Work Text:
Slow, practiced movements.
Sorey’s eyes follow them, the soft lengths of Mikleo’s fingers running through white tresses, parting and holding and weaving them together into an easy braid. It’s immaculous, almost without stray hairs, so utterly pretty and perfect and infuriating—
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” he finds himself uttering.
Mikleo looks up with a small and confused noise. His fingers pause and he blinks at Sorey. “Doing what?”
“This!” Sorey growls out, and honestly, he didn’t mean to sound so snappy, it just… happened. Mikleo watches with concern as his face contorts into a grimace.
“I’m not following, Sorey... What’s this about?”
“I already feel like I don’t belong anymore without you doing everything you can to remind me,” Sorey says, clenching his hands into fists where they rest on his knees.
Now it’s Mikleo’s turn to frown. “I’m not doing anything, Sorey.”
“Yeah, you are! You’re so… different now, Mikleo. Your clothes, your home, even your hair that you keep always playing with! It’s like you’re mocking me for how long I’ve been gone!”
Mikleo physically recoils, even though they’re sitting on completely different sides of the room. The hair falls out of his stiff fingers and the lowermost few weaves untangle themselves. There’s silence for a moment, in which Sorey has a first row seat to the spectacle that happens on Mikleo’s face as he visibly fights off an onslaught of tears.
Immediately, Sorey regrets his outburst, but it’s too late.
Mikleo’s lips purse tightly. His voice is almost, almost free of any wavering as he stands up. “You really hate my hair so much?” he asks, though it’s obvious he doesn’t expect an answer.
“N—”
Mikleo picks up a scissor from the edge of the table, from underneath a pile of books and scattered papers and maps. “Well, if you hate it so much, let me just cut it off for you!”
Sorey springs up, his heart skipping a beat as Mikleo takes ahold of the unfinished braid and lifts it off his shoulder. Time seems to slow down a little as Mikleo drags the scissor above his fist.
Hair goes flying as it settles back down around Mikleo’s flushed, teary face. The cut ends up uneven and his hair now only reaches down to his chin. The cut-off rest in Mikleo’s shaking hand is thrown right at him, scattering everywhere over the bed and the floor.
“Mikleo! Why’d you—” Sorey cries out, looking at the mess everywhere.
Mikleo starts weeping openly now, gritting his teeth as the scissor falls down from his hand, making a dull thud as it hits the floorboards. “There!” he yells back, sobbing. “Hope you can feel like you belong again!”
And with that, he twists on his heel and bursts out of the small house, slamming the door behind himself. Sorey is left in the ensuing silence, with only the leftover mess and a sinking feeling that he should have held his damn tongue in check in the pit of his stomach.
Sorey searches around with his heart in his throat and bigger pain that before pressing against his lungs, and finally finds Mikleo sitting by the edge, next to the stream and its soothing trickling.
He sits down next to him as he is, knees pulled up to his chest and forehead against them; he was weeping, if he still isn’t. He doesn’t tell Sorey to scram, though.
“Mikleo, I—” he starts, but Mikleo cuts him off. It seems to be a pattern today.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it hurt you.”
“Mikleo, Look at me.” Sorey’s louder voice — he doesn’t care for waking the others. The others don’t matter now. Mikleo does — finally forces Mikleo’s head to lift up. And, sure enough, his beautiful purple eyes are rimmed with red. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that. Of course things would be different, it’s been seven hundred years! It’s not fair to make you feel responsible for a choice I made.”
Mikleo looks away, brows drawn together, and he doesn’t say anything. Sorey might not be up to speed, but Mikleo’s personality hasn't changed. He doesn’t believe him—or he doesn’t want to.
“I’m so sorry about your hair,” he continues then, “It must’ve meant something to you to keep it long.”
Mikleo drops his head into his knees again, wrapping his arms around them tightly to hug himself into a small ball. His voice is almost inaudible, although it makes Sorey’s blood freeze in his veins. “It was a reminder of our armatus. I wanted to feel like you were still with me wherever I went.”
“Oh— oh gods,” Sorey breathes out, slapping a hand over his mouth. Here he was, thinking Mikleo and the world moved on without him, even with Mikleo’s visits, and instead Mikleo was keeping his memory this close to his heart. And now it’s gone.
He’s an idiot.
“Mik— I’m so sorry, I, I didn’t know. I should’ve just talked to you instead of… that.”
Mikleo picks his head up again to look at him, pushing a strand of hair behind his ear. It escapes almost immediately and drops back into his face.
A pang of guilt runs through Sorey again.
“It’s fine, I was planning to cut it anyhow,” Mikleo says, “I should’ve done it sooner, the night you came back. I’m sorry. A lot has changed, you’re right, but I didn’t want us to be one of those things.”
“I think we can put stuff as it was before,” Sorey says, as if trying not only to reassure Mikleo, but mostly himself, “Maybe not like it was, but better.”
Mikleo rocks himself and ends up leaned against Sorey’s shoulder, still curled up. Sorey can’t help but think how adorable he is. “Yeah. You have to tell me when you feel bad, though. Cutting my hair once might’ve been alright, but if it happens again, I might not have any left.”
“How about I try and even it out, at least?” Sorey proposes, cupping Mikleo’s cheek and brushing the soft skin and even softer hair with his thumb.
“You’re not allowed anywhere near my hair with any blade, don’t you remember?” Mikleo says, even though he sighs and leans into the gentle caress, eyes slipping closed.
“Am I at least able to braid it?”
Mikleo scoffs. “It’s too short for that now.”
“I don’t know,” Sorey muses, toying a strand between his fingers. “It’s not that much shorter than Rose’s had been. I’m sure we could do some cool little braids on the sides.”
“So first you get angry when I braid it, and then you ask to braid it yourself? You should’ve just asked in the first place.”
Sorey snorts softly, an apologetic grin on his face. “You won’t let me live this down, huh?”
“Depends on how good of a braid you can make. You know, Edna used to make fun of my early braids, they were horrible. So I just wore a ponytail instead. I’ve gotten pretty good later on, though,” Mikleo says, sounding proud of himself. And he is, it took him a lot of effort to make it look so effortless.
“What if I let my hair grow out too, and then she can make fun of me when I practice.”
Mikleo laughs, unfurling one arm from around his legs to stifle himself. “I don’t think you want that,” he says between giggles.
“I don’t think I’ll get much else from Edna anyhow,” Sorey says, laughing along with Mikleo.
“One time she complimented my outfit. But then she noticed Lailah was around so she insulted everything else she could think of right after.” Sorey’s amused expression melts into understanding.
“I guess not that much has changed, huh.”