Work Text:
Heart wasn’t sure how long they had been lying in their bed when he woke up. Yet as his alarm blared next to his mattress on the floor, he guessed it was probably Monday. If no one else had fronted since he fell asleep, they’d probably been in bed for almost a day? He found it hard to tell.
Still lying on his side, alarm ringing in his ear, he ran his tongue over his teeth. They didn’t taste as rancid as usual, he thought, wondering when they were last brushed - maybe one of the others had shown up while he slept and did something productive for a change.
His alarm clock continued to remind him he had to be working in an hour. Annoyance overcoming his apathy, he rolled over and slapped at it blindly until the shrieking ceased. Heart shimmied up to a sitting position and felt for his water bottle next to him. Brushing his hair away from his face, he drank.
That’s what he intended to do, at least. Instead, he found himself frozen. He was running his hand through his hair over and over again like a broken automaton, unable to bring his water to his mouth as his brain stalled, trying to figure out what was up.
Suddenly, he shot up, knocking over his water bottle stumbling over to where he remembered the mirror was in their room. He groped at its surface for a second, forgetting in his panic he couldn’t actually see the state of his hair.
“Soul!” He shouted out loud as his fingers clutched at the remnants hair that usually dangled in front of their face to Mind’s annoyance. “Soul!”
After a moment, a voice murmured into existence as if in front of him. Despite not being able to see him, Heart felt Soul’s presence now staring back from the other side of the mirror. “You alright?”
For a moment all Soul could do was watch in silence as he tried to see anything past Heart’s flailing hands. Failing to articulate himself any further, Heart eventually just groaned and simply pulled at his hair, or at least what remained of it.
Soul finally managed to get a good look at Whole’s hair: a third of their hair had become a jagged arc cutting across their forehead. Soul had heard of micro bangs before, however he wasn’t sure whoever had done this to them understood that some hair was supposed to remain. At least they would save some money later that year, no longer needing to buy a wig to go as Lord Farquaad for Halloween.
“Why do we have a fringe?!” Soul exclaimed at the Edna Mode cosplayer in the mirror.
“I don’t know!” Heart cried, hands now flapping in panic. The only salient thought through his hysteria came a moment later; the brief recognition of Soul’s presence slipping away from the other side of the mirror and back to their headspace, leaving him alone in their room.
…
“Mind? Mind!” As if stumbling through the front door of the house that made up their head space, Soul made a beeline up towards Mind’s room. A shuffling sounded from downstairs and, turning where he was on the stairs, Soul saw Mind standing by the bottom of the stairs. Soul froze as he took in all three hundred and sixty degrees of the bowl cut Mind had given himself. His curls tried and failed desperately to hide the awkwardness of his work. The fact the short hair almost suited him only made Soul’s annoyance worse, or would have, if he didn’t look like a monk.
“What did you do to Whole?!” Soul shouted - the momentary look of anticipation Mind wore as he saw Soul look at his new hair cut completely disappearing.
Mind only stared back confused. “Did what to him?”
“Your hair! His hai-!” Soul was shouting when front door burst open again. Before Mind could even look over his shoulder, Heart had made for him and grabbed him by the tufts of his sixth-grade-picture-day-looking-ass hair cut.
Still half way up the stairs, Soul knew he really ought to stop Heart as he watched him begin to tear at Mind. The atrocities he had seen Heart do to Mind during Calamity before paled in comparison to what he saw happening now at the bottom of the stairs. Yet the obligation to stop him for Whole’s sake seemed now only a distant notion.
Heart continued to trample Mind into the bannister even as he fell to his knees. Doing his best to avoid getting caught by Heart’s violence, Soul slipped past the pair and into the kitchen. He put on the kettle, but now only reached for two mugs. He tried his best to ignore Mind’s mechanical screams coming from the hallway and get on with making a cuppa.