Cutting Hairs

As Fran settles into a new normal with Dot, she finds herself in a position of stark dissociation, the consequences of her actions unable to be repealed. Now she must must choose how to recover from changing herself in a permanently temporary way.

Fran has always had a habit -- unconscious or not, she never quite knew for certain -- of categorising and catastrophising. Such a firm habit it is that she could hardly tell the difference between the workflows if you begged her and provided examples. But Fran also has a habit, she knows, of dissociating and separating herself from the moment that the catastrophe begins to take shape. It's her primary modus when things become too much. And things become too much quite a lot.

Almost too much, if you were to ask her opinion.

That was how she found herself lost and being comforted by Dot. That was how she found herself vomiting on Dave's shoes. That was how she found herself always eating lunch alone at Assuredly -- a rebranding of Totally Real Company that she still didn't understand after almost a year. Indeed, that dissociation is how she finds herself on an ordinary Tuesday evening, staring at a mirror, with the body of her ponytail in one hand, scissors in the other, and her hair no longer reaching far below her shoulders.

Fran hates Tuesdays, but she hates change more than she hates Tuesdays, so why had she just done that?

"Dot," she calls, knowing her partner -- her joy friend, her semi-romantic crush, her slowly strengthening foundation -- will hear her from the other room. She's not sure what to do as Dot's face comes into focus in the mirror, just over Fran's left shoulder, consequently the same side as she's holding aloft the handful of what used to be her hair.

Fran turns to find Dot's expression not horrified, but gentle. "Got to be too much did it?" They aren't smiling. They aren't frowning. It's something like kindness. A kindness Fran has become accustomed to in her time with the enigmatic bariste -- for to be a baristo or barista, one must have a proper gender, Fran reasons -- and has still not found a way to properly interpret.

"I don't know what came over me," Fran's not quite in tears, but she's getting close as she holds the scissors and hair up for Dot to see. "The scissors were there, and then the hair was here." She holds it out, an offering to a fae godling not present to accept the gift.

"Well," Dot sighs, "what's done is done." A meaningless tautology that sounds profound coming from them. "I can see three ways to attack this, Fran," they remain unreadable as they exude something like hope. "I can cut it for you, finding a style that works for now. Or you can keep fighting with it."

"There's a third option," Fran says, recognising its absence in Dot's silence. "What's the third option?"

Dot finally smiles. It almost breaks Fran. "Embrace the weird," they say softly, "become one of the freaks. Stop waking up to Carol King and start waking up to Lzzy Hale." By the time they've finished the words, they're fighting back a laugh, or it seems that way to Fran. Their hands are on the ponytail, promising through their touch to not let it go. "But first, we bind this and put it somewhere. Maybe frame it and the scissors." With the word, Dot takes both from Fran. "'Fran's first rebellion. A diptych of despair and rebirth.'"

The scissors find a place on the counter next to the sink. Dot masterfully wraps the detached ponytail with hair ties in a way that maintains its proper integrity. It too discovers a home by the sink, and Dots hands wrap Fran's midsection. Fran finds the sensation comforting. Safe. And safe is good. It's enough for Fran to let the emotion creep in.

"Why did I do that?" Her tears are already burning at her eyes before they start sliding down her cheeks. "I love my hair."

"It is not ours to question why," Dot says, apparently quoting some lofty philosophical ideal of a long dead poet, "it is only ours to sit and cry."

Fran's steps carry her to the bed, where the sobbing holds her -- more tightly than Dot -- for a few minutes before releasing her and allowing her a moment of clarity. "You said you would cut it. Clean it up? You cut hair?"

Dot makes a sound, something like a giggle. "How do you think this glorious mane stays in perfect condition?" They ruffle their own hair, curls scattering at the sensation before returning to their assigned places.

"Genetics. Genetics and a lot of conditioner." Fran smiles as she shoves Dot playfully. She'd seen the routine first hand every day for the last several months. How long had they been dating? A year? Two? Had she ever seen Dot cut their hair? Had she ever seen them got to a salon? "How does it stay so perfect, if you don't mind?"

"I cut it while you're at the office," Dot says the words with a tone that sounds like they want to say 'obviously' at the end of the sentence. "Once every two weeks. It's my Thursday ritual."

"When you told me that you have a Thursday ritual that I couldn't see," Fran says, reasoning as she goes, "I expected sacrificing goats to Artemis Brauronia or something equally tasteless."

"Brauronia is the bear festival," Dot says, apparently switching into education mode, "and there are no animal sacrifices to Artemis the Protector. You're thinking of Laphria." They start naming off festivals to Artemis and their various practices. Fran barely hears any of it. She's more transfixed by the wonder that is the person sitting next to her. So much so that she doesn't realise when Dot is finished speaking and stares at her for a few seconds in silence. "You in there, Fran?"

"I'm in there." Fran taps her temple, causing her head to shake and her hair to brush lightly on the back of her neck in an unfamiliar way. "I don't think I want it any shorter just yet," she says, running her hands through it and coming up short. "So if you can clean up this mess without shortening it, I'd love that."

"Your wish," Dot says, standing and crossing the room, "is my honour to fulfil, darling."