Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Can you just hold-”

“Ow!”

“Oh come on, that did not hurt.”

Rodrick scowled up at her with one manicured eyebrow. It would be two if he’d stop whining and let her work. For a guy reclining in her mountain of perfectly fluffed pillows, he sure had a lot to say about his discomfort.

“How would you know?” He asked shortly, “it’s my face.”

Regina sat back on her heels, hovering just above Rodrick’s stomach. The last time she’d sat on him, he’d wheezed. He still had a red mark on his forehead from where she’d flicked him.

She set the tweezers down carefully on the quilt beside the untouched eyeshadow pallet and eyeliner. Rodrick eyed her warily as she leaned in close, blonde hair falling forward and brushing his cheek.

“You think all this happens naturally?” She asked, saccharine and lilting.

Rodrick’s throat bobbed with an audible swallow. “No?”

Regina hummed, placing a barely there kiss on the tip of his nose. “Smarter than you look.”

“Uh huh,” he said a little doppily, eyes crossed to stare at her lips. Then he blinked. Then he was scowling again. “Ouch.”

“Beauty is pain, babe,” Regina said airily, snatching up the tweezers and descending on him once again with malicious glee.

“That-” he hissed sharply. “That feels like a cop out.”

“Hush,” she soothed, holding his brow still with steady fingers, “I’m nearly done.”

“You keep saying that.”

“And you keep interrupting me.”

“How am I interrupting you?” Rodrick pressed, hands moving from his chest to fiddle with the drawstring of her shorts, absently curling the cord around his finger. She shot him a pointed look. He put his hands back on his chest. “Besides that one time.”

She brushed a thumb over his eyebrow. Progress was slow but evident. “You keep talking, it’s distracting.”

The speed at which his expression went from bored to sly was truly dizzying.

“You find my voice distracting?”

Regina scoffed. “The way I find a fire alarm distracting, yes.”

“Nah, you think my voice is se-” She plucked out a particularly dark hair on the underside of his brow. “Shit!”

“I think your voice is shit?” Regina grinned down at him.

Rodrick rolled his eyes with impressive velocity. “Sexy.”

“Me? Yeah.” She tossed her hair elegantly over her shoulder.

“Whatever.” Rodrick was doing a poor job of acting annoyed. Regina felt a surge of quiet fondness. She refocussed on her task before she did anything embarrassing about it.

Regina was soon doing the finishing touches with a self satisfied smile. She picked up the eyeshadow pallet, straightening up and squinting at the colours critically.

“Do I get a say on the colour?” Rodrick asked, stretching out as much as he could with Regina still on top of him. He laced his fingers behind his head and looked up at her imploringly.

Regina tittered at the ridiculousness of the question. Her boyfriend sighed heavily, fringe fluttering against his forehead. She held the pallet up beside his face. Tilted her head left. Tilted her head right.

“Red,” she decided. “Close your eyes.”

Obediently, he did so.

She swirled the brush through the red pigment. “And don’t fall asleep.”

Obediently, he did not.

She only had to tell him to stop twitching twice while she painted severe black wings with the eyeliner. She capped the pen with a satisfying click.

“Are we done? Am I the prettiest princess in all the land?” He blinked up at her with a wide eyed innocence that went against his entire character. She reached for a pillow with perfect smothering dimensions but stopped herself at the last second, unwilling to ruin her immaculate handiwork.

“Second prettiest,” she conceded, nodding at the gold lettered ‘PRINCESS’ hanging on the wall directly above Rodrick’s head. His grin was blinding.

“Can I see?”

Regina passed him a small handheld mirror. He wrapped his larger hand around hers, twisting both their wrists this way and that as he admired his makeover. She grimaced as he tugged one of his eyelids down by his eyelashes for a better look.

Rodrick lowered the mirror between them. Regina barely had time to catalogue the undiluted mischief in his dark eyes before the world around her inverted violently. Suddenly she was the one lying on the bed, Rodrick looming above her. He wiggled his fingers in front of his face conspiratorily.

“My turn,” he said gleefully.

Before Regina could say anything, however, he scrambled off the bed, sending her small pile of beauty products bouncing across the quilt.

“Where are you going?” she asked, bemused, as she gathered her makeup and set it safely on the bedside table.

Rodrick was already perusing the CD rack beside the mantle piece. He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I know you know I do my best work under the influence of rock and roll.”

Regina moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “Fine, but I refuse to let you ruin the integrity of my CD player with Good Charlotte.”

“It’s generally considered rude to tell someone you don’t like the gift they got you.”

“Well, it’s generally considered rude to buy someone music from a band they’ve told you repeatedly they hate.”

Rodrick shook his head with a scoff. “You just have bad taste.”

She stood, straightening out her tank top with a huff. “Clearly, considering who I’m dating.”

Rodrick smirked at her as she siddled up beside him, she smirked back, leaning into his shoulder.

“Whatever liar,” he said. He ran his finger along the CD cases. “Britney, no. The Strokes, god no. Huh. I’ll settle for Avril Lavigne.”

“Oh you’ll settle will you? How magnanimous,” Regina simpered sarcastically.

“You know I don’t know what that word means.” Rodrick fed the disc into the CD player and dragged Regina back to the bed. He sat cross legged in the middle and gestured for her to do the same. He dug a stubby eyeliner pencil from the depths of his jeans. “Prepare to look the coolest you’ve ever been.”

Regina stared at the pencil in shock. “You just carry that around?”

“If I answer that, it’ll ruin my mystique.” Rodrick took her face gently in one hand, tilting her head towards him. He leaned forward, then back, then shuffled closer until their knees were pressed together. “Close your eyes.”

Regina felt the first stroke of the pencil. She made sure to hold perfectly still lest she be called out for hypocrisy. There was something about the palpable focus and precision in Rodrick’s movement, the steady breaths, the occasional smudging swipe of his thumb, that lulled Regina into a complacent calm.

“Open,” he murmured. He dragged the tip of the pencil carefully along her waterline. Regina watched the skin between his plucked eyebrows crease in concentration, blood red eyeshadow shimmering in the mid afternoon sun pouring through her balcony doors.

He leaned back to survey his progress. Regina felt as though she was blinking out of a trance.

“Mascara?” he asked. She pointed to her bedside table. He stretched out along the length of her bed to reach it.

“I’ll do it,” Regina said as he uncrewed the lid.

“Ah ahh,” he sang, wiping the excess mascara off in the rim of the tube. “That’s cheating. Blink.”

Miraculously, Rodrick didn’t poke her in the eye once. He tossed the mascara aside carelessly when he was done.

“Awesome,” he said, jumping off the bed and pulling her up after him.

Regina stumbled, fingernails digging into the meat of his bicep to keep her balance. Rodrick brought them to a stop in front of her full body mirror. He ducked his head down to her height, pressing their cheeks together.

“Woah,” Regina said, staring at her reflection in semi horror. Her irises stood out like bright full moons in contrast to the thick, midnight black eyeliner. “I look…”

“Cool as shit?”

“Like a raccoon.”

Rodrick snickered. “Raccoons are cool as shit.”

Regina clicked her tongue. She pulled away, leaving her boyfriend to admire himself with the vanity of a peacock, and retrieved the small digital camera from her dresser drawer.

Rodrick shot her a sideways look. “Any photo you take, you have to be in too.”

“Really, Rodrick?” she said wearily, though more for appearances than anything else.

“Really, Regina,” he parroted her tone back.

“Fine, but you show it to anyone and you’re dead.”

“Even Janis?”

“Wha- especially Janis!”