time ; diego hargreeves

4 ; the surprise

"Your hair is so nice," Estella said, fingers going through Alex's hair. He was getting a haircut. Mila had told him he was starting to look homeless and told him it made him uglier with each passing day. Estella had stepped up to offer her skills as a hairdresser to cut his hair.

"Thanks, E,"

Estella smiled at him through the mirror, getting to work. "You've been with us a year, Alejandro. It's been wonderful having you. But I think we don't know each other that well, do we?"

"I feel like you're doing this with someone else's intentions," he said, and caught the amused smirk on Estella's face.

So he didn't share a lot about himself, kept most things quiet and didn't bother people with information about him. It probably drove his friends insane, not knowing the more hidden secrets he held. Still, it amused him to see how the others would try and pry the information out of him.

"Maybe just Isabel and Rosa's intentions. Though I am curious myself," she said as she cut at his hair. "You're a good guy, Alejandro. We're just curious. You could have a girlfriend nowadays and we wouldn't be any wiser, keepin' all your secrets to yourself."

"That's because they're secrets, Estie," he said, laughing when she slapped him upside the head. "I don't have a girlfriend, Estella. If that's what you're so curious about."

"That's good to know, sweetheart. Mila and Roberto want to see you happy. They say you've been savin' up for a small apartment?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding when she reached over for the shaver. "It's tiny and stupid but it's gonna be mine. I've already called the landlord, so until he sees my face, he's pleased for me to be renting it from him. I put on my special white accent too."

"Don't let him take more money from you when he finds out you aren't white."

Alex nodded. "Oh, I know how to talk my way around landlords, even racist ones."

"There sounds like a story hidden away in that,"

"Oh yes." he said, feeling amused at the excited tone to Estella's voice. Her fingers went through his hair as she cut it.

The two were quiet as Estella worked, listening to the music on the radio.

Alex was grateful to have the friends he had. He knew he was lucky, that the life he had had been given to him on a golden platter. He had lucked out completely. He just didn't know how to deal with it all. How easily he found himself in such a safe place, despite how easily people would discriminate against him.

People had already thrown slurs his way, threatened the cops on him so many times that he had lost count. He knew he had been privileged in the lifetime he had been born in, had lucked out there with the cops not called on him so many times. The times they had been, Patch had been one to turn up. She had just dismissed it, knowing how racist people worked.

But that didn't mean that there weren't racists in the police then. Alex hated how the whole system ran on racism. It pissed him off, and he didn't know how he could help. A part of him knew he couldn't help, not without rewriting history, and he couldn't do that, affect the timeline so intensely.

He had to hide away, bide his time. Try and live a quiet life even though everything made him just want to scream and burn everything down, to start it all over again.

"All done, sweetheart. My, the girls will be swooning after you,"

"My dear, Estella, not everything is about girls. Sometimes it's about bo-" Alex cut himself off. Sometimes it's about boys, had been on the tip of his tongue.