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“dude, stop moving or im gonna put bleach in your fucking eyes.”
jason whines beneath leo and rolls his shoulders back, feeling a knot forming at the base of his neck from the way he’s perched on leo’s tiny ass sink. the smell of chemicals is thick in the air, made worse by the fact that the bathroom door is closed and leo absolutely refuses to open the window, because it’s ‘too damn cold.’
“i literally feel like someone’s drilling a hole into my skull, leo, just give me like, a one minute break.”
with a grumble, leo pulls his fingers out of jason’s hair and watches as he carefully rests his foot on the toilet cover next to the sink to stabilize himself as he climbs out of it. his joints pop when stretches and he hears leo mutter something about jason being an old geezer, but he doesn't really care, he’s on cloud nine with every freeing crack of his back.
“aight, move it, jase,” leo snorts, pushing jason back towards the sink with his elbow. “we’ve only got like, an hour left and then it’s my turn. i even let you have an extra minute, because i’m such a good friend.”
the thought of another sixty minutes pretzeled up in leo’s sink breathing dye fumes makes jason want to die, he won’t lie, but doing matching split-dyes for leo’s birthday was his idea and jason grace is nothing if not a man of his… well, idea.
an hour later the knots have already re-formed in jason’s back, more painful than before, and a white-hot current shoots down his spine as leo finally tugs the last sheet of aluminum foil from his now-dark-brown curls and lets jason down from the sink. he leans into the cracked mirror above it, close enough that his breath fogs it up, and runs a finger across his hairline. there’s little spots where the dye splattered onto jason’s forehead, creating a weird glob of freckles that are way too dark for his skin tone near his left temple. when he turns back to leo, he watches his eyes flick up to jason’s new feature and a strange expression takes over his face. he quickly realizes it’s amusement.
“you like ‘em? i made it star-shaped,” he grins, shit-eatingly, a little too close to jason’s face for his liking.
he groans and shoves leo away, rubbing the spot again. “asshole, i knew it was you,” he complains. “it’s gonna take forever to come out. thalia’s gonna kill me.”
“nah, she loves you too much,” leo replies, patting the non-dyed half of jason’s head comfortingly.
jason raises an eyebrow at him and scoffs. “yeah, just enough to cry at my funeral after she skins me alive, maybe.”
the dark haired boy sticks his tongue out at him and scrunches up his nose, drawing jason’s attention to his freckles, though these are natural. they’re splashed across his face in a way that makes him look like a jackson pollock painting, and it’s jason’s favorite thing in the whole world. he’d been trying to find constellations in his face since they were in middle school, to no avail, but it was a good way to procrastinate on homework.
jason finds himself looking straight at leo in the mirror, unable to tear himself away, even when leo’s eyes snap up to meet his. he’s not really looking at him, more like drinking in his presence and the distinct smell of his (piper’s) coconut conditioner. they both smile at each other at the same time, matching dimples appearing on their cheeks on the right sides of their faces. a beat passes and jason looks away, back into his own eyes which are fragmented in the cracked glass.
he doesn’t recognize his reflection, it’s half-leo, half-jason, half-good and half-nothing. he didn’t think dyeing his hair would change him so much, and maybe it hasn’t, but jason feels strange, not like himself. it’s alright, though, he supposes, if he’s unlike himself because he’s more like his best friend.
it’s his turn to watch as leo clambers into the sink, movements much clumsier than jason’s due to his inexplicable inability to balance, ever. there’s a smudge of dye all the way down the right leg of leo’s sweatpants, but jason doesn’t point it out, opting instead for the option that will get him out of the bathroom they’ve chemically hotboxed quickest. leo begins pointing at bottles and bleach-covered brushes, telling jason what to do and where everything is, as though he wasn’t the one that set up the whole counter.
chatter quickly fills the bathroom and jason’s tempted to give leo something to fidget with to keep him quiet, but then leo starts going off about some teacher that slept with a freshman at his high school and all temptation goes out the window. (metaphorically, because leo still won’t let him open the stupid thing.)
as leo talks, jason begins sectioning off the mess of curls on his head, that, upon further inspection, turn out to not be a mess at all. for such a disorganized person, leo seems to take remarkably good care of his hair. jason, being his best friend, feels like he should’ve known this, but then again leo’s the one that plays with his hair, not vice versa. his fingers slip easily between his curls, allowing jason to establish an easy rhythm of slipping and clipping, and soon enough leo looks like a one-sided chia pet with butterfly clips in its sprouts.
they’re well past the teacher-student drama, jason realizes, when leo stops talking and looks at him in the mirror expectantly, like he’s waiting for a reply. there’s a moment of total silence where both boys are just staring at each other in the glass again, until leo lets out a laugh and jason’s shoulders relax. he doesn’t get the joke, but at least leo’s not mad, so it’s okay.
“you weren’t listening, were you?” leo giggles. jason feels himself flush pink to the tips of his ears and he shakes his head sheepishly, busying himself with mixing up some more (unnecessary) bleach. leo shakes his head fondly and twists his arm behind him to pat jason’s head again, making the pink on his cheeks turn to bright red.
“du-u-ude, you look like a lobster,” he snickers. “hey, it’s cool. you can keep zoning out or whatever you were doing. you gotta process at least some of it anyway.”
jason frowns and turns on the faucet, wetting his hands with cold water in hopes that it’ll cool his face down. “process what? the bleach?”
he looks back up to see leo rolling his eyes at him. “no, dumbass, the shit i’m talking about. like when you’re in a lecture and you fall asleep, and you wake up and all you remember is how the fuckin’.. uh, pyramids were built. and that’s it. or something.”
“yeah, i think i’ll go with the ‘or something’,” jason laughs.
leo rolls his eyes again and turns back to the mirror, muttering something about how jason knew what he meant, leaving jason to weave his fingers in his hair again as he applies the foul-smelling paste to his curls. jason’s brain begins to shut off as leo keeps talking a mile a minute, which he would feel guilty about if they hadn’t been doing this since they were kids. leo’s a white noise machine, and jason, an insomniac. and it works for them.