Author's Note: Okay, I've done it. See, there's this game going on in the Writer's Loft forum, and I played, and then Mayalala totally tricked me into having written an outline for this one-shot without knowing it. So I had to write it to get that out of my head. I have no other explanation for what this is. Also, writing Cece was a lot easier than I thought it'd be. Enjoy!
Another Author's Note: Newly edited - thank you so much Captain Crunk!
Schmidt had shaved half his eyebrows off. The outer halves were gone; the inner corners the only parts that remained. She guessed he was still trying to figure out his pogo. For someone who was more into personal grooming than half of her coworkers, she was surprised he hadn't figured out it was probably his toenails, but she wasn't going to be the one to say it. Those things were frightening. And gross.
He looked kind of devilish, in a disturbing, hot way. (She could still think he was hot - no one had to know. There was no way she'd be going back there again, but that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate the view when she came over. She'd suspect that Schmidt was dressing - or undressing - to rub things in her face while she was there, except that nothing had actually changed in this respect since they'd met, let alone broken up.)
The eyebrows, however, were still on his face, unlike Nadia's that one time.
Cece was doing her makeup in the bathroom. She saw Nadia's reflection in the mirror and did a double-take.
"Nadia, your face!"
"What - what I do? Oh, no, take too much hair away from eyes. Will have to grow back. You have penis ill? I need to fix."
"Penis ill?"
"Yes, penis ill. To fix face."
"Penis - ? Oh, pencil. Yeah, here."
She handed her the brow pencil.
And they were each in one piece, unlike Jess's brows the first time she'd tried tweezing them.
It was a Saturday morning. Cece was lying on the bed, paging through fashion magazines. She picked up the phone on the second ring.
"Cece, help!"
"Jess, what happened?"
"I just tried tweezing my eyebrows and... I think I made some mistakes."
"I'll be right over."
She entered Jess's room, armed with her makeup bag, and her eyes widened.
"Oh. Okay. Um, how'd you do that?"
"I don't know! First the left one didn't match the right one, so I tried fixing it, and then the right one didn't match, and the next thing I know I've got bits and pieces of eyebrow and I'm freaking out and my mom is going to kill me! What am I going to do?"
She rummaged in the bag and found the eyebrow pencil.
"Sit. Close your eyes."
Jess obeyed. Cece started correcting with the pencil as best she could.
"Why'd you decide to tweeze them, anyway? You've never cared about your eyebrows before."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay."
Cece moved on to the next brow.
"Fine! It's all Jessica P.'s fault! She said they looked like caterpillars. In front of Jeremy!"
"Jess, they don't look like caterpillars. They really looked fine. And I'm pretty sure Jeremy's gay... which means he might care about your eyebrows, actually."
Jess sighed. Cece stepped back.
"Okay. You're going to have to draw them in for a week or two, until everything grows back. Do NOT try to tweeze them again, okay? I'll show you how to do it next time so you don't cut them in half again."
"But what about until then? You can't come over every morning and draw them in for me! My mom is already mad at you because of that thing with the car. And she'll see that they're drawn in and know and I'm already in enough trouble!"
"Calm down, Jess. I'll show you how to draw them in yourself. And - wait. Put on your glasses."
The glasses went on. The frames obscured her brows a bit. Cece fiddled with Jess's bangs.
"Okay. Keep your glasses on at all times. Comb your bangs down over your eyebrows, and try not to look her in the eye for a week. You'll be okay."
Jess hugged Cece in relief. "What would I do without you, Cece?"
Cece looked at Schmidt's face and shrugged. "I've seen worse," she said.