#he also bans Nancy from ever entering their home after he hears about how she played a role

[artiststarme]

Interested or Not?

Based on a prompt from @nburkhardt. I hope you guys like it and please leave your thoughts in the comments!

Also, if you have any angsty prompt ideas, please send them my way!

~*~*~*~

Steve knew he didn’t have any self-confidence anymore. He hadn’t really since his fall from grace as King Steve in his junior year of high school, really. He tried to change for the better, be a man that himself and Nancy could be proud of. But what did that do? It caused his entire friend group and the rest of the student body to shun him. He’d started high school as King Steve, destroyer of morals and jerk of a man. People liked him, he was popular, and he thought he was happy. As soon as he tried to be better though, everyone turned on him so quickly they couldn’t have ever liked him to begin with. He left high school as a broken boy that hadn’t ever been loved at all. 

Sometimes he wished he could go back and change things. He used to be someone he was proud of. He’d spend hours perfecting his hair and outfit to show off to the girls of the school (and the boys but that’s neither here nor there). His skin was flawless and his biggest insecurity was the too-faint outline of his abs. Now though, Steve was a mess. His hair was dull, his skin was scarred, and his confidence was gone. How could he have good self-esteem when he had a ligature mark branded onto his neck and chunks of tissue missing from his sides? 

There was always a voice in the back of his head whispering that the family he built for himself wouldn’t last, that they’d leave him just like everyone else had. His parents couldn’t get away from him fast enough, his old friends from high school dropped him as soon as he showed an ounce of emotional maturity, and Nancy broke his heart into a million little pieces before leaving too. So why should Steve believe anyone would ever stay?

Even with Robin singing his praises to anyone that would listen, the voice in Steve’s head was louder. It spoke of better options, whispers of abandonment, and deprecating thoughts about his appearance. Who would ever choose Steve when he looked like this?

Steve’s looks were all he had. That’s how he charmed people and drew people in. Now? Anyone in their right mind would stay as far away from him as possible. He didn’t have anything else to offer people either. He didn’t have any interests or intelligence or drive to go into anything. He wasn’t going to school or working at a great job. He was twenty years old working a dead end minimum-wage job at Family Video and babysitting kids that really didn’t need him, for free on the side. 

When Eddie started acting weird, Steve genuinely had no idea what was happening. The whispered words pointed to make Steve blush, the lingering touches, and the free weed all confused him. What the hell was Eddie doing and why was he doing it? If a girl had done that to him before everything happened, Steve would’ve upped the charm and started flirting back. But there was no way Eddie was flirting with him. Steve was probably just imagining it, hoping for it, because he knew no one would ever be interested in him again. 

But then Eddie got even more bold, less cautious with his words and much more direct. He’d tell Steve how pretty he looked in the lights of Family Videos, an absolute lie since the bright fluorescents made his skin look pale. Eddie would brush an imploring hand through his hair and comment on how soft it felt, another lie since the hairspray made it all oily and gross. He even told him that his singing voice was that of an angel, a definite lie because Robin always tells him he sounds like a dying walrus when he sings along to Queen. 

After several weeks and many brushed-off flirts later, Eddie reached his breaking point. He asked Steve not-so-straight out, “Steve, I like you and I think you like me. Would you like to go on a date with me this weekend?”

Steve just stared at him in response. What the actual fuck? “You like me?”

Eddie stared at him blankly before sputtering an indignant, “uh yes? How-how did you not know that? I’ve been flirting with you for months?!”

“That was flirting? What? Eddie-”

“Was it bad? I told you your ass looked great in your jeans like two days ago. How was that not flirting?” Eddie yelled.

“But why? Why are you flirting with me? Is it a joke?” Steve couldn’t wrap his head around this. Why would Eddie of all people be interested in him? There was no way someone as beautiful and full-of-life as Eddie would ever look at a guy like Steve twice. 

Eddie rested his hands on Steve’s shoulders and looked at him sadly. “No Stevie, it’s not a joke. How could I not like you? You’re smart, you’re kind, you listen to me talk for hours about nerdy subjects I know you don’t give a shit about. You’re good with the kids and you’d do anything to protect the people you love. You’re also fine as hell so there’s that. There’s no way I couldn’t be interested in you.”

Steve had tears in his eyes by the time Eddie was done speaking. Eddie truly liked him, something Steve didn’t think was possible anymore. But here he was, unswayed by Steve’s tears and low self-esteem and abandonment issues. He was willing to prove to Steve that he was important and that he wouldn’t leave him. He was willing to stay. 

With a small laugh, Steve nodded. “I would love to go on a date with you.”

“Glad to hear it, Big Boy because I might be in love with you.”

And with that, they kissed. Steve had a long way to go before his self-esteem was where it used to be but with Robin, Dustin, and Eddie in his corner, there was no doubt that he would get there eventually. 

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[sowk-fic-archive]

SOWK ch.26/35

Summary:

Dominic attempts to make things right...

Chapter 26 : accueil

It had been a while since Dominic had entered Sector Three from this direction. Granted, Scrap only lived a few doors down from his own home, but something about heading in from the Voix side of St Pierre pulled at Dom’s gut.

He remembered the note he had left Annie. He wondered if she had read it, or even if Nancy had. He wondered if she’d worked out who, exactly, he had risked his life for.

He wondered if she wanted him back in the house at all.

Sighing, he summed up every ounce of courage he had and knocked twice on the door, willing himself not to turn and run away. He could hear someone clattering about inside the house that had felt so far from home for the longest time, and then loud, frenzied shouts. “I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t go!” yelled the voice of his mother. An unbidden smile crept onto his face.

The door was wrenched open and there stood Annie, wearing a dressing gown with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. “Sorry,” she said distractedly, “I was in the shower and-- Oh my God. Oh my God.” A hand flew to cover her mouth before she was enveloping Dominic in a hug that only a mother could give.

“Hi, Mum,” Dom whispered, his own arms wrapping around her and holding her as if it was the most important thing in the world.

In that moment, it was.

Until, that is, Annie stepped back and slapped him around the face.

“Jesus, Mum!” Dom screeched, clutching his cheek and bending over double.

“Don’t you dare walk out on me like that again, Dominic! I sent you away for one night, not two flipping weeks! I almost had a coronary while you were off galavanting with Scrap and then you left the note and... oh darling, come here,” she said, all the anger out of her system. She wrapped Dominic in her arms again, her son standing much taller than her and patting her gently on the back. “Dom, I’m so glad you’re home.”

Dominic simply nodded, his cheek red and stinging but his throat choked up with emotion. “Me too,” he whispered, as Annie drew back once again. Her hands smoothed over his hair, trying to stick one lock down in place. Dominic cracked a smile.

“You look tired, love,” she cooed, cupping his face in her hands. “What’s happened?”

Dominic looked away to the side, towards the rest of the room. It’d felt like too long since he was last here, but nothing had changed. Physically, at least. “It’s a long story,” he sighed, meeting her eyes again.

“For you, I’ve got all the time in the world,” she said with a smile, leading him towards their threadbare sofa. “Go on, you sit down and I’ll make up some tea.”

“It’s really complicated,” Dom muttered in feeble protest. His heart sank in his chest as he sank into the cushions. He knew he was about to shatter Annie’s happiness, unless she had already worked it out.

She hummed out of tune as she made up two cups of tea, and brought them over to where Dominic was sitting. He thanked her quietly, slurping at the drink. It was perfect, as always.

“So,” she said, with a smug little smile on her lips. “How’s Matthew?”

Dominic choked, his eyes bugging out his head. Coughing, he managed to place his mug on the floor without spilling too much tea. “How... what...” he wheezed between coughs. “I can’t breathe,” he feebly declared, bending over double as he gasped for air. Annie’s hand was patting his back reassuringly.

Sitting up with tears in his eyes from the lack of oxygen in his lungs, Dominic exhaled loudly. He then met Annie’s eyes and all the shock went straight back through his veins. “Oh my God,” he gasped again, running a hand through his hair. “How... I just... you’re not angry at me?!” he spluttered, his mother’s approval the first thing on his mind.

Annie smiled lightly to herself, placing her mug of tea on the floor also. “Dom, love,” she said, beckoning Dominic into her arms. Of course, he complied. “I’ve always had a mother’s intuition that you might not be as straight as you appear--”

“Mum!”

“--but the fact that you are... in love with a Voix is quite a surprise, after everything we’ve been through...” her voice was airy as she stared out of the back window into the grimy alley there. There were tiny flowers growing in the window box, the lack of sunlight stopping them from developing properly.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” Dominic said quietly, turning to put his head on her shoulder. She pulled away with a look of disgust on her face.

“If you ever, ever apologise again for loving someone, then you are not my son, Dominic,” she said, her voice quivering. “I never told you about your dad, did I?”

Dominic blinked. “What about him?” he barely whispered, a good week of not even thinking about his father suddenly crashing down on him.

“Fleck wasn’t always a good man, Dom. I know you love...” she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I know you loved him dearly, but he never used to be such a good father figure. He was a horrid person, before I met him. When he was young, younger than you, he used to bully glouglous that were worse off than him. He’d manipulate the system just to see how far he could bend the rules. When my mother found out I was seeing him - I was only eighteen, mind - she banned me from ever speaking to him again. I told her I was in love. She didn’t care.”

Annie wiped away a tear with her free hand, clutching Dominic closer with the other. “And I promised, on that very day, that I would never stop my children from making their own choices in life. We learn from our mistakes. I just hope you loving Matthew isn’t a mistake,” she said with a small smile.

“It’s not, Mum,” Dominic said, voice thick with unshed tears. “But... how did you find out?”

“Your note confirmed it all,” she said, and it was clear to Dominic that she was desperately trying to hold back a self-satisfied grin. “And, I suppose, before that. I knew there was something odd about you and Nancy not talking just because you’d come out to her. She’s not like that. She’s a sensible girl. So I knew it must have been more than that.” She sighed, squeezing Dominic’s hand lightly. “And then when you said in your letter that you were risking your life... well, I only had one option. Matthew.”

“He’s not as bad as you think,” Dominic said quickly. “Everyone thinks he’s a spoiled brat and... okay, well, he is spoiled, and he can be a brat sometimes...” he trailed off, thinking back to their last conversation with a frown. “But he’s different. He’s not like other Voix.”

Annie smiled, a tear trickling down her cheek. “Why did you fall in love with him?” she asked softly. “I mean, I know it’s... it’s difficult to explain it, even to yourself, but... you seemed so angry with him for such a long time.”

Dominic sighed, dropping his eyes from his mother’s hopeful face. He was going to have to tell her eventually. Why not now? “I had a plan,” he said, in a mousy, fearful voice. “I was going to... I was going to make him...” he faltered, unsure of what to say and with a rosy blush seeping across his cheeks. “I was going to make him want me and then I was going to ruin him so that his father would lose his son, just like I lost Dad.”

Annie’s face fell. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Well, I didn’t see that one coming.” Her lips wobbled suddenly, splitting out into a grin. “What are you? Some kind of secret agent?” She laughed, her eyes creasing at the corners. “Well, Dom, you’ll be glad to know that - having known your father so well - he’d be proud that you’d decided to out yourself and end up with Matthew Bellamy rather than trying to kill everyone you see.” She sighed, patting his head with a fond smile. “I love you, you know, you daft bugger.”

“Love you too, Mum.” Dominic grinned as she wrapped her arms around him once more.

The front door slammed loudly, heavy footsteps stomping inside the house. Three guesses who it could be, Dom thought to himself with a quiet smile.

“Mum, I’m home!” Nancy yelled, movements as loud and ungainly as a baby elephant’s. “What’s for lunch? I’m starving!”

She strolled further into the room, dressed smartly in a simple, knee-length black dress with a white collar, her hair pulled up into a ponytail. Her eyes fell suddenly upon Dominic, and the expression on her face stiffened. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Hello.”

“Hey, Nancy,” Dominic said quietly.

“You’re alive, then,” she said evenly.

“Apparently so.”

She stared at him, lips turned slightly upwards. “Don’t do that to our family ever again,” she said, holding out her arms for a hug. “C’mere. I’ve missed you, little brother.”

“Nancy, we’re like... minutes apart, age-wise. You’re not my big sister.” Dominic said, though when his twin began to smile, he did too. It felt like forever since he had seen her happy, but as he stood up and allowed her to run at him as if she was competing in a sprint, an unpleasant, sickly feeling twinged in his gut. He felt her arms around him and she was laughing, but for some unidentifiable reason, he wasn’t laughing with her.

There was a quiet, sensible voice in the back of his head that was telling him there was something wrong with his sister. He didn’t know where the voice had come from - he’d never really noticed it before - but it was there, softly and calmly telling him to find out what was wrong.

Nancy pulled away from the embrace with a grin, nodding just once. “I’m going to get changed. This stupid dress is suffocating me,” she announced, skipping upstairs without a care in the world.

But Dominic knew that wasn’t the case. He didn’t know how, but he knew.

“Oh, that’s right!” Annie was saying, talking to herself for all Dom was listening. “Nancy got a new job, I forgot to say. She’s working at a big house quite a way away from here. A maid, you know. Our Nancy.”

“I’ll be back in a minute, Mum,” Dominic breathed, following his twin upstairs and heading to their room. He walked slowly, trying not to make a sound as he stood next to their door and listened, holding his breath.

Silence.

Without stopping to think, he pushed open the door and stepped inside, eyes landing on Nancy immediately. She spotted him and grinned, waving. “Hey. What are you doing up here? I was just--”

“What’s wrong, Nancy?” Dom asked quietly.

Her face fell suddenly and horribly. “N-nothing,” she said, though her eyes dropped to the floor. “I’m fine.”

“You’re lying. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“What... how did...” she shook her head numbly, flopping down onto the bed. “I don’t understand. How did you know?”

“I don’t know, but that’s not the point.” Dominic strode across the room and sat down beside her. “What’s up?”

“It’s Ben,” she said, and that’s when the first sob broke free from her lips. Her shoulders heaved, and she brought a hand to her face. Dom shuffled closer, cautiously hooking an arm around her shoulders. It should’ve been natural, but over the past several weeks it was something that had never happened.

When she didn’t shake it off, however, Dominic held her tight. “What did he do?” he asked, the lump in his throat telling him that he knew. He knew that Ben had hurt Nancy, and badly, but he didn’t know why he suddenly knew.

“He said he didn’t want to be with me anymore,” Nancy said, tears now freely rolling down her cheeks. “We’ve been dating for two months, Dom, isn’t that good enough for him? I asked if he loved me and he said he’d think about it, and then we argued,” she whispered, sobbing again. Dominic held her close, thinking about his own love life, though he wrinkled his nose at the term. In the two or so months since Matthew’s birthday party, he’d fallen hard and fast in love. Nancy, however, his identical in every sense of the word, hadn’t been loved back.

And it pained him.

“Are you sure that he’s not just nervous or something?” he asked quietly, thumb rubbing circles into Nancy’s shoulder. She sighed, as if the weight of the world was on her back.

“He sounded so sincere,” she said, her voice drifting away at the end of the sentence. Nancy turned to Dominic then, meeting his gaze. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Dom suddenly found himself saying. Nancy recoiled slightly, giving him a trademark you’re crazy look as she raised her eyebrows. “No, I’ll do it,” he said resolutely. “It hurts me just as much as it hurts you, to see you like this.”

The truth in that statement frightened him.

Nancy sighed, nodding her head slightly. “Alright, Dom. If you want to do that, that’s fine. Just... don’t say I had any involvement in it, I know how you get,” she said, the ghost of a smile on her lips. She pushed Dominic’s back slightly, nudging him away. “Now, if you don’t mind, this dress really is uncomfortable,” she said, giggling slightly.

“Tough shit because I need to change too,” he said with a low laugh, walking over to the chest of drawers. He pulled out a clean t-shirt, turning away from Nancy to tug his old one off.

“Dom, what’s that?” she asked quietly, Dom getting tangled in his shirt as he tried to turn around. Throwing the offending garment to the floor, he faced her.

“What’s what?” he asked, totally unaware of what she was talking about.

“Those red marks on your back that look very much like fingernail scratches,” she deadpanned, Dom’s eyes widening as he hurried to look over his shoulder in the mirror. Sure enough, there was a set of angry red marks on both shoulder blades, some deep enough to have broken the skin and leave tiny scabs in their place.

“Oh, er, well... you see...” Dom said, blushing and struggling to think of an answer. One corner of Nancy’s mouth tugged up in a sad smile.

“You don’t need to make up an excuse, Dom,” she said quietly, looking away from him. He pulled his clean shirt on as a silence descended on them both. “However,” she added as he was walking towards the door to give her privacy, “that’s quite a feat, I suppose, if it was... was it...?”

“Yeah, it was,” he said as he scratched the back of his neck nervously. Nancy’s judgement could send him spiralling back into the hostility they’d only just escaped.

“Hmm,” she hummed, pulling her hair down out of the ponytail it was in. “My instinct’s telling me to congratulate you for dragging him down, but...” she paused, looking up to find Dom nodding minutely, “but I guess I should congratulate you for finding happiness.”

Dominic smiled. They were only born six minutes apart, but suddenly it seemed that Nancy had years of wisdom on him.

Standing at the door ready to leave, he looked at Nancy carefully once more. His twin was wiping away the remaining traces of her tears when she thought Dom wasn’t looking. “I love you,” he said quietly, a small smile on his lips.

Blinking, Nancy met his gaze. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him say that, and it brought a genuine smile across her lips. “I love you too, Nicky. You’re not that bad after all,” she said, smirking.

Laughing, Dominic left the room feeling happier, and that strange new feeling at the pit of his stomach was much lighter too. He went downstairs with a slight spring in his step, and his mother smiled at him from the kitchen.

“It’s nice seeing you so happy,” she said with almost a sad tone to her voice, “but tell me, Dom.” Annie gripped his wrist, as if she was desperate to know he was still there. “Are you really, truly happy?”

“Yes,” was Dominic’s immediate answer. Annie smiled in kind.

“I’m still worried, you know. I will always worry about you,” she said, smoothing down his hair.

“I’m worried too,” Dominic admitted, eyes downcast. “I’m fucking terrified.”

“Language!” she scolded, slapping the back of his palm lightly. Their eyes met and she smiled again. “Just... be careful, Dom. Don’t do anything stu--” Sighing, Annie laughed and restarted her sentence. “Don’t do anything more stupid than what you’re already doing.”

Dominic grinned. “I won’t, Mum. Promise,” he said as she walked back towards the oven. “What’s for lunch?”

Finally, a sense of normality had returned to the 815231184 household, and Dominic couldn’t be happier.

*

Days passed but things stayed the same.

Matthew woke up. He washed. He ate. He ignored the pangs of loneliness as he lay on his bed and tried to think of nothing. The bathroom was too quiet; the bed was too empty. He missed having the feeling of someone to curl into, even if he’d only known that feeling for one night. But still, despite feeling so utterly desperate and lonely, the anger bubbled inside him, scratching at his stomach and desperate to get out.

He had trusted Dominic, laid his soul bare for a glouglou to see it, and instead of being met with open trust and warmth, he was left dejected and vulnerable. For reasons unknown, Dominic had wanted to kill him. He knew that much. Matthew didn’t know when or why or where Dominic had first decided that he wanted Matthew dead. He had no idea of the situation or anything behind it. Both of them were in the dark, and so they should have stayed.

And then there had been the nickname. It shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did. But as he lay in the bath on the morning of the fourth day since Dominic’s departure, the memory of the glouglou calling him Matt still made his blood boil. How dare he degrade Matthew, a future Unique, and call him that in such an offhand way? Matthew’s hands curled into fists beneath the water. Dominic may have been a glouglou with the name of a Voix, but that did not give him the authority to destroy other people’s names as well. Aside from his voice, a name was all Matthew had.

He sighed, letting his head rest against the tiled wall of the bath. “And it’s all I ever will have if any of this gets out,” he muttered to himself, his quiet tones echoing in the empty room.

*

The next morning, Dom woke with a smile on his face. Nancy’s side of the bed was empty, so he put two and two together and presumed she was at work. Stretching, he rolled out of bed and slowly got dressed, making his way downstairs.

“Morning, Dom,” Annie said as he reached the kitchen, immediately setting about making his breakfast. “You look chirpy this morning.”

“I’m gonna go see Ben,” he said with a small smile. Nancy had told Annie the previous afternoon that her and Ben had split, and in the way only a mother can, she’d assured her daughter that it would be alright. Dom, however, was a man, and liked to take matters into his own hands instead of simply sitting around and letting things happen.

After all, that’s how he’d been raised.

“I’m proud of you for doing that,” Annie said as she sat down at the table with a cup of tea in her hands. “You know, when you and Nancy weren’t talking... I thought I’d lost you both.” Sadness crossed her features briefly before she smiled brightly. “But we’re back together again. A family.”

Dom smiled in kind, sitting down at the table with a bowl of cereal. Annie made her excuses and went upstairs to tidy the bathroom, leaving Dom to eat in silence. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do when he got to Ben’s house. Threaten him until he took Nancy back? Beat him up out of revenge?

That quiet voice was in the back of his head again. They should just talk, it was saying. Dom and Ben should sit down and have a sensible conversation about it all. Dom hadn’t really seen Ben since school, anyway, so it’d be nice for them to catch up.

Hopefully.

*

The 4876034 house was two doors down from his own, so Dominic soon found himself knocking lightly at the front door with a pleasant smile on his face. He wasn’t quite sure who would open it or what he’d be faced with, but was surprised when it was Ben himself.

“Oh,” Ben said, blinking a couple of times. It slowly occurred to Dom that, of course, he did look quite similar to his sister at first glance. It also occurred to Dom that he didn’t really have any business standing at Ben’s doorstep. “Dom. It’s been a while,” Ben said with a small smile on his lips.

Ben was what Dom thought of as Nancy’s ‘typical bloke’. Lightly muscular, tanned and with a penchant for flannel shirts, he radiated an aura of strength and friendliness that Nancy seemed to latch onto. At the minute, Ben was apparently the proud owner of a scruffy little brown beard, matching his hair; the latter of which had natural red streaks in it. Dom privately thought it suited him, but said nothing of the sort directly.

“Yeah, it has,” Dom replied. “Can I come in?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Ben said, gesturing Dom inside and still sounding quite confused about it all. His house was very similar to Dom’s own, and they sat down on a battered sofa pushed up against one of the walls of the kitchen.

Dom wrung his hands together, glancing up at Ben, who had a puzzled expression on his face. “Look,” the blond said, “I’m going to cut straight to the point. You probably know why I’m here.”

“Nancy,” Ben said. It wasn’t a sigh so much as an uttering, and the sound alone gave Dominic hope.

“I know it’s not any of my business,” he started, meeting Ben’s gaze, “but I care for Nancy more than anything in the world, you know?”

Ben knew. His little brother had been struck down with pneumonia last winter. He hadn’t made it through.

Ben and Dom both knew about the importance of family.

“I just...” Dom said, gesturing. “I’ve never seen her so upset in my life.” Dom carefully chose to omit the time when Nancy cried herself to exhaustion when she realised he was involved with a certain Voix.

“I didn’t mean to make her upset,” Ben set, expression set in a frown. That gut feeling, that quiet voice in the back of Dom’s head returned. “I just... I thought being with me was making her upset. I can’t offer her everything she deserves.”

Dom smiled wryly. “She deserves you. She deserves someone who cares for her.” As silence crept over them both, Dominic found himself biting back the words I know you care for her, because what proof did he have? The expression on Ben’s face, the strange creeping feeling in his chest?

Ben looked doubtful. Screwing his nose slightly, he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “I don’t know, Dom...” he said carefully, brown eyes avoiding Dom’s greys.

“Listen,” Dom said softly, “Nancy got home last night all smiles, laughing and joking. I saw her upstairs later and she was crying, Ben. Sobbing her heart out right in front of me. You broke her heart. She just wants you. She doesn’t want a prince.”

“She deserves a prince,” Ben mumbled.

“Well, fine. If you want to put it like that, then that’s fine by me, Ben. But just think about it. Remember at school, when Nancy tripped over her shoelace and fell in a puddle? And you swapped clothes with her, and you wore her pair of dungarees for the whole day? Do you remember that?”

A reluctant smile made its way onto Ben’s face. “Yeah, I remember that.”

“And do you remember that time a few years back, when Fred was hitting on her down in Sector 5, and she wasn’t okay with it? You told him to fuck off and you didn’t even have the hots for her back then, you were just friends. Remember that?”

Ben was laughing now, “Yeah Dom, I--”

“Do you remember,” Dom said now, in a much quieter voice, “the night that my dad died? You walked Nancy home from that bloody party, and you sat with her as she cried. Do you remember?”

Ben’s smile faded slightly. “Yeah. I remember.”

“You said she deserves a prince, Ben. You know what? You are her fucking prince. You’re her knight in shining armour, or whatever the hell you want to call it. You’re always gonna be there for her, no matter what, and she needs that. She needs you.”

“I love her,” Ben said suddenly, blushing. “I really love her, Dom. I want to marry her. I want... I want her to love me too, but I’m scared to tell her.”

“I can’t tell you this completely truthfully, and this is only from what I’ve seen, but... honestly, if you tell her you love her, she won’t disappoint you.” Dom smiled, reaching over to give Ben a friendly pat on the back. “Trust me. I’m her twin. It’s like we’ve got some kind of weird mind-bond thing going on.”

Ben gave a resolute nod, taking in a long breath. “Thanks for coming over, Dom,” he said. “If there’s one thing this whole experience has taught me it’s that you’re a really good guy. Also that I should never cross Nancy ever again or she’ll probably castrate me.”

“I would too, but she gets first dibs,” Dom deadpanned, watching Ben’s face pale before he clapped him on the shoulder, guffawing as he stood up. “Oh God, I’m sorry, but your face...”

Ben stood up, chuckling sombrely as they walked towards his front door. “You don’t joke about those things, Dom,” he said warningly, though he smiled.

“You’re a good guy, Ben,” Dom said fondly, with a smile on his face. “Just as I remembered.”

Ben offered his hand and Dom shook it, before pulling him into a half hug. “Take care, Dom.”

“You too,” Dom said, stepping out of the house and walking back down the street with a smile on his face. For once, he felt like he was doing things properly.

[oldguardaudio]

PowerLine -> Washington Post solicits immigration sob stories

Illegals – I love the USA! NOT @ Hoax and Change

illegals flipping USA burn flag @ Hoax and Change

Washington Post solicits immigration sob stories

Posted:Mon, 30 Jan 2017 01:04:30 +0000

(Paul Mirengoff)In what might be described as the journalism equivalent of ambulance chasing, the Washington Post is inviting readers to tell it how their lives have been ruined by President Trump’s executive order on immigration. The Post’s main web page includes this:

Are you, or someone you know, affected by President Trump’s executive order banning refugees and migrants from the U.S.? Share your story with us.

If you follow the link, you get this screen:

Are you, or someone you know, affected by President Trump’s travel restrictions?

President Trump issued an executive order barring refugees and migrants from predominantly Muslim countries from entry into the United States. If this affects you or someone you know, The Washington Post wants to hear from you.

*REQUIRED FIELDS

Name *

Who is affected and why? *

Explain your/their situation to us in as much detail as you can provide. * For example, if the person affected is currently detained at an airport, left in limbo during travel, etc.

How can we reach you or the person affected by the order? Please provide contact information – phone, email, or both – which a reporter may use to get in touch and learn more. We will not publish your contact information.

Submit

Reader response may already be robust. The main page currently contains these stories: “She was barred from visiting her sick mother” and “‘Trump destroyed my life’” and “‘We’re second-class citizens’” and “He was days from moving to the U.S.”

I’ve been reading the Post for 55 years. I don’t recall the paper ever running individualized story after individualized story about how particular people have been affected by a government policy. Nor do I recall the Post ever soliciting such stories.

I also don’t recall the Post engaging in this sort of journalism when Donald Trump intervened to prevent companies from moving plants from the U.S. to foreign countries. The Post easily could have run multiple stories about workers whose jobs Trump saved, thereby rescuing their economic situation. The Post could have elicited information about the dire consequences particular people would have faced if the company had moved its operation abroad.

To the best of my recollection, the Post didn’t do so.

It can’t be that the Washington Post is out to get our new president, can it?

Trump’s immigration order: myths and realities

Posted:Sun, 29 Jan 2017 23:46:48 +0000

(Paul Mirengoff)Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of the Trump administration’s immigration order [NOTE: And the way it was implemented arguably left much to be desired]. But before agreeing or disagreeing, it’s important understand what the order does and does not do, and how it compares to recent policy.

David French does a good job of separating the facts from the hysteria. For the hysteria, French cites the usual suspects: Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Huffington Post, etc.

For the facts, and for perspective, French begins with this:

[T]he order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year. Outrageous, right? Not so fast.

Before 2016, when Obama dramatically ramped up refugee admissions, Trump’s 50,000 stands roughly in between a typical year of refugee admissions in George W. Bush’s two terms and a typical year in Obama’s two terms. . . .In 2002, the United States admitted only 27,131 refugees. It admitted fewer than 50,000 in 2003, 2006, and 2007. As for President Obama, he was slightly more generous than President Bush, but his refugee cap from 2013 to 2015 was a mere 70,000, and in 2011 and 2012 he admitted barely more than 50,000 refugees himself.

The bottom line is that Trump is improving security screening and intends to admit refugees at close to the average rate of the 15 years before Obama’s dramatic expansion in 2016. Obama’s expansion was a departure from recent norms, not Trump’s contraction.

About the 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, French has this to say:

[T]hese are countries either torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments. The ban is in place while the Department of Homeland Security determines the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat. It could, however, be extended or expanded depending on whether countries are capable of providing the requested information.

The ban, however, contains an important exception: Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked. In other words, the secretaries can make exceptions — a provision that would, one hopes, fully allow interpreters and other proven allies to enter the U.S. during the 90-day period.

To the extent this ban applies to new immigrant and non-immigrant entry, this temporary halt (with exceptions) is wise. We know that terrorists are trying to infiltrate the ranks of refugees and other visitors. We know that immigrants from Somalia, for example, have launched jihadist attacks here at home and have sought to leave the U.S. to join ISIS.

Indeed, given the. . .recent track record of completed and attempted terror attacks by Muslim immigrants, it’s clear that our current approach is inadequate to control the threat. Unless we want to simply accept Muslim immigrant terror as a fact of American life, a short-term ban on entry from problematic countries combined with a systematic review of our security procedures is both reasonable and prudent.

French opposes application of the ban to green-card holders because they have already gone through round after round of vetting. He notes, however, that Trump’s order, by its terms, doesn’t apply to them. Thus, the administration should intervene to stop the misapplication of its order to green-card holders. If it doesn’t, “it should indeed be condemned,” French says.

What about the indefinite hold on admitting Syrian refugees? French finds this to be fairly inconsequential — a return, largely, to the Obama administration’s practices from 2011 to 2014:

For all the Democrats’ wailing and gnashing of teeth, until 2016 the Obama administration had already largely slammed the door on Syrian-refugee admissions. The Syrian Civil War touched off in 2011. Here are the Syrian-refugee admissions to the U.S. until Obama decided to admit more than 13,000 in 2016:Fiscal Year 2011: 29Fiscal Year 2012: 31Fiscal Year 2013: 36Fiscal Year 2014: 105Fiscal Year 2015: 1,682.

To recap: While the Syrian Civil War was raging, ISIS was rising, and refugees were swamping Syria’s neighbors and surging into Europe, the Obama administration let in less than a trickle of refugees. Only in the closing days of his administration did President Obama reverse course — in numbers insufficient to make a dent in the overall crisis, by the way — and now the Democrats have the audacity to tweet out pictures of bleeding Syrian children?

It’s particularly gross to see this display when the Obama administration’s deliberate decision to leave a yawning power vacuum — in part through its Iraq withdrawal and in part through its dithering throughout the Syrian Civil War — exacerbated the refugee crisis in the first place. There was a genocide on Obama’s watch, and his tiny trickle of Syrian refugees hardly makes up for the grotesque negligence of abandoning Iraq and his years-long mishandling of the emerging Syrian crisis.

When we know our enemy is seeking to strike America and its allies through the refugee population, when we know they’ve succeeded in Europe, and when the administration has doubts about our ability to adequately vet the refugees we admit into this nation, a pause is again not just prudent but arguably necessary.

What about Trump’s directive to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality? French puts this directive in perspective by noting the extent to which persecuted non-Muslims almost never seemed to benefit from Obama’s refugee policy:

[When] Obama dramatically expanded Syrian refugee admissions in 2016, few Christians made the cut:The Obama administration has resettled 13,210 Syrian refugees into the United States since the beginning of 2016 — an increase of 675 percent over the same 10-month period in 2015.Of those, 13,100 (99.1 percent) are Muslims — 12,966 Sunnis, 24 Shi’a, and 110 other Muslims — and 77 (0.5 percent) are Christians. Another 24 (0.18 percent) are Yazidis.

As a point of reference, in 2015 Christians represented roughly 10 percent of Syria’s population. Perhaps there’s an innocent explanation for the disparity. Perhaps not.

In any event, federal asylum and refugee law already has a built-in religious test. The term refugee means “(A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality . . . and who is unable or unwilling to return to . . . that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of . . . religion [among other things] . . .” Thus, as French says:

Religious considerations are by law part of refugee policy. And it is entirely reasonable to give preference (though not exclusivity) to members of minority religions.

Finally, French emphasizes that “you can read the entire executive order from start to finish, reread it, then read it again, and you will not find a Muslim ban.” He concludes:

Now is the time to take a fresh look at our border-control and immigration policies. Trump’s order isn’t a betrayal of American values. Applied correctly and competently, it can represent a promising fresh start and a prelude to new policies that protect our nation while still maintaining American compassion and preserving American friendships.

In my view, anyone who takes American security interests seriously and who has been paying attention will agree that a fresh look is overdue.

The Implausible Donald Trump

Posted:Sun, 29 Jan 2017 19:23:06 +0000

(Steven Hayward)I know we’ve posted this video here once or twice before, but it’s even more fun to take in now that he’s been in office for 10 days and the left is losing its mind. So let’s enjoy an extra thick and delicious helping of schadenfreude once again: (more…)

Is Trump’s Immigration Order the Worst of Both Worlds?

Posted:Sun, 29 Jan 2017 17:42:55 +0000

(John Hinderaker)President Trump is taking a lot of political heat, and therefore expending a considerable amount of political capital, for an immigration order that doesn’t go far enough to be meaningful. Trump has decreed a halt to travel–immigration and otherwise–from seven Muslim-majority countries, for a mere 90 days. This is accompanied by a suspension of refugee admissions (with the exception of Syria) for only 120 days. The idea, supposedly, is to investigate, and try to improve, vetting procedures.

This is mostly pointless, for two reasons. First, there is no conceivable way to effectively “vet” immigrants and other travelers from the Middle East and Africa. It would require more resources than we can possibly assign to thoroughly investigate all such travelers. Second, and as to immigrants more important, there is no way to vet the immigrant’s descendants. This is one reason why the current liberal theme that relatively few terrorist attacks have been carried out by Islamic immigrants is so silly. Frequently, perhaps usually, the terrorist doesn’t appear until the second generation, like Omar Mateen.

What will happen when the current travel ban runs out in just a few months? Most likely, the administration will announce some additional security measures and it will be back to business as usual. This will be seen as a defeat for President Trump, even though his order is, by its terms, time-limited. Little or nothing will be accomplished, at considerable political cost.

The problem goes much too deep to be addressed by this kind of stopgap measure. What we need is a wholesale revision of our immigration laws, commencing from the principle that immigrants should be admitted only if there is good reason to believe that their presence will be beneficial to existing American citizens.

As for refugees, there is no humanitarian case for admitting them at all: at enormous cost, we protect a tiny percentage of the refugee population, while subjecting them to an alien culture to which many will never adapt. It makes more humanitarian sense to devote those resources to protecting a far larger number of refugees where they live, or close to where they live, in a familiar culture.

Trump has the legal authority to suspend immigration indefinitely from any country or group of countries. That would be much better than the temporary order that has raised such a furor, especially if Trump issued an indefinite suspension with no pretense that “vetting” is the issue. But even that would not be an adequate substitute for a thorough revision of our immigration laws.

The Muslim Brotherhood revisited

Posted:Sun, 29 Jan 2017 17:09:06 +0000

(Scott Johnson)In significant respects the Muslim Brotherhood is the progenitor of the Islamic terrorism that hit us on 9/11. Lawrence Wright therefore began his account of al Qaeda and the road to 9/11 with Sayyid Qutb, the “intellectual godfather” of the Brotherhood.

The avowedly genocideal and terrorist group Hamas is an offshoot of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood itself is a little cagier, but it takes a case of willful blindness to miss the nature of this particular beast.

Senator Cruz urges designation of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization under federal law. The text of Senator Cruz’s 2015 bill sets forth the evidence in support of such a designation and is posted here. Andy McCarthy endorsed the bill here (additional helpful background is summarized here). The bill as reintroduced in the current session of Congress is posted here.

The purported civil rights organization CAIR resists Senator Cruz’s proposed law through a campaign of disinformation. Adam Kredo calls foul on CAIR in the Washington Free Beacon story here.

In his invaluable book The Grand Jihad Andy devoted a chapter to the origins and purposes of CAIR, its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas-support network, and its aim to silence critics of Islamic supremacism. NRO has posted a version of the chapter here. CAIR’s defense of the Muslim Brotherhood with its false disparagement of the Cruz bill makes out the point in its own way.

Lawfare editor in chief Benjamin Wittes argues that designating the Brotherhood “as a whole” a terrorist organization would be illegal. The linked post appears solely under Wittes’s name, but the text of the post refers to “[o]ne of the present authors” and elsewhere also seems to denote plural authorship (“we would never argue…”). Either I am missing something or a co-author is missing from the byline.

As I say above, Senator Cruz’s bill urges designation of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. It should be noted, however, that Senator Cruz’s bill calls for the Secretary of State, in consultation with the intelligence community, to submit a detailed report to the appropriate congressional committees that (1) indicates whether the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189); and (2) if the Secretary of State determines that the Muslim Brotherhood does not meet the criteria referred, to include a detailed justification as to which criteria have not been met.

PowerLine -> Washington Post solicits immigration sob stories PowerLine -> Washington Post solicits immigration sob stories Washington Post solicits immigration sob stories Posted:Mon, 30 Jan 2017 01:04:30 +0000…