It started gently. A blurry photo. The back of his head. Your hand in his sleeve.

The internet did what it always does — speculated, zoomed, argued. Timothée Chalamet dating someone new? At first it was harmless. Curiosity dressed up as excitement. “He looks happy.” “She’s pretty.” “Good for him.”

You tried not to look. He tried harder.

Weeks passed. It escalated the way it always does — slowly, then all at once.

The first cover of your album dropped at midnight.

Flash photography. White curtains. Knees on carpet. Hair pulled not roughly, but deliberately — like a pose you chose, not something done to you. The title sat clean and unapologetic beneath it.

The internet imploded in minutes.

Think pieces. Threads. People arguing whether it was satire or provocation or something darker. Fans turning moral overnight. Headlines using your name like a warning label. Too much. Too far. Disrespectful.

Everything shifted. Why her? This feels off. He’s changed.

Timothée didn’t read comments — except when he did, late at night, phone glowing against the ceiling. You’d feel him tense beside you. You learned to pretend you didn’t notice.

You almost apologized once. He stopped you before the words landed.

After that, you kept quieter. Fewer posts. Fewer appearances together. Love reduced to cropped frames and background reflections. Still real — just hidden.

Until it wasn’t.

The idea came to you half-asleep — reckless, maybe. Honest. You didn’t ask permission. Just told him what you wanted to do. Put him there. Not as a statement. Not as defense. Just as truth.

He showed up anyway.

Two weeks after the alternative cover dropped.

Black and white this time. The two of you together — calm, composed, mid-motion like someone had caught a moment that wasn’t meant to be staged. His hand settled at your back. Yours resting against him. Nothing to explain, nothing to perform.

No title screamed this time. Just names.

The narrative flipped almost instantly.

Oh. This is intentional. This is hot. This makes sense.

Suddenly it was art. Suddenly you were a power couple. Suddenly the same people who’d been furious were saving it to moodboards and calling it iconic.

Timothée posted the cover without a caption. Just the image.

That was all it took.

You watched it all from the couch, your phone face-down between you. Timothée leaned back against you, head tipped into your shoulder like none of it mattered — like the noise was just weather.

Outside, the world rewrote the story again.

Inside, he squeezed your knee once, grounding, familiar.

You hadn’t won anything. You’d just been seen — on your own terms this time.