Work Text
Gigi worries, sometimes. The work is there, for now. The followers are there, for now. But your twenties are the decade where it all ends, right? And Bella’s right there behind her, younger and… well, not
prettier
, exactly, but she’s achieving a level of compelling vapidity that Gigi can’t hope to replicate.
So when Eva Chen’s insta story delivers the compelling news that Tan France is there… like, right there, right in Eva’s cool office with the flattering sofas and the little tray of nailpolish on the desk... Gigi has to DM her.
is tan still there? does he want to facetime?
Eva’s reply comes immediately:
you sure about that?
sure, i love him
, Gigi types. Tan knows how to get things done, she hears. Tan has everything under control.
Thirty seconds later, her phone vibrates. Gigi fluffs up her hair at the roots and pretzels her legs up on the sofa so she can rest her chin on her knee before she opens the call.
“Gigi! So nice to meet you.” Tan’s on the cream-colored sofa. It’s Gigi’s favorite too, better with her coloring than the baby blue sofa that most people post from in Eva’s office. Tan knows what he’s doing.
“Same,” Gigi says, giving him a sphinx-like smile. “Thanks, Eva!” she calls.
He swings the phone to the side so Gigi catches a glimpse of Eva writing on a notepad at her desk. “Eva and I were just making some plans.” Gigi makes a mental note to ask her about whatever new filter Tan is using. It almost looks like there are sparks coming from her pen.
“I like plans,” Gigi says. She tilts her head to the side and blinks, slowly. “I know it’s Antoni’s birthday, but do you want to come over?”
Her screen goes dark. Gigi swears and thumbs frantically at the screen. Of all the calls to drop...
There’s a knock on the door. Gigi freezes. She’s not expecting anyone, and the doorman hasn’t called. She pads soundlessly to the door in her stocking feet and peeks through the peephole. Tan, Bobby, Antoni, Karamo, and Jonathan are staring back at the lens, their faces arrayed in a tight knot.
“Wow, you got here… fast,” Gigi says as she opens the door.
“Oh, we’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” Tan’s eyes seem to go black for a second, but that’s probably just the bad lighting in the front hall.
“I love your place,” Bobby says, sweeping his gaze around the main room of the apartment. “Seems like there’s enough space for two, right?”
“Probably,” Gigi says vaguely. Home improvement and/or relationship advice aren’t really the Queer Eye skill sets she needs. “I’m, um, more interested in your other line of work.”
“Look who’s getting right down to business!” Is Jonathan’s tongue… forked? It seems rude to ask. He settles onto the sofa and pats the cushion next to him. “You’re looking for the standard eternal youthful beauty, right?”
Gigi learned about driving a hard bargain at her father’s knee. “Youth, beauty, and a guaranteed fifty million insta follows forever,” she says, curling up on the sofa next to Jonathan. “No, wait...”
What if someday there’s no Instagram?
“Fifty million on any relevant platform.”
“Oh, Instagram’s not going anywhere,” Tan says, perching on the arm of the chair across from Gigi. “Eva’s on top of that.”
“Is Eva…” -- Gigi can’t quite manage to say
demon
-- “...one of you too?”
“Close enough,” Bobby says. He jiggles one of the chairs at the dining table, the one with the leg that’s just a bit shorter than the others. “It took a lot of demonic energy to unleash Instagram Stories upon humankind.” Bobby lets go and flicks the chair with a fingernail. All four legs thump flush on the hardwood floor.
“Enough chit-chat,” Tan says. “Thirty million’s the best we can do.”
Gigi’s got standards. “Forty million or we don’t have a deal.”
“The girl can bargain,” Tan says approvingly. “Forty it is. Don’t you want to know the price?”
Gigi waves her hand dismissively. “My soul, whatever.” Once somebody told her about primitive cultures that think the camera steals your soul. Gigi assumes hers has been stolen many times over by now. She’s probably getting the deal of the century here.
“Oh no, honey.” Jonathan hooks a lock of her hair between his fingers and inspects the ends. “No, no, no.”
“We work a little more… creatively than that.” Karamo sits down on the other side of Gigi.
Gigi turns to look at him, which is a little hard while Jonathan’s finger-combing her hair. “What’s the deal, then?”
“We need you to take care of someone.” Karamo’s eyes glow red around the edges as he carefully enunciates the words.
“Like… kill them?” Gigi’s not sure she’s got it in her. Signing over her much-compromised soul is one thing, but committing an actual murder is another thing entirely.
All five of them laugh uproariously. “Oh, this one can’t be killed,” Bobby says, looking up from one of the doors in the built-in cabinets, the one that doesn’t close as neatly as the others. It swings shut silently under his fingertips. “He’s got a deal with us too.”
“He’s going solo soon,” Tan continues. “He needs someone to take care of him… you know, look after him, make sure he eats breakfast, flosses, doesn’t spend all his money on exotic reptiles, that sort of thing.”
Solo
… “Is he a musician?”
The Fab Five smirk at each other. “Sort of,” Karamo says, and Antoni snorts.
“So I’m supposed to be some kind of nanny?” Gigi asks, skeptically. “Or a PA?”
“Oh no, darling,” Tan says. “We’ve got to think of your career too.” He wanders over to the dining table, where a set of samples from Gigi’s eyewear collection is spread out. Tan selects a pair of cat-eye glasses and slides them on. He checks his reflection in his phone, and then darts back toward the couch. Gigi has a split second to register how uncanny it is --
how did he move so fast
-- before he squirms into the space between her and Karamo. “We think it would be better if you date,” Tan says, putting his arm around Gigi and holding up his phone for a selfie. “May I?”
Gigi arranges her face into a glowing, delighted smile just as Tan takes the picture. “Date
who
?” she asks as soon as the phone’s down.
“Zayn Malik,” Karamo says, with a crisp K on the end of it.
“Zayn?” Gigi’s jaw drops.
What kind of a deal is this?
“He’s like the most beautiful person ever invented.” Are the Fab Five just off-brand demons, terrible at bargaining? How can her unholy deal be to date a fairytale prince with a voice that’s made of smoke and crystal? “What’s the catch?”
Jonathan piles her hair up on top of her head and tilts her face to look at the effect. “The catch is you’ll be dating Zayn.” He lets go.
Her hair cascades down around her shoulders. “You are seriously telling me that I get eternal youth and beauty and all I have to do is date Zayn Malik?”
“Oh, Gigi,” Karamo says fondly. “You two were made for each other.”
“You think?” Gigi smiles. How fortunate, that Eva introduced them. She can’t believe her luck. “I guess we have a deal.’
“Excellent,” Tan says. And suddenly Gigi’s alone on the sofa, except for the pair of cat-eye glasses on the cushion next to her. The air smells like someone’s just struck a match and blown it out. She makes a mental note to buy some new candles.
***
“Are you expecting a Zayn?” the doorman asks over the phone the next day. Gigi scrolls to the front door security camera view on her iPad. A slight figure with a NASA cap and a backpack over one shoulder is gazing around the lobby while the doorman waits on the phone.
“Send him up,” Gigi says.
Zayn’s leather jacket hangs on him like a milkweed husk, not enough to keep him from blowing away. Gigi wonders if the Fab Five did his cheekbones. It seems unlikely that they happened by accident.
He looks around the apartment, blinking slowly. “Sick.” Sliding limply onto the couch like he’s an uncooked salmon filet, he unzips a side pocket of his backpack and pulls out a joint and a lighter. “Mind if I…?”
“Let’s go out,” Gigi says suddenly.
Zayn blinks again. His eyelashes really are something else. “Sure, babe.” He lines up the joint and lighter on the coffee table. “Maybe just this once.”
Gigi laughs. He’s funny. They leave the building to the sounds of shutters clicking like a grasshopper swarm consuming a prairie. She can practically feel her follower count climbing, an effervescence in her bloodstream.
It’s good like that for a while, having someone beside her when she leaves the apartment. Braving the paparazzi together. Zayn’s up for whatever Gigi wants to dress him in, he never minds a selfie, and he’s a total dream date for the Met Gala. Zayn also turns out to be absolutely smashing at cunnilingus, bringing both a stoner’s patience and an artist’s dexterity to the endeavor. As Gigi looks up at the moonlight on the ceiling, her heart rate slowing to match Zayn’s peaceful snores next to her, she congratulates herself on cutting the greatest deal ever.
***
So Gigi doesn’t say anything when Zayn brings home a lizard. Tan just said not to spend
all
his money on exotic reptiles, right? Just one lizard can’t hurt. Even the cat gets along with the lizard. The first cat, that is. Gigi’s not entirely sure how Zayn got the cat, or the French bulldog, or the other dog, since he hasn’t actually left the apartment since the lizard showed up. He’s just been sitting on the sofa, smoking weed and playing Fortnite for… she checks the calendar on her phone… at least six months.
Gigi stretches her leg down the sofa to nudge him with her foot. “We should get outside.”
Zayn blinks at her luminously. “That’s a great idea.” The lizard sitting on his shoulder blinks too. He cranes his head past the lizard to call over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen, “Taryn, can you find us some towels?”
“Sure thing.” Taryn appears a moment later with two striped beach towels. Maybe Taryn got him the cat (the first cat) and the dog too. And the second dog. And the second cat, the hairless one. As Zayn unfurls his towel, Dobby twines around his ankles and jumps into the warm patch where he’s just vacated the sofa.
“Towels?” Gigi asks, accepting hers from Taryn.
“We’re going out to the roof, right?” Zayn drifts toward the sliding doors.
Dobby glares malevolently at Gigi as she follows him. “I was thinking we could actually leave the apartment? It’s been a while, don’t you think?” She wraps her towel around her shoulders.
Zayn settles onto a lounge chair and lights a joint. “I’m domestic,” he says, shrugging.
Past the edge of the roof, Manhattan stretches out below them, vast and untouched. The skyline blurs, hazy behind Zayn’s exhaled smoke. Gigi shivers in her towel.
***
A few days after the monkey shows up, Gigi sends a DM to Tan.
we need to talk.
She paces around the apartment as she waits for a response, avoiding the message spelled out in prerolled joints on the floor: BUY PAPER TOWELS PLEAS. The tail of the S is cut short, a still-smoking roach. Zayn’s taken to communicating mostly in joints. The E must have been smoked already. Or else the monkey stole it. He’s sitting on top of the lamp, beady eyes tracking Gigi’s every move.
She snaps her fingers at him. “Go wake Zayn up.” What’s a capuchin monkey good for if it can’t coax Zayn out of bed by 1 p.m.?
The monkey bares its teeth and screeches. Gigi bares her teeth right back, until her phone hums in her hand. She arranges her face into a pleasant, inscrutable expression, and walks out onto the balcony so the monkey can’t eavesdrop.
“Gigi!” Tan’s face fills the screen as she swipes into Facetime. “Say hi to everyone!”
Tan’s on a sidewalk somewhere, surrounded by the rest of the Fab Five. And is that… Adam Rippon? “Hi, Gigi!” Adam purrs. “Love your brows.”
“Love yours too!” Gig puckers her lips at him.
“Say hi to Zayn for me,” Adam calls, as Tan swings the phone back to his own face.
“When can you come over?” Gigi asks.
“See you in two,” Tan says, and the screen goes dark.
When the knock comes, Gigi’s surprised to see only the Fab Five on the doorstep. “Does Adam Rippon have a deal with you too?” she asks as she lets them in.
“Oh no, honey,” Jonathan says, air kissing Gigi as he passes her. “Adam grew that ass all by himself. We just like to hang out.”
“What can we do for you?” Tan asks, settling in on the sofa. The monkey dangles down from the lamp to grab a fistful of his hair. Tan, never looking away from Gigi, raises a hand and snaps his fingers. The monkey shrieks and lets go, as if it’s been burned. It pulls itself back up onto the lamp and sucks on its hand petulantly.
Nice trick
, Gigi thinks jealously. “I can’t live like this.” She grinds her heel into the preroll lettering on the floor. “What are my options?”
“Options?” Antoni asks. The cat (the first cat) jumps into his lap, purring. The first cat really is a good cat, Gigi remembers. They’ve taken some great selfies with him. “We’re past the point where you have options.” He rubs a finger under the cat’s chin. It closes its eyes and stretches its head back in bliss.
Dobby jumps up onto the ottoman and hunkers down with his bald hindquarters in the air, hissing at Gigi.
“You didn’t tell me it would be like this!” Gigi flings her arm wide, encompassing the skateboards, the kung fu posters, the turntables, the giant half-finished collage pieces, the pyramid of empty Rain Berry Gatorade bottles, the pervasive skunk odor. Gigi’s assumed it’s all the weed, but now it occurs to her that Zayn may actually have a pet skunk. “He never leaves! He literally never leaves the house!”
Karamo’s gazing down at the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows. “You don’t have to leave the house to take a bed selfie,” he observes.
“I am running out of new angles!” Gigi stomps her foot. “There’s only so much I can do with white sheets!”
“Poor girl.” Tan opens his arms. “C’mere.”
Gigi slumps on the sofa next to him, resting her head on his shoulder. “He got my
eyes
tattooed on him,” she whimpers, attempting to exploit Tan’s sympathy. “It’s so creepy. I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m staring back at me.”
“Isn’t love beautiful?” Tan’s shoulder is awfully chilly. And shaking with laughter. “You know you’re stuck with him, gorgeous. Now go make those 45 million followers happy. You earned the last five million all on your own, you know.”
Gigi sits up. The monkey cackles at her. Down the hallway, the bedroom door creaks open. A moment later, Zayn emerges into the living room, shirtless and rubbing his eyes. The lizard peeks its head out of the pocket of his sweatpants. “‘Morning,” he mutters sleepily to the Fab Five. He curls up in the far corner of the couch and pulls out his phone. “You guys play Fortnite?”
“We were just leaving,” Tan says. “Unless you want Antoni to make you some avocado toast first?” For some reason, they all laugh madly at that.
Zayn barely looks up from his screen. “I’m good.”
“Hold on!” Jonathan beckons the other three over to the sofa. “Selfie before we go!” They pile around Tan and Gigi, and Jonathan snaps the picture before Gigi has a chance to say no. or “help,” or “for fuck’s sake.”
***
One day, Gigi comes home from a shoot and knows as soon as she opens the door that something is different. She’s forgotten that absolute silence isn’t just the absence of sound. It has its own feel, gives the air a different weight. At last, the apartment is impossibly, blessedly, empty.
“Zayn? Taryn? Dobby? Stitch?” She calls their names just in case. Dobby reaches a paw out from under the hallway bench and swipes his claws at her ankle, but even that can’t bring Gigi down when no humans are answering. She flings open all the windows in the apartment, letting the spring air blow out the stoner funk, and collapses on her back on the sofa, stretching her arms above her head and claiming all the space for herself. The cat (the first cat) jumps up and curls into a neat loaf on her stomach.
She can hardly believe Zayn’s finally listened to her pleas to get out of the apartment. What’s he doing out there in the world? Getting coffee? Walking the dogs? Making music? Gigi snorts. Nah, not that.
It’s hours before she hears a key in the lock. It occurs to her that she didn’t even know Zayn had a key. He’s never left the apartment without her before.
Gigi holds her position on the sofa as Zayn enters the room and slides his backpack off his shoulder. He perches at the far end of the sofa, in the only space Gigi’s feet have allowed him, and opens the pack, pulling out a thick binder-clipped packet of papers. “Babes,” he says, looking down at her with limpid eyes. “I know you’ve been wanting us to get out of the apartment more.” He tosses the packet onto her stomach, dislodging the cat. “So I bought us a farm!”
“A farm?” Gigi must not have heard him right. She closes her eyes. As long as she can’t see him, none of this is real.
“A farm,” Zayn confirms. “In Pennsylvania.”
“Pennsylvania?” Gigi opens her eyes. She’s not sure where Pennsylvania is. It sounds very far away.
“We can get horses.” Zayn’s down on the floor, spelling out something in joints. “What should we name the horses?” Gigi turns her head slowly toward him. The joints spell PIKACHU. “Pikachu’s a sick name for a horse.”
“Pikachu,” Gigi repeats weakly. “Cool.”
“That’s a great idea, babes,” Zayn jumps up. “We’ll name the first horse Cool.”
“Cool,” Gigi echoes desolately. “Cool.”
***
Gigi can hear the engine of Zayn’s ATV gunning in the distance. He’s making endless circles around the fields, like usual, while Gigi mucks out the horse stalls. She flings the pitchfork to the ground. It’s not worth it. Not even their beautiful horse photos are worth this.
She stomps back toward the house. The ATV sounds like a chainsaw killer coming for her. Gigi slams the door to the mud room behind her and pries off her wellies, resenting this undignified interruption to her righteous stomping. But even a good stomp isn’t worth getting horse shit on the farmhouse floors.
Yolanda’s sitting at the kitchen table, a teabag label trailing from the steaming mug in front of her. “Want me to make you a cup?”
“Mom.” Gigi collapses into the chair across from her and buries her head in her arms. “I made a deal with a demon,” she chokes out between sobs, “and now I’m stuck with Zayn forever.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Yolanda sighs. “I know it
seems
like an unholy deal with an agent of the devil, but really, it isn’t so different than...” She reaches across the table to pluck a piece of hay out of Gigi’s hair. “This is just what happens when you’re in your twenties. All men grow up eventually.”
“No, mom,” Gigi picks up her head. “I made an actual deal with an actual demon, five of them.”
“Sure, sweetie,” Yolanda says, her voice too carefully sympathetic. “Well, never mind that.” Her hand hovers over Gigi’s for a moment, but then she sees the dirt under Gigi’s fingernails and changes course to pat her on the shoulder instead. “I’ll help however I can.”