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#20: ɪ ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ ʜᴇʟᴘ ꜰᴀʟʟɪɴɢ ɪɴ ʟᴏᴠᴇ

"I look like a little girl."

Eddie tilted his head and scrunched his nose up in slight disgust as he gazed into the long body mirror set against the wall. It was Halloween evening, and I wasn't about to let the poor kid walk these streets naked. 

He lightly pulled at the white silk robe he wore down to his knees, uncomfortably repositioning the feathery wings on straps that settled over his shoulder. A long gold wire looped around his head like a tiara and lifted into the air, creating a perfect circular ring that lit up if you pressed a certain button on the back.

I shouldn't have been watching and lurking as he looked at himself in the mirror, but I couldn't help it. He was fucking adorable. And he was adorable all  the time, so that was saying a lot.

I loomed from over his shoulder, looking down at his cheap gold slippers that he had found in the back of his mom's shoe closet. 

"A pretty little girl."

He sighed softly and picked at the straps on his arms in annoyance, finding the feathers extremely itchy. "I can't believe you talked me into this shit," he mumbled under his breath, his eyes flat and emotionless. "I'm not wearing a fucking skirt over this and you can't make me."

"Noted and understood," I pampered the small section of my red turtleneck shirt over my red jeans. I'm gonna be honest, I don't know how the fuck my mother found them either. I adjusted the red straps attached to the dragon-like wings, subtly pushing Eddie out of the way to get a better look in the mirror. "You brought the horns, didn't you?"

"You would've kicked my ass if I didn't," he held out a small pair of crimson devil horns from a small knapsack his mom had forced him to bring, pushing it into my hand. "It's been sitting in the back of my closet since the second grade."

"Good to put them to use," I gently settled them into my scalp, putting the fabricated wire around the back of my ears, conscious of the headache I would get later on from wearing them for too long. "How do I look?"

"There isn't much of a difference."

From behind us, seated on Bill's bed, Stan nodded.

"You look less like a dork without your glasses, too, I almost think it's better that you lost them," Eddie's watch timer went off and he sifted through his bag to find his pills, unscrewing the cap with a minor struggle. He tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and dry swallowed the motherfuckers. "Maybe get contacts or something. You can choose all sorts of colors too, if you want."

If it was anybody else telling me this shit, I would've backhanded them and laughed in their face about how their mother thought my glasses looked good anyways. But with Eddie, his opinions actually mattered.

I'm never wearing glasses again.

"Yeah, like red or something," Stan butted in, flipping the page of an action comic Bill had in one of his drawers. "That way people won't have to actually get to know you in order to understand what a creepy pain in the ass you are."

"I might just take up Mr. Keene about that. Eddie, you've still got that lifetime VIP pass to the pharmacy, don't you?" I lightly nudged his side with a small grin. "Think you can be a pal and sneak a guy in?"

"Shut up, asshole, I don't go that often."

I folded my arms and propped my foot up against the wall, careful to not touch the lightswitch by Bill's door frame. "Never in my life have I seen a man do checkups every other day. That's excessive, even for someone with a mild breathing condition."