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call-me-maggie13 · 1 year

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My late 40s to early 50s boss just asked what’s wrong with 18-25 year olds these days

And as a 21 year old all I could think was

The world has been on fire since we were born and we’ve been told the adults are putting it out and now we’re old enough to realize they’ve been pouring kerosene on the flames instead of water.

Before my first birthday, 9/11 happened and the world wouldn’t let us forget it. When I was 6 years old, on September 11th, my teacher sat us down in front of a tv and showed us footage of 9/11 and then told us we weren’t allowed to cry. She said that it was real and those were real people jumping from the building because jumping was a faster death than burning.

When I was 7 years old, the economy collapsed and my family went from lower middle class to poverty, we went from healthy home cooked meals every night to mac and cheese and beans for weeks in a row. We started skipping holidays because mom and dad couldn’t keep the lights on and buy us new toys. We started wearing clothes and shoes until they fell apart.

When I was 11 years old, Sandy Hook was attacked by a grown man with a gun and 26 children and teachers were brutally murdered. My teachers never looked at us the same and I haven’t felt safe in a school since. After that, once a month we would have active shooter drills and we were taught to fight and cause as much damage as possible if an armed man entered our classroom because it gave other classes a few extra seconds to escape, it gave our siblings a few extra breaths of safety. We were taught to cover ourselves in other students blood and play dead if we weren’t hit, we were taught that we weren’t safe and we wouldn’t be safe as long as we were in school.

When I was 15 years old, my high school art teacher locked us in the classroom and told us if we heard gunshots we should line the desks up lengthwise so that they reached the other wall because that would be harder to break through than a barricade. She told us that she knew about the threats and she wouldn’t judge any of us that wanted to leave. She told us to get our siblings and stay in the buildings as long as possible, to duck in between the cars so we couldn’t be seen until we got to ours. She told us about the trail behind the auto shop that was lined with trees and led off campus. I got my brother and his friends and we left, we spent the day sitting on the floor in my living room waiting for a phone call that the people we left behind were dying.

Two weeks later, one of my friends dragged me out of a football game and forced me to go home with him. He grabbed my brothers and my best friend and forced the six of us into a two seater car before he would tell us anything. His mom worked for the school board and had told him the police found an active bomb under the bleachers in the student section, and they weren’t informing anyone because they didn’t want to incite panic.

When I was 16 years old, ISIS set off a bomb at a pop concert in Britain and killed 22 people, injuring at least 100 more. The next day at school, our teachers went over how to stay safe if we ever experienced something like that. They told us the most important thing to remember was to not remove any shrapnel because it could be keeping us from bleeding out, they said it was more important to get yourself out safely before you worried about anyone else.

When I was 18 years old, my teachers stopped teaching and put the news up on the projector and we watched as the Notre-Dame burned. The boy I had sat next to since second grade spent the entire day trying to call his sister who was studying abroad in Paris, I watched this kid I had never even seen frown fall apart in English because she wouldn’t pick up the phone. We didn’t know it at the time, but she was okay.

Six months later, my history teacher put the news on the projector again for another fire. This time, we watched as an entire continent burned for three months. We watched their sky turned orange from the smoke and their wildlife drowned in pools because they were trying to escape the heat.

When I was 19 years old, the whole world shut down because of a global pandemic. I didn’t meet a single new person for eight months, despite the fact that I had just moved across the country. I watched as people didn’t wear masks and spread it to everyone around them, I was so scared when I went back to my room every night because my roommate was immunocompromised and I was terrified I would give her Covid and kill her.

Just two months later, I watched a video of a black man being murdered by police officers. I watched the world around me explode after George Floyd’s death, people destroying businesses and police stations. I watched some of my friends realize police officers didn’t exist to keep them safe, they existed to keep the people in power in power. I learned that some of the people I had grown up with would rather watch a black man die than admit that maybe, maybe, the system was broken.

When I was 20 years old, I went to the mall with a friend to buy a birthday present and I was pulled to the ground by a twelve-year-old girl after gunshots went off in the mall. I held this child’s hands as she cried for two hours until we were evacuated by police, and then I waited with her outside and helped her look for her mom. I gave her my phone to call her mom and I watched as she called the number over and over and never got a reply. I waited with her until a police officer took her to the station to try to find out more information about the girl’s mom, I hugged this girl I had never seen before and I wished her the best. I never found out what happened to her or her mom, it keeps me up at night sometimes worrying that this little girl was orphaned.

When I was 21 years old, I started working at a daycare and exactly a week later, Uvalde happened and I found myself crying because my students are the same age those kids were. When they came in after school the next day, one of them had asked me if I had heard about Uvalde and I told her I had, I asked her if she was scared of going to school because of it. Her reply broke my heart. “We practice for it every week so that when it happens to us, we know what to do. I’m just worried that the shooter is going to start in my baby sister’s classroom and not mine.” I listened as other students with younger siblings agreed with her, one of them saying “I would take fifty bullets, if I had to to keep my little brother safe.”

Early this year, I watched Russia launched bombs into Ukraine, blowing up churches and schools and hospitals and apartment buildings. I watched as the estimated death count rose from the hundreds to the thousands to the tens of thousands. I watched men send their wives and children to bordering countries for refuge while they stayed behind to fight, knowing they would probably never see each other again.

Just four months ago, I watched as my right to medical privacy got taken away. I watched my old roommate fall apart because she was denied the right to have her dead fetus removed from her body for almost two days, I worried every time I looked away from her that the next time I saw her would be in a casket. I watched as the women around me realized the military-grade weapons that had torn children in classrooms apart were protected by the government but our bodies weren’t.

There is nothing “wrong” with my generation, we’ve experienced all these things as children and were expected to respond with patriotism for a country that continuously sacrificed their children for the “right” to military-grade weapons, that took away my freedom of choice. We are tired, we were told the world was a wonderful place then shown, at every step, how the world was a place of destruction and pain. And we are angry. We are angry because no one but us seems to be trying to fix anything. And we are scared. We are scared because our children, our nieces and nephews, our cousins and our friends children are growing up in a world that won’t protect them.

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spotsontop · 2 years

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There’s literally an active shooter not 5 minutes from here (was just watching the helicopter from the back door), and my coworkers are going off about how this is going to affect their guns

One person is dead already, for context

Edit: The victim is apparently in the hospital, fingers crossed

#shooting tw #active shooter tw #gun violence tw #death tw #death cw

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detectiveconnor · 2 years

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look i just think, meet connor in an active shooter / hostage situation when he talks down some would-be killer from shooting your muse, because he’s a trained negotiator and there’s certainly not any other negotiator on the scene

#ingrid talks #!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#it could be in a bank. in a coffee shop. at a library. (at a hospital.)#anticlimactic? perhaps #still fun to write/think about? yes #active shooter tw #hostage tw

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parameddic · 1 year

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@gallntry / sc.

... Ow.

TK's ears were ringing. His vision swam, for a while, and he let it, taking a second to find his bearings: where was he? The place smelt... sharp. His mouth tasted of blood. Something... he was in uniform but someone had removed the radio he normally had clipped to his shoulder, he reached for that first (alive; he was alive; whatever it was that had caused his head to swim like that, it was worth telling his team, yeah, please come look for me) only to find it was not there. TK could feel his toes, and his fingers. Moved them easily.

The side of his head was pounding, and vision wasn't quite clearing yet on that side (he kept one eye closed, because it was more disorienting to have it open). Someone shifted, beside him, a movement of weight that alerted him to the fact he was not alone - he looked up at her, the woman. She did not want to be close to him, didn't want anything to do with him. She clutched a baby to her chest like he might harm either one of them.

.... Hospital, TK figured out, after another beat. The sharp smell was antiseptic, he was in a hospital, lying on the floor. The woman beside him was not the only one there - the lights were dimmed, the hospital emergency room was quiet, and there they were, rows and rows of people who were well enough to be sitting, sitting on the floor. No smartwatches. Nobody was on their phone. TK did not remember getting here, but he was beginning, rapidly, to be able to take a guess as to what had happened.

"Hey..." more a whisper than a word and not really directed to anyone, though the lady beside him pretended very hard not to hear him (shook her head, no, because she was not getting involved with someone who had aggravated the gunman enough to be hit over the head: TK was on his own). TK had been left to bleed. He touched the wound at his temple. Ow. (Obviously, ow.)

... He swalllowed, hard, and pulled himself up onto one elbow. If he looked he could see the dark streak of a pacing, out-of-his-depth gunman, circling the floor of the emergency room, aggravated and unsettled. TK must have been bringing in a patient. Where were Tommy? Nancy?

The hospital's doors were closed. If they were in here they'd be at his side. They were safe. (His eyes roamed the patients still in beds, next; there were medical staff still practicing, people who had refused to sit down when their patients needed tending to. That was good. TK had medical skills - they'd be shorthanded - he should help).

... A man (doctor; the scrubs suggested doctor) crouched down in front of TK, and his attention was drawn back, again. "Hey." Better, stronger. He read the namebadge (Ackermann) and thought, vaguely, that he might have known him. Recognised him, anyway. He'd come to make sure TK wasn't concussed (he was definitely concussed), or maybe ask him a question? About a patient? TK did not remember the patient he'd been bringing in. He offered, as the guy shone a light in his pupils, "'mm TK."

#gallntry #ic #gun violence tw #active shooter tw #shrug emoji? idk #hands this to you #TK is just taking guesses as to why David is there he could be there for any reason!

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ratislatis · 1 year

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idk why it’s just coming to me now but I remember feeling this cold, white catharsis upon realizing that it wasn’t Freddie’s decision to give Glenn that panic attack. It was Anthony’s. And the way he said it, so finite, “Glenn is having a panic attack.” in a tone that was used before only to set up a disastrous scene.

It hurt, a lot, because in the weirdest way possible that’s exactly what having a panic attack is like. You’re sitting there with your world crashing down around you and then a disembodied narrator suddenly says, “This bitch shutting down.” (Distinctly in a Stanley Parable manner.)

#dndads #dungeons and daddies #glenn close #using the team’s actual names instead of ‘mr/mrs lastname’ was fucking traumatizing but I did it so nobody would get confused #anyway I wanted to say something in the tags that I couldn’t above because I can’t add breaks while on mobile #so tw for active shooter DRILLS if you’re reading this #one time. not too long ago #we had an active shooter drill at school while I was in orchestra #and as soon as I heard that my body went ‘oh hell no’ but I have anxiety so I ignored it #and we got outside #and the whole music department was huddled in the parking lot #and it was a beautiful day #and I was shaking #and I turn to my acquaintance maddie and I go #‘I think im having a panic attack’#and then I start laughing hysterically. and I bend over with a hand on her shoulder because there are tears streaming down my face #and my conductor bless his gay soul he comes over like ‘what is going on’#and I had to shuffle to the bhr while an imaginary shooter was in the school #because I tried to Not have a panic attack and besties. take it from me. nobody has IGNORED a panic attack and lived to tell the tale #anyway. glenn just like me fr LMAO

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maceofpentacles · 11 months

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when there’s an active shooter on campus so they set the tornado sirens off?? hello? what the fuck is going on?

#personal stuff #tw active shooter #tw: active shooter #tw gun violence #tw: gun violence

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uwingdispatch · 10 months

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Devotion

Notes: Brasso/Reader, established relationship, gender neutral reader, post-rebellion/post-war, hurt/comfort, chronically ill/disabled reader

CW: depression/mental health struggles, active shooter

Ao3 Link

★★★★★★★★

“What’s going on?”

You’re in your pajamas, standing at the end of the hallway that leads to your bedroom. It’s 3:00 in the morning and you’ve woken to find Brasso sitting at the kitchen table, fiddling with something in his hands.

Startled, he looks up. “How long have you been standing there?” He asks, running a hand through his dark hair, his grays hidden in the shadows of the dimly-lit room. In this moment there’s a sadness in his eyes that he doesn’t often allow you to see.

“Not long,” you say.. “I woke up and you weren’t there. I had a feeling…”

“I made you anxious,” Brasso says, pushing away from the table. “I’m so sorry, love.”

You insist that you’re fine, but he’s already wrapping his big arms around you and you can’t help but sleepily lean into his embrace.

“I got a message from Wilmon today. Did you know it was the anniversary of Rix Road?”

“I should have remembered.”

“No, darling,” he says, kissing the top of your head. “No, I’d rather not remember that day. Most of it, anyway.”

“Are you all right?” You ask.

“I will be,” he says. “Last time I was on Ferrix, Xanwan’s niece was cleaning up his old store front, getting it ready to sell. She gave me this keyfob of his that she found in a drawer. It’s just a festival trinket from an old holiday but…there are pictures from that day. The old gang, you know? Before I met you, even.”

“You’re thinking about Xan?”

“And everyone who didn’t make it out that day. How things could have gone differently if I’d just—”

“If you’d just what? Let fascists steamroll your entire community? Brasso, people did get out because of you. And I’m sure I’m not the only one you warned away from town that day.”

“You’re not.”

“And you got Wilmon out.”

“I did.”

“Bee. Bix. Jezzi.”

He answers with a sigh.

You step back so you can see your partner’s face, tucking a few strands of hair behind his ear so you can look into his eyes. “You’re one man, Brasso. A very good man, but still just one. How were you going to stop anything that Maarva Andor started?

He laughs a little, remembering the woman who had been so much to so many people. You’d never been a Daughter of Ferrix, but it was Maarva who invited you to join in on some of the community projects anyway. It was people you met through Maarva who had encouraged you to start selling your handmade goods, who had told you how much they’d enjoyed the things you’d made for fundraisers over the years. And it was the Daughters, so many now spread throughout the galaxy, who’d helped you leave Ferrix and find a place on Gatalenta. Who’d told you that Brasso would find you when the war was over, because surely someone knew where he was, even if it wasn’t safe for you to know yet.

In the hallway, Brasso hands you the keyfob. There’s a year etched on the back and it is indeed before you’d met Brasso, but you’d been in town then. Back after finishing your degree, trying to feel out what was next. You’d made jogun fruit jam that year for the festival these pictures were taken at. And you’d only been at the stall for a few hours each day, but in the background of one of the pictures, there you were.

“Brasso,” you say. “That’s me.”

“No kidding,” he says, zooming in. “Beautiful as ever.”

“You can barely see me.”

“I can see enough.” Brasso kisses your forehead, his lips soft and warm on your skin. “Let me get you back to bed, darling. Enough of my troubles for the night. I never should have woken you in the first place.”

“You didn’t wake me,” you remind him.

But he has your hand in his and is leading you back down the hallway to the bedroom, the keyfob left behind.

There were a lot of things you loved about Ferrix, but the time grappler had never been one of them. He was a nice enough man, and you didn’t have any quarrel with him personally. But you’d never been a morning person. And nothing about Ferrix was going to change that. You’d occasionally pick up a morning shift at the café where you worked if someone called out and they needed help. But other than that? You needed the rest. So you jammed a pillow over your head while the time grappler struck the beskar steel in the tower at the start of each day until you could go back to sleep.

You’d known Brasso for a few years when he showed up with a basket of fruit a few hours after dawn, banging on your door like the galaxy was collapsing. You crawled out of bed and put on a robe, sure that there was some kind of maintenance emergency in the building.. But when you opened the door, it was Brasso, all two meters of him with a desperate look on his face. And…the fruit.

“What’s wrong?” you asked, the annoyed tone in your voice unmistakable.

“Thank the stars,” he said, pulling you into his arms. “You’re all right.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Someone opened fire at the market this morning. Not even from here…at least nobody I can think of matches his description. Someone called Morlana-1. Corpos showed up and all they managed to do is chase him to the café.”

You knew without asking that he meant your café, and at the word of corpos, you stepped back to let Brasso in. His cheeks were rosy from the early morning cold, his eyes bright, and his work clothes were crisp and tidy before a long day at the salvage yard.

“Is anyone hurt?” you asked.

“There were some injuries at the market,” Brasso said, running a hand through his hair. “But the café…we don’t know yet. They won’t let anyone near the building. I came to see you as soon as I heard.”

You didn’t live far from your work—just a few blocks. And as all of the information you were receiving began to solidify in your brain you felt your nervous system kick into high gear. You tried to steady your breathing as you asked, “What’s with the fruit?”

“The Daughters dropped this off for my mum the other night. But you know how she’s allergic to meilooruns—won’t eat anything that’s touched them out of precaution. I thought I’d leave it for you on my way to work…and then someone commed me about all this…I’m just so glad you’re safe, love.”

This was the first time he’d ever used that term of endearment with you, and you weren’t sure what to make of it, but it warmed something inside of you that you knew you’d never shake, even as you felt yourself giving way to panic.

Brasso pulled you close again. “Hey,” he said. “I’ve got you.”.

It’s all you needed to hear.

“I know you don’t do mornings. I’m so sorry to wake you…I just…they don’t have the guy in custody yet. Do you mind if I stick around for a bit? You don’t carry a blaster and…”

“I’ll make us some caf,” you say, turning toward your little kitchen.

“No,” he said, his hands steady on your shoulders. “You sit down. I’ve thrown off your day, the least I can do is make you breakfast.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Unless you want to go back to sleep. I can leave if—”

“No,” you said, your breath shaky. And, when he took your hand in his, it felt so right that for a moment you forgot that everything about this morning was unusual. “Stay,” you said. “Please.”

“All right,” he said, his eyes searching yours for something neither of you seemed to quite grasp.

You snapped out of your haze and went to get yourself cleaned up and dressed, allowing yourself in your sleepiness to think thoughts about this man, your closest friend, that normally you pushed away. He was right there, after all. In your kitchen. If you let yourself feel what you felt, if it came burbling out of you in a groggy delirium…you couldn’t bear the thought of anything changing between you. Of losing this closeness. Because somehow it hadn’t occurred to you that he felt those feelings about you, too.

You wake to the sound of clattering in the kitchen, a string of curses on Brasso’s tongue. There’s not a lot that can get you out of bed quickly but, after last night, you’re a little worried that he’s not just upset about a broken dish.

You slip into a robe and hurry into the kitchen where you find your husband sweeping up broken glass.

“It’s early, love,” he says when he sees you. “You can go back to sleep.”

“No, I can’t,” you say. “Some anniversaries you just feel in your bones. This is one of those for you.”

Brasso is washing his hands. You can’t tell if he’s ignoring you or if he just doesn’t know what to say.

“Brass?”

“I don’t know why it’s hitting me like this,” he says. “It’s been so long.”

“You told me last night you heard from Wilmon. Is he all right?”

“He is.”

Brasso drops a towel on the counter and you take his hand. You’ve both had more than your fair share of grief. Grief for loved ones lost. For futures that could never be. For safe places that would never feel safe again. And with the Imperial occupation of Ferrix you lost your home as you knew it. But you’d moved there as a teenager. You didn’t have generations of history there like Brasso did. His roots there were different. And when he chose to stay on Gatalenta, it was partly because could never go back to the place he left—not for more than a visit. Because too much had changed for it to feel like home for him.

“Let me make us some caf,” you say.

“Nonsense,” he says. “I’ve spoiled your sleep again, I’ll just—

“Brasso.”

“Okay,” he says, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I hear you.”

He’s always been the kind of man who takes care of everyone else and struggles to let others take care of him. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to ask for help, it’s that he doesn’t want to burden anyone. Even after all this time, he hesitates to tell you when something is wrong that he thinks he can handle on his own. You usually figure it out anyway, and he usually gives in to your care. But it hasn’t always been easy.

As you grind the caf beans—a blend he’d picked up at the market last week—you think of all those afternoons after you’d first met, when he’d turn up at the cafe on his break. It had been the best part of your day. You’d later learn that he’d been pretty loyal to a caf bar closer to his place until the day he stopped in on his lunch one afternoon and recognized you, the person he’d helped with the spilled groceries just a week or so before. Soon, he was a staple, falling into an easy routine with you. The two of you started taking your breaks together, soon becoming so close that it seemed like you’d always known each other. The first time he walked you home, on a night when the end of your shifts coincided, you had a feeling that maybe—just maybe—when you got to your apartment he was going to kiss you. But the moment passed. And you let yourself push the thought of a romance with Brasso to the back of your mind for the first time.

When you put a cup of caf in front of Brasso today, he takes your hand, bringing it to his lips for a kiss.

“Tell me what you need,” you say.

“Just sit with me, love,” he says. “All I need is you.”

Brasso was the kind of man who didn’t know how not to be busy. He’d been in your apartment for all of ten minutes before he’d sliced up some of the fruit to go with eggs and toast for breakfast. You’d known him long enough to know that this was just what he did. When he was upset, he took care of other people. So you should have known that when you’d sleepily mentioned that your refresher sink had been leaking that he was going to have to try and fix it. Now, a few hours later, he was in there with the tools he’d meant to take to work before the trajectory of his day had changed, leading him to you instead.

“You don’t have to do this,” you told him. “I can call the building manager and have him come take care of it.”

“It’s a simple fix,” he said. “I’m almost done.”

It was noon. Word was out that the scene had been cleared at the cafe, luckily with only some minor injuries. But nobody wanted to go out while the corpos were still around. And Brasso hadn’t said anything but you could tell he didn’t want to leave you by yourself either. Ferrix had always watched out for their own, and there was no telling what these off-planet police might do while they were here. Who they might bother. They didn’t know Ferrix and they didn’t like it any more than it liked them. So the streets had emptied. Places of business were closed. And Brasso was still with you.

“Finished,” Brasso called out from the refresher. “Good as…well as good as it was when you moved in here at least,” he said.

Not a lot on Ferrix was brand new. You liked this about your home. When you first came to Ferrix, you hadn’t known what to make of it. But now—now you felt there was something cozy about it. It was comforting to think about all the lives that had touched everything here.

You smiled as you heard Brasso taking off his tool belt and putting it with his boots by the door. When he came to sit with you, he’d unzipped the top of his coveralls and tied the arms around his waist, the black tanktop underneath accentuating the muscle of his chest, his broad, freckled shoulders. His hair was a bit mussed, and you fought the urge to reach out and touch it, to smooth it back in place.

He noticed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you said. “I zoned out for a moment. Probably just tired.”

“Things are changing around here,” he said. “It’s setting people on edge. I can’t remember the last time I had a day where I just felt at peace. Where things felt normal.”

“I wish there was something more I could do.”

“You’re here. That’s peace enough for me today.”

You yawned then, and he put his arm around you.

“Come here,” he said, grabbing the knit blanket you kept thrown over the back of your couch. “Close your eyes. Just rest.”

So you did. You let yourself relish in that closeness, in his clean, familiar scent, the secure warmth of his strong arms, the steady rhythm of his heart. It wasn’t the first time you’d fallen asleep in his arms. And you did still wonder, sometimes, if there was something there that neither of you dared to speak about. But you had seen Brasso’s affection with other friends as well. And, at the end of the day, you were grateful for what you had with him, even if it wasn’t quite what you wanted. He made you feel safe, even on days like this, and given the state of the galaxy, that was a considerable feat.

“Would you want to go out today?” Brasso asks.

He’s just woken up from a nap, and he’s wandered out of the bedroom looking delightfully mussed in his favorite pair of sweatpants. You’ll never get used to the fact, even after all this time, that this beautiful man has chosen to spend the rest of his life with you. You’d been answering holomail, but you put down your datapad, ready to do what you can to ease your partner’s stress.

“Are you up for it?” you ask. “There’s that food festival downtown, you know. In the park by the spires. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to go.”

“That sounds nice.” He sits on the sofa next to you, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I think I need some fresh air.”

“I think you do, too.”

You smooth his hair away from his face. Even as you say this, a part of you wants to just sit here like this all afternoon, resting your head on his chest, tracing the lines of the tattoos he collected in his travels, before he came home to you. A part of you wants to just stay here, like this, for the rest of the day. Still, you tell him to go get dressed, that you’ll be ready to go when he is.

Soon you’re in the park, a soft blanket laid out over the grass beneath you, paper containers of hot treats waiting to be opened—things from a few different food carts, because neither of you could choose.

“Now this,” Brasso says to you, “this is something I want to remember.”

“Hm?” You’re trying to open a bottle of a fizzy drink you hadn’t seen here before.

“Love,” Brasso says, one finger under your chin as he eases your face toward his. “Today is the day I first met you. Did you know that?”

You have to admit you didn’t remember the date. But he isn’t the kind of person to be upset over that. He knows his memory is better than most, and that you have a tendency to forget anything you don’t write down.

Still, you say, “I’m sorry,”

He smiles, leans in to touch his nose to yours. “No need,” he says.

There was a time when you never could have imagined Brasso would be the type to kiss you this way, out in the open for everyone to see. But whatever part of him that maybe had been too bashful for that kind of intimacy was gone with the war. With all the years he couldn’t hold you or kiss you at all. And under the bright sun he pulls you toward him, bringing your legs over his lap as he leans in to kiss your forehead, and then your nose, and then your lips, a kiss rich with devotion as he cradles your cheek in one of his big, rough hands.

You reach for his face, caressing the scruff of his short beard before threading your fingers through his hair, now collar-length, the silver strands catching the light. He still doesn’t believe you when you tell him you’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than him. But you’ll never get tired of telling him this, of telling him that from that day you met him there was nobody else in the galaxy who stood a chance to win your affections.

Today, you tell him: “I love you, you know. So much.”

“I know,” he says, a sparkle in his hazel eyes. “I can remember these things for the both of us.”

He kisses you again, a bit deeper, lingering, and you whisper, your lips brushing the shell of his ear, “People are staring.”

He laughs, running his fingers softly over your jaw before his hand comes to rest at the nape of your neck. “Let them,” he says.

And so you do, letting yourself enjoy this closeness as a warm breeze comes through the park, the sky in this moment seemingly full of possibilities, his kiss an infinite canvas for you to complete. You make a note of the date, and think to yourself that you won’t forget this time. You couldn’t possibly forget an afternoon like this.

★★★★★★★★

Hopefully it won't be so long between fics next time, but I hope you enjoyed this! Thank you for reading! I hope this fic made you feel seen and loved.

I have a taglist now! Sign up here if you want to be tagged in future fics. (And choose if you only want to be tagged for certain characters.) In the meantime, I’m tagging my taglist as well as some folks who have been reblogging my fics. Love y’all!

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poemsandstoriesohmy · 18 days

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I’ve had the same nightmare for over 10 years. An active shooter scenario where everything but the gun changes. Most nights, I’m my in high school band room hiding from the reverberations in the hallway. Others, I’m at work crouched behind pallets of boxes fearing discovery. Sometimes, I’m in college. Running backstage praying that the dark familiarity of my degree gives me an advantage over firepower. Every time I hope that the instruments -- the boxes-- the curtains keep me from view. Always a man even if the face is covered in the black cotton of a ski mask or the reflective obscurity of glasses. He usually finds me and I relive the burning feeling of metal velocity against human skin and muscle. Bravery seeps in some nights and I rush the gunman. I wrestle the gun away tying him up with guitar straps -- my belt -- duct tape. Because only in America can the halls of a school become a real-life military exercise. Bravery is not always enough. That pluck is stolen from me in the face of action and I freeze. I tremble. I die. Gunned down by a man on a foolish mission with an end only he can see. I’m lucky. I woke up. I wasn’t shot in school or at work. I graduated and walked across the stage with no memorial to those we’ve lost to the violence embedded in the walls. I don’t leave home wondering if I’ll get on the bus to come back. I don’t experience the terror and trauma of the children of today. Because I left behind the blood covered lockers and walked into the bullet ridden salesfloor. I may no longer be a child, but the fear of bombardment in a place I should feel safe lingers. No longer may it be a child with a handgun or a parent hoping to prove a point. But it will always be someone. Someone who was fired, never got their money, didn’t -- doesn’t -- don’t. There will always be a reason in their head to put a gun in their hand and a trigger beneath their finger.

#poem #poetry #prose #original poem #school assignment #tw gun mention #tw active shooter #nightmare

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ohlawdthebirds · 7 months

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Currently asking for prayers for the victim's of an on-campus shooting at my school tonight. We're still on lockdown, thankfully it didn't happen during the day, as I fear there would have been more casualties.

#tw active shooter #this country...help us Lord #I'm grateful to be safe right now but...yeesh this is too much

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siltslut · 1 month

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in middle school we had an active shooter drill and our instructions were to stand behind the door with heavy textbooks and beat the shit out of the shooter and the best part is i truly think a group of 20 twelve year olds with heavy history textbooks could kill a guy

#i think the goal was to disarm him but i’m not sure how many of us would stop there #idk why we did this cause it was sm different than all my other active shooter drills ??#shooting tw

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stardust948 · 2 years

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Prayer request:

There was an active shooting near my neighborhood. They arrested the guy but there are already several dead people and more injured. Please pray for the families.

#prayer request #tw shooting #tw gun violence #tw death #tw active shooter

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pinkfey · 1 year

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the lack of empathy people have for victims of gun violence is making me rapidly descend into grief and despair and i don’t know what to do about it 👍

#like what kind of person do you have to be to see a video of someone sobbing while during an active shooter situation #and comment america moment. or wow soooo much freedom. or so glad i don’t live there.#like?? and thats the nicest it gets too. what happened to oh my god i’m so sorry i hope you’re safe #like. it genuinely makes me so devastated to see this constantly constantly constantly happening #how hard is it to be kind. how hard is it to say nothing.#‘don’t understand how americans live like this’ what if i ate you. BADLY.#i’m tired i’m tired i’m tired we NEED solidarity and radical empathy to get through things #when you’re in a position like this where imperialists control everything and you’re murdered for enacting change thats all there is #politicians need to be assassinated and killed and executed etc and in the meantime?? empathy and mutual aid. no fucking sarcasm no ‘jokes’#i don’t know how to change this attitude ppl have. it’s not helping.#anyways.txt #delete later #mass shooting tw.

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wolvesbaneandbuttercups · 1 year

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tumblr ate my original post abt this but anyways here we go again

usually, we stay the fuck away from discourse type topics however

yeah.

anyone who uses these types of transid labels I highly suggest getting offline for a bit.

Like trans[insert harming of innocent people here] especially things like transnazi or this transschoolshooter are just like an instant red flag for me because to me it says if cancel culture and the law didn't exist you'd be out here recreating the holocaust or killing kids. These are the kinds of transids that really make me hate that community even more than transabled and trace do because this is promoting traumatic things.

also OP if you were uncomfortable coining this (which, understandable, school shootings are traumatizing coming from someone who has almost been through it multiple times and knows people who have been through it) you didn't have to coin this you really could have said no or deleted the ask.

-Fell

#tw school shooting #tw transnazi #also fyi im not any anti or pro stance on transid shit #i am however anti this #it reminds me of the bitches who had crushes on the columbine shooters #and as someone who has been in a few active threats fuck you #i have friends who lost people to school shooters #its not cute or funny or something to have a proud label and flag for #discoursey

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detectiveconnor · 2 years

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@jericholeader

It was arson. There was thirium pooling around the body of an Android who deserved to live that was evidence of the cruel in this. This person wanted to take life, and the flames licking up over walls and across a floor soaked in gasoline were proof enough.

He shot first and asked questions after, and thought he’d put Markus down with three bullets in his chassis. It was his mistake, to underestimate him.

Markus’ was bleeding, with the man slung over his shoulder, when he came out the first time, a group of a dozen or more behind him, choking on the smoke starting to fill the corridors of their burning home. “Get to the side-walk! Help each other.” He’d deposited the man in the custody of the single officer who’d arrived first. And then he’d gone back in. He went back, again and again, each time with more coming out with him, and more of the shelter and home of hundreds consumed in flame.

The fourth time he didn’t come out, for long enough that the media that had begun to crowd in thick on the edge of the police line began to speculate. He’d caught a beam as it was falling. He’d had to bite back the sound of pain as it hit his shoulders, but he could hold it. It was hot enough to seer his coat worse than it already had been (badly) and he registered the increasing pressure with the more immediate threat of the heat. It had given enough time for the woman trapped to be helped free by two others.

When Markus came back out again it was for the last time. He couldn’t breathe through the smoke in his lungs, or see, from the ash, in the air and in his eyes, and covering him. His clothes and skin were blackened, and the fire was too hot, even here, even outside.

He opened a call. It was all he could think of, as he fought his way back. He had wanted to hear Connor’s voice, he wanted… he wanted him-

The call picked up, but there was a burst of harsh, garbled static as he flinched from the heat and choked, on the ash in his throat. His chest hurt. He reached, to brace himself, but his palm slipped, and he stumbled, (Oh. Oh.) his hands too slick with his own blood. He sank, onto his knees, leaving a wet trail of thirium, “… Connor?” There were voices and clamoring. He couldn’t-, “I love-… you.” There was more, he had more to say, “I’ll be-… all right, but can-… you come?”

“Connor, open up!” Thudding. “Connor!”

The Lieutenant banging on his front door was what woke him, originally. It was still dark outside. The bed was empty and large, and Connor was in one of Markus’ sweaters, a red one, and his boxer-briefs. Lieutenant Anderson could easily have called him to wake him, which meant there was something urgent happening which needed them to move now - Connor had missed several calls while asleep but none from anyone he wanted to be able to wake him; his last message from Markus was a goodnight, which he remembered had roused him briefly sometime earlier in the night.

When Connor opened his front door he found Hank standing there fully dressed and equipped with the tools of his job (a badge, weapon, ID card). He was not clean-shaven and his hair was not combed. It looked as though he’d had very little sleep so far at all.

“Lieutenant.” It was late.

It should have been concerning that Connor answering the door in his boxer-briefs didn’t immediately have Hank swearing. Instead he assessed Connor, the way he was coming out of sleep and dressed in a sweater that didn’t quite fit him (it wasn’t his), and Hank said, “Android housing’s on fire in DC. Markus was staying there,” he knew the question before Connor could ask it, “And someone’s saying there was a shooter. Our flight leaves in twenty.”

And the news wasn’t reporting on it? But they were – it hadn’t reached a national scale yet but when he searched news reports local to DC the reports were beginning to trickle in, with one livestream that filmed the smoke only just beginning to wind into the sky - there was yelling, and coughing. The camera didn’t focus on the people on the sidewalk, which meant not many could have been out yet. Connor stepped forward (he was ready like this, they could go like this, he didn’t need to stop for his weapon or ID) – “I have your badge,” Hank said, but blocked his exit from the doorway. “Put on some pants.”

“… Got it,” Connor decided, and he did indeed go to pull on some pants, and snag something warm and comfortable for Markus, to bring with him.

They were well and truly already in the air by the time Markus made his call. Connor accepted the transmission on its first request, which meant he was privy to the initial burst of static that flooded the line – Markus might well not have heard Connor’s initial, urgent-but-not-panicked, “Markus.”

“Connor?”

“I’m here.” Even without the difficulty Markus’ system was having in supporting a transmission (overheated? Hurt? Connor had been watching the news he’d been able to source while in the air, but that was only occasional snippets - twice he had seen him covered in ash and turning back toward the building to go back in, but that was at least two hours ago now) – even without that difficulty it would have been a limited connection, voice only in what would ordinarily have been a way to …. reach him. There was often more to these transmissions but in the air by distance he could not share worry or love or the sort of presence that he would have liked to offer, so he settled for listening.

Markus’ ‘speech’ was slower than it should have been. Connor had not had footage for hours now, no tether to the ground other than this staticky transmission made between two Androids with unusually excellent transmission capabilities, and the not-knowing until this point had made him snappish. He wasn’t cruel, or even particularly rude, but he’d been very still except for when his leg was bouncing all flight, LED constantly flickering as he tried to learn anything else about the situation on the ground. Hank put a hand on his shoulder now, having noticed the shift that this call brought him (the way Connor leant lightly forward, posture changed, the inclination to do something) and maybe trying to be supportive. Connor did not shake him off, but only because they were friends.

“I’ll be-… all right, but can-… you come?”

“I love you.” A statement of fact and an answer, in one: yes, of course. He wanted to be there already, without this gap in between when Markus was tired and ash-ridden and wanting him, and when he could physically be there. Connor checked the time again but it was still another half hour until they’d land, and a half hour on top of that to taxi to the gate and physically get out of the airport, let alone to where Markus was. “Let someone look at you,” not an order, just a reminder: Connor had seen how he shook people off, brushed away people who tried to steady him (Thirium, tools, support), because there were still people in that building and Markus could still go back in. “I’ll call when we land. I’m coming.”

Even once they were on the ground, it was difficult to sort out just where Markus was. The media only kept looping footage of Markus coming out of the building, that slip on the wall (Connor half-shifted forward as though to catch him, the first time he found it playing in the airport’s little television on his way out), the way Markus was not the only one covered in ash and dusty rubble and smoke so thick it had turned to sludge that clung onto their bodies and clothes and lungs.

Hank turned away from the screen with a, “Jesus. I’m gonna make some calls,” because he was seemingly one of the few people in DC who had the forethought that people wouldn’t want to wake up in the early hours of the morning to footage of people dead or dying or hurt. They were, technically, here for work; Hank took the role because if he did then Connor would not have to, and Connor would have to thank him for it later. He retrieved their luggage (a shopping bag filled with what Thirium supplies there had been in the trunk of Hank’s car, a last-minute addition Hank had jogged back to retrieve before the flight because there would definitely be a need), then crossed through the airport, to find the building. Its smoke trail was visible from here.

The calls he tried to make to Markus picked up occasionally, but they were grainy, and dropped often enough to not have given him anything meaningful. These were the beginnings of people flooding the network, Connor thought, as they made calls or called loved ones, or sorted out who could give them shelter, or could anyone spare Thirium? North, at home, had already started coordinating their resources with different shelters in the area. It wasn’t the first time Connor had not been able to call Markus but it was as displacing as it had been the last time, an odd knowledge they were that much further apart than they could have been.

It was a good thing Hank had brought Connor’s police ID. Connor flashed it now to the DC cops guarding the smoke rubble that used to be a building – the cameras were still there, news media who flooded toward him when they recognised who he was, but he was in and under the tape before they could ask him anything. Flashing lights was what he was looking for. It had been roughly an hour since Markus had last left this now-burnt out building, but there were still emergency services on the scene, people wrapped in shock blankets that didn’t serve a great deal of purpose other than a way to keep them warm. EMS was ill-equipped for Androids, here. Thirium supplies would be thin. Those who didn’t die in the fire and the gunfire might do it here, on the sidewalk.

“I have Thirium,” offered loud, for attention, and someone – a paramedic – came quickly to take it from him with a short ‘thank you’. He recognised her, he thought, on a scan: Peta something. One of the paramedics who had come to Detroit specifically for New Jericho’s training on Android first aid. She might even have worked in the infirmary for a while. Connor had to catch her as she turned, “Markus?”

The woman hesitated. Connor watched her remember they were together (the flicker of surprise at seeing it confirmed in front of her - knowing the gossip was different from seeing it), and she gestured for him to follow, “He’s helping.”

Of course he was helping. Connor followed her beyond the reach of the cameras’ lenses and found a sort of triage space, with those well enough to help – and with the knowledge enough, or willingness enough, to do so – doing what they could for the wounded. Many of them were wounded, themselves. Connor called Markus again, searching, but this close to the incident the network cut him out almost as soon as he made the call, and besides he could probably find him if he s-

“Hey, Markus,” Peta said beside him as Connor’s eyes combed the sea of people, and Markus - right there, beside them - looked up. Covered in ash, and half-wearing a shock blanket around his shoulders, crouched beside a woman who could not stand and running obviously low on Thirium but not anywhere as low as others, here. Peta’s hands were already reaching to take Markus’ tools from him. She didn’t even make the offer verbally, she just took what he was doing and kept doing it, so the woman had someone to care for her and so Markus could have someone to care for him.

He looked like shit. The sweater embedded with smoke and dust and Thirium had burnt away in places, and there were others where Markus’ synthskin must have burnt as well - it would regrow, but for now it was retracted. Rough.

His eyes, when they met his, were blue-green and alive.

Connor’s LED flashed a vibrant red for just half a beat (”Markus,” repeated, a declaration of something), then a rapidly-flickering, brilliant white-blue, then something steady yellow, as he crouched, knelt (dropped), to join him. To hug him. To hold him in the places where there was not already Thirium staining into his outfit. “I’ve been coming since midnight.” Since before Markus had called. It was a several-hours-long flight, which he’d boarded on the first news that something was happening. That why he was here now, in the early hours of the morning with people still on the sidewalk instead of later in the afternoon, with bodies in a morgue. There would still be bodies. There would be an investigation to set the local force on.

For now: “Has someone checked you out?” Was he alright?

#mmmmm poke me if this needs altering but here is what is in my head! i don't know if we talked about this more #but this is what the old draft made me think of #submission #ic #jericholeader #fire tw #active shooter tw #consider: connor in dresspants and one of markus' sweaters #(dresspants bc that's - if he just grabbed a pair that's what they would be lol. i love him)#he has a sweater for markus with him somewhere too but that is for not-yet. current now-goals are Hold Him #and make sure he is not bleeding in more places than he says he is

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