Chapter Text
Hyunjin closed his eyes as they drove through the city, letting his head rest against the cool glass of the passenger window. It was rare for him to be the only member in the car with their manager, but Hyunjin needed to go get his hair touched up since they had returned from their world tour. The dark reddish-brown was more high maintenance than they had expected, and Hyunjin was thankful that they would just be stripping it out and retouching his roots this morning. The blond wasn’t going to be the final look; Hyunjin already knew that there would be another fashion color going on his hair in a few weeks, once they were closer to their next big event. But his hair was definitely starting to show signs of damage, so they were having to take it in stages to avoid losing all of the length he’d managed to get since he’d started to grow his hair out again.
The only good thing about having to be up so early for a hair appointment was the fact that he would be able to nap while his hair was processing. Hyunjin was already looking forward to that; despite the fact that he’d gone to bed early the previous evening, he’d woken up still feeling exhausted. His whole body just felt heavy and sluggish, almost as if he was moving through water. He didn’t feel sick, exactly, but he could tell that something wasn’t quite right. There really wasn’t anything wrong that Hyunjin could put his finger on - nothing that he could explain in a way that would make sense to anyone else. So he’d written it off as just being tired, getting up and getting himself ready when the manager had called him that morning to let him know that he was on the way to pick him up for his salon appointment.
“Are you okay?” Sunghyun, the manager driving Hyunjin to his appointment, asked.
Hyunjin forced his eyes open, pulling down the visor to look at himself in the mirror. “Do I look that bad?” he asked, noting the fact that his eyes were kind of puffy and his skin was much paler than usual. He almost wished that Sunghyun wasn’t a beta like himself, because their noses weren’t quite as strong when it came to picking up changes in people’s scents. Given how bad he looked, Hyunjin was starting to wonder if he wasn’t starting to come down with something.
“You look exhausted,” the manager admitted.
“I can nap while my hair processes,” Hyunjin replied.
“You boys need to take better care of yourselves when you have time off… how late were you up last night painting?” Sunghyun sighed, as he pulled up in front of the salon to let Hyunjin out. “I’m going to go find a place to park while they get you started… you remember what the plan is, right?”
“Removing the old color, and touching up my roots,” Hyunjin replied, nodding as he pulled down his hat just a bit and put on a mask before he started to get out of the car. Although the salon was supposed to already know the plan - their stylists were always in touch with the salon about what they had coming up and what was supposed to be done in terms of colors for each of the members for each major scheduled event - there was always a chance that things might have been transmitted wrong. It was Hyunjin’s responsibility to know the plan as well, so that he could make sure that the salon didn’t get confused.
“Hyunjin-ssi… it’s good to see you again. Ready to get started?” Hayoung, the stylist that usually worked on his hair, asked as he walked in.
“Of course, noona,” he replied, smiling and following the kind older omega up the stairs and into the private room where she would be working on his hair.
“Right… so the plan today is to get out what’s left of the reddish-brown and then do a touch-up on your roots, right?” Hayoung asked, as she sat Hyunjin down and got him ready to get started on his hair.
“Right. Let me take a look…” Hyunjin closed his eyes as Hayoung played with his hair for a moment, relaxing under her careful attention. “I think we probably need to do a little trim, too… it’s not bad, but there is some splitting starting down here at the ends that we definitely want to take care of before it gets any worse.”
“That’s fine,” Hyunjin replied, nodding. “I want to keep as much length as possible, but we were doing a lot to it on tour so I’m sure it’s a mess…”
“I’ve seen a lot worse, trust me. Let me go mix up the color remover, and we’ll get started.”
Hyunjin got comfortable, letting his eyes close as he waited for Hayoung to come back so that they could actually get started.
“You must still be tired from tour…” Hayoung commented. Hyunjin jerked up, blinking a few times to get his vision to clear as he glanced up at the stylist in the mirror. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you start to fall asleep in my chair before we’ve even gotten started…”
“Mianhe… I’m just really tired this morning…” Hyunjin began, shaking his head.
He watched as Hayoung raised an eyebrow, taking a deep breath. “What’s going on?” she asked carefully, as she put on a clean pair of gloves and began working on painting the color remover over the mix of brown and faded pink that was left of his original bright red hair color and the brown they had done to try and make the upkeep a little easier for the world tour.
“I’m not really sure,” Hyunjin admitted. “I just feel… off.”
Hayoung nodded. “Your scent is a little different today,” the woman replied. Hyunjin watched her in the mirror for a moment, wondering if she would elaborate; he’d forgotten that the stylist was an omega, and that she would be able to pick up on something like that more easily than Hyunjin or Sunghyun would.
“What do you mean?” Hyunjin asked, when it became apparent that she wasn’t going to say anything else without being asked.
“Your scent is sweeter than normal… more obvious,” Hayoung explained. “Not like you’re getting sick… I don’t really know how to explain it exactly. It’s almost omega-like, honestly.”
Hyunjin wanted to nod, but he didn’t particularly want to mess up what the stylist was doing as she continued to paint the color remover into his hair. “It’s probably just exhaustion… the tour was really long, and we didn’t get a lot of time off to relax,” Hyunjin began. “We have a pretty light week… I’m sure I’ll feel better once I’ve had some more time to rest.”
“Hopefully you’re right,” Hayoung replied, smiling before she went back to working on his hair. “We’ll get this done as quickly as we can, so that you can take a nap here in the chair while it processes.”
“Thank you, noona,” Hyunjin replied.
Hayoung was nothing if not efficient, and soon enough she was pulling off her gloves. “Right… we’ll let this process for a bit while you try to get a quick nap in. I’ll be in and out checking on how this is going, but I’ll try not to wake you up until it’s time to rinse this out.”
“Thank you again, noona,” Hyunjin commented, smiling at her before she headed out of the room to give him the time to at least get a little bit of a nap.
Hyunjin honestly didn’t feel much better by the time Hayoung was shaking him awake to go to the shampoo bowls, but he smiled and pretended that everything was fine despite the fact that he honestly felt more tired after his little nap. He tried not to make it obvious that he just wanted to find somewhere to lay down, buy Hyunjin could see that Hayoung was keeping a close eye on him as they made their way through the salon.
Hyunjin honestly lost track of how long it all took, nodding off again as the bleach had to process on the hair at his scalp and then the toner to get it to the same shade as the blond that had been revealed once the red and brown were removed. By the time Hayoung was done, Hyunjin looked as though his hair grew out of his head in this particularly light shade of blond. It was only a little shorter than it had been when he’d walked into the salon a few hours earlier, which Hyunjin was happy with. “It looks really good…” Hyunjin commented, running a hand through his hair. “Thank you, noona.”
“Go get yourself some rest,” Hayoung instructed, as she handed Hyunjin his hat and mask.