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director's commentary for the first 4 CHAPTERS of army of me, the marina/death riders character study that tries to touch on the individual relationships between them and her as the years progress

GENERAL:

this is obnoxiously long

still two chapters to go. they're still cooking so i thought i'd do some reflecting and elaborating now that we're in the homestretch

marina. i really really like her so much she's so interesting. the best part of writing this has been watching her increasingly lean into this version of herself that i feel like i made up, like she keeps being fucking weird For Free it's awesome

CHAPTER 1:

She doesn’t mind the silent witness — that’s half the fun, really.

example 1 of her being a voyeurism creep yay

“Hey,” Mox rasps through the gravel in his voice, a reminder that neither of them have spoken in over two hours.

i think they're generally a pair of chatty cathy's when they hang out, but in that same vein they both know when to shut up. if they didn't have some weird mind reader shit going on i think they'd otherwise rather be alone

She nods curtly as she stands to meet him, gives him a brief and unnecessary once over, and backhands him as hard as she can, bony knuckles striking against the side of his face with a meaty thud. He takes it like a champ, head set and eyes dilated toward the wall behind her as he groans and savors it. Marina smacks him again, overlapping the impact, his struck skin going pink.

said mind reader shit. sometimes when you're overstimulated you just need a little grounding. it's jon moxley you get the gist

Marina doesn’t remember when this all started. They don’t talk about it. If she were to hazard a guess, it was sometime between the year their training sessions becoming semi-regular and four months ago, when Mox scrubbed the lingering grapple-sweat out of his face, snaked his wet paw over Marina’s heaving clavicle, and asked her to do him a favor he already knew she’d accept – all about a seven minutes before the motherfucker bulldog choked her unconscious despite her tapping out, or maybe because of it.

especially early into their whole committed endeavor she was so completely fixated on the job and keep mox safe that her specific memories go a little numb. she knows how they met etc etc but one day Something must've clicked when they both realized they were the same breed and marina decided to put everything into this

when he choked her out and she realized what was happening she let him finish it. turning point. she already said yes but y'know. bleeding with em first and whatnot

She feels sick with it, like the excess in her was carefully scrapped out, all her serviceable components left alone, and the gaps filled with Mox’s blood to lubricate her churning brain and keep her organs pumping with a new sense of purpose, if you want to get romantic about it.

around this period she's very much just in Living Weapon mode. barely considers herself her own person for the sake of efficiency. this lessens but i'll get to it later

“Nah,” Mox predictably replies. “You gotta break my legs if I fuck it up, though. Since you’re offering.”

if claudio reacted badly to mox's Insane Plan it was never getting off the ground. mox is in a borderline delusional "i am a servant of this mission" headspace around this time so the weight is all on his shoulders

CHAPTER 2:

“You should probably meet her first, Swiss,” Mox jokes dryly, sipping at his ice water.

wracking my brain trying to remember where i stole the character detail of mox drinking ice water instead of coffee/alcohol when he's out. i like it. sober + oral fixation

She’s not naive; they have history and established dynamics that Marina can only really pick up second hand or merely infer for now. [...] Mox trusts Claudio with his life and holds what they have close to his chest, despite what their responsibilities might entail. Marina is keen to learn what makes him so special.

she's jealoussssss or at the very least bitter she wasn't in mox's life sooner. just that "fuck this is so good and fulfilling. what was i even doing before" feeling. impossible to remedy

He makes it seem like Claudio will get with the program like he was born for it; a follower at heart as long as it’s in service of someone he has faith in.

i get into it more later but i like to think claudio's place in the bcc and eventual death riders is this wall of support, which he takes pride in exercising. hashtag acts of service

“I’ll call you soon, Mox,” Claudio says as he departs. “Marina,” he adds with a smile.

the transition from nice jokey claudio to android monolith claudio is so harsh. i remember u used to be niceies bro

Marina’s not even sure if he sleeps in the hotels paid for by the company. If he has a phone it’s almost never on him. The man doesn’t even seem to wear anything but the same pair of boots and trunks every day, not to mention his thin hair constantly splaying over his face in greasy strands. He’s fucking strange.

i love implying naked wet hair pac is essentially some kind of inhuman freak that lives in a sewer. he isn't but look at him man

The established personality conflicts between Pac and Claudio irk her too. That’s years worth of hatred that’s not going to suddenly disappear overnight just because of a united cause, regardless of who’s at the helm. Expecting this freak to be worth trusting with their lives is extraordinarily disconcerting, but Mox is adamant it’s gonna work out, so fuck it, what does she know?

i heart making sense of borderline nonsense character actions. pac and claudio hated each other so goddamn much and they just Worked It Out offscreen. word. i prefer the idea that pac is a hateful little dickhead about everyone constantly, but he can be convinced into compromise relatively easily if he sees personal gain. not his problem if he actually starts to like it there. b-baka!!!!!

irrelevant but i think it'd be hilarious if ospreay was a step too far for pac. annoying ass straw that breaks the camel's back and makes him go postal

"...This is bigger than the fucking trios titles or the real pretty one around Swerve’s waist.”

i like to think taking out bryan was always a part of the plan alongside getting the world title. so when swerve lost it to bryan it was a nice little two birds one stone situation they found themselves in

why was mox convinced bryan had to die? no bullshit i think it was a combo of regular lingering personal frustrations with him that could've otherwise been solved with a regular ass conversation which unfortunately slammed into a sudden bout of delusional psychosis. the chemicals spelt out "strangle him to death with a plastic bag" and he went duuhhhghh okay boss

“I dunno, man. Maybe. I don’t really expect you to fully subscribe to what I’m trying to sell you, to be fucking honest. You don’t seem like the benevolent type.”

mox knows how sketchy getting pac is on an allegiance level, but goes for him anyway bc of his work ethic and loose morals. them jon moxley brainworms do not discriminate though

...Marina would find herself training in the dungeon (or as she prefers: Renee’s basement)...

the concept of death rider’s HQ being in renee’s basement is too funny. her evil ass husband's dungeon that nobody should ever bring a blacklight down into. you know that framed photo of the bcc mox had up in the background of some video. do you think renee made sure to hide it somewhere in case mox tossed it

Mox has spoken at length about all Blackpool Combat Club members—given her the rundown, their general dynamics, the works—but Marina has probably heard more about Wheeler Yuta than any anecdotes about Claudio or Danielson combined, and then some. [...] ...if Mox weren’t so clearly hung up on the guy, she would’ve suggested killing two birds with one stone. [...] It feels uncharacteristically naive to Marina...

mox loves yuta. yuta could fuck up a million times and he'd very much Let Him Know but he'll never stop being like Haha that's my fuckin guy. it's not really "romance" to me, it's that mentor-mentee pride + the psychosexual Everything they soak it in that inherently makes everything they do intimate. you get it. moving forward it's a more sinister You Belong To Me thing where mox feels entitled to yuta's prescience, but i digress

CHAPTER 3:

An honest attempt to wrestle-fuck the mania out of Mox as a family (so to speak) eventually devolved into them working in braincell preserving shifts; a revolving door of somewhat distinct submission techniques that essentially boiled down to barking orders, varying degrees of aggravated assault—receiving end or otherwise, and simply trying to keep hands and mouths busy and full to mixed results.

i think early into the death riders when mox was fully locked into their mission, he generally leaned away from his usual proclivities and got really into just watching things play out from the sidelines. cold calculated (toxic) masculinity + making sure everyone was on the same page + sex as a tool for power etc etc. lowkey bryan-isms UH OH

but when mox starts spiraling he's fuckin back to that animalistic self destructive understimulation. the kinda guy he's always been i.e. needs to get hurt/taken down a peg/treated like a big lumbering mess that's gotta be wrestled to ground. and yeah maybe if you fuck him he'll stop tryna double leg yuta and rip his throat out. he'll be better in the morning

They all have their methods, most of which fall flat when all Mox wants to do is incoherently run his mouth and pace a hole through his boots, biting at his flayed cuticles like he’s trying to dig his fingernails out the hard way.

their methods of making mox chill tf out when he's doing This Bad are mostly some variation of "let's spar/beat the energy out of you -> fucking" depending on the person. it's all Fucking to them but there's levels. marina and mox can spar for an hour straight or they can cut to brass tacks and have marina kick him in the ribs til he's done. or vice versa, where she'll sit there and take a beating. how to care for your moxley

if you want me to get really self indulgent i'll cut the prose and just say i think mox has an oral fixation. will wordlessly drag someone onto the mat under the pretense that he wants to train and they'll notice a weird dull look in his eye and 30 seconds into the round he's yanked their shorts down. oh okay. and it's like 9 AM or some shit

for claudio it's a Responsibility. for yuta [this era] it's like winding the music box on the fnaf 2 marionette so he doesn't die. for pac it's like Oh okay getting my dick wet is like 45% of being in this faction. Whatever you say freaks i'm no prude

He gets in his own head like that sometimes; a whirling mind convincing himself that the fight is still on, eyes honed and fists clenched like he’s still in it, pacing like he’s in a cage with the walls closing in.

sometimes when you're an in extended mental health crisis you turn 24 years old again and you don't know what to do with your body that isn't skinning yourself alive with barbed wire

They sicced him on Yuta in the storage room of some arena once, which was a fun twelve minute learning experience for everyone involved. Killed a few birds with one stone with that one, left everyone happy — more or less.

"learning experience" in the sense that it was early death riders and marina was figuring out what yuta's purpose was

It would be a lie to say she hates him like this. The irrational fog ironically makes him feel human in a way she hasn’t allowed herself to see him as in some time, cracks revealing themselves in his otherwise calculating psyche for her to step in and stabilize so he doesn’t handicap himself. His volatility is a privilege he only gets to indulge in because he has her – and the rest of them, supposedly.

she loves the control she has over his life despite his distress. it's also this kind of

relevant tangent: marina the type to put nicotine patches on roddy while they're cuddling so he feels sick when he's not with her and he doesn't know why

Mox’s humid breath fogged over her skin, a hairtrigger glint in his eye. I should fuck you up, Marina thought, her twitching fingers digging into the space between his ribs, feeling irrationally certain he can hear her. Within an inch of your life. You need it bad. Can’t even take care of yourself like this.

at least 40% of her really, truly, believes he can hear her thoughts in this moment. she's That codependent at this point

“I wish you’d take this more seriously,” he says. “More and more often he’s falling victim to his own enthusiasm. He’s always been a handful, which I’ve… I’ve never minded.” Marina can see the twitch of his lips from the bench. “But it’s different now. We’re different. He’s meant to be the best of us.”

awwwwwww genuine sentimental feelings. mox has always Appreciated having the support system but now he Needs it or he'll crash and have nobody to pick him back up. no fun and games and claudio is taking ts seriously

Forgiveness is easier than permission. Mox wouldn’t believe her upfront if she told him Claudio was a loose end. It’s fucking Claudio, the fuck are you talking about? What'd you do?—he’d say. The worst part is that he’d believe her if it were about anyone else. Forgive her. If she stabbed them. She’s getting ahead of herself.

she knows her and claudio are held to a certain higher standard, she's just bitter she has to share. violently bitter. if she really really put thought into action, she probably wouldn't actually follow through on her impulses to irreparably hurt him, but she sure can think really hard about it

lmao maybe i just love the idea that she genuinely dislikes everyone that isn't mox for at least three months into everything

also she's wrong, he'd be really pissed if she fucked yuta up without good reason. he'd be pissed if she had a good reason frankly

“No, jackass, you—” Marina exhales all the air from her lungs. “Just stop fucking talking about him like there’s something wrong. I don’t give a shit.”

she knows she's being irrational, but her body is reacting to claudio's tentative suggestion like he's saying Let's Dump Mox, and she knows she's gotta get him to shut tf up before she snaps. it's the antithesis to everything she is (at least in her heart). it feels equivalent to him earnestly telling her to blow her brains out

The mental dick measuring contest sours in the back of her mouth.

mostly just fun phrasing but there's for sure a tinge of gender in marina's mentality here. she's a woman that takes prides in her womanhood, but who's also shoved nearly every aspect of her identity to the backburner bc she's prioritizing mox and The Mission. nothing else matters. who cares

the death riders general weird energy around training and masculinity and hazing is an increasingly distinct part of her identity as well. long tangent short: she'd for sure take low dose testosterone for the sake of building muscle mass. and hey a little subtle force-mascing via mox wouldn't hurt

she's like if a man was born as a woman and went "cool" instead of worrying about it

She remembers what he did for Mox to wind him down; manhandling his lumbering body and giving him what he wanted, the calloused muscle memory from years of experience and the short yet satisfied reception to Marina’s suggestions. He loves it; taking care of Mox when he’s out of his mind with neuroses, picking him up when he falls, and obliterating anyone stupid enough to get in his way. They’re the same, ultimately, in more ways than one.

in the same vein as marina, claudio also lowkey loves when mox gets kinda fucked in the head bc it means he can step in and service dog calm him down. it's genuine, but it's also weird kinda toxic caretaker mentality Smiles. some kinda "I Can Fix Him" thing combined with an aptitude for subservience

But if that’s true, it makes him just as bad as Marina. If they’re the same, it makes him a fucking hypocrite. His suggestion means absolutely nothing. What an incredible revelation.

i think it's funny for marina to recognize that her and claudio aren't so different after all and instead of it bringing them together she goes LMAO YOU FUCKING BITCH

Claudio tanks the punch with a shocked grunt and wrenches Marina’s wrist, grinding the bones of her hand together. “Will you fucking listen to me!”

this chapter was originally much shorter (and worse) and about claudio losing his temper instead of marina. it was bc of that post-adam cole match moment where he lost his shit and started throwing tables like a toddler. claudio having deeply buried anger issues that explode into violence is a character detail not touched on often but i likes it

“Okay, shit,” Mox says, bemused laughter in his voice. “Is this gonna be a problem?”

mox would pay good money to see marina and claudio go at it for real

Marina considers the raked up skin and blood under his nails, the microscopic cesspool teeming with all of their stolen DNA in mingling layers collected over the course of the last couple days. Weeks. Years. The marks in her back sting dully, and she imagines Claudio’s do as well.

romantic. mox's jizz and dead skin filled fingernails that he hasn't washed bc he fell into a coma after two days of medicinal dick sucking and aggravated assault. the stinging in marina's back is a fucking blood infection go take a shower asshole

Mox took Claudio to pick up some supplies half an hour ago, mostly food. Cleaning supplies.

lol yeah Those cleaning supplies i.e. orange cassidy torture. maybe that doesn't make sense timeline wise but it's ok i just hope you thought about it

If Mox were here he’d probably exile Yuta to take care of himself in the bathroom like a horny teenager, or simply here in the gym with everyone and God watching just to teach him something about self control and his place in the world.

early death riders treatment of yuta was a lot of denying the usual affection he was so used to before aggressive bouts of drowning him in praise and touching and all that bullshit. fuck nasty the day before and then treat him like a pariah for having a hard on the following morning. textbook

Marina sighs, exasperated and sharp, and ignores the grimace on Yuta’s face. That’s perfect. The kid is starving himself like a high-school cheerleader now, which is just what they need.

really wanted to make it clear that marina isn't that good of a person. very little empathy. your guy might have an eating disorder and you vocally go UGGHHHH FUCK THIS IS SO ANNOYINNGG jesus christ

Marina peels off her sweat soaked sports bra, tosses it into her bag, and fishes out a dry hoodie. Yuta silently follows her with his eyes, trying to work out what she’s going to make him do to make up for it before she makes it known.

can't tell if the visual of this is clear enough. she's Only wearing a sports bra and just walks across the room tits out. i think it's a fun detail or maybe my dicks in my hand Who Can Say

“Go upstairs. You’re eating.” Yuta searches her face for a few seconds. “Oh. Like–” “Food, dipshit. Jesus.”

do you like my pussy eating joke

“Sure,” he finally says with a shrug, trying and failing to make it seem like this isn’t a big deal to him.

yuta hates himself. not eating is an extension of that, but also something he has the power the control. getting caught and forced to feed himself feels like losing even more of his autonomy

“Figure it out. Everyone’s fucking sick of you.”

rewrote this line like five times to be less harsh but always came back to it. it's so mean. and it's generally untrue bc it's just marina's bitter impatience speaking, but yuta takes it at face value. why shouldn't he

this is why yuta starts crying. apart from it just being a really cutting thing to hear on a bad day, it's also seemingly confirmation of his worst fear; he's run out of time to be of value. he's going to die!!!!!!!!!

His face is as level as he can keep it as a sob hiccups its way out of him involuntarily. Yuta’s never broken down like this as far as she knows. It would’ve gotten back to her if it had.

yuta's been keeping his emotions under check for this very reason and realistically assumes this is getting back to mox. he's fucked

Her heart stutters and she bites the inside of her lip. God-fucking-dammit.

ya the line has been crossed. marina doesn't know it yet, but a square inch of her soul was sold to yuta some time ago and no amount of resentment is ever gonna sever that. maybe it was the second she made things official with mox. inherited him. It Follows (2014) but the monster is not wanting an annoying guy to kill himself bc you inexplicably love him even though it's only been like three bad months

She ignores him, locks the bathroom door behind them, grabs a hand towel, and turns the faucet. Every second feels like a hundred as they wordlessly stare at the water inching up the sides of the granite. Yuta’s pitchy sniffling and thick swallowing is loud behind the sound of rushing water.

always though that scene from A Christmas Story (1983) where ralphie's mom washes his face was really sweet. that's what inspired this. also feels like a very slavic thing to do lol

Against her best judgement, Marina pushes the fringe out of his eyes. Her fingers firmly thread through the front of his hair as she lets herself study him.

the start of a thread that'll probably continue throughout the rest of this; marina staring at yuta (and danny) like if she looks away too long they'll somehow drop dead. it starts as a bit of entitlement, like she can grab him and study him whenever she wants, but it's a borderline maternal (eughhgh) sentimental thing soon enough

“Fuck, Marina, can I not grow my hair out? Is that not allowed?” Yuta snaps with the most life he’s shown in what feels like weeks. The creeping affection in Marina’s chest returns despite her gathering that he wants this interaction to end about twice as much as she does. “I’m sorry,” Yuta adds sheepishly anyway.

something about realizing 1) he's not gonna die today and 2) the scariest person ever is capable of genuine kindness injected a lust for life in yuta for the first time in weeks. fuck you marina let me do this one thing for myself

It’s times like these she desperately wishes she didn’t have intimate experience caring for vulnerable people; it clashes with the rest of her and overcomplicates simple shit.

when wrestlers have kids for shoot i retcon it. i do the same for marina but i Do think motherhood is intrinsic to her characterization so it's difficult to balance. it's also difficult to talk about without coming across like i'm doing a Only Woman In Group Obligatory Mother Role thing, which usually sucks. i'll keep it weird and psychosexual for the most part for everyone's sake but truthfully Her Maternity Is In There, somewhere

Odds are Yuta’s gonna have another moment of weakness when it counts, and she’s not going to jump to his rescue when Mox loses his patience. She’s going to sit and watch the proceedings with intrigue, participate if she’s feeling restless enough, and not worry about the state of Yuta’s mental health outside of his ability to please. It’s how this works.

true, but i think this whole interaction is the first (and one of the only) secrets marina keeps from mox. yuta notices : )

Pac isn’t nearly as close with the rest of the group as everyone else is. The history isn’t there. The years of familiarity are missing. He’s there to do a job, and they’re lucky he seems to care enough about the objective to put his body on the line.

pac doesn't like them, but he's unfortunately fallen for some kind of sinister found family emotional trap, so he's fucked. that being said literally nobody knows bc he's got a great poker face. if the death riders are dogs pac is that cat raised by pitbulls

Between him and Marina, they have a relationship balanced on a layer of mutual disdain for the same few morons—gossiping like catty bitches—and not forcing each other to make small talk.

been really thinking about pac and marina lately. they're funny. just reiterating what i already said but i know those motherfuckers silently glance at each other when some bullshit is happening in ring and scoff in mutual judgement

“This isn’t good,” Marina mutters to herself, a little frenzied and nonsensical, the briefcase neurotically pressed against her chest in her deeply uncomfortable seat.

i didn't get to go into this as much as i wanted, but marina's connection to the briefcase is really interesting to me. see: "Ball and chain." it's a burden she takes overwhelmingly serious. it's like a physical throughline connecting her and mox

“You’re having a panic attack,” Sampson chimes in brusquely. “Breath.”

i'm a really big fan of when writers feature lesser known backstage figures in their work, like referees or medical personnel or security guards (fake or not) are mentioned by name. hello dr micheal sampson you hack

Marina grimaces. He’s right, which means she’s being erratic. Unreliable.

a nod to the claudio argument. mox can be erratic, she cannot. subtext about her being a woman

“Unless unloading me on poor Renee’s couch and forcing her to nurse me back to health sounds pleasant to you,” Pac maintains. It doesn’t. He’d hog the sauna the whole time, alongside Renee inevitably feeding him rat poison.

renee wouldn't do this, but marina assumes she would

"...He knows how to reach me.” Marina sincerely doubts that.

lol i really like the idea that mox emailed pac maybe once or twice during his recovery and just assumed (correctly) he'd turn back up. nobody knows where pac lives or stays... overseas surely....... a hole in the ground. 10x funnier if pac didn't see a single message

It feels like they’re running in circles, sore and wounded and only just now regaining the focus and drive they need to exist without constantly snarling and tucking their tails. She’s genuinely starting to think this disconcerting agreement with the EVPs is shaving a few years off her life; she has no idea how Mox managed to convince her the move is a good idea.

copeland era garbage. you can actually complain about how dogshit a storyline was in your work as long as you have a character say "this shit makes no sense i feel really bad about it"

A lot of the time he’ll use the tail end of their rare gossiping minutes to chide Mox, which he really only does because he knows it’ll rile her up. Word gets around.

another nod to the claudio argument. pac does it to be purposefully irritating as mentioned, but i like to think he's doing an exposure therapy thing to her (intentionally or not). if she can listen to him rib and/or critique mox for seven minutes without her mouth filling with blood everyone's quality of life will improve

Pac leans close, voice low. “When I’m gone, out of every one of them, I’m going to miss you the most.” [...] Marina blinks at him for a moment before wrinkling her nose at the odor of bullshit. “Fuck off,” she mutters, and a predictably impish smile molds itself to Pac’s face. She curses herself for considering that he could be sincere for even half a second.

yeah bitch you like him. he's your friend. stay mad

“Don’t be a stranger,” she mutters to nobody a few strides down the hallway later, hopefully out of earshot. Can’t have anyone getting ideas.

i hope it's coming across how much her heart is begrudgingly opening up to the rest of them in text. these are her brothers, her words

CHAPTER 4:

He talks about the man like a blanket inevitability, something he avoids when it comes to carefully goading Statlander. Marina’s finding it hard to dispute with how simple he’s making it sound.

i can't help taking nonstop jabs at danny whenever i write him. i genuinely love him but it's also very funny to think about mox planning to court danny and going "oh yeah this'll be easy. watch" and he's basically right

i think at least 45% of mox wanting dg in the fold is leftover bryan spite. danny is bryan's white whale, wouldn't it be a great Fuck You to finish what he never could with the BCC? bitch

getting in Garcia’s face, forcing his way forward to growl something in his ear, getting handsy while looking an incensed Daddy Magic in the eye knowing he can’t do shit. Marina thinks he might’ve snuck a kiss in. It’s great stuff.

sometimes i think i'm exaggerating how much sexual menacing went into acquiring danny and then i remember and kubrick stare at my screen

There’s no other way to put it: Daniel Garcia is asking for it. Maybe that’s crude.

yeah maybe a little lol

Mox strolls over to wrap a sweaty arm around her neck, forehead shoved against her hair. “Make him feel welcome,” he rasps hotly into her ear, before nodding and lumbering off over the barrier and into the crowd.

i don't think anyone clipped this at the time which is a shame. here. fucks their problem

As they wrap up, Yuta squints over something on his phone as he checks the time. Whatever it is makes him huff a dry laugh. “Look at this,” he scoffs, handing it to her. It’s a long thread of messages from a number labeled Danny. “He write you fucking essay?”

garcia is a double texting "has to have the last word" motherfucker. so i think briefly after his post-match rant to daddy magic + hours in a self doubting spiral alone in his hotel room, he reached whatever stage of grief fills you with the spiteful confidence to unblock wheeler yuta and tell him he's a bitch. before immediately regretting it bc actually maybe these ppl are his only way out

“Yeah,” [Yuta] chuckles, like he’s clever.

writing this this era of yuta was a treat bc he's so annoyingggg and has a wonderful unearned smugness about him

Sure enough, the phone rings forty seconds later, Danny’s name plastered on the screen alongside an old picture of him flipping off the camera and sticking out his tongue.

yuta being too lazy to remove the pic or just being sentimental despite himself? not the pic but i imagine it's a cute one like this

“Not yet,” Marina says. She tries to be careful with her tone this time; not too arrogant and a little sweet about it. It’s bait, but it’s sincere. She wants this motherfucker leashed by the end of the week.

marina's fondness for danny is immediate. it's already the game plan to be really touchy and accommodating with him once he's in the bag (for like 3 days), but something about her (relatively) newfound openness to affection for People That Aren't Mox allowed something organic to develop real quick. she thinks it's cute how east he is to mess with

Marina thinks she gets the gist of Yuta’s grudge against Garcia. Boiled down, it’s every pigheaded jealousy-ridden rivalry cultivated in every locker room in America, just with an added dash of juvenile spit-swapping and being beholden to the whims of a small handful smart enough to pit them against each other. Been there, done that.

it's a lot more complicated than this obviously, but from marina's pov this shit isn't that serious. get over yourselves

my hypothetical baby marina mma training history where she had a fling or two with some evil muay thai girls

Yuta’s easy to bait into sincerity if he feels like you’re taking him seriously.

he's a cynical asshole nowadays but he's still dorky yuta under all that. he wants to feels respected despite his place in the world

“And I bet Mox will let you break him in, whatever the fuck that means to you.” She offers it to him like a compromise, or at worst a bribe. Like she already has the authority.

pretty darksided implication but par for the course. she feels so secure in danny joining them that she's already pimping him out as a stress toy lol

Yuta chews on his lip like he’s sorting through a years old catalog of Danny flavored ideas in his head, and shrugs halfheartedly. “Talk to him. And fuck him, I guess.”

he truly just wants to yell at danny and honestly let out all his petty frustrations and call him a failure and shit. get all his simmering resentment out. their brains are all poisoned so of course it'll turn into a sex thing but that's not yuta's first priority

“Yeah… yeah, c’mon,” someone—Danny?—mumbles as the door swings open. “C’mon, why’re you…”

she goes from calling him Garcia to just Danny/Daniel within a week or two

She’d bark at them to keep it down if her head hurt any more, or admittedly if she was any less nosy – as if she can’t intuit where this near daily act of hormonal idiocy is going.

i wish there was more on screen tension between yuta and dg when he first joined up but it's cool bc i bet it was just like 2 days of silent treatment on yuta's part, a week of them being mutually catty, and then they got slapped upside the head by mox when it stopped being entertaining. and they sucked each others dicks like normal ppl and now they're more or less on the same page. something like that

She’s convinced Yuta stole the sound of his groaning relief from Mox, all throaty and sharp at the ends.

hilarious concept. stealing the sound of you getting your dick wet

“Ohhh shit.” He flounders slightly like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands before finally wiping his mouth, his liquor flushed face reddening somehow. He freezes when Marina locks eyes with him.

danny's still kinda getting used to the group sex thing. he Does Not hate it, but when he's not pretending that it makes him a little shy he goes with muscle memory and flinches. but hey turns out it was marina that caught him, and she freaks him out in a way they're both intrigued by, so his hammered brain short circuits

“Really sorry for waking you up,” Danny apologizes anyway, ignoring her. He looks bashful about it, like Marina caught him with his hands in the cookie jar, as if she hasn’t been breathing down his neck since he joined up in Philly. She’s seen a lot more egregious shit, is all. “For real. Didn’t mean to.”

and i don't know what you'd call what he feels for her! i enjoy the idea that danny is bi but with a generally overwhelming preference for men. but then this woman (note: it's complicated) who checks all the fucked up mentor role boxes in his broken brain starts messing with him and he subconsciously subdues all his usual petulance and bratty avoidance bc she's also (CRUDELY) slotted into daddy magic's recently vacant role of someone that checks up on him. it's nowhere near the same. she's like a gross amalgamation of danielson's psychosexual menacing and fixation + daddy magic's genuine parental figure status. really gross. but they're uhuhhhh making it work

and i haven't even gone into the role mox and claudio and (to a lesser degree) pac play in danny's brain but we don't have all day here

“Yeah?” Yuta scoffs arrogantly, like it’s that outrageous of an idea that Danny could worm his way into Marina’s favor. Like it fucking matters.

it is a little crazy right. i'd be bitter if i was yuta too. he's mox's favorite between the two anyway if we're speaking in these terms so it's fair enough

and it's too much of a simplification to say danny is marina's "favorite" she's objectively closer with yuta considering all their history. but u know how it is with new touys. she's just havin fun learning his Quirks and is less beholden to her fixation on exclusively mox nowadays so she can hit the ground running instead of a slow burning Learning To Like Your Coworker for another 6 months

“You know he literally finished all my drinks?” Yuta gripes. “He’s like a bottomless pit but for disgusting cocktails.”

i'm picturing their night out as a way for them to talk a couple things through (bc of the headbutt) and then they just banter. bc they haven't actually gotten to hang out like old times in years. and then danny gets wasted and annoying and steals every new drink yuta orders bc yuta doesn't actually like drinking very much

Marina passively toys with the idea of keeping Danny plastered a while longer, over a quiet weekend, like a constant drip feed to loosen the stick up his ass and keep them entertained because she’s a fan of the wasted look on his face.

i like intox so now marina and danny like intox sorry or you're welcome. it's just fun to play with and maybe one day i'll follow through on this little dynamic and Write something

consider this

Yuta interrupts the loose moment to pull Danny in and hiss something bitter into his ear and is promptly shoved away.

drunk yuta is kinda an asshole. or he's at least more honest bc he whispers "she's fucking with you, moron" to danny here, as if he doesn't know better. he's like a mad teenage boy, maybe that's why he doesn't drink

Yuta petulantly returns with a shove to the face, Danny volleys a smack, and before Marina can tell them to knock it off they devolve into messy tussling on the carpet like shitty kids.

case in point. normally yuta keeps it to their designated sparring time to pick fights, but he's running on 1/3rd his average braincells. oh man does he kinda just turn into danny lmao

He won’t see it this way behind his pounding hangover, but she’s being nice. Grossly, masterbatorily nice. “Three miles. Chop chop.”

efficiency says wake them both up. this is a rare case of her self indulgence winning over

Danny thumbs at the split for a moment and wets his lip. “Yuta fucking headbutt me.” “He—” Marina snorts. The striking visual flashes through her head and she laughs harder. “Shit, on purpose?” “Dickhead didn’t wanna apologize, so.”

training that day was haphazard, and yuta was in a mood. lol

God knows none of them would’ve stopped the action for a leaky brow.

just like marina would've, mox laughed in shock and amusement. attaboy. zero chance he let them finish the round early, they were a bloody mess until someone tapped

At some point it must’ve been clear how wasted he was. Maybe the tell is how much of his body weight he starts expecting you to carry, or how unapologetically handsy he gets. His mouth too; the complete lack of filter. She gets the feeling he got what he asked for.

ya this guy started hanging off yuta and hissing horny bullshit into his ear until he got too annoyed to stick around

“I can't tell which one of you is the bad influence.”

it's fairly mutual. their bad habits ricochet off each other exponentially but it's also keeping them contained, almost. they need to orbit each other or something worse happens

Yuta shoots a dirty look at Danny, who returns with a bemused shrug. I don’t know either, lay off. They huddle into their own little corner to bicker, and that’s that. She needs to switch back into bad-cop mode before they start getting any ideas.

when yuta woke up he was pissed off about being left behind but not Drunk pissed off. he gets it. he took a shower and met up with claudio. talked for a while before they convened with mox

danny was more thrown off than yuta was

“Peachy. Motherfucker woke me up.” Barely true, and a poor choice of wording.

do you like my joke

ok see you in a year when the last two chapters come out thanks for reading this

#taking me a long while to get through this final segments but i will Win #commentary #my writing #marina shafir #death riders

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