tangles
an OC kiss between ellinor and @sunflowerdales' ezra stormcrow <3
***
“Ezra.”
They look back at Ellinor, tossing their golden tresses effortlessly over their shoulder with a smirk—one she returns with a teasing wrinkled nose, a sly stuck-out tongue.
“What?” he asks her.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Your hair. I’m jealous. I can barely tie mine back into a bun without getting tangles all over the place, or bumps or weird parts or without it falling out and—”
They laugh.
“It’s not funny!”
“No, it’s just—well, it is a little.”
She frowns.
“I can show you, if you like. My hair’s a bit thicker than yours, but the basic process is the same. Is your hair all brushed?”
Ellinor nods.
“Sit here.” He pats the ground in front of them gently, and she takes a seat beside them. “You can practice on me first, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
She laughs nervously, and they smile back, cheeks flushed a little.
“We’ll want a small section, like this.” They part a bit of loose hair away from the braids they’d done earlier in the day, holding it out for her to see. “And then separate it into three more pieces.”
“Okay.”
“Now take the two outer strands.”
“Me?”
“Who else?”
She laughs nervously, and Ezra tries to ignore the way her fingers are warm when they brush against his, the way it makes them shiver.
“Tuck the right over the middle.”
“Okay.”
“And now the left over the right. Well, technically it’s the middle strand now.”
“The…what?”
“Put the left strand over the one you just moved over the middle.”
“Um…okay…”
“And then you just…sort of keep going, in that pattern. Until you reach the end and you can tie it off with a ribbon or whatever you have, you know?”
She doesn’t answer this time, instead only humming thoughtfully to herself, her fingers continuing to work through the little section of their hair they’d offered to her as practice. So they wait. Sit in silence, comfortable silence, enjoying each others’ company and the warmth—both against their skin and in their chest—of her presence beside him.
“Done,” she says finally. “At least I think.”
“You think?” they tease her. “Let me look.”
She hands off the section of hair to him, and they pull it into sight, looking up and down.
“It doesn’t really look like yours,” she says awkwardly.
Understatement of the age. “I—Ellinor—” It’s not a braid at all. Rather a series of knots, twists, ties, tangles.
“I just did what you told me!” she says defensively. “I tried to—”
But she misunderstands, they think, I’m not angry at all. Instead, he bursts out laughing. “I think—ha—” It takes them a moment to catch their breath, tossing the section of woefully mismanaged hair back over their shoulder.
Her own expression changes from embarrassment to surprise and finally to a grin, laughing along with them. “I’ll fix it!”
“Please don’t.”
“I’ll—at least let me undo it, I can try to—” She reaches out for them again, but it’s easy for Ezra to dodge her, sending her falling into him.
They catch her. “Oh,” they mutter, looking into her, out of breath and flushed with tears in her eyes from the laughter. He quickly leans down once to kiss her nose. “You’d better.”
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