Work Text:
“Do I even want to know?”
Marjan watches in amusement as Nancy startles at her voice, popping upright from where she’d been sitting alone in the station kitchen with her forehead pressed to the countertop.
Seeing Nancy’s disgruntled face has Marjan putting a pin in grabbing her leftover smoothie from the fridge, and detouring to the espresso machine instead. Nancy settles again, slouching on her stool.
“Ugh,” she groans, leaning forward again to rub at her face, “the fucking gum call is haunting me,”
Marjan barks out a laugh as the machine heats up, “What, are you having bubblegum-pink nightmares or something? Is that why you’re up so early?”
Nancy just groans again, folding down to put her forehead back on the counter, voice slightly muffled when she says, “I wish it was nightmares,”
“I don’t know what that means, Nance,” Marjan snorts, pulling a mug out of the clean dish rack.
Nancy heaves a dramatic sigh before she reaches to the back of her head and separates out a section to lift, and says, pitifully, “It’s still there,”
All at once, Marjan understands.
She grimaces, “Oh shit, dude. Gross,”
A laugh bubbles out of Nancy
“Thanks,” she says flatly, then heaves herself back upright, a pathetic look on her face to add, “Why couldn’t she have waited like, two more seconds to cough it up. At least until I was out of range,”
“Maybe TK’s next performance review will read ‘much too good at the Heimlich, needs less work’,” Marjan says, splaying her hand out theatrically in the air between them.
“Don’t give me ideas,” Nancy says, widening her eyes emphatically.
Marjan just snorts again as she turns back to the fridge to grab some creamer—and her smoothie—after pulling a shot of espresso, “I thought you got it all out after you showered last night,”
Nancy heaves a sigh, resting her chin in her hand, “Me too, but there’s still something suck by the roots, it’s driving me nuts , and now my arms are tired,”
Setting the finished coffee in front of a pouting Nancy, and taking her own seat on the stool next to her, Marjan takes a sip from her smoothie straw, raises her eyebrows pointedly, and says, “Do you want help,”
After a few more dramatic platitudes, they end up in the lounge with the morning news on low volume, Marjan on the sofa, and Nancy seated on the floor, sipping her fancy coffee and leaning against Marjan’s cross-legged shins.
It’s strangely liminal, the station when no one is awake yet. Being settled like this makes it feel like they shouldn’t break the peace they’ve created.
So Marjan busies herself, taking the offending strands from Nancy’s fingers and very gently, very meticulously, begins working the remaining tacky remnants from her roots.
Her hair smells like citrus. And warmth.
The suddenness and unexpected affection of the thought makes Marjan blush.
She clears her throat and continues her task.
Over the few quiet minutes that follow, Nancy begins to relax back into her more and more, head tilting, shoulders slouching, the warmth of her back seeping through Marjan’s work pants. She can feel the reverberations of Nancy’s pleased hum against her shins when she runs her fingers across her scalp to check for anything she missed.
Marjan’s throat clicks when she swallows. She runs her fingers through the hair from Nancy’s temple to the nape of her neck, just to detangle it, she tells herself. And then she does it again, just to be sure. By the time she’s doing it a third time, Marjan is running out of excuses to tell herself. Her ears are burning.
Nancy lets out another little hum.
Marjan feels like her chest is heaving.
She gently draws the strands of hair at Nancy’s temples back with her fingertips, and tucks it behind her ears.
“Hey,” Nancy’s sleepy voice startles her hands away so suddenly, Marjan almost feels like she’s been electrocuted. Her heart is pounding with embarrassment? Maybe guilt? But before she can spiral about crossing lines or being weird, Nancy is continuing, “you think you could do a braid? Just since you’re back there?”
“Yeah—uh, yeah, absolutely,” Marjan replies quickly, willing her voice back to her regular tenor, clearing her throat, “just a regular French braid?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Nancy says, lifting her hand to pass a hair tie pinched between two fingers over her shoulder to Marjan.
“No problem,” Marjan murmurs—heart still pounding in her ears—before gently gathering Nancy’s hair to start separating it into sections.