Us as Bookends - Luster!Dieter Bravo x assistant! f!reader
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Title: Us as Bookends
Author: @ghotifishreads
Pairing: Luster!Dieter Bravo x personal assistant! f!reader
Word count: 5.8K
Summary: You work for Dieter. He pines. He's sober. He is also desperate to not cross any boundaries.
Warning: Sometimes Dieter has horny thoughts, these are pretty mild, and I'm choosing not to use other warnings, proceed at your own risk.
Credits: Title from the song Heads Gonna Roll by Jenny Lewis. section titles mostly from various Neko Case lyrics
A/n: This is a prequel to Luster!Dieter x assistant!reader but you don’t need to have read that to read this. (But you should, it’s Dieter at the Met Gala, and it’s horny and fun!)
Unbeta'd.
🔞Over 18s only, minors dni! 🔞 I do not give permission for my work to be republished, reposted, or translated.
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i: the tide smashes all my best-laid plans to sand.
When he first met you Dieter felt like his smile didn't work right. Not because he couldn't smile, but because all he wanted to do was smile at you, but his smile came out wrong and wonky and it wouldn't convey all the precise sentiments he wanted to say with it by the end of your meeting.
You're beautiful.
You're funny.
You're smart.
Time passed and your smiles to him capably telegraph all manner of emotions that he now knew like a mother tongue:
When your smile was tight, get on with this task, Bravo.
When it was lazy and lopsided your silly joke is appreciated and warming.
When it was sleepy and softly peering out from behind a travel coffee mug you actually woke up on time and turned up for the car pick up, good work, Dee.
Later, months after he'd had time to get his smile right for you he felt it falling into wrongness again. Because it couldn't convey the new dimension to his vocabulary when it came to you:
I think I'm fucking in love with you.
It takes a third party disruption to bring everything to breaking point.
—
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. 😈
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