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Scriabin stares at his half-familiar face and wills his hair to grow.
It’s not not there. It’s just not there yet… and that might be worse than the alternative.
He could contend with waiting if it were a matter of stasis before revelation: several months of discomfort and dissociation from a bald reflection, rewarded at last with a first, enduring glimpse of his glorious self.
Instead, these awkward in-between phases; a new, wrong person in the mirror every day. While any of those men could, of course, gain the adoration of all they encounter over the course of their daylong lifespan… it does wear on him, trying on and casting off face after face in search of the one still so vivid in his memory.
When will his appearance click into place? How will he even know, by then, the difference between almost-me, not-quite-me, and yes-finally-me? Will the stifling anticipation burn away the eventual triumph, leaving him looking right, but feeling the same?
Bodily impermanence is not a new threat, but it has taken on a new and more concrete form. Several, in fact.
On a greater timescale, if they all make it that far, this body is susceptible to the effects of aging. He will have maybe a decade to flaunt his lustrousness before it starts to thin and break more easily.
(Is he younger than Edgar? Biologically, genetically? Can that even be determined? Would such a comparison even help to alert him, someday, to the imminent changes to his hairline, skin texture, or eyesight?)
More immediately, various commonplace objects around the apartment hold the potential for fleshly destruction. Scriabin first realized the precariousness of his appearance on the first morning, as Edgar shaved his face, keeping a firm grip and an attentive gaze to avoid inflicting injury. The notion still occurs to him during that otherwise mindless step in his daily routine. Inversely to how he uses the razor to preserve a certain image, he could so easily pick up a pair of scissors, gather fistfuls of hair, and decimate the progress his body has made. No amount of focused remorse would unmake those cuts.
Continuity of embodied existence is a beautiful, wretched, horrific thing.
The wig he now holds in his hands helps, but he can’t look at it when he’s not wearing it, has to quickly stow the bag in a drawer between uses. It looks so fake and dead. How repulsive that, after he gave so much to become real in the eyes of the world at large, any part of his outward appearance would be contingent on a plastic imitation.
It’s just hair. But it’s representative of everything. Every suffocating, humiliating limitation that singes his fingertips when he dares reach beyond it.
Earlier in the week he found himself alone in the kitchen after making a sandwich. Before replacing the red twist-tie on the bread bag, one of many fine motor tasks he now excels at, he tried twisting it around a lock of hair near his temple. Even in the dark reflection of the microwave door, he could tell it looked pathetic and quickly pulled it back out.
Months from now, when Scriabin can finally perfect his real hairstyle in that way, literally and figuratively putting a bow on his look… the first time he knots the yarn in the privacy of their home, Edgar will notice, and will most likely stumble over his words in search of a nonchalant yet respectful acknowledgement. It will be a meaningful, noteworthy change. He wishes it were already so normal as to be unremarkable.
He doesn’t deserve to suffer the itchiness of new growth, the odd vulnerability of air currents against the nape of his neck, or the bleak monochrome of hair too short for adornment.
Edgar appears in the mirror, poking his head through the open bathroom door. “What are you doing?” he asks. Willfully unobservant as always.
“Nothing that would interest you.” It would be all too easy to slip into a sullen tone here, but Scriabin is above that, and keeps his voice cavalier to drive home that he’s perfectly content thinking his own thoughts in isolation, thank you very much.
“All right, well, Todd’s ready. We’re leaving in just a minute.”
During the short pause that follows, Edgar looks forward and seems to study the tableau of the two of them side-by-side. He reaches out, almost without visible hesitation, to run his fingers briefly upward through the hair at the back of Scriabin’s head.
Pleasure flickers across his still-sensitive scalp, and he tenses to suppress a shiver.
Edgar gives him a small half-smile and pats his shoulder before he steps back into the hall. “Come meet us in the car, okay?”
He nods, and the floor creaks with Edgar’s departing footsteps.
Bastard. He either knows exactly what Scriabin was doing and thinking, and how the gesture would comfort and wound in equal measure… or he suspects nothing and acted entirely absently. To know which, to once again feel the intention dissolve into his mind like a flavor on his tongue, Scriabin would give anything. Even these precious few inches.
When he hears the front door close behind Edgar, Scriabin glares fiercely in the mirror, past the strands of hair brushing his brows, straight into his own eyes behind their reflective lenses. Just for a few seconds—before he sighs, pulls on the wig, and follows.