Well. She wouldn’t be keeping these cookies after all. Nurse reflexes had kicked in like lightning and she was holding Shelby’s hair back out of her face even before the milky porridge met with the snickerdoodles. Poor thing. It hadn’t even mingled in her stomach long enough to be gross, mostly it was just sad. The passengers who had noticed didn’t stay close enough to find out. That was fine, Shelby probably wanted space. She looked like she was about to cry.

”…I’m so sorry…”

Zinnia patted her shoulder reassuringly and offered the teatowel to wipe her face and mouth. It was only going to cover up the mess and end up in the bin with the rest of it at their stop.

“No harm done. Well, maybe to the cookies, but it’s ok!” She could use the practise. But seeing as her last kitchen joke had gone down like a tonne of bricks she decided to keep that one to herself.

Shelby took deep, steadying breaths like she had showed her (such a quick learner!) and soon all the evidence was stowed under the teatowel. Except for the expression on Shelby’s face that was.

“Sorry if I said something… I can really miss the cues sometimes. Are you ok to hang on ‘til we get to our stop or do you want to get off now?”

Because if she needed air they could catch the next bus, but if she wanted to get a cheapie bottle of water to rinse her mouth then they were better off just staying on the bus. The other passengers didn’t dare to make eye contact and Zinnia was glad. She didn’t really feel like staring anyone down now that she had upset the little oyster shell.

She cleaned herself up with the napkin, sitting back in her chair and gripping her stomach a little harder than before. It was empty now, which was good for all future barfing incidents... but also meant that the good work she'd managed to do was undone. She'd have to try all aver again when she got back to the mansion.

The cookies were obviously a goner, but Zinnia took it like a champ. Shelby was infinitely grateful for that. "I'll be fine.. I think. Just... Just try not to bring up anything about cooking..." It was a weird request, and she wasn't about to go into detail on it, but thankfully it was also easy to pass off on just having a sensitive stomach.

"I'll wait till our stop... the store should have a drinking fountain. I can clean up a little there." She eyed the basket and cringed. "Can i hold those at least? I don't want them leaking on you or anything... I think i've already subjected you to enough.."

Zinn made a strongly worded mental note not to bring up cooking again lest Shelby bring up something else. Not that she would have anything else left by the look of things.

Pinkie offered to hold the basket and Zinn didn’t fight her on it. She passed the basket over gently and patted her hand.

“All good, I’ve had worse before.”

A nurse was endlessly getting splattered, dripped, hurked or otherwise being on the receiving end of a number of delightful things. She knew better than to mention blood and guts though. That was just asking for more retching from poor Shelby.

“How long does hair-doing normally take?”

She wasn’t in any rush, meeting Jac after work was somewhat spontaneous, and this spontaneity had been taken over by hair. Mostly she was just trying to turn the conversation around to something that would make Shelby a little less pallid. She made a mental note to buy some milk and crackers if the convenience store had them, or instant mashed potatoes, that was just about the most plain thing she could think of, and if Shelby was having trouble keeping down plain porridge it called for drastic blandness.

Shuddering, she happily agreed to change the subject. "It depends, really. On average I leave the dye in my hair about 45 minutes or so, and then you rinse it out." It helped that the dye she typically used had very strict directions.

"For your hair it will be about the same, but I'll have to work quickly. You generally want the 45 minute wait to start after the last of the dye is in." She had settled her bag next to her, and was hovering the the basket between her legs.

"For the hidden part I don't think it will take too long. And while yours is setting in I can touch mine up." Hers would be easier, too. She really just needed to take care of the roots. "Really, the only part that will be time consuming is the bleaching part. I'll have to take some of the color out of your hair before we can put the other colors back in."

They would need to set up some sort of assembly line for all the colours to get them in quickly one after another. So many bowls. She nodded at Shelby’s assessment of the timeframe.

“I haven’t had a cool hair colour before, I’m a little nervous.”

She chuckled, her hair was generally more contained rather than maintained. Having a bit of special colour in it would probably it got a bit more attention. She was keen for the colour. She was slightly less keen to find out whether it was something her Mom would be cool with, or if she was going to be roasted for it. There were some benefits of being back home, and definitely some negatives.

“How long have you had cool hair?”

It seemed like the sort of thing that once you did once it would be hard to go back to plain hair. She was fairly confident that she wouldn’t meet any resistance from either of her workplaces regarding hair, with all the plethora of visible mutations body mods had fallen to the wayside in terms of raising eyebrows.

The bus rumbled towards their stop and as it approached Zinnia pressed the button signalling that they were getting off. A few people eyed them, but that was about as forthright as anyone was with their disapproval either of the pair or the basket.

"That's pretty normal. Kinda feels like taking the plunge, huh?" She smiled shakily and scratched the back of her head.

"I've been messing with my hair since Junior high." She fiddled with her own hair, glancing at the slightly frizzy ends. "Started with the ends, then went full color the next year. I started with a really deep red."

She paused, and then added in, "I went to black after that, and then Orange." She'd been orange for a few years, too. Bright, fruity orange. It had been her favorite until pink. "And now pink!"

The bus rumbled to a stop and she waited for Zinnia to get up first before un-wedging herself from her corner. Once they were on the street she promptly deposited the ruined basket and cookies into the nearest trash can, and pointed across the street to where the store was. "That's it right over there."

She sidled up to a cross walk and waited, glancing at Zinnia as she tugged her bag back up onto her shoulder. "It's not terribly bad, though, the hair dye. If you end up hating it there are plenty of ways to remove the color and go back to normal."

She started across the street when the light changed. "And as long as you don't try to bleach it too often, the color doesn't do a whole lot of damage to your hair." Someone bumped into her as she moved past, checking her shoulder lightly. She turned to look as she walked.

"Dang, Girl! Do the drapes match the carpet?"

Rolling her eyes and ignoring the comment, and turned back around to keep walking. "You also have to grow a second skin to comments pretty quickly."

Sounded like she had dipped a toe in (so to speak) before taking the full plunge, Zinnia felt less like a dork for wanting to start semi-hidden.

“All the colours!”

She would have the advantage of seeing each of the assortment of colours and how it behaved with her hair. Then if she wanted to commit to one particular colour she would have an idea of how it might look. It was almost like cheating. She followed Shelby’s lead towards the little store, flipping a choice finger to the passing sphincter.

Shelby’s mention of a second skin made her a little abashed. Perhaps she should have just kept her hands in her pockets… That was something she would have to practice at. A rainbow had certain implications, in this case they happened to be true as she was indeed dating a girl, but she was well aware that she might cop a little more flack than usual if she was sporting her pride so visibly. She might actually have a chance at slightly understanding what those with a visible mutation would go through.

“Yeah, I guess people think it’s fine to just comment on anything even slightly out of the ordinary.”

Be it clothes, hair or skin different was noteworthy.

They made their way into the little convenience store and Zinnia made her way to the fridge to retrieve iced coffee and milk. Plain crackers were next on her list, and dehydrated mashed potatoes if they had any. She grabbed a couple pot-noodles as well, they were pretty plain when the seasoning was skipped.

Shelby smiled at her, chuckling to herself. "I feel likes it's become second nature to most. Anything out of the ordinary among the generic masses must be identified and ostracized."

She stopped and grabbed the door handle, opening it wide for her new friend. "But, that gives us all the more reason to stand out. The more of us there are, the better chances that we will change the numbers in our favor. We won't be so abnormal anymore."

Once she was inside she split up temporarily to grab the supplies she would need. A few throw away bowls, a comb or two. Blue, medical gloves to protect their hands. She grabbed some foil and a few kitchen towels to protect shoulders. Then she headed for the hair care aisle. She regrouped with Zinnia after, her basket packed full of boxed dye and supplies.

"I think I got everything!" She beamed, struggling to hold up the basket.

She was all for safety in numbers. As long as safety didn’t have the duel meaning of superirority. Just because the X-gene made them homo-superior didn’t mean they had to be homo-superior-complex. Peaceful cohabitation was her dream.

Zinnia had managed to gather all the ingredients plus some additional snacks and things (Shelby might not be able to stomach them, but if she was chilling with bleach and dye for 45mins she wanted to have tasty things handy). They reconvened and compared baskets. They had everything they needed.

"Yaaas!"

A quick exchange of goods and green and a short bus ride later and they were back at the mansion. She never even saw the informant who scampered off to alert a certain someone to their return.

She let Shelby lead the way, focussing instead on carrying the bags safely. The last thing she wanted was an explosion of ink all over the mansion carpets. Plus, she didn’t actually know where Shelby’s room was and she was somewhat wary of the seemingly-ever-changing corridors.

“Let’s do this thing!”

She bounced a little with excitement. Just a little. Somewhere not that far away they were being dobbed on. But there was nothing the receiver of the news could do about it. Yet.

She led the way to her room with ease, eyeballing Saph's door as she passed it. It was closer, but she hardly wanted to wreck his bathroom with dye. "This one right here." She unlocked it and shouldered her way in, dropping her back and stuff off on the floor just inside. The walls of her room were decorated with various paintings, some only recently started, some already finished. The subject matter varied greatly. She set the bag of good down on her bed and sighed happily.

"Erm, ignore the mess if you can. I'm still in the process of feelings things out for decorating."

Luckily for zinnia, Shelby had the tools of an artist at her disposal so they both wouldn't have to try and cram themselves into her small bathroom. She dropped down and dug a pile of rolled up sheets from under her bed. Heavy duty fabric meant to protect the carpets and furniture while painting rooms. She adored them for easy of cleanup when she pained her pictures. She made quick work of laying a few out, and by the time she was done her room looked very much like it was primed and ready to protect everything but the ceiling from a paint explosion.

"Alright," She started, digging out a spare t-shirt for Zinni and a chair. "You can put this on if you want, to protect your clothes. I have tons of them for when I paint." If you looked closely, you could see splatters of different shades decorated the fabric.

"I think it will be easier doing it right out here instead of in my tiny bathroom. I'll do your hair first, and then when you go in to take a shower I can throw my stuff in."

She cracked open the packet of gloved and slid a pair on, then set about getting the bleach and dye bowls ready.

"Any reservations before we start?" She chuckled.

It wasn’t a dirty mess, more the mess of an artist, with paint and canvasses and things scattered about. Which was fitting really. Zinnia was careful not to step on anything important and plopped her bags onto the bed next to the bag of dyes et al. The more Shelby covered up, the wider her eyes grew. Exactly how messy of a process was this? Surely they wouldn’t get any on the walls… Actually, given the risk that even a small stumble would smear the walls with dye was enough for her to come around to the whole prevention-better-than-cure thought process.

Doing the tiny room tango wasn’t top of her to-do list, so she was happy to take up the alternative. It meant they could open the window as well, to alleviate some of the strong chemical smell.

A quick change later and a nervous brush of her hair later she wiggled into the chair. Shelby checked if she was having reservations as she slapped the gloves on in that particular way. Zinnia knew it well, it was the way to put on gloves if you wanted to scare the person you were putting gloves on to deal with. It was one of her favourites for problematic patients. It was just something about that rubber on skin slap that made the body clench.

"Any reservations before we start?" The chuckle was an added level of mean.

“Nope!”

Yes. Very yes. She was actually sweating a tiny bit. It was such a big change!

The bleach was quickly and skillfully applied to the place where her hair split if she had it half up and half down and soon the dyes were all squidged into their respective bowls.

Yes, windows were good. Too many times had she tried to dye her hair in un-ventilated areas. Too many brain cells she had lost.

She giggled at the other woman's apparent enthusiasm and set to work. First she used one of her combs to separate pre-combed hair. She tried to find the best place for a hidden color job to go; not to low or to high. Somewhere around the middle of the back of the head. Maybe top-middle. She shook the bleach bottle, one finger secure over the tip, until it was well mixed and started to apply. Shelby went ahead and did the bleaching in three different sections to make it easier, foil wrapping one after another until she was done, then she let them sit.

"Okay, those should be good... we just have to check on them every few minutes to make sure they are lightening correctly, and not too much."

She set the bleach bottle over by the window so most of the fumes would leave on their own accord, and stepped into her bathroom to grab her travel mirror. It was a decently sized one, which made it easy to apply makeup from her desk, or bed, depending on how lazy she felt at the time.

When she returned, she used it to take a peek at her own roots. The natural color was starting to seep in, and looked nearly brown when compared to the pink that surrounded it. After fishing out one of her many brushes, she snagged the bleach again (and a pair of gloves for Zinni) and approached the sitting woman.

"Wanna help me bleach the crap out of my roots while we wait?"

Zinnia was careful not to nod in case she got a streak of bleach unexpectedly. The bleached sections felt kind of… crunchy? But not in a bad way. The odour was quite strong, and she was grateful for the open window.

"Wanna help me bleach the crap out of my roots while we wait?"

“Sure!”

It was like a reverse colour-by-numbers. The sections which were a darker ginger-brown were the bits that needed painting with the goopey mixture. She donned the gloves and went to work, separating the hair into sections one by one as if she was doing cornrows on her brother and dabbing the bleach onto the non-pink sections. She was careful of ears and foreheads and backs-of-the-neck to ensure she didn’t make too much of a mess, and soon she was done. She surveyed her work critically.

“Are we meant to… do your eyebrows?”

She wasn’t sure whether one would match their eyebrows to their head colour. Working with bleach that close to the eyes was a dangerous game, but it was probably safer with two people than with one trying to work with the mirror image flippery.

She sat patiently, keeping an eye on the time and taking a break or two to check on her hair, while Zinnia went to work. By the time her roots were saturated, Zinnia's hair had started to lighten to the point that Shelby felt they could work with it.

"Nope, never been brave enough to match the eyebrows to the hair." She took the squirt bottle and brush and moved it back to the window, then clipped the rest of her hair back and out of the way. "The whole 'if you screw up you lose your eyebrows' thing was a real problem for me. Heh."

Turning back, she slipped on a fresh pair of gloves and peeled the foil back so she could take a final look at it. The end result was ever so slightly yellow blonde locks. Smiling, Shelby started to remove the foils and clipped all of the bleached bits all together. "Looks like its pretty much as good as we need it. You can go rinse all of the bleach out now, then i'll dry your hair and we can add the rainbow in!"

She wandered back over to the bed and fished her own boxed dye out, popping it open to look at bottle. She generally liked to use bowls and her fingers instead, since it was much less messy in her opinion, but she was also feeling exceedingly lazy today. She fished the ingredients out and mixed them all together, then screwed the un-snipped lid back on. (mistake numero uno)

When Zinnia came back out from the shower she hopped in to rinse off her own head, and grabbed the blow drier on the way back out. "Have you ever thought about getting any piercings or tattoos?" Shelby had her own metal, mostly gathered in her ears. The visible bars that spanned her cartilage were the most obvious part, with the small tunnels in her lobes a close second. She hadn't even thought to get any on the rest of her body, or 'personal canvas' as she liked to call it.

People need eyebrows, without them, they just look odd. It was one of her favourite things to do for moral was to visit the chemo patients and help them put on eyebrows, some of the longer-term patients had even got them tattooed on rather than re-applying them each morning. Plus then there was no trickle-risk if it was particularly hot outside or if it rained.

After a quick check she was cleared for rinsing duty and she ducked into the little adjoining bathroom to get it done. She stuck her head in under the showerhead and scrubbed at it until most of the chemical smell had dissipated and she couldn’t feel any more crunchy bits of bleach within. She borrowed a towel that was hanging by the sink to squeeze the most of the water out then returned to Shelby. The fact that her natural hair poofing up under the hairdryer might not be what Shelby was used to never even crossed her mind.

“I’ve got a little one,” she showed the teardrop on her wrist, “and my belly button done, I like them and all, but tattoo’s don’t show up as well on my skin as some others so I probably wouldn’t get a whole piece done.” Or anything with intricate detail, like pictures… There really needed to be an ink that was blacker than black.

Scarification was a far more dramatic option for her, but one she had never been brave enough to seriously consider.

“How about you?”

She ruffled the towel through her hair and shook her head to loosen the wild curls from the towely confines. It would need to be drier to puff up completely around her head, but it was making an effort.