So yeah Shiro’s terrible haircut S3-onwards is all Elslince’s fault. XD (In the show I’m sure he did it himself, so they’re both bad at haircuts.)
(my friend has completed FFXIV2.0! Congrats, Yllamse!)
Chapter 6: Haircut
He was unconscious when they pulled him from the fighter, almost unrecognizable when they pulled his helmet off. Elslince gasped when she saw: his hair had grown, flowing in straggling, tangled piles over his shoulders, over his face. Wasn’t it a bit long for a human having only been gone six months? She wasn’t sure. His stubbled cheeks were haggard, his eyes bloodshot and sunken, and she could feel the bones of his ribs as she checked him over on the stretcher. He looked forty deca-phoebs old, or older, like an old man. “He’s dehydrated and malnourished,” she said, hands flying through her work so no one would notice them shaking. “The cryo-pods will help with that.” And any other injuries his strange, hodge-podge armoured outfit was hiding.
She held her pride aloof. Shiro needed the best care they could provide, and the cryo-pods would heal him far faster than any treatment she could give.
She looked up at the others, saw the wild emotions in theirs that echoed hers. “Get him there right away.”
“Of course,” Coran said, and with Lance, double-timed the stretcher away. She kept pace, jogging with them – as if she was letting him out of her sight now! The others followed with equal haste.
Keith helped her undress him, redress him in soft sleeping clothing, and she tried not to weep at what she saw. So many new scars… she’d known every one of his old ones, but these new ones were awful, some of them clearly self-cauterized, and she winced at the pain he must have gone through. And he’d been gone so long… But the cryo-pod would restore him to health. She was more worried for his mind. How much did he remember? How bad would the nightmares be this time? How much could one person endure in one lifetime?
Would he still let her love him?
She watched over him without rest as he slept, watching as he visibly improved over the next two days. His colour returned, the haggard look left his face, and she knew angry red lines across his body would be fading to white, dark bruises dissolving away.
But he still looked tired and unhappy, and when the pod opened and his eyes did as well, that look didn’t change. But he saw her, and his expression eased a little, and so did hers. She held out her hand to him silently, and he took it, gaze now fixed on the floor, black and white hair trailing over his face. Together they walked to her room – their room, although she was considering… did he want her to stay with him? If he wanted privacy, she was happy to let him have it. She could sleep somewhere else for a while.
“Are you sure you want me in here?” he asked, when they got there, the first words he’d spoken since they’d found him, and his voice was hoarse with disuse.
She gave him not-quite-a-smile and whispered “Always.”
He collapsed on the bed as soon as the door closed, and she sat beside him with the lights off, running her hands through his long, unkempt hair.
A few hours later, the door opened and Keith took a step into the dark room. “Shiro. …Can I have a minute?”
Shiro didn’t answer for a moment, then said “Sure” and pushed himself to sitting.
“Should I go?” Elslince asked.
Keith shrugged. “I don’t care.”
So she stayed, and listened to the tale of what he could remember of his imprisonment – not much, again – and escape – most of it – listened as Shiro and Keith tried to figure out what had happened that day so long ago. She was just glad that he hadn’t forgotten them, even if the Galra had still removed his memories of his imprisonment. She wondered if it was on purpose or not, whether it was a threat or a mercy.
“Well…” Keith said eventually, softly, “if you’re feeling up to it… the rest of the team would be thrilled to see you up and around again. They need you, you know.”
“Yeah,” Shiro said, not meeting his eyes. “I’ll try.”
“Okay. We’ll be on the bridge.”
“Hey, Keith?”
Keith stopped in the doorway and half-turned. “Yeah.”
“How many times are you gonna have to save me before this is over?” But Shiro had a tiny smile on his face. Elslince had the feeling she was seeing a piece of their past, a close bond forged through trials and experiences she would never know about. Perhaps she shouldn’t have stayed.
Keith paused, then answered with a tiny smile of his own. “As many times as it takes.”
When Keith had gone, Shiro heaved a long sigh and let his head fall to his chest. “No rest for the wicked.”
“You’re not wicked,” she protested, a lock of hair brushing against his shoulder.
“It’s an expression,” he said, with the ghost of a smile. “Probably from a book. I guess I’d better get tidied up. Will you… will you help me?”
“What do you need?” she asked.
“A shower. Clothes.” He raised a hand to his face, to rub his chin, push his white forelock out of his eyes. “A shave and a haircut. Then maybe I’ll feel more like myself again.”
“I can prepare the first three, but the last…” She’d never… cut hair in her life. She knew Shiro could shave himself, but an actual haircut…?
“I’m not sure I can do it myself,” he said, his eyes shyly seeking hers. Of course she relented.
The castle’s fabricator had made new clothes for him while he slept, and he wore them when he returned from his shower, his hair wet but less tangled. The new clothes’ short sleeves allowed her a clear view of his arm, the definition of the muscles in it, and she watched in fascination as they tensed and released under his pale pink-brown skin as he continued to towel his hair. He hadn’t lost too much of his muscle mass in captivity, and while she approved from a medical standpoint, she also approved as a straight woman. He’d already shaved, and looked deca-pheobs younger already. All that was left was the haircut.
Her heart trembled as she considered the wish she’d harboured while he slept. “Shiro… If I might…”
“El?”
The familiarity of the short form of her name reassured her. “There was something I wanted to do while you had long hair. May I… twine mine with yours…?”
He blinked at her, letting the towel rest on his shoulders, not understanding. “Sure, whatever you like.”
She would take it and explain later. “Just… stay where you are.” She brought her face closer to his, like she might kiss him, and her hair reached around her to snake into his dark damp locks, lifting them from his shoulders, blending the three colours. His eyes searched hers for context, but she couldn’t give it to him through her eyes alone. She put her hands on his shoulders for balance, and his hands sought her waist. They stayed there a moment, then suddenly pulled her close, so she was sitting on his lap, his arms tightly around her, clinging to her with the desperation of a man about to fall from a cliff.
“God, El,” was all he said, the look in his eyes sad and broken and disbelievingly hopeful all at once, and then he kissed her.
“I’m here,” she whispered when they parted. “I’m here. You’re here. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Thanks, El,” he said, and she set about trying to slowly disentangle her hair from his. “…I can see why you wanted to do that. I… like my hair short though. It doesn’t get in the way.”
“I know,” she said. Though he still didn’t entirely know why she’d done it. “I’ve gotten used to you short-haired humans, anyway. I-I’ll do my best…”
And she did try her best, with her bandage scissors, to get his hair to resemble what it had before – very short on the sides, a little longer on top, and the white forelock even a little longer still. The sides weren’t shorn to his head, and the forelock she accidentally clipped a bit too short, but he looked a bit more like himself when she was done. At least she’d gotten it even on all sides. “It’s not perfect…”
He didn’t even check his reflection, only smiling gently up at her. “It looks fine. And I’m glad I didn’t have to do it myself.”
“I’m keeping all this,” she mentioned, sweeping up the longest loose strands into a bundle. “I know it’s no longer part of you. But…” She suddenly clutched them to her heart, looking away, unable to tell him how much she’d treasured the single hair she’d found while he was gone. Now she had a trove of them.
“I don’t know why it’s important to you, but go ahead,” Shiro said, and pushed himself to his feet. He took a deep breath and raised his head, and suddenly he seemed to be himself again, projecting a confident smile, compassion in his eyes. “I’m ready. Let’s go see the others. I missed them too.”
It was all an act, she could tell, but a vital one, so she took a place at his side, giving him a confident smile of her own. She didn’t touch him, letting him stand on his own. “Welcome back.”
“Keith…”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Keith said quietly, walking past her.
She turned to face him. “I think it’s important. Just to point out that you spent so much time looking for him, and now he’s back, you don’t want to listen to him.”
Keith glared at her. “He doesn’t understand what we’re up against. I made the right decision. I think.”
“I won’t make judgement on that. But Keith… in the Resistance, we had this thing called Mission Control; they would guide us through our field assignments and advise us, coordinate our movements. They try to know everything, but they can only know so much. And if you go off and do your own thing, they know even less and can’t help you. Shiro is ours, and he’s only trying to help to the best of his ability.”
He sighed impatiently and looked away. “I get it, but I’m supposed to be in charge of the mission. So if I think there’s a better course of action, I’m going to take it. I thought he would trust me the way-” He dropped his voice and mumbled: “Besides, he ought to be in the Black Lion in the first place.”
“All right,” she said, and let him walk away.
When the day was over, she returned to their room first, while Shiro reacquainted himself with other changes around the Castle and she checked that everything was ready for him to return to residence.
And when he opened the door, he practically fell on her, wrapping her into a tight hug, burying his face in her neck. She held him, feeling his breath, his heartbeat, her own heart filling with feelings until she felt she was going to burst.
“You sure you want me in here?” he mumbled into her neck. “I can always find another place to sleep.”
“Stay with me,” she pleaded with him. “Neither of us wants to be alone.”
“They might have… Every time they take me, I lose more.”
“You won’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Because we love each other.” She felt bold, saying it, but she felt him relax a little.
He lifted his head to look into her eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” She stood on her toes to kiss him, and it was a kiss that felt like it would never end. His longing and passion were almost overwhelming, but hers surged to meet him, and for a while she hardly knew which way was up and which was down, so carried away she was in the feeling of him. His human scent, the warmth that he wrapped around her, the brush of his forelock against her forehead, the taste of his mouth, salty compared to her own people.
It was strange, to lie in bed and feel his bulk across from her, and he seemed restless at first, shifting, making minute adjustments every couple doboshes. At length he reached out to her, his hand resting on her side. It was his prosthetic, and it was cold and alien through her thin sleeping clothes, but she didn’t care. She took it as an invitation and moved closer, to snuggle into his front, and he put his arm about her, breathing into the crown of her head. His dry baritone voice rolled through her, a comfort she’d been without for far too long. “You know when I was with you before, sometimes I dreamed of the darkness. But when I was in the darkness… sometimes I dreamed of you…” His voice broke and she hoped that whatever he dreamed of her, it had given him comfort, and not simply added to his torture.
Her fingers tightened on his back. “I’m here now. Rest.”