To Fight Oneself by Zero

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: Hi, everyone, Zero here! This is a explicit, intense, long one. Where it came from? A mystery even to me. You guys know me already, sex, yes but also hurt and comfort, the not so sexy real-life issues, people in need of therapy (like yours truly), the usual Freudian mess, you know the drill. As always, comments of any kind are welcome.





He can’t silence the moan that slips through his lips in tandem with the scenes playing on his laptop. It’s a guilt. It’s a shame. It’s a flagellation. It’s a perpetual desire out of reach. It’s a hunger that is never satiated. It’s another one of those nights of isolation.

The images flicker and swim and swirl and blur. They burn bright against his retinas. The glow of the screen casts harsh shadows on his face and his surroundings. The sounds of labored breathings, the grunts of two bodies like his own carve inside his eardrums, through the cordless earbuds.

Each flicker of the screen ignites a primal urge, a craving that claws at his insides with relentless persistence. Ecstasy and at the other end, self-loathing, remorse.

He shuts his eyes, trying to catch his breath, to ease his trembling body. It’s animalistic. His body scorching and damp. His hands sore from seeking another body in his own. The winter night feels even colder against the hellish fever that courses through him.

He rests his forehead against the back of his hand. His rationality shut by the more primal parts of himself. With a shaky exhale and an unfocused gaze, he reaches the climax, the release he was chasing after.

His bangs graze his face, just barely, as he lowers his head.

It’s another one of those nights of fighting against himself and losing.

It must be an ungodly hour. He runs his unoccupied hand through his hair, pulls his bangs back and holds them away from his face.

"Colt?" a hand knocks on his door "Hart, are you in there?"

He jolts to shut the laptop and tears the earbuds off. The weight of shame settles in his chest, and the pressure makes his heart stop pumping blood.

He tosses the laptop aside (something crashes to the ground as he does and he doesn’t check what it was) and throws the bed covers on himself. His muscles tense as he awaits another word from the other side.

"Hey, Colt" one of his classmates, doing fire watch duty, peeks inside "You awake?".
"What is it?" he asks, curled up between the sheets in his bunk, his back turned against the guy at the door. He feigns rubbing the sleep off his eyes, sitting up, without making eye contact.
"Colonel Bull is looking for you" one of the guys shifts his weight from one leg to the other, avoiding his gaze "Your dad died" the words come out in clipped, short bursts "Sorry" there is a pause "Later, man".
He stays quiet an instant "Thanks".

Colt doesn’t know why is he expressing gratitude to his classmates. Or what for.

It’s an instinctual, automatic, absurd response and that his answer to the news that his dad died is ‘thanks’ says things about him he doesn’t want to know.

As he gets out of bed to get changed, he checks what he destroyed when he tossed his laptop aside.

His electric razor lays in pieces in a corner. F***. His dad just bought that for him.

He gathers his breath.

Colt only remembers three things about the night his father died: He was masturbating to gay porn, he thanked his classmates for letting him know his father had passed and his father’s best friend, and Colonel Caesar Bull drove him to the morgue at 400 sharp.




Colonel Aloysius Hart, his father, is dead. Call sign Stallion. Ace pilot. The one with most accolades and honors of his brothers. Most kill-count. Most victories.

Ha. Cancer has finally proved to be a superior opponent.

A lifetime of death-cheating has ended for his father.

He stands before his coffin in silence. Levius Hart. Fighter pilot in training. Call sign Colt. An in-joke among pilots about him being Stallion’s foal. Only son to Aloysius Hart. He has survived him, despite all the times he thought he wouldn’t.

His dad’s funeral is on a bright spring day, and it’s a waste of a clear blue sky.

"Look at you, all clean-cut and proper, like Stallion always liked it".

Another of his father’s friends, Colonel Bartholomew Young approaches him. Call sign just Young. Colt has never asked why his call sign is just his surname.

"Sir" Colt stands up straight.
Young eyes him up and down, a warm, paternal smile on his face "I see you still keep that mane trimmed, well-groomed and tamed, not a single hair out of place, huh?".

His freshly barbered cut has not escaped his notice. Colt would hope that after a lifetime of seeing him wear the same perfect military haircut his own dad used to have they would ease up. But they don’t. Like his dad never did.

It’s mostly a scissored cut. His dad liked Colt’s hair too much to let hair clippers too close or too high. His dad taught him the ins and outs of styling it, of keeping his appearance impeccable and polished for him to show off to his superiors.

Colt has been sat down in a barber chair so often and punished in front a mirror for so many hours since he was a child that his hair has always been a thing of beauty, never a thing for him to love.

"Thanks, I…" he clears his throat "I try, colonel".
"How are you holding up, my boy?".

Before Colt can answer, a voice cuts through the air from his left.

"It’s disgraceful".

Beside him, Colonel Caesar Bull. Fighter pilot. Currently an instructor. Call sign Rodeo.

"What is disgraceful, Bull?" Young raises an eyebrow.
"One of those pallbearers is a faggot" Bull spits with anger.
Colt flinches at the tone and the slur and prays Bull’s eye doesn’t catch the flicker of emotion in his face.
"Aye, how do you know that?" Young folds his arms across his chest "You f***ed him, Rodeo?".
"Of course not!" Bull snaps back "He is involved with that activist from that queer bookshop downtown".
"They’ve got amazing coffee there" remarks Young with a solemn nod.
"I don’t give a damn how good the coffee is, faggots like him…".
Colt can’t remain silent any longer "If it bothers you that much, why don’t you ask them to leave and carry my father’s coffin yourself, colonel?".
Young snorts at the challenge in his tone, amused.
"Watch your tone, foal" Bull groans in response.
"Both of you watch your tone" Young rolls his eyes "We’re here to pay respects to a fellow pilot, and to accompany Colt through these hard times".



Colt’s phone vibrates as he sits down at the table in this bar near the cemetery.

He sees a notification from the app he has forgotten to silence. A new message in one of his chats. He glances to check his dad’s friends are still at the bar ordering their drinks. Then, he opens the app and reads:

SHAVER: Hey, up for a chat, handsome?

His fingers hover over his phone’s keyboard, he reads bits of their last conversation. The intermittence of both their usernames.

His was supposed to be a throwaway username, the first thing he came up with after his first options were taken. He still isn’t proud that it has stuck for almost two years now.

AVIATOR: Hey, man.
AVIATOR: Not today. I’m at a funeral.

Colt rereads his own messages and decides he should clarify.

AVIATOR: My dad’s funeral.

Shaver is still a stranger and isn’t. He knows a lot about Colt and Colt can also put up together a brief biography and portrait of him and his life.

For example, Shaver knows Colt is a cadet, he knows he is twenty-four, he knows he is an only child, he knows he is turning twenty-five in May. Colt knows Shaver is thirty-two, he knows he was once married to a woman, he knows he is lives near the ocean.

He deserves to know, Colt decides. Or rather, Colt wants him to know.

SHAVER: F***, man. Sorry about your old man. I’ll message you later, then. Take care, will you?

Colt smiles sadly when he reads the message. Shaver is a good man. Undoubtedly.

AVIATOR: I will. Thanks, man.

He slides the phone back inside his pocket. It’s strange how someone who isn’t physically present can make him feel less alone.

His dad’s friends are back.

He wants this day to be over.

His dad’s death to be already over.

"Texting a girl, Colt?" Bull gives him a sly grin.
"No, sir" he tenses at the sound of the man’s voice "Just friends giving me their condolences".
"Hmmm" Bull puts his beer on top of the table.
"You sure you don’t want a drink, Colt?" Young asks him.
"I’m sure. Thanks, sir".
"So… Stallion…" Young taps his glass of rum with his fingers.

A very funeral silence settles among them.

It’s a silence of death and Colt wonders whether to ignore it or acknowledge it. He debates internally for a while what would be appropriate.

His father did always prefer lots of things to be left unsaid after all.

"Brain cancer. I still can’t believe it" Bull sighs deeply.
"Well, what can I say? We all knew Stallion was pretty messed up in the head" Young takes a sip of his rum.
Bull’s face and tone both shift "What is that supposed to mean, Young?"
"Oh, you know, Stallion was a f***ing madman, don’t pretend he wasn’t, Bull".

Colt feels his blood run cold. He knows Bull’s temper has just flared, even without seeing his face.

He braces himself for listening to a one-sided shouting match between his dad’s former fellow service men.

He imagines a escape route, an excuse, a way to deescalate if it comes down to that.

But it doesn’t, because Bull’s next words are:

"Colt, defend your dad, will you?".
"I would like to be excluded from this conversation" Colt stands up straight.
Bull glares daggers at him "Have you no respect for your dad?".
"Because he is dead?" the words leave his mouth before he can catch them.
"Ha! Good for you, my boy!" Young raises his glass in a toast "Here’s to young Colt having the common sense Stallion lacked!".
"This is…" Bull gesticulates wildly with both hands "…this is your dad we’re talking about!".
He measures his words "You’re free to keep talking. I refuse to say anything about my dad".
"Colt, what the f***!?" Bull’s face turns red "You’re just going to throw your old man under a bus like this?".
"I have my thoughts and my feelings towards my dad, and I would rather keep them to myself".

It takes all his self-restraint to reign himself in, to leave this conversation where it is.

And then, Bull pours the entire glass of beer all over Colt.



Leaning over the sink as he is now, saying every swearword he knows inside his head, for himself, Colt’s heart keeps racing in fury.

He rinses the hand soap out of his hair, hoping the stench of beer will wash off him. He has lost track of the time he has been inside the bathroom, bending over, scrubbing his scalp until it is sore, raking with his short fingernails.

He despises the smell of beer. The smell of alcohol in general sets him on edge, awakens a primal, survival instinct in him.

Beer is the most vicious, the most penetrating.

As he stands up straight again, closing the faucet, Colt looks at his disheveled, soaked hair.

He mutters a swear and runs a hand through the heavy, drenched locks of hair.

"That mane giving you trouble, foal?" he hears Young come in, his tone lighthearted, a playful smile on his face.
"I hate it" Colt hisses.
"What did you say?" the man’s face falls.
"I f***ing hate it".
"Colt… Levi…" Young gets closer "Take a deep breath, calm down, tell me what’s wrong"
"I…" he throws the towel off his shoulder, on top of the bathroom cabinet "I detest it".
His dad’s friend is startled at the abruptness and violence of his movements, but his voice remains steady as he speaks to him "Son, come on, what got you so worked up?".
"I hate my f***ing hair, colonel" Colt rakes at his hair with both hands, leaning back against the sink, feeling he’d rip it all out if he could "I hate it so much".
"Hey, don’t talk that way, you have very nice hair, you know? You should appreciate while you’re still young and it’s this thick and…".
"I f***ing hated him, Young" his voice is a whisper "I always have".
"Oh, Levi…" Young puts a slow, firm hand to his back.

Colt can’t let the tears fall despite of it all.

He can picture himself letting go and crying and letting Young comfort him, but he can’t.



Two weeks off.

Young has fought for it, for him, against Bull and the rest of the academy authorities.

Colt doesn’t know what to make of these two weeks off for his dad’s death. Young has given him a therapist’s card. Bull hasn’t offered him anything.

Instead, Colt wanders through the department store, looking for a new electric razor.

What would his dad make of him? Taking two weeks off after he has died?

As Colt weighs an electric razor in one hand, the questions bloom on their own inside his head.

Colt checks the reviews for the electric razor he is holding on his phone on the store’s website. The model he used to own and destroyed is no longer available.

Any other guy would just buy the razor on sale and be done with it. But Colt’s dad was picky with shaving and grooming equipment, and Colt wishes he wasn’t as picky as his dad when it comes to these things, but he can’t help it, can’t shake it off.

His dad’s uptightness running through him, even when trying to choose a razor to buy.

He gets a notification.

SHAVER: Hey, man. I know this timing is s**t but… I wanted to let you know I’ll be in your zone for a fitness event for a couple days. If you’d want to grab a drink or something and meet IRL, let me know.
SHAVER: No pressure. I’ll understand if you’d rather not.
SHAVER: Take care, man.

Colt jumps to text a response.

Then, he stops himself.

F***.

Why is this so hard?

He steadies himself. He reads Shaver’s message once more. Tries to infer the tone of the words.

Colt does not know when and or if he will get to meet this man ever again like this.

He doesn’t know what kind of man would he be if he agreed to see him in the wake of his dad’s death.

He feels he should mourn him deeper. He was his father. He thinks it’s what is expected of him (by whom? His father? Bull? Himself?).

He types a response, his heart pounding in his chest.

AVIATOR: Hey, man. I’d love to.
SHAVER: Great! What do you want to do?

Colt takes a deep breath.




It’s a rainy day.

It’s wasteful really. This city for all its vices and hostility and callousness, it’s beautiful under the sun.

Colt apologizes that he has come to meet both the city and him under these conditions.

He doesn’t care. He has brought the warmth, the rumbling embrace of the ocean with him, and he doesn’t quite look like in his photos, but he is not hard on the eyes.

Even if he doesn’t look the age he seemed in the screen, the rest about him remains the same. Freckled. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Weightlifter physique. Gray-eyed. Golden hair buzzed down to bristles, back and sides clean-shaven.

He laughs richer than he imagined, a sunflower and melted gold in the sound of his laughter. He gives compliments easily, generously (in a way that Colt can almost believe them) and when they step in the living room, he acknowledges the room’s windows (also the thing Colt always liked the most about this room, the side of the wall that let him peer outside of his dad’s domain).

He didn’t intend to come to his father’s apartment, but the rain has caught them both in the city center and his hotel is a forty-five minute bus and if the clock will keep ticking on them, it better be on their terms.

"So, Aviator, what should I call you?" soon enough they’re coiling on each other like snakes, like roots of a tree.
Colt. The sound almost slips out of his lips "Levi. Levi Hart. You can call me Levi".

He falls on his back on top of the chaise lounge, pulling him closer to him by the collar of the t-shirt.

"What about you?" he asks.

Then, the other man parts his lips with his tongue, as if he was letting him look for the sound of his name in the depth of his mouth, read his teeth and taste buds until he finds it.

"Adrian. Adrian Chase. You can call me when you want" a hint of a smile in his lips.
"Adrian" he rolls the name in his own tongue. The way the vowels expand, contract, and then open once again, the soft rumble of the consonants in the middle.

They shed layers of their clothes hungrily, with urgency, as if they weighed both down.

Colt quickly finds Adrian’s chest, a work of art and science and a proof of divinity all at the same time as he kisses his naked skin.

"So, Levi" Adrian runs a slow tempting hand through his bangs, revealing his face "That thing you said you wanted to do…".

Colt shudders. His breath hitches. There is a memory at the center of his stomach that curls up and twists as he looks into his own eyes reflected back in Adrian’s inviting gaze.

He nods. His heart pounding violently in his chest.





The electric razor snaps on with a growl.

And Colt has imagined doing this at least a thousand times. Since he was just a boy, fighting his own reflection, punished, and sentenced to hours of discipline with a comb and pomade, deprived of play.

And tomorrow, when it’s all over, the familiar self-loathing and the numbness will claw their way back inside him. But tomorrow isn’t here yet. Adrian is. Colt is. Tonight they’re both all that exist.

Adrian roughly pulls his bangs away from his face, forces Colt’s head back, jerks it until he faces the ceiling with it’s crystal chandelier hanging above them in the chaise lounge.

Colt feels the cold metal teeth of the razor against his skin, each buzz and hum vibrating through his bones. He clenches his jaw, his muscles tense with anticipation as Adrian's firm grip steers him into submission.

Adrian's movements are relentless. Colt flinches and whimpers and moans as the razor teeth dig into his scalp.

Tufts of hair fall to the floor. Colt's gaze follows their descent, the familiar copper hue that once adorned his father's head. Colt nuzzles his face further inside Adrian’s the crook of his neck while the razor runs along the back of his head.

Colt devours Adrian’s jaw and neck and shoulders, kisses him with starvation, begging the memory of his touch, the heat of his body, the tattoos on his back to remain with him long after he is gone.

Once his scalp is bare, Adrian anchors his hand against the back of his head. He rubs the stubble left back and forth, brushing off bits of hair, examining by touch alone.

A tremor shoots like lighting down Colt’s spine as he feels the fingers snaking, dancing across his nape, as the electric razor returns and the metal teeth kiss his skin a couple times more.

Adrian then grabs Colt’s face. He studies him. The razor goes back along his hairlines while Adrian holds his jaw firmly in place.

Colt shuts his eyes, Adrian wraps himself, his thighs, and his legs tighter around him and the razor goes silent.

Colt welcomes Adrian’s tongue caressing the edge of his lips and quickly lets his mouth capture his. Their lips clash once, twice, thrice, they compete for dominance, like both their pulses try to outrun one another, as their bodies press closer and closer.

His entire body itches inside out, from the bits of hair, from the years of denial.

Then, Adrian guides Colt on top of him, on his lap, they sit facing each other. He grips him tightly by the hips. Colt anchors himself, his hands on Adrian’s back and takes a deep breath, bracing himself for him.

And as Adrian thrusts harder inside him, Colt stares into the living room mirror in front of the chaise lounge. Both their bodies glistening with sweat as if the crystals from the chandelier had fallen and nested inside their skins.

His body reverberates with each thrust of Adrian’s hips and Colt swallows back a moan and a whimper.

It still rains outside.

And tonight, he doesn’t fight himself.

He can hear himself breathe, alive, for the first time in years.





AUTHOR’S NOTE: Hey, everyone! Zero here! Just wanted to let you all know this will be my last story at least in a long while. I’ve contributed for this site for a couple years already and I am deeply grateful and fortunate for the community of fellow writers, the readers and the admin who keeps the site running.

I have to be honest with you all, I am finding myself lacking the thrill and the challenge describing haircutting situations once gave me. It’s not that it’s not satisfying. It’s that I am struggling a lot with the aspect of the stories when it comes specifically with the haircutting scene because I do not find it as engaging as I once did.

I believe my interests as a writer are gravitating a lot more towards other aspects of storytelling. Character psychology being a strong one. The theme of change (I personally believe a fantastic haircut story is always about change). The interplay of the rest of the pieces of the puzzle. So I am writing stories that aren’t necessarily haircutting related on the side, but finding that thrill I once did while doing it so.

I know I’ve never been the guy-meets-guy and gets shaved and straight-to-the-point and to-it writer. And that my work might not be the easiest to read or engage with (thanks for taking the time to read my more experimental stuff anyway!), but to each its own and that is great!

Lastly, being a contributor here, rereading my own work and seeing how I have evolved, exploring yes, my usual hurt-comfort, but also real-life issues, and the wounds people have and what they do with that pain and eroticism and playful narratives I believe have challenged me and made me grow up a lot as a writer. Not to mention the inspiration from other writers here.

I feel a lot more confident in my craft than I did when I first started writing and that is all thanks to all of you, readers, and writers and that is invaluable to me.

Will I ever come back? Perhaps. But for the time being, I am taking a long break and focusing my attention and work elsewhere.

Once more, thanks you all.

Best and yours truly,

Zero.

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