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Kanda had never paid much mind to the mousy-haired scientist while they had been at the Order together; apart from brief greetings and fittings for his uniform, he couldn’t remember ever actually having what might generously be considered a conversation with him. So in traveling with Johnny Gill in search of that idiotic beansprout, Kanda had learned a lot about the older man. For one, he was entirely too optimistic and cheerful—a people-pleaser to a fault. He also was a happy drunk, losing all sense of personal space and insisting on holding hands as they went through the bars and brothels. But the most surprising discovery was that Johnny Gill required a hair tie far more than he did.
The young scientist often slept with a cap on his head, hair tie abandoned for the night on the night stand next to the bed. Kanda, having lost his own hair tie sometime between their last bar and the inn in which they were staying, naturally saw fit to claim it for his own use. Johnny had short hair; he could manage having his hair down until he managed to find another one whereas Kanda needed to have his hair out of the way in case he needed to fight. So Smiley would just have to make do.
Johnny woke up several hours after Kanda had, eyes squinting and hands flailing around the bedside table in search of his glasses. When he finally managed to situate them on his face, he stumbled into the small bathroom attached to their room, emerging more or less dressed with his night cap still firmly on his head, not realizing that the buttons on his shirt were misaligned by one or two buttons. The exorcist just rolled his eyes, not saying anything. A Johnny without coffee was a Johnny that you didn’t want to talk to just yet, especially if you weren’t planning on handing him a cup before you spoke.
Flopping more than sitting back down on the bed, Johnny began searching the nightstand again, shifting around his various piles of papers, parts, and who knows what else. Furrowing his brow, unable to find his target, the caffeine-deprived scientist turned to his temporary roommate with a pout that all too much resembled Kanda’s childhood friend. “Have you seen my hair tie..?” Kicked-puppy Johnny should have been easier to deal with than cranky I-just-woke-up-and-haven’t-had-coffee-yet Johnny, but naturally it never worked out that way for Kanda.
“I lost mine.” He said as a matter of fact, avoiding eye contact while still monitoring the other’s expression in the reflection of the window.
“…but where’s mine..?” For someone so smart, he didn’t connect dots very quickly.
“In my hair.” Kanda swished his ponytail for emphasis, “I have more than you do.”
“You have longer hair maybe, but at least yours behaves when you leave it alone!” Cue eye roll. Johnny was as dramatic as Alma too. He didn’t appreciate the resemblance.
“Let’s just go already. Stupid beansprout isn’t going to find himself.”
Kanda already half way out the door and waiting impatiently, Johnny gave a final pout, shuffling out into the hallway with Kanda still wearing his nightcap, his strange golem flying lazy circles and loops around its master’s head. “What the hell are you doing with that thing still on your head?”
“You have my hair tie…?”
With an exasperated sigh the Japanese man yanked the nightcap off his head, tossing it back into the room before promptly locking the door and walking off before the other man could protest, hearing him whine slightly as he took off down the hallway. Casting a glance over at the shorter man, Kanda felt the corners of his lips twitch upward as he watched Johnny struggle to tame his bedhead, the top of his hair plastered to the top of his head while the ends of his obnoxiously curly hair jutted out at odd angles, resisting every attempt to smooth them down.
“Quit preening. It’ll be fine.” They exited the inn and Kanda stared expectantly at the scientist who was still smooshing his hair down with his hands, waiting for directions to the next entry in the Beansprout’s debt log.
Groaning, Johnny abandoned the efforts on his hair and pulled out the receipts and the map, mumbling to himself as he set them on the right course. As they walked, Kanda wished that he had left his coat back at the inn; the rain that they had gotten the night before still hung in the air, the humidity making his clothes stick to his skin. But as the day went on as Johnny pulled him through the streets by the hand, Kanda noticed something strange: His curly hair seemed to be growing.
The frizzy curls had gotten progressively fuller and frizzier with each passing hour, and the hair that had started the day stuck to the top of Johnny’s head like a bad hat now stood above it in a mess of curls like Kanda had never seen before. Now the scientist’s pouting made a bit more sense. The kid looked like his damn golem—the back of his head looked like a mousy-brown cotton ball, albeit frizzier because of the awful humidity.
After a moment of internal debate—and damn it, he was going soft from hanging around this guy for so long—he pulled back on the hand that was tugging him along, accidently causing Johnny to spin face-first into his chest with an oomph! Kanda steered the shorted man off to the side of the street by the shoulders where they’d be out of the way.
“What are we—” Kanda cut him off by spinning him around unceremoniously so that Johnny’s back was facing him, yanking the elastic band out of his own hair before he could have second thoughts.
He gathered the thick curls in hand, firmly but not roughly, smoothing out the tops and sides the best that he could before securing it into a ponytail with the tie. Satisfied that he no longer looked like his golem, Kanda turned on his heels and headed back the way they came without a single word to the confused scientist, who after a moment, merely elected to smile widely and jog to catch back up with his companion, taking Kanda’s hand back in his own as they continued on their way.