Chapter Text
“Will, help,” El calls from her room, and it sends Will’s heart into a panic.
When does El ever ask for help? Ask him for help?
His socked feet plow his body through her bedroom door before he can give it a second thought.
“What happened?” he heaves, keeping his balance with a shaky hand on the door knob, as he surveys the room.
El sits calmly on a stool in front of her messy vanity, looking at herself in the mirror. Nothing appears amiss.
“El?” he asks. He doesn’t know what’s wrong.
She turns to look at him — gooey black tears drip from her left eye down to her chin — he has to hold back a flinch. But in her hand is an equally gooey mascara wand; it’s just makeup.
“My eye stings,” she says, still calm. Mostly annoyed. She rubs the rest of her face with the backs of her hands, smearing the black tears into her cheeks. “I poked myself. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Will waits for her to open her eyes before he cups her chin in his hands.
She blinks the mascara away, and the blackness quickly scatters from her eyeball. She’s not injured, only startled.
He scans her counter for something that might help. Several half-used eyeshadows, eyeliner and mascara tubes, lipsticks and glosses, a packet of makeup wipes.
“Do you want to take it off and start over?” He grabs a clean wipe as a suggestion.
Nodding, she takes it and starts scrubbing at her cheeks.
“What… what kind of makeup did you have in mind?” he asks, sitting on her floor as she works on the removal. He didn’t want to be rude and say, What were you trying to do? or What went wrong? because stabbing herself in the eye and crying black tears obviously wasn’t the preferred outcome.
His mom only gave El her old makeup supplies last weekend, of course she won’t be a master, yet.
“Maybelline,” she says, and points at a makeup advertisement in her open magazine. The model has on bright blue eyeshadow and huge, spidery lashes. Yeah, that’s something he could see El trying to replicate. “I like the color.”
“It’s really pretty.” His mom doesn’t have the right colors to get the same look, but he figures they can come close. How hard can it be? “How do you start?”
Her face, now bright and clean, is laser-focused and ready to begin.
Will never really pays attention when his mom does her makeup—she never wears much, anyway. Mrs. Wheeler, though, could probably teach El a few things. She’s always invested in the current trends. Will guesses she owns makeup in every color of the rainbow, while El’s choices here are pretty limited to neutrals and muted tones.
“Eyeshadow,” she says, picking up a little spongy brush and dipping it in a navy blue eyeshadow pot.
Will watches her pat the color onto her eyelid, one of her eyes scrunched closed and the other struggling to stay open. Tiny particles of color fall onto her cheeks here and there, but she pays them no mind. Her mouth opens slightly as she squints at herself in the small mirror.
As her hand wobbles, and she struggles keeping the powder in the center of her eyelid, Will speaks up.
“Do you… want me to help?”
She ditches the sponge and goes in with her fingers instead, blending the color into her skin around her eyebrows. “I can do it.”
And he knows she can.
They sit in nice silence for a while, Will watching her do her thing, as the color slowly becomes more and more put together.
“It looks nice,” he comments. He can only imagine how nice it’d look if she had the right colors to work with. Maybe they can convince Argyle to drive them to the mall one day—Christmas isn’t too far away, now.
El only hums, not letting herself get distracted by responding. She pulls out a confusing metal contraption from her makeup bag and glares at it.
Will also stares, he has no idea what that could be used for. It’s got a handle like scissors, but instead of shears at the end, it’s curved and complicated and clampy.
“What is that?”
“Eyelash curler,” she says, with enough venom in her voice to make the thing drop dead in her hands. “Scary.”
“You know you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to,” he says, because he can’t fathom putting scissors up against your eyeball.
“Have to,” she says, simply, still stubborn as ever. “It is part of it.”
Will holds his breath as El lines the curler up to her eye, and he’s sure she’s holding her breath, too.
The sight is horrifying. It looks like she’s scooping her eye out with a melon baller. From the angle Will looks up at her, he can tell she’s not even touching her eyelashes with it, and it’s still scary.
She tries a few more times, getting closer and closer, but she doesn’t quite make contact.
“I can’t do it,” she groans, discarding the curler on her vanity.
“You can do it, El,” he says. “You’re so close.”
She glares at the eyelash curler on the table once more and takes a deep breath.
“Can you do it for me?” she decides, pushing the torture device his way.
“What? Me?” He accepts the curler, only because she won’t let him not take it from her. “I don’t know how to do it. What if I cut you? Or rip all your eyelashes off?”
“You won’t,” she says, already closing her eyes and leaning her face towards him. “I trust you.”
And isn’t that a big word? Maybe it’s not trusting each other with their lives against a giant shadow monster in Starcourt Mall, but it’s still big, when it’s just the two of them.
He opens and closes the device between his fingers, and it’s not so scary. It’s not sharp, and it moves slowly enough to not do any damage.
“Okay,” he says, and she smiles as he lines it up with her light brown eyelashes. As he opens it up, he says, “Take a breath.”
On her exhale, her lashes flutter, and he clamps the curler down gently.
“Is that okay?” He lightens up on the grip, but she hums in assent, and he lets the lashes curl as much as they go.
Will opens the curler and slowly pulls it from El’s face.
“There,” he says. And the difference really is noticeable.
Her left eye is now open a lot more, with her lashes curled upwards and away from her eye. It makes her look happier, more awake, and Will now understands why it’s a step in the makeup process.
El looks at herself in the mirror and grins. “You did it!”
“Do you want to do the other one?” he asks, ready to get rid of the eyelash curler and never use it again.
“No,” she says easily, and shuts her eyes once again.
“El,” he whines. “I thought you wanted to do your makeup yourself.”
She doesn’t even open her eyes.
“But you do it so well.” She cements her point by leaning into his space, again, prodding him to finish. “And you wanted to help.”
Will rolls his eyes, though she won’t see it. “Fine.”
He does her other eye, and it goes by with a lot less panic than the first. He still asks if he’s pinching her, if it feels okay, but he’s less stressed about it.
“Okay, I’m done,” he says, and it makes El happy, so he can’t be too upset with her.
He sets the eyelash curler back on the vanity, and makes a mental note to never agree to that again.
El finishes the rest of her makeup much more slowly than she began.
Will realizes the next step is mascara, which makes sense, logistically, if they just finished curling them into the position she wants.
She barely pets her lashes with the mascara wand. It’s thick and goopy, and goes onto her lashes in clumps. As she combs the wand through them, again and again, the clumps disappear.
Soon enough, El’s starting to look like the magazine model.
She snatches a clear lip gloss and smoothes it over her lips, and the process is done.
“Wow,” Will says, because there’s not much else to say. She pulled it off, and he’s proud of her.
Smiling, El says, “Thank you for helping.”
“Of course,” he says. “Anytime.”
And that “anytime,” quickly becomes his downfall. This goes from a one time, costume-y event, to a near-daily thing.
El doesn’t wear makeup every day, and when she does, it’s not very loud or colorful. But she likes lip gloss and mascara. And unfortunately, that often means she needs help curling her lashes.
So, every few days, Will gets up ten minutes earlier than usual, watching El do her makeup and stepping in when needed.
“Can I do your makeup next time?” El asks, her mouth hanging open as she does her usual mascara before school.
“What—no! I mean—” Will focuses on not choking on his piece of toast. They have five minutes before Argyle pulls up in his Surfer Boy van, and Will will not be wearing makeup to school. He just won’t.
“Not now,” El tries again. “Another time, just for fun.”
“I don’t know, El,” he draws out, not wanting to tell her no, outright. “Makeup isn’t… Boys don’t wear makeup, it’s for girls.”
“Why?” She caps all her makeup products and gives him her full attention. She’s not upset, only curious. She gets like that sometimes, mostly about societal norms, that Will does his best to explain. “What is different about boys and girls?”
“Nothing… Everything. I don’t know,” he shrugs, a lot less confident than before. It’s weird. It’s gay. He can’t wear makeup. He can’t like makeup. He can’t give everyone even more ammunition to make his life miserable. But he also can’t find the words to tell El any of that. “It’s just the way it is.”
“Oh… okay.” Disappointment drips from her voice, but she doesn’t push any farther.
The burn of regret eats at his stomach, but Argyle’s van pulls into the driveway and cuts off any attempt at an apology he can offer.
He still helps El with her makeup most mornings, but El never asks to do his again.
“I’m sorry,” he says, several days too late. He’s got her trapped, too, her eyelashes at his mercy as he contemplates his next words. “It’s not that I don’t want you to do makeup on me, it’s just… I…”
“What?” she whispers, when he finishes her lashes without continuing. He fiddles with the tool in his hands.
“I’m—I guess I’m… afraid. Of what people will think, if they saw me. People… You know how people can be mean.”
“Even at home? It’s just Joyce and Jonathan. They won’t think of you differently.”
“Maybe not on purpose, but they will. It’s not—” He lets out a frustrated groan. “I try, so hard, to be normal, but everyone still knows that I’m—that I’m a huge fag anyway. My dad knew it, and he left when I was just a little kid. Mom and Jonathan, maybe they won’t hate me like he did, but they’ll look at me with more pity than they already do.”
El goes quiet for a while, and Will can’t look at her. He keeps his eyes downturned, hoping she’ll move past it as quickly as she did when he explained why they shouldn’t talk loudly on the city bus.
“What’s a fag?” she asks instead, and Will’s heart rate spikes.
His eyes fly open and lock onto hers, pleading. “Don’t tell Mom I said that.”
“What is it?” she says, hesitant concern creeping into her voice.
“It’s… it’s a bad word, I guess,” he says, and he can’t keep the furrow out of his brow. He also can’t keep eye contact with El, either, his eyes flying back to the floor. “Mom would think it’s bad, even if it’s...”
“What does it mean?”
He sighs, only delaying the inevitable. He should’ve kept his mouth shut.
“It means gay.” He winces and she joins him softly on the floor, but she doesn’t nod or make any sound signifying she understands, which means he has to keep going. “It’s, uh, when a—a man likes another man, instead of a woman.”
“I don’t understand,” El says, and Will wants to cry.
“So you know how you and Mike are in a relationship? O-or Max and Lucas?” He’s getting choked up, but he needs to say it, or it’ll never come out. “It’s one man and one woman, a-and anything other than that is gay and it’s wrong and it’s not allowed—”
“But I don’t understand what that has to do with makeup,” she says simply.
Will lets out a laugh, a little manic. “Me neither. But it does.”
“I’m sorry.” El places her hand on his knee, and his eyes follow the movement. “I do not have to do your makeup. I didn’t know it meant so much to you.”
“No, don’t be sorry, it’s my fault,” Will says, shaking his head. “I… I want to like it. I like how it looks on you. But I’m not allowed, be-because if I like it, then…”
Then it’s just another thing about him that’s different and wrong. Another sign everyone should’ve seen coming. Another walking stereotype he’s unable to hide away.
“I have an idea,” El says, hopeful. She grabs his hand and swings it between them. “I can do your makeup, but take it off right after. We’ll be alone in my room.”
Will nods, a little teary-eyed. “Can we do it tomorrow?”
“Any time.” She smiles.
“A-and,” he says, nerves getting the better of him. “Can you not tell anyone, about what I said earlier? It’s not a huge secret or anything, and I want to tell them—one day—but it’s… hard.”
“I won’t say anything.”