Craig sighed and slumped against Clyde's locked bathroom door, angrily flipping off nothing in particular and then aiming a kick at the door for good measure. Fucking Clyde.
There were a few scuffling noises from inside the bathroom and then Clyde kicked the door back, on his side.
"Fuck you," he said, rather melodramatically. "My life is over."
Craig rolled his eyes for what felt like the millionth time that afternoon. Then he decided that rolling his eyes wasn't good enough, because Clyde couldn't see him and be appropriately shamed. Instead, he turned to face the door and did his best to sound supremely disdainful.
"Clyde, quit being a fucking idiot. It was a haircut."
More scuffling, a series of ominous-sounding thumps, and then Clyde was there, on the other side of the door. "I'm not being an idiot," he huffed, sounding outraged and also kind of out of breath. Craig wondered vaguely how someone could get out of breath doing their hair, but decided it was probably best he didn't know.
"Dude," Craig tried, switching tactics. "It looks exactly the same. I promise." To the naked ear his voice would sound just as annoyed as it did before, but Clyde would know that he was being as placating as it was possible for him to be. He hoped Clyde would know that, anyway, because this was getting kind of ridiculous.
There was some more scuffling and then a pause, and then Clyde opened the door just a tiny crack. Craig could see a sliver of one of his eyes, and some of his (totally ordinary) brown hair sticking up.
"Does it really?" he asked, sounding kind of skeptical. Craig had to resist the urge to stomp on the floor like a child. The most annoying thing about this was that Clyde honestly did look exactly the same. His hair was still messy and brown, girls still checked him out even as the two of them walked back to Clyde's house so he could have this little tantrum, and for whatever reason he steadfastly ignored them all in favor of trying to get Craig to hold hands with him in public.
"It really does," said Craig, and Clyde finally opened the door all the way. He looked as though he had recently lost a family member, but Craig counted the fact that he had come out at all as a win. Really, he thought that if someone gave him a haircut without actually cutting off any of his hair, he'd be more concerned with getting his money back than angsting about how the seven hairs she'd taken off the side irreversibly threw off his internal cool balance, or whatever. Then again, it was Clyde that he was dealing with.
Knowing that, Craig couldn't stop himself from making a startled face and stepping back, like Clyde's hair had scared him. Even though it really did look exactly the same. Clyde made a deeply emasculating noise that sounded sort of like a yelp and slammed the door shut again, and Craig cursed his own fantastic sense of humor.
"I'm hideous," said Clyde, and Craig could tell he was going to do something ridiculous like start crying soon. Which, no. If there was one thing in the universe that Craig couldn't handle, it was a crying Clyde.
"Shut up," he said, by this time growing slightly desperate. They were supposed to go to the movies later and at the rate Clyde was going, they'd probably never see a movie again. "That's a lie. You're-" here he paused and waved his hand illustratively in the air even though Clyde couldn't see him, unable to bring himself to the levels of faggotry it would take to finish that sentence.
From inside the bathroom, Clyde gave a loud and theatrical sniff. "I'm what?" he asked. The question was innocent enough, but Craig knew that on the other side of the door Clyde was totally grinning like an evil idiot lunatic, as he often did when he got Craig to admit something embarrassing. There was the clicking noise of the door unlocking, and Craig gave an internal sigh of relief. Clyde allowed Craig to pull the door open and step into the bathroom, gaping slightly at the sheer amount of hair product lying around. Unsurprisingly, Clyde was grinning like an evil idiot lunatic.
"You know," said Craig, grudgingly taking Clyde by the wrist and leading him out of the chamber of horrors he called a bathroom.
"Enlighten me," said Clyde. He smiled at Craig stupidly, haircut completely forgotten, just like that. "Perfect? Amazing? Beautiful?"
"An asshole," said Craig, wishing he'd never brought it up.
"I like beautiful, myself," Clyde continued blithely as they walked down the stairs of his house and onto the street.
Once they were outside Craig attempted to disentangle his hand from Clyde's, but Clyde just held on tighter and grinned at him some more. Craig scowled and tried to tell himself he allowed this to happen only because he didn't have the energy to fight it, but he wasn't even fooling himself.