Chapter Text
Nancy doesn’t always lock her bedroom door, especially if she’s not going to be gone for long. Usually when she showers every night her door is left unlocked and her room unattended. Mike, being the textbook pain in the ass younger brother that he is knows this and has used that time to go snooping on occasion. Last time he was rifling through her vanity for something to occupy himself he found her collection of overly girly makeup. Small compacts of eyeshadow and tubes of lipstick sat alongside some kind of pale powder and a small selection of brushes that vary in size. Mike didn’t find anything particularly interesting about any of it at first, deciding to leave it and find something in the basement to entertain himself with instead.
But now it’s two days later and he can’t stop thinking about it, the gold tube that he knows is full of bright pink lipstick that Nancy only wears on special occasions. This morning he stood in the mirror imagining his reflection looking back at him with pink shiny lips. Mike can’t explain why but he knows he has to try it, he knows he’ll never stop thinking about it until he sees it on himself.
It feels like a never ending wait for Nancy to take her nightly shower but eventually Mike hears her steps down the hall and the bathroom door click shut. He listens, waits to hear the shower to start running and when he does he makes his way to her room faster than any of the times before, something about this time feels different, more intense in a way.
He opens the door and makes quick work of locating the shiny gold tube and getting the hell out of there, practically jogging back to his own bedroom. Once he’s back in the safety of his own room he stares at his reflection in the large mirror that hangs from his wall nervously, like his reflection might jump out at him.
After some time he slowly opens the top and twists out the waxy cylinder of pigment, stares at it like it’s a weapon. He brings it to his lips with shaky hands and drags it across his bottom lip, it feels smooth and quite nice in an unfamiliar way. He has to pout a little to apply it to his upper lip, the lines are messy and it’s too bright and pink for his pale skin but dispite all of that, he finds he feels pretty.
Pretty is never a word Mike Wheeler would’ve ever used to describe himself before now, but the reflection looking back at him is different from anyway he’s ever seen himself, softer, more feminine and just..pretty.
These new feelings begin to overwhelm him. Is he even allowed to feel pretty? Boys are supposed to be handsome, right? Tears start to burn behind his eyes and he’s not entirely sure why. He has to take it off, has to because he likes it so much and that’s not how he expected this would go.
He expected to put it on, laugh at himself a little, put the lipstick back and never speak a word of this to anyone ever.
Mike leaves the mirror, yanking a dirty shirt from his laundry hamper and furiously wiping at his mouth, trying to rid his face of the bright stain. He checks that he got it all off before tossing the shirt back with his dirty clothes. A frustrated sigh escapes him, he knows he should put the makeup back in his sisters room, knows he shouldn’t have taken it in the first place, but he just can’t.
He clutches the tube in his hand and tries to think to no avail, only able to focus on the way he’s *still* on the verge of crying for some reason when he hears the shower turn off shortly followed by Nancys footsteps returning to her room.
Mike grumbles and shoves the lipstick into his underwear drawer, all the way in the back where his mother won’t see when she puts clean laundry away. He drags himself over to his bed and climbs under the covers, still in his t shit and jeans from the day. There’s no point in getting ready for bed when he knows he won’t sleep tonight.
He’s right, sleep doesn’t come easy, he tosses and turns most of the night, thinking about how the lipstick felt waxy but looked so soft and the pleasant scent of the makeup, not overpowering but definitely present sitting just under his nose when he had it on.
He pushes those thoughts away that night and overtime it becomes easier to not think about it. Nancy never brings up the missing lipstick thankfully, but every time there’s a family gathering that he knows she would’ve worn it to, he thinks of that night, thinks of how it made him feel inside. Sometimes he imagines being brave enough to wear it himself around family, he never lets those thoughts linger for long as they tend to end up making him sad.
Maybe one day he will be brave enough to face this more feminine part of himself, but for now his life goes on with a small tube of expired lipstick sitting untouched under a pile of boxers.