Work Text:
The thing about frosted tips, Carl would later not reflect on, because reflection required acknowledging that something had gone wrong, was that they had seemed, at the time, completely reasonable.
In 2001, Carl was nineteen and Josh Hartley had frosted tips. Josh Hartley also had a car and a girlfriend and an easy way of standing in rooms that made other people unconsciously adjust their posture, and Carl had observed all of these things and had drawn the only logical conclusion.
He went to SuperCuts.
The woman who did it, Debbie according to her name badge, had paused at one point during the process and said, "You sure about the whole head?"
"The whole head," Carl confirmed.
Debbie had the professional integrity not to say anything further. She finished. She handed him the mirror.
"Yeah," Carl said, looking at himself. "Yeah, that's it."
That was not it.
*
His mother saw him first. She was standing at the kitchen counter when he came through the door, and she went through several expressions quickly before settling on one that was technically neutral.
"You did something," she said.
"I got my hair done."
She looked at him for a long moment. She picked up her coffee. She looked at him again over the rim.
"Hm," she said.
Carl had known his mother for nineteen years. He understood that hm contained multitudes. He chose not to excavate them.
*
His friend Danny said, "Yo, your tips look baller," which was positive.
His friend Rooster said nothing, which Carl filed as neutral.
Rooster's girlfriend Amanda looked at Carl with an expression he couldn't quite categorise, whispered quietly to Rooster, and then laughed in a way she immediately converted into a cough.
Carl filed this as positive. Amanda laughed at a lot of things.
*
The girl from his Chemistry class (her name was Felicity, she had a nose ring and strong opinions about things, and Carl had been working up to asking her out for approximately six weeks) looked at him across the lab bench on Monday morning, tilted her head, and said, "What did you do to your hair?"
"Got it done," Carl said, with all the confidence of a man who didn’t quite know that confidence and correctness were not the same thing.
Felicity looked at him for another moment.
"Okay," she said, and went back to her notes.
Carl took this as a neutral-to-positive response and revised his timeline for asking her to the movies to the following Thursday.
He did not ask her the following Thursday.
He did not ask her at all, in the end, which he told himself had nothing to do with the hair.
*
The frosted tips lasted eleven weeks, when Danny finally said, "Dude, you have to stop." It was a sincerity that he’d never seen from Danny before and would never see from him again. Carl wasn’t sure if he liked it. But he was sure that he needed to act.
Carl went back to SuperCuts.
Debbie was there.
She said nothing. She didn’t need to.
Afterwards, Carl looked in the mirror at his regular hair, restored and unremarkable, and felt nothing in particular. No relief. No embarrassment - to be embarrassed, he would’ve needed to know that something had been wrong. But all he knew was that he never wanted Danny to take that tone with him again.
He went home. His mother looked up when he came through the door.
"You did something," she said.
"Got my hair done," Carl said.
She picked up her coffee.
"Hm," she said, and this time, it was different. This time it was the good hm.
Carl didn't notice the difference.
He never did.