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“You really shouldn’t let this get so long,” Fyodor said severely, pinching a lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger. Nikolai stared at their reflection in the mirror—Fyodor’s blank face, liquid purple eyes and sharp mouth; his own messy hair and washed out, colourless eyes. All of him was colourless, drained further by Russian winters. White hair. Rainy-grey eyes. Pale skin and pale lips.
His reflection smiled. “You’ll just have to cut it for me, then,” he said. Fyodor frowned slightly, and Nikolai’s stomach ached with something on the edge between affection and want.
“I’m not doing that,” Fyodor said decidedly. He took a half-step back and vanished, padding silently about the flat they lived in. Nikolai grabbed at the lock of hair Fyodor had just let go of and wondered how he’d look with shorter hair.
He’d begun growing it out somewhere around the time he’d left home and never really considered cutting it. But it was getting so very long, and Fyodor wouldn’t keep quiet about how it was a liability in a fight. Nikolai didn’t care. He hated the idea of himself with short hair, and when he tried to superimpose his fourteen year old self, all buzzed down and dull-manic eyes, onto the mirror his stomach turned and clenched unpleasantly.
Fyodor returned a couple minutes later with a comb and a spray bottle. “No cutting,” Nikolai insisted.
“No cutting, don’t worry,” Fyodor said absently. He brushed through Nikolai’s hair slowly and carefully, working out the tangles and knots that had gathered in it. He hummed quietly to himself as he worked. Nikolai looked at his hands in the mirror and wondered if he could somehow print this image on the back of his eyelids, fall asleep picking on new details.
Fyodor had graceful hands, nimble and talented from years of playing the cello. His humming was far better than his singing, a tune that felt like watching a flock of birds drift through the air. Nikolai could close his eyes and not worry about being yanked out of his pleasant mindless floating, but he didn’t want to look away from this for a second.
“Done,” Fyodor said, when Nikolai’s hair was all combed out—a fall of silver down his shoulders. It looked almost too pretty to be his and Nikolai was so glad, anyway, that it was. He would have preferred for it to be colourful, daydreamed about hair dyed pink and blue and gold. But he took what he had and was grateful, as he’d been taught to be. “Braid it for me?” he asked.
Fyodor sighed a little, but he got to work dividing Nikolai’s hair into fifths. Nikolai hid a smile—he hadn’t asked for a French braid; Fyodor was just a perfectionist and an overachiever. Nikolai pulled a hairband out of the drawer and handed it to Fyodor near the end.
There were already baby hairs escaping the braid, but that wasn’t relevant. Nikolai pulled the braid over his shoulder, tracing the valleys of it. “Fancy work, Fedya,” he noted.
Fyodor went slightly pink. “I don’t do shoddy,” he said gruffly.
“I can see that,” Nikolai trilled, just to make Fyodor relax and roll his eyes again.
He kept the braid for a week before Fyodor pushed him in front of the bathroom mirror again, insisting that Nikolai’s hair needed more love and attention than he was giving it. Except he didn’t use the words love and attention.
This time they also dragged one of the chairs from the kitchen table to the bathroom so that Nikolai could sit, and probably not so that he could tip his head all the way back and make kitten eyes at Fyodor. Fyodor rolled his eyes but allowed it, dropping to his knees so that he didn’t have to work at an odd angle.
“You’re making my life harder,” he grumbled.
“Good,” Nikolai said seriously. Fyodor’s smile looked just as pretty upside-down.
This time Fyodor spent a few long moments combing his fingers through Nikolai’s hair, and Nikolai tried not to physically purr with pleasure. Long after it was over, as they tripped down streets together, Nikolai would reach up to grip his braid and imagine Fyodor’s hands that close to him, cool but firm and always knowing just what to do even when Nikolai was lost.
He’d never imagined it would happen like this for the first time: both of them standing in the stairwell of their apartment building, Fyodor’s hands full of books and Nikolai’s empty. And when Fyodor tripped it was second nature to catch him and steady him even though it put them nose-to-nose, Nikolai’s hand still on Fyodor’s shoulder.
It was Fyodor who kissed him. A quick little thing, afraid of itself. His lips were cold. Nikolai’s heart was racing. “We don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow,” he breathed.
“What are you thinking,” Fyodor said suspiciously. If he was affected at all he hid it well.
“I think you should take a little break,” Nikolai replied. He pulled the hairband off his braid—it would have to be replaced; it was losing its elasticity—and carefully pried it loose.
Nikolai had considered kissing Fyodor before; never had because Fyodor was shy with physical affection. Nikolai was careful not to push him too far, too fast, careful to make sure Fyodor always had a way out. But it felt inevitable now. The last step, the only way forward.
He tugged them both into the bedroom, dropping into the bed by himself first and then pulling Fyodor down as well.
Like this it felt like crashing headfirst into light when it happened: Fyodor in his lap, his hands gripping Nikolai’s face. Nikolai’s hair falling around them in a silvery curtain, creating a private world inside a private world. The way Fyodor’s lips were chapped and bloody and got bloodier the longer they kissed because Nikolai was incapable of holding back when he had everything he’d ever wanted in his hands.
Even the cramp in his neck and shoulders couldn’t have pulled him away. The fact that Fyodor got greedier and more desperate as it went on made it harder still. He put his hands in Nikolai’s hair, brushing through the billowy fall.
“Kolya?” he whispered, voice rough and strained. “I love your hair.”
“I know,” Nikolai murmured. Because he did know, and knowing was something to lean back against and cherish. Knowing was a bright bird in his chest, always singing and always golden. “I know.”