Work Text:
“Are you sure?”
Zhang Jiale opened his eyes to the fluorescent bathroom lights, then squinted against the bright starbursts that sparked across his vision.
When his gaze cleared, he tipped his head back to look at Lin Jingyan and the pair of scissors held in his hands.
"Yep. Go wild."
"You're putting a lot of faith in me," Lin Jingyan remarked. "The last time I gave anyone a haircut, I messed up awfully.”
"Eh," Zhang Jiale said. "If that happens, I'll make wearing hats my new thing."
"If you say so. Well, take one last look at this." Lin Jingyan ran his fingers through the soft length of Zhang Jiale's hair. Strands of brown-black hair, darkening from the slow fading of dye over the past few months, fell to frame his face.
Zhang Jiale looked before him, and his reflection in the mirror looked back. It was and it wasn't the bright-eyed youth who'd thrown all his hopes into a new dream, once upon a time; the loyal and desperate supplicant who'd given Hundred Blossoms everything he'd had and then some; the embittered widower who'd spent nearly two years sequestered in grief yet who could not bear to truly leave the past behind.
Zhang Jiale's lips quirked upwards. "New team, new me."
"A new beginning," Lin Jingyan agreed, and began to cut.