missions were tedious and tiring, but genya always found sitting with muichiro quite relaxing and replenishing. so he recovered idly, regaining his steadiness as he pulled the hashira onto his lap. muichiro seemed content making cranes from origami, quite fine despite his much more arduous mission, humming to himself.
as they sat there quietly, allowing the silence to spread comfortably, genya ran a hand through muichiro’s hair. or—he tried. apparently, it had gotten exceedingly tangled recently, and his fingers weren’t able to make it down. instead, he ended up tugging at muichiro’s hair, causing the boy to snap his complaints.
“stop it,” he demanded. he put his paper crane down to bat genya’s hand away.
“but it’s so tangled…” genya pointed out. “we should brush it.”
clearly against the idea, but not in the mood for arguments, muichiro simply huffed. genya took it as an okay and twisted, reaching for a brush that sat on the drawers. he began the difficult task of unraveling each and every knot in muichiro’s hair, earning himself the occasional grunt and—“that hurts!”—as he attempted to tame the bird’s nest. eventually, he managed to get it as smooth as it could get, at least able to run his hands through with the minimum resistance.
he smiled down at his handiwork for a moment. then a thought occurred to him as he was reminded of sanemi doing their sisters’ hairdos in the past. he hesitated, only for a moment, then asked, “can i braid your hair?”
“what?” muichiro said flatly, focused on his seventh origami piece, ignorant to genya’s words.
after repeating himself, though, genya was met with surprising compliance. muichiro was completely fine with it, apparently, so genya took the opportunity to hurry up before any minds were changed. he separated the hair into three sections, then began to braid it, trying to recall when he’d done it as a child.
when he finished, he tied the end, leaning back to admire his work. the turquoise had blended in quite well with the black, and gave it a nice touch. he hummed to himself, and tapped muichiro’s shoulder.
“i finished,” he informed him.
muichiro looked up, putting down his now maybe tenth (glancing at the rest, genya counted them quickly and found that it was, indeed, the tenth) bird to reach behind him. he touched the braid gently, fingertips treading carefully as to not mess it up. standing and turning to the dresser, he peered at his reflection in the mirror. he pivoted, then glanced over his shoulder, trying to get a better look at the braid. unable to see it properly, he slung it over his shoulder and inspected it from there. then, as the braid had gained his approval, he flashed genya a smile and went back to his origami.
(genya could barely resist clutching his chest where his heart lay, overcome with a sudden desire to squeeze the life force out of muichiro. because: how could he be so damn adorable? but, alas, he decided his reputation would be on the line and, lest he wished to have muichiro thinking he was weird, he must compose himself. and that he did, masking his overload-of-love-for-muichiro with a neutral expression and joining muichiro on the floor again to assist in crane-making).
my babies
