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Adam opens the front door to Ronan Lynch. The knocking had been loud, insistent, and unignorable and if Adam didn’t know exactly what his downstairs neighbour was like, he would have thought it was some kind of emergency. As it is, Ronan stands in Adam’s doorway with a set of electronic clippers in his hand.
“I gotta ask a favour,” Lynch says.
“Need help shearing a sheep?” Adam deadpans.
“I—No. I mean—” Ronan runs his free hand through his hair. It’s not the first time that Adam’s noticed the way Ronan’s hair has grown a little longer than he normally lets it. It’s curling a little at the ends. There’d be enough for Adam to take a fist of it, if he were to do that. Not that he wants to do that.
“Gansey normally does it,” Ronan continues. “But he’s in fucking Venezuela.”
Gansey is the landlord and owner of the townhouse that Adam rents a floor in. Gansey lives in the loft, and Ronan, his best friend, lives in the basement. Adam thinks he accidentally got the best end of the deal, in the first floor apartment, but he won’t point it out.
“How long is he there for?” Adam asks. He steps aside to let Ronan in, shutting the door behind him.
“Six months,” Ronan complains.
Adam raises an eyebrow at him. He knows how long ago Gansey left. “And you’re not even going to bother trying to cut your own hair?”
Ronan shrugs. He finds Adam’s bathroom easily and flicks on the light. “I can never get it even.”
“And you think I can? You know you can pay professionals for this service, right?”
Ronan drags Adam’s kitchen chair into the bathroom and plugs in his clippers. He sits expectantly in the chair, and looks over his shoulder at Adam. “You’ll do fine.”
“You know I had plans for the evening,” Adam says, but he takes the clippers from where Ronan had left them on the bathroom counter.
“Hot date?” Ronan smirks. He looks down at Adam’s ratty sweats as he says it.
Adam isn’t exactly proud of the way he roughly grabs Ronan’s hair and wrenches his head forward. It gets him to shut up, it gets him to stop looking at Adam like that, that teasing, knowing look that says he knows exactly what kind of hot date Adam would like to be on. Like he sees right through Adam, down the core of his pathetic little crush. Adam is maybe a little rough when he pushes on the base of Ronan’s skull, getting him to look down. If he didn’t want Adam to express his frustration in his rough treatment, then he should have gone to a barber like a normal person.
Ronan’s gone quiet though, and he makes a soft noise when Adam starts the clippers. Adam, shockingly, has never actually shaved anyone’s head before and he isn’t quite sure where to start. He switches them off again, reconsiders his approach.
Ronan doesn’t offer any advice at his hesitation. It almost catches Adam off-guard; he’s so prepared for a snarky comment about how frustrating Adam Parrish must find it, not to know how to do something.
Adam puts his hand on the top of Ronan’s head and tilts his head back up instead. Ronan’s eyes are closed, and his nostrils flair as he breathes out slowly.
Adam switches on the clippers and sets the edge of them to the front on Ronan’s hairline. He drags them back slowly, thick, dark curls piling up behind them, buzzed stubble left in their wake. Adam drags them all the way back until he reaches the base of Ronan’s skull. He goes again and again, moving slowly in even lines, tilting Ronan’s head with his fingertips to get to every part of his head.
It's quiet in the bathroom. The only sound is the buzzing of the clippers, filling all the space between Adam and Ronan, taking up all the sound they could be making by talking. Adam’s concentrating, is all, and Ronan is silent, giving him space to focus. Adam catches sight of his face in the mirror when he glances up. His eyes are still closed, his brow slightly furrowed like he’s concentrating on something too.
Adam switches off the clippers when all he has left are the edges to tidy up, just the bits around Ronan’s ears to do. Ronan tips his head back to look at him.
“Done?” he asks.
“Not yet,” Adam says. He’s just strangely nervous about this part. He tells himself that it doesn’t matter, that he can’t fuck this up, that there’s a guard on the razor, that Ronan wouldn’t have asked him to do this if he didn’t trust Adam not to hurt him.
He holds Ronan’s head with his left hand, completely unsure whether it’s the right thing to do or not. Ronan goes still again beneath him and his breaths are controlled and even. Adam switches on the clippers again, and he slowly and carefully shaves off the hair behind Ronan’s left ear, trying not to think of how soft and thin the skin is. He uses his left hand to tilt Ronan’s head the other way, and he goes easily.
“There,” Adam says, when he’s done behind Ronan’s right ear. “All done.”
It’s a moment before Ronan moves. His breath comes deep and slow one final time, and then suddenly he’s a hurricane again, so loud and chaotic that Adam almost forgets he’d been anything different. He deliberately pushes Adam’s chair over, knocking it into the edge of the bathtub, when he goes to unplug the electric razor.
“Nice one, Parrish,” he says, smoothing his hand over his freshly shaved scalp. Adam’s fingertips tingle with the memory of buzzed hair beneath them.
Ronan knocks his shoulder into Adam’s on his way past. He opens Adam’s fridge, uninvited, and takes two beers. “Wanna hang?”
Clearly that was normal, Adam thinks. Clearly, they aren’t going to talk about whatever just happened, how still and quiet Ronan had been in that moment. He nods, and takes one of the beers that Ronan offers, dropping onto his shitty, broken couch next to Ronan.
They’d never really been friends before. Gansey, his friend from grad school who had room to rent, and then Ronan, his hot new neighbour, tangentially a friend. A friend-in-law. That’s how it had been.
Adam wouldn’t say they were friends now, either, but apparently without Gansey to entertain Ronan, Adam is now his go-to. For more than just hair cutting, apparently.
Adam doesn’t bring it up. He wants to. He wants to ask if it’s like that with Gansey, if Ronan goes still and quiet and pliant when Gansey cuts his hair. Wants to ask if that’s why he doesn’t go to a barber. He wants to ask why. But he won’t.
Adam can’t stop thinking about it, is all. He can’t stop thinking about the change in Ronan, how it had been like flipping a switch. He’d given something to Adam, some kind of control or power, just for those few minutes while Adam cut his hair.
The first time isn’t the last time. Two weeks pass, and Ronan is at Adam’s door again, clippers in hand.
“I did an acceptable job then?” Adam asks, ignoring the way his stomach fills with butterflies, taking the clippers and letting Ronan in.
Two weeks after that, he’s back again. And then again, like clockwork.
Adam would never admit it, but he starts to look forward to it, those moments of intimacy with Ronan. Every two weeks, Ronan is—Well. He’s different to how he is every other time Adam sees him. When he sits in Adam’s bathroom, he’s pliant, malleable. He doesn’t speak as Adam carefully runs the clippers across his scalp, around the delicate skin behind his ears, exposing the vulnerable nape of his neck to Adam.
The anticipation builds through the weeks until Ronan is at his door again. Every time Adam sees him, he assesses how long his hair has gotten, how many more days it will be until he wants it cut again. When he passes Ronan coming in and out of the building. When Ronan comes up to eat takeaway at Adam’s. When Adam goes downstairs to play video games with Ronan. When the two of them use Gansey’s emergency key to sneak into his apartment and take advantage of his 4K television and his sound system.
Every time Adam cuts Ronan’s hair, he knows it’s one haircut closer to the last time. Gansey won’t be gone forever, and every week that passes brings them one week closer to things going back to normal. Normalcy that Adam doesn’t think he wants anymore. But he can’t tell Ronan this. Can’t risk losing it early. So he silently cuts Ronan’s hair, stays his friend, keeps things the way they are. Keeps counting down.
Gansey comes back. Gansey comes back ridiculously tanned, relaxed and happy and full of stories about all the things he saw and did in Venezuela with Blue and Henry.
Gansey comes back and Adam thinks that’s the end of Ronan asking Adam to cut his hair. He thinks that’s the end, but they hang out at Gansey’s apartment and Adam watches the way Ronan’s hair is just curling around his ears, the way he scrubs his hand in it like it’s bothering him, and he hopes.
It’s foolish to hope. If he knows anything about Ronan, Adam knows he likes familiarity. He trusts the people he trusts with the things he entrusts to them and that’s it. If you have access to Plan A, why would you use Plan B?
But Ronan always defies Adam’s expectations of him and the next day, three days after Gansey is home, Ronan is back. With the electric razor.
Adam opens the door and stupidly says, “I thought you might want Gansey to—”
Ronan takes a breath and kisses him. One of his hands comes up and cups Adam’s face. Adam’s breath catches and locks in his throat and for a second he’s too stunned to do anything. Just for a second. He feels the moment when Ronan is about to pull back and snatches for him. Adam twists his fingers into Ronan’s t-shirt and holds tight. He kisses him back, harder, deeper, better.
In the quiet moments, when he’d let his mind wander, this kiss is what Adam had thought about. He slides his hand up and over Ronan’s skull, feeling the thick hair growing there, how he can almost make a fist in it. He’d thought about this, kissing Ronan before, and then kissing him again after. Adam thinks of how Ronan’s freshly-shorn scalp will feel beneath his palms, and he moans into the kiss.
“I came here to get you to cut my hair,” Ronan says. His breath tickles Adam’s lips as he talks. “I—”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t mean to do that,” Adam interrupts. He doesn’t think he could bear to hear it.
“I meant to do that. I wanted to do that. I wanted to kiss you and I wanted to ask you to shave my head again and I wanted to tell you it’s not like that with Gansey,” Ronan says, all in a rush. His cheeks are pink when he’s finished and Adam brushes his thumb over one of them.
“I wanted you to do that. I wanted to cut your hair again,” he confesses. “I was jealous, at the thought of you going back to Gansey.”
He kisses Ronan again, quickly, another confession, one without words. Ronan still has the clippers in his hand and when they part, Adam says, “Do you want me to cut your hair?”
Ronan nods and together they go into the bathroom.
Six weeks later
Ronan moves the chair into Adam’s bathroom, the same way he always does. Adam wraps his hands around the wood of it and draws it back before Ronan can sit down. He sits instead.
“So you want me to do you?” Ronan says, smirking. He picks up the clippers, but Adam takes them from him before he can do any damage.
“You should kneel,” Adam says. He almost phrases it as a question, almost asks Ronan if he wants to kneel, but—He knows what Ronan wants to do. He still can’t quite manage an order; it comes out as a suggestion.
But Ronan does kneel. He kneels on the bathroom floor between Adam’s legs and rests his cheek on the inside of Adam’s knee. Adam slides his fingers through Ronan’s hair, long enough now that it pulls, that the curls of it catch and wind around Adam’s fingers, long enough that he can take hold of it. It’s grown longer than Ronan normally lets it get. It’s grown longer so they can do this.
Ronan looks up at him and his pupils are blown wide, his mouth red from making out on the couch, wet and open for what’s about to happen. Adam cups the back of his skull in his hand and tangles his fingers in his hair. He reaches for the clippers with his other hand, leaning over Ronan to do it.
He holds Ronan in place while he shaves his head, and the way he moves him around is rougher than he ever has been in the past. There’s enough hair on Ronan’s head that he can hold onto it as he goes, and Adam’s glad that they left this a couple more weeks. The anticipation of it had nearly been too much, but it’s so much better for it.
When all that’s left is to neaten up the back, Adam holds Ronan down, his forehead pressed to crotch of his jeans. “Good boy,” Adam says. “Just keep still for me.”
Ronan is quiet, but his breaths are audible, deep and slow like he’s deliberately trying to keep calm. Adam sets the clippers to Ronan’s neck and carefully shaves away the remaining thick hair, neatening up the places he’s missed, the thinner hair that trails slightly onto his neck.
When he’s finished, he switches the razor off and sets it down on the counter. Ronan sits back and watches him, lets Adam keep him close with hand on the back of his head. The hair beneath Adam’s fingertips is velvety soft and he pets at it as he undoes his jeans.
Ronan makes a soft, pleading noise and he takes the head of Adam’s cock into his mouth when Adam angles it down towards him. He sucks eagerly and greedily at it, licking sloppily and Adam lets him, lets him until he tries to take too much. Adam pushes him back with hands on either side of his head.
He holds Ronan’s head in both of his hands, and tilts Ronan’s face up to meet his. Ronan’s eyes are wet, and he looks desperately turned on. Adam’s hand shake and he’s more turned on than he’s ever been in his life, like the past eight months have been nothing but foreplay that have built to this moment.
“Look at what I did to you,” Adam says. “Look at what you let me do.”
Ronan looks down, just for a second, at the hair on the floor. He looks back up at Adam just as quickly, his expression open and expectant, like he’s waiting to see what Adam’s going to do to him next.
“You’re going to let me fuck your mouth. You’re going to take it and when I come you’re going to swallow, you know why?”
Ronan nods, his head moving in Adam’s hand, freshly shaved hair against fingertips.
“Tell me why.”
Ronan’s voice is rough when he says “Because you can do what you want with me.”
“Yeah. I can,” Adam says. “Good boy.”
He gives no warning when he feeds his cock back into Ronan’s mouth. Ronan stays still, takes it, chokes a little when it hits the back of his throat. Adam can’t thrust the way he wants to, sat in the chair, so he stands, managing to keep his cock in Ronan’s mouth as he does. The next time he thrusts, his cock sinks inside even further than before, wet and tight.
Adam’s holds Ronan in his hands, keeps eye contact with him, swipes his thumbs through the mess of spit on his chin. “Next time I’ll tie your hands behind your back,” he tells him. “Would you like that? Making you keep still for me?”
Ronan’s moan is garbled by the cock down his throat. He shuts his eyes tight, like he can hide how badly he wants it from Adam. Adam lets him, because they both know he can’t.
Adam’s impending orgasm rushes through him, no reason to hold back, not when he has Ronan looking at him like that, Ronan waiting for his come like that. He pulls back as he comes, letting his release go into Ronan’s throat, his mouth, letting it spill out over his lips and his chin. Adam drops to his knees, kneeling with Ronan in the mess of his shaved hair on the bathroom floor.
He swipes his fingers through the come on Ronan’s chin and then roughly pushes them into his mouth. “All of it,” he murmurs. “Swallow.”
Ronan swallows around Adam’s fingers, whines pleadingly when Adam takes them away. Adam squeezes his hard cock through his jeans.
“Do you want to come?” Adam asks him. When Ronan nods, he adds, “Do you think I can keep you like this a bit longer? It’s okay if the answer is no.”
Ronan shakes his head, just like Adam knew he would. “Okay,” he says. “Take out your cock.”
Ronan’s hands are shaking as he unbuttons his jeans and pulls out his dripping wet dick. Adam grasps it in his hand, swipes his thumb over the leaking head. “You always get so wet for me. So hard. Is it because of what I did to you? How I shaved your head and fucked your mouth? How I made you mine?”
Ronan’s jaw is clenched tight, all his muscled are coiled and when he whines the sound escapes from between his clenched teeth. Adam can feel how close to coming he is, just from the energy that pours off of him. He strokes Ronan teasingly slowly, his grip no where near as tight as he know Ronan needs it. Knows he’ll come from it anyway.
“Are you going to come for me? Should I leave you here after? Had your head shaved and now you’re covered in spit and come.” Adam puts his thumb in Ronan’s mouth, wraps his hand around his jaw and pulls his mouth open. He uses his thumb to smear more spit on Ronan’s face. “You’re such a mess. You look fucking wrecked, baby. My beautiful slut.”
Ronan whimpers as he comes, spilling over Adam’s hand. He collapses forwards, burying his face in Adam’s neck and Adam lets him. He wraps his arms around Ronan and holds him as he comes, as he keeps on coming, shaking in Adam’s arms. Adam holds him tight until he thinks Ronan has finished, and then for even longer after that, waiting for Ronan’s breathing to even out.
“Jesus, fuck,” Ronan says, eventually, after slow minutes have passed. “I’m never gonna be able to get my hair cut again without getting a boner.”
Adam snorts. “That’ll scare Gansey.” He kisses the side of Ronan’s head, on the velvety buzzed skin just above his ear.
Ronan laughs, presses his smirk to Adam’s shoulder. “Shithead.”