How Green Becomes Wood

"Oh, like a Bomb Pop?" She asked brightly, "That's really cute! I don't know why I've never thought of that, I should do the Nerds bomb pop, have you seen those? They're so good, honestly I prefer them, but you're Classic, I like that. It's perfect for summer."
 
Alec stared at her. "A bomb pop?" he said weakly as realization dawned. "Oh... Oh no." He pulled up a mental image of the iced treat and realized that, yes, that was exactly what his hair would have looked like. He had never had one, himself, they were always just out of financial reach, but he remembered seeing them in the grocery frozen section. "Oh no, he said again and started laughing. "I didn't even think of that!" he crowed, embarrassed and amused at the same time.
 
"Oh," She laughed, putting her hand over her mouth, "I'm sorry, dude, I thought that was intentional! I mean, if you want to go for it, I definitely think you could pull it off, you've got great bone structure, but I totally understand if you want to think it through."

Nearby, Dark took out his phone and looked something up online, glanced at Alec, and then looked back at his phone before putting it away. The stylist was right.
 
Alec caught Dark's movement in the corner of the mirror and pointed at Dark's image. "I saw that! You agree with her." He shook his head, laughing as his embarrassment faded. "If my brother catches onto the similarity, there's no way he'll ever let me live it down. I think I'd better rethink this." He squinted at his reflection in the mirror. "Hmm. What if it was just white or just blue instead of both?"
 
Dark held up one hand, "Habibi, I swear to you, I was only looking to familiarize myself with what a bomb pop is!"

"A likely story," The stylist chuckled, looking at Alec and fluffing his hair with one hand, "We could just do blue. We could maybe put white beneath the blue rather than between it, if you really wanted the white, and that might be enough to shake the similarities? Plus the white would be the weakest portion, because it needs to be bleached the most, so it might be easier to manage that way. But it is whatever you prefer. I will warn you, blue hair dye tends to fade green."
 
Alec debated and considered the dangers of blue dye. Finally, he gave a nod. "Blue!" he declared. "If it fades to green, maybe it'll look good, and if not, well, I can always get it trimmed off, right? Let's do it!"
 
"If you use the right toner that will help," The stylist told him, "I'm going to go mix the bleach so we can get this party started! Are we cutting anything? How far up do you want the blue to go, and do you want a hard line or more of a gradient? If you want a full gradient, we can also do a really lovely red to purple to blue, but we can make it work just red and blue."
 
"A gradient would be cool if you could do it! I was thinking... two inches? Maybe three with the gradient?" Alec suggested. "I want the red base to be really solid no matter what we do."
 
The stylist nodded, agreeing with his vision, and then left him to mix up the bleach. When she returned, with all of the relevant accoutrements, she took out the blush and said, "Alright, we're going to do a strand test first, just to see how easily your natural colour lifts, okay?" Then she took the ideal strand and, before brushing any bleach onto it, asked, "Are you ready?"
 
A good portion of the start was painting bleach on and then waiting. The test strand was promising, so she set about applying bleach in the correct areas to the entirety of his head, and then they needed to wait for some time while it lifted.

During all of it, Dark sat patiently, occasionally chatting with Alec, occasionally checking his phone, and when the stylist was really just making conversation with Alec, he sat back and read a book, although he still listened in, just in case.
 
Alec enjoyed talking to the stylist and asking questions about what she was doing or how things worked. He also talked about her and learned more about her, just generally conversing. Sometimes, he'd bring his father into the conversation, once referring to Dark as his father without even thinking about it. It was a surprisingly boring process, but the people were fun!
 
She made sure to show Alec his hair was fully bleached and toned to get his approval. Once it came to it, and they had talked about the exact shade of blue he was looking for, she mixed it and then got to work painting and foiling his head before coming to another round of waiting.

With a bit of the dye left over, she jokingly asked Dark if he thought about getting a blue streak, to which he replied that he wasn't interested in having his hair bleached, so he did not expect it would show up.

Finally, after the rest of the waiting was done, she brought Alec to the sink to wash the dye out before bringing him to the chair and blow drying it so he could see the final product.
 
Seeing his hair bleached was actually kind of unnerving, but he trusted the process, and by the time it was finally over, he was glad he had! He looked in the mirror and keened in delight, reaching up to cautiously play with it. "This is amazing!" he gasped, delicately touching it and moving it around. "I love it! Ba, what do you think?" He turned and showed it off to Dark excitedly.
 
Alec grinned at the stylist, unable to stop glancing at his image in the mirror. "Thank you! This is absolutely perfect! You got it exactly the way I wanted, and! I don't look like a sugary confection." He winked at the stylist.
 
Alec considered the questions seriously as he looked at himself. "I think... I think this is another step in discovering who I am," he said, satisfied. "Who I am as just me. More than just the flip side of a coin." He smiled. "It's been fun to learn something new about myself. It's almost like I'm learning about another person, not myself, but strangely better!"
 
"I am thrilled to hear that." The stylist said, "and I'm glad you're allowed to experiment. When I was a teenager, my parents refused to let me come anywhere close to hair dye, and I was so angry about it, because what's the point of having hair if you don't get to express yourself with it?"
 
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