“Babe. Babe. Have you ever felt a pillowcase?”
“No, just like felt it? Like, done nothing but hold a pillowcase and feel it? Feel it.”
Lup thrusts the pillowcase at Taako, who takes it, affecting disinterest, but poorly. “Soft,” he says.
“I know!” His sister lights up, flushed cheeks vibrant with excitement. She sprawls backward on the bed, arms thrown askew like a snow-elf without the snow, grinning madly. She flips onto her stomach and buries her face in the covers. “These are so soft too, Taako.”
“Natch,” he says, flopping down beside her. “Nothin’ but the best for cha’boy. I’m drippin’ in riches now. Ain’t nobody gonna keep me from ripping that good good cotton.”
Lup snorts, kicks his shin with her toes. She pauses like she’s going to tell him off, then gets distracted rubbing her cheeks along the soft satin lining of his covers.
Taako props up his head on the heel of his hand, elbow to the pillows. “Havin’ fun?”
“So much,” she says. Quick as a flash she snags the hem of Taako’s overlarge sleep shirt and rubs it between her fingers, awestruck. It’s Kravitz’s, technically. One of the softer things he owns, which of course Taako then stole. It’s more of a sweatshirt on him, or perhaps a hideously baggy gown. At home, he doesn’t care. It’s soft and warm and smells like Kravitz, the former of which Lup is just now discovering, to her delight. “It’s so soft!”
“Sure is,” he says, curling amusement into a smirk whose affected disdain doesn’t fool Lup for a second. She grins back, just as fond, before throwing herself onto her back with a contented sigh.
“Man,” she says, beaming at the ceiling. “I fucking love skin.”
Her grin stretches. “Not a bad thing, babe.”
“It is when he tries to use said skin to bind books. That shit’s gross as hell.”
Lup shrugs, then reaches a hand toward the ceiling and wiggles her fingers, that overjoyed grin creeping across her face. “Innovative.”
“Hey,” Taako says, watching her. “Cha’boy spent all yesterday baking and my fingers are way too stiff to braid, you wanna give it a shot?”
“Oh hell yeah,” Lup crows, already sat up and ushering him off the side of the bed. “Off, off off off. You got a scrunchie? Ooh, get me one of the ribbed ones, with the elastic and all that - yeah, that’s the good shit, thanks babe,” Lup says, accepting the band he passes over his shoulder. There’s a set of snaps, one, then two, as Lup marvels at the soft sting of elastic against her wrist.
Taako snorts impatiently, settling back against her legs. “Listen, Lulu, if you forgot what pinching felt like I’d be happy to remind you.”
Lup only snorts, already dividing his hair into three even parts with the ease of hundreds of years of practice. Her hands still, slow, weaving gently through his hair, and if she takes several minutes to just rub the strands together, awed, well, Taako chooses to take that as a compliment for his conditioner.
Besides, not commenting lets him hide the crack inevitable in his own voice. Listen, it’s been a while since he’s let anyone braid his hair, okay? He just got his sister back, fuck, he’s allowed to get a little choked up.
She moves slowly through his braid, passing his hair between her fingers in the frustratingly stilted motions of an artist decades out of practice. Still, she fashions an even braid, redoing and undoing sections to perfection, and pausing, every so often, to card her fingers through his hair, marvelling again at the softness and the texture and the light brush of clipped ends against sensitive fingertips.
Finally she ties it off with an elastic and wordlessly hands him a mirror, and - he doesn’t tear up, he doesn’t, but his eyes sting a little, because he’d braided his own hair but it was never right, but this is, and it’s perfect, and he turns to hug her wordlessly, casting the mirror aside.
She stiffens in surprise, and she’s so warm against his chest, and he hopes for a moment that she can feel that too - warmth, from him to her. Then she winds her arms around his back, just as she’s always done, and he laughs, a little choked, and she laughs too, palms running lightly up and down his back, still marvelling at the texture of his shirt.
“Thanks,” he says. “For the braid.”
“Of course.” She leans back, tucks a stray hair behind his ear. Then she smiles that same beaming grin, overjoyed. “Any time, babe.”
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