He was not going to talk about it.
He had that decided before he was properly awake: flat on his back in a bed with a girl in it, under a blanket he didn't remember pulling up, looking at a ceiling he had owned for one day, with a position already fully formed and non-negotiable. We are not discussing this. No review. No going over what happened and how everybody feels about it. It happened, it's finished, the file is closed.
Luna was normal about it, which was worse.
She got up. She went to the kitchen. She ate an amount of food that would have concerned a stranger. She got on her phone. She didn't bring it up once, and at no point in the entire morning did she look at him in a way that referred to anything. By about eleven Josh had worked out why: she didn't consider it a thing that required referring to.
So he went and drew.
✦ ✦ ✦
And the work came out.
That was the first thing, and it was such a relief that he nearly didn't notice how strange it was. He sat down in front of the page he'd walked away from, the one that had been correct and wrong at the same time, and looked at it once, and then started fixing it, and it fixed.
He had the reference now. It was in the next room, eating.
He worked through the afternoon and into the night, which is what he always did, except that this time it went somewhere. He wasn't guessing. Every time he arrived at a decision he'd have invented six years ago, he stopped, and thought about what she had actually done, the rate of it, the wetness, where the volume came from, and put that down instead. The page kept improving in a direction he could feel while it was happening.
He finished at four in the morning and posted it a week late with no apology attached, because he could not come up with a way to write one that didn't involve explaining where he had been.
Then he slept.
While he was asleep, it went off.
✦ ✦ ✦
His phone had a notification count on it in the morning that he assumed was a bug.
It wasn't a bug. He got it in front of his face, squinting, expecting the worried messages to have turned into something worse, and instead the top comment had four hundred likes on it and said:
longtime_lurker· top comment · ♥ 400ok WHAT happened
He read for an hour and a half.
anatomy_policethe anatomy. THE ANATOMY. six years and chapter 1623 just exists now since_ch400I've been here since chapter 400 and I have never once been able to say what was missing from this comic. it isn't missing anymore. that's all I've got, that's my whole review dream_journalit always used to be a bit like listening to someone describe a dream they had. this reads like he was there physics_enjoyersomething about it finally has weight?? like there's an actual body doing it??
horny_on_mainAND NOW IT'S SO FREAKING HOT
That last one, in nine different spellings and four languages, was most of the thread.
Realism. That was the word that kept coming back, from people who had never used it about him before and would probably have been embarrassed to. It had been missing and now it wasn't. None of them could say what it was. All of them could tell.
✦ ✦ ✦
He went and looked at the numbers, because numbers were the part of this he could hold on to.
The new subscribers weren't the story. The upgrades were. People who had been paying him four dollars a month for two straight years had moved up a tier without being asked, all at once, overnight.
He opened the spreadsheet and did it properly.
First, what went out every month:
Going outPer monthHer food$18,334.85His own costs (loan, phone, internet, software, food)$1,864.00Total$20,198.85Then, what came in. Last month's payout had been $10,186.42, and after tax he'd kept $7,757.77 of it. So every month he was $12,441.08 short, and the difference came out of his savings.
After last night, this month was going to pay $14,689.58.
To keep the math working, next month had to pay a lot more than that. More than the $20,198.85 he spent, too, because the more he made, the bigger the share the IRS took. He tried numbers until it balanced:
Next monthAmountHas to pay$29,938.27Tax−$9,739.42Left$20,198.85Exactly the $20,198.85 that went out.
He ran it twice, because the first result looked like an arithmetic error. It wasn't.
$29,938.27 minus $14,689.58. He needed another $15,248.69 a month. Not once. Every month, from people who kept paying. And there were twenty-three days left in the month.
NEXT MONTH'S TARGET · $29,938.27This month: $14,689.58+$15,248.69 more a month, in 23 daysLast night alone had brought in $4,503.16 a month. He needed about three and a half more nights like it. At the rate things were going, that was possible.
He hadn't opened it in six years and he was not going to start opening it because of a good week. But he noticed himself not opening it, which was new.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then a shadow came down over the desk, and it kept coming down, because Luna does not lean over a person the way a person leans over a person.
She folded. From the waist, forward and down over his shoulder, until her head was level with his and right next to it, with the rest of her still standing upright behind the chair.
"What are they saying?"
"Nothing."
"You've been sitting here for two hours."
She read them anyway. He could tell exactly where she was in the thread, because she read slightly out loud: not the words, just a low sound at the end of the ones she liked.
(Luna:A few weeks ago she was in these.
Not this thread. An older one, under a page she'd read four times. She'd typed something, posted it with everyone else's, and gone back out to her car.
Now she was right beside the author. Not one of them knew that, and every one of them was talking about her.)
✦ ✦ ✦
Then, some way down:
hottakehaverhot take: he got laid
Josh's hand stopped on the mouse.
↳ close_reader^ okay but seriously though. it reads different. it reads like it was drawn by somebody who has actually been in a room with
↳ coping_lurkerI hate that this is probably just it
↳ linework_nerdit's a maturity thing and you can SEE it. six years of theory and then finally
↳ kingmakerGET IT KING
↳ proud_patronwe are so proud of you man
(A commenter:It started as a joke. That's worth being clear about — it was a joke, and then four people agreed with it, and one of them made a genuinely decent argument, and now it isn't a joke any more, it's the leading theory.
Which is a bit invasive when you think about it. He's a person. We don't actually know anything about his life.)
The problem was that it was true.
Josh sat there with a girl folded over his shoulder and watched several hundred strangers correctly diagnose his private life off the linework, and he had no move available. He couldn't deny it. He couldn't confirm it. He couldn't even get annoyed with them for being wrong, and that was the one he'd have enjoyed most.
They'd gotten it in one. From a drawing.
"Look at them," Luna said, from two inches behind his ear. "Even they understand your virginity was a problem."
"Please stop reading."
"Come on. Thank me for that."
"I already did," Josh said. "Last night."
Luna didn't say anything.
"Well," she said. "That was...."
She stopped.
"Okay. Yup. That counts."
(Luna:She'd brought it up to collect on it. You do a guy a favor, then you make him say thanks out loud. That's how a ledger works, and she'd been keeping one on him since the doorstep. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
But he'd already said it. Last night, flat on his back, about to pass out, he'd said "Thank you." To her. Nobody says that to her.
She hadn't written it down anywhere. There was no column it went in.)
✦ ✦ ✦
"So....." She straightened up a little. "What now? When's the next time?"
"Next time for what?"
"For the exposure therapy. Duh."
Josh looked at the screen for a moment.
"Actually," he said, "I'm better off with just snuggles and cuddling. Let's keep things at that."
"Oh, still backing off?" Luna sounded disappointed on his behalf.
"I'm not backing off—"
"You definitely need some more."
"I don't."
"You definitely do." She came away from the back of the chair. "But for now, here's some cuddles."
✦ ✦ ✦
So that's what they did.
This time he was used to it. A week ago a girl had put an arm over him while he was asleep and he'd lain there like a guy in a bomb disposal video, running a full risk assessment on a blanket. Now he got into it like a chair.
They stayed like that a while.
Then Luna went still.
"Huh," she said. "You feel heavy. Like your gravity went up."
Josh sat up. "Are you calling me fat?You?" His voice cracked. "You've been eating like a pig all week! You ate a week of groceries in three days!"
"Not that type of heavy." She pulled him back down where he'd been. "The other type."
"What other type?"
She didn't answer.
(Luna:She had a guess. His essence had grown, and by a lot. She didn't want to admit that, even to herself, and she wasn't going to tell him.)
"Hey," Josh said eventually. "For the celebration. I'm making us steak."
"Good."
"Please say you didn't eat the raw beef."
"Yup. Haven't touched any raw food since coming to this apartment." There was real pride in it. "The fridge is yours."
"...Thank you."
"You keep doing that."
What she didn't say, and what she did instead, was tighten her arms.
Not much. Just enough that his face ended up on her boobs, which were their normal size and had been all evening.
She hadn't changed anything. She didn't need to. She knew he liked this.
And he wasn't complaining.
In the other room the thread was still going. Four hundred people down, under all the shouting about page four, somebody had got there on their own and asked whether he'd started working from a model.
asking4afriendand if so. where. asking for a friend