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When Girlfriend moved in with him, Boyfriend never considered the idea that it might pose a very mild problem if Nene ever wanted a hangout date with their girlfriend not at her own apartment.
To be fair, in most circumstances, it wouldn't have been a big deal. The only reason it was was because their current apartment was so damn small. They'd been working on that, but they wouldn't be able to move for another week or so, and the two had apparently decided that their date night couldn't wait.
He was far from bothered. Just sort of felt like he was intruding on something.
That was his own fault, though, he reminded himself as he continued to more or less accidentally eavesdrop from the other side of the tiny living space. They'd made plenty of compromises before. It wasn't uncommon for one of them to leave the house when the other wanted another's company to themself. BF had just decided that he wanted to keep working on his music tonight rather than worry about making date plans with Pico or something. After all, he was more than fine with Nene - it would kind of be against the whole idea of polyamory if he wasn't - and it seemed like it wouldn't inconvenience anyone involved.
Maybe it was just something about infringing the sacred sanctity of Girl's Night. He didn't know a lot about it due to not really having a lot of friends growing up, but from what he could pick up from the way his mother talked about it and how it was talked about on TV and Twitter, it was very much not something to be intruded on. Or something.
Alternatively, maybe he just felt a little awkward in general.
He'd been doing good up until a certain point - that point being almost exactly when he had wrapped up on what he wanted to do for his current track. He'd been working his ass off recently, trying to push as much music as possible to help with finances - maybe at the risk of some of his work being shoddy - but he could worry about the integrity of his craft later. In fact, he even surpassed his goal a bit, and now was just kind of done with work for the day, unless he wanted to start something new, which, to be absolutely clear, he one-hundred percent did not.
So... what now?
Headphones allowed mixing to be a relatively quiet activity. GF and Nene were in the living room, watching something he couldn't make out off the top of his head, and they probably hadn't even thought about him being in the other room for the past hour. So he didn't want to transition to, like, blasting some new album he'd been meaning to listen to, a sacred practice that involved turning the volume up so loud he was amazed he'd never gotten a noise complaint. Video games weren't an option either - those hooked up to the living room TV.
Of course, the easy answer was to just continue doing shit on his laptop until he was in the clear. The unfortunate news was that that entire thought process had been there to cover up the fact that he was thirsty as fuck, and he had no water.
Now, as much as he respected women, BF was no coward. He needed water to survive. Or, at least, that was what someone told him the last time he passed out from forgetting to drink water for, like, a day. So he was going to intrude for a few seconds to get some water. That was fine. Nene wasn't going to throw a knife at him for it.
... probably.
Setting his laptop aside for the moment, he scooted off his bed and started to make his way to the room divider. He could hear a little bit clearer now, and determined the two were watching true crime videos, of all things. He didn't even know GF was onto that sort of thing. She mostly stuck to the haunted doll stuff around him. The more you knew.
Rounding the corner, he found the two sitting on the floor in front of the TV, coffee table awkwardly shoved out of the way and closer to the wall, where it held a bottle of what he assumed to he some sort of wine that he was at least ninety-nine percent sure didn't belong to either of the people who actually lived in his apartment. Scattered around the girls were an assortment of makeup palettes and, presumably, the plastic bags they'd been carried there in.
GF noticed him first, immediately looking up from whatever Nene was putting on her face - something she was clearly supposed to be sitting still for, given Nene's reaction. "Hey, babe!" She greeted cheerfully, like it was the first time she'd seen him in days when it had been, at most, an hour and a half.
Of course, he was equally as giddy to see her. "Hi, Gee," he replied. He left it to their telepathic link to inform her that he thought the makeup she was wearing - which was only half-applied at the moment - looked really nice on her.
"Bee says the colors look nice," she informed Nene eagerly as BF went to rummage around in the kitchen. Did they have any water bottles...? Maybe he could get away with some Gatorade instead...
"They'd look even nicer if you stopped getting distracted at every little sound." Though Nene's tone was harsh, it was impossible not to notice that she was, at the very least, a little bit tipsy. Given alcohol had next to no effect on GF, he wouldn't be surprised if any contents gone from the wine bottle were almost entirely Nene's doing. When he again turned to look at them, Nene was forcing GF to look at her by squishing her face in one hand as she held some sort of brush in the other, something their girlfriend seemed completely unbothered by.
"Can' hel' i–" She insisted causally as her face continued to be pinched into focus. Nene shushed her, staring like a painter who was trying to determine the next stroke of her masterpiece. Or maybe like a falcon trying to figure out the best angle to concuss its prey at.
Still feeling like he was intruding on whatever sacred ritual was going on over there, BF hurriedly grabbed a bottle of blue Gatorade out of the fridge and made his way back to his room without another word. He could probably get away with playing some mind-numbing clicker game for an hour or two until Nene left...
.. is what he thought until Nene randomly appeared in his bedroom. Blinking down at the little clock on his laptop before she could even say anything, he determined it had been, at most, half an hour. "Ah–"
"Are you allergic to anything?" She asked, and then, without waiting for him to answer. "I need you to lab rat for me."
If he had, like, two more brain cells, he probably would've realized that this is the single most intimidating thing that Nene of all people could possibly say to a person. Like, it was a solid bet that he was about to be stabbed with something. Especially given the fact that the wine-drunk behind her off-white eyes had increased a good deal since the last time he saw her.
Instead, he shrugged, and more or less said "sure" without actually saying anything.
With absolutely zero regard for whatever he'd been doing prior to her intrusion, she grabbed his arm with far more strength than he'd ever expected out of someone a foot shorter than him and dragged him to the living room. His only question at that point was where the hell GF went.
"You're, like, the palest bitch I know," Nene said with all the authority of someone who was saying this for a very good reason. He was mostly sure it wasn't a compliment. "I need to see something. Sit there and sit still."
The "there" in question was literally just his living room floor. So far, so normal, he thought. Nene clearly didn't have a lot of patience for cleanliness when it came to doing makeup, given how everything was just kind of haphazardly strewn about on the floor. He wasn't sure if that was more or less in-character of her than he'd anticipated.
Before things could progress any further - or, rather that he was aware of; Nene was prepping something just out of the corner of his eye - GF emerged from the bathroom, answering his prior question. Upon catching sight of what was going on where she was once sitting, she immediately barked out a laugh. "Babe, I thought you were joking."
"I would never joke about my fucking craft," Nene insisted. BF, meanwhile, was very distracted, as his girlfriend was wearing a nice purplish-shade of lipstick he'd never seen on her before. He was sure she noticed his staring as she sat next to him, given the slightly smug look on her face.
“Doesn’t it look nice?” She asked, though she already knew the answer, given BF’s mental comments to her earlier. Despite her upbringing, GF didn’t tend to wear a lot of makeup, given she didn’t leave the house much anyway. One of those average teenage girl experiences that being close to Nene - who, to be fair, had been far from your average teenage girl, despite appearances - allowed her to finally have.
Up close, he could see more. She mostly - well, almost exclusively, honestly - wore red, so seeing her wearing darker colors was novel and, dare he say, quite attractive. She’d always had this faded, almost brick-red tint to the brown eyes of her human disguise, and the deep purples really brought it out.
GF burst out into giggles, snapping BF from his trance. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be speechless!” Her teasing ironically seemed to make herself flush more so than BF, who was far from ashamed of the state he’d been rendered into. An adorable display of how easily she was overpowered by compliments that he would be eager to take advantage of if Nene hadn’t proceeded to vice grip his face in the same manner she had to their girlfriend prior.
“I’m telling you, I know what I’m doing,” she said. She tilted BF’s face up, squinting hard, and he couldn’t tell if she was formulating something specific or just trying to fight through the wine’s haze on her mind. Abruptly, she let go. “Yeah, okay. Give me your arm.”
Again, this was an absolutely bizarre thing to immediately trust Nene of all people with, but being himself, BF immediately complied, idly lifting his right arm which she proceeded to flip over to face upwards. From there, she proceeded to grab a palette and start dabbing the colors onto his arm in neat little lines.
… um?
“Wah doin’?” He asked, finally realizing he was clearly missing something. He’d never had… whatever Nene was putting on his arm on his skin before. It felt weird.
“Making sure you’re not allergic. We went over this,” Nene said matter-of-factly, completely ignoring the fact that she absolutely had not done that beyond asking once and then completely moving past it. Like that was all the explanation needed, she went back to what she was doing, now putting some other colors on him. The skin colored stuff was foundation, right? What was the colored stuff? Why did she need to know if he was allergic to it?
GF, overly amused with the state of utter bewilderment on his face, gave him a different kind of smug look - the kind she only got when she was the one with the group brain cell. “She wants to do your makeup, babe.”
Oh. Okay, that made sense, he decided.
… wait. No the fuck it didn’t.
As the realization of what was going on fully hit him, he pulled away his arm a bit, something Nene greatly opposed. “Wha?” He questioned aloud, somehow even more confused than he’d been moments prior. “Why?”
Nene appeared almost offended by the question while GF erupted into a fit of giggles. “I literally told you. It’s because you’re fucking pale.” She made an extremely vague gesture, like that would somehow provide further context, even though it elaborated on absolutely nothing.
“It’s a compliment, slushie,” GF insisted, forcing her voice to be smug through the continued urge to laugh. In an effort to prevent him from struggling away, she wrapped her arms around one of his in a loose hug that all but trapped him in place. “She’s saying you make a nice canvas.”
That still doesn’t sound like a compliment, he complained vaguely, not surprised in the slightest when GF completely ignored him.
“Don’t be a little bitch,” Nene insisted, grabbing his arm again. “If you don’t like it, you can just wash it off. ‘N’ we won’t take pictures or anything for blackmail.” She squinted hard at his arm, processing a thought. “Probably.”
He was genuinely unsure when the last time Nene kept a promise was, but he supposed she could’ve threatened to do worse. Looking at the colors contrasting against his skin, he took a few seconds to try and parse how much it meant to him to get out of here and do, like, anything else. He had no real reason to give into his friend’s drunken shenanigans, after all.
That being said, looking around, he realized something. He’d been more or less invited into girl’s night. He hadn’t talked them into this or anything. Nene literally just kidnapped him and then started doing his makeup. Either this wasn’t as sacred as he once thought, something he utterly refused to believe, or he was being given a very high honor.
Craning his neck to look behind him a bit, he blinked at the dark line that communicated how much wine was left in the bottle that Nene had, presumably, given the lack of glassware anywhere, been drinking straight out of. GF filled in for him. “He’ll let you if you let him have some of your wine.”
Nene frowned, not initially enthused with the idea. But after a few moments consideration, she nodded gravely, almost like she’d agreed to sign over her mortal soul to the devil, and said, “deal.”
Every part of this experience, BF thought as he allowed the first gulp and subsequent sips - at Nene’s insistence - settle, was completely novel to him. This was part of why he was so confused that Nene kept telling him to stop twitching. How was one supposed to not flinch when a girl was stabbing a little pokey thing directly on top of their eyelid?
“She’s not stabbing you with it,” GF teased aloud, not caring that it had been one of those thoughts her boyfriend had had that hadn’t needed to be commented upon. He pouted at her.
Helpfully, Nene replied, “I could.” BF decided he preferred his odds with simply trying to stop flinching.
Patience and sitting still had never been one of BF’s strong suits, so it felt like this process, whatever it actually was, was taking literal hours. It got to the point where he somehow managed to involve GF in some form of ambiguous game involving his free hand and hers, messing with each other's fingers mindlessly.
“Yeah, that's–” Nene started, stumbled, and then managed, “that works.” She finally sheathed her final weapon and BF was given the space to back up - though she did swat his hand away when he tried to touch his face. “Do not smudge.”
“You sound awfully proud of it,” GF snarked, earning her a glare. Eager to judge her girlfriend's work herself, GF grabbed BF by the chin, rather roughly, actually, and tilted his face towards her. She immediately lit up. “Awww, so pretty!”
“I'm telling you, it's his fucking color. It was going to bother me for the rest of my life,” Nene said. She stood, attempted to stretch and wound up threatening to fall over; she rectified this by grabbing the wine bottle and looking at what remained of its contents (not much) with scrutiny.
BF, meanwhile, couldn't help but flush at the compliment. Wasn't sure he'd ever been called pretty before. At least not in a way that wasn't meant as some sort of insult about his hair.
Unfortunately, it was hard to feel fully flattered when he didn't really know what was being complimented. He had no idea what was going on with his face other than there was some stuff on it now. Almost as soon as he thought about this, GF seemed to realize it too.
“Oh, yeah! Where's the mirror…?” GF spiraled around, looking for the object in one of the bags that Nene had brought. It was only when she retrieved it that BF remembered that he'd been having a kind of complicated relationship with mirrors, recently. He wasn't sure if– “Here, look!”
Ah.
It was true he hadn't enjoyed looking in a mirror in a long time. Even then, he wasn't… sure that was what was happening right now? This felt weird. Not in a bad way, but weird. Y'know. His face didn't normally look like this.
His scar was still obviously there (of course it was the first thing his eyes were drawn to), but it blended into his face a bit more, something not easily achieved with how much darker it was than the rest of his skin. More so than that, though, what stood out was his eyes.
It was a sort of navy blue that faded into more of an indigo, almost purplish where it met the eyeliner (he assumed) off the edge of his eyelids. BF had pretty dark blue eyes - they looked almost black in certain lights - but something about the colors made it really obvious his eyes were blue. Like, a nice ocean blue.
It was, dare he say, pretty.
“Again, if you don't like it, I still got the, uh, wipes,” Nene said, jarring him from his thoughts. She used the wine bottle to make some sort of vague circular gesture in the direction of where he assumed she'd placed them after forcibly scrubbing his face with them earlier. “Not gonna hurt my feelings.”
He blinked back at his reflection, then up at GF’s expression, which was one of fondness and mild amusement. He was well aware that, for the average man, he was taking far too long to preserve his projection of masculinity.
Fortunately for him, he also didn’t care.
“Nah,” he said, waving her off. GF’s smile widened, and her tail flicked as she lowered the mirror. She had this specific way of arching her tail when she felt flirty that he’d long caught onto, and he was wondering if the new shade of lipstick she was wearing would look nice on him as well. Nene caught on and rolled her eyes, instead focusing on drinking the last of her beverage of choice.
Well, maybe he’d never been called pretty before, BF thought as GF began to press short kisses against his lips, teasing at first, as always - but he could confidently say he liked it.
He could unpack that later.