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Wooyoung’s blowing his bangs out of his face again.
From the corner of his eye, Seonghwa watches as he huffs, shakes his head, attempts to push his hair back with his sweater covered hand, then grumbles to himself and pulls his sleeve down so he can properly run his fingers through his hair.
It’s his normal way of dealing with his hair, except it’s never been this long before. So when his bangs stay put for a second, only to slide right back into his face, it’s no wonder that Wooyoung lets out a frustrated cry and throws himself back onto the couch.
Usually it’s Wooyoung that’s the one to poke fun at Seonghwa and now he can finally return the favour.
Seonghwa wanders over, hands behind his back and a smile on his face. “What’s the matter, Wooyoung?”
“Hyung…” Wooyoung whines with a pout that should look ridiculous, but doesn’t on him. “How did you deal with long bangs?”
“Well,” he perches on the arm of the couch. “The ones during the Wonderland promotion were clip-ins.”
“Yah, that doesn’t help!” Wooyoung pitches himself forward and turns to face Seonghwa. He slaps his sleeve covered hands on the couch. When his bangs fall forward again, he actually wilts, his shoulders slumping.
Seeing Wooyoung like this should make Seonghwa chuckle or something, but when he’s so down it never evokes such a reaction. There’s times when fun is to be had and then there’s times like this.
Seonghwa reaches out and pushes one side of Wooyoung’s bangs back, holding it in place to keep it from sliding forward again. “Have you tried tying it back?”
“Of course.” Wooyoung huffs more, but a bit of frustration leaves his face. “But the way they cut it makes some strands a different length and they just go everywhere.”
“Product then?”
Wooyoung shakes his head and the hair slips out from under Seonghwa’s fingers. This time, Wooyoung doesn’t even bother sighing. “We don’t have anything strong enough and I don’t think it’s worth it to go out and buy something. I’ll just have to get used to it, I guess.”
If it’s bothering Wooyoung so much, it’s probably worth it, but Seonghwa isn’t going to push the issue too much. It’s Wooyoung’s hair, after all, and he’s right; he would get used to it eventually.
But maybe Seonghwa could help him out for today. The group is already done with their schedule for the day, so he might as well get Wooyoung as comfortable as possible.
“Then we can braid it.”
Wooyoung raises his eyebrows at Seonghwa. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“I do,” Seonghwa says.
“Huh? When did you learn that?”
He wants to snark back at Wooyoung, but takes a quick breath to keep himself from doing so. “One of the stylists showed me how.”
Wooyoung stares at him, eyes wide and mouth half open. It lasts for so long that Seonghwa wants to ask him if he’s okay, but then the younger smiles. “Yes. Please, hyung.”
One of the advantages of many of them having grown their hair out in the past few months is that there’s hair elastics scattered around the dorm. Seonghwa doesn’t know how many braids he’s going to make, so he grabs as many as he can find, all in different colours and sizes.
When he gets back to the living room, Wooyoung’s already perched on one of the ottomans, rubbing his sweater covered hands on his knees.
Seonghwa hands Wooyoung the mess of elastics and runs his fingers through Wooyoung’s hair. It’s soft and smells faintly of the shampoo that he knows the younger singer uses. “I haven’t practiced much, so I can’t promise it’ll look good.”
“That’s okay.” Wooyoung wiggles on his seat. “As long as nothing pinches.”
That’s also not something that Seonghwa can promise, but he’ll try his best. He sits on the couch behind Wooyoung and hesitates before standing up again. The stylists are always standing when they do their hair. Seonghwa will take a page out of their books.
The first braid is wonky and plenty of small strands of hair are sticking out of it, but when Seonghwa gets an elastic from Wooyoung and ties it, he finds that he’s not exactly angry at it.
“How does it look?” Wooyoung asks.
Seonghwa grabs more hair, gathering a little more than the previous one. “I thought it didn’t matter what they looked like?”
“Hmm, maybe a little bit.”
They’re both laughing as Seonghwa slaps Wooyoung’s shoulder.
As he does more braids, Seonghwa feels more confident in them, and it shows. The next few are tighter and much neater. He’s pleased with himself when he finishes and makes sure that there aren’t any loose strands still tickling Wooyoung’s face.
“I’m done.”
Wooyoung shoots off of the ottoman, dropping the elastics that were on his lap to the ground.
Seonghwa immediately bends down to pick all of them up. If they’re left there for more than a minute, he can guarantee that someone will come in and kick them all over the place. They’ll find hair elastics under the couch in a few months if that happens.
There’s a loud exclamation coming from down the hall. Echoey in such a way that Seonghwa knows it’s from the bathroom.
He makes sure that he has all the elastics and pads over to where Wooyoung is leaning close to the mirror, tilting his head side to side as he takes in the braids. “Hyung! These don’t look bad at all!”
Seonghwa nudges Wooyoung aside and deposits the hair ties in one of the top drawers. “You sound surprised.”
“Honestly, I am. In fact, I’m so impressed that you can do this again tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.”
“Hey. Be careful, you.”
“And the week after that! And-” Wooyoung shrieks as he squirms away from Seonghwa’s hand poking at his side. He bats at Seonghwa and goes running out of the bathroom and down the hall to San’s room. “Sannie! Look what Seonghwa hyung did!”
There’s more excited shouting and Seonghwa shakes his head at the other members’ antics.
Later, Wooyoung’s dragged Yeosang and San to him and asks Seonghwa to braid their hair too and for all that Seonghwa rolls his eyes at them, he happily gets up to grab the hair elastics.