Konoha Hair and Nail salon
--by Flightangel
-o-o-o-o-
4
-o-o-o-o-
"Tsunade-sama…"A certain redheaded hairdresser stood poised in front of the woman's manicurist station, hands tucked into his pockets and his face and tone neutral. The woman looked up from eating her box lunch, mouth full with chicken panku and soybeans and makeup smeared, annoyed.
"Yes? What is it, Gaara?" She may have added a "you brat" to the end of that if he wasn't as skilled as he was, for interrupting her and her breakfast time (she often ate lunch boxes as breakfast, seeing that most Japanese restaurants only served lunch and dinner). She licked her fork.
"I will be leaving work early today." He declared matter-of-factly—and Tsunade raised a thin brow. It was more of an order, a statement, a declaration, then a question; in fact, she was surprised he'd even come to alert her at all with the way he was speaking to her.
"And why is that?" She violently stabbed another piece of chicken and held the aforementioned piece of meat in front of her face, casually examining it with honey-brown eyes.
"I have a part-time job I have to go to."
Tsunade raised her brow again, surprised. The fork quivered in front of her lips.
Part-time job?
Granted, she didn't quite mind her employees working shifts elsewhere—Sakura had medical school to attend at times and she'd have Haku become a makeshift secretary—but Gaara. Well, that was quite surprising. Gaara never seemed to care for money or glamour and made do with whatever he had the moment, be it clothes, string, or paper-mache—so seeing that he was taking up another job for money was quite odd.
"What time do you have to be gone?" She popped the piece of chicken in her mouth, thought-process ended. Gaara remained stiffly standing, hands clenched white inside his pockets.
"An hour before normal. I'll make it up tomorrow." He paused. "This means my work hours will be shorter, so you may pay me less." When Tsunade continued to gnaw on some soybean shells wordlessly and dusted the table a bit with her napkin, looking at her nails, he turned heel and returned to his work station.
Inwardly, the blonde buxom manager sighed, lunch box clattering on the counter as she finished the last of her meal. It seems as if good times can't last forever.
Briefly, she wondered what she should do when every one of these young folk—Sakura, Naruto, Gaara, Haku—were gone. People move out, change jobs, leave because of quarrels—
And still—somehow—life goes on.
-o-o-o-o-
Snip, snip.
Locks of hair fell messily to the ground, lying in puddles on the linoleum floor. A skilled stylist fluffed his clients' hair as other such celebrities were being equally pampered by other hairdressers around them. Rows of mirrors decorated the interior walls; clients and agents were bustling around trying to correct the stylists, anxious voices growing higher and higher.
Fashion designers stood contemplating around the dressing stations, instructing and painting an image of what they imagined the perfect hairdo would be for their latest fashion extravaganza. Stylists nodded, smiled, and did their own thing anyway.
Fate has an odd way in intervening with human affairs. It was a meddlesome habit of the gods long understood by Earth's scuttling inhabitants: how else could two such people collide in such circumstances? It was baffling. And through whom their meeting should ensue was just as troubling.
In the breezy summertime, at the bud of a new year for both a young hairdresser and a fashion designer, both fresh out of college at the young age of twenty-two—fate had longed planned their meeting.
A single fashion designer, hands crossed nervously, lolled his head as he examined the stylist's handiwork on the model currently bearing one of his best works in ages. He was young and fresh and attempted a tough stance on the floor, though his inexperience allowed anxiety to foster in his heart. He'd dealt with models and such back in fashion school, but there was a frightening gap between fashion school and the real world, and—sometimes—he'd wish he could crawl back into the security of the classroom and stay there. He furrowed his dark eyebrows, eyes locking in on the hair.
Seeing that the model's hair was naturally hard to work with, it was amazing the hairstylist was able to do anything at all, but it wasn't enough.
"Can you lighten this up a bit? I want the image of cotton-candy, clouds, floating, happy things." The designer waved his arm about: "Gushing, but in a sensible fashion."
The stylist said nothing. Though standing straight and poised with an air of cool confidence, he, too, found this worrisome. At this point in time, he was still inexperienced and unable to completely interpret whatever the hell the designer was gushing out of his mouth (or did he want the model's hair to gush? He couldn't tell) and hid his aggravation in the pucker of his lips. Beauty school didn't really prepare you for the pressure of the market, and the scratchy whiny voices echoing about the room was enough to grate on his nerves.
He regarded the designer cooly, as if challenging his ability to order the hairsylist about, though seemed to be about to oblige and leaned forward to snatch a bottle of hairspray from a container under the table—when the sound of retching captured everyone's attention.
One of the models had just vomited all over the floor.
The entire company stared, shocked, and unable to speak—what to do? Go help her or let her take care of herself? None of those around the model wanted to possibly upset or offend her in any way, and was wondering how they should help when the young fashion designer, who had been cruelly pulled from his imagined world of cotton-candy and happy things, let out an enormous sigh.
"Tch." he muttered under his breath, putting down a hefty pile of magazines he'd used to show the stylist exactly what he wanted. "How troublesome."
-o-o-o-o-
Gaara was tired—more than tired: worn, haggard, white and pale with frustration, squatting on the curb in front of the production station, hand tapping his cheek. It was growing quite dark outside, the sunset bruising violet and red against the silhouettes of buildings and cars and trees and other such things.
It was so cold.
"Look, I have an appointment with a 'Uchiha Sasuke' inside," he had explained as clearly as he possibly could to the sweet, smiling secretary—whose smile was almost three times as frightening as Sakura's, if that was possible—sitting behind the front counter, "so can you please let me in?"
"Sorry, sir," the woman continued to grin cheerily, "What was your name again?"
"Sabaku Gaara."
She fingered through a pile of paper, flipping through the sheets deftly. She squinted at the fine print. "I'm sorry, but 'Sabaku Gaara' is not one of the hairstylists working at the salon here, so I can't let you in."
Though the redhead's face carefully remained expressionless and blank, a slight clenching of his hands gave away his rising anger. "I already said: I am a hairstylist that has an appointment with Uchiha Sasuke—"
"—who is currently getting ready for a shoot in which only company hairstylist can enter and you, Mr. Sabaku Gaara," the blasted woman was still grinning, adjusting her little moon-rimmed glasses gleefully behind her bundle of papers, "are not a company hairstylist. Thus, I can't let you in. Sorry!"
It took the most of Gaara's inner willpower to not reach into his bag for a pair of scissors and stab the woman repeatedly with it. In the eyes. Stab, stab, stab.
But no, Sabaku Gaara was a well-educated, nonviolent, adult male who, at that point, chose instead to stuff his inching hand into his pocket, turn heel, and promptly walk out the door and into the cold. The swinging doors made one last moaning plea at him before falling silent to the howls of the wind.
The said winds snickered and played with his newly cut hair—he had cut it himself during work, no matter what Kankuro said about the haircut not being suited for his facial type—as he continued to tap his cheek wordlessly. Cars hummed by as they sped down the street across from him, coming in an assortment of different colors: white, black, red, blue, navy… his own car was white, sitting pallid and invisible next to the bleakness of the snow.
Thank god it wasn't snowing at the moment, or else Gaara would have just driven home without a thought—no amount of scolding from his uncle for dropping a job opportunity was worth an hour's wait in snow. The cold made the redhead feel clammy and in need of a blanket, the latter part a wish that was only ever granted by his sister, who was very good at interpreting his moods.
If only he had a blanket at the moment… he slowly turned his head to regard his car musingly. But no, Gaara was a responsible man, if not a bit stiff and cold-necked.
It wasn't like he didn't want to give up, but Sabaku Gaara always got the job done, even if his current job was to cut the hair of probably the prissiest and bitchiest singer alive. Even his scissors were cringing.
He decided to go the more direct route of entrance, seeing as the damn secretary was taking pride in barring him from the company walls at the moment. Digging through his pant pocket, he retrieved Kankuro's cellphone—seeing that it was Kankuro's jacket and the older sibling always put his cellphone in his jacket pocket, it only made sense—he flipped the screen open and clumsily dialed in the number Yashamaru had handed him before leaving the car this morning.
"Secretaries can be a pain in the ass, so here's the agent's phone number, in case you're stuck." The older man paused. "But, of course, you'll probably be fine, so you won't need it."
Ha. Won't need it. Right, Yashamaru-ojiisan.
He sat with his jacket wrapped tight around his body, feet motionless against the cement and back straight and stiff, bearing the freeze in a manly fashion. Though perhaps his sister would argue that it was more of an insane, non-feeling fashion, but she had odd taste in interpretation.
"Yo. Hatake Kakashi."
Japanese. All the better.
"This is Sabaku Gaara, the hairstylist Iruka-sensei advised." Straight-forward, blunt, and succinct. The redhead coughed, the chilly winds suddenly finding joy in filling his mouth with dry freezing gusts. "I am having a very hard time trying to get inside the building. Can you please help me inside?" The last sentence was deadpan and firm—although Gaara had long learned to phrase his words in a question, his statements always sounded very much like an order.
It was just… habit.
Kakashi, on the other side, would have cheerfully clapped his hands together if his left hand was not occupied holding a well-worn cellphone and, instead, resorted to letting an invisible smile dance on his lips: "Aah, Sabaku-san! Yes, we were waiting for you—Iruka has talked about your skill and, well, let's just see if Sasuke agrees. Not saying you aren't good, mind, but you've probably heard of Sasuke's pickiness…? Oh, anyway, back to the point: yes, I will talk to the secretary about it in a moment, hold on a bit—"
A beep.
Gaara waited some five more minutes out in the cold, staring blankly at the now swelling purple skies and cluster of clouds lazily swimming towards the horizon. Swim, swim, swim. It would have been quite a beautiful sight, what with the white snow and pale, contrasting figures of the buildings, if it didn't just mean that it was getting late.
At last, another blip signaled that Hatake-san was back:
"—okay, so I went and talked to her about it and she's going to let you in now. Just come on up—we're in studio eighteen, near the back of the hallway on the second floor. You can't miss it, everyone's crowded around here." Judging from the amount of loud background noise behind his voice, the stylist could wager a guess on how crowded it was: "Just wait in the hall while I go fetch Sasuke—he's getting walking lessons from Sabaku Temari… wait, is she your sister? She is, isn't she?" A cough. "Anyway, he's making this sour prissy face, so get yourself up here as soon as you can so he doesn't blow a fuse. Up, up!"
The stylist pocketed the cellphone—it was sticky, the damn thing. Stupid Kankuro and his stupid habit of talking on the phone whilst drinking soda—and, with a slight brush of the jacket, returned to the warmth of the building.
Face passive as he coolly regarded the now slightly frowning woman at the counter—he would still very much have liked to stab her in the eye, but he didn't really want to be chased out after just being allowed in—he turned his head away with a huff, carefully yanked open the stairway door, and disappeared up into the steps.
-o-o-o-o-
Naruto was seven years old when he declared—to the whole world, or, at the time, the whole playground—that he liked boys, and that girls were icky, and that was he was going to marry Iruka-daddy when he was going to be grown up. Needless to say, it was a rather flushed-looking professor that had left with the child tucked firmly under arm, quite embarrassed at his adopted son's behavior—
"Oh, I don't know what to do, Kakashi." The man slumped down onto his boyfriend's kitchen table, hair mussed and pooling onto the mahogany wood. Kakashi sat sitting opposite him, sipping at a strawberry lemonade he'd hand-squeezed and attempting to look concerned (though failing).
"Well, boys are just boys. He'll grow out of it."
"But I'm just worried that, you know, he got the idea of liking boys in his head because of—" Iruka hitched his breath, anguished, "because of me, you know, and you, too, sort of—because he grew up in the presence of gay men, he'd turn gay himself—is that possible? Dammit, this was just what the orphanage feared!"
"Iruka," Kakashi said, tone suddenly harsh. His strawberry lemonade clattered onto the countertop, skidding on the wood and looking as if it was about to precariously tip over. "Iruka, listen to me. Being gay and being straight is something that you're born with, not something kids—well, not something that kids just pick up from their parents. And at this age, he's isn't old enough to be interested in fads yet, so you at least know he's saying what he wants to say—and if he does turn out gay, then it's no one's fault. Okay? And being gay isn't all that bad, is it?"
The man softened his tone, lifting himself up from his stool to scoot into Iruka's chair, left hand casually slinging over his lover's shoulder: "He's still a child, Iruka. I'm sure you'll wrestle the truth out of him later, when he's old enough to understand exactly why Mommies and Daddies exist in the world and how some people can be—" he leaned forward, "—Daddies and Daddies, too, so don't worry."
Iruka let out a long, melodious sigh, head suddenly feeling heavy on the tabletop. It was quite rare for Kakashi to be comforting him and not the other way around, and it was… touching, in a way. Feeling as if he needed to grace the silver-haired man draped across his shoulder with an answer, he turned his head slightly so that the barest glimpse of gray was in his range of vision:
"Okay, okay, you're right. I'm just worrying over nothing." He let out a small reassuring chuckle, more for himself than his lover, obviously. "Kids don't know what they're saying sometimes anyway. These things will come… later."
Just how much later the professor didn't know.
And though he would never in his life admit such a thing to Kakashi (how could he?) the man secretly and fervently wished with all his heart that Naruto was straight—straight as a line going on forever and ever and ever into the depths of space and back again.
It wasn't that he was opposed to homosexuals—seeing that he was a homosexual himself. Iruka was, instead, much more worried over society.
Worried about what society would do to Naruto if he did declare his sexuality. Worried that he would be treated the same way he himself—Iruka—had been treated when he was young.
Worried that some idiot would come and tear that innocent heart into tiny pieces.
Worried that Naruto would never find his one true love.
"What troublesome worries," Kakashi may have said to him if he'd heard these thoughts, "Naruto's a strong boy. He'll pull through."
And if only Kakashi was just so right.
-o-o-o-o-
The door slammed open jarringly, immediately catching a certain secretary's attention. A figure sat slumped in the doorway, huffing, and, scanning the still oddly empty salon with frantic eyes, blurted out:
"Where's Gaara?"
Naruto was worn with his car keys still fresh in his hands and leaned against the doorframe of the front door, cheeks red from the cold. After driving like a madman from the Californian suburbs to try and make at least one of his appointments, it was understandable that the man was a little worn out.
Sakura looked up, surprised, from her game of solitaire—balancing checkbooks, sending out pay checks and settling appointments were so overrated—pink hair tied back with a red ribbon and cheeks brushed with glittery makeup. The medical student and part-time secretary put her flip-flopped feet back onto the floor and set her green tea onto the tabletop, annoyed.
She aimed a well-trained glare at the slightly panting blond. "You're late, Naruto! Your customer's not here, either. None of them came, actually."
He suddenly felt a flood of relief tingle from his head-to-toe, knowing that there was no angry patron to somehow talk his way through. Despite a somewhat clumsy yet appealing-enough tongue, he never quite liked facing the enraged snarl of a worker running on schedule.
Collecting himself, he shook his blond locks: "I know I'm late! Where's Gaara—and Tsunade-baachan?" He attempted to messily cover up his initial request for Gaara's presence, to avoid suspicion—though the look the pink-haired secretary was giving him was anything but not questioning.
In fact, was there a little hidden smile in her eyes?
Without the manager and other hairstylist and the eerily empty lobby, the salon was quiet. In fact, the quietness unsettled the Naruto, causing him to duck under a sales sign and scoot closer to Sakura who had gone back to her accounting and was talking to him off-handedly.
"Gaara went to get coffee and Tsunade-baachan went in the backroom to talk privately with some guy… I dunno. You just missed Gaara, by the way—if you'd have come ten minutes earlier you could've convinced him to get some coffee for you, too." Seeing that he just bore holes in my skull when I asked him to get some for me, it would be unlikely, but you could have tried.
She took a moment to peer at the blond. "Anyhow, you should probably set up fast—you're kind of lucky that none of the morning customers showed up for some reason but just make sure you don't miss the afternoon ones."
"Aye, aye, captain!" The boy beamed and ducked under the scrutinizing glare of the aggravated student, anger resulting from a combination of Naruto's idiocy and Gaara's refusal to get her coffee. Shrugging off her frosty glance, he gave a wave at a muttering Haku—who was studying English for his English night class—("Heeeeey, Haaaakuu!" with a response of: "Ohayo, Naruto-san…") and pranced cheerily to his workspace.
Happy, happy, happy… hairdresser has to be happy even if there are no damn customers to attend to… other hairstylist is missing… manager is missing… it's too silent… happy.
He attempted to brighten himself up with a self-assuring smile, humming as he—perhaps being a little too dramatic—arranged his little hairdresser's table, cleaned the mirror, dusted the dressing chair. Despite this, however, he eventually found himself dully squatting in a dresser's chair, silent and moody.
…happy…
The emptiness was depressing. The hollow where Gaara should have been either working away or reading a book was depressing, too. In fact, the mere absence of Tsunade-baachan-manager was depressing, even though he could still make out her screams from the back room. He wondered what the woman was discussing, especially in the early morning—at eight, Tsunade was usually found at her manicurist station rereading romance novels and chewing gum, breakfast lying strewn about the desk in a mess.
Something must have disrupted her system this morning.
Head lolling to the side, he spared ten minutes staring at the ceiling before beginning to pick at his toenails, briefly entertaining the idea of getting a pedicure from the still-reciting manicurist across the room. But no. Even he couldn't subject kind, quiet Haku to the horrors of his feet, though the man had probably long grown used to the smell of fungus-infested nails.
Not that Naruto's feet were fungus-infested, but they did smell a bit ripe.
"Saaaaaakura! Saaaaaaaakura!"
"What? What is it?" The secretary held the phone on hold for a moment with a primly elevated finger, lips set in a thin line. Seeing as she had been trying to persuade a potential client to set an appointment not on a day when the salon was full, it was no wonder her temper was shorter than before, if possible. The blond ignored the glaring warning signs (flared nostrils, raised shoulders, twitching brows), vying instead to pout and drape himself over the dressing chair.
"Sakura, I'm boooored!" He turned on a hairdryer and aimed the bursts of hot air onto his dry hair, "There are no clients, it's cold, and Tsunade-baachan's been arguing for a long time! I don't have anything to doooo! Gaaaah! Dammit, I'm going insane!"
The woman was about to reply hotly when she was interrupted—
"Naruto, shut up and get your coffee."
The addressed hairstylist let out a bark of surprise when a merciless breath of icy wind suddenly flew at him from the open door, powdered snow illuminating the stiff figure standing in the doorway.
Gaara normally intimidated people, but, covered with a thin layer of snow that made him appear to be Jack Frost's grandson, he wasn't quite so scary.
"Sugar!" Naruto laughed cheekily, propping himself back up into the chair, suddenly finding his mood cheered. Gaara frowned, silent, and set a Starbucks coffee holder onto the counter, four cups of steaming java patiently sitting under a thin layer of powdery snow. He irritably brushed the quickly melting slush off with a thumb, wincing at the biting chill.
Gaara hated the cold. If that hadn't gotten across yet.
Despite the redhead's angered expression, however, even Sakura felt a bit lighter when she'd realized that the redhead had—most likely grudgingly, under whatever moral conscience he had left—fetched her coffee for her.
She gave him a flirtatious wink.
He turned on around on heel, pointedly ignoring her and her lip gloss and sparkles and hung his brother's jacket on the coat rack before giving Naruto's ears a bit of a twist when he walked past. The blond immediately clutched the hurt appendages, yelping.
"Ow!"
"Get to work." his colleague repeated, tonelessly as usual. Naruto gave a melodramatic sigh, as if wounded, though gave a reassuring wink at Haku when the man looked up to see if the hairstylist was alright. Gaara narrowed black-rimmed eyes, feeling just slightly uneasy; most days, both he and Naruto would stay after closing hours to tidy up their workspace and leave together, albeit silently (though Naruto's running mouth was anything but quiet). Leaving early, however, the redhead would then miss the chance to give Naruto a farewell nod—an odd worry, but important to him, nonetheless.
After spending a moment cheekily observing the older man setting up his workplace (and just ignorant enough to not realize that the said man was also stealing looks at him as well and muttering things to himself), the hairstylist took a light, casual swig of his coffee.
He almost spat the blasted thing out, jolting up in surprise. Dangling the cup at a good arm's distance, he eyed it with warily.
Wait…
"Sakura, what kind of coffee did he get you?"
The pink-haired girl chewed the back of her pen thoughtfully. "Regular. Why?"
Naruto gave the woman a grin and a wave, as if he was worrying about nothing, before turning about his chair and examining his cup again. He carefully popped open the cap, peering at the frothy mess within, suddenly feeling… fuzzy. And weird. And perhaps a little bit scared.
"I didn't know he knew what kind of coffee I liked…" Starbuck's Grande Caramel-Syrup Frappachino with half-and-half milk and the whipped cream as high as they can mount it—oh, and don't forget the cherry. I don't even know if you serve cherries with your coffee, but give me one anyway.
Forget Sasuke and his damn cottage and injury and whatever. This coffee made his day.
-o-o-o-o-
"I won't!"
"You will."
"You can't make me, you stupid, lazy, dumbass pigheaded inconsiderate excuse for a man, you understand me?!" Two lipstick tubes were thrown at the poor designer's face, and the man was forced to take cover behind a fake plant. "Oh, and don't even think about 'dropping' me! You know what kind of favor I'm doing for modeling for you? Huh? I'm not wearing that, Shikamaru, and you can't make me!"
Nara Shikamaru sighed under his breath, wondering what in God's name had lead him to fall so helplessly in love with one of the grumpiest, frilliest, prissiest creatures on earth: women. Not that falling in love with men was any better—sitting through some of Chouji's bad days had, of course, revealed to him the irritable sides of men, too—but women were just so much more… mystic. In his two years of experience as a fashion designer, he'd never quite met another being that could be just as damn confusing as that other gender.
Mystic, loud, annoying…
He sighed again, ducking to his left as an open shampoo bottle collided with the wall behind him.
"Look, Temari, be reasonable. It's just one fashion show, no big deal. Just walk out, do your stuff, and then run backstage, okay?"
"Not a big deal? Having peacock feathers sticking out of my ass is no big deal? Nara, you sometimes come up with the most genius ideas, but—" The blonde held up the incredulous costume with her forefinger and thumb, as if afraid that it would contaminate her. "—this is NOT genius!"
Shikamaru furrowed his brows tiredly, finding his hands inching its casual "thinking" position, forefingers and thumbs pressing against each other as he remained behind his fake-plant-of-a-shield. The man was lithe and tall and was easily able to hide inside the narrow space, but his lack of thinness made it hard to completely dodge the woman's attacks—he needed enough bulk for him to get away modeling his own clothing, after all.
Opening his eyes, he, again, tried to renegotiate. "Look, Temari, I'm a model, too, so I know what it's like to dress troublesomely, okay? I once had to go down the catwalk in a g-string with glittery makeup over my chest. It's not a big deal."
"Not a big deal if it's a big brand, yes!" Temari hissed, hands seizing a tissue box, "but at a local fashion show where the people in the audience are personal, family members, yes, it is a big deal!"
Tch. Troublesome. Shikamaru would have never guessed the true brash nature of this model, whom, two years prior, he'd helped up from a violent bout of vomiting and laid across a couch. Back then, Temari was pallid and pale and quiet and didn't say much of anything; lying limply on the furniture, she looked like a doll.
A hissy, tissue-box and lipstick-tube throwing doll with a temper and an obstinate refusal to dress in anything costume-like, that is.
The Japanese man would have argued on if the door had no oh-so-conveniently flung open at that point, revealing the bulky, self-assured form of Temari's younger brother, Sabaku Kankuro. Temari twisted around sharply mid-rant to face her sibling, eyes wide with infuriation.
The makeup-artist pointedly ignored the odd scene laying before him—tissue paper, toiletries, torn-up pieces of fabric scattered about the ground; his sister's frizzy hair and wide-eyed, frantic look, jaw clenched and arms stiffly clinging to the edge of the vanity table; a certain fashion designer cowering behind a fake plant in the corner—and signaled that their uncle was just outside the door.
"He wants to talk to you." he concluded, sweating a bit under Temari's fierce and aggressive stare. Such a meeting was one that even an angry Temari could not refuse, and she knew it.
The woman threw one last defiant flare of her nostrils in the direction of the still-hiding fashion designer, eyes hard, before calming herself down. Smoothing down her mane-liked hair and wiping the sweat off her face with a napkin she found in one of the vanity drawers, she smoothed her modeling dress and coughed.
Shikamaru remained motionless behind the plant, and continued to be frozen as the model stiffly stalked out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
"Troublesome woman." he said loudly after he was sure that devil-of-a-model was gone, untangling himself from plastic tree limbs and nimbly climbing into the mess the dressing room was in.
Kankuro just eyed him suspiciously.
"She wouldn't have gotten so worked up if your design wasn't so abominable," he drawled. "Do you enjoy annoying her on purpose?"
"That would be too troublesome…"
"Modeling is too troublesome. Designing is too troublesome. Eating is too troublesome. Hell, I even wonder how you get out of bed in the morning."
Shikamaru sighed, running his hand through his taunt ponytail. Surveying the mess around him, he—again—sighed, rubbing his temples.
Receiving no adequate response, the older man tucked his hands into his pant pockets and kicked open the door, peering down an isolated hallway and listening for the quiet hush of whisperings being discussed several doors down. His suspicions confirmed, he turned back to the slouching fashion designer: "Nee-chan and Yashamaru-jiisan will probably be talking for some time, so…"
He scratched his head, suddenly looking a bit uncomfortable.
Kankuro, from years of working alongside designers in the salons and makeup rooms, knew that Shikamaru was a good man at heart—but his overprotective brotherly tendencies usually led him to suspect the kid to unreasonable proportions.
For instance: what was he doing looking at his sister's legs (doesn't everybody)? Why is he touching her thigh (how else was he supposed to see how well those pants fit)? Dammit, don't get so close to her! (In that case, Shikamaru really had no excuse).
"…there's a real nice bakery down the lane," Kankuro scratched his head. "You want to go grab some lunch?" Know you better, see your motives and weak points and find a way to protect my sister from you and your evil perverted manly crazy stalker-ish ideals, ah ha! Don't think I don't know that inner devil inside you, Nara Shikamaru! I will catch you yet!
Must be Chouji's family's bakery, the aforementioned stylist thought to himself lazily, brain deciding that it was too much effort to read too much into Kankuro's invitation. Probably another get-to-know-your-enemy lunch in which the eldest Sabaku brother would stare at him with binoculars three feet away and try to see how much he "fantasized" about Temari. How troublesome… sometimes, he preferred the silence of young Sabaku Gaara, even if his stare was a bit unnerving.
At least Gaara was more interesting to look at.
-o-o-o-o-
Fate was still laughing. Perhaps it enjoyed seeing the discomfort it threw it's victims in, or, perhaps, it just really, really liked to see humans unnerved. Either way, its chuckles were evident. California sat cowering under the glaring summer sun, its rays glancing at its uptown district with greedy, attentive eyes.
The hairstylist and fashion designer sat crouched across from each other at the local McDonalds, with its greasy countertops, chairs, walls, and flooring all bearing their weight down upon the two. The taller of the two spent his time sipping his soda, running his hand through his hair and sighing, inwardly wondering how he had gotten himself in this predicament.
"Come with me." the stylist had said—no, ordered—icily after the young designer had managed to haul the pallid model onto a sofa, with his arm crossed and eyes narrowed. The brunette would have said something in return if the older man had not strode out of the salon. Taking one more glance at the slumped model—now being tended by a flock of other shrilly girls who had escaped the holds of their stylists and were now fussing over her and the maids, who were cleaning up the vomit—he followed.
It was hot.
Seeing that it was the middle of the sweltering Californian summer, it wasn't that unreasonable. The designer had his vest unbuttoned and his shorts rolled up in quite an unprofessional manner, whilst the hairstylist seemed to be entirely comfortable in a long black tee and pants. The door of the restaurant had been propped open to let in what one hoped to be cool air inside, alternatively giving entrance to all types of nasty insects and pollen and… yes.
The fashion designer scratched his nose irritably.
Peering at his—what was the proper name for this tense relation? Adversary?—he noted the thin, gaunt look in the man's face; the fierceness of his eyes; the blood-red of his hair. He was thin and a bit bony, and, though not short, not quite tall. He looked quite young, actually—the man couldn't have been more than half a year out of beauty school. Though his physical appearance seemed to be weak, that clench of the jaw and the grip on his McFlurry told otherwise; in fact, the simple stare he was directing towards the other man was quite frightening.
In his observations, the designer took a moment to pause and look at the hand clutching the drink—the man's left hand.
Something was a little odd, but he couldn't quite place it.
Finally, the hairdresser put down his McFlurry and bowed his head slightly, though a slight flash of his eyes made it obvious that he was quite a bit unwilling to do so. "I apologize for my sister's conduct in the salon. Temari is often irritable when she is sick."
Quick, lilting—perhaps a bit melodious, though the man lacked tone—Japanese, probably from Kansai origin, around Kobe: Kobe-ben Japanese.
"However…" Those green eyes flashed, like lightening tickling the tips of a tree and delighting in the sparks that were emitted afterwards, "I ask you do not interfere with our matters again."
"What?" the designer asked in his second tongue, bored, though he remained on-guard. "I am not aware that throwing up is a part of the average Japanese-American's 'matters'." Despite his edgy, argumentative tone, the man could not repress a sigh.
This entire affair was quite troublesome. He normally wouldn't have helped a model—anyone, actually, for that matter—but something inside his poor dried-up soul had inevitably twisted itself backwards to force the man to lend a helping hand—and what did he get in return?
A silent interrogation from some creepy-ass hairdresser whose hair didn't look quite natural.
Good grief.
The man's eyes narrowed. "Illness is not something us Japanese like to display to the public. Judging from your clumsy American accent, you must be American-born. You do not have the same morals as we: to us, it is an embarrassing affair. Next time, keep away from our sister and let us handle her ourselves."
The fashion designer sat stiffly as the stylist leaned forward to take a sip out of his McFlurry.
It was that moment that he realized with great shock what exactly was wrong with the older man's left hand, which was clutching the cup quite fiercely.
Sabaku Gaara was missing the top digit of his left pinky.
-o-o-o-o-
The man was somewhat handsome, in his own quirky way, and much more appealing than any of the other hairstylists Sasuke had been forced to work with previously. The Uchiha cocked his head, mind agreeing with his mouth—he did approve of that haircut.
The redhead gave a small nod of his head, an almost-bow. The steady unwavering stare of those greenish—and sometimes blue, under the right lighting—eyes were, however, constantly trained on the taller man—watching.
"Sabaku Gaara." he replied softly in a deadpan voice, not even bothering to offer a hand for clasping. The singer gave him a just-as-aloof nod, turning his head and pointedly looking at Kakashi. The agent coughed.
"Sabaku-san—ah—well…" he coughed again, bringing up the hard backing of his clipboard to hide his wince, "Sasuke will be up in a few moments, so will you come inside and help him do his hair…?"
The brunette soon found himself propped up in a chair, dressed in a scratchy suit, face staring intently at itself in the mirror as the redheaded stylist took his position behind him. The Calvin Klein designer stood poised next to the man, staring intently at the singer as if he was nothing but a mannequin to dress up.
He discussed his wishes with this odd stranger (not one of the stylists here from the salon—no, he was an odd one out, which made him feel uneasy): "Windblown but not messy—make him look young, sexy and sophisticated. He's Asian, so maybe accentuate his eyes and lips and—no, no, don't use that kind of mousse—here, this one."
Gaara looked quite blank and—was Sasuke imagining things?—a sudden flash of annoyance flickered his glinting green eyes. The man gave another short nod, and the designer left with a muttering of "Damn Asians" under his breath and left the stylist to do whatever he saw fit.
Sasuke sat still as the hairdresser expertly combed his hands through his hair—testing its strength and texture—before replacing the mousse that the designer had handed him with the one he originally picked out. "
"Asian hair doesn't react well to certain American products, so this kind of mousse is better." Gaara riffled through the locks with his hands, and the younger Uchiha could not help but feel a bit… odd.
Most of the other hairstylists had been loud and obnoxious or too quiet and shy or unskilled or—most irritating of all—had a horrible touch. Seeing that the hair and the scalp was a rather sensitive part of the body, the singer had been most irked by the lack of sensitivity some stylists had put onto his poor hair: those grabby, sticky hands that dared to pull themselves through his locks and pulled his poor hairs right out of his head.
It felt like razor-sharp metal rakes were being scraped along his scalp, sometimes.
Gaara's touch, however, was feather soft, deft, and expert—the light brushings of his fingertips was quite a surprise for Sasuke. His quietness, too, accompanied by a more confident attitude made him adept for professional styling, a rare mix Sasuke hadn't seen a while. Perhaps this one—?
—too soon to decide yet, Sasuke. The modeling singer shifted in his seat, lulling trance broken and the brilliant overbearing lights suddenly causing him to break out in perspiration.
The light touches inevitably caused him to flush and—dare he say?—a slight pink tinged his cheeks; never before had anyone touched his hair in such a manner, and it felt—strange. Elating.
Though still strange.
He squirmed and coughed and Gaara, mistaking the discomfort as impatience, pursed chapped lips and added the finishing touches to the model's gelled hair. Simple, quick and efficient. The man did, however, step back with a slight frown on his face.
"I suggest for you to be completely still next time during a styling session," he said simply, laying the facts down in a firm voice, "it is quite unprofessional for a model to fidget under the appliance of makeup and hair-styling products."
"Ooh, reprimanding, Sasuke," Kakashi wiggled his brows, not because of the actual criticism, but because that single visible eye of his had caught every shade of red crawling along the brunette's cheek and neck whilst the hair-doing session. It was just so amusing.
The elegant singer would have thrown his water bottle at him if he was not busy observing the redhead carefully with calculating eyes, face tilted at an angle so that his flush would have time to settle. He rubbed the back of his neck.
Good god, what was that?
And for once, the almighty bitchy king-of-prissiness Uchiha Sasuke was rendered speechless.
"So, Sabaku-san, what do you think of working with Sasuke today?" the agent later whispered into the hairdresser's ear as the two observed a huddle of models being escorted to the photo room. "Good? Bad?"
Gaara cocked his head, scissors snug tight against his thigh in his jean pocket. He liked the feeling of the cool metal against his skin through the clothing—perhaps it was his one last lingering link to his past of quietly playing with the cold glint of knives. It was comforting.
"He was much quieter than I expected him to be." The man admitted easily, finding no reason to hide whatever thoughts circulated around his—what most people call insufferably boring—brain. "I have heard that he is quite the complainer."
"Oh, he is, he is." Another invisible smile came to tug at the middle-aged man's lips, and Kakashi tossed his silver hair back, pleased: "But he must have had little to complain about today—which means you've passed with flying colors, Sabaku-san. Congratulations." Congratulations on making him flushed, too—it's been a long while since Sasuke's been even remotely turned on. I applaud you.
Gaara—thankfully—had no inkling of what was dancing gleefully about the agent's head and accepted the congrats silently, shifting so that his jacket now was rolled down over his shoulders.
The heat was truly unbearable. It was a stark contrast to the blood-chilling cold sweeping the nation outdoors; it only urged the man to want to leave faster, though he couldn't escape this place until his sister was done modeling. Apparently, having his job session and her modeling session coincide was the perfect opportunity to smack the two together for some good old carpooling—at least, to their uncle.
Oblivious of whatever had overcome the usually prissy Sasuke—who attempted to cool himself down during the photo shoot with thoughts of old grannies and mud-covered pigs—the only thought swimming lazily through the hairstylist's mind was this:
I wonder what Naruto is eating right now…
Ramen. Duh.
Stupid Gaara.
-o-o-o-o-
Edit: due to complaints on the confusion, I went back in and added more time-hooks to show where people are. The Shikamaru-Gaara scenes take place two years prior to the present time of this story, shown by mention that they were both just out of school and that Shikamaru (present) has been working in the industry for about two years. Tsunade went to scream at whoever it was on the phone right after she spoke to Gaara in the first scene (shown by mentions that she would have been normally finished with her breakfast at the time) and that the entire Naruto POV scene takes place before the Gaara-Sasuke scenes. The last scene is the most "present" if you would like to think of it that way. Though it is still jumpy, I thank you for reading this short edit hopethat this clarifies things!
AN: Okay... I know I promised more Gaanaru and Neji's continuation this chapter buuuuut... for the sake of moving the story along, I cut out the Gaanaru (nooooo! I know... I'll some of the uncut scenes in the next chapter) and I'm definitely adding Neji's conclusion in the next chapter as well. This chapter jumps around a bit: it starts BEFORE Gaara meets Sasuke up at the modeling site (hope that was obvious) and ends with him finishing the haircut.
I know some people were looking forward to some good ol' Sasunaru (like in Breaking the Music) but I decided to have some fun and make the failed secondary pairing Gaasasu (this does have significance) instead. I know... shoot me. This is still a Gaanaru fanfiction. I hope I got that clear.
Last note: I need to know what readers are more interested in: Sasuke's POV, Gaara's POV or Naruto's POV? This is an issue becuase the main reason it's taking so long to get anywhere is that I'm trying to fit in three POVs at once evenly. This isn't the end-all-be-all but I am interested in seeing which POV I should work with/develop with the most in the story, and, hopefully, I can move a bit quicker. Thanks for reading! And please, leave a comment. I really, really appreciate it.