If I Made Moodboards For All The Characters I Make Up And Make Pinterest Boards Of Would The Two Followers
if i made moodboards for all the characters i make up and make pinterest boards of would the two followers i have eat that up or...
More Posts from Racketelio and Others
listen i know i'm a lesbian nad all but i need to eat him. umnumnum. rghhghg. he's always either smiley or confused and i WANT HIMMMMM
His curls…. i’m fuckign gnawing at the bars of my enclosure PLEASE JUST ONE CHANCEHDJSJDJF
TRAVIS MENTION?!?!
Anthony Mackie you deserved so much better
What if Jess and Lupe go to the bar to get lit and Lupe gets into an argument that spirals into an altercation? Well Jess has to jump into to finish it of course! and to make things worse, when they get back to the house, they realize they're locked out for the night :o)
Dang I wish I had fanfic brain! I have more for this!
both cropped and not because i like the crop but their pants look so goodt :o)
I’m sorry, but imagine being mad at former Avenger, current Captain America, first person to speak up against The Accords, has spent his entire MCU tenure fighting against corruption (while also fighting the Big Bads), Sam Wilson, because he doesn’t want a bunch of misfits, including the guy who tried to kill him with his own shield, running around working for the head of THE MOTHERFUCKING CIA and calling themselves Avengers???
Jfc put on your thinking caps already
Big Shoes to Fill
or, lily follows in her parents' footsteps.
an: i've only ever written small portions of stories from lily's perspective, and i think this was a fun little challenge at expanding that. i feel she needs more love. thank you @tashism for choosing this story, i hope i did you justice. extra thank yous to @newrochellechallenger2019, @artstennisracket, @ghostgirl-22, @grimsonandclover, and @diyasgarden for their willingness to help me out. it is not unappreciated.
tag list: @glassmermaids
Lily’s new shoes are pink, and the white rubber toes shine when the sun hits. She had wanted the pretty ones with the rhinestones, the ones that light up when she stomped her feet, but Mommy said no. She insisted the tennis ones were so much prettier, baby. That they were ‘professional’, the kind the big girls wear. As she looks down at them now, laces tied in a haphazard tangle by small fingers on the left, and a precise, delicate bow on the right by her mother’s hand, she thinks she should’ve fought a little harder for the light-up shoes. Her skin is tacky with sunscreen and perspiration, cheeks flushed, hands just a bit too clammy to hold the racket the way she’s meant to.
“Fix that grip, Lils!”
And then a flying yellow blur floats over the net and to her side, she stretches her little arms to reach, and hears that little tink of connection. It bounces, rolls, rolls, rolls… then stops like it’s proud of itself, right against the bottom of the net, the white line amongst the yellow fuzz beaming smug and stuffed to the brim with schadenfreude. Lily hears a sigh, the steady tap, tap, tap of a foot against the clay court, and then the half-hearted smack of hands against thighs. Mommy does this sometimes, when she’s upset at Lily. Or upset because of Lily’s playing, as Mommy insists is different. But, as far as she can tell, it’s still her fault. Mommy wouldn’t be sad if she could just figure out the tennis thing. And she just can’t. Not with all the coaching, or the miniature rackets, or the nights spent falling asleep on the couch because Mommy and Daddy are up too late watching matches to tuck her into bed.
Mommy went inside, probably for a break, maybe a little AC, maybe to stare at old photos of herself and breathe just a little bit harder. Sometimes, she swaps Lily out with Daddy. In terms of tennis, he’s rare to disappoint the way Lily was. He racked up win after win after win, smothered in trophies and sunscreen and something blue and bruised beneath his skin, and that’s what he was known for. So, he became therapeutic, in a way. A distraction, a lover, a means of vicarious victory, and the target of misplaced frustrations. Lily sits on the grass for a bit and blows some dandelion fuzz into the breeze. She thinks about what it’d be like to be a flower.
Mommy went to bed right after dinner (Mommy and Lily had a burger and fries, Daddy just ordered a salad), complaining of a headache that just wouldn’t quit. Her lips are quirked politely, something like a smile that never quite made it all the way resting on her cheeks. Lily knows that’s a fake one. She’s learned the difference. Lily knows it’s fake because her chest isn’t burning with that warm, golden feeling. Mommy really smiles when Lily makes a good serve, or when her drawings are deemed good enough to hang on the fridge with a little U.S. Open magnet. And Lily watches her face lift and her eyes crinkle and thinks, for a second, she really is as special as her parents say she is. She doesn’t feel that now. Daddy brushes Lily’s back with his fingers when he passes behind her to put the used forks in the sinks, Mommy doesn’t like the plastic ones, and she doesn’t move.
“What’s going on in that big brain of yours, Lilybug?”
She shrugs, huffs a little bit, doesn’t giggle when he blows a raspberry into her temple. She wants to, but she’s got to make it clear this is serious. Adults never laugh when things are important, she thinks. That’s why Daddy looks so angry during matches. He pulls back and frowns a bit, hands on his hips. She turns his way, and the visual makes her lip puff out and tremble a little. She can’t help it, really, but she just keeps upsetting people. She’s tired of making everyone so sad.
“Do you think Mommy is mad at me?”
He does something funny then, curves in by his tummy. It looks like the fallen Jenga tower from last week’s game night. Daddy always chooses Jenga, says he’s too good to beat. Lily always beats him, and it’s the only time he looks happy to lose. She thinks that’s silly. He pulls up a chair at her side, and she doesn’t like the way the metal sounds against the wood floor. It’s easier to be sad when it’s quiet.
“No, baby, ‘course not. Why’d she be mad at you?”
She shrugs, places a small chin in a smaller hand, stares at the granite countertop like it’s personally offended her. Like it’s staring back.
“‘Cause I’m supposed to be like you guys, and I’m not. It makes Mommy angry that I’m so super bad at tennis.”
He wants to smile, but he can’t, not when this little girl at his side is feeling things bigger than her body, than her vocabulary can provide her with a word for. Sweet girl, too, that she cares. That she just wants her mama to be happy, proud, something that isn’t going to wrack her with guilt for being herself. Still, he takes in that miniature pout, the one her mother so often wears in moments of her own frustration, and places his fingers in her hair, puffing up what had been pressed flat by a ponytail moments ago.
“She’s not angry. She’s just… well, it’s hard. You know what happened to Mommy. You know how bad she misses it. She just wants to see you grow so, so strong, like she was. That’s all.”
Lily nods. She knows. She knows as much as she’s been told, at least. Not with words or stories, but through little tell-tale signs. Through her mother’s insistence on long skirts, or taking extra with her lotion at the bend of her knee, right where the little white line is. She got hurt. Something band-aids and boo-boo kisses couldn’t make go away. She’ll get an ice pack for Mommy next time she sees her.
“But, what if I can’t grow big and strong like she did? What if I can only do it the Lily way?”
He pauses his hand’s movement in her hair, breathes through his nose like the air was pressed out of him. He wants to say that Tashi could take it, that she’s an adult woman who’s worked through these things, because she’s supposed to have done so. She’s meant to be able to feel pride in other people’s successes, rather than hate that they’re doing what she can’t. But, Art knows the resentment. He feels it some days, when he loses a match she’d have one. When Anna Mueller wins. So, he smiles, presses his lips to the curve of her nose, watches it scrunch.
“Then you do the Lily thing, and we watch you shine.”
She hums when she smiles, the way Daddy does sometimes when things are only a little funny, but mostly make her feel like her head is a balloon, and it’s flying away from the rest of her body.
“But she’d like me more if I did it the Mommy way, right? If I was good at tennis?”
He squeezes her shoulder with his palm, and finds that it doesn’t fit right in the cup of it. He thinks she’s grown too fast, and yet she’s still so small. And she’s too smart to lie to. He’s too dumb to know.
“I’m not sure, Lilybug.”
The answer is yes.
A few months later, Christmas lists were being made, toy catalogues searched, circled, conspicuously left by coffee machines and Daddy’s yucky green ‘First thing in the morning’ drinks. But they don’t make her all jumpy and giggly, the way a good gift should. So, when Grandma calls, her face shaking in and out of view on the screen of Mommy’s phone, and Grandma asks ‘What does our Lilybug want for Christmas?’, she replies,
“I want more tennis lessons.”
And she watches Mommy smile like she’s never smiled before, even though she tries to bend her head down into the paperwork she’s doing at the coffee table to hide it. It’s still see-able, and Lily can feel herself fill with that gold feeling again, from her toes to the top of her head. She just wants to make Mommy smile.
She’s been staring at this assignment for hours, and for all her might, she just can’t make sense of these numbers. Stupid logarithms. Stupid math. She shuts her laptop, watches her face turn a glowing white to a healthy gold in her vanity’s mirror. She’ll do it tonight, probably. Or in the morning, before early practice. She hopes her eyes are functional enough to write real, understandable symbols at two in the morning. She hopes she gets enough sleep to even wake up in time. She knows she can help it, but she still feels her stomach sink at the sight of a big, red ‘F’ on a page. She’s glad she does well enough in tests to make up for it, or her spot on the National Honor Society would be someone else’s, and, most importantly, Mom and Dad would flip their shit.
She flips her phone over where it laid next to her laptop, the screen flashing a text from Amy.
“Sorry babe can’t do tonight i’ve got dance and sth with andrew at like 7 :((( tm tho?”
Dance. It’s always dance. She remembers watching those clips of Amy on her Instagram story like they were miniature blockbusters, watching the way the fabric of her skirt moved when she bent her leg a certain way. How her arms flowed like waves, even if they were made up of jagged bone. Fucking dance. It’s not even a real sport, and Amy breathes it more than air.
“That’s alright :)) tomorrow then”
She pushes herself out of the spinning chair, pockets her phone and snags her earbuds from off the foot of her bed. Ignores the way her knees pop a bit. She’s been sitting for a while. Besides, she could use the practice.
“Where you going, Lils?”
Her mother calls from the kitchen, not looking up from some ad mock-up. Looks like another Aston Martin thing, if she can read it properly from where she is.
“Practice.”
She calls over her shoulder, stuffing one earbud in. She sees her mother nod, hide a smile behind the palm of her hand. Rare Tashi Donaldson, nee Duncan, approval. Her shoulders roll back, and her spine straightens just a little bit before she makes it through the sliding glass door.
She came back inside at 11 pm. Four missed calls from Amy and a ‘Hey plans got canceled you still free???’ lighting up her lockscreen, blocking out the tennis ball in the photo of a little her, fairy wings, missing front teeth, and a racket half the size of her current one. Maybe she should change it to her with friends.
She walks past the empty dinner table, bowl of something still steaming and waiting for her at her usual spot in the corner, dropping with a haphazard flop onto the couch, clicking the TV on.
“So, pick me, choose me-”
“Fifteen found dead in Oakland, Cali-”
“And little Ms. Duncan, daughter of famed tennis couple Art Donaldson and the former Tashi Duncan has had a great season so far. So far, undefeated, and with just a few weeks before the Junior Opens, she really has a shot at the win. Thoughts?”
She sits up a little, watches pictures of her flash, half-way through a grunt, braid whipping behind her. There had to have been a better photo of her.
“Well, Rog, I’d just like to see a little more out of her. I mean, what with her mother being what she was, it’s just a shame to see it look so much more aver-”
The TV is off with a click. She shuts her eyes, rubs at her temples, lightly raps her knuckles against her head like it’d knock out the sound. She thinks they’re wrong. She hates that they’re right. She wishes it was more natural. Everyone knew her mother was dead in a living body till she stepped on that court, and it all clicked into raw, animalistic passion. With Lily? Procedure. She didn’t feel adrenaline, or a spark, or anything but duty. Steps. Tired. She falls asleep in the fetal position, alarm unset. She only has enough time to step out the door before early morning practice when she’s up.
Her opponent’s get a birth mark on her right shoulder the shape of a ballet slipper. It’s just a little darker than the rest of her skin, only visible when she served. Her mother is sat on the stands behind this girl, hands braced on the rails like she’s ready to pull herself over and onto the warm clay ground beneath her if things go south. But, for now, the score’s even, like it has been the whole match, and that wedding ring is glinting in the light. She’s not even the court and she’s controlling it, back straight and face stony like an emperor watching two gladiators in the colosseum. She just hopes she’s not the one ending with her head detached.
She can’t see Dad, thinks he’s probably gone to get a hot dog, now that he can eat them again, or maybe he’s just too non-threatening to matter to her right now. But, vaguely, she thinks she remembers hearing a ‘That’s my girl’ in that stupid, slightly nasally voice she pretends to hate as much as she can. You’re not supposed to like your parents at her age. Her mother is staring, she can tell. Those sunglasses don’t hide a thing. She can read her mother better than that, and they both know it. She’s thinking. Something. Something sharp, biting, maybe hurtful. Maybe hurt. She doesn’t see her opponent set up to serve, she doesn’t see the birth mark slip into view, just a bright yellow blur headed her way. She lunges as best she can, practically on the tips of her toes to make it, and she hears a tink. And then a crunch.
She kisses the concrete like it grabbed her by the hair and pulled her in, and her teeth scrape her tongue and leave gapped indents there, heavy and bleeding. She doesn’t hear her mother, or the gasps of the spectators, or the medics asking the other girl to clear the ground. She can hear her own breath, her pulse, and laughter. Wild, hysterical laughter she only notices is coming from her when she looks down and sees her stomach contracting with it. And then she sees it, that abnormal, jagged looking leg of hers. Bone not made to wave. And she cries as hard as she’d laughed.
“Hey, Dad?”
It’s later than he’s normally up. Generally, he’s out at 9 p.m., still careful to be healthy where he can be. Where it’s normal.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed? You’ve got prac… what’s up, Lily?”
She bites her lip, shifts back and forth on her feet the best she can. Her right leg is just a bit more bent than the left, wrapped in soft, beige bandages. She didn’t like the brace. She doesn’t want to look at him, so she looks at the wall. There’s a photo of Mom, fist raised, mouth agape in a scream, dress white and pristine. The Junior Opens. She sniffs.
“Can I just… I don’t know. Can we pretend like I’m little again?”
He shifts, pats his lap, smiles like it’s the only thing keeping something aching and raw at bay. Something that’s needed to be touched for years.
“‘Course, Lilybug.”
And she falls into place like it hadn’t been ages. Like she’s allowed to like her Dad, head on his thigh, eyes trained on the coffee table. There’s a letter from some college there with her name on it, somewhere cold and rainy. Somewhere they could use a name to their tennis team.
“How’s Mom?”
He tilts his head to look down at her, the side of her head, the shell of her ear, the soft lashes of her eyes that are slightly damp.
“Oh, Lily… how are you?”
She swallows, places a hand on his thigh and squeezes there, not tight, but firm. Like it was a natural place to settle. Something unharmed and soft and a healthy, functional leg. Her throat tightens. The world looks blurry. She thinks the letter says Yale. The water makes it hard to tell. Her voice is just a bit too quiet when she responds.
“‘M fine.”
It’s silent for a moment, one heavy breath, then his lighter one. A volley. She rolls onto her back to look him in the eyes, and finds a spot of brown in the left one. How had she never noticed that before? It looks like the color of Mom’s eyes. Even he’s got her little territorial marks on him.
“Can I say something stupid?”
He nods, hums his affirmation, waiting like it’s all he wants to do. To look at her and wait and let it just be quiet. She appreciated the stillness. It’s easier to be sad when it’s quiet. It’s easier to love then, too, melancholic and bittersweet and sticky like saltwater taffy.
“I always wanted to dance.”
He buries her face into his stomach when her lip trembles. She wouldn’t want him to see. He doesn’t want her to see his watching teartracks. In the room over, Tashi sits with her head in her hands and her eyes downcast. She hopes Lily would consider a coaching position.
JOAQUIN JOAQUIN JOAQUIN
might drop a few other marvel chars w my thunderbolts drop... (joaquin. need that) but if u guys want anyone else lmk
admitting you’ve been a john walker fan since day one is CRAZY to me. you saw an unqualified, privileged white man who represented us propaganda take the shield and position that was suppose to go to a capable, hand appointed by the previous captain america, black man and thought “i love him so much”? YOU’RE WEIRD 🫵
and then you watched as he used the very same shield that he didn’t deserve to publicly execute a surrendering man, tainting it and ruining the morals that steve rogers dedicated his life to uphold and decided “he’s sooo deep and complex i want him.” YOU’RE SOO WEIRDD 🫵
i understand finding his character more enriching AFTER watching thunderbolts (barely) but thirsting over him beforehand is just fucking crazy.
to start writing fanfic about someone who was introduced into the mcu as part of a discussion regarding racial disparities is so odd to me. it seems like 9/10 of y’all weren’t even waiting for thunderbolts to come out, you were supporters of him from day one and now you’re just using the movie to justify being attracted to him.
i just don’t get how we watched the same show and you weren’t angered by him and his actions, much less found him attractive for it. it’s giving “i can excuse racism, but i draw the line at animal cruelty.”
i’m just saying thunderbolts better have written him as the most apologetic man to ever grace the marvel universe or u bitches will never stop hearing from me! if i find out he just made some corny hehe haha jokes and y’all believe it’s enough to redeem him (and romanticize him?) i’m sending u all to hell myself 🙄👎
and on top of all that, he’s fucking UGLY like ok bro yall some glazers
TIMECAST - Roaring Twenties
The Pink Pony Club
pianist!art donaldson x burlesque dancer!reader
c.ai bot | moodboard and introduction
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The music was never written down.
Art played it like a secret, fingers moving from muscle memory, heart memory. No sheet. No name. Just a tune he’d stumbled into one night after watching her dance and never managed to shake loose.
It didn’t match the other numbers. Too slow. Too sad. It had no business lingering beneath rhinestones and tassels. But it fit her. The real her. The one he only caught glimpses of between routines—when the lights dimmed and the sweat on her shoulders hadn’t yet cooled.
Carmen—though that wasn’t her name, he was sure—had a laugh like a brass bell and walked like she’d never been taught to apologize. On stage, she glowed. A constellation of sequins and hips, dazzling and deliberate. Offstage, she smoked French cigarettes and swore like a man on leave.
Art kept his eyes down when he played. Most nights.
Except for hers.
She was halfway through her number, some wild, thumping thing with feathers and a chair, when she caught him.
Not just looking. Watching.
Her mouth curved mid-spin, slow and dangerous. She pivoted, winked, and blew him a kiss so theatrical the crowd howled.
He fumbled the next chord.
The number ended. Applause. Laughter. A crash of cymbals. Carmen disappeared behind the velvet curtain, and Art was left blinking at ivory keys like they’d betrayed him.
It wasn’t until an hour later, after the last call had been whispered through shadowed booths and the club was quieter than a prayer, that she approached.
He was still at the piano. Always was. Tinkering with chords like they might one day answer a question he didn’t know how to ask.
She perched on the edge of the piano bench without asking. One long leg crossed over the other. Glitter smudged along her collarbone like stardust.
“That song,” she said. “The slow one. The one you always play when I dance. Is that for me?”
Art didn’t look at her. He couldn’t.
“I just…” He cleared his throat. “Play what fits.”
A beat of silence.
Then Carmen laughed, soft and sharp. “You’re lucky I like flattery, sweetheart.”
She slid off the bench and disappeared into the dressing room corridor, scent trailing behind her like rose perfume and danger.
Art stared at the keys a long time before touching them again.
—
The Pink Pony Club was never silent, not really.
Even after the doors locked and the girls peeled rhinestones from their skin, there was always a hum. A low, ambient hush like the place had its own pulse. The walls held secrets in their velvet folds. Lipstick prints on half-drunk glasses. Ghosts of applause in the rafters.
Carmen lit a cigarette with one hand, the other holding her silk robe shut at the chest. She was perched on the piano bench again, bare legs crossed, one heel dangling from her toe. The smoke curled around her like mood lighting.
Art played.
He didn’t ask what she wanted. He just let his fingers move—minor chords, soft harmonies, a lazy rhythm like the stretch after a long, slow kiss.
She hummed along under her breath.
“Do you ever sleep?” she asked, eyes closed.
“Sometimes,” he said.
Carmen cracked one eye open. “That a joke?”
He shrugged.
She took another drag. “You always play like you’re dreaming.”
“That’s when it sounds right.”
Silence again, except for the music.
Carmen reached into her robe pocket and pulled something folded and worn. She slid it across the top of the piano toward him. Art stopped playing.
It was a flyer. Faded. Creased from being carried too long. A girl in feathers smiled from the page, kicking her legs in silhouette. The headline read “Amateur Night—$20 Prize” in a cheap, jagged font.
“That’s me,” she said.
He looked up.
“I was seventeen,” Carmen said. “Didn’t even know how to sew a snap into a bodice yet. I borrowed shoes from a girl I met in the train station bathroom.”
Art didn’t ask how she got there. He just waited.
She tapped ash into a teacup. “I didn’t win. But Miss Kitty saw me. Told me I had legs like a chorus line and the face of a woman who’d never lose a fight.”
Art stared at her for a moment.
Then, carefully, he reached into his satchel and pulled out a thin, leather-bound book. He laid it between them. Inside, faded pencil notations danced across yellowed pages. Sheet music. Some finished. Some not.
Carmen raised a brow. “This your diary?”
He gave a small, helpless smile. “I don’t… write things down. Not really. But this is how I keep them.”
She touched the edge of a page, delicately, like it might flake apart.
“Play me one of these,” she said. “Something no one’s heard before.”
Art hesitated.
Then he turned the book, laid it flat, and began to play.
The song was slow. Not sad, but wistful—like a window left open on purpose. A melody that didn’t ask anything of you, just stayed awhile and listened.
When it ended, Carmen blinked and cleared her throat like she hadn’t meant to.
“You got a name for that one?”
He shook his head.
She leaned back. “Call it Glitter.”
Art looked at her.
She smiled, a real one this time. Smaller. Softer. “That’s what it sounded like. Glitter in a drain.”
—
They called her Sugar Lace.
She arrived on a Tuesday with a battered suitcase and a voice that tried too hard to purr. Said she came from St. Louis, used to work the Rivoli, knew how to handle men and high kicks in equal measure.
Her curls were firetruck red. Her heels were too tall for the way she walked. Her perfume came in waves, like someone had spilled it on her train ticket.
Carmen clocked her before she even finished her introduction.
Too gay. Too eager. Too much brass, not enough brass band.
But Miss Kitty took her in anyway. Because Kitty always did.
Kitty didn’t turn girls away. She took the raw ones, the bent ones, the ones with lipstick too dark and shoes too big. She’d press a compact into their hands, teach them how to glide instead of walk, and make them family before anyone else could ruin them first.
“You don’t have to be the best,” Kitty said once, holding a girl while she cried in a beaded bra. “You just have to be yours. Everything else is rehearsal.”
Still, Carmen had earned the late night slot with blood, bruises, and boa fluff. So when Sugar Lace strutted onstage in Carmen’s eleven o’clock spot four days later, something behind her ribs twisted sharp.
From his bench, Art noticed too.
He always did.
⸻
Carmen was in the wings, arms crossed, one brow arched like a challenge. Her corset still clung to her ribs from the earlier number. She hadn’t even taken her lashes off yet. That’s how fast the schedule had flipped.
Miss Kitty stood behind her, cigarette smoke curling around her like a halo. “She’s a novelty act. Just passing through. Don’t bristle.”
“She’s flailing.”
“She’s trying.”
“She stole my slot.”
Kitty smirked. “No one steals from you, baby. Not without consequences.”
Carmen’s eyes flicked to the stage.
Sugar Lace was mid-routine, something involving a velvet swing and a poorly timed glove toss. The crowd liked it well enough—men laughed too loud and slapped tables—but there was no rhythm. No tease. Just noise and skin.
And the piano?
It didn’t sing.
Carmen’s head snapped toward the bench.
Art’s fingers were still moving, but the tempo was wrong. The chords a little off. The cue for the bridge came too early, then too late. It wasn’t much. But it was enough.
Sugar tripped her exit spin, laughed like it was part of the act, and jogged backstage to scattered applause.
Kitty didn’t say a word.
Carmen did.
She waited until the next act had started—one of the twins with champagne bottles and a comedy bit—then found Art exactly where he always was after a misstep: by the side piano, fussing with a page of fake sheet music like it might confess for him.
“You messed up,” she said, arms folded across her chest.
He didn’t look at her. “Sorry.”
“You don’t mess up.”
“I just wasn’t… focused.”
“Try again.”
Art glanced up, eyes meeting hers, cheeks already flushing.
“She took your number,” he said softly. “I didn’t like it.” He shrugged.
Silence.
Then she leaned down, placed a hand on the bench beside his, and kissed his cheek. A quiet press of mouth to skin. Nothing flashy. Just real.
“Don’t go starting a fire on my account, piano man,” she whispered. “Unless you want me to dance in the flames.”
⸻
Later that night, the girls were curled up in the dressing room like cats after a long hunt. Robes slipped from shoulders. Stockings dangled from the edge of the vanity. Glitter stuck to everything—skin, mirrors, even the doorknob.
Goldie passed around a tin of balm for bruised feet. Jo flipped through a gossip rag, reading the horoscopes out loud in her fake radio voice.
Lorna was painting her nails with bootleg polish, one leg kicked up on the makeup table. “Carmen, you hear your replacement?”
“She’s not my replacement,” Carmen said, biting into an apple like it had personally offended her.
“She cracked her knuckle on the swing,” Jo offered. “Heard it from Theo.”
“She’s got nerves,” Kitty said, appearing from the hall with a fresh martini in hand. “She’ll learn.”
“She doesn’t listen,” Carmen muttered.
“She’s scared,” Kitty replied. “You remember what that felt like?”
Carmen didn’t answer. Only clicked her tongue in annoyance.
Goldie grinned. “Art sure listened.”
Jo whooped. “You see that chord sabotage?”
Lorna raised her glass. “To shy boys with good ears.”
They clinked imaginary glasses and howled with laughter. Carmen rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her.
Across the room, tucked half out of view, Art sat alone with a paper napkin full of notes, scrawled staves, and tiny sketches of stars in the margins.
He wasn’t laughing. But he looked like he wanted to.
And Carmen? She looked at him and felt it.
The spark.
—
It started with a kiss behind the prop curtain.
It was after a long set. Carmen still glittered at the collarbones, sweat like pearls at her hairline, her robe clutched loosely over her costume. Art had just finished packing up the second piano—his fingers still tingling from playing her exit number like it was a love letter he wasn’t allowed to send.
She passed him in the hallway, didn’t even pause, just grabbed his tie and pulled him into the dark behind the curtain.
The kiss was fast. Heat and lipstick. A bite on the bottom lip.
She didn’t say anything after. Just slipped away like nothing had happened.
But it did.
God, it did.
⸻
The next time was in the back storage closet between sets. She cornered him while he was reaching for a fresh music stand. Kissed him again—slower this time, mouths fitting like they’d rehearsed it. Her thigh pressed between his. His hands, awkward and reverent, found her waist like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to hold her even now.
She broke the kiss and whispered, “This doesn’t have to mean anything.”
He nodded.
It already meant everything.
⸻
It kept happening.
A dressing room when no one was looking. An empty stairwell at midnight. Once, breathless, against the hallway wall while the show thundered through the floorboards above them.
She touched him like she needed something from him—release, relief, quiet. He let her take it. Gave himself up in pieces.
But he never touched her like that.
He touched her like a hymn.
⸻
Art didn’t know how to be casual.
He tried. He told himself he could. But every time Carmen kissed him, he melted into it like sugar in heat. Every sigh was a song he wanted to write. Every time she undid her robe for him, he wanted to kneel.
She’d press him against the cool tile of the back room, kiss his throat, pull open his shirt with impatient hands. He’d slide his palms up her thighs, feel silk and strength and softness. He’d breathe her in like she was the only real thing in the city.
She’d laugh—low, wicked—and tell him not to get sentimental.
And he never said it out loud, but—
Too late.
⸻
One night, after, they lay tangled in the dressing room chaise, her head on his chest, their clothes half-askew.
He traced the edge of her arm with two fingers. Light, like a breeze. Her skin raised under it.
“You always touch me like I’m breakable,” she murmured.
“You’re not,” he whispered back.
“But you think I am.”
He didn’t answer. Just kissed the back of her hand.
It wasn’t love. Not exactly.
But it was something blooming wild and impossible in the dark—like orchids in a whiskey glass.
—
“Okay,” Jo said, leaning across the vanity with a cherry popsicle between her teeth, “so when are you gonna admit you’re absolutely, catastrophically, full-body stupid over the piano man?”
Carmen blinked. “Jesus, can I breathe?”
“Nope,” said Goldie, kicking her heels up on the chaise. “You’ve been walking around with that just-fucked shimmer for weeks.”
“You’re glowing like a cabaret Virgin Mary,” Lorna added, rifling through someone else’s lipstick bag. “Spill it.”
Carmen didn’t mean to.
But it was late, and her robe was falling off one shoulder, and she still smelled like his cologne from when he pulled her into the stairwell between sets. And her thighs? Still trembling a little.
So she smirked, twisted open her perfume bottle, and said, “Fine.”
Jo straightened.
“I’m fucking him,” Carmen said.
Screaming. Absolute chaos.
Goldie fell off the couch.
Lorna choked on her gum.
Jo slapped the mirror. “Oh my god. You’re fucking Art?”
Carmen lounged. “I’ve fucked him in the linen closet. Twice in the prop cage. Almost on the piano bench, but he got shy.”
“You corrupted a musician,” Goldie gasped from the floor.
“He said ‘oh fuck’ like it was a prayer,” Carmen said, grinning. “He says my name like it’s gonna kill him.”
Jo threw her popsicle. “You bitch.”
“He holds me like I’m gonna break,” Carmen continued, dreamy now, voice going all warm. “But he eats me out like he’s trying to ruin my afterlife.”
Lorna screamed. “I need him to teach a masterclass.”
“I’m gonna die right here,” Jo said, wheezing. “Art ‘I-blush-when-you-say-bra’ Donaldson? With the tongue of God?”
“And the hands,” Carmen added, dazed.
Goldie climbed back onto the couch like a ghost. “Tell me he calls you ‘ma’am.’ Tell me he whimpers.”
“Oh, he whimpers. He asks. He begs.”
The room exploded.
Jo was crying. Lorna rolled off the table. Goldie was chanting, “I knew it, I fucking knew it,” like a victory song.
Carmen tucked her chin into her palm, smug and soft at once. “And now,” she added, “he looks at me like he’s halfway in love and doesn’t know what the fuck to do with it.”
Silence.
Then a long, collective awwwwwwfuckkkk.
Jo wiped her face. “I’m gonna be sick. That’s adorable.”
“He’s gonna write you a fucking symphony,” Lorna said, starry-eyed.
“He did,” Carmen admitted, quiet now. “He played it for me after I let him take my stockings off with his teeth.”
Even Kitty—passing by the door—stuck her head in, arched a brow, and said, “Just make sure you’re not leaving a mess on the floorboards.”
Carmen winked. “No promises.”
—
It was half past three and the club was asleep.
The glitter had settled. The air was thick with old perfume and spilled gin. Somewhere, the record player was warbling a tune no one had flipped in hours.
Theo was behind the bar, wiping glasses and humming to himself, when Art slid onto the stool in front of him—shirt rumpled, tie loose, face a little too flushed for someone who definitely hadn’t been drinking.
Theo looked up. “Jesus. What the hell happened to you?”
Art stared straight ahead. “I think I’m in love with Carmen.”
Theo blinked. “…Okay?”
Art buried his face in his hands. “She climbed on top of me and told me not to come unless she said so and then kissed my neck and I think I blacked out for ten minutes and also she stole my glasses after.”
Theo set the glass down carefully.
Art kept going. “She bit me. Like actually bit me. And I liked it. Like, a lot. And then she made this sound—like a gasp but also a laugh—and I swear to God my soul left my body.”
“Okay.” Theo leaned on the bar. “What exactly do you need from me here?”
Art looked up, wide-eyed. “I don’t know. Advice? Perspective? A cigarette? A shovel to dig my grave?”
Theo sighed. “I pour drinks for a living. I once got broken up with because I didn’t know what ‘astrological incompatibility’ meant.”
“I’m so fucked,” Art said, voice rising. “She’s cool. She’s hot and charming and terrifying. She could eat me alive and I’d thank her. She laughs when I beg. And then she cuddles me like I’m breakable.”
“Sounds like you’re having a great time,” Theo said dryly.
Art slammed his head onto the bar. “She calls me baby. Like she means it. Like I’m hers.”
Theo slid a whiskey across to him. “Here. On the house. For your suffering.”
Art didn’t drink it. Just stared at it like it might hold answers.
Theo, against his better judgment, softened. “Look, man. She keeps coming back to you, right?”
Art nodded miserably.
“She kisses you after? Not just the… you know. Stuff?”
Art blushed. “Yeah.”
Theo shrugged. “Then maybe stop spiraling and let it be good. Not everything has to make sense. Especially not in this dump.”
Art looked up slowly. “She moaned my name.”
Theo put a hand up. “Nope. And we’re done here.”
Art smiled.
It was soft. Nervous. Stupidly, blissfully content.
“Thanks, Theo.”
“I did nothing.”
“You were here.”
“Tragically,” Theo muttered, walking away. “Fucking musicians.”
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
She didn’t knock.
She never did. She just slipped in past the curtain like a secret, still in her robe, cheeks pink from the dressing room heat. Her heels were off. She walked barefoot across the sticky floor like she owned it.
Art was alone onstage, the club empty now except for the two of them. The lights were half-down, just enough for shadows to lean into everything. He was playing something soft. Something new.
She didn’t speak. Just slid onto the piano bench beside him like gravity had dragged her there.
He didn’t stop playing.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. Pressed her lips to his neck. Light. Thoughtless. Familiar.
He breathed out hard.
“You left a button undone,” she murmured. “I thought you were trying to kill me.”
“I didn’t—”
She unbuttoned the next one. Slow.
“You’ve got the softest fucking skin,” she said, and he swore his soul left his body.
“I, uh—”
She kissed his throat. Lower. Dragged her nails lightly down the back of his hand where it rested on the keys.
“I came here to say thank you,” she said, voice like warm smoke. “For letting me be a greedy, filthy, terrifying thing around you.”
He swallowed. “You’re not—”
She looked up at him. “I am. And you like it.”
He did.
He liked it more than he’d ever liked anything in his life.
“I can’t breathe when you look at me,” he admitted.
She straddled his lap.
“Good,” she said.
He kissed her like he was scared of being good at it. She bit his lip until he stopped being scared.
⸻
They didn’t have sex on the piano bench.
They almost did.
But then Carmen looked at him, fingers curled in his curls, and saw something tender in his eyes—something not just hard or needy, but open.
So she leaned in close, cheek pressed to his, and whispered:
“I want to hear the song you wrote me. The one you don’t want me to know about yet.”
Art froze.
Then—without a word—he adjusted the bench, flexed his fingers, and began to play.
Carmen sat in his lap, wrapped in robe and affection, listening to her heart get played in harmony.
The melody was all her edges.
And all his softness.
