Work Text:
“D’you think I need a shave?”
“Hm?”
Penelope looks up from her laptop on the sofa to find her boyfriend surveying his appearance in the entryway mirror of their flat. Colin runs his fingers through his dark brown curls, before gliding them over his jaw and over his five o’clock shadow.
“The gala on Friday,” he reminds her.
Though he can’t see her from his reflection in the mirror, Penelope nods in response, thinking about the curve-hugging black-and-gold gown she has in a garment bag in her closet for the occasion. “You want to shave for the gala?”
“Should I?” Colin asks again, this time turning to look at her on the sofa. She blinks back at him, at first confused as to why he’s asking her about what to do with his own face, before quickly getting too distracted by said face (which, in her defense, is their topic of conversation) to answer within a reasonable amount of time.
Her eyes sweep over his curls, his sideburns, before travelling back to his chiselled jaw—to the shadow in question—and then land on his lips.
Said lips curve into a smirk as he follows the path of her gaze.
Colin slowly moves from the mirror to her spot on the couch and plucks her laptop out of her hold to set it on the coffee table. Penelope is seated on the sofa with her legs outstretched and her back leaning against the arm rest. He lifts her legs to pull them across his lap, and she slides across the cushions with a sudden squeak, coming to a halt just a few centimetres from her boyfriend’s cheeky grin.
“Why don’t you take a look?” He leans in impossibly closer, wiggling his eyebrows. “Inspect the merchandise. If I’m going to be your trophy husband at this Publisher’s Gala, I want to look the part.”
Penelope laughs. “I think you mean trophy boyfriend.”
Colin casually waves off her correction. “Dress for the job you want and all that. Now take a good look and tell me what needs to be done.”
Penelope shakes her head and huffs out another laugh in astonishment, taking a moment to simply marvel at her proximity to Colin’s face and the implication of his remark. Though they’ve been friends for most of their lives, they’ve only been dating for five months. She has, however, been in love with him for as long as she can remember. And sometimes she still can’t quite believe that her dreams have blended into reality—that Colin loves her back, and loves to talk about their future like that.
She makes a show of straightening her posture and cracking her knuckles before gently taking his face between her palms. As soon as she touches him, Colin’s shoulders sag and his eyelids start to droop. He lets out the faintest little sigh between his parted lips.
Penelope narrows her eyes at him in mock concentration as she tilts his head from left to right.
Truthfully—though she admits she may be biased—Colin is already perfect. Already startlingly beautiful. He could show up wearing a garbage bag and he’d still be the most gorgeous man in the room by yards. She’d be thrilled to have him on her arm, polished or not.
She could simply tell him that. But right now, he is putty in her fingers, and she likes touching his face.
“First off…” she says, humming in concentration. “The hair is good. Perfect, in fact.” She then tilts his head so she can plant a light kiss to his temple, and then turns it to kiss the other side. “The sideburns are very dashing.”
“Yeah?” Colin grins, even as the tips of his ears begin to redden at the compliment. Penelope starts to kiss those too.
“Mm-hm,” she nods. She lets her fingers graze over his facial hair and trace his jawline, biting her lip when she feels him shudder.
“Beard texture is tops,” she murmurs. “Sexy with a suit, and distinguished.”
“Distinguished?” He echoes, raising an eyebrow, his eyes shining with delight. She nods in confirmation and tilts his head up to pepper kisses over his jawline, and ends with a nip just below his ear. He elicits a low, satisfied rumble in response.
Colin leans in close and nuzzles her nose. “Have I ever told you how sexy your vocabulary is?”
“You have, actually,” she grins. “At least twice.” He huffs out a laugh.
Penelope plants her palms back on either side of his head and continues her assessment. “Nose, perfectly shaped.” She plants a kiss on the tip of his nose.
“Eyes, a most remarkable shade of blue.” She presses a kiss to each of his eyelids.
“Eyebrows… actually,” she pauses for a moment to squint, “your eyebrows could use a bit of a clean-up.”
Said eyebrows shoot up on his face. The remarkably blue eyes blink. “Wait, really?”
Penelope bites her lip, a little guilty to have said anything at all, and nods.
Colin simply laughs. “Alright. I guess I’ll get my eyebrows done. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“Or we could do it now.”
He tilts his head at her in question, and she quickly scrambles off her spot on the sofa to run to the bathroom.
When she returns, she holds up a pair of tweezers, as if in answer to Colin’s question.
“You’re gonna pluck my eyebrows?”
“Mm-hm,” she confirms. “Lean back.”
Colin does as he’s told, adjusting his position on the sofa to lean comfortably on the backrest. Once he’s settled, Penelope sits on his lap, face to face, with her thighs bracketing his legs.
He raises his eyebrows at her suggestively, his hands instinctively finding her hips and sliding down her pyjama shorts to her thighs. Penelope only smirks before swiftly pushing his head all the way down, angling his face to look up at the ceiling.
“Close your eyes,” she instructs. He complies easily, and she pulls down on his right eyelid before plucking the first few hairs with her tweezers.
The room goes quiet as Penelope loses herself in concentration, her eyebrows knitted together and the side of her bottom lip between her teeth. Colin doesn’t say a word as she plucks out several hairs along his brow, sitting perfectly still and giving her thighs the occasional squeeze when she plucks a particularly painful hair.
“Ow!” Colin jerks in his seat as she pulls out a particularly stubborn strand low on his eyelid.
Penelope grips onto his shoulders to steady herself from the sudden movement, though Colin’s hands are already holding her in place on her waist.
“Sorry,” she murmurs apologetically, before planting a light kiss onto his eyelid then on his lips.
She resumes her work, more careful this time with her face hovering incredibly close to his. It’s a wonderful view, and Penelope works slowly so she can take the time to count the long, curled lashes on his eyes.
Colin yelps again in pain after another difficult strand. She mumbles her apology and repeats her earlier kiss to his eyelid and to his lips.
Less than a minute later, Colin hisses and jolts again. Penelope blinks in surprise but does as she’s done before and leaves kisses on his face before moving over to his other eye.
On the first strand, he yelps again. She presses her kiss to his eye, but pulls away before kissing his lips.
When Colin’s head chases after her for the kiss he had expected to receive, Penelope narrows her eyes at him with suspicion. “Are you actually in pain or are you just fishing for kisses?”
“I’m definitely in pain,” Colin says, his face the picture of feigned innocence. “So much pain.”
“Well if that’s the case, we should stop.” Penelope makes a show of moving off his lap, but Colin quickly grabs her hips to keep her in place.
“Woah, woah wait, you can’t stop now. You’ll leave my eyebrows uneven.”
“I’ll take you to a professional to get them waxed,” she says, mirroring his earlier innocent expression.
“But you were doing such a good job,” Colin reasons. Penelope spots his jaw twitch the way she knows it does when he’s trying not to laugh. He knows the jig is up. “It’s a waste of money to pay for someone else to do just one of my eyebrows.”
Penelope snorts, unable to resist. “Yeah, we don’t want to dry up your trust fund on a trip to the salon.”
“Exactly,” he grins. “You still owe me a kiss by the way.”
Penelope rolls her eyes, but can’t hold back her amusement as she leans forward to bestow on him the kiss he had very clearly been fishing for.
“Now will you behave?”
“No promises,” he answers cheekily.
Penelope rolls her eyes, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from twitching upward before resuming her work.
True to his non-word, Colin is quick to complain after a few plucks at his eye, and shamelessly puckers his lips in anticipation. Penelope rolls her eyes, but cannot, for the life of her, hide her amusement and complies. She gives up entirely towards the end of their beauty session and simply bestows a light peck to random spots of his face with every brow hair plucked.
When she finishes she leans back on her heels and lets out a satisfied sigh. “All done.”
She scrambles off his lap and hears him whine in complaint from their bedroom, where she picks up a hand mirror to bring back to the sofa and show him her handiwork.
Colin takes the mirror from her as she settles back into his lap. He turns his head side to side as he inspects his reflection, raising and lowering his eyebrows, a glint of amusement in his eye. “Smart, sexy, talented, and is a promising beautician. What can’t you do?”
Penelope laughs. She raises both her hands to his face to smooth her thumbs over his brows.
“So how do I look now?” Colin asks, savouring her touch. “Like a nicely-polished trophy husband?”
She rolls her eyes and leans in to nuzzle his nose. “Better. You look like my smart, talented, sexy boyfriend.”
“I’ll take the sexy,” Colin says lightly, although she sees his ears going pink, “but we’re definitely gonna need to re-negotiate the boyfriend part.”
They laugh together. Colin brings up one of his large hands to cradle her face and tuck a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Thank you for cleaning up my eyebrows. Unfortunately, I don’t have any payment for the service.”
Penelope snorts at the sly smile he gives her, and giggles more at the way his serviced eyebrows wiggle in mischief. She loops her arms around his neck and tangles her fingers in his hair.
“Don’t worry,” she says, her face drifting forward to hover over his lips. “I have a few cash alternatives in mind.”