Chapter Text
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When Scratch wakes up in the middle of the night, it’s to the sound of the faint shuffling of blankets and pattering of feet on the wooden creaky attic floor; he doesn’t think much of it, then. So Molly’s getting a midnight snack, bathroom, whatever, yadda yadda, who cares- he’s only upset he woke up from such a quiet noise, really.
He curls up in the dollhouse bed more, turning over on his other side as his face sours a bit, trying to relax again and fall back asleep.
Except… an awfully long amount of time goes by, and Molly’s still not back in their room- nearly twenty or thirty minutes in fact, Scratch is sure.
He tosses and turns and buries himself in his blankets, but that glaring fact keeps him awake even still.
Dragging his hands down his face, he peeks out of his window, blinking slowly and out of sync as his tiredness drags him down from the window to splat against the floor. Grumbling, he picks his head up, growing back to his normal size, and rubs at his eyes with his fist, squinting at the clock by Molly’s nightstand.
“Okay, kid,” He mutters to himself, “There better be a good reason for this.”
He floats down through the floor into the living room, arms crossed as his eyes dart in every which way, trying to catch a wild Molly in the night, perhaps scavenging a fridge or watching TV, who knows.
And… nothing.
He uncrosses his arms as he looks around once more, wandering into the kitchen to the stairs and even outside, front and back of the house, but… nothing. He shoves his worry off the best he can, coming to a stop in front of the stairs.
“Molly?” He whispers into the quiet, dark house.
No one responds; the pit of worry growing in his stomach only worsens as the silence drags on for seconds at time. But then, so quiet he nearly misses it, he hears a sound that is suspiciously alike to crying.
If he had a heart still, it’d have dropped, and he rushes around the house, silent as can be, trying to listen to where it came from.
He jerks to a stop in front of the downstairs bathroom, frozen in place by a choked sob coming from the other side of the door. The crying is quiet and muffled, and if he strains his ears (or lack thereof) he can hear Molly’s stuttering breaths as she tries to gasp for air between sobs.
“Molly?” He whispers again, raising a hand towards the door. He hears her cries abruptly stop, and the silence following is nearly deafening. “...Do you… want me to come in?”
For a moment or two, there is nothing, but soon a soft click is heard- the lock wouldn’t have stopped him beforehand, but the gesture is enough. The door now unlocked, he phases through it.
The first thing he sees is hair of all things, gathering in a pile in the sink- the second thing he sees is Molly on the floor, back against the door, scissors in hand. It doesn’t take long to put two and two together.
He doesn’t quite get the apparent gravity of her cutting her own hair, but he floats down next to her and places, what he hopes is, a comforting hand on her shoulder anyways.
What matters now is that she’s upset and crying, and that she needs someone to help her right now. With his other hand, he reaches over and grabs the scissors from her hand gently, stretching his arm out to set them on the counter.
“Molly,” He starts, face twisting into a worried frown as he sees her curl up more upon hearing him speak. “Moll, what’s the matter, what happened?”
Molly says nothing, only raising an arm to haphazardly gesture at her head before bringing it down again.
Her hair is now a messy, uneven pixie cut, looking like she had taken an axe to her hair, really- there was a section of it that was longer than the rest, too, like she had stopped herself halfway through.
“...Don’t feel like talkin’ right now?” He asks. She gives a shake of the head in reply. “That’s alright. I’ll be here when you’re ready, kid.”
She leans into his side then, subtly shaking, and he moves his arm to wrap around her shoulders. He can’t help but share this sadness she’s feeling; such sadness that he’s never really seen too much of from her, if ever. Not the kind that’s left her as she is now, shaky and curled up in a ball to hide from the world.
(Thinking back and looking at her now, he’s actually quite glad he woke up from the small sound of her leaving the room.)
A few minutes pass, time dragging on in silence as Scratch floats by Molly’s side, listening to her occasional sniffles and hiccups. He’s so bitterly, woefully unprepared for moments like this- he tries not to fidget, tries to figure out what he could possibly say to break this heavy silence, and yet he cannot think of anything.
It is then that Molly lifts her head up, startling him out of his thoughts. Her face is riddled with stray tears, and her eyes are squinted against the lights; she does not turn to look at him, only barely peeking her head out from her arms.
“I, I don’t,” Molly starts, voice broken and quiet. She stops for a second, shutting her eyes closed tight, and inhales a shaky breath. “I don’t think I’m a girl.”
Oh.
Scratch’s eyes widen a bit, and all at once the situation hits him across the head; all at once he feels the familiarity of it all.
“Hey,” Scratch says, nudging them lightly as he puts a small awkward grin on his face. “It’s ok, kiddo. You say you’re not a girl, alright, you’re not a girl then.”
Molly turns to face him then, their eyes wide as tears gather in them. Shoulders shaking, they sob again, except they begin to smile thereafter, and the look in their eyes screams nothing but gratefulness- it makes Scratch want to cry too, to think that they were afraid he’d try convincing them otherwise.
They uncurl themselves, quickly wrapping their arms around him tightly as they cry, and he squishes up at that, breath squeezed out of his nonexistent lungs.
“Tell you what-” He wheezes out, tapping Molly’s shoulder. “You stop squeezing the afterlife outta me, I’ll fix up your hair.”
He hears them give a quiet, watery laugh at that, and gives a smile of his own. They let go and lean back, wiping at their eyes with their wrist, and Scratch reaches out a hand as he floats up to help them up to their feet.
He pats their shoulder as they stand, and levitates the pair of scissors over to them both, gently nudging Molly to face away from the mirror.
The silence, this time, is comforting, interrupted only by the snip, snip, snip of the scissors, tufts of hair falling to the floor around Molly’s feet. The minute he’s finished, he floats all the stray hair in the room up from the floor and sink, and into the trash, setting the scissors down on the counter.
Rubbing his hands together, he turns Molly around; in the mirror is a kid with short hair that barely grazes the bottom of their neck, short bangs swept to the side with ends that curl around their ears.
It’s certainly not a professional looking haircut; it’s messy and a bit uneven, but it’s definitely enough for Molly, by the look on their face.
“So!” Scratch says with a proud grin, leaning an elbow on Molly’s head; they’re smiling wide, face breaking out into a grin. “Who am I looking at, here?”
“...Who you’re… looking at?” Molly repeats as their smile falls a bit, sounding less like asking him to repeat himself, and more like they’re asking themselves. “I… I dunno. I like being Molly. I just… I dunno. Molly, the… not-girl.”
“You claimin’ that middle name, then?” Scratch tries to joke, relieved when Molly cracks a smile at it. “Molly Not-Girl McGee. I like it, ‘s got a nice ring to it.”
“I… It’s kinda silly. I don’t even know when I realized…” They trail off, eyes turning down as they fidget with their hands. “It just… hit me out of nowhere. I guess I couldn’t sleep and started thinking too much? I- I dunno.”
Scratch hums at that, face softening, hoping that they know he’s listening, but that he won’t interrupt. The room is silent for another minute while Molly gnaws at their lip, trying to find the right words to say.
“I guess it’s like- it’s just weird. ‘Cause I mean…” They stutter a bit, eyes darting back up to look in the mirror and at him, before looking back down. “I was… I’ve been growing up being a girl ‘nd stuff. And I don’t even… I don’t feel all the way like a boy, either. I’m just… Something.”
“...And being that something can be scary, when you’ve always been another thing,” Scratch supplies, looking down at Molly. “At least that’s one experience we have in common.”
Molly pauses at that, looking up at him with wide eyes. Once they process his words, their smile they give him shakes a bit as they stare at him with something alike to hope.
“You… You too?” They ask quietly, almost shy.
“Yep, me too.” He affirms. “I tried a lotta different words on ‘fore I decided I was a boy, lemme tell ya. So… you do the same, alright? Keep tryin’ until you find what fits you .”
“I… O-Okay,” They reply, sniffling a bit as tears well up in their eyes again. When they speak up again, their voice is quiet and unsure. “...Do- do you think, at least when no one else around, or- or until I tell Dad and Mom, and everyone... you could, um… use, he/him for me?”
“Course, Moll,” Scratch smiles, ruffling up his hair, effectively giving him a noogie; Molly laughs quietly and bats his hand away. “Now c’mere, once in a lifetime chance, gimme a hug.”
He expects another death-grip of a hug, as Molly’s hugs always are, but…
Molly grins at him, a tear or two falling from his own face, and he leans forward to give him a hug that screams love . It’s not too tight, and Scratch’s face is pressed against his shoulder, Molly’s face resting on top of his head.
They’ll both talk and talk into the night, consoling and fretting respectively, of what to do or what to say, of how, “I’ll handle any bullies, Moll, they’ll be so scared they won’t even think to mess with ya-” but for now, they will stay put for just a moment longer.
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