Fic post: A Girl Thing

[darkluna]

Title: A Girl Thing
Rating: PG-13
Characters: girl!Mello, Linda, Matt, Near
Warnings: Swearing and genswitch
Word Count: 905
Notes: Some girl!Mello for dn_contest's week #66: puberty. Thanks to my intrepid beta, vashti, and usual apologies to anyone seeing it twice.


"I fucking know how to do it, quit!"

"Mello," Linda said, with patience that was starting to sound strained, "if you don't stop squirming, I'll poke your eye."

Mello exhaled a puff of air that lifted her new fringe off her forehead. This was... humiliating was the only word for it. She was the smartest girl at Wammy's—and not by a little—and here she was, reduced to asking Linda for help. "Fine," she said, and tried to ignore the implement of death approaching her face. Linda called it an eyelash curler, but it looked more like a medieval torture device to Mello.

"Why do you suddenly care about makeup, anyway?" Linda said.

"I dunno."

"Seriously, Mello, hold still."

She scowled, and did. She wasn't about to admit to Linda why she cared.

It was all Near's fault, of course.

Mello had come in from playing dodge ball, grinning and victorious, leaves in her hair, mud on her feet and up the hem of her trousers, and Near had darted a cool glance at her (she suspected he timed them to the millisecond for maximum condescension), and said, eyes on his book again, "Even if we scraped the mud off, I am not certain we wouldn't find one of the Lost Boys."

Mello had flicked him off and stalked away, but later that afternoon, she couldn't get it out of her head. She'd curled up on her window seat with a stomach-ache, telling herself he was just pissed that she'd almost beat him on that test.

But still. Stupid fucking Near, he had a way of being stupid and mean and right. Mello scratched at her scalp, tugged her fingers through her hair, and came up with a bit of dead leaf. She held it in her hand and frowned at it. I'm good at everything else. I should be good at being a girl too.

Which was why she'd let Linda cut her a fringe, and why she was submitting herself to the torment otherwise known as putting on makeup.

"Ow!"

"That can't possibly have hurt!" Linda snapped, finally losing her patience.

It hadn't, but Mello had expected it to. She rubbed her eye irritably. "Well, give me some fucking warning next time."

"Why don't you do the other?" Linda said, holding out the vile metal thing.

"Okay, watch me." You and me, eyelash curler. May the better woman win. She was awkward and slow at it, but after a moment she successfully squeezed the dumb thing shut.

Linda giggled, and Mello saw in the mirror her own tongue poking out of her mouth. She pulled it back, unclamped her eyelashes, and blinked. "'s not that funny."

"You have to make that face when you do your eyes. It's a girl thing."

Mello studied herself. Between the fringe and her curled lashes, her eyes looked a lot bigger. "Not bad."

"Wait 'til we get the shadow on." Linda seemed worryingly enthusiastic. She had a box of makeup almost as big as the watercolour set she took outside sometimes.

"Don't make me too girly!"

"Mel, you are girly. It's not a bad thing. You're so pretty!"

After a moment, Mello grinned. "Thanks for not adding 'when you're clean.'"

"You're still scary either way," Linda teased.

Mello looked at herself in the mirror again. "Yeah. Best of both worlds."

Linda was definitely an artist. She put smoky grey on Mello's eyes that seemed like nothing at all but made them look darker blue and more wide-set. She even talked Mello into letting her brush on some lip gloss.

"Wow, look at you!" she said when she was done.

"Heh. I am pretty hot." Mello flipped her hair and laughed.

"I've got a skirt you can borrow that'll make Near's eyes pop out of his head."

Mello gave Linda a look. "How'd you know that?"

"It's a girl thing."

A little later they walked into the common room, Linda beaming as proudly as if she'd done it all herself, which, Mello had to silently admit, she kind of had. Mello was taller than Linda, so the grey-and-green plaid skirt didn't reach her knees, and she had to fist her hands to keep from trying to tug it down.

Everyone stared.

Except Near.

There was a clatter from the back of the room: Matt had dropped his GameBoy. Mello went over to him, ignoring Near as pointedly as he was ignoring her.

"Mel, you're. Holy shit, man." Matt scooped up his game and gaped at her. He was going red in stages, all the way to his ears. It was awfully gratifying.

Mello grinned. "Thanks."

"Are you gonna." He was having trouble making words come out in a normal rhythm, "Look like this, from now on?"

Mello laughed, and she saw a flash of white that meant Near wasn't really ignoring her. "Nah." She'd proved her point.

Matt rubbed the back of his neck. He was blushing so hard, Mello was surprised his goggles hadn't fogged up. "Maybe... sometimes?"

She stopped worrying about whether Near was watching. "We'll see."

The next day, Mello came in from the yard with leaves in her hair and dirt on her trouser knees. Near turned a page in his book, twirled his hair, and didn't look at her.

"The thing about Lost Boys?" Mello said. "They have friends." And she spun and walked out without looking back. Girls one, boys zero.