Work Text:
“Hey, Pip! You heading back to the cabins?”
Pippin looks up from where she’s storing her glove in her bag to see Kiki heading her way, batting bag slung haphazardly over her shoulder, dirt ground into her pants and t-shirt, the result of an unnecessary slide into home plate during practice. Stu had been filling in for catcher and was more than a little displeased when Kiki barreled into her and caused her to drop the ball, but Kiki shrugged it off and didn’t seem to be in any worse of a mood for it.
“Um, yeah, I’m headed back. Are you…?” Pippin trails off, not sure where this is going. Kiki has always been friendly to her, but it’s hard not to be intimidated when you’ve seen her hit dinger after dinger. She’s good and she doesn’t let anyone forget it. Pippin can’t say the same.
“Yeah, I’m headed in that direction, might as well go together.” There’s something overly casual in the way Kiki says it, shrugging and picking at her already chipped nail polish as if Pippin’s answer doesn’t matter either way.
“Yeah, okay.” Pippin nods and slings her own bag over her shoulder.
As they walk, not much is heard except for Kiki’s thick soled boots against the path and the wind through the trees. Pippin begins to worry that she’s supposed to say something first, that the walk is going to devolve into awkwardness and that Kiki will never ask to walk together again when Kiki pipes up, “You did pretty good today.”
The silence was almost better.
Pippin tries not to grimace as she looks over at Kiki, looking down to account for the height difference. “You really don’t have to say that.”
“No, really! I mean it! You’re definitely getting better. Don’t listen to Alf, he’s just being a dick, he’s like that with everyone.”
Pippin could reply that he’s definitely not “like that” with everyone and that he’s definitely not “like that” with Kiki, and really, he was definitely justified for yelling when she sent that pitch that went soaring over Stu’s head by a mile, but it’s easier to change the subject than think through her failures right now. “Are you doing anything fun tonight?”
Kiki takes the redirection in stride. “Oh, I was planning on finishing dying my hair tonight. Make a mess of my bathroom. I got bleach fucking everywhere last night and I still think I missed a bunch of the hair I wasn’t trying to miss.”
Pippin noticed that Kiki had changed her hair when she arrived at practice earlier. The ponytail through the back of her cap showed off the newly bleached section at the nape of her neck. The top portion of her hair was spared the harsh chemicals and remained as black as ever, but it looked cute. It fit her. Before Pippin can process what’s coming out of her mouth, she hears herself saying, “I could help you, if you wanted.”
“Wait, really?” Kiki stops short, causing Pippin to stumble as she tries to follow Kiki’s unexpected halt. Kiki’s looking at her with surprise, but there’s something hopeful in her gaze. Pippin just hopes that she hasn’t made a mistake. It feels too late to back out now.
“Um, yeah. It might be easier than doing it by yourself?”
A smile blooms across Kiki’s face. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
When Pippin enters Kiki’s cabin later that day, her first thought is that it looks like nobody lives here. Then she begins to notice the small touches of personality around the room. A pair of heavy boots are kicked next to the front door, the small wooden animals that Pippin has seen Kiki carve with her pocket knife sit on the windowsill, a stray lighter sits on the rickety table each cabin is furnished with. These small traces reveal themselves but the cabin is hardly homey.
Kiki ushers her through the door. “Make yourself at home, you want a beer?”
“No, I’m good, thanks.”
“Okay, cool.” Kiki pauses as if she doesn’t know what to say for the first time in her life. “Uh, I set everything up in the bathroom, there’s better light.”
Pippin’s eyes follow where Kiki gestures, a small door off the main room. Her own bathroom is located in the same place, each cabin identical to the next. “Yeah, okay.”
In the bathroom, an assortment of hair dying supplies are laid out along the edge of the sink, a wooden stool pulled up just in front of the mirror. It’s a tiny bathroom. Pippin tries to politely ignore the grime that clings to most surfaces and instead takes her place behind Kiki as she sits.
Kiki has a sly grin on her face. “I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m going for. Don’t worry if you fuck it up, it can’t be much worse than what I was probably going to wind up with without you.”
The words are probably meant as encouragement, but Pippin is suddenly very aware that it’s been a long time since she dyed her high school best friend’s hair in the basement of her mom’s house. She doesn’t remember whether she did a good job or not.
But with Kiki’s approval, the only thing left to do is start.
There’s a moment of hesitation before Pippin begins at the crown of Kiki’s head and tentatively cards her fingers through her hair, tugging free the tangles that snag against her fingers. Her hair is slightly longer than it was when they met at the beginning of the season, it nearly brushes her shoulders now, and Pippin can’t help but notice that it’s softer than it looks.
“Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?” Kiki’s voice is unexpected in the silence and Pippin looks up in surprise to see Kiki already looking back at her through the mirror. She seems almost nervous and any reservations that Pippin may have still had about agreeing to help, nerves about this being awkward or that she is overstepping, ease at least for the moment.
“I’m sure.”
Pippin reaches to pick up the mangled comb that sits on the bathroom sink. It’s covered in old dye stains and more than just a few of its teeth have been snapped off at some point, but there’s something endearing about it. She runs the comb through Kiki’s hair, lightly dragging the teeth against her scalp, smoothing the strands until she feels Kiki begin to relax into the sensation. Her voice is quiet when she asks, “You okay?”
Kiki hums an assent in her throat so Pippin goes ahead and drags the end of the comb from ear to ear to portion off the top half of Kiki’s hair from the rest. She twists the dark strands up and away from the brassy blonde underneath, until the top sits in a messy bun at the crown of her head. Kiki was right, she missed a few spots while bleaching, but they’re mostly by the roots and will be easily covered by the rest of her hair.
Kiki watches her in the mirror as she exchanges the comb for the pair of gloves sitting on the counter before picking up the bottle of bright blue dye. She squirts a generous amount into her hand before beginning to card it through Kiki’s hair section by section. Kiki didn’t provide a dye brush and Pippin doesn’t ask for one.
Pippin gets lost in the motion of running her dye covered fingers through Kiki’s hair until Kiki breaks the silence, “My sister used to help me with this.”
Pippin can feel Kiki watching her, waiting to see how she reacts, so she just continues applying the dye, not looking up, afraid to acknowledge whatever is happening here. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“I haven’t talked to her in a while.”
For all of Kiki’s exuberance, her constant crowing and general attention-seeking behavior, Pippin doesn’t think that anyone on the team knows all that much about her. They’ve heard plenty about her success on the field, and they know she’s from somewhere out east, but this is the first time she’s willingly shared information about herself. Pippin finds it hard not to feel special in the moment.
“Do you miss her?”
“Yeah,” Kiki’s voice is quiet, and she pauses before saying, “She’s the only good thing back home.”
As careful as Pippin has been, there’s a streak of blue across the side of Kiki’s neck. It’s distracting. She wants to use the back of her hand to try to remove it, but she’s afraid of smearing it further. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Pippin continues running her fingers through Kiki’s hair while she waits for her to answer. The blonde is now a shockingly bright blue, and there’s really not anything left to cover, but she doesn’t want to break the moment before Kiki is ready.
The drip drip of the leaky tub faucet is the only sound to be heard for several long minutes. Pippin almost thinks that Kiki isn’t going to answer her when she says, “Maybe another time.”
Pippin nods and runs her fingers through Kiki’s hair for just a moment longer before peeling off the gloves and stretching for the roll of paper towels on the sink. She tears off a couple squares and reaches over Kiki to wet it under the sink, avoiding the wet dye of Kiki’s head but pressing carefully against her shoulder. She wrings it out before taking it to Kiki’s neck, gently removing the smear of blue. Kiki’s skin is warm under her hands, a contrast to the cold paper towel.
They’re quiet for a moment until Kiki speaks up. “Hey, Pip?”
Pippin finally looks up to meet Kiki’s eyes in the mirror. There’s a gentle smile on her face, her expression soft. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.”