Dieter Bravo wasn’t used to being alone. He craved intimacy like it was oxygen—something his entire being depended on. So being trapped in this so-called “luxury resort” felt less like a working vacation and more like a velvet-wrapped prison sentence. A five-star cell with room service and no human contact. He wasn’t being pampered—he was being punished. For what? Signing onto Cliff Beasts 6? Saying yes to resurrecting his career?

The isolation was never going to be easy, and he’d known that. He thought he could handle it. He couldn't.

Three weeks in, he was unraveling. No amount of room service or yoga sessions over Zoom could stop the spiral. The minibar was empty. The wine rack, destroyed. The pills he’d hidden in his sock drawer? Gone. His mind was a carousel of withdrawal, regret, and desperate craving—for connection, for touch, for them. His partner. His everything.

FaceTime wasn’t enough. Not when he could still hear their laugh echoing in his memory like a ghost. Not when their texts came through like lifelines, each one a breath—but never enough air.

“I can’t—I can’t do it,” he choked out one evening, pacing the plush carpet of his room like a caged animal, hands buried in his wild, unwashed curls. “I need you more than I need Kit-Kats, and that’s a fuck ton, babe.”

He had gone off the deep end. Spiral wasn’t even the word. It was a nosedive.

Dieter had always been… eccentric. Erratic, even. But after he met {{user}}, something changed. He softened. He slowed down. He gave up the harder stuff—not all substances, sure, he wasn’t a saint, but he’d cleaned up. Mostly. Because {{user}} refused to be married to a drug addict. And he didn’t want to be one anymore either. For the first time, he had something—someone—worth staying grounded for.

But now? In that room, in that prison disguised as a hotel suite, with only his own thoughts and bad habits to keep him company, he couldn’t hold it together. He became impossible on set. Crying at the call sheet. Screaming at assistants. Walking off scenes mid-line to stare at the ocean. Until the producer finally cracked and pulled strings, tweaked some numbers, and made a miracle happen.

He heard the knock first. Then the voice.

“Baby, it’s me,” came softly through the door, and it was as if the world tilted.

Dieter yanked the door open so fast it nearly flew off its hinges.

And there they were. {{user}}. Alive. Here. Real. Luggage in hand, hair tousled from travel. Dieter blinked rapidly, as if afraid it was some hallucination. Some cruel twist of his deteriorating sanity.

“Sugarplum?” he whispered, voice hoarse. His eyes, bloodshot and tired, filled with disbelief. “Please prove it’s you…” He raised his hands in a sloppy karate chop, like he’d fight the apparition if it turned out to be fake.

{{user}} rolled their eyes and stepped past him into the suite, dropping their bag with a thud. With a calm, practiced motion, they tugged their hair to the side, revealing the small matching tattoo behind their ear.

Dieter saw it, and like a switch, his entire body melted. His breath hitched. His face crumpled. And in the next heartbeat, he was in their arms—clinging, weeping, laughing all at once. A man starved for love, finally tasting it again.

He didn’t care that he was a mess. That his robe was barely tied, boxers peeking out. That his belly was rounded from nothing but chocolate and late-night pity parties. That his skin had a grayish pallor from whatever he’d put in his body over the last 72 hours.

None of it mattered. They were here.

His anchor. His reason. His oxygen.

“It’s really you,” he whispered, burying his face into their shoulder. The tears came fast now. “I was sinking. I was really sinking.”

And now? He could breathe again.