Makeup - Haller and Shatterstar
Sep. 13th, 2024 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsHaller finds Shatterstar with his birthmark covered up after one of Sharon's makeup lessons.
Sharon's first "shapeshifting" lesson had been... alright. Shatterstar found that the cosmetics were heavy on his skin in their attempts to cover his birthmark, but the results were... astonishing. He hardly recognized himself. It really was like he had Jessie's power to change her face. Despite how the cosmetics felt caked on his face, he hadn't washed it off. After all, getting used to the feeling was part of the lesson as well.
He wondered if he could bum car keys or a ride off anyone to see if people would, for once, not stare at his face when they noticed him if he went out to Salem Center. He didn't mind the stares, but well... that was because he taught himself to thrive on attention and performance.
Instead he settled for starting out for a long walk- but not a run. He didn't want to know how makeup felt when it was melting with sweat.
"Hey, Shatterstar."
The younger man's characteristic red braid made him easy to recognize from behind. Already on a walk of his own, Jim made a minor course correction to greet him. He remembered to stomp out the cigarette he'd been smoking before calling out; he wasn't actively trying to set an example, good or otherwise, but smoking probably canceled out the mild cardio he was attempting.
Shatterstar didn't even have the stands out of his braid that he normally had, everything neatly out of his face. (Hair was also apparently part of "shapeshifting"). He turned to greet Jim, nodding at him. "Hello." He could still smell the cigarette smoke, but appreciated Jim putting it out. Shatterstar wasn't smiling, but there was a softness to his expression.
Without the large red port-wine birthmark over his eye, attention wasn't automatically brought to it.
Jim blinked. He was so used to the hyperpigmentation he no longer even registered it; it was simply an indelible part of Shatterstar. To address him and be greeted by a uniformly pale face was legitimately startling.
"Is that coverup?"
Shatterstar brought his eyebrows together in a slight glare, bringing attention to the shape of his browline and his eyes- which stood out more without the star-shaped birthmark. His features looked, if you were familiar with both of them enough to notice, slightly like Arthur's. You could see it in the eye shape especially.
"No. My face became like this overnight," Shatterstar said sarcastically, miffed that Jim had drawn attention to it. He felt that this must mean he didn't do a good enough job, not thinking that the people who knew him would be used to his face as it was.
"Sorry, I was just surprised," Jim said. He, too, noticed the resemblance, but he wondered if his mind was extrapolating this from his knowledge of Shatterstar and Arthur's relationship. He shook his head. "You did a good job. I almost didn't recognize you."
"You knew it was me from behind," Shatterstar reminded him but clearly was preening slightly over the compliment, causing him to tilt his head slightly in the sun. It was in the sunlight that the failing showed- too warm of a concealer and the blending wasn't quite there yet either. Still, pretty decent for the first time and a colorblind teacher. (Sharon had done a lot).
The telepath gave an amused snort. "If you really wanted to be unrecognizable you'd need a pretty significant haircut." He studied the boy's face more carefully, recalling Shatterstar's previous use of makeup. The young man occasionally used makeup to accentuate the borders of the birthmark to make it more dramatic. He'd never seen him go the opposite route. "Any particular reason you felt like experimenting?" Jim asked.
Shatterstar went to tug on his hair self-consciously, but all of it is out of his face in a tight braid so he drops his hand midair. "Sharon is teaching me what she called 'human shapeshifting'. I didn't know how different I could look until her lessons. In exchange I am teaching her hand-to-hand." They were both trying to teach each other from their on-going lessons.
That refreshing lack of toxic masculinity got a smile. "Sounds like a mutually beneficial arrangement. Can I take a closer look? I know a little about makeup."
If it was someone else, Shatterstar would have denied them. But it was Jim, who was one of Shatterstar's favorite people and whose professional opinion he trusted. He stepped closer to Jim and tilted his head so the older man could better see.
"Makeup looks different under natural light," the older man remarked after a moment, "and foundation is already hard to match. Your skin has cool undertones, and it looks like the concealer here is for warm ones. You'll want something that looks a little pinker in the bottle. You may also want to try a color corrector before you put on the concealer; it might let you get away with using less of it. Something a little greenish will offset the red. You can also use blush or bronzer to give your skin a little more dimensionality."
Shatterstar scowled slightly at his failings, even if he had more or less asked Him to point them out. Though, any advice on how to use less makeup to receive the same results was welcome. It really did feel heavy on his skin. "How do you know all this?" He asked, trying to imagine them even making greenish concealer (color corrector? What as that anyway?).
Jim gave him a crooked smile. "I paint. There's a lot of color theory that goes into it, and not all of it is intuitive. For example, sometimes if you want to de-emphasize a color you don't just keep going over it with the shade you want -- you put a complimentary color over it first. Those are the colors directly across from each other on the color wheel." He raised a hand and began ticking off his fingers. "Red and green, blue and orange, purple and yellow. They cancel each other out. If you had a bruise you might use something more peach or yellow." The man paused, then added, "Also Cyndi is obsessed with Beauty Tok."
That sounded like Cyndi. He was inclined to trust her more than Jim, considering she was more likely to have actually done makeup. "Why would you-?" Shatterstar cut off his question before he finished asking it. Actually, wanting to cover a bruise made sense if you didn't want to come from the perspective of seeming like someone who was dangerous. It had been over a year since he came to the mansion, but it was hard to shake thought patterns from juvie and the hospital. He changed his question instead. "Does Cyndi know anything that wouldn't have to be so thick?"
"Maybe. Sometimes it's how you apply it, and sometimes it's just the brand. Where did you go for the makeup, drug stores? Online?"
"I have no idea," Shatterstar confessed. "It is Sharon's. She said we are very similar shades. I think she got hers from a woman named Felicia."
Jim nodded thoughtfully. "Good for practice, but not matched for you. There's an Ulta in Salem Center. If you want, I can take you there so you can try some other things. The salespeople will be able to give you advice, too." Cyndi would be thrilled.
Some days it still took him back how easily he could just go places at the Mansion. Maybe it was because he was already slightly vulnerable from being blank-faced, but the offer took him back slightly. He jumped on it. "Yes. Let's do that. Yes."
Cyndi and Shatterstar go to Ulta.
"No, see, you gotta go with the red eyeliner. Trust me, put this on your waterline and it's gonna make your eyes pop. Oh, and this green shadow, let's try this, too."
Cyndi was thrilled.
The alter had lasted about five minutes before her attention span for the current assignment gave out. She'd tried fixing David's face for years with unsatisfactory results, and age wasn't improving things. Now here was Shatterstar, a fresh palette just begging for a glam makeover and zero concerns about appearing professional.
It was her time now.
Shatterstar took the red eyeliner from her- red was, after all, one of the colors he actually wore, but put the eyeshadow back. "I don't wear green," he told her. He was also starting to get distracted from their attempts to find a coverup and concealer that wouldn't be cakey. He hadn't realized how nice it would be to have people not staring at his face. It would be good to be able to decide how much attention he wanted to draw to himself. (He still would draw some. He was over six feet tall with long red hair and he was much too vain to cut it). "But the red is good. I don't know if it goes with my skin."
Cyndi made a pssh noise. "I mean you can go with like, a goldy orange, too, but we're trying to bring out your hair color, not your skin. Plus it'll make your eyes look super bright. God, why do boys get the good hair? Plus the best eyelashes. Guess I should be glad the dorkbody isn't going bald. If that happens I'm demanding reparations." Her green eyes flicked to another shelf, weighing possibilities. "Hey, you wanna try mascara or nah? They've actually got some red ones."
"We are on a mission," Shatterstar reminded Cyndi, but took the red mascara into the small basket he had all the same. Cyndi did, after all, have an eye for color. "We are here to find concealer that won't be so thick."
But, spending an hour or two window-shopping and playing Barbie Styling Head for Cyndi was really fun too. He pulled out a white eyeliner. "What about this with the red?"
"We're not not getting your stuff, we're just also not limiting ourselves. This whole store is just cosmetics. It's disrespectful to walk in here and only buy one thing." The alter dangled her shopping basket in front of Shatterstar and jangled the contents, and pursed her lips at the proffered liner.
"That'll work if you want your eyes to look bigger, but you're gonna wanna put it on your waterline and the red underneath. If you're cool with almost drawing on your eyeball, I say go for it. Hey, polish!" She snatched up a sparkling bottle and waved it at Shatterstar. "Do you do nail polish? You should do nail polish. Or let me do your nail polish. Once again I have to suffer because Jim is boring."
"If it's a professional navy or beige, Jim would probably wear it," Shatterstar teased with her before turning and crouching to better look at the aisle of nail polishes. Of course, the neutrals were lower down. He handed Cyndi a bottle after reading the name off of the bottom of the bottle. "Alpaca My Bags." He snorted slightly, and started turning over the blacks and whites to see if they had pun names too.
"What about this one for me?" He asked, holding up a glittery black bottle with slight red flecks in it (Roulette was the name, unfortunately not a bad pun).
"Jim is way less interesting than you give him credit for. We're talking about a guy who'd wear chinos on his fingers if he could. Definitely grab the black though. Okay, you said no greens, but maybe this mauve? It's got a real 'hands stained with the blood of my enemies' vibe. Or maybe this . . ." A polish in either hand, Cyndi raised the bottles to Shatterstar and squinted, trying to envision the colors against his skin. The indecision was paralyzing. Then she snorted and dropped them both in the basket hanging around one arm. "Actually what am I saying, just get whatever you want. We'll pay."
"You don't need to pay for me," Shatterstar said, even as he slipped the Alpaca My Bags in the basket. "And if you paint Jim's nails a boring color he probably wouldn't take it off." Jim was more interesting than Cyndi gave him credit for, in 'Star's opinion. He was, after all, friends with Arthur. And an X-Man.
"You had a birthday like, Monday, right? The right to a budgetless cosmetic experimentation can be your birthday gift. Go nuts. I promise Jimmothy can afford it. Besides, it's our money." Cyndi regarded her offensively unpainted nails with disapproval. "I guess if we paint Jim's nails a boring color he probably wouldn't take it off. He loves y-"
In the back of her mind: Watch yourself. We don't want to screw this kid up.
"-to encourage self-expression in a safe and nurturing environment," Cyndi finished, seamless on the outside but inwardly sour.
"If it is a birthday gift," Shatterstar agreed, not catching Cyndi's interruption to her own thought. Instead he looked over the nail polishes to find an inoffessive beige.
He added it to the basket. "That way I can do a pattern on him, since you signed him up to paint his nails," Shatterstar said with the hint of a genuine smile.
It actually boggled the mind how much Jack and Jim could simply Not Get It. Yeah, maybe not telling someone how much they mattered to you would save them some pain in the long run. Shit happened. People could disappoint you, or just die out of nowhere -- something that'd been hammered into David all his life -- so sure, pain was always a possibility. But what if the person would have chosen to trade the possibility of future pain for the certainty that someone cared?
What then, assholes?
No answer, and whatever. If they loved stupid so much they could live with the consequences.
Grinning in a way anyone on fire suppression duty at Muir Island would have known and feared, Cyndi selected the most obnoxious sparkling neon green she could find and dropped it into the basket.
"Actually, let's go with Limelight - Infinite Shine. Y'know, since it's a birthday gift."
Sharon's first "shapeshifting" lesson had been... alright. Shatterstar found that the cosmetics were heavy on his skin in their attempts to cover his birthmark, but the results were... astonishing. He hardly recognized himself. It really was like he had Jessie's power to change her face. Despite how the cosmetics felt caked on his face, he hadn't washed it off. After all, getting used to the feeling was part of the lesson as well.
He wondered if he could bum car keys or a ride off anyone to see if people would, for once, not stare at his face when they noticed him if he went out to Salem Center. He didn't mind the stares, but well... that was because he taught himself to thrive on attention and performance.
Instead he settled for starting out for a long walk- but not a run. He didn't want to know how makeup felt when it was melting with sweat.
"Hey, Shatterstar."
The younger man's characteristic red braid made him easy to recognize from behind. Already on a walk of his own, Jim made a minor course correction to greet him. He remembered to stomp out the cigarette he'd been smoking before calling out; he wasn't actively trying to set an example, good or otherwise, but smoking probably canceled out the mild cardio he was attempting.
Shatterstar didn't even have the stands out of his braid that he normally had, everything neatly out of his face. (Hair was also apparently part of "shapeshifting"). He turned to greet Jim, nodding at him. "Hello." He could still smell the cigarette smoke, but appreciated Jim putting it out. Shatterstar wasn't smiling, but there was a softness to his expression.
Without the large red port-wine birthmark over his eye, attention wasn't automatically brought to it.
Jim blinked. He was so used to the hyperpigmentation he no longer even registered it; it was simply an indelible part of Shatterstar. To address him and be greeted by a uniformly pale face was legitimately startling.
"Is that coverup?"
Shatterstar brought his eyebrows together in a slight glare, bringing attention to the shape of his browline and his eyes- which stood out more without the star-shaped birthmark. His features looked, if you were familiar with both of them enough to notice, slightly like Arthur's. You could see it in the eye shape especially.
"No. My face became like this overnight," Shatterstar said sarcastically, miffed that Jim had drawn attention to it. He felt that this must mean he didn't do a good enough job, not thinking that the people who knew him would be used to his face as it was.
"Sorry, I was just surprised," Jim said. He, too, noticed the resemblance, but he wondered if his mind was extrapolating this from his knowledge of Shatterstar and Arthur's relationship. He shook his head. "You did a good job. I almost didn't recognize you."
"You knew it was me from behind," Shatterstar reminded him but clearly was preening slightly over the compliment, causing him to tilt his head slightly in the sun. It was in the sunlight that the failing showed- too warm of a concealer and the blending wasn't quite there yet either. Still, pretty decent for the first time and a colorblind teacher. (Sharon had done a lot).
The telepath gave an amused snort. "If you really wanted to be unrecognizable you'd need a pretty significant haircut." He studied the boy's face more carefully, recalling Shatterstar's previous use of makeup. The young man occasionally used makeup to accentuate the borders of the birthmark to make it more dramatic. He'd never seen him go the opposite route. "Any particular reason you felt like experimenting?" Jim asked.
Shatterstar went to tug on his hair self-consciously, but all of it is out of his face in a tight braid so he drops his hand midair. "Sharon is teaching me what she called 'human shapeshifting'. I didn't know how different I could look until her lessons. In exchange I am teaching her hand-to-hand." They were both trying to teach each other from their on-going lessons.
That refreshing lack of toxic masculinity got a smile. "Sounds like a mutually beneficial arrangement. Can I take a closer look? I know a little about makeup."
If it was someone else, Shatterstar would have denied them. But it was Jim, who was one of Shatterstar's favorite people and whose professional opinion he trusted. He stepped closer to Jim and tilted his head so the older man could better see.
"Makeup looks different under natural light," the older man remarked after a moment, "and foundation is already hard to match. Your skin has cool undertones, and it looks like the concealer here is for warm ones. You'll want something that looks a little pinker in the bottle. You may also want to try a color corrector before you put on the concealer; it might let you get away with using less of it. Something a little greenish will offset the red. You can also use blush or bronzer to give your skin a little more dimensionality."
Shatterstar scowled slightly at his failings, even if he had more or less asked Him to point them out. Though, any advice on how to use less makeup to receive the same results was welcome. It really did feel heavy on his skin. "How do you know all this?" He asked, trying to imagine them even making greenish concealer (color corrector? What as that anyway?).
Jim gave him a crooked smile. "I paint. There's a lot of color theory that goes into it, and not all of it is intuitive. For example, sometimes if you want to de-emphasize a color you don't just keep going over it with the shade you want -- you put a complimentary color over it first. Those are the colors directly across from each other on the color wheel." He raised a hand and began ticking off his fingers. "Red and green, blue and orange, purple and yellow. They cancel each other out. If you had a bruise you might use something more peach or yellow." The man paused, then added, "Also Cyndi is obsessed with Beauty Tok."
That sounded like Cyndi. He was inclined to trust her more than Jim, considering she was more likely to have actually done makeup. "Why would you-?" Shatterstar cut off his question before he finished asking it. Actually, wanting to cover a bruise made sense if you didn't want to come from the perspective of seeming like someone who was dangerous. It had been over a year since he came to the mansion, but it was hard to shake thought patterns from juvie and the hospital. He changed his question instead. "Does Cyndi know anything that wouldn't have to be so thick?"
"Maybe. Sometimes it's how you apply it, and sometimes it's just the brand. Where did you go for the makeup, drug stores? Online?"
"I have no idea," Shatterstar confessed. "It is Sharon's. She said we are very similar shades. I think she got hers from a woman named Felicia."
Jim nodded thoughtfully. "Good for practice, but not matched for you. There's an Ulta in Salem Center. If you want, I can take you there so you can try some other things. The salespeople will be able to give you advice, too." Cyndi would be thrilled.
Some days it still took him back how easily he could just go places at the Mansion. Maybe it was because he was already slightly vulnerable from being blank-faced, but the offer took him back slightly. He jumped on it. "Yes. Let's do that. Yes."
Cyndi and Shatterstar go to Ulta.
"No, see, you gotta go with the red eyeliner. Trust me, put this on your waterline and it's gonna make your eyes pop. Oh, and this green shadow, let's try this, too."
Cyndi was thrilled.
The alter had lasted about five minutes before her attention span for the current assignment gave out. She'd tried fixing David's face for years with unsatisfactory results, and age wasn't improving things. Now here was Shatterstar, a fresh palette just begging for a glam makeover and zero concerns about appearing professional.
It was her time now.
Shatterstar took the red eyeliner from her- red was, after all, one of the colors he actually wore, but put the eyeshadow back. "I don't wear green," he told her. He was also starting to get distracted from their attempts to find a coverup and concealer that wouldn't be cakey. He hadn't realized how nice it would be to have people not staring at his face. It would be good to be able to decide how much attention he wanted to draw to himself. (He still would draw some. He was over six feet tall with long red hair and he was much too vain to cut it). "But the red is good. I don't know if it goes with my skin."
Cyndi made a pssh noise. "I mean you can go with like, a goldy orange, too, but we're trying to bring out your hair color, not your skin. Plus it'll make your eyes look super bright. God, why do boys get the good hair? Plus the best eyelashes. Guess I should be glad the dorkbody isn't going bald. If that happens I'm demanding reparations." Her green eyes flicked to another shelf, weighing possibilities. "Hey, you wanna try mascara or nah? They've actually got some red ones."
"We are on a mission," Shatterstar reminded Cyndi, but took the red mascara into the small basket he had all the same. Cyndi did, after all, have an eye for color. "We are here to find concealer that won't be so thick."
But, spending an hour or two window-shopping and playing Barbie Styling Head for Cyndi was really fun too. He pulled out a white eyeliner. "What about this with the red?"
"We're not not getting your stuff, we're just also not limiting ourselves. This whole store is just cosmetics. It's disrespectful to walk in here and only buy one thing." The alter dangled her shopping basket in front of Shatterstar and jangled the contents, and pursed her lips at the proffered liner.
"That'll work if you want your eyes to look bigger, but you're gonna wanna put it on your waterline and the red underneath. If you're cool with almost drawing on your eyeball, I say go for it. Hey, polish!" She snatched up a sparkling bottle and waved it at Shatterstar. "Do you do nail polish? You should do nail polish. Or let me do your nail polish. Once again I have to suffer because Jim is boring."
"If it's a professional navy or beige, Jim would probably wear it," Shatterstar teased with her before turning and crouching to better look at the aisle of nail polishes. Of course, the neutrals were lower down. He handed Cyndi a bottle after reading the name off of the bottom of the bottle. "Alpaca My Bags." He snorted slightly, and started turning over the blacks and whites to see if they had pun names too.
"What about this one for me?" He asked, holding up a glittery black bottle with slight red flecks in it (Roulette was the name, unfortunately not a bad pun).
"Jim is way less interesting than you give him credit for. We're talking about a guy who'd wear chinos on his fingers if he could. Definitely grab the black though. Okay, you said no greens, but maybe this mauve? It's got a real 'hands stained with the blood of my enemies' vibe. Or maybe this . . ." A polish in either hand, Cyndi raised the bottles to Shatterstar and squinted, trying to envision the colors against his skin. The indecision was paralyzing. Then she snorted and dropped them both in the basket hanging around one arm. "Actually what am I saying, just get whatever you want. We'll pay."
"You don't need to pay for me," Shatterstar said, even as he slipped the Alpaca My Bags in the basket. "And if you paint Jim's nails a boring color he probably wouldn't take it off." Jim was more interesting than Cyndi gave him credit for, in 'Star's opinion. He was, after all, friends with Arthur. And an X-Man.
"You had a birthday like, Monday, right? The right to a budgetless cosmetic experimentation can be your birthday gift. Go nuts. I promise Jimmothy can afford it. Besides, it's our money." Cyndi regarded her offensively unpainted nails with disapproval. "I guess if we paint Jim's nails a boring color he probably wouldn't take it off. He loves y-"
In the back of her mind: Watch yourself. We don't want to screw this kid up.
"-to encourage self-expression in a safe and nurturing environment," Cyndi finished, seamless on the outside but inwardly sour.
"If it is a birthday gift," Shatterstar agreed, not catching Cyndi's interruption to her own thought. Instead he looked over the nail polishes to find an inoffessive beige.
He added it to the basket. "That way I can do a pattern on him, since you signed him up to paint his nails," Shatterstar said with the hint of a genuine smile.
It actually boggled the mind how much Jack and Jim could simply Not Get It. Yeah, maybe not telling someone how much they mattered to you would save them some pain in the long run. Shit happened. People could disappoint you, or just die out of nowhere -- something that'd been hammered into David all his life -- so sure, pain was always a possibility. But what if the person would have chosen to trade the possibility of future pain for the certainty that someone cared?
What then, assholes?
No answer, and whatever. If they loved stupid so much they could live with the consequences.
Grinning in a way anyone on fire suppression duty at Muir Island would have known and feared, Cyndi selected the most obnoxious sparkling neon green she could find and dropped it into the basket.
"Actually, let's go with Limelight - Infinite Shine. Y'know, since it's a birthday gift."
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Date: 2024-09-14 12:26 am (UTC)