#my mom said: well none of our scissors are really sharp enough to cut hair

[softandwildx]

Help do I pay someone $20 to give me a shitty haircut or do I give myself the shitty haircut for free????

[scullyy]

A Quiet Moment

Pairing: Clementine x Louis

Word Count: 2.5K

Summary: During her monthly hair cut, Clem and Louis both confide in each other about their deepest feelings.

A/N: I started this at around 12:50 am and finished it at 4 am (the power of a can of coke before lmao) buutttt it’s all for @castle-javier HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAISY!!!!!!! YOU’RE ALWAYS LISTENING TO MY RAMBLES AND DUMB HEADCANONS GO WISH HER THE BESTEST BIRTHDAY <3<3<3 I LUV YOU 

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"Oh Looouis," That devilish yet melodic tune meant only one thing and both of them knew it. Louis glanced up from his book, raising a brow at this rare case of forwardness from her. "I need your help." There it was. Clementine knew when to turn on the charm and how to talk in such a delicate way that turned Louis into mush.

He closed the novel he was reading, wasn't captivating to begin with. He had read over the same page three times now, always losing himself to a stray thought. Besides, a task with Clementine is a more fruitful way to spend the day. "Anything for you my darling. What is it?"

Clem slowly unveiled her hands, revealing a tarnished pair of scissors. "Could you please cut my hair?" Her teeth were bared in the widest grin he had seen to date, puppy dog eyes in full effect.

"You know I can't say no to a face like that." And what a task this was! Clem usually cut her own hair, swearing every few minutes when she cut a piece too short, yet somehow she always came out of the bathroom looking as adorable as ever.

She tossed him the scissors before retreating back to the bathroom, immediately going back to inspecting her hair in the mirror, pulling at a stray curl. Clem didn't even want to consider how long it had been since she had last used shampoo and conditioner. Too long that was certain. Dirty hair was the norm. And it still smelled after all these years. Whoopee.

Louis interrupted the rare vanity he witnessed, leaning against the door in his typical nonchalant manner. Function over fashion for Clem, that was always the way. Seeing her fiddle with flat curls and knots pulled at his heart. At the end of the day she was still a young girl who wanted a decent haircut. "You ready for this?"

Clementines' hand clenched unknowingly, her teeth near the point of grinding. "Just...be careful. The last person who cut my hair fucked it up." She sat down on the rickety toilet seat, eyes focused on the mirror and definitely not on how Louis was wildly swinging the scissors around his finger.

"I'm a natural, been doing my own since I was a kid!" Louis ran his free hand through his dreads, even Clem had to admit they looked good and somewhat healthy. "Now trust the process. You asked me for help, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah. Don't cut it too short, okay? I like tying it up." Clementine pulled out her hair tie, wincing at the unevenness of it all. Goddamnit Javi. The curls on the longer side were near untameable, reminding her of how she once looked. Smiling ever so faintly at the memory, looking like a boy was now the least of her concerns.

Louis bit his tongue in an attempt to not laugh at her scrunched face. "Pinky promise, you'll still be able to use your hair...thingy."

"You mean hair tie?"

Louis eventually took the plunge and snipped off the first tattered curl, watching it fall to the ground. No going back now. "Yeah that. I use to have one but it snapped, guess it couldn't contain my luscious locks."

A shiver ran across the back of her neck as the cold metal glided against her skin. "Yeah, I'm sure that was it. I have a spare you can borrow," She dug around her jacket pocket for the mangy thing, soon finding it hiding beneath a flower she had plucked earlier that day. "Here, still pretty stretchy after all these years."

Louis held his hand out steady as she slid it over his wrist, the once purple dye now tarnished by specks of blood, dirt and other substances Louis didn't want to know of. "Damn, you've had this for a long time."

"I got them right as everything started."

Louis eventually found his groove with the scissors, secretly wondering if Clem would stab him if he gave her a mohawk. Perhaps Farrah Fawcett hair? "Who gave them to you?"

Her delayed answer nudged at his sympathy, a clear cut sign that Clementine had fallen back into old memories. "Lilly did. She said they would help keep my hair out of my face while I slept."

Louis had stopped mid-cut, letting the answer sink in as his own tormented memories of that woman came at full speed. "Oh. You don't really talk about her."

"There's not much to talk about." She chose to focus on the rapidly growing pile of hair on the floor, gliding it around the smooth tiles with the tip of her boot. It would be a bitch to tidy later, but that was a future Clem problem.

They continued in silence, the only sound being the sharp cut of the scissors every few seconds as Louis took his time, choosing to focus on the task at hand rather than the shared trauma both had been dealt by Lilly. "Sometimes I wonder what she was like, before the child kidnapping thing. Was she always a sociopath?"

Clem let out a laugh that Louis knew was fake. "No, she was normal. I guess a little angry, but who wasn't? Her dad certainly didn't help."

"Her dad? What was he like?"

"We were all hiding in this drugstore and her dad, like the grade-A asshole he was, threatened a kid."

"Yikes." Seems like hurting kids ran in the family.

Her shoulders fell deeply, snippets of hair sliding off her shirt. "Yup, he thought the kid was bit. He wasn't, just scared, like everyone else. I miss him sometimes."

"Who? The dad?"

"Fuck no, the kid. We called him Duck, he was the only other kid I had to talk to." Even if all he talked about was dinosaurs and comic books, it was a nice distraction from the world outside the motor inn. Before everything began to crumble.

"Was he cool?" Louis dared to question further, treading carefully on what he knew were sacred memories. Stories Clem had never shared with him, or anyone. The only glimpses he had seen were the aftermaths of her nightmares, the faces of past ghosts coming back to haunt her.

She hummed over her answer. "I suppose, kinda annoying and loud. Very loud. I put a bug in his pillow."

Louis couldn't help but chuckle. "You did what now?"

"I put a bug in his pillow, just a little spider. I don't know why I did that."

"You would have been the perfect candidate for a troubled youth school."

She lightly punched his chest, unable to contain her smile. "Hey! I was a good kid."

He feigned the agony from the punch, clutching his t-shirt in a death grip. "Sure, cause good kids always leave bugs on pillows and punch their boyfriends."

"It was in his pillow for the record."

The silence was no longer heavy like it was before. This time light, breathable. A change of pace from how it began.

"Her dad died in a meat locker." Clementine pursed her lips together as the unsettling story began to spill out of her. She had never spoken about it before, to anyone, choosing to let those memories fester and hide.

"A what?"

"A place where you store meat. Some of us were trapped inside, he had a heart attack and to stop him from turning Lee..." Her words became the mere wave of a whisper as her breathing grew quicker. She was still there; in the meat locker, in the jewellery store, at Howe's, on the boat. Always there, always trapped, unable to get out.

Louis briefly stopped cutting her hair, giving her his full attention instead. "Lee did what?" Some small part of him was afraid of the answer.

"He held Lilly back as Kenny dropped a salt lick on his head." She said it so calmly, too calmly. As if it was just an occupational hazard, a little story you tell to strangers to pass the time.

The scissors nearly slipped from his grasp. "Holy shit."

"Yeah, not fun." It was the moment she realised her world had changed, now forever starved for help. There was no going back.

He thought of one final question, the one question whose truth terrified him more than the others. "How old were you?"

"Eight."

Louis didn't dare test his luck any further, his curiosity reaching its limit. She was right, he had no idea what people were capable of behind the school walls. The things she had seen, the things she was forced to live through...he wished he could take it all away. Replace her horrid memories with calmer ones.

There was always their purple house.

As her hair got shorter and shorter, he began to cut slower and slower, not wanting their brief time together to end. After this, it's back to the grim world. Back to the endless fight. He was so lost in concentration he hadn't noticed Clem staring blatantly at his reflection for the past few minutes. He wasn't the only curious cat in the room.

"Whatcha thinking about now?"

"Wondering where I can find purple paint. For our house." He chirped. Talking about this dream house always put them both in a better mood, despite the likelihood of them ever seeing it was slim to none. It was their safe haven, a world away from this one where they could do whatever and be whoever.

"Ah, right. I haven't been able to come across any. We might have to consider a different colour."

Louis nearly choked on the very prospect, his hands waving around violently in disbelief, despite wielding a sharp blade. "Never! I am building you that house and it's going to be purple."

"Why so set on purple?"

He slowed to a near crawl, pondering over his word choice. "Well, you said at the party purple was your dads favourite colour. Take it as a gift of good faith, I am dating his daughter after all."

Clem could only hope there was enough hair left to hide her burning ears. "He would like you." She whispered just for him, despite being alone.

"You think so?" The glee in his voice was obvious, his posture straightening up.

"If he didn't I'd make him. He had a pretty good singing voice, I'm sure you'd sing duets together, driving both me and my mom crazy." If this were a normal world that is. Perhaps they would go to high school together, go to the movies, skip class or whatever it was teenagers would do. Hiding from walkers would be replaced with games of tag, repeated bowls of rice would become pizza and endless junk food.

"You okay?"

Her fantasy world gone before her eyes just as quickly as it appeared, Clem ran a hand over her shadowed face, repressing the tears that always threatened her when she considered all that could have been. "I miss them."

"Sorry, shouldn't have brought them up." Louis kissed the top of her head, hoping it would soothe her subtle trembling. The original task of cutting her hair now gone from both their minds as they basked in this secret grief. A grief they both knew the other felt, grief for a world long gone from their grasp.

Her hand slid over the top of his, intertwining their fingers, her thumb tracing each line and callous present. Memorising everything about him. "No, it's fine. Really, I'm glad I can talk to you about them."

He squeezed her hand, letting this moment sink into his heart. It was moments like these he would turn to on his more difficult nights, where monsters pulled themselves out of every dark corner. She was a light, protecting him in more ways than she knew. "You wanna know a secret? Sometimes I'm thankful for the apocalypse."

"You're what now?"

"Think about it. You used to live in Georgia, we probably never would have met had you not needed to bounce between cities for survival," He spoke gently into her hair, never breaking away from her. "I know we've lost people, I've made plenty of mistakes, but if going through all that meant I got to meet you, you best believe I'd do it all again."

And there it was, a confession that completely destroyed and rescued both of them.

Clementine couldn't bear to look at him, for her own self-restraint lest she become a puddle of tears. Grabbing onto the lining of his coat, she pulled herself into his inviting arms, burying her head in the warm crook of his neck. "You always talk about how you're the lucky one," Swallowing the strong lump within her throat, she bore her heart to him. "You may not have been the one to drag me out of that car crash, but you saved me that day and continue to every day since. It's always been the other way around."

His words got caught somewhere between his heart and his mouth, an amalgamation of thoughts moulding together in his mind. He stood there, unsure of when he had dropped the scissors and his arms had clung to her waist, gripping her tighter than before. The two fit together like pieces of a puzzle, completing each other. "Well...I think that's just about the most romantic thing anyone has ever told me," They both laughed in unison, now admiring each other's soft eyes. Their arms still wrapped around the other, not wanting to depart just yet. "Thank you, Clementine. Perhaps we're both lucky."

He planted a chaste kiss to her nose as their foreheads collided, his fingers drawing intricate circles on her lower back. "You're right," Her voice now back to a whisper only meant for his ears. "I don't want a normal world if it means you're not apart of it."

They could have remained within that tiny bathroom holding each other for a lifetime. Instead, they both let their young love mend the cracks of their past. His heart thumped from deep within, echoing in her ear. The slow, rhythmic beat had lulled her to sleep many nights. Even his heart made beautiful music.

"I have one last question for you," Clementine asked, no more traces of pain or regret laced within her words.

Louis glanced down at her, marvelling at their height difference. "Go ahead."

She beamed up at him, her chin prodding his chest. There was that devilish gleam in her eyes once again, unmatched by her innocent smile. "Does my hair look bad?"