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Gray hair. Weathered face. A sullen expression he can’t seem to get rid of, and that little X beneath his eye. He thought maybe a different mirror would reflect something else—something new—but of course it fucking doesn’t. Even now, with the new leg steady beneath him and most of his strength regained, he’s the same old… well, whatever the fuck he is.
“Want me to do yours, too?”
Izzy snaps to attention. He’s gotten so caught up in the details of his own face, he almost forgot Wee John was there. That, in fact, Wee John was there first.
“Do my what?” Izzy asks.
“Makeup,” says Wee John, as he meticulously dabs something pale on his eyebrows, rendering them nearly invisible. “I’m best at doing myself up, but I’m also pretty good at doing other people. Offer’s open.”
Makeup. On Izzy. The thought has literally never occurred to him.
“Don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Wee John adds. “Just, if you want to try it, is all. Think you’d look good.”
“What, um,” Izzy says, stumbling over the words. He can feel his face heating up. He isn’t good at having conversations like this. “What would… look good? Specifically?”
Wee John pauses, turns, assesses him with a critical eye. “Well. Glitter, for a start. You definitely want glitter.”
Glitter. Sparkly shit. Izzy’s never been sparkly before.
“What else?” he asks, breathless.
A smile tugs at John’s lips. “Tell you what, how about you sit and watch me do mine? See if there’s anything in there you want to try, too?”
Izzy’s heart is in this throat. He wants to bolt. He wants to forget this ever happened. He wants…
There’s a note, folded up and stashed safely in his breast pocket. He keeps it close, these days. He’ll probably keep it close for as long as he gets to keep on living.
For the new unicorn, it says.
What he wants is to be something new.
“Yeah,” he says thinly, as he sits where he can watch. “Show me what you got.”
And so John does. With steady hands, he changes his face. Erases some bits, enhances other bits, applies blue in all sorts of places Izzy never knew blue could reasonably go. And the result, as it slowly comes into focus, is… it’s strange. Disorienting. Wild. Feminine, but in such an exaggerated way that Izzy doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He can’t stop staring.
John is stunning.
“Calypso,” John says, spreading his hands in a dramatic flourish.
“Fuck yeah,” says Izzy.
John smiles, clearly and justly proud of his work. “Right! Now, how about you?”
“I…”
Izzy can’t move. Can’t speak. John waits patiently, his pots of glitter and paint spread before him.
Finally, Izzy swallows. “The… the eyebrows. Yeah? Do my eyebrows like yours.”
“Yes,” says John, and reaches for Izzy. “Here, turn this way. Angle your head like… yeah, just like that. Gotta make sure the light’s good. Right, you ready?”
Izzy is sure as fuck not ready.
“Do your worst,” he says.
“Close your eyes,” says John, and Izzy does.
The first few times John touches his eyelids, with his fingers, with his brushes, Izzy flinches. But John is gentle, careful, and competent, and soon he finds himself relaxing into the touch. Enjoying it a little, even. He feels lines being drawn on his forehead, and his stomach flutters.
Improbably, he thinks about Buttons. The story Edward told, how he turned into a seagull and flew away. Izzy doesn’t know whether he believes that’s what really happened. But he does know that part of him, just the smallest ember of him, wants to believe.
“Glitter?” comes John’s voice, and this time Izzy doesn’t even hesitate before nodding. “Fuck yeah. Glitter. Let’s do… maybe not blue for you.”
Izzy finds himself smiling. “Can’t risk overshadowing Calypso on her own birthday.”
John snorts. “As if that’s even a risk.”
Izzy laughs. It comes weirdly easily.
“This one,” says John after a moment. “Oh, and some lip. And definitely a bit of rouge.” Izzy doesn’t even open his eyes to see what color he’s chosen, or what’s going on his lips, or what rouge even is. Just puts his trust in John and lets it happen.
Finally: “Here, you can look. Tell me if you want me to change anything, yeah?”
Izzy exhales, long and slow. He opens his eyes. Finds the mirror.
“Oh,” he says.
The look is somehow brash and subtle at the same time. His own face, but different. His stomach swoops. His heartbeat is so loud.
“You like?” asks John.
“I… I think I do,” says Izzy. “Yeah. I like. Except…”
Why the fuck can’t he finish saying it? Why is he suddenly hesitant to criticize John’s work? He’s spent his entire fucking career criticizing other people’s work.
But John just nods encouragingly. “Except what?” he prompts.
Wordlessly, Izzy points to the X just below his eye. The X that Ed gave him with a needle and ink, back when he first became Izzy’s captain.
“Yeah, thought I’d leave that? Looks almost like a beauty mark or something.”
Izzy narrows his eyes. “Fuck’s a beauty mark?”
“Oh, you know,” says Wee John. “Like when people draw dots on their faces. Like… look at this dot, I’m so beautiful? Or something. I dunno. But it’s a thing.”
Now that he thinks about it, he has seen a dot or two like that before. Often on women. Sometimes on men. He mostly thinks they’re stupid, but… but he might also understand the appeal, a little. People drawing on themselves, telling other people how to look at them, what to think.
All the people he’s seeing tonight, though—they’ve all seen his tattoo before. They all know how to look at him. And he can’t tell them what to think, because even though he hasn’t told any of them what the X means, he’d be genuinely shocked if at least a few of them hadn’t guessed.
“Erase it,” he tells John. Then adds, because that came out maybe a little harsher than he intended: “Please.”
John sets back to work. Within seconds, the X is gone. Which is when Izzy adds, “I want a new one instead.”
John nods and grabs a brush—but Izzy stops him.
“And I want to do it myself.”
John smiles. It’s soft, like maybe he’s seeing something Izzy didn’t mean to show him—but that’s the way of things these days, isn’t it? The Revenge, full of people just fucking seeing each other and—and being fucking kind about the shit they see.
Izzy accepts the brush from John’s hand and, under his careful guidance, draws a little dot on himself. Just above his mustache.
See? You’re mine. That’s what Ed said when he finished the X tattoo, all those years ago. He grinned fiercely down at Izzy, as Izzy’s skin throbbed. It was pain and it was belonging and it was the closest to anyone Izzy had ever felt. How easily it disappeared, just now, under John’s makeup.
He considers for a moment, then turns the dot into a new X. His own, not Ed’s. He knows it won’t last. But for now, for tonight, there it is. Where everyone can see.
His eyes find John’s in the mirrors; when John smiles, he smiles back.
“Motherfuckin’ unicorn,” John says. “All right, I just gotta put on the rest of my outfit—and then, you ready to get out there and show ’em?”
No. Izzy is sure as fuck not ready.
But he nods anyway. “Let’s fucking go.”