Redhead

"So what do you think?" John looked to Kelly as she moved into the barracks. She ran a hand through her hair which was out of its usual ponytail. Usually John would have found Kelly with her hair down attractive, but this time, he didn't have the familiar desire to run his hands through it.

"Why did you dye your hair?" John scowled as she moved over to the cot beside his and sat down. "And why red?" John let his displeasure leek into his voice.

Kelly frowned, not understanding why he was upset. "I wanted something new. I thought that dying my hair would be the easiest thing that I could do without making any sort of change someone would notice."

"You shouldn't have done it." Kelly's shoulders slumped at John's words. He watched as she grabbed a hair tie and tied it back in as she usually did. "If you wanted to do something different you should have braided it."

"Well I wanted to do something more original then just changing my hair style. Do you really not like it?" Kelly lay back on her cot, making herself comfortable.

"It looked better before." John watched her relax on the bed. "If you were going to dye it a color, why not blue?" John set aside his datapad and turned his full attention to the woman.

Kelly rolled her eyes. "You do realize that just because we are blue team doesn't mean that we had to do things that are all blue." Kelly shook her head a bit. "That wouldn't be original at all. Besides, red is an actual human hair color."

John frowned. "I hadn't thought about the connection with our team." Kelly frowned at him, obviously confused so he explained. "Your hair was dyed blue the first day that I met you. You broke the fingers of several people when they tried to cut your hair. They had to pin you down." A smile spread over John's face at the memory of a six-year-old Kelly being pinned down by a group of DIs so that her hair could be cut.

Kelly looked over at him, a look on her face that John couldn't identify. "I can't believe you remember that." Kelly stood up and moved over to John's cot, lying down beside him. "Unfortunately I can't remove the dye."

John instinctively put his arm around her. "Well you can always just wait for it to grow out a bit then cut it short to where it's brown. If you want then you can let it grow out."

"Are you trying to tell me that you like my hair short and brown?" Kelly raised an eyebrow as she moved her head so it was on his chest.

"Well, I don't mind it long." John's fingers moved to play with a few strands of her ponytail which was draped over her shoulder. "Though it does look rather cute short. I liked the way you had it back during training." John twirled the bit of hair. "Another tip, I don't like redheads."

Kelly moved to lay on his chest. "Really?" She seemed very surprised by the information. "I thought you liked people with red hair?"

"What would give you that idea?" Kelly just shrugged in reply to his question. She settled on his chest and closed her eyes. John just looked down at the woman on his chest. He found it interesting how easily he allowed himself to feel for her. He'd cut off so much emotion when it came to being the leader of his team, but at a moment like this, just lying here, he felt that warm feeling in his chest that he had identified as what people considered love. The problem was such emotion was making it harder to be willing to put her out in the line of fire in combat. He knew he had to, but he felt like he hesitated more when he knew there was a higher risk.

He closed his own eyes, pushing those thoughts away. He didn't want to think about that, even if eventually he'd have to deal with the effects that their relationship was having on his ability to utilize her in the field. For now he would just sleep contently with Kelly in one of the few relaxed moments they had.