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"Let me do that." Monoco rose from his patient squat, the wooden armor of his skirt clacking with the movement. Verso glanced at him through a wavy curtain of hair as he approached, pacing around to Verso's back.
Usually Verso chopped inches of hair off when it grew past his shoulders, but recently Monoco had developed an interest in braiding. He liked it when Verso styled his fur, humming a low thrum of contentment that was almost a purr as Verso worked to turn his mane into dozens of thin braids — and he liked even more to braid Verso's own hair in return. Verso indulged him: first asking for twin twists starting above each of his ears, then extensions that arced from his temples to wrap around a messy bun. And finally, when it grew long enough, all of his hair was gathered into a thick fishtail that trailed down to the center of his back.
It was rather handsome, he had to admit. But it could result in an unholy mess when it was undone. Especially if he slept in it.
Now Verso closed his eyes with a sigh as Monoco's fingers ran along his scalp. Corrugated knuckles dragged over the back of his neck, and he shivered at the cool sensation. Let his head dip forward, chin tucked, jaw relaxed.
"You're going white again." A gentle tug. Verso let his skull move loosely on a pivot guided by Monoco's grip. "Here." Monoco's thumb rubbed along his nape, one slow stroke up against the grain of hair. He could hear strands rasp along polished wood.
"Couple of months until the next Expedition." Like this, cradled in Monoco's embrace, the despair of another failed year was blunted to something bearable. "Leave it until then, I guess."
"Hrm." Monoco combed with his fingers in silence; Verso waited. "If you kept a piece, I could braid a pattern with it."
"Yeah?" Verso huffed a laugh. "Maybe you could dye a bit of your mane black. Then we could match."
Quiet. Monoco was actually thinking about the idea, Verso realized. Monoco, whose vanity regarding his fur was near-legendary among his kin. (He had given a lot of critical advice when Verso first began braiding his fur. A lot.)
Verso opened his mouth to — what, take back the proposal? But the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. A visual cue tying them together, opposite but equal.
"I could," Monoco said slowly. "If I could trust Delsitra to do the job correctly."
"I could supervise," Verso suggested. "You'd trust me."
Monoco ignored the assertion as something too obvious to acknowledge. "That just means two of us would beat him up if he makes a mistake instead of me alone."
"Ah, but think of how fun that would be. A good consolation prize."
Monoco stayed silent for a moment more. Then he knocked his knee against his staff, the bell tolling. "You've convinced me. Let's do it."
"I mean, we could — do it?" Verso blinked and cleared his throat. "Yeah, let's do it, we should definitely do it."
Monoco looked at him. Verso looked back.
"But you could finish my braid first," Verso suggested.
As expected, Monoco was insufferable about his new fashion statement. He insisted that Verso work perfectly so that only the dyed strands were in a single braid, and any time it got mussed — after battles, or when they ran away from Serpenphare, or post a volleyball duel — Verso would be recruited to groom him again. It got so bad Verso started taking better care of his own hair out of spite.
Which brought them to the current mess.
"It's not so bad," Verso said, ignoring the wet rasp in his throat and the vast amount of red-black fluid spilling down the front of his coat. He coughed and blood spattered onto Monoco's arm.
"I can see your lungs," Monoco pointed out.
"Just a flesh wound." Verso patted clumsily at Monoco's hands cupping his waist until he found the wiry silk of his braid, then gripped it tight. The tension pulled all the way up to the base of his skull. "'S not cut, right?"
"Idiot," said Monoco. "It's fine. Unlike you, and your coat. You're never going to get the blood out."
Verso's legs were a little wobbly. Monoco half-carried him away from where the Nevron corpses were dissolving into flakes of chroma, replying in hoarse grumbling hums to every pained noise that escaped Verso's gritted teeth.
"Just kill me and—nngh—throw me in the river. Problem solved."
"Last time we did that a bunch of Demineurs blew your arm off. You ended up worse than you started."
"But I was already dead," said Verso reasonably. "So I didn't feel it."
"You can find your own arm, then."
They stared at each other. Monoco won the face-off by the way of not having to blink, and also because Verso coughed up another lungful of blood.
"Come on." Monoco swept Verso up into a bridal carry. Verso felt a warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with the gaping wound below his sternum. "I'll take care of you, you disaster."
Verso buried his face into Monoco's mane, right at the edge of the black streak. The fur muffled his voice. "You love me."
"Hrm," said Monoco. Acknowledgement.
Verso smiled. His own braid was still clutched tight in one white-knuckled fist.