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“Charlie, my dear, light of my life, remind me to murder your sister, please,” Maxine grumbles as she reads Raven’s email. To her disappointment, Charlie laughs, shaking her head and carefully wiping tears. Maxine would be angry if she didn’t find Charlie’s laugh magical, instead she is just annoyed.
“It will be fun, I think. Raven always has the best themes for her parties. Once, she had us dress up for the wrong event, Sean had put on a cloak and a hood and said he’s there for an exorcism. It will be fun. We will go buy clothes, we will dress up one another…” Charlie rumbles on, but is quickly interrupted.
“If you make me put on a blazer, I will spontaneously combust. Or those therapist cardigans,” Maxine shakes her head, her thin lips pursed in disgust.
“Odd, you never complain about me wearing them,” Charlie points out as she lets go of her phone to stand up and raid the coffee machine, raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow and watching Maxine nod curtly before she fetches a second mug. “And besides, Raven also said it’s a party. I wouldn’t wear a blazer or a cardigan to a party, just like you wouldn’t have on your SI overall,” she adds, handing over the mug of black coffee as she adds creamer and a caramel syrup to her own.
“And what exactly will I have on?” Maxine asks before she sips her coffee, steel eyes following Charlie as she goes back to her seat, sits down and takes a long sip of her own beverage (it has so much sugar Maxine does not call it coffee). She does not know why she asks, she already knows the answer. Maybe it’s a fruitless hope, a delusion that she will be spared.
“A dress, of course. Come on, we will go for shopping. You are too tall for my dresses and I will need clothes as well… It will be so fun!” Charlie smiles so widely Maxine thinks her cheeks will tear themselves in half.
Raven will pay. With blood. Litres and litres of blood.
For someone with barely a working spine, Charlie is really eager to drag Maxine around the mall. She really comes to understand the guys that get absolutely bored to death when shopping with their girlfriends.
Actually, no, Maxine loves shopping with Charlie. She loves watching her try dresses and cardigans and skirts, she particularly enjoys joining Charlie in the dressing room and ‘assisting’ with undressing. But no, they have to be here on business. They have to find a fucking dress for Maxine.
“Seriously, when was the last time you had a dress on?” Charlie asks as she studies the displays in the mall.
“My graduation, I had a regalia on. Then, before that… My bat mitzvah,” Maxine shrugs, raising an eyebrow at Charlie’s shock.
This is why Maxine had given up. No matter what she did, how she presented herself, she would be the other. The only mutant in her school, the only woman in her workplace the only lesbian in her mother’s synagogue, the only Jew in the Brotherhood. She was doomed to being the sore thumb, even within her groups. Too much of a mutant because she is a mutant, not mutant enough because someone can just assume her silver hair is just bleached. Queer, yet not queer enough because she slept with a woman for the first time after she turned twenty-two. Jewish, but not Jewish enough because she barely goes to the temple, and she cherry-picks the rules she follows. And now, too feminine to be an engineer because her bits don’t hang, yet not feminine enough because she doesn’t have a dress.
So, somewhere in college, she gave up trying to fit in a box. She would be the other no matter what. So, she simply worked on being comfortable underneath her skin. Was it a final act of rebellion against society? Was it Maxine reclaiming her body and soul after Shaw’s institution? Was it both and nothing at the same time? Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck cares? She knows that she feels like her skin does not suffocate her. She knows that she can recognise the person staring back at her in the mirror, and that’s enough.
Charlie shakes her head and drags Maxine inside a store, bypassing the employees and pulling her poor girlfriend to the corner where the formal dresses are being displayed.
“Listen, I usually go for blue, but we can definitely make a red work for you. What do you want to try first?” she asks, her eyes scanning the dresses.
“The door,” Maxine mutters, earning a sigh from Charlie before she makes the choice herself, plucking out a short red dress and shoving it to Maxine’s chest. With a roll of her eyes, Maxine retreats to the dressing rooms.
She hates it already. It’s knee-length and flowy, making Maxine feel like a mutated mushroom. The fabric feels harsh and wrong, it squeezes her stomach too much and sags on her chest, clearly never made with Maxine’s almost flat chest in mind, but also constricting her back.
This is why she hates women’s fashion. It is not cut for her. She has too broad shoulders, too long legs, not enough curves for whatever they consider the feminine physique to be. Women’s clothes make her look like a clown, like she’s squeezing herself into something never made with her in mind. Her body is more masculine, she knows, so why would she not simply just… wear men’s clothes and be done with it? They fit her better anyway.
“Are you alright in there?” Charlie asks from over the curtain. Carefully, because a sudden move of her hands will tear the dress, she gets out of the dressing room, glaring at Charlie as she studies the red abomination.
“It is too tight, I look ridiculous. We can just… We will say one of us got sick, that I crashed in my bike, anything. Please,” the harshness leaves Maxine’s face for just a moment, but Charlie does not relent. Instead, she shoves another dress, black and longer, and ushers Maxine back in.
The second dress is not as constrictive, the fabric more elastic and actually willing to work with Maxine’s body. The length is better, this time stopping on the floor, but with a slit on her side, climbing up to her left thigh. It does nothing to hide her scraped knee, the burn from the bike exhaust on the inside of her ankle. But her ripped jeans and her cargo shorts don’t hide those either.
The top is strapless, the two loops of fabric are there solely for the dress to be hanged, meant to be tugged in Maxine’s armpits. She can see why Charlie chose it. It almost sticks on her, exaggerating her thin waist while the harsh lines of the dress fit with her flatness. On the bust, it has a decorative slip of fabric, hugging the frame and looping around her biceps. Maxine can see how it’s meant to pair with a necklace, the blankness making her collarbones almost pop, the cut of the dress not even trying to hide her broad shoulders, but working with them. She almost likes what she sees in the mirror, the way it compliments her harsh lines, it doesn’t try to hide her body hair, the way the stark black fabric makes her inked arms pop with their colour.
Her smile fades when she turns around, cursing when she sees her bare back, no fabric to hide the scars crisscrossing her skin. But the dress will be too tight if she puts on an undergarment. And, when Charlie wears a dress, she has her skin on display. She has nothing to hide after all, her back is dusted with freckles making her skin look like a sky, not with rows and rows of jagged lines.
She walks out of the dressing room, frowning as Charlie’s eyes go wide.
“This is it, you look magnificent,” she cheers, blue eyes scanning Maxine like she’s her next dinner. Maxine leans against a wall, her hands crossed in front of her chest. It does nothing but distract Charlie further.
“My back is exposed,” she points out, sighing and making a short turn when Charlie raises her eyebrow.
“Your back is beautiful, Maxine. It really compliments you,” she argues, her fingers toying with the handle of her cane.
“No, you like my back. It’s a bloody roadmap. I look like Frankenstein’s bride,” she snaps, earning a quick look from a woman nearby.
“You like gothic shite. Seriously, you can really make it work. We just need shoes. The fabric will drag without a high heel, and I don’t have any size 9…” she muses. Maxine knows when she sees a lost fight with Charlie, so she just sighs and goes back to the dressing room, slipping back in her jeans and turtle-neck and feeling like herself again.
She’s scowling as Charlie pays for the black dress, but her mood really darkens when they go to a shoe store and Charlie pulls a pair of black high heels.
“Absolutely not,” Maxine snaps.
“The fabric will drag. Just try them on, they’re not as high as my usuals,” Charlie ushers Maxine, who ends up relenting, kicking off her boots and socks (and scowling further at Charlie when she snorts at the superman socks Maxine has under her combat boots, but superman is very punk rock, thank you very much). The tiny clasp is not as much of a struggle as Maxine would imagine, but the terror begins when she has to stand up.
In that second, she feels like a newborn giraffe, unsteady on her feet as she stands up, her ankles trebling underneath her weight. She extends two hands downwards, her palms stretches as she leans against the Earth’s magnetic field, taking a baby step forward and nearly twisting her ankle when the heel refuses to hit the ground.
“No, no, you just walk like normal. Toes and then the heel. Like this” Charlie stands up on her own heels, proceeding to walk slowly and steadily, cane still in her hand. Maxine tries to follow suit, but she ends up looking like a baby foal. Actually, a baby foal can run. She looks far far worse than a baby foal.
“Maybe I should also get a cane? You accessorise with your canes, and I will twist a ligament with those,” Maxine does not look up at Charles, too scared that if she loses direct eye contact with the floor, she will fall.
“Baby, you let the shoe walk you. You should walk the shoe. Go find combat boots for me, on those, for practise. And remember, you walk the shoe, the shoe does not walk you,” Charlie orders Maxine as she sits back down. Maxine finally looks up, spotting the boots on the other side of the store. Great, public humiliation.
With the confidence of a naked nun and the steadiness of a lief in a windy day, she slowly walks to the other side of the store, trying to lean against the planet instead of the furniture. By the time she returns with a pair of combat boots, her ankles and her lower back aches and she does not feel the pads of her feet, but at least her walking is a little less unstable.
She collapses the moment she hands over the boots, kicking off the shoes and massaging her feet with a sigh.
“How do you walk on these every day? Can we put some support in them?” Maxine groans as she watches Charlie take out a pair of socks from her bag and put on the boots.
“We can put an extra sole, but you will have to bear with the pain. Maybe you should walk around them in the house, at least until you built some confidence,” she muses as she stands up, still and feeling the shoes in her feet before she grabs her (now slightly too tall) cane and walks around a short route. She sits down with an approving nod, handing the boots over to Maxine.
She will kill Raven, then kill herself just so she will follow her to Hell and torture her for all eternity.
Charlie looks at Maxine as she parks the car in front of a thrift store. She frowns when Maxine gets off the car and holds the door open for her.
“You are on Tony Stark’s payroll and thrift your clothes?” she questions, scanning Maxine. She knows Maxine mends her clothes, but…
“Unless I want something specific,” she shrugs casually, taking Charlie. Charlie blinks as she looks around the store, everything looking more like something a grandma would wear to church than something Maxine would even look at.
Without a care in the world, as if she belongs there, Maxine goes to where the jeans are, inspecting the darker ones with a grave look in her face. Charlie needs a long second to realize her girlfriend is not looking at women’s pants.
“Why are you looking at men’s clothes?” she frowns.
“Thicker fabric, larger pockets, more comfortable…” Maxine hums simply, because this is her criteria for pants. Not a spec of her cares about what she looks like, what others will think.
Because, of course, Maxine does not have to prove her competence to rusty old professors who would think she’s a student unless she has a suit and full makeup and hair every day. She doesn’t have to think of people questioning if she’s sick, if she’s too tired, and that maybe academia is not for women after all. She never grew up listening that her hair is too wild, her skin too pale, her nose too big, her teeth crooked, and how will her mother present her daughter if she looks like a beast? Hell, Charlie needed months to cope with the fact that she will never shed the love handles and the squishiness of her belly and thighs, not without working her spine to collapse. And Maxine can just… exist. Someone tells her she dresses up like a man, she shrugs and says she eats pussy better than a man. Once, Charlie introduced her to Hank, and she had come basically straight from work, her hair still up and with just an outfit change. Hank scanned her pale face, her smudged eyeliner exaggerating her dark circles, and asked Maxine if she’s sick. And, without a care, she shrugged and simply said no.
If Charlie did the same, she would go mad. The thoughts of her coworkers would drive her to insanity. The ghost of her mother would drag her to hell single-handedly.
And now, Maxine pushes a turtle-neck and a black pair of jeans on Charlie’s chest, gesturing at the dressing room. There is nothing feminine about the black rectangle pants, the black shirt. Charlie bites her lip.
“I was thinking of doing the sleeveless turtle-neck and mesh sleeves combo you did when we met,” Charlie hums, hoping it will make Maxine change her mind.
“I was thinking the same. Try these, I will mend the turtle-neck if it fits,” she nods plainly. Charlie frowns, moving to the dressing room and putting on her clothes.
The pants barely climb up her stomach, the turtle-neck does nothing to hide her plumbness. She wants to cover her body with her hands, as if she’s naked, but she resists the urge, she lets herself feel the clothes. She doesn’t feel something constricting her, pushing in something, jabbing away an imperfection. She feels… comfortable. As if she can fight god in those clothes.
In the end, she walks out, watching Maxine smirk at her, her hands crossed in front of her chest.
“Well?” she asks, an eyebrow raised.
“The pants are a bit plain… Yours are usually decorated. Other than that, it’s perfect,” Charlie points out at Maxine’s pants, at the embroidery, at the spikes on the side. Maxine nods slowly.
“I will fix that, don’t worry. And you can just use my accessories. The sleeves, the chains… Is it comfortable?” she asks, because this is what Maxine prioritizes. Slowly, Charlie nods. Something in Maxine tells her they will figure out the rest, so Charlie just goes and puts her clothes back on, handing the shirt and pants over to Maxine to pay.
Maxine had got used to Charlie begun to get ready hours ahead of an event. She found no problem adjusting to the routine, taking her shower before Charlie can occupy the bathroom and watching her get ready. And yes, usually that routine ends up with Maxine walking out with at least three marks from Charlie’s lipstick, but perhaps this is what she likes the best.
Of course, luck has stopped being on her side ever since they got that damned invitation.
“Oh great, you’re done with the shower. We can start getting you ready,” Charlie smiles, striking terror into Maxine. Because, obviously, it’s not Charlie’s outfit that will take time today.
Maxine lets Charlie drag her to the bedroom, still with just a towel covering her body and her hair still moist as they air-dry. She sits on the bed, watching Charlie go and come back with a collection of products.
“Do you want to turn me into Patrick Bateman?” she raises an eyebrow, as she examines the tubes. What even are all these? Since when did they fit in their bathroom? What else is Charlie hiding?
“Of course not! Those are just the basics. So… I will be honest, I haven’t done makeup around piercings before, so…” she pauses when Maxine jumps off the bed and heads back to the bathroom. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“Committing to the fucking bit. I am supposed to dress up like you, right? You don’t have piercings because it is ‘unprofessional’, or whatever Columbia bullshit,” Maxine’s answer is plain but sends shivers down Charlie’s body.
She follows Maxine to the bathroom as fast as she can, watching in horror as her girlfriend removes her piercings, one by one, and replacing them with transparent plastic ones.
“I feel like I’m watching an angel pluck out her own wings,” Charlie whispers as Maxine pushes the plastic piercing into her eyebrow, all metal in her left ear is already laid on a little box in their sink.
“Now you’re overacting…” Maxine hums, carefully working on her angel bites, methodically removing the steel and replacing it with plastic.
“I don’t recognise you,” Charlie shakes her head, horrified when Maxine laughs at her statement.
“When we come back home, I am putting everything back on, I promise,” she reassures Charlie as she pushes out the industrial on her right ear.
“Erika Maxine Lehnsherr, no matter what, when we come back home, you are putting them all back on. Even if you’re so plastered you can’t tell apart the eyebrow piercing from the vulva one,” Charlie’s voice is grave, deathly serious. Maxine stops, holding the last plastic piercing between her fingers. Charlie tries not to weep when she sees her turn her head, her eyebrows raised to her hairline.
“Are you insane? I’m not removing those that, neither the nipple ones,” she blinks, then puts on the final piece of plastic. Without doing much to comfort Charlie, she returns to the bed. “Alright, Patrick Bateman routine…” she sighs, examining the array of skincare products in front of her. Charlie rolls her eyes, projecting pointedly her annoyance as she sits in front of her girlfriend.
“Seriously, I’ve seen you use face masks. Why are you being like that?” she shakes her head, staring accusingly at Maxine.
“Yes, the pain ones, once a week, because they smell nice. You, mein Schatz, have fallen victim to the capitalist traps of the beauty industry,” Maxine pokes Charlie’s breastbone with her fingers, barely holding back a grin.
“I did not know I am dating the reincarnation of Lenin… Before you seize the means of production, will you let me at least prepare your skin or would you rather go in unprepared and having your skin break?” she simply tilts her head to the side, her eyes pinned on Maxine as she sighs.
“What the fuck are you putting on your face and it needs protection? Lead? Who am I dating, the reincarnation of Queen Elizabeth?” she protests but still scoots closer, watching Charlie pick out a cream and put it on the top of her palm.
“The foundation and the setting spray and all that won’t let your skin breathe. So, we have to hydrate and protect it,” she explains, dipping a finger in the cream and placing a dot on Maxine’s forehead. Steadily, she covers Maxine’s face with the banana scented cream, smirking when Maxine closes her eyes and slumps forward.
“This is pretty nice, actually… when will you put cucumber slices on my eyes?” she smiles, earning a jab in the shoulder from Charlie.
“You’re ridiculous! We’ll just… give it some time to sink in, then we start,” Charlie hums, wiping her hands clean with the end of Maxine’s towel. “I’ll go take a shower as well…” she hums as she stands up slowly, moving towards the closet to get some spare towels.
“Don’t straighten your hair, love. Let it air dry,” Maxine calls out as Charlie gets in the bathroom, making her poke her head out.
“You must be out of your mind, I am not going out looking like an evil witch that lives in the woods and steals the souls of children,” she argues.
“We will style it. I trust you, will you trust me?” Maxine’s eyes grow bigger, pleading. Charlie huffs a curse before she shuts the bathroom door.
Maxine smiles over her cigarette when Charlie comes out in Maxine’s bathrobe, her hair down and drying by themselves, just combed out.
“I’m ready for the medieval torture, love,” she sits up, watching Charlie as she sits closer and cracks open another tube, spilling the nude cream into the back of her hand. Maxine frowns, the colour does not match Charlie’s skin. “How did you buy a foundation for me behind my back?” she asks.
“Colour matched it with your chest. Also, don’t worry about it going everywhere, I learnt how to do my makeup from drag queens, it will last a century,” Charles mutters, stealing Maxine’s cigarette as she gently applies the foundation on her face, smacking her repeatedly with a very dense and fluffy brush to beat the cream into obedience.
Maxine rolls her eyes and steals the cigarette back, if only for the final drag, watching the concentration in Charlie’s face as she applies the concealer on Maxine’s eyelids, kissing her before she puts a primer on her lips.
“The way you’re applying this, you make me think I’m a raccoon,” she points out as Charlie goes back to working with the underpart of her eyes.
“The eyeshadow will need to sit somewhere, love… don’t breathe in for a second,” Charlie hums before she starts assaulting Maxine’s face with an insane amount of powder, relenting with an eyebrow raised when Maxine does, in fact, breathe in and covers her face to sneeze, her fist just barely missing Charlie’s jaw. “I warned you,” she hums, not a spec of sympathy in her tone.
“You did not. You barked orders like some drill sergeant,” Maxine blinks and sniffs, raising a fist to rub her eyes before Charlie smacks her wrist.
“No. Come on, look at me,” she orders, making Maxine roll her eyes and look at Charles, feeling a second, more fluffy brush wipe away the powder from her cheekbones. Maxine lets her lean closer, stealing a kiss before Charlie grips her jaw with one hand, the other combing away her eyebrows.
“Seriously?” she frowns.
“Just for a few strays, you have quite beautiful eyebrows already…” Charlie hums, careful to leave the split on her left eyebrow still open. Maxine watches her crack open an eyeshadow palette before being instructed to close her eyes.
“I feel like you’re putting clown makeup on me,” she hums as she feels Charlie pad her eyelids with a small brush, steadily blending the powder up and away before she has to open her eyes again and look forward.
“It’s just eyeshadow. You’ll like it, it already brings the green out of your eyes…” Charlie puts a hand underneath Maxine’s jaw, forcing her to look up in the ceiling light as she climbs on her thigh, Charlie’s knee brushing Maxine’s knickers. She raises an eyebrow when a small whine escapes Maxine’s throat.
“Forget this party and fuck me, please,” she asks as Charlie keeps working on her eyes, gently applying eyeshadow on her lower lid.
“Oh, when we come back, I will take out that pretty dress of yours with my teeth and eat you whole, love. But be patient now, yes?” Charlie purrs, readjusting herself as she fetches the eyeliner and applies it to Maxine’s face, her hand steady as Maxine tries to not shudder.
“Patient is not my virtue, you fucking tease," Maxine grits her teeth, letting Charlie press her eyelashes in a curled shape, barely applying any mascara in them.
“You have the most enchanting eyes I’ve ever seen, you know…” Charlie mutters to herself as she finishes with Maxine’s eyes, ignoring the small whines coming out of her poor helpless and horny victim.
Charlie stays seated on Maxine’s lap, her knee pressed over her knickers, as she starts contouring Maxine’s face, her brush stroking her forehead, cheekbones, jaw and nose.
“It tickles,” Maxine complains, making Charlie raises her eyebrow.
“I thought you’re too preoccupied with my knee,” she nutters, making Maxine whine once again as she brushes off the hollow of her cheek, the sides of her nose. Maxine frowns when Charlie puts a tiny bit of highlighter above her lip, on the small scar resting there.
“What are you doing?” she asks once her lips are free, a little too disappointed when Charlie drops back to the bed, going through her lipsticks.
“I am not hiding the scar,” she hums, moving close to Maxine with a red lip liner, rendering her mute as she applies it. Still, with a telepath, Maxine does not need a mouth to be annoying.
Yet, you hide your freckles with your makeup… she points out with a raised eyebrow, wanting to kiss away the frown in Charlie’s face.
“That’s different,” she hums plainly, stopping Maxine from responding by deploying her fiery red lipstick, slowly moving around Maxine’s thin lips.
“No, it’s not. If my imperfections are worth being shown, so are yours,” Maxine responds once Charlie is done, bending forward to kiss Charlie’s jaw, smiling at herself when she leaves a red smudge there.
“You’re an idiot, this is waterproof!” Charlie rubs her jaw, smudging the red further. With an evil grin, Maxine kisses her on her earlobe, leaving a second mark.
“The kiss marks are the best part of my makeup, I’m merely helping you,” she smiles innocently, laughing when Charlie shakes her head and gives up trying to clean her face.
Turning around for a moment to light a cigarette, Maxine holds Charlie’s jaw and gets the black eyeshadow, smudging it into Charlie’s eyes with her fingers.
“Are you insane?! It will look like I haven’t slept in weeks!” Charlie protests, trying to move back.
“Your eyes are already glowing. And, shut up, I know what I’m doing,” Maxine purrs, just circling Charlie’s eyes with her eyeliner and barely adding any mascara, eyebrows and cheeks and nose untouched. Even in her lips, she just puts a lip balm, barely adding a colour to the rosy lips.
“You are awful at this. I will look like a raccoon, you didn’t even contour my nose!” she sighs as Maxine goes to her office, satisfied with the makeup.
“You don’t need it, your nose is perfect,” Maxine hums as she comes back, holding a clump of metal as she sits back down, grabbing Charlie’s eyelash glue. “And I am not hiding your freckles…” she hums as she starts putting dots of glue on Charlie’s eyebrow, on the sides of her nose, on the underside of her lips.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asks as Maxine puts the glue on her ears, seemingly randomly.
“Giving you piercings. Ones you can just take when we come back home,” she explains, plucking small bits of metal from the mass on her lap like it’s clay, forming it into perfect spheres and glueing it on Charlie’s face, mirroring her own piercings. She even makes a small bar and magnetises it on Charlie’s ear to mimic the industrial, just like she magnetises an open circle on her nose to add the septum.
“I love you so much right now,” Charlie hums, purring when Maxine starts running her fingers through Charlie’s hair, long fingers getting tangled in unruly curls. Charlie feels her eyes closing as Maxine doesn’t try to comb the madness away, as she lets it fall freely in all directions. Charlie knows she will hear an argument if she comments on it.
Instead, she waits for Maxine to be done before she grabs those thin wrists, making forcing her hands still and applying red nail polish in her. Maxine does not fight back this time, watching Charlie as she plants kisses on her knuckles after being done with each hand.
Maxine sits and waits for the polish to dry up, watching Charlie slip into the now sleeveless turtle-neck and the boxy jeans, now decorated with spikes and white stitches around the seams. Charlie chuckles as she slips on the fishnet sleeves.
“I still can’t believe you just… gutted fishnet tights from target to make this,” she hums as she steals Maxine’s chains and necklaces and rings, adding until she glints with every movement.
Maxine just shrugs, tapping her nails to feel the dried polish before she stands up and slips on the black dress, suddenly feeling Charlie’s eyes on her as the black fabric covers her, as she moves around to add those dangling earrings and the thin necklace Charlie had set out for her, only adding the chain with the steel star of David.
“Love, could you loosen some rings? I can’t feel my fingertips,” Charlie hums as Maxine steals Charlie’s rings, tightening them around her thinner fingers. Wordlessly, she loosens the rings around Charlie’s fingers, moving to the bathroom to deal with her hair.
She freezes when she looks in the mirror, staring at the woman in front of her. The thin neck, the regent face, the evening dress. For a moment, Maxine thinks she’s staring at an old Hollywood star, not her own reflection, not at the troublesome punk with broken knuckles from fights and the smell of cigarettes and chemicals that never quite leaves her clothes.
Charlie says something and walks in as well, freezing beside Maxine as she also stares in the mirror.
“I don’t like this, Charlie…” she hums, averting her gaze from the mirror as if that woman scares her. “I don’t… that’s not myself,”
“It is. You… you can fit in these, just like you can choose not dress like that. It is you,” Charlie puts her hands on Maxine’s shoulders, feeling the broad muscles there, slowly travelling down to her hands, soft fingertips brushing against Maxine’s callouses. Maxine sighs and looks back at the mirror. She makes herself see the board shoulders, the bold tattoos, the scars on her back. Her Roman nose and her sharp jaw, her muscled arms and her flat chest. Charlie is right. She still is herself, she can still be this and be herself. Then, she looks at Charlie chewing on her lip.
“You look breathtaking too. You don’t need all the shit I have on. Can’t you see?” she moves behind Charlie, toying with her wild hair. In that moment, Charlie loses grip of her thoughts, the physical touch making Maxine listen to the broadcast of thoughts. She can hear that bitter voice go on about Charlie’s English teeth, her nose being too big for her body, her dark circles and freckles making her look deathly pale, the way the shirt does nothing to hide those few extra points she never shed after getting her PhD. Maxine’s hands move to Charlie’s sides, her neck bending to kiss Charlie’s pulse point, leaving another red mark there.
“By the end, you won’t have any lipstick on your lips,” Charlie mutters, making Maxine drops her head back and laugh.
“I will gladly make that sacrifice, darling,” Maxine purrs, running her hands through Charlie before she lets go, swiftly putting her hair up in a bun, letting a few silver strands fall on her face. “Alright, go steal my jacket, I am putting on the torture devices you call shoes and we’re going,” she smacks Charlie’s shoulder as she walks out of the bathroom, earning a laugh from her.
“If your feet start hurting, we will swap shoes,” Charlie hums as she slips on the combat boots, grabbing the cane she has for flat shoes. She’s reached the door before Maxine, grabbing the car keys and the leather jacket, smiling when she puts it on and is surrounded by Maxine’s perfume.
She hears the clink of the high heels before she sees Maxine reach the door, the hours of practicing around the house managing to make her walk like she didn’t just start standing on her hind legs.
“It is unfair how tall these are making you,” Charlie grumbles as Maxine puts on her spare jacket, smaller and less fictional than the one Charlie wears. Then, a smile blooms on her lips.
“Oh, really?” she smirks, resting her hand on Charlie’s head. She laughs wildly when Charlie growls and smacks her hand away, tears welling up in her eyes. With a huffed curse, Charlie unlocks the door and moves forward, letting Maxine fall behind.
They wake up the next morning, small bits of metal that flew off of Charlie’s face sprayed on the bed. The black dress and the mended turtle-neck are abandoned somewhere on the corner of the room. Maxine’s makeup smudged on her face, Charlie’s neck and breasts, and their pillows. Charlie will wake up first, her fingers tracing the scratch marks on Maxine’s back. She laughs when Maxine groans, long fingers with chipped red polish smacking her face before pulling her closer.