#i think I just don’t like reading about live theatre. i think it’s a really tough thing to write compellingly

[arijackz]

PICK A CARD: Your FS' Secret Kinks

❦ “She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air." - Raymon Chandler, The Big Sleep

Disclaimer: This is a general reading, take what resonates. This is a gender-neutral reading, change any pronouns to apply to you.

p1 → p2 ↙︎ p3 → p4

✦ Pile One ✦

Poor lil pooh pooh. This person struggles to “fill their cups up” so they get off on denying themselves pleasure. They secretly like the feeling of hitting whatever rock bottom looks like to them. Honestly, they want to be saved. They are wallowing at the bottom of a well, waiting for their savior to swoop in and throw them a rope. 

In a more literal sense, they want a person to be their reason to live. Their reason to feel daylight on their skin again. Everyone and everything around them is unsatisfying and “fake”. They want something real to coax them out of their hell and entice them with all the thrilling things life has to offer. 

However, they also like this dark and brooding side of themselves. They have a bit of a corruption kink.

They fantasize about a virginal angel coming down to save them, but they end up convincing the angel to sink down to their level. 

They like exciting, spontaneous people who are willing to jump up and run out the door to do something fun at any moment, but think innocent fun. Like going to the movies to theater hop, and getting away without paying. Or, running around the Target parking lot in shopping carts and trying not to bang into cars. Maybe even steal a few street signs. 

Innocent childhood fun that you’d see in early 90s movies. But add a sadistic twist to it that only they are aware of. 

You would be the innocent virgin (doesn’t have to be true, it's their fantasy) who is unknowingly leading this beast (also not true, they are just extremely self-deprecating) to your pretty little happy places which they plan to desecrate.

They want to fuck you in your family home and make a mess of your childhood bed, making you scream so loud that you’re family starts to look at you differently. They want to take you to your favorite movie spots where you usually chill and hangout with your friends and turn it into a place where all you can think about is them covering your mouth in the back of the theater while you’re squirming in their lap, trying to escape out of their grip as they edge you to the new Marvel release. 

They have a kink for turning all of your innocent, fun moments into their very own filthy fantasies.

Ps. Fisting came out of the blue so lube up!

Come To Me, My Senseless Angel

✦ Pile Two ✦

I don’t believe this is a future spouse, to be honest. This might be a situationship you need to move past. They seem emotionally immature, or at least this is a side of them that exclusively comes out when they’re aroused. 

They can be quite abrasive and feel like they are constantly under attack so they’re incredibly defensive. They have a history of lashing out at their loved ones when they feel overwhelmed and get so blinded by their emotions that they disregard their affection for their partners and say really unforgettable, harmful words which permanently alters the connection for the worse. 

They carry guilt from these actions and are in a constant state of regret. In this state, their sense of pleasure is a little twisted. They get turned on by causing a genuine issue in the relationship. They like the idea of pushing you to your limit where you’re this 🤏  close to your breaking point and at your absolute lowest. It’s when you reach your rock bottom and realize the need to move away from this person and you scream out, “I DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS.”

They like to grovel. You know that cycle where somebody fucks up and then they’re in the dog house buying flowers and being extra fluffy just to get in the victim’s good graces so they can do the same thing over again. So far, pile one and two’s respective partners like to feel like shit. They secretly like the moment where they completely fuck up a relationship and have to beg on their hands and knees to get their person back orrrrrr they get off on emotionally tearing someone down to the point where they get on their knees to bed for this person’s attention. 

Either way, there's a lot of fucked psychological issues underneath this fantasy that I’m not unpacking here because it differs from person to person. 

In its best light, this person glorifies struggle love. At its worst, this person is purposefully emotionally abusive with the intent to tear their partner down for their own sexual gratification. 

They’re conscious enough to know their actions are toxic but don’t have the emotional maturity to work past their actions. They’re at the phase where they’re just aware and are like “I know I’m shitty but that’s just who I am. If they stick with me and the sex is good, it’s meant to be.”

I’m honestly getting twitter relationship hypotheticals with this one. Iykyk.

They’re also an edgelord. Less in an internet cockroach way and more in a witty- can be funny if done well- way, but they get pleasure from shocking people nonetheless. This energy can be directed toward you to piss you off and annoy you with the intent of getting in your pants later. 

I’ve been guided to switch the conversation briefly: If this resonates and is someone you are dealing with. It is time to move on. This person gets gratification from hurting you and will not get past that high of tearing down a relationship and then having a messy recovery. They have their own issues to work through and cannot see how they are hurting you. There is no future with this person, they came into your life to teach you a lesson about your self-value. That cycle has run its course and it's time to move on.  

To be honest, I’m not a fan of this person and don’t even want to list the explicit kinks that came out but I will just in case this message is for you but you’re not sure.

Random messages: Hot tub/pool sex, hair pulling, break down crying, interracial, milk, broken condom, “i fucking hate you”, “whore”, mirror, drunk sex, complaining, smack a bitch, twitter

P.S. You’re too sexy for the bullshit! There is bigger and greater out there, you just need to believe that for yourself!

This person will not get a mood board out of me.

✦ Pile Three ✦

Okay, so this person has some deep religious guilt. This is a male presenting person. I am being clear with their sex because it plays a role in this reading. They have some majorly repressed feminine energy. They may even be attracted to the same sex. 

This is a fs reading, so they are likely bi, pansexual, or trans. Either way, their family is close-minded and is not supportive of them. They were forced to leave home so they could finally live their truth. They have lived their entire life fitting somebody else’s narrative. They were the hypermasculine bro type to “cover up” their femininity. 

So, they have a kink for hyperfeminity. It’s almost to the point where they obsess over the caricature of girlhood. I see lots of pink, high heels, full-glam, all-day mall shopping, pinup curls, flashy jewelry, sleepovers, day spas, that scene in Scott Pilgrim where that girl is like “SHE’S PROBABLY LIKE 25!”, and everything else that gets associated with “girlhood” nowadays. 

They fantasize about you in your receptive energy, being waited on and cared for hand and foot. They like to observe the way you move. Everything about you and your feminine aura is incredibly alluring to them. The way with each breath your breasts fall, the way your hips swat with each step, the cute way you match your accessories with your outfits. They notice everything about you. 

You know those paintings of wealthy women lying on their sides and being fed grapes? That. They’re not in the serving role, they're the painter. Their kink is capturing you in those everyday moments where the world seems to be waiting on you like you’re the collective’s queen.

They see femininity in a higher light than the general population. They see women as automatically deserving of this type of care, they also want this care. 

They have a secret hard-on for pregnant women and women with swollen breasts. They have a lactation kink. They fantasize about cumming in you over and over again. They see you as a Goddess, so they want to see you masturbate at church on an altar, like you're waiting to be worshipped. 

A lot of their fantasies, they’re not even included in. It’s just you looking God-like and being worshipped by the world around you. This person may hate when you wear clothes. They act like the fabric is committing a sin by covering your body. They just want to capture your essence. Like an admirer and a student.

P.S. Dick game goes CRAZY. They watch a lot of women-focused porn to study what gets a woman off. Like Maddie in Euphoria, here is there to study.

Pretty In Pink

✦ Pile Four ✦

WE GOT A PLEASURE DOM IN THE BUILDING Y’ALL STAY CALM. As my mama would say, they love your dirty drawls!

You could do no wrong in this person’s eyes. They’re the golden retriever type. Head empty, leading with heart and IN LOVE>>>>>

You are the pot of gold and the end of the rainbow they’re chasing. They appreciate a good fling but they’ve never felt this before. The emotions you stir in them are unprecedented, this is puppy, sandbox love that most people lose touch with after life jades them.

This is raw love at its most unprocessed. I taste honey. 

They have a kink for the power you have over them. It’s like you have a carrot on a stick and they’re the pig being led to a love den they can’t escape. And they’ll happily be the squealing pig in every lifetime they get with you. This is a soul yearning. 

You will know this person because they will proactively pursue you and they will have no doubts in their mind about it. They are really attracted to your physical form, your curves. Even if you’re on the slimmer side, they like your structure and the dips in your spine. They’ll stare at you when you’re talking and zone out, thinking about how attractive they find you. 

They’re not used to having to try to get someone to sleep with them. They have to put effort towards you and they like that. This person is downright thirsty and craves intimacy with you.

Their fantasies aren’t even dirty, they’re passionate. They want to put you in a mating press, with your knees pressed all the way up beside your ears. They want to penetrate (could be with a toy) deeply and touch that gooey part of you that makes you see stars. 

They want to see an imprint of them in your lower belly. Any position where you’re in their arms is a go for them because they like having you. They want every moment to be just you and them away from the world. So very sweet and intimate. They also love marking you, expect lots of hickeys.

Ignore them from time to time too (healthily, these conditions should be discussed beforehand)! They see you as the ultimate prize, so if you delay their satisfaction, they’ll feel like they’re chasing again, which gets them off. They like to feel like they’re convincing you to sleep with them. You both are consenting, but they like the idea of you having better things to do and they’re trying to convince you to stay and party with them. 

They are very action-oriented and love movement. Anything that involves an adventure together, they are down for. 

PS. Surprise them with a bubble bath together, they’ll love that. And tease them while pulling their hair a bit!

Ode To My Darling Sun

#arijackz #pac #pick a card #tarot #tarot reading #pick a pile #astrology observations #muah

[lungthief]

i’m so sorry to those of you who enjoy this book but i am Struggling my way thru if we were villains

#like. Maybe it’s just bc im an actor who goes to acting school and so like. reading about acting is the LAST thing I want to do #but it is so hard to care about these characters. and im unfortunately incredibly familiar with caesar so nothing is like. new #i think i just spend too much time w shakespeare to actually enjoy it. bc i know that the school is supposed to be framed like a cult or w/e #but people doing the shakespeare reference thing. there ARE people who do that. And they are fucking annoying. i know because im one of them #i dont do it as often as they do but i do know what it’s like to have a convo where ppl are constantly throwing around shakespeare #and it gets tiresome. and is tiresome to read #like i feel like My shakespeare references are balanced by the other references i make. but i guess u cant have that here bc it’s a #Shakespeare Cult #but again. Tiresome #also i just Do Not feel as invested in these characters as i did w like…secret history. this seems like watered down secret history #i think I just don’t like reading about live theatre. i think it’s a really tough thing to write compellingly #especially to people who Do It #okay rant over im still not finished and i still really want to like it. like really really Want To im just Struggling #shut up riley

[artbyblastweave]

Let’s get some abandoned effortposts on disco Elysium in the list. Liked what analysis on it you had, would be great to see more, or fail to see as the case may be

Here’s one of the last insights on Disco Elysium I care to put to paper for a good long while; I really enjoy the nested futility and self-defeat of the central murder mystery, the way it structured to constantly raise the question of how anyone could possibly benefit from what you’re doing.

I mean off the bat the murder victim is a fascist stormtrooper, so there’s that. I personally maintain that it’s still good in a general sense to investigate murders regardless of the moral standing of the victim, but to get real, it’s a very convenient time for me to embrace universalist rhetoric given how little support the neighborhood receives with problems that don’t involve someone well connected. And then, over the course of the game, you can kill all four people left on the planet to whom the initial victim actually mattered on a personal level. Three in clear-cut self-defense, the fourth as an optional casualty to the same mindless, trusting proceduralism that’s admittedly and unfortunately intertwined with my “ no murder left unsolved” stance.

And then! You finally run down the murderer, and from a public safety perspective it turns out that if you’d just gone home after the mercenary tribunal, nothing would have changed; Dros is on his last legs, the odds he’s gonna kill anyone else are very very low.

The last redoubt is the ideological angle- there could be a narrative here about how you’re crushing the last vestige of the revolution, how the killing and the subsequent investigation was the last theatre of the old war- but I think the narrative resists even this attempt to read meaning into it. From an ideological perspective Dros committed the killing off the clock. It was spite, not praxis- informed in the moment by his misanthropy, his neuroses about women, and his obsession with Klaasje more than it was about striking a blow for communism. He killed Lely while Lely was doing probably the least objectionable thing he ever did. Obviously Dros’s neuroses and living situation were downstream of ideology, of material circumstances, in the way everything else is- but to try and elevate the killing by making it about that feels disingenuous.

And this is great, because Disco Elysium isn’t really about the murder mystery in the same way that Fallout: New Vegas isn’t really about finding the guy who shot you in the head-it’s an injection point, it’s a thread you pull for guidance, but the real meat is all the other stuff and people you encounter while poking around. The killing isn’t unimportant, per se, but the mystery surrounding it kinda is! Given the repeated anti-climax, it’s definitely *less* important than the harm you can cause to people in order to push the investigation forward, or the good you can do for the community by going off-script and helping people out with random bullshit. It’s neat!

#thoughts #ask #asks #meta #disco elysium

[unfortunately-i-love-it]

yeah so uh, Shadow Joker eh? 

this whole thing started with me thinking about a PhantomThief!Mishima, and then i started drawing stuff based off this one fic i read and then we got to here. oh well 

i might turn this into a comic maybe??? depends on how hard finals slaughter me, but I’ll cross that bridge when i get to it 

also here’s the lore on this guy cuz i legit spent too much mental energy scraping through the wiki figuring out how shadows and personas work and then coming up with a way it could work for joker 

Basically, since someone’s shadow is a manifestation of their distorted desires, then a Shadow Joker, would be the manifestation of the protagonist’s (I’m gonna call him Ren from here on. cool? cool) distorted desires. What might those be? Well, during his awakening, Arsene notes Ren’s strong desire to help people and makes him think about whether the resolve he’s shown in the past was valid or not. This becomes the basis of the rebellious will that allows him to forge a contract with Arsene. But now with Shadow Joker, that desire to help people has been distorted into a kind of mix of hero and savior complex. So instead of just helping people in need, on some subconscious level he has started to see himself as the only one that can help and save people. 

In personality he’s about the same as regular Joker. But that’s only at first glance. He’s much more unpredictable and dangerous, basically taking the whole “wildcard” thing very literally. I’d also like to think that all of Joker’s theatrics become even more emphasized with Shadow Joker.  

For his palace I was thinking of him seeing the whole of Tokyo as his stage, wherein he’s an actor in a play of which he is the hero. For this I was kinda looking to the “The show’s over” on his all out attack screen, as well as hero = play, play = theatre, theatre = stage, and all that jazz. I’m still not exactly sure on how it’d look; maybe just the city as it is at night with open stages everywhere, spotlights floating through the dark nigh sky both as aesthetic as well as acting as traps for the thieves to avoid, so if you step into one of them the security level goes up. Or maybe each area that they go through would be like a different part of a theatre, so the treasure room would be Shadow Joker’s changing room and the final confrontation would be on a grand stage, idk. One thing is though, I think that his Palace Tokyo would feel really empty. Like there’d be people, but they’ll be more like faceless ghosts kinda milling about, so not at all like the ATM-guys or robots in Kaneshira and Okumura’s palaces. Also probably no cognitive versions of the other thieves or anyone else he knows, as I was thinking that Shadow Joker would be going by an “I don’t need anyone but myself” idea, and since he’s the all-powerful hero he doesn’t need “sidekicks”.

His treasure is his Phantom Thieves mask, as that would be the source of his distorted desire to help, cuz it’s the thing that represents him getting his persona and being able to help people on a larger scale in the first place. 

When the other thieves first enter the palace, they won’t be in their thief outfits, as i think Shadow Joker’s desire to help would still outweigh him seeing them as a threat -- plus they’re people he knows. He’d talk and interact with them like regular Joker would, but maybe a bit more openly and with more theatrics, so the other thieves will have some trouble with thinking of him as a legit threat and not just their pal who’s a bit too quirked up. But when Shadow Joker realizes that they’re here to steal his mask, the switch flips completely, and the others have to really scramble to get out with their lives.

Then follows the general infiltration thing and blah blah blah. For the infiltration I thought it’d be neat if they go through all the different districts (that are walkable in-game) and the safe-rooms would be the areas where confidants hang out -- The Untouchable in Shibuya, Crossroads Bar in Shinjuku, Gigolo Arcade in Akihabara, Takemi Medical Clinic in Yongen-Jaya, etc. 

There might also be a progression reason for which the gang will have to go into Shinjuku Academy, wherein the safe-rooms would be Ren’s classroom and the roof. Maybe there’s something in the school that they need to clear before they can progress through Aoyama-Itchome and go to Shibuya, idk.

The treasure room would be in the Leblanc attic (because ofc). 

For the boss battle, when the other thieves try to steal his treasure but get caught on the way out (cuz that’s what always happens to these fools), Shadow Joker takes the mask from them and actually uses it in the battle, which allows him to switch between a number of different personas as a mechanic. Their levels and attack would be comparatively lower that the thieves’, but the sheer number of skills at his disposal as well as his unpredictability would be trouble enough. 

there might also be a phase two, where he rips off the mask he’s wearing and replaces it with his original phantom thieves one, and ends up transforming into a fusion of himself and Arsene, so now he’d be technically using only one persona, but with higher stats 

(also i was entertaining the thought of this being the general theme of the palace and this being the theme of the final confrontation. i feel like the first one’s just kinda eerie enough to suit prowling through your friend’s subconscious)

and then pertaining to the design itself, i was basing it off of the regular Joker outfit but spiced up with more flamboyance, because to Ren, Joker would be like the epitome of him feeling like a hero. I kept the mask on to also keep that Joker vibe going, however i made it a more extravagant variation on the original, to kinda push the theatre vibe. I also gave him a cape -- i think that one’s self-explanatory. The walking stick is to give him even more flair, but also uh, concealed weapons is like the perfect Shadow Joker thing to do. Basically think of Lucious Malfoy’s wand-walking stick but with a dagger instead of a wand.

anyway I want it to be clear for the record that I have never once looked up the shadow joker tag on here before i started drawing this but i’m glad we all share the same braincell when it comes to his outfit, fellas 

(also holy FUCK @waifujuju‘s Shadow Joker design is so fucking clever, i am in awe)

that PhantomThief!Mishima thing is still in the works by the way, though i’ve hit a roadblock trying to come up with a persona for him. So far i’ve been thinking of something along the lines of Merlin but idk, it doesn’t seem rebellious enough so the only thing that fits is the vibes, and even that’s a maybe. this whole process has also been exacerbated by the fact that i’ve got a really cool costume going for him that involves a bolt-action rifle which i am very fond of and very reluctant to let go off. all this to say, if you’ve got any ideas please shoot me a message or write a comment cuz rn my brain is kinda frying itself trying to think through this. ty

#shadow joker #persona 5 #p5 #akira kurusu #amamiya ren #joker persona 5 #persona 5 protagonist #man is joker fun to draw #all you do is sit down and draw a flamboyant little bastard (affectionate) #p5 joker palace au #joker palace au #p5 arsene #p5 protagonist #p5 protagonist palace au #can't get enough of joker's heels #my art

[audhd-nightwing]

percy jackson ep3 live reaction

yesss the attic it looks perfect

the voice crack on “hi” i’m cackling

“oh geez” HES SO PERCY

annabeth immediately i love him.

percy’s gf requirements: has to be willing to push him down a flight of stairs without hesitation

let percy understand the horses PLEASE

“i chose you” i thought it was gonna be like ‘because you’re my best friend’ but nah he is just suspicious of grover dang. “i trust you” DAMN HE REALLY LYING HUH. poor grover totally believes him too. good thing he earns his trust back eventually and remains his best friend forever

“i’m gonna pack the best snacks” HE IS THE BEST KIND OF FRIEND

why tf are there lobster traps in the cabin. WHERE IS HIS BED???

“i think they’re canadian maybe? or from chuck e. cheese i dunno” he’s literally my favorite person ever

“these are… interesting”

thalia’s tree :(

when do they tell percy that grover was thalias protector 🤔

“the most powerful being in the universe’s best idea to save his daughter’s life… was to turn her into a tree?” YEAH FR GET HIS ASS PERCY

bro really does not know how to read the room 💀 “she met a pinecone’s fate” dude she is talking about her dead friend/sister-figure. grover’s literally like “wtf man”

how tf did they get a taxi from long island to the city bro

“i’m sorry to hear that” UR THE BEST ANNABETH

why is grover singing… THEATRE KID ENERGY

“our voting system’s broken” hgjfhdhd

BIG OOF ????

the autism makes decisions so hard very real

NOT THE TOSTITOS /j

“they smell fear” “that’s bees” EXCUSE ME? BEES WHAT NOW??

damn dodds that’s brutal

“perhaps the most formidable demigod child alive” i adore how they make 12 y/o annabeth so fucking powerful. like i really really love that they do that cuz ppl always talk about how powerful percy is but not how powerful annabeth is

defeated by shitty evacuation skills smh

…we’re lost in the woods, somewhere in new jersey

“i didn’t even know they had forests in new jersey” king. what.

ahhh i wish they just made them 13 i really cannot see them as 12 year olds

ope it is revealed. GROVER STOP TRYING TO REDIRECT THE CONVERSATION ITS NOT WORKING

annabeth IMMEDIATELY knows it’s medusa lol

thinking abt how sally used medusa’s story to teach lil percy that appearances aren’t everything and “not everything that looks like a monster is a monster”. very interested to see what they do with her in this version of pjo

“and i definitely trust my mom” percy is such a momma’s boy i love it

i hope they don’t make her evil pls pls pls. SHES NOT EVIL SHES AN SA VICTIM. “a survivor” :(

“the gift the gods gave me is i cannot be bullied anymore” yes 🙌

girl really said “it’s not a gift it’s a curse” as if she was there 💀 ilysm but clearly the story you’ve heard isn’t what really happened

“so did i” :( she was a worshipper of athena

“i wasn’t like you, i was you”

ANNABETH “that isn’t what happened” GIRL YOU WERENT THERREEEEE

you tell them medusa !! her and percy get matching “i hate poseidon” shirts

team #trust issues

oop. yeah fuck poseidon.

okay yeah i really like this characterization of her. like a good person with a skewed moral compass. or at least good intentions but not great actions

leetle snakes hiss hiss

annabeth watching percy defeat alecto… she literally has heart eyes hehe

THEY BETTER SHIP HER HEAD TO OLYMPUS I SWEAR

you tell them grover!!!!!!

oh he really did choose grover because he trusted him aw :,)

YES SHIP THE HEAD

“i am impertinent” ily

the song 💀 this is why they are besties

LIN MANUEL MIRANDA? *lip bite*

#percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson show #pjo tv show #pjo spoilers #pjo show #aunty em #annabeth chase #grover underwood

[sunkenma]

a lucky idiot

in which you learn about the way iwaizumi hajime loves, as told by his best friend.

871 words, fluff

“has iwaizumi ever fallen in love?” oikawa chokes on the water he's currently chugging down, clearly caught off guard by the unexpected question. after a handful of coughs, struggled breaths, and smacks to his back, he hoarsely responds, “i think so, yeah. why are you asking?”

“i’ve never seen him fawn over anyone. how do you know he’s loved someone?” you reply, a huff of frustration hanging off the tip of your words. subtle, but not subtle enough for oikawa. “i don’t think he’s the type to show it.”

oikawa follows your gaze over to his best friend, resting on the figure that stands in the middle of your living room with a vacuum in hand. despite the occasional grunt and complaint that could be distinguished from the machine’s deafening white noise, iwaizumi is diligently cleaning your apartment.

“he does,” oikawa says nonchalantly, unable to resist the smirk that tugs at his lips when your head whips over to look at him from the corner of his eye. “you just have to look between the lines.”

he sighs exasperatedly when he sees your face contort in confusion, leaning closer to you across the table. “listen carefully.”

“when iwaizumi loves someone, he does everything in his power to make their life easier,” he begins, numerous memories flooding in his mind before playing back like an old film.

in his head, he sees college senior iwaizumi buzzing through the grocery store like an agitated bee. behind him was oikawa, who was visiting from argentina at the time. he trailed behind with the shopping cart in tow, its contents enough for one to assume that iwaizumi was preparing a feast.

“you don’t have to buy all of this for me, iwa. i promised to treat you, rememb—“

“these aren’t for you,” iwaizumi shot him down with one savage swipe, his back turned so he couldn’t see the way oikawa stuck his tongue out at him.

“they’re for a friend… they’re not feeling well so i’m picking groceries up for them,” iwaizumi’s voice was hushed and almost subdued but still enough for oikawa to take note.

a friend you say, he thought. it wasn’t until a few days later when he finally met said friend—you.

“he’s okay with words, but he prefers to let his actions speak for him,” oikawa continues.

his memories take him back to the time you got stood up by your date at the movie theatre, tearfully calling iwaizumi and asking him to pick you up. at the time, he was on a regularly-scheduled call with oikawa. he had hung up prematurely, leaving oikawa to grumble and swear at the dial tone.

“hey sorry. just came back from dropping my friend off,” iwaizumi’s text read a couple hours later. by then, oikawa was settled in bed, his phone balanced precariously between his hands over his head as he attempted to fight the tug of slumber enough to reply.

“it’s been a few hours though. what were you doing?”

“we watched the movie they were supposed to see. got food after,” read iwaizumi’s reply.

"so… you were the rebound that took them on a date instead?” oikawa teased.

“man, shut the fuck up,” oikawa hollered at his best friend’s response, the sleep that once clouded him now slowly retreating. before he could reply, a second message from iwaizumi popped up.

“it’s not like that.”

then… what is it like, iwaizumi?

“he does things without being asked. to him, the best way to make that special someone happy is by making life less stressful for them,” oikawa finishes, taking note of the way you nod as if you've reached some kind of revelation. and for his best friend's sake and his own sanity, oikawa really hopes you have.

he hopes that you're thinking back to earlier today, when iwaizumi first stepped foot in your apartment and immediately fussed over the state of your living room. you had snapped back at him, telling him that you were too swamped with work lately to catch up on house chores. and thus without a word or even a request on your side, iwaizumi walked over to your storage closet to pull out the vacuum cleaner and tidy up.

“if you put it that way, iwaizumi is actually really sweet,” you smile softly, leaning your chin against your arm as it rests against your dining table. you focus your attention on your college best friend, watching as he battles against the mess in your living room. your eyes follow him as he neatly folds your throw blankets and fluffs your pillows, effectively making your home a little more welcoming than when he first came in.

“whoever iwaizumi falls in love with is one lucky person,” your voice is wistful, a sense of longing dripping from your tone. oikawa would be a fool not to catch it.

but he does, looking at you incredulously as he realizes that every subtle hint he just laid out on the table for you passed right over your head. deducing that he's in a room full of idiots, he resists the urge to flick your forehead at that very moment.

but instead, he nods in defeat. “yeah. a lucky idiot, to be exact.”

#iwaizumi x you #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi fluff #iwaizumi scenarios #iwaizumi imagine #iwaizumi hajime x reader #iwaizumi hajime x you #hajime iwaizumi x reader #hajime iwaizumi x you #iwaizumi drabble #iwaizumi #iwaizumi headcanons #iwaizumi hajime headcanons #iwaizumi hajime #hq iwaizumi #haikyuu drabbles #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu iwaizumi #haikyuu!!

[florence-end]

Adriel chooses elain over his mate? And he regrets it.

She is happy with someone else.

Okay so I know a few people have done the Az/Lucien/reader/Elain triangle in an angsty way and I didn’t want to tread on any toes, plus I think the idea of platonic mates is super cute so Azriel doesn’t regret it in this and everyone is happy. I hope that’s okay!

“Hi Lucien, y/n. Thanks for coming,” Azriel greeted you as you walked into the dining room in the townhouse.

“No problem. It’ll be good to get this sorted out,” Lucien nodded, pulling out a chair for you before claiming the one beside yours.

Elain and Azriel sit opposite you both, looking as nervous as you felt.

Lucien had been courting you back home in the Spring Court for a few months, since you had been freed from Amarantha, when he had been dragged into Tamlin’s deal with Hybern that saw him meet his mate. Since then, Feyre had brought down the Spring Court, Lucien had taken you with him when he fled with the high lady back to her court and you had been living in an apartment Rhys found for you in Velaris ever since.

The already complicated situation had been made worse by your mating bond with Azriel immediately snapping into place when you first arrived a little over a month ago. However he and Elain had been developing quite the close relationship since she had been Made despite her bond with Lucien.

Ever the advocate for the mating bond, Feyre and Rhys had encouraged you all to put your existing feelings aside and give things an honest shot with your respective mates. And you had. Azriel took you on tours of the city, you went to the theatre and out for dinner, you got to know about his family and past, and in turn shared yours. Similarly, Elain and Lucien spent time reading together in the library and baking in the kitchens as she was still too nervous to venture far from her sister’s residences.

But despite your best efforts, you couldn’t muster up romantic feelings for Azriel in the way you could for Lucien and you knew he felt the same. You got along well and felt comfortable around each other, you even had a surprising amount in common. And yet you couldn’t shake the feeling that you were just spending time with a very good friend or even a brother, not a lover.

After finally admitting as much out loud to Azriel, he invited you and Lucien over to talk things through honestly with him and Elain. Which is what brought you to the townhouse today.

“I think we all agree this isn’t working,” you blurted out, knowing someone had to get the conversation started. “Az, I love you but not in the way that I should. Not in the way I love Lucien. I’ve really tried but it just feels different.” You immediately felt guilty for the abrupt way you voiced your feelings, which Azriel caught through your bond.

“Don’t feel guilty y/n, I feel exactly the same. I love you like the sister I never had, I want you to be safe and happy, but I want to be with Elain,” he admitted, reaching across the table to squeeze your hand and looking to Elain nervously.

As Elain voiced her similar feelings, Lucien let out the breath he felt like he had been holding for a month and relaxed back into his chair while slinging one arm across the back of yours.

“I think that settles it then. None of us will reject the bonds but we will stop trying to force romantic attachments that don’t exist. I have been in love with you for months, and I thought that would have to go away when I mated but it’s like my love for you and my love for Elain come from different places within me,” Lucien directed the last part to you and you smiled in relief.

After enjoying a nice dinner together, it was time for you and Lucien to call it a night. You hugged both Azriel and Elain goodbye, confirming your plans to see a symphony with Azriel in two days’ time, before strolling out onto the street. You weren’t going home with your mate, but you were hand in hand with the man you knew you’d marry one day.

#acotar fanfiction #acotar #azriel x reader #azriel acotar #azriel x you #lucien x reader #lucien vanserra #lucien x you

[liannelara-dracula]

Shu Sakamaki in Real Life HCS

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Prompt

Requests are open

Rules

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

🎻I probably won’t have much to say because I find his character to be ugh sometimes but I can’t imagine not creating hcs abt this mf.

🎻But it is difficult to come up with things about him, ngl.

🎻Anyhow, if you guys have seen these irl hcs before you’ll know I’m mostly sharing with you my general thoughts, and formulated opinions on this character so here we go!

🎻Okay, so I’m sure we all know he’s the heir and a prince of the vampire kingdom (I know its weird.) And I just have to say this because I don’t say it enough, I really feel like he acts differently in the demon world because he knows his dad will be mad.

🎻So you can expect Shu to be much more expressive as he is the heir, he represents his father and so he needs to be “lively”.

🎻 That being said, he attends gatherings, banquets, and many other events that his father may want him to.

🎻I will say that when he is in the demon world it is much different as he doesn’t act like himself.

🎻Apart from him is still the same in the sense that he is still a pervert.

🎻I mean we know he’ll be with low-ranking vampires or whatever just to get some.

🎻 After all, he has somewhat of an ego even if he doesn’t show it.

🎻So you know he most definitely does believe that because he is the heir he can move from one girl to the next with no strings attached.

🎻All for his advantage of course.

🎻Also speaking of his royalty life I really want to mention the fact that he is very annoyed by all the attention the girls give him.

🎻He literally can’t wait till he goes back to the human world where it's much quieter.

🎻However as a royal he does enjoy the theatre because he can hear classical music.

🎻In fact, he loves it most when he can watch the ballet performances.

🎻If there’s one thing he loves most it’s watching girls do ballet.

🎻He loves watching them practice especially because you know he’s a thigh guy. Apart from being an ass man.

🎻This is honestly where he might take an interest in a girl who's probably a dancer.

🎻I’ve literally made an aesthetic about this here.

🎻And you can read a lot about how he is at school in the demon world here. 

🎻Oh btw he sleeps in only his underwear, that’s just how I see it. (and it's actually canon, I was laughing when I found out I was right.)

🎻I will say that he doesn’t laugh very often, he’ll just have a chuckle that makes anyone uncomfortable but when he full-on laughs it's so fucking rare.

🎻And it freaks out almost anyone, it even got Yui.

🎻He is such an ass I feel like he trolls anyone in, anyway, he can.

🎻His hair is so tangled and I bet he doesn’t wash it that often because he’s lazy

🎻He smells like cotton/linen and a bit of dust.

🎻The best actor to play him would be Toby Regbo.

🎻However the model I found on Pinterest is also a great representation of what he’d look like.

🎻In terms of attitude he really reminds me of Robert Pattinson because he trolls so much. 

🎻The best way to bribe him is with steak, I swear it works every time. 

🎻And I bet my entire ass that Reiji uses it for when he needs big favors.

🎻He loves to be comfortable so I feel like American Eagle, Hollister, Old Navy, and H&M are his go to.

🎻I know he loves cardigans so much so he’s probably extremely picky about the kind he buys.

🎻That’s why he only has three, this is actually canon, I believe it was in one of the game translations in Reiji’s route where he was looking for his jacket and asked Reiji. And Reiji told him it can’t be that hard to find since he has only three, lol.

🎻And idk why but I just feel like he miss places them all around the house.

🎻I also think he keeps so much junk under his bed.

🎻“Huh, I don’t remember that being there.”

🎻If he gets really hot, he just throws his cardigan under the bed.

🎻He once owned a cat, it's not that he went out of his way and bought one. It sorta followed him and so he started to take care of it a little. It lived outside mostly because Reiji wouldn’t tolerate it, but occasionally Shu kept the cat in his room.

🎻He has no idea where the cat went and whether or not it's alive since he hardly kept watch of it.

🎻Although he sometimes wonders where it went, and I think he liked the cat since she sometimes got into Reiji’s things. It was amusing to say the least.

🎻Forgets he puts his music sheets on his bed and ends up sitting on them.

🎻That’s why they’re always somewhat crumbled and folded.

🎻Never makes his bed, he just throws the blanket on and thanks to the butler the room is kept clean.

🎻Otherwise it’d end up like Ayato’s room, to which the butler can never keep up with.

🎻Because he loves music he has vinyl records, and countless CDs in some boxes he keeps under his bed.

🎻He keeps a couple of his favorite books which are in Latin.

🎻Something also tells me if he had a journal, he’d write only Latin because none of his brothers can.

🎻Because he used to be a cashier, he still has his name tag from then and his worker vest.

🎻He keeps in hidden in a corner of his closet.

🎻Speaking of which his closet is so empty and he literally has repeats of the same pants and shirts.

🎻It’s mostly because they were on a good sale.

🎻He will wear the same clothes for like three days or more and not even change out of them.

🎻Doesn’t brush his hair, just goes to school with bed head.

🎻Keeps his door locked so triplets don’t think about pranking him with some clown-related things since he has a fear of them. It's mostly because he’s learned that the hard way.

🎻It's also because he fears they may bring in a caterpillar.

🎻I could totally see Yui trying to feed a caterpillar and he’d flip out in panic and leave immediately. 

🎻He never will admit to his fears and covers them up quite well because he wants no one to know that, especially a girl. lol.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

˗ˏˋ 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑦 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 ˎˊ˗ ©𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟔~Present

#diabolik lovers #anime #diabolik lovers headcanons #anime headcanons #dialovers #diahell #anime requests #shu sakamaki #sakamaki shuu #shuu sakamaki #diabolik lovers shuu #shu sakamaki moodboard #shu sakamaki aesthetic #diabolik lovers shu #sakamaki shu #dia lovers

[greenticklerdreams]

15 questions for 15 friends:

Hi, @lady-featherquill and @missamyrisa2! I’m honored that two such illustrious writers would think of me.

Were you named after anyone?: Nope! My mom may have gotten the name from a soap opera she was watching, though… but that might just be one of my dad’s lame jokes, lol.

When was the last time you cried?: The ending of Godzilla Minus One. I’m serious.

Do you have kids?: Nada.

What sports do you play/have you played?: I played tennis when I was in junior high and early high school! Was big into it for a while … and then we moved and my new high school didn’t have a team. Had a thriving theatre program, though! I’m ultimately very thankful for that.

Do you use sarcasm?: Me?? Psshhh. Nahhh. 😉

What is the first thing you notice about people?: Tough question. IRL… probably the way they carry themselves? The way they move through space. I also notice how they say things… phrases, reactions. Does that make sense? … Maybe this is too deep. I notice clothing style, too! Not in a critical way, just assessing. As for online, I WILL notice your texting style. Perfect grammar, all lowercase no punctuation, how often you use emojis and how. Just warning y’all.

What's your eye color?: Brown, tending more toward honey/amber than black. (My brother has super dark brown eyes like the latter and I’m only a little envious.)

Scary movies or happy endings?: Happy endings, definitely. I can’t handle scary movies at all, let alone downer endings. … I never did watch that Cyberpunk anime. I should get to that…

Any talents?: Writing. Acting. I’m a fast reader. Projecting my voice. Memorizing lines. ... a lot of these are related to acting, haha.

Where were you born?: Louisiana! And then got moved away before I was even a year old, so I don’t exactly remember it.

What are your hobbies?: Reading, writing, video games, listening to music, TTRPGs (GMing and playing). Typical nerd! I also like walks, casual hikes, and trying new coffeehouses.

Do you have any pets?: Sadly, no… I miss having dogs. And I love cats, but I’m allergic to them… it sucks.

How tall are you?: 5’7”, and a lot more confident about it than I used to be! (I know it’s kind of the stereotypical “bitter guy” height, lol. It’s fine, I probably shouldn’t go into politics anyway. 😆)

Favorite subject in school?: English, hands down. 

Dream job?: I wish I knew. It would be fun to be creative for a living – a writer, or one of those streaming D&D Dungeon Masters – but it might also drain me of the creativity I need for my hobbies. I’d like to do something that actually helps people, charity work or something. I know I sound really driftless for a 30-something… I just care more about my life outside of my job, y'know? And I’d like to get out of finance one day, man.

Join in and pass it on if you can. Don't feel obligated!: 15?? That’s a lot. Hi, mutuals! If I haven’t said hi before now, I’d like to get to know you better. 😊

@ticklingmesoftly @magnificentbitchface @theepopcornwhore @something-tickly-this-way-comes @darkharp-tickling @silly-panic @thebest-medicine @applesyaboi @a-ticklish-banshee @brushtickler @datstrangetickler @ticklish-wallflower @hypersensitiv3 @yopatbo @sensitivemarie @still-not-rly-sure

#ask game #answered

[therewasatale]

ABC room

On Ao3.

Summary: Even if Gordon doesn't want to move in to the studio, it doesn't mean that he doesn't have a place in there.

Based on prompt.

Finally, the buildings and the park next to them, quieted down. The puppets either watched the new films that Gordon got to them in the theatre, some cartoon and document films. He and Ricky agreed that this might be the most useful way to help the puppets get back to their old-selves.

He checked on Ray, thankfully everything was all right with the big guy, the basement manageably clean, and the pipes intact.

He fed and played with the dogs in the park, just to make sure they too got enough attention, and while Gordon would never admit, they grew on him over the time.

Goblette returned to her place in the studio. She became a bit prone to isolation over the last couple of weeks, so Gordon managed to get a small tv and VHS player for her. He also made her room more comfortable for her and visited her daily. Goblette had to deal with her own trauma, but with tiny steps, she would get better. She was strong deep down, and one of the best listeners he has ever met.

All in all, everyone was doing fine. Still the most annoying part of this second job was still waiting for him.

He was tired, so God damn tired, thanks to this second secret-job. And yet, somehow, he was still filled with content. For years he couldn't do anything that helped others, now he was at least able to help some lost puppets.

"Gordon, hey, stop snoozing." Ricky slid slightly out from his pipe, right next to Gordon's head and stared at him with his two unsymmetrical eyes.

"I'm not snoozing, just thinking," grumbled Gordon, as he rubbed his face and supressed a yawn. He won't give Ricky the satisfaction of seeing exactly how tired he actually felt.

"Your eyes were closed for abooouuut…55 seconds."

"You're really good at counting, maybe we could make some math lessons for you to teach the kids."

The puppet frowned as much as he was able to. "You're grumpy."

"And you're made out of a sock," Gordon chuckled and glanced down at the paper in front of him.

"Yeah, yeah, very funny, big guy. If you're that sleepy, go to your room and have some rest."

"My room is quiet far away, Ricky. And I want to check on this contract." He could feel the sock-puppet's mismatched eyes stare at him.

"I'm talking about the room inside the building, grumpy." He moved his head, like a human would roll their eyes. It was almost impressive how a puppet could show more emotions than most people Gordon has met.

"I've never agreed to live here." Gordon pointed at the puppet with his pen.

"And I didn't talk about you moving in here, silly," under his fake-cough Ricky added 'for now', "but to be fair it would be more comfortable to everyone. The others like you to be around, make them feel safe, and even Goblette seems calmer when you are around."

Again, Gordon scoffed as he leaned back in his chair. "That's emotional blackmailing, Ricky. Some would say it's a really nasty trick to pull."

"No, it's not, it's just the truth. Listen," Ricky let out an almost honest sigh. "You're a human, you need sleep, even I know your body needs rest, or your brain will conjure some pretty dark thoughts, besides you don't make good decisions when you're tired to the bone."

The puppet got a point, somehow most of the time he got a point when he was arguing with Gordon. It was annoying. In a nicest way.

"So, why don't you lay down in that room? It's actually pretty close. We just have to go down two floors."

"We?" As he glanced over his arm he watched in amazement, as the sock-puppet climbed from his deck to his chair then up to his shoulder.

"Wooho, sweet-sweet freedom. See? I'll guide you there by myself."

Gordon looked at the puppet, who somehow over the few weeks since he known him, became his friend. His overly positive attitude and smartass personality somehow made him endearing.

"Come on," Ricky nodded towards the door. "Or, we can read together the contract if you want." He leaned over from his shoulder and started to read, deliberately mispronouncing a couple of difficult words and then loudly yawning.

"I'm going, I'm going-," Gordon finally stood up leaving the pen next to the unread paper.

"See? Was that really hard?"

"Oh, shut it, before I send you down to Ray through one of the garbage pipes."

Ricky, even without a pair of lungs, gasped dramatically. "You wouldn't dare."

"You would be surprised." Gordon answered letting out a small chuckle.

They made their way to the elevator, and went down two floors.

Gordon felt the exhaustion clinging to him more and more with every step. The only thing that kept him awake was Ricky, who kept curiously glanced around his shoulder, humming a song under his puppet nose.

"The 11th room is yours, it's not too far from the elevator or us, but not too close to the noise we make." The puppet told him. It wasn't hard to find the room actually, it was the only one that had an ABC painted on its door.

"ABC, very funny," Gordon rolled his eyes.

"You have to admit that you were quiet a hero as you gallivanted around the buildings, with that gun of yours."

"You tried to steal it from me." He glanced at the Puppet as he opened the door.

"You wanted to shut down the antenna." Retorted Ricky. "I would say that we're even," he focused his limited attention inside. "So, what do you think?"

He was greeted by a spacious room, when this place was still a popular hotel, they probably charged a small fortune even for one night. Inside, there was a wide bed, two dark lacquered wardrobes, a small table and two accompanying chairs. A door opened to the bathroom, which was now dark.

Still, Gordon's attention was drawn to the drawings and sheets that used to decorate the otherwise white walls. Some just had the text: 'Gordon and his friendly neighbourhood'. Others were drawings showing the different puppets holding hands, with a stick figure that could possibly looked like him. Pirate flags, and crossbones here on there on other papers. There was one, that was a bit dirtier than the others, it had a wrench and some sacks on it. One of the papers only had a giant chicken-like footprint on it. He was able to see another with a piano drawn in crayon. Some puppets chose to draw on papers and put them on the walls, some, now he realised drew straight to the walls of his room.

"Have to say, it wasn't easy to stop them from filling all of the walls. I think they became quiet the fond of you, Gordon." Ricky said, clearly with a warm smile in his voice.

"Yeah, I guess," Gordon murmured and glanced away, but he knew the puppet caught the embarrassment on his face.

"Now, get to the bed and have some rest. We can look at the contract tomorrow, and you can even get a headache. I’ll allow it. "

The puppet gently nudged him with his head. He scoffed with a tired sigh, but listened.

"All right, all right, I can sleep for a couple of hours, then at dawn I can read those darned papers. Just get me some coffee."

"Good, until then I can go and look out for the others. If you'd be so nice chap." Ricky nodded at next to the bed where a pipe was waiting for him.

There was a pause, then Gordon stepped closer, letting the puppet climbed into it from his arm. "Do I want to know, why do you have a pipe to in my room?"

"No."

He scoffed and decided not to push it, instead he laid down into the bed and let out a sigh. The bed was so, so comfortable, and he almost forgot about the puppet next to his bed watching him. Almost.

“You know, Gordon, you remind me of the ocean.” Rocky glanced at him.

Gordon cocked an eye at him, not sure what to expect. “Why the ocean?”

“Because you’re salty and you scare people.” And with that the puppet vanished into the tubes inside the building, his chuckle echoing in the room around him.

"You damn little sock-puppet!" Gordon scoffed again and pulled the cover over him. "One of these days I will turn you into a hat, Ricky!" He yelled after him, but again he only received a warm chuckle.

"Good night, Gordon!" Ricky's voice echoed from the distance trough the pipes; it had a kind friendly tone.

"Yeah-yeah, night." Gordon turned to his side and adjusted the sheet on him. His thoughts began to wander, as his eyes slowly closed. The last thing he saw before falling asleep was the papers and drawings on the wall around him. Once again, he felt like he really made a good decision to help these puppets out.

#my friendly neighborhood #my friendly neighborhood fanfiction #ricky #Gordon O'Brian #copper

[finchers-ipad]

Can u share any Tyler hcs you never shared before :D!!!!!!!? If u have any. He’s always on my mind!!

i have a few bouncing around in my skull rn:

-he has this weird mysterious past that he doesn’t really talk about, not because he doesn’t want to necessarily he just doesn’t think about it. this would lead to really funny situations where him and the narrator are lying in bed or something and the narrator traces his fingers on a scar on Tyler’s chest and say “where did you get this, did you have surgery or something?” and tyler would nonchalantly say “nah i got stabbed by this guy” the narrator would look exactly like this emoji upon hearing that: 😧. this works in another situation like tyler walking in on the narrator reading and the narrator would be like “did you know that in Spain they have this holiday where they throw tomatoes at each other?” tyler would just be like “uh yeah i lived there for 2 years” like it was common knowledge.

- he would love to go to concerts/shows even if it’s an artist he doesn’t know. when he was younger he attended a lot of punk shows and thats kind of the environment he hung out the most. thinking about of the narrator and Tyler would both love radiohead (semi based on the fact that Brad Pitt and Ed Norton love radiohead but i do feel like radiohead is a common ground in Tyler and the narrators music tastes) and how they would go and see them live in 2003.

- i feel like he is a sentimental person but would rather die than openly show it. he keeps little rings that Marla leaves at the house, takes polaroids often and either puts them up around the house or has a pile of them, keeps little doodles that the narrator makes while he is on the phone etc.

- he’s definitely attempted to brew his own beer before in the basement of paper street just to keep himself occupied and maybe sell it. after waiting four weeks for the beer to be ready and hyping it up to the narrator, they both take a drink and immediately throw up. he learns to stick to soap making.

- this is kind of more of a soapshipping thing but this is what i have been thinking about lately. i don’t know how this would work in terms of film switching from reels to digital and how that would kind of put Tyler out of a job BUT, let’s just say he gets paid to sit on his ass in the projection booth and click play. he is forced to watch ‘twilight’ when it comes out as apart of his job and thinks it is the worst film he has ever seen.

he basically sprints home to tell the narrator about it “man i kid you not he is this old vampire dude but in the body of this young guy trying to fuck this 17 year old it’s weird” and the narrator doesn’t believe him on how bad and cringe it is so Tyler sneaks him into work to watch it, and they laugh the whole way through to the point where you can hear them both laughing IN the theatre. and they go back to watch it like 3 more times taking a drink every time something awkward happens to the point where they are blackout drunk.

#ty for the ask!! #did i have to google radiohead tour dates and how long it takes for beer to brew for this….maybe #fight club #tyler durden #soapshipping #tyler x narrator

[auspicious-manner]

ngl I keep coming back each day to read your stories, they are really good! can you do another story on newsies era mike faist and the reader? thank you :)

thank you so much, it means a lot :) even though i don’t update daily anymore, lol. although, i was better about it this week, and it only took me 6 days to update instead of 7, go me! small improvement!

female reader x mike faist

warnings: none

I’m So Tired

•

“dude, open the door!” a voice sounded from the outside of Y/N’s apartment door.

“gosh, give me like five seconds!” she yelled back as she finished packing her backpack to head to the theater.

there was a long pause. “it’s been longer than five seconds!”

she grabbed her bag and flung the door open to find an impatient mike looking down at her disheveled state.

“my goodness, you are insufferable.”

mike raised an eyebrow. “i’m insufferable? you’re the one who has made us behind today. we’re going to be late because of you.”

Y/N walked out of her apartment and turned to lock the door. “we’re going to be just fine, stop being so dramatic.”

Y/N and mike had a very close bond. after being cast in newsies together, with mike as morris and the understudy of jack kelly and Y/N as hannah and a bowery beauty, they became best friends due to constantly being together. every day, they would commute to the nederlander theatre together. mike lived further into the city, so he would drive his car to Y/N’s apartment building, park it in the street, and together they would take the subway.

with mike being a year older than Y/N, a lot of their debates resulted in mike trying to act as an older figure to her, with her firing back and saying something snarky like, “you’re not my dad”. given the fact that both of them had a dry, sarcastic sense of humor, their personalities fit together like two puzzle pieces. not only that, but their relationship was full of constant play-flirting that both of them though was based strictly off of friendship.

“i’m going on as jack today,” mike told her as they walked down the busy streets of new york.

Y/N yawned. “no kidding? that’s cool.”

mike sighed. “you could have just told me you didn’t care.”

Y/N quickly looked at him, realizing her yawn came off the wrong way. “i didn’t mean that sarcastically, really. i didn’t have time to make coffee today and i barely got any sleep because my neighbors dog was screeching all night,” she stopped walking, resulting in mike also coming to a stop. he stared at her sunken eyes. “i’m so unbelievably tired.”

mike nodded and continued walking. “i get it. if it makes you feel any better, we’ll share at least a little bit of stage time today since i’m going on as jack,” he said with a hopeful grin.

“ugh, that does not help my mood.”

the pair continued to the station, safely got on the subway, and headed off. on the subway, Y/N’s eyes began to flutter as if she was fighting off sleep. she’s pretty sure at some point she actually did manage to fall asleep on the short ride to their stop.

“are you… sleeping?” mike asked when he saw her head slumped to the side. he pushed her arm gently and she shot up.

“are you okay? i don’t think i’ve ever seen you this tired,” he asked her with real concern.

“i’m fine, i promise. i just didn’t get a lot of sleep, that’s all.”

mike stared back at her, not fully believing it. he put his hand to her forehead. “you feel a little warm. do you have a fever?”

“who knows, i might,” she started, being interrupted by a yawn. “i’ll just take a nap in my dressing room before i have to get ready, then i’ll be brand new.”

mike sighed. “Y/N, you are one tough cookie.”

they got off at their stop and walked into the beautiful nederlander theatre. sometimes they still couldn’t believe they did this for a living. the feeling of walking into the empty theater never changed, even after performing hundreds of shows.

they signed in and separated to their dressing rooms to prepare. she got to her shared dressing room early and was able to squeeze in a short hour of sleep before being awoken by her cast mates.

“Y/N, if you don’t get ready now you’ll never be ready in time for the show,” kara lindsay said, leaning over the girl sleeping on the small couch. she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and sat up.

“this is going to be a long night,” she murmured before getting up and sitting in front of the mirror. she began to pin strands of hair tight against her head in order to prepare for her wig to be placed.

“what’s wrong with you today? you seem off,” kara asked as she did the same thing as Y/N.

“is it really that noticeable?” she asked, resulting in a nod from kara.

“i slept horribly last night, and i think i’m coming down with a cold. i’m just so tired.”

“just think about how rewarding your sleep is going to be when you finish the show tonight. you just have to get through two hours, and you’re free to sleep,” she consoled.

Y/N nodded and yawned. “i guess you’re right.”

she continued getting ready with kara and the other girls who played the nuns and the second bowery beauty by her side. she was friends with kara and merely acquaintances with the girls, but her only close friend out of the entire cast was mike. she hated to admit it, but she almost thought there was something more seriously flirty between the two of them. something beyond the nonchalant play flirting.

as if kara was reading Y/N’s mind, kara cleared her voice and began to speak. “you and mike are together a lot. do you like him?”

Y/N froze. was she going to admit her feelings for mike to kara?

“what? no. we’re just friends, nothing more,” she said, clearly not believing her own words.

kara smiled. “the way you guys look at each other and blush as if on cue isn’t something friends just do. when you guys finally realize there’s something more, give me credit,” she stated confidently before going to the wig room to get her wig placed.

Y/N sat contemplating what kara said, and looked at the three other girls to her side that were too engrossed in their own conversations to really listen to hers. she sat back in her seat and continued her hair, the conversation never leaving her mind.

after completing the process of pinning her hair back and doing her makeup, she got her first wig placed and her hannah costume on. after she was completely ready and waiting for her first call, she laid back down on the couch and closed her eyes.

there was a knock outside the dressing room door. she heard it in her sleep, but didn’t have the energy to answer it.

the knock sounded again, but instead of stopping afterwards, whoever it was came in.

“i-Y/N, are you sleeping again?”

Y/N sat up and saw mike in his jack kelly costume, standing over her.

“yeah, i was sleeping,” she replied, dazed.

“you’re not okay to do the show tonight, you never sleep before we go on like this. you should have called off,” mike said, sitting down next to her.

“i can do it. it sucks, but i’ll be fine. it’s just one show, and then i’m free to sleep in as long as i please tomorrow. i promise i’m just fine, pinky swear,” she said playfully, holding out her pinky.

mike glared at her before rolling his eyes and interlocking his pinky with hers. “i’m trusting you on this one.”

everyone was called to the wings, and mike stood by Y/N. she felt his glance lay on her, but she ignored it and looked onstage where the final props were being set up. she could hear the bustling audience beyond the stage.

mike placed an arm around Y/N’s shoulders, causing her to lean in and rest her head on mike’s shoulder. she could have easily fallen asleep right there.

it was mike’s turn to go on. “good luck buddy, you’ll be great,” she said, patting his back.

“you too, Y/N. don’t fall asleep out there!” he whispered before running to his place.

the show actually went smoothly, to Y/N’s surprise. the roar of the audience gave Y/N a boost of energy, and she was mostly able to get through the show. however, she noticed that any time she sat down in one of pulitzer’s chairs onstage, sleep threatened her again. along side the sleep issue, she felt her cold symptoms beginning to worsen, and her throat became scratchy and her nose was beginning to get stuffed up.

while being one of the bowery beauties, mike and Y/N got at least a few minutes of indirect stage time together. when the show allowed, they made eye contact and Y/N would look back at him, dazed with both tiredness and admiration for her friend.

towards the end of the show, Y/N watched mike perform onstage, and he was magical. he was captivating, and talented, and she wanted nothing more than to watch mike perform for hours. he ran off stage, catching her eyes staring directly at him.

“you okay?” he whispered, leaning close to her ear.

she yawned in response. “all good.”

he laughed before running off. she smiled to herself, feeling oddly giddy. mike was her best friend, why was she feeling excited at mike recognizing her?

finally, after a tiring two hours, it was time for curtain call. Y/N felt like at any time, her body would collapse under the weight of her heavy eyelids coercing her to sleep. she took her bow, and grinned when mike came out on stage as jack kelly. every time he went on as jack, Y/N’s heart fluttered with pride. she wasn’t exactly sure if it was normal for her to feel this strongly about a friend.

she retired to her dressing room, undoing her costume, hair, and makeup as quickly as possible. it took her longer than expected, though, due to her drowsy and slow movements.

all of the other girls finished before her, and she was left alone in her room. she was on her last task: unclipping her head of hair.

“oh gosh, i can’t do this,” she mumbled, resting her head on the table in front of her. luckily, before she could fall asleep at her table, mike barged in the door.

“hey Y/N- oh do not tell me you’re sleeping again,” mike said, standing behind her.

“not this time. i was close,” she lifted her head up and looked at mike through the mirror in front of her. “i just want to go home. i don’t even have the energy to take my hair out of the clips.”

mike thought about it, hesitated, and spoke up. “if you want me to, i can unclip it for you. you can rest your head for a little bit and i’ll get your hair done, okay?”

Y/N blushed. “would you?”

mike smiled back. “anytime. now, head down.”

she rested her head on her arms in front of her, and dozed off into a very light sleep. she knew mike was still talking to her, but she couldn’t decipher it or reply.

mike patted the back of her head. “all done,” mike exclaimed. “now, if you don’t hurry, we’ll miss our ride and i don’t think you want that.”

Y/N stood up slowly, finding it hard to walk due to her exhaustion. they made it outside of the theater, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to walk the few blocks to the station.

“mike?” she asked softly. matching her energy, he turned around and gave her a gentle look.

“what’s up?” he asked.

“c-can you carry me?”

mike tried to hide his red cheeks. “yeah, of course, but just this once. you’re crazy if you think i’ll be doing this for you every day.”

Y/N laughed and jumped on his back. “don’t worry about it, i won’t ask again.”

she got herself situated in a piggyback position on mike, and he carried her to their station. she rested her head comfortably on his back, and the sound of his breathing quickly lulled her to sleep. the only time she was awake was when mike set her down at the station and when they arrived at their destination. on the subway, she rested her head on mike’s shoulder and took a power nap.

Y/N instinctively got onto mike’s back again after they got out of the station, and he carried her all the way to her apartment door.

“i’ll get you settled inside, and then i’m going to head out,” mike said as Y/N unlocked her door.

“you can stay. your shoulder and back was comfy to sleep on,” she said, surprising herself with how bold she was being.

“are you sure? i don’t want to interrupt your sleep.”

Y/N stopped in the middle of her bedroom as mike told her this. “dude, i literally fell asleep on you multiple times tonight. you help me sleep,” she replied.

“if you say so,” he said, smiling lightly.

they got into bed, and unbeknownst to the other, they were smiling at the thought of sharing a bed together.

Y/N laid her head on mike’s chest, and he placed his arm around her.

“is this okay?” she asked, not wanting to overstep her boundaries.

he grazed her shoulder with his fingertips. “it’s perfect.”

“goodnight mike,” she said, already half asleep in his arms.

“goodnight Y/N,” he whispered back. she swore she heard a small “i love you” from mike, but before she could decide if she did or not, she was passed out cold.

#mike faist #mike faist imagine #mike faist x reader #mike faist fanfiction #newsies #newsies imagine #newsies x reader #jack kelly

[bakersdaughter21]

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S SPOILERS DONT READ PAST THE CUT IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILERS

I want to talk about the theatre experience because that MADE the movie man

First thing of note is there were three guys in full TUXEDOS leaving the theatre, and i’m 94% positive they were leaving a fnaf movie showing. That was fun, they looked very Classy.

Our theatre wasn’t PACKED full, it wasn’t the very first showing of the movie so probably the earlier showings were more packed. But it was a lot of young adults/teens and some kids with their families (also my mom went with us and despite not knowing any of the lore she really loved the movie so take that rotten tomatoes my mom knows better)

SPOILER: so the first theatre reaction happened with MATPAT. I was so distracted for a minute until i was like “wait, i know that voice” and everyone either gasped or laughed when he came on screen.

when those people were breaking into Freddy’s to ruin Mike’s job, I think there were some minor gasps and such with the first two kills BUT when the babysitter was BITTEN IN HALF EVERYONE WENT “OOOOOH”. That was fantastic.

Soon after that, when Mike was cleaning up and the second Balloon Boy Jumpscare happened (loved those btw) everyone laughed/jumped.

After that, when Abby asked if she could see the Massive Intimidating Animatronics again and Mike just stared Tiredly, EVERYONE laughed. He wanted to say “No????” so bad but he could only scream it in his eyes.

Everyone laughed/cheered when Cory got his scene! It was so good. Me and my sibs wore his merch for the movie so he was the real star for us

When Springtrap stepped out everyone was shrieking/gasping in excitement. When he took the helmet off a lot of people gasped loudly which- I guess people didn’t think Steve was William? (insert that one meme that average fnaf fans don’t know a deeply obscure fact but do know a different bonkers lore fact)

EVERYONE gasped when Vanessa was stabbed. i think there was a louder reaction for that than the “I always come back” line.

When the credits started to roll people CLAPPED. THERE WAS APPLAUSE IN THE THEATRE. IVE NEVER BEEN IN A THEATRE WHERE PEOPLE CLAPPED FOR A MOVIE. IT WAS GREAT. Also when The Living Tombstone started playing people started singing along and that was great.

The final Cory scene had people laughing and I’m so glad he got a second scene. Balloon Boy was the real villain of the movie.

#fnaf #fnaf movie #fnaf movie spoilers #spoilers in tags #five nights at freddy’s movie #this was such a great time #i’m so glad i went on premiere day #even tho i was feeling a little sick i wasn’t about to miss this #now i can suffer at home #five nights at freddy’s #coryxkenshin #matpat #vanessa afton

[chronic-ghost]

Chapter 10 of Recovery Road

chapter rating: E (18+)

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

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

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

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

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

▲ Series Masterlist | Previous | Part 2 + Epilogue

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

▲ Taglist Form

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

SEPTEMBER 

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

One hand jumps up from the back of the crowd. 

“Yes?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That was supposed to be a secret.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Want me to get it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As you moved away from him.

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

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

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

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

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

You stepped closer to the centerpiece of the exhibit. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone is still here. 

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

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

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

Oh, fuck, the black rings –

“Darling!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My dear, I’d like you to meet –,”

“Natalie?”

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

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

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

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

He’s older and so are you. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Holy fucking shit.”

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

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

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

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

Marie swallows as her eyes slide to you. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay, what am I missing here?”

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

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

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

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

“So what do you think?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. Okay.” 

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

Sadness. Yeah, you definitely know that one. 

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

You can almost hear the storm brewing in his head.

“Natalie, wait.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Natalie, how the fuck are you doing?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s Dieter.” 

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

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

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

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

I really thought I’d never see him again. 

“Was he actually stumbling? Is he sober?”

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

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

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

“Nervous. Shocked. Surprised. Angry.” 

“Talk to me about the anger.” 

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

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

“But did you run for a drink?”

“No.”

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

“No.” 

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

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

“Okay, then what do I do?”

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As if you’d let me forget.”

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

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

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

You bring up his contact and type out your message:

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe I am.”

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

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

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

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

She harumphs. 

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

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

You mock-gasp. “You take that back!”

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

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

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

Everyone, including –

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

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

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

“Who, Dieter?”

“No, the man on the moon.”

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

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

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

“And why did you ask him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But therein lies the problem. You remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Going on about ten years now.” 

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

You sip slowly, unable to look at him. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

His eyebrows jump and he shuffles a bit closer. 

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

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

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

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

“Yeah. I fuckin’ do.” 

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

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

You frown at him. “What’s that for?”

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

“Centrum? Isn’t that for –?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hi, Marie, how are–,”

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

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

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

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

“To love,” the chorus chants.

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

This is such a dumb fucking idea. 

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

“This is so weird.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So they’re happy?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to get this thing off your chest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s Chloe?”

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

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

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

He swallows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So you don’t . . . you aren’t . . .”

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

You say the first thing you think of. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If that counts for anything.

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

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

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

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

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

“Can I ask you something?” 

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

“Sure.”

“Why were they called The Sixers?” 

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

You grin at him.

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

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

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

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

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

Not once, had you ever stopped to consider that. 

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

You laugh so hard, you cry. 

Dieter is bent over, howling alongside you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, uh, hey, Marie.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So, what the fuck was that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She can see the understanding cross over your face. 

“Where’s his wife anyway? Chloe?”

“They’re divorced, okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s not like it was before,” you answer as honestly as you can. “Even if it was, I can’t imagine he feels anything but guilt over me, which isn’t a great starting point for a relationship. You saw his face in the gallery – he looked petrified, not in love.”

When she nods, it stings, just a bit. She eyes the paperwork, knowing the income and good word coming from Andrew’s production would benefit the gallery for years to come. And of course she knew – she was the one who came up with it. Would she have said yes if she knew Dieter was attached to it? Would you have?

“Are you going to see him again?” 

You wave a sweeping hand at the invoices, as if to show how the gallery and Andrew’s show are completely intertwined. 

“I have to, right?” 

Marie frowns at you, angry but not at you, and then her face softens, all fight gone, and she goes around the island to hug you. This is what saved you. This is what kept you going. 

“I know my boundaries, Marie,” you say to the crook of her neck, unwilling to look her in the eyes while you say this. “And I know what happened in the past. I’m not going to make the same mistakes.” 

She kisses your cheek. “Good because I really can’t run the gallery by myself.”

You laugh, pulling apart, and you shuffle the invoices together. “Yeah, who would you have to cart all this paperwork around?” 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Bright and early.”

You wave her goodbye from your porch, locking the door after her. 

You want to google his name and “divorce” to see if it’s true. If anything he told you today was real. You want to curl up in bed, with your head under the sheets and try and piece his life without you together. But you don’t. 

That was the thing with Dieter. You want things, but you can’t have them. You have this indescribable urge, but it must be tempered. The obsession is lesser, a blindspot more than anything, now that you know your next hit and how you felt about him had been horrifically tied up into one, incessant, painful need. It would never be as bad, you assure yourself because now that you don’t have that overwhelming urge to get high; whatever you would be feeling is just good plain old human brain chemicals. And if you survived being coked out for nearly a year straight, you’d probably survive your own stupid emotions. 

You would survive Dieter Bravo. All you have to do now is be his friend.

OCTOBER

A sharp chill had descended over the city, bringing with it an explosion of color. A consolation prize for the painful nip in the air. It was too early in the season for snow, or anything to prevent the wind from being so cruel, so everyone had to bustle from one structure to the next, careful to avoid the cold that hounded them like dogs. Teeth clenched, hands clutching scarves, the streets were filled with scowls and pink cheeks, raw knuckles and frozen ears. The crowds moved faster, eager to get where they’re going, out of this cold, out of this wind that pressed unsuspecting bodies together with the force of it. It made getting out of bed, leaving the cozy warmth of duvets and covers, planting your feet on the freezing wood, almost a monumentally impossible task. Especially for those who hated mornings anyway. 

As much as you tried – really, truly, desperately tried as you sorted through the mosaic of your life, shining up as much as you could – you simply could not turn yourself into a morning person. Yawning widely, you stirred the cup of terrible coffee aimlessly, as if with enough glaring it would not only taste better, but startle you awake. 

No such luck. 

“Hey, miss, where would you like us to put these?” 

You grimace as you choke down the black sludge, pointing the workman to a far wall at the back of the stage. Six in the morning and you already know it was going to be a long day. There are supplies to organize, materials to sort out, work to delegate, but you can’t seem to climb out of that sleepy haze. It had been a while since you’d been on the set of a production but if you don’t plant your feet now, you are liable to get swept up into the chaos. 

You shake your head and blink. Focus. 

Your designs had mapped out six separate moveable pieces of extra thick balsa wood. Attached to wheels, stage hands could rearrange the pieces as needed, depending on the scene. The “walls” are light enough for Andrew’s skeleton crew, but with some shadows and shading, you could give them depth and visual weight. You just had to build the damn things first, but Andrew assured you that all of his stagehands are basically master carpenters. By the confused but eager looks on their faces, you doubt that’s entirely true. Maybe by the end of this you’ll all be master carpenters. 

Smiling to yourself, you go to help them unpack the planks of wood, but freeze when you hear Andrew’s voice unexpectedly. Assuming he’d come by when most of the work is nearly done, you poke your head around the thick black curtains. 

Andrew stands facing the house, his arms wide and mobile. You smirk at the Lululemon sweats – his version of dressing down – as he addresses the small crowd in front of him. It’s the cast, you realize, only about seven of them and in the center is, of course, Dieter, with dark circles under his eyes. He’d never been a morning person either. He has his arms crossed over a thin black shirt and he’s focused entirely on Andrew, thick brows furrowed. 

And focused entirely on him, is Emily (you finally remember her name), the cute blonde twenty-something. 

Friends help friends get dates, right? Maybe this would be a good first step.

Getting Dieter Bravo laid.

Lunch arrives well past noon, leaving everyone tired, hungry, and a little irritable. Cast and crew go off into their separate corners, looking for peace and quiet and somewhere the pounding of hammers isn’t audible. 

You’re deciding between a ham or turkey sandwich when he sidles up next to you. His plate is half a sandwich, three strawberries, and four cookies. Good to see his voracious sweet tooth hadn’t dulled even a little bit. 

You glance over your shoulder. Emily sits on the edge of the stage, munching on a bag of chips and reading over her script. With your elbow, you nudge Dieter and he turns to look. 

“She likes you,” you grin. 

He frowns, glancing back between you and the girl on stage. “Who? Emily?”

“Duh. She has eyes, doesn’t she?” 

Dieter’s mouth goes tight and he turns back to the craft’s table, suddenly interested in adding something healthy to his plate. 

“She flirts with everyone. Besides, I’m kind of out of practice.”

“What do you mean?”

He picks at a melon, noses through the box of chips. “Rehab makes dating kinda hard. Unless . . .” he pauses and puts down his plate, “unless you’ve figured out the secret to dating in rehab.”

Your neck heats again. “Um, no, definitely not. It’s been a while, for me too.”

“How long is a while?” His eyes darken as he asks. 

You are completely baffled at how quickly this conversation spiraled out of your control. 

“Dieter – I – it’s been – you —,” 

He spares you and bites the corner of his cheek. He glances over to Emily as she swings a long, bare leg over the edge of the stage. 

“I’m not sleeping with her.” You nod, dumbstruck by this complete and total opposite reaction you thought he’d have. He works his jaw before looking back at you. “Her or anyone else. Okay?”

Andrew calls the cast to the stage to review blocking before the buzz saws start up again, so Dieter is pulled away before you can sputter incoherent consonants at him. He leaves his plate with you.

“Don’t let anyone steal my cookies,” he says very seriously before wiping his hands on his jeans and heading back to work. 

What you said is true. You didn’t date anyone in rehab, the practice actually rather forbidden, and didn’t really have the inclination once you got out. It had been years before you actually tried to date anyone, but most of them ended after the first awkward hug goodbye or when he tried to put his hand up your skirt at dinner. 

You hadn’t been a nun this whole time – you weren’t a fucking saint – but there hadn’t been anyone, anyone who really mattered in, years. For the first time, that struck you as odd. There wasn’t time, you reason with yourself as you watch him cross the stage on Andrew’s direction and jot notes in his script, his hair sticking up in all directions as if a cat’s tongue had licked him up the back of his neck. With moving to New York and starting the gallery and then running it, expanding it, there just simply wasn’t time to find something to fill that giant, gaping hole in your life. A hole you didn’t seem to mind or even notice, until Dieter came back. 

Okay, maybe, friends didn’t need to help friends pick up dates. He didn’t seem interested anyway. 

You pick up his plate, careful to not spill his precious sweets, only vaguely aware that his first inclination after loading up his lunch was to come find you.

🤍 Next: Part 2 + Epilogue

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[aeolianblues]

Honestly if one of the first things everyone knew about me was that I spent 35 years pining for one woman, and later said woman and her daughter because she married a long time ago, then forget the fact that she inspired a lot of my poetry, I would simply burn it all and bury myself from the burning embarrassment of being such a loser.

But such was the life of William Butler Yeats.

Every one of them had a Life eh? TS Eliot too— fascinating fear of decay and mortality. You see it in his work etc etc, but he also left his wife when she fell mentally ill, for a younger hot thing— some 20 y/o when he was in like his 40s or 60s. We see you running away from facing the inevitability, man, a profound line about death doesn’t change that.

So it’s fascinating to read their works with this background context available to you, it’s such an insight into the human psyche. You know I’ve talked about this a little before, on how we sort of look to our poets and songwriters for answers, to help make sense of all the madness, and without fail, they happen to be some of the most flawed human beings in history. Or in less intense cases, they don’t have the answers we seek from them. It reminds me again of that interview with Grian Chatten from Fontaines D.C., in the NME back in 2022. He’s a poet for the modern day, I’ll grant him that easily. He convinced me recently that lyrics can work quite well standing alone as poetry and not come off as naff or aloof, or can still feel quite prescient and not pretentious or removed from the live setting in which they will be performed, making eye contact with you in a sweaty theatre (slowly getting larger, pleased to see, with the U.K. and Dublin arena shows planned). They can still connect with the loud guitars and drums pounding behind them.

He said to the NME, in light of Dogrel and his painting of a Dublin life, presenting you with the characters, the contradictions, the scenarios lived in his Dublin, his portrayal led to people turning to him for answers, when I think what you and him would both know deep down is that you’re really looking to him for a depiction of your world in the words that hit the soul, in a way that romanticises the moments you want to remember, and can beautifully frame the injustices of the bad ones. Not answers. Just a painting.

He said, people are looking to me for answers. What the fuck do I know?

Same as it had always been, hasn’t it? He doesn’t have answers. Yeats didn’t have answers. TS Eliot didn’t have answers— despite his vivid depictions of loss and decay, he still couldn’t deal with the thought of it himself. But all it does do, is let you read a work through the lens of your own life, and then look at it again through the eyes of a complex human being, the poet. It’s an option that is available to you. Some people do subscribe to ‘death of the author’, but if you’d like to explore the mind of someone who isn’t you, if you aren’t afraid to feel uncomfortable, different, or in the skin of a very different person, it’ll open you up to new thoughts, which don’t have to be yours.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is, don’t be afraid to read something you don’t agree with. Bad thoughts aren’t contagious. You can approach someone else’s work knowing it’s a complex read, and that can be an intriguing and insightful read. However, I am absolutely not going to be putting this post in any poetry tags, because I don’t think most people on the poetry canon side of the internet will appreciate me calling one of the crown princes of 20th century Irish poetry and literature a loser. Lmao.

#And so 2:40! I’ll stop faffing and go to bed #chitter chatter #writing #thoughts #Dublin #writers

[fanhackers]

Radio, Radio!

I almost didn’t write this post for fear that you guys will think I’m even more of an old than I even am, but a) fuck it and b) there’s a way in which everything old is new again, so bear with me.  *takes deep breath*  OK, so when I was a young fan, a lot of my fannish life happened over the RADIO.  Yes, RADIO, that–I was about to say, that weird looking box with dials on it, but you probably don’t even have a radio. (*Shut up, shut up, I can’t hear you, la la I am going to live forever!*)  But you probably listen to something like radio on Spotify, or you listen to podcasts, or you might even use an app to listen to some great legacy radio station in your area.  So imagine you had a dedicated box just for that.

Anyway, in the before-times, radio then–like podcasts now–was a way to do fandom.  Music people know this of course, but I’m both a fan and a theatre person, and man, radio theatre was the best, and fannish radio theatre even better.  Britain had and still has a really strong radio drama tradition, which is smart because it lets them produce new plays by new writers for a fraction of the cost of a staged production.  But NPR in the US used to do radio drama too–they had a show called NPR Playhouse / Sounds of Theatre which I was devoted to.  

I have two particularly strong fannish memories from this era. First,  the joy of hearing the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on radio. Douglas Adams wrote Hitchhikers for radio and radio is the best way to experience it  - I mean, Zaphod having two heads and three arms is radio joke if there ever was one, and then all these poor TV and film people had to figure out how to actually get an actor with a second head. (Footnote 1).  I backtrack here to say that if you don’t know what I’m talking about, never read or saw any version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, click on the link and have yourself a whale of a time (or a bowl of petunias of a time.) (Sorry, the whole Hitchhiker’s thing makes me instantly 12 years old FOREVER. My whole world is Hitchhikers, Star Wars, and Doctor Who– Five.) 

Moving on: the second great fannish radio experience was NPR’s dramatized version of Star Wars, which had Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels playing their original roles, and Perry King as Han Solo - Perry King, you will remember (who am I kidding, you will absolutely not remember, but anyway), became a fan-favorite for a show called Riptide, so that was okay, too. And they expanded the text! And added new scenes!  I can remember Mark Hamill giving an interview talking about how different it was to play the part for radio; he talked about how you had to sort of put movement in your voice at all times: “I’m–grunt–putting on my–harumph–jacket!” But he was great at it–obviously, since he’s become such a famous voice actor since. And it’s wonderful that podcasting has brought theatre and fandom back into the medium of sound - podcasts are the obvious new media version of all this.

Okay, so bring this back to fan studies, these personal fannish reminiscences (and awesome links—you’re welcome!)  are brought to you by Martin Cooper’s book Radio Legacy in Popular Culture: The Sounds of British Broadcasting Over the Decades (Bloombury, 2022, excerpt available at the link).  Make no mistake, this is a fannish book in its way - Cooper is interested not just in radio but in artistic works that are in some way about radio, which he regards explicitly as fanworks about radio: 

In the case of fandom it could be alternative storylines; in our case of radio listening, it can be a reinterpretation of what has been heard on the airwaves. Hence, it is plausible to think of the responses I analyse in the chapters that follow as reinterpretations and critiques of radio listening; that they have been produced by professional writers and musicians makes them less of a subculture and more of a series of transformative texts that extend the meaning and understanding of the medium of radio. They are portrayals of the everyday action of listening to the radio: of paying attention to the programmes, the discussions, the documentaries, the dramas, the daily shows and the DJs.  

Note that the book has a specifically British focus, but British music and drama have influenced fandoms all over the world. I mean, Radio, Radio; Video Killed The Radio Star; Oh Yeah (There’s a Band Playing On The Radio), Radio Clash –Cooper frames all these songs as part of a British transformative fannish response to the medium.  Radio on! 

–Francesca Coppa, fanhackers volunteer

(1) I got the chance to meet Mark Wing-Davey, who played Zaphod Beeblebrox both on the original radio show and on the BBC show--he's a big-shot theatre director now, but I honestly could not keep my inner 12 year old under control: I basically had my fists stuffed in my mouth because OMG Zaphod Beeblebrox!!! my heart!! and finally I just kind of choked out, "sorry, I can't--excuse me" and fled the dinner. *facepalm*

#author: francesca coppa #forever 12 #radio fandom #so glad that podcasts and podfic are a thing now!!