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Reiko’s shoulders are tense. There’s a knot in between them that he can’t seem to get rid of, and the uncomfortable strain on his lower back from standing straight all hours of every day. But he’s not standing now. He wishes he was, really. Sitting on the floor is demeaning, especially when it’s covered in dust and stains and crumbs. There’s piles of clothes and abandoned underwear that he knows have not been cleaned.
Not that Reiko is all that savvy with how Earthrealmers do their washing. He tilts his head back to ask before Kabal pushes his head back into place, the strange double bladed mechanism in his hand pointed dangerously close at the warrior’s eyes. Reiko doesn’t even flinch, but his shoulders tense more. His head automatically tilts to the side where Kabal’s hand is closest to.
“I can’t cut it if you keep moving around, idiot,” Kabal says before tilting Reiko’s head back into place again, his sigh echoing throughout the room. Reiko grumbles, but he remains silent. His teeth sink into his bottom lip once the snipping begins.
Snip. Snip. Reiko watches as his hair tumbles before his face, adding to the mess on the floor. His nose wrinkles as Kabal tugs on strands of his hair, only for the snipping to begin anew. The hands on his head are too gentle for someone so calloused, someone so cruel. They are too gentle for both of them.
Reiko ends up moving his head away from the blades after only a short while, his heart rate increasing in a way he’s not familiar with. Rapid, scared. His emperor had made sure to train that awful weakness out of him, made sure to show him exactly how to keep his beating heart and blood pressure at a level that could be excused. There’s no excuse for this.
“Reiko. Stop it, seriously,” Kabal says before reaching out to grab the other man’s head again. When Reiko moves even further away, that ache in his back only increasing, does Kabal stop and stare. “What’s got into you today?”
“Those are sharp,” Reiko says, his head nodding towards the blades in Kabal’s hand.
“Scissors tend to be, yeah.”
“I don’t like them.”
“What do you want me to cut your hair with, a knife?”
“That is how I do it in Outworld.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“You are a coward, Kabal.”
“Get back here. Now. Or I’ll kick you out on the street like a mangy dog.”
Reiko huffs, but he doesn’t move back. His gaze wanders back onto the scissors, before his eyes settle on Kabal’s hands. Scars dance over them in the way the moon reflects on the sea, dark and beautiful all in one fell swoop. His eyes linger on every divot, ridge, edge. Those hands were so close to him, all over him. Too close. His head starts to hurt, and his heart continues to race.
The blood that his heart pumps so unfairly quick finds its way into his ears, swirling around so hard that it rings and dings off of his skull. It pumps so quickly that those beautiful hands that Reiko loves so much begin to morph and twist and change from holding a simply sharp pair of scissors into holding spears, swords, flails. The hands that were on his head pull on his hair as they fight, trying to twist his neck off of his shoulders.
The voice that tries to cut through the ringing in his ears is not harsh, but it isn’t gentle either. Nothing in Reiko’s life is gentle. He’s not allowed it, has been denied it his whole life, and now he’s trying to find it? In something as simple and as mundane as a haircut? Kabal should cut every strand of his hair with his hookswords, then slice his neck to finish the deal, just to spit on the worthless wreck of a soldier that Reiko has become.
His chest hurts, and his shoulders tense even more. He can feel his teeth grinding together before he realises he’s even doing it. Reiko tries to swallow to unclog his ears from the blood that swims through him in red hot bursts. Everything in him feels top heavy, and he wishes that those hands had never touched him at all. He’s not sure which set of hands he’s referring to, but he’s sure it’s all of them. Anyone so intimately close to him only means a dagger in the back.
“Reiko?” Kabal calls through the noise in his ears again, and he quickly looks up. He cannot handle the look on Kabal’s face. It isn’t pitying, which only makes it worse. It swirls in and out of one of disapproval. “What’s going on, big guy?”
“Low iron,” Reiko manages to get out, even if he’s not sure that Kabal would buy such a lie. In fact, even with his head so heavy, he knows he wont. Kabal has made it clear that Reiko is a lousy liar.
“Did I catch you? C’mere, let me check for blood.”
“No!”
“Right. Okay. Just ride it out, yeah? I’ll just… sit here when you want me.”
“I always want you,” Reiko mumbles, which is the unfortunate weak truth. The gentle touch, the care, the soft way of handling his head and hair. The messy room, the soft talking, the intimacy of household chores left unfinished all around him. This is not the life of a warrior.
“Down, boy,” Kabal says with a snort, and Reiko’s chest loosens slightly. Even when Reiko falters, Kabal doesn’t find it a disgrace. There is nobody here to impress, nobody to fight for. Kabal is already here. “You want me to keep cutting?”
“No. You should clean your barracks,” Reiko says, something said to him half a dozen times a day. Sometimes he would come back to what was supposed to be freshly cleaned barracks only to be met with all his belongings tossed to the floor.
“Shut up, man,” is all Reiko gets in response. No fuss. No fights. No nothing. Just Kabal. Sitting right there for when he wants him. Maybe that’s why he feels it start to dissipate with just the sound of his laughter, the smile on his lips.
It takes a while for the haircut to actually end. Reiko is guilty of flinching every time Kabal gets too close with the scissors, and Kabal gets more and more frustrated with him moving his head around.
But they make it up to the other with kisses and unserious remarks that bury the feelings neither are brave enough to share. Sometimes, Reiko thinks Kabal snaps at him on purpose so that he’ll apologise and press his lips against the palm of his hand. He does it anyway, because really, that’s exactly where he wants to be.
After those long, long hours, Reiko is stood before the mirror in Kabal’s bathroom. He tilts his head from side to side, exhausted from the blood that still hasn’t fully emptied from his skull. But Kabal stands behind him, brushing his shoulders down with a hand towel, humming to himself softly. And Reiko is alright with those hands on him. In fact, he loves those hands on him. Rough but soft, taking care of him in ways he has never been taken care of before.
“Good?” Kabal asks, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
“Yes. I… want to apologise.”
“Wow. Who are you, and what have you done with my big scary general?”
“You are a cruel and unsettling little man, Kabal,” Reiko says, pretending to sneer, grabbing the towel off of him and wafting it so that it hits Kabal in the face, the blood seeping out of his head and back into his veins as that laugh hits his ears again. Simple and nice. He will miss this when he returns to shurikens and war hammers.
“You keep smiling at me,” Kabal says, pointing back at the mirror. Reiko turns his head to see that, yes, he has his crooked teeth on full display. It isn’t a look he’s familiar with, and he catches himself staring. “Aww, do you like me?”
Reiko pauses before he turns back to Kabal, his shoulders slumping comfortably. All that tension is gone, at least. It’s hard to keep his muscles clenched around him.
“To my detriment, yes. I do.”