"Ryou, you just got out of the hospital!" Neil admonished as he ushered the shorter man into his suite. "What are you doing here?"

"I want you to help me do something," Shishido said slowly, a brown paper bag in one hand.

"What?" Neil asked, frowning. "What do you have in the bag?"

Shishido opened it up and showed the contents to Neil, who squealed loudly and did a little dance.

"Oh. My. God!" he laughed, grabbing Shishido and hugging him. "I knew we'd convert you one day!"

"Yes, well, it's because of a simple little word that is what the next shoot is all about."

"What word?" Neil asked, tilting his head to the side as he laid out the contents of the bag, squealing a bit as he handled some of the jars.

"Brunet."

~

"We converted you!" Zak, the photographer, cheered, throwing his arms around Shishido as soon as he saw him. "I'm so proud!"

"Zak!" Neil laughed, pointing the photographer towards the kitchen where the tea was brewing and where the assistants were twittering about. "We need to know if this will mess with the shoot too much."

"No, it shouldn't," Zak said, picking up the jars and inspecting them. "They're semi-permanent too, so it'll be fine. Though, we need to seriously bleach your hair, Ryou."

Shishido sighed and flapped a hand at them. "There's bleach in the bag too. I can always dye my hair back to a solid color, normal or not, later."

"Mm… This opens up new possibilities for you, too," Zak said, brushing Shishido's long hair out. "Since you don't mind dying your hair now." He motioned for Shishido to stand up, and watched the hair fall to his thighs. "Do you mind if we cut your hair a bit? Length-wise, this'll be a sure bitch to play with."

Shishido winced slightly in pain and nodded. "Not too much."

"Small of the back?" one of the assistants asked, a pair of hair cutting scissors in one hand.

Shishido nodded and sighed as he heard the scissors go snip. At least this would be well worth the torture his hair was about to go through. All he had to do was imagine the faces of various people and he would smirk, knowing the good was going to seriously outweigh the bad.

~

"For the first time in my life, I think bleaching might be impossible on hair," one of the assistants sighed, pulling at strands of Shishido's hair. "It's too fine. This might damage it too much."

"Doesn't matter," Shishido said stubbornly. "Just get it to blond so we have a base to work with."

The assistant sighed and continued to apply the bleach to Shishido's hair. "All right. We have to let it sit for a bit, but let someone watch it."

Shishido nodded and put a hand to his hair and then hissed in pain. "Damn, when did my hair decide to become a furnace?"

"The chemicals in the bleach makes your hair hot," Zak sighed, grabbing Shishido's hand and putting it under cold water. "No touchie. We let it sit for a while and then we wash it out and have fun with colors."

~

"Hello?" Atobe asked, picking the phone up on the second ring.

"Hi, Atobe? This is Neil, Ryou's friend."

Atobe grimaced in distaste. "What can I do for you?"

"Get you and your friends' sweet asses down to the studio by 9 am."

"Why should we?" Atobe asked, looking at the clock. It was 7:30 am.

"Trust me," Neil chuckled. "You do not want to miss this. And if that's not an incentive enough, let's just say…you won't recognize Ryou!"

Atobe's eyebrows rose. "We'll be there, then."

"Brilliant," Neil cackled.

~

"Tell me why we're doing this again," Gakuto snapped. "Why should we go see—"

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO YOUR HAIR?!" a voice shrieked out loudly.

The lot of them exchanged mild looks of confusion and apprehension.

"Let's hurry up a bit, eh?" Taki suggested with a grin.

The others nodded and they all pretty much ran the rest of the way to the stupid. Opening the door they frowned. Why were there two blond models?

"RYOU!" Jesse yelled, pointing a finger at the blond in front of him. "HOW COULD YOU!?!"

Shishido smirked, tucking back a strand of black and purple hair. "What? You don't like it?" he said, mock pouting.

"Why are you doing this?" Jesse cried. "You've never done this before!"

"You've never gone back on your word before," Shishido said sweetly. "So these are firsts for us both."

"Why?"

"Why?" Shishido grinned. "I read over the information for the next shoot. They require a brunet, not someone with outrageously colored hair who now is doing a double shoot for Zak for an ad with Jerome Russell."

Jesse looked like he was about to throw things. Instead, he stalked off to hiss angrily at Zak and his assistants, who were all smirking proudly. Neil spotted the intruders and bounced over to them, grabbing Shishido's elbow and dragging him over as well.

"Great! You came, and just on time too!" Neil gushed. He put his hands on Shishido's shoulders and spun the other man a bit. "Looks fantastic, doesn't it? Took us five bloody hours too. We hardly got any sleep."

"You never get any sleep," Shishido said, batting away Neil's hands and regaining his balance from his impromptu spin. "You're too busy screaming half the time and making sure other people don't sleep either."

"Awww," Neil grinned, pulling Shishido into a hug and groping him quickly before Shishido tried to break his hands. "Next time I'll invite you to watch since you're up anyway!"

"Next time I'll buy you a fucking ball gag," Shishido growled, flicking Neil's ear in exasperation. "Off with you, now."

Neil pouted, flounced, and blew them kisses before falling under Jesse's wrath as well.

"What the hell did you do?" Atobe asked in shock.

"Ah," Shishido laughed nervously. "That would be… Bleach, pink hair dye, purple hair dye, and then black hair dye. Oh, and a hair cut."

Gakuto stared, "I call first dibs on grilling you for a magazine!"

"Uh, hell no," Shishido snapped. "You go through Victoria for that, not me. And, thankfully, she doesn't like me doing too many interviews. Something about how me and Neil always end up as a two headed quote machine."

"Jesse did ask a good question," Oshitari said, pushing his glasses up. "Why?"

Shishido scowled, "Because I resent the fact he went back on his word, landed me back in the hospital, and took away the only break I'm probably going to see until my contract is up in eleven months."

"You gonna renew?" Gakuto asked, trying to seem uninterested.

"Probably not," Shishido said with a shrug. "If I do, I'll make sure the terms are looser and there's more for me negotiated into it."

"You did this for a vacation?" Taki asked in shock.

"Honestly?" Shishido grinned wickedly. "Yes."

"It looks great!" Jiroh grinned, pouncing on Shishido. "It's brilliant!"

"It'll last for a bit, but I can always strip the color and have them dye it back to my natural," Shishido smiled, arms occupied with a very bouncy Jiroh who was currently playing with Shishido's hair, separating the lightly colored violet strands from the darker purple strands from the light pink ones.

"You think that'll give you a vacation?" Hiyoshi asked with a frown.

"No, I don't think it will," Shishido said, watching as Jesse went on a rampage with a victorious smirk. "I know it will. See, Jesse's not my only agent. He's the one who signed me, so he has more control over me, but my other one, who Jesse works with, is back in LA. I simply asked her if she knew what jobs Jesse had lined up for me, and then told her about my plan. She'll cover for me for as long as I need."

"Why?" Taki asked.

"She's pissed at Jesse too for setting the shoot up with the knowledge that I wanted a vacation," Shishido said, smirking, as he turned back to face them. "After all, what Jesse does reflects on them all and can be seen as infringement upon my contract."

Eyebrows rose all around.

"So, in about two weeks, I'll have a vacation."

"Two weeks?" Atobe frowned.

"Mmhm, because I said I'd do Zak a favor with the whole Jerome Russell ad. They need a portfolio of possibly 10 shoots, which is relatively small. I'm merely an extra in that one, and this one finished in two weeks. I'll do the other ad as extra on top of these shoots."

"And you'll come back to Japan?" Ohtori asked quietly from the back where he had stayed for the entire conversation.

Shishido tilted his head to the side. "Where else would I go?"

The smile on Ohtori's face was all the answer any of them needed.

The End

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