#in this case bex delivers baldness

[notstinky]

TIMING: Sometime recently idk who knows FEATURING: Felix (@recoveringdreamer) & Thea (@notstinky) LOCATION: The Grit Pit SUMMARY: With the help of a mysterious hair growth serum purchased online, Thea is no longer bald! With renewed confidence she accosts the coolest fighter ever (Felix) in the locker room. Unfortunately, there's something that's an ever bigger fan of Felix than Thea...

The Hair was bored. The Hair had tried pinching people during the match, but the imbecilic container of flesh it was attached to wouldn't stop squirming. The Hair demanded entertainment. The Hair was growing and growing minds needed more than just shampoo and conditioner. The Hair would find a way. But the hair liked the transforming cat person. As a cat, they had been covered in hair. The idea was appealing to The Hair. The Hair wanted that for everyone. The Hair would find a way for that too. 

“You were so cool out there!” Thea bounced in place, clapping her hands. “When you took out your claws and you went—“ Thea mimicked the actions of Felix, completely with comic book ‘swish’ and Wolverine’s ‘snikt’ sound effects. “You really showed that uh…whatever that thing you were fighting was… But you really showed it who’s in charge!” Thea beamed, technically she wasn’t supposed to be in the locker rooms unless she was cleaning them but if she went around authoritatively with her janitor’s cart, who was going to tell her she wasn’t allowed to talk to Felix? “I, uh, found this by the ring.” Thea reached into her pocket and pulled out a tuft of Felix’s fur. “I don’t know if you want this back to like… super-glue on your fursuit or whatever.” 

The Hair twitched at the mention of fur. As the inane conversation between the meat sacks went on, it lengthened down Thea’s back, curious about what mischief it could dip its split-ends into. 

—

The fight hadn’t been a particularly hard one, as far as Grit Pit fights went. It was a weeknight, so there was no need to up the stakes to draw in a big crowd, and the Pit didn’t want to ‘waste’ Wildcat by getting the balam injured before the weekend came and brought the more profitable fights with it. Tonight’s ‘work’ had been almost monotonous in a way — slash here, punch there. They asked Felix to play it up for the crowds, and they did the best they could if only to avoid the lecture that would come with disobeying. There were areas where rebelling made little sense; Felix would rather save their energy for the big stuff.

They settled onto the bench in the locker room, pulling their shirt over their head. Senses still enhanced with the jaguar close to the surface, they heard, smelled, felt Thea enter the locker room before she spoke and smiled as they pulled their head through the loose t-shirt. “Hey, thanks,” they replied. They didn’t really like the fighting, but it was nice to have a ‘fan’ when the fan was as kind as Thea. She wasn’t like the people in the stands who cheered when Felix bled on the mat — she was their friend. 

Reaching out hesitantly, they took the tuft of fur. “Uh… I don’t really need that back. But I appreciate it, anyway!” In spite of their claim and the fact that they really did have no use for the fur, they tucked it in the pocket of their gym shorts, just to be nice. “Um, did you change your hair? It’s — It looks cool.”

—

“My hair?” A flare of defensiveness ran through Thea, before she remembered that she wasn’t bald anymore—the miracle tonic she bought online had really done wonders! Of course, when she tried to look at the ingredients, it was just a winking face and when she tried to go back to the website, it was gone, but small businesses came and went all the time; such was the woes of capitalism. “Yeah! My friend cut it!” She had cut it a little too much, she wanted to say, but felt bad about it. Cass had done a good job and it was her fault for squirming around on the stool. 

But, at the mention of being cool, the hair waved all at once, as if a breeze had swept through the room. The hair was cool. The hair decided that it liked this cat person—no—it loved them. Did they need hair? They could have always used more hair. The hair continued its descent and slithered up towards Felix’s bag. 

“Your hair’s pretty cool too,” Thea said, just to be polite. Mostly, it was covered in sweat. “Do you use gel or anything? Actually, when you put on your big cat fursuit, how do you get your fur all silky? Do you shampoo it?” Despite Felix explaining to her that the cat was a real creature they transformed into, Thea didn’t believe it. Rather, she had simply chosen to ignore that it had even been said and move on with her life as though there were no such thing as Lip Balms (she’d purposefully forgotten the word Felix used) or girls that turned into wolves. She thought she was doing a pretty good job of it; denial was her strongest skill. 

Meanwhile, the hair decided it enjoyed Felix’s stink. It didn’t have a nose—it was hair—but that didn’t matter. The hair knew good stink. The hair curled into Felix’s bag, spreading itself in the smell. 

—

“Well they, uh… They did a really good job,” Felix said, offering Thea a thumbs up. Growing up, one of their sisters had been incredibly self conscious. They remembered how every change to her appearance had seen the entire house holding their breath, waiting to see if she’d fall apart over it. Thea reminded them of her sometimes. Naturally, the inclination to ensure that she was happy with changes to her physical self existed just as much here as they had with Felix’s sister all those years ago. 

It wasn’t as if they were lying, though. Thea’s hair did look nice. It was… flowing, somehow, despite the fact that they were indoors and there definitely wasn’t any wind or anything in here. And it seemed like it was… growing? But that couldn’t be right. Hair grew slowly, Felix knew that. 

Reaching up, they absently rubbed at their own hair. It was sticking up in every direction the way it always did after a fight, when the mixture of sweat and blood turned it wild. Felix didn’t really know if the shifting had an effect on it or not. Did the jaguar’s ears mess up their hair when their body shifted back into its default state? They tried not to think about it too much. It was a little too weird. Which… might have been why Thea still refused to see the jaguar as anything more than a fursuit. Felix wanted to explain it to her again, wanted to insist that the jaguar was so much more than that, but they were tired, and they didn’t want to overwhelm her. 

So, rather than explain again, they only shrugged. Fiddled with the towel around their neck, wrinkled their nose a little. “I just wash it normal.” Felix figured the jaguar got clean when they did, since they shared a body and all. “Uh, normal shampoo. And conditioner.” 

—

The socks were especially stinky—deliciously, juicily stinky. They were like little grapes of stink, bursting with stink flavour the more the hair wrapped itself into them. The hair needed to have the socks; the hair wanted to possess that beautiful stench. 

“Really?” Thea ‘huh’ed with surprise; she’d thought different materials needed different shampoos. No one dumped Head & Shoulders on a carpet and no one would think of using Pantene on their dog. Well, maybe people used Pantene on their dogs, she didn’t know; she tried not to think about dogs. “But like, are we talking Herbal Essences? OUAI?”—which Thea pronounced as ‘ooh-ey’—“Old Spice? Don’t say Irish Springs. If you say Irish Springs I’m going to lose respect for you.” Thea tried to sniff the air but regretted it the moment she did as a marching band of scents paraded into her nose and shot up into her brain. There was sweat, sour and stale; there was blood, sharp and metallic; and there was the sweet aroma of Bonbar shampoo, her hair’s signature scent. Her hair that was….

Aloft, clutching in its dark tendrils several spherical wads of fabric. Thea squinted. Was that…socks? “Uh…” She turned to Felix, sweating down her face and into her blue jumpsuit. “I think my hair is…I think it’s…” The hair was frozen, the only strands that moved slipped into and around Felix’s socks, writhing in the air like molasses in zero gravity. “Um…” She didn’t know what to say. 

—

They could have sworn they saw Thea’s hair moving, but they kept their eyes planted firmly on her face rather than look. It would be silly, wouldn’t it? Her hair moving around on its own. And if she’d just gotten it cut, she was probably self conscious about it, so looking at it — gaping at it — would only make her feel bad. The last thing Felix wanted to do was make her feel bad. They didn’t have a lot of friends, especially not in the Grit Pit. With things as tense as they were with Samir following the blue moon’s Razor/Wildcat showdown, Felix couldn’t really afford to lose any more allies in here. 

“Not Irish Springs,” they said quickly, wrinkling their nose. “That stuff smells so weird. Uh, I usually use Dove? It smells nice. And it’s not very expensive, which is good!” Technically, Felix could probably afford expensive, but why spend more money on something if you liked the cheap stuff just fine? They weren’t a big believer in spending money just to spend it the way some people seemed to. “What — What do you use? For your hair, I mean. It really does look…”

Their eyes finally drifted to her hair, and they blinked. It was moving. And Thea saw it, too. She pointed it out, and Felix followed the line of hair down, down, down, all the way to… their gym bag? The hair had Felix’s socks tangled in its ‘grip,’ and the balam blinked. “Is — Is your hair stuck in my socks? I don’t think that’s — they’re dirty. Dirty socks. Your hair’s gonna get dirty, I don’t — I’m sorry, let me…” They leaned down, moving to detangle the hair from the dirty socks in a way that hopefully wouldn’t hurt her.

—

In reality, Thea had no use for knowing what shampoo Felix used, it wasn’t like she was going to switch to their brand and smell her hair and pretend she was as cool as Felix, and that Felix was her best friend, and that they would go and get dairy-free ice cream together and, under those buzzing fluorescent lights, taking spoons from each other’s scoops, they’d discovered that they ordered the same ice cream flavor because they were just so similar; they were both so cool and normal and cool, especially. She wasn’t going to do that because she wasn’t weird, but she did think about it for several seconds longer than any normal person would have. She also imagined Felix in one of those Dove beauty commercials saying “I am beautiful” as the camera zoomed in on their soft hair. 

She couldn’t be blamed then, that when she blinked at her floating hair, she thought it was another vivid imagination fuelled by sleep deprivation. Her body ran on coffee and willpower, after all. But Felix could see the hair too, and Felix was touching the hair. Thea stared at the scene in front of her. It was probably a fantasy; any moment now, Felix would turn around and say she was cool, like in all of her best dreams. 

The Hair snapped around Felix’s wrist, sharp tendrils cutting into their flesh like metal wire. Those socks belonged to The Hair. It constricted, soaking up Felix’s blood as it wove itself around the socks, piercing the porous, sweaty fabric. It knitted new socks, ones that were equal parts hair and cotton-blend. The new socks dropped to the ground and the hair untangled itself from Felix’s wrists. The children—the socks—rose from the ground, spinning strands to form four appendages: two legs and two arms. From the writhing black cloud of hair still hovering, several balls of hair dropped like stones in a silky avalanche. 

At once, the hair-socks and the hair balls lunged at Felix, hoping to merge with their flesh. The hair-socks wanted to be on their feet—wanted to becometheir feet—and the hair balls just wanted to eat Felix—they were simple minded.

—

The hair wrapped around their wrist as they tried to detangle it, and that — oh, that was really tight, wasn’t it? Without thinking, Felix yanked their hand back, wincing when they remembered that this hair was, in fact, attached to Thea’s head. “Sorry!” They yelped, because the hair was tightening, and they were pretty sure it was too soon for their fingers to actually be turning blue due to lack of circulation but they swore they saw it, anyway. They really didn’t want their hand to be cut off by hair. It would be a whole thing, and it would be messy, and they’d probably get in trouble for only having one hand and it sounded like a whole thing, really. Felix yanked again, hand moving faster than his brain. “Sorry! Sorry, I’m — Thea, this is —”

The hair released him. The hair spat out a sock. The sock was made of hair. The hair sock had legs and arms and, oh, there was more than one hair sock, wasn’t that just — wasn’t that perfect? Felix stumbled back as the hair socks moved towards them, eyes wide. Hairballs joined them, the small army moving towards Felix.

And then, they were on him.

Felix let out an undignified yelp, falling backwards over the bench behind them and tumbling to the floor. There was hair in their eyes, in their nose, in their mouth. Curled up around their feet, and — was it biting them? They kicked frantically. “Thea?” Their voice was muffled by the hair. “Thea, uh — I think — I think your hair is killing me? Thea, can you — Can you stop — having — hair?”

—

Stop having hair? Thea almost screamed, the only thing that stopped her was the fact that she wasn’t sure if she’d ever screamed before; what if it sounded bad? What if her scream wasn’t like the girls in the movies moments before they got stabbed? Instead, she pouted. She thought that was a good enough replacement. “I’m not going to be bald again, Felix!” She’d done bald; tried it, didn’t like it, thank you very much but she was going to pass on being bald again. Anyway, if this was all a dream—which it was slowly occurring to her that it might not be—it didn’t matter if Felix died, they’d be totally fine! Right? “Maybe it just wants your fursuit? You have your fursuit around here somewhere, right? I’m sure it just wants to see the fursuit again…” Thea began pulling at lockers, trying to see which ones were unlocked and which housed Felix’s furry alter ego. 

The hairballs nibbled on Felix, like rats chewing through a wall to get to the other side, to get to the meat. The Hair knew that it was in love. It wanted to become Felix. The mother cloud, the writhing mass of Thea’s hair—still unfortunately tethered to her head—that birthed the hairballs, began a slow push towards Felix. In its angry black depths was the desire to engulf them, become them, show them the pleasures of hair. 

Thea continued to search for a fursuit that didn’t exist. 

—

Thea looked upset, and Felix felt a flash of guilt. You couldn’t just tell people not to have hair, it wasn’t polite. But — But they were pretty sure Thea’s hair was killing them. Yeah, actually, they were certain of it. It was in their nose, in their mouth, it was biting them. They could barely breathe, and Thea wasn’t really as concerned as Felix thought she probably ought to be. Did she think they were pretending? “Thea, I need — Please, you gotta —” But she was too busy opening lockers, looking for a fursuit that didn’t exist because it was Felix’s body, not a suit, they were a jaguar and a person and —

Wait. Jaguars had claws. 

Feeling another flash of guilt and silently apologizing to Thea, Felix let those claws push through the pads of their fingers, let their hand shift into a paw. They brought the clawed appendage up, slicing through the hair that was the biggest problem currently — the bulk of it attempting to enter their mouth and nose. With their other hand, they tore the hair away. Now able to breathe more freely, they began batting the hairballs away, looking very much like a cat playing with balls of yarn… if the cat was a half-person, half-jaguar hybrid and the balls of yarn were small balls of sentient hair trying to kill them. Totally normal stuff.

—

The Hair recoiled; the large, writhing mass, seemed to lose its luster as its children perished, turning into nothing more than cut strands on the ground. Still, if it could just join with its love, Felix, then perhaps…perhaps…. A world of hair was a glorious thing and The Hair’s mind was unable to move from the image of that jaguar in the ring. All that hair on that lean, muscular, killer body. It continued to move towards Felix, now looming above them. 

Thea watched, giving up on her quest to find the fursuit. It was obvious to her now; her hair wouldn’t stop until it had Felix or until Felix used their weirdly sharp nails to cut the hair up. Her gaze flickered to the strands on the ground and she sobbed softly. “Do it,” she said, looking back up. “You have to do it….” Tears continued to rain down her face. “You have to make me bald, Felix.” 

—

The hair just kept coming. Less intense now, almost as if it was grieving the loss of the bulk he’d sliced through and the hair balls that had been batted away, but still a problem all the same. Felix held up a clawed hand in a threatening manner, eyes shining gold as a little more of the jaguar came out. Of all the things the beast had ever swooped in to protect them from, this had to be the most… unexpected. The jaguar didn’t know what to make of it any more than Felix did.

Thea was crying, and the guilt swimming in his chest was almost as painful as the threat of whatever this hair was trying to do. “Sorry,” Felix said desperately, swiping at the hair again. “I’m sorry, Thea. I — I can buy you a wig! Or something!” Because they had to keep slicing through the hair as it came, and there was more and more of it on the ground and less and less of it on Thea’s head. At least it seemed to lose its consciousness when it was separated from her head and hit the floor, though whether it was ‘dead’ or not was hard to say. 

—

The Hair was dead. Once lustrous strands of black shrivelled into dried piles of pale string--gone was its colour, gone was its hunger. Gone was all that made The Hair.

Thea touched her head, pulling away chunks of pale thread that felt more like twine than hair. Under the fistfuls of dead hair was her pristine, hairless scalp. Heat flushed from her body, leaving nothing but the quivering husk of a girl. “A wig isn’t hair,” she sniffled, knowing in her heart that some wigs were made out of hair and that wasn’t a true statement and she should probably correct herself. She was too sad to bother with it. “It’s okay.” She glanced up at the blurred image of Felix, forcing a grin on her face. “It’s totally okay! It, um, it…” 

She wanted to explain that it wasn’t the hair. For a long time she believed that her hair was redeeming; people called it lovely; it made her feel feminine and normal. Girls had hair. Girls like her had hair. Girls like the sort of girl she wanted to be had hair. It wasn’t just the hair. Would Felix understand? It was the fact that nothing in her life ever seemed to go the way it ought to; not even something as silly as her hair. Thea sniffled. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” 

Dazed, she stumbled to the locker room doors, digging her blunt nails into the wall. She looked back at her friend. “I’m sorry about your socks,” Thea said. “I’m not going to process the fact that you don’t actually have a fursuit and might be part-cat for real because I’m at my limit for traumas right now. Also I’m bald. I’m bald and I’m sorry.” She turned away, tears soaking into her collar. “It’s not your fault I’m the way that I am: bald.” She had more of the magic hair growth formula at home, she reminded herself. Yet, the numbness rattled through her bones. Why? Why was she like this? What was it about life and living that came so easily to cool people like Felix but completely missed her? What was wrong with her? “I’m bald,” she said, answering her question. 

The door clicked behind her as she stumbled away.