Work Text:
Baguette:
> ici stp. now
The door is unlocked when Alex shows up to the apartment, which isn’t surprising. John and Lafayette rarely keep it locked, which drives him a little crazy, but then again it’s none of his business. Lafayette is stretched out on the couch, face down against the upholstery with one arm dangling off of the side. He’s wearing purple basketball shorts and is sprawled in such a way that his feet stick out over one end of the couch, even though it’s more than long enough to fit his entire body. Despite the awkward pose, he looks very comfortable and very sleepy.
“Hey Laf,” Alex says mildly, dropping his backpack by the door and toeing off his shoes. He closes the door behind him and pointedly locks it. “You texted... and didn’t reply to any of my responses?” It had been kind of concerning, if Alex was being honest. Lafayette knew when to take things seriously, and Alex had speedwalked all the way there in case something was really wrong.
“Hello, Alex,” he mumbles into the upholstery. “Go tend to your stupid boyfriend, he is black and blue.”
“We’ve talked about this, he’s not -” Their relationship is still fresh, and Alex really doesn’t want to complicate it by slapping a potentially disastrous Label onto it.. Though he can’t deny the small surge of happiness he feels at hearing that word. “Wait. He’s what?”
“I was out for a very long run this morning, and I returned to find him making coffee, covered in his own dried blood. I do not have the energy to deal with this.” Lafayette flicks his free hand dismissively in Alex’s direction, huffing a little.
John sticks his head around the bathroom doorway and beams at Alex. His left eye is surrounded by a large, dark purple bruise that mars his freckled skin. It looks painful, and Alex recoils instinctively at the sight.
“Heyyy, Ham,” he drawls. “Come on in. I’m okay, really. No one needs to ‘deal with me’,” he insists, making air quotes with his fingers and narrowing his eyes at his roommate. “Now that you’re here, though, stay awhile. Have some coffee. It’s fresh,” he adds, disappearing back into the bathroom. His voice echoes slightly as it bounces into the living room. “Actually, could you bring me a cup too?”
Alex shoots Laf a look, which the Frenchman returns as well as he can with one side of his face mashed into the couch. Not again. Alex has been warned about John’s hot temper by Hercules, Lafayette, one of John’s idiot coworkers and even by John himself, so he isn’t exactly surprised. Alex prefers to use his words rather than his fists, but John has no such qualms. He’s just concerned at the way John never seems to care about his injuries, like he was the first time this happened when Alex was around to see it, before he and John started dating. It really wasn’t too long ago, and he’s already managed to get himself into trouble again.
“You know, I know how to pick my battles, Alex. These silly things never happen to me,” Lafayette mumbles. This is an outright lie. Alex knows that Lafayette has gotten into his fair share of fistfights, but he clearly isn’t feeling charitable today. Maybe John had been complaining to him before he showed up, who knows.
John is whistling cheerily when Alex walks into the bathroom, brandishing two cups of coffee. He takes a long sip of his and offers John the other, which he grabs and lets out a happy sigh.
“Thanks,” he murmurs. “You’re the best.” John leans in close and gives Alex a soft peck on the cheek, lips just brushing the corner of Alex’s mouth as he pulls away, before draining half the mug in one swig. Alex tries to act unaffected by the kiss, but he can see his face in the mirror and his cheeks have turned a little pink.
“You don’t look like you need any tending to,” he offers, leaning against the wall. “You’re upright and everything. Not a drop of blood in sight.” There’s a bag of frozen peas with a skull and crossbones and DO NOT EAT in John’s distinctive Sharpie scrawl drawn on its label, lying abandoned on the bathroom counter beside a bulky zippered pouch and a damp looking tea towel. John shrugs and gazes appraisingly at Alex.
“I don’t, really. You can provide moral support if you want?”
Alex pushes a row of Lafayette’s hair products out of his way and hops up onto the counter, his back to the mirror so he’s facing John.
“I would love to. That’s a wicked bruise. Shit, Laurens, what did you do?”
“Need more coffee. Be right back.” John grabs Alex’s cup out of his hand and leaves the room.
He fishes his phone out of his pocket and sends Lafayette a quick text.
Alexandre:
> He seems totally ok? Apart from the black eye?
Baguette:
> Désolé, mon ami. In my defense I really did think he needed assistance when I saw him, this was not a trick.
Alexandre:
> its fine bro
Baguette:
> Merci <3
John is taking his time with the coffee, and Alex scans the room for something to focus on while he’s gone. His gaze lands on the little black bag sitting on the counter, and he deliberates for a split second before impulsively pulling it a little closer to himself and tugging the zipper open. It was clearly overstuffed, and as soon as the bag is open its contents spill out onto the counter, and it’s full of makeup?
Alex can’t tell what each product is without reading the fine print on the labels, but he can see a container of powder, a few differently-sized tubes,, some little sponges and a puffy brush that are still poking out of the bag. He’s just pulling the contents out in order to better examine them when John returns to the bathroom, chattering absentmindedly.
“Laf tried to finish off the pot, that bastard, but he’s slow this morning and I managed to steal his mug while he was rinsing out the French press. We can share it, half for each of us sound okay? He’ll probably make more anyway… Oh.” John’s eyes land on the cosmetics lying exposed on the countertop, and his eyes grow wide. He freezes for a second as if he might turn around and leave Alex here alone, but he must decide not to run because he slowly puts the mug of stolen coffee down and clasps his hands together nervously.
“What is this?” Alex asks, trying to keep his voice neutral, more surprised than anything.
“I can explain,” John says quickly, flushing a little bit through the bruising. His earlier confidence has disappeared, and he looks smaller all of a sudden. He bites his lip.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Alex offers cautiously. He doesn’t want to upset John, and he’s afraid he might have already done that by being nosy. He needs to learn to mind his own business, he knows, but he keeps making mistakes like this one.
“Um…” John is faltering. Usually Alex is the one who’s unsure of himself between the two of them, and this is unsettling to watch. He doesn’t want to mess this up in any way, but he isn’t sure exactly what the problem is. John is just standing there in front of him, jaw working like he’s about to speak, but still saying nothing. Fuck.
“I shouldn’t have opened the bag,” Alex says quickly, trying to fix whatever he’s done wrong. “That was rude of me. I’m sorry. C’mere?” He opens his arms slowly and after a moment’s hesitation, John moves in close and allows Alex to wrap his arms around him. “Will you tell me what’s wrong? Because I’m trying to figure it out, but you probably know by now how I am with these things.” John smiles wryly, the first glimpse of normalcy peeking through his overt anxiety, and Alex feels him relax a little in his arms. It’s okay, he thinks in relief.
Alex and John are similar heights, but since he’s sitting on the counter he’s the perfect height for John’s head to fit perfectly under his chin. He takes advantage of that now, pulling John closer against him, legs hanging off the counter on either side of him, and envelops him in a hug. John’s arms snake around Alex’s middle, and he turns his head to the side so he can speak clearly through their embrace.
“Um, I was just going to find a good way to segue into that conversation, since you showed up on a work day and I can’t go in looking like this. You just caught me off guard and I freaked out a little. Sorry. I’m not mad, I promise. I was just worried about what you’d think. Took me a minute. We’re cool.” Alex squeezes him a little tighter in acknowledgement, and John huffs out a soft breath of laughter.
“I guarantee I’m entirely cool with it. What you do is none of my business, anyway, but I’m not bothered. So, you... wear makeup?” John shrugs, and Alex imagines that he can feel his small smile against his collarbone. “Okay, I have questions. Since when? How often? Why? How did you learn? What does all this stuff even do?” John lets out a genuine laugh at Alex’s inquiries and pulls away to look up at him.
“It serves a purpose,” he says matter-of-factly. “And it’s also kind of fun sometimes. You’re ridiculous, you know?” Alex doesn’t bother to agree, just tilts John’s face up with one hand and cups the back of his head gently as he kisses him, trying to be gentle with his injured face. Kissing John Laurens hasn’t lost any of its thrill over the past several weeks, and Alex hopes it never does. John can come across as sharp and angular in both personality and appearance, but he has the softest lips. John strokes one hand softly up Alex’s back as he pulls away, sending tiny shivers up his spine. Acknowledgement that his feelings are very clichéd floats through Alex’s brain, but he doesn’t care.
“It looks really bad,” he blurts. John smiles, wincing a little as his eyes crinkle at the sides. Up close, the bruise looks worse: it’s purple and yellow and curves out into a blurred crescent moon under his left eye.
“Okay, see, it may look bad, but I can totally fix this. I’ve had worse. I’ll show you if you’re sticking around.” John pulls a bottle of face cream from one of the drawers and briefly holds it out to Alex so he can read the label before squeezing out a pump and smoothing it methodically across his face, moving slowly over the bruising.
“‘Kay, but what actually happened?”
“Well, to be honest, this time it was not for an honourable cause. I was walking home last night, minding my own business, and out of nowhere this guy pushed me out of his way without apologizing or saying anything. Total stranger. I get being in a rush, but there was plenty of room on the sidewalk for both of us, and I kind of reacted badly. I called him out on it, and he must have been looking for an excuse to hit something, because we’d barely yelled at each other before he was, ah, burying his fist in my face. This is a primer, by the way,” He adds as an afterthought, uncapping a bottle and pumping a small amount of goop onto a fingertip. “It helps the products stick, so they last longer.” John dots it onto his face, concentrating most of it near his black eye, and begins to pat it in.
“Jesus. You know that’s assault, right?” John lets out a snort at Alex’s horrified recoil, one hand pressed over his own eye in sympathy as he winces on John’s behalf. Alex knows John won’t contact the police, but the future lawyer in him has to interject. He cannot fathom how John takes so much physical abuse with a smile.
“Yeah, well. I landed a few good hits but he pretty much won. I was a little dazed after that, bloody nose, all that good stuff. I got home okay but I was too tired to clean myself up before bed. I must have looked like something out of a horror movie this morning. That’s what Laf came home to, and I guess why he texted you. So now you know the story of last night.” John is in an unusually talkative mood today, and Alex is more than happy to sit and listen. He can be very reserved at times, so this much sharing is very welcome.
“So what I do is use these,” John fishes around in the pouch and pulls out a couple of… crayons? They look like fat little crayons. Alex watches as he uncaps an orange one and draws a few thick lines across the darkest parts of the bruise. “This one makes the darkness less noticeable, and this one,” he says while dotting a yellow crayon around the fainter parts of discoloration, “will help cancel out the purple bits. It’s called color correcting, it’s like a thing in the makeup world.” John picks up a little oblong sponge and runs it under the tap for a few seconds before squeezing the water out. “And you have to blend it in, obviously.” He does just that, bouncing the sponge gently around his eye.
“Looks sore.”
“It is.” Alex watches silently as John works, appreciating the concentration on his face and impressed at how his eye really doesn’t look as bruised as it did before.
“That worked!” he exclaims before he can stop himself, and John responds with a snort of derision.
“What do you think I was doing it for? Of course it works,” he scoffs. “Honestly, Hamilton, they told me you were smart!” He continues to blend, rolling his eyes.
“Do you do this often?” John shrugs and turns away to rifle through the small black pouch.
“Nah. Just for incidents like these, and even then not all the time. I just have to cover them up sometimes so no one gets too worried about me.” Incidents like these? Alex finds himself troubled by John’s casual treatment of the topic, but he doesn’t want to nag or overstep his boundaries, so he holds his tongue.
“That does explain how I’ve never noticed your black eye when I order my coffee. And you must do a good job, because let me tell you, I scrutinized your beautiful face every time.” Alex swings his legs softly, kicking his socked feet against the drawers under the counter.
“I don’t think most people are ever looking that closely at me to notice any of the makeup, honestly. They just want their drinks and their change so they can get back to their lives. And even if they did notice, what are they gonna say about it? Aha!” John says under his breath, distracting Alex from their topic of conversation as he pulls a small tube out of the bag. “Concealer. This is where the magic really happens.” He unscrews the cap and squeezes some out, toothpaste style, onto the back of his right hand. “Let me tell you, it took ages to found one that matched my skin. It gets tricky real fast if you’re not white.”
“I’ve never seen the process from up close before. This is like a whole new world,” Alex comments, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. “Remarkable. How’d you learn any of this?”
“I've done my share of online research, and befriended a couple of girls who were very enthusiastic to have a gay friend in need of instruction. Too enthusiastic, actually, but they never meant any harm by it, and I learned, so. I wasn’t really upset. And, I mean, I have an internet connection. I have watched a lot of damn makeup tutorials on Youtube.”
He leans in a little closer to watch as John picks up some of the concealer with the tip of his ring finger and, only inches away from the mirror, begins to tap it on over the existing layer of makeup. Alex is mesmerized by the delicacy with which he works, by the way his strong fingers move so gently across his skin, and then by the memory of those same fingers tracing his ear, his jaw, his lips. Unaware of Alex’s fixation, John silently adds a couple more layers before grabbing the same sponge he’d used earlier and beginning to tap it back and forth across his face. “The skin is kind of tender from so much blending, but it’s worth it. Can’t have people asking questions.”
“But why go to all this trouble? Why not just say you got in a fight?”
“Let’s just say it comes in handy,” John muses. “I started in high school because I’d have the guidance counsellors coming after me, making a lot of assumptions about my life. I didn’t need any more problems to deal with, I was already having a rough time without them being nosy as hell.
“And even now at work, sometimes I let it slide, but I can’t really afford to walk around like this too often. Like, Washington is a really great boss, but he would be the first to get concerned, call me back to his office, sit me down and make me suffer through a Serious Life Chat about my health. I can hear him in my head now, calling me son, asking me if I’d like to talk about it and offering his help. Like, bro, that’s great, really, but I just do not need that in my life. It’s much easier if he doesn’t find out. And it’s always been like that, just with different figures of authority.” John has been waving the sponge in time with his words, one of his more adorable habits that he never seems to realize he’s doing.
Alex remembers the cup of rapidly-cooling coffee on the counter beside him, and downs his half in two gulps. He passes the mug to John, who grabs it with his free hand and finishes it off.
“I don’t mean to offend, but have you considered just not fighting so often? This seems like a pretty physically and emotionally taxing habit to sustain... Surely it would be easier to stop?”
“There are worse coping mechanisms, believe me,” John says darkly. Alex decides to leave it at that for today, not wanting to ruin either of their good moods by dredging up too much from the past. He changes topics.
“So if I rub your face or something, will that take it off?” John shoves him away, laughing even through his annoyance. Alex is forced to uncurl and put his legs back down to prevent himself from falling over completely. “No, I won’t do it, that’s just an honest question!” He was totally planning to do it.
“Yes! Some of it, at least, ‘cause I kind of piled it on. So don't do that, please. You...really don't know a thing about makeup, do you?”
“Nope,” Alex replies cheerily, running his hands through his hair and re-doing his ponytail. “I had a lot of foster sisters over the years when I was growing up, don't get me wrong. But none of them would have ever been open to talking about it while I was there. They didn't want me lurking around in their rooms, talking to them non-stop while they got ready. Apparently it was distracting, or annoying? Never really understood why at the time.” John smirks.
“I see.” He reaches for the nondescript-looking compact sitting on the counter and flips it open to reveal a disc of well-used tan powder. With his other hand, John grabs the fluffy brush from his bag and swirls it around in the pan before buffing it onto his eye. “So, last step. If I dust powder over it, the makeup is way less likely to crease during the day, doesn’t wear off as quickly, and people are less likely to notice it’s there. Plus it keeps my skin from getting too shiny, which is kind of nice. I can see why some people do this every day. It’s pretty cool to live your life and know that your skin looks perfect, you know?” As he speaks, he adds a second layer before brushing some over his entire face.
“I don’t actually know,” Alex points out, prompting a snicker from John. “But I see what you mean. It - looks so smooth.”
“So, voilà! we’re done.” John turns towards Alex to reveal... a normal-looking face. Sure, the skin around one eye looks a little more perfect than the other, and some of his freckles have all but disappeared under the layers of makeup, but if he hadn’t watched the whole process Alex wouldn’t notice anything amiss. “If I was in the mood I’d put foundation over my whole face so it looks more seamless, but today I’m satisfied.” It’s impressive.
“Wow.” Alex lets out a little whistle, too, just for effect. “You look super normal!”
“Thanks!” John says, and then his expression twists a little and he coughs awkwardly.
“So you’re sure this doesn’t bother you, right? Obviously I’m a strong independent person who doesn’t need your opinion... but I still kind of want your opinion.” He ducks his head down a little as he shoves the makeup back into its bag. Alex feels a little twinge at how vulnerable he still seems, even with his injuries concealed. Really, he just wants to give him a giant hug... so he does. He reaches out with grabby hands and catches a glimpse of John’s little smile as he complies, allowing Alex to reel him in. They stay there for a long moment, Alex still sitting on the counter with his dangling legs bracketing John’s body as he pulls him in close and tucks his head up against his shoulder.
“Of course it doesn’t bother me. Screw gender norms, right? And you really are good at this. That’s flawless coverage.” John’s face crinkles into a wide smile despite the pain his hidden bruises must still be causing. Alex moves his head back far enough to plant a gentle kiss on the tip of John’s nose, careful not to ruin any of his careful work. Another smaller, pleased smile sneaks onto John’s face as Alex pulls away. He hops off of the counter and swats playfully at John. “Come on, let’s get you to work now that you’re presentable.”
“Sure thing, babe.”