"Sit down!"
If there was one thing Yang Wenli learned from history, it was never to trifle with Julian when he spoke like that. So he quickly sat down on the floor in front of the couch. Julian sat behind him and wrapped a comb out of it's plastic package.
"I should have known."
"Julian…"
"I should have seen the signs from a mile away."
"Well, I don't think that's fair, you're not a hair stylist. Hey, maybe you could become one of those!"
Julian grabbed Yang's head and forced it forward. "Admiral Yang." He began, putting on his biggest scariest voice. "No amount of waffling is going to get you out of this, do you understand?"
Yang sighed. "Okay okay." He mumbled as he brought a cup to his lips.
"Julian— Ah, hey, not so rough!"
"It's your own fault."
"… I was going to say the tea was delicious as always." Julian huffed, both trying to hide his small pride over the complement and trying to chastise the 32 year old sitting in front of him, infected with head lice.
"How did you even get these anyway?" Julian chided, and Yang instinctively reached up to scratch his head but stopped himself. He laughed nervously as his hand dropped.
"Well… There was a big celebration and everyone threw their hats up. I decided not too, but my hat got knocked off in the hullabaloo. So, I groped around for it and I had thought that I'd picked up my own but later that day, Poplan approached me and I learned I had picked up his."
Julian shook his head. "I should have known it was him, that Olivier Poplan."
Yang chuckled softly and sipped his tea. He reached for the remote and turned the tv on.
"Oh." he said softly, "The news is on. But who wants to watch that, right?" He changed the channel and Saturday morning cartoons came on. But Julian wasn't paying attention, being focused on Yang's hair. It was soft and fluffy and neat from the combing and would have been rather nice, if not for the lice. If Admiral Yang wished for it, Julian decided, he could easily be the heartthrob of women across the Alliance. But he didn't, and he remained plain old Yang.
"Julian~"
While Julian was preoccupied, Yang had leaned his head back, staring at Julian upside down. Julian pursed his lips at him.
"Don't give me any lip service." Yang pouted and his face looked rather silly from Julian's perspective.
"Julian, you're a cruel child. I can comb the lice out of my hair on my own you know." Julian whacked his forehead with the comb.
"You wouldn't have noticed them in the first place, you would have just kept scratching away until the end of time."
Yang laughed and looked forward again.
"That may be true, but tell me, is that truly all that bad? If we assume that lice is like—"
Yang was silenced. Julian had reached around and covered up Yang's mouth with his hands. Yang sat there, a mixture of confused and surprised. He pulled Julian's hands off and turned to stare at him.
"You interrupted me!"
"That's right, I did. No complicated metaphors that take 30 minutes to explain, just you, me, saturday morning cartoons, and a date with head lice. Do you understand?"
Yang nodded slowly and returned to his tea, and that's how they passed the time on that one lazy Saturday morning.