Mascara

By:  Sierra

 

the butcher, the baker, the candle love maker, the makeup that shows the soul…

 

The mascara that dripped down his face was makeup that he hadn't put on himself, he knew.

He tried to remember, back to the night before, but the memories were blurred and black in his mind. The very fact that he hadn't put it on should have been one of those hazy memories too, but for some reason, that certainty stood very clear and sure in his mind, as if it had been etched in crystal in his head. While all the other occurrences of the night were broken and clattering and shattered, he could almost read the fine lines of inscription telling him that someone he knew very well had done this.

 

His hand wandered up to his face again, to feel the slightly sticky black trails down his face that he had first felt caked into his skin when the sun stirred him from sleep. He had had the hardest time opening his eyes to see the sun streaming in his window, and for a panicked moment, he had almost thought he was blind.

 

But there his eyes were, open and smudged black on the lids, up to the eyebrows, and then down to the dark circles under his eyes. Normally this area was dark anyway, but this morning the black was pitch and heavy, because from there lines of mascara trailed all the way into the corners of his mouth and across his nose. One offending line even inched its way onto his chin.

 

He saw all of this through the small pocket mirror he had fumbled for on the table next to his bed as soon as he had woken up. He let his fingers trace down each line, wondering who he knew had done this to him, and most importantly in his mind, why. He knew he had been insanely drunk last night, to the point where remembering was barely an option, so it wouldn't have be out of the ordinary to do stupid things just for the hell of it. But the point that bothered him the most were those trails of makeup, falling and dripping away from his eyes. His mind was cobwebs, sticky and tangled, but he knew one thing for certain. Obviously he had been crying.

 

And maybe he had been crying because he had found some unfortunate soul to listen to all of his problems- the stress, the love, the heartache, the anger, the confusion- after experimenting with the mascara. Maybe he had pulled them aside and sat them down on some dark leather couch in the club, swung his legs over the side of it, and started bawling, because alcohol always made him emotional, as he knew from incidents in the past. And that stranger had probably listened, nodded, and let him cry because they were just as drunk as he was, before he stumbled home to his bed.

 

He wished all of that would have made perfect sense to him, and he simply could have written it off as another night he would be embarrassed of. However, something still pulled at his mind.

The mascara was open on his beside table, and most of it was spilled out in a pool that was still wet and creeping into the cracks of the wood. His abnormally dark eyelashes darted over this, and he almost reached out to touch the seeping mess. There were spots of the makeup all over the dresser, and even on the ceramic of the small lamp in the far corner of the table. The black stains continued all the way onto his sheets, which he twisted in his fingers and studied, scared to go on further in his investigation. Licking his dry lips, he swallowed.

 

Still in the haze of early morning and sleep, he lifted his head off his pillow and looked down the rest of his sheets, seeing large specks of black dotting all the way from his feet to where his hands held the hem of the sheet tightly. The mascara looked stark and harsh on the white sheets- bright black spots vibrantly obvious on their clean background. He let his head collapse back onto his pillow with a sigh, wondering and trying to remember as the bed moved beneath him.

 

The ceiling of his room, barely touched by the light coming into his room, told him nothing. It was gorgeous and pale and paper thin light, swirled with color. Vaguely, this reminded him of Lance, the same way Lance was reminded of JC every time he saw glitter or dry-rimmed coffee cups and leather. And the same way Lance was reminded of JC by the smell of smoke and sweat and pencil tips and violet, JC was reminded of Lance by the smells of orange and damp and fabric detergent. He could barely smell orange, wisps of it out of the corner of his mind, as he stared at the colors on his ceiling.

 

With another sigh, he turned over, where something immediately caught his eye. His chin inched upwards, his stubble rough on the pillow, and there on his pillow he saw trails and trails of black. Finding the energy from his surprise to flip his body over on the bed to look at it more closely, he could see almost the entire front of his pillow dipped in a dull color of black. Most of it was smudged, but there were definite trails that had fallen from his eyes and stained the pillow case. He even found those trails, creeping and rolling during his sleep, tracing down onto his chest.

He took one finger, licked it, and ran it across the lines on his chest, right near his collar bone. He pressed a finger to the soft skin near the bone and tried to remember any sort of touch at all from the night before. He could remember none. The mascara there wiped away with the movement of his finger, but left it stained black, a token and postcard from dreams and ghosts to his reality.

 

Letting his face fall into the stained pillow, he could almost still smell the alcohol on it, and could almost still feel the dampness from his own tears. Something had happened, he knew, something each new look was hinting at more and more. He was curious to the point where he wanted to lie there, facedown, until he had racked his brains enough to remember, but at the same time he was almost positive he didn't want to know what had happened. He muffled a groan into the pillow, stretching out his legs.

 

He was suddenly to the point of taking a shower to wash off all the smudges of black from his face and body, and drinking a quart of orange juice before anything else to get the stale taste of alcohol out of his mouth, when he felt a movement in his bed. A jolt of frozen energy ran through him as his eyes widened. At first JC decided to lie perfectly still, his face still in the pillow and his senses turned up to the breaking point. There was someone in the bed with him. The someone groaned, turned over, and settled back into the sheets with a sigh. With one more indistinct movement, the body was still again.

 

JC held his breath for another minute or so, until he felt his lungs would burst and his cheeks began to burn. Then slowly, quietly, he lifted his head off of the pillow and opened his eyes back up from the sticky mess they were still in. He finally rubbed his eyelashes apart with hurried hands, and saw the body turned toward him, tangled in his white sheets that had black spots reaching all the way to the opposite side. The body rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and from the smudges of black in the body's hair, JC almost wondered if it was true that he had brought home that random drunk person he might have spilled all his problems to in the club.

He realized with a distinct sinking in his chest that he would have no such luck. As he squinted and turned to get a clear look at the face of the person in his bed, he sucked in his breath and whispered, "Lance?"

 

There was silence as an answer, only the light breathing that reminded him a little of a small flickering flame.

 

JC was glad to see the man he loved in his bed with him, but he couldn't understand why it was Lance that was also covered in mascara, up and down his arms and spotted into his hair. JC looked closely at his eyes, but he couldn't see any mascara there at all, only speckled every now and then across his cheek and smudged into his hands. It almost looked like dark ash, but more full of pitch and more vibrant, like his body had been splattered with paint from an artist's pallet.

 

He looked a bit like an angel like that, his chest rising and falling slowly and his face and body a mess of speckled black. JC reached out to touch Lance's face, because something about the entire situation and the rumpled, tousled, and stained state their bed was in was drawing his hand to Lance's touch. He suddenly felt a need to hold him tightly, securely, and bind him to his body with every ounce of strength he had. It became a pounding in his head, until he could almost feel sparks jumping from his fingertips to Lance's cheek. Something about the scene made JC feel panicky, as if the sparks would die at any moment and a giant magnet would fling him from one opposite side of the room to the other, away from Lance. He wanted to touch him so badly, and make sure he was real. And suddenly he knew why.

 

He almost leapt off the bed in one movement, springing backward onto the carpet and snapping his hand away before it made contact with Lance's smooth face. JC held his breath and looked around wildly as he steadied his hands on the bed's comforter and stared down at Lance's bare feet nearly hanging off the bed. There were little black dots there, too. Little black dots that mocked him and had held such wonder and novelty and confusion only a few moments ago that now held such raw, striking memories.

 

It was Lance. He had known it in a semi-conscious, half-awake stupor sort of way as he had turned over, searching his bed for the black intruders and a drunken stranger to explain his state, and finding his lover instead. But it hadn't quite clicked until he felt it, and he knew, and he remembered. The crystal in his mind came together, the pieces fit back into the places they had cleanly broken off from, and his heart pounded at it.

.

 

Lance, the one that he had always trusted to hold his emotions stable, to hold everything together, to support JC… Lance, the one that drank and usually ended up covering JC with smothering kisses, had done something totally unexpected that night.

 

The blond, having swallowed several drinks and reached a point past his limit and past even JC's limit, had done the expected at first. He was lounged across a leather couch in the club with his blue-eyed lover, with JC looking to Lance in his drunken state like the most beautiful angel on earth. He shone like glitter, he smiled like oceans, he laughed like love, he radiated energy and Lance could almost see the unpolished halo tipping slightly off of JC's head and slipping into his drink.

 

Lance laughed, touched the angel's face, and straddled him, beginning to feel every inch of his face with his lips, until he wanted nothing more then merge into one with the angel. His angel, his soft, brown haired angel. He whispered it into the angel's ear, and JC believed it.

Very faintly, out of the corner of both JC and Lance's tunneled vision, there were other people in the room, but three stood out most prominently.

 

"There they go again…", the brown haired one mumbled, pushing his hair back and revealing dripping sweat on his forehead.

 

"Get them out of here…", the sun-child whispered, a girl hanging off each arm.

 

"We've warned them about this, not here, not now…", the dark-eyed one rasped, his voice gone into his drink along with the deep orbs of his eyes.

 

They both were aware of this in only dream-like way, because all they felt and all they knew was the leather they were sitting on and the skin on their own skin that felt alive and beautiful and shining in the dim lights. Feeling tugging on their arms, they were pulled up as one body off the chair and back into a mess of limbs in an up-right position. And although the faces were grim around them, smoky eyes without a purpose and without much of a care of a future, the two laughed.

 

They found the entire scene around them gorgeous and funny, even the girl in the corner nursing her drink and bruises. They found beauty in the couple in the corner in vintage clothes and rolling pool balls on the floor for entertainment. But most of all, they found their own faces exquisite, and collapsed upon each other in smiles and giggles and laughter, even as they were pushed out the door into the night air.

 

It whipped by their warm cheeks like a blast of ice, but that made them only feel more alive. Averting stares from the late-night city crowd prowling under the neon lights, they stumbled together, their voices loud in the night and over the din of the music inside.

 

"And where is it, angel?", Lance asked the celestial being next to him, even more drunk on his laughter.

 

"What, heaven?" The blue eyes lit up, sparkling in the bright signs high above their heads.

 

"No, no…", Lance gulped, holding JC up from falling to the pavement below. "But close… the hotel?"

 

"Second star to the right and straight on till morning," he giggled, collapsing back against the storefront behind them and slightly shaking the closed iron gates protecting it. He lifted his face to the sky and realized he could barely make out the stars beyond the bright lights that drowned them out so very high. "No…" JC whispered, letting his hand that pointed upwards down slowly. "That must not be it, then."

 

Lance attempted a frown through his laughter in concentration. "We need to find it… because… why?"

 

"So we can fly," JC uttered in a hush of a lighted voice. He drew Lance closer to him up against the storefront and iron gate so that they touched noses. He laughed at Lance's confused face and then gently pulled away from the side of the sidewalk and ran out into the middle of it. "And we can fly…," he said, spinning around with his arms open wide and his face to the sky, "Here!" He stopped abruptly, his right arm outstretched to a building only a few feet away.

 

The sign in front, pearl colored and painted in a rosy hue, was in fact the right hotel building, and JC and Lance shuffled together toward it as if by divine intervention. Or, as in Lance's case, JC was the divine intervention that led them there.

 

Given a sly look that showed the flame in Lance's eyes, JC rose in the cream colored elevator with him and gave his own attempt at a look as well, which was more of a drunken grin. As they collapsed together again, never quite off the roller coaster of lights and laughter they had boarded almost an hour ago, a smell of orange and violet wafted through the air.

.

 

Lance pushed JC up against the back of the bedboard, still fully clothed. As JC sat there, his back imprinted in hotel pillows, Lance climbed over his long sprawling ripped jeans and reached JC's chest, moving heavily with breath. Lance's eyes were swimming with alcohol and energy, and looked once deeply into JC's eyes with lust. Then they shot away.

 

JC had his own eyes closed in anticipation of Lance's lips and touch and was smelling in the electric air. When he opened them into nothingness, however, he glanced across the dim room to see his lover's back to him. Lance steadied himself on a chest of drawers and sucked in breath with a passion.

 

"La…nce?"

 

"You see," his voice unfurled into the thick silence, "I was walking down Branch Avenue today, looking through the stores for that one book you recommended to me awhile ago. Remember?"

Staring and blinking and trying to focus in his drunken state at Lance's back, and not quite understanding why he was met with air when he had almost touched passion, heat, and lust a few moments ago, JC nodded dumbly.

 

"I… um…"

 

"And on the way there," Lance interrupted, striking a match from a packet in one of the drawers and watching it ignite into flame, "I saw this gorgeous church. High stained glass windows. Gothic style. Beautiful architecture. And I looked up at it, realizing that I really haven't had the chance to go to church nearly as much as I've wanted to."

 

Lance turned around, holding a match in one hand and a small white candle in the other. The flame lit up and matched the fire in his eyes, giving them a feline look. JC still blinked, rubbed his eyes with one hand, and tightened his grip on the bed sheets beneath him. Lance looked like another person had possessed him, but JC knew it was the alcohol calling to him, deep in his veins.

 

"And I just walked inside," he whispered, putting the wick to the flame, "as if I belonged there." The wick instantly caught, and was devoured by the flickering light. "I walked to one of the pews, sat, and began to pray."

 

"I was a little clumsy at first, as if I had been out of practice. It was as if God was some person that I had met a very long time ago, and I was clumsily trying to make conversation." Lance walked over to the bedside table next to JC, who was frozen in his spot and transfixed on Lance's absent, other-worldly stare. He placed the candle down softly, the light wavering in the slightest, and then walked back to take another.

 

"And when I was done, I was left with an empty pit in my stomach, like I was some intruder there. The saints seemed to be looming down from the stained glass, mocking and shunning me. I could see their eyes, JC. Their eyes… some were even red. And I felt such a coldness when I saw that, an absolute chill except for the burning in my chest."

 

Lance looked up to the ceiling, watching as the next candle he lit flung orange lights up onto the white tapestry. "You remember the cross I always used to wear? The one that's all wrapped up at home, now? If that had been on my chest, I swear it would have melted on the spot. The silver would have just dripped away, link by link, until it burned and sent up curls of smoke… up, up to the ceiling."

 

"I was a little scared, to say the least," Lance sighed, as he placed another candle next to JC. " I got up out of the pew quickly, trying to get back out into the daylight, find a small bookstore, and let myself drown in the old paper smell and run away from the burning eyes."

 

Lance reached for a third candle, swallowing, and lolling his head to the side a little bit. "But I… I saw these two men. I tried to walk by them, and they just stood there, fixed on the tile. They both looked at me, with those same burning eyes, straight into my soul." He struck a third match and held it steady this time, absently running his finger through it. "I didn't know what to say to them. I had this strange urge to explain myself, to apologize even though I had done nothing to them. The larger one, with his face rough and close to mine… he whispered…" Lance lit the candle and looked down into the flame. "He whispered… 'You will not be forgiven.'"

 

Lance choked on the last word and then hurried his speech as he brought the last candle over to the bedside table. "I could almost feel my skin melt. He burned straight through me, igniting my flesh and turning it black. It was like those movies, JC. Where you want to scream so badly… but nothing comes out."

 

"I'm pretty sure I ran out of there. But the sky wasn't the same. It was mocking and harsh. Everyone's eyes seemed to pinpoint me, label me, shun me. The entire world was full of smoky eyes, broken bird wings, melted crosses. It smelled stale, even in the bookstore, as I tried to keep my finger steady as I scanned for my book. But it wouldn't stay still. It… it wouldn't stay still."

 

Running his finger through all of the candles in a group on the table, he glanced to JC, who wouldn't have been able to move if a hurricane ripped through the building. "And, standing there, wanting the stars to shine in reality, not with glitter and plastic, I realized something." Lance turned once more to the dresser, and pulled a small tube from a plastic bag lying on top. Curling it into his palm, he approached the bed once more. He crawled up over JC's legs, moving the bed and shaking JC's rigid body, tight with drunkenness and fear.

 

"You're so beautiful…", Lance whispered, touching a hand to JC's cheek and running it up to his eyes. "An absolute angel. My brown haired angel." JC relaxed a little with those words and his eyes searched for Lance's, which were so intently studying JC's face. "Why did I have to fall in love with you?"

 

JC gave him his best attempt at a questioning glance, only to see the glazed over look in Lance's eyes remain steady. Those eyes were transfixed on JC's face, accompanying light fingers running over each area of skin, dimly lit in the flickering candle light.

"If only you were a woman," he whispered, leaning in close to JC's ear.

 

JC twitched slightly, unconsciously, and swallowed, feeling Lance's breath light in his ear, paper-thin and alien. He moved his eyes over to Lance's face and licked his lips, making a small moaning sound. JC was almost sure that if he reached out and touched his lover, he would have shattered into a million pieces on the floor. Everything seemed so surreal, and even though his fingers were frozen to the sheets, with ice creeping up to his chest and down to his toes with delicate wisps of frost, his face felt very mobile. The areas around his eyes stung deeply.

 

"Things would be so much easier," the ghost-voice continued to spill into his ear. "The eyes wouldn't burn. The perfection we live… it would be even more perfect. I would still be able to wear my cross. The hurt, the burns… they would seep away. If you were a woman JC, a woman...". His blond hair shone in the light and his eyes jumped to his palm, which he uncurled slowly to reveal a tube of mascara.

 

"If only…" His voice was a light whisper, floating on the air and swirling into JC's ears. A window was open somewhere, and threatened to cover up the softness of his voice. Instead, it mingled with the air, magnified it, lit it up with candle light, and crashed it toward the blue eyed mannequin propped up on the bed.

 

Lance unscrewed the top, with the bristles licking the sides. "Shh…", he seemed to tell himself, as he brought the brush up near JC's eyes. The first stroke was hesitant, but as JC's eyelashes darkened on impact, Lance was urged on and took a second, and then third stroke.

Leaning back to admire his work, Lance smiled and then let out a small laugh. "Yes… that's how it would be. So much simpler…"

 

Visions swam in front of JC's eyes as Lance leaned in once more, his fingers brushing tenderly up against the creases in his eyes and Lance's own eyelashes close enough to brush up against JC's. He laid very still, not understanding, not blinking. Lance coated his left eye thickly, and then the right one just as much, far beyond it ever needed to be.

 

With each stroke, Lance's excitement and smile climbed stories, until he began to flick the brush back in and out of the tube wildly, letting the black makeup spray everywhere. It dotted the bed sheets, Lance's own face and hair, and even JC's chest. Like an artist entirely caught up in his work, Lance ignored the mist of blackness surrounding his head and kept lunging to coat JC's eyes with even more makeup, an unorthodox canvas for his emotions.

 

"Yes," he murmured, over and over again. "Yes… yes… that's much better. My angel is so beautiful." Lance shoved the brush back into it's tube with one last thrust, showering the bed with black stains. He flung it onto the bedside table, over JC. He took JC's chin in his hands and began to dot his face with kisses- slow, luxurious kisses that JC could not do much else with except lean in to.

 

"Now I can love you forever. Now I can be forgiven…". Lance pushed soft pieces of hair off of JC's forehead and then placed more kisses there, until he traced them down to JC's chest.

JC sat as still as possible, his blurry vision still not convincing him that what he had experienced was real. But before he could understand anything else, he felt Lance's dotting lips stop right near his bellybutton. The cool touching on his light-thin skin was frozen, and he felt Lance's body slack and ease off into a smooth roll onto the pillow next to him.

 

Allowing his head to slowly, slowly turn to the body that was very still, passed out, and rolled up beside him, JC allowed his own body to slide lower in the bed. The candles next to him were dying slowly, and two had already snuffed themselves out, drowning in a pool of silvery white. The ghost flicker of one candle danced across his face.

 

It lit up the pillow that was already stained black, which his head collapsed into with a weight of confusion and heaviness. The world was swimming, careening, and crashing to a halt. And in the middle of that world, the single flame lit up his face, staring straight ahead but visualizing Lance's peaceful sleeping one. That one face didn't understand anything at all, but didn't understand specifically why, even as thick trailing tears had driven down his face in streams of black, that his lover had continued to apply the makeup. And questions built up in the thick puddles of mascara, dripping down his face. Why he couldn't be a woman for his lover? Why he couldn't bring Lance happiness? Why did he have to be who he was? Did Lance love him at all?

 

The candle died, bathing him in darkness and an empty mind.

.

 

Memories crashed at JC that morning and left him wanting for more air. All thoughts of showers or breakfasts disappeared from his mind and left with the normal, sane person that usually continued through his daily morning routine. And as he remembered and put together why simply looking at Lance made him want to bind his lover's body to his own out of fear of losing him, he found himself crawling softly back into the bed.

 

The sheets felt foreign and naked to him, but he still slipped himself under them and resisted the urge to rip them off and burn them, because of all of the spots marking what had happened.

But he waited. Patiently, staring up at the ceiling and trying to piece together scents in the room… orange, violent, pencil, leather… he found himself less frightened of the night before and more likely to blame it all on both of their drunken states.

 

JC studied his fingernails, chipping away a spot of black, when he heard a slight stirring next to him. Immediately shutting his eyes and allowing his body to take on a steady breathing rhythm that mocked sleep, he felt the body turn over, stretch, and slowly lift its weight off of the bed.

JC could feel the sunlight burning through his eyes, bright and hot from the window across the hotel room, and resisted temptation to open his eyes and see Lance stretch out his arms in a wide arch, breathing in the morning and yawning slightly.

 

And he waited. He waited for Lance to turn around once or twice, look over his body, and let out a small gasp of surprise. He waited for Lance to look over the bed, look over the sleeping form of JC, and begin to shake JC awake, wanting to know what had happened the night before.

 

He could almost feel the light touch, the hurried, frantic breathing, the confused stare. Had they been attacked by violent black pens in the night? No, no... you did this… JC would explain. And they would talk and maybe cry a little over the very depths of Lance's true desires that were only uncovered because of his drunken state. The real things he wished for but never wanted JC to see had been shown in true Freudian style, the unconscious had let JC known everything was not right with Lance and their relationship. But they would work through it. They would.

 

The touch, seeming to be every breath of air coming in from the window, never came. JC heard the slight squeak of footsteps cross from one side of the bed to the other, and he heard hands gather up the candles and dump them into a trash can. There was no pause as he took in the pooling spill of mascara on the bedside table, no small yell at the speckled lamp.

 

Instead, JC heard Lance flick on the bathroom light, and push something into the sink, wetting it with damp. And even though he was surrounded with darkness, he could see Lance coming back out, wiping up the mess of black makeup on the dresser, and stepping back into the bathroom, ringing the towel back out into the bathtub. The water ran faster, and then faster, rinsing the towel and the slight ring of black around the drain, and the towel was hung wetly over the side of the tub. There was a slight dripping noise as the towel dried out onto the tile.

 

The rush of water stopped abruptly as the dripping continued, and when Lance walked back out into the main room, embodying everything JC had come to trust and love in the world, JC opened his eyes slightly. In this way, only a slit of vision slipped in and to the rest of the world his awareness was shrouded behind his eyelids. He saw Lance reach for the tube of mascara, slightly sticky and staining his wet creamy fingers.

 

Lance looked from the tube to his lover, who was sleeping soundly. He fingered the tube, closed his eyes, and breathed in deeply, tipping his chin up to the ceiling. With a slight breath, he dropped the mascara into the trash can and it clattered to the bottom.

 

"If only…", he sighed. "If only…"

 

The End

 

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