Title: "Lipstick"

Rating: T

Genre: friendship, teetering into romance

Character(s): Skylar S.

Pairing(s): pre-Skylar/Leo (we need a ship name for these two, guys)

Summary: Those thoughts continually came to her at idle moments of the day, bringing a livelier, more colorful smile on her face. One-shot.

Notes: That was a loooong hiatus, wasn't it? :P This is inspired by a makeup video I watched a few nights ago. Also, it's been a while since the last story with this pairing. Why not give it a shot again, right?

Thanks in advance for checking it out. :)

Skylar wouldn't admit this to anyone, but those tiny little lip color sticks actually fascinated her. Not that she had anyone to tell anyways; she was surrounded by people who didn't give the thing much thought. Horace, for one, was not someone she felt comfortable talking to regarding this. He may have had unwittingly become like a father figure to the 'kids' in the superhero hospital, but subjects such as makeup would not be something that would in the slightest bit interest him.

Alan would dismiss it, too. He would just say lipsticks were for normo girls who had nothing better to do then go off on a tangent about how people with no powers lead such boring lives. Kaz…No. She didn't even want to imagine what kind of a conversation would result from the word popping up in their discussion.

Oliver might listen to her for a bit, but she knew he would feel very uncomfortable about it. He probably would only nod and smile and comment here and there just to sustain the dialogue. He would probably only listen out of his little crush on her.

She wouldn't even consider talking to Gus and Jordan about it. Gus would just make some offhand comment as he usually did with almost any subject, and Jordan, well, she seemed to share Alan's thoughts about it, only in a less derogatory way.

It wasn't a big deal, but it was one of those things that would be nice to talk to someone about from time to time. Makeup was one of the new things she had discovered on Earth, and it would be nice to get another person's thoughts on it.

Like that one that Earth girls put on their faces, the skin-colored liquid in the bottle. It felt thick and uncomfortable when she first tried it. She didn't know if that was normal. Nonetheless, she tossed it away that same hour. That one in the little tube, too – with the wand and its many tiny bristles. She had read on the package that it was supposed to be for her lashes, to make it 'fuller and longer.' She poked her eyes so many times with it that she deemed it dangerous.

She threw that away, too, not only because her eyes were a mess of red and black at the end of the trial, but because she realized that it served her no purpose.

But lipsticks were different. The colors fascinated her when she saw them at the convenience store. Though it had only been months since her last battle with the stifling liquid skin and weapon-in-a-tube, the range and purpose of that new item intrigued her. She wanted to try them all, but she only had two dollars and some change in her pocket then.

So she bought the ninety-nine cent, deep magenta one to match her superhero costume.

She didn't hate it. In fact, it grew on her quicker than she thought it would. It brought out her features, and for the first time since she ended up getting stuck in the planet, it made her feel like she was herself again.

It had been two years since then, and she had bought another one. Sure, they left marks of her lips everywhere all the time, and they smudge on her teeth and cheeks (much to her embarrassment), but weren't those normal? They tasted of plastic, too, but she didn't mind. She figured it was just the nature of the beauty product.

None of the boys knew it, but small things like those lipsticks gave her a sense of belonging. There were times when she would miss Caldera terribly, and in every second of those moments she would be fully aware that she was different from the people around her. But when she glided on her favorite shade, it felt as if she was like the other human girls, too.

Besides belonging, it also granted her a bit of security. She had been a warrior for as long as she could remember. Day in and day out, she was surrounded, too, by men who were hardened by the heat of their every day battles. Though she regretted none of these, she still wanted to be able to display a bit of femininity.

She wanted to feel like a warrior and a princess at the same time, and the twistable lip paints allowed her that.

Maybe that had been one of the reasons why she didn't feel very comfortable around Bree when she and her brothers came to their world. The bionic girl had the 'normal teenager' lifestyle down pat. She had the clothes, she had the friends, she had the excessively excessive but lovable family. Bree had everything she wished she had. The makeup, too – she wore it and owned it.

Yes, she had been jealous, but thankfully she overcame it.

Now, she and Bree were friends, and the older hero was the only person she could occasionally be a girl with and not feel troubled about it.

The only one until recently, at least. She had been on her way home from school when she heard someone calling her. It took a while before the name clicked with the face. Leo, if she wasn't mistaken. He was Bree's stepbrother whom she spoke both highly and complainingly of. "What are you doing here?" she had asked the teenage boy smiling at her.

"Oh, you know, just visiting," he had said. "I asked my stepdad to let me come with him to his business trip here, and I figured I might as well say hi."

"Okay." What she knew about him from what Bree had told her bred some suspicion. Why would he come unannounced like that? He also had a tiny, black-and-white striped bag in his hand. What was that for?

He appeared to have understood what she was thinking because he chuckled and said, "I just really wanted to say hi. We didn't get a chance to spend much time getting to know each other because of that crazy old villain guy." Catching the implications of what he had said, he amended, "I mean, not just getting to know you you. I meant you and Kaz and Oliver."

"All right," she said, still wary.

"Also, I heard there was a pretty big comic book place here. I wanted to go see what they have."

She only kept staring. Based from her past experiences with human teenagers, staring distrustfully should eventually catalyze a confession.

He sighed, and it caught her off-guard when she glimpsed a shadow of sadness from his eyes. "Well, nice catching up with you," he said. He handed her the small striped bag. "This is for you."

"What is it?" she asked, peeking in.

"It's a gift. I heard giving gifts make making friends easy."

Unboxing the small product, she found that it was a tube of lipstick. "Are you bribing me?" she asked a bit brashly.

"No…?" he answered. "Uh, I know this might sound weird, but weeks ago, before we left the hospital, I saw you looking at the lipstick Bree dropped. I figured you might want one of your own. I had help from a girl at the store. She said that one's universally flattering, so you might like it."

"Universally flattering?"

"Looks good on anyone, I guess," he said, shrugging. "Anyways, it's just a peace offering, nothing too big. You, Oliver, and Kaz had taken care of Chase when he got hurt. If you don't want to take it as a Let's Be Friends gift, I hope you'll at least take it as a thank you gift."

Their farewell had been awkward and wordless. He left with his stepfather's chauffer to meet Oliver and Kaz at the comic book shop (he had gifts for them, too), and that was the end of their second meeting.

She pretended not to be excited about the gift, and she did succeed in looking stoic on her way back to the hospital. But once she was alone and in front of a mirror, it hit her that having a new lipstick to play with was absolutely thrilling.

She uncapped then twisted it up for the trial. One swipe, and her senses filled with wonder. It was deep raspberry in color, and even in medium lighting it brightened up her face. Suddenly, her eyes were a mysterious shade of dark brown and her complexion smooth and bright.

It made her feel and look so beautiful.

She chuckled when she got a taste of it. Unlike the two she had, this one tasted of raspberries and cream. It also smelled of cupcakes.

She wore her new favorite most of the days that week. To her surprise, she got many compliments for it. Nurses in the hospital would stop in their tracks and tell her how gorgeous it looked on her. Some of the female superhero patients had said the same thing, too. At school, the girls asked her what she had on.

Before, they barely noticed her.

"I don't know," she told them shyly as a small group crowded around her in class. She showed them the tube. "Somebody just gave this to me."

"Oh, wait! I know this brand." The girl seemed impressed. "This is a high-end one. It's cruelty-free and natural, too. My sister, Lisa, just bought a couple two months ago. Maybe I can ask my mom to get me this shade next month."

"Ooh, cruelty-free. Look who's trying to save the world while looking classy," another girl teased her good-naturedly.

She smiled gratefully as they handed the tube back to her.

She had been worried before that she had made a disappointing impression on the boy who gave it to her. She thought she must have. She knew what people expected of superheroes like her, and enjoying small things that others may consider frivolous was lost somewhere in the mix. But after hearing those things, and experiencing the things she did, she realized that he didn't think of her the way she thought he did.

He respected her desire to unabashedly feel like a woman. He didn't hold that against her. And with this thoughtful choice, he acknowledged her as a defender who worked hard to save the world.

Those thoughts continually came to her at idle moments of the day, bringing a livelier, more colorful smile on her face.

The boy may not have made a lot of impact on their first meeting, but he sure did leave a lasting one this time around.