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Bigotry has Many Forms; Billy runs into Sam, literally
Topic Started: August 6, 2015, 2:03 am (167 Views)
Steve
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Character: Wiccan
Date: March 13
Time: Morning
Place: Utopia



Billy and Teddy had a quiet morning full of standard obnoxiously cute and romantic things. Of course all of that had to change once Teddy had to bring up Sam and Josh Guthrie. Seriously! Was it at all possible for Billy to escape the Guthries even for a moment on this island? Teddy had obviously seen the side eye that Billy was serving.

"Billy, what is your problem with the Guthries? Why do they bother you so much?"

"You saw them in the prison. They wanted nothing to do with us when they saw us together. Teddy, it's because we are gay are they don't like us. Just like all of those idiots in high school who used to beat me up, who used to threaten us."

"If you hadn't noticed, Billy, we are on the secondest queerest island ever. Only Lesbos beats us out. If they had a problem, they probably wouldn't be here. And who knows, maybe one of them is queer too. Go and talk to Sam today. Actually get to know them. It would be good for you."

"Oh alright, fine. But finish your eggs. I spent good time making those."



Billy awkwardly walked around the main island looking for Sam. He wasn't really even sure of what he was going to say. Hi, I'm Billy. I think you and your family hate me because I prefer the company of men instead of women. How about we talk about it, hug, and then watch a really, bad cheesy rom com together? Yeah that certainly was a winner. How would he get a rom com anyway?

Billy was still absent mindedly walking when he finally ran into Sam. Quite literally into him. Billy being the clutz that he is fell right on his ass. The fall jolted him back to the real world. It took him a sec to notice that Sam was right there. He was afraid that the whole rom com thing was going to come out of his mouth at any second.

"Oh ummm Sam... Hi... I was uhhhh looking for you... I guess I found you... Oh gosh this is awkward..."

Billy looked up at Sam's face to see what the other man's reaction was to Billy running into him. Well right before the whole getting ready to get picked up and punched in the face. Billy was used to that. Avert your eyes. Keep your head down and relaxed. Don't tense up. Don't resist. Don't fight back. Think of Teddy. Always think of Teddy.

Billy could feel the electricity dancing just below his skin. He knew that his powers could over load from fear, but that was more than he was bargaining for this morning. I don't want to kill somebody today. I don't want to kill somebody today. I don't want to kill somebody today. I don't want to kill somebody today.



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Matthew
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Character: Cannonball
Date: March 13
Time: Morning
Place: Utopia



Every day living on Utopia was bound to be a new experience. Sam had already had so many different kinds of days in his short stay there that he couldn't doubt just how true that was. One day might be a party. The next might be a meeting. Then t hey would vote on who was some sort of ruling council. And then another party, or someone shouting about evil telepaths, or genitals.

Maybe they needed to decide on what was appropriate to say and not say? Sam had hick sensibilities. He could talk about some damn dirty things within the right crowd. That crowd included coworkers back from the mines, from the rodeo, from his time as a sheriff. None of those crowds involved his kid brothers and sisters. Titties and draining the lizard were all fine and good, but they had a time and a place. Around his kin, he had to be the man they looked up to and saw how best to act. He had promised that much when they lost their pa. So rules about how to act?

Sam shook his head at the thought as he strolled across the tall grasses that sprung up all across the wide expanses of Utopia. Would he want to live in a world where he was told what he could say? Of course not. Would he want to force that kind of world on anyone else? No, he rightly wouldn't.

There was protecting people and then there was controlling people. More and more their government seemed to think control meant protect. Lock up mutants, protect the world. Lock away rights, protect the country. Utopia wouldn't become a place like that. Sam promised himself just that as he plucked a long blade of blue grass from the ground and stuck an end into his mouth.

Hat tilted at the perfect angle to show off that cowboy sensibility and grass sticking out of his mouth. That was the image Sam Guthrie struck as he was all but bowled down by someone else who didn't realize that in the wide open you could actually dodge people you walked near.

"Lookin' fer me?" Sam responded immediately to the younger man, one of the two in the prison couple. He shook away that thought. They had to all stop thinking of each other as prisoners. They also had to all stop not talking to one another. That had seemed to be quite the theme since becoming free from that hell on earth. Even before so, some of them hadn't been all that talkative with everyone. Not that it could be blamed. They had been locked up and mistreated. That wasn't a breeding grounds for comraderie.

"What did y'all want with me? Official council business? Cuz I am jus' one cog in this new government machine..." Sam already knew the distrust the two boys had of government systems, they had been quite vocal about such things. Is that why he was looking for him? Why did most people look for him? Because they needed a sheriff in the past. On Utopia? He wasn't rightly sure.



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Steve
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Character: Wiccan
Date: March 13
Time: Morning
Place: Utopia



Billy was still bracing himself for the inevitable punch that was destined for his face when Sam gently asked Billy about what he was after. That quite honestly shook Billy more than any fist could. Physical violence was normal. Physical violence was how people handled things. Physical violence was not happening to him right now. Billy titled his head up slowly and cautiously to look Sam in the face.

Sam
 
What did y'all want with me? Official council business? Cuz I am jus' one cog in this new government machine...

If Sam was paying much attention to Billy's face at the time, he would have seen the cogs whizzing around in Billy's head as he tried to piece together what was going on and why he wasn't being punched or kicked or pummeled in any innumerable other ways that mutants could do that. But that certainly didn't assuage Billy's fears about this conversation. He had been rather vocal about how he wasn't particularly fond of statist systems of governance. Ooooooh! He thinks I'm here since he's on the council. No no no no no. It's cause the gay. How do I even begin to say that?

"Uhhhh actually... no. I wasn't hoping to talk to you about that, Sam. I uhh just wanted to talk?" He didn't mean for that to have the questioning inflection that his statement did, but Billy was having a hard enough time convincing himself that was what he wanted to be doing at this moment.

Billy gather his wits about him enough to realize that he was still sitting on the grass where he had fallen. That was not exactly the best position to be in to be having these negotiations conversations begging thing whatever the hell this was going to turn out to be. He deliberately reached out his hand to as a gesture to ask Sam to help him up.

"You see, the thing is, I was eating breakfast with uh Teddy, this was all Teddy's, I mean I also agreed with it. I'm getting ahead of myself. Teddy and I uh, well more specifically me, have not really spent any time uh around? people since we have gotten here. So Teddy, uh, suggested that I come talk to you... Just to, you know, get to know each other. Oh gosh I'm so sorry. This is stupid. I'm stupid. I'll just be going now."



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Matthew
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Character: Cannonball
Date: March 13
Time: Morning
Place: Utopia



Sam Guthrie was a patient man. He was an understanding man. He liked to think he wasn't an easily confused man either. Sure he came from simple beginnings and his education was limited. But he had lived a hard life, helped raise more than his fair share of youngins and come out of it as unscathed, both physically and mentally, as was to be expected when you tossed in the fact he and half the Guthrie brood were mutants with varying degrees of fledgling power.

None of that made him a man who could guess at what another person wanted simply by looking at them. Sure he knew certain looks from certain people. He knew the look Jeb had on his face when he had done something foolish and was afraid he would get caught. He knew the look Josh got after performing and feeling the best about himself. He knew the look Paige got when she dreamt of the future, though he had a feeling the new haunted look of seeing too much in the past had replaced that one. He knew the look Liz got when she wanted some new dress they just couldn't afford, so they scraped together and helped her get it anyway.

They were all kin though. Sam had known them for as long as they had lived. With other people it wasn't so easy to read signals. He sometimes could tell if a person was guilty or not by how they acted when he dealt with them as sheriff. That was more to do with how some guilty people would act and less to do with any innate skill at sorting out what others could be about though.

So when it came to Billy, Sam had NO clue just what the boy wanted. In fact Sam wasn't sure that Billy knew for sure either. Apparently it wasn't about the new government they were forming. That in itself was a relief as Sam did not want to hash out the particulars of a government body he had barely become a member of with one of the people who was most outspoken against it.

So what did he want? Apparently to stumble over his words. He wanted to talk. Because he talked to Teddy. Teddy said to talk to people. About stuff. This all continued on as Billy kept talking, but saying a lot of nothing. And then suggest they not talk at all?

Sam wasn't going to let that fly. Clearly the kid wanted something, and Sam wasn't going to let him just walk away. Not that he would stop him either. This was a conversation, not a death march after all.

"Y'all are gettin' settled in fine I reckon? How ya liking yer rooms? Better'n where we were afore all this, but that dun say much at all as it wasn't exactly friendly," Sam, the guy who wasn't the most talkative nor smooth in the world, apparently had to carry the weight of the conversation. Woe be it for the two of them.



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Steve
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Character: Wiccan
Date: March 13
Time: Morning
Place: Utopia



Sam was a lot less awkward than Billy was being. Actually the initiative that he was taking to help the conversation along was extraordinarily helpful. Billy knew he wasn't going to be able to be very articulate if he actually had to try to begin the conversation. Hell he had already made a fool of himself trying to not get punched.

But Sam actually seemed like he wanted to talk to Billy. Maybe Billy really could reconcile things with him and who knows? make friends on Utopia? Sam seemed genuinely interested in what Billy was thinking.

Billy scrambled to his feet and and answered Sam's questions quickly and sincerely.

Sam
 
Y'all are gettin' settled in fine I reckon? How ya liking yer rooms? Better'n where we were afore all this, but that dun say much at all as it wasn't exactly friendly.


"Yeah we are settling in fairly well. All of our things are back in our apartment in Brooklyn, though. We are trying to figure out to get all of it out here. Teddy's mom might come deliver it to us here. The rooms are nothing to scoff at. I would like to decorate our's at some point though. It's looking a little bare, but nothing compared to those cells. You're right. I umm, I guess I should apologize for how I reacted to you and your siblings in those cells. At the time, I thought you all were avoiding Teddy and I because of the whole queer thing. I'm just used to people from the south expressing their homophobia particularly. I just try to defend myself is all. Things haven't exactly been easy for me. And being locked really didn't help that either. I'm umm sorry."

Billy was extraordinarily self-conscious having just confessed that to a man that he barely knew after spending the last few minutes afraid Sam was going to pound his face in his skull. He slowly rubbed the back of his head to have something to do with his hands other than gawk and swing them now that he was done talking. Billy found one last shred of courage in himself, though, and thrust out his hand as a peace offering. "I hope you forgive me and we can move on from this?"

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Matthew
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Character: Cannonball
Date: March 13
Time: Morning
Place: Utopia



Sam had dealt with many a thing in his not so long life. Yes he was pushing towards thirty, but that hardly made his life long, hardly made him old, regardless of the jests and jabs tossed at him by his younger kin.... which included ALL his kin. It was just sibling funning, just as he treated each younger one like a child, regardless of how grown up Josh or Paige was.

It did not change the fact that in his life he had seen and experienced a lot. Start out with seeing his father wither away and die. Follow that immediately with seeing his mother cry for the first time ever, letting her cry on his shoulder as the realization that the man who had cared for them all and protected them all was now gone. Follow that up with getting trapped in a mine, seeing his life flash before his eyes only to find out he was a mutant and that alone would save his life, yet change it forever at the same time. Fast forward even further to his years working for measly pay just to send it all home and live in a one room box on the outskirts of a rodeo town. End it with a dose of playing law enforcement officer to the most impovershed section of Kentucky back lands, spending days going to domestic disputes and bar fights of people you know because they have no work and no hope. Only to one day get the final call out to a neighbors homestead to find him hanging from his barn rafters or diving head first into a thresher... Sam had seen it. Sam had wished he hadn't.

That was just the surface of what he had seen. So Sam knew a lot, had seen a lot. That didn't even include younger sisters who imprisoned you and then tried to shoot themselves in the head... He had yet to process even the edges of that vividly real memory.

Sam knew bigotry. Sam knew hatred. He had grown up amongst it. Had dealt with it, at times even had to tolerate it.

What Sam didn't know was how to be a bigot, how to hate.

Such a thing seemed a surprise to some people. He grew up deep in the sticks of the South. He should have been every stereotype come to life. Except he wasn't. Sam was a product of a nurturing loving family. Not of the bigot views people often associated with his home. As such. He was who he was. A caring family man. Not some neanderthal who hated everything and anything different.

He had a feeling Billy didn't see that. In fact their time locked up had all but confirmed that. Even before they all knew his sister was their captor Sam had reckoned the couple in another cell had a disdain for the others. He just hadn't known why. Had only guesses to make about it. And in all reality his mind sat on other issues that didn't involve them. Like the fact his own kin was locked up in the same situation he was.

Now that they were all free he had time to think about it all. It all made sense to him. At least so much as any foreign view on his own self could make sense to him.

"In all my interactions with people, I have found the most opinionated about others tend ta be the ones expecting opinions to be made about themselves. Project yer own fears on others and ya hurt em first. I can't fault ya for bein' human, an I gotta give you credit as a man fer apologizing," Sam was trying his best to explain things from his own side of things without taking on the brotherly lecturing tone he used on his siblings. He had a feeling that would just push Billy back down the doorway to disliking all things Guthrie.

"So dun worry none about it, what's done is done. I should beg yer forgiveness fer how my sister acted to ya in the first place, so lets jus go an call it a wash..." Sam added and shrugged his shoulders thoughtfully. "That bein' said, from here on in, treat me as ya see fit, but I expect none but smiles and friendliness fer my sisters and brothers on this here island,"



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