Leo Bautista

the basics

full name ♦ Leo James Bautista
nicknames ♦ His name is three letters long, if you can’t handle that then please get out of his face.
age ♦ Seventeen
birthday ♦ December 23, 2001
occupation ♦ student | professional nuisance | Sound Garden employee
school ♦ Phalanx
species ♦ Human
ability/power ♦ Siren
how the ability works ♦
Simply put, Leo’s ability means that women are attracted to the sound of his singing voice. The more complicated explanation is that when he sings, something about the tone of his voice causes feelings of lust and love, specifically to women and regardless of their age.

In order to be affected by Leo’s voice, the woman in question must be able to hear it. The longer that this woman hears this tone, the more affected she’ll be, and only after listening to him sing for one straight hour will the feelings turn to a hopeless infatuation that closely mirrors love. While this infatuation is intense, it is not permanent by any means. After an hour, the first effects begin to fade, and after about three days even the strongest effects will have cleared out of the woman’s system. Those with sound or sense manipulation are largely unaffected, and the type of love exhibited by the women it affects can vary depending on a pre-existing relationship.

When Leo uses his ability at all, he begins to feel incredibly emotionally drained, leading to irritability and general refusal to deal with anybody. If he goes long periods without using it, his emotions will steamroll over him, which will occasionally trigger one of his seizures. However, because Leo has no control over this siren song, he cannot sing at all without using it. In order to avoid making unwitting women fall for him, he has a tendency to only sing in the shower.
gender ♦ Cisgender male | he, him, his
sexuality ♦ Heterosexual

the appearance

face claim ♦ Gavin Leatherwood
height and weight ♦ 5’8” | 150 lbs
identifying features ♦ He would say it’s his jawline, mostly because he doesn’t really think there’s a whole lot that’s identifying or special about him. Others would probably say it’s the intense look that he almost always seem to have in his eyes when he’s staring off into space.
overall appearance ♦
Despite his relative poverty, Leo cares about his appearance. He knows name brand has never been an option for him, but he keeps the clothes that he does have clean and free of rips, tears, holes, etc. His hair is usually neat and tidy, and his face is clean shaven. He keeps an impeccable skin care routine, and regularly locks his door and has a quiet night in with a face mask. Not that he’ll ever admit to that.

the personality

likes ♦
-Music, specifically rock
-Sleeping late
-The smell of coffee
-Italian food
-Good pens
-Math
-Hanging out with his friends
-Tattoos
-Space
-Singing
-Running
dislikes ♦
-Avocados
-His glasses
-Father figures
-Dressing up
-Foster families
-His medication
-Seizures
-Forced reading
-Birds
-Metal music
-English classes
strengths ♦
-Athletic
-Loyal
-Compassionate
weaknesses ♦
-Temperamental
-Secretive
-Jealous
dreams ♦
-To control his voice
-To become a tattoo artist
fears ♦
-Becoming an alcoholic
-Pushing everybody away
-People finding out he’s not as confident as he seems to be
overall personality ♦
From the time he was about seven years old, Leo got used to living in what he called survival mode. It wasn’t that he was necessarily in danger at every single moment of his life, but there had been a number of times in his life that he had to figure out how to fend for himself; this was particularly true during his time in foster care. It was when he was in foster care that he learned how to be resourceful, how to come up with creative solutions to problems when there was no adult within easy reach that could, or would, help him. However, before he entered foster care he’d learned how cruel the world could be. He became acquainted with loss and struggle, with the idea of protecting the people that were close to you. It was also the time that he crafted this confident persona, the devil may care attitude that he’s become so well known for. He also has a tendency to be more than a little mischievous.

the history

father ♦ Paul Bautista, 36, unknown
mother ♦ Elizabeth Bautista, deceased
siblings ♦ Karen Bautista, 13
important people ♦
Caitlyn Reynolds, 59, maternal grandmother
Lawrence Reynolds, 62, maternal grandfather
hometown ♦ Baton Rouge, Louisiana
overall history ♦
TRIGGER WARNING: This history contains a death of a parent, alcoholism, and neglect of a child.





A two story house with magnolia trees in the front. There’s a car in the driveway, and two figures stand on the wraparound porch, watching a young boy play with his dog on the front yard

It’s the closest approximation that Leo has of his childhood home. The picture that he drew it from was taken long ago, when he was young and his mother was pregnant with his little sister; the picture has long since been lost, but the details of the house are written on his memory the way that only a childhood home could be. The smell of the magnolia trees in summer, the way that the hardwood floor felt under his socks as he slid into the room, effectively re-enacting a slightly more clothed “Risky Business”. He remembered languid summer days spent riding his bike with his neighborhood friends, and if he thought about it, he could remember the way the light glinted off of the lake down the road from his home.

A baby laying in a crib, its tiny face scrunched up and contorted with a scream

Leo was only four when his baby sister entered the world. But even that joyous event was marked by tragedy. He didn’t fully understand at the time what had happened, but there was a feeling of sadness in the air as his father brought home his other child. Leo’s little sister. Karen. He was too young to understand that his mother had gone through complications with her pregnancy, that giving birth to Karen resulted in hemorrhaging, that she died. He didn’t understand when his father stuffed him into black clothes a week later, that it was because his mother was gone and wasn’t coming back, he just knew that one moment, she was heading to the hospital, and that was the last time that he had seen her alive. What he does remember are the tears at the funeral, the way that your father’s shoulders can’t help but shake even as he holds his week-old daughter. Eventually, he hands her off to his family members and attempts to pull himself together. He doesn’t succeed, and the low, animal-like keening that pulled from him when he thought that all of his family members were gone was something that Leo will never forget.

A man laying on the couch, a coffee table filled with bottles

After the death of his mother, his father became inconsolable. He wasn’t just grieving, grief was overwhelming him to the point that he could no longer function. Leo was too young to understand, but he heard stories, things that he later would have to rehash in therapy years down the line, therapy he didn’t even want to go to. His father eventually turned to alcohol to numb the pain, and after too many times of trying to go into work so drunk he could barely stand, he was fired. Fast forward a few months of unpaid bills, skipped mortgage payments, and a hole of debt so deep that Leo’s grandchildren would probably still be paying it off. Eventually, his little, broken family was evicted, and began to live on the streets. For a while, they were able to hide it well. Leo started school, made friends, and told none of them that after the school day ended he didn’t have a home to go back to. There were nights where he went hungry because his father hadn’t managed to scrounge up enough food for the three of them, and they all agreed that little Karen was the most important. It didn’t take long for a well-meaning teacher to find out about his situation, and it took even less time for child protective services to take them both away. His little sister went to his maternal grandparents, but they deemed him too much like his father, and refused to take him in. He went into foster care instead.

A boy, standing on a stage in front of a microphone, guitar in hand - Folded in half

Growing up, Leo loved music. He loved hearing it, he loved learning it, he loved playing it and making it. As he grew older, he started playing the songs that he created in front of people, wanting to share the music even as he jumped around from school to school. When he was about 14 years old, he entered the talent show at his school, and was shocked to find every female student in the audience transfixed on him. For the rest of the day, girls followed him everywhere, slipped him secret notes; one even pushed him against a locker and kissed him. For most boys, that would be a dream come true, but he had no idea what caused it. Over the next few days, whatever had possessed them to act that way faded, and most of them started hating him. The next time he sang, the cycle repeated, and he eventually figured out that it was tied to his voice.

A three floor house with a wraparound porch - Phalanx House

Leo jumped from foster home to foster home, trying to figure out what was going on with him, when someone caught wind of who he was. Before long, he met one of the recruiters, heard about the school; a place where he could learn about what was happening to him and have a steady home instead of jumping all over the state of Louisiana. Sign. Him. Up. Before long, he found his way to New Orleans, specifically to the French Quarter, and tried to make himself feel at home. After turning 17, he figured that it was time for him to get a job instead of being such a freeloader, and to start building skills for the long term, even though what he really wanted was to ink his designs and drawings into the skin of people who would appreciate them.

the role player

alias ♦ Sara
age ♦ 25
pronouns ♦ she/her/hers
code ♦ Primrose
other characters ♦ so many