DESIGNER!
❤︎ you're convinced romeo hates you until you see what he's been drawing in his design sketchbook. ❤︎ romeo lucci x gn! reader ❤︎ wc: 5.3k
“Watch where you’re fucking going, BB!”
Ouch.
Romeo stares down at you with a sneer that could make anyone cower.
You blink, momentarily blinded by the sharp pain in your ass, and then annoyance washes over you. The boy in front of you is the singular cause of your frustration, and you hate that your first instinct isn’t to screech back at him but to be dumbfounded.
Heavens be blasted, he’s so beautiful.
It’s not a secret that Romeo cares immensely about his fashion. You don’t think anybody else on Darkwick campus has made as many amendments to his school-sanctioned uniform as he has. Nobody else, save for him, continues to play around with different trinkets and accessories to better augment their beauty.
He’s a vain man, but when it comes to his style, he can talk the talk and walk the walk. In your brief brush-ins with him, you don’t think you’ve ever seen him with a hair out of place. Every pricey piece he wears has Kaito turning green, and even the haughty Frostheim nepo baby students begrudgingly admit that Romeo can make anything look good. You’d think that level of skill and his doll-like face would endear him more to you. He’s capable, hard-working, breathtakingly gorgeous, and clearly the apple of envy for many students, more than you’re probably aware of.
But you don’t care.
Right now, you’re ungracefully sprawled out on the hallway floor.
Your butt throbs from taking the brunt of the fall, your limbs splayed out awkwardly as you somehow manage to push yourself upwards into a seated position. You rub at your body slightly—it wasn’t that hard of a fall initially, but then all the books you had in your arms went flying when you lost balance. Most of them are strewn around you, thankfully unharmed. However, to your misfortune, a few had landed on you instead and now leave you with stinging aches in random parts of you. Individually, they might not have hurt much, but everything snowballing one after another makes your battered body helplessly sag with exhaustion and pain.
A seemingly endlessly long day of classes, an unexpectedly hard fall on your butt, and your school supplies scattered all over the floor like the aftermath of an explosion… Your head is rightfully blank. Your consciousness floats somewhere over your physical form.
“Are the eyes on your face only for decoration? Do you always walk around like a headless chicken?!” Romeo’s sharp voice snaps, rudely jostling you back to reality. “You have nerve, crashing into me like that! What if you had injured my face? Broken one of my limbs?”
He clicks his tongue in clear disgust at you before crouching down. You bristle like a scorned pet at the chastising. You want to complain and growl back that you’re the one who ate shit after accidentally bumping into each other. Literally anyone with an ounce of kindness in their heart would ask if you’re alright, help you clean up, and get you on your feet.
But this is Romeo, and if you looked up kindness in a thesaurus, you’re pretty sure you’d find his mug amongst the antonyms. His good looks are wasted on someone with such a thoroughly rotten personality as his. Anger pricks underneath your skin, and your body feels irritatingly hot with the amount of pure annoyance that shoots through your neurons. You instinctively want to snap back at him smartly, but you know better than to provoke any more of Romeo’s wrath. As humiliating as it might be, the best course of action is for you to swallow your pride and keep your mouth shut. You can fume all you want inwardly, but you don’t want to give Romeo any more leverage for him to entrap you in one of his schemes.
His items are intermixed with yours, fragrant hand creams and expensive lipsticks and the like, the sort of thing you could never imagine just taking everywhere with you as if it cost nothing. On any other day, you might fawn over the brand names and try your luck to see if Romeo was feeling generous enough to let you spark conversation with him over it. But not today.
You grit your teeth, and frustration grips at your neck. You obediently swallow it even though your body fights it the entire time. Your anger burns like hellfire the entire way down. You make it a point not to address him as you hurriedly scoop up your items. Heavy textbooks, pencils that had rolled away from you as if running away, notebooks and journals that you needed for your classes… You haphazardly grab everything that appears to be yours, shoving them into your arms without caring whether or not it was organized or getting crumpled.
You can feel Romeo’s piercing leer at you the entire time, trying to goad you into saying something, but you’re determined to be the bigger person even if it’s only for show. Just enough to extricate yourself from the immediate situation. Then you’d go straight home, toss yourself in bed, and scream as many swear words as you knew at him into your pillow until your throat was hoarse. You’d invoke every deity you knew to curse him until he’d rue the very day he was born.
“Not even an apology? I suppose it was too much to assume that you’d have even the most basic of manners down,” the Sinostra vice-captain huffs indignantly. He pretends to dust himself off, smoothing out what you can only assume to be luxury brand clothes amidst the required uniform pieces. You wish you had a knife so you could rip holes into them.
Barely balancing all of your now-recovered school materials in your arms, you stand up shakily. The initial pain is gone, which is good. You can make a quick exit and put this whole thing behind you. You’re itching to do just that. You stand up tall and proud, and you make sure to shoot Romeo one final dismissive look.
You don’t bother hiding your disdain. Eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; disgust for disgust. Sarcasm drips from your vitriolic voice like venom, “I’m soooooo sorry.”
You don’t wait to hear him respond. You don’t want to waste any more of your time looking at his infuriating face. You don’t think you can handle being in his presence any longer than you have to.
You turn on your heel and storm off.
…
…
…
This is not your journal.
You didn’t notice the mistake until you were back to the safety of your dorm. This journal looks strikingly similar to yours, the cover a deceptively similar color, which was probably why you didn’t realize the mix-up until you calmed yourself down enough to get some work done and realized the truth when you opened up the front cover.
Romeo Scorpius Lucci.
There it is. His impeccable handwriting, in thin but gorgeously looped cursive, denotes who this journal actually belongs to. You must have accidentally mistaken his journal as yours after bumping into him earlier in the day, and just the sight of his signature makes you so angry that you want to tear every single page out of his journal and set it on fire.
You won’t, though. Just like earlier, you’re going to be a good person. Even if Romeo isn’t a good person to you, you have enough restraint and kindness and empathy in your heart to make sure his rottenness isn’t a reflection of your own character. Because ultimately, that’s what matters: you’re putting in the effort not to stoop to his level, and for that, you’d like to think that someday the universe will reward you for your determination. Your fingers clench into fists at your side, and you glower down at his signature as if glaring at it long enough will somehow magically start scorching the paper.
The right thing would be to close the journal. The right thing would be to contact Romeo and let him know that you have it. The right thing would be to return it to him, endure whatever lecture he’s going to hash out to you, and move on with your day. It’s what a good person would do, and it’s what you would want someone else to do to you if you were in Romeo’s shoes.
But would that be what Romeo would do if he were in your shoes?
Without thinking, your hand moves towards the journal, and you flip a page. Then another. And another. You’re not sure what you’re expecting. Maybe something typical: notes from classes, a record of the casino’s expenditures, perhaps scrawlings that would turn the journal into his personal diary. If what was inside was truly as trivial and personal as that, then you’d actually let your moral compass kick in and close the journal out of respect for his privacy.
Drawings.
No, not just any drawings.
They’re designs.
Clothing designs.
You’re no expert, but your eyes widen when you come across the neatly arranged arrays of sketched out blank models in the beginning few pages. They’re done freehand and messily, but the blank forms are done with a practiced hand, meaning that this isn’t the first time Romeo’s drawn them out. They’re draped in all kinds of pretty colors and different articles. They look like they’re wearing pieces that belong in a fashion show rather than contained on paper. They would be beautiful on a runway, on a real body, his artistic vision brought to life instead of being tucked away like a forbidden secret.
It’s wrong for you to look at these, but it makes sense. Romeo cares about his fashion like no other, and he’s always critiquing the dress of those unlucky enough to pique his anger. It makes sense that he’d try his hand at his own designs and that he’d be good at it too, undoubtedly through years and years of meaningful practice and keen observation. You gingerly and slowly drag your fingers over the designs, imagining what the actual fabric of the designed garments might feel like against your skin.
Are these the fragments of his dreams? Is this what he’s hoping to achieve one day? To reinvigorate his brand, breathe life into the many designs he’s probably cooked up in the meantime, and share his genius with the world? It’s a very vulnerable and tender side of him, and you peruse through what appears to be countless designs, enraptured by his craft and wishing you had his expertise if only to admire his handiwork more fully. It’s one thing to hate the guy for how he treats you and others, but it’s another to separate the artist from the art. He’s good at this, and you have to respect him for what he’s accomplishing.
You absentmindedly flip through a few more pages, and then you pause. An observation dawns on you, and equal parts intrigue, doubt, and confusion trickle through your veins.
No. It can’t be. You’re overthinking it. This is Romeo you’re talking about. He’d crush you like a bug under his heel if destroying you meant bringing him some kind of advantage. You’re not close enough to him to have endeared yourself to him, and you’d only be flattering yourself if you dared to think you meant anything positive to him. And yet…
The sketched models go from blank, featureless figures to something else. Someone else. You watch as they go from wispy, indiscernible forms to figures with eyes. Hair. A nose. A scrawled smile. You hold your breath as you flip each page, no longer stopping to admire the designs as much as you are watching a once indistinguishable mannequin transform into an actual person.
The same color as your eyes. The same color as your hair. The distinct shape of your nose. The curve of your mouth when you smile. Your imperfect posture. The shape of your silhouette. As you go through his journal, your heart rate starts picking up. You can hear your panicked pulse throbbing against your aching temples, the deafening roar of your heated blood inside the shell of your ears. Your stomach twists painstakingly in on itself into a tight knot, and your throat constricts every time you nervously swallow, the metamorphosis unfolding like a daydream in front of your trembling eyes.
These models take on more and more of your features. Soon enough, he’s no longer drawing designs on blank humans. They’re not the ones filling up the majority of the pristine pages inside his journal.
It’s you.
You gasp like you’ve been shocked by electricity. You throw the journal back on the table like it’s suddenly grown a head, nearly falling out of your seat with how fast you’re trying to distance yourself from it. You stare at it like it’ll explode into a million pieces right in front of you, a bomb ready to detonate. Denial thrums in your veins, your heart racing a million beats a second.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It can’t be true. It can’t be you. Your eyes are playing tricks on you. You’re tired, and you’ve had a long day. There’s just no logical explanation as to why someone as plain and ordinary as you would be his model. You’re anathema to him, if anything, to the point that you were certain of this much just this morning. Your panicked thoughts clamor like a cymbal dropped on the floor. You don’t know what to do with the journal.
Should you look again? To confirm what you saw? But what would you even do with that knowledge? It’s not like you have the chops to become an actual model, and if Romeo finds out that you’ve been pawing around his trusted designs, he might actually have you dragged off by his goons and “taken care of” as he sees fit.
And yet… your curiosity stirs deep in your brain. Pandora’s box of secrets has already been opened, and it’s not like you can really scrub the forbidden knowledge that’s been spilled into your lap. With a quivering heart and shaking hands, you muster up whatever scraps of your flustered courage you have left inside of yourself. You reach for the journal, and while holding your breath unconsciously, you scour the pages for where you left off.
Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. It’s undeniably and unabashedly you. No matter how many times you blink or rub at your eyes, your likeness doesn’t disappear from the journal. Your throat tightens, and you tentatively flip the page.
More designs unfold in front of you. His handwriting also decorates so much of the once-blank page. Instead of full body designs, he seems to have sketched close ups with details of patterns, fabric, textures, even notes…
This shade of green would look good on them. Brings out their complexion.
They wore new socks today. Want to design an outfit that would match.
New SS collection - these pieces would suit them.
They’re pretty when they smile.
Such lovely eyes.
So cute.
Pages and pages. All filled with what look like lovenotes. You have to go back to the title page and check multiple times to make sure this is actually Romeo’s journal and not a figment of your imagination. Your heart tenses against itself as if you’re waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under you. There’s just no way you could catch his attention, and more importantly…
This is not the work of a man who simply happens to be inspired. This is a whole journal filled with you and nothing but his observations of you. Your mind spins as you struggle to take it in at face value. How long has this been going on? Has Romeo been considering you his muse this entire time, without anyone knowing? How many times has he been keeping tabs on you, doodling the things you wear, the accessories you choose, the clothes that you might have tossed on without thinking too much? Do his eyes seek you out whenever you cross paths with him, not wanting to miss a single detail so he can spill his heart out to his journal? And if so… are these notes his true thoughts towards you?
You’re getting ahead of yourself. You sink into your seat feeling like you’ve actually gotten physically beat up once the designs run out and untouched blank pages blink up at you. You don’t know how to navigate the situation from here on out. You should give the journal back, but you don’t know what to do from there.
You could feign ignorance and move on with your life, but then you’d be haunted with the elephant in the room every time you see Romeo. But if you brought up the fact that you had seen the contents of his journal, you’re certain he’d skin you alive and sew your flayed hide into a handbag or something. You could lie and say you opened it by accident, but it still doesn’t take away from the fact that you’ve seen what are most likely his inner-most thoughts. You’re probably the last person he wanted seeing these designs and notes.
You swallow shakily, and you let your eyelids flutter shut. You try to empty your overloaded brain the best you can, shaking your head to clear your thoughts. You’re overthinking and letting everything get to you. You’re thinking of the worst possible scenarios when you need a level head on your shoulders. It would be too easy to panic and make everything worse, but if you’re already digging yourself into a shithole, there’s no need to dig yourself further.
Romeo hasn’t come kicking your door down demanding his journal back, so you’re willing to take the gamble that he hasn’t noticed that his journal has gone missing. It’ll be too devious of a plan to try to smuggle it back to him without him noticing, but that means you have the upper hand when it comes somehow miraculously extricating yourself out of this nightmare.
You’re going to be a good person. That much has never been out of the question. You’ll return the journal, and hopefully, you’ll use the knowledge this mix-up has granted you into winning a bit of Romeo’s favor.
If his notes in the journal are to be trusted, the hard part of this battle has already been won.
…
…
…
“Y-You…!!”
You watch as Romeo’s face contorts and twists, a barrage of emotions running amok. He looks like he’s visibly speedrunning the five stages of grief. You stand your ground, planting your two feet firmly against the sparkling marble floor of the VIP room. His journal is placed on the table in front of where Romeo is sitting, and Romeo gnashes his teeth before he shoots a glare at you.
“It was a mistake,” you remark before he can launch into one of his neverending tirades. “It got mixed up when I bumped into you. So I’m here to return it.”
“Did you-,” Romeo breathes. Hot fury radiates off of him, and it sounds like it’s taking all of his energy just to keep his voice somewhat level and understandable. “-Did you look inside it?”
You steel yourself. You had practiced how this interaction might play out in your head every single moment up until you actually had to enter the VIP room and give Romeo his journal back. You had braced yourself for all kinds of scenarios: him getting aggressive, him trying to deny everything and pretend like you were the crazy one, him dragging you off into the auction hall to lock you inside a cage until his immediate anger subsided.
“I did,” you state plainly. You suck in a deep breath, and you do your best to look a little remorseful, at the very least. “I… have thoughts about what I saw inside, but I won’t deny that I owe you an apology for intruding. I’m sorry.”
Romeo’s mouth drops like he’s a fish caught out of water. He’s no idiot—he probably expected the worst himself when you came into the VIP room with his beloved design journal in your hands. But you don’t have to say the quiet part out loud for both of you to know what your confession means. You’ve seen proof of his obsession with you, and no matter how big of a fit he throws or whatever means he turns to to gaslight you, the drawings don’t lie.
The boy’s cheeks explode with color. His face turns the same shade of red as his dorm vest, a red so brilliant that you almost wish you could take a picture to ridicule him down the line. He’s been caught red-handed, no pun intended, that he seems to be struggling to pick his next words.
You’re a bit amazed too, if you’re going to be frank with yourself. Romeo is loud and brash, but he’s intelligent and quick-witted above it all. Even when his dorm mates stir up all kinds of trouble or the school tosses him into some impossible mission, he can normally snap out of it after a few minutes of screaming and find some plan of action to get everything under order again. But you watch with bated breath as the proud young man struggles, genuinely struggles, to figure out his next move.
You let yourself be a bad person for a few minutes. Very few people at Darkwick would have the audacity to court their crush by being outwardly antagonistic towards them to the point of overkill, but Romeo has done nothing but give you hell to cover up his own selfishness. Had it not been for you snooping around his journal, you might have always thought that Romeo simply had it out for you. You relish his embarrassment and his inability to recover from the mistakes he’s made. The sadist in you sings with sweet retribution at him squirming in his seat, all vulnerable with his pomp stolen out from right under his nose.
For his sake though, you keep your expression level. If humiliation was your end goal, you would have spread the journal wide and far to cast his reputation to a place so low he couldn’t recover from. But you aren’t that cruel, and it feels dirty to exploit what should be as innocent as a crush to that extent. You’re here to do the right thing, and if the stars are in your favor, to teach him a lesson too.
“It’s okay.” You decide to put him out of his misery by breaking the silence. Romeo looks in your vague direction, but he’s unable to lift his face enough to meet your gaze. Despite that though, you do your best to offer what you hope is as close to a comforting smile as you can get with your inner gloating. “I haven’t told anyone else. And I won’t let anyone else know, not unless you want me to.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he spits. He grips the armrests of his chairs, and had it not been for the black gloves covering his hands, you would have bet good money that his knuckles would be ghastly white from how hard he’s digging his nails into them. “If I hear anyone else other than you talking about this, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you!”
Frustration flashes in you, but you keep your calm face. It’s only natural he lashes out even more harshly than he normally does—you have him cornered, and Romeo won’t hesitate to gnaw his own leg off if it means freeing himself from this trap.
“I want us to be friends, Romeo,” you murmur, disappointment lacing your words. “It’s not the end of the world to have a crush. And… I liked seeing what you drew. I’m not a fashion expert, but I know that’s something you care about a lot. I’ve always thought your outfits were cool, and I thought all of your designs were really neat.”
His death grip on his chair loosens just a tad. His face is still a vivid shade of crimson red, but he lifts his burning face up to look at you for the first time since you let the cat out of the bag. Hurt, surprise, doubt, confusion: they all paint his pretty face as he sizes you up, waiting for you to pull the rug from under his feet.
Romeo inhales deeply through his nose. His voice sounds a little bit softer, but he remains jaded, insistent on keeping you out. “Are you mocking me?”
You shake your head vehemently. “No! I’m being serious. Mocking someone for something they’re passionate about is an awful thing. I want to help you.”
A pause. “I don’t need your charity.”
It’s your turn to suck in a deep breath. You’re doing your best to be patient, to be empathetic, to meet him in the middle so that you both can gain something out of this ordeal. You remind yourself again and again that even though Romeo is difficult, he’s only doing this because he’s hurt at having his heart revealed without his permission. Anyone would be as angry as he is.
“It’s not charity,” you do your best to correct him gently. “But if it’ll make you feel better, then I’m willing to strike some kind of deal with you.”
“A deal? What are you cooking up, you rascal?” He scowls. But now you’re speaking more aligned with his terminology, and with the ball more in his court, his body language transforms from pure stiffness to something with a thin veneer of professionalism in place. Force of habit, perhaps, from all of his years trying to wiggle his way through the fashion world and from running the casino.
You shrug, hoping the motion comes across more as casual than absentminded. “It’s nothing crazy, I promise. I just thought… I wouldn’t mind modelling for you. If you want.”
The room falls silent with what you can only describe as a deathly chill the moment your proposition exits your mouth. The first inklings of regret tickle your brain, and discomfort pricks at the back of your neck. You force yourself to stay still and to not cave under the pressure. Even if you are barking up the wrong tree entirely, you want to see what he might say to you before you decide to throw in the towel.
“Model… for me,” he starts. His words are quiet, the snappy edge gone and replaced with the kind of incredulity that confirms to you that Romeo thinks your offer is too good to be true. His probing eyes scan your face, desperate to find any clue that might hint to you having more nefarious endgames in mind.
Relief blooms inside your chest, but you don’t let it show. But you allow him a small smile, mostly in part to assuage any worries he might have. “Yeah! I can pose however you want me to. Or try things on! We can even spend more time together that way.”
It’s working. You know it is. You can see the gears in his mind turning, and Romeo sniffs haughtily, not bothering to hide his petulant pout at this point.
“...What do you want in return then?” He counters. He’s most likely bracing himself for you to extort him, for you to demand things like money or luxury products or to capitalize off of his many powerful connections. The thought is tempting, but your issues with him have never been about his class or his wealth.
Your innocent smile extends into a grin. You’re being a little immature, but if there’s an apt time for immaturity, it’d be now.
“I want you to be nice to me.”
Romeo visibly freezes. His eyes narrow into a ferocious glower, and he claws at the armrests of his chair again. “What!? What kind of preposterous-”
This time, you let your face fall, and you return his glare with an equally pointed one of your own. The time for pleasantries is over; you’ve done your part in getting his guards down. This is a deal, the one he wanted because he was too proud to simply accept your friendship for what it was, which means it’s fair grounds for you to negotiate what you want to get out of this.
“This is what I’m talking about,” you firmly state. You cross your arms over your chest, sighing. “I thought you hated me for the longest time, Romeo. You’re always spitting insults at me and calling me names. If you were a five year old, I might have thought it was cute and turned the other cheek, but you’re fully grown. You’re… really mean, and it makes me feel awful.”
Romeo colors again. Then he drops his face into his hands, and you nearly flinch when something that sounds like a pained whine comes from him, the sound muffled slightly. “You’re- You’re humiliating me!”
“I’m trying to help you!” You cry back. You shake your head, and you walk over. You place a gentle hand on his shoulder and crouch down to his eye-level, and once more, you’re trying to coax him out from his shell. “I want us to be friends. I’m not going to lie and say that I’ll magically fall in love with you the second you start being nice, but it’ll make me think better of you if you try. You don’t have to fake positivity or anything. I just want you to not be so mean to me all the time.”
You smooth over the fabric on his shoulder, and when he lifts his face again, his pretty violet eyes are brimming with tears. This isn’t much to ask of him, but this is Romeo. Fickle, prideful Romeo, who hates letting anyone see him weak. Your breath hitches in the back of your throat, and you wonder if you’ve pushed him too far.
But then he hastily wipes at his eyes. “Do you mean it? That… you’re not doing this to embarrass me? And you really want to be my friend?”
“Yes! Of course I mean it!” You shove your head against his shoulder, smacking your forehead over and over lightly into the corner of his body. “You’re so stupid, Romeo!”
“Prove it to me then,” he sniffles. You stop your exaggerated headbanging to look up at him. He meets your eyes for just a second and then averts his gaze. But he looks less jaded this time, and there’s a bit more of a shy, boyish glow in his cheeks as he stumbles over his next words. “Tomorrow. Meet me here after your classes tomorrow. I want to draw you.”
You raise your eyebrows at him expectantly. Romeo bites his bottom lip, and he acquiesces under your hopeful gaze.
“Meet me here tomorrow… please,” he ekes out, “I’d like to draw you, if you’re… open to it.”
You grin again. You reach over to grab his hand, and when Romeo doesn’t snatch it away from you, you reward him with a reassuring squeeze. “I’d love to! See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
“I feel like a child,” he sighs, frowning. There’s no real bite behind anything he says or does now, a lion defanged thoroughly. He still has a long way to go before he’ll be anything close to the palatable kind of boy you’d consider going out on a date with, but it’s his efforts that’ll matter more than any end result. And you know Romeo is nothing if not determined, and you wouldn’t put it past him to clean his act up without any room for doubt if it’ll mean keeping you all to himself.
This is a start. A better one than you could have dreamed of, and truth be told, you’re excited to see what this will have in store for the both of you. You meant it with your whole chest when you said you wanted to be his friend, but with enough time and enough practice…
You wouldn’t be opposed to becoming something more.
x
