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xtruss · 11 months ago

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When The New York Times Lost Its Way! America’s Media Should Do More To Equip Readers To Think For Themselves

— 1843 Magazine | December 14th, 2023 | By James Bennet

Are we truly so precious?” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, asked me one Wednesday evening in June 2020. I was the editorial-page editor of the Times, and we had just published an op-ed by Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas, that was outraging many members of the Times staff. America’s conscience had been shocked days before by images of a white police officer kneeling on the neck of a black man, George Floyd, until he died. It was a frenzied time in America, assaulted by covid-19, scalded by police barbarism. Throughout the country protesters were on the march. Substantive reform of the police, so long delayed, suddenly seemed like a real possibility, but so did violence and political backlash. In some cities rioting and looting had broken out.

It was the kind of crisis in which journalism could fulfil its highest ambitions of helping readers understand the world, in order to fix it, and in the Times’s Opinion section, which I oversaw, we were pursuing our role of presenting debate from all sides. We had published pieces arguing against the idea of relying on troops to stop the violence, and one urging abolition of the police altogether. But Cotton, an army veteran, was calling for the use of troops to protect lives and businesses from rioters. Some Times reporters and other staff were taking to what was then called Twitter, now called X, to attack the decision to publish his argument, for fear he would persuade Times readers to support his proposal and it would be enacted. The next day the Times’s union—its unit of the NewsGuild-cwa—would issue a statement calling the op-ed “a clear threat to the health and safety of the journalists we represent”.

The Times had endured many cycles of Twitter outrage for one story or opinion piece or another. It was never fun; it felt like sticking your head in a metal bucket while people were banging it with hammers. The publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, who was about two years into the job, understood why we’d published the op-ed. He had some criticisms about packaging; he said the editors should add links to other op-eds we’d published with a different view. But he’d emailed me that afternoon, saying: “I get and support the reason for including the piece,” because, he thought, Cotton’s view had the support of the White House as well as a majority of the Senate. As the clamour grew, he asked me to call Baquet, the paper’s most senior editor.

Like me, Baquet seemed taken aback by the criticism that Times readers shouldn’t hear what Cotton had to say. Cotton had a lot of influence with the White House, Baquet noted, and he could well be making his argument directly to the president, Donald Trump. Readers should know about it. Cotton was also a possible future contender for the White House himself, Baquet added. And, besides, Cotton was far from alone: lots of Americans agreed with him—most of them, according to some polls. “Are we truly so precious?” Baquet asked again, with a note of wonder and frustration.

The answer, it turned out, was yes. Less than three days later, on Saturday morning, Sulzberger called me at home and, with an icy anger that still puzzles and saddens me, demanded my resignation. I got mad, too, and said he’d have to fire me. I thought better of that later. I called him back and agreed to resign, flattering myself that I was being noble.

Whether or not American democracy endures, a central question historians are sure to ask about this era is why America came to elect Donald Trump, promoting him from a symptom of the country’s institutional, political and social degradation to its agent-in-chief. There are many reasons for Trump’s ascent, but changes in the American news media played a critical role. Trump’s manipulation and every one of his political lies became more powerful because journalists had forfeited what had always been most valuable about their work: their credibility as arbiters of truth and brokers of ideas, which for more than a century, despite all of journalism’s flaws and failures, had been a bulwark of how Americans govern themselves.

I hope those historians will also be able to tell the story of how journalism found its footing again – how editors, reporters and readers, too, came to recognise that journalism needed to change to fulfil its potential in restoring the health of American politics. As Trump’s nomination and possible re-election loom, that work could not be more urgent.

I think Sulzberger shares this analysis. In interviews and his own writings, including an essay earlier this year for the Columbia Journalism Review, he has defended “independent journalism”, or, as I understand him, fair-minded, truth-seeking journalism that aspires to be open and objective. It’s good to hear the publisher speak up in defence of such values, some of which have fallen out of fashion not just with journalists at the Times and other mainstream publications but at some of the most prestigious schools of journalism. Until that miserable Saturday morning I thought I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in a struggle to revive them. I thought, and still think, that no American institution could have a better chance than the Times, by virtue of its principles, its history, its people and its hold on the attention of influential Americans, to lead the resistance to the corruption of political and intellectual life, to overcome the encroaching dogmatism and intolerance.

Tom Cotton speaking at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2020 (Top). James Bennet (Second Left) with Hillary Clinton (Far Right) on Her Trip as First Lady to North Africa in 1999 (Bottom).

But Sulzberger seems to underestimate the struggle he is in, that all journalism and indeed America itself is in. In describing the essential qualities of independent journalism in his essay, he unspooled a list of admirable traits – empathy, humility, curiosity and so forth. These qualities have for generations been helpful in contending with the Times’s familiar problem, which is liberal bias. I have no doubt Sulzberger believes in them. Years ago he demonstrated them himself as a reporter, covering the American Midwest as a real place full of three-dimensional people, and it would be nice if they were enough to deal with the challenge of this era, too. But, on their own, these qualities have no chance against the Times’s new, more dangerous problem, which is in crucial respects the opposite of the old one.

The Times’s problem has metastasised from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favour one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether. All the empathy and humility in the world will not mean much against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without an invaluable quality that Sulzberger did not emphasise: courage.

Don’t get me wrong. Most journalism obviously doesn’t require anything like the bravery expected of a soldier, police officer or protester. But far more than when I set out to become a journalist, doing the work right today demands a particular kind of courage: not just the devil-may-care courage to choose a profession on the brink of the abyss; not just the bulldog courage to endlessly pick yourself up and embrace the ever-evolving technology; but also, in an era when polarisation and social media viciously enforce rigid orthodoxies, the moral and intellectual courage to take the other side seriously and to report truths and ideas that your own side demonises for fear they will harm its cause.

One of the glories of embracing illiberalism is that, like Trump, you are always right about everything, and so you are justified in shouting disagreement down. In the face of this, leaders of many workplaces and boardrooms across America find that it is so much easier to compromise than to confront – to give a little ground today in the belief you can ultimately bring people around. This is how reasonable Republican leaders lost control of their party to Trump and how liberal-minded college presidents lost control of their campuses. And it is why the leadership of the New York Times is losing control of its principles.

It is hard to imagine a path back to saner American politics that does not traverse a common ground of shared fact

Over the decades the Times and other mainstream news organisations failed plenty of times to live up to their commitments to integrity and open-mindedness. The relentless struggle against biases and preconceptions, rather than the achievement of a superhuman objective omniscience, is what mattered. As everyone knows, the internet knocked the industry off its foundations. Local newspapers were the proving ground between college campuses and national newsrooms. As they disintegrated, the national news media lost a source of seasoned reporters and many Americans lost a journalism whose truth they could verify with their own eyes. As the country became more polarised, the national media followed the money by serving partisan audiences the versions of reality they preferred. This relationship proved self-reinforcing. As Americans became freer to choose among alternative versions of reality, their polarisation intensified. When I was at the Times, the newsroom editors worked hardest to keep Washington coverage open and unbiased, no easy task in the Trump era. And there are still people, in the Washington bureau and across the Times, doing work as fine as can be found in American journalism. But as the top editors let bias creep into certain areas of coverage, such as culture, lifestyle and business, that made the core harder to defend and undermined the authority of even the best reporters.

There have been signs the Times is trying to recover the courage of its convictions. The paper was slow to display much curiosity about the hard question of the proper medical protocols for trans children; but once it did, the editors defended their coverage against the inevitable criticism. For any counter-revolution to succeed, the leadership will need to show courage worthy of the paper’s bravest reporters and opinion columnists, the ones who work in war zones or explore ideas that make illiberal staff members shudder. As Sulzberger told me in the past, returning to the old standards will require agonising change. He saw that as the gradual work of many years, but I think he is mistaken. To overcome the cultural and commercial pressures the Times faces, particularly given the severe test posed by another Trump candidacy and possible presidency, its publisher and senior editors will have to be bolder than that.

Since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in 1896, one of the most inspiring things the Times has said about itself is that it does its work “without fear or favour”. That is not true of the institution today – it cannot be, not when its journalists are afraid to trust readers with a mainstream conservative argument such as Cotton’s, and its leaders are afraid to say otherwise. As preoccupied as it is with the question of why so many Americans have lost trust in it, the Times is failing to face up to one crucial reason: that it has lost faith in Americans, too.

For now, to assert that the Times plays by the same rules it always has is to commit a hypocrisy that is transparent to conservatives, dangerous to liberals and bad for the country as a whole. It makes the Times too easy for conservatives to dismiss and too easy for progressives to believe. The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.

It is hard to imagine a path back to saner American politics that does not traverse a common ground of shared fact. It is equally hard to imagine how America’s diversity can continue to be a source of strength, rather than become a fatal flaw, if Americans are afraid or unwilling to listen to each other. I suppose it is also pretty grandiose to think you might help fix all that. But that hope, to me, is what makes journalism worth doing.

The New York Times taught me how to do daily journalism. I joined the paper, for my first stint, in the pre-internet days, in an era of American journalism so different that it was almost another profession. Back in 1991 the Times was anxious not about a print business that was collapsing but about an industry so robust that Long Island Newsday was making a push into New York City. A newspaper war was under way, and the Times was fighting back by expanding its Metro desk, hiring reporters and opening bureaus in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

Metro was the biggest news desk. New reporters had to do rotations of up to a year there to learn the culture and folkways of the paper. Baquet, surely among the greatest investigative journalists America has produced, was then in Metro. I was brought on as a probationary reporter, with a year to prove myself, and like other new hires was put through a series of assignments at the low end of the hierarchy.

After about six months the Metro editor, Gerald Boyd, asked me to take a walk with him, as it turned out, to deliver a harsh lesson in Timesian ambition and discipline. Chain-smoking, speaking in his whispery, peculiarly high-pitched voice, he kicked my ass from one end of Times Square to the other. He had taken a chance hiring me, and he was disappointed. There was nothing special about my stories. At the rate I was going, I had no chance of making it onto the paper.

The next day was a Saturday, and I reached Boyd at home through the Metro desk to rattle off the speech I’d endlessly rehearsed while staring at the ceiling all night. The gist was that the desk had kept me chasing small-bore stories, blah blah blah. Boyd sounded less surprised than amused to hear from me, and soon gave me a new assignment, asking me to spend three months covering the elderly, one of several new “mini-beats” on subjects the desk had overlooked.

I was worried there were good reasons this particular beat had been ignored. At 26, as one of the youngest reporters on the desk, I was also not an obvious candidate for the role of house expert on the wise and grey. But Boyd assigned me to an excellent editor, Suzanne Daley, and as I began studying the city’s elderly and interviewing experts and actual old people, I began to discover the rewards granted any serious reporter: that when you acknowledge how little you know, looking in at a world from the outside brings a special clarity.

The Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist

The subject was more complicated and richer than I imagined, and every person had stories to tell. I wrote about hunger, aids and romance among the elderly, about old comedians telling old jokes to old people in senior centres. As I reported on Jews who had fled Germany to settle in Washington Heights or black Americans who had left the Jim Crow south to settle in Bushwick, Brooklyn, it dawned on me that, thanks to Boyd, I was covering the history of the world in the 20th century through the eyes of those who had lived it.

After joining the permanent staff, I went, again in humbling ignorance, to Detroit, to cover the auto companies’ – and the city’s – struggle to recapture their former glory. And again I had a chance to learn, in this case, everything from how the largest companies in the world were run, to what it was like to work the line or the sales floor, to the struggle and dignity of life in one of America’s most captivating cities. “We still have a long way to go,” Rosa Parks told me, when I interviewed her after she had been robbed and beaten in her home on Detroit’s west side one August night in 1994. “And so many of our children are going astray.”

I began to write about presidential politics two years later, in 1996, and as the most inexperienced member of the team was assigned to cover a long-shot Republican candidate, Pat Buchanan. I packed a bag for a four-day reporting trip and did not return home for six weeks. Buchanan campaigned on an eccentric fusion of social conservatism and statist economic policies, along with coded appeals to racism and antisemitism, that 30 years earlier had elevated George Wallace and 20 years later would be rebranded as Trumpism. He also campaigned with conviction, humour and even joy, a combination I have rarely witnessed. As a Democrat from a family of Democrats, a graduate of Yale and a blossom of the imagined meritocracy, I had my first real chance, at Buchanan’s rallies, to see the world through the eyes of stalwart opponents of abortion, immigration and the relentlessly rising tide of modernity.

The task of making the world intelligible was even greater in my first foreign assignment. I arrived in Jerusalem a week before the attacks of September 11th 2001, just after the second intifada had broken out. I had been to the Middle East just once, as a White House reporter covering President Bill Clinton. “Well, in at the deep end,” the foreign editor, Roger Cohen, told me before I left. To spend time with the perpetrators and victims of violence in the Middle East, to listen hard to the reciprocal and reinforcing stories of new and ancient grievances, is to confront the tragic truth that there can be justice on more than one side of a conflict. More than ever, it seemed to me that a reporter gave up something in renouncing the taking of sides: possibly the moral high ground, certainly the psychological satisfaction of righteous anger.

Pat Buchanan during the New Hampshire primary (Top). A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times (Right).

But there was a compensating moral and psychological privilege that came with aspiring to journalistic neutrality and open-mindedness, despised as they might understandably be by partisans. Unlike the duelling politicians and advocates of all kinds, unlike the corporate chieftains and their critics, unlike even the sainted non-profit workers, you did not have to pretend things were simpler than they actually were. You did not have to go along with everything that any tribe said. You did not have to pretend that the good guys, much as you might have respected them, were right about everything, or that the bad guys, much as you might have disdained them, never had a point. You did not, in other words, ever have to lie.

This fundamental honesty was vital for readers, because it equipped them to make better, more informed judgments about the world. Sometimes it might shock or upset them by failing to conform to their picture of reality. But it also granted them the respect of acknowledging that they were able to work things out for themselves.

What a gift it was to be taught and trusted as I was by my editors – to be a reporter with licence to ask anyone anything, to experience the whole world as a school and every source and subject as a teacher. I left after 15 years, in 2006, when I had the chance to become editor of the Atlantic. Rather than starting out on yet another beat at the Times, I felt ready to put my experience to work and ambitious for the responsibility to shape coverage myself. It was also obvious how much the internet was changing journalism. I was eager to figure out how to use it, and anxious about being at the mercy of choices by others, in a time not just of existential peril for the industry, but maybe of opportunity.

The Atlantic did not aspire to the same role as the Times. It did not promise to serve up the news of the day without any bias. But it was to opinion journalism what the Times’s reporting was supposed to be to news: honest and open to the world. The question was what the magazine’s 19th-century claim of intellectual independence – to be “of no party or clique” – should mean in the digital era.

A journalism that starts out assuming it knows the answers can be far less valuable to the reader than a journalism that starts out with a humbling awareness that it knows nothing

Those were the glory days of the blog, and we hit on the idea of creating a living op-ed page, a collective of bloggers with different points of view but a shared intellectual honesty who would argue out the meaning of the news of the day. They were brilliant, gutsy writers, and their disagreements were deep enough that I used to joke that my main work as editor was to prevent fistfights.

The lessons we learned from adapting the Atlantic to the internet washed back into print. Under its owner, David Bradley, my colleagues and I distilled our purpose as publishing big arguments about big ideas. We made some mistakes – that goes along with any serious journalism ambitious to make a change, and to embrace change itself – but we also began producing some of the most important work in American journalism: Nicholas Carr on whether Google was “making us stupid”; Hanna Rosin on “the end of men”; Taylor Branch on “the shame of college sports”; Ta-Nehisi Coates on “the case for reparations”; Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt on “the coddling of the American mind”.

I was starting to see some effects of the new campus politics within the Atlantic. A promising new editor had created a digital form for aspiring freelancers to fill out, and she wanted to ask them to disclose their racial and sexual identity. Why? Because, she said, if we were to write about the trans community, for example, we would ask a trans person to write the story. There was a good argument for that, I acknowledged, and it sometimes might be the right answer. But as I thought about the old people, auto workers and abortion opponents I had learned from, I told her there was also an argument for correspondents who brought an outsider’s ignorance, along with curiosity and empathy, to the story.

A journalism that starts out assuming it knows the answers, it seemed to me then, and seems even more so to me now, can be far less valuable to the reader than a journalism that starts out with a humbling awareness that it knows nothing. “In truly effective thinking”, Walter Lippmann wrote 100 years ago in “Public Opinion”, “the prime necessity is to liquidate judgments, regain an innocent eye, disentangle feelings, be curious and open-hearted.” Alarmed by the shoddy journalism of his day, Lippmann was calling for journalists to struggle against their ignorance and assumptions in order to help Americans resist the increasingly sophisticated tools of propagandists. As the Atlantic made its digital transition, one thing I preached was that we could not cling to any tradition or convention, however hallowed, for its own sake, but only if it was relevant to the needs of readers today. In the age of the internet it is hard even for a child to sustain an “innocent eye”, but the alternative for journalists remains as dangerous as ever, to become propagandists. America has more than enough of those already.

What we did together at the Atlantic worked. We dramatically increased the magazine’s audience and influence while making it profitable for the first time in generations. After I had spent ten years as editor, the last few as co-president, the publisher, A.G. Sulzberger’s father, also an Arthur Sulzberger, asked me to return to the Times as editorial-page editor.

His offer, I thought, would give me the chance to do the kind of journalism I loved with more resources and greater effect. The freedom Opinion had to experiment with voice and point of view meant that it would be more able than the Times newsroom to take advantage of the tools of digital journalism, from audio to video to graphics. Opinion writers could also break out of limiting print conventions and do more in-depth, reported columns and editorials. Though the Opinion department, which then had about 100 staff, was a fraction the size of the newsroom, with more than 1,300, Opinion’s work had outsized reach. Most important, the Times, probably more than any other American institution, could influence the way society approached debate and engagement with opposing views. If Times Opinion demonstrated the same kind of intellectual courage and curiosity that my colleagues at the Atlantic had shown, I hoped, the rest of the media would follow.

No doubt Sulzberger’s offer also appealed not just to my loyalty to the Times, but to my ambition as well. I would report directly to the publisher, and I was immediately seen, inside and outside the paper, as a candidate for the top job. I had hoped being in Opinion would exempt me from the infamous political games of the newsroom, but it did not, and no doubt my old colleagues felt I was playing such games myself. Fairly quickly, though, I realised two things: first, that if I did my job as I thought it should be done, and as the Sulzbergers said they wanted me to do it, I would be too polarising internally ever to lead the newsroom; second, that I did not want that job, though no one but my wife believed me when I said that.

It was 2016, a presidential-election year, and I had been gone from the Times for a decade. Although many of my old colleagues had also left in the interim and the Times had moved into a new glass-and-steel tower, I otherwise had little idea how much things had changed. When I looked around the Opinion department, change was not what I perceived. Excellent writers and editors were doing excellent work. But the department’s journalism was consumed with politics and foreign affairs in an era when readers were also fascinated by changes in technology, business, science and culture.

The Opinion department mocked the paper’s claim to value diversity. It did not have a single black editor. The large staff of op-ed editors contained only a couple of women. Although the 11 columnists were individually admirable, only two of them were women and only one was a person of colour. (The Times had not appointed a black columnist until the 1990s, and had only employed two in total.) Not only did they all focus on politics and foreign affairs, but during the 2016 campaign, no columnist shared, in broad terms, the worldview of the ascendant progressives of the Democratic Party, incarnated by Bernie Sanders. And only two were conservative.

This last fact was of particular concern to the elder Sulzberger. He told me the Times needed more conservative voices, and that its own editorial line had become predictably left-wing. “Too many liberals,” read my notes about the Opinion line-up from a meeting I had with him and Mark Thompson, then the chief executive, as I was preparing to rejoin the paper. “Even conservatives are liberals’ idea of a conservative.” The last note I took from that meeting was: “Can’t ignore 150m conservative Americans.”

I was astonished by the fury of my Times colleagues. I found myself facing an angry internal town hall, trying to justify what to me was an obvious journalistic decision

With my Opinion colleagues, I set out to deal with this long list of needs. I restructured the department, changing everybody’s role and, using buyouts, changing people as well. It was too much, too fast; it rocked the department, and my colleagues and I made mistakes amid the turmoil, including one that brought a libel suit from John McCain’s vice-presidential running-mate, Sarah Palin, dismissed twice by a judge and once by a jury but endlessly appealed on procedural grounds. Yet we also did more in four years to diversify the line-up of writers by identity, ideology and expertise than the Times had in the previous century; we published more ambitious projects than Opinion had ever attempted. We won two Pulitzer prizes in four years – as many as the department had in the previous 20.

As I knew from my time at the Atlantic, this kind of structural transformation can be frightening and even infuriating for those understandably proud of things as they are. It is hard on everyone. But experience at the Atlantic also taught me that pursuing new ways of doing journalism in pursuit of venerable institutional principles created enthusiasm for change. I expected that same dynamic to allay concerns at the Times.

In that same statement in 1896, after committing the Times to pursue the news without fear or favour, Ochs promised to “invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion”. So adding new voices, some more progressive and others more conservative, and more journalists of diverse identities and backgrounds, fulfilled the paper’s historic purpose. If Opinion published a wider range of views, it would help frame a set of shared arguments that corresponded to, and drew upon, the set of shared facts coming from the newsroom. On the right and left, America’s elites now talk within their tribes, and get angry or contemptuous on those occasions when they happen to overhear the other conclave. If they could be coaxed to agree what they were arguing about, and the rules by which they would argue about it, opinion journalism could serve a foundational need of the democracy by fostering diverse and inclusive debate. Who could be against that?

Out of naivety or arrogance, I was slow to recognise that at the Times, unlike at the Atlantic, these values were no longer universally accepted, let alone esteemed. When I first took the job, I felt some days as if I’d parachuted onto one of those Pacific islands still held by Japanese soldiers who didn’t know that the world beyond the waves had changed. Eventually, it sank in that my snotty joke was actually on me: I was the one ignorantly fighting a battle that was already lost. The old liberal embrace of inclusive debate that reflected the country’s breadth of views had given way to a new intolerance for the opinions of roughly half of American voters. New progressive voices were celebrated within the Times. But in contrast to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, conservative voices – even eloquent anti-Trump conservative voices – were despised, regardless of how many leftists might surround them. (President Trump himself submitted one op-ed during my time, but we could not raise it to our standards – his people would not agree to the edits we asked for.)

About a year after the 2016 election, the Times newsroom published a profile of a man from Ohio who had attended the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, at which a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of protesters, killing one. It was a terrifying piece. The man had four cats, listened to National Public Radio, and had registered at Target for a muffin pan before his recent wedding. In exploring his evolution from “vaguely leftist rock musician to ardent libertarian to fascist activist” the article rang an alarm about how “the election of President Donald Trump helped open a space for people like him”.

The profile was in keeping with the Times’s tradition of confronting readers with the confounding reality of the world around them. After the 9/11 attacks, as the bureau chief in Jerusalem, I spent a lot of time in the Gaza Strip interviewing Hamas leaders, recruiters and foot soldiers, trying to understand and describe their murderous ideology. Some readers complained that I was providing a platform for terrorists, but there was never any objection from within the Times. (Nor did it occur to me to complain that by publishing op-eds critical of Hamas the Opinion department was putting my life in danger.) Our role, we knew, was to help readers understand such threats, and this required empathetic – not sympathetic – reporting. This is not an easy distinction but good reporters make it: they learn to understand and communicate the sources and nature of a toxic ideology without justifying it, much less advocating it.

Today’s newsroom turns that moral logic on its head, at least when it comes to fellow Americans. Unlike the views of Hamas, the views of many Americans have come to seem dangerous to engage in the absence of explicit condemnation. Focusing on potential perpetrators – “platforming” them by explaining rather than judging their views – is believed to empower them to do more harm. After the profile of the Ohio man was published, media Twitter lit up with attacks on the article as “normalising” Nazism and white nationalism, and the Times convulsed internally. The Times wound up publishing a cringing editor’s note that hung the writer out to dry and approvingly quoted some of the criticism, including a tweet from a Washington Post opinion editor asking, “Instead of long, glowing profiles of Nazis/White nationalists, why don’t we profile the victims of their ideologies”? The Times did profile the victims of such ideologies; and the very headline of the piece – “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland” – undermined the claim that it was “glowing”. But the Times lacked the confidence to defend its own work. (As it happens, being platformed did not do much to increase the power of that Ohio man. He, his wife and his brother lost their jobs and the newly married couple lost the home intended for their muffin pan.)

I felt some days as if I’d parachuted onto one of those Pacific islands still held by Japanese soldiers who didn’t know that the world beyond the waves had changed

The editor’s note paraded the principle of publishing such pieces, saying it was important to “shed more light, not less, on the most extreme corners of American life”. But less light is what the readers got. As a reporter in the newsroom, you’d have to have been an idiot after that explosion to attempt such a profile. Empathetic reporting about Trump supporters became even more rare. It became a cliché among influential left-wing columnists and editors that blinkered political reporters interviewed a few Trump supporters in diners and came away suckered into thinking there was something besides racism that could explain anyone’s support for the man.

I failed to take the hint. As the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration approached, the editors who compile letters to the Times, part of my department, had put out a request to readers who supported the president to say what they thought of him now. The results had some nuance. “Yes, he is embarrassing,” wrote one reader. “Yes, he picks unnecessary fights. But he also pushed tax reform through, has largely defeated isis in Iraq,” and so forth. After a year spent publishing editorials attacking Trump and his policies, I thought it would be a demonstration of Timesian open-mindedness to give his supporters their say. Also, I thought the letters were interesting, so I turned over the entire editorial page to the Trump letters.

I wasn’t surprised that we got some criticism on Twitter. But I was astonished by the fury of my Times colleagues. I found myself facing an angry internal town hall, trying to justify what to me was an obvious journalistic decision. During the session, one of the newsroom’s journalists demanded to know when I would publish a page of letters from Barack Obama’s supporters. I stammered out some kind of answer. The question just didn’t make sense to me. Pretty much every day we published letters from people who supported Obama and criticised Trump. Didn’t he know that Obama wasn’t president any more? Didn’t he think other Times readers should understand the sources of Trump’s support? Didn’t he also see it was a wonderful thing that some Trump supporters did not just dismiss the Times as fake news, but still believed in it enough to respond thoughtfully to an invitation to share their views?

And if the Times could not bear to publish the views of Americans who supported Trump, why should it be surprised that those voters would not trust it? Two years later, in 2020, Baquet acknowledged that in 2016 the Times had failed to take seriously the idea that Trump could become president partly because it failed to send its reporters out into America to listen to voters and understand “the turmoil in the country”. And, he continued, the Times still did not understand the views of many Americans. “One of the great puzzles of 2016 remains a great puzzle,” he said. “Why did millions and millions of Americans vote for a guy who’s such an unusual candidate?” Speaking four months before we published the Cotton op-ed, he said that to argue that the views of such voters should not appear in the Times was “not journalistic”.

Conservative arguments in the Opinion pages reliably started uproars within the Times. Sometimes I would hear directly from colleagues who had the grace to confront me with their concerns; more often they would take to the company’s Slack channels or Twitter to advertise their distress in front of each other. By contrast, in my four years as Opinion editor, I received just two complaints from newsroom staff about pieces we published from the left. When I was visiting one of the Times’s West Coast bureaus, a reporter pulled me aside to say he worried that a liberal columnist was engaged in ad hominem attacks; a reporter in the Washington bureau wrote to me to object to an op-ed piece questioning the value of protecting free speech for right-wing groups.

This environment of enforced group-think, inside and outside the paper, was hard even on liberal opinion writers. One left-of-centre columnist told me that he was reluctant to appear in the New York office for fear of being accosted by colleagues. (An internal survey shortly after I left the paper found that barely half the staff, within an enterprise ostensibly devoted to telling the truth, agreed “there is a free exchange of views in this company” and “people are not afraid to say what they really think”.) Even columnists with impeccable leftist bona fides recoiled from tackling subjects when their point of view might depart from progressive orthodoxy. I once complimented a long-time, left-leaning Opinion writer over a column criticising Democrats in Congress for doing something stupid. Trying to encourage more such journalism and thus less such stupidity, I remarked that this kind of argument had more influence than yet another Trump-is-a-devil column. “I know,” he replied, ruefully. “But Twitter hates it.”

The bias had become so pervasive, even in the senior editing ranks of the newsroom, as to be unconscious. Trying to be helpful, one of the top newsroom editors urged me to start attaching trigger warnings to pieces by conservatives. It had not occurred to him how this would stigmatise certain colleagues, or what it would say to the world about the Times’s own bias. By their nature, information bubbles are powerfully self-reinforcing, and I think many Times staff have little idea how closed their world has become, or how far they are from fulfilling their compact with readers to show the world “without fear or favour”. And sometimes the bias was explicit: one newsroom editor told me that, because I was publishing more conservatives, he felt he needed to push his own department further to the left.

Even columnists with impeccable leftist bona fides recoiled from tackling subjects when their point of view might depart from progressive orthodoxy

The Times’s failure to honour its own stated principles of openness to a range of views was particularly hard on the handful of conservative writers, some of whom would complain about being flyspecked and abused by colleagues. One day when I relayed a conservative’s concern about double standards to Sulzberger, he lost his patience. He told me to inform the complaining conservative that that’s just how it was: there was a double standard and he should get used to it. A publication that promises its readers to stand apart from politics should not have different standards for different writers based on their politics. But I delivered the message. There are many things I regret about my tenure as editorial-page editor. That is the only act of which I am ashamed.

As I Realised How Different the New Times had become from the old one that trained me, I began to think of myself not as a benighted veteran on a remote island, but as Rip Van Winkle. I had left one newspaper, had a pleasant dream for ten years, and returned to a place I barely recognised. The new New York Times was the product of two shocks – sudden collapse, and then sudden success. The paper almost went bankrupt during the financial crisis, and the ensuing panic provoked a crisis of confidence among its leaders. Digital competitors like the HuffPost were gaining readers and winning plaudits within the media industry as innovative. They were the cool kids; Times folk were ink-stained wrinklies.

In its panic, the Times bought out experienced reporters and editors and began hiring journalists from publications like the HuffPost who were considered “digital natives” because they had never worked in print. This hiring quickly became easier, since most digital publications financed by venture capital turned out to be bad businesses. The advertising that was supposed to fund them flowed instead to the giant social-media companies. The HuffPosts and Buzzfeeds began to decay, and the Times’s subscriptions and staff began to grow.

I have been lucky in my own career to move between local and national and international journalism, newspapers and magazines, opinion and news, and the print and digital realms. I was even luckier in these various roles to have editors with a profound understanding of their particular form and a sense of duty about teaching it. The wipeout of local papers and the desperate transformation of survivors like the Times have left young reporters today with fewer such opportunities.

Though they might have lacked deep or varied reporting backgrounds, some of the Times’s new hires brought skills in video and audio; others were practised at marketing themselves – building their brands, as journalists now put it – in social media. Some were brilliant and fiercely honest, in keeping with the old aspirations of the paper. But, critically, the Times abandoned its practice of acculturation, including those months-long assignments on Metro covering cops and crime or housing. Many new hires who never spent time in the streets went straight into senior writing and editing roles. Meanwhile, the paper began pushing out its print-era salespeople and hiring new ones, and also hiring hundreds of engineers to build its digital infrastructure. All these recruits arrived with their own notions of the purpose of the Times. To me, publishing conservatives helped fulfil the paper’s mission; to them, I think, it betrayed that mission.

Dean Baquet, Former Executive Editor of the New York Times Addressing the Newsroom (Top).

And then, to the shock and horror of the newsroom, Trump won the presidency. In his article for Columbia Journalism Review, Sulzberger cites the Times’s failure to take Trump’s chances seriously as an example of how “prematurely shutting down inquiry and debate” can allow “conventional wisdom to ossify in a way that blinds society.” Many Times staff members – scared, angry – assumed the Times was supposed to help lead the resistance. Anxious for growth, the Times’s marketing team implicitly endorsed that idea, too.

As the number of subscribers ballooned, the marketing department tracked their expectations, and came to a nuanced conclusion. More than 95% of Times subscribers described themselves as Democrats or independents, and a vast majority of them believed the Times was also liberal. A similar majority applauded that bias; it had become “a selling point”, reported one internal marketing memo. Yet at the same time, the marketers concluded, subscribers wanted to believe that the Times was independent.

When you think about it, this contradiction resolves itself easily. It is human nature to want to see your bias confirmed; however, it is also human nature to want to be reassured that your bias is not just a bias, but is endorsed by journalism that is “fair and balanced”, as a certain Murdoch-owned cable-news network used to put it. As that memo argued, even if the Times was seen as politically to the left, it was critical to its brand also to be seen as broadening its readers’ horizons, and that required “a perception of independence”.

Perception is one thing, and actual independence another. Readers could cancel their subscriptions if the Times challenged their worldview by reporting the truth without regard to politics. As a result, the Times’s long-term civic value was coming into conflict with the paper’s short-term shareholder value. As the cable networks have shown, you can build a decent business by appealing to the millions of Americans who comprise one of the partisan tribes of the electorate. The Times has every right to pursue the commercial strategy that makes it the most money. But leaning into a partisan audience creates a powerful dynamic. Nobody warned the new subscribers to the Times that it might disappoint them by reporting truths that conflicted with their expectations. When your product is “independent journalism”, that commercial strategy is tricky, because too much independence might alienate your audience, while too little can lead to charges of hypocrisy that strike at the heart of the brand.

To the horror of the newsroom, Trump won the presidency. Many Times staff members – scared, angry – assumed the Times was supposed to help lead the resistance

It became one of Dean Baquet’s frequent mordant jokes that he missed the old advertising-based business model, because, compared with subscribers, advertisers felt so much less sense of ownership over the journalism. I recall his astonishment, fairly early in the Trump administration, after Times reporters conducted an interview with Trump. Subscribers were angry about the questions the Times had asked. It was as if they’d only be satisfied, Baquet said, if the reporters leaped across the desk and tried to wring the president’s neck. The Times was slow to break it to its readers that there was less to Trump’s ties to Russia than they were hoping, and more to Hunter Biden’s laptop, that Trump might be right that covid came from a Chinese lab, that masks were not always effective against the virus, that shutting down schools for many months was a bad idea.

In my experience, reporters overwhelmingly support Democratic policies and candidates. They are generally also motivated by a desire for a more just world. Neither of those tendencies are new. But there has been a sea change over the past ten years in how journalists think about pursuing justice. The reporters’ creed used to have its foundation in liberalism, in the classic philosophical sense. The exercise of a reporter’s curiosity and empathy, given scope by the constitutional protections of free speech, would equip readers with the best information to form their own judgments. The best ideas and arguments would win out. The journalist’s role was to be a sworn witness; the readers’ role was to be judge and jury. In its idealised form, journalism was lonely, prickly, unpopular work, because it was only through unrelenting scepticism and questioning that society could advance. If everyone the reporter knew thought X, the reporter’s role was to ask: why X?

Illiberal journalists have a different philosophy, and they have their reasons for it. They are more concerned with group rights than individual rights, which they regard as a bulwark for the privileges of white men. They have seen the principle of free speech used to protect right-wing outfits like Project Veritas and Breitbart News and are uneasy with it. They had their suspicions of their fellow citizens’ judgment confirmed by Trump’s election, and do not believe readers can be trusted with potentially dangerous ideas or facts. They are not out to achieve social justice as the knock-on effect of pursuing truth; they want to pursue it head-on. The term “objectivity” to them is code for ignoring the poor and weak and cosying up to power, as journalists often have done.

And they do not just want to be part of the cool crowd. They need to be. To be more valued by their peers and their contacts – and hold sway over their bosses – they need a lot of followers in social media. That means they must be seen to applaud the right sentiments of the right people in social media. The journalist from central casting used to be a loner, contrarian or a misfit. Now journalism is becoming another job for joiners, or, to borrow Twitter’s own parlance, “followers”, a term that mocks the essence of a journalist’s role.

This is a bit of a paradox. The new newsroom ideology seems idealistic, yet it has grown from cynical roots in academia: from the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth; that there is only narrative, and that therefore whoever controls the narrative – whoever gets to tell the version of the story that the public hears – has the whip hand. What matters, in other words, is not truth and ideas in themselves, but the power to determine both in the public mind.

By contrast, the old newsroom ideology seems cynical on its surface. It used to bug me that my editors at the Times assumed every word out of the mouth of any person in power was a lie. And the pursuit of objectivity can seem reptilian, even nihilistic, in its abjuration of a fixed position in moral contests. But the basis of that old newsroom approach was idealistic: the notion that power ultimately lies in truth and ideas, and that the citizens of a pluralistic democracy, not leaders of any sort, must be trusted to judge both.

Our role in Times Opinion, I used to urge my colleagues, was not to tell people what to think, but to help them fulfil their desire to think for themselves. It seems to me that putting the pursuit of truth, rather than of justice, at the top of a publication’s hierarchy of values also better serves not just truth but justice, too: over the long term journalism that is not also sceptical of the advocates of any form of justice and the programmes they put forward, and that does not struggle honestly to understand and explain the sources of resistance, will not assure that those programmes will work, and it also has no legitimate claim to the trust of reasonable people who see the world very differently. Rather than advance understanding and durable change, it provokes backlash.

The impatience within the newsroom with such old ways was intensified by the generational failure of the Times to hire and promote women and non-white people, black people in particular. In the 1990s, and into the early part of this century, when I worked in the high-profile Washington bureau of the Times, usually at most two of the dozens of journalists stationed there were black. Before Baquet became executive editor, the highest-ranked black journalist at the Times had been my old Metro editor, Gerald Boyd. He rose to become managing editor before A.G. Sulzberger’s father pushed him out, along with the executive editor, Howell Raines, when a black reporter named Jayson Blair was discovered to be a fabulist. Boyd was said to have protected Blair, an accusation he denied and attributed to racism.

The accusation against Boyd never made sense to me. In my experience he was even harder on black and brown reporters than he was on us white people. He understood better than anyone what it would take for them to succeed at the Times. “The Times was a place where blacks felt they had to convince their white peers that they were good enough to be there,” he wrote in his heartbreaking memoir, published posthumously. He died in 2006 of lung cancer, three years after he was discarded.

Illiberal journalists are not out to achieve social justice as the knock-on effect of pursuing truth; they want to pursue it head-on. The term “objectivity” to them is code for ignoring the poor and weak and cosying up to power

Pay attention if you are white at the Times and you will hear black editors speak of hiring consultants at their own expense to figure out how to get white staff to respect them. You might hear how a black journalist, passing through the newsroom, was asked by a white colleague whether he was the “telephone guy” sent to fix his extension. I certainly never got asked a question like that. Among the experienced journalists at the Times, black journalists were least likely, I thought, to exhibit fragility and herd behaviour.

As wave after wave of pain and outrage swept through the Times, over a headline that was not damning enough of Trump or someone’s obnoxious tweets, I came to think of the people who were fragile, the ones who were caught up in Slack or Twitter storms, as people who had only recently discovered that they were white and were still getting over the shock. Having concluded they had got ahead by working hard, it has been a revelation to them that their skin colour was not just part of the wallpaper of American life, but a source of power, protection and advancement. They may know a lot about television, or real estate, or how to edit audio files, but their work does not take them into shelters, or police precincts, or the homes of people who see the world very differently. It has never exposed them to live fire. Their idea of violence includes vocabulary.

I share the bewilderment that so many people could back Trump, given the things he says and does, and that makes me want to understand why they do: the breadth and diversity of his support suggests not just racism is at work. Yet these elite, well-meaning Times staff cannot seem to stretch the empathy they are learning to extend to people with a different skin colour to include those, of whatever race, who have different politics.

The digital natives were nevertheless valuable, not only for their skills but also because they were excited for the Times to embrace its future. That made them important allies of the editorial and business leaders as they sought to shift the Times to digital journalism and to replace staff steeped in the ways of print. Partly for that reason, and partly out of fear, the leadership indulged internal attacks on Times journalism, despite pleas from me and others, to them and the company as a whole, that Times folk should treat each other with more respect. My colleagues and I in Opinion came in for a lot of the scorn, but we were not alone. Correspondents in the Washington bureau and political reporters would take a beating, too, when they were seen as committing sins like “false balance” because of the nuance in their stories.

My fellow editorial and commercial leaders were well aware of how the culture of the institution had changed. As delighted as they were by the Times’s digital transformation they were not blind to the ideological change that came with it. They were unhappy with the bullying and group-think; we often discussed such cultural problems in the weekly meetings of the executive committee, composed of the top editorial and business leaders, including the publisher. Inevitably, these bitch sessions would end with someone saying a version of: “Well, at some point we have to tell them this is what we believe in as a newspaper, and if they don’t like it they should work somewhere else.” It took me a couple of years to realise that this moment was never going to come.

Top: Arthur Sulzberger, Former Publisher of the New York Times (left) with his Son A.G. Sulzberger at the Times building in 2017

More than 30 years ago, a young political reporter named Todd Purdum tremulously asked an all-staff meeting what would be done about the “climate of fear” within the newsroom in which reporters felt intimidated by their bosses? The moment immediately entered Times lore. There is a lot not to miss about the days when editors like Boyd could strike terror in young reporters like me and Purdum. But the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that editors now tremble before their reporters and even their interns. “I miss the old climate of fear,” Baquet used to say with a smile, in another of his barbed jokes.

During the First Meeting of the Times Board of Directors that I attended, in 2016, Baquet and I hosted a joint question-and-answer session. At one point, Baquet, musing about how the Times was changing, observed that one of the newsroom’s cultural critics had become the paper’s best political-opinion columnist. Taking this musing one step further, I then noted that this raised an obvious question: why did the paper still have an Opinion department separate from the newsroom, with its own editor reporting directly to the publisher? If the newsroom was publishing the best opinion journalism at the paper – if it was publishing opinion at all – why did the Times maintain a separate department that falsely claimed to have a monopoly on such journalism?

Everyone laughed. But I meant it, and I wish I’d pursued my point and talked myself out of the job. This contest over control of opinion journalism within the Times was not just a bureaucratic turf battle (though it was that, too). The newsroom’s embrace of opinion journalism has compromised the Times’s independence, misled its readers and fostered a culture of intolerance and conformity.

The Opinion department is a relic of the era when the Times enforced a line between news and opinion journalism. Editors in the newsroom did not touch opinionated copy, lest they be contaminated by it, and opinion journalists and editors kept largely to their own, distant floor within the Times building. Such fastidiousness could seem excessive, but it enforced an ethos that Times reporters owed their readers an unceasing struggle against bias in the news. But by the time I returned as editorial-page editor, more opinion columnists and critics were writing for the newsroom than for Opinion. As at the cable news networks, the boundaries between commentary and news were disappearing, and readers had little reason to trust that Times journalists were resisting rather than indulging their biases.

The publisher called to tell me the company was experiencing its largest sick day in history; people were turning down job offers because of the op-ed, and, he said, some people were quitting

The Times newsroom had added more cultural critics, and, as Baquet noted, they were free to opine about politics. Departments across the Times newsroom had also begun appointing their own “columnists”, without stipulating any rules that might distinguish them from columnists in Opinion. It became a running joke. Every few months, some poor editor in the newsroom or Opinion would be tasked with writing up guidelines that would distinguish the newsroom’s opinion journalists from those of Opinion, and every time they would ultimately throw up their hands.

I remember how shaken A.G. Sulzberger was one day when he was cornered by a cultural critic who had got wind that such guardrails might be put in place. The critic insisted he was an opinion writer, just like anyone in the Opinion department, and he would not be reined in. He wasn’t. (I checked to see if, since I left the Times, it had developed guidelines explaining the difference, if any, between a news columnist and opinion columnist. The paper’s spokeswoman, Danielle Rhoades Ha, did not respond to the question.)

The internet rewards opinionated work and, as news editors felt increasing pressure to generate page views, they began not just hiring more opinion writers but also running their own versions of opinionated essays by outside voices – historically, the province of Opinion’s op-ed department. Yet because the paper continued to honour the letter of its old principles, none of this work could be labelled “opinion” (it still isn’t). After all, it did not come from the Opinion department. And so a newsroom technology columnist might call for, say, unionisation of the Silicon Valley workforce, as one did, or an outside writer might argue in the business section for reparations for slavery, as one did, and to the average reader their work would appear indistinguishable from Times news articles.

By similarly circular logic, the newsroom’s opinion journalism breaks another of the Times’s commitments to its readers. Because the newsroom officially does not do opinion – even though it openly hires and publishes opinion journalists – it feels free to ignore Opinion’s mandate to provide a diversity of views. When I was editorial-page editor, there were a couple of newsroom columnists whose politics were not obvious. But the other newsroom columnists, and the critics, read as passionate progressives.

I urged Baquet several times to add a conservative to the newsroom roster of cultural critics. That would serve the readers by diversifying the Times’s analysis of culture, where the paper’s left-wing bias had become most blatant, and it would show that the newsroom also believed in restoring the Times’s commitment to taking conservatives seriously. He said this was a good idea, but he never acted on it. I couldn’t help trying the idea out on one of the paper’s top cultural editors, too: he told me he did not think Times readers would be interested in that point of view.

As the Times tried to compete for more readers online, homogenous opinion was spreading through the newsroom in other ways. News desks were urging reporters to write in the first person and to use more “voice”, but few newsroom editors had experience in handling that kind of journalism, and no one seemed certain where “voice” stopped and “opinion” began. The Times magazine, meanwhile, became a crusading progressive publication. Baquet liked to say the magazine was Switzerland, by which he meant that it sat between the newsroom and Opinion. But it reported only to the news side. Its work was not labelled as opinion and it was free to omit conservative viewpoints.

This creep of politics into the newsroom’s journalism helped the Times beat back some of its new challengers, at least those on the left. Competitors like Vox and the HuffPost were blending leftish politics with reporting and writing it up conversationally in the first person. Imitating their approach, along with hiring some of their staff, helped the Times repel them. But it came at a cost. The rise of opinion journalism over the past 15 years changed the newsroom’s coverage and its culture. The tiny redoubt of never-Trump conservatives in Opinion is swamped daily not only by the many progressives in that department but their reinforcements among the critics, columnists and magazine writers in the newsroom. They are generally excellent, but their homogeneity means Times readers are being served a very restricted range of views, some of them presented as straight news by a publication that still holds itself out as independent of any politics. And because the critics, newsroom columnists and magazine writers are the newsroom’s most celebrated journalists, they have disproportionate influence over the paper’s culture.

And yet the Times insists to the public that nothing has changed. By saying that it still holds itself to the old standard of strictly separating its news and opinion journalists, the paper leads its readers further into the trap of thinking that what they are reading is independent and impartial – and this misleads them about their country’s centre of political and cultural gravity. “Even though each day’s opinion pieces are typically among our most popular journalism and our columnists are among our most trusted voices, we believe opinion is secondary to our primary mission of reporting and should represent only a portion of a healthy news diet,” Sulzberger wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review. “For that reason, we’ve long kept the Opinion department intentionally small – it represents well under a tenth of our journalistic staff – and ensured that its editorial decision-making is walled off from the newsroom.”

I came to think of those caught up in Slack or Twitter storms as people who had only recently discovered that they were white and were still getting over the shock

When I was editorial-page editor, Sulzberger, who declined to be interviewed on the record for this article, worried a great deal about the breakdown in the boundaries between news and opinion. At one town hall, he was confronted by a staffer upset that we in Opinion had begun doing more original reporting, which was a priority for me. Sulzberger replied he was much less worried about reporting in the Opinion coverage than by opinion in the news report – a fine moment, I thought then and think now, in his leadership. He told me once that he would like to restructure the paper to have one editor oversee all its news reporters, another all its opinion journalists and a third all its service journalists, the ones who supply guidance on buying gizmos or travelling abroad. Each of these editors would report to him. That is the kind of action the Times needs to take now to confront its hypocrisy and begin restoring its independence.

The Times could learn something from the Wall Street Journal, which has kept its journalistic poise. It has maintained a stricter separation between its news and opinion journalism, including its cultural criticism, and that has protected the integrity of its work. After I was chased out of the Times, Journal reporters and other staff attempted a similar assault on their opinion department. Some 280 of them signed a letter listing pieces they found offensive and demanding changes in how their opinion colleagues approached their work. “Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility,” shrugged the Journal’s editorial board in a note to readers after the letter was leaked. “The signers report to the news editors or other parts of the business.” The editorial added, in case anyone missed the point, “We are not the New York Times.” That was the end of it.

Unlike the publishers of the Journal, however, Sulzberger is in a bind, or at least perceives himself to be. The confusion within the Times over its role, and the rising tide of intolerance among the reporters, the engineers, the business staff, even the subscribers – these are all problems he inherited, in more ways than one. He seems to feel constrained in confronting the paper’s illiberalism by the very source of his authority. He is sensitive about the idiosyncratic way he reached the pinnacle of American news media, via his family’s control of the paper’s voting stock. Once, when I told him we were preparing an editorial series on nepotism within the Trump White House, he was quick to note that the Times was in a glass house when it came to such criticism.

The paradox is that in previous generations the Sulzbergers’ control was the bulwark of the paper’s independence. For this publisher, it seems also to be a vulnerability. He noted in the Columbia Journalism Review that he is “a wealthy white man who succeeded a series of other wealthy white men with the same first and last name.” His background, he wrote, may make him “uniquely, perhaps even comically, unpersuasive” in the debate over journalistic principles. That confession read like throat-clearing before his lengthy exposition of “independent journalism”, and it is right for people to be aware of the blinders and biases created by their upbringing. But if he is going to instil the principles he believes in, he needs to stop worrying so much about his powers of persuasion, and start using the power he is so lucky to have.

Tom Cotton Had Written two op-eds for us in Opinion, making the case for buying Greenland and defending Trump’s decision to assassinate the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, General Qassem Suleimani. Adam Rubenstein, a rising talent in Opinion, had helped edit the second of these pieces. Rubenstein had brought in dozens of op-eds by then that reflected a variety of voices, ideas and politics, and had received a note of praise from Sulzberger himself, for a piece by a former congressman, Joe Walsh, a Tea Party favourite who had called for a primary challenge to Trump. But Rubenstein had a background in conservative journalism, and within the Times his work in soliciting pieces from conservatives had put a target on his back.

Top: Donald Trump with Cotton (Left) Speaking at the White House in 2017. Bottom: A Man Smashing a Cash Register Following the Death of George Floyd in 2020

In early June 2020 Cotton’s office pitched a piece about Twitter’s curation of its platform. Cotton had tweeted that Trump should call out troops to stop the “anarchy, rioting and looting” if “local law enforcement is overwhelmed”, and Twitter had threatened to censor his account. Jim Dao, the op-ed editor, was more interested in the substance of the tweet and, via Rubenstein, asked Cotton to write an op-ed about that.

That was the right thing to do. Trump was starting to call for the use of troops, and on May 31st the mayor of Washington, DC, had requested that the National Guard be deployed in her city. After police gassed protesters before Trump posed for a photo in Lafayette Square on June 1st, the editorial board, which I led, weighed in against that use of force and Trump’s “incendiary behaviour”, and the op-ed team had pieces planned for June 3rd arguing he did not have a sound basis to call out federal forces and would be wrong to do so. In keeping with the basic practice of the op-ed page, which was created to present points of view at odds with Times editorials, Dao owed readers the counter-argument. They also needed to know someone so influential with the president was making this argument, and how he was making it.

I knew the piece was coming, and that Dao had asked for substantive revisions to the first draft. At the time, Rubenstein was assisting me with research for a daily newsletter I was writing, and I asked him when we met on the morning of June 3rd to make sure Cotton was distinguishing clearly between rioters and protesters. He did: “A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants,” Cotton wrote. From Cotton’s perspective, it was leftist elites who were confusing the two. In the op-ed, he decried any “revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters”.

Rubenstein also told me that in one draft Cotton had linked disapprovingly to a tweet from a Times reporter that could be read as expressing support for the rioters. I told Rubenstein to make sure that this link was removed. I had prohibited criticising any work, including any social-media activity, from the newsroom, unless I ran the idea by a senior newsroom editor first.

Shortly after we published the op-ed that Wednesday afternoon, some reporters tweeted their opposition to Cotton’s argument. But the real action was in the Times’s Slack channels, where reporters and other staff began not just venting but organising. They turned to the union to draw up a workplace complaint about the op-ed. At least one of the reporters who covered news media took a strong position in this internal debate: “Amplifying a message that argues for MORE force only puts our own people in harm’s way, and undermines the paper’s commitment to their safety,” this reporter argued to colleagues in Slack, going on to offer suggestions for how the union should attack the op-ed: “I think it’s good that a lot of us will put our names on a strong condemnation.”

Their work does not take them into shelters, or police precincts, or the homes of people who see the world very differently. It has never exposed them to live fire. Their idea of violence includes vocabulary

The next day, this reporter shared the byline on the Times story about the op-ed. That article did not mention that Cotton had distinguished between “peaceful, law-abiding protesters” and “rioters and looters”. In fact, the first sentence reported that Cotton had called for “the military to suppress protests against police violence”.

This was – and is – wrong. You don’t have to take my word for that. You can take the Times’s. Three days later in its article on my resignation it also initially reported that Cotton had called “for military force against protesters in American cities”. This time, after the article was published on the Times website, the editors scrambled to rewrite it, replacing “military force” with “military response” and “protesters” with “civic unrest”. That was a weaselly adjustment – Cotton wrote about criminality, not “unrest” – but the article at least no longer unambiguously misrepresented Cotton’s argument to make it seem he was in favour of crushing democratic protest. The Times did not publish a correction or any note acknowledging the story had been changed.

Seeking to influence the outcome of a story you cover, particularly without disclosing that to the reader, violates basic principles I was raised on at the Times. I asked the Times if the media reporter’s behaviour was ethical. The spokeswoman, Ms Rhoades Ha, did not answer the question but instead wrote in an email that the reporter was assigned to the story after posting the messages in Slack and the “editors were unaware of those Slack messages”. The reporter, apparently asked by the Times to write to me, immediately followed with an email that said: “In the heat of the moment, I made comments on an internal Slack channel that, as a media reporter, I should not have” but that “the factual reporting I contributed to the story is not at issue.” (I am not naming this journalist because I do not want to point the finger at a single reporter when, in my view, an editor should be taking responsibility for the coverage.) Ms Rhoades Ha disputes my characterisation of the after-the-fact editing of the story about my resignation. She said the editors changed the story after it was published on the website in order to “refine” it and “add context”, and so the story did not merit a correction disclosing to the reader that changes had been made.

I asked if it was accurate and fair to report that Cotton called for “the military to suppress protests against police violence”, as the June 4th story still does. In response, Ms Rhoades Ha supplied an opinion from a Times lawyer which noted that Cotton called for a military presence to “deter lawbreakers”. The lawyer argued that because some protesters violated curfews, failed to get permits or disperse when police ordered them to, they could be considered “lawbreakers”, just like the rioters and looters Cotton explicitly referred to. I followed up, saying I was seeking an editorial rather than a legal opinion, and asking again whether the Times believed its characterisation of Cotton’s argument was not just accurate, but fair. Ms Rhoades Ha again referred me to the lawyer’s opinion.

She also defended the Times more broadly: “The New York Times believes unequivocally in the principle of independence, as has been demonstrated consistently by our journalism before and since that episode. There are countless examples of the Times standing strong against pressure and protest, whether from governments, companies, politicians, activist groups or even internally. In the case of the Tom Cotton op-ed, the handling of such a sensitive piece, specifically the decision to rush it into publication without key leaders having read it because it was “newsy”, made it unusually vulnerable to attack. Good principles, as the Cotton op-ed demonstrated, cannot be an excuse for bad execution.”

In retrospect what seems almost comical is that as the conflict over Cotton’s op-ed unfolded within the Times I acted as though it was on the level, as though the staff of the Times would have a good-faith debate about Cotton’s piece and the decision to publish it. Instead, people wanted to vent and achieve what they considered to be justice, whether through Twitter, Slack, the union or the news pages themselves. Engaging with them at all was a mistake. That first night after the op-ed was published, when I called Baquet, his sage advice was to say nothing. Give it time, he said. Let this play out. The publisher disagreed. He thought we needed to say something that night explaining why we chose to publish the piece, and so we kept heaping more logs on the fire.

My colleagues in Opinion, together with the pr team, put together a series of connected tweets describing the purpose behind publishing Cotton’s op-ed. Rather than publish these tweets from the generic Times Opinion Twitter account, Sulzberger encouraged me to do it from my personal one, on the theory that this would humanise our defence. I doubted that would make any difference, but it was certainly my job to take responsibility. So I sent out the tweets, sticking my head in a Twitter bucket that clangs, occasionally, to this day. At the publisher’s direction, I then wrote an explanation of the decision to publish the op-ed for the next day’s edition of the Opinion newsletter. Reading that piece now, I think it holds up. It was not defensive and it dealt with the strongest criticisms. It concluded with a sentiment that I’ve always thought journalists should bring to all their work, and which I intended as an invitation to debate. (“It is impossible to feel righteous about any of this. I know that my own view may be wrong.”) But no one took me up on that.

What Is Worth Recalling Now from the bedlam of the next two days? I suppose there might be lessons for someone interested in how not to manage a corporate crisis. I began making my own mistakes that Thursday. The union condemned our publication of Cotton, for supposedly putting journalists in danger, claiming that he had called on the military “to ‘detain’ and ‘subdue’ Americans protesting racism and police brutality” – again, a misrepresentation of his argument. The publisher called to tell me the company was experiencing its largest sick day in history; people were turning down job offers because of the op-ed, and, he said, some people were quitting. He had been expecting for some time that the union would seek a voice in editorial decision-making; he said he thought this was the moment the union was making its move. He had clearly changed his own mind about the value of publishing the Cotton op-ed.

Times readers are being served a very restricted range of views, some of them presented as straight news by a publication that still holds itself out as independent of any politics

I asked Dao to have our fact-checkers review the union’s claims. But then I went a step further: at the publisher’s request, I urged him to review the editing of the piece itself and come back to me with a list of steps we could have taken to make it better. Dao’s reflex – the correct one – was to defend the piece as published. He and three other editors of varying ages, genders and races had helped edit it; it had been fact-checked, as is all our work. But I resisted, worried that we had put Sulzberger in a hard position. In Opinion we had grown accustomed to the wrath of our colleagues, but this time the publisher was in the line of fire as well.

I told myself there was nothing false about this. There isn’t an article out of the many thousands I have written or edited that I do not think, in retrospect, could have met a higher standard in some way – and Cotton’s op-ed is no exception. And I thought that by saying we could have somehow made the piece better, we would dispel the heat within the Times but affirm the principle that it was the kind of piece we should publish. This was my last failed attempt to have the debate within the Times that I had been seeking for four years, about why it was important to present Times readers with arguments like Cotton’s. The staff at the paper never wanted to have that debate. The Cotton uproar was the most extreme version of the internal reaction we faced whenever we published conservative arguments that were not simply anti-Trump. Yes, yes, of course we believe in the principle of publishing diverse views, my Times colleagues would say, but why this conservative? Why this argument?

Most of the union’s assertions were wrong, but in going back over the piece the fact-checker did find a minor error. Cotton had accidentally left some words from a legal opinion in quotation marks that he should have put in his own voice. Dao also dutifully itemised language that we might have softened, and said the headline, “Send in the Troops” should in retrospect have been made more palatable, if duller. I doubt these changes would have mattered, and to extract this list from Dao was to engage in precisely the hypocrisy I claimed to despise – that, in fact, I do despise. If Cotton needed to be held to such standards of politesse, so did everyone else. Headlines such as “Tom Cotton’s Fascist Op-ed”, the headline of a subsequent piece, should also have been tranquillised.

As that miserable Thursday wore on, Sulzberger, Baquet and I held a series of Zoom meetings with reporters and editors from the newsroom who wanted to discuss the op-ed. Though a handful of the participants were there to posture, these were generally constructive conversations. A couple of people, including Baquet, even had the guts to speak up in favour of publishing the op-ed. Two moments stick out. At one point, in answer to a question, Sulzberger and Baquet both said they thought the op-ed – as the Times union and many journalists were saying – had in fact put journalists in danger. That was the first time I realised I might be coming to the end of the road. The other was when a pop-culture reporter asked if I had read the op-ed before it was published. I said I had not. He immediately put his head down and started typing, and I should have paid attention rather than moving on to the next question. He was evidently sharing the news with the company over Slack.

Top: Baquet (Second left) and Bennet (Third left) Applauding a Pulitzer-prize Winner from the Times in 2019. Bottom: A Black Lives Matter Protest in New York, Four Days after George Floyd’s Death, on May 15th 2020

If he had followed up, or I had, I might have explained that this was standard practice. Dao’s name was on the masthead of the New York Times because he was in charge of the op-ed section. If I insisted on reviewing every piece, I would have been doing his job for him – and been betraying a crippling lack of trust in one of the papers’ finest editors. After I departed, and other Opinion staff quit or were reassigned, the Times later made him Metro editor, a sign of its own continued confidence in him. Every job review I had at the Times urged me to step back from the daily coverage to focus on the long term. (Hilariously, one review, urging me to move faster in upending the Opinion department, instructed me to take risks and “ask for forgiveness not permission”.)

It was important to me to read pieces in advance that might cause an uproar, and I had asked Dao and his deputy to alert me to any they thought would be particularly sensitive, but they did not think the Cotton piece rose to that level. I had also instituted an “if-you-see-something-say-something” policy in Opinion as a whole. Nobody raised a red flag with me. To be clear – I don’t fault anyone for this; I mention it only as an index of how much easier it was to judge in hindsight, after publication, when a piece was explosive. In any event, if anyone had raised an alarm, I might have edited the piece differently, but that would not have changed the outcome. Given the pieces we had already published and planned to publish opposing the position Cotton argued, we would still have published it – it was, in my view at the time, the kind of viewpoint the Sulzbergers had said they wanted to see also represented in the Times. And the critics would hardly have been mollified had it been more persuasive.

I learned when these meetings were over that there had been a new eruption in Slack. Times staff were saying that Rubenstein had been the sole editor of the op-ed. In response, Dao had gone into Slack to clarify to the entire company that he had also edited it himself. But when the Times posted the news article that evening, it reported, “The Op-Ed was edited by Adam Rubenstein” and made no mention of Dao’s statement. One of the ironies of this episode was that it was not any newsroom reporter but Rubenstein who wound up receiving death threats because of the Cotton op-ed, and it was the newsroom that put him in harm’s way. I would put Times Opinion’s standards for the editing of Cotton’s op-ed up against the Times newsroom’s standards for its coverage of the op-ed any day of the week.

By unhappy – but, really, also quite funny – coincidence, a meeting of the entire company had been scheduled over Zoom for the next morning. The plan had been for the newsroom to talk about its coverage of the protests. Now the only subject was going to be the op-ed. Early that morning, I got an email from Sam Dolnick, a Sulzberger cousin and a top editor at the paper, who said he felt “we” – he could have only meant me – owed the whole staff “an apology for appearing to place an abstract idea like open debate over the value of our colleagues’ lives, and their safety”. He was worried that I and my colleagues had unintentionally sent a message to other people at the Times that: “We don’t care about their full humanity and their security as much as we care about our ideas.”

One of the ironies was that it was not any newsroom reporter but a comment editor who wound up receiving death threats, and it was the newsroom that put him in harm’s way

Like his cousin, the publisher, Dolnick is a smart guy with a good heart, and I know he meant well. But I was staggered by his email, by how different his conception was of the role of journalism, and of my own commitment to it. Did he really think I saw this as an academic exercise, or some kind of game? My mother survived the Holocaust in Poland, and it took years for her and the remnant of our family to be admitted to the United States. Did he really think I believed ideas had no consequences for people’s lives? I guess I was also fed up. I wrote to the publisher, who had been copied in on Dolnick’s note.

“I know you don’t like it when I talk about principles at a moment like this,” I began. But I viewed the journalism I had been doing, at the Times and before that at the Atlantic, in very different terms from the ones Dolnick presumed. “I don’t think of our work as an abstraction without meaning for people’s lives – quite the opposite,” I continued. “The whole point – the reason I do this – is to have an impact on their lives to the good. I have always believed that putting ideas, including potentially dangerous one[s], out in the public is vital to ensuring they are debated and, if dangerous, discarded.” It was, I argued, in “edge cases like this that principles are tested”, and if my position was judged wrong then “I am out of step with the times.” But, I concluded, “I don’t think of us as some kind of debating society without implications for the real world and I’ve never been unmindful of my colleagues’ humanity.”

Sulzberger did not reply. But in the end, one thing he and I surely agree on is that I was, in fact, out of step with the Times. It may have raised me as a journalist – and invested so much in educating me to what were once its standards – but I did not belong there any more.

In retrospect, it seems clear that I was done by then. The executive committee gathered that morning to prepare, and for the first time I was not invited to join them. They had solicited questions in advance, and I got a glimpse at the list only as the company-wide meeting was about to start. I did not hear from Sulzberger, but the speechwriter who drafted many of his remarks, Alex Levy, contacted me just before the meeting began to tell me to use whatever question I got first to apologise, and at some point to acknowledge my privilege.

A Zoom call with a couple of thousand people is a disorienting experience, particularly when many of them are not particularly mindful of your “full humanity”. I do not recommend it. As my first turn to speak came up, I was still struggling with what I should apologise for. I was not going to apologise for denying my colleagues’ humanity or endangering their lives. I had not done those things. I was not going to apologise for publishing the op-ed. Finally, I came up with something that felt true. I told the meeting that I was sorry for the pain that my leadership of Opinion had caused. What a pathetic thing to say. I did not think to add, because I’d lost track of this truth myself by then, that opinion journalism that never causes pain is not journalism. It can’t hope to move society forward.

Baquet spoke movingly about how, as a black man, he was vulnerable in ways a white man was not when he left his apartment wearing a hoodie and a mask, to ward off covid. Speaking into the void, via the unblinking eye above my computer screen, I said I knew, as a white man, I was in a very different position. When I stepped out into the street, I was protected by my privilege. But I added that I did know what it was like to be a reporter out in the field, alone, surrounded by armed, hostile people. I knew what it was like to be shot at, and to see a fellow journalist shot in front of me. And so I took to heart the criticism that I’d endangered my colleagues. I’d been raised – raised at the Times – to believe the best way to confront ideas that some people might consider dangerous was to bring them out into the open. But I recognised that many of my colleagues thought that was wrong. And I said I would like to debate with them whether it was time to discard the old approach, and, if that was the case, what role opinion journalism should have at the Times.

As I look back at my notes of that awful day, I don’t regret what I said. Even during that meeting, I was still hoping the blow-up might at last give me the chance either to win support for what I had been asked to do, or to clarify once and for all that the rules for journalism had changed at the Times.

But no one wanted to talk about that. Nor did they want to hear about all the voices of vulnerable or underprivileged people we had been showcasing in Opinion, or the ambitious new journalism we were doing. Instead, my Times colleagues demanded to know things such as the names of every editor who had had a role in the Cotton piece. Having seen what happened to Rubenstein I refused to tell them. A Slack channel had been set up to solicit feedback in real time during the meeting, and it was filling with hate. The meeting ran long, and finally came to a close after 90 minutes.

A Zoom call with a couple of thousand people is a disorienting experience, particularly when many of them are not particularly mindful of your “full humanity”. I do not recommend it

One last dismal task lay ahead. I had agreed to take the rare step of posting an “Editor’s Note” on the Cotton op-ed describing what was supposedly wrong with it, and the publisher had asked a newsroom editor to draft it for him. Although I had urged Dao to come up with “process” criticisms, I tried to insist, as did Dao, that the note make clear the Cotton piece was within our editorial bounds. Sulzberger said he felt the Times could afford to be “silent” on that question. In the end the note went far further in repudiating the piece than I anticipated, saying it should never have been published at all. The next morning I was told to resign.

What An Intense Period That Was, inside the Times and across America. In spring 2020 covid-19 chased people into their homes in fear, and then, as spring turned to summer, the murder of George Floyd brought many of them out into the streets in anger. Or maybe the emotions were the other way around. We were also angry at the virus, and at the government’s handling of it, and at our employers; and we were afraid of the police, or of the rioters, or of white people or black people, Democrats or Republicans. It was a terrible moment for the country. By the traditional – and perverse – logic of journalism, that should also have made it an inspiring time to be a reporter, writer or editor. Journalists are supposed to run towards scenes that others are fleeing, towards hard truths others need to know, towards consequential ideas they would prefer to ignore.

But fear got all mixed up with anger inside the Times, too, along with a desire to act locally in solidarity with the national movement. That energy found a focus in the Cotton op-ed. Scattered as we were by covid, none of us at the Times could speak face to face, and nobody was thinking very clearly. That seems understandable, given the frantic pile-up of circumstances. It would be reasonable now for all of us – me, Sulzberger, the journalists who were declaring their fright on Twitter – to look back, shake our heads and say that was a crazy time, and we all made some mistakes.

But the Times is not good at acknowledging mistakes. Indeed, one of my own, within the Times culture, was to take responsibility for any mistakes my department made, and even some it didn’t. To Sulzberger, the meltdown over Cotton’s op-ed and my departure in disgrace are explained and justified by a failure of editorial “process”. As he put it in an interview with the New Yorker this summer, after publishing his piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, Cotton’s piece was not “perfectly fact-checked” and the editors had not “thought about the headline and presentation”. He contrasted the execution of Cotton’s opinion piece with that of a months-long investigation the newsroom did of Donald Trump’s taxes (which was not “perfectly fact-checked”, as it happens – it required a correction). He did not explain why, if the Times was an independent publication, an op-ed making a mainstream conservative argument should have to meet such different standards from an op-ed making any other kind of argument, such as for the abolition of the police. “It’s not enough just to have the principle and wave it around,” he said. “You also have to execute on it.”

To me, extolling the virtue of independent journalism in the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review is how you wave a principle around. Publishing a piece like Cotton’s is how you execute on it. As Sulzberger also wrote in the Review, “Independent journalism, especially in a pluralistic democracy, should err on the side of treating areas of serious political contest as open, unsettled, and in need of further inquiry.” It matters that conflicting views do not just appear before different audiences in politically rivalrous publications or cable news networks, but instead in the same forum, before the same readers, subject to the same standards for fact and argumentation. That is also, by the way, an important means by which politicians, like Cotton, can learn, by speaking to audiences who are not inclined to nod along with them. That was our ambition for Times Opinion – or mine, I guess. Americans can shout about their lack of free speech all they want, but they will never be able to overcome their differences, and deal with any of their real problems, if they do not learn to listen to each other again.

Baquet Outside the New York Times Building in 2019

If Sulzberger must insist on comparing the execution of the Cotton op-ed with that of the most ambitious of newsroom projects, let him compare it with something really important, the 1619 Project, which commemorated the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia. Like Cotton’s piece, the 1619 Project was fact-checked and copy-edited (most of the Times newsroom does not fact-check or copy-edit articles, but the magazine does). But it nevertheless contained mistakes, as journalism often does. Some of these mistakes ignited a firestorm among historians and other readers.

And, like Cotton’s piece, the 1619 Project was presented in a way the Times later judged to be too provocative. The Times declared that the 1619 Project “aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding”. That bold statement – a declaration of Times fact, not opinion, since it came from the newsroom – outraged many Americans who venerated 1776 as the founding. The Times later stealthily erased it from the digital version of the project, but was caught doing so by a writer for the publication Quillette. Sulzberger told me during the initial uproar that the top editors in the newsroom – not just Baquet but his deputy – had not reviewed the audacious statement of purpose, one of the biggest editorial claims the paper has ever made. They also, of course, did not edit all the pieces themselves, trusting the magazine’s editors to do that work.

If the 1619 Project and the Cotton op-ed shared the same supposed flaws and excited similar outrage, how come that one is lauded as a landmark success and the other is a sackable offence? In asking this, I am not running down the 1619 Project. It was excellent, above all because it made arguments readers should hear and consider. And to be clear: unlike Sulzberger, I do not see any equivalence between any huge project like that and a single op-ed piece. The parallel is absurd. I am comparing them only to meet Sulzberger on his terms, in order to illuminate what he is trying to elide. What distinguished the Cotton piece was not an error, or strong language, or that I didn’t edit it personally. What distinguished that op-ed was not process. It was politics. It is one thing for the Times to aggravate historians, or conservatives, or even old-school liberals who believe in open debate. It has become quite another for the Times to challenge some members of its own staff with ideas that might contradict their view of the world.

The lessons of the incident are not about how to write a headline but about how much the Times has changed – how digital technology, the paper’s new business model and the rise of new ideals among its staff have altered its understanding of the boundary between news and opinion, and of the relationship between truth and justice. Ejecting me was one way to avoid confronting the question of which values the Times is committed to. Waving around the word “process” is another.

What still seems most striking about the Cotton episode is how out of sync the leaders of the paper were with the ascendant, illiberal values within it. Cotton’s essay brought into focus conflicts over the role of journalism that had been growing within the Times for years, and that the leadership has largely ducked away from. Is it journalism’s role to salt wounds or to salve them, to promote debates or settle them, to ask or to answer? Is its proper posture humble or righteous? As journalists trained in what was once the conventional way, with the old set of principles, Sulzberger, Baquet and I reacted similarly to Cotton’s essay: here’s a potentially consequential idea from an influential voice. It may make readers uncomfortable, and they should know about it and evaluate it partly for that very reason.

What still seems most striking about the Cotton episode is how out of sync the leaders of the paper were with the ascendant, illiberal values within it

Times colleagues who were frightened or angry about the piece had the opposite view: that readers should not hear Cotton’s argument. To expose them to it was to risk that they might be persuaded by an elected politician.

As he asserts the independence of Times journalism, Sulzberger is finding it necessary to reach back several years to another piece I chose to run, for proof that the Times remains willing to publish views that might offend its staff. “We’ve published a column by the head of the part of the Taliban that kidnapped one of our own journalists,” he told the New Yorker. He is missing the real lesson of that piece, as well.

That op-ed was a tough editorial call. It troubles my conscience as publishing Tom Cotton never has. But the reason is not that the writer, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the deputy leader of the Taliban, kidnapped a Times reporter (David Rohde, now of nbc, with whom I covered the Israeli siege of Jenin on the West Bank 20 years ago; he would never be afraid of an op-ed). The case against that piece is that Haqqani, who remains on the fbi’s most-wanted terrorist list, may have killed Americans. It’s puzzling: in what moral universe can it be a point of pride to publish a piece by an enemy who may have American blood on his hands, and a matter of shame to publish a piece by an American senator arguing for American troops to protect Americans?

As Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, said on the Senate floor about the Times’s panic over the Cotton op-ed, listing some other debatable op-ed choices, “Vladimir Putin? No problem. Iranian propaganda? Sure. But nothing, nothing could have prepared them for 800 words from the junior senator from Arkansas.” The Times’s staff members are not often troubled by obnoxious views when they are held by foreigners. This is an important reason the paper’s foreign coverage, at least of some regions, remains exceptional. It is relatively safe from internal censure. Less than four months after I was pushed out, my former department published a shocking op-ed praising China’s military crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong. I would not have published that essay, which, unlike Cotton’s op-ed, actually did celebrate crushing democratic protest. But there was no internal uproar.

The opportunity the Times threw away in repudiating the Cotton piece goes deeper than a setback to Sulzberger’s hopes that the paper will be seen as independent by anyone disinclined to nod along with its representation of reality. What seems most important and least understood about that episode is that it demonstrated in real time the value of the ideals that I poorly defended in the moment, ideals that not just the Times’s staff but many other college-educated Americans are abandoning.

After all, we ran the experiment; we published the piece. Was any Times journalist hurt? No. Nobody in the country was. In fact, though it is impossible to know the op-ed’s precise effect, polling showed that support for a military option dropped after the Times published the essay, as the Washington Post’s media critic, Erik Wemple, has written. If anything, in other words, publishing the piece stimulated debate that made it less likely Cotton’s position would prevail. The liberal, journalistic principle of open debate was vindicated in the very moment the Times was fleeing from it. Maybe if the Times would put more trust again in the intelligence and decency of Americans, more Americans would again trust the Times. Journalism, like democracy, works best when people refuse to surrender to fear. ■

— James Bennet is The Economist’s Lexington Columnist | Illustrations: Michelle Thompson | Images: © New York Times/Redux/Yevine, Natan Dvir/Eyevine, Getty Images, AP

#1843 Magazine #James Bennet is The Economist’s Lexington Columnist

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uh-velkommen · 1 year ago

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The Reality of Immigration. Life in Sweden:

So this post might be a little controversial depending on your national or heritage history but I'm realizing just how taken for granted the privilege of speaking English in a majority English country is. Believe me, I am a huge advocate for learning the language before visiting that country not just to make getting around easier but out of respect for the culture and people. However, in this case I decided not to learn Swedish before coming here. I know enough to get by and I keep mentioning how I can communicate in Norwegian enough to understand Swedish but there's a part of me that's being hella stubborn about this topic. I think a part of me lives in this world of idolization where Norway is top priority and Sweden is irrelevant. "I'm just here to get to Norway" But that mentality is also proving to be a massive hurdle. My current realistic goal is to get a job in Sweden and with that comes a serious need for fully grasping the culture. I feel like a boomer who's refusing to understand Pronouns. (Of course this isn't the full picture because I am taking steps to learning Swedish but this represents my internal battle).

The problem presents itself when it comes to looking for a job. I was told multiple times that you need to know Swedish to get a job. My American ignorance tells me, that can't be entirely true because most of the country also speaks English. And then I get online to look at applications and either 1) They ask if you can speak Swedish before even being able to apply or 2) The entire application is in Swedish. I found that some jobs are nearly impossible to find unless you are checking out Swedish websites. I got an email from my schools Career site and in Swedish it mentioned all the places that were hiring for 2024 but when I clicked "translate to English," the entire hiring section disappeared. Why?? Immediately my brain goes, "Discrimination! They're actively hiding this stuff from English speakers" And I have enough sense to recognize and check myself for that display of American Entitlement. Of course a place where Swedish is the main language is hiring Swedish speakers to interact with Swedish costumers. And this whole moment of realization has made me frustrated and even a little hopeless at the thought of finding work that occurs at least 80% of the time in English. "But Alisha, just learn Swedish and that'll solve like half of your problems??" Yes I could do that but knowing conversational Swedish is not gonna get me far in Academia and my loyalties lie with learning Norwegian. I can't give up my baby to focus on Swedish (and in that case, don't ask why I came to Sweden instead of going to Norway I've tried justifying my reasoning over and over already). Do you understand what this internal battle is really about? Because I don't. I just can't? It feels like self-sabotage, but why?

Then all this gets me thinking about the millions of Hispanic-Americans who were in the exact position that I'm in but perhaps with more dire consequences. They come to America not knowing a lick of English, not have a Personal Identity Number, not having family to fall back on. Everything I've experienced upon coming here, all those people had to overcome. I can imagine now how hard it was for them. I want to be mad at Sweden for making me jump through all these hoops but this is just the reality for nearly every country out there. I met someone here who tried to move to Canada for sanctuary and they told her no because she didn't have the funds to support herself. The exact situation I was in trying to come to Sweden. It doesn't matter where you're moving to or why, the process is the same everywhere. I don't know why I thought this would be easy but now that it's not, I just wanna go back to America and I can't help but think about all the people who didn't have this option to just "go back where they came from." And it makes me feel guilty for getting worked up over this language barrier.

#life in sweden #sweden travels #Scandi Saga #me

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theharshestaddiction · 1 year ago

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it's been 4 years now apparently. i don't think I really loved him, I was just vulnerable and young.

i dont know how to explain what it is like after being groomed. it is painful to live with this trauma. i find that my own relationships sometimes cant feel as fulfilling because im not used to having such a consistent relationship. my boyfriend is a constant point of joy and affection my life. i self sabotage to try and recreate what it is like to be groomed and I cant. nothing feels the same as when he did it, or when she did. to be groomed by a teacher is an entirely different experience. when she was older it felt more like a high school thing, she was freshly graduated, but with him he was grown. he saw something in me even though I'm so young, of course I felt special. of course I felt special. it gets harder to remember exactly what happened a lot of the time, I think I am blocking it all out now. i spend everyday on the bus dreaming of writing a book or screenplay that can represent how this feels, but this pain cannot be put into words. i am loved and cared for by nearly everyone I know now, but the pain seems so attractive.

if i were to create a film or book about it I wouldnt want the actor to show his face. i think it would represent how I never put an identity to his name. i never ever made him a real person, here or in real life. my ex girlfriend might remember, but I doubt it. it would be all hands and movements, maybe some shots of his face up close. but it would be just like how it feels. bits and pieces, while I give my whole body and soul.

i always feel like someones gonna go through my blogs if im ever killed or if i die, so i think I should clarify. he never touched me inappropriately, he never raped or assaulted me. he complimented, encouraged and was personal with me. i don't know if he meant to groom me, I dont know what his intention was. i don't know why I was his favorite. i wish i did so i could swallow this all down.

i rarely write or talk about this because it hurts so much, but its been getting bad again. not processing this properly has been bad for me. i think about it on the bus all the time. for at least an hour a day I reminisce on what I think is gone. there was nothing ever there in the first place. i could talk about it endlessly and still say nothing, still describe nothing. there is a cork in my throat and I cant say words. why cant I admit it to myself? why do I still doubt him?

i know he was a good man. i want to know that, at least. the warmth I felt when he was hurting me was unlike anything I have known. like an absent part in my heart had been filled. probably because I was so angry with my parents at the time. i feel like I'm giving away too much. if I'm dead and youre reading this please don't go after him. i don't love him, I wish I never met him. he still works in schools I think. i have been searching for his social media for years, but I am unable to find it. there is nothing on him. no linked in or anything. its weird. his name is too common.

i find that i have a strange attraction to older men now. or maybe just one. pedro pascal is attractive to me, but i dont think thats because of this. hes just attractive. anyhow, I find that i read a lot of fanfiction with age gap relationships. it isn't to like, get me off or anything dumb. i just . i want to feel that way again. i want to feel so far beneath someone that when they lift me up an inch it feels like the first breath I've taken in years.

i am complacent in my own pain.

i wish he had touched me sometimes. i wonder what his bed may have felt like, when im alone and angry. i get mad that he probably has a girlfriend, and that hes forgotten about me by now. i know he only saw me last a year ago but hes probably had a hundred students since my class.i wish he would think about me, or email me. i wish I would wake up to a notification and see his name asking how I am. i just want him to see that I'm doing well in school, just like he remembers. i feel like he would care that I didn't give up. i feel like hes the only one who ever made me feel like my writing was really worth something. i dont let anyone read my stuff anymore unless its for school. no one would compliment it like he did, and even if they could it wouldnt be from him so what does it reall matter.

i remember when i learned he didnt have a girlfriend. i remember trying not to smile, thinking it could be me. i was 14, maybe. she was allergic to shellfish and he had bought her a dinner with shellfish in it, but I don't think thats why they broke up. maybe she found out that he's kind of a loser.

i just wish love hadnt been so ruined for me. it feels like my heart has been beaten down in everyway possible now. sexually, and emotionally.

i hate knowing that this is a shared pain. i hate knowing im not the only one. i hate that im letting go of this in some stupid post on a blog i made for him. i hate that there were others, i hate that there will be others. i should have been the only one for him. i should be the one with him and i should be killing him and hurting him the way he hurts me even now.

at the end of that movie she kills the man, the one with no face. i don't know anything else about the plot, but she stabs him to death in his kitchen.

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dianaritteroflows · 1 year ago

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7/3/2023 - 1:38 PM

Dear diary,

Happy Full Buck Moon!

What have I been up to? Nothing special.

I gave the address of one of the guys i fucked to scientology. We’ll see what happens from there. To be sure I also signed him up for a separate email service. And then to have one of their representatives to reach out to him. Exciting stuff!

I also gave him an anonymous text message about having an std (specifically HIV and gonorrhea.) I kinda fucked up when I realized since I did this all at once, he’s probably going to just think that someone is fucking with him. SOOO i feel mad. I should’ve calculated better. HOWEVER, he is a dumbass so he might take all of it seriously without an idea that someone is fucking with me.

To continue my reign of terror, I’m going to send 5 more anonymous texts to other guys too. We’ll see how it goes!

I’ve been in a mood lately. Might be because I’m bleeding. can you believe I thought I was pregnant? Actually rightfully so, I had sex 7 days before the bleeding began. Yes, no rubber. And when he came he wasn’t exactly sure if he had done it in me. I was too tired to care. But i should’ve obviously cared a bit more because I WAS OVULATING.

Bought a pregnancy test with a result that came up negative. I’m going to of course try again later when I’m closer to when my period is.

Actually, why the hell am i bleeding? It’s not even spotting, it’s like I’m having a light period. it’s still fucking with my mind.

God (literally talking to God), can you imagine if I got pregnant with his child? We both have huge foreheads, it would be terrifying. But at least if he has thick eyebrows and my eyebrows are naturally thin, we should even out with our child (THAT DOES NOT EXIST). And i think we would have a cute kid (THAT WOULD NOT HAPPEN THOUGH BECAUSE I’M NOT FUCKING PREGANT)

Anyways the reign of terror continues! I’m going to send a couple of more anonymous text messages that people have HIV over the next couple of days. I’m also going to sign a couple up for health insurance spam. Just because I’m in a spiteful mood. After that, I think I’m going to hold back until my next plan comes to me.

Tonight is the full buck moon. Every full moon I like to get my manifestations all down. They always come true, so i stick to this practice very spiritually and religiously.

You know what’s insane (besides me)? Everything i manifest comes true. I’m literally who I wanted to be. Over 2 months ago I thought writing down everything I wanted would be WAAY too much. But everything has worked out for me. Because I’m just lucky like that. I’m ruled by Jupiter so it makes sense.

But the more I think about it the more insane it is to me. I wrote down so much and accomplished so much more. I need to defend myself more because I am capable of so much more than I know. Everything I want is already mine. Insane how things just work out for me.

And i really mean that. The Lord is constantly looking out for me. He just has my back. I thought getting rejected by every sorority was gonna be my downfall, but He really had my best intentions at hand. Every girl I know that joined is fucking miserable. You know what capital M, Miserable. I have so much more luck than I can even perceive. If one sorority had not rejected me, I would’ve gladly joined that one and become more insane than I usually am. Like actually. I think I would’ve borderline tried to end it all. But because the Lord was looking out for me, my mental health has actually been incredible been semester. Sure, could take better care of myself? Absolutely. But am I on the border of where I was last semester? NO way. I’m so much better. I’m so much happier. I know who I am. And I can the Lord for that.

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welcometomyweird · 2 years ago

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Somewhere Out There

The night sky has always been magical to me. I know all the science, but that's part of the magic for me. Yes, the moon only reflects the light of the sun and doesn't shine with its own, but it doesn't make it any less breathtaking when it's full and casting that light on a blanket of fresh snow. The light of stars that died thousands of years ago still shining down on us, twinkling like diamonds against a deep blue velvet sky.

The night sky also represents space. I am a lifelong Trekkie. "Space, the final frontier..." I think, because of my Star Trek fandom, that I have never questioned whether or not there is other life in our universe. It's not "if" they are out there for me. My questions have always been "where are they" and "who are they". And... as a very young child, I tried very hard to find out.

How, you ask? Brace yourself for some hard core dorkiness. My first attempts were by sending "psychic" messages. Well, I was 6 and when you're 6, sending "psychic" messages consists of squeezing your eyes shut as tight as you can and thinking really hard. I actually remember my mom catching me and asking what I was doing. I shushed her and told her I was trying to talk to the aliens.

Second method of attempted communication was through song. Music has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember and is one of the most universal languages on the planet. I thought that my "psychic" messages didn't get a response because of the language barrier. Maybe a song would get through. Even if they couldn't understand the words, maybe the melody and the emotion conveyed might make a connection. The first song I sang was "Somewhere Out There" from the animated film "An American Tail". Yeah, I know, but there was a method to my madness. I figured if I was trying to make contact with beings outside of my planet, there was likely another child somewhere else in the universe trying to do the same.

Third try was just music. I had been at a street fair where I paid 50 cents for a little cedar flute. I would sit on my back porch making up little tunes ans playing them into the night, hoping they would find their way to someone across the cosmos.

"Did any of that work?" Well, maybe... I can't be sure. There was something pretty traumatizing that happened when I was 10, but I will only be telling THAT story to Micah Hanks. (Hopefully, he checks his Twitter DMs because my email bounced back.) Be it suffice to say that if I was freaked about NOT seeing the Jersey Devil at 34, what I DID see at the age of 10 really messed me up. And that's assuming it actually did happen and wasn't just a very lucid dream.

I still feel very certain that there is extraterrestrial life. I am certain that they have visited. I just think people are wrong about why they're coming here. If they were going to attack us, they have had ample opportunity, so I don't believe they're a threat. They've also had plenty of opportunities to extend the olive branch and convey a message of peace and friendship, so that's not it either. No, I think they just like to watch. I think we're the trash reality show the rest of the universe watches. We're either a guilty pleasure or a scared straight program. Whatever the case, they go home feeling a lot better about themselves. You occasionally get a brave/crazy one who chooses to engage with us. That's where we get the now infamous "Tic-Tac" video. What's on that video isn't E.T.s taking aggressive action. It's intergalactic punk kids drag racing with our Navy pilots. Who knows? Maybe they watched "Top Gun" and thought it looked like fun and wanted to try it themselves.

And so ends this foray into Forteana. So, I've done cryptids and E.T.s. I guess ghost stories are next. You're in luck there. I have way more of those. (I live in New England!)

#uap #extraterrestial life #micah hanks

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inbarfink · 2 years ago

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Alright, so the way I see it right now the Dark Worlds run on “Neverending Story Logic”, they’re created when Dark Fountains are opened, but they are created already with full history and memories for everyone inside them as if they alwas existed. But here’s another important element I want to touch on...

How does this work with the mysterious entity that keeps driving people mad and creating Secret Bosses?

Like, this feels a bit too Ominous to just be a retroactively-existing backstory element, right?

And, I think... I think one of the reasons why this is so Ominous is because this is kinda goes against the rules of how Dark Worlds are supposed to work?? Like, whoever or whatever this ‘someone’ is, they are something very Not Normal and this is partially demonstrated by the screwy way they interact with the Dark Worlds.

(Also for the sake of clarity, I will be referring to this unknown entity as Someone with a capital ‘S’ for the reminder of this post. I would also be making some references to the very popular theory that Someone is actually Dr. W. D. Gaster, but I will only be using his name when directly talking about aspects of my theory/interpetations that factor in the idea that Someone is Gaster)

I think that Someone might be able to, like, ‘infect’ newly-created Dark Fountains with their own presence. Like, to retcon themself into the history of the Dark World once it’s created? Maybe they can travel to the ‘past-that-has-always-been-there’ of a Dark World even though it’s not supposed to ‘actually exist’? Or maybe they truly only exist as a Backstory Element in various Dark Worlds but are somehow also aware of the fact that they do not truly exist save for in the past and the third-person, and are working with that knowledge? A villain you could never confront under normal circumstances because they never ‘is’ and always ‘were’?

I think all of these options kinda make sense within the Neverending Story Logic while also being kinda brain-breaking in the way that they directly interact with the paradox in the center of it all, which is The Point.

And I think it all work pretty well with the idea that Someone is Gaster. Cause, like, Gaster in Undertale was stuck in a weird state of nonexistence and existence where he DID exist in the past (since his creations, most notably the CORE were still around) but somehow it’s like he never existed in the present. So him (or even just some sort of being related to him) being able to interact with the Deltarune universe only through the Past Tense and\or through Worlds that technically do not exist kinda makes sense to me???

And it also factors into one thing I’ve noticed about our Secret Bosses which is.... there are all potrayed as having been somewhat ‘corrupted’ by Someone but it’s... never really in a way that corrupts their nature as Darkners representing spesific objects?

You know, it’s not really “this Darkner is a representation of Object and therefore they are X, but then Someone came along and through their influence the Darkner became Y” as much as it is “this Darkner is a representation of Object and therefore they are X but they actually used to be Y before Someone came along and made them X”.

Like, Jevil is locked up because he has been driven mad by Someone, but also because the Jocker Card is often ‘locked out’ from many Card Games. The greater understanding of the world given to him by Someone seems to have made him more powerful and unpredictable... but powerful and unpredictable is also just what a Joker card is.

Spamton is a barely-coherent madman living in a [[GODDAM GARBAGE CAN]] because of Someone’s influence, but also because Spam Mail is often barely-coherent and usually gets thrown in the garbage (and Spamton spesifically seems to have been created by a pile of spam-emails in the recycling bin).

When Someone abandoned Spamton and left him to crash and burn, can we call that an intentional act of maliciousness on their part? Or was that simply an inevitability that not even they could stop, because Spamton is fated to end up in the garbage when he reaches his actual present-day ‘creation’?

Like, just as I can say “from a Darkner’s perspective they and their world always existed but really they are created by the Dark Fountains” I can also say “from a Darkner’s perspective, if Someone hadn’t come along, Jevil would still just be the Court Jester and Spamton would still be a somewhat incompetent Addison. But from really, without Someone’s influance, Jevil would still be a Very Strong Clown in Jail and Spamton would still be a rambling garbage-dwelling conman, it’s just that the reason to their situation wouldn’t be Someone-related.

Cause you have like the Dark Fountain kinda forming the Joker Card into a Powerful Clown that is Locked Away, and then Somone butts in like “and the REASON for why he’s locked away is MEEE”. An the other Dark Fountain is like ‘Spam Mail in a Bin’ = ‘A weird conman who lives in the trash and is both very driven but incredibly incompetent and kinda off-putting’ and then Someone makes it so They Did This to Him. But by doing that they did corrupt Jevil and Spamton further due to their otherworldly and paradoxical nature, and the knowledge they seem to hold. If Someone hadn’t interfered, Jevil might not be quite as powerful and Spamton might not be quite as miserable, but there’s still isn’t truly an option for Jevil and Spamton to remain the people they and other Darkners remember them once being.

And linking this back to Gaster... in the Undertale’s universe his situation was very much that he was... a Cause removed, while his Effects still remained. Again, even though he seemed to have been somewhat ‘erased’, the CORE he designed still remains standing and active.

And meanwhile here we have Someone as, like the way I think they operate, they’re like a rogue Cause attaching itself to Effects. Which is possible because they truly are reversed when it comes to the Darkner’s pasts. And I think that if Gaster’s goal is just, basically, to Exist within the Deltarune Universe - there’s a certain logic in the idea that he’s trying to Make Himself Exist by inserting himself into Darkner’s backstories, no matter if it keeps driving them crazy(er).

This also raises the question of like... did Someone have any agency in picking their ‘Effects’? Like, is the reason why Someone’s has influanced Darkners that ‘make sense’ for them to influance like Jevil and Spamton and not like... Jigsaw Joe and Tasque Manager is because Someone is deliberatly trying to minimize their corrupting influance by targeting Darkners would be kinda Fucked Up regardless? Or is it something that they can’t even control and it’s more that the powers of Inevitability of the Dark Worlds make it so they can’t change what the Darkners are too much?

Man I hope any of this makes sense it’s like 4AM lol.

#deltarune #deltarune theory #spamton #spamton g spamton #spamton deltarune #jevil #jevil deltarune #gaster #w. d. gaster

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gurugirl · 2 years ago

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The Tiffany Club Part 20*

Summary: Camille receives the punishment for her actions - and Harry's not taking it easy on her

Warning: SMUT (some heavy stuff and Harry's mean here - sub/dom dynamic - be warned - do not enter if you are triggered by anything in that realm)

Part 19

Part 20* ~Harry~

I didn’t speak much to Camille after I took her cellphone. I kept my arm around her, though, keeping her close. I didn’t want her out of my sight ever again if I could help it. I would lock her away in a cage if I could every time I needed to be away but that’s not realistic. My anger and disappointment were still there but I knew she had some things to work out in herself. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be getting a taste of my wrath. I was already cooking up plans on how to discipline her for her actions. I’d done nothing to deserve her running off and I needed her know I wouldn’t be letting her off so easily.

Once we got to my flat, I released her hand and locked the door behind me. I walked past her, coolly, and took off my coat and then headed to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. In all truth, I was feeling a bit anxious for what I was about to do. Camille and I had done some kinky shit together, but this was going to be different. My dominance was always in play around her but right now, I was still seething, and I needed to unleash myself a bit. Camille wasn’t going to get away with her actions.

She followed me into the kitchen, keeping quiet. She knew she was in for it. Her small frame stood near the entryway. I didn’t look at her, though. I didn’t want to gift her that just yet. Placing the glass in the sink, I walked out of the kitchen and past Camille. She huffed a breath that I ignored, and she followed me to the bedroom, what I would consider our bedroom at this point since she was mine now and I wasn’t going to let her leave me again.

“Harry? Are you still mad at me? I’m sorry.”

I pulled my sweater off over my head and smoothed my hands through my hair, not making a move to respond or to look at her just yet. I was still going over in my head the plan of attack. It wasn’t going to be nice and I needed to get into the right headspace. Looking at her only softened me, and her sweet voice nearly had me wanting to comfort her, tell her that I wasn’t mad so she didn’t feel bad. But this wasn’t the time to be soft because I was mad.

I pulled my wallet out from my back pocket and placed it on the dresser and looked at myself in the mirror and sighed. Camille was watching my every move. It was time to let her know what she was in for.

I turned toward her, but did not look at her face, “Go take a shower. You need to rinse off. I can smell you from here.” That wasn’t necessarily true. I could see she hadn’t showered and with what I’d planned on doing to her, it would probably be in her own best interest to clean up a little because it was only going to get worse.

I walked out of the room, and she still followed me with a scoff, “What? Harry?!”

I needed to make it clear what was happening, as she didn’t seem to think I was serious when I told her in the car she was due for a punishment.

With my back still turned to her I spoke, “Don’t be dull with me, little girl. I warned you that you would be punished. Your actions have consequences and I’m nothing if not a man of my word. Now go shower and then after sit down in the chair next to the window in the bedroom. I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”

I went to my study and turned on my computer. This time Camille did not follow me. I checked my emails to find that I’d been emailed back by the HR representative about Cindy and I typed out my complaint with details in full as requested. I heard the shower start as I was typing and smiled to myself, pleased that Camille was following my orders.

Fifteen minutes later, I found myself back in the bedroom. I closed the door behind myself and Camille was sat in the chair near the window as she was told.

“Remove your robe.” I let my eyes wander over her figure but did not allow myself to look at her face just yet. I would need to get into the mindset a bit first, have her submissive for me before I would be able to look at her.

Camille silently stood and removed her robe, draping it over the chair and stood still waiting for what was next. While she did that I went into my closet and pulled out a few things that would be used for punishment. She watched me as I brought out the items and put them on the dresser.

Pointing to the bed I said, “Lie on the bed on your back, head hanging off the side.”

Camille got right to it. Her body was so fucking hot. I loved the little bit of weight she gained over the last few weeks. It made her look so mouthwatering. Not that she wasn’t before, but now, this woman looked so healthy and her skin looked so clear and radiant. Maybe I could get her to put on some more weight with time, have a little something extra to hold on to. If she wanted…

When she was lying on the bed with her neck out and arched back, her head hanging off as I told her, I walked to where she’d see me from upside down.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. First, you’re going to make me come while you’re lying like this. I’m gonna fuck your throat until your choking on me and gagging for air. You may not touch me,” I say as I lift the leather cuffs which I will place on her before we get started, “these will help you to do as I say, because you can’t be trusted to do it on your own, can you?”

Camille silently shook her head, her eyes on mine. I didn’t mind looking at her face in this position.

“That’s right. I can’t trust my little whore to be a good girl anymore. Not until after I’ve shown you the equivalent of what you put me through last night and this morning.”

I begin removing my t-shirt and then my jeans, and finally my boxer-briefs. I’m angry at her but I’m also desperate for her, but I won’t show her how desperate I am. She can already see that I’m half-hard as my cock dangles over her face.

“Now, here are some rules,” I begin sliding my fist over my shaft, angled right above her face so I can’t see her anymore and she can’t see me, “… you are to only call me Daddy tonight. I do not want you to back-talk me or question my actions in any way. You will only speak when being spoken to. If it’s a yes or no answer, then nod or shake your head only. You will not be allowed to orgasm today, maybe not even tomorrow, I don’t know yet, but you don’t deserve a release. I will be spanking you, calling you names you deserve to be called, and taking out all of my frustrations on you and your body as I see fit. You are mine to do with what I please and I don’t want to hear a peep of a complaint.”

Then, slowing the movements of my hand over my cock, I lean down to speak quietly into her ear with consideration to her well-being, “If anything is too much, just say stop and I will. But I know you can handle what I give you because you know you deserve it.”

I stand back up and continue jerking my dick over her face. I can feel her warm breath on the underside of my cock and over my balls. It’s making me delirious. She’s been naughty but she’s so good at pleasing me and she’s so fucking hot that I just want to destroy her.

“Can you follow my rules, little girl?” I move back so I can see her face and watch as she nods yes.

“Good. Any concerns before I start the punishment?” I see her swallow and shake her head no. Her chest is rising a falling heavy and her tits are perked up beautifully. But I’m not going to show them any love tonight. She doesn’t deserve it.

I lean forward to take her wrists into my hands to cuff her and as I do so, my dick lands right over her face. I can feel her lips give a small peck to the prominent vein running along the underside and I close my eyes for a moment. I love her so much and the feel of her sweet gesture has me instantly thickening up.

When I stand back up with Camille’s wrists cuffed together I continue pumping myself over her, but I’m hard and I’m ready to fuck her mouth.

With my knees slightly bent, I hold my shaft and place my tip at her mouth, still fisting my cock, “This won’t feel good for you, but it’s going to feel great for me. Little slut doesn’t deserve to feel good today.” And with that, I push my cock into her mouth and don’t stop until I’m down her throat. I can’t see her face like this, only her bottom lip and her neck, which bulges at my length going down her throat.

She gurgles and wiggles her hips a little and bends her knees to stabilize herself as I pull out and push back in. Her noises are nice and the way she gags around my cock is soothing to me. I stuff myself deep into her mouth and continue my thrusts as I watch her neck bulge and her tits wobble with each smack.

My balls are smashing into her nose each time I plunge into her, and she swallows around me uncontrollably. But I won’t stop until I’m drowning her with my come. Her bottom lip looks swollen as I press into her, I know I’m a lot to handle but she can take it. She’s good at this.

I begin to feel the heat build up in my balls as I continue fucking her mouth. Saliva is dripping down her face now and she is lying still but continues to gag and gurgle at the long and thick intrusion to her throat. She’s being very good. If she keeps it up I won’t have a choice but to be sweet with her at the end of the night. I won’t let her come, but I would like to hold her close to me in bed as we drift off to sleep. Never to let her out of my sight again.

I reach down to put my palm over her throat so I can feel the way it expands when I shove myself into her mouth. I hold it in for a moment, cramming myself in as far as possible, my balls pressed over her top lip and nose before dragging my cock all the way out to give her a breath of air. I look down at her and her face is red and wet with saliva. Her hair is still wet from her shower and it tickles a little each time my thighs brush against it. I grasp onto her wet locks and drag her a little further toward myself, so she’s hanging off the bed further. I am about to go a little harder because I’m so close to coming and having her angled further down will help.

She grunts at the feel of her hair being pulled as she gets dragged a bit to the edge of the bed. I let go of her damp strands and then reposition myself with my knees against the bed on either side of her head and push just my tip past her lips, slow, shallow thrusts so I can watch as my cock fills her mouth. I’m shiny with her spit and as hard as a rock. I can feel puffs of her breath fall over my balls and thighs as it escapes her nose in preparation for what she knows is about to come. She better take in as much air as she can right now because in a few more moments, I’ll be snaking my cock down her throat and coming so she’s nearly flooded by me and unable to breathe.

“Open up wide, for Daddy. Gonna fill your dirty throat with my come and make you choke.” I speak as I’m gently rocking in and out shallowly. The way she’s sucking my tip each time I drag out is incredible. She knows what I like. Her tongue swiping at my tip and her swollen lips wrapped around me brings me to my edge quickly.

Suddenly when I feel my balls tighten I groan and impale my cock into her throat, hard thrusts down into her mouth, esophagus distended when I’m balls deep. She’s gurgling and swallowing around me, wet gags and attempts at a gasp for breath fall from her stuffed throat when I pack myself as deep as I can go. I pull back and thrust in over and over but she continues sucking my shaft each time I drag nearly all the way out. Her chest is red and heaving. I place my hand back over her neck to feel myself invade her throat and her loudest gurgle escapes as I begin to dump my come down her throat.

“Fucking swallow all of it down little slut. Fucckk…” my pulsing dick releases rope after rope of come down her throat and I throw my head back at the feel. It’s pure pleasure. A release that feels settling and comforting in a way. I have her back with me and I’m fucking her throat. After what she put me through this is my reward. I get to have her and do with her what I please.

When I finally feel milked of all there is to give her, she’s still suckling on me hollowing her cheeks. She’s a filthy mess with saliva and my come running down her face and cheeks toward her ears. The little bit of extra sucking makes me shiver because I’m so sensitive, but it feels so fucking good.

I pull out of her and coo at the mess. “Awww… Looking like a dirty whore for Daddy. Go to the bathroom and clean yourself up.”

Camille, with heavy breaths and wobbly legs makes her way to the en-suite bathroom and does what I say. She takes a few minutes, but I allow her to take her time so she can recover before my next corrective action.

When she returns to the bedroom she’s pink in the face and her eyes are wide and round. I’m already sitting in the chair and holding a paddle which she sees right away and her mouth drops open.

I pat my lap, “Come on. It’s time for your spankings.” Usually, Camille loves being spanked because I typically use my palm, but today it’s the paddle and this won’t feel nice. But she’ll probably still like it, knowing her.

She crosses the room to me and settles herself over my lap, her ass up, hips down. She adjusts herself for leverage, preparing for the jolt she’s about to receive.

“I’m going to spank you twenty-five times. I’ll have you count and then say thank you, Daddy after each paddle. You won’t be able to sit on your bottom for days when I’m done with you.”

I watch her nod as her head dangles and I want so badly to rub my palms over her bum and squeeze but I resist. This is her punishment. When I raise the paddle and bring it back down over her cheeks the sound of the leather hitting her flesh echoes through the room and she jumps in shock.

“One! Thank you, Daddy.” Her voice sounds raspy and strained. Probably due to the cock she just had down her throat.

I repeat the paddling and she answers with the count and her thank yous. When I get to ten her answers come out in almost a moan.

“Oohh… ten… mmm… thank you, Daddy!” I notice that she’s wet as I have a good view of her pussy from this angle, and I clench my jaw. The girl is beautiful and she’s turned on by this, but I’m not even halfway done. Her cheeks are bright red with stripes where the edges of the paddle have dug into her flesh.

I bring it down again and she answers with more moans and wiggles ever so slightly. Again, and again, the same.

At fifteen paddles she’s dripping down to my thighs and I’m still in my refractory period so I’m not hard yet, but I can tell it will only be a matter of time before I’m rock hard again because the view I have is outstanding.

I go through the next five paddles relatively quickly but then when she’s answered me at 21, she sounds tired and less enthusiastic. I can tell it’s taking its toll on her.

When I’m done she doesn’t make a move to get off of my lap. Her bottom is bright pink and red and some spots are starting to bruise a little. She’s limp in my lap.

“Okay. Now time to get up. Go on.” I encourage her to move off my lap and she slowly shifts and moves herself until she’s standing up. Her hair is messy and I can see she’s red in the face and her eyes are wet with tears. I hand her the paddle, “Clean this off. All you need to do is wipe it down with the alcohol pads and then put it on the dresser next to everything else when you’re done.”

She immediately goes into the bathroom and gets the alcohol wipes to clean it and I stand up and stretch myself a bit. It’s quite a workout spanking someone twenty-five times. I sit at the edge of the bed and wait for Camille to return.

When she walks out of the bathroom she places the paddle on the dresser.

“Now, pick out what you want me to use on you next. All your options are right there on the dresser.” I motion to the wooden dresser she’s standing near.

She turns to look at everything and I feel a little bit of guilt when I see her bottom marked up. She’s going to be very sore. It looks painful.

She turns around with the spreader bar and cuffs. It’s all one piece but the bar will go between her ankles and it’s attached to straps that will have her staying still without the use of her hands and she won’t be able to put her thighs together. It’s not something I’ve ever used on anyone. No one seemed to be into such a thing. Of course Camille pulls this out of the small stack of toys. She’s seen it all before so she’s aware of what this is.

“You want to be spread out and cuffed so you can’t move, hmm? Just remember, even if I fuck you, my cock being inside of you is for my pleasure only today. You do not get to come. Do you remember our rules?”

Camille nods quickly, “Yes, Daddy.”

“Good. Get on the bed, lie on your stomach and I’ll put this on you.” She walks to the bed, placing the bar and straps down at the edge of the bed and then crawls onto her stomach, lying flat, face down.

I stroke my cock a little as I’m beginning to get hard again and make my way to the bed where I pick up the spreader bar.

I pull at her ankles and secure the cuff to each one and then link the straps to the wrist cuffs. I grab her left wrist, pulling her arm behind her back, and bend her legs at her knees so I can attach it to the first cuff and then connect it to the bar, then do the same with her right wrist. Now she’s lying face down with her arms behind her and her legs bent, ankles up. Kind of similar to the bow pose in yoga but with her legs spread apart and her wrists aren’t touching her ankles. In this position I can see everything and it must be very vulnerable for her.

I swipe my finger through her slit and she moans. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to just touch, for my own sake but she clearly enjoyed the contact. I leave her on the bed and walk out of the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I need to gather myself for a bit and have some water. Which reminds me I should probably get a water bottle for her as well. I gulp down a few swigs of water and then grab a straw to share with Camille. She’ll need something and, yes, I’m punishing her but I don’t want her to suffer. I check my emails to see if I’ve had any responses about and there’s nothing important for me to get back to just yet.

When I reenter the room, Camille is silently lying tummy down on the bed. Her head is turned to the side and her eyes are closed. She’s been very good. No complaints at all.

“Here, baby. Have some water before we continue.” I tap at her shoulder and she opens her eyes to look at me. I help her get into a position where she can wrap her lips around the straw and not spill any water from the bottle. She keeps her eyes on mine and stays silent. I smirk at her and then remove the water bottle to the bedside table.

Walking around the bed I take a look at the girl spread out for me. Her pussy is shiny and beautiful as ever. I love being able to see her without her thighs being pressed together, nothing obstructing the view of her from me. And she most definitely has the prettiest pussy I’ve ever seen. Perhaps I’ll tell her when I’m done with her.

I knee up to the bed and grasp the bar, trying to figure out the best way to fuck her like this. She’s spread nice and wide and I can lift her hips up over my thighs and fuck into her that way, but I am concerned about her breathing in this position. She’s already in a strained pose with her arms behind her.

“I’m gonna fuck your cunt for a bit but I need you to tell me if it’s hard for you to breathe, don’t want you to pass out. That won’t be fun for me. Understood?”

Camille hums and nods, “I understand, Daddy.”

I grasp onto her hips and slide her back over my thighs and pump myself a bit, getting nice and plumped up in my hand. She’ll be easy to slip into like this. When I’m hard I angle myself to her entrance and slide up and down her crease for a bit. She’s trying not to wiggle, and she can’t really due to how her limbs are arranged, but I can tell she’s struggling. She wants my cock.

Without even thinking I lean in to kiss the top of her right foot and she groans and I silently scold myself for slipping up. I’m not supposed to be sweet with her, but it’s hard because of my feelings for the girl.

I prod at her entrance and then begin to push in. She’s so satisfying to enter. She’s wet, and warm, and tight around me. I press in as much as I can and then I start to drag out and then slam back in. I do this a handful of times and each thud into her causes her to grunt as her breath is getting punched out of her lungs.

I want so badly to tell her how good she feels but instead I keep to my original plan, “Fucking little cunt is desperate for Daddy’s cock. Likes to be punished, like’s getting spanked, what else do you want, hmm?” The sounds of my cock impaling her wet entrance are making my head spin. It’s one of my favorite noises and she feels so good around me. It’s going to take me a lot to come since I’ve already just come not long ago. She’s in for it.

Camille is trying to respond but she’s having a hard time with the way she’s angled and how deep I’m grinding into her with the fast pace that smacks into her at each thrust.

“Y… all uufff… Dadd… mmyy… mmmffff…” she’s trying to speak but I have a feeling she won’t be able to with how I’m railing her. So I laugh and smack her thigh.

“Try that again. What else do you want since you like this so much? You’re dripping down to my bed now. Fuck…” the view I have is something I want to record. It’s amazing. She’s simply just my fuck toy like this.

“Hmmm… Uffff… YOU!! Plee… daddyyy…” I chuckle and slow down a bit so she can put a few words together.

She’s breathing hard and her little pussy is gripping my cock like its her job. With a shallow gasp she speaks again, “I… want… you… to do… anything… please. It’s what… I deserve…” she gasps again to take in another breath. I smile down at her ass as I slowly fuck her.

After some long minutes in silence (except for the sound of me fucking into her soaked cunt) I feel my pleasure peaking. I won’t come for a bit but now it’s feeling very very good inside of her.

“Can you breathe okay still?” I check in on her.

She is breathing heavy and I can see her chest expand as she prepares herself to answer me when I slow down my strokes again.

“I’m okay, Daddy... Just need… you to… be happy.” She’s struggling, I can tell. Also, her words have me nearly caving. She’s so sweet and I want to unhook her and make love to her properly. I don’t know how long I can keep up the façade.

“Good. I’ll be happy once you’ve learned your lesson.” I pull out of her and release her so her thighs aren’t over mine anymore and I’m not touching her.

She whines and then quickly stops when I pause at hearing the wordless complaint. I ignore it because she stopped so fast. And also because even though I’m being a little mean, I’m totally soft for her right now.

I make my way to sit next to her so that she can see me. I stroke my cock and pump myself in my favorite tempo so she can watch.

“I’m gonna jerk myself off right in front of you. I don’t think you deserve the satisfaction of feeling my cock right nwo. So you can watch me as I make myself feel good. I do it better than you can anyway.” A lie.

Her arousal is still coating my cock so it’s slippery and shiny as I fuck into my fist. Her big eyes are rounded and watching me closely. She’s still got tears on her face.

I lean back and use my right hand to perfectly stroke my cock and I moan, “Mmm… feels so good like this. Better than any fuck toy, or pussy I’ve had. No one knows how to get me off like I do. Isn’t that right, Camille? Daddy knows best?”

Camille pouts but she nods and blinks her eyes. More tears roll down her cheeks and onto the comforter. It’s not true what I’ve said. Not at all. Sex with a person is far better than doing it alone (especially sex with Camille), but I’m determined to keep up the front I’ve got going until she understands she can’t run off from me like she did.

Continuing my long strokes I take my free hand and grasp her chin, “I do know best. What I know is that you need to learn how to be more confident in yourself. You need to learn to trust someone who loves you and wants you as much as I do. If you don’t learn to trust then you can never be happy and you and I will never work out.” I slow down my strokes and then lean over to unhook her wrists. She’s breathing a bit too hard and I don’t want her to pass out. Her lungs are fighting to take in air properly in this position.

When her wrists are released, she sighs and lets her arms fall down onto the bed limply and her legs fall into the mattress so she’s flat on the bed. I smile at her and how compliant she is.

“This is your last chance, Camille. If you ever do what you did to me last night again, we’re done. Is that what you want? You want your insecurities to sabotage your life? Because that is what will happen. You’ll self-sabotage and find yourself miserable. If you don’t learn you’ll never be happy.”

I move Camille so she’s being gently rolled onto her back now. I know it’s going to sting a bit when her bottom hits the bed, but she’ll probably be thankful for the new position regardless.

When I’ve got her on her back, her legs are still spread thanks to the extender bar. She keeps her arms at her side and her eyes on me.

“You can respond. I want to hear what you have to say.” I stand from the bed and look down at her.

She takes in a deep breath and I lean down to move her hair off of her face and then she starts to reply with a soft and quiet voice, “I do understand. I’ve been very bad, and I’ve neglected you and myself. I want to be better, and I trust you and I’m going to learn to trust myself. I promise.”

It makes me sad to hear her admit it, but we both know it’s an issue she needs to work on. I smile and then move across the room again, my hand holding my shaft because I’m hard and my cock is heavy.

I get to the dresser and find what I’m looking for and bring it back to the bed. I slip the eye cover over her face so she can’t see and then dip down to kiss her lips quickly. I don’t want to give her too much, but she should know that I’m proud of her.

“That’s good, Camille. That’s what I want to hear. But you should know that what you put me through last night and this morning was hell. I’m thisclose to locking you up forever so you can never run away from me again. You hurt both of us by thinking the worst and not hearing me out. I should have just let you go.” I speak slowly as I walk around the bed and climb up to her. I take the bar and push it up so her legs are bent at the knee and I tuck myself in between her thighs again.

“But do you know why I didn’t just let you go? I want to hear your thoughts on why I ran after you and why I didn’t just let you leave.” Her lips are parted and her face is pink but I can’t see her eyes anymore now that the cover is over them.

Her voice comes out small and soft again, “Because… you…” she presses her mouth together and I see her lips quiver before she continues, “you love me?” It comes out in nearly a whisper.

I smile when she says it. I’m glad to hear her admit that I love her. I want her to know it and speak it and feel it.

“Yes. Exactly, Camille. You’re very smart, see? You know what this is. This is me loving you. I want you; I need you, and I love you. Which is why when you left me like that last night, it felt like you didn’t love me anymore. And that makes me feel insecure in our relationship. It’s hard for me to trust anyone and you nearly broke that, but I’m giving you another chance because of how deeply I feel for you.”

Camile sniffles and her lips turn downward and lets out a small gasp of a cry. She begins to cry, and I can’t see her tears because they’re probably getting soaked into the black, silk eye cover.

“I’m so sorry. I love you with all my heart. I just… I need to work on myself and I’m never going to do that again, Daddy. I swear!” She gasps some more and lets out bubbles of breaths as she works through trying to hold herself back from crying.

I love hearing her say that to me and I ignore the fact that she spoke without being told to, but I’ll let it go for the sake of the moment and because I’m weak for her.

“Good, baby. That’s what I want to hear. You will never do that to me again. Now, I’m going to fuck you like this and I’m gonna come inside of your little pussy but, remember, you are not allowed to come.

I slam into her without warning and her mouth drops open and she becomes silent as soon as she feels me entering her. Slicking myself in and out I angle her just right so the bar isn’t too cumbersome for either of us.

I watch as my dick penetrates and spreads her open. Normally I’d thumb over her clit but she’s not coming today. No orgasm for her. But I can tell she’s enjoying my cock even without the extra stimulation.

I keep at a good pace in and out of her and watch as she grasps onto the blankets for leverage as I knock into her body. Her tits are jolted with each smack of my hips to the back of her thighs and I just go in harder so I can come faster.

The loud thuds in the room from my balls, coated in her arousal is making quite the noise. I groan as I watch the lewd scene of my cock buried inside of and moving into her entrance. I hear Camille’s own small whimpers at the feeling and only speed up the pace so that I’m fucking her deeper and harder.

She grunts and then bites her lip, throwing her neck back and arching her back as little. I can feel her squeezing around me and it’s delicious.

“No coming, Camille. I’m not even touching your clit and you’re acting like you’re about to come. Does this feel good?”

Camille drops her mouth open wider and lets out a moan before responding, “It feel… oh god… it’s good daddy. I’m not gonna… come. I promise!”

I chuckle and then it turns into a moan when I look down and see how she’s creamed on my cock, white streaks over my shaft as I fuck into her.

“That’s right. You’re not gonna come, baby. Just my little come hole is all you are right now. Fuck… your pussy is squeezing me hard.”

I lean over her more; the bar is a little bit in the way but I’m so close I can’t be bothered by it. I fuck down into her slick hole and work my long cock in and out of her. It’s amazing how her pussy can take a big cock like mine. How it just disappears deep into her belly.

I can’t stop my panting and moaning when I feel my balls tighten up again when my orgasm starts to boil from my cock.

I burst into her and slap into her harshly, my hips hitting the back of her thighs as I rock into her.

Camille moans with me and she’s gasping and panting but I lose myself in my own orgasm, releasing myself into her cunt. I dip in deep and press into her and catch my breath.

I lean back and gently start to pull myself out and she’s dripping with my come. I watch as it oozes from her hole and then I finger some of the white, warm liquid back into her.

“Don’t want to waste any of Daddy’s come. Here, gonna just push it all right back in there. Just like that… Mmm… pussy was made to take my come.” I finger my come into her a bit and then bring the fingers I used to her mouth and push them past her lips.

“Suck.” And so she does. Her cheeks hollow and she moans.

When my heart rate has gone back to normal I remove my fingers from her mouth and unhook the spreader bar from her ankles but leave the eye cover. I leave the room again and go to my study to check my emails.

I’m mostly leaving her for a few minutes at a time as some kind of power play. I want her to miss me while I’m not punishing her.

I have an email from our HR rep and it’s mostly just saying what I expected about Cindy’s removal from the office. I sigh a breath of relief, knowing that’s done and over with now. I won’t have to worry about Cindy again. I shut off my computer and see the time is already nearly 5pm. I’ve been at this with Camille for a while. No wonder I’m tired. She’s probably tired too. It’s exhausting keeping up this kind of act with her and then I’m brought to the realization that this is the kind of thing she used to do with her clients. Except the actual sex part, with all but one of them.

Back in the bedroom Camille is laid flat on her back still. Her arms by her sides and the eye cover still in place.

I have more toys and punishment tools to use but I’m tired and I’m hungry and I want to make Camille eat because I have a feeling she hasn’t eaten today.

I remove her eye cover and kneel next to her, helping her sit up, “Are you okay?” I ask her.

She’s got tears in her eyes still but a soft smile on her face. She blinks a few times and nods, “Yes, Daddy.”

I scoop her into my arms and drag her in to my body and she immediately wraps her own arms around my middle and begins crying again. I let her cry. She might need it. Today was emotional and my punishment was emotional as well. For both of us.

“S’okay, honey. I think we’re done for the day. Let’s get cleaned up and I’ll make us some dinner.”

Camille makes no move to release me so I squeeze her tighter. I’m so relieved she’s here with me. I’m so happy I caught her before she could board and leave for New York.

“Come on, love. Let’s go to the bathroom.” I pat at her back lightly. She holds me tighter.

“Camille, I mean it.” I say with a sterner voice. She begins to loosen up and she looks at me and her lips are quivering. She looks like she wants to speak.

“You can speak to me, babe. We’re done now.” I bring my hands up to cup her face and wipe her tears.

“You… are you still made at me, Daddy?” Her voice is very shaky and very soft. It almost doesn’t sound like Camille.

“I’ve forgiven you, Camille. As long as you never do that again, I won’t be mad.” I speak clearly. Her face is scrunched and tears are still rolling down her cheeks.

“I promise… promise. I swear. Never. I don’t want to make you sad or angry.” She tries to move in to hug me again, but I hold her still. I’m concerned about how she sounds very little and very scared. I wonder if I’ve pushed her too far.

“Baby, are you okay? What are you feeling right now?” I speak gently and quietly to her.

“Just want to be yours and want you happy. I love you, Daddy.” She nods and her big eyes are still filled with tears. I smile down at her.

“Camille, can you do me a favor, honey? Will you call me Harry right now? We’re no longer playing and your punishment is over.”

She furrows her brow and nods, “Dad… Harry. Yes. Sorry. I’m feeling… really, floaty. I can’t really make sense in my head right now.”

I suddenly come to realize that perhaps she’s halfway in a sort of subspace.

“That’s okay, honey. Just take your time. But let’s go into the bathroom and get cleaned up and then I’m gonna feed you and I think you’ll feel better.”

Camille nods and we go into the bathroom where I help her stand into the tub. I take the shower head and bring it down and turn on the warm water where I help both of us rinse off. I rub over Camille with my hands and the water and then I dry her off once she’s no longer sticky. I rub lotion over her bottom and kiss her shoulders and then put her hair into a ponytail (which I’m terrible at doing by the way – it looks like a grade schooler attempted to do her hair). I put a fluffy robe on her and put my own robe on. Camille is hanging on to me and she keeps her eyes on me throughout the whole ordeal.

I lean down to kiss her lips and smile at her, “I love you, baby. All squeaky clean now. Are you hungry?”

Camille nods. I groan and tilt my head. I want her to answer me with words because I don’t want her falling further into subspace if I can help it. Speaking might help her snap out of it a bit.

“What would you like me to make you?” I grasp onto her small hands and pull her with me as we walk to the kitchen.

She hums and smacks her lips. She’s adorable when I look back at her and see her sweet face and round eyes. I pause to let her gather her thoughts. I don’t want to push her.

“Uhh… pasta. With cheese. And black pepper. You know that one kind you made me at my apartment? I can’t remember what you called it…” she looks down trying to remember the name. I know what she’s talking about.

“Cacio e pepe. It’s one of my favorites. That sounds really good Camille. Good choice.” I smile at her as she looks up to me and nods.

“Yeah, that one.” She smiles and I’m happy to see her smile a little wider.

We get to my kitchen and I have her sit at the island while I pull everything out.

“Keep talking to me, Camille. How do you feel, baby?” I pull out glasses and pour some water.

“I’m okay. Still feel fuzzy a little. Um… what do you want me to say?” She keeps her eyes on me.

“Whatever you want to say, Camille. How about, let’s talk about what we’ll do tomorrow. How does going to Covent Garden tomorrow morning sound?”

“Oh yes! I want to go there! We can bundle up in our coats and maybe get some hot tea to keep us warm. I love that idea!” Camille’s voice is becoming stronger and clearer now.

“Yes. Good idea. We’ll get something hot to drink while we walk around the garden. What else Camille?” I start to put the water to boil and crack some pepper into a bowl.

“Mmm… then maybe brunch at No. 11? I’ve been wanting to try it out.” She sips the water I gave her.

I sigh in relief when it seems she’s nearly back to normal. I nod, “Let’s do that. I’ll make a reservation right now…” I lift my phone up and message my assistant to get me a reservation. It’s not one of those spots one just gets into. I’m hoping she can make it happen for me so I can take Camille but right now, I’m mostly concerned about Camille and glad she’s feeling better.

I walk across the kitchen and sit next to Camille on the stool and put my hands over her thighs, “Better, honey? Are you okay?”

Camille smiles and nods, “I feel better. I’m just glad I’m here with you now, Harry.”

“I’m glad you’re here with me too, Camille. I love you, baby.”

“I love you, Harry.”

Part 21

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jadelynlace · 3 years ago

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More HC’s & Conversations⎮Ink Drinker Modern Vikings AU

I literally just can’t stop anymore, you’ve all been warned. A collection of funny conversations that my over tired brain likes to keep me awake with.

“Don’t eat that boxed mac and cheese, dear. We have pizza here if you want some! I made it myself,” Floki hums, pulling a slice for you.

“Boxed mac and cheese is her period food, Floki,” Ivar says back and you only nod. “Sometimes she eats the ones shaped like dinosaurs,”

“Like you don’t eat the chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, Ivar” You tease. “You got sad when I didn’t come home with them from the market.”

“Wait,” Hvitserk starts, plopping his slice on the plate. “What time period is boxed mac and cheese suppose to represent?” He asks.

“Why don’t you have what we’re having, Y/N?” Ubbe offers, opening his hands over the plate and you only shake your head.

“What I’m cooking is fine,” You start. “I don’t want to eat a 16 ounce steak like you three meat heads are, anyways,” You challenge back.

“She’ll get and 8 inch one later tonight,” Ivar says though a mouthful.

“Not if you’re sleeping on the couch Ivar,” You tease and his eyes flick to yours as he swallows slowly. “I will add another blanket in case you get cold,”

“It hurts my back,” He grumbles, stabbing his steak. “You’ll beg me to come back,” He then hums, leveling his gaze to yours with a smirk.

“I’m trying to eat here, guys,” Hvitserk says.

“You are at the top when it comes to being a jack ass,” You grumble, turning back to the stove.

“You do prefer me on top, baby,” Ivar hums.

“I have a steak knife in my grip and I can start stabbing!” Hvitserk sings.

“Babe, hey!” Ivar says, trying to reach for the bag in your lap but you twist. “Stop eating my candy!”

“No!” You whine. “Stop eating my...? There’s really nothing of mine that you eat,” You say before you and Ivar exchange glances. “Don’t stop eating that,”

“Guys, I’m right here,” Hvitserk groans.

“Hvitserk! You might want to get your stuff out of the fridge at station one,” You call.

“You’re not my mom!” Hvitserk calls back.

“No, thankfully, but Lewis just sent out an email about the stuff in the fridge, and anything without a name is getting tossed...”

“I have kimchi in there!” Hvitserk shrieks as he stands quickly, searching for his keys. “I’ve been trying to make it for months!”

“What’s in your pocket, Ivar?” Sigurd asks.

“My dick,” Ivar answers.

“In the back?”

“Yeah, it’s so big I have to tuck it in the back,” He replies.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? I can’t handle you sometimes,” Sigurd snaps.

“I’m sorry mama raised a bitch,” Ivar then smiles, spinning in his chair.

Ivar changes his name in your phone whenever he gets the chance.

A Few:

“My Husband” (even before he proposes) “Best Dick In Town” “Absolute Love Of My life Ivar Lothbrok” “Daddy”

You kept the “best dick in town” for a while and Hvitserk once went “Why is Best—oh, Ivar’s calling you,”

When you’re mad at him, you change it to “The Biggest Dick In Town”, and Ivar can't even be mad back.

A Lothbrok group chat conversation, regarding that shit ex-boyfriend of yours. And, mostly because I’m in love with the idea that these five meat heads work together to protect you, and each of their girlfriends/wives.

Sigurd: Bully him sounds like the right approach.

Ubbe: Beat him up in the parking lot!

Bjorn: Do we know where he works? Get him fired.

Hvitserk: I can hit him with an oxygen cylinder!

Ivar: I will simply kill him.

You: No, Ivar.

Sigurd: Who the fuck added you to the Lothbrok group chat?

You: Your father did.

I’m so sorry.

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computercreature · 2 years ago

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i think i have a prediction for chapter 3′s secret boss. i’ve been trying not to predict the next chapter’s dark world theme, since there are a few options and i think most of them are possible, but for now i’m going to assume it’s tv themed.

the two secret bosses so far have been things that were thrown away or forgotten, a joker card and a spam email. spamton is an interesting case because his boss fight is connected to an undertale character. swatch says that the neo body was designed by a lightner and represents their dreams (mettaton’s dream body). it’s difficult to draw any clear patterns with only two chapters but i highly doubt spamton will be the only character like this.

if chapter 3 is tv themed, and the secret boss is connected to an undertale character, then who? mettaton is the most tv related character, but i don’t see why deltarune would focus on him so much. other characters that come to mind are papyrus (fan of mettaton), undyne and alphys (watch anime together), and even mad mew mew. but i don’t think the connections are that strong. so i need to look in a different direction.

the neo body is only seen in no mercy or an incredibly violent neutral route. maybe another character has a second form similar to this?

[Image ID: Undyne the Undying from Undertale. end ID]

undyne in undertale is known to watch human documentaries anime. her second form definitely resembles an anime character. her main motive in undertale is to be a hero that saves monsterkind, something she can’t do in a quiet town with no crime. she probably watches anime when things get boring at work, representing her dream of being a hero.

my prediction is that the next secret boss will be the protagonist of an anime that no one watches anymore, except for one police officer. (and maybe a high school teacher?)

#undertale #deltarune #deltarune prediction #idk how to tag this sorry #if undyne does end up in the dark world that might cause confusion but who knows #still not convinced that chapter 3 is tv themed but i thought this was a neat idea

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vintage-squid · 4 years ago

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Threading Our Future

Summary: When up-and-coming designer Virgil Psykhe lands an interview with his favourite fashion label, he has no idea that the attention he's drawn to himself is being taken away from someone very important: the Lady of the Summer Court. Scorned and furious, she sends her son to kill the insolent human.

But when Janus lays eyes on Virgil for the first time, his breath is stolen by the fluttering of his heart and he knows he won't be able to follow through with his mother's orders.

A modern fae re-telling of the Eros and Psyche myth!

Pairing: Virgil/Janus (background Logan/Patton) Characters: Virgil, Janus, Roman, Remy, Patton, Logan, Remus Rating: T Warnings: mild violence and blood mention, nonsexual nudity, literal sleeping together Word count: 10 363

-----

Virgil Psykhe groaned as he stood from his chair, bracing both hands against the small of his back and pressing until he felt a satisfying series of pops from his hips and up his spine. He should know better by now than to spend hours on end hunched over his projects without taking proper breaks, but he honestly couldn’t help it. Once he got focused, his whole world narrowed to sketch, cut, sew, trim. It was like he was possessed by some crazy spirit who deemed his sarcastic, introverted ass worthy enough to use as a vessel for creation. At least, that’s how he described the near-frenzy he would fall into when his worried fathers questioned after his health.

Was he getting enough sleep? (No.) When was the last time he’d had something to eat? (Did the granola bar he had earlier count?) Would he be willing to drink more water if Papa cut up some citrus to add? (Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea...)

He knew their fretting came from a place of love. As the youngest of three, he was the baby of the family. Both of his older sisters had married a few years ago, now living with their husbands in a couple of larger, nearby cities. They had told their parents the distant moves were for their husband’s jobs, but Virgil knew better. His sisters had never seemed to fit with the unique … energy of their small hometown.

Virgil, however, had yet to even move out, let alone find anyone who would want to spend the rest of their life with him. Thankfully, while his dads did want him to eventually find love, they were mostly just happy to support his dreams of becoming a famous designer.

Rolling his eyes, Virgil glanced around his cluttered studio. Like he would ever actually be a big name in the fashion industry. Yeah, sure, he wanted more than anything to get his designs out there for models of all backgrounds and appearances to showcase the beauty that was in every body type, but he didn’t want his first name attached to that kind of attention. Nope. No thanks. He would much rather people enjoy his work for what it was, not just because it came from him.

Maybe a pseudonym would work? Eh, he still had time to think about it anyway. It wasn’t like he was going to be traveling far from his studio in his dads’ basement any time soon after all. Picking up his phone, Virgil glanced at the time and cursed under his breath. Shit, he was late to meet up with Remy, and he had forgotten to plug his charger in. He groaned as he shoved his phone in his pocket anyway and grabbed his wallet, headphones, and house key. That drama queen was probably going to bitch and moan about being made to wait until Virgil finally agreed to pay for his drink. Not that Virgil really minded, but he had appearances to keep up.

With one last glance around to make sure he had everything, he dashed up the stairs to head out.

-----

Jogging down the street, Virgil turned past the Spirits’ Temple, where the town’s inhabitants left offerings to the spirits of the forest on the first of every month. Tradition claimed that each month was to be dedicated to one of the twelve local spirits who held dominion over different areas of day-to-day life, and that by honouring them, the town would prosper. At the height of the monthly festivals, there would be candles lining the marble steps, fake vines and string lights wrapped around the temple’s stone columns, and a wide spread of wine and honey-sweetened foods to be served. Some of this would be up for grabs on the buffet table, but a selection was always saved to be placed in one of the twelve bronze braziers, which one depended on the month, lining the sides of the temple. Each brazier was set in front of a stone statue carved with a symbol that denoted which spirit it belonged to.

At some point during the evening, everyone in town would take a moment to approach the massive fireplace along the back wall of the temple and toss in a part of their meal with a quietly murmured prayer for luck in some strange-sounding language. To this day, Virgil wasn’t sure what exactly he was saying, but his dad had taught him the correct pronunciation, and he was too superstitious not to follow through. Besides, it wasn’t like he could look too ridiculous doing it when literally everyone else was doing the same thing.

Approaching one of the two coffee shops in town, and the only one he ever frequented, Virgil shook his head to rid himself of thoughts of weird small-town rituals. Inside, it was easy to spot Remy sitting at their usual table with his sunglasses tucked into the front of his shirt and a drink already in hand. As he slid into his side of the booth, Virgil was surprised to see his favourite order (hot chocolate with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles, and a slice of banana bread) already waiting for him.

“I was gonna apologize for being late, but clearly I don’t have to,” he said, glancing up and narrowing his eyes. “What did you do?”

Remy threw both hands up in a gesture of innocence. “Hey now, why did I have to do something wrong in order to surprise my best friend with his favourite goodies?”

Virgil snorted and crossed his arms, giving his friend a Look.

“Fine, fine!” Remy blew out a sigh and dropped his hands onto the table. “So, maybe I did do something, and maybe you’re gonna be a little mad at me for it, but I promise it’s okay! It’s gonna pay off and you’re totally going to thank me for this one day!”

Virgil dropped his face into his hands with a groan and dug the heels of his palms against his eyelids. “Just spit it out, Remy. What the fuck did you do?”

“Remember that photoshoot we did a couple weeks back with the latest ‘famous-one-day’ designs you sewed up?” Virgil could hear the familiar sounds of Remy typing on his phone. “Well babe, you’ve been making ‘one days’ for too long! So I decided to make ‘one day’ into ‘today’! Ta-dah!”

Bracing himself, Virgil peeked out from the dark safety of his hands, blinking a few times to clear his blurry vision and focus on the phone screen wavering in front of him. Right there, staring back at him from within Remy’s well-manicured clutch, was an email addressed to Penelope with attached photos from their shoot.

“Please, please tell me you didn’t sen-”

“I sent our pics to your favourite fashion label! The one and only Penelope! Known for their breathtaking lines like ‘Faith’ and ‘Fidelity’ that reimagined what it meant to be fashionable! And the best part!” Remy paused for dramatic effect, all but wiggling in his seat. “They emailed me back! They want to do an interview with you next month on the first!”

There was a loud thud as Virgil’s head met the table. If they hadn’t been sitting in public, he definitely would have started screaming too. Instead, all that came out was a muttered, “I fucking hate you. Why would you do this to me? You know I suck at talking to people; they’re gonna hate me and then tell all of the other companies to never work with me and then I’ll definitely never make it.”

A hand settled on top of his head and began to run through his hair, gently scratching at his scalp at the same time. “Don’t be so dramatic, Virge. This is gonna be great for you, I promise. When have I ever led you astray?”

Virgil glared at his friend and opened his mouth, but Remy cut him off.

“Ahp-ahp! Rhetorical question, babes. You're going to thank me for this, I promise.”

When Virgil remained silent, the hand that had been petting his hair slid down to cup his cheek and lift his chin up.

“Hey,” his best friend murmured softly. “If you really, really don’t want to do this, I can email them back and cancel, but I think you should go for it, Virge. This could be your big break!” Remy’s thumb had begun running a soothingly back and forth over his cheek. Virgil didn’t even try to hide the way he relaxed into the comforting gesture, leaning more weight into his friend’s palm. “I’ll even come with you to the interview, okay? I’ll be right there the entire time - gotta make sure they meet your number one model after all,” he added with a playful wink.

Damn Remy and his extroverted influence. Virgil sighed and sat up fully, reluctantly pulling away from the comforting hold and silently relieved when Remy’s hand dropped to link their fingers instead. “I guess as long as you’re there too, then I won’t be the only one making a fool of myself.”

“That’s the spirit!” Remy cheered, ignoring the looks some of the other patrons shot their way at the noise.

Keeping their hands interlocked, Virgil picked up his hot chocolate and took a sip of the sweet ambrosia as he listened to his best friend ramble about his plans for their future.

-----

Somehow, the word got out. Everyone and their cousin’s dog knew about Virgil’s interview and had seen some of the photos that had been leaked. All of them wanted to get a glimpse of not only the representatives of the big fashion label (who may as well have been celebrities to the small community), but also the unobtrusive young man who had brought the attention onto their town.

Virgil clung to Remy’s hand as they approached the café where the interview was going to be taking place. It wasn’t their usual haunt, something Virgil was grateful for; if things went south, he didn’t want that memory attached to one of his favourite places. People were already gathering outside, gossiping amongst themselves or attempting to peer through the front windows. He longed to pull his hood up and hide his face, but Papa had spent all morning helping him make sure his hair and make-up (and everything else) looked interview ready. Not to mention he wasn’t even wearing his favourite hoodie to tuck himself away into.

At Remy’s insistence, he had donned one of the outfits he made last year. The top was made of a flowy material, tighter at the wrists and loose in the arms, wrapping comfortably around his chest to tie in the front above his navel. It was sewn from a high-quality plum linen with a black lace webbing over top. For the bottom, Virgil had pieced together different shades of grey and black fabrics until he had a pair of loose patchwork pants that sat at the hips and left a strip of his stomach visible. He had completed the look with a fresh pair of high-tops that tied the look together despite the discordant styles. With one last look to his best friend for reassurance, Virgil nodded and they waded through the crowd together, on their way to their future.

-----

Singing to herself, Roman stepped through the woods with all the ethereal grace granted to her by her station. As she made her way to the quaint little human town, Roman was accompanied by a pair of mourning doves. While one had alighted on her shoulder, the other fluttered about, and both were cooing in harmony with her otherworldly song.

Her body was draped in a sheer chiffon number, as blood-red as the wine she drank from each year at the celebration of her power and beauty. It was naught much more than a thin layer of fabric over one shoulder and wrapped about her shapely waist, exposing one breast and leaving little work for the imagination on the rest of her body. The finest embroidery coloured the lower hem with twisting rose vines, as if they had sprung from the ground she walked on and reached up for her attention. Her hair was left to tumble free, as wild and untamed as the waves she had been born from so long ago. The Lady of the Summer Court had arrived.

In no time at all, the temple the humans of the village had built for her and her compatriots so long ago came into view. Roman hurried her steps, eager to feast on the delightful offerings she knew would be awaiting her. She hoped one of them left pomegranate; it was her favourite. The plump fruit so easy to tear open to reveal the juicy flesh inside - and the crunchy seeds! Oh!

Grinning, Roman moved around the side of the temple, stepping between the columns to slip inside and make her way towards her ceremonial statue along the right with the other ruling gentry of the Seelie Court. However, when she got close enough to see into the massive dish, indignation began to boil in her blood. Before her, in her brazier, lay half as many offerings as were given to her in the years passed. She looked around, hoping to find something else had been set aside or misplaced, but there was nothing. Seething, she spun on her heel and stalked towards the front of the temple in search of answers.

Outside, two attendants were working to douse the remaining candles to be collected on the morrow after Roman had departed. Well, they were certainly going to be in for a surprise when they returned to find their pitiful offerings still there in the morning. Even with the great distance between them, as a fae, Roman’s sharp ears did not struggle to overhear the conversation between the two humans.

“-believe something like this could happen in our little town,” the one on the right was saying. “Especially from that quiet kid! What’d you say his name was again?”

“He’s the Psykhe’s youngest boy, Virgil.

“No kidding! Sam was telling me the kid showed up for the interview wearing this wild statement piece, like a full fashion runway. I bet his dads sure are proud. I heard half the town was outside Burnsen’s hoping to get a front-row seat. They certainly weren’t here, that’s for sure.”

“Damn shame,” the second human agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a turn out this small for a Spirit’s Night. I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.”

The pair continued their gossip as they finished with the candles and moved onto tidying some of the other nonessential decorations. Roman wasn’t interested in listening any further; she had what she needed. Turning away from the pitiful little temple those putrid humans had so desecrated on her day of honour, the Lady of the Summer Court stormed back into the forest, seething vitriol.

“How dare these humans offer this worthless boy the worship and reverence meant for me! My status is all but set in the very stars and they do nothing more than drag it through the muddy earth!” She screeched, scaring away the doves who had been lingering nearby. “So much for me, the ancient mother of this forest who feeds and fosters the very nature of this place! If nothing lusts, then nothing reproduces! Did they ever consider that before they forced me to associate my status with a mere mortal child?”

As Roman cried out, the very trees parted for her, leaning their trunks away and raising their boughs out of the path of the furious fae. She paid them little heed as she marched down a trail long familiar. “Won’t this boy, whoever he is, be glad to know he has claimed the honours that are due to me by right? Not for much longer, this I swear by my very name! He will regret this beauty to which he has no claim!”

At the climax of her tirade, Roman stopped before the ivy-woven doors of her son’s lofty domain. She would teach this Virgil what happened when you scorned the fae.

-----

Across town, still wearing the outfit and makeup from earlier, though much disheveled, Virgil ran as if his life depended on it. At this point, though, his life may as well have been over, so what was the point in struggling on? Down the street and through the park, he sprinted until he could go no further and crumbled to the ground at the top of the large hill that overlooked the fish ponds. On his hands and knees, he clutched at the damp earth and panted heavily through his heaving sobs.

It was over. Penelope didn’t want to pick him up as a designer. Sure, they liked the selection that Remy had sent them, enough to come talk to him about it, but when the representatives had taken a look through the rest of his portfolio? They hadn’t said they hated it outright, but Virgil was certain his designs were too gothic, too dark, too risky for mainstream fashion. They were going to talk with some of the higher-ups back at the designer studio, but Virgil wasn’t going to be holding his breath. He’d seen their expressions clear as day while they flipped through his work.

Collapsing forward, Virgil buried his face into the crook of his elbow and curled his knees towards his chest, sobbing even harder. He had told Remy after the interview that he needed some space, but now that he was out here alone, he wanted nothing more than a hug from his best friend. Fuck, how was he going to tell his dads about this? It would break their heart!

Virgil shook his head free of the thought; he couldn’t handle any more right now. So he lay on the ground with his cheek pressed against the cool night grass, and cried until he passed out from exhaustion.

-----

In the twilight between wakefulness and sleep, Virgil stirred when he felt a pair of arms slide under his body and hoist him up into a strong hold. His head lolled to the side until his temple dropped against a firm body. Then, a kiss was pressed to his forehead, tickling his skin with...a mustache?

“Go back to sleep, little human,” a high, scratchy-sounding voice said. “Jay doesn’t want you to see anything just yet! We don’t want to ruin the surprise, eh?”

Virgil’s face scrunched in confusion, but before he could crack his eyes open to see who was carrying him, a warm breath blew across his face and carried him off to his dreams like a gentle breeze spiraling high into the air.

-----

When Virgil woke for the second time, it was with far more peace and tranquility than he usually felt when greeting the day. His bed was extra soft and luxurious beneath the swell of his hip and he was comfortably warm, though he couldn’t feel the usual weight of his blanket. Stretching his arms far above his head, Virgil suddenly snapped his eyes open when his fingertips were greeted not with the hard wall behind his headboard, but with a damp, spongy texture instead.

Scrambled to his feet, he looked around to discover he was at the edge of a clearing, carpeted with a thick moss that his feet sank slightly into and surrounded by trees who towered so far above him their canopies seemed lost secrets of the sky. To one side a stream babbled a song, its waters bright as day and clear as glass. Breathless, he turned a slow circle, feasting on the seemingly supernatural wonders with starving eyes. The sight that greeted Virgil as he turned full around, however, could have subsisted him for a lifetime.

At the very heart of the grove, sitting in its focal point, rose what he could only describe as a palace. The trees which made up its supporting columns were an ivory birch, though much wider than any Virgil had ever seen, with leaves seemingly grown from pure gold that glittered in the dappled sunlight they let through. Framed by these otherworldly goliaths, ivy vines had been woven together to form a grand door which opened of its own accord and bid Virgil to enter. Under a spell spun from his own awe and curiosity (and probably some of whatever magic this place had to be made of), Virgil strode forward.

Inside, the palace seemed to emulate its own light, reflecting off the vaulted ceiling and highlighting the polished stone walls decorated with endless silver reliefs of animals real and imagined. Virgil trailed his fingertips along the slithering spine of a snake as he passed, admiring the lifelike detail in each scale, but before he could venture much further, a voice spoke.

“Welcome.”

Virgil jumped, spinning around to search for the source of the voice, but no one was there. When they spoke again, it sounded like they were right over his shoulder.

“You have been invited into the home of the fae as a guest of honour, Virgil.” The man in question felt a strange twinge in his chest hearing his name from the voice. “If you follow the doors to your left, you will find a dining hall in which you may eat your fill; the foods are from your home world and you need not fear consuming them. To your right lay the bathing and bed chambers. Please, make yourself at home. You are safe here, my darling.”

“Who are you? How do you know my name?” Virgil called out into the empty room.

There was a small pause before the voice replied. “You may call me Janus for the time being. It matters not how I know your name, but you need not worry that I will give it to anyone else.”

“Not creepy at all,” Virgil murmured before raising his voice once more. “Where are you? Why can’t I see you?”

“Ahh, my darling, take care with your curiosity before it gets you into trouble. Fret not, I am here with you, though you cannot see me. I know it is hard, but you must trust in me, my love. I shall visit you this evening after the light of day has given way to the dark of night. So long as you promise not to look upon my face and let me remain shrouded in shadows, then I shall answer more of your questions then.”

“What? I’m supposed to trust you, but I’m not allowed to look at your face? What the fuck, dude?”

“I understand this may be a cause for alarm, but you must understand my perspective, dear one. If you were to gaze upon me uninhibited, I fear you would not fall in love with me in a manner which would be best for us both. Promise to me, Virgil.”

“Okay, okay, I promise. Why is this so important to you anyway?”

“Thank you. I wish to form a genuine bond with you, beloved, and I cannot do that if you are influenced by my appearance. That is not how I desire to court my future husband.”

“Husband? What do you mean future husband!?”

Virgil stood in place, waiting for any further response from the invisible person, but it seemed his host had vanished into the very air he spoke from. Blowing out a heavy sigh, Virgil looked from left to right and decided the faint grumbling in his abdomen was something he could ignore for the time being; he probably wouldn’t be able to stomach anything right now anyway. So, he made his way towards the baths, hoping a splash of cool water could wake him from this crazy dream.

Unfortunately, even after dunking his head under the cool water, Virgil was still stuck in the extravagant palace with an invisible host. He braced his hands on the sides of the stone bowl carved from the wall, staring blankly at the trickling waterfall that fed into the dish he had rinsed in. How the fuck did he get into this mess? The voice had mentioned something about this place belonging to the fae? What the fuck? There’s no way any of this could be real. Well, that Janus had said he would answer Virgil’s questions tonight, so there seemed little more he could do than wait.

The bedroom he had been given was grand, far larger than even his entire basement suite back home, and all of its drapings were more luxurious than Virgil had ever seen. He ran his fingers down the curtains that hung from the bedposts, marvelling at the quality and the depth of the colour. What he wouldn’t give to be able to create with fabrics of this pedigree. He fiddled with the tie of his shirt around his middle and settled onto one of the plush armchairs by the window. Now, to wait.

-----

Hours later, Virgil was startled awake from a light doze by the sound of footsteps approaching his door. He scrambled to his feet, keeping one hand braced on a bedpost to orient himself as he squinted through the darkness. It was so dark he couldn’t even make out the vague outlines of the furniture around the room.

The door opened.

Virgil tensed, gripping the bedpost tighter and raising his other arm in front of him defensively. From what he could see, backlit from the hall, the figure entering the room was about his height, maybe a little taller. It was difficult to make out in the dark, but the shadow he cast onto the floor seemed to be larger than his body mass would produce. The door closed, leaving the two of them alone in the dark.

“Janus?” Virgil asked nervously, hoping there wasn’t anyone else in the palace who would be coming into his room this late at night.

“Breathe, Virgil, it is only me.”

It was as if a spell of calm soothed over him, easing the tension from around his neck and within his chest. Virgil took a deep, relieving breath. Janus hadn’t come any further into the room, seemingly content to linger by the door.

“Um… hi?” Virgil winced at how awkward he sounded, but continued on regardless. “You said you would answer more of my questions, right?”

“That is correct, beloved. I will tell you as much as I am able to at this time.” There was the sound of shuffling in the dark. “May I join you on the bed? I think we will both be much more comfortable being seated for this conversation.”

Virgil bit his lip, looking between the bed and Janus despite not being able to see either. Eventually, he nodded, and then blushed when he realized what he’d done.

“Yeah… yeah, you can come sit over here, I guess.”

“Thank you, my darling.”

When the pair had gotten settled, Janus was seated at the foot of the bed, leaning up against the bedpost and seemingly unbothered by the strange situation. Virgil, on the other hand, had his back pressed against the headboard with his knees hugged to his chest. His feet were buried in the blankets and he was absently scrunching the soft material under his toes in a comforting, rhythmic motion. It was Janus who broke the silence first.

“What would you ask of me first, dearest?”

Virgil blew out a sigh. “Why did you bring me here? What are you going to do with me? Am I ever going to be allowed to go home? Will you-”

"Sh sh sh,” Janus crooned, “One at a time, beloved, all will be answered. In short, I do not know when you will be able to return to your home, or if you ever will, but it is for your own good!” Janus hurriedly added before Virgil could panic. “You see, there is someone very powerful who is very angry with you. Intentionally or not, you have caused her a great disrespect, and she will not rest until her dues have been met.”

“How do you know all of this?”

Janus sighed. “Because she is my mother, and she sent me to kill you.”

“What!?” Virgil screeched, throwing himself off the bed and slamming against the nearby wall. His nails scrabbled at the stone, desperate to clutch, claw, escape. No, no, no, he didn’t want to die! He snapped his head back and forth, searching for any sort of way out, but he was blinded by shadows and fear. A sharp cry escaped him when a hand suddenly wrapped around one of his own and he whimpered as it squeezed, expecting pain. Instead, a gentle crooning cut through the ringing in his ears.

“Breathe, Virgil, you are not in danger. You must calm down and listen.”

Janus’ voice was surprisingly tender for how powerfully it could be heard through Virgil’s panic. He was able to focus on it like a tether to pull himself into a more relaxed state of mind. At some point, he had begun to time his breathing with Janus’ as well, steady and even to a count known only to the fae holding him. When Virgil had relaxed enough to come back to himself, he tensed all over again, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“How can you say I’m safe, when you’re gonna kill me?”

“Because I have no intentions of killing you,” Janus replied, now cradling both of Virgil’s hands to his chest. Even this close, the darkness was so impenetrably thick that Virgil had no hope of glimpsing his face. He kept his eyes averted regardless. “I brought you here to remove you from my mother’s gaze and conceal you from her misplaced wrath.”

Virgil was silent, processing, as Janus gently tugged on his hands and guided him back onto the bed. There, the fae leaned against the headboard with his legs stretched out in front of him and carefully pulled Virgil to recline on his chest. Virgil resisted for only a moment before complying. Everything else about this was already way out of his depth to manage, he may as well allow himself to be comfortable wherever he could. Janus was either going to kill him or leave him alive, and there likely wasn’t anything Virgil could do to sway that decision at this point. So, Virgil settled himself against Janus’ chest with his body laying between Janus’ legs and stretching out until their legs tangled together. He was grateful now for the dark that hid a probably searing blush as his cheek pressed flush against the fae’s warm skin; Janus wasn’t wearing a shirt and his nude torso was warm to cuddle against.

“Now,” Janus murmured, shifting Virgil’s focus from his embarrassment to the situation at hand. His fingers ran over Virgil’s scalp and through his hair, carefully brushing out any tangles and soothing in the same motion. “If you will let me continue, I was going to say my mother had ordered for you to be killed, however, I do not agree with her decision. She is acting rashly over a slight you did not directly commit.”

“What did I even do to piss her off so bad?” Virgil murmured from where his face was tucked against Janus’ collar, resting more of his weight closer with each breath.

“I do not know the exact details, only that you were the cause for drawing her worshippers away from the temple on her day of adulation. The fae do not take kindly to being stolen from, especially not my mother.”

“The interview,” Virgil breathed in horror. Pushing himself upright, he clutched at Janus’ arm. “I swear, I didn’t mean for everyone to skip out on the Spirit’s Festival! If it had been up to me, none of them would have even been at the cafe! I didn’t want them there, you have to believe me!”

“Calm yourself, beloved. I believe that you did not intentionally act to anger her. However, you must understand that even a perceived slight is considered very real and serious to the fae. That is why you must remain here under my protection, until my mother’s ire cools or I can convince her to redirect her anger.”

As Janus fell silent, Virgil curled in again and pondered what he had been told, trying to remember anything he could about the fae. It wasn’t like there was one consistent guidebook he could follow, but some of the stories the older people used to tell his grade school classes at the library were starting to make a little more sense now. He had been told the forest couldn’t lie, so maybe that meant the fae were bound by the truth? A stretch, sure, but weren’t all myths rooted somehow in reality? They were also regularly told that the spirits of the forest loved beauty, especially in the form of attractive people, and could bestow gifts on those they enjoyed looking upon. Virgil had always felt so disheartened hearing that. He wasn’t anything special, just a plain-looking boy, so the forest would never favour him.

Why then had Janus?

“So,” Virgil broke into the quiet, “you supposedly brought me here to protect me from your mother, but that doesn’t explain why you called me your future husband earlier.”

Janus hummed. “When I set out to observe the human who had offended my mother, I was prepared to be faced with a disgusting example of your kind. What I found instead was the most beautiful face I had ever laid eyes on.” Virgil gasped when the hand that had been in his hair slipped down to cup his cheek and tilt his chin up. He felt a pair of lips brush so lightly against his forehead that he thought he imagined it. “You were sobbing so hard for a deeply rooted pain. I found myself desiring nothing more than to stop your tears and see how much your already breathtaking countenance would shine when lit by a smile.”

“I - you -”

Virgil was sure that he had been kissed before, because now he felt those lips curl into a smile.

“Is it so hard to believe you are so attractive?”

“Well, yeah,” Virgil huffed, his eyes closed as he leaned into Janus’ palm. “It’s not like I heard it all that often.”

“Mmm, I shall have to change that, then,” Janus whispered, resting his cheek on Virgil’s head, cradling him close once more. “Do you have any more questions, beloved? If not, it is time for you to rest, you’ve had a long day.”

The gentle petting and warm embrace were taking their toll on Virgil’s exhausted mind. He let himself rest heavily on Janus, nuzzling his face into the crook of his neck and wrapping an arm around the fae’s chest. “Jus’ one,” he murmured, voice already dipping into that sleepy slur. “Wanna make sure m’dads know ‘m safe…”

“I’ll see what I can do, my love. Rest now, Virgil.”

Like a spell had been cast over him, Virgil drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

-----

When Virgil had awoken, he was alone in the massive bed. He was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment in his chest, having hoped Janus would stay despite the fae not wanting to show his face. Sighing, he slid out of bed and got himself ready for the day, slipping into some comfortable clothes he found in a set of drawers. When he came down for breakfast, his host’s invisible voice greeted him and informed him that his dads had been told of the situation and were relieved Virgil was alive and relatively safe.

The next few days played out much the same. Virgil was left to his own devices during the day, waited on by some sort of invisible staff as he explored the palace. He never saw another soul, but whenever he needed something, he learned to simply call out for it and it would be delivered to him by magic.

Each night, Janus would arrive in his bedroom once the sun had disappeared. He never asked for more than Virgil was willing to give, but Virgil found himself cuddled close every night without fail. They would speak for hours - about Virgil’s dreams, his dads, and Remy - nothing was too simple for Janus to inquire about. The fae was fascinated by every aspect of human life, and Virgil enjoyed discovering a sense of romantic joy over the little things he had experienced. There was something about Janus that soothed away the ever-present worries that were always yelling inside Virgil’s head.

There was one worry that couldn’t be silenced, however. No matter how much Virgil was coming to trust his protector, he could not ignore the fact that he had no idea what Janus even looked like. It was eating away at him not to know, and the longer he sat alone, the Janus in his head looked more and more like a monster waiting to prey upon him. This couldn’t go on. He had to know.

-----

During the day before he was going to enact his plan, Virgil spent his time in the massive library he had discovered on the second day, scanning the shelves and making a show of selecting a couple books. He made himself comfortable in one of the oversized cushions piled near the floor-to-ceiling window and pretended to read. Between absently scanning the pages, Virgil looked up and glanced around the room, as if his mind were wandering with the tale he was apparently focused on. In reality, he was scouring the room for ideas.

Countless candles were lit around the library, their wax melting at different stages, some newly pooling while others formed thick layers around the base of the candelabras. They were lit now, but there was no way for him to have an already burning flame in the bedroom when Janus arrived for the night. He would have to find some way to light one on his own. Maybe he could just -

“Excuse me?” He called into the air. “Could I please have more candles, and some matches for them? I want to go read in my room, but, um, the smell is really nice in here.”

Like always, the items he requested popped into existence on a low table nearby: three candles and a pair of matches. Huh, he hadn’t actually thought that was going to work.

“Thank you!”

Hugging both books to his chest, Virgil collected his new tools and jogged up to his room. There, he placed the candles onto the small table between the armchairs and lit them with a match. The second match, he carefully tucked inside the front knot of his shirt, pressing against his breast. Now prepared, he settled in to actually focus on the novel he had picked up. There was nothing but time to kill.

-----

By the time Janus arrived, Virgil had already blown out the candles and crawled into bed. He cuddled in as soon as Janus had laid down, laying his head on the fae’s chest and trying to keep his breathing steady as they fell into their usually nighttime conversation. Janus’ claws delicately traced the bumps of his spine the entire time they spoke.

Once Virgil was sure Janus had fallen asleep, he began the slow process of extracting himself from the fae’s embrace. Janus really was a cuddler, and loved to hold Virgil close while they slept, but thankfully he was also quite a deep sleeper. Virgil was able to carefully pull himself away and tuck a pillow into Janus’ arms. The fae squished it to his chest and curled onto his side, none the wiser.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Virgil went to work. He grabbed one of the candles and fished the match out from under his shirt, striking it against the table to light it. One hand held onto the base of the candle, while the other carefully cupped around the flame, protecting it as Virgil walked around to the other side of the bed where Janus lay. With a deep breath to steady himself, he pulled his hand away and gasped at the sight in front of him.

Janus never wore a shirt, which meant Virgil’s hands had felt the broad expanse of his naked back every night they had slept together. That didn’t explain why there were now a pair of gorgeous, tawny wings sprouting from between Janus’ shoulder blades. The feathers looked softer than anything Virgil could imagine and shined like spun gold in the candlelight. Virgil ached to caress the speckled feathers, to scrunch his fingers in the fluffy down near the wings’ base, but as he reached out, Janus rolled over and Virgil’s breath was punched from his lungs. The face of his protector was carved by the gods. Janus’ skin was a rich, dark brown, reflecting the candle light to accent his strong jaw and sharp cheekbones. Virgil could only imagine what colour his eyes could be behind his lids, framed by perfectly shaped brows and a shapely nose. Oh! Those lips! So plump and full! What would they feel like pressed against his own?

Enraptured, Virgil tried to get a better look, but as he leaned forward, some of the melted wax from the candle spilled over and landed on Janus’ cheek. The fae yelped, startling awake and clutching at his face as he threw himself upright. Virgil jumped back in shock, falling on his ass while somehow keeping the candle lit. The clatter drew Janus’ attention and his head snapped to the side to look at Virgil, who saw the moment Janus’ eyes widened with understanding and heartbreaking betrayal.

“You promised!” Janus hissed. “You promised me you wouldn’t look! Does your word mean so little to you!?”

“N-No - I, I just, I wanted-”

“What!? What was so important that you had to break your promise?”

“I wanted to, to make sure you weren’t some sort of … monster … who had kidnapped me to… to eat me,” Virgil muttered, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish. Why did he have to give in to his anxieties so easily? The next moment, his heart crumpled with Janus’ expression.

“Get out.”

“Wait, what?”

“I said. Get. Out.” Janus growled, spreading his wings high above his head as he leaned over the edge of the bed. “Get out of my sight, and out of my home! If you cannot hold to one simple promise, then I will not protect you! You can deal with my mother’s wrath on your own!”

About to protest, Virgil cried out in fear as Janus slashed out him, narrowly missing his face with those lethal claws. He didn’t waste any more time, dropping the candle and scrambling to his feet to run out of the bedroom. The empty halls echoed with his laboured breathing and the slap of his bare feet against the tiled floor as he sprinted through the palace and out the ivy-woven doors. The moment he was out, the doors slammed shut behind him.

Panting heavily, Virgil bent over with his hands on his knees, his entire body trembling from fear and exertion. He dropped to the ground and clutched his head in both hands, curling smaller and crying as silently as he could muster. It was a long time before his breathing evened out and he was able to drag himself back to his feet.

A glance around the clearing revealed what he had known upon his first arrival: he had no idea where in the forest he was, or which way led back home. So, he did the only thing he could and picked a direction to start walking. Through the night he stumbled over roots and around tangled shrubs, not stopping until he finally tripped over his own exhausted feet and fell into the shockingly cold waters of a stream. He spluttered and gasped, miserably dragging himself back up the bank. The sun was rising overhead, the forest waking up around him; he didn’t have the time to huddle here in a ball feeling sorry for himself.

-----

As the day progressed, Virgil noticed the trees beginning to thin and the gaps between the trunks growing wider. Suddenly, the canopy overhead parted to reveal a mountain, vast and tall, that should have been visible long before this moment. Placed at irregular intervals up the cliffside were six palaces woven of different plants woven together with even more grandeur than Janus’ home. Over the edge of the mountain, the tips and edges of presumably more palaces - these ones sculpted and shaped from various stones - were visible against the pale sky.

Virgil squinted, trying to get a better look at the strangely familiar shapes carved into the rock face near each palace. He gasped. The symbols matched those carved into the statues above the bronze dishes in the Spirit’s Temple, more specifically, the dishes meant for the spirits honoured in the spring and summer. That would mean - there! On the left! Beneath a palace of myrtle trees and rose vines, was the symbol belonging to the seventh spirit. That had to be the home of Janus’ mother, the spirit - or fae, rather - who was supposed to have been honoured at the start of this month.

Biting his lip, Virgil looked back the way he came then up at the palace once more. If what Janus said was true, and he wasn’t going to be offering protection anymore, then Virgil would have to face her on his own. It was either that, or cowering away until she tracked him down and killed him. Also not a desirable option, but Virgil would rather have some form of control over the end of his life. Beginning to climb, he just wished he would have been able to say goodbye to his dads first.

While there were worn deer trails to follow, the journey was not an easy one. Virgil had to cling to the rocks, heaving himself ever upwards, trying not to slice his bare feet or palms on the uneven shale. The summer sun climbed alongside him, growing hotter and hotter, sapping his energy and strength. Still, he pushed on until he stood before the lush gates shaking with exhaustion and dizzy from the heat.

Before he could gather his wits, the thorny vines that sealed the palace from the outside world began to withdraw. Where they parted, massive sanguine roses bloomed, as if to cushion a passerby from the sharp thorns. From within the depths of the palace strode out a figure so radiant and commanding, Virgil immediately felt subservient to her will. He quickly looked away, cheeks hot, as both of her breasts were exposed and only a lightweight wrap covered her lower body. His body recoiled when her piercing laugh broke the silence.

“Finally! The wretched beast comes crawling to its master, the Lady of the Summer Court. Had enough of playing at royalty, have you? Look at me when I’m talking to you, Virgil!”

Virgil immediately snapped his head back towards her, paling when his eyes met with her seething ire, but unable to drop his gaze any lower. He gripped the sides of his pants with white knuckles. “I - I’m so, so sorry! I n-never meant-”

“Look at this!” The fae cut in, causing Virgil to flinch again. “The pathetic mortal trying to inspire pity from me with your anxiety and melancholy! I will not be made a fool and relegated to some cheap handmaiden!”

With a shriek of rage, the Lady of Summer darted forward faster than Virgil’s eyes could track. The next moment, he was sprawled on the ground, ears ringing. He brought a shaky hand up to his stinging cheek and felt his stomach drop when his fingertips came away bloody. Rolling onto his back, he choked. The Lady was looming over him, one of her hands dripping with his blood as she pinned him down with a foot on his chest.

“It seems only fair to me, mortal, that I give you some chance to win back my good graces. Therefore, you shall complete a task for me, or else I will take your life as compensation for your disrespect.” The Lady of Summer announced with a wave of her hand. Virgil looked to the side, wincing as the cuts in his cheek dug into the gravel, and watched in surprise as a pile of mixed grains appeared nearby.

“You will sort this mass and disarray of seeds - wheat, barley, millet, poppy, chickpea, and lentil - into individual piles. I will know if a single grain lays with the wrong group. You have until this evening.” With that, the Lady of Summer kicked off his ribs and spun her skirts, vanishing into thin air with a flourish and leaving only the heady scent of roses as a sign of her presence.

Virgil lay on the ground in silence for a long time after she disappeared, barely daring to breathe. When he was finally able to bring himself to move, he slowly rolled onto his hands and knees, hissing at the pain in his ribs - definitely bruised. Crawling over to the pile of seeds, he reached a hand out but hesitated before he could touch the tiny grains. How the fuck was he supposed to sort these? He could hardly begin to tell them apart! Sitting back on his ass, Virgil dropped his face into his hands and burst into tears.

Then, he heard a high-pitched giggle.

Flitting to-and-fro above him were four - five - eight, no - seven? Seven little pixies were spinning, twirling, dancing through the air above him. Their bright, insect-like wings caught the sunlight and sent out flashes of colour like a rainbow in motion. One-by-one they drifted to the ground, settling in a half circle in front of Virgil and his miserable collection of seeds. They stood only several inches tall and were dressed in leaves and petals. A pair stepped forward in front of the rest; they were holding hands.

“Hello, hello!” The one on the right chirped, waving up with his free hand. He had gorgeous light blue butterfly wings that fluttered when he spoke. “We heard you crying and came to see, to see! What happened here, here?”

Virgil sniffled, wiping away his tears and snot on his sleeve. “Well, um,” he hiccupped and took a deep breath. “It’s the Lady of the Summer Court. She wants me to sort all of these seeds by type before tonight, but I have no idea how I’m going to do that so she’s definitely going to kill me!” He slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle a sob, tears running down his face.

“Easy now,” a new voice murmured as two little hands pressed against his knee. Virgil blinked his eyes open to see the second pixie - this one with veiny wings like a beetle’s - rubbing his leg soothingly. “You need to take slow, deep breaths to calm yourself.”

Virgil nodded and attempted to follow suit, counting to four on each inhale and exhale until the tears had slowed and he was able to relax somewhat to continue the conversation. “Th-thank you, um, what are your names?”

“You can call me Pat, Pat!” The first pixie announced twirling himself up into the air and drifting back down again.

“Ah, so you are quite new around here,” the second pixie mused, keeping his hands on Virgil’s leg. “You may call me Lo. Names have great power to the fae and it is imperative that you do not give yours away lightly, else someone may have complete control over your will.”

“But the Lady of the Summer Court already knows my name, and so did Jan- her son.”

“At any point did you give it to them, though?”

Virgil thought back over the last few weeks. “No… no, they both just, sorta, knew it somehow. Oh, uh, I guess you can call me Vee, then?”

Lo nodded. “Then it is likely they only heard your name somewhere, but they do not own it. Do you understand? They can exert some measure of power over you, but they cannot remove your free will entirely. Now then. Why is it the Lady wants you dead?” The pixie offered a small smile, nodding his head as Virgil explained how he got into this situation, that he knew Janus (though he referred to him as Jay), and why he wasn’t with the other fae anymore. When he finished, it was Pat who puffed up angrily.

“The Lady has gone too far, too far! You didn’t mean to make those people leave, leave! And it sounds like you didn’t actually make a binding promise, so Jay is acting a bit silly, bit silly. So, we’re gonna help you sort these seeds, and get everything cleared up, up!”

Logan nodded in agreement. “Indeed. Pat, you stay here with the others to aid Vee. I am going to go have a word with our feathered friend.” With that, Lo leaned in, kissed Pat’s cheek, and flew off down the mountainside.

Virgil watched the glint of Lo’s wings until he was out of sight, then turned back to the remaining pixies to watch as their quick, tiny hands got to work on the grains. “So… how do you know Jay?

Pat grinned widely up at him. “Jay is one of the Princes of Spring, Spring!” He works with love magic, and helped Lo and I get together decades ago in exchange for our help weaving that pretty gate in front of his palace, his palace!”

While they continued to converse, the pixies worked away at the seeds to form six unique piles, sorted from darkest to lightest. Before long, the entire jumbled mass had been reorganized without a single seed out of place. Once their job was complete, the five other pixies twittered their goodbyes and flew off up the mountain. Only Pat remained, sitting on his knee and chattering away as the sun set. Virgil shivered as a chill breeze licked at his exposed skin.

A sudden snap rent the night air, spooking Virgil, who lurched forward to cradle Pat in his hands protectively. Looking over his shoulder, he felt like vomiting when he saw the Lady of Summer standing over the grain piles with her arms crossed. He internally thanked any of the spirits who may be on his side that her chest was covered this time.

“This is not your work,” she hissed. “These were not organized by your hand, but by his!” She pointed an accusing finger at Pat, who had been peeking around Virgil’s arm but quickly hid back against his chest at the attention. “How dare you attempt to deceive me, you cretin!”

With a wordless shriek, the Lady lashed out with her vicious claws, aiming for the unmarked side of Virgil’s face. He scrambled back on his hands and heels, his ass dragging on the ground while Pat clung to the front of his shirt. Before she could take a second swipe, however, the dust and grit kicked up around them, obscuring their vision.

With his eyes covered, Virgil could only hear the flapping of large wings that cut off before there was the thud of a body dropping in front of him. Opening his eyes, he gasped. There, with his back to Virgil, stood Janus, with his great wings spread wide and his claws flexed at his sides. Lo, who had been holding onto the fae’s shoulder, now zipped down to the pair on the ground, holding Pat close and ensuring he was unharmed while the pixies huddled together on Virgil’s lap.

“You will not lay another hand on him,” Janus hissed, standing over Virgil protectively. Virgil felt Pat grip his thumb, but he couldn’t look away from the pair above them.

“What are you doing? Get out of the way, my son.”

“No. You wanted your revenge on him, and you got it. Look at him; he’s terrified, injured, and exhausted. The original disrespect against you was not even intentionally caused by him; it was the doing of numerous others. I do not fault you for your affront, but you are carrying on like a tantruming toddler!”

The Lady of Summer took a step back and clutched at her bosom. “You dare to speak to me like that?”

“I do, and so does the rest of the Seelie Court.” Virgil watched as Janus rolled his shoulders back and stood straighter. The Prince of Spring then reached into a bag tied at his hip and pulled out some sort of wooden charm dangling from a hemp rope. At the sight of it the Lady of Summer gasped and covered her mouth. “I have spoken before the Queen and her retinue, and she has decreed you will leave this mortal alone. In exchange, he will return to his town and gather a proper celebration for you by the end of this month.”

Virgil held his breath, not daring to twitch a muscle as he awaited his fate. The Lady of Summer let nothing show in her expression, but the hard lines of her face had softened attractively as Janus spoke. She shifted, looking over Janus shoulder and directly at Virgil. “You. You will do as this deal demands?”

Nodding rapidly, Virgil held up his hand in oath. “I will, I promise. I’ll go back home and speak with the curator of the Spirit’s Temple. We’ll host another festival and you’ll get the offerings you were supposed to be given at the start of the month.”

As if a switch had been flipped, the Lady of the Summer Court beamed a smile and grasped her hands over her heart. “Well then! That wasn’t so hard, was it! My dear, smart son, finding a way to set things right. I’m so proud of you, my little songbird.” Looking at her son, she cooed and cupped Janus’ cheek to tilt him up to kiss his forehead, smiling at his grumbling. “I won’t linger much longer, don’t you worry. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you in front of my future son-in-law after all! I’ll see you soon, Virgil, dear,” she called, a cool edge to her voice for a moment before she smiled brightly once more and waggled her fingers. With a dramatic wave of her hands, the Lady of Summer vanished once more.

A quiet settled over the remaining quartet, broken by a tinny clearing of a throat. Lo stood in Virgil’s lap, tugging Pat up next to him. “I believe it is time for us to depart as well. I am relieved we were able to arrive in time to prevent any harm coming to you, Vee.” The pixie looked from Janus to Virgil and smiled. “Let us know when you are in the woods, we would enjoy visiting under more ideal circumstances. Farewell, for now.”

“Goodbye, Vee, Vee!”

In a flash, the pair of pixies flew off into the night, their hands held tight together. They flew loops and circles over the others before darting off in the direction the other pixies had traveled hours ago.

On the ground, Janus helped Virgil to his feet. He cooed in sympathy, tenderly touching the tips of his fingers beneath the angry red cuts on Virgil’s cheek. “I am so sorry for what she has done to you, darling. And I am even more sorry that my own actions drove you from the safety of my side. I was meant to protect you from unearned rage, but instead I subjected you to further punishment and drove you towards your would-be killer. If I hadn’t gotten here in time-” Janus exhaled heavily, his wings sagging behind him. “I am so sorry, Virgil.”

“I mean, I’m not gonna say it’s okay, because none of this has been okay, but, I guess I can understand where you were coming from. If I were as attractive as you, I’d also be worried about people taking advantage of me.” Virgil blushed and dragged his big toe through the dirt. “So, yeah, I forgive you, or whatever.” He looked up with a fire in his eyes and jabbed his finger into the center of Janus’ chest. “But don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?”

Janus hands cupped around his own, cradling it close. “I swear, to the end of my days, I will treat you with the dignity and respect you deserve, my dearest.”

Despite the tenderness of the gesture, Virgil was unmoved. “I mean it, Janus. If you want us to work out, then I can’t be afraid that you’re going to banish me from your home every time you get upset. It’s not a relationship if you’re going to treat me like I’m disposable. I’m worth more than that. If you want more reassurance, or something, on my promises, then we can work something out, but what you put me through was terrifying, and I can’t go through it again. I won’t.”

Janus sighed, holding Virgil’s hands up to his lips and resting there a moment before slowly gathering Virgil into his arms. His embrace was loose enough to break, if Virgil wanted. “I understand, darling, and I will never be able to apologize enough for what I have done. However, it is not my words you want, but my actions, and I will do whatever you desire of me in order to make it up to you.” He cupped Virgil’s uninjured cheek. “I want us to work, too.”

There was a long pause as Virgil searched Janus’ golden eyes for any signs of deception. When he found only an earnest honesty, Virgil allowed himself to be held closer. He wasn’t sure which of them moved next, but they came together as one, lips pressing softly at first before quickly gaining heat. Then he was spun and dipped down, laughing hard as he clung to Janus’ shoulders, the fae’s wings held aloft to keep them balanced.

Maybe ‘future husband’ didn’t sound so bad after all.

#anxceit #healthy anxciet #virgil sanders #janus sanders #sanders sides #fae au #eros and psyche #squid scribbles

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