Work Text:
“When was the last time you cut your hair?”
The contemplative silence following Tracker’s question is pierced by the buzz of insects outside.
“Uh...” Kristen considers this, rubbing the ends of her ponytail between her fingers. “I don’t know. Maybe, right before freshman year?”
Tracker raises her eyebrows. “That was like, two years ago!”
Kristen shrugs. “My mom didn’t really, uh, let me cut it growing up. I think she only took me to the salon because my brothers got chewing gum in my hair and she couldn’t get it out herself. But, the stylist only cut off the sticky pieces so maybe that doesn’t count as a real haircut.”
On the bed, Tracker rolls over to face Kristen on the floor. She reaches a hand out and gently touches the top of Kristen’s head, keeping it there as Kristen leans back into the touch.
“Can I?” Tracker asks, lightly tugging at the hair tie securing the ponytail in place.
“Hm? Oh,” Kristen says, noticing. “Yeah, sure.”
Tracker pulls the hair tie out, and Kristen’s long, red hair falls down across her back. Tracker smooths out the bumps left from the hair style.
“Wait,” Tracker says, thinking. “Why weren’t you allowed to cut your hair?”
Kristen, having closed her eyes as Tracker caressed her head, opens them. “Oh, uh. Yeah, well, I think it was a religious thing? Sort of like how most of the women at my church wore skirts and dresses instead of pants.”
Tracker hums a bit. “So, like, a femininity thing?”
“Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I tried to ask Pastor Amelia about it once, and she gave me this whole speech about how our hair is a gift from Helio and doing anything to it is, like, rebellion against our Helionic womanhood.”
“Oh, weird.”
“Yeah,” Kristen says, frowning a bit. “I don’t know, I never really thought about it. I kind of just wear my hair up all the time, like, out of the way.”
Tracker hums again, listening, and reaches down to gather Kristen’s hair in her hands. She begins to comb through the auburn tangles with her fingers, slow and methodical, as Kristen continues.
“But, like, I’m not sure if I even wanted to cut it. My parents let me wear jeans and stuff, so. Yeah. I don’t know,” she says, turning her head slightly toward Tracker behind her. “Why d’you ask?”
Tracker is working on a particularly thick knot by Kristen’s nape as she says, “Um, I don’t know. I was just wondering, since I realized you’ve had, like, the same hairstyle the whole time we’ve known each other.”
Kristen makes a noise of assent. “Hm. True.”
“But, also, like, I was just thinking, ‘cause it’s about to be summer, don’t you get hot?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Kristen says, shrugging a bit, the curtain of hair behind her shifting as she does. “But, I just have it in a ponytail usually, y’know?”
Tracker gathers the mass of Kristen’s hair, detangled and soft, and smooths it back down her back. She sits up and moves herself off the bed, joining Kristen on the floor, both of their backs up against the mattress.
“Yeah,” Tracker says, looking at Kristen with a glint in her eye. “But, like, babe. You’re free! You can do what you want now! Would you ever want to change it?”
Tracker watches Kristen’s face as she processes this question. She seems to be cycling through emotions, eyes fixed on some unseen point on the floor. Nearby, the box fan they’d installed with Jawbone’s help hums away in the open window.
“Maybe,” Kristen says, finally. She’s absentmindedly twirling a piece of hair, winding and unwinding it around her finger. “But I’m not sure what I’d even do to it.”
Tracker nods. “Yeah, there’s tons of options. Uh, you could cut it, obviously, or you could dye it, or you could buzz it-”
“Buzz it?” Kristen interrupts, pausing her hair-twirling.
“Oh, yeah, like shave it!” Tracker says. She rubs a hand over the side of her head, feeling her own freshly-shaven fuzz. “I buzzed my whole head after I got kicked out, just as, like, an independence thing. But it’s really nice.”
Kristen’s gaze follows Tracker’s hand, and she eyes her hair with an interested expression. “How long did it take to grow out? Like, the top part.”
Tracker thinks for a second. “Mmm... ‘cause of the lycanthropy, my hair grows really fast. But I reshave the sides, like, every two weeks?”
Kristen’s brow furrows, ever so slightly, in thought. She grows quiet, looking away again. Her hands, Tracker observes, are clasped in her lap, almost as if she’s praying. Tracker’s noticed this is a habit of Kristen’s; when she’s stressed or concentrated, her fingers seek each other, locked and steady in this familiar position.
Tracker lets the silence stretch out a bit, and moves to lie down on the floor, positioning her head in Kristen’s lap. Kristen dutifully stretches out her legs, adjusting to accommodate Tracker’s head. She unclasps her hands, busying them now with Tracker’s hair. She scratches lightly at the spot where the shaved parts end and the longer hair begins, and Tracker closes her eyes, enjoying the sensation.
They sit like this for a few minutes. Somewhere in the house, Jawbone puts on a record, the muffled sounds of jazz floating up to the bedroom.
Tracker cracks open an eye. Kristen, above her, worries her lip, looking distant as she continues to play with Tracker’s hair. Tracker lets herself just look at her girlfriend for a moment, enjoying the view even from this angle.
She loves Kristen. So much. And she loves how Kristen’s always on an adventure, always figuring something out, always chasing after something that’s just out of reach. Tracker’s said this to Kristen before, said how she loves to watch Kristen go on these adventures in her own head. But, it means that, sometimes, Kristen recedes into herself, leaving Tracker on the outside.
Like right now. Tracker watches, and Tracker wonders, but Kristen is quiet and contemplative, so Tracker has no idea what she’s thinking about.
Kristen eventually seems to notice Tracker’s staring, and looks down.
Tracker gives her a small smile. “What’re you thinking?”
Kristen looks back up at the room around her. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready to cut my hair.”
“Oh,” Tracker says, “that’s okay! There’s no, like, set timeline for things like this. You don’t need to cut it, ever, if you don’t want. It’s just good to know that you have the option to do this stuff, if you wanted, y’know?”
Kristen still looks uneasy. She makes a small, noncommittal noise.
“Hey,” Tracker says, reaching a hand up to grab Kristen’s hand. The angle is awkward, but Kristen lets her hand be taken so that Tracker can hold it against her chest. She kisses Kristen’s hand lightly. “There’s no right way to figure out who you are. You’ve spent the past, like, two years reevaluating the way you see yourself. That’s really hard!”
Kristen sighs. “Yeah,” she admits, “it is really hard. I’m so worried that, like, I’m just following what everyone else says I am. Which is just what I did before, but with my parents and the church instead of my friends.”
“Yeah, I totally get it,” Tracker says sympathetically, “but, like, there’s a million ways to be gay, and a million ways to be Kristen. The only right way is whatever feels right and, like, makes you happy.”
With that, Kristen finally smiles, and squeezes Tracker’s hand.
“But,” Tracker adds, giving Kristen her most wolfish grin, “I think you’d look hot with a shaved head, too. Just saying.”
Kristen scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, okay. You just think I look hot regardless.”
Tracker holds her hands up in surrender, taking Kristen’s with her. “Guilty as charged. Sorry, my girlfriend is really hot. Oh, wait,” she says, dropping Kristen’s hand. She twists to get up, and in one smooth motion, Tracker scoops Kristen up in her arms. “No, I’m not!”
Kristen yelps as Tracker picks her up bridal-style, and attempts to stand up. Tracker grunts, and lifts Kristen up, dumping her onto the bed unceremoniously. Tracker soon follows her onto the bed, sprawling out in the remaining space.
Kristen rolls toward Tracker, tucking herself into her side, a free hand splayed across Tracker’s stomach. “Thank you,” she says.
Tracker, still breathing heavily, inclines her head to look down at Kristen. “Hm?”
“Thank you, for talking to me about this. And for listening, y’know. I’m glad I have you.”
“Oh,” Tracker says. She cranes her neck to just barely kiss Kristen’s forehead. “Babe, of course. I’m here to support you, so here I am, supporting.”
Kristen squeezes Tracker. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I love you, like, a lot.” Kristen insists, raising her head off of Tracker’s chest to meet Tracker’s eye. Tracker can’t stop the laugh that escapes when she sees how determined Kristen looks, some of that zeal only a former youth pastor could have, lingering on her face.
Tracker pulls her back in with a bear hug. “And I love you a lot, Kristen Applebees. But, stop making this a competition,” Tracker admonishes, attacking Kristen’s head with a ridiculous series of kisses. “I’ll always win!”
Kristen laughs from within Tracker’s arms, attempting to wiggle free. There’s a moment of confusion, when Tracker’s new bracelets - brightly colored silicone ones, with a variety of sayings ranging from "i <3 redheads" to "say YES! to YES?" - get stuck in Kristen’s hair.
It takes multiple minutes for Tracker, trying to pull as little of Kristen’s hair out as possible, to finally disentangle herself. Once free, she shimmies the bracelets off her wrists and discards them onto the floor.
“I’m just saying,” Tracker begins, “like, obviously it’s your choice and your life, but if you shaved your head, we could cuddle more easily.”
Kristen huffs a laugh. “True.”
“And, I could do some, like, super romantic shit with your hair. Like, put it in a locket,” Tracker says thoughtfully. Kristen rolls her eyes.
“You could do that literally right now. I could just cut a tiny piece off.”
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be symbolic, y’know?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, I’ll think about it.”
Tracker can hear the warmth in Kristen’s voice, and the lack of anxiety, and so Tracker’s pleased. They settle back down in the bed, and make easy conversation about nothing at all, until Kristen grows quiet and dozes off, with Tracker close behind her.
---
Three weeks pass, with the Bad Kids spending the increasingly hot summer days spread out across Solace. Tracker, Kristen, Adaine, and Fig fill much of their time at the manor together, usually assisting Jawbone in one of his home renovation projects, any number of the others dropping in regularly. Tracker and Kristen, of course, spend far more time together, either out on missions or in their respective bedrooms. Adaine, happy to escape her status as a third wheel, takes it upon herself to visit Zayn at Cravencroft whenever the weather permits. Fig, to nobody’s surprise, spends as much time out of the house for rockstar-related purposes as possible.
It’s one of those days; Adaine has excused herself from lunch, with jokes being made by the others about double dates between Boggy and Edgar, and she heads out to the cemetery. Tracker and Kristen help Jawbone and Sandra Lynn clear the table, as Fig, quite obviously, sneaks away, the raucous sounds of her bass soon starting up from another room.
“Aw, you girls can head out,” Jawbone says, lifting dishes out of Kristen’s hands. “I got the rest of these. Get outta here!” he says good-naturedly, and both of them grin at him, plenty willing to escape from their chores.
As they race up the ancient staircase, Tracker grabs Kristen’s hand and pulls her along toward the northwestern wing. Kristen laughs, caught up in their mutual excitement and energy, and they bump into each other as they make their way to Tracker’s room.
They tumble into the room, and Tracker quickly closes the door behind them. Kristen jumps onto the bed, reaching over to the window to flick on the box fan. Once whirring to life, she flops back onto the bed, turning her head to look at Tracker.
Tracker, still standing, pauses as she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror above her desk. She hadn’t realized how long her hair had gotten, and mentally does the math. She supposes a shave is overdue, having postponed it longer than usual since they’d been out of town for a mission.
“Babe, what’re you thinking about over there?” Kristen asks from the bed, smiling.
“Oh, just thinking I need to reshave my sides soon,” Tracker responds. She has a thought, and turns toward Kristen. “Actually, wanna do it today?”
Kristen shrugs amiably. “Sure, why not. Do I have to do anything?”
Tracker huffs a laugh. “No! You can just watch,” she says. Then, grinning, “Watch, and learn.”
Kristen narrows her eyes in mock suspicion, but a trace of her high spirits still lingers on her face. “You just want to indoctrinate me into your gay agenda. You and your modern hairstyles.”
“As if you don’t try to indoctrinate the gays into your YES? agenda?” Tracker replies. “I’ve heard about the GSA meetings! I had to explain to poor Ragh that he wasn’t required to be religious to attend those!”
“I would do no such thing.”
“You’re such a liar, Kristen Applebees. You’re lucky you’re cute,” Tracker says, giving Kristen an exaggerated once-over.
Kristen rolls her eyes, fighting a smile.
Tracker grins back, and turns to dig through her desk drawer. She rummages for a few seconds before triumphantly pulling out first a pair of wireless clippers, and then, after rummaging a little bit more, she finds a guard, a comb, and hairclips. She tosses most of her bounty onto the floor, and snaps the guard onto the clippers, switching them on to assure they still work. A harsh buzz fills the room, startling her and Kristen both. Tracker quickly switches them off.
She grabs the mirror off of the wall, positioning it across from the bed, on the floor against her dresser. Kristen, from the bed, rolls over to regard herself in the reflection. Tracker stands back up and moves to her closet, quickly retrieving a spare towel from within. She shakes it free of any dust, and lays it out in front of the mirror.
“Should we put on music?” Kristen asks.
“Umm... I mean, I don’t think we’d be able to hear it over the clippers, y’know?”
“Oh, true.”
Tracker kneels in front of the mirror. She can see Kristen behind her, watching with intrigue.
“Alright, let’s do it,” she says, and Kristen gives her a thumbs up in the mirror.
Tracker inspects her hair. She decides to start with the left side, and takes the comb, locating the line between the once-shaven section, grown out to almost a full inch, and the longer pieces up top, parting it to further define the sections. She clips the longer pieces toward her forehead, so that she has better visibility of the sides, combing the shorter pieces down until it’s all uniform.
Switching the clippers on, Tracker gets to work. The room is once again filled with a loud, mechanical buzz, loudest near Tracker’s ears as she moves the clippers to her head. She starts at her sideburns, guiding the razor up toward the crown of her head, stopping at the defined part. Cut hair begins to fall, some sticking to her cheekbones, as Tracker shaves it off.
She cranes her neck to get the tricky bit behind her ear, smoothly gliding the clippers up along the curve. She pauses, clippers buzzing, to brush off pieces of hair from her face and neck, onto the towel below. As she goes, she methodically uses her free hand to keep the longer pieces pulled away, ensuring that the part is clearly visible. She uses brief, horizontal sweeps of the razor along the line of the part, cleaning up the edges.
Tracker switches off the clippers, and sits back to assess her work. The left side of her head is neatly shaved, close to her scalp. She thinks the lines and the part all look good, so she unclips the longer pieces, shaking her head until everything falls into place.
She catches Kristen’s eye in the mirror. “How does it look?” She twists and turns her head slightly, to give Kristen the full picture.
Kristen’s eyes roam over Tracker’s reflected face. She nods thoughtfully. “Good!”
Tracker nods in return. Now for the right side.
She clips her hair back up, this time combing from the right side of her head. Now able to wield the clippers in her dominant hand, Tracker makes fast work of this side, moving across her head with deft, easy strokes of the razor. She clips her ear at one point, just a bit, but not enough to cut herself.
Beneath her, a dusting of dark hair collects on the towel. Tracker makes one final pass along the part of her hair, then switches off the clippers. She flips her head upside down over the towel, and shakes her hair out from the roots, scrubbing her hands over the shaved sections to loosen any lingering hair.
She flips her head back up and straightens herself out in the mirror. She makes a weak attempt to style her hair, tousling it a bit before deciding it’s not worth the effort. It’ll look better once she’s had a shower, but in Tracker’s opinion, it looks pretty damn good already.
She always feels better with a freshly done haircut. Cleaner, and in control.
Tracker turns around, moving to kneel in front of the bed where Kristen is lying on her stomach. “Well, what do you think?”
Kristen takes in Tracker before her, and Tracker tries not to squirm under the weight of her gaze. Tracker, at this intimate distance, can see each of Kristen’s freckles.
Kristen, with an expression of concentration, reaches her hands out to hold Tracker’s head, turning it this way and that. She then holds Tracker still, her hands on the shaved sections, thumbs rubbing the downy soft hair. Tracker unconsciously leans into the touch, closing her eyes; this is her favorite part of shaving her hair.
“It looks great,” Kristen says.
Tracker smiles. She opens her eyes, and finds Kristen looking at her with a furrowed brow, chewing on her lip.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” Tracker asks, placing her hands on top of Kristen’s, still holding her face.
Kristen spends a moment examining Tracker’s face, before saying, “Do you think we could shave my head now?”
Tracker’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “Oh!” she says, “yeah? Sure!”
She lightly tugs on Kristen’s hands, encouraging her to join Tracker on the floor. Kristen pulls her hands back so that she can lift herself up off the bed, and climb down next to Tracker. They both position themselves across from the mirror, regarding the reflections looking back at them.
Tracker is watching Kristen. Kristen seems to be trying to solve a mystery in her head, the final clue hiding somewhere in her reflection. She pulls at her ponytail absentmindedly.
“So,” Tracker begins, “today? Today’s the day?” She tries to sound encouraging, but Kristen simply squints at herself in the mirror.
A beat. “Yeah,” Kristen says, “today’s the day. I don’t think a better day is gonna happen, so I should just do it now, right?”
Tracker makes a hesitant noise. “Mmm...I mean, today’s as good a day as any, yeah. But, like, you should only do it if you really want to.”
“I do,” Kristen says firmly.
Tracker nods. “Alright, let’s do it!”
Kristen doesn’t move at first, still stuck looking at herself. Then, she snaps out of it, pulling her hair out of the ponytail.
The afternoon sun, having slowly crept around the room, now lights up a square on the floor next to them with gentle light. As Kristen lets her hair down, it catches the light, almost glowing. She runs her hands through the red locks a few times, anxiously.
Tracker realizes it might be easier to do this with a high vantage point. She pulls the chair from her desk over to the mirror, and positions it behind Kristen. She also grabs a pair of scissors from her desk.
“Alright,” Tracker says, gathering her tools and moving up to sit in the chair. “You ready? You sure?”
Kristen nods sharply, but looks unsure.
Tracker gently squeezes Kristen’s shoulders before her. “You really don’t have to do this, you know? Nobody whose opinion matters really cares what you look like.”
“I know. But I want to,” Kristen replies, her jaw set. She looks up, catching Tracker’s eye in the mirror. “But, thanks for checking. I appreciate it. And you.”
Tracker smiles, and gives her shoulders another squeeze. “Well, we have to start with cutting most of it off, ‘cause you have a lot of hair, and the clippers probably can’t handle that. That okay?”
Kristen nods.
“Do you want to make the first cut?” Tracker asks, holding out the scissors.
Kristen’s eyes widen, and dart to Tracker’s outstretched hand. “Oh,” she says, “uh...” She trails off, but grabs the scissors nonetheless.
She stares at them like they’re a foreign object. “Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Kristen says, seemingly talking herself into it. “I can do this.”
“You can do this!” Tracker affirms.
“I can do this. I’m a new person, I can do what I want,” Kristen continues. “And I want to do this.”
She seems to steel herself, grasping a section of her hair. She twists it, securing her grip, and positions the scissors at her scalp.
Snip.
Kristen cuts, and a long piece of hair falls from her head. She sits still, holding a remaining portion of her red hair in one hand, scissors in the other.
“Babe!” Tracker says, shaking Kristen lightly by the shoulders. “You did it!”
“I did it,” Kristen says, stunned. “I did it! That was easy!”
She cuts the rest of the hair grasped in her hand. Then, she takes hold of another section, and, snip, cuts it off. A broad smile forms on Kristen’s face as she realizes what she’s doing.
Snip, snip. Kristen cuts away at her hair with ease, removing larger sections as she goes. Snip. Tracker watches happily in the mirror, noting just how carefree Kristen looks in this moment.
It takes her a few minutes, but Kristen eventually makes her way across her whole head, a pile of long, auburn hair forming a small nest on the towel around her.
When she finishes, Kristen examines her work. Tracker silently thinks that Kristen looks a little bit like a baby bird; her hair, chopped off unevenly, sticks up wildly in some places. She tries not to smile, but fails when Kristen bursts out laughing.
“I look ridiculous!” Kristen exclaims, gleefully.
Tracker grins. “No, you don’t!” she tries to say, comfortingly, but Kristen is laughing too hard to even care.
“No, I do.” Kristen says. “But I don’t even care. I love it already. Let’s keep going.”
Tracker shrugs amicably, and reaches down to retrieve the clippers. With them in hand, she smooths a hand over the choppy hair sticking up across Kristen’s head.
She switches the clippers on, and starts from the bottom of Kristen’s scalp, pressing the razor against her neck and sweeping up. Short tufts of hair fall from Kristen’s head, a smooth, shorn path left in the razor’s wake.
Tracker takes special care shaving around Kristen’s ears, and around her face, brushing any errant pieces away from her eyes as she goes. Kristen diligently watches Tracker’s hands in the mirror, wide eyes following each movement as Tracker makes her way across her head. She seems fascinated, more than anything. Tracker notices, absentmindedly, that Kristen’s hands are clasped in her lap.
Tracker makes a few final passes with the clippers, and proceeds to switch them off. The silence of the room seems to swell as the buzzing ceases, and Tracker feels compelled to hold her breath as she sees Kristen lean forward in the mirror.
Kristen’s mouth drops open ever so slightly. She goes to touch her hair, her hands ghosting just a few inches from her head, unsure what to do with the sheer lack of hair there. She rubs a cautious hand against her scalp.
Kristen looks...
Tracker thinks Kristen looks radiant. Her face seems so open, revealed in all its peachy, freckled glory. Tracker notices she can see the perpetually-pink tips of Kristen's ears now, as well as a small birthmark, just by her temple. She seems stronger, too, sitting up straighter now that some sort of weight has been lifted.
Tracker watches Kristen, transfixed by the feeling of freshly shaven hair against her palm, rubbing back and forth. Her mouth, still suspended slightly, curves into a small smile.
Tracker squeezes Kristen’s shoulders. “Well?”
“It’s gone,” Kristen says, both hands roaming over her head. “It’s all gone! Oh, my God!”
Kristen beams, suddenly. Tracker can’t help the grin that breaks on her face in response, and wraps Kristen in a hug from behind.
“It’s all gone, babe.”
Kristen rocks a bit, enveloped in Tracker’s arms. “It’s all gone,” she echoes, “and nobody can ever say anything or think anything about my hair because it’s gone.”
Tracker rests her head in the crook of Kristen’s neck, regarding their reflections in the mirror. “What do you think, though? Like, do you like it?”
Kristen hums. “Mmm...I kind of look like a baby.”
Tracker screws up her face. “What?”
“Uh, like,” Kristen begins, thinking. “Like, I look young. You know?’
“Oh, yeah, I guess. But, like, you are young, so. But!” Tracker adds, “I think you look so beautiful.”
“Hm. True,” Kristen says with a shrug. “Just can’t sneak into any clubs, I guess.”
“Hey!” Tracker frowns. “Don’t you think you look beautiful?”
Kristen rolls her eyes. “Yes, Tracker, I think I look beautiful. Happy?”
Tracker smiles into Kristen’s neck. “Yeah.”
Kristen leans into her, and tries to plant a sideways kiss onto Tracker. Realizing her inopportune angle, Kristen twists and attacks Tracker with a storm of kisses, moving to push Tracker down onto the floor.
“Hey!” Tracker protests, being pinned against the floor. Kristen smiles, wickedly.
“I love it. So much, actually,” Kristen says, peppering kisses across Tracker’s face. “And I love you, even more.”
Tracker tries not to blush, and fails. She catches one of Kristen’s kisses, and finds her squarely in the middle, their lips meeting.
She pulls away. “I love you, too,” she says. “I’m so proud of you, babe.”
Kristen looks away, bashfully. “Yeah, well. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Well,” Tracker says, “you did it! C’mon,” she says, and pulls Kristen up.
They stumble off the floor, and Kristen is pulled along with Tracker’s momentum. Tracker takes them to the door.
“It’s time to debut your new look,” she says, gleefully. Kristen’s eyes widen in alarm.
“Wait, wait,” Kristen says, and tugs on Tracker’s arm. They pause in the open doorway. Tracker looks at her patiently. “What if, like. I don’t know. What if they hate it?”
Tracker’s brow creases a bit. “Oh, well. Um,” she begins, her mind racing as she tries to find something supportive to say. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You chose to do this, and you did it. Whatever they think can’t change that!”
Kristen seems to hear this, and takes it in. She nods, after a moment. “Okay,” she says. “Yeah, okay. Let’s show Jawbone first?”
Tracker grins, and grabs hold of Kristen’s arm again. They take off down the hall.
From down below, thundering steps can be heard as Tracker and Kristen descend down the antique stairs, leading to the sounds of their rambunctious entry into the common space. Jawbone’s reaction echoes throughout the manor, his shouts of enthusiastic support reaching the upper levels of the building.
The house is filled, for the rest of the day, with loving noise.