#nail gun market

[aimarketresearch]

Nail Gun Market Size, Share, Trends, Growth and Competitive Analysis

Global Nail Gun Market study by Data Bridge Market Research provides details about the market dynamics affecting this market, Market scope, Market segmentation and overlays shadow upon the leading market players highlighting the favourable competitive landscape and trends prevailing over the years.

All the market insights of large-scale Nail Gun market research report will lead to actionable ideas and better decision-making. This market report also takes into consideration the drivers and restraints for the Nail Gun market that are derived from SWOT analysis. Businesses can surely go with this industry analysis report for logical decision making and superior management of marketing of goods and services. The universal Nail Gun report is generated with a nice combination of advanced industry insights, practical solutions, talent solutions and the use of latest technology which gives an excellent user experience.

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Nail gun market will expect to grow at a rate of 3.40% for the forecast period of 2021 to 2028. Nail gun market report analyses the growth, which is currently being growing due to the increasing usages of the product in workshops during assembly such as bed manufacture or pallet making.

The nail gun is a useful power tool that drives the nail by air pressure or electromagnetism into wood or some other material. Nail guns can be either pneumatic or electronic. In the competitive environment, developments in the development of nail guns are seen as manufacturers turn their attention on technology to appeal to customer demand.

Table of Content:

Part 01: Executive Summary

Part 02: Scope of the Report

Part 03: Global Nail Gun Market Landscape

Part 04: Global Nail Gun Market Sizing

Part 05: Global Nail Gun Market Segmentation By Product

Part 06: Five Forces Analysis

Part 07: Customer Landscape

Part 08: Geographic Landscape

Part 09: Decision Framework

Part 10: Drivers and Challenges

Part 11: Market Trends

Part 12: Vendor Landscape

Part 13: Vendor Analysis

Key takeaways from the Nail Gun Market report:

Detailed considerate of Nail Gun Market-particular drivers, Trends, constraints, Restraints, Opportunities and major micro markets.

Comprehensive valuation of all prospects and threat in the

In depth study of industry strategies for growth of the Nail Gun Market-leading players.

Nail Gun Market latest innovations and major procedures.

Favorable dip inside Vigorous high-tech and market latest trends remarkable the Market.

Conclusive study about the growth conspiracy of Nail Gun Market for forthcoming years.

The major players covered in the nail gun market report are Illinois Tool Works Inc.; Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.; Robert Bosch Power Tools GmbH; Techtronic Industries Co. Ltd.; Makita U.S.A., Inc.; MAX USA CORP.; BY KYOCERA SENCO.; Koki Holdings Co., Ltd.; PUMA INDUSTRIAL CO., LTD.; Emerson Electric Co.; JITOOL USA CORP.; Unicatch; Rongpeng Air Tools Co.,Ltd.; Meite USA; Sichuan Nanshan Powder Actuated Fastening System Co., Ltd.; Hilti India Pvt. Ltd.; Powernail Company; Prime Global Products, Inc. (PGP); PORTER-CABLE.; Everwin Pneumatic Corp.; among other domestic and global players. Market share data is available for global, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America separately. DBMR analysts understand competitive strengths and provide competitive analysis for each competitor separately.

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[trendingtopicsreports]

By value, a 7.2% CAGR has been predicted for the global concrete nail gun market from 2022 to 2032. Worldwide sales of concrete nail guns are expected to reach US$ 1.1 Bn by the end of 2032.

[marketing-research-service]

Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market, Demand, Status and Global Briefing 2022 to 2029

Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market Overview:

For the global industry’s Battery-Powered Nail Gun market analysis, a research team did thorough primary and secondary research. Secondary research was carried out in order to supplement existing data, segment the market, estimate overall market size, and anticipate market size and growth rate.

Expected Growth is expected to be xx% during the forecast period and the Battery-Powered Nail Gun market size is expected to reach nearly US$ xx by 2029.

Primary and secondary research is used to identify market leaders, while primary and secondary research is used to assess market revenue. In-depth interviews with important thought leaders and industry professionals, such as experienced front-line staff, CEOs, and marketing executives, were conducted as part of the core research. Primary research comprised in-depth interviews with key thought leaders and industry professionals, such as experienced front-line staff, CEOs, and marketing executives, while secondary research included a review of the main manufacturers’ annual and financial reports. Secondary data is used to calculate global market percentage splits, market shares, growth rates, and breakdowns, which are then compared to primary data.

Request a Free Sample Copy or View Report Summary:

Market Scope:

By defining and assessing market segments and predicting market size, the study aids comprehension of the Global Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market dynamic structure. In addition, the report includes a competitive analysis of significant firms based on pricing, financial state, application expansion ambitions, and geographical presence. The research also includes a PESTLE analysis to help shareholders prioritize their efforts and investments in the Global Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market.

External and internal factors that are predicted to have a positive or negative impact on enterprises have been researched, presenting decision-makers with a clear picture of the sector’s future. By studying market segments and projecting Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market size, the study also assists in understanding the dynamic structure of the Global Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market. The study acts as a resource for investors by depicting the competitive analysis of prominent businesses in the Global Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market based on price, financial status, growth strategies, and geographical presence.

Market Segmentation:

Segment by type

Wireless Battery-Powered Nail Gun, Cable Battery-Powered Nail Gun

Segment by Applications

Wood, Decorate, Industrial, Other.

Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market Key Players:

Major Key Players are Adolf Würth, Bostitch, MAKITA, Paslode, HITACHI KOKI, Sumake Industrial, SENCO, SPIT-IMPEX,  and Others and Others.

Regional Analysis:

A study of the Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market at the national level focuses on categories indicated as potentially high-growth, nations with the biggest market share, and countries with the highest development potential. North America (USA, Canada), South America, Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Korea), Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy), and Other nations are the geographical breakdowns in the Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market study.

To Gain More Insights into the Market Analysis, Browse Summary of the Research Report:

COVID-19 Impact Analysis on Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market: The report covers COVID-19 impact on Battery-Powered Nail Gun market.

Key Questions Answered in the Battery-Powered Nail Gun Market Report are:

What will be the Battery-Powered Nail Gun market’s CAGR throughout the projected period?

Which market category emerged as the market leader in the Battery-Powered Nail Gun market?

Who are the key players in the Battery-Powered Nail Gun market?

How big will the Battery-Powered Nail Gun market be in 2029?

Which firm had the biggest market share in the Battery-Powered Nail Gun market?

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[water-loos]

Chocolate

“We’re dressed in black from head to toe, we’ve got guns hidden under our petticoats”

dealer!eddie x witchy!ditsy!fem!reader

cw: drug mention, drug use mention, tooth rotting fluff

wc: 1,504

“Babe, just because they’re purple and you like the color does not mean that the Blazy’s are better,” Eddie groaned for the umpteenth time, looking at the older man behind the smoke shop counter for a lifeline.

“They’re the same price as the RAW cones! You’re the one who said we should expand the market and try and get some new customers. I’m telling you, all of my friends would start buying from you if they were getting a purple preroll. Even better if it’s a purple preroll of the special dreaming blend that I came up with,” You smiled brightly, long, dark nails tapping excitedly on the glass countertop. “It’s a great marketing tactic.”

“Sweetheart—“

“She’s got a point, Eddie. The ladies love it when their shit is all pretty,” The shop owner snorted.

“Thank you, Dennis!” You motioned toward the man, rings clacking on the counter as your hand came to rest on top. “A little sexist, but correct. Please, Eddie?”

When Eddie looked back at you, you could see his eyes melt. “Fine. Give me two shorts, two regulars, and two kings.”

“One pink, one purple?”

“Yes please!” You reached up to kiss your boyfriend right on the apple of his cheek, leaving behind a black cherry-colored lipstick mark. “I promise it’ll be worth it. I’ll pinky swear on it.”

“You get your cones and your blend, that’s it,” His arm snaked around your waist, pulling you closer as he looked down at you pointedly. “That’s it. I’m not having you take over my business, alright?”

“Mhm. That’s it. Just those,” You confirmed, nodding your head. “Can you ring up a few of those fun little incense cones in a separate order, Dennis? I’m running out and I need some for my altar.”

“Will do, sweetie. Just don’t give your man any more trouble, alright?”

“On my life, I will not give him any more trouble.”

——

You swore up and down that you would stop at the cones and the special blend of weed and other herbs.

But then you found a pack of navy blue mesh bags covered in tiny stars that could comfortably fit half an ounce at the craft store. In the clearance aisle. For $2.99.

“Baby, you have got to be kidding me,” Eddie sighed, watching you come in the door, platform boots stomping excitedly as you bounded into the living room of your shared trailer, the bags clutched in your hands. “Don’t tell me those are what I think they are.”

“They are that exactly! Aren’t they cute? Look,” You swung yourself into his lap, legs hanging over the arm of the rocker he had been lounging in. His arm instinctively wrapped around you and rested on your hip, making sure you wouldn’t fall off. “They can fit at least half an ounce and still have room. Not to mention the amount of prerolls you can fit! And they tie super nicely so you can keep everything together!”

His head buried into the crook of your neck, his dramatic groaning rumbling against your skin. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

“Is that a yes? Please tell me that’s a yes,” You immediately get excited, dropping the bags into your lap and looping your arms around his drooping shoulders. “Have I told you I love you this afternoon? If not, I love you. I love you more than the sky and the sea and the moon and the stars—“

“Yes, angel, you’ve told me you love me more than I can count today,” He laughed sweetly, lifting his head to look at your expression. You could tell he was trying so hard to stand his ground, but the smile on his lips gave him away. “I can’t let you use the bags, though. It’ll ruin my reputation.”

“What, your reputation among college kids who invite you to every function even though you graduated two years early?” You joke, nodding toward his high school and college diplomas, which were framed above your fireplace. “What a thing to ruin!”

“Are you really going to bring up me graduating every chance you get?”

“Absolutely,” You kissed him sweetly, one hand smoothing over his hair. “My smart boy.”

“Okay, now you’re just buttering me up, you sap,” He ducked away, watching you cackle with a grin on his face. “How about we compromise?”

“A compromise?”

“Yes. You can make your fancy little prerolls with your mix and put them in your pretty little bags,” Your eyes widened, surprised that he was letting you do it that easily. “But, nothing else. No edibles, no flower, and none of the raw cones I’m still working through, okay?”

“I can work with that! It’s like a little side business! A partnership!”

“Yep. A partnership,” He tapped your hip and sat up slightly. “Let’s go get some stuff ready for later, alright? I’ve got to drop off to those monthly guys up in Chicago tonight.”

“Let me text some people and see if they want anything,” You got up off his lap, handing the bags off to him as he rose. “Can you put these at my seat while I go grab us some drinks?”

Eddie sighed heavily, rolling his eyes playfully. “Yes, sweetheart.”

“I love you, just a reminder!” You called as you left the room, a shit-eating grin on your face.

——

You ended up finding a few friends from college who lived in the city and wanted to try the new “dream bundles” as you called them. Each bundle was packaged with care and love, and Eddie watched endearingly as you meticulously packed each and every cone, lined them up in the bags, and even included some candies from your personal stash. The bags looked almost comical next to the brown bags that your boyfriend’s regular orders were in, but as you piled into his van, both his and your bags piled into one of your many tote bags, they looked perfect together.

He held your hand the whole two-hour drive into the city, a mixture of alternative rock and metal blaring through the speakers as you both sang along at the top of your lungs, a smile permanently etched into your lips. Eddie even let you be the one to run the bags up to each of his clients, watching with a lovesick smile and your favorite puppy dog eyes as each and every one of them smiled, happy to see you and your bubbly personality.

You practically skipped away from the final house of the night, grinning from ear to ear. You had sweet-talked the customer, a 6’3 and honestly terrifying security guard, into buying a couple of your special bundles for his girlfriend, who had waved at you from behind the open door.

With your empty tote bag swinging from your hand and your front pockets full of cash, you pranced up to Eddie, who leaned against the side of his van with a grin that could stop hearts on his face. Except, he was looking at you, who was the picture of joy.

“D’you see? I got him to buy three bundles! I told you they’d be a big seller,” You smiled brightly, chains jingling as you rocked back and forth on your heels. “He got them for his new girlfriend and he said he’d let you know how she likes them.”

“That’s great sweetheart,” He reached forward to pull you close and kiss your cheek. He watched you pull the big bills of cash out of your pocket, folded perfectly and all in the same direction and put it into his pocket instead. “We make a good team.”

“The best! You’ve gotta let me keep doing this, babe,” You pull your tote bag over your shoulder and loop your hands around his neck, stepping on the tiptoes of your boots. “They love me. And it’s so fun!”

Eddie chuckles and shakes his head. “What kind of influence am I, huh? Getting you to enjoy this whole thing?”

“The worst ever,” You hum, smiling at his almost drunk expression as he looked at you. “I think my parents would have a conniption if they knew what I was out doing right now.”

“Oh, what will I ever do if your parents find out that I’ve corrupted their precious angel?” He laid the sarcasm on thick, reveling at the giggle you let out as he smushed a kiss to the soft skin of your cheek. He pulled back after, pecked a quick kiss to your lips, and tapped your hip with the hand that held his car keys. “C’mon. Let’s get home and pack a bowl with some of that mix you’ve been selling. I wanna see what it’s all about.”

“Really?”

He stepped back and opened the passenger side door for you. “Really really.”

“Yes!” You celebrated, grabbing his face and smacking a kiss to his lips before you leaned down into your seat. “God, I love you.”

“I love you too, angel.”

[tightjeansjavi]

The Menu | Part 1

“Vices to fill a Void”

A/N: so I decided this is gonna be a two-parter because if theres one thing I’m good at, it’s edging my dear readers ;)

~word count: 3.4k~

Pairing | dark! Joel Miller x f! reader

Summary: Joel Miller has a menu concocted just for his customers. Pills? He’s got ‘em. Guns? Ammo? Name your price. Booze to warm the broken souls and hearts of the QZ? give him a holler. Everything comes with a price, of course. Joels got somethin’ special on his menu. Somethin’ that he doesn’t advertise freely. Y’gotta want it. Y’gotta have a desire that matches his own, only then will he offer what you seek.

Warnings: dark themes, two feral cats energy, mentions of deceased bodies, Joel is an asshole that knows how to get exactly what he wants. Dark! Joel, post!outbreak, Joel and Tess run the black market in the QZ, age gap, Joel is in his 40’s reader is in her late 20’s, mentions of drugs, smoking, alcohol, graphic depictions of violence, reader is a spitfire with a no-shit taking attitude, enemies to lovers type beat, Joel likes to play mind games, reader has no physical descriptions, readers nickname is Angel, +18 minors dni!

The first time you meet the infamous Joel Miller is in his and Tess’s apartment in one of the few available Boston QZ apartments. Rumor on the street is that Joel and Tess are an item. When in all actuality, they’re business partners that occasionally fuck. His options, however, are not just limited to Tess. He likes to keep that part of his business on the low. He’s got a reputation, sure. But he doesn’t boast it proudly like a peacock. He knows his expertise, and he knows it well. His purpose in the structure of the QZ was smuggling. He’d bring pills, booze, ammo, guns, and anything else that was desirable. He’d trade for ration cards; a hefty amount of them. Sometimes, he’d allow his customers to trade their bodies, but he was quite picky, and it ain’t had anything to do with women’s appearances. In that department, he indulged in all body types. What he was most intrigued about was their minds. Their ability to survive, and most importantly, what they desired most in this shit-hole world.

He liked it when they were verbal. Silence was not a name in his game. He liked it when they showed up at his doorstep knowing exactly what it was that they wanted from him. He could play all the cards, and he played them well. He could be empathetic if they asked for it. He could pretend to love them just for the night. He could yank their hair, dig his nails into their flesh and call them a dirty, useless whore, but only if it was requested. See, he wasn’t all that brutal of a man, but if you weren’t careful and direct, he might send you home with more than just an ache between your thighs. He knew how to fuck, and he enjoyed it almost as much as he enjoyed beating a man senseless, almost.

You, however, held no interest to know what laid beneath his weathered jeans. You showed up wanting one thing, and one thing only. A vice to fill the hole in the void of your heart. You knew that Joel Miller’s menu was just what the doctor ordered.

Tess and Joel were seated at the kitchen table going through their supplies for the day. They had their usual customers, but Joel was always intrigued to see new faces walk through his door.

A cigarette dangled between his lips as he flipped through a stack of ration cards. The scent of tobacco wafted through the cracks in the door frame as your knuckles rapped firmly along the chipped paint. You knocked once, then twice five seconds later. It was customary like a code. Not that Joel or Tess had any concerns with FEDRA; they were a part of his regular cycle of customers too.

“Come in.” His voice was thick, deep, and dripping with authority.

The tip of the cigarette glowed bright orange as he inhaled the toxic fumes. The nicotine that coursed through his system calmed his nerves. Everyone had their own skeletons in their closets after all.

He paused his counting momentarily as he listened to the door handle squeak before it was pushed open.

“Sit.” He rasped with his freehand gesturing to the open seat in front of the table. “State your business.”

You watched the way the smoke coiled around his head like an ashy halo through the stagnant air. His brow cocked in your direction as his eyes zoned in on the stack of ration cards that you pulled from your jacket pocket.

“I was told that your menu is designed to cater to one's vices. I’m needin’ a bottle of booze, and a pack of smokes if you got any.” You placed the ration cards along the table before leaning back against the chairs frame.

“We ain’t got a whole pack, unfortunately. Five cards gets you five sticks, and three gets ya a bottle of hooch.” He declared in his warm Texas twang.

He was handsome, you’d give him that satisfaction only.

“I’ve got ten cards total. How about you throw’n two more smokes to make it even?” You countered smoothly as you crossed your arms against your chest.

“A negotiator, huh? Well, I'll tell ya what, girlie. Y’got yourself a deal. Y’new around here? Ain’t seen ya before.” He knew pretty much every face in the QZ. But yours remained a mystery. He wasn’t all too big of a fan of mysteries.

“Don’t think that is any of your concern, Joel.” You ignored his question as you passed off the cards.

“True.” He mused with a grin tugging across his lips. ‘S’alright. I’ll jus’ end up findin’ out about you in my own way.” He shrugged with the utmost casualness that sent your blood boiling under the surface. “Besides, my customers always end up comin’ back for more.” He grabbed a bottle of hooch and seven freshly rolled cigarettes concealed in tinfoil.

“There ain’t much for you to find out. Wouldn’t go wastin’ your time.” You grabbed the bottle swiftly before tucking it into the inner lining of your jacket. Before he could send you on your way, however, you unrolled the tinfoil to inspect the handiwork. Once you were satisfied with the merch, you plucked one of the cigarettes and placed it between your lips. “You got a light I can borrow?”

His nose twitched and his eyes squinted tightly before he reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He beckoned you silently to lean in as he ignited the flame.

“Y’know, these are a nasty habit to break.” He leaned back into his chair with his own cigarette dying between his lips. “Ain’t nothin’ like a good ole’ fashioned nicotine addiction.”

You scoffed under your breath as you took a deep inhale of the cancerous smoke that filled your lungs. “Says the man puffin’ away on one right in front of my face.”

He didn’t even look half fazed by your remark as he blew the smoke drifting from his lips off to the side.

You stared at one another a second longer before you stood up from your chair and snatched the cigarettes from the table.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Joel Miller. See ya around.”

Before he could respond, you were already slipping back out his apartment door and into the hallway.

“Man, she’s got a pair of balls on her, huh?” Tess mused from her seat alongside him.

“Yeah,” He smirked. “She sure does.”

The next time you saw Joel Miller was a few weeks later. You were assigned with assisting in dumping deceased infected into the deep pits where their flesh would be burned and melted away and all that would be remaining was their brittle bones. You had done this job enough times to get used to the putrid stench of rotting flesh. Others, however, couldn’t stand the smell. Some would pass out, others would empty what little was in their stomachs.

A denim-clad shoulder brushed against you as you lifted another body from the truck bed.

“Fancy seein’ you here, Angel.” Joel’s voice was muffled through the bandana he wore across his face, but you knew it was him just from that Texas twang of his.

Your eyes rolled back as walked past him and dropped the body into the flames that engulfed it.

“C’mon now.” He mused. “I know y’heard me.” He pressed.

“Fuck off, Joel.” You muttered under your breath as you bumped his shoulder harshly.

“Y’break that nasty habit yet?” He asked with a twinge of curiosity.

“Nope. Don’t plan on it either.”

Much to your relief, he walked away without speaking another word. It was short-lived however as he was standing right behind you in line to receive your ration cards for the day. The air was hot and almost unbearable as you wiped the sweat of your brow along your sleeve. When the cards were placed into your outstretched palm you shoved them deep into your pocket. The pay wasn’t worth the work that you put in.

Before you could disappear around the corner of the alley to head home, a hand grasped your shoulder rather firmly and before you could reach for your concealed weapon, your back was met with something hard that nearly knocked the air from your lungs.

Joel Miller.

“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doin’, Joel?!” You hissed under your breath as he flipped you around to face him.

“Got a proposition for ya, girlie. Trust me, you’ll want in.” His voice dipped down an octave as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of pills. Painkillers you suspected. The kind of shit that people could easily find themselves getting addicted to.

“And what makes you fuckin’ think that I would wanna do anythin’ for you?” What the fuck was this guys problem? The nerve he had.

“Cus’ I know there’s somethin’ that you want. Somethin’ that you need. Besides, you ain’t gonna make it long here if you don’t start usin’ people. S’the only way to survive in this world now. So, here’s what you’re gonna do. Tess and I wanna branch out further and in order to do that, we gotta get the rest of FEDRA off our backs.”

“You ain’t know shit about me, Joel. I’m doin’ just fine on my own.” You ripped your arm from his grasp, but he was quicker than you expected.

“I ain’t askin’ you, Angel. I’m tellin.’ Now, you’re gonna take these pills, and you’re gonna go on over to those guys o’there, and you’re gonna trade them. Y’get half the ration cards from the deal. Seem fair?” His tall stature loomed over you like a shadow being casted across the sun. Everything about this man was massive. His hands. His bulging arms. His shoulders. He was built like a fucking fridge, and he clearly wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Is this what you do to all of your customers? Corner them into alleys and force them to do your dirty work for you?” You scoffed as you ripped the baggy from his hand. “And I get all the cards. I ain’t gonna let you just go and boss me around for half.”

“Jus’ the pretty ones that have a mouth to ‘em.” He mused with a wicked grin. “Fine. Y’get all the cards, but only if they agree to trade. Go on now, Angel. Time's a tickin away.” He nudged you forward with the palm of his calloused hand resting along your lower back.

“Asshole.” You hissed under your breath as you stashed the pills into your pocket before departing from the alley. If there was one thing you were good at, it was getting men to give you exactly what you wanted. You could flutter your lashes, giggle, flirt a little and their little egos would be crushed to dust beneath your fingertips.

“Hey boys, got a minute?” You spoke in a honeyed voice as the three officers diverted their attention towards you.

Joel watched from the shadows of the alley as you worked your charm like a fiddle. He was impressed with your natural skills. You certainly were no pushover. He did wonder if this was all a facade that you wore confidently. He thought briefly about what it would be like to have you beneath his sheets. What would you request from him? Would you ask him to be sweet and gentle? To fuck you like a man oughta? Or, would you be willing to share your deepest, darkest, filthy desires with him? He hoped for the latter.

When the deal was done, you made your way back across the street. Maybe Joel Miller was right. Maybe you should start using people for what they have. Who gave a fuck about morale anyway?

“How’d it go?” he inquired with his broad arms crossed against his chest as he leaned back against the brick wall.

“They wouldn’t take the bait unfortunately.” You let out a faux sigh. “Guess the deal is off.”

“What a shame, Angel. I surely thought you had it in ya. Guess I was wrong. Oh well. Good luck to ya.” He pushed himself off the wall only to find himself being pushed right up against it. Your palm lay flat against his chest as your freehand reached into your pocket and pulled out a single ration card.

His brow raised curiously as you went to slip the card into his back pocket. His eyes widened when he felt the warmth of your fingers searing through his jeans. At this close proximity, he got a proper whiff of your natural scent, and his cock pathetically twitched in the tight confines of the denim.

“Here’s your half of the deal. Decided to be generous.” You whispered through the thick growing tension.

His hand reached up to grab your wrist but before he could make contact with your skin, you were already stepping away from his reach. Your fingers rose in a mock salute before you turned on your heel and walked away.

Fuck. She’s perfect.

The next time Joel Miller saw you it's past curfew. Hours to be exact. The Boston QZ streets are quiet sans the labored breathing and deep grunts coming from a group of low-life scumbags.

“I already told you, I don’t have shit on me!” You emptied out your pockets to show these fuckers that you weren’t messing around. Would raw honesty really keep these men from tearing you apart?

“Bullshit. Y’got stuff back at your place, right? C’mon now darlin’, don’t lie to us. We’ve seen you hangin’ around Miller. Y’workin’ with him?” The man that had you pinned against the brick wall pressed further.

“Oh, for fuck sakes! Are y’all really that boneheaded to think that i’m gonna be carryin’ merch on me out in the open like this?!” You yelled out of frustration as you tried to pin your wrists free to reach your concealed knife.

“How about you shut the fuck up and tell us where Joel’s apartment is, and we won’t have to kill you. How’s that sound?” The man twisted your wrists tightly to the point where you were just waiting to hear a sickening crack.

“I don’t know where his apartment is, asshole. And even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell the likes of you because i’m not a fuckin’ rat!” You hissed between your gritted teeth as you threw your head back in one swift movement right into the face of the man that was holding you hostage. His nose crunched audibly from the force as he stumbled back right onto his ass.

Blood pooled and gushed down his lips as he yelled out a slew of profanities in your direction. Just as you were reaching for your knife, it was knocked from your grasp and clattered to the concrete out of your reach.

A fist collided with your face that sent you slamming into the brick wall with your ears wildly ringing.

You detected a familiar voice through your half-conscious haze as you slumped down to the ground with a labored wheeze.

A sickening crunch, followed by a strangled yell as Joel had one of the men in a headlock. Their body dropped to the ground like a bag of bricks. Eyes forever unmoving. The man that you headbutted was desperately trying to crawl away as Joel staggered after him. He bent down, grasping the hilt of your knife in his calloused palm.

His pupils were dark like a never ending black pit as he sent his steel-toed boot colliding into his gut over and over again. The man’s wails died in his throat as Joel flipped him over onto his back and slit his throat with one fatal swipe. Blood spurted from the entry wound and speckled Joel’s skin in a spray of crimson.

The third man almost got away, but Joel fired a bullet right into his spine without a second thought.

He focused his attention on you as he crouched down, knife still in his grasp, dripping with blood onto the pavement. His freehand grasped your face gently as he assessed your injuries. His good ear detected the sound of tires crunching under gravel; FEDRA.

“Angel, we need to go. We need to move. NOW.” He spoke urgently as he tucked your knife away before placing that hand along your shoulder. “FEDRA is gonna be here any minute, and I don’t know about you, but my ass is NOT bein’ thrown in lockup!”

When you didn’t immediately respond to his dire request, he took matters into his own hands, literally. You felt his strong arms lift you from the ground as if you weighed nothing. He left the crime scene in a flash. He was speaking to you, but you couldn’t detect his words as his mouth was moving too fast.

The last thing you remembered seeing was his dark, espresso brown eyes, and his blood spattered skin.

“Need’ya to open your eyes for me, sweetheart. C’mon. Guy knocked ya pretty good, but you’ll live.” Joel murmured close to your face as you were coming to.

What the fuck.

Your lashes fluttered for a moment and then snapped open. Despite the ache in your face from being punched, and the pounding in your skull, you immediately shot your hands upwards and shoved harshly at his broad chest.

“Joel?! What the actual fuck–”

“Ah, there she is. The sleepin’ beauty awakes, finally!” He’s grinning like a cheshire cat as he moves off the couch to give you space to breathe.

“What the fuck are you doin’ here, Joel?”

“Wow.” He tuts under his breath dissaprovingly. “Can’t even get a thank you for savin’ your fuckin’ life?”

“I had the situation handled on my own. What the hell were you doin’ out past curfew anyway?” You sat up a little too fast as blood rushed to your head.

His strong hands were gently easing you back down to a lying position before he was backing off again.

“Easy now, Angel. I wouldn’t sit up a’that fast if I were you.” He warned you sternly.

“Well, good thing you aren’t me, huh?” You snapped back as you swung your legs over the side of the couch.

This time he was more forceful in his actions as his hands pressed down on your shoulders firmly. “I said, stay put. God, can’t you jus’ fuckin’ listen to me when I tell ya to take it easy? You’re gonna bust your nose back open, and the stitches on the back of your head. Just chill the fuck out.” You could taste his hot breath on his tongue and feel his pulse quicken. The bulging veins in his neck protruded through the thin skin.

You swallowed harshly as your gaze wavered along the remnants of blood on his skin. Why didn’t he bother to wash it off? You couldn't help but wonder.

“I didn’t fuckin’ need your help, Joel. And you still haven’t answered my previous question either.”

He rolled his eyes before he lifted his hands from your shoulders and stalked away into the kitchen. You heard him grumbling under his breath as he slammed open a cabinet door that was already hanging by the hinges on its last legs.

“Oh, I see. So you’re just gonna ignore me now? Y’know, its fuckin’ rude to not answer someone when they ask you a question, Joel.” You muttered mostly to yourself, but you secretly had hoped that he heard you too.

Two semi-cleaned glasses were yanked from the sink and lifted from their rims as Joel swiped up a bottle of whiskey before stalking back over to the couch. He slammed the glasses down on the faded coffee table before popping the cap off with his teeth.

You were infuriating. Disrespectful. And he wanted nothing more than to put you right back into your fucking place. He however, refrained from doing so and instead poured a large splash of amber liquor into both glasses.

“Y’know, Angel. One day that mouth of yours is gonna send ya six feet under.” He stated firmly as he picked up his glass, swirled the liquor around before throwing it down his throat in one gulp.

Your eyes narrowed into slits as you glared at him from the couch. You reached for your own glass as you slowly sat up. He was pouring himself another when you downed the liquor without a fuss.

“I am well aware of that, Joel.” You deadpanned and he poured you another.

“Good, that’s real good, Angel. S’then it should come as no surprise to you that I think you’re a fuckin’ disrespectful brat.” He rasped low and deep as his words rumbled like an oncoming storm.

The tension in the room was palpable as you stared one another down. Two predators with sharpened claws ready to strike.

______

please follow @tightjeansjaviupdates for fic updates as I no longer use a masterlist!

banners made by the lovely @saradika

[mister-eames]

darling, you have to give me more flesh on the scenario “what if arthur went to mombasa aka cobols backyard to fetch eames on doms request” would inception still have happened? or would end credits roll immediately? You can’t dangle that scenario infront of me like a carrot infront of a horse and say nothing :(

I love this question!! <3 I could write a whole novel on the possible canon-divergence, aha, sorry this took me a to minute to reply x I imagine it went something like this:

Above the din of the gambling house Eames suddenly notices two things at once.

One, the sharp scents of Davidoff Cool Water and nicotine.

The other is the barrel of a gun pressed in-between his shoulder blades.

Between his restless fingers the chips stop moving before resuming again. Saying nothing, Eames places the chips on the unluckiest number he can think of - if the person behind him is who Eames thinks it is, not a single sliver of luck can be wasted on something as frivolous as a dice game.

"Now, now," says Eames, sitting up straighter until the gun digs into his back. "Is that a firearm or are you just happy to see me? Goodness. You could at least buy me a drink first."

The dice roll on the table. Eames has lost. He wears his best look of disappointment as the dealer collects his chips, fewer than before, but still enough to cash in on. Currency comes in all shapes and forms and, hearing the tap of Arthur's loafers behind him as he's followed to the cash exchange, Eames very much get's the sense he'll need every last iteration of currency to bargain with.

"That's an interesting way of spelling Mombasa," Arthur says somewhere over his shoulder.

After all, Arthur is a man who plays to win.

---

"So," Eames deshells a pistachio and pops it in his mouth, "to what do I owe the pleasure of your company, dear Arthur?"

On the other side of the table sits Arthur, composed of long lines, angular limbs and dark fabrics, hair slicked back so perfectly it can only be a product of industrial-strength pomade and Arthur's sheer will. A pair of wayfarers are perched upon his nose, an old pair. His face is angled to the view outside beyond the terrace.

The nail of Arthur's right thumb, bitten short, digs into the side of his beer bottle.

"I'm here to offer you a job."

"That so?" Eames pries open another another pistachio, leaning back in his chair. "Tell me, was the gun to my back part of your offer?"

"Had to make sure you wouldn't run."

"What makes you think I still won't?"

"You won't," Arthur says confidently. "Not when you hear what I'm selling."

"And why would I buy anything from you," Eames asks, following Arthur's line of sight to the people milling in the market below, "when I could simply cash in on the price on your head?"

The challenge hangs in the air, suspended, awaiting Arthur's repartee. Instead, Arthur sighs, finally sliding the frames off his face, slipping them into his breast pocket. His expression turns pinched. "You won't," he repeats. He sounds less sure.

"I might."

"You would've done it already."

There it is. Eames shifts in his seat, throwing an arm around the back of it. "How'd you end up pissing off Cobol Engineering, hmm? Let me guess."

"How'd you know about that?"

"How did you know where to find me?"

"Inception," Arthur says suddenly.

"...Pardon?"

"The job," Arthur clarifies, a little uncomfortably. "Our client is asking for inception."

Eames stares at him.

Under the weight of Eames' gaze Arthur seems pressed to project nonchalance, sitting up straighter in his chair, re-adjusting his legs until they mirror Eames' outstretched ones. Eames knows him better. He's already catalogued all of the little things that are different with Arthur since they last crossed paths - some for the better - a nicer suit, longer hair. Some for the worse. Tired lines. A tie tied too tightly, begging to be made crooked. Bitten nails.

The problem with Arthur is that Arthur cares so much that it's written all over him.

"You do recall what happened the last time we attempted inception, yes? How horribly we failed at it."

"Yep."

"And you recall telling me from the get-go to the get-gone that it wasn't possible?"

Arthur shakes his head. "Doesn't matter. You still think it can be done."

"You don't," says Eames, confused. "Which leads us to the inevitable question of why you, Arthur, are here, risking your head to ask me onto what you in your mind consider to be a fruitless endeavour."

"Cobb wants you on the job. You'll get paid."

"Try again."

The exhale that escapes Arthur's nostrils seem to deflate him a little. The too-short nails stop digging into his bottle as the hand retreats to his lap. "If we're to succeed, the client will secure Cobb's return to the states."

"In shackles, I hope."

He shakes his head. "To his kids."

"I'm still failing to see what I get out it."

When it's clear that he won't capitulate, Arthur sighs. "What do you want?"

To never be in the same room as Dominic Cobb ever again. To wind back the clock three years. To live out his retirement in peace.

"Something priceless," he says instead.

"The opportunity to achieve inception isn't priceless enough?"

"No."

Going quiet, Arthur appears to think on this. "This is the last job," he says after a moment. "No more. He'll either go home or go to prison."

He says it like it's fifty-fifty; luck; the toss of a coin. Eames considers this, wondering uneasily if he is the element that will give weight to one of the coins sides - which yet, he isn't quite sure. Which Eames wants, he knows even less.

"And you'll be a free man."

"Yes."

"And what are you planning to do with yourself after?"

"That," Arthur raises his chin, meeting his gaze, "I will let you decide."

Lightning crackles up Eames spine.

"...That is priceless, indeed."

"Yeah," Arthur smirks. "So, what do you say?"

Eames writes down an address on a napkin. He slides it over and stands.

"Meet me here in an hour. I know of a chemist that might be useful."

Arthur blinks down at the napkin. "Why? Where are you going?"

Eames tilts his head towards the bar where a middle-aged suit sits, eyes flicking towards their table.

"Giving you a chance to shake your tail."

Arthur looks over to the bar and swears under his breath. "Does this mean you're taking the job?"

"Depends on whether our friend over there shoots first. Go on."

"Wait," Arthur says, placing a hand on Eames' arm. He raises an inviting eyebrow, eyes brightening brilliantly. "I've got a better idea."

---

Twenty minutes later emerge from a narrow alley with a matching pair of bruised, bloody knuckles, an unconscious body slumped in the shadows of the alley.

Eames grins at Arthur, who is already smiling wide at him.

Something in Eames' chest is in freefall, starting from his throat, right down to his sternum. The same thing that always robs him of any good reason when it comes to Arthur - the one that hits the reset button in his doldrums, like pulling the lever at a poker machine and says come on, try again, hoping that he might make dividends this time. A horrible lack of certainty; a wonderful, frightening unfurling of possibilities and hope.

Arthur's shirt is crumpled to hell; dirt and dust mar the cuffs of his suit jacket, the shine of his loafers. He places his wayfarers back onto his face and Eames thinks hello again. Hello Arthur, the man who is both nineteen and twenty-nine in Eames' mind, who has kept the same sunglasses from five years ago and wears Davidoff Cool Water because it was what he wore when he needed something cheap and accessible and never quite grew out of it, even when he has the means to afford 'better'. A creature of habit - and sentiment.

"Cobb wanted to come to ask you," Arthur says, tone light, shoving his bloody hands in his pockets as they rejoin the greater crowd, sides brushing as they close in to avoid getting separated.

"Thank christ he didn't."

Arthur hums agreeably at the sentiment. "What would you have said, if he had?"

Eames shakes his head, not even needing to think about it. "I'd tell'im to piss off. Probably had sold him out before he touched soil."

"Come on. You would not have."

"Would've. There is not a single thing in Cobb's coin-purse that would sway me to sign up for this," he insists.

Arthur rolls his eyes, squeezing past Eames to get through a narrow opening in the crowd. Eames follows closely, eyes trained on the back of him.

Well... maybe one thing.

He'll take the job. And after that... Eames has some ideas already.

[ae-neon]

Literally only 4 chapters in and Bryce Quinlan might be the worst? Like morally speaking, she might be sjm's worst protag and that's saying something

She says again and again that compared to the rest of midgard humans are treated best in Crescent City, as they don't have to endure menial labour until death.

The treatment in ccity being that best case scenario: you can become rich but will always be a second class. Worst case scenario: you're eaten. Even the average life of even a half-human is selling sex at the Meat Market.

She still thinks the Asteri shouldn't let the human resistance get to ccity. Implying they should be put down, permanently, rather than have them disrupt her peace.

Bryce sees a Fae woman with a barely adult human man, notes the man is clearly drugged up BUT her real issue is that the woman is cheap when she offers Bryce money to sleep with the DRUGGED UP 20 YEAR OLD.

She says she keeps her nails long and body fit to fight for her life in case some random Vanir tries to rape, kill or eat her. But looks down on her human date for not causing a scene when she thinks that the Vanir in the restaurant are thinking "half-blood" when they look at her. Knowing her Vanir friends would definitely fight for her.

Let's think about that

She knows humans can't do much to Vanir without guns and bombs but she thinks humans are disgusting terrorists when they do use them to fight oppression

She, a half Vanir, is always ready to physically fight for her life but is expecting her HUMAN date to fight a Vanir because she THINKS that random Vanir at the restaurant are THINKING bad things about her

So the man must die because Bryce has perceived thought crimes against her

God help me

[nonotnolan]

Labor and Materials

"You, uhh... you sure that's safe?" Howard was always cutting corners-- seeing him laying across a roof was not a shocker. "I know you're trying to go fast, but we're gonna have fill out so much paperwork if you fall off and break something. And isn't that body a rental? Boss'll have a bitch fit if he sees you like this."

"It's fine," he said, pausing to shift his grip on the nail gun. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can both get the hell off of this roof. Anyway, this look like a company body to you? I'm not swapping into one of those damn things unless I got no choice. Those robot shells ain't got no dick. Nah, I picked this body up cheap from some guy needing some quick cash. We swap back in 48 hours even if I do fall off the damn roof."

That tracked. Now that body swapping technology was becoming mainstream, a lot of younger men were selling out their bodies. It was marketed as a way to experience life from a different way, but everyone knew it was about the sex. I'd never seen the real Howard, but I knew that he was at least in his 60s. "You realize if you vegetable that body, no other guy will swap with you."

Howard had no counter argument, just an angry grunt and a dismissive roll of the eyes. "Shut the fuck up. Just keep passing me shingles."

-------------------------------------------------

Want to read more by this author? Dicked (Over) by a Demon by Nolan Sempers, for sale on Amazon.

[creaturefeaster]

I was wondering about the cq guys, did they have jobs before the disaster??, Personally, I see Rachel working in a beauty salon or doing nails in a salon. And what if mimes could have professional careers?,Could REDE be a mathematics teacher who likes to torment his students? What do you think about that?

A good chunk of them did have jobs, yes! And I think there are definitely some jobs the mimes would love/excell at, too, were they ever to need to work.

I'll go into depth about some of these jobs :3...

Hannah had a lot of commissioners for her robotics expertise, would be funded by various organizations of the state to help develop robotic aids or other useful things of the sort-- she was a busy gal before the Fault!

Gary had a middle man, or a plug of sorts, through which he would occasionally offload personal art through to sell locally within a farmer's market. He did this less than occasionally because he preferred to maintain his solitude.

Lauren sells single-use spells and other magical tools and compounds (They had other people help distribute these goods). They also taught classes on historic magic, when they had the spare time.

Elliot worked as a bookstore clerk, organizing books and other goods. He additionally found work through Lauren to help manufacture her products alongside her, through which he eventually became her apprentice, and gained many more tasks as a result.

Tanner was a hunter, partially for town game and partially to defend against opportunistic predators. You'd find him stationed out around the outskirts of town often, chilling with a gun and a drink.

April would help with hunting occasionally, but primarily worked as a nurse for Lystrike's very small, very dinky hospital.

Leon was not working at the time, but he did occasionally play solo gigs for the bar and other venues in Lystrike.

Rachel was actually a royal medic at the time of the Fault. As in, technically within the Dominion's higher military, but not a fighter. She was not on duty when it hit, but immediately went into the front lines anyways to try and help people with her healing oriented magic.

Samantha was a tailor typically selling her custom clothes remotely, though she didn't have much success in pulling customers in. Debbie advocated vocally for her on several occasions though.

Michael was about to get his first job just before the Fault, working at a comic shop, a position he lucked into by being at the store at the right time. (Then got lucked out of, due to the world ending 💔 )

~☆~

As for the mimes...

TyV would be a journalist. Ching is already an actor. Foxglove would enjoy a bartender position, for the wrong reasons I think. El Ganso is technically a bounty hunter of sorts and takes pride in it. Rede probably wouldn't be the best teacher, he'd get too frustrated with people who don't understand right away, but he would be an excellent astrophysicist. Holly would thrive as a model, Twiddle would just want to be the boss of anybody, Chickenstab would be great in any field involving animals. Atrox would be most content as a quiet maid. Jarna would love to be in a band, and Uppsulka I think would be a great counselor. Calamea would be the town nuisance.

These are just what I think would work for them, not necessarily what they'd end up doing if they did have to get jobs. Like, Rede would be great in astrophysics but he'd get stuck as like. A clerk or something that'd drive him up the wall.

[crystcllise]

cursed child london year 7 cast

the other week i got to see the year 7 london cast of cursed child and i am AMAZED!!! such a strong cast of wonderful performers across the board and i was absolutely blown away with their performances! you can tell they really understand their characters and have really worked on the dynamics and relationships with each other to create a realistic interpretation of these beloved characters!!

as always, i’m always watching the scorbus duos to see the little things they do with each other and i just want to say that ellis and harry’s scorbus is such a delight!!! they’re definitely my fav pair now hands down! such a sweet youthful portrayal of albus and scorpius and their dynamic on stage is so so pure i adored them sooo much!!

i got to meet ellis and harry after the show and ellis knew who i was and hugged me im fine

like broadway, i took some very unhinged notes so behold, read below all my unedited notes on (mainly scorbus) but the year 7 cast of cursed child!

ELLIS ALBUS IS SO SKRUNKLY AND SMALL AND CUTE HELP ME

james sings the end of his lines and it’s SO FUNNY

it genuinely looked like scorpius was leaning in to kiss albus after he tells him to come to the funeral

harry putting his legs up on the desk and trying to touch his toes while hermione is scolding him in his office and she just 😐

BREAD BREAD WHATS WRONG WITH BREAD??? scorpius was very excited about the bread

scorpius’ hand on albus’ chest when the train started

scorpius protectively putting his entire arm over albus’ chest in st oswald’s when amos pulled his wand out

scorpius as harry was the FUNNIEST SHIT EVER THE VOICE CRACKS AND THE LITTLE JUMPS david absolutely nailed the harry!scorpius mannerisms

“WIZZO!” (jump and finger guns) i love one skrunkly boy

scorpius looking so shocked and terrified when delphi grabbed albus’ hand and kissed his cheek

once delphi kissed albus’ cheek, she turned around to face scorpius and both of them look SO REPULSED like absolutely not get away from me

edge of the forest !!! scorpius looked so happy to call albus his best friend and albus was so shocked and so in awe (people in the crowd literally awwwed at it)

albus looking at scorpius so admirably at the triwizard tournament while he was geeking out

i’ve never seen such longing stares in the staircase ballet what the fuck

delphi’s ‘you two you belong together’ was just sooo knowing like jess!delphi is a scorbus advocate

ellis’ hair 🥰🥰🥰🥰

the collective gasp from the audience when albus said he wasn’t a loser before he met scorpius in the library… OUCH

hermione crying after ron said ‘my hermione’ and trying to hide her tears when ron kept talking to her

SCORPIUS AND THE DEMENTORS !!!! harry!scorpius absolutely devoured idk

scorpius’ scream when albus came up in the water SENT ME he squealed to the rooftops

ITS HARRYYY (the highest pitched scream i’ve ever heard scorpius was VERY excited)

hermione in tears after mcgonagall’s office and rose just running into her arms when she sees her crying oh i love them

intense staring in slytherin dorms holy mother of god

the massive scream cry delphi did in the owlery HOLY SHIT it like mimicked the cry of an augurey bird it was SO GOOD i was genuinely scared for a hot second

delphi’s “looOooooooOove” when looking at scorpius and pointing out albus’ weakness oh jess vickers my queen devours every time + albus unable to look at scorpius and scorpius in utter shock

WAIST GRAB WAIST GRAB AND SCORPIUS’ HAND ON ALBUS’ IM COMING UP when albus and scorpius had to hide from lily with the blanket, albus literally just stood behind scorpius with his hand on his waist and scorpius had his hand on top of albus’ it was sooooo adorable

harry crying in his office after talking to the dumbledore portrait and draco walking in, giving a ‘i ain’t dealing with this’ face and turning to walk out LMFAO

“ugh, is that a farmers market?” steve!draco HATES FARMERS MARKETS HELP

scorpius jumping into draco’s arms when reunited :’)

albus and scorpius literally sitting on each other in st jerome’s, their legs against each other and albus leaning into scorpius’ shoulder they’re so :((

hermione and albus are definitely close and i live for it she was so warm and comforting to him in st jerome’s this is all i’ve dreamed of

“and now i think you’re finding wonderful clarity” and GINNY LOOKING OVER AT SCORPIUS GOD SHE KNOWSS

the staring in the final staircase scene and ROSE WATCHING WITH UTTER SATISFACTION

albus’ hand on scorpius’ chest after rose interrupts and brushing it off with a fake yawn HELP

“you good albus?” “mhm” ROSE GIGGLING AND SKIPPING OFF STAGE AND LOOKING AT ALBUS AND SCORPIUS SO KNOWINGLY MY BEST GIRL

the closeness after the hug when scorpius says ‘new version of us’

SCORPIUS DOING FINGER GUNS ON NEW VERSION OF US THEY BOTH DID FINGER GUNS AT EACH OTHER ALBUS DID THEM BACK THEY ARE SO SILLY

scorpius waving, albus waving, scorpius turning to leave, giggling and waving again I FEEL ILL

david!harry completely understands albus’ love for scorpius and you can really tell in the final scene when albus tells him scorpius is the most important person in his life. he catches on throughout the show and it’s really nice to see him fully accept his son’s bond with scorpius and be content with it!!

like mentioned before, such an incredible cast and i am so sad i won’t get to see them again!!! they are truly wonderful and i hope a lot of you get to see them bc they are fantastic <3

[rosebarry16]

Saira Wright (oc modren warfare)

Face Claim : Akina Nakamori

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Name: Saira Wright

Age: 16 (2015) 24 (2023)

Gender: Female

Nationality: Japanese, British and Russian

Nickname(s): sai-chan, bubblegum girl

Alias(es): reader-35

Timeline: Modern Warfare

Rank: Classified

Status: Alive

Birth Date: 5th of March 1999

Death Date: none

Affiliation(s): konni group pmc

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Skin Tone: White skin

Eye Color: Light Brown

Hair Color: Black

Hair Length: armpit length

Height: 477 ft (0.11cm)

Weight: 18.5

Scars/Marks/Burns: None

Tattoos: None

Physical Enhancements: None

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Personality: Saira is delicate with human feelings and often understands them without a struggle, she cares, reliable and more light hearted, it doesn't turn black unless it needs to be. She's carful with hurting anyone and more likely she can't be always serious but no meaning she's none responsible, saira has the attitude of a secretary. She's sometimes mean, rude but most of the time obedient and respectful

Fear(s): losing her husband, betrayal

Likes: filling her nails, cleaning guns and her katana, killing people

Dislikes: Mentions of phobias, manipulation. Lying

Habit(s): keeping secrets

Talent(s): hacking, marketing, sorting files

Reputation: low

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Love Interest(s): Vladimir Makarov

Saira Wright fell in love with Vladimir Makarov while working with him for a few months, each day she falls in love with him and as his secretary they got close to each other and they fell in love and dated for 8 days until the 9th day, she was engaged and got married

Friend(s): Philip graves, farah karim

Enemy(ies): General shepherd, Yuri volkov

Philip Graves : him and saira are pretty good friends at secret, they might look like vest friends but they know they can't imagine their life time if they haven't met each other. They met In a court while the lawsuit was going wheb shepherd sued her for being makarov's wife.

Farah Krim : they might be in different ways and connections, she and Farah can never let their point of view for work break their friendship and become enemies since they opened up to each other, they met in urzikstan at the time and Became comfortable with each other once they knew they were not going to harm each other or look for trouble.

Vladimir Makarov : whatever happens to them both physically and mentally hurt her love can't be broken or ever going to do so, Saira is one of his weaknesses and he is her weakness, any harm done to them they don't hesitate to hurt without a second thought popping up in their heads, they met in streets of saint Petersburg when she was looking for a job

General Shepherd : they hate each other more than life itself and let's just say they'd rather suffer then dealing with each other. Shepherd himself wanted her dead along with makarov, no matter what she was and who she was. Saira would also appreciate the person who'll kill him either an enemy or a crew

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

The Character’s Abilities :

Weapons: AK, RPD, Katana

Preferred Weapon(s): Katana

Agility: /10

Hand-to-Hand Combat: /10

Long Range Accuracy: /6

Defense: /8

Offense: /7

People Skills: /8

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Birthplace: Honkog, Japan

Family: Wright

Mikai Wright: Father (Alive)

Classified Wright: Mother (Alive)

Kenji Wright : Uncle (Alive)

Familial Background :

Saira, the only child was brought into the world by Mikai and “Classified” Wright in March 5th 1999 In Hong Kong, Japan. Her parents are the only ones who has their Daughter without siblings while the other family members has at least 2 or more, kenji The older brother of mikai. Used to serve the infamous gang in Japan “Yakuza” for almost 30 years.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Character Background:

When Saira was 6 years old, her dad decided to teach her hard work and business. Mikai told kenji to let saira work at the restaurant he owns. Kenji time to time saw Saira how she was handling calls, files, appointments and made Saira his secretary. Kenji was impressed and she was kicked Later at 8 years old to move in uk

At 8 to 13 years old she was raised in UK and got the nationality, on February 28th Saira had a fight with her parents and kicked her out, she traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia to start a new life with the savings that she had when she was a baby.

(Tagging : @kings-out-of-pocket-hell @adlersoldspice @piouswolf @alypink)

[fruit-salad-ship]

Jlxkgfhlzlhzlhvgslhhxhlxgkxmgzlgcgdmgsktxfjd

SOFT SUPERVILLAINS!!!!

YEEEES!!!!!

Let them have moments of soft!

I will share one I have thought about for the last two days.

Injured and in hiding, the girls retire to a safe house, patching wounds, passing bandages, and peach being the frontline has sustained some serious internal bruising, she hurts, so she pops some pain killers and clumps on an old dusty couch. Her head lolls to the side to watch plum applying a plaster to her arm, she sees her boss’ white clothes muddied, blood splattered, her hair is not it’s regimented style, her nail polish is chipped, her skin sports damage. She is not herself, and yet peach can’t help but fall back on a daydream. Hazy with her meds she doesn’t seem to mind being caught looking. Plum asks her what, a defensive tone, and peach rolls her head to be comfortable and indulges in her little secret.

She tells plum about the secret wish she’d had. She tells her that in another life, she’d have loved to have met her like a normal person. No violence, no spite, no job between them. Peach paints this picture of running a strawberry farm, selling them by the punnet at a farmers market. She is happy, with no one there to tell her what to do. Plum shows up to her stand, and they both seem to click, a background thought in their heads of ‘oh. I was made for you.’ As they fumble around conversation, with peach’s cheeky grin and plums open smile. Neither girl was damaged, they had a normal upbringing with no trauma to shape them into what they are now. Plum buys two punnets after being offered to try one, and they’re good, they’re so good, peach knows it, she grows em with care. Her parting words are that she’ll be here again same time next week, if plum likes them she should come back and get some more, you know, while they’re in season.

Plum of course comes back, same time next week, looking as radiant as ever, and this time peach works up the nerve to ask her to go for coffee sometime, if she likes, don’t have to. Plum agrees. They go on this coffee date and laugh, genuinely laugh. Have fun. Go on other dates, and this is where peach describes a bunch of things that even in her real life, even now sat on that dusty old sofa, plum would enjoy, she knows because she’s been around her long enough to have picked up on her interests.

Plum once upon a time would have used her quirk to get this story, but peach offers it freely, a cocktail of pain killers keeping her calm and numbing out the pain she’s managing. To plum, this is a gift she did not expect to get, always she has to extract information with force, but this is handed to her, this gentle notion of another lifetime where they get to be normal is offered up with peach’s smiles and weak laughter, aware enough that she’s being stupid saying it out loud.

Plum eventually says peach is wrong. It takes a while to find the words, but she toys with a thread on a cushion and mulls over the story. It’s not that it’s bad, she says it’s that she’d have asked to go out with peach first time they met, she’d not wait to see her again, and she’d not let peach lead. There’s no way. This gets a laugh that hurts, but her big guard can’t help it. Of all the things to have an issue with, that was it? Typical.

Peach slips into sleep and leaves plum to chew over the notion of what if. A woman impossibly cautious, daunted by personal connections, fearful of meaningful relationships, she’s been burnt so many times, now it’s natural to guard herself.

Once they’re back to work and healed up, the story hopefully is forgotten, peach put it behind her, plum however, can’t. She’s tried, she’s really tried, but it’s hard to look at that black clad woman beside her and imagine her being anything but a brutal gun for hire. The idea of her being slack, being sweet, is alien. It’s even more abstract to imagine plum would be on the receiving end, even after how she’s treated her, after how they clash hard, how many times she’s used her quirk to mess with her.

Plum stands in a shop later on, peach is gone, it’s just her, eyeing a tray on a shelf, biting her lip in thought, trying to be brave about something so stupid. She picks up the item, buys it, and takes it home. It’s placed on the kitchen table, where she looks at it for a longtime, with wine, over dinner, while sorting out emails and paperwork. Her eyes always return to the thing she bought.

It’s not until the next day, peach back in guard rotation, that she gestures vaguely after her shift ends for the night, trying not to meet the gaze of her member of staff, a woman who’s gone above and beyond in her work. ‘It’s for you.’ Stated simply as she continues typing on her laptop, not even giving peach a moment of her time, as if she had better things to do, when in fact she’d thought about this for almost 2 days now. It made her nervous. Peach picks up a tray of 6 strawberry starts. Little baby plants that need time and care, but could grow healthy. The only hint peach has gotten that her story didn’t just get thrown in the trash as she’d expected.

Neither say anything, plum can feel her looking over, but peach goes home, and carefully plants them up, and waters them in, and looks at them with a very gentle smile. In another life, they’d have been better, had a good honest chance at love, but who’s to say they don’t deserve it in this one? It’s all they got, may as well try to make something of it.

Doodle for fun^

[sparklecryptid]

Royal Bastard au and For want of a nail for the ask game. Specifically, Ardyn never notices Ace during that visit to Galahd so doesn't follow him to see him doing magic.

As though I have not thought about this extensively because it changes the entire thing and most likely the fic would take a MUCH darker turn.

Because the thing is; that is the best possible way for them to meet. It is much better for them to meet somewhere away from prying eyes than it is for them to meet publicly. It is much better for them to lay everything out on the table at their first meeting than it is for them to know that the other knows that they know the plans that the other has.

The two other ways for them to meet that have crossed my mind are uh. Not nearly as good.

(There is a man - barely a man, more of boy than anything - cut through MTs like he is possessed by a wrathful god. There is a man with silver eyes and magic racing through his veins like lightning that cuts through soldiers of flesh and metal alike.

There is a man who locks eyes with Ardyn and snarls with the rage of someone whose entire life is burning to ashes around him.

The man lunges at Ardyn and Ardyn laughs. He keeps the man alive - of course he does - the man is too interesting to let die.

(the other ending to this one is that he does in fact kill ace.))

(the market around them bustles and hustles as Ace moves through it, collecting supplies for the dinner he's been tasked with making tonight. he doesn't notice the eyes on him. he doesn't notice how the crowd stills until hes already run into the solid steel of an MT.

There is a gun at his head in an instant. Ace does not want to die.

He doesn't die because the chancellor takes a look at him and smirks as if he can see the magic leaking out of Ace's body.

"Oh," the chancellor says in front of Ramuh and everyone, "Aren't you interesting.")

[chronic-ghost]

Part Two + Epilogue

A/N: this is an approximation of what I envisioned reader wearing the night of the premiere. the monologues come from the works of elena jacobs and lemony snicket.

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NOVEMBER 

Snow had come hesitantly to the city. Sprinkling down and melting against the black tar like salt in soup, the weather seemed unable to make up its mind. That nasty wind would flush down narrow alleyways, snagging up unsuspecting hats and everything not firmly held down, bringing with it that biting cold. This late in the season, the gorgeous bloom of golds and reds fluttering in trees was gone, torn down by that spiteful wind. The gnarled, brown bodies of leaves littered the streets, drain pipes swallowing them down when that first drift of snow melted into gray water. New York was fighting an oncoming winter, sinking its heels in and rejecting the inevitable. Everyone else just wished it would pick a side.

You know you’re not, not really, but sometimes you feel it: old. At thirty-two, things tend to crack a little louder than they used to. Hangovers lasted two days, not two hours, and how you used to live your life with only hours of sleep for weeks at a time completely baffles you. Sure, it was probably a lot of coke, but god, these hours are going to kill you. 

Production for Andrew’s play is in full swing. Some days you never leave the back side of the curtain, too entrenched in building, then painting the forty-two foot moveable walls. Between you and the rest of the tech crew, you had managed to solve the weight problem: because of its light-weight nature, the walls had a tendency to fall forward or back, basically the opposite direction of where they were pushed. But late last Thursday, with a few bolts from a nail gun, a couple of thick screws, and several PVC pipes, the walls stabilized. A collective, exhausted cheer went up, some moved to tears after hours of frustration. After that the crew went home . . . and you went to open the gallery. 

Marie helps as much as she can. Opening early when you can’t and closing late when you have passed out in your office chair. But as financial manager and co-owner, she has her own responsibilities. Hands to shake and meetings with potential buyers and artists. She’s taken over much of the front-facing work associated with running a gallery, as you had both agreed when you agreed you’d handle Andrew’s project, but there’s still so much to do. Opening night looms large in your mind and you are simultaneously excited and horrified. Once it's over, you plan on sleeping for two weeks straight. 

There are some bright spots, though. Your crew is a bunch of college kids from NYU interning, but they teach you about the world of TikTok outside of being the marketing arm for the gallery and whatever the fuck flossing is. You overheard one of them call Dieter, “girl dinner” and you absolutely knew better than to ask what that meant. They’re funny and curious and love to learn. Gives you hope for this goddamn world.

And then, there’s the opportunities you get to see bits of the show before anyone else. When rehearsals are on, the building stops, quiets for a few minutes. Like ants, the stagehands scurry out into the seats, relieved to have nothing to do for a bit, and eager to see where all their hard work is going. 

You find your place at the far back of the house, out of the lights of the stage, and you watch him. And he’s good. He’s so fucking good it makes your heart twist in your chest. The rest of the cast is great in their own right, but your eyes remain glued to him and him alone. His performance is magnetic. You feel it in your bones. You could watch him on a stage for the rest of your life. You don’t miss acting, but you do miss having him as a scene partner. 

For what it’s worth, he never looks at Emily longer than he has to.

You twist your wrist, growling at the pain, the muscle in your forearm cramping like it always did when you overworked yourself painting. With the walls built, that left only the actual artwork to be done and if your team were master carpenters, master artists they were not. You set them to work painting the base layer, but it was on you to bring those designs Andrew approved to life. 

You are sweaty, hungry, and every time you move, something else hurts. By your watch, it’s close to seven and Andrew usually lets the cast go home around seven thirty. You’re a more benevolent overlord; you let your team go around seven fifteen. 

But at seven on the dot, the black curtain moves back and several members of the cast head towards the back door, animatedly chatting amongst themselves. Like wildfire, some gossip spreads from the cast to the crew, eyes lighting up and suddenly reinvigorated. 

“What are they talking about?” You ask Liam, one of the stagehands, who shrugs.

“No idea, but –,”

“Andrew is giving us the weekend off!” Sarah in her too big overalls comes bounding over, practically vibrating. “He’s hosting a party at Shandy’s.”

Shandy’s is actually three different venues built into one like legos. In the center was an open air stage. If live music wasn’t playing, then the latest sports game played on the high definition screen. On the right was a bar, aptly in the style of an old tiki lounge. And on the left, was a low-maintenance seafood bar and grill: fish and chips, fried oysters, and hush puppies. It sounded fun but you never much had the inclination to go sniffing your nose around temptation. 

“You’re coming, right, Natalie?” Sarah asks excitedly. But the idea that you have a second of free time to yourself, much less to spend it with drunk people, is laughable.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Sarah. There’s gallery stuff – Marie hasn’t had a break in weeks and –,”

“You hear the good news?” Dieter’s delighted tone splits apart your little trio and he comes loping over with a grin on his face. “We’ve got the weekend off.”

“Hell yeah!” Liam pumps his fist. “But Natalie here doesn’t wanna come to the party at Shandy’s.”

Dieter’s face falls. “Why not?”

You frown, not feeling like you need to explain yourself to a bunch of college students, or Dieter himself for that matter. You stand up, mindful of the tension in your lower back, and wipe the paint on your hands on your overalls. After working with you for several weeks, Sarah’s bright enough to pick up on your irritation simmering low. 

She eyes him as she steps forward. “We’re gonna head out for the night, if that’s okay?”

You nod at the both of them, your mouth still twisted into a frown. 

“I have a job outside of this,” you huff at Dieter, as the kids scurry away. “A busy full time job and I just can’t –,”

“What if I pick you up?” Dieter asks. How, after all these years, could he still make you feel like you are the only person in the room? “Andrew’s also doing a bunch of events for the out-of-towners, and the last stop before dinner is a bar. Which I’d like to avoid for obvious reasons. So lemme meet you at the gallery and take you to the dinner.” He smiles relaxed. 

“I just don’t know, Dieter.”

“Bring Marie,” he says simply. “You both have earned a night off. I’ll pick you both up and take you back after dinner. I’ll help you mail invoices, if you’d like.”

Knowing exactly what his ADHD does to his brain with numbers, you shake your head, giving up the ghost and grinning. “That’s really not necessary, but, um, I’ll think about it. Lemme talk to Marie and see what she thinks.”

He nods, watching as the backstage empties out. Less people, less noise. Dieter’s mouth twitches.

“I can help you with painting too. You and I both know I’ve got a shit head for numbers, but this, I think I can do. With a little direction.”

He flashes you a smile and you inject your thumbnail into your closest finger. 

“Um, maybe? I’m exhausted right now and probably shouldn’t be making any executive decisions.”

“You want me to walk you home?”

Your chest swells at his sincerity. “Just to the subway stop if you don’t mind.”

To your enormous (disparagingly, staggeringly large) surprise, Marie actually agrees.

“I’ve been staring at excel spreadsheets so long I think I’m going cross-eyed,” she says from behind the office desk you share that next morning. She massages her eyeballs with the heel of her palm. “We’re in a good place with the fundraiser announcements for the holidays and there aren’t any upcoming tours we have to schedule.”

You know this, but you let her talk through it outloud, hoping she’ll stumble across something that’ll make her change her mind. But she doesn’t.

She shrugs. “Tell him I’ll buy him dessert if he gets a car with heated seats.” 

After your initial confrontation at your brownstone, Marie had seemingly changed her stance on having Dieter around. While she wasn’t about to offer to him to stop by, she most likely wasn’t still considering murdering him in his sleep. You wonder if it had anything to do with his consistent concern about your wellbeing – making sure you ate breakfast at those six AM calltimes and walking you home at night in the freezing cold, despite your protests. He even made the very risky joke that Daddy’s visitation hours were over and it was time to return you to Mommy . . . in front of Marie. And again to your enormous surprise, she laughed. 

It was progress. Progress towards what, you weren’t entirely sure.

You smile at your friend, gray eye bags and all. Maybe this is the universe’s way of sending its approval; yes, this is okay to want.

“I’ll call him later today.”

It’s the last tour on a Friday before a long weekend. Meaning, none of the students are paying attention and a few appear asleep on their feet. You go on with your explanation of brushwork, of pattern recognition, that artists' use of color is almost as distinctive as their signature. You sound boring even to yourself, your quips falling flat and references feeling awkwardly outdated. Nothing could rouse these zombies and their glassy-eyed stares. The herd shuffles along as you take them to the charcoal exhibit. 

This actually has you excited, charged even. You talk about the care that using this particular medium requires, that there are so rarely do-overs and mistakes are costly. The artist must be precise with their vision, focused, and above all else, determined. 

Your impassioned speech for the arts wakes up no one and you fight back a frown.

Jesus Christ, gimme something to work with. 

As you try and remember the next part of your tour, something beyond the crowd of students moves. You’re halfway through describing past and present famous artists who worked with charcoal, when you catch his eyes.

Dieter leans up against one of the white walls, a real one, not a hanging salon wall, his arms crossed and his converse notched against his ankle. You expect a smirk, a tease, so this is what you get up to when I’m not around, but whatever is on his face its not that. 

It’s . . .

He’s smiling. 

Like he’s proud of you. 

You attempt to stifle the blush erupting up your face as you turn back to the artwork. If the students can catch the tremble in your voice, they don’t say anything. 

Through the glass window, you see their bus pull up and stop by the curb, a beautiful glowing miracle.

“And that’s the end of our tour,” you say quickly. “Thank you for coming on this tour. Feel free to browse the gift shop, but you are free to go. ”

You don’t physically shoo them out the door, but your fingers clench just the same. 

“You’re good.” Logically, you know you didn’t hear him coming, didn’t smell his cologne. But you sense him all the same. You don’t jump at his voice suddenly at your shoulder. You turn and smile back at him, throwing your hip out dramatically.

“Had some practice acting in front of crowds before. Maybe you’ve seen my work?”

He shrugs, swinging his hands into that tan coat – which he wouldn’t let you pay to get drycleaned – as he looks around the gallery.

“Maybe, I have,” he sniffs, “don’t get a big head about it.”

You laugh as he wanders back as though drawn to the art. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot your contribution and curse yourself for not tearing it down when you had the chance. 

You sidle up next to him, hoping that if he got that far, you could deter his attention elsewhere. But he doesn’t notice your anxiety, your worrying ball of fear. Instead, he’s quiet, mouth soft, eyes slow to move across the exhibits.

“You know, you always were braver than me.” Your heart catapults into your throat, gaze wrenching away from your dark secret to him, to his face, to search desperately for a hint of a lie. 

“W-what do you mean?”

“This, all of this,” he swings his hand out either to indicate the rest of the artwork or the building itself, “it’s so fucking incredible, Natalie. I let you see one painting of mine and I wanted to die from embarrassment. But this . . . you . . .” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t do this.” 

“Do you still paint?” 

There are flashes in your memory, more feelings than anything else, of that time in New Orleans. You’ve told your therapists as much as you can remember about it, about the drugs you took with him, how quickly it spiraled out of control. And then comes the most painful thing to admit: it was the first and only time in your life you felt truly happy. Having Dieter all to yourself was a bright spot that nothing, not even time, or anger, or heartbreak could ever extinguish.

And in those flashes of memory, you remember waking up and watching him paint gorgeous things on those green walls. Watching him paint on you. 

Your heart aches, throbbing for just a minute. He’s been back in your life for months now, and you’re still convinced he’ll vanish the second you’re not looking.

Dieter nods, thoughtful. “Yeah, sometimes. It’s more of a stress reliever than anything else.” 

“I get that. I tried out ceramic work before I found out I’m complete shit at it. But it felt good to punch something gooey.”

He grins. “Oh, yeah?”

You nod, adding, “moved on to painting giant murals after that. Pollock would have been proud.”

He follows you as you lead him back, into the long and winding guts of the gallery. 

“I tried a lot of things after . . . after rehab. Not a lot stuck, but at least I wasn’t choking on my own feelings anymore.”

Your unconscious feet have brought you to the red painting your other tour group pointed out. It’s big, pulsating red, black specks invading the scarlet colors like an infection. 

“Lots of love and nowhere to put it,” he murmurs to the painting. 

His curls are just as lush, just as beautiful as they are on your charcoal sketch. As they are in your memories. God, his neck, his fucking neck –  

He catches you staring and grins bashfully. “Sorry, what you said reminded me of that scene in Fleabag. When she confesses to the tax guy.”

You swallow around the knot in your throat, nodding your only possible action. And then he turns and you feel your knees buckle. 

“Did you paint because of me?” The brown in his eyes is soft, overwhelming. Seizes you and nails you to the floor. The noise that would leave your mouth if you open it would come directly from your heart.

The gallery is quiet, empty. Silent as a church. 

But then he steps back, resetting the distance between you. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that. I’m crossing a line here and –,”

“Yes.” It’s gentle, quiet, your admission. Your confession. “Yes. You said you picked it up in rehab and I . . . I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see if it helped me too.”

He worries his lip, his hands fidgeting in his pocket. “And did it help? Painting?”

You huff and cross your arms as you stare up at the art you made with so much unhinged rage and painful love pouring out of you. You had been sure your tears were going to ruin the paint. 

“Yeah. It did. Unfortunately, your fucked up matched my fucked up in absolutely every way possible.” His nose flares as he stares at the ground. It hurts him still, after all these years. You inhale, the smell of the space calming your nerves, Dieter’s cologne a heady undertone. Trembling barely visible, you reach forward and take his hand. It’s warm and heavy and you try to find a memory where it was gentle against your face, but it doesn’t come. Your brain longs for new memories of him, hungry, desperate after surviving on scraps. He stops breathing regularly as you intertwine your fingers.  “For what it’s worth, Dieter . . . it was nice not to feel so alone.”

The noise he makes is quiet, almost imperceptible. Could have been a deep breath, a groan, a sigh. But it is something much more vulnerable, much more punctured than that. 

You hold him a bit longer before letting him go. 

“I don’t get it,” he mutters quietly, staring at your wrist. “I don’t get why you aren’t fucking furious with me.”

“I was,” you confirm. “For a long time, I was. I hated you, Dieter. But I can’t be mad at you without being mad at myself and I’ve learned to forgive both.” 

He closes his eyes briefly, lashes thick as they obscure that beautiful brown. “I could have said no. I could have – stopped it, before it became anything.”

“You and I both know that’s not true.” 

It's careless, throwing around suggestions about fate and destiny and the thing that binds all living things. Your gaze lifts from his lips to his forehead when he looks back at you. 

“You’re right,” he hums. “You were, we were . . . it was an addiction I wasn’t prepared to deal with at the time.” 

“Did it get better? Dealing with your . . . addiction.” 

You want to think he’s looking at your lips as you face the painting again.  

“Nope,” he says, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Had to quit cold turkey. But this one, uh, this one doesn’t come with any nicotine patches.” 

You wrinkle your nose. “Those things smell disgusting.” 

Something buckles as it crosses his face. He sticks his hands into his pockets again. “Yeah. But I would have preferred it to the alternative.”

New York had made a decision by the time Marie locks up the gallery behind her. The sky is a throbbing purple and thick snowflakes flutter against your eyelashes. The sharp wind had surrendered, winter making its final claim over the city, and it started snowing with confidence, with surety. 

White flecks cling to your scarf as ahead of you, Dieter opens the car door for Marie. Desperate to get out of the cold, she practically launches herself across the leather seats, her little body always cold as it is. 

“Did you seriously get a driver with this car?” You shake your head at him as you follow Marie. He smirks as he climbs in after you.

“I’m only partially responsible with a credit card now. Besides, New York drivers are so mean and my fragile heart can’t take it.” 

It was a simple town car, but with the seats facing inward like a limo. Marie sits with her hands over the air vent in the floor with obvious relief on her face. She cracks an eye open to Dieter as he shuts the door and the car lurches into traffic.

“What do you want?” She scowls begrudgingly.

“What do you mean?”

“You went above and beyond the request for seat warmers. I owe you dessert. What do you want?”

Dieter chuckles, glancing at you as Marie all but curls up against the vent. 

“Rain check?” 

She hums and closes her eyes, her head lolling against the window. Dieter sits across from you, his feet tucked in between yours, a content smile on his face. 

“Thank you,” you murmur quietly. The cold has left a pink blush across his cheeks and it looks wonderful on him. His hands flex by his sides.

“Least I could do.” 

The only sound for a while is the rush of air coming out of the vent, the faint honk of a car in the distance. Over Dieter’s shoulder, you watch the slow trickle of snow turn more consistent, flakes turning to chunks. It looks deathly cold out there.

You meet Dieter’s gaze – only because he had been watching you first. 

“Do you ever miss warm and sunny California?” you tease quietly, mindful of Marie. 

“Sure.” Dieter shrugs and folds up his long leg over his knee. “But I don’t think California misses me.” 

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” You cock your head to the side, watching the snowfall again. “California has a lot of good memories with you.” 

“Well, if California ever wants me back, she’ll have to give me a call.” 

You laugh. “She’s far too mysterious for that.” 

“I’d like to think I know what a lady wants.” His voice is low, rumbling, like the heated vents. You glance at him but he’s already staring out the window.

You unbutton your coat and sit in silence for the rest of the ride. 

Shandy’s is, presumably, packed. Hot bodies desperate to get out of the cold stand shoulder to shoulder in the pretend-crab shack. The irony of a beachfront-themed restaurant while outside a blizzard is brewing, is not exactly on anyone’s mind as they cram further in, away from the windows and drafts. The smell of fried fish makes your mouth water and these are the times you miss having an ice-cold glass of beer. With your arm wrapped around a sleepy Marie, Dieter stands on his toes to try and find Andrew and the other cast and crew who showed up. He drops back down, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, saying something to you, but it’s loss in the buzz of the crowd.

“What?” You yell across three feet. He shakes his head and, without warning, takes your hand, diving into the crowd. You have only a second to revel in the warmth of his palm before you have to take an active stance to avoid being elbowed or stepped on. Marie latches on to your arm tighter, one good jostle away from being lost in the sea of people. Dieter ducks and weaves with shocking precision, his wide chest cutting a path for you and Marie behind him. Someone steps back and you stumble into his shoulder. 

He glances down at your intertwined hands, as if to make sure you are still there. You can’t quite read what’s in his eyes. 

“Nearly there,” he murmurs before diving back into the crowd. Like the parting of the red sea, Dieter manages to pull the three of you through the knot of people and over to where a section of tables and booths had been roped off. Andrew leaps to his feet, his face red and eyes blurry, the instant he sees you. 

“You made it! I thought we lost Dieter a while ago!” He embraces each of you, ending with Marie who glares up at him.

“I’m hungry.” A sleepy Marie was one thing. A hangry Marie was a whole other beast entirely. 

Andrew chuckles and slings an arm over her shoulder. “I’m pretty sure we ordered everything on the menu twice, so dig in. All goes on the company card.” Marie’s eyes the size of silver dollars as she stumbles towards the feast, Andrew turns back to you. “What about you? Hungry?”

There’s something warm in your palm and it takes you a minute to realize it’s Dieter’s hand. You’re still holding hands – and smooth as ever, Dieter casually lets go as one of the cast members comes to give him a hug. 

“You’re good, right?” He says to you, as they break apart. “You can come sit with us if you want.”

By some miracle, you spot someone who looks like Sarah from the back so you shake your head.

“Nah. I think I see my people over there.” And then you do something incredibly stupid: you clap Dieter on the shoulder, like an uncle would pat his neurotic nephew. “If Marie comes looking for me, tell her I’m in the back.” 

He glances at your hand on his shoulder and then nods. “Sure. Uh, have fun?”

You are sweating beneath your woolen coat from the body heat of a hundred drunk idiots and now you can actually feel it on your hairline.

“Yeah. You too.” 

You spin on your heel in the direction of your salvation, internally cringing at your own stupidity. If this girl isn’t Sarah, I am so totally and completely fucked. 

The girl was, in fact, Sarah. Liam’s there too and a few of the other NYU interns. The art director sits in a booth nearby, talking to a couple of the students, so you don’t entirely feel like a lecherous weirdo hanging out with a bunch of nineteen year olds. 

Many of them come up to you, offering to buy you a drink as a premature celebration for opening night, which is only just a week away. But you merely ask for water, or a coke. They obliged, curious, but respectful, staying for a while to chat until the ice in their glasses melts and they’re off for a refill. 

In the early days of your partnership with her, Carla told you that addictions are formed out of habits: you turn to drugs or alcohol every time because you have no other tools with which to self-regulate. That you quite literally fill the silences by drinking because the alternative is unbearable. 

So, you count it as a small personal, private win that you can lean against a railing, quiet, and watch the crowds of people without ever feeling like you need a drop to top it off.

But . . . there is a want. A missing of something no longer there. You toss back the ice to crack it between your molars before it melts. 

“Hey there, stranger!” Dieter bounces up the few steps to the small alcove you’ve propped yourself up in. His cheeks are flush and his hairline is wet. That gorgeous jacket is nowhere to be seen. He shoulders up next to you and you are consumed with his radiating body heat.

A delighted scream goes up from the crowd as the opening chords of Sweet Caroline begin and the walls vibrate with a triumphant “bum bum bum.” 

“Someone’s having a good time,” you practically shout over the bad and off-key singing, eying him up and he chuckles, swirling around the brown, bubbly liquid in his cup. 

“Some of the kids wanted to go dancing,” he yells back, “and bet I couldn’t floss or whatever, so sue me if I’m a little sweaty.” 

He drops his head and rubs his sweaty forehead against your shoulder. 

“Ew! Dieter – get off!” You giggle and shove him away from you. Hekers as he stumbles against the railing. He sniffs his shirt.

“Blegh – I think I can already smell myself.”

Sobering, you watch him as he presses the cool cup against his forehead. He catches you watching.

“What?” He asks and pushes the sweaty ends of his hair out of his face. 

You turn your head to his ear so you don’t have to screech over Neil Diamond’s most famous song for white people. “You look . . .” You can’t really find the right words now, opting for staring at a freckle on his neck until they come to you. “You look happy, I guess.” 

The rapturous smile curled around his lips fades, his eyes caught on the melting ice in his cup. This close, your shoulders touch and he curls around you, like he’s got a secret. You’ve learned a thing or two from your therapist so you wait until he’s ready.

The crowd is insatiable, screaming and howling as the final chords play, and another plucky song starts up. 

“Once upon a time, these kinda things were a struggle for me.” He nods to the crowd, the bar, the alcohol. “Either I’d get black out drunk and wake up next to my PA or a stripper named Candy. And then, when you met me, I was straddling sobriety and my failing marriage.” Another party, a hotel, a blue sparkling pool. Wanting nothing more to push him back into his room and unbuckle his pants on top of his linen bedsheets. Dieter drops his head away, his forearm tense against yours. He thumbs the edge of his cup, preparing it for his admission. “And then . . . I was going out of my mind trying not to think about you.”

You can’t admonish him. You already know this, how you had been the image in his mind he pictured when he fucked his fist, long before viewing party at the director’s house. But it feels new, fresh, like he’s confessing all over again. Like the feeling persists. 

“Dieter, I . . .” 

His mouth is soft, beard wet, neck sticky with sweat, but his eyes burn you. Threaten to singe the skin from your bones.

“Old habits die hard, I think.”

His thumb presses against your wrist, his big hand covering yours against the wooden bar, pinning you – you can’t move forward or pull away. The heat of his chest throbs against your stuttering ribcage, the fingertips of his other hand twitching against yours at your side, seeking out your knuckles and then jerking away. His inhale draws your chin up to his, you’re so close you can see every memory etched in the lines around his eyes, his pulsating skin above the vein in his neck – the way his lips part when you meet his gaze. He murmurs your name and the ghost of his kiss swoops down your spine, choking your lungs, robbing you of air. Heavy lashes soft against his cheeks, he breathes, gives you whatever is left inside of him and you swallow it down, inches from his mouth. 

Here you come again

Just when I'm about to make it work without you

You look into my eyes and light those dreamy eyes

And pretty soon I'm wondering how I came to doubt you

In the lofty silence between you, the Dolly Parton lyrics are audible, the crowd decidedly less familiar with the words. The bubble of sound surrounding you, enclosing you and him, breaks, the casual hum of a bar returning, and the outside world suddenly exists again.  

He blinks at you as neither of you can ignore the song any more. 

Here you come again

Looking better than a body has a right to

And shaking me up so, that all I really know

Is here you come again, and here I go

“Smoke?” You squeak.

He nods quickly, pushing you gently on your low back. “We gotta get the fuck outta here before they play Jolene.”

It’s nearing 1AM when Marie finally stumbles out of Shandy’s, drunk and warm and full of french fries. 

“‘Hn don’ even ca-are I’m over thirty n’ drunk as hell.” She mutters into your shoulder. Heavy virgin snow sits heavy on the ground, only a few imprints of shoes left behind. You hold her close, worried about her stumbling and yanking you both to the ground. Dieter has gone ahead to flag the car down. 

“You say that now but wait until the hangover, sweetie,” you laugh and she squeezes you. 

“Hmm, you’re maybe right.”

Bold headlights flash on the street ahead as the town car pulls up against the curb. Dieter jogs up, leaving the car door open behind him. 

“Gimme Drunky Pants.” You help him hold Marie up right before he bends, scooping her up by her knees and cradling her to his chest.

“Dieter, be careful,” you frown. “It’s fresh snow. You could slip.” 

Marie lifts her head, her arms looped around his neck, squinting. “Am I Drunky Pants?”

“Yeah, Drunky Pants,” Dieter chuckles as he leads you to the car. “It’s a good thing you weigh about a buck fifty soaking wet.” 

“Hey, pal, ‘m at least two dollars.” She holds up three fingers. She tries to find you over his shoulder. “Natalie, call my lawy’r, they’re takin’ me to jail.”

You brush her wet hair out off her forehead just outside the door. “I’ve got bail money, don’t worry about it.”

Dieter snorts and climbs to the car, minding Marie’s head as it goes limp on her neck. He eases her onto one of the seats as her eyes flutter open and shut.

“ ‘re such a good friend, Nat-il-ee. I h’ve bail money for you too.” 

You shut the door after them and Dieter raps the glass, indicating to the driver to go on. He sits back down as Marie’s hand touches his knee.

“ ‘r we friends, Die’er? We’re frien’s right?” 

You bite your lip, trying to keep from ruining what could be a very sweet moment, as Dieter pats her hand. 

“Yeah, Drunky, we’re friends.”

“I’m not Drunky, you’re Drunky . . . wait, no, guess y’re not.” With a sigh, Marie rolls over and faces the plush seat. “Good night.” 

Dieter meets your eyes across the car, your teeth tight against your lips, and he shakes his head, grinning like a mad man. Don’t ruin it for her. 

You nod, snorting down a giggle. You take out your phone and snap one picture. Just for memorabilia.  

DECEMBER 

The morning of Opening Night

The concrete floor is cold even through your thick socks and hard-bottom slippers. The low window is shut and has been locked for weeks now, but the icy air managed to sneak in anyway. A woolen shawl around your shivering shoulders, you shuffle towards the stack of shelves at the back corner of your basement. Your pottery wheel sits clean and unused, the prospect of either hauling it up to the kitchen or freezing your ass off down here equally unappealing. 

You store things down here that are either seasonal, like decorations and bug spray, or things that are too big to fit somewhere upstairs. Or, in the case of what you’re looking for, things that weigh too much. 

It’s on the bottom shelf in the back, like it always is. You realize now that you’ve unintentionally stored it in a place of shame or embarrassment, a dirty secret you can only look at when it’s cold and all the lights are off. But that’s not how you feel about it. You slide it off its shelf, the only thing here that isn’t covered in a layer of grime that accumulates over items in basements. The buckles are cold under your hands and you feel like you should apologize. So you do. Silently, you make a promise that it’ll no longer live in the basement, that under the bed, easier to reach, might be a better home for it. 

After all, you think, after tonight, you might want to show it to him. 

Breathing out puffs of white air, you tighten your shawl over your shoulders and make the slow climb back up to the warmth.

Opening Night - Premiere of Homeward with You directed by Andrew Young

You puff out your cheeks, air rushing out between your lips painted the color of pomegranate, deflating entirely, as you swish the emerald green folds of your dress back and forth in the mirror. At the store, you loved it immediately and Marie audibly squealed, repeating that on the point of death, you had to promise to buy this dress for the premiere. 

Now, you think it fits awkwardly, the waist too tight and the loose shoulders unable to settle right. The high collar around your neck threatened to choke you out, your overheated skin uncomfortably itchy beneath the wool. 

This is stupid. I look ridiculous. I’m changing immediately –

“If you try to take that off, I’m tackling you to the ground.” 

Marie shakes her head as she slips silver studs into her ear, her own black dress stunningly elegant yet remarkably simple. Her short hair is coiffed, tucking around her ear in a way that would make any flapper girl sick with envy. 

“But it doesn’t look right,” you whine. “I look like an asparagus!” 

She rolls her eyes and picks your earrings up from your vanity, your gold necklace looped between her fingers. Her smooth brow is furrowed as she gently slips your earrings on, softly plugging the backs. She is quiet, contemplative. 

“Did I ever tell you I wanted to be you when I grew up?” She asks quietly. 

You frown at her in the mirror as she goes to put on the other earring. “That’s ridiculous. You of all people know what a complete nightmare my life has been.”

“Yeah, but you’re still here, aren’t you?” She unhooks the chain of your necklace. “You are without a doubt the most tenacious person I’ve ever met. You’re brave and funny and smart. Everything I ever wanted in a big sister.” 

The sharp flush of tears in your eyes threatens to smear your mascara and you catch her arm as it rests against your shoulder to clasp your necklace together. She stills and you look her in the eye. 

“You’re my best friend, you know that?” You ask her, your voice tight. 

She puts her arms around you, her head on your shoulder, her heels adding that extra height, and you watch each other in the mirror. 

“Of course, I know that. I just want you to be happy.” Her tone changes and you can’t find her meaning in her eyes.

“I am happy,” you say, firmly. “I’m happy with this life we built.” 

She kisses your temple. “No, you’re not. But you could be.”

The falling snow flickers and sparkles in the bright lights of the theater, the sidewalks clear for now. As the car approaches, through the window you read the name of the production up on the marquee in giant bold letters, his name just below it. Your stomach tightens.

The tires squeak and you climb out of the cab, Marie just behind you. No one greets you and there are no flashing camera lights. There are a few journalists, trade reporters, critics but they stand around, relaxed, smoking or talking amongst themselves. It’s a relatively quiet affair, not uncommon for productions of this size. You feel the brief press of disappointment before boxing it away. 

The lobby is warm, with bordeaux floors and wooden paneled walls. An ancient staircase spills out to greet its guests, rich, shining banisters peering down from the second floor. A smiling suit-and-bowtie bartender waits by the coat check-in desk, converted from the old ticket sales corner used during the theater’s glory days. Marie offers to take your coat as your phone starts to ring. 

Fighting between your coat and getting your phone, you answer it without checking the caller.

“Hello?”

“Hey there.” Dieter.

Your mouth dries and you glance at Marie chatting with the coat check-in girl. Quietly, you make your way over behind the grand staircase, a little out of sight.

“Dieter, shouldn’t you be getting ready?” 

“I can do both. Talk to you and put on this eyeliner that makes me cry.” You fight a smile, your hand holding your elbow, shoulders hunching towards the sound of his voice. “It’s okay, you can laugh. It was funny. I’m funny.” 

“Dieter, did you call for a reason?” You know he can’t physically see you roll your eyes, but he’s deserving of it anyway. 

“Yeah. Um, well, actually I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

“Of course. What do you need?” 

“If you’re in the lobby, can you look over by the old phone booths?” Annoyingly vague occasionally, but cryptic, Dieter is not. You peer around the wall, your gaze running across the lobby. Sure enough, by one of the other theater entrances sits five old wooden phone booths. Only a few still hold the rotary boxes, but in one on the end sits a small woman with white hair. “Do you see a lady there in a silver dress in one of them?”

“Yeah, I do. Who is she, Dieter?” 

With an exasperated chuckle, he says, “okay, this you can’t laugh at. She’s my therapist.”

“What?”

“Okay, ex-therapist. I met her in rehab and I stuck with her after I got out. But then about five years ago she retired and she referred me to someone else. We kept in touch and became really good friends. I flew her out here to see my play and I was wondering . . . if you could keep her company.” 

Your mouth dropped further and further open. “Dieter, I . . . I don’t know . . .”

“She doesn’t bite,” he laughs. “And don’t worry, she only knows only most of the details of our sex life.”

“DIETER!”

“I’m kidding – I’m kidding!” You can picture him hunched over on the chair in the dressing room, laughing himself silly. He sighs, giggles subsiding. “Okay, look, she knows you who are, but I don’t talk about that stuff with her anymore.” His voice drops, quiet and boyish. “Besides, she’s kind of the closest thing I have to family and I don’t trust anyone else with her but you.” 

You can almost feel his breath across your jaw, his hushed reverence.

“You still there?”

“Yeah, Dee, I’m still here.” You scratch your eyebrow with your nail. “Of course, I’ll keep an eye on her. What’s her name?” 

“Beatrice, but I just call her Bea.” 

You arch an eyebrow. “Bea and Dee?”

“I’m just cute like that.” You laugh with him this time. There’s a part of you that wishes you could have seen him before the premiere, given him what you want, but you worry it might have messed with his head. “Thank you. It means a lot to me.” He sounds so sincere. “I’ve gotta go, but –,”

“Dieter, wait.” Phone clutched tight to your ear, you go deeper into the bowels of the theater, by the door that leads to the cabaret stage. “I, um, I have something to show you later. Nothing serious – and it doesn’t even have to be tonight but I’d like to steal you away for just a bit.” You smirk, trying to get some even footing underneath you, but his silence dries your mouth out. “I-i-if that’s alr–,”

“Say when and where and I’m there.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

“A-alright. Then, uh, break a leg.”

He chuckles, right down your neck. “Thanks, Nat. Oh and if I don’t see you until afterwards, you look really nice.”

You swallow around a dry knot of wool in the back of your throat. “Is this where I’m supposed to say, ‘you can’t see me’ and you say, ‘I just know’?” 

“You’ve got me all figured out. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Bye, Dieter.”

You close your eyes, thumb shaking as you tap the red button on your phone. Every breath catches on the knots of your spine, of the curve of your ribs, as it goes down, hollow, sucked down, only to emerge shredded and weak. 

The memory of what had nearly happened the night of the party at Shandy’s, it’s sunk into the crevices of your brain, under the skin behind your forehead, weighing your brow down day by day. It’s there, but you don’t see it. You don’t look. Like a beast in the jungle, you don’t make eye contact, hoping it will pass you by. 

Hearing his voice over the phone, teasing you, you swear you hear it growl. 

Look up, look up, look up

Look at me

Slipping your phone back in your purse, you straighten your shoulders and march for the old phone booth. 

Bea is probably about sixty years old, maybe closer to seventy. Silver hair tucked back in a low bun that makes her dress shine, short unpainted nails press a ratty paperback book into her lap. She adjusts a navel blue sheer shawl around her mache-thin skin when you gently tap the window, smiling. She blinks up at you with the biggest blue eyes you’ve ever seen on a living human being. 

What it says about you and Dieter that your therapists could not be more different, is a question you’ll bring up to Carla later on.

You gently push back the accordion door and wave.

“Hi. I’m –,”

“Oh, I know exactly who you are,” she says softly, her smile coy. She bookmarks her page and closes the book – The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – before standing up. Not wanting to offend her, you don’t reach for her unless she seems unsteady, but her walk is confident, if not slow as she exits the phonebooth. “Dieter said a friend of his would come get me.”

Yes, but do you know which friend? Those thin lips swirl up to the corner of her mouth, her eyes playful. “You really are as pretty as he said you were.” Quickly, she adjusts her shawl and offers out her small hand. “Lovely to meet you, dear.”

Mischievous. Like those little elves or sprites. Instantly, you see what Dieter likes about her. You offer her your arm. 

“Lovely to meet you too, but I get the feeling you know much more about me than I know about you.”

She pats your arm, that dizzy (fake) bleary old lady glaze going over her eyes. “I don’t know what gave you that impression.”

Above you, the lights flicker and a thrilled anticipation hums from the lobby, those still left eagerly moving to take their seats

“Oh, I’m so excited,” Bea squeals against you.

“You’ve never been to Dieter’s plays before?” You wait until the flow of people lessens, not risking an elbow or an errant shoe. 

“He doesn’t let me!” She grouches. “Only recently has he let me see some of his movies. But he picks them out and we have to watch them together. Honestly, that man is such a goof!” 

Her blue eyes watching people go by, she doesn’t see you chew your tongue. The man he lets Bea see is so wildly different from the one you knew, or the one you’ve gotten to know the past few months. The idea of just sitting down on the couch with Dieter to watch a movie was once, well, impossible. Now it didn’t seem . . . right. You try to picture this Dieter, this long-haired, relaxed, sober Dieter in a dark room, feet under your covers, laughing – laughter comes so easily to him now – and you couldn’t. Your brain shut the doors and turned off the light. No, no one’s home. 

No one’s there.

“He’s a doctor in this one,” you say by way of filling the silence. “Did he tell you that?”

Bea peers up at you, her silver eyebrows arching. “No. He said he wanted it to be a surprise.”

“He’s a small town doctor, in a town on the verge of collapse in the thirties. He’s caught between being responsible for his brother’s kid, who has been drafted just before he’s set to get married, and getting out of the town himself.” 

“Ooh, his dramatic roles are so good!” Bea squeals again, squeezing your arm excitedly. You wonder if this is what she does to Dieter’s arm when they watch his movies. The crowd thins, so you lead her down the steps, to the front row that Andrew roped off for special guests. The theater is small, intimate, not space for more than fifty people, but the red velvet seats have been kept in immaculate condition, the Roman-inspired paintings on the ceiling and golden-dusted ceilings kept fresh in gloss and shine. It’s, for lack of a better word, cozy.

Marie is already there with a playbill and her smile fades when she sees you with an old woman on your arm. You shake your head, I’ll tell you later, and help her sit before taking your seat next to Marie. 

“Do you miss it?” Bea asks quietly, her eyes on the stage, as the room fades to black. 

“Miss what?” 

“Acting.” If you were dancing, you would have just tripped. “With him?” And now you’re on your ass, wondering what the hell just happened.

You swallow, those blue eyes so bright and earnest. “Um. Sometimes.”

Bea sighs, rolls her eyes, and pats your hand. “He misses it. Even if he’ll never say anything.” 

You don’t ask her to elaborate, because you don’t want to know.

He’s good. They all are. 

There is a natural chemistry reflected between the cast that is often so hard to find. The subject matter, the sets, the expertly designed costumes – there is a sense of grounded realism. As Andrew hoped, the audience peers into the lives of a people strapped on a path of destruction. They fall apart as their town does around them. They get in their own way. They sabotage their own happiness again and again out of fear or frustration. Every character is fully realized to the point of anguish, of emotional damage because how could they not see it? How could they possibly continue to live their lives like this? How long do they believe they should suffer?

And beyond this swirling chaos of painfully human failure are the mobile walls you designed. They evolve, transform under expertly placed light, shadows increasing or decreasing depending on a blue or red light. The old Greek plays had The Chorus, omniscient watchers that took pity on the tragedy but were unable to stop it. Andrew’s play had your designs; silent, overbearing smears of sadness or grief or joy just out of reach. In such a grounded play, the walls added a sense of vivid delusion, waking madness, providing a razor’s edge of tension to every scene. 

Dieter’s character is morally flawed. Tired and run down by this world that’s given him nothing, no hope; stealing from his patients when he conducts housecalls to pay for this “escape” that never comes. At first he has no interest in saving the skin of his nephew, not willing to risk imprisonment over a fake diagnosis, but he, like the audience, is forced to bear silent witness to the genuine, deep, honest love between his brother’s son and his sweetheart, played by Emily. 

They sit at a kitchen table, the set painted a light green, the wood chipped and window glass cracked above the grimy sink. The night before he is meant to be drafted, Dieter’s doctor in the corner trying desperately to appear unaffected as his nephew goes through his will to his sweetheart and his uncle, so that in case of the inevitable, they know what his final wishes are. 

The boy is choked up, nervous, reading through every word with an agonized sob. His hands that hold Emily’s are shaking, as silent tears stream down her face. 

And then in a truly beautiful stroke of theater production, the boy pauses, and a recorded voiceover of him continues to read the will. But he stands, Emily and Dieter frozen in time behind him, and gently kisses Emily on the forehead, his eyes shut and face wet. He lets go, and turns to the audience. 

The voice over fades to a low hum as he stands at the center of the stage. The boy is mere feet from you. He watches Emily over his shoulder. 

“There are things I want to say to you, but I can’t. I think you already know them, but saying it out loud would only make things worse, not better. I would be saying them to be selfish, to unburden my own soul, by weighing down yours. But you know, right? You touch me and suddenly I feel a little less war torn. I'm not sure what peace is supposed to feel like but I think it may feel a lot like you.” He goes to her, still frozen, still curled up on the table, her eyes seeing nothing. He strokes her cheek, getting on his knees to look into her visionless eyes. “I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you everyday. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close. I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else and I will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.” 

He drops his head onto her hands. The reading of the will ends and the lights hold, just a bit longer on the doomed couple. 

“Are you okay?” Bea whispers, touching your arm and dropping back into your own body, you stare forcefully at your lap, begging the tears to stay back.

A cold sweat breaks out across your forehead, down the skin on your back, sucking your dress’s zipper to your spine. The blood in your ears roars, thunderous and loud, and you know you’re breathing unevenly, but you can’t help it.

You nod, wishing she would look away.

You feel green, feel pale, like something is molding inside of you, sickly blue sprouting around your spine and into your stomach. A sickness, an illness, lying dormant for years. 

It’s still there, you understand that now. 

The beast in the jungle, you meet it straight on, knowing the truth of it from the very beginning. But to what end – where would the self-inflicted circle of missed opportunities and failure finally end?

To unburden my soul, by weighing down yours. 

The lobby is loud, dozens of voices overlapping each other in an excited chatter, the crowd . You bring Bea to one of the long, low benches near the twin sets of double doors at the entrance, careful to take her out of the rush of the crowd. 

She groans as she sits down and eases her feet out of her silver flats.

“I do not miss the days of heels,” she says with a sigh, rolling her ankles around. “But is it too much to ask that they make nice shoes that don’t chew up your feet?”

“My mother used to say that was the price you pay for being a woman.” You sit down next to her, watching Marie chat with the art director across the room. “It’s not supposed to feel good, she said.”

Bea shrugs. “I suppose that’s true, but seems like a terrible way to look at life. A cycle of reward and punishment.”

You grin wryly at her. “My mother was a pessimist.” 

“And you?” She leans back, her thin hands on her lap. “Are you a pessimist or an optimist?”

“I’m trying to break the cycle of reward and punishment.” Your eyes unconsciously fall to the door to the theater. “But old habits die hard, I guess.” 

An excited roar sparks from across the room, the crowd surging towards the double doors. You see Emily’s shining blonde hair between shoulders, her bright smile. You can’t see him, but he’s there, you know it. So you sit back with Bea, matching her easy position.

“I know my old bones couldn’t fight off that crowd,” she nudges you with her elbow. “But you should go.” 

A flash of the curve of his chin, the sharp angle of his nose, the endless brown of his eyes. 

One way or another, it will be over soon. There is a sense of peace with that, whatever the outcome. 

You shrug. “I’m just fine right here.”

So you sit, with your ex’s former therapist and closest thing he has to family because his are all gone, or they hate him. You ask her about Upton Sinclair, and she asks you about what you do, and you tell her about the gallery. The two of you could have been sitting on a bench in Central Park, for all the hurry you take, exchanging questions and answers. 

Reporters ask for his picture, vloggers using their livestream to ask him about the role. You and Bea watch him, never talking about him, but never looking away either.

He’s handsome. He always is. Hair slicked back, eyes still ringing with black. He smiles and performs and you wonder if he’s a good enough actor to pretend to want to almost kiss you. His suit jacket is a deep red, almost purple, a perfect color for a December premiere. He turns, leaning into a photo with a few of his castmates and you see it – a flicker of dark green on his lapel. A glass leaf, the same color as your dress.

You fight to hide your blush, your assumptions really and truly getting out of hand, and you ask Bea about where she’s from. Eventually, Marie comes and joins you two, and her eyebrows jump only slightly when you tell her Bea’s connection to Dieter. 

The congregated crowd of media and fans alike eventually subsides, leaving just friends and family. Andrew finally comes out and an applause goes up. He’s pink and his eyes are a little bleary and you think he might have started celebrating a bit early. Toby holds his hand and he leans into it, smiling like a fool.

You hear a buzz about an afterparty through excited grins and one-armed hugs, the news met with nods or groans. The last stragglers linger, wandering out into the cold or into waiting cars. The lobby is flushed with cold air every time the double doors swing open. Marie has gone to pick up your coats, including Bea’s, her wrap doing nothing for warmth, and you lean your head back against the wall. 

You’ve been rehearsing something in your head since this morning, a final script, the end to the scene. Nothing fits quite right and you wish you’d written it down, but that risked someone finding your batherings. Maybe you’ll journal later, to get down everything in your head, everything you can’t say or don’t know how. 

The crowd thins, and a few more flashes go off, and then he’s coming towards you, arms outstretched. 

“Bea!” 

The old woman wrestles to her feet with a speed you hadn’t witnessed all night and Dieter envelopes her in his arms. Without context, the image is sweet, domestic: a boy and his mother. 

Then she steps back and messes up his perfectly combed hair. “There – that’s the Dieter I know.”

You swear he blushes. 

“I have had a lovely evening with your friends!” Bea says, holding his hand and giving you and Marie warm smiles. 

Marie out of the blue rushes forward and nearly tackles him to the ground. “You were so good, Dieter!” 

His eyes widen before his arms come around her waist, squeezing her so tight he lifts her off the ground. 

“Mhmm! Thank you! Thank you for coming. And now I promise to return your business partner to you. No more painting backdrops until midnight.” 

She slips off him, as his eyes drop to you, the warmth there softer than the velvet chairs. He reaches for you and all of existence narrows to his palm. You take it and he pulls you into his chest. 

He smells like your old Dieter. That layered musk of charcoal and vanilla, of sweet tobacco and sweat. Of course, he wears cologne, expensive and rich, but you turn your nose to his neck and inhale – it’s still there. Somewhere. His hands fall to your hips, your low back, then they’re sliding up your dress, cupping your ribcage against his. You pull him tighter to you, the scruff of his beard rough against your cheek as you breathe each other in. It happened accidentally, but this is the hug you should have given him all those months ago – one that allows for joy, for remembrance, for an ease that only comes after two people have learned the other intimately, where so much of one exists within the other, their own hearts cannot decide where one ends and the other begins. 

He presses his warm hand against your shoulder, tucking you farther and farther in, as the other hand spans across your entire back, his face burrowed in your neck. You feel him sigh, at ease, his ribs expanding into yours and you fight back the sharp swell of the sob caught in your throat. You had no idea what it meant to be held until this moment. 

You don’t want to let him go. You don’t think you can. 

But the double doors sweep open, drafting in the cool air and stronger, prevailing thoughts. Your chin trembles at the strength it takes to keep from pressing your lips against his cheek as you set your weight back on your heels, his hands resisting your release until the very last moment. He doesn’t let you fall or drop you; he eases you back down, away. But his hands are shaking and he steadies them around your elbows and you take his because you think your knees will buckle if you don’t keep touching him. His mouth makes a wet noise, his eyes on the ground, feet shuffling back. He holds you as though the room is spinning. 

“Um, Dieter,” Marie’s voice comes in from far away as you fight the urge to bury your body up under his chest, to lift him up with every ounce of strength you possess. “There’s an afterparty . . .”

“But I’d rather like to go home first, darling. If that’s alright,” Bea says. “Dieter?”

You watch his throat convulse and he stands up right. He lets go of you entirely. 

“Sorry,” he swallows, resolutely not looking at you, “just got a little lightheaded. Haven’t eaten much today. Bea, can I call you a cab?” 

“Do you want to go to the party?” Marie asks you as Dieter guides Bea over to the front desk. “Andrew’s invited us.” 

You shake your head, watching them go. It has to end tonight. It has to. 

“I . . . can’t. There’s something I need to talk to Dieter about.” You tear your eyes away to her concerned face. “Shouldn’t be long, but after that I’m gonna go to bed. I’m exhausted after four months of this.” 

She nods like she knows it's been much longer than that. She hugs you, pulls you in tight, her mouth tucked in by your ear and says, “don’t take this the wrong way, love, but you were never going to be just friends.” 

You don’t make eye contact with her when she pulls away.

Ten minutes later, Bea and Marie have decided to share a cab, Bea’s hotel on the way to Marie’s apartment. You and Dieter stand on the curb, waving to them as they go. The snow is coming on thick now. A few catch on his lashes as he turns to look at you.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the party?” You ask.

He shakes his head. “There’ll be others. What did you want to show me?”

Age has done nothing to rob him of his beauty. You think you hope it hasn’t robbed him of anything else.

The creaky door of your brownstone greets you as you lead him inside, cheeks blushed pink from the cold, fingertips slightly numb, the metal keys in your hand bitterly chilled. You fumble for a few lights, cursing yourself that you left your home in total darkness hours earlier. The warm overhead lights awaken your living room, then the dining room across the hall. You’re grumbling to yourself and completely oblivious to Dieter’s open-mouthed stare. You’re leaning against the wall, fighting with your heel as he walks into your aubergine-colored living room with the plush gray couches and wall-to-wall bookshelves. 

“I want to look at every single one of these,” he says softly, fingers curled around your chenille throw blanket on the back of the sofa. “Have I read any of them?”

“If your reading tastes are anything like Bea’s, then probably,” you grin at him as you finally slip out of your heels. You fight the urge to groan, your feet flat against the hardwood, sensation finally returning to your toes, but you do sigh. The noise brings his attention to you and he smiles. 

“You do look beautiful.” 

Your toes visibly curl and you feel the smile slide off your face. You nod over your shoulder.

“C’mon. It’s in here.” 

He follows you through the other open-archway rooms to the kitchen, where the box from your basement sits on the counter. It’s gray, unassuming, with little buckles as adornments on the corners. Something about it feels weathered, hard won, as if it had been shipped across the ancient sea by long-dead ancestors. 

The lights are low here, hovering low on the dimmer switch. You always thought kitchens should be relaxing, comforting, so you rarely brighten the room unless you have to. Behind you, Dieter unbuttons his jacket as you grip the lid. 

“Now, you can’t laugh,” you say, a playful curl to your lips. He mimes an ‘x’ over his heart.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

“I’ve had these for a while, collecting them as I came across them. At first, it seemed almost morbid, but – I don’t know – I took comfort in them. As time went on, it helped me remember that everything that happened back then, actually happened and wasn’t just some insane LSD trip.” You thumb a corner. “At least it wasn’t for me.”

His brow deepens as you take off the lid.

He blinks a few times, trying to understand what he’s looking at. You wait, sit down on a black stool, watching.

Newspaper clippings. Magazine articles. Online articles printed and cut out. 

He takes a few out, his fingers running over the corners where yours have gone a dozen times. 

“Are these . . .”

“They’re all about Recovery Road. Speculation pieces on why it should win an Oscar, or several, even before it premiered. First reviews and public, consumer reviews. Trades on Heidi’s directing career, the cinematographers, the music for the film.” Your bare toes could brush his shoes if you swung your leg forward just an inch. “Opinion pieces on my career . . . and yours.” The knot in his throat moves as he flips through, going back ten years to the first articles. You watch his masculine hand, thick veins and weighty palm. “I know we didn’t make Oscar night, Dieter, and I don’t know if you ever stopped to celebrate. I know I didn’t, even years later. So this became my little celebration and in light of your success tonight, I thought you might like to celebrate with me.” 

He spreads a few out on the counter, the strange shapes of cut-out articles like lost puzzle pieces. His mouth is a straight line, those thick eyebrows drawn down, jaw set tight. 

“That night was the worst night of my life, Natalie. I don’t know why you want to remember it.” 

His voice is rough, cutting, comes from a place at the back of his chest. Your heart sinks. 

You’ve gotten it all wrong. 

“Oh. Oh, I . . . I’m sorry. I thought . . . well, actually I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry.” You shake your head, dispelling any lingering illusions you may have, and brush together the articles he laid out, jumping to your feet. “This was a stupid idea. I can’t believe I thought this would be fun. I took you away from your afterparty to show you this ridiculous –,”

His big hand loops around your wrist and you freeze, the warmth of his palm exploding up your arm and into your cheeks. Dieter looks at you with a weight so profound you feel as though you could plunge through the floorboards.

“I lied to you.” He says gruffly. “Ten fucking minutes into seeing you again and I lied.” He works his jaw as his hand slides up to your forearm, then your elbow where it notches over the bend in your arm. “I know I said I thought we’d be better off if we never saw each other again, but that’s not true. Every day until you were released from that hospital, I begged Heidi for any news. On your health. On your withdrawals. On if you got out of the fucking bed that day. And then after you got out and into rehab, I asked Heidi to check in on you. But I knew it had to fucking stop. I had to fucking stop wanting things to be different because I didn’t think they could be. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Your bottom lip trembles. “And now? Now, do you think things could be different?”

The lines around his eyes tighten as he straightens up. But he still holds your arm like it's the last life raft in a cold black ocean. He turns his head, an imperceptible tilt.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. Do you want it to be?”

“Dieter,” you cry out, out of breath before you open your mouth, air held captive in your chest. You’re crying and you don’t mean to be. You sway as you violently shake your head and he grabs your other elbow. You reach forward and steady yourself with both hands on his biceps. There’s no way you can say this with your eyes open. “Dieter . . . for months now, everyone’s been asking me if I need space from you, or if it’s alright with me to be alone with you. If everything is still too painful to be around you, like I need protecting from you or something. But I – I don’t know how to tell them . . . that’s all I want. I want you. Even after everything, after how fucked up it was, how fucked up we both were, I can’t stop thinking about you.” 

It comes out in a rush, words and tears tumbling out of your mouth. You open your wet eyes to his lips parted in surprise, his face soft beneath the weight of your revelation. You inhale, more tears and more courage to say the things you’ve always wanted to say. No paper, no pen, no going back. 

“Dieter, I think about that house in Albuquerque all the time. I wake up and I think I can smell you in the kitchen. Or you’ll be out on the patio, painting. I know you and I went our separate ways – and I think that’s what was best for us then – but God, you never went away. You never, ever left.”

You tighten your grip, nails digging into his lovely jacket. Staring at his throat, locked in by memories, you want to drag him to the floor and cry in his arms, the way you should have on that hospital bed. 

In the silence, your gaze drifts, down his chest and over to his lapel. 

That green leaf pendant. The color of your dress. You thumb it and it’s warm, like his heart sits just behind it. 

Unexpectedly, his wide palm rests against your jaw, tilting your head up. Eyes warm and dark like the dying coal in a wood-stove, he brushes your cheek with his thumb. You don’t realize how cold you are until your face is held in his hand. 

“I’m gonna fuck it up if I say anything,” he says quietly, to you and you alone, “so I’m just going to do this.” 

In an instant, years and years and years of buried fear come screaming into your chest. That single most profound worry you carried with you since he first kissed you the night of the rainstorm –  dug it deep, covered with ignorance and a blind eye – it emerges like a seed sprouting into the light when his lips touch yours. 

You fold up into him, this fear, this concern pulling you up as he does. 

You feared, in all this time and all these years, that the great love of your life, the end-all-be all to romance and adoration, had been nothing more than a misguided, lonely girl giving away parts of her to unworthy holders – drugs, alcohol, addiction, and Dieter fucking Bravo, the first man who taught her there was something special about sex and feelings and not being alone in the darkness. 

You break apart from him, trembling in his arms. You’re crying again and you think he might be too, but it’s too blurry and it’s too much. 

“Dieter, w-wait–,” you grip his lapels, unwilling to separate his chest from yours, the press of his hips against yours. “W-what if we are wrong? What if I was wrong – what I felt for you, what I feel for you, everything we had – it’s just – a-a mistake. What if what you feel for me, is just more psychosis, more pills we have to swallow to fix it, fix us? F-f-fix me? What if you never really loved me?”

With a groan, he presses an open-mouth kiss to your cheek, the ghost of teeth against the fine hairs on your skin. 

“If what I feel for you isn’t love, then I don’t know what it is.” His arms sink across your low back, as if pulling you in as tight as he could make you understand with touch alone, send you his thoughts unfiltered and honest. He kisses the corner of your mouth, wet and frantic, and then your cheek and then again on your mouth. It’s wet and messy and he pulls away, just inches, to say: “I’ve loved you every day of the past ten years. I never stopped loving you. You were the only thing I ever got right.”

A soft cry escapes your mouth, hand on his cheek, as you tug him back into your mouth. Your lips barely part at the touch of his teeth, before he slips into your mouth, tongue massaging yours.Your nails scrape the back of his neck, the curve of his skull, fingers delightedly yanking on his longer, wilder hair. Everywhere he touches you, it’s insistent, determined to make you feel his love. He breathes harshly out of his nose when he palms your ass in his wide hands and you allow yourself to rub up against him, as if you didn’t own every inch of him already. 

Even through your dress and his slacks, the heat of your cunt up against his half-hard length is enough to have you both gasping for air. Breathing doesn’t really work right, lungs stuttering, half-aborted gasps through hiccups. 

His hand curls around your jaw and he kisses you again. You no longer need to breathe air that hasn’t been recycled by him first. 

“I’m so fucking scared,” he murmurs against your lips, half-open eyes searching for hesitation, for rejection.

“Me too.” 

You claw at him, and still sucking on your mouth, he rolls your dress up over your knees, up to your hips. His hands on your bare skin for the first time in a decade, he cups the back of your knees, tugging you up onto his chest.

“Where?” He mutters. 

“Upstairs. Second door on your right.” 

You spend the time it takes to get there familiarizing yourself with every curve of his mouth, the softness on the inside of his cheeks, where along his neck elicits the deepest groan when you use your teeth. 

Memories whisper like ghosts – he likes it there, lick here and listen to him, bite, yes, bite – you slip his earlobe between your teeth, nipping just north of gently, and he falters.

“You got this?” You tease, nosing under his jaw, as he makes the landing. 

“If this place was blown to bits,” he grumbles as he knees open your bedroom door, “I’d still find a way to fuck you on this mattress.” 

Kneeling one leg at a time, he unfolds you on the covers, hands free to roam against your hips, your ass, the backs of your thighs. Your nails scratch through his hair one last time before he sits up. 

Your bedroom is dark, blue in the winter, and the only light to see him by comes from down the hallway and over the banister. In the half-light, Dieter glows, a faint bright edge to his hair, his right arm as he slips it out of his jacket, tossing it to the floor. It lands somewhere and you don’t hear it, don’t look, instead watch his fingers unbutton his collar, tugging the starched shirt out of his pants. 

Mesmerized, you want to tell him to stop, that you want to do it, but you can’t. You have and always be spell-bound by Dieter Bravo. He gets off his outer shirt and that’s when you realize how hard he’s breathing, the shadows blurring the pink tinge on his skin. 

“Dieter, baby,” you worry, reaching for him and he comes, collapsing on his trembling elbows. He kisses you with a wet mouth.

“I can’t believe you’re letting me do this. You’re so fucking beautiful. You look like a fucking angel, on this bed, in this dress and I never thought I’d ever be here with you again.” His chest shakes and you pull him between your legs, arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders, hand cupping the back of his head. He buries his head in the curve of your neck, grasping at your back with his arms. 

You together lie there for a minute, in the silence and comfort that is afforded those nestled in intimacy. He fits, so well, like no one else ever has. Bones touch bones, his space is filled by your joints, his blood warms where you are cold. Disjointed and broken, you slot together in holes made by the other. You stroke his hair and he pulls back. The grin that grows across his face causes tears to spill down the apples of his cheeks. 

“You’re a fucking hurricane, baby, and I love you.” He holds your cheek in his palm, softly pressing a kiss to your lips. “Can I take off your tights?” 

You nod, swallowing thickly, the anticipation of having his hands on your skin making you twitch. 

He kneels away from you and one hand slides up the material of your dress while the other reverently plucks at the tight waistband of your nylons. He tugs gently, then using both hands, knuckles scraping your hips, your thighs. He touches the back of your knee and that fear resurfaces just for a moment. 

“Be careful, Dieter,” you gasp. He slows, catching your eyes. “P-please be careful.” 

The rest of your nylons come off easily while he nods, his thumbs briefly rubbing the material before they’re tossed to the ground. The night air is suddenly cold, colder than it had been seconds ago and you shiver, your dress around your hips and your cunt nearly exposed. 

Dieter crawls forward, settling around between your knees. It’s like he can smell how wet you are. His big palm cups your inner thigh, thumb directing his attention.

“Do you still like to be licked here?”

You nod fervently, almost bashful. 

“Has anyone eaten you out in a while?”

Again, your head jerks back and forth in the opposite direction, your hand clutching his knee and the other fisting the sheets. 

“Can I?” His stare flickers from your barely visible pussy up to your eyes. He’s all but begging you.

His gaze reawakes your voice. “Yes, Dieter, please – p-please, I need it.” 

His tongue wets his lips, eyes half-open, focused, as he pushes your dress up the rest of the way. You part your legs for him and he groans with appreciation.

“Jesus Christ, baby.” He shuffles back, easing onto his knees on the floor, big palms around the hinge of your legs. He tugs you as he goes, until your hips have settled on the edge of the mattress. 

His mouth drops open at the shine on your inner thighs and as though too overwhelmed to go straight for the center, he licks as close to your cunt as he can, eager for your taste. His hands on your hips tighten as he groans, inhaling deeply.

“I’m gonna make you feel so fucking good.”

You have half a second to breathe yourself before he licks, flat-tongued, up your cunt and the edges of your vision grow dark. 

He picks you apart, slowly, methodically, explorative. He licks like he’s trying to get an ice cream cone to come all over his face. 

Dieter tongues one lip, then the other and he has your hips shaking. He digs in, suctioning his mouth to your cunt, and flicks his tongue as far as he can and you twitch. He slurps in spit and slick between his teeth before presenting it back to you on the head of his tongue. 

“Oh, fucking god, Dieter –,” you press the heels of your palms into your eyes. “I can’t believe how good –,”

He licks as deep as he can, all the way up, air muffled by your folds, and flat-tongues your clit. Your vision whites out and you scream. But you didn’t come. That wasn’t you coming. Your legs are trembling and Dieter presses his forearm against your lower tummy, eyes scorching and scolding. Stop moving and let me work. 

As you relearn him, he rediscovers you. He knows there’s a spot, just around your clit that when sucked, it makes you arch off the bed, but he searches in no hurry, divining every inch of you again. He gets close and you tremble, so he pushes your knee back, opening you up further to slide in two fingers. So much more than anything you could put inside yourself, you roll your hips as much as you can, chasing that touch as his tongue sweeps over you again and again. He taps up against your pelvic bone through your pussy and you moan, loudly, pleasure soaking his fingers, then his palm. His dark eyes watch you from where his mouth works to suck ten years of missed orgasms right out of you. 

You want him to fuck you faster, to get you there in a way only he can, brushing places only he can find, only he dares reach. He licks you faster and faster, fingers plunging deeper and twisting, spreading you apart – he adds a third just before entering you again and again and again and then he finds it – that spot on your clit that breaks you apart, that warm gooey center exploding across his tongue. 

You come in silence, sparks flickering at the edge of your vision, mouth open, pussy clenching down on him, and only when you feel the vibrations of his moan between your legs, do you remember to breathe, gasping sharply to the high-pitched edge of a whine. 

“Dieter,” you pant, voice strained, knees weak as you push against his shoulders. Your clit stings a bit from overstimulation and he relents. He wipes his mouth on your inner thigh, inching up the bed, with your knee over his shoulder, still three fingers deep in you.

“C’mon, honey, you can give me one more like this. I know you can.” 

You whimper, never having a single orgasm like that in the last ten years, let alone two. “I don’t – I don’t think I can –,”

“Of course you can.” The wet squelch of his fingers scissoring inside of you proves him right. “I’ve got you, darling, I’ve got you and I’m never letting you fucking go again.”

He licks under your knee, beard still damp with your release, and Dieter does what he does best: he talks.

He promises you filthy, beautiful things. 

I wanna be soaked in you. I want you to come so hard, it drips down my arm, wets my chest. 

I wanna put my tongue on every inch of your sweat-drenched skin. I wanna taste you. All of you. In you. I wanna make you so full, that when I fuck you, I taste myself. 

I want . . . I want . . . I want . . .

“Oh, shit,” he murmurs, your cunt squeezing his fingers so hard they can’t move, and you gush, all the way to his elbow. 

You can’t see for a second, the sound of your pounding heart in your ears the only proof you’re still alive. It’s like your body has been storing it all for him, never doing this for anyone else, so you keep coming and coming. Dieter groans, drops his head, and licks up as much as he can, but you feel your own slick slip down your ass and stain your dress. You whine as he slips his fingers out of you.

“Ohmy– oh – oh – oh fuck, Dieter,” you garble. Your entire lower half is numb. You don’t realize you’re shaking until he’s stretched out both of your legs, hand gently massaging your thighs. He licks his palm, his forearm, trying to clean himself up, but never once taking his eyes off you. 

“Good, baby?” 

You nod, blinking back the sparks of light whirling across your vision. “So good. So, so good.” 

“I have a lot to make up for. Where’s the clasp to your dress?”

“In – In the back,” you swallow, hand flopping around to indicate some direction. 

“I’m going to turn you around, okay, baby?”

He takes you by the hip, the shoulder, and curls you onto your side. His thumb pressed up against the cup of your skull, warm and grounding, he unzips your dress, the sound loud in the silence. Easing you as he goes, he rolls you until you’re face down on the mattress and he can peel the dress off your shoulders. Somewhere behind you, he makes a noise at the sight of your bare back. 

“You’re so fucking gorgeous.” Heat drapes across your back as he leans down and kisses from the back of your neck, down your spine and lingers at the place just above the curve of your ass. He harshly palms your thighs, the meat of your butt, groaning, promising and marking places for his teeth. Your breathing hitches as you slide your dress off your arms. He meets your hands and helps you pull it down the rest of the way, over your knees and off the bed. 

You should be cold, shivering, but you aren’t. Not when his hands start over your calves, gripping them soft enough that he can move unhindered, but tight enough it's almost a massage. He goes up the backs of your knees, curves around your thighs, fingers dip into the bones of your hip. The mattress dips as he lays out behind you, over you, fingers tugging you back until there’s enough space for him to slip his hand between you and the mattress, his knee prying your legs apart. He cups you, biting the curve of your ear, and you gasp for him. He plugs you up with two fingers, still so wet he meets no resistance and he growls in your neck.

“There’s this image of you that I swear to god is painted on the backs of my eyelids,” he murmurs, fucking you lazily with his fingers. You fist the sheets, arm shaking to keep yourself tilted enough to give him room. You can feel his hot, thick, solid cock against the back of your thigh, his own body heat enough to make you sweat. He touches a place that makes you gasp and his hips twitch forward. You want more, more heat, more of him, his white undershirt sticking to your back. You want to feel him. You push your hips back and he groans, dropping his head onto your shoulder. “I see it when I wake up and when I go to sleep at night and it used to fucking kill me because that was all I had left of you.” He speeds up, his wrist snapping against your pelvis. “But then – then, it – it gave me comfort, because I got to see you all the time. It wasn’t real and it wasn’t enough but god, it got me through the worst of it.” 

You can feel your core tighten, pleasure spiral down and in on itself, a single spark away from exploding, as he goes faster and faster.

“I fucking need you–,” he whines in your ear, chest smothering your back, knuckle rubbing up against your clit. 

“Dieter, take off your fucking shirt –,”

You lunge forward, out of his grasp, his fingers dragging wet slick over your hip as you roll away from him. His hands frantically yank his shirt up and over his head as you work the button on his pants, unzipping him in a rush. You’ve barely gotten his pants down over his knees when he grabs you by the elbow, yanking you into his mouth, his lap. Your shared moans coat the inside of your mouths, lips pressed swollen and hot, teeth nipping and pulling. Separating only to breathe, he hauls your knee over his hip, pulling you as close as he can, his cock red and leaking into your stomach. 

You roll your hips forward, your soaked cunt clutching around his cock and he sways, breaking apart, to open mouth-groan. 

“C-condom?”

“Don’t want one. There hasn’t been anyone but you.”

“Me neither.”

You snake a hand between your heated bodies and pump him once. Again and he whines. A third time and you push him back, flat against the mattress, his body thumping into the pillows. His thumbs press into the curve of your hips, up your waist, fingers slotting between your ribs. 

But his eyes are latched onto your nipples.

“And these tits, baby,” he cups the weight of one while thumbing across the raised nipple of the other. You arch your spine, letting him do whatever he wants, while you pump him slowly, and swirl your clit with your other fingers. “Been obsessed with them. Fucking dream about them. Wanna spend a whole day with my mouth on them.”

“Well, I wanna spend a whole day on this cock. Dieter, fuck, your cock is fantastic.” It’s thick and long and you lick a mix of precum and spit into your hand to coat all of him. 

“Yeah, you missed my big cock?” Hips bucking inches off the mattress, his eyes fall half-shut, almost black with hunger. “Show me, baby, show me how much you missed me. Fuck yourself on my cock.” 

Despite his filthy mouth, his breathing hitches when you go onto your knees, hand holding him beneath you as you adjust to find your entrance. He breaths so sharply, you glance at him, the head of his cock just inches from your cunt. His chest is flushed and sweaty. The roundness of his stomach trembles, the hair there pressed flat and wet. The hair at his temples and across his hairline is damp,  beautiful curls tossed back from his face. Eyes warm, his lips are wet with anticipation. 

“I missed you, Nat,” he says quietly, suddenly. His fingers squeeze your thighs and his words catch as you notch just the head inside you, the fat head splitting you apart. “I m-m-missed you so-oh much.” 

Wanting nothing but to feel every inch, you take your hand away and find his forearm to steady yourself. The deeper you take him, the higher your whine goes. 

“Fuck, Natalie, fuck –,” his eyes are squeezed shut, jaw tight, as you gasp towards the ceiling, eyes rolling back in your head. “Fuck, you feel – you are –,” 

“Dieter –,”

Your hips drop, his twitching below you, and you take in every ridge, every throbbing vein. You don’t mean to tease, but he’s so big and it’s been so long since you’d taken him, you have to sink as slow as possible. His grip almost bruising, he wants nothing more than to yank you down on his cock, but he holds, waits, lets you adjust, even though his chest is red and he hasn’t taken a full breath in a minute. 

You inhale as you finally take all of him inside you, flush to his hips, his lap already wet, that low simmering heat swirling out from every place his cock rubs up inside of you. 

“Natalie–,” he chokes.

It’s been too long. 

You thrust forward, riding him hard and setting a pace that startles even you. A loud groan roars through him and his hands around your hips yank you back and forth with just as much force, as much want. Arousal climbs higher and higher, your shared pants and moans a catalyst for fire.

“Natalie,” he tries and you open your eyes. His face is flushed now too, eyes wet. “Natalie, I can’t stop thinking – the last time we were like this – I did – I said –,”

He whimpers as you slow and lean over him. You cup his cheeks with both hands, thumb tugging down his bottom lip. You kiss him, mouth slotting over his. “Don’t think about that, baby. Stay here with me. Be with me.” 

He nods frantically, gasping as you jerk your hips just right, and you nuzzle his nose before building back your speed, that heart-stopping pace. He intertwines his fingers with yours, offering himself to hold onto as you both race towards release, his hips rhythmically bouncing against yours. 

But you can’t help it either. Flashing across your memory like fireworks, you’re overwhelmed with images of you and him either in this exact position or a dozen others. On top of a desk, in a car, against a wall, behind, under, in front – every way he would make you take him again and again. You dip forward, just a bit, remembering that angle that made his knees quake – and apparently still does. 

“Oh, fuck, baby –,”

Bits and pieces of old fantasies slide in between the gaps in your memory – the time you tried to picture his face when you sat on your new vibrator you gifted yourself on your twenty-sixth birthday – the time you finger-fucked yourself in the bathtub, hopelessly trying to find that spongy spot he used to stroke – it was not agonizingly enough.

It was nothing like him begging you to never, ever leave. You ride him hard and fast because tomorrow isn’t promised and it might never come. 

His thumb on your bottom lip and his voice pry your eyes open. Your thighs quake from the strain, ratcheting that thunderous pleasure up every knot of your spine. You’re sweating so much you think you might melt off his cock. 

The bed squeaks, as you grind yourself against him, his hand still on your face. 

“I fucking love you.” He breathes through, open-mouthed, a spike of pleasure, his hair plastered against his forehead. You think you might come from the look of pure adoration in his eyes alone, but you white-knuckle your approaching orgasm, just as you know he is. “You’re made for me. This cunt is made for me.”

Every inch of you is fire hot. You gaze down at him and take your thumb between your teeth, nipping gently, your hands balanced against his stomach. 

“I am yours, Dieter. I’ve never wanted anything else. Never.” 

He swallows, eyes impossibly dark and deep, staring up at you like you hang the moon and stars, like you are solely responsible for the air in his lungs and the blood in his veins.

Dieter jerks up to kiss you, his hand cupping the back of your head, nails lightly scratching into your hair. The force of him stills your hips and you kiss him back, arms around his neck, but does nothing to quench that roaring blaze in your cunt. 

His arm drops from your head, goes around your back, the other catching your hips against his and he flips you both, nestling you against the covers. He pins your arms above your head and thrusts into you, setting a pace that has your eyes rolling back your head. You whimper. 

“You are the only thing I’ve ever loved,” he grunts into your neck, his voice low as it kisses your skin. His pace is punishing, chasing whatever haunted him at night those years he was apart from you. You pin your knees to his ribs, welcoming him deeper and deeper. “I want to be yours. I want to be yours until the day I fucking die.” 

“You are, Dieter, you are.” 

The sound that comes from his chest, echoing in your ear, and seeps into your bones finally pushes you over the edge. White-hot lightning strikes you between your legs, a warm, milky wave rocking you flat on your back as your cunt clenches down on him. He shouts, loudly, his back tense as he spills inside of you a second later. You can feel him soak the inside of you, his cock twitching under the pressure of your still-tight cunt. 

His hips pump once, twice more, his body eager to empty him out entirely, and then he stills. 

The sound of your shared heavy breathing, between the sweaty, throbbing mass of your bodies, is the only sound in the bedroom, stretching on for minutes at a time. 

You have never felt so close to a person as you do right now. You can feel his heart pounding against his chest as it sits above yours. Your skin, damp with sweat, clings to his. This is where you want to be, for the rest of your life. 

Slowly, as fast as his shaking arms will allow, Dieter lifts up to look you in the eyes, breath still heavy in his lungs. He’s red, pushed to the limit of exertion and then beyond that. His hair is a damp mess and his skin is so warm it almost burns.

But he’s smiling. 

As your breathing returns to normal, even if it might take hours to wash yourselves clean, he smiles at you and you smile back because all it took was time.

Time, some therapy, and some space apart to find out what truly matters. What only matters. If nothing we do matters, this is the only thing that does. 

You don’t have to speak because he knows what you’re thinking. Grinning through a half-chuckle, he kisses your forehead, your nose, and your lips. With a sigh, you wrap your arms around him as he gingerly tucks his head under your chin, and rests his cheek against your chest. You play with his hair. 

The night stretches on, the snow falls harder outside. Eventually, you end up under the covers,  Dieter Bravo is in love with you and you love him back. 

He taps his fingers against your hip, absent-mindedly, to a beat you don’t recognize. And then his chest vibrates over yours, the sound sinking into yours, as he hums the chorus to Here You Come Again.

When you wake up, hours later, sleep overtaking you at some point during the night, you open your eyes to gold sunlight streaming in through the curtains and his back to you. His arm tucked under his head, curls askew on the pillow, and you feel him breath against the mattress. 

Hesitantly, slowly, you reach forward, hand trembling, across the small space between your bodies –

And you touch his shoulder. He’s solid. He’s real. He’s here.

He shudders awake, groaning sleepily, as he turns over, his brown eyes greeting yours with all the joy of the sun. 

He touches your cheek and you smile. 

Epilogue

The wooden tracks of the rollercoaster vibrate violently as the cars lurch over the railings and down the slope. Screams of delight are lost beneath the gentle melody of the merry-go-round, its lights bright against the late evening sky. People wander between the tents and the booths, stopping to play a round of hunt-the-duck or to throw a ball at empty milk bottles. The smell of popcorn and candy hangs thick in the warm summer air. 

Dieter adjusts the giant stuffed bear on his back, eyes surveying their next target on the Coney Island pier. 

“Ice cream me, babe.” 

Your arm juts out and smears vanilla-chocolate swirl across his mouth and he sputters.

Your eyes jump up from your phone, embarrassed to have been so distracted, and you immediately go to wipe his lips, his own hands busy keeping the bear up right. 

“Sorry, sorry!” 

He grins as you blot his mouth and chin. His tongue swipes out and licks your palm.

“It’s okay, only if you use your mouth next time.” 

You roll your eyes as you toss away the used napkins. This time you hold the cone properly so he can lick his fill.

“What’s so important on your phone that you nearly drown me in ice cream?”

A summer breeze, hot off the waves of the ocean, strokes your hair, tugging it over your eyes. You push it back, frowning.

“Netflix emailed us, wanting to know if we wanted to be a part of the documentary about the making of Recovery Road.” 

“And you think that’s a bad idea?” He asks, catching an errant dribble before it smears across your fingers. 

“I don’t know. It just feels like dredging up things that are better left in the past.” 

“Netflix’s specialty.” 

You frown at him and he grins. “No one’s ever officially gone on record about what happened and now maybe we should. Set the record straight.”

“I don’t think we’ll come out of it looking very good,” you worry your lip. “Besides, if we’re being interviewed, shouldn’t Chloe get a chance to tell her side too?”

Dieter shrugs. “She can if she wants. But the story is ultimately about you and me. Besides, they just want the juicy gossip about all of our wild and crazy infidelity sex.”

“Dieter!”

With a chuckle, he drops the bear between the two of you, so he can look you properly in the eyes without a paw over his face.

“Baby, I’ll do whatever you want to do. If you want to do it, great. If not, fuck ‘em. I don’t care how it makes us seem, because no matter what, they’ll never know the true story.” He takes your hand that is not holding an ice cream cone, sticky fingers and all, and kisses your knuckles. “You and I are so beyond Netflix documentaries, or tell-all exposés – or whatever constitutes a love story in Hollywood. What I feel for you, no one could ever do it justice.” 

He sees your chest stutter for breath, your eyes soft as he kisses your palm. 

“They’d never understand the man you’ve become,” you say quietly. “What it took to get here.”

He nods, hand sliding to your cheek, your neck, and pulls you in. “This is it for me.”

“Me too.” 

The jingle of the carnival around you, the roar of the rollercoaster in the distance, fills the silence as your lips move against his, hand curled up against his collar.

“Okay, new question,” he breaks apart before he loses all of his senses and pulls you into a bathroom stall.

You chuckle against his lips. “Yeah?”

“What would you think about getting a dog?”

“A dog?” You blink up at him.

“Yeah. Doesn’t have to be very big – there’s no room in our brownstone for the three of us anyway.”

You frown playfully, contemplative, as you loop your arm through his, the bear stretched across both your backs, as you instinctively wander towards the water.

“I’ve always liked pitbulls. Found them to be really misunderstood.” 

He nods. “I like that. Kind of flies in the face of the ‘small dog’ idea but I like it.” 

“When have we ever not bucked tradition?” 

“You’re exactly right, my beautiful girl.” He kisses your cheek as you list off other potential breeds.

Honestly, he doesn’t care. Whatever dog breed you want is fine with him.

As long as it has a collar and a name tag, somewhere he can hang a ring. 

T H E  E N D

[bengiyo]

A Boss and A Babe Ep 3 Stray Thoughts

Last week, Cher proved that he was the best ally by introducing his boss to his friends to give him a sense of queer community. Then, to further prove that he was the best ally, he invited him into his apartment, made comfort food, and then kissed his boss.

Meanwhile, Drake's character took the idea of the game their company was developing and beat them to market.

I do like the gaming team dynamic.

Thor is in this show and he is GAY. I'm glad Gun has had some romantic experience before Cher, and I am curious to see former-lovers-now-friends content.

Three and Zo are actually kind of refreshing. I don't mind not seeing their arc to their relationship. It's nice seeing a somewhat new couple trying to make it work.

Cher is that person who shows up late and barely fakes illness.

Ah, time for some HR nightmare scenarios. On the real, though, Force and Book are very good together.

Cher's family history sounds difficult. Seems that this might be a blended family, and an older sister may be dead. Either way, Thoop seems to resent that he needs Cher's help.

Cher is so wrong for titillating Gun like this. He is a menace.

Of course Gun is going. He needs to see the rest now.

I love Cher's family. My grandmother would have fussed at me too for bringing a guest home without warning.

I'm with Gun. I hustled for ten years, and it's exhausting.

Oh ho ho! As soon as the nail polish came out I knew this was going to be a Nivea ad.

This powder is going to end up everywhere.

Glad Gun stopped when Cher clearly didn't want to kiss.

This show continues to be a lot of fun with relatively low stakes. I really love this for Force and Book.

[alsosprachvelociraptor]

Ragazzi di Vita chapter 1 synopsis

Translated, for my dear friend so he doesnt have to read this damn book

It also has content warnings! Yay!

CHAPTER 1: the Ferrobedò

CW: violence, death

On a very hot July day (calculated 1944), a young boy, nicknamed "Riccetto", "curly-haired" because of his curly hair, gets up early in the morning to prepare for his First Communion and Confirmation. He dresses in a white shirt and long grey trousers, not really suitable for a Catholic rite. Together with other children of his age dressed in white like him, all living on Donna Olimpia Street, a poor road in the outskirts of Rome, they go to the Church of the Divine Providence: at 9 a.m. the priest performs the Communion, and at 11 a.m. Confirmation by the bishop.

Immediately after the sacraments are over, Riccetto runs off in a hurry, while a noise of cars, trucks, horns can be heard in the background; Riccetto joins a shouting, maddened crowd and goes to the warehouses of the "Ferrobedò" factory, walks through the courtyard outside, and goes to the wooden cottages at the side, guarded by four Nazi soldiers, who do not let the crowd in. Riccetto tries to steal a small table in front of one of the houses, but another boy warns him that there is something better to steal and to follow him, and so he does; they go inside the factory and steal some hemp ropes, nails, and other things, going up and down between the Ferrobedò and Riccetto's house in Donna Olimpia. Riccetto naively believes he can steal some weapons (two pistols and a machine gun) and a horse from a Nazi warehouse, but is discovered by a German guard and sent away.

In the meantime Marcello, Riccetto's friend, who knows nothing about this confusion at Ferrobedò, is with the other boys bathing and playing in the pool at the Buon Pastore. Agnolo, another friend, asks where Riccetto is, and Marcello believes he has gone to a friend's house after communion. Marcello and Agnolo do not appear to be the same age as Riccetto, as they both appear not to have taken communion/confirmation like Riccetto did. They meet a Nazi soldier on a motorbike who orders them to leave because that place near the Military Hospital is an ‘infected zone’; Marcello ignores him, the Nazi hits him in the face, and Marcello together with the boys run away and are told by other boys to take advantage of the situation at Ferrobedò to steal something, too. Agnolo wants to steal an engine from the machine shop, as Marcello goes out, and is about to fall into a tar pit, but Riccetto manages to warn him in time and save him. Together they enter the factory, and steal cans of grease and belts. Marcello abandons everything he has stolen in a courtyard so that his mother cannot discover it. When he's home, however, his mother beats him for being out of the house all day, and with his older brother he returns to the Ferrobedò, where together they steal tyres from a wagon. By now it is evening but at Ferrobedò the crowd continues, now suffocating and unbearable.

The next day, Marcello and Riccetto go to the General Markets, which are closed and guarded by Nazi soldiers and Apai (P.A.I., Polizia dell’Africa Italiana: colonial police force allied with the Nazi army, replacing the Carabinieri police force between 1943 and 1945 in Rome); the crowd is restless and pushing to get in, and the soldiers let them, but once the crowd enters they realise that there is nothing left in the markets. Downstairs, in the cellars, someone seems to have found something, and so the crowd runs in a frenzy to grab what is left. Riccetto and Marcello, as they are little more than children and smaller than the adults around them, are unable to escape and are pushed down the stairs along with everyone else, and in the craze they get separated. In the excitement a woman is pushed against a rail, which breaks, falls down and she dies. Marcello is forced down the stairs by the crowd around him, jumps over the woman's corpse without any interest and manages to sneak into the cellar where he steals some tyres together with other boys. Once the crowd has dispersed, Marcello does not find Riccetto, and simply deduces that he has left; he climbs over the dead woman's body again, and runs home with the loot. On his way home, at the Ponte Bianco bridge, the Apai lurking there rob him, and he is joined by Riccetto, who together remain in the area to observe how the Apai are standing there on purpose to rob anyone who passes by, until some dangerous-looking men pass over the bridge and confront the Apai, who, cowardly and frightened, also hand over the loot to Marcello and everyone else. Happy, Marcello and Riccetto return to Donna Olimpia.

*

One Saturday some time later, the boys gather in a clearing of dirt and dust under a small hill, and the older boys start playing kicking a ball around in a circle, all dressed up. Among the boys playing are Rocco and Alvaro, their ball ends up against the small group of younger boys lying beside them, consisting of Riccetto, Marcello and Agnolo, the latter giving them the ball back. Rocco says he and Alvaro are saving their energy for that very night; Agnolo explains to his two friends that the two older boys are going to steal and resell metal pipes. At the stroke of three o'clock in the afternoon, marked by factory sirens, Riccetto and Marcello walk to the tram stop, where they hang to the tram without paying the ticket. The two have started stealing; they had started with Ferrobedò, continued with the arrival of the Americans in Rome(june 1944), and now they "search for cigarette butts" (collect cigarette butts to collect and resell tobacco remnants).

Riccetto had tried to work at the truck service in Monteverde Nuovo, but after being caught stealing half a sack (a sack= 1000 lire, half a sack = 500 lire) from the boss, he was fired on the spot; since then he and Marcello spend their afternoons lazing around or playing football together with other poor kids from the area; almost all the families there consist of evacuees from the Second World War, which is still going on. Riccetto and Marcello quarrel a bit but in the end they go to Ostia, to collect cigarette butts left on the ground at the station; however, their "little job" is short-lived, because of the heat and boredom they abandon everything and go for a swim in the Tiber river, near the mouth of the river, next to the building sites. The two young boys talk and argue with a very vulgar slang; the two have known each other for a long time, but neither of them really seems to know much about each other. Riccetto is curious about Marcello's origins, who says he was born in Ostia, but on the contrary Marcello does not seem interested in engaging in any interesting discussions with his friend. The river is black, foul-smelling and polluted, so Riccetto, curious by nature, watches the rubbish pass by on the surface of the water, wanting to rent a boat on the Tiber, since his dream is to, one day, go on a boat by the sea; however, they do not have the money to do so.

Marcello proposes to join the older boys and ‘go tubing’ in their turn, to scrape together some money to finally rent this boat, and Riccetto accepts. They stay by the river for a while playing in the clearing by the river, and throw stones at the prostitutes and their clients (mostly American soldiers) hiding there, and Riccetto annoys one of them who chases the two kids with a knife. They run away, first terrified, then snickering, unaware of the danger. To catch their breath, they sit down next to an old blind man who is begging for money, and Riccetto wants to rob him; Marcello refuses to help him, causing Riccetto's wrath, who decides to go it alone while Marcello waits for him not far away; in all, Riccetto steals about half a sack (500 lire).

The next day, a street is left without running water: it is implied that a small group of petty thieves have stolen and resold the water pipes.

Riccetto, Marcello and Agnolo go to an uncrowded street at a late hour. A woman from a balcony observes the scene and calls them back, but Riccetto, in his typical self-confident manner, reassures her that they are working on the sewers. Instead, they take the manhole cover and carry it away, to a dilapidated and uninhabited house where they tear it to pieces to sell it more easily. Agnolo knows a buyer, Antonio, who for the 70 kg of cast iron of the manhole cover gives them 2700 lire. Not satisfied, the three, with an axe, descend into a sewer, detach and chop up 5-6 metres of drinking water pipes, interrupting its flow. They return to the buyer, and make 150 lire a kilo. But on the way back, instead of going home, they go to an illegal gambling den with Alvaro and Rocco to play "zecchinetta" and there they lose all the money they had earned, except for the few coins that Riccetto had stolen from the blind beggar and had hidden in a shoe.

*

The three young boys, with money kept by Riccetto, enthusiastically arrive at the floating bathing establishment on the Tiber, called "Il Ciriola"; they pay 50 lire for admission each, and then an extremely rude and aggressive lifeguard forces them to undress and lock their clothes in a single locker. The three are treated badly by the owner of the establishment, and constantly insulted by the lifeguard, who takes no particular interest in the lives of the children (recurring theme in Pasolini's literature: how women and young boys are treated as "inferior beings" and their lives are worth less than that of an adult man). The three are badly chased away every time they try anything, so they start playing with Agnolo's dog.

Later, many other boys arrive, who start making a fuss, but soon they too leave, leaving only the three kids on the trampoline. Riccetto plays affectionately with Agnolo's little dog, all happy, and then they play at making spectacular dives (more or less) that attract the attention of all the other boys and kids around, who in turn play at diving, swimming, and throwing mud at each other. Riccetto, Marcello and Agnolo are excluded from these games that they themselves had started, so they pluck up courage and rent a boat that barely floats. Marcello is unable to reach the money he was hiding in his clothes, because of the lifeguard who refuses to listen to him; Agnolo, however, succeeds in the enterprise, retrieves the money and pays the owner of the little boat. Marcello is the only one who can row, but he is not very good at it, while it is the first time Agnolo and Riccetto get into a boat. The little boat veers dangerously into the currents and eddies under the bridge, but Marcello manages to steer and regain control of the boat before crashing into something. In a calmer part of the river Agnolo takes Marcello's place, tired after rowing for so long, but not very good; so from the shore some boys make fun of him, and, seeing him in difficulty, some older boys climb into the boat and take control. The boat, which was already taking water before, is now full and barely stays above water, but Riccetto does not seem to mind and, lying on the water-filled bottom of the boat, imagines he is in the open sea, his dream.

But all of a sudden Riccetto sees movement in the water: it is a little swallow drowning in the water just below the bridge, at a dangerous point in the river. Riccetto is worried, and asks for the boat to come closer to the poor bird, but the others refuse, so he without thinking dives into the water, trying to catch the swallow, which wriggles away from him and bites him. The Riccetto returns to shore with the swallow safely, and the boys in the boat join him. Marcello and the others do not understand why Riccetto saved the bird, saying that it would have been so much fun to watch it drown, but Riccetto does not listen to them and, with the swallow held protectively in his hands, waits until its feathers dry, and takes flight with the other swallows.

*

Characters:

Riccetto: protagonist. He is about 12 years old and lives on Donna Olimpia Street with his family. He is a naive boy who is easily dragged into trouble and bad situations by others. He is often called "son of a bitch" by the others because of his exaggerated, ironic manner and the few scruples he has in stealing even from the weakest. He seems, however, to have a streak of goodness and generosity that only occasionally shows itself.

Marcello: friend of Riccetto. He was born in Ostia, but now lives in Donna Olimpia Street with his family. He is skinny and crooked, and is more serious and insensitive than Riccetto.

Agnolo: a friend of Riccetto and Marcello; he lives in Via Donna Olimpia like his friends, has red hair and a more aloof character. He is the most experienced of the three boys and the cleverest, but the one who gets angry most easily.

Rocco and Alvaro: two of the older boys, petty thieves. Rocco has black hair slicked back; Alvaro is not handsome, and has a bony face.