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notstinky · 1 year ago

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TIMING: Current FEATURING: Thea ( @notstinky ) & Cass ( @magmahearts ) LOCATION: Thea’s house, Worm Row SUMMARY: Cass's hair looks so nice! Gee, she must be a really skilled hairdresser Oh, wouldn't it be a great idea to invite her over to cut hair? CONTENT WARNINGS: none unless you are Charles Xavier

Cass was sad and Thea didn’t know what to do about it. She didn’t think it was the sort of sadness that could be extracted with company and google searches of a B-list X-Men (she would apologize to Rictor if he was real, but he probably understood why he was B-list). And, certainly, it wasn’t the sort of sadness that would magically evaporate if Thea let her hair be Cass’s new canvas, but she was going to try anyway. Standing around and letting her friend be sad just wasn’t an option. The week before a full moon was the time she had the most energy; the moments in which her body forgot what would happen to her in a few days' time. If she was going to give Cass the best damn chill-hang-out-at-a-friend’s-house ever, it would have to happen now.

“Cass!” Thea flung the door open with a wide smile. “Just in time! The google images page just loaded.” Thea spun her Macbook around, showing off the bright screen and the thousands of results of ‘Rictor marvel’ on Google: from his wet-dog X-Factor investigations look to his tragic early look with the nonsensical beige shoulder pads. “Come-in-how-are-you-love-the-hair,” she muttered all at once, standing off to the side so Cass could enter.

Thea’s extremely humble rental home had all the charm of something built two decades ago, maintained by the laziest of landlords, and subject to a bit of a pending silverfish problem. In every corner there was chipped paint and strange brown stains; if a floorboard didn’t creak then it was probably scratched so deeply that it had a new texture altogether; and the light bulbs illuminated the area in such warmth that it verged on orange. The only thing the house had going for it was the size, designed for a large family but currently occupied by Thea and three other mysterious college students she never saw except for the one time all three of them were huddled outside of her bedroom window, looking up at her. She didn’t think much of it. If her rent was five times what she was paying, it would remind her a lot more of the houses in Toronto.

—

Cass could count on one hand, really, the number of times in her life when someone had recognized she was upset and wanted to do something about it. It was the kind of thing that had seemed impossible for so long, as fantastical and outlandish as the events that unfolded in the comic books she was so fond of. But now? It was becoming almost common. Alex talked her through it when she was feeling abandoned, Nora stayed with her when she was upset, Van let her stay when she begged for it, Thea invited her over when she was sad and rambling on and on. She knew it was probably temporary, knew that eventually they’d all choose to leave her too, but she could enjoy it while it lasted, couldn’t she? She could sit with it, could let it lighten the load on her back. She could walk to Thea’s weird house in the bad part of town and feel good about it, could smile when her friend opened the door.

“Thea,” she greeted, letting her gaze jump down to the laptop monitor as it was turned around. And, yep, there he was. Short-tempered earthquake master Julio Richter, displayed in a thousand different boxes on the Google image result page. “I miss the mohawk,” she sighed, zeroing in on one of the pictures and shaking her head. “I wish they’d let him have one again.”

She stepped into Thea’s house as the other girl stepped to the side, glancing around. She couldn’t say much about anyone’s living situation — living in a cave kind of disqualified her from commenting on anyone’s house, she was pretty sure — but Thea’s place was a little run down. A little falling apart, a little unsteady on its foundation. She wondered how much it cost to live here, wondered if Thea wouldn’t be happier living in a cave instead. She couldn’t imagine anyone preferring any kind of living structure that wasn’t a cave, but people were weird, she guessed. “Um, I didn’t bring scissors because I don’t know where mine are. Do you have some? I can do your hair. What kind of hairstyle do you want?”

—

“It’s better than the long hair and the…whatever this is.” Thea pointed at a picture of Rictor sporting a green headband and skin-tight green spandex. “He looks like he’s going to teach a spin class.” And if Thea understood anything about Rictor, it was that he should not be teaching a spin class. Shatterstar would probably teach an interesting spin class, though. Maybe this was a new subject for Cass’s fanfiction. She’d have to casually broach the subject latter; it wouldn’t be polite to hound the best author in existence with her stupid ideas. The thought made her shiver suddenly, as thinking about Cass’s writing often did. She couldn’t level a comment about it that wasn’t praiseworthy, and that had seeped into her thoughts. Something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure what. Regardless, even if Cass had the writing skill of a sixth grader just discovering the ‘publish’ button, Thea took pleasure in just reading something her friend wrote. “I have scissors! They’re from Walmart, so maybe it’s lower quality than you’re used to, I hope that’s okay.” Thea gestured down the hall leading Cass into the bathroom.

Thea had taken great care to set it up for Cass. She had her Walmart scissors laid out, a spray bottle with water (she knew hairdressers used it, though she didn’t know why), towels, a stool and a hair dryer. A flickering thought crossed through her mind: if Cass cut her own hair, why didn’t she know where her scissors were? That seemed strange. Thea didn’t interrogate it. “Um, just whatever is easy,” she said, answering Cass’s question. “My hair is kinda longer than I like, so maybe just a little cut? Nothing crazy.” Thea sat down on the stool, lowering it so she was at a good height for Cass. She held up the laptop, pointing to a new photo of Rictor; a picture of him from the latest Excalibur run. “What do you think about this one?”

—

“It was the eighties,” Cass replied, squinting at the picture. “I think.” Hard to tell, sometimes; some of the art was recognizable as standard for the decade, but some of it was harder to pinpoint. A rough google image search was a lot harder to determine a specific year from than a full comic cover would have been, even for someone like Cass, who knew just about all there was to know about this particular obscure B-List X-Men character. “I’d go to his spin class. It’d probably be funny.” But talking about X-Men, with Thea, wasn’t quite as much fun as it used to be. That fanfiction bind was a silly one, but Cass still felt bad about it. Would Thea be angry with her if she knew? Maybe it was for the best that the subject changed to scissors and a haircut — that was a lot easier to think about without feeling bad. “Walmart scissors are fine!” Truthfully, Cass wasn’t even sure where she’d stolen her scissors from. It could have been Walmart. She didn’t think her ‘standards’ were quite what Thea assumed they were, but that was okay. She’d still do a good job on the haircut, she was sure of it.

The setup Thea had prepared for her looked very professional. Or… like what Cass imagined a professional setup might look like. She’d never actually seen one in person, but the chair and supplies Thea had pulled together didn’t look entirely dissimilar from that scene in Legally Blonde where they were all in the salon, so she figured it was pretty spot on. “I can definitely do that.” The words didn’t make her feel sick, so she was confident that they were true. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? Leaning forward to investigate the photo, she nodded. “I like that one,” she agreed. “That’s one of his better looks.”

And so, she got to work. She picked up a chunk of Thea’s hair, holding it between her fingers and letting her tongue poke out the side of her mouth as she concentrated. All she had to do was cut it riiiight… snip. Whoops. The scissors slipped, making the cut uneven. Cass carefully masked her surprise. It was fine. She’d cut a little more off to make it even. Except… That was uneven, too. A little more, then. She’d get it right eventually.

—

Thea’s head felt lighter. It was strange to think of hair as having a weight, but as Cass trimmed it very lightly just as Thea had asked, she certainly felt much lighter. She didn’t wonder why the snipping sounded so heavy; tiny cuts didn’t come with such a thick sound, like chunks of hair snapping under the sharpness of her Walmart scissors. When she glanced down, she thought she saw a pile of her hair that seemed to large to be something from a small trim, and she had emphasized she just wanted a trim, right? Nothing crazy? She had said that, hadn’t she? Thea continued to scroll through the images of Rictor, thinking nothing of it. Cass’s hair looked so good, if she got even a fraction of that talent used on her head, she’d be okay. There was nothing to worry about. “Do you like him just because he has rock related powers?” She asked, growing tired of scrolling through images of Rictor; most of them were images of him making out with Shatterstar anyway. She thought that was reductive, certainly Rictor was more than his messy gay romance. So, she typed, ‘cool rocks’ into the search bar and watched the page populate with images of different crystals and stones.

There were photoshop images of glowing rocks, one that looked like the cookie monster, and another that someone had just drawn sunglasses on. Thea realized she ought to have searched for something more specific. Instead of learning her lesson, she typed ‘cool volcanoes' and went with that. “Do you know why this happens?” Thea lifted the laptop up so Cass could see it, pointing at a picture of an erupting volcano with a branch of lighting striking down. She hadn’t intended to embark on a science lesson but unlike her searches of Rictor, the B-List X-Men, she did know a lot about the scientific functions of the world. She had lofty dreams, once. “How much do you know about volcanoes?”

—

This was not going well. Cass could tell, even if she gave no outward indication of it. Thea’s hair was way shorter than she’d meant to make it, getting more and more uneven with each snip. It was starting to look less and less like normal hair and more and more like a bowl cut, too close to the other girl’s skull. But she could still fix this, she was sure of it! She just had to… keep cutting. Thea could pull off short hair, anyway. She’d probably look good. And it’d come in handy with the janitor job! She’d save a fortune on hair ties, and she wouldn’t have to worry about… janitorial stuff getting into her hair! Cass was doing her a favor, really. With a newfound confidence, the oread continued to snip. She was nailing this, actually. She was doing great.

“I like him for a lot of reasons,” she replied, “but the rock related powers are definitely a big one. Have you read the new Excalibur? They gave him lava powers in the new Excalibur.” Naturally, Cass had been thrilled when she read it, even if the comic over all hadn’t been very good. She could excuse bad writing if it meant Rictor was in a comic book again. “I like his personality a lot, though. And his backstory is cool. I think it’s neat how he doesn’t try to fit in. He’s like, ‘This is who I am, and I’m gonna make earthquakes about it.’ I like that.”

Another snip, another mistake. Cass was growing less confident in spite of her internal pep talk. She distracted herself by looking at the laptop screen as Thea held it up for her. “Oh!” She grinned, excitement rushing through her. “There are a lot of factors that contribute to volcanic lightning, actually. Ice charging, frictional charging, fractoemission, radioactive charging, plume height… It builds up in the plume of an eruption. Not really as straightforward as a thunderstorm.” She lifted another strand of hair, snipping. Uneven again. Why was this so hard? “I know a lot about volcanoes.” Nearly everything there was to know, including some things that human scientists didn’t. But she could be chill about it.

—

“No, I haven’t read it yet. I’m really behind on comics. Like, by a few years. I got busy with school and then I got busy with…” Turning into a wolf and eating people. “…moving to America.” Thea sighed, sinking into her stool before she remembered that Cass was trying to cut her hair and moving around wasn’t helping. “Sorry!” She straightened up. If there were some uneven cuts (which she doubted, Cass was probably a pro), it would be Thea’s fault. “It's interesting that you picked Rictor, y’know? ‘Cause not a lot of people would pick him as their favorite; I think that says a lot of good things about you, Cass.” This hair cut was taking a while. Well, she couldn’t rush a genius. Her head felt really light, which was probably a good thing. She repeated this in her head until she believed it, which didn’t take very long—Thea had a superhuman ability to delude herself into anything. She was very proud of the skill.

“Really?” Thea spun around, interrupting another cut. “Ah,” she winced. “Sorry, sorry.” She spun back around; now there really was no one but herself to blame for uneven cuts. “Could you tell me more about volcanoes? Um, okay, well...I know how they’re formed and I know about the different types…” Thea scrunched her face up, trying to think of something specific she wanted to know that she could ask Cass about. In the end, she thought she knew quite a bit about volcanoes and couldn’t think of an extra curiosity on top of it. “Did you go to school for uh, the study of volcanoes? What is that called?” She asked and as a thought occurred to her, striking in her mind not unlike the lighting in ash plume, she spun around again. “Cass, do you…” And then she saw it: from the corner of her eye, her hair. Or, more accurately, her lack of it.

Thea stumbled to her feet, staring at herself in the mirror. “C-Cass?”

—

“It’s not good,” Cass said matter-of-factly, “but Rictor is there.” In her opinion, that made the book one worth reading. It was the eternal plight of comic readers, wasn’t it, to suffer through terrible storylines and awful art just to catch a glimpse of their favorite characters. Thea would understand that, she thought; Thea understood most of what Cass said about comics. Thea moved, and Cass’s hand slipped a little, but with all the other uneven cuts… it wasn’t even noticeable. It was a bad needle in a bad haystack. It was all just bad. “I know he’s not, like, super well-known,” she admitted. “I just like his vibes. I don’t know. Who’s your favorite obscure mutant?” She wanted to know everything about Thea’s tastes, if only to distract them both from what was an undeniably a terrible haircut.

Thea spun around again, and Cass winced. What was one more uneven cut in a sea of them? “I can tell you anything you want to know. I didn’t go to school for it, though. I, um…” She tried to think of the best possible way to describe it. “I learned it when I was a kid.” Not entirely true, but she could hardly say I was born knowing without questions. Anyway, it seemed like the conversation wouldn’t remain about volcanoes for long, because Thea was looking in the mirror and stumbling to her feet. Cass let out an undignified squeak, scrambling over and throwing a blanket from the floor over the mirror. “I’m not done yet!” As if there was any fixing this. “I’m not finished! You can’t look yet! Let’s talk about rocks!”

—

Thea tapped her chin, taking the question very seriously. It was hard to say what counted as an obscure mutant; Thea knew most of, if not all of the official X-Men and in her heart, Xuân Cao Mạnh/Karma was well-known, for example. She was still thinking about the question as she stared at her hair, before the blanket flew on top and she was staring at lint and dust. She would never get around to her answer, which was Monet St. Croix because of that one issue of Generation X where she pushed Jubilee up against a wall and recited the story about the scorpion and the frog and made Thea feel things. Thea never liked ‘mean’ characters but the desire to be stepped on had never made more sense to her than when she thought about Monet. “Cass,” Thea said, turning to her friend—and Cass was her friend, right? “I don’t think there’s any hair left for you to cut.” Thea lifted her hand to her head and groped around the uneven, pointy ends. She still had hair, it was just much shorter than Thea thought she could ever pull off; much shorter than she asked for. “W-what is there left to finish?” But like a good friend or a soldier in shock having watched their friend (her hair) be shot (cut up in what she could only describe as an intoxicated person’s attempt at mowing a lawn with blunt scissors), Thea sat down again.

“Tell me about rocks,” she mumbled, staring out of her soap-stained bathroom window. Her voice had gone flat like a soda left out. “You know, my hair kind of looks like those chia pets. But worse, because those are even.” Thea blinked. “That’s not really related to rocks; I’m sorry. Do you think I’d still look cute if I was bald? Be honest. Rocks are bald.”

—

There was hair left for her to cut! A little! She could fix it, she was sure, she just needed Thea not to look yet. It was too much pressure when Thea was looking. When Thea was looking away and talking about X-Men, Cass could convince herself that the haircut didn’t look quite so bad because no one was freaking out about it. But now, Thea was looking, was reaching up to touch the uneven ends, was stammering through her words. Cass really wanted to go back in time to about three minutes ago, before she’d really started in with the scissors. “Don’t freak out,” she said, though she was freaking out more than Thea seemed to be. “I’m gonna make you look so cute, okay? Um, cute enough for Scott Summers to refuse to blast you to pieces on the moon even though you’re ending the universe!” That was romantic, right? She’d always thought it was romantic, the whole ‘Cyclops and Phoenix dying in front of each other all the time’ thing. Thea would probably like the reference.

“You don’t look like a chia pet,” she squeaked. The lie tasted acidic, making her stomach churn. Thea looked so much like a chia pet right now. “I think — I think you’d look really cute bald. Way better than Charles Xavier. He looks stinky, but you’d pull it off on account of — you — you don’t, um — you don’t make teenagers fight supervillains for you.” This was going so well. So well.

—

It was true that Scott Summers and Jean Grey were sorta romantic; it was cute that through the chaos of her telepathic powers, she thought of Scott like an anchor, it was also true that through the evils the Phoenix could commit, Scott saw the woman he loved. Then there was that whole mess with Madelyne Pryor and Mr. Sinister but that was comics; for everything that made sense there were about twenty things that didn’t. The thought comforted Thea. Perhaps this was her Madelyne Pryor moment; it wouldn’t make sense but maybe she’d look back on it fondly and be thankful that it gave her Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, whose name would always be stupid but at least he had a cool glowing eye. This was her glowing eye. Or maybe, just maybe, her sanity had slipped from her like a screw loosening, popping out of its hole, and rolling away. It was true that she didn’t make teenagers fight for her but the thought didn’t comfort her as much as it should have. The truth was Charles Xavier was an ugly bald bitch and now she was going to be an ugly bald bitch too.

And there was no saving an ugly bald bitch (Thea issued mental apologies to all the ugly bald bitches that weren’t Charles Xavier—he could choke).

“Do you think I could pull off a wig?” Thea sniffled. “Maybe I could wear a red one like Jean Grey and then when I try to destroy the world, I’ll find a Scott Summers who seriously thinks about letting me do it. And a Logan too, although he’s kinda stinky I don’t know if I want him.” She paused. “I’m gonna be so ugly Cass.” She flipped around in the stool. “Promise me I’m not gonna be ugly. Look me in the eyes and say I won’t be ugly. I need you to mean it. I need you to say it for real. I need you to tell me I’m not going to adopt children and then make them fight for me but if I did do it, I’d be hot like Bruce Wayne and not an ugly bald bitch like Xavier. Promise me.” Thea wasn’t sure what she was making Cass do for her; the screw had rolled very, very far away.

—

She felt terrible. There was no saving what was left of Thea’s hair — even if she didn’t do anything else to it, it would grow back all patchy and uneven and weird. The best course of action, at this point, was to shave it bald. Except Thea didn’t seem to want to be bald, and Cass felt bad about making her bald. She thought about offering to shave her own head in solidarity, but she wasn’t exactly sure how that would work with her glamour. Her hair wasn’t even real hair, it was just a mask made of magic. She didn’t think she could shave it if she tried.

“You could definitely pull off a wig,” she insisted quickly. “You could do red like Jean, or — or blonde like Emma Frost. Maybe even white like Storm!” Was this making Thea feel any better? The idea of having Scott Summers and Wolverine in some kind of eternal contest to see who got to be with you on the rare occasions where you were all alive at the same time didn’t sound entirely appealing to Cass, but then, Cass also thought that Wolverine was a little stinky. Scott would probably be a good husband, but all the inner turmoil might get a little old after a while. “You’re not going to be ugly!” She hesitated for a moment, because this could be bad. This could be very, very bad. But her friend was upset and it was her fault, and didn’t she kind of owe her something for that? Plus, ‘ugly’ was a relative thing, anyway. “I promise you’re not going to be ugly,” Cass said, deciding to risk it. “And I’m definitely positive if you adopted kids and made them fight for you, you’d be cool like Bruce Wayne and not stinky like Charles Xavier. None of them would even kill you, probably!”

—

“Emma Frost is seriously hot.” Thea sniffled. “But I think most of that is her boobs.” Emma Frost wasn’t her hair and the more Thea thought about it, the more it comforted her. She thought about the hottest X-Men; Emma, Jean, Ororo, and Mystique (Psylocke would not be making an appearance on her mental list because body snatching discounted her as sexy). She wasn’t going to consider modern depictions of these women because Marvel had finally stopped featuring them on covers with a boobs-out approach, except for Emma Frost, who always had her boobs out. Thea needed to think of them when they were at their sexy peak: half-naked in skin-tight clothing with questionable anatomy. Yes, all of these women had hair but none of them were known for their hair. She could be hot without hair! It would just also require having big boobs and tight clothes and questionable anatomy. In the end, she was back where she started, accepting that Emma Frost wasn’t hot because she had hair, but because she had big boobs. Thea glanced down; some things could not be willed into existence.

The promise was nice even if it wasn’t Thea’s concern now. Sure, she wouldn’t be ugly but would she be Emma-Frost-hot? She twisted in the stool again. “Promise me I’m hot?” she asked, her wet eyes glistening. “Promise me that if you saw me with this hair walking down the street you’d think ‘wow, she looks attractive and cool’?” Thea blinked. “P-promise me that if you saw my hair, and if you were a stranger, you wouldn’t think ‘oh she fell into a lawn mower’…promise? Do you promise that? Do I have the Cass guarantee that no one is even going to notice my hair? No one is going to notice, right? If my child kills me it’ll be because they have an uncontrollable darkness inside of them and not because I’m an ugly bald bitch, right? Promise?”

—

“It’s not the boobs, it’s the attitude,” Cass insisted, still trying to salvage the whole ordeal. “And you’ve got a great attitude, too! Your attitude makes your boobs Emma Frost-level boobs.” Was this helping? Thea was looking down at her boobs — which were, decidedly, not Emma Frost-level boobs, because Emma Frost-level boobs really only existed on Emma Frost specifically, and that was because no one who had ever drawn Emma Frost had done so with a basic understanding of how boobs actually worked — and Cass was desperate to put some kind of a positive spin on this absolute disaster of a haircut. But some things were hard to spin. Cass couldn’t imagine Emma Frost or Jean Grey with this haircut, and she thought Thea probably knew as much.

Which brought them to a new promise. Cass could promise Thea that she wouldn’t be ugly and adopt a bunch of children that she’d make fight for her, because ugly was a relative term and Thea adopting a bunch of child soldiers was far-fetched enough to make the reward outweigh the risk of the promise being broken. But promising Thea that Cass, specifically, would see her haircut and think she was attractive and cool? That was… a little harder to keep. “Uhhh…” Cass’s eyes darted to Thea’s reflection in the mirror. “I don’t think you look like you fell into a lawn mower,” she said, which wasn’t a promise. She couldn’t make the promises Thea was asking for, because people were definitely going to notice. “Bald is in right now! Florence Pugh shaved her head this year, remember? Natalie Portman’s done it, too! And Karen Gillan! You’re gonna be trendy, Thea.”

—

“Those were for movies!” Except for Florence Pugh, but when you were an actress who made as much money as her and who looked like her, you could do anything. Thea thought so, at least. She stood up, pushing the stool away. She gripped Cass's shoulders and shook them lightly. “They got paid! They made money! I don’t have Emma Frost boobs or an attitude! My attitude is like a wet, overcooked noodle! I’m mushy! I’ll never be Natalie Portman or Emma Frost!” Water stung the edge of Thea’s eyes. She released Cass, sighing. It wasn’t her fault, Thea moved around a lot: shaking her head, talking, showing off pictures of volcanoes. It wasn’t lost on her that Cass didn’t promise the things Thea had asked, but as she pulled the blanket Cass threw on the mirror away, she knew what she’d asked for was impossible. It really would take the anatomy of a sexy comic book female character to fix her, and she was never going to get that. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, turning to face her friend. “This isn’t your fault. I’m sure this looked really good before I started moving around and asking about volcanoes.” She slumped.

Thea’s goal had been to cheer Cass up, bald or not, she could still be a good friend. Sucking in a deep, quivering breath, Thea forced her mouth into a wide smile and perked up. “Maybe I’ll start a new trend!” She wouldn’t. “Maybe I’ll be so weird that I’ll be hot!” She really wouldn’t. “Maybe this will make me extra approachable.” It wouldn’t. She considered that if she shaved it down all the way, instead of leaving the uneven strands, she’d look better—but then her hair would have more to grow back from and she did want her hair to go back, desperately. “Hey, why don’t we watch V for Vendetta? So we can see Natalie Portman be bald. And maybe we watch that part of Fantasia that’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’. Maybe we have a whole bald themed day. I’ll order a pizza but with no toppings, because it’s bald. I’m bald.” She opened her arms, inviting Cass into a hug. “I really appreciate you coming here to cut my hair and hang out, Cass.” This time, her smile was genuine.

Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at the glowing screen of her laptop. Once Cass was gone, she was going to look up pictures of Emma Frost until she felt her hotness was transferred into her. Then she’d try on an all white outfit and spill sauce from a leftover slice of pizza on it and cry. But that would be then and for now, all she wanted to do was hang out with her friend and be bald.

#a little off the top #c: cass #writing #s1 #// this was so fun #the rammys are going to be felt worldwide #also rip to thea's hair

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