Chapter Text
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Whatsapp chat with: Bobby Producer
Received Message:[MH_book_final_250418.pdf] 23:07
Received Message:[MH_comp_card_final.pdf] 23:07
Received Message:I know I know I'm sorry Zoey 23:07
Today
Sent Message: you DONT know 04:21 
i am up at this time because of UOU BOBBY!!!! 04:21
i hate you 04:22
this is going to be the most stupidly rushed prep ever 04:22
can you move the shoot to tomorrow at all? I'm gonna miss the whole night! 😭😤 04:22
Received Message:No, sorry, trying to schedule her in for this was hard, we sandwiched it in between two of her other jobs, she’s coming straight from the airport 07:14
Have you looked at her book yet? 07:23
It'll be worth it 07:23
Sorry, Zo 07:23
I'll make it up to you somehow 07:23
Sent Message: you BETTER 07:33
Sent Message: her book is p nice I GUESS 07:33
Sent Message: fine ok it's perfect for this stupid concept this won't be the worst 07:34
Sent Message: you still owe me tho 07:34
Received Message:You're my favourite photographer thank you!♥️🙏🏼 07:38
Sent Message: 😡 07:39
Sent Message: 💜 07:42
Type a message
*
Whatsapp chat with: ~*~*~💜~*~*~
Today
Sent Message: im having the shittest day 13:53
Sent Message:tell me youre up for seeing me tonight 13:53
Received Message:I am not coming to the staff party 14:03
Sent Message:i dont want you to come to the staff party 14:03
Sent Message:i want to come in your bed 14:04
Received Message:Ah. That can be arranged 14:04
Received Message:See you this evening 14:04
Type a message
*
Zoey was annoyed. Her camera shutter clicked, and she gave short, clipped directions, shooting again after a moment of unhurried, elegant movement from the model in front of her. The model who hadn’t even sent across her comp card, much less her book, until yesterday, giving Zoey almost zero time to prep. The model who was absolutely only here because she was a total nepo baby, but who was making Zoey’s rushed as fuck shoot look like a wet dream; incredibly, irritatingly, unfairly good at fulfilling the brief.
And attractive. She couldn’t forget attractive. Her vagina wouldn’t let her — it hadn't stopped reminding her since this woman had walked in the door. Feeling a vague attraction to the person she was shooting wasn’t new, Zoey photographed attractive people every day, but there was an energy about this woman that was hitting her slightly too right to make the pull of attraction comfortably ignorable.
The model had been booked to arrive bafflingly close to when the edition wrapped, a clash with another job that the Creative Director had begged the whole team to forgive, and had made their producer have to work miracles to schedule. And there was a summer party happening at the office bar downstairs, one lone editor waiting for Zoey’s selects upstairs, the CD on call but having left with an “I have every faith in you, Zoey,” that really just meant ‘This shoot is in the way of me and my beer.’
All it had taken was one glance and one word and Zoey had been shoved off balance. The stupid fashion concept gown (sunset on the moon through a waterfall, this CD needed to get in the bin) clung to the woman’s skin, hiding nothing of what she wasn’t wearing underneath it. She’d raised a hand and said, “Hey,” the greeting low and velvety, and Zoey had just about enough sensibility left to think, oh, dear.
She’d always been a sucker for a good voice.
She checked the camera display, a mildly annoyed huff coming out of her at how fucking almost perfect the shot was already. She’d gotten three shots she liked, but this one was giving her that tingly almost there feeling that meant good things for her own book.
The model was irritatingly good. Zoey had really wanted her to be incompetent because it would have made her far less attractive, but fine. If she could get this shoot over with, get someone on the edits, she could head downstairs and allow herself one drink before reviewing the finals. Then she could enjoy herself for a couple of hours before heading to Rumi’s to make herself feel better about everything that was currently happening.
She frowned at her camera display, then up at the woman, tilting a finger slightly at her and getting a perfect tilt of her chin in response, the light catching her cheekbones just a little more sharply. The stylist had also disappeared with a “But free wine, Zoey” (fuck him), but there was a curl of hair in the wrong place, and Zoey stepped towards her. “May I?” she asked.
“Sure,” the model said, almost sounding amused at having been asked, the laughter lilting through her voice like a streak of light through smoke. “Where’s everyone gone?”
“Honmoon Magazine’s summer party tonight,” Zoey said, somehow managing not to sound annoyed about it, mostly instead just annoyed at the hair that still wasn’t quite sitting where she wanted it, despite how many times she tried to curl it back into place. She turned for the hairspray, realising as she did so that the stylist had fucking packed up.
“There’s hairspray in my bag,” the model murmured, unmoving. “Pink one, in the corner.”
As if Zoey could have missed it. It was embossed with her name — Mira, in gold, loopy cursive — and it matched the shade of her hair perfectly, because of course. Still, Zoey could have kissed her. “You’re my saviour, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Mira said, and if her voice had a taste it would have been hot honey. Zoey’s steps actually faltered on the way over to her bag, in a way that she really hoped Mira hadn’t caught.
When she looked back at her, there was a spark of something interested in her eyes that meant she probably had.
Fuck.
She needed to get this fucking over with. She was in personal time mode already, that was the problem. It had hit 7pm, she could hear the bass of the music from downstairs, and she could already feel how good the beer would taste after a day that had started at 4 this morning trying to prep for this stupid shoot with this stupid model that she couldn’t even be annoyed at any more because she’d saved her with a beautiful little can of L’Oréal.
The curl of hair finally paid attention to her, and Zoey stepped back, tipping her head to the side as she surveyed her critically.
“Fuck, yeah, okay. This is the shit.”
One perfect eyebrow raised at her, then flickered back down into the exact right position when Zoey inhaled, ready to threaten murder.
“You look like you really need that drink. I’ve delayed you, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” Zoey said, but she was only half paying attention to what she was saying, checking the shot and the lighting before her finger pressed down on perfection.
She glanced at it for just long enough to see what she knew would be true. It was the shot, she knew it was the shot, but she still asked for one more change. Options were always required, even when they weren’t going to be picked. And sometimes creatives liked to choose wrong. “Sorry,” Mira murmured, changing poses with an effortless precision.
Zoey blinked, finger hovering over the shutter, catching her eye and for some inane reason feeling herself flush.
Rumi had made her excuses for this evening’s event, as she always did when there were too many people, when things got too big and too messy, and she needed to be the boss and not a person allowed to have fun. She would be lounging in a bath right about now, glass of wine in hand, waiting for her to leave the party and join her. But if she gave her a heads up…
There was a tingling start of something electric in the air that made Zoey actually let herself wonder for a second if Mira had a hotel suite close by.
Zoey tapped at the floor with her foot, the nervous energy needing somewhere to go. She knew what kind of mood she was in, and if Rumi was too… it wasn't impossible, they'd done it often enough. She allowed herself an even more dangerous thought of actually texting Rumi with a question.
Nope. Nope. None of that. She was still on the clock. She was Zoey The Photographer right now, not Zoey The Hot Queer Mess.
“S’ok,” she said, all irritation fading at the apology. It had been soft and intentional, her eyes flicking over to her with real feeling behind her words, and — well. Zoey was a sucker for a good voice, and a good face. Rumi was proof enough of that. “We’ve got it. Good to go.”
Mira got up, stretching with a dancer’s flexibility, and Zoey had to stop herself from taking another shot, candid this time, because that had been a gorgeously unrestrained movement. Mira wandered over, peering at Zoey’s camera display, and she tilted it towards her, flicking back to the shot she knew would be chosen.
“Oh. I look…” Mira stopped, blinking. “Huh.”
“What?” Zoey asked, eyes flicking between her face and the screen, trying to see what had possibly gone wrong to cause that note of confusion in her voice.
“I look like me.” She said it like it was new, and Zoey grinned, bouncing on her toes slightly.
“I’ma take that as a compliment.”
“You should. Damn. Thought this shoot was a wildcard, but this is going straight in my book. You’re crazy good.”
She was close enough over her shoulder that she could smell her — hairspray and conditioner and a hint of sweat from the lighting — close enough that she could feel the ghost of air on her skin from her breath, and that and her words were enough to send Zoey into approximately the sixth ring of gay hell.
“Thanks,” she said finally, not certain if she’d managed to wrangle her voice into something reasonably level, or if it sounded as affected as she felt. “You’re very good at taking direction.” Zoey genuinely meant it as a professional compliment, because she was, she’d taken the barest movement of Zoey’s hand and somehow translated it into the exact photograph Zoey was after, but she could feel the energy shift.
“Not something I’m normally accused of,” Mira said, low and amused, and Zoey turned to look at her, her face slightly too close to be within the bounds of professional behaviour. “But those photos are fire, so maybe you’re just that good at giving it, hm?” Zoey was still trying to figure out how the fuck to respond to that in a way that wasn’t just a breathy, ‘oh god,’ when she continued, “Your necklace is twisted.” Mira reached to fix it, her fingers burning heat into her skin and rising an embarrassing flush on her face, and Mira’s eyes twinkled with something that looked far too close to thought so. The light pressure of her fingertips slid along her skin, making her shiver far too obviously. “You heading down to that party, now that you've finished ordering me around?” Mira’s smile was knowing, and there was a light tug at the material of her shirt straps, knuckles brushing her throat in a way that buzzed static in her brain.
“Not really something I'm normally accused of, either,” Zoey said.
“Oh?” Mira said, looking up from where her own fingers were impacting her skin. Her eyes were dark with an intention that Zoey would have had to have been incredibly obtuse to misunderstand, and Zoey forgot that she was supposed to be in work mode; the room they were in fell away, all she could see was the quick movement of those eyes, flickering down to her lips. Her mouth was open and saying words before she could stop it, a blurted, “Maybe you could order me around instead sometime?”
Mira’s eyes widened, a flicker of sharp surprise, and Zoey stepped back, looking at the ceiling, the rush of blood to her face sudden and awful. “That wasn’t my inside voice, was it.”
“No-o. That… was an outside voice.”
“I’m sorry,” Zoey said to the ceiling, looking back at her unhappily. “It’s been a really long day but that was incredibly unprofessional. You must get this all the time, I’m a dickhead.” Mira looked like she wanted to interrupt, but Zoey barrelled through her apology, starting to pack up the remaining equipment. “I’m going to go make these selects and send ‘em off for editing, I’ll send a copy of the raw files and the final proofs over to your agent. Again, so sorry.” She didn’t stop talking until she’d finished packing, camera bag swinging onto her shoulder, leaving the rest to be sorted tomorrow by the assistant who had abandoned her two hours ago.
“Bobby invited me, to your party,” Mira said, her face doing something complicated and expressive that Zoey couldn’t quite read. “I’ll see you there?”
“Uh,” Zoey said intelligently, her jaw creaking with how hard she shut it, just nodding instead of letting her traitor of a mouth say anything further, very close to bolting out of the door.
Selects. Selects and then a metric fuckton of beer to try and forget that this had ever happened.
*
The photographer was on the other side of the room. Not just on the other side of the room, but visibly continuing to be on the other side of the room, no matter where Mira chose to be.
Zoey, her name was, one of the assistants in the room had told her, as they apologised on their way out of the door and Zoey swore at them about abandonment. Zoey herself had definitely not mentioned her own name, entering the room without introduction in a flurry of brightly coloured pants with suspenders hanging uselessly down her thighs (a choice), a turquoise, flowery crop top that showed abs for days (a choice Mira appreciated), and fucking leather straps with belt buckles around her neck (a choice which Mira… was functioning completely fine about, thanks for asking). She’d been visibly and audibly pissed off most of the shoot, a cute little glare on her face that Mira had to try very hard not to laugh at. The witty little insults she spat as she worked made everyone laugh at her, and she looked like an adorable, angry little ferret in leather and vibrant colours, until one apology took all of the fight out of her, which — Mira loved a girl who was all bark, no bite. So fuck it, she’d flirted a bit. And Zoey had seemed into it until suddenly she was apologising for being unprofessional, like Mira hadn’t just literally had her fingers playing with the belt buckle by her neck, imagining doing much more than that. And now. Avoiding her.
Mira was not used to being avoided. Mira did not like to be avoided. Particularly when she’d delayed her flight just for the way she'd said that — her eyes beautifully steady, her face completely honest and shameless with it until the second she’d remembered where they were, the humiliation looking just as pretty on her.
She was trying to listen to someone talk about an editorial piece on — tampons? Christmas trees? Potentially tampons on Christmas trees? — but when she saw the opportunity she excused herself politely, grabbing up a new beer (not that she’d been looking at what Zoey was drinking, but. Well. She’d been looking). She wasn’t standing outside the bathroom for long before the door opened, and Mira dangled the beer from a finger and a thumb, stopping her from being able to leave without running face first into it.
“Uhm,” Zoey said, with a stutter that felt as full of feeling as a sentence. Fuck, she was cute.
Mira just continued to hold the beer in front of her, one eyebrow raising until Zoey finally reached to take it. “Avoiding me?”
“No,” Zoey said, seeming to realise that it was going to be very difficult to explain her behaviour in any other way and quickly giving in to a shrug and a mumbled, “Maybe.”
“I was flirting too, y’know,” she said, in case she hadn't made that clear enough. “Really not an issue.”
“Well, yeah,” she said, without a hint of the shyness Mira had assumed was to blame for this. “But it was my studio, and we were on the clock. Super not cool of me. So, I’m sorry.”
Cute. “If you really feel like you need to give it, apology accepted,” Mira told her, watching that loosen something she'd been holding between her shoulders. “We’re not on the clock now,” Mira tried.
“No,” Zoey agreed, taking a pull from her beer as if to confirm it, her eyes hitting hers with something promising coiled tight in them. “We’re not. How long are you here for?”
“Just tonight,” she said, letting her eyes dip down her body and back up to her lips — getting a curl of a soft, welcoming smirk. She continued, mostly because she was getting the impression that it might work, “I shifted my plane to tomorrow in case.”
“Do you… have a hotel yet?” Zoey asked, and oh holy shit there was no shyness in that, that was a straight up question.
“No,” Mira said, lowering her voice to add, “I was hoping I wouldn’t need one.”
Zoey’s eyes darkened, looking at her watch. “No time for foreplay,” she said, as if that helped her make a decision, going to put her beer down on the side.
Mira was too stunned to do anything but stare at her, a feral grin creeping across her face as she turned to put her own drink down.
“Mira!” A hand came to pat her shoulder before she could respond, and if it had been anyone other than Bobby, Mira would have thrown them off. “So glad we managed to make schedules work to finally get you here.”
“Yeah,” Mira said, tearing her eyes away from Zoey, her mouth softening instinctively as she looked at him. “You're a miracle worker.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Zoey look down at her phone and start typing. “I know Bobby from when he produced a shoot I was on for Kijun,” she told Zoey, trying to drag her back into the conversation. She could not allow Zoey to get bored now.
“Back when I was freelancing,” Bobby agreed. “How'd the shoot go? Sorry it worked you late, Zo.”
“Worth it. Hold on, you'll like this one,” she said, scrolling on her phone for a second before handing it to him.
“Oh my god, I knew getting the two of you in a room would be magic. Finally managed to convince our ECD with that Autumn brides shoot you did for Grazia. Oh I like these a lot.” He was flicking through photos that Mira hadn't seen, and she peered over his shoulder, watching image after image of her flick by. And all of them, somehow, felt like they were actually capturing her — not the Mira she was used to seeing look back at her from spreads and covers, but expressions on her face that felt real. Zoey's phone pinged with a message from someone who was in her contacts as nothing more than a heart emoji, and Bobby thumbed it away. “Message from someone.”
“Oh yeah?” Zoey asked, sounding a little nervous.
“Not anything incriminating, don't worry,” Bobby laughed. “They just said ‘in,’ if that means anything to you.”
“Did they, now? Well that's fun,” Zoey said, with something interesting in her voice, but Bobby was flicking back to another shoot, probably something from earlier this morning, and Mira was too interested in the content to do more than quickly glance over at her, finding her rocking back on her heels, looking like she was thinking hard about something. At least she couldn’t go back to avoiding her when they had her phone kidnapped.
“These are sick,” Mira said.
“I feel like you’ve gone far enough back now that you’re flirting with danger in my photo reel,” Zoey said, grinning as Bobby made a short, alarmed noise, stopping and handing her phone back.
Bobby chatted to them both about their day, Zoey getting visibly more and more frustrated with him, her eyes flicking over to Mira like this was somehow her fault. “Bobby,” she said eventually. “You know you're my favourite producer.”
“Yes,” Bobby said, as if it was a well known fact.
“So you know when I say this it is with all of the love in the world. Please fuck off. Mira and I were having a conversation.”
She said it with an inflection that couldn't possibly be misunderstood, and Mira coughed to cover her laugh. Bobby looked between them, his eyebrows raising and a grin on his face. “You sure you don't want to talk more about tomorrow’s schedule?”
“Fucking certain,” Zoey told him, with that cute little attempt at a glare, and he snorted, clearly finding it as hilariously unintimidating as Mira had, backing away, hands up.
She turned back to Mira, lashes lowering as she looked up through them in a heart-stopping flicker of intent. “You lost us twenty minutes.”
Mira hummed. Oh, she was trying to blame her for that, was she? What a delightful little shit. “We can make up for that in a taxi to your place.”
“Or,” Zoey said slowly. “And this is just an option. If you're not enthusiastic about this option, my place can totally work instead. But. How do you feel about threesomes?”
Mira blinked at her. “With… who? You have a girlfriend?”
“No, no, we're not super keen on labels. I have…”
Zoey's fingers flitted over her phone, tilting it to show her a photo of two people she recognised. One was the photographer in front of her, and one was the editor-in-chief of the magazine she had just modelled for. Rumi Kang.
Mira's brain stopped working, and Zoey put her phone back in her pocket, an edge of a smirk on her lips at her reaction. “Only if you're interested. She is.”
Rumi Kang. “Wild,” Mira said out loud. But this wasn't an opportunity that she was going to get every day, the woman in front of her was looking at her with an attractively daring smile, and Mira had never been very good at saying no to interesting choices. Her grin was sharp as she shrugged. “May as well make it worth the flight change fee.”
Thankfully, they didn't need to wait for an Uber. Zoey waved over a black sedan that seemed to be waiting specifically for her, and Mira opened the door for her as Zoey said, “To Rumi's, please, Darryl.” They’d barely pulled away from the curb when Mira’s hands found purchase on the straps of her shirt, pulling her towards her and finally tasting her lips.
Zoey made a little groaning sound of pure want, her mouth hot and needy on hers, her hands slipping to try and find skin in amongst layers of clothing as Mira pressed her back into the seat. She was undone in moments, her breath quick and harsh, her skin flushed with warmth, and when Mira licked up the line of exposed neck, she made a beautifully wrecked mewl of need, bucking up into her with a gasp of air. God, she loved how difficult her mouth made her seem and how easy she was once she got her hands on her.
Mira’s eyes flicked to the view window into the front seat, but thankfully the driver seemed to have realised it would be best to close it for them. She wrenched herself away from her, getting a disappointed gasp of an ‘oh’ that shot liquid heat straight through her insides, pushing her back as she tried to follow her. “No. Stay,” she said, catching her breath. Zoey looked at her from the side of the car, legs spread and up on the seat, a dazed compliance keeping her where she was, eyes dark and lips bruised. Fuck. “Good girl,” she said gently, pressing down on her knee, and though Zoey tossed her head, there was a pleased flicker in her eyes. “Question.”
“Yes,” Zoey said immediately, her voice rough, and god, she was going to beg her so pretty before the night was through.
“How into taking direction is this not girlfriend of yours?”
Zoey’s eyes flickered as she shook her head as if to try to straighten out her brain. “Not very.”
“Uhuh,” Mira said, giving up on subtleties. “I don’t switch.”
“Fuck,” Zoey said, breathing the word out reverently, her eyes actually fluttering closed for a moment. “Wouldn’t ask you to. Rumi likes to watch.”
The air punched out of Mira’s lungs. “Oh,” she said, so fucking confused about how this night was going when she was supposed to have been making her way to the airport around about now, and the hand that had snuck to trace a line up her bicep wasn’t helping. That smirk was back again, a teasing tilt of full, reddened lips, like she was enjoying rattling her, and Mira reached to kiss it from her. She pulled back just as Zoey's hips started to shift towards her, small, whiny pants coming from her that were shocking heat right through her. “Anything she likes to watch in particular?”
“Check with her before you try anything weird,” Zoey said, her voice low. “My safeword is Burbank, but I’m pretty—” she cut herself off, giving herself that shake again, like she was trying to clear a haze from her mind.
Mira hummed in satisfaction, reaching for the open button of her trousers, tracing a slow line upwards, feeling the slick wet of her even through her underwear, watching the clarity she’d fought for slip straight away again, her head tilting back as she hissed, her whole body tilting into her and her fingers tightening hard on her arm. “Are you going to beg? You don’t look like you say please easy, but I think you’ll be saying it a lot tonight.”
“God,” Zoey gasped, a high-pitched cut-off whine. “I don’t even care anymore.”
“No?” Mira asked, amused, leaning to kiss her, her mouth hot and open and careless. “What do you care about?”
She kissed down the side of her neck, pressing the pad of one finger into the divot of her throat until Zoey was past words, making an incoherent moan of approval, encouragement, asking for more.
The car pulled to a stop with excellent timing. It took effort to take herself away from her, but she managed to remove her hands from Zoey's body long enough to dig inside her coat pocket for cash to pay.
Zoey’s hand was still on her arm, but it was a cute quest for contact, almost as if she was using it to steady herself. “Oh, you don't need to — he's Rumi's,” Zoey said, her words delayed.
“Thanks Rumi. Thanks Darryl,” Mira said, reaching over her to open the door and shove her out of the taxi.
Zoey was shivering just a little, bouncing on her toes as she walked towards the apartment block with suppressed energy, tugging Mira after her. The hallway was spacious and well-lit, and as Zoey chucked her keys on the side table, Rumi stepped out in front of them like she’d been waiting, bare feet padding on wooden floorboards. It was really her, this wasn't an elaborate joke — like a small part of Mira had thought this must be. She was in Rumi Kang’s apartment, Rumi Kang was in front of her, wearing a turquoise silk robe with what looked like nothing under it, barely covering mid thigh, signature purple braid brushed out and loose around her shoulders, the elegant, sharp features that Mira knew from interviews softened with the evening.
“Hi, Zo,” she said, her lips curving into a smile. Zoey had said they weren’t good at labels, but there was something delighted and affectionate as she looked at Zoey, an intensity that Mira could feel even though it wasn’t pointed at her. Rumi reached to give Zoey a swift kiss, humming at her sharp intake of breath. Her head tilted, placing her hand on Zoey’s sternum, holding her in place with no more than one light hand as she pulled back. Zoey made an unhappy noise but stayed where she was, Rumi’s eyes landing on Mira in a sweeping assessment. She wasn’t much taller than Zoey, but she held herself like someone used to knowing she'd be listened to, her face close enough that Mira could see little flecks of warm amber in the dark eyes looking up at her.
“Oh, you have got her to a lovely place. Mira, was it? Am I joining you for the evening then?” Rumi hadn’t even introduced herself, like she knew she didn’t need to, but it was true enough that it didn’t even feel smug — just honest.
“I think that was what Zoey requested. Wasn’t it?” Mira asked, pitching her voice low and seeing Zoey shiver in response, lips opening, pink and beautiful, but her voice not quite managing to escape.
Rumi’s eyes darkened on her, head tilting back to Zoey. “Is that what you want, Zoey?”
“Yes, please,” Zoey managed, her voice breathy and hoarse, and Rumi shot Mira a wide-eyed look of approval over Zoey's shoulder.
“What a gift,” Rumi said, landing the comment somewhere between them, like Zoey in this state was just as much of a gift as Mira’s presence.
“Yeah?” Zoey asked, seeking assurance, and Rumi cupped her cheek, eyes dark and heavy with intent on her. Mira could physically feel Zoey shiver in reaction, and god, she was delightfully responsive.
“She’s beautiful,” Rumi said, eyes flicking back to Mira and curving into a grin, all sharp edges and focus. “And she’s taken you apart so well already. Look at you, so ready for her to fuck you. Is that what you want, Zoey?”
Zoey nodded, eyes wild as she looked between them, hands clutched tight in Rumi’s robe. Rumi looked at Mira with a question of one perfectly arched eyebrow, and Mira just gave her a grin and a shrug.
“Well then,” Rumi said, turning without any concern for the way Zoey’s hands were tangled in her robe, letting the twist of her body leave it behind in Zoey's grasp as she walked, bare and stunningly beautiful, back down the hallway. “Bedroom?”
“Holy shit,” Mira whispered.
Thank god Rumi didn’t look back, because she was very almost as quick to follow as Zoey.