#if love doesnt feel like this what is the point

[honeytonedhottie]

taking control of ur wellness (tips and tricks to be ur healthiest most vibrant you)⋆.ೃ࿔*:･✍🏽🌸

you must treat ur body like the temple that it is. love every inch of urself and out of love for urself, take good care of it. in this post we'll explore how to take control of ur wellness and overall take better care of urself from the inside out…💬🎀

THE MAINTENANCE ;

maintaining ur health by taking supplements is something that i do and its made a big difference in my health. because im taking my vitamins and supplements i feel a lot better and i dont get sick often at all.

♡ invest in a cute vitamin box to inspire u to take ur vitamins

i take a daily multivitamin in the morning and at night i take magnesium + D3 because its helped me fix my sleep schedule and just have better quality of sleep. plus its a better alternative to melatonin ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅✍🏽

DISCLAIMER : its crucial for u to do ur own research when it comes to ur health so make sure that u do that before applying anything that u learn on the internet for ur own safety!…💬🎀

♡ chia seed water every morning

make sure that ur not consuming more than 1-2 tbsp of chia seeds a day but i put 2 tablespoons of chia seeds in my water every morning cuz its an amazing source of fiber, and they're rich in omega-3 fatty acids and other vitamins and minerals.

♡ if im experiencing inflammation i'll take some warm water, turmeric and some lemon

♡ chlorophyll water (bonus points if u add a lemon wedge)

chlorophyll is an internal deodorizer! it helps to detoxify the body by binding to and eliminating toxins, heavy metals, and harmful substances. it also helps with skin concerns like acne 💕

♡ dry brushing

dry brushing is something else that i do that has an impact on my health. dry brushing unclogs pores in the exfoliation process. it also helps detoxify your skin by increasing blood circulation and promoting lymph flow/drainage. so not only am i exfoliating for softer more princessy skin, im also promoting my lymph flow and increasing my blood circulation.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HYDRATION ;

i know everyone always talks about how important it is to drink water and its lowkey overdone but its TRUE. water is so SO important. if u have difficulty drinking enough water invest in a cute water bottle with a straw. i say with a straw cuz i feel like personally, im more inclined to drink water if its out of a straw.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT ;

when ur eating, try focusing on how the food ur eating is making you feel. everyones body responds differently to different foods so by noticing how u feel after eating something, you can have a better idea of what u should continue eating and what u should steer clear of. with that being said, lets get into this section. 🗒️

something else that i wanted to yap about in this section is that there is a difference between restricting urself and self control. eating shouldn't be bringing u anxiety and ur allowed to let urself live. so eat to feel satiated and happy, dont eat to the point where you feel sick and like u can barely move.

something that has helped me be more conscious of what im choosing to fuel my body with is the 80-20 rule. choose the healthier option 80% of the time and the 20% of the time eat yummy pastries and cakes 💕

if ur someone who has difficulty eating vegetables, try cooking them in a different way and seasoning them adequately to make them yummy, masking them in different dishes. OR if that doesnt work for u get ur veggies in smoothies. cuz u gotta get in some fruits and vegetables.

im someone who loves to have a fun drink in the mornings and during the day so i've been super obsessed with making my own smoothies. my smoothie formula is super simple and it has never failed me.

(1-2 fruits + collagen powder/protein powder + almond milk + a bit of honey/maple syrup + ice)…💬🎀

some more wellness drinks and juicing recipes →

♡ apple + lemon + kale + honey + water

♡ grapefruit + lemon + kale + water

ALL ABOUT PROBIOTICS ;

probiotics are the good bacteria that live in your gut, working hard to keep your digestive system balanced and healthy. SO if you’re dealing with bloating, fatigue, or even skin issues, it might be time to show your gut some love.

♡ kimchi

♡ greek yogurt

♡ kefir

♡ pickles

♡ kombucha

MOVING YOUR BODY ;

moving ur body is also super duper important, not only for ur physical well being but also for ur mental wellbeing so make sure that ur getting physical activity every single day.

whether thats going to the gym, stretching, playing a sport, going on walks, dancing etc. there are literally SO many ways that u can move ur body and enjoy urself ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅ some things that i like to do to stay active are →

♡ dancing ♡ stretching ♡ jump-roping (my favorite) ♡ walking

the trick to this is using the stair master machine OR if u dont have one in ur gym, u can just go on the treadmill at an incline for like 30 minutes or however long u can, and putting ur hands up to ur head and keeping ur posture straight. aim for at least a 5-10% incline, but you can go higher depending on your fitness level…💬🎀

or ofc u can go on walks with ur pet or ✨hot girl walks✨ and walk while listening to a podcast, literally whatever u prefer.

♡ pilates/workouts that i can follow along with on youtube

a fun way to keep track of the workouts that u consistently do is to make a workout book like i did. that way i can have everything at my fingertips right when i need it 💕🗒️

[alelathedragon]

Ohhhh real.... To be honest SMG4 himself i never really dug into his character that much, Puzzles is the 2nd character I've ever over analyzed in this silly show and it's really neat seeing your perspective on the subject! Because looking back I defo see it now. Puzzles being the bad ending to (Gotta Be Perfect) bc

A: no friends /ayo he got no bitc-/

B: now he's a perfectionist in the cruelest ways

Like i was talking to friends about Puzzles and said at some point "I wanna make perfect shows and entertain the masses!! What better way to have full control of the screen than to BE a screen!!! "

That's likely along the lines of what would have happened to 4 if 3 didn't step in and confess friendship to him and remind him he has more to live for than just his channel making his friends around him happy.

Awesome point of view mate!!! Good eye!!!

___

Oh yes Puzzles is such a little freakazoid and i LOVE him for thaaaaaat!!! Hes so protective and he does obviously care for her on DEEP levels he's so silly! But due to his lack of social skills he doesnt know how to portray that/is HORRIFIED of opening up because everytime he did try to open up he was shut down in one way or another and his only friend was the TV.

He gen tries with Leggy but - /information

It is important that I share what i mean when i say i think Puzzles has Low Empathy VS the ability to show Care

They are 2 very different things bc while he cares so ungodly deep for her, he doesn't do well in thinking about How She Feels .when he makes her upset he gets that she is upset but doesnt fully understand WHY he made her upset. And while Luigi is not a friend, Mr.Puzzles was gen trying to be nice to get past and failed miserably x,D

I love how well written he is, his lack of communication skills is so yummyyyyyy

Also its been fun rambling back and forth w you for realzzzz love ur opinions and views :0

sooo…

WOTFI

THEY DIDNT ADDRESS ANY OF THE PARALLELS AND THEN THEY

INSTITUTIONALIZED HIM

I’m so mad about this. I’m so mad. I’m so mad.

because okay. Okay remember this.

His super dramatic flinch here and there was that post going around like “I wonder what happened in Mr Puzzles’ childhood to make him flinch like that“

CHILD PUZZLES DOES THE SAME THING

EVERY TIME MEGGY/LEGGY APPROACHES HIM HE FLINCHES. HE COWERS. EVEN OUTSIDE OF THE POTENTIAL CONCLUSION HE WAS BEATEN, SOMEONE GENUINELY CARING ABOUT HIM IS SUCH A FOREIGN CONCEPT THAT HE ASSUMES THE ONLY REASON ANYONE WOULD GET CLOSE IS TO HARM HIM.

AND HE’S NOT EVEN WRONG?! THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS?

THEY INSTITUTIONALIZED HIM HE IS TIED TO A TABLE IN A PADDED ROOM. THEY APPEALED TO HIS HUMANITY AND FOUND THE GOOD IN HIM AND THEY USED IT AGAINST HIM.

YOU THINK THATLL HELP HIM? TARGETING THE MOST VULNERABLE PART OF HIMSELF AND GETTING HIM SENT TO AN ASYLUM?

AND IT SUCKS BECAUSE I WAS LEGITIMATELY ENJOYING THE EPISODE BEFORE THAT! I was having fun until that ending. That’s literally the one thing I didn’t like. The scene with Kid Puzzles was really well done. Everybody’s outfits were so cool. IGBP flesh blobs were there that was really cool

but then

I hate this. Genuinely worse than killing him off to me. It just feels wrong

[impactrueno]

I saw your twt about holding back on telling stories with serious and deep tones and it reminded me of an issue I had a while back. Im a south park fan and I loved reading deep analysis of the characters. and south park being south park, people dont take it seriously and think its just funny so it doesnt deserve deep analysis like other forms of media. I always came across comments saying "its not that deep" or "doing all of that for south park" and I used to hate that so much because why are you commenting that under the authors post? In media there is like a "spectrum" of how deep you are in it as a fan, and it doesn't make you less of a fan if you like to binge watch the show when you feel like it because its funny. Someone who makes fan fiction and psychoanalyses the characters doesnt make them a better fan than you. I hate "it's not deep" because it is that deep to me, I enjoy it, but it dismisses critical thinking and discourages deep discussions about our interests. I want to learn more about the turning point for eric cartman and the friendship dynamics between the main 4. I want to read psychoanalysis of the characters and understand why they do the things they do. I loved reading fan fics with an author that understood how the characters work and put them in situations while making it believable. Whether the content was deep and serious or lighthearted and silly. I don't see those as cringe at all. What I see as cringe is trying to downplay someones time and effort. you dont care for it. cool, just dont make it our problem.

I believe in recent years, this cringe and its not that deep mentality is linked to media literacy/reading comprehension issues. On top of the fact, that fandoms right now has been "normalized", so alot of mean and rude kids and adults are in this space not having a mature and respectful conversation and discussions, as well as zero fandom etiquette. (I understand the past wasnt this magical respectful place but this behaviour has increased compared to past years).

Please don't worry about making deep content, its super fun and there will be fans of what you write/draw that will definitely be into it.

GOSH anon you are absolutely right. cringe culture has done some serious damage to people's creativity and freedom of expression. doing things in earnest is now cringe to so many people (specifically that 18-21 age where they think they're better than everyone else and everything is cringe to them, image is everything) and they actually give you shit for it?? it's crazy. the most harmless thing in the world. whenever my hey arnold comics would leave my target audience on instagram i would get the meanest comments for no fucking reason, because i was taking hey arnold "seriously" (nevermind that hey arnold is probably the nicktoon with the most emotional depth and moments besides ginger but i digress) but hey at least i'm not the one losing my marbles over some random cartoon comic on the internet.

i think rudeness in general has been too normalized not just in fandom, but in social media in general. it's sad. the only thing you can do about it is be kind as much as you can to counterbalance it. i'd like to think that rubs off on people just like how being rude rubbed off on them.

i said that thing about holding back because i'm admittedly too hard on myself sometimes. no one is calling me cringe or making fun of me for what i do, thankfully, people have been super cool and supportive. and it means a lot to me because i'm very earnest about everything i create, even when i try to hold back. i literally cannot help being myself. it's all i know how to do. i'm just glad i was able to grow a platform where i'm free to be openly passionate about the things i like, talk about them and why i like them, the little things that i find fascinating, the emotions they make me feel, all of that shit is awesome and i wish more people did that.

[voidsimpala]

What if in the next episode, we get a continuation of the ending scene. And Buck tells Eddie why he has come over.

But as soon as Eddie realises how much it has, Tommy has hurt Buck, he just sees red.

He starts ranting about, "How could Tommy have done this? Does he not know how amazing you are. I mean your...... continues with a list of Eddie basically showering Buck with compliments about how amazing he is, how he's great with kids, and treats chris like his own. Until it gets to the point where eddie is so carried away that he doesnt realise that he is pretty much confessing his love to Buck. Bucks just sat listening to Eddie whilst having his 'oh' in italics moment.

Or Eddie realises afer he's finished having his rant that he's in love with his best friend and Buck is absolutely oblivious.

I feel like one of them should be oblivious to the others feelings for at least a while no matter how obvious the other is making it. So we get a "for God's sake I live you you idiot" or

"are you flirting with me?" "I have been for a while but thanks for noticing" moment

[ashoss]

obsessed with dick, jason and tim just. knowing? that this is persephone.

(long posting this bc i realized how long i got LMAO) i go on a huge tangent but trust i get back to persephone

(slight tangent - i feel like with dick and jason it would be alfred to inform them on the greek world? like. its something bruce told alfred to do with dick because bruce felt it he would explain it better type deal since alfred is the one actually involved with it.

however tim knew directly. janet probably had him grow up with the knowledge. (i wonder if janet went to camp?) so tim was already aware of gods, monsters, demigods, what type of metal to use, etc (after all janet would want her child to be informed)

stephanie. didnt know right away? she was probably with tim or something when venus showed up and was like. alright. another thing to add to the weird shit wrong with the waynes or something. but... venus and stephanie yap sessions (they shit talk tim)

((also another side tangent bc this is making me think world building .. i guess. i wonder how they get claimed? isnt it mostly at camp where that happens..? - ok looked it up and it says "when a camper shows some amount of their godly power or skill".. gotta find a work around for that hmmm))

cass probably knew.. some of it? she didnt know exactly what it is until she came to gotham and met w the bats. she just knew she had certain powers that could kill these monsters that some people didnt see.

duke however. i feel like is aware theres,, something he doesnt fully understand? i think his powerset in particular would be interesting to explore with this world. bruce would probably train him to see past the mist (to me hes not clearsighted) ((also also i wonder if one of them could work with the mist- like hazel or (cecil? was it?))) but i wonder how his powers would affect it. i feel like when he comes into contact with gods and goddesses he can see their aura? if that makes sense. he can see that they're. different. brighter. more powerful.

damian def,,, grew up around it. hes aware of it, the magic, the power, etc.... i wonder how he and persephone would get along.... (however again damian to me is the least explored in this au)

okay back to persephone and the batfam together..

persephone and dickie getting along together is soo cute .. sobbing... (which would break him more come MOA. teehee) they really areee spring siblings... her little birdie........ i think she would love the bright colours and bird name.

(bruce absolutely DOES have the mysterious woman board. he marks down everything she has said about Weird Stuff. like why does she talk about the ancient times as if she were there? why does talk about the underworld as if she lives there. why does she talk about his parents as if she still talks to them.

(like brucie at this point its kinda obvious)

"i should hope that no one here addresses me as such any time soon" from persephone, how only those in the underworld call her "your majesty" OUGHHH it made me think of jason when he died. do u think he went to the underworld? he was fated to return so why bother going there? i wonder if it was just blackness for him.

if he did go to the underworld he definitely would have gone to elysium. (... did thomas and martha make it there? did jason get to see his grandparents? do you think they were able to meet. being able to see them, tell stories with them, laugh with them unlike bruce was able to?)((however with how close they are to persephone i bet they would have made it.))

ohhh cassandra....... how much i torment u in this au...

ur so right.. about how she'd feel about persephone. persephone more so,, to me is the rebirth to hades' death? like how after a volcano, new plant life grows. that is persephone to me.

i wonder how exactly cass would feel about persephone and direct connection to death- (i mean she is the queen of the underworld no matter how much she is a spring goddess)

also oughhh the flower........ </3

i wonder if persephone did show up. if she could sense the distress the second little birdy was emitting. shes ough to have mixed feelings about his death because at least she could see him though.

ALSO bruce lost in time and MOA happening at the same time is SOO good

like tim's quest to find bruce is ALSO part of his quest to find venus and athena.

(dick breaking at the fact he just. cant talk to persephone. the flower lays crushed. wilted now because persephone is supposed to be here. the roses she had help plant are dying and they dont do that so something. is really wrong.

hehe

(@duskdawnallen )

ok this isn't eloquently said at all, but it was inspired by a batfam fic i love on ao3 called "way down hadestown" (which i love so much and highly recommend if you haven't read it yet). i was thinking about bruce/wayne ancestors and patron gods and instead of it being athena or hestia, what if it were persephone? patroness of bats, goddess of springtime, and queen of the underworld. on the one hand, she embodies growth, rebirth, and resilience, on the other hand, she has ties to death and is known as the destroyer. thinking about bruce has lost so much and yet can't escape death no matter how much he wants to because it literally blesses his family :')

PERSEPHONEEE IS SOOOO GOOD oh my god u cooked with this u cooked with this......

[casualavocados]

Learn from who? Learn from you?

Chen Bowen as CHEN YI & Chiang Tien as AI DI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[usercelestial]

okay but literally what if buck and tommy end up together? like what if we get to see them moving in together or saying i love you for the first time or getting engaged or getting married? what if we get to see buck having a husband? literally what then...

[thethespacecoyote]

contemplating what exactly it was about ford that made bill feel important now

[transmasculinizing]

(ok i cant confirm how well the other characters uv mentioned are written id have to read up on them so here im just gonna talk about talia) im glad u pointed out how it feels like 1 of the implications here is that bruce wouldnt b attracted to an arab woman. like i HATEEEE how both comic writers and fanon has erased how much bruce loves talia (and talia loves him back and would never do that to him). ppl only wanna ship him with white ppl and pretend he never really loved or was even attracted to talia bc he was "raped" by her. but it was all bad writing and out of character and a slap in the face to the character and a retcon. she would not have been written that way if she was white bc grant morrison is racist i get that people wanna cling to any representation of male SA since that kinda trauma is underrepresented but i dont think thats whats happening here. it was not well written or meant to be anything other than a way to further demonize a woman of color. we never see how being SA'd affected bruce and its never brought up again and can easily be taken out bc morrison doesnt care about survivors or representing their stories meaningfully. its nothing. it should be ignored. its just like. boils my blood how that 1 line of dialogue how perminitly changed how ppl see the character and can honestly just tell when the only talia comic someones read is batman and son and its just frustrating as a talia fan to constantly see her represented this way

While I agree that media representation of CSA is important and should be treated as a serious matter, people have to understand that the infamous Talia/Bruce plotline was literally three panels that went:

Talia: HAHAHA BATMAN I a ARAB woman knew that you couldn't love me as your other white lady lovers club, so I ASIAN woman put a nodescribeddrugpotion in your drink (even if we were already getting it on)to make the 110th perfect human weapon in DC HHAHAH because I'm EVIL and ASIAN

Bruce:😱😐

And then they never brought it up again. At best it was a excuse to make Bruce a shitty father towards Damian. It was badly written and trust me the writer just wanted it for shock value. Probably didn't even stop to think that it was in fact non con. If you want to talk and defend survivor so much why don't you start with Tara Markov, Sandra Woo-San ,Jade Nguyen and Starfire?

[blueskittlesart]

deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao

not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad

[lunarharp]

played dragon age 2...just simple scribbles

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[ravensmadreads]

Taylor I'm- 😭😭😭

in another life . . .

rating: explicit, 18+

pairing: frankie morales x f!reader

word count: 7K

summary: Partner. That word had been jammed up inside his brain for as long as he could remember. Gym-class partner, lab partner, work-out partner, partner-in-training, partner in this fucking life or death situation where we’re only going to get out alive if we trust each other more than I trust myself. And then he met you and the definition changed again.

warnings: domestic!frankie, marriage kink (if that’s a thing), oral (f receiving) but i think that’s an expectation from every frankie fic, improper use of a kitchen table, unprotected piv, no use of y/n, brief mentions of PTSD, improper use of Spanish, eating in bed 

a/n: requested for my 100 followers event! Anon: hiiii firstly! congrats on the big one hundo you totally deserve it 🥂‼️ secondly wondering if I could rq a Pedro boy drabble with prompt number 12... I wanna do laundry for Frankie Morales :D “did you just wash these sheets?” “I did.” “they smell nice. and they’re still warm.”

🤍Masterlist

. . . I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.

Frankie fills the silence of the house without you in it with music. This house, it had been your choice, even though he never expressly made you choose, or even presented the dichotomy. This house, with its leaky faucet and janky AC unit and finicky pilot light, was what you wanted instead of a diamond ring, and so he gave it to you. First down payment, along with every other red cent you and he had both saved up, went into buying your first home together. This wasn’t forever, you both agreed (with only two bedrooms it wasn’t enough room for a baby, he often thought) but even as the real estate agent glanced around with disdain for the house and your budget, one look from you and it was settled. 

“It has good bones,” you said, standing out on the concrete deck overlooking a postage-stamp-sized backyard. There were weeds in the corners and holes from some unknown animal but he could see the wheels in your head turning, imagining how you, like everything else you did, planned to tackle and wrestle control over it with your bare hands. “It needs work, but I think there’s something special here.” 

“Yeah?” he asked, threading his fingers through yours, the real estate agent no doubt off somewhere inspecting the drains. “Is there something here?”

You grinned and shoved your nose then a soft press of your lips into his denim-shoulder. 

“I’m sure of it.”

All his life, Frankie worked best in a unit. As children, his older brother, his younger brother, and him were practically inseparable, their physical similarities almost presenting as the same person but at different ages, and when that group disbanded because Oscar left for college, he went on to find another one. First, his army unit, then the boys. His boys. Left to his own devices, Frankie was terrible at remembering to eat, sleep regularly – focus on anything other than fixing cars and planes, really – but he’d do it for them. He hated to see that worried crease show up on Will’s brow when Frankie admitted he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He hated that Benny had to show up at his apartment to drag his ass outta bed to get him into the sunlight. And he hated when Pope felt obligated to take him out to bars to try and meet women.

“I’m not dating someone just so they can be my mother,” Frankie muttered into the lip of his beer bottle. “I don’t need anyone thinking I need to rely on them like that.” 

“Yeah, but you do better when you have people relying on you.” Pope’s dark eyes flitted from a woman at the bar top to him, with intention and full of force. “And I’m not saying I’m trying to get you to fuck your mother, but you need a partner.” 

Partner. 

That word had been jammed up inside his brain for as long as he could remember. Gym-class partner, lab partner, work-out partner, partner-in-training, partner in this fucking life or death situation where we’re only going to get out alive if we trust each other more than I trust myself. 

And then he met you and the definition changed again. 

You are his best friend. You are the woman he wants to fuck every day for the rest of his life. You are the first person he wants to tell good news to and the first person he wants to talk to when he’s had a shitty day. Your voice quiets something inside him that has been far too loud for far too long. You are a relief and a refuge. For all his faults, you love him and sometimes he can’t fathom why. 

You are his partner – in life, in marriage (one day), and forever (he hopes).

“I might not always like you, Catfish,” you said to him in Will’s backyard for Benny’s birthday party. You had been drinking and every sip seems to bring you closer and closer to him. With your face tucked up into his neck, arms up under his flannel and hugging his waist, the only way he could be physically closer to you was if he was inside you – which he was about two seconds away from suggestion when you leaned in close. “‘M not always going to like you, but ‘m always going love you.”

And love him you did. You loved him when he decided to go back to school to get some additional certifications so he could maybe teach flight school. The army would pay for most of it, was a fucking relief to your shared thread-bare, cartoon-spider-web empty savings account. But what the army would not pay for was for you to go to nursing school. You worked in hotels for the events services branch, coordinating everything from weddings to conferences, walking (mostly running) from one end of the hotel to the next. Your sister got you a Fitbit for Christmas one year and after the holiday rush, you walked twenty miles in two days. 

“After that, this nursing stuff should be a breeze,” you said flippantly as you signed your paperwork for admissions. 

Of course you got accepted at one of the better hospitals in the city – he never doubted for a second you would – and as the fresh-faced trainee, you got stuck with most of the night shifts. 

Which meant his days looked a lot like this: wake up at 6AM, drive an hour to the helicopter tour building on the coast, fly rich idiots around all day, eat the lunch you had prepped for the both of you on Sunday night, continue flying rich idiots around, drive home in two-hour traffic, change into his work overalls, go work on some cars Benny’s buddy had at the local garage for some extra cash, then go home, heat up dinner you also made Sunday night, and then attend to the most pressing thing you or the house needed. 

Which could be:

Fixing the AC unit, resealing the back door so it would close properly, re-caulking the shower, building more attic space, repainting the back fence, or replacing the hand towel holder.

Frankie didn’t mind the hard work. It kept his mind and his hands busy. What he did mind was the house silent and eerily empty without you here. 

He didn’t mind the hard work because even for a few hours, he got to hold you while you slept. He got to eat with you at 10:30 at night and it was the highlight of his day.

Pay your surgeon very well to break the spell of aging

Sicker than the rest, there is no test, but this is what you're craving?

Frankie bobs his head, his earphones carefully tucked up under his shirt to prevent the laundry from tangling up in them. He hauls out the latest load and moves onto the washer, fishing out one more sock when suddenly the lights go off. All of them. Total darkness.

And then light and he’s staring down the bottom of the drum.

Then dark. And light.

You. Your code. One you designed when you read that PTSD victims are often triggered into a fight-or-flight response when startled. You, who knew before he did, how to manage the symptoms, create workarounds, and find a pathway through, instead of not at all. 

He takes out one of the earbuds and smiles.

“Hey, you’re home.” 

You lean against the doorway, smiling that smile that is reserved for him and him alone. Sometimes he’s selfish and wants everything of yours to be only for him – all your smiles, your laughter, your sighs – but that’s like trying to capture sunlight in a butterfly net: too focused on the impossible and you end up missing the daytime. 

“How goes this fucking Sysphian task?” You nod at the baskets of laundry at his feet, referring to how you’d often rant and rave about how laundry, the dishes, and grocery shopping were never tasks that could simply be done. He knows how much you hate being unable to cross things off your to-do lists, so he holds your hand during all of these rantings and kisses your knuckles when you take a breath. 

“Good,” he shrugs. “‘Bout to fold your scrubs for tomorrow.”

“Ah, have I told you lately that I love you?” You swing into the room and kiss him on his cheek, on the division where his patchy beard meets his skin – the place that you most often claimed on him. Your fingers squeeze around his bicep as you pull away and your eyes fall to the basket behind him. You gasp with glee. 

“Did you just wash these sheets?” You ask like you’d just uncovered buried gold. 

He smirks, propping his hip up against the dryer. “I did.” 

Without another word, you scoop them up in your arms and inhale sharply.

“Mhmm, they smell nice.” You bury your head in deep. “And they’re still warm.”

In the rare moments when you’re both home and going through laundry together, he never fails to scoop up a load of hot towels and dump them over your head, relishing in the girlish giggle from beneath the clean laundry. “It’s so toasty,” you whimper with glee. 

“They’re not gonna be if you get your hospital gunk all over them,” Frankie tuts, going back to add a new load into the washer as you glare at him over the lump of sheets. 

“Ha, ha. Move over, Mr. Morales, and watch a master at work.” 

“Yes, Mrs. Morales.” It’s stupid but his heart always fumbles when he calls you that. It started as a joke, one that you initiated, but now it’s like berry jam on his tongue, sweet and sugary. He’s thought about calling you that while he’s inside you but figures he should save something for the wedding night. 

He sidles back, giving you space near the dryer as you pick up a basket of t-shirts.

“You know there’s dinner waiting for you in the kitchen.” He shakes his head as you begin to fold the shirts with lightning speed and precision – a side effect of being the oldest daughter in a family of five kids. 

“Yeah, but you’re in here,” you say and bump his hip. He bumps you back and helps with the load. “Besides, it’ll get done faster with two people.”

He can’t exactly argue with that, so he lets the silence grow. But it’s not silence, not really. In the distance, dogs bark. Outside the room, the temperamental AC grumbles, a sound he never thought he’d come to appreciate. Inside the room, fingers tug at fabric, the soft thump as the shirts grow into a continuous pile. Then there’s you, breathing in the lilac-scented air, the scent of his deodorant and sweat and something entirely unique to him– his Frankie-ness as you’ve called it many times without elaborating. I’d bottle it if I could, you told him, bathe in it. You’re kinda weird, he told you, and you know he likes it. 

Every once in a while, his elbow brushes up against yours, yours skirting around his, but never colliding, an awareness of the other always present and attended to, a flow of familiarity and recognition he’s never felt before or known since. 

Bit by bit, you’ve taken pieces of him into you, picked them up, held them to the light and found them beautiful, until a second bit of his soul lives outside of his body. He knows every inch of you, how every atom calls out to him, begs to be close to him, and held tight. It’s not sunlight he’s trying to keep safe, it’s your heart. Your precious, wonderful heart that is somehow so full, it was enough to fill him up too. Gold filling in the cracks. 

Kintsugi, Benny called it, when he got obsessed with anime for three months that one time two years ago. Frankie never could remember the actual name, and maybe that wasn’t the point and maybe it was a little ridiculous, especially when it was explained by a deliriously drunk and bleary-eyed Ben Miller at one in the morning on his brother’s lawn chair. 

Maybe a better way of thinking about it was how separate, disparate, jagged and raw edges came to fit together. How someone like him got a do-over, another chance to be remade in the kiln, and how someone like you was allowed to love unselfishly, to ask for things and never be threatened with reparations of some kind – as if loving you deserved some sort of compensation. 

Pieces, broken and scattered – he looked up and saw you carrying yours, and you witnessed the scars and blood dripping from the shards of his own past, his life, his love, and despite how slippery his pieces were, how dried and empty and wanting yours were, something pulled them together and made them stay. 

Something stronger than light.

Stronger than gold. 

You shook his hand and looked at what you built together, the pieces that came together, and in the end, that was your partnership. A creation of something greater – home, family, love. 

So much fucking love.

In the end, Frankie Morales used love to build his life, not death, and you’re the one who gave it to him.

He drops the last shirt on the stack and he turns, his fingers seeking the drawstring of your pants. 

You know what he wants. You want it too. A singular desire in two separate bodies.

The inherent closeness of domesticity draws you into him, closing the already limited space as hands find waists and lips find skin. He drags his nose against your jaw, somehow already shaking, his teeth grazing your throat, unwilling and unable to press his lips to you, wanting to drag this out as much as possible. He squeezes your hips, thumbs flipping under your shirt to touch, touch, touch, until his fingers wrap around your ribs and you make your first sound of the night. It snags at his restraint, pulling it threadbare. 

“Frankie,” you sigh and he cannot fight the cataclysmic pull towards you – he stumbles, pinning you to the laundry room wall, his tongue cupping your earlobe into his mouth and he sucks. The next noise you make is high and keening and it turns his touch frantic.

Caught between the wall and his broad shoulders, he does with you what he wants. He nips at your cheek, your neck, the dip of your clavicle, as his thumb presses up each knot of your spine, drawing out the tension from your body like draining poisoned blood, and by the time he pinches off your bra, you’re all but hanging onto him. 

“Baby–,” 

He can hear you say, it’s late, we have work in the morning, you don’t have to do this,

I’m not worth this 

With a low growl that is all possession, all anger that someone ever made you feel like your love was too much, he tugs your shirt off, knocking his hat off as he goes. In the drift, he sees your eyes flutter, mouth twisted in pleasure and guilt – you don’t want to be asking for things like this – and so he silences every doubt, every worry that he’s tired or it’s too late or his knees are aching too much to make you feel the way you deserve – he kisses you with enough force to knock out every unpleasant thought you’ve ever had about yourself and flattens you against the wall. 

You let him pry you open, his touch fervent and insistent, tasting of iced coffee and gum. He licks into you, telling you things with his tongue, the way he tugs your bottom lip between his teeth, in the soft puff of breath that escapes him when you cup the back of his neck. Closer, he begs, closer. 

His wide palm arching your lower back into him, he squeezes your ribs, up under your breast, before finally taking your nipple between his thumb and the meat of his hand and twists, just enough to make you break apart from his demanding mouth, gasping as if tapped by a live wire. But it’s him who is electrocuted, who catches fire, who wants to be chewed down and swallowed up. He shuffles and pulls you into him, the throbbing in his pants bordering on painful. He rubs himself against you once and you sigh like you know he hurts. You nod.

Your fingers peel your shirt up and over your head as he cups one thigh then the other until your hips hug his waist, smearing the hem of his shirt up over his skin. He feels the heat coming from between your legs, the slight dampness, against his lower belly and he groans, low, right near that source of warmth he wants to die in. 

You curl above him, tipping his head back, as you dive into his mouth again, fingers twisting into his hair, thumbs brushing his temple right where you know he tends to get headaches. Your tongue brushes against his upper lip, tasting his mustache, and his knees threaten to buckle. 

“You’re gonna fucking kill me,” he laments, he praises, into the supple wetness of your tongue. You nod, pleased, and press your chest into him. He cannot fucking wait to get his mouth around your tits.

Mouth sealed to yours, hands cupping the meat of your ass, Frankie works entirely on sense memory to carry you into the kitchen, to a long wooden table beneath a wide window, white curtains closed and blinds shut. 

This table had been one of the first purchases for the new house. Tan cedar boards with white knobby legs, it instantly reminded him of the one in his own childhood home, where he and his brothers fought over meals and did homework together. Where he held his mom after his father died and where he dropped his bag after coming home from a life too long spent fighting other people’s wars. 

This table mattered to him and he’d be damned if it wouldn’t mean something to his own child one day. 

That was something you too wanted to give your child, never having a table like this in your own life. You loved the stories he told about the table in his kitchen. How much it meant to him.

And now he was going to fuck you on it, this symbol of stability.

He just wonders how stable it really is. 

His fingers clutching the back of your neck, arm running in tandem with your spine, he lowers you down, shifting your weight onto his arm so you don’t bump your head against the wood. He releases you but you protest, a muffled uh-uh, as he tries retreating. You loop your arms around his neck, tugging him flat against you and he feels your breasts mold against his chest, nipples already tight.

“Baby,” he breathes, sucking up and out of your mouth, “let me make you feel good.”

Behind him, he hears your sneakers clatter to the floor, your heels digging into his back as you toe off your shoes, and you shake your head. 

“I am.” Kiss. A thumb under his bottom lip. “You do.” Breathless, reverent, grateful. 

Grateful.

Grateful that he is kissing you. 

Not good enough. God, he’s going to eat that self-loathing right out of you. 

You whine, frustrated and hot, as he pulls back. He wants to go right for your pussy, but stutters at the sight of your unmarked tits. Smooth, flushed, heaving. There is no part of you he does not love, does not feel the need to worship on his knees. 

But suddenly sour shame strikes him as he realizes enough time has passed since the last time you’d had sex for the hickeys to heal. He intends to amend that right now. 

His thumbs rubbing soothing circles into your hips, to calm himself, he folds himself over you, dribbling kisses along your throat, over the wings of your clavicle, at the barest incline at the top of your breast, and then to the meat of your tit, the heaviness, the sway, and he bites down. Predictably, you yelp, nails scratching roughly into his scalp and that only makes him suck harder. You have very strict rules around where he can mark you, but on the places he can – oh, you beg him for it. 

He palms your other tit, just to feel the goosebumps break out across your skin, to roll your nipple with the calluses on his palm. His teeth release, his tongue laving over that already pink and swollen skin, and he glances up, his other thumb coming to massage that fragile patch. 

Being a pilot, a soldier, a brother, a son, those are the things he is. But Frankie lives – aches, pines, desires – to watch you come apart. 

The purple bruise on your tit shining like a luxurious necklace, your eyes flutter open when you feel him pull up. Your fingers around his ears, your chest wet with his spit, you let him take you in. You give him this, because you know you’re about to get so much more. With your legs still wrapped around his waist, he can feel the soft cant of your hips, the quiet, patient begging, as you thought he needed reminding that you needed this. You rub up him, knees pinned to his ribs, and he lets you pull him into your mouth, grounding him. This kiss is brief, soft, a far cry from the tearing and biting that got you onto the table. Knowing exactly the state you need to be in to ask for what you want, he holds your jaw, thumb against the apple of your cheek and he slips his tongue out of your mouth. Again a protest, an instinctual reaction to the repeated pattern of abandonment, but like all cries for help, he quiets your squirming by sliding his thumb between your lips. 

“Suck,” he murmurs gently. Your eyes flutter shut, your nails carving half moons into his forearm, lips creating a vacuum seal around his knuckle and you obey – you suck – and he rewards you with a trail of kisses across your sternum, over your breasts, to the soft swell of your stomach. He nuzzles your belly button and you groan, eyes still shut and his thumb still in your mouth. He bites, softer than before, just above the thatch of hair and you whine around his finger, body going supple for him. He slides his thumb out, dragging a shiny string of spit over your plush lips, down your chin, joining his other hand at the waist band of both your panties and your scrubs. 

Any fast movement will awaken that anxious, overthinking, beautiful brain of yours, now that he has it fuzzy and unfocused, so he keeps kissing, keeps sucking and biting, that spot just above your curls. He tongues your hip, and then the other side, your bottom half wonderfully bare before you can open your eyes. 

His shoulder bumps the back of your thigh as he stands up right, inhaling the sweat behind your knee, the pungent tang of your glistening curls, your almond butter body lotion. It’s hunger, he feels, but not a tangible hunger, one that can be so easily satiated. It’s not painful, or weakening – no, he is made stronger by it. He feels your blood pulse beneath his hand on your inner thigh as he opens you up and he’s made better by it. 

He kneels, a holy servant before the divine meal of their goddess, on shitty linoleum beneath harsh lights in a kitchen he can barely afford. 

Frankie takes your hand, kisses your knuckles, and slides your grip into his hair. 

“Recuérdame cómo te gusta, nena.” 

He eats. He consumes. He licks. He sucks. He slurps.

He tastes your dripping wetness on the seam of your cunt, before his tongue ever gets the chance to explore, to open, to divulge. He licks until he feels your breath hitch – a curse in the shape of his name, as if he needs scolding for making you feel so good – and then he opens his jaw and tongues your hole. 

In a lust-drunk haze you once told him he has something better than DSL – he has a pussy-eating nose. He prods you with that nose you can’t seem to get enough of, licking in as far as he can, coating himself in everything as it leaks out of you, and he moans as he can feel it on his chin. You vibrate with the sound and above him, your fingers clench down into his hair. 

“Oh, fuck, holy – fuck, Frankie–,” your trembling shakes the bowl of your hips, spilling his meal, so he sucks your clit in a way that makes your body freeze and then melt. You go limp, pliable, and gushing. He gets a few more moments of twisting and sucking and swallowing, until by the third time he puts his lips around your clit, you open-mouth whine and it’s like his body violently remembers he has a cock. He is seized with such a need to fuck you in this warm, wet place he’s dug out with his tongue, he doubles over and rests his teeth against your thigh. 

“Frankie, I’m so close,” you writhe, chest flushed and brow sweaty. 

Before you, he never knew sex could feel like this, could do this. Sure, he used sex to keep away those circling, vulture-like thoughts from time to time. But this, this drawing out and unthreading, unspooling, of himself and someone else, tearing at ego-drenched threads until all that was left was a being of pure want and desire – he didn’t know this was possible. 

He didn’t know he could feel like this.

One more broad lick, coating everything in what he hope fucking smells like him, and you arch, thighs shaking, his hair in danger of being ripped from his scalp. You gasp as you flatten, the first orgasm of the night rolling through you, sweat making your skin salty, as though you had been breached by the ocean. 

He laps you through it, of course, a nascent smirk on his face. 

You open your eyes to this self-satisfied Frankie, eyes only visible over the top of your cunt, and you whine. 

You reach for him and he goes, smearing your slick over your face, offering it to you in supplication on his tongue. He tastes your rising desperation, the way you sharpen your teeth against his lips, batter his tongue into the corner of his mouth, try to claim what your cunt already has. His hunger is an infection and your fever has reached a boiling point. 

Your trembling fingers curl his shirt up his back, passing over the ruddy scar on his shoulder where he got hit with a stray bullet, the jagged white line over his ribs where a knife nearly split him open. He used to only fuck with his shirt on. He doesn’t now. 

His shirt crumples to the floor as he sits up, you following, eyes dark, and you bite his pec muscle, your love for him twisting you into an anthropophagist. You want to consume him, like your pussy swallows his cock. Having him impale you is not enough; you want intercourse with him on a subatomic level. 

You inch back to give yourself enough space to unbutton his jeans and he sees the wet slick left behind on the table. The heat behind his groin shoots up his spine and he grunts, burying his face into your neck where he tugs on your earlobe with his teeth, hands planted on either side of you.

“Hurry, baby, I gotta fuck this pussy,” he whispers against the curve of your jaw. He wants to leave a giant purple bruise there, this instinct to claim, to mark, stoking the roiling heat at the base of his spine and drawing up his balls. 

But his attention snaps back to your hands when he hears a click, the release of his zipper is almost euphoric. He moans in relief, unable to see through his half-lidded eyes the explosion of goosebumps over your skin as his breath tumbles over your back and down your chest. 

His urgent hands overwhelm yours, one pushing his jeans down his hips, the other palming your stomach, pushing you back and you go willingly, but seemingly mesmerized by the sight of his aching, flushed cock springing up against his stomach. You lie down, but only barely, still on your elbows, as he tugs you by your ankles to the edge of the table. 

Your uneven breathing could mean a lot of things. He thought you were being complementary the first time you told him he was too big, but your eyes always widened at the sight of his cock. 

“Do you need to be opened up some more, cariño?” 

At his rawest, Spanish came out of him like a spilled bottle of molasses, sweet, slow, rich. 

“Hmm? Tell me what you need. Hable mas alto por favor.” He rubs your knees, your thighs, hoping you’ll ask for what he wants.

“F-fingers, Frankie,” you swallow, eyes still latched on to his now weeping cock. You glance up at him, face open and full of trust, and he feels his dick pulse. “Please, Frankie, put your fingers in me.” 

“Fucking anything.” He plants one hand and cups your mound, lost for a moment in the soaked curls, before pushing two fingers inside and thrusting. “I’ll fucking give you anything you want.” 

His hips jerking slightly in tandem with the pulse of his fingers, his slacked mouth an indication of how unconscious his humping has become, as he watches you dissolve with every stroke of his hand. God, he didn’t know they made things this pretty. His hand pushes your knee up and back, finding room for three fingers and your eyes roll back in your head. You scrabble for anything to hold onto, fingers searching for the ghosts of your bedsheets, but finding none, your arms curl over your head and latch onto the other edge of the table. You present your fucking tits to him like you’re letting him admire artwork. 

It almost brings him to his knees.

“Oh, I’m coming, oh, Frankie, I’m gonna –,”

He pulls out his fingers just enough to let you gush down his palm, his wrist, and he licks it up like a glutton. It drips a bit onto the linoleum and he smears it with his bare feet.

Frankie slides two fingers back in, his brain going fuzzy at being away from the clutch of your cunt for too long, when you grab his wrist. 

You can barely breathe, your skin a pale pink, your cunt no doubt must be sore, but your eyes are as hard as diamonds in your skull. He swallows the flush of spit in his mouth.  

“Now, Frankie,” you plead, fingers tight around his wet wrist, the hairs on his arm standing up at the sound of your commanding voice. “Fuck me, now, I need you inside of me.”

It always makes him a bit dumbstruck, the way you beg, the way you let him and only him see this side of you – this side of you that is sick with wanting.

His hand squeezes the base of his cock once, eyes fluttering, to remind himself he cannot blow his fucking load the instant the tip of him is inside you. He taps your clit, once, twice, lubing himself up as if he hadn’t moved around internal organs to make way for himself. He notches, then slides, white-knuckling his impending orgasm in favor of making this good for you. He steps farther between your legs, hands sliding from your thighs, up to your waist. He thumbs your nipple and your pussy twitches around him. He swears his heart flat out stops for a concerning length of time.

“How is a pussy this good all mine? All fucking mine?” He rolls his hips, pushing deeper, movements marionetted by the high-pitched whimpers and moans of your mouth. He could catalog every single one of them, has done so in the deep recesses of his brain, and it takes just a second to know when it switches from pleasure to pain. 

He bends over you, you choking on his dick, and kisses you hard, shattering the tense look on your face.  

“I love you,” he tells you, a secret that despite being well-known to anyone who sees him look at you, still feels precious and fragile. His hand plasters your hair to your sweaty neck as he kisses you desperately, speaking a language only you understand. “I love you so fucking much.” 

You sigh into his open mouth. “I wanna marry you, Fransisco Morales.” 

He is covered in gold. Dripping with it. 

His nails at your hip dig into your skin and you know exactly what you’ve done. 

“Say it. Say it louder, nena,” he snarls, face pressed into your cheek, and he thrusts forward with enough force to rock the table. The table legs squeak as you pin him to you one more time and nip at his ear. The last drop in the well, the rope slipping over the edge, the coil locked into place.

“I wanna fucking marry you.” 

With a breathy grunt, he yanks you down onto his cock by your waist and slaps your ass with his balls. It’s been a while since your cunt has taken a beating like this. You clutch at the edge of the table again, mouth torn open.

He knows you like it when he plays with your clit, and he will, but he needs to get this out of him. 

“Yeah? You’re gonna marry the guy who’s fucking your pussy so good right now?” It’s amazing that words escape at all through his gritted teeth, jaw taut. He watches as he disappears and reappears in you, your lips puffy and pink already but he needs more. He doesn’t want you to be able to walk out of bed tomorrow. 

“Yes, Frankie – oh, god, there, right there – yes, I’m gonna marry you.” He tips your hips up as he pounds down and you arch, crying out at the angle, the depth, how full you feel. He fucks like he’s trying to bruise your ribcage through your pussy. 

The thoughts in his head collide with the others, knotting together, blurring, until the only noise he can make, the only thing he can verbalize is the tight grunts, the hm, hm, hm, as he focuses on chasing this fire. 

He feels it approach so fast, he’s nearly taken under by the intensity of his orgasm so he slows, grinds instead, and with his eyes on your face, he cups himself around where he’s split you open, feeling your lips suck in and out with every thrust. 

He closes his eyes briefly, helpless against the waves of arousal that coat his fingers. He smears your clit with his thumb and his name is a split, jagged thing that burns your tongue. He wants that taste on his tongue again. 

You throb once, a sharp climax warming your pussy, and he backs out, drops to his knees, and licks you up again. He can taste his sweat there this time and he groans. His hands slip over your skin from the sweat in the crease of your thigh.

The cries from your mouth are wet now, on the curve of a salty tongue. You tremble like your orgasm is a physical thing, thrumming under your skin, warming your blood and you claw at his forearm. 

“B-baby, please–,” 

Wiping his mouth on your inner thigh, then licking up the mess he made, Frankie stands. He swats your bottom lightly, tutting. He’s a mad man, he knows it, he can’t tell if it's delirium from the rough ache of his balls or masochistic joy in hearing you beg, but again he rubs himself through your folds. It’s not the same, not nearly enough, but it helps last just a bit longer. 

“No crying until after I’ve made you come.” 

“I’ve already come twice,” you whine as you buck your hips, trying to take him in deeper. “You said I can have anything I want.” 

“And what does princesa want?” Yeah, there’s definitely something wrong with him. 

Your eyes flash as your nails dig into his shoulders, that fire he so loves to stoke flaring out.

“I want to come on your cock, Mr. Morales.”

And he unravels, divinity calling his name. 

His pace is slow, then rough, then deep. 

The table is just the right height. He balances on knee on the lip, bending your knees over his shoulders, and fucking down into you. He’s going to snap you in fucking half and maybe he does but he’ll be there to seal you back up again. 

Pour himself into you. Fill you. Make you whole once more. 

Baby, please.

The first drip of tears starts out the corner of your eyes as you come, open-mouthed, throat exposed, a cry loud and in the shape of his name tearing from your lips, your body locking up, cunt squeezing him until he feels himself burst. 

With a shudder and a groan, he spills, hot and flush into you. He comes, and comes, and comes, until his gooey spend is forced out of you and down the crack of your ass. He can’t see anything past the white spark in his eyes, feel anything but you and the tingle of his limbs. 

The excess of you and him is everywhere, leaking out onto the kitchen table, soaking the wood. There’s a ringing in his ears he can’t quiet. 

Your breath is hot on his neck, sweaty skin stuck tightly against his, he knows he’s crushing you, his arms given out at some point, but he really doesn’t think he can stand up right. He kisses your cheek by way of apology and thanks but you don’t seem to mind, your own gaze unfocused on the ceiling. 

“Fuck, Frankie . . .”

He laughs, realizes his legs aren’t working, so trembling and uneasy, he slides out of you and manages to make it to the floor. He blames the sudden dizziness on a lack of food and then blames the dizziness for lying down on the floor. 

His eyes flutter and somehow you’re suddenly curled up next to him, your palm resting over his pounding heart. His fingers find their way up into your sweat-damp hair, thumb gently rubbing against the knot at the base of your skull. 

“Your back is gonna be killing you in about fifteen minutes, sweetheart,” you grumble sleepily into his chest, a grin on your face. 

“I can’t feel anything below my waist right now.” He yawns. “So, we’ve got some time.” 

You nod, absentmindedly stroking the dark hair on his chest. 

“We need to talk about Pope’s birthday party this weekend. Will put us on drink duty . . . but I can’t really focus on anything right now.”

“Good,” he smirks with his eyes shut. “That was some of my best work.” And then he frowns. “You need to eat.” He pokes your side and you huff.

“Okay, if you’re awake enough to berate me, we can at least go to bed.” 

Groaning, you pull him up and he threatens to stumble you both into the wall, but he kisses your cheek and swats your ass, before snagging a tub of ice cream and a spoon. He meets you in the bedroom with the cap off and a smear of chocolate around his lips. 

You’ve got one of his shirts, grinning up at him from the center of the bed, and he’s torn about whether he likes you in his boxers, or nothing at all. 

You take the ice cream from him before he has a chance to flop down on the bed. 

“Not exactly a nutritious meal,” you mutter around the spoon and he turns his face from the pillow to glare at you. 

“That’s the other dinner I made for you, so eat.” 

Your giggle is all you can give to show your thanks.

He rolls onto his back, groaning theatrically, before tucking his hand behind his head, and his fingers coming to rest on his stomach. 

Behind the lids of his eyes, he can feel you watching him.

“What?” He grumbles, feeling around for your foot to pinch your ankle. He hears you move so he knows he’s close. “Not the right flavor, princesa?”

“No,” you laugh and prod his hip with your toe. “It’s just . . .”

His eyes open, finding yours in the half-lit gloom. You’re grinning the spoon in your mouth, eyes bright with something unnameable. You shrug, eying his hand between you both.

“I just never knew Fransisco Morales could be domesticated.” 

He wipes the chocolate off your chin with his thumb.

Yeah, who knew?

[deoidesign]

Hi, how did you learn to draw Steve's physique?

Ohh what a complicated thing to answer...

When it comes to how I learned to draw anything, it's hard to say anything too specific since it's always a culmination of many years of assorted study and practice... but I can try to do my best to explain some of the biggest things that helped me learn, some tips I keep in mind, and maybe at least some places to start/delve further.

(just a little disclaimer it's not like my drawings here are going to be 100% medically accurate.. they're just to illustrate concepts!)

The main thing about learning various physiques is understanding anatomy. Which feels obvious, but I don't mean proportions; these are important, but perhaps more important is understanding the skeleton and how it moves and learning where muscles connect to bones and where fat grows on the body. When you understand how these function on a more mechanical level, depicting form and movement in a way that feels natural comes in tow.

For instance, understanding things like the pronation and supination of the radius and ulna, as well as the fact that muscles can ONLY contract or relax, will help you understand a bit better which muscles will be flexed and which will not while someone moves. It's inherent to the positioning based on the structural makeup of the body... It's not like you NEED to memorize all the muscles and bones, of course, but understanding and gaining at least a passive familiarity with the concepts really helps.

In tandem with this concept is the way parts of the body flow into eachother. Muscles ALWAYS come in groups because they can only contract. Whatever muscle is there to lift something, there is a muscle on the other side to pull that bone back down. What this results in is a series of straight edges next to curves, which gives us a lot of really lovely "s curves" and dents and folds and so on and so forth just naturally occurring.

I would suggest at least learning the "bony landmarks", which are bones (usually) visible on the surface of the body. things like the iliac crest, the great trochanter, the 7th vertabrae, the acromion process... These can be used to help you understand the parts of the body as angles and relationships, rather than trying to remember lengths and sizes, which vary immensely... (since you asked about steve, he can be our model... also study these on your own don't just take my word for it haha, these are the ones I personally keep in mind)

I've done the same thing with body hair... learning where it grows and in which directions... It helps me make up variations without needing reference, because I have a set of rules I can follow.

The biggest thing that helped me understand all this on a much deeper level was my ecorche course. I sculpted this guy. We started by sculpting the entire skeleton to understand the bones, and then we added muscles on top. Not every single muscle, of course, but the "artistic muscles" AKA the ones which directly affect the surface of the body. Doing this let us see where muscles connect, because we would make a shape, put it on the bone where it actually goes, and then you get to see how other muscles overlap that.

This helped me, perhaps, more than anything else. But I also didn't just start with this course, I had been drawing for years before I even took it. I had been in school for years before I took it. Not that I think it wouldn't be helpful to someone just starting out, but I do think that the more you know going in, the better an in-depth course like this will help you and stick with you. Classes are also expensive, though so I'm not really like... recommending you pay potentially thousands of dollars to take one... But it did help me a lot, personally.

I also, of course, have done many figure, gesture, and master studies...

These just help you quickly gain a stronger understanding of generalized anatomy, and gives you real life examples of and practice with of how people move and balance.

What all this does when combined, is gives me a very solid ability to depict movement and form in a way that feels relatively natural from my subconscious without the need for reference.

The rest of how I've learned to draw his physique is honestly mostly just stylization. I understand the body, and this is how I am depicting it for his level of musculature.

And as I move into depicting him in other ways, either moving in comics or in animation, realistically rendered, or extra stylized, these concepts inform every step of that process for me! When he keeps the same/similar relationships between parts, he gets to still look like himself.

It ALSO really helps when putting clothes on, because the way cloth falls and bunches and lifts is all directly related to the form it is on... So the more you understand that form, the more you can depict clothing and movement in a way that feels natural.

This is all, of course, true when I draw anyone, you asked about Steve so I'm trying to mostly show with him! But because I'm just drawing from raw information of general anatomy rather than trying to study one body type at a time, it allows a lot more "give," I think!

Like, here's most of the cast from TTA so far... actually, they're not as varied as I thought they were nevermind LMAO ignore this part

But, it also makes monster and alien design much easier! It's a lot easier to come up with non-human anatomy when I understand human anatomy, because I can manipulate the knowledge I have...

There is infinite more to study in the world of anatomy... The complexity of the human body goes extremely deep. For our purposes as artists, we need only depict a fraction of it, but more information rarely hurts the process.

I'm sure there's something in here that's wrong on a technical level, I'm mostly going off of memory. But that's kind of my point - I understand enough generally and conceptually that when I am missing something and need to find reference for it, I understand what I'm looking at. It's much easier than trying to learn AND draw at the same time.

I hope even one thing in here helped you! Sorry it's so long.

[tacagen]

one of the things that fascinate me about thawne: yes, he CAN be normal with kids! surprisingly normal!

((not at all times, though. his mental illness still spills through and as usual he, in trying to manipulate or hurt others, spits out at them the exact stuff that would hurt him (or have in his childhood/barry's rejection interpretation) the most in the first place lmao))

but at the same time. his like second instinct when doing his bullshit is FUCK THEM (as) KIDS

(and, well. whatever this classifies as)

[sluckythewizard]

[PUT INTO PLACE, TIED DOWN AND ARRANGED, AND IS NEVER THE SAME, AGAIN.]<-listen to my favorite songs. VAMPIRES ARE WONDERFUL ARENT THEY. THE FLESH IS SO MUCH MORE DURABLE. SO MUCH STRETCHIER THAN HUMANS. THE STRESS DOESNT KILL A VAMPIRE THE SAME WAY IT DOES A HUMAN. YOU CAN TAKE THEM APART THREAD BY THREAD AND LEAVE THEM WIDE AWAKE WITHOUT WORRY OF THE BRAINMATTER SPOILING UNDER VINEGARY AGONY.