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I can't believe I'm letting him do this.
If a year ago you'd told Meijack Chils she'd be sitting in her bathroom, almost naked, having her hair washed by a man, she would've laughed in your face. Or, maybe not laugh, she had a particular sense of humor after all, and she probably wouldn't have found that funny anyways.
But here she is, sitting in her bathroom on a wooden bucket meant for laundry, steam clearing her lungs, and Mickbell Tomas’ hands undoing her braids.
They've been at this for a while, his deft fingers parting her hair in smooth auburn-red segments. “Honestly, you should just cut it, it's so dried out-”
“No,” she interrupts. She's gone seventeen years without cutting her hair and she doesn't intend to start now.
Without warning, he grabs the pail of water next to them and dunks it over her head, completely soaking her. “AUH-! Mick-! You asshole!”
He makes a little tsk noise that reminds her just a bit too much of her father. “Suit yourself, but I'm not gonna spend any more money on hair oil.”
She can feel her ears going red, and her face too, but she can chalk that up to the hot vapor permeating the room. “I didn't ask you to buy me that fancy stuff-!”
He rakes his fingers through another tangled knot, entirely too forcefully, making her yelp. “I'm not so stingy that I won't get my girlfriend anything for her birthday.”
She sets her mouth into a grim line. She supposes she should be happy that he got her a gift. Happy that he cares. Happy he's calling her his girlfriend- a title nobody has ever referred to her by. But all those little things pile up, and she goes out to meet his friends when he wants to show off, and he brings her noodles from the shop after work sometimes, and he warms her bed when it's cold. Frozen, lonely nights colored in amber, hands on her waist, legs criss-crossed between hers.
How long is this going to last…?
It's pessimistic, sure, but after her parents' situation she can't help but be a bit jaded in all matters regarding love, the fact her parents are seeing each other again notwithstanding. And it's not like she planned this- the whole situation was sort of comical, really. He was, probably, too old for her, but she didn't really mind. At heart, he was still a youthful spirit. The fact that they were both part of her dad's union was a little more awkward.
Maybe I shouldn't bother telling Da…I don't even know if we're going to stay together.
She can feel a strange tingling sensation crawling from her nape down to her spine, from him rubbing her scalp with soap, it reminds her of that floaty feeling from the night before.
Puck says locksmiths are good with their fingers…or something like that.
Mickbell would probably agree, they got along like a house on fire, those two.
Her face is red just from remembering it. It's not until he nudges her shoulder that she's startled out of her reverie. “Oi, why are you so quiet?”
She runs her tongue along the edge of her teeth, jaw sore from clenching it so hard. “I was just thinking you shouldn't spend so much money on something you're not serious about.”
His hands freeze. He leans over her shoulder, eyebrows furrowed deep in irritation. “Eeh? You think I'm not serious about you?”
Me and my big mouth…!
She swallowed thickly, words clumsy on her lips. “Ah, Mick…that's not…”
He starts scrubbing harder, nails dragging along her scalp as he works the soap in. “Or are you just not serious about me?”
She winces, her arms going up to grab his wrists. “Mick, stop-! Don't twist my words!”
He pulls away from her, backing into the wall with a dull thudding sound. She can see tears beading up in the corner of his eyes- a familiar sight in unfamiliar circumstances.
“Are you just waiting to leave me like everybody else?! Are you sick of me already!?”
He's taller than her, but at this moment, he looks small. A scrawny thing, she’d counted his ribs before, traced the skin between them, and found him hungry. A love-starved animal.
It’s hard to find the right words, even harder to get them out. “Mick…you know I didn't mean that.”
He slumps against the wall, quickly wiping away any stray tears with his forearm. Mumbling the whole time, she manages to hear him say, “...I…don't like you saying things like that…”
A little self-consciously, she fiddles with a wet strand of hair. “Like…what?”
He throws his arms into the air, clearly frustrated. “Like I don't care about you or something! It makes me think you don't care about me!”
She stares, eyes wide and round like the moon. “I'm…Mick- I'm sorry. I'm just…”
She wrapped her arms around herself tight and ducked her head down in shame. Vision misty, but only because of the steam. Just soap that got in her eye.
She hears his feet pad lightly across the floor, stopping right behind her. His arms drape themselves over her shoulders, holding her in a loose embrace, chin sliding over the top of her head. “...Just so you know, I am serious about… this.”
She can feel his ribs pressing against her back, can hear his heartbeat when she closes her eyes.
This…I don't know what this is…but I want it to last.
She wraps her fingers around his wrist, turning up to look at him. Her other hand finds its way into his hair, fine locks that spill through her digits like liquid silver, smooth and damp. She likes his eyes the most, green-blue like a mossy lake, colors rippling depending on how the sun hits him. Expressive, too, it's simpler for her to tell how he feels.
But it doesn't matter how easy it is to read him when she still doesn't know how to comfort him, so she does it the only way she knows how.
Kissing Mickbell is always a bit weird; neither of them is very good at it, he's the first person she's ever kissed, after all. And Mick is no ladies’ man, for all his smooth-talking. “Mmm…”
It starts a bit sloppy, uncoordinated because he clearly hadn't expected it, but he's always been a quick study. He shifts his body to lean into her, parting to gasp for air before diving back down to meet her mouth again. He's always been hungry, the way he kisses is no different. Stealing her breath, hands roving her body, teeth nipping at her lips. Flertom did say she'd picked a selfish lover.
She lightly pushed at his shoulder, breaking the kiss with a wet sigh. “Mm-! Ahh…better…?”
Mickbell still looks dizzy. “Uh…? Oh- Well…Mei-”
She can tell he's going to say something stupid, so she decides to interrupt him before he can ruin the moment. “I wouldn't kiss you like that for nothing!”
His face colors, going from warm and rosy due to the heat to a bright crimson that's pure embarrassment. “Yeah, yeah…w-well, you should be clearer about your feelings-!”
It's not my fault Dad gave me all his bad habits.
There's so many things to say, but they're too much, they get lodged in her throat. How does she say he makes her feel less lonely? It's in warm meals shared over an unsteady table, the scent of broth filling the house, in scrawny arms circling around her body, chest pressed against her own because he's always been clingy and he doesn't let go easily. It's in that silly, miniscule crystal bottle of hair oil that he got for her.
She grabs him by the hands, looks into his eyes even though she immediately wants to drop her head and hide behind her fringe. “Mick…braid my hair, will ya?”
He opens his mouth, softly, like he's testing something on the tip of his tongue, before a bright grin stretches across his face. “Finally, I thought you'd never ask me to help with that bird's nest!”
The smile immediately vanishes from her face, a scowl adorning it instead. “Oh- shaddup! You're always exaggerating!”
He’s snickering now. “Seriously, it was like touching hay.”
She raises an arm to slap his bicep. “Oh-! You-!”
He shuts her up with another bucket full of warm water over her head, rinsing out the bubbles and suds behind her ears. “Damn-! Mickbell, I'm seriously gonna hit you!”
He ignores her, already busy with spreading the yellow-tinged oil over his palms. The whole room suddenly seems to smell of- lavender? She doesn't know, Fler's the one who knows all about beauty products, Puck's the one who grows the flowers. Lavender and something else that burns in her lungs, in a good way, like the smoke from her father's pipe. He lathers it over the roots of her hair, carefully working it into every strand, till it glimmers and shines and it sticks to her bare body. She rubs a lock between her fingertips and cringes at the greasy texture. “Are you sure this is gonna help with my hair?”
He puts one hand against his chest, where his heart would be, but on the opposite side, and raises the other in the air. “Do I look like a liar to you?”
She raises an eyebrow, squinting at him. “Was that rhetorical…?”
“Hey-! What's that supposed to mean?!”
She snorts out a laugh, catching a towel when Mickbell angrily throws it at her, without any real force to it.
He sulks, brooding on another wooden basin meant for laundry that was next to her own. His chin puckered into a pout, a puffed-up cheek in the palm of his hand. “This is what I get for being such a nice guy…”
So childish.
But she can't help the sudden urge to coddle him. She bumps her knee against his, a freckled calf pressed on his. “Mick…c'mon, you said you were gonna braid my hair.”
He glances at her from the corner of his eye. “...Ugh, c’mere.”
With a small, satisfied smile, she turns her back to him and throws her hair over her shoulders, cascading like a red wave, water droplets falling between her toes.
He swiftly gets the work, parting her hair and throwing it back over her shoulder to work more efficiently. She can feel his fingers gliding through her hair as he starts on the first braid.
She has to admit, she’d never expected him to know how to do something so girly. “Where'd you learn this, anyway? You only ever tie your hair up.”
He makes a soft grunting noise. “I did it for my sister.”
A sister!
She balks, briefly star-struck by the thought of a shorter, softer-looking Mickbell. Well, not so different either way. “You have a sister? Why didn't you tell me?”
He shrugs, a casual motion, but when he speaks it's a hiss through gritted teeth. “I don't even know if she's alive, I haven't seen her in years.”
Oh.
As annoying as they can be, she can't imagine even going a week without seeing Flertom or Puckpatti, much less years. It sounds…terribly lonely.
“...Sorry,” she mumbles, after a pause that stretches for too long.
“It's not like it's your fault,” he answers, voice low in her ear.
He ties off the first braid, silently starting on the second one. The whole mood has shifted, and even the vapor isn't enough to warm her.
What should I say…?
She doesn't think about it long, though, because Mickbell takes a deep breath and starts talking again. “Her hair was worse than yours, you know? We didn't even have a comb, it looked like a rat's nest, and the other kids would pull on it. She always came crying to me about it.”
He ties off the second braid, before moving his bucket to sit in front of her. Normally, she'd be flustered, bare chest exposed so openly (it's different, under the covers, only candlelight highlighting her features), but she's never seen Mickbell look so focused, she's a little enthralled by it.
The braid is pure muscle memory, she can tell his mind is somewhere far away from this place. “So I learned how to braid hair, so it wouldn't be as noticeable. I started doing my hair up around the same time.”
His knuckles, scarred and knobbly, brush against her collarbone as he ties off the third braid, and she can't help but shiver.
“Nobody was gonna look down on me and my sister, if I could help it,” he finishes, his whole expression grave.
She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't really know how to react to his childhood in general. They were from different worlds. She knew he'd grown up in the slums, but that was it. He had too much pride to talk about how miserable it'd been.
She puts a hand on his knee, aiming for comfort but probably landing somewhere closer to awkwardness. “What happened…?”
His lip quivers, eyes shining, but he looks more angry than sad. “I don't know- I guess I was…eight, or maybe seven. Our useless excuses for parents had already abandoned us, so it was just us. I went out, for food- we hadn't eaten for a few days at that point. And I told her-”, he says this emphatically, “I told her to stay put-! And- And when I got back, she…”
His chest heaves with a long, heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping forward, the weight of a regret that had been building for years pushing him down, into himself. “She was gone,” he mutters. Tears overflow in his eyes, spill down his cheeks even though he's not blinking. “She probably went off with a stranger, s-she was stupid like that-”
Suddenly, a sharp, shuddering gasp leaves him, and then a strangled-out sob, fighting its way out of his throat despite his unwillingness. “Ggh-! It's m-my fault, honestly, I- what was I thinking? Leaving her alone-”
He presses a trembling hand over his mouth, eyes squeezed shut. She can hear him breathing, quick and shallow, desperately trying to calm his heart.
I should- I have to help him- what was that thing Mama taught me?
She places the palm of her hand on his chest. He's so thin, his bones are hard underneath his skin, against her fingertips.
His heart is beating so harshly…
Mickbell's eyes find her own, a sliver of quivering green, like leaves in the wind, peeking out from a curtain of platinum.
Deep breathes, in through the nose, out through the mouth, until he calms down.
He watches her, the rise and fall of her chest with every intake, the shape of her lips when she breathes out, and, unconsciously, mimics her movements.
As soon as he relaxes, she can see his face tense with shame. “Ah …I…I don't know why- I'm sorry-”
She loops her arms around his shoulders and pulls him into the crook of her neck. “Mick, I won't leave you, okay?”
Maybe there are gentler ways to say it, with flowery prose or honeyed words, but it's enough for her, and, more importantly, enough for him. His arms, still shaking, find their way around her, sliding up her back.
“...Okay,” he pants out, breath warm on her throat. “I'm not leaving either.”
So they hold each other in their arms for a dragged-out moment, stuck in time.
Eventually, one of his hands slide up her waist, toying with the wet ends of her hair, the final braid still undone.
“...Are you going to finish it?”
His lips are soft on her shoulder. “To be honest? I kinda wanna mess up your hair again.”
It takes her a second to realize what he means.
“Mickbell-!”
But he's already laughing, grabbing her by the hips and clumsily pulling her on top of him, towel fluttering innocently to the floor. When he kisses her, she can feel his mouth curving into a smile, giggles reverberating deep in her chest. She sinks her fingers into his hair and kisses him back.
I think I could get used to this…