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Nicholas was half-awake, cuddled up in his bed in that blissful state in which you know you are awake, but if you do not open your eyes you can easily fall back into sleep. So, so comfortable, knowing that it was the weekend and he did not need to be up anytime soon. He had enough snacks hidden in his side of the room to get through the morning without having to go down to eat breakfast with the rest of the school. He was about to go back to dreaming about beating Seiji Katayama at fencing when…
“Makeover day!” Bobby yelled, wielding a pillow that he did not hesitate to throw on Nick’s head the second he was done speaking.
Nick jolted awake, yelling in a too high pitched voice. He managed to sit, and then he looked all around in alarm, still processing what was going on. When his heart rate recovered a normal speed, he realized that Bobby was there. Nick sighed, not sure if relieved because it wasn’t anyone else or just tired.
“What the heck was that for?”
“Did you forget already? I told you a while ago that you were in need of a makeover, it’s today.” Bobby announced. “You’re coming with me right now.”
Nicholas answered with a loud groan; he certainly wasn’t in the mood that early. Before he could verbally argue, Bobby was already grabbing him by the arm and dragging him away from his beautiful comfy bed.
“I ordered a bunch of stuff for you and it got here on Friday.” Bobby said with his index finger up. “C’mon, you can even bring all that food you sneak in thinking no one else notices.”
Nick’s lip quivered, he didn’t even try to deny it. “How do you even know what my size is?”
“We heard Seiji complaining about having to pick up your dirty clothes from his side of the room, so Dante asked him!”
Dante, peeking from behind the rubber duck curtain, waved.
“Wait why would he even look that u—“
“I didn’t ask, doesn’t matter. Nicholas Cox, you are not getting out of this.” He said, final.
After grabbing what didn’t constitute a healthy breakfast at all from his not-so-well-hidden snack stash, Nicholas agreed to follow the two to their dorm. Bobby sat on the floor, his back resting on the side of his bed, while Nicholas sat in front of him. Dante opted for lying down on his own bed to watch everything unfold.
“So… what’s first?” Nicholas asked once he had finished his poor excuse of a ‘breakfast’.
“Your hai—“
“NO.” He said firmly, unconsciously reaching up to cover his not brushed hair. “Not the hair.”
Bobby pouted, disappointed, but he found it reasonable enough to leave it be.
“Alright, alright. Not the hair then. Let’s do your nails first.” Bobby said, rummaging through a big cardboard box of what Nicholas correctly assumed were all of his internet purchases. “These ones have Sonic the Hedgehog in them; I wasn’t sure if you liked ‘doing it for the meme’ or something so I got them anyway.” Seeing Nick’s confused expression, he continued. “But we’re doing this the old fashioned way first. I got a bunch of nail polish bottles.”
Nicholas inspected his own nails. He didn’t usually care for his own appearance, but suddenly he realized that his nails definitely weren’t as nice as he guessed they were supposed to be for this.
“I think they’re too short. And uh… not good, I guess.” Nicholas said.
“Don’t worry about that, it’s fine.” Bobby reassured him. “I haven’t tried painting them like this before but I’m following a YouTube tutorial, nothing can go wrong. It’s a first for both.” He added, thinking that made it fair. “Just stay still or it will go horribly wrong.” Bobby warned.
“How can painting your nails go horribly wrong?” Nicholas said, drawing his hands back, he needed those for fencing.
“Dante can show you the video.”
“He does not want to see the video.” Dante said, deadpan, but Nick noticed that he was trying really hard not to smile, so he sighed relieved that it was just a joke.
“Ha ha, very funny.” Nick blushed lightly, embarrassed.
“It’s literally just nail polish; you won’t lose any manly man points for it.” Bobby laughed, reaching to grab Nicholas’ left hand. “But seriously don’t move your hand or you’ll make me mess up the pattern.”
He obliged and decided to observe Bobby as he worked. He looked fully concentrated as he painted each of his nails and later added the tiniest little patterns to them. Nicholas noticed that Bobby stuck the tip of tongue out when he was concentrated, cute. Obviously, halfway through the process Nick zoned out, as the sleepiness hadn’t worn off completely yet.
“It’s done!” Bobby announced, smiling proudly at his own creation. “See? I’m an expert.”
Nicholas blinked away his daydreams and he looked down to his nails.
“They’re like little galaxies.” He gasped.
He looked at his nails closely, his eyes practically sparkling. Bobby had managed to paint a gradient between purples and blues decorated with lots of the tiniest white dots he had seen, all of them little stars. He could swear the nail polish also had some glitter so that it looked like the stars were kind of actually shining.
“How did you do that? It looks so good” He kept his eyes focused on his own hands, so he didn’t see how Bobby beamed.
“Hehe, it’s not that good.” Bobby admitted, though Nicholas thought it was amazing. He rubbed the back of his neck before adding “So you like them?”
“Of course I do!” He answered, big smile on his face. “Oh, but what if I mess them up when we get back to practice?” Nick said, expression turning just a little bit sad.
“Don’t worry about it that only means I get to paint them again with a different style! Ah, if you want to.”
“Yeah!” Nick said with enthusiasm in his voice. “Only next time don’t sneak into my room to wake me up like that.”
“I’ll try to.” Bobby laughed, winking at him. “Hey Dante what do you think?” He lifted Nick’s hands so that Dante could see his work better from his bed.
“Good.”
Nick winced, just a little, because somehow he had completely forgotten Dante’s presence in the room until he spoke. He could swear that guy was basically a cryptid sometimes.
“Nice. It’s always good to ask for a second opinion.” Bobby said before letting go of his hands.
“So, are we done or is there anything else?”
“Hmmm, well your face is very pretty so I don’t think you need makeup.” Bobby gave him a light pat on the cheek. “So clothes it is! Just because we’re mostly in uniform doesn’t mean your regular clothes should be bad. No offense, it’s just that your wardrobe is like one color.”
“I mean, none taken?”
Nicholas couldn’t deny it. Some days he literally just grabbed whatever looked cleanest if he didn’t feel like putting any effort at all. Bobby rummaged through the box of things he had ordered online until he took out a single article of clothing.
“A skirt?” Nicholas said, hesitant. “But I don’t wear those.”
“It’s fiiiiiine. You can try new things, y’know?” Bobby rolled his eyes. “Skirts won’t bite you and you’re not going to wear this with nothing underneath, you’ve never seen Harajuku fashion? Dudes wear these over pants and it doesn’t even look ‘girly’.”
“B-but why do we need Dante for this?” Nicholas asked, kind of embarrassed.
“We need a second opinion, like before.” Bobby answered. “And this is also Dante’s room; I’m not kicking him out.” He added. “I just got you a single new thing to try out. The rest of the outfit is like what you usually wear. Dante, hold him.”
Nicholas felt two hands on his shoulders. It was Dante, who he could swear hadn’t made a single sound to get there. Bobby’s eyes glinted, and Nicholas closed his as if he were going to be struck.
“Nick? Hey I was just kidding!” Bobby said with a worried tone, he patted Nicholas on the head. “Don’t be dumb, we won’t force you.”
“But you should still try the whole thing on, Bobby knows about this stuff.” Dante said.
Nicholas’ face was red, he was lucky that neither Seiji nor anyone else was here to laugh at him.
“Okay, okay. Just give it to me.”
“We won’t look.” Bobby reassured him with a thumbs up, then he put a pillow over his own face and threw another one at Dante, who did the same.
“You look like a model!” Bobby said in amazement, all shiny eyes at Nick.
“I said you were good at this.” Dante added. Nicholas took it as a compliment to him too.
“It looks more like I have a shirt tied to my waist.” Nicholas commented as he looked at himself.
The outfit was pretty simple; the only thing that wasn’t actually black was the skirt, which matched the color of his nails. The t-shirt had some small details of the same color, but the rest of it and the skinny jeans under the skirt were all black. He seemed pretty happy with his look, which made Bobby smile wide.
“I thought you wouldn’t like something colorful so I just added a little bit of it to not overwhelm you.” Bobby explained excitedly. It looked like he was actually holding off on the full explanation.
“Yeah you’re right. I do like it a lot, maybe I will let you do more makeovers.”
“Does it mean you will let me do you hair next time?” Bobby suggested.
“NO.”
"Okay." Bobby giggled, he was okay with that. “Then mission successful!”