#Stroke Recovery Journey

[siobhantuite]

Stroke Rehabilitation: Expert Insights By Siobhan Tuite In Sydney

Discover comprehensive stroke rehabilitation services in Sydney. Our expert team provides personalized care to aid recovery and enhance well-being. Trust us for effective rehabilitation tailored to your needs. Contact us for top-notch stroke recovery support in Sydney.

[simplyannamazing]

The Promise of Christ’s Birth

You, Bethlehem Ephrathah, . . . out of you will come . . . one who will be ruler over Israel. Micah 5:2

READ Luke 2:1–7

LISTEN ONLINE

In November 1962, physicist John W. Mauchly said, “There is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be master of a personal computer.” Mauchly’s prediction seemed remarkable at the time, but it proved astonishingly accurate. Today, using a computer or handheld device is one of the earliest skills a child learns.

While Mauchly’s prediction has come true, so too have much more important promises—those made in Scripture about the coming of Christ. For example, Micah 5:2 declared, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” God sent Jesus, who arrived in tiny Bethlehem—marking him as from the royal line of David (see Luke 2:4–7).

The same Bible that accurately prophesied the first coming of Jesus also promises His return (Acts 1:11). Jesus promised His first followers that He would come back for them (John 14:1–4).

This Christmas, as we ponder the accurately promised facts surrounding the birth of Jesus, may we also consider His promised return, and allow Him to prepare us for that majestic moment when we see Him face to face!

By Bill Crowder

REFLECT & PRAY

How might you respond in worship to the truth of the prophecies of Christ’s birth? How does His promise to return for us impact your decision-making?

Loving Father, I’m so grateful for the birth of Jesus and His mission of rescue and redemption. Thank You for His certain return for me.

SCRIPTURE INSIGHT

Jesus’ birth recorded in Luke 2:1-7 was prophesied in Micah 5:2. Along with this prophecy, the Old Testament contains many other prophecies about His birth and life. In Isaiah 7:14, we read, “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” Moreover, Christ would “proclaim good news to the poor” (61:1) and bring miraculous healing ( 35:5-6; 42:7-9). Also in Isaiah, we read about Jesus’ suffering and purpose: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (53:5). Zechariah prophesied the events of Palm Sunday, that the “king” (Jesus) would come “lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). And, again in Zechariah, Judas’ betrayal is foretold ( 11:12-13). Finally, Christ’s kingdom will be everlasting (2 Samuel 7:12-13; Psalm 89:29; Isaiah 9:7).

Alyson Kieda

[wordsandimagesbycynthiastaples]

well if you can't make it to the mountain ...

… then bring the mountain or at least a portion of it to you. “Do what you love.” That is what the outpatient therapists reiterate to Steve as we continue on this journey of stroke recovery. One of the things he loves is woodworking, old school craftsmanship. Think The Woodwright Shop. His woodworking shop is in the basement. Hmmm. We’re not quite there yet because yes, it is another spiral…

[truevedicastrology]

Jupiter's Influence on Fortuity

🌟 Jupiter in the 1st House: Your countenance is kissed by luck. A myriad of garments adorns your closet, fulfilling every desire. Your style undergoes constant metamorphosis, exuding unwavering confidence. Jupiter bestows joy upon matters of appearance and vitality, fostering an unyielding individuality. Confidence in physique and actions draws attention effortlessly. An optimistic life view and robust overall health accompany this Jupiter placement, rendering you inherently appealing. Financial luck and life's treasures are within your grasp.

💰 Jupiter in the 2nd House: Felicity in fiscal matters, valuing possessions, and indulging in life's pleasures. A captivating conversationalist with profound life acumen, possessing mental fortitude and intelligence. Financial success graces you early in life, with steadfast values deflecting external influence.

🗣️ Jupiter in the 3rd House: Bliss in relationships with kin, fostering understanding and camaraderie. Fortunate occurrences extend to vehicular matters and swift exam success. Your gift of eloquence ensures articulate expression, resonating positively.

🏡 Jupiter in the 4th House: Familial happiness, affluence, or a deep sense of belonging. A harmonious connection with your mother and favorable living arrangements. Fortuitous circumstances surround your dwelling, possibly leading to residence in a dream locale.

🌈 Jupiter in the 5th House: Swift recognition of talents propels you into the limelight. A proclivity for sports and diverse skills define you. Enjoyable encounters characterize your dates, often with like-minded individuals. Favorable outcomes in gambling showcase high self-esteem and risk-taking proclivity.

🌿 Jupiter in the 6th House: Health and physical well-being favorably influenced by luck. An enjoyable and intriguing routine mirrors fortuitous professional endeavors. Financial abundance often emanates from daily work, with new opportunities arising through colleagues.

💑 Jupiter in the 7th House: Luck with relationships, potentially leading to an ideal partner and grand unions. A predisposition for popularity accompanies this placement, with societal recognition and advice-seeking becoming commonplace. Legal professions may find this position particularly advantageous.

💸 Jupiter in the 8th House: Fortune in inheritance, financial dealings, and a shield from misfortune. Profits through investments are likely, and deeper relationships are blessed with happiness. Resilience in matters of the heart ensures swift recovery from emotional setbacks.

🌍 Jupiter in the 9th House: An overall stroke of luck. Frequent travel, exposure to diverse perspectives, and encounters with life-changing individuals define this fortunate position. Enthusiasm and curiosity for the world's wonders infuse your being, making every adventure invigorating.

🚀 Jupiter in the 10th House: Success in your career, often intertwined with financial support from parents or ancestors. Leadership roles and prominence become synonymous with your professional journey. A penchant for travel and cultural exploration characterizes your pursuits.

🤝 Jupiter in the 11th House: Realization of dreams and steadfast, loyal friendships. Your circle is erudite and multilingual, and influential connections propel your advancement. A recognizable presence in social networks is a natural consequence of this fortuitous placement.

🧘 Jupiter in the 12th House: Luck in adversity and a heightened spiritual inclination. Elevated moral standards and a proclivity for altruism characterize your persona. A solitary contemplative nature intertwines with an acute awareness of life's intricacies, guiding your intuitive decisions. Traveling to desired destinations becomes a personal venture shaped by your instincts.

Follow our Facebook page Mage Magic Touch for personal consultations https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565561190268

[goldenwilliamson]

back in training | leah williamson

pairing: leah williamson x reader

summary: ridiculously fluffy. leah is back in training after doing her ACL and reader is just very proud of her. showering together after training. general domestic sweetness.

a/n: thought this might become smut, but still doubting my abilities there. we're working on it. requests are welcomed and appreciated!

word count: 1.9k

What would have been a standard day at training in London Colney was made extra special thanks to the fact that Leah was out on the grass with you for the first time since her ACL injury. The entire training session Leah had a smile plastered on her face, and you did too. After almost a year of recovery and rehab, you were both itching to be able to share this part of your life together again. Leah being amongst the training sessions again was also one huge step towards playing games, which was what she wanted more than anything. 

While you harboured some secret concerns about whether Leah was ready to return, purely coming from a place of love and worrying about her injury, she proved you wrong. She was in full form, slipping into her role in the team with ease. There was an energy in the air having her authoritative presence around, and it seemed like everyone was taking their performances up a notch. Her loud supportive voice cheered everyone on, and you felt so much better because of it. In your opinion, Leah was the glue of this team, and you knew you weren’t alone in feeling that. When she did her ACL it was heartbreaking for the whole team, knowing they were losing one of the most valuable and dedicated players the club has ever seen. But now that she was making her eventual return, it felt as though things were returning to their natural order. 

At one point you and Leah jogged past each other and you lightly smacked her on the bum, unable to help yourself. 

“Oi,” Leah reprimands you with a grin on her face as you innocently shrug your shoulders. 

“What?” You respond, acting as though you had no clue what she was talking about. 

When training finished you and Leah came together and wrapped your arms around each others waists slightly leaning into each other as you and the girls did the walk back to the gym. 

“I can’t even tell you how good it feels to look up and see your face out here,” you tell your girlfriend, and she squeezes your waist just a little tighter. 

“I’m just buzzing,” Leah says, giggling a little bit. 

“So proud of you,” you say, kissing her on her cheekbone. You know how hard she has worked for this moment, and how difficult the mental journey has been for her. 

“Thanks baby,” Leah says, moving her hand up from your waist to stroke the back of your head. 

Back at the gym some girls stretch, some go into some strength training, but some also decide to call it a day and head home. You and Leah, not wanting to leave each others sides decide to head on home together. You go and grab your bags from the changing room, but before you go Leah tells you she just wants to talk to the girls for a minute. 

You walk back to where most of the others are working out and Leah grabs their attention.

“I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for the support you’ve given me over the last year, and for the love I felt out there today in training. It’s been one of the hardest moments of my life, but it was made so much easier thanks to you lot, so yeah, I appreciate you all, and I’m just so proud to be coming back to this team.”

She’s met with a chorus of love and support, as well as everyone coming over to give her a hug. 

“The look on your face,” Katie nudges you with her elbow, pulling your eyes away from Leah and towards your Irish teammate. 

“What? I’m proud of her,” you say, playfully defensive. 

“You’re so in love,” she says rolls her eyes with a smile on her face, “Go enjoy a romantic night together while we’re all here training.”

“Oh, we will,” you assure Katie, making her laugh. 

“Of course you will,” she shakes her head as she walks over to Leah to embrace her before finally the two of you head off. 

Leah reaches for your hand as you step out of the building and into the car park, happily swinging her arm as you walk towards the car. Before you move around to the passenger seat, you pull on Leah’s hand so she steps closer to you and you lean in to give her a quick kiss. You step away to find Leah looking at you like a lovesick puppy and you shake your head.

“That face kills me,” you point your finger at her as you begin to walk around to your side of the car, making Leah laugh. 

As Leah gets into the car and starts it, connecting her phone to choose the music for the drive home, you sink into the passenger seat. 

“I’m bloody exhausted,” you say, “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good after training,” Leah says.

“I’m so happy for you Lee,” you say as she begins to reverse out and get on the road.

“Thanks. I was going to say something back in there, but I didn’t want to put you on the spot, but I hope you how much you helped me through all this,” she says.

“I’m glad to hear that, sometimes I felt so useless,” you say honestly.

“No!” Leah immediately counters moving her hand to hold your thigh, “You’re the reason I was able to stay positive through it, you were the biggest help, not useless at all.”

“Good, that’s good to hear,” you say, resting your hand on top of Leah’s on your leg, tapping it lightly. 

When you get home you walk into the kitchen first, opening the fridge to work out what you can have for dinner while Leah steps in behind you, grabbing glasses from the cupboard and getting you both some water. She hands your glass to you and then stands behind you, leaning down to rest her chin on your shoulder and peer into the fridge with you. 

“I’ll sort something out here, you can have a shower first,” you murmur to Leah. 

“Mm,” Leah hums right beside your ear, “Was kind of hoping you’d shower with me.” 

A smile spread over your face instantly, “I can do that,” you close the fridge door as Leah stands up straight, “You go get the water running, I’ll come up in a minute,” 

“Great plan,” Leah pecks you before making her way upstairs to the bathroom. 

When Leah goes up stairs you make a quick decision to call her favourite Italian restaurant to order some takeaway for dinner. Once you know that is on the way, you move your way around the kitchen and lounge room to light some candles and pour two celebratory glasses of wine for you two to have when you’re finished rinsing off the day. Finally you switch off the overhead lights to allow the space to be filled with candle light, looking awfully cosy. You could almost hear the voice of Kate McCabe telling you to enjoy your romantic night, and you knew she would get a kick out of knowing that you followed through with that. 

Moving quickly up the stairs you walk into your shared bedroom and can hear the water running in the ensuite. You strip out of your clothes from training and throw them into the dirty clothes basket before pushing open the door to the bathroom. 

“Finally,” Leah smiles, openly looking you up and down as you step into the shower with her. 

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” you say, pushing your hair out of your face as the water runs over your skin. Leah steps to the side, allowing you to take up some space under the shower head to warm up and rinse your body. 

“It was worth the wait,” Leah says, running her hands down the sides of your torso, letting them settle onto your lower back which allows her to pull you close to her for another kiss. This one is deeper, more passionate. 

“Spin round,” she tells you, and you know what’s coming. Your showers together is one of your favourite routines. Leah pours some shampoo in her hands and begins to smooth in onto your hair, running her fingers through your scalp and massaging your head as she does so. 

You sigh at the relaxed feeling settling into your body, “You’re so good at this, you could be a hairdresser in another life,” you tell Leah and she laughs. 

“Just want to make you feel good,” she says in her simple Leah way and she’s got you melting with her words in a matter of seconds. 

“Well you definitely know how to do that,” you assure her as she drags her fingers through the length of your hair, letting the shampoo rinse out. 

“Your turn,” you spin around to face her, motioning her to turn around too with a rotation of your hand. 

You imitate her movements, massaging the gel into her hair, letting your fingers trail lightly down her neck and over her shoulders. Leah’s head rolls back slowly and she groans slightly. 

“Does that feel good?” You ask.

“Mmhmm,” she hums, and from her lack of words you know that it must. 

When the shampoo rinses out next you both takes turn washing each others body’s with the shower sponge, taking extra care and much longer than you would on yourself. When you rinse the last bits of soap off of Leah’s body you remember the little surprise you have for Leah downstairs. 

“We’re starting to waste water now,” you say and Leah laughs at you. 

“Alright, out we get then.” 

You step out first and grab two towels off the rack, passing the second to Leah and loosely wrapping the first around yourself. You quickly pat yourself dry and then move out into your bedroom, going to your drawers to pull out something comfortable to slip into. Leah does the same, getting into some trackies. 

While you move back into the bathroom to comb through your hair, Leah tells you she’ll meet you downstairs. 

“Alright,” you smile, knowing what she will see when she walks downstairs. 

About five seconds later you can hear Leah calling out your name, and you go downstairs to join her. 

“What’s all this for?” Leah says sweetly, watching you as you move towards her. 

“For my girl being back in training,” you say and Leah can’t contain the smile on her face.

“Come here,” she opens her arms and you step into her embrace, finding solace and comfort in the way your bodies melt into one another. 

“There’s some pizza on the way too,” you inform Leah and she moves to kiss your neck.

“How did I get so lucky?” She says, her words muffled against your skin as she kisses you again. 

“Yeah I ask myself the same thing from time to time,” you say, placing a kiss against the side of Leah��s head. 

You suggest that you go lay down on the lounge, and Leah agrees, grabbing the two glasses of wine and setting them down on the coffee table. Leah lays down first and opens her arms for you to crawl beside her. As you lay together, arms and legs wrapped around each other watching telly for the remainder of the night, you realise it’s the first night in a long time that you haven’t felt a vague sense of separation from Leah. Finally, she is doing what she is meant to do again, being back in the team at Arsenal, with you, and everything feels back to normal. 

[magics-neptunes-things]

Forever

Hi guys!

You were waiting for this one for a long time but it's finally here! This is Luna's elopement fic.

As always, this is a fiction, so it's purely coming from my mind. Please enjoy this one and tell me what you thought about it!

TW : None, I think. Maybe a little of chaos.

Lucy is tired, like bloody tired. Her and her team just won the cup of the Champions League yesterday and she’s still hungover from the party last night. She regretted bitterly her choice of drink this morning when the alarm went on, asking her to get up to get on the bus and then the plane. They had to be in Barcelona in the afternoon to present the cup at all the Cùlers and for some random talking with people in suit.

She’s not as hungover as Cata though, the woman practically snoring during the ceremony, much to her friends’ amusement.

To distract herself during the speeches that she finds rather annoying, Lucy is looking at her girlfriend. Standing right in front of her, Ona seems to be listening for the people who don’t know her, but Lucy knows better. Ona’s eyes are a little off, but Lucy can’t say if it’s because she’s bored or because she’s in pain.

The cuts she had because of her fall on their opponent’s boot is sharp, she needed three stitches on her cheek. The other one is way to close to her eyes to do anything. Lucy feels the bile running up her throat every time she remembers that her girlfriend could have lost an eye that night.

The English woman frowns when she sees Ona rubbing her injured eye, the scarring itching terribly. But the team’s doctors clearly specified that Ona should touch her eye as little as possible for a quick and optimal recovery.

“Ona” Lucy gently scolds her.

The younger pouts and crosses her arms on her breast, making Lucy smiles softly. She can’t wait to go home, find their dogs and sleep for the next three days before she has to go to national camp in England.

Thanks God they stop soon to talk, and Lucy is relieved to be able to go home. She even grabs Ona’s bags and push her in the direction of her car when they are released. Ona laughs slightly but let her do, looking for her keys in her pocket while Lucy puts their bag in the car.

“What do you think you're doing, Batlle?” Lucy tsk her when Ona sits behind the wheel.

“Going home?” Ona frowns.

“Get out of here. I’m the one driving, you almost lost an eye.”

“Lucia I can drive.”

Ona is sulking and Lucy rolls her eyes. The Catalan girl is the nicest and sweetest person in the world, but Lucy swears that she never met someone as suborn as her girlfriend. Which she likes very much, even if she sometimes seems to forget that she needs to take care of her.

“Sure Cyclops. Let’s sit on the passenger’s seat yeah?”

Ona frowns harder and try to make her girlfriend changes her mind, but she realizes soon that she doesn’t stand a chance. Lucy usually gets Ona what she wants, but not if she knows that it isn’t good for Ona.

The drive home is long, the journey who is usually thirty minutes is far from being finish and yet they only made several kilometers in one hour and an half.

“You can sleep if you want, Bonita” Lucy says softly at her girlfriend.

Ona was lost in the contemplation of the streets, but she turns her head in Lucy’s direction with a soft smile.

“I know. I prefer enjoying my time with you though. I three days we will be separated again.”

Lucy smiles softly, very carefully stroking Ona’s face. The wound looks better than yesterday but it still seems hurtful. But Ona isn’t the kind of girl to complain about anything.

“You’ll be careful with that beautiful face of yours, yeah?”

Ona hums only. She doesn’t want to have a big, awful and permanent scar on her face, but they don’t really let them be gentle during Spanish camp.

“I asked Alexia to keep an eye on you anyway.”

Ona whines, much to Lucy’s amusement. She knows what she was doing when she asked that to Alexia, their captain will be around Ona during all the camp, probably snapping her hand away every time Ona will want to scratch her face.

“How can you do that to me?” Ona groans.

“I did it because I love you” Lucy smiles, rolling her eyes.

“You definitively don’t love me as much as you say. If it was right, you would never betray me this way.”

“You are so dramatic” Lucy laughs softly.

“All that I’ll retain from this conversation is that I love you more than you love me.”

“That’s not true” Lucy frowns.

“It is. I’m the one who love you the most but that’s ok.”

With a satisfy smile, Ona shrugs before taping Lucy’s hand on her thigh. This discussion is going again and again between them, a childish and sweet fight that none of them want to give up.

“Ok” Lucy says after several seconds of silence. “If you love me so much, marry me.”

There is another moment of silence.

“Qué?”

Ona is looking at her girlfriend with wide eyes, seriously asking herself if Lucy lost her mind. But Lucy is looking at her seriously.

“Are you still drunk?” Ona asks, arching an eyebrow.

“No. I am very serious, Ona. I love you. I know you are the love of my life. You are the one I want to finish my life with, I’ve never be so sure about anything in my whole life. I don’t have a ring, but I’ll change that as soon as possible. I want to marry you.”

This is unreal for Ona. Of course, she already thought about marrying Lucy one day, because she’s sure that Lucy is the love of her life too. Lucy flipped her life upside down, in the best way possible. The situation is unreal, but the answer she gives seems to be as much.

“Ok”

“Yes? Will you marry me?”

“Yes” Ona smiles softly.

Even if this isn’t the most convenient marriage proposal, there still is some tears in Lucy’s eyes. And the smile she gives to Ona makes Ona’s heart fluttered. But then, Lucy is suddenly turning on the road, taking the opposite street of their apartment.

“Lucy what are you doing?”

“We are going to the airport, taking the next plane for Las Vegas. I want to marry you right now.”

“What? But Lucy the dogs? Our parents are going to kill us!”

“Coco and Narla can stay a little longer to your parents. And we will make a ceremony with everyone in several days. I just don’t want to pass another day without you being called my wife.”

The tender smile Ona gives her talk for her. She wrote to her parents to ask them to keep the dogs a little bit longer, explaining that Lucy and her are taking surprised holidays. She doesn’t say why and where though.

While Lucy is looking for a place on the parking, Ona is looking at the first plane leaving for Las Vegas. She managed to find one leaving in five hours, choosing to be in business class, after all they are getting married, right? They let their suitcases from the game in the car, choosing to buy new clothes in the airport. And because they are in business class, they have the lounge and the possibility to take a shower before landing.

Their seats are next to each other on the plane, but when they are on the sky, Ona chooses to escalate the wall between them to sit next to Lucy. Well, on Lucy. In the darkness of the plane and night, they cannot be seen from anyone, not that their embrace has anything looking like Pegi 18 anyway. Lucy just had passed her hand under Ona’s shirt to stroke her back and they are under a cover.

“Lucy?” whispers Ona.

It’s dark and quiet, people around them are sleeping or watching a movie from the television in front of them.

“What is it, Bonita?” Lucy whispers in answer.

“Are you sure you want to do this? We still can enjoy our time in Las Vegas, we are not forced to get married if you want to change your mind.”

“Are you scared?” Lucy smiles.

“No” Ona answers, putting her head again on Lucy’s shoulder. “I’m only scared that you will regret it the next morning.”

“Never.”

To add power to her answer, Lucy squeezes her harder against her, making Ona smile. She then kisses her hair, even if the shampoo she used isn’t the same one she’s using daily. Her natural scent is still here though, Lucy loves to think that Ona smell like sun, sand, and holidays.

Lucy smiles when she sees Ona yawning, the last days were chaotic. They were great, but very tiring and they haven’t many times to rest. They sleep a lot during the long trip, catching their lake of sleep, before landing to Philadelphia to take another plane.

“People are wondering where we are going” Ona smiles while looking at her messages during their stopover to Philadelphia.

“Tell them Lesbos Island” Lucy answer, looking at Ona’s phone above her shoulder.

Ona rolls her eyes and bite in the croissant she received during the journey. It’s not as good as the one she had in France, but still ok for an empty stomach.

“People are going to be wild when they’ll know” Lucy adds soon after. “How do you think we can say it to them?”

“If we want to keep the clichés, we can send them a picture of us next to a fake Elvis.”

********

They arrive at Las Vegas after several more hours, choosing one of the most expensive suites in the hotel Ona likes the most – The Venetian. Even if the younger one tried to protest, Lucy makes her shut with only one gaze.

“This is wild” Ona mumbles, looking at the view they have from it.

They are on the 36th floor and can see almost everything around. She lost herself in the contemplation of the streets and the lights, while Lucy is busy turning of the air conditioning who is always making her sick, after what she says.

She then takes several seconds to look at Ona, who turned her back at her. She’s smiling while looking at the smaller one. Even if it’s look like a whim, she knows what she’s doing. She was thinking about proposing to Ona for several weeks now, she wanted to do things right with a sweet proposal and everything. She still can make the surprise to Ona when she got the ring.

She is so in love with Ona.

She is so in love and is going to marry her.

It’s sometimes scary for Lucy to admit to herself how much her happiness depends of that wonderful and beautiful girl in front of her. She doesn’t understand how someone like Ona can be interested in her.

Sure, Lucy knows that a lot of people fancy her, she’s not stupid. But she’s older than Ona and she won’t be able to play football for as long as Ona would. But when she talked about it to Ona, the younger girl just smirk and answer that she would like this has a lot of time to choose her clothes for her wagging era.

Feeling a rush of love for the girl in front of her, Lucy breaks the distance between them in three big strides, before embracing Ona from behind.

“What if you’re the one regretting this tomorrow?” Lucy asks quietly, for once letting out some form of vulnerability.

“I won’t” Ona answers.

Her tone is so sure that there is no reason for Lucy to doubt about it. Ona turns around in Lucy’s arms, passing hers around Lucy’s neck.

“T'estimaré per tota la vida” she whispers, before kissing Lucy softly. (I’ll love you for all my life)

Lucy’s progresses in Catalan are prodigious, thanks to her personal teacher, which allows her to easily understand what Ona has just whispered against her lips. She doesn’t have time to answer though, carried away by the extent of Ona’s kiss.

“Is it a way not to leave this room and not to get married, miss Batlle?”

“I can’t believe we’ve done it” Ona mumbles, looking at the pictures on her phone.

They are on their way back to Barcelona, after a stop at Dallas this time. They haven’t said anything to anyone about their marriage, like Lucy said, they will make a ceremony for their families and Lucy even planned a way to offer a magic proposal to Ona with the ring she will find in Barcelona.

She looked for jewelry in Barcelona when Ona fell asleep in her arms after having celebrated their wedding.

“Still no regret?” Lucy whispers, looking at Ona’s phone above the armrest between them.

“Never.”

A sweet smile is on Ona’s face when she looks at her girlfr… wife. Even if they have to make the contract acknowledged in Spain. They are travelling during the day this time and people are obviously more up than during the first fly. Lucy sulks when she realizes that Ona won’t be able to join her on her seat like before, but then Ona grabs her hand and never let it go since. She can live with that.

“I always thought that the big Elvis' was a myth to be honest” Lucy comments when she sees the photo where they are posing next to him. “It was like a movie.”

“Yeah. I liked that movie though; the first actress is hot” Ona smirks.

“The Spaniard with the scar? Yes. Hot and badass.”

********

When Lucy’s back from the England Camp, Ona had the time to make their marriage contract recognized. She went back home from the camp after deciding that it was better for her face that way. She was sad not to be able to play with Leila again, but it was safer that way. She went to training with Patri and Mapi and passed time with Narla and Coco.

She went to take Lucy from the airport and Lucy already started to look for the right ring. She looked for several days before making the choice to have it custom-made. Lucy wants it to be perfect.

They managed to keep the secret for now, the only difference is that Lucy calls Ona “Wifey” at home now and that they can’t keep their hands away of each other. They are not making out in public, but they are impossible to separate. And when they are on each side of one room, they keep look and smile at each other.

“Can you please stay focus and stop drooling on Ona for a second, Bronze?” Mariona asks, hitting Lucy behind her head.

“I’m not drooling” Lucy frowns, showing Mariona away.

“You are” Mariona laughs.

But then Mario’s laugh drags Ona’s attention – who was talking with Salma and Jana - and she smirks at Lucy who kind of forgot why she’s supposed to be mad at her friend. The calm of the room is suddenly broken by a roar coming from Alexia’s voice as soon as she enters it.

“LUCIA ROBERTA TOUGH BRONZE!”

Lucy jumps and look at their captain like a teenager in trouble without knowing what she did bad. But the blonde came right in front of Lucy with a paper, the room suddenly quiet.

Lucy gets pale when she sees the sheet and Ona doesn't need longer explanations to understand what it is. However, Alexia doesn't hesitate to give more details.

“I was helping the administrative team to make the papers for our next trip, and they told me about this funny mistake, like they said. I did my research and it’s look like it isn’t actually a mistake. So will you please tell me why and how in the world it is written black on white that you are married to Ona Batlle Pascual?”

Ona makes a grimace when she feels almost all the eyes on the room going on her. It isn’t the way she wanted to tell people, but she can see Mapi from the corner of her eyes who seems to have the time of her life.

“You choose Lucy, Oni? What about us?” Jana jokes, but she is suddenly silent when she crosses Alexia’s eyes.

“Come on Ale’, what was I supposed to do? Ask you before asking her?” Lucy rolls her eyes.

“Well at least. Then I would have refused and took Ona on a secret island” Alexia groans.

“Your kids are growing up, Alexia, get over it” Irene says, patting Alexia shoulders. “Ask Pina about her love life, you’ll be stunned” she adds, before leaving the room.

“WHAT?!”

[melanieph321]

Okay hear me out: what about ruben’s girlfriend losing her memory temporarily, and ruben literally leaves everything to take care of her. He asks some time away from football to help her on her recovery journey, and he would make her one of his usual breakfasts, full of nutrients and he would help her exercice slowly and would help her remember little things at a time, and he would just do everything for her well being 🥺

THIS IS THE ONE, MY 100TH RUBEN FIC! 🥳🥳❤️❤️❤️🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳❤️🥳❤️🥳❤️🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

Love the many requests I've received, I have stories for days now 😅. But in honor of my 100th Ruben Dias fic I have written a 8 part series based on this request. Hope you enjoy!

Ruben Dias x Reader - Remember You and Me Part 1/8

Enjoy!

You slowly opened your eyes, groggily taking in your surroundings. You were in a hospital room, surrounded by your family and a man you had never seen before. The man, who you assumed was a nurse, was holding your hand and smiling at you.

"Hello, honey. Welcome back" your mother said warmly.

"What's going on." You grunted. The pain hit you all at once as you tried to sit up.

"What hurts the most?" Your mother was quick to pat you down, not wanting you to over extend yourself.

"My neck." You said and reached up to touch the brace that covered your throat.

"The doctors say you have to wear it for a couple of weeks. You were in a terrible car accident that almost left you paralyzied head down."

"What?" You tried to sit up again but squirmed as the pain hit.

"Careful." Said the male nurse, still holding your hand in his. "I know this isn't easy for you to hear Y/N," He said. "but the truth is that you've been in a coma for the last four days. You've had multiple injuries on your spine, ribs and if it wasn't for the doctors deciding to put you in a sedative state your brain would still be swelling."

Your brain swelled with all the information you were given. "I want to go home." You said. You hated the smell of hospitals and always have.

"I know honey, I know." Your mom stroked your head. "But I'm afraid it won't be that easy."

"Why not?" You looked around the room, meeting the faces of your family. They all carried the same expression of sadness and concern for you.

"What's going on?" You said through the tubes plugged in your nose.

"Honey..." Your mother tried to break it to you easily. "You don't live with us anymore, you haven't done so in the past five years."

"Um, what?"

"Honey, what is your last memory? How old do you think you are?"

"Mom what are you...I'm nineteen years old and I live with you, dad and Eddie. Why are you asking me these stupid questions? Why am I in the hospital, what happened to me?"

You were getting quite worked up, however your mother was patient. "Y/N, the doctors suspect a temporary memory loss as a result of your severe head trauma. You are not nineteen years old but twenty four years old. And you don't live with your father and I, you live in England with your husband, Ruben."

Your mother pointed to the nurse standing next to your bed, his hand still intertwined with yours.

"My what?" Your eyes widened in confusion. Husband? You had no memory of getting married. In fact, you had no memory of anything that had happened since you were a teenager. "What do you mean?" You asked, voice shaking. "I don't remember getting married."

The nurse smile faltered for a moment, but then he took a deep breath and explained. "You were in a terrible car accident a few days ago. And in a coma ever since this morning, when you finally woke up, not remembering anything. We've been trying to help you remember, but it's been a slow process."

Your mind was reeling. You had no memory of your childhood, your friends, your job, or anything else. It was as if your entire life had been erased.

"Mommy." You cried, letting go of the nurse/your husband's hand. "I want to go home, take me home right now."

"I know sweetie, I know." She brought you in for a hug, a tight and safe mommy hug. "The doctors say that your memory loss is only temporary, that it will come to you naturally as you go on with your daily life."

"Okay, so I'm free to leave the hospital then?"

"Yes, the sooner the better. However you have to leave with Ruben not us."

"What? I can't go live with him, he's a stranger I don't even know him."

The man's eyes widened in suprise, his expression unreadable.

"Yes, you do honey." Your mother was determined. "Ruben is your husband and you must stay with him. We will be here through your recovery, every step of the way. But for your memory to return to you naturally you must go back to living your old life, the life you spent together with Ruben, your husband."

[aetheternity]

Synopsis: You're sick, thankfully the 6reeze boys are there to care for you.

CW: Just sweet fluff. Reader calls Wanderer, Kuni.

Aether

☆ Now now, just because you're sick doesn't mean you have to eat stuff you hate.

☆ He'll literally make you any food / drink you want. Unless you're throwing up. Then he'll stick to giving you water to flush your system out.

☆ He does any and everything you want no matter how ridiculous it may seem. Pillow needs fluffing? He's your guy. Extra blanket needed? He's got two pick the one you like better. You want a bath? He'll run it for you.

☆ He lets Paimon read one of the stories he wrote. Just to help you fall asleep easier.

☆ "And then our hero turns to his trusty, reliable, amazing companion and says-"

☆ "Paimon, stop padding out the story. The whole point of this was to relax Name, this isn't for entertainment purposes."

☆ "Paimon has to make the story more interesting or else even Paimon will fall asleep reading it!"

☆ You can't help but giggle at Aether's sullen expression.

☆ He makes sure to take your temperature every hour and yes it does feel a bit excessive but he wants to make sure you're actually making a recovery. Humor him would ya?

☆ "What's it say? What's it say? Is the cold breaking?" Paimon questions

☆ "Maybe we need more blankets and soup."

☆ "Doctor Paimon is on it!"

☆ Don't worry even if they argue quite a bit or the entire time. You're definitely going to make a speedy recovery with Doctor Aether and Doctor Paimon tending to you.

Heizou

☆ He was already off for the week as it was so now here he was at your door with a big smile and some treats for the two of you to share.

☆ He starts boiling a pot of water so you can soak in the steam almost immediately.

☆ "So, what do you think got you so under the weather?"

☆ "I have no idea.. honestly I just woke up yesterday sick as a dog."

☆ "Well, these kinds of things don't just magically happen even though it can feel like it. Trace your steps back to before the illness."

☆ Another one that isn't worried enough about getting sick himself. Though he's human so he's the one that should.

☆ You're already burrito wrapped in a huge thick blanket but somehow you're still shivering so he slides into place behind you wrapping you tightly in his arms until your body slowly relaxes.

☆ "You're not worried enough about catching my germs."

☆ "Well, I know if I happened to fall victim to a dreaded cold, you'd be my savior as a sort of debt for me being yours." He chuckles

☆ And of course when he inevitably does catch what you had he has the prettiest nurse to care to him. Or at least that's how he describes it.

Kazuha

☆ He's so oddly happy to take care of you while your sick. Like yeah he'd far prefer if you were in good health and spirits but he likes any scenario where he can tend to your physical, mental or emotional state.

☆ Lets you rest your head in his lap while he strokes the top of your head. You can apologize as much as you want for all of the snot and spit you accidentally drip onto his clothes during this time but he couldn't care less.

☆ "Your worry is valid, however if I'm going to be here with you until you recover I have plenty of time to wash my clothes.

☆ "Are you going to leave as soon as I get better?"

☆ His laugh is airy, "I have nowhere in particular that I need to be. If you're willing to have me I can stay for at least a few weeks."

☆ He reads every single haiku he's written to you to take your mind off the pain and when he runs out of those he starts telling you stories of his journey.

☆ "One day a young boy was stood along a stream, his head hung staring down at the water below. At long glance a troubled soul trying to discover some sort of mystery in the endless current of water. But at face value. A long rope and a boy long gone from this world."

☆ "How is that supposed to make me feel better?" You grumble clutching the pillow in your arms tightly

☆ "It's simply a distraction. For a moment your pain was disrupted by my story and it ceased to exist. While the story itself may or may not be true. Similarly when I began that story you believed I was telling it with the purest intent. That I was doing it to aid in your sleep. All is not as it seems, the story teaches."

☆ "I don't like that story."

☆ Even if his stories aren't the most sensitive he does still keep your space extremely clean and even tidies the rest of your house up as you sleep.

☆ You'll sometimes wake up alone but you always know Kazuha will be back if you call out to him. That's how he'd always been as it was.

Venti

☆ You're more than a little curious as to how he found out you'd fallen ill in the first place. He dodges the question.

☆ "Come now, aren't you just happy to have your favorite archon tending to you regardless?"

☆ "You could just tell me ya know. I'm not exactly in a judgmental mood."

☆ Stops you every single time you try to get up.

☆ "And just where is my patient going?" He places both hands on his hips.

☆ "I need my medicine, Venti."

☆ "That's what I'm here for. Your personal caretaker is at your service." He gestures for you to lay back down and refuses to leave until you're fully beneath the blankets.

☆ "Halt!"

☆ "Halt??" You nearly snort

☆ "Where are you going now?"

☆ "I have to pee, Venti!"

☆ His cheeks bloom a tiny pink, "Oh, ahem carry on then.." He chuckles

☆ He literally never leaves your house. Taking advantage of the fact that he's a God and can't fall ill as often as possible. Just crawling in beside you in your bed.

☆ "Even if you can't get sick, do you really want me sneezing and coughing in your face?"

☆ "Don't worry, I'm far away enough that if you wake up in a coughing frenzy it won't even touch me."

☆ He was in fact not far away enough.

☆ You find yourself getting more and more accustomed to rising and falling asleep to the sound of his voice. His songs so sweet, they end up helping you sleep deeper than you ever had before.

☆ "So, what kind of payment am I looking at? You know to thank my favorite archon for clearing his busy schedule just to tend to one of his mere disciples."

☆ "Aw don't put it like that. I would've done it for free. We are friends after all."

☆ "Did I hear would've?"

☆ "Well since you mentioned it there's only one thing I want. Let's get a drink together. You know when you're fully recovered."

☆ "Sure. It's a date."

Wanderer

☆ Everything he makes you is disgustingly bitter and he forces you to drink every single drop too. (We don't waste food here).

☆ "If you wanted a babysitter you should've called someone else. I'm just here to make sure you don't die."

☆ Surprisingly well meaning in everything he does. Gets you an extra blanket when you ask and even stays while you sleep. Clearing up your mess of tissues and washing all your dishes.

☆ He makes himself feel better after being so helpful all day though: "You look worse every time I come back over here." His grin shitty.

☆ "Funny, cause I've noticed you look better when I'm bleary eyed."

☆ You're not sure what you're expecting after that but his snarky huff as he leaves the room doesn't give you much confidence that he isn't planning to suffocate you with a pillow next time you doze off.

☆ "You know, you're gonna make someone a really cute house wife someday." You remark as he grabs your nth bowl of finished soup for the day.

☆ "Shut it." He grunts though before he can fully swivel around you see a dust of pink graze his cheeks.

☆ You wake up at one point to a cute plushie in your arms. The stiching so neat and the fabric of its hair and clothes so soft. As you turn it over more and more you start to notice the similarities between it and your dear caretaker.

☆"Why are you staring at him so hard?"

☆ You gasp, "Wait, he's yours?! You made a doll that looks like you??"

☆ "Don't act so shocked, I have things I care about like everyone else."

☆ "He's so cute!" You snuggle tiny Wanderer closer feeling infinitely better just being able to touch something so precious to someone you cared about so deeply. "But why give him to me?"

☆ "Because, when you get better and tell this story again. No one's ever going to believe you about the doll."

☆ You stare at him blankly, eyes growing wider. That dark smirk forming on his face as he stared back in pure amusement. "KUNI, YOU JERK!"

☆ "DON'T YOU DARE THROW HIM, HE'S NOT A TOY!"

Xiao

☆ He can't even begin to understand why you can't do anything for yourself.

☆ "Mortals can be so weak." He grunts when you explained your sickness.

☆ All you'd asked of him was if he could pick up your medication from Bubu Pharmacy on his way back from his daily patrol.

☆ He'd done it, easy but he still didn't leave immediately. For the next three days he'd leave you during his normal patrol hours then return at different times everyday.

☆ "How long do Mortals normally stay ill?" He questioned

☆ "Depends on the mortal, some can catch a cold and be bed ridden for a couple weeks. Age factors in too."

☆ He'd grown quiet after that. You're not completely sure he understands.

☆ Grossly overestimates how weak you are. Maybe you're into that tho.

☆ You're eating soup? He takes the spoon away and blows on the food then feeds it to you. You're trying to get up to go to the bathroom? He rushes over to open the door then trots back to grab your arm and keep you steady.

☆ The first time you went into a coughing fit he stared at you wide eyed, hair raised and on edge for several minutes before you'd willed him into coming close again.

☆ The first time he'd laid his head on the bedspread beside you you'd shooed him off. "I don't want you to catch any of my germs, Xiao Xiao."

☆ He shakes his head, "You need not project concern onto me. I can't contract an illness from you."

☆ Overall it feels almost too comforting having Xiao around like this. It was the most you'd seen of him in some time. Maybe you'd have to get sick more often.

[wendydoodles]

Mike is my brother-in-law! He recently had a life threatening stroke and now has a long road of recovery ahead of him. It would mean the world if you could share/help out. Thank you!

[paddockbunny]

I’ve just had surgery and could I request something fluffy? Max, Daniel or Pierre please x

"Maybe a peek...'cause your hot"

Summary : A bit load of sugary fluff of Daniel picking you up after you have wisdom tooth removal surgery. Rating : 16 Pairing : Daniel Ricciardo x Reader Word Count : 809 blurb Trigger Warnings : Post surgery discussion, language, teeth discussion (cause I know some people are triggered by that)

💞Authors Note: I hope you’re feeling better, there is nothing worse than being post surgery. I hope your recovery goes well and this little blurb is ok ☺️

Daniel genuinely didn’t know what to expect when he came to pick you up after your wisdom tooth extraction. He had seen all the funny videos that circulated around online but those were of teenagers, you were a full-grown woman. Surely, the drugs wouldn’t affect you THAT much?

But as soon as the nurse pulled a face when she opened the door to show him into room, he realised what he was going to be in for.

You had some contraption around your head with ice packs built in to keep the swelling down. But it was the fact your head was sort of lolling around while you spoke nonsensical words that made him crack up.

It wasn’t that you were super serious but out of the pair of you he was certainly the goofy, silly one so this was incredibly amusing for him

“There he is!” Your arms stretched out toward him and he held back laughter when he saw the padding poking out of your mouth. You were cute even if you were high as fuck.

Daniel leaned in and stopped before kissing you on your dry cracked lips and instead placed a quick, gentle kiss on your forehead and you feigned shock. “My doctor will kick your ass for that.”

Daniel pulled back and couldn’t help but laugh as you start babbling to the nurses about the doctor saying you needed lots and lots of kisses to feel better. If you had been fully aware of what was going on he would have claimed to feel ganged up on but clearly you were on another planet from the painkillers they had given you as you came around from surgery.

And then, as the nurses handed him a bag full of the things you needed for recovery and helped you into his car, it dawned on him he was in charge of you and he hoped and prayed he would be able to do a good job.

During that car journey Daniel listened as you spoke mindlessly, most of it not making a single bit of sense. You kept calling him handsome which he liked, and then when he had to break heavily for a car ahead slamming on their breaks, you called him a bad driver he didn’t like. He tried to plead his case and said he was the last of the late breakers and he physically couldn’t be a bad driver when he’s one of the best in the world but you just kept shushing him and calling him pretty.

Finally, after getting back to his, Daniel helped you out of the car and into the house. He managed to get you to the bedroom and you only groaned once from twinges of pain.

“It’s alright baby, let's get you into bed and I’ll get you some ice chips.” He said as he sat you down on the edge of the bed and got on his knees to take your trainers off. While he did that your hand reached out and stroked his curls like he was a little pet. He couldn’t help but smile because he wondered what your mind was thinking of as he glanced to see you content.

“Gentle, gentle….” Daniel said calmly when he helped you out of your zip up top and you whipped your arms out of the sleeves rather quickly for his liking. He was worried that you would hurt yourself, burst stitches or something. He wanted to protect you and take care of you like he knew you would if it had been him and roles were reversed.

Daniel tenderly went to the hem of your t-shirt and started pulling it, almost getting it over your head – even with the funny head bandage ice pack thing – and you stopped him and dramatically clutched the top at your chest.

“Uh!” You yelped and he pulled back immediately, scared he had hurt you, “I have a boyfriend.” You wag your finger at him playfully.

“I know you do.” He held back his laughter and bit his bottom lip to avoid cracking when you added; “You can’t see my boobs because I have a boyfriend.” And he almost lost it at that. He felt himself fall even more in love with you in that moment because you simply looked so cute – and it was clear how much you needed him to look after you while you were out of your mind on prescription drugs

“Ok well, maybe a peek…cause your hot but don’t tell him…shh….” And as you flashed him quickly Daniel sat back on his knees and put his hands over his face to hide the fact he had tears streaming down his face from laughter but then played along

“I know for a fact he loves your boobs…and when you get better he will show you how much.”   

[immortaldesiresproject]

Project Update

Hello friends and fans. I want to apologize yet again for leaving everyone hanging. I would like to share that this project will no longer be continuing. Due to everyone's personal circumstances, it has been difficult to meet and to create the game. In regard to my own personal struggles, I had a suspected mini-stroke back in November that has caused neuropathy on top of already having fibromyalgia. On top of my recovery being a mess of cognitive issues, I lost someone who was like a second father to me, as well as my best friend of 18 years. I hope this gives some clarity as to why the project was a little abandoned, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten around to providing this update sooner. With my life finally reaching a level of normalcy between returning to school and being able to function properly at my job again, I have mustered up passion and inspiration for the first time in months (after getting piercing and tattoo therapy lmao). I will be creating my own game inspired by the storyline of this fan project and a webtoon I wrote years ago. I'll give shameless plug of the blog once I have actual material to share, if any of you are curious or want to follow along the journey of building that game.

Thank you for all of your support and love to this game. I'm disappointed that it ended like this, but life sometimes has a way of steering you off the rails.

[junemermaid]

[NiF fic snippet]

so in order to unblock myself on my first NiF WIP I started another NiF WIP, surely nothing can go wrong here

post-canon, everyone lives au, ot3 agenda in full swing. unofficially titled one beautiful morning, Lin Shu woke to find the Son of Heaven at his door.

-

The gate to the yard is open. He is under no illusion that he's been let this close unobserved, but he ties his horses next to the watering trough by the gate, and goes in.

The path to the house is paved with smooth stones. Somewhere out of sight, chickens cluck and flutter, and a pigeon coos mournfully. A woman emerges from the house: a trim, solid figure in the shade of the veranda.

"Husband," she calls over her shoulder, "the messenger is here! I'll see him in."

She comes into the sunlight, and he chokes on nothing but the sight of her. Her garb is simple, unlike the rich silks she would wear to court, but the years sit lightly upon her shoulders; the spring in her step is as supple as ever. While her hair is tied low in the sedate fashion of a married woman, it still falls down her back thick and dark as a stroke of good ink.

Last time he saw her, she knelt to him at a private audience and asked for his leave to marry. Her betrothed, his dearest friend, their childhood companion, had lived through the battles in the north. A miraculous recovery, some claimed. The skill of his doctor, she asserted.

She brought the news knowing it would be a sword through his heart, and still she was right when she said, I did not want you to hear this from anyone else. I hope you will forgive me someday, Your Majesty.

There's nothing to forgive, Princess, he told her, half-strangled by hurt and relief and breathtaking love. He is alive. How can I not be glad?

With an aching smile and another obeisance, she left with his imperial permission to wed the jianghu scholar Su Zhe.

Here, in the sunlit yard, it takes her a few paces to understand he isn't coming to meet her or offering a greeting, like the courier she's mistaken him for would. Her brow furrows—there are lines there he does not remember, either—and slowly, her hand goes to her mouth.

He watches her war with herself, swamped in her astonishment. Her gaze swims with the same tangled things that shoot up into his own mind, splintering the lull of the ride.

If she says Your Majesty now, he—he does not know. He will crumple and fall. He journeyed for a month to be here, and there, the plan ends.

"Xiao Jingyan," Mu Nihuang whispers through her trembling fingers. "What are you—how in the name of—"

Should he bow, he thinks, wild, unmoored—kneel in the sand of the yard like a lord of yore, come to entreat a sage hidden in the hills?

Mu Nihuang is no sage, or even a wife to one. But she was once the Princess-Marshal of Yunnan. She's rarely met a hurdle she did not try to vault head-on.

"Stay there," she says, as if he would move for all treasures in the empire. She rounds on her heel to shout back into the house, "Beloved husband! Perhaps you'd care to explain why the Son of Heaven, His Imperial Majesty, may he reign for ten thousand years, is standing in my yard?"

There is a loud clatter from inside. His heart jolts in echo: beloved husband. The tint of fondness in her annoyance. This peaceful, prosperous house, the veranda freshly sanded, the jasmine in bloom, like dawn clouds perched on the boughs.

What is he doing? As if compelled by the same question, Nihuang looks him up and down: travel-stained, dishevelled, half-mad with purpose and yearning.

"I'm not that anymore," he says, rough with disuse. The horses do not make for great conversationalists. "I left, Nihuang. I stepped down."

tbc

[bumblesimagines]

Under The Moonlight

Part 6

Request: Yes or No

~~~

"Where were you?"

"Exploring." (Y/N) answered, picking up the barrel and handing it off to his brother. Leif stared at him with an arched brow, taking the barrel into his arms and setting it down on their ship. Liv stood near them, gazing down into the water absentmindedly. She had made a quick recovery, only needing a couple of bandages and some rest before she could pick up a sword again. Her skin had regained its tan complexion and her eyes regained their light. Seeing her up and walking had been a tremendous relief to the brothers. With everything they needed onboard, (Y/N) carefully stepped down onto the ship, feeling it rock slightly at his added weight.

London's harbor had filled to the brim with boats as half of King Canute's fleet readied for departure back to their homelands across Scandinavia. But the Greenlanders would need to stop by Kattegat for Freydis and the others. Then, it'd hopefully be smooth sailing back home to their families.

"Exploring? The castle? All night?" With each word, Leif's brows rose higher and higher. (Y/N) looked away from his brother and out toward the horizon with pursed lips. He felt like a child again. It'd been ages since Leif last scolded him. "It isn't like you to lie to me."

"What do you want me to say, Leif?"

"The truth. If you were with..." Leif trailed off, eyes flickering over to Harald and back to his brother. The prince stood in front of King Canute as they exchanged words. Once, Harald would've appeared carefree and pleased to be in the king's presence. But now he looked miffed and bitter, the taste of betrayal still on his tongue. Harald wore his typical black leather and dark tunic attire with two-skinned coyotes stitched to his long black cloak and tied together by a small bronze chain that kept the cloak from slipping off his shoulders. He no longer looked like any other Viking waltzing up and down the dock. He looked like a prince. He was a prince. (Y/N) needed to remember that. Even when the bear tooth hung snugly around Harald's neck.

"Just tell me."

"It's not like that." (Y/N) murmured, tearing his eyes away from Harald and distracting himself by adjusting one of the ropes keeping the sail tied to the mast.

"Are you certain?" And people said his brother was a man of little words.

"Safe journey, Greenlanders!" King Canute suddenly called out to them, drawing their attention away from each other and onto him. The two brothers forced awkward smiles for him, offering nods of acknowledgment before looking at each other again. Harald's brows furrowed slightly at the sight, gaze lingering on them.

"What are you two whispering about?" Liv asked, using the side of the boat to push herself up. Leif- almost instinctively- wrapped an arm around her waist to ensure her balance, causing a flustered smile to appear on Liv's face. 

"Don't tell me you-"

"Nothing, Liv. Just the weather." Leif answered, hand rising to delicately stroke the back of her head and giving his brother a squinted-eyed look. (Y/N) grinned back at him. Liv slowly nodded at his answer and sat back down as Harald stepped onboard and bid his goodbye to Canute. Leif took his spot behind the steering oar and (Y/N) sat beside him, watching Vikings finish getting their belongings packed away. Harald made his way down the ship, fingers twitching and brushing against (Y/N)'s arm when he brushed past and he sat behind him. (Y/N) took in a deep breath and looked out at the ocean again.

                    ➸        ➸       ➸       ➸       ➸       ➸

The closer Kattegat's harbor grew, the faster his heart pounded against his chest. His fingers drummed anxiously against the side of the ship, watching people swarm to the docks to greet their family and friends. He waited impatiently as the boat docked, staring down the dock until the boat had been secured. Climbing out, he paused and waited, hearing Liv's soft sigh of exhaustion as Leif helped her off the boat. Then, He heard it. He heard her.

"Leif! (Y/N)!" Freydis raced through the crowd, her long blonde braid whipping back with the wind as she brushed past people. Her pace quickened upon spotting her brothers and she barreled into the arms of (Y/N), feet leaving the ground when he wrapped his arms around her tightly and spun her around. Laughter escaped her freely. "You're alive!"

"And you are too." (Y/N) laughed as well, feeling his heart swell tenfolds. Gently setting Freydis back down on her feet, she smiled and kissed his cheek before eagerly wrapping her arms around Leif and Liv, thrilled giggles falling from her lips.

"What is this?" Liv asked when they pulled apart, looking over Freydis' attire. It was then he noticed what exactly she wore. Freydis had ditched her typical dark tunics and coats for brown leather, a light blue tunic underneath, and shoulder plates. Her black boots were covered in a mixture of damp sand and when he looked closer, so were the back of her pants, almost as if she had fallen while on the beach. (Y/N) blinked. Her clothes looked strikingly similar to what the defenders of Kattegat wore, he realized. Had Jarl Haakon offered Freydis a place amongst her shieldmaidens?

"I have much to tell you." Freydis breathed and leaned back, turning her head side to side in search of the others. When she couldn't find them along the Vikings unloading and heading down the dock, she looked back at them, her wide smile beginning to crumble. "Skarde? Njal?"

"And Ulf," Liv whispered, inhaling sharply and turning her gaze downcast. 

"Then..." Freydis pressed her trembling lips together, her blue eyes overflowing with tears. "Toke and Yrsa are not alone in Valhalla." She revealed softly, voice nearly cracking.

(Y/N) felt as if someone had punched him right in the chest, knocking all the air out of his lungs and squeezing his heart. His friends... The ones who had stepped up and promised to help them on their journey for justice... dead. Every single one of them. Liv stared at her wide-eyed, eyes flickering between Freydis's in hopes of finding a cruel joke. Her lip began quivering and she shook her head, sobs escaping her and shoulders shaking. (Y/N) squeezed his eyes shut. He'd grown so tired of crying, so tired of mourning that the tears had dried after the deaths of Njal and Skarde. He only stepped forward and wrapped an arm around his sister, dropping his head onto her shoulder as Leif and Liv stepped in as well, arms wrapping around each other and Freydis. The group of Greenlanders had watered down to just four. Four survivors. Four people who'd have to relay the news to different families back home. They'd have to hold sobbing mothers and spouses and explain to the children why their fathers wouldn't be returning.

"It's just us now." Liv sniffled, leaning back and gazing up at Freydis, hand gently rubbing her back. 

"Come," Freydis sighed, wiping her tears away and slipping her arm around Liv's shoulders. She looked up at her brothers and smiled sadly at them, nodding back toward the town. "You must be tired from your journey."

"I want to go home, Leif." (Y/N) mumbled, watching the girls head down the dock. 

"I know, (Y/N). I know." Leif tried offering him a reassuring smile through his exhaustion. "But we must rest." He reminded, motioning after the girls and beginning to follow them. (Y/N) sighed and trailed after his brother, eyes drifting away from Leif's back and meeting Harald's pitying ones. (Y/N) broke eye contact first and quickened his pace, even as Harald stared holes into the back of his head. 

Freydis took them to the market, the smell of freshly baked bread and cooking meat wafting through the air. (Y/N)'s mouth watered at the thought of a warm meal, collapsing at an empty table and smiling sweetly at his sister when she swiftly retrieved bowls of food for them to eat. Setting them down in front of her friends and getting some water for them, Freydis plopped down across from them and began recounting how she had spent the last couple of months. "Jarl Haakon sent us to Uppsala."

"To Uppsala?" Liv gasped in awe, breaking apart a fresh piece of bread and popping the smaller slice into her mouth. "Is it like the stories we heard growing up?"

Smiling widely, Freydis rested her arms on the table, her gaze turning distant. "It's even better... Temples as high as the sky with golden rooftops, and hundreds of the faithful." Her smile fell slightly. "But it is threatened by Christians."

"So this is your new mission?" Leif asked softly, rolling his wooden spoon between his fingers. (Y/N) drank the broth of his soup, having finished eating so fast his mother would've wacked him with a rag and scolded him. Wiping his chin with the back of his hand, his brows furrowed as Freydis nodded, her fingers toying with the ends of her shirt.

"What I have seen has changed me. I cannot leave Kattegat now, and I hope you will stay too?" Freydis glanced between the three of them hopefully. (Y/N) felt his stomach drop, fingers squeezing around the bowl in his hands. Leif swallowed and turned to look at his younger brother, placing his hand on his shoulder and affectionately rubbing it. 

"Perhaps we could stay a little longer. Make sure Freydis settles in well and then we can depart for Greenland?" Leif proposed, gaze softening. Between his siblings pleading looks, (Y/N) could only begrudgingly nod, putting aside his longing for home. "Besides..." Leif's eyes flickered to someone past him. "I don't think Harald would let you leave so quickly." 

"Harald?" Freydis repeated with furrowed brows and (Y/N) peered over his shoulder at the prince. Harald had ditched his cloak and changed into lighter clothes better suited to Kattegat's chilly yet ever-changing weather. Inhaling deeply, (Y/N) let the bowl drop lightly on the table and stood up, hearing his sister whisper questions to a chuckling Leif. 

"I see your sister is a warrior now," Harald noted, a smile spreading on his face. "I will congratulate her later. For now, I wish to know why you've been ignoring me."

"Yrsa and Toke were killed, Harald. By a Christian Jarl named Kåre. Friend of yours?"

"No, he's not." Harald's smile turned into a frown. "He's a zealot and many of us consider him deranged."

"But you know him."

"I know of him. (Y/N), please, I do not wish to argue with you today." Harald sighed and shut his eyes, nose crinkling slightly. "Why don't we take a walk-"

"Harald, I want you to forget about what happened. I do not want you trailing after me like a child at every turn. You're the Prince of Norway, I am a hunter from Greenland. I am... far below your station. Find someone else to bother and keep your bed warm, but I do not need to risk my safety for a man, much less a Christian." (Y/N)'s words came out much nastier than intended. It became apparent by the way Harald nearly flinched at his words, a hurt look passing over his features. (Y/N) turned his back to him and returned to the table, avoiding the questioning gazes as he took some bread. Harald stared at him, and then he scoffed and turned away, stalking back into the depths of the town.

When night fell, Jarl Haakon opened the Great Hall doors to the fleet of Vikings for a feast congratulating them on their victory and safe return. (Y/N) had found himself sitting beside a pretty redhead, although he couldn't recall if her name was Ingrid or Isgerd. She wore a long flowy green dress with white designs stitched on the cuffs and collarbone. Her wavy hair had been tied back by multiple braids with a couple of strands falling over her face that she occasionally brushed away when speaking. Talking with her was easy, for the most part. His attention would automatically drift away from her when he would feel someone staring at him, even if he knew it was Harald watching him from across the room. Liv and Leif sat together at the table beside (Y/N)'s, warily glancing at each other and whispering about the two. Leif had kept the day's attire on but Liv had changed into a long red dress and finally released her hair from its typical updo. Sitting a ways away from her brothers, Freydis chatted animatedly with a handsome young man, appearing rather interested in him as she laughed and leaned toward him curiously.

Drums began to be hit and (Y/N) turned his eyes away from Harald and onto the woman walking down between the tables, the small chimes on her red outfit clinging together with each step she took. Lifting her hands, she hollered. "Hail Prince Harald and Leif Eriksson, the heroes of London! West over water they fared to tear the English crown from the head of Æthelred!" Cheers filled the hall as Vikings lifted their cups in the air. "Or was it the head from the crown? By the man who brought London Bridge down! And this Prince of Greenland, across oceans he went, to face hundreds of men in the village of Kent!"

"Hundreds? More like thousands!" Leif called confidentially from his seat, laughing as the hall erupted in laughter and cheers.

Harald lifted his up high in the air, his bitterness and hurt gone for the moment. "Get your story right, Skalde!" He piped in playfully, a laugh rumbling in his chest.

"I think you better get up and tell it then," Skalde responded with a large smile, encouraging the hall to chant for Harald to rise. Even Leif chimed in, chanting Harald's name and slamming his fists against the table. (Y/N) felt a smile tug at his lips, fingers gently dragging along his cup as Harald gave in and stood up, stepping onto his seat and then onto the table. 

"The story I want to tell is not of me." He shouted over the chants, waiting for the hall to quiet down before continuing. "It is of a group of friends: The Greenlanders. Leif Eriksson, my friend. My brother. Captain through the storms of wind and mutiny. He settled rough waters and made the passage calm." 

"Brother." Leif raised his cup to Harald in thanks.

"And Liv-" Harald continued, grinning when Liv's head snapped in his direction with wide eyes. "-who left her blood in the river along with the bridge! This is her story." Harald stepped down from the table, gazing over the hall. Liv bowed her head bashfully at the cheers that followed, a flustered smile spreading across her face. 

"And (Y/N) Eriksson. A man who would carry the weight of the world on his shoulders if it meant helping his brother and sister. I admire his strength and kindness... and I certainly wish to never face him on the battlefield." Harald kept his voice even, listening to laughter and cheers that spread at his words. (Y/N) rubbed his thumb over the rim of his cup and met Harald's fond gaze. He didn't wish to admit the way his heart seemingly picked up when he looked into his eyes. Harald's lips spread into a small smile. 

"This is his story too. As it is Ulf's, Skarde's, and Njal's. Greenlanders who came to pay a debt for one, but stayed to help save us all. They met Syn in Odin's Great Hall, and she welcomed them into Valhalla. They are the true heroes of London. They are who we celebrate tonight! For without the Greenlanders, London Bridge would still be standing, but we would not." Harald lifted his cup once more. "The Greenlanders!"

Rising from his seat and picking up his cup, Leif raised his cup as well. "Skol!" At his words, the drums picked up and people stood to mingle and chat, sharing laughter and exchanging tales. (Y/N) excused himself from the redhead's side and made his way through the hall, feeling Harald's eyes on him as he approached the fireplace. Predictably, Harald appeared at his side in seconds.

"Thank you for what you said, Harald. You didn't have to." (Y/N) muttered and looked at the prince. Harald hummed, lifting his hands and warming them with the heat of the fire. The fire cast a golden glow on him, making his dark eyes appear a shade or two lighter. 

"Your friends deserved to have their names known. They were heroes too." Harald said, lifting his gaze to look at him, his brows gently raising and gaze softening. "And I am deeply sorry for everything and everyone you've lost." 

(Y/N) regarded the prince with a sorrowful smile. While his heart remained heavy, he knew his friends were where they were meant to be. The Gods had willed it and (Y/N) could only be thankful for the time they had spent together, even if a few of those times had been filled with arguments and petty insults. But they had remained loyal to him and his siblings through thick and thin. Sighing softly, (Y/N) tilted his head and parted his lips to speak, only for the sound of steel hitting a shield to break his thought process and draw his attention toward the center of the hall. Stepping away from Harald, he spotted one of Jarl Haakon's shieldmaidens standing protectively in front of Leif with her sword pointed directly at Arne. 

"He's no hero!" Arne seethed with bottled-up fury and hate, staring directly at Leif. "He's a Christian lover and probably a Christian himself!" Arne spat, moving wildly against the two men restraining him. Leif made no move to defend himself. Instead, he stood behind the shieldmaiden silently... Guilty. (Y/N) frowned.

"Leave before I banish you." The shieldmaiden ordered, keeping her sword trained on the blonde man, even as the other men escorted him out of the hall. (Y/N) watched them shove Arne out of the hall, their bodies blocking him from entering. After cursing them a few more times, Arne disappeared into the night.

"Come to my lodgings, (Y/N). I'll have a hot bath prepared for you." Harald whispered into his ear, the touch of his hand fleeting against (Y/N) back before he disappeared into the crowd. (Y/N) stared after him, the buzz of the feast picking back up despite the brief interruption. The music grew louder, more encouraging for people to dance and mingle. But the festivities had been enough for the Greenlander. And with some hesitance, he found himself following in Harald's direction.

Even after his unnecessarily cold words, Harald had invited him back to his room. And (Y/N) foolishly accepted. (Y/N) winced at his own inconsistency. It wasn't like him to be so... impulsive. So reckless. Harald would surely think of him as easy. (Y/N) slowed down in front of the inn, staring at the open door. The cold outside nipped at his cheeks and ears but he barely felt it. Nothing could beat Greenland's winter. Grinding his teeth and cursing himself, he stepped inside and questioned the innkeeper who provided little directions to Harald's room. 

Why was he doing this?

Why was he standing there before his door?

Why did he knock instead of leaving?

Questions that repeated over and over in his head as the heavy footsteps grew near and the door opened, warmth flooding out from the room and coaxing him inside. (Y/N) didn't look at Harald when he walked in, instead, he eyed at the tub toward the back of the room with steam rising out of it. The door creaked when it closed behind him, sending a small jolt up his body at the sound. (Y/N) knew he could easily change his mind and Harald would let him leave. But he stayed.

"You have your own tub?" (Y/N) asked, feeling his skin burn. From shame? Embarrassment? Want? He couldn't tell. Those feelings had slowly grown muddled. Growing closer to the wooden tub, his fingers danced along the rim of the tub, the warm water rather enticing after a short trek through the chilly night.

"Jarl Haakon treats her friends well," Harald said, his voice suddenly closer. His arms moved around his waist, hand pulling and tugging on strings. When his clothes grew loose, (Y/N) gently pushed Harald's hands away and slipped the rest of the clothes off, stepping into the tub and lowering down into the water. He shivered and pulled his legs toward his chest, a soft chuckle escaping him as the heat hugged his tired muscles. Harald picked up his clothes, setting them on a chair, and gingerly taking the dagger to place it on top of the clothes. 

(Y/N) pulled his hand toward his chest, palm pressing against his scar. It ran from his left shoulder down to his right hip. His attacker hadn't dragged the tip of his sword down his body to cut him open, only to torture him with the pain. The scar had faded considerably over the years but the memories remained clear and vivid. His head lifted when he heard a chair scraping along the ground. Harald set the stool down and sat on it, leaning his arms on the rim of the tub with a rag in hand. 

"Tell me about Greenland," Harald said softly, dipping the rag into the water and gently rubbing it against (Y/N)'s cheek. "What's it like living there?"

"It's cold and dry. We get a lot of snow.. so much sometimes you can barely tell it's summer or spring. But I like the snow. I like the cold. But snow and cold mean the animals that live among us are sparse and hard to capture. It's... challenging." (Y/N) sighed, skimming his hand over the surface of the water. "To survive, you have to be less of a man, less of a human. You have to become a predator. Even if it's just to catch a cunning little hare or take down an ox. And to make things harder, your neighbors aren't your only competition. You've got polar bears roamin' about and once they catch a whiff of you... They'll follow you for hours on end and because they blend in, you'll never see them coming. It's... terrifying, how such a large creature can sneak up on you. But, Gods, they're beautiful."

"Beautiful yet terrifying... Reminds me of someone." Harald cooed, dragging the rag down along (Y/N)'s jawline. Droplets ran down his neck, mixing with sweat and grime from the weeks at sea. Hooking his finger under (Y/N)'s chin, he tilted the Greenlander's head toward him and gently scrubbed the other side of his face. (Y/N)'s lips curled up. 

"Is this always how you get your peen wet?" A laugh slipped past his lips when Harald's brows raised at his crudeness, his movements temporarily pausing. "You offer hot baths to anyone you find pretty?"

"They typically like me for my charm-"

"Charm?"

"Yes, my charm." Harald drawled and dropped his hand, the water rippling from the contact. "If it wasn't for my charm, why did you lay with me?"

"You were available. And desperate." (Y/N) shrugged lightly and slipped the rag from Harald's fingers, squeezing the water out of it and rubbing it against his shoulders. 

"You make me feel like that," Harald sighed, fingers brushing against the top of (Y/N)'s knee. "You make me feel many things."

Shifting in the water, (Y/N) moved toward the prince and propped his arms on either side of Harald's. His heart danced around in his chest, threatening to burst out at any given moment but he shoved down the jittery feeling in his veins instead, he bumped his nose against Harald's and gazed into his darkening eyes. (Y/N) leaned back and found Harald leaning after him, chasing his lips in hopes of stealing a kiss. "Careful, prince. You may fall in." 

"You are no bear.." Harald breathed, a smirk appearing on his face. "You are a fox."

                    ➸        ➸       ➸       ➸       ➸       ➸

The shieldmaidens entered the makeshift arena in a single line for Freydis's test. She was last among them, having exchanged the blue tunic for their signature yellow. Leif, Liv, (Y/N), and Harald watched from the sidelines as the shieldmaidens turned to face Jarl Haakon and dropped to one knee, simultaneously speaking in Norse. Rising up again, the women spread out and Freydis handed her sword over. She needed to prove her strength against the group. She had to mark her place among them by defeating them in combat. Silence fell over them as Freydis stepped back into the center, scanning each face and bracing herself for the first attack.

The first woman charged, taking advantage of Freydis's back being turned to her. Expecting the attack, Freydis turned just in time to dodge the swing. The woman stumbled and Freydis took advantage of her momentary daze to kick her forward onto the ground before landing a solid punch to her jaw, thus marking the woman out of the fight. Jarl Haakon smiled proudly at her first win.

Two shieldmaidens charged neck, one swinging her sword and the other shoving forward her spear. Freydis dodged the swing of the sword and angled her body to avoid the spear. Thinking fast on her feet, she grabbed the spear and aimed the end of it toward the woman with the sword before slamming her body against the second woman and loosening her grip on the spear. Taking the spear from her, Freydis swung at both women, using quickness and good aim to knock both women down without seriously injuring them. 

Twirling the spear in her hand, she aimed at the next woman who charged and flung it forward but the woman raised her shield in time to block it. Scrambling to pick up the discarded sword and shield on the ground, Freydis faced her again, only for another woman to come up at her side and use her own shield to force Freydis onto the ground. She blocked the woman's hits while on her back before swinging her leg at the back of her ankles, effectively causing her opponent to fall onto her knees. She rolled out of the way to avoid Freydis's sword and the two women used the distance to get back on their feet. They charged at each other, grunting and huffing as metal hit metal until Freydis got her sword to the woman's neck, forcing her to surrender.

But she didn't have time to breathe before being charged at again. Her new opponent, the woman that had saved Leif from Arne's attack the previous night, didn't spare her, swinging her sword and blocking with her shield. They broke apart for a moment, their chests heaving with pants and then they charged again, swinging and blocking until the woman brought her shield to Freydis's knee, causing her to cry out and lean over instinctively. Using the distraction, the woman swung her shield at Freydis's and pushed her down on the ground. She allowed Freydis the time to get back on her feet but didn't hold back, swinging at her again and again. Freydis got a solid hit against the woman's side but she didn't even bat an eye, slamming her shield against Freydis's and causing it to bounce back and hit her face. Freydis cried out as she fell back, rolling over onto her stomach and cupping her face in pain.

"Get up!" Jarl Haakon shouted, encouraging chants erupting in the crowd. Freydis staggered to her feet and tossed her shield and sword aside. When she turned around, (Y/N) grimaced at the sight. Blood oozed from her temple, dripping down the side of her face, and her bloodied lips parted to suck in gulps of air. Freydis went as far enough to unclasp the armor and toss it aside. She continued to stumble around and her opponent frowned, turning to look at Jarl Haakon with an arched brow. When Jarl Haakon remained silent, the woman sighed deeply and looked back at Freydis. Fingers brushed against (Y/N) and he felt someone hook their finger around his. Glancing down, he noticed Harald's hand and looked up at him. Harald gave him a reassuring smile.

With the fight still on, the woman charged and swung but Freydis ducked. Dodging another swing, she lifted her foot and slammed it against the shield, pushing her back. The woman charged again and Freydis allowed the sword to brush against her arm in order to get closer to her and push the shield aside, shoving the woman back again. Despite stumbling on her feet, she dodged another swing and spun around, grasping the woman's arm and stomping on her leg, forcing her down on one knee and holding her wrist. The woman dropped her sword only to catch it with her free hand. Freydis quickly backed away, ducking from two swings before charging forward and slamming her body against the woman's and taking the sword from her weakened grasp. Cutting her side and watching her fall back on her knees, Freydis held the blade to her throat before she could get up. 

Once Jarl Haakon nodded her approval, Freydis lowered her sword and offered the woman her hand, helping her up on her feet. The two grinned at each other as the crowd cheered and shieldmaidens approached Freydis to congratulate her. Freydis panted, soaking in the cheers and her victory before lowering down to one knee when Jarl Haakon walked toward her with a proud smile. 

"Freydis Eriksdottir. What promise do you make?"

"I promise on Odin to protect Kattegat to the death." Freydis breathed.

The woman beside Jarl Haakon took Freydis's sword out of its sheath and held it before her as Jarl Haakon took a handful of dirt and then wiped her other hand on Freydis's blood. Smearing the blood and sprinkling the dirt on the sword, she spoke. "The body and Earth are one." Taking the sword into her hands, she held it and stared down at her. "As you protect me, so I you. Rise." She said and Freydis took, taking her sword back and taking the shield offered to her.

Turning to look at the crowd, Freydis grinned. "Yeah!" She screamed into the day, causing the crowd to erupt into cheers and hollers. Liv excitedly jumped up and down, cheering for Freydis and laughing. (Y/N) watched the pure euphoria on Freydis's face as she continued to scream and thrust her sword upward. She belonged in Kattegat as a warrior, he knew that now. And when Harald wrapped his fingers around his wrist, he wondered if he belonged somewhere, at someone's side. 

[woofnoble]

My Dog Had A Stroke

Two days ago my dog had a spinal stroke and the total bill is going to cost me and my family 20,000 dollars. She's expected to make a full recovery but the bill hit hard, and we need help! If you can't donate please reblog, we really need the support. More info on page!

[agirlwithdemonblood]

Through the Shadows: Chapter 27 - Letting Love In

Pairings: Dean Winchester x Reader

Series Summary: A hunter's Journey through despair and recovery is guided by Dean Winchester's unwavering love, leading her to reclaim her strength, voice and hope for their shared future.

Chapter Summary: Y/N finally has the courage to let Dean love her, and love him back.

Warnings: SMUT! Allllll dirty ;) Enjoy.

Series Masterlist here!! & Main masterlist here!

The following week, Y/N & Sam forged a plan to surprise Dean, eager to reveal the fruits of her hidden efforts. Sam drove her to the lake, the one that held memories of her first kiss with Dean. The location felt symbolic, a perfect setting for what she was about to share.

As Sam set up a blanket by the water and set Y/N down, she couldn't help but feel a rush of anticipation mixed with nerves. This place, where love had first blossomed between them, was now the backdrop for a moment that could change everything.

Dean arrived home to find the bunker unusually quiet. When he saw Sam, the look on his brother's face was enough to send a jolt of panic through him. "Where is she?" he demanded, fear clouding his eyes.

Sam reassured him quickly, "She's at the lake. You need to go there, now."

Dean's heart raced as he sped towards the lake, his mind a whirlwind of anxiety & hope. When he arrived and saw the blanket set up and Y/N sitting patiently, his panic eased but confusion lingered. He rushed over, his eyes searching hers.

"What's going on?" he asked, his voice a mixture of concern and surprise.

Y/N smiled up at him, her heart pounding with a mix of fear and excitement. With trembling hands, she wrote on her whiteboard. "Take me into the water."

Dean's worry melted into laughter as he complied, lifting her gently and carrying her into the cool embrace of the lake. The water lapped around their bodies, a familiar comfort that only intensified her feelings.

She leaned in closely, lips pressing to his with such passion. She could feel his smile grow as he kissed her back, hand resting on her cheek.

Pulling back slightly, she steeled herself for what she had been practicing for the past two weeks. "I... love... you." she whispered, her voice raspy and hesitant, yet filled with raw emotion.

Dean froze, his eyes wide with shock, mouth gaping open and closed as he tried to process what he just heard. "What did you just say?" he asked, voice trembling.

She cleared her throat and repeated the words, a little stronger this time, "I love you."

Tears welled up in Dean's eyes, spilling over as he laughed, his joy overwhelming. "You talked!" he exclaimed, spinning her around in the water, his laughter ringing out in pure exhilaration. "You did it!"

He pulled Y/N closer, his forehead resting against hers, his voice choked with emotion. "I love you too." he whispered, his words a relief to her soul.

She leaned closer, kissing him more passionately as tears welled in her eyes. This is what she wanted, what she needed, this is what she was afraid of the entire time.

His hand moved to her hair, deepening the kiss, panting against her lips, hands gripping her tightly. She moaned against his lips sending a deep shiver to rush up and down his back.

She hesitated, but moved her hand lower in the water, slipping underneath his jeans. He gasped in response, lips leaving hers as he stared into her eyes. "W-What are you doing?"

She smirked flirtatiously, fingers crawling deeper until she reached his already hardened erection beneath his jeans. His head rolled back as a deep groan escaped from his throat successfully sending chills down Y/N's body.

His hand moved to her wrist, holding her in place, chest heaving. "Wait, are you sure about this?"

She leaned closer, pecking him on his lips before whispering the words again, "I love you."

He smiled and nodded, lips crashing into hers over and over until they moved to her neck. Her hand moved back down, gripping his rock hard cock and stroking up and down, melting at the way he gasped in shock.

He was already close, just the mere touch from her, the look spread across her face was enough to send him over the edge. He gripped her wrist and pulled it away, wrapping it around his back as his hand held her tightly to him, one of his hands moving against her stomach and then to her bottoms.

She smiled nervously as he undid her pants and tossed them onto the store, her heart pounding when his fingers traced over her belly, moving teasingly slow. He checked her eyes, making sure everything was okay, that he wasn't crossing any boundaries.

She nodded as his hand dipped lower, fingers brushing against her clit gently, causing her to gasp and wrap her arms around him tighter. He couldn't help the groan that escaped his chest when his fingers slid inside her, feeling the tightness between her legs and the softness against him.

His pace was slow at first, testing the waters, getting her prepared, but the way she moaned in his ear, the way she scratched his back spurred him on, causing him to move faster and push deeper inside of her.

She was falling apart beneath him, each thrust of his fingers causing her body to shake and quiver, experiencing pleasure she's never felt before. She was tightening around him, and he could barely handle it, his heart was pounding, cock twitching at the sight of her like this, he wanted nothing more than to keep going, to fuck her into next week, to never stop giving her the pleasure she deserved.

She was there, right at the edge, when he slowed his movements, thumb moving to her clit to rub the nub roughly, aching at the way she twitched. "What do you want, baby? You want to cum on my fingers like this?"

Her eyes widened at his words, not realizing his mouth could sound so dirty and sexy at the same time. She reached down, grabbing his cock once again to silently tell him what she wanted.

His smirk grew as he nodded, one hand moving slowly as he undid his belt and pushed off his jeans and boxers, adjusting Y/N's body so her legs wrapped around his hips. His eyes flickered to hers, quietly asking for reassurance that this was okay, that this wasn't too much, too quickly.

Her smile was the most relaxed he's ever seen it as she reached down, stroking his cock a few times and settling it in-between her legs. He held back the whimper that wanted to escape at the heat between her legs, and one hand moved to the back of her neck, holding her in place as he got ready.

He kissed her lips deeply, holding her tighter as he thrust up into her, swallowing the moan that erupted in her mouth. He gasped at her reaction, craving each sound, each breath, every second of feeling himself so deeply inside of her was driving him crazy, and he wanted more.

Her thighs tightened around him as much as she could, head arched back as he kissed her neck, not able to hold back the sounds that crashed out of his throat, filling the open air.

"F-Fuck sweetheart, you feel so good." He groaned, and it only spurred her on, causing her to clench around him. She thought to herself there was no way he could become more attractive, until a whimper escaped his lips and his eyes shone with pleasure.

"God, fuck, I love you." his voice rang out, grip tightening around her neck as he pushed impossibly deeper, desperate to hold onto this feeling forever.

His hand moved lower, rubbing her clit roughly as he thrust into her, watching in amazement at the sounds that escaped her mouth, the look on her face, the heat in the air.

He was so close, he could have came inside of her minutes ago but he held on, not wanting to stop, never wanting this moment to pass but every second he held back was another second he could feel his face straining and his chest clutching, it was impossible, too much to bear but he tried.

His forehead fell against hers, struggling to catch his breath, and he knew he needed to let go. His eyes dragged up, desperation filling his features. She only smiled back, mouthing to him, "Harder."

He smiled lazily and pulled her closer, tighter, as his movements became erratic and messy, fucking up into her so hard that he thought she was going to break, but he loved it, loved her.

Her moans became chaotic, loud and breathless as she approached the finish line, so close, ready to fall apart beneath him. "F-Fuck baby, okay I'm sorry I can't hold on, please, fuck, cum for me." he practically begged causing her to clench harder, gripping his hair in her fingers tightly, the pain shooting through him only making him harder.

She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, the orgasm wracking through her body so hard that she was shaking, but he held her for dear life. Finally, she let go, the coil inside her breaking as it shot right through her, watching Dean follow closely behind.

"Jesus Christ Y/N, Fuckkk.." He moaned louder than intended, as he spilled himself inside of her, feeling the relief and exhaustion hit him quickly.

Their movements slowed as they nearly collapsed against each other, the air filled with their deep panting. Dean's hands moved to Y/N's face, staring into her eyes with such love. "Are you okay?"

She nodded and pecked his lips, "Okay." she whispered, hugging him tightly to her body.

The two of them remained in the lake, holding each-other as the world seemed to fall away. The water, the setting sun, and the warmth of Dean's embrace became a cocoon of safety and love.

For the first time in forever, she allowed herself to believe in the future, in the possibility of happiness, and in the strength of the love that had guided her back from the edge.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Chapter 28 coming soon stay tuned!

Like, comment, and reblog, feedback is my fuel 💕

[chronic-ghost]

Chapter 10 of Recovery Road

chapter rating: E (18+)

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

word count: 31K (part 1: 14K + part 2: 17K)

chapter summary: how they find each other again . . . and everything else

chapter warnings/tags: discussions of mental health, medication discussions, therapy (so much therapy), everything about theater and theatre production is nothing but fake lies, and yes lots of smut

a/n: there's a longer, sappy-er reblog coming but i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came along with me on this journey. this wouldn't have been possible without you and i hope to see you again soon!

▲ Series Masterlist | Previous | Part 2 + Epilogue

▲ AO3 Link (posted there as a single chapter if you like to read it all at once)

▲ Taglist Form

“Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.” - Jane Austen, Persuasion 

SEPTEMBER 

“And so we can see that with the abstract paintings, color theory, as well as a fundamental understanding of color under light, is more important than ever. We can have a more immediate reaction to abstract art precisely because it digs at our unconscious thought. We see what we want to see and that can give us perspective on our own lives as well as that of the artist.” 

One hand jumps up from the back of the crowd. 

“Yes?”

“Is it true that Van Gogh ate yellow paint because he thought it would make him happier?”

You nod. “He did. But Van Gogh was a deeply disturbed man and while many of his best works come from his Yellow period, art historians have debated for decades about whether or not the madness was worth the beauty.”

The same boy in the back, blonde, lanky, frowns out of frustration, not boredom. 

“So he ate yellow paint and then painted yellow things?” 

“It could be said that he wanted to literally take what he was feeling inside and put it on the canvas.” 

Another boy, bigger than the first and clearly used to all eyes on him, snickers. He points to a frame at the end of the salon wall. 

“So, what, the artist who did that one wanted to get their blood all over everything?” 

You cross your arms, unphased by yet another teenage smartass. “What does color theory tell us about the color red?”

“It’s associated with anger,” a young girl at the front says with confidence. “Or more often, love. Intense emotions.”

The same jokester in the back chuckles, louder this time. “Wow, so that guy must have really been in luuuurve to paint that.” He pinches the waist of a girl next to him and she wriggles away, giggling. 

“Actually,” you say, straightening up, “I had just come out of a horrific break up and was trying to process grief, trauma, and heartbreak unlike anything I’d experienced before.” 

That successfully manages to silence them all. It usually does.

“You painted that, miss?” The girl at the front asks again, her eyes wide in awe. 

You smile at her. You remember being her age, fourteen, and thinking the world of art, theater was all so exciting. 

“I did. Am I a vain bitch for putting my own paintings in my gallery? Probably, but for some reason, people like to buy them and I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to fund another kitchen renovation in my home.” 

There’s a surprised chuckle amongst the students. Nothing endeared you faster to teenagers by some light cursing. 

“What other paintings are yours, miss?” The blonde boy asks, eyes suddenly leaping from wall to wall, trying to spot similar brush strokes. You don’t miss when the girl looks at him, her cheeks red. 

“Miss Lorraine only has a handful of her paintings in this gallery.” Marie steps forward from around one of the salon walls, her trusty iPad clutched against her chest. “If you are really interested in her work, I highly recommend going to see her charcoal sketches upfront. But this is the end of the tour. Your teacher has given you fifteen more minutes to view any last pieces or purchase a souvenir, but then it’s back on the bus. ” 

The gaggle of high school students disperses, an excitement buzzing as a few surge towards the charcoal exhibit. 

You roll your eyes, as bodies flow around you, and flick your best friend of the past ten years on her earlobe.

“That was supposed to be a secret.” 

“Oh, whatever.” Marie bats your hand away. “It’s honestly some of your best work. You should be proud.” 

“This is meant to be a business, not a housing facility for my ego.”

“Well, the second your ego starts to suck money out of this place, I’ll let you know.” She taps her iPad with her stylus. “Speaking of which, Andrew should be by in about ten minutes to discuss that piece he wants for his new show.” 

You groan, falling behind Marie as she leads you to the front desk, where some of the students are purchasing posters of the art they liked. You watch as the sales girl rings up a few posters and some postcards, as Marie continues to scroll through her tablet, always thinking of the next thing, the next move. 

“This had better be the last one,” you sigh, particularly pleased when you see someone buy a postcard of your red painting. “Why am I starting to think this damn show is going to be the death of me?”

Marie scoffs as she leans forward onto the corner of the sales counter, your bark always worse than your bite. “If you’re so concerned, think about what the notoriety of designing a set for an off-broadway production will do for this gallery.” 

“Does it always have to come back to this dump?” You smile at her, knowing you are the only one who is allowed to tease her precious child. 

“Duh.” Marie sticks out her tongue at you. 

Despite the absolute horror you felt about starting your own gallery three years ago, you can’t say it hasn’t been a success. A reasonably-priced gallery in Brooklyn, you worked to showcase small local artists who needed a leg-up in the industry. Not that breaking into the art world yourself had come easy, but with your old connections in Hollywood and Marie’s in the music scene, you recognized the sheer number of doors open and available to the both of you. The community received the opening of the gallery better than expected, given that it was occasionally used as a center and study hall. It was small, quiet, and unassuming, but it was yours. Yours and Marie’s. You wouldn’t be here without her. Quite literally.

“Once you’re done sulking, we have a meeting with a local council member about expanding the property at two, then that new artist from the Bronx is coming by to measure his space.” She scrolls through your day, with the sharp eye of someone who never missed a beat. You told her she didn’t have to wear that crisp white shirt and pleated black pants, but she rolled her eyes at that: “I’m going to be thirty-three in two weeks. I cannot wear plaid shirts to work every day.”

Same old Marie. Using any small excuse to dress up. Unlike her, you had zero compunctions against wearing old concert shirts and paint-splattered jeans to “the office”. Except, you conceded, on days like this where it was tour after tour, client after client. You attempted something “professional” for her sake, but these heels pinched your feet and the emerald green top seemed to draw the eye of every teenage boy who walked by you. 

“Ah, shoot,” Marie says suddenly, standing up right from her iPad. She glances at her watch. “Andrew asked to see a print of King Square and I totally forgot to grab it.”

“Want me to get it?”

She waves you away. “Nah, mingle. I’ll be out in a second.”

You smile as she struts away. Again you wonder what you possibly did to earn a friend like her, what you did to earn her devotion for a decade of friendship. It was as if the universe had been steering you away from all other friendships, keeping you a friend-virgin, until you met Marie. The One. The girl, now woman, who had saved your life more times than you could count, even before she became the manager of the gallery. You hoped to spend the rest of your life proving to her that she had chosen well. 

The class of teenagers has thinned. Only a few remain to chat with friends, or check out one last piece they might have missed, a plastic bag with a rolled-up poster in their hands. The noise in the gallery dulls, as the patter of feet against the wood grain and the sound of eager voices falls away. You hear the front door swing close and the room goes silent. You inhale, the saw-dust smell of the space always soothing to you, even before you turned it into a gallery.

This place felt like a destination, a culmination, a breakthrough after so many dark nights. You poured your heart and soul and nearly every dime you had into building this space and its community. You could wander through the salon walls, easily identifying the artwork done from different points in your life, what each of them meant to you, by the colors or mediums used. You experimented a lot after rehab, trying every creative outlet you could find until something stuck. Hell, you even attempted cross-stitching – Marie still laughed herself silly every time it was brought up. 

Early on, you processed a lot through clay, through sculpture. It wasn’t very good, but it gave you somewhere to put your rage, your frustration, those hot emotions that made you want to squish warm goo. You could never make bowls or vases – instead just absurd creations with teeth and wide eyes. 

Next came the paintings that covered entire walls. You’d come home after spending hours in a rented workspace, covered in paint, hot and tired and teary, but relieved. The scratchy ball in your chest loosened after those hours of working yourself into exhaustion. That was also around the time when you had started to process decade old feelings and memories regarding your parents with your therapist. It all went hand in hand. 

It was only recently that you’d turned to charcoal and your canvases shrunk. There was something hypnotic about charcoal as a medium, the stark contrast of black and white, of the delicate shading required to give depth and offer light, the way it stuck to your palms, your forearms as if the subject you sketched lingered on you. 

You turn a corner and are welcomed by the sketchings of dozens of artists who also worked in charcoal. The exhibit is called The After Effects of Flame and the artists had completely risen to the challenge. The soft paper, the light etching, it makes the space beautiful, quiet, warm. 

But your eyes fall to a single piece across the room, your heart thrumming in your chest. 

He had shown up in your work in prior years, of course, as much as you tried to swallow him and the memories down. A flash of the curve of his chin, the sharp angle of his nose, the endless brown of his eyes – they were there as you sorted through the cracked pieces of your life in rehab and continued on in therapy. As you moved on from that night in the hospital. 

As you moved away from him.

But you still found slivers of him, splinters that dug into your skin against the wood grain. Marie said it wasn’t noticeable, that only you saw those flashes because of what you had been through, what he had meant to you. But he was there, inside you somewhere, after ten years, and he became a different sort of ache. What he had been to you was never clear, never given structure or form, and perhaps that was why closure had been so hard to find: there was no road map to moving past whatever Dieter Bravo had meant to you. What he had become. What he still, in the fitful state between dreaming and awake, was to you. 

He wasn’t haunting you; you had never known a silent ghost. But he lingered, like the remnants of last night’s perfume or the body warmth of a loved one after they’ve left the bed. You saw him in everyone and in everything and, simply put, Dieter wasn’t going away. 

Much like with grief, you learn to hold this part of you that held him and let the memories, the good and the bad, pass over you without judgment. 

The world is hard enough on you as it is, your therapist told you, don’t add to it by beating yourself up.

So you let him stop by, hang around if he wanted to. He kept you company as you sketched and drew and created in a way you had never experienced as an actress. This is what you were meant to do. It just took you twenty-two years and a decade of heartbreak to get here. 

You stepped closer to the centerpiece of the exhibit. 

A simple sketch, nothing outwardly advanced or difficult, but it is detailed. Thoughtful, introspective. It comes from an image that appears to you in the morning light of your empty bed, or as you fade into the welcoming arms of sleep. It feels like it should be a memory, but if it is, you don’t know when or where it sits in your history. Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel real. Other times, it’s too real, the added weight in your bed almost palpable – you can smell him in the air, you could reach out and touch the curve of his shoulder – and you blink, the image is gone and you’re alone. Your outstretched hand floats through empty air, the tears stinging so sharply in your throat you can’t breathe for a moment. 

To anyone else, the sketch is that of a man, naked, sleeping partially on his stomach, partially on his side, turned away from the viewer. His arm curls beneath his head, under the pillow, and the sheet slips low on his hips, the turn of the light dictating whether or not the exposure is playful or sensual. The waves of his hair fan out across the pillow, tuck around the back of his neck in a way that begs to be teased, tugged on. To everyone else, it’s a loving image of relaxation, of peace, of quiet, joy. 

To you, it’s the image of Dieter that visits you most frequently.

You stand before it now and try to find that solace, that imaginary morning where domesticity dripped into your bed with him, the tension it takes from your bones. But you can’t find it. The day is coming up again, the first blush of fall breathing down the New York streets, and like a thready hangnail you forget to cut, you find pain with every movement. 

He sits, melancholic, in your heart. I know, darling, I know. 

Unconsciously, you rub a hand up your shoulder, unease mounting. You rub again, and something catches in the corner of your eye.

Someone is still here. 

Tan coat nearly the same color as the floorboards, the man somehow blended in amongst the cream paper of the charcoal sketches. His knee-length coat looks expensive, the white Converse do not. His head is tilted back, looking up, inspecting one of the pieces. 

Okay, yes, you saw him in passing on the streets – a flash there, a blur here – but this is getting ridiculous. 

You stare, immobile and silent, at the dark curls that catch against his collar. At the broad shoulders that curl inwards. This is not a ghost, a specter. This is not a haunting. He even stands, holds his weight, just like – no, no, this is just desperation, you’re overworked and tired and – 

Oh, fuck, the black rings –

“Darling!”

Your head snaps to the front of the gallery, seconds before you are nearly tackled to the ground by your friend and long-time benefactor Andrew Young. He had started to go gray at twenty-five, and never to be outdone by the ravages of time, he dyed his entire head silver. It’s been this color for years, blinding and shining, the only thing he changed was how it was styled. Nearly forty, he’s shaved the sides and let the top grow long. It flops in his face as he pulls back, grinning from ear to ear. 

“This looks fantastic!” He beams around your latest exhibit. “Baby girl, I am so proud of you!” 

You drag out a smile, your lips catching on your teeth, the buzzing in the back of your mind at a low hum.

“T-thank you, Andrew. I– uh,” you blink up at him, “sorry, it’s been a day and I haven’t eaten. I’m just a little dizzy.”

Andrew frowns and throws an arm over you. “You work too hard – has anyone told you that? And that, quite frankly, I simply cannot have. You see, I can’t do the set without you, and then I can’t do blocking and stage production, and then the damn thing itself is off the rails. Do you see my problem?” The designs you had been planning are back in your office, some initial sketches drawn up and laid out based on Andrew’s requests over the phone. You smile, settle, that gnawing sense of panic easing. Andrew watches you visibly relax in his arms and he taps your nose with a bright blue nail. “Besides, it’s up to you, you New York native, to help me show my star a good time around town.”

He steps back, arm thrown out wide, and your heart plummets. 

You know who he is before he turns that thick head of hair, before you see that aquiline nose in his profile, before you are swallowed up by those endless, warm brown eyes that flicker in the corners of your heart. 

“My dear, I’d like you to meet –,”

“Natalie?”

The noise is barely human, a punched out groan from a hit that maybe broke a rib, popped an organ loose. 

The gallery has gone silent, or maybe it’s just you’re so suddenly stuffed full of memories, of rage and joy, grief and giddiness, that there’s no room for any sound. 

He’s not a ghost, not a haunting, but he is pale, the whites of his eyes bright and round and staring. 

He is not the Dieter that curls up against your neck at three in the morning when you can’t sleep, no, this one’s different. The lines marking his eyes are deeper, more pronounced – laugh lines, you remember, he’s clearly laughed a lot in the time that he’s been gone. His beard is speckled with gray, here and there, drawing your gaze to that lovely bare spot where the hair refuses to grow. His hair is longer, unkempt, and wild, and in his ear sits a small silver ring. This is not the Dieter you remember. 

He’s older and so are you. 

The coffee cup drops from his loose fingers and splatters against the ground, light brown liquid splashing everywhere. It rolls towards his shoes, but he doesn’t move. Neither do you. You couldn’t, really, even if you wanted to. 

To cope, in the beginning, in the cold, sick days in the hospital, you told yourself that he had died. That’s why he left you, why he abandoned you to get the drugs out of your system alone. To get him out of your system. It was childish and petty and completely irrational, but it soothed you in a way that made living manageable. You could walk around those long white hallways, talk, eat, exist without a giant gaping bloody hole in your chest. 

Consciously, you knew he was out there, somewhere, but in all the chunks inside of you that made up his lingering presence, the old idea, the old comfort, embedded itself. 

Seeing him now, seeing him ten years older, it’s like he had come back from the dead. You could not have made up a more surreal dream.

“Oh, hey, Andrew, I got your print and I –,”

Marie stiffens the instant she sees who’s in your line of sight. Her mouth drops open and the poster joins the spilled coffee on the ground.

“Holy fucking shit.”

Andrew’s perfectly manicured eyebrows eject into his hair. “What? You’ve met before?”

“W-we . . .” the rest of the sentence dies in your mouth, catches fire and turns to ash. “We – I . . .”

“We used to . . .” his voice is raspy, deep, as though scraping through a wet crevice. “We used to work together.”

It doesn’t sting, the casual distance in his words, because he’s right. All of you met a decade ago for work.

Marie swallows as her eyes slide to you. 

His have traced every line of your body, once, twice, and three times over. They stay on the bridge of your nose, the crook of your neck, the arch of your cheek. He’s not looked at Marie once. Given the circumstances of your last meeting, perhaps it should have been you to appear as a ghost from beyond the grave. 

“Uh, Andrew, do you mind if we give Dieter and Natalie some time alone to –,”

“No!” You both bark, a sufficient reason to tear your gaze away from the other. 

He sounds genuinely frightened. Your stomach twists. Your gaze flickers to the spill at Dieter’s feet. 

“Marie, would you get some towels for that?” She nods, completely forgetting the print and nearly sprinting for the bathroom. You swallow, set your shoulders, and turn to Andrew. “I’ve got the designs in my office. If you’d – if you’d both – like to–,”

“Natalie.” He tries again and you flinch as though his voice is a physical force that has pressed roughly against an internal bruise. At his side his hands clench over and over, mouth opening and closing, brow furrowed as if he’s scrambling through every word he knows and can’t find the right one.

Your chest suddenly squeezes so tightly you have to put a hand over your sternum to keep your ribs from collapsing into your spine. You can feel the blush breakout across your cheeks, down your chest, and you’re so confused as to why, a hot bloom of anger overwhelms everything else. 

Andrew’s eyebrows are in danger of falling off his forehead. Dieter still hasn’t looked away. 

“Okay, what am I missing here?”

“We dated.” You say. You keep your gaze on Andrew, knowing your knees would buckle if you look anywhere else. “While we worked together. We dated about ten years ago on the set of one of our movies. But,” you swallow, your knees shaking in these stupid fucking slacks, “that was a long time a-ago.” Your voice cracks and you hate it. You want to hear him say your name again, just to make sure he got it right.

“Are you sure you don’t want a second?” You nod. “Then, uh, let’s see this design.”

Dieter doesn’t follow you and Andrew. Small miracles, you suppose. As you walk Andrew through the designs, you can see out the clear office door that Dieter had taken off that rich tan coat and is using it to soak up the spill. You can’t tell by the twist in his mouth if he’s regretting that particular decision, or regretting something else, but Marie appears a moment later with a rag. His expression changes as she hands it to him, softens, that wind-swept, knocked-back-on-his-ass surprise creeping into the opening of his mouth. She says something to him – her back is to you – and his mouth flatlines. He nods and Marie turns on her heel towards the office. 

You avert your eyes from her and look back at Andrew.

“So what do you think?” 

He grins, completely obvious to the exchange outside, as he shuffles through a few papers. “As always, darling, you’ve managed to somehow crawl into my brain and recreate exactly what I’ve been looking for.” 

You won’t be designing the actual set pieces, but more of the backdrop, what the audience will see through the open windows and around stairs. Most productions use lights to fill in their backdrop, but Andrew described wanting to make the stage feel as claustrophobic as possible. “Nothing breathes in here,” he had said over the phone. “We need something sturdier than lights.” 

You have never felt claustrophobic in your office, but staring at Dieter, an older Dieter, a different Dieter, absurdly scrubbing your gallery floor spotless, the walls nestle tighter, the air stagnant and stale. You feel like you’re seeing the entire place with new eyes and you realize how dingy it is. You can’t look Marie in the eye as she opens the office door. 

“How goes it in here?” She says, surprisingly breathless. 

“Fantastic!” Andrew claps his hands together. “The theater has given us access to the space starting Monday, so I’d like to get to building this as soon as possible. The back lot is huge so I’m hoping to do all painting onsite.”

You nod, the request somewhat expected – Andrew was a bit of a micromanager. 

Behind you, Marie is humming with unfocused energy, but only in a way you can pick up on after ten years of knowing her. To Andrew, she calmly asks,

“Would you like us to bring out those other pieces you won at the fundraiser? We can have them loaded up, if you’d like.”

Andrew’s eyes widen. “Oh god, yes, please. I’m so sorry – I told you I’d pick those up weeks ago! I’ll go get the car.” 

Marie’s gaze latches onto you as he jogs past her. 

“What do you want me to do with . . .” 

You can’t find him through the window, but the floor is spotless. 

You shake your head, that slightly dizzy feeling returning. “Go help Andrew. I’ll . . .” you shrug. “Actually, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to be alone with him if you don’t want to.”

You feel your back muscles tighten. “No, no – I want – I mean, it’s fine. If I’m going to help Andrew with the designs, then we’ll have to see each other, right?”

Her look is apprehensive but she gives in. “Alright. I’ll be just a minute.”

The second the door closes, you push your palms into your eyes and groan. What the fuck is happening?

You spot him again in the charcoal exhibit, as if this is the area he is confined to. He holds his coat over his arm, the bottom half of it damp and a different color, as he slowly roves from piece to piece. He’s on the opposite side of the room from your contribution, but a part of you wants to yank it down and shove it under the floorboards. A very large part of you.

“Dieter,” you say, hands up, but your voice startles him anyway. His stark white t-shirt matches his converse, and you vaguely think, he’s going to be cold without a jacket. 

He physically steps back the closer you come. You don’t know if that hurts or if you feel relieved.

“Andrew went to get the car,” you say, your focus going in and out as you stare at his earring. “He has some paintings he won at an auction here and he hasn’t picked them up so Marie is bringing them out to the curb to load up.”

“Oh. Okay.” 

“Yeah.” You lose track of the earring as you meet his gaze. Terror, in his eyes. Concern, worry. 

Sadness. Yeah, you definitely know that one. 

Without a single coherent thought in your head, you head for the front doors, feeling him fall in step behind you. 

You can almost hear the storm brewing in his head.

“Natalie, wait.” 

Just in front of the glass doors, you stop. On the other side, Marie and another backend worker load wrapped canvases into a Black Escalade. Even without the faint howl of wind, it looks cold outside. 

He stands in front of you, older after ten years, but no less beautiful. He’s thickened over the years, more solid, an oak instead of a stretchy willow. The thought of what it would be like to wrap yourself around his chest, feel the warmth of his stomach against yours, comes crashing down on you. The inclination is to yank it back, submerge it, but you don’t do that anymore. 

You look into his eyes and the old ache hums. You thought it was gone, despite the many times you think about him, the many versions of him that live in your memory. But it’s there. You’ve missed him.

“Look, I’m sorry – for, um, the surprise visit.” Voice low and quiet, like trying to pass on a secret, his thumb spins through his rings distractedly. “Andrew said he had some errands to run around the city a-and the names didn’t register with me . . . a-after all this time.” He swallows, glancing at your shoulder for a second before finding your eyes again. “Had I known it was yours, I would have . . . I’d . . .” 

“You’d what?” You want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Shake him until he speaks, until he explains himself for showing up and cracking your world in half. 

His mouth crumbles, stricken with regret, and he shakes his head. “I – I –,”

Someone taps on the glass beside you and it’s your turn to jump ten feet in the air. Marie waves to you and Dieter, her arms wrapped around her chest to stave off the cold. On the street, Andrew gets into the Escalade as the worker heads for the warehouse around back. 

“For what it’s worth, it was really, really good to see you.”

Your head snaps back to him. No stutter, no unease. Confidence. This is what he feels. This is what he means to say. 

And then Dieter Bravo smiles at you. Genuinely, gently, full of wonder. He is . . . relieved.

You nod, dumbstruck, as he pushes through the glass doors and you’re following him before you know what you’re doing. The air has a bite to it, the threat of winter swirling in the gray clouds above the city streets. A particularly rough gust of wind barrels down and Marie staggers into you. Wrapping her up in your arms, you watch as he climbs into the Escalade and the passenger window rolls down.

Of course Andrew hired a driver. He leans out, his silver flop fluttering in the wind. 

“We’re having a party tomorrow, my place. A little kick-off party before production and rehearsals begin. You two should come.” 

You can’t see Dieter behind the tinted glass but you know for a fact he just tensed up. Beside you, Marie is shivering, the little thing.

“Maybe, you know? We’ve got a lot to do around the gallery before the weekend,” you say as you rub her shoulders. “It’s kind of a bad time.”

“Well, the art director is going to be there, so it might be nice to get to know him before we get started.” Andrew shrugs, seriously, unaware of the consequences of his simple request. 

Nothing about this feels like a good idea. You nod. “Lemme get Marie here back inside before her lips go blue. I’ll text you tonight about it.” 

You both step back from the curb as the Escalade eases its way into New York traffic. Your eyes stay pinned to the window until you can no longer see it in the distance. Holding her close, you kiss Marie’s cold forehead. 

“C’mon, Frosty, I think we both deserve the biggest cup of coffee our Kerig can make.” 

The hum of the potter’s wheel is loud in your concrete basement. Cold air curls in from the small open window at ground level, chilling the floor and the walls. It stings your bare toes just a bit to keep you awake and focused, your arms and hands already chilled by wet clay. You pump the wheel a bit faster as you try to thin the edge of this bowl – or what may be a bowl. This rarely ever works out, but at least the concentration forces out everything else in your brain. And, as an added bonus, the sound of the wheel also blocks the incessant buzzing of your phone.

Andrew and Marie had not stopped trying to call or text you since the gallery closed. Marie was not above simply barging into your brownstone if you had been quiet for too long, but this was a special case and she knew it. 

Hands wet, back aching from your hunched position, fingers as steady as they’ll ever be, you smooth the rippling clay as it spins. You pump the pedal steadily – too fast and the clay will spin off, but too slow and you’re basically playing with playdough. 

To your enormous surprise, the clay curves, molds between your finger tips. With every rotation, there comes a clear, distinct solid edge to this unfinished ceramic. 

Yes! Okay, just a little bit to round things out and –

Your phone alarm goes off, you jump, and the maybe-bowl deflates into a pile of squishy goo. 

“Damn it,” you mutter, even though you have only yourself to blame. You set this alarm because you needed two extra minutes to clean off before accepting the incoming Facetime. 

You just finish rinsing clay out of your nails when you hear the familiar chimes from your phone. Switching between your phone and a dry rag, you accept the call and smile into the face of a sixty-five year old woman. Blue tips on the edges of her gray hair, oversized cat-wing glasses, Dr. Carla Holstein always reminded you of Ms. Frizzle’s evil twin sister, in appearance only.

“Natalie, how the fuck are you doing?” 

Her non-existent brain-to-mouth filter was one of the things that initially endeared you to her. Talking to a shrink about your childhood trauma felt less embarrassing when the woman taking notes had electric blue nails. 

“I’d say I’m good, doc,” you smirk at her as you head up the wooden stairs of your basement, “but then I probably wouldn’t be calling you.”

“It’s like you only wanna talk about the bad things with your therapist,” she shakes her head mockingly. “As if I wouldn’t appreciate you calling with good news.” 

You chuckle as you drop onto the floor of the living room, mindful of any furniture that might get smeared with errant clay from you overalls. “I’ll save those for our weekly meetings, alright?”

“Which brings me to my next question – what the fuck is going on? You haven’t made an emergency appointment in years. What gives?” 

You set your phone up against a stack of books on the wooden table you lugged here all the way from 42nd street. Frowning, you lean against the redbrick fireplace, in a home you decorated with ugly little trinkets and overused furniture. Tidy and messy, this place holds everything that over-spilled from your brain, a place that feels like what the inside of your heart might look like, if you could see it.

“Seriously, Natalie, what is it? You’re kinda freakin’ me out.” 

“It’s Dieter.” 

Those perfectly drawn on eyebrows arch into that silvery hairline. “What? He called you?”

“He showed up at the gallery this morning.” A motormouth when left unchecked, Carla is a fantastic therapist, first and foremost. She knows exactly when to shut up and let everything pour out of you. And you hated when she did that. You scrubbed your face with your hands, groaning. “Not like that, but he’s the lead role in Andrew’s new production. I don’t know how the fuck he even found out about the part in the first place, but he swears he didn’t know that Andrew and I know each other. I know it wasn’t an intentional ambush but . . .”

“But it still feels like one?” You nod, your bottom lip snagged between your teeth.  

“It’s just . . . it doesn’t feel real, you know? Like, what are the fucking chances that everything has to line up perfectly in the universe for him to come stumbling into my gallery after ten years?”

I really thought I’d never see him again. 

“Was he actually stumbling? Is he sober?”

“No to the stumbling part, but I have no idea. I mean, I don’t think Andrew would hire someone so coked out they couldn’t remember their lines . . . but he was always so good at hiding it.”

The desperate anger in your voice makes you cringe. Even after all these years, you hate when you confess something you didn’t mean to. Dieter’s ability to mask how high or drunk he was used to scare you. Like you were never quite sure which version of him you were going to get. But then again, you were also so high and drunk you never really cared. Which was entirely the point.

“Well, that’s his shit to work out,” Carla scoffs. “I wanna talk about you. What did you feel at the time?”

“Nervous. Shocked. Surprised. Angry.” 

“Talk to me about the anger.” 

“I’m angry that I couldn’t think of a single fucking thing to say to him. Not even a good ol’ ‘fuck you’ or a ‘hello’. I’m angry that he’s back in my life in a way where I’ll have to see him again and again. And I’m fucking pissed that after all these years, after all this work, I see my ex for thirty minutes and I’m running scared to my therapist.”

Carla’s face softens. If you were in person with her, this would be the part where she lowers her clipboard and looks at you with warmth you are barely accustomed to. 

“But did you run for a drink?”

“No.”

“Did you run to the nearest street corner and pick up a bag of coke?”

“No.” 

“Then the process is working. The tools we built to manage your anxiety, to find healthy outlets for your emotions, they held up under scrutiny. You can be pissed all you want but you should also be fucking proud as hell.” 

Something hot and sharp threatens to choke you, your cheeks flushing. The word “pride” and you in the same sentence always fucking did that to you. You cough, clearing your throat.

“Okay, then what do I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how do I act around him? Do I treat him like a stranger? A friend? Can I be his friend? Should I?”

“Is that what you want? Don’t forget you always get to set the boundaries of any relationship you have. He doesn’t get to decide that for you.” 

Your toes squeeze into the plush forest green carpet beneath you, thumb pressed into your palm. 

“I . . . don’t know.” The truth of what you want sears the back of your throat, a vomit-burn on your tongue, but you keep it to yourself. “But I shouldn’t be around him, at the very least, right? Isn’t rule number one for ex-addicts to keep away from contacts in their past lives?”

“Sure,” Carla nods sagely. “Old friends can bring back old patterns. But are you saying that because you are genuinely concerned about what would happen if you reconnect or because you feel like it’s what’s expected of you as a recovering addict?”

You bite your lip harder. “I don’t know, Carla. It just seems stupid to willingly let someone like Dieter back into my life.”

“And I’m saying you don’t have to. This is a hard case because not only is he an ex, but he was also your dealer and fellow addict.” Carla leans into the camera – this is the part where she put away her clipboard entirely. “But whether or not you let Dieter back in is irrelevant. I want you to go through life with the security in yourself that your past doesn’t have to own you. You have come so far and done so well. You’re on medication and in therapy. You’ve built a great life for yourself, in spite of everything. There will always be temptations, cravings to go back, and I’m not saying you should be overconfident and assume nothing can go wrong, because it absolutely can. But you are not the old Natalie anymore, have faith in yourself. You get to decide your life.”

Once again, you are reminded of all the people who let you forget that. The anger, the hurt, decades in the making, it’s still there. But its bite is no longer cruel. 

You nod. “Thank you, Carla. I needed to hear that.”

“I know that,” she smirks. “I’m a damn good therapist.” 

“As if you’d let me forget.”

You thank her and end the call. With a sigh you lean back, staring into your living room. Back then, you grew spikes to keep back a world intent on consuming you. Dieter had been the only one to not mind the spikes, even mold around them. 

If he’s still a fuckhead, I’m gonna kick his ass.

Your stomach makes a displeased noise, irritated at being empty for so long, so you stand, taking your phone with you as you head for the kitchen.

You bring up his contact and type out your message:

Hey Andrew! Would love to come to your party. What time?

Marie did not want to go to the party for a variety of reasons.

Too busy at the gallery. Invoicing. Nothing to wear. Straight up tired. 

All valid reasons. Except they weren’t and it was bullshit and you made her go anyway. 

Groaning all the way on the subway, she won’t even look at you as the elevator doors open to Andrew’s hallway. She’s gone uncharacteristically silent as you near the party. This is not her usual “I’d rather be in my Snuggie” scowl, but something else. Her eyes are sharp, hard. 

“What?” You bump her with your elbow. “You look like you’re plotting murder.”

“Maybe I am.”

You still and she does too. It’s like you can see inside her brain. “This is about Dieter?”

“Andrew’s a good guy,” she huffs, waving at the shut door. “He doesn’t deserve Dieter’s drama and bullshit . . . and neither do you.” 

About a foot shorter than you, Marie carries enough spitfire to fill someone twice her size. You’ve never actually seen her in a fight, but you really don’t want to. Her cold pink nose from the wind outside does nothing to deter her rage.

“If it makes you feel any better, I was cleared by my therapist to be around him.” 

She harumphs. 

“Look, if I can make this much progress, this much change, shouldn’t we give him the benefit of the doubt? Maybe he can too?” 

Her scowl deepens, but the murderous glint in her eyes fade as she knocks on Andrew’s door. “You are too nice for your own good.”

You mock-gasp. “You take that back!”

Just like every other party you’ve ever been to hosted by Andrew, the vibe is intimate, warm, and friendly. You run into and greet a few of the costume designers and lighting techs he’s used in the past, ones you’ve met before by way of just hanging around Andrew during rehearsals. Andrew is very fond of adopting creatives like pets and if he likes your work, chances are he’ll use you again – something uncommon in the industry, but very welcome to those whose paychecks are never steady. However, you notice how small the gathering is. You’ve seen this open-floor plan apartment full of people, partygoers nearly stacked on top of each other during Halloween parties or on New Years Eve. But this production team is a fraction of that size. 

Private. That was the other word Andrew mentioned over the phone for the backdrop design. He wanted the space to feel private, as though you were staring into something that was none of your business. 

That feeling doesn’t persist here. Here, everyone is welcome. 

Everyone, including –

“So, are you going to tell me what the fuck is up with you and him, or am I going to have to think up a very elaborate con to get you to confess?” Andrew snakes an arm over your shoulder, a glass of sparkling water in his hand. His green eyes are full of mischief, the faint lines around his eyes crinkled with glee, as he watches for any change in your expression. Dieter sits on a chair across the room from you, leaning in to listen to a story a man on the center couch cushion is animatedly telling with his hands. To his right, and nearly touching Dieter, is a blonde, beautiful, twenty-year old actress who everyone is telling you will be on Broadway any day now. You know someone told her your name, but you can’t remember it. You swat away your annoyance.

“C’mon, I’ve never seen you look at someone like that. I’m dying to know –,”

“Is he sober?” Your frown falls on Andrew who takes a step back, his own thick eyebrows scrunched together.

“Who, Dieter?”

“No, the man on the moon.”

Andrew shrugs, the lilac pullover he wears looking soft enough to eat. “As far as I know, yeah. We met when Toby and I went to that yoga retreat in Oregon last year. It was a substance-free commune so unless he was getting drunk off the atmosphere –,”

“You’ve known him for a year?” You gape at him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why would I tell you about some actor guy I met out on a co-op in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere? I didn’t know you knew him! We didn’t reconnect until I asked him to come read for the part.”

“And why did you ask him?”

“I . . . dunno,” Andrew says, clearly ruffled. “I liked his vibe. Matched what I had in my head for the role of Sam. And he’s got the best puppy dog eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen.” 

It’s not like you can disagree so you turn away from him, scowl on the verge of pouting. 

“Oh, no, the conversation does not end here, not after you’ve given me the third degree. Who the fuck was this guy to you?”

Across the room, the blonde’s knee knocks against Dieter’s and something acidic like bile claws the back of your stomach. You take the cup of water from Andrew, other hand digging into your purse.

“We dated. It didn’t end well. In fact, just watch Recovery Road – kinda says the whole thing.” You know Andrew doesn’t deserve your ire and you’ll apologize with coffee and a biscuit from his favorite bakery, but right now, if you don’t leave right now, you’re liable to pop something. “I heard it even won an Oscar.”

It’s stupid and childish and wrong to get jealous every time he talks to a woman. 

Okay, notice the thought. Observe it. And let it go. 

You inhale, the orange ring immolating the paper around the tobacco, and exhale smoke over the railing of Andrew’s balcony. It’s a nice balcony, as far as metal balconies go in New York. It’s private, sturdy, and a perfect place to contemplate the insanity of your own life. The sunset bleeds rapturous colors, bright and loud, across the city, light reflecting like stars in the glass windows of the buildings. The sight and the smoke is enough to ease the burden in your chest, just for a moment.

It’s not like you are even really jealous. You know that feeling and this isn’t it. The pain is farther away than the immediate nip of jealousy. You follow the feeling, careful not to nick yourself too hard on old memories as you use your toolbox to sort through the undulating waves of feeling. 

But therein lies the problem. You remember.

You remember when that girl curled up next to Dieter, eyes full of adoration, used to be you. 

You tap the ash against the metal railing, feeling terribly sorry for yourself, when the door to the balcony slides back. A few people had come and gone, shared a smoke, then went back inside. You know you are probably being a party pooper, gazing alone and wistful at the sunset, and you promise yourself this is the last one. It’s officially getting cold the lower the sun falls. But then you turn to the person who just came outside. 

“Ah, shit.” He blinks at you as the noise from the party inside is muffled behind the closing door.  “I mean, uh. Hi. Um. I didn’t know . . . look, I’ll just come back later –,”

“Andrew says you’re sober. Have been for at least a year. Is that true?”

Maybe you should have just brought a police hat and badge if you were going to grill everyone like this. You lean your hips back against the rail, the burn of the smoke forcing you to breathe slowly. 

The autumn wind tugs at his hair, threatens to pull that black sweater out of his pants, as he stares, a lighter and a packet of cigarettes in his clenched fists. 

“Um, yeah. He’s right. I’m . . . I’m sober. Have been, for a while.” 

You nod, reeling in that invisible electric fence you kept him at the edge of. He senses it and hesitantly, cautiously, he takes a few steps forward and joins you at the railing, but at least two arms lengths away. Eying you, he taps out a cigarette and lights it. He smokes, a full inhale and exhale, before continuing.

“Going on about ten years now.” 

The way he says it knots your stomach. His tone of voice. You know exactly what he means. How could you not?

You sip slowly, unable to look at him. 

“You haven’t had a drop of alcohol or smoked a single joint in ten years?”

He shrugs. “Doc says weed’s actually good for unfucking my brain.” He swallows and props himself up against the railing. “But, uh, I did go to therapy in rehab again and for the first time, I continued going after I got out. Turns out risk taking behaviors and mood swings are not things normal people experience. Looked lot at my anxiety around self-acceptance too. Triggers included feelings of inadequacy. I even got a new syndrome named after me in the DSM. Baffled my therapist for months.” 

“Really?” You stand up right, mouth parted. 

“No.” And there’s that Dieter grin. After a decade, it blooms across his face without any hesitation. Your heartbeat pounds rough against your throat for a second. But then his expression grows heavy. “But, uh, I was serious about the therapy part. It’s helped with the depression and anxiety attacks.” 

You roll your cigarette between your forefinger and thumb as another wind blows by. You nip at your lower lip. 

“Personally, I found Buspar was really good at keeping me from wanting to claw my skin off. Anxiety’s never been better.”

His eyebrows jump and he shuffles a bit closer. 

“Oh, yeah? Used to give me the worst headaches, but we fucked around with the dosage and it helped.”

You nod, remembering those weeks of trial and error. You don’t know what to say, what else to admit. His gaze flutters up your shoulder to the side of your jaw and he leans forward with you.

“Did they, uh, put you on Campral too? Wish they had that the first time I went to rehab.”

You shift your weight as you glance over your shoulder. “Yeah. Makes coming to shit like this easier. I, um, don’t feel so overwhelmed to fight the urges, you know?”

“Yeah. I fuckin’ do.” 

You blame the catch in your breath on a particular rough gust of smoke. He taps out that cigarette and eagerly lights another one. Yours is barely holding on. He must think of something, remember a joke, because he smirks again. 

“They also tried to put me on Metoprolol, but I told them to fuck off.”

You frown at him. “What’s that for?”

Dieter shakes his head, barely containing the smile on his face. “Fucking blood pressure medication. You turn forty-five and they wanna put you on Centrum fucking Silver.”

“Centrum? Isn’t that for –?”

His look dares you to tease him for it, all low eyes and curling lips, but you can’t swallow the fit of giggles. You snort, which makes him laugh, and then you do too. 

You laugh with him, until you remember you shouldn’t. You swallow your giggles, sipping more fervently on your cigarette, hoping your abrupt end wasn’t too obvious. 

But if Dieter notices, he doesn’t say. He watches the city skyline, contemplative.

“But of all that, therapy seems to be the thing that sticks the best.” 

You groan, smacking your palm against the railing, hunching your shoulders. “God, doesn’t that fucking suck? The one thing that actually helps is talking about your stupid fucking feelings?” 

“Yeah,” he chuckles, “yeah, it really does.”

Grinning, you flick your cigarette into the concrete pot Andrew has specifically out here for that sort of thing and go to light another one, but your packet is empty. You both stare at the empty box and then each other. 

Dieter pulls on his cigarette, with a big inhale. “Well, I guess you, um, gotta go back –,”

Your past does not own you. You decide what you want. 

“Do you wanna get lunch sometime?” That is not how you should have asked that question. His eyes go wide and he’s consumed by a coughing fit. You realize your mistake only seconds too late. “That’s not a line, I swear–,”

He bats your concern away, eyes watering, shaking his head. 

“No, I know–,” he croaks. “Yes, I’d like — to catch up. No – I didn’t think it was – a line.” 

He barely gets his breathing right, your own hands knotted together, as the balcony door opens for a second time. 

“There you are!” Marie tsks. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere and –,” 

She frowns at the hunched-over coughing man in the shadows. He tries to smile at her, cheeks red, eyes wet. 

“Hi, Marie, how are–,”

“Andrew wants to make a speech.” She talks like she didn’t hear him. “Come on.” 

She all but takes you by the scruff of your neck and hauls you back inside. You wave over your shoulder to Dieter and realize you don’t have his number anymore. Haven’t had it for years. You no longer have any way of contacting him, even if you wanted to.

As speeches go, Andrew was always very good at them. Short, sweet, and to the point. He thanks everyone for coming as he stands on his dining room table, thanks the caterers and the staff. You stand in the corner with Marie, chatting with the art director you finally met until Andrew started his speech. You focus entirely on Andrew, resolutely not searching the crowd or the balcony, as he continues to welcome everyone to New York, cracking a few jokes here and there. But then the perfunctory part of his speech is over, when something thoughtful comes over his face. 

“I know you’ve all got better things to do than listen to me rant and rave, but I know each of you personally, and I’d like to say I’m so happy you’re in my life. I’d like to think everyone touches each other’s lives for a purpose. Not to sound utilitarian, because those purposes can be healing an emotional wound, or filling a hole you didn’t know was there. Or, in Jack’s case, the best damn audio technician I’ve ever seen. Thanks, Jack.” He holds up his glass as the crowd laughs. Andrew smiles and shifts his weight. He had never done any sort of acting himself, always more content to be the conductor of the chaos, but you always think he would have done well. He has a presence and it’s comforting. “Every day we interact with each other in ways that we can’t foresee and leave lasting consequences we can’t explain. That’s what’s at the heart of this story, this play we’re about to create. The effects we have on each other, how those chance meetings can have lasting consequences.” He grins across the crowd, to where you know his husband, Toby, stands. “How love is the only thing that matters in this fucking world. I really hope you remember that as we start production. If nothing we do matters, then love is the most important thing we’ll ever do.” He holds his glass high and everyone follows. “To love.”

“To love,” the chorus chants.

You’ve never been good at sitting still but this is getting ridiculous. Beneath the table, your toes curl and uncurl in your boots, rubbing blisters with your thick socks. Your teeth nibble the thinnest piece of skin behind your lip, chomping constantly like an uneasy horse chewing at its bit. You stare at the menu and read absolutely nothing. It could be written in French for all that you retain. 

This is such a dumb fucking idea. 

The restaurant is nice. Too nice for something like this. They have glass cups and plates that clink together when stacked on top of each other. The lighting feels low, even for the middle of the day. The paneled wooden walls are too stuffy, too old money. When you asked Andrew for a brunch suggestion, you never should have trusted the recommendation of someone whose idea of loungewear is a pair of hot pink Puma track pants. You loosen your grip on the leather-bound menu out of fear of breaking it in half. 

“This is so weird.” 

Your eyes snap across the table to your lunch companion. Sunglasses pushed up and nestled inside his long hair, Dieter distractedly tugs at his earring, frowning at the cream-colored menu. Everything about this is wrong. The location. The vibe. The white fucking table cloth. The fact that he’s here, sitting with you, like this is some chat with a business acquaintance –

“This is so fucking weird,” he says again, slowly. “Not a single thing on this menu looks good.”

He pauses for a moment, letting it settle, before he grins up at you. With a sigh, all the air rushes out of your chest. You smile back.

“There’s this really good hot dog cart down the road.”

He snaps his menu shut with glee. “Lead the fucking way.”

Ten minutes later, Dieter groans into a steaming chili cheese dog. You’ve found a concrete bench overlooking a small nearby park. It’s Saturday so the park is full of children and their parents, dogs and their owners. It’s . . . normal. 

“Holy shit, this is good.” He licks melted cheese off the space between his thumb and forefinger and goes back in for seconds.

You suck a drop of chili off your thumb and grin. “Found this place when Marie and I first moved here. We lived just down the road and Tony with his cart became our guardian angel. And even now, even though I live across town, I’ll still come by just for his hot dogs.”

The man, round as he was tall, waves over his shoulder, heat rising from his chunky yellow cart, and you both wave back. 

“Can Tony adopt me? Please? I clean the dishes every time, I swear.” 

You chuckle as Dieter continues to slurp every errant stream of meat juice careening down his wrist. 

“I think his other kids would object, but you can try.” 

He chews slowly, suddenly thoughtful, glancing over the cold autumn air at the vendor. “You told me once you felt like it was hard to make friends. Guess that’s not the case anymore.”

He glances at you and you finish off your hot dog in two bites, your mouth dry. You shrug. “I do a lot of things now that I didn’t back then.” 

He nods – rather, moves his head up and down rigidly – and finishes his lunch as well. You hand him a napkin and he takes it gratefully.

“But, uh, speaking of friends, how’s Heidi? Do you still keep in touch?” 

Dieter’s eyes light up. He tosses away the napkin as he takes out his phone. “They just adopted another little kid.” He scrolls through his pictures before handing it off to you.

And once again you’re struck with the weight of memories that had been at the bottom of the box for years. Heidi’s older too, her hair now completely sheared off, cut shorter even than Dieter’s, but she’s smiling. She and another woman hold up a boy who looks to be about six, while two others, another boy and a girl, sit in front of the couch. All of them smile up happily for the camera. It tugs at a soft place inside of you. 

The thing that’s been circling your mind for days lifts its head out of the churning mixture of your thoughts, sniffing the air, knowing it’s almost time. 

“Oh wow! He’s adorable!” You grin genuinely. 

Dieter smirks as he closes his phone. “Carlos. Heidi asked me to help him practice his Spanish, but I’m pretty sure he knows more English than I do.” 

“So they’re happy?”

His brown eyes fall on you like autumn leaves and your toes curl again. “Yeah, they’re happy.” 

“And Mark? Do you still keep up with him?”

Dieter glances away, biting his lip. “Um, no, actually. It’s kind of hard to hang out with someone after you’ve punched them in the face and called them a liar while being so coked out you’re hallucinating.” He picks at a callus on his palm. “Wouldn’t be the first time I lost a friend because I did dumb shit while I was high.”

You nod, the shame and embarrassment all too familiar. Plus, every memory you have of that hotel you handle with radiation tongs and chemical-resistant gloves. 

“But, uh, what about you?” He leans back against the bench, hands in his lap. Behind him, children run and scream in the cool sunlight. “Were you and Marie always friends, even back then?”

“That’s a complicated question.” You sigh and tuck your hands up into your jacket pocket, matching his position on the bench. His legs sprawl out far longer than yours. “I wanted to be her friend back then, and I tried, but then things got . . . intense, with you, and the drugs, and I stopped responding to her calls and texts. For weeks at a time.” His gaze flickers to you as you talk, between your face and your pockets. “But she was also there for me . . . afterwards. She says Heidi called her and told her what happened and she immediately came to the hospital. She just fucking forgave me. Forgave all the shitty things I had done to her, just like that. To this day, she doesn’t hold it over me and I don’t know why but I’m so grateful for her . . .” Your voice cracks and you squeeze your eyes shut for a second. You can feel the wind on your cheeks, your unspilled tears sitting in your eyes. 

You have to get this thing off your chest.

“Dieter, I’m so sorry.” With a gasp to stifle your tears, you turn to him to look him in the eyes. “For the first two years of my rehab, I thought about writing to you, or calling you. Just to say how sorry I was. I had no idea what it was like on the other side of sobriety, how every day is a such a fucking struggle, and I rubbed that in your face, over and over again until you snapped. I’m so sorry.” 

He studies you for a moment, arms crossed, dark eyes almost black in the thin light. You can hear children yelling and shrieking with glee. Faint, distant. He taps his teeth together twice before finding his answer, his jaw tight.

“That’s not why I snapped and you know it.” 

His voice holds like iron in the wispy wind. Everything blurs around you but not that. Not him. He shakes his head gently, eyes falling to the scarf around your neck. 

“And please don’t apologize to me. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it.” 

He meets your eyes and you swear they’re damp. A shade brighter than they were before. You stare at each other, on that park bench in Brooklyn, on a cold autumn day, for a long, long time.

You have to ask it now. You can’t avoid it any longer.

“You wanna get coffee?” You pass the tremble in your hands off as a shiver. He nods, still chewing on his mouth, and you gather your trash. 

It slips out of you as casually as you slip your napkins into the trash bin. 

“How’s Chloe?”

You barely have turned around when his hand seizes your upper arm. His grip is almost too tight, his eyes wide and manic.

“Oh, shit.” He blinks as though he’d been slapped. “Natalie, I never told you – I didn’t even think – fuck –,”

“What, Dieter?” You want to pull away, but the touch around your arm is warm, thick. You peer up at him from furrowed eyebrows. “What didn’t you tell me?”

He swallows.

“The baby – it’s not – it wasn’t mine.” 

Your entire body goes slack as your mouth drops open. The hold he has on you is welcomed; the entire park is in danger of spinning sideways. 

Somehow he has the good sense to pull you both back onto the bench. Your knees buckle the second you move and you all but collapse into the concrete. Dieter releases you and rubs his hands together, leaning forward on his elbows, eyes still wide and blank. 

“How do I say this?” He murmurs and that old hurt turns to panic, to anger. 

“How to say what, Dieter?” You snap, hotly. “Just start at the beginning. Please.”

He shakes his head, tongue up against his molars, finally turning to look at you. “Chloe and I got divorced. Years ago.” He takes a steadying breath, thumbnail absent-mindedly against the black ring on his third finger on his left hand, as if to remind himself what was there. This is why no one over the age of twenty-five needs to wear this many rings, Dieter!

“Look, Chloe and I – our marriage was shit from the get-go. I didn’t want to admit it back then, but it’s true,” he says, still soothing himself with gentle strokes. “I used Chloe, like all the people in my life, like a crutch and she felt it. I was smothering her and she couldn’t get far enough away from me, even halfway around the world. She started seeing someone in Portugal and I think she was happy there. I hope so. But, uh, she didn’t want it to get to the papers that she’d cheated on her movie-star husband and got knocked up as a result, so she passed the baby off as mine. We were about seven months in when she finally told me. I don’t know if she could tell I was coming apart at the seams or she was finally ready to be happy, but she confessed. And I confessed to her – the drugs, the affair with you – all of it. I think I just wanted it to be over, done. We weren’t going to come back from something like that and I think we were both okay with it.” He stops spinning the ring and, against all expectations, grins. “This is probably kind of fucked up of me but we kept in touch for a while. She married the baby’s dad about a month after we divorced. He’s actually a really nice guy. I was even invited to the wedding, if you can imagine.” 

There must be something wrong with your hearing. He’s stopped speaking but there’s a high pitched whine nestled between your ears. 

“So you don’t . . . you aren’t . . .”

“No, I don’t have some ten year old kid running around out there,” he huffs, shaking his head. “And no, I’m not a father. Or a husband. Not anymore.” 

You say the first thing you think of. 

“Dee, that’s fucking crazy.” His old nickname slips out while your brain is offline. “That’s, like, soap opera levels of insane. That’s . . . I can’t believe . . .” 

With a massive inhale, where you can see the hot steam of breath enter into his mouth and nostrils, he sits back, hands limp in his lap. 

“I don’t blame her, you know. After what I had done, to her, to you, I didn’t have the right to be angry that she cheated on me. In some fucked up way, it made sense and it wasn’t just my paranoid, druggy brain telling me something was off. I was never a good husband, was never going to be a good father. When I think about it, the kindest thing she ever did was agree to leave me, even when that seemed impossible.” 

His massive palms smooth across his thighs, his soft hair tugged on by the wind. His fingertips stop just short of touching yours, inches from your own lap. 

“Natalie, I’m sorry I never reached out after that night. Or even years later. I lost hours of sleep thinking about what I was going to say to you if you ever let me see you again. I had all these grand plans of finding you and showing you how sorry I was. But then,” he swallows, “I realized what damage that would do and I . . . I thought it would be better if we just never saw each other again.” 

Your ribs expand out into your chest, just once, just enough for it to hurt, before everything settles.

“I didn’t try and find you for the same reasons. I wanted to, though.”

If that counts for anything.

Back then, Dieter always had a fascination with your hands. Holding them, inspecting them, drawing invisible artwork across your palms and over your veins. He even sketched them on notebook paper and post-it notes from time to time, when you sat still long enough to let him. 

You can see it in his eyes that he wants to touch you, to hold your hand, but he doesn’t. Instead, he puts his own back into his pockets. 

Anxiety churns in your stomach. There’s more he wants to say and so do you, but for now, you’re content to let the confessions of the day settle. 

It’s funny, the little things that you pull together in your mind to create an image of someone. You didn’t think of it often, but when you did, you tried to imagine him happy, with his wife and child. And now you know that’s all they were, imaginings. You wonder if you thought about it more than he did. 

The label of father for Dieter was gone, after ten long, insufferable years. You had no idea what would take its place.

“Can I ask you something?” 

When you look at him, the intensity in his gaze is lifted. Something lighter has taken its place.

“Sure.”

“Why were they called The Sixers?” 

The whiplash between conversation topics is colder and sharper than the air around you. You suddenly remember you’re in a park full of children with Dieter Bravo inches from you.

You grin at him.

“Because it sounds like the sex-ers. Like sex-havers but said fast.”

That press of skin, the dimple on his right cheek, deepens and he smiles. “Nick came up with that one, didn’t he?”

You giggle. “Yeah, but the rest of them signed off on it.”

He nods, eyebrows arching as he shrugs. “But I actually meant why are they called The Sixers when there’s only five of them?”

Not once, after a decade, after millions of memories you shifted through, pulled out and examined and held up to the light – after shifting weight and blame and shame, putting your entire life under scrutiny – after sobriety and founding the gallery and finding Marie as the best friend in your whole world – 

Not once, had you ever stopped to consider that. 

It starts low in your stomach, expanding rapidly, arching up your spine, pulling your lips open, your head back until it bursts out of your mouth so absurdly loud, you clap a hand over your lips to keep from drawing attention.

You laugh so hard, you cry. 

Dieter is bent over, howling alongside you.

When he orders your coffee, he remembers how you take it.

“Cream, no sugar, right?” He smiles as he hands you the steaming cup.

What else of you still lives inside of him? You hesitate to wonder.

You nod, thanking him, and follow him down the street. 

A brisk evening settles between the high rises and rows of brownstones. The air has a mean bite to it now, a chill that nips at the bone. But you don’t really notice it. Not with his warm shoulder pressed up against yours, the warm styrofoam keeping your fingers from numbing. You’d brought up Andrew and the discussion quickly turned to the play. Dieter gestures wildly, chatting about this role, something so different from Hollywood.

Not that he had done much in the way of the public eye after Recovery Road. Smaller stuff, indie films, a few local LA plays. Then when all that became insufferable, he wrote a few treatments for some films, scripts to movies that never saw the light of day, and sold off the rights of those scripts to keep himself busy. He even directed a short film or two, but still felt a restlessness you were all too familiar with.

“So when Andrew called, I got the next flight out. This is the first part I’ve been excited about in years.” 

You smile at him as you sip your coffee. “I’m really glad to hear that. Andrew’s a great director, I think you’ll have fun with him.”

As you led him near and nearer to your street, the conversation wove between artistic inclinations, production management, set design, character work – things you thought you’d forgotten about for the most part, but came back all too easily. You laughed easily too. 

You were laughing when you stopped in front of your brownstone, but then instantly sobered when you saw who was waiting for you on the steps. Which was intentional because she absolutely had a set of keys.

“Oh, uh, hey, Marie.” 

“Dieter.” But she’s looking at you, her jaw set and eyes blazing. “I just came by to get those invoices. Did I interrupt something?”

The back of your neck warms and you put more space between your shoulder and his. “No, i-it’s fine. Dieter was just walking me home. The invoices are in my kitchen.”

The chill of the air settles around you, tapping against the bubble you’d found yourself in after the park. You have him at arm’s length and you don’t know whether to shake his hand or give him a hug. You go with neither.

“It was good catching up. I’ll see you Monday?” 

He nods, grinning in that silly way that makes him look like a fourteen year old dumbass. “For sure. See you Monday.”

It’s not the way you wanted your afternoon with him to go, but in honesty, it was probably the best way it could have gone. Dieter waves at Marie as he heads back the way you came, towards the subway station. 

He’s not entirely out of earshot when Marie turns on you.

“So, what the fuck was that?”

You don’t meet her eyes as you fumble for your keys, your fingers numb from the cold. The door to your brownstone creaks as you stumble inside, as if irritated with you that you’re letting all the warm air out. 

“What are you talking about? We were just catching up.” 

She’s hot on your heels as you slide off your jacket, almost running for the kitchen. 

“You don’t just catch up with someone like Dieter Bravo. He knows all your weaknesses, Nat.” 

You scowl as you toss your purse onto the kitchen island. You face off with her, your hands on your hips. “And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means he’s your blindspot,” she says, carefully watching your face. “Always has been. He’s not just some guy and you know it. He broke your fucking heart.” 

It had been all smiles and laughing and remembering the good this afternoon. But she isn’t wrong. She rarely was. 

She can see the understanding cross over your face. 

“Where’s his wife anyway? Chloe?”

“They’re divorced, okay?”

Marie’s mouth falls open in disgust and you cringe. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned that. 

“So he’s back in your life for five minutes, single, and you’re getting coffee with him?” 

“I didn’t know he was single when I asked him — you know what, it’s fine. I asked if he wanted to get lunch and that turned into coffee and we spent a lot of time talking about the play. That’s it.”  

She crosses her arms, reading every line in your body for secrets, as if he might have slipped you a bag of Oxy. You stare back. You have done nothing wrong and neither did he. 

(You store away the fact that this was the first time you hung out with Dieter Bravo in a capacity that didn’t have you both hiding in shadows, ready to examine later alone in bed.)

“And you can honestly say you didn’t feel anything for him?” Marie arches an eyebrow, waiting for your stony face to crack. “No flicker? Nothing after ten years of radio silence?

“It’s not like it was before,” you answer as honestly as you can. “Even if it was, I can’t imagine he feels anything but guilt over me, which isn’t a great starting point for a relationship. You saw his face in the gallery – he looked petrified, not in love.”

When she nods, it stings, just a bit. She eyes the paperwork, knowing the income and good word coming from Andrew’s production would benefit the gallery for years to come. And of course she knew – she was the one who came up with it. Would she have said yes if she knew Dieter was attached to it? Would you have?

“Are you going to see him again?” 

You wave a sweeping hand at the invoices, as if to show how the gallery and Andrew’s show are completely intertwined. 

“I have to, right?” 

Marie frowns at you, angry but not at you, and then her face softens, all fight gone, and she goes around the island to hug you. This is what saved you. This is what kept you going. 

“I know my boundaries, Marie,” you say to the crook of her neck, unwilling to look her in the eyes while you say this. “And I know what happened in the past. I’m not going to make the same mistakes.” 

She kisses your cheek. “Good because I really can’t run the gallery by myself.”

You laugh, pulling apart, and you shuffle the invoices together. “Yeah, who would you have to cart all this paperwork around?” 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Bright and early.”

You wave her goodbye from your porch, locking the door after her. 

You want to google his name and “divorce” to see if it’s true. If anything he told you today was real. You want to curl up in bed, with your head under the sheets and try and piece his life without you together. But you don’t. 

That was the thing with Dieter. You want things, but you can’t have them. You have this indescribable urge, but it must be tempered. The obsession is lesser, a blindspot more than anything, now that you know your next hit and how you felt about him had been horrifically tied up into one, incessant, painful need. It would never be as bad, you assure yourself because now that you don’t have that overwhelming urge to get high; whatever you would be feeling is just good plain old human brain chemicals. And if you survived being coked out for nearly a year straight, you’d probably survive your own stupid emotions. 

You would survive Dieter Bravo. All you have to do now is be his friend.

OCTOBER

A sharp chill had descended over the city, bringing with it an explosion of color. A consolation prize for the painful nip in the air. It was too early in the season for snow, or anything to prevent the wind from being so cruel, so everyone had to bustle from one structure to the next, careful to avoid the cold that hounded them like dogs. Teeth clenched, hands clutching scarves, the streets were filled with scowls and pink cheeks, raw knuckles and frozen ears. The crowds moved faster, eager to get where they’re going, out of this cold, out of this wind that pressed unsuspecting bodies together with the force of it. It made getting out of bed, leaving the cozy warmth of duvets and covers, planting your feet on the freezing wood, almost a monumentally impossible task. Especially for those who hated mornings anyway. 

As much as you tried – really, truly, desperately tried as you sorted through the mosaic of your life, shining up as much as you could – you simply could not turn yourself into a morning person. Yawning widely, you stirred the cup of terrible coffee aimlessly, as if with enough glaring it would not only taste better, but startle you awake. 

No such luck. 

“Hey, miss, where would you like us to put these?” 

You grimace as you choke down the black sludge, pointing the workman to a far wall at the back of the stage. Six in the morning and you already know it was going to be a long day. There are supplies to organize, materials to sort out, work to delegate, but you can’t seem to climb out of that sleepy haze. It had been a while since you’d been on the set of a production but if you don’t plant your feet now, you are liable to get swept up into the chaos. 

You shake your head and blink. Focus. 

Your designs had mapped out six separate moveable pieces of extra thick balsa wood. Attached to wheels, stage hands could rearrange the pieces as needed, depending on the scene. The “walls” are light enough for Andrew’s skeleton crew, but with some shadows and shading, you could give them depth and visual weight. You just had to build the damn things first, but Andrew assured you that all of his stagehands are basically master carpenters. By the confused but eager looks on their faces, you doubt that’s entirely true. Maybe by the end of this you’ll all be master carpenters. 

Smiling to yourself, you go to help them unpack the planks of wood, but freeze when you hear Andrew’s voice unexpectedly. Assuming he’d come by when most of the work is nearly done, you poke your head around the thick black curtains. 

Andrew stands facing the house, his arms wide and mobile. You smirk at the Lululemon sweats – his version of dressing down – as he addresses the small crowd in front of him. It’s the cast, you realize, only about seven of them and in the center is, of course, Dieter, with dark circles under his eyes. He’d never been a morning person either. He has his arms crossed over a thin black shirt and he’s focused entirely on Andrew, thick brows furrowed. 

And focused entirely on him, is Emily (you finally remember her name), the cute blonde twenty-something. 

Friends help friends get dates, right? Maybe this would be a good first step.

Getting Dieter Bravo laid.

Lunch arrives well past noon, leaving everyone tired, hungry, and a little irritable. Cast and crew go off into their separate corners, looking for peace and quiet and somewhere the pounding of hammers isn’t audible. 

You’re deciding between a ham or turkey sandwich when he sidles up next to you. His plate is half a sandwich, three strawberries, and four cookies. Good to see his voracious sweet tooth hadn’t dulled even a little bit. 

You glance over your shoulder. Emily sits on the edge of the stage, munching on a bag of chips and reading over her script. With your elbow, you nudge Dieter and he turns to look. 

“She likes you,” you grin. 

He frowns, glancing back between you and the girl on stage. “Who? Emily?”

“Duh. She has eyes, doesn’t she?” 

Dieter’s mouth goes tight and he turns back to the craft’s table, suddenly interested in adding something healthy to his plate. 

“She flirts with everyone. Besides, I’m kind of out of practice.”

“What do you mean?”

He picks at a melon, noses through the box of chips. “Rehab makes dating kinda hard. Unless . . .” he pauses and puts down his plate, “unless you’ve figured out the secret to dating in rehab.”

Your neck heats again. “Um, no, definitely not. It’s been a while, for me too.”

“How long is a while?” His eyes darken as he asks. 

You are completely baffled at how quickly this conversation spiraled out of your control. 

“Dieter – I – it’s been – you —,” 

He spares you and bites the corner of his cheek. He glances over to Emily as she swings a long, bare leg over the edge of the stage. 

“I’m not sleeping with her.” You nod, dumbstruck by this complete and total opposite reaction you thought he’d have. He works his jaw before looking back at you. “Her or anyone else. Okay?”

Andrew calls the cast to the stage to review blocking before the buzz saws start up again, so Dieter is pulled away before you can sputter incoherent consonants at him. He leaves his plate with you.

“Don’t let anyone steal my cookies,” he says very seriously before wiping his hands on his jeans and heading back to work. 

What you said is true. You didn’t date anyone in rehab, the practice actually rather forbidden, and didn’t really have the inclination once you got out. It had been years before you actually tried to date anyone, but most of them ended after the first awkward hug goodbye or when he tried to put his hand up your skirt at dinner. 

You hadn’t been a nun this whole time – you weren’t a fucking saint – but there hadn’t been anyone, anyone who really mattered in, years. For the first time, that struck you as odd. There wasn’t time, you reason with yourself as you watch him cross the stage on Andrew’s direction and jot notes in his script, his hair sticking up in all directions as if a cat’s tongue had licked him up the back of his neck. With moving to New York and starting the gallery and then running it, expanding it, there just simply wasn’t time to find something to fill that giant, gaping hole in your life. A hole you didn’t seem to mind or even notice, until Dieter came back. 

Okay, maybe, friends didn’t need to help friends pick up dates. He didn’t seem interested anyway. 

You pick up his plate, careful to not spill his precious sweets, only vaguely aware that his first inclination after loading up his lunch was to come find you.

🤍 Next: Part 2 + Epilogue