Chapter Text
Arcade’s eyes were glazed as he stared out the window in the backseat of his mother’s car, face resting on his palm as he leaned against the car door. He couldn’t believe Fern had actually agreed to go on holiday with him. Occasionally, he would remove his gaze from the lines on the road to look at the boy in the seat next to him, reassuring himself that they were actually there. And they were. Fern sat with their head back, lying on the seatbelt as if it were a pillow, occasionally snoring softly. It was adorable.
He couldn’t help himself from staring at them, the way their eyes slightly crinkled at the corners, the way their mouth tugged up in a small smile, the light dusting of freckles blessing their face with eternal beauty. A small, stray stream of sunlight glistened on their hair, drawing Arcade’s eyes from Fern’s perfect face to their flawless hair. A small, pale auburn streak peeked at him, a stark contrast from the luscious moss green of their hair. How hadn’t he noticed before?
Arcade had known that when Fern became cursed, their appearance had changed. Their ivory skin bore no cursed clothing, their obsidian eyes were not the black holes Arcade could lose himself in, their wings neither tattered nor torn, their hair not the lush shade of green only seen deep in the forest. Arcade had often wondered what Fern’s real hair looked like, and his eyes kept trailing back to the thin streak of amber hair.
Fern stirred as the car hit a large pothole, blinking dazedly at the boy next to them, catching him staring. Arcade quickly averted his gaze, bringing his hand up to his face to cover the pinky blush painting his cheeks. Fern’s brows furrowed, pushing themself into a proper position to look at the human boy.
“What are you looking at?” they asked earnestly.
“Nothing!” Arcade replied too quickly.
Fern’s skepticism had only grown deeper. Carefully, they wrapped their hand around his wrist, attempting to pry it from his face. Their endeavors proved futile, and they grumbled in defeat.
“Arcade,” his mother chided. “Be nice to your friend.”
The blue-haired boy turned red, caught by his mother rather than his best friend. When he took too long to respond to Fern’s question, she glared at him through the rearview mirror.
“Ah! Uh…” Arcade removed his hand from his face and rubbed his neck sheepishly. “You have a streak of orange in your hair. It just caught my eye.”
Though it was barely the truth, it was better than the full truth. He couldn’t bear imagining how Fern would respond to “I was staring at your face because it’s very pretty, then the sun hit your hair and I noticed an orange streak.” Utterly mortifying.
Fern looked down at their hair to see the aforementioned streak of copper that their friend had been very intent upon looking at. It was her hair. Their mother’s beautiful, long hair that they had lost when they put on her crown. Fern had known it was there, a constant reminder of their past: their sickness, their failure, their curse, the loss of who they were. Their heart throbbed looking at it, throat tightening as the hotness pooled into their eyes. No. They couldn’t cry. Not now. Not in front of him when he was so excited for this trip. Fern inhaled sharply, their breath hitching in apprehension of the tears they would not allow to fall, then let it out slowly, surreptitiously.
“Fern?” Arcade asked, worriedly. “Are you okay?”
Fern smiled softly at Arcade and nodded, melting the boy’s heart a little bit.
“It’s a streak of what my hair used to look like, that’s all,” they said quietly.
“Whoa, that’s fuckin’ awesome, dude!” he blurted excitedly, eyes alight.
“It is hair,” Fern muttered. “Nothing to get excited over.”
“It totally is!” Arcade huffed in response.
“You need to lower your standards then…”
“No, you just need to heighten yours!”
“Allow me to reiterate: it is just hair.”
“But that’s your hair!”
“I do not wish to talk about it!” Their voice was sharp, almost serrated.
Fern turned to face the window, away from Arcade, away from their problems.
“Fern, I—” Arcade cut himself off, seeking the right words. “Fuck. Fern, I’m so sorry.”
He reached out to the thorny prince, fingers inches short of brushing their shoulder, and hesitated. Arcade’s fingers curled into a tight fist and retreated to his lap. He just didn’t know what to say.
“I didn’t know your hair was a touchy subject. I’m sorry. I won’t push it any further,” he whispered.
There was a pause. An all-consuming, deafening silence filled the car.
“S’ok,” was Fern’s quiet, belated response.
They knew it wasn’t fair to Arcade, being like this. He knew nothing of their past, but they hated their hair. And that Arcade knew. So why did he take the knowledge of their old hair and run with it?
In an attempt to lighten the mood, Lola’s arm came snaking around the back seat, a large glass jar filled with various coins in her hand.
“That’s $4 for you!” she hummed. “Remember that I’m the one driving!”
Arcade scowled as he fished the two coins out of one of his pockets and plopped them into the jar. He’d sworn. Twice. Fern slowly turned away from the window to the sound of coins clinking in an absolutely massive jar. Their eyes widened in surprise at the scene, and they had to suppress a snort at the sight of Arcade’s diabolical, borderline evil glare towards his mother. It was a strange sight to behold, indeed.
“What is that?” Fern asked, pointing to the nearly full jar.
Arcade huffed a long, suffering sigh.
“It’s called a swear jar,” he grumbled begrudgingly. “Every time I swear, I have to put a different amount of money in the jar.”
Fern giggled. It was a graceful, mellifluous sound of raw, genuine mirth, a lovely, wonderfully beautiful symphony gracing Arcade’s ears.
“So you have to pay for your dirty mouth, I see,” they ascertained.
Arcade smiled softly. Fern’s moody demeanor had left the car, and was instead replaced with the sweet melody of their laughter. They were okay. He hadn't hurt them, right?
Many miles and many giggles later, the car pulled into a familiar driveway.
It was only the second time Fern had been to Arcade’s house, but as soon as they stepped foot inside it, they made themself at home, immediately running up to Arcade’s room and flopping onto his bed. His smell of soft sunshine and warm summer rain was intoxicating; it took great restraint to not roll themself up into a burrito with his duvet.
It took a minute for Arcade to catch up to Fern, gasping for air after dashing up the stairs with both his bags and theirs clutched in his hands. Fern sat up and stared at him, cocking their head slightly.
“Are you alright?” they asked obliviously.
Arcade opened his mouth to make a sharp and slightly passive-aggressive comment about helping before glancing at Fern’s pouting face, at which point he immediately shut it. He couldn’t stay mad at them for long. Not when they looked like that. Instead, he sighed and muttered some form of “I’m fine” before plopping down into his desk chair.
The problem with their quarrel—or whatever it was, Arcade wasn’t really sure—was that even though everything had seemed to smooth over, the moment wouldn’t stop replaying in his head. The only time he’d seen Fern that upset was… Oh. He’d really fucked up, hadn’t he?
“Hey Fern?” Arcade murmured tentatively.
“Hm?” was the gentle response he received.
“About earlier…” he paused, finding his words. “I—fuck—Fern, I’m so sorry. I was just thinking… No, I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking about you and how you felt about your hair and… everything. I was just thinking about me and how I felt, and that was really selfish, and I’m so terribly sorry.”
Fern froze, unsure of how to respond. Couldn’t they just be past this already?
“Arcade, I assure you, it is fine,” they soothed. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. It wasn’t fair to you for me to bring my personal issues into this trip we had planned.”
“Why are you apologizing for being upset? Your feelings are completely valid, Fern,” Arcade said, brows knitting in concern.
Slowly, he stood up and sat next to Fern on the bed, close enough for their hands to touch.
“I… I didn’t want to ruin your holiday… our holiday,” they whispered.
“Dude, if I upset you I need you to let me know so I don’t do it again. Plus, burying your feelings deep down is really bad for you. You’re allowed to feel, Fern,” Arcade whispered back.
“Arcade, it really is nothing… I just hate the green. I hate it,” they admitted.
Arcade paused, considering whether he should grab Fern’s hand, and considering what to do about their hair. Carefully, he nudged his pinky into theirs. Fern responded to the touch by immediately lacing their fingers with his, almost too keenly. The two boys turned cherry red, averting their gazes.
While Arcade was surveying his room a little too carefully, whistling some commercial jingle, he noticed an empty box of hair dye. That was when it hit him.
“Fern!” he exclaimed excitedly. “You should dye your hair!”
Fern stared at him for a long while before responding.
“Dye… my hair?” they asked skeptically, brows furrowed.
“Yeah! Like the blue in my hair!”
“So you’re going to make my hair…. not green?”
“Mhm!” Arcade nodded enthusiastically. “I’m gonna try and match it to your orange streak!”
Fern picked up the lock of hair Arcade was referring to, gazing longingly at the auburn-colored strands inlaid within the sea of mossy green.
“Will you make my hair… what it used to be?” they asked, trying to keep the desperation out of their voice.
Though they hid it well, Arcade still picked up on the subtle tone of disconsolateness in their soft utterance. His heart ached for Fern. He hadn’t known how much they’d hurt. Or for how long. He wished he could’ve known, could’ve been there sooner. Instead of letting the melancholic air consume the both of them, Arcade smiled softly at Fern, eyes crinkling at the corners, gently lifting a lock of their hair and kissing it softly.
“We can make it whatever color you want,” he whispered, heart beating rapidly.
The prince’s bright pink ears were the only telltale sign that they’d registered the human’s kiss. Their face still bore the slightly pouty scowl they used to cover up their true emotions, gaze averted with a soft, subtle twinkle in their eye. That was new.
“How should we go about this then?” they asked, the tone of their voice returning to its usual vague complacentness.
“We must venture forth onto a long and arduous journey, through various puzzles, dungeons, and mazes, until we reach… pause for dramatic effect… the Fountain of Youth!” Arcade declared, voice deepening in its announcement.
Fern flopped fully onto Arcade’s bed and grabbed a pillow, holding it to their face. His smell was everywhere. It made sense, of course, but it was blissfully wonderful. It then dawned on them just what Arcade had said.
“Nooo I’m too tired to do that…” they groaned, muffled by the pillow they were sniffing. “‘Sides, we just got here, and we still have to go to Frenatae.”
Arcade sighed loudly, feigning sorrow and annoyance.
“Fiiine, I guess we’ll just have to go to the drugstore and buy some hair dye,” he huffed dramatically.
Fern’s registration of the words “drug” and “store” in the same sentence, consecutively, resulted in them flinging the pillow into Arcade’s face and sitting bolt upright.
“The what store?” they asked, straining their ears to make sure they’d heard him correctly.
“The drugstore… y’know, like a pharmaceutical store?” Arcade repeated, hoping to make himself clearer to the fairy prince.
He had not.
“Pharma… what?” Their face screwed in utter bewilderment.
“Medicine, Fern. It’s medicine.”
Fern blinked.
“...Medicine?” there was a pause. “OH!”
Fern crossed their arms and smiled smugly, chuffed with their new knowledge and expanded vocabulary. But somehow it still didn't make sense.
“Arcade, why do they have hair dye at the pharma… pharm… the medicine store?” they asked, confused utterly and completely by the whole situation.
Arcade blinked. Then furrowed his brows.
“I… have no idea, actually. That's just kinda what they've always been like. They sell food and candy and stuff too,” was his pitiful attempt at an answer.
Fern stared at him. Just stared at him, completely unreadable.
“Humans are so strange,” they finally stated, retreating from the bed to grab the pillow they threw and returning to their position with it on their face. Without Fern’s hand in his, the air felt colder. He rubbed his palms together, pretending it wasn’t because he missed the warmth.
Slowly, so as to not disturb the fairy on his bed, Arcade sat up and stretched, readying himself for the long grocery run he was about to attend.
“C’mon, Fern,” he insisted. “We gotta go now if you wanna get your hair dyed.”
There was the faint sound of unintelligible, garbled mumbling emanating from the pillow, but no movement from the prince.
“Please?” Arcade tried, asking as nicely as he could.
More indistinct mumbling.
“Fern, the store is gonna close and you'll never get to see what a pharmaceutical store looks like…”
It was his final resort, hoping the accentuation of the newly-learned word would help. When that didn't work, Arcade grabbed Fern by the leg and began dragging. Fern flailed helplessly, clawing at the sheets in an attempt to stay in Arcade-scented heaven, but to no avail.
Miraculously, they were human-passing and ready to take on the world in less than five minutes, give or take some disgruntled grumbling toward Arcade (who was beginning to realize how remarkably they behaved like a cat).
“This better be worth my time,” Fern threatened, jabbing a finger into Arcade’s chest.
Arcade smiled widely and nodded in return.
“It will be, I’m sure of it.”