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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Will Brexit Bring the Troubles Back to Northern Ireland? https://nyti.ms/2rHSWA7

This is a fascinating look at the very real and immediate consequences of Brexit. While looking back at the violent sectarian history and what Brexit could awaken in the very near future. WELL WORTH THE TIME

"In Northern Ireland, Brexit is stirring up an especially volatile brew. Sectarian tensions have been roiling in one form or another since at least the 17th century, when King James I encouraged the migration of Protestant colonists from Scotland and England to the northern Irish province of Ulster, where they enjoyed special privileges. An act of the British Parliament in 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, led to Ireland’s partition, creating a Protestant-majority Northern Ireland. Catholic grievances over discrimination fueled animosities that helped precipitate the Troubles. By the time of the Good Friday Agreement, some 3,600 people had been killed and tens of thousands injured. The peace deal created a power-sharing system of government, but it did not bring reconciliation."

Will Brexit Bring the Troubles Back to Northern Ireland?

As the United Kingdom confronts the prospect of dissolution, old factions are bracing for the possibility of new violence.

By James Angelo's | Published Dec. 30, 2019 | New York Times | Posted January 2, 2020 |

Belfast, like Berlin and Sarajevo, draws many visitors not despite its history of murderous conflict but because of it. Guides there take tourists to “peace walls,” the tall barricades of corrugated metal and concrete erected during the sectarian conflict, known as the Troubles, that began in 1968 and ravaged Northern Ireland for three decades. The walls were built to divide Protestant and Catholic enclaves and to prevent people from killing one another as the spiraling cycle of attacks took hold. Today tourists from around the world visit the walls and take selfies. This type of tourism is more peculiar in Belfast than in some other cities shaped by a legacy of atrocity. You can visit the intact parts of the Berlin Wall, for instance, with the knowledge that the wall no longer serves its original purpose. In Belfast, however, the walls are still there to divide, their continued presence deemed necessary to prevent a resurgence of violence.

Tours of the peace walls are often given by ex-paramilitary combatants who were active during the Troubles. The bald, stout, tattooed driver who took me on one such tour last June said he was “connected” to a paramilitary called the Ulster Defense Association, or the U.D.A., which was responsible for the killing of hundreds. He described himself as “no angel” during the Troubles and asked that I use only his first name, Robert, so as not to attract attention from the authorities — those involved can still face criminal prosecution — or from old foes. “We’re all paranoid as hell here,” he told me shortly after I got into his van. “The war is not over. Far from it.”

Robert had a quick, friendly smile and a fast wit that made it a little hard to imagine his past paramilitary connection. But those were almost unimaginably violent times. In the rote manner of tour guides everywhere, Robert told me his father was a U.D.A. member who in 1975 was shot dead by the Irish Republican Army, or I.R.A., the most lethal of the paramilitary groups, at the bus depot where he worked. Robert himself had dodged three I.R.A. assassination attempts, he said, and the organization also “blew up” his brother-in-law and murdered seven of his friends. We pulled up to a section of the peace wall in an industrial part of West Belfast that divides the neighborhood around Falls Road, heavily Catholic, from that around Shankill Road, which is heavily Protestant. Robert pointed out the metal gate that opens during the day to allow traffic to pass and closes again at night. In 2013, the government of Northern Ireland announced a goal of removing the walls within 10 years, but Robert was against this. The situation, he said, was still too turbulent. “We’re not ready for it,” he said. “I’m sure you’re probably fed up with hearing about Brexit,” he said. “But people are worried about a bad deal, the wrong deal or no deal.” If things went badly, he added, “I think we’re going to need these walls more than ever.”

The 1998 peace deal, known as the Good Friday Agreement, subdued the violence in Northern Ireland, but it did not resolve the underlying sectarian conflict that propelled it. Northern Ireland is in the United Kingdom. “Unionists” or “loyalists” — who tend to identify as Protestant and as British — want it to remain that way. “Nationalists” or “republicans” — who tend to identify as Catholic and Irish — want a united Ireland. The peace between these factions was facilitated by a tangentially related circumstance: Both the United Kingdom and Ireland had by then joined the European Union. This arrangement ensured uninhibited trade across the border, helping to render it virtually invisible and placating many Irish nationalists with circumstances they deemed acceptable if not ideal.

At the time the peace agreement was signed, however, a different movement was growing across the Irish Sea in England: a skepticism of the European Union, bubbling up among voters on both ends of the political spectrum but embraced in particular by the conservative hard right. As populist, nationalist parties grew in strength across Europe and much of the globe, this skepticism culminated in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Few of the hard-line politicians who advocated Brexit seemed to consider the consequences their push to “take back control” would have on the delicate peace in Northern Ireland or, for that matter, on the cohesion of the United Kingdom itself. In the more than three years since the referendum, the matter of Northern Ireland has presented a unique and treacherous stumbling block to any agreement between the British government and the European Union on the terms of withdrawal. How would the United Kingdom “take back control” of its borders without hardening the Irish border, thereby endangering the Good Friday Agreement? However this question was answered, one side or the other in the sectarian divide was bound to be upset.

On Dec. 12, voters in the United Kingdom gave Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party a sweeping parliamentary majority based on his pledge to “get Brexit done.” His success, attributable in part to the electorate’s sheer exhaustion with the Brexit limbo, means the United Kingdom will almost certainly leave the European Union by Jan. 31. This occasion, however, will by no means bring closure to a United Kingdom that has become so deeply fractured — not only along party lines but also by geography — that many people predict the most salient and enduring consequence will be a kind of monumental self-immolation: the breakup of the United Kingdom itself.

As if to illustrate the volatility of the matter, Robert pulled up to a mural on the Protestant side of the wall. Murals are ubiquitous on both sides of the divide, sanctifying former combatants who are invariably considered coldblooded murderers on the opposite side. This one, repainted around the time of the Brexit referendum, depicted Stephen McKeag, a commander in the U.D.A. known as Top Gun, against a cloudy sky, as if floating in heaven. “If you believe the stories you hear, he was one of the ones who won most of the trophies, what they call a trophy for the amount of people he has supposed to have allegedly killed,” Robert told me. McKeag, indeed known as one of the U.D.A.’s most lethal assassins, died in 2000 of a drug overdose. “Remember With Pride,” the mural read. Several tourists snapped photos. Robert got out of the van and shook hands with another tour guide, a man who looked much like him, with a bald head and dark sunglasses. “Thirty years ago, we would have been trying to kill each other,” Robert said. The other guide, apparently a republican ex-combatant, nodded in agreement. They exchanged a few niceties. Robert got back in the van.

“We’re friendly, but we don’t fully trust each other,” Robert said, his tone quickly changing. He showed me a picture on his phone of the same man at a militant republican parade. He then showed me a video, taken the previous month, outside a wake for a former member of the Irish National Liberation Army, or I.N.L.A., a Marxist republican paramilitary group formed in 1974. The I.N.L.A. ostensibly decommissioned its weapons along with other paramilitary groups as part of the peace process. The video, however, showed six men in balaclavas. One of them carried an assault rifle. They lined up in formation, and the gunman fired several shots into the sky. The mourners applauded.

Robert pointed to the soaring twin steeples of a Catholic cathedral on the other side of the wall. The shots had been fired around there just a few weeks earlier, he said. “That’s why I say these guys have never gone away,” he added. “That’s why we don’t trust each other.” As long as people on this side of the wall felt threatened, he said, loyalist paramilitaries would remain. “You think we’re going to go away?”

While British euro-skepticism is far from new, its culmination in Brexit represents the most tangible manifestation yet of the re-emergence of the nationalist strains in Europe — and beyond — that the European Union was meant to temper. The British conservatives who advocated Brexit acted partly under pressure from the far-right U.K. Independence Party, which under its former leader Nigel Farage grew more popular in the years leading up to the referendum with a staunchly pro-Brexit, anti-immigration platform. Implicit in the “take back control” message employed by the “Brexiteers” were themes promoted by populist-right movements everywhere: a reassertion of national sovereignty coupled with the claim that only those who advocate this represent the true will of the people against a globalized elite. As far-right parties have risen across Europe, Brexit has provided them a concrete victory — and it’s possibly not the last, as such parties in countries like Italy, France and Hungary seek to corrode the European Union from within.

The more immediate consequence of Brexit, however, may be not the dissolution of the European Union but the dissolution of the United Kingdom. Brexit and Boris Johnson’s decisive election victory were propelled primarily by voters in England. The United Kingdom, however, is made up of three additional smaller countries — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — that contain nationalist movements of another sort. In Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular, left-wing nationalist parties perceive the source of unwanted foreign meddling to emanate from London rather than from Brussels. Majorities of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland, in fact, cast ballots in favor of remaining in the European Union, and many of these voters now see Brexit as a reason to split from the United Kingdom. This is particularly the case in Scotland, where the pro-independence Scottish National Party, or S.N.P., won a landslide victory in December. When Scotland held a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom in 2014, 55 percent of voters elected to remain. Now, in light of Brexit, the S.N.P. is calling for another referendum. Polls suggest the result would be much closer now. “Independence is coming,” Ian Blackford, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party in the British Parliament, said during a debate there in October. “We will take our place as a proud European nation.”

In Northern Ireland, Brexit is stirring up an especially volatile brew. Sectarian tensions have been roiling in one form or another since at least the 17th century, when King James I encouraged the migration of Protestant colonists from Scotland and England to the northern Irish province of Ulster, where they enjoyed special privileges. An act of the British Parliament in 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, led to Ireland’s partition, creating a Protestant-majority Northern Ireland. Catholic grievances over discrimination fueled animosities that helped precipitate the Troubles. By the time of the Good Friday Agreement, some 3,600 people had been killed and tens of thousands injured. The peace deal created a power-sharing system of government, but it did not bring reconciliation. Currently, the two largest parties elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly are Sinn Fein — once the I.R.A.’s political wing — and the socially conservative Democratic Unionist Party, or D.U.P., which advocates continued union with Britain. The partisan rift between them has been so great that the assembly has not fully convened for nearly three years. Many people in Northern Ireland, exhausted with the sectarian paradigm, have tried to move beyond it; this is evident from the recent growth of the cross-community Alliance Party.

Still, the sectarian rift remains palpable in much of daily life, influencing everything from which soccer team locals support to the everyday language they use. Many Irish nationalists, for example, refer to Northern Ireland as “the North of Ireland.” Schools in Northern Ireland remain mostly segregated along religious lines, and children often learn disparate versions of history. Attempts to administer justice for past atrocities seem only to deepen divisions. A former British paratrooper known to the public as Soldier F is now on trial on charges of murdering two people during the massacre known as Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British troops opened fire on unarmed Catholic demonstrators in Londonderry, killing 13 that day. For many Irish nationalists, the trial is painfully belated and woefully insufficient. Many loyalists, however, see it as a witch hunt, and it’s not uncommon to see flags celebrating Soldier F’s parachute regiment fluttering in loyalist strongholds.

Sectarian tensions are most evident in the so-called interface areas, urban working-class neighborhoods where Catholic and Protestant communities live in proximity but often barely interact. In addition to the physical walls of separation — of which there are some 100 in Belfast alone — territory in such neighborhoods is demarcated by paramilitary flags hung by front doors or sometimes by painted curbs, either in the colors of the Union Jack or the Irish tricolor. Residents in these areas often avoid patronizing shops located on what is deemed enemy turf, even if they have to walk farther to buy what they want. These communities live “cheek by jowl, but in separate worlds,” John Brewer, a sociologist at Queen’s University Belfast, told me. Publicly funded cross-community programs for youths in these areas aim to bridge the rift. But poverty and unemployment in interface areas tend to be high, leaving many young men hopeless and vulnerable to radicalization. Rioting and violent clashes in these areas are not uncommon.

Attitudes on Brexit, too, largely fall along sectarian lines. A majority of Protestants in Northern Ireland — 60 percent — voted to leave the European Union, according to one survey, and the D.U.P., long skeptical of the European Union, backed Brexit. A majority of Catholics — 85 percent — voted to stay, a position also backed by Sinn Fein, in great part because many people feared that Brexit would result in a hardening of the Irish border. The fate of that border presented the main obstacle in negotiations between successive British conservative governments and the European Union on a withdrawal agreement. The European Union, mindful that a hard border would undermine the Good Friday Agreement and quite possibly lead to violence, wanted a deal that avoided customs checks at the border. In October, Boris Johnson found a partial solution by agreeing to a new customs border in the Irish Sea, between Britain and Northern Ireland; this means checks on goods traveling within the United Kingdom instead of on the Irish border. But hard-line unionists have been outraged by the deal, with some calling it the “betrayal act.” English conservatives, they believe, have abandoned Northern Ireland and endangered its place in the United Kingdom. At the same time, many Irish nationalists, though relieved that the immediate prospect of a hard Irish border has faded, have nevertheless been so angered by the uncertainty of the last years that they see continued membership in the United Kingdom as less tenable than ever.

Passions around Brexit are heated across the United Kingdom, but nowhere are the stakes potentially higher than in Northern Ireland. A 2015 report on paramilitaries drafted in part by MI5, the United Kingdom’s domestic intelligence agency, said that all the main paramilitary groups that operated during the Troubles remain intact; moreover, not all their weapons were decommissioned. The report’s authors considered it very unlikely that these paramilitaries would return to political violence, but the fact that they continue to hold on to weapons just in case seemed to underscore the fragility of the peace. At the same time, some so-called dissident republican groups have continued, since the Good Friday Agreement, to launch violent attacks in the name of achieving a united Ireland. The police judge the terrorist threat from these groups, including one calling itself the New I.R.A., to be “severe.” Dissident republicans have tried to use anger over Brexit as a rallying cry to win new recruits. Amid the confusion and bitterness sparked by Brexit, one thing seems clear: Northern Ireland’s delicate, hard-won equilibrium has been upset, and the consequences are potentially grave.

The headquarters of Saoradh, a small, self-declared political party whose name means “liberation” in Irish, is on a narrow street in Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second-largest city, close to the Irish border. A mural on the facade of the building pretty well encapsulates the group’s outlook: It shows a masked paramilitary soldier wielding a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher under the slogan “Unfinished Revolution.” Northern Irish police officers say Saoradh is inextricably linked to the New I.R.A.

Inside the headquarters one afternoon in July, a thin and meticulously coiffed 27-year-old named Paddy Gallagher introduced himself to me as the party’s national press officer. While Saoradh calls itself a party, it does not engage in electoral politics, because this, as Gallagher put it, would mean becoming part of the “British infrastructure.” The party consists of “disaffected republicans,” he said, who “don’t believe the signing of the Good Friday Agreement was a good thing.” I asked him if the peace the agreement made possible wasn’t a good thing. He objected to the premise that such a peace exists. “The ongoing struggle for Irish unification and freedom hasn’t ended,” he said; people remain “willing and capable of carrying out acts of resistance.” He then provided an example: A few weeks earlier, a bomb was placed under a police officer’s car in Belfast. This was true. The officer spotted the bomb before getting in his car at a golf club, and it was safely defused; the New I.R.A. claimed responsibility. “I would assume that it was intended to kill that member of the British crown forces,” Gallagher told me.

On other occasions, the New I.R.A., which was formed in 2012, has killed intended targets. It claimed responsibility for attacks that killed two prison officers: a man named David Black, who was shot dead in 2012 in his car on the way to work, and Adrian Ismay, who died in 2016 after a bomb exploded under his van. The New I.R.A. killing that sparked the most attention and outrage came one night last April, during a republican riot in a Londonderry neighborhood called Creggan; when a masked rioter fired shots in the direction of an armored police vehicle, a bullet struck and killed Lyra McKee, a 29-year-old journalist who had arrived on the scene to report on the riot. A few days later, the New I.R.A. released a statement to a local newspaper saying that its volunteers were engaging “British crown forces” when McKee was “tragically killed,” depicting her death as collateral damage. Police officers later raided Saoradh’s headquarters as part of their investigation into the shooting, though no one has yet been charged with McKee’s murder. When I visited Creggan, I found signs posted on street lamps warning people not to cooperate with the police. “Informers will be shot,” read one of them, signed by the “I.R.A.”

Gallagher denied that Saoradh supports or has had links to the New I.R.A. — or any other armed groups — though he did not disavow their violent methods. “The Irish people can use any and all means necessary to achieve Irish freedom, whether it’s armed struggle or not,” he said. “The party believes that is up to the Irish people.” Gallagher spoke as if observing events his party played no active part in. The effect was menacing, particularly when he talked about the possibility that Brexit would result in a hard Irish border. “If there is a hard border in Ireland, and it is a manned or fixed installation, I can only assume it would be attacked,” he said, just as such installations were in the past.

Sinn Fein — the party that represents mainstream republicanism and whose leaders participated in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement — has offered a stark political response to the anger Brexit has fomented. Enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement is the “principle of consent,” which means that the people of Northern Ireland have a right to decide to which nation they want to belong. The demographics of Northern Ireland have been steadily shifting, and within the decade, a majority of its people will be Catholic, making the prospect of a united Ireland seem almost inevitable. This population shift is evident in election results that increasingly favor nationalists; in the United Kingdom parliamentary election in December, voters in Northern Ireland elected more nationalist representatives than unionist representatives for the first time in the country’s hundred-year history. Now Brexit has provided an opportunity for Sinn Fein to argue that the time to make that choice is near.

In July, I met Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Fein’s vice president, in her cavernous office in Northern Ireland’s palatial Parliament building. Brexit, she told me, had changed the paradigm in Northern Ireland, necessitating a referendum on Irish unity. Northern Ireland, she said, should not be dragged out of the European Union against its will. She seemed eager to assure not only her base but also the moderate unionists who voted to remain in the European Union and who might swing such a referendum. “I want to see a united Ireland,” O’Neill said. “But it has to be an inclusive Ireland. It has to be one where those who have an Irish identity and those who have a British identity feel part and parcel, feel that they have their place, and it’s valued and cherished.”

This seemed a shrewd political approach. But Northern Ireland’s history often reads like a case study in how the most extreme elements in the society can wreak undue havoc. Northern Irish police officers have warned that the threat from violent dissident republican groups remains severe even without the prospect of a hard Irish border. On the other side of the divide, many are outraged in the belief that the prospect of militant republican violence drove Boris Johnson and the European Union to keep the Irish border open at the expense of Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

After Johnson’s deal was announced, a few hundred loyalists, including reputed paramilitary members, met in East Belfast to discuss how they should respond to their perceived betrayal. Following the meeting, Jamie Bryson, a self-described “loyalist activist,” told local reporters that the Brexit deal would be met with mass resistance. “One of the main reasons we were told there can be no border on the island of Ireland is because dissident republicans may attack it, but yet there’s been no consideration given to the loyalist community on how people may react to a border down the Irish Sea,” Bryson told a reporter from The Belfast Telegraph. “I don’t think anyone in loyalism wants to see violence. But obviously there’s a lot of anger at the minute.”

On a June evening in East Belfast, a group of men belonging to a Protestant fraternal organization called the Orange Order gathered at their meeting place in a red-brick Victorian hall for a special occasion: the unveiling of a new parade banner. The Orange Order is a staunchly unionist organization founded in 1795 and is named after William of Orange, the Protestant king who in the late 17th century took the throne after King James II, a Catholic, was deposed in the Glorious Revolution. Every year in Northern Ireland, Orangemen — who number around 30,000 — conduct thousands of parades, and they’ve been staging them for centuries. The biggest day of parading falls on July 12, a Protestant celebration that marks William’s decisive victory over James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and on the eve of the holiday, unionists light large bonfires. These parades were historically seen as a display of Protestant supremacy, and they frequently led to sectarian clashes. Today they usually go off peacefully, though often under a heavy police presence. Orangemen say the parades are an innocent expression of their culture. Many nationalists still view them as intimidating.

This particular lodge, called the Young Men’s Christian Total Abstinence Loyal Orange Lodge 747, consisted, contrary to its name, largely of older gentlemen who wore suits and ties along with the orange sashes worn by Orangemen. The abstinence in this case was real — the men drank juice out of wineglasses — and the event began with the singing of a hymn. Then the parade banner, which had been covered with a white sheet, was unveiled, revealing a depiction of William of Orange atop a white horse at the Battle of the Boyne. The men applauded the banner, put on their bowler hats and filed out into the street, where a neatly uniformed marching band awaited. The drummers snapped and pounded, the flutists piped and the men marched their new banner past the brick rowhouses and storefronts of East Belfast, a working-class stronghold blighted in parts by poverty. The Orangemen strutted past homes decorated with flags of loyalist paramilitaries and murals showing armed paramilitary men in balaclavas. It made for a somewhat jarring juxtaposition, seeing men of such apparent decorum pass such harsh images. The Orangemen ended their march with a rendition of “God Save the Queen.”

Back inside the hall, as they dined on plates of roast beef and potatoes, a Presbyterian minister named Mervyn Gibson, the grand secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, approached the lectern. “Today some are trying to bribe us out of the United Kingdom by claiming to offer us a better lifestyle in the Republic of Ireland,” he said. Gibson seemed to be referring to arguments that the Northern Ireland economy would flourish within a united Ireland. “Our loyalty and identity are not about economics,” Gibson went on, “not something to be bartered or traded.” Those now threatening a referendum on Irish unity, he added, were the same people who “tried to bomb and murder us out of the United Kingdom. They failed then, and they’ll fail again,” he said, and then concluded: “We’re born British, we’ll remain British, we’ll die British.” The men of the lodge responded: “Hear! Hear!”

The key question, it seemed, was how far these men would go to remain British. On another occasion, Gibson told me he would accept a democratic vote for Irish unity it if it came to that. Others, however, are more strident. Many loyalists feel a sense of decline as Catholics have gained more rights and upward mobility; young loyalist men in interface areas who used to be guaranteed factory jobs by virtue of their identity now face high unemployment and a sense that their standing in society has eroded. Such grievances seem to only reinforce people’s sense of identity. Loyalist paramilitaries feed off this to gain recruits, though according to the police, these groups are more often involved in organized crime than in politics. Still, in East Belfast, I observed how one paramilitary — the U.V.F. — had the capacity to stir up sectarian passions.

Last summer, in advance of the July 12 celebrations, members of Belfast’s republican-led City Council voted to remove a pyre made of wooden pallets in East Belfast — set up for the coming bonfire night — saying it was illegally on city property, namely the parking lot of a recreation center. Local loyalists responded angrily and vowed not to allow the city to remove the pyre, resulting in a standoff that, for days, became the main news story in town. At a demonstration one evening that drew hundreds of people to the site of the pyre, I met a number of masked young men who told me they were protecting the pyre from being dismantled. Jamie Bryson, the loyalist activist, spoke to the crowd. “Standing exposed tonight is the actual agenda of Belfast City Council,” he said. “And it is the total demolition of every aspect of Protestant unionist and loyalist culture,” he went on. “We will not have it!” This inspired a fervent round of applause. “No surrender!” shouted a woman next to me who wore a shirt that said “Me Wrong?” on it. “This is British land, and it will stay British land,” she then told me.

Police officers said the standoff was whipped up by the U.V.F. In a letter to the City Council, the police warned that any attempt to remove the pyre would “cause a severe, violent confrontation, orchestrated by the U.V.F.” and that the “use of firearms during such disorder cannot be ruled out.” Ultimately, the police did not move in. This was, Bryson later wrote in an online newsletter, a “momentous and hugely symbolic victory within the context of the larger cultural war.”

On the bonfire night, I went to another pyre on a barren plot next to a peace wall in West Belfast, where my tour guide, Robert, had taken me. As the sky slowly darkened, a D.J. played pulsing techno. Drunken teenagers milled around. A small, impromptu marching band of revelers formed. They sang a U.V.F. tune at the top of their lungs: “On my gravestone, carve a simple message: ‘Here lies a soldier of the U.V.F.’ ” I spoke to one woman among them who told me that this was all in good fun, just an expression of loyalist culture. But you couldn’t help noticing that the pyre that was about to be lit had been bedecked with flags of the Republic of Ireland.

______

James Angelos is a contributing writer for the magazine based in Berlin. He last wrote about anti-Semitism in Germany. Ivor Prickett is an Irish photographer. He was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in breaking-news photography for his coverage of battles in Mosul and Raqqa.

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pr1ncessjasm1ne · 5 years

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Love Sick

Summary: Y/N reminisces on memories that have led to the confessions of her best friend, [college!]Grayson, admitting his feelings. Word Count: ~ 5,600 Warnings: Cursing, mentions of smoking and drinking, but mostly fluff. A/N: Yikes, this is my first time posting for this fandom and NOT on my side blog, this is also the first time I write with a concept that I really like and needed for myself. I grew to love it and I might make a part 2, so PLEASE FEEL FREE TO GIVE FEEDBACK AND LET ME KNOW IF YOU WOULD WANT A SECOND PART!!! <3

tags: @cutesydolan @joeyskinnyleg @hmmmethan @ohmydolantwins

My days at university have been exceptionally beautiful during many moments. I was getting to date my best friend, whom I met here. It was an occurrence that I never really expected. It all started my freshman year. It was move-in day, to be exact.

“Mom, it’s to the left,” I instruct her on the other end of the large, blue plastic moving cart that we had unloaded my stuff into from our car. It was move in day for my first year of college, and I was ecstatic to be settled in and meeting new people to make friends immediately. I was also super excited to finally be away from home where I had never been allowed out of the house.

“Okay, number 205, right?” she asks as she slows down in front of the room. I nod in confirmation and move around to unlock the door. I guess I beat my roommate, since it was empty.

“Sweet, I want the bottom bunk!” I smiled at my mom as I started to walk in and she followed with the cart.

“Yay! If you fall off when you’re sleeping, you’re only a couple of feet off the ground!” She teased. She likes to think I’m a huge clutz in avoiding the reality that she’s oblivious to, which is that she’s the huge clutz. But whatever. I rolled my eyes in response and asked her to start putting the sheets on my bed while I go get the second cart with my dad.

The second I stepped out my door, I bumped in to a taller, larger man holding a huge box that hit my face. “Oh shit- I’m so, so sorry!” I heard as I clenched my eyes shut and held my hands to my temple. I open my eyes to find a pair of beautiful, deep green orbs decorated with some thick and sharp eyebrows currently furrowed with concern.

“Uh… it’s ‘kay,” I giggled. I felt like I forgot the entire English language in that moment. I continued my hold on my temple before he gently removed my hands by the wrists, making me shiver a bit.

“Oh no, did the corner of the box hit you? It looks like you have a little cut.. oh my god, I’m so-“

“Hey, it’s fine! Nothing a little Neosporin can’t fix,” I reassure, “just be a little more careful, please. I’m asking for everyone.” He sports a small smirk and I caught his cute little dimple. The little dimple I didn’t know I would ever come to love so much.

“Okay, you got it. But still, I’m so sorry. Can I do anything?” He asks, without realizing someone was behind him trying to push another cart. It was my dad, bringing in the second cart I was supposed to help him with.

“Y/N, who’s this?” My dad blatantly asks. Grayson drops his hold on my hands and looks up. Dad has never been fond of any boys in my life, saying they were clearly only after one thing. It was no different with any stranger who looked between 17 and 20 years old. He’s a little overprotective, I guess.

“Good question, what’s your name, boy-who-hit-me-with-his-box?” I cross my arms and cock an eyebrow. He shifts his eyes between my dad and I, growing a little red in the face.

“I promise it was an accident- I’m Grayson…” he smiles a bit awkwardly. I couldn’t help but giggle at his reaction to my dad’s glare after I mentioned the incident that brought our meet, to begin with.

My dad completely dismissed Grayson’s existence and asked me to move out of the doorway to bring the first cart in and replace it with the second one. I did as I was told and moved over to let my parents handle the moving for a second.

“Do you need any help with that box, by the way?” I asked, pointing down at the box he had dropped when he grabbed my wrists. He quickly bent down to pick it up and let out a small chuckle.

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind a spotter to make sure I don’t hit anyone else,” he smiled in my direction. How am I supposed to resist that smile? I moved to be in front of him and led him down to the boy’s hall of the residence.

“What number?” I asked, slowing down my pace as we made our way down.

“220, right there,” he pointed me to the door just a few feet away. I helped him steer clear of a couple of parents he couldn’t see, and probably would have hit with his obscenely large moving box. I noticed the door was prompted open, so I let myself in. I let curiosity get the best of me and decided to watch him for a bit.

“Bottom or top bunk?” I asked. He set the box down behind me and dropped to his knees to start unpacking it.

“I want the bottom bunk, but I know my brother is going to use the ‘I was born first’ card to claim it once he gets here,” he sighs. I take the liberty to sit down on the bottom bunk to test it out.

“Hmm. Unless you want to hit your head constantly on the top bunk, I think you dodged a bullet there,” I stated while holding the metal bars above me.

“Same difference, I’ll hit my head up on the ceiling, too. I just don’t wanna climb,” he smiles. He shifts his focus from the box over to me, and I notice he caught a glance of my exposed thighs in my shorts. I immediately felt a bit insecure and I covered them with my hands before standing up.

“True. Well, good luck to you, Grayson. I have to go help my parents before they complain and say I’m avoiding them,” I say while peeping into his box. It looked like a bunch of tech stuff and lost interest for the moment, making a mental note to ask about it later. “I’ll see you around,” I sport my biggest smile as I leave the room.

“Bye, Y/N!”

I saw Grayson very frequently that year. We bumped into each other nearly every day first semester; I saw him after sociology as I was making my way into the building and he was making his way to class. During midterms season in early October, I would get annoyed of my roommate talking to her boyfriend from back home every single night while I was trying to study. I decided to go in the common room of the residence hall one night and found Grayson taking up an entire table with his laptop, books, and notes spread out as he was studying. That night, he was wearing a white hoodie and gray sweats, looking real cute and cozy. He had his hood up and fidgeted with the strings, which I later found out he did often. He was alone in the common room, which indicated that it was pretty late at night considering that was a popular study space. Even though there was plenty of space, I still sat at the table he occupied because I didn’t want him to feel lonely, even if we were both going to be silently working on our own things. That quickly turned out to be the opposite of what we intended. Every time we started studying, he would ask me random questions about myself and got me rambling for hours. Eventually, this became a problem because we would never really get work done. I found out his twin brother, Ethan, was always playing video games late at night while he tried to study. I didn’t mind that I would hardly get my work done with him. I enjoyed getting to know him every few nights at 3 in the morning until the sun rose and we called it a night and went on with our lives.

Second semester, I found him in my statistics class. Our late-night study sessions, therefore, started to become intentional as well as more frequent. The fact that we both actually needed to study and had each other for support didn’t stop us from getting distracted and talking about literally anything else. I also started hanging out with him in our rooms which eventually led to hanging out outside of the residence hall. We started going to the dining halls together along with his brother, Ethan, and my new friend Alena. Alena quickly made a move on Ethan one night while we were all taking a walk around the lake nearby to stargaze. I was very happy for them when they shared their first kiss together, but it made me a bit sad when I had no one to share an experience like that with. Grayson suggested I should get on tinder, but I didn’t cave then. I was always hoping something would spark between us and bring us together and I don’t think I would have wanted there to be a chance for it to happen with someone else. Not at that time.

Over summer, Grayson and Ethan went back to New Jersey, while Alena went back to her hometown of San Angelo, Texas. I made my way back to my small town in California, which was only a few hours away from our university. I was happy to be back home, but I missed Grayson more than anyone. We started sending one another consistent snapchats of random things that happened throughout our day. Or random selfies with “bored” somewhere on the caption. It always depended on the day, really. But there was never a day I didn’t see his gorgeous face on my screen. At some point in the summer, we started to facetime at night, continuing our late-night chats from the study room. Most times, he would be sending me things to watch on youtube and watch my reaction. It was something we liked to do at our distracted study nights as well. Other times, we would just keep each other company while we played video games or one of us was trying to sleep. It became habitual to fall asleep to the sound of Grayson Dolan’s soft snores even though he had never physically slept next to me. I almost couldn’t sleep the night I moved back up for the second year of college.

“This apartment is sick, [Y/N]! You could throw parties here!” Grayson exclaimed, sitting on my new bed. I let out a small giggle as I sat next to him. “I’m not really a party girl, Gray,” I tilted my head at him. He averted his gaze and stared at his lap.

“You’re right, but I’ll be coming over a lot. This is way better than the small studio Ethan got us stuck with,” he said shifting his eyes back to mine. I felt a slight rush of heat and decided to lay down and stare at the ceiling to shake off the effect Grayson’s eyes had on me. I hadn’t looked into them since the last day before summer, and I forgot how intimidating they were. I always felt like Grayson could see into my soul and take it to keep whenever he laid eyes on me.

“You’re welcome to stay whenever Ethan won’t stop geeking out,” I offered. “But you’re also welcome whenever, and you know that”. I was trying so hard to suppress the smile that threatened to stretch out my cheeks. I felt him lay back next to me, and I shifted my attention to his face.

“Thanks, beautiful,” he almost whispered. I swear if it had been any lower, I wouldn’t have heard him. I almost pretended not to hear it, but my smile and blushing cheeks made it evident. I quickly sat up again, shaking off this feeling.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want Grayson to know how I felt, nor was it that I was afraid of rejection. I genuinely just wanted to keep Grayson around as platonic as I could for as long as I could. I also did not think he was anywhere in my league, but I wouldn’t let that flood my mind. I enjoyed Grayson and his company. His actions and words never crossed any boundaries of mine and I couldn’t tell if that was intentional or not. Regardless, he was my best friend and Alena would kill me if she heard me say it. I tried to tell myself I was just lusting over my best friend because I was horny, and he was the closest guy I had around. Besides him and Ethan, I didn’t have many guy friends who were straight in my life at the moment. And I definitely did not want to pursue Ethan after him and Alena had hooked up one night and she caught feelings for him- BAD. And I can’t blame her. Ethan was amazing, sweet, hilarious, and the tinge bit of annoying was actually endearing on him. However, he was no Grayson to me. Sure, Ethan checked up on me and sent me random memes every now and then. But my second year showed me just how close Grayson and I were going to get.

It was a cold night during finals week of first semester when I was studying at the library and I got my period out of nowhere. No, it wasn’t just that I was far from my apartment and couldn’t get a pad that made me lose it. It was also that I was so close to failing the class I was studying for, and it was that I had spent 14 hours studying the material that day alone, and that I hadn’t had a proper sleep for 4 days also studying for this exam.

While I was sitting in the bathroom stall, crying my eyes out at 1 am, I tried to call Alena to see if she could bring me a pad or tampon from home. To my dismay, her phone was off and I kept getting sent to voicemail. Just a few minutes later, I got a text from Grayson, who had also been studying with me at the library:

gray<3: hey u good?

I knew he was no stranger to periods and wasn’t one of those boys to get freaked out by it, so I decided to call him.

“Hey, what’s up? You’ve been in the bathroom for a while. I got worried,” he said. I tried to muffle my sobs and get myself together.

“I got my period and I don’t have anything with me, Alena won’t pick u-“

“HEY does anyone have a pad or tampon?” I heard Grayson say away from the speaker. “My friend is in the bathroom, she doesn’t have anyth- oh thanks! Yeah I think she’s in the bathroom on this floor,” he said to someone else. I started laughing at his shameless behavior. He was never hesitant to make sure I was taken care of but this was just amusing to me. “Okay a blonde girl is gonna come in there any minute now, she had something useful,” he giggles. I reciprocate the laughter as my heart jumps a little bit.

“Thanks, Grayson,” I say before hanging up.

While small, the gesture stuck with me that night. He also went to the campus convince store located across from the library and bought me some snacks to cheer me up while we studied a bit longer. When we were done, he walked me back to my apartment and stayed the night. When I asked him why he wanted to spend the night during the most stressful time of our semester when he could be bundled up and cozy in his own bed, he said he would rather make sure I’m extra warm and getting cuddled when I was on my period and stressing over exams. This was new territory in our friendship and we had yet to test the waters. We had cuddled before, but it was always for a short period of time and while others were present. Most times, it was when we were watching movies or playing games with a group of people and we were stuck sitting on the floor. I would lean my back against his chest as he leaned against a couch or cabinet. That night, he held me in the same position but laying down, with one arm gently around my waist and the other tucked around my head as he stroked my hair every now and then. It was the first time since summer that I had fallen asleep to the sound of his soft snores. I found myself drifting off easily to the gentle, warm feeling of them against my hair. To say I caught myself falling in love with him that night is an understatement. I finally admitted it but didn’t know where to go from there. It was different from how I had seen him before.

Winter break separated us again, and the facetime calls became more frequent than they had been over summer. It got to a point where I started introducing him to my family over facetime, and he did the same. Nonetheless, I was surprised on Christmas Eve when he facetimed me asking to open the package that he sent me through the mail as a Christmas gift for a reaction. I was in the living room where my family had been gathered to watch a Christmas movie when he texted me to check the mail. I didn’t expect to see a small box and a separate envelope from him in there. Immediately, I ran up the stairs to my room with my family asking what I was doing. I didn’t pay attention to them and bolted straight to my bed as he called. I answered and sat down before opening the envelope first, as he requested.

The first thing I found in there was a hand-written note reading:

“Y/N,

First of all, you don’t understand how much I miss you. Seeing you through a screen literally does you no justice. I’d rather be giving you this in person. Second, you’re so special to me. You’re my best friend. And my best friend deserves the best. I really hope you like it. I chose it myself and Ethan said it was nice… I kinda trust him. I just thought of you instantly when I saw it. Lastly, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

- Gray”

I think he knew exactly how to pull at my heartstrings by this time, and he knew handwritten notes were one of my favorite things. I kept all the random sticky notes with jokes and doodles he put in my notebooks when I wasn’t looking while we studied at the library all those nights. He didn’t know I kept them all in the back of my planner, sticking them an inch apart to create a collection.

I pulled the next thing out of the envelope, which was three Polaroid pictures we had taken at three different times. The first picture was an attempted selfie that was mostly Grayson’s smile and my eye featuring one of the ears of my cat ear headband. On the bottom, written in sharpie was: “10/31/17 – one of my favorite nights”.

“So we’re dressing up just to hang out and eat candy?” I asked Grayson from my bed, as he sat against it with his laptop open searching for last minute DIY Halloween costumes.

“No, we’re dressing up because it’s Halloween. It’s tradition,” he states sternly.

I didn’t dare question Grayson and his love for holidays. He ended up asking me to do some skull makeup on him, which I did… poorly. And I just stuck on my cat ears that I had laying around for when I wanted to push my hair back while doing my makeup. I went full out with him and drew some whiskers on with eyeliner and drew a pink heart on my nose with lipstick. He insisted we should take a polaroid and the one that came out was the one he sent in the mail. We burst out into laughter after we saw the developed photo because Grayson swore that he had the perfect angle for us to be in frame, and he was totally wrong. But at the time, it was the last of the film he had, and we decided the photo would suffice for memories and we took a few selfies on his phone for better measure. That night ended in us watching Rick and Morty until I passed out in the bed where we were sitting against the wall, and Grayson went home. I didn’t know why it was one of his favorite nights, so I asked him while we were on facetime.

“It was the first night I saw you fall asleep in front of me,” he said with a bit of hesitation in his voice, “all the other times were over facetime.” My lips betrayed me when I tried to hide my smile. I didn’t think Grayson had such fond memories of small things like this as I did. I thought I was the only one.

The second photo was one of Grayson holding a joint in his mouth and I held a lighter against the joint and smiled at the camera. Again, written in sharpie: “11/11/17- baby’s first weed”. I laughed hysterically at this one. This was from the first time Grayson and I smoked weed together, and his first time ever smoking.

“Okay, remember to hold it in your mouth and then when you pull it away, inhale it,” I instructed Grayson. My housemate Kiara had brought home several joints and left them out on the living room coffee table for anyone who wanted them. I was curious to see what Grayson would be like while he was high. Alena was with us, and she had never smoked before either.

“Wait, let me take a picture with Grayson’s polaroid!” Alena exclaimed. We posed somewhat silly, and then I lit the joint for Grayson.

Grayson took a puff of the joint and breathed as I had taught him. His eyes were getting a little bloodshot as he kept taking hits, and they were also a bit hooded and seemed sleepy. I knew he was high when the three of us were sitting in comfortable silence while lightly playing The 1975 from my phone. I heard a slight snort escape him. It took me a little bit to react, looking over to him and giggling inexplicably.

“What?” I asked through a smile.

“I don’t know,” he replied, still giggling. “I just wanna laugh!!”

“It’s the weed, Gray!” Alena cackled out. I couldn’t believe the lightweights that sat on each side of me on the couch. I was also high, but I obviously forgot what it was like when you smoked for the first time.

After a while, Alena felt the sleepiness hit her and she knocked out in her bed, leaving me alone with high Grayson. We sat in the same silence with the light sounds of the music for a while before Grayson admitted he was feeling the munchies hit him. We made our way to the kitchen when I remembered I had some left-over, pre-made cookie dough from baking cookies for Alena’s birthday last month. Right as I put the cookies in the oven, Grayson wrapped his arms around my waist from behind and lifted me up.

“Gray!! STOP!” I squealed and laughed. I would have normally begged him to stop for a bit longer, but he turned me around and sat me up on the counter next to the stove. I choked on my breath a little bit as he spread my legs apart slightly to allow himself in between. I didn’t know what was going on because he had never done this before, but I wasn’t going to complain. His face was close to mine, and I noticed his eyes fixed to my lips, then my eyes, and then my lips again. I couldn’t handle the intensity in this interaction, so I grabbed the cookie dough wrapper and started picking at the bits of lingering dough to stick in my mouth. “Want some?” I asked with a slight shake in my voice, holding out my dough covered finger. He smiled and accepted the cookie dough I held up, licking up the dough and going for more from the wrapper. I didn’t want things to get awkward with Grayson if I had made a move and kissed him when maybe he was just super high and admiring me for no reason.

The last photo was just of me, asleep on his chest with his hand through my hair. This was from the morning after he had spent the night during finals and I didn’t even know he took this. This time, the sharpie just read “12/13/17 – nervous x nbhd”. My heart escaped my entire body and I felt my head start to spin. I knew this meant he wanted me to know that I made him nervous, as The Neighborhood had so perfectly titled their song. I couldn’t breathe, but before I could ask Grayson anything, my mom barged into my room.

“Y/N, come back down please. We’re doing family stuff,” she said eagerly, “don’t be rude by staying up here.”

“Okay, give me just a second mom, Grayson sent me this-“

“Y/N! Now!” she whisper-yelled. I put the polaroids away in my desk just in case my mom wanted to punish me for smoking weed or being asleep on top of a boy.

“Hey, Grayson I’m sorry. I gotta go, but I’ll open the package later?” I bit my finger nervously.

“That’s fine, go do family stuff. I’ll be awake,” he reassures me. I felt butterflies in my stomach knowing I’ll be talking to him later.

While watching yet another boring Christmas movie with my family, I couldn’t help but think about Grayson deciding to put that song title on the picture of me sleeping. What did this mean? Was there any meaning to it at all? I was stepping in more uncharted territory with Grayson, and with anyone. I hadn’t had a boyfriend since the beginning of high school, so I forgot how to interact with boys I liked. I also didn’t get much practice since I was too busy swooning over Grayson to pay attention to any other guys who might have been potential interests. Grayson didn’t make it very clear if there were any other girls in his life, but the more I thought about it, the less I could think of a single time he talked about being interested in a girl. I grabbed my phone and texted Ethan.

Y/N: Hey I need to talk to you Don’t tell Grayson!!! PLEASE!

Eetee: What’s up??

Y/N: Okay I need you to be completely honest with me right now

Eetee: Ok…? I always am but ok

Y/N: Yes. So does Grayson like me??

Read at 9:47pm

I got nervous as he left me hanging for a good 15 minutes.

Y/N: ETHAN PLEASE DON’T SAY ANYTHING TO GRAYSON

Eetee: I can’t tell you anything either

Y/N: What do you mean?

Eetee: You’re asking someone who was sworn to secrecy on this subject. Shouldn’t that give it away?

Eetee: Btw that should be a totally obvious answer, but I can’t insinuate anything. Just talk to him

Ethan knew Grayson was in love with me. Grayson had told him about every single time he got me to smile so much that my faint dimples started showing. Grayson told him about every snapchat I sent him while he held up his phone and said “Isn’t she so cute?!” Ethan was there every time Grayson came home from hanging out with me, feeling sad that he couldn’t find the courage to confess how he felt. Ethan was also there the night Grayson got high and came home giggling hysterically. He knew he had smoked, but what he didn’t expect was to hear Grayson tell him how he almost kissed me. He almost found the courage to act on his feelings, but I made cookie dough our “cock-blocker”. Ethan wanted to tell me all of this right then, but Grayson made him swear he wouldn’t spill a word to me because he wanted to do it himself. He needed to find the right words and the right time.

I decided to leave my family once again, claiming that I was tired and promised to come back down if I couldn’t sleep. It was a cheap excuse, but my family finally let me go and I immediately facetimed Gray as I locked the door to my room.

“Hey again,” he smiled through his barely open hoodie. He was snuggled up in his bed and looked so perfectly cute. I could never get enough of him.

“Hi, sorry about earlier. I’ve been so eager to keep talking to you.”

“It’s okay. Go open your present,” he flashed his toothy smile as he commanded me to open what he sent.

“You know you didn’t have to get me anything, right? The pictures are amazing, and I was so close to crying before my mom came in,” I admitted.

“Cool, then it worked. Now open what I WANTED to get you because I know I don’t have to get you anything,” he chuckled. He knew I was stubborn about gifts and I hated being materialistic.

But when I opened the package, I didn’t expect to see what he had gifted me. It made my heart stop for the second time tonight, but also start racing faster than it was already going. I stopped fighting my smiles at this point. “Gray….. what the…?” I whispered.

“Just wanted you to know how much you mean to me.” He said sweetly. It was a beautiful, dainty gold necklace with a small crescent moon adorning that I had seen in a jewelry store we checked out when Ethan wanted a new chain and we tagged along. It was very pretty but I couldn’t afford it and I had honestly, completely forgotten about it. I’m surprised Grayson remembered how much I loved it when I saw it.

“Why did you- when did you- what?!” I was out of words. This was the most attention someone had ever put into a gift for me. Even though I didn’t wear jewelry often, I knew I was going to be rocking this necklace every single day just because Grayson had gifted it to me.

“I know you love the moon, and you loved that necklace so much. I saw it in your eyes when we were at that store. I went back like a month later by myself and got it. Saved it for Christmas.” Grayson sounded really proud of himself, and honestly, I was too. This was such a sweet gift and it truly made me want to be the first to confess how I felt and get it over with.

“Grayson, I love it. Thank you so much,” I gushed, “god, I love you…” I said quietly. I felt an awkward silence fall on us, and I was unsure as to if he heard me or not. I kept my focus on the necklace to avoid seeing his face if he had heard me.

“Y/N… I need to tell you something….” He said quietly, losing his short-lived confidence. I looked at my phone screen to see him tucked behind his hoodie that he had pulled the strings on, only his nose and some of his forehead visible. “I’ve had a major crush on you since we met, and my feelings just keep getting more intense. I wanted to tell you in person, I swear-“

“It’s okay, you have told me in person,” I cut him off reminiscing in all the memories where I left myself wondering if he liked me or if it was just a delusion of mine. The pictures and his confession of said “crush” was enough confirmation that I had been waiting for.

“What do you… oh, the pictures?” He chuckled, opening his hoodie a little more, to peek through. “Yeah, I was hoping you caught on eventually… I just- I’m not sure how to tell someone I like them, so…”

“It’s fine, I love the pictures. I love the necklace. I’m so, so happy right now, Gray.”

We spent that night on facetime until 5 in the morning in my time zone, but he was up until 8 in the morning, where he had to go open presents with his family. We talked about our different memories where it was obvious that we had feelings for one another and we both felt like the other was not into them. I laughed at how he thought the time I changed in front of him was because I thought of him as a brother. But I was very drunk, and he walked me home that night to make sure I was okay. And I needed help getting out of the dress I had worn because the back zipper got caught on something and fell off completely. Everyone else in my apartment was still out partying and Grayson was the only person around, which was fine by me. I pranced around in my underwear after he helped me out, hoping it would be a bit amusing or maybe spark a bit of innocent, drunk fun between us. He admitted he was also drunk that night, being overly tempted to finally kiss my lips as well, and touching my bare skin made him too nervous to make a move. He didn’t want to send the wrong message, so he avoided contact with me until I needed to be tucked into bed when he kissed my head through my hair. I hardly remembered that, as I was pretty wasted. But, he told me how nervous he was I’d get weirded out by it.

This is where it really started.

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