Work Text:
Despite the fact that they now had plenty of space in the Temple of Airjitzu, the ninja still had a significantly smaller sense of privacy for each other. This stemmed from the experience of living on a flying ship for a good chunk of time, where five out of six of them had to share a singular bedroom.
So Cole was barely fazed when he stepped out into the hallway, fully intending to go to the bathroom, and saw Jay step out of the same bathroom shirtless. Their eyes met for a moment before the brunette made a gesture to the open bathroom door. “Bathroom’s free.”
Cole shrugged and walked past him. “Thanks,” he replied back.
Neither said much more, both being exhausted after spending the day carrying boxes from the Bounty to the interior of their new home. Cole was actually still getting used to feeling his body weigh him down from overexertion.
He had been a ghost for almost two years, which was merely a fraction of his life, but there were a lot of things he’d gotten used to from it. One of them was being essentially weightless. He didn’t have muscles that could burn from carrying things, he didn’t have skin that could turn slick from sweat, and he definitely didn’t have lungs that could ache from grunting so much.
Today really put his fairly recent body to the test in the worst possible ways. It’s why he’d been sleeping practically all afternoon in his room (although he admits it was an uneasy sleep) after showering earlier.
Jay had probably worked on one of his personal projects before heading into the shower and that’s why he only just showered.
As Cole stepped into the bathroom, stifling a yawn, he flipped the light on. It illuminated the very bare inside of their new bathroom.
He was just about to close the door when he spotted a small rectangular box on the sink counter.
Cole frowned slightly and picked it up, the lack of weight telling him that its contents had been emptied. Upon turning it over, he was greeted with the picture of a model with luscious brown locks. The box label read ‘Dark Auburn Brown’.
… The fuck?
Why is there hair dye here? Or better yet, why did Jay have hair dye?
“Oh hey, sorry I forgot to throw that out.” Jay’s voice speaking at the door made Cole glance up, bewildered.
It seems Jay had made it to his room because he now had a thin blue shirt on to match the black shorts he’d come out of the bathroom with. He had a dark blue towel draped over his shoulders, his hair still sitting damp but ruffled on his head.
He reached for the empty hair dye box in Cole’s hand and the taller quickly pulled it back, preparing his interrogation. “Jay, what is this?”
Jay paused, his hand freezing in place. “Hair dye? Did you forget how to read or-”
Cole huffed and swatted his hand away. “No shit, I know it’s hair dye. Why do you have hair dye with you in the bathroom?” It’s not like Jay needed it, his hair was already as brown as they came. In fact he suspects it would watch Edna’s hair color if it wasn’t washed out with age. Although Jay is adopted so it would be pure coincidence…
The brunette now looked confused as hell as he lowered his hand. “To dye my hair? My roots were showing a bit and I knew we were gonna be busy over the next few days so I figured I’d get it out of the way now.”
Cole stared long and hard, squinting at Jay. “Roots?” he echoed. Maybe it was the lingering sleep that was making it hard to process the implication of what Jay was saying.
Jay blinked in surprise and said nothing for a few moments while they stared at each other.
“... Cole, I’m not a natural brunette.”
“WHAT-”
Cole’s reaction was loud and completely reasonable. He reached a hand out, grabbing Jay’s face and squishing his cheeks together as he scrutinized his hair and face. “But your eyebrows are the same color!”
Jay squeaked at the sudden manhandling and swatted at Cole’s arm, the same apparently-not-naturally-colored eyebrows furrowing. He didn’t seem too bothered by the contact.
Something the others were very understanding of was that Cole was a little too reliant on physical touch. Now that he didn’t have to concentrate on being solid to touch someone, Cole sought it any chance he could as reassurance that, yes, he wasn’t a ghost anymore. He tried to keep it from being overbearing or annoying though. Just an additional ruffle of Lloyd’s hair or the casual hand on the shoulder sometimes. Or, in this case, a face grab.
“Because I dye those too!” he exclaimed, his voice slightly muffled because of his lips being pressed together horizontally.
Cole leaned in close, their foreheads nearly touching. Sure enough, he could see faint dye marks on Jay’s skin on his eyebrows. But why? He’d never noticed Jay’s hair being a different color. None of them did! And they’ve known each other for what? Five years give or take?
Finally he let go of Jay to look at the hair dye box in his hand. He kept flicking his gaze from the box to Jay and Jay to the box, still completely frazzled. “But- Wait so if you dye your hair then what’s your natural hair color??” A different shade of brown? Cole could’ve sworn Jay’s hair color has been the same throughout these years. So he either had a slightly lighter shade before or Jay’s been dyeing it since he was fourteen or something.
“I- It’s blonde, Cole-”
“BLONDE?!”
Jay threw his hands up, clearly shocked about this as much as Cole was. “I thought you knew!! You really believed my hair was brown the whole time you’ve known me??”
“Um, yes, because it’s always been brown! Since when are you blonde?!” Cole can’t even picture Jay as a blonde! Unless you count that one time he put on a blonde wig to bait Nya and reveal her as the Samurai, but that had looked plain ridiculous.
“Since birth?? This isn’t something I tried to hide from you, I always add hair dye to the list of things we need to get at the store when we go shopping!” Jay pouted, animatedly folding his arms over his chest.
“Well in all fairness, Zane’s the one who handles the list…” Cole added sheepishly, momentarily distracted from his shock. Whenever they go shopping, the nindroid just tells them what to get from what aisles based on the list he has in his head. Perks of having a nindroid on the team.
Cole shook his head, refocusing on the subject at hand. “But seriously, I had no clue you were blonde! What does that even look like?”
Jay raised an eyebrow. “Like me. But with blonde hair instead of brown.”
“What are you two fighting about now?” A third, very tired, voice entered the conversation and both turned their heads to look at Kai, who had manifested at the bathroom door.
Like Cole, he’d opted for showering and taking a much needed nap. Only his looks like it was interrupted because he didn’t even bother to fix his spiky bedhead. It was kinda cute to be honest.
“I could hear Cole yelling from my bedroom,” he muttered bitterly, squinting at the two.
“Did you know Jay was a blonde??” Cole asked, needing confirmation that he wasn’t crazy for not noticing such a drastic fact about their loudmouth.
Kai was immediately awake, his eyes widening at the question. He looked at Jay in shock. “What? You’re not a brunette?!”
“Did none of you know?!” Jay exclaimed, baffled.
“I think I’d remember you telling us something like that!” Kai shouted. Now it was his turn to examine Jay as he reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders. He pushed the brunette down a bit so he could see the hair on his head better. “How in hell are you blonde??”
Jay huffed, being far less kind with Kai’s manhandling and pushing him away. “I just dyed it, you-”
“Are we having some kind of meeting in the bathroom…?” Zane’s tone was somewhere between genuine curiosity and caution because it was super weird for half of the team to just be arguing over something in a bathroom.
Immediately, Cole and Kai rounded on him with a sharpness that made Zane more alert.
“Jay’s a blonde,” they said at the same time, Jay letting his mouth fall open at their absurdity.
It fell further when Zane’s eyebrows raised. “He’s… blonde?”
Jay dug his fingers into his deceiving hair, stopping short of yanking it in pure frustration. “FOR THE LOVE OF FIRST MASTER-”