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"This one looks rather nice on you."
"Cute. I think you'd like this shade."
"Close enough. But not quite. Still good on you, though."
Anything, everything but something that goes along the lines of finding the gloss with the perfect shade, a formula that's an exact duplicate.
They must've gone through at least twenty lipglosses now, if Phoebe's been counting correctly while she's being used as the test dummy for all the glosses as they're sat together on Zani's couch.
Twenty small lipglosses used as testers to find something that resembled Zani's current lipgloss. The same one whose production, as they've just come to find out, has been discontinued after a ten-year long operation cycle.
Phoebe may not be a salesperson, or have much knowledge of the commerce sector at all, but she does know a few things, at least. She knows that businesse run on the song of supply and demand, and that medicore endeavors would normally find themselves cut short from the shelves once they proved themselves unprofitable. Zani's shade, as far as she recalls, was quite the pretty color, so she thought it would've been quite the moneymaker as well. Guess it isn't, considering its discontinuation, but the point of appeal still stands.
Phoebe would know it's a pretty color, too. A light, rosy red for its dye, unassuming but still capable of striking a highlight. Made her lips look so, so soft that Phoebe would often find herself zeroing in on her lips after they started making things official, and it's true that they are soft, that they make her feel like she's on cloud nine whenever they kiss, and—
"This color's a bit too red." Zani speaks up, suddenly, after pressing a kiss mark to the side of her cheek. Phoebe's face is almost fully covered with her kisses, now, and she wipes the excess gloss off her lips with a tissue, "Next one, please?"
Phoebe blinks.
Oh, right.
To her right is Zani, and to Zani's right is a pile of all the used lipglosses that they've gone through. To her left, however, is the pile of unused lipglosses that they've yet to go through—five remaining—and Phoebe finds herself picking up another new product, looking into its contents through the container curiously.
Still, what are the chances they've gone through this much and there still isn't one that resembles her usual color? Phoebe wouldn't say she has a fondness for too much makeup, either, but she also knows that brands oft shared a few shades with one another, so how is it that they haven't come upon even one shade that was the same?
Phoebe sighs at their predicament, grabbing another from the pile, "There's all these shades and not a single one fits the lipgloss you normally wear?"
"Hm?" Zani takes the lipgloss that's currently in Phoebe's hand, unscrewing the lid with perfect ease, "What are you talking about? I already found the duplicate of the shade I normally use a few wands back."
Phoebe blinks, again.
"…What?"
"What?"
Phoebe turns to face her, a little unsure if her ears were working correctly, "How much further back?"
"Don't remember." But that grin on her face makes it clear that she so, clearly remembers, "The second one, maybe? Could've even been the third, but I think that's stretching it."
"The third, but that's stretching it…" Phoebe repeats, processing the words. In between, her mouth starts to gape; realization sinking into her bit by bit, step by step, "So the second?"
"I do have quite the eye for detail." Zani says while nodding. That grin only grows wider, "I'm sure you're aware of that, no?"
Well, yes, Phoebe is greatly aware of that. That exact atttentiveness is why Zani's sunny-side ups always end up perfect with its yolk oozing from the center; and why Phoebe even knows that Zani does her ties so halfheartedly these days is just so that she can have an excuse to ask for Phoebe to tidy the mess up.
Which means that she probably didn't even need to buy all of these lipglosses in the first place, and also means that she's also been using the past hour or so as an excuse to get Phoebe to sit pretty on her couch, getting smothered in glosses in all kinds of shades in red, even though Phoebe didn't really have to.
Oh, for Imperator's sake.
"Then—" There's a crack in her voice, there's redness under her cheeks that nearly mimic some of the lipglosses' tones, "Then why did you—"
Somehow, the grin on Zani's face only extends even deeper. "Why didn't I tell you I already found a duplicate, you mean?"
"You said—!" It's been an hour. What was it that Zani had said at the start of all of this, again? "You said you wanted my help to—!"
Zani cuts through her sentence, again, replacing the cap of the tube in her hands in favor of looking straight into her eyes, unnerved. "To use your pretty face as my own human canvas to see which lipgloss shade perfectly mirrored my discontinued one, considering how often I smudge onto you when you kiss me before I go out to work." She finishes for her, looking completely smug as she does so. Yes, that's it. That's perfectly it, so why hadn't she stopped already if— "Didn't say anything about stopping when I found the one shade that was a perfect match, dolcezza. If you recall, I've mostly been saying how nice each gloss looks on you."
…Oh.
That's why.
"You could've…"—could've stopped but didn't, could've said something, could've just not bought all that lipgloss and I'd have let Miss Zani kiss me all over anyways—oh Imperator, I know she has a special Montelli discount that can cut costs by up to seventy-five percent, but how much did this elaborate trick even cost—"Miss Zani was deceiving me this whole time…"
"Deceiving is an awfully strong word that implies my having malicious intent, principessa." Oh, how is Zani even lecturing her right now? Waving around the gloss around like a toy, as if she was the innocent party in this whole debacle, "Need I remind you that I didn't even hear a word of complaint coming out of your mouth?"
"You cheat." Well, that last statement is a moot point, now. "Miss Zani is a horrible, horrible cheater."
"Oh, how dreadful of me." But it doesn't sound like it's dreadful at all, not when Zani looks at her as if she's commited a crimeless stunt—which it is, but Phoebe almost feels like it isn't, "Come on, cara mia. You gotta use harsher words if you want me to regret anything."
Which is almost impossible considering her day-to-day vocabulary consists only of church prayers and choir hymns. That, and the occasional retorts for their argumentative joking sessions of back-and-forths and anything and everything that didn't concern itself with the practice of demeaning and cursing another human being.
Forget using harsher words; the only thing Phoebe can even find herself giving as a punishment—and even that's a word with more weight than intended—is maybe, just maybe, banishing her to sleep on the sofa.
And even that's a punishment Phoebe can't bear dishing out. Zani already has so much work to do all day. The stacks of paperwork are plentiful, her guard duty even often compromises her sleeping schedule. It's not fair for Phoebe to relegate her to sleeping on her cramped, limited sofa, even when it's come to this.
At the end, Phoebe can only manage a sigh. Instead of even attempting to find something that constitutes as a 'harsher word', she chooses to pout instead.
"Awh." Zani coos, endeared, "Something about that cute little pout tells me that the Priestess actually likes having my mouth all over her face."
Phoebe's not going to respond to that. She's not going to, because instead, she's squeaked, punched her on the shoulder with barely any pressure, and muttered out a Miss Zani! that sounds rather indiscernible, a bit too high in its pitch.
Nevertheless, Zani chuckles it all out. "What?" She asks, still smug, "Nothing for a rebuttal? So you admit that you do like it when I kiss you all over your pretty face?"
Of course she does, and of course Zani knows that she does. Phoebe wouldn't be tiptoeing up to press her forehead against her lips everyday before they go to their respective workplaces if she didn't, she wouldn't be be letting her pepper kisses everywhere from head to toe at night if she hated the feeling of her lips on her skin, and she certainly would not be letting Zani pull her into her lap as another kiss is planted onto her cheek after all that .
"You still have around five left, Miss Zani." Phoebe notes instead, gesturing to the four tubes they've set aside on the unused pile and the one she’d previously handed to her. Zani has gone out of her way to source all of these lipglosses, didn't she? It would be a waste of money if she didn't try them too, Phoebe thinks, "We might as well finish them up. Just in case you need a replacement for your current replacement that you got on your second try."
Zani huffs, already understanding her ulterior motives, "You can just ask me to kiss you more without involving the lipglosses, you know."
Oh, she could, but: "You started this, Miss Zani." Phoebe points out, grabbing the container in her hands to pluck the wand right out, "You should finish it up, too."
Zani starts to frown, playful, "Awh, but Miss Priestess—"
"Didn't you mention once that products sourced through employee discounts are non-returnable, Miss Zani? Therefore, we're stuck with all of these lipglosses?"
"…We could give some to your Acolyte friends, and some others to my co-workers? Oh, one of these shades even belong to Lady Carlotta, and Miss Ciaccona. Signorina Margherita too, I believe, and I actually liked some of these shades too, and—"
"Zani."
Zani's mouth closes in an instant. She takes the wand from Phoebe's hands, and begins to spread the new gloss over her lips once more.
("This one's strawberry-flavored, it's one of their unique selling points." Says Zani, holding up the second last lipgloss wand in their lineup. Much pinker than the others, and it doesn't exactly seem like a shade like Zani would use, either, "Think you'd like to use it, wanna have a taste?"
"Oh?" That does sound rather lovely, Phoebe thinks, "Let me try it."
A smirk appears on Zani's face, then, which isn't necessarily weird, because Zani does tend to smirk sometimes—sometimes, when she's uttered another sardonic joke at her own expense due to her obligations of overtiming, and then at other times when she's poking fun at the criminals in the vault who are clearly not up to par with her abilities, or when she's gone up and about and tripped Phoebe with that magnetic charm of hers—case in point, this entire situation—but now?
Now? There's not much to be smirked about, other than the fact that she'd just spent the last half-an-hour or two dragging Phoebe around with swatches and smacks of shades of light red.
That falls onto the third category of Zani smirkings, but she doesn't see why it would be appearing now, considering that Phoebe's asking to try it herself instead of having Zani use it instead. Oh, well, maybe she's just reminscing how fun it had been to be so cruel to her.
...Then again, is it really counted as cruelty if Phoebe liked their time together? Probably not, right?
Ah, well. She can think about it later. For now, she can think about other maybes that could happen when she gets her hands on that gloss.
Maybe Phoebe will even be the one to smirk, this time. Maybe Phoebe can use it right after Zani's done applying the gel on her own lips. And then maybe, just maybe, she can catch Zani by surprise by getting close to her and kissing her lips instead.
Just like what Zani's doing right now, just like how Zani's pulling her by the shoulder, her lips brushing over Phoebe's own, strawberry flavoring entering her mouth bit by bit—which does taste sweet, huh, Zani knows her well, as always—and—
Wait a second.
"So?" Zani says, pulling away, and that charming, damned smirk is still there, "Does my dearest Priestess like it?"
…Forget it. Phoebe's all red already. There's no saving the fact that she's completely under her whims today.)