Jordan stormed through the city like a live wire snapped loose, sparks flying in every direction. The January cold clawed at his face, unforgiving, but he barely felt it over the heat roaring in his chest. Midtown’s sidewalks blurred past, tourists huddled in puffy coats, steam curling from halal carts, the endless blare of horns and shouted curses, none of it registered. His legs carried him south on pure instinct, cutting across avenues, weaving through crowds with the single-minded force of a torpedo slicing water. He didn’t decide to go home; his body simply knew where the explosion needed to happen. By the time the familiar cast-iron facades of Chelsea rose around him, his breath was coming in ragged puffs that hung white in the air. He stopped in front of their building, keys already in his trembling fist, and felt a savage surge of relief. Yes. Here. With Ben. The place where everything had started unraveling, and the only place it could finally be end.
He took the elevator alone, the mirrored walls throwing back a version of himself he hardly recognized: cheeks flushed crimson, eyes wild, hair disheveled from the wind and his own furious raking fingers. The ride felt eternal. When the doors slid open onto their floor, the hallway’s quiet pressed in like an accusation.
The loft was empty, of course.
Sunlight slanted through the windows in pale, winter-weak blades, illuminating dust motes drifting over the hardwood like lazy snow. The air smelled faintly stale, coffee from that morning, the ghost of Ben’s cologne lingering on the sectional where he’d sprawled for hours before leaving. Jordan stood just inside the threshold, coat still on, chest heaving, letting the silence hit him full force. It was just past two o’clock. Ben was still up there in the Catskills, probably wrapped up warm in that rented cabin, laughing with Gideon over lighting setups or coaxing Beau through his nerves. The drive back was three hours, maybe four with traffic. Ben wouldn’t walk through that door until after midnight at the earliest. Jordan had known that, logically. But knowing and feeling were two different animals, and the empty space gut-punched him anyway. The loft felt cavernous without Ben’s bulk filling it.
He shrugged off his coat at last, let it fall where he stood. The rage that had propelled him here didn’t dissipate; it shifted, sharpened, found a new target. Ben was always gone now. Always. Interviews with gay media, work-out sessions in the gym, meetings with Gideon, and now a snow-draped cabin where he’d take a virgin on camera for the hungry eyes of strangers who paid top dollar to watch. While Jordan waited. While Jordan lied to his family, to himself. While Jordan sat alone in this beautiful prison they’d built together and felt the walls close in.
The thought intruded unbidden: Ben’s body moving over someone else, sweat-slick and commanding, that legendary cock buried deep while thousands watched and wished they were in Beau’s place, and Jordan’s stomach lurched with revulsion. Once, that image had lit him up from the inside, a twisted heat he’d chased in the dark while pretending it was all for Ben’s sake. Now it only fueled the disgust, a bitter wave crashing over him aimed as much at himself as at Ben. How could he have ever gotten off on that? How could he have pushed Ben toward it, fed it, watched it grow until it swallowed them both?
He paced to the kitchen island, palms slamming down on the cold quartzite hard enough to sting. The sound cracked through the quiet like a gunshot. His reflection stared back from the darkened oven door, furious, small. He hated how small he felt. He hated that Ben was out there feeling huge again, desired again, powerful again, and that Jordan had handed him that spotlight.
The love was still there, stubborn and aching beneath the resentment, like a bruise he couldn’t stop pressing. Pride, too, in the man Ben had become despite everything, but it soured quickly into something poisonous: pride that the world saw what Jordan had always seen, yet resented them for claiming it louder, for taking pieces of Ben that used to be his alone. And the shame, god, the shame burned hottest of all. Shame for starting this, for lying to everyone, for the hallway moment that had stripped him bare, for the part of him that had once thrilled at the betrayal and now loathed himself for it.
Tonight, when Ben walked through that door smelling of pine and another man’s skin, Jordan would be waiting.
No more pretending. No more careful lies or swallowed words. He would lay it all bare, the jealousy, the hurt, the terror that he’d lost the man he loved to a version the world loved louder. And if Ben looked at him with those soft hazel eyes behind fogged glasses and said he couldn’t give it up…
Jordan closed his eyes, breath shaking.
He didn’t let himself finish the thought. Not yet.
Instead he moved to the couch, sank into the indentation Ben’s body had left in the leather, and waited for the sound of keys in the lock that would either save them or end them.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. Hours, surely, though time had slipped its leash and run wild. Jordan had sunk into a kind of trance, body motionless in the sectional, eyes unfocused on nothing in particular. The world outside the windows kept moving without him: sunlight crawling across the hardwood in slow, golden increments, climbing the far wall, reaching its pale winter zenith, then bleeding away into bruised twilight. Shadows lengthened, stretched, merged. The Hudson’s distant gleam faded to ink. Streetlights flickered on below, one by one, like hesitant stars. He felt suspended, frozen in one of those film montages where the camera lingers on the protagonist while life accelerates around him, clouds racing, traffic blurring, seasons turning in seconds, until the frame snaps back to reveal how much has been lost in the meantime. Only here there was no swelling soundtrack, no dramatic cut. Just the gradual dimming of the loft, the air cooling degree by degree, the faint hum of the refrigerator the only witness to his vigil.
Then, abruptly, night swallowed the last of the light. The loft lay steeped in shadow, the city’s glow pressing against the windows like an uninvited guest. Somewhere far below, a siren wailed and faded. Jordan drew a slow breath, tasting the stale air, and straightened, just enough to feel the protest in his spine.
Distantly, cutting through the thick hush of the darkened loft, Jordan registered the muffled buzz of his phone. It had been vibrating for a while, insistent, a sound he’d tuned out the way he’d tuned out everything else in his vigil. For a fleeting second, some buried part of him stirred with the old reflex: maybe Ben reaching out, thumb hovering over a quick apology or a soft “miss you” before the job began. But he crushed the hope before it could take root. Ben had kept radio silence all day, no texts other than the one he’d sent that morning, no calls. Why would he break it now?
Jordan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and fished the phone from the coffee table in front of the sectional. The screen lit his face in cold blue as he swiped it awake. Not a call. An alarm.
18:32.
The thing had been buzzing for over half an hour, buried under the weight of his trance. He stared at the label he’d typed that morning, fingers trembling over the keys in Ted’s pristine guest room: LIVESTREAM STARTS AT 6PM.
The words hit like ice water down his spine. Six o’clock. The scheduled go-live. Beau’s big debut, snow falling outside the cabin windows, firelight flickering over bare skin while thousands tuned in to watch Ben claim him. Jordan’s stomach twisted, a fresh surge of revulsion rising sharp and metallic in his throat. He had set the alarm himself, hadn’t he? Some masochistic impulse, telling himself it was to stay informed, to know when Ben would finally head home. Or maybe deeper down, the last frayed thread of that old sickness, the need to witness, to punish himself with proof of how far things had slipped. Either way, the reminder felt like a betrayal from his own hand.
The buzzing finally cut off as he dismissed it, the sudden silence louder than the alarm had been. He sat back, phone heavy in his palm, screen dimming to black. The loft remained steeped in shadow, the city’s distant lights glittering like cold eyes beyond the glass.
He told himself he wouldn’t look.
The phone lay dark in his hand, screen timed out to black, but its weight felt incendiary, like a loaded clip he’d sworn never to chamber. Jordan set it face-down on the coffee table with deliberate care, as if the slightest jolt might wake it. He stood, paced the shadowed length of the loft, bare feet silent on the cool hardwood. The city’s nighttime glow filtered through the windows in bruised purples and sodium orange, painting the furniture in ghostly outlines. He poured water from the kitchen tap, drank it in slow gulps that did nothing to ease the tightness in his throat. He even flicked on a lamp, harsh light flooding the space, chasing shadows into corners, anything to break the spell.
But the urge gnawed deeper, patient and relentless. It wasn’t desire anymore, not the fevered heat that had once pulled him to the screen like a moth to flame. That sickness had curdled now. Now it was something uglier: a compulsion to confirm the wound, to pick at it until it bled fresh. Proof. Proof that Ben was gone, that the man he’d rebuilt brick by brick had been remade again in someone else’s image. He lasted maybe twenty minutes, pacing, breathing, bargaining with himself in whispered fragments. Don’t do it. You’re stronger than this. Watching changes nothing. But the loft’s silence mocked him, thick and complicit, amplifying every phantom sound: the imagined creak of bedsprings upstate, a stranger’s gasp echoing through fiber-optic cables straight into his skull.
Jordan sank back onto the sectional. His hand moved without permission, retrieving the phone, thumb unlocking it with muscle memory. The screen’s glow stung his eyes, too bright in the dim room. He didn’t open the browser. Not yet. He stared at the home screen instead, a photo from better days, him and Ben that crooked, beard-framed grin behind fogged glasses, taken on a hike in the Palisades when Ben had hoisted him onto those broad shoulders like he weighed nothing. The photo blurred. Jordan’s vision swam, not quite tears but close. He hated the ache in his chest, the stubborn love that refused to cauterize itself. Hated how love still flickered beneath the resentment even as it poisoned him.
His thumb hovered over the app icon. The one he should have deleted months ago. Just check if it’s over, he lied to himself. See when he’s heading back. That’s all.
He tapped it open.
The channel loaded instantly. The viewer count ticked upward in real time: 48,000… 52,000… climbing fast. Tips raining in the sidebar, hundreds, thousands pouring in, emojis exploding across the frame in frantic bursts: eggplants, water droplets, flames, peaches. Jordan’s breath caught. He meant to close it. Meant to hurl the phone across the room and watch it shatter against the exposed brick. But his grip only tightened, knuckles whitening, as the audio filled the loft, low, rhythmic grunts in Ben’s unmistakable gravel.
He couldn’t watch the video itself. Wouldn’t. His eyes fixed on the chat instead, the endless scroll assaulting him like shrapnel: HorseHungDaddyFan69: fuckkk breed that tight twink hole raw big ben!!! stretch him till he cries daddy. CumDump4Bears: god his fat cock is destroying that boy pussy i’m leaking just hearing those slaps. BigBenObsessed: beau taking every inch like a champ but we all know he’s wrecked forever now. SizeQueenSlutNYC: tip 500$ make him gape for us ben!!! show us how u ruin virgins with that monster
The words blurred into a fevered blur of filth, each one a fresh cut. Tips pinged louder with every obscene demand, the chat moving so fast it was dizzying, thousands of strangers baying for more, reducing Ben to a weapon, Beau to a hole, the whole thing to meat and money.
He couldn’t stop at the chat.
The scrolling filth had been bad enough, vile, dehumanizing, a thousand strangers reducing Ben to a cock and a command, but it was abstract, disembodied. Words. Jordan had slammed the feed shut at once, phone skittering across the coffee table like it burned. He’d even stood, paced again, palms pressed to his eyes until sparks bloomed behind the lids. Enough. Close it. Delete the app. Be better.
His hand found the phone again. Thumb trembling. He reopened the app before the rational part of him could scream no.
Full screen this time. Video unmuted.
The scene loaded crisp and immediate, exactly what Gideon had pitched: intimate, “authentic,” bankable sweetness wrapped around raw sex. A huge, comfortable bed dominated the frame, flannel sheets rumpled in deep grays and burgundies, pillows piled high, the kind of nest that looked lived-in, loved-in. Snow drifted lazy past the wide cabin window, firelight flickering gold across the walls, turning the whole thing into some curated winter fantasy. Ben had Beau sideways, the boy’s smaller frame completely enveloped, his massive arms wrapped around him like a living blanket, one beefy hand splayed possessive over Beau’s flat stomach, the other cupping his jaw to tilt his head back for slow, lingering kisses. Ben’s hips snapped forward in unhurried rhythm, almost lazy, each deep roll drawing a soft, breathy sound from Beau that the mics caught perfectly. It wasn’t the frantic pounding of typical porn; it was measured, indulgent, the kind of fucking that felt like savoring.
They weren’t even fully naked. Ben still wore a faded Led Zeppelin 1977 US tour shirt, the one Derek had bought him three years ago and it barely stretched across his chest even then, now rucked up just enough to expose the plush curve of his gut pressing against Beau’s back. Beau had on a simple black jockstrap, the pouch stretched obscenely, and thick, comfy wool socks pulled high on his calves, like he’d just kicked off boots after a walk in the snow. No harsh lighting, no exaggerated angles. Just two bodies moving together over warm blankets, breaths fogging in the chill air seeping from the window. It looked… domestic. Real. The kind of quiet, Sunday-morning intimacy Jordan hadn’t felt from Ben in months, maybe longer. The kind they used to have, back when Ben’s weight was still new and Jordan would trace every softened inch with reverent fingers, whispering how perfect he was while Ben laughed low and pulled him closer.
Jordan’s chest caved in. The revulsion hit harder than any brutal scene ever could. This wasn’t faceless meat being used; it was the ghost of what he’d lost, gift-wrapped and sold. Ben’s low murmurs, too soft to catch fully, but the tone unmistakable, that gravelly reassurance he’d once saved for Jordan’s bad days, poured into Beau’s ear while his hips kept that devastatingly patient rhythm. He hated it. Hated how beautiful it looked. Hated that Ben gave this version of himself so effortlessly to a stranger while Jordan got silence, distance, excuses. Hated most of all that he was watching, letting it flay him open, because some broken part of him needed to measure the exact depth of the loss.
The phone trembled in his grip. A tear slipped free, carving down his cheek like acid. He didn’t wipe it away.
He watched until he couldn’t bear it anymore, until Beau’s soft cry peaked and Ben’s arms tightened, holding him through it like something precious. Then Jordan killed the feed again, harder this time, thumb mashing the button until the screen cracked faintly under the pressure.
But in the end, it wasn’t even the gentleness that killed him. Not the way Ben cradled Beau like something fragile and irreplaceable. Not the slow, indulgent roll of Ben’s hips, or the soft murmurs caught by the mic, or even the chat’s relentless filth scrolling like poison in the corner.
No. What shattered him, what drove the final spike through his chest until he couldn’t breathe around it, were the candles.
The fucking candles.
Jordan’s eyes snagged on them scattered across the frame, on the nightstand, the dresser, the wide windowsill where snow pressed white against the glass. Dozens of them, flames dancing low and steady in thick glass jars, their golden light spilling warm and intimate over the bed, gilding Ben’s jaw, the plush curve of his gut beneath the rucked-up Zeppelin shirt, Beau’s flushed skin as he arched into every lazy thrust. Jordan knew those jars. Knew the subtle amber tint of the wax, the faint cedar-and-vanilla scent he could almost smell through the screen. He’d bought them himself, months ago, on a whim during a weekend trip to the Hudson Valley, wanting to make Ben’s moving in daya special, romantic day. The same candles he used that night days ago when he wanted to make love to Ben all night and was stood up.
Ben must have found them later, packed away in the back of the linen closet, forgotten relics of that botched night. Taken them to the cabin because Gideon wanted “mood,”. Thinking the flickering glow would sell the fantasy better. He was right, as always. The light turned the whole scene into something straight out of a dream, the kind of dream Jordan had once nursed for them alone. Ben and Beau bathed in that honeyed haze, bodies moving together like they belonged there, like the tenderness was real and earned and private.
His vision tunneled. Breath stuttered in his throat. The phone slipped from his fingers, clattering to the hardwood, screen still glowing with that golden betrayal. It wasn’t the porn that broke him. It was the theft of their own unfinished moment, repurposed for strangers. The intimacy Jordan had tried to salvage, handed over without a thought to someone else who’d never know what it was supposed to mean.
And then the rage came.
Not the hot flare that had sent him slamming Nolan against the restaurant table earlier that day, no, that had been a mere candle flame, a brief sputter quickly snuffed. This was an inferno, white-hot and all-consuming, roaring up from the pit of his gut until it filled every inch of him, scorching away reason, restraint, everything but the burn.
Jordan surged to his feet, the phone clattering forgotten to the floor. His vision tunneled red, pulse thundering in his ears like war drums. He saw it all in vivid, violent clarity: himself snatching the keys from the hook, storming down to the garage, gunning the engine north through the dark highways, three hours of black ice and blinding fury, until he reached that fucking cabin. Bursting through the door mid-scene or after, it didn’t matter. Grabbing Ben by that faded Zeppelin shirt and slamming him against the log walls. Beating the shit out of him, of Beau, wide-eyed and scrambling back, of Gideon with his smug smile and expensive suits. Anyone in the way: crew, assistants, whoever the fuck else lingered for the “magic.” Fists flying, blood on the snow, the whole production shattered like the cheap set it was.
He pictured himself losing it completely, a fit worthy of the most unhinged Mexican telenovela, overturning the center piece in the loft, sending lamps crashing, smashing every bottle in the cabin’s bar: whiskey, vodka, whatever expensive shit Ben drank this days, glass exploding in glittering arcs, liquor soaking the rugs while he roared like a man possessed. His chest heaved with it, hands clenched so tight his nails bit half-moons into his palms. The loft spun around him, shadows leaping as if feeding on the rage.
But he didn’t move.
He stood frozen in the center of the room, breath sawing in and out, every muscle locked against the urge to destroy. He wouldn’t give in. Wouldn’t hurl the coffee table through the window, wouldn’t smash the framed photos of better days, wouldn’t tear the place apart until the super called the cops. No drive north, no bloodied knuckles, no headlines tomorrow about some art consultant gone berserk in the Catskills.
No.
He’d keep the fury bottled tight, pressed close to his chest like a live grenade, his sharpest weapon, his fiercest ally. Let it simmer, let it build, until Ben walked through that door and faced it head-on. Because in the grip of that rage, pure and cleansing, Jordan didn’t remember how much he loved Ben. Didn’t feel the ache, the longing, the stubborn tenderness that had kept him chained this long.
There was only the burn.
He didn’t move for a long moment, rooted in the center of the loft like a man calcifying in place. Then the rage shifted, trapped, restless, demanding an outlet narrower than violence but no less self-destructive. Jordan crossed to the bar cart in three strides, the one tucked against the exposed brick, its glass shelves gleaming with bottles Ben had started collecting once the money rolled in steady. Top-shelf scotch, mostly, labels Ben couldn’t have pronounced six months ago, amber liquids glowing like liquid gold under the faint city light leaking through the windows. He snatched the nearest bottle, a heavy crystal decanter Ben had brought home with that sheepish, boyish grin after his first big payout. Poured a shot into a low glass with a hand that didn’t shake, steady, deliberate, as if the fury had armored him.
He hated scotch. Always had. The peat, the smoke, the way it clung to the back of the throat like regret. Ben knew it; used to tease him for sticking to red wine, calling him a “fancy boy” with that fond rumble. Jordan threw the shot back in one brutal swallow. It burned, god, it burned, scorching down his esophagus like molten lava, hitting his stomach in a white-hot bloom that nearly doubled him over. He gagged, eyes watering, the taste thick and medicinal, coating his tongue with smoke and oak and something darkly floral he didn’t want to appreciate.
Good shit. Expensive. His boyfriend was really turning into a connoisseur.
The thought landed bitter as the aftertaste, laced with venom. He poured another before the burn could fade, glass clinking hard against crystal. Downed it the same way, fast, punishing, chasing the pain like it might cauterize something inside him.
Again
And again.
Each shot hit harder, the warmth spreading from his gut outward in treacherous waves, loosening muscles he hadn’t realized were locked. But the rage didn’t dull; it sharpened, distilled, pooling low and liquid in his veins alongside the scotch. He leaned against the cart, forehead pressed to the cool brick, breath shallow and deliberate, letting the alcohol stoke the fire instead of bank it. By the fourth, or fifth, he’d lost count, the room had softened at the edges, the shadows deeper, the city lights beyond the windows smearing into watercolor streaks. He was nothing but a pool of scotch and resentment and fury now, every swallow feeding the blaze, every bitter note on his tongue a reminder of what Ben had become without him.
He set the glass down carefully, didn’t slam it, didn’t hurl it. Control, even drunk, was another weapon, as Ted always said. He’d stay sharp enough for what came next. Jordan straightened, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and returned to the sectional. Sank into Ben’s indentation again, deeper this time, the leather warm from his own heat. The fury sat heavy in his chest, companioned now by the slow, smoky throb of the scotch. He welcomed both.
Jordan didn’t remember falling asleep.
One moment he was a bonfire of scotch and fury, the burn in his veins keeping him awake and razor-sharp. Th n, nothing. A black, dreamless drop, as if time had surged forward again without permission, yanking him hours into the future. The key turning in the lock snapped him awake. The metallic scrape, the soft click of the deadbolt, the door easing open on well-oiled hinges then closing with a muted thud. Familiar sounds, once comforting in their domestic rhythm, Ben home from a late shift, or a gym session, or groceries. Now they landed like blows.
Jordan didn’t move. His body felt leaden, the scotch’s warmth curdled into a thick, nauseous sludge in his stomach. The room was still steeped in darkness, but then the overhead lights flicked on, harsh, unforgiving fluorescents flooding the loft in cold white. He winced, eyes slamming shut against the sudden blaze, spots dancing behind his lids.
“Hey!”
Ben’s voice, genuinely happy, cut through the quiet like it belonged there. Like nothing had changed.
Jordan’s eyes adjusted slowly, blinking against the glare. Ben stood just inside the threshold, coat half-off one shoulder, bag across the other, keys dangling from his fingers. He looked… fine. Tired, yeah, shadows under his hazel eyes behind fogged glasses, shoulders a little slumped from the drive, but not wrecked. Not glowing with post-orgasm high after hours of slow, tender fucking under candlelight. Not hollowed out from selling pieces of himself to the world. Just Ben. The man Jordan had loved for years, standing there with a soft, surprised smile tugging at his lips, like coming home to find Jordan waiting was the best part of his night.
Jordan hated him for it. Hated how that rumble of happiness still tugged at something deep in his chest, a reflexive warmth that flared traitorously before the rage could smother it. Hated how Ben could look so normal, so sincerely glad to see him, after everything.
“What you doing sitting in the dark like a creep, babe?” Ben asked, laughing, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the hook by the door. His voice carried that easy affection, the one that used to melt Jordan on bad days. “And why you didn’t said you were home already? I’d have come back earlier if I knew.”
He toed off his boots, padded across the hardwood in socked feet, the floor creaking faintly under his weight. The faint scent of cold mountain air clung to him, pine, snow, a hint of woodsmoke, and underneath it, something warmer. Skin. Sweat. Someone else.
Ben dropped his bag by the island, rolled his shoulders like the drive had knotted them, and crossed to the sectional. He looked down at Jordan with that crooked, grin, eyes crinkling behind his glasses, one beefy hand already reaching out as if to ruffle his hair or pull him into a hug.
“You’re waiting up for your man after a hard day at work?” Ben teased, that rumble laced with tired amusement, the same playful lilt he’d used a thousand times before, back when coming home late meant overtime wiring a high-rise, not hours on the bed with someone else.
He yawned wide, scrubbing a beefy hand over his beard, glasses slipping down his nose as he straightened. “Come on, let’s get to bed. I’m fucking beat. Don’t even think about waking me before noon tomorrow, you hear me?”
Ben extended a hand, massive, callused, familiar, palm up in that casual invitation, expecting Jordan to take it like always. Jordan didn’t move. He stayed rooted to the sectional, body rigid, gaze fixed somewhere past Ben’s shoulder, on the coat hook, the bag by the island, anything but those hazel eyes crinkling with uncomplicated happiness. The fury churned hotter in his gut, thick and viscous alongside the scotch, a molten weight pressing against his ribs. The casualness of it, the teasing, the yawn, the offered hand like nothing had changed, only fed the blaze. Ben had driven three hours home smelling of pine and another man’s skin, pockets heavier from tips rained on Beau’s moans, and here he was, acting like it was just another late night.
Ben’s hand hovered, then faltered. The grin faded slow, confusion creeping in at the edges.
“Hey. What’s wrong, babe?” His voice softened, concern threading through it now. He lowered his hand but didn’t step back, leaning in instead. “Something bad happen in Switzerland? You wanna talk about it?”
Still nothing.
Ben shifted his weight, the floor creaking under him. The concern deepened, etching lines around his eyes as he adjusted his glasses, peering closer.
“Jord?” Quieter now, edged with real unease. “You’re freaking me out, babe. Say something.”
He reached out again, not for a pull-up this time, but tentative, fingers brushing Jordan’s shoulder like he was something fragile that might shatter. The silence thickened, heavy and electric, broken only by the distant hum of the city far below. Jordan’s eyes finally lifted, locking on Ben’s.
And in that gaze, the inferno waited, unleashed at last.
“Who the fuck,” Jordan said, voice pure venom, each word carved out like glass shards, “let you take my candles?”
Sorry for the cliffhanger (well, not really). We’re close to end now. Thanks for staying with me! Please, if haven’t already, consider joining my Substack with a paid subscription. $8 a month and you can change my life. https://substack.com/@jackstaggwrites
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