This Is Not How Any of This Works
Summary – Sometimes you don't realize how much things have changed until you're in the presence of someone who's convinced they haven't. Written for the 2017 Successor Challenge.
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Overcome with the sudden need to rub his eyelids now that he couldn't, Squall wedged his hands underneath his thighs. The very notion that people did this to their faces every day to some degree was simultaneously baffling and awe-inspiring, he decided.
From across the bathroom, he watched Rinoa rummage through her makeup bag for a few seconds until she pulled out a blue cylindrical tube, dark-coloured pencil and small spritzing bottle of some kind. Against better judgement, Squall unearthed his hands to rest them on his lap in anticipation of what was left to do.
Upon noticing this movement after taking a few strides to close the gap, Rinoa stopped a step short and shot him a knowing look, pocketing the tube and crayon in her sweatpants.
"I'm just going to spray some of this so the makeup is a little more resistant to heat and sweat. No guarantees about how it'll hold up against your itchy trigger fingers though." she made a point to say, giving the bottle a vigorous shake.
"And the things in your pocket?"
Rinoa shook her head. "As much as I'd like to see you try to apply mascara and eyeliner, I've decided to spare you. It has nothing to do with the fact that you don't need it since your eyelashes are longer and fuller than mine as is. Or that life isn't fair."
Squall shrugged, the corners of his lips upturned by a fraction. "I could humour you if it'll make you feel any better about life."
"Humour me by closing your eyes and letting me spray you in the face, Mr. Leonhart."
While it was tempting to goad her, he reckoned they were on track to be unforgivably-late — assuming Selphie hadn't softened over the years about her militant intolerance for any tardiness to her parties — so he remained mum and consented to a few hisses from the bottle spreading a fine mist across his eyelids. Without any real lingering dampness to validate the assumption that he needed to keep his eyes cemented shut for a good minute, Squall opened them a few seconds later.
He was greeted with the sight of Rinoa clasping her hands, her expression thrumming with excitement and the bottle already perched on the precipice of the sink's edge.
"…Relieved that you're done with this?"
"Not gonna lie, it was painful watching you apply eyeshadow at a petrified Ochu's pace when you only needed to cover where the eye holes would be. But it's so worth it since you honestly look like you jumped out of those youth magazine centerfolds. You know, the ones featuring the band of the week? Erm, maybe you don't but all you need to know is that teenage me would have cut out said pages and stuck on my wall so... now all you have to do is profess your love to me with four other guys to complete the full leap. Actually, scratch that. The eye makeup with the black vest, black tie and blue-grey dress shirt look is more rock band than boyband - you need to walk on some train tracks while none of your bandmates look in the same direction."
That last run-on sentence had Squall's heart thump a little too hard against his ribcage for his liking.
"…For the record, Ochus are immune to petrification." he deflected.
Rinoa separated her hands to rest her left on her hip and place her right squarely on her chest as if she was clutching at the necklace she wasn't wearing; he was never so grateful for one her patented looks of over-the-top mock-melancholy.
"You are such a killer of dreams." she theatrically lamented as she walked towards him with a slow calculated gait until they were a mere inch apart. The sorceress crouched down to level off the height disparity and look him directly in the eyes. She then proceeded to wag her left index at the side of his face. "Then again, if we're following clichés, it all makes sense. You're the moody bassist who's shrouded in mystery. No one knows what's his deal is, all anyone is ever told is that he leaves broken hearts in his wake."
"The only mystery here is how your imagination came up with that – not sure that sitting on a toilet seat lid for far too long counts."
Rinoa started to clutch at her invisible necklace even harder.
"You're breaking my heart, Squall. You are so breaking my heart." she sighed as she righted herself to full height. "But I suppose you do have a point. Selphie will probably turn the party's murder mystery masquerade theme into the real deal if we don't show up on time. Or if I show up in my pjs. I should probably get changed."
"Good idea." he agreed, getting off the seat. "Are the masks that Selphie left in that yellow bag on the kitchen table?"
Rinoa nodded. "Yes, that would be it. One's black and the other's light blue. If you could leave the black one for me, that would be appreciated since the light blue doesn't exactly go with the colour of the dress I bought yesterday."
"Will do."
He made a point to slyly kiss on her lips before leaving the bathroom altogether; the sorceress had a lingering smile on her face well after their lips parted.
While he was no stranger to accosting her for a quick lip lock when they were alone, she liked to think this specific instance was to indulge her long-winded flight of fancy. Though, admittedly it was more of a fleeting hover of fancy when one absentminded brush of her hand against her sweatpants reminded her that she still needed to get changed for an event that had nothing to do with pretending she was a special — but a decidedly non-groupie flavour of special — fan to a rock musician.
Life was really unfair and borderline tragic sometimes.
After fishing out the mascara and eyeliner from her pocket and placing it on the counter, she stepped out of her pants and flung off her sleep shirt, unceremoniously dumping the articles of clothing in a heap by the bathtub. Her sights were now set on the garment bag holding her black and plum coloured dress on the hook at the back of the bathroom door.
Then the doorbell ring caused her to jump out of her skin before she could so much as unzip the bag.
They never got visitors and anything SeeD-related was always preceded by a phone call that Squall would relay. With curiosity getting the best of her, she moved the bag aside and placed her ear against the door for the oft-chance the sound would carry from across the apartment.
The sound was low and garbled but the lack of pauses despite the slow cadence to the muffled words suggested it wasn't a solemn conversation or anything particularly important.
The forceful reverberations in her ear was another thing, however; the knocks coming from the other side of the door caught her off guard as she yelped in reaction. How it managed to escape her that the very nature of her boyfriend's job required him to be well-versed in stealth techniques, she did not know.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you." she could hear Squall say from the other side. "Are you…decent?"
Rinoa knit her brows in confusion. It had been two minutes, tops.
"Not so much. Why do you ask?" she answered back.
"Quistis and Selphie are here. There's been a change of plans."