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♰FaShIon KILLA♰

✦ · ───────── · ✦ FASHION KILLA // Cortis James AU ✦ · ────────── · ✦ ▶ PLAYING: [Fashion Killa] 0:45 ───º──────────── -3:12 ◁ ❚❚ ▷ ↻

✦ Pairing: Cortis James x Reader! Creative director x Stylist! ✦synopsis: As Cortis James's main stylist, you're used to fixing his fits and dealing with his late-night chaos. But James doesn't care about professional boundaries. When a late-night fitting after Milan show locks the two of you in a hotel room, all that tension finally snaps behind closed doors. ✦ Genre: MDNI ♰ explicit (18+) ♰ smut ♰ workplace romance ♰ fashion AU ✦ Word Count: (got too lazy) not proof read!! ✦ Warnings : Unprotected sex ♰ teasing ♰ fingering ♰ oral ♰ etc.

✦ this story was inspired by Pharrell Williams and Asap Rocky's song fashion killa.

The email had been sitting in your inbox for three days before you worked up the nerve to open it. Maison Margiela Interview Confirmation. You'd almost deleted it, assuming it was spam, until you saw the sender domain and nearly dropped your phone in the sink.

Now you were sitting in a glass-walled office on the fourth floor of the Paris atelier, knee bouncing under the table, portfolio clutched against your chest like it might fly away if you loosened your grip.

"Y/N?" A woman with cropped silver hair and a clipboard appeared in the doorway. "They're ready for you."

They. Plural. You hadn't expected that.

You followed her down a hallway lined with archived sketches, sheer fabric pinned to corkboards like specimens. The door at the end opened into a room that smelled like cedar and espresso, and there — leaning against the edge of a long steel table, arms crossed, sleeves pushed up was James.

You'd seen him in magazines. You'd seen him at two shows, from nosebleed seats, a blur of dark denim and unreadable expression. In person he was taller than you expected, and he studied you for a second longer than felt casual.

"You're the stylist," he said. Not a question.

"I'm hoping to be, sir," you said, keeping your voice even, your hands folded in front of you.

"Sir," he repeated, like he was turning the word over. "Formal. I can work with that." He gestured at the empty chair across from him. "Sit, please. Tell me why you're right for this."

You sat, spine straight, and opened your portfolio before he could ask twice. "Because I don't dress people the way magazines tell me to. I dress them the way their actual life requires meetings, travel, cameras, all of it. Consistency across chaos. That's what a personal stylist is for."

He glanced down at himself, at the blazer that didn't quite match the boots, and something shifted in his expression not offense, more like he'd been caught. "Is that a professional observation, or are you telling me I look unfinished today?"

"Both can be true, sir," you said. "I'd never say it to embarrass you. I'd say it because it's my job to notice."

That answer seemed to land better than anything printed in your portfolio. He looked over at the silver-haired woman by the door. "Delphine. I think we've found her."

"You haven't even finished the interview," Delphine said, amused.

"I don't need to." His eyes stayed on you, but his tone was light, professional again. "I need someone who'll be honest with me and still call me sir while doing it. That's rarer than you'd think."

"I can manage both," you said simply.

"Good." He stood, extended a hand. "Welcome to the team, Y/N."

You shook it, keeping your grip firm, your smile polite and contained. "Thank you, sir. I won't waste the opportunity."

Nobody had mentioned, in the interview, in the offer letter, in any of the three phone calls with HR, that "stylist" meant his stylist. Not the runway. Not the ad campaigns. James, personally the man himself, five mornings a week, standing in his dressing room while you decided what he was allowed to put on his own body.

You found this out properly on day one, arriving at his apartment at 8 a.m. sharp, garment bags over your arm, notes already prepared on his schedule for the day. His assistant let you in, James was still finishing up in the other room.

"Good morning," you called out, setting the bags down carefully on the rack his team had wheeled in. "I pulled three options based on your calendar board meeting at ten, dinner with the Milan team tonight. I want the morning look to photograph well if the press catches you outside."

"You did your homework," James said, stepping out, still buttoning his shirt cuff. He said it with genuine approval, no teasing in it yet.

"That's the job, sir," you said, already reaching for the garment bag and unzipping it, all business. "This blazer works better with the trousers we discussed last week than the ones your assistant pulled. May I show you?"

"Please."

You laid the pieces out along the table with quick, practiced hands, narrating as you went fabric weight, how it would sit under studio lighting, how it would hold up through a twelve-hour day. James watched you work, arms crossed, quiet in a way that made you glance up once to make sure you hadn't lost him.

"You're very thorough," he said.

"I'd rather over-explain than have you second-guess something in front of the board," you said. "You should feel certain in what you're wearing, sir. That's part of what I'm here for."

Something about that made him tilt his head slightly, like he was recalibrating an assumption. "Most people just hand me a hanger and hope for the best."

"I'm not most people," you said, then caught yourself, softening it with a small, professional smile. "I mean I take the job seriously. That's all."

"I noticed." He reached for the blazer you'd laid out, shrugging into it without being asked, which you took as a good sign. "Well? Verdict?"

You circled him once, adjusting the collar, smoothing a shoulder seam with quick, impersonal touches, the way you'd touch a mannequin. "Better. The trousers balance it out — nothing's fighting for attention." You stepped back. "You look like the person running the meeting, not the person who got dressed on the way to it."

He laughed under his breath, genuinely pleased. "That might be the nicest insult I've gotten all week."

"It wasn't an insult, sir," you said, already moving to fold the rejected pieces back into the garment bag, keeping your hands busy, your tone light but even. "Just an observation. Like I said that's the job."

"Right. The job." He checked his watch, then looked back at you before heading for the door, something almost curious in his expression, like he hadn't quite placed you into a category yet and wasn't in a hurry to. "You're going to make this very easy, aren't you?"

"I intend to make it easy for you, sir," you said, zipping the garment bag closed. "Whether that's easy for me remains to be seen."

That got another laugh out of him short, surprised and he shook his head slightly as he grabbed his coat. "I like you already. Don't let that go to your head."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir," you said, and held the door open for him, professional smile fixed in place, already mentally moving on to tonight's dinner look before he'd even left the room.

You told yourself the flutter in your chest was just the adrenaline of a first day going well. You had a feeling you'd be telling yourself that a lot.

Two months in, and the job had settled into something like rhythm. Alarm at 6:30. Garment bags by the door. James's apartment by eight, his schedule memorized before you even got there, half a step ahead of whatever the day wanted to throw at him.

What you hadn't expected was the desk.

It showed up on a Tuesday, no warning, just a note from Delphine asking you to stop by the main studio floor before heading to James's place. You found it wedged into the open-plan hallway outside the design offices, right where the interns worked, a long table shared by three assistants, sketch paper and fabric swatches scattered across it like confetti after a party.

"This is yours now," Delphine said, setting a small nameplate down on the corner of it. Y/N. Stylist. Nothing fancy, just laminated card stock, but you stared at it longer than it probably deserved.

"I have a desk," you said.

"You have a table with your name on it in the hallway where the interns sit," Delphine said, not unkindly. "James's request."

You didn't know what to do with that information, so you thanked her and set your bag down and got to work, same as any other day.

Nothing about the morning was different, at first. You pulled James's look for a supplier lunch, laid it out across the folding rack in his dressing room, walked him through the reasoning while he half listened and mostly checked his phone, the way he always did when he trusted you enough not to watch you work anymore.

"You're getting predictable," he said, pulling on the jacket you'd chosen. "In a good way. I stopped worrying about Tuesdays."

"I'll take that as a compliment, sir."

"It was one." He adjusted his cuffs in the mirror, glanced at you over his shoulder. "New desk treating you all right?"

"It's a table, sir."

"It's a desk if I say it's a desk," he said, and there was that half smile again, the one that meant he knew exactly what he was doing.

You didn't have a response for that, so you didn't give him one, just handed him his coat and sent him off to lunch.

The trouble started later that afternoon, back at the hallway table, when you were killing time between fittings and pulled out your own sketchbook to fix an idea that had been nagging you since the morning. A coat. Structured through the shoulder, then falling apart on purpose at the hem, unfinished seams left raw and visible, the kind of thing you doodled when you were bored and never showed anyone.

You didn't hear James come up behind you.

"What is that."

You startled hard enough to nearly knock your coffee over, twisting around to find him standing there, coat still half off one shoulder, staring down at the open page like it owed him money.

"Nothing, sir. Just sketching."

"That's not nothing." He reached down, and you let him take the book, mostly out of shock, watching his face while he flipped back through the earlier pages. Pages you'd never meant for anyone to see. A jacket with an asymmetric collar. A dress built from layered mesh. Half finished notes in the margins about drape and tension and where the fabric would want to move on a body.

"You designed these," he said. Not a question this time either, but a different kind of not-a-question than the one in your interview. This one had actual surprise in it.

"They're just sketches, sir. Practice, mostly."

"Practice." He looked up at you like you'd been hiding something from him on purpose, which, fair, you had. "You've been dressing me for two months and you never once mentioned you could do this."

"You hired me to style you, sir. Not to show you my notebook."

"I'm reconsidering that division of labor." He turned another page, slower now, actually studying the construction lines you'd sketched into the coat, the little notes about seam placement. When he looked up again, something in his expression had shifted, sharper, more interested, less like an employer and more like someone recalculating what you were worth to him. "Who taught you to draft like this?"

"I'm mostly self-taught, sir. Some of it's from school."

"Self-taught." He said it slowly, like he was testing whether he believed you. "This coat. The one with the raw hem. Would you actually make it, if you had the fabric and the time?"

You hesitated, caught off guard by the question, by the fact he was asking it at all. "I'd want to, sir. Yes."

"Good." He closed the sketchbook, but didn't hand it back right away, tapping the cover once like he was deciding something. "You're not just sitting at this table anymore."

"Sir?"

"You heard me." He finally passed the book back, and you took it carefully, like it might still be evidence of something you'd get in trouble for. "I want to see more of these. All of them, actually. Tonight, if you're free."

"I'm your stylist, sir, not"

"You're whatever I decide you are," he said, but it wasn't sharp, it was almost warm, edged with something that hadn't been there in the interview, in the mornings, in any of the ordinary days that had passed between then and now. "Turns out I hired someone more interesting than I realized. Don't waste it."

"And stop calling me sir."

He walked off toward the design offices without waiting for you to argue, coat still hanging off one shoulder, leaving you standing at your hallway table with your sketchbook clutched to your chest and the distinct feeling that the rhythm you'd gotten so comfortable in was about to change.

"Tonight" turned out to mean seven o'clock, in a part of the building you'd never actually been inside, past the design offices, down a short hallway with a door that didn't have a nameplate on it at all. James's own studio, apparently. Not the polished one photographers got shown. The real one, cluttered with pinned fabric and half built forms on dress stands, the walls covered in tear sheets that didn't look like they belonged to any single collection.

"You're late," he said, without looking up from the table, where he was clearing space between two rolls of muslin.

"You said seven. It's seven."

"I said seven expecting you'd be early." He glanced up then, and there was something looser about him here, sleeves already rolled, no jacket in sight, like this room ran on different rules than the rest of the building. "Sit. Show me."

You set your bag down and pulled out the sketchbook, more nervous handing it over voluntarily than you had been when he'd taken it by surprise that afternoon. He took it, but this time he didn't flip through it fast. He went page by page, slow, actually reading your margin notes, occasionally turning the book sideways to study a construction line.

"This one," he said eventually, tapping the raw hemmed coat again. "Walk me through it. Why unfinished on the hem and not the collar."

You hadn't expected a quiz. "Because the collar needs to hold its shape near the face. If that frays, it reads as sloppy. But the hem's meant to look like it's still becoming something. Like the piece hasn't decided if it's finished."

He looked at you for a second too long. "That's a better answer than half my actual design team gives me."

"I doubt that."

"I don't say things I don't mean." He set the book down, flat on the table between you, and reached for a spare pad of tracing paper instead, sliding it toward you along with a pencil. "Draft it properly. Real proportions, not doodle scale. I want to see it like you'd actually pattern it."

"Tonight?"

"Do you have somewhere better to be?"

You didn't, and you both knew it, so you pulled the stool closer and got to work, and for a while neither of you said much, just the scratch of pencils and the occasional correction from him, sharp but not unkind, pointing out where your seam allowance was optimistic or where the drape wouldn't hang the way you wanted at that grain line.

"You've done this before," you said at one point, surprised at how naturally he read the sketch.

"I started exactly where you are," he said. "Hallway table. Sketchbook nobody asked to see." He didn't look up from the paper. "Somebody caught me with it too."

That stopped your pencil for a second. "Is that why you're doing this? Paying it forward?"

"Don't flatter yourself." But there was no edge to it, just that same half smile you'd learned to read as him being pleased and not wanting to admit it outright. "I'm doing this because the coat is good, and I don't like good ideas sitting in a notebook instead of on a body."

You went back to the draft, warmth climbing up the back of your neck that had nothing to do with the studio heating.

"So what happens now?" you asked, mostly to fill the silence, not expecting a real answer.

He leaned back, arms crossed, watching you correct the hemline like he'd been right about it all along. "Now you keep styling me during the day. And you keep coming here after." He tapped the sketchbook. "This doesn't stay in a hallway anymore."

"And if I say no?"

"You won't." He said it simply, no arrogance in it, just certainty, the kind that came from watching you not say no to a single thing he'd asked of you in two months. "You didn't take this job to fold jackets forever. Neither of us is pretending otherwise anymore."

You didn't have an answer for that, so you didn't give him one. You just kept drafting, aware of him watching you do it, aware that whatever this had been that morning, table in a hallway, name on a laminated card, it wasn't going to stay that simple for very much longer.

Several months in, and the job had stopped feeling like a job most days. You knew James's schedule better than he did half the time, knew which fabrics he'd reach for before he touched them, knew the difference between his real silences and the ones that meant he was three seconds from changing his mind about everything.

Which was why the phone call at nine at night threw you off balance more than it should have.

"I need you here," he said, no greeting, no warm up.

"Now? It's nine, James."

"Now." A pause, papers shuffling somewhere on his end. "I moved New York up. I'm flying out tomorrow instead of the day after, and I have exactly zero time in the morning to deal with any of this, so we're doing it tonight."

You were already reaching for your coat before you'd fully agreed to anything.

His apartment was a mess when you got there, garment racks half pulled apart, three different suit bags draped over the couch, his laptop open on the counter with what looked like a dozen unanswered emails glowing on the screen. He let you in without much of a greeting either, just stepped back and gestured at the chaos like it explained itself.

"Okay," you said, dropping your bag, already scanning the racks. "Talk me through what New York actually needs. Press days, the board dinner, or both."

"Both. And a flight I'm taking in twelve hours that I haven't packed for."

You got to work, pulling pieces, checking them against the weather he'd need, the schedule his assistant had forwarded you an hour ago in a panic. He answered your questions when you asked them, but distracted, half his attention still on his phone, the rest of it somewhere you couldn't quite place.

"I need you at my place by six tomorrow," you said, laying a folded shirt into the case. "Before the car. I want the last check done in daylight, not under these lamps."

"Six," he repeated, but he wasn't looking at the shirt. He wasn't looking at much of anything in the case at all.

You glanced up to see what had him distracted and caught him looking at your chest. You felt it before you fully registered it, the specific, prickling awareness of being looked at somewhere you hadn't given permission for, and you crossed your arms over yourself without deciding to, a small, instinctive fold that made his eyes finally lift back up to yours.

Neither of you said anything about it. You went back to folding.

"You look beautiful tonight," he said, quiet, like it had slipped out sideways from whatever he'd actually meant to say.

"James, we should finish the case before-"

He was already closer than he'd been a second ago. His hand came up, just barely, brushing along your jaw, tucking back a piece of hair that hadn't even been out of place. You went still, every instinct you had short-circuiting at once.

"James."

"You always do this," he said, low, not really answering you. "Beautiful and you have no idea. It's infuriating."

He tipped your chin up slightly, and for one long second you understood exactly what was about to happen, felt the space between you go from professional to something else entirely, his face dipping closer, close enough that you could feel his breath before his mouth ever got there.

You turned your face half an inch. Just enough.

"The Milan fabric," you said, too fast, too bright, stepping back and reaching for the swatch card like it was a life raft. "For the board dinner. I still think the darker one photographs better under the hotel lighting than what your assistant pulled."

He didn't move for a second, just watched you retreat into work like it was the only language you trusted right now. Then he exhaled, something rueful in it, and stepped back too, running a hand through his hair.

"Right," he said. "The fabric."

"The darker one," you said again, holding it up between you like a wall. "Trust me."

"I do," he said, and it landed heavier than the moment probably meant it to. He took the swatch from your hand, careful not to let your fingers touch this time, and set it into the case himself. "Fine. The darker one."

You finished the packing faster after that, both of you keeping the conversation strictly to itineraries and weather and which shoes wouldn't survive a New York sidewalk, neither of you mentioning the six inches that had almost closed between your faces twenty minutes earlier.

It was nearly midnight when he walked you to the door, and you were exhausted enough that you'd almost forgotten your six o'clock start until he said it.

"Actually, don't come at six."

You blinked. "James, I need to do the final check before you—"

"You're not ready," he said, and something about the way he said it made your face go hot, like he wasn't only talking about tomorrow morning. "You've got maybe four hours before you'd need to leave your place, and you look like you're about to fall asleep standing up. Stay in the office tomorrow instead. Handle things from there. I'll manage the case myself."

"That's not how this works."

"It's how it's working tonight." He held the door open, and there was something gentler in his face now than there'd been all evening, gentler than you were used to from him. "Get some sleep, Y/N. That's an order, not a request."

You didn't have the energy left to argue with him, so you didn't, just nodded and stepped out into the hallway, painfully aware of him watching you go, and even more aware that you hadn't stopped thinking about his hand on your jaw the entire walk to the elevator.

The car ride to the airport was too quiet. James had his phone out, scrolling through nothing in particular, but his mind kept snagging on the same six inches from the night before, on the way she'd turned her face just enough, just barely, and reached for a swatch card like it could save her.

He didn't blame her. That was the part that irritated him most. She'd been right to step back. He was the one who'd forgotten himself in a room full of half-packed suits, who'd reached for her face like he had any right to it.

You always do this. Beautiful and you have no idea.

He'd meant it. That was the problem. He hadn't meant to say it, but once it was out he couldn't take it back, and then his hand had moved before his sense had caught up with it, and for one second, one full second, he'd thought she might let him.

She hadn't. And he'd told her not to come in this morning, which in hindsight was probably as much about giving himself room to breathe as it was about her needing sleep.

His phone buzzed. A text from her, sent twenty minutes ago, sitting unanswered because he hadn't known what to say back.

Confirmed the board dinner seating with the Milan office. Also moved your Thursday call to accommodate the flight back. Let me know if you need anything else handled from here.

Efficient. Professional. Not a single word out of place, nothing that acknowledged last night had happened at all. He read it twice, then typed back something equally clean.

Good. Thank you.

He almost added more. He didn't.

By the time he landed, he'd convinced himself the distance was a mercy. For both of them. It didn't feel like one.

The office felt strange without him in it. You'd gotten so used to your days revolving around his schedule, his fittings, the low hum of being near him more hours than not, that the quiet of your hallway table almost rang in your ears.

You buried yourself in the seating charts, anything that kept your hands occupied and your head out of the previous night, but it kept surfacing anyway. His hand on your jaw. The half inch of space you'd closed the gap on, on purpose, because if you hadn't moved you weren't sure you would have wanted to.

Get some sleep, Y/N. That's an order, not a request.

He'd never used your name like that before. Not stylist, not the clipped instructions you were used to. Just your name, soft, like it belonged to him a little.

You typed out the update about the seating chart three times before you got the tone right, professional, brief, nothing that gave away the fact you'd replayed last night more than you'd like to admit. When his reply came back, two words, you stared at it longer than two words deserved.

Delphine stopped by your table around noon, dropping off a stack of fabric samples for the next collection meeting, and paused when she caught your expression.

"You look like you didn't sleep," she said.

"Busy night," you said, which wasn't a lie, exactly.

Delphine studied you a beat too long, the way she had a habit of doing, like she filed away more than she let on. "He does that," she said finally, not unkindly. "Makes people busy. Keeps them close without ever quite saying why."

You looked up. "What do you mean?"

But she only shook her head, patted the stack of samples, and walked off toward the design floor, leaving you with a question you weren't sure you wanted answered, and a phone screen still open to two words that had somehow managed to say more than either of you intended.

James came back from New York and, strangely, took the next day off entirely. No fittings, no schedule, nothing on your calendar with his name on it for the first time in months. You told yourself it was jet lag. You didn't quite believe it.

He called you three times before noon.

"James, is everything okay?" you answered the first time, already reaching for a notepad out of habit, expecting a schedule change, a wardrobe emergency, something.

"Fine. Just checking in." A pause, too long for someone who was fine. "What are you doing right now?"

"Working. Milan follow ups." You waited for the actual reason for the call. It didn't come. "Was there something you needed?"

"No. Just wanted to hear how the office was running without me in it."

You frowned at your phone after he hung up, not sure what to make of a call that had accomplished nothing at all.

The second call was worse. He asked what you'd had for lunch. The third, later in the afternoon, he didn't really ask anything, just talked, about New York, about a restaurant he'd gone to, about nothing that needed your input at all, and you sat there at your hallway table with the phone against your ear, half working, half wondering why the creative director of the company was using you as a sounding board on his day off.

You didn't bring it up. You weren't sure how you would have.

He was back in the office the next day, and the schedule returned to something like normal, right up until nine at night, when most of the floor had cleared out and you were packing up your table, and he appeared at the end of the hallway like he'd been waiting for the building to empty first.

"Stay a minute," he said. "I need you in my office."

You followed him down, garment bag still over your arm out of habit, notepad ready, expecting a New York debrief or a change to next week's schedule. Instead he shut the door behind you, and the room felt smaller than it had that morning.

"James, what did you need?"

"Nothing work related," he admitted, and stepped closer, the way he had in his apartment the night before New York, hand reaching for your face again, slower this time, like he'd learned something from getting stopped the first time and wanted to make sure you couldn't stop him twice.

Your pulse spiked, half of it not unwanted, and that scared you more than anything else. Because underneath it, sharp and sudden, was a different thought entirely. What if this is nothing. What if I'm someone he calls when he's bored, someone he touches because I'm convenient and close and always available, and what does that make me if I let him. Delphine's voice from two days ago surfaced right along with it. He does that. Makes people busy. Keeps them close without ever quite saying why.

You stepped back before his hand reached your jaw this time.

"James—"

"You keep doing that," he said, quiet, not angry, almost tired. "Stepping back."

"Maybe I have a reason to," you said, and your voice came out steadier than you felt. "You call me all day on your day off about nothing. You bring me into your office at nine at night. I don't know what I'm supposed to make of that."

Something flickered across his face, like he wanted to argue, or explain, and hadn't decided which yet, but before either of you got the chance, the door opened.

One of the interns stood there, a portfolio clutched to her chest, wide eyed at having clearly walked in on something she hadn't expected. "I'm so sorry, I didn't realize you were still, I just, I wanted to submit my collection sketches before the deadline tomorrow and I saw the light on—"

"It's fine," James said, stepping back from you smoothly, voice sliding back into its usual, unbothered register like nothing had happened at all. "Leave it on the desk. I'll look at it tonight."

The intern set the portfolio down, glanced between the two of you with the particular caution of someone who suspected she'd interrupted more than a meeting, and excused herself as fast as she'd come in.

The door clicked shut. The silence afterward felt louder than before.

"I should go," you said, already reaching for your bag.

"Y/N."

"Goodnight, James," you said, and left before he could stop you a second time, walking fast down the empty hallway, past your own table, past the laminated nameplate that suddenly felt like it belonged to a version of you from months ago, one who hadn't had to ask herself yet what she actually was to him.

The rumor moved faster than anything on the actual production calendar.

By the time you got to your table Thursday morning, two of the junior pattern cutters stopped talking the second you walked past, which was how you always knew something was circulating before you actually heard it. It took until lunch for someone to say it to your face.

"So are you and James actually a thing, or...?" one of the fabric buyers asked, not unkindly, just curious, like she was asking about the weather.

"No," you said, flat, immediate. "Where is this coming from?"

"The intern mentioned something. About Tuesday night. His office." The buyer shrugged, already backing off at your expression. "Sorry. Figured you'd heard."

You hadn't. And the fact that you hadn't, that it had apparently made its way around three departments before it reached you, made your stomach drop somewhere unpleasant.

Your first thought, ugly and immediate, was Delphine.

You didn't have proof. You just had two months of watching her stand a little closer to James than the dress code technically allowed, blouses unbuttoned one notch further whenever he was in the room, a laugh that got louder and more musical the second his attention landed anywhere near her. It wasn't hard to imagine her deciding a rumor might do what proximity hadn't.

He does that. Makes people busy. Keeps them close without ever quite saying why.

Maybe she'd meant it as a warning. Maybe she'd meant it as the first domino.

You spent the rest of the day with your head down, answering only what needed answering, aware of eyes on you in a way that made the hallway table feel like a stage. You caught Delphine watching you once, across the studio floor, and couldn't read a single thing off her face.

What surprised you was who didn't treat you differently.

The pattern cutters who'd gone quiet that morning came by your table in the afternoon with a swatch question that didn't really need asking, an obvious excuse to check in. One of the senior tailors, a woman named Odile who'd barely said ten words to you in two months, sat down across from you at lunch without asking and said, simply, "People talk. Don't let it move you."

"I'm not moving," you said, though you weren't sure that was true.

"Good." Odile unwrapped her sandwich like the conversation was over, then added, almost as an afterthought, "For what it's worth, nobody who's actually watched you work believes it. You're too careful for that kind of mess. It's obvious to anyone paying attention."

It shouldn't have helped as much as it did. You held onto it anyway.

By the end of the day you'd had enough. You found the intern near the sample room, the same one who'd walked in on James's office two nights ago, and pulled her aside before she could duck away.

"Whatever you think you saw," you said, keeping your voice low and even, "you saw a work conversation that ran late. That's it. If I hear my name attached to anything else, I'm going to Delphine, and then to James, and you can explain it to both of them yourself."

The intern went pale. "I didn't mean for it to get around like this, I just, I mentioned it to one person and-"

"Then un-mention it," you said. "To everyone."

She nodded fast, and you walked away before you had to watch her decide whether to actually do it.

James found you at your table just before you left for the day, standing a careful two feet back, hands in his pockets, none of Tuesday night's closeness anywhere in his posture.

"I heard," he said.

"I figured you would."

"I can shut it down. Say something to the floor, make it clear there's nothing"

"Don't," you said, sharper than you meant to. "That'll just confirm there's something worth denying. Let it die on its own."

He studied you for a second, something unreadable behind his eyes, like he wanted to ask if you were angry at him specifically, or just at the situation, and didn't quite have the nerve.

"Y/N-"

"I have to go, James," you said, already shouldering your bag, and this time he let you leave without following, though you felt his eyes on your back the entire length of the hallway, past the sample room, past the closed door of Delphine's office, all the way to the elevator.

Milan Fashion Week had a way of swallowing entire weeks whole, and this year it swallowed yours completely.

James's assistant quit two weeks before the show, unable to keep up with a schedule that changed itself three times a day, and rather than replace him in time, James simply redirected all of it onto you. Flights. Hotel confirmations. Restaurant reservations for dinners you weren't invited to. You went from managing what he wore to managing his entire existence, and by the time your plane landed in Milan you were running on airport espresso and the sheer refusal to let anything fall through the cracks.

"You didn't have to do all of this yourself," James said, watching you juggle two phones and a printed itinerary in the back of the car from the airport.

"Somebody had to," you said, not looking up from the screen. "Your assistant left a mess. I'm just cleaning it up."

"I know. I'm saying thank you."

You glanced up at that, surprised enough that you nearly missed a text from the hotel confirming his suite. "You're welcome," you said, and went back to work before either of you could make anything more of it.

The morning of the final show, he told you that you'd be sitting front row, photographed, not backstage doing his final check the way you always did.

"You've done more for this show than half the people who'll be sitting in that row," he said, "and I'm done pretending otherwise."

You didn't have anything to argue with, so you nodded, and told yourself it was just recognition.

The show went well. A reporter caught him near the exit afterward, asking who you were. "That's Y/N," he said easily. "My stylist. The reason I look presentable at all this season." The right answer, the professional one. It should have felt fine. It felt smaller than you wanted it to.

The after party was at a rooftop venue near the Duomo, and when you got back to your hotel room to change, there was a garment bag already waiting on your bed that you hadn't packed.

You called him before you'd even unzipped it. "James, what is this?"

"A dress," he said, like that answered anything. "You've been in the same three work outfits all week. Wear it tonight."

"I don't need you dressing me. That's supposed to be my job, not yours."

"Consider it a professional courtesy," he said, and you could hear the smile in it even through the phone. "You style me every day. Let me have one night."

You should have argued harder. You didn't.

The dress fit like it had been made for you, because, you realized once you saw the label, it had. A custom Margiela piece, the kind that didn't exist on any rack, structured through the shoulder the exact way you'd have drafted it yourself if anyone had asked. You stood in front of the mirror longer than you meant to before heading down.

The party blurred, the way Milan nights did, champagne and industry faces and music too loud to talk properly over. James kept finding his way back to you between conversations, a hand at the small of your back when he introduced you to someone, a glance across the room whenever you drifted too far. You told yourself it was normal. You didn't fully believe it.

By one in the morning the crowd had thinned, and he found you near the edge of the terrace, jacket long gone, tie loosened, looking more unguarded than you'd seen him all week.

"Come up to my room," he said. Quiet. No teasing in it this time.

You felt your pulse jump, the same old warning bells going off, Delphine's voice, the rumor, the intern, all of it crowding in at once. "James-"

"Just to talk," he said, reading exactly what was crossing your face. "That's all I'm asking tonight."

You looked at him for a long moment, the city lights behind him, the dress he'd chosen for you settling against your skin, and you still weren't sure, not really, what you were walking into.

But you went anyway.

The room was quiet except for the hum of Milan’s night traffic fifteen floors below. James didn’t speak for a long moment. His gaze moved from the hollow of my throat down the plunge of the neckline, over the way the fabric clung to my waist, and stopped at the slit that ran up my right thigh.

“I was right,” he said finally.

“About what?”

“The color. It does exactly what I thought it would do against your skin.” He reached out and traced the edge of the neckline with his index finger, not touching me, just the fabric. “Which is make it look like you’ve been dipped in something precious.”

A laugh bubbled up in my throat, half nerves, half pleasure. “You sound like a creative director.”

“I am a creative director, and you are wearing nine months of my team’s labor. The silk was woven in Como. The dye bath took fourteen tries to get the undertone right. The construction has three separate internal corsetry panels that you can’t see but that are absolutely essential to how it falls.”

“You’re giving me the spec sheet.”

“I’m telling you why I couldn’t stop staring at you tonight.” He withdrew his hand. “The dress is extraordinary. But you’re the reason it works.”

“The wine,” I said now, watching him open the bottle. “Is that part of the spec sheet too?”

“Barolo. 2016. I had it sent up.” He poured two glasses, handed me one. “You’re nervous.”

“I’m not.”

“Your knuckles are white on the stem.”

I looked down. Loosened my grip. “Maybe a little nervous.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my boss. Technically. Sort of.”

“I’m not your boss.” He settled onto the edge of the chaise, glass balanced on his knee. “I’m the creative director of a house you freelance for. That’s a collaboration, not a hierarchy.”

“That’s a very convenient distinction.”

“I’m very good at convenient distinctions.” He took a sip. “But if you’re uncomfortable, I’ll finish this glass and go.”

Was he bluffing? I couldn’t tell. James’s face was a study in controlled neutrality the same expression he wore during fittings, evaluating a hemline, deciding whether a sleeve should be taken in three millimeters or left alone.

I sat down next to him on the chaise. Close enough that my thigh, exposed by the slit, was maybe two inches from his trousered leg.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” I said. “I’m deciding.”

“Deciding what?”

“Whether I want to be here because you told me to be, or because I want to be.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. Appreciation, maybe. Or surprise. “And?”

“Both.”

I took a drink. The Barolo was dark and tannic, and it warmed my chest going down.

James set his glass on the side table. He turned toward me, one arm draped over the back of the chaise, and I could feel the heat of his body even through the space between us.

“I’ve watched you for three seasons,” he said. “In fittings, in rehearsals, on the runway. You have a way of moving that most models never learn. It’s not just walking. It’s inhabiting.” His voice dropped. “I’ve wanted to see if you inhabit other things the same way.”

The air in the room thickened.

“Other things like what?” I asked.

“Like this.” He gestured between us. “Like being in a room with someone who has been thinking about you for nine months and is finally done pretending he hasn’t been.”

My pulse beat in my throat.

“You hid it well,” I said.

“I’m paid to hide things well. Fashion is just controlled revelation.” He leaned closer. “But I’m off the clock.”

I set my glass down next to his. My fingers were steady now. The decision had been made, somewhere between the zipper and the Barolo.

“Then stop hiding.”

James didn’t move for three full seconds. Then his hand came up and cupped the side of my jaw, his thumb resting on my cheekbone. His palm was warm and dry and slightly calloused on the pads from handling fabrics and pins and scissors for decades.

He kissed me.

Not tentatively. Not like a first kiss. He kissed me slow, deliberate, his mouth slanting over mine with a pressure that asked and answered in the same motion.

My lips parted.

His tongue traced the edge of my lower lip, then slid inside. The taste of wine. The faint bitterness of espresso from earlier. And underneath, something that was just James.

His other hand found the back of my neck, fingers threading into the hair at my nape. He tilted my head, deepened the kiss, and a sound escaped my throat a small noise, half surprise, half wanting.

He pulled back just enough to speak against my mouth. “That sound. I want to hear it again.”

“Then do something worth making it for.”

His eyes flashed. He stood, pulling me up with him, and then his hands were on my waist and he was walking me backward toward the bed.

The mattress hit the backs of my knees. I sat, looking up at him. The room was lit only by the bedside lamp and the city glow through the window, and the shadows carved his face into something almost architectural cheekbones sharp, jaw tight, eyes hooded.

“Lie back,” he said.

I did. The duvet was white and crisp and cool against my bare shoulders. James stood at the edge of the bed, looking down at me, and I felt like a piece of art being appraised. Not objectified, exactly. Studied. Admired with an attention so intense it was almost clinical.

“You have no idea what this dress does to your proportions,” he said. “The way the waist hits exactly at your natural curve. The way the slit breaks the line at precisely the right point.” He knelt on the edge of the bed, one knee, then the other. “I designed it thinking about your measurements. Your walk. The way you hold your shoulders back just slightly when you’re confident.”

“You designed it for me.”

“I designed it on you. In my head. Every time I looked at the pattern, I saw your body.”

The confession landed in my stomach like a swallow of whiskey.

James bent over me. He didn’t kiss my mouth. He kissed the hollow of my throat, just above where the neckline ended. His lips were soft and dry and they lingered, pressing just enough to feel my pulse.

Then lower. The slope of my breast, above the fabric. Then the inner curve, where the plunge ended and the dress began. He kissed the boundary between skin and silk.

“I want to take this off you,” he said. “But I also want to leave it on. Do you understand? I want to fuck you while you’re wearing six months of my work. I want to see the fabric move.”

My breathing had gone shallow. “Leave it on, then.”

He made a sound low, approving and kissed me again. This time it was deeper, messier, his tongue sliding against mine while his hand found the slit in the dress and pushed it aside.

His palm met my thigh. Hot. Wide. He dragged it upward, over my hip, and his fingers hooked into the waistband of my underwear.

He didn’t pull it down. He just rested his fingers there, inside the elastic, waiting.

“Tell me what you want,” he said.

“You know what I want.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

I lifted my hips. Pressed into his hand. “I want your fingers. Inside me. Now.”

His eyes closed for a fraction of a second, and when they opened again, the restraint had cracked. His hand moved.

He pulled my underwear down slowly, dragging the lace over my thighs, my knees, my ankles. He dropped it off the side of the bed.

Then his palm was on the inside of my thigh, pressing outward, and his mouth was on my neck, and his fingers were tracing a line up through the slickness that had gathered between my legs.

“You’re wet,” he said, and the word was almost reverent. “You’ve been wet since the zipper.”

“Since before the zipper. Since you looked at me across the courtyard.”

He groaned. The sound vibrated against my throat.

His middle finger circled my clit once, twice, a slow orbit that made my hips jerk. Then he slid lower, parting me, and pushed inside.

One finger. Knuckle-deep. He curled it forward, finding the spot behind my pubic bone with an accuracy that made my back arch off the mattress.

“There,” I breathed.

“I know.”

He withdrew. Pushed back in. Two fingers this time, stretching me, and his thumb settled on my clit with a pressure that was firm without being urgent.

He fucked me with his fingers slowly. Deliberately. His mouth never left my neck, my collarbone, the upper curve of my breast. Every time his thumb circled, a pulse of heat shot through my pelvis, up my spine, into the base of my skull.

I grabbed his wrist. Not to stop him. To hold him there.

“More,” I said.

“Not yet.”

His fingers curled again, and I made the sound he’d wanted a high, breathy moan that I couldn’t have suppressed if I’d tried.

“That one,” he murmured against my skin. “That’s my favorite so far.”

He added a third finger, and the stretch made me gasp. He worked me open slowly, his thumb still tracing lazy circles, his mouth moving down to the neckline of the dress.

He bit the fabric. Actually bit it, his teeth closing on the silk, and tugged.

The neckline shifted. Exposed more of my breast. He sucked the skin there, hard enough to leave a mark, and I grabbed the back of his head and held him against me.

“You’re going to ruin the dress,” I managed.

“I’ll make another.”

His fingers pumped harder now, faster, the wet sounds filling the quiet room. I was climbing toward something, my thighs tensing, my stomach tightening

He stopped.

Pulled his fingers out. Lifted his head.

I made a sound of pure frustration. “James.”

“Not yet,” he said again. “Not like this. I want you to come around my cock the first time.”

The first time. As if there would be a second. A third.

He stood up, unbuttoning his trousers. The cashmere sweater came off over his head, and I saw his chest for the first time lean, defined, a scattering of dark hair across his pectorals. A scar along his ribcage, pale and not quite thin. He was real, a man in his twenties who looked like he’d spent years bent over worktables and sketchbooks and the bodies of fabrics.

His trousers dropped. His boxer briefs followed.

His cock sprang free, thick and flushed, curving slightly upward. He wrapped a hand around it, stroked once, and I watched a bead of pre-come glisten at the tip.

“Condom?” I asked.

“In my wallet. On the console.”

He retrieved it, rolled it on with practiced efficiency. Then he was back on the bed, kneeling between my legs, and the weight of him pressed the mattress down on either side of my hips.

He pushed the slit of the dress wider. The fabric bunched around my waist, leaving me exposed from the hips down, still encased in ink-blue silk from the waist up.

“Beautiful,” he said. “You have no idea how many times I’ve imagined this exact image.”

He positioned himself. The head of his cock pressed against my entrance, and I was so wet that he slid forward an inch without resistance.

He stopped.

Looked at me.

“Ready?”

“I’ve been ready.”

He pushed inside.

The stretch was slow and deep. He entered me inch by inch, letting me adjust, his jaw tight with restraint. I felt every ridge, every vein, the thick heat of him filling me until he was seated to the hilt and his hips were flush against my thighs.

We stayed there for a breath.

Two breaths.

Neither of us moving.

“Look at me,” he said.

I opened my eyes I hadn’t realized I’d closed them and met his gaze. His pupils were blown wide, the dark almost swallowing the brown. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

He withdrew. Thrust back in.

The rhythm he set was nothing like his fingers. His fingers had been clinical, precise, a study in control. This was something else. This was a man who had spent six months maintaining composure and was now letting it shatter.

He fucked me hard and slow, each thrust a full-body motion that made the headboard tap against the wall. The dress bunched further. The slit tore another inch. Neither of us cared.

“Tell me how it feels,” he said, his voice strained.

“You first.”

“Like I’ve been waiting my whole life to be inside you.” He thrust again, deeper. “Your turn.”

I couldn’t form words for a moment. His cock was hitting a place inside me that made everything go white at the edges. “Like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

He kissed me. Hard. Teeth clashing. Then he pulled out, flipped me onto my stomach, and pulled my hips up.

The dress’s plunge neckline dipped forward, exposing my breasts to the cool air. James ran his palm down my spine, over the fabric, over the bare skin below it, and settled on my ass.

“The back of this dress,” he said, “was designed to frame your spine. I spent three weeks getting the strap placement right. Do you know why?”

I shook my head, face pressed into the duvet.

“Because I imagined doing this.”

He entered me from behind.

The angle was deeper. Different. I cried out, my fingers clawing at the sheets, and he leaned over me, one hand braced next to my shoulder, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise.

He fucked me with a rhythm that was losing its steadiness. His breathing was ragged, his hips snapping forward, and every thrust pushed a sound out of me a moan, a gasp, a half-formed word.

“You feel-” He broke off. Groaned. “You feel like everything.”

I pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts, and the slick sound of our bodies was obscene and perfect. The dress had twisted around my torso. One of the shoulder straps slipped down my arm, and he grabbed it, pulled it further, exposing my breast.

His hand found my nipple. Rolled it. Pinched.

The dual sensation him inside me, his fingers on my breast sent me spiraling toward the edge.

“I’m close,” I gasped.

“Good. Come for me.”

“Not without you.”

“I’m right behind you. I promise.” He thrust deeper, harder, and his fingers slid around to my clit, pressing in tight circles. “Come.”

The word was a command, and my body obeyed.

The orgasm hit me like a wave of heat, starting low in my pelvis and radiating outward through my limbs, my chest, my throat. I cried out a sound that was half his name, half nothing at all—and my inner walls clenched around him in rhythmic pulses.

He felt it. Groaned. His thrusts became erratic, desperate, and then he was coming too, his hips pressed flush against me, his cock pulsing inside me as he emptied himself with a sound that was almost pained.

We stayed there, frozen, breathing hard.

Then he withdrew. Rolled off the condom, tied it, dropped it in the bin by the bed. I collapsed onto my stomach, the dress a wreckage of silk around me.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke.

Then James laughed a soft, breathless sound. “I think we owe the seamstresses an apology.”

I turned my head to look at him. He was propped on one elbow, his hair disheveled, sweat cooling on his chest. He looked younger like this. Less like a creative director and more like a man who’d just had extraordinary sex.

“The dress survived,” I said. “Mostly.”

“Barely.” He reached over and traced the torn slit. “I’ll make you another one.”

“You said that already.”

“I meant it.”

He leaned down and kissed my shoulder, then my jaw, then the corner of my mouth. It was gentler now. Slower. The kind of kiss that came after, not before.

“Stay,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.” He settled onto his back, one arm draped over his eyes. “Give me ten minutes. Then I want to taste you properly.”

My stomach flipped. “Properly?”

“I didn’t get to do nearly enough with my mouth.” He lifted his arm, looked at me sideways. “And I’ve been thinking about it for nine months. You owe me.”

“I owe you?”

“You owe me the chance to watch you fall apart against my tongue.”

The words landed hot in my chest. I shifted onto my side, facing him, and the ruined dress rustled like a secret.

“Ten minutes,” I said. “Then you’d better make it worth the wait.”

He smiled. It was the first unguarded smile I’d ever seen from him no irony, no calculation, just a man pleased with the way the night was unfolding.

“I will,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

The city hummed outside the window. The Barolo sat half-drunk on the console. Somewhere in the room, my underwear was still balled on the floor where he’d dropped it.

I closed my eyes and let the minutes pass.

Nine minutes later I was counting, James’s hand found my thigh under the rumpled duvet. His fingers traced upward, slow and deliberate, and when they reached the slick heat between my legs, I was already wet again.

He made a sound of satisfaction.

“Time’s up,” he said, and slid down the bed.

A/N: okay so I know I’m late posting this BUT I have an excuse I promise 😭 I was literally trapped at a wedding all day/night... but the second I got home, I sat down to upload this for you guys!! James had me working overtime with this one ˚.𝜗𝜚 anyways, hope it was worth the wait! Please reblog.

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