Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bleach Towa's hair. Such was the directive from Madarame before going radio silent for the day. It seemed like he was busy, though any message from Madarame-san carried a degree of urgency that Kotarou had no desire to test. Well, it wasn't like he had anything better to do today.

From mere habit he managed to collect Mayu from his apartment following a rousing struggle with the cocoon of blankets. At least Eiji required no such treatment, though Kotarou also felt no need to drag him along. If he wished to, he would come.

Takasato-gumi or no Takasato-gumi, the city was bustling. Sometimes it was hard to imagine that anything had changed at all. Same old, same old, even if exerting authority became a hobby rather than a job. Kotarou spearheaded through the crowds directly into the local drugstore, Mayu drafting in his wake. He aimed for the usual suspects, powder bleach and peroxide, products he used for himself. Tried and tested, so to speak. If Madarame didn't like the result, he shouldn't have asked.

***

Following the boss's previous examples, Kotarou and Mayu entered unannounced. If Kotarou gave it any thought, the reason for it would be the guaranteed reaction in their customer. Well, only half-guaranteed in the case of Towa. Until now he had been equally as often receptive to Kotarou’s intrusions and offers as he was reluctant. Kotarou lost the gamble this once as Towa did little but look up from his seat on the floor, cigarette in mouth. The smoke billowed evenly like he was barely breathing, entirely unimpressed by the duo’s dramatics. If he leaned any heavier against the sofa at his back he could probably be mistaken for a corpse.

Mayu got in a "Hi, Towa!" before Kotarou could open his mouth. He sauntered in, cat-like, flipflops carefully slipping between the room's debris like a true Clean Dishes master. The room differed little from their usual scenes.

Kotarou approached coolly, hands on bare hips, paper bag against his thigh.

"Yo. What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

No shit, and this wasn't in any way an exaggeration. Even the TV wasn't on. Had he just been smoking in silence? At least he seemed to have a bottle by his side for company. Smirnoff Ice, again? It wasn’t exactly the vibe Towa exuded, but perhaps this was another subtle facet of Shinkoumi's changes.

"Cancel your plans. We've got something for you here." Kotarou held up the bag that had been mildly cramping his style.

Mayu approached from the other side as though he had conspired with Kotarou to circle Towa like a pair of vultures — or perhaps mildly nobler beasts, such as hyenas.

"We're giving you a makeover," Mayu said, putting a bizarre lilt on the word.

Towa suddenly looked more alive with a frown on his face, flashing anger rather than mere inconvenience. He looked ready to start swinging, and not in the fun and flirty way.

"Woah, woah. Madarame-san's orders. It's hair bleach." Kotarou took out the bottle of peroxide and thrust it in Towa's face.

"We're going to make you pretty," Mayu added, then laughed hysterically. Kotarou gave him a glare, but at least Towa seemed to soften, from the looks of it having pointedly ignored Mayu.

"Whatever. If that's what he wants." Towa took a final drag of his cigarette and extinguished it on the floor, sitting himself up with what seemed to be moderate difficulty. He looked like he was about to offer them coffee like a good host, but what Kotarou saw was probably an intent to get this over with. He did not offer them coffee.

Unperturbed, Mayu swivelled around to face the TV and dropped his ass to the floor. Someone should have grabbed the remote before he had the time to put on anime, but that was exactly what he did. At least the room wouldn't be silent now. It was generally difficult to feel awkward with Mayu around, but Kotarou couldn’t help feeling like they were under a blanket of pressure right now. Towa alone couldn’t have been exerting that.

Kotarou shrugged and began pulling out the supplies. "This is just the basic stuff, I'm not doing any toning or whatever."

Towa gave Kotarou a curious look, and a quick side-eye at Mayu, but said nothing.

"What's that face for?" Kotarou's characteristic sneer dropped immediately in favour of a thinly-veiled self-conscious gape.

"Nothing."

A hyena's wheeze came from Mayu. It wasn't entirely clear if it was them, or the show that entertained him so.

Kotarou snapped, putting on an accusatory tone. "Huh? You thought Mayu was going to-? Who do you think does his hair? Sit up so I can get behind you."

More stubborn than ever, Towa did not budge and Kotarou had to swing a leg over him to sit behind him on the sofa. How nostalgic, he thought. Last time he had Towa in this position his mouth was facing towards him though. Kotarou pulled at the blond ends of towa's hair, gentler than that time, careful even. When Towa's life had been his own, Kotarou didn't have to worry about treating him too preciously, but Madarame-san's good graces weren't all that spacious and Kotarou didn't fancy falling out of them.

"Guess you've been bleaching until recently, huh?"

"I stopped two years ago," Towa replied with surprising lucidity. He never seemed like a guy who concerned himself with precise dates.

"We were matching!" came Mayu's voice. Clearly whatever he was watching was only a rerun. Towa didn't comment, of course.

"As if," Kotarou responded for him. Usually by now – had they not been invited to copulate – the two of them would have been diffusing their farewells and Towa would have been walking away with silent purpose, like he had any plans besides getting his steps in for the day. Where had he ever cared about going? Roost, home, Roost, home and then perhaps a visit to Sakaki's office the odd day, if Sakaki didn't stumble upon him first. Well, the old man wouldn't be doing that anymore, though Towa no longer seemed interested in doing his rounds either. How Shinkoumi had changed, and was changing. He felt something akin to pride in his involvement with the harbinger's advent.

Kotarou combed through his hair with deft fingers, surveying the job. Towa's hair was longer than his of course, and much, much shorter than Mayu's. This wasn't his expertise. He supposed this wasn't a precision root job, at least. He just had to bleach everything, hair damage be damned. Kotarou snipped the tufts of blond at Towa's nape between his fingers.

"Your split ends are worse than Mayu's," he said to disrupt the anime-laden silence, something Towa surprisingly didn't seem to mind. It drove Kotarou nuts on the other hand. Mayu's unoffended disinterest signalled his returned attention to the TV screen.

"Cut them then."

"That'll be extra."

There wasn’t a response, which wouldn't bother Kotarou usually.

"Hey, come on, take the joke. I can't even cut hair." He really needed Mayu's focus here. It was unnatural to be around Towa like this, in a room so distinctly lacking violence or sex, at least presently. Even Mayu's choice of TV show showed a distinct lack of perversion, no bouncing tits, not even cleavage. What happened to all the fucking cleavage? They simply weren't meant to speak one-on-one with no intentions. Even Eiji could be helpful here, and that was saying something.

"I laughed,” Towa said finally.

Kotarou forcibly drained his breath of relief before snorting. "I'll mix the bleach."

It was a simple case of mixing one chemical with the other, and there was plenty of sofa space for all the components, once Kotarou pushed all the garbage to the floor. He was glad that he had bought a plastic bowl as the room seemed to be devoid of all but debris and litter of every sort, and he was not about to go all housewife on this place looking for a container. Brush, comb, gloves too. There was no way he was getting reimbursed. He would have to consider it a sort of loyalty tax.

"Comb your hair while I do this."

Kotarou shoved the instrument down at him. Towa, with a moment of consideration, and great reluctance, took it and half-heartedly began to go at his hair. The display, so pathetic it verged on offensive, got Kotarou to pause again.

"Hey, the fuck are you doing? You gotta start at the ends and work your way up to get the knots out. Fuck it, ask Mayu, he'll tell you." He could not deal with this, but more importantly, he needed his wing-man.

"Yes, start at the very ends," Mayu said, thankfully without Towa's prompting, twisting his body around and grabbing a section of his own fringe between his fingers, “and then bit by bit..." He travelled up his hair in steps, alternating hands to demonstrate. "And ta-dah! you'll be silky smooth."

Towa looked like he was about to argue, throw away the comb entirely, maybe tell them to go fuck themselves. He was on edge like that lately. He didn't though, and neither did he adjust his technique.

"You do it, if you're the expert." He continued to run the comb through his hair, get stuck on a knot and repeat like he was taunting them. If not for a creeping smile on his face, Kotarou would have thought he didn't care, rather than try to provoke them. The provocation was good.

Kotarou nodded at Mayu, who gave the TV a wistful glance, but shuffled over without complaint to work on Towa’s hair. The task seemed nowhere near as taxing as Towa had made it seem. His knots were pulled apart with impressive precision and speed by Mayu’s hands. Kotarou had a feeling that if he said anything about it, Mayu would insist this was somehow the product of his anime-induced eagle eye. He refrained. The combing took longer than Kotarou’s preparation, so he just sat back and watched what was possibly the closest thing to a threesome they would ever have again.

“Now he’s all fluffy,” was Mayu’s capstone to the event as he barely resisted going in for handfuls of Towa’s hair. Kotarou understood that look perfectly.

“I don’t need him fluffy, I need him serviceable.” Mayu had done a thorough job in all fairness. “Ready?”

Towa shrugged, jostling himself between Kotarou’s legs. Kotarou somehow hadn’t noticed him leaning against his thigh at all until now. Well, now wasn’t the time for cosying up.

“Sit up before I put this on. You’re buying me new pants if you bleach these. Mayu, get me a towel.” Towa hardly moved, burdened by a worrying lethargy that was accompanied by periodic winces. Kotarou applied the bleach into his hair by whatever area was available to him before Towa’s head lolled to the other side, where Kotarou’s pants were hopefully just as protected by the towel. Again, if Madarame-san had wanted a thorough job he could have hired a professional, but Kotarou could see why he hadn’t. Few would want to deal with this difficult customer.

Towa rolled his head forward, providing a perfect opportunity to work on those precarious tufts at the back of his head, but Kotarou stopped and pulled his head back.

"You don't want this shit in your eye socket. Where’s your eyepatch?"

“Don’t have it.”

Kotarou vocalised displeasure. “Just watch it.” He pulled the hair over Towa’s right eye back and wiped his forehead with a corner of the towel. Was this concern even necessary when Kotarou was sure that he had gone over several open wounds on Towa’s scalp with the bleach? That, at least, wasn’t avoidable though. He finished up some time later, wondering if he should have used tinfoil or any other recommended tricks on Towa’s bizarrely thick hair. He wouldn’t particularly want to be the cause of its ruin. He ran his gloved fingers through the hair, a discreet check for hair loss. All seemed fine for now.

"Tell me if your scalp starts to burn. Though I guess you'd be into that. Microdosing immolation fetish?" Kotarou expected no reaction again, but he could see a faint smile play on Towa’s face from this angle now that there were no tufts or fringes in the way. He looked a little naked with all his hair slicked back, a little too visible. “It’ll take a while. Any offerings for your guests?”

“These.” Towa lifted his bottle of Smirnoff Ice, finger pointed at a corner of the room where more bottles lay around haphazardly like trash, among actual trash.

“Fuck off. I didn’t think you even drank this shit. That’s it, I’m going to the shop. Mayu, your order.”

Mayu didn’t tear himself away from the screen. “The usual.”

“I’ll have a whiskey… on the rocks,” Towa piped up from his resting place on Kotarou’s thigh.

“You want me to get you a fuck-off giant ice cube?” Kotarou leaned in, Mayu howling in his peripherals. “Whatever. Mayu, watch him. Wash it off in 50 minutes if I’m not back.” He dislodged Towa for the final time, Mayu assisting until their hands got pushed away with returning aggression. At least his pants were safe now.

A brisk walk through the deserted District A was everything he needed, relieving both his chemical headache and the tension that had seeped into his body. Mayu simply had to be sacrificed, and if he survived he would have his drink. Despite what others may have thought, that guy was as reliable as they came.

The round trip had taken him the hour as his gait stalled in reluctance. He had almost expected to stumble upon Towa or at least catch a glimpse of his dark, gangly figure in town, but obviously could not happen. It never would happen again. And he was about to be blond. Kotarou expected to be greeted with that very sight upon his return, but instead found that the anime audience had multiplied, and now included Eiji.

“Yo.”

“Hello,” came Eiji’s typical and polite response.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” Mayu whinged. “Towa’s in the bathroom.”

“Washing out the bleach?” That bit wasn’t quite clear. Mayu hummed affirmatively.

“I’m excited to see what that will look like,” Eiji said. So did Kotarou, yet at the same time he wished he had simply walked in on it already.

He dropped a 4-pack of Mayu’s choice of beer by his side with a suggestion to share with Eiji, which was swiftly rejected by Eiji. Moving to what had originally been a kitchenette, but now was another orifice for trash, Kotarou searched for a glass, mug, cup or any manner of receptacle and came up empty-handed. He should have had the foresight for this, but now it seemed that there was only one option. He washed out the residue from the plastic bowl that held the bleach. Honestly, ingesting whatever was left might only serve to strengthen Towa’s stomach lining. The guy wasn’t the healthiest to say the least. Kotarou dropped a large, overpriced sphere of ice into the bowl and topped it off with cheaper-seeming whiskey. The rest of the ice shapes he shoved into the freezer, which despite having space actually lacked power. Fuck it, that was where they belonged anyway.

The sound of the shower quelled, leaving the trio in bated breath until Towa unceremoniously re-emerged just moments later, soaking wet and beaming blond. Though it was only two years ago that he stopped bleaching his hair, Kotarou was reminded of a time before then, before he had even reached his twenties, Towa nubile and untouchable.

“Oh, how nostalgic. I think it looks great on you, Towa-san,” Eiji commented.

“Wow! You’re dripping puddles on the floor. Did you dry yourself off at all?” Mayu laughed.

“There’s only one towel.” And seemingly it was the bleach-covered one, still on the sofa. Towa moved towards it to regain his original seat, ignoring Mayu who insisted on a ‘twirl’.

“It looks even enough,” Kotarou said, which was true enough from what he could observe. He couldn’t bring himself to check for himself.

“Madarame-san will be pleased,” commented Eiji, face full of an inoffensive smile that Kotarou couldn’t stomach for a moment. “Ah, Towa-san, do you know where the two of you are headed after this?”

Towa hesitated to answer, and in what appeared to be genuine curiosity Eiji prolonged the expectant silence.

“Travelling around South America aren’t they? Where are they flying in to again?” Kotarou offered, speaking over the lump in his throat. Bowl in hand, he approached the trio on the floor and left it at Towa’s side.

Eiji examined Towa’s blank face and suddenly grinned wildly. “Let’s not spoil the surprise.”

Towa, angry and defiant, turned instead to Kotarou’s offering. “What is this?”

“House special. Whiskey on the rocks.”

His Smirnoff Ice was already in hand. “Don’t need it.”