there’s an undeniable serenity which follows your voice. how it traverses within the room’s dome-like structure, reverberating through the surrounding space before ultimately touching the hearts and souls of those who hear your solo piece. it captivates and impassions, an underlying force woven beneath layers of harmonies forged under years of dedication holding one’s attention as they await in baited breath for the forthcoming emotions which swirl and soar at the mercy of your voice.
having never missed one of your performances to date, neuvillette believes he would know this best.
in his life, he has found there are many difficulties which arise when overseeing trials of various levels of severity — some being a life-defining case whereas others may delve into a more… menial aspect of things.
(“to bring some entertainment for once!” …is what he would usually hear in response to his unvoiced thoughts before having to reprimand a certain archon for levity in the court.)
but in spite of the blurred lines between professionalism and public entertainment, neuvillette finds himself at ease once he steps into the grand hall, finding his seat as stated on his ticket, waiting patiently as the chatters die down the moment the lights dim and the curtains draw, watching in content as vocals and instrumentals resound until the lights dim once more to signify the end of the opera.
amidst his day-to-day life, he has come to anticipate the dates which mark your performances.
ever since he first started attending, he has discovered that when sitting amongst the crowd enjoying your voice and performance, he is neither the iduex nor the chief justice of fontaine; he is simply neuvillette — a man who finds peace and respite in your presence, regardless of how near or far you may be from him.
he claps just as everyone else does, watching as you stoop into a bow on centre stage once the final note dissipates into the air where rounds of applause take over. there’s an ever-present smile stretching your lips, the corners of your eyes crinkling as you wave to the crowd surrounding him.
neuvillette recognises this expression as one you’d wear after a performance you deem satisfactory and finds his heart fluttering at the glow in your expression. (your smile doesn’t reach your eyes if you think it is anything less, despite his internal thoughts believing otherwise.)
he remains seated as the orchestra begins to arise and gather their instruments, as the conductor steps down from their podium, as the singers line up and shuffle off stage, as you turn and take your leave in close pursuit.
he glances at the bouquet settled atop his lap. oddly enough, the colours he chose coordinate with your attire, and he cannot help but to think this is some twist of fate playing with his convictions.
no matter, he thinks to himself as he rises from his seat, the bouquet cradled within his hold. with brisk steps, he makes his way past the crowd. it’s easier once people step away the moment they identify him and opt to gawk at his presence, allowing an easy passage for a quick escape.
it is not much later when he finds himself walking down a familiar hallway, the bright lights illuminating the name plaques hanging on the dressing room doors. his feet naturally come to a stop in front of a dressing room six doors down, the words [name] [last name] neatly engraved into the stainless steel nailed to the door.
his eyes trace over your name a few times, the flowers in his hand seemingly heavier than they were mere moments prior.
perhaps this time…
neuvillette attempts to push back the lump lodged within his throat. there’s a slight trepidation which hangs overhead as he gently raises a fist to your dressing room door, one which is all-too familiar in the way he hesitates and rethinks his actions over and over when in regards to you.
he stops before his knuckles touch the door. before he knows it he falls back into his usual routine: place the bouquet in front of your dressing room door, gently knock three times, turn and walk down the hall, disappearing before you can see him loitering around and make the connection of him being the anonymous bouquet gifter after each performance.
rounding a corner, neuvillette comes to a halt. with a glance over his shoulder he watches you peek your head out the door, looking around the hall in search of who knocked. when you take note of the bouquet he left, he fights back a smile of his own when you beam and thumb at the petals as he wills himself to turn and resume his exit.
perhaps after your next performance he will finally gather the resolve to speak to you.
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Fluent Freshman - Part 21
PREVIOUS
“What made you think taking on a mafia hitman was a good idea?” Andrew asks as he and FF were positioning themselves the best the could for an ambush on Romero.
Since, they APPARENTLY had time to talk.
Romero had gotten the text Andrew had sent him and INSTEAD of coming out right away to progress the whole SCHEME to kidnap and murder Andrew’s Junkie like any sensible goon Romero went to the BAR. Romero went to the Bar to get him and Jackson a round of CELEBRATORY drinks. Romero is still there at the bar waiting to be served by an INCREDIBLY nervous Roland if the number of exclamation marks and puking emojis is to be believed.
What the FUCK is there to celebrate?
These two idiots want to kidnap NEIL and so far the only thing Romero knows (thinks) that they’ve caught are two people that Neil would come for but even in Andrew’s text he’d been clear that he needed help getting ‘The boyfriend and the new friend’ to talk let alone getting them to call ‘The Wesninski Brat’ out. Andrew had hated typing the name in reference to Neil but it was the only thing the two ever referred to him as in their chats.
Is it some insane mental game that Romero thought he and Jackson were going to play on Andrew and Smith? Toasting to their torture so they’d give up Neil? Who knows.
He realizes that FF hasn’t answered him, his eyes focused on the door when Andrew’s thoughts had drifted. A reliable guy, steady in a pinch, and focused like most the others weren’t.
(Andrew does not know that FF is thinking about how one would go about becoming a Mafia Hitman. What is that career path like? Do they show up at job fairs? Do you get a job as a short order cook at a business that acts as a front and see to much but you’re also the only one that knows the secret spaghetti recipe the boss likes so you have to sign yourself to the family? Are you out doing your own freelance crime and someone higher up sees your work one day and literally head hunts you? Is it like in Saw where you survive an ordeal and then-)
“Smith?” Andrew draws FF’s attention away from the door.
“I didn’t think it was a good idea at any point.” FF says and Andrew is surprised by the admission and is more surprised by the twist of FF’s lips into a frown, “I just did what I thought I needed to do.” He adds.
(Andrew does not know that the twist of FF’s lips has more to do with the fact that he is realizing that Romero likely STILL has not washed his hands. Romero hasn’t washed his hands and he is going to hand Jackson a DRINK with those hands. Ugh. Honestly a contract killer AND someone who doesn’t wash his hands? Who RAISED him? What does his grandma think of this? FF hopes she’s disappointed in him.)
“You thought you needed to lure a hitman into an alley?” Andrew asks because the plan is stupid even if so far it has worked out for FF. The fact that Romero hadn’t just come out when he sent Jackson the signal is only due to FF’s good luck and their stupidity.
“I didn’t have a lot of time to think up anything more than the first plan I thought of. I saw him looking at Nicky on the dance floor.” FF says with another twist of his lips as he self-consciously rubbed at his cheek. It’s never fun to have someone who has time to pick apart a plan that you barely had time to form. Andrew can understand the irritation and is glad that FF isn’t lashing out at him for it.
(Andrew does not know that FF is not irritated he is just remembering that he had held up his broken toilet bowl phone to his face to pretend call Captain Neil. He’s contemplating asking if Andrew maybe possibly has a wet wipe? Actually the murder van probably has bleach to clean up evidence, maybe he can just dip his face in there for like a minute.)
“Don’t use a plan where you martyr yourself. I already have to deal with Neil’s bullshit tendencies.” Andrew says instead of thanking him. “You should have just called me.” He says.
FF just holds up his phone, “Dropped into a club toilet. Completely unusable.” He says and yeah that makes sense. FF would have probably just texted Andrew but coming out and seeing a hitman going after Nicky probably made it impossible for the freshman to go get help without drawing all the attention to himself first if he wanted to make sure Nicky stayed safe.
Still.
“You dropped it into a toilet? You haven’t even had anything tonight.” He says because that clumsiness is not something he expects from FF.
“You try taking a pee next to someone on the FBI’s most wanted list and see how dry your palms remain when he’s talking about grabbing one of Captain Neil’s friends to lure him out.” He says with a brow raised.
That’s fair.
He figures that Romero hadn’t even noticed FF standing there. FF was incredibly good at just making himself unnoticeable (to Andrew’s occasional great annoyance and to Kevin’s great desire to study him for Exy related purposes).
“You recognized him?” He asks.
FF’s gaze slides to him, “I looked up a lot about the Foxes after I signed.” FF answers before his gaze slides back to the door. Roland had just texted Andrew that he’s getting Romero’s drinks ready (Two bud lites. Those are the celebratory drinks he waited for?? Embarrassing.) “I really looked up to Captain Neil. So, I read a lot more about him than anyone else.” FF admits but the fact that FF looked up to Neil was not in any way shape or form a secret.
FF was the only one who was ALWAYS paying attention to whatever Neil was saying and never argued with it. Even Andrew tended to just get lost in the sound of Neil’s voice when he’s going over Exy plays and not actually listen to the plan. FF’s eyes were always right on Neil and his actions on the court showed that he had been paying attention and knew what he was doing. Kevin also listened but he tended to fight Neil on the finer details of plays, strategy or anything else. FF was the one who would just nod and do his part in whatever possible play Neil had broken down for them.
FF was also categorically incapable of referring to Neil as anything other than Captain Neil.
Neil had bristled early on at it. He had thought it was a mocking title, something FF was saying to rile him up because that’s what Freshman Foxes did. That’s what Freshman Foxes always do. FF slid into the team without a whisper of rebellion and it hadn’t taken long to realize that FF was using the title with sincerity even if his monotone did not perfectly convey that.
It’d been that sincerity and that ease that had FF be the only option he’d considered when Bee said he should consider expanding his friend pool.
So if FF looked a little deeper into Neil’s past and sees Neil’s part in it as something to respect, something to admire?
Well, he personally thought he always had great taste in people. (He ignores the voice in his head that sounds like Nicky complaining about Kevin still not knowing German despite it being the family language.)
“You sure you don’t want one of my knives or the knife Jackson had?” It was pretty big and Andrew didn’t think it would work well with his general style but maybe FF could use it somehow. He was uneasy that FF was going into this fight unarmed. FF still hadn’t talked about how he’d taken out Jackson when the man had a knife like that.
“Do I look like Crocodile Dundee to you?” FF asks with a raised eyebrow and Andrew has to pause a moment for the movie to load into his brain before he offers an amused quirk of his own lips.
FF is a funny guy.
His phone dings. “He’s on his way.”
***
Aside from thinking about how nice the conversation he was having with his friend Andrew (his friend! His friend Andrew! God how is he going to admit to Gran that Andrew was never planning on stabbing him? She threatened to come over and square off with the ‘mean young man’ bullying him. He’s gotta go grab the makings for a secondary pie to even start to make up for this. Maybe Andrew would prefer a cobbler? He should ask his friend his preferences.) he was thinking about how he really wished they hadn’t had a cut away from Gracie Hart showing all the various forms of self defense she knows in the movie.
He had no idea if he could do a repeat performance of S.I.N.G. with Romero.
It’d be nice to have a few more things in his repertoire because all he has is striking Romero with the heel of his hand in the nose, getting grabbed from behind to throw him over his shoulder (which what if Romero is shorter than him? How will THAT work. Gracie Hart guide my steps!), and of course S.I.N.G.
If he survives this he might write a letter to the writer.
The door opens and honestly FF and Andrew agreed that surprise and speed were going to be their best weapons. The two of them go in for a full body tackle but Romero must just be a higher class goon than Jackson was since he manages to body them away. The door shuts which is mostly what they wanted anyways. Romero can’t go back in and grab someone to use as a shield.
He sees Andrew pull out his knives and now FF realizes that any level of threatening Andrew had done before must have mostly been in jest or just as intimidation. When Andrew wants to stab someone it’s obvious that he’s aiming to stab them.
Romero manages to parry Andrew’s first stab with a move that FF had seen on the ‘how to handle someone coming at you with a knife’ videos. FF sees Romero go in to bash one of the Bud Lite bottles over Andrew’s head so he launches his water bottle at Romero’s hand. The bottle falls and shatters harmlessly on the ground.
He kicks Romero’s other hand since the water bottle bought him time to get close. “You fucking brat!” Romero hisses.
He sees Romero reaching for something at the same time Andrew is going in for the second round of stabbing. Romero dodges out of the way but FF can see what might actually for real be an entire gun concealed in his jacket.
He can see Romero going for it. Sees the same smile on his face he’d seen inside as his hand wraps around the handle.
FF doesn’t think.
FF doesn’t think because if he does he’ll freeze.
So FF acts.
“Gun!” He yells and runs full force tackling Romero as hard as he can but unfortunately he tackles Romero into Andrew.
The three of them grapple on the ground. It’s hard to keep track of what limb is who’s and he’s pretty sure he’s accidentally hit Andrew a few times instead of Romero but he’s also pretty sure that Andrew punched him in the stomach so he thinks they’re equal. Finally FF gets a hand on the gun that Romero had been trying to get the safety off of and he knocks it out of Romero’s hand. “You kids will-“
Romero doesn’t get to say anything else because Andrew manages to land a punch right to his jaw that has Romero go limp under the two of them. They look at one another and Andrew manages to pull the handcuffs they’d purloined out of the Van while they were waiting off of the belt loop they were hooked onto and gets them around Romero’s wrists.
They stare down at the second unconscious man on the FBI’s most wanted list in the alley.
Then they roll off of him and onto their backs. Both of them wheezing from a combination of exertion, adrenaline, and (at least in FF’s case) a fair amount of pain (Christ Andrew packs a PUNCH his stomach is already sensitive. It’s a miracle that punch hadn’t made him puke.)
“That was…so stupid.” Andrew pants.
“Yeah probably.” FF admits.
They lay there for about a minute and FF thinks that maybe someone will need to carry him because his stomach is KILLING HIM with all this.
“Alright let’s-“
Andrew is sitting up and looking at him when he stops talking.
FF doesn’t really know what the issue is but starts to sit up, “Don’t you DARE.” Andrew hisses and FF finds himself being pushed back down to the ground to lay flat. “Don’t move Smith.” He demands and is pulling his phone out of his pocket as he keeps a hand on FF’s shoulder.
FF doesn’t really understand what’s got Andrew so upset all the sudden. “Andrew, what’s-“ he tries to sit up again. Is there a third person and Andrew wants him to keep down? There’s not really cover here they should move towards the dumpster maybe?
“Smith, I told you to not move.” Andrew hisses before whoever he’s calling seems to pick up. “I need police and an ambulance. We’re at Eden’s Twilight in the back alley.” He looks to FF, “What’s your blood type?” He asks.
FF has NO idea.
“I don’t know.” He answers and Andrew makes a disgusted sound. “Andrew, what’s-“
Then he sees it.
He doesn’t quite get how he missed it before now.
“Huh.” He hears himself say.
That’s Andrew’s knife handle sticking out of his stomach.
It appears that Andrew Minyard may have stabbed him in the stomach.
“Well, that’s about what I expected.” He says and lets his head rest against the pavement.
MASTERPOST FOR ALL PARTS OF FLUENT FRESHMAN AU
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Thinking about the Don Suave scene and what it means in terms of LGBTQ+ representation because my brain does nothing if not torment me with random topics to ramble about on the regular.
Anyway, I just wanted to ramble about why I like the scene but to get it out of the way - the scene can very easily be interpreted in so many different ways, and all of them are valid. I personally see it as Leo having at least some attraction to a man. And the following is an explanation of my own interpretation and thoughts on it and what it means especially for Leo’s portrayal in the grand scheme of things.
Long-winded interpretation under the cut!
Now, to start with, it’s important to me that in the scene Leo looks at Don Suave in the very beginning and then for the entirety of the rest of the time the man is on screen, Leo’s eyes are closed. Yet, in the end, he is still visibly enamored with Don Suave, happily cuddling up to him as he’s being carried away.
You can very easily interpret this as Leo being spellbound and that’s honestly super valid and I believe he likely was at least somewhat in the beginning, but considering how fast he looked away and how he never looked again, I personally think it makes more sense to read it as Leo just finding the man attractive, at least somewhat. (For the record, I personally headcanon Rise Leo as bisexual with a heavy preference for men, but I want to be blunt when I say that any interpretation is valid. Literally any. Ace, pan, gay, bi, none of the above or a mixture of something new literally all of it is more than okay and fair. Hell you could even interpret this entire scene as more romantic attraction than physical and it would still work. Anything goes!! Don’t bother people, guys, really.)
The main reason I take this scene to be at the very least LGBTQ+ adjacent isn’t just because of how it’s portrayed, but because of who Leonardo is. Not in terms of Rise of the TMNT, but in terms of the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™️ franchise.
Leo’s a character who, while changing with each iteration, has still at his core been around for decades upon decades as “the blue one”. One fourth of the team. He’s the one most are going to look at as the Leader, and oftentimes he is the one closest to having the title of Main Character. Not to say the others aren’t just as important, but Leo’s presence in the A plots of basically all TMNT media is often something very main character-esque.
And that’s very, very important to note. Here we have a Main Character of a prolific and decades long-running franchise distributed by a children’s television network. You can play around with his and his brothers’ characters all you like, but there is always going to be challenges to dodge around, especially since this was still in 2018-2019.
For example, you can play around with their designs so long as they’re color coded turtles, but their sexualities? Now that’s tricky.
“But what about Hypno and Warren?” Not main characters and also they’re Rise originals. They have a lot more room to play around with than a character like Leo does. But even talking about main characters in the franchise, you could arguably have an easier time playing around with Donnie or Mikey’s sexualities than Leo or even Raph, as (unfortunately) the former two tend to get more B plots, so they’d likely have had a little more leeway (still not a lot though.)
So, where does this leave us?
It leaves us in a place where outright stating and/or showing undeniable proof of Leo’s attraction to men is very, very difficult. So, workarounds!
Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.
To be honest, as left up to interpretation and lowkey and deniable as it is, this whole scene means a lot to me because of who Leo is as a character. It’s just nice when we get so see even the bare bones of representation with characters that have been such a large part of pop culture for decades, y’know? Even if more would be so much nicer, this is better than I thought we’d ever get for these boys.
And, again, literally nothing I’ve said is the only way to interpret it, I’m more than happy when people interpret media on their own honestly, it’s just something I’ve been thinking of lately and I was wondering if others felt the same way.
Whatever you think when you interpret this scene or Rise Leo as a whole, I just thought this would be interesting to think about, even if it was ramble-y, haha.
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