What Have We Hair? {Wes}

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

As far as days went, Feliks found nothing exceptional about this one. It was just a regular day in the hair salon, neither particularly busy nor unusually slow. People came into the shop, sat in chairs and explained what they wanted to look like. And it was the job before Feliks and his colleagues to make that happen.

Some of those were easier than others.

Feliks had just finished one of the easier ones, trimming the hair of a rather talkative lady who had plenty to say about What Was Happening In London. He had laughed and chatted with her about many things. This was in some ways an aspect of this job, and in some ways an aspect of that other job that he never let on here that he did. It was helpful, to be tapped into the age-old civilian information network called gossip.

London was a busy city, and there was lots of gossip to be had, most of it harmless. Feliks liked to hear it, liked to hear about the day-to-day lives and trials of ordinary, innocent people. It was nice, knowing that some people had ordinary lives with ordinary problems and ordinary successes. The less-ordinary side of Feliks' life was devoted to ensuring that that continued to be the case. Of course, he couldn't mention any of that in his own side of the gossip, but he was used to being careful about such things. There was certainly plenty to talk about in any case.

“That's all done!” he informed his customer cheerily, taking her up to the register to pay for the trim. She was quite pleased with the results. Another satisfied customer, and Feliks was satisfied that he had done his job well.

The door opened to admit the next customer, whom Feliks greeted with a cheerful wave.

[Westley Walters-Kirkland]

Wes had his usual simper plastered onto his face as he stepped into the hair slaughtering shop, schoolbag slung over his shoulder. Honestly, he had no love for the place in the slightest. The snip snips by his ears unnerved him greatly, and always caused him to instinctively lash out with his arms and hit whichever unfortunate person was offered up to cut his hair. There was only one place that would ever cut it cheaply, and at the age of seven he was banned for biting every hairstylist there.

His mother had taken up to cutting his own hair after that, and it was a horrible ordeal with bowls over his head and squirming wailing children. But there was nothing that would seem to make him sit still, not kisses nor promises of sweets. Haircuts became a hated family ordeal and it was his clever aunt who had thought up a solution.

His hair had grown shaggy, half cut in some parts from failed attempts over the year and she had immediately taken notice when they had come for Christmas. So she had made Kyle go fetch the antique shears he had hidden in his drawer and sat the child down to give him a talk.

"Why do sheep have to have their wool cut Wes?" the woman began, gently stroking his head to calm him down.

"Because they get hot" was his firm reply, trying to squirm away and escape off under the couch where he belonged with his little hoard of sweets he had nabbed from the cupboard.

"Do you like getting hot?" she asked, taking the shears from her son and motioning him to keep his slippery cousin seated. It was always horridly hard to catch him again once had slipped off.

A head shake was the child's reply, huffing his cheeks in utter indignation as Kyle lifted him up and trapped him in his lap.

"Are you going to be like those sheep on television? Who were so fluffy they fell over in the heat?"

Once again he shook his head and ceased his squirming, instead chewing on the sweet his cousin had given him to calm him down a little.

"So we'll need to cut your hair, you don't want to fall over because your hair is too heavy do you? You have to be older so you can be strong enough to have long hair, like Mummy and Auntie." The woman gave a firm nod to add adult truth to her words, his mother following suit. And with the fear of overheating and falling over the little Kiwi agreed, the dull snip of the shears far more calming that the rapid ripping that the scissors seemed to make. From then on it seemed that it was the only way he could ever manage his way through a haircut, even when he grew old enough to know better the scissors just irked him far too much.

But now his hair was once again growing far too long, and his attempt to shear it himself had gone terribly awry. So he had looked up some places in the phone book and hoped that they wouldn't think anything odd of his request.

"Hullo, I need a trim?" he asked the pretty blonde lady at the counter who had greeted him, lacing his fingers nervously behind his back as he stepped up closer.

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

The boy who came into the salon next appeared to have something wrong with his hair.

Feliks blinked and looked again. He wasn't seeing things; the boy not only showed signs of having tried to cut his own hair (apparently without the aid of, say, a mirror), but he had the most extraordinary curls on the sides of his head. Despite having worked here for some time, and thus having seen and styled plenty of different kinds of people with different kinds of hair, the hairdresser spy had never seen enormous side-spirals like these. The boy almost appeared to have ram's horns, of all things.

“Hullo, I need a trim?” the boy said, his tone making the request into a question.

Right. Aside from that one extraordinary detail (and it really was extraordinary!) this was a routine matter, exactly like any other customer who came in needing a haircut. Feliks nodded and gestured to indicate that the boy should follow him. “Right back this way, then,” he invited him, leading the way into the section of the shop where the real work happened.

Each stylist had a designated workspace. Many had photographs of their spouses or children taped to the edges of the mirrors or in little frames next to their supplies; having neither partner nor offspring, Feliks had decorated his space instead with photographs of his ponies. The only picture that broke the pattern was visibly old and taped to the wall directly above the mirror, of himself at age fifteen with his parents. He kept that one around as a reminder of where he'd come from.

The big black barber's chair was ready and waiting. Feliks whisked away the drape that sat there for cleanliness purposes and said to the boy, “Sit right down. Any special requests, what sort of look you're going for or anything?”

[Westley Walters-Kirkland]

The Kiwi nervously trotted off behind the ..., he wasn't quite sure anymore now that he had gotten a good look of his/her face. The stylist's voice also had that unmistakable husk, leaving him hopelessly confused as he slipped back into the chair that had been uncovered and tried to relax. His eyes darted around the little booth, a brow raised at the horrendously large collection of horse pictures adorning the walls but not finding the need to comment on that, instead speaking up precisely what was weighing heaviest on his mind.

"Are you a homosexual?"

He didn't mind if he was or anything, but it was something he had to have answered immediately so he could focus on the next task, the inevitable haircut that he had been anxiously awaiting. If Wes hadn't been wanting to appear presentable he would have his finger up between his lips and gnawing away, but he only gripped his slacks tightly in his fists and braced himself. "Can you give me a trim? Not too much off the ends or anything, just enough that it looks neat and out of my eyes." With a little hand motion he tried to emphasize what he meant, wiggling his fingers a little nervously and setting them back into his lap to gently clasp them together. 

"So if you would please cut my hair with these as well..." the boy added, motioning to the shears in his lap and awkwardly holding them out for the hair stylist to take. "Thank you~"

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

“Are you a homosexual?”

If Feliks hadn't had the sort of self-control that had to be trained into every agent to ensure that they wouldn't their cover at a bad moment, he might have jumped out of his skin right then and there. The question wasn't one he had heard in a while, and he had very unpleasant memories of previous iterations. Still, the kid didn't seem to be threatening, the way other people had in the past, just nervous. Feliks wasn't sure what the problem was, though, which was dangerous because he had no idea what course of action would ensure that this conversation didn't go too catastrophically wrong.

When in doubt, trust your gut. Not that Feliks' gut was nearly as fine-tuned for that purpose as most, but it wasn't like he had anything better to go on. “Why, yes I am,” he replied matter-of-factly. Probably the kid wouldn't even notice any delay, as Feliks had run through that risk assessment in a matter of seconds.

It seemed that the news didn't unsettle the boy with the strange hair any further, so the problem was probably something else. That question was shortly answered by the request the boy made, which was even more unusual than either his previous comments or his hair. Not the style—the style he asked for was a perfectly ordinary one—but the... what was that, that the boy held out for him to take?

Feliks took the large shears and looked them over, a little dubiously. He had never used such a tool for this purpose before, and couldn't imagine why he was being asked to do so now. Part of him suspected that it might be some sort of a joke.

The boy seemed too sincere for that, though, so Feliks would try taking him seriously for the moment. “I can try,” he temporized, trying a few different ways to hold the shears in order to keep control of them so that he wouldn't end up ruining the boy's hair even worse.

He whisked the drape back into place over the boy's shoulders, and set to work. The shears were large, heavy, and moved much more slowly than he was used to, but he thought he could figure it out. First to even out this choppy job here...

As he worked, he put a question to the boy. “So... mind explaining what these enormous scissors are all about?”

[Westley Walters-Kirkland]

Wes tensed, heavily gnawed fingernails digging into the cushion of the arm rest as the hairstylist began to snip away at his chestnut locks. He was nervous, oh so nervous that he genuinely wondered if there was a chance he would vomit. At least the drape would keep his clothing somewhat presentable in that case? It certainly was not the silver lining one would want to focus on.

However the man began to work away at his soft curls with an impressive grace, one that he had never experienced before. The blond's slim fingers stroked through his hair, delicate and light against his scalp with a delicate touch. The anticipation that had built up in his stomach started to fade, the terrors that he recalled as a child nothing like the experience he was being offered here in the chair. It was calm, serene, and he allowed his eyes to slip closed, growing visibly relaxed in contrast to mere minutes before. It wasn't like his aunt or his mother's work, cutting off as much as they could reach to keep his hair from growing too long and becoming bothersome. Each snip of the shears from them was hurried, a race to get as much done as they could before he grew too fussy about sitting still. The stylist's work was precise and balanced, a moment's pause before each little snip of the shears.

"I don't like the way scissors sound" Westley confessed, wanting to slump back lazily into the chair now that he had calmed enough to notice it was rather comfortable. He didn't. Even with his new found tranquility the thought of moving too suddenly and having an ear lopped off was terrifying. "They're sharp, hurried, like bees buzzing around my ears and far too high pitched. They're unnerving?" His head slumped over to the side for a moment uncertainly, before the teen caught himself and snapped right back into it's prior position.

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

The boy seemed so incredibly tense that even Feliks noticed it, but as he worked, that tension faded away in a very obvious manner. He wondered what had happened to scare the poor kid. Whatever it was, it must have been very different from what he was doing now.

Of course, the odd thing about that was that Feliks was doing his job in a pretty normal way, he would have thought. Aside from the change of scissors, he was just doing what he always did, what he thought most stylists always did. Had someone nearly cut the boy's ear off in the past, or something?

Then the kid answered the question Feliks had put to him: “I don't like the way scissors sound. They're sharp, hurried, like bees buzzing around my ears and far too high pitched. They're unnerving?” While he spoke, the boy's head started to tilt to one side, and Feliks moved the scissors away quickly so as to avoid any possible disaster.

“That sounds dreadful,” the Pole admitted frankly. He had never had such an experience, but then he was, naturally, used to the little scissors he used every day. It was a small wonder that someone who had that experience would dislike haircuts. Of course, his work would be different. He was being careful, as always, hoping to make his customer look good.

The swirls on the boy's head were still striking to him. He had never seen anything quite like it. “Does your hair, like, naturally grow in circles like this?” he asked, quietly fascinated and carefully touching the spirals. The stylist found himself unsure how or even whether to cut that part. He had evened out the worst of the ragged bits, and the weird spirals didn't seem to be in any danger of obstructing the boy's vision, so... what should he do here?

He decided to wait until he heard what the owner of this hair thought of it before doing anything.