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Zee’s a comfortable enough seat for Mio to rest on, even if he won’t stop squirming around and avoiding the chance to touch her. He keeps shifting from one hip to the other, then her thighs, down to the actual chair like it’s safer, like Mio isn’t just sitting there waiting on him to get a move on already.
“You ever gonna stop shimmying, Zee, or must I tie you down?”
Oh, he’s so fucking cute whenever she sidles by some innuendo, mind all stumped on what to say and eyes hollowed out, unmoored, a real deer-in-headlights moment. Then his cheeks light up with cherry flashes, warm all down to his neck in a way Mio wants to pet.
Which is the objective here, in a roundabout kind of way.
Not that she’d object to just sitting in his lap all sweet and holding onto a razor like some knockoff genderbent Sweeney Todd.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, lips opening, closing, swallowing back whatever question might’ve been about to come out.
But Mio can see it lingering there on the tip of his tongue and she crosses her arms to wait it out, one eyebrow lifted and god damn that flush of his just keeps going lower.
“How do you know all this?” he asks after a few more seconds of the silent treatment.
The question wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it also wasn’t anywhere near out there enough that Mio had thought he’d be worried about asking it. But seeing as his realisations on gender had all needed to come through in Rader’s fucked up funland, maybe that makes a kind of sense.
“Dad taught me! Used to have to shave before he went to work, and since I never took the bus I’d just watch him go at it each day. He swore by old straight razors and was always proud of never giving into the ‘Cheap, mass market bullshit,’ as he called it. Then, when I was like thirteen or fourteen, I started having gender thoughts and he offered to teach me how to shave properly.”
Mio had a front row seat to watching Zee’s eyes widen and his smile growing wide, hands finally settling into place against her hips.
“That’s adorable.”
“Course it was. Course I was. Not that everyone else agreed with that, though. My teachers were all a little more freaked out than ‘Aw, cute,’ when I showed up to class with one of the razors he bought me to score points with the older kids.”
“Okay,” Zee laughed, warm and full and tinged at the edges of it with a deepening tone that set Mio’s heart on fire. “Yeah, that sounds like something you’d do.”
“Mhm! But he let me keep it, didn’t even punish me for it. I never ended up needing to use one myself, but knowing how to use it is pretty handy. Great way to impress any potential partners.”
“Smart,” Zee said, his eyes closing and body stilling.
“Oh yeah,” she answered, rolling her eyes at how dense he was sometimes. She applied the lather and situated herself to see a little better, hands brushing against his neck as she tilted his chin up. “Only been able to use it once or twice, though. Now, are we going for a devil-inspired goatee or do you want some mutton chops?”
“Mio, if you give me mutton chops, I will shave your head.”
“Ah, jokes on you!” Mio laughed as she leaned in to lay the flat of the blade against Zee’s cheek. “I already did that in high school and looked killer. Dashing, really. Had all the girls and guys fawning over me for weeks.”
“Just weeks?”
“Well, yeah, eventually they were fawning over me for my hilarious wit and fat ass instead.”
“Oh, I can see it,” Zee mumbled as Mio began to shave in earnest.
It’s just thin fuzz for now, but not peach fuzz, the first few red strands coming in nice and firm. It also technically doesn’t need shaving, but Mio had jumped at the chance once Zee said it felt annoying. Just give him a quick, clean shave, thorough and tight, before moving to a massage afterwards.
Just enough of a starting point that Zee could choose a style later and not be afraid of using the instrument.
The minutes slowly passed as Mio attentively shaved Zee down, following along the curve of his neck, his jaw, the subtle hollows and sharper ones, lingering against the skin in the pattern her father had taught her. Once with the grain, once sideways, twice against. Overkill? Yeah, probably, but she’d never had the facial hair to find out on her own and that was how her father had done it. His little idiosyncrasies could live on in Zee, if not in her.
Which was a nice thought, a sweet one that filled her heart with warmth. When she spent too long thinking about it after the last pass of the razor, Zee just opened his eyes and waited until she was ready.
Just another thing about him that she loved, how he’d just allow her the time and space to think through what was ringing around in her head, never impatient as she fought to express herself.
“Dad would have loved to meet you,” she said eventually, her words soft as she set aside the razor.
“And I would’ve loved to meet him. I’m sorry, Mio.”
“Oh,” she said, swatting at his shoulder and leaning back. She remained there a moment, placid and happy enough to let Zee hold her from falling all the way off. “Don’t worry about it. It is what it is, as the kids say. Now, are you ready for a quick wipedown and some aftershave?”
“That’s the smelly stuff, right? Cologne, basically?”
“Eh,” she answered as she leaned away to grab the little bottle she’d chosen randomly from the local store. “Kind of? Has a disinfectant for any nicks. Not that you’re showing any, compliments to your barber.”
“Oh, hush,” Zee said, rolling his eyes and squeezing just a little tighter to her hips. “You did great, Mio. Thanks.”
The towel is warm and damp in her hands, perfect to swipe up any leftover foam from his skin, revealing all the little freckles that Mio so loved to count. She already knew he was handsome, but sitting just above him, this close, it really came out. Roguish in a refined way, his smile warm and kind and green eyes so bright they seemed to glow.
And somehow the big softie still hadn’t seemed to have gotten all her hints to coalesce into actual thought. Mio’s been just about ready to fuck him since day one, but whatever, Zee will undoubtedly move at his own pace and Mio’s more than prepared to wait around for him to figure it out.
In the meantime, she can amuse herself by splashing some aftershave and watching him squirm, laughter filling the room around them.