#gf og

+++

Dieter was partying less and less. You notice.

Dieter still keeps odd hours. The artist's temperament, his untethered drift when he lacks the routine of a shooting schedule or promotional tour to keep his time strictly accounted for, means he flits to nocturnal. Or something akin to it, following only his own internal Dieter clock, managing to wake at 7am for yoga instructor Kate's visit after you heard him at 4am in his studio, then sleeping all day punctuated.

You don't mind, but as a person who likes to sleep through the night, and as his assistant, it is one of the (admittedly few) downsides of the job.

(The other downside being your attraction to your boss, but this is fine, mostly fine, totally fine, and you can completely tamp down your attraction to this free spirit, who cares too much even though many who don't know him would say he doesn't care at all; your boss who has a sweet rumpled smile to go with his devilish one, and can deploy either to tug at your heartstrings or dissipate any annoyance at his recent antics. But. That's completely fine, and not a crush that is growing exponentially and crushing you. It's mostly the weird hours, absolutely that.)

Most of the time, Dieter just wakes up and paints. Occassionally, you wake up to confirmation emails of his late-night shopping escapades. ("Dieter, I cancelled the chincilla order." "Why do you hate me?" he dramatically slumps himself down on the sofa. "A chincilla is for life, not just Arbour Day. And I'm going to be left caring for it." Dieter pouts, but his side-long glance lets you know he knows you're right. "I got you a plushie one instead." He perks up at this. "Alright, this is an acceptable substitute.")

What does touch your heart and break it is when you receive notifications that he's donated money in the night to something that he's been thinking about, as donation confirmations to places like The Trevor Project pop up in his emails.

You worry about where the night's shadows have taken his own labyrinthine thoughts, but heartened that he's thinking of others.

The world may see Dieter as a selfish, self-absorbed film star, and some days and in a lot of lights, that assumption is entirely correct. But most of the time, Dieter cares about others and keeps that much quieter than his demand for another latte with the correct brand of coconut milk this time, thanks very much.

The night ambling, whatever its nature, and the nocturnal painting, usually means Dieter craves affection after.

Your role is platonic and professional, you remind yourself, as a quiet knock comes on your guest house door.

Moving in with Dieter when your apartment's rent got too high had been the best and worst thing you'd done. Living with one's boss? A horrible idea, but the nature of your job was so goddamn weird and boundaryless, what was one more line in the sand erased. Most of the time Dieter left you alone once you were 'off-duty,' and texted you no more in his guest house than when you were your own apartment. Which was a lot. And a welcome flurry of wonderful disconnected strangeness:

Ping. "How much do you think I need to nag my publicist to get me a Critereon Closet slot?"

Ping. "Heard a horrible noise. Do we think Sherman Oaks has coyotes and how can we protect the property from them?" then a few minutes later: "Scratch that, how can we build the best coyote-enticing viewing platform? Would the wildlife preserve people have this info??? George RR Martin raises wolves, wait can publicist get his number????"

This morning? Well, today is a good, soft day. Autumn is coming so it's not terribly early as grey light of your bedroom floods your vision, roused by the soft knocking. Dieter.

You text, rather than stir from your nest of blankets. Come in.

The door latch opens and closes softly. You hear his shuffling footsteps before you see him, and his weight dips the other side of the bed.

He's been up late (or woken up very early) and his voice comes out as scruffy as his early morning appearance. You dutifully ignore the way it gives you pleasant goosebumps, hearing it languish across your bedsheets, penetrating the cozy, safe space with a soft tread that feels monumental as he softly croaks out, "Shouldn't sleep with the door unlocked. 's not safe."

You roll over, face Dieter fully. The sight of him, laying back on your bed, eyes closed and paint dried on his hands, hair askew, is begging for attention. You long to give him all the fawning he deserves, but opt to bunch your fists into the covers and pull them under your chin rather than run your fingers through his hair or gently stroke over his paint-flecked temples.

"There's gates at the driveway. You like to come in, and I hate getting out of bed a second before I have too."

Dieter's eye slide open to the slimmest of slits. "Sleeping with your front door unlocked is reckless. And you definitely shouldn't do it for me." His eyes close again and he rolls to his side facing you. "We'll change the lock to a keypad. Or those—AirBnB lockpad key holders?"

His fists curl beneath his chin so close to your own balled hands. You won't kiss his knuckles, that would be absurd. "I can still get in and you don't have to get up. But I'm not having you out here at the mercy of crazy robbers," Dieter continues.

The other option hangs between the air, unspoken by you both.

That he simply doesn't come in the mornings anymore.

You hope it means something that he doesn't suggest it either.

Maybe he shouldn't be crawling into your bed at the early hours of the morning, perhaps it runs too roughshod over the already fuzzy boundaries of your odd employer-employee roles.

"Either sounds ok. I'll look into some options today while you're at that photocall."

"Mmm." Dieter hums an affirmative noise and his warm breath skitters softly over your knuckles, just past to your lips.

Your whole body flushes warm at his closeness. Is this what Victorians felt like, all this yearning and no place proper place for it to go?

"Good," there's that warm, deep cracking to his morning voice again. "Cuz I'm never leaving. Your bed is more comfortable than mine."

You nestle down, subtly shift back to the edge of the bed, squeeze your own eyes shut tight, hold your self rigid and away to keep the foolishness at bay that the pinks and powder blues of dawn breaking the grey sky and skittering the light prism-like and alluringly across Dieter's nose and cheeks make you want to enact.

"Impossible to not leave," you retort softly. "Photocall starts at one."

Dieter grumbles and inches sweetly closer. "Just for awhile."

He dozes off, blissfully unaware of your own heart thumping in your chest.

++end++

Hope you enjoyed, Em!

He groans when you follow through your tongue's trail with a suck at the hollow below his jaw. “Fuck,” he grits out. “Shouldn’t be taking you like this in the backyard, where anyone can see.”

The pool lounger groans in protest beneath both your weight as Frankie thrusts forward again, and your legs wrap him closer, making his hips follow through deeper.

“I’ve left half a job done on the pool…” the man’s work ethic is unassailable, as is his guilt complex, you can’t help but think.

“Frankie,” you say, drawing his attention back to the task at hand, cradling his jaw, “Focus.”

His hair is plastered to his forehead, cap gone, but leaving behind a sweetly pressed mass of ruffled hair against his brow. Frankie drops it against your collarbone, the curling ends of hair tickling.

“Sorry, sorry,” the hot sweet breath of his apology huffs against your breast. “Your pussy’s so sweet I’m rambling thinkin’ of anything just not to come instantly…”

His nose nuzzles against your nipple before he curls his lips around it, making you keen.

“Frankie, fuck,” you say, back arching further into his mouth. “You should absolutely come inside me, right fucking now.”

—--

Beads of condensation make your glass of lemonade glitter as if jewel-encrusted in the late morning sun. 

You step carefully with the tray in your hands, two glasses, freshly poured lemonade, and laden with a nearly full pitcher of the stuff. The heels you wear aren’t helping, you have to navigate. 

“Frankie, would you like a break?” you call to the pool boy. 

You try to downplay the hitch in your breath as the pool boy (pool man, you think, is far more apt for the broad figure standing in front you, squinting in the sun making the slight crow’s feet around his eyes more prominent, his stubble a little patchy and salted strands starting to thread through his beard and unruly mop of dark hair) pauses his work.

If your husband knew how you’ve gone full ‘bored 60s housewife,’ wearing a silky robe open over your swimsuit that’s more fashion statement than swimsuit, he might laugh. You’re wearing heels. On your patio. For the pool guy. Before you lose your nerve, you set forth, step through the open sliding glass door to seduce the pool man.

The tray thunks heavily on the patio dining set. Safe, no spills. Lemonade looking as alluring as you hope to.

Frankie looks up. He’s got his hat on to keep the sun out of his eyes. The summer heat, already making the day hazy, has turned to sweat on the back of his neck and upturned his hair into waves. 

But he’s forgone a shirt, despite the ball cap. 

You reflect on the conversation that landed you here, playing Betty Draper to Frankie’s mundane maintenance task. 

—-

“Sure you don’t want some young buck pool guy to take care of this for you?” he’d asked, half jokingly a few weeks back when you’d talked about a summer maintenance schedule. “You know, you don’t have to keep using me.” You still heard the vulnerable truth at the heart of his question.

“Frankie, you’re the only man I want service my pool this summer,” you say. 

His eyebrow arches “Servicing, huh?”

You sputter, catching the innuendo in your phrasing. “Hanging around my pool this summer…” 

Frankie kindly bites back his smile. Shrugs.

But the intractable roots of an idea are now firmly planted. 

—----- 

You watch his broad shoulders while his strong arms draw the skimmer across the water’s shimmering surface, making quick work of the errant debris that blew into the pool after last night’s summer thunderstorm. 

You note the stretch of the drum of his belly, watch his happy trail dip into his board shorts.

The air still crackles, but the charge is between you and Frankie. 

He stops his work to watch you stroll to the dining set at the patio. 

You throw your shoulders back, walk taller at the double-take he does when he sees your get-up, the way his jaw drops slightly before he thickly swallows. You can see his throat bob from all the way over here. 

“You look awful thirsty, Frankie,” you call across the pool from the patio. “Though I’d come out here and quench you.”

—----

Frankie comes and it’s a beautiful sight. Broad shoulders holding his weight just off you, while his hips stutter against yours. Both of you panting, exerting from the effort. He drops to offer you one sweet kiss, ending it but not pulling away from your lips to ask:

“So, your husband gonna be OK with you fucking the pool guy?”

You nip at his lips. “Seeing as my husband IS my pool guy, he might be OK with it.” 

He pretends to contemplate, unable to keep the dimple in his barely restrained smile from peeping as you gently swat his arm. 

He reluctantly peels your sweat-sticky bodies apart, swipes the mess he made between your legs with a cloth napkin from the lemonade tray.

“Francisco, that’s the good linen my grandmother gave us for our wedding gift!”

He scootches you both around on the lounger so you’re nestled against his side. “Shouldn’t have used it in our sex role play then.”

His hands roam up and down your now-naked back. Suit off, heels on. That had been his request for your little fantasy. 

You huff a laugh, knowing he’s right. Your own fingertips dance on his sternum, trail across his belly. “Wasn’t too arch or cheesy, was I?”

“I thought it was might be, but you were really fucking sexy.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. Fucking nearly fell into the pool.”

“Can’t have that.”

“Real talk - we do need to get a pool guy, my back is fucked.”

-end-

—---

A/N: I am nothing if not a one-trick pony, ha.

Sometimes Joel’s brother Tommy and his wife Maria join you, even skating themselves. But when they stay with Joel for a chat as you circle the rink, you still feel the burn of Joel’s deep brown eyes cutting to you from across the room.

It doesn’t bother you that Joel sits on the sidelines.

When you asked why didn’t want to even try, he gives a self-deprecating answer about how, “My uncoordinated ass don’t need to be out there, I’d just fall over and make a fool a’ myself,” he declares. A statement for which you reprimand him by slinking your hands into the tight denim of his back pockets and squeezing his ass. “Your ass is perfect, baby. If anything it would make a perfect cushion if you did fall.”

To which Joel replied, “Think you’ve the got the perfect ass outta the two of us, darlin’,” which required a detour back to the bedroom before you turned up to Tommy and Maria’s dinner party late and clothing rumped. 

You skate for yourself. To move your body to the beat in a way that makes you smile, makes you feel free and sexy, and to forget your troubles.

But you also do it as a show for Joel. For his hungry eyes to follow you, to eat up the scattering of light and the shimmer of the disco ball’s reflection across your skin.

Resting becomes its own thrill. When you do sit for a break, take a slug of water and a sip of cocktail, you do so perched in Joel’s lap.

When the two of you had started to attend the rink, on one of your early dates, it was pressed against his side, your nerves as buzzy as neon at merely touching the man’s shoulder.

But now, Joel is yours and wants you all the time. Being likewise inclined, you permit yourselves these indulgences, these open displays of desire. 

Others full on fuck in the booths – you and Joel at least wait until his truck. 

—

The DJ switches records and you slow down, skating to the rink exit and to the table Joel awaits you at. 

Legs spread wide, one arm stretched across the booth back, unintentionally displaying the sheer wingspan and strength of himself, solidness honed from his weekdays on construction sites alongside Tommy. 

He’s taken off his fur coat as the body heat increases correspondingly with the uptick in body count while the bar and rink get crowded.

You admire his shirt sleeves, the open polo neck collar, the knitwear clinging to his stocky torso so that you want to wrap bodily around Joel and take the shirt’s place.

The open tease of the polo shirt plackets makes you crazy, because it IS a tease. Through it glistens the gold of Joel’s chain necklace sitting beautiful against his golden skin, nestle in the very faint dusting of his chest hair.

Your friend Monica had always said she wanted a man just like Burt Reynolds. “A bear skin rug on his chest,” she’d dreamily sighed. You understood Burt’s appeal. But you thought Joel’s smattering of chest hair was the perfect amount, liked that his body only sprouts darkly and thickly under his arms and on his torso beneath his belly button, a line you loved to follow with your tongue, down, down, down….Particularly before Joel had fully freed himself from his trousers or large belt buckle, the sturdy pooch of his belly calling out for your teeth and mouth. 

You shake your head from its lusty reverie, memories making you wobble perilously on your skates. 

Sweat prickles your neck, you’re starting to overheat, both from Joel and the room, so you turn your wheels to the booth to refuel and feel the sugar rush of a cocktail. 

You sit, throw your knee over Joel’s lap.

No matter that you glisten with a faint sheen of sweat, and Joel’s cheeks bear a flush even the flashing low lights can’t hide, you still need Joel’s body heat close. 

He passes you a glass of ice water, condensation leaving drops on your silky jumpsuit. You chug, lick your lips as water escapes your mouth and the glass. 

Joel licks your neck, chasing the droplet’s trail, his wide tongue’s path lapping your sweat in the process. You hum a moan, then Joel swaps your spent water glass for your cocktail. Drink sorted, Joel’s hands stroke the silky material of your jumpsuit.. You must radiate light as much as the disco ball spinning above the rink, the way you feel incandescent when Joel’s strong, sure hands touch you.

He gives your ass a squeeze, then rests his hands on your hips, fingertips stroking and patiently drumming on your ass in time to the music.

“You look real nice, honey,” Joel says. “This new?”

In your satin jumpsuit–with shorts, because even in the dead of winter the roller disco gets far too hot–you feel stylish amongst the trendy bar crowd. Crucially, it allows you to move freely. 

He cups your ass again, lifts you up and rocks your pelvis against his, under the pretense of skimming his fingertips over the crisply sewn satin of your shorts hem.

You nod. 

“Well, you look fuckin’ sexy in it,” Joel praises. He leans further forward, his next words only for you, breath hot and deliciously lurid against your neck. “Can’t wait to get you outta it, though.”

As you zipped the front of the one-piece earlier that evening, your mind wandered, imaging how Joel might later unzip it, careful not to catch your skin in his haste to expose your tits to the air and to his hands and his mouth.

The thrumming of the beat guiding you, your free hand sinks into curls at the base of Joel’s thick neck, pulling him back enough to capture his mouth with yours in reply. 

Your tongue bridges the seam of his mouth first, lapping at his lips, then licking into his willing, open mouth.

You squirm in his lap as the kiss grows heated. The sewn seam of your jumpsuit presses into your cunt, makes you wish there was no denim or satin separating you and Joel. You’re desperate to feel his heated skin against yours, his filling cock right against your bared cunt.

Instead, your cocktail glass sweats condensation down your fingertips, dripping on Joel’s shirt. 

He breaks the kiss first, angles your neck to keep your eyes locked on his to rasp out against your lips, “Love the way you fill out these shorts, sweetheart. Fit like a glove. Just like my cock inside you.”

Your eyebrows shoot to your hairline and your hips rock. “Joel Miller!” you reply, leaning back to take in the full breadth of his face, lips quirked in a small smile. 

He manages to say absolute filth quietly in your ear, right at the side of the rink floor. And then possess the audacity to smile at you like butter wouldn’t melt in his wonderfully filthy mouth.

The opening strains of T. Rex’s glittery guitar riffs slink out of the speakers. “Go dance for me, yeah, darlin’?” Joel requests and smacks your ass, broad palm giving a loving stroke after the snap of its sting. 

You like disco best, Joel’s more into rock, so the tempting sleaze of the dirty sexy guitar riff of ‘Get It On’ appeals to you both. 

Before you head back to the skate floor, you stand and lean over him in the booth. Tug him forward by his gold necklace chain to vie him one last teasing kiss. You lick his lips before starting to roll away backwards and then twirl deftly to face the rink. 

Let Joel stay worked up for you in retaliation for his wandering hands and the daring of his low, gruff bedroom voice in this very public space. 

As you make to cross the threshold of the rink, you cast a final glance over your shoulder to see Joel shift in his seat. The move wouldn’t be obvious to an onlooker, but you know the heave of his hips forward is Joel’s subtle attempt to adjust the heft of his thickening cock against the denim he fills out so well. 

His keen eyes catch you watching. He merely shakes his head, lips twisted in a subtle smile before he mouths, “Later,” to you. A threat and a promise.

Even from this distance and in the rink’s stifling heat, the shape of his lips pulls a shiver down your spine and keeps your cunt flooded.

—--

You’ve all but exhausted yourself, speeding around the rink, hips waggling and shoulders shimmying to the thump of the music. 

Your pulse and your cunt are pounding for stimulus other than tunes now, for a sight that you revolved around with each lap of the rink.

Thrumming for the way Joel spreads into lounging on the booth seat, watching you. He’s switched from beer to sipping two fingers of whiskey, an assuredness and certain regality to the contractor. He’s precisely where he should be, waiting only for one thing–you–eyes lethal and voracious over the rim of his glass.

So you come to attend him like the loyal subject that you are. 

You skate over, and Joel welcomes you to straddle his lap. “Hello, stranger,” you say, sliding down over Joel’s thighs, scooting forward until your legs are as wide as they go, till your knees hit the back of the booth seat. Not quite belly-to-belly in your man’s lap, but nearly. 

Your fingers twine into his hair, starting to curl in the heat of the sweatbox the rink’s become, and you drink from his whiskey-tinged lips.

“Mmm, that’s nice whiskey,” you declare.

“Indeed it is,” Joel agrees, then downs the rest of it in one. You watch the bobbing column of his throat until he finishes, chucks the glass with uncharacteristic carelessness onto the table behind you.

The flickering lights of the arena throw the sharp line of his nose into the relief before he presses it back to your neck. “Your shorts are fucking killin’ me, darlin’. Need to fuck you now, better get outta here ‘fore everybody gets a show.”

His facial hair tickles your neck as his hot mouth descends to laving your pulse point. You moan. “What if I wanna give ‘em a show, Joel? Hm? Wanna show you off? Show them what it looks like when I take your big cock?”

His head whips up and his grip tightens around your hips. “Oh, darlin’, but you and your noises? The sight a’ you taking’ my big cock? Are just for me.”

“Joel,” your word a mere whisper as you’re breathless from his successful bid at taking control. 

Before you can work up a retort, Joel all but throws you off his lap into the booth seat, brandishing your shoes and the carry strap for your skates as he kneels before you.

His thick fingers work to untie one lace while you scramble at the other. 

After freeing you from the skate, his breath skims hot on your calf, and he kisses your shin above your high sock, deep brown eyes peering up at you as his lips meet your skin. 

Memories flash, and you know Joel’s purposefully torturing you. He’s positioned himself at your feet to reach your skates, but also so the sight of his broad shoulders between your thighs conjures up the last time he was there. When he flung you down on the living room couch after work yesterday, settled your thighs over those very same shoulders of his and ate you out like a starving man, clothes hurriedly shoved to side. As your high subsided, you’d been so grateful Sarah was studying at a friend’s house that night. 

Now, Jel runs his nose up your thigh before heaving himself to standing. Fucking tease, you think uncharitably. As if he won’t make it worth your time later.

“C’mon, let’s get outta here,” Joel extends a hand to you, and with the other straps your skates over his shoulder.

—

The pair of you don’t make it home.

You fail to make it even to the truck this time.

Instead, you’re in the unlocked stockroom in the hallway of the rink. You’d never even noticed it. But Joel had.

Door closed, Joel flips the lock into place from the inside.

The single lightbulb on a chain swings wildly from Joel's pulling it on, vastly faint light that bounces dizzyingly back and forth behind his head. The shadows it casts under his eye sockets give his hungry look deadly menace, and you want to be consumed.

Joel presses you to the door with a devastating and instantly deep kiss.

His hands rove your body freely and his mouth never leaves yours. Wet and willing yours open as he moans into it. 

Joel’s large deft fingers unzip your jumpsuit, exceeding your fantasy. He doesn’t bother taking off your shearling coat, just throws it open to caress you, backing you into the door. Thank god, you need something to brace against, given your weakening knees.

His work-honed fingers catch the collar of satin, press it to one side and drag it down over your collarbone to your midriff. He presses the cool metal teeth of the zipper aside, broad palms spanning your ribs under the satin while his thumbs stroke the aggravated buds of your nipples to full points. He plucks with all calloused fingertips in unison before he cups your tit, grunts an approval, and ducks to pull your nipple between his lips.

He kisses it, swipes his tongue, then sucks, his own teeth doling out the perfect edge of pain on your flesh that he’d so carefully avoided when steering the metal zipper away from your skin seconds before. 

“Joel, wait,” you pant out, hands sinking tighter into his hair. 

The man is right never to move on skates. He’s an absolute tank. So broad and full and you can imagine now, as his bulk presses you into the door, how dangerous he’d be in the rink. How the solidity of him might have a cataclysmic effect. Not falling, just moving like a predator, deftly through the crowd? His stride is deadly, his glide could be just as lethal. 

“What, darlin’?” 

Your arching back betrays how you miss the heady warmth of his wet mouth.

You tilt up his bent head to kiss him fiercely, clutch the front of his fur coat and pull him to envelop you further.

Hot and stuffy and wonderful, the whole of his weight sinking onto you, pressing you into the door.

“Baby, you gotta stop this, I’m trying to get to you,” Joel murmurs against your mouth.

Your palms slip from his shoulders, your hips arch to his, pressing the satin, perfect painful slick in cloth form, and the seam of the shorts now tacky with your weeping cunt, from so little contact, against where his jeans hug his bulge, straining. 

Your attention splits, to the alluring curve of his cock, hardened below his belt buckle. But you also want to mouth the fullness of his belly pressing just over his waistband, the deep navy of his knitwear clinging and hugging delectably. 

Your palms slink around his waist, and you arch again. 

“Joel, wanna take care of you,” you whine.

“Oh, baby, you do,” Joel coos, taking your face in his large hands, cradling your skull. His eyes search your face, bright and lustful, as he licks his lips.

You offer him another kiss, hook a leg around his waist to force his weight to sink fully against you.

You nibble his bottom lip, then bite, a slight piercing, the pleasure-pain drawing out a groan from Joel when you break the kiss.

“No, baby. Lemme take care of you,” you insist. You untwine your leg from Joel’s thick middle.

You haul him back in by the belt loops for more making out, hands scrambling to untuck his shirt. Your palms snake under the knit top, clinging to him from the heat of the rink.

You bestow one last biting kiss to his wet, plump lips before you resort to a phrase he uses all the time, your voice husky with want as you declare, “Wanna taste you.” You hold eye contact, rake your nails softly down his belly, and sink to your knees, teeth nearly piercing your own lip as you bite it with desire.

Your legs barely fit behind you, trapped as you are between Joel and the door. The awkward angle doesn’t matter one iota when Joel sighs out, “Well, fuck, baby. Go on then.”

You reach for his belt buckle, metal clanking and you both sigh as your own careful zipper work reveals Joel’s cock, lets it spring, unencumbered, from his jeans.

Saliva fills your mouth how he’s already hard for you, velvet encasing steel and his tip flushed prettily pink, wet and weeping.

You peel his jeans down over his hips, so all of him is revealed to you.

You lick your palm, then rub him, your other hand presses back denim to nibble at the crease of Joel’s hip. You smile against his skin when his breath hitches and he swears.

Under your hands, his cock jumps with the quickening pulse of his heartbeat.

Your greedy tongue can wait no more as Joel’s cock throbs at your touch along with the rest of his blood.

You pump the thickness of him again, then kitten lick the salty precum off his swollen tip. 

“Goddamn it, baby,” Joel grits out from above you, and cups your cheek.

You trace your tongue around his frenulum, then lap once more at his wet tip, then press your lips to engulf Joel’s thick cock.

Your lips stretch and you work to meet where your fingers cup around the base of Joel’s dick. Your hand struggles to wrap him, his root so thick.

He groans, drops his head backwards to expose the column of his throat above you.

Your mouth works over Joel’s cock. His heft drags blissfully heavy on your tongue as you press your mouth further and further to his base, your spit aiding your journey down his shaft.

You ease back, suckle at his cockhead, the throb and jolt of his cock pairing with his near-wounded sounding groans, hands clutching your shoulder to let you know your tongue and mouth are servicing him well.

One last curl of your tongue beneath him, then you bestow a kiss to his crown. It’s nearly purpling with all the attention, and the thick root of the rest of him is flushed fully pink. 

He’s so beautiful, you think. 

“Tastes good,” you coo aloud. Your head drops back against the door, eyes flicking up to Joel’s, dark and hooded with desire as he peers down at you.

Crammed against the door as you are, your back arches, your spit-slick nipples pert and catching the cool air as you hold yourself momentarily away from Joel’s broadness and warmth.

“Then ya oughta get some more of it, hm, baby?” he urges. His large warm palm moves to cradle your skull, shielding it from the wooden door.

Nodding eagerly, you smile, exaggerating the arch of your spine. Your tits out, you delight in Joel’s mouth quirks in a grimace of frustration, apt payback for his teasing, you think, before you delve back to Joel’s bobbing cock in front of you.

One hand clutches his hip for leverage, the other traces up his sturdy thigh, the hairs tickling your palm until you cup his balls.

You begin licking him, press your tongue wide and flat against the underside of his shaft. Turn your head sideways and trace the vein there with your tongue, to run your mouth up and down him. Lap up his scent and the heft of him until you mouth the root of him, turn your attention and your tongue to Joel’s sac. 

His fur coat cocoons you from the buzzing, sickly light of the closet, but you feel transcendental, attuned to Joel’s body and his responses, where your mouth and hands leave a trail of fire in their wake. 

He fills his jeans so well, and your mouth now too, as you lap at his sac. Above you, his abdomen fills with juddering breath while his cock jumps in your hands at your mouth’s attention.

The salt and scent of him intoxicates you, seeps more slick between your legs. Joel moans, clutches at your shoulder to keep from squeezing your skull with his other broad, cupping palm. He’s giving you headrush, makes you wetter as your belly swoops with the rush of  power and arousal. 

You plant a series of kisses on his shaft once more from root to tip, then go in for the kill.

“Fuck my face, baby, please,” you mutter your breathy pleaagainst the head of Joel’s cock, your lips barely leaving the fat tip of him. You hover and swirl, plush of your lips skimming Joel’s hole as if you could paint your mouth with him like your favorite lipstick.

“Oh, you perfect fucking dirty woman, all mine, and so hungry for my cock, huh?”

Blinking up at him, you nod, then lap at his weeping slit again, eyes unwavering from his as your tongue curls devilishly around his pretty purpling head. Joel’s gaze darkens, you watch the warm mahogany brown of his eyes bleed shark-eyed black with desire.

“You fucking angel,” Joel grits out.

He composes himself momentarily, fixes his blown pupils on you, cups your chin with his fingertips. “Go on then, lemme fuck this perfect mouth.” 

Your lips part and you descend on Joel. Lips stretched pleasurably around him as your wet mouth engulfs him, your hands tugging his hips, urging his pelvis to you with full force. 

Joel obliges.

Your hands slink up his belly while he fucks your face. He pushes your head against the wall, but cages your skull with two meaty paws and fucks into your mouth while you desperately hold on his abdomen.

“Fucking so good, baby,” he pants. 

Your jaw already arches and spit pools and leaks out of your mouth. 

The din of the roller disco’s music beyond the door behind you faintly pierces your awareness. It hardly compares to the music of Joel’s grunts above you, sounds you feel beneath your hands as his belly twitches with the pull of his vocalizations. 

But you relax your throat, loving the sensation of Joel’s wiry pubic hair tickling your nose and skimming your lips, while his cock pulses and fills your mouth. 

Your fingers curl around the base of Joel’s shaft and you bob deeply, encouraged by Joel’s repeating refrain of “oh shit, baby, oh shit.” 

The protective cupping of his hands around your head twists to involuntary clutching as his hips stutter “I’m coming, fucking coming cuz of that mouth,” he mutters.

You take every inch he gives you, blissfully. Let his hot salty spend fill you, swallow it down.

A placidity descends, Joel towering over you, panting. A deep groan as he eases his hips back and you sigh as his cock pops out of your lips.

Your tongue eagerly chases the salty wet and you swallow, humming as you lap up the spend seeping out of your mouth. 

Joel’s forehead plunges to the door and he angles his fall to just beside you against the surface. 

He cracks one eye open to take in the sight of you, kneeling unmoving beneath him.  

Your eyes catch his, still glassy, shining with lust.

Your thumb swipes across your lip, you make an exaggerated show of polishing off the remainder of Joel’s cum and your spit that has smudged your lipstick beyond repair. 

“You’re gonna fucking kill me, woman.” Joel says fondly, voice still rasped with lust as he cups your cheek.

“Someday. But what a way to go,” you retort, smiling and moving dreamily.

“Speaking of—gotta get you outta here. You’re in a fucking state.”

Your cunt is flooded with arousal, so much slick staining your jumpsuit a trip to the dry cleaner will be futile. Your tits are out, still shiny in the sickly closet light, nipples diamond-sharp and glistening with Joel’s drying spit. 

“Perceptive. I am in a fucking state,” you grin, ignoring the less pleasant throb on your knees from being crammed against the door. 

Joel gathers himself, zipping his jeans, and moving to help you stand.

“Sure are. But gonna need a bed and all night for the rest of what we're gonna do tonight, baby. Let's grab your skates and go.”

++end++

🛼🪩🛼🪩🛼🪩🛼🪩🛼🪩🛼🪩🛼🪩🛼🪩🛼🪩

He shuffles you back on the bed, so you aren't half hanging off anyway more, places your head at the pillow

Gives you a quick and dirty kiss, facial hair cover in your slick. "Lemme show you"

And he pivots his broad ambling body alongside yours, you assume he's going to let you suck his cock while he goes down on you, and you salivate, lick your lips in anticipation.

But Dieter keeps his body parallel alongside yours, tantalisingly out of reach of your wet lips. You want his salty wet occupying your mouth the way his kiss has given you your own taste back. 

"Soon. I just wanna...I missed you so bad"

"Baby," you breathe out, brimming with desire and nearly sad with how much you'd missed him, with how much you love him. 

Your fingers yearn to touch Dieter and you reach for his hips, to urge him on top of you. The imprint of his straining cock stretches his soft linen trousers and your mouth waters.

"Dieter," you whine.

"Wait, not done eating yet," he doesn't move his hips to your clutches, but instead grabs your wrist, presses your seeking hand to cup his cock.

He grins at you upside down, and you're changing the phrase in your personal lexicon to "pussy-eating grin" because that's how Dieter smiles at you, biting his lip, pressing his hips into your hand, urging "'Here. Feel what you do to me," before he closes his fucking eyes and delves back into your cunt with his tongue and suckling mouth. 

Sure enough, as Dieter french kisses your pussy from this revised angle, his cock throbs in your hand. 

Your other hand grips Dieter’s hair, holds him to his current task, while you squeeze his rigid, twitching cock. 

Your fingertips delve past the elastic band of his pants. He might be able to stop your mouth, but he can’t stop your hand. 

And from the sounds he make as his lapping becomes more eager, you doubt Dieter wants to.

~end~

++++

BABE NO 2 (but equally number one in my heart):

Maybe there's handyman Joel, who comes around making little improvements to the beautiful top floor Victorian apartment you rent from your downstairs neighbour, an 80-something woman named Marisol who carved up her family home into two parts with the help of Miller Contracting.  

Joel's taciturn but friendly enough. Things you certainly do NOT notice about your handsome handyman:

-the way his broad shoulders fill your pantry as he replaces the ceiling light

-that his energy and efficiency and competence makes you feel at the ease, and how you can have comfortable silences together

-the depth of his voice and the way he uses it to speak so lovingly and bursting with pride about his beloved daughter Sarah at college and her accomplishments when you finally crack small talk with him

-the grey peppering the hair at his temples and how when passes close in the kitchen you want to rake your fingers through it and make his deep voice grumble and purr

-that in your alone time, your mind easily conjures Joel's handy hands showing deftness and skill in touching you, his broadness over you. 

That's not a complete list. 

Now you sit in the detritus of a storm that blew a tree branch through your window. Despite it being the middle of the night, you’d called Joel directly, not knowing what else to do as the wind howled outside and you fought trash bags and duct tape to temporarily battle what nature sought as fit to impinge. 

He’d helped you secure the window for the night, checked on Marisol. 

After the franticness of the wind and rain in the house, Joel’s calm and capable hands and mind had been what you needed.

Now, you both sit on the couch, quietly nursing beers. 

“Holiday weekend, gonna be a struggle to get that replacement,” Joel breaks the silence to say, nodding to the cardboard-and-trash bag window. 

“Oh?” You’re still too stunned and tired to muster actual thoughts. The ordeal, yes, but Joel’s proximity and the fact that he’s sitting on your couch in his pyjamas - a soft t-shirt with a hole in the collar, and rain-damp flannel pj bottoms.

Him warm and woodsy and soft against the

“Might know a guy, see if he can get one put in on the holiday.”

“That’s great, but don’t go to trouble.”

“You gonna be here, just a cardboard window, unsecured and alone all weekend?” a small frown crosses Joel’s face.

“I’m not alone. Marisol’s downstairs.”

“She’s tough but don’t think she could fend off intruders,” Joel says. You smile, matching the little sideways grin Joel has gotten, presumably thinking of the 80-year-old karate chopping a burglar.

“Ain’t right, you just exposed like that,” Joel continues. “Not safe.” 

“You’re sweet to worry, but i can take care of myself, Joel.” You lean forward, drop your spent beer bottle on the coffee table in front of you, but in reaching the coaster you’re right in Joel’s space.

“Know you can. Should let other people sometimes though?”

His hand lands gently on your outstretched arm. You think you stop breathing. His warm brown eyes are all molten this close up, and he breath is sweet and warm with his interrupted sleep and the beer you’ve given.  

You’re leaning awkwardly and too close but it would take another branch through the window to move you away. “Joel-” but you kiss him before you can finish your own question.

Falling into Joel is so easy, you melt into the kiss, his warm mouth welcomes the press of your tongue as you hunt his taste, and his body presses into yours.

You’re still side-by-side on the sofa when you part for air, but Joel’s forehead pressed against yours. 

“Sorry, Joel. I shouldn’t have.”

“You sorry?” His eyes snap open.

“Not really, actually,” you say.

“Good,” his voice goes honeyed again. You kiss him again, sling a leg over his hips and settle in hislap.

“Why apologize then?” Joel asks against your lips, and you feel the smile 

“I feel like I lured you here with a fake emergency and then plied you with booze and attacked you on my couch.”

“You didn’t fake that tree branch or throw it through the window your self, did you?”

His hands squeeze your hips, and you squirm, seeking friction.

“No,” you scoff a laugh, realize your own ridiculousness.

“And ‘plied me with booze,’ you gave me half a beer.” His hand drifts up to cup the back of your neck, “I look intoxicated to you.” 

You shake your head.

“Then ‘s OK then. I’m perfectly happy to be seduced.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Well, If you’re not, mind telling me what you’re doing up there?” Joel raises his heels, jostles you on his thighs to indicate his lap.

“I can get off, if you’re not happy?” you make as if to climb down, but Joel’s hand clutches your hips to his lap.

“Not a chance,” he says, kissing you again. After a few moments of making out—you’re adding ‘extremely excellent kisser’ to the list of things Joel is annoying skilled at–Joel breaks the kiss again.

“Making me crazy, seeing you in your little sleep shorts,” Joel’s fingers drift under their hem to illustrate his point.

“‘S that so?”

“Crazy,” he reaffirms, and takes your hand from where it rests on his shoulder and guides your wrist down till you cup the full curve of his cock where it strains the flannel. 

His warm work calloused hand reaches your ass underneath your shorts to squeeze the plump flesh he finds there, and his cock jumps a beat behind the squeeze of his large hand. “Feel what you do ta me?”

You do, and so you kiss him again. 

 ~end~

—

Six months into your improbable career change of being Dieter fucking Bravo’s personal assistant, your landlord jacks up the rent in your shitty apartment. The only thing you clung to was its privacy and having zero roommates, all without commuting a million miles to Dieter’s place up in the Sherman Oaks. 

A morning of trawling real estate listings and you’re at a loss for where to move and moaning about it with Dieter. You pace his expansive living room while the film star lounges on the couch, knees propping up a sketchbook while some film noir drones on the TV, ignored.

Dieter lolls his head on the arm of the couch to look at you. “Do I pay you enough?”

“For a decent apartment in this city close enough to your house? Absolutely not.”

Dieter deflates, slumps back into himself. “I should fix that.”

Then he perks up, shooting forward on the couch. You can virtually see the lightbulb above his wild brown hair. “What if you just live in the pool house?”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Your pool house?”

“Yeah. I mean. That’s here.” Dieter’s eyes dart around, checking to be sure where he is. He’s been clean and sober for 10 months, but old habits die hard, and the conversation is veering into absurdity. 

His heart does pound in his ears like he’s jonesing for a fix. 

But the only hit he wants at this moment is for you to say “yes.”

“Rent-free and utilities-free. Consider the difference your raise?” Dieter knows you won’t take what you haven’t earned, but also that you deserve all this and more. He should let you live in his fucking master bedroom instead of him, for how easy and smoothly you run his life, for all the light your mere presence brings to his days.

“Only till I find someplace better,” you reluctantly agree.

Dieter sets aside his sketchbook, crosses the room in three quick strides, and hugs you tightly.

“You won’t find someplace, I don’t pay you enough,” he mutters into your neck.

“You should fix that,” you say, squeezing him back. 

“Yup,” he pulls away, grinning. “Till I do, you’re bunking with me.” 

“This isn’t going to be a slumber party, Dieter, I still need to have boundaries, my own life…”

“That’s why you’re in the pool house and not the bedroom next to mine.”

You cock your head, grinning in spite of yourself. “Boundaries, Bravo.”

—-

You set your own boundaries, and don’t tell Dieter the self-imposed by-laws you adhere to.

When you live with a movie star – or on his property – bringing people over proves to be a problem. The genuine friend or two you’ve made in LA since your arrival is Delia, a super-busy staff screenwriter who’s running her first show, and an accountant named Felix, who is in awe of Dieter. 

The one time you bring him around, Felix keeps hitting on Dieter when you spy him on the patio. 

Dieter isn’t interested, you know his tells, but he is a shameless flirt and the friendly coffee you were meant to have on the tiny patio at the pool house with Felix never manifests. Instead Dieter and Felix play flirting chicken neither of them follows through on.

You don’t want to bring some random dude back to yours for a hookup when it’s not, you know, actually yours.

You quash the voice that tells you it's because you don’t want to make Dieter jealous. And the even louder voice droning over telling you Dieter wouldn’t register whose company you keep like that anyway.

You, make Dieter Bravo jealous? Yeah, fucking right. 

—

Dieter Bravo is insanely jealous. 

Moving you into his pool house is the best and worst thing he’s ever done. 

Your friend Felix hangs all over you, even though he’s flirting up a storm with him. Dieter flirts back; Felix is really good at it and it’s fun to spar like that. 

But before the pool house, there was that fucking First AD on the James Cameron thing, who crowds your space and gets overly familiar at the wrap party drinks. Not in a bad way. Dieter spots from a mile away that your attention to the conversation is purely polite. But the AD is unrelenting. 

Dieter extracts himself from a conversation with the producer about his next potential role for the studio, and wheedles you out of your own boring chat, using work and attending to his petulant movie star needs as an excuse. 

The beaming smile of appreciation you give him when you’re safely in the corridor, away from the chatty man and the rest of the party, makes Dieter’s heart pinwheel in his chest. 

Even worse was the journalist at the Sundance screening, only 3 months after you’d started working for Dieter. Because you actually liked that guy. (Joe? Jeff?) And Joe-Jeff made you laugh and your face lit up like a Christmas tree, and watching it happen Dieter felt like he could have crushed the crystal tumbler of Diet Coke with his bare hand while Vanessa Kirby spoke very interestingly about her process. 

He couldn’t focus on this fellow actor saying genuinely intriguing shop talk. He just saw the glow on your face, and that fucking Joe-Jeff made it happen. And how he couldn’t swoop in like he had with the Cameron AD, because it would have prevented you from getting something you wanted. Dieter realized about two seconds after meeting you that he only ever wanted you to have what you wanted.

He thinks you slept with Joe-Jeff, because he blinked and shook his head to tune into Vanessa, and when he glanced back you’d both disappeared into the night. Afterwards for about a week you’d get a knowing little smile after certain text notifications.

Then you stopped. 

He hates the silent victory lap he mentally takes later when someone mentions that journalist Joe-Jeff is married. You must have found out too.  

Dieter hates that someone hurt you. Dieter is irritable at the thought of someone else seeing you, but he's irate as fuck about that unworthy someone hurting you.

He can't even console you about it. Given you hadn’t actually told Dieter you’d slept with Joe-Jeff, hadn’t mentioned him at all. 

So he surprise Door Dashes Orange Julius from the last place in the entire San Fernando Valley that does it, and the sweet little groan when the sugary mall food court smoothie hits your lips. The watery smile you give him through your unmentioned melancholy as you say, “God, I haven’t had one of those in ages, tastes like childhood. Thanks, Dieter,” makes his fucking week. 

—---

Since you came into his life his paintings have been all pastel, Monet-like swaths of spring and summer sunshine. He's trying to capture the way the chiaroscuro sunshine of Los Angeles alighting on your face makes him feel.

Light but rich with color. There’s moodiness too, but they’re jewel-tones now, not the dark black-brown brackishness of everything he painted during the Pandemic and up through the first months after his divorce from Anika.

He thinks the jewel tones are so rich and full of depth, and the pastels so light and sweet. He wants to capture you with them, because they’re all the truest expression of you. In living color.

So he paints, hoping that the Joe-Jeffs who hurt you never works in this town again, and that the ones who aren’t unfaithful dickheads aren’t so great, the ones who will inevitably be drawn to your light and your smarts and your fucking beautiful face? Well Dieter hopes they aren’t so fucking wonderful that you stop working for him and find a more fulfilling career like you used to have in art gallery curation, in a town less manic and draining than LA. 

Dieter thinks he wants more for you than you want for yourself. Even if losing your near-hourly presence in his life would re-expose the saw toothed edges of his broken heart you'd been mending, just by being you. Stitch stitch stitch.

He wonders if he can put a hit on Joe-Jeff. How much could it cost anyway? He opts for just refusing the next interview request from Joe-Jeff's publication, making the denial a frosty one, and explicitly hinting it has to do with the journalist.

—---

ii: so many tools that are made for my hands.

You and Dieter were always in each other’s pockets, that’s the nature of your job. But now that your commute requires merely walking across Dieter’s backyard, now that you come for your morning coffee in his kitchen, thin robe open and barely covering your sleeping shirt and shorts; your possessions co-mingling with his; now have your midnight snack from the same fridge Dieter is attempting to culture sourdough in…. Well, the two of you never stood on ceremony and the non-existent boundaries between you only blur to oblivion. 

Naturally, Dieter is losing his fucking mind.

Least of all in your shared proximity is the yoga.

You’ve been living in Dieter’s pool house a few weeks when you give up having any exercise routine of your own and agree to sit in on his private yoga lessons with his instructor friend Kate. 

–

Dieter thinks he’d like to paint you now. The arch of your hips. The straightness of your back when the three of you sit for breathing exercises. 

You’re very distracting in yoga. He wants to watch the lines and curves of your body. The amazingness that is your ass in leggings. 

His greater need is to do the yoga correctly, for you to see him do it right. He feels like he won't be able to heft himself around as freely as he used to because he is focused on looking competent for you. 

That compulsion bleeds into everything he’s doing these days.  

He was en route to self improvement, having been sober before hiring you. But wanting to show you his best helps fuel him to turn away from destructive impulses. He wants to be more than merely a series of catastrophes you have to clean up.

It’s less intimidating that you curse at Kate’s instructions sometimes, let slip a “For Christ’s sake,” when Kate perkily calls out “Just 5 more breath cycles!” while you both hold a plank position. 

Your legs start to tremor and Dieter feels every ventral inch of his unbound desire for you because he wants to be the cause of the slight judder of your thigh, making you sweat and your breath shaky and making you come undone.  

—-

Kate calmly closes the exercise, nonplussed and skin dewy as ever. Dieter has a flush in his cheeks and down his chest, and both of you are a bit sweaty, decidedly dirty and rumpled compared to her healthy Instagram-ready glow. 

Dieter hits the shower, and you bound to the kitchen in pursuit of sugar and hydration.

You close the fridge, smoothie bottle in hand, and yelp at Kate, stood just behind the now-closed fridge door, smiling at you.

“Jesus, Kate!” you say, collecting the plastic bottle from the floor and pressing a hand to your chest. “You startled me.”

“Sorry,” she says. Still smiling. She hasn’t moved. Or said what she wants. You eye her as  you step back to give her access.

“Do you need the fridge or…?”

Kate’s relentless fitness instructor cheeriness doesn’t usually phase you. She’s actually genuinely nice, you quite like her. 

This? Is creepy though. 

But she advances towards you.

“Dieter’s very generous.”

“Oh?” you keep one eye on her as you chug some smoothie. “I mean, yeah, he’s letting me live in the pool house…”

She nods, “Oh, absolutely. More generous than even that.”

“I feel like I’ve missed something. Did he give you a bonus or a tip? Or did he say he was going to and hasn’t? You’d have to speak to his accountant about that. ”

She giggles. “Well, the tip of something, am I right?” 

Is she making innuendo?

“I’m sorry,” you wipe an errant drop of smoothie off your lips with the back of your hand, “Must have yoga brain, I don’t follow,” you admit, before raising the bottle back for another swig.

“Dieter’s very generous. Like, in bed? As a lover. And out of bed, actually. He likes to do it very specifically not in a bed a lot, and he’s very flexible for a guy of his stature–”

You spit Green Machine smoothie out onto Kate’s very expensive exercise bra. “Oh shit, Kate, I’m so sorry,” you fumble for the paper towels.

Once she’s as clean as can be with paper towel pats, “It’ll go in the wash, don’t worry,” she reassures you, you take her back to the smoothie-spitting catalyst of the conversation. 

“Kate. I don’t mean to be dense, but why are you mentioning this to me? Out of nowhere.”

She shrugs, cheerily as ever. “Just, you know. You guys have a lot of chemistry. And also, he looks at you like you hang the moon.”

“I run his life, of course he looks at me that way,” you scoff.

“I’ve known Dee a few years now, and seen several assistants come and go. And they manage him and his stuff well, and he appreciated them too. But you guys? He’s not looking at you like the sun shines out of your downward-dogging ass because you get him his dry cleaning and pay his wi-fi bills.”

Bereft for response you chug another gulp of smoothie.

“And don’t worry, he and I only slept together with Anika, we’re not like that any more. Haven’t been for ages. But I just wanted you to know, he’d be worth the chance.”

“The chance?” That sun salutation sequence must have pulled all the blood from your brain, you’re dizzy and disoriented. 

“Sleep with him if you want. He’ll make it worth your while. And, as you can see, he’s not an asshole, he can keep a working relationship going because he’s not a fucking creep?”

Kate squeezes your arm reassuringly. “Just food for thought.” Then she spins on her heel and walks her pert ass out of the kitchen, leaving you flummoxed and feeling sloshy from too much smoothie. 

—-

iii: in vino veritas.

Your Tinder date does worse than stand you up. He turns up 15 minutes late, barely listens to you or asks you questions, then finishes his drink and tells you you’re ‘less hot than your photo,’ and leaves.

You stay in the bar and get shit-faced solo. 

Meanwhile, Dieter paces his living room. You mentioned a date. You left at 7pm. It’s now 10pm and nothing. It must be going well. He tried to paint. But all he wants to do is scream. He goes back to pacing, and smoking rollies profusely. 

He hears a car pull into the driveway and bounds into the living room, flinging himself on to the couch in a panic. 

Look casual, he thinks, throwing a copy of Variety in front of his face upside down.

Your key scratching at the door. He tosses the magazine away. 

Look insouciant, he thinks, fumbling to pull his cell phone out of the unstructured pocket of his trousers to make himself look occupied.

He needn’t have bothered. You’ve not come home with a visitor.

You don’t even notice Dieter as you slam the door and fling your bag down, lurching towards the kitchen.

You are really drunk. You keep muttering something about bread, rifling through cupboards until you find a bagel and wrestle it into two parts with a butter knife, then into the toaster.

Dieter watches your ordeal, his head peeping over the back of the couch, meerkat-like. He stands slowly and approaches the kitchen as if he’s nearing a skittish animal.

“Men!” you shout. Dieter jumps. You hadn’t seen him, you were only speaking to yourself. 

“You OK?” 

Your anger deflates. “Oh! Hey Dieter,” you wave your knife at him, a glob of cream cheese falling to the counter.

“Date went that well, huh?”

“I didn’t even want his approval, but I still sat there, rage drinking and making myself crazy and angry about this prick not thinking I was good looking.”

“He didn’t think you were good looking?!” Dieter is thunderstruck. “How do you know that? I’m sure–”

“He told me,” you say flatly, eyes pinging to the toaster as it pops.

“That’s fucked.”

“Yup.”

“And he’s wrong,” Dieter says.

He steps closer. You’re diligently spreading the creamy white diary on your now toasted bagel. 

You’re uncautious in your drunkenness and half your bagel clatters to the floor, cream-side down. 

“Fuck!” you roar. “Can’t even have this one fucking thing…” you stamp on the bagel, squishing it flatter onto the kitchen tile. 

Dieter winces. “Can I make you another bagel?” he asks sympathetically. 

You freeze, mid twist of your ankle. You lift your foot slowly, place it back on the floor, scoop the ruined bagel off the ground and into the trash can, before mashing a paper towel over its remains on the tile. “No thank you,” you say primly before attacking the remaining half of the bagel.

Dieter watches you polish off the bagel in no time. “Impressive,” he says.

“Need to get to bed as soon as possible, but needed to line the stomach,” you say, lunging past the living room and towards what you know to be the most comfortable bed in the house. 

“You didn’t have dinner?” Dieter’s concern is evident as he trails behind you into his bedroom.

You start shedding your clothes. The cardigan that had protected you from the blasting air conditioning on the return Uber ride was now your mortal enemy. The sparkling mini dress that you had worn to try and look suitably enticing for the drinks date is cast aside next.

“Whoa, hey, let’s get you out to-” Dieter says, as you flop on to his bed, wearing only the tights around your waist you try to wrestle off.

“Jesus, just hang on a second, your tits are out, let’s just get a shirt–”

"Pffft, don’t pretend you’ve ever looked at me like that, so what are you even bothered about?"

Dieter scoffs. “OK, well you’re wrong about that. But it’s more that, like, as great as your tits are and as pleased as I am to see them, you might not want this to have happened in the morning.”

“You’re not attracted to me. Which, like, fine,” you pinch out the last word in a tone that reassures Dieter you think it’s absolutely anything but. “In this town, in this industry, I get why I don’t get a second look in from anyone. Not even Tinder asshole.”

Dieter amused and saddened at your rant, riffles through his drawers and finds a large shirt of his. He passes it to you, focuses VERY HARD on keeping his eyes above your neck, and you scramble into the shirt.

“And why do you think that is?” he asks, trying not to have an aneurysm about how great you look in his shirt. 

You press your hands on Dieter’s cheeks and yank him close by his now-smooshed cheeks. “Cuz you’re all very beautiful,” you say into his stupid beautiful visage.

You look mournfully at Dieter, like you’re sad about his face, but your expression is very cute and comical. The pout of your lips and the furrow of your brow makes Dieter bite back a smile, as well as the urge to kiss your crinkled forehead. 

Dieter’s eyes widen and then cross as you lean up and kiss….the tip of his nose. “Boop,” you whisper and then slump back onto his bed. 

Dieter throws a blanket over you, and slopes away to the guest bedroom to have a wank and sleep. 

Desperate and restless as he thinks about your suppliant near-naked body tangled in his sheets, clad in his shirt, he gets very little sleep, wishing he could full-throated tell you how he feels.

But he can’t upend your livelihood and presence in his life for his dumb crush. Even if tonight's events confirmed his supposition that you had cracking tits. And a spirit too kind for this fucking town. 

When you wake, the morning passes in such a way he knows you can’t remember the way you stripped and sweetly complimented him.

He honors your tacit wish, and does not mention what transpired. (Which was nothing, he keeps telling himself.) 

He feels guilty about not joining you for an innocent cuddle in his bed, and about still thinking about your tits.

—--

A week after the horrible date and your drunken escapade, you apologize to Dieter. “I realized that wasn’t cool for a recovering alcoholic and as my employer-”

“Employer,” Dieter scoffs and curls his lip in disdain.

“That’s what you are, right? And just because I’m living here, as a guest even,” he eases a bit at the new term, “it still wasn’t kosher to come in and drunkenly slobber on you over my bad date. And then steal your bed.”

“The only one who has anything to apologize for is the dickhead running around telling beautiful women they’re not good looking enough for him.”

“And you don’t have to pity compliment me, Dee, he was right-”

He puts a hand up to stop you. His fingers are stained with paint from the morning, and he’s going to spend the afternoon reading scripts with you on the patio. He likes the new loose structure of his days. Likes that if painting inspiration keeps flooding his veins after lunch like art sometimes does, the muse having no regard for timetables, that you wouldn’t bug him to read the scripts until at least after dinner, but that he’d have to do it tonight because he promised his agent an answer the next day. 

You make him want to keep his promises in ways he likes.

His brown eyes soften, and he shakes his head. “If you say that fucker was right, I’ll fire you on the spot,” he threatens gently. His paint stained thumb and forefinger catch you under the chin to bring your gaze to his probing one.

You open your mouth to protest, and he shushes you, gently nudges your jaw closed. “Take the compliment, and move on, sweetheart.”

You smile back at him. “Thanks?” you say, a little woodenly. 

Dieter drops his hand from your chin like you've burned him. “Gonna go paint some more,” he says, a bit loudly for your closeness. He darts off towards the studio at the back of the house. “Get me at 3pm for that script thingy!” he calls over his shoulder.

You sigh. At least your boss is nice. You shake your head as if it could clear the butterflies in your belly that Dieter’s compliment and face touching gave you. 

You're going to have to quit your job. 

Traffic to Dieter's bedroom seems to have lessened, but he's been creating all the time. It hurts your heart to see him sloping around in full artist mode and flying high. You don't want to bring him down by leaving. But, at least he’s in a good place, he won’t be offended you’re going.

You miss having a job that was more than simply serving one person, and in turn serving the big Hollywood machine. You missed art and being around it. Your tantrum and existential crises were only getting worse, trapped with Dieter, and your enormous crush growing all the time. 

—-

iv: door closed, window open.

"Shake it up! Separation is natural," cheerily declares the smoothie carton in front of him.

Dieter's eyes narrow. The fruit juice is mocking him.

"Are you making profundities from the food packaging again?" your voice calls from the other room. "I can hear you thinking all the way over here."

Dieter pushes the smoothie carton behind the cereal box as you enter the kitchen. He's certain if telepathy is a thing that actually exists you're an honest-to-God mind reader. At least his mind.

"No," he lies.

That you know him so well makes his gut flip. Butterflies? Dread? Both, if he's being honest.

So does the knowing smile you give him, and the way the sunlight falls on you as you proceed to bustle around the kitchen.

God, he's so fucked.

Metaphorically.

Usually literally too, but he's been dialling that back recently, given who he wants is you and nobody he'd be sleeping with can be. 

Sex is cheap and cheerful, and in endless supply, especially in LA. Well, mostly cheerful, because when he kicks someone out of his bed, be they a beautiful, vapid star-fucker, wannabe celebrity, or someone who he might consider a genuinely nice (enough, nobody in this town is really nice, except for maybe a recent transplant like you) person as well as a good lay, the cheeriness in the harsh sunlight evaporates quickly like so much champagne spilled on the pavement. 

True intimacy is the unattainable, most coveted luxury in the City of Angels.

He thought he had it with Anika. Or that he could, because he hung the moon and the stars on his idea of her without trying to actually know her. Anika was blameless, in hindsight. But he fucked that up because back in California, after the Vegas wedding, Anika wasn't a doll he could fashion into a perfect mold of his idea of her. And she wasn't his staff any more. 

He can't keep getting with his crushes on people whose job it is to literally serve him. 

Why he plunges into those feelings so wholeheartedly for ... the help. 

Thinking of either you, or Anika, frankly, with that word doesn't feel right, even if technically true. She'd been his wife and you were his...lodestar. Though your business card would say merely ‘personal assistant’.

And then inviting you to live with him? He had the space and you didn't. It was an easy gift.

But not for him. He valued his alone time and his space. Or so he told everyone who attempts anything from casual to deeper knowledge of him. 

Apart from how he didn't want you further than a shout away from him.

He can't fuck this up. You can't leave. Oh god if you go he'll be heartbroken and not know how to book his own fights. Shit, the stakes have never been higher.

Well, Disney won't be calling him anytime soon for a traditional Prince Charming role, but he thinks he might (definitely) have some internalized romantic hero notions and a savior complex that he doesn't want to examine or pick at too closely. 

If he held those parts of himself to the light he'd realize it was a terrible idea to make a move on you. He'd realized he's substituting growth for convenience.

Running roughshod on boundaries.

Then he goes away to Canada without you for a week to film, because you have to set up an arts charity thing he's hosting but really you're doing all the work, so you stay in LA. 

And if convenience was what he's truly after, he'd fuck his co-star in the hotel suite across the hall. Or the head of catering who bites his lips to a plump, appealing cherry red between his beard as he says, "Any other dietary requirements the rest of the week, Mr. Bravo?" 

Fucking fuck, he should have fucked that lumber-sexual caterer in Canada. Or let him fuck me, Dieter thinks. 

But again. Dieter finds himself not reaching for the easiest thing. The quickest fix. The instant heroin-like flooding relief of the most pleasurable short-term choice.

Old age must be slowing him down. He doesn't mind. 

Then you prod his calf playfully with your toes when he makes an idiotic comment as you both watch a film. And you stand up to him and call him on his shit when he's being petulant. 

You don't let him get away with being the worst version of himself, but you don't hold his fucking hand while he crests that hill. "You're an adult Dieter. I can take a lot off your plate in your professional and private life, but I'm not your babysitter," you say.

Dieter knows he's high maintenance. You are excellent at maintaining him. On a professional level. but also on a personal one.

Also. You confessed when your ex-fiance called and put you through the ringer, you let Dieter hold you while you cried, and share your burden, and stroke your forehead and your back. He can make you feel better too. He can "actively reciprocate" in a "net positive way" as his therapist put it. Dieter permits himself the hope he could bring value to your life beyond a pay check.

Often he feels world weary as fuck. And then revitalized after time with you. 

He knows better than to hang all his hopes on you. Other things give him juice in his sobriety. He tried making sour dough, years behind everyone else doing it in the pandemic. Hiking, annoyingly, these days. Long walks, more like, but lacing up his trail sneakers and just strolling and getting fresh air, clears his head. Floating in his pool lounger with a good book, or reviewing a script. His own space where he doesn’t have to deal with anyone he doesn’t choose.

So he hopes the high he gets with you isn't some vampire situation. Him just draining your Hollywood-fresh blood. 

But as the months go by he marks your own world weariness. You've seen shit too. Just cuz it wasn't in this fucking town doesn't mean you haven't lived your own life, been through your own wringer. With that thought, he feels less vampiric about enjoying your company and basking in your light.

—

His crush isn't all sexless rom-com rose petals. He does want to fuck you. He wants to wring you out under his hands and his mouth. Identify with certainty what that sound he was sure was the buzz of a vibrator and your stifled moan, when he accidentally came home a day early from a shoot in Seattle, and the windows to the pool house were all open. How your distant moan now rings out in glorious stereo in his fantasy. 

He'd like to make you make that noise really fucking loud; he hopes to have your thighs bracketing his ears and clamping on his head cuz he wants to make you full on Exorcist if he ever gets his tongue and fingers in you.

Thinks about how if, after he makes you come, if he could get you so wet he wouldn't even need lube but could just slip one finger into (what he's gonna assume in keeping in line with the rest of you is) your gorgeous asshole. Thinks about you sucking his cock.

About you sweaty after a yoga session and commanding him to eat you out. About how salty and delicious and filthy you'd probably taste. About you pegging him. That last one he can't decide if he wants you to be shy about it or if you just rail him. Each has its own merits.

Dieter is metaphorically fucked. 

—

One day, you throw Dieter's world into upheaval.

“I don’t know what I’m doing in LA, Dieter. Taking this job was a panic move.” You pace. “I can’t buy a house living here. I have no future in this business. What am I going to do, be your assistant till I die? What’s my retirement plan? What’s the prospect for job growth?”

"I'll buy you a house," Dieter says.

"I don't want you to buy me a house."

"Said you wanted to buy a house though. Why not me?" The pout is plaintive in his query.

You sigh. "I don't need you to buy me a house, Dieter. I already freeload off you, living in the pool house."

"I basically had to force you to do that."

You think but do not say, All I want from you is you. And you can't give that to me in the way I want. Even if you knew I wanted it.

“Dieter,” you level him. “This is my two weeks notice.”

“What?” Dieter is panicked. You knew he liked you working for him, but his distress and instant discomfort you interject.

“OK, not my two weeks' notice. I’ll stay until we find you a new assistant and train them for a bit.”

—

v: the hammer clicks in place.

Even in his panic at your announcement, Dieter is amped to meet this screenwriter. Javi Gutierrez’s script invigorated him like few projects have recently. Even you loved it, and he knows you hate reading scripts. (“I like watching movies, Dee, I really don’t want to see how the sausage is made, you know? Working with you gets me too close to that already.”)

He wants to make a good impression on Javi. He’s more than ready to do good work. Maybe even his best work. Has been for awhile, and with his ascendancy back up towards respectable in this fickle town he’s crawling close to it. The Beasts of the Bubble was a disaster but he could laugh at himself in public and kick the drugs enough to turn up to work and who doesn’t love a comeback kid?

This Gutierrez-penned film? Could be another Oscar.

He doesn’t chase that possibility. He doesn’t want to dwell on how much it meant to him to get the first one. How long ago it seemed to have received it. How he felt so far away from having deserved it a lot in his life, especially making Cliff Beasts 6, and breaking Anika’s heart and a dozen other moments in between. 

He feels it in his bones. This is good work. He wants the role for the right reasons – it’s fucking interesting and complex, and he could actually bring something to it. Him, Dieter Bravo specifically, not just an actor with a work ethic. 

Javi’s emails are unrepentantly enthusiastic. His first film was a hit but it was fucking fun and more importantly it knew what it was doing – carrying the audience for a ride. 

Your sign off, even at the script stage, cements what Dieter wants to know. Maybe he can even try to get you to stay, just through the end of filming this project.

This meeting with Javi Gutierrez could change everything.

++end++ (....for now)

A/N: there will be a threesome fic follow up for this someday, scout's honor. 😈