Chapter Text
Laying on the couch with long auburn hair draped over Charles’s legs, the two were mostly silent. Their eyes were fixed on the movie playing on the TV but Erika wasn’t listening to anything that was being said, she didn’t even know what movie was playing honestly. Or if it was still playing. All she was conscious about was the hand trailing through her hair and the thoughts in her mind.
It wasn’t the first time she had entertained the idea and she was sure it wouldn’t be the last. The real question was if there would ever be a time when she gave in to the urge and did something about it.
Her eyes slipped shut as she thought about how easy it would be. Just cut her hair, and shorten it from halfway down her back to something much shorter. A close cut maybe. Not shaving her hair but nothing down on her neck, nothing to worry about getting in her eyes. She would be able to wash her hair in the same length of time it took Charles. Or less, she wanted her hair shorter than he kept his.
Was that something to worry about? She wanted a shorter haircut than her fiancé had. Would Charles be okay with that? He seemed to always like her hair, playing with it all the time, keeping his fingers buried in it, carding through it.
Then again, if he didn’t like it, what would they do? It was something Erika wanted and it was her hair. She was certain Charles would never refuse to carry on their relationship or dump her for something as simple and trivial as her hair.
“What are you thinking?” Charles asked a gentle tug to her hair, just to prove her point. Well, it was actually just enough to get her attention, not enough for pain or anything, a grounding pressure mostly.
“I want to cut my hair,” Erika replied, “Do you think you can do it?”
“What? Now?” Charles asked, looking down at her, “Why don’t you just make an appointment or something?”
“Because if I take the time to do that, I’ll talk myself out of it again like I have the last six times I’ve talked myself into it. I want to do it now while I have the nerve. It never fully leaves, it just is enough time for me to wonder what you’d think and our friends and my mother and then I decide it’s best to just get it trimmed but now that I’m talking about it I want it cut.”
“Okay, okay,” Charles says, calmly, as though trying to get her to relax a little as well but not daring to say those words. “I can try to cut your hair. We have that set I got last year for Christmas.” From Raven who was trying to leave hints for her brother. He didn’t take them and Erika was kind of glad. “How short do you want it?”
Erika mumbled the answer under her breath and Charles looked down at her, an eyebrow raised. “One more time, Darling?”
“Shorter than yours,” She said, speaking up a little, nervous to admit it, chewing on her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Oh,” Charles said, looking surprised, but quickly covering it up, “Okay, we can try to do that. Why don’t you go get a chair in the bathroom? I’ll get the set to cut it with and we can see what we can do.”
Erika nodded and stood, going to collect a chair from the kitchen as Charles moved into his chair and then collected the kit. The two met up again in the bathroom where Erika had wrapped a towel around her shoulders to protect her—Charles—shirt from the falling hair and sat in the chair.
“Okay,” Charles said, unzipping the kit to look at what they had. Clipper heads for different sizes, razors, scissors, combs, and more stuff than he knew what to do with. “I think the best thing to do would just be to cut it short, get it to your shoulders, maybe a little above that, and then work on the styling aspect. If this goes bad then at least that will be your motivation to actually get it done professionally.”
Erika nodded, “Alright, sounds like a good plan to me. Makes sense.” Maybe she shouldn’t trust Charles with this. She would trust him with her life, hold a gun to her head, knife to her back, but her hair and a set of clippers? Or a pair of scissors?
“Last chance to back out,” Charles offered and Erika took a deep breath but shook her head.
“Just start cutting. Get it off me,” She had a new determination about her now than she did before. She wanted it gone and would be happy to see it gone. Even if it did look terrible until she could get it fixed the next day. It would be a step in the right direction. A first step to doing something she had wanted to do for years.
She could feel Charles cringing as the scissors went through her hair right at the nape of her neck, the cold metal brushing against her, making her shiver. No part of her was cringing though. It felt like ten pounds falling as the hair hit the floor. She was sure that after this, she would have never felt more free.
It was a slow process. Handfuls of hair falling and then it was all short. She was sure she looked a little ridiculous but then Charles went in with the clippers, trimming up around his neck and the back of his head.
“You know,” Erika said, “Those are the ones to cut it the longest right? You could just use that all over my head. If something goes wrong, I will get it fixed. If it doesn’t suit me then in a month or so I can get it cut again professionally. There’s no need to do anything too fancy.”
“Need to trim it up a little after going over it. Just around your ears and collar at least, I think. I really have no experience with this either but we’ll see how it goes,” Charles offered as he kept going.
After a while longer, he found himself in front of Erika, tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration and she was much too distracted by how cute he was to think about anything else.
“What are you looking at?” Charles asked a moment later and Erika watched him sitting back, no longer leaning in close.
“You,” Erika replied without hesitation. “You’re very cute, if you hadn’t noticed.” Seeing Charles blush wasn’t the reason she said it but it certainly did have the desired effect anyway.
“Shut up,” Charles said, taking off the head of the clippers and putting it to the side to pick up the scissors. Slowly, he worked his way around Erika’s ears, getting the bits of hair sticking out around them. It didn’t take long before he rolled back and smiled. “Done.”
Erika smiled at him and then took a deep breath before standing up and turning to look in the mirror. A bright smile was on her face as she turned her head one way and then the other.
“Thank you, it looks amazing,” She said, unable to pull her eyes away from the mirror.
“I think it looks rather handsome,” Charles commented and Erika felt something more at that comment. A warmth in her chest, tears in her eyes, an excitement that had never been matched before.
Slowly, she turned to look at Charles with a racing heart, “What?” She asked softly, a desperate attempt to hear it again and Charles wasn’t going to disappoint.
“I think you look handsome,” He replied in a soft voice, his head tilting a little, looking at Erika as though he was trying to decide if he had made the right decision or a very wrong decision.
If Erika was being honest, she wasn’t sure either. But she did smile brighter and wrap her arms around Charles. This was something they would need to discuss at some point, she knew, but first, there were some things she would need to sort out for herself.