“The most important thing is probably to keep your hair out of whatever you’re making” Mordecai commented.
He was watching Carl mess around at the Sapper’s table after he had called him over to ask for advice on some new ideas. Or more like, to steer the conversation around so that Mordecai would tell him what he already seemed to know. He hadn’t survived as far as he had in his own dungeon and gotten through almost all of his indentureship by being blind, or stupid. Being naive - too trusting of some very specific people he didn’t care to think about right now - had cost him once. Never again. He could tell what the crawler was doing, even if he didn’t know where he truly got the knowledge from. But he also couldn’t ask about it, not with the universe’s eyes on them, and it wasn’t like he minded having these kind of conversations, anyway.
What they could and should talk about was the hair, though. It kept slipping over Carl’s shoulders when he leaned over the table, dangling dangerously close to the splayed out components and half-finished projects. As a changeling who didn’t get to choose the race he changed into, Mordecai was intimately familiar with the struggle of suddenly having extra hair. Or fur, in some cases. Or multiple limbs, or tails. Anyway, he could sympathize.
“Goddamit” Carl muttered. He tried to flick back the hair with a jerking movement of his head, and only succeded on making more of a mess of the waist-long strands.
“Where’d you leave your hair tie, kid?”
“On the table in the common room, it think. But I can’t leave this right now.”
“I’ll go get it” Mordecai told him with a fond shake of his head.
He did, and when he returned, Carl still had both of his hands full with the bomb he was making, so he simply started gathering back his hair for him, carefully combing it with his fingers to dissolve the knots and tangles. Mordecai didn’t have much experience in styling hair, having only recently been thrust into his own human form, one with much shorter hair and a racoon hat to cover it, but with a little effort he managed a decent ponytail.
“Thanks” Carl said, once he was able to set down his bomb, pulling the hair tie tighter himself. “So, what were we talking about before?”
A little crossposting from my AO3 - read the full fic there! (This part is just immensely important to me as someone who also has to tie her hair back for work.)
