Any chance that Brick had to create something fashionable for someone to wear, he took it. While his first love had always been the military, his second was fashion, and whenever he got to exercise the second love, he greatly appreciated it. And when he got the chance to do both together, that meant it was time for an army ball of some sort, and those were the best times of his life.
The only problem with mixing his love of the military with his love of fashion was that he had to have someone alongside him as he endeavored to the dances—and the only person he would even think to ask was someone who hated dressing up, no matter how much he begged. He couldn't get her to change her stance on the matter with anything, and it meant that he was always having to tag along with a group of other single servicemen and women, all because he couldn't get his girlfriend (if he was allowed to call her that) to dress up.
This time there was no excuse, and even if he had to drag her by her toenails, which would be perfectly painted and shown off in peep-toed shoes, he was going to get Jo to go to the ball with him. And she refused the first several times he asked her to go, simply because she didn't want to deal with the feminine side of herself that events such as this one required. But once he had bought the rather expensive tickets, she decided to humor him, just this one time.
"I'll be the worst looking lady there, Fashion-pee-sta," she said with a smirk, watching Brick squirm as she did. "And there's not a thing you can do to change that."
"There is if you let me design your entire outfit." He tried to smile at her, but the idea of him, someone so in love with fashion, possibly going to this ball with someone who was disgusted at actually having to wear something that wasn't sweats after she had dressed herself for the occasion was starting to eat away at his insides. "Just let me do it this once."
She rolled her eyes, having figured that he'd suggest that. "Only if you promise there's no frills or anything like that. I can't stand to see myself looking like a doll."
He saluted her, hands shaking and sweaty as he did. "Ma'am, yes ma'am!"
"Don't do that." He dropped his hand from his forehead and apologized as she laughed at his behavior. Watching him get flustered was one of the best things about being with him to her, but little did she know that having him be in charge of dressing her up was going to be just as great.
In order to make her look the best she could be, he decided to design her a dress from scratch, picking out beige fabrics that appealed to her tastes. Then he pulled out all of his neglected textbooks from the courses he had taken in school, and found a style of dress that best suited Jo's body type, before cutting the fabric and sewing it all together. That was only the outfit portion of the preparations for the ball, though, and he knew that he was capable of getting everything else ready.
It cost a lot of money, but the makeup and such that he purchased for use on her was absolutely perfect, complimenting her skin tone and her dress as well as it possibly could. He went with painting her nails—both fingers and toes—a soft blue, something that added a bit of pop to her beige dress and nude flats. As for her facial makeup, he decided less was more with her (mostly since she had a beautiful face to begin with, in his opinion), and chose to accent her eyes more than anything.
Her hair was the final piece to the overall outfit and there wasn't much he could do with it with how short she kept it, so putting a baby blue flower crown atop her head was the best thing he could think of. When he stepped back to admire her, he was rendered breathless, and he had been the one in charge of the entire makeover. Her reaction was similar, with a huge smile and a gasp that could be heard from miles away. "I-I'm beautiful," she managed to say, looking at him before hugging him. "How could you do this?"
"Three years of fashion school really drills this into a man."
"I'm impressed," she replied, regaining her composure and acting more like the strong, mature woman she tried to be. "Good on you."
Her compliments were enough to make him beam the entire night. Not like having a gorgeous piece of arm candy wasn't enough to make him feel like the luckiest man at the entire ball, but he had been complimented by her too—when she was the one deserving of the compliments.
A/N: Normally I'm not a big fan of diving this far back into my fic archives on Tumblr to post something on here, but this fic's gotten a lot of notes lately and it seemed like a perfect candidate for me posting it elsewhere! If you've read this before, then that's why-but if you hadn't read this before, then I'm hoping you liked it!
This was totally written as a request in May, by the way.