Work Text:
The screen door snapped shut behind her with its familiar metallic clap, and the whole house seemed to register it—floorboards answering in small creaks, a dog somewhere shifting its weight and letting out a single, uncertain huff, the kitchen radio murmuring low enough to sound like it was talking to itself. Jess had a plastic library bag hugged tight to her chest with both arms, the kind with the library’s name printed in blocky ink that had been rubbed pale at the folds. The bag was almost as big as her torso; it dragged against her knees when she ran, and every few steps she had to hitch it up like a treasure chest that refused to be light.
“Ho-ho!” she called before she’d even taken her shoes off, the nickname bright and practiced “Ho-ho! Where is—where is—” She spun, searching, curls of her own hair bouncing around her ears. “Where is my Ho-ho?”
Somewhere deeper in the house, someone’s voice replied without urgency, seasoned by the reality of Jess’s volume. “Try the living room.”
Jess accepted that as permission to accelerate. Her shoes stayed on. She had opinions about shoes and time and whether rules mattered when something important had happened, and this, clearly, was important.
She barreled toward the living room, the library bag thumping her knees, her breath already hurried with excitement. The air smelled faintly of pencil shavings and toast. There was a damp, chilled trace of outside clinging to her sleeves, because the day had that soft, gray weight to it—cloud cover that made everything look like it had been drawn with a slightly smudged eraser. It was the kind of day librarians loved: quiet weather, inside weather.
Holly was where Jess had hoped she’d be—curled into the corner of the couch, knees up, one sock half-off, a book open in her lap like a shield she didn’t even realize she held. She sat with her shoulders slightly rounded, as if she had grown up learning how to take up less room without anyone having to ask. Her hair was its own weather system: huge and dense and bright, a mass of blonde curls that fell forward no matter what she did, spilling over her brow and down across her cheeks until it covered her face in soft spirals. There were moments when Holly pushed it back and it stayed; most of the time it fell like it had its own gravity.
Jess stopped so abruptly she almost toppled, the library bag swinging forward. Then she adjusted, planting her feet wide like a tiny sailor bracing on a deck, and stared at Holly with a kind of reverence that made her whole body go still.
For a second, Holly didn’t look up. She was mid-sentence in whatever she was reading—her lips moving almost imperceptibly, the way they did when she tried to understand the rhythm of a paragraph. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear, half-lost in her hair.
Jess made a small sound—something between a gasp and a giggle—then lifted the bag like a trophy.
“Ho-ho,” she said again, softer now, as if the name itself was a secret handshake. “Look. Look what I gots.”
Holly could hear it in her: the proud shape of the sentence, the way Jess’s chest lifted when she said I. It wasn’t just that she had a book. It was that she had chosen it. She was three, and the library had been big and echoey and full of grown-ups and rules and shelves taller than her, and she’d come out with something she could carry in her own hands.
“That’s wonderful,” Holly said. She meant it. It was a simple thing, a child bringing home a picture book, but it softened something in her chest the way warm water softened a tight knot. “Did you pick it out yourself?”
Jess nodded so hard her whole body bounced. Her ponytail—if you could call it that—wobbled. “Yes. Yes I did.” She squeezed the bag again, the plastic crinkling loudly, and her shoulders climbed up around her ears with excitement. “I told the lady. I said—” Jess paused, eyebrows pinching, hunting for the memory like it might be under the couch. “I said, ‘I want princess one.’”
Holly’s smile widened a fraction. She could picture it perfectly: Jess, tiny and determined, standing at the counter with her hands on tiptoe, telling a librarian what she wanted as if the librarian were there to take royal requests.
“And did the lady help you?” Holly asked, keeping her voice soft, the way she did when Jess was in this mood—like a balloon you didn’t want to pop.
Jess shook her head with absolute certainty. “No. I did. I saw it.” Her eyes widened, as if the seeing had been the most dramatic part. She lifted the bag a little higher, almost showing it off without showing it. “I’m gonna show you.”
Holly shifted on the couch and angled her knees down, making space in the subtle way she always did—quietly inviting Jess closer without making a big deal out of it. Jess didn’t climb up yet. The reveal mattered. Jess understood ceremony instinctively.
She slid one hand into the bag and then the other, both small hands disappearing into the crinkly plastic. The bag made a long, theatrical noise as she rummaged, like it was whispering, Here it comes, here it comes. Jess’s face screwed up with concentration. Her tongue poked briefly between her teeth. She was careful in the earnest way little kids could be when something felt important.
A corner of glossy cover appeared.
Then more.
Jess tugged, both hands pulling in a determined little jerk until the book came free. It was big—picture-book big, wider than Jess’s chest. She had to adjust her grip immediately, elbows out, the weight of it making her forearms shake with pride.
She held it upright like a sign.
The cover caught the lamplight: bright, saturated colors, a tower rising up, and a girl leaning out of a window, her hair pouring down in a long golden rope. Even through Holly’s curls, the image was unmistakable. It was the kind of illustration that wanted to be pointed at.
Jess lifted it higher, presenting it at Holly’s eye level, then higher still as if to make sure Holly couldn’t possibly miss it. Her whole body seemed to vibrate around the book. The energy in her was so intense it had nowhere else to go but out through her arms, through her grin, through the slight bounce of her knees.
Holly’s heart did the small, familiar flip it always did when Jess was proud.
“Oh,” Holly said softly, already feeling the warmth bloom in her face. “Rapunzel.”
Jess’s mouth fell open for a second, delighted that Holly knew the name. “Yes!” she said, triumphant. “Yes! That one!”
Holly’s eyes moved over the cover again. The hair. The tower. The fairytale logic of it. Before Jess said anything else, Holly could feel the connection clicking into place—the reason Jess had chosen this out of all the princess books on a shelf. Jess had looked at a picture of impossible hair and thought of Holly’s impossible hair. Not with the mild annoyance grown-ups sometimes had about Holly’s curls, not with the comments people made when they couldn’t help themselves—so much hair, how do you see, does it get in your way—but with something simpler and purer.
Princess.
Jess, meanwhile, was nearly shaking with the need to explain, as if Holly’s quiet recognition wasn’t enough. Jess needed to say it out loud so it would be true in the air.
She took one small step toward the couch and thrust the book forward a little, like she was offering Holly a medal. “I got it for you,” Jess announced.
Holly’s eyebrows lifted behind her curtain of curls. She didn’t ask why—not yet. She wanted Jess to tell it in her own words.
“For me?” Holly echoed, letting her voice carry a soft surprise, even though the answer was already there in the picture.
Jess nodded, eyes shining. “For you. Because you’re—” She paused, hands squeezing the book’s edges. Her shoulders rose again with the effort of containing the thought. Then she blurted it, unable to hold it any longer. “Because you’re Rapunzel.”
Holly felt her cheeks go hot, the way they did when she was singled out. Her first instinct was to duck her head, to let her hair fall even further and hide the smile that wanted to happen. But Jess’s face was so earnest—so sure, so affectionate—that hiding felt like the wrong response, like closing a door gently in someone’s face.
“I’m not Rapunzel,” Holly said, automatically, because she always corrected things down to a safer size. Her voice wasn’t sharp. It was almost embarrassed, a reflex. “I’m just—Holly.”
Jess stared at her as if Holly had said the sky wasn’t blue.
“No,” Jess insisted, and the certainty in her tone was almost comical—except it wasn’t meant to be funny. It was meant to be true. Jess took another step closer, close enough that Holly could see the tiny smudge of something on Jess’s thumb, close enough that she could smell the faint library scent of the book: paper and plastic and the clean, dry scent of shelves. “Ho-ho is a princess.”
Holly swallowed. The nickname—Ho-ho—landed on her like a small hand on her shoulder. Jess said it with such natural ownership, as if she’d named Holly and therefore knew her.
Jess held the book out again, impatient now, as if Holly’s reluctance was a delay in the ceremony. “Look,” Jess urged. “Look. See?”
Holly let her eyes go to the cover again. The illustrated hair poured down in a single shimmering mass. In the picture it was straight and neat and obedient. In real life, Holly’s hair was a wild, springy thing with its own opinions. It tangled if you looked at it wrong. It made adults sigh and reach for brushes with the resignation of people preparing for battle. It made Holly feel like she was carrying a heavy, bright banner she hadn’t chosen.
But Jess wasn’t seeing mess. Jess was seeing magic.
Jess leaned forward, almost bouncing on her toes. She lifted her free hand—tiny fingers splayed—and hovered it in front of Holly’s face, pointing at the curls without touching them, as if even her hand knew it should ask permission.
“Hers,” Jess said, tapping the air near the illustration, “is like yours. Like this.” She made a vague looping motion, trying to draw curls in midair even though the picture didn’t have them. Jess’s imagination fixed that instantly. “So long. So big.”
Holly’s lips curved despite herself. It wasn’t a big smile. It was shy. It tried to stay hidden, but it existed, and Jess noticed it the way Jess noticed everything.
Jess brightened even more, as if Holly’s smile had been the answer she wanted all along. “Yes!” she said, and then, because she couldn’t help adding the best part: “And she’s in a tower.”
Holly gave a small, careful laugh—barely a sound—because Jess’s logic was so intense and sweet she didn’t know where to put it. “She is,” Holly agreed softly.
Jess thrust the book closer, then pulled it back, then held it out again, unable to decide whether she wanted Holly to take it or just to keep seeing Jess hold it up like a prize. “And her hair goes—” Jess stretched her arm down dramatically, hand falling toward the floor, acting out the length. “Down and down and down.”
Holly’s gaze flicked to Jess’s little arm, then to her own hair. She could feel it: the weight of curls against her cheeks, the way it brushed her eyelashes. She could see Jess through it, a bright-eyed shape framed by blonde spirals.
“I can see,” Holly said quietly, as if answering something Jess hadn’t asked. It came out before she could stop it—an instinct to reassure, to smooth, to show Jess she wasn’t as hidden as she looked.
Jess’s brow furrowed for a moment, thinking, then she accepted it without question, because Jess didn’t care about the mechanics. Jess cared about the story. “Good,” Jess said, decisively. “Because you gotta see if dragon comes.”
Holly’s smile deepened a fraction. She reached one hand out—not all the way, not grabbing—just enough to touch the edge of the book’s cover with her fingertips. The glossy surface was cool. The contact felt like an acceptance.
Jess’s eyes widened, thrilled by the gesture, as if Holly touching it made the whole thing official. “Take it,” Jess urged, shoving it forward with both hands now, arms trembling again with the weight. “You can have it. I brought it for you.”
Holly’s throat tightened in that strange, familiar way it did when she felt loved too directly. She didn’t want to make it a big moment. She didn’t want anyone else to notice. But Jess was right there, offering her something with her whole heart.
Holly slid her own book aside and took Rapunzel carefully, supporting it from underneath so Jess could let go without the picture book tilting or falling. The transfer was small, almost ceremonial: Jess’s hands releasing their grip, Holly’s hands taking the weight.
Jess exhaled like she’d been holding her breath through the entire mission.
“There,” Jess said, satisfied, and then immediately bounced in place once, twice, unable to stop herself. Her excitement spilled out as movement. “Now you’re princess.”
Holly looked down at the cover again, then back up at Jess through her curls. She let the affection show in her voice even if her face wanted to hide it.
“You picked this because of my hair,” Holly said gently—statement, not question.
Jess’s grin became radiant. “Yes!” she said, as if Holly had solved a riddle Jess had been dying to give her. “Because you have hair. Lots hair. Princess hair.” She reached up with one hand and, with startling gentleness, patted the outer layer of Holly’s curls where they spilled over her cheek, not pushing them away this time, just touching them like they were part of the story. “Rapunzel hair.”
Holly went very still. The touch was light. Jess’s hand was warm. It wasn’t invasive. It was worshipful, like Jess was blessing her with her own certainty.
Holly could have deflected—could have made a joke, could have said it’s just hair again, could have shrugged it off the way she often did when people commented. But Jess wasn’t commenting. Jess was offering her a role: someone beautiful and brave and important, someone who was chosen.
So Holly let herself accept it in the only way she knew how—quietly.
“That was thoughtful,” Holly said, the words simple but weighted. She looked down so her hair fell forward even more, but she didn’t hide the softness in her voice. “Thank you.”
Jess’s face lit up with pure relief, as if she’d been anxious Holly might not want the gift, might not want the story.
“You like it?” Jess demanded, needing confirmation like a heartbeat.
Holly nodded, small and steady. “I like it.”
Jess clasped her hands together under her chin for a second, squeezing her own excitement into a tight ball. “We gotta read it,” she said, immediately, because the gift wasn’t complete until it had been used. “You read it. Right now.”
Holly glanced down at the first page, her fingers already finding the edge like they knew what to do. She didn’t rush, didn’t perform. She simply opened it, the spine cracking softly, and angled it so Jess could see.
Jess leaned in so close her shoulder pressed against Holly’s arm, practically vibrating again, as if the story’s electricity was already humming under the paper.
Holly took a breath, and before she began, she lifted her eyes through the curls one more time to look at Jess—really look—at the proud little face, the eager mouth, the bright belief.
Holly’s voice, when it came, was quiet and sure.
“Once upon a time,” she began.
Jess went perfectly still, as if the whole world had finally become exactly what she wanted: her sister beside her, a princess in her lap, and a story opening like a door.
When Holly’s voice stumbled on a longer word, Jess didn’t notice. When Holly paused to turn the page carefully, Jess’s fingers helped, clumsy but earnest. When Holly’s hair slipped forward and covered the text, Jess reached up and pushed a curl aside with gentle impatience, as if clearing a curtain so the show could continue.
“Need to see,” Jess whispered.
Holly let Jess do it. She let her. Jess’s small hand in her hair didn’t feel like being touched by a stranger. It felt like being claimed—lovingly, not possessively. Like Jess was saying: this is my sister, and I know her, and I’m allowed to move her curls because I want to see her face.
“Ho-ho,” Jess said quietly. “Rapunzel is lonely.”
Holly’s throat tightened. She looked at the illustration—Rapunzel in the tower window, hair spilling out, eyes turned toward the horizon.
“Yeah,” Holly said. “She is.”
“Ho-ho not lonely,” Jess declared.
The words came out with the steady certainty Jess had about simple solutions—like declaring the sky blue, like insisting a scraped knee would be better once a bandage was on. Jess didn’t say it as comfort she was offering; she said it as a fact she expected the room to accept.
“I’m here,” she added, as if that settled everything.
Holly blinked.
For a heartbeat she didn’t move at all. The picture on the page—Rapunzel framed in a tower window, the wide blue of distance behind her—stayed in Holly’s vision, but it softened at the edges. Holly’s throat tightened, not in the sharp, spilling way of tears, but in that quieter way where you realized something had landed exactly where it was meant to. She didn’t cry. She didn’t make a sound that would have made anyone turn and look. She only drew a slow breath in through her nose, held it as if she were keeping the moment from tipping, then let it out, carefully, like easing a glass down on a table.
Jess watched her face with the seriousness of a child waiting to see whether her truth had worked.
Holly’s fingers rested on the edge of the page. The glossy paper was cool beneath her fingertips. Her curls hung forward as usual, brushing her cheeks, a soft curtain between her and the room, but she could see Jess perfectly through it—Jess’s wide eyes, Jess’s small mouth set in a line of earnest conviction, Jess leaning in as if closeness itself could solve loneliness.
Holly’s voice came out soft, but steady. “I’m not lonely,” she agreed.
She lifted her gaze, meeting Jess where Jess lived—in the bright, uncomplicated center of things.
“You’re here,” Holly added.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a proclamation. It was a simple acknowledgement that made the air feel warmer, as if it had just been given permission to be gentle.
Jess’s face loosened immediately, relief and satisfaction washing over it in the same instant. She didn’t need more explanation than that. She didn’t need a long conversation about towers and waiting and how loneliness could sit right beside other people and still exist. Jess just needed Holly to say the right words back.
“Yeah,” Jess murmured, as if the matter was closed. Then she shifted closer without asking, the way she always did when she felt safe—small body scooting into the space that had been offered, shoulder pressing into Holly’s side, her head angling in toward Holly’s arm like it had always belonged there.
Holly’s free arm—her other arm, the one not holding the book—moved almost without thought. It came around Jess gently, not trapping her, not squeezing, just wrapping her in the quiet, sisterly way Holly did things: careful, protective, like she was building a small fence out of warmth.
Jess made a pleased little sound and melted into it, her whole posture loosening. She cuddled closer, tucking herself in under Holly’s arm as if she were settling into a blanket. The earlier vibrating excitement didn’t disappear—Jess was still Jess, still brimming—but it shifted shape. It became contentment instead of urgency, the difference between a spark and a steady flame.
Holly looked down again. The book waited, open in her lap, the story paused mid-breath.
Jess’s hand found the page edge, not to turn it yet, just to touch it—to be connected to it. Her fingers were small and warm against the glossy paper.
Holly tipped the book slightly so Jess could see the illustration better, angling it as naturally as if they’d done this a thousand times. Her arm stayed around Jess, light and sure. Jess’s head pressed a fraction more into Holly’s side, satisfied with the fit of them together.
Holly’s voice resumed, soft as cloth. “So…” she continued, letting the words fall gently into the space between them, “Rapunzel waited in the tower…”
Jess listened with her whole body. Every so often she gave a tiny, approving hum, like she was making sure the story behaved. Her eyes tracked the pictures carefully, darting to the hair whenever it appeared, as if checking the evidence again and again: See? Princess hair.
Holly turned the page slowly. The paper made a quiet, crisp sound. Jess’s hand slid along the margin as if helping, but she didn’t rush it. Now that she was tucked under Holly’s arm, she seemed willing to let time unfold at the pace of a story.
Holly kept reading, each sentence measured, her voice even. It wasn’t a performance; it was a gift. She felt Jess’s weight against her side, small and trusting, and it steadied something in her—made her less aware of her own shyness, less aware of the rest of the room. In this pocket of space, it was just words and pictures and Jess breathing softly, close enough that Holly could feel it. Jess nestled in further, cheek brushing Holly’s sleeve.