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“Your hair is always so silky, Yan! It makes it so easy to work with!”
“Thanks, I guess.” Yan rested with one hand propped up in his palm, patiently sitting and letting Moirai fiddle with his hair as she pleased. She had been at this for almost an hour now, cheerfully brushing, styling, and restyling his hair to his heart’s content. First it had been just braiding it, but then once she started, it seemed every time she finished there was just ‘one more’ she wanted to try.
First it was a ponytail, to the back of his head rather than the side as he usually tied it. Then a bun, then two, then a set of pigtails. Each time barely were they finished before Moirai declared she thought of another hairstyle that would look ‘super cute’ on him so that she immediately started taking it down and brushing it out again to reset it for whatever new thing came to her mind.
She wasn’t rough with his hair, at least, so it wasn’t like he was subjected to it being yanked at or anything while Moirai was in the process of entertaining herself. But even so, there was only so much playing around that he could sit still for before he started to just feel bored with it.
“Is it really that fun to just keep styling my hair?” Yan finally asked. Moirai looked up, tilting her head to one side at the question. “I mean, it’s just hair. There’s only so many ways you can style it.”
“Oh, it just makes me feel a little nostalgic, is all,” Moirai hummed, not looking up from her handiwork in twisting Yan’s locks around her fingers into whatever complicated braid pattern she was amusing herself with. “It reminds me of when I used to style my own hair like this back when I wore it longer.”
Wait, what?
“Your hair used to be longer?” This was news to Yan. In the time he’d known her, Moirai had always worn her hair in the same short bobbed cut she always had. Cut close enough that the ends curled up near her chin. Moirai nodded and hummed a soft confirmation.
“That’s right! It probably wasn’t as long as yours, Yan, but it went pretty far down. Just about to my waist!” Finally Moirai reached for a hair tie, and twisted it around the end of her handiwork. “I took good care of it, too! Kept brushing it every night and used some pretty nice products on it, too.” Moirai sat back, now that her styling was done. She held a hair brush she’d set across her lap, twisting her hands around the long end of the handle. “Well, I ended up chopping it off when I came down here. With the lack of good showers down here and everything, it seemed like it would be too much of a hassle to keep up.” Moirai lifted a hand, twisting her forefinger around so that her hair all gathered around it in a small curl of motion. “It’s easier to maintain, but I kind of miss being able to style it a little.”
Yan watched Moirai as she rambled on. It was rare to see her drop her usual cheeriness, though it also wasn’t overall too surprising. It wasn’t like anyone could keep smiling and cheerful forever, and that included Moirai.
“… Hey, could you hold still for a moment?”
“Hm?” Moirai tilted her head in confusion for a moment, but otherwise stayed where she was as Yan had instructed.
He moved across her bed on his knees, scrounging up one of the several ties that she’d set out across her bed. This one in particular he chose because it was one of the ones which had a semi-transparent, colorful little plastic charm that was molded around one part of it. With careful, but quick hands, he gathered up and portioned out a small section of Moirai’s hair at the front, on the opposite side from where she had been playing with her own hair. There wasn’t much to work with, and he didn’t know of it would do much for her overall. But nonetheless it was an impulse born of the desire to see Moirai’s mood lifted at least a little.
“And… done.” Yan finally sat back again, letting go of the portion of Moirai’s hair he’d been working. He picked up the small hand mirror Moirai had brought over when they started this, and held it up for her to see her own reflection. Including the small braid he’d left in her hair, with that small blue charm twinkling at the end of it. “I know that… I can’t really do much. But even if it’s something small like this, I thought… Well, you know.” Well, now he just felt silly with how unnecessarily bashful he was feeling. But before he could apologize for the awkwardness of the delivery, Moirai relieved the mirror from his hand, bringing it closer to herself as if to take a better look at what he’d done.
“Yan, you’re too sweet, you know that?” Before Yan could reply, Moirai suddenly flung herself forward, and he found himself flattened against the bed with Moirai flopped on top of him, her arms wrapped around him as she nuzzled her head into his chest. He could feel the plastic hair tie charm tap against his chest where Moirai let her head rest. “… I think you’re probably the best thing that’s happened to me since I came down here,” Moirai murmured. Yan felt some sensation in his chest, between a dull thud and a guilty flutter. The kind that knew his joy to hear her say that but also felt his guilt as to the fact this meeting only happened at all because of her isolation underground to begin with. “Ever since you’ve come down here, it feels like… I have something to look forward to. And you find all these little ways to cheer me up when I don’t think I even realized before that I wasn’t that happy to begin with…”
“… You wouldn’t need me here, if you weren’t trapped,” Yan said, unable to hold back the truth of the matter as he blurted it out into the open. “If you weren’t made to stay down here in this cavern, and could be free to go wherever you wanted, there’d be all sorts of other people you could meet up there.”
“Maybe. But I’m just not in that kind of situation where I can think about what I’d be doing if I could leave.” A reply just as blunt as his own, but somehow worse for the airiness of how Moirai said it. “What-ifs and what-if-nots… You’re here now, no matter what brought you here. And I’m glad I have you.”
Moirai lifted herself up, so that now she was hovering over Yan. Her hair fell around her face as she leaned over him, that blue charm Yan had chosen on a whim glinting and sending waves of blue shimmer across her face as the plastic refracted the room’s light. As if it were the most natural think in the world, Yan lifted his hand, and pressed his hand to Moirai’s cheek, his thumb gently stroking her skin until her eyelids drooped and she leaned into his touch.
“Me too, Moirai.” His hand migrated to the back of Moirai’s head, fingers carding through her hair until the gentle pull of his hand to the back of her head coaxed her down until she rested atop him again.
He willed his racing, ever-revolving head to not overthink the moment. Just this once.
To let him take the opportunity to recline in this moment where it could feel like the only things bringing them together here were their desires for one anothers’ company, and not the distant machinations of some unseen Will which felt like it lay in wait to sever the threads of their union as easily as a pair of newly-honed scissors through a lock of hair.