With your cherry lips and golden curls

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With your cherry lips and golden curls

WHO: Stephanie Brown and Lua Klein
WHAT: A haircut!
WHERE: Lua's Room
WHEN: Monday, Oct 1
WARNING(S): A very brief mention of fire?

Talking about things had very quickly become something that Steph was not very good at. The small patch of hair on the very back of her head that didn't match up with the rest of it wasn't too noticeable, she was sure, although when she looked in the mirror her eyes went straight to it like a laser tracking system. She just didn't want to ask if there was anyone who could cut it for her. She didn't want anyone to ask, and she didn't want to explain how her hair had gotten burned. The real trouble was that she couldn't just leave it alone, and she found herself messing with the spot constantly, which would only draw more attention to it.

And so she found herself going through the list in her head of who on the barge might be qualified to cut hair. Claudia seemed like someone who had probably cut her own hair before, but she was gone. Faith maybe, but she was gone too. Cass might have been a good choice if her eyes hadn't been hurt. Babs was an option, but the chances that she would want to have a heart to heart were a little too high. So, someone she wasn't really close to, then. There were a couple of girls that fit the bill that Steph thought she could probably trust with a pair of scissors near her head. First on the list just happened to be Lua.

She stood outside the door for a long minute, trying to figure out what to say. In the end she decided that she was worrying about it too much, took a deep breath, and knocked.

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Behind the door, there was the sudden silence that comes when background noise shuts off, then Lua opened up a moment later, giving Steph a curious smile. Was it something about a friend, or Kon? (How to handle a guy who'd lost it and killed a couple guys?) She didn't know, but would let her say it.

"Hey. You doing good?"

"Hi," Steph started, feeling awkward and a little lame. But a little social anxiety was nothing that she couldn't handle, so she plowed onwards.

"Actually, I had a favor to ask. Have you ever cut someone's hair before?"

"Not in a while." Not her own, for years, and while she'd done friends on "I need it to look good now but my next two checks are planned out" weeks, that hadn't happened here. But she'd seen what had happened to Steph, and knew she'd have to ask someone soon. "You don't mind me going slow, I could try."

"I'd really appreciate it," Steph replied, relieved. If she had done it at all that was good enough for Steph, and if it turned out bad she could always find someone else to fix it. She just wanted the stupid spot gone.

"I didn't want to make a big public thing of it, you know?"

She nodded, encouraging, I understand that, and waved Steph inside. "People might start asking you questions, right?"

"Exactly." Steph hurried inside, glad that she didn't have to explain anything.

"Thanks so much for this, Lua, you're really a life saver."

"Only if it turns out good." Lua waved her on a little further, back through to a tiny bathroom, and started picking through drawers to see if she had what she remembered she did. "You just want it gone, or something pretty?"

She followed in tow, keeping her hands clasped behind her back. She'd never been in Lua's room before and she didn't want to touch anything without permission.

"I had this sort of bob haircut a few years ago, I was thinking that might be short enough and I know it looks okay."

There they were, scissors and a comb, good enough to touch something up, but it was going to take a while with a cut like Steph was asking for. Lua turned up the lights in front of her mirror and stepped back around Steph, reaching up to check the burned spots in her hair and wincing just a little. If she'd had to get rid of that all at once... "I've never done that much, but it won't look bad."

Steph bit her lip and tried not to fidget. Was it really that bad? But she shouldn't have been surprised. Hair burned fast and it was the only part of her besides her face that was particularly flammable at the time.

"That's all I need really, it'll grow out soon enough." She just wanted it gone. And maybe she wanted a change, too. Things had been going wrong a lot lately and she needed to turn something around.

It wasn't as bad as the sounds Lua made, but Steph having to lose all of it made her start to think a little too much of hers. "It'll come back. Maybe it'll look better," she added, trying to encourage her, and ducked down to find a towel to lay over Steph's shoulders. "You'll be easier to recognize now."

She laughed, but it was a little sad. She'd liked how her hair had looked before, but she was doing her best to be positive. Let the negativity out in little doses and focus on the future, that was the key.

"I'm finally setting myself apart from the young blonde girl masses. There always were kind of a lot of us." Less, with Claire and Cissie and Kara gone. There were still a lot, though, and now she would be the one with short hair.

Edited 2012-10-08 19:15 (UTC)

Lua raised her hand with the scissors, opened them up, then stopped like she'd forgotten something important. "You want to do a picture real quick, or just want me to go?" She really didn't want to mess this up.

"Oh, uh, sure." Back home Steph might've just said 'screw it' and let her do whatever, but it had taken some effort to get this far and there was no reason to risk it.

"Have you got a pencil and paper?"

A couple steps back and Lua was digging through a drawer in her bedroom, coming back with a couple squares of notepaper and a pen. "If I know what you want, I'll copy it."

"No problem." She accepted both gladly and immediately started doodling, using her leg as a table. A quick little drawing of her face, then a nicely detailed image of the haircut she wanted. It came down just past her chin and angled slightly so that most of her neck was left bare; a fairly stylish bob. She handed the paper back.

"Look doable?"

Maybe wasn't the right answer, and if Lua was honest with herself it wouldn't be as bad as she was thinking. She picked the drawing up and studied it, then looked up with a nod. "We got this."

"Awesome." Steph smiled at Lua with an ease that conveyed her trust. Even if it went as bad as Lua was fearing, it couldn't possibly make anything worse. She adjusted the towel around her shoulders and turned around again.

"Oh, do you need me to sit down?"

Another nod, and Lua breathed in as Steph sat, taking the scissors up again and cutting for length. This was going to be slow work with this much hair, so she tried to find something to say that wouldn't make Steph think much about her hair or her boyfriend's problems. "You've been here about a year, right?"

"Two, actually, give or take." It was hard not to think about the reason she was here, but Steph had been quite good at repression in her time and that skill would serve her well again now.

"It gets kind of confusing when you go home from time to time."

"It would be. You go home, half the time it's like nothing's happened, right?"

"Yeah, sometimes I'm gone for weeks and I come back and it's only been three days." She almost shrugged, but remembered that Lua didn't have that much experience cutting hair and caught herself. She twiddled her thumbs instead.

"And then there was that time where I was home for a week and came back and it had been several months." That was particularly nasty.

"Last time?" Lua shook her head and made a sympathetic noise, but tried not to move too much. This wasn't looking that bad so far, but she had to stay careful.

"Yeah," Steph confirmed, since she couldn't nod her head. "I haven't wanted to go home since. It just doesn't seem worth the risk, you know?" She didn't want to let anyone else down like she had Dallas, and the chance that she might not come back was too great. Especially now that she had a boyfriend. What if she came back and didn't remember him?

"He'd miss you too much." It was the first time Lua had mentioned Kon, but that kind of comment seemed safe enough.

"I'd miss him too," Steph agreed quietly. Even though she'd just seen him yesterday, she already misses him. Or maybe it's more like she's missed him since he stopped staying in her room with her.

"And it's not like I can take him with me until he graduates."

"You guys still got a little while." Lua wasn't about to mention what had happened that had Steph with her in the first place. If she was staying, though, and they both were leaving, it couldn't have been as bad as it might sound. So instead of leading it on, telling her that, she stayed quiet and started snipping, getting in details at the back of Steph's head.

She knew how bad it looked, and couldn't help a small grimace that she was glad Lua couldn't see through the back of her head. Kon had hurt a lot of people (and probably a lot of feelings), but she had seen him come through it. There was no doubt in her mind that he had never meant to hurt anyone.

"I hope not too long," she noted, thinking more for Kon's sake than hers. She would stay until Doyle either graduated or was reassigned, she wouldn't just abandon him, but Kon being a warden as well was a bit of insurance that would make things easier. If one of them disappeared, the other could hold the Admiral accountable.

"It's all just really complicated, you know?" There were powers at work that they couldn't control and some that they could. Her fears about the future only made it messier.

"That's just it. Always is, right?" Lua waited a little longer than she needed to instead of moving to the side, knowing the conversation was starting to go places it was easier not to take face to face. "Long as you both know where you're going."

"We do," she assured Lua. They had very much decided where they were going, and planned for their future together. She just had to hope that it would work out, and not end in disaster.

"He's a really good kid, and you're pretty smart." Of course it's going to work out, Lua left unsaid, and finally turned to Steph's face, squinting at the paper. "This is the important part, okay?"

"Okay," Steph agreed, going very still. They could talk more about Kon when Lua was done.

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With your cherry lips and golden curls

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aaahhhhh you have an icon of her doodling <3

she's her own fanartist /squishes cheeks

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