#i love men in uniform (blue collar workers) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cursingtoji · 8 months

Text

ᥫ᭡ — EXECUTIVE AFFAIRS: In a cutthroat world of boardroom battles and power struggles, you must navigate ambition , corporate intrigue, and unexpected love affairs.

✧ PRELUDE

— contents: CEO!reader, construction worker!Toji, lawyer!Nanami, therapist!Geto, ex-husband!Gojo; power imbalance, sexual frustration, manipulation, use of 'darling', 'baby', 'dear' & 'boss', 4k words, on-going series

— note: osha is the occupational safety and health administration agency in the USA, even tho i'm not american seems easier to just say osha (also a fun word to pronunce)

A young man opens the rear door of the Jaguar as soon as your driver stops by the construction site, “This way ma’am” you accept his hand, touching the cement with your stiletto first before getting out of the vehicle.

As scheduled you are heading to a meeting with the architect responsible for this particular project, a big one. Normally the CEO wouldn’t be involved in such routine visits like this, but you definitely don’t want to be like the previous CEO, who barely stepped out of his office for anything.

Besides, you have to make a good impression with the other directors that would be there today as well, and what better way to do that if not going to the construction site yourself, even though you clearly do not belong there given the way your heel wobbled as soon as it touched the uneven ground.

“Excuse me, miss” you’re stopped by a man twice your size — horizontally and almost vertically — extending a white helmet in your direction, “I’m sure that hair costed a lot and you don’t wanna cover it, but every person on site, even the ladies, ‘gotta wear it.”

You stand a bit shocked at the man addressing you like it’s not your last name on his uniform.

“Mr. Fushiguro, I should inform you that it’s your CEO you’re talking to” the boy beside you speaks up, he’s wearing a white helmet and the unknown man a yellow one.

“Great, so you are able to afford the OSHA fine if they decide today is a good day for inspection, but I’d rather not have another pointless safety training just ‘cause no one had the balls to tell you to protect your pretty ‘lil head” his expression doesn’t change a bit with the new information. You find that respectable, especially having so many people stuttering when talking to you.

If you were to say that you don’t get even a little bit amused by people being nervous in your presence Nanami would have to warn you about perjury.

It’s quite a change to have a blue collar employee sticking to the rules and not batting an eye when the highest possible authority of the company is standing right in front of him, especially when that someone looks like he just got out of a sexy construction men calendar… not that you have ever seen one of those. That’s just what you think they might look like, plus that scar only adds up to fantasy.

You clean your throat, “I appreciate your work ethic, Mr. Fushiguro” you repeat the name so you won’t forget, “I wasn’t aware of the rules” you side-look the young man beside you who’s now staring at his own feet embarrassed since it was his duty to inform you.

“Call me Toji” you take the helmet and put it on, “By the way, you’re supposed to wear trousers too and… literally anything but that” he points with his chin to your high heels thinking how that alone was a safety hazard not just on a construction site. Toji leans closer “but I’ll let it slide, ‘cause you have quite beautiful legs.”

You are left mouth agape, internally appreciating that he didn’t say that out loud — after all being sexualized when you are trying to impose respect would require you to put a show and fire the man — but also makes you question if he was straight forward with you because of his work ethics or because he does not respect you as his superior.

Not that you wouldn’t let him do disrespectful things to you, but still!

You’re taken to where the rest of the directors are, they’re easy to spot — a bunch of men in suits that clearly don’t belong to the place — surrounding a table with the blue prints. They greet you and you realize this is the first time you see all of them around a table and not sitting, poor guys must be dying for a room with AC right now.

It’s not like you belonged there either, with your tailor made beige suit that had a pencil skirt instead of the newly-discovered-necessary trousers and how-the-fuck-you-thought-that-was-a-good-idea high heels. But in your own defense you did visit a lot of construction sites when you first started at the company all those years ago and that’s much more than the white collar men in front of you can say.

The main architect starts to give you all an status of the project being interrupted by the senior engineer every few minutes, the last one clearly thinking he’s better than the first even though neither of them lifts a finger in this ground.

Your sight is drawn to the man that scolded you before, while the architect is pointing to something on top of the construction and everyone else is shielding their eyes from the sun to find it, you’re looking straight ahead to Toji who’s currently lifting an apparently very heavy sack of cement on his shoulder and taking it all across the site. God, he’s strong.

His handsome face shines with sweat, you’re sure the wife beater he has on also violates some OSHA code, but who would be crazy enough to report that? Not you for sure, the view is worth the OSHA fine.

Especially when he drops the sack with a grunt and uses the shirt to wipe his face, revealing a torso you’re sure Michelangelo would die to use as inspiration to sculpt into marble then having people saying ‘whoa that’s real art’.

You wonder if someone would scream at you for touching that piece of art.

Unfortunately you don’t expect to get caught ogling by the subject himself. So the best thing you can do is find whatever the architect is pointing to and pretend to pay attention like you should have from the beginning instead of eye fucking one of your employees.

“Hey, boss” you hear on your way out of the site and back to your cozy office where you wouldn’t get your ankle broken that easily. You turn around and see Toji catwalking his way to you.

“Technically I'm out of the hazard zone, mr. Fushiguro” you justify your lack of a helmet which you ditched a few seconds ago.

“Toji” he corrects you, taking his own helmet off “and I’m not this uptight, unlike some people here today” he mutters the last part looking behind him to some of the directors that seemed to be looking for tiny errors on the project so they could fix it and justify being there.

“Well, what can I do for you?”

“I’m pretty sure you're being robbed.”

“What?” you look around, “What do you mean?”

“You’re paying for double the stuff that’s actually being delivered” he took a sheet of folded paper out of his pants, you reach for it but he pulls it back, “I have proof and I can say names.”

“Did you say that to your field supervisor?”

“Please, who do ya think it’s signin’ under this?” he rolls his eyes.

“So you came to the CEO instead? You’re going behind some big backs here, sir.”

“Look, miss, I want a promotion, I know a lot of big shots will go down for this and I’m the only one capable of handling the people here. Besides I stand by what I said before, no one has the guts to do this so I’m taking a big risk and I deserve compensation” he hands back the paper and this time he let you take it. You stare into his deep green eyes suspiciously, the man has the looks of a fantasy villain with his sharp features and dark eyelashes, you're not entirely sure if you should believe him.

“Give your number to my assistant, we’ll schedule a meeting in the office, you tell me everything you know and I see what I can do about it.”

“In the office? Didn’t know you allowed commonores in your castle” he smirks.

“Only the pretty ones” you wink and his smile grows wider.

“How long have you known about this?” Nanami questions.

“Not even 24 hours” you sit on your white couch signing for him to take the seat in front of you.

Your lawyer does that thing you find really hot where he unbuttons the coat of his five digit worth suit before sitting down. You admire Nanami’s elegance while he roams his eyes through the paper, he has a vest between the coat and the dress shirt. Navy blue suits him so well, matches his eyes. He makes you think every man should wear vests, but of course not every man can pull it off. Honestly, you find it hard to believe there's anything Nanami can’t pull off, but you haven't seen your lawyer without a suit… ever.

Maybe he looks bad with a plain T-shirt?

No way.

Perhaps with an overall and cowboy hat?

Mmm the image makes you wanna ride something.

What about emo hair, eyeliner and a band tee?

No, you can’t imagine Kento with emo hair, no chance he had a rebellious phase except if his parents wanted him to be a surgeon and he became the best lawyer in the city just to piss them off.

“I’m glad you came to me first, but we’ll need to involve auditing and probably internal affairs. That’ll probably put the project on hold for some weeks, also I’ll need more evidence than this” he shook the one paper sheet that was merely a quotation of supplies even you could understand is way too much for a single building.

“I got the guy for that, say the word and Yuuta will arrange a meeting” you pointed to your assistant sitting outside.

“Tell me, dear” he put the sheet aside, taking that posture that intimidated you a bit, “A blue collar worker just saw your pretty self on the site and handed criminal evidence? Just like that?”

You open your mouth, thinking what to say that won’t sound like you are being taken advantage of, and failing.

“Oh darling” he says a bit too condescendingly for someone that technically works for you, “Thought I told you about being too naive” he leans on the couch, making himself comfortable like you’re about to have The Talk.

“Kento, is not like that” you cross your arms defensively, “He said he wants a promotion, how risky that would be?”

“Thought you would say that” he takes his phone and hands it to you, “So I did my own little research.”

“What’s this?” you find yourself looking at a picture of the man you met yesterday.

Only now you could see tiny numbers behind him indicating his height and he held a plaque with his name. He looks way younger, still very handsome, you wonder how popular he used to be in his youth, with a face like that and the implication he was arrested was enough to make every girl’s bad-boy-dream come true.

“What was he accused of?” you ask out of curiosity.

“Not relevant, also sealed records” he breaks eye contact and that’s enough for you to understand he actually knows it and he did not get this information by any legal means.

“So what? The man got a bit of trouble with the law when he was young” you shrug, remembering even your ex husband had a little rich boy “criminal” file, if you can even call the dumb shit he did outta spite for his parents an actual crime.

“HR will find out about this, then you’re going to have to justify why you’re recommending a filled man for a managing position.”

“And I’ll tell them he actually found out about a theft scheme and whatever public-pissing crime he did will surely be overlooked.”

“Darling, you have to start thinking about your image, we’ve been through that before” he tilts his head.

“You don’t like my image?” you question playfully twirling your hair, Nanami smiles for a brief second.

“You know what I mean: your image towards the board, you barely made the votes necessary to be where you are today.”

Indeed, you owned the company and no one could take that away, but the CEO position needed to be voted and you only got the necessary votes because your ex-husband had the strongest voting rights and part of the divorce agreement was that he voted for you, so his, plus a few more other members of the board's votes and you made chief executive officer.

“Fine, then write a contract, he tells everything including testify if he has to in exchange of the supervisor position and I’ll pitch it to the board before any decisions are made” you uncross your arms raising from your seat.

Bringing the board into the conversation made you nervous, most of them don't like you and you’ve been trying to prove yourself for months. Even though you worked your ass off way before marrying the owner all they saw was a hurt ex-wife making pretend.

“Atta girl” Nanami raises too, buttoning his coat back and placing his hands on your tense shoulders. Nanami smells like what you think it should be every handsome lawyer's trademark scent, cause damn that smell would make you sign anything he gives you.

“Don’t worry much, you’re doing great” he presses a bit and you melt.

“Take me out to lunch?” you pout.

“I would love to” he lets go of your shoulder, “Unfortunately I have a hearing, but I'll be back for that meeting soon, okay?”

You sigh in defeat, getting even a few minutes of Nanami’s time for yourself is as hard as it can get, only a corruption scheme to get him to come to your office in such short notice.

“Ma’am” Yuuta says from the speakerphone, “Your ex-husband is calling” you groan, throwing your head back.

Of course he would want to interrupt your moment with Nanami.

“I can get you a restriction order” your lawyer offers jokily (or not).

Aside from being the company's lawyer, Nanami Kento was also your divorce attorney, which you managed to get only after agreeing to give him your company's account if he managed to land you the CEO position. Like everything in this merciless corporate world, it was give and take, you got what you wanted – not surprisingly so, afterall Nanami, even though is not a divorce specialist, is the best. Still, you like to think of him being more than another contractor of yours.

“I appreciate the offering” you smile tiredly, Nanami kisses your hand like the gentleman he is before leaving your office, “Yuuta, I’ll take him– it. I’ll take the call” you sit back behind your desk massaging your temple “Put him through.”

“Hello, beautiful” he greets over the speakerphone in that always so cheerful tone.

“Satoru, what do you want?”

“No chit-chat? It’s the least you could do for me after I gave you the company” entitled as always…

“You didn’t give it to me, you gave it up for the rest of your assets” you remind, already sick of this same discussion over and over.

When the divorce was officially on the table you told Kento exactly what you wanted: the company. The one thing you knew your ex husband would hate to lose, but also didn’t love as much as his lifestyle – which would be brutally affected if you decided to go for the 50% you were entitled to.

So through a carefully written agreement you accepted way less than you were owed in the form of full ownership of the respected construction company and title of chief executive officer.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other. How have you been?”

“Fine. Just tell me what you want, I actually take this job seriously and have important things to do.”

Oh god, he would tease you so bad if he knew about the corruption scheme, and the worst part is that, eventually, he will know. Gojo has ears everywhere around here.

“Nanami” he says simply. You start to look around your office, wondering if he has cameras there.

“You… want… Nanami?”

“Yes, beautiful” he confirms slowly like he's talking to a kid that has just learned the alphabet.

“Why? You know what? Nevermind, I don't want to know. No, you can’t have him” you lean on your chair, denying Gojo gives you great satisfaction.

“It’s not for any bullshit reason, alright?”

“I don’t care, Satoru. Besides, I don’t own Kento, you can approach him anytime” you smile knowing he would never be able to do that without you.

“Aren’t you a sweetheart?” condescension drips from your phone and onto your desk, “He won’t represent me even if I run for president.”

“So you need legal representation? You’re not calling me from jail, are you Satoru?” you mirror his condescending tone, surely he can hear the smile in your voice.

“Thought you didn't care, or would you bail me out? Oh wait, I forgot, you don’t have the money for that” he laughs, arguing was never a thing with him, he would mock you and find a way to make you doubt your accusations. Gaslighting is it? “I’ll give it a shot, just so you know, but this is a great opportunity for you to ask something in return.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Think about it, baby, I’m sure there's plenty of things I can do for you” his tone is lower, more seductive.

“Doubt it” you roll your eyes hearing his chuckle.

“Yeah? When was the last time you had–”

You hang up.

Then sigh loudly and press the button to talk to Yuuta.

“Yes, ma’am?” you scrunch your nose, still not used to being called that, Nanami said you should let your sweet assistant call you ma'am or madam at least in front of others since you could use the recognition of your authority.

“Please put Geto on the line.”

“Certainly” you wait, stepping out of your heels and digging your toes on the fluff carpet under the table.

“Hi, doc” you salute your psychologist.

“Sugar, I told you there’s no need to address me like that, hurts my feelings” his honeyed voice is everything you need to hear in such stressful times.

“It does? Maybe you should see a therapist to talk about that, I have a great recommendation” you can’t help but smile like a little girl when talking to him, being playful is a way to cope with your harmless crush.

“Just great?”

“He’s the best, I can assure you” he laughs, “Do you have a few minutes?”

“For you, absolutely” your face warms up then you remember the subject of the call and cools down again.

“It’s Satoru.”

‘It’s always Satoru’ Geto thinks.

“He just called wanting something, I told him no and he made that same old joke about me not having money” you huffed.

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Helpless? I don't know, he must think I’m poor now or something” which is ridiculous, you’re not nearly close to his patrimony as you used to when you were married but what you have is still fuckload more than what it takes to be considered poor.

“He’s trying to remind you of what you lost when you left him, this is just another manipulation technique, my love. Don’t let him get in your head” you need this as a mantra to hear every time your ex-husband calls, “Did he bring up sex this time?”

“No, but he was about to.”

“And what did you say?”

“Hanged up” you hear him snorting.

“Well, that can work on the phone, but what if you were talking face to face? What would you have done?”

Geto knows a lot about you. Obviously since you pay him to listen while you ramble and complain. Still, feels overwhelming having someone recalling your previous actions, especially the ones you're not exactly proud of.

“Tell him to shut up, throw a stapler on him, call security, threaten him with a restriction order.”

“Would you really?” Geto likes to take a joke you make and dig on that.

“Well, probably not the last two…”

“Have you been looking up restriction orders?”

“No, that was a joke my lawyer made early. A restriction order would be too… bureaucratic? Also unnecessary, afterall Satoru he never physically hurt me or threatened to.”

“That would be a good way of making him leave you alone for a while since you're not able to fully detach from him” you sat up.

“That's not true! I’ve been doing everything by myself lately, don't even have time to think about him! I’m detached, doc.”

“Wanna know what I think you would have done if he made that sexual comment face to face with you?” you gulp and Geto takes your silence as consent to continue, “I think you would let him go forward with it.”

You make an offended sound but don't fight his statement, “And what would happen next?” he tones the question like a professor trying to make the class complete a sentence, you keep your head down and mouth shut, “You would’ve let him sweet talk you into sleeping with him again.”

“You don't know that” you murmur.

“It’s a pattern, love. This is how abusive husbands keep their wives from leaving them or even telling anyone about the abuse. They use sex to make them think how good it is to be with them despite everything else.”

“Satoru was not abusive.” you defend your ex-husband firmly, “And I already left him!” you defend yourself less firmly.

“And he still thinks he can have you back! You know why?”

“Because I’m a catch that he shouldn’t have cheated?” Geto stays quiet for a few seconds and you feel a lump in your throat forming. The comment was supposed to sound more like a joke but you're still too hurt for that , clearly.

“That as well, but you really think he regrets it?”

“He seemed pretty sorry in the divorce mediation” you murmur recalling his lost-puppy expression.

“The meeting where he signed a paper that would make him lose his company and his wife? Gee I wonder why” the little sarcastic remark made you smile and shake your head, your psychologist using sarcasm against you is quite funny, “My point is, if you really want to be independent from him you ‘gotta stop letting yourself be attracted back like a magnet” you let his words sink in hearing some papers being ruffled on his side.

“I’m giving you homework.”

“Oh no…”

“Find your sexuality by yourself, you can watch porn, masturbate or even better: have sex with someone. Anyone but Satoru, because right now that’s what he’s using to control you.”

“Geto, I don’t know about this. Porn is too gross, masturbation is too ineffective and sex is too…” you trail off.

“Vulnerable?” he completes.

“I guess…”

“It’s been a few months since you last slept with Satoru, right? What’re you feeling?”

“What do you mean?” you rub your face.

“You know what I mean” he's strict and you let out a long sigh.

“I feel frustrated, sometimes stressed and distracted” all caused by the men you have to deal with including the handsome psychologist putting some sense in you. Not exactly what you wanted him to put in, but oh well…

“Exactly, in your current state it’s only a matter of time until you end up on his bed. You gotta decide if you are willing to: find porn that is not gross, masturbate more effectively or let yourself relax and be vulnerable.”

Is easy to like Geto Suguru, he’s handsome, has a sweet voice, he listens without interrupting (manterrupting is a big no-no for this job thankfully). Though sometimes it’s easy to hate him too, you have to remember he's saying what you need to hear not what you want to, even if your ears could use some tickling from time to time.

“Still with me?” he asks after you remain quiet.

“Yes, doc” he says your name in a warning tone, “Sorry, Suguru.”

“All good for our appointment next week?”

“Hm” your thoughts go to the newly found out corruption scheme that will need your attention the following days, “I’ll ask Yuuta to confirm with your secretary alright?”

“Whatever works best for you, love.”

“Bye, Suguru.”

“Don’t forget your homework.”

🏷️ @rinntvrou @sakurasimppp @sad-darksoul — to be tagged in future works of this series please comment “@ me” in this post.

note: i’m not sure if tickle the ears is a known term worldwide but means “saying or suggesting things to please even if untrue”. also i have some big plans for kinktober so next chapter might take a little while to be posted, let me know your thoughts <3

#jjk x reader #jjk smut #gojo x reader #toji x reader #geto x reader #nanami x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk series #jjk x you

734 notes · View notes

e-1los · 2 years

Text

▹𝐀𝐤𝐢𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐱 𝐟𝐞𝐦!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

↳𝑨𝒌𝒊𝒕𝒐 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒘𝒂𝒍𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒐𝒏 [𝒀/𝑵] 𝒑𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒌!

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 [ Unavailable ]

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆/𝐒:

↳𝑨𝒌𝒊𝒕𝒐 𝑾𝑰𝑳𝑳 𝑩𝑬 𝒔𝒐𝒇𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝑰 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝒔𝒐.

𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒/𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒:

▹𝑹𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝑰 𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒂𝒔 𝒂 𝑻𝒔𝒖𝒌𝒂𝒔𝒂 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒕? 𝑾𝑬𝑳𝑷 𝑰𝑻𝑺 𝑨𝑲𝑰𝑻𝑶 𝑵𝑶𝑾 >:)

↳ 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒐𝑽𝒔 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒆 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒔𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒔 𝒘/ 𝒅𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒂𝒔𝒅𝒋𝒇𝒉𝒈𝒊𝒋.

𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐒:

↳[𝒀/𝑵]'𝒔 𝒂 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝑴𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓!

↳❝ˏˋ𝓢𝓴𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓸 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓽ˊˎ❞—💌

→❝ˏˋ[𝐘/𝐍]'𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐕ˊˎ❞—⛸️

An exhausted sigh left [Y/N]'s mouth, shoulders slumped as her body started to ache from school as a whole.

She looked off into the distance as she skimmed over the assignments she plan to do once she get home, checking her phone to make sure every assignment is written down on her notes app before it clicked.

She wanted them to be finished or pending once your at home. Once.

A mischievous grin pulls on her mouth before a scary glint in her eyes sparked.

"I suppose a little skating won't cost me~." She excitedly purred to herself before eagerly stuffing her phone in her bag and heading home. 'It's okay if I let this one slide first. Besides, school's giving us too much workload this week. Wonder what's up with that though.' She wondered, wincing at the thought of your workload.

She shook your head, a cheerful delight took over her demeanor.

Turning away from her shoes, she moved her legs swiftly up the flight of stairs to her room. Setting her bag next to her door, she took out some things before carrying them to her bed.

Grabbing her skates from the wall, she stuff them in a nearby duffle bag before grabbing her phone, pen, and notepad from her bed.

Locking her door, she change her clothes to those more to her taste.

Don't get me wrong, her school uniform was a BANGER but it wasn't really her taste.

A loose white button up with extra fabric covering her bust, giving her overall silhouette a flowy look. A large black bow acts as her tie as it loosely hangs from under her collar. Holding her top tight; a black skirt is firmly wrapped in the middle of her stomach, as the contrast of the white and black give her a striking presence. Her skirt was long so she did not worry about it rising, though she still wore shorts underneath.

↳ ❝Outfit of choice.❞

The frills at the end of her sleeves led her to a vivid image of herself spinning, the frills following her like how the ocean waves follows the moon's demands.

Such fantasies she wish she could see for herself.

She snapped from her wishes once more before a dull face leaked onto hers. Putting her skates and duffle bag over her shoulders, she left her home for the nearest ice rink.

It wasn't really near to her house but she paid no mind. Afterall, she has been skating since she was young so, her breath and legs were strong enough.

Finally, with a last huff, she arrived in front of the building.

The cold wind and feel of ice welcomed her warmed face, sweat clinging close to her even though she has yet to start.

She dragged herself to a near by bench, saying hello to the worker who stood by. She was a frequent guest in that rink, so she was very familiar with the people she sees working there day by day.

With a smile, she placed her stuff on the bench and bringing out her phone and earphones.

Scrolling through her music as she watched in boredom. Her eyes sparked with a glint of inspiration. It was a trending song that suddenly popped out of the blue. A soft melody of either love or healing heartbreak.

Men I Trust - Show Me How ↳ ❝it's so soft Im gonna cry. I recommend listening to it while reading (on loop)!❞

With an eager tap, the earphones blasted the music in them.

Slipping in her foot into the skates, moving close to the entrance to the rink, she removed the guards and placed it on the side next to her phone.

She stood in the center, eyes closed as her arms and legs naturally struck an elegant pose, rewinding the music before waiting for the music to hit its beat.

Skating around the rink, trailing her arms behind her. A serene yet painful look dripped onto [Y/N]'s face, looking at her gentle hands flowing like liquid.

→❝ˏˋ𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐓𝐎'𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐕ˊˎ❞—🎤

A hefty groan left Akito's exhausted figure.

Walking aimlessly as he passed by shops and things alike, before a short hum escaped his lips as he noticed a glimpse of something in the corner of his eye. He walked back to the front of the building to see an ice skating rink.

He remembered Ena bringing him here, to take pictures of course.

He genuinely wanted to try but Ena butted in for aesthetic photos. He stood still for a moment before deciding to go in and eventually going into the room of the rink. His eyes stared at the figure in the rink, wide with awe as his mouth was agape. It was [Y/N].

It was Ena's fellow member, a friend.

She always came by to hang out with Ena, be it for their group or school. Sometimes, they'd talk to each other if Ena decides to take longer.

A warm feeling grew in his chest.

"Tell me why... Your hands.. Are cold?"

As those words meekly left [Y/N]'s mouth, her pose led her to face him. A hand extended to him as the other rested on her chest. The serene look was whipped off as shock crossed her face. "Huh..?" she gasped. Standing straight before running her hand through her hair. "A-Akito! Hah, I didn't expect you to be here." she nervously conversed, skating towards him till her hands reached for the short walls.

"Y-yeah, I uhm, wanted to try skating."

Akito responded, fighting for his life to keep his aloofness, a tint of pink finding its way on his cheeks.

As quickly as it came, [Y/N]'s embarrassment ran away as simple astonishment took over. "Oh! You could've just messaged me. I would've brought you along!" she exclaimed as a warm smile came to her lips.

"O-ok.." Akito muttered in return. Making his way to the small opening for the rink. 'Shit..! I don't know how to skate.' he panicked as he held onto the short walls hard.

"..? You can step in the rink you know."

[Y/N] lightly teased as her eyes turned to an upward crescent with a small of her fingertips blocking her sly smile. Holding onto the same wall Akito held, she skated closer to him and offered her hand to him. "Here, take my hand."

'Shit.' A painful blush crept up Akito's cheeks before taking her hand.

A warm smile enveloped [Y/N]'s features, pulling him around as she skated backwards to face said teen. As her eyes landed on his own, his legs gave out. A face of utter defeat replaced Akito's flushed look, preparing for the feel of cold ice.

Akito opened his eyes slightly as curiosity took over, why is it so warm? Isn't he supposed to be face-flat on the ice?

A warm chuckle came from beneath him.

"You sure you can skate? I mean I don't mind teaching you or anything." [Y/N] lightly teased as she held onto him tightly.

Akito's eyes opened full as his eyes landed on the small figure holding him close. Her arms firmly wrapped around his body as her legs are firmly planted on the ground to hold both their weight.

In the end, Akito was able to have a little fun.

From that day onward, he couldn't shake off this warm feeling whenever he stood close to her.

#akito shinonome #shinonome akito x reader #prosekai #project sekai x reader #female reader #x reader #ice skating #oneshot #fluff

56 notes · View notes

jadelynlace · 3 years

Text

Heavy As Bone⎮Modern Vikings AU [Ivar x F!Reader], Chapter One

author’s note: Inspired by this post & kinda by Ink Drinker & mostly by my uniform kink on these men specifically. You are all to blame, and I will not be convinced otherwise, so let’s see, together, how long this lasts before I lose interest in it as a whole and re-board the train to the town of writer’s block. Yes, the reader is going to be a medic in this one; I was convinced by @ivarisms and @prepare4trouble to keep that idea, despite me thinking it would be overkill. (And I still do so if it is, please just tell me.) This AU is totally separate from Ink Drinker but there will be some twists and turns along the way. And no, that’s not evil laughter you hear in the distance, I promise. Also, I don’t want to hear any complaints about Ivar and children, you all know how much the mere concept slaughters me. The divider is by the amazing @firefly-graphics.

**content warning**: We start off with a pretty gruesome scene (welcome, again, to EMS!), and this is the warning for it. Mentions of suicidal thoughts, and stress in this chapter, which I will place a trigger warning for. Mentions of mental health breaks, and time off. This is your reminder that it’s okay to not be okay. My messages are always open. The overall series will have mentions of blood, gore, and trauma, as well as medical inferences with that of emergency medical services. Swearing, adult themes & sexual content will be present. Chapter-specific contents will be added for upcoming additions.

pairing: Modern Ivar x F!Reader

synopsis: A best friend’s dying wish, and no means to ever really repay it, Ivar has been raising his Godson as if he is his own flesh and blood. He’s put up walls for his sake, for his Godson’s sake, and he’s not sure he’s ready to let them fall. But an old co-worker, healer, & unlikely lover helps to tear them down; even when you have your own walls just as high. This is the kind of human wreckage that you love.

word count: 1900+ words

Seconds dragged painfully by, rocking under metal and he trembles towards the center of the chest. The illusion that the harder he works, the more life will flow back to this deceased body. Painstaking care as a devoted friend, watching seconds tick by, bleeding out in glory and then he screams. Veiled in a breath of smoke from the chill in the night, her perfume mixing with the car’s oil. And nothing on the earth mattered as lives spilled over the black asphalt. Analyzing, and as he’s grabbed, they hear the young cry rise slowly through his mouth, and they talk with little sense but Ivar’s world is already silent.

Present Day:

You had never seen so much blood. Gripping black leather, pulling it as a reign across the skin of the man’s arm, tighter and tighter, higher and higher to get the trickle to slow. A tap from your finger meets his checks, a low moan on his mouth as his only response and you yell for people to move when the sirens roll through your eardrums.

There’s a voice that catches your attention before everything else, as the back doors fly open, broad shoulders under the blues with eyes as ice that fall on you instantly. Crossing him as a field comes an emotion you can’t dictate, nor taste with your tongue but all you could smell was metal. Copper, oozing around you and soiling your clothes as he comes towards you.

“Do you know him?” Ivar asks quickly as he maneuvers a new tourniquet to lay above the belt, and you shake your head.

“I saw the crash and pulled him out,” You say back.

“Almost didn’t recognize you without the uniform,” He quips and you both smile before his partner is there next.

“He’s cyanotic, get the Lucas,” You try.

“You can’t boss us around Y/L/N,” Ivar teases, securing a c-collar around the head you’re holding stationary. Thrusting the man’s jaw under latex fingers, the curve of the oropharyngeal airway slipping over his tongue before Ivar turns it, and speaks again: “How long have you been here?”

“Less than five minutes,” You reply. “Bleeding stopped just as you pulled up,” You add as you watch them work, a well-oiled machine and it makes you long for your title again, for your career to roll back but you’re not sure what side is worse. Holding the man as he dies, or trying to be the one to save him. “I was the first medic on scene.” And your sentence makes Ivar chuckle.

“That may be true, but you’re on leave, remember?” Ivar smirks, adding humor to the air to push out the toxins as the man’s coffin looms closer. “Lewis grab the stretcher,” He adds with a toss of his head.

There’s grace to how you and Ivar turn this man’s body, less of it soiling you as you look like a wounded warrior, drenched in the day of battle. A roar from Ivar pulls the crowd to part like a sea, as if they’re watching for curiosity, a soap opera with their dinner and they’ve lost the connection that this is a man’s life.

“Let me know how he makes out please, Ivar,” You say softly to him and his eyes catch yours. There’s one nod from him as he pulls himself into the ambulance, tossing a clean rag in your direction.

Despite his call that evening, you don’t answer. You neglect the contact from everyone as you wash the blood from your skin. Staining the porcelain of your tub as the soap eats you until you’re raw, burning water and bubbles of acid that feel as though they melt your skin when the two touch. No amount of crying helps, despite how you pity yourself for the onset of grief. First comes the blood, then the tears, then the sleep.

You watch him fall, tumbling towards the cement floor and at first, your mind can’t make out the scene before you. Ivar’s laugh rings through your ears and he turns, the small body of a child crawling up his back with a giggle twice as loud. Confused as all hell as the two stand up and in the five years you have known this medic, never once has he mentioned he’s a father.

Ivar stands tall, with impressive stature and sturdy; he’s held his ground for even the strongest patients you’ve seen. Excited delirium making them as super humans, and he can push the ambulance with his own arms. You’ve seen it. It hits you then that the knock towards the ground was routine; the tap on his legs from small hands pushing him as a secret promise and your heart can’t detect what to make of it.

“Ivar, I’m sorry but he would not stop asking for you,” A woman’s voice calls.

“It’s alright Ma, shift change is soon,” Ivar answers back.

“Who’s that?” The boy asks, a less than polite finger pointing your way.

“That’s Y/N, she’s my partner today. Can you tell her your name?” Ivar asks, ruffling the mop of dark hair on the boy’s head.

“Igor,” He mumbles shyly, pressing back against Ivar’s side and you only smile.

“Hi Igor,” You reply. “The last ambulance down there isn’t on duty if you want to look inside,” You then add, and a bright smile takes over the boy’s face. Through a tug on Ivar’s uniform-clad arm, they start off, steel toes following the light-up sneakers as they march through the bay. The woman smiles at you and you smile back.

“I’ve worked with him for five years and I didn’t know he had a son,” You start. “I’m Y/N.”

“Aslaug,” She replies with a smile. “He’s Ivar’s Godson. His best friend growing up was Igor’s father. He and his wife were hit by a drunk driver and Ivar was in the back seat. He tried to save them, even though they were killed on impact. That’s why he’s a medic now, I suppose.” Aslaug tells you.

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” You say to cloud the overwhelming sensation that climbs through you. “I’ve known Ivar long enough to know he doesn’t even bother to try to explain his reasoning anymore.”

“It’s different with Igor,” Aslaug sighs. “It’s always different when it comes to that boy,”

That little boy alone proves to be the solution to too many of Ivar’s ailments. A cure for his loneliness, his remorse. A very bright power always overtakes Igor when he is excited, the calming rays of sunshine he brings to Ivar’s most challenging days as he still struggles to remember how his best friend sounded, how he laughed. Igor is his second chance; he owes it to them.

You offer the two a smile as you go about your routine of finalizing every part for this hospital on wheels. As Ivar blows up glove after glove, flicks on the red lights to illuminate the garage and then Igor pads his way over to see you. Ivar’s eyes are on the child as you help him into the back of the rig, sit him on the stretcher, only to jump out and start the system. He giggles as the bed slides closer to you, as it halts and as the legs crank to touch the floor and then you repeat the process. Sending him back into the ambulance as glee rings from his mouth and he watches you. He only jumps out to push the buttons once more, but you stop him, climbing yourself onto the stretcher so he can orchestrate it.

His eyes watch the two of you, a small smile stuck to his lips as Igor toys with each red button, making sound effects all of his own. A whine comes through when Aslaug tells the boy it’s time for them to head home, but the sound is quickly swallowed up when Ivar reminds him he’s driving. You’re shocked Igor hasn’t been gifted the whole universe with the way the two of them look at each other.

You watch how Ivar lifts the little one onto his back, sending him to be twice as high and he laughs, the two walking off to his truck. The blues cling to Ivar as Igor pulls them, fiddles with his badge and his pins, tugs on the pulled back hair, and then you watch how Ivar leans into his truck to put him in his car seat.

Ushering a hug over to his mom, Igor yells something about food—drive-throughs and smoothies and you warm with how precious, how different Ivar becomes within the presence of his son. Turning away, you pretend to finalize the last few remains of the rig check, even though you’ve already done it. Twice.

“You did that already,” Ivar says as he grabs his coat from his locker.

“And I’m doing it again,” You answer.

“Are you all pissy because I drank the coffee?” He jokes and you can’t decide if you want to slap his cheek or kiss it. Instead, you offer him a sideways glance, deadpan on your face and it makes him smirk out of pleasure for your annoyance.

“Get some sleep, Ragnarsson,” You grumble back.

“I will tonight—are you going to sleep upside down again? Or in a coffin?”

“I didn’t know you had a kid,” You finally say and Ivar’s eyes darken. “He’s a good kid, Ivar, you should be proud of yourself,” You then add and the darkness on his face melts suddenly, a light smile claiming the space. Draining the remnants of his mug, you watch the smile not leave his lips as he does, trying to cloud the gesture and it only warms you once more. “But I’ll sleep where ever your Father decides to sleep tonight.” And Ivar chokes on his coffee.

“When you get the rest of your sanity back, let me know,” Ivar nudges, bumping your shoulder with his and you laugh.

“You leech it from me as my partner!” You call and there’s a snicker that rings through your lips and Ivar’s.

Walking through the parking lot to your car was torturous, overspent bones ready to be wrung out and dried, left to be overanalyzed from the days being back in the station. Six months off was welcomed—it was needed, looking down over your balcony and wondering if the fall would hurt, or if it would kill you. Even when your medical mind knew the answer. Admitting that to you chief was the largest mountain to climb in the never-ending journey, and then you had vanished from the station like a ghost. Rumors here and there but they were all dismissed, even the ones Ivar was told about you running off, finding love, or whatever nonsense they came up with, ticked him worse than the most horrid patient. As your partner, he thought you owed him at least an explanation, but his texts went unanswered, and his calls were never returned.

Not until you were holding the man who was the victim of a car accident, his truck railed by another to the point where undetected metal nearly severed his brachial artery. And then you were back, one shift like you had never left and everything poured through your mind at once. The love for the rush, the sirens, but the fear for what new terror would come tomorrow. You weren’t sure if you could put yourself wholly to help someone who was splitting because now you could not find the other half to your own human wreckage. The job was a lot, physically and mentally and you were lonely; fucking lonely and tired of being your own, and only best friend. Even if the only way you’d open up to someone was when the coroner pulled your ribs to part at your autopsy.

You feel your phone buzz as you park your car, the message rolling through your screen under Ivar’s contact:

“Give me a call when you get a chance, I want to talk to you.”

Ivar Tags:

@smileysam13579 @dreamtherapy @youaremyfamiliar @kathryn-jane @readsalot73 @lihikainanea @queen-sarang @anastasiaskarsgard @andmyannabellee @peachyboneless @heavenly1927 @istorkyou @quantumlocked310 @xbellaxcarolinax @mighty-ragnarssons @alexhandersen-marcoilsoe-fandom @queen-of-upshur @nanahachikyuu @fandomlifeandeverythingelse @ivarhoegh @a5hl3y5ibley @pixluru @hashimily @youbloodymadgenius @love-all-things-writing @not-another-viking-fanfic-blog @theanxietyqueen17 @trip2themoon @tgrrose @synnersaint @ivarisms @nordicshieldmadien

*please message me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from my tag list. specifications for series/etc. are also welcomed, as well as feedback.*

full masterlist can be found here⎮reminder: requests are closed

80 notes · View notes

dustedmagazine · 4 years

Text

Punk’d History, Vol. VIII: This Machine [blank] Fascists

Photo by Richard Young

It has the appearance of a worrisome pattern: any number of punk rock’s founding figures embraced the symbolics of Nazi Germany. Ron Asheton, an original and indispensable member of the Stooges, played a number of gigs wearing a red swastika armband, and liked to sport Iron Cross medals and a Luftwaffe-style leather jacket. Sid Vicious loved his bright scarlet, swastika-emblazoned tee shirt, and Siouxsie Sioux, during her tenure as the It-Girl of the Bromley Contingent, mixed her breast-baring, black leather bondage gear with a bunch of “Nazi chic.” And how many early Ramones songs (inevitably penned by Dee Dee) referenced Nazi gear, concepts and geography? “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World,” “Commando,” “It’s a Long Way Back to Germany,” “All’s Quiet on the Eastern Front,” and so on—for sure, more than a few.

youtube

“Appearance” is the key term. Poor Sid lacked the sobriety and smarts to have much of a grasp of fascism as an ideology. Siouxsie was just taking the piss, and gleefully pissing off the mid-1970s British general public, for much of whom World War II was still a living memory. Asheton and Dee Dee? Both were sons of hyper-masculine military men. Asheton’s father was a collector of WWII artefacts, and the guitarist shared his father’s fascination. When the Stooges adopted an ethos and aesthetic hostile to the late-1960s prevailing Flower Power rock’n’roll subculture, the Nazi accoutrement seemed to him fitting signs of the band’s anger and alienation. Dee Dee hated his father, an abusive Army officer who married a German woman. Dee Dee spent some of his youth in post-war West Germany, in which Nazi symbols were highly charged with anxiety and vituperation. Casual veneration of Nazis was a convenient way to reject the triumphal ennobling of the Good War, and of the military men associated with its traditions. And (as Sid, Siouxsie and Asheton also noticed) it really bothered the squares.

None of that makes the superficial use of the swastika or phrases like “Nazi schatzi” any less offensive — it simply underscores that in the cases noted above, the offense was the thing. The politics weren’t even an afterthought, because the political itself had been dismissed as corrupt, boring or simply the native territory of the very people the punks were striking out against. If that’s where the relation between punk and fascism ceased, there wouldn’t be much more to write about.

youtube

The post-punk moment in England provided opportunities to rethink and restrategize the nascent détournement of Siouxsie’s fashionable provocations. Genesis P-Orridge and the rest of Throbbing Gristle were a brainy bunch, and their play with fascist signifiers was a good deal more complex. The band’s logo and their occasional appearance in gun-metal grey uniforms clearly alluded to Nazism, with its attendant, keen interests in occult symbols and High Modernist representational languages. TG’s visual gestures were also of a piece with an early band slogan: “Industrial music for industrial people.” Clearly “industrial people” can be read as a highly ironized coupling: the oppressed workers marching through the bowels of Metropolis were a sort of industrial people, reduced to the functionality of pure human capital. TG seemed to impose the same analysis on the middle-managers of Britain’s post-industrial economy, and their uncritical complicity in capital’s cruelties. But it’s also possible to argue that industrial people are industrious people; like TG, industrial people (middle managers, MPs) can get a lot of stuff done. They can produce things. They can make the trains run on time. And what sorts of cargo might those trains be carrying? What variety of conveyance delivered the naked “little Jewish girl” of “Zyklon B Zombies” to her fate?

To be clear: I don’t mean at all to suggest that TG was a fascist band. Like their punky contemporaries, TG traded in fascist iconography in a spirit of transgressive outrage, expressing their hot indignation with equally heated symbols. And other British post-punk acts flirted with fascist themes and images, ranging from ambiguous dalliance (Joy Division’s overt references to Yehiel De-Nur’s House of Dolls and to Rudolph Hess; and just what was the inspiration for Death in June’s band name?) to more assertive satire (see Current 93’s appealingly bonkers Swastikas for Noddy [LAYLAH Antirecords, 1988]). But a more problematic populist undercurrent in British punk persisted through the late 1970s. The dissolution of Sham 69—due in large part to the National Front’s attempts to appropriate the band’s working-class anger as a form of white pride—opened the way for a clutch of clueless, cynical or outright racist Oi! bands to attempt to impose themselves as the face of blue-collar English punk. And literally so: the Strength through Oi! compilation LP (Decca Records, 1981) featured notorious British Movement activist Nicky Crane on its cover. It didn’t help that the record’s title seemed to allude to the Nazis’ “Strength through Joy [Kraft durch Freude]” propaganda initiative.

Of course, it’s unfair to tar all Oi! bands with an indiscriminate brush. A few bands whose songs were opportunistically stuck onto Strength through Oi! by the dullards at Decca Records — Cock Sparrer and the excellent Infa Riot — tended leftward in their politics, and were anything but racists. But for a lot of the disaffected kids sucking down pints of Bass and singing in the Shed at Stamford Bridge, it wasn’t much of a leap from the punk pathetique of the Toy Dolls to Skrewdriver’s poisonous palaver.

In the States, a similarly complicated story can be recovered:

youtube

In numerous ways, hardcore intensified punk’s confrontational qualities, musically and aesthetically. The New York hardcore scene made a fetish of its inherent violence, which complemented the music’s sharpened impact. So it’s hard to know precisely what to make of the photo on the cover of Victim in Pain (Rat Cage Records, 1984). If inflicting violence was an essential element of belonging in the NYHC scene, with whom to identify: the Nazi with the pistol, or the abject Ukrainian Jewish man, on his knees and about to tumble into the mass grave?

Agnostic Front seemed to provide a measure of clarity on the record, which included the song “Fascist Attitudes.” The lyric uses “fascist” as a condemnatory term. But the behaviors the song engages as evidence of fascism are intra-scene acts of violence: “Why should you go around bashing one another? […] / Learning how to respect each other is a must / So why start a war of anger, danger among us?” That’s a rhetoric familiar to anyone who participated in early-1980s hardcore; calls for scene unity were ubiquitous, and the theme is obsessively addressed on Victim in Pain. But the signs of inclusivity most visibly celebrated on the NYHC records and show flyers of the period were a skinhead’s white, shaven pate; black leather, steel-toe boots; and heavily muscled biceps. Those signifiers clearly link to the awful cover image of Strength through Oi! The forms of identity recognized and concretized in the songs’ first-person inclusive pronouns have a clear referent.

Agnostic Front wasn’t the only NYHC band to refer to and engage World War Two-period fascism. Queens natives Dave Rubenstein and Paul Bakija met at Forest Hills High School—the same school at which John Cummings (Johnny) befriended Thomas Erdelyi (Tommy), laying the groundwork for the formation of the Ramones. Rubenstein and Bakija also took stage names (Dave Insurgent and Paul Cripple) and formed Reagan Youth. But unlike the Ramones, there was nothing tentative or ambivalent about Reagan Youth’s politics. Rubenstein’s parents, after all, were Holocaust survivors. The band’s name riffed on “Hitler Youth,” but specifically did so to draw associations between Reagan and Hitler, between American conservatism’s 1980s resurgence and the Nazi’s hateful, genocidal agenda. Songs like “New Aryans” and “I Hate Hate” accommodated no uncertainties.

Still, it’s interesting that Victim in Pain and Reagan Youth’s Youth Anthems for the New Order (R Radical Records, 1984) were released only months apart, by bands in the same scene, sometimes sharing bills at CBGBs’ famous matinees of the period. And while Reagan Youth toured with Dead Kennedys, it’s Agnostic Front’s “Fascist Attitudes” that’s closer in content to the most famous punk rock putdown of Nazis.

youtube

It’s odd what comes back around: Martin Hannett, whom Biafra playfully chides at the track’s very beginning, produced much of Joy Division’s music, moving the band away from its brittle early sound to the fulsome atmospheres of the Factory records, and to a wider listenership. “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” similarly addresses a formerly obscure, tight scene opening to a greater array of participants, some of whom were attracted solely to hardcore’s reputation for violence. Like “Fascist Attitudes,” the Dead Kennedys’ song itemizes fighting at shows as its chief complaint, and as a principal marker for “Nazi” behavior. Biafra’s lyric eventually gets around to somewhat more focused ideological critique: “You still think swastikas look cool / The real Nazis run your schools / They’re coaches, businessmen, and cops / In a real fourth Reich, you’ll be the first to go.” The kiss-off to punk’s vapid romance of the swastika (it “looks cool”) complements the speculative treatment of a “real fourth Reich.” Both operate at the level of abstraction. The casual, superficial relation to the symbol’s aesthetic assumes a sort of safety from the real, material consequences of its application. And the emergence of a fascist political regime is dangled as a possible future event. That speculative futurity undoes the “real” in “real Nazis.” The threat is ultimately a metaphorical construct. The Nazis are metaphorical “Nazis.”

Still, it’s the song’s chorus that resonates most powerfully. So much so that the song has found its way into other artworks.

youtube

Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room (2015) is frequently identified as a horror film on streaming services. We could split hairs over that genre marker. The film gets quite graphically bloody, but there’s no psychotic slasher killer, no supernatural force at work. And cinematically, the film is a lot more interested in anxiety and dramatic tension than it is in inspiring revulsion or disgust. It terrifies, more than it horrifies. What’s especially compelling about the film (aside from Imogen Poots’ excellent performance, and Patrick Stewart’s menacing turn as charismatic fascist Darcy Banks) is its interest in embedding the viewer in a social context in which the Nazis are a lot less metaphorical, a lot more real. In Green Room, the kids in the punk band the Ain’t Rights are warned about the club they have agreed to play: “It’s mostly boots and braces down there.” And they understand the terms. What they can’t quite imagine is a room — a scene, a political Real — in which fascism is dominant. Their recognition of the stakes of the Real comes too late. The violence is already in motion. In that world, the Dead Kennedys song provides a nice slogan, but symbolic action alone is entirely inadequate.

OK, sure, Green Room is a fiction. Its violence is necessarily aestheticized, distorted and hyperbolized. But perhaps the film’s most urgent source of horror can be located in its plausible connections to the social realities of our material, contemporary conjuncture. You don’t have to dig very deep into the Web to find thousands of records made by white nationalist and neo-fascist-allied bands, many, many of which deploy stylistic chops identified with punk rock and hardcore. You can listen. You can buy. (And yeah, I’m not going to link to any of that miserable shit, because fuck them. If you do your own digging to see what’s what, be careful. It’s scary and upsetting in there.) It feels endless. And the virulent sentiments expressed on those records are echoed in institutional politics in the US and elsewhere: Steve King (and now Marjorie Taylor Greene, effectively angling for her seat in Congress), Nigel Farage, Alternative für Deutschland, elected leadership in Poland and Hungary. Explicit white supremacist music also has somewhat more carefully coded counterparts in much more visible media (the nightly monologuing on Fox News) and in very well-positioned, prominent policy makers (Stephen Miller, who’s on the record touting “great replacement” theory and is a big fan of The Camp of the Saints). It’s a complex, ideologically coherent network, working industriously to impose and install its hateful vision as the dominant political Real.

Sometimes it feels as if no progress at all has been made. Maybe we’re moving toward the reactionaries. Contrast Skokie in the late 1970s with Charlottesville in 2017. And now if the Neo-Nazis have licenses for their long guns, they can strut through American streets wearing them in the name of “law and order.” It’s even more disturbing that a subculture that wants to clothe itself in “revolution” and “radicalism” is so tightly in league with institutional politics. Say what you will about Siouxsie’s Nazi-fashion antics, no one suspected that her prancing echoed political activity, policy-making or messaging in Westminster.

So what’s a punk to do? It’s certain that a vigorously free society needs to preserve spaces in which unpopular speech can be uttered and exchanged. Punk should pride itself on defending those spaces. But speech that operates in conjunction with an ascendant political power and ideological agenda doesn’t need defense or energetic attempts to preserve its right to existence. In October of 2020, that speech (in this case, speeches being written by Miller, texts by folks who have spent time in Tucker Carlson’s writer’s room and songs by white supremacist hardcore bands) has become synonymous with political right itself.

So now more than ever, it’s important to be active in the public square, to stand up to the fascists and to say it, often and out loud:

youtube

Jonathan Shaw

#dusted magazine #punk'd history #jonathan shaw #punk rock #siouxsie and the banshees #throbbing gristle #agnostic front #dead kennedys #green room #mdc

16 notes · View notes

chilling-seavey · 4 years

Text

Amoureux (c.s./d.s.) - Chapter Twenty-Five

A/N A decision has been made...

Christian woke early the next morning to make sure everything was going according to plan with the last-minute date change of the wedding. He slipped back into his red and gold suit and was polished up by his own personal butler to be ceremony ready before heading down to the ballroom. As expected, it was almost finished, the workers looking half exhausted, but it didn’t phase him in the slightest, offering a half-honest thanks for their accommodation to the room before leaving again.

Corbyn had stayed up all night to prepare the wedding fest and he was over his feet and frustrated to no end with the sudden change, but he pulled his best smile to the future King when he came into the kitchen, assuring him everything was progressing smoothly.

Mary came into the kitchen while Christian was in there in order to bring Louisa her breakfast; it being bad luck for the bride and groom to see each other the day of their wedding, so breakfast wasn’t held in the dining room. Mary shared her excitement with a smiling Christian before being handed the tray from Corbyn and made her way upstairs. She knocked on the door of Louisa’s room before letting herself in.

Mary stopped in her tracks when she found the room empty; the window open to the cold autumn air, wedding dress gone from the hanger, and the bride-to-be no where to be found.

Louisa’s hands hurt from holding up the front of her dress and her ankles were aching from walking in her heels for hours as she rushed into the city of London, the hem caked in mud and her hair drenched in sweat, breathlessly navigating the streets as the sun rose behind her. They would be looking for her soon.

Once Anna left her bedroom the night before, she left Louisa questioning a lot, especially weighing the Royal requirements of marriage with what she truly wanted. For her whole life, she had been blinded by the crazy expectations and the tight leash she was on, forced to focus on what she was told was right rather than what she knew to be true.

She dressed herself up in her wedding dress, staring at herself in the mirror in the light of the moon and a single candle, and all she could think about was Daniel. If she loved Christian then why was she wishing it was Daniel she was going to be walking down the aisle to the next morning? It was wrong of her, so wrong, and Louisa knew it.

If she was caught disregarding the Royal rules again, there was no doubt she would be punished either by Christian himself or the Crown…her own parents even. The existence of France and the reign of her family depended on this marriage and if Louisa broke that promise, her family would be taken down and her country would be turned to the British.

But all that seemed so mundane compared to how important it was to find Daniel before he was gone for good.

Maybe it was her naivety speaking, at only sixteen you couldn’t expect much, but Louisa was sick of feeling like she was walking on eggshells, sick of crying over her feelings, and sick of not doing anything to change it.

The police station was set on the corner of one of London’s main streets and Louisa’s legs were nearly ready to give out by the time she got there, heaving her heavy dress up as she took a step inside the building. The three policemen stationed inside looked at her with shock as the future Queen on England stood in their doorway in her wedding dress, drenched in sweat and stained in mud.

“Where would you take someone who is to be removed from the country?” Louisa asked breathlessly, her body trembling with exhaustion after running nearly all night.

“Princess, are you alright?” the captain asked, walking over to her and set his hand on her arm. “Are you in danger?”

“No. I am fine. I just need to know where you take banished p-prisoners.” Louisa said, looking between the group.

“We will send word to the palace right away. They must be worried sick.” the captain waved to one of his men to set off for the palace. Louisa rushed outside after him and grabbed his arm to stop him from getting on his horse that was tied up on the street.

“No!” she said sternly, looking between the two men. “I need to know. This is of utmost importance.”

“Princess, with all due respect, you really need to return to the palace. You are getting married today and should not be walking these streets alone.” the captain said with the fakest kind smile Louisa had ever seen.

She yanked her wrist from his grasp, stumbling over her dress a little, “I have been walking all night to get here and I will not let you stop me! Now tell me at once!”

“There is no need to go to the port. There is nothing there for you.” the captain said.

Louisa could have screamed, shoving him back before turning to the second in command who had untied the horse but was kept still by her hand on his uniform collar.

“Tell me! Tell me at once or I will have you beheaded.” She didn’t want to use that card but her power within the country was higher than most, even the police constables.

“Are you threatening us, Princess?” the captain questioned, grabbing her arm to try and restrain her.

The other man looked between them with wide eyes, hesitating on Louisa’s demanding expression, the usually so clean cut princess looking half a mess in front of him. Desperate.

“Are you sure we can’t take her to Southampton?” he spoke slowly, lifting his eyes to his captain casually.

Louisa whipped around to look at the man too, now given the name of her destination, nearly begging him with her eyes.

“Not without permission from the Crown. Now let’s go. I will have to keep you in the cell while we wait for the Royal Guards to retrieve you.” the captain turned to pull her back into the building but Louisa ripped her arm from his grip and hoisted herself onto the horse’s back. The two men shouted at her and tried to grab her but she kicked her heel against the horse’s side and clicked her tongue and the horse took off down the street, ripping the reins from the constable’s hand.

She had always been hesitant around horses during her dates to the stables with Christian, keeping her comfort zone to a light trot, but the adrenaline was coursing through her from her sneaking out of the castle on only a meal of truffles and pastries and she was taking the police horse down the dirt road out of London at its top speed, dirt kicking up behind them in their wake. The stained wedding dress was rippling in the wind, her hair pushed back from her face as she leaned forward and snapped the reins again.

By carriage from Kensington, it would take about a day and a half to get to the southern coast with time for the horses to rest overnight. Louisa didn’t know how long she had left – if she had any time at all even – but she wasn’t willing to sacrifice one spare minute. It was a straight shot to Southampton from London and at the speed she was travelling; Louisa made it in an hour, her body trembling with adrenaline and she struggled to hold the reins as she slowed the horse down to a trot as they entered the town. She kept her head down the best she could as she navigated the streets towards the ocean in the distance although it was hard not to notice the future Queen riding at breakneck speed into a small town on a police horse in her wedding dress.

Louisa could hear her heartbeat in her ears as she scanned the bustling harbour for any sign of the Royal Guards and carriage. The horse carried her gently down the stone steps and through the crowd, avoiding people and their belongings and carts that lined the shore, all ready to board one of the four massive sailing ships that were docked in the water. She scanned every single face she passed, a few giving her concerned glances in return or a whisper to their neighbour, but she pushed on, clicking her tongue to get the horse to walk a bit faster.

She finally spotted a glimpse of red and then the tall hat of the Royal Guards and she snapped the reins to push the horse through the crowd. It was hard to navigate through the crowd at a faster pace but Louisa kept her eyes on the smudge of red as she tried to make it in time. She could see them unpacking the trunks from the carriage and loading them onto the last ship in the lineup.

A few people gathered to watch the Prince of England being taken from the carriage in chains, his head bowed tiredly, shamefully, with a guard on each side of him holding his cuffed arms tightly.

“Daniel!” Louisa called out at the sight of him, making a few people look up and move out of her way as she got closer.

He didn’t hear her and neither did the guards as they took the first step onto the gangplank.

“Daniel!” Louisa screamed, her voice wavering with emotion.

He looked up from the ground, blue eyes wide as he scanned the crowd as if her voice was a figment of his imagination, but he spotted her on horseback, towering over the rest of the crowd in her ruined wedding dress and mangled hair. His eyes shone with excitement as they locked on hers.

#daniel seavey #christian seavey #why dont we #wdw #why dont we music #royal!wdw #jonah marais #jack avery #zach herron #corbyn besson #daniel seavey fanfic #daniel seavey imagines #wdw fanfic #wdw imagines #why dont we fanfic #why dont we imagines #historical fiction #👑#limelight

15 notes · View notes

claraxbarton · 5 years

Text

MCU Bucky Barnes

So here’s the thing.

I’m a costume designer by trade, and one thing that I actually really love about Captain America: The Winter Soldier (okay, among the things I love) is the costume design and the rhetorical value given to the clothes and, well, costumes in this movie.

For example - when Sam and Steve have their heart to heart on the bridge that ends with Sam saying “but he doesn’t even know you” and Steve saying “he will” before going to steal his old uniform - the one Bucky last saw him in when he was Bucky. There are some other great costume points in this movie, actually a LOT of them (costumes, not wigs, don’t at me because I KNOW).

But one thing that has always stood out to me, and not in a good way, is the “I’m with you til the end of the line” flashback.

Now, here’s the thing, it’s not JUST about the clothes. We’re in MCU verse, so it’s MCU canon - obviously, the Steve and Bucky duo is drastically different in Marvel comics canon so - and Bucky starts this scene by saying his folks wanted to give Steve a ride to the cemetery.

Which is super cool and nice. So one, we know Bucky’s dad is still alive - and his mom, but two, we know they have a car.

So this is supposed to be when Steve is around 16? So it’s... 1936 (according to MCU wiki it totally is)

So cars.

Crazy popular ever since they started having closed bodies and all that. BUT, were they crazy popular in CITIES in 1936? Especially in the middle of the Great Depression?

There’s some evidence that actually no, that car ownership in a city like NYC was something like 1 car per every 43 people. Then again, looking at the NYC.gov 2015 Mobility Report we see that the population of NYC in 1936 is something like 7.2 million, and the number of registered vehicles in 764,000... or roughly one per every 9.4-ish persons. Which is a pretty drastically different number. This doesn't, of course, account for taxis or fleet cars being registered - so the number might seem inflated. I still think it’s probably something closer to 1 car per every 20 than every 43 but... I’m too lazy to dig that much deeper at the moment. Plus I'm sick, which is fueling this in the first place.

So, anyway you slice it, Bucky’s family was in 11%, 5% or 2.33% of New Yorkers who own cars in 1936. Which says something, I think, about Bucky Barnes that we don’t always - ever? - think of in fandom.

I’m not going to say that Bucky Barnes was loaded. Maybe his family owned a garage or a grocery store or a delivery service or a funeral home...?? or something. So, the vehicle could be occupational as opposed to private usage - but either way it’s a statement. Bucky’s family has money and/or Bucky’s family has steady employment.

I’ve been there. I’ve read the fics where Bucky works at the docks to put Steve through art school and get him his medicine. I love those fics. I love that head canon.

But I... don’t think it’s realistic in light of some evidence showing us that, actually, Bucky wasn’t doing too badly for himself.

Let’s now actually look at CLOTHING. Here’s the whole scene via youtube, if you want to follow along with what is about to get RIDICULOUS.

Actually, before I dive in, who is the costumer for this movie? And should I be like... reading into all this as much as I am?

Judianna Makovsky - fellow New Jersey..Ian?ite?no clue - 3 time Oscar nominee and designer of 5 MCU films and a lot of other big budget movies, including quite a few period pieces dealing with issues of race and class (The Legend of Bagger Vance, Seabiscuit, The Little Princess.. and also like Harry Potter and The Quick and the The Dead.) So, should I have some faith in Judianna Makovsky’s designs? I’m gonna go with yeah, yeah I should.

So, back to the movie. The scene.

This is post funeral. We’re in 1936. As a general rule, the dress, colors and style of mourning wear was pretty much formalized in the early Victorian era. There was a great - read PHENOMENAL - exhibit at the MET a few years back on Mourning-wear and I’m still reeling from how lovely everything was - but the gist of it is this: you wore black when someone died. If you were a lady, and especially if you were a rich lady, you then went through a few different colors (dull black to SHINY black to purple/mauve and gray and white and then back to color within six months to one year). By the 1930s only the really rich were sticking to the actual rules of mourning - or like, really old people. And, of course, really old rich people. Really old rich WHITE people. Because it needs to be said: these are WHITE customs. I'm not saying people of other ethnicities didn’t follow them, but these are basically British Victorian practices that were assimilated into American culture.

I’m not going to go off on a huge sidebar about American fashion following in French dressmaking and British tailoring, but I need to say at least that much. Everyone who was anyone knew you got your dresses made in France or in the French style and you got your suits made in England - Savile Row in specific. I am NOT implying Bucky’s got himself an English suit, fyi. I just... have to be thorough.

BACK TO THE SCENE:

We’ve got our boy Steve. STEVE. Who just buried Sarah Rogers and what is he wearing...?

For starters, he’s wearing a windbreaker, check out the 1933 ad below, he’s the guy almost giving us the Fonz finger gesture, or maybe guy in the fedora on the end.

This thing isn’t falling apart at the seams, but it’s a very nondescript not really gray, not really blue - maybe was at one point. It also doesn’t FIT Steve. It also, in the ad above, would cost about $165.40 in today’s money.

My guess? It’s Bucky’s old windbreaker. Because it’s not cheap and because it’s just a bit too big on Steve.

He’s also wearing a shirt that is maybe tan? And a brown tie and maybe - MAYBE black trousers. And if those trousers are black, it’s the only black thing he’s wearing. Not even a black tie, or a black arm band (which I’m pretty sure - but also pretty aggressively atheist so I don’t know - the Catholic Church would have provided for chief mourners and pall bearers right?). We also have our depressing as all shit Depression surroundings to clue us in: Steve Rogers ain’t loaded. Steve Rogers is poor as dirt. Side note: boys. Hiding a key under the ONE FUCKING BRICK on a walkway is not like... a smart idea???

So we can guess a few things here, we can guess that Steve and Sarah were really struggling - this checks out with the rest of MCU canon (wearing newspapers stuffed in his shoes, even when he had nothing he had Bucky, etc.) - and that all money probably went towards Steve’s numerous ailments, food and then the TB medication or treatment, as it was, that was available to Sarah.

We can maybe guess that Steve and Sarah weren’t very religious -but I don’t feel qualified to impart anything except my own agenda here so I’m not taking that stance. But like, real talk, not even an arm band??

But, well, let’s move on to the point of this whole long ass thing anyway?

Then we go to Mr. Barnes, looking dapper AF. Also, hey, check out this ad from 1933 featuring... pretty much exactly what Bucky is wearing down to the god-damn two-tone shoes:

If you’re curious, yeah $24.98 in 1936 is $475.44. I'm not suggesting Bucky Barnes went out and bought a brand new suit for Steve’s mother’s funeral - for one thing, this ad is from 1933. BUT, that suit fits Bucky. Quite well, and it’s in good shape. He’s also sporting that super stylish mid-late 30s into 40s deeply angled collar shirt - as is our dude up in the ad - and so we know these clothes are at least new-ish. We also can see that the suit is definitely of the mid-30s moving into the boxy silhouette of the later 30s and early 40s and NOT the look of the 20s and early 30s, which has an almost bell-bottom fullness to the legs instead of our straight-leg here (though we can debate nuance if you want to hit up my DMs.)

I should note, Bucky’s shirt is not bright and pristine white - it’s kind of grayish? And I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be an old-timey sepia thing or an indication that Bucky can’t afford to... bleach a white shirt? So that’s an odd choice for sure because we’re still in an age when a crisp, white collar shirt means something (Hey, if you want to hear me go on about the democratization of men’s fashion via shirt collars and 19th century Victorian suits, let me know because I am READY).

All this is to say: I don’t think Bucky Barnes is a poor dock worker. I think Bucky Barnes of MCU canon. Okay, so the MCU wiki on Bucky/The Winter Soldier is an actual mess (because it tells us that Sarah died in 1936 and that’s FINE but I’m not going back to change my math because I’m SICK so just... I went back and changed it. She died in 1936. Fine. The damn wiki also says that “a year later, during their art class, Barnes and Rogers found out that the United States of America had joined World War II. Which, like, I’m sick, but there are a few years between 1936 and December 8 1941... just... I’m no rocket doctor but...

ANYWAY. Bucky is a three time YMCA welterweight boxing champion by this “year later”/ 1941-1942. He and Steve are also in an ART CLASS together. Bucky also trained Steve in boxing at Goldie’s gym before the two of them went to enlist - Steve rejected and Bucky, again quoting MCU wiki, “drafted” (which I'm gonna take to mean he didn’t try to enlist when Steve got rejected, they went home and Bucky got called up later but... hey, who knows?!).

So, I can’t easily find the prices of gym memberships in NYC in the 1930s right now because I don’t feel like wading through all of the articles complaining about Equinox pricing in 2019. But I do know that part of Roosevelt’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) building projects included building more public gyms - as well as libraries, auditoriums, pools, parks etc. Check out your local public buildings - if they are WPA projects they will have a cool plaque like my local NJ library does! All that is to say, there were free or very cheap PUBLIC options where Bucky could have trained Steve.

Bucky trained Steve in a private gym. Do I like to think that this is the same gym Steve and America’s ass are working out in in The Avengers? Yes, Yes I do. Do I like to think that Steve likes to box because it reminds him of Bucky? Yes, yes I do.

But moving on: it’s another sign of wealth.

So is this “art class.” Whether we are in 1937 or 1941 - we’re still in the Depression. Steve still has all of his health issues and presumably accompanying “medication” (wanna talk 1930s medicine? Again, slide into my DMs or shoot me an ask). So Steve either has a side job making enough to cover all of that, rent? and enrollment in an art class.

OR maybe Steve is teaching the art class and Bucky is his model for life drawing instruction (yeah, it’s a fic bunny I’m sharing with the world).

OR maybe... Bucky is paying the rent and other things or Steve is living with Bucky and can afford the class and meds... somehow or...

OR I'm not saying that Steve is Bucky’s kept man because Steve Rogers would punch anyone who dared to say such a thing.

All I’m saying is, Bucky Barnes was not a poor dude. Bucky Barnes... had some money.

And also I’m about to be late for my doctor’s appointment so I gotta run.

At me with your thoughts!

#Bucky barnes #James Buchanan barnes #winter soldier #Steve rogers #captain america #marvel #mcu #meta #head-canon #costume design #character thoughts

1K notes · View notes

silverineontherun · 5 years

Text

What is this?! This is a gift for twitter users @etangerine_1 and @uccello8059, fellow latines and hardcore corason shippers like me jsjs. Inspired by this edit by Eve Eleidan! Here we go!

Coran x Iverson || 1.7k || G rated || Post canon (kinda)

In all his years, Commander Iverson has met all types of people. Until not long ago, he considered he had seen everything, being on the second half of his life already, and with first row seats to the Galra invasion and the Coalition contact.

Until he met Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe, that is.

The Altean was a true force of nature. He has to admit that his first impression of him was that he was a very noisy, slightly irritating person, and he even considered that if all aliens shared his eccentric personality, it could become a problem for him, used to military discipline and not... whatever Team Voltron – his kids once, now heroes of the galaxy— had going.

But with so many changes happening around them, with so many creatures to work with and so many threats over them, he got used to it very quickly. In fact, dealing with the Altean soon stopped being a chore.

Especially once he realized that Coran is a real hard worker, a quality he appreciates in humans and aliens alike. Watching his role at the Atlas crew, and later as the nexus between the Garrison and New Altea, they started having direct contact and that allowed Iverson to also discover that the Altean is smart, loyal and kind. Well, he knew already about his golden heart, because he had to see it be broken at the Princess’ departure years ago, but his way of healing was very telling itself. Never one to be bitter, Coran always strived to be better, and if that wasn’t endearing…

So, at some point among their exchanges, Iverson’s perception of Coran changed. He started smiling at his long ramblings and offer to accompany him on his visits. He started waiting for his calls and wishing for more meetings to be summoned.

Soon, he could identify his feelings as something he hasn’t felt in a good while. His rocky heart – dedicated for so long exclusively to his students and the Garrison— seems to be throwing one last tantrum before it completely dries.

He likes to think this change is only due to the growth of their relationship through mutual respect, and not at all pushed by that time he saw Coran get rid of his jacket showing off two strong arms, crawling under his own ship to fix a sudden leakage with amazing ease.

But anyway, the old dog still has a beating heart and, as embarrassing as it may be, today he finds himself visiting Colleen’s botanical garden and watching the pink flowers he knows are Altean in their origin. The famous juniberries.

So, on a scale of 1 to utter buffoon, how stupid is to ask Colleen to give him enough of these for a bouquet?

“Commander Iverson?” suddenly says a male voice behind him, making him flinch and turn around violently.

Lance McClain steps back, startled by his reaction. Iverson, blushing, takes a hand to his chest.

“Lieutenant McClain… Uh, sorry. Did you need something from here, or…?”

He stops, staring at the ex-paladin’s face. His Altean marks shine in a soft blue, and he swallows. Right. It’s been quite a few years already, but he still can’t get used to the marks on his ex-student face. How does one get some of these?

Lance looks relieved at the change in his tone but also, to his disgrace, curious. His blue eyes travel from the flowers to the instructor in a way that doesn’t augur anything good.

“Nope. I was just asked to come to get Colleen for a meeting and was going to ask you if you’ve seen her,” he replies, his tone excessively casual.

“No. Sorry, uh, no,” answers Iverson, clearing his throat. After doubting for a moment, he makes a military salute and tries to leave, but Lance stops him.

“Wait, sir! Err, may I—Can I ask you something?”

‘I’d rather NOT’, wants to answer Iverson, feeling his jaw taut. Instead, he answers:

“Sure thing, Lieutenant.”

Lance gives a step forward and crosses his arms in front of the flowers, looking at them with fond eyes, before dropping the bomb.

“Sir… could you be in need of, you know… Altean courting advice?”

Goddammit, he should have run away when he could. Instead, Iverson feels his face burning and, trying to swallow, he chokes. As if he wasn’t ashamed enough.

“M—McClain!” he wheezes.

“Sorry sir, it just looked that way!” apologizes Lance, patting his back to help him breathe.

Still coughing, he glares at his scared ex-student. The lanky boy he knew is now a strong, grown-up man who survived an entire war, but at least he still fidgets under his gaze. He is about to use the last remnants of dignity that he has left when he suddenly realizes.

His now colleague does know about Altean customs and such, after all. Prime source. Also, he trusts him. Maybe…?

Who is he kidding, he needs the help. Besides, when will he get another opportunity to ask about it without even having to explain what’s going on?

Thinking it thoroughly, God bless Lance McClain.

“Let’s suppose…” mumbles Iverson, narrowing his eyes. “In the hypothetical case I did… would you happen to know where to get it?”

Lance opens his eyes wide, and then the corners of his mouth twitch.

“I mean, I know where… Which is right here, because I was trained by a certain Altean himself, but still, there are some uh, quirks—”

“Spill,” grumbles Iverson, and he understands he will have to swallow his pride and tolerate that smug look on Lance’s face if he is to get the information he needs.

“I’ll try my best sir, but you have to promise you won’t attempt anything against me after it,” says Lance.

“What does that mean?”

“Just promise it and we’ll be set.”

It can’t be that terrible, right? After a moment of consideration, Iverson extends a reluctant hand that Lance shakes with a smirk.

-------------

“McClain, you are DEAD.”

“Sir, the promise!”

“Is this payback? Do you resent me that much?” asks Iverson, staring at his reflection in Lance’s mirror with horror. He looks like a kid improvising a costume in his mama’s kitchen, pot in the head included. Except he is a grown-ass man, close to retirement and currently wishing for a quick death.

“I swear on my husband’s life this is what Coran made me wear that time,” answers Lance, giving a cautious step back. “In fact, he’s my witness, we can call him—”

“Enough! This is absurd! You’re just mocking me, and I won’t stand for—”

They hear the door suddenly open and Iverson feels his heart stop.

“Oh dear. What is this?” asks a loud voice, and Iverson turns his head so quick the pot over it threatens to fall. Coran is at the door, looking at the scene with round eyes.

“Coran! Y-you’re early,” stutters Lance.

“You told Merla I had to come as soon as the meeting was over so I hurried, but… What is this?” he repeats, and if Iverson’s tired good eye isn’t failing him, the Altean’s ears are turning pink.

“Right! Yeah! But now I that remember I uh, I gotta go! Paperwork, what a drag, right? So, Commander Iverson, I leave it to you, then!” Lance blabbers, and bolts to the door before Iverson can extend one hand and grab him by the collar of his uniform.

How the hell did this ridiculous man get himself a husband with this attitude is a mystery to his teacher, who stares daggers at him as he leaves.

However, just when the door is closing, Lance suddenly turns and points eagerly to his left side. Out of the corner of his eye, Iverson sees something that makes his stomach drop: three juniberries lie in the table by his side, pretty and aromatic and absolutely out of place.

It really couldn’t get any worse.

There is a moment of silence between the two men before Coran loudly clears his throat and nervously tugs at his own mustache.

“Commander Iverson,” he greets him, clearly trying to sound cheerful.

“Mr. Wimbleton,” answers Iverson, feeling his mouth dry at the way Coran looks up and down his attire. Doubtful, the Altean says:

“Excuse me, but I can’t help but notice the… garments.”

“I— I can explain,” retorts Iverson, even though he actually can’t. But Coran peers at him in silence again and then, after a pause, he lowers his eyes.

“You should have asked me. The royal family is no more, and… Well, there are other ways to court an Altean lady,” he states.

“What?” asks Iverson, dumbfounded. Coran crosses his arms and walks around him now, appreciative.

“A valiant effort, nonetheless. The lady is so lucky! She will be pleased to know you are so eager to prove your worth!”

“No, wait—”

“Of course, Lance never was one to understand the subtleties of Altean courtship, but at least he tried this time…”

“But—”

“However, with Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe assisting you, success is guaranteed! We just have to—”

He can’t keep talking, because Iverson puts a hand over his mouth in the most impulsive move he has ever made in his entire life. And it hasn’t been a short life.

“Mr. Coran. Y-you misunderstood. I don’t intend— I’m not into— Urgh!!”

He just picks one of the juniberries from the table by his side and offers it to Coran, who looks down at it, mouth still covered. Iverson slowly lowers the offender hand, watching how the Altean’s gorgeous eyes look at the flower, wide open. And then, the way he raises them to his own face.

He knows he is sweating bullets, dressed as a clown and flushed to the top of his head, which isn’t a good look. How long would Admiral Shirogane take to accept his early retirement application if he submitted it right now?

But then Coran takes the flower and smiles at it. Loud, eccentric and flamboyant as he is, Coran can still show such a shy smile, and Iverson simply feels his rocky heart melt. He gulps when Coran tucks the flower behind one of his pointy ears and looks at him.

God, they are mature men, but now? Iverson feels like a simple teenager in love.

“How does it look?” asks Coran, the corners of his eyes crinkling playfully. Iverson takes a sharp breath.

“Gorgeous,” he answers, unable to hide his endeared tone.

Coran smirks now, his expression shifting to mischief.

“See? Success guaranteed,” he says, and he steps closer, giving Commander Iverson the sensation that his lifespan has been extended at least a thousand years.

Retirement would have to wait a few more centuries then, it seems.

#corason #iveran #coran #iverson #vld #silv writes #I have no self-control lmao

7 notes · View notes

ironstank · 6 years

Text

TRYING TO TRANSMIT, CAN YOU HEAR ME? GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM.

PAIRING(S): Bucky x Reader | SOULMATE AU

WARNING(S): I actually don't remember whether or not there are curse words, sorry not sorry

WORD COUNT: 1451

Tagging: @baezen @oheleven @claritycas @obiwanker

AUTHOR’S NOTE: all i’m gonna say is 40′s bucky makes an appearance . . . and i love me my 40′s bucky.

PART TWO: BUT I STILL GOT JAZZ, WHEN I’VE GOT THOSE BLUES. PUT THE RADIO ON, HOLD YOU TIGHT IN MY MIND.

MASTERLIST ( ! ) • PROMPTS ( ! ) • ASK BOX ( ! )

MARCH 10, 1917

James Buchanan Barnes was born to Winifred and George Barnes.

George swiped his thumb across the collar bones of his newborn. As the blood began to clear, Winifred and George looked upon one another as they stared at their boy’s countdown.

0 : 0 : 0 : 0 : 0 : 0 : 0

Their son was made for no one.

—

SEPTEMBER 03, 1925

Eight-year-old James Barnes sighed at a scrawny blond boy on the dirt of the school’s playground. The brunette boy offered his hand. The seven-year-old boy muttered his gratitude as he dusted himself off.

“I’m James. But Ma and my sisters call me Bucky.”

“Steve.” Bucky’s eyes drop to the boy’s wrist.

17 : 8 : 3 : 0 : 17 : 32 : 16

—

FEBRUARY 19, 1933

Bucky’s eyes scanned the dusty old house which sheltered five cots. Four for his sisters and one for his mother. He held his sister tight as he shielded her from all the rain and thunder. “I heard a girl’s daddy should always be her first love. How can I have a first love who I can’t even see anymore.”

Bucky sighed at the makeshift bed made of old blankets across his own. His father’s bed. He brought his sister closer and rested his head above hers. “Oh, darling, I’ll be your first love.”

Little Rebecca manoeuvred her head from under his chin to look at his pretty blue eyes. “How do you love if you don’t have a soulmate?”

Bucky sighed again and pulled his sister closer. “With all my heart and then some.”

—

JULY 16, 1934

Bucky smirked at the pretty young girls on the other side of the courtyard. They all cheered for him. The day Bucky stopped playing Cops and Robbers was the same day he decided to try a new give-no-fucks attitude towards women — or, more precisely, the idea of soulmates.

Bucky was raised in a house of four sisters and a wonderful mother. The day he stopped respecting women would be the day he stopped breathing. Sure, dames were beautiful, sweet and sugary — but Bucky Barnes was a young lad made for none, and none were made for him.

Who said so?

The buttload of zeros on his collarbones said so.

—

AUGUST 06, 1936

Bucky sat with Steve on the porch of his house. Buck had a toothpick hanging out the side of his mouth as Steve fiddled with one of his sister’s toys. Bucky had his eyes set on a pretty girl. “What do you think of Dolly?”

Steve raised his head, tearing his eyes away from the complex children’s toy. His brow raised as he looked between the girl in the sweet, summer dress, and his pal in the dirty white shirt, dark green trousers, worker boots, and a peaked hat. “I don’t,” Steve mumbled. “Heard her an’ Joseph are soulmates. Found out a week ago or somethin’.”

Bucky clicked his tongue and cursed under his breath. It had been known for those without soulmates to settle with people who were quite the the same. Besides, not all soulmates died together. Complications and all that yada yada. Last time Bucky checked, nobody had ever seen Dolly’s countdown. “Doss is as crazy as his old man. A damn tragedy a dame like her gets caught up with a damn fool bastard — “

Steve rolled his eyes. “Careful, Buck. You don’t watch your mouth and you’ll best end up with Bonnie — or Darlene.” Bucky snorted at the thought of the twin sisters across the road. Steve only reverted his attention back to Rebecca’s knickknack. He rolled his eyes to himself as he heard his best mate mutter something along the lines of ratty old witches.

—

JUNE 15, 1942

Bucky sighed at the crowded train station. His ma and sisters trailed behind him in a small, chaotic crowd. Bucky began to push and shove his way through the crowd of civilians and soldiers wearing identical uniforms to his. As cops attempted to settle the rowdy crowd of wailing and crying civilians saying goodbye to their soldier, Steve stood beside his mother with a sigh.

One by one, Bucky hugged his sisters all standing in a line. He stopped by Rebecca, his youngest sister, who now carried a pregnant belly. He knelt down, gave his little sister’s belly a kiss, then stood in front of her soulmate. Four out of four sisters had found their love. It was only John who came along to say goodbye. The others were pulling their weight at the factory or were already drafted. John nodded at his soulmate’s brother. “I’ll take care of all of them.”

Bucky nodded, a soft look on his face. He turned to Steve. Gave him a hug. Then the soldier gave his ma a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “We love you, Buck,” his mother cried. “You stay safe now, you hear me, boy?”

As Bucky settled into one of the seats by the train window, he glanced at all the lovers with a clock just like his. The only differences were the soulmates in each other’s arms. The sergeant pinched his nose as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Pull yourself together.”

—

SEPTEMBER 23, 1942

Sergeant Dum Dum Dugan pinched the corners of his orange, fluffy moustache, curling it upwards as he stared at Sergeant James Barnes with squinted eyes. “How about you, Sarge? No special lady?”

Bucky snorted. He tossed Pinky Pinkerton his old lady’s picture. “That’ll be the day, gentlemen.”

A chorus of exclamations were released by the men in his cabin. Half of the men in the cabin still slept, so, the wild soldiers began to die down in volume. Falsworth let out a low whistle, “You have been cursed with a blessing, my friend.”

Bucky rolled his eyes at his British army brother. He turned and grabbed his pillow. Bucky raised his arms and slammed it down on a sleeping soldier. “Rise an' shine, rats. Get off your asses! Drill sergeants up an’ coming.”

—

MONTH OF BIRTH + DAY OF BIRTH, 1997

The Winter Soldier hadn’t been activated since 1991. Little did anyone know, the soldier couldn’t cry out, but he felt the pain. It was unlike anything he had ever felt. The assassin couldn’t remember his own war stories, but he just knew this pain was different.

It stung. It burned. It ticked. It felt like Heaven. It felt like Hell. His eyes were slammed shut, and his body was frozen. Literally. The soldier calmed his mind and began to attempt to locate the source of the pain. Just below the collarbones.

18 : 9 : 2 : 3 : 8 : 52 : 59

Someone was made for James Barnes.

—

SEPTEMBER 30, 2016

It wasn’t until the day Steve Rogers accidentally walked in on Bucky drowning in his own sweat, training alone and in the dark at twelve in the morning, did the two soldiers finally have a heart to heart. “Nobody blames you, Buck.”

“They will.”

“Who?”

Bucky sighed and pulled the collars of his shirt down. “Whoever this is.”

—

OCTOBER 01, 2016

Steve walked into the laboratory of the Avengers Tower. He placed a tablet onto one of the steel tables. Tony and Bruce barely spared them a glance. Tony threw a handful of nuts into his mouth. Without glancing at the man out of time, Tony hummed. “How can we help you today, Tinkerbell?”

Steve sighed. “I need your help.”

Tony’s brows shot to his hairline. “What? Gramps run out of old fashioned tricks up his sleeve?”

“I need to find Bucky’s soulmate.”

—

NOVEMBER 04, 2017

Bucky’s fists bounced off the punching bag repeatedly.

Steve walked behind the bag and held it securely in his arms in attempt to help his friend. “Buck.”

The soldier only punched harder.

“Bucky, I found your soulmate.” Then the punching stopped.

—

DECEMBER 31, 2017

You were in a red dress and champagne. Literally. Some jackass decided to slam into you causing you to spill your drink just seconds before the ball drop. You groaned inwardly at the thought of your awkwardness. It wasn’t until a metal arm was extended to your direction with a pile of folded napkins. The arm was only ignored as your ankles began to sting and burn. You dropped to the floor and clutched your burning ankle. It wasn’t until you saw your clock officially run out as the clock on your ankle turned into zero’s. Your mouth was gaping open. “Oh, my God.”

Bucky‘s head dropped in relief. He sighed in contempt. As his head raised, a soft smile appeared.

5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1

“You have no idea how long it’s been for me, doll.”

700 notes · View notes

littleredroseonthevalley · 6 years

Text

Red Rose - Chapter 1

Prologue CH. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 6 Ch. 7 Ch. 8 Ch. 9 Ch. 10 Ch. 11 Ch. 12 Ch. 13 Ch. 14 Ch. 15 Ch. 16

Summary: Riley, a simpleton waitress from New York, meets a strange group of men. An unwelcome presence lurks, however, and they don’t seem very content in just watching.

Rating: T - Content not suitable for children. Suitable for teens, 13 years and older, with minor suggestive adult themes.

Notes: As promised, here it is chapter 1. I wonder who you think Theodora is. Send me your thoughts, I’ll be glad to hear them. No spoilers, though!

Vienna, Spring 2006

Liam stared blankly to the canvas in front of him, trying to get some sense out of it. Up so far, he failed miserably.

To be fair, he didn’t think many people his age would even bother to try, much less achieve, to understand the painting. It was a sickly green, with some reddish shadows that he couldn’t quite manage to place what they were. The title, Schadenfreude, was of not much help. Not only was in German, a language no tutor quite managed to instill in him, it referred to a concept rather… mismatched with the image he currently saw in front of him.

Let’s face it, Liam is pants in art appreciation.

“What have this painting done for you to frown so much at it?” A red-haired girl about his age asked him in French.

He was taken by surprise by the girl’s approach. He got stiff for a second, but with a discreet nod by an inconspicuous man a few meters away, he relaxed again. “How come you know I speak French?” He asked, curious.

“I make a point in being observant. You don’t look Austrian, you’re way too tanned. You don’t look Italian, with all that blonde hair of yours. My first guess was French, but you don’t quite sound like one either.”

He smiled despite himself. He supposed he could humor the girl for a while. “You’re right. I’m Cordonian.”

“A beautiful land.” She said, in a heavily accented Greek. “What brings you to Austria?”, she asked, back to French.

“I’m visiting a friend.” He said, simple.

“But you seem to have come alone.”

“He’s not into art.”

“Ah! So, it’s a he!” She exclaimed, and he laughed. “You’re a tough nut to crack, mister. And I’m Germanic.”

“I suppose I’m a little shy. Or have something to hide.”

“I guess it’s the second one. You’re not into art either, are you?”

He smiled. “Busted. I’m really not. But that painting out in the front was much too beautiful, I got curious.”

She smiled. “Yeah, Hagia Sophia in Purple. It’s one of my favorites, too. You’re out of luck, though… That’s from an early collection by the artist. Now we’re doing abstract art.”

“So I’ve noticed… I never really got those, you know? It seems to me a little… I don’t know, childlike? Chicken scratch?”

She laughed softly, like a violin. “Oh, if I had a dime for every time I heard that! You’re not really wrong, those are very strange images. But the thing is, it isn’t about what you see, but what you feel, what comes to your mind.”

He raised an eyebrow, confused. He had heard that quite a lot at his art lessons, but never quite comprehended what that meant.

“Look, let me help you,” She motioned to him to face the painting. “What do you see?”

“Green?”

“I can work with that. What does green mean to you?”

“Apples? Forests? Grass?” He guessed, but faced the patient negative from his master.

“No, I mean, what remind you of? Something intimate, deep.”

“I guess, sickness… Jealousy…” Yeah, definitely that. He could feel himself getting nauseated from watching it.

“And what does the title mean?”

“To be happy for one’s misery.”

She hummed. “And how do you relate what you feel to that concept?”

“That the artist is glad to make me sick?”

She once again laughed, this time more hysterically. “Perhaps. She could be a bitch.”

It was his time to snort. “Hey… I never really got your name.”

“Pardon me. I am Linda Rosa Valois, enchanted.”

He froze in shock. “Valois? As in...”

The redhead cut him off. “As in the artist of the childlike painting, yeah.”

Liam started to stutter. “Lord, I am so sorry! I did not mean to...”

“Don’t worry. It’s art! The beauty of it is that all viewpoints coexist peacefully.”

“That’s wise, I suppose… I’m Liam.” He extended his hand. As she handed him hers, he kissed the top of it.

“Now, if you excuse me,” She said, softly, “I must get back to work. I am here every afternoon, should your guy-friend decide he’s not into coffee either.”

“He despises it.” He laughed. As Linda Rosa turned to leave, Liam calls her back. “Miss Valois?”

“Yes?”

“What do you want to say with your painting?”

“Perhaps I’ll tell you someday.”

New York City, Fall 2015

The winds started changing in New York, signaling the end of Summer. Riley couldn’t say she wasn’t glad. The heat has been suffocating that year, never before have the season felt that hot.

She passed by a mean-faced guy in black, hanging in front of a car. The street was rather empty, she could see four or five people around. Almost nothing, considering it was New York, and still kind of early.

The graying skies predicted rain that evening. She pulled her jacket closer to her carboniferous hair, in an attempt to cover her neck and shoulders, exposed by the waitress’ bun and her cleaved uniform.

To be a waitress in a dingy watering hole in Brooklyn is far from being Riley’s dream, but, given the circumstances, it was her only choice. It paid well for a blue-collar job, and if she could manage not to punch anyone, the tips weren’t that bad either.

A block or so from the bar she saw another man dressed in black. She noticed the red button in his clothes. Her breath hitched in her throat.

Trying to pass unnoticed, she pulled the jacket, looked down and kept walking, hurriedly. She believes she wasn’t seen, but to be sure, she took a few wrong turns in her way to work.

A few too much, it would appear, as, when she arrived, Frank, her lovely boss, was waiting for her.

“You’re late!” He screamed, or rather, spoke in his indoor voice. Frank couldn’t be bothered to lower his tone.

Ignoring him, she went on to work her shift.

A few hours into the night, she was close to be finished with it all.

“Ah, the glamour of New York, taking out the trash in a Saturday night!”

One of her co-workers, Daniel, was helping her. She liked Daniel, she supposed. Even though he was a little lazy, he entertained her with his tales from the ship he used to work.

“It could be worse.” He said, “There could be…”

A mouse jumped out of one of the dumpsters.

“RATS! Riley! Save me!”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of this adorable little mouse! He’s a survivor, just like us!”

Back inside, she noticed an entourage just got in. Frank said they were a bachelor party. Nice.

“Waitress!” Said one of the three guys, a middle-eastern looking young man. “We need your best table!”

“Forget the table!” Said another, a jean-clad man. “Just bring us whiskey, and lots of it.”

Yay. Rowdy drunkards.

Daniel paled looking at them. Riley could just foresee what he was about to do.

“I’ve got a date tonight!” He said, “I’ll never make it out of here on time!”

“You really want me to take the bachelor party?” Riley said. “Why do I always get the rowdy tables?”

“Because you’re way better at this than I am.” Cheeky bastard.

Riley facepalmed, but smiled kindly, despite her deep displeasure. “Fine. But you owe me one.”

Saying her goodbyes, she walks over the table.

“Hello, gentlemen!” She mustered her best smile. “I’ll be taking care of you this evening!”

She wasn’t quite finished when yet-another man, dressed in a designer shirt, ordered steaks. If the accent wasn’t a dead give-away, that would be her first clue that they were foreigners.

“The closest thing we have to a steak is the burger.”

“Dare I ask for your wine list?” Asked the middle-easterner, dejected.

“We’ve got an excellent vintage house red. And it also comes in white!”

The jean-guy, with common sense, ordered whiskey and four burgers. Counting only three clients, she wonders why four meals. Turning for the kitchen, she only just bumps into the fourth party-goer.

“Sorry I’m late,” He says. “Thank you for your patience, miss…?”

“Riley. No trouble at all.”

“Charmed to make your acquaintance, Riley.”

“It’s really nice to meet you too. Now, excuse me, I’ll be back with your order shortly. Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

Riley was wiping the bar and emptying the tip jar. The place has only just closed, but the party was still around. Lost in some pop lyrics, she was surprised by the tap on her shoulder.

“I think we’re about to head out.” The blond, Liam, told her. “I just wanted to thank you… and apologize. I know we kept you late, and my friends can be… demanding.”

Well, back when she was only but a kid and her mother took her to church, the clergyman used to say there was no sin big enough to be unforgivable if a truly regretful heart asked, sincere, for pardon.

Besides, they could have been jerks and just left.

Feeling the irritation evaporate, she answered: “Demanding? Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

As it seems, Liam found humor in her words. “I got the feeling that you could take care of yourself.” As an afterthought, he added: “If you don’t have any plans tonight, maybe I can make it up to you by buying you a drink. We’re about to go to a club.”

“Oh,” She said. “Which one?”

“We’re hoping you might have some advice about that. We’re not from around here.”

No, really?

Figuring from the outlandish requests and the thickness the check had acquired while in their table, she believed they were wealthy, if not well-connected. Going into clubs shouldn’t be a hassle for them.

“In which case,” She said to herself and for Liam. “I recommend going to the hottest club in town this season, Kismet.”

“That sounds perfect. Lead the way!” He said, with a smile.

Making use of a dress she had in her locker due to an event a few weeks before in the bar, and perfectly refreshed, she stepped outside to meet the others.

Receiving a round of compliments due to her look, she must admit she wears green well.

Liam, however, was a little less than amused. “I doubt she appreciates you talking about her like that.”

Maxwell, she finds the guy in the shirt is called, apologizes for all the catcalling. “Now let’s get this party started!”

“So, she’s our tour guide now?” The jeans, Drake, surly asked.

“Riley” Liam emphasizes. “Was kind enough to agree to show us around. She’s doing us a favor, so play nice.”

A short and somewhat awkward cab ride later and they were in the club. She blinked and found herself alone with Liam, as the others went to the dancefloor.

“Thank you for bringing us here.” The blond said. “The guys are having fun already.”

Taking in consideration that statement, Riley says: “I bet you’re used to putting everyone else first.”

Humoring her, he says: “And why would you say that?”

“I can tell. I’m good at reading people.”

A memory flashes in Liam’s mind for a second, but he soon represses it.

“Now,” She said. “Forget your friends. How do you like it here?”

“What I enjoy the most is the company.” He says, in a somewhat flirtatious smile. “And I believe I am in your debt. What will the lady have?”

“Surprise me.” She said.

A minute later they were toasting with some flaming cocktails.

“A funny choice,” She teases.

“Careful.” He says, blowing the fire. “We’re playing it hot.”

“That’s what makes it fun!” Downing hers, she finished with a “Thanks. I guess we’re even now.”

He hummed. “I guess you’re right. Now I’ll have to find some other excuse to get you to stay.”

“Better think of something fast.”

“Well… the guys are really warming up to you.” She doubted. “If you stick around, you can keep them in line.”

“Oh, yeah?” She said. “I’m pretty sure I just saw a girl dump her drink on Maxwell.”

“See? You’re needed more now than ever.”

“Yeah.” She tutted. “But I’m no babysitter.”

“And what if I buy you another drink? Does that work for you?”

She tucked a rebel strand of hair behind her right ear. “Now you’re not even trying to persuade me.”

“Okay. You got me.” He raised his hand and fake-sighted. In a more serious tone, though, he added: “Hanging out with you is the most fun I’ve had this entire vacation.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know quite how to respond. “That’s… sweet. I suppose you haven’t been enjoying yourself all that much, then.”

“It’s…” He wrestled the words. “Been wonderful, but there’s something missing. I really wanted to…”

“To?”

“It’s… Well… You might think it’s silly, but I’ve always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. It wasn’t in the guys’ plan, so we never got around to it. And now it’s my last day here…” He real-sighed now. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It has been thoughtful of them to throw me this bachelor party. They’ve done their best, but I’m not in a celebratory mood.”

In her most neutral tone of voice she could muster, Riley said: “I thought it was Tariq’s bachelor party.” Tariq would be the middle-easterner. “Congratulations, Liam.”

In truth, she was kind of annoyed. It wasn’t cool of his part to go out with a girl while his fiancée waited for him an ocean away.

Liam was downcast. “If you knew the whole story, you might not congratulate me so quickly.”

“Oh?” She quipped her ears.

“I actually don’t know who I’m going to marry just yet… Only that I have to pick her before the winter is over.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“The truth is, Riley…” He twists his face in a displeased scowl, as the word is hard to pronounce. “I’m the Crown Prince of Cordonia. That is, a country just across the sea from Italy, to the east.”

Crown Prince of Cordonia? Riley knows of the Bonaparte-Valona-Rys, but as far as she remembered, the Crown Prince was Leo. So are the broadcasters, such a small, somewhat backwater country never makes the news.

Trying to ease him, and herself, into it, she says: “I kinda had a feeling.”

She didn’t have much success. “You did?!”

“You’ve got a bunch of fancy guys in your bachelor party who tried to order fillet mignon at a bar.”

Wordlessly, he conceded they were an eyesore. “And you don’t care? Not everyone takes in stride.”

“It takes more than that to intimidate me.”

He scoffs at his own foolishness. “You’re fearless. I admire that in you. You decide who you are. You could be anything, do anything. What drives you?”

That’s a statement one step too close to home. Thinking about what he said, she answers: “To live every day to the fullest. I long to make every day an adventure! You only get one chance in life, and I want to make mine count.”

“That’s beautiful, Riley.”

Hearing the commotion behind her, Riley uses it as a chance to change subjects. “Your friends seem to be having the time of their lives.”

“I’m happy for them. They deserve to have fun.”

Riley takes notice of the rehearsed answers. It’s like interviewing a Miss Universe.

“Tomorrow,” He adds, with a little more sentiment. “It’s back to Cordonia for the start of the social season.”

She looks, passingly, to the bar. Tariq seemed to be ordering yet another bottle of champagne. As it was Saturday, the club was packed with people. Men, women, all single and ready to mingle. But, in a first look, there was someone who dissents from that trend. A man in black. God, it was the man from earlier today!

Riley got scared. She needed an escape plan.

“But it’s not tomorrow yet.” Riley said.

“What are you suggesting?” Liam asked, curious.

“You said you want to see the Statue of Liberty. Let’s do it! I know a place where we can catch a boat.”

“A boat? How will you manage a boat?”

She laughs. “Ye of little faith! I’ll call in a favor, don’t worry.”

“A favor? Just like that, you can get us on a boat after midnight to see the Statue of Liberty?”

“I have some friends who owe me. Come on! I know it’s important to you, so let’s go!”

“Right now?”

“No, next week! Of course, it’s now. Your friends look busy, they won’t notice we’re gone.”

“You’re not taking no as an answer, are you?”

“No.”

He flashes the happiest smile she has seen all night. “Then I happily surrender to your demands.”

Down at the marina, boarding the boat, Liam admires the view of the city.

“Not a bad scenario.” He says.

She smiles at him and says: “Now I’m dying to know why you’re so eager to see the Statue of Liberty.”

“Can’t you guess?” He said, half lame, half joking.

“I’d say it’s because it symbolizes freedom.” She mockingly scratched her chin, as an upscale psychologist.

“Freedom is something I always wanted.” Liam said, in excitement. “But I’ve always known that my role would require me to give up much of what I desire.”

Something was really off. Always? As she got home, she’d investigate that statement better.

“You are the Prince. Can’t you do what you want at least some of the time?”

“As a member of the Royal House, my actions reflect in all of Cordonia. That is a lesson I’ve never been allowed to forget, no matter how badly I want to.”

The last part of that sentence was said staring longing at Riley’s figure, who was looking at the sky, philosophically. The driver calls for her, she pays for his services discreetly.

“Let’s go!” As she said, the ship started running.

They get quiet for a moment, up until Liam says: “I don’t think you’d be able to pull this off.”

“You just don’t know me very well.”

He’s amused by that answer. “You’re right. But I’d like to change that. You’re fascinating, Riley!” He thinks for a second, and then asks: “Why are you doing all this for me?”

She smiles, and gives a somewhat true answer: “You seemed like you needed it.” She sure knows she needed it.

“That’s… so sweet of you. No one has ever done something like that for me before.”

“You’re a prince, Liam.” She said. “People do things for you all the time.”

“I do get all the perks that come with being royalty, but no one ever seen me as me. No one ever listened to me the way you listen. No one come up with a spur-of-the-moment plan to make my dream come true.”

“Oh, Liam…” She was sincerely touched. “What else do you dream about?”

“Finding someone. Someone who can be the Queen Cordonia needs.”

It seems sad to her that even his dreams are grounded by a harsh reality. Seems hopeless, even.

“And…” She tries to amend. “Someone who you fall in love with, right?”

“That’s never been part of the criteria that the Cordonian Council uses.”

Riley may be an adult, her princess pink dreams from infancy may be long gone, but it does bring a wave of disappointment to her heart.

As she contemplates her feelings on the matter, the mist dissipates, and they get their first good look into the Statue.

“So,” Riley asks. “What do you think?”

Liam looks stargazed to the great, green woman. The definite embodiment of freedom holding a torch above her head – the northern star for all people in the world. He sees the broken chains at her feet, half-hidden by her robes, close as they are from the island. The symbol of a foreign nation, ironically, means something so opposite to him as a symbol of his own homeland.

“Magnificent.” Liam breathes. “I’ve heard that art has meaning because of how it makes the viewer feel. It only matters if it moves you.”

Riley smiles, sweetly. “And?”

“And right now, looking at this view with you, I feel like anything is possible. Thank you for this moment, Riley. This feeling… this mean more to me than you could ever know.”

“Liam…”

“I want you to know I admire you. Your adventurous spirit. The way you follow your heart.”

“You can live that way too, you know?”

“If only. My whole life I’ve prepared myself to do what’s best for Cordonia.”

“Well, we’re not in Cordonia now.”

Liam watches those seemingly-familiar onyx eyes as he draws close. He puts his hands to her sides, pulling her in and kissing her deeply. As she goes out of breath, they pant in a rhythm, with their foreheads against each other’s.

“I’m glad to have met you, Riley. I’ll never forget this night.”

In between kisses, they soon are brought back to the shore.

As the reality comes down at Liam, they have a lovers’ farewell, as he hops in the cab.

Happy with how her night turned out, Riley had a skip on her step walking her way home.

As she unlocked the door and turned on the light, there he was. The man who has been stalking her all day.

“I have finally found you.”

She screams in terror.

Red Rose - Masterlist

<< Last Chapter Next Chapter >>

#red rose #the royal romance

25 notes · View notes

thesovietbroadcast · 7 years

Quote

If anything distinguished Brezhnev from the coterie of baggy-suited apparatchiki around Khrushchev, it was his sartorial trimness. Foy D. Kohler, a former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, used to say that Brezhnev 'must have the best tailor in Moscow'... Publicly he is a moraliser who exhorts people to ever greater achievements with finger-wagging monotony and orthodox Communist cliches. Behind the scenes he loves the good life; expensive clothes; gadgets; fast and ostentatious cars; thoroughbred horses; stiff drinks; spicy foods...; beautiful girls; loge seats at Moscow's Dynamo or Lenin stadiums where he can watch his favourite soccer team; boar hunting; duck shooting and yachting -- in other words, the perquisites of belonging to the upper classes of Soviet society. While I was in Moscow other members of the Politburo rode in Soviet-made ZILs and Chaikas, but Brezhnev flashed about in his Rols-Royce. Subsequently he was seen in a Cadillac which Nixon gave him in 1972 and presumably he now drives about in the Lincoln Continental he got from the President in 1973 of the steel-blue Mercedes 450-SCL he received from Willy Brandt. He is also vain. He preens himself before any mirror he passes, combing and smoothing down his wavy hair, brushing any dust or lint from the lapels of his expensive suits. He has the facial lines erased from his official portraits... But no matter how charming he tries to be, his eyes often betray him... When he is not consciously attempting to impress, they are hard and icy... He is conservative, prudent and cautious... He is a manipulator of men and skilled at tuning the party instrument so that it hums to his score... He behaves like a 'chairman of the board', albeit a chairman whose power is virtually unlimited... Today his team in Moscow is appropriately called the Dnieper Mafia. It is a clique of powerful politicians, apparatchiki, aides, advisers and friends who started in politics, government and industry with and under Brezhnev in Dneprodzerzhinsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe in the 1930s and 1940s. Today these men... assure him his working majority in the Politburo, give him his strength in the Central Committee, fill key positions on his personal staff, influence his views and policies, serve as his watchdogs in government administration, control the police, the KGB and party apparatus. It is a formidable list of the most important men in the Soviet Union.... Even more important, perhaps, than the Dnieper Mafia is Brezhnev's solid power base in the Soviet military establishment.... His signature next to Nixon's on the strategic arms limitation (SALT) treaty set a precedent in international law; it was the first time that an agreement between two nations had been signed by one man in his capacity as party leader... In reality, Brezhnev's signature on the treaty merely underlines what has become apparent in recent years. He is the new tsar of the Kremlin, title or no title. This build-up began in early 1970. In March of that year, unaccompanied by other Politburo members or senior government officials except for Defence Minister Grechko, Brezhnev journeyed to Minsk to review the Soviet Army's spring manoeuvres, an act that cast him in the role of supreme commander. In June he set a noteworthy precedent by attending a meeting of the Council of Ministers, of which he is not even a member but whose chairman is Kosygin, and delivered what 'Pravda' called a 'major speech'... In February 1971, when the draft of the current five-year plan was published, the Central Committee decree approving it was signed by Brezhnev alone... The most persuasive evidence of Brezhnev's real power was provided by the 24th. Party Congress in April 1971. He spoke for six hours.... and every minute of it was telecast to the nation.... At the very moment Kosygin began to speak in the Kremlin's cavernous Palace of Congresses, Soviet television started re-broadcasting Brezhnev's report in its entirety... At the 24th. Congress he was eulogised and panegyrised by a succession of delegates who lauded his 'tireless activity and constant concern for the welfare of the people' and proclaimed that his six-hour speech had brought 'tears of joy and pride' to their eyes... At first sight the Soviet political system strikes most observers as an alien, unfathomable labyrinth that defies comparison with anything in the West. In many ways it is, but there is one possible analogy: New York's Tammanny Hall. At its height, Tammanny represented... a system of political conrol centring around a single powerful figure -- the boss -- and a complex organisation of lesser figures -- the machine --.. To obtain some idea of the Soviet system one should imagine a 'super Tammany' with political monopoly exercising virtually unchallenged control of the press, the police, the economy, the military, the judiciary, even the cultural establishment. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev is the Soviet 'boss' today. He got where he is through patronage, intrigue, manipulation, maneuvering and political influence peddling... The heart of his political machine is the Dnieper mafia... Brezhnev's political machine is undoubtedly a precision instrument.... Llleonid Ilyich Brezhnev... is omnipresent. His portrait is on every wall of nearly every government and party office from Brest-Litovsk to Vladivostock. It is held aloft, icon like, by thousands of marchers each 1 May and 7 November. It hangs in super-dimensional form from the facades of public buildings on important state occasions and holidays. His name appears in 'Pravda', 'Izvestia' and countless other Soviet newspapers every day. It is mentioned on radio and television several times daily. It appears in headlines and has become a household name around the globe. His speeches are mandatory reading for millions. His books stand on the shelves of all libraries in the USSR.... For half of their married life they [the Brezhnevs] have lived in the same apartment house -- reserved for high-ranking party functionaries. By Moscow standards it is a posh neighbourhood... It would be an idyllic picture of upper-middle-class Soviet life were it not marred by the problems of so many upper-middle-class apparatchik families: the un-Soviet like airs of the children. Next to affairs of State and Party, Galina [Brezhnev's daughter] has been Brezhnev's greatest problem. Her penchant for men from the circus and her romantic escapades were the primary reason why her daughter Viktoria lived not with her but with Brezhnev... Motherhood is not her thing. By comparison, her brother Yuri, 40, is a paragon of good behaviour... On a recent trip to Paris, in January 1972, he made news of his own by going to the Crazy Horse Saloon, the French capital's best-known and most expensive strip-tease club and allegedly paying the head waiter a $100 tip... Leonid Brezhnev has been a member of the elite since 1931, and he is now at its apex. Government dachas and limousines for his private use, servants, Black Sea vacation villas and, above all, the right to buy in special Central Committee and Kremlin stores where premium Soviet-made and the finest imported merchandise is available at cost and below -- these have been his privileges for nearly two decades. He takes them for granted. Though he also denies them... If Brezhnev even has a salary, then it is probably not more than 1,000 roubles ($1,350) per month -- less than what he was earning as a lieutenant-general -- which is approximately eight times the average monthly wage (122 rubles) of a skilled industrial or white collar worker. But salary is not the issue, for like all other members of the Politburo and the Secretariat, Brezhnev is entitled to an 'open account' at the State Bank from which he may draw and spend as much as he wishes, for anything he pleases. Naturally, he has a flat-roofed, California style bungalow with fire place, swimming-pool and patio in the Politburo compound at Kolchuga, a village 18 miles west of the centre of Moscow. A restricted area, it is surrounded, like most of the dachas of the elite, by a ten-foot-high wooden fence and a small army of grim-looking uniformed police and security men who guard the access roads... By Soviet standards it is opulent. So incidentally is Breshnev's Kutovoski Avenue apartment... His fleet of automobiles is legendary, but in addition to those he has a whole park of Kremlin and Central Committee limousines, including foreign-made ones, from which to choose. And what was it he told Willy Brand? Oh yes, he has another, bigger yacht than the one in which they cruised off Oreanda.... A Kremlin physician measures the water temperature before Brezhnev takes a dip in the Black Sea... The fact is that Communism in the Soviet Union has given birth to a new upper class which enjoys and guards its privileges just a jealously as the old one. It is very much a hierarchical system in which each step up the ladder brings with it greater and additional perquisites... He [Brezhnev] is neither an intellectual nor culturally inclined... He likes technical things. The intricate push-button and telephone panel sunk into the top of his Kremlin office desk, heatable swimming pools, automatically operated sliding doors -- those are the things he shows visitors with pride.... The sport about which he is most enthusiastic.. is hunting. He claims to have shot everything from hares around Moscow to bears in Kazakhstan. His favourite area is a Savidovo... There the Politburo maintains a private 140-square mile game preserve with hunting lodges... Brezhnev also claims to be a conservationist. Leonid Brezhnev is a conservative".

J. Dornberg, "Brezhnev: The Masks of Power" (London, 1974).

#USSR #Communism #Socialism #Brezhnev #Resources

20 notes · View notes

loving-jack-kelly · 7 years

Note

TALK TO ME ABOUT AUS FRIEND

LET’S GO I’ve had this one for a while and I talked to @lesmizteries about it yesterday while we talked about AUs we had but I’ve never posted it! so!

If you know me, follow me, have scrolled through my blog for ten seconds you know

love

Spot Conlon

so much

but I also enjoy giving him (progressively more) tragic backstories in every au involving him

For example, the Kayla AU, which is my go to background/modern setting for any Spot related thing

i can’t find it to link it but it was sad anyway

this one is no exception to the “let’s hurt spot to see how it affects his character” rule i seem to have adopted

so let’s go!

read more ‘cause I already know this is gonna be long

Spot!

as in most of my aus, he’s a smart guy

very smart in this case, like super genius kinda smart

but

he grew up pretty much homeless

like technically there was an apartment he could go to? but he’d rather sleep in a shelter or if it was warm outside because his dad hated him and he hated his dad

his mom was a woman who met his dad because he was a drug dealer, but she was on probation when she got pregnant and couldn’t tell anyone who’s the baby was because she wasn’t supposed to be seeing him

and then handed Spot off to his dad and said “good luck he’s yours now”

so Spot grew up in Chicago, pretty much homeless

the only useful things his dad taught him were how to read, how to beg, how to pick pockets, and how to steal

the only good person who cared about spot was Romeo, his half brother, but we’ll get into that later

anyway

when Spot was around twelve his dad packed up and moved them to new york, where it was pretty much same deal, different streets, different people

but he’s eventually like, no, i’m going to school, i’m making myself better than what i am

so he goes to school these years don’t matter as much to the story

graduates hs early

graduates college early

gets several degrees

now on with the story!

by the time he’s twenty, he’s already a semi-public figure, cause he’s a twenty-year-old genius with a bunch of degrees and he’s like Dr. Conlon

and he and one of his friends from college, Davey, have a small lab together and then everthing kinda explodes because they patent a medical machine that’s revolutionary

and they get really rich, really fast, and really public, really fast

and Spot gets really good at circumlocuting around questions about his childhood so he doesn’t have to talk about it

but every time he does, he remembers

he remembers being a tiny, hungry kid, sitting on a corner in chicago watching the rich people go past. the people with obviously fat wallets in their front pockets, in fancy suits with huge watches on their wrists, and those people were the ones who tossed him a quarter and acted like it was a hundred dollars, like a gumball would fill his stomach

and then the people a step up from him, the blue collar workers, the people who were wearing fast food uniforms, they were the ones who pulled out a nearly empty wallet and handed him five, ten, twenty dollars if they could and pointed him towards the nearest McDonald’s

and that didn’t seem right, not when he was a kid and not once he had money and could afford to help

it seemed like the people with money should be helping the most, right? they’re able to, why shouldn’t they? and yet, they don’t

and every time he thinks about it, he gets mad.

especially at the parties. god, the parties, where the rich old men are hailed as gods among men, like they do so much to help while standing in their huge mansions in front of their classical art and museum worthy statues and vases

and one night he’s at a party at the home of media giant Joseph Pulitzer, forced to watch him stand in front of a newly acquired Monet painting talking about how much it cost and everything just reaches a boiling point which leads to him planning his first heist since he was like, fourteen and raiding the school for computer stuff and food

and he grabs the painting

but then he’s like, “shit. what the fuck do i do with a huge ass monet. i don’t know any fences, i haven’t had to fence anything since i was a kid, what the fuck do i do now?” so he ends up just literally leaving the painting in a shelter and hoping for the best

and what happened was Pulitzer got the painting back unharmed but the shelter also got attention and thus funds, but that put suspicion on the shelter, which is never what Spot wanted

so he went to Chicago to meet!

Romeo!

his half brother!

runs a ring of pick pockets and petty thieves, is an all around pretty neat guy, protects the kids who work for him with his life

also knows e v e r y o n e worth knowing in the criminal world

so he’s like “yeah i know some good fences. Kat and Saz are the best, girlfriends, loyal to those loyal to them, can sell anything. Kat works out of New York, Saz from Paris”

doesn’t quite mention Kat is Pulitzer’s daughter? Spot finds out when he goes to meet her and can’t contain his “Katherine?!”

which leads to Katherine laughing like crazy bc

a) her father had tried to set her up with Spot

b) the tiny little super genius had stolen her father’s painting completely successfully but couldn’t figure out how to sell it

also eventually Romeo kind of accidently reveals that Davey and Saz are twins, which leads to Dave being brought in on it for the second heist

the second heist is a bust, an old, valuable bust, and several smaller things from other media giant, Hearst’s, mansion. the smaller things were fenced off and the money used to pay Kat, Saz, and Dave and to give away, and the bust was left the same way the monet was

this kept going for a while, Spot recruits Crutchie after catching his IT guy breaking into his safe and learning that he was really, really good with tech and all he wanted was enough money for he and his husband to adopt

which also led to Jack being recruited as an art forger

eventually, Race hears about them and tries so hard to contact them to help that they let him, and he’s also a thief, so Race and Spot do the actual breaking in while the others take care of the details

and somewhere along the way, they got the idea to leave a calling card, so the people trying to do what they were doing couldn’t claim they were the real thieves behind the good they were doing

and Jack noted the similarity to them and robin hood, so they left a super specific arrow behind at every scene, signed “the Merry Men”

the normal people at least kind of accept what’s going on, because most people can see that some good it being done

the rich people obviously don’t

to stay secretive, Spot even steals from himself a few times, no more or less than the other rich people

now not in every version of this au? but for your consideration:

Spot gets caught somehow

he refuses to give up anyone else and even tells Dave to essentially disown him so Dave is in charge of their labs and everything so it can keep functioning

but his trial becomes legendary because he does admit to every crime committed by the Merry Men, but he shows no remorse at all

and at first nobody comments on it, but finally somebody does, and asks him, “Do you feel bad for what you did?”

and his response is never forgotten. he leans forward, makes direct eye contact, and says quietly

“Why should I feel bad, when they continue to live rich, happy lives, minus a painting? While people go hungry on the streets, while kids freeze and starve, and they have the money to help, and they don’t? Why should I feel bad when stealing a few paintings that almost all got returned unharmed fed hundreds of people? Clothed hundreds of people? I called myself the Merry Men for a reason. Steal from the rich, give to the poor, what happened to Robin Hood being the hero? I was Robin Hood, I helped people with my machines, with my money, with my means, and by taking from those who could afford it. No, I don’t feel bad, and no, I never will. Not when I know what hunger and cold feel like, and not when I know that I helped people.”

and after that he stops talking in his trial

#newsies hc #modern robin hood au #merry men au #yeah i started this as soon as i got it #and then my computer crashed #soooo #Anonymous

59 notes · View notes

mizjoely · 7 years

Text

The third of four prompt fills promised to new followers of @geekyangie. This one is for @sherlockholmesismytype. The prompt was Sherlock undercover as a bartender at a 1920s Speakeasy, where Molly comes in for a drink to get her mind off colleagues who are intimidated by her being a woman. Enjoy!

Speakeasy

Why, Molly thought morosely as she plunked herself onto a barstool, had she ever believed it would be easier to take up her chosen profession in the United States? Men were men no matter what country they came from, and she was sick of how intimidated they were by her being a female, much less a doctor. The fact that she worked in the morgue and did autopsies didn’t help; she couldn’t begin to count the number of ‘helpful’ suggestions that she might be better off delivering babies or dealing with ‘women’s problems’ she’d been subjected to in the past six months. She was glad her friend Meena had recommended this place to her just the other day; Molly was more than desperate for a nice cold gin and tonic to wash away the taste of male testosterone clogging her (figurative) senses.

“I should have asked that idiot Moran if he’d rather I told him to turn his head and cough,” she muttered to herself as she waited for the bartender to show up and take her order.

The sound of choked off laughter brought her out of her reverie, and she looked up to see the single most gorgeous man she’d ever laid eyes on standing in front of her, still chuckling. At her highly inappropriate words. How perfectly mortifying.

She was still trying to work out a way to explain herself when she realized he was asking her a question. “What’s your poison?” he repeated patiently as she just gawped at him like an idiot.

It finally clicked that he was the bartender. The one she’d been waiting for. “All my life,” she breathed out, then blushed bright red as she realized what she’d done. “Uh, a gin and tonic, please, been gasping for a drink...um, all my life,” she added in a lame attempt to explain her earlier words.

The slow grin he gave her told her she wasn’t fooling him in the least, and she blushed even redder under his knowing gaze. As soon as he served her drink she mumbled her thanks, handed over the necessary coinage, and tried to make herself invisible as she sipped at the refreshing beverage.

“You’re not from around here,” she heard someone say, and looked up as soon as she realized it was the bartender speaking, and not one of the men seated on either side of her.

Coming from one of them she’d have rolled her eyes and given them the cold shoulder; too many American men seemed to think that an Englishwoman must be easy, although Heaven knew why. It was a good thing she knew how to handle that sort of unwanted attention.

Unfortunately what she was less adept at handling was attention of the wanted kind. Especially when it came from a man who ticked all her favorite boxes: tall, dark curly hair, gorgeous blue (green?) eyes, sharp cheekbones, and...British??

She really was in bad shape, if it was taking her brain this long to catch up with the fact that his accent screamed Posh Londoner to her ears. “Um, no, I’m not,” she replied, wishing that her cheeks would cool down just a tiny bit. “I’m from…”

“Northamptonshire,” he said promptly. “Born there, studied in London, moved here for the so-called better opportunities available to a female doctor. Discovered that was only a myth, and are more than ready to move back home at the first opportunity, where at least your boorish male co-workers will come from familiar backgrounds and might more easily be set back on their heels.”

“Uh...how did you know all that?” Molly asked, bewildered and more than a little suspicious. “Did Meena put you up to this?” She craned her head around, trying to spy her friend in the crowd of people, to no avail.

“Don’t know any ‘Meena’,” he replied with a shrug as she turned her questioning gaze back on him.

“Then how…”

“I deduced it,” he replied, rather smugly. Before she could ask what exactly that meant, he went on: “As a fellow countryman with a very practiced ear, your current accent and its origins were clear to me. And your profession and your distaste for your colleagues were both made blindingly obvious by your disparaging remark as you seated yourself at the bar...and of course, there’s this.” Brashly, he reached forward and flipped a finger under her coat collar, exposing the black band of her stethoscope hung round her neck. Drat, she’d forgotten to remove it before leaving work again.

“But how did you know I was thinking about moving back to England?” she asked, fascinated in spite of herself - and willing to forgive him the overly familiar gesture. She’d honestly expected him to explain that he was an undercover policeman or, that yes, Meena had told him about her - but neither answer would explain how he’d known she was thinking about chucking it all and returning home.

Before he could answer, the sounds of shouting and swearing erupted behind them. Molly whipped her head around to see what was going on, her mouth opening in a shocked ‘O’ as she saw a veritable sea of uniformed policemen streaming into the room. “Bollocks,” she heard the bartender mutter, as if this were some minor inconvenience rather than a full-on raid.

As the shrill sound of police whistles added to the noise, Molly started to rise from her feet, just as eager to avoid arrest as the thronging masses milling about the speakeasy. However she was stopped by a pair of hands grasping her upper arms, and let out a startled screech as she felt herself being hauled bodily over the top of the bar. She was pulled close to a warm male body, and looked up to see that the bartender was the one now holding her semi-captive while chaos ruled over the rest of the room. “Shh, it’s fine, I’m the one who summoned them,” he murmured as he pressed her closer. “Although their timing could use a bit of work.”

“Wh-what? Why?” she stammered out, utterly confused - and wishing she’d had time to finish her drink before all hell broke loose.

“Because the owners are using the speakeasy as a front for an international drug-running ring,” he replied, spinning them both around so that she was pressed between his body and the bar-back. Before she could protest his high-handed treatment of her, the sound of something whizzing by her ear and smashing into the mirror behind them caused her to duck her head against his chest. “By the way, the name’s Sherlock Holmes.”

“Molly Hooper,” she mumbled into his collar, feeling more than a little dazed at how the night was shaping up. She peeked up at him. “Or did you already know that, too?”

“Nope,” he replied, popping the p obnoxiously and at the same time tugging her down so they were both crouching on the floor. His timing was impeccable; more bottles and glasses were slung their way, showering them with glass. He held her close, her forehead on his clavicle and his hands over her head, shielding her from the worst of the debris.

She kept her eyes tightly shut but couldn’t resist continuing to pepper him with questions while the police and patrons shouted and fought on the other side of the bar. “So you’re a policeman after all?” she asked. “How long have you been in Chicago? Why did you move here? Surely someone as clever as you has no end of opportunities in London for…”

The fact that he silenced her wasn’t surprising, considering the circumstances - but the fact that he did so with a rather searing kiss came as something of a shock. A welcome shock, to be sure, but still, a shock.

“Hey, Holmes! You back there?”

Gradually Molly realized that the background noises had lowered to a dull rumble peppered by the occasional curse. Blushing furiously, she allowed Sherlock to help her back to her feet, fearing that her rumpled appearance and undoubtedly dazed expression would give away the fact that the pair of them had been snogging like a couple of adolescents.

Why had he kissed her? Most likely to distract her, of course. Or he was simply taking advantage of the situation, and her, the way any man would under the circumstances. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it could be anything more than that - certainly he hadn’t done it because he found her attractive!

“Stop that,” he said crossly. She couldn’t help but notice that he kept his arm around her waist as they turned to face whoever had called out to him. A policeman, of course, one who was eyeing them both askance.

“I’m not doing anything!” she protested, trying to pull away from him.

“You’re thinking too loudly. I’m not taking advantage of you and I didn’t kiss you just to keep you quiet, I did it because yes, I do find you attractive and more than mildly interesting,” he retorted, tightening his grip on her waist.

“If this is a bad time,” the policeman interjected dryly, “we could always come back, do it all over again. You know, at your convenience.”

Sherlock waved his free hand in an irritable gesture. “Don’t be an idiot, Gregson. You’ll find the evidence you need down here.” He stamped his foot, and Molly heard the hollow sound of what she presumed to be a trapdoor beneath their feet. She allowed Sherlock to shuffle them both off to the side as Gregson - a lieutenant, she believed, if she was reading his rank insignia correctly - ordered a group of other policemen to go around the bar.

Sherlock brought Molly down to the far end of the bar, lifted the bar flap, and nudged her through before lowering it back into place. Thinking that was her sign to leave she pasted on a smile and opened her mouth to thank him for protecting her during the raid, but he stopped her with one raised hand. With the other he pointed at the nearest bar stool. “I still owe you a drink, Doctor Hooper. And if you’ll allow me, I’d like to escort you back to your flat.”

Molly hesitated for the briefest of seconds before nodding and sliding onto the seat. Her smile this time was sincere. “Yes, that would be lovely. And please, do call me Molly.”

“Molly,” he repeated obligingly. As he handed her her drink, he added, “Perhaps on the way we can continue our discussion of why it would be an excellent idea for you to return to England sooner rather than later. By the end of the week would be best, actually.”

Molly’s brow knit in confusion. “Why by the end of the week?”

He flashed her a grin that would have turned her knees to butter had she still been standing. “Because that’s when I’m due to fly back, and I would enjoy your company on the flight. Now, let me tell you about an acquaintance of mine in London by the name of Mike Stamford. Last time I spoke to him he mentioned a shortage of doctors at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital…”

#sherlolly #mizjoely writes #mizjoely's fics

63 notes · View notes

tragicbooks · 7 years

Text

Here's what actual trans military voices have to say about Trump's ban.

An estimated 15,000 trans people currently serve in the military.

In June 2016, the U.S. secretary of defense made a long-overdue announcement: The military was ending its ban on transgender service members.

With the 2011 end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy banning gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from serving, allowing trans people to serve openly seemed like the logical next step.

As then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter explained, “Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualifications to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine who can best accomplish the mission.”

Fast-forward a year, and President Trump has undone that progress, tweeting that "the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military."

He cited "tremendous medical costs" as the reason behind his decision despite the fact that a RAND Corporation study found that the total additional cost of allowing trans people to serve in the military is $2.4 million-8.4 million. (For comparison, in 2014, the military spent more than 10 times that on erectile dysfunction medication alone.)

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

But maybe Trump's decision wasn't about cost at all. According to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan, a Trump administration official was quoted as saying the move "forces Democrats in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to take complete ownership of this issue."

"How will the blue collar voters in these states respond when senators up for re-election in 2018 like Debbie Stabenow are forced to make their opposition to this a key plan of their campaigns?" Swan quoted the official as saying.

In other words, Trump's decision doesn't seem to be about readiness, cost, or any of the other reasons frequently tossed around by opponents of trans inclusion in the military. Instead, it's just a game of politics, with trans lives as pawns.

There are currently an estimated 15,000 trans people serving in the military. What do they think of Trump reinstating the ban? We asked them.

Amanda Clark was discharged back in 2007 after coming out as trans. While she says she's ambivalent about military service, she sees this as a matter of basic civil rights.

"I can’t possibly fathom what openly out trans people in the military are feeling right now. Hell, I feel scared now just being a trans person in the civilian world. It feels like the f*cking fascists who run this country are coming for us, and openly serving trans people are next. I’m sure a lot of officers/[non-commissioned officers] are going to be thrilled to get involved in paperwork hell discharging folks."

Kristen Carella, who served on active duty 2001-2005 as an intelligence analyst stationed in Germany, pointed out that many U.S. allies (18 in total, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom) allow trans people to serve without issue.

"Here was an opportunity for this country to move forward, recognizing the sacrifices transgender people have ALWAYS made in the armed forces, by allowing us to serve openly. [According to Human Rights Campaign] stats 26% of the trans community serves in the military at some point during their lives, that is TWICE the rate of the general population. Trump's decision is a stunning reversal that can be taken only as a slap in the face, personally to every transgender person who has ever served. It accomplishes nothing more than making sure transgender people remain a demonized and hated target that right-wing politicians can target to scare their base and push their agendas. Of course, all of this demonization ensures that the ignorant violence which leads bigots to murder transgender people in the streets (particularly trans women of color) will continue."

Penelope R., an intersex trans woman who served in the Air Force for six years before leaving to pursue transition, says "members are going to die" because of this new policy, and she urges those who might not generally support the military to care about this.

"[The] American military, despite its many infelicities, has always been a reliable space for many kinds of marginalized people to hide out in. This is why trans people are disproportionately represented in the military. Enlisting was always a last resort for me — I've known I was trans since I was a child, and knew going into the military meant carving away parts of my identity I cherished, but at the time the alternative was death. Just death. I chose to live, and as a result I met my wife, found a chosen family that makes the sun rise for me, made enough money to afford transition, and qualified me to receive transitional health care from the Illinois VA. ... The military helped make my life worth living. And now it's all gone to shit for everyone. Despite what he says, there's nothing Trump can say or do to stop trans people from serving — he can only get rid of those he knows about. It will only go back to how it was before, with trans service members confined to the closet at the risk of their careers."

Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifts the ban on trans troops on June 30, 2016. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

Landon Wilson, who served in the Navy and was the topic of a widely read 2014 Washington Post profile about trans people in the military, points out that the ban means "honorably serving people" will be removed from service, "effectively weakening our country."

"It's a heartbreaking shame that the President of the United States is choosing to ignore the sacrifices of transgender service members, particularly at a time where so many have proven their dedication to this country. A diverse military makes a strong military; by removing honorably serving people from service, the President is effectively weakening our country, both as a fighting force and as a leader in civil rights."

"Even when we've taken the uniform off, our service never stops." - @HiBoriPrincess #VeteransDay #OpenTransService http://pic.twitter.com/mBdneUM1Sv

— TransMilitary (@TransMilitary) November 11, 2015

Vivian Wise, an information systems technician on active duty in the Navy, came out to her shipmates the day President Obama and Secretary Carter lifted the ban in 2016. She disagrees with President Trump's assertion that trans people serving in the military is a "disruption."

"To say that my service has been a 'disruption' is an outright lie. My Commanding Officer, immediate superiors and co-workers have all been fully supportive of me. I am one of the senior technicians within my division, responsible for training our new sailors and managing our day-to-day and week-to-week work list. I was, until just now, being groomed to lead one of our division's two watch teams for our upcoming deployment, beginning late next year. In that capacity, I serve a critical role in my work center. Summarily discharging me from military service, for nothing more than petty bigotry and electoral politics, is the disruption. The GOP as a whole, and the Trump administration in particular, are degrading my unit and hundreds if not thousands of other units across the armed services by taking away valuable people. We, and the American people, deserve better than this."

Cisgender allies, activists, and experts are voicing their concerns, as well.

In an email, TransMilitary co-director and executive producer Fiona Dawson (who, in 2015, documented the story of two trans service members who fell in love) weighed in on the move, saying she hopes Trump will actually take the time to meet some of the trans personnel he deems unfit for service.

"Donald Trump's assertions against transgender service members are baseless. Science and ethics determine there is no rational reason why the thousands of transgender women and men who have been defending our country and fighting for our freedom for hundreds of years should not be permitted to continue doing so."

Former Secretary Carter offered his opinion on the reinstatement of the discriminatory policy as well, saying that it "has no place in our military."

Ex-DefSec Carter: "To choose service members on other grounds than military qualifications is social policy & has no place in our military." http://pic.twitter.com/Y1SjfYK7Ug

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 26, 2017

Advocacy organizations and civil rights groups across the country are issuing press releases, denouncing the tweet on a number of grounds.

The Palm Center called this "a worse version of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'" and hit Trump over his claims of "tremendous costs."

"As we know from the sad history of that discredited policy, discrimination harms military readiness. This is a shocking and ignorant attack on our military and on transgender troops who have been serving honorably and effectively for the past year. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen stated yesterday, their service must be respected. The Rand Corporation has estimated that the cost of medical care for transgender troops is approximately one one-hundredth of one percent of the military annual health care budget, or at most, $8.4 million per year. To claim otherwise is to lie about the data."

Tyler Deaton of the American Unity Fund, a conservative LGBTQ organization, criticized Trump for going back on what he saw as LGBTQ-friendly campaign promises in a statement that is long but worth reading in its entirety:

"President Trump promised to protect the transgender community. As President, he said he was 'respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights' and would 'protect the community from violence and oppression.' But President Trump has broken his promise and, coupled with his administration's efforts to roll back protections for transgender students in our nation's public schools, he is developing an undeniable pattern of anti-gay and anti-transgender policy while in office. ... As conservatives and advocates for LGBTQ freedom, AUF calls on President Trump to reconsider his comments, and stand with all of our soldiers, including those who are transgender."

Former Justice Department official Vanita Gupta, currently president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, slammed Trump's move as "yet another broken promise to the American people."

"President Trump doesn't understand that our military is stronger when there are no discriminatory barriers to service. The civil and human rights community will continue to loudly and proudly stand up for the rights of all who are willing to protect the security of our country, including the thousands of transgender people currently serving in our military."

And of course, there was pushback from a number of Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) commented on the sad irony of Trump's decision to increase discrimination on the 69th anniversary of President Truman's order to desegregate the military.

.@POTUS has shown his conduct is driven not by honor, decency, or national security, but by prejudice. https://t.co/PHTlXMhEJg http://pic.twitter.com/X9rYhn5Jic

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) July 26, 2017

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) announced plans to introduce legislation that would overrule Trump's decision.

This morning, transgender service members put on uniform and showed up to their military duties...

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

This new decision is harmful and misguided. It weakens—not strengthens—our military. And I’ll do everything in my power to fight it.

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) highlighted the number of trans people serving in the military.

To @POTUS: Don't tell me #trans military service members who serve this country are any less courageous or deserving b/c of who they are. http://pic.twitter.com/XNQKKTnWw5

— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) July 26, 2017

Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), who has a transgender son, spoke out against it as well.

No American, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be prohibited from honor + privilege of serving our nation #LGBT

— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) July 26, 2017

Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts) offered to stand in solidarity with trans soldiers.

To the thousands of #trans men+women bravely serving our nation in uniform: Thank you. We do not take your patriotism for granted. https://t.co/bguuL4tx0f

— Rep. Joe Kennedy III (@RepJoeKennedy) July 26, 2017

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said "transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them."

Senator Hatch's full comments on the issue of transgender Americans in the military. #utpol http://pic.twitter.com/EDS6JRXJaj

— Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) July 26, 2017

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) called trans service members "patriots."

Transgender Americans are serving honorably in our military. We stand with these patriots.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 26, 2017

Trans people exist in the world and have every right to engage in the same activities and occupations as anybody else.

This is a big deal, and it's not just a distraction. Nobody should be discriminated against for who they are — not in the military, not in education, not in housing, not in employment, not in health care, not at all.

0 notes

socialviralnews · 7 years

Text

Here's what actual trans military voices have to say about Trump's ban.

An estimated 15,000 trans people currently serve in the military.

In June 2016, the U.S. secretary of defense made a long-overdue announcement: The military was ending its ban on transgender service members.

With the 2011 end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy banning gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from serving, allowing trans people to serve openly seemed like the logical next step.

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

There are currently an estimated 15,000 trans people serving in the military. What do they think of Trump reinstating the ban? We asked them.

Amanda Clark was discharged back in 2007 after coming out as trans. While she says she's ambivalent about military service, she sees this as a matter of basic civil rights.

Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifts the ban on trans troops on June 30, 2016. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

"Even when we've taken the uniform off, our service never stops." - @HiBoriPrincess #VeteransDay #OpenTransService http://pic.twitter.com/mBdneUM1Sv

— TransMilitary (@TransMilitary) November 11, 2015

Cisgender allies, activists, and experts are voicing their concerns, as well.

Former Secretary Carter offered his opinion on the reinstatement of the discriminatory policy as well, saying that it "has no place in our military."

Ex-DefSec Carter: "To choose service members on other grounds than military qualifications is social policy & has no place in our military." http://pic.twitter.com/Y1SjfYK7Ug

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 26, 2017

Advocacy organizations and civil rights groups across the country are issuing press releases, denouncing the tweet on a number of grounds.

The Palm Center called this "a worse version of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'" and hit Trump over his claims of "tremendous costs."

And of course, there was pushback from a number of Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

.@POTUS has shown his conduct is driven not by honor, decency, or national security, but by prejudice. https://t.co/PHTlXMhEJg http://pic.twitter.com/X9rYhn5Jic

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) July 26, 2017

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) announced plans to introduce legislation that would overrule Trump's decision.

This morning, transgender service members put on uniform and showed up to their military duties...

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

This new decision is harmful and misguided. It weakens—not strengthens—our military. And I’ll do everything in my power to fight it.

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) highlighted the number of trans people serving in the military.

To @POTUS: Don't tell me #trans military service members who serve this country are any less courageous or deserving b/c of who they are. http://pic.twitter.com/XNQKKTnWw5

— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) July 26, 2017

Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), who has a transgender son, spoke out against it as well.

No American, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be prohibited from honor + privilege of serving our nation #LGBT

— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) July 26, 2017

Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts) offered to stand in solidarity with trans soldiers.

To the thousands of #trans men+women bravely serving our nation in uniform: Thank you. We do not take your patriotism for granted. https://t.co/bguuL4tx0f

— Rep. Joe Kennedy III (@RepJoeKennedy) July 26, 2017

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said "transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them."

Senator Hatch's full comments on the issue of transgender Americans in the military. #utpol http://pic.twitter.com/EDS6JRXJaj

— Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) July 26, 2017

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) called trans service members "patriots."

Transgender Americans are serving honorably in our military. We stand with these patriots.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 26, 2017

Trans people exist in the world and have every right to engage in the same activities and occupations as anybody else.

from Upworthy http://ift.tt/2h37wvY via cheap web hosting

#Upworthy

0 notes

tragicbooks · 7 years

Text

Here's what actual trans military voices have to say about Trump's ban.

An estimated 15,000 trans people currently serve in the military.

In June 2016, the U.S. secretary of defense made a long-overdue announcement: The military was ending its ban on transgender service members.

With the 2011 end to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy banning gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from serving, allowing trans people to serve openly seemed like the logical next step.

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

There are currently an estimated 15,000 trans people serving in the military. What do they think of Trump reinstating the ban? We asked them.

Amanda Clark was discharged back in 2007 after coming out as trans. While she says she's ambivalent about military service, she sees this as a matter of basic civil rights.

Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifts the ban on trans troops on June 30, 2016. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

"Even when we've taken the uniform off, our service never stops." - @HiBoriPrincess #VeteransDay #OpenTransService http://pic.twitter.com/mBdneUM1Sv

— TransMilitary (@TransMilitary) November 11, 2015

Cisgender allies, activists, and experts are voicing their concerns, as well.

Former Secretary Carter offered his opinion on the reinstatement of the discriminatory policy as well, saying that it "has no place in our military."

Ex-DefSec Carter: "To choose service members on other grounds than military qualifications is social policy & has no place in our military." http://pic.twitter.com/Y1SjfYK7Ug

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 26, 2017

Advocacy organizations and civil rights groups across the country are issuing press releases, denouncing the tweet on a number of grounds.

The Palm Center called this "a worse version of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'" and hit Trump over his claims of "tremendous costs."

And of course, there was pushback from a number of Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

.@POTUS has shown his conduct is driven not by honor, decency, or national security, but by prejudice. https://t.co/PHTlXMhEJg http://pic.twitter.com/X9rYhn5Jic

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) July 26, 2017

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) announced plans to introduce legislation that would overrule Trump's decision.

This morning, transgender service members put on uniform and showed up to their military duties...

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

This new decision is harmful and misguided. It weakens—not strengthens—our military. And I’ll do everything in my power to fight it.

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 26, 2017

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) highlighted the number of trans people serving in the military.

To @POTUS: Don't tell me #trans military service members who serve this country are any less courageous or deserving b/c of who they are. http://pic.twitter.com/XNQKKTnWw5

— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) July 26, 2017

Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), who has a transgender son, spoke out against it as well.

No American, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be prohibited from honor + privilege of serving our nation #LGBT

— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) July 26, 2017

Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Massachusetts) offered to stand in solidarity with trans soldiers.

To the thousands of #trans men+women bravely serving our nation in uniform: Thank you. We do not take your patriotism for granted. https://t.co/bguuL4tx0f

— Rep. Joe Kennedy III (@RepJoeKennedy) July 26, 2017

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said "transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them."

Senator Hatch's full comments on the issue of transgender Americans in the military. #utpol http://pic.twitter.com/EDS6JRXJaj

— Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) July 26, 2017

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) called trans service members "patriots."

Transgender Americans are serving honorably in our military. We stand with these patriots.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 26, 2017

Trans people exist in the world and have every right to engage in the same activities and occupations as anybody else.

0 notes