#i wuv thirteen...hope how i write her is fun for others!

[obm-avenquire]

❥ thirteen ❥

She doesn’t use brushes unless they’re part of the product. 

Unfamiliar with makeup or not, her process is…a unique one. These days, it’s one she lets you observe, regularly growing bored of her assigned room and pushing her way into yours instead. She comes and goes like a stray cat, and like any unguided human, you leave that door open for her, and feed her interest. 

It goes two ways. There’s something curious about how she puts it all on, dipping her fingers into a thin white paste that she spreads across her face - foundation, presumably, but from the horror on Asmodeus’ face when he walked in the other day, it isn’t a normal kind. She tells you she made it herself, rolling her eyes as she cites how far away her cave is from everything else, and how annoying some of the Devildom shops are. You don’t have any reason to argue. You’ve seen stranger things down here, even if it should maybe worry you a little that she warns you not to touch it when it’s still in the jar like that.

You watch as she smears pigment across her eyelids, a powdery, vibrant substance that she blows into your face when you ask what it’s made of, turning away again to drag jagged lines of eyeliner into points, cleaning the neon yellow of her fingernails on the lapel of her uniform.

She’s an artist, albeit an unconventional one. 

“-How do you decide what you draw?” It’s not a question you think very hard about, absentminded as the study period drags on, and on, ink words trailing off into nothing on the page as you’re distracted by the uneven doodles she scrawls across her worksheets and up on to her arms, sat backwards on the bench in front of yours. 

“Hah?” Her eyebrows quirk upwards, pen tip stopping halfway through another cracked heart symbol on her wrist. You tilt your head to the side slightly, silently emphasising your question, opening your mouth to repeat it just as she stands, leaning forward to catch your face in her hand, hold still, nails digging into one cheek in a way that’s not quite painful, just noticeable. You hold your breath, eyes scrunched shut ‘til she pulls away, lightly slapping your hand away from your face when you instinctively go to touch where she’d drawn. “Like that.” She says, curtly, and it takes you a moment for you to understand that that’s her answer. “I don’t. It’s not like there’s any special meaning behind any of it.” 

She sticks her tongue out at you, piercing that you didn’t even know she had flashing dully in the light before she drops the pen on your desk, and with that she’s gone, leaving you to study alone. You don’t get much done, and when you check later, the heart she’s drawn on your cheek is uncharacteristically shaky. 

You can’t quite find it in yourself to wash it off, and when she sees you the next day she sputters something about humans not even being able to clean their own faces, trailing off into grumbles when you offer to get rid of it now, if it bothers her.

“-I just liked it, is all,” You tug at the sleeves of your uniform, flustered thinking about how it had all made your face burn, having spent too much time overthinking if she’d noticed, felt the heat through her fingers, or written it off as just another human thing.

For whatever reason, she drops the topic there, huffing about how humans always make things so weird.

Then again, artists are inherently unconventional, to some.

Today her face is bare. She’s in your room again, mouth and fingertips stained with the juice of some strange Devildom fruit that smells like blackberries and drips down her wrist in faint streaks of purple. 

“What, did you want some?”

She catches your eye and leans in close, close enough that you see how dark her eyes get when she looks at you, crinkling as her face splits into a crooked grin. Your eyes flit away for as long as you can drag them away. The bowl is empty, save for the dark, reddish black liquid that just barely covers the base, and later you’ll lament letting her use it, because the stain doesn’t leave for weeks, and replacing it to avoid Lucifer’s irritation is one thing, but the reminder of today is another. 

You don’t know how long it takes. It feels like forever, and far too short, her pupils blown out and glassy in a way that makes you dizzy.

(You’re embarrassed every time you think about it, distracted and bashful at the thought.)

“Oh,” You breathe, touching your lips with shaky hands, staring blankly when you pull away and your fingertips shine with tinted fluid. Her eyes don’t leave your mouth til you let out a thin laugh and she bristles, catlike. “We match-”

“And that’s enough to make you happy?” She’s placated as quickly as she was wary, scoffing as she leans on her hand, hiding her expression between her fingers, elbow digging into her thigh. “Are all humans that easy to please?” You only laugh again, bite in her words missing you entirely. Her face is red. It has nothing to do with the berries.

Like all artists, she has a sort of…signature. Something that marks her works as her own.

Once she gets a taste for it, she makes it a habit. 

She’s as unpredictable as ever in her appearances, but you can’t help but think that she’s around a lot more now. Her makeup changes, and you see her with actual branded products sometimes, though the powder she uses as eyeshadow never does change. Even so, the notes you lend her come back with a little skull and crossbones next to your name, and more days than not you find her in your room, complaining when you come back late or have to leave early, leaving trinkets in your pockets, taking a strange sort of mercy on you by leaving you as an exception to her usual traps.

Hearts and skulls and bones and flowers you don’t recognise.

You can’t help but feel that she only spares you because she leaves you with a whole different kind, though, like now, your hands bunched up by your sides as she straddles your legs, tilting your head back slightly as she uses her other hand to work whatever magic she feels like for the day, a small collection of palettes and products on either side of you laying open on your bed. You open and close your hands around the covers, finding it hard to stay still for so long. 

She’d told you off for fidgeting, once, threatening to tie up your hands if you couldn’t hold still, quickly thinking better of it and muttering some sort of excuse, don’t you dare overthink that, snapping the palette in her hand shut and slipping it in her pockets before she slips off of you, stalking out of the room, red-faced. 

She’s gone for a week before you find her again, catching you at the entrance of the colosseum, acting as though nothing had happened.

“-you even listening to me?” You’re snapped back into the present and she cuts you off again before the apology can even leave your lips. “Don’t bother. Just…hold still.” She says, as if you staying put will change anything about the way her hand shakes slightly, as if her eyes don’t keep dropping down to your mouth and back again, as if she isn’t just waiting to make a mistake. It’s as good of an excuse as any, really - if she’s already screwed up, what’s the harm in really ruining it with her mouth?

…It’s not like you’re complaining, though.

She brings you sweets and snacks as apologies, and thank-you’s, and sometimes for no reason at all. There’s always some excuse, some reason why she didn’t buy them just for the two of you to share, but you’re happy to indulge her white lies if it means she’ll keep coming to see you, even on the days where she won’t eat herself, having ‘accidentally’ bought something she hates but knows that you love, oddly peaceful as she watches you instead.

She brings more chaos into your everyday, somehow. It’s a feat that leaves you breathless in more ways than one. 

You can’t remember when it became normal for her to lock your arms together, grab your hand and lace your fingers with hers, when it became everyday for her to let her head fall in your lap and complain about the brothers, about angels, and Solomon avoiding her latest trap. You grow used to catching yourself in the mirror and seeing lipstick stains and skull tattoos in pen, and when you give her one in return, thoughtless impulse, she comes back again and again, insisting you go over it just one more time, so it doesn’t fade.

She dreams of one day making a masterpiece.