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Ocean has always known that she wasn’t the most well-liked person at school. Other students are irritated by her perfect grades, perfect projects, perfect attendance. They spread rumors about her (“Ocean’s mouth must be really good to get her the scores she gets” and “I hear she’s sleeping with Mr. Whitby”), and they harass her into doing assignments for them because they don’t want to do it themselves. Yes, her rather dented social status is something she’s very aware of.
But she never expected it to go to this level.
Ocean is cornered in a stairwell by a boy that’s more like a dog than a human being. She believes his name may be Nicholas. She’s seen him prowling the halls quite often, always leering at her from behind a scraggly mop of dark brown hair. She’s gotten bad vibes from him before, but this just proves that there’s something very, very wrong with him.
“What— what do you want?” Ocean stutters, unable to keep her voice from shaking. She’s never liked confrontation very much, but this sort of situation is so much worse than anything she’s ever imagined. She has no breathing room in this corner she’s been backed into, forced to take in the thick musk of Nicholas’ sweat and cologne. Her own breath quivers as it passes her lips, heart pounding furiously in her chest, and she starts to feel faint.
And that’s before Nicholas even starts to talk.
But then he does, and his voice is like the hungry growl of a rabid hound.
“I think you know,” he says.
Ocean does know, but that doesn’t mean she wants to say it out loud.
“Please let me go,” she begs softly. “Please, I’ll give you whatever you want. Test answers, a finished project, anything!”
“I don’t want any of that shit,” Nicholas says. “You are what I want.”
Ocean whimpers faintly. She needs to get away. She has to get away. She can’t let this happen to her.
With a sudden burst of movement, Ocean ducks to the side of Nicholas and makes a break for the staircase, but Nicholas is much faster than her. He snatches her by the hair and yanks her around; her head smashes hard into the wall.
Ocean crumples to the floor. Her skull aches with tremendous pain, and she thinks she can taste the coppery tang of blood on her tongue. Above her, Nicholas looms, his eyes sick and wild.
Then, he’s coming down on her. Even with her awful headache, Ocean fights him to the best of her ability, feebly swinging her fists and kicking out her legs. She opens her mouth and screams, “HELP! SOMEONE HELP!”
And then a hand clamps down over her mouth, muffling any further plea. Nicholas looks livid.
“You stupid bitch,” he hisses. “Keep your fucking mouth shut!”
Ocean lets out a weak sob. With his other hand, Nicholas starts to slither his way up her dress, and Ocean is sure this is the end of everything—her future, her innocence, her life.
And then, there’s a new voice that echoes through the stairwell. One that sounds like the furious roar of a bear.
“What the FUCK do you think you’re DOING TO HER?!”
A moment later, Nicholas is ripped off of Ocean and thrown to the ground. The second he’s gone, Ocean curls in on herself, closing her arms around her head, trying to protect her body.
There’s a loud struggle going on, punctuated by the howl of colorful swear words and the smack of fists against flesh. Someone is screeching, “If you touch her again, I’ll KILL YOU! Do you hear me? I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”
Ocean peeks out through her arms and sees that it’s Mischa who is mauling Nicholas. In the fray of violence, he looks almost animalistic, his eyes alight with feral fire, mouth pulled back to show his teeth in a vicious snarl. He’s like some kind of monster going on a barbaric rampage, and Ocean feels so very protected by the aura of animosity he’s giving off.
Nicholas is shoved down the staircase, and Mischa screams at him to fuck off. Then, Mischa turns to Ocean, and the hellfire burning in his eyes cools down when he looks at her.
When he’s close enough, Ocean reaches her hands out to Mischa, not caring about how childish or pathetic she must look when doing so. His arms wind tightly around her, and he holds her to his chest with all the protectiveness of an older brother to his younger sister. Her fingers claw for a hold on him as she sobs into his shirt, and he tucks her head beneath his chin. One of his hands rubs her back as he starts to sway her back and forth, hoping to bring her some sort of comfort.
“Shh, shh,” Mischa murmurs as Ocean weeps. “I’ve got you. It’s okay now. I’ve got you…”
A week later, Ocean shows up at Mischa’s house without warning. Her eyes are watery and rimmed with red, and she’s sniffling, doing her best not to break down again. When he opens the door, she says one thing to him: “Cut my hair.”
Mischa doesn’t ask questions, nor does he call her absurd or insane for such a request. He just nods and beckons her inside. She drenches her hair in the sink while Mischa finds some scissors.
They don’t have the apron that barbers use to keep hair from running down their client’s backs, so they use a blanket instead. Mischa looks up a WikiHow article on how to cut hair (with pictures!) and then gets to work.
It’s a mostly silent affair, that quietness broken only by Ocean’s faint sniffles, the snipping of the scissors, and the occasional mumble from Mischa as he attempts to figure out how to obey the instructions properly. By the end of a half hour, Ocean looks like she got into a fight with a sentient sword and lost. Mischa had bunched up all of her hair like he was going to make a ponytail and then chopped all of it off (which was promptly followed by a soft, “Uh oh.”). He had done his best to even it all out, to make it look as nice as possible, but the end result was still choppy, uneven, and awkward.
And yet, as she looks in the mirror, Ocean can’t help but be absolutely mesmerized by herself.
“I’m sorry,” Mischa says apologetically. “I tried my best.”
“No, no, it’s—” Overcome with emotions, Ocean lets out a small, choked laugh. She runs her hands through her hair; it barely reaches below her ears now, but it’s poofier than she had been expecting. “It’s wonderful. I love it.”
Mischa’s eyebrows raise up. “Yeah?”
With tears in her eyes, Ocean smiles. “Yeah.”