InsaneJournal

my skin is like a map
Who: Vinnie and Jocelyn
What: Vinnie has a black eye and no skill at foundation. Jocelyn offers to help a poor boy out
Where: Jocelyn's apartment, 201
When: Evening, July 10th.

Note: backdated like WOAH (2 of 3)

His razors were definitely gone. Vinnie rubbed at his eyes, wincing when his hand brushed the dark bruise over the left one. Asshole. Wait, what time was--The sound of his phone alarm going off answered the half-formed question. Time to meet his angel of mercy.

He snatched up his keys and wallet, stuffing both of them into their own pocket as he headed out the door. The soft sound of his apartment locking behind was forgotten nearly the moment he heard it, his concentration focused on remembering which apartment she was in. Nimble feet made quick work of the stairs, and within a few minutes he found himself standing in front of 201.

Vinnie took a deep breath to steady himself, and knocked lightly.

The door opened almost immediately, and Vinnie came face to forehead with the petite resident of the apartment at the end of the hall. She looked up at him and grinned. “I’d ask if you were here about the make-up, but that shiner is pretty obvious. Come on in!” she stepped back and allowed him to enter her apartment.

It was immaculately clean, as if it had recently been scrubbed from floor to ceiling and back again, the scent of cleaning solution still lingering. The furniture was serviceable, and mostly of the flatpack variety just one step up from ‘broke college student.’ A few reusable grocery bags sat on the counter, still filled with her recent purchases.

“Sorry...I just got home a few minutes ago. Work kept me late, and then I realized I needed to buy groceries again…” There was a subtle stress on that ‘again,’ as if groceries had recently turned into more than just a mundane necessity.

Vinnie laughed, soft and low. “Yeah, it is pretty obvious,” he answered, reaching to touch it and instead forcing himself to rub awkwardly at the stubble on his chin. The invitation inside got a smile and a muttered ‘thanks’ as he stepped inside, glancing around.

Nice enough place. Furniture looked newish, which was more than Vinnie could say for basically any of his (refurbished is not new, even if it looks the part). The smell of cleaning solution was strong and recent enough that he thought of BB and her little issue, and for a moment wondered--but none of his business. ’Don’t be nosy, Romero.’

“Hey, no it’s cool,” he answered, waving a hand as if to shoo away the need for apologies. “One of my jobs is at a pizza place, believe me I know how it is. You need any help putting up groceries?” Because guest in her house, it didn’t strike him as odd in the least to offer a helping hand.

Jocelyn looked at the groceries. “Um...no, I think I’ll be good. Thanks for offering, though.” She smiled at him and held out her hand. “So, I don’t think we’ve actually met yet. I’m Jo. I’m pretty new to the area - I just moved here in May.”

“Don't think so, but I've been kinda a recluse,” he agreed, taking her hand to shake after a short pause (at least California will get him used to shaking hands.) Vinnie offered a bright smile to hopefully smooth over the awkwardness of his hesitation. “Vinnie Romero, no relation to the famous one. I moved here in.. April, I think? Wow, yeah, April. It does not feel that long.”

“You liking it here so far?” ’In Rose Red,‘ he barely resisted the urge to add as he let go of her hand. He's alone in her apartment with her, bringing it up will probably just freak her out.

“For the most part, yeah,” she replied, as she grabbed several items out of the bag and opened the freezer to tuck the items away. She reached into the freezer, hesitated, and looked over at Vinnie. “How long ago did that happen?” she asked, indicating the bruise.

Vinnie took a step back to allow her room, shifting on his feet in an unconscious twitch. When she asked about the bruise he blinked, reaching toward his eye before stopping himself. Again. “Five--no, it's the tenth. Six days ago?” He glanced down, suddenly and inexplicably embarrassed at how dark the bruise still was. Still he chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Dude was mad.”

“Apparently,” she agreed, eyes widening slightly in surprise. She closed the freezer, and looked around, chewing on her lower lip. “You’ll want to switch to heat, if you haven’t already. Aaand...eat papayas. There’s...um…” her fingers twitched, as if trying to conjure up a forgotten word, “enzymes. Helps with bruising.”

She peered into bags and, after a moment of consideration, scooped up the bags and put them in the empty refrigerator without unpacking them. “Okay! That’ll do for now...let me go dig out my supplies so we can see what we can do about that.”

“Papayas, huh? I'll remember that,” he said, knowing well and good he had exactly zero funds for that. Depending on how much he spent on makeup to cover his eye (thanks asshole) Vinnie was already looking at eating more leftovers from the pizza joint. For a brief second he considered asking Percy to pick some up--and then sanity returned, bringing with it a brief confused expression. What the hell; just because the man had started acting like his dad didn't mean he should indulge it.

This place was messing with his head. “Hmm? Oh, right. Lead the way.” Vinnie punctuated with a half-bow and a grin to acknowledge how deliberately silly the gesture looked.

She giggled at the bow and disappeared into the bathroom. “You can grab a stool from the kitchen when you come in. It’ll be easier to work if you’re sitting down.” She flipped on the vanity lights and started pulling various tubes and jars and containers out of the drawer, lining them up neatly along the far edge of the counter.

Victory. Grinning, Vinnie snagged one of the stools and carried it with as he followed her to the bathroom. “Yeah, this part of the routine I know. Sit down, look where you tell me, don't fall asleep.” He chuckled and set the stool close to the vanity lights. When he glanced at her to see if he needed to move it, his eyebrows raised at the sheer amount being pulled out. “I'm starting to wonder if you've got a history in theater.”

“A ‘history’, a degree, and eight years of working on over three dozen productions...but who’s counting?” she replied, not bothering to look up from her inspection of the content of the drawers.

His mouth split in a grin wide enough to pull at the the aching bruise. The pain dims his smile not one bit. “So, have I mentioned I spent the last few years running around New York with a pack of musicians and theater geeks? Mostly musicians, but,” here he shrugs, “be funny if we had some mutual friends.”

“I worked out of ‘North Hollywood,’ and mostly films and television. Haven’t done much stagework in the last five or six years. But...well, it’s not impossible. We’ll have to compare photo albums sometime.”

Judging by the crowd of supplies on the counter, she had to be nearing the back of the drawer by now. “I really need to go through this stuff someday...AHA!” She reached into the far back corner and pulled out three small paint pots of oddly-colored creams: one pink, one yellow, and one pea green. “I knew I had these somewhere in that mess.”

“Ah, yeah. Most of the ones I knew did stage work in New York. Might be fun tellin’--telling stories anyway one night.” Vinnie pulled one face at the accent slip, and another at the sharp pain when he did. This bruise could not fade soon enough.

Hearing no directions from Jocelyn to move the stool he perched on it, his feet hooking through the lower rungs. Another grin flashed across his face at her sound of triumph (which was kind of adorable but he didn't know her nearly well enough to say so). “And now the magic starts,” he said, voice warmed by his good humor. Despite telling himself to stay still, Vinnie briefly wiggled in genuine anticipation.

Jocelyn smiled, amused by Vinnie’s excitement, then frowned thoughtfully. “We can do quite a bit of damage control with these three, but I think you’re right about skin tone…” she glanced over at the counter and hmmed softly as she ran a fingertip across the tops of several bottles, hesitated over one, then finally picked it up and set it down on the counter next to the others. “That might be close enough - we’ll have to see what it looks like on.”

She picked up a makeup sponge and the pot of yellow concealer. “So...did you ever learn anything about color theory when you were in school?”

“One of the problems with having brown skin, finding makeup to match is a bitch.” His words were light, but a sardonic twist to his mouth hinted at a bitter truth that was rooted in something deeper than cosmetics. Without realizing, he absently rubbed at the light beard gracing his jaw out of season.

The gesture served to wipe away most of all that wasn't good cheer. The soft laugh that followed her asking about color theory took care of the rest. “The high school I barely graduated, you mean?” He shrugged, not proud of his academic shortcomings but not willing to hide them. “Enough not to look like bozo when I put together an outfit. Why?”

Oh...touched a nerve there, didn’t you, Jo? For the space of a heartbeat her smile seemed momentarily fragile, as she struggled to find a path out of the conversational minefield. “Because I didn’t want to look like an idiot, sitting here explaining about complementary colors, if you’re secretly Banksy or something.”

She dipped a corner of the sponge into the pot and showed it to him. “What we want to do here is try to neutralize a lot of the bruising by covering it up with its complementary color. So yellow over black and purple, green over red...eventually, once it starts healing, pink over yellow. Then the actual foundation doesn’t have to do all the hard work of making your skin look normal.”

’Well shit,’ Vinnie thought, noticing the slight hesitation. He didn't mean to make her upset; it's not her fault the world can be crappy to people with darker skin tones. His expression softens, deliberately gentle when he chuckled. “Trust me, the only talent I have in visual arts is looking pretty. Explain away.”

For all that he claims not to be a bright man, Vinnie listened well as she explained which colors go over what bruises. A slow nod is the precursor to “Makes sense, I guess. So we're going with yellow, right?”

She felt her face start to burn, and turned away to look at the counter, desperately hoping that her hair would hide the worst of the blushing. “Umm...yeah, mostly. A little bit of green, too. Around the edges.” She turned back, and brushed a fingertip lightly against his skin. “Here...and here.” She adjusted her position slightly, to make sure she wasn’t blocking the light. “Lift your chin up a bit, and close your eye,” she instructed.

She blushes. Vinnie had to press his lips tight to swallow the grinch-like grin that briefly threatened to spread across his face. Down, boy. Now was not the time to tease and poke to see her blush more, tempting as it was.

The mischief was still making his eyes gleam when she turned around again, though he did his best to appear nonchalant. A muscle in his cheek twitched when she brushed the bruise, but his only other reaction were when he noticed the pattern of scarring underneath her make-up. Vinnie’s eyebrows drew together faintly, curiosity battling with the urge to wince--but that would be rude. Instead he nodded, closing both eyes and lifting his chin as instructed. “Like that,” he asked, showing no signs of discomfort at essentially baring his throat to a stranger.

“Perfect,” she said with a smile, before turning her attention to the work at hand. “I’m sorry if this hurts a little...I’ll be as gentle as I can, but there’s only so much I can do if we want to get this covered up.” She started to cover the skin with the concealer, working quickly and deftly. “Let me know if it gets to be too much to handle, yeah?”

“I highly doubt it's gonna hurt as much as receiving this bruise did.” He did wince involuntarily when the sponge pressed into the darkest parts of the bruise, gentle as her touch was. Not for the first time, Vinnie found himself wondering if the asshole had cracked his face; but what difference would it make if he had? Nothing anyone could do except wait for it to heal.

Distracted, he began to jiggle one of his legs. “So, you said you weren't doing stage work anymore. Did you move into movies, or are you doing something else now?”

Jocelyn chewed on her bottom lip as she focused on the cover-up work and tried to think of a way to answer that question without having to explain a whole lot of uncomfortable past to a near stranger. “Television, mostly. Little bit of voiceover work - that was basically by accident, t’ be honest - but mostly production work. Nothing you’ve heard of-” She stopped, and suddenly laughed out loud. “Sorry! Not trying to sound like a hipster, I promise. It’s just that most of the stuff I worked on didn’t get a lot of play down here in the States.”

She finished applying the colored concealers, and stepped back to get a better look at the overall effect. The bruise was significantly less vivid but still noticeable, at least in the bright vanity lights. She frowned thoughtfully. “Okay, I think that’s about as much as we can do with those. Go ahead and take a look, so you can see what it should look like.”

Vinnie laughed before he could think not to. “Oh no, it’s too late to backpedal. Your fate is sealed, totally the cute hipster chick now.” Alright so maybe he wasn’t so good at resisting temptation; understatement of the century, if he were being honest.

With a nod, he scooted off the stool and leaned toward the mirror. “This is amazing,” he muttered, a brief smile flashing across his face before it faded into concentration. “So, I’d do this and then put.. Foundation over it, or would I be alright with one of those compact things? Kinda worried about sweating foundation off.” During his inquiries Vinnie closed the bruised eye, squinted at his reflection briefly before opening it again.

“Despite what you may have heard, women do sweat on occasion,” Jo commented dryly, eyes glimmering in amusement. “You don’t have to worry about the foundation.”

She turned and picked up the bottle she had set aside earlier, it’s contents easily a shade or three darker than any of the others in her collection. She frowned down at it. “Why do I even have this?” she muttered to herself, bemused. It must have been from Divya’s wedding, where she had cajoled, begged, and finally outright bribed her over-pale maid-of-honor to tan prior to the ceremony in Mexico.

She looked back at Vincent, bottle in hand. “I need you to put your hand up by your good eye. Like so…” she demonstrated, holding her hand up to the side of one eye, first back out, then switching after a moment to palm out.

“I know women sweat, I have been witness to this phenomenon several times.” Sometimes as the cause, and those memories were what curved his lips upward for the split second before he remembered the other, more frequent cause behind his asking. That got a snicker, and Vinnie tilting his face to look at Jo’s reflection. “I also spent most of my life in the South, followed by a few years in New York. I don’t know how hot it gets in Canada, but I have personally witnessed the summer heat melting a girl’s entire face of make-up off. Multiple times.” It was hilarious; except for that time Michelle cried because it happened on her way to a job interview. They’d all pitched in for ice cream and booze that night.

Caught in the memory of getting his ass beat at Mario Kart, Vinnie blinked owlishly when she addressed him. “Um, sure.” He turned, leaning back against the sink. The bottle in her hand caught his eye, the lightness of it bringing a protest to the tip of his tongue; but he knew just enough about make-up to know it didn’t always look the same on skin as it did in the bottle. So he did as instructed, bringing his hand up near his non-bruised eye and holding for a few seconds. “Like that?” he asked, before flipping his palm to face her.

“Perfect,” she assured him with a smile. She reached up and guided his hand down, gently running one finger along the side of his hand where the thumb met the pointer finger. “So...this part here is a pretty good color match for the skin around your eyes. This way, we can test the color without messing up all the work we’ve already done.”

Jo shook the bottle of foundation, then uncapped it and dabbed a little bit onto Vinny’s skin, blending the edges of the foundation carefully. She inspected her handiwork carefully, lips pressed tight and eyes thoughtful. “Weeeelll…” she started, her voice uncertain. “It’s not as far off as I was afraid it would be…” She chewed on her lower lip and looked up at Vinny. “It’s up to you. We can probably make this work, if you want to avoid having to shell out money for something you won’t use after this week. It’s close, and I have a few tricks we can use to make it closer.”

The gentle touch along the tender skin between his two fingers had them curling inward briefly, and for a moment his entire attention span was dedicated to that small patch of skin. He muttered noncommittally at her explication of why she'd asked him to hold up his hand, the words only sinking in when she began dabbing makeup.

‘Jesus Christ, pull yourself together,’ he thought, unconsciously punctuating the thought by clearing his throat. Vinnie watched her work in silence, the shift movements of her fingers reminding him of being backstage when he performed with The Ungrateful, sitting not very patiently as one of the core band members worked on his face.

With those memories in mind, he nearly opted in favor of going shopping; but New York is on the other side of the country, and his days of performing on stage might as well be on the moon. Yeah, his YouTube channel was doing OK, but that was one guy and his flute. “Sure,” he answered, the corner of his mouth quirking upward. “Show me whatcha got.”