#and i already wasted so much money bleaching and dyeing all of this that it feels like it would be a waste to cut half of it off | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

clumsyclifford · 3 years

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Rian helping Alex to dye his hair!! And complain how it'll fall out and stuff just to mask how pretty he thinks it's gonna look

alright anon here it is! my rilex debut. i hope it does not disappoint. also full disclosure i have had my hair dyed Once for me and my friends did it and i do not remember most of what happened so while i did do some light google searches please suspend disbelief if and when you must

read it here on ao3

Rian should know more about dyeing hair. It seems impossible for him to have been in a band with Jack and Alex for this long and not pick up on the basics, at least. Standing in a CVS, Rian feels confident that he should know this.

"Should" being the operative word.

Finally he calls Alex.

"I forgot which brand you said," he tells Alex when he gets yeah?

"I texted it to you, you moron," Alex replies. He sounds very fond. It's always fun to hear Alex try and be bitchy when he's really just being fond.

Sighing, Rian pulls his phone away from his ear and checks his texts. "No you didn't."

"I definitely did." Pause. "Oh, it didn't go through. Whoops."

"Who's a moron now?"

"Still you. I told you the name like fifty times. Okay, it sent. If you get the wrong color, no offense but our friendship is over."

"Gotcha," says Rian. "So was it bright orange or more of a burnt umber that you wanted?"

Alex hangs up on him. A minute later he calls back.

"Love you," he says.

Rian rolls his eyes and grins. "Love you."

"Isn't it kind of disrespectful to do this in a hotel room bathroom?"

Alex doesn't stop setting up the hair dye supplies on the sink, but he does shoot a dry look towards Rian. "Yeah, duh. But it's just hair dye. Worst case scenario it stains the tub or something."

"Or the floor," Rian puts in. "Or your hair all burns off from the bleach and you sue and then there's a whole court case. That'd be pretty bad for them."

"But dope for me," Alex says. "So wins all around."

Not wins for the hotel, Rian doesn't say. He's not sure why he's bothering to try and convince Alex that they shouldn't do this. Not only is Alex thoroughly unable to be convinced, Rian doesn't even think he believes himself.

It's just, Alex is dyeing his hair blue.

Rian tries not to form opinions, like, about Alex in specific, because in general his opinion is wow and good-looking and would love to kiss him and AHHHHH, and those opinions don't really change with Alex's look. Even in the most emo of Alex's hair days, Rian had been very much extremely attracted to him, and Alex has only gotten cuter since then. It will probably become a problem eventually. Rian suspects it might already be a problem that he's just ignoring very effectively.

It's not like he only likes Alex for his looks. Alex has lots of wonderful qualities, and Rian could easily wax poetic for hours. It's just that it would probably be easier not to fall in love with him if he was a little less what they in the music business called Fucking Gorgeous.

But no dice. Obviously.

All of which to say: helping Alex dye his hair blue cannot possibly end well for Rian. Alex has yet to do blue, but Rian is one hundred percent sure it's going to look as good as all the other colors have, and he's just going to find himself speechless for a couple minutes again. Which hadn't been a problem before, when Alex had gotten Jack to do it with him, but for some reason this time he's enlisted Rian, and Rian has yet to find within himself the capacity to refuse anything Alex requests, within (and sometimes without) reason.

Speaking of which: "Why isn't Jack helping you with this? Don't you think he'd be, like, a thousand times more competent? I mean, I wouldn't usually say that about Jack, but this is so not my area of expertise."

Alex huffs, opening the box of dye. "Well, for starters, Jack is busy with Zack, and they are probably banging and/or playing a board game and/or getting wasted and/or doing things that I can't even fathom because Jack and Zack are ineffable," which takes Rian a long moment to process but none of which is technically implausible or untrue, "and second, I wanted your help."

"Yeah, no, I got that when you told me you wanted my help," Rian says dryly. "What I'm wondering is why."

Alex frowns in judgement as he mixes the dye. "What's with all the questions? I just like hanging out with you, man. Do I need a better reason?"

Rian clears his throat. "Uh. I guess not."

"Damn right." Alex gives Rian a smile, and a small part of Rian melts, and he thinks about how much of a naive idiot he's been that he didn't realize how much of a problem this would be until right now. When it's too late. "Okay. Gloves on, Ri. It's gonna get messy up in here."

There's no way that innuendo is unintentional, and Rian is a sucker because he blushes anyway.

Apparently it's just a matter of painting. Which is much easier said than done. Not because painting dye onto hair is particularly challenging, but because Rian painting dye onto Alex's hair is, well.

"One of these days you're gonna lose all your hair," he says at one point, mostly to distract himself from the look on Alex's face as he works the dye through his hair with his crinkly-plastic-gloved fingers. That look is putting Rian's mind in places it should not be.

Fortunately, this comment alters it, and Alex opens his eyes. "I don't dye my hair that much."

Rian gives him a critical look. "Yeah, but still. This stuff can't be good for you. Even if you don't use it a lot."

"You know what else isn't good for me?" Alex says seriously. "Alcohol. Tattoos. Sex before marriage. Rebellion is hot. What kind of punk rocker are you?"

"I'm sorry it's not punk to be worried about your friends," Rian replies. "Doesn't it burn your head?"

"Nah," Alex says, closing his eyes again. "Feels nice."

"How the fuck does putting — I don't even know what's in this stuff — feel nice?"

"It's more about the experience," Alex says around a smile. "You putting the dye in my hair, it feels nice."

Awesome. Rian's fine.

"Oh," he mumbles, and then decides that not talking is in his best interest.

Rian is thorough with his task. If that means he goes twice through all of Alex's hair, it's because he's being extra careful.

(By the second time, Alex has begun humming along to the Motion City Soundtrack song playing from his phone on the sink top, and Rian is distracted for a little (long) while.)

With the shower cap on, Alex actually looks kind of dumb, which is a relief. The timer is nearly done ticking down from thirty minutes and Paramore is singing about how the camera's lying as Alex stares at himself in the mirror, using a washcloth to wipe off the smudges of rogue dye on his forehead.

Rian should stop watching, but there's something very captivating about the intensity of Alex's demeanor. It's not about what he's doing so much as the manner in which he's doing it, and God, Rian would give all the money in the world for Alex to look at him with that same attentiveness, even though he would probably just disintegrate if it ever did happen.

Rian was once a dignified man. He's not sure what happened but he's certain it's Alex's fault.

"Hey, Ri," Alex says. "Can you help me with this? I can't get this fucking dye off my face."

You're doing fine, Rian absolutely does not say, and instead says, "Yeah, sure. Although you might wanna think about just leaving it. I really think you could start a trend with this."

"Yeah?" Alex says, passing off the wet washcloth to Rian. "What, a trend of wearing hair dye on your face?"

"Dyed face is the new dyed hair," Rian says, grinning. He hesitates for a moment and then resigns himself to what he knows has to happen. "Don't move or talk or breathe or anything like that," he tells Alex, sliding a hand around Alex's neck to keep his head in place.

"Don't breathe?"

"What did I just say about talking and breathing?" Rian holds up the washcloth like a weapon. "Shut your mouth."

Alex presses his lips together and mimes locking them. He slips the imaginary key down the front of Rian's shirt. Rian snorts and begins his efforts to clean the dye off Alex's face. It's probably not going to go away for a little while, and they'll need to cover it with makeup, and Rian knows that, and surely Alex knows that too, so he's not sure why they're even bothering with this.

But. The position they've found themselves in is as compromising as it is tempting; Rian keeps his eyes firmly on the washcloth in his hands so they don't flit around Alex's face or land too often on his mouth. He could give himself away far too easily right now.

(He would like to. He would love to. If he kissed Alex right now, would Alex kiss him back? Would Alex have put them in this position as a joke? Is Alex a heartless monster or just a friend who thinks they're just friends? Are they just friends? Do they have to be? Could hair dye be mixed with glue to make colorful glue or does it only work on hair? All these questions and more crowd Rian's mind. It's a wonder he ever gets anything done.)

Eventually, though, Rian has to admit he's not going to get this dye off Alex's skin, and he doesn't want to hurt Alex. He sighs and drops his hand to his side, curling the washcloth in his fist. "Sorry, Al. You're gonna have to start that trend whether you like it or not."

Alex doesn't look even slightly disappointed. "That's cool," he says, smiling at Rian, smiling only for Rian, in a way that paralyzes Rian and renders him momentarily unable to respond. "It's kinda hot, in a subversive way. You know?"

Rian swallows. "Huh?"

"I mean, objectively being punk isn't hot compared to mainstream hot people, but there's something inherently hot about doing exactly what you're not supposed to. That's the whole point of punk." Rian's pretty sure punk has an additional, slightly larger point, but at the moment it's slipping his mind. "So like, this is hot in the sense that it's not what you'd expect to be hot. But I kind of make it work, don't you think?"

I think you kind of make this shower cap work, so I'm not exactly an unbiased authority on the matter, Rian keeps to himself. "Are you asking if I think you look hot with blue hair dye on your face?" he says, neutrally, trying not to give away that he does think Alex looks hot with blue hair dye on his face.

But Alex just meets Rian's gaze and says, "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm asking."

A moment passes. Rian realizes he never reclaimed his hand and it is now just kind of cradling Alex's neck where it meets his shoulder. Another moment. Alex keeps his eyes steady on Rian's. Neither of them move. Rian starts to feel his heartbeat and wonders how he never notices when he's not feeling it. It's only startling to feel it because it's so quiet usually. People should be able to feel their own heartbeats, all the time. Then it wouldn't be such an inconvenient surprise any time it kicks to life with a thudding intensity that almost makes Rian flinch.

It's not like he can lie. Morality aside, because Rian doesn't like to lie, he also knows Alex will see through him like glass.

Which leaves him with the truth as his only option, and unfortunately it's been too long since Alex asked for the truth to sound anything but incredibly guilty coming from Rian.

Well.

"If anyone is going to make it work," he says at last, "it's you."

Alex raises his eyebrows. "Way to not answer the question."

"I basically did."

"You completely didn't."

"Why do you care if I think it's hot? You don't need to impress me. I'm already in your shitty band."

"Maybe I'm trying to impress you for something that isn't the band," Alex says evenly, with an impressive degree of confidence, but Rian can feel his heart rate rise under his fingertips.

He has the presence of mind to think, what the fuck is going on? But instead of that, he says, "Like?"

Alex bites his lip. Rian thinks that if he's reading this right, it will flip everything upside down, but surely even he couldn't read a situation this wrong. There's nothing else Alex could possibly mean by this, right?

"I take it back," Rian says. "Dumb question."

"A little," Alex says, breathing a nervous laugh. There's a dangerously small amount of space between the two of them, the kind of small that Rian could bridge so easily, and with no reason not to, he figures there's not much more he can lose.

(He can't be misreading this. There's just no way. Alex isn't this cruel, and Rian isn't this stupid.)

Alex leans closer when Rian does, breath mingling in the air between them, so so so close, like insanely close, like Rian can practically taste it already, how impossible and incredible it's going to be to kiss Alex. The air catches in his throat, and he kind of smiles a little hesitantly, and Alex smells so much like hair dye that it is overpowering all of Rian's senses but he'd love to drown in that smell as long as it means drowning in Alex and their noses brush and Rian lets his eyes fall shut and then

The timer goes off, blaring an aggressive alarm throughout the bathroom, and Rian almost has a heart attack as he jerks backwards and he is going to fucking break his phone into many many pieces.

They're quiet as Rian rinses the dye out of Alex's hair. The worst part is Rian can't quite figure out what kind of silence this is, if it's awkward or anticipatory or what. But thinking for too long makes him want to scream or something, so he stops thinking and just focuses on washing out the dye. Alex is sitting in a chair they pulled in from the room, head tipped back under the sink, that same look on his face that —

But Rian's not thinking about it.

The water starts out bright blue, and Rian almost panics before Alex says lightly, "You just have to rinse until the water runs clear. Don't freak out if it's blue, that's normal."

So Rian does not freak out when the water is blue, and true to Alex's word, it starts to grow clearer the more Rian lets it run. If it were Alex in his position he would probably have a thousand poetic things to say — it's like life, he'd say in a tone just shy of pretentious, it starts out looking like it's going wrong but then everything literally becomes clear — but Rian isn't Alex and to him it's just a Good Sign that he hasn't Fucked Up.

Well he hasn't fucked up the hair, at least. Probably. Yet.

At long last, the water starts running clear, and Rian breathes a sigh of relief and turns the tap off. "You're good," he says, wringing the worst of water out of Alex's hair. His hands are stained blue, he now notices; probably he should have put the gloves back on when he'd gone to rinse Alex's hair, but he hadn't thought to.

"Yeah?" Alex asks, experimentally lifting his head and stretching his neck. "Ah, that is not the most comfortable position, not gonna lie."

Rian grabs the hand towel and dries his hands off, then gives it to Alex so Alex can dry his neck, which Alex does, and then leaves the towel around his shoulders. They are definitely going to get dye on this towel and the hotel will not be pleased, but as Alex stands up and begins rearranging his hair to look like himself again, the comment dies in Rian's throat.

Predictably, he looks really fucking good.

Rian watches Alex like some kind of lovestruck idiot until Alex turns to him, tilting his head, and says, "So? Final thoughts? How do I look?"

"Can I kiss you now?" Rian says, surprising himself. "That's what was about to happen before, right? Like, I'm not insane?"

"Your sanity has nothing to do with whether or not we were gonna kiss," Alex says, grinning, eyes bright, "but we totally were and now we definitely are."

This time Rian wastes no time, and his dye-stained fingers blend into the blue oasis of Alex's new hair color as their lips meet. Briefly, Rian's mind is once again crowded with dumb pointless questions, but he pulls Alex closer and Alex curls a hand into the front of Rian's shirt and Rian decides that his mind can take a hike.

As they break apart, Alex laughs. "So you think it looks good?"

"It looks terrible," Rian deadpans. "Yes, of course it looks good. You could shave your head and it would look good." Alex gasps. "Well. Okay. That was an exaggeration to make a point but I'm not sure it's actually true. But honestly, Alex." The jig is up, so Rian just smiles at him. "I always fucking think you look good. This?" He tugs at Alex's hair. "Hot. No doubt."

"Well, that's the only vote of confidence I need," Alex breathes, and then they're kissing again.

(The hair dye leaves its mark on the towel and Rian's hands and the pillowcases they sleep on that night, but its impact, in Rian's opinion, is altogether immeasurable. It's not every day a box of blue hair dye gets him a boyfriend.)

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chaoswriting92 · 4 years

Text

Games we shouldn’t Play

Chapter Four: hoping for better days

Lunch rolled around and you’d gotten a few texts from Jin apologizing and one or two from Jaebeom asking if you were alright and about what happened when he got off the elevator. You hadn’t answered either of them. It was too much. Jackson had come over up to ask how Friday went right as lunch time rolled around and you didn’t say anything to him either. Jasmine was the one left to explain about everything that happened this morning and yesterday and after that even Jackson. The group’s friend who was almost always happy and energetic was down on his mood.

You made it to the cafeteria and Jaebeom was waiting for you, smiling and waving from his table a second tray of food already waiting on you and you felt better about that. He wasn’t making a move to join you at the door just waiting patiently for you to come to him and you did. Walking past a few of the models and Hyeji and her inner circle head held high to go sit by him and try to let all your worries from earlier dissipate. You sat down and bit into the crisp red apple smiling at the fond look he was giving you and the sweet taste.

“Did I mention earlier that you look beautiful?” He leaned in and whispered.

“Hmm… No, I don't think you did. I remember you calling me beautiful, and saying I looked stunning, but not telling me I looked beautiful.” You commented falling into that easy feeling that you’d had Friday and Saturday when the two of you had gone out by yourselves. The upset from this morning still stung around the edges, but what he’d said on the elevator was right. You had discussed this and you had a plan. None of that involved giving up on Jaebeom just because Seokjin came around.

“Hey Y/n, JB.” Yugyeom came over from where he had grabbed his lunch and sat down at the table. He was followed shortly after by Sooran and Jinyoung, then Jasmine, Jackson, Youngjae and Mark followed. Finally the rest of you were joined by BamBam who always seemed to take the longest to grab his food, but it didn’t surprise you all that much because he was usually held up talking to Lisa since she sat at one of the other model’s tables close by to the check out counter and vending machines.

“Hey Bambam, how did that video presentation from this morning go?” You asked, sticking your fork into the salad that had been sitting in front of you.

“It went well. They really liked the track and thought that Lisa was a good choice of model. Thanks for suggesting her. The even said that they want her to be the permanent model for their campaign.” He said taking a bite of his pizza when he was done speaking.

“Hey y/n. Is that a new dress?” One of the models who had been sitting at HyeJi’s table had passed by your table to go over to where the waste bins were and on her way back seemed to notice the dress you were wearing.

“Oh, yeah, it’s from a new design series I was working on,” you replied.

“Is there going to be a photo shoot for that series?” She asked curiously.

“Maybe sometime soon. I still have a few more pieces I’m working on and some changes since the advanced copies of the designs were shared I have to change some things.”

“I thought it looked familiar. That’s the dress Hyeji was gushing about. She had a picture of the design sketch on her phone. She said you were making it specially for her. You know, I knew she was lying. If you need a new model for any shoots let me know, okay? By the way congratulations not everyone can leave a catch like Seokjin and land on their feet.” She eyed JB up and down making it obvious what she meant and both of you almost choked on the respective drinks and food you were eating.

“I.. uh...Thanks. If I need a new model I will let you know.” You placated her and tried to recover from her comment and she nodded satisfied that she may have replaced Hyeji as your favorite and that she got something she could hold over Hyeji’s head in the meantime.

“What did she mean by that?” Youngjae asked.

“Probably just that word has traveled about me and Jabeom dating.” You muttered like it was common knowledge and continued to eat.

“Oh okay. Wait when did you two start dating?” Youngjae asked, confused.

“Saturday. We went out for breakfast trying to see if we could really get to know each other after the fun we had Friday, thanks for buying dinner by the way Jackson.” You said.

“Technically we went out for Bingsu Saturday not breakfast.” JB countered.

“Same thing. After that I helped him dye his hair and we kind of just decided that we’d give this a try.” You finished.

“And you said we should let them find someone else on their own.” Jackson said smugly and gave a pointed look at Mark who rolled his eyes again. You and Jaebeom gave each other a knowing look. This was actually working. They all seemed to believe you. The pieces were falling into place.

The rest of lunch was spent with your friends asking you questions about Saturday until you finally told them the story leaving out a few key points of course.

***Last Saturday Afternoon***

After leaving the Bingsu place the two of you bought the hair dye JB had wanted and went back to his apartment blessedly not running into Jin or anyone else. Jaebeom’s apartment suited him. It was cozy and sort of intimate and looked like it was lived in and loved in the time he’d been here. The door bathroom traveled through his bedroom and it took everything in you to keep from laughing as he scrambled to pick up the mess of laundry lying around and had blushed a little in your direction and apologized. You had tried several different scenarios out in your head for how to go about dying his hair without staining his shirt and finally let out a sigh.

“This is hopeless. Take your shirt off.” You ordered and he got a sly grin on his face.

“I thought we were dying my hair,” he teased.

“I will leave right now and you can call Jackson and explain why you were about to have me dye your hair”

“I’m just kidding, y/n, please don’t leave me like this.” He grabbed onto the soft denim of the shorts you were wearing. His knuckles brushed the outside of your thigh and your eyes met his for an almost electric moment before you shook your head, made a little uncomfortable coughing noise and went back to mixing the hair dye.

“I’m... You should... Unless you want your shirt stained I’d suggest either changing or taking it off,” you told him.

“Right, I’ll… I’ll just go change. I have an old t-shirt I use for cleaning. That should be alright. You just keep mixing I guess.” He left the bathroom and went looking through his room for the shirt and you let out a sigh and looked at your reflection in the mirror not meaning to but noticing where JB was standing with his back turned to you as he slipped his shirt he’d been wearing over his head and you found yourself transfixed by the flawless expanse of tan skin revealed as he slid the shirt over his head. His long hair just barely grazed the space between his shoulder blades on his neck and you found yourself imagining what would be like to feel that skin under your fingertips. When he quickly began slipping the new shirt over his head it seemed to snap you out of your daydream and you had shook your head squeaking in panic when you realized your hair had dipped into the pot of hair dye in your distraction and sat it down scraping it off in a determined fashion with a tissue that you pulled from a nearby box. Jaebeom didn’t even bother to hide his laughter.

“We could have matched.” He said and you swatted at him before tugging him down into the seat and putting gloves on so you could apply the bleach to his hair. Things were quiet while you did this. He watched you as you focused on what you were doing. Your brows knit together and concentration tugged the corners of your mouth down in this cute little frown. He found himself imagining what your reaction would be if he kissed the little creases you had forming there and mentally cursed. The two of you weren’t really dating he couldn’t just take advantage of thoughts like that any time he wanted and you were his friend there should be a line. That did remind him though. He cleared his throat a little and you pulled away satisfied with the work you’d done on the bleach. Now all you both had to do was wait for it to do its job. He tapped your side where you had leaned across and sat the bowl and brush down then you turned to look back at him.

“We should probably decide what our boundaries are for this whole thing.” Jaebeom said.

“What do you mean?” You sat down on the edge of the tub and shifted so the two of you were face to face.

“Like for what would cross the line and be a deal breaker.”

“Oh. Right. No meeting parents or siblings unless it is absolutely unavoidable. The last thing either of us needs is our families getting attached to the idea of us being a thing and getting hurt too.” You said setting a timer on your phone for when to rinse the bleach.

“Fair enough. Um… no sex. I think that would complicate things.” Jaebeom said.

“Really? You think sex would complicate things. I would never have guessed.” You teased.

“Listen here smart ass.” He chastised you for the comment and you let out a full and jovial laugh tilting your head back and exposing your bare skin at your neck and creating a clear line to the v of your shirt to his eyes. He was starting to already be glad he set that rule, but also beginning to curse himself for it. You were still as beautiful as always, but for some reason even more enticing as the realization sunk in that you were essentially untouchable now due to the rule he’d just put in place.

“Okay um… We should go to every public function that requires a plus one together if it means one of the others will see us.” You said drawing him back to the topic at hand.”

“Does that mean I am driving you to and from work from now on too?” He asked and you nodded.

“I can give you gas money if you need it, but it would look weird if you let me ride the bus when you have a car.”

“Fair. Um… couples clothes or accessories?” He asked.

“Not unless you think we need to unnecessary money being spent if you ask me.” you replied.

“Not yet. If it gets too hard to keep the ruse up then maybe.” he said thoughtfully.

“Group dates?”

“Probably unavoidable, but only if someone asks.” He answered.

“You just want me to have all my attention focused on you. I should probably borrow some of your clothes too.” You teased then suggested the latter as an afterthought.

“What? Why?” The thought of you in his clothes with your small stature and how his hoodies would probably fall about at the same length as the shorts you were wearing now effectively making you look like you were wearing nothing underneath them was a particular brand of torture he hadn’t even imagined when he had been factoring in things that would complicate your friendship.

“Wouldn’t it be odd for a girlfriend to not at least have one piece of her boyfriend’s clothes?” You asked.

“Fine but I’ll pick it.” He said.

“Deal.” You agreed.

“Y/n are you sure you still want to-” The timer beeped and interrupted what he was going to say. You pulled the shower hose down and sat on the edge of the tub switching the water to the hose rather than the faucet and gesturing with your free hand for JB to lean back across your lap from his seat on the lid of the toilet his hair dangled down now a whitish shade of yellow. You were right to buy the toner because you were going to need to take the yellow out after you dried it so that his hair wouldn’t turn green. Not that you really thought he’d mind, but he’d wanted blue and you weren’t going to be the one to ruin it.

A few more hours passed and his hair was finally a dark blue with his black brown roots poking out of the top. It looked good on him and you smiled and nodded your approval after drying his hair a final time.

“Thanks, y/n. I owe you one.”

“No you don’t this is the least I can do for you helping me with the whole Jin and Hyeji situation.”

“That’s another thing we need to talk about. What are we going to do Monday. Jin is going to see us there.”

“I’m going to avoid him like I’ve been doing I guess.”

“That’s not going to work forever, y/n.”

“Then what do you think I should do?”

“I think if he bothers you, then you should stay by my side. We don’t have to talk to him, but if you stay by me maybe he will probably get the point and at least you will know you have someone there for you.”

“And if that doesn’t work? What if the two of us get in an argument or you two get in a fight?”

“If he and I get in a fight I can handle it, but if you two argue then when it’s over the two of us will get back together and have a good day and you will act like nothing happened. It will be hard, but he deserves to see you happy without him and so do you if we’re being honest. If at any point you are sad, call my name, do you think you can do that? ”

“We’re not being honest JB, that’s the whole point of this, but I can try anyway.”

“Just trust me. We can make this work, Y/n I know it.”

“Okay… well I guess since we’re done with your hair I’ll get going. I need to clean the extra dye off of me anyway.”

***Present***

“So you’re telling me that you spent the entire day in his apartment and nothing happened?” Jasmine had been pestering you since the two of you got back from lunch with the others.

“Pretty much,” you replied. You walked over to the different bolts of fabric selected a few and nodded when you were satisfied with the combinations cutting small sample squares from each of them and safety pinning them to the respective designs that they were going to be used for in the look book you had planned for the company’s next runway production. A few of them had more than one layer and you were already discussing with the people who usually did the sewing how you wanted them to work when she caught back up to you.

“You and I have really got to have a chat about seizing opportunities, y/n. You were in his bedroom, for crying out loud. In his shower,” She scolded and you laughed.

“Okay, first off, I wasn’t in his shower. Second, what was I supposed to do just finish dying his hair and have my way with him right there until we were both covered in blue hair dye?” You asked.

“Yes. Yes you were.” She said matter of fact tone and a serious look on her face.

“That is a quality man downstairs and you should take advantage of every inch of him from head to toe.” You laughed again this time for a good solid few minutes and even snorted a few times from how hard you were laughing. She began laughing too and that’s how you knew this entire exchange was just her way of trying to cheer you up. Jasmine was almost as energetic and twice as eccentric as Jackson was and you were grateful to have her as a friend but she definitely had her priorities skewed sometimes.

“It was only our first real date.”

“No it wasn’t. You had a date Friday.”

“That doesn’t count. You guys set us up.”

“Okay yes we did, but it should still count anyway.” She argued and before you could protest the point further your phone chimed.

“Is that him?” She asked trying to peek over your shoulder, but you hid the phone away and made some distance between the two of you.

#jb got7 #im jaebeom x reader #games we shouldn't play

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copias-thrall · 4 years

Text

DIY

(Part: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8)

It’s been a trying day. The staffing agency had gotten you another contract, and the firm wanted to meet with you in person for some reason. Usually you’re just traded around with firms already familiar with you, and you can’t recall the last time you needed to be respectable. You tend to dye your hair when your mood changes, so the fading pink had needed to be taken care of.

“What do you care about their opinion?” Mary had said.

“This would be a little more money,” you’d shrugged. “I could get the good coffee and that mochi you like.”

“I can feed myself,” Mary had snapped.

“Then why don’t you?” you’d retorted.

He’d made a sour face at you when you’d said that.

In the end, Mary had suggested going black, and the two of you had had hair-dye day where you’d introduced Mary to the wonder of Vaseline to keep the dye off his skin.

“Look at you, making me all respectable,” he’d quipped as you’d slathered him up.

“Yes, heaven forbid you lose your coveted street cred because your ears and hairline aren’t mottled with black half the time.”

While most of the dye had ended up in your hair, a few errant blotches ended up staining the tiles and shower curtain (and, ok—the hand print on your upper arm when Mary forgot himself). Mary had called you a spoilsport when you’d refused to fuck in the shower (“What? It’s cool with all the black dye running down our bodies. Come on!”). But in the end you were rather happy with how the fresh dye made your pixie bob look sleek and polished.

Mary had scrutinized you in the mirror.

“I don’t like it. Makes you look like you’re trying too hard to be normal.”

You’d made a face at him. “Well, we can’t all work at Mickey’s and dress like Oscar the Grouch kicked us out of bed for eating crackers.”

Mary’d lightly bitten your neck. “I’m taking that as a compliment.” He’d then run his fingers through the shorter hair at the back of your head. “You’d look pretty hot with an undercut.”

“I know,” you’d said as you’d winked at him.

He’d snorted. “Modest too.”

You’d shrugged. “Getting an undercut was one of my many tiny actions of rebellion. As long as I kept my hair down, no one was the wiser.”

“They never caught you?”

You’d sighed. “They did. Bitch of thing too—a picture of the school pep rally in the monthly newsletter for parents happened to catch me in the background.”

“Shit. What happened?”

“After all the screaming about boundaries and disrespect? TThey’d shaved my whole head.”

Mary’d stilled behind you.

“They … what?”

You’d leaned into the mirror, primping your hair unnecessarily.

“Buzzed all my hair off. Said I should never do things by half measures.”

Mary’d given you a look in the mirror, so you’d just smiled brightly at him.

“It’s just hair, Mary. Beside, all my schoolmates thought I was edgy as fuck.”

He’d turned you to face him.

“I really fucking hate your parents.”

You’d just patted him on the cheek. “Why waste the energy.”

“It’s just …” he’d leaned against the washer/drier as you began to clean up. “I had to be like, 15? And I came home from a friend’s house with badly bleached hair and a safety pin through my navel. My mum was in the kitchen, and I told her I wanted to be called Viscount Doom from now on. You know what she said?”

(It was a rhetorical question.)

“She said, ‘That’s nice, dear—now take out the trash’.” He’d chuckled. “I was always her son first, you know?”

You’d slid a hand under his shirt to stick your thumb in his unadorned belly button.

“Did she make you take the safety pin out.”

Mary’d grinned at you. “Ah, well. The fucker got infected. Angry red blotches with pus and shit. I had to come clean to mum, and she bundled me off to urgent care. Whoops.”

You’d traced your thumb along his belly button, feeling now the obvious bump of scar tissue.

“So you were always fucking crusty.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he’d said as he’d crowded into you and dragged your hand down to his crotch.

The actual "chat” (they’d purposefully pussyfooted around calling it an interview) had gone fine; a girl about your age—probably an intern—had read a bunch of inane questions off a piece of paper in a monotone before a harried-looking woman came in and asked you questions surely your resume could have answered.

The firm itself, however, was a 30min walk from the bus, and about 90 more minutes including a bus transfer away from your apartment. You’d gotten up at 5am so you could leave by 6 so you weren’t late for your 9am appointment (“Jesus. Who schedules interviews for the crack of dawn?” “Sadists, that’s who.”). So, of course, you’d gotten there an hour early and—with no coffee shop in sight—you’d sat on a concrete wall across the street that bordered a parking lot.

Like a creep.

You’d then been asked to wait for another hour because “an earlier meeting was running late.” The receptionist had at least taken pity on you and brought you a steaming cup of Dunks and a chocolate doughnut.

It was noon by the time you made it out of there—which meant that there was no way you were making the 12:25pm bus. Which meant you didn’t make the 1:33pm transfer, and you had to cool your jets in a fast casual restaurant for 45min. The next bus had never shown. When you finally made it onto the transfer bus, you’d dozed off and had woken up several stops past your destination; you’d opted to just walk back to your apartment instead of waiting the questionable amount of time for the next bus in the opposite direction.

By the time you finally get back to your place, you’re limping from the blisters your cheap dress shoes had given you, and it’s nearly 4pm. When you enter your apartment, you’re surprised to see Mary on your couch, guitar in hand and scribbling down notes. At the clink of you dropping your keys into the skull ashtray that had just appeared one day, he looks up.

“What are you doing here?” you ask, sounding much more harsh than you intended as you kick off your shoes.

“Well, hello to you too. I couldn’t hear myself think at my place.” He gives you a minute shrug.

You don’t know why this irritates you.

“Well maybe think about giving me the same courtesy,” you snap as you limp toward your bedroom. “I need to lie down.”

You don’t even get changed, just untuck your pussy-bow blouse and unzip your pencil skirt before flopping down onto your bed.

“Interview not go well?” asks Mary’s from your doorframe

You wave your hand. “The interview was fine, but it was a fucking trial and a half getting there and back. Thank god I won’t be onsite.”

“Yeah. I was kind of wondering where you were.”

You just snort and start to wrestle off your nude hose, but then Mary’s kneeling there and rolling them down you. You hiss when he gets to your feet.

“Fuck, your feet are wrecked.”

“Remind me to bring flip flops or something next time.”

“K.”

He tosses your pantyhose at your laundry basket (they only half make it in), then he leans down to kiss the instep on each foot.

“Do you want me to eat you out?” he asks as his hands travel up the inside of your legs.

You lean up to look at him. “Yeah, actually. Would you?”

Mary grins at you. “Ok, baby doll.”

You lie back down as Mary begins to kiss and nip up your legs. You help him to get your panties off and to push up your skirt—then he’s diving into your folds, his tongue enthusiastically lapping at your clit. Unfortunately, you’re just too exhausted to really get into it, and Mary notices your lack of engagement. His head pops up.

“Fingers?”

“Fingers,” you agree.

He wipes off his chin with the back of his hand before climbing onto your bed. You shimmy out of your skirt before he’s rolling you onto your side. He positions himself behind you, his hand sliding down your stomach until it reaches your lips. You arch back into him at the feeling of his finger slip sliding across your sensitive clit.

“Oh yeah, Mare …”

He doesn’t tease you, just keeps up a steady motion, changing it up to avoid touch numbness. Despite your lethargy, you pant and squirm against him as your blood pools and your orgasm slowly builds. He’s been giving your neck little nips and sucks, but as you get close to blowing, Mary leans over to engage you in a wet, sloppy kiss. It ratchets your arousal, and you suck his tongue into your mouth, saliva leaking out the other side, as you begin to press back against his hand. He quickens his finger, and you cry out at the burst of pleasure. Your orgasm swells and breaks soon after, and you moan and thrash a little as Mary works you through the waves.

When you sag, sated, he gives your ear a lick, then removes his hand.

“Mmm,” is all you manage as you roll onto your stomach.

“Yeah, I know. C’mon, let’s get you out of that top.”

“No,” you say into the bed.

“Yes,” he says as he starts to tug up the hem. “You’ll thank me later.”

You just grunt at him.

He manages to get the material up to your armpits before you’re obliged to move by lifting your arms—and even then all you do is hold out your arms.

“You’re a pain in my fucking ass.”

“Mmphb.”

Through minimal effort on your part, Mary finally removes both your top and your bra before rolling you this way and that to get you under the covers. You’re asleep before he even leaves the room.

You sleep, nude, sprawled out and face mashed into your pillow. It isn’t until much later when you wake. It’s almost certainly because Mary is on all fours over you, mashing his face into your neck. You must move in some tiny way, because he stills.

“Mare,” you mumble groggily into the pillow.

“Shh,” he breaths. “Don’t. Just …” His mouth moves to your ear. “Can I?” he whispers. “I was so good earlier.”

“Mhm,” you agree sleepily.

“Stay still then,” he growls as he shifts about. “Don’t. Move.”

You feel the head of his cock enter you, and you clench and moan. Mary’s other hand is quick on your head, smashing your face further into the pillow.

“Shut up,” he hisses, then his hand is gone.

He takes the tip out, then slides it back in.

Then out.

Then in.

He teases himself like that a few more times—making pleased rumbles—before finally sliding all the way home. You bite the pillow in an effort not to twitch or make noise. The bed jostles when his balled hands land on either side of you, supporting himself up. He takes a handful of slow, smooth pumps in and out of you, making little Mmm noises. It’s a nice feeling that you relax into—silently.

He speeds up a little … and then a lot … until he’s pounding into you with such force that there's an audible slap! slap! slap! as he makes contact with your skin and your one arm is jostled slightly off the bed. Mary moans, and changes up to long, hard strokes that hit your sweet spot deliciously; you know your breaths are labored at the strain of staying motionless and quiet, but luckily, any sound you’re making is being drowned out by Mary’s grunts every time the bowl of his pelvis smacks into the meat of your ass.

You’re pretty slick from your arousal, and Mary easily pumps in and out of you. You can feel your heartbeat in your pussy—and your frustration with not being able to touch yourself increases. Mary suddenly grabs the fat on your back hard enough you almost cry out. He lowers himself down onto his forearms and starts to fuck into you with quicker, deeper thrusts that are no longer quite hitting your G-spot—much to your chagrin. He’s not quite laying on your back, but he’s close enough that you can hear the rasping air through his nose and the Uhn noises he’s making—his breath hot and moist on the nape of your neck.

You expect him to finish like that, so you’re surprised when he heaves himself up to a kneeling position. His hands grip your hips hard, and then he’s yanking you back onto his dick as he buries himself deep into you.

And again.

When he accidentally hits your cervix, you do let out a little mewl, but he doesn’t seem to notice—cock still deep in you and his hands still clamped on your sides. After a moment, you finally feel the tension drain out of him, and he releases his grip, flopping down on the bed beside you. Sluggishly you begin to move your limbs, but Mary gathers you up to him with a soft C’mere. He presses his sweat-cool body against your back and kisses your neck once before he’s maneuvering your vibrator (oh, hello) between your legs.

You reach your hand down to help position it to your liking, mashing into it once … twice … thrice, and then you’re moaning and twitching—the nails of your free hand digging into Mary’s thigh—before the intensity has you finally shying away from the toy lest you make a mess.

Mary clicks the vibe off before letting it go, and you twist around until you’re facing him. You grip his hair in your hands and kiss him deeply, smashing your slickness into him as your cunt still gives an errant spasm or two. He grabs your ass and pulls you into him.

“Yeah, mash that wet pussy into me—I want to smell you on me all night.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“You fucking love it.”

“I should pee on you.”

“Do you think I’ve never been pe—”

You shove a pillow in his face. “OH MY GOD—do not finish that sentence.”

His hand shoots out and presses on your bladder. You shriek and push him away from you, and he subsequently falls off the bed with an undignified noise. He looks up at you like a disgruntled cat, so you just cackle and sprint out of the bedroom. You can hear him start after you, but he’s not quick enough, and you manage to lock the bathroom door behind you before he can catch you.

You’re too tired to cook, and you’re wondering if you can count on getting that contract enough to order takeout when Mary surprises you; he takes out a beat up looking Tupperware from your fridge. Something reddish-brown sloshes in it.

“It’s my kitchen-sink goulash.” He beams.

You put a smile on your face.

“Aww, Mare. What’s … in it?” you ask as you squint at the contents.

He pokes you in the ribs.

“Just fucking try it.”

You reheat it in a big pot, and it looks edible enough—elbow macaronis, ground meat, tomato sauce, green … things. Once you’re settled at your rusty cafe table with the hot food, you dig in and you have to admit that it’s actually not bad. Mary has a smug look on his face as you tuck in.

“Shut up,” you say.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your thoughts are loud.”

He just giggles at you.

“So what is in it?”

“Uh,” says Mary as he chews. “Frozen hamburger patties, spaghetti sauce, noodles, and some okra from the Latin grocer near me.”

You make a thoughtful noise.

“I wouldn’t have guessed okra. I knew it wasn’t green beans, but.”

“I swear that store is the only reason none of us have scurvy.”

Afterwards he packs up his guitar.

“I gotta be getting back to my place.” He licks your nose, and you sputter. He grins. “But thanks for the sex.”

“Yeah, well …” you say as you rub at your nose, “thanks for the Goulash.”

He looks at you for a moment before slipping a hand into your robe to rest on a love handle.

“I didn’t come by just to hear myself think, you know.”

You roll your eyes, but step into his space.

“I kinda got that, Mare.”

You tap your lips, and he leans down to kiss you.

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#mary goore #ofc #feral cats fic #gutter punk #gritty girls #my writing #original post

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thiswanderinghope · 4 years

Text

Snapshots of a Summertime Sadness || Taylor & Hope

@taylorvoxx

It wasn't said aloud, but it was heavily implied that Hopes new foster sibling was less than fond of the idea of taking Hope with her to the carnival that had rolled into town. In circumstances like these Hope usually tried her best to keep the peace with the family she was staying with, she would usually claim to not want to go, or to feel sick just to lessen the stress on her new foster family. But on this instance she'd already been with them a week and she knew the strain was already there. The family was struggling with new broken appliances already and Hope knew this was only the beginning. So to get out of the house was for the best. Take herself and her bad luck elsewhere. Not only that, but she wanted to go to the carnival. Even if this feeling was an afterthought. It wasn't long before her foster sister got a text and was more than ready to ditch her. And ditch her she did. A little bit of money was stuffed into her hand to amuse herself and not snitch to their guardians before Tori was off between attractions and into the arms of her new boyfriend. Hope left in her wake, upset for herself but not able to hold onto that feeling as nausea from someone getting off a nearby ride overtook her. Curling up to let the feeling pass she didn't realize she'd stopped dead in front of another person. Potentially toppling them over.

Taylor relished in her Dad’s trust in her, and his trust that this small town was safe. It meant she was granted with freedoms a lot of kids her age wouldn’t dream of. She had a couple friends that still had babysitters at age 15, or at least always had to go somewhere with another friend, but here Taylor was, off on her own to the annual town carnival, driving a truck she technically wasn’t licensed to drive to get there. She liked being off on her own. It meant she wasn’t being forced out onto the boat with her Dad at least. Or getting educated about the fishing business like that was all that ever passed through the man’s mind. Even surrounded by people, she could be at peace being alone among others. If it just meant getting away. Munching on her corn dog slathered in mustard, Taylor wasn’t watching where she was going, and a mistimed step sent her right into the back of someone in front of her. She was able to keep her balance though, and at the cost of her corn dog hitting the hay-strewn ground, she reached out to catch the girl she’d ran into as well. “Shit! I’m sorry. You okay?”

Hope stumbled when a body collided with hers, arms flying out to catch herself if she fell. Luckily for her the person who'd bumped into her had caught her and they both steadied each other. The first thing Hope noticed with the corn on the ground and she almost reached for it before thinking better of it. Whoever it was would definitely not be eating any more of that off the ground. Especially with all that straw sticking to the sauce. "I'm sorry!" Hope says turning around to apologise properly. "Felt sick for a second, didn't think stopping would be so wasteful!" She looks down at the corn and then back up to the person she'd denied food. "I can get you another?" She tries a smile.

When the girl turned around to apologize, any ill will Taylor might have had for the accident drained from her body. She looked uncomfortable and she was being so polite and kind anyway. Taylor took her hands off the girl once she was steady, glancing at the corn dog but mostly focusing on the girl’s smile. “What? Oh, no, don’t worry about it. It was like my third one today I probably didn’t need it,” she joked, shrugging her shoulders, the flannel shirt she wore over a tee-shirt blowing back in the light breeze, her ponytail joining suit. “I hope you’re feeling better?” Taylor asked. “Was it something you ate? Or you think you need to eat something?” Her instincts took over. She’d always been a nurturing person, even to strangers. “I’m Taylor, by the way. You here with anybody?” She didn’t know why that suddenly felt like such a weighted question.

Hope wasn't one to argue, so she simply smiled a little bigger at the other in thanks for being understanding. She really had to get better at crowds, she'd forgotten that out and about could be just as overwhelming as home with the stress that something else might go wrong. "Still a shame, I really am sorry." Hope intoned still. Given that the boy with the nausea had moved well out of her way Hope had no trouble perking up trying to show the other that she was perfectly fine, nothing to worry about. "Oh, yes. I feel much better I just needed to stop moving for a minute I think." she fibbed easily. "I'm Hope. I was here with someone but-" she laughed then, trying to show that it was okay. "She ditched me for her boyfriend. It's okay though, we don't know each other all that well so I understand. I'm not holding you up from going somewhere am I?"

“Hope. That’s cute,” Taylor commented with a smile. “Most people around here have those God fearin’ Christian names,” she added, emphasizing with an exaggerated southern accent, before ditching it just as quickly. “I know like five Marys and four Matthews and that’s just in my class.” She smiled again, suddenly feeling awkward about what she’d just said. “But I like Hope.” She cleared her throat then, kicking at the ground with her boot. “Uh, no! I was just walking around checking out what all they got this year. Ferris wheel is new. Didn’t have the budget for it til now I think. Had a bad bout of fishing last year and that’s basically what runs the town. Live for die by the ocean currents, ya know?” Was she rambling? She felt like she was rambling. “You want some company?” Taylor asked. She’d come out here to be alone but the question had slipped out before she could stop herself.

Hope wasn't from anywhere near here. But she'd bounced around so many of the available foster homes that the closest open spot had been out of state. So it was funny to hear a local perspective, in a just as fun put on accent. Hope laughed a little and beamed. "Well I'm not really from Rhode Island so maybe that's why I'm not another Mary." Taylor was rambling a little, and definitely about a topic Hope knew absolutely nothing about as well. Small town like this she might pick up a few things about the ins and outs, but it was unlikely she'd be here that long. All she could do was smile vaguely at Taylor and nod when she felt it was the right moment. "I'd love some!" Hope answered as soon as the words left Taylors lips. This was a person she had a shot with, someone who didn't know her from before, didn't live with her, and was maybe a little closer in age than her foster sister Tori. "I mean if you don't mind? I just really like having people around." Taylors presence was calming, Hope herself not yet sure why, but would later reflect that maybe it was the dulled emotions, and her open attitude.

One month later

She bounced into the bathroom and hopped up on the counter with an excited grin. Taylor had agreed to help her bleach her hair and she couldn't have been more excited. They'd bought dye, they had toner and she was more than ready to get this show on the road. Hope didn't quite know what her foster parents would think, but she wasn't really worrying about that, she was far more concerned at the time with Taylor walking into the room as well. "Do you think it'll be okay? I mean even if it turns straw yellow that's okay right? Schools not in for ages yet, so it'll have time to not be so mad."

Ever since that night at the carnival, Taylor and Hope had been inseparable. They'd had an instant connection. Two loners out looking for someone to understand and support them. Lift them up. It was a no brainer. Taylor loved spending time with Hope, and she'd stayed at Taylor's house already that summer more often than she was with her foster family. Taylor didn't mind. She felt like she'd never get tired of the girl. And Taylor's Dad was out fishing more often than not, so the girls had the house to themselves. Domestic bliss in their early teens. It was...really nice. That Saturday evening, Hope had commented on Taylor's currently bright blue hair (she was constantly dying it different colors), saying she wanted a cool color too. And now here they were in the bathroom, Hope up on the counter and Taylor's hands shaking as she approached, not really sure why. "It'll be fine, don't worry. I'm an expert, remember?" she joked, mixing the bleach powder up with the developer in a small bowl. She looked up and flashed Hope a crooked smile. "If it's straw yellow we'll just add a little color to it and say we wanted pastel all along. Easy peasy."

Hope kicked her feet with nervous energy, but there was no going back now. She'd spent what little allowance she had from a previous foster home on the developer and she definitely wanted to see what she'd look like with anything other than black hair for once. Feeling a tingle down her spine Hope tenses and her eyes catch sight of the shower curtain fluttering slightly. Her chill was back, goosebumps erupting on her arms as Taylor mixed dye. Hopes eyes followed the movement of the curtain and then hopped down off the counter to put herself between the chill and Taylor. Hoping to deflect any intent it had. Smiling like nothing was wrong as the light flickered a little. "My shirt is white, that'll be fine right? We won't have to throw it away or anything?" she said casually.

It was cute how nervous Hope was, kicking her feet as she sat on the counter. The medicine cabinet behind Hope was open, hiding the mirror because, well, Taylor didn't like to look at herself. And by herself, she meant the weird monster she always saw in her reflection. She was used to it by now, but avoided it when she could. Taylor felt a chill in the air as Hope hopped down off the counter, but just chalked it up to the nervous energy in the room. "Oh, uh, I have a couple towels I used specifically when I'm dying my hair, but you might want to take your shirt off just in case." The moment she said it, Taylor felt a lump form in her throat, and she did her best to swallow it down. "It's, uh, all mixed up! Come sit down when you're ready," Taylor said, clearing her throat and gesturing to the folding chair she'd brought into the bathroom, a towel already thrown over the back of it. She set the bowl of dye down and pulled on some gloves, biting her lip to stamp down her nervous energy.

The suggestion didn't strike Hope as anything to be worried over. She was more focused on what her foster family would think if she had ruined a shirt doing something that she already likely wasn't allowed to be doing. This family were stricter than most, but not about anything Hope felt was important. She had been spending so much time just out of sight and out of mind, staying at Taylors house when her dad was gone. But she was confident that a ruined shirt would go down like a ton of bricks. The chill rose up her back and then it was gone. The light stopped flickering and Hope instantly set about continuing on as if nothing happened. She pulled her t-shirt over her head and sat down in the chair quickly. Hope drew her knees up and she crossed them where she was seated in the dining chair. "When did you dye your hair the first time? What colour did you go?"

Taylor felt a very soft gasp escape her as Hope removed her shirt. It wasn't like they hadn't seen each other change in all the time they'd spent together. She'd even seen this bra before, the one with the red stars on it. They were girls, after all. Nothing weird about changing in front of each other, right? But something about this situation just struck a chord. A beautiful one, allowed to ring out and echo around the small tiled room. As Hope sat down, Taylor picked up the towel and draped it over Hope's shoulders. It was an ugly shade of brown and spotted with orange bleach stains and lots of splatters of color. Like a tapestry telling a story of Taylor's rebellion and insecurity. She picked up the bowl and the brush and started at Hope's roots, slathering the bleach on as she spoke. "Two years ago, when I was thirteen. It was my birthday and my Dad was feeling guilty because he had to go out on the water, so he told me I could 'break one rule' and I chose to dye my hair purple." She shrugged as she continued to work. "I was getting teased a lot then. Shitty friends from elementary school decided to turn on me for no reason. It felt like a shield. Like a helmet to keep all the negativity away." She bit her lip, chuckling awkwardly. "It's...stupid. I know."

Her knees bounced as they talked, her eyes on the bottles in the medicine cabinet just for something to look at while Taylor set about putting the bleach on her hair. Hope bit her lip when the first brush stroke cemented what was to be done and then relaxed back into the chair after that. It was too late to go back now. A whole head of blonde would surely be better than a panicked one singular stripe of orange if she were ti back down now. "It's not dumb I like it. I think coloured hair is so cool, I've just never had the opportunity to do it before. Never stayed anywhere with friends who had hair coloured like yours." she admitted. Though it was no secret that Hope had bounced around, her non accent and obvious lack of personal belongings showed that just fine on it's own. "School is really terrible for mean people." Hope then adds. "I've been to loads of schools, and there are always people who just complain and moan." She might be a bit of a gossip herself, but she tried not to be malicious with it. She just liked to know things mainly. To know things was a nice safe way to be. She lived her life in an avalanche of uncertainty after all. "Well I'm 13 now, so it's my turn." Hope beamed at the wall, not moving her head so that she didn't bother Taylor who was busy.

Taylor instantly felt bad complaining. Hope had it so much worse than her, and here she was complaining about some mean ex-friends when Hope didn't even have a permanent home. She knew it wasn't a contest on who's life was worse or anything, but still. At least Taylor still had her Dad... "Wait, you're younger than me? I wouldn't have guessed that," Taylor admitted, surprised this hadn't come up until now. "You're so mature." Probably because she had to be. "I...really admire you. Like, a lot. Even with all the bullshit you're still so positive and bubbly and full of like, joy and good vibes and shit. It's fascinating to me." She started working the bleach out into the strands of hair now that she was done with the roots, already seeing it lightening before her eyes. "Your hair is gonna match the ball of pretty sunshine I see you as..." God, that was stupid. "I mean...I don't know what I mean. Ignore me." Why had she said that?

They'd spent the first half of summer together constantly, and yet Hope still felt a small little paranoid pit of dread sink into her stomach when she heard Taylor point out that she was younger with surprise. She felt she knew the other girls so well, and still a little part of her braced for the worst. The speech her foster sister had given not yesterday about not wanting to hang around with 'children' so much younger than herself. What followed was far from her fears however and her face broke out in a smile once again. "I don't know. I do get sad sometimes, but you're so much fun. It's hard to be upset when I'm having such a good time." Hope admitted, taking a moment to shift her head just sightly to the side so that she could look at Taylor out of the corner of her eye. "You think I'm pretty?"

The silence rang in the room like microphone feedback, almost throbbing in her ears as she tried to just focus on getting the rest of Hope's hair covered in bleach and stacked up on her head. When Hope finally did speak, Taylor couldn't help but smile to herself. "It's okay to be sad," she said quickly. "You can be sad around me to, if you need to be." She worked her gloved fingertips into Hope's scalp. There was something weirdly intimate about the whole ordeal now. "But I'm glad you're happy around me. That like, means a lot..." When Hope turned a bit to look at her, Taylor retracted her hands, thinking she might have pulled her hair or done something wrong. But the question Hope asked made Taylor's throat go dry. She'd told lots of people in the past they were pretty. It was like, a thing people did to boost each other's egos, right? Why did this feel so different? "Uh, yeah, I do. You're beautiful, Hope," she practically whispered. "Your bright soul shines in your eyes every time you smile." What the fuck was that? She needed to abort mission and fast. "Oh, your hair is done. We need to let it sit for a bit though.”

Maybe Hope was a little too absorbed in how that made her feel that she missed the expression on Taylors face as she said it. Her heart felt light at the admission. She'd never really gotten a compliment like that before. Usually you'd hear things like that from your family when you were young, with no one to really say as much she was rather taken in that moment with the words. Hope slides to sit sideways on the chair beaming up at Taylor. "You're beautiful too." she responds. "Really cool. You're my favourite thing about this town, about this state actually. I hope I get to stay a long time here with you." she admitted not realizing how upsetting that might sound to the other girl. It implied that she would be going at some point. but to Hope that was just an inevitability. Distracted easily by her hair being done, Hope hops to her feet and swings the mirror of the medicine cabinet around so that she could see, but what she saw behind her caught her attention much more than her hair. Her heart races and she freezes in place. Was this a manifestation of her chill? She didn't know. But that wasn't Taylor behind her, or at least it didn't look like it.

Taylor's stomach knotted up as Hope called her beautiful, and she reached back to rub the back of her neck with a crooked, sheepish smile. "Heh, thanks. Not many interesting things in this town though. I don't have a lot of competition," she joked, trying to defuse the weird tension mounting in the room. She had caught the bit about leaving one day, but was just trying not to think about it. "No, wait--!" But it was too late, Hope had already swung the mirror back and she'd definitely saw Taylor's reflection. Until now, she thought she'd been the only one to see it. Her Dad had never mentioned it, and he'd seen her in the mirror plenty of times. She ducked down, out of sight of the mirror, hitting the floor and falling backwards into the shelf behind her, extra bottles of shampoo and body wash crashing to the floor. "Shit," she spat as the tops flew off a couple of the bottles and they started to leak onto the tile floor.

Hope's mounting fear over this being what had been haunting her since birth fell apart when Taylor reacted like she could see it too, like she knew it was coming. It couldn't be her ghosts, no one ever believe her about her ghosts. But Taylors reaction brought about a new nervousness. She continued staring in the mirror just to make sure the image wasn't lingering with Taylor ducking out of the way, but there was no other way about it. That had been Taylor. A little bubble of fear took hold of Hope but she stayed put. Unsure what to say or do next. Her best friend. The girl dying her hair, letting her sleep over every week. Was there something to fear? She was frozen, battling with herself. Hands gripped to the sink Hope felt herself pale. "What..?"

Hope's reaction had been exactly what Taylor had feared. Well, not exactly. She'd expected a bit more screaming and freaking out. But Hope was frozen in fear, and Taylor didn't know if that was worse. "You saw it too, didn't you?" Taylor pulled herself to her feet, the monster appearing behind Hope again in the reflection. And when Taylor's spoke, its lips moved as well. "This isn't what it looks like. Actually, I don't...I don't know what it is at all," she admitted, moving to sit on the edge of the tub, out of sight of the mirror altogether. "Please don't be scared of me. I'm already scared enough for the two of us," she said, tears threatening her eyes, but she tried her damndest to hold them back. "As long as I can remember, my reflection has been that...thing. That monster. I don't know what it means. What it makes me...especially now that I know it's not just all in my head." She held her head in her hands, covering her face. Right next to her ear, the timer she'd set on her watch started to go off, and it made her jump before she quickly pressed the button to silence it. "You, uh, you need to rinse your hair."

Hope stared into the mirror as 'Taylor' reappeared in it. The second glance wasn't any less terrifying as the first, but at least this time she was expecting it. She stared with wide eyes as it spoke, in exact timing with Taylor and then ducked back out of sight. She didn't understand. She didn't know what to do. But she felt Taylors sadness, it was muffled as per usual, but it was still there. She was incredibly upset. She didn't feel like she was lying, like she had malicious intent. Maybe this was why her usually so clear indications of what someone was feeling was so blissfully dull around the other girl. She was something else entirely. Loosening her hold on the sink she glances over to see just normal Taylor sitting on the edge of the bath. Normal. Regular. With a freaky reflection Taylor. "You don't know why?" she echoed tentatively. Her hair was the last thing she wanted to worry about. "I uh......right." she said unmoving.

"I always thought it was just in my head. Like an imaginary friend that just wouldn't take a hint once I grew up," she said quietly. There was no point in hiding any of it now. "But you can see it, which means it's really. It's out there, in the world, whatever it is. Whatever I am? Fucking hell..." She held her face in her hands again, letting the tears leak out now, wiping them away as quickly as they fell. "No. I just know I'm a fucking freak..."

Their stories were so similar yet so far apart. Both of them had something they couldn't explain, both of them hoping that one day whatever it was would just go away. Both of them still living with it. Both just as terrifying admissions. Hope sees the tears, and feels a fraction of the sorror from the older girl and she was unable to do anything but approach her. Hope moved towards Taylor and reaches out tentatively to admit with a shaking breath of her own. "I'm haunted. I'm not...... completely normal either."

As Hope approached her, Taylor flinched just a little, not really sure what to expect. But a gentle hand rested on her and she quickly and quite greedily took it in her own. She needed the contact. The reassurance she was still touchable. Lovable. Worth having around. "Haunted?" she asked, confused as she looked up at Hope finally. "You mean like, metaphorically with all the shit you've been through or like...legit ghosts?" She tried her best not to sound judgy or anything. Now wasn't the time for her usual sarcasm. Her eyes flicked up to Hope's hair, still piled on top of her head as the bleach was starting to crust. "You really need to rinse that out, dude," she said with a little nervous chuckle.

Hope didn't quite know how to answer so she decided to save her hair before they really got into it. She shook her head a little and gestures for the sink. "Help me wash this out?" it was a tentative ask. Taylor looked like she could break down, she felt like she was on the verge as well. But Hope's confidence in her grew in that moment. She still felt the same, she still felt -even if it was a little blurry- like she wouldn't do her any harm. She was willing to trust her gut as she leaned over the sink and turned on the tap to start washing her long hair out. It felt like such a bad moment to be doing something so trivial but there she was.

Taylor took notice of the lack of answer, but she simply nodded as Hope asked for help, getting to her feet and opening the cabinet again so she wouldn't catch her reflection. She ran her hands through Hope's hair, feeling shivers up her arms as she did so. Being trusted to touch her again, after what she'd just seen, it meant more to Taylor than Hope would ever know. Once it was all rinsed out, Taylor handed her a towel and moved to sit back on the tub out of sight, swinging the mirror back in place for Hope to see herself. "It looks great," Taylor complimented. "Even without the toner."

She didn't even glance at her own reflection for a moment, smoothing her hand over her head and wiped the water out of her eyes to look back at Taylor, as if to make sure she was still the same. Although she was still a pre-teen girl, so she did spare a glance when she was complimented. She'd forgotten she was nervous at all, but she was glad that it did actually look good on her. She'd rather have the toner, but she was relieved to find it worked out well. Hope ignored herself again and wraped her hair up in the towel to dry and bites her lip looking at Taylor again. She opened her mouth to start out by saying that she wasn't crazy, but stopped herself when she remembered what she'd just seen would also constitute as crazy in anyone elses eyes. "I'm haunted...like..........ghost haunted I think."

Taylor had never believed in ghosts. It seemed to far fetched, even with her weird monster friend in the mirror. But something about Hope made her believe, even if only a little. It was hard not to, seeing the distress on her face, feeling it coming off her in waves almost. "I believe you," she said softly, reaching out to take her hands. "That's what friends are for, right?"

Yet another month.

It was coming up for the end of summer when Hope finally found out. She'd had an inkling, but something about Taylor had lead her to dream bigger than her life usually was. She'd been gearing up for a new school, maybe even a school she'd manage to stay in for the whole year. But on a Sunday morning, with no warning from her foster family, her social worker appeared at the door with a sad smile and a soft hand. But this wasn't like the other times she'd been sent away from a family, she'd noticed her ghost activity had really picked up since her and Taylor had dyed her hair but she'd really been hopeful that this time it'd be different for the better, not what she was getting now. Hope started to panic and upset herself, her social worker thought she'd been told a week ago when the arrangements were made, and so as not to stir the pot Hope didn't correct him. Instead she let the tears fill her eyes and wandered upstairs to 'collect her things'. In actuality, Hope swung a leg out the window and was off like a shot towards Taylors house. She frantically knocked and as soon as she saw her friends face she started to speak, making no sense. "PROMISE YOU'LL WRITE TO ME."

Taylor herself had been preparing for the school year. The thought of starting high school was scary, but it was nice to know that she’d have a friend to fall back on in Hope, even if she was at a different school. Friends before now had always been hit or miss with Taylor. She had a couple, but she always felt like an afterthought. Not with Hope though. Hope was always on Taylor’s mind, and she could only imagine Hope felt somewhat the same, especially after what they’d admitted to each other. The knock on the door was so frantic it scared Taylor a little. Per usual, her Dad was on the water, and he’d asked her to come with him but she’d refused. Fishing with him had less and less appeal as she got older. Hoping up from the sofa, she tugged the door open to see Hope peering back at her, eyes wet and voice desperate. “What? What’s the matter?” Taylor asked, confused, as she ushered Hope inside.

Hope rushed in and wrapped her arms around Taylor. Her arms wrapped around the other and she starts to explain. Her voice hurried as if she was being chased and had to get it all out before it was too late. Which was sort of true, back in her foster familys home they'd discovered her missing, they were searching the house. Her social worker very concerned as she'd never done this before. "They're taking me away. The Davidsons didn't say a word but it was all finalised last week that I'm to be going back to Maine to a new family. They didn't even tell me, and I'm supposed to be packing right now but I climbed out the window and I'm going to be in so much trouble but I needed to know if you'd write to me, please say you'll write to me!"

Taylor instinctively wrapped her arms around Hope, holding her tight. Why did this feel like it had such a finality to it. And then Hope spilled the beans and Taylor felt tears springing to her eyes. “You’re leaving?” she asked dumbly, backing up to get a good look at Hope’s face. She wished it was some sick joke, but she could feel in her bones it was true. “Of course I’ll write to you!” she assured her, pulling her back into a hug, burying her face in Hope’s shoulder as she sniffles back the sorrow that had pierced through her like an arrow to the heart. “I’ll write so much you’ll get tired of me.” Taylor mentally noted she’d be giving the Davidsons a piece of her mind later, one way or another. But right now her focus was on Hope. “Fuck, I’m gonna miss you. I knew this would happen, but not so damn soon...” and before she could have another thought, before she could even think about hesitating, she pulled back and then leaned in, pressing her lips against Hope’s, doing the only thing that felt natural, because she probably wouldn’t get another chance.

It was a lovely sentiment, and it eased a little of Hopes anxieties about having to move to yet another town, yet another family, yet another school. To know Taylor was going to stay in contact meant everything. Hope clung to the other girl tightly, as they spoke her foster family were already directing her social worker towards Taylors house. She'd been there so often it was unlikely she'd be anywhere else after all. So they didn't have a lot of time. "I'm gonna miss you too." Hope responded, although her teary eyes widened in shock as Taylor presses their lips together. She's flabbergasted when the older girl pulls away. Shocked and unsure how to respond. That had been her first kiss, and amongst all the stress she felt that moment she was dazed and confused. "Wha-?"

Taylor pulled back quickly, her mind finally catching up with her actions and slapping her in the face with them. “I—I’m sorry, I—“ But words were lost in her throat, barely able to squeeze past the lump forming there. “I just, I thought—fuck...” Just then there was a knock at the door, a hard rap that startled the both of them. That sort of angry patience that was somehow scarier than pure anger. The social worker called to Hope through the door, and they knew their time was up.

In that moment Hope didn't have time to process the moment, she only had time to give Taylor another hug. Arms wrapped around the other girl again tightly, no time to address the kiss as she feels the anxious energy of her social worker, probably worried and hoping beyond anything that he'd find Hope there. "Please write me, I'll send the first one i know you're address but I don't know what mine will be." She mumbled into Taylor shoulder. But then she had to go. She turns and opens the door to face the music.

#C: Taylor #~Flashback~#p: Chatzy #bold = taylor

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zcnns · 5 years

Text

starter for celeste @dearceleste

zen wasn’t a very IMPULSIVE person. unless under the influence of something, or anything related to ghosts and aliens, he usually spent more time calculating every action that having much fun at all. he wasn’t sure why he feared existence itself more so than the existence of things that people have argued over for dozens of years, and probably wouldn’t ever come to a solid conclusion over, but he did. the emotional turmoil he was in had him needing celeste’s company over anyone else, and when he let her inside of his apartment, the bleach and hair dye on the counter were a clear indication that he was potentially going THROUGH it. “hey,” he said, flashing her a grin. “uh... i know you’re probably thinking i look like a fucking lunatic right now, and i know dyeing your hair on your own is probably a really fucking stupid idea, but... i don’t know. it might be fun.” he already WASTED the money on it, at least. “what do you think?”

#( zen ft. celeste. )

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imaginethemkmusic · 6 years

Text

Soulmate!Au Woozi

Summary: Where your hair color changes when your soulmate’s hair color changes

as a child you were born with (h/c) hair

and you had pretty much no obvious soulmate sign that you knew of and it was quite discouraging

because wow growing up you just had people getting their soulmate left and right

but WOW

all of a sudden it changed

and you woke up with fucking bleached hair

,,,,like wtf?

did you do this?

you couldn’t remember

omg did you underage drink and do it >_>

is that why u couldn’t remember!

your parents were going to K I L L you

so you (dreadfully) go downstairs and boom

your parents are F L I P P I N G out just like you if not even more,,,, but like,,,

you don’t realize it’s for a different reason lol

so everyone is freaking out because you see each other freaking out and it’s quite funny >U<

so when you guys calm down

you’re like

“,,,,so you’re not mad?”

and they’re confused and then they laugh

they’re like no lmao

so you’re like

???

what?

so you could do whatever you wanted now? wow

N O P E

lol your parents saw that look on your face

so you learn that it’s your soulmate and W O W you F R E A K out

because

F I N A L L Y

????

It took long enough?

and you’re so happy and relieved and you start freaking out again ahahaha

,,,but like for a different reason now!

like a good freaking out

if you don’t know how that feels than oh well I do

it’s the feeling of knowing SVT is having a comeback soon

you know now? yea good

so ofc you tell your friends and they’re super happy for you!

your hair stays bleached and you kind of like it!

you think you look pretty fye

ANYWAY

you realize this is a pretty cool soulmate mark,,,

,,,because you can change hair colors without getting in trouble lmao

also no damage to your hair!

so yay for that

so you’re planning your outfits to go with your bleached hair now to color coordinate

because why not?

but wow

the next morning?

that outfit?

SCREW IT BECAUSE YOU’RE HAIR IS NOW A SOFT PINK

and so you’re super upset because that outfit was lookin hella fresh and you couldn’t wear it now!

because the whole thing would just clash and

So you take more time for another outfit and go to wherever you need to go whether that be school or work

and everyone is super surprised because wow

your hair is now pink!

and then you start to wonder

what if

your soulmate was some type of punk who dyed their hair constantly to weird colors

rip

at least your scalp wasn’t taking the damage

so you live a while with your pink hair and you grow to like this color on yourself too!

but then you wonder

what if your soulmate was doing this so no damage came to your scalp?

how sweet

on the other hand

Woozi was not thinking it was sweet because he didn’t know he had a soulmate still!

and wow what a bummer :/

because he was super stressed as the composer for seventeen

and carats and his members gave him plenty of love but

,,,he wanted his soulmate’s love

:’(

poor jihoon don’t worry you’re talented and I hope you become happy!

I’m also a jihoon stan >_> 4 js man

so he lived regularly

but anyway back to you

the pink was slowly fading out to the bleach blonde again

but wow your soulmate was on top of things because the next day it was a mix of both (MANSAE MANSAE MANSAE YEA)

and you thought wow!

you kind of like this and also,,,

your soulmate’s scalp must be D Y I N G

lmao rip

you hoped he or she didn’t go bald by the time ya’ll met because that would have been bad

so as it started to fade again

they dyed it again!

and you went through a lot of colors lmao

orange

blonde

a purple

a brown at one point

a lime green

yellow

red

and then black

like wow

your soulmate’s scalp must hurt like a bitch

,,,,also why were they dying their hair so much? on the run from the gov’t or something?

it stayed black for a while so you decided you wanted a change

you just didn’t really like black on you because you were used to the wacky coloring now

so you went to the salon and decided

WHY NOT BLUE

yolo

and so you sat in that chair getting your hair bleached today so you could dye it tomorrow!

so when you finished bleaching it,,,

WOOZI F L I P P E D

because WOW

his hair changed colors?

what type of sorcery

and it was while they were eating dinner to so everyone just stopped and stared

and woozi was like

“tf you looking at”

when he realized holy shit

BLEACHED HAIR!?

he finally got it to black too >_>

black hair woozi 2kforever

and then it struck him that it was probably his soulmate sign!

wow

he was so shocked omg

like he dyed his hair so much? and his soulmate knew? but he didn’t? and that was so unfair because he first dyed his hair like 3 YEARS AGO!

and so he was slightly sulky because you didn’t do anything

and that he had taken all this damage

while you got the color for free

and he had to wait all this time

and Jun, Mingyu, Josh, and a lot of the others got their soulmates already!

shamelessly promoting my other aus sorry guys

wow #pettywoozi what a concept

but he was like.... I gotta get it back to black tho >_< for the group and stuff

and he felt a bit bad you had to waste money on the job when he was just going to change it back

but oh well that was what you got for not letting him know about your existence

so he decided to do it tomorrow

and they had a schedule so he just went oh well and kept his hair bleached

and you were on your phone when you saw a random article

and it was like

“Woozi goes back to bleached when he’s finally black haired?”

and you were like oh shit

he’s cute

so you search him up and wow

he had all the same hair colors you had at one point

,,,wait,,,,

OMG

was this cutie your soulmate?

wow

YOU WERE SO LUCKY IF HE WAS WTF

so you decided to keep tabs on this Woozi cough cough potential soulmate cough cough

and it would be easy because it would go to blue tomorrow if he really was your soulmate!

so you’re super excited to dye your hair now

so you’re in the salon the next day

but you’re hella tired because you stayed up late learning about seventeen

mostly woozi tho

so you’re dozing off as the lady does your hair

Woozi comes into the same salon

and he looks at you and he’s like oh shit

ur supper attractive what the heck

but he sits down to get his hair done back to black and when ur done the lady wakes you up

so you can get it to dry

so she dried your hair and boom! what a nice shade of blue

you admire it in the mirror when you hear a confused exclamation

and you glance over

and there’s a barber with their hands up in confusion

,,,,,with a confused woozi right there!

OMG

HE HAD BLUE HAIR

he’s like

“sorry my soulmate must have dyed their hair”

the barber who was with you nudged you and you’re like WHOA

is he really my soulmate?

you lock eyes with him in the mirror

and he has wet blue hair

and you have blue hair

,,,the same shade

he’s shocked and opening and closing his mouth like a fish

so are you tbh

he’s like

“soulmate?”

and you’re like

“I think so!”

so you sit down and wait for his hair job to be finished to be sure but you're H O P I N G it’s him

and lord behold

when he’s done?

your hair is black!

so you guys pay and get out of the salon and just stare at each other lmao

it’s kind of awkward because Woozi’s never dated before

and you’re just kind of struck at how amazing woozi looks in real life and how amazing his personality must be

he talks first and asks if you want to go to the cafe close by

of course you say yes!

so over some coffee you guys bond and you realize wow

this boy is so talented and amazing

and he’s just as amazed by you

ya’lls relationship would be such goals tbh

like he’d get frustrated that you dyed your hair but you would get out of trouble by buttering him up

and whenever he dyed his hair you would be E X C I T E D and hype him up so much

because COMEBACK?

but if it would be too soon you would probably try to fight him because he needs to rest

but you would lose

because then he would butter YOU up

and how could you stay mad? Such a healthy and fun relationship :D

soulmate!woozi everyone!

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adiwriting · 7 years

Text

My North Star

Oliver and Felicity have been best friends since 1st grade. So when Felicity is struggling to get over the death of her boyfriend, there’s only one person that can help make things okay again.

This is part two of a three part mini-verse. Part One “My Compass” can be found here. Shout out to @acheaptrickandacheesyoneline for the quick beta! Enjoy!

Boston 2007

Felicity stares at her reflection in the mirror trying to figure out who this girl is staring back at her. She used to think she knew. She’d been so confident about who she was and where she was going in life. Now she looks at the girl in the mirror and barely recognizes her.

How crazy that two whole months can change everything.

She leans in closer and inspects the dark circles under her eyes that appear permanently set in. It’s been two months since Cooper’s arrest. She hasn’t be able to sleep without waking up from nightmares since the day she watched the feds carry him away. She’s barely left her dorm room and even then, she’d only done so to visit Cooper in prison. Then he died.

Two months since Cooper convinced her to try her algorithm out on the Department of Education and every since then her life has been a downward spiral.

She’s not sure who she is anymore, but she’s positive that she doesn’t want to be this girl in the mirror anymore.

She closes her eyes against a fresh wave of emotion and takes a steadying breath. Mind over matter. Mind over matter. If she tells herself that she’s not going to cry today — that she’s not going to have a panic attack — she won’t.

While her world ended two weeks ago when Cooper took his own life, time wasn’t kind enough to stop. The world kept on spinning. Things kept moving without her.

Today is the day she joins the world again. She can’t continue on like this. She can’t keep the rest of the world blocked out forever. She’s spent the past two months in virtual solitude. In a fit of rage, she’d destroyed her laptop and phone and disconnected her internet. She didn’t want to hack anymore. She didn’t want the reminder of Cooper and what he’d lost his life over and she didn’t trust herself not to give into temptation.

Between that and her refusal to open the door for anyone, the only person she’s communicated with is Myron. He’s been forcing food on her everyday in an effort to at least make sure she doesn’t waste away into nothingness.

He’s been worried that she might take Cooper’s lead and end it all.

But as tempting as that offer has been at times, she knows she could never kill herself. She’s too cowardly. Too selfish.

Cooper deserved so much better than the girl he got.

No more.

If she doesn’t start showing up for classes soon, she’s going to have to repeat the entire semester. She’s already missed her midterms and is failing her classes for the first time in her life. But she’s done the math. If she starts going to classes now and aces her finals, she can pull of passing grades in each of her classes.

So that’s the plan. That’s what Cooper would have wanted for her. He hadn’t taken the fall for her to be some depressive MIT washout that never makes anything of herself. She needs to live her life. If not for herself, then for Cooper.

She opens her medicine cabinet, intent on brushing her teeth, only to realize that she’s out of toothpaste. A quick check of her drawers tells her that she’s already gone through all of her backups.

She’s going to have to leave her room to go buy some.

After 8 weeks of being a shut in, she’s going to have to brave the outside world.

“You can do this,” she says to her reflection.

Can you really though? The voice in her head mocks her.

She spends twenty minutes tracking down her purse, which she finally finds buried under old carryout containers. By the time she locates it, she’s tired enough that she nearly crawls back into bed, but forces herself to walk out the door before she loses her nerve. She looks like a walking nightmare, she’s sure, but she can’t be bothered to care. She doesn’t have the energy for things like makeup or washing her hair. It’s taking everything in her just to put one foot in front of the other and keep walking towards the elevator. The temptation to turn around and go back is real.

She manages to make it to Walgreens without a mental breakdown, which she takes as a win. In fact, the fresh air feels good. For the first time in weeks, it doesn’t feel like an elephant is sitting on her chest or like she’s going to crawl out of her skin. If it weren’t for the constant ache where her heart used to be, she would almost say she’s back to normal.

She grabs a cart and starts stocking up on the essentials that she’ll need after 2 months of not shopping. She’s grabbed milk, cereal, tampons, and is on her way to grab toothpaste when she stops at the end of the makeup aisle. She’s not sure what makes her stop, but she stares at the display for new long lasting lipcolor longer than is probably natural.

The models in the picture look so carefree. They are smiling in a way that Felicity’s not sure she’s ever smiled. Has she ever been that happy in her life? She struggles to think.

For so many years she’s felt scarred by tragedy. First with her dad leaving, then growing up under the constant fear of eviction, having to leave Starling to move in with her grandparents, and now Cooper?

Felicity was never meant to be one of those happy people. She’s never been a girl meant for pink lipstick and flirty dresses. That stuff is meant for bubblegum chewing mindless blondes who have nothing to worry about but chipped nail polish. And Felicity? She’s never been at a point in her life where she’s even come close to that kind of peace.

Maybe there were moments. Glimpse of possibilities that things could be different. Fourth of July’s spent in the Glades… Trips to the zoo with a tiny, chatty brunette… Ice skating near the Exchange building… Late night conversations on the phone with her best friend once her grandparents when to sleep…

But they were just moments and they felt like a lifetime ago.

Felicity shakes her head.

She doesn’t want to think about the fact that most of her carefree moments involve Oliver and not the boyfriend she’s been crying over the last several weeks. Her crush on Oliver died back in high school when she came to terms with the fact that she would never be the kind of girl Oliver would ever date.

Oliver dates girls like the ones in the lipstick ad: Gorgeous, tanned, and not a care in the world girls. Felicity is nothing like those girls.

It must be nice, she thinks, staring at them longingly. She used to make fun of girls like that, but now she envies them. They probably don’t have boyfriends who get arrested and confess to crimes on their behalf and end up killing themselves.

Felicity doesn’t think about it, she picks up one of the brightly colored lipsticks and places it in her cart, quickly followed by a less intense eyeliner and mascara. She picks out new makeup brushes and eyeshadow kits. Several brightly colored nailpolishes make their way into her cart as well.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’ll never actually wear anything she’s buying. She can’t pull it off and it’s so opposite of what she usually wears, but still, she feels compelled. Compelled to start over, to become someone new. Somebody she can look in the mirror and be proud of. Somebody deserving of the sacrifice that Cooper made for her.

After she finishes in the makeup aisle, she heads straight for the hair color aisle. Her roots have started to grow out and her purple is washed out and gross. She really needs to color her hair again this weekend if she wants to convince her teachers that she’s no longer a total mess and worth their time. She reaches out for the midnight black that she always buys, and somehow, she ends up picking up a shade of blonde, not unlike her mother’s.

You need to dress how you want others to see you, Felicity, she can hear her mom’s voice in her head. She rolls her eyes and puts the dye back on the shelf before she realizes that it’s not the worst idea in the world. She may be broken beyond repair on the inside — she can’t do anything about that — but she can fix her physical appearance. Maybe if she starts dressing like those happy models in the picture, one day she’ll actually feel like that.

“Fake it til you make it, I guess,” she says, and puts several boxes of blonde dye in her cart. Lord knows how many boxes it’ll take to get her from black to blonde.

She heads towards the cashier and tries not to think about how much money she is spending as she rings everything up. As she swipes her credit card, she realizes there is something else her mom may have been right about: retail therapy.

If she’s going to do this, she’s going to need more than some new hair and makeup. She’s going to need a whole new look. When she leaves Walgreens, she realizes that the temptation to go home and crawl right back into bed is gone. Instead she finds herself walking down the street towards the trendy boutiques near campus.

Go big or go home.

****

It takes several rounds of bleach over two days before Felicity finally arrives at a shade she’s happy with and the change is drastic. For the first time in her life, she actually feels like the daughter of Donna Smoak. She’s blonde. Like, legit blonde.

It’s different. It’s certainly going to take her awhile to get used to it, but she kinda likes it. It feels like a fresh start. A change she’d desperately needed.

Now, she doesn’t have to be the sad girl that got her boyfriend killed. She can just be Felicity. Everyday, normal Felicity. A girl who worries over normal things: like passing her finals, and bills, and whatever else normal girls stress over.

She lets her hair air dry and is pleasantly surprised to see that, while it’s dried curly, it’s not as frizzy as it usually is. It reminds her of one of her favorite pictures of herself: the one of her and Oliver holding sparklers from middle school. That thought makes her smile for the first time in a long time.

She moves to pick up her phone and text Oliver to see if he remembered that night, only to remember that she doesn’t have a phone and she hasn’t spoken to Oliver in months. She tries to remember the last time she’d seen him, and can vaguely recall a lunch during spring semester last year. Things between them have been strange ever since she’d started dating Cooper but Felicity had never taken the time to try and figure out why.

She’d been so caught up in the feeling of being in love for the first time that she’d never really stopped to notice that she’d lost her best friend in the process. She wonders if the giant hole in her heart isn’t only because of Cooper, but also because of Oliver. She misses him. He would have been the first person to drag her out of bed these last few weeks and do whatever it took to get her out of her funk. He would have helped dull the pain for her felt over yet another loss.

Felicity glances over at the clock and sees that it’s 7pm. If she hurries, she can probably catch Oliver before he heads out to the bars for the night. It would be nice to see him again and hang out. If she’s being honest with herself, it would even be nice to go out and hit the town with him. Getting mindlessly drunk sounds promising and besides, didn’t she promise herself that she would start doing normal college things? Getting dressed up and going to bars on a Saturday night is certainly what normal kids her age do.

She breaks out her new makeup and tries to resist the urge to paint her eyeliner on too thick or use her purple lipstick instead of the new pink one that makes her self-conscious. It’ll take awhile to feel truly comfortable with her new look, but she can be objective enough to know she looks halfway decent. And besides, it doesn’t really matter anyways. Oliver won’t care what she looks like and she’s not looking for a boyfriend tonight.

She’s just looking for a night of fun. A reprieve.

She quickly changes into one of her new dresses and grabs her purse, double checking for her ID, money, and keys before heading out the door and towards the bus stop.

As she waits for the bus, she tries to ignore the college boys cat calling her and making her doubt her decision to leave her room. What if she looks ridiculous? What if everyone can see right through her and know that she’s not one of those girls? Can people see how utterly broken she is?

What if Oliver laughs at her?

She’s about to turn around when the bus shows up and the crowd of people push her towards the door, effectively making the decision for her.

She takes a seat and tries to pull her skirt down when she catches a guy leering at her. She wonders how her mom wears dresses like this all of the time with such confidence. Isn’t she constantly worried that she’s flashing somebody? Maybe she’ll just borrow a pair of sweatpants from Oliver when she gets to his place and beg him to stay in with her instead. Maybe this was too big of a step for her first night out, and they really should talk. She needs to apologize for being so distant the past few months.

She gets off of the bus at Oliver’s stop and walks towards his place. She walks up the steps to his door and rings the doorbell. When she doesn’t hear movement for several minutes, she presses the doorbell again, praying that he’s home. She didn’t just trek 30 minutes across the river for nothing. When he still doesn’t answer, she throws her hands up in defeat.

“Of course you’re not home,” she grumbles to herself. “You’re probably already several shots deep and with some leggy supermodel.”

She could call him… That is, if she had thought to buy a new phone yesterday in all of her shopping. She could walk to the wine shop down the street and ask Richard, the manager, to borrow their phone, only she doesn’t know Oliver’s cell number. She still has his old house phone memorized by heart from all of the times they talked well into the night during high school, but she’d never taken the time to memorize his cell number. It’s always just been programmed into her phone as her number two speed dial, second only to her mother.

She sits down on his doorstep and debates what she should do next. She doesn’t really want to go back home. Not when she’s worked up the courage and energy to actually go out. And now that she’s here at Oliver’s place, she realized just how deeply she’s missed talking to Oliver. When he started at Harvard her junior year after being kicked out of Brown, she’d spent nearly every weekend at his place. This place has always felt way more like home than her shitty dorm room ever has. She’s determined to find him.

She wonders if she started walking into the nightclubs in the area, if she would run into Oliver. Then again, she’s pretty sure the kind of clubs that he frequents are exclusive and would never let somebody like her in. New blonde hair and dress or not, she’s still a socially awkward nerd.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but there are easier ways than stalking to get a pair of cuffs...” she hears a familiar voice say.

Felicity rolls her eyes and looks down to where Oliver’s other best friend is walking up the street.

“Hey Tommy,” she says.

“Shit,” Tommy says, doing a double take. “Smoak?”

Felicity blushes as she stands up and pulls her skirt down. “How are you?”

“When did… What the… Wow,” he stumbles over his words.

“Tommy Merlyn speechless. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that,” Felicity says, shuffling back and forth on her feet, trying to figure out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“Well it doesn’t happen often, so congratulations. You look amazing,” he says, stepping up to stand next to her on the stairs. “Are you waiting for Ollie?”

She nods, biting her lip, suddenly feeling awkward. It’s been months since she talked to him and in that time, he hadn’t reached out to her either. Had it been completely stupid of her to show up like this expecting things to go back to normal?

“I thought I might catch him before he headed out, but I guess not,” she says, going for nonchalant, but she’s pretty sure Tommy sees right through her. After all, she had literally been waiting on his doorstep.

“Yeah, he headed to Royale tonight with a bunch of the guys,” he says.

“Right,” she says, as if she’d known that. Which is stupid, because if she had known that, she wouldn’t be sitting on his doorstep like a pathetic loser.

“Has Ollie seen this?” Tommy asks, reaching out to pull on one of her curls.

She shakes her head. “It’s new.”

Tommy’s smile grows and he suddenly has that look in his face that he gets when he’s about to do something that will be epic but also highly illegal.

“Okay, give me a minute to cancel my plans and we’ll head over there together.”

“You don’t have to cancel your plans,” she says, weary of whatever he’s clearly planning. “I think I’m actually going to head back. I’m kind of tired.”

“It’s 9:30,” he says with a laugh and pats her shoulder. “I forgot how cute you are when you’re being a total buzzkill. That dress deserves to go out. We are going to find Ollie. The look on his face when he sees you will be totally worth cancelling on Crystal Harris.”

She opens her mouth to argue with him some more, but he puts a finger to her mouth and shakes his head.

“Nope, no more arguing,” he says. “You’ve been MIA for far too long to be allowed to argue with me.”

She smacks his hand away and crosses her arms, but doesn’t argue any further. She’s known Tommy long enough to know that she won’t win this argument. She doesn’t have the kind of energy it would take to argue with him and if she’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t want to. Not if it means seeing Oliver.

He makes a quick call and within a minute, he’s cancelled his date and is pulling her down the stairs and down the sidewalk.

“For the record, you didn’t have to do that,” Felicity says, pulling her hand out of his grip but continuing to walk at his side.

“Felicity,” he says, giving her a serious look. “Oliver and I talk.”

“Okay,” she says, unsure what he’s getting at.

“So I know that the two of you haven’t talked,” he says. “He hasn’t been at his best recently, so I wouldn’t be doing my friendly duties if I didn’t make sure to deliver him the one person that I know can make him feel better.”

Hearing that Oliver has been going through something and she’s been unavailable makes her feel guilty. Then again, she’s not sure how much help she would have been to him given the emotional state she’s been in recently.

“Was she pretty?” Felicity asks, deciding against pushing Tommy for more information on Oliver. She can ask him herself when she sees him.

“Who?”

“The girl you cancelled on just now.”

Tommy shrugs. “Yeah. She was pretty hot, but it’s cool.”

“Are you going to reschedule with her?”

“Maybe. Who knows,” he says, which sounds completely unlike him. “I’m kind of getting bored of all of it.”

“Of girls?” she asks as they cross the street and Royale comes into view. The line is around the block. There’s no way Felicity ever would have gotten in herself. Thankfully, she knows Tommy Merlyn has never had to wait in line a day in his life.

“Of the whole thing. Dating. Hooking up. It’s just kind of tiring.”

“Are you saying to want to settle down?” she asks.

“You tell anyone that, Smoak and I’ll have to kill you,” he says teasingly as he waves at the bouncer who lets them right in.

The second they step into the door, Felicity knows that she doesn’t belong here. The music is so loud she can’t hear what Tommy is saying to her. The girls are all scantily clad, making the dress she’s in look like a parka. And everyone is grinding on each other in a way that makes her blush.

She’s about to turn around and leave, but Tommy grabs onto her wrist and holds her in place. He leans down to whisper into her ear, “Relax. You’re with friends. Take your nose out of the books tonight and let yourself have fun.”

She nods, knowing that he’s right. This is what she wanted. A normal college experience. This is what college kids did. They went out and had fun with their friends. They drank. She’s sure once she gets some liquor in her she won’t feel so awkward.

“I could use a drink,” she says, turning her head closer to his so that he can hear her.

“Let’s head upstairs. I’m sure Oliver has a table,” he says.

He leads her through the crowd of people until they reach a set of stairs that has a bouncer at it blocking the entrance. As soon as he sees who Tommy is, he moves aside and lets them upstairs.

If she didn’t know firsthand how crippling the expectations are for people like Oliver and Tommy, she would envy how they seemingly walk through life and have everything handed to them. Every door they could ever want to walk through is opened for them. They don’t have to fight tooth and nail for everything they have.

But Felicity has heard enough about Oliver and Tommy’s parents to know that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

“Tommy!” Felicity hears Oliver shout as they reach the top of the stairs.

Oliver doesn’t seem to recognize her at first. Between the dark lighting, her hair, and her outfit, she gets it.

“I thought you were bringing your date out to dinner and then dessert at your place?” Oliver asks, pulling Tommy in for a friendly hug.

“Not my date,” Tommy says with a smirk before squeezing her hand one last time and stepping around Oliver to take a seat at the table.

“Hi, Oliver,” she says, suddenly feeling nervous, which is absurd. They’ve known each other since they were in elementary school. There’s no reason she should feel awkward. Still, his opinion has always mattered more to her than most.

“Felicity?” Oliver says, clearly confused.

She nods, trying to figure out what his reaction is. Does he like it? Does he think she looks like a little girl playing dress up?

He reaches out and pulls her into a tight hug, nuzzling his face into her hair. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Between his familiar voice in her ear and his warm arms around her body, it feels like coming home. He’s always been her protector. The boy who kept her safe from ghosts and protected her from bullies. He’s always been the encouraging voice in her ear, pushing her to do better. Making sure she felt loved and cared for.

It doesn’t make everything go away. A hug from Oliver doesn’t erase the fact that Cooper is gone forever and it’s all her fault. But it’s something. It’s a really important something. It’s healing.

“You’re blonde,” he says, tucking a curl behind her ear and cradling her cheek.

“Yeah,” she says, biting her lip. “Do you like it?”

“I like you no matter what color your hair is,” he says, causing her to roll her eyes. It’s lines like that which had her lovesick all through high school.

“But…”

“But the blonde looks good,” he says. “That dress is another story.”

“You don’t like it?” she asks, reaching down to pull at it again, scared that it’s somehow managed to come up.

“I don’t like that it’s making the guys stare at your ass,” he says, turning to glare at his friends until they finally look away.

“Down boy,” she says, putting her hand against his chest. “I don’t need you playing protector tonight. I’m not here for that.”

She has no interest in hooking up with anyone tonight. She has no interest in hooking up with anyone ever again. Cooper was supposed to be it for her, and now that he’s gone, she can’t imagine opening herself up like that again.

“And what are you here for then?” Oliver asks, a curious smirk on his face.

She’s about to answer him when they are interrupted by a leggy brunette that Felicity recognizes from one of the language classes she’d taken at Harvard last year.

“Ollie! Do a shot with me!” the girl in a skirt even shorter than Felicity’s pulls on Oliver’s arm and tries to get him to come back to the table.

Not only is she pretty, but if she goes to Harvard, she’s clearly smart as well. Just Oliver’s type. She wonders if that means Laurel is out of the picture or if he’s cheating on her again. She wishes the two of them would call it off for good. She likes Laurel and she loves Oliver, but the two of them are toxic together.

Oliver looks at her and it seems like he wants to say more, but doesn’t.

“Come on,” he says to her. “Have a seat. Order your favorite wine. Your drinks are on me tonight.”

“I figured I’d just drink whatever you guys are having,” she says, taking a seat at the table across from Oliver and the girl he’s with. Samatha? Felicity thinks that’s her name.

“Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?” Oliver asks as he pours a shot for them all.

She shrugs, but plays it off. She knows if she tells him that she’s planning on getting drunk as fast as she can, he’ll ask questions, and she’s not really feeling up to answering any of those questions right about now.

They cheer and she downs the shot, coughing as it burns on the way down. She’s never done shots before. It’s not nearly as fun as everyone makes it seem.

“What is that?” she asks.

“That, my friend, is tequilla,” Oliver says already pouring himself another. “It goes down easier the more you have.”

“Ollie, come dance with me,” Samantha says to him.

Oliver rolls his eyes, but allows himself to be pulled out of his chair. Felicity gets it. The girl’s outfit leaves little to the imagination. If she were a guy and had a girl like that hanging on him, she’d probably go with her, too.

“Guys,” Oliver announces to the table. “This one isn’t allowed to have an empty glass tonight,” he says, pointing at her. “Take care of her.”

“Don’t worry, Ollie,” Tommy says with a smirk. “I’ll make sure she’s well taken care of.

“Touch her Merlyn and you’ll lose a finger,” Oliver growls, causing Felicity to roll her eyes.

“It would be so worth it though,” Tommy says with a laugh.

“I’m literally sitting right here,” she says, but both boys ignore her. Oliver heads down the stairs and Tommy slides over into Oliver’s vacated seat.

“Alright, let’s get this party started,” Tommy says, pouring her another shot. “By my estimates, you’re going to need another two of these before you stop pulling at your dress self-consciously and allow yourself to enjoy the night. So drink up, Smoak.”

She remembers taking shots with Tommy.

She’s pretty sure there’s some dancing involved. Both with Tommy and with Oliver.

At one point they were walking down the street in search of tacos.

She thinks she may have kissed Oliver, but she really can’t be sure.

And there’s definitely crying at some point. She remembers crying in a bathroom to Oliver’s… whatever Samatha is to him.

That’s it. That’s all she can remember when she wakes up the next morning next to Oliver in his guest bedroom.

“I feel like I’m dying,” she grumbles as he rolls over onto his stomach, shaking the entire bed in the process and making her nauseous. “If you don’t stop that I will throw up on you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Oliver says with a laugh, shaking the bed again.

“Stop,” she grumbles, pulling the blanket up over her face.

“Well I’ve got two different hangover options for you,” he says. “We can order Mike & Pattys or you can have some hair of the dog that bit you.”

“Ugh, the first. No question,” she groans. “I must have tequilla coming out of my pores I smell like a distillery.”

“That’s probably from all the body shots you did,” he says with a laugh.

“What?” she asks, sitting up in bed suddenly and instantly regretting it.

“Kidding,” he laughs.

“I hate you.”

“I’m about to buy you a breakfast sandwich, so I know you love me,” he says, rolling over to grab his pants from the floor. As he digs around in his pockets, Felicity has a horrible sinking feeling. While she’s still in her dress from the night before, Oliver is only in his boxers.

“Please tell me that we didn’t have sex last night,” she says.

“We didn’t have sex last night,” he says pulling out his phone and laying back in bed.

“Then why aren’t you wearing any clothes?” she asks. “And why are you in my bed?”

“I like that you’re calling it your bed when it’s my house.”

“Has anyone but me ever stayed here?” she asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Occasionally,” he says. “Thea visited once.”

“So back to why you’re almost naked in my bed…”

She feels like they kissed yesterday, but she can’t be sure if it was real or not. Her brain is still pretty foggy.

“Because you begged me to cuddle with you and you’re like a damn furnace,” he says. “And I wasn’t about to sleep in my clothes. They’re disgusting.”

She has a vague recollection of Oliver putting her to bed last night and tucking her in. She remembers being really sad. Had she been crying?

She can picture herself reaching out to him as he went to leave. It wouldn’t surprise her if she’d asked him to stay. She hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since Cooper got arrested. She’d gotten used to sharing a bed with him and the empty spot next to her at night just reminded her that he wasn’t ever coming back.

God. She must have been a mess last night. Which is totally embarrassing. She probably ruined his night.

“What happened to Samantha?” she asks.

With how much Samantha had continued to pull Oliver away from Felicity, she can’t imagine she would have been okay with Oliver cuddling with her last night. Then again, Felicity isn’t even sure if they are dating or if she’s just another thing Oliver’s going to have to apologize to Laurel about later.

“What?” he asks.

“Isn’t that the girl from last night?”

She’s pretty sure Samantha is her name.

“Yeah.”

Oliver’s lack of reaction is puzzling. She knows Oliver well enough to know that he had to have wanted to hook up with the girl last night. Shouldn’t he be more upset?

“You didn’t take her home?”

“I was a little focused on getting you home,” he says.

“Great, so I messed up your’s and Tommy’s nights.”

“It’s fine.”

“You didn’t want to get laid?” She looks at him curiously. “That’s a first.”

Oliver laughs. “I wouldn’t worry about me. I’m okay.”

She watches him another minute, looking for any sign that he’s lying to make her feel better, but when she doesn’t see any, she allows herself to relax and fall back into bed. “Okay.”

“I’m going to order us some food and take a shower. You good?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Once the world stops spinning I’ll attempt a shower as well.”

“All of your stuff is still in the guest bathroom,” he says. “I think you’ve still got some clothes in the closet here, too.”

“Thanks,” she says and watches as Oliver leaves the room.

She lays back in bed and her eyes fill with tears unexpectedly as she thinks of Cooper. He’s always her first thought when she wakes up and her last thought before going to sleep. This morning had been the first morning she woke up and didn’t immediately think of him. While it makes her feel incredibly guilty and selfish, it had been nice.

It’d been refreshing to wake up and not instantly feel like she didn’t deserve to be alive.

****

A few hours later, showered, fed, and feeling much better, Felicity lays on the couch with her head in Oliver’s lap. He’s watching college football on the TV while she watches old episodes of Buffy on his laptop. He’s running his hands through her hair in the most soothing way and she’s contemplating the merits of a nice long nap before she heads back to her place.

She doesn’t want to leave. She’s been putting it off all day. Oliver’s home is warm, welcoming, and safe. It doesn’t have memories of Cooper around every corner here to push her back underwater anytime she makes it to the surface.

“I have class tomorrow,” she says, mostly as a way to motivate herself to get up the energy to leave. She probably should be studying and trying to get caught up before her first class back.

Oliver says something but she doesn’t catch it.

“What?” she asks.

He reaches down and pulls the headphones off of her head.

“I said skip class and stay here.”

“As incredibly tempting as that offer is, I can’t skip class tomorrow. I’ve already missed too many classes this semester,” she says. “Besides, don’t you have class tomorrow?”

“No,” he says.

“I thought you had classes on Mondays?” she asks, searching her memory for his class schedule. She’s pretty sure he’s always had classes on Mondays.

“I, uh, don’t really have classes on any days anymore,” he says, scratching the back of his neck.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, sitting up to look at him properly.

“I got kicked out last week,” he says.

Her heart drops to her toes and she instantly feels like the walls are caving in.

“What?”

“I am no longer a Harvard student,” he says. “I guess excessive not showing up and failing grades mixed with getting caught with some drugs was enough for them to kick me out.”

She puts her head in her hands and tries not to panic. She only just got him back. Spending the day with Oliver here had been helping her feel human again. Why did he have to go and take that away from her? She needs him.

“Hey, hey,” he says softly, pulling her hands away from her face and wiping the tears that had already started to fall. “What’s going on?”

“You’re leaving,” she says. “Why does everyone leave?”

Oliver shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

“Your dad isn’t going to pay for you to live here if you aren’t in school,” she says, trying to keep her voice calm and not hysterical like she’s starting to feel.

She’d been doing so good this weekend. She hadn’t had a panic attack in days.

“Breathe,” he says, putting his hands on either side of her face. “Breathe with me. In… Out… In… Out…”

She does her best to match his breathing, but her heart is racing a mile a minute.

“You are okay. It’s just a panic attack. You need to try your best to breathe normally.”

Felicity shakes her head.

“Felicity. In… Out… In… Out…”

The two of them sit there for several minutes breathing together until eventually her heart rate slows down and she doesn’t feel like she’s suffocating.

“How long has that been happening?” he asks her softly, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her in close.

“Since Cooper got arrested,” she says, her voice weak. Her entire body aches. She feels like she just ran a marathon then got hit by a bus.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have checked in on you more. Why didn’t you call me?”

Felicity shrugs. “I don’t know.”

She takes a minute to think about it and he gives her space to do so.

“I think that telling you would have made it real, and I didn’t want it to be real.”

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I know how much you loved him.”

“I still wake up most mornings expecting him to be there,” she admits. “And when he’s not, it’s like I’m losing him all over again.”

“I know it sucks right now, but it will get easier,” he says.

“What if it doesn’t?” she says, voicing her real fear. “What if this hole in my heart lasts forever and I never get over it? What if I never find someone else?”

“You will,” he says.

“You don’t know that,” she says. “Cooper was special. He understood me. He loved me. I’m not going to find anyone that cares about me again.”

“You will,” he says again. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you will.”

As much as the idea of dying alone terrifies her, the thought of ever having to go through the pain of losing somebody again scares her more.

“Maybe I’m not as ready to rejoin the world as I thought.”

“You can always apply for a medical leave this semester,” he says.

She starts to protest but he holds up his hand to quiet her.

“I know you hold yourself to an insanely high standard, but you need to take care of yourself. There’s nothing wrong with taking some time to process everything that happened and grieve. Give yourself some space. You can return when you’re ready.”

Felicity lets his words sink in. While her initial reaction is no, she knows that he has a point. She’s not okay. Cooper’s death hit her incredibly hard and if her panic attack just now showed her anything, she may be more damaged than a simple makeover can solve.

“What would I even do with time off?” she asks.

“My dad is planning on taking the Gambit out for a few weeks. We could hijack his trip,” he says. “Some time on the open sea could help you clear your head.”

“You want to go on a trip with your dad?” she asks, surprised.

Oliver and his dad don’t have an awful relationship. They get along well enough. However, Oliver’s spent the last several years avoiding spending time with his parents as often as he can because it inevitably always leads to pressure to settle down and do something with his life. The Queens want Oliver to take over the company one day, and while Oliver doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, he knows it’s not run Queen Consolidated.

“It’s a thought,” he says.

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t say anything else. As far as ideas go, it’s not the craziest thing he’s ever suggested, but she’s also not sure if she wants to spend weeks on a boat. That seems like way too much time alone with her crushing thoughts.

But there is one thing Oliver suggested that does hold merit.

She should apply for a medical leave of absence. She’s not ready to return to class and a medical leave of absence would be better than failing every one of her classes.

“Will you come with me tomorrow to talk to student services about a leave?” she asks him.

He looks a little surprised. She’s sure that he thought she would ignore his advice and insist on going to class tomorrow.

“Yeah. Whatever you need. You know that.”

“Thanks,” she says and curls back into his side and rests her head on his shoulder. Her panic attack really took it out of her and a nap is well overdue.

****

Felicity wakes up to the sound of Oliver calling her name. She’s struggling to get her breathing under control as she slowly realizes that it was only a nightmare. She’s not in prison watching Cooper kill himself.

“It’s okay,” Oliver whispers into her hair as he rocks her back and forth. She tries to focus on the steady rise and fall of his chest and match her breathing to his own. She’s alright. She’s safe. She’s with Oliver.

Her nightmares haven’t been getting any better since moving in with Oliver last week, but she’s hoping once she starts therapy tomorrow, that will change. Or, at the very least, they’ll prescribe her something strong enough to knock her out so that she won’t dream about Cooper.

Once her breathing calms down, she lays back in bed and allows Oliver to hold her from behind. Ever since that first night where she couldn’t fall back asleep after a nightmare without Oliver holding her, he stopped waiting for her to ask him to stay.

“I killed him,” she whispers, staring at the wall ahead. She finds it easier to confess these things when she doesn’t have to look at him.

“You did not kill him, Felicity,” he says kindly, just like he’s told her numerous times before.

“He took the fall for me,” she says.

“It was his idea to wipe out those loans. You tried to stop him,” he says.

“It was my virus.” She shakes her head. “He should have told them I wrote it.”

“Then both of you would be in prison and he probably still would have made the same decision,” Oliver says.

“He could have cut a deal.”

“He loved you,” he says. “He wanted to protect you from his own mistake.”

“If he loved me, why did he leave me?”

It’s the question that has been tearing at her from the moment she got the phone call saying Cooper was dead. Why did he have to leave? Why did he give up? Wasn’t she enough to fight for?

“I don’t know.”

“Why does everyone always leave?” she asks.

“You’ve still got me,” he says, placing a kiss to her forehead. “Always. Now try and get some sleep.”

****

Felicity is sitting at the kitchen island, writing in her journal when she hears Oliver’s phone ringing. She does her best to ignore it, not wanting to snoop, and continues to write. Her therapist suggested she start journaling everyday to see if it helped her work through some of her feelings. So far she’s yet to see the benefit to it, but she’s willing to do anything to stop having panic attacks and be capable of going back to school in the spring.

She can hear Oliver arguing with somebody and realizes it’s probably Laurel on the other end. She closes her journal, grabs some snacks and a bottled water, and heads upstairs to her room. She doesn’t want to hear what sounds like is shaping up to be an epic fight. Oliver’s arguments with Laurel are never short.

She makes it to her room and puts a movie in the DVD player before settling in with her snacks for the night. She figures Oliver will come and get her once he’s off the phone and ready to vent.

About halfway through the first Lord of the Rings, Oliver crawls into her bed and steals her trail mix and begins picking out all of the M&Ms.

“If you eat all of those, I’m going to be mad,” she says.

“I’ve earned it,” he says.

“So you guys broke up again?” she asks, unsurprised.

“No,” he says. “I managed to talk her down, but I had to promise her that I would come home next week…”

She can tell by the way he says the last line, that he’s worried about her reaction to the news that he’s leaving. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, focusing on being aware of her body like her therapist has been teaching her.

“So you’re leaving?” she says, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Only for a few days. A week at most,” he says, rolling over onto his stomach to look at her properly.

She opens her eyes at that. A week doesn’t sound so bad. She can handle a week.

“Are you going to be okay here?” he asks. “I can tell her no.”

She’s tempted to ask him to stay. For one, she doesn’t think that he should still be with Laurel. That relationship isn’t good for either of them and their argument tonight proves that. But she also knows that she can’t keep expecting him to drop everything for her. He’s already done so much for her in the last few weeks.

“No, you should go if you want to go,” she says. “If Laurel is who you want to be with, then you should do whatever you need to do to make that work.”

Oliver stares at her for a really long time studying her. He looks like he wants to say something to her, but is holding back. She notices his eyes continuing to drop to her lips, but doesn’t know what to make of that.

“What?” she asks, once the silence grows uncomfortable enough.

“Nothing,” he mumbles. “You’re right. I should make things work with Laurel.”

“Yeah,” she says half heartedly and turns back to the movie.

They both watch together, with Oliver interrupting every few minutes with questions on who different characters were and what was happening. When the movie finishes and the trail mix is all gone, she turns to him.

“So what did you two argue about this time?” she asks.

“Same thing we always argue about,” he says.

And there it is again. That weird look on his face that she doesn’t understand.

“I’m pretty tired, I think I’m just going to head to bed,” he says, rolling out of bed. “You gonna be okay?”

She nods, confused. It’s only 9pm and Oliver never goes to sleep earlier than midnight.

“I’ll probably catch a plane home tomorrow, but we can do breakfast before I leave,” he offers.

“Sounds good,” she says with a smile and watches as he leaves, trying to figure out what exactly is going on with Oliver.

****

Felicity is eating pizza with Tommy, who she’s pretty sure only stopped by at Oliver’s request, when the phone rings.

“It’s Oliver,” she says to Tommy, who tells her to take it.

“Hey! What’s up?” she answers the phone.

“Hey, so I have a plan,” he says, there’s a weird tone to his voice. He sounds frantic. “I’m going to get you a flight out to Starling tonight and the two of us are going to go out on the Gambit with my dad for a few weeks.”

“What?” she asks. “No.”

She’s fairly used to Oliver’s spontaneous adventures by now, but he doesn’t usually sound quite so desperate when he offers to take her around the world.

“Come on,” he says. “You don’t have school. It’ll be fun.”

“I can’t just pick up and leave,” she says. “I have therapy.”

“It’ll be waiting for you when we get back.”

Tommy’s looking at her expectantly. She shakes her head and stands up from the table, moving into the living room in order to have some privacy.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Laurel asked me to move in with her,” he says. “And I said yes.”

Felicity feels her heart drop to her feet at the news.

“Oh,” is all she can make herself say.

“She’s already talking about condos,” Oliver says, and he sounds like a caged animal. She wishes she could see his face. It would be so much easier to calm him down if she were there with him.

“Isn’t that a little fast?” she asks, causing Oliver to laugh.

“Apparently of all of our friends, we’ve been together the longest,” he says, clearly just repeating whatever argument Laurel had made for him. “I don’t know. I guess it makes sense, right? There’s not any reason for me to say no?”

Felicity can think of about a hundred reasons to say no, but she doesn’t think it’s her place to say anything bad about Laurel. The few times she’s mentioned how toxic they are, Oliver hadn’t taken it well.

“It’s you’re decision,” she says.

“Felicity,” he whispers, like he’s pleading with her to understand something.

“What?”

“I need you to tell me if there is any reason why I should say no to her,” he says.

Something clicks in her mind, and she’s pretty sure that she knows what Oliver is asking her, but it doesn’t make sense. They are best friends. They’ve never been more. It’s always been Laurel and Oliver. And even if he did feel that way about her, she’s still picking up the pieces of her heart from Cooper. She’s not sure if she’ll ever feel ready to be in a relationship again.

“What are you asking?” she asks quietly, needing to be sure that she’s not reading into this wrong.

“I’m asking you to come on the Gambit with me,” he says, his voice shaky and clearly nervous. “I know that moving in with Laurel is what I’m expected to do, but Felicity... please.”

Felicity can’t believe this is happening. It’s everything that she’s dreamed about for years… Except she can’t. This isn’t right. Her boyfriend just died, she’s not ready to jump into anything else right now, let alone a relationship with her best friend and rock. There’s no way that she’s ready for that and it would only lead to heartbreak right now. She needs time.

“I can’t go on the Gambit with you,” she says with tears in her eyes. “I need to stay in therapy. I’m not ready.”

“Forget I said anything,” he says, and hangs up the phone before she can say another word.

Felicity tries to call him back, but he won’t pick up. He’s hurt and angry, and it breaks her heart, but she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do about it. She’d waited years for Oliver to show even the slightest hint that he wanted more with her. Years. She’s been in love with him since middle school, but never fathomed he would ever look at her with anything but friendship.

It wasn’t until she met Cooper that she was finally ready to give up on any hope of a future with Oliver and move on. And she’d been happy she had. Cooper had been wonderful. So wonderful, that she was able to put her feelings for Oliver to rest completely.

And now he puts this on her? It’s not fair. She’s still so broken. He knows how broken she is. He’s the one that pulls her out of her nightmares most nights. He’s held her numerous times as she cried.

Why did he have to go and do this now?

“Everything okay?” Tommy asks.

Felicity looks up at him, unsure how to answer that question.

No. Everything's not okay.

She’s not sure if anything will be okay again.

What if, in telling Oliver no, she just lost him forever?

****

Felicity wakes up the next morning to a voicemail on her phone from Oliver.

She breathes a sigh of relief. If he’d called her last night, he must not be as mad at her as she thought. Maybe they can find a way to salvage this.

“Hey Felicity. Fe-lic-it-y,” he starts out and she can tell he’s drunk. She hopes he’s not about to start drunkenly raging at her like he used to do with Laurel.

“God… Even your name is beautiful. So beautiful. Felicity.”

At this he sighs deeply. “You know I love you, right?”

“No, I didn’t,” she whispers as she listens to his message. She had no idea. How could she have possibly known that? He never said anything.

“I know. I know. It’s selfish. ‘Specially now. E-spec-ial-ly. That’s a hard word. I’m sure you know that word. You’re so smart… My Felicity.”

“God, how drunk are you?” she mumbles. She’s seen Oliver consume an ungodly amount of liquor and still manage to be a smooth talker, so she can’t imagine how much he had to have drank in order to be this fargone.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes… I’m such a fuck up. You deser… deserve somebody else. But I promise you, Felicity. My Felicity. I would never leave you like Cooper did… Or your father. He was a jackass. I hope you don’t think I’m a jackass… Felicity. Such a pretty name.”

He pauses again and she wipes the tears from her cheek. God, why is everything in her life so fucked up? Where was this a few years ago? Why didn’t he tell her sooner? Back when she was still happy and whole. She can’t be with him now. She can’t possibly give him what he needs. She’s too broken. She’s going to be too broken for a long time.

“Since elementary school… I’ve been here for you… It’s always been you… Since first grade. Doesn’t that count for something? It should count for something…”

It sounds like he drops the phone as he lets out a string of curse words. The message cuts out with an automated voice informing her that the message had been left at 2:34am. She saves the message and moves onto the next one.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to come with me on the Gambit. I get that now. You don’t love me like I do you,” he says.

“You are so dumb,” she whispers.

Of course she loved him. If she’s being honest with herself, a part of her still loves him. That’s probably why she distanced herself from him when she was dating Cooper, because she needed the time and space to let go of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ if she wanted her relationship with Cooper to work.

“But I need you to know… You’re my light. The one that guides me home. Like the north star. You’re my north star. My life doesn’t work without you in it,” he says quietly, sounding a bit more sober than he had before. He must have waited to call her back a few more hours.

“I’m going to go on that trip with my dad. I think I need the space to clear my head. But after that… I hope we can get past this. I hope you don’t hate me forever. Because even if you never want to be with me, I still need my best friend.”

The call cuts out and Felicity immediately calls him back, but his cell is turned off. When she calls his house, Raisa informs her that Oliver has already left for his trip and won’t be back for another three weeks.

She types out a text message, hoping he’ll get it whenever he docks somewhere, and sends it before she can start to second guess herself.

I do love you. I always have. You’re my north star, too. I just need time.

Tagged/Untagged? Let me know!

@acheaptrickandacheesyoneline // @almondblossomme // @arrowandolicity // @bifelicitys // @bushlaboo // @canadianheartgirl // @cinfos // @dettiot // @dyedblondefelicity // @emisfritish // @emmaamelia95 // @evil-limace // @felicity-said--yes// @geniewithwifi // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @hope-for-olicity // @itsakatemus// @just-arrow // @karenanderson32 // @loveyoubeyondhope // @memcjo // @miriam1779 // @missyriver // @mtb1002 // @olicitylovemaking // @oliverfel4 // @pleasantfanandstudent // @pottercastleminds // @puddintan3 // @relativelyobsessedfangirl // @scu11y22 // @somewhatinvisible // @sonrisaentejas // @sovvannight // @spaztronautwriter // @sweetdawn129// @sweettooth5 // @tennesseeyouaregoodtome// @wetsuiton

#arrow fic #olicity fic #childhood best friends trope #friends to lovers #home verse #arrow fanfiction

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eileennatural · 3 years

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if i cut my hair i would be exponentially happier but also sadder. i think about this every single day

#looking back at old selfies it looked so good shoulder length and also was way easier to maintain #BUT having long hair that i can play with and style is more fun #and i already wasted so much money bleaching and dyeing all of this that it feels like it would be a waste to cut half of it off #i'll probably chop it all off before i go back to school i guess i need to be long enough during the summer #that i can pull it back for work

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easynaturalhairstyle · 5 years

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The 18 most beautiful pastel pink hair color ideas

A pastel pink hair color is a soft and delicate version of pink that is usually combined or worn with other lighter fashion colors like blonde and even purple. It fits any kind of hair and skin tone and is super portable, believe it or not! All you need is the confidence to show it off!

Tips for coloring hair in pastel pink

You should not be afraid to experiment with your hair color, as did the millennial stars Emily Ratajkowski, Gigi Hadid and Jemima Kirke and took the lead! The fantasy color specialist Emma Jean from the Porte Noire Salon in Central Florida also delights with her masterpieces in pastel pink!

Note that blond is the perfect canvas for this color to reach its maximum potential. Therefore, a pre-enlightenment must be considered. To rock this beautiful pale pink hue to the full, you have to give your tresses a little love! Like all unnatural colors, pastels can be washed out quickly, but the regular use of colorfast products guarantees the longevity of your beloved Zuckerwattemähne. There are some hair dyes that are great for a touch of pink at the tips or for some highlights. However, for the best results, the best option is to subject pastel pink hair to a chemical treatment.

Maybe it's time to drop those old, boring sunglasses and experience the trendy pink magic! Make this shimmering look your own by taking inspiration from these popular pastel pink hair color photos for the season!

Light Metallic Rose

Lavender with a touch of silver for the shiny effect. You will shine with this one in a different light!

Smoky pink

How would you describe this look?

This look is the best of both worlds for desired pastel pink. If you can not decide which sounds look better, you can get the best of both! It has the mix of cool tones that gives it the smokiness and warmth to bring in and capture the light. Similar to make-up in the highlight and contouring area, but for hair! Pastel pink hair really shines because the shade really comes out more.

The beauty of this look is the versatility of the color combinations. By incorporating the natural hair color of the client, the client is upgraded, but not by himself, so that his skin tone is not overwhelmed, and it remains low maintenance when it grows out. Even with the balance of warm and cold, it works with any skin tone, regardless of the undertones. Although it fades, it does not fade to a flat blonde, but to a blonde with dimensions.

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Research a lot and much. Save all pastel pink hair color photos that attract your attention and show them to your hairdresser. You should notice a pattern and see the sounds you like. Do not wash your hair, do not use dry shampoo or walk as long as possible and wash in cold water.

Keep the heat styling low! I always tell my customers the temperature when I curl their hair and say, "This is the temperature. If you can not curl up faster than I do, do not go higher than me. "High heat can burn the paint or even your hair.

I would ask you to ask a series of questions: What lengths are you willing to go for this hair? This look requires lighting no matter where your natural level begins. You would need up to 3 sessions. This is based on natural, virgin hair.

Now that you know that, the question is, is healthy hair a big deal for you? I'm not saying that your hair is damaged / dry afterwards, but are you open to the possibility? This is before you even reach the pastel pink. Note that anything that is iridescent or pastel is not permanent. It is unfortunate that such a thing only holds up to 5-7 washes. This depends on the hair conditions and you wash it in cooler water. Heat, hot water, salt water, sun and free radicals can cause hair color to fade.

Okay, now everything is fine, the big question: Are you ready to invest? What to invest? Time and money. Each lighting session can take up to 5.5-6 hours. The customer in the photo lasted a total of 18 hours, 3 sessions of 6 hours each. She has done it over time. With 3-4 months between each session so that her hair and wallet could rest.

Cut, light, tone, style up to 6 hours at around $ 500 per session before tipping. Toner – This is for interim sessions if you need them. Hair quality is different for everyone – some keep their color better and others do not. Not everyone is the same.

I recommend Color Enhancing Shampoo Purple, Blue, Pink, etc. (Once a week, 50 USD +). Why once a week? Because it's meant to neutralize / enhance sounds. If you use too much, this would exceed the deposit and affect the color. Less is more. Now you need a normal shampoo. To keep the hair healthy, I suggest something that has a perfect balance between moisture and protein – over protein (dry brittle), over moisture (elastic ky, noodle).

At this point, your hair needs the big guns. They wash about 1-3 times a week. If your hair is weak or thirsty, detoxifying agents / masks bring it to life. What's the point of getting the color you want, but in a bad condition? Use it at least once a week for 5-10 minutes.

Products: Oils / Serums $ 30, Heat Protection $ 25 +, Leave-in Conditioner $ 25 +. Tips: If you are lazy or have a limited store, buy a 10 in 1, as oil is always a must. Things to think about when buying oil for your hair, especially for my blond ladies: it's more than nutritious! Think of it as a sponge / piece of white paper, the color of the oil is important – orange / yellow oil. Your hair will drink it and always put oil in your hair before you blow dry it or air dry it. Your hair needs something to drink as it starts to dry. If you invest all that time and money in pastel pink hair, it is a good idea to keep it alive and radiant.

Pink highlights on blond hair

How would you describe this look?

What I love about this carefree little pastel is that it was a happy replay! I had worked her hair the week before with a beautiful color correction that fixed green stripes with strong roots and funky ends, and I turned them into a perfectly glowing blush (you can see a few posts before on my Instagram)! But she came back a week later to relieve the roots and wanted a more purple tone. So I blushed Malibu-ed's pretty light pulp-riot and gave her an exaggerated Shadow Root with my beautiful Keune Semi 5.11 + 6.1 (dark ashen). Then I blazed their ends with pulp-riot clear + powder + blush to make more of a bright purple tone!

I also sealed it with a soft pink glow from Keune to lighten it. This is a fantastic spring color for blondes who want a little fun change, but I also love that they are nicely hidden and look pretty until they disappear. Adding the loose curls with a 1-inch curling iron increases the softness and makes them look really pretty and polished!

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

When I think about this look, I want my client to know that the pastel colors in fashion fade within 25 washes, making them light and gentle. Cool the water, add money to your color-safe / sulfate-free shampoo, do not wash daily. Make dry shampoo your friend!

As far as the tone is concerned, he is beautiful in most already bright blondes! It's just fun without too much, and it gets very soft and pretty. The Shade Root also facilitates the management of the outgrowth. It's a perfect pastel tone for spring.

Pastel blue and pink

How would you describe this look?

This pastel blue and pink look is bold yet very feminine and flirting. The best part about it is how it shines in the light and when it moved, it made a dazzling effect.

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Pastel colors are becoming increasingly popular and it is common to think that they are easy to access and maintain, but in reality it is more difficult than it seems and doubles for pastel pink hair colors. My best advice is to prepare for several sessions and find a stylist who will bring you to a healthy platinum blonde before you try out pastel colors. Paint deposits such as Oberton and Joico Color Butter become your best friend to refresh the color between appointments.

Pastel Rose Gold

How would you describe this look?

This client does not want a color that needs to be serviced very often. She comes only once a year, so we make balayage highlights for her hair. The best thing about this color is that when the rose gold tones disappear from the hair (and the customer does not want to take care of it anymore), they can stay blond for the rest of the time and not have to worry about growing roots.

This time, I made both Balayage highlights with backcombing technique and classic highlights for the frame of the face. She had very dense hair, so I layered a bit in the back but concentrated mainly to layer the hair around the face to make it feel very soft and light.

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Pastel pink hair needs to be cared for frequently, these pastel shades fade very easily. Therefore, this color is not the best if you do not want to waste your time showering, without losing the color or money that you can easily spend on hair care products.

Due to its short life this is good for those who want to try something new but want to return for a more sedate look!

Petal pink

How would you describe this look?

Pastel pink hair is delicate and sweet. The color gives a summery touch, which is also perfect as pastel pink hair is one of the upcoming trends for this summer. My favorite thing is definitely the pale pink color.

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Remember the big change. The hair must be bleached to a whitish color, which can affect the quality of the hair.

This type of pastel pink hair is not durable in the hair over a longer period of time. The customer needs a color shampoo / conditioner to use it at home. Therefore, he must also consider his budget.

When it comes to the skin tone, the light pink will suit most of us. This is because it contains both warm and cold pigments. And as long as the roots are a bit darker, there is no shallow impression.

Praise haircuts are suitable for all types of face shapes textures. For styling, it is a general type of haircut. I find it perfect for clients who want a good change with many options for their daily lives.

Light cotton candy

Combine the delicate color with a strong and chic, straight bob. The contrast makes the look even more enticing and interesting.

Dark to light pink ombre

Steal the perfect balayage look by adding beautiful beach waves midway to the end of your long, delicious locks.

Dusty pink hair color

Pink scattered hair on blond and black striped hair. Full, blunt pony with a medium length cut makes the look more exciting.

Nice pink short hair

Pop star Pink would definitely be proud of this Pixie Pink style!

Light pink color

Pink rose directly from the garden! They look blooming in any weather.

Soft Pink Shade

Imagine yourself in a tinted, pastel-pink hair color. The colorist Lauren did the impossible and created a shimmering pink cut.

Silver and pink balayage

Ashy Pink looks just as sumptuous as any strong hair color. Colorist Lana has the hands of a master with this paint job!

Faded pink curls

If you have a vibrant hair color and want to change it, try fading it to get a different shade of color. Champagne strawberry hair looked especially beautiful on tangled hair.

Pink highlights on brown hair

Did you ever think strawberry brunette would be one thing? Stylist Lauren shows you how to mix and match these very different colors to create a harmonious hair color.

Pink and purple

Do you dare to try this lush shade? Colorist Tara killed this unicorn hair from root to tip.

Pastel pink hair color with dark roots

Get this wild color by using a semi-permanent dye at home or, if you feel pretty brave, have your hair dyed permanently pink by a professional.

Bubblegum Pink

Bubbly and sweet, this lively pastel-pink hair color is a dream for millennial. The right curls hit the sweet spot of cuteness.

The 18 most beautiful pastel pink hair color ideas

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qualitytacolover · 5 years

Text

The 18 most beautiful pastel pink hair color ideas

New Post has been published on https://www.easypromhairstyles.com/the-18-most-beautiful-pastel-pink-hair-color-ideas.html

The 18 most beautiful pastel pink hair color ideas

Tips for coloring hair in pastel pink

Light Metallic Rose

Lavender with a touch of silver for the shiny effect. You will shine with this one in a different light!

Smoky pink

How would you describe this look?

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Pink highlights on blond hair

How would you describe this look?

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Pastel blue and pink

How would you describe this look?

This pastel blue and pink look is bold yet very feminine and flirting. The best part about it is how it shines in the light and when it moved, it made a dazzling effect.

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Pastel Rose Gold

How would you describe this look?

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Due to its short life this is good for those who want to try something new but want to return for a more sedate look!

Petal pink

How would you describe this look?

Any advice for someone who thinks about it?

Remember the big change. The hair must be bleached to a whitish color, which can affect the quality of the hair.

This type of pastel pink hair is not durable in the hair over a longer period of time. The customer needs a color shampoo / conditioner to use it at home. Therefore, he must also consider his budget.

Light cotton candy

Combine the delicate color with a strong and chic, straight bob. The contrast makes the look even more enticing and interesting.

Dark to light pink ombre

Steal the perfect balayage look by adding beautiful beach waves midway to the end of your long, delicious locks.

Dusty pink hair color

Pink scattered hair on blond and black striped hair. Full, blunt pony with a medium length cut makes the look more exciting.

Nice pink short hair

Pop star Pink would definitely be proud of this Pixie Pink style!

Light pink color

Pink rose directly from the garden! They look blooming in any weather.

Soft Pink Shade

Imagine yourself in a tinted, pastel-pink hair color. The colorist Lauren did the impossible and created a shimmering pink cut.

Silver and pink balayage

Ashy Pink looks just as sumptuous as any strong hair color. Colorist Lana has the hands of a master with this paint job!

Faded pink curls

If you have a vibrant hair color and want to change it, try fading it to get a different shade of color. Champagne strawberry hair looked especially beautiful on tangled hair.

Pink highlights on brown hair

Did you ever think strawberry brunette would be one thing? Stylist Lauren shows you how to mix and match these very different colors to create a harmonious hair color.

Pink and purple

Do you dare to try this lush shade? Colorist Tara killed this unicorn hair from root to tip.

Pastel pink hair color with dark roots

Get this wild color by using a semi-permanent dye at home or, if you feel pretty brave, have your hair dyed permanently pink by a professional.

Bubblegum Pink

Bubbly and sweet, this lively pastel-pink hair color is a dream for millennial. The right curls hit the sweet spot of cuteness.

0 notes