Chapter Text
YUUJI
It’s far, far too early. Frost crackles underfoot, the air is cold enough to sting Yuuji’s throat as he huffs deep, beleaguered breaths, and almost every shop front has a sign that’s flipped to closed . The 6am trudge to work should be something he’s gotten used to by now, but with his toes getting numb, his nose running, and the cool metal of the salon’s front door keys carving divets into his palm, all he really has the wherewithal to think is: Fuck. This.
Yuuji buries his face deeper into his thick woollen scarf and blinks against the breeze threatening to make his eyes stream. Shoving his hands deeper into his pockets he heaves a sigh that clouds the air in front of him and makes him idly wish he had a cigarette, then sets his eyes on the one cafe that opens every morning at 6 on the dot. His saving grace, an oasis where he’s chummy enough with the baristas for a free drink every once in a while and the coffee is actually pretty decent.
Mumbling his coworker’s orders to himself, Yuuji spies the Curious Cat Cafe up ahead, plasters on his most charming, I Do Not Feel Like Death Right Now smile, and forces a spring into his step.
Sorry, We’re Closed!
“What in the ever loving fuck?” Yuuji whips his head around, as if looking for a culprit to blame for this violent offence against his morning routine, but the street remains empty aside from a salaryman loitering by the bus stop, checking his watch. Yuuji glares at him for the sake of it, before turning back to inspect the stupid sign a little further.
Sorry, We’re Closed!
The Curious Cat Cafe will be closed
for the next four weeks while we give a
temporary home to a pop-up cafe!
The Little Miss Maid Cafe looks forward
to welcoming you with open arms.
See you soon, kittens! :)
“Little… Miss… Maid Cafe,” Yuuji mumbles to himself, “no way.” Slanting his gaze across the unlit store front, Yuuji’s eyes catch on another, much brighter, much pinker sign advertising the pop-up maid cafe. Set to open in two days after they’ve finished redecorating the Curious Cat, supposedly it’ll be a rare delight of ridiculously named cakes, pastries, and drinks, all prepared and served by maids, aprons and all. There's even a photo of a petite maid holding a pink and blue sundae in the bottom right hand corner.
Yuuji snaps a picture of the poster and grins to himself. His day just got a whole lot better.
He skips off down the street feeling giddy and lightheaded, thinking about the possibility of girls in maid outfits less than two minutes from his workplace. Damn, who needs caffeine when there’s so much potential on the horizon?
Then he slips on a patch of ice and slams into the front door of the salon with a thunk! and an exaggerated groan.
"Guuuuh fuck, man."
“You see, that would’ve opened had you used those magical keys and actually unlocked it first.”
Yuuji hisses as he rubs the probably not fatal bump on his head and turns to Haru, who clutches a wildly oversized puffer jacket around her middle and looks thoroughly unimpressed.
“Oh, you’re here," Yuuji drawls.
“What? Yes I’m here! Are you gonna let me in or what?”
“Sorry sorry!” Yuuji sing-songs, raising his hands in mock surrender before lazily pulling the keys from his pocket, twirling them around his index finger, once, twice, then slotting them into the keyhole at his most infuriatingly leisurely pace. As soon as the key turns and the lock opens with a click , Haru all but shoves him to the ground in her effort to be the first inside.
“I don’t even know why we give you those,” she huffs, as Yuuji pops the keys into the lockbox in the back office, “you’re basically a baby.”
“Emi-san said it was to teach me responsibility and maturity,” Yuuji calls as he swipes one of Emi’s hand warmers from the desk drawer and twists it until it begins to warm. “I’m being trained into the perfect capitalist drone.”
“Oh shut up ,” Haru whines, “and blast the heaters would you? If I die from pneumonia it’ll be your funeral.”
Ignoring the obvious contradiction in her words, Yuuji pokes his head out from the back office and offers Haru his most well practised smarmy grin, “aw don’t be like that Haru-chan, you know you’d be lost without me!”
Haru simply groans and flops harshly down into her seat behind the front desk, immediately pulling out her phone while Yuuji gets to work turning the heaters and lights on, resetting the security system, and finally, his favourite part, getting a good playlist going.
"I think today is a pop punk kinda day," Yuuji muses, sauntering over to Haru and booting up the desktop so he can flip through his playlists, "I wanna boogie." Haru lifts her chin and manages to give the impression of looking down at him while actually looking up, rolling her eyes.
"Boogie?"
"Yup."
"Terushima-kun, it's 6am. Give me my coffee then we can talk about-" her nose scrunches in distaste and Yuuji stifles a giggle, "boogieing."
Ah. The coffee. "Oh, uh, you see, the thing is-"
"Consider your next words carefully."
"I… okay I'm really trying to consider this carefully but there's only so many ways to deliver bad new-AH! Fuck! Get off me, what the hell?"
Coffee deprived Haru is a demon, a feral creature from the depths of hell sent to make Yuuji suffer at 6:30 on a Monday morning. She clings to his back like some kind of rabid koala, bashing him physically and verbally over a cup of crummy coffee while Yuuji struggles to pry her off and not unceremoniously drop her ass to the floor like the great, fantastic, handsome co-worker he is.
"Workplace abuse!!! This is workplace abuse, Haru-chan! Don't think you can get away with this because you're tiny and easily- OW! mistaken for a hamster- Oh my god please don't bite!"
"Teru-kun I will DIE if I don't get my coffee."
"Stop talking about death at the start of the day, it's weird!"
"I'll show you weird, bastard."
"Please," Yuuji huffs, trying not to laugh as he scrabbles against the stranglehold of this bite-sized woman, "Curious Cat was closed and I got distracted by the maid cafe thing, I'll order us coffees just get off. "
But she's already slipped down his back, another target in her red tinted terminator vision. Yuuji thinks about how similar Haru is to his younger sister, which reminds him why he hates opening the salon with her. He scampers away from her and takes up residence at the front desk again, eyeing the clock. Almost opening time, the other girls will be here any minute. He chooses an Ali playlist on Spotify, maybe a bit of funk would be good for Haru’s mood swings.
Haru, who is still staring at him like that .
"What?"
"You said maid cafe."
"Yeah, and?"
Haru squints and glares at him a little more before snorting with laughter, “You pig!”
“I- wait- what?”
“You want to go to the maid cafe!”
“Of course I wanna go to the maid cafe!”
“Why?”
“Oh, uh, I dunno, girls maybe?” Teru cries, flailing his arms around as if that will make it clearer how obvious his point is.
“Girls? I’m a girl! You’re surrounded by girls every day!”
“Nice girls! Girls who wanna-”
“Fuck you?”
“-DATE ME!”
Haru barks out a laugh so sharp that Yuuji is almost cowed, but it’s at that moment that the three other girls waltz through the front door to witness him red faced, arms in the air, and Haru advancing on him again with a glint in her eyes somewhere between mischief and murder.
“You’ve got a date, Teru-kun?” asks Chihiro, lovely, sweet, kind, Chihiro. Yuuji considers hiding behind her.
“Nah, but he reckons he’s going to get some poor girl forced to be living breathing fanservice for a job to go on one with him,” Haru snickers
Yuuji gathers himself, retracting his inflatable arm-flailing tube man limbs back down to his sides as he turns to address Chihiro, Akane and Emi.
“Curious Cat is closed so, sorry, no coffee, but!” He extracts his phone from his pocket and opens his gallery, selecting his picture of the maid cafe poster, “This place is opening in two days, cool right?”
The girls gather round and coo at the poster. Akane, who handles most of the advertising and social media for the salon, comments on the cute design, while Emi, his boss, wonders aloud if the coffee will be overpriced and worse than Curious Cat. Yuuji heaves a sigh and opens up a delivery app on his phone since this conversation really isn’t going the direction he was hoping.
“Guys, I think you’re missing the point,” he says as he quickly taps in everyone’s orders and makes a mental note to get them to actually pay him back this time, “there will be girls there. Girls!”
“What are you talking about, this place is full of girls,” Akane says, walking to her station and laying out her things before her first client of the day arrives. “Open your eyes, dude.”
“This is what I’m saying!” says Haru, already tinkering with the playlist and adding Taylor Swift to the queue.
“Girls I can date, I mean!”
Akane chuckles, “there’s new women in here every day, what are you talking ab-”
“Terushima-kun if you even think about dating one of our clients I will know about it and I will not be happy,” Emi says. Then, after a moment of thought– “you too, Akane.”
Akane simply blinks blandly at Emi.
“Yeah, thank you, I know . I just thought, I don’t know, that it would be nice to meet a cute girl that I could at least entertain the thought of going out with in my head without you guys knowing her or judging her or–”
“Judging you?” Chihiro asks.
“Exactly. Now, please let me fantasise in peace!”
Chihiro hums and pats him gently on back. Teru can feel a blush rising on his cheeks, as if this could get any more embarrassing, as he slogs over to his station to prep his tools, ensuring he has everything ready for the start of the day. He thinks about Hana, the manager of his old volleyball club, who was so enthused about Yuuji getting into hairdressing because she thought it would be ‘good’ for him.
“You can be a little… overbearing at times, Terushima-kun,” she’d innocently said, “I think being around more women would help you loosen up and get used to talking with them more!”
And yeah, he’d felt a little condescended to, but he knew it was all in good faith, and it seemed to have proved true while he was in training. He has lots of girl friends now, even had a girlfriend or two, even if it didn't work out. It was all going great, better than great, and now he had a job that paid well, with (mostly) decent coworkers, but his love life was even more stale than it had been in high school. At least there he got a frantic sweaty kiss or two after a game. Now it was just… nothing.
Yuuji scrunches his nose as he checks his timetable for the day. Nothing until 2pm, one of his sister's friends.
“I need more clients,” he mumbles to himself.
“You’ll get them when you’re a better hairdresser!” calls Haru, who has the ears of a freaking hawk.
“I’m a great hairdresser!”
“You’re an apprentice .”
“Doesn’t mean I’m bad at my job!”
“Both of you calm down,” Emi says, fiddling with the attachments to her blow dryer, “and Teru-kun would you mind checking on that boy outside, he’s been loitering like a lost puppy for a minute or two. Any longer and he’ll catch a cold.”
Yuuji turns to see a young man standing outside the store, staring up at the sign with a furrow in his brow so deep you’d have thought it was an affront to his ancestors.
“He looks lost, go see if he needs some help,” Emi urges, nodding towards the door again. The man outside the salon looks up and seems to catch her eye. The deep ridges in his brow smooth out as his expression opens into something akin to a deer in the headlights, and he quickly spins round and faces the other side of the street, head down.
Yuuji grins, “on it.”
He lopes past the front counter, dragging his fingertips across the plastic ferns that decorate the waiting area, before opening the front door and stepping back out into the cold morning air.
“You okay there?” he asks.
The man jumps a little and turns to face Yuuji with wide eyes. He’s wearing a thick knitted beanie and an oversized maroon jumper that covers his hands and almost reaches the knees of his skinny jeans.
“Um, I-”
“Dye-job? Trim? Back and sides? Though if you’re looking for a skin fade you might be better off heading to the barbers two doors down for that one, if I’m being honest,” Yuuji says, squinting to see if he can spot a hint of hair poking out from under the beanie but– nothing. The man doesn’t reply, looking everywhere but Yuuji as he fiddles with the hem of his jumper. He’s kind of striking, Yuuji thinks, in an odd way, with thin, fair brows and sharp black eyeliner framing his hazel eyes. His lips are thin and chapped, and he nibbles on his bottom lip as he glares down at his hands.
“You okay there, buddy?”
The man raises his chin sharply, almost as though he had forgotten Yuuji was right there in front of him. Sensing that he had once again come on too strong somehow, Yuuji walks it back a couple of steps, leaning against the storefront and pulling his gaze away to the stores opposite.
“What’s your name?”
“My name?”
“Yeah. I’m Terushima Yuuji. I work here,” he says, jabbing a thumb back towards the salon. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Kyoutani. Kyoutani Kentarou.”
“Pleasure to meet ya, Kyoutani-san,” Yuuji says, smiling in a way that he hopes isn’t ‘too much’. “Can I help you with anything?”
“You, uh, you do men’s hair here?”
“Sure! We’re unisex. We do men’s hair, women’s hair, anyone-else-who-needs-it’s hair. You looking for something in particular?”
“And you do walk-ins?”
“If you’re okay with an apprentice then yeah, I’m free all morning!”
“Okay… but what about, um…” Kyoutani trails off, the rest of his sentence lost to an incoherent mumble. He glares down at his hands again.
“Didn’t quite catch that man,” Yuuji says, pushing off the wall and taking a step closer to Kyoutani. “What’s that?”
“Um, hair, yeah, I need that. But what about other stuff like, y’know, eye- eyebrows, maybe.”
Yuuji’s eyes widen slightly before he catches himself, customer care and all that. He schools his expression back into something blandly neutral, “what exactly do you want to do to your eyebrows?”
“I was thinking, maybe, of dyeing them darker? They don’t match-”
“Woah woah woah, dude! What! You have great eyebrows! You’ve got this kinda punk rock stud look going on, it works for you!”
“I’ve got a- what the hell are you talking about?”
Oh shit, too much, backpedal!
“I mean, it just works for you! You could dye them, sure, but they fit your face as they are. They’re neat,” he says, once again actively adjusting his expression so it comes off as open and honest as possible.
“Uh. Alright. I appreciate that, I guess? But I’m starting a new job in a couple of days and what with the way my hair is dyed and the whole eyebrow situation I just don’t feel very, like, professional. I guess.”
Dyed hair? Now that’s something Yuuji can work with.
“Show me the hair. We’re not gonna do your eyebrows. Not because I’m denying a customer's requests or anything! It’s just that we don’t do that here. But maybe we can do something about your hair if you're worried it’s unprofessional.” Yuuji can already feel the excitement welling up in him. If he can get this client, and have him out of the chair looking absolutely fucking to die for , then he’ll be one step closer to being an actual, fully-fledged hairdresser.
Kyoutani mumbles something to himself and tugs off the beanie. His hair is… really fucking cool. Grown out a bit too long, sure, and his roots are definitely coming in, but the dude’s blonde hair has racing stripes , fucking racing stripes! It’s a bit on the delinquent side, but it totally goes with the eyeliner and skinny jeans get-up. Yuuji’s almost envious. If he can’t be this guy, he will have this guy. In his chair. To get his hair done.
“Wow, hell yeah, this is great.”
“Right, thanks.”
Yuuji opens the door of the salon to a gust of warmth and grins. “Wanna chat about it outside of the tundra?”
Yuuji does a little fist pump when Kyoutani finally enters the salon. He’s got him in his claws now, and he will not be letting him get away. He directs him to a couple of plush loveseats in the corner of the waiting area, as far as he can get from prying eyes, and starts to gently interrogate Kyoutani about the kind of hair he wants. He finds out that he’s not about to start some soulless salaryman gig, but a more casual, customer facing job where he doesn’t need to look formal but at the very least “appealing”. Yuuji reckons he looks plenty appealing, but if Kyoutani wants to soften some of his sharp edges, it’s not really his place to just say no point blank. But the thing is… he can tell that Kyoutani really loves his hair. He’s been dyeing it himself since he was 15, and he’s attached to the distinctiveness, and the blonde, even if it’s never failed to come out either copper or canary yellow.
Yuuji leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees as Kyoutani seems to try to talk himself into making a big change. He’s clearly nervous, both because he doesn’t want to conform to what appeals to others and, maybe, just being in a salon in general, since he’s never tried it before. Handing off your beautiful head of hair to a stranger to mess with is kind of like giving away your daughter at her wedding, Yuuji can relate.
“So I guess- I want- something like this, but nicer, but I don’t know how to make it nicer for the people I’m working with, I don’t even know how to look nice this is so embarrassing I should’ve just fucking asked. Why’d they even hire me? Ugh, fuck!” Kyoutani buries his face in his hands, and a moment later, a muffled “sorry” escapes his lips. Kyoutani’s been talking himself in circles for a couple of minutes, and Yuuji can already spot the flush on the back of his neck, right where his hair has grown long enough to twist into tight curls.
“Hey, nothing to be sorry for,” he smiles, and reaches out to touch Kyoutani’s shoulder but, oops, that was a mistake, because Kyoutani wrenches back and looks between Yuuji and his shoulder like his hand was made of hot coals. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. Like, actually, for real, apology required sorry,” Yuuji rambles, huffing out an awkward laugh.
“N- no, it’s fine, I overreacted,” Kyoutani says, shoulders relaxing from where they’d hunched up to touch the black rings in his ears. Before Yuuji can really react, he steers the conversation back to hair. “So, um, what do you think? About the-” he gestures weakly to his head.
Yuuji feels like he’s got conversational whiplash, but for all his more questionable qualities, he prides himself on always having something else to say.
“Oh, right! Well, if i’m being honest, it feels like if we completely get rid of the look you’ll only end up leaving-” upset, angry, broken beyond repair. This guy is sensitive . “Disappointed. How’d you feel about tidying up the cut a little, redyeing the blonde to give it a more natural hue, and cleaning up those stripes so they’re a little straighter and less smudged around the edges. I mean, they hired you with this look, right? If they really hated it, they’d’ve told you already.”
“Oh. you think?”
“For sure! Plus, it suits you. You look cool as hell.”
“I don’t know if ‘cool’ is what I’m going for.”
“Huh?”
“I mean- I need to look more, y’know, cu- c-classy. I think.”
Yuuji eyes Kyoutani for a moment. He didn’t miss that, he’s not stupid. He takes in the eyeliner, the jumble of earrings, the floral chelsea boots, and the array of pins on the satchel that sits at his feet. A smiley face, a volleyball (nice), a couple of avante garde enamel ones he probably picked up from some art gallery, and a rainbow flag.
Now, Yuuji isn’t one to jump to conclusions, but he’s also not one to not jump to conclusions.
“And do you want to look… classy?”
Kyoutani bites his lip again and stares at his knees, he nods sharply.
“But still, unique, right? Like you, Kyoutani-san?”
“Yeah, that’d be nice.”
Yuuji takes a breath and smiles, hoping the expression works its way into his voice since Kyoutani still isn’t looking at him.
“Okay, I think I can work with that.” Yuuji drums his fingertips on his knees to try and release some of his overexcited energy. He is the ally of the year , he can’t wait to tell Akane about this.
Yuuji guides Kyoutani to the reception desk and walks him through pricing, which initially has Kyoutani baulking, but he relaxes a little after Yuuji explains the apprenticeship discount, and promises he can lump a student discount on top of it even though he’s not technically allowed to. He encourages Kyoutani to sign up for their mailing list with one of the print out forms from behind the desk, and chances a quick look at his details (another thing he’s technically not allowed to do), just so he can ensure he’s got the pronouns right, and he has, sweet.
Yuuji lets Kyoutani get settled in the chair so he can linger back and hiss at Haru to “stop fucking staring!”, to which she sticks out her tongue and uses her middle finger to pull down the skin under her eye like a child.
Kyoutani shifts awkwardly in his seat, scooting his butt back then slipping forwards again. He’s glaring at his reflection as he starts feeling under the chair for the lever to adjust the height.
“Oh, don’t worry about that! I’ve got you,” Yuuji says, and sets to work adjusting the back and height of the chair for Kyoutani’s long legs. Kyoutani, for his part, huffs a thanks. “Anyways, you’re in luck,” Yuuji continues, hauling a thick black binder out from one of his station’s drawers. “When I was in training I had a whole bunch of ideas about how to style shaved heads. If anything, I’m the lucky one for finally having the opportunity to try it!”
“You’ve never done this before?” asks Kyoutani, locking eyes with Yuuji through the mirror. Yuuji suppresses a shiver and darts his gaze back to the binder.
“Uh, well, yes I have. There’s plenty of practice wigs at college. Just never done it on a real person before, haha… but it’s fine! Promise! I’ll take care of you, swear on my life.”
Kyoutani still looks unconvinced and worryingly flighty, so Yuuji promptly opens his binder to the final tab, where he’s collated various images both of style inspiration and wigs he styled himself on plastic heads. He flips through until he finds the page with stencilled hearts, flowers, and all manner of kitsch and cutesy patterns dyed into fair hair, before handing the open binder to Kyoutani, who takes it silently.
Kyoutani stares at the images for… an uncomfortably long time. His thin fingers drag over the laminated images one by one, sometimes pressing a thumb against them as if he can feel the texture of the hair beneath. Yuuji waits patiently beside him, desperately trying not to hover, his right foot tapping insistently on the linoleum in hungry anticipation. Sometimes he’ll pause on a photograph and Yuuji will open his mouth to say what a gorgeous style it is, or how much it would suit the shape of his face, the colour of his eyes, but Kyoutani will only murmur a quiet “no” and skim to the next.
By the time Kyoutani finally chooses a style, Yuuji has totally zoned out, staring holes into the base of Kyoutani’s neck, and those curls, wondering idly if he could poke his pinky finger through one, if it’s soft or coarse. He wonders how a Japanese guy came to have such a defined curl pattern, if only in the baby hairs, anyways. What’s up with that? Did he have a foreign parent? Was that why his style was so unique? Maybe he grew up in America, or somewhere trendy like London or Paris. Man, that would be pretty impressive, you could probably have real fun in cities like that. Maybe that’s where he started dyeing his hair, maybe that’s why he’s so nervous about being a boy in a salon in Japan .
So maybe Yuuji is the kind of guy who makes assumptions.
Kyoutani coughs, and Yuuji startles out of his stupor to see Kyoutani staring up at him like he’s lost his mind.
“This one,” he says gruffly, “I like this one.”
“Oh! Great, ah, yeah, sorry,” Yuuji chuckles, as he leans over Kyoutani to peer at the image being pointed out by one delicately painted nail. It’s a neat look, natural blonde buzz with amber and crimson flowers the size of senbei looping around the head from temple to temple. It’s not nearly so daring or audacious as some of the other designs, but it sort of matches the pattern of the old racing stripes, and Yuuji can see why Kyoutani decided on them. “That’s nice, really pretty. It’ll definitely look good on you,” he smiles. Kyoutani glances up at him through the mirror, clearly the kind of guy who blushes easily, pink dusting high on his cheekbones.
“Yeah, right, sure.”
“Don’t worry about it, you’ll see. Trust the process,” he grins.
He leads Kyoutani to the sink to wash his hair, and Kyoutani shivers a little when Yuuji slips the towel around his neck. The racing stripes, as it turns out, are a temporary dye that washes right out of his hair. The black turns to grey and runs right out in soapy rivulets, spilling down the drain in a marble swirl as Yuuji massages Kyoutani’s scalp with shampoo and conditioner. He uses his nails to scratch around the neck, where those curious baby hairs are, and Kyoutani squeezes his eyes shut, turning bright red and flinching as though Yuuji had struck a bundle of nerves.
“Are you okay?” Yuuji asks gently, pausing in his ministrations. Kyoutani squeezes his eyes tighter for a moment, before relaxing his face and shoulders, muscle by muscle. He takes a couple of deep breaths, and Yuuji can sense the four counts tripping through his mind as he does so. He can see the moment his jaw unclenches, and eventually Kyoutani breathes out a shaky “yeah, m’fine.”
“Can I continue?”
“Yes. I said I’m fine.”
Yuuji doesn’t push it any further, but continues to rub soothing circles into Kyoutani’s scalp until all the dye and any latent dirt and oils are thoroughly removed. In a moment of inspiration, he grabs a small flannel and soaks it in hot water, then wrings it out until it’s damp and presses it over Kyoutani’s eyes. He cringes a little initially, but Yuuji keeps his hand there for a moment, exerting the lightest pressure. He watches as Kyoutani’s fingers uncurl from his jumper, leaving little indents where he’d squeezed the fabric into peaks and troughs.
“I’m going to dry your hair now.”
Kyoutani nods, ever so slightly. Yuuji leaves the flannel on his face and uses a fresh towel to tenderly work the water out of his hair. He dabs at his neck only slightly, and feels a restrained shudder through the thick terry cloth. He finishes by daubing the skin around his hairline, and only then realises that he’s been holding his breath.
Reminding himself that he is a mammal that literally needs oxygen to survive, Yuuji heaves a breath like he’s just done real manual labour and tosses the towel in the hamper. He slowly removes the flannel from Kyoutani’s eyes, and adds that to the pile too. Taking a step back from the sink he puts his hands on his hips, power pose. Because he’s got this. Every client is a learning opportunity! “Right, all done!”
Kyoutani blinks his eyes open slowly, as if waking up from a deep sleep and suddenly all the lights are too bright. “Alright,” he grunts, and rubs his eyes roughly with his fists, his eyeliner smudging into dark grey circles. He looks down at his hands, where his knuckles are dusted grey, and groans. “Ahhh fuck.”
Yuuji can’t help it, Kyoutani looks remarkably similar to an angry raccoon. His chest bubbles with wheezing laughter and he tries so hard to hold it back that his ribs begin to ache and his cheeks are on the verge of cramping. Once he’s gathered himself enough to look up at Kyoutani again, the sight of his small lips pressed into a pout and those sharp eyes scowling through the blotchy makeup sets him off again.
“I, haa, I’m so sorry Kyoutani-san. I’m sorry it’s-” Yuuji gasps for another breath and finds it within himself to hold eye contact with Kyoutani, pursing his lips to stop the laughter from exploding back out, “it’s so early that my brain’s bar for humour is on the floor, it’s- it’s in the gutter. It’s in hell. It’s really not that bad, I swear.”
Kyoutani has gone back to rubbing his eyes. He runs the tap and splashes water on his face, scrubbing with his fists. He catches sight of himself in the mirror and blanches, “shit, why’s it only waterproof now? ”
Yuuji, having finally restored his already somewhat lacking sense of professionalism, gathers a few cotton pads and nabs a bottle of micellar water from Chihiro’s station. “Tanuki-san,” he grins, handing Kyoutani the supplies. Kyoutani grumbles and blushes, because the guy is always blushing.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Tanukichi?”
“Ew, I hate landlords.”
“He’s cute though.”
Kyoutani, with one clean eye and one still splotched with grey and black, freezes for a moment. Yuuji is busying himself with getting the shaving and bleaching supplies ready and notices the stillness in his peripheral. The sounds of the salon, of other clients entering and chatting and the really bad pop Haru has spoiled his playlist with, fuzz and blur and blend into a soft white noise. All of Yuuji’s awareness concentrates on a single bright pinprick that settles itself right where Kyoutani is sitting.
“You can be a little… overbearing at times, Terushima-kun,”
Yuuji takes a step towards him, wondering if he’s broken another invisible boundary, “um-”
But, Kyoutani’s shoulders are shaking, and light, incredulous laughter is puffing from his lips. He’s not looking at Yuuji, but he tilts his head at his reflection as he starts working on the makeup again. “Yeah, I guess he is.”
Once the makeup debacle is over and Yuuji has had a couple of internal pep talks with himself, Kyoutani is finally settled back in the chair at his station. The cutting cape is around his neck, fastened with the lightest touch, and Yuuji is working on getting that buzz as neat and sharp as possible. They don’t talk much, because Yuuji is determined for this to be the cut and style of his god damn life. Plus, Kyoutani isn’t much of a talker anyway. Yuuji listens to the sound of his breaths as he works, the way they get a little shorter when he touches his ears and neck. He flinches a little, sometimes, but Yuuji pokes his tongue out in concentration and keeps working.
“I’m taking the guard off now, Kyoutani-san. I’m going to neaten up your sideburns and the back of your neck. Um, if you can, try to keep as still as possible, okay?”
Kyoutani only seems to tense more as Yuuji clicks the guard off the clippers.
“Hey, Tanuki-san,” Yuuji says, setting the clippers aside and resting a hand on the table by Kyoutani, “relax for me?”
Kyoutani, with his eyes bare of makeup and suddenly looking much younger, glances up at Yuuji, holds contact for a searching moment, then nods sharply. Yuuji grins, and gets to work.
Once the cut is done, Yuuji brings Kyoutani a glass of water to drink while he preps the bleach. This process is much simpler, he’d managed to cut away most of what was already bleached and damaged, so all that was left was Kyoutani’s natural deep brunette hair. Yuuji mindlessly runs his fingers through the fresh buzz, always thrilling at the way the hair flits across his skin in soft waves.
“Hmm, this is great,” he murmurs, and he’s not lying. The close crop and skin tight edges bring out the sharpness of his cheekbones, and his natural colour accentuates the fair, barely-there eyebrows that Yuuji’s slowly becoming obsessed with. “Maybe next time we keep this colour?”
He’s mostly talking to himself, and he knows that. Kyoutani merely huffs a non-response and stares at his fidgeting fingers while Yuuji clips a fresh cape around him and brushes on the bleach in precise strokes. While it processes, Kyoutani reads magazines and scrolls through his phone as Yuuji hand cuts the floral stencils and finds a couple of thin brushes for the details.
The bleach is washed out, and Kyoutani’s hair is toned to a light, natural blonde, bright like the midday sun. Kyoutani is speechless, and Yuuji, for his part, is over the fucking moon.
“Wow, I take back what I said before about your natural colour, this looks amazing, Kyoutani-san. Never go back, please, I’ll pay you to keep it like this forever.”
Yuuji excitedly jumps around Kyoutani, examining the bleach job from every angle, from up close and far away, “once you get that eyeliner back on it is over. ”
“Uh, over?”
“Yup. Finished, done-zo, over for all the girls and the boys. You win, Kyoutani-san, damn!”
“Aha, okay, right. Thank you, Terushima-san.”
Yuuji applies the stencils and paints on the flowers with a sense of giddy relief. He totally did it! A kick-ass style on a brand new client who will for sure become a regular if Yuuji has anything to say about it. Shit, this is going on instagram immediately .
“Et voila!” Yuuji beams as he reveals the final product to Kyoutani, holding up his hand mirror to give him a view of every angle.
“Wow.”
“Do you like it? Are you happy, Kyoutani-san?”
Kyoutani, who’s eyes have kind of bugged out, is leaning toward the mirror and tilting his head from side to side, his mouth splitting into a wobbly smile.
“Y-yeah, it’s amazing, thank you so much.”
Yuuji can’t help the slightly hyperactive laugh that spills out of him, maybe his voice crackles into a high-pitched pre-teen squeal for a second, who’s to say. What matters is that this is the most he’s gotten Kyoutani to positively emote over the last few hours, and it feels fucking fantastic!
“Do you mind if I take a picture for the salon’s instagram? It’s a professional account, and you can choose whether or not we tag you.”
Yuuji knows it’s cheating, but he does his best impression of a wide-eyed Puss In Boots and Kyoutani, who had looked a little reluctant, crumbles immediately.
“Uh, yeah, just give me a sec.” He rummages in his satchel and retrieves his eyeliner, and it takes him all of thirty seconds to apply wings that could cut glass. It’s perfect.
“It’s perfect,” Yuuji says, completely involuntarily. “Uh, haha. Anyways, let me just-” he fumbles with his phone for a second and positions Kyoutani against the back wall, by their Very Aesthetic and Very Expensive orange and pink neon sign. Kyoutani looks like a model, he doesn’t even have to do anything. He’s just got that thing where you hold a room and it’s totally light work, plus he has the whole unconventionally attractive thing going on. Or maybe he’s just attractive, Yuuji tries not to dwell on it. The way the pink and orange hues spill over the flowers in his hair and splashes his cheeks (ah, are those freckles? Okay, let’s do a close-up shot) is mesmerising.
“Um, Terushima-san?”
“Yep?”
“You must’ve taken a hundred pictures by now.”
“Oh! Ha! yeah, got carried away there!” Yuuji pockets his phone and grins broadly, “that was amazing, thank you very much Kyoutani-san. Let’s get you to the till.”
Kyoutani pays and suddenly it’s almost 1 o'clock and Yuuji is leading him back towards the front doors. Yuuji bows deeply. “Thank you again, Kyoutani-san. I look forward to seeing you again.”
Kyoutani pauses at the door, flicking his eyes towards the reception desk and the other stylists at work, then back to Yuuji, then at his feet. “Uh, I’m probably younger than you, y’know.”
Yuuji halts next to him, slightly at a loss as to what that’s supposed to mean.
“San… is a bit much.”
“Oh!” Yuuji grins again and holds out his hand for Kyoutani to shake, “I look forward to seeing you again soon, Kyoutani-kun.”
Kyoutani graces him with a small smile, nods a little jerkily, and makes his way out of the salon. His hair catches the cool afternoon light and the short strands almost glitter with it. Yuuji wishes it would snow, wonders what the soft white flakes would look like, settled on his eyelashes, scattered atop his head and refracting prisms across that super fucking dope style. Yuuji grins and hopes he comes back, mentally making it his mission to get him to smile with teeth . He’s absurdly proud and a bit overwhelmed for reasons he can’t quite place. His heart is beating a little too hard and his palms are sweating enough for him to have to wipe them against his jeans as he turns back into the waiting area.
“That was literally the most intense cut and style I’ve ever seen,” Haru says, eyes glinting and smile curled into something on the wrong side of mischievous. “Fuck a maid cafe, you should get his number.”
Yuuji grunts and slaps her upside the head as he walks past the desk.
“You’re blushing. ”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“ Why would I be blushing? I’m not even-” Yuuji waves his arms around. Hana would tell him to use your words .
“How do you know, though?”
“I’m 21 years old, Haru- chan .”
“You’re a widdle biddle baby, lots of new experiences and realisations await you.”
“I- what are you- just shut up oh my god you’re infuriating.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Haru cackles, like the goblin witch she is. Yuuji can feel his stupid heartbeat in his stupid ears as he cleans away his station and the blood won’t drain from his face and neck which are all suddenly prickling hot and itchy and–
“Ignore her,” Akane whispers, prying away the shampoo bottle he’d been gripping with far too much force.
“She’s just- she’s just so-”
“I know,” Akane chuckles, “she’s really fucking annoying when she wants to be, but she’s only teasing.”
“Yeah, I know, thanks.”
“And you should know that Emi noticed how well you worked with him. You impressed her today. You have great instincts.”
Yuuji smiles and places his hand over where Akane is touching his shoulder.
“Hell yeah I did. Kyoutani-kun looks amazing, right?”
“Insanely amazing. Send me the best pictures for our socials, yeah?”
“Yeah, course. Thanks, Akane-san.”
“Anytime. And just- don’t overthink it, okay?”
Yuuji doesn’t know what there is to overthink, but he grins and agrees not to anyways. Akane gives him a squeeze and pinches his cheek before settling back at her own station. Yuuji takes a couple of breaths and gets back to work.
Yuuji’s next client is a breeze. She’s kind and chatty, pretty too. He bleaches her hair and dyes it a light auburn, then gives her a wolf cut, like he’s done dozens of times for young and trendy women, and snaps a handful of photos by the plastic ferns. She’s very outgoing, clearly, posing like she’s on the cover of Vogue and asking for a couple of fake candids too. Yuuji likes her, she’s a fun client, and he sees her out the door with a smile on his face.
“Boooooooooorrrrrriiiiiinnnnnnggggggggggg.”
Yuuji spins around to glare at Haru. “Do you have to comment on everything I do? Don’t you have a job? What do you do ?”
“Aka-chan aka-chaaaaan.”
“Haruka-san!” Emi yells, then dips her voice low. “Please keep it down, we still have clients in. And Yuuji, if you’re all done you can leave early since you opened today. We can deal with the clean up.”
“Thank you very much, Emi san!” Yuuji bows gratefully and quickly tidies up his station before double checking that the keys are where they’re supposed to be and grabbing his things. He waves the girls off as he exits into the dusky evening, Emi’s “good work today!” ringing in his ears.
Later that night, Yuuji lies in bed, flicking through the photographs he took of Kyoutani for something to send to Akane. He sent two decent pictures of his second client over an hour ago, and since then he’s been poring over Kyoutani’s expression, hair, stance, vibe , even. His phone is so close to his face and the brightness so high he feels like he might get some kind of pressure headache, but he just can’t choose. They’re all so good .
He flips between two images that are almost identical, but Kyoutani’s head is tilted just so in the second one, so favourites it and moves on to the next few. He knows he’s being a bit too rigorous, and far more of a perfectionist than anyone would ever give him credit for, but there’s a part of him that wants to do his work, and Kyoutani, justice. To plaster up a couple of images on the grid and say, hey, we did that .
There’s an even bigger part of him that’s just having a good time. He’s proud of his work, and of his new customer service superpowers. He zooms in on a side profile, right at Kyoutani’s neck, where the cut is tight to the skin and each strand is impeccably bleached, and traces his finger over it as if to feel it again. The image shifts to the right, and now his screen is full of Kyoutani’s face. Those freckles he noticed earlier, small but dark and clustered over the bridge of his nose, with a few scattered like stars across his cheeks. His lips a little chapped and bitten, his eyelashes thin and pale like his brows.
Yuuji puffs out a short breath, “ha, what the fuck man.”
He favourites the picture and closes out of the gallery, then opens the favourites folder and finds at least 20 images there. He groans.
After painstakingly choosing 3 final images to send to Akane to edit and post, he starts to draft an email to her when it hits him that he never found out whether Kyoutani wanted them to tag him or not. After around 3 seconds of intense deliberation, he opens instagram and types out Kyoutani Kentarou .
It takes a little scrolling, but eventually he finds a private account with Kyoutani’s full name and the display name KyouKen🐶. His DMs are open, so Yuuji shoots him a quick message.
>>> Yuuji_T: Hi, sorry to bother you so late! Hope you don’t mind me contacting you here, but I was wondering if you wanted us to tag you in our post? Hope you like the cut, you look rad! 😜
After much less than three seconds of thought, Yuuji sends him a friend request, too. He tosses his phone on the bedside table but it immediately buzzes and Yuuji gets tangled in his blankets as he lunges for it.
>>> KyouKen🐶: Hi. You can tag me. And thank you.
>>> Yuuji_T: Any time! Literally can’t wait to have you back in the chair 😁
The message is seen immediately, and Yuuji waits a few more seconds to see if he’ll get a response. The ellipses float up a couple of times, teasing him as he grips his phone and stares down the little dots. The ellipses eventually drop back down for long enough for him to think that he probably won’t get a reply, but then his message gets a heart, and Yuuji is beyond ecstatic.
“Shit, nice,” he grins.
Exiting the chat, he is even more beyond ecstatic to see a full grid of images on Kyoutani’s profile.
“You accepted it,” Yuuji mumbles excitedly, “oh my god.”
Kyoutani’s profile is pretty understated, mostly pictures of the places he visits, and more of friends than of himself. There’s a lot of peace signs and phones obscuring his face, but Yuuji drinks in the rest of him like a man deprived. He reads the captions and the comments, and is oddly happy to see that he has friends who comment on almost everything he posts. He wonders if this Oikawa guy is his boyfriend, he comments on everything and leaves a ludicrous amount of heart emojis. Yuuji kind of wants to comment too, there’s a birthday post from late last year where Kyoutani is blowing out the candles of a cake shaped like a terribly misshapen dog, and though Kyoutani is scowling, he’s surrounded by about 15 guys who look like they all adore him.
He doesn’t comment though, because that would absolutely be creepy. It’s almost a year old. So he keeps scrolling.
A flash of pink catches his eye, and he opens a post to a night out that Kyoutani went on last year, where all the boys in the picture are dressed in various shades of pink and red. The caption reads ‘Team Reunion’ and it was uploaded the day after Valentine’s day. flipping through the images, Yuuji’s heart flip flops at a full body picture of Kyoutani leaning against a bar in a club lit with strobes and glow sticks. Kyoutani isn’t looking at the camera, looks more like he’s vying for the attention of the bartender, but what hooks Yuuji is his outfit. There are bangles dangling from his wrists, and his converses have been crudely sprayed bright pink. His hair, too. He thinks he spies glitter on his cheekbones. He’s… he’s wearing a pink ribbed vest tucked into a checked black and pink pleated skirt, and he’s got white fishnets on that have been ripped to shit. Yuuji stares at it for a full minute, then swallows with an audible click.
Okay so… the dude has nice legs. He looks really good in- that, obviously. The way he’s leaning on the bar pushes up the skirt a little at the back and makes his legs look even longer, somehow. And he might be able to see the hem of a tiny pair of black shorts peeking out from beneath the skirt that is, quite honestly, criminally short.
There’s an annoyingly attractive man next to him also leaning over the bar. He has his hand on his shoulder. Yuuji taps on his face and he’s tagged as ‘Oikawa Tooru’. Right. But if they were together, he’d probably have his hand around his waist or something, surely.
Giving in to something that he can not and doesn’t want to name, Yuuji clicks on Oikawa’s name and opens a public profile absolutely slammed with pictures of this guy with someone who is one hundred percent his boyfriend who is one hundred percent not Kyoutani.
Terusihma’s chest seems to loosen at this couple's gratuitous displays of affection and he exits back to Kyoutani’s profile, where the image of him at the bar is still just… right there. He looks at the rest of the pictures in the post, and though boys in skirts seems to be the theme of the night for almost the whole team, there’s only one picture with Kyoutani on full display, so Yuuji goes back to it. He focuses on the way the lights highlight the muscles of his arms and legs, and the strip of skin covered by those infuriating shorts. They pinch in a little and the way his upper thighs swell out has blood rushing through Yuuji’s ears like a tidal wave. If this was an anime his nose probably would’ve started bleeding pretty dramatically by now because he’s well, uh, he’s sexy .
Yuuji doesn’t think he’s ever consciously thought of another dude as sexy before, but Kyoutani’s vest is hugging the side of his pec, throwing the muscles into stark relief, his waistband is tight enough to give him a sense of the slightness of his taut waist, and the holes in his tights have his thoughts drifting to whether they were pulled by someone else’s fingers slipping through the holes to hungrily touch the skin underneath.
His breath is coming up a little short, his eyes are definitely straining, and he realises with a jolt of surprise that he’s sporting a semi.
He lifts the covers and stares at his dick.
“Well that’s new.”