✚ Rapper!Martin x fan!Reader ⋮ oneshot ⋮ bananagirl masterlist
desc - you’ve been a fan of martins music since before he was on all streaming platforms, since before he was doing live performances and headlining for famous artists. And one day he suddenly deleted your favorite niche song of his off all platforms and you thought the best thing to do is to DM him about it, even though you knew he would never see it in the floods of all his DMs.
note - listen I know I said I was going on hiatus but I got really bored and js wanted to post smth so I made this BUT AS SOON AS I POST THIS I WILL OFFICIALLY BE ON HIATUS I NEED TO GET OFF TUMBLR HOLY SHIT ITS AN ADDICTION 😭😭🙏🙏
synopsis : as a childhood friend, martin has truly loved you, tears and all. he knows exactly what you've been through growing up and chose to stay with you, by your side. as you both started college, addictions came in the guise of relief due to unprocessed grief and pain, terrible friendships and a situationship whom you think you could fall for. how does martin feel about the changed version of you??? will he let it slide or still fight for you? cause truth is, he always has been.
genre : non idol uni student!martin x uni student!reader, heavy angst, mature themes, childhood bestfriends to toxic situationships to ??
warnings!! : pg 16+, slightly suggestive, reader is toxic, manipulative, reader smokes a lot, mentions of drugs and substances, reader goes back and forth with martin and another guy, lowk cheating ( I DO NOT CONDONE THIS TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP, THIS IS ALL FICTIONAL AND FOR THE PLOT ), mentions of physical and emotional abuse, trauma, profanities, martin is yearner at its finest.
note : i can't believe y'all acc liking this plot, im so honoured to get so many likes reblogs enol YOU GUYSSS🥹🥹 are the sweetest ever, thank you for your love. im really crashing out real bad yall im this close to entering uni so ive been behind on the blr but hope yall liked this ☹️☹️🫶🏻
more under the cut!!
don't like, don't read!!
wc :5.6k
CH 3
"I can't get you out of my head Y/N, you're so intoxicating." Mario says, blowing out a puff of his cigarette. You smile at his sentence, as he passed the cigarette to you.
You're on his couch, his one arm around you, as you're pretending to watch a movie, but really, it's tension. You used to live for it, the heat of it all, but now it's not what you want.
You're still thinking of Martin, shockingly. The way he heard you out last night, the way his touch was so gentle and tender on you that you could almost tell him you loved him. You could always hear the concern he had for you in his tone, in his words. You realise now, how much he's made himself about you.
You feel the after effect of disgust all over your body, when you told him how much your dad yelled at you, stating your problems instead of helping and looking out for you. Pieces of your heart chipped away last night and the horrifying memory of it. It broke you even more that your mother, cruel as she always is, suddenly defending your father in front of him when you thought she would defend you like she did when you first told her your grades.
You didn't fail. You know that, and so does Martin and in fact, so do your parents. It's just that there's a very different way on how they react to it. It's only Martin who's fully aware of what you're going through while your parents don't. And it's within the moment, that Martin pulled you into his arms, his touch ever so soothing on your back, whispering, "You did amazing and you should give yourself that credit."
Some nights it would hurt, that Martin saw things in you that your own family couldn't. Things wouldn't have been the way they are now, had you felt the maternal love you longed for. But sometimes, it's a bitter pill to swallow that you're one of those kids who's life is a testament of how miserable you are, only cause you've fought so long for the love you wished you had. It hurt knowing that yes, love shouldn't be brought but you had to buy it from your own family for them to love you. The damage is so heavy, that you don't recognise what it means if someone really loves you truly.
You know the difference yourself, you've seen other people being loved. It's not always a perfect way, but it's seen and it's felt and it's pretty real and evident if a person loves something or somebody. And you've grown to be utterly jealous that in every path you went, every opportunity you were given to finally earn your parents' love, they shut you off and tell you to do better. Be better. That's all you hear from them.
Martin came through for you, in so many ways, and for that you'll be grateful. It's just your cruel heart that can never give him back the love he deserves. Why? Because you don't know what it feels like to love someone deeply when you weren't loved yourself.
Mario is a sweet guy, he's very expressive when he tries to show how much you mean to him. And because you've seen this happen with other people, you're mistaking and deluding yourself into thinking that maybe this is the love you're looking for. That when people have something in common, they're bound to fall in love. And that's what you thought was happening when you and him first talked. That just because he knows your pain himself, you and him are destined.
Today doesn't feel like how it normally did whenever you were with him. Today felt so numbing and dull, that you wanted to run back to Martin.
"Hey, I'm heading out." You tell Mario, getting up from his couch.
He lets out another puff before saying, "You just got here?" With his doe eyes, staring right at you.
"I don't feel too well at the moment. I think I gotta take a nap." You say, heading towards the door.
"You can take a nap here, we can cuddle for sometime too." He says, with a small smile, hoping you'll say yes.
"Nah, it's okay, I want my bed."
"You know I can't argue with that, your bed is amazing." He adds.
You laugh before placing a chaste kiss to his lips, "I'll see you around, yeah?"
He nods adorably. You're heading towards the door, hand on the knob before he says something.
"Hey, you know I care for you right? Whenever you need to smoke to get you thought out of your head and all? I'm always gonna be here."
"Of course, thank you for that."
"You're mine, okay? No one else can like you like I do. And no one else understands us better than each other so we gotta look out for each other more. So don't go around, kissing someone else. " He adds, a hint of possessiveness and teasing in his tone.
Usually you wouldn't care before whenever he'd say something like this, but now a chill just ran down your spine at his words. Weird.
You simply hum, like you always do before leaving his smoke filled appartment.
You're heading towards the college dorms, pondering as to why you were scared when he said that. Did he finally figure out that you were with Martin too? You hope not.
Instead of going to your dorm, you head towards Martin's, opening his door with the spare key he gave you.
He really wants you, doesn't he? Cause it's not everyday you see a man give his dorm keys to a best friend who doesn't live with him, let alone a girl unless they were together.
You enter his room, adoring the way his hair curves just around his face as he's sleeping on his bed. His lashes fluttering in the process. You think, how adorable can this guy be?
You take your shoes off, before climbing into bed with him which causes him to stir in his sleep. You put a hand on his chest, soothing him back to sleep before he gently lifts your hand and wraps it around his own waist, snuggling into you. You open your arms fully, before he instinctively leans into your touch, his head on your chest as you wrap you arms and your legs around him before pulling the duvet over yourselves.
He hums into you, his head in your neck, placing a small cute kiss there. You laugh silently at his antics.
You bring him in closer, feeling how warm he is. You can hear how loud his heartbeat is. He was always like that. Excited and enthusiastic whenever you'd come around.
You let out a content sigh, your mind drifting to your hidden thoughts, of how you can get used to this sight. Waking up every morning, with you in Martin's arms and him in yours, as he would place a kiss on your lips, calling you the best thing to ever exist. Telling you how much he loves you and you would tell him you'd love him more.
Wait.
You'd love him more.
Oh my God, you love Martin.
That's why you didn't feel anything when you were in Mario's arms today. Because what you had for him was slowly fading away and you could see it but you didn't admit it cause you're scared of what he'll say to you or worse, what he'd to to Martin if he ever found out.
Because you didn't like him anymore, you loved Martin instead.
Oh fuck, you really love him., don't you?
God, who are you kidding? You're totally in love with him. Not because of his looks, but because even in the most mundane moments, he chooses you. In a crowded room, his eyes always look for you. And you've known, or maybe you've been selfish all along that he loved you.
You look at him one last time, you're eyes dozing off soon. You hold his face in your hands, running your thumb along his cheek before placing another kiss on his lips. He giggles softly, before kissing you back.
You break the kiss, feeling the panic tight in your chest and the realisation of your feelings sitting heavily upon you.
You hold him in your arms, pressing small kisses in his hair as he dozes off to sleep.
Good God, you're so in love with him. Something about this makes it feel so liberating because if feels so redeeming knowing you're being loved rightly.
So why is your heart heavy and your stomach sinking in guilt?
synopsis: as a childhood friend, martin has truly loved you, tears and all. he knows exactly what you've been through growing up and chose to stay with you, by your side. as you both started college, addictions came in the guise of relief due to unprocessed grief and pain, terrible friendships and a situationship whom you think you could fall for. how does martin feel about the changed version of you??? will he let it slide or still fight for you? cause truth is, he always has been.
genre: non idol uni student!martin x uni student!reader, heavy angst, mature themes, childhood bestfriends to toxic situationships to ??
warnings!! : pg 16+, slightly suggestive, reader is toxic, manipulative, reader smokes a lot, mentions of drugs and substances, reader goes back and forth with martin and another guy, lowk cheating ( I DO NOT CONDONE THIS TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP, THIS IS ALL FICTIONAL AND FOR THE PLOT ), mentions of physical and emotional abuse, trauma, profanities, martin is yearner at its finest.
note: YALL CH 1 GOT SO MANY LIKES AND VIEWS OMLLL YALL ARE THE SWEETEST!!! 234 followers is acc insane you guysss thank you for all your love, seriously means allat to me, hope y'all like this one too 🥹🥹
more under the cut!!
don't like, don't read!!
wc:5.8k+
CH 2
"Did you know that more people are likely to die due to smoking or drug overdose more than alcohol?"
"Oh? Well that's too bad." You say, while reaching for another cigarette.
"What I mean is, it's not healthy to smoke." Martin says, pursing his lips.
"Yeah, I got that." Like you didn't know what he was hinting at.
"But I'm serious though, you could fall sick or worse, actually die." He say, his expression getting more agitated.
"Do you want me to die?"
"No I don't! I'm just saying cause, you know.." He trails off.
"Have some fucking balls, you know what?" You knew exactly what he was hinting at.
"I care about you." He states, as if you didn't figure that out already.
"I know."
You're both in his room, a guitar in his hands and a ciggerate pack in yours. He turns his head to the other side, his fingers glide through his hair in frustration. He knew you were better than that, but you chose the smoke to dumb down your brain yet again and it killed him to see you neglect yourself so much. He strums his guitar again, playing a gentle melody which soothes his aching heart, aching for you, whilst filling the uncomfortable silence.
I couldn't care less is what you want to say but you let those words die at the tip of your tongue, cause you know he isn't wrong. But rather you knowing better, you light your cigarette and let out a puff.
If only he knew how much of pain you bore upon yourself. How easy you were, caring about everything people had to say about you.
And if only you knew, how much it killed him to see you like this, beating yourself up for your mistakes, which were just truly insignificant.
Well, you knew you couldn't control your senses at times. Made you turn out weak. Atleast that's what you parents said. They called you immature, arrogant, rude, indisciplined and what not. Unfortunately, that's how it always is in their eyes. They'd never know that it was because of them that you turned out to be such a bitter, cruel person.
Martin stared at you, wishing you could say anything to him, heck, even a snarky remark, but you gave him nothing except your silence. He knew you were getting into your head too much. Especially when you would quiet down, and stare at him like he hung the stars in the sky with that dreamy gaze of yours, his soul would yearn for you to be with him.
But what could he say? He's self conscious as well. Always overthinking, always worried, more you than himself. He cannot believe its yet another day he's witnessing you fall apart slowly, world crumbling right before you. He also hated that you're absolutely stubborn, refusing and unwilling to heed the advice he gives you.
"If we held our hands together, would our prayers reach the sky?"
"Well, it depends on the weight of what you're asking for."
"I wished you could get more peace at home and you're parents would stop fighting." Martin said, with hopefully eyes as he stared at the sky, wishing there was anyone who would hear the prayer of an innocent seven year old.
"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, but don't you want that guitar, Mars?"
"A guitar can come by anytime, but you can't keep living like this! You atleast deserve to sleep well at night." He says, his heart doing back flips at the nickname, with those same hopeful eyes that could melt any cruel man's soul.
"But what if you had to wish for one thing only?" You ask.
"Then I'll wish that your parents stop fighting. I can wish for the guitar later, it's not that big of a deal." He says, with no hesitation.
You tear up at his words. Oh, how your corrupt and screwed up life didn't deserve him. You wished you could take back everything you've said about your parents to him. He was just too kind and caring for the world.
"You don't have to do that, you know?"
" I want to! I hate seeing you like this. I miss your smile, your joy and your warmth." He says, taking a precautionary pause before continuing, "I hate seeing you come to me with tears in your eyes. I want you to be happy Y/N! If I have to pull out a sleepless night just so that my prayer could reach the sky, I would do if for you." He says, with utmost sincerity, his voice a pitch higher.
You can't control the tears in your eyes as you reach forward and hug him, close to you. You melt in his warmth, crying into his shoulder as he runs his hand on your back, rubbing gently.
"Thank you Martin, you really are kind." You don't deserve him. You don't deserve someone else sacrificing their wishes for you.
"We'll always have each other right? When I feel lonely and broken, will you be there for me?" He asks, more hopeful.
"Of course I will, I'm stuck with you no matter what." You say, wiping the tears off your face.
He smiles and pulls you in for another hug, as a gesture of gratitude, unaware of how fast both your hearts are beating at the proximity.
"Since when did you learn to use big words and become a hero?" You ask, teasing him.
"I just care about you."
You'll forever be grateful for those words. He still says it even till today, more so in a tired and frustrated tone.
It was just a couple of marks on your test. In your eyes, you knew the pressure you went through so it didn't seem that bad, but that's not what your parents want. They wanted you to stay at the top, they wanted you to be the best at everything you did, everything. You understand their intentions, but it hurt you that they couldn't convey that right. It always started with back and forth arguments and ended with tears in your eyes.
"Do you still care about me?" You ask him, once again.
He softens this time, "I always did. Even now, I still care about you."
You laugh a little before asking, "Gosh I could kiss you." You bite your lip before asking, "Can I?"
At this he freezes. He can never get enough of you, even when you're fucking miserable. "Don't you have Mario for that?" He asks, wondering who you'll choose this time, him or your fucked up situationship who guilt tripped you into smoking.
"But I want to kiss you." You say, your cheeks reddening at your own words.
He simply nods, and that's all it takes for you to climb into his lap and kiss him slow.
It's raw, real and something unnamed at the moment. His fingers caress you waist, as you pick up the pace. You clutch your fingers on his shirt before moving towards his neck, thumb brushing his birthmark. He gasps at the sensation, sending shivers down his spine.
You break the kiss, trying to catch you breath, biting your lip to stop yourself from getting too ahead. He's not Mario, but God, when he looks up at you like this, with you in his lap, having that starry eyed gaze, you can't help yourself lean in and kiss him senseless this time.
He pulls you down so that you're both lying on the bed. Your head on his chest, and his arm around you. You mumble am inchorent thank you, before drifting in his arms.
He stares at the ceiling, his heart full of the love he's carried for you ever since you were kids. It also carries the pain of it all being one sided. He knew, you weren't together but he always wishes you were. He also knows that what you have with Mario isn't real either, it's just a toxic relationship which was bound by addictions and shared loneliness. Which means, Martin has just one more chance to ask you to be his, once and for all. Easier said than done, because he could ask you right now in this moment to be his girl.
But he knows better than that. He believes since you're really special to him, he has to plan out something special for the two of you before he can confess. But he knows how much you like Mario too. He hated that he's another choice for you everytime that guy pissed you off but sometimes he stays content and grateful that you still want him in the first place. Seems like he's settling for something really low but it's all he's got as long as you still want him. He'd live with the thought of that instead. You may not always choose him first, but you still do, so to him, that's enough for now.
A man who yearns with all his heart can only hope right?
synopsis... yn never asked for fame, and she most certainly never asked to spend spring break chasing celebs in LA. but when her sister's obsession with popstar MARS drags them into Hollywood, yn finds herself colliding with the boy in the spotlight. what began as nothing more than an accident spirals into Hollywood chaos of paparazzi rumors and a choice between lifestyle and love. in the city where nothing is secret, yn is stuck between guarding her quiet world or risking everything for a connection that feels real. (inspired by disney’s starstruck)
The Ln household in Michigan was buzzing with anticipation, most of which was thanks to your sister, Isa. She had been counting down the hours until your family trip to Los Angeles, her phone was filled with twitter fan account updates and the latest gossip in Hollywood. Every conversation with her within this last week always seemed to circle back to one person: Martin Edwards, more widely known as Mars.
You’re in the doorway of your her room, arms crossed, watching as she’s sprawled across her bed surrounded by posters of Mars. His smile beams down on her from every corner, glossy and perfect, while she scrolls on her phone with an intensity you’d expect from someone engaging in a heated debate.
“Do you even understand how huge this is Yn?” she says, eyes wide and her voice carrying that same buzzing energy that filled the house. “We're going to freaking LA. The home of Martin Edwards, of Mars. I have to meet him.”
You roll your eyes, readjusting your position against the doorframe. “Or you could go and see his wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. It's about the same thing.”
She glares at you, clutching her phone to her chest. “Not funny. This is fate.”
You sigh. As much as you hate to admit it, you love your sister, but her obsession with this Mars character is exhausting. You'd much rather spend your time doing almost anything else. Fame, to you, is just noise–loud, invasive and fake.
From downstairs, your mom calls out another reminder to pack, prompting you to push off the doorframe and head back to your own room. You toss whatever into your suitcase without giving it much thought.
In her room, your sister carefully folds outfits she thinks Mars may notice. “You never know,” she whispers, “This could be my chance.”
Later that night, you had settled yourself on the couch, half scrolling on TikTok, half watching whatever was playing on the TV. Your sister was sitting in an armchair opposite you, still scrolling on some random Hollywood gossip forum.
“You know he doesn’t care if you’ve memorized his coffee order, right?” you mutter.
She huffs back at you. “You’ll see Yn. When we finally meet, it’ll be perfect.”
You turn your attention back to your own phone. “Or completely humiliating”
The thing about Los Angeles, you had decided at age twelve, was that it was basically just New York but with better weather and worse priorities. You'd visited your grandma enough times growing up to form a solid opinion on this. The sun was too bright. The people were too pretty. Everyone was either trying to be famous or pretending they already were, and half the conversations you'd overheard at your grandma's neighbor's pool parties were about "projects" and "brand alignment."
You liked cooler days, coffee that was too strong, and the kind of quiet that only exists in places where people have enough going on in their actual lives that they don't need to perform having a good time.
So. Los Angeles. July. Five weeks.
Great. Absolutely perfect.
"I still can’t believe this is happening," your sister, Isa announced for what felt like the fourteenth time since you guys had boarded the plane at JFK. She was currently vibrating in her window seat, headphones around her neck, phone in both hands, scrolling through what appeared to be an Instagram account dedicated entirely to photos of him.
You didn’t need to look to know whose account it was.
"I still can’t believe it," she says again.
"Isa."
"He literally lives there, YN. Like. He lives there."
"A lot of people live in Los Angeles. Eight million, approximately."
"Yeah but he lives there. Mars. Martin Edwards." She said the name the way other people said things like "Leonardo da Vinci" or "the cure for cancer." With absolute reverence. Like it was a gift to even have the syllables in her mouth. "We're going to be in the same city as him."
You turned a page of your book. "Cool."
"Cool?!" Isa looked at you like you’d just said something deeply offensive. "YN. He's the most famous pop star in the world right now. He has four platinum albums. His last tour sold out in six minutes. Six. I was on three different devices trying to get tickets and I still got nothing."
"I'm aware. You cried for two days."
"I wept. There's a difference." Isa tucked her legs up under her. "And his new album drops in like three weeks. While we're there. This is literally fate."
You had a lot of thoughts about the concept of fate when it came to celebrity proximity but you kept all of them to yourself. Isa was your sister and you loved her, even when she made it genuinely difficult. The Mars thing had been going on for about three years now — ever since "JoyRide" had come out and basically broken the internet and seventeen-year-old Martin Edwards from somewhere in Canada had become, overnight, the kind of famous that had its own gravitational field. The fan accounts, the stan Twitter, the merchandise, the think-pieces about what his lyrics meant, the very serious Reddit threads where people analyzed whether he was in a secret relationship based on the way he tilted his head in interviews.
You had listened to about four of his songs. They were fine. Catchy, even. You’d never say that out loud.
"The point," your mom said from across the aisle, looking up from her crossword, "is that we're going to grandma's because she broke her hip, not because of any pop stars. Yes?"
"Yes," you said.
"Obviously," Isa said, not looking up from her phone.
Your mom gave you a very specific look that translated to you are nineteen and theoretically the responsible one, please keep your sister from doing anything insane in Los Angeles.
Your dad had stayed home with your younger brother Daniel, who was eleven and in a soccer camp that couldn't be interrupted, which meant it was just the three of you flying into LAX on a Sunday afternoon in July, descending into the brown haze of the city while Isa listened to Mars's entire discography on repeat and you tried to read your book and stare at the clouds.
Your grandma's house was in Silver Lake. It was a small yellow craftsman with a lemon tree in the front yard and wind chimes on the porch that drove your mom absolutely insane but you had always sort of loved.
Your grandma was standing in the doorway when your Uber pulled up, her right hip in a brace, a glass of white wine already in hand at four in the afternoon, her white hair in a perfect twist.
"My girls," she said, opening her arms.
You were, you had always thought, the least similar grandmother-granddaughter trio possible. Your grandma was all warmth and color and dramatics, the kind of woman who threw dinner parties and had opinions about art and had dated, at some point in the 1970s, someone mildly famous that she was always vague about. Your mom was practical and organized and approached emotion the way an engineer approaches a structural problem. And you were somewhere in the middle — you had your grandmother's tendency toward strong opinions and your mother's tendency to keep them contained, which meant you mostly just walked around with a lot of thoughts you never said out loud.
"You look wonderful ma," you told your grandmother, hugging her carefully, mindful of the hip.
"I look like I fell getting off the toilet," she said cheerfully. "But thank you. Isa, sweetheart, you've grown about six inches."
"Grandma." Isa kissed her cheek. "You have a pool."
"I have always had a pool."
"I know but, this summer you have a pool." Isa's meaning was very clearly this summer when we are in Los Angeles where Mars also lives. Your grandma looked at her with the fond incomprehension of someone who had never understood celebrity culture and had stopped trying.
"Come in, come in. I made sangria."
"Mom, it's four in the afternoon," your mom said.
"It's five somewhere," she retorted. "And also I broke my hip. I'm allowed sangria."
The house had two guest rooms and you and Isa were sharing one, which was fine, theoretically, and in practice meant that within thirty minutes of arriving you had unpacked neatly into half the dresser and Isa had covered every remaining surface with her stuff including, and you were not exaggerating, three different Mars posters that she had apparently rolled up and packed specifically to hang in the guest room.
You looked at them. Three large format photos of Martin Edwards — Mars — in various stages of concert lighting, his face all shadow and spotlight, one where he was laughing at something off-camera, one where he was mid-performance with his eyes closed, one that was apparently a magazine cover because it had writing on it that said ROLLING STONE and THE FUTURE OF POP.
Martin Edwards was, you would acknowledge privately and only to yourself, aesthetically not unpleasant to look at. He was tall, from what you could tell. Blond hair, usually a little messy. Good jaw. The kind of smile that photographed well and that you were deeply suspicious of for exactly that reason. He had the look of someone who knew he was charming and had decided to lean into it entirely, and in your experience, people who knew they were charming and leaned into it were exhausting.
You had seen exactly one interview with him, accidentally, while waiting for something else to load on YouTube. He'd been on some late night show, sitting across from the host with this very easy, very practiced sort of confidence, laughing at all the right moments, deflecting personal questions with jokes that were genuinely funny, which was the most annoying possible thing. He'd talked about his music in a way that was either very sincere or very good at seeming sincere, and you had watched for about four minutes and then closed the tab because you had things to do.
"You don't have to look at them like that," Isa said from behind you.
"I'm not looking at them like anything."
"You're doing your face."
"I don't have a face."
"You have a face, YN, everyone has a face, and yours right now is the one you make when you're about to say something judgmental and you're deciding whether to say it or not."
You turned around. "I was going to say that three posters seems like a lot for a guest room we're sharing."
"It could be four," Isa said pleasantly. "I have a fourth one rolled up."
"Please don't put up the fourth one."
"Then don't make the face about the first three."
You sat down on your bed. Outside, through the window, you could see the backyard — the garden, the pool, the old olive tree in the corner. The light was that particular golden California afternoon light that you hated to admit was genuinely beautiful. A mockingbird was doing something complicated and aggressive in the olive tree.
"I'm not judging," you said, slightly more gently. "I just don't really get it."
Isa sat on the other bed, cross-legged, her phone finally face-down for once. "I know you don't."
"It's not a bad thing. I just—" you searched for words. "He's a person you don't know. Who doesn't know you exist. And you've organized a significant portion of your life around him."
"So?" Isa's chin tilted up in that particular way that meant she was about to get philosophical about a pop star. "People organize their lives around things they love. You organized your life around environmental science and hiking and being in book clubs with people twice your age."
"The book club members are very interesting."
"My point is that loving something isn't embarrassing just because it's a celebrity. His music makes me feel things. His interviews are actually really smart. And he's good, YN. Like genuinely talented. You'd know that if you'd listened to more than like two songs."
"Four songs," you said.
Isa blinked. "You've listened to four of his songs?"
"They're not bad," you said. Which was the most you were willing to give.
Isa stared at you for a long moment and then, slowly, broke into a grin. "Which ones?"
"JoyRide. The one about fashion or whatever. Um. Go? And..." she thought about it. "The one with the whistling in it."
"'Lullaby.'" Isa looked like she might cry, but in a good way. "That one's about finding peace and staying close to friends when life gets stressful."
"I know."
"You know what it's about?"
"I looked it up," you said, and went to get your book before this conversation could evolve any further.
The first week was, genuinely, pretty nice.
Your job for the summer was officially to help your grandma while her hip healed — accompanying her to physical therapy three times a week, doing the grocery shopping, making sure she wasn't overdoing it (her definition of "overdoing it" and the doctor's were very different). Your mom was working remotely for most of it and would head back to Michigan after two weeks, leaving you in charge.
Which was fine. You liked your grandmother. You liked the Yellow House, as you'd always called it. You liked the Silver Lake neighborhood, which was walkable in a way that most of LA wasn't, full of coffee shops and bookstores and little restaurants where you could sit outside. You found a farmer's market three blocks away that happened every Tuesday and Thursday. You found a library that had a good section on California ecology. You started running along the reservoir in the mornings before it got too hot.
Isa, for her part, was managing the fan account she ran for Mars and had made friends with almost twenty other people online who were also in LA for the summer and were also fans, and they had a group chat and were apparently planning to stake out various locations where Mars had been spotted previously.
You found this mildly concerning and deeply unsurprising.
"You're not actually going to like… camp outside his house," you said over breakfast.
"We don't know where his house is. Obviously."
"Obviously."
"There's a coffee place in Los Feliz where he's been photographed like four times," Isa said, pouring approximately half a bottle of maple syrup onto her pancakes. "We're going to go hang out there a few times and just see."
You thought about this. "And if he does show up?"
"And then I die," Isa said simply.
"That's not—"
"Figuratively, Yn."
"I know what you meant."
"I would just. It would just be really amazing." Isa was quiet for a second, which was unusual enough that you looked up from your coffee. Your sister's expression had gone soft in the way it did when she was being genuine instead of performative. "I know it's silly to you. I know you think it's embarrassing. But he's been — like his music got me through some stuff. Last year when everything was really hard with the friend group drama and I was really anxious all the time. I'd just put on his albums and it helped. So." She shrugged, aiming for casual and not quite landing it.
You felt something shift a little. "I don't think it's embarrassing," you said, more carefully. "I think—" you paused. "I think I don't fully understand it. But I don't think it's embarrassing."
Isa looked at you for a second. "High praise from you."
"I have a lot of praise. I keep it curated."
Isa laughed, and threw a piece of pancake at you, and the moment passed.
It was your Grandma's physical therapist, a cheerful woman named Diane who had exactly the kind of boundless optimism that you found exhausting in the morning, who recommended the coffee place.
"Oh, Lighthouse Coffee? In Los Feliz? Amazing. Their lavender latte is life-changing. Tell them Diane sent you, they'll know who I am."
Your grandma, sitting on the examination table, had looked at you with the expression of someone who is about to send you on an errand you don't fully want to run. "Yn, darling, you could pick me up one of those? I'd kill for a good lavender latte."
Which was how you found herself, on a Wednesday morning at nine-thirty, driving her ancient Subaru down into Los Feliz, the windows down because the AC was iffy, wearing denim cutoffs and an old hiking t-shirt and your hair in a bun that had started the day in better shape than it currently was in.
Isa had mentioned Lighthouse Coffee. You had made a note of this and immediately filed it under things I am pretending I don't know because showing up at a coffee place Isa had specifically identified as a Mars-sighting location was, on some level, embarrassing, and you had standards about that kind of thing.
And yet. Here you were.
The coffee place was a small corner shop on a quiet street, the kind that had exposed brick and reclaimed wood, very small succulents on every table and an extremely long menu on a chalkboard. There was a line. You got in it, pulled out your phone, and started reading an article about wetland restoration in the Sacramento Delta.
You were three people from the front when the door behind you opened and a gust of warm outside air came in. The person directly behind you said, quietly and under their breath, "Oh, thank god."
You glanced back automatically.
The person behind you was a tall guy in a baseball cap pulled low and sunglasses and a plain gray t-shirt, carrying what appeared to be a mostly-dead phone and wearing the particular expression of someone who has been awake for too long and needs caffeine more than they have ever needed anything. He was looking at the line in front of him with what could only be described as profound relief that it wasn't longer.
You looked back at your phone.
You were two people from the front when he said, from behind you, "Sorry — do you know if they have oat milk?"
You turned. He was looking at the menu, tilting his head to read it. The sunglasses were too big for his face, slightly. You could see the line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth. Something nagged at you.
"I think so," you said. "The menu says alternative milks available. So probably."
"Cool." He exhaled. "Cool, thank you. Sorry, I'm not — I haven't been awake long enough to process things like menus."
"When did you wake up?"
"About forty-five minutes ago."
"And you got dressed and drove here in forty-five minutes?"
"I woke up because I was out of coffee," he said. "I consider it a survival mission."
You almost smiled. "You drove a car with no caffeine in your system?"
"Technically I walked. I'm staying not far from here." He paused. "You from LA?"
"Michigan," you said. "Visiting my grandmother."
"Oh." A pause. "How's that going?"
"She broke her hip."
"Yikes. Sorry."
"She's fine. She's very —" you searched for the word. "Resilient. And also apparently her physical therapist loves this place, so."
"Yeah, it's good," he said. "I've been here a few times."
You turned back to the front of the line because you were next. You ordered grandma's lavender latte, and then, because you'd been awake since six-thirty running along the reservoir and was now driving around Los Angeles doing errands, an iced coffee for yourself, and stepped aside to wait.
The guy in the baseball cap stepped up to the counter. You heard him order — oat milk latte, double shot, and could you also do a side of whatever that pastry is in the case — and then he came to stand beside you at the pickup end of the counter, and there was a moment of that particular silence that happens between strangers who have been making conversation and aren't sure if they should continue.
"I'm YN," you said.
"Martin," he said.
You shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Martin."
"You too." He leaned against the counter. He was tall, you noticed. And the jaw was — there was something about the jaw that was still nagging at you in a way you couldn't quite identify. "So what do you do back in Michigan?"
"I'm in school. Environmental science."
"Oh nice. What kind of environmental science?"
"I want to work on watershed restoration, eventually. Or policy. I haven't fully decided yet."
"That's cool," he said, and he actually sounded like he meant it, which was unexpected enough that you looked at him more directly. "I feel like everybody's environmental science interest is like, solar panels or whatever, and watershed stuff is more, it's important but like, less Instagram-friendly?"
"Exactly," you said. "Rivers don't really trend on social media. But they're kind of the whole thing. Like fundamentally."
"Yeah." He nodded. He'd pushed the sunglasses up onto his head, and you could see his eyes now — dark brown, and honestly a little bloodshot in the way of someone who definitely hadn't been sleeping properly. He had a small scar through one eyebrow. "I read a thing about the Colorado River last year. Like the water crisis thing. It's—"
"Yeah," you said. "Yeah, that one's bad."
"There's a whole documentary about it. I watched it on a plane somewhere. Couldn't stop thinking about it for like a week."
"What do you do?" you asked.
A brief pause. Something moved across his face, just for a second, and then it was gone. "Music," he said.
"Like, music music? Or—"
"I'm a musician," he said.
"That's cool. What kind?"
"Pop, I guess. Mostly."
"Are you good?"
He blinked. Then he laughed — a real laugh, surprised out of him. "I mean I think so? Some people think so."
"Some people think lots of things," you said. "I'm asking if you think you're good."
"I think, yeah." He seemed to consider it. "I think I'm genuinely good at it. Not the best. But good."
"Okay," you said. "That's a good answer."
"What would the bad answer have been?"
"Fake modesty," you said. "Like 'oh, I don't know, I just do my best.' Or the other direction, where you're like, 'yeah I'm incredible.' Both of those are red flags."
He stared at you. "You're very direct."
"I've been told that."
"Is that a Michigan thing?"
"It might be a me thing," you said.
Your lavender latte was ready. And then his oat milk latte with the pastry. They gathered their orders and there was a brief, slightly awkward moment at the door where they both reached for it at the same time and then laughed, and he held it for you, and you walked out into the Los Angeles morning.
He fell into step beside you, which you hadn't expected.
"Which way are you parked?" he asked.
"Up the block. The gray Subaru with the bumper sticker about tide pools."
"I'm that direction anyway."
You walked. The street was quiet in that mid-morning way, the serious breakfast crowd gone and the lunch crowd not yet arrived. A dog walker passed with what appeared to be six dogs of wildly varying sizes.
"Do you miss it? Michigan?" he asked.
"Not yet," you said. "Ask me in two weeks."
"Fair." He looked over at you. The baseball cap was casting a shadow over most of his face and you had, you were realizing, managed to have an entire conversation with someone without really seeing them clearly, which was either impressive or an indication that you needed more sleep. "It's weird being away from home for a while."
"You're not from LA?"
"No. I’m Canadian." A pause. "I don't get back as often as I'd like."
"What's keeping you here?"
"Work," he said. "There's always something. Recording, promotion, shows. It's—" he paused again. "It's good. I like it. I just sometimes wish I could—" he didn't finish the sentence, shrugging instead.
"Just be a person?" you said.
He looked at you. "Yeah. Exactly."
You’d reached the Subaru. You unlocked it, and the jingle of the keys in the dry morning air felt suddenly loud.
"Well," you said.
"Well." He was looking at you with an expression you couldn't quite read, behind those stupid sunglasses that he'd pushed back down over his eyes. "It was nice talking to you, YN."
"You too, Martin." You got in the car, put the lattes in the cupholder, started the engine. Through the window you saw him lift a hand in a small wave, and you nodded back, and drove away.
You were a block and a half down the road before it hit you.
You pulled over. Sat very still. Looked at the lavender latte.
Martin.
Tall. Blond hair. That jaw.
"No," you said out loud.
You pulled out your phone. Opened Instagram. Typed in the first thing that came to mind.
You stared at this photo for a long, silent moment.
"Absolutely not," you said.
You put the car back in drive and drove home. You gave grandma her lavender latte and said, "How was PT?" and listened to twenty minutes about Diane's very interesting weekend, and said nothing to anyone about what had just happened.
At no point did you stop thinking about it.
That night, you sat on the edge of the pool with your feet in the water while grandma sat in a lounge chair nearby with a glass of wine and listened to the whole story.
Your grandma was the best possible audience for a story. She listened with full attention, asked the right questions, and never once made you feel like you'd done something embarrassing. She also did not scream like Isa had done, an actual scream, upon hearing the full account, that had sent the neighbors' cat fleeing off the fence.
"So he just," your grandma said, when you had finished, "walked with you to your car."
"For like half a block."
"And you talked about rivers."
"And handshakes and Michigan."
She was quiet for a moment, swirling her wine. The evening air was warm and smelled like lavender from somewhere in the neighbor's yard, and the pool lights were on, making wobbly blue patterns on the bottom.
"Did you like him?" She asked.
"I didn't know who he was," you said.
"That's not what I asked."
You put your feet deeper in the water. "He was... easy to talk to. Which I didn't expect. I thought, I mean, I didn't think anything, I didn't know who he was. But looking back, someone that famous, you'd expect a certain kind of... performance. But he was just. Tired. Normal. Wanted oat milk."
She smiled. "He sounds like a person."
"I know. That's the weird part."
"Why is that weird?"
You looked at the pool, thinking about Isa's posters. "Because in Isa's version of him, he's this like elevated thing. He's Mars, not Martin. And I met Martin. And Martin is just a person who's tired and wants coffee and thinks about the Colorado River."
"Isa's version of him isn't necessarily wrong," she said. "It's just partial. Most people are bigger and smaller than their reputation, depending on the angle you're looking from."
"That's very wise."
"I have a broken hip, not a broken brain." she took a sip of her wine. "Are you going back to the coffee shop?"
"No," you said.
She nodded in the way that meant she had filed this answer away under things that will turn out not to be true.
"Grandma."
"What?"
"Stop doing that with your face."
"I'm not doing anything with my face. I'm simply enjoying the evening." She looked up at the sky, which had gone that particular deep blue of a Los Angeles evening, the light pollution softening the stars to a gentle blur. "He sounds like he was nice."
"He was fine," you said. "He was just… A person."
"Well," said she, "sometimes that's the most interesting thing someone can be."
You had a system for your mornings in Silver Lake: alarm at six-fifteen, coffee (instant, made in the kitchen before anyone else was awake), running shoes on, out the door by six-thirty for a forty-minute run along the reservoir before it got too hot and too crowded. Then shower, then breakfast, then whatever the day required.
On Friday morning, the day was supposed to require a grocery run, picking up grandma's prescription, and then a completely normal and Mars-free afternoon.
The grocery run was fine. The pharmacy was fine. On the way back, you took a slightly different route because you'd read that there was a stretch of Silver Lake Boulevard with a good view of the reservoir from the sidewalk and you wanted to see it, and you were a nineteen-year-old in a new city and looking at things was free.
The view was genuinely good — the water flat and softly painted by the morning light, the hills on the far side patchy with scrub and the occasional palm. You'd stopped to take a photo, your reusable grocery bags hanging off one arm, and was standing, looking at your phone when someone said, behind her:
"Good view, right?"
You turned.
Martin, Mars, was standing about three feet away, in running clothes this time, no sunglasses, earbuds in one ear and the other earbud dangling, a light sweat on him like he'd been running for a while. He was looking at you with an expression that was halfway between surprise and something else.
"Oh," he said. "Michigan."
"Canada," you said, automatically.
He blinked. Then he seemed to realize what you meant and laughed. "Yeah. Canada."
"You run here?"
"When I'm in town. It's — yeah." He looked out at the reservoir. "It's one of the things I like about this neighborhood. It feels less like LA."
"That seems like a weird reason to like it," you said. "If you hate LA so much, why do you live here?"
"I don't hate it," he said, a little too quickly, and then said, "I have a complicated relationship with it."
"What does that mean?"
He fell into step beside you without either of you really deciding this was happening. You were going vaguely in the direction of grandma's house; he seemed to be going in no particular direction.
"It means," he said, "that LA gave me a lot of what I wanted and also takes a lot of things I didn't know I needed."
"That's either very deep or complete nonsense," you said.
"It might be both," he said. "I say things like that in interviews sometimes and people write about how profound I am and I'm just like. I'm just talking."
"You've noticed that you sound profound and you're not sure you are," you said.
"Kind of, yeah."
"That's more self-aware than most people."
"Is that a compliment?" he asked.
"It's an observation."
He was grinning now — a real one, not the stage one from the Rolling Stone cover on Isa's wall. It was slightly crooked and did something a little annoying to the overall picture of his face. "You don't do compliments much, do you."
"I do them when they're warranted."
"What would I have to do to get an actual compliment from you?"
"Something genuinely admirable," you said.
"No pressure," he said.
You’d reached a bench overlooking the reservoir. You sat down because your grocery bags were heavy and your arms were tired. He sat down too, not too close, looking out at the water.
"You're here visiting your grandmother," he said. It was half a question.
"Yeah. She's got a house in Silver Lake. I'm staying through August."
"The whole summer?"
"The whole summer."
A small pause. A bird of some kind cut across the surface of the reservoir and disappeared.
"I'm here through the end of August too," he said. "Album stuff."
"Right. The new album."
He glanced at you. "You know about the new album?"
"My sister is a fan," you said. "A very significant fan."
"Oh." Something shifted in his expression — a slight careful quality came into it. "Is she."
"She has three posters of you in our shared room," you said. "I'm living with your face times three."
He made a face that was between amused and mortified. "That's."
"It's fine," you said. "She's very excited you're in LA."
"Does she know you—"
"Talked to you?" you considered. "Yeah. I told her."
"And?"
"She screamed."
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize for her," you said. "She's excited. It's okay. She's a genuinely good person who has a lot of feelings about your music."
He was quiet for a moment. "That's — I never know what to do with that. The fan thing. I appreciate it, like, I know it's because the music means something to them, and that means a lot. It's just—"
"It's weird when people love a version of you that you didn't make," you said.
He looked at you.
"The Mars thing," you said. "It's not really you. It's a character. Or a name. Or something. And people love that thing. But you're Martin, who wants oat milk and has complicated feelings about Los Angeles and apparently knows about watershed restoration."
"I don't know about watershed restoration," he said. "I watched one documentary."
"Still. It's a different person than the one on Isa's posters."
He was quiet. Looking at the reservoir.
"Yeah," he said, finally. "That's — yeah."
You stood up, resettling the grocery bags. "I have to get back. These bags are going to leave marks on my arms."
He stood too. "I'll walk with you."
You almost said you don't have to, but stopped yourself, because you didn't actually mind.
You walked. He was easy to walk with, he didn't fill silence with noise, which was something you valued enormously in a person. You talked a little: you asked what the album was called (still deciding), he asked what your grandmother was like (a force of nature with a fondness for sangria and wind chimes), you asked if he'd grown up in a small town (yes, very small, very different from here).
At the corner of your street, you stopped.
"This is me," you said.
"Cool." He looked up the street — the yellow house was visible from here, the lemon tree in front, the porch with its wind chimes. "Nice house."
"It's my grandmother's."
"Still nice."
You looked at him. In the morning light without the sunglasses and without the baseball cap, he looked younger and more tired and more like a person and less like the photograph on the Rolling Stone cover. The scar through his eyebrow was more visible. There was ink on his right wrist — you couldn't tell what.
"You're going to be at that coffee shop again," you said. It wasn't really a question.
"Probably," he said. "I go there most mornings."
"Okay," you said.
"Is that—" he stopped.
"It's fine," you said. "I'm just noting it."
"I could," he said, and then stopped again, in that way people do when they're not sure if they're about to say something stupid. "If you wanted coffee again. At some point."
"Are you asking if you can buy me coffee," you said.
"I think I'm asking if we could be in the same coffee shop at the same time on purpose," he said. "Which is technically different."
"Technically."
"I just think you're interesting to talk to," he said, and he said it straightforwardly, without the sort of shine on it that would have made you suspicious. "And I don't get to talk to a lot of people who don't know — who aren't—" he gestured vaguely at himself.
"Who aren't a fan," you said.
"Yeah."
You looked at him for a moment. His eyes were a very dark brown and were, in fact, slightly bloodshot again, which you found oddly humanizing.
"Monday morning," you said. "I can be there at nine."
He smiled. The real one again. "Nine works."
You turned and walked up the street toward the yellow house, not looking back, and you were about eighty percent sure this was a normal thing to have agreed to and twenty percent something else entirely that you weren't going to examine right now.
Grandma was on the porch.
Of course she was.
"Is that who I think it is?" she said, squinting down the street.
You glanced back. He was already gone around the corner.
"No," you said.
Her expression said everything.
"He was just walking the same direction," you said. "We live in the same neighborhood."
"Of course."
"Grandma."
"I said of course." She picked up her tea. "Come have breakfast, darling. You can tell me about the watershed."
author’s note 🩵: i had a few days off of school so i was able to get quite a bit done 🙏 i have most of the next part typed out so hopefully it’ll be out in the next few days too 💘
germansingergirl
annaxmalina
ellievsbear
2087
theartofmadeline
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