#//I have it pictured in my head but translating it to a drawing is difficult

[mechahero]

//things that also have a stranglehold on my brain rn: designing lambda’s recharge coffin but designing it as if it was a mon.ster high playset in the same vein as the bedroom sets that came out with the dead tired line

[wombywoo]

Hello!!

I wanted to ask if you would be willing to share how you go about finding the references for the injuries you depict in your work? Your pieces where the CoD boys are sporting injuries, fresh and old, are always so lifelike and to my untrained eye seem entirely medically correct.

I have been trying my hand at drawing the boys retired and resting as well, but I’m finding it difficult to decide what work injuries to add and how to find the respective references.

How do you decide what injuries to portray? And how do you go about finding the reference material?

Your huge fan, amustikas

Oooh ok ok! I'm gonna post my answer publically because I think others would find this interesting too!

To preface, I am definitely NOT a medical professional, and as such, a lot of the stuff I choose to depict in my art is not so much..ah, medically accurate as it is....aesthetically pleasing 🤭

I'll start with scars, as a lot of us enjoy slashing up Simon's face with them, lol. Generally, I'll do a cursory google image search for the type of scar I'm looking for (be warned, these can be graphic) with searches like 'burn scar' 'surgery scar' etc. But I find that for things like cuts and lacerations, real-life scars are a bit innocuous and lame 🤷‍♀️ Unfortunately not everyone's skin wants to retain that perfect slash look™️😔

So what I usually end up referencing are costume prosthetic scars ✨

As you can see, they're pretty gnarly:

And you definitely don't have to go this intense, but I find that the dramatic, carved-like appearance of these translate better to art than a realistically healed wound 🤙

The other thing to consider is the prevalence of injuries in the military. From what I've gathered, the most common will be back/shoulder/limb injuries, just a general fucking up of the whole musculoskeletal system in general due to constant overuse 🤕 Hearing loss, shrapnel/blast/burn injuries are also common, as well as all the negative psychological effects :') goooood times (not)

I think it's neat to look up real-life examples of these things, but it can get a bit intense if you're squeamish...

SafeSearch is OFF, the horrors are REal 😳

So yeah...I tend to tone things down, all things considered...😅

For this particular piece:

I researched broken humerus injuries and treatment 👍 Poor boy 🥺(Yes, I am aware that I consumed entire articles and did a shit ton of research about this just to go ahead and put a female's x-ray in this fucking picture sdfghjkl rip💀😭)

But here you can see the actual process for applying the brace for this particular injury:

Neat, eh?

When I draw Johnny with a knee brace, it's usually a real authentic one you can buy on amazon:

Product placement blast!!!💥✨ Bezos, where is my cut?? 🫰

As for ones like this:

I tend to just...scatter some wounds around and patch them up accordingly, lol. Bruising around the eyes is common with any head injury, and surgical stitching will offer a nice puckered skin effect mmm 👌 (I swear I'm normal abt this)

I'm sure the medical malpractice lawsuits are stacking up for me now, but again--it's usually more about the ✨visuals✨

My parting advice would be--go nuts! Feel free to maim and mutilate and mangle to your heart's content 🥰

Thank you for the question, Amustikas! I love your art as well 💗🫶

[khakirnelm]

From an incorrect quote generator

If Melody was a human tho

Phoebe: WHAT’S YOUR TYPE Melody: Anything, honestly, but nerds especially Phoebe, desperately, as Melody bleeds out: YOUR BLOOD TYPE Melody: Oh! B positive. Phoebe: DONT TRY TO CHEER ME UP JUST TELL ME YOUR BLOOD TYPE Melody:

-

Phoebe: Is letting someone win at chess sapiosexual bottoming Melody: Does anyone in this godforsaken group ever think before they speak

-

Phoebe: Whaddya call a fish with no eye? Melody, not looking up: Myxine Circifrons Phoebe: Phoebe: fsh

-

Phoebe: So what's for dinner? Melody, staring at the food she just burnt: Regret.

-

Callie: I left instructions for everyone while I'm gone. Phoebe: Mine just says "Phoebe no." Callie: I want you to apply it to every possible situation.

-

Trevor: Not elegant enough to be a vampire, not jock enough to be a werewolf... Phoebe: Goblin it is.

-

Trevor: My head hurts. Phoebe: That’s your brain trying to comprehend its own stupidity.

-

Computer: Please enter a password. Phoebe: *types in Melody* Computer: Your password is too weak. Phoebe: How fucking DARE YOU-

-

Phoebe: So what are your political beliefs? Podcast: Well, I think Pikachu would be a lot more powerful if he had a gun.

-

Callie: You spent all our money on THIS?? Gary, putting tiny raincoats on ducklings: They live outside. They need this.

-

Phoebe: Why are you on fire? Melody: This is just how my day is going.

-

Podcast: Change is inedible.

Phoebe: Don't you mean inevitable?

Podcast, spitting out coins: No, I did not.

-

Phoebe: .. .----. -- / ... --- .-. .-. -.--

[translation: I’M SORRY]

Callie: What's that?

Phoebe: Remorse code.

Callie: I'm even angrier now.

-

Phoebe: I don’t do relationships.

Melody: *exists*

Phoebe: Shit.

-

Trevor: Kissing can burn 26 calories in a minute, wanna work-out with me? ;)

Lucky: Are you saying that I'm fat?

Trevor: No that's not what I meant I-

-

Phoebe: Podcast... Why did you draw a pentagram on the floor?

Podcast: Your text told me to satanize the house before you returned.

Phoebe:

Phoebe: I wrote sanitize, Podcast.

-

Callie, tending to Trevor’s wounds: How would you rate your pain?

Trevor: Zero stars. Would NOT recommend.

-

Peck: I'm going to ask you to be respectful. Phoebe: I will politely decline.

-

Podcast: I’m having one of those things! A headache with pictures!! Phoebe: you mean an idea..? Podcast: MMMMHHMMM!!

-

Phoebe: English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though. Trevor: You need to stop.

-

Phoebe: How did none of you hear what I just said? Callie: I’ve been zoned out for the past two and a half hours. Gary: I got distracted about halfway through. Trevor: Ignoring you was a conscious decision.

-

If Melody was a human, again

Phoebe: HELP! I TOLD MELODY I’D COOK DINNER TONIGHT BUT I CAN’T COOK! Trevor, pouring milk directly into the cereal bag: And you thought I could help?

-

Podcast: What if I press the brake and gas at the same time? Phoebe: The car takes a screenshot. Trevor: For the last time, get the fuck out.

-

Gary, holding a python: Guys I impulsively bought a snake, what do I name him Callie: You did WHAT– Phoebe: William Snakepeare

-

Trevor: You look nice, I want to kiss you. Lucky: What? Trevor: I SAID IF YOU DIED, I WOULDN’T MISS YOU.

-

Gary: The best revenge, really, is being nice! Podcast: [in the distance] Or murder.

-

Gary: That’s one of my biggest fears. Like, if I ever woke up as a donut... Callie: You would eat yourself? Gary: I wouldn’t even question it.

-

Phoebe: WHOEVER CAUSED THIS MESS IS GOING TO- Melody: It was me... Phoebe: ...Is going to be forgiven because everyone deserves a second chance.

[julianalvarez9]

acting on it / martin ødegaard

author's note: been avoiding writing smut for this man for ages. i started this back when arsenal played liverpool so it's been A WHILE. not proofread bc i just needed to get it out quick. needless to say this isn't real, don't know the real reason why they took him out so yeah, fiction :)

warnings: smut with plot. badly translated norwegian pet names (?, kinda hair pulling, kinda choking, kinda public sex (they could get walked in anytime) ¿?

wc: 2k words

summary: suggesting to take martin out of the game to avoid any serious injury backfires when he blames you for being subbed off.

"why did you tell him to take me out?".

you knew this talk would be coming, but still, the loud thud when the norwegian shut the door a bit too hard startled you. the draw was rough for everyone at arsenal, and at some point, felt almost like a loss. the players got into the dressing room with their heads hung low after clapping for the fans, and apart from some encouraging pats on the back, you didn’t really get to talk to anyone in particular.

you saw how angry martin had left the pitch when arteta decided to take him off, but he hadn’t said anything: of course he hadn’t. he was a good captain, and he wouldn’t ever question the gaffer’s decisions. at least, not publicly.

but under the anger, he knew it was a good decision: he wasn’t asking for the ball and leading his team like he used to do at every game. like he was supposed to. he knew his performance was below average, but he refused to attribute it to the minor discomfort he had during the week. he was fine during warm ups and the entire first half. he couldn’t afford to get injured now, at this point.

being seated during the last ten minutes of the match was the worst thing for him. seeing how the win slipped through their fingers felt like a knife being turned on his stomach. and even if martin knew they still had the top position secured, the lead they had against city was cut short, and they hoped it wouldn’t be something they turned to regret at the end of the line.

martin was observant, not only off the pitch, but during games, too. he frequently saw the bench, awaiting for instructions offered by the manager or movement in the sidelines, signaling some players being subbed in. when he saw you, the team’s physio, talking to arteta, he knew he would be the player to be taken off.

“you were only meant to play 60 minutes, martin. you played 80,” you reasoned. before the game, you had been consulted how many minutes was the norwegian able to play, without risking an injury. knowing martin, you were sure that he wouldn't appreciate being subbed off if there was still a match being played, but you were aware that mikel was considering the bigger picture -there were still games that needed to be won, and it would be immensely more difficult if they were without the norwegian on the pitch. you understood arteta's worries about his key player being sidelined for way too long if he were to make the matters worse.

he wasn't happy with your response, but he didn't say anything else: he stayed in the way of the door, impeding the way out, whether intentionally or not, trapping you in the room with him. the frown is still visible on his features, glooming his usual prince charming looks for something darker, almost malicious. you think that he's maybe transported back to the game, reliving again and again what went wrong, and you try to ease his worries. "not everything is your fault, you know? you have to take care of yourself first”.

he scoffed. "i'm the captain. everything is my fault".

at this point, you've grown tired. all you want to do is finish packing your things, and get home as fast as possible. but the presence of the norwegian is stopping you from completing the checklist you have in hand. "what do you want me to do, ødegaard? i’m doing my job, which is to keep you all healthy," you say, while finishing to check the last thing you had on the list, assuring that you aren't forgetting anything. you throw the little notepad to the desk, while sitting on the empty space, as martin watches your every movement like a hunter keeping track of his prey. "you can't play 90 minutes every three days: you need to rest, or you'll get a serious injury. if you have any problems with it, talk to arteta”.

you're mirroring the frown he had for the last five minutes, and martin can't stop thinking about how cute you look while trying to act mad at him. "quit the attitude. i'm supposed to be mad, not you".

now it's your turn to scoff. "you are making me mad by trying to take your frustrations on me, like i'm in the wrong for doing my fucking job".

"if you think this is me taking my frustrations on you-” his blue eyes turn almost dark gray, and martin takes big, rushed steps towards your figure, making his wider frame tower over yours. he lifts his hand, brushing a string of hair that had fallen from your makeshift ponytail behind your ear, and his hand rest softly on the side of your neck, with his palm surely covering half of your skin.

he looks for hesitation in your eyes, something that would tell him to back off, but he can't find any. instead, your breath is ragged, and you're trying really hard to keep eye contact with him while trying not to visibly shut your legs in a way that lets you ease some of the tension. "this would be me taking my frustrations on you," he corrects, now his thumb resting across your neck, restricting your airflow but just slightly.

you're not sure if you feel dizzy because this is what you wanted all along, ever since you've crossed paths with the norwegian, or due to how intoxicating you find his touch: either way, you gasp for air, and it has martin smiling wickedly, in a form you haven't really seen before. "oh, does my pretty girl like being choked?".

the whine you emit is, surely, pathetic, but it fires something inside of him. his grab on your neck is a bit rougher after hearing the sweetest sound he had only dreamed of hearing, but it’s not enough to worry you about the possible marks he could be leaving. still, you can feel it, just as you can feel the desk behind you that would not really leave you any space to escape, if you wanted to. but you don't want to, although you probably should remember where you're at, that you're working and he's a player.

the smallest glimpse of reality comes back to your senses when you hear a sort of commotion outside, and you're cut back from his spell, just barely. "martin, we-".

he hears the hesitation in your voice, and is quick to lure you back in, his kisses leaving a wet trail under his way. "i know we can't. and i know we don't have enough time. but i need this, i need you. will you let me?. the way he's whispering in your ear makes your skin flourish in goosebumps, joined by how he's nudging at your neck, while smelling your perfume, driving you mad. he realizes when the smallest whimper leaves your lips and is proud of his doing, showing by the way it oozes out of his mouth when he whispers "that's my good girl".

your hands are quick to find their way under his shirt, having the chance to feel the toned abs you've never dared to look at before while trying to keep up with the feverish kisses shared between you two. the second his mouth trails down to your collarbone, you slip a playful "eager, aren't we?" when you realize his hard on pressed against your leg. "could say the same about you," he bites back, after his leg graces your center and you're eager to rub yourself against it.

you two don’t even get to take your clothes fully before he slides into you. his right hand is covering your mouth, helping you in silencing the moans that seem impossible to contain, while he isn’t much better at keeping quiet. especially, when your hands are pulling on his blonde hair, driving him crazy. you’re coming undone under him, and martin can’t help but groan at the sight of you, a wreck for him, while taking him so well.

through his grunts, he can barely manage to warm "not gonna last long if you keep on squeezing me like that, kjaere," but it’s to no use, given that you’re still clenching on him tightly, your warm walls swallowing his length fully as he snaps his hips in and out of you in a relentless pace. the desk underneath you shakes with force, given that you’re perched against it while trying to stay on your feet.

it’s not long before your whole body is shaking under his frame, as his left hand lifts your leg up, now hugging him by his waist in an attempt to bring him impossibly closer. you let out another moan that gets muffled by the hand he still has over your mouth, and you’re grateful for it, because in your hazy mind filled with pleasure, you can’t mute your sounds as your orgasm approaches.

“where?” he asks, looking deep into your eyes to ensure you won’t be too loud, before freeing your lips to speak. your voice comes out hoarse when you reply where you want him to cum. “i-inside, please-”.

the norwegian has to crush his mouth to yours in a bruising, hard kiss, before his sounds are the ones that alert the outside world of what's happening in your little workspace. his bruising pace fails when he's on the edge, and a soft moan that slips out of you and directly onto his ear makes him lose it. he's deep into you, coating your insides which provoques your own frenzy to disinvolve.

everything gets too much for you, and you’re not sure you can wrap your mind around your surroundings, but martin keeps you afloat, holding your figure flush against him. "hey, you're okay, i'm here," he reassures, his soft touch grazing your cheek in a loving way when he sees your eyes glaze over. it's purely because of the mind shattering orgasm you just experienced, but he cares, wants to know you're okay. the gesture is intimate, certainly feels almost more intimate than the moment you've just shared, and once you reassure him that you're okay, he kisses the crown of your hair before proceeding to dress himself properly.

"you like the armband, right? i'm bringing it next time," martin shows his million dollar smile before picking his shirt from the floor, and puts it again in a quick motion, smothering the creases in hopes that no one that sees him leaving your office could figure out what went down between you two.

"already thinking about the next time, ødegaard?".

the door knock startles you both, and breaks the atmosphere previously held in the four walls. his hair is a bit messy after you pulled endlessly from the locks not even five minutes ago, but he makes a quick move to tame it, passing his long fingers through his gold strands and setting it in place, exactly how he likes it, before you open the door to find just the one person that you didn’t want to see.

"oh, i knew you'd still be here," arteta calls upon seeing you, still in the secluded area you work in. he doesn't find it weird that you remain here, knowing that you’re the first one to arrive and the last one to leave, just like he is. instead, his eyes furrow when he sees better into your eyes, still a bit glassy.

"martin, did you make her cry?".

his hands are in his pockets, trying to hide off the tent still present in his joggings. it doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to gather a believable enough excuse, and you’re kinda impressed about it, figuring that he might have thought about this more than you thought. "she was upset about the game" he explained, lips pursed without giving out much emotion, quite like how you saw him answer the interviews he did post-match. "told her to not worry too much. we'll win next time,” martin smiled, turning his stare to you now. “for you, right?".

[hiemaldesirae]

hi！i really like your story in AO3 【golden rule, it's just for show!】

i really like the description of Vox in it❤️❤️ i m so exited so I couldn’t help draw and want to share!

Do you mind to see it!

I hope I haven’t disturbed you I’m sorry 🥺

(I speak through translations software so I hope I have expressed my thoughts adequately🥲)

The following are extracts from the original article

Vox looked… fragile, almost.

He was pale and clammy, two bright and mismatched eyes drawing attention away from his physical state to the beauty that was his face. Not even a single blemish showed on his porcelain-like face, three beauty marks strewn about his face making it difficult not to want to lean over and play connect-the-dots. Soft looking black hair fell over his face, framing his eyes nearly perfectly. The moment Alastor laid eyes on him, he thought he could understand why exactly it was that Vox’s punishment in Hell was to have the head of a picture box. Though he’d never understood people’s depravities in life, he wondered if he would think differently if he had met Vox in life.

(I drew this based on this description)

oh lord hes absolutely STUNNING. im floored with awe. dont worry at all about your wording, i understood you perfectly fine! your art is gorgeous, im honoured you liked my fic so much :) its exactly as how id pictured him, i feel absolutely blessed for this . thank you so much for sharing this with me !! <3 (by the way if you dont mind, can i share a link to this on the actual fanfic?)

[comicaurora]

As a writer for this comic, scripts for videos, or what have you, have you found writing ever gets easier? Like with visual art you can study references or practice and eventually see results but just throwing more words on a page doesn't feel like it has the same tangible improvements. There are clearly authors out there who can certainly fill pages and either could not or chose not to improve things my favorite examples being from "men writing women". So yeah part of it is knowing what not to write I guess, but is there a way of seeing writing improvement you know of?

I think it's certainly harder to see, but writing absolutely does get easier with practice. Like most art forms, it's a matter of figuring out how to translate what's in your head into a tangible thing on the page. That can be very difficult and counter-intuitive. For instance, because I think of storytelling in a very visual way, my first instinct on prose writing is to describe everything in terms of visual detail, but the problem is, this does not actually work in writing.

The greatest strength of prose writing is thoughts and feelings - to communicate exactly what is going on in a person's head, and to inspire the audience to internally craft an image that matches the feeling the story is communicating. This is something no other art form can communicate so readily, because every visual art form is on a certain level on the outside looking in at the characters. And frankly prose writing is not very well-equipped for detail-oriented visual description. If you try, you often end up with something that doesn't really paint the sort of word picture you might be looking for.

"I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow."

(from My Immortal, natch)

This, detail by detail, is very clear about what the character is wearing, except if you read it you have to mentally arrange all the pieces yourself. Black corset, okay. Black leather miniskirt - really? Okay. Pink fishnets - cool. Black combat boots, all right, great, that's the clothes done. Oh god there's more-

But the exact specifics of what this character is wearing really don't matter, do they? It matters more the feeling they're inspiring by their appearance - what their appearance communicates to the audience, what their character is. Compare to how Terry Pratchett characterizes a different goth-trending young woman in his Discworld novel Thief of Time:

"Miss Susan wore black, which the headmistress disapproved of but could do nothing about because black was, well, a respectable colour. She was young, but with an indefinable air of age about her. She wore her hair, which was blond-white with one black streak, in a tight bun. The headmistress disapproved of that, too — it suggested an Archaic Image of Teaching, she said, with the assurance of someone who could pronounce a capital letter. But she didn’t ever dare disapprove of the way Miss Susan moved, because Miss Susan moved like a tiger."

What exactly is Susan wearing? What is her makeup situation? What's her bone structure, her hair texture, her build? We don't know, and yet we can clearly visualize in our mind's eye exactly what she looks like. Except that visualization will be different for everyone, because it draws from the reader's internal knowledge of what these various things might mean. She wears black, she's young, she's a teacher, and she moves like a tiger. We don't need to picture it the exact way Terry Pratchett visualized it to know exactly what that means. And because she's being framed in the context of being disapproved of by a character in authority who nevertheless clearly can't do a damn thing about it, we learn a lot about this character just by the way the story narrates around her.

This is the kind of thing that a writer figures out with practice - what actually needs to be communicated to the audience for the story to have the impact it needs. And what doesn't need to be communicated, because the audience can be trusted to fill it in on their own. A writer doesn't need to spend three pages describing the luxurious embroidery on a beautiful ball gown if "she was wearing a gorgeous confection of satin and lace" or "she had been carefully zipped into a very impressive bodice" or "she was looking beautifully miserable in her ball gown" or "she sat with the grace and poise of an empress enthroned in her satin skirts" would do the trick in terms of helping an audience get the point.

And once a writer has gotten a feel for how to communicate what they want to communicate cleanly and simply, they can start figuring out how they might want to get weird with it.

"Arthur Dent was grappling with his consciousness the way one grapples with a lost bar of soap in the bath."

(From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

There are so many ways to describe a character on the verge of unconsciousness, and this is a buckwild variation, because it doesn't feel like it should work except that it totally does. We don't need to know what that looks like because we know exactly what that feels like, and we're readily invited to extend that metaphor into Arthur Dent's slippery grasp on reality.

"Lady Ramkin’s bosom rose and fell like an empire."

(From Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!)

What does that mean? What does that look like? It doesn't matter, we somehow absolutely get the point. This is a woman who moves with the power and gravitas of a battalion of soldiers and is often described in terms like "a galleon." We know how we're supposed to feel in this moment.

Words and language are incredibly precise and powerful tools, and what you need to use them for depends entirely on the kind of story you're telling, so the more you write, the better you'll get at using words for your specific purposes. This is why legalese is functionally its own dialect of English - lawyers try to use words to create completely precise, ironclad statements that cannot be misconstrued or manipulated, and it's pretty much incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't been trained in it because that is not what English is usually for.

The progress might not be as easily visible as art improvement, but it'll be there when you look for it, or when you revisit your older writing. You'll wonder with hindsight why you made certain decisions, or be frustrated with how inefficiently or blandly you communicated the point you wanted to make, or how much you undercut your own intentions because you weren't confident in your style. The more you write, the more easily you'll move through the medium of language and the better your work will become.

[leventart-den]

I love seeing Sanji and Zoro trying to recover from a bad fight together

Just…. Both of them in pain, maybe some blood??? That’s good shit right there

Just them being quiet trying to patch the other up, because Chopper already has enough on his.. hooves? And they don’t want to be a burden

You don’t even have to draw this, I just want your opinion on this???? It is VERY important I swear

Dearest Anony!

I swear I'll draw this, I really like the idea! But since this is VERY important, I cannot remain silent and leave you for days without an answer.

Plus, damn, I love this kind of stuff, I could talk about it for hours (if I didn't have to use an online translator because my written English is non-existent).

AN (Me from the future while I was writing what is below): I tried to be short but I was carried away. Thanks for the inspiration, by the way. I'm sorry for all the blood. But I hope that you like it overall and that my answer will brighten up your time at least a little!

AN2 (even further in the future when I finished writing): When I have time I'll rewrite this into a fanfic, if you don't mind, dear Anony.

P.S. to everyone who wrote prompts for art - I will draw each of them, I promise! Thank you very much, they are wonderful! One Piece Art prompts are open for an unlimited time.

***

What I picture in my head when I read your prompt:

It’s time after a heavy battle, they are on the ship, everyone is tired, it’s the afternoon, calm and very quiet. Sanji and Zoro seem to be fine at first glance, and Chopper is so tired that he doesn't have the strength to insist on checking their condition, so he lets them go, immediately falling asleep at the table. It's so hot on the deck, almost suffocating without the wind, but Sanji and Zoro go downstairs to where provisions are stored, barrels of alcohol and where it's cool.

Sanji limps to his usual place, to a box against the wall on which he sits down heavily, leaning against the wooden surface and exhaling a cloud of smoke from the smoldering cigarette now clutched in his fingers. It's stained with blood.

Zoro glances at him briefly and silently heads to the far corner, pulling out a box of first aid from behind the drawers. It's a familiar routine by this point. They are both strong and both don't want to be a burden to Chopper when it can be avoided. They're both stupid like this. So of course at some point in their journey they came to this silent agreement mending each other's wounds and here they are. Again.

Zoro places the box on a nearby drawer and sits down opposite Sanji. The cook takes another drag and finally puts out the cigarette on the wall, throwing the cigarette butt into the iron tin can nearby, which he placed for such purposes. He grunts, finally opening the box and taking out everything he needs while Zoro takes off his shirt.

There is no tightness or awkwardness between them about such things. Not anymore. 

Sanji begins by treating the nasty gash on his forehead. It turned out to be difficult to wipe off all the blood; head wounds usually bleed a lot. Although, with his experience up to this point, he gets the job done quite quickly. Next come the wounds on the arms and torso. There are several cuts and spreading bruises. Zoro has a couple of broken ribs. He drinks a few drinks from the bottle while Sanji stitches up a particularly deep cut near his collarbone and tightens bandages around his chest and torso.

They don't talk during the process, they are too tired even for their usual banter and jokes towards each other. They would probably rather go to bed now, but the risk of upsetting and angering Chopper later is too great. So they will finish what they started, despite the fact that Zoro is half asleep and Sanji's movements are getting slower.

The air becomes heavy with blood and now the smell of tobacco is added to it. Sanji lights another cigarette and Zoro opens his eyes watching him. The cook's hands are shaking, he notes. He runs his eyes over his entire form, noting his injuries. He doesn't see much but Curly looks pale. His gaze falls down. There is a pool of blood on the floor under his feet. Zoro swears soundlessly. Looks like the shitty cook has got his legs messed up.

Zoro gives him a very meaningful look and Sanji sighs. He bites the cigarette between his teeth and fumbles with the waistband of his trousers, but his fingers are too weak right now. 

Zoro watches him for a few seconds and clenches his teeth because of the pain in his ribs, but still gets up and leans towards the cook, pushing his hands away and helping with the clothes. Sanji lifts himself off the box as far as he can, allowing him to pull his trousers down, and then leans heavily against the wall again. His cigarette is smoldering, he is too sleepy to even smoke.

Zoro, meanwhile, examines his legs. There are several deep cuts and his left ankle is swollen and his knees are bruised. Zoro thinks that he shouldn't be surprised, after all, the shitty cook's legs are his weapons, the main blows fall on them, but still. If some of the cuts had been any higher they could have cut the artery and then the cook would have been dead. Zoro finds himself observing all the old scars that cover his skin. He shakes his head, pushing away the thoughts; now is not the time for them.

At this moment, the pale bloodstained hand falls down and the half-smoked cigarette slips out of limped fingers onto the floor. Zoro's gaze shoots up, he feels pressure in his chest for a second and it's not his broken ribs.

But Sanji's breathing is calm and measured. The cook just fell asleep, it seems.

The swordsman releases a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

Okay.

This is okay.

Everything is fine.

He picks up the cigarette from the floor, puts it out and throws it into the jar with the others. Zoro winces at the movement. His damn ribs hurt with the adrenaline gone, but he'll take care of this stupid cook anyway.

He gets rid of the blood around the wounds and stitches them up, trying to keep his hands as stable as possible. It turns out to be more difficult than it seemed, but he tries. He bandages Sanji's legs after and takes off his shoes with socks, checking his ankles and feet.

It looks like nothing was broken, probably just a sprain, so for now Zoro will do what he can and tomorrow Sanji will turn to Chopper himself if necessary.

After a few minutes and tending to a few other cuts and bruises here and there, Zoro looked over his work and decided he was done. The cook didn’t even flinch during all this time and it looked worrying if it weren’t for the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest from breathing. He really lost a lot of blood. Zoro decided not to even try to wake him.

Grunting, he bent down, pulling his pants up to his knees and then moved the cook's motionless body closer to himself, leaning back a little so that he would lean against him and Zoro could pull his pants all the way up. He carefully returned Sanji to his seat and sighed wearily as he buttoned up his pants. Zoro felt exhausted by this point. He wasn't sure he could make it upstairs to the cabins with Sanji as dead weight.

So after a few seconds of hesitation, Zoro went to the corner where they kept all sorts of extra things and fished out a heavy animal skin with thick fur and a couple of blankets. He placed it on the floor next to Sanji and carefully moved him onto the makeshift bed, throwing a blanket over him. He watched as Sanji reflexively curled up on himself, burying his face in the soft fur. The cook always sleeps like this, as if he is trying to hide. It never sits right with Zoro. It looks wrong. 

One day he will find out why. But now Zoro settles down next to Sanji, wrapping his arm around him on top of the blanket and holding him close to himself. He feels the other man's shoulders relax and his breath a little too hot on his collarbone. His nose is cold against Zoro's skin. Zoro suddenly feels like he won't be able to sleep, but he buries his face in the cook's hair, which smells of cherry tobacco, sea and spices, and listens to his heartbeat against his skin.

He falls asleep within seconds.

[mementoboni]

[part 3/4] DIR EN GREY WOWOW Interview & Document (2020)

"But looking at these, seeing Diru's behind-the-scenes production process, I still feel it's not easy, DIR EN GREY is really amazing." — Shinya

Notes before reading:

The whole interview is divided into 8 topics, and the translation is divided into 4 parts. This is the third part, including the 5th topic. The details of all topics and time markers are 👉 here.

I have added Chinese subtitles for this video in 2021. The whole interview was very meaningful, and I hope that with the English translation, more people can understand what they're talking about.

The five members were interviewed separately and then edited into a video, so the words spoken by each of them are not necessarily coherent.

Repost and share are welcome.🙌 I translated it all by my ears, so please feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing parts.☺️

— — —

05. Member Feature

[ 薫 Kaoru ]

►Memories of the Band Formation

Kaoru: Even ONE MAN LIVE, we still didn't have the budget to decorate the stage. But we still wanted it, so we went to TOKYU HANDS* and bought Styrofoam, flower decorations, and wire or something like that. It's fun that we all made  stage decorations in the house together. (*Note: "TOKYU HANDS" is a Japanese chain of home-based department stores specializing in selling DIY products.)

►Something of Recent Interest

Kaoru: I am often asked, but I can't think of anything. I don't want to do anything when I get home.  This month, in June, "Neon Genesis Evangelion" (the movie) will be released, and I really like it. Kaoru: It's almost over, of course I also want to see it earlier, but after watching it is really over. I'm a little happy that it's going to be postponed, that it won't be released this year (2020), and that I won't be able to watch it. (Staff: Emotionally, you still can't accept it.) Kaoru: Yeah, yeah, it will feel like it's not the end yet.

►Opportunity for Solo Exhibition

(*Screen caption: Kaoru held a solo exhibition”ノウテイカラノ”in 2019.) Kaoru: The reason for the exhibition is that a few years ago my hands started to become a bit uncomfortable and I couldn't hold the pick properly to play the guitar, so I had to put the pick on my fingers with tape*.  As a kind of rehabilitation, I started to draw and try to show some random things, but the story is not yet that rich. (*Note: Around 2014, Kaoru's hands began to show signs of abnormalities, which were diagnosed to be the occupational disease, caused by relaxation of the ligaments of the muscles or joints.)

►The Origin of「ノウテイカラノ」("nouteikarano”)

Kaoru: When I was a child, I often had a dream. I don't know if it was the sky or the ground, but there was a pure white place, and from far away, I could see a lot of dots, as if there was a large group of things coming closer and closer, and in an instant, they all swarmed towards me. Kaoru: Every night I would dream about it, and then I woke up with a start.  I wake up every time I dream about it, and what happens after that? I imagine what happens after that, try to draw a picture like this, go back to my mind at that time and imagine it. (*Note: According to Kaoru’s scend book “Dokugen ni” (published in 2018) P.85, "ノウテイカラノ" means "脳底からの" (born from inside the head), just written in katakana.

►Influence on the Band

Kaoru: At first, I wanted to draw with a different feeling, and I felt that my creative power was stimulated, so I thought I could compose with a different feeling. But, rather, it seems to be more difficult to make a song. (laughs)

...

[ Shinya ]

►The Person You Admire

Shinya: I've been in a band since my first year of middle school. X was very popular in the class, and YOSHIKI-san's presence was very strong.  At that time I decided to become a drummer like him, and I've always looked up to YOSHIKI-san since then.

►Memories of the Band Formation

Shinya: We used to compose in a studio in Osaka. There was a container-like studio, and I remember we stayed there for 3 or 4 days, composing the song together.  The studio was rented, and we slept there under the blankets. Shinya: I never understood why we had to share a room*. The studio was in Osaka and we could just go home, so why did we have to spend the night there?  I guess other members might have felt the same way. (*Shinya used the word "gashuku, 合宿")

►Reason for Not Changing the Style

Shinya: There are people who have liked me for a long time. Also, I can feel the beauty by keeping my old look, and that's why (I don't change my look).

►Opportunity to Start Solo Project

(*Screen caption: Shinya established the music group "SERAPH" in 2017.) Shinya: The concept was already there many years ago, but I felt that it was a bit taboo to have other band activities, so I didn't do anything.  But around 2012 or 2013, I started to think that it was okay, so I went into it with the intention of trying it out.

►The Concept of "SERAPH"

Shinya: The theme is the various things that I see from heaven, about human beings, and that's what I'm expressing.

►Influence on the Band

Shinya: The drum part is the same as DIR EN GREY. After all, it's an expression of my own creation.  In this respect, when I think of the drums of DIR EN GREY, there may still be some influence.

►Things learned from "SERAPH"

Shinya: I have to do a lot of things by myself in SERAPH, booking all kinds of things and so on.  I'm quite happy to do it myself, or maybe I'm doing it because I like it. But looking at these, seeing Diru's behind-the-scenes production process, I still feel it's not easy, DIR EN GREY is really amazing.

...

[ Die ]

►Opportunity to Go into the Band

Die: I wasn't that interested in music itself before. I like listening to music, but I don't know anything about the bands. After entering high school, I saw the performance of senpais' copy band at the cultural festival. I was dragged there by my friends, and it was a shock to me. The first time I saw a live performance, I realized that it's the band. Die: Although I had no interest in it, I wanted to do something while watching it, and I formed a band with my friend immediately after the show was over. There was no one else (in the band). I was a drummer at first. (laughs)  But it's boring to play rhythm all the time at home.  After all, guitar is a melodic instrument, and there is an amplifier. I guess the guitar is more attractive to me.

►Memories of the Band Formation

Die: When we first debuted, we spent the whole day in the conference room of the record company, signing posters, changing signatures, and so on. Filming also started at 6 a.m., and it took about 3 hours for a person to put on makeup, it's usually over time at the end. I remember these things very well.

►Something of Recent Interest

Die: In my daily life, I naturally see and hear things like the Japanese music industry, and it feels really peaceful.

►Opportunity to Start Solo Project

(*Screen caption: Die founded the rock band "DECAYS" in 2015.) Die: As far as music is concerned, it's something I can't do at DIR EN GREY. I wanted to try and see how far I could go without the DIR EN GREY label. There is a part of me that wants to do it myself, or to challenge it.

►Things learned from "DECAYS"

Die: At first I felt like I had to make some changes, but instead, I felt like I was losing myself. In the end, I found that it is best to be myself, in the next process.

...

[ Toshiya ]

►Opportunity to Start Playing Bass

Toshiya: Originally, I just wanted to be a guitarist, but I didn't think I could play very well. At that time, I was thinking about what to do, and then I was attracted to the bass. I felt like I could see my future. Toshiya: There are many people who are called "Guitar Heroes", but few people remember "Bass Heroes". That means there is still room for me to develop, so I thought I would play bass.

►Memories of the Band Formation

Toshiya: When our band first formed, four members came to my hometown. It was winter and there was still snow on the ground. They all came from Kansai and rarely saw snow*. I was very impressed by how excited they were to see snow. (*Toshiya's hometown is Nagano. It is said that Toshiya's mother took the picture at the time and still keeps it at home in Nagano :D → TOSHIYA AT JOE YOKOMIZO CHANNEL 4th FEB TRANSLATION/NOTES 2/4)

►Favorite Artists

Toshiya: I like painting. Vincent van Gogh and Francis Bacon, I like both of them very much.  The world of painting is usually a mixture of truth and fiction.

►Opportunity to Start the Apparel Brand

(*Screen caption: Fashion brand with Toshiya as creative director - DIRT) Toshiya: I think music and fashion are inseparable and both are very attractive. Music should be free to express itself, and in the same way, fashion should be free, too. Toshiya: When it comes to expressing oneself, everyone chooses what is acceptable to most people*. I don't like that, I think we should listen to our own thoughts more. (*Toshiya used the word "migimuke migi, 右向け右")

►Influence on the Band

Toshiya: Even if I'm designing clothes, I end up having something to do with music. Although this is a completely different field, it will eventually return to music and bands.

...

[ 京 Kyo ]

►The Person You Admire

Kyo: There are a lot of them.  Now I'm not just targeting one person. When I was young, there were a lot of senpais that I wanted to become like them.  But it's been more than 20 years, so now I don't take them as a target, just be myself.

►Interested Artists

Kyo: Haven't there "Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃)" recently?  I haven't read it yet, it's super popular, isn't it?  Generally speaking, if the sales are so good, it is difficult to end the series, right? There will be a variety of entanglements, such as the life afterwards, there are many to consider. Kyo: I think it's great to end the series like this, to end it at this time, with a sense of strength and determination. So if there is a follow-up manga in the future, I would like to read it.

►Opportunity to Start Solo Project

(*Screen caption: Kyo founded the rock band "sukekiyo" in 2013.) Kyo: The things I want to do often keep popping up. I think it's a shame not to do it, and I don't want to regret it.

►Influence on the Band

Kyo: I don't think so, but I feel less stressed (after the solo project).  People who like DIR EN GREY say to me, "Don't bring sukekiyo to DIR EN GREY!" Sometimes people say that, and I'm not going to do that. Kyo: I was asked why (I want to form a sukekiyo), "Diru can do it, right?" It's because I can't do it (in Diru) that I want to do it!  I don't know what criteria they used to say that Diru can do it, but I didn't do what I could do (in Diru).  If you finish what you want to do one by one, you will be less stressed out.

(To be continued…)

--- --- ---

part 1. & part 2. & part4.

topics & time marks

中文翻譯 (My Blogger) part 1. & part 2. & part 3.

[torrentialstardust]

Awawawawa! More Touhou art! And more palette swaps!!!

This is a fun piece. I haven't had a lot of spoons for drawing for a while but I've been whittling away at this over the span of over a month, and I'm proud of how it turned out!

This was partly inspired by this post, but funnily enough I only remembered it after I'd done a lot of work on this piece's sketch. Sakuya has learned what oxygen is at least twice throughout Touhou, and personally I think she's just fucking with people. Coupling that with Reimu's more surly attitude and overworkedness felt fundamentally right to me. They would totally do this.

My bestie @banmitbandit also helped me out when I couldn't figure out what to do with Reimu's head angle and facial expression so give them a thanks! Go into their askbox and say "thanks", do it now!

I also wanted to do palette swaps again! I freaking love palette swaps, I want to make that my whole brand at this point. The second image is based off of their alt costumes in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the rest of Sakuya's are from Hisoutensoku, which I actually downloaded just so I could get a better look at the sprites. The pictures on the Touhou Wiki don't actually show Sakuya's braids or her eye colour so I had to go straight to the source. Her appearance is remeniscent of Remilia, Youmu, and maybe Flandre?

Reimu's appearance in the third image is more or less a straight translation of one of her alts from that game, it's very similar to Sanae, who I don't know that much about but seems to be something of a foil to Reimu. The other two alts of her I made myself! One is supposed to look like Marisa, the other is just that I saw a pink alt of Reimu from Antinomy of Common Flowers (by the way, I had no idea before that Sakuya wasn't in that game! That feels so weird!) and I wanted to do something cool with pink! I like pink, I think it's the best colour. I was thinking of doing more, but actually I kind of borked up the whole process with the coloured lines on Reimu's outfit, merged it with the regular lines layer, and also hit that layer with a gaussian blur making it *very* difficult to edit it and the lines. Marisa Reimu and Pink Reimu's lines were very involved, I had to make multiple correction layers to change the colours. If you notice, Reimu's eyebrow on the first image is different (and IMO better) than the others, that's also because I wasn't watching and holding onto my layers properly.

I'm still super proud of this piece! Art is inherently good to create, and though I can't do much at the moment but rest, I'm proud I could get this in there a little at a time.I hope you have a safe weekend! Much love! <3

[nightghoul381]

Licht 3rd Anniversary Event

A Beast's Dream Realized by Beauty

Chapter 2

This a fan translation so it is definitely not 100% accurate. I do not own anything related to Ikemen Prince. Support Cybird by buying their amazing stories!

I’m very sorry I don’t have screenshots for this translation until the epilogue!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Premium End | Epilogue

There are three things we can tell from Licht’s drawings.

The first is that every drawing has a big, round full moon.

The second is that there are no roses in bloom.

And the third is that he hadn’t drawn any people.

Relying on the few clues I had, I immediately headed out to town with Licht, but nothing came of it—

Fruit shop Clerk: “These are wonderful colors but I have no idea where the drawing is supposed to be.”

Grocery Store Clerk: “Miss Emma, is this some kind of riddle? Is there a hidden code or something?”

Passing Soldier: “I do patrols a lot, but I haven’t seen scenery like this… I’m sorry I can’t help you!”

Emma / Licht: “Hmm….”

Licht and I go into our favorite café and take a seat to rest our feet, tired from walking around.

Immediately after ordering our sweets, I let out a sigh.

Emma: “This is pretty tough.”

Licht: “The toughest thing is how bad my drawings are…”

Emma: “No!? I like how unique and creative your drawings are.”

Licht: “You don’t have to force yourself to like them.”

Emma: “I’m not forcing myself.”

Licht: “But it’s true that it’s not good enough to work as a clue.”

Emma: “That’s not true.”

I arranged the pictures on the table to see if there were any clues we may have overlooked.

(We went to all the places I could think of and asked the people in town.)

(Even so, the landscape drawing didn’t trigger any memories.)

Emma: “Maybe this scenery isn’t from Rhodolite.”

Licht: “We’ve searched a lot and can’t find a similar place, so I think the possibility is high.”

Emma: “That’s right. Bu what should we do when it comes to other countries…”

(It’s suddenly become even more difficult to find…)

The store clerk sets the seasonal peach tart on the table in front of me.

I hurriedly set aside the drawing and inhaled the scent to my heart’s content.

Emma: “Looks delicious…”

Licht: “You’re drooling…”

Emma: “You’re lying!?”

Licht: “It’s a lie.”

Emma: “…Licht.”

Licht: “I just wanted to see your cute reaction.”

Licht cut into the tart, putting a slice onto a plate and handing it to me.

After I took the plate and thanked him, he started cutting his own portion of the tart.

Licht: “I want to keep your current cuteness in a picture.”

Emma: “…If you say that, I’ll have to get revenge okay?”

The tart that Licht had cut into pieces had the most delicious parts.

While he had a somewhat melancholy air when he dug up the box, Licht was now smiling.

(Licht’s smile is a national treasure no matter when I see it.)

(…national treasure…)

Emma: “Ah!”

Licht: “What?”

Emma: “I have a good idea.”

(With this you might be able to find scenery from other countries!)

After savoring the seasonal tart slowly, we convinced the staff to package the rest for us to take home.

I took Licht’s hand and headed to a certain place.

Sariel: “You want to see inside the treasury?”

Emma: “Yes.”

I had approached the subject while offering tea and a lightly sweetened cake to Sariel while he took a break.

It was only natural that I got a questioning response.

Emma: “Rhodolite is the land of art and roses, so there are many works of art in the court, right?”

Emma: “I want to see paintings by artists from all over the continent.”

Licht: “… I see.”

Licht: “If there’s a similar painting in the court that would definitely be a clue.”

Emma: “Right?”

Sariel: “Are you looking for something? I’m not sure you’ll find it, but it’s fine for you to look in the treasury.”

Emma: “Eh…it’s okay?”

Sariel: “Why are you surprised?”

Emma: “Well the treasury is such an important place that it’s heavily guarded, so I didn’t think it would be possible to get permission so easily…”

Sariel: “Is it really that strange? You are Price Licht’s fiancée.”

Sariel: “You have the right to freely browse the treasury. Here you go.”

Sariel takes out a key from the desk drawer and drops it into my hand.

Emma: “Thank you—”

Sariel: “However, as you said earlier, it houses important cultural property that is under security.”

Sariel: “Don’t play hide and seek in the treasury and break the artwork like Prince Licht did in the past.”

Licht: “…don’t bring that up, Sariel.”

(That really happened?)

Emma: “I understand, I’ll keep my head up!”

The treasury of Castle Rhodolite was even more expansive than the dance hall.

(Even so, it feels cramped because there are so many things.)

As befits the name of the land of art and roses, countless works of art were stored in the treasury.

I froze… if I should fall, I would crash right into the ceramic vase displayed in front of me.

Licht: “You’re too cautious.”

Emma: “Aren’t you nervous, Licht?”

Licht: “Not really? Guess I don’t understand the value of art.”

Licht: “You are far more valuable to me than the national treasures here.”

Emma: “Ah, thank you…?”

(…Licht’s words are always so sweet and make me smile.)

Licht: “There are a considerable number of paintings alone.”

Emma: “Yeah, it’s rewarding to have this many!”

Licht: “Too excited.”

Licht: “…that kind of thing is cute though.”

Licht casually presses his lips against my forehead and immediately begins to remove the cloth from a nearby painting.

(The treasury…. it’s really warm.)

After hours of quiet work—

Emma: “I might have found it.”

Removing the cloths that were hanging on painting after painting…

That’s when I found one picture that stopped my hand.

The painting was a delicate depiction of a foreign dancer.

The dancer is beautiful, and takes your breath away in admiration.

But what caught my attention was the scenery behind her.

Licht: “Which one?”

Licht came closer to the sound of my voice.

The two of us stared intently at the painting like appraisers.

Emma: “Look. First, here’s the beautiful full moon, right?  Then there’s the stage where the dancers are dancing.”

Emma: “The jumbled masses in your drawings look just like that, and most importantly, this…”

I compared one of Licht’s drawings with the painting in question.

In the picture that Licht drew when he was young, there are parts that were colored with yellow and green.

On the other hand, the painting depicts a beautiful sandy landscape that is almost transparent and green plants that are not seen around here.

(I don’t know if it’s really right, and it’s possible that it’s just a stretch, but…)

Emma: “The picture you drew was a desert, isn’t it?”

Licht: “…a desert…”

Licht: “That means it’s in Tanzanite, the land of divination and illusion—”

I try to recall the information while imagining a continental map in my mind.

Emma: “Tanzanite… I think that was the country neighboring Jade.”

Licht: “Yes. Tanzanite is the only country that has a desert, and it’s famous for its dancers.”

Emma: “So the person who told you the stories was talking about Tanzanite?”

Licht: “It’s very possible.”

Licht: “I heard that the country over there welcomes dancers and songstresses freely.”

Licht: “…and my mother was a songstress.”

I can hear my heart pounding heavily.

Emma: “Wait, Licht…”

Emma: “Who told you the story that made you draw this picture?”

Licht: “…”

Licht: “…my mother.”

An unfathomable shadow casts into his crimson eyes.

Licht: “This is where my mother wanted to go.”

[pikatrainer99]

I made Orange and Red as autism creatures! (With bonus digitized Sinnoh Trio as autism creatures)

Drawing Red as an autism creature was really difficult...his hair and his clothes were NOT easy to adapt into creature form. For Orange the biggest struggle was the scarf...which I think I made a good way of making it look like it's wrapped around his big creature head...and I updated Dia's design to have his scarf look the same way. For Pearl I couldn't do that because of his high collar on his shirt. And for Platinum I tried to make her scarf actually look like it's trailing behind her like it does in the actual official art. Everyone's hair and bodies are white because that's the color of the TBH creature, so don't go complaining that everyone's hair color is wrong because it's literally just because they're in creature form this time around. As for expressions everyone has a little smile except for Orange who has the classic TBH creature blank expression. I decided to give him the blank look because he really struggles with identifying emotions and he either feels everything or nothing depending on the situation. Orange also has his fingerless gloves which I somehow was still able to draw the little Poké Balls on them...as well as the Poké Ball design on his shirt. Btw...It is SO hard to draw these characters in four-legged creature form because their clothes...ESPECIALLY Red's clothes...do NOT translate well to four legs...it's so weird and hard to draw. So I just stuck to each character's shirt and hat/scarf to make it a bit easier for me. I'm sorry if it looks all weird and wonky because of that but clothes just don't translate well to these creatures 😅

Eventually I would like to draw the Sinnoh Trio and Red normally...but I'm still trying to learn how since PokéSpe characters are hard to draw (for me anyway). The only one I've ever drawn is Yellow, and that was only ONCE in that one drawing where she and Orange were drawing pictures. I've drawn Yellow's head a second time and Red's head only once, but that's all I've managed to draw of PokéSpe characters so far. I will keep practicing though, I want to improve so I can draw more art of my favorite characters in all of PokéSpe!

I hope you all like this newly digitized Sinnoh Trio drawing, and I hope it's an improvement from the original I posted last year! I also hope you all like my new autism creature drawing of Orange and Red as autism creatures! These are all characters I headcanon as autistic (and Orange IS autistic), so it works perfectly for them all! I'd like to be back with more drawings soon but I've been really busy lately so I don't know when I'll be able to draw again next.

[afreakingdork]

Weak Spot - Chapter 25

RotTMNT Donatello x Reader

Warnings: Aged-up Turtles, Romance, Meet Cute, Villain Donatello, Cussing, Crushes, Xenophobia, Fear, Intimidation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Hurt/Comfort, Love, AFAB Reader, Vaginal Sex, Sex Rough, Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Creampie, Teasing, Scent Kink, Sexual Tension, Breeding Kink, Multiple Orgasms, Cunnilingus, Fellatio, Marathon Sex, Somnophilia, Intercrural Sex

Synopsis:  A love story of villainous proportions! Though it hadn’t come easily, as these things rarely do, you found yourself in a whirlwind romance with a handsome and mysterious mutant. His idiosyncrasies had been easy to ignore as attraction grew into something more. However, will love endure when the unknowns about him end up being far darker than you ever considered?

Also available on Ao3

First 💜 Previous

“Is that why… you draw your…?” Your lips pursed as you stalled your hand movements.

Donnie lifted a hand and brushed a finger over one of the brows drawn onto his mask.

You blew out a raspberry. “That one’s literal.”

Donnie arched said marking in a knowing way.

“That… one is…” You hesitated again.

“It’s not always a word for word translation.” Donnie signed along as he spoke.

“W-wait slow down!”

Again his brow arched high.

“Uh!” Putting a hand out flat, palm up, you bent the fingers on your other hand at the knuckle before pressing them into said awaiting appendage. “Slow down…”

“That’s ‘again.’” Donnie gave a patient smile as he repeated your gesture.

“Oh ‘slow down’ was the glove one.” Flipping your open hand over, you brushed your other digits slowly over top to your wrist.

“You’ll confuse yourself by doing that. ‘Gloves’ spreads the fingers.” Tacking on the gesture to his sentence, he tipped his head back and waited.

“I think you’re…” You paused and filled your cheeks with irritation. Brain flurried with the many signs, you exhaled sharply as if clearing them. “…pushing? Us off-topic on…?” 

“You wanted to sign ‘throwing’ didn’t you?” Green hands moved with ease.

“The figures of speech are annoying.” Leaving the beginning of your sentence you simply chopped one hand into the webbing of your other.

“It is American Sign Language.” He left an ‘L’ up in the air.

“You spelled it out.” You spun your hand in the air.

“Correct.” Closing into a fist, his hand bobbed.

You signed for him to ‘slow down’ again. “Wait, I’m a few behind. What was ‘purpose?’”

Donnie dropped his hands into his lap and waited.

You stared abysmally for a second before shaking it off and readying yourself for the accompanying gestures. “How do you sign p-u-r-p-o-s-e?”

“The general sign is ‘meaning.’” His hands danced with ease. “Keep in mind context: ‘goal,’ ‘reason,’ ‘plan,’ and ‘want.’”

Your lip quivered as you tried to retain the movements.

“’Eyebrows?’” He signed again and waited with his high.

“Do you draw them on to sign?” Going slow, you were methodical about your dual response.

“Your grammar is off.” He left his sentence off by repeating yours, correctly.

You followed along.

“No, that’s not why I started.”

“Why?” You touched your forehead and came away with the sign for ‘y.’

Lowering his hands to study them, you watched as Donnie searched those far flung memories. It was only recently that you’d picked up the different air he took on when doing so. He typically resisted the wade more often than not, but if it was something more menial it always felt like he’d pluck the necessary parts out while trying to keep from getting wet. Whatever he was currently searching for must have been in a murky path; he didn’t appear troubled, but he wasn’t finding anything clear. “The purpose…” 

You gave a half smile as you hadn’t meant to trick him. 

You also had no idea which of the versions it was meant to be. 

“… to an extent, was to alleviate me doing either to get my point across.” 

You tried to picture a smaller version of him giving his patented look, but it was difficult to conjure. Setting that and how much you wanted to ask about baby pictures aside, you instead moved with another question. “Did you… ever? Draw them on your face?”

“No, the sensation of marker to skin is one I find repulsive.” Coming out of his sentence his hands came up to adjust his mask before coming down for another bout. “None of these decisions were done without careful consideration. They’re multi-faceted. I didn’t don a mask just for the purpose of drawing brows, just as I didn’t decide to do something seemingly so foolish without having a multitude of reasons to do so.”

You stared blankly, dropping the lesson to think about what he said. It cropped up a new slew of questions of what a young Donatello was like. Cycling through several aged versions of him in a confusing shuffle, you spelled. “N-e-i-t-h-e-r?”

“There’s no one agreed upon sign. I prefer shaking my head no to negate the ‘either.’” He demonstrated.

You watched before rubbing your eyes.

A hand lightly tapped your knee for attention. “That’s enough for now.”

You gave a nod beneath your palms before sinking into the couch. “You were mute at one point.”

The silence chased your question and, in bringing your hands down, you caught a tired line of surprise pass on Donnie’s face before he tried to hide it under nonchalance. “Why do you think that?”

“Feeling and a guess.” You gave a tired shrug. “None of the answers were clear, but it sounded like you started drawing your brows before you knew how to sign. You said ‘neither’ and, for you, not ‘having’ to do something can be the same as not ‘knowing.’”

Breaking eye contact, he evaluated your response as if he could pick apart the words visually in the air.

He was following the chemtrails of your logic and it left you free to study him. He looked especially tired even though he seemed to have gotten a good amount of sleep as of late. You were about to question it when he turned to you with one of his own. You paused to hear him out first when his snout wrinkled and he gave a comparatively small sneeze to the size of his body.   

You stared openly before a smile spread on your lips. “That was… adorable!”

With his hand lingering in front of his snout, he glared over it. “No.”

“It was!” You leaned forward, but kept shy of your boyfriend. “I’m not teasing; I’m just surprised! I’ve never heard you sneeze before!”

Donnie made a disgruntled sound before getting up and rounding towards the door.

You pivoted and slung your arms over the back of the couch as you watched.

“Lunch.” He was already sticking an arm through his coat.

“Oh.” You bobbed to get up. “Sure.”

-

Juggling a stack, you wished you had grabbed a bag. You’d opted to take everything by hand to do a grand reveal once getting to apartment two, but that decision was literally weighing on you awkwardly. After lunch, it had been in a strange stupor that Donnie suggested a movie night the following one. Not wanting to second guess it in case he changed his mind, you instead shifted your focus on making this one great to hopefully open the door to others. 

It had been easy, at first, to carry a few movie cases. It was the trip to the bodega that had done you in. Snack packages didn’t pile as nicely and their rounded shape proved it by sliding as you made it out of the elevator. Hoisting the popcorn up for a fourth time, you huffed as you approached the door. Debating setting it all down, you shoved the unpopped sleeve into the crook of your arm before rapping your knuckles on the door.

As per usual you heard nothing as you waited. 

Then, to break normalcy, a large thud slammed against the other side.

Jolting, you tried and failed to keep some candy from falling. “Don?!”

Though annoyingly muffled, you heard a groan.

It prompted you to press your ear flat to the wood. “Donnie?!”

“It’s-” He sneezed so loud you jumped again. “-fine… I… Oh…”

“Oh?!” With your load lost at your feet, you palmed the door handle.

It was locked.

“What’s going on!?”

You heard him mumble something before there was another heavy thud. This time it was centralized enough that you could picture him slamming his forehead against the door for whatever reason. “Why are you here…?”

His voice seemed thick and you strained to separate what wasn’t him versus the soundproofing. “Yesterday, we-”

“Movie night…” He groaned again and his voice trailed away as he presumably reeled in irritation at the memory.

“Did you… forget?” Stepping back to get your phone, you scrolled to the shared calendar. Scrolling found it surprisingly blank. “I know we said today. It was right after I left at three something!”

“Correct…You had the… the… uh…” It almost sounded like his nose was stuffed with cotton.

“Birthday dinner…” You answered with worried wonder. “Don, open the door.”

“Yes…” There was an off kilter quality to the way he ignored you. “I was tired.”

“Donatello.”

“Something, something, let’s stay in. Movie night.” He reiterated before another thump to the door took you further back.

“Donnie, let me in!”

“I’m-” He hitched on another sneeze that didn’t come but instead devolved into a coughing fit.

“You’re sick…” 

His choking ebbed before it flowed as bubbling sniffles. “Preoccupation with dredging a grotesque amount of mucus from my body-” He hacked. “-I-” Another sneeze came before he summed the thickness in his throat up to a growl. “I forgot to cancel!”

“You can get sick?” You whispered to the wood.

“Not normally.” He snorted though you could hear how no oxygen entered his body. “There is a mutagenic-” He blew his nose. “-pestilence that rises up from the sewers. I can never-” He sneezed and it was accompanied by a gag. “-study the damned thing because… it … How do I…?”

You returned to press your hands flat to the door.

“It messes… my mind…?”

“You don’t know?”

He gave a cough that was not the least bit productive. “The fever… Start soon… Lethal to humans… Mutants…”

“Start soon? What…? How can you tell?” You gave a little bang. “You didn’t even seem sick yesterday! You literally sneezed one time!”

There was a sliding sound that you imagined was him sinking to the floor. “Start fast, end fast… You… leave…”

“But I can help! You sound terrible. I just need a mask-”

“No.”

“Donnie…”

“I haven’t… study…” He choked on a cough. “…human spread.”

“You don’t know if I can catch it?”

You heard a shuffling, but couldn’t decide if he was shaking his head or nodding. “Is S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. there?”

“Can’t…” Donnie’s voice wrung out.

“He can’t?” You asked more to yourself before pulling up your gauntlet. “Donnie, are you saying you go through this alone… every year?”

His silence hit you like a gut punch.

“Okay…” You pushed off the door to stand a little straighter. “I’ll go, but at least let me bring you some essentials. Electrolytes, food, medicine… It might not help, but…” You wanted to do something. You knew it was selfish and your shoulders dragged under the weight of it. “I’ll go. I’ll get a few things and go. I’ll leave them by the door for you just in case. Is that alright?”

There was a bout of quiet before a faint, “Fine.”

“Okay, I’ll be back!” You stepped away, but hesitated before coming in close. “Text me if you can think of anything you need! I’ll knock three times for the drop off and leave right after.”

You heard a grunt that you imagined was him getting up.

“Feel better…” You mumbled softly before heading towards the elevator. “S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.?”

Your gauntlet sat uselessly on your wrist all the way to the pharmacy. It unnerved you as you tried to calculate what kind of dosages someone like Donnie would need. You wished you had gotten more information, but at the same time he seemed to be rapidly devolving. A ghost of a wet Donatello in the rain flashed through your mind and you thought of your own immune system. By the little he’d mentioned it sounded like he would run the full length of a flu in a very short amount of time. With it being apparently so bad he had no memory, then it couldn’t have been a good thing. It struck you as the same logic one used when turning up the oven temp to shorten a cook time; all it resulted in was a burnt dish.

Having never shown a preference, you ended up grabbing him every flavor of enhanced water you could find. You had to trek back to the front for a basket before snatching up the maximum strength of several cold medicines. It would rack up a big till, but Donnie always jumped over you to pay. If you could help him even once then at least you tried to even the score. Debating on who had the best soup nearby, you approached checkout when your gauntlet suddenly started buzzing like crazy the moment you reached for your wallet.

The cashier stared at you dumbfounded as you sheepishly lifted the tech up to your face.

“S-smart watches, ya know?” You gave a synthetic laugh and turned to growl into it. “S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. what the hell!?”

It went silent again and you stared at it openly.

It seemed so different; almost like S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. wasn’t there at all.

You narrowed your gaze. “Donnie?”

The thing lay limply and you spun back to the cashier who had lost all interest.

“S-sorry about that…” You held up your wallet a second time only for the gauntlet to come alive again. “Ugh!” In a snap, the tech was off your wrist and into your pocket. It continued to buzz angrily as you paid. It stopped as soon as you stepped away and you tried to gather what felt like a messy string of facts.

S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. was gone.

Donnie was sick.

Trudging a few blocks with bags biting your arms, you entered a deli to get some soup. The employee there was kind and started up a dialog based on your load. It was only as they passed you a bag did they mention something about adding extra garlic with a wink. You thanked them and headed back to Donnie’s apartment. The process was second nature by now which meant you had thought little of your first entry. NowKnow with the knowledge that S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. was MIA, you wished you could remember if you had seen the check. Prepared now, you stared at the black of the panel only for the door to simply unlock. You stared at it warily as you headed in.

Another bout through the elevator and you took your time setting the bags in front of his door. In case he decided to scorn your picks for whatever reason, you pushed the soup to the forefront. Surely he’d be able to at least smell the garlic. Leaning back to survey the many parcels, you wondered how his scenting worked with his congestion. Debating whether it disappeared or dropped to a human level, you lifted a fist up. Giving a sad but satisfied exhale, you prepared the three taps to alert him.

You were already stepping back for your hasty retreat when your knuckle’s contact with the door cracked it open from where it had been left ajar.

You stared blankly at it for a moment before leaning in to peek.

The lights were off, but the sun oozing in through the kitchen window made it so you could see the shadow of the empty living room. “Donnie?”

There was no sound and you almost wondered if he had left.

Stepping forward to get more of an angle inside, you glimpsed how his computer’s monitors were also off. “Hello?”

Again silence chased you and you frowned before looking down at all the bags in your way.

“I’m going to put everything inside and close the door! Say something if that’s not what you wanted!” You pushed the door fully and knelt down to nudge the bags through the threshold. It was there, in a squat, that you saw a neatly folded pile of blue and white. Blinking at it, you reached past a bag handle and picked the bundle up. There was no note or anything attached, but as you stood, it unfurled into what you immediately identified as PPE.

The papery quality of the blue jumpsuit was something you thumbed over as you caught a respirator mask as it tried to fall. Staring back into the dark, you shrugged before donning the equipment. You mistakenly dropped the gloves, but otherwise you felt invincible to germs. Secured and curious, you scooped the bags up and entered the apartment. “I’m safe! Where are you?”

This time you didn’t wait as you headed towards the kitchen. He wasn’t on the couch or bed so you frowned as you stocked the fridge with the many drinks. You left the soup out hoping you could get him to eat a little when the silence started to wear on you. There was only one place you didn’t have a clear view of and you wandered over towards the partition to access the bathroom.

As soon as you passed into the bedroom, you immediately caught sight of a single green foot splayed on the ground. Jarring and in a sudden rush, you chased up his body to find Donnie laying half in, half out, on his back in the dark of the bathroom. “Donnie!”

“Don’t…” He gave a pitiful groan as you flicked the light on. Rotating away as if the light burned him, pocks of sweat dotted his naked body. Around him, his wraps and mask made a faulty outline as he had clearly torn them off in delirium.  

“Did you fall? Are you okay? Did you hit your head?” You reached gloved hands out to him and both points of contact that hit him radiated heat through your barrier. “What the…?”

“Fe…” His pupils refused to surface. “…ver…”

Burning nettles setting in, you had to pull away “I can’t… I can’t touch you like this… Just how hot are you!?”

A hand waved deliriously and bumped into the wall before it collapsed. A whirl that sounded like a computer running caught your attention and you glanced behind you. “Uh… I’m gonna get oven mitts! Then we’ll run you a cold bath or something.”

You hesitated to leave him before turning with a pained wince. Your heart ached as you rounded back towards the kitchen and slowed as the purple glow of his computer lit the room. Drawn to it, there was a large error message. Approaching, the details listed a numerical error code along with notes about the neural link connection having been interrupted. Not seeing a keyboard, you clicked the large ‘proceed’ on the screen only for a dozen pop-ups to appear. Frowning in dismay, you searched them to find they were monitors of Donnie’s health under the header of another number set; each window seemed to have a decimal place and different designation. Shifting through them with a finger, you flicked a few away until you finally found a bright red one noting his temperature. It was floating around 115 degrees and you balked before rushing to the kitchen.

Slipping on a pair of oven mitts, you rushed back to find Donnie in a forming puddle of sweat. He only tried to shoo you away once before his limbs refused to respond. His limb body made him near impossible to move and you barely managed to heave him over the lip of the tub. The exertion temporarily took you out and you plopped onto the toilet seat to catch your breath. Removing the oven mitts, you surveyed how he sat the entirely wrong direction with his knees hooking his legs outside the rim. Thinking only of the fever, you pushed past your weakness, and rushed for the tap. Flipping the gauge all the way to cold, you shot him an apologetic look that he never caught wind of as your throat tightened. “I’m sorry, Don.”

He babbled something as you turned the shower on and yelped as the cold water hit him. The shock was only momentary before he gave a dreamy sigh. You almost thought you saw steam roll off him as you sank back down on your porcelain seat. Seeing him almost content, you let him stay in his awkward position for a moment on a wind back to the computer. There, his temperature had already dropped to 111 and you headed towards the fridge to see if there was ice in the freezer. You found two trays and, in passing, saw the gauge dipping to 109.

Minutely satisfied, you returned to find his eyes surfaced as he stared through the stream.

“You with me?” You asked as you popped an ice cube out and held it out to him.

His reach was weak, but he got his arm up and took it. He then pulled it close and held it against his temple with a congested sigh. For a long time you sat like that, passing him cube after cube as he let them melt against his skin before reaching for another. Around the time they were all gone, he pulled his legs into the tub and sleepily leaned against the tiles. You watched on with a heavy chest thinking of all the years he did this alone.

He’d clearly survived, but that didn’t make it better.

Giving a motion that caught your eye, you looked up to find him signing for a drink. You nodded appropriately and jumped to your feet. He rested his eyes again as you debated which bottles to grab him. Settling on three top options that he might like, you gathered them up and returned. “Alright, I’ve got almost every flavor so if these aren’t good enough you can take your pick-“

A low hiss caught youryour attention and you brought your head up to find Donnie backed into a corner of the shower. If he had hackles you imagined they would have been up from the way his whole body was bunched. His teeth werewere bared threateningly and, as you searched, you found his pupils were simply gone.

“Uh…”

A sharp clicking noise started and you took a hesitant step back. One bottle slipped with its condensation against your glove and you scrambled to catch it. Missing and, barely keeping from dropping the rest of your loadload, the bottle clattered to the ground before the tub gave a deep boom. Bent at the knee, you shot your gaze back up to find Donnie gone. The shower continued to drone on and you felt a drip land on your head. Looking up in stunned horror, you saw a wet imprint on the wall that seemed to indicate that was his bounce point before he’d jumped clean over you and out of the room.

Abandoning the drinks, you followed a drip trail until it disappeared into the living room. “Hey…. Uh Don…? I know this isn’t like a human illness, but let’s get you a towel…”

The thick nasally hiss came from your right and you were only able to incrementally turn your head towards it before he lunged. Slamming to the floor with his weight crushing you from above, your gloved hands slipped over his slick skin as you tried to grab the forearm pinning your chest.

“D-don-nie!” You choked into your respirator; the air pressing right out of you.

Above you the clicking was so loud it echoed in your ears as he dropped lethally close to examine you. You whined on the last bit of your oxygen and gave up on trying to grab him. With black dotting your vision, you yanked one glove off to give yourself better grip before going for his limb again. His fangs flashed and you awaited the sting of a bite as his teeth clicked audibly. The pain didn’t come and you forced yourself out of the wince to find the sound had stopped. Eyes going wide, you looked through your mask to see Donnie staring sightlessly as he sniffed at your appendage.

The vignette of your vision had just started to swallow up your consciousness when he jumped off. Choking on the sudden influx of air, you rolled over and had to keep yourself from tearing the mask clean off to greedily gulp down all you could. Pushing down the lightheaded feeling, you pulled yourself up onto your your hands and knees before looking for your feral boyfriend. You quickly found him lurking nearby with a wary, wide white gaze. “What… kinda sickness… is this?” You wheezed before sitting back on your haunches.

He darted around the couch and you lost him until he peered at you over the back of it.

“You’re getting the sofa wet…”

He made a noise you’d never heard from him as you got up. Not sure what to make of it, you left him to go get a towel. When you returned he was in the kitchen sniffing at the soup you’d left out and you slowed with the fluffy cotton in hand. He made an approximate hiss at the object before you mimed wiping yourself off.

“Come on, just let me-!”

With the kitchen a nook, you gave a slow chase and he clicked angrily as you neared. Dropping down to show no harm, you offered the towel for him to sniff as one might a hand to a cat. You could only tell he flicked his gaze to you because his chin tipped, but he sniffed the cloth lightly while monitoring you in case you tried anything. 

“You smelled enough to know I’m not a threat, but not enough to trust me? You are congested, huh?”

He snorted and you almost laughed at how poetic the move seemed. With his neck outstretched, you readied the towel to hopefully drape it over him when he shot forward and bit down. His teeth sank into your hand and you squeezed your lips together to keep any scary overreactions to a minimum. 

“It’s alright… I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to dry you off…” You shushed him and slowly his jaw unlocked. Your fingers moved which was a good sign and he let you brush the towel against his cheek. It was either the dry feeling or the softness itself, but the concept finally seemed to puncture him. He gave you one last tilt of the head before he nuzzled into the fabric. Sighing at the small victory, you brought your other hand around and he only gave a minor hiss as you started to towel him off. It took some work but eventually you had him wrapped up in the thing and he sat in an awkward pile staring up at you with a blank gaze.

You gave him a little hopeless shake of your head before removing your other glove and washing your hands. The towel had thankfully kept him from breaking skin, but there was a red line from where he’d chomped the thick of your hand. You rubbed it under the tap before drying your hands off and finding your boyfriend still staring up at you like the world’s strangest pet. Looking from him to the soup, you dished a small amount into an asian-style soup bowl before warming it. Thinking there was no way he could use a spoon, you blew on it before giving it a quick dip of your finger to make sure it was alright to sip.

Feeling very much like a mother preparing a bottle, you made a show of kneeling in front of him. You then offered up the cup and he sniffed at it before trying to take it with his teeth.

“No. Not like that. Just-” You mimed holding and tipping it to your mouth even though you bumped the respirator in the process.

He watched with a tilt of his head before you offered the bowl again. He sneezed off to the side before taking it and checked with you before he lapped out of it.

“Close enough.” You leaned against the cabinets, feeling suddenly drained.

He slowly downed the cup until he had it turned all the way over to empty it. He then simply let it go and it clattered in a way that you jostled at. He similarly gave several warning clicks that you hushed before you picked up the bowl.

“You were thirsty, think you can drink?”

He stared on wordlessly and you gave a sigh.

Searching for something he could drink out of, you weren’t surprised to find nothing of the spill proof variety. Against the thought of putting a bowl down like he was actually an animal, you ended up rinsing out the little soup cup and filling it with fresh water. He similarly sipped it, but you caught his hand before he dropped it. He growled and you ignored him to take the bowl away. This time when you set it aside, he was gone when you turned back.

Not finding that as alarming in his current state, you put the rest of the soup away before stepping out of the kitchen to look. Not having to travel far, you spotted his pale purple towel on the couch first in a little lump where he’d curled up under it.

“Don, that’s wet. Don’t sleep like that.” You approached and little stunted growls started up as you reached him. “I know you’re tired… Come on.” Holding a hand out, his head emerged to snap at you and you glared at him.

He shared a similar sentiment with his teeth shining as a warning.

Rolling your eyes, you went into the bedroom and wondered about blankets. The sheets weren’t soft enough to coax the feral beast into a trade and you’d never really seen another beyond a comforter. Staring between the closet and dresser, you hesitated. They weren’t expressly forbidden, but you hadn’t considered rifling through his drawers. Looking back to where the toweled lump just barely exceeded the couch’s back, you approached the closet first. Opening found a clean system of his black wardrobe split between hangers and folded in little cubbies.

Not finding appropriate linens, you closed it up and went to the dresser. It seemed to contain lesser used items and it was in the bottom drawer that you found a couple blankets along with a scant few pairs of purple pajama pants. You hadn’t seen Donnie wear them and lingered there before picking up the softest blanket. It seemed worn in a loved way and you carried it over to the couch where your boyfriend had done his best to curl up in a little ball.

“Hey.” You knelt down in front of him.

He stirred with a sound that had a trill-like quality to it.

“Trade?” You slowly offered up the blanket and Donnie’s snout appeared from beneath the towel in a way that caught your heart. Trying not to give into how cute it was, he followed it up with another bitter glare that went from you to the blanket. He sniffed it lightly before a hand shot out to grab it. You let him before jumping back while plucking the towel away from him.

He spat a visible spray with a sudden literal hissy fit and you walked right away from him with the noise trailing you. Hanging the towel up, you took notes of the many little puddles. Gathering the forgotten sports drinks slowly, you gave him space before returning to the kitchen. A quick peek found Donnie in the same position except now cloaked under the blanket. You smiled at the blob before stowing the bottles away and unearthing a rag. Cleaning up the water first, you then headed back to the bathroom where you gathered up his mask and wraps. Not sure where he kept his dirty laundry as it always seemed to disappear, you set them aside neatly.

Returning to the living room found your partner’s shape stilled to immobility. Nervous after his biting stunt, you headed toward the computer. I took a quick flip of status windows to find one that logged sleep. He was in the first stages and his fever was now bobbing around a manageable human level. Frowning at how you hadn’t been able to get any medicine in him, you decided you had time to ponder the tabs.

It felt like a safe assumption that the neural implant Donnie had mentioned a couple months back was the neural link. From the way he used his tech, things either happened instantaneously or with hand gestures that you had a hunch were just a flare for dramatics. In the day to day, things you couldn’t explain would simply happen around the apartment. Knowing now that Donnie was mentally plugged into the workings was both fascinating and disconcerting. You wondered how far something like that went before flashes of grizzly surgeries sent you in a different direction.

You imagined it was probably his insanely high fever that had interrupted the link’s function. The alert coincided and, not too long after succumbing, Donnie had literally seemed to lose his mind. Glancing back at his still dozing form, you now understood why he didn’t remember these bouts of sickness. The only thing none of this explained was S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.’s absence. Both he and Donnie had made it clear that he was sentient, so it made little sense he’d be affected by the disrupted neural link.

Unsure, you tried to access the search function on the computer. Typing in S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.’s name didn’t come up with anything and you huffed as any other search queries ended up similarly. Staring at the open tabs, you chanced typing in the code listed on them and found it coordinated with what looked like an entire medical database. Not wanting to intrude on his privacy, you closed it and chewed your lip as if you couldn’t remember the number that had popped up along with the initial error message. Taking a seat in the supportive desk chair, you combed all your conversations with Donatello. He hadn’t hinted at any numbers and you swiveled in thought. The DAR bypass protocol popped into your mind, but you didn’t have much hope as you typed it in.

In contrast to your last search, a pop-up appeared and asked for a password as the system was in manual override. Looking side to side, you tried typing in your name, but the rejection was instant as you hit enter. Seeing no limit, you tried a few variations including cutesy couple phrases to no avail. Sighing loudly, you switched back to the search function and typed in a random set of three digits, 9-2-6. An odd black window with purple code appeared and from your skim it said it was labeled as a rocket shell. Remembering when S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. had taken off similarly in your escape, you sat back in the chair and gave an audible, “Huh.”

You then lost yourself in a guessing game of numbers. Some items were barred under further passwords, but most seemed to bring up boxes of code. Everything Donnie did was logged into the system in one way or another. Less interested in the content, you instead tried to figure out a method to the numerical madness. You doubted he’d simply put everything in chronological order, but anything else seemed even more arbitrary. Eventually, your bladder beckoned you away and, with one last check on your sleeping partner, you popped over to the bathroom.  

Quick relief and washed hands, you threw the door open to exit while the hand towel was still in your grasp. Turned to the side to make sure it landed on the counter in your toss, you jarred when you ran directly into a hard wall. Making a yelp of surprise and confused as to why the exit had betrayed you, you heard a worn voice.  

“There you are…” Donnie nearly cooed as you realized the flat surface was his plastron. Before you could process further, his arms came around you.

You squeaked at the sudden pressure of his hug. “H-Hey!”

He ignored your squirms to instead root his snout down into the top of your head. 

It disrupted the straps of your mask.

“Ack! Stop!” You tried to push but he was an unrelenting force. “I’m glad you’re up, but you’re acting like I was gone for years. The apartment isn’t even that big!!”  

“I’m rewarding my dearest for coming to take care of me!” His grip was shifting and, in the moment his arms loosened, you broke free.

“Dearest?!” He wondered, looking very betrayed. 

You took a wary step back.

He made an actual kissy face as he shot after you and you dropped instinctively. He bent over to chase you down and you were forced to scurry between his legs to escape. “Where are you going, darling?”

“What is wrong with you!?” You screeched as he was in motion again and you just barely dodged by crawling out of the bathroom. “The wild cat routine was one thing, but this love bug change is…I don’t know! What even is this?!”

You felt him catch your ankle and you were dragged back to him with a scream that felt very much like a horror movie. He scooped you right up from there as someone would a small dog and, if it wasn’t for your mask, you would have taken your turn to bite him.

“Put me down!!”

“Why ever for?” The sing-song tone made you want to punch him.

“Because I don’t like this!” You yanked at his arm.

“You don’t?” He sounded near tears.

“No! You’re not-” Remembering he hadn’t had his prosthetic equipped, you kicked back into his good shin. “-my Donnie!”

Letting you go with a hiss of pain, you barely managed to land on your feet and whip around. He recovered quickly and had a feverish glint in his eye. Weirdly glad he now had his pupils back, you weren’t near as happy when he suddenly crouched low with his arms out, as if this was some kind of game. “If I wasn’t yours then how would I know you prefer to be held?”

You readied yourself out of necessity even though it made it seem like you were playing along. He made a feint which you slapped away. “Donatello, I don’t care how sick you are, you stop this!”

“Sick?” There seemed to be genuine curiosity there even though the quality of his voice spoke to his congestion.

“You… can’t tell?” You dropped your guard and he caught you in an embrace that caused your feet to leave the floor. Feeling very much like the life was being squeezed out of you in a totally different way than feral Donnie had, he then nuzzled into your arm in a dramatic fashion that made your skin crawl. The crawling sensation inched up your spine and caused you to shudder.

“Are you cold, beloved?! Let’s get you all snuggled up!” You were being carried much like a baby and indignity topped the million things already grossing you out.

“Donnie, stop!”

“Hm?” His tittering of tone felt like tinnitus.

“Floor!” You squeaked as he gave another squeeze. “I’ll hug you back if you put me down!”

The speed at which your feet hit the ground hurt your ankles. Wincing, you looked up to find a horrifically uncharacteristic starry eyed expression staring back. 

“Yikes-I mean!!” You tried to recover and were glad the respirator concealed your mouth. You made good on your promise and slung your arms around him only for him to hug the breath out of you once. “W-while y-you have me…”

He did a shuffle that was almost like an excited dance.

“I’ll cuddle you all you want-”

You were being lifted again and you immediately started kicking your feet.

“BUT!”

He set you back down and appeared in your vision with a flagrant sheepish nature.

You hated how he currently looked.

“You have to agree to a few things.”

His giddiness deflated like a released balloon and it was almost strange how it didn’t move you in the slightest. “Such as…?”

“One!” You held up a finger. “The gear stays on and you need to be careful. If you knock anything off, there’s going to be consequences.”

He wilted even more with his lower lip jutting out in a repulsive pout.

“Two!” You shoved the second finger right in his face so you wouldn’t have to see that expression anymore. “We’re laying down. Even if you don’t realize it, you’re sick right now and my top priority is you resting.”

Donnie was quiet and his grip loosened slightly. “Is that all?”

“Three, I lead because I can only take so much, deal?” Instead of throwing up another finger, you offered your hand to shake.

He released you to do so and you turned the hold into a tether. Pulling him over to the bed, he was surprisingly malleable as you got in first. He waited by the side with an expression like a crying child which you had to turn away from so as not to visibly gag. Shifting focus, you laid out with pillows propped up behind your lower back so you could comfortably sit up against the wall. You then put your legs out straight and patted your lap. In a flash he was upon you and curled upsimilarly as he had been on the couch. It took some pushing to keep his weight from crushing you, but you eventually ended up with him lying saddled up against you with his head resting on your chest.

“This enough?” You mumbled, trying not to look at the line of his exposed shell and instead curled your arm to brush his cheek.

He nodded a little too fast and you flattened your palm to stop him. The contact seemed to do the trick and the warmth he exuded turned him into a cumbersome weighted blanket.

“Can you really not tell you’re sick?” You whispered, petting his head while skirting the scars on the side.

He rubbed his head against you. “I feel sort of sluggish.”

“You sound stuffed up.”

He made a little noncommittal noise and you sighed.

This change did not fit easily into your earlier fever hypothesis. Taking the puzzle piece and staring at the half finished image, you felt a tug that was eased in by a sort of hum. The lull took hold and as you tried to fight it, you saw glimpses of Donnie’s form seemingly going slack before he disappeared as you dozed off.

Eyes opening, it took you a moment to adjust to the fact there was a protective layer of plastic in front of your vision. A hand came up and tapped your respirator as memories bolstered your wakefulness. Jarring without any weight to hold you down, you stared out at the dark. The sun had clearly gone down in the time you had been asleep and Donnie was no longer glued to you in his clingy act. Scrambling off the bed, you stumbled slightly as you couldn’t see a thing.

Keeping a hand to the mattress as a guide, you quickly noted how all the nightlights were gone and the computer was off. The curtains seemed especially drawn in a way that made you wonder if there was a new layer. Wandering around with the bed close, you made a clear path over to the window. There you pressed a hand through the gauzy outer sheet and hit what felt like cold metal. Feeling awash with dread, you followed the wall until you banged your leg into the dresser. Resisting the urge to yell, you hobbled a few more steps before leaning on the partition. “Donnie?!”

Eerie silence greeted you.

You were not particularly in the mood for a horror movie reenactment.

Following the wall to the computer desk, you glanced to find you couldn’t make anything out. Even the kitchen, which only had semi-sheer coverings over its window, was solidly dark. Not knowing where he kept flashlights, you knew the fridge would at least have some reprieve and continued onward towards that destination. It was only as you felt your way around the counter did you hear the creak that sounded like the couch. Head flashing in that direction, two purple spotlights hit you. Blinded, you threw a hand up. “Oh, hell no.”

Something zipped past you so fast it whistled in its descent. Trying to minimize your movements in case his swings were imprecise, you nearly jumped onto the counter when there was a loud clatter at your feet. Your labored breath hit your ears strangely and it was with a slap to your own cheek that you realized the respirator had been cut from you. Dropping down to grab it, you heard something slide straight across the floor. Hand landing flat on the ground, you guessed the sound was the object in question when something descended down your back.

Making a noise of fear, you shrank into yourself. WIth no pair apparent, you opened your eyes to the dark and rose up. Your outermost layer fell slack with a paper-like crinkling. Blinking and grabbing at your arms, you found he’d cut the entire back of your protective suit without hitting you. Feeling oddly torn at how to feel about it, your hands flew to your mouth. Having seen it first hand, you couldn’t imagine surviving this illness. You’d already inhaled too much of what must have been the stagnant apartment air and nearly cried at the thought. Moving to get up and try to communicate that to whatever this next version of Donnie was, something sliced right in front of your nose.

Even with the faintest silhouette, you recognized the shape from the image burned into your mind: Donnie’s fighting staff.

“What are you doing?” Your voice broke. “You had a 115 degree fever, idiot… How am I supposed to-?”

The purple lights of his mask turned on again and you had to screw your eyes shut against the onslaught. “Non-transmittable.”

Opening your eyes to a flood of black, you swung to find nothing there. “What? How do you know that?! You said earlier you hadn’t studied it!!”

There was no response and you sensed something behind you. Turning around to grab at it, you felt his staff tap your back and you sucked in a breath harshly through your teeth as rage flooded you.

“You’re toying with me!? I should have left you on the ground!!!”

The silence that followed felt more like a harsh halt than a snub. The minute level of guilt you felt you shoved down as you stomped around the counter towards the computer. Not knowing how it worked, you slammed a hand to the screen and were surprised when it lit up in a scan that ran over the appendage. You pulled back as it finished and it came to life with the same display as before. Spinning around as purple light bathed the room, you weren’t surprised to find yourself seemingly alone. Glowering at the expanse, you returned to flip through the health tabs. Donnie’s heart rate was markedly slower, but his fever held steady.

Helpless on any other information, you drooped and pressed your palms into your eyes. “Okay… there was fever, animal, love bug, and now jackass ninja…” You groaned. “Does the fever count? You said something about it coming on, but does that make it the start? It’s been sort of constant, but… I guess I don’t really know what temperature you’re supposed to be. Turtles are cold-blooded or something right? Humans aren’t… You never seemed cold…” Falling into the desk chair, you stared at the rhythmic blip that marked his heart. “What am I supposed to do?”

There was a sound from the bedroom and you resisted turning towards it.

“Are you watching me?” You asked the desk before pushing off of it. The wheels of the chair sent you a foot or so from the computer. “What’s the point?”

There was nothing there other than the outline of the bed.

“I can’t believe I brought soup.” You gave a foreign laugh. “Like that would do shit for… this.”

Turning slowly, you surveyed the way the monitor’s glow highlighted your shadow.

“I don’t want to get sick.” You spoke far below a whisper.

“You won’t.”

The voice came from behind you and you stiffened up. “You’re sure?”

“Completely.”  His voice drifted all the way across the apartment to what must have been the door. “Simple analysis.” 

You were staring right at it but there was nothing there. “Ninjas don’t talk.”

The computer’s light went out and you pulled your legs up. For a long time you sat in the dark with your chin to your knees in wait. You decided that no matter what the next stages were, this one had to be the worst. Stuck with only your thoughts, you swirled the drain on the other times you’d been in this position. Trying not to cry from the mounting loneliness, you eventually heard an audible click. Looking up with a little sniffle, metal cranked in some sort of mechanism. The computer snapped back on and as you slowly rotated towards it, you glimpsed the faint light from the streetlight pouring in through the kitchen window.

Blinking, you left the chair to wander towards it and realized there had been some sort of lock down shield. Running your hand along the window’s jamb found nothing and you wondered where the object had gone. Giving up with a roll of your eyes, you flicked the kitchen light on. In a turn, you jumped as Donnie’s figure stood slack just behind the couch. His costume mask was curiously gone, but his staff was in hand to apparently keep him upright based on his pathetic posture.

You were too mentally exhausted to prepare yourself for whatever was next. “What kind of Donnie am I getting now?”

With him limp, you chanced creeping closer. There was a sway to his body that was almost imperceptible. You got a sense this version wasn’t going to attack you and, for the first time since you’d found him, he looked like what you’d expect of someone with the flu: weary, clammy, and pale. Openly approaching him, you found a little tune coming from his throat. You listened for a moment and he only acknowledged you with a half glance. He then sank further into his staff, squishing his face. 

“That sounds… familiar?” You looked up and to the right in thought.

“Moonlight Sonata…” Donnie drawled before the humming picked back up.

You stood watching as the sound seemed to be wrongfully torn from him. It had a haunting quality that trapped you until you noticed he was trying to get his hands up. Moving forward, you supported his elbows and he shifted a hip against his staff to hold the brunt of his weight. He then brought one palm facing up and dropped a fist into it with the thumb standing at attention.

Help.

“What can I do?” You moved into him and took the place of the staff. He expertly swapped it to his other hand and, while the tune continued to leak from him, you managed to get him over to the bed. 

He promptly collapsed.

Humming helplessly, his head turned side to side with a sort of agony. Reflexively kicking into caretaker mode, you got a pillow under his head. You then tucked him in before going to get a cloth and a bowl of cool water. Back, you soaked and wrung the rag before placing it over his head. He fought the music to get something out, but his tongue refused. Taking a guess, you ran back to the kitchen. When you returned you had six sports drinks which you held up for him to see. Through Beethoven, he cracked a sort of smile and gestured to one.

“I have other flavors too.”

Again you earned a half baked grin as he only affirmed his decision and you cracked it open for him. He allowed you to lift his head up where you temporarily removed the damp towel so he could sip. He gulped down three quarters of it before he sank back into his pillow with the melody surrounding you. Leaving to put the other bottles away, you came back and sat on the little space between him and the edge of the mattress. He held out his hand in a wobble and you caught it as the song began to peter out.

Another didn’t start up and you got a sense he wasn’t with you in the waking world. Worried just in case, you placed his appendage to his chest before going to check his vitals. There didn’t seem to be any cause for concern, but you gravitated towards him. Eventually, you settled after seeing the faint rise and fall of his plastron. Remembering his staff, you quickly found it tucked into bed beside him as a small tube. Free to explore once again, you spent some time studying it. Unable to get it to extend, you eventually relented and set it on the nightstand.

You then toiled away the next few hours fiddling on your phone first before eventually succumbing to putting on one of the movies you’d originally brought. You vaguely remembered leaving them in a heap outside the door and tried to picture sick Donnie pulling them inside. How he managed a neat stack on a nearby shelf, you’d never know. 

You made it about halfway through the film when you heard a mumbling.

“Donnie?” You paused the movie.

“Pizza pick-up…” He groaned and forced his eyes open.

“No pizza.” You reached him to remove his cloth which had warmed before you freshened it. “How about some soup?”

“…Six pizzas stacked…” His lips were moving but you only caught tiny snippets. “…current lateness…”

“Hey…” You touched his cheek to get his attention from where it was swimming.

He gave a nod and continued to rattle something off.

Secure in his acknowledgement, you slipped away to warm him up a bowl of sustenance. Returning with it found him in a similar state, but a little more lucid. He sat up on his own with a groan and what must have been a pain in his musculature. His grip on his spoon was steady enough and you let him feed himself as you tried to make sense of what he was saying. It seemed to be some kind of story, but he appeared to be telling it even when he was chewing. He’d come back to it with whatever the next bit was and you watched with a furrowed brow as you couldn’t place it.

His eye darted to the nightstand and he steadied his bowl to get a hold of a near empty drink. He finished it and you took it with you to get him some water. When you returned he was telling the tale with more oomph and you realized he was referring to you specifically. Staring intently as he hydrated, the food gave him more clarity where he now directed his attention to your audience. You listened enamored as he spun a yarn where the two of you were star-crossed lovers in another universe. The timing never seemed to match up and after some meteor shower date, you felt your heart wrench as the relationship broke down.

Donnie’s fatigue grew and you crawled into bed beside him so he could lay back down. He seemed to appreciate it and you balked as he wove the other turtles in as if they were his family. For however much he was present, he was seemingly oblivious to your astonishment as this other reality you and him eventually came back together. His sentences slowed as the story had you by the throat and you felt utter dismay at the chance he’d doze off before you got some resolution. An expiatory extravaganza was happening and you resisted the urge to prod him.

Whatever possessed him to sing seemed to have a similar hold of his consciousness which carried to a climax hit where he described music playing in central park and finally the two of you kissed. Utterly moved, you leaned forward and pecked his forehead. He caught your hands and held on as he continued with an aftermath where this other you was understandably upset. Thinking him done, his attention lulled as he tacked on a sort of epilogue about a failed date that led to a do over.

Tears pricked your eyes but you refused to give into them. “What was all that?”

He made a little noise of confusion, his lids drooping like sandbags.

Wiping your eyes with your free hand, you sat up. “Never mind. Get some rest.”

“What’d… I… buy…?”

“Buy?” You slipped off the bed and came around to tuck him in.

He tracked you. “It’s starting… to taper off... I usually come to… having made some… absurd purchase…”

“As far as I know you didn’t buy anything.” You removed the cloth off his head and he seemed surprised it was there.

“I should…”

“Not a good idea to make a decision right now.” Dunking the cloth, you twisted out the excess water before placing it back on his head.

“Wait… you’re… here?” His blinks were getting slower and slower.

“I am.” You gave a little nod. “Let’s talk later, why don’t you sleep now?”

“Not…” He tried to shake his head and get up, but you put gentle pressure to his shoulder to keep him down. “… yet… The whole time? No… one is supposed…”

“It was… a lot, not gonna lie. You were a real bastard at times.”

“Gift.” He grunted and finally gave into his eyes closing.

“No, no gift. You sleep.”

“Not good enough.” He shook his head and you had to replace the cloth.

“Donnie-”

“Anything. Please.” He forced his eyes open and pleaded with a barely there gaze. “Name it. Please.”

Two pleases had you sitting up a little straighter.

He stared without blinking and you figured if he did, then he’d probably pass out.

Giving him a defeated smile, you adjusted his covers and figured he wouldn’t remember whatever you said anyway. “Get me a locket. Something simple. No gimmicks. No trackers.”

“Done.” His eyes closed and his head lolled as he went right to sleep.

-

You were startled out of your sleep when your feet lifted up. Scrambling onto your elbows, your legs landed in Donnie’s lap where seeped displeasure.

“Good… morning?” You wondered, your neck sore from sleeping on the couch.

“What happened?”

He was way too stern for whatever time it was.

You rubbed an eye. “I slept…?”

“We’ll get to that. When I was sick.”

Shoving yourself upright, you pulled your limbs from him and were assaulted with the many oddities of the day prior. “Oh geez… Uh where should I start?”

“How did you get here?”

“That far, huh?” You blew out a breath with rounded lips. “Um… we had made plans for a movie night?”

“Go on.”

“Okay… I brought movies and snacks, but you said you’d forgotten…”

With him hunched forward, you traced his black tank, joggers, wraps, and finally his purple bandana. You could only faintly feel it, but there was a tinge of humidity that said he had taken a shower.

“We talked through the door, but you were getting worse by the second so I went to get you-”

“What did I say?”

You gave him an incredulous look. “That some sickness messes with your mind and comes and goes quickly…?”

“Is that what I said exactly?” He stared, his expression hard.

“I don’t remember, Don. A lot happened.”

He made a face of irritation before turning towards the TV. It took him a moment, but he located the remote from where you’d knocked it between the cushions and flipped the input to something hidden on the menu under a blank selection you wouldn’t have thought to navigate to.

“What are you doing?”

A display that mimicked his computer appeared. “You’ll be upset. Understandably so, but I need context.”

“Context for what?”

“What time did you get here for the movie night?”

Lingering on the screen, you were slow to look at him. “Like… 2pm?”

He only gave a nod and the screen turned again. Chasing back to it you find two sets of footage side by side. One showed Donnie running into the door and the other you juggling a stack of movies and snacks.

“Donatello…”

“There’s no audio.” He grumbled, leaning even farther forward.

“You have security cameras?” The question sounded thin to your ears as a plummeting sent your stomach south. 

“You’re leaving here.” He pointed to the screen and looked at you. “Where?”

“I went to get you soup and meds.”

He nodded and went right back to watching the feed. The twisting of your innards was justified as you watched the camera chase him through the apartment. In a sweaty stumble, screen Donnie tore his sweats off until he got to the bathroom where finally the camera didn’t follow. It only showed a glimpse of the door where, with the lights off, you saw bits of struggle where he removed his wraps.

That was just yesterday. 

You knew well enough he never did anything in half measures. 

“Donatello.” 

His eyes were trained on the screen. 

“How much do you have recorded?”

“All of it.” His snout wrinkled “You walked right in, but I didn’t see the door open…” The tape rewound as you stood up.

You saw it playing again in flickers of light as you stepped forward and kicked the coffee table out of the way. Donnie ignored you as you then used the space to stand in front of him and block his view. “I’m going to punch you.”

“I can’t see-” You clocked him right in the jaw and immediately shriveled in pain. “What is wrong with you!?”

“Don’t you dare fucking turn this on me!!! Understandably so, my ass!!!”

“It’s security and record keeping!” He cupped his chin. “I acknowledge the invasion of privacy, but that doesn’t give you the right to strike me.”

You glowered down at him for a long second. “Fuck. You.” In a swift turn, you headed towards the door.

“Y/N.” He was in motion after you.

You stopped just shy of the exit. “No! Why is it that you always get to do some insane shit and then chase after me to make it all better?!”

You heard the sound of his shoulders falling.

“What else is there, Donnie?” You turned and gestured to the apartment. “You keep acting like you’ve finally revealed the last secret, but there’s always something more messed up right after that! Sure, I guess I shouldn’t have hit you, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to-” Tears burned your eyes and you were so sick of them.

You heard him take a step.

“Watch your stupid tape. See what I went through trying to help. Make a new fucking list of all your apologies. Same shit, different day.” You grabbed the knob and heard the faintest sound from him. “What!?” You rounded with a snarl.

“You’re right.”

It didn’t quell your rage. 

You stared at him blankly. 

“There is more. There will always be more and you will go through this again and again.”

Your fingers curled.

“But you at least deserve to know I haven’t had access to this footage since the first night you were over.”

You shifted your weight as you turned a little.

“The morning after… before I left and before you woke, I spoke to S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. and switched full permissions over to him. We agreed the records were necessary in case anything were to happen to you. As a third, disinterested party, only he could act justly.”

You broke eye contact and checked the door. You hadn’t unlocked it yet. “Where is he?”

“He’ll arrive shortly.”

“Why was he gone?”

“He always leaves when I get sick. Another agreement.”

“Why?”

“I cannot be trusted during.”

You looked at him.

“The first year he was present I… came to with a need to rebuild him.”

You rubbed your face and hated the oily sleep layer there.

“I refused to let that happen again.”

“You didn’t hurt me.”

“Neither of us is entirely sure how that is, which is why I was given permission to watch the tapes.”

“I don’t…” You slicked a hand through your hair and gave up.

“I won’t apologize. There’s nothing I can do or say that will ever make up for what I’ve done and will do. I’m torn as while, on one hand, I appreciate that you can finally see my misconduct, on the other, we’ve become far too entangled. When you asked me ‘what’ a moment ago, I would have begged you to stay. I will still do so because that is what I desire. No matter how wrong…” He stood for a long moment before gesturing to himself. “All I can do is keep striving to pile on more and more positive acts in an attempt to outweigh the inevitable negative.”

You tapped your foot before giving a sigh. “I went through your computer.”

“What.”

“Pot, kettle.” You pointed between the two of you. “I got your medical history open, but I didn’t go through it.”

“You-!” There was a look of horror on his face and he whipped around to stare at his monitors.

“I’m so… so… tired of being blindsided…” You shrank some and Donnie came over to you.

You leaned into him as soon as he was within reach. 

There, he hesitated to hold you.

“I don’t like the way you talk about yourself. That mentality, the trying to make-up for your existence. That isn’t sustainable… I want… No…” You shook your head and leaned back to look up at him. “It’s not what I want, it should be what you want. If I tell you then I know you’ll do it because I asked. Not because you actually want to.”

He stared down, his pupils darting as he searched. “What if I don’t know another way?”

You shook your head not knowing what to say.

“If preemptive action isn’t a viable option…” He dropped his study of you to check his mental files. “The opposite of which is remedial which…” He looked back at the TV which was paused. “You’re tired of-” He made a groan and paired it with a face that said his realization should have been obvious. “I need to be forthcoming.”

You ducked your head into his chest to keep him from seeing your reaction.

“More so and, I imagine, specifically when I already know your reaction will not be favorable.”  

“I’ll still be upset.”

“As you should.”

You gave into a faint bob.

“I can’t promise high precision. This is completely against how I’ve lived my life until now.”

“I don’t expect you to be perfect. No one is.”

He knelt down until lips pressed into your hair. 

You could feel he didn’t make it into a kiss.

“Let’s watch the tape.” You mumbled.

“S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. can review it.”

You shook your head. “It’s okay. I kinda want to see how grossed out you are by some parts, dearest.”

“What.”

You shrugged and started to pull away before his arm caged you close. You leaned into him and sighed.

“Thank you.”

“You’ll see… I mostly just dealt with whatever you did…”

“Not for that, though I do have additional gratitude for such.” He shook his head, messing up your hair. “There’s evidence all around the apartment. You cleaned up after some sort of mess, the shredded PPE, you appear to have purchased an absurd number of electrolyte boosted drinks, the rag on my head, et cetera and so forth.”  

“Speaking of the drinks, can you access my gauntlet remotely?” S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. had told you otherwise and you believed him as the droid had never once lied to you. Though it went against everything you had just attacked him for, you still felt the need to keep your knowledge there to a minimum in his eyes. 

You felt Donnie shift his head until his chin rested on top of yours. “If S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. leaves the network, there’s a secondary dummy program that takes up the homing beacon property. I assume something happened otherwise you wouldn’t ask.” He made a little annoyed noise about the unknowns. “From the footage, there was a moment when I accessed my computer, but I shouldn’t be able to reach it.” 

“It went off when I tried to pay.” 

Donnie gave a single snort. “Ah.”  

“What? Please don’t tell me it’s another-”

“S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. can write his own code.”

You stilled with a pout. “So?” 

“The gauntlets have contactless pay chips connected to shell accounts in case of emergency.” 

You leaned into him trying to connect the conversational pieces. 

“It’s a guess that we’ll find out soon, but we can venture that he edited the dummy program to respond to such situations.” 

You shook your head in a way that rubbed your nose against his tank. “You both are hopeless. You moreso.” 

He made a small scandalized noise. 

“There’s something I’d say here, but you feel weird about me saying it.”

He gave a half laugh. “Also…”

He shifted further down until his lips were at your ear. “Figuring out my system? Accessing my files?” He nipped at you before placing a searing kiss to your cheek. “Incredible.” 

You pushed him away despite very much not wanting to.

He stepped back and led you over to the couch with a tender pull. You saddled up beside him and he slung an arm around you before leaning back. You did a little squirm to settle before the tape started back up.

“Is the fever the first stage?”

“Yes.” He gave a nod as he squeezed your arm. “It’s the only part I ever capture.”

You looked at him. “But you said you record all of it…”

“I escape.”

“What.”

He glanced up and you could feel how much he detested the whole affair. “This is the first time I didn’t break out.”

“There were… like blast shields on the windows!”

He looked at you flatly in a way that said it wasn’t enough to contain the beast.

Though you had seen it first hand, you stared back owlishly.

“S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. retreats all the way to the Hidden City. Any less and I hone in on him for whatever reason.”

“Ninja prey drive…” You balked.

He stared as if waiting for the joke before his gaze narrowed in confusion. “Just watch…” You waved to the TV.

NEXT

Show all the love to my betas @tmntxthings and @thepinkpanther83!

[riddlerosehearts]

🐍 same, there were many things i did not enjoy about HoO but leo is one of the highlights i will always treasure from it. in fact I made my OC just so I could make them be friends with him bc it's like an old childhood dream of mine 😭 it's several years late but i will do it anyway. have u ever made any pjo ocs?

I read your post and i agree with you so much!! EN did jamil so dirty and just the few changes they made to his lines flipped the entire dynamic between him and kalim and basically completely erased how tragic and difficult their situation is, and portrayed jamil as basically just someone throwing a fit over something easily changeable when it isn't. I play on JP so I was so surprised to see the changes EN made, it sucked seeing so many ppl hate my fav

oh nooo yeah if both riddle and jamil are in the athena cabin i have no clue who'd become the head counselor... this is so hard, if only we could have more than one :(. Kalim'd def be in a different cabin at least, but just him being around camp would make it so much harder for jamil to be himself, it hurts my heart. there are so many ways you can write this and it all has so much angst potential. on the other hand you're so right abt the missed leo nico friendship bc i always intuitively felt they could've be good friends without knowing why, but your analysis puts everything into words and makes me even sadder we had such a missed opportunity... like cmon rick....

idia labwear groovy but nico is actually so funny - nico ominously approaching cats with his hands out like the grabbing emoji when nobody is looking and completely unaware how scared the cats feel, meanwhile all he wants is to spend some time with kitty before the chain sneezing sets in

I love your ideas abt the outfits I think they fit super well!! if i get around to doodling the characters in a twst au i'd like to reference your ideas if that's okay with you! They'd both probably attempt to wear the uniforms as a full set in the beginning then decide it's way too much of a hassle/feels too stiff (totally not an excuse to want to draw them in the full outfit), then begin modifying things so it felt more like themselves, though at least I think they both would like the ignihyde uniforms better than the other dorms, igni's seems more casual and practical than the other ones imo. for some reason i feel like the savanaclaw colours would look good on leo, i just picture yellow being a nice colour on him - but leo in savanaclaw would just be like him stuck with a ton of jocks feeling confused why he's even there lool

also imagine leo meeting ortho, he'd be so fascinated that something like ortho was possible and be inspired to make a robot of his own (twst festus origin story?) idk if there's a robotics club but i could see that being leo's club of choice, nico maybe board games... which means he'd meet idia and azul omg, what do you think?

sorry it took me a bit a longer to answer this time. i haven't!! i don't make OCs super often in general, i don't even really have one for twst haha, but i love seeing all the creativity other people put into their OCs.

yeah exactly!! i do keep up with the JP main story updates and have read most of the JP events through fan translations, but i started by playing on EN. and i feel really lucky that i recognized the words for master and servant and could tell they were mistranslating some things, because i can imagine that otherwise i would've come out of it hating jamil for "betraying" kalim too. instead i loved him and was a little annoyed with kalim until book 5 showed more of his growth. i don't ship jamil and kalim but i do love both of them and it's sad that the complexity of their dynamic got watered down so much... i will note, though, that the app is rated E10+ on the google play store and 4+ on the iOS app store, so my guess is that higher-ups at disney thought the actual story wasn't kid-friendly enough.

something else to keep in mind with athena kids that i actually sort of forgot about until recently, is that they're all claimed from birth and therefore are pursued by monsters from birth :( and then also the fact that athena is a virgin goddess who just sort of gives babies to people who might not have been prepared to have one... i bet that would make things so much rougher for riddle and jamil. some other ideas i had are that if jamil's parent was a minor god, it could be nemesis (goddess of revenge) or terpsichore (muse of dance). and for kalim, if his parent was an olympian it would be either dionysus or apollo and if it was a minor god it'd be tyche (goddess of luck and fortune). like you said, there's so many different ways i could see their story going in an AU like this and they'd all be so angsty.

if you wanna see more analysis on how nico and leo fit together there's some stuff i've reblogged from others in my valdangelo tag! not all of it is necessarily romantic, i just basically use that for anything about the two of them--and a lot of the reasons why people like the ship are reasons why they'd work platonically as well. but yeah one of my biggest criticisms of HoO is how even though i like all the new characters for the most part, i feel like their relationships to each other were largely defined by romance (and i don't just mean the actual couples, but also the frank-hazel-leo love triangle for example) and a lot of potential was missed because of that!

oh yeah go for it!! feel free to use pretty much any of these ideas we've been brainstorming as basis for your own headcanons and stuff, i don't mind at all. and like i've been saying, if you did draw anything for this AU i'd love to see it. i can definitely see that about leo and nico both trying on the full uniform and then quickly deciding not to bother with it anymore lol. i imagined them both not wearing the tie because i just think nico wouldn't really want to and that leo might not even know how to tie one AFSKJGHDF. do you think leo would add any other accessories or personalization to his school uniform? also, i was thinking, i totally agree that they'd both like the ignihyde uniform, especially nico because it resembles the bulky jackets he normally likes to wear! but i wonder what nico would wear for a dorm uniform if he transferred to ramshackle... according to one of silver's voice lines at least, they canonically don't have one, so maybe he'd just wear, like, a my chemical romance shirt and call that a uniform lol. or keep his ignihyde uniform and confuse everyone.

omg, i love the thought of leo meeting ortho and being inspired to make festus because of him. he'd definitely be so fascinated by everything ortho could do. as for the clubs, i saved this excellent post about NRC's clubs for reference a while back, and since no other existing clubs were mentioned in either of the camp vargas events, i assume that that's all of them. but afaik there's nothing that says leo couldn't start a robotics club, and i'm sure there'd be people willing to join! out of the existing clubs i can totally see nico being in the board game club, i think that'd be a lot of fun for him.

[emry-stars-art]

Do you usually use references or draw from imagination? Or combination of both?

I admire the fact you seem like you usually don’t draw from reference and if that’s true, yeah, that’s my goal right there. ;-;

Oh god, anon, I use lots of references 😅 I have aphantasia to some degree, I know what I want something to look like but I can’t see pictures in my head so that makes it difficult sometimes to figure out how to translate my ideas to paper! I actually drew something yesterday without reference that was a little more complicated than normal, and I had to sketch out each element separate at different angles - what I knew I could do without photo reference - and use those sketches as reference to move and fit everything together. So technically I can, but it’s a lot of work!

My last post actually came about because I found such a good reference, actually my friend sent me the video after I almost sent it to him, and I figured I should finally draw some Andrew 😂 I’ll put the pics under the cut. Neil’s pose I came up with on the spot because I had a clear idea of what I wanted, but I did look up a reference for the hand holding the phone.

Yes it’s a good goal, to be familiar enough with anatomy that you can make poses work without references, but also references are really useful! (And they’re how you get good at anatomy in the first place ;) ) Both things can be true.

So to answer your question, technically it’s a combination of both ☺️ I’ll never be able to not use references because of how my brain works, or at least I’ll be using them until I have memorized exactly how muscle and fat folds in every situation and every pose. Which is essentially impossible. I’m sure most artists that do similar art use references much the same way!

Thank you for the ask, I hope your art journey goes well! 🥰🥰

I still think the caption is silly and tells a very good story 👀

[astral-mariner]

totally random tangent on how I got into writing:

so I was one of those creative loner kids growing up, and I read a lot of fantasy stories. and I made up my own fantasy world and cast of characters. created fictional languages and everything for them. and I started out just drawing pictures of them (this is also how I got into drawing---I don't consider myself an artist, but I've been drawing on and off since childhood).

and when I was 10 years old and was in a typing class (yes, I'm an ancient man in my mid thirties), we were given the prompt "tell a story" to practice typing something out on the computer. and so I started writing a story about my fictional characters. and I LOVED it. I very much "think in pictures." when I write, I have images in my head that I translate into language and describe. and I felt like I could "draw" so many more pictures with words than I could with physical images. like, a picture tells part of a story, and a good picture can tell you quite a lot. but with words, I could describe and convey things that would be very difficult to draw or would take many images to get across/tell the whole story.

I left that computer class and started writing more of the stories I had in my head about my characters. and I didn't stop writing. I wrote about different things as I got older, though. I read a lot of "classic" books as a teenager because I liked them (Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and Paradise Lost were some of my favorites), and I wrote my first novel-length piece when I was 16. it was awful, of course. a story about generational and religious trauma and frustrated desire. I completed my second piece when I was 19. it had a lot of similar themes to my first story. heavily influenced by all the philosophy books I was reading (I studied philosophy at university---nerd alert).

and I got into dragon ball fanfic when I was in my 20s. (though I'd watched the show as a kid.) there was always an underlying darkness and complexity to the series that I wanted to see explored, and I'd thought a lot about it and had so many stories in my head. and I felt like (and still feel like) if I don't get them out of me I will lose it, haha.

but yeah. I've been writing for over 20 years. I don't think I'll ever stop. it's what I was born to do, and I love doing it. I love the craft. I love thinking about writing itself, about all the different ways a story can be told. when I write, I like to play with narrative conventions with elements like unreliable narrators, frame stories, perspective bending, and making the reader a very active participant in what story they get when they read (as in, their interpretation heavily changes how they perceive the story's events, and I leave lots up for interpretation on purpose). I'm big on layers of ambiguity and playing with subjectivity. Makes my brain tingle!

I think when I finish the fic I'm writing right now, I might eventually take some elements from it and turn it into something original. and I definitely want to print a physical copy with illustrations when I finish it so people who like it can put it on their shelves! there's nothing like seeing something you WROTE sitting on a shelf like a real book.

[capricioussun]

I know it's kind of dumb to say but it just always trips me up that people perceive things differently. Like, obviously that's just a given, but specifically, when I'm talking about all these silly characters like, I know them in ways that no one else could, you know? But it's weird. It's like, to me, they're basically just some person I know, so in that way, anyone could come to know them of their own volition just as well as they've allowed me to, but that it not the case! They live only in my head!

It's especially jarring because I honestly want to make enough content of them that people have at least some sort of similar understanding, but I work so incredibly slowly and writing and drawing are difficult and just like !!! I want to paint a fuller picture but only tiny specks dot the canvas, you know?

It's odd to me. They're there! They're right here! They have these thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, hobbies and this type of sense of humor but no one else would know that. Like those stories where only one character can see the ghosts and can only attempt to translate bits and pieces to those who can't