing into his belly. He’s got a fistful of your hair, and in the last moments, it’s like he doesn’t know whether to push you off or pull you closer.

It tastes hot, and slightly sweet, and when you crawl back up to let him taste himself on your tongue he can’t help but moan all over again.

He’s a bit like a zombie after that.

You decide to just leave him to recover for a while, realising it’s about time someone went to check on Robbie. You pull Roger’s dressing gown off the back of the door and slip it on, turning around in the doorway to tell him you’ll be back in a minute.

He’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, a goofy grin plastered all over his face.

“Won’t be long.” You whisper.

You wonder whether the words even register at all.

“Is he..?” Roger wonders when you come back in. He looks like he’s come back to life a little, now sat up on his elbows.

“Flat out.” You grin, coming to sit back down on the bed.

You don’t bother taking the robe off, suddenly a little chilly after all of the sweat has cooled.

“So do you want to fuck then, or..?” You wonder, trailing a finger around one of his nipples in a circle.

He sits up fully and looks at you at bit sheepishly, scratching his head.

“Er, actually...” He trails off, and you look at him encouragingly, waiting for him to finish. “Would it be ok if we, er, left it? For tonight?”

You blink at him.

“Of course!”

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t be silly!” You say, reaching over to pull him into a one armed hug. He leans his head on your shoulder.

“It was really awesome, though.” He mumbles into your collar bone, pressing a wet kiss where his dark blue robe had slipped down. “Loved it.”

“Me too.” You say appreciatively, resting your cheek - sore from all the smiling - against the top of his head. His hair smells like coconut shampoo.

“M’really glad it was with you.”

He yawns, suddenly knackered, and you begin to feel the same.

He moves off you and to the edge of the bed, and starts pulling his underwear back on.

“And plus,” he adds, looking at you over his shoulder. “There’s always tomorrow.”

You grin back at him.

“You’d do it again?”

“Are you joking?” He snorts, as if you’ve asked him the most stupid question he’s ever heard. “Any time you like, darling.”

★★★★★

Robbie can’t be left on his own overnight, so you have to collect up all of your things and traipse back through into your flat, bare feet cold on the wooden hallway floor.

Roger comes with you, not wanting to send you off to sleep alone after all of that. You do a final check on Robbie, before slipping into bed next to him, huddling into him immediately for warmth. It get’s cold in your little flat at night time, and the heating was something both of you could only afford to put on in the very depths of winter. Roger wraps his arms around you.

“So was this more of a one time thing, then?” He whispers into the dark just before he falls asleep. “Or were you looking to fill a more... permanent position?”

His voice is light and silly, but the moment’s a somber one. You can tell he’s feeling nervous.

“I’d wake up to you every day if I could.” You say seriously.

He kisses you then, gentle and deep - no lust in it but full of passion, and it makes your toes curl.

“Tomorrow’s a start, then.”

You stare up at the ceiling, listening to his rhythmic breathing and thinking about the forgotten strawberries, left out to go over-ripe on the bedside table. You can’t help but lament all the lost nights you could’ve been spending curled up in bed at Roger’s side.

You wonder whether all of this shouldn’t have happened a long time ago.

Or maybe it had happened at exactly the right time.

★★★★★

@ixchel-9275 @oogachuggaoogaoogachugga

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mynamemeanscute · 3 years

Text

i’ve realized over the past few months that leaving this corner of the internet untouched for the better part of this year has left me a bit overwhelmed and a lot uncertain of where and how to pick back up. while i recognize this blog isn’t monetized, i don’t have a huge following, and there is literally zero obligation to regularly post random tidbits about one’s life for all to see, i have genuinely enjoyed logging my life in such a way that i’m able to scroll through what is essentially the last decade of my life and have a pretty decent clue as to what was going on at any given point. i have decided to jump back in here by highlighting a meaningful project my partner and i have taken on over the past few months.

back in september, there was a post going around showing how much $43 amounts to in school supplies in iqaluit. it got a lot of attention and many supplies (an excess, in fact!) were sent to inuksuk high school. recognizing the high costs of many items in the north affects more than the budget of a single school, we got in touch with vice principal of the local high school in cambrige bay, nunavut .

kiilinik high school is able to provide school supplies for their students from the school's budget (!!); however, their vice principal explained period poverty is very real for their community, as it is for many menstruating individuals in the arctic. it is not uncommon to pay upwards of $15-$18 for a small box of tampons, and the lack of menstrual products can lead to, "missed school and work days, health problems and a decreased sense of self-worth" (source). in response to this need, we decided to ship three flat rate boxes filled with tampons, pads, and reusable cups to the school with the hopes of helping them to better support their students and their community.

in an update from the vice principal, we learned the students were incredibly excited to open the packages and went about setting up a “room of requirements” (yes, this is a HP reference) in the school for whomever needs clothing, shoes, and basic toiletry items. we were graced with a photo of the “period shelf” (below). the high schoolers also took the initiative to put together a presentation to educate the junior high students about good period hygiene and product use, and to make sure they all knew they can go to any of the seniors if they need extra support.

in november, the students of kiilinik high school collaborated and gave our project a name: “pijitsirniq, period”. the first part of the name is one of a number of inuit societal values and means, “serving or providing for family and/or community.” the second part speaks for itself. we are both honoured and excited to have been given this name.

once we had a name, we created a GoFundMe page, in an effort to increase the legitimacy of our project and to reach a wider audience. the goal of $6,000 is the approximate amount it will take to support kiilinik high school, with three flat rate shipping boxes shipped monthly, for the next school year. we are please to announce we have already successfully collected enough funds to support the school for the remainder of the current school year and into the next.

this past week, we spent the better part of four days baking, decorating, and delivering assorted holiday cookies and treats, as a fun and festive way to raise money that wasn’t just, “hello, money please.” we managed to raise over $500, and only sacrificed one spatula in the process. needless to say, we are very done with cookies for the next while and the celebratory bowl of kale was probably the best decision i ever made.

i did the big shop for the december shipment yesterday, so i’ll be getting that boxed and to the post office asap. we have some future plans for our little two person organization and i may have a particularly exciting phone meeting next week, so sit tight (and thank you for following along... if you read this mini novella here, you are fully up to speed, and i am so jazzed you stayed). if you are able and willing to donate, please check out the GoFundMe page. if you can’t or just don’t want to (both valid), please consider sharing, chatting about what we’re doing, generally spreading the word. we are (and will be) all the grateful.

#pijitsirniqperiod #periodproject #menstrualproducts #north #Canada #Arctic #Nunavut #links #project #community #personal #return to blogging #snapshots #tampons #pads #menstrualcups

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southwindscoffee · 3 years

Text

Um so I had an amazing year

You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive or sick enough to help sick people get well. You only ever uplift from your position of strength and clarity and alignment. – Abraham/Esther Hicks

So.

I had an amazing year.

And I’m embarrassed to say it because I’m not dumb. (At least I hope I’m not.) I look around and can see suffering. Upheaval. Sickness. Poverty. I’m not denying those things exist or minimizing anyone else’s experience.

But I wanted to share why I had an amazing year with the intent of uplifting someone else.

Maybe you.

I’m ending the year feeling happier, healthier, richer, more creatively fulfilled, and closer to my family than I have in a very, very long time. I credit this to a few small but key things—and overall, to one book.

Last year about this time I listened to Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’ve lost track of how many copies I’ve bought of this book. Maybe four? At least two hardback copies, because I gave one away. Simply stated, the audio changed my life.

Just—if you’re sick of listening to yourself complain about your bank account or weight or whatever, and you’re serious about changing things, go read/listen to this book.

AND THEN ACTUALLY DO WHAT HE SAYS. The little, dumb, tiny changes. Because they add up.

Last year I got sick of complaining about the same things year after year. And since I mostly complain in my journal or in my own head, it was a very boring place to be. I got sick of wondering why the balance in my bank account didn’t change, why I wasn’t losing weight, and why I wanted to write so much and wasn’t getting anywhere, even though I tried.

But these things (richer, slimmer, more creative) were also what I really desired, deep down inside. I wanted to feel more financially stable, healthier (defined by weight loss), and to write more. (Well, I already wrote plenty. I wanted to write stuff and put it in public where people could actually read it.) These dreams felt very special and secret, but I think they’re somewhat universal—at least for authors.

(Please note: I know that mental health can get in the way of taking any action at all. I’ve written about my depression and anxiety before. If this blog entry makes you feel overwhelmed, please know I’ve been where you are. Focus on taking care of yourself in whatever way you can and don’t worry about all this aspirational ambitious stuff I’m writing. Because the aspirational and ambitious can simply be getting out of bed and taking a shower. I’m proud of you for hanging in there.)

After listening to Atomic Habits, I decided to do the following macro habits all throughout 2020—and I checked these off on a little grid in the James Clear journal:

1. Take my vitamins.

2. Save $5 every day.

3. Write 10,000 words per week.

4. Post a blog entry every Wednesday and Saturday.

5. Go to the gym 3-5 times a week.

I thought that these were things that could get me to my goals—richer, slimmer, more creatively fulfilled. And overall—happy.

I also had some habits I already did. These were:

1. Meditate for 10 minutes every day. (I usually use a guided YouTube video).

2. Write three pages longhand as Morning Pages (per Julia Cameron). (Incidentally, I’ve done this for decades and credit it to the reason I don’t get writer’s block.)

3. Take a Swedish lesson on Duolingo.

I just wanted to keep these up.

I have lots more habits … like brushing my teeth or whatever (and I actually floss because I bought the stuff and leave it out where I can see it), but the ones above are my more unusual habits.

Well, what happened?

1. I took my vitamins. Boring, but I’m also quite healthy, so maybe it helps my overall wellbeing. I haven’t been sick all year. I keep them by my bed where I see them and remember to take them.

(Yes, I wash my hands all the time and don’t touch my face. And yes, I stayed home in quarantine. Yes, I wore a mask when I went out. But I think taking vitamins helped.)

2. I ended up saving $5 every workday not every day. I either transferred the money to a Capital 360 account because it’s hard to transfer it back or put $5 into a Stash account. I sometimes would skip Starbucks or something similar and feel virtuous about transferring the $5. Other times I just transferred it.

At the beginning of the year, the Capital 360 account had $5. It now has $806.

At the beginning of the year the Stash account had $50. It now has almost $2500. (Buying $5 here and there in March when the stock market was down ended up making about $500 over the year, a 23% increase.)

Um, so that’s like $3200 I just kinda now have. Incidentally, $5 per day is $1825 over the course of the year, and I’ve almost doubled that because I invested it, not just saved it—and also sometimes I’d transfer like $10 or $25 if I was feeling wild. Over the months, I saw how the account balance would get close to an even number (like $500), so I’d transfer enough to make it that amount. And it just kept going.

(Also, I’m not intending on this to be money advice. Go talk to someone who actually knows. My thought process was to hedge my bets with doing both safe and speculative—a savings account that earned interest and then various stocks. I also wasn’t spending money I needed for food, shelter, etc. I barely felt the expense, but I very much feel the accumulation of savings.)

There really is magic in just starting to do something small, because it really does compound and snowball into good things.

Maybe in the grand scheme of things $3200 isn’t that much. To me it feels like I have this cute little cushion I literally created out of loose change in a year.

Honestly, it feels like a lot, not “cute” or “little.” If I don’t compare myself to millionaires, it’s kind of amazing.

What would happen if you transferred $1 or $2 a day? By the end of 2021, see how much you have…

Another money habit: I wanted to stop buying so much online and one-clicking so many ebooks—even free ones—because it was just too much. I had like 800 unread books. So I kept track of the days I didn’t buy anything or download any books. My ecommerce moratorium ended up being streaks of time I didn’t buy anything and then a day where I would buy everything off of Amazon or whatever all at once. Not sure it did much except make me feel marginally better. With ebooks, while my TBR count is less than what it was at the beginning of the year, it isn’t the zero I’d hoped it to be. But I seriously read about 300-400 books—about 1-2 a day. (I read fast and don’t sleep.) My “read” pile jumped from 800 to 1100. Not sure what to make of it except I read so much and it was really fun. So, I still have about 680 books on my TBR pile for next year. That can be another habit to work on.

3. I’ve written more than 530,000 words this year. The habit I tied it to incidentally, was opening my laptop. If I open my laptop—and that’s a habit I record with a tick mark on a grid—it’s a lot easier to get into the document and start writing. So the way I trick myself to write is I tell myself all I have to do is open my laptop. Simple. I check off the box that I did it and I feel virtuous. To reward myself for actually getting the word count, I have a little jar with binder clips in it and every 1,000 words I put a binder clip in a small old milk bottle. Then I can see the words add up.

I also did a spreadsheet to know what I’ve written this year. I’ve never done one before because it felt too quantitative rather than qualitative. Writing is supposed to be this outlet for me, not something to beat to death with statistics. But I’m glad I did it because writing can be so amorphous. Putting parameters on it made it feel real.

Oh, and I’ve finished one book, set to be published in February. I have a contract for another, and it’s (today) at 77,000 words. Three more books are 50% or more done. And I did NaNoWriMo. So, yeah. It was a productive year.

I also learned that I like juggling projects. Focusing on one can make me stagnant. If I get stuck on one, moving to another really seemed to keep my momentum going.

But I’m now focusing on getting them done and shipped. One at a time. Because they’re all just so close I can feel it.

4. Before this year, I’d published eleven blog entries from 2017 to 2019. This year, I’ve posted 97, not counting this one. I missed a time or two at the beginning, but um, yeah… That’s a big difference.

The reasons I wanted to focus on posting blog entries were multifold. I’d felt “out of it” as far as publishing, having worked on one book for so long that wasn’t gelling. I’d felt frustrated and jealous of those who got their work done. I needed the instant gratification—so to speak—of putting something out there while I worked on projects that took longer. I also wanted to inure myself to the fear of putting myself out there. With each entry—still—I feel fear, but I wanted to do it anyway. So that when the time comes to publish more fiction, I can go, “yeah, I’ve hit publish (literally) 100 times, what’s the big deal?”

My guiding point for writing a blog post has been my gut feeling—tempered by wanting to reach out and help someone else. But to keep up a streak, there is a document on my computer called “Default blog post.” This is what it says in its entirety:

Default blog post

I told myself I just needed to post a blog every Wednesday and Saturday.

Here is me keeping that promise.

If you see that, well, you’ll know how the week is going.

Is there an endgame here? What am I going to do with these blog posts? I can see me taking some ideas and expanding on them and creating some sort of nonfiction/self-help kind of book. I’ve always wanted to do that. I do see them as steppingstones to something bigger.

It also lets me be okay with imperfection. Typos. “Think-Os.” Whatever. This is me with no editor.

5. So, the gym. Well, until it closed, I was going. My trigger was that I just had to check in. That was how I checked the box. Like opening the laptop, actually getting to the gym is the hard part. Once I was there, it was easy.

But the gym closed and is still closed. Like all of us, I needed a Plan B. (C? D?)

I’ve done short walks and long. Currently, I’m just working on doing pushups. I can do a lot of pushups with my knees on the ground. But I can only do a few “real” ones, so that’s what I’m keeping track of. I’m focusing on doing them slowly and properly, not faking my way through them. Faking them is easy, but I’d rather be able to do them right and have the actual arm strength. My trigger for when I do them is when I close my journal, I have to get down and do pushups. (Currently it’s seven.) To someone else that goal might be ridiculously easy. To me, it’s rather difficult and a little embarrassing to post, but whatever. I’m being honest.

I’m ending the year a few pounds lighter than last year—and lighter than I’ve been in years—so I’m calling it a win.

With the other habits, meditating keeps me happy as does dumping my brain in the morning pages. Oh, and I’m on day 622 in a row of Swedish on Duolingo. It feels like I’ve taken about a semester of college Swedish. Not enough to actually converse with someone but getting the hang of it. I’m motivated by a desire to go to Sweden and see some ancestral places—and actually understand some of the language, even though I know most Swedes speak better English than me.

With COVID-19, like most of us, I’ve spent more time at home, but I’m temperamentally suited to that. I know it’s hurt extroverts hard, but as far as I’m concerned, I got to see my family more—even when I went to the office for work.

What am I looking forward to next year? I like the habits I started for 2020. I just want to keep these systems up, because they seem to be working for me. I hope that by using these systems I end up with four to five books happily published in 2021 and I look forward to seeing how the exercise and money habits work out as well.

This entry is about two or three times my usual blog entry, so if you made it this far, thank you. I hope it inspires you to take a small action and then keep taking that small action over and over again. They really do add up.

I wish you the most amazing year ever in 2021. Know that it’s possible.

#mental health #encouragement #2020

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blackfreethinkers · 4 years

Link

Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered "Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee, a group of middle-schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl: "This is Trump country."

Since Trump's rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.

Trump’s words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of 2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been victimized because they support the president — more than 45 times during the same period.

Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in the news, The Post’s figure represents a small fraction of the actual total. It also doesn’t include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and racial epithets that aren’t directly linked to Trump but that the president’s detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated.

“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” said Ashanty Bonilla, 17, a Mexican American high school junior in Idaho who faced so much ridicule from classmates last year that she transferred. “They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

Asked about Trump’s effect on student behavior, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham noted that first lady Melania Trump — whose “Be Best” campaign denounces online harassment — had encouraged kids worldwide to treat one another with respect.

First lady Melania Trump speaks at the White House in May 2018 about her “Be Best” campaign, which denounces online harassment. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

“She knows that bullying is a universal problem for children that will be difficult to stop in its entirety,” Grisham wrote in an email, “but Mrs. Trump will continue her work on behalf of the next generation despite the media’s appetite to blame her for actions and situations outside of her control.”

Most schools don’t track the Trump bullying phenomenon, and researchers didn’t ask about it in a federal survey of 6,100 students in 2017, the most recent year with available data. One in five of those children, ages 12 to 18, reported being bullied at school, a rate unchanged since the previous count in 2015.

However, a 2016 online survey of over 10,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that more than 2,500 “described specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,” although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases, offenders used the phrase “build the wall.” In 672, they mentioned deportation.

Withrow University High School

Someone sprayed hateful graffiti across campus, declaring "F- - - N-words and Faggots" and "Trump." The graffiti also threatened gay and black students and featured multiple swastikas -- the latter often painted alongside the president's last name.

Lewiston High School

After Ashanty Bonilla, 17, tweeted criticism of Trump supporters who visit Mexico, a classmate posted her message on Snapchat alongside a racist response and a Confederate flag. The next day, classmates heckled the teen with racist jeers, tied a rope to the back of her car and wrote "Republican Trump 2020" on the back window.

Amon Carter-Riverside High School

Georgia Clark, an English teacher in Fort Worth, tweeted at President Trump asking him to remove undocumented immigrants from her high school. She mistakenly believed her messages were private.

For Cielo Castor, who is Mexican American, the experience at Kamiakin High in Kennewick, Wash., was searing. The day after the election, a friend told Cielo, then a sophomore, that he was glad Trump won because Mexicans were stealing American jobs. A year later, when the president was mentioned during her American literature course, she said she didn't support him and a classmate who did refused to sit next to her. “‘I don’t want to be around her,’ ” Cielo recalled him announcing as he opted for the floor instead. Then, on “America night” at a football game in October 2018 during Cielo’s senior year, schoolmates in the student section unfurled a “Make America Great Again” flag. Led by the boy who wouldn’t sit beside Cielo, the teenagers began to chant: “Build — the — wall!” Horrified, she confronted the instigator. “You can’t be doing that,” Cielo told him. He ignored her, she recalled, and the teenagers around him booed her. A cheerleading coach was the lone adult who tried to make them stop. “I felt like I was personally attacked. And it wasn’t like they were attacking my character. They were attacking my ethnicity, and it’s not like I can do anything about that.”

— Cielo Castor

After a photo of the teenagers with the flag appeared on social media, news about what had happened infuriated many of the school’s Latinos, who made up about a quarter of the 1,700-member student body. Cielo, then 17, hoped school officials would address the tension. When they didn’t, she attended that Wednesday’s school board meeting. “I don’t feel cared for,” she told the members, crying. A day later, the superintendent consoled her and the principal asked how he could help, recalled Cielo, now a college freshman. Afterward, school staff members addressed every class, but Hispanic students were still so angry that they organized a walkout. Some students heckled the protesters, waving MAGA caps at them. At the end of the day, Cielo left the school with a white friend who’d attended the protest; they passed an underclassman she didn’t know. “Look,” the boy said, “it’s one of those f---ing Mexicans.” She heard that school administrators — who declined to be interviewed for this article — suspended the teenager who had led the chant, but she doubts he has changed. Reached on Instagram, the teenager refused to talk about what happened, writing in a message that he didn’t want to discuss the incident “because it is in the past and everyone has moved on from it.” At the end, he added a sign-off: “Trump 2020.”

President Trump’s rhetoric has been condemned as racist and xenophobic since his candidacy began in 2015. Here is what he’s said. (The Washington Post)

Just as the president has repeatedly targeted Latinos, so, too, have school bullies. Of the incidents The Post tallied, half targeted Hispanics.

In one of the most extreme cases of abuse, a 13-year-old in New Jersey told a Mexican American schoolmate, who was 12, that “all Mexicans should go back behind the wall.” A day later, on June 19, 2019, the 13-year-old assaulted the boy and his mother, Beronica Ruiz, punching him and beating her unconscious, said the family’s attorney, Daniel Santiago. He wonders to what extent Trump’s repeated vilification of certain minorities played a role.

More than 300 Trump-inspired harassment incidents reported by news outlets from 2016-2019

Anti-Hispanic: 45%

Anti-black: 23%

Anti-Semitic: 7%

Anti-Muslim: 8%

Anti-LGBT: 4%

Anti-Trump: 14%

Note: Some incidents targeted multiple groups and, in other cases, the ethnicity/gender/religion of the intended target was unclear. Figures may not precisely add up because of rounding.

“When the president goes on TV and is saying things like Mexicans are rapists, Mexicans are criminals — these children don’t have the cognitive ability to say, ‘He’s just playing the role of a politician,’ ” Santiago argued. “The language that he’s using matters.” Ruiz’s son, who is now seeing a therapist, continues to endure nightmares from an experience that may take years to overcome. But experts say that discriminatory language can, on its own, harm children, especially those of color who may already feel marginalized. “It causes grave damage, as much physical as psychological,” said Elsa Barajas, who has counseled more than 1,000 children in her job at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health. As a result, she has seen Hispanic students suffer from sleeplessness, lose interest in school, and experience inexplicable stomach pain and headaches.

For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a single tweet she shared 10 months ago. “Unpopular opinion,” Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. “People who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off. Sorry not sorry.” Some of Ashanty Bonilla’s classmates at Lewiston High in rural Idaho harassed her last April after she tweeted a comment critical of Trump supporters. (Rajah Bose/For The Washington Post) A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag. “Unpopular opinion but: people that are from Mexico and come in to America illegally or at all really piss me off,” he added in a message that spread rapidly among students. The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen boys, including the one who had written the message, stood nearby. “You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” she heard one of them say. “F--- Mexicans.” Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up. In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white, Ashanty, whose father is half-black and whose mother is Mexican American, had always worked to fit in. She attended every football game and won a school spirit award as a freshman. She straightened her hair and dyed it blond, hoping to look more like her friends. “It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected. They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

— Ashanty Bonilla

She had known those boys who’d heckled her since they were little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her quinceañera. A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup truck. “Republican Trump 2020,” someone had written in the dust on her back window. Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn’t. She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her. She began to weep. Lewiston’s principal, Kevin Driskill, said he and his staff met with the boys they knew were involved, making clear that “we have zero tolerance for any kind of actions like that.” The incidents, he suspected, stemmed mostly from ignorance. “Our lack of diversity probably comes with a lack of understanding,” Driskill said, but he added that he’s encouraged by the school district’s recent creation of a community group — following racist incidents on other campuses — meant to address those issues. That effort came too late for Ashanty. Some friends supported her, but others told her the boys were just joking. Don’t ruin their lives. She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away. After that, she began seeing a therapist and, along with the friend who defended her, transferred to another school. Sometimes, she imagines how different life might be had she never written that tweet, but Ashanty tries not to blame herself and has learned to take more pride in her heritage. She just wishes the president understood the harm his words inflict. Even Trump’s last name has become something of a slur to many children of color, whether they’ve heard it shouted at them in hallways or, in her case, seen it written on the back window of a car. “It means,” she said, “you don’t belong.”

Georgia Clark taught English at Amon Carter-Riverside High School in Fort Worth, where a student accused her of racism. (Allison V. Smith/For The Washington Post) Three weeks into the 2018-19 school year, Miracle Slover's English teacher, she alleges, ordered black and Hispanic students to sit in the back of the classroom at their Fort Worth high school. At the time, Miracle was a junior. Georgia Clark, her teacher at Amon Carter-Riverside, often brought up Trump, Miracle said. He was a good person, she told the class, because he wanted to build a wall. “Every day was something new with immigration,” said Miracle, now 18, who has a black mother and a mixed-race father. “That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.” Some students tried to film Clark, and others complained to administrators, but none of it made a difference, Miracle said. Clark, an employee of the Fort Worth system since 1998, kept talking. Clark, who denies the teenager’s allegations, is one of more than 30 educators across the country accused of using the president’s name or rhetoric to harass students since he announced his candidacy, the Post analysis found. In Clark’s class, Miracle stayed quiet until late spring 2019. That day, she walked in wearing her hair “puffy,” split into two high buns. Clark, she said, told her it looked “nappy, like Marge off ‘The Simpsons.’ ” Unable to smother an angry reply, Miracle landed in the principal’s office. An administrator asked her to write a witness statement, and in it, she finally let go, scrawling her frustration across seven pages. “I just got tired of it,” she said. “I wrote a ton.” Still, Miracle said, school officials took no action until six weeks later, when Clark, 69, tweeted at Trump — in what she thought were private messages — requesting help deporting undocumented immigrants in Fort Worth schools. The posts went viral, drawing national condemnation. Clark was fired. “Every day was something new with immigration. That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.”

— Miracle Slover, referring to Georgia Clark, her former English teacher

Not always, though, are offenders removed from the classroom. The day after the 2016 election, Donnie Jones Jr.’s daughter was walking down a hallway at her Florida high school when, she says, a teacher warned her and two friends — all sophomores, all black — that Trump would “send you back to Africa.” The district suspended the teacher for three days and transferred him to another school. Just a few days later in California, a physical education teacher told a student that he would be deported under Trump. Two years ago in Maine, a substitute teacher referenced the president’s wall and promised a Lebanese American student, “You’re getting kicked out of my country.” More than a year later in Texas, a school employee flashed a coin bearing the word “ICE” at a Hispanic student. “Trump,” he said, “is working on a law where he can deport you.” Sometimes, Jones said, he doesn’t recognize America. “People now will say stuff that a couple of years ago they would not dare say,” Jones argued. He fears what his two youngest children, ages 11 and 9, might hear in their school hallways, especially if Trump is reelected. Now a senior, Miracle doesn’t regret what she wrote about Clark. Although the furor that followed forced Miracle to switch schools and quit her beloved dance team, she would do it again, she said. Clark’s punishment, her public disgrace, was worth it. About a week before Miracle’s 18th birthday, her mother checked Facebook to find a flurry of notifications. Friends were messaging to say that Clark had appealed her firing, and that the Texas education commissioner had intervened. Reluctant to spoil the birthday, Jowona Powell waited several days to tell her daughter, who doesn’t use social media. Citing a minor misstep in the school board’s firing process, the commissioner had ordered Carter-Riverside to pay Clark one year’s salary — or give the former teacher her job back.

A snapshot of the harassment in 2019

In the three months after the president tweeted on July 14, 2019, that four minority congresswomen should "go back” to the countries they came from, more than a dozen incidents of Trump-related school bullying — including several that used his exact language — were reported in the press.

Mahtomedi High School & Como Park Senior High School

During a soccer game, students taunted a majority Asian-American team (which also included at least one Hispanic player) by telling them to go back to their countries and calling them "Asian food names."

Baldwin High School & Piper High School

During a volleyball game, students told black players on the court to go back to where they came from and made monkey noises at them.

Barack and Michelle Obama Ninth Grade Center

After a 14-year-old failed to address a staffer with "Yes, sir," the man showed the student a coin with "ICE" written on it and said, "Even though you are a citizen, Trump is working on a law where he can deport you, too, because of your mom’s status." The man later lost his job.

Everett Alvarez High School

Frontier High School

Students waving "Make America Great Again" flags disrupted a meeting of the school's Gay Straight Alliance, breaking up the gathering by shouting slurs before following the group's members to the parking lot.

Edward Little High School

Students yelled "Build the wall!" and "Ban Muslims!" as a 16-year-old Muslim girl walked through the hallways.

A 16-year-old student was arrested after posting on social media -- shortly after the deadly mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso — a photo of a pickup displaying a Trump flag, a Confederate flag and several guns. He captioned the post, "west harrison ain't ready for round 2."

Fans told one Hispanic player on the opposing team to “go back to your country” and called others “f---ing beaner” and "wetback" during a soccer game.

During a game in which a student was accused of using a racial slur againt a black player, fans also waved a Trump sign and chanted "America" when their team scored.

Cheerleaders from a largely white school held up a sign that read "Make America Great Again" and "Trump the Leopards" before a football game against a much more diverse school.

Before a football game, players ran through a banner reading "Make America Great Again Trump Those Patriots," triggering a backlash.

At least two minority students were bullied — in separate incidents — because the district allowed students to display a Trump banner at a high school football game, according to parents and school board members.

After students painted the school rock with rainbows to celebrate National Coming Out Day, someone painted over it with "Trump 2020," "MAGA 2020," "NRA" and an expletive. Later, two students — one black, one white — got into a fight about the issue.

During a volleyball game, students told black players on the court to go back to where they came from and made monkey noises at them.

In an apparent prank against a schoolmate, students created a fake Twitter account — which praised Adolf Hitler and Trump in its bio — and tweeted out racist remarks against a black high school coach. Jordyn Covington stood when she heard the jeers. “Monkeys!” “You don’t belong here.” “Go back to where you came from!” From atop the bleachers that day in October, Jordyn, 15, could see her Piper High School volleyball teammates on the court in tears. The sobbing varsity players were all black, all from Kansas City, Kan., like her. Who was yelling? Jordyn wondered. She peered at the students in the opposing section. Most of them were white. “It was just sad,” said Jordyn, who plays for Piper’s junior varsity team. “And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.” Go back? To where? Jordyn, her friends and Piper’s nine black players were all born in the United States. “Just like everyone else,” Jordyn said. “Just like white people.” “It was just sad. And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.” The game, played at an overwhelmingly white rural high school, came three months after Trump tweeted that four minority congresswomen should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” It was Jordyn’s first experience with racism, she said. But it was not the first time that fans at a school sports game had used the president to target students of color.

The Post found that players, parents or fans have used his name or words in at least 48 publicly reported cases, hurling hateful slogans at students competing in elementary, middle and high school games in 26 states. The venom has been shouted on football gridirons and soccer fields, on basketball and volleyball courts. Nearly 90 percent of incidents identified by The Post targeted players and fans of color, or teams fielded by schools with large minority populations. More than half focused on Hispanics.

In one of the earliest examples, students at a Wisconsin high school soccer game in April 2016 chanted “Trump, build a wall!” at black and Hispanic players. A few months later, students at a high school basketball game in Missouri turned their backs and hoisted a Trump/Pence campaign sign as the majority-black opposing team walked onto the court. In 2017, two high school girls in Alabama showed up at a football game pep rally with a sign reading “Put the Panic back in Hispanic” and a “Trump Make America Great Again” banner. In late 2017, two radio hosts announcing a high school basketball game in Iowa were caught on a hot mic describing Hispanic players as “español people.” “As Trump would say,” one broadcaster suggested, “go back where they came from.” Both announcers were fired. After the volleyball incident in Kansas, though, the fallout was more muted. The opposing school district, Baldwin City, commissioned an investigation and subsequently asserted that there was “no evidence” of racist jeers. Administrators from Piper’s school system dismissed that claim and countered with a statement supporting their students. An hour after the game, Jordyn fought to keep her eyes dry as she boarded the team bus home. When white players insisted that everything would be okay, she slipped in ear buds and selected “my mood playlist,” a collection of somber nighttime songs. She wiped her cheeks. Jordyn had long ago concluded that Trump didn’t want her — or “anyone who is just not white” — in the United States. But hearing other students shout it was different. Days later, her English teacher assigned an essay asking about “what’s right and what’s wrong.” At first, Jordyn thought she might write about the challenges transgender people face. Then she had another idea. “The students were making fun of us because we were different, like our hair and skin tone,” Jordyn wrote. “How are you gonna be mad at me and my friends for being black. . . . I love myself and so should all of you.” She read it aloud to the class. She finished, then looked up. Everyone began to applaud.

It's not just young Trump supporters who torment classmates because of who they are or what they believe. As one boy in North Carolina has come to understand, kids who oppose the president — kids like him — can be just as vicious. By Gavin Trump’s estimation, nearly everyone at his middle school in Chapel Hill comes from a Democratic family. So when the kids insist on calling him by his last name — even after he demands that they stop — the 13-year-old knows they want to provoke him, by trying to link the boy to the president they despise. In fifth grade, classmates would ask if he was related to the president, knowing he wasn’t. They would insinuate that Gavin agreed with the president on immigration and other polarizing issues. “They saw my last name as Trump, and we all hate Trump, so it was like, ‘We all hate you,’ ” he said. “I was like, ‘Why are you teasing me? I have no relationship to Trump at all. We just ended up with the same last name.’ ” Beyond kids like Gavin, the Post analysis also identified dozens of children across the country who were bullied, or even assaulted, because of their allegiance to the president. School staff members in at least 18 states, from Washington to West Virginia, have picked on students for wearing Trump gear or voicing support for him. Among teenagers, the confrontations have at times turned physical. A high school student in Northern California said that after she celebrated the 2016 election results on social media, a classmate accused her of hating Mexicans and attacked her, leaving the girl with a bloodied nose. Last February, a teenager at an Oklahoma high school was caught on video ripping a Trump sign out of a student’s hands and knocking a red MAGA cap off his head. And in the nation’s capital — where only 4 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump in 2016 — an outspoken conservative teenager said she had to leave her prestigious public school because she felt threatened. In a YouTube video, Jayne Zirkle, a high school senior, said that the trouble started when classmates at the School Without Walls discovered an online photo of her campaigning for Trump. She said students circulated the photo, harassed her online and called her a white supremacist. A D.C. school system official said they investigated the allegations and allowed Jayne to study from home to ensure she felt safe. “A lot of people who I thought were my best friends just all of a sudden totally turned their backs on me,” Jayne said. “People wouldn’t even look at me or talk to me.” For Gavin, the teasing began in fourth grade, soon after Trump announced his candidacy. After more than a year of schoolyard taunts, Gavin decided to go by his mother’s last name, Mather, when he started middle school. The teenager has been proactive, requesting that teachers call him by the new name, but it gets trickier, and more stressful, when substitutes fill in. He didn’t legally change his last name, so “Trump” still appears on the roster. The teasing has subsided, but the switch wasn’t easy. Gavin likes his real last name and feared that changing it would hurt his father’s feelings. His dad understood, but for Gavin, the guilt remains. “This is my name,” he said. “And I am abandoning my name.”

Maritza Avalos knows what's coming. It's 2020. The next presidential election is nine months away. She remembers what happened during the last one, when she was just 11. “Pack your bags,” kids told her. “You get a free trip to Mexico.” She’s now a freshman at Kamiakin High, the same Washington state school where her older sister, Cielo, confronted the teenagers who chanted “Build the wall” at a football game in late 2018. Maritza, 14, assumes the taunts that accompanied Trump’s last campaign will intensify with this one, too. “I try not to think about it,” she said, but for educators nationwide, the ongoing threat of politically charged harassment has been impossible to ignore. In response, schools have canceled mock elections, banned political gear, trained teachers, increased security, formed student-led mediation groups and created committees to develop anti-discrimination policies.

In California, the staff at Riverside Polytechnic High School has been preparing for this year’s presidential election since the day after the last one. On Nov. 9, 2016, counselors held a workshop in the library for students to share their feelings. Trump supporters feared they would be singled out for their beliefs, while girls who had heard the president brag about sexually assaulting women worried that boys would be emboldened to do the same to them. “We treated it almost like a crisis,” said Yuri Nava, a counselor who has since helped expand a student club devoted to improving the school’s culture and climate. Riverside, which is 60 percent Hispanic, also offers three courses — African American, Chicano and ethnic studies — meant to help students better understand one another, Nava said. And instead of punishing students when they use race or politics to bully, counselors first try to bring them together with their victims to talk through what happened. Often, they leave as friends.

In Gambrills, Md., Arundel High School has taken a similar approach. Even before a student was caught scribbling the n-word in his notebook in early 2017, Gina Davenport, the principal, worried about the effect of the election’s rhetoric. At the school, where about half of the 2,200 students are minorities, she heard their concerns every day. But the racist slur, discovered the same month as Trump’s inauguration, led to a concrete response. A “Global Community Citizenship” class, now mandatory for all freshmen in the district, pushes students to explore their differences. A recent lesson delved into Trump’s use of Twitter. “The focus wasn’t Donald Trump, the focus was listening: How do we convey our ideas in order for someone to listen?” Davenport said. “We teach that we can disagree with each other without walking away being enemies — which we don’t see play out in the press, or in today’s political debates.”

Since the class debuted in fall 2017, disciplinary referrals for disruption and disrespect have decreased by 25 percent each school year, Davenport said. Membership in the school’s speech and debate team has doubled. The course has eased Davenport’s anxiety heading into the next election. She doesn’t expect an uptick in racist bullying. “Civil conversation,” she said. “The kids know what that means now.” Many schools haven’t made such progress, and on those campuses, students are bracing for more abuse. Maritza’s sister, Cielo, told her to stand up for herself if classmates use Trump’s words to harass her, but Maritza is quieter than her sibling. The freshman doesn’t like confrontation. She knows, though, that eventually someone will say something — about the wall, maybe, or about how kids who look like her don’t belong in this country — and when that day comes, the girl hopes that she’ll be strong.

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zombiepigmans-blog · 5 years

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It also gives Domino

It also gives Domino a chance to indulge in her geeky professionalism: "I like being able to network with people who aren't my strip club customers, [and] it's a way for me to see how good I am at SEO and social media. This is fun for her. Domino says she's "always been a very sexual person," so while camming is tiring, of course, on-camera kink isn't onerous, if you can put the monotony aside.A lot of their clients are really freaking mean for no reason. The downside to raking in that sweet cash is that a lot of people can be really mean for no reason. She says a lot of guys can't even sit there and watch her without saying mean things to her, and many of them don't tip either. Granted, that happens in minimum-wage jobs too, but I'm guessing what guys say to her is probably way worse than what people say to fast-food employees. Domino wakes up at 8 am every morning and performs booked shows for clients paying between $US90 and $US120 an hour. That's about sixteen times her state minimum wage, and she doesn't have to leave her bedroom. If a client wants to book through MyFreeCams rather than sending money directly, Domino charges double. There's not a cent lost to a middle man. It seems like a pretty swell setup: "I love my job," Domino gushes. "I can work when I want to, as much as I want to, [and] nobody can tell me how to do my job. She's right. At her strip club, she was required to come in four to five days a week, spinning on a pole. Now, she can work all day. Or not at all. The last time we spoke, she was working on an ebook project, spending her time as she pleased.And that is not to say that there haven’t been bad times, like in any job. There have been mornings where I have come home with bruises all over my knees, my makeup sweated off, after a busy night. I have felt overworked and underappreciated by my bosses. Sometimes after a shift I have an overwhelming need to curl up in the arms of someone who loves me just because I crave that intimacy that I don’t get when I am at work because I am so self-sufficient there. And I am lucky that I have people who do love me, who can hold me after work and let me be still for a moment. I know that not everybody has that and I am never ungrateful for that privilege.

If abuse were such a big problem, Anna says, then why would any Romanian girls bother with it at all? Why wouldn't they just find some other job? In a country whose GDP only stopped shrinking two years ago, with 20 per cent of the population living below the poverty line and personal income levels far below Kazakhstan, Iran and Gabon, that question answers itself. There's a reason Anna's so happy to be independent from her former employers, a status she equates with nothing less than her "freedom".Andra Chirnogeanu, Studio 20's PR Manager, also rejects the idea that this is risky or psychologically damaging work.Today, things are different. After saving money and learning enough savvy to avoid continued exploitation, Anna is done with money-sucking studios, and so she works only about five days a month, from her own home. Five days of camming per month allow her to match the Romanian per capita income of roughly $US12,000 per year with a minuscule fraction of the labour. If she wants more money, she works more days.Odds are, you're referred by a newspaper or website listing. Maybe a friend suggested you try it out. Maybe you're shifting from traditional strip club work to the online equivalent — a popular trend in wealthier countries. Maybe you're working in a brothel where web camming is just another expectation. Whatever the case, you'll have to stream yourself through a web cam portal, one of the massive sites that catalogues thousands of models and acts as a go-between between customer and model.

Are there misconceptions about webcamming that you want to bust?"It's psychologically damaging to stay 12 hours in an office getting paid a minimum wage," she says."Mostly it's conversation. I do role-play sometimes, and a small part of it is nudity and masturbation," she says.It took six years to reach this life of dilettantism and occasional sex work. Anna wasn't always free. She started camming when she moved from her backwater Romanian hometown to attend college in Bucharest for a degree in psychology. When she relocated, she knew no one and had no money. But, like Domino, heard things about the lucrative streaming flesh trade — a recommendation from a male friend who convinced her to strip from his cramped two-room apartment as he did the same in the other room. CONTINUED BELOW...

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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IN THESE TIMES

When I ask Bernie Sanders about the surge of teachers’ strikes that swept the country earlier this year, he perks up, applauding the teachers’ display of working-class power. “The teachers may be the tip of the spear here,” he declares in his heavy Brooklyn accent.

In many ways, the strikes illustrate Sanders’ theory of political change. He has long insisted that the key to moving the country in a more progressive direction is to make ambitious demands and build movements capable of achieving them. Striking teachers in states from West Virginia to Arizona bucked the traditional tried-and-failed mechanisms for obtaining better pay and working conditions, and joined together by the tens of thousands to act. By withholding their labor, they won key demands.

At a time of staggering income inequality and stagnant wages, with unions facing an all-out assault from the Right, the teachers’ strikes have served as a rare bright spot for labor, proving that workers can still take on conservative politicians and their corporate backers. Now, with the Supreme Court’s Janus decision poised to bruise public-sector unions, Sanders is attempting to help revive the U.S. labor movement.

Over the spring, Sanders trekked across the country to stand with low-wage workers at corporations such as Disney and Amazon, spotlighting their efforts to win better treatment on the job. In May, he introduced the Workplace Democracy Act, a sweeping bill that would prevent employers from using certain anti-union tactics, make it easier for workers to unionize, and undo so-called right-to-work laws that drain unions of resources. The bill has secured support from almost a third of Senate Democrats, including prospective 2020 presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.

In a sprawling interview with In These Times, Sanders discusses how unions can respond to Janus, the fight to move the Democratic Party left, the recent victories of democratic socialist candidates and why he believes the 2018 midterms are the most important of his lifetime.

Why do you see labor issues as a critical rallying point in 2018?

In my view, there is really no way the middle class in this country is going to grow unless we build the trade union movement. Virtually all of the power rests with employers and large corporations. Workers without unions are finding it very difficult to get the kind of wages and benefits that they need.

The statistics are very clear that workers in union companies are earning better wages and have far better benefits than nonunion workers. And the working people in this country know it. In overwhelming numbers, workers want to join unions.

But it is increasingly difficult for them to do so. That is because of the power of employers to intimidate workers, to threaten to move their companies away, and to fire workers who are trying to organize. So it is very, very difficult now for workers to have a union. That has got to change.

You named your bill the Workplace Democracy Act. Why do you think it’s important for workers to be able to practice more democracy on the job?

It’s an issue that we don’t talk about as a nation very much. Millions and millions of people are waking up in the morning and saying, “Oh God, I have to go to work and I hate my job. I feel exploited. I feel powerless. I feel like a cog in a machine.” If we believe in democracy, it’s not just voting every four years, or every two years—it’s about empowering your whole life and having more say in what you do all day.

Workers who are in a union have the ability to have their voices heard and to express their discontent in terms of working conditions. So unions empower ordinary people to have a little bit more control over their lives.

Less than 11 percent of Americans currently belong to unions, and since taking office, the Trump administration has been waging an all-out assault on workers' rights. Yet in recent months, teachers have gone on strike across the country. Polling shows that younger people have a more favorable opinion of unions than older Americans. Are you optimistic about the future of the labor movement?

Yes, I am. With these teachers’ strikes—especially those taking place in so-called conservative states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma—teachers have basically said, “Enough is enough.” We have to make sure that our kids get the educations that they need, that we attract good people into the teaching profession. Teachers almost spontaneously stood up and fought back and took on very right-wing legislatures. This was, I think, a very significant step forward.

The teachers may be the tip of the spear here, because you’ve got millions of people watching and saying, “Wait a minute, I work two or three jobs to make a living, 60 hours a week, and can’t afford to send my kids to college. Meanwhile, my employer is making 300 times what I make and he gets a huge tax break.”

I see an anger and a resentment among working families. They want an economy that rewards the work of ordinary people and doesn’t just allow the billionaires to get even richer. That’s what the teachers’ strikes are all about.

In terms of younger people, they’re looking at a nation where technology is exploding, where workers’ productivity has risen, and yet the average young person today has a lower standard of living than his or her parents. Younger people are saying, “What is going on? This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world—why am I still living at home? Why am I struggling to pay off my student debt 10 years after I graduated college? Why can’t I afford healthcare?” I think young people are smart enough to look around and say maybe we need unions to get the kinds of wages and benefits that working people are entitled to.

The Supreme Court’s Janus decision will spread right to work to the public sector nationwide. How can workers respond?

The Workplace Democracy Act would make it illegal for states to pass right-to-work legislation. The people of this country have a right to organize, they have a right to form trade unions, and it is not acceptable that states are denying them that right.

The Janus case is a very significant setback for the union movement. The Right is already trying to mobilize public employees to leave their unions. What we have to do is an enormous amount of organizing and educating to explain to workers: “You think you’re going to save a few bucks by not paying union dues, but in the long run you’re going to be a lot worse off when you don’t have a union negotiating a decent contract for you. If you want the benefits of that contract, you’ve got to pay your fair share of dues.”

Why do you think it’s important to highlight the plight of workers at Disney and Amazon?

In terms of Amazon, the CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the wealthiest person in the world right now. His wealth has increased in the first four months of this year by about $275 million a day. You got that? A day. That sort of astronomical number is hard to believe.

Amazon is doing phenomenally well, and yet you have thousands of employees in Amazon warehouses who are paid wages so low that the average taxpayer in this country has got to subsidize Amazon by providing them food stamps, or Medicaid, or publicly subsidized affordable housing. The taxpayers of this country should not have to subsidize a guy whose wealth is increasing by $275 million every single day. That is obscene and that is absurd. This speaks to the power of the people at the top who use their power to become even richer at the expense of working families.

With Disney, you have a corporation that made $9 billion in profit last year—a very, very profitable company. CEO Bob Iger recently reached an agreement for a $423 million, four-year compensation package. And yet he’s paying the workers in Disneyland—the people in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck costumes, the people who serve food, the people who collect the tickets and manage the rides—starvation wages. Eighty percent of the workers there make less than $15 an hour.

Living expenses are very high in Anaheim [where Disneyland is]. Many people cannot afford an apartment and are living in their cars. They don’t have enough money for food. So here you have a profitable corporation reaching an extraordinary compensation package for their CEO and paying starvation wages to their workers. These are the kind of issues that need to be highlighted.

Between 1978 and 2017, we've seen the union membership rate in the United States fall by more than half. Over this same period, the Democratic Party has taken a more corporate-oriented turn. In President Obama’s first term, Democrats were criticized for failing to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have enshrined card check, a feature of your bill. Do you think the Democratic Party establishment has been asleep at the wheel on protecting labor rights?

If your question is whether, for too many years, the Democratic Party has been paying more attention to corporate interests than the needs of working people, then the answer is yes. Ultimately, the fight is over the future of the party. The Democratic Party has got to decide, to quote Woody Guthrie, “Which side are you on?” You cannot be on the side of Wall Street and large profitable corporations and very wealthy campaign contributors while you’re claiming to be the party of working people. Nobody believes that. You can’t do both. And right now, the Democratic Party has got to decide which side it is on, and I’m doing everything that I can to make it the party of working people.

We need a party that has the guts to stand up to the 1% and to represent working families. I think it’s the right thing to do, and from a public policy point of view, I think it will make this a much better country—to put policies in place that end our high level of poverty, to address the fact that we’re the only major country not to guarantee healthcare, that we’re not being as strong as we should on climate change; that we haven’t made public colleges and universities tuition-free. Those are all ideas that will improve life in the United States of America. They’re also great political ideas.

You have worn the mantle of democratic socialist throughout your political career. Today we’re seeing socialism increase in popularity among younger people, and democratic socialists are winning local primaries and elections in states such as New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Montana. What do you think this shift means?

Our opponents can say, “Oh, democratic socialist, it’s radical, it’s fringe-y, it’s crazy.” But when you go issue by issue and you ask the American people what they think, they say, “Yeah, that makes sense.” For example, should the United States join every other major country and guarantee healthcare for all by moving toward Medicare for All? Is that a radical idea? No. Because healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Young people say, “Yeah, of course. That should be a right, yeah. My grandma is on Medicare, she likes it. Why can’t I get it?” Not a radical idea.

Today, in many respects, a college degree is as valuable as a high school degree was 50 years ago. So, when we talk about public education, it should be about making public colleges and universities tuition-free. Is that a radical idea? I don’t think so.

At a time when you have three people, including Jeff Bezos, who own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the American people, is it a radical idea to say that we should significantly raise taxes on the very wealthy and large profitable corporations? Not a radical idea. Rebuilding our infrastructure, creating millions of jobs. Not a radical idea. Immigration reform. Criminal justice reform. The vast majority of the American people support both those ideas.

We are managing to get these ideas out there. The ideas are catching on. And to young people especially, they make sense.

You recently introduced a Medicare for All bill with a historic number of co-sponsors. Why do you think so many Democrats are now jumping on board with universal, single-payer healthcare?

The overwhelming majority of Democratic voters now support Medicare for All. So if I'm running for office and I see a poll that shows that 70 or 80 percent of people say that we should have Medicare for All, I don't have to be the bravest guy in the room to say I think I'm going to make that part of my program.

And by the way, you've got many Republicans today who benefit from Medicare, and their sons and daughters are saying, “My dad has Medicare; I'd like it as well.” So you have the majority of Americans and the overwhelming majority of Democrats now supporting it, so for many candidates it simply becomes common sense and good politics.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #in these times #bernie sanders #progressive #progressive movement #democratic socialism

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Sunday, July 11, 2021

Crushing heat wave in Pacific Northwest and Canada cooked shellfish (Washington Post) Amid the crushing summer heat wave that has slammed the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada, Alyssa Gehman, a marine ecologist who lives by the sea in Vancouver, B.C., walked down to the shore to go for a swim. As expected, the beach was packed with others looking to beat the heat. She made her way to the edge of the water. It smelled like putrid shellfish—cooking. All around her, beds of mussels had popped open, dead. The heat beating down on the rocks had killed them, and she could see dead tissue between their shells. A dead crab floated in the water, she said. Gehman studies marine community ecology, but this was the first time she had seen anything of this “magnitude of mortality.” An estimated 1 billion small sea creatures—including mussels, clams and snails—died during the heat wave in the Salish Sea, off more than 4,000 miles of linear shore, according to marine biologist Chris Harley.

School boards become battle zones (AP) Local school boards around the country are increasingly becoming cauldrons of anger and political division, boiling with disputes over such issues as COVID-19 mask rules, the treatment of transgender students and how to teach the history of racism and slavery in America. Meetings that were once orderly, even boring, have turned ugly. School board elections that were once uncontested have drawn slates of candidates galvanized by one issue or another. A June school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, that dealt with transgender students and the teaching of “critical race theory” became so unruly that one person was arrested for disorderly conduct and another was cited for trespassing. In Rapid City, South Dakota, and Kalispell, Montana, nonpartisan school board races devolved into political warfare as conservative candidates, angered over requirements to wear masks in schools, sought to seize control. “We’re in a culture war,” said Jeff Holbrook, head of Rapid City’s Pennington County GOP.

Heat, wind spur California fire; evacuation hits Nevada area (AP) A California wildfire that closed nearly 200 square miles of forest forced evacuations across state lines into Nevada on Friday as winds and scorching, dry weather drove flames forward through trees and brush. The Beckwourth Complex—which began as two lightning-caused fires in Plumas National Forest—showed “extreme behavior,” fire information officer Lisa Cox said Friday evening. Hot rising air formed a gigantic, smoky pyrocumulus cloud that reached thousands of feet high and created its own lightning, Cox said. Spot fires caused by embers leapt up to a mile (1.6 kilometers) ahead of the northeastern flank—too far for firefighters to safely battle, Cox said. Winds up to about 20 mph (32 kph) on ridgetops were funneling flames up draws and canyons full of dry fuel, where “it can actually pick up speed,” Cox said.

‘We need help’: Haiti’s interim leader requests US troops (AP) Haiti’s interim government said it asked the U.S. to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilize the country and prepare the way for elections in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination. The stunning request for U.S. military support recalled the tumult following Haiti’s last presidential assassination, in 1915, when an angry mob dragged President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam out of the French Embassy and beat him to death. In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Haiti, justifying the American military occupation—which lasted nearly two decades—as a way to avert anarchy. But the Biden administration has so far given no indication it will provide military assistance. For now, it only plans to send FBI officials to assist with the ongoing investigation into a crime that has plunged Haiti, a country already wracked by gaping poverty and gang violence, into a destabilizing battle for power and constitutional standoff.

Venezuela: Battles rage between police and gangs in Caracas (BBC) Street battles have been raging between security forces and armed gangs in the Venezuelan capital Caracas. No official death toll has been given but local media reports say more than 10 people have been killed since the fighting began on Wednesday. Hundreds of officers have been deployed to seize weapons and search for gang leaders, who have been seeking to expand their territory. One local resident said the recent violence was “like a war”. Images shared on social media showed bullet castings littering the ground in the Cota 905 neighbourhood on Friday. One officer told AFP news agency that authorities were now in control, but said “there may still be a few snipers”. The operation marks the first time in years that authorities have launched a major offensive against the gangs, AFP reports.

Queen Elizabeth II opens her lawn to picnics for the first time (Washington Post) For the first time in her nearly 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II is allowing the people to picnic on her lawn. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, courtiers say. And the grass? It really is a little greener on the other side. “The boss,” as staff members call the monarch, thinks the people need this bit of fresh air after a wretched year. And so, starting Friday and for the rest of the summer, the paying public may sprawl upon the main lawn behind the high walls of Buckingham Palace.

Biden presses Putin to act on ransomware attacks, hints at retaliation (NYT) President Biden warned President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday that time was running out for him to rein in the ransomware groups striking the United States, telegraphing that this could be Mr. Putin’s final chance to take action on Russia’s harboring of cybercriminals before the United States moved to dismantle the threat. In Mr. Biden’s starkest warning yet, he conveyed in a phone call to Mr. Putin that the attacks would no longer be treated only as criminal acts, but as national security threats—and thus may provoke a far more severe response, administration officials said. It is a rationale that has echoes of the legal justification used by the United States and other nations when they cross inside another country’s borders to rout terrorist groups or drug cartels. Asked if it might attack the servers Russian cybercriminals have used to hijack American networks—meaning knock them offline—Mr. Biden responded, “Yes,” according to a pool report.

Taliban Enter Kandahar City and Seize Border Posts (NYT) Taliban forces on Friday penetrated Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, in a new phase of a sweeping insurgent offensive that has captured territory across the country since May 1, when U.S. forces began withdrawing. The insurgents had been encroaching on Kandahar city, the capital of the province of the same name, for several weeks, capturing surrounding districts, before entering the city for the first time Friday. Taliban fighters entered Kandahar’s Seventh Police District Friday, seizing houses and engaging with security forces in the area, said Bahir Ahmadi, the spokesman for the Kandahar governor. Commandos and other special forces units were battling the insurgents well into the evening. Afghan security forces have struggled to defend themselves against the Taliban, who in the span of just over two months have managed to seize at least 150 of Afghanistan’s roughly 400 districts.

Russia votes to keep crucial Syrian border crossing open to humanitarian aid (CNN) The Biden administration scored a key diplomatic victory Friday after Russia agreed to keep a crucial border crossing open in Syria for another year, allowing the United Nations to continue delivering crucial humanitarian aid to millions of Syrians who have been displaced by the decade-long civil war. Friday’s vote at the U.N. Security Council took some US officials by surprise given Russia’s longtime opposition to the humanitarian corridor that has been used by the United Nations to deliver aid to millions of Syrians every month. Officials said it was evidence that the possibility of future US-Russia cooperation is better than was expected. “Syria is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world today,” said Mark Cutts, the U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis. “The people in these camps are mostly women, children, and the elderly. They are totally dependent on the aid that has been coming across the border from Turkey. That aid corridor has proven to be the only safe and reliable way of getting aid to these people. This is one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.” He called Friday’s vote “very encouraging.”

Lockdowns in Asia as some nations see 1st major virus surges (AP) Several countries around Asia and the Pacific that are experiencing their first major surges of the coronavirus rushed to impose tough restrictions, a year and a half into a pandemic that many initially weathered well. Faced with rapidly rising numbers of infections in recent months, authorities in such countries as Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam announced or imposed measures Friday that they hope can slow the spread before health care systems are overwhelmed. It’s a rhythm familiar in much of the world, where repeated surges deluged hospitals and led to high numbers of deaths. But many Asian countries avoided that cycle by imposing stiff travel restrictions combined with tough measures at home.

52 dead in Bangladesh factory fire as workers locked inside (AP) A fire engulfed a food and beverage factory outside Bangladesh’s capital, killing at least 52 people, many of whom were trapped inside by an illegally locked door, fire officials said Friday. The blaze began Thursday night at the five-story Hashem Foods Ltd. factory in Rupganj, just outside Dhaka, sending huge clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky. Police initially gave a toll of three dead, but then discovered piles of bodies on Friday afternoon after the fire was extinguished. So far 52 bodies have been recovered, but the top two floors of the factory have yet to be searched, said Debasish Bardhan, deputy director of the Fire Service and Civil Defense. He said the main exit of the factory was locked from the inside and many of those who died were trapped.

Violence erupts over jailing of South Africa’s ex-president (AP) Supporters of former South African president Jacob Zuma are protesting his imprisonment, burning trucks, commercial property, and blocking major roads in KwaZulu-Natal province. They are demanding that he be released from prison. Zuma started serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court earlier this week. His bid to be released from the Estcourt Correctional Center was rejected by a regional court on Friday and he is set to make another attempt with the country’s apex court on Monday. His supporters in KwaZulu-Natal, his home area, have been blocking roads, setting trucks alight and damaging and looting shops in various spots in the province. At Mooi River, near Pietermaritzburg, about 20 trucks were stopped and set on fire early Saturday, according to witnesses.

#headlines #news

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afrolesbikita · 3 years

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News reports & important info on POS System Hardware and Point of Sale.

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

No matter how hard he tried, Jonatan Garcia said, he couldn’t find steady work in Guatemala. He dabbled in construction, and on some days picked beans, after losing his sales job at a TV station a few weeks after the pandemic shuttered businesses and further stifled employment in his country.

Desperation quickly mounted for Garcia. He struggled to make enough money to provide food for his wife and two small children, and they faced eviction from the three-room house they rented in the mostly indigenous and impoverished rural state of Baja Verapaz.

Then, Garcia said, smugglers falsely told him that President Joe Biden had signaled during a television appearance that migrants would be allowed to enter the United States. The new administration has been trying to combat such misinformation as it seeks to rein in the influx of migrants at the southern border of the U.S.

Garcia borrowed nearly $7,000 from a friend and, aided by a smuggler, traveled to Texas with his 6-year-old son. He left behind his wife and baby while he searched for stable employment.

Garcia and his son were among a record-setting number of migrants who were detained while attempting to enter the country at the U.S.-Mexico border in March and April under confounding policies that have turned the immigration process into a game of roulette. While not rising as rapidly as they had in the months immediately previous, border detentions reached a 21-year high after increasing again in April, according to federal statistics released this week.

Because of a lack of uniform policies and uneven enforcement of some laws in the U.S. and Mexico, migrants can be granted or denied entrance into the country based on a variety of factors, including where they cross and the age of their children. Smugglers have exploited the confusion to manipulate vulnerable migrants into making the journey north, adding to the sustained influx at the border, experts said.

Migrants were taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection a total of 178,622 times in April. The data includes migrants who have previously crossed. Nearly 67,000 individuals, mostly those crossing with their families and unaccompanied children, were allowed to stay in the U.S. while they seek protection from deportation. The remainder, largely single adults, were summarily turned away under a health order instituted by former President Donald Trump and continued under Biden that denies entrance to the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

In his first presidential address to Congress last month, Biden said the U.S. must contend with the root causes of migration that force people to flee their countries, including persistent violence, poor economic conditions aggravated by the pandemic and two hurricanes that pummeled Central America last year.

But the deteriorating circumstances in that region, combined with disparate U.S. immigration policies, have created a chaotic situation at the border that is worsened by the perception of mixed messaging from the Biden administration, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

“Messages matter, perceptions matter, but the sudden spike on the ground is because people hear others are getting in,” Selee said. He added, “Many people wait until they see there is some proof that you can actually cross the border, even if it is tentative.”

The Biden administration has ramped up Spanish-language media campaigns in Central America that urge migrants to stay in their home countries as it seeks to repair what officials have called a fractured U.S. asylum system.

But such public messages are muddled by Biden reversing some of Trump’s immigration policies while maintaining others, according to experts who said that at times they too struggle to make sense of who gets into the country and who doesn’t. Below is a breakdown of how some of those policies and decisions have played out for Garcia and hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving at the border.

Some families with children under 7 are allowed to enter

On the day that Garcia waded through the Rio Grande at the southernmost tip of the U.S.-Mexico border, the vast majority of the 200 families in his group were immediately sent back.

But Garcia and his son were allowed to stay.

“I guess we were lucky,” said Garcia, who now lives near his mother-in-law in New Jersey while he awaits a July court date to plead his asylum case.

During the journey, Garcia said, he learned that many families were turned away, while those with children his son’s age and younger were allowed to enter the U.S. to await court hearings.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. began sending migrants seeking asylum to Mexico until their cases could be heard. The process requires cooperation from the Mexican government, which has been overwhelmed by the number of migrants in its border cities.

Officials in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where Garcia crossed, have increasingly denied U.S. attempts to return families with young children to the state. They cite a lack of capacity in shelters, according to the Biden administration. Such rejections appear to be the result of a new Mexican law, implemented in January, that prevents the detention of migrant children and mandates that they instead be housed by the country’s family welfare agency.

“With the Rio Grande Valley, there are some families who cannot be expelled in that particular area of the southwest border by reason of capacity constraints in Mexico,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters last week.

As Tamaulipas rebuffs U.S. efforts to return certain families with young children, other Mexican states continue to accept them. It is unclear why the Mexican law appears to be enforced mostly in Tamaulipas, five experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

In some cases, the U.S. government has bused or flown migrant families entering through Tamaulipas to different areas along the border, including El Paso and San Diego, and then sent them to Mexican states adjacent to those locations. Mayorkas said last week that the administration was taking a “close look” at whether to continue expelling families not accepted by Tamaulipas. On Thursday, the government told CBS News that it would no longer fly families elsewhere, but would still bus them to other areas for expulsion.

One potential explanation for the uneven implementation of the law is that the Tamaulipas welfare agency is underfunded, and more migrant families cross there than in other border states, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

“The bottom line is that this is all relatively murky,” Ruiz Soto said. “It is a mixed result of shelter capacity and increasing discretion by Mexican authorities, not only one or the other.”

He added that welfare agencies in Tamaulipas “are simply not equipped” to handle the current migrant family flow. That sentiment was reinforced by Jean Gough, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations’ refugee agency for children.

Gough said in an April statement that most of the shelters she visited across Mexico were overcrowded and could not accommodate the surging number of families and children arriving at the border. Children represent more than 30% of migrants in Mexican shelters. Half of them traveled without their parents, one of the highest percentages of unaccompanied minors ever recorded in Mexico, Gough said.

The agency estimates about 150,000 children and families affected by violence and poverty in their places of origin will require humanitarian assistance in Mexico during the next two years.

The Mexican government did not respond to specific questions from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

Biden is accepting 25,000 migrants with pending cases

One of Trump’s signature border initiatives was the Migrant Protection Protocols, which forced people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico until their cases could be heard by U.S. immigration judges.

The policy, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” was a departure from the traditional asylum process, which generally allowed those requesting protection to stay in the U.S. until their claims were adjudicated.

Between 2019 and January of this year, the Trump administration ordered more than 71,000 migrants to stay in Mexican border cities pending their court hearings. A majority of the migrants were later denied protection from deportation.

In February, Biden issued an executive order that suspended the policy and began the process of allowing into the U.S. about 25,000 migrants whose cases had not yet been decided. More than 10,200 have since entered the country, according to the U.N., which is processing asylum seekers in six Mexican border cities.

A Central American asylum seeker carries her child at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas.

Credit: Verónica G. Cárdenas for The T

Biden’s decision paused a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and several other lawsuits challenging the policy, drawing early praise from advocates who are seeking resolution outside of the courts.

In April, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt sued the administration to reinstate the policy.

The Republican officials argued in court filings that MPP was an effective tool for turning back migrants at the southern border. Halting the policy, they said, imposed “severe and ongoing burdens” on the two states, including forcing them to provide health care and education for migrants. A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment on the case.

Unaccompanied migrant children are no longer expelled

In one of his most consequential immigration actions as president, Biden stopped a Trump practice of expelling children who had crossed the border alone.

Unaccompanied minors generally have broad protections under long-established U.S. law because they have widely been viewed by both Republicans and Democrats as more vulnerable.

But in a stark reversal of such policies, the Trump administration in March 2020 instituted the pandemic health order known as Title 42. The order used an obscure provision of the federal public health and welfare code to justify making more than 733,830 expulsions of adults and children at the border without asylum screenings.

Among those sent back last year were a 17-year-old girl who had been raped and her baby. The teenager asked U.S. agents for asylum, saying her abuser had threatened to make her “disappear” in Guatemala. Federal agents expelled the girl and her infant, forcing a scramble by international refugee organizations to relocate them to a third country because of concerns for their safety.

A federal district judge in Washington ruled in November that the government could not expel unaccompanied minors, after advocacy organizations sued. The decision was reversed by a federal appeals court in January, but Biden said his administration would not continue the practice.

“The idea that I’m going to say, which I would never do, if an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just going to let them starve to death and stay on the other side — no previous administration did that either, except Trump,” Biden said at his first presidential press conference in March. “I’m not going to do it.”

Children from Central America at a migrant camp in Mexico, where they lived after being expelled from the United States under the Trump administration.

Credit: Verónica G. Cárdenas for The T

The number of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border of the U.S., which had been slowly rising since April 2020, skyrocketed after Biden’s announcement.

About 18,900 children entered alone in March, surpassing the previous monthly record of nearly 11,500 detained at the southern U.S. border in May 2019. In April, the number of unaccompanied minors declined by 9% to just under 17,200.

A growing number of children are being sent alone across the U.S. border by desperate parents who made the decision to separate from their kids after being forced to wait in Mexico under Trump and Biden policies, immigration lawyers and advocates said.

Paxton, the Texas attorney general, cited the high number of unaccompanied minors in his fourth lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s border policies. DOJ officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, which aims to force Biden to resume the practice of expelling unaccompanied migrant children.

Most single adults are turned away under the pandemic health order

Despite halting the expulsion of children under Trump’s health order, Biden has maintained the policy for most single adults and some families, effectively shutting them out of the asylum process.

Previously, migrants who asked for protection had a chance to make their claims to U.S. authorities. If they passed an initial screening, they would argue their cases before immigration judges in formal proceedings that could take months and would often lead to deportation. Those who returned to the U.S. after being removed could face prison for reentering illegally.

Under the health order, Border Patrol agents expel migrants in proceedings that take an average of 90 minutes and include no asylum screenings, court hearings or criminal prosecutions.

In April, federal officers returned nearly 110,000 migrants under the health order, 3% more than in March. Most were single adults, and nearly a third had been previously expelled, CBP officials said.

In danger in Mexico and facing no criminal consequences for making multiple crossing attempts, many migrants have repeatedly tried to enter since the health order went into effect. Since Biden took office, advocacy groups, including Human Rights First, tracked almost 500 attacks by criminal groups, Mexicans, and other migrants against people who had been expelled from the U.S..

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, criticized Biden’s continued use of the directive, calling it harsher than MPP. The latter, he said, was “at least a fig leaf of due process,” whereas the health order “provides nothing but a one-way ticket back to Mexico.”

Under the current policy, few exceptions exist. But starting this month, the U.S. is allowing more migrants to enter the country for humanitarian reasons, in a process that includes coordination with advocacy groups. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security declined to say how many migrants have been allowed in under that status by the Biden administration.

In May, Eledin Garcia, a 26-year-old from Honduras, was permitted into the U.S. from Mexico after previously being turned away under the pandemic health order. With the help of an attorney, Garcia successfully persuaded the government that he should be granted a humanitarian exception because he is gay and other migrants with the same sexual preference have been assaulted in Matamoros, Mexico, across the border from Texas in the Rio Grande Valley.

“It is impossible to explain how overjoyed I am,” Garcia said shortly before boarding a flight to Florida, where he has relatives.

Thousands are still waiting to enter, hoping for asylum

Thousands of migrants whose asylum claims were denied under the Trump administration have been waiting in Mexico and other countries for an opportunity to try again under Biden.

In typical asylum proceedings, migrants with rejected cases would be deported to their home countries. They would then face a higher legal standard if they sought protection a second time.

But attorneys and migrants said the Biden administration should recognize that many asylum cases were dismissed through an MPP process that was plagued with problems, including hearings in tent courts where migrants often lacked attorneys and proper translation.

Most migrants with denied MPP cases did not appear in court for their final hearings, according to federal statistics. Ariana Sawyer, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, said some were kidnapped, while authorities bused hundreds more to cities in the interior of Mexico, making it harder for them to attend proceedings in the U.S. More than 1,500 migrants waiting in Mexico under MPP were killed or assaulted, according to Human Rights First and other advocates.

The majority of migrants in the MPP program lacked legal representation. Only about 8% had attorneys, according to federal data analyzed by Syracuse University.

Biden has not said whether migrants with denied asylum cases will get another shot. But, in March, his administration allowed some migrants whose MPP cases had been dismissed into the U.S. after it shuttered a tent camp in Matamoros, Mexico, that had become notorious for poor conditions. DHS officials said admissions from that camp were based on “urgent humanitarian concerns” and that they also sought to keep families together.

The migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, closed by the Biden administration in March.

Credit: Verónica G. Cárdenas for The T

Marbin Arnuby is one of thousands of migrants denied asylum under MPP who are waiting for additional opportunities to make their cases under Biden.

Arnuby, who asked that his middle name be used instead of his last name out of fear of retribution, said he fled Honduras after gang members, furious that he refused to sell drugs, killed his brother in June 2019. Arnuby carries a picture of his brother’s tombstone and his death certificate, which lists strangulation as the cause.

The 32-year-old attempted to cross the border in October 2019 but was returned to Mexico. At a hearing in 2020, a U.S. immigration judge denied his asylum claim.

Arnuby, who did not have a lawyer and does not speak English, said the judge told him he had not provided enough proof that he faced danger in Honduras. He tried to appeal the ruling, but said he missed the deadline because immigration courts were closed on account of the pandemic and access to ports of entry was restricted.

After losing his immigration case, Arnuby could not renew his work authorization in Mexico. He remained in Matamoros until March, renting a room after leaving the tent camp where he’d lived for seven months.

Arnuby said he fled the settlement last year after he was assaulted, a move that inadvertently made him miss a chance to enter the U.S. when Biden dismantled the camp in March.

That month, Arnuby sought a COVID-19 test at a Mexican government facility. There he was detained and deported to Honduras, where, he said, he is now in hiding because he fears gang members.

Arnuby plans to return to the U.S. border to try again.

“I have no hope here,” he said.

Other migrants under different circumstances are also still waiting.

Beginning in 2018, the Trump administration sharply limited the number of migrants who could seek asylum at U.S. ports of entry, a manner of requesting protection that is codified within U.S. and international law.

Under a practice known as metering, U.S. officials began allowing only a handful of migrants a day to ask for asylum. To keep their place in line, migrants created informal waiting lists, which were run by asylum seekers, shelters and Mexican authorities. The migrants could have crossed illegally and asked for asylum once detained by Border Patrol agents, as hundreds of thousands have done. But some migrants prefer to request protection at ports of entry, in part because it is safer. While it is lawful to ask for asylum anywhere along the border, criminal organizations often charge migrants to cross illegally at points other than designated ports of entry.

Ports of entry have been closed to asylum seekers during the pandemic, so more than 16,000 migrants remain on those waiting lists, said Savitri Arvey, a researcher on migration at the University of Texas at Austin. Some migrants, including a large number of Haitian and African asylum seekers, according to advocates, have been waiting as long as two years to ask for asylum at U.S. ports of entry.

“There is growing anguish,” Arvey said. “The messaging is just really unclear, and there is a lot of confusion on the path forward for people who have been waiting for so long.”

A need to fix legal pathways and overburdened courts

Marlen D. Cruz, an asylum seeker from Honduras, and her children in Matamoros in February. They arrived in July 2019 to await their asylum cases being heard in the U.S.

Credit: Verónica G. Cárdenas for The T

Biden has proposed immigration bills that would provide a pathway to citizenship for about 11 million immigrants already in the U.S., fund border security technology and expand legal immigration.

All require approval from Congress. Republican senators have threatened to filibuster the legislation, saying the administration must first contend with the latest influx at the border.

But experts said the country’s challenges at the southern border are driven by the inability of Congress to significantly reform the immigration system over the past three decades. Selee, from the Migration Policy Institute, said that U.S. officials should have learned by now that enforcement only works if there is a way to channel at least some people onto legal pathways.

“If you create a line that you can actually get into, over time it changes people’s options,” Selee said. “The sense for many people in Central America is that when there’s an opening, you grab it.”

Biden announced earlier this month that he would raise the cap for admitting refugees to 62,500 but said the number would not be reached this fiscal year. Only about 5,000 slots would be available to people from Central and South America, who are driving the largest number of detentions at the border. Refugees differ from asylum seekers in that only a limited number can receive that status. They are also screened outside the U.S. through the U.N., while asylum seekers request protection at the border.

Experts said few avenues exist for Central Americans seeking protections that include asylum. They pointed to a lack of predictability about when and how migrants qualify for protection and the need for additional pathways for temporary work. Expanding provisional employment programs for people from the region would reduce the strain of asylum seekers at the border, said Alex Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

In the absence of significant reforms, experts said, an overburdened immigration court system has become the arbiter for many trying to come to the U.S. Overseen by the DOJ, the court system has a record backlog of more than 1.3 million cases. On average, a case can take more than two years to decide.

The Trump administration added more than 330 immigration judges. Biden has asked Congress to fund 100 additional judges to bring the total to 634, said Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former DHS official who is managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, said the Biden administration should order asylum officers to directly decide the protection claims of migrants at the border, rather than having them wait years for their cases to be determined in court.

“Immigration courts should be the last resort, not the first resort, when it comes to adjudicating asylum,” Cardinal Brown said. “This avenue has become the only avenue for people to try and has completely overwhelmed the systems put in place to deal with a much smaller number of people, which is why we need to rethink all of that.”

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

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Need Amid Plenty: Richest US Counties Are Overwhelmed by Surge in Child Hunger

Alexandra Sierra carried boxes of food to her kitchen counter, where her 7-year-old daughter, Rachell, stirred a pitcher of lemonade.

This story also ran on USA Today and GateHouse Media. It can be republished for free.

“Oh, my God, it smells so good!” Sierra, 39, said of the bounty she’d just picked up at a food pantry, pulling out a ready-made salad and a container of soup.

Sierra unpacked the donated food and planned lunch for Rachell and her siblings, ages 9 and 2, as a reporter watched through FaceTime. She said she doesn’t know what they’d do without the help.

The family lives in Bergen County, New Jersey, a dense grouping of 70 municipalities opposite Manhattan with about 950,000 people whose median household income ranks in the top 1% nationally. But Sierra and her husband, Aramon Morales, never earned a lot of money and are now out of work because of the pandemic.

The financial fallout of covid-19 has pushed child hunger to record levels. The need has been dire since the pandemic began and highlights the gaps in the nation’s safety net.

While every U.S. county has seen hunger rates rise, the steepest jumps have been in some of the wealthiest counties, where overall affluence obscures the tenuous finances of low-wage workers. Such sudden and unprecedented surges in hunger have overwhelmed many rich communities, which weren’t nearly as ready to cope as places that have long dealt with poverty and were already equipped with robust, organized charitable food networks.

Data from the anti-hunger advocacy group Feeding America and the U.S. Census Bureau shows that counties seeing the largest estimated increases in child food insecurity in 2020 compared with 2018 generally have much higher median household incomes than counties with the smallest increases. In Bergen, where the median household income is $101,144, child hunger is estimated to have risen by 136%, compared with 47% nationally.

That doesn’t mean affluent counties have the greatest portion of hungry kids. An estimated 17% of children in Bergen face hunger, compared with a national average of around 25%.

But help is often harder to find in wealthier places. Missouri’s affluent St. Charles County, north of St. Louis, population 402,000, has seen child hunger rise by 69% and has 20 sites distributing food from the St. Louis Area Foodbank. The city of St. Louis, pop. 311,000, has seen child hunger rise by 36% and has 100 sites.

“There’s a huge variation in how different places are prepared or not prepared to deal with this and how they’ve struggled to address it,” said Erica Kenney, assistant professor of public health nutrition at Harvard University. “The charitable food system has been very strained by this.”

Eleni Towns, associate director of the No Kid Hungry campaign, said the pandemic “undid a decade’s worth of progress” on reducing food insecurity, which last year threatened at least 15 million kids.

And while President Joe Biden’s covid relief plan, which he signed into law March 11, promises to help with anti-poverty measures such as monthly payments to families of up to $300 per child this year, it’s unclear how far the recently passed legislation will go toward addressing hunger.

“It’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. “But it’s hard to know what the impact is going to be.”

Need Grows in Places of Plenty

After the pandemic struck, the federal government boosted benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and offered Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to compensate for free or reduced-price school meals while children were schooled from home.

Sierra’s family saw their SNAP benefits of about $800 a month rise slightly and got two of those P-EBT payments, worth $434 each. But at the same time, they lost their main sources of income. Sierra had to leave her Amazon warehouse job when the kids’ school went remote, and Morales stopped driving for Uber when trips became scarce and he feared getting covid on top of his asthma.

Federal relief wasn’t enough for them and many others. So they flocked to food pantries.

In theory, pantries and the food banks that supply them are part of an emergency system designed for short-term crises, Schwartz said. “The problem is, they’ve actually become a standard source of food for a lot of people.”

In Bergen County, the Center for Food Action helped 40,500 households last year, up from 23,000 the year before. In Eagle County, Colorado, where the tony ski resort Vail is located, the Community Market food bank saw its client load nearly quadruple to 4,000. And outside Boston, in the affluent Massachusetts county of Norfolk — where Feeding America data shows child hunger jumped from an estimated 6% of kids to 16% — Dedham Food Pantry’s clients tripled to 1,800.

“This is just out of control compared to other times,” said Lynn Rogal, vice president of the Dedham pantry, which opened in 1990.

Pantry managers said a disproportionate number of clients are from minority groups. Many lost jobs in the eviscerated service sector that undergirds the wealthier parts of their counties. Julie Yurko, CEO of the Northern Illinois Food Bank, said up to half of her current clients have never sought help before.

“In early January, we had a white minivan pull up with three kids, 5 and younger. It ran out of gas sitting there,” Yurko said. “The mom was sobbing, and her beautiful children were sitting there watching her.”

Kelly Sirimoglu, spokesperson for New Jersey’s Center for Food Action, said the stigma around seeking help can be worse in wealthy areas. She said some people tell her, “I never thought I would be in line for food.”

Advocates said the reluctance to seek help means the need is likely even larger than it appears.

Katie Wilson of St. Charles, Missouri, said she heard about a food pantry run by the Sts. Joachim & Ann Care Service from a friend of a friend. She almost didn’t go. The single mom of two children, 11 and 9, lost her job as a hotel auditor in June and tried to squeak by without her income for two months.

“We found ourselves in a situation where it was a ‘heat or eat’ kind of thing,” said Wilson, 42, describing having to choose between heating her home or buying food. “It took me looking around and saying, ‘There is nothing to eat.’”

Struggling to Meet the Need

As hunger has become more visible, donations to food charities have risen. But they don’t address the core problem of an infrastructure that doesn’t match the new need. Some pantries are open just a few hours a week in church basements, a far cry from those that operate regularly and look like supermarkets. Many small pantries struggled to shift to outdoor food distribution during the pandemic or find new helpers when the few, often senior, volunteers felt unsafe doing the work.

“It definitely is harder in these places,” said Yurko, whose food bank distributes to Kendall County, Illinois, which has just three pantries for its population of 129,000. “The safety nets are not as robust.”

A strong safety net also requires pantries to cooperate with one another and the broader array of local social services. That’s been happening for years in Flint, Michigan, said Denise Diller, executive director of Crossover Downtown Outreach Ministry, which runs a pantry. Agencies and community leaders banded together in 2014 when lead poisoned the drinking water.

“When covid occurred, we were already kind of ready,” Diller said.

So was Atlanta. As in Flint, hunger was never hidden there; 15% of children in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, faced hunger before the pandemic. After covid suspended volunteer shifts, the Atlanta Community Food Bank asked the Georgia National Guard to help sort, pack, warehouse and deliver food to help meet the needs of the estimated 22% of kids experiencing hunger. The food bank also partnered with seven school districts on more than 30 mobile pantries.

Such coordination and connections were lacking in Bergen County, where 80 pantries worked mostly in isolation when the pandemic hit, County Commissioner Tracy Zur said. “They weren’t collaborating. They were going along the same path they had for decades,” she said. “There was this need to break out of the old way of doing things and work together to be more impactful.”

Zur spearheaded the creation of a food security task force in July, reaching out to municipal and faith leaders. Goals include feeding people, connecting them to other services and turning some emergency food programs into full-fledged pantries. “Building an infrastructure is painstaking and ongoing,” she said.

Now, Zur said, pantries are starting to share with one another when one gets a large donation of perishable items such as eggs or milk.

With the need so widespread, residents do much the same.

During a recent pantry trip, Sierra, the New Jersey mom, opened the trunk of her 1999 Toyota and rummaged through the two big boxes volunteers had just placed there. She pointed to eggs, chicken, bread, butter, cheese and apples, observing, “I have more than I need.”

But she said it would never go to waste. Any extra would go to neighbors and their hungry children.

Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony and data editor Elizabeth Lucas contributed to this story.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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