Chapter Text
“Ow!” Jesse yelped, not hiding the look of pain on his face as a comb was roughly yanked through his hair, a mixture of pomade and sheer will taming it… somewhat. “You don’t have to kill me!” He complained, hand going up to rub the sore spot on his head.
“I am not killing you.” His father replied, both prim and smug, snapping the comb against Jesse’s hand. “Do not touch your hair, after all this work you want to tangle it again?”
“It’d be nice to not have it glued down,” Jesse grumbled, frowning at Gabriel through the mirror. His father made a face, about to launch into an extended lecture on the importance of poise and manners and whatnot, but Jesse is spared the thousandth version of a lecture he’d heard far too many times by his father’s mate.
“Jesse, you don’t want to go and suffer your tumbleweed fluff of hair all night.” Jack hummed, barely looking up from the jacket he was checking over. “It’s important you make a good first impression, because once people have decided you are a nice young man it is hard to sway them from it. Besides, you did all those lessons on etiquette, you may as well use what you learned, so it isn’t, as you say, a massive waste of time.”
“It is a waste of time.” Jesse sighed. “I don’t even care about… omegas and… and dancing.” He added, voice pitching into a slight whine.
“That’s all well and good, but you cannot skip out on your presentation dance.” Jack chuckled, helping Jesse into his coat. It was a rich, deep red, bordered by delicate golden filigree. Gabriel had commented it made Jesse look dashing at the tailor’s, and the young alpha had blushed about as red as his new jacket.
“But if I go to this one, people will expect me to go to the other ones!”
“Yes, and you will go to those too!”
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Hanzo sighed softly as the brush stroked through his long hair and caught, slightly, before gliding down. He loved the feeling of his hair being taken care of. He could hear his father huffing a small laugh as he set the brush down and began the task of twisting and pinning up Hanzo’s hair into an elaborate design, set with an elegantly jeweled comb.
“Why is it,” asked Genji, who was sitting on Hanzo’s bed, pouting, “That Hanzo gets to go to another ball, and I have to stay home?”
“You haven’t presented yet, and Hanzo presented last year,” Sojiro replied, with a fond smile. It wasn’t entirely true, of course. Genji was very clearly an alpha, it was a simple matter of his scent changing, but it wasn’t right for a younger sibling to be presented a year after his elder when they were three years apart.
“But he went to a ball last year when he presented!” Genji whined.
“And he must continue going until he secures himself a mate,” Sojiro explained, as he had a thousand times. Hanzo sniffed daintily, carefully dabbing a touch of Clarified Jasmine Oil onto his wrists and neck. The scent was complementary to his own but would disguise it well enough for a public gathering.
“I doubt I will find a suitable mate only a year after presenting.” Hanzo murmured, adding a delicate smudge of rouge to his cheeks, to keep from looking too pale in his lightly colored dress. The comment made Sojiro laugh.
“Are you so sure that the young alphas are a poor match?”
“Well, they clearly take time to learn manners.” Hanzo quipped, eyeing Genji, who stuck out his tongue.
“Perhaps…” Sojiro agreed, voice cryptic. Hanzo gave him a curious look through the mirror. “But there might be someone that would be a good mate to you tonight.”
“You say that like you know something I don’t, father.”
“That may well be the case, Hanzo.”