“First thing’s first - you need some makeup.”

Zitao blinks, timid as his best friend lures him to the section of the store that has been illuminated in bluish-white light and duo-chromatic shelving, white that shifts to purple and back, and Zitao finds himself grimacing at how delicate and powdery the air smells. “Do I have to?” He asks. “Won’t I, like, have a personal makeup artist at work, or some ?”

Being the effervescent fellow he always is, Luhan deadpans wordlessly with the basket in hand, handle dangled around his wrist, “Well, of course, but you need something going into work. That’s the whole key to the illusion in the first place. After a while, once you have them fooled, then you can start going into work with a bare face because believe me, I’d bet a thousand dollars that half of those models in that firm don’t look the same bare-faced, either.”

He frowns, “Am I ugly bare-faced?”

“What?” His best friend’s eyebrows raise. “Of course not. You’re just not pretty and girly when bare-faced. Alright, so, what colors would you like to wear on your face? I’ll let you pick. What colors do you like?”

Now that he thinks about it, Zitao isn’t sure he’s ever put Zitao and colors in the same sentence, his wardrobe and hair and aura having been achromatic as long as he can remember. “Black, I guess,” he answers in a muted tone, his masculine reflection timid in the pillar mirror, wary of feminine eyes shifting. “And grey, maybe? I don’t know.”

“Jesus Christ,” his best friend sighs, head tilting back as his eyes flutter closed in a small roll. “Right, you’re the broody melancholy type. Alright, well, I guess I’ll have to pick them myself and see what looks good on you.”

Zitao knows for a fact he’s probably never set a single foot in the makeup department of any store, let alone even a mere drugstore, but if there’s one thing he’s certain he’s never become even if he had been unaware, it was human makeup swatch-art, as Luhan dips his fingers into products and grabs Zitao by the wrist and swipes his fingertips along the guy’s skin, powders and creams of shades Zitao isn’t sure he’s ever known to actually exist, some shiny and some flat and some dusted with glitter, and as his best friend counts off to himself, “Green? Okay, definitely not green, it makes you look very golden and in a bad way. Um… white, check, pink, check, orange, check, cran - ooh, cranberry is pretty! Navy looks alright too… and this light blue here…” Zitao becomes very aware of wandering gazes as middle-aged ladies browse around the stores and glance over to him, being held tenderly at the wrist by his best friend, looking very much like a couple. 

“Han, can we, like - hurry this up?” He asks through tight lips. “People are staring.”

“Oh, shut it, you,” Luhan tisks and sets down a big flat thing back onto a shelf, which if Zitao remembers correctly from his makeover the other day, is an - eyeshadow palette? Right? “Nobody is staring, sheesh. Well, except for me, but I can look at you all I want.”

“But there are women looking at me.”

Calmly, his best friend meets his eye with a flat gaze. “So? Maybe we’re buying makeup for whatever girlfriends we maybe have. Or, maybe we’re buying makeup for each other. Let them think things, Zitao, it’s alright. Believe me, nobody here is thinking that you’re a boy full-time with a helping of girl on the side.”

He sighs and allows his best friend to continue marking his skin with different colors, this time going into what looks like liquid pen-things, and when Luhan mumbles out a muffled, “Eyeliner,” Zitao understands.

When the blonde is done dipping his fingers into pans and shades of every array under the sun, Zitao’s entire left arm is striped up to his elbow like a tiger’s coat, and Luhan has to reach into the bag over his shoulder for a wet wipe to clean him up, “Sorry about this,” he says with a crooked chuckle. “I had to swatch everything to see how they worked with your skin tone, but it’s kind of a dirty process. Don’t worry, though, I have plenty of wipes.”

“So these are eyeshadow thingies?” He asks in a tiny voice, glancing down at the colorful book-like palettes in the basket, his eyes counting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven - why seven? and his friend laughs.

“Yes, Tao, they are eyeshadows. You put them on your eyes, usually with a brush,” he drawls dramatically with a brilliant grin. “They’re similar to colored charcoals, but for your eyelids. And I personally like palettes over individual shadows because they’re more compact and you don’t have to bust out tons of colors for one work.”

“Oh,” he says, understanding the analogy. “So, do you have to make like a canvas for it like charcoal, too, or?”

“Yep,” Luhan smiles. “We get you an eyeshadow primer for that. Exactly what it sounds like.” Reaching over, the blonde snatches a small packaged tube off of a wall rack, then grabs a second for good measure, and tosses them both into the basket. “You apply them before any shadow, that way they stick better and it’s like you’re shading - as you said, a canvas.”

He nods. “Makes sense.”

Letting go of his wrist, Luhan leads him over to another section with differently-colored shelving, hot-pink and black from ceiling to floor. “Alright, now I’m gonna need your neck and your chin to swatch you for foundation and concealer. Don’t worry, I’m getting you good makeup only.”

“You can get ty makeup?”

A snort. “Oh, you have no in’ idea, Tao. I’ve been down this road enough times to know which makeup and which makeup is good, so I know what to get for you. Bad makeup just doesn’t work out, so, for example, bad foundation cracks and breaks apart, bad eyeliner bleeds and runs and smudges, et cetera. You catch my drift?”

Mhm. He hums as his friend gently grasps his chin in careful fingers, wary not to move too much. “Alright,” Luhan continues. “So this is shade 102 Warm Beige,” he says softly before a wet fingertip presses to the line of Zitao’s jaw, and his face contorts for just a second in brief confusion. “Too light. One down is 105 Warm … eh, still too light. 110 Warm Honey…” 

Zitao zones out as the wipe swipes along his jaw to clean up the makeup mess, and by the time he averts his eyes from a middle-aged passerby giving him slightly judgmental looks, as if she’s got an old-fashioned mindset and views Zitao and Luhan as a gay couple about to engage in a loving kiss, judging by the hand on his chin, he realizes the guy has set two bottles of foundation and a tube of concealer into the basket. “What are,” he starts, slightly out of it, before he remembers what they had been doing.

“Your foundation color is 110 Warm Honey and your concealer color is Sand,” he says with a smile and gently pats Zitao’s cheek with the hand that had held him in place. “You know, just in case you need to come to restock on anything.”

He blinks. He doesn’t think he’d ever get the guts to come in here in-disguise, let alone even just in his regular everyday form. 

Next comes blushes, and Zitao doesn’t get any swatching or any time for questions as Luhan blindly - hastily, really - reaches out and grabs, tucking product after product into the basket. “I don’t really need to test these on you,” he says offhandedly. “Most blush colors can look nice on most skin tones. Besides, I already know you look nice in pink and orange tones.”

Much akin to a ragdoll, Zitao allows him to tug him further into the store and press colors into his skin and mark him like a sketchbook, beginning to accept that this is now his life and this is what he is going to have to grow accustomed to. He accepts that girls have to go through this on a probable routine basis and that if he is going to have to assimilate himself into this kind of lifestyle, he is going to have to get used to the way girls live. 

Afterward comes lipstick, and Zitao discovers that picking out lipstick colors is a lot like picking out eyeshadow colors - now that Luhan already has an idea of what colors apparently look bad on Zitao’s skin, he picks out similarly flattering lipstick shades, as well, practically piling tubes of pinks and berries and corals into the basket., and Zitao’s wrist begins to ache above beneath the weighted pull of the handle. “For ’s sake, how much else is there?” He asks with a sigh, and his best friend taps on his chin before grabbing more things from the shelves. “I feel like my arm is going to fall off.”

“Nothing is going to fall off,” Luhan laughs as he places more tubes into the basket. “Jeez, you need to lift weights.”

“Well excuse me for not being a fan of having huge, bulging arms,” he jokes. “Seriously, what else is there to buy? I’m getting tired.”

The blonde sighs and gives him a sharp look, “We’re almost done with makeup, okay? Then we can check out, empty the cart, and we have more things to buy.”

A groan. “More things?”

“Yes, Tao, more things. Girls don’t just own makeup only. They also own hairbrushes, soaps, perfumes, facial cleansers, and accessories. I’m also going to get you some hair removal cream for those parts you didn’t let me wax, like your brows and your balls.”

He sighs aloud as his best friend places more packages into the basket, and when he looks down at how it borders on overflowing, he notices packages of eyelashes resting on top of the pile. “This is so embarrassing.”

“You’re embarrassing,” Luhan joshes back at him. “Look, we’re almost done, alright? Let me just grab some brushes and a sponge for you. Oh, and some cleansers.”

By the time they finish their first round of browsing and unpack the mountainous basket onto the counter before the cashier, her eyes go slightly wide at the sheer amount of products they are purchasing, and although Zitao has never stepped foot in this place, in particular, he gets the strange feeling in the pit of his stomach that the makeup here must be quite expensive. 

The cashier, however, is every bit as expectantly chipper and kind as Zitao would expect from a retail worker on a good day, a smile on her face and coral blush on her perky cheeks, and in a sweet singsong, she asks, “You bought a lot of makeup, didn’t you? Is this for any certain occasion, or just buying for the first time?”

Zitao finds himself tongue-tied, unsure of how to answer such a question. Quickly, Luhan fills in the space, “He does drag,” the blonde says, and the girl smiles and coos at the answer. “He’s running low on some stuff and was looking to expand his collection, so I came with him to help pick stuff out.”

“Do you do drag also?” She asks, voice and gaze directed to the blonde as she scans each item with a mechanical beep and places them into a plastic bag. Luhan gives a half-confirmative shrug and a whittled sometimes, and Zitao can’t help but be impressed with his finely-tuned people skills. Zitao envies him for being able to talk to just about anyone and everyone, yet Zitao can’t seem to articulate whole sentences without panicking. “Wow, that’s so cool,” she continues with a pretty grin on her small lips. “I think drag makeup is so breathtaking. Oh! Did you need any recommendations for anything? Like brands, formulas, products?”

“I think we got everything, but thank you,” Luhan smiles at the cashier, and Zitao looks away shyly. 

“No problem,” the girl tells them as she begins to tissue-wrap and bag the palettes. “Just so you know in case you come back in the near future, we do offer a rewards program where if you make an account with us and link your email, you will receive newsletters and notifications of brand sales, as well as coupon codes that coincide with such sales. Would you be interested in signing up?”

This time, the question is directed at Zitao, and his heart thumps as he meets her gaze, just as soft and innocent as it had been the whole time, and Zitao should have no reason to feel panicked and afraid. Right? “Oh, um, sure,” he stammers, and the girl smiles and passes him a flyer and a pen. When he looks it over, it’s an application requiring his name and his email, just as she had told him. He takes the pen and begins scribbling down his family name when he stops; if he ever comes back here, he will more than likely come back as Yingtao. Exhaling out a stifled breath, he continues to write; Huang Yingtao. He’s got to get used to that. 

When he moves down the application, he writes in his email as well as his cell phone number before passing the form back. “Thank you,” the girl sings as she clicks the pen and slides it into her waist apron pocket. “Alright, your total comes to seven-hundred eighty-three and fifty-seven cents.”

Heart dropping into his gut, Zitao’s eyes practically bug right out of his skull. There is no ing way he can let Luhan spend nearly a thousand ing dollars just on makeup for him - is he out of his ing mind? “Han, that’s way too much,” he whispers beside his best friend, and he’s not shocked that it seems to catch the cashier’s ears judging by the way she looks up at them as Luhan procures his wallet and following that, his credit card. 

“Shut up, you,” Luhan teases as he slides his card through the scanner. “I don’t spend money on myself, so let me spoil you, alright?”

“Okay, but just because you have a lot of money doesn’t mean it won’t eventually run out,” Zitao presses again, and something in him deflates as the cashier instructs Luhan to type in his pin code and write his signature on the electronic pad. “Han, no!”

“Tao,” Luhan says with a glance over his shoulder, and Zitao shrinks just a little bit under the edge of that gaze. His friend is speaking sternly, flatly, and although not angry, Zitao can tell that Luhan has no intention of budging from his stance in this conversation. “I said it’s fine, trust me. It would take a lot more than me buying makeup for me to go bankrupt. It would take me buying you a hundred cars for me to go bankrupt, alright? And I mean expensive cars, Tao. Relax.”

He pouts as the transaction passes and his friend slides his card back into its slot in his wallet. “Don’t you have to spend money on you sometimes, though? Like, food and gas and… soap, and things?”

Luhan offers the cashier a kind grin as he takes the bag from her and pulls it over the counter before looking over at his friend. “Well, of course, but that kind of thing is cheap. I don’t splurge on myself just because I have a millionaire’s inheritance. You’d be shocked, Tao, that I’m actually far from spoiled. Why do you think I only make minimum wage waiting tables? It’s because I don’t hold my money above myself. Having money is great, sure, but if I have nothing to make me happy outside of my money, like keeping your mother alive and seeing you happy and prosperous, then what is the point of being filthy rich?”

The question sticks to Zitao’s skin like tacky humidity. He’s never thought of it that way - what would life be like if they lived it solely for money without the pursuit of happiness? Zitao can’t fathom how lonely that must feel, to have your worldview revolve solely around fending for yourself and not enjoying a single thing you do. Come to think of it, isn’t that how Zitao lives now? Of course, his world revolves around money for his happiness, but now that he thinks about it, it explains why Zitao is constantly so lonely and apathetic. 

“Besides,” Luhan starts up again, and when it pulls Zitao out of his reverie, he notices the warmest of smiles on his best friend’s lips, “we have more stuff to buy. Okay?”

Nodding on auto-pilot, Zitao lets the guy drag him to other corners of the store as he thinks about the statement. If I have nothing to make me happy outside of my money, then what is the point of being filthy rich?

Zitao hopes that once his first check comes in, he will finally be happy. 

Five-thousand dollars.

It’s five-thousand dollars later when Zitao finally leaves the mall, finally sighs as he plops into the passenger seat, arms and back aching to all hell after piling bags upon bags of makeup, personal hygiene products, shoes, and even clothes into the back of Luhan’s car, and Zitao has half his wits about him to give his best friend a piece of his mind over the ridiculous amount he’s spent. “You’re crazy, you know,” Zitao comments as Luhan tucks himself into the driver’s seat and slides his key into the ignition. 

“I know,” he responds with a grin, “but hey, I gotta do what I gotta do to keep my best friend in a job, right?”

Zitao rolls his eyes. “You’re going to have wasted five-thousand dollars if I get fired.”

Nonchalantly, his best friend shrugs. “Well, then I guess you’ll have to not get fired, now won’t you?” 

“Just wait, there will come a day when some cheeky decides to stick their hand up my and discovers oh, she’s got a backward ! That’ll be the day I waste five-thousand dollars.”

His best friend laughs out loud at the comment as he pulls out of the parking lot, and Zitao sighs into the seat at the lull of the moving vehicle. He’s truthfully worn out from his long day of shopping spree after shopping spree, and his arms feel like they’ve been sliced into tenths. After this, he needs a good, long, hot shower and about fifteen hours of sleep, because tomorrow, he’s going to hurt like hell. 

“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Luhan pipes up suddenly as they pull out onto the main road. “I have a shift on Friday at eleven, so I’ll have time to bring you to your second interview and all, but you’ll have to go somewhere and stay there after that unless you have bus fare. Would you want me to bring you home or to the hospital?”

He frowns slightly; right, his interview is at eight forty-five in the morning. Assuming his interview doesn’t take over an hour, they should be fine on time, since the restaurant and Luhan’s apartment aren’t very far from each other, but Zitao still hasn’t told his mother the secret about his job. How is he supposed to explain himself if he just shows up one day in full disguise? “Home would be better,” he answers among his thoughts. “My mother still doesn’t know I applied as a female.”

Ah. “Understandable. You’ll probably want to go home and change and then head to the hospital yourself, then. Well, assuming you one day tell her, how are you going to break it to her?”

Zitao snorts, watching hazily as they turn onto the highway and Luhan’s blinker clicks rhythmically. “Well, we already ruled out that I can’t just show up and say surprise! but I actually haven’t thought of how I’m going to say it. I mean, I know she’s not going to necessarily judge me for it, but it makes me uncomfortable to think of telling her. I don’t want to make things weird between us, not right now. She’s too sick for that.”

“That’s okay,” Luhan offers soothingly. “Don’t rush it. If I know your mother, she would never disown you no matter what decisions you chose to make, and definitely wouldn’t look at you strangely for dressing as a female, let alone earning money as a female. Actually, she would be proud of you for being brave enough to do what you did.”

“I know,” he hums as he gazes out the window at the saturated sunset, eyelids growing heavy. He knows it’s not about the judgment he will or will not receive - it’s about admitting it to people. Zitao has a hard enough time admitting it to himself, let alone his own mother. 

His ears catch the sound of the leather on Luhan’s belt grunting as the man shifts slightly, and Zitao exhales and lets his eyes drift closed. “You tire easily, Tao-ah,” Luhan comments gently, and Zitao gives a passive hum before he feels the gentle patting of a loving palm on his shoulder. “It’s alright, we’ll be home in about thirty minutes. Get some shut-eye, I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Zitao sighs and leans his head against the warm kiss of the sun-glazed window, sighing as he finds a comfortable position. No matter what happens, Luhan will always have his back and will always be there to hold his hand when nobody else will. Perhaps when it comes time to break the news to his mother, Luhan would be willing to mediate.

He heaves a tired breath as he tosses the last of the shopping bags onto his bed, overthrown with colorful plastic and shoeboxes and spilled fabrics, and Zitao lets out a sigh at the sight. How is he supposed to organize all of this? 

He decides to start easy and light - heading into his closet and grabbing each and every empty hanger and tossing them into a pile in the corner by his dresser, and he realizes in disdain that he only really has four full outfits. Now that he’s in possession of so much clothing, he feels like he’s never had anything to wear at all in his entire life. The Cons of Being Poor, part one, chapter three: Zitao has no experience with filling a closet or owning prints, and therefore, has no idea how to pair clothing together in miscellaneous colors. 

Too tired, however, he decides against pairing outfits right now and decides he’ll have to make that a project for each night before his shifts in the morning, assuming his schedule would be something like a routine full-time job, something like eight-to-five on a weekday basis. 

Suddenly shy about his own masculine, darkly-pigmented clothing, he tucks them into the far left side of his closet just in case anyone were to peer curiously into his boudoir, which Zitao isn’t exactly sure why anybody would have permission to be looking at his belongings, in the first place. He decides to put the dresses Luhan purchased for him in the middle of the top bar, all floral prints and some with pleated skirts and laced bodices, and Zitao can’t help but find them strangely beautiful. Next, come the blouses, all crisp and polo-necked of varying pastel colors, some floral as well, and he hands them beside the dresses. Next to the shirts go the skirts, all varying lengths, colors, and patterns, some plaid and latticed while others thick and woolen, some pleated and monotoned and others long and billowy with laced hemming. 

Where Zitao grows confused is the shoeboxes - his closet is only so wide and only so deep, and Zitao is not one to own more than two pairs of shoes in this economy, so where is he supposed to put the dozens of boxes piled high next to his bed? 

He decides after a brief spell of exhaling pitifully, hands on his hips, that he’s going to have to line them up against his wall to the right of his door, adjacent to his closet. He leaves his sneakers and his dress shoes at the bottom of his closet for his own personal keepsake, that way they aren’t in full view should anyone sneak a look into his bedroom. 

Not being a glutton, Zitao genuinely doesn’t see the necessity in owning fifteen pairs of high-heels and five pairs of sneakers; he feels like he could accomplish everything with a pair of white and black in both styles, making it four rather than twenty, but he knows he isn’t qualified with the knowledge to speak about feminine fashion styles. 

After this, comes the makeup - and Zitao breathes a sigh at the simplicity of organizing it. Not owning a vanity, Zitao uses the bare top of his low dresser, only hip-high and glossed at the top. He stacks the palettes in the back and lines the brushes up in the very front for easy access, but once he gets to the lipsticks, he starts to grow confused. Are they all lipsticks, or are some glosses? Are they all for lips and not eyes? Zitao doesn’t remember even half of the makeup mumbo-jumbo that Luhan had been mumbling to him in the store earlier. 

Sighing, he lines the tubes up by color: pale pinks with the vivid pinks, corals with the oranges, berries next to the reds, creating a warm rainbow across the top of his dresser shifting from orange to cranberry. Behind the row of lip colors, he places the foundation bottles and the concealer tube as well as the rest of the small products, including the liners and pencils. Does Luhan really expect him to have to do his own makeup every single morning? Zitao isn’t sure he even knows how to apply makeup.

Tired, Zitao exhales loudly and lets the store-branded plastic bag fall from his fingers and drift to his feet. Is this truly worth it? 

Sure, he’s aware that the money is an absolute necessity, but work is still always in the question. Zitao could pack all this up and hand the receipts right back to each individual store and get Luhan his five-thousand dollars back and could sign up as a , or something, and cater to men and women frustrated with their marriages. He sighs, for he doesn’t know what to do. 

Maybe a shower is in order to help clear his mind. Then, maybe after his shower, Zitao will look over his pictures from the amusement park. Yeah, that couldn’t hurt too much.

Tomorrow. His private interview is tomorrow.

Now past the infamous debilitating worry that Zitao is used to, he finds himself shaking hands with something more unfamiliar in the way that his hands tremble, in the way his drinking glass shatters when he falters and his grip spasms, in the way that he blanks out mid-shoelace tying and in the way he finds his breath ripped from him the second he opens his eyes in the morning. 

This isn’t his average, everyday anxiety. This is terror,