#i typed this down the last time i rewatched | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uzubebe · 5 months

Text

purgatory

type: one shot

pairings: dean winchester x fem!reader (mutual pining, friends to lovers?), sam winchester x fem!reader (estranged besties)

disclaimer: i don’t write often, but i’ve been rewatching supernatural and i have so many idea. this may not be the best, but just some self indulgence. i love sammy with my whole heart but he needed to be told off ok.

summary: the dick was dead. dean and cas were gone. and you didn’t rest a wink while searching for them. unfortunately it turns out dean wasn’t the only one sam abandoned that year.

“cmon there has the be something” you sighed, aimlessly scrolling through 14 open tabs on your laptop and a pile of messy papers scattered across the motel table. you slammed your hands on the table in frustration, letting out a shaky breath and gripping your fists tight.

it had been a year. an entire year without dean winchester. the second he vanished you had delved into aimless research in a desperate attempt to find him. you had to busy yourself, because thinking about his absence for too long caused an indescribable pain to open up in your chest.

you had only broken down three times in your year long search, which you figured was a record for someone going through what you were. you’d spent countless nights crying yourself into restless sleep, sleep filled with dreams and nightmares about the eldest winchester.

you crammed your hands to your tired eyes in a hurry, shaking your head vigorously in an attempt to wake yourself. you had to focus because you sure as hell knew sam wasn’t doing anything about it.

after deans disappearance sam explained that he needed time and space, which you understood. you cared for him just as much as you cared for his eldest brother. he had been your best friend for as long as you could remeber. and this was his brother, someone he didn’t want to learn how to live without.

you didn’t realize that time and space meant him also disappearing for an entire year with zero contact. you tried to understand him in the beginning, tried to rationalize why he would leave with no warning or explanation, because there had to be one right ? after four months you decided he wasn’t coming back and it was your job to find his brother.

you felt tears well in the corners on your eyes, inhaling a sharp breath and stretching your arms to regain your composure, gearing up for more research instead of dwelling on the loneliness.

you were pulled from your thoughts as your phone began vibrating vigorously from your bag. you quickly pulled yourself from the chair, feeling your body creak, this year had aged you in more ways than one.

you pulled your phone from the bag and froze. you narrowed your eyes, studying the caller id in absolute astonishment.

dean winchester.

you scoffed in disbelief, settling on the first emotion that bumbled up your throat, anger. you quickly hit the answer button.

“listen, i don’t know who the fuck this is. but lose this fucking number, i don’t have time for prank-“ you started spitting vigorously into the phone, being cut off at the gruff laugh that echoed through the speaker.

“…dean?” you whispered. it couldn’t be. how was he calling you?

“yeah, y/n. it’s me” he said softly, this time the tears came pouring out without warning, you let out a sad sob mixed with some kind of laugh.

“where are you? please tell me where you are.” you begged, he quickly gave you his address and within second you were tumbling into your car and speeding to him.

once arriving you let out a sigh, mentally preparing yourself for something you had been longing for for the last year. after 2-3 seconds of this you decided you couldn’t wait a second longer. you barreled out of the car and began your search for their motel room, suddenly turning into an olympic runner as you looked at each room number. you breath hitched in your chest as you finally arrived in front of the door. you knocked briefly before swiftly barreling into the room. nothing could’ve stopped you from getting inside that room, and there was no time for pleasantries and manners.

“dean!?” you screeched, scanning the room. your eyes landed on him as he stood from the motel bed to greet you, a sense of overwhelming relief washed over you as you ran to him.

within second you were in his arm, tears flooding your eyes as you buried your head into his chest. you felt an arm tighten around you waist, as he cradled the back of your head with his free hand.

“shh, it’s okay y/n. i’m here. i’ve got you.” he whispered, trying to calm you from the heartbreaking sobs escaping your chest. you gripped the back of his shirt, pulling him as close as you could, fearing that if you let go he may disappear once again. after what felt like hours and finally realizing that this was real, you slowly pulled for him allowing him a minute to truly study your appearance.

you looked exhausted. your hair that had been previously above your shoulders now hanging loosely below your shoulder blades, tangled and messy. the bags under your eyes had grown, and you looked like you hadn’t eaten a proper meal in ages.

“y/n…what happened? are you okay?” he asked, concern flooding into his pretty green eyes. you let out a laugh and wiped your nose. you moved from him slightly, opting to grip one of his hands to keep yourself grounded.

“uh..you happened. i’ve been looking in every nook and cranny in this god forsaken country trying to find you.” you explained, sending him a melancholy smile. he studied you, pulling you to him and setting a soft kiss to your forehead.

“thank you. i’m sorry. i wish i could’ve been here.” he whispered, setting his forehead to yours. you closed your eyes, smiling softly.

“you’re here now.” you realized, letting out a breath that it felt like you had been holding for the past year. it felt like you had been suffocating all this time, and seeing him finally allowed you to breath properly again. you were basking in this feeling, inhaling the fresh oxygen that would only be provided by the presence of dean winchester.

you were trapped in your thoughts, that was until you heard a slight cough from behind dean, interrupting your moment.

“if you’re going to say something. don’t.” you demanded moving from dean, and seeing his younger brother sitting awkwardly on the bed behind him.

“listen-“ sam began, but you quickly cut him on, shaking your head as you moved further into his view.

“no sam. i don’t have to listen. you left. crowley told you that you were on your own and you just took his fucking word and ran with it. i was here. i was here the entire time and you just left ! so you don’t get to tell me to “listen.” not when i spent the last year destroying myself to find your brother, while you went off and got a fucking dog.” you spat, sam straightened up slightly, fidgeting with his hands. you were shaking uncontrollably, the prior moment of bliss was being overpowered by the rage and loneliness you had kept locked up throughout the last year.

“how do you…?” he asked, trailing off as he tried to gain the courage to meet your eyes again. you let out a cynical laugh, balling your hands into a tight fist.

“yeah. i looked for you. i was concerned. i needed to make sure you were okay. but you’ll never guess what i found. to my pleasant surprise i saw you playing house with a pretty brunette and friendly little dog. so you’ll have to give me a lot more than a sob story about how you couldn’t handle dean being gone for me to ever forgive you.” you said, moving closer to sam. he hadn’t ever seen you this way, so angry. he had to admit he was slightly unnerved and almost scared.

“because you know who else couldn’t handle it ? me. but i didn’t just lose dean, i lost you too. i called you daily for weeks, desperate for some kind of explanation. i was going out of my mind, alone in dingy motel rooms without the two people i needed most. and then, after a few months, i couldn’t even get your voicemail, just an automated voice telling me i was desperately trying to reach a disconnected number.” you were seething. you felt like every vessel pumping your blood was boiling, your raging heartbeat pounding in your ears, you thought you might pass out.

“so i don’t want to hear about how there was “a girl.” because there was a girl here the whole goddamn time. a girl who had been by your side for years. and you. still. left.” you continued, sam found himself staring at the floor, studying its pattern, because he couldn’t take the look of absolute betrayal that consumed your eyes.

“and guess what ? i didn’t get the fairytale year you had. because my person, the one i wanted to be with. the one i wanted to settle down and get a fucking dog with, was gone!” sam flinched at your tone. by the end of it, you found yourself screaming, throat feeling hoarse as you finally took a breath.

you calmed instantly as you felt deans hand reach for yours. you inhaled a deep breath and turned to him. not even realizing you had practically confessed to the years of pent of feelings you had for the man.

“y/n. i understand. really, i’m upset too. angry even. but let’s take a breather, yeah? you need a good meal, and an even better nap. why don’t we get out of here, give each other some space, regroup later?” dean suggested. you hadn’t noticed his watery eyes and unsteady voice. he was brought almost to tears at the state you were in, at what his absence had caused. you nodded slowly moving closer to him. sam slowly stood up.

“just call me when you guys are ready. y/n…i’m sorry. i really am.” he whispered, you didn’t turn around to look at him. you knew yourself well enough to know that those puppy dog eyes would make you feel insurmountable guilt, they always had. but you didn’t regret what you had said, it was the truth. and right now, you weren’t sure what could help you forgive your former best friend.

dean gave your hand a reassuring squeeze. he looked back to sam and sent him a sad smile as he led you out of the motel room.

he stopped and turned to you once the door clicked shut. he studied you, narrowing his eyes as you suddenly became incredibly fascinated with the small rock next to your left foot. you forgot what it felt like to have him watching you so intensely.

“where were you?” you whispered, finally meeting his gaze, relief washing over you instantly, he was here. he was real.

“uh…purgatory. guess standing to close to dick when he died gave me a one way ticket to his afterlife.” dean explained, you scoffed slightly, mentally punching yourself at the realization.

“fucking purgatory. of course. i should’ve figured that out. god.” you cursed yourself, how could you have been so stupid ? of course he was in fucking purgatory. dean picked up on the fact that you were internally blaming yourself for his disappearance and immediately took action.

“hey. hey.” he whispered, settings his hands on either side of your face, forcing you to look at him. he bent down to your level, a stern look on his face.

“do not, for one second, blame yourself. none of this was your fault, and you’ve done more than i could’ve ever anticipated. i know it was a hard, even excruciating year, but i’m here now. and i’m not going anywhere.” dean insisted, you studied the look in his eyes. it was one you hadn’t seen from him before, or maybe it had been so long that you just needed to re-educate yourself on his mannerisms.

“okay. thank you.” you whispered, setting one of your hands atop his. he scoffed slightly at you thanking him, when they should’ve all been thanking you.

“cmon, let’s get you something to eat sweetheart.” dean smiled, moving to your side, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and walking you towards the car. you nuzzled into his side, wrapping your arms instinctively around his waist.

“think i made sam cry.” you scoffed slightly, replaying the intense speech you shoved down sam’s throat.

“yeah well i’m thinking maybe he needed to hear it.” dean stated, you let out a sigh and nodded.

“and for the record, i would’ve really liked it. settling down and getting a dog with you. i wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anyone else.” dean declared, setting his lips to the top of your head, feeling him slightly smile into your hair. you’re smile grew, it felt like your heart was finally beating normally again. you dug your head further into his side in embarrassment.

“well i guess we’ll just have to make up for lost time.” you whispered, giving deans waist a reassuring squeeze.

“great plan, so we thinking doberman? golden retriever? maybe something small like a chihuahua or something?” dean joked, pulled you tighter into his chest with a laugh.

“shut up” you giggled, punching his chest playfully, sending him a big grin as he continued to chuckle. and since being back, dean felt okay again, at least for that moment. cause the two of you were together once again, and he had the ability to make you smile like that. he wanted to do it for the rest of his life.

#supernatural #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #supernatural x reader #supernatural imagine #pov #sam winchester #sam winchester x reader #dean winchester imagine #friends to lovers #supernatural fic #fanfic

354 notes · View notes

futureplayboibunnie · 7 months

Text

i rewatched the godfather and listened to the entirety of honeymoon by lana del rey so here’s another mafia Miguel O’Hara drabble

Objectively, there were so many things wrong in the lifestyle that was gifted to you, but you didn’t feel any kind of way about it. You weren’t the type to fill the silence with empty words.

In this line of business, talking could get you killed.

Your husband wasn’t a good man and he often treated you well. He was the most powerful out of all the 5 families that ruled the underworld and he so happened to have a liking to you. You did love him once, that space where your love for him filled is now blank, a white space etched with a question mark. You didn’t know how to feel about all of it since you were his best kept secret, his secret weapon.

He used you to gain intel on his enemies, being a woman was one thing but being as cunning as you was another. You’d go undercover for him, he’d create an alias, a new passport, a new birth cerificate, a new drivers liscense. Your husband was nothing but thorough. And he needed to be thorough when the O’Hara brothers showed up out of nowhere.

The O'Hara brothers were very successful hitmen, but their business ventures were quiet, they moved in brooding silence in an effort to not draw public attention. Gabriel was more about the tech and was often out of town. Miguel, on the other hand, was dark, moody, he was the brawn, the muscle, the one that had to make all the hard choices all his life.

He couldn’t make heads or tales of who they were and how they so quickly got accepted into all of this and how the 5 families didn’t notice them on their radar. You had never seen your husband this anxious when it came to them, so he needed you to scope.

You were his crown jewel, he knew you could handle yourself. So he created a new alias: you were his new suit tailor. It was supposed to be a two month operation but Miguel took longer than expected to try and get close to you. Probably because you forgot to take off your wedding ring and now you had to make that part of your story. A stupid mistake on your half and now you’re reaping the consequences.

But here you were now.

Waiting for him at dinner at the most regal restraunt you have ever been in, you felt a little intimidated that there were a few security gaurds looming over you slightly as you sat and waited. Jesus, they cleared the whole floor out just for the two of you.

This is the type of intel your husband wanted. Intimate.

Miguel saw you through the window before he walked in, there you were sitting so prettily, waiting for him. Pretty silk dress, showing off your legs with those heels that he was surprised you could even walk in.

You were married. He noticed the massive rock on your finger while you pressed down on the lapels of his suit when you first started

Miguel knew you were married and it took a lot of time to prented he cared about it, but he didn’t. Not one bit. He always wanted what he couldn’t have.

He watched as your eyes shot up to see his figure walking towards you, a twinge of nervousness struck at your chest and your fingers started twitching as you felt his gaze simmer into yours. He was wearing the all black suit you made him last week. The sight made your legs buckle but you immediately dismissed the action.

“Salir.” (Leave) Miguel waved his hand and dismissed the guards so that you could both be alone together, the thing he’s wanted to do since he first saw you but you were so…unreadable. So polite and nonchalant, it was galling.

He waited long enough for you, now he wanted to see what your mind held.

“I apologize for being late. Business as usual.” He said coolly as he pulled out his chair to sit down.

Oh? Business?

“Such as? Nothing too serious I hope.” Your replied simply, expertly not giving away that you were digging.

Miguel contemplated your purpose, you were sat there so graceful and poised, so…fucking polite. He almost hated it. “An arms deal, a few of my guns went missing.” He stated huskily, trying to get past this conversation.

You let out an appreciative hum, letting a beat of silence cover you as you retained that knowledge “My husband doesn’t like me playing with guns, we argue about it.” You find yourself explaining your real life issues before your brain could even check it. “I told him men have endless distractions…while we ladies only have shopping and tailoring.” You chuckly dryly, giving him a shy crooked half smile, playing into whatever role of femininity you needed: this time, traditionalist. You wanted to roll your eyes back into your skull. “At least it keeps me at home.”

Miguel couldn’t help but squint his eyes and keep himself locked on you. He thought you were so sweet…and definitely unhappy at home with your husband. He sat quietly for a moment, the tension already laying thick into the atmosphere.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything when I called today.”

“Oh…my husband’s away on a trip. So his friends came over to keep me company. More like keep an eye on me. Your call was the perfect excuse to leave.” You say whistfully, not giving too much away.

Fuck, that was just your knack. You never gave anything away, you were so….puzzling. Miguel traced his fingers over his lips as his stared at you.

Hm.

“Is that right?” He muttered but it definitely wasn’t a question.

“Mhm. It’s a beautiful night tonight, I didn’t want to be surrounded by men who don’t care but a glass of wine would be nice right about now.”

You and Miguel ate and talked into the night, the soft piano playing in the background only added to the tension Miguel could barely touch his food, all he could do was stare at you across the candlelit table, urging you, contemplating you. He hadn’t wanted a woman in so long, it was like you were placed in front of him by God himself.

You sipped at your wine as a slightly concerned and defeat look spread across your face. You told him that your husband is a broker with a fraying temper and you were surprised he believed you.

“He asked me about kids. A daughter. He’d always wanted a daughter.” Although you were playing into your character, you couldn’t stop yourself from telling him the issues that were plaguing you in your real life. You disguised it well but it just fell so naturally.

Miguel frowned when he heard the mention of children.

“And?” He tilted his head urging you to continue as he took a sip of his whiskey.

“Well,” You sighed. “With all due respect, she’d be his daughter. And that affords her a certain amount of protection I don’t enjoy.” You pursed your lips as the words strained heavily, seriousness etching at your features. “He’d never hurt a hair on her head. I can’t say the same thing for myself. I won’t leave her alone in the world with him.”

Now this really was getting intimate.

Miguel felt a surge of protectiveness wash over him, he really didn’t like the way you were describing the way he acts and talks to you. He would beat him bloody for the way he treats you. He shook the thought out of his head, he needed to get a grip.

“In my work, moral codes rarely exist but I have one. I don’t hurt women or children, they are absolutely off limits and my men know this and it’s one or the only rules I expect to be firmly stood by.” He said calmly, trying to calm his temper at what you just told him.

Now this is intel. The mental list was getting bigger and bigger.

You smiled shyly as you placed your elbows on the table, looking as whistful as ever. “I sometimes think I’d rather do things on my own. The things I like don’t interest him.” You hated the fact you were telling the truth.

Miguel watched you, his eyes scorching and heated yet cold and steely. A paradox of a man as he listened intently, his ears pricked up.

“What do you like?” His voice was as rich as blue velvet.

Your eyes shot up and blinked for a moment, stilling as you finally registered the words, Miguel felt you swallow thickly. “I like the movies.” You gave him a crooked smile. “He doesn’t go with me so I go by myself. He and his friends only talk business.” You chuckled lightly.

“I don’t like movies either.” Miguel replied gruffly as he downed the rest of his drink. The look on your face spread into contempt, he caught a glimpse of you under all that politeness. And then you snapped it back on like second instinct as you smiled.

“Mr O’Hara you’re too busy to go to the movies. Even this dinner took you about 3 months to schedule. Movies are for people who have far too much time on their hands.” You teased.

Damn.

Miguel just kept staring.

“No its not that….It’s too dark. I’m not a fan of too much darkness.”

Oh?

He doesn’t like the dark?

Your lips parted as a palpable silence settled between you, Miguel was eager to dismiss the situation.

“Would you like another drink?” He grabbed the wine bottle to top you up.

“To keep you company. Alcohol…” You tisked. “Such trivial things…” You muttered quitely.

“If you play close attention to it enough, nothing is too trivial.” Miguel was laser focused on you and all you could do was give him a blank and slightly rattled look.

It was making you feel….things. You can’t feel it, you’re not allowed to feel it.

Miguel watched you as you raised the glass to your lips and took a sip, his eyes travlled to the lipstick stain on the rim as you set it down.

Fuck. Blushed red, a little glossy.

You rotated your head around to still be surprised that no one was actually here.

“Cleared out huh?” You questioned knowingly.

“I value my privacy. And it’s a nice place to talk so no one disturbs us.” He replied back as sauve as ever and you hated the feeling swinging in your chest as they fell from his lips.

The gaze you shared felt like it could last a lifetime, you were both practically eyefucking each other, neither of you blinked until he spoke.

“Your husband works a great deal, eh?” Now he was the one that was prying.

“At what I have no idea. He won’t tell me. I’ve always said that having a man is fine as long as he’s far away from home, right?” You raised an eyebrow, a cunning look filled with hubris and quiet flirtation.

It was like you weren’t even trying to be this sensual.

Miguel’s lips parted as his mouth tugged upwards a little. “Your husband is a broker, yeah?” He wanted to know more about you, about your life.

“If you wanted to know more about him, I’ll bring him along next time. You men always have something to say to each other.”

Miguel hated the idea. Absolutely not. He stayed quiet

“But with women you just make small talk.” You breathed and it halted him in his tracks, the small smirk, the look in your eyes- he wanted what he couldn’t have.

The silences that surrounded you was beating with tension that you thought you once forgot.

You swallowed.

“Small talk like this to me….is a rare treat.”

The night went on. Talking. Slight flirting. An ache started to form between your legs and your cunning was also turning into a mix of that and attraction. Your fingers grazed your arm slowly, your lips were getting wettet and your eyelashes seemed to flutter as you watched Miguel talk.

“The men I work with are high ranking officials and lowlives. But they all have the same look in their eyes.”

Yes. This is exactly what you needed to hear.

“And what is that?” You reply simply.

“Fear.”

“Of course.”

“But you’re different, aren’t you? You’re not afraid.” Miguel couldn’t help but comment on you, in this business a woman as polite as you should be on the chopping block but no, there was something about you.

“How about you?” You shot back and as always you disarmed him immediately but he didn’t like to give anyone that sort of power.

No one can catch him off guard.

“You’re smart but not smart enough to know how to catch me out.” Miguel smiled wickedly as he reached for his pack of smokes and pulled out a tab.

Your lips parted as you scanned his face up and down as he put it inbetween his lips. He noticed your mindless yet intent gawk and raised his eyebrows, he took another one out and extended his arm out as his fingers brushed your skin. You stilled and blinked up at him dumbly as his thumb brushed your lips and opened your mouth wider for him to put the cigarette.

His touch was like liquid fire.

You finally caught it and then he took his lighter and lit his and yours up, watching the way your lipstick stained the butt. When you fingers held it, he caught a full view of your wedding ring, it was massive diamond rock held together by golden pearls. His face grew embittered by the sight, his frustration fanned into anger and now his sentiments remained the same.

He always wanted what he couldn’t have.

#spiderman 2099 #miguel ohara #miguel o’hara angst #miguel o’hara smut #atsv miguel #miguel o’hara #miguel o’hara fluff #miguel o’hara x reader #across the spiderverse #miguel o'hara

729 notes · View notes

visceravalentines · 2 months

Text

fever dream

Bo Sinclair x AFAB!Reader

7.6k words. dubcon ofc. reader is absolutely mentally bankrupt. stockholm is where we live, it's where we are, it's where we'll die. sporadic smut, pnv, fingering, and oral (fem!rec). blood and sweat everywhere. Bo calls reader a bitch a couple times but like, it's out of love or some shit. somno. alcohol use. nightmares. ghosts. swamp things. the ever-looming threat of death and depersonalization.

welcome back to my youtube channel. I have been. working on this fic. since May of last year. and it's finally done(?) it is long and weird and maybe bad and meant for you to get lost in. a journey with no destination. a haunted house only you are the haunted and the haunt and the house. tbqh I'm rewatching HoW today for the first time in months and months and I had to get this out of my drafts so I can check back into the sanitarium with minimal baggage, y'know?? I hope it makes you feel some type of way.

The summer heat is in your blood and the swamp is in your lungs and he is under your skin.

You’ve never known an August like this, like a blister. You go to bed sticky and wake up drenched in sweat. The ceiling fan is a hurricane agent that offers no respite, just blows the humidity in vicious cycles. There’s no air conditioning in the house; it’s too old. Instead you wrap ice cubes in dish towels and press them to the back of your neck.

A storm’s been hanging on the horizon for days. Thunder rolls out of a wall of iron gray, an idle threat. The air is soupy and super-charged. No rain comes.

The nights are delirium. You go to bed on opposite sides of the mattress, oil and water. He sleeps naked, sprawled out like a water skeeter. The quilt sits scrunched at the foot of the bed for the season and he kicks the sheets off around midnight like something forcing its way out of a soft-shelled egg.

You lie awake, listening to the cicadas and waiting. Just when you’ve started to cool down and drift off he reaches over and fumbles at your leg, grabs your arm. He pulls you on top of him, hands on your body beneath his old t-shirt. You ride him with your eyes closed and your breath hot on your lips. It’s a fever, the sweating, the shaking.

You wake every morning suffocating under his arm in the center of the mattress with honey between your thighs.

He drinks his coffee hot even though the steam can barely rise above the rim of the mug in the humidity. You pour yours over ice and savor the feeling as it seeps down your throat and into your stomach. You curl your toes on the linoleum and almost smile at him across the table. He’s golden from all his time in the sun. You can trace the lines of his wifebeater over his shoulders, across his chest. You stare at him across the table and think about the taste of his skin. You want to run your tongue along that tan line.

He catches you staring. “What?” he says flatly.

You redirect your gaze to your hands. Shake your head. Wait for him to move on so you can resume your perusal of his body.

When he looks away, out the window, the sun catches those eyes and turns them to sea glass. He needs a haircut; walnut curls crest over his ears like kudzu. When you get up to clear the table your skin peels from the vinyl seat cushion with a sting that makes you wrinkle your nose.

“Be good,” he tells you before he leaves. You wonder what he means, what he thinks you might get up to in this house full of dust and guns and ghosts. You know better than to ask, and you nod and kiss him goodbye and feel his lips on your lips for hours afterwards.

The day languishes. They all do. You kill a thousand flies. You mop the floor and track your own footprints across it before it dries. You hang his shirts on the clothesline in the side yard and feel like an insect trapped in the sap of time. You shave your legs in a cold bath and examine your skin: sunburn, bug bites, bite marks.

When he pulls into the driveway you’re on the front step eating a popsicle and counting the minutes. He saunters across the gravel like John Wayne, shoulders exposed, hair plastered to his neck. You meet his eyes and wrap your lips around the cherry-flavored mess dripping onto your fingers. He spits into the weeds and eyes you through his lashes.

“What’s for supper?”

You suck on your sticky thumb. There’s a full spread on the dining room table, ready and waiting. “Whatever you want.”

He licks his lips.

Supper gets cold.

He brings home a bag of saltwater taffy, all raspberry.

“Thought of you,” he says when he hands it to you. To your recollection, you have never mentioned taffy or raspberries or anything of the sort. You wonder who he thinks you are, whether he has you confused with someone else.

You sit on the porch steps and amass a pile of wax paper wrappers beside you. It’s soft and melty, peels out of the wrapper with a sticky crackling sound. It’s salty and sour and tastes like cheap sugar. Like a memory of summer that may be real, or maybe not. Could be yours, or could be someone else’s.

You eat more than you want, until your teeth hurt and you can feel the hot spot on your tongue where a canker sore will form. You rake that spot back and forth across your incisors. You can’t help it. Sometimes it feels like things have to have a hurt to them.

“You ever been to the fair?” you ask him over your shoulder.

He grunts from the porch swing. “Used to go when Vince ‘n me were little. Took Les a couple times when he was old enough.”

“You ever take a girl?”

“Nah.” His boot thumps on the porch, an offhand punctuation mark. “Couldn’t find one to go with me.”

You doubt that; you’ve seen his yearbook photos. But then again, maybe he was off-putting as a teenager. Spooky. Hadn’t quite learned how to camouflage yet. Came on too strong, wore too much cologne, used too many teeth.

You survey the vast swath of woods that surrounds Ambrose and try to imagine a ferris wheel, red and blue and blinking, rising from the green like the hump of a whale. “I’d go with you.”

He snorts. “Yeah?”

You look down at the piece of taffy in your fingers. You don’t really want it. You unwrap it anyway. “Yeah.” You gnaw on the candy like a dog savoring a scrap. “Be like a date,” you say thickly.

“What, you wanna skip down the midway holdin’ hands? Makin’ out in the Tunnel of Love?”

You can picture it, sunset and a sundress. He’s laughing. You’re laughing. The crowd is made of wax. “You could win me a stuffed animal.”

He scoffs again, but then he asks you, “What kinda stuffed animal you want?”

You think for a second, unstick the taffy from your molars and push it around your mouth with your tongue. “A Louisiana crocodile.” A souvenir from your time in the South. Maybe it’ll be wearing a little trucker hat and a smile that doesn’t reach its eyes.

“Ain’t got crocodiles here, sugar. ‘S all alligators.”

“Fine, an alligator then.”

You run your hands over your shins, sticky with the humidity. The chains of the porch swing creak rhythmically behind you. The sea of trees is dark and still and endless.

“Fair don’t come ‘round here anymore,” he says finally.

You force the taffy down your throat, swallow hard, and reach for another one.

“Figures.”

You’re buzzed and reckless, sucked down a pair of beers too fast just because they were frosty. The shears snick like some needy, nipping thing. You found them upstairs under the bathroom sink once upon a time and you always put them back when you’re done. They’ve been there longer than you’ve been alive. You comb your fingers across his scalp and loose locks drift onto your clean floor.

“Don’t take it too short,” he admonishes into the mouth of his beer bottle. “You butcher me, I butcher you.”

You roll your eyes behind his back. “Have I ever?”

He grunts in acquiescence. That’s as close to a win as you’ll get.

The windows are open; the thunder presses against the frayed screens. A gigantic moth flings its feathery body repeatedly at the ceiling light. You run your hand through his hair slow just to feel it between your fingers, thick and soft. Your thumb glances off the scar on the left side of his skull and comes back for another pass.

He jerks his head, puts a stop to that. “You done?”

“Almost.”

You’re particularly fond of the curls at the nape of his neck, always save them for last. You coil one around your finger. You want to ask him if you can keep it, but you’re afraid he’ll say no or worse, that he’ll say yes. He’ll ask for something in return. You’ll give it to him, no matter what it is. You give him anything he wants, everything he wants. It’s the least you can do, the most you can do.

You snip them one by one, bittersweet.

“Done.”

He leans over in the chair to examine his reflection in the window. “Good enough.”

He stands up and drains the dregs of his beer. His hand finds your waist and he pulls you in and you bend like a reed, peering up at him, inspecting your work. He smells like sweat and sun. You grip his shirt in your fists and move with him as he sways lazily side-to-side.

He gives you the gift of a smile, half-cocked and handsome. “You wanna dance, mama?”

Your fingers spider-creep up the shield of his chest and lock behind his neck. His skin is hot and sticky against your wrists, clipped hairs poking and itching. Your hips bump against his like a car on a back road, lost, no cell service. You wish there was music playing.

He tilts his head towards you and you get caught in the trap of his mouth. The thunder moans. You can feel the sweat beading on your upper lip, in the pit of your elbows. His hands are heavy on your bones.

His jaw scrapes along your temple like a razor blade and a fever chill rolls over your skin, hot-cold. “G’on upstairs, get those clothes off.”

Have you always been such a good listener?

He comes home drunk and fucks you on the table, in the midst of supper left cold and waiting for him. You knew he’d be hungry. You are right about some things and wrong about others.

You wince every time a dish topples off the table and shatters on the faded linoleum. He doesn't look at you, not once.

Afterwards, he disappears for a while and leaves you to clean up the kitchen. You are dazed, legs unsteady, leaning on the counter like an old friend. It’s been a bad day. Dinner has soaked through the back of your shirt and so you take it off, hang it over the back of a chair for later, and set to work on the mess.

You cannot puzzle out how he managed to get blood on every dish you are trying to wash until finally you realize it is yours, seeping quietly from a slice on your palm. When he comes up behind you your spine stiffens, arching like a snake making a final stand. He puts his hands on your bare waist and his lips against the back of your head like a sweetheart, like a husband, like a different person.

“Leave it, darlin’. Come sit on the porch with me.”

You bite your lip, lift your palm so he can see it, watch the world blur with saline. “I cut myself,” you say, and only then does the sting set in, so sharp you can feel it in your teeth.

He makes a sympathetic noise and cups your hand in his. “Now why’d y’go and do that?”

You open your mouth to answer but only a moan comes out as he lifts your arm and seals his lips over the cut. He sucks, gently at first and then harder, hard enough you feel the seam of skin separate and your fingers jerk like puppets to the pain. He lets you go and you cradle your hand to your chest as he laps your blood off his lip.

“You’ll be fine,” he says, takes your arm, tugs you from the sink. “C’mon. I need a smoke.”

You follow him onto the porch, curl up in his lap with a dishrag pressed to your palm and watch smoke and moths float around the light.

Your blood dries on the dishes with the gravy.

The clouds boom a reminder that they are still hanging above the house, but you are already awake in the split second beforehand. You are cocooned in the sheets and panic for a moment, arms pinned to your chest, bedroom black as a coffin. When you claw free, gasping, the air is like moss draped spongey and damp across your face.

You worm out of the bed, out of the room, stagger into the hallway and down the stairs in the dark. You are mere steps ahead of some emaciated beast, its breath muggy on your cheeks and the back of your neck. You twist your shirt off and throw it on the floor of the den before it can strangle you, wrench the front door open and slam through the screen with both hands.

The night is wet in your nose. One hundred million insects scream to God. In the back of your mind you think about joining them. Your toes scuff to a stop on the precipice of the porch and you peer into the darkness with round eyes, bare chest heaving for more air than you can hold. You are drowning here, surrounded by trees, surrounded by more green than you ever knew existed in the world.

Somewhere out there, someone is mourning you. You can feel it tonight, crackling in the ozone like the storm that won’t break.

You wrap your arms around yourself and sink to the ground, sit perched on the top stair in your panties and sweat-drenched skin. The nail of your index finger rips apart the cuticle of your thumb. Mosquitos float open-armed to your legs like swamp angels. It’s too hot to cry.

The yellow porchlight struggles to life. The screen door bangs flatly behind you. He can’t ever pick up his feet, scuffing through the dust you haven’t swept.

His fingers brush the bone of your shoulder. You don’t flinch nowadays, usually. “Y’alright?”

You don’t have to answer that. Let him wrap his hand around your throat and fishhook his fingers into your mouth to pull your jaw open, you don’t have to answer that. You grit your teeth and dig crescent moons into your thighs with all ten fingernails.

Your silence doesn’t bother him. He leans on the railing to your left, curling his toes on the concrete, looking out into the night. Sleep has mussed his hair to one side and left imprints of the sheet fanning across his chest. There’s a hickey in the shape of your mouth in the curve of his neck. Lightning flutters shy among the clouds and the thunder reprimands it. There’s something stuck in your throat, something you can’t swallow down no matter how hard you try. Moths flock to the porchlight. If anyone was alive in the town to look up the hill, they’d see you haloed, and him too.

“‘S late. Come back to bed.”

You can’t remember your home address. You can picture the house, the sidewalk in front of it, cracks in the driveway. The rest is like a dream. The house behind you doesn’t have an address. No number, no mailbox. You can feel it sucking at the base of your spine like a leech, coaxing you in, tipping you backwards all wrong like a gravity hill. You feel eyes on you, all the time, no matter what room you’re in.

“You listenin’ to me? Let’s go.”

You can’t go back inside. You can’t go back inside. Something in you doesn’t line up right. Someone is holding a pillow over your face.

“No,” you think you say out loud. The word flutters off into the night. You watch a mosquito drift beyond the reach of the porchlight and disappear. The stars bow gracefully into the arms of the clouds.

After a beat, he shuffles out of your periphery. The screen door slams. Maybe this time. When you least expect it. Maybe he's sick of you at last. You pick at a scab on your knee until it comes loose and flakes off, and then you pinch the skin around the wound and squeeze until a bead of blood, scarlet-black, mounds and breaks and gets all over your fingers. You raise them to your mouth and suck them clean and it tastes familiar. Safe.

He doesn’t come back with a knife, or a gun. He comes back with the quilt and sheet from the bed, a pillow stuffed under his arm. He unfurls the quilt on the porch. The pillow flops to the ground like something hunted to extinction. He follows suit.

“C’mere.” He wrestles with the sheet, props himself up on an elbow and punches the pillow into place. “C’mon.”

You breathe, just for a minute, watching him. You want to hate him so bad it hurts. You want him to hit you so you’d have a reason to hit back. You want to fight for your life because you can feel it slipping away, waning, evaporating in the heat. Already you’ve found shreds of yourself under the couch, covered in dust. You are drowning. You are thirsty. He is water, cold and brackish.

You rise from the stairs and come to him because you need him, because he is all you have.

“Get the light,” he says.

You go and come back and his hand finds your calf in the dark, slides up the back of your knee, guides you to the ground. The quilt is a mockery of softness, the porch unyielding beneath. You curl up with him at your back and he folds his arm around you, thumb worrying aimlessly at your nipple. His breath is hot on the nape of your neck.

The air roils in your lungs. The night surges in. You are alone, so alone, aching with loneliness, now and always. You close your fingers around his wrist and guide his hand between your legs. He rubs the cotton of your panties with something like pity and you let a moan seep from your throat.

Your face lolls into the pillow and it smells like fever dreams and cold-sweat nightmares. The fabric of your underwear catches on your clit and you gasp, arching against his chest.

“Easy,” he murmurs as his fingers drag back and forth. He hooks his foot around your ankle, forces your legs open. You asked for this. You’ll take it and thank him.

Lightning silhouettes the world beyond the porch in black and purple. When you close your eyes, you see the rooftops of the town in the colors of heaven. You rock against his hand and pretend you’re someone else somewhere else. You feel the thunder in your teeth and wish with all your heart the rain would fall.

He puts an abrupt end to the friction and cups you in his palm, wide and warm. You make a plaintive sound and wiggle your hips, push your ass against him. You need to feel something. You need him to help you. Otherwise, you might disappear beneath the horrible blanket of the night.

“Please,” you moan.

He presses his lips to the back of your neck, whispers into the shell of your ear like a lover. “You love me?”

You squeeze your eyes shut. “Yes.”

His teeth graze your skin as he slips his fingers past the waistband of your panties.

“Good.”

You wonder if he knows he keeps saving your life.

The house is a midden of family misery. There’s barely space for you between heaps of clothing and glassware and mass market paperbacks. You live sideways amid the boxes and bottles and beer cans. He refuses to let you throw anything away. No matter how much you sweep and dust and tidy, the clutter seems to crawl right back across the carpet like morning glory.

Late morning finds you in the master bedroom. It’s sweltering up here. The air sticks to your face like tattered gauze. The junk in here is of a particular breed, more meaningful—photo albums, baby clothes. Much of it has been stacked high just inside the door like a battlement. A fortification between this room and the rest of the house. You’re not allowed in here.

Neither is he.

Beyond the wall, everything sits untouched. A layer of dust rests primly on the bedside tables, the vanity, the yellow quilt still neatly made up on the bed. The art on the wall is sun-bleached in evenly spaced lines from the half-open blinds. The silence crowds your ears. It feels like standing in a tomb, the family crypt.

With courage paper-thin, you've decided you'd like to confront the heart of the horror. Like shoving your fingers down the throat of the beast trying to bite you. Like making a home in its mouth, a bed in its bed. You want to eat me so bad, you’ll have to savor every scrap.

It’s eerie in here. This room is brighter than the rest of the house by far. You can feel that parasitic presence all around you, cajoling you with hands that are soft and dry. There is a faint, floating smell of faded flowers. You breathe slowly to keep yourself from sprinting back downstairs.

You gaze at yourself in the vanity mirror. The dust almost erases you from sight, almost. You reach a finger out and draw a single streak across the silvery surface. You’re in there, somewhere. Sometimes you forget.

The front of the vanity holds a trio of slim drawers with tiny gold handles. You catch one with the tips of your fingers and tug, just slightly. It creeps open without resistance. The inside is lined with green velvet. You pull it open all the way and search through the contents with your eyes. Blush, lipstick. Eyeshadow in seven shades of blue. You slide the drawer closed and move on to the next one, the widest one in the middle.

This one holds a treasure trove of golden baubles: a jumble of earrings, half a dozen hairpins, a long, thin cigarette holder. A string of pearls that look too chipped and dull to be real. And a locket, oval-shaped and decorated with a halo of tiny vines. You pick it up and the chain slips over your fingers like a thin, shining snake.

You dig your nail into the seam and pop it open. To your muted disappointment, it is empty. No husband. No children.

It’s yours, you decide suddenly. You want it. You've earned it. A prize, a consolation for the hell you’ve been through. For the fact that you have survived him, and she has not. You wonder if he’ll recognize it. Part of you hopes that he does. You imagine the look on his face and his hands on you afterwards. Your mouth is wet.

This might be her house, will always be her house. But you do not belong to her. You have been spoken for again and again, and perhaps you should thank him for that.

In the daylight you remember that you aren’t scared of ghosts, and that you have nothing left to give. Plenty of dead women have laid claim to you already. This one cannot have you, and for that matter, she can’t have him either.

You hear the rumble of his truck out front and the thrill of fear that shoots down your spine is so cold it’s almost welcome in the stuffy room. You shove the locket into the pocket of your shorts and fling the drawer shut. It closes with a soft, complicit thunk.

You pick your way back through the boxes and slip through the door like a reptile into water; smooth, silent. You make sure it latches behind you before you hurry to the top of the stairs.

Out of the corner of your eye, just before you dip out of sight below the banister, you see something bend the light that reaches through the crack beneath the door. You freeze, turn your head only slightly. You see nothing. Only sunlight. Certainly no feet, dainty and bare, padding across the carpet with red-lacquered toenails.

Panic, delayed, breaks loose. You gallop down the stairs so quickly you forget to skip the ones that creak.

By the time he comes inside, slamming the door fit to shake the frame of the house, you are hunched over the dishes in the sink like you’ve been there all morning. If you are unduly quiet, he doesn’t seem to notice, and if he notices, he doesn’t seem to care.

“I think I love you.”

You say it half-casual, half-pronouncement, the way you might tell your mom you’re dropping out of college. Tell your boyfriend you’re over him. Tell your boss you’re moving to Louisiana. “I mean it this time.”

Bo snorts, lifts his beer to his lips. “That so?”

You shoo a bee from the rim of your glass and suck down the last of your drink. You just might be drunk. “Yup.”

“Think that’s the bourbon talkin’.”

You roll your eyes, shimmy a little in an effort to make the busted lawn chair more comfortable. You thought he’d be more excited. “Why don’t you ever believe me?”

He smacks his lips like he’s considering his answer. The sunlight shifts through the trees and you close your eyes, blissful. “Lemme ask you this. You ever set a snare, baby?”

You can feel it in your blood: the sun, the breeze, the brook bubbling over your toes. It’s not so bad, you think. Sometimes. It’s not so bad.

“Hey.” He leans over in his chair and snaps his fingers, splintering your peace. “I asked you a question.”

“Nah. Never set a snare. Some of us were normal kids.”

He ignores this and you feel like you’ve gotten away with something. “Well, sometimes you catch a critter, but it don’t strangle to death like it’s s’posed to.”

You frown.

“So you gotta do somethin’ about it, right? But you gotta be real careful. Can’t get caught up by the sufferin’. Gotta keep your head about you, y’know?” He’s not looking at you, but you can picture his lips, twisted in something like a smile. “‘Cause it don’t matter what it is…raccoon, possum, bunny rabbit…that sucker’ll take your hand off if y’let it.”

Your throat is sensitive all of the sudden, feels closed off. Maybe you swallowed a bee. “What are you even talking about?”

His head lolls lazy to the left and he stares at you for a second in a way that makes your hair stand on end. Then he chuckles, winks at you, turns away and leans back in his chair.

“Nothin’, sugar. You’re awful cute.”

The heat wreaks havoc on the lifeless inhabitants of the town. You trail behind him like a listless kite as he makes the rounds, checking for damage, hauling the worst afflicted home to Vincent. It baffles you how much he seems to care about them. How much investment he has in keeping the rot contained beneath a pristine cosmetic veneer. For what? For who?

You don’t tell him it’s all rot, all of it, the people, the buildings. The trees. The air. Him. You.

Some days, most days, you can’t quite look them in their faces. It’s guilt, you suppose. Guilt and acknowledgement of a fear so pervasive you no longer notice the way it clings like a second skin. You’ve convinced yourself if you meet their eyes you’ll find them glaring at you, envious and accusatory. Or worse–you’ll see the future, suspended in the flat, glass pupils of a dead game animal.

Occasionally you punish yourself by looking too closely. You note the receding hairlines, where the skin beneath the wax has dried and pulled taut and shifted the scalp along with it. You observe the way the light shines through plump round fingertips that are only hollow shells of wax, all that soft flesh desiccated and shriveled to a skeletal wedge underneath. You wonder, sometimes, whether Vincent smoothed over any flaws–scars, moles, asymmetrical lips. You touch your face subconsciously and think about the things he might fix for you.

It makes you feel like you are tiptoeing on the precipice of sanity, arms wide, just waiting to topple.

You take a particular interest in their clothing, wonder whether it belonged to them or to someone from the town. You never ask Bo, although you know he could tell you. You ignore the obvious parallels like a badly stitched seam. None of the clothes you wear belong to you either.

There are more residents than you ever imagined, half the houses not as empty as you assumed. Ten years, three brothers, three hundred and forty-nine holes to fill. You were decent at math in a past life, but nowadays, you try your hardest not to solve problems, no matter how they howl and scratch at the door. You’ve become adept at avoidance of the obvious in favor of learning how to assimilate into the cobwebs and shadows. No one can kill you if you’re already dead. You believe that so hard sometimes you can’t see your own reflection.

You believe it so hard that when you find it, on a girl in a house on a street you’ve only been down once or twice, you can’t make sense of it for several long seconds, staring dumbstruck and stupid while the static subsumes your brain.

“Let’s go,” he barks from the sitting room. The couches are pink and floral and faded.

You cannot move. You are made of wax.

“You deaf? Come on.”

She’s wearing cutoff jeans and the t-shirt you bought on a trip two years ago, or maybe three. There’s blood, brown and faded from half-hearted washing, streaking the collar and left sleeve.

Her hair is lighter than yours, and shorter. Her feet are smaller. Her nose is bigger. But the shirt is yours, and so is the blood, and for a second, you know you are a ghost.

“Hey.” He grabs your arm and turns you around. You think maybe she’ll move, now that you’re not looking. “You got a problem?”

You cannot answer him, because you do not have a voice. Because your lips have been glued together and painted the perfect pink. His gaze flicks from you to the girl and back and you wonder if he kissed her the way he kisses you. You hope he can see it, the way you are withering under the wax. You hope he will pick you up, cradle you in his arms, take you home and take care of you, make you whole, make you human.

Isn’t that all you’ve ever asked for?

He snaps his fingers in front of your face and you flinch, because you are real after all.

“Let’s go.”

You let him push you towards the door, hear him close it behind you, feel the floorboards shiver as he follows you down the hall. He puts his hand on the small of your back and ushers you out of the house, down the sidewalk cracked and stuffed with weeds keeling over in the heat. You can feel your feet melting to the concrete, skin crawling, sagging. You try not to stumble. You don’t want him to leave you behind.

“She ain’t you,” he mutters at the end of the street, so low you barely hear him over the buzz of the cicadas.

You aren’t sure if he’s lying, now or ever. You don’t ask him where her clothes are and he doesn’t offer. She might not be you, but you might be her. And you both might be someone else.

Either way, the shape of her is burned into your vision in blue and green, and she shakes her head at you when you close your eyes.

You wake to the sound of rain on the roof and it pulls you immediately from bed, stumbling sightless over your feet to get to the window. You yank on the mangled cord to raise the blinds and sure enough, the dust of summer is melting down the window in waves.

“Bo,” you say hoarsely. “Bo, look.”

It is then that the silence of the room seeps into your brain, the conspicuous lack of snoring. Your heart sinks into your wringing stomach.

In a perfect world, he’d be taking a leak. He’d stumble back to bed and wrap you in his arms, press a kiss to your temple, and you’d drift back to sleep in the bliss of air conditioning.

Your world is a few dirt road miles south of perfect.

You have to go find him. Find him and haul him out of whatever dark place he’s waded into, before he comes back worse than he went in.

The hall is a throat you have to fight against to get to the stairs, black and humid with walls that breathe. You feel cobwebs on your face and slap them away only to realize it’s your own hair caught on your lashes. The glow of the TV laps at the bottom step like floodwater, makes the carpet undulate like something just sank below the surface. You hesitate, for just a second, before you step down and feel solid ground beneath your feet.

He sits slouched on the couch in front of a screen full of static, deadeyed, jaw clenched. He doesn’t seem to notice you, quiet, creeping thing that you are. The static sounds like rushing water. Mangroves rise from the shadows in the corner of your eye. Lilypads part around your feet. If you turn your head just right, his eyes flash red in the light.

You stop halfway between the stairs and the couch, unsure what kind of animal you’re approaching. Your hands float up like a shield, like a bridge. “Bo,” you say softly, and it echoes in the night. “Are you okay?”

He blinks, like a person. You notice a bite mark, a purple half moon in the meat of his forearm. Your skin is well acquainted with the shape of his teeth.

“Bo,” you whisper. You don’t want to get closer. “Come back to bed.”

You hear a splash in the kitchen. The carpet squishes between your toes. Something brushes your ankle and wriggles away. You need to get out of here. You can’t leave without him.

“Baby…please.” You step towards him and freeze as he lurches forward, sits up straight. His hands dangle between his knees, his gaze still locked on the fuzz of the television.

“I killed my mama, y’know.”

His voice is pitched, low and dull. A sheen of sweat glistens on his upper lip and cheekbones. The color is gone from his face and here, in this place, he looks almost green.

You fight to form breath into words. “I…I know.”

He’s speaking again as though he didn’t hear you. You can see in his eyes he is far, far away. “I watched her die. Took a real long time. But I stayed…waited. Had to make sure.”

The water is rising, cold and slick, over your ankles and up your calves. Panic rises with it, packs into your throat like silt. “You were real brave, baby. You did it. You made sure.” Your voice is thin as a reed.

A terrible, empty grin cracks his face and then vanishes without a ripple, and now he looks at you for the first time and his eyes are hollow and blue as marbles and he whispers, “Then why ain’t she dead?”

The water surges to your knees like it’s been displaced by something large, something prowling. You teeter forward, heart hammering, splashing as you regain your balance. Too loud, too loud. Do alligators eat each other?

“She’s dead, Bo. She is.”

“Don’t lie to me, bitch!” He rises to his feet so fast you lose your balance again, flinching back from him. “She ain’t and you know it. You’ve seen her, she’s here! In this fuckin’ house!”

You shake your head quickly and in your periphery something ducks beneath the surface of the water. “No. She’s not.” Convince him, convince yourself, make it true.

His chest is heaving, his gaze darting around the room, searching. You can picture a shadow in shadow, curled up and waiting in the corner of the ceiling like a fat black spider, fingers splayed wide and tipped sharp and red.

Bo grips the back of his head and moans and it echoes off the trees, too loud, too loud. “Fuckin’...everywhere.”

Faded flowers. Blush, lipstick. A trick of the light. A locket wrapped in vines. Something hunting, just below the surface. If you let it rip him apart, would it come for you next?

“She’s everywhere…in my goddamn head….” He sways on his feet like he might fall and if he does, if the swamp swallows him, you’ll die here in this place.

“Hey.” You close the distance, push through the muck, brush his elbow. “Hey!”

He smacks you away, snaps his jaws closed. “Don’t touch me!”

You cringe and the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Something groans in the dark. Something moves near the ceiling.

His eyes on you are predatory, cold and empty, and his brow furrows. “Who are you?” he demands.

Wide-eyed, you open your mouth to answer him, but there is nothing on your tongue but moss. “I don’t…I don’t know.”

He leans toward you. “Who the fuck are you?”

You hold your hands up in front of you, backing away, mud between your toes. Your fingers are skeletal. Your nails are painted red. “I don’t know!”

A terribly low, vibrating sound is rising from the water, sending ripples in all directions, freezing your heart in your chest. He moves towards you and the swamp parts around him, allows him to pass like he is a part of it.

“You ain’t leavin’, baby.”

His teeth are sharp.

He lunges.

You scream.

The sound gets caught in your throat like a wad of feathers and bones and you choke, twisting, coming to in your bed. In his bed. Disoriented, you gasp for breath and release the death grip you have on the sheet. Your brow is so sweat-soaked your eyes are beginning to sting. The air is dry on your skin; the blanket is gone. The lower half of your body is tingling.

His head lifts from between your thighs and he looks at you with eyebrows raised. “Easy, sugar. Ain’t done with you yet.”

“Wh…what?” You rub at your eyes, trying to shake the sensation of water closing over your face. Somewhere, some version of you is bleeding in the silt.

His tongue makes another pass and you whimper, arms shaking with the effort of holding yourself up, of treading water, of fighting the maw of a monster. “Relax, baby. Go back to sleep.”

It’s all so insurmountable, the weight of it on your chest, and you sink back into the mattress without a ripple. His mouth is wet and warm. His dark hair is disheveled and you wonder absently if he misses it, that lock you stole. The room is silent save for the sound of your drowning.

“Is it raining?” you whisper, and hate yourself for the hope behind it.

He pauses, meets your gaze over the watery surface of your body. All you can see are his eyes and you could swear, for a second, they reflect neon red. “No.”

You let your head drop back onto the pillow, let him devour you, feel a tear slip over the brim of your lashes and disappear into your hair.

The storm breaks on a Wednesday.

At first, you don’t register the rain on the roof. You don’t even take note of the thunder anymore, after weeks of torment. It’s become a fixture like the dust, like the pervasive smell of decay.

It starts slow, cautious, rolling into town like a tourist with a busted GPS. You mistake the patter for the familiar buzz of TV static even though that makes no sense, even though you’re the only one in the house, even though the TV is off in the next room. All you can hear is the rough swish of the scrub brush on the hardwood floor, coaxing flecks of blood from the gaps between the boards. It’s already beginning to reek in the heat.

You wanted to clean it up last night when it was fresh but he wouldn’t let you, strongarmed you up the stairs and pinned you to the mattress. You’d never admit it to him, to God, or to yourself—and really, is there a difference in Ambrose—but he fucks so good when he’s riled up like that, when it feels like he can’t get enough of the killing so he’s going to take it out on you, take everything you have to offer him plus a little bit more.

The cut on your palm is half-healed and hurts when you put your weight on it. There’s something about that—familiar, comfortable, not grounding, not really, but like static. Stable. Buoyant. Like the bruises on your knees. A constant that cradles you and takes you up and out of here, not too high, just above the trees.

A stair creaks behind you and you freeze like a hare in the shadow of a hawk. It could be Vincent, but he’s busy with last night’s batch. It’s not Bo.

You ease yourself up onto your knees, rock back, stand up, and creep to the foot of the stairs. They are empty. You are alone with the sense that someone has just disappeared out of sight, retreating up into the aching cranium of the house, skirt swishing.

You are never alone, not really.

It’s only then that the sound of the rain seeps into your brain, soothes the hair standing up on the back of your neck. A weight you have been holding on your shoulders since the end of July dissolves like sugar and your spine lengthens by inches. You drop the brush, forget the ghost, walk barefoot through the bloodstain on your way to fling open the front door.

It rains.

It rains even though the clouds are thin, the sun forcing its way through in places like it just can’t bear to admit defeat. It rains and pools in the potholes of the driveway that have been waiting open-mouthed to be filled. It rains and the grass and weeds release a sigh of bliss, stop begging for mercy.

You step down from the porch in a trance, palms up and open, trailing pink-tinged footprints that melt across the concrete like raspberry taffy. You walk across the lawn, scuff your feet in the grass, wonder if maybe you’re dreaming and decide you don’t care.

You sink to the ground, sprawl on your back, feel the damp soak into your clothes and your skin and it makes you whole, makes you new, makes its apologies for taking so long. You are floating, only eyes above the water, surrounded by salvinia and duckweed.

You hear his footsteps just before he calls to you. “The fuck you doin’, girl?” he shouts, but when you open your eyes, he’s losing a fight with a grin, picking his way up the slippery hill.

You sit up halfway. “It’s raining.”

“Y’don’t say.” He drops to his knees beside you, slumped with relief.

His wifebeater is splattered with blood and water but you grab it with both fists and pull him to you, catch his mouth and coax him to the ground.

“Crazy bitch,” he mutters, but he guides your hands to his belt and grips your ass with both hands as you fuss with the buckle, even rolls onto his back to ease your way and lifts his hips so you can tug down his jeans. “Right here, huh?”

“Yes.”

“In the front goddamn yard.”

“Yes!”

“It’s fuckin’ rainin’!”

“I know!”

He laughs and the heavens giftwrap it with a roll of thunder. You're giddy, beaming at him, and he traces your smile with the pad of his finger and something akin to admiration.

You're brand-new, him too, and both of you together. Like it's the first time, a better first, another universe. His hands are on your thighs and his shirt rides up above his stomach. Water drips off your nose and onto his lips and he licks it off like it might save him and maybe it just might. Maybe it’ll save you both.

Exhausted, exalted, you wash the sweat and grime off each other with filthy hands and thirsty mouths. You wrap your fingers around his bare shoulders and ride him with your eyes open and your breath hot on your lips. It’s a fever breaking, the panting, the shaking.

The locket taps against your chest, the lock of his hair tucked inside it. He cups your face, slips his thumb in your mouth, and there’s blood beneath his fingernail. You suck it clean with greed and obedience, savor it, turn your face to the sky and let the crocodile tears run down your cheeks.

“That’s my girl,” he growls, and you bask in the rare and wondrous glow of his approval.

You come apart in splashes like raindrops, small, staccato swells in your core while he kisses the rain off your skin. His hands find the bruises they’ve left on your hips and squeeze and it’s all you could ever ask for, to be held. To be hurt. To be his.

Maybe it’s not so bad, you think. Sometimes. It’s not so bad.

“Y'know, girl, maybe you're right,” he says. "Just this once."

You’re confused until you realize you’ve spoken out loud. You look down at him, cold skin, wet curls, a smudge on his jaw that could be mud or blood, his or yours or someone else’s. He looks back like he sees you.

“You love me?” you ask him before you can think better of it. Before the rain stops.

The corner of his mouth twitches. His gaze slides past you, goes somewhere else, above the sea of trees. The sky is in his eyes. “Sometimes.”

You don’t smile, don’t sigh, just push the hair off his brow and sink slow and gentle beneath the surface and into the green, not a ripple made in your wake.

“Good.”

#this really truly took it out of me #vignette-style writing like this is SO HARD for me idk why #but i wanted so many moments of normal life in hell and i wanted them all #he's probably so ooc god but it's fine it's fine #we're so back #bo sinclair #bo sinclair fanfiction #bo sinclair x reader #slasher x reader #house of wax fanfiction

351 notes · View notes

lovely-keii · 3 months

Text

being their sibling

characters: tsukishima kei, oikawa tooru, suna rintarou

a/n: i write a fic every time i rewatch hq LOL sorry ik i said im abandoning this blog buuuut…happy bday to this blog!! (repost from 1/5 because tags broke :(( )

part 1

TSUKISHIMA KEI

looks out for you, but he can’t help that hes so emotionally constipated :’( he tries to give you advice because he genuinely is concerned for you but just is unable to word anything properly. see: “you need to stop talking to that person, you’re being a pushover,” but he just wants you to realize you’re letting people walk all over you.

god forbid he has to comfort you because hes the wrong brother for that - you’re definitely in better hands with akiteru. he might walk in on you crying and contemplate if he’ll even say anything or just ignore it flat out, or he’ll say something like “don’t cry, you look stupid.” if you cry more, he’ll end up swallowing his pride and sitting next to you. he’ll groan and reluctantly, “fine, spill it.”

other than that, he’s going to be a sneaky little prick. definitely the type to take revenge on you if you annoy him. you eat the last piece of chocolate he was saving and suddenly you find your charger hidden deep under your bed. also loves to take things without your permission. “why? i’m just using it, it’s not like you need it now.”

if someone picks a fight with you, he’ll be quick to extract you from the situation before saying something ruder and harsher than usual to the person. and if you tell him you like someone from his team, he’s going to look at you like you’re crazy. “are you insane?!” he’s honestly more bewildered than upset. doesn’t let you anywhere near the gym. he can make an exception for yamaguchi though. “at least it’s not hinata…or worse, kageyama.”

OIKAWA TOORU

your life is never boring with this guy as your brother. you’re literally being dragged everywhere, practices, shopping, team events… you’re like “i’m not even part of the team.” he goes “we can fix that!” and the next day you find out that you’re the manager for the boys’ volleyball team. huh, wonder how that happened.

oh my god, he MILKS you being his manager. “hold my drink, my fans are calling.” “y/n get my towel please.” you’re absolutely seething at the power trip that this guy is on. eventually, you start doing all that for his other team members and not for him, and he gets so whiney. “y/n you’ll get big ugly iwaizumi a towel but not your own sweet brother?!” that earns him a spike to the head from iwaizumi.

he tells you all the gossip about the school, because believe me, he knows A LOT of things. he’ll do his skin care while he forces you to listen to his gossip, cue him getting mad if you try to leave. everyone realizes why you two are siblings when you two walk down the halls and pull the exact same faces at the people he’s told you about in his gossip.

he makes you his little scapegoat for his fangirls. “oh, you want my number? you’ll have to ask y/n for that, they keep my phone with them during practice!” (you dont) “now, why don’t you girls hand all these gifts to my lovely sibling for me?” (you almost immediately chuck them at his face when you see him) but you know the best way to get back at him? when he sees you even slightly conversing with ushijima or kageyama, all hell breaks loose.

SUNA RINTAROU

the devil if the devil was your brother. he takes the ugliest pictures of you, when you’re asleep, when you’re yelling, when you’re crying over a movie. he also loves to send you pictures of animals and send a “look at you in this picture, so cute”. he also takes your things without asking and never returns it, you’ll just find it in his bag one day.

he also is one to order you around, and it drives you mad. “pass me the remote, y/n.” “but it’s nearer to you.” “i’ll tell mom that you-” // “y/n get me a drink from the vending machine.” “why would i do that” “remember when you snuck out and i-” // “get my bag too when you get yours.” “no.” “what i post that one picture of you when you’re about to sneeze-”

but he’s always looking out for you. when creeps try to approach you, he’s quick to react by shooting them a nasty glare. he’s a silent kind of care. standing behind you on elevators, walking on the outer side of the sidewalk, staying up late til you come home and just telling you he just couldnt sleep. little do you know, it’s something he’s always done even as a kid. putting more food on your lunch box, holding the corner of tables when you pick something up so you don’t hit your head, returning your things that are sprawled around the house to your room so you don’t lose them.

and if he ever finds you crying over some guy, he sighs and sits down next to you. “why’re you crying over an idiot?” he then makes snappy insults at the expense of the guy, making you laugh. “see? you look better like that. now stop crying and let me get some sleep.” he closes the light and shuts the door on his way out.

#haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu!!#oikawa x reader #tsukishima x reader #oikawa tooru #tsukishima kei #oikawa tooru x reader #tsukishima kei x reader #suna rintarou x reader #suna rintarou #suna x reader

213 notes · View notes

cvntrlseecvntrlvee · 2 months

Text

home is where the heart is

↠ pairing: wonwoo x reader ↠ genres: fluff ↠ word count: 900~ ↠ a/n: thinking abt bestfriend!wonwoo today 🥺 also ty to @hannieween who always reads all the little drabbles i type into her inbox, that’s how we ended up with this. she also helped write part of it, the an at the bottom will explicitly say which bits!! hope you guys like it uwu

bestfriend!wonwoo who keeps you company after your break up with your shitty ex boyfriend.

bestfriend!wonwoo who lets you lean on his shoulder while you guys watch the latest episode of bake off and you’re ugly crying with a tub of ur favourite ice cream.

how he tries to distract you the next day by inviting you to play mario party because some of the boys are over and he doesn't want you to wallow in your room by yourself.

the way, after the boys leave, he takes you into his arms while on the couch and letting you snuggle into the warmth of his chest as you sniffle a little. wonwoo smells like fresh laundry and he rubs a comforting hand up and down your back.

to you, wonwoo was home.

this is basically yours and wonwoo’s dynamic haha.

and he would never admit it out loud, but he honestly loves it. he loves as you ramble mindlessly, asking him pointless questions about nothing and everything at all. he remains quiet, but every now and then he’ll say is that so? setting you off on another tangent.

you laugh at your own jokes, which makes him laugh as well. it's the kind of laugh that makes his nose scrunch and makes him push the rim of his glasses up a bit.

and when ur away for the weekend, visiting ur parents, and wonu is home alone, the silence is deafening, and he misses you.

he misses you during breakfast, how you'd grumble about having to go to work and rant about the woes of capitalism and the five day work week.

he misses you when he's rewatching the previous episode of bake off on the cold couch alone, and how you'd be telling him about the history of shortbread and something about an alliance between scotland and france.

he misses you when he's out walking the dog after dinner and how you'd be talking his ear off about every little thing that happened to you that day, in chronological order.

wonwoo's life is quiet and greyscale when you're not there and he misses the colour of your laugh and your smile and the sound of your voice.

one night, he finally convinces you to go out to the movies with him. you've been feeling better lately, and you can't remember the last time you cried about your ex.

he buys you the biggest tub of popcorn, making sure the worker slathers it with extra extra butter (even though he knows its gonna give him a tummy ache later). and he watches you fondly as you try to choose between the buncha crunch or mike and ikes (his two favourites) before settling on both.

he also gets you a cola slushie, but your hands get cold from holding the cup, making you clasp them together between your thighs when you finally go to sit down, and he wishes, god how he wishes, he could just grab your hands to warm them up a bit.

you guys decide to see the latest action movie, a genre which you love, but sometimes you can't handle the blood and gore that comes with it. so when the bad guy's about to get sliced to hell, wonwoo quickly throws his hand up to cover your eyes.

you grab his hands to move it away because im a big girl, wonu, i can handle a little blood (except your pants are on fire and you absolutely cannot) but he knows this and does not budge.

and when the scene is finally over and he moves his hand away from your face, you're still holding on to it, not letting go

wonwoo sends you a look but you've got ur eyes glued to the movie, as if holding his hand is a normal occurance (it's not) and you're not freaking out like wonwoo currently is (you are, in fact, freaking the fuck out).

wonwoo settles back in his seat, loving the way your hands feel around his and laces his fingers with yours. you keep his hand in your lap, squeezing everytime sometimes stressful or surprising happens on screen and wonwoo rubs back and forth on the back of your hand when you do.

when the movies over, you still don't let go of his hand, and neither does he. not when you’re picking up ur bag to sling over your shoulder, not when he's picking up the empty food boxes to throw away, and not when you're walking home together in the cool of the night, as you rehash the movie ending, swinging your hands between you when you get a little too excited with your theories

you're both still unwilling to let go of each other's hands when you make it back to your shared apartment, as wonwoo keys in the door code, and it isn't until you're in the hallway, in front of your two bedroom doors, that you realise neither of you want to ever let go.

so you don't.

you let wonwoo hold onto you tightly while you tell him you had a lot of fun tonight and he replies saying he always has fun when he's with you. and you get on your tiptoes to press a soft kiss to his cheek, both of your cheeks warming up.

and it isn't until then that wonwoo let's go of your hand, choosing to instead grab your face with both of his and leaning down to kiss you sweetly

wonwoo tastes like a mix of movie theater butter, fruity candy and salted chocolate.

and best of all, wonwoo tastes like home.

a/n: this is my first time writing something in this sort of format! let me know what you think!! also the first part aboutt he rambling and the bit aboutt he cola slushie are courtesy of v, she's really fab and you all should go read her writing 👀👀👀

here are some lil extra bits that i didn't put into the drabble but i still think are cute to think abt hehe

gif 1 by @jeonsupershy // this wonu when he finally gets the girl he's loved all his life

gif 2 by @meowonhao-main // this wonu when you shyly nod yes to wonu asking you out to a real dinner date

this wonu (yes, im obsessed w this photo leave me alone) when you climb into his lap to snuggle after a really shitty day at work

this wonu when you whine that his kisses are too sweet and you want him to kiss you like a man

this wonu when he's about to ask you to marry him and legally be stuck w his loser gamer ass for the rest of ur life

u when u say yes because he's YOUR loser gamer ass and u love him so SO much 🥺🥺🥺

#seventeen fic #wonwoo x reader #seventeen x reader #wonwoo scenarios #wonwoo fanfic #writing #mine #title: home is where the heart is #author: cvntrlseecvntrlvee #band: svt #member: wonwoo

163 notes · View notes

superhoeva · 4 months

Text

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐘: 𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐊 𝐎𝐍𝐄

next chapter | series masterlist | main masterlist

⬩ pairing(s) sexologist!francisco "frankie" morales x college student!female!reader

⬩ warning(s) very inaccurate scientific study methods (this could not happen in real life without someone going to jail, i think lol), language, flirting, sexual tension, scientific talk about genitals, safe sex practices, pcos (mentioned), endometriosis (mentioned), commentary on unbalanced male domination of sexual spaces, Spanish nicknames/pet names, smut smut smut, somewhat-guided masturbation, reader hs nipple pircings, dirty talk, mdom-ish!frankie, pussy drunk!frankie, consent checks, oral sex (f receiving), fingering (f receiving), big hands!frankie, bodily fluids, doctor/patient relations, the whole "we want to but we can't but we might have to anyways" kind of vibes, some aftercare, pov switches (reader's pov uses "dr. morales. frankie's pov uses "frankie.")

⬩ author's note happy new year! starting 2024 off with a bang (literally, ha) of a new series. as mentioned before, this was inspired by an audio series created by anonyfun35 on the erotic audio site quinn (very much recommend the series and entire site if you're looking for more ethical alternatives to regular porn and able to spare a few extra dollars!), which is absolutely heavenly. frankie's been sitting in my heart recently after rewatching triple frontier, and now here we are! here is chapter one, as promised, and i can not wait to share the rest of this series with you all! (p.s. i know some people have asked to be tagged in this, but i no longer do tag lists. for those who want to keep up with new chapter, i'd recommend following the au: the study tag or just check back here regularly! heeds the warnings. let me know if i've forgotten any. drink your water. love you and hope you enjoy. <3

⬩ word count 6.4k(!)

The lobby is suspiciously comfortable for a doctor’s office. As if the chair you’ve been shuffling back and forth in for the past five minutes. You’ve decided to focus on the mint green tint of the walls to steady yourself. Your breath moves in and out of you in quivering streams, and you have to keep running your tongue over the flesh of your bottom lip to stop your teeth from drawing blood.

A sweet-looking brunette types away at the lobby desk, and she sends you a quick smile when you accidentally catch her eye. You hope the grin you send back doesn’t look as pitiful as it felt.

Straight across from you, there’s a poster of a vagina. Vibrant and contrasting nicely with the color of the wall, it labels each part of the genitalia with pretty, curvy letters. You read over each of them, laughing a little when you get to the clitoris. Maybe you should hang a copy of the poster over your headboard. Just to make it a little easier for those who need it.

Your eyes trail left. Another poster, this one with photos of different types of barrier methods for safe sex; on it is everything from internal condoms to dental dams and a short explanation for when it’s best to use them. You study it with a little more intent than the last one and become so engrossed that you don’t hear the receptionist at the desk until her third calling of your name.

You jolt a little, looking over at her with widened eyes.

“Sorry, yes?”

She smiles at the look on your face, shaking her head.

“It’s alright,” she promises, “that stuff’s actually pretty interesting, right? I just wanted to tell you that Dr. Morales is ready to start whenever you are.”

Ignoring the way your heart jumps a little, you rise from your seat with the best grin you can manage.

“Alright,” you nod, gaze flickering down a nearby hallway, “is it–”

“All the way down and to the right. Can’t miss it. And feel free to let me know if you need anything, before or after. I’m here for whatever you need me for.”

There’s something genuine in her voice that lets your shoulders relax. You smile again, and it feels real this time. “I think I’m okay right now, but I appreciate it, I do. Thank you.”

“No worries. Oh, and honey,” she pauses, taking a second to leave her seat and trot over in front of you. “Remember to breathe. Dr. Morales is a sweetheart, I promise. Wouldn’t work here if that wasn’t the case.”

Melanie the tag on her name reads. She gives you one last wink before returning to her desk. A warm feeling fills you nicely as you watch her for a few more seconds.

Melanie is nice. You like Melanie. If you could, you’d stay and talk to her for a while, but no sense in keeping the doctor waiting.

As you head down the hallway, the walk feels like it lasts half a second and a thousand years all at once. Time here seems to work a little differently, but maybe that’s only because of how unbelievably fucking nervous you are.

The room is at the end of the hall on the right. Just like Melanie said. The knock you give the door is softer than you mean for it to be, but it pulls open before you get the chance to knock again.

“Hi, welcome. Come on in, please.”

Well, fuck. Fuck.

The first thing you notice isn’t the fluff of hair on his head, or his big, doe, brown eyes–it’s his voice. A deep, pleasing rasp that’s soft and stirring, all of it combining into a sensation that sits snugly right in the middle of your chest. And legs.

You take a second to swallow the spit in your mouth.

“Hi,” you all but mumble back, swallowing again. God, you hope he doesn’t hear the sharp exhale that leaves your nose when he steps to the side with a smile. Your eyes blow up, big and wide, but only for a second as you swiftly compose yourself. You’re here for a scientific study, damn it, not to gape at how fucking gorgeous Dr. Morales is. Even though he is fucking gorgeous. “You’re Dr. Morales?”

“Yes,” he answers effortlessly, and you bite your tongue when he rattles off your name. His voice. You barely remember to nod, and he smiles. Now that you think about it, he hasn’t stopped smiling since he opened the door, and it’s already building a bit of sweat at the back of your neck. “It’s nice to meet you finally. Been seeing your name on all the paperwork, so it’s nice to put a face to it. Especially a face as nice as yours.”

You swallow, again, and can’t hold back the grin his words bring. “Thank you and uh… likewise.”

Dr. Morales pauses and your heart stops at the way his face drops. Then his eyebrows raise slightly like he’s impressed, and he takes in a long breath himself. A gulp of air finally refills your lungs when his smile returns, more of a smirk now.

“Thank you.”

The two words are followed by a small silence. You take it as a chance to look around. Dr. Morales takes it as a chance to glance you over, and his teeth bite into the side of his mouth at the dress you’re wearing. It’s airy and short, stopping just above the middle of your thigh.

He sniffs, clearing his throat.

“Well, if you want to go ahead and get seated, I think it’s best we just start with some introductions to break some ice. Then a short discussion about the study itself, boundaries, things like that. And I know you answered a lot of those types of questions in your application, but I think more authentic answers can come about when speaking, you know, face-to-face. Plus it’ll give us both the chance to get to know each other a little better. Relax before we get to the actual… activities for today’s session.”

You blink.

“You’re doing the… the stuff?”

Dr. Morales blinks.

“Yes,” he starts slowly, eyebrows furrowing. “I’m sorry, was that not what you were expecting? I-It’s in the forms you signed, though I guess it is pretty easy to glance over if you don’t know where to look. But if that’s not something you’re comfortable with, I completely understand. We also have some female doctors participating in the study if you–”

“–I’m comfortable with you doing it.” God, you know interrupting was rude. But the words spill out of you before you can stop them. “Really, I’m okay with it. Just surprised me a little, considering…”

A hard clenching of your teeth doesn’t work to hold back the small grin that sneaks upon your face at the expression on Dr. Morales’s face. He’s gone from warm to faltering and back to warm again, with a hint of delight just in the past few moments.

“Considering what?”

Dr. Morales squints his eyes as he asks the question. Watching and waiting for your answer with the knuckles of his fingers rubbing across his pink lips. You only let your gaze trail across the action for a short second. Any longer, and you’re sure you’ll melt away.

“Nothing,” you finally breathe with a soft laugh. The muscles in your neck tense and pull as you force your eyes upwards. Back to his eyes. “Sorry, uh… introductions?”

Something in his gaze shifts and he drops his hand.

“Right, right. Uh, feel free to take a seat here while I pull up your file real quick,” Dr. Morales tells you, motioning to the deep red chaise wing chair you didn’t notice until now. You nod, not trusting your voice, and settle into the large chair. It’s even more comfortable than the one in the lobby, and Dr. Morales just barely keeps his smile at how you subconsciously snuggle into the plush.

Other than the blood rushing past your ears, the clacking of his fast typing is the only sound in the room.

Much like the lobby, the room is rather warm for where you are, literally and figuratively. It’s a kind difference from something like the dentist or your normal practitioner. The opposite of the bright, sterile white you’d expected. You can tell the room was put together with the intention of being congenial for whoever steps inside. The velvet couch and nice rug that decorate the space tell you that much.

It seems that Dr. Morales dresses with the same purpose, white coat hanging forgotten on the back of his swivel chair, showing off the taupe button-up that stretches over his impressive set of shoulders. The shirt is tucked into a pair of thick, clean-cut jeans that hug around his waist.

“Alright,” Dr. Morales begins, sliding his chair over a few feet so you can see him a bit better. He smiles as he continues, reading off your name and age, to which you nod and smile back. You make sure the grin is big enough to cover the shiver that runs throughout your body and you don't notice that he didn’t even have to look at the screen when reciting the words.

“Great. Well, as I already told you, I’m Francisco Morales,” he chuckles, “one of the doctors here participating in this study you’ve so kindly agreed to be a part of. We’re really excited about all the knowledge we’re expecting to gain from the study. I, uh, we–we really appreciate you being here.”

“Oh, thank you for the opportunity. I’m also really excited. Never been involved in something like this before, so… yeah. I’m excited.”

Huh. Excited is one of the few words able to come to your mind as you bumble through the sentence. After only a few minutes with the doctor, you’ve found it’s somewhat difficult to form a coherent enough sentence. It’s even harder with him staring at you.

“What made you want to participate, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Um,” you start without thinking, “part of it was the topic of the study itself, I guess. So many of the things that have to do with sex, at least in my experience, are centered around men and their pleasure and what makes them feel good. So I think it’s refreshing to see something like this.”

“Oh, absolutely. That’s the whole reason for us doing this. I mean, we’ve got gynecologists, hormone specialists, endocrinologists, gender surgeons, and even sex therapists on my team all working together on this.”

“Oh, wow. That’s actually… really impressive,” you breathe out, but Dr. Morales shakes his head.

“It is, but I don’t wanna take all the credit. We’ve got a lot of amazing people working on this thing that’s gonna lead to ways to help women suffering from endometriosis, PCOS, trans women, everyone, really.”

Your eyes soften at the doctor’s words, and you straighten a little.

“Well, now I’m very happy to be here.”

Dr. Morales’s eyes squint with his smile this time. It’s the biggest he’s smiled all week.

“Good. I’m glad. And you’ve already filled out all the financial paperwork? Wanna make sure you get paid for this week’s session as soon as possible.”

“Oh, yeah. That was actually the other reason I signed up. Got some student loan payments coming up, and I could use the extra money.”

Dr. Morales laughs to himself.

“Loan payments are a bitch, aren’t they? Still paying mine off,” He shakes his head. Something about his curse pulls a small chuckle from you.

“Never heard a doctor curse before,” you tell him, and he laughs this time, raising his eyebrows with a shrug.

“Sorry. I’ll try to keep it at bay, but I should warn you… I can have a pretty dirty mouth.”

Whether he knows it or not, Dr. Morales’s voice seems to drop an octave as he speaks. The words are paired with his gaze clouding to something similar to a stirring ardor. It shakes something inside you, rumbling into the depths of your veins, heating you in a way that feels remarkable. In a way that has you clenching and reeling, eyes just barely watering.

He hasn’t even touched you yet, and he’s got you evaporating into a transcendent air of nothing. You brush your hands along the fabric of the skirt of your dress, arms stretching and trying to find some sense of relief. Dr. Morales stares into you, a burning observance of an action that your subconscious therefore controls more than anything. The look is hot and pointed and forces him to take in a long inhale. He squeezes the thin arm of his chair when you finally grant him a soft reply.

“I don’t mind.”

Dr. Morales pauses before letting out a huff. A smirk teases across his lips, and his mouth opens like he’s going to say something. He stops just short of whatever it is, opting to roll his seat a little closer to you while clearing his throat.

His elbows hit the top of his knees, gaze tilting to yours. Unable to hold it, you try to settle for his hands, but that doesn’t seem to calm you at all. You flick your eyes again, this time onto his thighs, but it’s no use.

Damn it.

“Um, so today’s session will revolve around cunnilingus and a some hand stimulation. Uh… sorry. Sorry, I–” Dr. Morales stumbles to a stop and your eyebrows furrow.

“You okay?”

He holds a hand out at the look on your face with a quick nod.

“Yeah, yes, I’m okay. Where was I? Uh… right, so like we talked about a little bit ago, I’ll be the one performing the… stuff, as you called it. And speaking of that, you’re still one hundred percent comfortable with me being to one to do it?”

“Hundred and ten,” you promise with a bobbing of your head that makes him grin again.

“Okay, then,” he nods back, hands rubbing against the denim of his jeans. “Let’s get started.”

.・゜゜・

You’re going to be the death of him.

He had an inkling of it when you greeted him at the door, those eyes all wide as you took everything in. He was confident about it when you assured him that you’d be alright with the fact that he’d be the one ‘doing the stuff.’ He knew when you didn’t mind his dirty mouth. And he was certain when you'd asked if he was alright.

Dead. That’s what you’ll make him by the end of this study, and he’ll go happy. A little embarrassed also, given how he started sputtering through his sentences like he was twenty years younger.

Frankie’s breath catches a little when he returns to the room after washing his hands. You’re just finishing the tie on the robe he’d provided you with, and he doesn’t realize how flimsy it is until now. It maps across your shape damn near perfectly as you hang your dress on the side of the wingchair.

“Hi,” you breathe out, spinning around. Frankie rakes his teeth over his bottom row of teeth hard.

“Hi,” he blinks back, making sure to brighten his face with a small smile. “Ready?”

You shakily hum your answer, smoothing down your robe to busy your hands. It’s made of silk and feels incredible, but boy is it small. Just barely covering the cheeks of your ass, you might as well be wearing nothing.

“Alright. So, before I forget, let me go ahead and get a swab of the inside of your cheek, just so we have that on record.”

Frankie grabs a long cotton swab and its transport tube off his desk, stepping over to where you stand waiting. He swallows, ordering you to softly open. You obey with no questions asked, dropping your jaws.

Did you mean to stick out your tongue, too? Frankie has no idea, but whatever the answer is, he doesn’t care, not with the rustle he feels in his middle.

“Thank you,” he replies after a few scrubs of your mouth, eyes catching yours briefly before sticking the swab in the tube and placing it back onto his desk. He huffs, turning back around to you. “Now, let’s get you settled on the couch.”

Frankie holds out his hand for you to take without thinking. The regret that runs through him slips away as you place your hand into his grip and let him lead you. His other hand reaches for his chair, rolling it over as he walks with you.

He rubs a gentle thumb on the back of your palm as you sit, hand squeezing into a fist when yours drops from his. Frankie sits in his chair with a grunt, planting his feet on the group, making sure to face you.

The man softens a little at the sight of you, all bunched up into a ball of returned nerves, and he thinks for a moment.

“How about we start with a deep breath, yeah? Relax a little bit before we do anything else?”

You nod and Frankie’s head goes a bit fuzzy for a short moment. You’re so sweet, with your tiny robe and all your nods, like candy. You breathe in deep, just like he says to. Your chest rises with it, and Frankie almost forgets to take in the breath as well.

“Good. Now, how we go from here is up to you,” Frankie starts, hands folding together politely. “Robe can stay on, or you can take it off. Your decision–”

“Robe off,” you speak before he’s finished. He holds back a chuckle. “Sorry. I’m okay with it off if you are.”

Of course, you are. Of course, you are, and so is he.

“That’s absolutely okay with me. As long as you’re comfortable,” he states, and your fingers go to pull at the tie. He shuffles, waiting, and swallows when you pause.”

“Um, is my bra being off okay? I took it off with my dress, didn’t even think about it until now.”

Frankie’s head pivots back to the wine-colored chair. And so you did. There’s more lace than he expects, causing him to stare longer than he means. He turns back to you with his eyes darker than before.

“That’s perfectly fine.”

You nod again, fuck, and finally pull the ties. His heart nearly stops as the silk slips down your shoulder, exposing your naked skin to him, inch by inch.

God, you’re devastating. You devastate him, and he’s going to die a happy, happy man. It’s inappropriate, he knows that, but fuck. Yes, he’s a doctor, but he’s also a man with blood pumping through his veins and down into his cock, which he’s currently shielding with a subtle cupping of his hand.

Your robe continues to fall, and soon enough, nearly all of you is revealed to him. His eyes, working with a mind of their own, fall upon your breasts.

Of course.

“Wow,” is all he says, and the corners of your mouth pull upwards. You peek down, the tips of your barbell piercings shining with every one of your shaky inhales. “Wow, uh… wow.”

“Oh, these. Yeah, I got them a few years ago,” you reveal, setting the robe to the side. “Hurt like hell, but it was worth it.”

“While I definitely agree, I was talking about your… everything. You’re gorgeous, querida.”

Querida. The name is unexpected, yet received by you with dilating pupils. It’s not just the way he says it but the way he says it. You can tell that he means it, every letter. Every syllable, as it falls off his tongue, into your ears, and down to just inside the thin layer of your panties.

It’s the only piece of clothing left on your body, and you’re certain they’re soaked. You can feel yourself seeping through, needing for something to happen. Anything, or you’ll die.

“Thank you,” you murmur back, impatience inching you closer and closer. To what, you don’t know, but you think it’s something special. “Should I go ahead and…?”

Dr. Morales’s gaze oozes down you where you’re slowly parting your legs. It takes him a second to answer.

“Uh,” he interrupts himself with a short laugh, “actually I was going to have you do something else for me first. When you’re, you know, in the act of pleasuring yourself, how do you usually start? Do you… do you dive right in or is there some kind of build-up?”

Legs having paused, you blink. It’s almost impossible to formulate an answer, but somehow you manage.

“Normally, I’d play with my nipples.” God, it sounds so silly when you say it out loud. “Tease myself for a little bit until I’m ready to start.”

The doctor sits back in his seat, still covering his growing member.

“Why don’t you go ahead and do a little bit of that for me?”

There’s that thing again. With his voice, the thing that is causing your organs to convulse and squeeze. Has you scooting a little further back onto the couch with ease and a deep breath.

You hear Dr. Morales suck in one of his own as your legs spread a little further, revealing a large wet splotch in the very middle of your panties. It’s seeped a little into the couch, and you’re not even embarrassed. Your legs more because you want him to see it. You need him to.

A flinch jerks you when the tips of your fingers meet the buds of your breast. You twist and pull, and it feels good. Better than normal with the beautiful doctor watching you do it. They start to pebble around the metal and a few shocks through you.

Leaving your lips is a gasp. Soft and nearly nothing, but it tugs something from Dr. Morales.

“That’s it. Good girl.”

When you gasp again, he bites his lip.

“You like that? You like it when I say that?”

You nod.

“Words, querida.” No matter how much he likes the nod.

“Yes, I like it when you say that.”

“When I say what?”

You hear him chuckle at the small groan you release.

“A good girl.”

Your voice is even smaller now, hoarse with want.

“Good girl.” Another groan from you. “Now, I need you to move a little further down, okay? Slip those pretty panties off for me.”

Your turn.

“You really like them?”

Dr. Morales’s throat bobs at your question you ask while dragging your hand lower. They glide across your stomach to rest just over your center. Pushing onto your clit, your moan is muffled by the way your teeth catch the soft flesh of your lip.

“I do, muñeca,” he assures you. “I really do. They’re almost as pretty as you are.”

You can’t help the full grin that sneaks onto your face. You push against yourself a little harder, and your head falls to the back of the couch. Fingers hooking under the seam, you tug.

Everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion at this moment. You raise your head back up, just to catch the reaction from the doctor, who’s already gazing into your pussy when your eyes refocus. His breathing changes from long, calming inhales, to unsteady suspires.

“Jesus,” he grits out just under his breath when you eventually throw your panties alongside the robe and fully open yourself to him. Clenching around nothing, you relax further into the couch, legs propped and feet settled against the velvet.

Your huffs push out hot when Dr. Morales finally lifts from his seat. You don’t dare look away as he steps forward, towering over you. He bends at the waist, face lowering near your own. He gets so close that, for a split second, you think he’s going to kiss you. Press his pouting lips into yours like you so badly want him to.

His breath fans across your face, but he pulls away before you get to bask in any of the warmth. In his hand is a pillow from the couch that he plops onto the floor.

“Bad knees,” Dr. Morales mumbles, smirking at the dazed look in your eye. You say absolutely nothing, only watching as he drops his knees onto the wide pillow, hands clenching the edge of the couch cushions.

All the doctor does for a tick is stare. He stares and stares, tongue darting out to wet his mouth.

“Keep rubbing for me, hermosa,” Dr. Morales orders. “Just a little more.”

Your pussy clenches around nothing when your fingers dip down and come back sticky with your wetness. A whine exits you, and your head falls again.

“Can you touch me now? Please,” you remember to add at the end, the ache between your legs forcing you to squirm. “Please, I can’t wait anymore.”

A hand on your thigh almost startles you. Your head tips back up to see his palm sitting heavy against your leg.

“This what you want?” He asks, another scalding touch planting itself on your other thigh. His hands give thrilling grips, thumbs landing at the very edge of your dripping lips.

A pathetic nod from you.

“Words, gorgeous,” Dr. Morales tells you, gaze completely unmoving.

Gorgeous. Hm. A new one, but just as effective.

You pant a few more times before pushing out “Yes, that’s what I wanted.”

“Good girl,” he praises, and you’re nearly done for. “Now, if I ask on a scale of one to ten, how turned on are you right now?”

It’s tough to think of an answer. His hands, so big and inching closer and closer to your heat, are melting your thoughts away at record speed. Everything you try to come up with leaves too fast for you to catch them.

“A… a seven,” you sigh, liking the way his eyes twinkle at your response. “Seven.”

Dr. Morales chuckles lowly, looking up at you.

“Seven?” Frankie grins. “I haven’t touched your pussy yet, and you’re already at a seven?”

He waits for an answer but only receives a long whine that makes him want to laugh again. Fuck, you’re cute. And wet enough that your juices ooze out of you with a pretty shine, and it’s all for him.

Honestly, the only reason he’s lasted this long is because this is for science. Because Francisco Morales is a medical professional and needs to have some kind of composure. It’s breaking, though. He knows it, and not just because of the way his hands crawl closer and closer to your pussy. Or because of the ache in his cock that’s straining against the crotch of his jeans. Sucking in a breath at the feeling of it catching against the tight fabric, Frankie scans you.

Your chest, those stunning tits, have a noticeable rise and fall and you watch him. Something in your gaze, an unexplainable force, finally pulls his face down. It’s as close to your pussy as it’s been. He tries to remind himself about the self-control he’s supposed to be possessing, but a few more seconds pass and it’s nowhere to be found.

He starts just off the left side. The first kiss, soft and careful to start easy. Figure out what you like, what you don’t, and what you really like.

Kiss after kiss, his lips press a little harder. Gliding across the skin of your thighs and pelvis, staying in a spot a little long when it elicits a sound or squirm from you.

The pecks turn to full smooches, and he soon enough finds himself right where he wants to be.

Eyes meeting yours, he sinks into you with a long, fiercely slow drag of his tongue. Frankie’s gaze ties into yours, he puckers his lips and sucks. It’s a supple thing that he pairs with a flick of his tongue right across your pearl.

“Oh,” you squeak, unable to continue with anything but another broken sound. When you arch, Frankie’s hand reaches higher to rest against your hip. He had his suspicions that you were a squirmer, but to see it like this, up close is something else. Something special. “Shit.”

God, you taste incredible. Better than incredible, and while he wants to tell you he can’t. There’s no way he’s pulling away from this, so he suffices for his own moan.

“Fuck,” he mumbles against you, mouth lifting to suck a bit harder. The hand not occupied on your hip reaches until his thumb sits just inside your opening. He rubs, delicately, all the way up, only pulling his mouth away to smooth it over the slick skin.

Another moan, this time from both of you when your hips grind upwards. He matches your movements, letting his head dip back down to continue his lick.

After a while, Frankie decides to up it a notch. Delve as much of his mouth as he can against you, lapping and slurping whatever he can catch before it leaks down onto his chin. The sound it makes, your pussy and his soaking lips, is disgusting. Loud, sinful squelches of wetness that he would give anything to hear for the rest of his life.

Yet somehow, what leaves you is even better. A combination of hitching breaths, loud coos, and cries for him to keep going. Just like that, fuck. So he keeps going, just as he is until he can barely breathe.

He yanks away from you with a grunt but makes sure to replace his tongue with his hand.

“Such a gorgeous pussy,” Frankie husks out, pressing another kiss to your inner thigh while he finishes catching his breath. “What number now, princesa?”

Frankie makes sure to wait until you’re about to answer him when he snakes his tongue into your slit and fucks. His head bobs back and forth, tongue caressing as deep inside of you as he can. His fingers return to your clit, rubbing with ease thanks to the mixture of slick and spit.

“I don’t know, I can’t think of one,” you rush out, and Frankie chuckles. He gives you one last bold lick before pulling away. He has to hold you tighter when you squirm in irritation, nearly sobbing.

Frankie shushes you with a kind pat on your thigh. You don’t have a chance to whine anything out before he hooks an arm of your thighs and tugs you to the edge of the couch. One of your legs hangs just off the couch, so the doctor hitches it over his shoulder.

His eyebrows scrunch, and he focuses his attention on ghosting a few fingers just barely inside of you. He looks up at you and is met with you already looking back, ready and waiting for him to push further.

He pauses in a wait. Not ten seconds pass before you try to thrust his fingers further yourself, but he doesn’t let you.

“All you need to do is give me a number, baby, and I’ll fuck these as deep as you want.”

“Nine,” you whisper, and he spots your hands clench. You must want to touch him.

“Nine,” he repeated, thumb rolling a circle over your clit. “How many fingers to get you to ten?”

“Three, plea–ah,” you mewl out when Frankie slides his middle digit inside you. He lets out his own noise at the way you suck him in.

His hand bottoms out, and you’re already fucking yourself on his finger. “That’s a girl. Already taking my finger so well. Feel so fucking good around me.”

You’re truly a sight to behold as Frankie watches you, skin damp with a slight sheen, curving and grinding against his hand. Speed increasing, almost growls when he bends to lap at your clit. His tongue twirls against the bud of nerves, and he has to close his eyes to stop himself from reaching down and giving his painfully hard cock a squeeze.

Frankie slides in the second and third finger at the same time, and you break.

You don’t mean to tangle his hair with your fingers, but they do anyway. It’s hard, but you tug them away, clenching the couch instead.

“Sorry. Sorry, I–” you blurt out, breath long gone, but Dr. Morales has none of it. He doesn’t lift from his licking and swirling to grab your hand and tangle your fingers back into his hair. “Fuck me.”

The rhythm he finds is relentless. He pumps knuckles deep inside you, sliding in and out, collecting a residue of thick moisture. He curls his fingers, searching and finding the spongy spot that causes you to tighten your grip on his hair. His fingertips drag across it, over and over, and you fall limp in his grasp.

“Good fucking girl,” he tells you, words slurring together in his pussy-drunken state. “So good for me. Now I need you to cum, alright? Need you to come for me, all over my fingers so I can drink it all up.”

Dr. Morales slurps messily, chin now nearly dripping as he eats at you. Savoring the tang and hint of sweet while his fingers drive with a steady vigor. There’s no way you can stay still now. You arch, twist, and grind into the doctor, propelling him even deeper. He’s reaching somewhere inside of you that you once thought impossible. Taking grasp of you entirely.

You’re close. You’re so close

“I’m clo–fuck, yes, I’m close. Please don’t stop, please,” you whimper.

“Yeah, you are. Squeezing all nice around me, like a good girl. Sucking you into my mouth. Love how you feel on my mouth, baby. And on my tongue and around my fingers. Never gonna forget how you taste. Shit, could come just like this, so I need you to come right now, okay?”

Frankie doesn’t even know what he’s saying, his rambles. They just pour out, some of it incomprehensible as he busies himself with circling and flicking your sensitive clit.

You sob out one last moan before the damn breaks. He groans along with you at the way your clit throbs against his tongue. His fingers slow, but only a bit as they make sure to rub right against your g-spot.

A choking sound leaves you as you can barely breathe. The air sucks from your lungs almost as hard as Dr. Morales does down below, and your eyes clench shut. You see stars and space, world falling mute, and body quaking with a thick orgasm.

It rolls over you in drowning waves, the euphoric warmth, driving you with an unbearable bliss. You whine, crying out a few tears. Twitching and shivering under the strong hands of Dr. Morales.

His hold is tender as you work through it, talking to you gently in the pauses he takes from licking you clean.

“Fucking look at you, querida.”

“Did so good for me, so fucking perfect.”

“Can’t wait to get you back in here next week.”

Only some of the words make it to your ears. The blood rushing makes it hard to understand, but just the sound of it is comforting enough. You feel more kisses press into you, this time just under your belly button, as the fingers inside you still.

The two of you stay like that for several minutes. Dr. Morales murmuring quietly to talk you down. Your leg still over his shoulder caressed by his free hand, while your own twirls at his brown locks.

“Fuck me,” you breathe out eventually, and Dr. Morales smiles against you. You can’t help but join him, chest warming at the final peck he places onto your knee before lowering your leg.

“Gonna pull out, okay? I’ll go slow,” he tells you. You nod, hand falling around his to touch at the warm skin. You huff out a short breath, mouth falling open as you stare at the wetness revealed when he begins to pull out.

Frankie whispers out his own damn, watching you until his fingers are free. Fuck, you’re pretty, aren’t you?

“I meant what I said earlier,” he declares, pushing away the thought. “Did great, muñeca. Incredible, actually.”

“I could say the same for you…” you mumble with a shy grin, and Frankie finds it touching. You’re divine. You’re precious. You’re… his patient.

The room is filled with heat and smells of sex. It clouds Frankie’s brain, but he knows he needs to keep moving. You can dwell, but not him. He’s got a job to do.

Frankie only lets himself stare for a few more minutes before he rises with a groan. His knees are aching, but he doesn't care. His face heats when you help him up the rest of the way, loose limbs and wet stains in all.

“Thank you,” he smiles, moving to hand you your robe with his untainted hand. “Let me go grab you some water and a towel, and then we can do your swab so you can get out of here.”

He’s turning to leave, heading for the bathroom across the hall to wash his hand–it’s still wet and shining, even now–but stops when he sees the look on your face.

“Is it required that I leave right away?”

Frankie is quick to answer. The small pout on your face makes it so.

“Of course not,” he shakes his head. “You’re free to take your time, take a breath. Sip on the water I’m gonna go grab you. Hell, you can even take a nap, if you want. I’ve uh… we’ve got rooms upstairs with beds and blankets. I think there are some snacks in there, too.

“Really?” You blink at him.

“Yeah. Gotta keep you all as comfortable as possible.”

Frankie sees that look again, the pout. He’s not sure you even know you’re doing it.

“I actually might take you up on that nap. I don’t think my legs have really come back yet,” you tell him, looking at him while slipping on the robe. When feels your eyes trail down, right to the bulge in his pants, he sucks in a rough inhale and does his best to screen the obvious.

“I’ll be right back with that water and towel,” Frankie rushes out, turning for the door.

His clean hand is sitting shaky on the handle when he hears you.

“Do you want me to…” you trail off, pausing for so long that he doesn’t expect you to keep going. “I could help you with that if you want.”

That. He knows you aren’t talking about getting water or towels, and it crumbles him. He grits his teeth, dick jumping at the thought of your–

No. No, he can’t. No matter how much he wants to, he can’t.

Frankie turns, digging deep for the strength to look you in the eyes.

“...we shouldn't, sweetheart. It’s against the rules, and we don’t want either of us getting in any kind of trouble, right?”

It takes a long time for you to nod. Way too long.

“Right,” you agree, but Frankie can smell the lie. He wonders if you can smell his, too.

#frankie morales smut #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #francisco morales x reader #francisco catfish morales #francisco morales #triple frontier fanfiction #triple frontier smut #triple frontier #au: the study

221 notes · View notes

maxe-murderer · 6 months

Text

thoughts on the summoning choreo and the LiB's ages

aight so i watched the digital ticket last night and spent way too long analyzing the choreo for the summoning and a) want to ramble abt it cause its cool and b) wanna give my 2 cents for the Lords in Black ages theories (i don't think I've seen anyone mention this but im sure im not the first person to notice)

so the choreo for LiB do at the very beginning of the summoning is like a lot to take in all at once so i didn't take it in all at once and rewatched the same like 10 seconds over and over

so each of the LiB have their own little bit of choreo that's theirs, with Blinky and Nibbly's probably being the most obvious. But they all seem to do the same moves - with some little differences for a few of them - at completely different and seemingly random times. They do all start with "their" move. So breaking down each one, starting with:

Wiggly: The first move Wiggly does and the first one we see in the pro shot. Bent over at the hips, arms out to the side swinging in and out at the elbows. Reminiscent of his tentacles, yknow. One difference I can see with his choreo is he puts the majority of his weight on his right leg with the left out to the side and partially bent - he only does this the first time he does his move, and Tinky does similar but to a lesser extent.

Tinky: First thing he does, the bend down snap up repeat, arms back when down arms out in front when up. First time you see it in the pro shot is Nibbly doing it in the background behind Pokey (roughly 2:01:07). It doesn't make anything immediately jump to mind, other than like, goats fighting.

Nibbly: Since Nibbly has the lollypop prop it looks like licking the lollypop. For everyone else, it's just their right hand sorta sliding down in front of their face. The first time we see this is Wiggly doing it during the line "Wiggly wants his wrath".

Blinky: Bent at the hips, circle down and left to right and up. Blinky holds his hands in front of his to make that triangle/diamond over the one eye. Pokey holds his mask in front of his face for this, it looks like Wiggly does either the same hands as Blinky or basically the same but centered on his face, it's difficult to tell, Nibbly and Tinky just have their hands out in front of them.

Pokey: Swapping from facing right, right hand up in front of your face to facing left with the left hand up. Makes me think of Hamlet. Pokey looks at the mask while facing right and his hand when facing left. Everyone does the same with or without whatever prop they have. Tinky and Wiggly put their arms all the way up in a more of a presenting something type pose - Tinky's arms straight up and Wiggly's a bit bent. Nibbly does the move but faces forward instead of looking at his hands - he does this for every move, face is constantly directly toward the audience.

so I do wanna say first that while they do have all the same bits of choreography (just at different times) none of them do it exactly the same. There are small differences between all of them on the same moves (ex. Tinky: some people keep their head up when going down others have their face to the ground. Nibbly always keeping his face forward. Legs bent and feet flexed. Etc.)

Ok. So. The order that each of the LiB do each move is the same for all of them, but they each start at their own move and end on their own move.

The order goes: Wiggly, Tinky, Nibbly, Blinky, Pokey

Its a really fun way to keep the scene feeling cohesive but also super chaotic. It's pretty much impossible to notice a pattern if you aren't replaying the same part specifically looking for if there's a pattern.

As for their ages, I can't say that I actually have any strong opinions on the LiB's ages (I think any sort of hierarchy among each other they have is based on what I can best describe as their eldritch vibes) but this is fun to think about so like.

We all agree that Wiggly's the oldest so basically, the order Wiggly does the choreo as the ages of the LiB. And I think that when we look at it like this it has a sort of like, coming into being as the universe evolves to fill whatever cosmic need there is or smth like that. If you get what I'm getting at.

Wiggly's the oldest, he's clearly in charge and I think is also the most vague if we try to narrow down his "thing" if you know what i mean

Tinky would then be second oldest, I think it makes sense. He fucks with time itself, once you have a world you kind of need time for shit to happen in it

Nibbly next, middle child. He's hunger. As soon as you have life in the world that life will need to eat. And, he's the only one of the LiB who will consistently exist as a physical being outside of the Black and White (at least for a short while) and I think having the middle child be the one to have that sort of ability just sorta works

Blinky is the second youngest. His whole thing is sight. Not everything alive can see but a whole load of them can. Insert some sort of specific connection to the development of humanity. He's pretty satisfied with just having Watcher World seemingly. His brothers all have their domains and shticks already, so he'll just be happy in his corner torturing the shit out of whoever goes to Watcher World. No need to step on anyone's toes, y'know.

Pokey is the youngest and steps on everyone's toes. He both has a pretty nailed-down theme of control but is sorta, messy about it? his two main appearances have his existence in the physical world be directly connected to the meteor to the point of him getting kinda fucked over by it in Yellow Jacket. He's "The Singular Voice", he wants everything to be him, if it's not his voice he wants it dead. He's also the only one who we've seen get scolded by Wiggly. So like, the annoying and loud little brother.

anyway that's it. idk if you have any thoughts tell me. working boys budget breakdown soon to come

#max rambles #hatchetfield #lords in black #nerdy prudes must die #the guy who didn't like musicals #black friday #nightmare time #the summoning choreo analysis #ok christ i need to do my fucking homework this projects due on friday

344 notes · View notes

dollymaniac · 10 months

Text

︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶ Sick ︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

Pairing: Leon Kennedy x GN!reader.

Summary: You got sick, like a really bad flu; Leon comes in to be your caretaker.

Wordcount: 0.846k.

A/N: just a very short kinda fluffy story i did after i rewatched that scene where Leon holds Ashley's hand while the plaga is being purged. (Didn't proof read, woops)

For a good few days you had a ever increasing in pain headache, It started as little annoying prickling by the side of your eyes, and as the days went on it had become a full blown migraine.

You my friend, had caught the flu, and the migraine was the first symptom, however, as the day went on your nose was stuffy and you had a horrible cough. You sent a text to your boyfriend, Leon, telling him you had to cancel the date you had as you were terribly sick.

Laying in bed, and trying (and failing) to sleep you heard the door to your apartment open up, and a warm familiar voice call you.

"Babe?" Leon had arrived with no warning what so ever. You coughed instead of responding, but that let Leon know where you were.

"Honey?" He poked his head through the door and saw you laying in bed, a red faced mess with too much tissue paper sorrounding you. "Oh lord" he said starting to enter.

You, in the panic leap up a little "No, no don't come in", Which was follow by a Hard, and painful sting on your throat that made you cough uncontrollably for half a minute. Painful, your chest felt on fire and your throat wasn't much better.

"Jesus Christ" Leon replied as he heard you coughing like you had just came out of a fire, "Yeah no chances of me leaving you alone like that" he said as he began to walk in despite your protest.

To be honest, Leon was quite recilient for those types of Viruses, he had to, or a simple flu may whipe him out during a mission.

He kneeled down in front of you and reached for your forhead, gently pressing his hand on it "Seems like you have a fever", after doing this, He stood up and without a warning, He straight up pulled off all of the soft, chunky blankets you had on.

"No!" You protested, he somewhat ignored that and reached for a very, very thin Blanket. Putting it over you and wrapping you up like a helpless burrito. It didn't do much to help you feel less cold as it was fresh… Meaning, It had no warmth on it.

"sorry, but you can't be burried in those with a fever" he gave a small kiss to your cheek, comforting you "I'll get you a Soaked cloth".

You nodded with a pout as he stood back up again, Heading for the kitchen. As he walked out, you noticed on the floor of your door…. At least three plastic bags full of stuff. "L…leon?" Your voice raspy as your throat was hurt after so much force used to cough.

"yeah?"

"wh..what is all that?"

"I'm not leaving you to take care of yourself in that state".

A soft smile appeared on your lips as he said those words, he had always been protective, it was one of the things that made you fall for him, and it shined through as he came back and put the cold water soaked cloth on your forehead.

A 'tsss' came out of you as it made contact, it was too cold for you and it almost hurt. He gave you another small kiss on your cheek and pet your hair for a moment. "Yeah, i know its uncomfy" he spoke gently.

You thanked him, and he went on to bring the bags to your room, he had gone all out to make sure you had the best care possible.

The first bag was full, and i mean full of medicine, maybe too much… Maybe to the point it would last more than necessary, he knew he was being a little exaggerated but well, at least the next time you got sick you'd have spares; analgesics, cough syrup, Painkillers. All he could think of since you really didn't specify what you had.

Then the second bag, Full of food and water. Instant soup, Noodles, Crackers, some sweats, tea, coffee and more.

"Leon you… didn't need to" the cough interrupted you again.

"But i wanted to, your my partner; I'm gonna take care of you".

The third one was just full of entertainment for you to stay on bed rest, new books, one of those 2000's cheap game consoles with like 5 games, movies, and even cards.

The fourth and hidden bag was just his clothing he could stay as long as necessary.

You were surprised, since it was rare you got sick that bad you hadn't seen Leon pull anything similar. He even got you Pedialyte in case you were dehydrated.

A true keeper.

After a minute he put his hand on your face again "it's going down" his gentle tone as he smiled at you, sitting on the edge of the bed and talking gently about how he'd be your personal nurse for the time you were sick.

You couldn't help yourself but to think, while he looked at you with this soft demeanor, that you needed to get him a ring ASAP.

︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

He's just a keeper and we know it.

#leon kennedy #leon s kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x reader #re4 remake #resident evil fanfic #leon kennedy x you #resident evil fanfiction #resident evil x reader #leon kennedy fanfic #leon x reader #resident evil leon #leon scott kennedy x reader #re4 leonff

473 notes · View notes

tare-anime · 2 months

Text

I've watched Spy x Family Code White!!!!

And and ........!!!!

OmG!!!!

It's so totally awesome!!!

Tbh, I've never watched anime movie that good before!

I might be biased, but truly, it WAS so AWESOME that I'm planning to rewatch it (if I've ever managed to find extra free time)

My full with spoiler review under the cut

So first of all, the animation quality WAS top notch!

They way they draw scenery, background, lighting, camera movements. OmG!! I really love how WIT studio pay so much attention to details. And the smoothness of it.

The scenery of snowy mountains, sun light reflections through crystalize ice, the water...... wow!

And then there were the difference in way of drawing scenes. Like Anya's imagination was drawn so cartoony, meanwhile Yor's fiery 🔥🔥🔥 fight with type F was drawn with so much intensity, and Loid's stealthy fight was drawn with different color as if Loid was in different dimentions than the rest of the enemies because he was the only one in disguises.

This different way of drawing scenes kind of like Spiderman into the spiderverse, but not to that extent. Nevertheless, it's super awesome.

The foods!!! OmG! Those were detailed and awesome food drawings that make me drools 🤤🤤🤤 desserts, main courses, even snacks!! Wooooaaaa

The action!!! I bow down to the animators. WIT studio once again showing off their skills in drawing super awesome fight action scenes. They draw the character movements very well. Even Fiona get her short glimpse of action scene and that's awesome!

Loid's different action tones animation is super awesome, but I have to bow down and thank the animation team in making Yor (my queeeennn 🛐🛐) being super badass!!! The way she ended the fight with type F??? Guh..... I need all my will power not to screamed "That's my queen!!" in the middle of theatre 🤣

Of course like all anime movies out there, we have to lower our expectation regarding plots. (Plot? What plot? We're here to see the family awesomeness 🤣)

We can easily spot the re-use of plot from canon material but was shown in different font, such as:

Yor's jealousy towards Fiona, that leads her thinking she's inadequate mom and wife, that was a result from her overthink her 3 gossipers cowokers

Fiona's obsesiveness in trying to impress Twilight and becoming the Forger mother

Drunk Yor vs Twilight which ended with Yor sleeping

The super direct advance of Twilight that sucessfully making Yor super embarrases that her body instinc injured Loid

Super long and hiperbolic poop joke from Anya

(These managed to make us the audiences LOLed though 🤣🤣🤣)

Not to say, plot holes (?) Or plot that make you go "huh?", such as:

The super unnecessary idea of replacing Loid with other incompetent agent for a mission as important as Op.Strix

The possible stella from a cooking contest that end up all for nothing because of technicallity malfunction

Putting a very valuable microchip inside a common trunk, and all of a sudden was transported in a common train, leniently lying around in a place where a kid can meddle with it. Secured with only 1 very common key.

A secret recipe of dessert that is a secret but the restaurant owner can give the ingridients to stranger because the owner felt guilty that Anya's share was taken by a foodie adult with military power.

An old plane memento that somehow still in prime condition that can be used by Twilight to pursue Anya's kidnappers.

I can't be helped. The animators may not create something that might disturb canon stories afterall. So these plots were just there to drive the story forward, and forward the story goes!!

(Despite all the things I mentioned above, I still enjoyed the story well.)

And then, last but the most important things, the movie managed to deliver the family awesomeness so well!! The animators clearly know the character and character dinamics so very well. And I, again, bow down to them. 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️

There are so many moments that will make you go "awwwwwww" and give you so much fluff and sweetness you'd have diabetes right away.

The way Loid always tried his best to give the best for the family, but he forget that the family IS the important one. And Yor was there to softly remind him of it. (This scene was so soft I really teared up 🥲🥲🥲🥲)

The way Anya tried her best to help her papa in acquiring the ingridients because that's the mission was, but eventually she got into trouble. And yet at the end Loid was still very proud of her.

The way Yor took care of Anya and play with her during the trip, the way she protected Anya during their initial fight and at the end of the fight (so many mother daughter moments!!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰)

The difference way of fighting between Twilight and Thorn Princess. Like Twilight will go all stealth and disguises until he can't. Meanwhile Thorn Princess was just strorm right through the front door (or rear wall in this movie), demolishing everything while at the same time politely asking for her daughter and husband 🤣🤣🤣

The way all of family working together so that the plane didn't crash at the town, and the way they laugh (Yor and Anya were laughing out loud, meanwhile Loid was chuckling) when all of them managed to "safely" landed.

Good boy Bond always tried his best to support Anya and even galantly tried to defend her but alas, he was no match to human enemy. 🥲🥲

I was just 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

And really, Endo should take notes.

Because all of these are what make we love Forger family. And that it IS possible to make the family do a mission together without revealing their secrets. Like Loid's lousy excuses that make Yor went wooooww, Yor's even more lousy half lies that Loid believes just like that 🤣🤣🤣🤣 (these two omG!)

I also love how Anya as the captain of TwiYor ship actively pushing her parents. Yes Anya 🥰🥰🥰

I also love how the main villain able to recognize Twilight in disguises via the unusual scent. Like. Woa!! That is so possible!! I mean, latex should have a very distinctive smell afterall.

All in all, truly an amazing first movie!!! I do hope one day the anime team will continue to make amazing movies in the future. 🥰🥰🥰

#spy x family #yor forger #loid forger #anya forger #twiyor #bond forger #sxf movie #sxf code white #spy x family code white #sxf movie review

129 notes · View notes

son-of-a-top-gun · 3 months

Text

Sky's the Limit (part 1)

Hello all, so I rewatched Top Gun Maverick last night and was inspired to finally finish this enemies-to-lovers series I've had in my drafts for literally months featuring everyone's fav sexy asshole Hangman!

Warnings: two idiots as usual, Jake being arrogant, innuendo, author fem!reader

Sky's The Limit

You take off your glasses and slump your face into your hands. You had been staring at the same blank document for the last two hours and still had not typed a single word. You hear the bar door swing open and chatter filling the bar, but you do not look away, instead keeping your face in your palms.

When your Aunt Penny had offered you the chance to stay with her in sunny San Diego over the summer to finish your long-awaited second book, you practically leapt at the chance. Back in New York, your agent, publisher and frankly every literary magazine were rabidly awaiting the next brilliant idea from bestselling debut author ‘Sky Bentley’. What you couldn’t tell them was that ‘Sky’ didn’t have a single clue what that brilliant idea was. So you had leapt at the chance to not be Sky, just for a little bit, while you tried to figure out your next steps.

You had only been in San Diego less than 12 hours before scuttling down to the Hard Deck. You had loved spending your summers here as a teenager, but hadn’t managed to come back since graduating from NYU. You had tried writing in the house this morning, but Amelia had some friends around and you couldn’t think with all their excitable chatter, so here you were. You knew the bar was pretty empty during the day, but the day was rapidly turning to evening and it was becoming less quiet. But you could tune it out. Until.

“You know darlin’, this is a bar not a library right?”

***

When Jake Seresin walked into the Hard Deck that day, he had assumed it was just another quiet evening as usual. He had strolled over to the pool table as usual, confident that he would win, as usual, when something caught his eye. Unusual.

There was a person sat in a booth, who was…working? It was hard to discern much, except they were wearing a baggy Top Gun T-shirt and what looks like short shorts, although they are sitting cross legged so it’s hard to tell. Judging by this and the messy bun, he thought it might be a girl, but he wasn’t not sure. They had a computer out, but their head was slumped in their hands, with glasses strewn to the side. He had never seen anyone try to work in the Hard Deck in the whole time he has been coming here, especially not at 5pm on a Friday.

“Who’s that?” He asked Javy, who is setting up the balls.

“Damned if I know.” Jake looked over in thought. Javy elbows Payback. “Hey, maybe we’ve found a girl in California that Hangman has managed not to sleep with.” Phoenix coughs. “Except you of course, Natasha.”

Jake smirked and started walking over. He loved a new game.

“Well, not for long.” Javy sighed. Nat considered the scene more closely. She had a good feeling about this.

“How much are you willing to bet?”

***

“Sorry?”

When you finally remove your hands, your vision is still blurry. You can tell there’s some sort of guy in front of you, in what looks like Navy uniform. Fantastic. It was hard to tell as you looked around for your glasses, but you had dealt with enough of these kinds of guys at family parties. Just another meathead who would say the same old shit as they always did.

“Pardon my manners, sweetheart but you seem to be lost. The library is -” Before he can finish, you cut him off.

“Oh yes, actually, I think I am lost. I thought I was at the Hard Deck, but from the looks of you this is where Chippendales go to die? I hope you don’t mind but I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling, thanks.”

You hear him laugh a little.

“I’m pretty sure we’re the same age.”

You look around for your glasses.

“Sure, whatever the Viagra guys keep telling you, buddy.” You can see him fold his arms out of the corner of your eye, but you ignore him, continuing to search for your glasses. Silence ensues for what seems like forever.

“I think you’re looking for these, Grandma.” He hands you your glasses, and you snatch them out of his hands.

“Thanks.” You put them on. You see him properly now. He’s tanned, blond and incredibly handsome, like he’s walked straight out of a Hollister ad. He leans back, arms still folding and biceps definitely flexing and your heart skips a little. Sure, it had been a while since you had gotten some, but then he smirks and it’s clear that he’s the sort of handsome asshole who knows how good-looking he is. You roll your eyes and straighten up, folding your laptop.

“I’ve gotta go. It was a real displeasure meeting you,” You stand up, but before you can turn around, you hear a familiar voice.

“Ladybug! It’s you!”

“Bradley?” At this point Bradley Bradshaw swans into the bar, wearing one of his usual god awful Hawaiian shirts and plants a kiss on the top of your head.

“Ladybug?” Navy Ken raises an eyebrow. Bradley turns and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, I should have known you’d be sniffing around here already.” Bradley turns back to you. “You’ve had the pleasure of meeting Bagman, I see?”

“Bagman?” You mimic Bagman’s expression, complete with raised eyebrow.

“It’s Hangman. Although most people know me as Lieutenant Jake Seresin.” Jake winks at you. “At your service.” You scoff.

“If I’m at your service, I think I’ll rather die.”

At this point Bradley lets rip with a belly laugh, placing a hand on a bare stretch of your arm. You swear you see Hangman’s jaw tense a little.

“How do you two know each other again?”

“Me and Ladybug grew up together.”

“We’re old family friends. Bradley used to babysit me and my sister when we were little.”

“And look at you all grown up now, some bigshot fancy auth-” You shoot him a glare. Bradley is one of the few people in the world you’ve trusted with your secret, and you explicitly told him not to tell anyone. You just wanted a summer to be normal, with no pressure.

“Fancy what?” Jake looks you up and down.

“Academic. She’s a pHD student.” Bradley says immediately. Damn, that was quick, you think to yourself. You look up at him. Was Bradley always this good at lying?

“Yeah. English lit. Here working on my thesis.You wouldn’t be interested.” You make sure to put extra venom in the ‘you’.

Bagman’s furrowed brow offers a little fake smile, but before he can retort, Bradley leads you over to the other aviators. While you are a little tense going into the group of navy guys, most of them are immediately friendly. You struggle to remember everyone’s real names and call signs, but they don’t seem to mind. In particular, the girl, who is called Natasha, links arms and drags you off to a corner.

“Thank god you’re here. It will be nice to have another woman in the midst.”

“Honestly, it would be nice to just have someone who isn’t a pilot”. Her lanky WSO pipes up. “I heard you were doing a English lit degree.”

“Oh, er, yeah. It’s Bob right?” I mean it was sort of true. Except you had completed said degree about five years ago, but it certainly helped as Bob started enthusiastically talking about books. He was cute, and you were trying to reply, but you found it hard to focus when you could feel a certain pair of green eyes boring into you from the other side of the pool table. You deliberately refused to look in Hangman’s direction the rest of the night, until you couldn’t stand it any longer.

You stride over and gently put your hand on the guy who you think is called Fanboy.

“Do you mind if I take this?” You pick up the cue. He nods and you turn back to Hangman. “Right, are you going to play me or what?”

He tilts his head in disbelief. “Darlin’ are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Well, darlin’ If it means you stop staring at me like a wounded puppy all night, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

The rest of the squad have all dropped their conversations to turn and stare at the two of you.

“Suit yourself.” He sets up the balls to break, before leaning over to whisper in your ear. “Just remember if it gets too much, you can always beg me to stop, Ladybug.”

You try not to react. After all, it’s better he thinks like this. Having watched him play the last few games, he was clearly a very good player, but you knew you have to play the player, not the game. As you break, the game begins fairly normally. He manages to pot a few in quick succession, looking visibly relaxed with a gloating smile over his beer. You deliberately shuffle, and readjust until you can tell he’s stopped looking at you. This is the time you make your move, potting several balls to take a significant lead. Jake turns back suddenly, his jaw slackening a moment before regaining composure. You can hear Bradley stifle a snigger. Being dragged around from base to base with few kids your age to play with meant that Bradley had grown up watching you whoop the ass of everyone you played at pool since the age of eight.

“Something funny, Rooster?” Jake’s head swivels around.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Jake starts playing more ferociously, almost clawing it back until you’re both got two balls left. You walk past.

“If it gets too much, you can always beg me to stop.” You look him up and down, before you whisper in his ear. “I like a man on his knees.” Jake’s cheek flushes and with that you pot the final two, claiming victory. You yawn. “I think I need to head home, but it was lovely to meet you all. Well almost all of you.” You blow a kiss to Jake, before waving goodbye and swiftly leaving after giving Bradley a hug. The rest of the group stand in stunned silence.

Jake raises one hand. “Don’t say anything.”

****

Jake lies on his bed. He couldn’t sleep. This was unusual. Well, not the not sleeping part. He always struggled to get asleep. At least, when he was sleeping alone. That’s why he made an effort not to. But tonight was different.

For one, it was rare for him to be alone in bed on a Friday night. But he had been so distracted, he hadn’t even managed to follow up with the pretty blonde who had asked for his number at the bar.

He couldn’t stop thinking about your stupid face.You and your stupid face and stupid glasses and stupid lips and the stupid way you said on your knees-

He got up and paced around the room.

This would simply not do.

Not only were you completely infuriating, but you beat the great Jake Seresin at pool. Bradley said you were here for the whole summer. So Jake had some time to get his own back. But how? He had noticed something odd about the way you looked at Bradley when he mentioned your pHD. Something was up, Jake could just tell, and he was going to get to the bottom of it. But not before he had a cold shower first.

part two

#jake seresin x y/n #top gun maverick #top gun fanfiction #top gun hangman #hangman x reader #jake hangman seresin #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin #hangman top gun #jake hangman seresin x reader

160 notes · View notes

freakadr0id · 2 years

Text

ROTTMNT Character Fight Style Analysis - Part 1: Leonardo

Eeeeyyyy it's finally here. This is my analysis of each character's fight style and role post that I teased about a week ago. This turned out to be a hell of a thing, so this will be split into many posts focusing on each character since I have quite a bit to say (and I think Tumblr might break if I put it all into one post). I plan to release one a day, but we'll see how it works out with school.

[Part 2: Raph] [Part 3: Mikey] [Part 4: Donnie] [Part 5: April]

~-~-~

If there's one thing Rise is known for, it is the show's stellar action animation - it's the reason most people started the show to begin with. The visuals are so strong in these scenes, in fact, that Rise could have easily gotten away with having pointless fights each episode (if the budget allowed that) and still be regarded as a fairly decent show. However, Rise doesn't do that, instead chooses to give its action scenes depth by putting thought into the personality of each character and implementing that into how each of them fights, showing the growth of the protagonists over the course of the show.

After rewatching the show multiple times (seriously, so many times) I began to notice patterns in many of the show's big fights, particularly in how the turtles and April fight and how they cooperate with each other as a team.

I thought it might be fun to categorize and examine how Leo, Raph, Mikey, Donnie, and April fight by breaking it down into their unique fighting styles, their roles and strengths in battle, how they apply those roles, and how all of these demonstrate different parts of their character.

BTW: There's a reason for the order in which I examine each character - it will all make sense by the last post. There's also a bit of a TL;DR at the end, but I encourage you read the full thing (or at least skim it)

~-~-~

Let's start with Leo.

Leonardo: The Strategist/Initiator

Leo was one of the easiest characters to analyze since a major focus of his character arc is the development of his fighting skills and his ability to cooperate with his team and act as a leader.

Fight Style:

Balanced/Well-rounded Fighter

Leo is the most balanced fighter on the team. He is a capable offensive and defensive fighter and has enough physical strength and acrobatics to handle many types of fighting styles. We see him fight everything from paper ninjas to the large Foot Brute and Draxum's hired goons (the dog guys) without seeming to be weak against one type of enemy. He may not necessarily be stronger than them but he is very versatile. However, this means that Leo doesn’t have a specific ability that makes him stand out in a fight (mystic and ninpo powers aside) the way his brothers do, and won’t have any inherent advantages that he can utilize when fighting a particular enemy.

Strengths and Roles in a Fight:

The Strategist:

Leo’s role as the team’s strategist is pretty obvious. He may not be given the title of “Leader” until the end of season 2, but we see throughout the show that he is a very quick thinker and is skilled at coming up with clever and effective plans. Of course, each member of the Mad Dogs supplies ideas and plans, but Leo is especially good at developing and implementing them. The most obvious example of this is his fight in the Battle Nexus in 'Many Unhappy Returns, but there are other times when he is the one to put all the pieces together (think of the big attack against Draxum in the Shredder armor in 'End Game').'

The Initiator:

Leo acts as the initiator in battle as he is either one of the first into battle or is the one to start a coordinated attack. This doesn't mean he necessarily has to attack first, but that he is usually the one to put the plan into action. This role relies the most on his mystic powers as his portal and teleportation powers give him the maneuverability needed to accommodate any plan. His abilities allow him to enter and disorient the enemy, or he can portal allies into the fight and create opportunities for a follow-up attack. This plays into his strengths as the Strategist as being the initiator can help him begin a strategic attack by maneuvering people or objects into their needed positions.

Utility:

Leo’s skills truly shine in a fight against a few number of enemies as he can better focus his strategies on a specific enemy and direct the battle in his favor. With less pieces in play, he can properly utilize his mystic powers and act as the initiator instead of bouncing around a battle with no real objective in mind. It becomes easier to coordinate attacks with his brothers and allies since they don't have to spend time fighting different enemies.

However, in a fight with multiple enemies, Leo’s skills can be easily overlooked. Sure, he can direct the fight as the Strategist, but there’s only so much he can do in the middle of the chaos. His role as the initiator isn’t all that effective in a fight with many enemies as well as he and his brothers tend to just rush into battle in those situations. However, Leo’s balanced fighting style means he could theoretically go up against every type of enemy and won’t be at a noticeable disadvantage, which is very useful in a chaotic battle.

How it Plays into His Character:

Admittedly, the show is probably the most direct in using fights to show some of Leo's character traits, since so much of his arc is centered on his fighting and use of mystic powers. However, Rise does use this in enough interesting ways to make it worth mentioning.

While his role as the Strategist plays into Leo’s strengths as a character, it also highlights Leo’s problems with team communication. When Leo plans a strategy, he often fails to inform his allies of his plans, which can result in losing the battle or frustrating those around him. The show demonstrates this by having him make strategies in a fight but leaves his allies in the dark and confusing them. Leo does this, in part, to show off, but also because the plan simply makes sense in his head, so it would be easier for him to just do it instead of having to take the time to tell everybody his plan.

The initiator is a good role for Leo’s powers and fighting style, but also feeds into his cockiness and overconfidence in a fight. Leo has a tendency to play the hero and either overestimate his abilities or underestimate his opponent. He may be the best fit for going first in a fight but Rise uses some fights to show how this can conflict with some of his character flaws. When he goes into battle first overconfident and cocky, it only conflicts with the team, but with his own role as the Strategist. He could, theoretically, bring his teammates into the fight after him, but if he thinks he has an easy win in front of him, all strategy goes out the window.

His status as a balanced fighter and lack of specialization in battle is a likely source of some of Leo’s insecurities about his place in the group. We see in 'Portal Jacked!' how Leo doesn't feel like he has a proper role on the team - that he's just the face man - which is reinforced by the way he fights in comparison to his team. Leo is well suited to fight a wide range of enemies, but when his brothers have easily identifiable skills that can give them a distinct advantage, it becomes difficult to recognize the advantages he brings to the team as a well-rounded fighter.

Working as a Team:

As mentioned earlier, Leo's strengths as a fighter make him the one best suited for the first attack in a coordinated team strike as it highlights his skills as the Initiator and the Strategist. It shows how well he can fit those roles when he plays to his strengths and overcomes the character flaws that stand in his way. While the others do have skills that may allow them to start the first attack, Leo's abilities and strengths as a fighter give him (and his team) a much stronger advantage in this position.

Leo also does well when he goes second to last in a team attack, as he can finalize a strategy and prepare for a final blow by putting all the pieces into position. However, this is more situational as there are other characters just as well suited for that second-to-last position and can fill that role when Leo needs to be the one to start a team attack.

Leo’s fighting style, however, does make him a poor fit for a follow-up attack or the final attack in a fight. His balanced fighting style means he isn’t suited for a strong final attack. While he is technically fine acting as a follow-up attacker, it doesn’t really play into his strengths and isn’t that effective when fighting with others who are more suited to that role. His balanced fighting style also prevents him from effectively dealing that final blow to an enemy since he doesn't have a specialized strength in this regard. Again, he can do it, he just isn't well suited for it.

The way Rise develops and explores Leo's fight style demonstrates one of my favorite things the show does with his character (in fact, all of its characters). At first glance, he may seem pretty one-note and predictable, but as we go through the show, we see how both his character is actually more complex than we were first led to believe. The fights Leo participates in reflect that, as not only do his skills develop over the course of the show, but we begin to see how it all ties into his personality and growth as a character - making his fights more meaningful than what they may seem.

~-~-~

[Little bit of a TL;DR: Leo is the team's strategist and initiator in fights, supported by his balanced fight style and mystic powers. These roles play into his greatest strengths but they also expose some of his character flaws and insecurities. In team fights Leo is most effective as the first or second to last attacker but isn't well suited for a follow-up or final attack]

Thanks for bearing with me on this stupid long post. They're all going to be like this btw. Next up will be Raph. I plan to get that done and posted tomorrow.

#holy shit this ended up being long #way longer than I expected #I don't expect many people to read the whole thing #hopefully some people do #but this is almost too much #yes actually #it is too much #but I'm too proud of it #and spent too long on it #not too post this #you guys said this is what you wanted #so here it is #sorry not sorry #I hope this is actually coherent to other people #and not just my brain #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt movie #rise of the tmnt movie #rottmnt leo #rise leo #rottmnt leonardo #rise leonardo #I'll update each posts with links to the other ones too in case people are (somehow) still interested after reading this beast of a thing #I updated this to hopefully fix the whole crashing problem when people try to reblog this #Tumblr should pay me to stress test this hellsite #I seem to be very good at it #analysis #rottmnt analysis #character analysis

2K notes · View notes