Bleach Job

A Fanfic in Which I Do Not Own Anything, Swear to God

"I'm not sure this is a good idea."

Gum only smiled, lifted up his hair, and wrapped the towel around his neck. Tab grimaced and pulled away as she raked her fingers through his locks and caught a tangle; rather than gently pry it loose like any hairstylist in their right mind would, she quickly yanked it out with a flick of her wrist. It triggered a surge of pain from the roots to his shoulders, his normally droopy eyes growing wide as he yelled something incoherent and strangled.

"Well, I think it's an amazing idea," she grumbled, feathering his hair with a few quick flips. "Look at this, bro. You just let it go and hope for the best. That's the problem with men that want long hair. Bitches don't know how to take care of it. You see how frazzled your ends look?"

He raised an eyebrow and examined them apathetically. They were beginning to twist and split, and they weren't near as straight as the rest of it. In fact, the further down it went, it transformed from straight, to chunky wavy, to a series of messy, thick, spiraling curls. Of course, he hadn't thought much of it--he had begun to tie back his hair anyway--but Gum? The girl had gone crazy, nagging him as though she were his wife. She behaved as though she was offended by the fact he had let himself get to such a point, always talking about his appearance with the same disgust she usually withheld for the brutes in Poison Jam.

After about a month of her whining that he should totally let her fix him up, he had caved. It had seemed like a good idea at the time--free hair cut and the opportunity to finally shut her up--but now that he was sitting in front of her he was beginning to regret it. She had taken the idea and run with it. What began as, "I'm going to trim these dead ends off" became, "I have so many ideas to make you look fab, bro." She never elaborated beyond that, insisting that it was a surprise and he'd just have to trust her intuition, but the second he had saw a towel...

Well, needless to say, Tab was worried.

He tugged at it around his neck, earning a slap on the wrist. He raised an eyebrow and tried to turn around to face her, but she simply smacked the back of his skull, forced his head straight forward, and growled, "Stop twitching, T. You're seventeen, not seven."

"Yeah, well. I'm the boss, right? I can do what I want," he replied with a pout. She smirked and shook her head, bending down to pick up a squirt bottle and fine-toothed comb from the blue-tiled floor. With a sigh, she began to spritz his hair, raking the comb unmercifully through the various knots. He grit his teeth, knowing that asking her to take it easy would probably inspire her to try and hurt him, his eyes twitching every time he heard a ripping sound as she yanked hair out by the very root.

Only when every tangle was valiantly defeated by his impromptu hairdresser did she completely soak his hair, unscrewing the top from the squirt bottle and dumping the contents over the top of his head. Tab squeaked at the sensation, and sputtered as a stream of water flowed down his bangs and in front of his face, some of it managing to find a way to defy gravity and go up his nose. He almost jumped up, but it was like Gum had anticipated the reacting. No sooner had his feet shifted to launch him from the chair to the other end of the Garage did she grab him by the shoulders and force him back into his seat.

Seeing that escape was impossible, he settled for protesting with a shrill cry of, "What the unholy fuck was that for, woman?"

"Your hair needs to be wet," she calmly replied.

"Why?"

She stooped down to the floor and picked up a pair of green-handled scissors, twirling the comb in the air as she explained, "Well, 'cause your hair is curled up at the ends. I need to get it straight so I can cut it evenly, you dig?"

"So you tried to drown me?" he snapped, trying to lean forward. She grabbed him and pulled him back, and he threw back his head and let loose with a loud, exasperated groan. She forced him to look straight again.

"Goddamn, bro. You're whinier than a little kid," she muttered. "I wish you were a chick. You'd just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, and sit still like mommy and daddy used to tell you to do when they took you on the fuckin' subway."

With a grunt, he fell silent. So did Gum. Aside from the sound of cars in the distance, the buzz of the electricity still surging through the speakers they had failed to unplug, and the quiet snip-snip of scissors, everything was mute. She quietly and quickly worked her way from the left side of his bangs, around the back of his head, and to the right. He watched her with a mixture of annoyance and impatience, every now and then trying to steal a glance at the floor to make sure she wasn't hacking it all off. Only when the last snip reached his ear did he open his mouth to speak, asking in a dry tone, "So, was the towel for the water or something?"

She didn't say anything but he could suddenly smell something, something strong and nausea-inducing. It brought to mind the smell of burning tires, new blacktop, and Gum's cheap nail polish from the drugstore in Dogenzaka. Tab heard her giggle behind his head and yelped in alarm, ducking out of the way before she could manage to snag him and drag him towards her. Stumbling, fumbling, he staggered to the speakers and turned his back to them, eyes wide and locked on Gum as though he were afraid to look away. She stood there dumbly with a comb and a clear plastic bottle with a tell-tale, slender nozzle.

"Oh, what is with you?" she asked, mildly offended. "I told you I had some ideas to make you fab, didn't I?"

"I said you could cut my hair, not dye it!" he barked back.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, slamming the dye bottle in the chair he once occupied and putting her hands on her hips. Her voice was almost like an angry mother's when she snidely retorted, "Well, lookit you. Thinking you know how to fix yourself up better than I do. Who's the stylish one here?"

Tab raised an eyebrow, looking down at his own clothes. He wore the same mechanic's jumpsuit, day after day after day. Wear, tear, sun, and grime had turned it from a kicking cobalt to a grody green despite all attempts to clean it, and that wasn't even touching on the tears and stains from wiping out on asphalt. Compared to Gum, admittedly he looked less like a street punk and more like a street urchin. Not that he cared. He was fine with how he looked. He didn't want to be known as eye-catching. Rudies who stand out are Rudies who get caught.

"You need to look the part of leader if you want to be leader," Gum continued, waving her hand towards him. "I mean, look at you. Look at this! You're a mess. I will not be run ragged across Tokyo by a slob. I'm way too chic for that, dig?"

Oh. So this was about her. Tab crossed his arms over his chest and huffed, "Yeah, well I never asked you to follow me 'round, now did I? 'Sides, I don't think that dyin' my 'do is gonna..."

"I wasn't going to dye it!" she interrupted, then after a pause, "I was gonna... bleach it."

His face went pale. Bleach it? She was gonna take him from brunette to blond in under twenty minutes? He covered his still soaking hair as though to guard it, backing up into the speakers like he was trying to force himself inside of them. Shaking his head forcefully, he began to chant "no" at her, even as she jumped forward to try to plead her case.

"Come on, Tab! You may be as fashionably aware as the greasy chick who sits in the dark corner of the burger joint, but even you can't deny that blond is in. Fair hair is hot. You wanna be hot, right? I think you'd look pretty fly as a blond."

No, he didn't want to be hot. Blond hair would probably make him look like a tool. He was a beanpole with tired eyes, lips a bit too full for a guy, and a nose that jutted out of his face like a shark fin. He was fine with his brown hair. It suited the rest of his ordinary self.

In an attempt to disengage the conversation, he averted his gaze and fell silent. As though that would deter her. It didn't take long before he heard a whimper, and came to the realization that his partner in crime was inches away from bawling like a baby. Cursing the fact that he was one of these "emotionally motivated" types, he slowly looked up to face her, watching as crocodile tears began to well up in the corner of her eyes. Of course she was faking, she always was. That didn't stop him from feeling a stake being shoved through his chest, or the thought of "maybe I actually did make her cry" from fluttering around in his head.

"C'mon, Tab," she whined. "You know I ain't got no girlfriends to do this stuff with. I'm on my own, just like you. You're the only one I got!"

The stake in his chest was twisted. He visibly flinched, an act that just egged her on.

"You and me, bro. It's just you and me. You're my best friend, T. And you care, right?"

His posture softened, and so did his face.

"Taaaaab," she sniveled, now bouncing on her toes like a child. "I never get to get girly with anyone. Nobody has to know. We're the only ones here. We can say you lost a bet afterward, I dunno. And you'll look kickin', I promise. Just pleaaase, before your hair dries."

Slowly, reluctantly, he trudged back to the chair. He plucked up the bottle from the seat by its nozzle, grimacing as he offered it back to a now grinning Gum. Every cuss word he knew flashed through his brain at a speed that rivaled light and, with a huff, he plopped back down in the seat. Gum giggled, fixed the towel around his neck, and soon he felt her rake something cold through his hair that caused his scalp to burn. The smell was enough to make him want to vomit, but every time it came up he forced it back down.

It seemed like an eternity of combing, rinsing, and reapplying. The sun sank in the sky, Gum hummed and bobbed to tunes on the radio, and by hour three he was so accustomed to the stench of the dye that he had almost grown to like it. After his sixth failed attempt to doze off in the middle of the make-over, he was quickly yanked up and escorted over to the bathtub.

It was an oddity: a club-foot bathtub that had been in the Garage when they laid claim to it, and which they hadn't been able to move because of the lines that anchored it. It had only ever been used as a water fountain, and only sparingly because the faucet was horribly rusted. However, it seemed that Gum intended to use it for its intended purpose, as she twisted on the cold and shoved his head under the creaking faucet as the water--completely devoid of pressure--began to gush over his head.

She almost cracked his skull on the faucet, pulling him back once the dye had been rinsed off. The towel from around his neck was pulled up around his head, and with the ferocity of a groomer trying to dry off a dog, she began to rub it through his hair. She only stopped when he lost his footing and fall back to the floor and, even then, she didn't ask if he was okay. She just jumped into the floor next to him with the comb, tearing viciously through the new knots she had created with her frenzied drying session.

"This turned out surprisingly well," she sang, Tab grumbling in response. She didn't seem to mind if he was a moody bitch now; it was "mission accomplished" on her end. She pulled the last tangle out and grinned ear to ear, climbing to her feet a dusting off her knees. She offered him a helping hand up, but he staggered up on his own. Looking at her with distaste, he inwardly groaned when he noticed she was a hair away from laughing.

"One thing," she giggled, raising a finger. "You may wanna ditch that green potato sack and shoot for something new."

"Why?" His voice was flat, annoyed. He noticed that she was having to really fight back her snickering.

She motioned her finger up his tall, lanky body, chuckling, "The green from head to toe? The new fair hair? Your... borderline anorexic build? You look like a fuckin' sunflower. Or, you know, a cornstalk."

As soon as the last word left her mouth, she broke down. Heaving laughter, she buckled over and took herself to her knees. Tab shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away with a growl, listening as she carried on behind him. Seeing he was offended, she wiped a tear from her eye and shakily took off after him. One arm was around her side, the other in the air to try to wave him back.

"Oh, c'mon Tab! It's a joke! No, wait, dude! Come back! What will I do without my fearless leader, Corn?"