@dovji , [ braid ] for your muse to braid mine’s hair
there was not a whole lot that ibaraki was capable of doing on his own with his long mess of hair. only having one arm made sure that the rest of his life was an absolute pain to handle. it wasn’t just his hair -- it was everything. it was shocking that shuten was even willing to put up with him this long. not only had he failed to protect him in the past, it had ended up with him crippled, no fix to that issue in sight. if he had an easy way to regenerate it, he would have -- though unlike his friend, he didn’t have an easy way of being healed. usually, he was the one that would have to suffer through all of his issues; depending on how much trouble that he got himself into.
sitting patiently in front of him, he could feel the light tugging on his hair as he braided it, usually in small parts. more often than not, he would pester him to pull it up, that way it wasn’t all over the place. while he did have very pretty hair, it was long and unruly -- with how thick it was, it was awful difficult to pull up correctly. thankfully, shuten was used to his own hair, even if ibaraki’s was definitely on the fluffier side. his horns often got in the way too, which he would certainly hear about it if he bumped one of them. turning his head some, he tried to catch a look at shuten’s expression. he was never too sure whether or not this was something that he enjoyed, or if it was just something that he considered a nuisance. most things that involved him seemed to annoy the other a great deal -- he was hoping that maybe just this was something calming to him. there had been rare times where he didn’t have to ask for it, he would just come over and start toying with it himself. his hair was incredibly soft, despite the fact that he was not so careful when it came to caring for it. when you lived in the mountains, the closest that they had to showers was natural water sources.
instead of asking him how he was feeling about it, ibaraki leaned back a little more into his hands, hoping that he would at least give him some kind of reassurance. he was much more like a dog than he liked to admit -- especially when it came to shuten.