seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany
seen from Singapore
seen from United Arab Emirates
seen from Guam
seen from South Africa
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Taiwan
seen from China
seen from United States
STATIC & SPARKS: part one
pairings: 2hollis x fem!rockstar!reader
in which one late studio night hollis interacts with upcoming rockstar y/n aka rivka via twitter in 2023.
tags: hollis x reader, mutual pining, smau, rockstar gf.
→
taglist: @2bun22.
a/n: everything included in this fic is, you guessed it right FICTIONAL. comment for taglist. (big thanks to @/2bun22 for semi helping me <3)
PRIVATE ACCESS: part one
pairings: nettspend x stripper!reader
In which while heading backstage to meet her best friend after dancing at a private rolling loud pop-up y/n bumps into gunner as he's leaving his rolling loud set.
୨ৎ─────୨ৎ──────୨ৎ────୨ৎ
nett: "Yo -- you going to the after?"
You: "Depends on who's asking"
nett: "I'm asking"
You: "Then yea, I'm on my way to my best friend"
nett: "Let me get your insta"
you grab the phone extended towards you, typing in your username and handing it back.
He held eye contact for exactly one second too long before his team pulled him away. You stood there in the hallway for a minute longer, your heels loud in the concrete floor as you finally continued your journey towards Jade. Then your phone buzzed.
30 min earlier
You were still in your stage outfit— no time to change between your set at the club’s pop-up stage and getting to the festival grounds. Heels, bodysuit, the whole thing. Your access pass was swinging around your neck as you speed-walked through the backstage corridor, head down, texting Jade your location. You didn’t see him until you walked directly into his chest.
nett: “yo—”
You: “Oh my god, I’m so sorry—”
nett: “Nah you good, you good.”
You looked up. Red hair, bright eyes, silver chains catching the backstage lights, a little out of breath from being on stage. He was a taller than you expected. He looked genuinely unbothered that you’d just walked into him at full speed. You knew exactly who he was. You just weren’t gonna be weird about it.
You: “Good set tonight.”
nett: “Word? You watched it?”
You: “Not the whole thing, caught the last twenty minutes. The crowns was crazy though.”
nett: "Yeah it was cold. You perform tonight too?"
You blinked. The pass. The outfit. He’d clocked it immediately.
You: "Pop-up stage. Club set.”
nett: "Which club?"
You: "Live."
nett: "Oh word, my boys were there earlier."
You: "Hmm, small world."
nett: "What's your name?"
You told him. He repeated it once, like he was testing the sound of it.
nett: “You got instagram?”
You: “You asking for my instagram while backstage at Rolling Loud.”
nett: “Yeah.”
You: “…Okay.”
He handed you his phone— unlocked, instagram already opened. Just like that. Nothing extra about it . You typed in your username and handed it back. He looked at it— and followed you immediately.
nett: “Follow me back.”
You: “I’ll think about it.”
He laughed—quiet and surprised. Like he didn’t expect you to say that. Someone called his name from behind him. He glanced back, then at you. Nodding his head, he headed towards his crew.
୨ৎ─────୨ৎ──────୨ৎ────୨ৎ
→
taglist: @spectranix. @sweet2sin. @luvvconceal.
a/n: I know jack shit about rolling loud so please bear with me😞. also everything written is FICTIONAL. the pictures include are FAKE and were created by me.
SOME MAY CALL IT DESTINY: one
Parings: hollis x film!photographer!reader
tags: fluff, slow burn, strangers to lovers, mutual pining, miscommunication.
in which y/n and hollis always seem to run into each other at erewhon (no specified timeline)
wc: 1.2k
You weren’t supposed to be here.
Erewhon was a forty-minute detour from your apartment and a thirty dollar commitment just for a smoothie, which is why you’d only been twice before— both times dragged by your friend who swore the mushroom elixir (a/n: eeyuck) had changed her life. You didn’t believe her. You still don’t believe her. But you were out of oat milk and the traffic on Fairfax had rerouted you past the parking lot, and somehow, in a way you couldn’t fully explain to yourself, you were inside.
The produce section was quiet for a Saturday morning. Soft, filtered light. The kind of place that made you feel underdressed even in the light pink workout set with your hoodie pulled over.
You were staring at adaptogenic honey— three jars, three prices that made you feel vaguely ill— when you felt someone stop beside you. Not touching. Just close enough that you clocked them in your peripheral vision. You didn’t look up.
You read the label on the back of the honey jar twice without actually taking anything in.
“That one’s not worth it.”
You looked up.
He was already looking at the shelf, not at you. Tall— very tall, unbothered, a black hoodie pulled loose over his head. He reached past you— not quite past you, you had to shift slightly, and you did— and picked up the jar on the far left.
“this one.” He set it back without looking at you. “The other two are the same thing with different labels.”
You looked at the jar he’d indicated. Then at him.
He still wasn’t looking at you.
“How do you know?”
A beat of silence. He glanced over then, just briefly, like he was reassessing something. His eyes were dark, tired, and completely level.
“I read the back,” he said.
Then he moved down the aisle.
You stood there holding the jar he’d pointed to. You turned it over and actually read the back, then you read the back of the other two.
He was right.
You put the cheaper one in your basket and didn't look for him again. At least you tried not to. You were at the checkout when you caught yourself scanning the store again— a quick one-two, the way you do when you’ve misplaced something.
You couldn’t spot him.
You paid thirty-eight dollars for honey, oat milk, and a bottle of something green that you definitely didn’t need, and you drove home thinking about almost nothing.
── .✦
Three weeks later. Tuesday.
You were shooting on film— you’d been in Los Feliz all morning for a project that was eating at your life, a series of interiors that kept you not quite working, the light always a few degrees off from what you needed. By noon you were tired and hungry, so you stopped by Erewhon because it was there— you were already having the kind of day where you made poor financial decisions.
You were in line at the smoothie bar, staring at the menu— eyes unfocused, when you heard someone behind you order in a voice you recognized before you understood why.
You slightly turned your body to look behind you.
He was closer than you expected. He glanced at you at the same moment, and something shifted in his expression— not surprise exactly, more like a quiet recalibration, the look of someone filing something away.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.” you said back.
The person at the counter asked for your order. You turned back and gave it, slightly flustered, and when you slapped aside to wait you were aware of him stepping up behind you. You scrolled through your phone— mainly looking at the weather app.
He came to stand a few feet away, waiting for his order. You could feel the specific quality of his stillness. He wasn’t performing nonchalance; he just genuinely seemed to take up exactly as much space as he needed.
“You come here a lot?” you asked. You didn’t plan to.
He looked at you. “Enough.”
“Me neither,” you said, which didn’t quite make grammatical sense as a response, and he almost smiled— not quite, but almost, a small shift at the corner of his mouth that you would think about later in a way that annoyed you.
Your smoothie came up. You grabbed it and said, “see you around,” which also felt like a weird thing to say given you’d seen him twice, both by accident, in a store you rarely came to.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at you for a moment longer than what felt strictly neutral.
You walked out into the hot and bright afternoon light, drinking your smoothie down the sidewalk and thinking about the way he'd said yeah— like it wasn’t a dismissal, but like a small fire that was left open.
You told yourself you were reading into it.
You probably were.
── .✦
You started noticing a pattern after this one.
It was Friday evening, golden hour, the whole city doing that thing where it looks almost worth it. You’d been developing film all day in your friend’s darkroom, you smelled like chemicals, and your eyes hurt. You stopped at Erewhon for something that didn’t require you to cook.
You were in the already prepared food section, weighing the moral implications of spending twenty-two dollars on a grain bowl, when you looked up and he was standing there.
Across the aisle. Looking at the same wall of overpriced food with the same flat, considering expression he’d had the first time you saw him, like he was unimpressed but present.
He saw you at the same moment.
Neither of you said anything for a second.
Then; “Again,” he said. Not a question.
“Again,” you agreed.
He picks something up from the shelf and reads the back of it, and you watch him for a moment longer than you should have before you look back towards the grain bowls.
“You live around here?” you asked.
“Close enough.”
You nodded. You picked up the grain bowl. You put it back. You picked it up again.
“You always do that?” he asked.
You looked up. He was watching you with an expression that was almost— not amused, but adjacent to it. Attentive, maybe. Like you had his full attention and he wasn’t sure yet what to do with that.
“Do what,” you said.
“Change your mind.”
You thought about it. “Only when it costs twenty-two dollars.”
He made a small sound, low, that might have been a laugh, You felt it somewhere in your chest in a way that was disproportionate to how quiet it was.
“Get the bowl,” he said, and turned back to the shelf.
You got the bowl. You paid for it, walked to your car and sat in the driver’s seat for a moment before starting the engine.
Three times.
You’d run into him three times in a store you usually came to maybe once a month.
You thought about his eyes in the fluorescent-warm light. The way he looked at you like he was always in the middle of deciding something.
You drove home. Ate the grain bowl— it wasn’t worth wasting twenty-two dollars.
You went back the following Friday anyway.
── .✦
⭑ ⭑
taglist: @2bun22. @luvvconceal. @spectranix. @sweet2sin.
a/n: nana so bored she just putting anything out. (i just made some BULLSHITTTT)
STATIC & SPARKS: part two
pairings: 2hollis x fem!rockstar!reader
in which one late studio night hollis interacts with upcoming rockstar y/n aka rivka via twitter in 2023.
tags: hollis x reader, mutual pining, smau, rockstar gf.
← → taglist: @2bun22. @ibelieveinfairyz. @romansbbg. @anunfortunateoutcome. @2autumndrunk.
a/n:everything included in this fic is, you guessed it right FICTIONAL. comment for taglist.
STATIC & SPARKS: final part
pairings: 2hollis x fem!rockstar!reader
in which one late studio night hollis interacts with upcoming rockstar y/n aka rivka via twitter in 2023.
tags: hollis x reader, mutual pining, smau, rockstar gf.
← →
taglist: @2bun22. @ibelieveinfairyz. @romansbbg. @anunfortunateoutcome. @2autumndrunk. @sippingonsin. @spectranix . @sweet2sin. @luvvconceal.
a/n:everything included in this fic is, you guessed it right FICTIONAL. song visioned as fatal attraction by Amira Elfecky >ᴗ<
STILL BREATHING
—cheater!xaviersobased x reader (oneshot)
in which xavier cheats on reader with someone she was once close friends with and she doesn’t know how to heal from it.
The playlist you made for him is still sitting in your spotify. 187 songs. You haven’t been able to delete it.
You stare at the ceiling of your apartment, the one he helped you pick out furniture for, the one where his hoodie is still hanging on the back of your vanity chair because you keep moving it to different spots instead of getting rid of it. It’s been three weeks. You’ve washed it twice and it stopped smelling like him after the first time, but you kept it anyway like some kind of punishment.
Your phone buzzes. You already know what it is before you look— another mutual sending you the same screenshots that apparently everyone in New York has seen by now. You don’t open it. You’ve memorized the details anyway, the way you memorize the lyrics to a song you hate but can’t get out of your head.
mia.
mia.
You two had been close since high school—the kind of close where you brought each other food to school and knew each other's parents’ names and talked about moving into an apartment together after graduation.
That fell apart junior year over something so stupid and small, the way friendships do sometimes, and you’d spent years at a comfortable distance. Not enemies. Just strangers who once knew everything about each other.
And then you’d introduced her to Xavier at a show in Brooklyn, eight months ago, because that’s just what you do when worlds start to collide. This is Mia, we used to be tight. Mia, this is Xavier, we’ve been together for six months, isn’t he—
You don’t finish the memory.
── .✦
The worst part isn’t even the betrayal in the abstract. It’s those specific details your brain keeps playing on a loop like a messed up stereo in a broken old truck.
That she knew. That she knew every fight you’d had with him, every insecurity you’d whispered to her in those careful, tentative texts you’d exchanged once you started building something back. You’d been so careful about it, so proud of yourself— look, I can let people back in, look how grown I am.
That he knew who she was to you. He wasn’t some stranger who didn’t understand the weight of it.
That neither of them told you. You found out the same exact way everyone else always finds things out— through a grainy photo, a comment section, someone sliding into your dms with a hey are you okay, hey I saw the post, hey, hey, hey… that told you everything before you even clicked the link.
You’d called Xav— Xavier first. Old instinct. He picked up on the second ring and said your name the way someone did when they weren’t expecting you to call, soft and hesitant, and you’d waited for him to explain it away, to give you something to hold onto.
He didn’t.
── .✦
You dragged yourself to the kitchen to make tea that you won’t end up drinking, standing at the counter while the kettle boils. Your best friend Selena texted you earlier: come over. we’ll watch some stupid reality tv show and I won’t make you talk about it. You haven’t responded yet. You don’t know how to explain that being around someone who loves you feels unbearable right now, like sunlight on a headache.
The thing nobody tells you about heartbreak— real heartbreak, the kind that comes with a double betrayal sewn into the lining— is that it doesn’t feel like sadness, exactly. It feels like disorientation. Like someone moved all the furniture in a room you knew by heart, and now you keep walking into the edge of things in the dark.
You trusted your own judgment. You trusted her. You trusted him. And all three turned out to be wrong at once, and now you don’t know which one of those failures is the one that keeps you up at night.
You pour the tea out without drinking it.
── .✦
You end up texting Selena back at 1am: yes, okay i’m coming over.
She didn't say anything when you showed up at her door in an oversized t-shirt with your hair thrown up. She just moved aside and let you in, handed you a blanket, and put on something mindless— some competitive show where people bake elaborate cakes in the shape of everyday objects. You sit on the couch with your knees pulled up and watch a man stress-frost a cake shaped like a stapler and you feel, for about fifteen minutes, almost like a person.
“You don’t have to figure it out tonight,” Selena says during a commercial break. Not looking at you. Just speaking out into the open.
“I know.”
“Or tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“You’re allowed to be emotional about it for a while.”
You pulled the blanket tighter around your body. On screen, a woman is crying over a collapsed fondant sculpture. You watch her collect herself, straighten up, and keep going.
“I don’t know how to stop loving someone and hating them at the same time,” you say, finally. “It’s like— I miss him. I miss her, even. How stupid is that?”
“It’s not stupid,” Selena says. “It just means you have a heart and you actually cared.”
You don’t say anything to that. You let it sit there.
Outside, the city keeps going— like always, it’s indifferent, loud, and alive. And you sit in the soft rainbow light of your best friend’s apartment, not healed, not okay, not over it. But breathing. Still breathing.
And that was enough for tonight.
taglist: @sweet2sin . @spectranix . @luvvconceal . @2bun22 . @chesspend . @gabisohot . @kingoveverything . @punkarchangel . @y-yasminn . @glitterandviolence13 .
a/n: did some fuckshit like this happen to me irl?!? well, YES!
SOME MAY CALL IT DESTINY: three
Parings: hollis x film!photographer!reader
tags: fluff, slow burn, strangers to lovers, mutual pining, miscommunication.
in which y/n and hollis always seem to run into each other at erewhon
wc: 1.6k
You developed the film on a Wednesday.
You were in the dark room alone; your friend’s place, the red light and the chemical smell paired with the slow emergence of images in the developer tray— which never got old, and you hoped would never get old in the future. That specific miracle of something appearing out of nothing, reality reasserting itself in silver.
His face came up first.
You’d shot twelve total frames of his set. In the red light they looked like paintings— the grain, the contrast, the way the stage light had caught the edge of his jaw, the way he’d stood with his head down at one point, something private happened in a public place. The camera had caught all of it. The camera always seemed to catch things you didn’t ask for.
You held the strip up to the light.
There was one frame— third from the end— where he’d looked directly into the lens. Not at you, at the lens, which was different. His expression was open in a way you hadn’t seen before in a person. Something underneath all that quietness, visible just briefly, like lights on in a room with slightly opened curtains.
You stayed in the darkroom for hours.
When you finally got home you texted him: they’re done.
He replied five minutes later: good?
You thought about that frame— about what it meant to have someone’s unguarded face on a piece of film sitting in your apartment.
Yeah, you wrote. Come see.
You gave him your address. You stared at your phone for a moment after sending it, aware of what that was— not a grand gesture, just another door opened, a real one this time, not metaphorically.
He replied: tomorrow
You put your phone down— looking at the contact sheet sitting on your kitchen table, you stared at it for a good minute.
── .✦
He came at seven.
Your apartment was small and fitting— bookshelves that were actually full, a desk buried under notebooks and contact sheets, prints hung up with tape because you kept changing your mind about them. Plants that were mostly alive, a flower lamp, and a thrifted couch that you loved.
You had told yourself you weren’t going to clean for him. That was a lie. You stress cleaned a little. Not much.
He stood in the doorway when you opened it and looked at the apartment with curiosity— taking it all in, but not saying anything.
“Come in,” you said.
He came in. He moved through your space slowly, which you’d expected somehow— he didn’t seem like the type to rush through rooms. He looked at the prints placed haphazardly along the wall. He stopped at the desk and glanced at the contact sheets without touching them.
“Can I?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He picked up the sheets from the show. You stood a few feet back and watched him look at himself. It was strange, watching someone encounter their own image taken by someone else— the slight adjustment, the recalibration.
He didn’t say anything for a while.
“This one,” he said finally. His finger hovered over the frame— not touching. The once you’d stared at under the red light.
“I know,” you said.
He looked over at you.
You looked back.
“You can have a print of it,” you said. “If you want.”
He set the sheet down carefully. “I want it.”
He was still looking at you. The lamp made the light in the apartment warm, and you were suddenly aware of how small the room was, how little distance there was between where he was standing and where you were.
“Do you want something to drink,” you said. “I have—” you turned toward the kitchen, listing things, and you felt rather than heard him move, and when you turned back he was remotely closer.
Not close enough for him to breathe in your air. But closer.
“I’m okay,” he said.
You nodded. You stayed where you were. He stayed where he was. The apartment was quiet around you in a way that you could hear movement of people in the corridor.
“The interiors,” he said. “You said they feel like someone just left.”
“Mhm.”
“Does this one?” He glanced around, meaning your apartment, meaning the space you actually lived in. There was something careful behind the question, something meaningful.
You thought about it for a moment. “No,” you said. “This one feels like someone is staying.”
His eyes came back to you. Something slow and certain moved through them.
He didn’t say anything.
He took one step towards you instead.
You didn’t move back. In fact, you didn’t move at all— just stayed where you were and let him close the distance, which he did slowly, with that same deliberateness he brought to everything, giving you time to change your mind.
You didn’t change your mind.
His hand came up to cup your jaw, just barely, just the edge of his fingers— and he looked at you for one moment at close range, the warm light of the lamp casting both of you, the room holding its breath— and then he kissed you.
Soft and unhurried. The kind of kiss that isn’t asking a question so much as making a quiet statement, the kind you feel settled tight and somewhat low in your chest.
When he pulled back he didn’t go far. His hand was still settled on your jaw. You could feel him staring at you intensely.
“Hi,” you said. You hadn’t meant to. It just came out.
Something shifted in his expression— the full smirk-like smile, nearly all the way there. “Hi,” he said.
You looked at each other in the same toned light for a moment that had no particular length.
Then; “The print,” he said. You said you’d make me one.”
“I did say that.”
“I want to be there when you do it.”
You looked at him. He was still standing close in your space, still unhurried, still completely certain in the way that used to feel unreadable that now just felt like him.
“Okay,” you said. “Come to the darkroom.”
“When.”
“Whenever you want.”
He nodded, once, like something had been decided. His hand dropped from your jaw slowly.
He didn’t have to say anything.
He never did.
── .✦
The print had dried on a Thursday. You texted him a photo of it— just the print hanging on your drying line, no extra messages— and he replied with a single “yeah.”
You understood that completely.
You’d been spending so much time with him in the loose, undefined way that didn’t have a name to it. He’d come to the darkroom once while you were developing something else, sat on the floor with his back against the wall and talked to you in the red-lit dark while you worked, his voice low and steady, telling you about new music he was trying to make, about sounds he was chasing but couldn’t quite catch yet. You’d listened without turning around. It felt like the right way to hear it.
You’d gone to another show. This time you stood closer to the front. When he saw you from the stage— and he did, you knew he did, the slight shift in his demeanor when his eyes found yours— you held his gaze for a moment and then looked at your camera because you didn’t know what to do with what was weighing your chest down.
You were developing that film now.
You were also sitting on the couch at eleven at night, staring at your phone, not texting him.
The thing was— you were good at ‘almost’. You’d been good at it your whole life. Almost-relationship that stayed comfortable and undeclared. Almost-feelings that you photographed instead of naming. The almost was safe because it was yours, fully yours, no risk of it being returned out of shape.
The other thing was— he wasn’t ‘almost’ looking at you.
He was definitely looking at you.
And you kept not saying anything— he kept not saying anything, and the space between you was so full of unsaid things that you were staring to feel them pressing against the inside of your chest when he was in the same room.
Your phone lit up.
still up?
You stared at it. Eleven-fourteen on a Thursday.
yeah, you wrote.
me too. can’t sleep.
You looked at the ceiling. You looked back at your phone.
what are you working on, you wrote.
nothing that feels right. everything keeps falling through.
what does it sound like when it’s not right.
A pause. Longer than usual.
like something’s missing but I can’t tell what.
You sat with that. The lamp made a small circle of light in the room. Outside a car drove past.
That’s how some of the interiors felt for a long time, you wrote. for like a year I kept shooting and none of it felt right. it felt like I was taking photos of all the wrong things.
what changed.
You thought about it.
I stopped trying to figure out what was missing and just continued shooting. And then one day I looked at a frame and it was there. I didn’t change anything. It just came to me.
Another pause.
yeah, he wrote.
Then; I like how you think about things like this.
You read that three times. The room was very quiet.
I like how you think about things too, you wrote, because it was true, because you were tired of not saying the things that were true.
You waited.
get some sleep, he wrote. I’ll come by the darkroom on Friday.
okay, you wrote.
You put your phone face-down on the couch. You stared at the ceiling for a long time gathering your thoughts.
The ‘almost’ was getting harder and harder to live in.
You weren’t sure how much longer you were going to be able to manage it.
── .✦
⭑ ⭑
taglist: @luvvconceal. @2bun22. @spectranix. @sweet2sin. @kingoveverything. @punkarchangel. @glitterandviolence13 .
a/n: dey kiss FINALLY. dis for you baby @luvvconceal 😋
SOME MAY CALL IT DESTINY: two
Parings: hollis x film!photographer!reader
tags: fluff, slow burn, strangers to lovers, mutual pining, miscommunication.
in which y/n and hollis always seem to run into each other at erewhon ( no specified timeline)
wc: 1.6k
You had told yourself that it was convenient. It was not particularly convenient— it was forty minutes from your apartment, as it had always been— but you told yourself that, and you kept telling yourself that when you made it a part of your schedule to come on Friday evening with a reliability that your bank account was beginning to notice.
He wasn’t there the first Friday you came on purpose.
You bought a twenty-dollar juice and felt like a complete and total idiot.
He was there the second Friday.
You almost walked into him coming around the corner. He caught your arm, just briefly, to stop you colliding— his hand on your sleeve, gone almost before you could register the feeling— and you both stepped back.
“Sorry,” you spoke up.
“My fault,” he said, which it wasn’t.
You stood in the too-narrow aisle and looked at each other as the store move around you, soft and slow, someone’s feet landing against the tile.
“I was going to get a smoothie,” you said.
“Yeah,” he said. He paused. “i’ll walk over.”
It wasn’t exactly an offer. It wasn’t a question. It was just a. statement of what was going to happen, delivered so quietly that you almost missed the significance of it.
You walked to the smoothie bar. Waiting in line— he stood directly beside you.
You talked— not a lot , not the way people talk when they’re trying to impress each other, but in the low, unhurried way of people who are comfortable with silence and not quite comfortable with each other yet. He asked what you did for work. You told him film, interiors, and sometimes portraits. He listened like he was taking in what you were saying, not just waiting for his turn to talk.
You asked what he did.
He looked at you sideways. “Music.”
“What kind?”
There was a beat of silence. “Come to a show,” he said, “and decide for yourself.”
Your smoothies came up. You both reached for yours at the same time— your hands didn’t touch but they almost did, you stepped back saying something about liking that answer, and he looked at you with those level, considering eyes and said nothing, which somehow said everything.
You left separately. He went first. You watched him walk through the glass doors into the cool evening, hands in his pockets, unhurried.
You drank your smoothie— phone in hand, looking up his name.
The whole ride home you listened to his music. Then you pulled into the parking garage and kept listening.
You hadn’t outrightly said yes to the show.
But you also hadn’t told him no.
── .✦
You went to the show.
Told yourself it was for research. You were a photographer; you attended shows all the time; this was professional interest, cultural curiosity, nothing with a specific name.
The venue was medium sized, packed to the brim, and loud in the way that rattles your skeletal system. You stood near the side because because that was the safest option— and that’s where you always stood; camera bag on your shoulder, and when the lights went low you felt the shift in the room the way you always did— that collective inhale, the moment before.
He was different on stage.
Not unrecognizable— still that same stillness, that same quality of taking up as much space as he needed— but expanded somehow, like a frequency you hadn’t been able to fully hear before was suddenly audible. You lifted your camera and started snapping pictures without a second thought, the way you did when something was captivating.
Afterward the crowd pressed and shifted, you were moving toward the exit when someone touched your shoulder.
You turned.
It was his security— telling you to follow them.
He’d just got done taking pictures.
When you made it to where he was he walked up to you, he was closer than the venue’s noise level required. He looked at you with an expression that was more open than any you’d seen yet, something running underneath it that he hadn’t let you see before.
“You came,” he said.
“Yea, I did,” you said back.
A pause. The crowd moved around you.
“And?” he said.
You looked at him. The base was still in your chest, humming. The photos were already in your camera, real, exposed, and undeniable.
“Hmm. I think I need to hear it again,” you said, “just to be sure.”
His mouth did the thing again. The almost-smile. Slower this time, more deliberate, like he’d decided to let it happen.
“I can arrange that,” he said.
Neither of you moved.
The crowd thinned around you and you stayed in the noise of the dimmed light and the thin gravity of something beginning, something that had already begun weeks ago in an LA grocery store, in the space between eye contact and words that were both said and not said.
His hand found the side of your camera bag and he adjusted the strap— just slightly, where it had been digging into your shoulder— without asking, or making it a big deal.
You let him.
“Come on,” he said. “I know somewhere we can get food that doesn’t cost twenty-two dollars.”
You laughed. A real one, surprised out of you— semi loud.
He looked at you like that sound was something he’d been waiting for.
You followed him out into the Los Angeles night, the city was loud, bright, and indifferent. You were thinking about how you’d started all of this because you needed more oat milk, and how nothing about it felt like an accident anymore.
── .✦
The diner was in Silver Lake, a booth by the window, vinyl seats, coffee that tasted like it had been sitting all morning, and a laminated menu. It cost eleven dollars total. You didn’t say anything about that but you both knew.
You sat across from each other. This was the first time you’d been across from each other— every other time you had been side by side, looking at the same shelf, standing at the same smoothie bar— the same stage. Facing him directly was different. You had nowhere to divert your eyes except directly at him.
“You shot the whole set,” he said. Non accusatory.
“I always shoot when something is worth shooting.”
He looked at you steadily. “Can I see them?”
“When I developed them.”
“Film.”
“Film,” you confirmed.
He wrapped both hands around his cup. His hands were careful-looking, steady. You noticed things like that— it was the photographer in you, or so you told yourself.
“Why film?” he asked.
You thought about it in a real way, not the rehearsal way you answered at openings and in artist statements. “Because you can’t see it right away,” you said. “You have to wait. And when you finally do see it, it’s either there or it isn’t. No adjusting. No fixing it in post.” You paused, “I like that it’s a commitment.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You like that you can’t take it back.”
You stared at him for a moment. That wasn’t quite what you'd said, but it was closer to what you meant.
“Yeah,” you said.
He nodded slowly, like he was turning that over. The diner hummed around you. Someone’s pancakes arrived two booths over. Outside, a car drove past with its windows down, music blasting— then gone.
“What are the interiors for?” he asked. “The project.”
“A book, maybe. Or just for me . I don't know yet.” You pick at the paper placement in front of you. “ I've been shooting the same kinds of rooms for two— almost three years. Spaces that feel empty. Not abandoned— just. momentarily empty.”
He was watching you with that full, unbothered attention.
“Like something’s about to happen,” he said.
“Or just finished,” you said.
There was a momentary pause. Something moved across his face, quiet and sudden.
“I’d like to see them,” he said. “The interiors. Not just the show ones.”
“Okay,” you said. You didn’t say it lightly.
He knew it wasn’t light. You could tell by the way he received it— not fully acknowledging it, just a small nod, showing you that it mattered and he understood.
You guys stayed until the diner got quiet and the coffee got cold— the server filled you guys’ cups twice before out of what seemed like pure and genuine sympathy. You talked about LA the way people take about any city they have a complicated relationship with— not quite with complaint, or love, but something more honest. He’d grown up around music and distance. You’d grown up somewhere flat and quiet— leaving at the first given opportunity.
“Do you miss it?” he asked. “Where you’re from.”
“Sometimes. The quiet.” You looked out the window at the streetlights. “LA is always awake. And loud.”
“Yeah,” he said, and you got the sense he understood that specifically, not just generally.
He paid before you could argue. You let him, and he didn’t make it a gesture, which you appreciated.
Outside it was cool, that particular cool that catches you off guard in May. You stood on the sidewalk and he stood next to you— neither one of you guys made an effort to head towards your cars.
“I’m over there,” you said, eventually. Gesturing.
“i’m down here,” he said.
Silence.
“The photos,” he said. “When you develo—.”
You cut him off.
“i’ll let you know.”
He stared at you for a moment, that intense gaze that you still couldn’t read completely and were beginning to think you weren’t supposed to— that it was something you’d have to accumulate slowly, over time, light light on film.
“Good night y/n,” he said.
“Good night hollis,” you said back.
You walked to your car. Not looking back, but you heard him head in the other direction, staying aware of his surroundings— while you stayed aware of the sound of his footsteps until you could no longer hear them anymore.
You sat in the dark car for a moment before you started it.
── .✦
⭑ ⭑
taglist: @2bun22. @luvvconceal. @spectranix. @sweet2sin. @kingoveverything. @glitterandviolence13.
a/n: an arm and a leg for a singular smoothie…i’ll bl*w that whole place up
