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Vic is not clean-shaven often. He’s always afraid, even after having proof to the contrary, that he’ll look in the mirror and see Victoria. But he’s offered an evening in the city and a fancy restaurant, a fine hotel, for their anniversary. He’s willing to shave for that…
Well, willing to let his Spy take care of it for him.
In the hotel, with time to spare before dinner, he is not even half-dressed when he lays his head in the Spy’s lap, stretched across the bed. On the nightstand, there is an expensive shaving kit, a mug holding a cake of the Spy’s shaving soap and a tumbler of water.
The kit is new, and while it is a fine one, it is not ornate, not elegant the way the Spy’s is. The handles of the brush and of the straight razor are a deep red wood. The Spy had picked it out, not wanting to find something exactly like his own, wanting something that would meet Vic’s standards. Something simple, masculine… but something good enough to make a gift of.
He has lotions and tonics and pomades and hot towels all standing by, and Vic had watched him with a warm smile as he’d used the strop moments before.
"Thanks for wanting to do this for me. Wanted to be cleaned up for taking ya out." He chuckles, a little self-deprecating. "I just get a little… mirror-shy, with a clean shave…"
"Oh? Cher, I’m stripping away hair, nothing more. It does not change the strong jut of your chin, does not whittle away your jaw. You are every bit a man without. I will admit, I like you scruffy, but under the circumstances… you know you clean up into a very handsome gentleman when you make the effort. There is no trace of the feminine about you."
"I know. But… still. Rather have you do it."
"That pleases me." The Spy chuckles, stroking Vic’s hair back.
They rearrange themselves slightly, the Spy grabbing a pillow to help prop Vic up, a dry towel to catch bristles and shaving suds. He hummed, whipping up a lather with the brush and spreading it thickly across cheeks, chin, and throat.
"I love this… as much as I like you scruffy and dirty, isn’t there such a pleasure in these things? Now that— that is my kind of masculine." He flicks the razor open, holding it carefully, turning it under the light for Vic’s inspection. "Fine things like this… things a gentleman owns, things only a gentleman owns."
He likes thinking of it the Spy’s way. He has a point. A man’s shaving kit, a nice one with a beaver brush and a straight razor, it’s nothing like what a woman would own or use… That air the Spy has created in their hotel room of a barber’s shop, a little dark and smelling of aftershave and barbasol, filled with the voices of men. A space that, even with the Spy’s expensive, clean tastes, has nothing of the feminine about it.
For all that he’s never liked having a smooth face much, the Spy is right— the act of shaving, or of being shaved, is a man’s act, and his manhood is what the Spy devotes himself to in every scrape of the razor.
"Oh, you are so handsome…" The Spy sighs, wiping at the last of the soap away with the clean corner of a towel. "I say that all the time, I know."
The application of bay rum aftershave turned into rather more of a caress than intended. Once he has Vic sitting up, once he is standing between spread knees with hair pomade open in hand, he is definitely playing as much as he is neatening, his fingertips massaging at Vic’s scalp before smoothing his hair into place.
"Oh." He sighs, voice a little thick. "Oh, go and look in the mirror. Really."
Vic does, trepidation vanishing. No, he is not the Arrow Collar Man… only the Spy could so effortlessly fit that bill. But even so…
"You’re a miracle worker." He jokes.
"You are a handsome man." His Spy purrs, slipping up behind him to admire the picture they make side by side. He strokes one smooth cheek. "For an occasional change, I do enjoy it… once in a long while. And then when your scruff comes back, it gets to be new all over again, having a little beard burn… The odd clean shave keeps me from getting desensitized to it."
"Oh, well, then all right." Vic chuckles. "That’s a good reason. And, course, I like letting you touch me up."
"Well, that I will never tire of." The Spy promises, kissing his way along a newly-smoothed jawline. "Never…"
It is a chore to pull away, to dress for dinner and to leave the room, but in the back booth of the restaurant, there is enough seclusion to reach over, to stroke cheeks and whisper sweetly without being seen. And then, after, the room is still waiting.