Giovanni spent the better part of the afternoon brainstorming what to get for Ashkii. He scrolled through a couple of online websites and catalogs as Benny turned his head to whatever side he pleaded as he trimmed his loose ends and shaped his locks.

There was nothing dramatic about the hairstyle. It was the same one he always got, just trimmed to its original length.

"What are you looking for?" Benny asked when he was done with Giovanni's hair. He was now rubbing hair balm between his palms before scuffing Giovanni's hair. The man's hair was generally straight, but his strands came to a wave towards the end that made the hair at the nape of his neck and edges curl.

"I forgot someone's birthday," Giovanni said in a voice loud enough for Benny to hear. The hairdresser paused what he was doing to cock his head to the side.

"You, Giovanni, forgot someone's birthday?" Benny asked, with disbelief laced in his tone. Giovanni chuckled a bit, shrugging his shoulders. "We weren't really talking when it happened, so it kind of slipped past my mind." He was known to remember stuff like that and gifted accordingly. Though, he still wasn't sure what he wanted to get for Ashkii. The younger man was very simple—blank. He didn't have very much he disliked and not feet much he liked aggressively. Giovanni started to wonder if maybe he should have thought things through before announcing that he would be giving Ashkii a present.

Benny looked over Giovanni's shoulder, watching him scroll through shoes on Amazon. "Who's it for? One of your hookups?"

Giovanni's first instinct was to protest, and then he thought about it for a little bit and realized that Ashkii was now in fact one of his hookups. "Err, yeah," Giovanni mumbled, clicking off the search tab before tucking his phone away.

"Is my hair done?" he asked, turning to look at Benny, who was now giving him a smile.

"Which one? Nate?" Benny asked, ignoring Giovanni's attempt to change the conversation.

Giovanni sighed. "No, someone else."

Benny pursed his lips, thinking hard about it before his eyes lit up. "That big Samoan dude with the sideburns?"

"No," Giovanni said, actually a bit impressed that Benny even remembered who that was. He barely remembered who that was. "It's someone I've known for a while. They're always at the bar talking to me..." Giovanni said.

Benny walked over to the counter, cleaning up the site as he hummed and thought about the prompt. "The kid?"

Giovanni nodded. "Well, that's one way to put it."

"Well, that's what you call him," Benny said, pressing down on a new mastic box where he'd shoved most of his tools. "You just call him the kid."

"His name is Ashkii," Giovanni said, as Benny walked over to him with a can of something that almost choked them both when Benny used it on his hair. "We've only been seeing each other like that for a while, but he's been great..."

"Great as in, he's kind and thoughtful, or great as in, his dick is big and I can't think much past that," Benny asked, and Giovanni rolled his eyes.

"Both," he said anyway, humoring Benny's question. "I admit I didn't think it would work out. Actually, I was sure that once we got to sleeping together, he would chicken out and take the stuff he said back," Giovanni said.

"Wait, is he straight?" Benny asked, folding his hands over his chest. "You make fun of me when I have crushes on straight dudes, and now you're going after them yourself?"

"No," Giovanni said, looking at himself in the mirror up ahead. He quite liked the haircut. It wasn't much different from what he usually got, and it suited his face. "I didn't chase after him. He chased me, and he's not sure if he's straight. He's just never slept with a dude before me."

"Oh, I see," Benny muttered. "So just an egg."

'Egg' was the term, used to describe LGBT+ youth figuring out who and what they were. It was mostly reserved for trans people, but it wasn't weird to refer to someone as a 'gay egg' if you felt they were obviously gay or bisexual but didn't know so themselves.

"You know, I sort of suspected it," Benny said as Giovanni got off his chair. "He doted over you so much that it was very weird—out of place if you will. Makes more sense he wanted to fuck you and didn't know how to go about it, poor guy."

Giovanni felt his face flush. Benny was very... crude, but he couldn't get as crude as Ashkii's initial coping mechanism, that was for sure.

"How much does my haircut cost again?" the bartender asked, trying to change the conversation.

"Fifty-five dollars, and if you're still thinking about a present for the dude, maybe you can just give him some polaroid pictures. I have a friend who can develop those if you send me the film once you're done—"

"I am not giving Ashkii printed nudes for his birthday." Giovanni rolled his eyes, seeing where Benny was going with the polaroid idea.

"Well, you've done similar things before!" Benny insisted. "You made a spin-the-wheel sex game for Mavin. Don't think I forgot about stuff like that."

"Well, Mavin was Mavin..." Giovanni said. That was a polite way to put it. The man had been very much obsessed with sex—and Giovanni—but mostly sex with Giovanni.

"You're being silly, won't act like Ashkii doesn't like a good blowjob," Benny said, and Giovanni let out an odd noise as his face warmed up.

"He does, doesn't he?" Benny said, smiling a bit. "There you go."

Giovanni looked over at his friend, mustering his voice again. "Fuck you."

"I wish, but I'm not your type."

The bartender blinked, and Benny started laughing.

"Which reminds me. I don't remember Ashkii being very tall. Or very muscly. Fuck, his dick must be huge then. How big is it? Or maybe it's just thick as hell?"

"I'll send you your fifty through PayPal," Giovanni said, turning and walking towards the exit. He was not under any circumstances discussing the size of Ashkii's penis with Benny.

"It was fifty-five!"

"I'm taking a five off because of the emotional distress you've caused me," Giovanni said when he got to the door and slid past it. He could hear Benny laugh far long after he closed the door.

Giovanni was still sighing and rolling his eyes when he got home. Benny was, something... He was definitely not going to give Ashkii some version of a sex game for his birthday, but maybe as a side thing, sure. That wasn't a bad idea.

Giovanni was browsing through a site when he remembered that Ashkii had mentioned liking sledding. It had randomly been brought up in a conversation about his childhood growing up in Alaska. Giovanni remembered it clearly because Ashkii had mentioned doing it with his siblings and being very petty and competitive about winning the races. Winter was almost up in Massachusetts but getting him a sled that he could use next year was a good idea.

"Finally," Giovanni said, keeping that in mind as he put the item on his wish list. He was going to ask for someone else's opinion before getting a sled for Ashkii. He didn't know much about sledding. Heck, he was all-around bad at winter sports and the champion hater of the season itself. The only thing good about winter sports was the bulky tall hockey players. He chuckled, remembering Ben saying he hated the weather so much because he was skinny as sin, and probably didn't have enough fat to not freeze to death if he was out for too long.

When he closed off the browser page, he opened Instagram on his phone, looking up Ashkii's profile for the first time. They'd followed each other at a certain point, but none of them used Instagram enough for it to be a consistent point of contact.

Giovanni scrolled through the photos on Ashkii's page. There weren't very many. A lot of them were photos of nature, in what seemed to be his hometown. Mountains, trails, and animals. There were some photos with him in them, though they were few and far between. In some of them, he was sitting on a snowmobile or sled. In many, he was awkwardly holding a fish or sitting by a fire. Giovanni thought men with pictures of fish were generally tacky, but with Ashkii... it was different. He looked cute. Giovanni kept looking through pictures, taking note of the ones where Ashkii was smiling. He had an awkward camera smile that used only one side of his mouth. The smile was dwarfed by his real one—large and bright that showed off his perfect teeth, but it was still cute—at least cute enough to make Giovanni smile and keep scrolling.

Giovanni looked up from his seat at the dining table when he noticed the natural light coming through the windows was starting to dim. He started at the clock when he noticed the time. He pursed his lips, realizing that he should start setting up since the regulars were about to start heading in. He had just spent his whole afternoon scrolling through Instagram photos.