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“Is it gonna hurt?”
“Hurt? Will, it’s eyeliner.”
Will’s fingers dig into his thighs as Max holds the pencil over his face. This was a bad idea, downright idiotic, even.
“Well, I don’t know…”
“Just hold still,” she says, moving her other hand to hold the back of his head.
He could barely hear the music drifting out of the gym doors above the pounding in his ears. He was being ridiculous, really. It was just that Max had leaned over to look in the rear view mirror, the smudged grey across her eyelid shimmering as she scribbled black liner under her eye, and the idea popped into his head.
It wasn’t like he’d thought about it a lot. For the longest time, makeup was something that moms wore. He’d never seen Mrs. Wheeler and Mrs. Sinclair without their red cheeks and pink lipstick, and even though his own mom rarely spent more than two minutes getting ready in the mornings, she still had a drawer full of old tubes and compacts. One time, back when his dad was still around and they would go out on one of their rare ‘dates’, he remembers sitting with his mom as she got ready, admiring all of the dark colours in one of the faded pans and thinking they looked just like the crayons he always used to colour in his dragons. When he started to get bored and restless, his mom fluffed the powder puff she was using across his nose, sending him into a fit of giggles as she tickled all over his face.
His dad had come into the bedroom not long after, barking at her to hurry up. He’d barely glanced at Will through the mirror before he left muttering something about Mom, cutting himself off with the slam of the door. She wiped his face down before they dropped him and Jonathan off at the Wheelers.
And then there was the day that Jonathan came home with an armful of posters and cassettes. Will was with him as he taped the poster of Bowie above his dresser, and whenever Jon invited him in to listen to a new mixtape, Will found himself staring at it. Jonathan called him a total rockstar, said that a lot of artists — real artists, he made sure to specify (even though Will didn’t quite understand the difference when he was eight) — wore makeup, that it was a middle finger to what everyone else thought, that even though it might be kinda weird, it was also cool.
El liked playing around with it too, trying out all the colours and copying whatever she’d seen on MTV that week, even asked if she could give him a makeover when they finally moved into their new place (to which Will scurried into his room, mumbling something about having a lot of school work to catch up on).
But really, he’d hardly ever considered it before. His mouth had just opened before his brain could catch it up with the mile-long list of reasons why he shouldn’t ask “Can I try?” to his prom date as she touched up her makeup.
It wasn’t even like Max to be wearing makeup, or a dress for that matter. In fact, tonight might be the first time he’s seen her in either. (He thinks it’s because her Mom took her shopping a few weeks ago, but he didn’t want to push his luck by prying. He also didn’t want to spend the whole drive ribbing her for looking so un-Max-like the way the other guys would’ve, so he simply said she looked beautiful as she bounded into the car in her blue dress and sneakers, and she rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.)
Maybe that’s why he asked. She looked just as unsure as he felt, but he knew she wouldn’t make it a thing, the same way she didn’t make him coming out while they passed a joint back and forth outside his bedroom window a thing. They got along like that, found comfort in tangling the straggling strands of their lives together. She had El (and Lucas, still close even as they broke up again), and he had Mike, but there was an understanding between him and Max, an unspoken kinship forged by monthly hospital appointments and driving thirty miles out to the shitty diner two towns over afterwards, because they had a working jukebox and cheap strawberry milkshakes, that was only theirs.
Her tongue pokes out as she presses the pencil into the outer corner of his eye.
“Look up.”
She’s surprisingly delicate, even as she uses her pinkie as a guide and it accidentally scrapes against his eyeball. It’s strange, being so close to Max, feeling her breath on his cheek, leaning into her hands. The last time he was this close to a girl was when Alison from Math cornered him in the hallway of a party before Christmas break, her breath warm and smelling distinctly sweet and alcoholic, very overtly trying to come onto him. He’d laughed clumsily as he wormed his way past her, feeling kinda bad when her face fell into a drunken pout.
He almost wants to laugh now, at the similar heart-racing absurdity of it all, but then Max speaks up again, and any attempt at injecting some levity into the car crumbles in his throat like ash.
“Hold on, I’ve got some eyeshadow too.” His eyes fly open as she lets go of him, reaching into the backpack that she brought along (when Will questioned this on the drive over, she simply pat him on the arm and grinned, the glint in her eye telling him immediately that there was either alcohol or weed in there, most likely both).
He wants to object, to say that that’s probably taking it too far, but he can’t choke out anything more than a flimsy, “Umm.”
“Here, it’ll just be a little.”
Her fingers smear over his eyelids, and Will focuses on the touch, the brush of her skin under his eyebrows, trying not to panic as he hears the echoes of conversations spilling into the car as more of their classmates head inside. Oh god.
His rented suit starts to feel like lead over his skin. Back in California, there was a record store not too far from Lenora, and Will took himself there one Saturday. At the counter was an older teenager, all golden skin and muscular arms, black makeup and carmine lips. He couldn’t even tell whether they were a girl or boy. Still, he found himself unable to look away, watching while they talked to the clerk, taking absent glimpses at the record he’d blindly picked up every few seconds to not seem like a total creep. As they turned to leave, they gave Will a passing glance, and it took him a few long minutes to thaw from his place in the Folk section.
There’s a click and then a ruffle of clothes, and a rush of cool air as Max sits back in the passenger’s seat. He opens his eyes, glancing at Max, catching as her lips quirk up in a brief smile, before he shuffles forward to the mirror.
“It’s kinda hard to see in here so it might be kinda… you know.”
Will’s reflection tilts his head back at him.
“No, no it’s–” Good, Will thinks. It’s far more subtle than he thought it would end up. His eyes jump out at him a little, the soft black smudged around the edges of his eyelashes making his stare look more intense. He only noticed the sparkly shadow when he moved his head and it caught the light. It was almost the same exact look as what Max had on, only a deeper burgundy instead of metallic grey; softer, less imposing, if it were possible.
Will chews on his bottom lip, catching a slither of peeling skin beneath his teeth and then biting it off, hard. In the mirror his lip turns red, glistening where the gash starts to throb. It’s too brutal to look anything like lipstick, but he finds himself thinking of it all the same, how he’d look with his lips painted like the person from the record store. He licks his lips, soothing the cut, leaving a sheen of spit over them like gloss (then hates that his mind immediately jumps to Mike, flipping through a comic book on Will’s bed, with El’s favourite cherry lip gloss still clinging to his lips).
“It looks cool,” Max finishes for him when he snaps his gaze down to his hands.
“Thanks,” Will croaks, his voice giving out on him. He can feel Max’s stare on the side of his face, and tries to keep from burning blotchy red.
“No problem.”
His stomach churns. Way to make everything all about yourself. He feels his eyes start to burn in that all too familiar way. He can rarely pinpoint what makes his throat close up nowadays. Sometimes he would just be overtaken by it; tears making the ink run on his homework, the days where all he could do was lay in bed until his pillow was damp and his face cracked, needing to pull over in muddy ditches on the drive home because suddenly the road was swimming. Though, the source of his tears was hardly a mystery now.
He clenches his eyes shut, not wanting to ruin Max’s work, while also half hoping his tears scrub it all away. He drags in a breath, waiting for the inevitable self-imposed voice in his head to pipe up and remind him that he’s acting like—
“Lemme see again.”
Will looks up from the corner of his eye, Max a blurry blob next to him. Her watery figure warps, then a gentle thumb is on his cheek, wiping away an unchecked tear.
Will snivels into a shaky laugh.
“Sorry,” he sniffs, trying to blink away the sobs about to erupt from his chest. He rarely ever has one of his outbursts in front of Max, but when he did she never tried to pacify him, never tried to soothe him with false promises. She just sat with him, wrapped her arm around his while his shoulders rattled and tears dripped down his nose. That was enough, most of the time.
She does the same now, moving her hand from his face to his arm, giving it a small shake. They stay this way for a minute, just existing. Then, once she seems sure Will wouldn’t be left with tear-stained cheeks, Max pulls him closer, peering at his face again.
“You know, Byers,” she begins, her icy blue eyes flickering over his face. “You’re pretty hot.”
Quiet laughter trembles through the car.
“You’re kinda outdoing me.”
“Max,” Will groans.
“Will.” She shakes his arm again. “I’m serious. It suits you.”
Even though he knows she meant it as a compliment, Will can’t help but see his dad’s face behind the words, sneering in that way that always made him feel like dirt. His dad had tried to sculpt him into something else the very first time he looked at Will and noticed he was different. Before he was five years old, Will had already failed.
A beer can clatters on the asphalt outside when some jock crushes it into the ground, sliding his hand onto his date's lower back. The sound jolts through the metal frame of the car.
Max must notice how the ringing of it made him flinch, because her back straightens up.
“If anyone tries to give you shit–” but then she pauses, looking equal parts preemptively defensive and uncertain. He knows as well as she does that they stand no chance. “Well, you’re stuck with me tonight anyway. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not,” he lies. He’s scared shitless, how could he not be.
Max looks right through him, then reaches for her walking cane.
“Okay, you ready to go?”
He isn’t, but he nods anyway. Max would let him chicken out of it if he wanted. All he had to do was say he couldn’t do it, that it was gonna end badly, that he would probably run off into the woods if he set foot outside the car.
He watches Max grab hold of the door handle, then jumps up.
“Wait a second. I nearly forgot.”
Max’s head whips back around. “What?”
“In the glove box.”
Max frowns, opening the latch and then freezing.
“Oh.”
“Sorry, I didn’t want to give it to you outside your house, you know.”
She reaches for the plastic box, pulling out the corsage. It’s nothing special, just a few small white flowers with some blue ribbon.
“You bought this for me?”
“...It was sort of a joint purchase.”
Max narrows her eyes, then a look of understanding falls on her face (and a pink flush over her cheeks, but Will pretends not to notice.)
“Here.” Will reaches over and wraps the ribbon around her wrist.
Max stares at it when he pulls his hands back, and for a second he worries that they’d crossed a line. They definitely should’ve asked her, but it was kind of impulsive. They’d just been in the city one afternoon and they’d passed a florist with some samples in the window display, and then Lucas suggested Will get one for Max.
“You guys are such losers.”
“What?!”
“This is so…”
“It’s a friendship corsage!”
Max snorts, but caresses the white buds with her fingertips, her feigned coolness slipping.
“Well, thank you, Will,” she says, then quickly opens the door. Will rushes out of his side of the car to lend her his arm.
“Wow, Byers, you’re such a gentleman,” she deadpans as she steadies herself with her cane, letting his arm hang awkwardly in the air.
Someone he recognises from Math walks by them, sending them the sort of dirty look they’ve become long accustomed to by now. Like always, Max glares back, and Will finds a sudden interest in his shoes.
“Fucking assholes, take a day off,” Max says through gritted teeth as she takes a wobbly step forward.
“Two more months then we’re free,” Will huffs out.
Max smiles, knocking into his side.
“All the way to California, baby.”
Will chuckles. They slowly make their way across the parking lot, and Will swings the gym door open. A slow Pat Benatar song booms at them from the tinny speakers.
He looks down at Max, feeling lightheaded already.
She wraps her arm around his suit jacket. Will looks across the gym floor, catching sight of their friends through rows of streamers and balloons, sitting around a table in a dark corner, Dustin and Lucas visibly bickering already.
Will swallows, pushing down the last, substantial shred of fear bubbling up around his bones, and tries not to think too hard about how the purple light filling the room will make the glitter on his eyes less-than-inconspicuous. Max grips his arm tighter and leads the way once she spots their friends too, Lucas having thrown off Dustin to stand up and wave her over.
He can’t help but smirk at the way she picks up her pace.
Max glances up at him, clasps their hands together, then stabs his own elbow into his rib.