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“Stay still, Saihara-chan! I could fuck this up really badly, y’know.”
Shuichi sits in his desk chair in front of his bathroom mirror as Kokichi hovers behind him, scissors poised above his head and a cheeky smile on his face. They’d moved his desk chair into the bathroom because it was either that or moving Shuichi’s mirror into his bedroom — and Shuichi had decided this was easier, despite Kokichi’s complaints about ‘playing on hard mode’ (what does that even mean, anyway?).
“I’m being still,” Shuichi tells him, feeling a smile of his own pull at his lips. “If you fuck this up, it’s on you. You’re the one who offered.”
“Don’t worry, Saihara-chan, I’ll make you look nice and pretty.” Kokichi runs a hand through Shuichi’s hair, his lithe fingers skimming the back of his neck. “And besides, you’re the one who said your hair’s getting too long, y’know.”
“It’s just been getting in my eyes too much. I didn’t like the feeling.” To prove his point, Shuichi reaches up to tug down at his bangs. They fall right by the tip of his nose.
“So what are you thinking? An inch or two?” Kokichi asks him. His tone turns teasing. “Or we could start over and give you a buzz.”
“What the hell? No.”
Shuichi watches Kokichi frown in the mirror. “Aw, why not? Don’t you think you’d look nice with no hair?”
“Be serious, Ouma-kun,” Shuichi chides him, no true bite in his words.
“I’m so serious. See, look at me.” Kokichi makes a big show of furrowing his eyebrows and scowling deeply. “So serious,” he says firmly, his voice dropping an octave.
“Very serious.” Then Shuichi hums, thinking. “I don’t want too much off,” he decides. He brushes his fringe around and points to the bridge of his nose. “Maybe half an inch or so. Around here.”
Kokichi nods resolutely. “Just try not to move so much, okay?”
“I’ll try my best,” Shuichi tells him, smiling. “You try not to fuck up my hair.”
“Your hair’s already pretty fucked up, not much I can do to make it worse.”
“What?”
“I was lying,” Kokichi says, sing-song, “that was a lie.” There’s a grin across Kokichi’s face, and if he catches Shuichi staring in the mirror, he doesn’t say a word about it.
Kokichi’s hands reach forward to hold Shuichi’s face, guiding him to lean back, and it’s gentle, inexplicably so. He follows the pull of Kokichi’s grasp until he meets the back of the chair.
“Tilt your head forward a little,” Kokichi tells him, and Shuichi obliges. Kokichi hums contemplatively. “Y’know, I could probably kill you right now. With these scissors.”
Shuichi squints. “Can you not say things like that?”
“You’re so no fun, Saihara-chan,” Kokichi complains, rolling his eyes. Shuichi feels him take some of his hair between two fingers, and then hears the soft snipping sound of the scissors.
The two of them fall into a comfortable silence as Kokichi cuts Shuichi’s hair, locks of cerulean floating down to the tiles of Shuichi’s bathroom floor. His touch is delicate when he combs back Shuichi’s hair, using his fingers to mark where he wants to trim it off. There’s a short strand of hair that falls onto Shuichi’s shoulder, and Kokichi sweeps it away with a pale hand.
“How did you learn how to cut hair?” Shuichi asks him, his curiosity getting the best of him.
“I have no idea how. I’m just winging it right now,” Kokichi answers, a grin playing on his lips. “You better pray to Angie-chan’s kami-sama that you don’t get a bald spot by the end of this. Your ugly hat will make an unfortunate comeback.”
“Don’t speak ill of my hat.”
“I’ll speak as much ill as I want, Saihara-chan. That thing was ugly as hell. And that’s not a lie.” Kokichi makes a face as if he were picturing it. “You look much better now. And you’ll look even better after I give you this haircut.”
“I thought you said you’re winging it,” Shuichi says dryly, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe I am. Who knows?” Kokichi laughs at Shuichi’s visible exasperation. “Truth is,” he continues, “I used to cut my own hair, when I was younger. I kinda just got good at it after a while.”
“I could do yours for you,” Shuichi offers. He bites back a laugh at the expression of complete and utter horror on Kokichi’s face.
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not? I’ll give you a style just like mine.”
“You think it would look good on me?” Kokichi jokes, smiling.
Shuichi shrugs, careful not to jostle Kokichi’s steady hands. “Not like it can get worse.”
Kokichi waves the scissors around unceremoniously, and Shuichi eyes his hand cautiously, his gaze following it in the mirror. “Careful what you say, Saihara-chan,” Kokichi tells him breezily.
“You have to stop saying things like that,” Shuichi mutters.
This doesn’t deter Kokichi at all, made obvious by the cheeky grin forming on his face. “Have you ever heard of Sweeney Todd?”
“Ouma-kun.”
“Won’t you be the Mrs. Lovett to my Benjamin Barker, Saihara-chan?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Kokichi groans. “Ugh, you’re so boring.” Another strand of Shuichi’s hair falls to the floor. “Oh, shit. Hang on, I think I just cut off, like, way too much. I fucked up. I hope you’re ready to be bald, Saihara-chan.”
Shuichi nearly chokes. “Ouma-kun—!”
“Just kidding!” Kokichi chirps, a laugh spilling from his lips. His hand comes up to smooth down that one lock of hair that just refuses to fall flat. It springs back into its original place despite Kokichi’s many attempts to tame it with his palm. “Hmm. You have a really bad cowlick here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Shuichi sighs, glaring at it in the mirror.
Kokichi tosses a grimace at him. “Okay, no need to get all emo about it. I think it’s cute.”
“That so?” A wry smile threatens to pull at Shuichi’s features, and he lets it. “You think it’s cute?” he echoes.
For the first time that day, a pretty scarlet is painted across the bridge of Kokichi’s nose. Shuichi files this information away for another time. “Don’t make me say it again,” Kokichi mutters, glancing away.
Shuichi just hums. He’s not so cruel as to make him repeat it — he’s not Kokichi, after all. More strands of his hair fall to the bathroom floor as Kokichi works his way farther up towards the crown of Shuichi’s head.
“Now for the front,” Kokichi says, heading around the chair to face Shuichi. He points to the bridge of Shuichi’s nose with the scissors. “Here, right?”
Shuichi nods. “About half an inch, yes.”
“Okay, brace yourself, Saihara-chan,” Kokichi quips, leaning forward so they’re eye to eye. “You really do have to stay still now.”
“I’ve been still this entire time.”
“Mm, were you though?”
A sliver of Kokichi’s tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth in concentration as he combs Shuichi’s bangs down to the front of his face with his fingers.
“This would be easier if your hair was wet,” Kokichi murmurs, snipping off about half an inch of hair. It falls into Shuichi’s lap, and Kokichi brushes it onto the floor quickly.
“Did you, ah, want me to wash it?” Shuichi asks, his voice softer than he intended it to be. It’s sort of strange; Kokichi takes him apart so easily.
Kokichi waves him off. “It’s whatever, too late now. And I’m almost done anyway.” He turns the scissors vertically to thin out Shuichi’s fringe and steps aside to give Shuichi a view of the mirror. “Okay, take a look!” Kokichi says brightly. “See if you like it.”
Shuichi catches sight of himself in the mirror. His hair is noticeably shorter, but not by much. He reaches up to tousle his bangs, and they brush past his eyelashes. His loathed cowlick still sticks out of place, but somehow, Shuichi doesn’t feel as bad about it.
“I like it,” Shuichi says honestly. “Thank you, Ouma-kun.”
His words earn him a smile out of Kokichi, a real one, and it’s a little different from the one he gets when he’s teasing Shuichi, or when he’s lying. Shuichi tries to memorize it, to commit to memory the gentle slope of his lips.
“Anytime, Saihara-chan!” Kokichi twirls the scissors around his pointer finger, squeezing Shuichi’s shoulder gently with his free hand. “If you ever need a haircut again, you know who to call.”
Shuichi smiles at him. “I’ll look for you.”
“You always are,” Kokichi tells him lightly. He hands Shuichi the scissors, and Shuichi takes them back without a word. “I’ll help you clean up all this gross hair.”
“Hey, that hair came from my head, you know,” Shuichi argues, but a smile tugs at his lips nonetheless.
“I know,” Kokichi says, making a face. “That’s why it’s gross.”
Shuichi procures a broom and a dustpan from Kirumi while Kokichi moves his desk chair back into the bedroom. Kokichi hums a song under his breath as they sweep the tiled floor, and it’s a sweet, lilting melody, one that Shuichi would have never thought to associate with him until right now. Sweeter things have left Kokichi’s lips, Shuichi thinks.
When everything has been cleaned up, Kokichi stops to scrutinize Shuichi’s haircut. A porcelain hand reaches up to comb back Shuichi’s bangs, and Shuichi raises his eyebrows because he knows Kokichi can see it.
“What, you don’t think you don’t think you did a good job?” Shuichi asks, amused, as Kokichi tilts his head with his other hand.
“Maybe I should have cut them shorter,” Kokichi muses to himself. “I can see your eyes better this way.”
Shuichi glances away if only to escape Kokichi’s gaze for a moment. “Should I go and get the scissors again?” he asks, unsure of what Kokichi is getting at here.
(Well, he might have an idea, but…)
Kokichi shakes his head. “They’re kind of golden,” he continues quietly, like a secret between the both of them even though there’s no one around. “Your eyes, I mean.”
Shuichi swallows hard. “Ouma-kun…?”
Kokichi pulls away quickly, hands returning to his sides, and he blinks as though just realizing his own actions. Shuichi almost wants to stop him, to take Kokichi’s hands in his own and keep them there. But he doesn’t, so Kokichi slips through his grasp anyway.
“See you around, Saihara-chan!” Kokichi waves Shuichi goodbye, grinning and tilting his head. “Try not to miss me too much.”
“No promises,” Shuichi says wryly, turning away to hide his smile as Kokichi goes to leave.
The door shuts behind him with a soft click.