oh em gee THE NEW THEME YES!!!
also here’s a humble request for you 😋
i’m thinking marinat but like it’s mari admiring nats style so nat dyes mari’s hair or smth… i need more content of their dynamic.
hii hi hi!! i ended up straying a little from the hair dye route so i hope you’re okay w that.. also this ended up a bit short.
quiero ser como tú entonces mal (que quiero tú)
mari wants to be natalie so, so badly. the lines blur between jealously and attraction.
—
Nat brushes past her in the locker room. Carefree.
“Oh. Sorry, Mar.”
Mari attempts to shrug, casual, but it comes off awkward and uncoordinated. “S’all good. Are—“
Nat shrugs back, walking slightly backward. Water bottle in hand. “Gotta go.”
Mari watches as she walks off into the distant haze of the locker room front door, slightly defeated. She’s so casual. Unbothered. Cool. Mari bites her lip in frustration. Even compared to her own venomous armor, it’s no match for Natalie’s. When people toss insults at her, she doesn’t even retaliate.
“How do you do it?,” Mari had whispered to her one day, after an especially battering lecture from Tai. Nat just closed her locker and wrinkled her nose.
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
When Mari looks at her, her heart clutches with jealousy. Her eyes trace over the very slight brown of Nat’s outgrown roots, the ashy brush of makeup around her eyes, the slope of her nose. She’s sure that if you offered her a winning lottery ticket or a chance to look like Nat, she would choose the latter. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone.
The next time she sees Nat in the locker room, she’s quicker to act.
“I like your.. makeup.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Nat says, smiling slightly. The other girls have mostly filtered out by now, jogging out in ponytails and sweatpants to get food after the game.
Which leaves she and Nat alone.
Thump. Thump.
Mari scorns her heart.
“I wish I could do mine like that, but.. I dunno. Not that kind of person I guess,” Mari adds, shifting on her feet.
“You could be,” Nat replies. “You can do whatever you want.”
Cue silence.
“That’s true,” Mari says after a moment of excruciating awkward tension. Nat reaches into her locker, pulling out a cracked little container of eyeshadow.
“Come here.”
She sits on the bench in between locker rows, looking up at Mari expectantly. Mari follows suit, but her breath catches in her throat.
“Really?”
Nat keels over slightly, a laugh escaping her throat. “Really.”
She pops open the eyeshadow lid, revealing an ashy black powder with a slight glittery sheen under the right light. Nat dips a finger in, dropping a few flakes onto the smudged little compact mirror inside.
“Close your eyes?,” she requests. Her breath smells like smoke and peppermint. Mari closes her eyes obediently, nails digging into her palms. She feels Nat’s fingertips brush over her fluttering eyelids, swiping gently to smudge the powder.
They sit so close together that Mari can feel the air she’s exhaled bouncing off of Nat’s skin and back at her. Too close. Perfectly close.
“All done,” Nat whispers. Mari opens her eyes slowly. Nat moves the compact so that Mari can look in the mirror.
She looks, honestly, like she’s been electrocuted. Like a cartoon, when their hair would stand up and their face would come back sooty.
“I feel stupid,” she says. Nat squints.
“You’re not stupid. I used to feel stupid too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and then I realized it didn’t matter.”
Nat watches her with half-lidded eyes, something almost hungry in her gaze. “Not stupid,” she repeats, turning Mark towards her by her chin with her index finger and thumb.
Mari’s heart skips and then stops, lungs clenching empty of air. On absolute impulse, she leans in, lips colliding messily.
Nat pulls away. Glass shattered.
“Oh my god. Sorry. That was so weird,” Mari says, instantly.
Nat shakes her head slightly. “No. It wasn’t.. weird.” Her eyes flick down to Mari’s lips, then back up to her eyes. Nat leans in and closes the gap again, lips warm and inviting.
—
