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It’s ridiculously hard, Shiv is just now starting to realize, to maintain composure with a pointy object held near your eye.
The closer it moves the harder he wills himself to fight back the flutter of his eyelid, more and more and more until-
“Ach!”
“I told you not to move,” a voice chides him, honey sweet in its mixture of fed up and fond. Shiv raises a hand like he’s making to rub it against his eye before he thinks better of it and leaves it hanging there, squinting and blinking over and over again down at the beige bed sheets until his vision becomes blurred with tears.
“It’s hard to do with the,” he waves his lifted hand in the air, “The thing in my face. Fucking ow .”
Dio rolls his eyes and breathes out a sigh, sitting back a bit as he waits for Shiv to gather himself.
“I don’t know how else you expect me to put eyeliner on you,” he retorts, and Shiv opens his mouth on a rebuttal before he pauses, stuck. That’s… that is a good point. He settles his hand back into his lap and glances up with pinched eyes at Dio where he’s sprawled back against the pillows, body loose and legs spread while he twists the liner pen between his slender, ring adorned fingers. “Unless you want to call it quits.”
It’s an instant ruffle to Shiv’s feathers, the challenge. He blinks a few more times and sits up a little straighter, jaw locked in the resolute conviction of seeing this through.
“No, no, no, c’mon, I can do it, I can do it.” Dio flashes him a look, just the slightest raise of his brow and a question behind his eyes, ‘ You sure about that? ’, and Shiv gestures with open palms and a nod of his head. “I can!”
Dio watches him for a long, silent moment, observing, and Shiv knows in his bones he’s enjoying the way Shiv starts to fidget and flush under that lead weight of a gaze.
“Okay,” Dio finally drawls, takes his sweet time pushing himself back up to sit at Shiv’s level and raises the pen back to his eye. “No blinking.”
“ Da ,” Shiv answers back on instinct, and nearly melts on the spot at the “Good boy,” Dio praises him with, voice low, in response.
“Look up for me.”
Shiv does as he’s told and turns his eyes up to the water stained ceiling above, and something about the lack of visual zeros in all of his senses on every point of contact between them- the gentle pressure of Dio’s fingers against his cheek, or the bump of their knees together on the bed, the tip of the pen gliding along his waterline. It’s an intimacy you wouldn’t expect from something mundane as this, but Shiv loses himself a little in the rustle of Dio’s baggy shirt each time he moves and the muffled music floating through the air, the heat of Dio’s body so close and warm breath ghosting over his skin.
“How long have you been doing this?” Shiv asks a little out of the blue, then feels the need to follow it up with, “The eyeliner makeup stuff.”
He hears Dio huff a little laugh before pulling back, and Shiv mourns the loss of his touch in the split second it takes for him to reach over and start on the other eye.
“You can look down now,” Dio tells him first, and Shiv does, gets caught for a moment on the sight of Dio’s tongue poking out from between his lips. “I dunno. A while. Maybe seven, eight years.”
“Explains why you’re so good at it.”
Another snort.
“Had a long time to practice. I said stop moving, tonto .”
Shiv mumbles incomprehensible russian under his breath, but he sucks in a deep lungful of air and roots himself to the spot, forces himself to focus more on Dio’s face- creased in concentration- than on the pen moving in the top of his vision. It’s not hard, really. Never has been since the day they met, latching onto every little bit of him Shiv can see. He’s got a face like those marble statues Tusk used to go on and on and on about, how beautiful they were- especially in an open place when the light hit them just right-, and eyes you could happily drown in. Those eyes flicker to meet his for a beat and Shiv’s breath catches in his throat, lips suddenly dry until Dio breaks the gaze and looks away.
“Y’know,” Dio speaks up a minute later, then gently murmurs for Shiv to look back up again as he starts on the bottom lash line, “If you’re going to let me go this far you might as well let me do your nails, too.”
“What, and turn me into an emo angry boy like you? Are you asking me to become allergic to color? I like my red!”
Dio scrunches up his nose and moves his hand from Shiv’s cheek to give him a soft whack on the side of his head, and Shiv whines an offended noise and shoots him a look like a kicked puppy.
“I’ll poke you in the eye with this on purpose,” Dio threatens, and Shiv nearly blanches.
“Please don’t.”
It’s simultaneously a second and a lifetime later, spent familiarizing himself with the freckles on Dio’s face and the lines of his lips, when Dio finally drops his hand and scoots back an inch.
“‘M done,” he murmurs, then takes a quiet moment to look, head tilted to the side like a curious puppy.
Shiv raises one brow, and then, as the silence extends, both.
“Well?” he asks, gauging Dio for a reaction. “Is it any good?”
A beat longer with no response and an unreadable expression on Dio’s face, and then he’s moving, leaning in with hooded eyes until their lips graze together. and Shiv nearly jerks back from the suddenness of it before the all encompassing scent of Dio covers him like a blanket and reels him back in.
“Very,” is what Dio says, soft as a whisper and course as a rocky road.
“Very?”
“Mmhm. Should make you up like this more often.”
Shiv hums an agreeing little noise, bolstered by the proximity and Dio’s apparent enjoyment, and tips his head a little to the side and a bit more into Dio’s space.
“Maybe,” he says, and he can feel the way Dio nearly purrs at the tone of his voice and the attention, “Maybe, I will teach myself how to do it on my own. Then I can do it whenever I feel like it. Surprise you sometimes.”
He feels Dio’s mouth curl into a closed lipped smile against his own, and it makes him brave enough to steal a peck Dio enthusiastically returns with one of his own.
“I’d like that. I think I’d also like to see this a little messed up,” he brings a hand up to swipe his thumb underneath Shiv’s eye, fingers curling around his jaw. “A little runny.”
“ O Боже ,” Shiv chokes, eyes wide, and Dio’s lips stretch into a cheshire cat grin as he laughs and reaches forward to wrap an arm around Shiv’s middle to pull him down along into the pillows. Shiv goes willingly, scoots up Dio’s chest a bit so he can plant a firmer kiss against that smile. Dio cranes his neck up into it and slides his hand around to tangle his fingers in Shiv’s hair, and they waste a few minutes like that, trading kisses like love drunk teenagers and reveling in the closeness of the other.
“I’ll let you turn me into an emo angry boy if it gets a reaction like this,” Shiv blurts when they break away, lips spit slick and swollen. It pries a low laugh from Dio’s lungs, and Shiv gives a breathy chuckle back and nudges his nose against Dio’s own, steals another quick smooch.
“All part of my plan,” Dio tells him as his pets his hand over Shiv’s forehead and then his hair, pushing back loose strands that’d flopped into his eyes, and Shiv can’t help himself; he grins, laughs, airy and high on endorphins, and leans back in for lip locking round two.