Chapter Text
“This is dumb...” Nicole groaned.
“No, this is your Christmas present.” Karen chimed with a smirk.
“Doesn’t make it any less dumb.”
“Nor does it make it any less needed. Now just choose one already, we’ve been waiting two years, I think another minute is gonna make me explode.”
Nicole’s fingers lazily combed through the display rack laid in front of her, before finally landing on a pair of glasses that didn’t look too awful. Wide and blocky reading spectacles that she could have sworn she had seen look cool at least once in some movie or another.
“How do these look?” she asked, sliding the glasses onto her nose before glancing in a mirror and receiving her answer. “Oh god, nevermind,” she recoiled, and tossed the glasses back onto the nearest hook.
Karen laughed, “aw, I didn’t think they looked that bad,” she said as she rescued the abandoned pair and returned it neatly to its correct spot.
“Yeah, well, if I must get glasses, then I have to find ones that are actually my style.”
“Oh?” Karen cocked her head slightly in that way Nicole refused to admit was actually kind of cute. “And what is your style?”
“Uh, I dunno,” Nicole stuffed her hands into her pockets as she continued scanning the rows again. “Nothing big.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or round.”
“Right...”
“Or just... dumb.”
“Vague...” Karen nodded, amused. “But I think we can work with that...” She plucked a pair from the rack, twirled around, and hid it behind her hand out of sight from Nicole. “Okay, close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Close your eyes!”
“Why...?”
“Just do it.” Karen puffed out her cheeks.
“Fine, whatever.” Nicole groaned, but obliged. She squeezed her eyes shut just enough to look closed, but not enough to keep her from peeking through her lashes.
She wasn’t entirely sure why she did that, she did trust Karen after all, didn’t she? They had been... friends, for years now. Pretty much their third... ‘anniversary’, come Christmas. And It wasn’t like Karen was particularly privy to doing anything untoward like Emily or even Kelly could be. All the same, Nicole didn’t like to trust people, even if she secretly did trust this one for some reason, so she peeked all the same.
That said, she almost found herself disappointed when all that Karen did was take the glasses she had already picked out, and place them onto the bridge of Nicole’s nose. She then stepped back, bringing a finger to her own chin as if inspecting her work, before nodding.
“Okay, you can open your eyes!”
“Why did you make me close them?” Nicole muttered as she turned towards the mirror. “It’s not like I could even see them until I saw my own reflection in the-”
“Because,” Karen beamed, exactly as Nicole froze on the spot, “I knew you woulda slapped them away or something if you got a good look at them before they were on your face.”
It was true, Nicole had managed to make out the frame of glasses in Karen’s hands, but only now did she see what form that frame took. Big, round, and just... dumb. Everything Nicole had explicitly been trying to avoid. And yet seeing them in action on her figure, somehow they felt annoyingly right.
“Okay,” Nicole paused, “why the hell do I not absolutely hate this?”
“Hmm,” Karen hummed, leaning into the mirror's reflection beside Nicole, her own glasses glimmering with the overhead lights in the mirror. Her own glasses, that Nicole now realized were identical to the ones she was wearing herself. “I dunno,” she smirked, “it’s a mystery.”