Chapter Text
Dani kept lifting her chin because the makeup artist tapped twice beneath it with the blunt end of a lip pencil every time she forgot, and by the fourth tap Kourtney had started doing it too from the couch, two fingers under her own jaw like she had appointed herself assistant director of Dani Lopez’s face. The suite smelled like setting spray, coffee gone lukewarm, and somebody’s breakfast sandwich abandoned under a stack of call sheets. Three phones buzzed across the glass table at uneven intervals, each one claimed by a different person who kept saying Dani’s name like she was not sitting six feet away with a tissue tucked under her lower lashes and a stylist combing the newly refreshed pink streaks through her black hair.
“Don’t move,” the makeup artist warned, not looking up, and Dani froze with her mouth half-open around the straw of her iced coffee. Across the room, one of the managers was saying the words “rollout synergy” into a headset with the grave intensity of a hostage negotiation while another paced near the windows and reminded everyone, for the fifth time, that the teaser clip for the new single could not leak before noon. Ricky had taken over the far chair with his knees folded wrong under him, eating grapes from the fruit tray one at a time like he had discovered luxury under duress, while Mack scrolled through fan edits with his sunglasses still on indoors because he claimed the room lighting was managerial.
Kourtney had Dani’s phone because Dani had been banned from touching anything after she smudged one nail reaching for a notification, and now Kourtney was reading reactions aloud with the kind of delight that made Dani regret giving her the passcode years ago. “Somebody said, ‘pink streak Dani is for girls who stay up past midnight and ruin their own lives,’ which,i think is pretty rude.” She glanced over the top of the phone, lips pressed in a way that meant she was saving three worse comments for later. “Oh, wait. Another one says the album visuals are giving rich girl meltdown at a haunted Sephora.”
“That’s a compliment,” Mack said from behind his sunglasses, and Ricky nodded too quickly around a grape, nearly choking before he got himself together with one hand pressed to his chest. Dani stared at both of them in the mirror, the makeup artist’s hand steady at her cheek, and gave the smallest possible smile so no one could accuse her of enjoying this. She loved release weeks in the way people loved storms from behind reinforced glass; everything moved too fast, everyone wanted something, and still there was a shimmer beneath the exhaustion that made her sit up straighter when the right lyric started trending. fabulous had begun as scraps recorded between late calls and hotel mornings, and now the scraps had a schedule, a hair concept, a lighting palette, three interview blocks, and a manager who kept saying noon like the word itself might save them.
Ricky started laughing before he got the sentence out, which was usually a warning. He leaned so far over Kourtney’s shoulder that she shoved him away with her elbow, but he only pointed at the screen, face going red with effort. “Read that one. No, no, Kourt, read it exactly.” Kourtney squinted, then her face broke, and Dani’s eyes narrowed at both of them in the mirror because there was no dignity in being trapped under powder while her friends treated the internet like a group project designed to humble her.
Kourtney cleared her throat with unnecessary drama and read, “the funniest thing about dani lopez is she acts annoyed every time somebody asks her to sing as if her entire job isn’t literally singing”
Ricky lost it first, loud enough for the manager near the window to pause mid-sentence and glare at him. Mack lowered his sunglasses just enough to look at Dani over the frames, then made the mistake of looking at the iced coffee still balanced in her hand. Kourtney tried to keep her mouth neutral and failed so badly she had to turn the phone toward her chest. Even the stylist behind Dani coughed once and combed the pink section near her temple with sudden, very professional focus.
Dani took a slow sip through the straw without breaking eye contact with her reflection. “It’s called having talent,” she said, and because Ricky laughed harder, she tilted the cup until the ice knocked against the plastic in a sharp little warning. “Some of us are carrying an era. Some of us are eating grapes in rented chairs.”
“whew don't worry i'm not gonna ask you to sing.. wouldn't want you getting annoyed with me” Mack spoke, and Kourtney made a noise into Dani’s phone like she was trying to hold herself together through prayer. Dani should have let it go. The whole room had turned back toward the schedule, the powder brush had moved along her jaw, the manager had resumed saying things like "assets” and “timed engagement,” and there were a hundred safer places to put her attention. Instead she watched Kourtney’s thumb hover over the screen, watched Ricky still grinning to himself, and tried to make her voice land careless. “Who posted it?”
Kourtney’s thumb stopped. Not dramatically. Just a tiny pause before she looked down again, as if Dani had asked what time the next car came instead of singling out one fan from thousands currently dissecting her hair, her eyeliner, her posture, her caffeine habits, and possibly her soul. “Account is @danilopezsgf,” she said, scrolling a little. “Gabby Lewis. She does those fake social media AUs people keep reposting. The funny ones with the fake group chats and fake headlines.”
Ricky leaned over again despite Kourtney’s elbow already waiting for him. “She wrote the one where your tour bus gets haunted by the ghost of your old publicist.”
“That one was good,” Mack added, and Dani looked at him in the mirror. He raised both hands, sunglasses back in place. “Not saying I bookmarked it. Saying art happens.”
Dani made a small dismissive motion with the iced coffee, which was difficult to execute with grace while a makeup artist held her face in place, so it became more of a wrist twitch. “People write anything when they’re bored.” She meant it to close the subject. It did not close anything inside her, which annoyed her more than the laughing had. Kourtney kept reading reactions, softer now because the room had tipped back into motion, but the name stayed where Dani could hear it. Gabby Lewis. @danilopezsgf. A person somewhere outside this suite, probably in a room without managers and call sheets and three people debating whether Dani’s next caption should include a star emoji, had looked at a photo of her and decided she was powered by spite and iced coffee. Worse, she had not been entirely wrong.
By noon, the teaser posted. By twelve-oh-three, Dani was in the hallway with sunglasses on, pink streaks falling deliberately over one shoulder while a camera crew walked backward ahead of her and someone reminded her not to answer questions about the bridge yet. She gave the practiced smile, the one that photographed clean from every angle, and said the single came from a place of spontaneity, which was true only if spontaneity included sobbing once in a bathroom in Phoenix and then rewriting a chorus at two in the morning while Ricky slept on the studio couch. Kourtney stood just behind the monitor, mouthing, “Chin,” once, and Dani lifted it without thinking.
The day kept pulling pieces from her. Interview room, hallway shot, car, studio, another car, another coffee she accepted without remembering asking for it. Fans gathered behind barricades in flashes of pink ribbons and handmade signs, and Dani waved until her cheeks ached, signed a sleeve of photo cards, laughed when someone yelled the haunted publicist joke from across the sidewalk. Her head turned before she meant it to, searching for a face she did not know, which was ridiculous enough that she stepped into the car too quickly and knocked her knee against the seat.
That night, the hotel room had been turned down by someone who tucked the sheets so tightly Dani had to fight the bed to get under them. The pink streaks were pinned away from her face, her makeup gone except for stubborn glitter near one eye, and her phone glowed against the duvet while the city kept moving in muted lines beyond the window. Kourtney had texted three reminders about sleep, one warning not to read comments, and one voice memo of Ricky saying, “ annoyed dani nation rise,” before Kourtney cut him off with a door slam.
Dani ignored all of it and typed @danilopezgf into the search bar.
The account loaded with a header that looked like a messy collage of concert lights, fake screenshots, and Dani mid-performance with her mouth open around a lyric she remembered recording barefoot. Gabby’s pinned post was a thread titled like breaking news from a universe where Dani got trapped in an elevator with her own PR team and slowly chose violence. Dani told herself she was only checking because Kourtney had mentioned the account, because fan behavior mattered during rollout, because it was technically useful to know what kind of posts were moving through the timeline. She was still telling herself versions of that when she clicked another thread, then another, then a short fic linked beneath a joke about Dani’s eyeliner having a better work ethic than half the industry.
The writing was funnier than she wanted it to be. Annoyingly quick. Too specific in places, careless in others, never worshipful in the way that made Dani’s skin tighten. Gabby made fake Dani dramatic, vain, exhausted, mean for three seconds and sorry in the fourth, always reaching for caffeine, always acting like the world was a stage even when she was alone in a kitchen wearing socks that did not match. Some of it was wrong. Some of it missed her by miles. Then, in one paragraph of a fake backstage scene, fictional Dani peeled the label off a water bottle while pretending she was not listening to everybody talk about her, and Dani’s thumb stopped moving.
She glanced toward the dark television, saw only the shape of herself in the glass, hair pinned back, shoulders bare above an oversized tour hoodie, one knee drawn up under the hotel sheet. The room was quiet enough for the air conditioner to become irritating. Somewhere below, a car horn cut through traffic and faded. Dani looked back at the phone, scrolled to the top, and read Gabby’s bio again like there might be instructions hidden in it.
By the time the clock on the nightstand changed to 2:17, Dani had learned that Gabby overused lowercase for comedic effect, hated bad pacing in celebrity documentaries, wrote fake social media AUs like she had a second brain wired directly to fandom chaos, and had once posted, “dani lopez if you're ever free , i have a mini van and a dream.” Dani pressed her lips together, annoyed at the little laugh trying to escape, and kept scrolling anyway.
Kourtney stole the last fry off Dani’s plate without looking at her, which made it worse, because theft with eye contact at least carried some theatrical respect. The restaurant had tucked them into a private corner behind a half-wall of plants and low gold lighting, far enough from the main dining room for Dani to stop smiling at strangers and close enough for a server to keep replacing Ricky’s soda before he asked. A tablet with tomorrow’s call sheet lay facedown between a bowl of truffle fries and Mack’s untouched salad, because everyone at the table had agreed not to talk about promo for twenty minutes and then immediately failed in smaller, sneakier ways.
Dani had changed out of the blue vinyl jacket from the afternoon shoot, but her hair still held the shape of too many hands: glossy black lengths brushed smooth, pink streaks bright against her cheek whenever she leaned over her pasta. Kourtney had taken one look at her when they sat down and reached across the table to tug one section forward, mumbling something about brand continuity while Dani swatted at her wrist. Now Kourtney kept scrolling between bites, her expression shifting every few seconds as the internet found new ways to discuss Fabulous like it had been dropped into the world solely for group analysis and dramatic font choices.
“Here we go,” Ricky said, too delighted to be trusted. He had his phone tilted away from Dani, shoulders hunched like a child hiding contraband under a desk. “Another one from girlfriend account.”
Dani’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. “From what.”
Mack lifted his glass, not drinking yet, mouth already curving. “The one you’ve mentioned nine times.”
“I have not mentioned her nine times.” Dani set the fork down carefully because stabbing Ricky in public would become a headline, and she had given enough to the rollout for one day. “Also, calling someone girlfriend account when her username is clearly a joke is—”
“—ten,” Kourtney said, still reading. “That makes ten, girl.”
Ricky turned the phone around before Dani could reach for it. The tweet sat there in dark mode, bold and obnoxious, from @danilopezsgf: dani lopez performs like she’s trying to win an argument with the lighting rig and honestly the lighting rig deserves it. Beneath it, the replies had already started building a tiny religion around the phrasing, people posting screenshots from the teaser, making edits, laughing at the rig like it had entered a public feud without legal representation. Dani stared at the tweet long enough for Kourtney to make a soft little noise beside her.
“It’s funny,” Ricky said, leaning back fast when Dani reached across the table. “Also, she’s right. I saw you glare at a spotlight during rehearsal.”
“The spotlight was wrong.”
“girl, please ,” Kourtney said, but she said it into her water glass, which meant she was smiling.
Mack dragged his salad closer with two fingers and still did not eat it. “This is what I mean. Normal people say things to you all day and you give them pageant princess buffering wheel, but one girl with a stan account says the lighting rig is your enemy and suddenly we have follow-up questions.”
Dani made a face at him, then ruined it by glancing again at Ricky’s phone. The username had changed shape in her head after Kourtney said it earlier. @danilopezsgf should have been embarrassing enough to make Dani scroll past it forever, but Gabby’s posts were not written like a person trying to get noticed. There was too much bite in them, too much ease, as if Dani was not a distant celebrity so much as a mutual everyone had silently agreed to roast with care. It irritated Dani in a clean, bright way. It made her want to keep looking.
Kourtney watched her over the rim of her glass. “The pasta is getting cold for Twitter discourse.”
“The pasta is fine.” Dani twirled a piece around her fork with exaggerated focus, then lost the noodle back into the sauce. Ricky made a tragic little gasp; she pointed the fork at him without raising her eyes. “Not a word.”
Mack finally took one bite of salad, chewed like he had chosen suffering as a lifestyle, and set the fork down. “Dani, for someone who complains nobody talks to her like a person, you do make it almost impossible for anyone normal to get near you.”
The table did not go quiet. Not fully. The restaurant still moved around them: silverware, soft music, a server laughing near the kitchen doors, Ricky’s straw scraping ice at the bottom of his glass. But the sentence stayed between the plates longer than the jokes had. Kourtney put Dani’s stolen fry back on her plate like a peace offering. Dani looked at it, then at Mack, then away toward the plants because the half-wall suddenly seemed very committed to its job.
“I talk to normal people,” Dani said, and the way Ricky’s eyebrows moved made her regret the sentence before it finished leaving her mouth.
“Name one,” he said, too quickly, and Kourtney kicked him under the table. He yelped and grabbed his shin, betrayed by friendship and furniture at once. “I meant besides us. And crew. And your dentist, who does not count because you pay her.”
Dani reached for her drink, not because she wanted it but because her hand needed an assignment. “I’m not making a secret account to befriend a fan. That’s weird.”
“No one said befriend,” Kourtney said, but her voice had gone too smooth, which meant she had considered this before and was now trying to present it as fresh group inspiration. “Lurk. Read. Learn how people talk when they aren’t trying to survive a meet-and-greet.”
Ricky straightened, wounded shin forgotten. “Make a stan account. Like, truly commit. Bad icon, vague bio, one repost from six months ago so nobody thinks you’re a bot.”
“No,” Dani said instantly.
Mack lifted both hands, palms out, smug without needing to work for it. “Nobody is forcing the people’s princess of resentment coffee into espionage.”
“Good, because the answer is no.” Dani stabbed the recovered fry with her fork and ate it in one bite just to end Kourtney’s little satisfied look. “Also, I would be amazing at it, which is why it’s beneath me.”
Dani leaned back in the booth, arms folding as much as the tight dress allowed, and let their laughter move around her without joining. She could have redirected them to the next interview, the next single tease, the choreography clip scheduled for Friday. Instead she pictured the tweet again, the stupid lighting rig line, the way Gabby turned Dani’s glare into something ordinary and ridiculous instead of a polished image. Across the table, Ricky was workshopping fake usernames with Mack in progressively worse whispers. Kourtney kept acting like she was not to listening while approving the least embarrassing ones with tiny nods.
when the check came, Dani had said no seven more times, each one weaker than the last.
Back at the hotel, the hallway outside Dani’s room held the hushed, carpeted quiet of people paying too much money not to hear each other exist. She kicked off her heels before the door had fully closed and padded across the room in bare feet, phone already in her hand, thumb hovering above the screen while the security latch clicked into place behind her. The city beyond the curtains had blurred into wet neon from rain she had not noticed starting. Her room service tray from earlier still sat near the sofa with a curled lemon wedge drying at the edge of a glass.
Kourtney had texted a skull emoji, then a screenshot of Ricky’s suggested username list, most of which deserved immediate federal attention. Mack had sent only, normal interaction. try it sometime. Dani locked the phone, tossed it onto the bed, took three steps toward the bathroom, then turned around and picked it back up with the kind of irritation that came from losing an argument no one had continued.
The sign-up page looked plain enough to be normal
She used an email no one on her team checked, rejected three usernames, and stared at the fourth until it stopped looking like a confession.
@violetreceipt.
It meant nothing. That was the point. Violet was not pink. Receipt made it sound like somebody who saved screenshots, which everyone online apparently did anyway. She gave the profile no photo, then added one, then deleted it, then settled on a blurry purple-blue square cropped from the hotel carpet because it looked accidental. The bio took longer. Anything clever looked fake. Anything empty looked fake. She typed mostly here for music + nonsense and hated it less than the others, so she left it there before she could start caring about the punctuation.
The account existed.
Dani sat cross-legged on the bed in her hotel hoodie, pink streaks coming loose around her face, and stared at the blank profile like it might stare back. No posts. No followers. No history. No Dani Lopez attached to it except the real one sitting in too much silence with tomorrow’s schedule folded inside her bag and glitter still caught near her temple.
She searched @danilopezsgf again.
Gabby’s profile opened at once, bright with pinned threads, jokes, fake screenshots, reaction clips, all of it moving even while Dani sat still. The follow button sat beneath the bio, small and blue and stupidly powerful for something designed to be tapped without ceremony. Dani rested her thumb above it, then lowered the phone to her lap and looked toward the window. Rain tracked down the glass in thin uneven lines. Somewhere downstairs, a car door shut.
Her thumb hovered again.
For one breath, then another, she did nothing.
Then Dani pressed follow.