Work Text:
Exhaustion is the usual state of being now. They're working hard, in the home stretch, needing to make every day of filming count. But when Aidan opened the door, he saw more than simple weariness on Richard's face. It's the slight furrow in the brow that hasn't yet smoothed, the smile that doesn't yet fully reach his eyes.
"Your hair's getting too long." Aidan rubbed his hand over Richard's close-cropped head, a look of mock disapproval furrowing his brow. "Sit down. I'll fix it."
Richard saw the concern in Aidan's eyes mere moments before it's masked, pushed back behind amusement and the usual warm sexuality, and understood this was about much more than hair. Aidan thought he could be too serious, that he needed to relax more into his own skin at the end of the day. And while he didn't agree there was a problem, he also knew that Thorin was always simmering on a low heat just below the surface, flavoring almost everything Richard did, unless he made a concerted effort to turn him off, or someone else pulled the pot off the burner. Which apparently Aidan intended to do through some ill-thought-out hair ritual.
"You're going to give me a haircut?" he asked, tugging his jacket off, not even trying to hide the incredulousness in his voice. He knew this was a bad idea, especially when he saw the old hair clippers and scissors Aidan had already laid out, clearly a plan concocted long before Richard came over for dinner. "If it needed to be cut, someone would have said."
"Right. And I just did."
"Someone official, like Emma."
"Man, you're lucky she doesn't give you a lobotomy when she's putting your wig on; she's so distracted by your eyes."
Richard rolled said eyes and leaned down for what he intended to be a brief kiss. But Aidan held him fast, playfully but intently deepening the kiss until they both were pleasantly breathless.
"Trust me," he whispered, his focus never wavering.
Richard looked into Aidan's eyes, and the fire and tenderness mingling there seeped into his heart. He nodded once, his voice temporarily trapped in emotion, suddenly looking forward to whatever Aidan had planned. He'd get his hair fixed by a proper barber later in the week.