Passion by Fantasy Weaver

---

Note

1: Passion is the sequel to Obsession. If you have not read Obsession, I highly recommend you do as there is allusion to events that happened in it.
2: Many artistic terms will be used in this story, but everything will be explained in due time if necessary. This is a fictional story, but there are a few events that I have taken from my own experience and placed them in here.
3: Where are the haircuts in this? There is at least one per part (this is a site devoted to haircut stories after all. And I’ve seen many comments disliking long drawn out stories (which I enjoy, as you can see)).
4: As with the last story, this is divided in ten parts.
5: This story may contain foul language.

Thank you for your interest in this story. -Fantasy Weaver

Passion

Part one

Hands. Hands in his hair, stroking gently, pressing firmly, scraping blunt nails along his scalp. The fingers were long, reaching all over his head. His eyes were closed still, but he didn’t need to open them to know who was doing this.

From what little light made it passed his eyelids, he could tell it was early morning, probably somewhere near seven or eight o’clock. The need to get up didn’t come however. He was perfectly comfortable here, in his plush bed, cuddled next to a warm body. A sigh left his lips, contentment visible on his face.

The hands on his head were divine. Or at least, he thought so. But it would appear that the owner of the hands was not satisfied enough with his gentle rubbing. Lips landed on his nape, a nose helping to move longish locks aside to have better access to the area. The lips were full and masculine, but as soft as a feather’s touch. They left barely felt kisses and little nibbles here and there, and Sebastian was in heaven.

Had someone asked him when he was sixteen where he would see himself in five years, he definitely would not have answered "Laying in bed with Jasper", but hey, miracles happen. The albino man had caught his interest during his final few months as a senior in high school. He worked as a barber -and still does to this day.

Many incidents, one more embarrassing then the other, had led them where they were now in their relationship. Sebastian had in the last five years finished high school, finished college and was now on the verge of finishing university. Both men had gained stability over the years, and they now lived in a shared apartment in their city.

At the moment though, Sebastian was more than happy to surrender to sleep again, if Jasper was going to continue his calming gestures. But, that same man stopped his ministrations, and Sebastian was made to turn towards him.

"Good morning, Sebastian" was the low greeting. He loved it in the morning when Jasper’s voice had a sleepy, gravely timbre to it; it made his insides turn to jelly.

"Hey" was his reply.

Upon his pillow, the younger of the two stared at where some of his hair was splayed out. It was a perfect shade of black that contrasted with the white pillow beneath him. And on the contrary, Jasper’s platinum tresses just blended with it, and, in the morning light of the sun, it shined with iridescent, divine whiteness. His skin almost looked like it glowed like freshly fallen snow. The only amount of color on the man was his piercing red eyes -another thing caused by albinism.

They were quite the opposites in terms of looks, and perhaps in terms of personality as well…if they would compare their selves from five years ago. Jasper had been outgoing, fun, confident -intimidating when he wanted to be- but overall kind. Sebastian had been shy, crippled by social anxiety and not one to speak up.

The raven supposed opposites attract, and that was why he had been so enthralled with Jasper as a teen. The man had awakened things inside him that he never thought had been there in the first place. The best example of this was his, ahem, fetish involving hair. That had been something that, as a teenager, he thought made him some sort of freak of nature, but it didn’t take long for him to realize he was not the only one.

Jasper had been quick to catch on to this, and one occasion had sufficed to have the raven completely at the barber’s mercy -one occasion he had wanted from the very bottom of his being. That one night in the barbershop had served to change him as a person and had been the foundation of their relationship. Since then, they had built upon it.

Looking at Jasper now, Sebastian felt like someone, be it some higher being, life itself or fate of all things, had dropped a gift from the heavens unto him. There were times when, alone, he felt so blessed by this notion that it brought the tiniest droplets of tears to his eyes. He would never tell Jasper that though; he would never let him live it down.

The younger man’s arms snaked around their lover’s waist, and his raven head tucked itself under his chin. They lay there, in content silence.

This, Sebastian thought, was what felt like home.

XXXXX

Sebastian sighed tiredly as he closed the door to his and Jasper’s home. The day at the university had been exhausting, what with all the things he had to do for his final semester. He was sure that there were bags under his eyes and that he had grown an addiction to coffee in the last week. He couldn’t get through the day without at least three cups.

With yet another drawn out sigh, he flung his bag in an unimportant corner of the apartment and kicked off his shoes.

"Jasper?" he called.

The raven heard a bit of noise near the kitchen and headed there. While he was doing so, Jasper said, "Oh, Sebastian, I’m in the kitchen!"

The younger leaned against the counter and observed his boyfriend preparing supper. The pale skinned man was in a joyous mood, as per usual. His head turned to Sebastian and threw him a smile over his shoulder.

"How was it at university today?" he asked him, not without noticing the way his lover was slumped.

Sebastian leaned forward to place his head on the taller man’s shoulder. "Long…"

Jasper put down the knife he had been using to chop up his vegetables. He then turned around to embrace the raven. "You look tired" he remarked.

"Yeah."

"Is it the project that’s giving you a hard time?"

He always knew what was bothering him. "Yes. The whole thing is making me stressed. I can’t think of anything. And if I can’t think of anything, how the hell am I supposed to graduate?"

Jasper let go and continued what he had been doing. "Well, can’t you do a theme you’ve already taken on before?"

"No, I already did that. I need something new that would still be in my comfort zone."

Sebastian sat down at the table and put his chin in his hand. It wasn’t Jasper’s fault if he thought something like that could work. Being an art student was, to many people, a waste of time. He couldn’t remember how many times in college he had heard the social science students mocking the art department. If only they knew; he wished many times they could spend one semester in his shoes. The amount of work required almost exceeded that of their own studies.

Projects. Homework. Another project. More homework. Two projects in the same day. A week to finish them. Giving them at the same time. Homework. Exams. Stress. Projects. Three projects. Two exams. An oral presentation. Studying. Stressing. More exams. Panic attacks. Another oral presentation. A project to give in the same day. Studying. Time. Time spent on homework. On projects. On presentations. Panic attacks. Stressing. Two exams. No time for himself. Final exams. Madness. Panicking. Stressing…

The amount of work he had to go through, the amount of stress he had to endure. He remembered one student had been working on a painting. It was a final project. The painting hadn’t been working out. The student had snapped her brushes in half, had swung her stool at another student, had splashed her muddied water everywhere and had left in tears.

He remembered another occasion. The art students had all been assigned six different projects; may it be drawings, paintings, sculptures, or studying for written exams. That week, one student got sick. A cold it seemed. Every student had been so wrought with stress, their immune systems (including his own unfortunately) had weakened, and nearly every one in the art department had been stuck with a cold for a MONTH. A MONTH.

"Sebastian, you’re over thinking again. Stop it."

Sebastian looked up to see Jasper setting the table. His red eyes were worried and admonishing.

"Sorry. I guess I’m just tired…" the young man confessed.

The barber sighed. "Let’s eat."

When supper had been eaten and the dishes had been done, Sebastian went to lie in bed. The day had been foul to say the least, and he was more than relieved to be able to relax some.

"Sebastian, sit up" his lover demanded.

With one dark brow raised at the platinum haired man, he did as he was told and sat on the bed, his hands folded in his lap. He felt a hand in his hair, then Jasper was running a brush along the long strands.

A content expression surfaced on his face. Even with all the bad stuff that happened during that day, Jasper brushing his hair was always something that would put a smile to his face. The experience was so relaxing. The brush made soft scraping noises every time it passed in his hair.

"Better?" Jasper asked him in a soft voice. He nodded.

One of Jasper’s hands aided the brush in taking knots out. His fingers were gentle in their work. Sebastian smirked. He’d felt those hands being less than gentle with him many times before.

Grey eyes closed and he let his mind wander back to that first evening in the barbershop. As a teen, he remembered wanting Jasper with a severity that had himself fearing for his own sanity. And yet, he had been much too reserved, much too anxious to even consider stepping foot in the shop. Well, except on one occasion; one that lead him to where he is now. Jasper had been patient, kind, yes, but firm in his approach to him.

"Hey" he spoke.

"Hm?" the barber intoned absently.

"When did it start for you?" the raven asked vaguely.

The brushing halted for a second before resuming. "When did what start?"

"Your fetish."

There was a brief moment of silence on Jasper’s part as he thought back to it. The younger man waited in baited breath.

He had already asked this question many times before. Why he was asking it again was simple: Jasper had never answered him. He would always find one way or another to avoid the question, or would throw it right back at him. Either way, Sebastian would always be denied the answer he wanted.

Today though, Jasper seemed resigned to his fate. The pale man took a deep breath before explaining.

"I’m sorry I never told you before. It’s something quite personal, something I’ve never shared with anyone before."

Sebastian opened his eyes. "Why?"

"It’s humiliating. Or at least, it’s not a fond memory." There was a shaky breath taken in.

Turning around, the raven made for his barber to put the brush down. His eyes were completely focused on the man before him. "Tell me" he pleaded.

Jasper turned his face away, making a stream of glistening white hair hide part of his face. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then took the plunge.

"My mother had left my father when I was very young. I think I was four when she divorced with him. She’s an amazing mother, I wish she didn’t live so far away."

Sebastian recalled that Jasper’s mother lived in Finland. Apparently she had moved there a few years before he and the barber had met.

Jasper continued. "Unfortunately, my ass of a father had custody of me. It didn’t take more than a year for him to turn into something nightmares are made from. In public, he was fine. He just looked like any ordinary dad. Behind closed doors? He’d turn into a monster. I was five; what could I do at that age? I didn’t realize what he was doing was wrong at the time, and I certainly wasn’t telling anybody –unless I wanted to know what leather felt like on my ass."

Sebastian frowned. "That’s horrible."

"It gets worse" Jasper replied. "He once burnt my leg with his cigarette."

There was look of thought on Sebastian’s face for a moment before a light turned on in his head. "That scar on your thigh…"

"Yeah." A sigh. "Let’s just say he wasn’t the father of the year for me."

"But what does this have to do with your fetish?"

"I’m getting there. My father wasn’t great at taking care of me to say the least. So things like getting my haircut, for example, were unnecessary…up to a point. When my hair was about to my shoulders, covering my face, my dear father decided a trip to his barber was necessary." Jasper put a hand to his nose and pinched the bridge. "It didn’t go well."

Sebastian’s brow furrowed. "What happened?"

"Well, I guess assholes hang around other assholes, because that barber was the furthest thing from one. Or maybe that’s just the five year old me talking, but either way, the way I remember it, he was awful. My father told him to just take all my hair off so he didn’t have to come back for another few months." Jasper’s hands clenched and relaxed unconsciously. "When my mother had still been with my father, she was the one who used to cut my hair. So being in that shop, with an old guy holding clippers -something I had never been near to at the time- I was scared. And I swear they hadn’t been working properly because it felt like I was getting my hair pulled out from their roots." He took a shaky breath. "It had hurt, I had cried, I had been humiliated in front of three other people in the shop on top of that, and all my father had to say was that I was the worst thing that had ever happened to him."

The silence that stretched on in the room was so thick with tension, Sebastian thought he might cut it with a knife. Jasper had turned his face towards him in this time, and there was an undertone of anger to his red eyes. The memory it seemed, no matter how long ago it had happened, still stung.

Sebastian didn’t know what to say, but he spoke anyway. "How…how could he do that to you?"

"Quite easily, if my memory serves me correctly" the barber replied with a disdainful sneer. "Ever wonder why I never mentioned him before? Well, now you know."

It was true. Jasper made a point of never speaking about his father. In the time he had known him, the raven had heard more about the man now than in the last five years combined.

"But," the younger of the two continued, "there’s still something bothering me. How did you go from being scared of getting your haircut to actually being a barber -one with a fetish for his work no less?"

Jasper gave him a less than joyous smirk. "I did enough research on the matter to come up with a theory."

Sebastian listened.

"When you get scared of something, be it of a dangerous animal, the dark or yes, getting a haircut, your body produces certain hormones, adrenalin and whatnot –that’s what causes fear and the fight or flight instinct. Things like that." He paused. "I chose at the time to try and fight what was making me scared, since there was no way I could run away. Fighting didn’t work, so, for some reason, my body decided, without my conscious consent, to find another way to fight my fear."

Something clicked in Sebastian’s head at that. "You don’t mean…"

"This is all just a stupid theory. There may be some other explanation, but for me this is it: my body started producing hormones associated with pleasure whenever I would think of the experience at that barbershop. The endorphin basically neutralized the fear hormones, but kept on producing even after I was no longer scared of getting my haircut. Once I hit puberty, my body was just as easily aroused by people making out or people getting haircuts."

Sebastian stayed silent through this detailed explanation. He wouldn’t say he understood Jasper. After all, his fetish had awoken in a much more pleasant way.

"So," the pale skinned man finished, "now you know." After a moment, he thought of something else. "Technically, that WAS my first time getting my head shaved, but it doesn’t really count for me. The second time was much better."

With a smile, the raven took Jasper’s hand in his and gave it a squeeze. "Thank you for telling me." He leaned in for a kiss, which his lover readily accepted. When they parted, Sebastian had something on his mind. "I guess you don’t feel the same way about haircuts now huh?"

Jasper found it in himself to laugh. "Yeah, well, now I worship hair."

They could both agree on that.

XXXXX

The only sound in the studio was that of a pencil tapping impatiently on a drawing board. Tap, tap, tap. On and on.

‘Think’ Sebastian told himself. He had to think.

Once he would have his diploma, he wouldn’t need to impress anyone but himself. For now though, he had to think.

Think.

Think.

The tapping of the pencil intensified. The ticking of the only clock in the room steadily growing louder with it. Tick, tock…

He could hear the chatter of students outside the studio. More tapping, more ticking. Laughter. The sound of snow and wind outside. The rustling of bare branches. He could hear his breathing, his heart beat.

THINK.

With a growl, he threw his pencil at the board, then he slumped his head in his hands, He grabbed at his hair, pulled, pulled hard.

Sebastian couldn’t think of anything with all this background noise. Or maybe it was just because his mind was so hyper focused that the noises seemed so loud all of a sudden. Either way, his thoughts were nothing but a void; there was nothing but emptiness.

It was so odd. He had never had trouble finding ideas for his pieces. They usually just came to him in a flood. Now the river of his mind was nothing but a barren wasteland where no ideas could sprout. Why were his ideas running dry at such a critical time in his studies? He had three months to prepare his final project -the only one of the whole semester- And he had already wasted a week trying to come up with something.

The way things were going, he was going to implode with all the stress consuming him.

"Hey! Sebastian! Anyone up there?" a sudden obnoxious voice called out.

Sebastian came out of his trance to see a hand waving in front of his face. His eyes followed the arm to the person’s face.

"Nicolas" he greeted.

It was a common occurrence; when Nicolas had time off from his own studies (unfortunately, his university was at the other end of the city) he came by the studio Sebastian’s university rented him to hang out. Sometimes Scarlet would come, but that was a rarer occurrence.

The blonde ceased his waving to throw his long time friend a grin. "Almost thought you had finally lost your marbles like all the other artists in history" he laughed.

Grey eyes rolled heavenward at the stereotypical comment. "Very funny, you idiot."

"Grumpy as always I see." Nicolas leaned against the drawing board and folded his arms in a habitual manner. "Really though; you look like you’re about to lose it. What’s up?"

The raven sighed. "I couldn’t think of anything for my project, and with your lovely presence, the air thickens with stupidity." He smirked.

"Go shove your boyfriend’s dick up your ass" Nicolas countered. The other man felt his cheeks get warm after such a remark. "So you have no idea what to make?"

"Nothing. It’s never happened before."

"Gee, that’s got to suck. Especially since you’re graduating this year." The blonde gave his friend a disappointed expression.

Sebastian moved around in his seat until he could lean his head on the back. The chairs definitely weren’t as comfortable as the one’s in Jasper’s shop. He would kill to sit in one right about now. Maybe he would stop by the shop on his way home; he was finishing early today after all.

The young man remained silent for a while. Without looking up, he could hear Nicolas fumbling around with the other chair in the room. He heard it being placed down close to his, and then heard it creak as the man sat down in it.

"What about you?" Sebastian asked.

"What about me?" Nicolas questioned with a raised brow.

"You guys in theater had to write a play or something right?" He paused before elaborating, "So how is that going on?"

He turned his face to see his friend giving him a smile. "We’ve been at it since last semester. You have no idea how hard it is to prepare something like that. And for your information, writing a play is only something to grade us by. We’re not actually going to do it."

"You’re not?"

"Nope. We take something that’s already been written by pros and we interpret it in front of an audience. We have to get all the scene setting done, give out the parts and see who’s doing what. It’s all a lot of collaborating. It’s really fun!"

Sebastian listened as Nicolas went on and on about what the people in his department were doing. He found it nice how the blonde described the people he studied with. He remembered the rejected class clown in high school with nothing but himself and Scarlet as company, and now the guy was attracting friends like crazy; including a lady friend if he wasn’t mistaken.

He then thought about himself. How his life as an artist was nothing like Nicolas’. He worked in solitude, with only his thoughts as his company. Maybe that’s why so many artists went mad. He could barely stand his own company as it was now. He didn’t mind it so much when it had something to offer.

"I wish I could be as hyper as you when I’m working on my projects" he admitted at one point.

Nicolas sent him a look of admonishment. "You could be."

"How?"

"Well, when I interpret a play that I find boring or depressing, I don’t get into it. But, if I do something that’s fun, or something that represents me in a way…I get excited."

Sebastian fell silent. ‘Something that represents me…’

Nicolas checked his phone and stood up. "Anyway, I promised to go see someone this afternoon, so I’ll be leaving."

Sebastian couldn’t resist the temptation. "You mean you have a date with that girl, Haley, right?"

Nicolas turned a shade of scarlet that would put Sebastian’s best oil paints to shame. "Shut up. You don’t hear me commenting every time I see you walking with a limp do you?"

The raven flushed a shade darker than the blonde’s red face. "Whatever."

---