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a-very-fond-farewell · 4 years ago

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The forbidden crack! Untamed prompts: 24/?

CLAMP AU n.3 [chengyu? yucheng? (JC/MXY) edition. don’t...question my taste bruh]: “Somewhere, sometime.”

[tw eating disorders mentioned + tw suicide mention (body sacrifice)]

[ok fam. ok. I get it. I would basically ship JC with a rock if it meant I could play with my crack AUs. but I have solid evidence for this one. I promise you.]

[so, “Kobato” from CLAMP is possibly my favorite series from them. it’s 6 volumes long, roughly 40 chapters (and I only recently found out there was an epilogue...even though it was not there in my published version of the series. bc your local cryptid did in fact buy the entire thing in the flesh, that’s how much I love it)]

[in this AU I’ll change some things for the sake of consistency, but I suggest you read it bc the hurt/comfort and pining is enjoyable...so...if you read my silly AU I’m afraid I will spoil the plot for u :( and that’s the last thing I want to do...I understand if you decide to go read the manga and skip my prompt. it’s ok, I’m fine, go and have fun ;-;]

[if you kept reading, hi :D]

[now. am I uncomfortable with certain common tropes in CLAMP’s work in general? yes. especially the age gaps between some of the characters, some of which are not adults. hence the reason behind the changes in this AU. but! the aesthetics fam. the beautiful drawings. the cute outfits. (*ﾉ▽ﾉ)

do you see these?? how cute would Mo XuanYu look in these fam?? I honestly hc him enjoying skirts and feminine outfits a whole lot, but you can imagine him with pants and they would be just as cute. my favorite one is the second from the left btw.]

(imagine Mo XuanYu like this btw and check out the fancomic by the same op! an anon suggested it to me a while ago and now I’m hooked!)

[other mangacaps bc you need visuals:

yeah. angry boy meets bby with a mission to accomplish, bonding over their inferiority complex. yep. I only love the nicest things in life. that’s me.

also look at my baby girl ;-; so cuTe]

[the title is from the ost from the anime series, “Itsuka dokoka de” (check it out!). the anime feels more cohesive than the original manga, possibly bc the pacing is handled a little bit better (since the manga was cut short and the end felt a bit sloppy, but the emotional engagement was still good). and I remember being 17 and crying like a baby when this song came in. if you don’t have time for the manga binge the anime instead! there are plot holes in both of them and the stories are different but still both very enjoyable if you like soft things and angsty vibes.]

[enjoy!]

When YanLi saw him for the first time in front of her door, at the beginning of spring, she thought XuanYu was too pretty and too young for his own good. Sitting across her on the floor, a tea set between them as he politely answered her questions, the boy couldn’t have looked older than sixteen yet he assured her he was of age and well into adulthood. Which seemed pretty difficult to assess, not with the way he dressed: cute button down, beret slightly askew on top of his pretty head and an old-looking suitcases in hand. She didn’t mention the stuffed black rabbit poking out from the front pocket of his luggage, which seemed more of a comfort thing than a reliable source of company.

Moreover, Jin Ling seemed transfixed by him, toddling his way towards their guest asking for cuddles... something her son had never done in front of strangers.

XuanYu refused to give his last name, nor did he have an ID he could show her, nor did he seem worried about how strange that was. And YanLi knew ZiXuan would have been against it, but she couldn’t leave the kid looking all over Lanling for a place to stay... so she gave him the only available room in their rundown pension.

She only hoped Jiang Cheng would be a nice neighbor and leave the kid alone. Who knew what horrors XuanYu was running away from, after all.

When XiChen heard from YanLi of her new tenant, he would have never guessed the kid to look so naive. Not in a bad way, mind you. But his smiles, for how genuine they seemed to be, looked a little bit too big. A little bit too strained not to be a distraction tactic from his part. Or maybe XiChen had lived too long surrounded by fake smiles and closed off people to not worry.

That’s probably why he gave XuanYu a job when YanLi asked him to look over the kid. More to prove himself there were still trustworthy people in the world than to give the younger man a chance. He couldn’t even pay him a full salary, not with the debt collectors breathing on his neck as he tried to run his late mother’s kindergarten.

But maybe that would have been enough for now. A starting point for something better, something new.

A-Yuan had always known the kindergarten used to be an orphanage back in the days, but now he had reached an age where doubts stuck to his head instead of being forgotten with the passing of time. Wen Qing and A-Ning were always busy -be it in the hospital or in university- and A-Yuan didn’t know if they loved him enough to keep him. Ever since granny had passed away he had wondered, day after day, when his cousins would have left him behind for good.

He was thinking about such things when he first met XuanYu, on the man’s first day on the job as a teaching assistant. A-Yuan was mulling over his sadness when XuanYu had come to his rescue, asking him what was wrong... before enthusiastically praising his cousins for working so hard after hearing they were late to take A-Yuan home. XuanYu stayed with him and they played on the swings as they waited for A-Ning to come pick him up, apologizing profusely.

On the way home, his cousin held him close and kissed his forehead as he asked him if he had had fun with the new teacher. And A-Yuan felt less doubtful afterwards.

After hearing the story from her brother, Wen Qing had made it her job to look into XuanYu and his weird approach to life in general. She took every opportunity she could grasp to spy on the younger man, lunch breaks be damned. She needed to confirm if the kid was a trust worthy person or a runaway child pretending to be older than what he actually was. Well, maybe tailing an unsuspecting young man on the streets of Lanling in scrubs and sunglasses would be considered a bit much, she could admit as much. But it was the thought that counted, no?

Her friend MianMian told her to knock it off and talk to the kid like a normal human being, but the truth was that... well, XuanYu was really too weird to be considered normal. He seldom put himself in dangerous situations without much care, such as picking up a random (and still lit) cigarette from the ground just to give it back to the person who had “accidentally dropped it”. Other times he would cross a road without looking left and right first, risking to be run over by cars at every corner. He never, never, fumbled with a phone and he frequently talked to himself... sometimes even directing his words to that creepy stuffed rabbit of his.

No thank you, Wen Qing felt safer behind light poles and crumpled newspapers held upside down. Even if that made her look sketchy as fuck.

Wen Ning made sure to arrive on time to pick A-Yuan up after that time, often chatting with XuanYu as they waited for his baby cousin to retrieve his backpack and raincoat. It was refreshing to speak with the younger man, no matter how weird he acted sometimes. Like that time A-Yuan asked him to tie his shoe-laces for him and XuanYu didn’t know how to do it. Or that time they caught the man taking a nap on the floor in the middle of the school hall. Or that time XiChen had ordered a cake for one of the kids’ birthday and XuanYu didn’t seem to know how to sing the birthday song.

Wen Ning had no place to judge, after all. But XuanYu’s smiles felt like balm on his heart. And if his sweet voice followed Wen Ning home as he bounced A-Yuan in his arms, well. Nobody needed to know that.

The last thing Meng Yao would have expected to hear that summer day when he called the kindergarten was a voice so different from XiChen’s. Startled, he had confusedly asked if the kid worked there and how so, given that the school definitely couldn’t afford to hire anyone. He ought to know. He was the debt collector.

But the kid apologized, introduced himself, and then explained XiChen had offered him a part-time job out of kindness more than out of need. The idiot. XiChen should have remembered who his money belonged to instead of taking charity cases left and right.

But when Meng Yao said as much to naive XuanYu, the other vehemently protested, surprising the debt collector with strong opinions on how he shouldn’t underestimate other people’s intelligence and kindness in the first place.

Meng Yao laughed out at that, genuinely so.

There was more to that kid XuanYu than what one would have expected.

Nie HuaiSang caught a first glimpse of the mystery man only in late summer, when XuanYu stepped into his cake shop to look at the display. His coworker MianMian seemed to recognize the younger man immediately, greeting him by saying they had a friend in common, namely Wen Qing. The kid merely tilted his head and answered he had never formerly met “Miss. Wen” and that he only knew who she was from what the woman’s younger brother had told him about her.

MianMian shrugged and smiled at him.

To which HuaiSang asked him what they could do for him and XuanYu... just... stopped working. Saying that he had wondered if he could do something for them instead. Apparently, Wen Ning had let it slip they were currently understaffed and needed a hand to deliver their sweets.

Delighted, MianMian set him to work, no matter how many times HuaiSang assured her they didn’t need to force the kid to help them... also because they didn’t actually have the means to pay him in kind. But XuanYu refused money altogether, simply asking them to let him help.

To their amusement (and horror) XuanYu didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, so he insisted on covering the deliveries by foot in the neighborhood instead.

HuaiSang called XiChen on the phone that same evening, asking him to give the kid some slack the following day. And maybe buy him some balm for blisters as well.

Jin Ling was young but he wasn’t stupid. Turning three had made him wiser, he knew as much. So he knew XuanYu was magical. He just did.

His pretty-gege talked with stuffed animals, always wore nice things, and kept in his satchel bag a vial filling up with magical candies every time he did something nice for others. A-Ling had seen it with his own eyes, that time XuanYu had put a plaster on his scrapped knee and blew on it to make the pain go away: the golden candy had appeared in the bottle out of nowhere and XuanYu had asked him to keep the secret.

And A-Ling may have been young, but he wasn’t a snitch.

No sir.

ZiXuan eventually stumbled upon their new tenant even though YanLi had tried everything in her power to prevent it. He was very displeased with her: taking a scrawny kid in, cutting his rent in half merely because he couldn’t afford to pay the room in full. Utter nonsense.

No matter how much this kid XuanYu praised A-Ling’s personality or YanLi’s cooking, no matter how much he smiled and made himself look accommodating and unthreatening. ZiXuan didn’t work pro bono even at the firm, let alone for his wife’s business.

Yet, when he asked to be let inside the kid’s room to formally discuss the terms of his contract (and tell him to pack his things and leave at the end of summer), ZiXuan was left speechless. There was no bed, no table or chairs. The fridge wasn’t humming and the AC wasn’t working. The only things he could see were the younger man’s clothes neatly folded in his open suitcase or hanging by the window to dry. No books, no snacks, no nothing.

Usually tenants brought their things in right off the bat, their stuff mailed in within a week after moving in. YanLi was very particular about it, she would have not overlooked something like that. But maybe she had been too busy with A-Ling these past few months and hadn’t noticed the kid was actually too poor to even breathe.

And now that he looked at him, XuanYu looked suspiciously skinny.

Was he sleeping on the floor? Didn’t he have covers for the colder season? Was his fridge broken, empty, or -gods forbid- purposely left with no power because the kid couldn’t afford the electricity bill?

“Do you actually live like this?”

XuanYu didn’t answer to that, but smiled anyway. It looked sinister in a way ZiXuan couldn’t explain, afraid of the things such a young man may or may not have endured in the past. And was maybe still enduring now.

The following day ZiXuan gave the kid their spare futon they bought in Japan on their honeymoon. They never had guests anyway and they could afford to pay for a tenant’s electricity bill every now and then, they weren’t poor.

Certainly YanLi would have agreed with him on the matter.

JinGy saw it. He did! He wasn’t lying! Xuan-ge was there, surrounded by darkness and shadows, looking over the children during their nap time, only a sliver of light coming from the door left ajar... casting shadows on half of his pretty face.

And he saw him reviving that stuffed black rabbit he always had on him.

The rabbit just rose on his hind legs and turned his head up and started whispering things to Xuan-ge, who nodded every now and then in deep though.

JinGyi had read about how paper-man talismans had been stuff of legends in the past. His books spoke of ancient times in which even corpses could be brought back to life. How even animals could turn into godly beasts if enough resentful energy polluted them. But he would have never thought magic could actually be real and so easy to play with.

And Xuan-ge had looked nothing but beautiful as he was talking to the stuffed animal, humming softly under his breath.

When Jiang Cheng dropped out of university for the second time, YanLi didn’t say anything and instead welcomed him back in his old room. So much for enrolling in law school at twenty-three, uh? ZiXuan would have been disappointed in him like the first time that had happened in his bachelor anyway, no point in avoiding the man. It was autumn anyway: it was either going back to the apartment complex or look for a new flatmate. But the school housing had rightfully kicked him out after dropping out in the middle of the academic year, so there would have been little hope for him to find a new place anytime soon.

What he did not expect to find was a new tenant living next door.

Sleeping in front of the door, clutching a satchel bag and a fucking stuffed animal on his lap.

Jiang Cheng jolted him awake and took in the sight of his shoulder length hair, his long lashes and sleepy eyes and thought he looked ridiculous. Wearing a silly hat and moccasins, purple shadows under his eyes, a confused expression on his worn out face. When asked what the hell he was doing there, sleeping out of his room instead of inside of it, the younger man said he had forgotten his keys inside that morning.

He was clearly an idiot, so Jiang Cheng walked away and returned to his room after more than a year away. If someone asked him who had rung YanLi to bring the spare keys to help the idiot he would have shrugged at them and shut the door in their face.

He didn’t have time for that, he had to think how to ask XiChen to let him back to work at the school the following day.

A-Qing had seen many things in life, met many horrible people, dealt with the scum of the scum... but she had yet to meet XuanYu.

A menace. A hurricane. A fool. The amount of times she had had to scoop him up from the ground after he had clumsily slipped on invisible bananas and such should have earned her a honorary title for outstanding citizen. It’s been months since his arrival and the kids had already learned to make way whenever they saw him. He inspired fear even in their tiny heads, honestly. What a fellow teaching assistant, really.

She was just there to score brownie points for his electives and internship program to become a social service worker, that was true. But she cared about the kids enough to know she had to do something about that. The children loved XuanYu and they were this fucking close to either worship him like a small deity or criminal and something ought to be done.

The last thing she would have expected to see, however, was Jiang Cheng coming back so soon. Crawling back from university to ask to work there, wagging his tail like the lovesick dog he was. She could easily imagine what the older student would have said to XiChen, something on the line of ��you know goddamn well I’m not doing it for the money. I grew up here, I don’t want to see this place crumbling down. I’m definitely not doing it because I’m in love with you and seeing you sad makes me want to gag.”

Well, maybe the last part could be considered artistic license from her part, but judging by what she could overhear behind XiChen’s office door... yep. She had definitely nailed the part about being fond of the ex-orphanage and for the rest... the sentiment was there. The pining bastard.

“Do you need anything, A-Qing?”, XuanYu asked her out of no-fucking-where, startling her as she pretended to dust off the floor very close to a door. Cheek-plastered-on-it kind of close.

“Nothing. Mind your business,” she answered, flustered as fuck.

XuanYu couldn’t be that naive, he knew what he was fucking doing. His creepy little smile so similar to the one the debt collect always had on his face. No wonder XiChen had fallen for such a tricky bitch.

“Then will you help me find JinGyi? He doesn’t want me to help him with his project for the festival and went into hiding again.”

There, that smile and knowing gaze. Judging poser. He looked much older than his alleged twenty years. He knew what he was fucking doi...

“You?!”

Jiang Cheng’s honest-to-gods screech pulled A-Qing out of her thoughts. She turned and had to witness XiChen amiably patting Jiang Cheng on the head as their boss explained him how XuanYu worked there.

“It’s been almost six months now, he’s a very valuable kid and helped out around here while you were studying.”

Jiang Cheng was both livid and red with longing, because his touch-starved ass was all over that hand patting him platonically on the head. He was also angry, which was default for him... but there was something else underneath. Something promising in the way he stared XuanYu down.

Maybe A-Qing could win some candy by betting with the kids about such unexpected turn of events.

ZiZhen believed A-Yi. If his friend had told him the new teacher assistant was a witch then he was right. So they had started researching witches at the school, but only found a couple of colored books on the matter, mostly useless. All but one, telling the story of a nanny called Mary Poppins... some western thing.

But everything checked for the most part. The hat was there, every day a different one, but ultimately never leaving XuanYu’s head. The umbrella was not, but both him and A-Yuan had seen their gege with a parasol once and that was enough. His satchel contained infinite amount of things, from sweets to possessed stuffed animals, like a qiankun bag from the legends! He talked with things as if he could control them.

Well, even the teacher sometimes tried to convince the printer to work with sweet words, gently coaxing it back to life... maybe that was just how adults functioned. Even his dad would ask the fridge where his favorite cake had disappeared sometimes. Adults were weird.

Fuck Lanling. Rain day and night, autumn planning everyone’s demise by flooding every bloody year. Xue Yang was over it.

He took a random umbrella from the rack by the door of the convenience store and left without a second thought, already wondering what he could say to convince XingChen to offer him dinner somewhere new. The man wasn’t married anymore after all, so Xue Yang could technically have his way with him now, right?

“Excuse me!”

Xue Yang was not in the mood for people calling him out on his bullshit that night, but he turned anyway and saw the weirdest thing. A young man roughly his age, maybe a year or so younger, drenched from head to toe after rushing to him. He was panting, clutching a plastic bag full of cleaning supplies from the convenience store Xue Yang had just left.

“I believe you mistakenly took my umbrella,” the other said, pretty face framed by wet hair sticking to his forehead and cheeks.

Amused, Xue Yang shut the clear plastic umbrella he had “mistakenly taken” and held it at arm’s length by the handle, directing the pointy edge to the other like a sword. Hell if he was going to get wet himself, he needed to prove something to the idiot. He could handle a bit of rain for the sake of being dramatic.

“You want it back?” Xue Yang asked, rising his chin and arching an eyebrow at the other. The man nodded, holding his now wet beret in place on top of his head as if he was more worried about it falling on the ground than keeping his crown dry.

“I knew it was someone else’s when I took it.”

“But...?”

“And what’ll you give me back for it? What are you gonna do about it?”

This should have taught him not to mess with him: he didn’t even have to use his business tone to make the other take a step back. Meng Yao, the bastard, had taught him smiles went a long way in dealing with stupid people after all.

“Right, if I take it from you... you won’t have one to go back home with.”

Uh?

“Wait here. I’ll go buy you one at the convenience store. I’ll be back.”

Uh??

The idiot actually run back to the store and purchased him a fucking umbrella. And Xue Yang was twice as stupid because he waited for him to come back, startled as he was. The idiot was smiling megawatt bright when he came back as well, what the fuck?

The sick bastard extended the clear plastic umbrella to him like Xue Yang had done earlier, but he held it by the middle, as if surrendering his weapon. It was fairly similar to the one Xue Yang had stolen anyway, why bother asking for his umbrella back?

“Did your dead mother give this particular one to you or something?”

The bite in his words only mildly deterred the other man, who pressed his lips together before forcing an even bigger smile on his face.

“No. It’s pretty cheap. But it’s mine. It’s the first thing I bought with my money.”

Xue Yang left after that. With the stolen umbrella. Because he was still a scumbag and not a sentimental asshole. But he was very quiet that evening when XingChen treated him to some fancy takeout on his couch while lovingly drying Xue Yang’s hair with a towel.

Nothing made sense anymore.

Qin Su worried over Jiang Cheng. He was her best worker, but she knew for a fact that he had a million part-time jobs in town and she didn’t want to overwork him. She also knew he would give all of his hard-earned money to XiChen anyway. All to pay a stupid debt. The huge lovesick idiot.

Was he the fastest delivery driver? Yes. Was he the most well behaved of his staff? Not even close. But he was respectful enough to work over his issues and she trusted him with doing his job at the end of the day.

So when she found a young man in a frilly outfit waiting for her on the lobby of her shop asking for Jiang Cheng... well, she was pleasantly surprised.

He introduced himself as XuanYu and held a lunch box in his hands, saying Jiang Cheng had forgotten it at home. Which left A-Su properly impressed. How could a man as angry as Jiang Cheng secure himself such a lovely person was beyond her comprehension, honestly.

He was adorable and she wanted to be his sister like, yesterday.

But when Jiang Cheng came back from a delivery, entering the dumpling shop with his helmet still on, he stared XuanYu down and told him off right off the bat.

“Not you again,” he said, to A-Su’s utter confusion, “Can’t you take a fucking hint? I’m already avoiding you at work. I don’t want to be your friend.”

Something akin to hurt painted XuanYu’s feature for a fraction of a second before he could retrieve his smile and point at the lunch box.

“Your sister asked me to give this to you on my way out. A-Ling helped making rice cakes this time and wanted to hear from you if you liked them or not.”

Qin Su could have easily missed the change in XuanYu’s voice at that, that’s how much of a good actor he was. But Jiang Cheng had no face even to feel ashamed for lashing out at the kid like that. How much older could he be from XuanYu, three years? Two? Had nobody taught him some respect?

“XuanYu, if he bullies you again you come here. Am I understood?”

Like hell she was gonna let this gem of a child slip away from Jiang Cheng’s hands.

Not in a million years.

Song Lan breathed in and out. In and out. The clear morning air surrounded him like an old friend, hugging him closely as he clutched the papers for his divorce.

XingChen had signed them in the end. Five years together were now in the past for him.

Maybe they had been too young back then, when they had taken the chance to get married the moment the government announced the change in the law for people like them. How old have they been, twenty-three? Twenty-four? Another lifetime. An existence away.

He wished he could cry. It would have been easier.

But, as he turned a corner, someone stumbled into him and sent the papers scattering on the sidewalk. Song Lan tried to save them from being dirtied on a puddle but was unsuccessful. He didn’t know why he bothered anymore. It felt like the last piece of his lover had left and Song Lan couldn’t even prevent something as simple as that. XingChen’s signature dirtied in a pool, but not enough to be washed away. What a joke.

The young man in front him bowed down, apologizing profusely, trying to save the documents at the best of his abilities. He even suggested finding a public toilet to dry the sheets under the hot air blowing machine, the silly man.

Song Lan smiled instead, reassuring him it was fine.

He was fine.

But the kid accidentally read the first few lines of the agreement before looking up at Song Lan. And where he would have expected pity, Song Lan only saw consternation instead on his pale face. It was so startling to see it, that he had to crouch back down on the ground next to the kid and reassure him everything was fine. It was just paper, it wasn’t important, he didn’t have to feel so guilty about...

“It is important. Your life is important.”

Such a dramatic sentence, uttered so vehemently, should have sounded weird to Song Lan. Especially because he disapproved of such antics in the first place. But it sounded so sincere, so earnest that he felt touched for a moment.

So he helped the kid up on his feet and asked him to walk a bit with him, to keep him company. Reserved as he was, he would have never thought possible opening up to a stranger the way he did that day. But there was something calming about the kid, almost as if he had been put on earth to soothe other people’s existence.

So he told him how his husband had fallen in love with someone else, someone much younger than them. How this had strained their marriage even if Song Lan had known all along his husband had the ability to fall in love with more than one person at a time. But Song Lan was monogamous and would have never justified forcing his lover to suppress his feelings just to please him. So it had been Song Lan himself to call it quits and wish him all the luck in the world.

The kid had started crying at some point, without Song Lan even noticing at first.

“Why are you crying? Please no, I didn’t wan to upset you.”

“So much love. In different ways but... it’s too much. There’s so much of it, of course I’m crying for you and your loved one.”

Song Lan was many things. Too stern, too rigid, too peculiar about who could touch him or not, too cold in expressing his emotions. But he felt warm then, in front of a kid crying for him in the middle of the street, one day of late autumn.

“Thank you.”

***

XuanYu let it slip once with Mrs. Jin how little he remembered of his past.

It wasn’t a lie, he really didn’t remember what it had been of him before he had met her, asking for a room. But the kind woman just assumed he was talking about his past or youth, so he didn’t correct her on the matter.

Knowing the truth would have scared her, after all.

But he still let himself trust her that day as they sat in front of a pot of tea and he pretended to drink and eat the pastries on the low table. He didn’t need to eat or drink. He wasn’t even sure he had a digestive system.

“I only remember... a song.”

“A song?”

“Yes. Someone singing every night before falling asleep. I don’t think it was meant for me to hear... but my body remembers the shivers. The feeling of being loved.”

“The body remembers the weirdest things, XuanYu. You should trust it more.”

He smiled at that, wriggling his hands on the handkerchief where he had hidden the pastries from sight.

“I’m pretty sure that song wasn’t for me. My body was merely there to listen.”

YanLi looked uncomfortable at that, something scary painting her features.

“Maybe I was eavesdropping,” he reassured her with a self-deprecating joke, not sure if that would have made her feel more at ease or not, “Maybe I was listening in, hoping such lovely words could be directed at me for once.”

Mrs. Jin sipped her tea for a long while afterwards, before finding the resolution to look up and stare him down with a serious expression.

“Unrequited feelings hurt, don’t they?”

XuanYu didn’t know what she meant by that, but he nodded anyway.

He heard something rustling in his bag and hid the sweets inside of it the moment YanLi turned to clear the table. If A-Ling heard someone munching their protests away from inside of the bag, he didn’t snitch on XuanYu and retrieved playing with Fairy on the carpeted floor next to him instead.

Lan Zhan was disappointed in him, XuanYu knew that much. They were admiring the sunset from the small balcony in their room, folding laundry.

XuanYu always wondered why Lan Zhan assumed the form of a black stuffed rabbit, of all things, but he didn’t want to pry. He didn’t even know his real name. The other had told him he used to be a human in his past life and that he hadn’t technically reincarnated in this lifetime. That his current form was just a mean to a goal, that he could use it to guide XuanYu and help him better that way without expending much spiritual energy.

He told him someone dear to him taught him how to manipulate paper-man talismans in his previous life. How similar the process had been to move around in a stuffed animal’s body. How convenient.

XuanYu believed he secretly loved it, even if Lan Zhan would have never said as much. He already talked very little to begin with.

“You told her you don’t remember your past.”

“That I did.”

“Don’t do it again”

XuanYu folded the last towel on his lap and then let Lan Zhan take a nap on it. He felt silly having to take showers and pretend to be a normal human being. He hated inconveniencing the Jins with him, accepting their bedding and paid kitchen appliances and so on. But if he wanted to accomplish his mission he had to make an effort to look normal... instead of spirited away from another world or maybe simply another era.

“I won’t do it again, don’t worry Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan was disappointed, but he was also patient to a fault.

Sure, it would have been much appreciated if Mo XuanYu didn’t lose him around every other day. This time the younger man had forgotten to pick him up from the floor where he had been reading stories to the children at the kindergarten.

But Lan Zhan was also a stuffed animal now, so it wasn’t like he could move around and risk being seeing by normal humans. His body was a vessel and any damage would have had repercussions on his soul as well.

What to do.

He tried not to panic when he felt someone picking him up from the floor after an hour or so. He silently prayed for them not to be A-Qing: even in this life she was too smart for her own good and he couldn’t risk being found out so soon. Mo XuanYu wasn’t even halfway to complete his mission and Lan Zhan couldn’t...

“I’m sure A-Yu is looking for you, little guy. What are doing all the way back here?”

It was always difficult to hear his older brother’s voice in this life. To see his face, to notice how sad he was even in this new reincarnation of his.

Lan Zhan didn’t move a single muscle as XiChen dusted him off and put him in his apron front pocket as he looked for “A-Yu”.

In order to give a second chance to Mo XuanYu, Lan Zhan had sacrificed any possibility to ever reincarnate until his mission was accomplished. So XiChen didn’t have a younger brother in this lifetime and he would have not had one for a while. Lan Zhan missed him, but they had to wait for a bit more.

They still had three months to fill the bottle the King of Hell had entrusted Mo XuanYu with. Then he would have entered the list for reincarnation once more and everything will have been fine in the end.

Lan Zhan owed the kid his life, so he trusted him.

No matter what.

XuanYu remembered the boy who had stolen his umbrella. He remembered him well enough to recognize him when he found him crawling on the floor, a stab wound in his belly, one winter night.

Panicked, he asked Lan Zhan what they could do as he instinctively pressed the wound with his bare hands. Lan Zhan didn’t dare move not to attract attention on himself. The other man snarled out at XuanYu, asking him why did he even bother, seemingly recognizing him.

“I took your fucking umbrella. Hate me and leave me alone.”

“Ridiculous.”

Lan Zhan would have been proud of him for that remark, but XuanYu was too scared to think about it. He didn’t have a phone and he didn’t even know the number for emergencies. He wasn’t even qualified to be a teacher. How had he survived until then. He was useless and stupid and...

“What the fuck?” Jiang Cheng’s voice came in a whisper behind him.

What a sorry view the older man had to take in that night: a pool of blood staining otherwise clean clothes, a moaning boy on the ground in restless pain, a crying mess of a sad excuse of a human pressing on a throbbing wound next to him.

Jiang Cheng muttered something about the boy being one of Meng Yao’s men, that they should leave him there to die for all he cared.

The man under XuanYu barked back, telling him he had tried to “convince the idiot of the same”. But XuanYu was horrified by what he had just heard.

“People die for nothing. People die for fucking nothing. You don’t leave someone behind just because you fucking hate them.”

XuanYu has never cursed in this brief, borrowed life of his. Maybe spending so much time with Jiang Cheng had rubbed some of his habits off on him in the end.

Startled, Jiang Cheng seemed to agree with him because he fished out his phone and called an ambulance right away.

The stabbed man laughed at that.

Lan Zhan was clutched in XuanYu’s hands as they waited in the corridor of a badly lit hospital. The kid was crying, hard. He must have remembered how his family in Mo Manor had mistreated him in the past, how easily his own relatives had starved him off just out of spite. How already impossibly emaciated he had been when he had sacrificed his body for Wei Ying, to bring him back in a weakened vessel just to seek revenge. Just to let his hatred run free.

Such cruelty had earned him nothing but distrust from the hell judges, who sentenced him to never be reincarnated again. Only when Lan Zhan had ascended to heaven -many centuries after reaching immortality- he had been able to make them relent.

If Mo XuanYu could prove to be a good human being during a trial time of one year on planet earth, filling a vial with good actions in the form of golden gems, then they would have considered Lan Zhan’s proposal. Mo XuanYu would have atoned his sin and be granted a new life, a clean record, and a second chance at happiness.

Seeing someone almost die in front of him must have awaken something ugly in him. His stained hands, the iron stench in the air. All that blood... like the last thing he had most probably seen in his previous life before his body sacrifice. A scarlet array under his feet, another soul replacing his in his own body.

Lan Zhan let himself be held tightly in Mo XuanYu’s hands that night at the hospital.

And hugged back without anyone else noticing.

Xiao XingChen. That was the name of the man showing up at the kindergarten one week later. XuanYu had never seen him before, but the man hugged him in front of the kids, alerting both XiChen and Jiang Cheng.

“Thank you,” the tall man said in between tears, holding him tight.

“I don’t understand. I...”

“You saved A-Yang. Thank you.”

XuanYu pressed his lips together tightly at that, so overwhelmed he didn’t know what to say. His fingertips hurting with sometimes akin to electricity the more he let himself be held so fiercely by the other man.

He started crying in earnest only after the man had left, surrounded by the children who worried and fussed over him. He fell asleep with them during nap time and when he woke up he found Jiang Cheng placing a quilt over him.

Caught red handed, the older man feigned disinterest in the beginning... but then he sat down next to him. Just like he had done in the hospital one week ago.

“Did you see someone die before?” Jiang Cheng asked then, awkwardly scratching the back of his head, “You had such a strong... reaction to my words. It was insensitive of me. I apologize for angering you. I’ll better myself.”

XuanYu didn’t answer at that.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood what it meant to sacrifice yourself to hatred and revenge. How much it had scarred him to be brought back to life, but only as a worn out set of robes on top of someone else’s soul. How distant he had felt when the Yiling Patriarch had inhabited his body and had let himself be touched by someone else.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood what it meant to be touched in the flesh but be utterly unreachable as a soul. Or how much it hurt to become an empty body filled by someone foreign and new. Someone who could wear his skin better than him.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood. And thank all the gods for that.

So XuanYu... Mo XuanYu kept quiet and smiled instead.

Lan Zhan didn’t trust Jiang Cheng. He hadn’t in the past and he wasn’t gonna start now. Wei Ying would have been so disappointed in him for thinking badly of his baby brother, but there was little Lan Zhan could do about that.

Wei Ying wasn’t there to judge him for it.

Mo XuanYu would wake up every morning and wash himself, get dressed and tidy up the room before leaving. He would fix his appearance in a mirror Young Lady Jiang had gifted him in autumn, making sure his hat was still in place.

“What would happen if I were to...?”

“You must keep your hat on... even when you sleep. You know this much.”

“I wear a headband to bed.”

“And what of it?”

“It’s... silly.”

“Nobody can see you in your sleep. Why the sudden worry?”

Mo XuanYu said nothing in response to that, but Lan Zhan knew. The kid had never worried too much about his appearance aside from looking proper and well dressed. He had never fussed over his features, but recently he had taken the habit to walk dangerously close to makeup stores and check various displays at the convenience store close by. Lan Zhan knew Mo XuanYu had remembered his past... how he had quickly realized he was already an adult. With needs and desires.

But now a brand new reincarnation of Jiang WanYin would wait for him every morning to walk to work together. Now Jiang Cheng acted pleasantly enough to be considered kind and doting to someone starved of affection like Mo XuanYu had always been. Which wasn’t planned, it had never been.

Lan Zhan didn’t like where this was going.

He didn’t like it at all.

Nie HuaiSang came to bring a cake for XuanYu one day or so before the end of the year, snow sticking to his hair and flushed cheeks.

“I don’t know when your birthday is... so I’m pretty sure I’m late to the game. But I wanted to thank you for helping me and MianMian that one time. So I made a cake for you. I hope you like strawberries.”

Mo XuanYu had no idea if he liked them or not. He couldn’t even eat.

He started crying in the middle of his room, where HuaiSang had placed the boxed cake on top of his low table.

Panicked, HuaiSang jumped up and out of the room to alert Jiang Cheng next door. But upon seeing the other man’s worried expression XuanYu cried even harder.

“What did you do to him, you bastard?”

“I’m not the one who used to prank people all the time. Grow up!”

“You clearly did something horrible to him for...”

“A-Cheng we’re not twelve anymore. Who do you take me for?”

XuanYu took his chance to stuff his face with cake, gulping it down bit by bit even if he knew he didn’t have the necessary organs to process it without vomiting it all out in an hour or so. He had tried many times to hold food down to no avail. His body rejecting it as if it was poisonous and dangerous.

He had tried so many times... to practice. To be able to appreciate YanLi’s generous cooking, to help A-Ling and the children at school prep their lunches and maybe... maybe to eat with Jiang Cheng every now and then.

Nie HuaiSang hugged him and patted his head, confused but too scared to ask for an explanation. Mo XuanYu smiled at him and lied, saying his cake was the best he had ever eaten. It wasn’t the best. It was simply the first.

He had no way to compare it with anything else, really.

Wen Ning had heard about his “stomachache” from XiChen, who had known all about it from YanLi and Jiang Cheng. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise for XuanYu when he saw the older boy in front of his apartment complex the last day of the year.

But it was a surprise.

“Can we talk for a bit?” Wen Ning asked, holding his umbrella up for XuanYu to walk beside him, protecting him from the icy snow.

They walked to the nearest park, sitting under the gazebo to watch the snow falling down. Their heavy coats keeping them warm, despite the cold.

They used to take long walks back from the kindergarten with A-Yuan after school, since the Wens lived close to XuanYu. Before Jiang Cheng came back anyway.

Wen Ning looked uncomfortable, fidgeting with his fingers as he tried to find the right words. He surprised XuanYu by telling him how, in the past, he had suffered from an eating disorder and had been hospitalized for a while in his teens. How worried his sister and their grandma had been for him, how much they helped him in his recovery. How alone he had felt for years still, no matter how loved he was.

“A-Yuan told me he never saw you eat. So I was wondering if you needed help.”

It wasn’t the case, but XuanYu knew he meant well. Telling him everything was fine would have only worried him more, so he tried to explain an half-truth that could satisfy him. Saying it was difficult for him to process food, that in the past he had suffered from malnutrition and now he had digestive issues.

He was talking about his past life, but he figured that could work as well.

When they parted ways in front of the apartment complex, Wen Ning asked to hold XuanYu’s hands for a bit. He cradled them carefully, as if they were precious. His slender fingers cupping XuanYu’s smaller palms almost reverently.

“I know you don’t feel the same about me. But I’ll ask you to look after yourself anyway. Not out of obligation for me... but out of respect for yourself, if nothing else.”

The moment Wen Ning let go of his hands, Jiang Cheng stepped out of the front door of the building and saw them.

He said nothing and walked away after stepping out of the gate.

Lan Zhan would have very much liked to flip a finger at Jiang WanYin’s forehead. Hard. Wei Ying would have done the same, he was sure.

Wei Ying would have also smacked some sense in his baby brother, forcing him to face his feelings and take responsibility for what he was doing to poor Mo XuanYu.

Who was currently waiting for the other man’s return like a dog by his room balcony, surveying the front courtyard like a bird of prey from above.

Lan Zhan tried to coax the kid inside, reminding him snow was still falling down and that his beanie was slipping away. He tried to be gentle about it, knowing how much XuanYu had grown resentful of the hats he had to constantly wear.

But the younger man simply shrugged, saying he wanted to wait for another five minutes. Just one more. Just to make sure.

Jiang Cheng didn’t come back that night.

And Mo XuanYu cried in his sleep clutching the half-empty vial to his chest.

Lan Zhan spent the night watching over him, singing to him the song he had written for Wei Ying. He snuggled close to XuanYu and made sure his wide headband was covering the crown of his head, before pressing himself to the other’s forehead.

He never stopped singing.

Wishing he could take all the pain away.

YanLi, A-Yuan and even ZiXuan knocked on his door to greet him into the new year, despite how XuanYu should have been the one to pay his respects to his landlords.

But they asked him to visit the funeral home with them instead, to say their thanks to YanLi’s parents with offers and flowers.

He dressed in his best clothes, having never been in what seemed to be a modern version of the ancestral halls of his childhood in a past life. The establishment was fairly sterile, with shelves filled with plaques and pictures instead of wooden inscriptions on an altar. The lot of them bowed and said their thanks, chatting with the late Jiangs almost as if they had never left. YanLi apologized to her mother for Jiang Cheng’s absence that year like any other year, while ZiXuan told his father-in-law how they would have visited the Jin ancestors during Chūnjié to make it fair.

XuanYu looked at them and barely kept himself from crying.

On their way back, YanLi explained her parents had died when she was still twelve and Jiang Cheng was merely six. How they had lived in the orphanage run by XiChen’s mother and made friends with the boy, who was YanLi’s classmate. How the siblings stayed there until YanLi came of age and got custody of her baby brother. ZiXuan’s family of lawyers had helped her pro bono and that was how she had met the man and fallen in love with him. Even if it had taken a while for ZiXuan to notice her at first, preoccupied with university and law school as he had been at the time. But the Jins helped her with the inheritance left by the late Madame Yu: the apartment complex where they currently lived.

Watching them explaining their past in such detail moved XuanYu deeply. Feeling as if they wanted to make him part of their family by filling in the gaps for him.

That was still his older brother after all and those were still his sister-in-law and his beloved nephew and he... he loved them. He had missed them so, so much.

And he was about to leave them again soon.

Wen Qing finally showed herself up one day at the park, when Mo XuanYu was taking Fairy out for an evening walk. She approached him by telling the younger man she had assisted in the surgery Xue Yang had undergone some time back.

Lan Zhan (hiding in the kid’s coat pocket) could see how startled the kid was at the mention of the criminal, but he decided to trust this version of Lady Wen as he would have done in the past.

Wei Ying cared deeply for her, after all.

Whatever truths she was about to entrust Mo XuanYu with, Lan Zhan knew the kid could take it.

He hoped as much, at least.

Jiang Cheng came back only for Chinese New Year. Saying he had stayed at XiChen’s since the winter break allowed them to take it easy and figure some stuff out for the following school year.

It hurt to know where he had been all along, but XuanYu braved a smile anyway. He knew how much Jiang Cheng cared for the older man, how much he wanted to save the school from the debt collector. How much he didn’t love XuanYu back.

So he let himself cry one last time before waking up one morning and deciding he had had enough.

He talked with Lan Zhan, asking him to tell him all about Wei WuXian and their love. If XuanYu’s sacrifice had allowed them to be happy as they deserved in the end. If Lan Zhan hated him now, for forcing him away from his loved one, who was currently waiting for him to come back to heaven.

Mo XuanYu knew the couple had sacrificed their chance at reincarnation to allow him to seek a second lifetime for himself. He knew Wei Ying watched over them from up above, waiting for Lan Zhan to secure a new life for the kid.

They talked all day and then well into the night.

By dawn Mo XuanYu had decided what to do.

XuanYu properly met Meng Yao one day of early spring, when flowers weren’t yet brave enough to poke their way out and greet the sun. The man was dressed in black, his hair cut short, a sigarette between his lips as he waited patiently for the kindergarten to open.

It was XuanYu’s duty to open that morning, so he was the one to greet the man.

Upon hearing his voice, Meng Yao immediately recognized him.

“There you are. I was waiting for you.”

“Me?”

“You’re the kid who answered the phone. And the one who helped my subordinate back in winter, right?”

His dimples were so deep, his face so pleasant.

Mo XuanYu remembered him from another lifetime. He remembered how much he had cared for his older brother Jin GuangYao. How hurt he had felt when the other had lied and accused him of harassment just to get rid of him.

But this was a new life and Meng Yao was just a man.

Who happened to have been married with XiChen for a while before turning to a life filled with crime and gang violence.

Wen Qing had told him Meng Yao had initially tried to live far away from his adoptive father Wen RuoHan. All for the sake of marrying XiChen and keep him safe. But XiChen’s mother still had had a debt to pay for the construction of the orphanage, a price too high for her to pay with her poor health and delicate disposition. A debt that XiChen had inherited from her when she had died.

That was why Meng Yao had left him: to go back to his father and ask him to handle the debt himself, supplicating him to overlook such small issue and let him dry XiChen out of every penny and cent instead.

Wen Qing may have learned this only from the gossiping running in her family, with the Wen Clan being as big as it was, but she was pretty sure of what she had told XuanYu. That Meng Yao had simply faked having fallen out of love with XiChen to protect him from his adoptive father and his cruelty. That XiChen still loved him and was waiting for him to fight alongside him instead.

Mo XuanYu knew all of this.

So now he could act and fulfill his mission.

“I want to pay the debt XiChen owes you.”

“You are full of surprises, XuanYu. And how do you plan to do that?”

“I can do many things.”

“You’re very pretty, you can make good money out of it.”

XuanYu considered his words before shaking his head.

“It’s not something I can do.”

“Then what can you do?”

“I’ll solve everything.”

“I’m all ears.”

“But you’ll have to stop making XiChen worry so much.”

“That’s not how business work...”

“Lie to me. Give your word and I’ll... I will solve everything.”

Meng Yao humored him and nodded.

Then and only then, Mo XuanYu took his hat off.

Lan Zhan had watched the entire scene unfold before his eyes without intervening, trusting Mo XuanYu with such an important choice. He took in the sight of the beautiful spiritual light shining brightly on top of XuanYu’s head like a crown.

His soul in full display, its energy so raw it had slowed down time all around them.

Lan Zhan turned around and looked at XiChen, who had just turned a corner and had been walking towards XuanYu to greet him good morning. Frozen in time, his older brother’s face still looked peaceful... simply because he had had no time to notice Meng Yao’s presence quite yet.

Lan Zhan turned once more and saw Jiang WanYin making his way in a rush towards them, surely to protect XuanYu from Meng Yao. When did he arrive? His features trapped in a perpetual frown, scared for the one he truly loved in this lifetime.

Then, Lan Zhan looked up at Mo XuanYu and saw him taking the bottle only half filled with gold... which symbolized his goodwill and generous spirit.

“Will this be enough to grant a wish, Lan Zhan?”

When XuanYu said his name like that he sounded so much like his Wei Ying, full of hope and love.

“It depends on the wish, A-Yu.”

“I reckon it’s not enough for a new reincarnation, eh?”

“It’s enough to save a life... but not yours.”

XuanYu looked crestfallen, but he persevered still.

The bottle transformed into a bag filled with money and XuanYu made his way to XiChen and left it at his feet before smiling up at his mentor and employer.

“I cannot rewrite the past, but maybe I can plan a better future for you.”

Still smiling, XuanYu slowly walked over to Jiang Cheng and said his farewells.

Then he crouched down and took Lan Zhan in his hands, kissing him goodbye on the head affectionately.

“Erase me well, Lan Zhan,” he whispered then.

Before disappearing into thin air.

***

Wei Ying had agreed with him, suggesting the idea himself.

In the end the King of Hell had granted Lan Zhan’s request and offered Mo XuanYu a second chance anyway. Since this new self-sacrifice had been fueled by positive emotions instead of anger and despair, the hell judges had considered the atonement fulfilled and put the kid’s name back on the reincarnation list.

Twenty years had past and many things had changed.

For starters, the kid’s last name wasn’t Mo anymore, but Nie. The boy had, in fact, born into Nie MingJue’s family and had lived overseas in Japan for a while before moving back to Lanling when XuanYu turned twenty. Nie HuaiSang had met him many times during summer vacations and other festivities, visiting his brother and his wife every chance he had gotten to dote on his cute nephew XuanYu.

Nie MingJue had done a remarkable job in protecting him from harm. So, by the time their little family had decided to move close to HuaiSang, XuanYu had become a well adjusted adult with a brilliant future ahead of him.

Nobody remembered him.

Or so Lan Zhan had thought.

Apparently, he had forgotten to wipe Jin Ling’s memories thoroughly. So, when The Nie family had come to greet HuaiSang’s friends YanLi and ZiXuan, A-Ling almost had a stroke out of incredulity and happiness for being reunited with his “A-Yu”. Even if Jin Ling was now older than the pretty-gege from his memories. Even if he had spent years trying to figure out why nobody seemed to remember the weird uncle living next door to his Jiujiu years back.

XiChen and Meng Yao had solved their problems and had started running the school together right after Wen RuoHan sudden and mysterious disappearance. The man had many enemies after all.

A-Yuan had grown up into a fine young man, someone Wei Ying would have certainly been proud of, working with his cousin Wen Ning at the local botanical garden while his friends still studied in university.

Nie HuaiSang had married Qin Su and opened a restaurant with her.

MianMian and Wen Qing had decided to live together and adopt a bunch of dogs just because.

Xiao XingChen and Xue Yang still lived together while Song Lan had found his way back to them after talking it out with the couple.

A-Qing was probably running some sketchy business in social services to protect kids from horrible families.

Lan Zhan was still, unfortunately, a stuffed rabbit. Following XuanYu in his new life in the most unexpected of ways. In the form of the first present the boy’s uncle had gifted him in childhood. If Wei Ying had pulled a string or two from heaven to make that happen, well, Lan Zhan himself was none the wiser. The only thing he knew was that XuanYu had always taken him with him in all his travels even if he didn’t know he could speak. Lan Zhan had preferred not to reveal his nature and let the kid have a normal childhood. Especially since he had no memories of his past as a tenant in Jiang YanLi’s house. Nor of his life as a cultivator.

Wei Ying had agreed they could wait to be reunited again. The both of them wanting to look over XuanYu for a little longer before getting their own chance at reincarnation. They had all eternity to be together again... they could definitely wait a bit more for the kid.

All was well.

Aside from the other person whose mind Lan Zhan had conveniently forgot to wipe clean of any memory of XuanYu.

In his defense, Lan Zhan had tried to make Jiang Cheng forget. But something about XuanYu must have touched him so deeply... that Lan Zhan had not been able to do much about it. The kid’s smiles and clumsy antics would always linger in the back of the other’s mind no matter how much he tried to ignore them.

Coming back from his job at ZiXuan’s firm, exhausted and vulnerable, Jiang Cheng decided to visit his sister the same day Nie MingJue had brought his family there. So he was particularly weak to the sight of a bright, soft XuanYu when YanLi introduced her younger brother to their guests.

To Lan Zhan’s absolute delight, Jiang Cheng immediately bowed down to a scary looking Nie MingJue and asked his son’s hand in marriage.

Yes, grovel to this precious boy and learn your place.

XuanYu only tilted his head at that weird man bowing to his parents and smiled.

His laughter ringing up to the sky, where Wei Ying was still listening.

From where he would have kept watching.

[I worked so hard on this please reblog]

[kobato means “little dove” I thought it was cute since XuanYu is a magpie! + I wanted MXY a chance at life and for once this is a reversal-sacrifice from WWX’s part and I think it’s neat.]

[JC would be 43 or so... which yikes. but this is all I could do. I don’t like huge age gaps but at least everyone is a consenting adult, okay?]

[the thing that started this was like “what if LXC was an only child and LWJ did not reincarnate bc he’s still in the afterlife or something? then the entire thing escalated so...yeah.]

now I will cry for ages. I worked so hard on this good god D:

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs/au: clamp #mdzs/au: kindergarten #mdzs/au: kobato #mdzs/au: modern #mo xuanyu #jiang cheng #the forbidden crack! untamed prompts #RAREPAIR ALERT #I AM TRASH I WILL SHIP JC WITH A ROCK FOR ALL I CARE #xiyao #tw eating disorders mentioned #wangxian #yucheng #chengyu

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fourtrisheafanfic · 7 years ago

Text

GoT Fanfic: White as Snow (Part III)

GoT fanfic: White as Snow (Part III)

Tumblr - JONERYS Appreciation Week

Day 4 Prompt: ANGST

Four Part Short Story Fanfic

Ratings: Mature (Part III)

Read Part I HERE (link)

Read Part II HERE (link)

Summary: A modern Cinderella Story of a child whose world is turned upside down after the death of a parent. This child made to feel inferior, and in servitude to their own family. Will the love of another help pull them out of their darkness.

PART III: Holiday Cheer

++o+ Age 19 +o++

“Shit! I am so late for practice,” Jon mutters grumpily as he runs through Greenwich Village towards campus. His shift at the diner went long, they are understaffed during the summer before the fall semester starts. Many of the out of state students that work at the diner with Jon haven’t returned to the city yet.

His large fencing bag thrown over his shoulder is not helping him navigate the streets of New York City. Feeling his cell phone vibrating in his pocket he pulls it out to read the incoming text. Smiling when he sees it is Arya. Since he moved out of Catelyn’s home in upstate NY over a year ago he doesn’t get to see Arya, Bran and Rickon as much as he would like. He’s missed seeing Arya at all this summer since she is spending it in Chicago for her high school internship. Her internship at Targaryen Enterprises headquarters.

He’s late, but he still stops on the sidewalk to read her text. Frowning as he reads, he immediately knows that he will not be doing what his sister asks. Arya’s flight arrives late tonight, and she really wants him to come to family dinner tomorrow night. “Our flight lands at 10 PM, so too late to stop by tonight. Please come to dinner tomorrow.”

The moment Jon read our flight, he knew that Dany would be flying with Arya. Which makes sense as Dany has been dating Robb for a few months now, and has been watching over Arya this summer.

Dany and Robb, the perfect couple. Jon rolls his eyes while texting Arya with a quick no and a lame excuse about having plans.

For a moment, when his guard is down he thinks about Dany. It’s been over a year since he saw her at Robb’s graduation party. He was so angry that day, and the weeks following. She wrote him twice that week, asking him to please just talk to her. He deleted the messages without answering. He just wasn’t ready.

And then shortly after he found out that Robb and Dany had started dating that summer. According to Arya, both Catelyn and Mr. Targaryen had pushed the pair together.

Stop it, Jon. Forget her. She was never yours. Never. He scolds himself before thinking about something else.

Moments later when his phone buzzes again he knows it will most likely be a snide comment from Arya, she hates when he turns her down for family gatherings. Often telling him that she doesn’t care what her mom thinks, he is her brother and he has every right to visit his family.

Surprised to see a text from his fencing coach, pointing out that Jon is already seven minutes late for warm up, but he will avoid running laps if he stops by Starbucks to bring him a strong coffee. Jon laughs, that would be a small price to pay to avoid extra running.

Ducking into the closest Starbucks he orders and then waits for his name to be called. Leaning against the counter and looking around he is surprised to see Robb walking out of the restroom and slipping into the back booth. Jon begins to walk over to say hello to his brother, he hasn’t seen him often in the last year and neither one ever mentioned Dany to the other. Jon always wondering if she had told Robb anything about their past.

Just as Jon gets close enough to say hi he sees that Robb had his arms wrapped around some brunette as he sucks her face off while his hand is under her shirt. She whimpers his name.

Jon’s stomach drops, how dare Robb disrespect Dany this way?! Cheating on her, with some tramp. Instantly seeing red Jon grabs Robb by the shoulder and pulls him out of the booth before yelling at him.

“What the hell, Robb? You are cheating on Daenerys! She is gone for the summer so you set up some chick on the side?!” Jon growls at his brother, furious he would hurt her this way.

The brunette in the booth gasps in shock, and then demands to know who the hell Daenerys is.

“Jeez, Jon! Just stop, you don’t understand! Let me explain, I am not cheating on Daenerys! She is one of my closest friends, I’d never hurt her that way,” Robb says calmly. “Just have a seat, I can explain.”

Jon breathes in and out, listening to what Robb has to say and how calm he sounds. Jon slides into the both across from Robb and the brunette who seems upset as well.

“Jon this is my girlfriend, Talisa. Talisa this is my brother, Jon,” Robb says as Jon and Talisa nod hello.

Turning to Talisa first, Robb assures her that he doesn’t have some secret girlfriend. Jon shifts uncomfortably seeing how comfortable and intimate their body language is. It would be obvious to anyone that these two are madly in love with each other.

Turning to his brother with a confused look, “I always thought you and Daenerys were close friends? I just assumed she would have told you that our ‘dating relationship’ was just an act to get my mom and her father off our backs.”

Jon’s mouth falls open, all this time…he was agonizing over a fake relationship? Holy shit he scowls, he had no idea.

“She and I lost touch after high school, so no. I’m really sorry – I just saw you and thought you were screwing around behind her back,” Jon apologizes, suddenly feeling really stupid.

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Robb says as he and Talisa laugh, all of the tension forgotten.

“It was just easier for us to pretend to ‘date’ then to keep having our parents plan meetups for us. I know it helped me a lot to have Catelyn off my back. And being away at college, it was so easy to pretend,” he explains to Jon and Talisa. “And then I met Talisa at the start of the summer, and I just couldn’t pretend anymore. So Dany and I agreed to fake-breakup, but again not call attention to it.”

Jon nods, his mind racing. He has so many questions he wants to ask, about Dany. But he knows he shouldn’t. It is too late for them.

Besides, he is with Ygritte now. Jon has no right to ask about Dany.

That chapter in his life is over.

+++o+++

“Jon, put your books away! I am here, and your roommates are out,” Ygritte demands while aggressively kissing his neck as he sits in front of his laptop. “I need you to fuck me, and now.” She laughs.

“Ygritte, please. I told you that this paper is due tomorrow morning, I need to get it done,” Jon sighs, frustrated already with the pressure of his school work.

“Ohhh, excuse me fancy college boy. I guess a simpleton like me wouldn’t be able to understand how important your book report on…” Ygritte looks over his should to read his screen. “On Global and Urban Education. God, you are so boring Jon Snow. I can’t believe you want to be a teacher.”

Jon smiles at her, “Well, you always told me you hated school growing up. Maybe one day I will be the cool teacher that helps kids enjoy learning.”

Ygritte rolls her eyes playfully and kisses him, slipping her hand around his body to rub his cock over his sweatpants. Jon closes his eyes to enjoy her hands on his dick.

Yes, Ygritte knows exactly how to touch him, how to lure him into bed. She is five years older than him, they met at his job during his freshman year. He is a server at the diner, she is one of the managers.

Never having gone to college, she is generally frustrated with all of the students that work for her. Ygritte seems to have a chip on her shoulder about it.

Jon gives in, he knows it will turn into a big fight if he doesn’t give her what she wants. Of course he enjoys sex with his girlfriend, but sometimes the pressure of school, fencing and his part-time job stress him out. His course load sophomore year is pretty heavy.

After a very satisfying fuck, Ygritte’s words, she slips her tank top on and falls asleep in his bed. Jon looks at his laptop across the room and knows he needs to get that paper done. Glancing at his cell phone he decides that he is better off sleeping for a couple of hours and then getting up early.

Setting his alarm for 4 AM while lying down, he feels a sadness wash over him. Even with Ygritte sleeping beside him, he feels alone.

+++o+++

“Daenerys, did you hear me? Please respond when I speak to you!” her father snapped, the stress in his voice was evident.

“Yes, father. I’m just in shock,” Dany whispered, her mind reeling having just found out her brother, Viserys, had seriously overdosed while in Amsterdam on business.

“Damned it, pull it together. I already have one screw of up a child. I do not need two,” Aerys snapped at his only daughter. Furious he has to deal with this. Of course he loves his only son, his heir. But at the same time, all this boy did was screw up after screw up.

This was the second overdose in two years, and Viserys had already done a stint in rehab recently.

“I know you have school, and you need to get your degree. But I have to fly to Amsterdam to clean up this mess! I need you to step up with the company. Do you understand?” he finishes, looking to his only daughter.

“Yes, father. Of course,” she assures him.

“The most important thing, no one is to know about this. I already have a man out there that is paying off the local police to keep this under wraps,” he scowls. “I still need to go out there and check him into rehab.”

Dany has heard it all before. What a disgrace and financial hit to the family empire it would be if word got out that her brother was an addict.

Sometimes she wonders if things would have turned out differently if father hadn’t sent his precious heir to boarding school at such a young age. What would it have been like to be raised side by side with her brother? Maybe we would have had what Arya has with Jon.

Forget it, stop thinking about Jon Snow. He stopped caring about you a long time ago.

As her father storms out, in a hurry to get the airport, she realizes he didn’t even say goodbye. He only summoned her to bark orders at her while warning to keep her mouth shut.

Dany allows herself a few moments to feel sad and alone. And then she lets it go.

She has much to do.

++o+ Age 20 +o++

Christmas of Dany’s sophomore year her father surprises her with a trip to Manhattan for the holidays. It is a four day trip full of spa time, shopping, the finest restaurants, and even a Broadway show. Aerys still has work to attend to, so Dany spends quite a bit of time alone. She is used to it.

“Danny, I know we have the Christmas Eve tradition of last minute shopping, but I have a couple of calls I need to take. Since we are in town, and the Stark family is celebrating Christmas in the city this year, why don’t you accompany them for ice skating today?” her father asks, although he isn’t really asking. He is telling her what he expects.

Normally Dany has no qualms about spending time with the Starks. Well, most of them. She still can’t stand Catelyn Stark for the way she treated Jon all those years.

“Father, you know that Robb has a new girlfriend now,” Dany says quietly as she catches Aerys rolling his eyes. “I just want to make sure you understand that Robb Stark and I are over, we both agree we are better off as friends.”

“Yes, yes…that is fine. You can do whatever you want in the love department. I am late dear, I need to go. And remember, you will be having lunch with all of the Starks and then enjoying the day with them.”

Danny nods, remembering her father’s past obsession with her love life. He was so worried she would do something to embarrass him.

Her father has had nothing to worry about. Aside from her fake relationship with Robb Stark, there has been no special man in her life. Between her studies and getting more involved in her family’s business she has lacked the time and desire to date anyone new.

+++o+++

Sitting at lunch later, Danny laughs as Arya and Sansa bicker about their short trip to California during winter break. When entering the restaurant, Dany had felt a huge sense of relief that Jon was not there. Immediately followed by sadness. It has been a little over a year and a half since she last saw Jon. Truth be told, she still missed him.

And if she is honest, she still loves him.

“Mother, was Jon invited today? I hope so, I don’t want to be cross with you,” Arya asks her mother from across the table.

Catelyn Start huffs at her youngest daughter, “Yes, I sent him an email. He isn’t even in town this week.”

Sansa and Robb laugh and smile at each other, Dany can’t help but feel that she is missing the joke.

“Where is Jon? Out of town you said?” Dany finally asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“Oh yeah, our brother the lover-boy, drove to Pittsburgh to meet his girlfriend’s family. Things are getting really serious between those two,” Robb says absentmindedly while looking over the menu at the same time.

Dany feels as though she has been kicked in the stomach. She doesn’t know why, did she think that Jon would be sitting in the NYU library pining for her?

Jon isn’t a complete idiot like she is. Dany’s face flushes, picturing a nervous Jon meeting his love’s parents for the first time. He probably got the mother flowers, or something equally endearing.

“Well, if you ask me, I can only imagine what Ygritte’s family is like. Since that woman seems to have been raised by wolves,” Sansa snickers. “Or dogs may be a more accurate description!”

“Oh Dany, it was so funny. Jon actually brought Ygritte to dinner at the house. It was the same night that Robb invited Talisa. Mother was beside herself, two girlfriends to entertain,” Arya could barely get the words out she was laughing so hard.

Dany politely nodded for her to continue with her story, as her heart was being stomped on.

Sansa takes over, Arya agreeing that she tells it better. “Let’s just say Jon’s girlfriend is really “interesting” – she is quite crass and foul mouthed. She didn’t make it through the meal before Catelyn demanded that Jon get her out of the house.”

The younger children laugh at Sansa’s story, while Robb frowns at his sister.

“Sansa, that wasn’t nice. I think Jon has really fallen in love with her. You need to try harder to like her,” Robb says.

His words like a knife in Dany’s heart. Jon is in love. With someone else.

And then she painfully remembers, he never once told her that he loved her.

Because he never did. Why would he love you? No one loves you.

A realization hits Dany, since the day Jon stormed off, unwilling to even listen to her try to explain, she has been pining for him. So many boys have asked her out, they have even asked Robb to set them up on a date with her.

She always said no. What a fool she is, waiting for some boy that obviously doesn’t care about her at all.

Turning to Robb, “Hey, Drogo, the president of your fraternity, he’s a senior right?” Dany asks. Drogo had tried to get Rob to set him up with her a couple of times. Dany had declined at the time.

“He sure is! He still has a crush on you by the way, he asks me about you all the time,” Robb tells her. “Why do you ask?”

“Can you give him my cell number, I’d like to go on a date with Drogo and see where it goes,” Dany says confidently.

She is done being a fool, while everyone else around her lives their lives.

After lunch she accompanies the Starks to the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center. She is a really graceful skater and helps the three youngest with their technique. Arya takes the cutest picture with Dany while on the ice.

Dany smiles at the end of the day, she actually had a really nice time with their family. She was also glad she didn’t have to sit in an empty hotel room all day.

+++o+++

“Fuck, this is truly the worst Christmas ever,” Jon groans while staring into the rearview mirror of his rental car. Jon is parked in a Pittsburg Walmart parking lot, alone, on Christmas Eve.

He can’t believe Ygritte actually hit him this time. She technically hit him three times! He checks his swollen cheek, furious with her. But also furious with himself. He has been putting up with this toxic relationship for so long.

He doesn’t even recognize himself.

They had another terrible fight, she actually believed that he was planning to propose to her this Christmas. She expected him to ask her father for his permission to ask her to marry him. Jon actually thought she was joking when she brought it up, and laughed.

She exploded. She is always threatening him with physical violence. Usually something to do with removal or injury to his balls.

This time she threatened to use her hunting arrows to castrate him! Jon had enough.

He broke up with her, on Christmas Eve. That did not go over well, and he has the swollen jaw and cheek to prove it.

Checking his cell phone to make sure his outgoing message went out, he gave the owner of the diner his notice. There is no way he could continue working there with Ygritte as his boss. No job was worth that torture.

It is then that he gets a Happy Christmas Eve email from Arya. She sent an email telling him that they all miss him and also attached some photos of Christmas Eve day in the city. Feeling a pang in his heart, Jon realizes how much he misses his family. All of them, even Sansa. Jon waits patiently as each photo attachment downloads, and then he sees it.

A photo of Dany with Arya, Bran and Rickon on the rink at Rockefeller Station. Dany looks so happy in the photo, with a huge smile and bright eyes filled with laughter. She is actually using her small frame to keep his younger brothers steady, who Jon knows are both terrible skaters.

From the end of her email, Arya explains that Dany joined the group for lunch and then skating while Mr. Targaryen was working. Arya also mentioning that Dany “finally” asked about him. Jon feels his stomach drop, even picturing her brings up emotions he doesn’t know will ever go away. His sister didn’t go into any more detail.

Which is probably for the best. It doesn’t matter, Jon made his choices and has his own life. He can’t turn back time and take back the way he treated her the day of Robb’s graduation. He can’t answer her emails that she sent just days later when he was still so upset with her.

As much as he wishes he could.

He made his choices and now he has to live with them.

Jon turns on the car and hopes he can find some kind of motel. He wants to get back to New York as soon as possible.

+++o+++

“Hey! It’s me!” Jon announces letting himself into the Stark family home. Only because he knows that Catelyn went skiing in Colorado for the holiday. He would never enter without knocking if his stepmother was home.

Jon is excited to spend some time with his siblings without Catelyn around. Sansa is a senior in high school this year, and she is spending the night at her best friend that is having a New Year’s Eve party. And then Robb and Jon were invited to a huge party at the country club that one of their old high school friends is hosting. Jon should say that Robb was invited, and asked if Jon could tag along with him and Talisa.

“Jon! You actually made it home, I missed you,” Arya squealed while jumping into his arms.

“Of course, I mainly came to see all of you. I’ve missed you guys,” Jon says while greeting each of his siblings.

It is only then he realizes there is a very tall, buff man in the room. For a moment Jon wonders if Sansa has a boyfriend he doesn’t know about. Which freaks him out as this guy looks like he is in his twenties and Sansa only recently turned seventeen.

“Sorry, Jon, this is Drogo. Drogo, this is my brother Jon. Jon is a sophomore at NYU,” Robb says as Jon and Drogo shake hands. Drogo towers over Jon. “And Drogo is a senior and president of my fraternity at Brown.”

“Nice to meet you, so you are here for the party?” Jon asks while setting his bag on the floor before they all enter the kitchen.

“Yes and no,” Drogo smiles confidently. “The party host is also one of our fraternity brothers, but the main reason I came out here is that the girl I just started dating is going to be at this party.”

Drogo takes a drink from his beer. “The things we do for women, right?”

Jon smiles while pouring himself a glass of water.

“Crap! Jon, we set Drogo up in your bedroom and he’s slept here the last week. Um, I can have you stay in my room and Talisa and I will crash in mom’s room,” Robb looks at the little kids and swears them to secrecy.

“Robb, I meant to tell you – I got a suite at the country club where the party is for tonight,” Drogo says with a smirk.

“Oh, you did? Are you expecting a special evening,” Robb teases while ushering the younger siblings, and even Sansa out of the kitchen.

“Hey, Daenerys and I have been on three dates already. I do think tonight will be the night. She seems down,” Drogo says confidently. “You know that no woman can resist this hotness!”

Robb laughs while Drogo flexes his muscles, neither noticing the look of horror on Jon’s face.

Jon confirms he can have his room back and goes upstairs to wash his sheets. He wonder if Drogo has had Dany over to the house this last week. Have they fooled around in his old room?

For fuck’s sake. Jon just can’t catch a break.

He also knows there is no way in hell he is going to that party now.

+++o+++

As Dany drinks her fourth glass of champagne she laughs loudly at Talisa’s intimation of Catelyn Stark.

“I blame you, Daenerys! Since your fake-relationship with Robb, no one will ever compare to you!” Talisa scowls playfully as Dany bursts into a fit of giggles again.

Robb and Drogo are playing a drinking game with some of their other fraternity brothers that made the trip for the party.

“So, how are things going with Drogo? That is one sexy beast of a man, not that I would look at anyone other than Robb. Obviously,” she laughs.

“Obviously,” Dany smiles back. “I think well, when Robb texted him about me on Christmas Day, Drogo drove out here the very next morning and has been taking me out on dates all this week.”

“And?” Talisa pushes.

Dany blushes, remembering some of their heavier make out sessions. Drogo is a very sensual and experienced man, that much is obvious.

“Well, he did get us a suite for tonight,” Dany whispers so only Talisa can here. “I did tell him, I am just not sure of I am ready for sex.”

“What’s holding you back? If you don’t mind me asking,” Talisa says with curiosity.

“Honestly, I guess I’m nervous. I just always imagined my first time would be…different.” Dany says sadly, Jon’s face popping in her head. “I should say with someone that I love.”

“I didn’t know you were still a virgin. That is great Dany. You shouldn’t rush,” Talisa pauses to sip her champagne. “Even if a man gets a suite, doesn’t mean you are obligated to screw him.”

Robb stumbles over to steal a kiss from Talisa. Asking for his phone out of her purse and then scowling when he checks the messages.

“What a shock. Jon sent me a text. He decided to skip this party after all,” Robb groans. “I wonder if he is planning to drive into the city to see Ygritte?”

“That’s too bad! I was looking forward to getting to know your brother better at the party,” Talisa frowns while rubbing Robb’s back.

Dany’s eyes widen, feeling conflicted. There is a part of her that is desperate to see Jon. And then a bigger part of her that knows seeing him will only bring her pain.

As the evening continues, Dany pushes all thoughts of Jon Snow away.

“Are you having a good time, gorgeous?” Drogo croons in her ear as his hand rests on her ass. “Can I get you anything?”

Dany smiles, and nods. She doesn’t know what she wants, aside from another glass of champagne at the moment.

+++o+++

Dany makes a fist, digging her nails into the palm of her hands. She never imagined this would hurt so damned much. It is their second time that night and she is so sore.

“Drogo, please. Be gentle, I'm still sore from earlier,” Dany reminds him, gasping sharply with each of his thrusts.

“Oh Fuck, I’m sorry. You are just driving me crazy, I’ve wanted you so badly and for so long,” he moans while slowing his pace.

She lets out a sigh of relief as he slows down and is gentler.

She told him she was still a virgin, and after she convinced him that she was not kidding, Drogo was a man on a mission.

Before they had sex, both agreed to be in a committed relationship. Biting her lip as they have sex, she wonders if she will feel different tomorrow. Feel different now that she is no longer a virgin.

After he comes into the condom and they clean up, he promises her that once she gets used to it – it will be so good for her during intercourse.

Drogo was a courteous lover, getting Dany to climax with his talented fingers before they had sex.

Once Dany hears that Drogo is sound asleep she allows her mind to wander. Tears of sadness spring into her eyes. Dany hates herself for feeling this way. So pathetic.

Why can’t she just be happy?

She sat up with her hair disheveled and the sheets tangled around her. Her new boyfriend slept beside her, yet she was alone.

+++o+ End of Part III of IV +o+++

Author’s Note: The prompt for today’s JONERYS APPRECIATION WEEK was ANGST. This was a hard chapter for me to write as I tend to lean towards happy and sappy. But I wanted to push myself. Tomorrow’s prompt (day 5) is SMUT!!!! Tomorrow’s Part IV will deliver the jonerys we all want. Hang in there please! xoxo

#jonerysweek #GoT #jonerys #angst #Jon snow #daenerys targaryen #jonerys fanfic

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ahnsael · 7 years ago

Photo

This is a jacket I recently picked up on ebay for $40 (plus $15 shipping).

There’s also a Walt Disney Animation Studio jacket which I bought from the same seller for the same price:

I’ve also bid on another jacket for $40 (plus $15 shipping, though I could buy it outright for $55 plus $15 shipping, but we’ll see if I can get it for the same price as the other two):

It’s getting too warm for my winter coat (finally), but...it’s still in the 40s when I come home from work in the mornings, so these are nice middle grounds.

And of the two I’ve received, they’ve both been HUGE hits at work (where all but the newest employees know of my Disney past). Plus, while the second jacket was available at The Disney Store, I’m pretty sure the other two were cast exclusives, though I could be wrong, at least on the first one).

I already have a tie with the exact same version of the castle logo as the Walt Disney Animation Canada jacket, so that would be a good tie to wear with it.

My Disney ties and jackets are a small moment of happiness in my otherwise stressful days at work lately (we have a former Disney Store cast member with us, but she hired in right as brown things started to hit the proverbial fan...in Keno especially, but also the behavior of Kurt (the “drama manager”).

Work-realted (not jacket-related things below the cut).

I’ve told her that if she had hired in when I did, she would have had a LOT more fun, and while I’ve been frustrated lately as well, she might hold a better opinion of the job as a whole if she had hired in when I did, when things were still fun.

But she LOVES checking out my ties every night, and has loved the jackets that have shown up from ebay in the past couple of days, so I’m hoping I can be the reason she hangs on. She’s still learning, but has been thrown to the wolves WAY too quickly. But she’s smart, she’s capable, ad if I can keep her mind off the drama (which is hard because MY mind is on the drama), she could be a HUGE asset to our casino.

So I try to help her out as much as I can as I come in to relieve her, and talk her through the paperwork that she hasn’t yet been properly taught (but she’s getting a LOT better at it, and is smart enough to ask if she doesn’t know the answer -- unlike a couple of casino attendants who get it wrong EVERY DAY and ignore the simple sample paperwork packet that is literally right next to their drawers and just throw things together however and hope for the best -- which means I have to fix it when I audit their paperwork on graveyard -- not that I have any desire to protect people whose paperwork is getting progressively worse as they care less and less (thanks, drama manager, for making them feel like doing their job right isn’t important, as they see you ignore your job in order to do magic tricks while ignoring your job entirely, and sometimes TELLING them to do it wrong), for the stress I feel now.

Auditing paperwork SHOULD be easy. I spend a minute or so running a tape on their math to be sure everything is right and makes sense. For a couple of our attendants (and even for Kurt), sometimes it takes 5-10 minutes to fix their paperwork so it will pass accounting’s muster. I literally broke a pen over the past few days because I threw it down on the edge of the counter so hard out of frustration that it cracked. Last night, I just threw down the paperwork. And I KNOW I’m on camera doing so, and I’m okay with that. The fellow manager who saw it, as well as another manager who was told about it, said “I’ve never even seen you angry.”

But...when the same mistakes keep happening, and MORE mistakes keep happening on top of the usual ones, it gets frustrating. We cannot have casino attendants who don’t get their jobs (in one case, it’s a “deer-in-the-headlights” thing -- she used to be wonderful, but now, at the first sign of stress, she forgets everything she used to be good at; in another case, we seriously thing she’s developing dementia, as her paperwork gets worse and worse all the time, and she once fell over at work and at first said she was reaching for an ashtray and lost her balance, then later told another manager that she had no memory of falling at all). From what I hear through the grapevine (unofficial), we just

Either the manager of their department is ignoring the copies of paperwork with notes attached as to how their paperwork sucks, or he IS talking to them and they just don’t care and are gonna keep doing it wrong since there are no consequences.

And...I’m still frustrated. But when my boss came in a couple hours early when I couldn’t get another manager to cover the shift, we shot the “stuff” for a while as I waited for my ride home. And other than him asking how my night was (which was good -- after our monthly party, the floor was surprisingly clean, and I told hi that the short-staffed swing shift rocked at their jobs last night), we just talked about random things -- his dental appointment, both of our health (we have both had health problems recently, and while I was apparently less than 12 hours from death in January had I not gone to the hospital, according to the admitting nurse AND the doctor I saw once admitted, and I forgot to take my iron pill yesterday when I ate and was VERY shaky in my hands last night as a result, but otherwise felt okay), in the long term his health may be worse than my own.

My fellow grave manager has told me he’s looking for another job. But he’s very fickle. He told me last week that he’s sticking around for the long haul.

He breaks up with a girl, says “the single life will be good for a while,” and then less than a week later he’s telling me about his new girlfriend. And, I mean, I kind of get THAT part of it. If you think you’ve found THE ONE and they think they’ve found you, it would be hard to turn that down.

Even though I’ve been single since late 2008, just to try to avoid the cycle this guy is now going through. I also wonder how he gets so many girls to fall for him (other than being VERY fickle, he’s a good guy, but...I’m also a good guy, and I’m at almost ten years since my last relationship -- when I said I was done looking, and that if something happened it happened, but otherwise I was cool with the single life, I meant it -- but this guy changes his mind almost as often as he changes his clothes). I think, maybe, he’s less picky than I am. I get to know a woman and I like her, and I think of all the reasons it would never work. He says he has depression...which makes me think mine must be MUCH worse, because I don’t even have the self esteem to make even a slight move in such situations.

He’s still got that 24-year-old “I know everything” attitude (which I didn’t reach until 25, but by 26 realized I didn’t know crap), He’s also got that whole “I’m perfect for whomever I choose” thing, which most of us know is the foolishness of a young man.

But...a week ago, he told me that he had no desire to find another job. Last night, he told me he may be leaving soon...which I flat-out told him that while I’ve been stressed out lately, he just made me MORE stressed out. Because we’re already woefully understaffed on graveyard. Sure, I can make it work with two people, but...there may be nights where I’m on my own, with NO other employee, and can’t even pay if someone hits a jackpot until someone else answers their phone and comes in. And that’s a rarity, to say the least (at least since we lost our best manager who was tired of fighting the drama do-nothing manager). But if he bails out on me, right after I hear one of our new managers quit...that’s REALLY going to mess me over.

I’ve decided that I can handle Kurt, as sick as I am of cleaning up after him (I just decided to STOP cleaning up after him, and fixing his mistakes -- he signs out a set of keys that needs three signatures, and his signature is the only one there? I’m NOT signing for him or having anyone else do it -- if he’s too lazy to cover the basics, Kurt can face the consequences, even though history shows that he NEVER WILL face any consequences for anything he does).

If he relieved another manager in a drawer, and never signed off on verifying the drawer? That’s on him.

If he and another person verify Keno balls on swing, but only one of the two provide the required signatures? I’m not signing if I wasn’t there to verify.

And the part that will hit our staff in the pocketbook: he doesn’t sign off on the hours for people who signed out during his shift. I’m not gonna sign off on shifts for which I was not there.

I have in the past, just to make sure our employees are paid. If there is no manager signature on the hours, they don’t get paid.

But from now on, I am NOT signing off on shifts that ended when I was not there.

If they don’t get paid, I’ll look up which manager was working (even though I KNOW who it will me), and I’ll tell them to ask why he is unable to do the basics of his job.

I want to stick around. I have loyalty to this company. But if Kurt keeps getting away with shirking his duties in favor of showing off his amateur magician skills, THAT NEEDS TO LAND ON HIM, not on me for not fixing his screwups.

Or, you know, getting phone calls at home from my boss who gets phone calls at HIS home from our owner when I tell him I asked my boss a week before about a tournament I administrate, and he never answered, so I went over his head. Don’t get mad at me because you don’t bother to support me and I go higher in the food chain to get the info I need to effectively do my job. Don’t call ME at home because you’re mad that YOU (as the property manager in charge of these things) were called at home because you hadn’t shared information with those who needed it,

#work things

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

Link

The following is an excerpt from Annelise Orleck’s “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages (Beacon Press, 2018). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

GIRSHRIELA GREEN FELT a weight lift from her shoulders when she founded Respect the Bump, an advocacy group for pregnant Walmart workers. “We used to blame ourselves and blame each other for everything,” she says. “Once we got educated, we knew that something needed to be done. Because this was not a give-and-take relationship with Walmart. It was just take.”

Venanzi Luna, leader of the 2012 Pico Rivera strike, felt a rush of power “being part of OUR Walmart. I learned what retaliation is, what intimidation is, what rights workers have. I would never have imagined in my life that I have so many rights at work. Walmart likes to say that the union puts words in my mouth. I say: Nobody speaks for me. This organization gives me the knowledge I need so I can speak for myself.”

At first, recalls Green — a 48-year-old mother of seven — getting a job at the Crenshaw Walmart in South Central Los Angeles was a tremendous boost. “I got the job through welfare-to-work,” she says. “I knew absolutely nothing. I was a loyal Walmart employee, dedicated to my job and my employer. I was told at orientation that I could have a career at Walmart. That was a dream come true for someone like me. So I fought for that career.”

Green says she was a model employee. She “exceeded expectations” during employee evaluations and was promoted “a couple of times.” Within three years, Green had become a department manager for health and beauty products. It was a great feeling. “Then I started to realize that something was really wrong.”

For starters, the promotion brought her only a 20-cent raise — to $9.80 an hour. Then there was the pressure. Store managers are constantly pushed to cut staff, Green says, to come in under the “preferred labor budget” determined by corporate executives. Green never had enough workers in her department to do everything her store manager wanted. The stress was killing her.

Walmart is the world’s largest private employer — with two million employees in 11,695 stores in 28 countries, under 69 corporate banners. It imports more products from China than any other US company. By some estimates, those imports cost four hundred thousand American workers their jobs. Walmart’s managerial culture has been adapted in stores worldwide. In China, a hundred thousand associates work in an environment that employs the cult-like aspects of Sam Walton’s business vision within hierarchical structures of Chinese communism. The result has been called “Wal-Maoism.”

It’s not much better in the United States, says Green. Surveillance of low-wage workers has been growing worse for years. “This call may be monitored for quality assurance.” We’ve all heard that so many times, we never think about what that means for workers. It’s just as bad in person, say Amazon and Walmart workers. Computers monitor how many items a cashier scans per hour, says OUR Walmart activist Cesare Davunt. Everyone is expected to meet quotas. “It’s gotten so bad, associates are afraid to go to the bathroom.”

Surveillance, speed, stress, and understaffing are why so many Walmart workers get hurt on the job. Ever cost-conscious, Walmart fights hard to avoid paying compensation or providing medical care. The company has waged a long campaign to allow employers to opt out of paying into the federal Workers’ Compensation program. As of 2015, only Texas and Oklahoma permit that. Still, Walmart cuts costs by self-insuring. All settlements with injured workers come from company coffers, so Walmart contests every worker claim vigorously.

Girshriela Green believes she got hurt because “we were severely understaffed. I was doing the work of five people and I developed a repetitive injury in my arm. Since management told me to keep on working, I compensated with the rest of my body and ended up with a bone spur in my throat.” Injury on the job is an all-too-common story at Walmart.

“I was given 24 hours to return to work or quit,” Green says.

“But after I was injured, I was treated so badly at work.” She shakes a little, remembering. “After all the work I had put in, that was heartbreaking to me. But I had kids. I couldn’t afford not to work.”

Walmart tries to avoid firing workers, she says, because “corporate” does not like to pay unemployment. Instead, they make life so unbearable that workers quit. This has been especially true for pregnant workers, Green believes.

“I didn’t tell my boss at first when I returned to work that I was pregnant. I was terrified. I knew the odds were already against me because of my injury. Then I came in with a release from my doctor saying I shouldn’t do heavy lifting.” Her manager was furious and things deteriorated quickly. Before long, Green’s injuries became debilitating.

She was sitting at home in a neck brace, warned by a doctor not to move too much, when the phone rang. It was a group she had never heard of: Organization United for Respect at Walmart. She wanted nothing to do with them, afraid she’d lose her job. Then a close friend was fired without warning after 20 years. “That was it for me. I knew then that we weren’t the problem. They were.” She and her friend joined OUR Walmart together.

Green wanted to take OUR Walmart in a new direction, organizing pregnant workers. She began by using the OUR Walmart Facebook page to link workers in different stores. Meanwhile, she studied the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act to learn what accommodations pregnant workers could legally request.

At first, pregnant Walmart associates only “met” online. Then Green started traveling for face-to-face encounters. The United Food and Commercial Workers funded her journeys. Green recalls meeting a Texan named Chrissy Creech whose manager had refused to give her bathroom breaks. Creech’s mother patted her daughter’s pregnant belly and said to Green: “They need to respect this bump.” The name stuck.

A new kind of labor organization was born, dressed in fuchsia maternity smocks. Green was amazed at how many women wanted to join Respect the Bump. Maryland Walmart associate Tiffany Beroid received nine hundred responses when she posted stories about her experiences of discrimination. Latavia Johnson in Chicago had a similar experience.

“A lot of women started speaking out about their hardships,” Green says, “about being retaliated against, discriminated against, being pushed out early, not given accommodations, being told that they had to lift a certain amount or they needed to leave.” Respect the Bump called on Walmart to change its policy of not accommodating pregnant workers. They announced plans for a pregnant women’s protest at the 2014 Walmart shareholders’ meeting. Corporate caved before the meeting, Green says, smiling, and for the first time agreed to accommodate pregnant workers. “They smelled a lawsuit coming.”

Green was pleased with the victory, but the policy change mostly helped women with “high-risk pregnancies,” she says. All pregnant workers needed accommodations to be safe at work. Thelma Moore was hit by a falling television set at the Chatham, Illinois, store. Ordered back to work, she refused and was fired. Moore came to Respect the Bump for help. “I’m here to stand up for myself, and other pregnant women all over the world,” Moore said.

Respect the Bump gathered an army of angry pregnant Walmart workers at its first national conference in Chicago in September 2014. Delegates demanded that Walmart comply with the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. They also announced a campaign to press for a more expansive bill, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. State versions of the bill have since passed in 21 states, and in 2017 it was reintroduced in Congress.

Attorneys from the National Women’s Law Center and at A Healthy Balance — a law practice dedicated to improving working conditions for pregnant employees and workers with small children — helped Thelma Moore and other pregnant associates file suit against Walmart. Respect the Bump picketed the store where Moore had worked. Among the protesters was Bene’t Holmes, who miscarried in a Walmart bathroom after her manager forced her to lift 50-pound boxes containing bleach and other toxic chemicals.

“They don’t even follow their own policies,” says Denise Barlage. “The rule is ‘two for a lift of 50 or more.’” When the store manager came out to ask the protesters to leave, Holmes handed him a water bottle and a stool. These two “little things,” she told him, can prevent miscarriages at work.

In the spring of 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that pregnant workers have a right to workplace accommodations. Respect the Bump was a party to the pregnancy discrimination case brought by United Parcel Service worker Peggy Young. Interestingly, the Young decision, like the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act on which it was based, was supported by conservative as well as feminist groups, working-class and middle-class women, pro-choice and pro-life organizations. Pregnancy discrimination was clearly an issue that transcended traditional political divisions, and the court’s conservative justices concurred.

Four years earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected a sex discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of Walmart’s 1.4 million women workers. Originally brought by a 52-year-old African-American woman named Betty Dukes, the suit claimed that Walmart managers discriminated against women. Plaintiffs pointed to a workforce that was 72 percent female, and a managerial team that was more than two-thirds male.

Lawyers for Dukes showed that Walmart corporate had, at every turn, prevented women from building the kinds of careers that Girshriela Green had been promised. But in the Dukes case, the justices split along partisan lines, with conservatives ruling that lawyers for the plaintiffs had not proven their case for sex discrimination. Women’s right to pursue careers free from sex discrimination remained controversial even in the 21st century. But in the 2015 Young case, joined by Respect the Bump, the court affirmed women’s right to remain safe at work through a pregnancy. Some said the victory belonged more to babies than their moms. Still, it was a victory, and a significant one.

Unfortunately for Green, by the time it came, she had been fired by Walmart. “I knew they were aware of my organizing. I was doing a lot of speaking out in public at that time.” Still, she thinks she crossed a line when she was quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “I hope to send a direct message that we will not take the abuse, the disrespect, the impoverished wages, the neglect of communities, associates and small businesses any longer,” she told reporters. The movement to hold Walmart accountable was growing, and that heartened Green. “My voice is louder with each and every one of these voices.”

Respect the Bump continued to organize and Green remained at the forefront. The group began to “take on issues of single parents too, especially not having a regular work schedule that will let parents maintain a healthy environment for their children.” Walmart’s insistence that workers come in whenever managers call has gotten some single parents in trouble with Child Protective Services, Green says. They don’t always have time to get a sitter. Fearful of losing their jobs, they leave their children alone. “It doesn’t matter if they are 11-year or nine-year or just two-year associates,” she says. “Walmart expects them to jump the minute they call.”

And usually they go, says former deli manager Venanzi Luna, until the day something breaks inside. Then, says Luna, “you know you won’t jump, even one more time. There is only so long you can live in fear.” The corrosive disrespect builds up scar tissue that becomes ever more inflamed. Her floor manager yelled at her in front of customers many times before she finally exploded. Called into the store manager’s office to explain, she seethed: “How dare he? I am not his daughter. He is not my dad.”

Denise Barlage remembers the moment she reached her limit. “I told my manager: ‘My husband knows better than to talk to me like that. Who do you think you are?’ He said: ‘Denise, sit down.’ I said, ‘No, this is done.’ I told him I knew my rights and walked out.”

Learning their legal rights has been transformative, Luna and Barlage say. They throw around the phrase “unfair labor practice” (ULP) whenever managers bully them. “I will always have to fight,” says Barlage. “I understand that. But the constant intimidation gets you down. When you just want to do your job and you are constantly getting ‘coached.’”

“One time a manager pulled me over, physically you know, and he said: ‘You just took a 22-minute break.’” Barlage shot back: “‘Are you counting my bathroom time?’ I had to pull out my wallet and show him my card, which shows my right to take a break. ‘I know how to file a ULP,’ I said. ‘This is getting old, guys.’ And it was.”

Walmart specializes in intimidation and retaliation, OUR Walmart workers say (and the National Labor Relations Board has affirmed this repeatedly since 2010). “As soon as they found out that I was part of OUR Walmart,” Luna says, “it all started. They gave me a verbal, a write-up, and my last warning all in one week. That was unheard of.”

When managers ordered Luna to write a statement explaining why she wanted to keep her job, she replied: “You’re not going to get that from me. You never asked me how many times I didn’t take a lunch. How many times I never took a break! How many times you asked me to fix the time clock so that it shows I took a break when I didn’t, so it says I took a lunch when I didn’t. I’ll show you who Venanzi is.’ That same day I filed a ULP.”

Salvadoran immigrant and 11-year Walmart associate Evelin Cruz came to the boiling point after years of watching managers and corporate executives be gratuitously cruel to workers. Cruz was treated well. But she grew ever more horrified watching managers demean grown women and men.

At daily morning meetings, she recalled, “It was drilled into all of us how replaceable we were.” Cruz felt that Walmart intentionally made “predatory hires: single mothers, felons, people they knew would keep quiet just because of their situation, because they’re the sole supporters of their families or because they have a record and are not able to get better employment.” She burned watching. “It was just so wrong.”

The final straw for Cruz was when her store manager denied leave to a co-worker whose daughter was dying of cancer. Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, Cruz told the manager, the woman had a right to take time with her daughter. The manager refused. “How dare they?” Cruz was incredulous. “It’s hard enough to have a child who’s dying. But to not be able to take care of that child because you have to work? To worry about putting food on the table and a roof over your children’s heads at such a time? To worry about not having medication for your child to survive a little longer or to lessen her pain? I couldn’t stand it. What I saw in that one instant opened my eyes. That’s when I became an activist.”

Jenny Mills says she became an activist when her son was injured on the job and Walmart “gave him the runaround.” She had been working at Walmart for nine years before his accident. Looking back, she can’t believe it took her so long to open her eyes.

She told me her story on a hot September day in 2015, over a breakfast of banana and smoothie at the Denny’s where she washes up each morning after sleeping in her car. Mills was wearing the green OUR Walmart T-shirt with thumb and forefinger forming an O and three fingers pointing upward. That was the signal activists would use to silently connect inside the stores. Managers listened for any talk of unionizing. So activists created a hand sign.

Jenny Mills was not one of those pioneers. “I was afraid,” Mills says. “I had never done anything like this before, so I was nervous about what the repercussions would be.” But a friend said that it was her responsibility as a mother to fight for young people. OUR Walmart probably won’t save middle-aged workers, her friend said. “But we need to help the next generation.”

Mills’s son was a night-shift worker. In small towns like Pico Rivera where Walmart contributes 10 percent of all tax revenue, it is common for multiple family members to work at the same store. Working and living together, pooling income to pay the bills, they can get by on Walmart salaries — until something happens.

The men who steam-clean the floors each night at Pico usually put rugs down to prevent workers from slipping, Mills says. One night they forgot. “My son was pushing a cart when his feet went right out from under him. He landed on his back and elbows. After that, he was in such pain it was ridiculous.” The company delayed sending him to the doctor, she says. Meanwhile, they told him to return to work or lose his job.

Finally, he got to see a Walmart doctor who said he would have to live with the pain. Jenny insisted he get a second opinion. “That doc told us my son’s tailbone was hanging on by a thread. He needed surgery, and soon.” Three years later, Walmart was still refusing to pay.

The injury would not have been so debilitating, Mills says, if Walmart had given him time to recover. Instead, they had him “lifting and twisting and doing all the things he could not do” until he was completely incapacitated. Since then, he has been unable to work.

At the time her son was injured, Mills still had her job at the Pico store. The two lived together. Then her son lost his job and the landlord raised the rent from $1,000 to $1,400. “I lost my apartment because I wasn’t getting paid enough to keep it on my own. I was making more than $13 an hour. It took me nine years to get to that wage and I couldn’t afford my apartment. New people come in making $9 an hour and they don’t get to work full-time. Come on!” She raises her voice. Heads turn. “Who can rent an apartment in California on $9 an hour part-time?”

When I met Jenny, she was living in a small hatchback with her husband and cat. And she wasn’t the only homeless employee at the Pico Rivera store. “There were at least three others,” she says.

For a few months, her manager let her park (and sleep) in the store parking lot. But after she joined in a protest when Walmart board members were meeting the prime minister of Japan, she was evicted. “A guard came and told my husband that corporate had seen my name in the newspaper and we couldn’t park our car there anymore.”

The owners of Party City, a nearby store, told the couple they could park and sleep in one of their parking spaces. It was right across from Walmart. Her old boss could see her get out of her car every morning and walk deliberately to Denny’s to brush her teeth and wash her face.

Walmart closed the Pico store in April 2015 and Mills lost her only income. The UFCW gave her husband a part-time job but it didn’t pay enough for them to put together first and last month’s rent on a new place. At 53 years old, Mills applied for and received a Pell grant to study computer science at a nearby community college. She is hoping an associate’s degree will help her find a job that pays enough that she can rent an apartment, or at least a mobile home. Meanwhile, she says, being active in OUR Walmart keeps her spirits up.

“I’m very enthused about the movement. I think we have a lot to gain,” she says “It’s empowering to stand up. Maybe we won’t benefit right away. But I’m really doing it at this point for future generations. It’s for them that I keep telling the story of what happened to me. I’m going to stay active in the movement no matter what. We need to help people get better jobs.”

Though it is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act to fire workers for organizing, every OUR Walmart activist I interviewed had been fired. One large wave of firings came after the 2013 Ride for Respect, which brought a hundred associates from across the country to Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Girshriela Green recalls the meeting.

“They wouldn’t let us in. The senior VP for Labor Relations and Human Resources came out and we stood in the parking lot with her for an hour. The workers kept saying to her: ‘You need to respect your associates.’ All of us were underpaid, so for associates to insist on respect before talking about a fair wage should have let them know how wrong things were.

“She assured us she had no idea we were being treated badly and no one else in corporate did either. We told her we were in fear for our jobs when we got back.” Green shakes her head. “She said she would not tolerate retaliation from any manager. Of course, as soon as we got back, the firings started.”

The next time activist protesters traveled to Walmart headquarters, Green says, “we were met in the parking lot with dogs. Yeah. Police dogs and private police were blocking us and telling us we were not welcome as associates in our own home office. So we said to them: ‘We are the heartbeat of the company. How dare you treat a vital part of your body like that?’”

Barbara Collins remembers it too. She had worked in the Placerville, California, store for seven years before she joined the second Ride for Respect. She was fired three weeks after she came back to work. She joined other fired workers filing suit with the NLRB.

The NLRB ruled that their rights had been violated. Walmart protesters won NLRB suits in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Denise Barlage believes that this was because the corporation’s behavior was so egregious and so obviously illegal. The NLRB had no choice, she says. In January 2014, the NLRB ruled that Walmart had illegally disciplined and fired 60 workers in 24 states for participating in Black Friday protests. Eleven months later, the NLRB ruled that managers at two California stores had broken the law by threatening to fire workers and close stores if employees organized. That’s how Barbara Collins got her job back.

In January 2016, the NLRB ordered Walmart to rehire 16 laid-off workers, including Evelin Cruz, and to compensate them “for any loss of earning and other benefits suffered as a result of the discrimination.” Walmart appealed. In May 2016, the NLRB ruled again that Walmart was guilty of illegal retaliation against workers. In an extraordinary punishment, it ordered store managers in 10 states to read aloud to workers the statutes affirming their right to organize.

Collins was excited to return to her store. “It takes a long time for anything to happen through the government,” she says, “but I wanted to go back (at a higher wage of course) and just smile at the manager who fired me.” In the midst of her ebullience she grows serious. “There are still a lot of people who are just consumed by fear. I want to be an example. You can win.”

For some, victory took too long. Evelin Cruz, who suffered from chronic heart disease, died before she could enjoy her victory. Barlage will never forget the night Cruz called her, crying, to the hospital. “I told her things were going to be okay but she just shook her head and said: ‘Promise me you’ll keep with the program.’” Barlage told her friend to calm down and rest. But Cruz was anxious and insistent. “Promise me!” she said as tears rolled down her face. Barlage did.

Barbara Collins returned to her job at the Placerville Walmart but she says she was a different person than when she was fired. The movement had changed her. “I learned about the economy. I registered to vote. I was 40 years old and I had never registered to vote. I didn’t think my voice mattered. OUR Walmart taught me that our voices do matter.” Collins learned she was good at lobbying. When California passed the paid-sick-leave bill she had worked on, Collins was invited to stand with Governor Jerry Brown when he signed it. Barlage stood beside Brown when he signed the $15 living-wage bill.

“Besides the historic stuff,” says Collins, “protesting is fun.” Gleefully, she boasts that she has been arrested eight times. She was among 42 Walmart employees who shut down Park Avenue in November 2014, sitting in the street atop a giant OUR Walmart blanket. Facing Alice Walton’s building, they chanted: “Didn’t your mother teach you to share?” Collins was also blocked the doors to Walmart’s lobbying firm in Washington, DC. To celebrate her daughter’s high school graduation, the two plan to get arrested together.

Tyfani Faulkner was fired on a spurious charge but she has no intention of giving up the fight for Walmart workers. She now works as a home-health aide, caring for fragile, elderly patients. She likes the work. It feels meaningful and the hours are flexible. She works back-to-back 24-hour shifts. “That leaves me plenty of time for OUR Walmart,” she says.

Faulkner, Green, Luna, Barlage, and other OUR Walmart leaders are in for the long haul. But they know well that the stakes are high and victories hard-won. “Everyone in OUR Walmart has suffered a lot,” Luna says. The Pico women, widely known for their courage and militancy, were badly shaken in April 2015 when Walmart closed their store. In a husky, whispery voice, Luna notes that 533 families “lost their breadwinner.” And it wasn’t just Pico. Five stores in four states were closed, 2,200 workers laid off without warning.

Luna came to work that day and found the doors locked. Full-time workers and a few part-time employees received 60 days’ severance. Many got nothing. Walmart claimed that workers who wanted transfers to other stores were given them. Luna says that is not true and that no activists were offered transfers.

Management claimed the stores were shut down to repair plumbing problems. OUR Walmart and allies in the UFCW say it was punishment. Walmart had warned workers they would shut down stores to punish organizing, says Barbara Collins. When meat cutters in a Texas store voted to unionize, Walmart moved to prepackaged meats. It’s how they respond, workers say, swiftly and with imperial coldness.

When the Pico store reopened, not one OUR Walmart activist was rehired. “I was suicidal for a while,” Luna admits. “People came to me and said: ‘If it wasn’t for you, we would still have our jobs.’” For a moment, she rests her forehead on her arms, then resumes. Court injunctions prevent OUR Walmart activists from entering Walmart stores, except to shop. Even that is denied her, says Luna. When she walked into the reopened Pico store to shop, someone recognized her. She was escorted out by security.

Deep friendships are the gift that compensates for many losses. “It’s all her fault.” Barlage nudges her younger friend. “She’s the one that signed me up. When I first started doing this, there was so much negative feedback from everybody else. You know: ‘If you don’t like what you’re doing, get another job’? I was ready to say, ‘Venanzi, I’m out. I can’t do this. It’s too negative.’ But she said: ‘It’s okay, mom. We’re going to change things.’”

Over a long lunch of Mexican food, they reminisce about their high times. They begin with the first walkout at a US Walmart, back in 2012. Barlage lets out a hearty laugh. “Venanzi said to me, ‘Mama, we’re going to strike over our ULP.’ I didn’t even know what a ULP was then. She said, ‘Just be there. Tomorrow. We’re going to strike.’ I thought, ‘Oh, crap.’” Barlage pressed herself against the back wall, hoping Luna might miss her. “But she took my hand and said, ‘Come on, mama. Let’s do this.’”

Luna says, “I didn’t know if the associates would really walk out.” But she and Barlage and Cruz had done their jobs well: Luna organized the fresh-food workers; Evelin, health and beauty; and Barlage, the night shift. The night workers liked the idea of striking, Barlage says, because they were the ones most frequently injured. “Everyone is scared to leave their position to ask for help so they lift heavy boxes alone, and they get hurt.” After a quick visit to the “No Care” clinic, she says, “they are given an aspirin and sent back to work. So when I said, ‘Let’s get together, let’s make a change,’ they were receptive. You bet.”

Still, the workers were nervous, says Luna. “They kept asking me, ‘Can we get fired?’ And I said, ‘No, we cannot get fired. We will file a ULP for you.’ I tried to hide how scared I was.” Luna’s manager glared as she walked the strikers out the front door. “They were on the phone with corporate as I said: ‘Clock out everyone. The strike begins now!’ And people were like, ‘Oh, my God. Walmart workers just went on strike to protest retaliation.’”

It wasn’t until she was outside, Luna says, that it hit her. “Oh, my God! We are on strike. She heard management tell reporters that the strikers were not Walmart workers, that they were outside agitators, union organizers. Luna laughs. “I told them, ‘Come see me inside at the deli where I work.’”

Support came from across the globe. The best was the busload of unionized Walmart workers from Uruguay, South Africa, Italy, and elsewhere, who came to walk them back in. When she saw the parade of foreign workers marching behind her, Luna says: “I got goose bumps. I felt like the president of the United States walking into the store with all of them behind us, dancing and singing. When the store manager tried to throw them out, they said, ‘We’re Walmart workers. We have a right to be here.’” Luna heard workers whispering that the strikers were going to be fired. She didn’t think so. It felt “so good having that support from everywhere. I said: ‘No. This is what happens when you actually believe in something.’ Our emotions went wild that day.”

Barlage nudges Luna in the shoulder. “She’s an emotional girl.” She tells of the time they shut down Cesar Chavez Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. They were all there: Evelin Cruz, Tyfani Faulkner, Girshriela Green, and a raft of supporters from organized labor and from Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice.

“The day was so hot,” Barlage remembers, “and we were all nervous. I looked at Venanzi and she was on her knees hyperventilating. She wouldn’t look at me. The cops were coming down the line, reading people their rights. I was three people down from Venanzi. There was this young guy next to her and I said: ‘I need you to put your hand on Venanzi’s back because she looks like she’s going to pass out.’ He looked at me funny. But he did it. And then I said, ‘Now rub her back.’ He did, and I saw Venanzi start to breathe again.”

Luna had not told her parents that she was going to be arrested. “I didn’t want them to see me on TV,” she says. “They would be: ‘Oh, my God, what are you doing?’ I was okay once we were arrested. But those few moments, in the streets waiting, I was nerve-racked.”

In prison, Rabbi Jonathan Klein of CLUE relaxed them by getting everyone to sing: old civil rights and labor songs, even Motown. “In one cell were the women,” Luna and Barlage recall. “On the other side of a brick wall were the men.” They heard Rabbi Klein start singing. “He said, ‘Come on, everybody. Let’s sing.’” Luna laughs. “It was like a party in jail.” Luna says she started to joke with the police. “I told them I didn’t like my mug shot. They needed to let me get my lipstick, let me fix my hair, and take it again.”

The pleasures of protest, the rush of feeling a part of history. When Barlage, Luna, Faulkner, and 25 others shut down the Crenshaw store in November 2014, they made the national news. It was the first retail sit-down strike since saleswomen occupied Woolworth in Detroit and New York in 1937.

“We shut down the store for almost two hours,” Luna says with glee. “Corporate was freaking out.” They taped their mouths shut to protest Walmart’s attempts to silence workers, wrote the word “strike” in thick black letters on the tape. Leaning against the display cases cross-legged, they held up black-and-white pictures of the Woolworth strikers — role models, allies from another time. Barlage and Luna grin, remembering. “We enjoyed that.”

That same night, Cruz led hundreds of protesters in Pico singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Then, tweaking Walmart’s slogan “Pay Less, Live Better,” they sat down in traffic holding hand-lettered signs that said: “Sit Down, Live Better.”

“But maybe the best times, and the scariest,” Luna says, were their trips to Walmart shareholders’ meetings. They’ve all gone several times. Faulkner went four years in a row. “It can be shocking the first time you go,” she says, “because they hold it in a basketball stadium. And when you think of how the workers live and you see this extravagant concert and show that they call a shareholders’ meeting, it can feel very overwhelming.”

“Walmart Moms” came one year to speak about their children’s needs for clothing, food, and medical care. Another year, the fired Pico strikers demanded their jobs back. The protesters cornered Walmart’s CEO and spoke directly to him. “Doug McMillon was very polite to us,” Barlage says. “He talked for about 30 minutes.” Over the years, they have even gotten face-to-face meetings with Alice Walton.

In June 2013, two months after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Walmart workers helped bring Kalpona Akter to Bentonville. She spoke directly to the Walton family, asking why they would not spend even one percent of one year’s personal dividends to save the lives of the workers who sew the clothing that has made them a fortune.

Venanzi Luna introduced a petition from the floor in 2012 asking CEO Rob Walton to step aside. She spoke again in 2015, demanding to know why the Pico store had been closed and hundreds of workers laid off. “I get really nervous speaking in front of people,” she says. “This was thousands of associates and Walmart corporate. And the family. My hands were shaking. If you look at the video you can see my entire body was shaking.” A working-class hero is something to be. But Luna will let you know that her fierceness is just covering her fear.

Since the 2016 election, Tyfani Faulkner has been trying to heal rifts in the movement, reaching out to Walmart workers who voted for Donald Trump. Though she voted for Clinton, she says she understands those who didn’t. “They wanted to believe in what Trump said he’d do: bring back manufacturing jobs. Then they wouldn’t have to work at Walmart anymore. That excited them.” Faulkner says she’s trying to “reunite us around the goals we all share. If you voted for Trump because he said he’d help workers, then hold him to it.”

Luna has been through a lot since the 2012 strike. She’s lost her job, lost Evelin, lost her mom, whom she nursed through it all. “It’s not easy,” she says. “Everybody who is part of this movement has suffered. But without that suffering we wouldn’t be where we are.”

I ask her where she thinks they are. She says, “The ladies that made a revolution at Walmart, we literally started a chain reaction. First it was the Walmart workers, then the fast-food workers, the car washeros. … It’s still going on. We did that! We started it.

“People never expected Walmart workers to take a stand against the world’s biggest company. But you know what? If we can change Walmart, we can change everything. People don’t realize how much power they have as workers. But if you put your little bit of rights on the line and go from that, you can change anything in the world.”

Annelise Orleck is professor of history at Dartmouth College and the author of five books on the history of US women, politics, immigration, and activism, including Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty.

Liz Cooke was born and raised in Brooklyn. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to photograph Holocaust survivors and Soviet émigrés in her childhood neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in numerous publications. Most recently her photographs of Newburgh, New York, were featured in the Guardian (UK).

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