Fic: Not a Pretty Girl - Makeover (Girl!Bob) PG13
Image by Itsy
Title: Not a Pretty Girl - Makeover
Fandom: Bandom: MCR
Characters: Girl!Bob, My Chem
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2137
Summary: Bob looks in the mirror and might as well be looking at her wallflower high school self, just with different ill-fitting clothes.
*
Bob spent her high school years as a band geek and she did her best to blend in and not draw attention to herself. When she went to college and first hit the scene she found herself surrounded by people who expressed themselves with their appearance in ways she never thought to, who wore their Differentness for everyone to see rather than trying to fade into the scenery.
It was like a revelation, and little by little Bob's wardrobe changed. She got rid of her plain baggy pants and bought skirts--which kept getting shorter and shorter--and didn't care that sometimes it was so hot that she couldn't wear tights to hide her very pale legs. She cut v-necks into thrift store tees that were meant for someone a lot less busty and, despite already towering over all of the women and most of the men on the scene, wore knee-high shitkickers with four-inch stacked heels.
She also abused black eyeliner, discovered a deep and unholy love of false eyelashes, and took to slathering gunmetal gray glitter across her cleavage.
It's funny that now, years later, Bob looks in the mirror and might as well be looking at her wallflower high school self, just with different ill-fitting clothes.
If by "funny" you mean "depressing".
Bob doesn't regret any of the changes she made to be taken more seriously. She really doesn't. In fact, when she looks back on pictures from her freshman year of college she cringes because, really, it was all a bit much and it was a good thing that she threw away those eyelashes.
She's just sort of tired of looking so deliberately bland when she doesn't have to anymore.
*
Bob thinks make-up is going to be the easiest first step but she spends forty minutes staring at racks of products in a drug store during a tour stop, confused and overwhelmed. In the end she grabs stuff randomly and pays for it in a daze.
Halfway back to the bus she looks in the bag and finds five eyeliners in different shades of black, and two sets of false eyelashes (one of which has small rhinestones attached to the tip of each lash). Bob almost cries right there on the street, because it's make-up. She's a woman. It should not be this fucking hard.
Pissy and annoyed, she crams the eyeliners in with the rest of Gerard's make-up, tucks the falsies into Frank's toiletry case, and then curls up in her bunk and listens to L7 for the rest of the day.
*
The problem, Bob realizes after giving it some thought, is that she's become completely incompetent in the ways of, like, most women. That's funny-depressing, too, in its own pathetic way. It also means she's actually going to need help.
*
Mikey's a great co-conspirator. He's one of the biggest gossips on the fucking planet, yes, but if you ask him, and get him to agree, to keep a secret? He will take it to the grave. Of course, he'll mock you every step of the way, but whatever. Bob gets that mockery is another form of love to some people, Mikey included.
Besides, if there's one thing Mikey knows, it's hair. And, okay, maybe not everyone shares this opinion, but Bob's not everyone. She's loved every hairstyle Mikey's ever had because they all suited and fit him.
They swap links of hairstyle pictures, with Mikey replying to some of Bob's with emoticons meant to convey his horror at some of her choices. Despite the odd link to headshots of Telly Savalas and Tawny Kitaen circa the 80s--which Bob assumes are jokes but is too scared to confirm with Mikey--everything Mikey sends her is really nice. None of the styles are over the top insane, and none of them are floofy and poofy, and Bob has a hard time narrowing her choices down.
Mikey crawls into her bunk in the middle of the night so that he can stare at the pictures on his Sidekick, then at Bob's face, and delete or save links as he sees fit. Bob, for the most part, is content to let him pare down her options.
When he's done there are ten left. Bob spends two days looking through them before deciding on a short, asymmetrical style that will come down to her chin on one side, and her cheek on the other.
"I like it," she says when Mikey asks her why this one. "I don't know. It's cute. And it looks, you know, simple to do. And the bangs are all angled. Which is neat." Mikey considers the photo that Bob picked for so long that she starts getting nervous. "What? Is it bad? Should I have--wait, was that one of the joke links?"
"Oh my god, relax." He holds Bob's Sidekick up by her face and tilts his head to the side. He nods slowly. "No, this is totally the one. Simple, but not." He grins, disarming and real, and bounces slightly with excitement. "It's you and it'll look great."
Bob narrows her eyes suspiciously, but Mikey seems serious. "Really?"
"Really. You done good, grasshopper."
*
Mikey comes with Bob for the haircut and holds her hand as most of her shoulder-length hair is snipped off, then thinned out into layers. When the cutting's done, Mikey makes the stylist talk out every step of the styling process so that Bob will be able to do it on her own.
When it's all over and Bob's spun around for the big reveal, she blinks and says, "Oh."
Mikey is almost giddy. "It's fucking fantastic! Bob, seriously. Fantastic." As soon as the stylist takes the plastic smock off, Mikey pulls Bob to her feet. "You love it, right? Come on, I know you love it."
Bob looks at her reflection and can't help grinning. "I really fucking do."
Because he knows that Bob's current hair styling tools consist only of a ten-year-old brush and a collection of hair bands, Mikey rattles off a list of products to the guy at the counter and they walk out with two bags of what Mikey swears are necessities. Then he drags her to a beauty supply store and shoves three different types of brushes, a comb, a blow dryer and a straightening iron into her hands.
And the best thing about it all is that Bob's not overwhelmed, even though she's carrying a fuckload of stuff she doesn't even know how to use. Her head is lighter and she feels freer than she has in years, and she's sure that Mikey will help her get the hang of all this shit she's bought.
"I owe you, like, my first born, Mikeyway," Bob says with great seriousness.
Mikey tugs at the lock of long hair on Bob's right side and shakes his head. "I'll settle for lunch."
*
Jamia is a natural problem solver. Bob loves that about her almost as much as she loves the fact that when Jamia travels with them she stumbles out of Frank's bunk with her hair a mess, no bra on, and eyeliner smeared down her face and doesn't give a flying fuck that there are guys around.
Bob feels bad, very bad, that she calls Jamia in the middle of the night, but sometimes desperation leads to bad decision making. Besides, Jamia wasn't sleeping anyway.
"Make-up?" Jamia repeats after Bob's done rambling, freaking out and possibly yelling at herself in the third person. It's all a fog. "Don't you--huh. Wait. I've never seen you wear any offstage. Ever."
Bob curls into a ball in her bunk and pulls the covers over her head. "I don't have any."
"None? Not even, like, a tube of lipstick?"
"Um, does Cherry ChapStick count? It's sort of got a color--"
"Oh, honey," Jamia says, horrified.
*
Bob is out of practice at being a woman and Jamia is fucking brilliant in general, and that's why Bob is standing in another drug store while, many states away, Jamia is doing the same.
"Go to the Maybelline section," Jamia says over the phone. "We're going to start with mascara. Um, let's see. Green tube. You want the one marked Brownish. Not Dark Brown, or Black, or Very Black. Ugh, and definitely not Blue. Brownish."
Jamia sends her from brand name to brand name, picking out eyebrow pencils, eyeliner--"I love the guys, but there is more to life than black eyeliner. Especially for someone as pale as you are. Trust me on this."--eyeshadow, lipstick and blush.
The trickiest part is finding a foundation compact that actually matches Bob's skin tone, but they eventually both agree that the Cover Girl Tru Blend in Translucent Fair is the best option.
"You'll need to practice," Jamia tells her. "Like start off with just a little of everything at first. Get used to putting it on. Then you can start getting bolder with some of it."
Bob is holding her little shopping basket in a white knuckled grip. "I love you."
Jamia laughs. "Bob, you need more girl friends. No matter what he thinks, Gee doesn't count." She pauses. "Don't let him help. He's great and all, but, no."
*
Over the next week, Bob re-familiarizes herself with things like mascara wands, eyeshadow applicators, and blush brushes in the relative privacy of her bunk. Once she feels like she's got a handle on it and doesn't look like a clown, she takes pictures of herself and sends them to Jamia.
Jamia offers her wisdom because she's awesome and totally Bob's favorite person of all time. She says, "Less eyebrow pencil, sweetie. A lot less," and "Be a brave little toaster for me and do another coat of mascara," and "Okay, so that was not the best color lipstick to get. Throw that shit out."
Eventually, Jamia calls after getting yet another middle-of-the-night picture text and says, "Fucking A, there is no more I can teach you with what you've got, babe. Go forth and be hot."
"We're splitting a bottle of Tequila next time we see each other," Bob promises.
Jamia snorts. "Bitch, please. I earned a bottle for myself. The good stuff, too."
And, yeah, she really has. "The good stuff," Bob agrees.
*
When Bob first gave up the too-low-cut shirts and too-short skirts, she started wearing a lot of jeans and t-shirts, but they fitted her well. Along the way, though, she's gained and lost weight, misplaced luggage, and has replaced clothing with whatever she could conveniently buy. Her entire wardrobe is nothing but random t-shirts with band, bar or restaurant logos, jeans that don't fit her properly, and old grungy hoodies.
Bob had it in her mind that clothes would be the hardest part, but it turns out to be the opposite.
She's always been body conscious--even though it was for the purpose of making sure to downplay herself in some ways--and apparently that's more than half the battle when it comes to buying good clothes.
She takes her cues from her new hairstyle and from Jamia's make-up tips, gravitating to clothes that are simple but interesting and which suit her well without being over the top.
She buys jeans that hug her curves, in a variety of washes and styles, and black Dockers that hang low--but not too low--on her waist, and realizes that she really doesn't want to wear skirts ever again because they're annoying to deal with.
She gets shirts that are form fitting and slightly dressier than t-shirts, and t-shirts that are fitted for women and don't make her look dumpy. She even gets shirts with button fronts and decides that, fuck it all, she'll leave a button or two undone.
Accentuating her body and drawing attention to her shape rather than hiding it is...startlingly liberating, especially paired with the hair and cosmetics. It feels like being real. Again. Or maybe for the first time.
Her hands shake when she looks at herself in a dressing room mirror and she almost reaches out to touch her own reflection because it seems like a dream, that she can have this, be this, and it won't cost her anything and it won't be held against her.
She sits down on the bench behind her and takes her phone out. Brian answers on the second ring.
"What's up, Bryar?"
"So, hey," Bob says, still staring at herself. If her voice is a bit shaky, Brian either doesn't notice or chooses not to comment on it. "Remember that time you called me up and bullied me to go audition for My Chem?"
"Yeah, it's not something I'm likely to forget," Brian says with a laugh. "What about it?"
"I just realized I never thanked you."
.End
14valentines Day 5 - Sexuality