carcrash (henry letham/driver), 666 words.
It takes Henry perhaps too long to finally ask, "What the hell are you doing?"
He's been focusing on drawing. Inspiration is hard to come by these days — or, not inspiration, really, but motivation — and he tends to obsessively follow it when it appears. He keeps his sketchbook on him, a pen and pencil tucked into the elastic, and when the mood strikes he takes it out whenever, wherever. Driver's gotten used to moving around him, even when he's hunched for hours right in the way in their too-small apartment. Sometimes, at most, he'll gently coax Henry to move somewhere more comfortable, or at least sit in a way that supports his back and bad leg, and he'd done that today.
Henry had let him, allowing himself to be gently shifted like a doll as he'd sketched furiously, singleminded in his focus lest he risk it slipping through his fingers. But there's been a nagging thought in his mind, and it comes to him again now like something surfacing in a lake — Driver hadn't moved away.
Henry's used to his hair being in his face. It's too long, he hasn't gotten it cut in…he doesn't know. And it's annoying. It's always in the way — just like he is — but when it's longer like this it hides the scars on his face, the knots of silvery-pink tissue that people love to stare at. It's something to hide behind, some tiny defense, even if he despises it when he's trying to focus.
He shifts, flicks his head to feel the familiar sensation of his hair moving, but only feels Driver's fingers fumble somewhere against the back of his scalp.
"What are you doing?" he repeats.
"You're the one distracting me."
He takes his left hand off his sketchbook, balancing the corner of it against his knee brace instead so he can keep absentmindedly drawing, and paws at his head where Driver's been working. His hair's been pulled back gently against his scalp, and he feels ridges where the strands of it have been weaved.
A braid. A French braid — two of them, almost symmetrical, down either side of his head. They're a little untidy, little tufts and strands poking out where Henry's hair is too short to stay in place, and Driver's clearly out of practice. Henry can feel how the lines of them falter, bending at his crown, crowding almost too close at his nape. The one Driver is finishing now bends out sharply to accommodate, completely uneven.
Athena liked braiding her hair. She used to complain about her curls then, cursing the way they'd fight out of the braids, never sitting sleek and flat the way she apparently wanted them to. Henry liked — likes, still — the way they looked, the strands of hair that would poke and fall and frizz. Artfully messy, perfectly untidy.
"I don't want you sleek and neat," he remembers telling her once. "It wouldn't be you then."
Her laugh is still ringing in his ears when he processes Driver's palm against his shoulder.
"You okay?" Driver asks softly.
Henry resists the automatic urge to say he is, and takes stock instead, the way he's been practicing with Sam.
"Yeah," he settles on. "Was a nice one."
He feels Driver tie off the braid. It feels strange, the end of it against his neck, but it's not unpleasant. Henry tilts his head to feel it brush back and forth.
"How do you know how to braid?" he asks.
"I don't know," Driver replies. It's not dishonest, but weighted and empty in a way Henry knows by now. A lost memory, repressed or dissociated. Not a nice one. He leaves it alone.
"All my hair's out of my face."
"I'll keep doing it, then," Driver says softly. "I'll practice."
Henry keeps drawing. Driver curls wordlessly into his side.