#Individual Mandate

[totalbenefits]

How income affects your Medicare drug coverage premiums

You could pay a higher monthly premium for Medicare drug coverage (Part D) depending on your income. This includes Part D coverage you get from a Medicare drug plan, a Medicare Advantage Plan with drug coverage, or a Medicare Cost Plan that includes drug coverage. This is true even if your drug coverage is through your employer. Download this bulletin to learn more about extra Medicare drug…

[laniusbignaturals]

Also I don't know why but a song I associate with Joshua as the Malpais Legate is "Leviathan" by Dirt Poor Robins. Something about how Malpais means badlands, him having an unhinged moment as seeing himself as a biblical disaster and unholy destroyer.

Well this is certainly White Legs Conflict Coded: Joshua is always remarking on them and their “Great Salt Lake,” and Ulysses characterizes them in similar terms himself, “blood covered ghosts” and such. The other lyrics bring to mind that “vengeful spirit” archetype Siri introduces him as to the player: and you could take the repeated mention of lurking and concealment to allude to Edward’s disallowing of the mere mention of Joshua. Broke bitter bitch.

[sea-critter]

not multiple of the covid cautious accounts i follow testing positive or being exposed )): it’s surge time and i hate it

[spushii]

just had to say you're an actual fucking idiot if you blame the general american populus for The Covid Issue (yes, even the crazy republican conspiracy theorists) and not the government which has proven time and time again that it cares more about greasing the infinite blood money machine than it has or ever will the lives of it's citizens

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

[butch--dean]

My company announced yesterday that they’re making everyone return to office 3 days per week EXCEPT for us in Denver (they’re closing ours bc only four people regularly go in…… of the 100 of us who work here…..) and y’all. It is a shit show

[lathrine]

im reading an article about how vitriolic people visiting the national parks have gotten, and it is SO cathartic to see my exact experiences in grocery retail be restated by the customer service reps working in the parks.

like its awful, obvious. the average customer has gotten so nasty, and the employees Do Not deserve the treatment they’re receiving. but during 2020/2021, people seemed to think that those viral Nasty Customer videos were 1) not common and 2) relegated just to grocery/retail. and i cant speak for every single hospitality and customer service sector and store, but i can say that at my store that sort of vitriolic outbreak became VERY common. not constant, but common enough to bump the baseline up.

my manager and i had a conversation where she said a lot of her friends-- some of whom had been in the hospitality or customer service industry for over a decade-- were considering a career change because it was SO BAD and no one could even fathom how to move forward. none of us could imagine it ever getting better. our New Normal was people screaming at and berating us every day, blaming us for mask mandates and vaccines and supply shortages. threatening legal action and physical violence. of people intentionally trying to get us sick and terrorizing us. everything was an argument with no hope of de-escalation; it genuinely wouldve been less inciting to tell some of those customers “go fuck yourself” than it was to tell them “im so sorry, but.” and all that while we were surrounded by the extremely smothering reality that no one cared if we died and everyone considered us sub-human.

everyone i know who gave a fuck quit shortly after i did, because none of us could handle it anymore. this includes people who’d worked at that store since it opened, some of our most decorated and knowledgeable coworkers.

like. i dunno yall. its kind of like how you cant describe how things just Make Sense as you near the latter half of your 20s; i cant put into words just how horrifically awful customer service was at that time. if you didnt personally experience it, everything we say sounds like an exaggeration and hyperbole.

and i cannot stress this enough: its still that bad. i would imagine most customer service and hospitality places had the same thing happen: a mass exodus of everyone who knew what they were doing because they could not stand the abuse anymore, and a rotating door of new hires that Refuse (rightfully so!!!) to tolerate the abuse. there is a new breed of customer that genuinely Does Not Care about employees and see pleas of humanity and kindness as a challenge to see how quickly they can break the employee at the desk.

this is especially relevant now, with it being the holidays. employees are more short staffed and overworked than ever, and customers some how have even less patience. customers dont plan literally five minutes out, and then blame employees for not materializing their needs before them on a silver platter.

anyways. i dont know how this article ends, but i have a pretty good guess.

[wildhannimal]

I evaded covid for 2 years and 7 months since the first U.S. case. Flying is what has finally given most of my coworkers their first case, and I half expected this Iowa wedding to be my nail in the coffin, too. Ugh.

[thepostman24]

A state-mandated Chinese mobile app that shows whether an individual has travelled in a city with COVID-affected areas will no longer specify such travel history, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Friday night, Jacksonville residents took to the Main Street Bridge to celebrate Pride Month. Just weeks prior, Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration and the Florida Department of Transportation issued an edict banning rainbow-colored lighting on bridges during Pride Month, mandating that all such lighting be replaced with red, white, and blue, the colors of the American flag. Residents, however, were undeterred. They carried flashlights and rainbow gels, took their positions, and proceeded to light up the bridge themselves. Weeks ago, Manatee County Commission Chairman Mike Rahn objected to Pride lighting on bridges in Florida. Many bridges in the state, such as the Skyway Bridge in Tampa and the Acosta Bridge in Jacksonville, have been lit up in rainbow colors in previous years. This year, however, Rahn attempted to stop such lights from going up on the Skyway Bridge, formally objecting to the lighting. He expressed that the decision did not lie with him, passing the blame to Governor DeSantis. Rahn stated, “I do not have the authority to override the governor of the state of Florida. However, in my opinion, the lighting of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge is an FDOT matter and should not be left to the individual counties.”

In response, Jared Perdue of the Florida Department of Transportation declared that this year, bridges would be lit up in red, white, and blue all summer. This decision bars Pride lighting, Juneteenth lighting, and many other special lighting days on bridges in Florida. Perdue stated in a tweet, “As Floridians prepare for Freedom Summer, Florida's bridges will follow suit, illuminating in red, white, and blue from Memorial Day through Labor Day! Thanks to the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida continues to be the freest state in the nation.” The use of the word "freedom" while taking away the choice to light up bridges for Pride Month struck Matthew McCallister, who organized the bridge lighting event on Friday night, as "Orwellian." In an interview with News 4 Jax, McCallister responded to the rainbow Pride light ban, saying, “The timing of that is really strange. The idea that we are going to celebrate freedom by giving you absolutely no choices seems Orwellian, honestly.”

Really happy to hear that some Florida cities told Ron DeSantis “up yours” to his anti-LGBTQ+ ways. 🏳️‍🌈

[rapeculturerealities]

Florida bill could end all trans legal recognition

– In one of the most extreme bills of the last decade targeting transgender individuals, a new bill introduced on Thursday afternoon in Florida seeks to end all legal recognition of transgender people and mandates mass biological sex affidavits for both transgender and cisgender Floridians.

These affidavits would be necessary at the DMV for license renewals, enabling the state to gather records of the biological sex of all individuals in Florida who apply for driver’s licenses. The affidavits could allow the state to compile lists of transgender people with Florida driver’s licenses.

They could then be used to enforce other anti-trans laws in the state. Additionally, the bill would impact every law in Florida that references sex, effectively removing all legal recognition of transgender people in the state.

[schraubd]

In the Image of God

A recent study found that Jews are the demographic group most accepting of trans individuals in the United States.

When certain Christians assert a religious freedom right to discriminate against trans individuals -- particularly, a right to misgender them -- their argument typically proceeds something along these lines:

1. They believe every individual is created in the image of God.

2. Part of that image is the person's sex (and by extension, gender).

3. In particular, a person's sex/gender is inalterably assigned by God from conception.

4. They are forbidden from lying or falsifying God's choice.

Therefore, they say, they are religiously obligated to refer to people by their chromosomal sex, regardless of how they identify or publicly present. This religious duty, in turn, is used to press against rules and policies which require respectful treatment of trans individuals (including refraining from deliberately misgendering them, deadnaming them, and so on).

What's interesting about this framework is that a lot of it actually resonates with how I view the relationship of my Jewish faith and trans individuals -- with some crucial alterations. To wit:

1. I believe every individual is create in the image of God.

2.  Part of that image is the person's sex (and by extension, gender).

4. I am forbidden from lying or falsifying God's choice.

The major distinction, of course, comes in prong 3:

3. A person's sex/gender is not necessarily or inalterably assigned by God from conception, but rather can be part of a person's own process of discovering who they are. Where such self-discovery leads to a person to conclude they are trans, non-binary, or any other identity that departs from the sex they were assigned at birth, they are not deviating from God's plan. They are uncovering their authentic self as God has created them.

The result of this process is part of God's image. Those who refuse to accept it are not cleaving to God's image, they are rejecting it.

God's process of creation is not, in my understanding of Judaism, a set-and-forget sort of deal. It is not a matter of passively being puppeteered by a divine hand. It something we do together -- we are partners in creation. To deny the results of that partnership is, for me, a denial of God's plan and practice just as much as it is for adherents of other religious views who adhere to a more static and calcified notion of the role of the divine.

And so for me, and I suspect for many Jews, the religious freedom obligation pushes in the other direction. Many conservative states have, or are considering, laws which require (at least in certain contexts) non-recognition of trans identity. For Jews (and others) who share my religious precepts, these laws would force me to deny -- to bear false witness to -- a key attribute of how God created some of my peers. I do not believe -- and this is a deep, fundamental commitment -- that God's "image" of trans persons was for them to be locked in a body or sex or gender identity that clearly is not authentically theirs. When they find their full self, they are equally finding God's image of themselves.

Consistent with my lengthily expressed feelings on the subject, I suspect that what's good for the goose will not be good for the gander. Despite the clear parallel, liberal Jews who assert religious liberty rights to be exempted from laws seeking to enforce by state mandate a transphobic agenda will not meet with the same success enjoyed by their Christian peers.

Nonetheless, there is value in promoting this sort of framework, and in unashamedly asserting Jewish independence from hegemonic conservative Christian notions of true religiosity. It is not woven into "religion" that God's image requires rejection of trans individuals' full selves. That is a choice, an interpretation of some religions or of some who call themselves religious. Other religions, other religious persons, have a different interpretation of how to respect and dignify the facet of God that is in every one of us.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/vlsH4T2

[paper-mario-wiki]

genuine question coming from someone who is trying their best to support palestine but can't stomach condoning hamas's actions. how can you justify the murder of civilians and sexual violence that happened on october 7th? i know the fight for palestinian liberation is more important but they said orders to rape israeli women came from higher up in hamas. how can we support these people?

I will not be debating people in the notes of this post or in followup asks. I am not an authority on this subject, I am an individual giving commentary as I see it.

Do not attempt to follow this discourse up with intent to own me. You will waste your time and look stupid, I promise. Just unfollow and block me.

If your intent is genuine, and you are sincerely confused, then I will tell you that the first thing you must do is understand that your perspective of what happened on October 7th was not your own. It was made by a committee of communications officials and sold to you by news organizations to implant within you a version of what happened so that you would feel this precise feeling of hesitation, discomfort, and desire to withdraw yourself from the discussion. And that version is often full of blatant, contradictory, and easily fact-checkable lies. Israel knows that it doesn't have to make everyone support its cause to get away with it: if they can make enough people look away while they commit genocide, this too is a victory.

The sexual violence against Israeli women by Hamas has been vastly unsubstantiated, especially in comparison to the verifiable claims of IDF soldiers using sexual violence against Palestinian women. Go to any news articles and you will see "Claims of [number] of Israeli women raped by Hamas". You don't see firsthand reports, and you don't see consistent numbers, just people speaking for this group of unnamed and uncounted women. Further, many of the photos and videos of violence happening to women you see typically attached to these articles have turned out to be verified as Israeli soldiers assaulting Palestinian women during previous conflicts.

And that's another important note: previous conflicts. The date on everyone's mind has been October 7th, because that's when Hamas made an attack on the concert. Make no mistake, this was not the beginning of this conflict. And Palestine was not the aggressor.

Here is a graph of people killed as a result of the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine from 2002 to 2014. Notice, if you will, the yellow vs the pale blue. Can you guess which color represents which group? Just kidding you don't have to guess, the graph tells you.

After WW2, the European-Jewish population (which was 90% of the Jewish population at the time) emigrated to their holy land after over 1000 years. This land, now Palestine, had been under control by Muslim kingdoms since around 640 AD. The UN created a proposition following the Holocaust, submitted to create 2 states within Palestine: 54% would go to the Jewish population, and 46% would go to the Arab population. The Palestinian representatives rejected this proposal, but the Jewish representatives agreed, and over the next few years there would be a massive displacement of Muslims during what was called the Nakba; a cataclysmic event that saw 700,000 Palestinians (80% of them) displaced from the territory that the Israeli occupying force had claimed.

Since then there has been an ongoing pushing and cleansing of Palestinians over time. The remaining land that was not stolen during the 1948 mandate has been shrinking as Israel tightens its grip on the land and the people, exerting the force given to it by the United States to completely absorb the area. The process of which has been torturous and extraordinarily traumatic on the Palestinian population.

This map represents generations of murder, rape, and torture of Palestinians. A people who had their land forcefully taken from them, and have been made to be unwilling neighbors with their aggressors ever since. There are countless articles of IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens alike abusing Palestinians. Stealing their homes, starving their children, mocking their faith. This form of violent nationalism is born from Zionism, which was created by secular men, and has existed for less than a single century. The ideals of Zionism can only be seen out with the COMPLETE annihilation of the Palestinian people, something the terroristic Israeli force sees to go through with.

Hamas, at the moment, is fighting for the unconditional freedom of Palestine from their colonizers. We are seeing, in real time, the furious spirit of Palestine resisting what some of the worlds strongest military forces are trying to make to be their final death. In that impossible fight, they are seeing victories in urban warfare, and extreme coordination in guerilla tactics that we haven't seen since the Vietnam war. And during all of that, it has still been verifiably reported that they've been treating hostages well, many of them speaking positively about their time in captivity and expressing extreme dissatisfaction with Netanyahu's cabinet, something reflected in the staggering lack of direct interviews with hostages released.

Let's not mince words here, Hamas is absolutely killing people. Hamas is killing as many IDF soldiers as they possibly can, and yes, even some Israeli civilians have died. While it's true that these number significantly fewer than Palestinian civilian casualties, I'm not bold as to claim that that is not horrible. But this too is the fault of purposeful abuse of civilian population centers by the Israeli government. Ask yourself for a moment:

Why would Israel, being so aware of the horrifying whims of the savage Palestinians, allow a massive open-air concert to happen DIRECTLY on an unpatrolled border between Israel and Palestine? Why too does Israel insist on housing Civilian populations as close to Palestine as possible? They've already showed us: the military uses the deaths of their civilians as warrant to punish Palestinians in any way and to any extent they see fit.

Even if we're discounting the murderous occupier civilians shooting at Palestinian families and forcing them out of their life-long homes, it's still horrible to see otherwise incidentally innocent Israeli civilians die. Innocent death is inherently horrible. But even in a world where what happened on October 7th didn't happen, Israel intended to ensure the death, innocent or not, of all Palestinians who resist giving up their land. Hamas, Palestinian resistance groups, and now other Arab states have chosen to fight against this. Millions of people around the globe have chosen to unite and fight for them for this reason as well. It is why I support Palestine.

When a society lets mass atrocities happen in slow motion over decades, those atrocities become normal. And when those experiencing these atrocities fight back with economical blows of violence, it becomes a shocking disruption to the normal for those who haven't been paying attention, or were born into it; something the west relies on, and has packaged and sold as "terrorism" in the past few decades.

The modern Zionistic body of Israel has been a terroristic, murderous entity since its inception less than 100 years ago.

Do not let yourself be swayed into believing that murder, if done slowly enough, is not murder.

[txttletale]

the way people on this website moralize about wearing a mask is weird. i don't get it. have we all not had the 'individual action is not effective' discussion one million times about like putting bricks in your toilet. like yeah obviously you probably should wear a mask but as long as there are not actual enforced mandates it basically doesn't matter

[talkfastcal]

Ew not my daycare lifting the mask mandate

[netherfeildren]

Honey, Stomach, Mine ; 1. Genus: Tragedy

Series Masterlist ; Part 2.

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: Existence is a needful thing. Choice is fickle, nature inescapable. Run to the end of the world, Joel, all those things will still find you. 

She'll still come for you. 

-OR-

the A/B/O outbreak AU 

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics; Dystopian Society; Outbreak not Cordyceps AU; Light Angst; Slow Burn; Shocking Considering the Implications of Me and This Trope but Alas; Biologically Assigned Soulmates; Power Dynamics; Topping From the Bottom; Government Controlled Reproduction; Segregation of the Designations; Institutionalized Sexism; Vaguely Handmaidien Undertones; Incredibly Soft Despite the Tags; Be Not Afraid, Dear Reader!; Yearning; Emotional Hurt/Comfort; Competence Kink; Alpha Joel; Omega MC; Very Soft Joel; Older and Jaded Alpha; Young and Needy Omega; Age Gap; Size Difference; Size Kink

A/N: I've found there is an absolutely shocking lack of A/B/O in this fandom, and this is my contribution to begin rectifying that. I swear that despite the way the tags read, this is entirely and sickeningly sweet soft, comfort, caretaking fic.

Share thoughts, please. It's sort of a different one.

Word Count: 6.3K

Read on AO3

Tip Jar

Genus : Tragedy

To a one Mr. Joel Miller,

500 Sheahan Road

Clallam Bay, WA 98326

United States 

We are writing to inform you that as of January 8th, 2015 there remain two weeks until your designated omega’s twenty second birthday, and a year since she has come of age. We have made several attempts to contact you with no response. As mandated by the federal government, you must collect her by January 22nd, 2015 or she will be distributed to another individual of the designation alpha who would be willing to accommodate her. 

The omega’s evaluations are all up to date, and she has displayed pristine results in both health and behavioral tests. It is estimated that her first heat will occur soon, and we strongly encourage you to collect before the fever starts and our facility is forced to place her with another willing alpha that may see the process through. As she is part of the Federal Alpha/Omega Pairing Program, and is biologically paired to an alpha already, that being you, if not collected she would be placed in the bidding pool and distributed to the highest offer. 

Again, we strongly encourage you to contact our facility with a response on your decision as soon as possible so that we may prepare the omega. We would like to remind you that these creatures are delicate, and unexpected changes to their habitats and surroundings cause high levels of distress. It is of the utmost importance that we proceed in accordance with the omega’s nature. 

Enclosed is a brief note from your omega that she has requested to attach:

Dear sir,

I hope that you are well. I have been told that you have not decided if you will come for me, but I ask that you please do. I have been waiting, but they have told me I cannot wait anymore, and I do not know what will happen to me if you don’t come. I promise that I’ll be good if you do. 

And at the bottom, in a pristine and swirly pen, and kindly, her signature, there for him to see. The name of the woman, or girl, who seems to have taken all of Joel’s choices from him. He follows the letters with the nail of his thumb, scratching at the ink as if he could make it disappear, make the reality of this poor thing out there in the world waiting for him, disappear. 

At the outbreak of the designations, twelve years ago, there had been mass hysteria, mass chaos, a terrible uncertainty of how the world could continue on, segregated into biological designations as it had suddenly become. Thought to be a product of the dwindling population rates, some whispered a government experiment gone awry, a freak genetic mutation had begun to appear within the biological markers of certain people. 

Designations: Alpha, Beta, Omega. 

It was not that society had unfolded, lost sight of itself, it was more so that from one day to the next, a new and unknown sort of hierarchy had been established, those that were, those that were not. Those that could live their lives as they’d always done, unruled by their biological urges, and those now marked as something new and different and set by a different sort of mandates. 

Joel had been one of these people. 

The designations had become controlled, weaponized, systemized, almost immediately. Almost. Before the government had mobilized and taken stock and hold of the situation, there had been a momentary lapse of order. Chaos wearing the names and faces of the people he’d once known, people that should have been safe or protected, protective. The true nature of the dynamics were quickly revealed. Obvious: an unmated alpha in need of an omega was a volatile thing, quick to aggression, hungry for violence. Less so: an omega, once thought self sufficient, independent, autonomous, was found to be at times fragile, vulnerable, full of necessity. Both connected by that string of desperation that could only be soothed in a pairing of the two. The desperate drama of being no longer only yourself.

It should have been an obvious thing, the mutation, a byproduct of the dwindling population levels, reproduction rates, was in service of something that would correct this misdirection of nature. Alphas and omegas were, are, idealized pairings for one another in terms of reproduction, in terms of biological pairings. It should have been obvious that this would be wielded as a means of control. It should have been obvious that this was an untenable situation that would cast people into roles that left no choice for autonomy, for freedom. 

It should have been obvious to Joel, who almost immediately, and even though he had been well into adulthood, a father to a young daughter, presented as an alpha, growing pains once again this late into his life. It should have been obvious that this was a situation that should have necessitated greater care, vigilance, protection. After all, this was the role of an alpha. He should have listened to this new nature of his that was suddenly, demandingly, presenting itself, acted quicker, stronger, with more wisdom. But he’d failed, he’d continued to fail for years to come after that terrible night when the world had turned back to its base nature in a hedonistic attempt for the preservation of humanity. 

Alphas were immediately feared, ostracized, and above all else, obvious. A designation was not a thing a person could hide, especially not an alpha, the truth of their nature. Many were gunned down in the streets at the start, imprisoned, experimented on and sold, debased and tortured. They’d been caught, him and Sarah, separated from Tommy trying to escape the madness. She had, in her innocence and without designation, still only herself, still only his little girl, been caught in the crossfire of a world's desire to tame or trap something it could not understand. 

Joel had, in many and the worst of ways, been caught in the crossfire too. 

With time, years and the sort of suffering that can only be forced upon anything that is different or out of the norm, a system had been created. Government mandated programs, laws, registries that kept track of the designations. A hierarchy in which those that were essentially and biologically considered stronger than what a normal human should be, were ostracized, exiled, denigrated, muzzled, and those that would be considered weakest, left without any voice at all, without freedom either. 

The Federal Alpha/Omega Pairing Program had been established for the continued preservation and furthering of reproductive rates. A registry was created in which all those with the designation either alpha or omega had to present themselves on, biological markers determined, all choices stripped. The program served as a match making machine, when two biological markers presented themselves as compatible, as mates of one another, an omega was assigned to an alpha for keeping. To do with as they’d see fit. 

He had gotten word of her only last year. Twelve years of solitude, of nothing, of running from a girl with green eyes he’d not been able to protect and the reality of himself he detested, the what and why of who he was. He’d left Austin, wandered and hidden and groveled in the dirt like a worm until he’d finally found a quiet place to settle. A place alone, undisturbed. And for so long, he’d not been happy, surely, but he had been. Joel had been.

He looks down at the letter in his hand, dragging his thumbnail over the swoop and slope of her signature once again. This was a person who, as mandated by law or biology or fucking whatever, had been deemed as his. His other half, mate, ball and chain. The terrible reminder of what he really was and could not escape, in the form and shape of his perfect opposite. 

Last year, when he’d gotten word of her existence, that she’d reached the age of twenty one and was now ready and available for his retrieving, he’d balled up the letter and thrown it with such weightless force into the fireplace in his living room that the air filled wad of paper had fallen limp and nothingful just shy of the flames, rolling in the ashes and dust, coating the reality of this imposed, undesired fate in dark soot. He’d been so angry he’d gone out and howled at the moon like the beast the world would have themselves believe he truly was. 

He did not want to be an alpha. He did not want an omega. He did not want to live off the coast of Clallam Bay alone in this house he’d built with his bare hands because he had no other use of them now, no other function or purpose or meaning. He did not want it to be now, he wanted it to be twelve years ago. He wanted to still be a father. 

He did not want to be an alpha. 

He did not want an omega.

He crumples the letter in his fist, looking out at the bay over the edge of the cliffs from where the cabin is perched. From his spot on the deck he can see as far out as the sea allows, sight stopping suddenly as if the edge of the world had dropped off a ledge. Sometimes he longed, so, so badly, to go find that edge, to drop off it as well. He had only tried once. Never again. The grizzle of scar tissue at his temple, a testament to yet another one of his failures. 

The first summons had come two weeks before her twenty-first birthday, and he’d laughed, after the anger, he’d laughed. A girl-woman of only twenty one years, deemed of age, for the role the government or God had deemed her ready for, served up on a platter to him for his own ravaging. For the correction of what nature told was an anomaly that only their coming together could solve. It was sick, disgusting. He wanted no part of it. And so, despite the knowledge that this poor thing was out there, in some government facility, places they took omegas, many orphans, but also, oftentimes separating them from their families for so called safe keeping, just another word for kidnapping. Rearing and breeding and no choices, no choices for any of them ever. 

He’d ignored it, turned a blind eye and a revolted heart away from it all, and shirked the supposed responsibilities he owed this omega who he knew nothing about, who knew nothing about him. But nature is, after all, a terrible and inescapable thing. And not even so much the nature of his designation, although that did, unfailingly, play a part in his demise, surely, but the nature of his character, of Joel’s heart, that was the true heavy player. He was not the sort of man who could turn away from someone who’d rely on him, who’d need him. A responsibility. That was, he convinced himself, all he should or could see her as. And for a year there’d been a sort of tugging of a string from behind his navel, an umbilical cord connecting him to his ignored fate. He hated it all. He wanted nothing to do with any of it. He wanted to rot in his aloneness and misery and bitterness, fester in the fear that lived around him from the world. It’s why he’d come here, it’s why he’d exiled himself. Balanced on the tightrope border between the Salish Sea and the Makah Reservation on this high and pristine cliffside cut from the crust of the earth; he was left entirely alone, at peace with only his own chaotic demons to torment him. He wanted it this way, he wanted this; please, please, he’d already given away so much, lost so much of himself. Should he also be forced into this too? To sacrifice the terrible peace of his solitude to save this poor creature that was being forced on him. He wanted to say no, that he didn’t give a fuck, that what would happen to her could, it was no business of his. But those words… another willing alpha, bidding pool, highest offer… they made him see, not even red, black, black and devastating anger or rage or something horrible and base, and what could only be a product of mother nature railing against him for ignoring what he truly was. Something that whispered terrible words of mine, mine, fucking mine. A hiss he did not recognize, did not want to admit he recognized. 

He was old, weathered and beaten and past his prime. Unmated. At the end of his line and unmated and purposeless, and his bones were tired, but itching and clamoring within the confines of his skin that this was wrong, that he was wrong, and that he needed to right this immediately. 

That she’s waiting, and dear sir, I do not know what will become of me if you do not come. I promise that I’ll be good if you do. 

And so Joel goes to her because he knows she is waiting, because fate or purpose or nature is not a thing to be ignored forever. 

-

“It’s her birthday today,” the caretaker says, voice ascetic and cold and direct. Not a voice, Joel thinks, for soft things; cadence that has his teeth on edge, hackles raised. “You’ve arrived just in time. She’s been asking for you, and we’d just set her name in the pool, ready to release for auction tomorrow.” That black rage muddies the corners of his vision, and he focuses on the cold shock of the blank white hallway they’re making their way down. Hospital-like, barren and hard, this place, facility, prison, they keep them in, the omegas in the program. He feels slightly sick, uninhibitedly angry as if his teeth would fall out of his skull, as if he could throw himself to the ground as a child throws a fit, spew his anger for the world to see how much he does not want this, how vehemently he’s opposed to it all. 

“She may seem young and small, but she’s twenty two now. She’s ready, and she’ll take it as you wish. It’s what she was made for.” 

Joel seriously considers, just for a moment, killing the cretinous little man beside him. Take it, he says as if he has any right to speak of you taking anything that Joel would give you, as if it’s any of his business, anything he could ever understand if the beta stench oozing off of him is any indication. He hums nothing more than a grunt of acknowledgement. If he parts his teeth he’ll take out a chunk of flesh. He should behave, there are easily frightened things nearby. 

White doors with a small circular window at the center line the hall on either side, endlessly down the length of the seemingly endless corridor. The caretaker, white scrubs, pristine like the rest of everything here, and Joel feels suddenly huge and bestial and brutish, marring and dirtying this place that is supposed to be of peace and quiet for the fragile things locked inside. 

A terrible place that makes him desolately depressed. You’ve been here so long, and he had not come, and it’s all just one more tally of failure on his rap sheet. 

When they finally stop before a singular door, the number fourteen emblazoned in large black, bold print just beneath the small viewing window, Joel suddenly feels– he can’t say for certain, he doesn’t know, or doesn't want to acknowledge the truth of the voices and sounds ringing in his ears, but he knows, recognizes it for the sound of the moment Sarah died all those years ago. His past and present suddenly clashing to meet here in this antiseptic white void, before the door to this fate that’s clamored in quiet waiting for exactly a year today. The sound of her voice, calling his name, saying it hurts, Tommy, his shouts ringing loud and then ebbing soft and as lifeless as she was while the reality of what they were living came to pass before Joel too, could realize. He’d left too, his brother, ran from the truth of Joel at the first easy opportunity. And she’s just there, her voice and her eyes and the feel of her is just there in his mind, on the tip of the tongue of his memory, and then the man opens the door and then there you are. 

He feels worse now, hulking, deformed, malformed like he was born wrong. “I’ll give you a moment,” the man says low, that cold voice monotone and almost too quiet to bear now. Joel feels he needs something loud and shocking. He fears he won’t fit through the door. “It’s better if you meet for the first time without distractions. She knows you’re coming.”

He thinks he asks if you’re sleeping, he can’t be sure, but he feels the vibrations of his throat work, his jaw move as if it’d come unhinged, his tongue swollen in his mouth, gums fat and painful, full of bile and terrible memories, and he is a badly made thing in need of some goodness in this moment. And then a shift of the small lump beneath the blankets, the reality of the moment snaps into focus, he steps inside the white box cage you’re kept in. The door shuts behind him, and then it is only him, the thing he would not be, and you, the thing he would not want. 

He doesn’t decide it until he finally peers into your eyes, that he can’t, will not, keep you. 

Wide, luminous and wet, but not afraid, wholly curious, peering up at him from above the edge of a thick wool blanket. Something drab and gray and stiff looking that immediately sets him on edge, brings that anger back, just the simple sight of the blanket. The two of you stare at each other in silence, the weight of that thing that tells of what you are, sitting heavy between the two of you as he looks down at you from his great height, presence that should be intimidating and cowing, looming over your prone and small form on the bed. But despite his stance, something swelling within him causing him to puff up like an angry dog and want to bear his teeth at you, despite the curtain of tears in your eyes, there’s nothing of the stench of fear. 

He shuts his eyes to the sight of you, huffing long and bullish through his nose, mistake, the scent of you, God, help me, and he listens to the rustle and shift of the blankets, opens his eyes to see a little nose peeking out from beneath the gray, drab thing to sniff primly at the air he’s now filling with his presence. 

Soft and warm and woman, the smell of a cunt that belongs to him. That’s what it is at its basest. More complexly: vanilla, bergamot, juniper berries, sweat and fever and salt. Taking a plunge off the cliffside, bypassing the sharp teeth of rocks that would kill you, waiting for the dark ice shock of sea and finding nothing but molten life. This is what you smell like. 

Worst of all, there is something in you that smells of him. His, yes, but not what he means, not his, him. Something that smells of recognition, like the two of you are the same. 

Something chained inside of him rattles at the bars of its cage, desperate to be let out and quenched. 

He steps back, frightened at your movement, at the reality of what the two of you are, so obvious here in this cage, at your perking up, your recognition of who and what he is, what he’s come for. You don’t speak, but you tell him. You wriggle beneath the covers, shimmying to turn and face him more fully, still clutching the blanket up high over your mouth, still covering half of your face, and he wants to bark at you to let him see, that he needs to see, but he grinds his teeth together. Molars going to dust down his throat, muscle wrapped around his mandible strung so tight he fears the fibers of it might burst and pop. 

You settle on your side facing him now, and then something to beguile him, to bring him to his knees muzzled and obedient and calm, the sweetest, sultry little crooning cry. Something provoking, alluring, something to beckon him to you in surrender and acceptance and welcome, come from your chest up your throat to his ears. He jerks back at the sound, your big eyes still expectant and wet but demanding now. I am here waiting for you. I have been here waiting for you. Come now. He steps back to your bedside, a too small, too stiff metal railed cot he’s going to wrap around that fucking guard, caretaker, idiot, whatever he is when he comes back, falls to his knees, and your little fingers peek out and up and over the edge of the blanket now. And you surprise him doubly, tenfold, more than he can comprehend – but he already decided he will not keep you, he already made up his mind – when you say: “You came. You remembered me.”

He could never have forgotten.

A low hum, a sound to make your eyelids flutter and your legs shift beneath the heavily draped blankets. “Today’s your birthday, sweetheart, is it? Would you like to come home with me as your gift?” 

He could never have forgotten.

-

The house that the large man who you’d waited your whole life and then a year for, brings you to – and you can’t be entirely sure, for you’ve so little experience or knowledge – but from what you can think you’re feeling now, from what you can decide, is lovely. 

He had taken you in a car, a truck, you like the sound of the word, —ck, —ck, —ck, and driven a long while, through the big city which you’d seen little of, between forest and beside sea, and then finally up a long and winding road and more forest, more trees and green than you’d ever seen in your entire life, until you’d come to a cliffside, the backyard a drop off of air and rock and endless dark water, and a small house perched just there at the edge. Wooden slats, weather beaten and salt lashed, a copper sloped roof, and two pert chimneys, despite the not large area of the house, cabin. It looks, very much, as if it had grown straight from the cliff rock, sprouted by the forest, strong bones that spoke resolutely of remaining where they were no matter how hard the wind howled. 

“How did it get here?” You ask the man, alpha, who’s name is Joel who has finally come for you after a life and a year of waiting. 

“I made it,” and his voice is rough and demanding of attention, demanding of you, even if you don’t know, although, you do understand, what it is he’s demanding. 

And you think, yes, of course. It looks a little, a lot, like him. Obvious, that it came from him. 

It would be easy to think that you’re nothing but young and stupid and untried. Just a little omega kept in a cage. But you feel, after this life, not life, of being you and the thing you are, that you’re none of those things despite it all. You had lived, you had been out in the world at one time, even if briefly, even if only as a child, green and inexperienced and innocent, and although you still remain all those things, you had been out there at one point. You had never had a mother or a father, dead when you were an infant, killed in the outbreak, but you had lived with your aunt, your mother’s, many years older,  sister, until you’d been ten years old. So you see, and he should see too, this man now before you, this alpha, that you were untried and inexperienced and young compared to him, but you’d had a decade of real life, even if it was the life of a child, even if afterwards it was a not life, but the before, that counted very, very much to you and so deserved respect and acknowledgement. And he should see that, although you do not know, you do understand.

After your aunt had died, and they’d taken you, first to the orphanage, and then to the place for omegas, after you’d started to mature and develop, perhaps that real life had ended. Or been put on hold, waiting for him, this alpha who seems, for all intents and purposes and from what you can gather from his sullen silence and dark looks, nothing like pleased at your presence here now. But then there was the: today’s your birthday, sweetheart, is it? And yes, yes it is your birthday. 

It’s your birthday, and you’re free. And yes, you’d lived the not life in the white box for so long, and yes, you are, in fractions, so afraid and knowing so little of the world, but you do know that you want to live and to see the sky. 

You want to see the sky every single day. 

His big clunking truck rolls to a slow stop before the house, a wide deck wrapping around the entire boxed thing of it, and he starts to move, unclipping his belt, grabbing the bag he’d brought with him stuffed with his clothes he’d promptly tucked and folded you into when he’d shuffled you into the cabin of his truck, and you’d been all thank you, sir, to which he’d given a shake of his head, only Joel. Only Joel. No other words, no other directions, only his hands pulling your strings like a puppet. You had accepted it for the chance to feel his touch, to familiarize yourself with the closeness of him. 

You want to know things. You want to know him. 

He’d barely said a word the entire drive here, but you could be patient, and they’d prepared you for this, after all. They’d prepared you long and well and told you all they thought you’d need to know. So you find yourself, and not at all shockingly, as you’d waited so long for this, for him, for freedom and the sky, and look, now there’s even sea too, not even a little bit afraid, only anticipatory in bated breath, stuttering heart, excitement. 

You had never seen the sea before, and you want to know things. You want to know him. 

He jumps heavy and thudding form the truck, and you start to shift, something suddenly frantic and clawing rolling in your chest when you realize he’s leaving the confines of the small space the two of you had found yourselves encased in together, the warm heat from the vents blowing his smell, his smell, all around you. You’d never encountered anything like it before. Salted vetiver and warm cardamom, something sweet and musked and heavy like what your fingers taste like after you’ve pet long and needy at that soft wet place between your legs when the hurt was so tight you felt nothing would sate it. It’s a scent that you think would devastate to have taken away now that you’ve tasted it. And it’s everywhere as the two of you’d sat in his staunchly imposed silence on the truck ride to this place he was bringing you to, his home at what seems like the end of the world. It’s in your nose and down your throat, heavy and cloying and sweet on your tongue, wrapping around your waist and covering your skin and your hands so that you’d even pressed your palms entirely over your face and rubbed yourself like a cat, coating yourself in him. 

The door slams, bringing you out of his scent induced reverie and back to the present, and you scramble to undo your buckle too, even though when he’d clipped it for you he’d very sternly said to not take it off, desperate to follow him wherever he’d go. But you realize quickly he’s coming around the front of the truck to your door, and then he’s there pulling it open and letting in a biting gust of wind come off the sea and up the cliffside to slash you across the face with its icy rancor. You shiver, teeth clattering and chattering in your mouth, trying to gather the blankets he’d cocooned you in, his too big, so soft clothes, more tightly around yourself, and find your feet. 

He gives a rough but soothing noise, and easy as anything, plucks you up and out of the seat and into his arms, kicking the door closed behind him as he goes. Into his arms. You hold yourself stiff and wide eyed, chewing on the tips of your frozen cold fingers, and staring at him this closely, it’s shocking. Large, had been the first thing. Tall and broad and thick the way they’d said alphas are. This you had expected. The rest, you had not. The eyes, you think, more than anything. His eyes, a strange mix of hazel and brown, but dark. Eyes, that even in your greenness, you can recognize as sad and angry. And the creases at the corners, between his brows, the gray threaded through the lush, dark curls and at the corners of the hair along his jaw. He looks like he would be someone’s father. The patch of bare skin, heart shaped, amongst the whiskers. He’s beautiful, and unthinkingly, or perhaps entirely intentional, you stick out one of your saliva soaked fingers and poke him gently there, only a small prod, to feel what the heart feels like. His gait stops instantly, that permanent frown he’d worn since you’d first laid eyes on him, deepening. “Don’t do that,” he gruffs, continuing his steps up the porch now, the dark, heavy boots you’d noted as he’d taken you from the facility falling thunk, thunk on the wooden boards beneath. He’d not given you shoes of your own. And at his tone, the grumpy look, you have the inexplicable urge to laugh. To laugh at him. Surly, you want to tease, but swallow it, itchy fingertips back into the warmth of your mouth to stop yourself from touching again.

Another gust blows against the two of you as he somehow transfers you, cradled into only one arm, to pull the jingle of keys from his pocket, and you’re jarred with painful shivers, huddling closer into the unbelievably broad expanse of his chest, the unbelievably steaming warm slab. At the touch of your cheek against his collarbone you realize all he’s wearing is a simple, green flannel, no coat, nothing warm. “Aren’t you cold?” It seems suddenly, supremely important you ask, head shooting back up. He peers down his nose at you, finally getting the door open, and his eyes are a very peculiar sort of dark, you cock your head at him, a very strange sort of creature this man is, who’s come to collect you, who you’d waited all your life and a year for. 

“I’m fine,” he says. 

You don’t believe him.

He sets you down on a large, dark leather sofa, chocolate, the hide smooth and worn and lived in. The rest of the house, not only a house, also a home, for it’s obvious in the way of his things, the way they’re arranged and fixed and the way they too live here, not only exist here. I’ll be like that too, you think. It’s all comfortable, it’s all warm, like a den and a place to relax and be protected, juxtaposed by the sight beyond the large windows, nothing but dark, violent sea as you’ve never before seen. 

He really had found a perch at the edge of the world, brought you here to perch as well. 

There’s a large fireplace, inlaid with large slabs of dark stone and thick beams of wood, and yes, this too is also obvious in a peculiar and particular way. The house very much looks like it was made by the hands of a single man in some way that you cannot specifically say, but can obviously see the truth of. He made this house, and then he came for you and now he’s brought you here, and you feel, suddenly, so pleased and warm and right. Everything feels so, so right. You sigh dreamily, suffused at once with a tight, deep heat at the pit of your belly, the scent of him everywhere, bubbles floating up from the bottom of you and seeming to pop out your ears. You lean back into the deep couch, wiggling this way and that, rubbing your bottom into the soft cushions to snuggle up, bringing the neck of his sweater he’d put you in up to your nose to breathe deep and long. 

He’s moving around, arranging things this way and that, a thick log in the slumbering coals, a pillow here, another blanket atop you, not looking at you, setting a wide berth once he’s settled the throw, not talking to you. It’s fine, let him do as he pleases and needs, you’ll sit here and watch. You can tell he doesn’t like to talk, that words cost him something, and you know so little, but you understand this. Words do cost something, truths, the truth of your before life and your not life. The truth of those realities cost. So, yes, you understand, and he doesn’t have to talk if he doesn’t want to yet. And looking at him, you realize that everything inside of you feels soft and bruised and little. And yet, despite all that, ready, in want and need of him. Ready to be big. 

Joel.

You must say the word out loud, his name, for he stops and finally turns to face you. There is something vibrational within him. Different. You’ve never seen a creature as such. You’d never seen an alpha before, not since you’d presented, you’ve never been around one. The caretakers were all always betas, people who would not be affected by the omega’s presence and fluctuations. 

He swallows once, twice, twitches and jerks and heaves a big sigh. He’s so full of energy as you, suddenly, in opposition, feel so sleepy and drowsy and ready to close your eyes and only feel warm and relaxed. You like his house, you might love it, even. 

Your eyelids droop low, slow blinks, and you watch his face fold into a frown. You want to laugh, he does that so much. They’d said that alphas could have big tempers, that they could be brash and aggressive and loud, but that the omega would naturally temper that. You think it may be true because as you watch him through the weave of your lashes, his frown deepening the longer he stares at you slowly drowsing on his couch which you hope he’ll never make you move from, the jitters and the shakes and the trembling that he’d seemed, just a moment ago, to be so full of, begin to quietly abate. 

He takes a step toward you, another and another until his shins meet the edge of the sofa, and you snuggle deeper into the cushions, making yourself into as little a ball as possible, so full of sleepiness. 

“How do you feel?”

“I like your house so much,” you slur, head drooping, lashes drooping. 

He clicks his tongue, makes that rumbly noise you think is an alpha thing because it has your eyes suddenly clicking open, sleep haze clearing momentarily so that you can look up at him again, and he’s looking at you so peculiarly. You scrunch your nose up at him, there’s no need to look at you so, you’re only an omega, only a little tired, nothing to stare at so strangely. 

“I’m–” he clears his throat, makes that rumble, growl, huff sound again, “I’m glad you like it. I wanted you to be comfortable while you’re here.”

And oh, he’s so nice, you tell him, and, “I am. I’m so comfortable.” You melt further into the couch, and he crouches down to peer at you more directly, pulling a soft pillow from the opposite end and tucking it under your head, the large, rough cup of his paw cradling your skull, big fingers weaving through your hair. He arranges you so gently, like he’d take care of you. Like you’re here, finally, finally, you’re here to be taken care of. 

It’s what they’d said would happen, and you’d waited so long. You’d waited too long to be let out of the white box, for him to come, to see the sky. And now there was so much; of him, of the house, of the sky, of your whole life and the sea.

You nuzzle your head into his big hand, the heat of it searing your scalp, your ear tucked into his palm. “Brave girl,” he hums. He has such a deep voice, a good voice for an alpha, you think, a very good voice. You feel it vibrating in your toes and in your eyelashes and in your belly. “You’ve been through a great deal, haven’t you?” You want to say yes, you want to remind him that you’d waited for him for so very long, and that when you woke up, if you remembered, you’d be very cross with him for taking so long to come for you. 

“You rest now,” he says. “It’s all alright now.” Yes, a very good voice.

2. More Intelligent Than a Face

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