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One of the most abstruse things teenage girls do, in Barou’s perhaps not so humble opinion, is this congregating together in bathrooms. Clustering together in a chattering bubble, always blocking the way, spraying pungent perfume around, too, if Barou’s especially lucky, so she can get a headache while she’s pissing, too. Who doesn’t enjoy fucking ambience, huh?
It’s this that makes her scowl when she slips out of the stall and there’s Shirasaki standing at the sinks, her mirror image dabbing at the edge of her mouth with her pinky finger. She looks up with a flick of her eyes—so dark it always does give a little swoop in the pit of Barou’s belly, especially when they’re on the field and those eyes are burning in the very same intensity that boils Barou’s blood, too—looking at Barou through the mirror, a smile spreading on her face.
“There you are, Barou-san! You absconded so suddenly one might think you’re trying to avoid us all.”
Barou clicks her tongue. Lingers for a moment more before she realizes she’s standing around like an idiot, then moves to a sink on the other end of the line, as far away from Shirasaki as she can possibly get to wash her hands.
It’s unsteady, like this. None of this is how her fucking day was supposed to go.
“Ouch,” Shirasaki, the fucking plague, continues, “talk about pointed!”
“What are you doing here,” Barou grunts, toneless. Shirasaki, apparently incredibly comfortable, starts digging through her bag. It takes a moment or two for her to find whatever the hell she’s looking for—when she pulls it out, it looks like a small tube… lip-gloss, maybe?—and takes just as long for her to reply. God, Barou can’t stand her. What the hell is she doing here?
“I thought we could go together!” she says, then, turning her face one way then the other in the mirror, opening the lip-gloss with a pop. Barou’s entire body fills with abject horror. “Also I needed to fix my makeup.”
This is precisely what she’s talking about.
“What, you wanna curl my hair and giggle about boys, too, while we’re at it?”
Shirasaki purses her lips into a pout. She is wearing makeup, Barou notices now, and it’s off-putting for just a moment, like uncanny valley. Barou’s never seen Shirasaki in makeup before today. Some of the girls did wear makeup in Blue Lock sometimes (small pleasures, they’d say, but Barou never understood and never will, has given that up for a long time), but never Shirasaki; Barou’d rather die than say it out loud, but that was honestly one of the reasons she could tolerate Shirasaki. She has no patience for girls who flock together in bathrooms and apply glittery lip-gloss and brush their manicured fingers through each other’s hair to go you’re soooo cute! Look at this lip-gloss, isn’t it soooo cute? We need to get this teddy keychain, it’s soooo cute! The new Starbucks drink is soooo cute!
Eugh.
It feels like betrayal, now, almost, to see Shirasaki’s eyes framed by eyeliner, her skin texture hidden by some sort of foundation that makes her look like a doll, her lashes long, long, long and a little tangled. It’s stupid, of course.
“You’re so mean, Barou-san,” Shirasaki whines affectedly, pausing to reapply her lip-gloss at last. Barou watches the slide of it, how it glitters almost pearlescent on pink lips. “I just wanna be friends, y’know.”
“I don’t do friends.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
Barou’s jaw ticks. What the hell’s that supposed to mean? threatens to spill forth from her mouth, but she just so manages to bite it back.
“I don’t want to talk about boys, for the record,” Shirasaki continues. There’s the pinky finger again, dabbing at the edge of her mouth. Right. She’s cleaning up her lip-gloss, isn’t she?
Then she proceeds to put her index finger into her mouth all the way up to the knuckle, and Barou’s brain kind of short-circuits a little. Shirasaki’s lips look all plush like this, sucking on her finger, wrapping around it, slowly drawing it out of her mouth, disconnecting with a pop. It’s… lewd.
What the fuck?
“Barou-san.”
Barou twitches, just a little. “What?”
Shirasaki’s eyes, dark, dark, dark, narrow with her smile, flashing with the cold LED light. There’s nothing vapid about that, Barou finds, makeup notwithstanding; nothing vapid about the way it always does make Barou feel just a little crazy, a little dizzy. It jerks at her sternum, tugs, has her scooting just a little closer. Surreptitiously, she thought, but that’s when Shirasaki puts her bag on the sink to root around in it some more, so apparently not.
It’s by no means prudent to stay here—there’s probably perfume in this stupid, bear-shaped backpack (did she find that in the kid’s section or what?) from hell, all things considered, and what does that smell like, vaguely like bubblegum? Or is that the lip-gloss?—and there’s very much bowling to get back to (as long as those other pests have left by now, which perhaps is wishful thinking, too), but somehow, Barou feels herself rooted to the bathroom floor.
“What?” Barou repeats, irritation clawing at the inside of her throat, but Shirasaki still isn’t looking at her. Just keeps glancing at her reflection, amusement tugging at her pink, glittering mouth.
“I said I don’t want to talk about boys.”
(There’s such an elfin acacy to her when she’s like this that Barou’s mouth goes all dry. That Barou never does know what to do with it, with her. There’s no ball anywhere near, after all, and all the things Barou puts in a neat row, all the routine she decides upon when the day starts, shatter like this.)
Barou averts her gaze. Grits: “Whatever,” stomps over to the paper towel dispenser to dry her hands, grinding her teeth. When she turns back, Shirasaki is still there, of course, despite the vague hope that she’ll disappear into a cloud of hopefully non-perfumed smoke, now applying mascara. Her eyes go a little cross-eyed with it. Barou swallows. It’s really so stupid. Why does this throw her off so much?
“I’ve never seen you wearing makeup before.”
It’s stupid. Tumbles out of Barou’s mouth before she can catch it, before she can tear it apart with her teeth, spills all over the tile of this public bathroom at a bowling alley, gutting her. It’s stupid; feels like a confession, icy in Barou’s veins, when Shirasaki’s eyes flicker over to her after all.
Black, black, black. Fanned by dark lashes, long and tangled together, with mascara accentuating them like this. It’s maddening, really.
Shirasaki laughs with the conviviality of a child on Christmas. She’s all rangy—despite being short, or, well shorter than Barou, she probably has a bit on the average girl, still—limbs and crooked fangs and pillowy under-eyes, and she’s all sharp teeth and bright-pink tongue and an adamancy that infuriates and intrigues Barou, both.
Right now, though, she looks just like any other girl. Like Blue Lock doesn’t exist at all. Like—
“Silly,” Shirasaki grins. “Why’d I wear makeup to sweat it off again? Football is best played bare-faced, in my opinion.”
An opinion that seemingly not all of them share (Barou’s had her fair share of anger over makeup stains on her jersey for practically the majority of her career so far), but whatever. “Waterproof,” Barou says, weakly. Shirasaki’s grin goes wider.
“You don’t really know how that works, do you?”
Barou flushes. “It’s a distraction,” she spits. “It has no place in my life.”
Which makes Shirasaki roll her eyes. She’s apparently done, though, however: throws her lip-gloss and her mascara back in her bag, messes with her hair a little bit. Candy-pink and bright, all of her is, down to the frilly blouse and the skirt and the shiny shoes. Pisses Barou off. Makes her blood rush in her ears.
(It’s like they don’t know each other at all.)
“Of course. The king’s rules are sacrosanct, after all! Not a single dance step in the wrong direction allowed!”
“Fuck you.”
Shirasaki sticks out her tongue between glossy lips. It scrunches her nose, and idly, Barou thinks Shirasaki really isn’t any good at this being a perfect, pretty doll-thing at all. Thinks most girls really aren’t.
“You’d be such a bad boyfriend, Barou-san,” Shirasaki sighs, fluffing at the ends of her hair one last time before taking a step back, turning to the side and kicking up one foot. Posing for the stupid mirror, apparently deciding she looks good enough. The polite speech together with what’s actually pretty rude words gives Barou whiplash; but it’s always like this with Shirasaki, isn’t it? “What? You’re still getting ready? Why the hell are you taking so long, woman, you look the same as you did before, anyway!”
Barou grits her teeth. “Good thing that I’m not a guy, then.” Plus you very much do not look the same.
“It’s okay, I’d let you be my bad boyfriend,” Shirasaki continues, now turning to face Barou directly; head tilted akin to a curious animal in a way that makes Barou’s palms itch. Completely ignoring what Barou said, too. “As long as you paid for my food, that is.”
“Yeah, no thanks.”
Another grin spreads on Shirasaki’s face, sugaring her features, all dewy, smooth skin and glossy lips. Barou thinks of her sweaty and flushed spread out on her back on the pitch, laughing loud and raucous, Barou thinks about her grit teeth, about the snarl on her face when she steals Barou’s ball. Barou balls her hands to fists, then flexes them.
Shirasaki sways closer. Eyes her closely in a way that makes Barou burn. It’s so weird, without a football between them.
“I can help you with makeup, if you want.”
“What?” Barou says, too sharp. “Right here? No.”
“Somewhere else?”
“No. I told you, I don’t need any of that. You should—you should focus more on football, too.”
Somehow, they’ve made their way over to the exit. Shirasaki holds the door open for her, and Barou’s stomach does that little loop again, and it’s so stupid, because they’re going to be right back in Blue Lock again soon, anyway, and then everything will slot back into place. Not that it even fucking matters. Who cares about Shirasaki and bathrooms and teenage girls and makeup?
“You’re so cool,” Shirasaki says when Barou brushes past her, “do you know that?”
Barou blinks. For just a fraction of a heartbeat, she wants to spin back around; wants to bark, wants to corner Shirasaki into a wall like she did when they first met. But there’s not a hint of sarcasm clinging to Shirasaki’s words, and there’s something so earnest—almost a little sad, Barou thinks—twinkling in Shirasaki’s eyes when she smiles at her that all words leave Barou’s head.
It’s Shirasaki who brushes past her, now. Picking up her pace towards a crowd of girls, and, ugh, the others are still here. Go fucking figure.
“Guys, we’re here! I brought Barou-san back with me!”
Yeah, she’s getting the hell out of here.