Yall Think Jackson Therapist Catherine OHara Would Take My Insurance Or No

Y’all think Jackson therapist Catherine O’Hara would take my insurance or no

THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT + Pedro Pascal Tweets 

This could have been the perfect life.

happy birthday joel miller. sorry about all the stuff that happened. do you want a blow job

PLEASE this is beyond delightful. The softness, the warmth!!! This is everything.

Western Skies: Ch 5

Din Djarin x F!Reader. Western!AU. Series Masterlist. Masterlist.

Warnings: Death of an animal (for food). Sexual themes (like, the tiniest mention of a cock, lol).

Summary: Din returns and neither of you find what you expect.

WC: 4.5k

Note: THIS ONE GETS SOFT, BABES. 🥰 Follow @jules-onpaper for updates! Dividers by @mykento. Thanks so much to @frannyzooey for the encouraging beta read and the Van ladies for their constant support 🩵 Tagging cowboy girlies (gn) below (let me know if you would like to be added, or if you would prefer not to be tagged):

@secretelephanttattoo @imaswellkid @fuckyeahdindjarin @goodwithcheese @maggiemayhemnj @kedsandtubesocks

A slow exhale that mists in the early dawn. Din presses the cold metal of the gun to his cheek, finger on the trigger, patient. The bite of early frost is in his nose, even behind his bandana. His belly tenses on the cracked and spare ground.

His target lifts its head. Aware of the fact he will meet his mortality?

It will snow soon enough. There are mists that linger down in the valley, now, in the little hamlet of Nevarro. The world has begun to slow from summer’s frenzy and autumn’s preparation.

He and the stag hover there in that one slow, bone-chilled moment. Nothing else exists but their heart beats, the deer’s large, deep brown eyes, the sensation of the iron slowly warming under his cheekbone,  and the steam issuing from their nostrils.

The shot rings across the clearing. The stag stumbles before it falls, dead before its body hits the ground. It gives its life in the skip of the heart between beats, and where before there were two broad, strong creatures in these woods with a knowing deep in their eyes that they are hunted, now there is one.

With swift, efficient movements, Din stands from his low perch, lifts his knife from his belt, and crosses the clearing.

Out of respect, he pauses for one moment before he skins and dresses the stag, the old familiar ache in his chest so routine it barely hurts any more. Silently, he nods at its dimmed eyes. They were equals. It was only the Way’s working that made it so that it was not him lying dead on the grass. 

Something feels different this time. He has never killed without purpose, but this time, he needs this deer to feed you and the child. Its death was for an even deeper purpose than survival. It meant safety through the winter. It meant a hide for the Armorer, perhaps enough for winter boots for the both of you. His respectful silence doesn’t seem enough.

“Vor entye,” he murmurs into the breeze that smells of cold pine and wild thyme. I accept this debt. 

His thanks tendered, he sinks to his knees.

The bounty the mayor had bid him to find had been wily, but that’s not what had taken Din three days to complete the job. In truth, the vermin had been easy enough to track down, but Din had never before found himself so distracted on a hunt.

So used to being surrounded by others who could protect themselves, his adopted kin or other hunters, he had taken on the child in the muddy spring and been stricken then by the fragility of the small creature. He was alien to Din’s world, needing gentle hands and regular feeding, protection, and guidance.

But as their bond deepened, as he grew slowly used to the feeling of small hands in his belt loops and the cries that meant the child fussed out of boredom instead of hunger, he had adapted. A bit of leather to play with or jerky to suck on would keep Grogu quiet long enough during a hunt. He seemed to listen when Din pointed out constellations in the wide arc of the sky. He stopped crying through the night and slept near Din’s chest, thumb firmly wedged in his mouth.

Then the kid improved his toddling to running, climbing, his curiosity wild and bright, and he had to adapt all over again. He’d tried tying the child to the horse, but that felt dangerous as the kid’s cries only upset Razor and drove off any hope of cover. Din was a big man, but even for him, carrying a toddler on his chest was burdensome, not to mention dangerous and impractical.

And so he had found you. You had seemed the perfect answer to the problem, if only for a little while – a solution that spared two innocent souls from fates they didn’t deserve. You would watch over the kid and the homestead while he stocked up for the winter, while he hunted wanted men for coins that could somehow, he hoped, protect what he cared for most.

Now that he has two free hands to catch bounties, he can train both eyes on the stag as he removes viscera and quarters it for transport, he has nothing but silence to train his ears for anyone watching or any errant game that he could collect to bring home or sell.

But this is worse than before. He can’t concentrate. The knife goes slowly. What should take him an hour takes him that and half again. By the time he cleans his hands on the grass and shoves his fingers back into his gloves, the joints are stiff with cold and the sun is retreating in the sky.

He doesn’t understand why he isn’t adapting this time. Why he can’t let this go. Instead of finding a place to put the thoughts of what you and the kid might be doing, all the things that could be befalling you in his absence – flood, wind, rain, robbers, fire – more crop up like weeds every time he looks away.

He had left the kid with you, but he had never counted on this, thinking of the two of you so very alone out there. What if one of you hurt yourselves? There were so many ways to injure and maim on even a tiny plot of farmland. What if Grogu had fallen ill, and you were fighting to find the right way to care for him? What if you were ill, and couldn’t leave bed? What if, worst of all, you had taken off while he was away, what if you had taken the kid with you, what if-?

With a frustrated grunt, he heaves the hide and the meat onto Razor’s back, ignoring the muffled cursing and mutters of the scrawny man hogtied to the beast’s rump. He presses the leather tips of his gloves into his eye sockets, as though he could pluck out the ridiculously swirling thoughts in his head and leave them in the dirt where they belonged.

They only knot further. There’s more hunting he could do, but Nevarro is half a day’s ride away and he has the bounty now. He won’t be sleeping tonight anyway. With a good pace, he’ll be back by morning.

With a practiced twist, you wring the water from your sopping wet nightdress and flick it outwards to dispel the last drops. Over the clothes line it goes, secured with two clothespins. You bend into the wash bucket and repeat the process with a set of wee trousers.

For once, you don’t have to keep an extra eye peeled for Grogu. He’s quite audibly nearby, splashing in his own bucket. You’ll have to peel him starkers and hang the clothes he’s wearing on the line too, or else try and keep him entertained by the fire so he dries and doesn’t catch cold, but the few minutes to complete a task without interruption is too precious to miss.

A sigh passes your lips, and as you pin the baby clothes on the line you glare accusingly at the green flannel shirt swinging harmlessly in the sunny, cool breeze. It’s late October, and the seasons have seemingly shifted overnight from oppressive heat to brisk winds and skies so heartbreakingly blue it hurts to look at.

Four days, no Din. The weather’s shift makes his absence more profound. Your anger has simmered and seasoned with each passing day. You’re frustrated that there’s nothing to soothe Grogu’s nighttime cries for his father, that there’s only silence in the little room after you’ve finally managed to get him to sleep, that the sunsets that slip behind the hills beyond the house are so spectacular that you feel smaller and smaller out here, so lonely and insignificant you could scream. You’re not sleeping well either – you can hear every twitch of every leaf, the crackle of phantom footsteps through the dry grass.

You’re standing with your hands on your hips, looking at the sky and hoping the sun will manage to dry your clothes and the other laundry before any frosts set in when Grogu squeals.

“What is it?” you ask. “Did you find a frog again?”

“Buh-buh-buh!” he cries, his dark hair and eyes wild.

He’s so excited that it takes you a moment to hear the hoofbeats over his babbling. You follow the child’s gaze around the house and down the drive, and sure enough, it’s Din and the silver-gray horse cantering up into the yard. You snatch Grogu into your arms before he can think of running into Razor’s path. He resigns himself to excited squirming.

A petty little voice inside you wants to go inside with the kid and shut the door in Din’s face, but it seems unfair to prevent Grogu from greeting his father. He had missed the tall, mysterious cowboy too.

Your heart skips and falls flat into your stomach like a pancake.

Missed him? You hadn’t missed him. Had you?

No, that’s not it, you tell yourself. It’s just the company. It’s just being alone with a toddler and a farm to care for without help.

You’re still chafing under this mental slip-up when Din swings from the saddle and his boots slam to the hard-packed earth. It takes you a few seconds to notice that both he and the horse look exhausted.

“Where on earth have you been?” You hide a cringing wince as you allow Grogu to scamper from your arms and attach himself to Din’s leg. You sound like a nagging wife, and you’re not sold on being either of those things.

Predictably, he doesn’t answer your question. “Where’s Peli?” he asks instead, his eyes scanning the yard as he lifts Grogu to his hip and works the bandana from his face, revealing a days-old beard. Though ringed with purple circles, his eyes seem more deeply brown than you remember them to be. Maybe it’s the shift in colors the autumn is bringing. Maybe it’s because he, his clothes, and the horse are filthy and dusty, and the clean brown of his eyes are brighter by comparison. It looked like you would be doing more laundry.

“I sent her home after the first night,” you answer flatly. “I don’t need a minder.”

For a moment, you think he’ll scold you. His nostrils flare and his stubbled jaw works as he observes you. Grogu palms his face, demanding attention, and then the hard lines of his face soften in a way they never do for anyone else. “Hey, kid.” He tickles the little boy’s belly until his laughter rings clear into the evening. Then his gaze returns to you. 

“Guess you don’t, huh?” His eyes skim from the top of your head to your leather shoes. You ignore the way your stomach flips. “You’re lookin’ well.”

“You’re not,” you reply, then internally scold yourself. Why is everything you say to him so barbed? With the tiny concession that you do not, in fact, need a minder, it’s more difficult to keep your anger fresh. It melts through your fingers. “I mean, thank you, we’re both quite well,” you amend quickly, “You look worn out and tired. I’ll make dinner early and you can go to bed.”

“No need,” he grunts, setting Grogu back down and turning to begin the process of untacking Razor. “Chores to do.” You don’t miss how his fingers fumble. It’s startling. His hands never grope about in perplexity. They are always sure and deft and capable, and you don’t really want to examine why you’ve chosen to notice this. 

Never one to let it be, you protest, “But I’ve been doing them.”

“Yeah, n’ I’ll be doin’ ‘em again, seeing as how I told you not to n’ you didn’t listen.” He doesn’t sound angry. In fact, you could almost swear there’s the smallest lift to the corner of his mouth. “Get on doin’ what you were doin’.”

Never minding his insistence that the day go on in the usual routine, you finish hanging the laundry and then go about starting dinner hours before sunset. 

You rejoice more than you thought you ever would at the sight of the fresh meat Din has carefully kept wrapped in oilcloth in his saddlebag. He tells you he caught a deer yesterday and most of it should be salted or dried, but that venison made a fine dinner when it was fresh.

It’s been a little while since you had fresh meat, and it’s with particular joy that you build up the fire from the banked coals from this morning and set about making a stew as Peli had done a few days ago.

Venison did indeed make a fine dinner, and when Din scrapes back his chair for a third helping you puff a little with surprised pride. You’ll have to thank Peli again for the quick uptick in your cooking abilities.

He surprises you further after dinner when he presents you with a gift from town. Two twin round cakes of soap the size of your palms.

“Ladies’ soap,” he explains, watching how your eyes shine with wonder as you carefully open the paper packaging. “S’got flowers in it.”

You lift the soap to your nose. The sweet notes of lavender flood your senses. The other smells like roses. It’s not just ladies’ soap, it’s packaged soap, made by a factory Maker-knows-where, and far softer and finer than the carbolic soap that has peeled the skin from your knuckles when you used too much for washing. This is the kind of soap ladies in Chicago or New York use.

“They’re lovely,” you tell him, smiling broadly. “But aren’t they terribly expensive?” Concern flickers in your chest. You think again about your idea of selling your sewing skills.

He doesn’t respond to that. Of course not. He only finishes his mug of tea, thanks you for the meal, and places his hat back on his flattened, dirty curls to return to the barn for evening chores.

You stare down at the cakes of soap, the tiny purple flower buds visible in the little white rounds, and make a decision right then.

The stew had not produced much to wash and between the three of you there wasn’t even any left, so dishes go quickly. Then you go about emptying and rinsing the wash tub for the fourth time today. Grogu had needed a bath anyway, you figure, and your own hair could do with washing. And Maker knew Din needed it after his trip.

“What were you doing?” you had asked during dinner. Conversation was never exactly free-flowing, but with Din’s return and the fresh meat the air was a touch celebratory, and Grogu had picked up on the mood and was chatty and loud, potatoes and venison making it to his mouth for one out of every three spoonfuls.

Din had not looked up from his plate at your question. “Hunting.”

Obviously. You have no idea how long it takes for a person to hunt and kill a deer, so you ask no further questions, but something doubtful niggles you. It seems an awfully long time for a man as capable as Din to be away for something as simple as a deer for supper. But who are you to know?

“Girl, what are you doing?” Alerted, perhaps, by your sudden increase in trips to the water pump, Din ducks into the cabin as the light is dying. His brows are wrinkled with confusion to find you boiling water in every spare pot and kettle you could find.

“I’m filling the tub for a bath.”

“Inside?”

“Of course inside,” you say matter-of-factly. “You may wash outside in the creek, but I am not going to.”

He mulls that point over for a few seconds, and you think you see a flicker of color in his cheeks, as though he hadn’t thought of that. “But why ain’t you fillin’ the tub by the pump? I can lift it inside for ya.”

“Because we’re washing with warm water, Din.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Starting with the womp rat and finishing with you. You’ve been on the road for days and you’re the filthiest creature I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Is that right?” As it had at the barn before, Din’s jaw works. But unlike before, you suspect that instead of bracing back a scolding, he’s trying not to laugh. Well, you won’t be laughed at, but it’s better than the alternative. “And here I was thinkin’ ladies were a little less blunt with their words.”

“I have to be blunt to get anything through your hat, your kerchief, and your thick skull,” you quip back, but now the both of you are smiling. With a little more confidence, you order him back outside to tend to the cuckoo hens, and then you remember with a pang your barbed words from earlier. Maybe he didn’t deserve to be pecked at all the time. “And would you please get me a couple of fresh eggs? I need them to wash my hair.”

He looks even more confused than before, and you’re uncertain whether it’s at your request or your change in tone. But all he says is, “Yes ma’am.” Filling the doorway with his bulk, he passes back out into the twilight and leaves you to the bubbling in your pots and tummy.

You’re hot and sweaty by the time the bath water is ready and Grogu is clean. You use the lavender soap on him, secretly relishing the way his baby soft skin smells after you towel him dry before the fire.

“Why don’t you go next?” you tell Din, whose head is bobbing with exhaustion. You wonder when he last slept. “He’s all excited with you back, it’ll take me a few minutes to get him down.”

Before he can protest, you’re already sweeping away with the kid. There. That’s one way to win an argument with Din Djarin, you figure. State your case, hope he agrees, run before you can hear any protest.

You suspect the ploy won’t work a second time, but it’s bought you a few minutes.

The moment the door shuts, you realize Din will be stark naked, right on the other side of this door. And in a few minutes, so will you. Unlike most husbands and wives, you would be separated by this door. Which is exactly how it should be.

With a slight flush to your neck, you go about dressing Grogu in clean clothes for bed.

It does take longer than usual to get Grogu to fall asleep. He’s taken to sleeping in the bed with you, and it’s only a few moments into your first story that you hear it through the door. A soft groan of relief, the gentle sloshing of water.

Your cheeks burn. You wonder if his big body can even fit in the narrow basin. His arms and legs are probably draped over the edges, or else he’s squashed up like a pumpkin growing under a fence. Mostly, you’re satisfied that a warm bath is exactly what Din needed after four days in the saddle.

It takes two more stories and a low, gentle lullaby for Grogu’s eyelids to droop and fall closed. You sit still for a minute or two longer, both to ensure he’s asleep and because you’re certainly not going to leave this room until you’re certain Din’s finished with his bath.

Your unspoken question is answered promptly with a soft tap at the door, and it opens a sliver. His hair is glistening, black as midnight. “He sleepin’?”

“Yes,” you whisper.

“You can go on ahead. Never mind the tub afterward. I’ll empty it.”

He leaves you to your wash. The warm water is now a tad closer to tepid, but it’s still the most lovely wash you’ve had in ages, especially with the luxurious, fancy soap. You soak in the fragrant water for a few minutes, feeling like a lady of leisure, just enjoying the crackle of the fire as the night deepens outside.

After you’re through, you have a bowl of fresh warm water ready for your hair, and after frothing the egg whites, you take a long time to scrub every inch of your scalp clean. When it’s rinsed and you’ve combed it through with your fingers, you feel so much better that you can actually feel your muscles relax from the rigid torpor they’d been locked in for weeks.

It’s when you’re slipping on your clean new nightdress for the first time that you recognize the almost unfamiliar feeling settling warm and low in your chest. Comfort. Warmth. It soothes you, to know Din is back and nearby, that Grogu is safe and clean and happy, that you’re about to fall asleep in a soft bed, with a full belly and no one to scold or strike you.

You look around the tiny cabin, barely big enough to contain its few residents. Your situation is far from ideal, but it’s far from awful, either. Perhaps, when this is all over, you might even look back on this place with fondness.

He nearly falls asleep doing it, but he sits up in the lean-to, watching until the light from your lamp goes out in the bedroom. He could just as easily empty the tub in the morning, but the fretfulness that had followed him onto the trail draws him back into the house – girl needs to lock that damn door, he thinks. You had also forgotten to bank the fire. He knows how much it upsets you to lose your precious flame, so after he hauls the heavy tub of water outside as quietly as possible, he sneaks back in to scoop fluffy ashes over the coals so they’ll be waiting for you tomorrow.

Maker, he is tired. He sits in the rocking chair you’ve placed before the grate, enjoying the warmth of the coals for just a moment before going outside to the cold lean-to cot. It’s a far sight better than the hard ground with nothing but a blanket between him and the autumn chill, but it’s still going to be a cold night. He isn’t complaining. Just a little warmth before he goes.

He’ll just sit for a minute, he thinks drowsily. Just a minute. He can smell the lavender from your soap. He breathes it in, and in his exhaustion his brain releases the bars that keep his secret thoughts contained: he imagines how you would smell. Like lavender and honey, something sweet and natural. It would smell best close up, under the curve of your jaw, your heat so close he’d feel it on his lips an inch away. The cold of the lean-to, that enemy of the night, would flee into the wind at the warmth of your hands, rough with work he’d so much rather you didn’t have to do, but still so gentle. They’d fit so easily into his own, so small and delicate he hardly knows where you find the strength you display with them.

When his eyes snap open it’s with the hunter’s innate sense of being observed, of peril close by. The fire is dim. There’s a figure obscuring the moonlight from the window. Without thought, his hand snatches through the air, closes tight around a wrist, and he pulls.

You gasp, and as your soft body tumbles into his lap, Din comes back to himself.

You were standing over him holding a blanket. He’d fallen asleep by the fire. Something had drawn you from your bed – you must have heard him, or sensed him, and now you’re all tangled up between him and the blanket.

The scent of lavender is overwhelming, but even more so is the sight of you. It shocks him completely to his core and batters a new shape into being.

You smell like lavender and you’re bathed in moonlight from the windows of the dark cabin, your eyes wide, lips parted. Your hair is loose down your back, soft and still damp. He can see the wet spots on your dress, translucent, the barest hint at what your pretty skin looks like beyond your face and hands.

Your skin. Your arms are bare. Your legs are bare. You’re completely bare except for the thinnest excuse for clothing he’s ever seen in his Maker-damned life, a little frock that falls to your shins in froths of white. There’s even a ribbon sewn through the low collar, so sweet and distracting it makes his cock jump.

Oh, hell.

Maybe you see it or maybe you don’t, but your wrist jerks slightly in his grasp. He releases it, but you don’t stand up from where you’re sprawled over him straight away.

“I’m sorry,” you both whisper at once.

Then to his horror, he spots a single tear gliding down your cheek. In the abandon of the dark, he finds the courage to thumb it away with a gentle touch. “Hey, hey. Why you cryin’, girl?”

“I’m not, not really,” you whisper. It’s clear you’re trying to coax out the words. “I – I just –”

He waits, a soft silence. He understands that words are difficult. That sometimes they play tricks. He gives you the time you need to find the ones you want.

In the smallest voice, as though you’re that deer offering its neck for slaughter, you whisper your secret. “I was… afraid. When you were gone. I thought I was angry at you, but I wasn’t. I thought… maybe you weren’t coming home.”

His heart leaps and then swells with such fierceness that he does what he has no excuse for, what he’s got no right to do, offers what he shouldn’t and can’t give you. He traces the moon’s pale, silvery light over your cheek with his thumb, tucks your damp hair, butter soft, behind your ear.

“I’ll always come back,” he promises. “Never had a home before. Never had anyone expecting me in it, either. Guess it takes some getting used to.”

“Yes, I don’t like being under a yoke either,” you smile. Your eyes are so beautiful. You surely cannot be a creature hands like his are allowed to touch. Yet you haven’t brushed him away. “I suppose it’s natural to want to escape it a little while, if you’re not used to it.”

He frowns. “You’re not a yoke.”

You breath a scoff. “What am I, then, but a burden? A stranger in your way?”

Din shakes his head slowly. “I follow the stars. I follow the Way. They led me to Grogu, and they led me to you. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve nothing else worth coming back to.”

He’s not sure, later, who kisses whom. Everything else melts away, the moment his lips find yours and find them exactly as soft as he thought they would be.

So unbelievably cute!!! 😭🦛

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pairing: Dieter Bravo & gn!reader rating: Teen (18+ only blog!) warnings: anxiety/stress, Dieter Bravo being a stubborn asshole, cute baby animals, vaguely fluffy word count: 1k summary: I couldn't stop thinking about that baby pygmy hippo and what Dieter would do if he saw it, so this fic was born. you're welcome.

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"I can't work in these fuckin' conditions!"

You hear him before you see him, sat scrolling through your phone as you wait the few hours still left until you have to pick him up. You'd got here early - as you usually did - even though Dieter was frustratingly late more often than not.

The door to the trailer is wrenched open a moment later, and you're raising your eyebrows in disapproval at the grumpy actor as he flings himself inside the trailer, slamming the door behind him.

"I can't do it," he huffs, turning anxiously in a circle, hands on his hips, running through his hair, balling into fists. "I can't fuckin' do it."

"Do what, Dee?" you say from your position curled up on the small bench seat in the trailer.

"This!" he yells, turning to face you gesturing in the vague direction of his face.

You make a face at him, still clueless as to what he's talking about. In a long line of things Dieter Bravo could be frustrated with "this" didn't really help to narrow it down.

"They want me to," he begins, fannining his eyes. "They want me to leak, and I can't."

"Cry?," you laugh. "Dee, it's in the script, of course they want you to. Have you tried the tear -"

The actor rounds on you, shaking his finger in your direction before you can even reach for your bag to see what you have to hand to help.

"No! I do not need performance aides."

"Dieter, it's just to help yo-"

"No!"

Dieter yanks off the thick knit sweater that makes part of his costume and dumps it uncermoniously onto a chair, shaking his arm in frustration as the sleeve just won't give up its hold on his wrist, growling at the garment when he's finally free. He rounds on you again when he's a little more bare, a little less claustrophobic, and flops down next to you.

"I'm not doing it," he says simply, as he tucks himself in beside you on the bench, and that's that, discussion over. You know better than to argue when he's like this so, with a roll of your eyes, you flip your phone back over and continue your aimless scrolling as Dieter's head finds its place on your shoulder.

He fidgets for a little while, the bench not really big enough for the two of you to curl up, until he's slumped down and half turned toward you, legs splayed out in front of him where yours are tucked beneath you.

"Can I watch?" he murmurs sadly a moment later, his face pressed into your arm and eyes screwed tight.

"Dieter, that's up to you. They're your rules, not mine."

Dieter didn't have a phone of his own. Not right now, anyway. That was locked away back at his house, awaiting the day it could be reunited with its owner. For now, all he had was an old send-texts-and-make-calls-only brick of a phone for emergencies, that he mostly used to bug you at all hours of the day. It was a rare day you weren't greeted with a "u up x" text in the morning, or a garbled jumble of letters as he forgot how to text with a number pad.

"I wanna watch," he mumbles into your arm, face pressed so tightly to you now you can feel his lips move against your skin.

"Then go ahead."

You watch then as he slowly opens one eye, peeking out shyly before opening the other and staring wide-eyed at your phone screen. You're only scrolling mindlessly, not really paying much attention to whatever the algorithm is throwing your way. Some stupid ads, spoilers for a show you're not even watching, the red carpet looks of a movie premiere Dieter was invited to, but couldn't make it, and endless shitty takes from random internet strangers. Just a normal day for the internet, but amazing for the man next to you who had kept himself away from the world of unsolicited advice and badly shot paparazzi pictures for weeks.

"Wait," he says suddenly, sitting up and scooting closer to you. "Go back, what was that?"

You scroll a little slower as you move back through the endless monotony on your phone, until Dieter goes stiff by your side and grips your arm.

"That," he says. "What's that? Is it fake?"

Something in you swells, oddly proud at the man for knowing to question something he'd never seen before rather than taking it at face value. More than once he'd come to you gushing over an image only for you to take one look, see the 8 fingers, and have to break the disappointing news to your employer.

"She's real," you say, opening the video for Dieter to take a look. "She's been everywhere the last few days."

"She's beautiful," he murmurs, transfixed on your phone screen. "Look at her. Get that girl an Oscar. Is there more?"

"Yeah, Dee, there's more."

"Can I see?"

You move to hand him your phone, but he refuses to take it, instead choosing to snuggle into your side as you search for the baby hippo that had taken his attention. A few minutes in you almost expect him to be sleeping by your side, but a small sniffle and the swipe of his hand tells you otherwise. Crying over baby animals wasn't new for Dieter, and each time he did it, you found it unbearably sweet. Eventually, he shifts by your side and squares off his shoulders, before standing, grabbing up his ugly sweater, and pulls open his trailer door with a determination to rival his earlier resignation.

"I think I can go back now."

You don't look up at him, transfixed on the tiny hippo staring back at you from your hands. A 180 flip like this wasn't unusual for Dieter. It probably wasn't even his first for today. Either way, you'd still be here when he got back from filming the last scenes of the day, ready to cart him back to the apartment he insisted you stay with him in.

"Do you need the tear stick? Drops? I've got some in-"

"No," he says with certainty. "No, I've got this. Just... just gonna think of that fuckin' hippo."