It was time for Bel to get his hair cut. When Squalo had joined the Varia, he'd been told about the interesting people he would be able to kill, the new places he would see, the strong opponents to fight, new sword styles to learn. No one had mentioned the babysitting. With the Boss out of action (and that burned every time he thought about it, so he didn't think about it much. It didn't keep him up at night, or make his breath catch at random moments) Squalo was in charge. That meant paperwork, mission requests, and all the other irritations he had expected to come with the position. He hadn't realised that it also meant listening to Lussuria bitch about his newest boyfriend and making sure that Bel ate his vegetables. Because somehow, he'd become a parental figure to the most messed up child in existence. If you'd asked him at twelve what he thought his life would be like after defeating the Sword Emperor, this would not have been his answer. Most days, he didn't mind the life he'd somehow found himself living. This was not one of those days.

Squalo had to make sure Bel was educated – which generally meant searching through the Varia for someone with the appropriate knowledge or skill, and praying that Bel didn't kill them for being wrong, or boring. It was a way to thin the herd, and surviving a lesson with Bel had become something of a rite of passage among the Varia. One member of the Rain Squad had managed to teach Bel three whole hours of advanced Maths without incurring more than light injuries, a feat that hadn't been repeated since by anyone.

He had to make sure that Bel ate properly, and the brat was almost as fussy as Boss. He also had to try and make sure that his entertainment was all age appropriate, a task which somehow managed to be even harder. Giving Bel the Talk was the most excruciatingly embarrassing half-hour of Squalo's life. He had only done it because Bel had threatened to ask Lussuria if Squalo didn't explain why the girl was screaming like that if there was no blood involved. Squalo himself had endured two minutes of Lussuria's version of the 'Birds and the Bees' when he had first entered the Varia, and he wouldn't wish it on anyone. With his pale skin, the blush had been humiliatingly obvious, and Lussuria had teased him about it for months. The only good thing about the encounter was the wonderful four hours teaching Levi why he shouldn't leave his porn lying around. Of course, he had then been forced to take over the duties of the Lightning Guardian while Levi recovered.

And now, the hardest task of all. Bel did not like having his hair cut. He was terrified of someone seeing his eyes (which had led to the deaths of three hairdressers). Squalo wasn't sure exactly where the fear came from, but he was willing to humour it. He just wished the boy would choose a more convenient way to cover his eyes; he had refused to consider sunglasses or coloured contacts. Bel didn't like someone having scissors near his neck, which they all understood, and was why the Varia always visited the hair dresser in groups. The instincts of an assassin were hard to defeat. The spoiled Prince didn't think that any of the peasants were worthy of cutting his hair in the first place. But it had almost reached his mouth, and Squalo was tired of hearing him bitch about it. None of the Varia had any skills in hair dressing, and the one time Bel had tried to do it himself, he had managed to cut himself with one of his knives. Squalo wasn't willing to sacrifice sixteen Varia members (and face the damn paperwork) every time Bel needed a trim, so he insisted on taking it to a professional.

Lussuria had made the appointment without telling the receptionist who was coming. The last time they had made that mistake, the salon had closed down the day before their appointment. Lussuria had hunted down the hair dressers to make an example, but Bel still didn't get a haircut. Squalo disliked wasting effort like that.

Bel had been whining the whole car ride, and combined with Lussuria's trilling, Squalo had one hell of a headache by the time they pulled up to the salon. He turned to talk to Bel before he unlocked the car. After the first time he had driven with Bel, he had learned of the beauty of child locks. Normally, the Prince slept through car rides, but on the rare occasions when he was too wired to drop off, he was a nightmare.

"Voi! Behave. No knives, no tantrums. We go in, get your hair cut, and leave. I don't need any blood today, got it?"

"I don't have to do what you say." Dear God, the brat was pouting. Had he learned about teenage rebellion from trashy American movies?

"If you can't manage this, brat, then we'll go home and I'll let Lussuria cut your hair." Bel looked disturbed at Lussuria's exclamation of glee. Squalo didn't blame him, the sound sent shivers down his own spine.

"What will the Prince get if he cooperates?" Bel tried hard to hide the tremble in his voice.

He was obviously genuinely upset instead of just complaining. The third person only came out when something was really bothering him, so Squalo relented.

"I'll let you watch the Saw movies this evening. We can marathon them." Bel had been wanting to watch them since they came out. The responsible-adult side of Squalo had refused him. But that part had never been very loud, and it wasn't like movies could make Bel more disturbed and bloodthirsty than the little Prince already was. As far as Squalo was concerned, they were more likely to give him wet dreams than nightmares. Which was disturbing enough for him to want to retract his offer.

Taking a deep breath, Squalo unlocked the car door and led his little band into the salon. Mission – get Bel's haircut. First obstacle – receptionist. As he turned to the girl and gave her his least terrifying smile, that still made her go pale, he saw two men vanishing into the back room. If they were planning on a quickie while there were customers waiting, Squalo might have to kill them for sheer unprofessionalism. He knew better than to expect anything approaching Varia Quality from civilians, but he still had standards.

As the woman fluttered and sputtered and was generally useless, Squalo felt his hand twitching for a sword. He had told Bel not to kill anyone, which meant that he wasn't allowed to either, but he'd be damned if he wasn't tempted.

"Voi! Where the hell is the hairdresser then!" Squalo was hanging onto his patience by a thread when one of the two back-room-boys came towards them with a smile. Black hair, green eyes, five foot five, this would be Harry Evans. Born in England, raised by his Aunt and Uncle, attended a private school, took a course in hair dressing and moved to Italy three months ago, hired by this salon just last week. Squalo ran through the key points in his head automatically. Running a background check on someone holding a sharp object near your neck was just common sense.

Evans had obviously come to rescue the useless receptionist, as he told her to leave, talking to her like you would to a skittish animal. Or like a normal person would to a skittish animal. None of the Varia were very good at the 'calm, soothing voice' thing.

As he turned to look at the group with a bright smile on his face, Squalo fought the urge to slice him up. Who the hell smiles at assassins? The man either had the best customer service skills in the world, or no sense of self-preservation at all.

"The princess needs a haircut. Can you handle that, scum?" Squalo decided to be nice, giving the man a chance to back away before he got hurt and Squalo had to clean his blood off the floor.

Bel immediately chimed in. "The prince does not need a haircut." Third person again. Crap. All this time wasting had let his nerves build back up. If the hairdresser wasn't careful, Squalo would be scraping his bloody remains off the walls by the end of the day. Cleaning up after Bel's hits was always a nightmare, and his tantrums were worse.

To Squalo's shock, the smile didn't drop as Evans led them over to the sofas. He asked the other back-room-boy to close the salon on his way out. Was he just trying to help his friend? His attitude was more of a leader evacuating his people from a danger zone. His background check hadn't shown anything that would lead to that kind of response, so Squalo was confused. As the Captain of the Varia, he couldn't afford to have gaps in his information, even about something as insignificant as a hairdresser.

"My name is Harry," he started. Squalo cut him off. He knew that already, and with Bel so wound up, they had a limited time frame to get this done.

Evan's didn't take offence, which was rare. The man was getting more and more interesting to the Rain Officer. Squalo was even more stunned when he asked Bel what he would like directly. Most civilians only saw Bel's age, and talked over his head. Most civilians didn't have a very long life expectancy around Prince the Ripper.

Bel insisted that he didn't want a haircut. Distress or not, Squalo was tempted to take the brat over his knee. Did he think that the rest of them wanted to be here either? Lussuria might enjoy the day out, but he sure as hell wasn't dragging him here for fun. The only good thing so far had been that Luss had kept his mouth shut.

Of course, Squalo should have known better than to tempt fate. His headache burst back into life as Lussuria started cooing at Bel, as though that had ever encouraged him to do anything except the opposite of what he was asked. For a martial artist, trained to read the tiniest movement in his opponent's body and react accordingly, Lussuria could be extraordinarily bad at reading people. That or he was just a troll. Squalo hadn't decided which.

And of course Belphegor had to start throwing a tantrum. A Varia Quality assassin he might have been, but the Prince was still a twelve year old boy, and an incredibly spoilt one at that. Most of the time, he took pride in acting like an adult, but occasionally he threw a hissy fit any three year old would be proud of. If today was one of those times, Squalo was going to cut the brat's hair himself. With his sword.

Squalo decided that the hairdresser had either the biggest balls known to man, or with no self-preservation instincts at all, because he completely ignored Bel's tantrum, which had been known to send trained assassins fleeing in terror. The civilian sounded confident that he could cut Bel's hair without seeing his eyes. Squalo didn't think he would be so calm if he knew that his life literally depended on it, and he was bemused by the fact that he didn't seem the least bit shaken by the bizarre request. At least his calm relaxed Bel before the tantrum could really get started.

Evans looked a little like a deer in headlights as the Varia stared at him. Most civilians would have run away screaming from even one of them. Squalo hardly dared to hope that they could have finally found a Varia Quality hair dresser. Lussuria looked as eager as a child in a candy shop. If the civilian did as good a job of cutting hair as he did at managing Bel, Squalo didn't put it past Lussuria to kidnap the poor man. He wasn't sure that hr would discourage him either. It would save him from having to drag Bel into town every time he needed a trim, and give Lussuria someone to babble about hair styles to.

"I can trim your bangs just enough to even them, so they're still well below eye level. I can thin the hair to make it easier for you to see, or I can leave it, whichever you prefer. And I can add some layers and texture to the rest of your hair, so it looks more stylishly messy. Will that work for you?"

Evans still sounded professional, and his voice didn't show any of the startled-bunny that was in his eyes. If Lussuria didn't kidnap him for his bedroom, Squalo might have to, just to figure out what he was hiding. Squalo growled as he realised how that sounded in his head, drawing a startled look from Lussuria, who giggled as soon as he saw Squalo's face. The swordsman knew he was blushing bright red, a drawback of his pale skin. He was not interested in keeping the pretty civilian man in his bedroom! He just wanted to know what the hell the man was hiding, since his background was obviously as fake as Squalo's own.

Bel had obviously found his new best friend, if his smiling and giggling was anything to go by. Years of experience had taught Squalo how to read Bel's face without the benefit of seeing his eyes, and that was a happy, friendly grin. The poor hairdresser was never going to escape the Varia now. Bel very rarely showed interest in anything that wasn't food, naps or his knives and wires, but the few things that caught his attention were given all the single-minded intensity a cat shows a mouse.

That was, the hairdresser had to survive the rest of the day before he needed to worry about catching the interest of a group of assassins. Not that that seemed to be a problem for the infuriatingly intriguing civilian. He dodged the knife Bel threw like a professional (who did the background check? Squalo made a mental note to track them down and kill them for sheer incompetence) and didn't run screaming for the door. Squalo felt like an idiot as he tuned back in to the situation. Why had he not predicted that Bel might react badly to being told to take the damn tiara off?

Squalo was not expecting Evans to glare at Bel like a parent facing a child who hadn't tidied their bedroom. "Prince Bel. You will put those away and you will take your crown off now. You are far too old to be throwing tantrums like this, and I won't have such immature unprincely behaviour in my salon."

Squalo whispered "Voi" under his breath. He was in awe, and maybe a little bit in love. The hairdresser clearly had balls of steel. The men knew exactly which buttons to push to get a reaction from Bel, after spending less than half an hour with him. Who had taught him to read people like that? This man was as much a civilian as Squalo himself.

And Bel listened. He took the damn crown off and sat down. Not even Mammon, the Varia member Bel liked best, could make Bel do that. Not even the Boss could have, some days. Bel was the only Varia member who had gotten away unharmed from disobeying the Boss, mainly because the man had a secret weakness for adorable, lethal things. But still, this tiny little thing had done what Boss couldn't, without a weapon. Once he was kidnapped – because it was a matter of when now, not if - Squalo was stealing him from Lussuria and making him Bel's babysitter. Somehow, he didn't think the prince would object.

Squalo sat in silence and watched the man work. He was quick and professional, making sure that Bel's hair was always covering his eyes and not trying any of that 'friendly conversation' that hairdressers liked and which had been the cause of more unpaid Varia assassinations than insulting the crazy prince. Assassins, especially ones already keyed up from being in such a vulnerable situation, were not generally fans of small talk. The movements of the civilian were quick and precise, strands of hair fluttering to the floor in a gentle cascade. Squalo wondered what Evans would look like with a sword in his hand. All that restrained power was wasted on scissors.

Lussuria started his twittering as he admired Bel's new look. Squalo could admit that it was neater than it had been, but he didn't see anything all that special about it. He was more focussed on Evans than on Lussuria, enough that he could actual tune out the irritating martial artist. The haircut was finished quickly, and Bel seemed to like it, given the way he was flipping it in the mirror like a model for a shampoo commercial. After giving Lussuria enough time to pay the man and make whatever excuses for their behaviour he needed to, Squalo dragged Bel out the door. He needed to do more research on Harry Evans.

So here is the revised chapter one! Sorry this has taken so long. I hope it reads better than before.