Work Text:
Alex leaned over the bathroom sink, staring at his hair intently in the bathroom mirror. The bleaching guide had recommended “applying the bleach consistently with rubber gloves over the hair,” so he’d done that. Right down to the roots, the cheapest hair-dye bleach set that the drug store could offer.
“Ah yeah, we do things right here at Salon Alex,” he muttered at himself, twisting his head to try and see if the bleach was doing its job.
He couldn’t see all that well, what with the mirror steaming up from his previous three minutes of shampoo action: the book had instructed him to “wash and rinse hair thoroughly before application,” which was a load of horseshit and took three minutes too long. He squinted harder, nearly braining himself on the fogged-up mirror as he moved right into it.
“Fuck,” he muttered, taking a good three steps away from the mirror, and colliding with the opposite wall. The Ortiz family bathroom was small, and for a second, Alex wondered how his older brother got in here, with all that body-builder bulk. But Matthew was at the gym this afternoon, so Alex was free to hog the bathroom with his home dye operation.
As he assessed himself, a safe distance from the mirror, he decided that his grown-out blue dyejob (and his brown particolored roots which he preferred not to notice) were a few shades lighter. Maybe that nasty bleach was doing its job? He climbed onto the counter to really check, balancing on one foot, and noticed that his hand-me-down sweatpants had already, somehow, attracted a splotch of bleach.
“Oh, gross,” he said aloud, swiping at the problem area with a wad of paper towel. On the bright side, the bleach came right off. On the less-bright side, so did the color underneath, leaving a kind of weird reddish-grey spot bleached into the black cloth.
Right on the knee, too. That sucked. These were his “it’s-my-day-off-from-my-job-at-gamestop-so-it’s-time-to-eat-only-doritos-and-mountain-dew-while-playing-through-dark-souls” sweatpants. Kind of a long name, but hey, he was a descriptive kind of guy.
“Alex?”
A knock on the door. He nearly smacked his head on the mirror (again), and let out an involuntary groan. He’d forgotten about his other brother.
“What is it, Wide Load?” he asked, turning his head so that his hair would drip into the sink, while he used his free hand to push the door ajar. Not open, just ajar. There was no way Tristan could enter the bathroom that way.
Tristan’s liner-smudged eyes widened as he took in “Salon Alex.” The bleach on the counter, the Manic Panic Deep Blue Smoke hair dye waiting (still in its manufacturer's packaging) on the floor. And of course, the main feature, Alex himself, balancing on one foot on the counter, long half-bleached hair swaying in a single wet sheet over the sink, as he glared at him from between chemical-reeking strands.
“I don’t even try to understand you anymore,” Tristan mumbled, letting go of the door so that it swung closed. Alex could hear him padding off down the hallway in those weirdass slippers of his, still muttering: “Why did I even try?”
“Good, leave,” Alex said, turning back to the mirror. “There’s no room for anyone else in this bathroom anyway. Least of all you.”
His hair had lightened noticeably during the time that Tristan had WASTED, and he wrinkled his nose into a hideous expression, glowering at himself in the mirror.
“Hello,” he said, pitching his voice upward into a falsetto. “I’m Cheerleader, and I’m going to get all the boys with my luscious blond locks. Nothing about this could go wrong-”
Another knock at the door.
“Tristan, if you’re looking for the toothpaste, Mom put the replacements in her bathroom- bug off.”
“Oh, it’s not Tristan. It’s me, Mikey!”
Michael Adessi. Goddamnit. He’d pushed open the door while Alex was busy (actually, he’d been acting fucking STUPID, but maybe Mikey hadn’t noticed?) and was leaning against the open door, in that tanktop he always went running in. He smelled like he’d just gotten back from running too, like the smell of sun and also a lot like sweat. His hair was even a little damp, curling up in brown ringlets where it fell over his forehead.
For a moment, Alex contemplated turning his head and ignoring Mikey, flat-out. Maybe he could pretend that this was all a bad dream. Maybe he could pretend Michael Adessi out of his bathroom, out of his house, out of his life. And hell, while he was at it, he could pretend that Mikey hadn’t walked in on him bleaching his hair, too.
“Why does everyone keep walking in on me,” he asked, more to whatever god was watching than to Mikey.
“I dunno, dog,” Mikey said. “Maybe you should have locked the door? That would probably help, like, a lot.”
“That wouldn’t help,” Alex said. “Matt broke the lock off the door last week.”
“Oh,” Mikey said. He turned his attention to Alex’s hair, which was now a bright blond.
“Uh, Alex, when are you supposed to rinse that stuff out?”
Alex felt more than a little tingling in his scalp- and when he looked at his stopwatch, he noticed it had been a lot longer than the forty-five minutes that the hair-dye book had called for.
“Shit- fuck-” It was really burning now, to the point where tears welled up in his eyes.
He turned on the faucet, so that cold water poured from the spigot, and dunked his head under the water, closing his eyes tightly against the spray. The cold water brought instant relief, and he let out a sigh as the bleach left his hair. He stiffened as a hand touched his back, hesitant, almost tickling against his spine, and pulled his head out from under the faucet.
Mikey was hovering behind him, face pulled into a frown, eyes creased in worry.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to go blond, bro,” he said. “I don’t know, I don’t wanna be negative, but it doesn’t really suit you.”
He brought up his other hand (which happened to be holding a towel) and Alex looked at it, blinking until he realized that Mikey was offering him the towel. For his hair. Which was still dripping ice-cold water. Maybe the bleach had rubbed out more brain cells than he’d intended, or maybe it had been the sudden icy dunk in the sink, but as he took the towel, Alex couldn’t help but laugh, only giggles at first, and then a shout of laughter. Mikey looked at him, confused, and then laughed too, although Alex knew Mikey had no idea why he was laughing.
“I’m not goin’ blond, Mikey,” he said, rubbing at his hair until it no longer dripped. “I’m just trying to bleach my hair so I can dye it blue again. It all grew out, so I had to, or the dye wouldn’t show.”
“Oh,” Mikey said, nodding. “Well, can I help, then?”
Alex considered it for a minute. He could say “no, I don’t want you to help,” but Mikey was clearly into the idea of lending a hand. He was even bouncing on the tips of his toes. Plus, dyeing his hair was a lot of work.
“Sure, why the hell not,” Alex said. He picked up the bottle of Manic Panic from the floor, and put it on the counter.
“This is what we’re gonna be using, here at Salon Alex, okay? This shit. What you’re gonna do, is put on these weird clear gloves, see? Like I’ve got on. And then you’re just gonna rub this shit into my hair, all through it, until it’s like, soaked.”
Mikey was looking from the gloves, to the hair dye, and back toward Alex’s hair, which was still half-wrapped in a towel.
“Okay, I can do that,” he said, nodding hard, so that the curls on his forehead bobbed. Alex resisted the urge to reach up and push the curls back. That would look gay.
“What if it drips down onto your back, and whatever?”
“Then it drips down. Wouldn’t be the first time- I don’t really care if I get hair dye on my skin.”
He sat on the side of the bathtub, his hair wet and cold on his bare shoulders. Mikey pulled on the gloves, getting into the bathtub itself to apply the hair dye. The acrid dye was enough to make him wrinkle his nose (again) as Mikey dipped his fingers into the bottle, and touched them gingerly to Alex’s scalp.
“Sorry if it’s cold,” Mikey apologized, his hands still hesitant. Alex wished he would get on with it.
“Just scrub your hands into it,” he directed. “Just get all that hair dye into my hair. I don’t care if it’s cold, I’m not tender-headed.”
He did sort of mind that it was cold, and something about the globby texture of the stuff that Mikey was spreading into his hair made his stomach turn, but it didn’t matter, because pretty soon Mikey started massaging his hands through his hair. He was a lot more careful than Alex had assumed he’d be- with those big athlete hands, Alex had figured he’d at least pull too hard.
But no.
Mikey basically carded his fingers through Alex’s hair, careful, slow gestures.
It felt kind of nice, actually, so he leaned into it for a second, and then pretended that he hadn’t. Mikey would probably make fun of him for that.
Instead, he settled for staring at the weird decorative towels his mom kept in the bathroom, with the ugly cherubs on them. Nasty lookin’ pink grub babies- they looked more like Sour Patch Kids than cherubs, all blurred into the fabric from wear and tear.
“I think I got most of the dye in,” Mikey said.
“Are there any dry spots?” Alex tried to crane his neck, to check in the mirror.
Even with the bleach, his hair was horribly, death-sentence-in-summer thick. He’d left patches without dye before, because it was just too hard to make sure that every strand of hair was dyed right.
Mikey ran his fingers through Alex’s hair, fingertips rubbing at his scalp. And Alex leaned into it again, even though it was kind of dumb (and gay) to do that.
“Yeah, there’s some blond spots. I’ll go over it again, okay? You just hold on, Alex, I’m gonna do it right.”
Mikey ran his fingers slowly through his hair, rubbing the hair dye into what felt like every follicle, one slow fluid movement.
Alex let out a noise that he refused to call anything but a manly grunt. It was nothing at all like a sigh, in any shape or form, and it didn’t mean he was relaxing because of Mikey’s fingers stroking his hair. Nothing like that at all.
“Doing okay, Alex?” Mikey asked, his hands halting.
“The side of the tub’s just diggin’ into my ass, that’s all,” Alex grumbled, pretending he hadn’t made any noise at all. Who just sighed? Him? Fat chance!
“Okay, I’ll hurry up, don’t worry, buddy.” One of Mikey’s hands rested on Alex’s shoulder for just a second, as though trying to reassure him. It would have been a nice gesture if both Mikey’s hands weren’t coated in Manic Panic.
“Sorry, bro, you’ve got blue dye on your shoulder now. It’ll wash off, right?”
Alex snorted. “In eight to ten business days, yeah.”
With a few last hair-combing gestures, Mikey finished rubbing the last of the dye into his hair.
“I think it looks really good,” he said.
Alex got up from the side of the tub. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
But even though he turned his head backwards and forwards in front of the mirror, he couldn’t find so much as a blond strand of hair- Mikey had actually done a good job, minus the blue handprint on his shoulder and the inevitable blue dye on his shoulders and neck.
He jumped at a sudden splat noise, and turned around, expecting to see Manic Panic hell blue all over the bathtub or something. Instead, he saw Mikey getting ready to slingshot the second of his blue-stained gloves into the wastebasket. The other was curled at the bottom of the basket, still vaguely in the shape of Mikey’s fingers. The second smacked into the wastebasket.
“Score,” Mikey said, grinning.
According to the back of the dye bottle, it would take 40-50 minutes for the hair dye to set.
“That’s a long time,” Mikey said, drooping a bit. “Like, that’s a whole TV episode. With all the commercials, when you can’t fast-forward.”
Alex pushed open the door, pointed toward the basement. “You wanna kill some time, we can play video games. We can even play like, Mario Party or something, you know, the games you like. You did help me with my dye job.”
Mikey insisted on playing as Yoshi, who he kept calling “the lizardman.” Even though they were sitting with a good foot of space in between them, Alex found himself noticing how Mikey’s body took up space, the way he leaned forward, the way he tossed his head to knock the curls out of his eyes. As a result, he kept fucking up his own gameplay, but it was almost worth it.
“The lizardman got to win,” Mikey cheered, throwing down his controller.
Alex checked his watch. “Hey, it’s been like, an hour,” he said. “That wasn’t so long, was it.”
“Race you to the bathroom,” Mikey said, and took off running.
Alex had to shut off the game system, before getting up and running after him. “Fuck you, play fair,” he shouted after Mikey.
Of course, Mikey was waiting for him when he got to the bathroom.
“So we wash it out now? Like with shampoo and everything?”
Alex laughed. “I wish. No, it’s cold water.”
Mikey winced. “You almost died of hypoth… hypother... cold before.”
“It’ll be fine, Mikey. Just pull me out if I look like I’m drowning.”
This time, Alex just stepped into the shower to rinse his hair. He didn’t bother to take off the ratty sweatpants, either- he just turned on the water as cold as possible, and blasted it directly at his head. His hands skidded on the knob, so it took a minute to actually get the water flowing, and he clenched his fists, took a breath, and braced himself before the cold water hit him.
Even though he was prepared, the water still knocked a gasp out of him, and he stepped out of the shower, right into Mikey, who’d been standing right by him this whole time, apparently.
“Fuck,” he said, shoving dye-streaming hair out of his face. There was a big blue splat in the middle of Mikey’s shirt, right where his head had collided with his chest. “I’m sorry, bro.”
Mikey looked down at the splash of blue dye on his shirt, and for a second, Alex thought he’d really upset him. Then Mikey stepped directly into the cold water, tank top and shorts and all.
“If you’re gonna be cold,” Mikey gritted out through chattering teeth, “then I’m gonna be cold, too.”
Alex thought maybe his lips were turning blue already, and pulled on his shoulder. “Come on, get out of there. I gotta rinse my hair too.”
“Then do it with me in here,” Mikey said, suddenly stubborn. “Cause I’m gonna make sure you’re okay.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to do, besides climbing right back into the bathtub, so that’s what he did, putting his head right under the spray so Mikey couldn’t get any wetter than he already was. They both barely fit in there, so it was actually pretty easy to do, although he had to push Mikey out of the way to rinse his hair.
When he’d finished rinsing his hair, he shut off the water, and grabbed blindly for a towel, handing Mikey the first one he touched. He stepped out of the tub and into the bathroom, where he grabbed the nasty stained towel from the floor that he always used when he dyed his hair, and dried himself off the best he could.
“What’s this?” Mikey asked from behind the shower curtain- he still hadn’t stepped out of the tub.
“What’s what?” Alex said, as Mikey pushed aside the shower curtain, and stepped out onto the slick tile. Somehow, he didn’t slip.
“This,” Mikey said, and pointed to the decorative cherub towel which he’d slung over his shoulder like one of those dubious white towels that he always used after practice.
Alex stared at the empty towel rack for a second. “Well, shit.”
The towel rack wasn’t the only disarranged part of the bathroom. Blue dye clung to the mirror, the sink, the bathtub. The smell of bleach still lingered in the bathroom sink, and Mikey had tracked dirt on the tile near the door.
Just then, Alex heard the mechanical whirr of the garage door opening. There was only one person who parked in the garage, and that was his mom.
“Run,” he said, and pushed Mikey toward the door.
Mikey’s eyes were wide- he didn’t need coaching to know when to get lost. They stopped by the back door to pull on shoes, and then they sprinted for the Gremlin, slamming the back door behind them.
“Is she gonna be mad?” Mikey asked as Alex twisted the keys in the ignition.
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Alex said. “We’re not gonna be here.” He leaned close to the steering column, practically shouting at the Gremlin. “Come on, baby, come on, you piece of shit car, come on… oh thank jeezus.”
The car’s engine sputtered to life, and Alex stepped on the gas, swerving out of the driveway and onto the road.
Mikey grinned at him- apparently, he wasn’t worried about the bathroom anymore.
“You want a burger? I’ll treat.”
There was something about the way his wet curls looked, unspooled over his forehead, and the way his smile glinted in the afternoon light that made Alex feel like he’d just been handed some kind of trophy. Maybe that’s how Mikey felt when he won at track meets, that burst of happiness.
He grinned back.
“Sure, why not.”