UNDER ALL THAT MAKEUP

AUTHORS NOTE: Okay. I'm doing a fic for everyone (Mimi, Maureen, Mark, Roger, Collins, Benny) during the period between 'Goodbye Love' and 'Finale'. This one is Mimi. Inspired bya friend who said that my Mimi could never do angst. Because she's really fluffy, but WHATEVER. Mimi!Angst, for your viewing pleasure. Reposted from Under All That Makeup.

Everyday she took a good long look in the mirror. Not at herself, really, but past the cover-up that masks the black circle under her eyes and past the dark scarlet lipstick and the color caked on her eyes. To her, it's as if the bright lights surrounding the mirror behind stage she can see a little deeper then she can see in a normally. Like she's looking past herself. Through her. Inside.

She isn't. She knows she isn't. Despite popular belief, she's not stupid. She knows there's no difference between this mirror and the one at home expect the fact that her physical imperfections are more clear. She can easily see the starved-looking definitions of her face and the way her collar bone sticks out too much for her liking and the few lines on her upper chest at home, but there, these simple dislikes became obsessions.

There, she was skinny and so obviously dying and no mantra, no hope, can change that.

Everyday, she wondered why she goes through this every night. Why she looks in the mirror and speculates and obsesses over and just prays that she could just be normal. Right now, she can just settle for being okay. Normal is unreachable. Being normal was a simple dream that Mimi gave up on a long time ago. Being okay was only in about half a month's distance, so close that if she reached out her hand she was sure she could just grab it. That she could just snatch the time that Angel was alive and well and suddenly be there. That's being okay.

And sometimes, being okay can be the best thing in the world.

Her hands scooped up the eyeliner, and she attempted to concentrate on her eyes. She had good eyes. Brown. Deep brown. Not mud brown, but a nice shiny brown like... whatever pretty thing brown was. Mimi couldn't think of one right now.

A quick line under each eye, and she was fine. There was no need to go back under it with something to make it less eccentric. 'We wear whore-makeup, girls,' one of them had said once. At that point, Mimi laughed and just put on a little more with a light smile. Now, the memory only caused a light smile dance across her lips, and they barely parted, as if glued together.

Over the course of the last few weeks, that word began to rub Mimi the wrong way. It always did though, but only in the dark corners of the strip longue where probing hands came over her long after when they were supposed to stop. Other time, she was called the word unscathed. It was only a word. It only mattered when meaning was attached.

Lately, she guessed there was just a lot more meaning attached.

She was called that in the alleyway, with the quick exchange of a precious white packet but no return trade was made. He'd know when. And his hands would find her waist and her hands would roam over him, too needy to be connected to her brain. It was her hands, not her. It was her hands who somewhat liked the few moments they were pressed against each other, believing for a few seconds, that he was Roger and that this was love. When he spoke, he startled her out of her illusion, and merely left her with the packet and a dazed, empty sort of expression.

'Yes. Yes, whore. Yes.'

She was called that in the middle of Benny's apartment, here to tell him goodbye. More of a 'get out of my life' then a goodbye. But really, she knew he didn't deserve that. He only tried to help. He always only tried to help, and it always hurt him in the end. She pulled the key into his apartment door, pulling it back and peeking inside slowly. There, stood recognizably, was Alison Grey. Mimi knew her. Alison didn't. But as soon the tall woman inside knew her name, and as soon as she figured it out she was rushing her out the door, screaming and yelling and crying in a way Mimi never knew she could make someone cry.

'Out! Out you whore, out! Find someone else's life to ruin. Find somewhere else to go. You're not welcome here. You never were. Now, go. Just get...get... Get out.'

She was called that by Roger. He was starting up the car and somehow, she dropped her pride and begged him not to go. She was threw with Benny. She'd be threw with Benny. She only picked him up again once he left her. He couldn't do this to her. He just couldn't. He just tore her hands from his arm and pulled open the door to the old cherry red car and stared at her for a long time before stepping in. He left her with one word.

'Whore.'

She was sure he could of thought up something better then that. There was a stronger word, a better insult. Whore was never a strong word to Mimi. It was useless. Words were only what you made of them, you know. And suddenly, she felt a strong sort of hate for the word. She felt a strong sort of hate for herself, and what she was. A whore.

Mimi took another good long word at herself in the mirror. She looked past the makeup and past everything else, like the mirror only allowed herself to do. She looked past the weathering thinness and the strong hateful sort of look she was getting at. At something far deeper, something a lot more understandable. Something she could only see in this mirror, but everyone else could see outside of it.

She let the eyeliner fall to the plastic tabletop and let it roll across to meet the mirror, and she watched it roll across to meet the mirror. Her eyes, her mud brown eyes, traveled up and took her face, meeting their double in the mirror.

"Whore." She told her reflection, her lips, clogged by paint, cracked a large grin.

And somehow, it hurt the most when she told that to herself.

Everyday, Mimi takes a good long look at herself in the mirror and reminds herself what she really is under all that makeup. A whore.