Also for Glowing Blue. Happy birthday, girl!

Prompt: Hair color

Rating: T

When he first met her, Kurosaki Karin didn't seem to care that much about her appearance—the only thing that mattered was her family and soccer. But as soon as a little thing called puberty hit, Hitsugaya Toshiro found himself noticing many different things about his friend that weren't there before.

Besides the, ahem, obvious changes, it came to a surprise to him that Karin suddenly became more interested in what she looked like. Gone were the tomboyish clothes; in their place appeared sporty, yet undeniably feminine pieces. Her hair, once chopped off to a no-nonsense length, steadily grew until it ran down her back. But the most surprising change was the color of her hair.

It began easily enough. A simple violet streak appeared when she was thirteen, cutting through ebony locks with a burst of color. Hitsugaya was befuddled. "Why?" he asked seriously.

Karin had merely shrugged. "'Cause it's fun."

But the fun didn't stop there—when she was fourteen, the violet took over her entire head. "I tell strangers that it's natural," she confided, snickering. "And that I'm from an anime family. I think seeing me and Ichi-nii together confuses them."

Unfortunately for Karin (and fortunately for everyone else), her school wouldn't allow the absurd color. So when the purple was out, other "natural" colors took its place.

Between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, Karin's hair went through blond, red, brown, and everything in between. She even tried out her siblings' shades. Yuzu's honeyed color softened her features and made the two girls, for the first time,actually look like twins. And Ichigo's…Toshiro couldn't help but smile whenever he looked at the picture she sent him, orange-haired and playfully scowling, and looking like the genderbent version of her cranky brother.

Every time Hitsugaya visited, she looked different, and she fell into the habit of texting him a picture of her new color if he wasn't around to see it. But when she was nineteen, he visited her college dorm room and was completely stunned by the sight of her.

Her hair was black—not the muted, bottled kind, but the flowing ebony that made him think of the night sky.

"What?" she mumbled, unnerved by his stare.

"Nothing." He shook himself out of his stupor. "It's just been so long since I've seen your hair like that."

She crossed her arms. "It needed a break from the chemicals." Her lips inched down. "Stop looking at me like I'm a mythical creature."

Sometimes he felt like she was, lithe and beautiful and fleeting. But he didn't tell her so, instead saying, "Maybe if you didn't change your hair so much…"

Karin threw a pillow at him, which he easily dodged. "You have some nerve!"

A snowy eyebrow raised in question.

She rolled her eyes. "Your hair is white," she said slowly and obviously. "I know you're pushing eighty and all, but that just isn't normal. Normal people aren't born with white hair."

If he had been thinking clearly, he would have pointed out that her brother hadorange hair and that he wasn't exactly human anyway, but he was too stunned by her accusations to tell her so. Instead, he gaped, aghast and mildly offended. "I don't dye my hair!"

Karin set her jaw stubbornly. "Prove it then."

There was a beat of awkward silence as her words registered. Karin flushed, embarrassed.

Hitsugaya sputtered. "I-I can't. There's only one way, and you won't like it—"

The look she was giving him stopped him mid-sentence. Though her face was still red, her eyes held a steely challenge. "Prove it," she repeated, slowly and deliberately.

She knew what she was asking for.

And so, not one to back down from a challenge, Hitsugaya Toshiro proved it to her.

Thoroughly.

Ahem.

A/N: Bow chicka wow wow.