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Derek noticed the mirror on a Thursday.
He had been in the bathroom brushing his teeth, which was a normal and unremarkable thing, and had looked up at himself , which he did not, if he was honest, do frequently or with significant attention , and had seen his hair in the way you sometimes saw something you had been not-seeing for a while, with a sudden clarity that made it difficult to understand how you'd missed it.
It was bad.
Not dirty , he washed it, he wasn't not washing it, that hadn't been the problem , but the texture of it had changed somewhere in the past several months into something he didn't have a precise word for. Dry, maybe. Or , stripped, in some way. Like something had been removed from it that used to be there. He had read, at some point, about the physiological effects of prolonged stress on hair , the cortisol, the disruption to the growth cycle , and he had read it the way he read most things about the aftermath of the King's world, with the detached interest of someone cataloguing data that pertained to him but that he was not quite ready to apply.
The data was currently applying itself to his reflection.
He looked at it for a while.
The knots were the main thing. Not just the dry texture, not just the general flatness of it , there were knots, actual knots, not large and not painful but present, several of them, distributed through the sections he could see and probably more in the ones he couldn't. He reached up and put a hand in and felt the resistance of two of them in the back and thought, with the calm of someone who had solved significantly more complex problems: I'll just cut it.
Buzz it. Electric razor, ten minutes, done. He'd had it short before, years ago, and it had been functionally easier in every respect. Clean start. He could start the whole thing over.
He turned off the bathroom light and went to tell Avery.
Avery was at the kitchen table with his laptop and a half-eaten piece of toast and the expression he got when he was editing, which was the focused-downward look, the one that meant his brain was somewhere inside the footage. He looked up when Derek came in.
"I'm going to buzz my hair," Derek said.
Avery looked at him.
Not the immediate response Derek had expected , not okay or sure or the slight nod of someone receiving practical information. Just: looking at Derek. Then at Derek's hair. Then back at Derek's face.
"You're going to what," Avery said.
"Buzz it," Derek said. "There are knots. The texture has deteriorated. It's a more efficient solution than trying to-”
"Derek."
“-work through it section by section, which would take-”
"Derek," Avery said. "Sit down."
Derek looked at him.
"Just-” Avery pushed his laptop aside, "sit down. Please. For one second."
Derek sat down across from him, which was his default chair, which had become his default chair in the way all things became his. He looked at Avery, who was looking at his hair with an expression Derek was reading as: several things happening simultaneously, not all of them verbal.
"It's just hair," Derek said. "It grows back."
"I know it grows back," Avery said. "That's not-” he stopped. He looked at the table for a moment. Then he looked back up at Derek with the expression that meant he had identified what he wanted to say and was choosing how to say it. "Do you want to buzz it?" he said. "Like , is that what you want, or is it just the fastest solution to the problem?"
Derek thought about this with the seriousness it apparently warranted.
"It's the fastest solution," he said.
"Okay," Avery said. "So don't buzz it." He stood up. "Give me twenty minutes."
"For what."
"I'm going to fix it," Avery said, already moving toward the bathroom. "Stay there."
Derek stayed there.
He heard the bathroom cabinet open. He heard the specific sound of things being moved around in the way Avery moved things in the bathroom cabinet, which had its own spatial logic that Derek had never fully decoded. He heard something spraying , a bottle, something he didn't recognize by sound. He heard Avery say, quietly, to himself or to Fies who had followed him: "where did I put the, there it is."
He came back with a wide-tooth comb, a small green spray bottle, a clip Derek didn't know they owned, and an expression of someone who had assessed the situation and made a plan.
"I'm going to need you in a chair without a back," Avery said. "Kitchen chair, can you-”
"I'm already in a kitchen chair," Derek said.
"Yeah but-” Avery looked at it, "turn it around. Or just , here." He moved around behind Derek. "Is this okay? I'll stand behind you."
"It's fine," Derek said.
"Okay," Avery said. "This is going to take a while. The spray is detangling. I'm going to section it and go from the ends up, which is , that's the correct way to do it, you go from the ends first so you're not dragging the knots through-” he paused, "sorry, you don't need the methodology."
"I don't mind the methodology," Derek said. Which was true.
He heard the spray bottle. Something cold and light landed on the back of his head, the specific sensation of mist against hair, and Avery's hands came into the picture , both of them, one holding a section of hair and one beginning, at the ends, with the wide-tooth comb.
Derek sat still.
This was, he noted, harder than it sounded.
He was not, in general, a person who was touched frequently.
This was not a complaint and not a lament, just a fact , one of several facts about himself that he had known for a long time and carried easily. He was not a person who had been touched much as a child either, not in a notable way, not in a way that had lacked anything necessary; his mum had been present and warm and sufficiently physical in the ways that counted, and he had grown up knowing that he was loved even when the house was quiet and the hands were at a useful distance. He had just always been , separate, in the specific way of a person whose interior life was large and busy and who found that his own company was generally sufficient.
This had not changed. He still found his own company generally sufficient.
It was just that Avery's company was also , sufficient. More than sufficient. Which was a word Derek was aware did not capture it but which was the word he kept reaching for because the more accurate words were ones he was still learning to hold.
The point was: he was not accustomed to being touched with this kind of attention.
Avery's hands moved through the back section of his hair slowly. There was a system to it , Derek could identify the system within the first few minutes, the way Avery isolated each section, held it above the knot so the pull came from his hand and not Derek's scalp, worked the comb through from the end up. This was how you were supposed to do it. Derek knew this theoretically. He had not thought about it in relation to himself because he had not been thinking about his hair much and had certainly not been thinking about someone else's hands in it.
"Sorry," Avery said.
Derek had not felt anything.
"That was fine," he said.
"There's a knot in this section," Avery said. "I'm going to have to , sorry-”
"Avery, I can't feel it."
"I know but just-” the comb moved through something with slightly more resistance, still minimal, "sorry."
Derek sat with this.
The apology was reflexive. He could tell , it wasn't a calculated thing, it wasn't performed, it was just coming out of Avery without him deciding to produce it, the same way breathing came out, automatic and continuous. The comb moved. Sorry. Another section. Sorry, is that okay. Another knot. Sorry.
"You don't have to apologize," Derek said. "I'm serious. It doesn't hurt."
"I know," Avery said. "Sorry."
Derek closed his mouth.
Avery kept working. The spray went on again in the left section, cool and light, and Derek felt Avery's fingers separating the hair carefully before the comb came in, and there was something in that , the deliberateness of it, the way Avery's hands knew where they were going and moved there slowly , that was doing something that Derek was going to need to examine later.
"How long has it been like this," Avery said. Not accusatory. Just: asking.
"A while," Derek said. "I wasn't paying attention to it."
"You've had other things."
"Yes."
Avery was quiet for a moment. The comb moved through another section. "Does it bother you? The texture of it?"
Derek thought about this. "It bothered me this morning," he said. "When I noticed it. It felt like , evidence of something."
"Of what."
"Of not having taken care of it," Derek said. "Of the gap." He paused. "There are still gaps. Things I was doing before and stopped doing and haven't fully restarted. I know that. I'm tracking them." He paused again. "The hair was one I hadn't noticed yet."
Avery's hands went still for a moment.
Then they started moving again. "Okay," he said. "We're fixing it."
"You don't have to-”
"I know I don't have to," Avery said. "Derek, I know I don't have to do anything. I'm doing this because I want to." A small pause. "The same way you prepped the first aid kit before I tried soldering."
Derek did not say anything.
He sat still and let Avery work and thought about that , about the first-aid kit, about the kangkung cutting for the sister, about the water on the nightstand anticipated before the temperature check, all the small prepared things, the things done ahead of need. He had done those things. He had done them because they were useful and also, if he was honest, because Avery was someone who should be prepared for, who was worth the anticipation of needing something.
It had not, until this moment, occurred to him that this also applied in the other direction.
He looked at the hands of Avery's which was not possible because he couldn't see them from this position, but he felt them , the weight of the comb, the careful separation of sections, the specific way Avery's palm cupped the side of his head when he needed Derek to tilt slightly.
"Just a little left," Avery said. His hands moved Derek's head gently. "Sorry , is that okay?"
"It's fine," Derek said.
"I just need to-” the comb moved, "sorry."
"Avery," Derek said.
"Mm."
"You've apologized approximately thirty times."
A pause. "Have I?"
"At a minimum."
"Hm." The comb kept moving. "Sorry."
Derek made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was related to one. It came out of him unexpectedly, and he felt Avery go still for a moment behind him, and then felt the particular quality of Avery trying not to smile enter the room from behind, which was a thing he had learned to detect.
"That was on purpose," Derek said.
"A little," Avery said.
He lost track of time.
This was unusual for Derek. He generally had a strong sense of it, a background process running that kept him oriented, and he relied on it in the way he relied on most things that ran automatically. But somewhere in the second section or the third section he stopped tracking and just , was in the chair. Was in the room. Was in the particular present-tense of Avery's hands moving through his hair and the spray cooling and the comb going through and sorry, sorry, is that okay.
It was quiet in the apartment. Not the tense quiet of something unresolved but the settled quiet of a Tuesday afternoon with nothing demanding anything, the plants doing their growing and Fies doing her sitting and the world outside continuing without requiring anything from either of them.
Derek sat still.
He had learned, over the past months, to be better at this , at stillness, at receiving things. He had spent a long time, before the King and also after, being most comfortable in motion, in the forward momentum of a problem being solved or a system being optimized. Rest had been what happened between problems, not a thing in its own right. He had known, intellectually, that this was not the only way to be. He had been slower to know it in practice.
He was still, if he was honest, practicing.
But this was , different. This was stillness with someone in it, which was different from the stillness of being alone, and he was finding it easier than he expected. Easier than it had been three months ago. Easier in the specific way that things became easier when they had been practiced, quietly, without announcement, over an accumulation of ordinary days.
Avery's hands.
He thought about Avery's hands.
He thought about them the way he thought about things he was still figuring out , not analytically, not with the gear-assembly patience, just: turning them over. What they did. The way they moved. He had watched Avery's hands on a skateboard and on a camera and on the keyboard when he was editing and on the soil when they planted the kangkung. He knew what they looked like at rest and in motion. He knew the specific way they passed him the sunflower mug and the specific way they had caught his wrist in the hospital doorway on the day he'd been discharged, the first time Avery had touched him, the grip of it, which had been , which had been a lot, which he had thought about later in the way he thought about things that had registered somewhere significant.
He had been careful with Derek's hands when he burned them on the soldering iron. He had applied the plaster with the same care he was using now, the same attention, the same quality of doing something he had decided mattered and was going to do correctly.
Sorry, sorry, is that okay.
Derek had not been prepared, he was discovering, for the specific experience of being apologized to preemptively. For someone being sorry before he had even registered discomfort. For the reflex of it , unthought, automatic, sorry every time the comb caught something, as if Avery's first instinct when he moved near Derek was to ensure that nothing he did cost Derek anything.
He sat with this. He turned it over.
He thought about the kitchen floor at 3am and you don't have to say anything and the warm milk and the chips from the hospital vending machine and the sitting-beside and all of it , all the months of it , and he thought: this is the same thing. This is all the same gesture. The one that said: I am here and I am being careful with you and I will tell you when I am not being careful so you don't have to brace for it.
He had not braced, he realized. For any of it. Not once.
He had not known, until this moment, in this kitchen chair, with Avery's hands in his hair and the light doing its afternoon thing through the window, that he had stopped bracing.
He had to close his eyes.
"Derek," Avery said.
"I'm fine," Derek said.
"You went quiet."
"I was thinking."
A pause. The comb moved through a section slowly, carefully, and Avery's thumb smoothed the section flat afterward in a small unconscious gesture Derek had already noticed twice.
"Okay," Avery said. "Thinking is allowed."
"Generous," Derek said.
"I'm a generous person," Avery said.
"You've apologized forty times," Derek said.
"Forty-three," Avery said. "I've been counting since you told me to count." He paused. "Sorry."
Derek made the not-quite-laugh sound again. It came easier this time.
Avery moved to the top section, the last one, and Derek felt the clip come out that had been holding the finished sections separate. He felt both of Avery's hands in his hair now, spreading the finished sections out, checking the work, running through with the wide-tooth comb one more time. His hands moved over the top and the sides with the thorough attention of someone making sure they hadn't missed anything, and the sensation of it was , Derek did not have a specific word for what the sensation of it was. Warm, maybe. Weighted in the way of something that asked nothing, which was its own category of word.
"Okay," Avery said. He came around from behind and crouched in front of Derek, at eye level, and looked at his hair with the critical attention of someone checking their work.
Derek looked at Avery's face.
He had the focused look, the evaluating one, the same one that appeared over footage and over skate clips and over the spinning robot. His eyes moved over Derek's hair section by section and he reached up once to smooth something near Derek's temple and said, quietly: "yeah, that's better."
"Is it," Derek said.
"Yeah." Avery looked at him. Properly, now , not at the hair but at Derek's face, at whatever was there, which Derek had stopped trying to manage in the past several minutes and which was therefore probably visible. Something moved in Avery's expression.
"Hey," Avery said, quietly.
"Hey," Derek said.
"You okay?"
Derek thought about this with appropriate seriousness. "Yes," he said. "I was , yes. I was thinking about something."
"The hair?"
"Adjacent to the hair."
Avery looked at him. He was still crouched in front of him, elbows on his knees, at the level of Derek's face, the comb in one hand and the spray bottle in the other and all his attention in the third.
"What were you thinking about," Avery said.
Derek considered how to say it. He had the words , he had been working on having the words, had been practicing the gap between the thing and the saying of the thing , and he wanted to say it correctly, which sometimes meant saying it approximately and letting it be imprecise.
"The way you apologize," he said. "When you're working through a knot. Even when I tell you it doesn't hurt."
Avery was quiet.
"I was thinking about-” Derek looked at his hands, in his lap, "I was thinking about the first-aid kit. That I put in the third drawer before you tried soldering. Because I thought you might need it. And about the water I put on the nightstand before the temperature check." He paused. "I do those things. I do them because , I think you should not have to ask for things. I think , when something is mine to take care of, I want to take care of it ahead of the asking."
He looked up.
"That's what you were doing," he said. "The apologizing. You were being sorry ahead of the needing. You were , anticipating the cost before I'd registered it. So I wouldn't have to." He stopped. "I didn't know someone could do that for me. I hadn't , I hadn't accounted for it."
Avery looked at him for a long moment.
The afternoon light was doing something specific to the room, the low November kind, and Fies had moved to the table and was watching them both with the particular attention of a cat who understands that something is happening and has decided to observe it.
"Derek," Avery said.
"Yes."
"You were going to buzz it."
"That's-” Derek paused, "yes."
"You were going to buzz it," Avery said, "because the knots were there and you thought the fastest solution was just to start over." He looked at Derek steadily. "But that's , that's what you do. When something has been neglected. You think the only option is clean start."
Derek was quiet.
"It's not always the only option," Avery said. "Sometimes you just need someone to sit with it for a while and go slowly." He held up the comb. "It took forty-five minutes. It's fine now. It didn't need to be removed."
Derek looked at the comb.
He looked at Avery.
"Forty-three apologies," he said.
"Forty-seven," Avery said. "I added four during the top section." He stood up, knees cracking, and looked at Derek's hair one more time with the checking-the-work look. "You need a trim at some point. The ends are uneven. But the knots are gone."
"Thank you," Derek said.
"It's just hair," Avery said, which was what Derek had said at the beginning of this and which landed differently now, from this direction.
"It's not just hair," Derek said.
Avery looked at him.
"I know," Avery said, quietly. "I know that." He put the comb on the table. He picked up the spray bottle. He looked at Derek sitting in the kitchen chair in the afternoon light with the particular look he got when he was receiving something and choosing, deliberately, not to minimize it. "You're allowed to need things," he said. "You know that, right. Taking care of things doesn't mean you have to do it alone."
"I'm learning that," Derek said.
"Good," Avery said. "I'm a patient teacher."
"You apologized forty-seven times."
"I contain multitudes," Avery said.
Derek looked at him. Avery looked back, and the expression on his face was the warm complete specific one, the one that had a lot in it, and Derek held it for a moment before he said: "I should probably still get a trim."
"There's a place on the corner," Avery said. "I'll come with you. Make sure you don't tell them to just buzz it."
"I wasn't going to-”
"Derek."
"Possibly," Derek said.
Avery picked up the comb and the spray bottle and took them back to the bathroom, and Derek sat in the kitchen chair for a moment longer and put his hand in his own hair, in the back section, and found it smooth , completely smooth, all the way through, no resistance , and thought about forty-seven apologies and a wide-tooth comb and the particular patience of someone who had decided this was important and was going to do it correctly.
He thought about not bracing.
He thought about the specific gift of that.
He thought: I am going to remember this for a long time.
Then he got up and went to find Avery, because the plants needed checking and dinner needed deciding and the world outside was doing its evening thing and there was no reason, he had learned, not to be in the same room for most of it.
In the comments on a video Avery hadn't meant to post , thirty seconds of Derek at the bathroom mirror turning his head slowly to examine his own hair with the expression of someone reviewing evidence at a crime scene, followed immediately by Avery's voice saying "do not touch that comb, sit down" , the top comment read: "the way he was looking at his own hair like it had personally wronged him" with 230,000 likes.
Below that, from D3rLord3Returns: "I was assessing the situation."
Below that, from AveryTheMayo: "you were going to buzz it."
Below that, from D3rLord3Returns: "It was an efficient solution."
Below that, from AveryTheMayo: "it took 45 minutes and you sat completely still the entire time and you told me to stop apologizing and i said okay and then kept apologizing and you didn't say anything after that."
Below that, from D3rLord3Returns: "The apologies were noted and appreciated."
Below that: 410,000 likes.
Below that, one reply: "THE APOLOGIES WERE NOTED AND APPRECIATED. im going to need to sit down." 120,000 likes.