He's battled hundreds of monsters before. You name one, and he's got three different stories about how he took it down. Te Kā? He took her out in under an hour. Tamatoa? He beat him in a fight not once, but twice. Giant Eels? He's happy to remind you he was the one who killed them each time he sees you drink from a coconut.
But this? Now this is something Maui can't admit he's tackled before, since it seems to Moana that this is something he's never had to deal with before.
He hadn't even noticed it right away. He and Moana had taken a fishing boat out for a quick circle around the island, and he was eager to get out in the water again. It wasn't until he leaned over the boat to look for fish did he catch his own reflection and notice something was wrong.
"It's a disgrace! It's unbelievable!" Maui shouts, pacing back and forth on the small canoe. "It's downright disrespectful!" He says, and plops down on the boat's floor, causing it to rock under his heavy weight for a moment.
"Everyone gets them, you know." Moana says as she leans into the water to pull up the fishing net full of fish. "It's not that uncommon".
"No, you don't understand. I don't get them. This doesn't just happen to me out of the blue. The gods must be mad at me for something".
Moana rolls her eyes as she walks over to the boat's storage unit with the net and empties its large stock of fish inside. "I seriously doubt the gods are responsible for your bad hair day" She says as she makes her way back over to the steering controls of the boat.
"Then explain it to me, girly. How can I go thousands of years with perfect hair and then wake up one day to find it like this?" He asks, gesturing dramatically to the frizzy, tangled mess attached to his head. "I had to have done something wrong recently." He says, lying down and staring up at the sky. "There's no other way to explain it"
After Moana starts the boat up and gets it moving, she walks over to Maui and sits down next to him.
"Tell me everything you've done this week"
"Excuse me?" He asks in an annoyed tone as he sits up. His hair whacks him in the face as he does, and he groans as he pushes it back behind him.
"Maybe if you tell me everything you've done this week I can figure out what you've done that could possibly anger the gods this much" Moana says sarcastically with a smirk on her face.
"I don't appreciate that tone" Maui says, rolling his eyes at her.
Moana stands up. "But you're all about keeping your hair perfect, aren't you? Maybe if you could go ahead and tell me what you did one day at a time I could let you know which you could stop doing to prevent this from happening again" She says with the sarcasm still strong in her voice. She walks over to check on the other fishing nets, and glances back at him to watch his expression change from frustration to annoyance to defeat in a matter of seconds.
"Fine" he says in a frustrated tone, and she smiles as she turns back around and takes her seat back next to him.
Maui sighs. "Well first, I helped pull those stubborn weeds that were growing outside your hut, and then I helped the hunters gather food, the day after that I was put in charge of telling stories to the young children…" He starts, listing off everything he had done to help her people since his arrival at Motonui earlier in the week.
Ever since Moana had returned home to Motunui alone, she kept getting the feeling that she was being followed. On land, she always caught glimpses of a large hawk following her from the air, and when she was out in the water, she kept catching sight of the shadow of a large shark closely following her boat from the side.
At first she thought she was just seeing things, but when she felt something nudge her boat gently in a different direction when she made a wrong turn on a trip home, she knew she had been right and that it had been Maui the entire time. Alone at the time, she stopped the boat, leaned into the water, grabbed the shark by the head, and attempted to pull him up onto her boat. Giving up on trying to hide himself anymore, Maui took his human form and helped himself the rest of the way up. After a quick catch up, Moana once again brought up her offer for him to return with her to Motunui. After giving him a minute to really think about it, he happily accepted her offer, and he's been living in the village with her ever since.
"Your hair" Moana says suddenly, clearly interrupting his thoughts as well as her own.
"I'm aware. That's why I'm listing off everything I've done like you told me" He says bitterly, crossing his arms.
"No," she says, laughing. "I mean, when's the last time you sat down and took care of it?"
"It doesn't matter. I don't need to" He says, pushing it behind him again when strands of it begin to fall over his shoulders.
"Maui." She says in a firm voice. "How long has it been?" She asks again, and he looks down at the floor of the boat to avoid making eye contact with her.
"A week...and a half" He mumbles, still refusing to look at Moana.
"Maui, you have to take care of it every day"
"I was!" Maui shouts, throwing his arms in the air defensively. "But that was…" He pauses, looking as if he's trying to find the right words to get his thoughts out. "Before I...got so busy with other things" he says in a quieter voice, and his scrunched up face softens as he gets the words out.
There's a short moment of silence between them.
"You know…" Moana says to break the silence as she stands and circles him to look at how bad his hair actually is. "I can help you fix it" she says, and Maui turns around to read her expression. When he finds nothing but sincerity, he shrugs.
"Sure" he says, a smile forming on his face.
"Really?" Moana expresses happily, surprised by his quick acceptance of her offer.
He smiles as a response, and then laughs as he watches her frantically running around the boat as she pulls the fishing traps up from under the water and empties their content into the storage unit. Slipping on a small puddle of water on the boat's deck, he has to duck as she tries to adjust the sail to change the boat's direction.
"Kid, you don't need to turn the boat around just so you can work on my hair. I could've done that myself." He says, laughing.
"What?" Moana says, almost unable to stop laughing herself. "No, no, no. You think I have my hair brush on me? We have to go back and get it.
"Hairbrush?" He asks as he stands up. "You're being serious about this, aren't you?"
"Hey." She says, pointing her finger at him. "It is the LEAST I could do for you" She says, and walks over to the controls
Before he can ask what she means by that, she's already sitting behind the controls and turning the boat around. When the boat starts moving, Maui watches Moana's hair flow flawlessly behind her in the slight breeze the movement of the boat is creating. He rolls his eyes. Showoff.
She brings the boat around to the shore, and jumps off the boat before it even touches the sand. Turning around, she watches as Maui follows slowly behind her.
"You go wait in your hut, and I'll meet you in there. I just have to grab something from my own hut first" She says. Her use of the word 'something' instead of just claiming she's just grabbing her brush makes him slightly suspicious, but he shrugs it off and makes his way over to his own hut.
As he does that, Moana sprints over to her own hut and grabs the brush she keeps next to her sleeping mat. Popping her head outside to make sure Maui isn't nearby to see her, she turns around and grabs the basket of wildflowers she had been collecting and holds it under her arm before making her way over to Maui's hut. Once there, she walks into the tall doorway and places the flower basket down on the ground.
"I'm here" she says to him, whose back is turned to her. In the time it took for her to walk from her hut to his, he attempted to fix his hair by putting it up in a messy bun, which in retrospect, only made it look worse.
He turns to face her, and she moves to stand in front of the flower basket so he can't see it.
"Don't just stand there looking at me like that" she says as she places the hair brush in her mouth. "Come here" she says, and he walks over to her and sits on the ground.
"You know, you can't just solve all your problems with a hair bun" she says as she begins to undo the messy bun.
"Never say never, girly" He says, mocking her. "I'm already letting you touch my hair, the least you could do is try not to insult it"
"It's kind of hard not to with the condition it's in" she says, laughing, and he glares up at her.
"Ouch" he says in a monotone voice. "One more insult like that and I'm taking that brush and snapping it in half"
"The only person that'll hurt would be you" She says as she fixes her own hair before taking the brush out of her mouth to start working on his. She starts by running her hands in his hair to part it, and he immediately tenses up for a short moment.
"Sorry!" she says sheepishly. "Probably should've warned you that it feels weird when someone else touches your hair".
He shrugs again, his shoulders bouncing his hair around. "It's fine. Already beats trying to part it myself" He says, and she rolls her eyes as she gathers his hair in her hand. Taking the brush in the other, she pauses before starting to brush it out.
"This definitely won't. You ever dealt with knots in your hair before?" She asks, and he shoots her a do-you-even-know-who-I-am sort of look.
"Of course not" Moana sighs, more to herself than him. "Then that means I should probably warn you this isn't going to feel very good" She says, and begins running the brush through his hair. He's about to speak up and ask her what she means, but right as he opens his mouth to ask her the brush gets caught on a small knot and he closes his eyes and scrunches his face in.
"I know" she says, reading his thoughts. "But trust me, your hair is going to look better than it did before, so you're just going to have to deal with it until I'm done"
"I'm not a child" he says, trying not to scrunch his face in as she begins to brush through another knot.
"No, but you act like one sometimes" she says, and before he can make another snide comment about taking her hair brush from her, she holds up his own hair to him as a reminder of why she has it in the first place. He closes his mouth, and she drops his hair as she continues to brush through it.
"I do have to give you credit for something, though" she says as she pushes one section of his hair aside so she can work on another.
"Yeah? What's that?"
"You're right about your hair being silky. I'm almost jealous by how much softer it is then my own hair"
Maui smirks at her. "Why thank you" He says, and Moana watches as a little speck of fear flashes in his eyes in realization when she returns his smirk.
"You're welcome!" she yells, mocking his deep voice, and then laughs.
"Can't you go at least a day without mocking me?" He asks, annoyed.
"You're my best friend" she says casually as she finishes brushing through the part she was working and begins to work through another one. "It's my job"
Maui goes silent, and it makes Moana realize that was the first time she had said that out loud to his face. Oops.
"Really?" He asks, glancing back at her. The half of his hair she finished brushing through falls over his shoulder in front of him.
"Well, yeah" she says, continuing to work on a particularly stubborn knot. "If you weren't, who would be? It's not like I've had much of a chance to connect with anyone else my age for the past few weeks anyway"
"Yeah?" He asks, his soft smile reverting back to his almost default smug grin. "And whose fault was that?" He asks, and she tugs on the brush twice as hard as she needs to just to hurt him.
"Mmm, I'm still gonna go with yours." She says smugly, and she places the handle of the brush in her mouth temporarily as she gathers all of his hair together.
Changing the subject, Maui glances back at her shortly as she gives his hair what feels like a couple of last finishing brushes.
"You done?" He asks eagerly, and she laughs quietly.
"You'll know when I'm done" she says, and takes the opportunity of him looking away from her to drag the basket of wildflowers close to her. "You still got that bow from when you had it up in a bun earlier?"
"But I thought you said putting it up in a bun wouldn't solve my problems" He says, reaching down on the ground to pick it up and hand it to her.
"Hush." She says, and ties the bow around her wrist. She takes his hair again, parting it into a bunch of different sections. She braids a small section of his hair together, and then reaches down and picks a bright red flower out of the basket. Careful not to poke him in the neck with the stem so he doesn't find out what she's doing, she ties the flower into the braid. As she braids each section of his hair together, she adds another flower in until she can't fit another one in.
She takes the bow off of her wrist, and determined not to let any of the flowers fall out of his hair, she carefully ties the bow in his hair. Pushing the basket of flowers aside with her foot, she quickly adjusts a few of the flowers and fixes the bow before backing away slowly with her hands in the air.
"Now I'm done" she says, and she picks up the basket of flowers.
"Promise?" He says, glancing back at her. She smiles at him in response, showing him her two empty hands.
He returns the smile and jumps up before making a run for the water to take a look at his reflection
"Maui, wait!" She laughs as she calls after him, dropping her basket as she sprints out of his hut after him. By the time she catches up to him, he's already down at the water looking at his reflection. The entire braid is pushed over one of his shoulders so he can look at it, and he's admiring it in the water. At a closer glance, she notices that he's running one of his hands through his hair at the top.
"You forgot to tell me what you think" She says out of breath as her reflection in the water joins his.
"I love it!" he almost shouts, clearly too ecstatic to try and keep his cool-and-collected-demigod act up. "You've got to teach me how you did it" he says, amazed that the flowers seem to stay in place no matter how many times he swings the braid back and forth. Glancing back, Moana notices a bright pink wildflower growing where the sand meets the grass. She walks over to it, plucks it out of the ground, and walks back over to him before placing it behind her ear and twisting her hair around it to keep it in place.
"Maybe next time your hair gets as bad as it was" she says, and then holds a hand up in the air to stop from replying. "But ONLY if it gets that way naturally. I don't want to catch you messing up your hair just so I can teach you how. I'm still the only girl on the island who knows how to do it and I don't want my little 'secret' spreading around the island when you run out of things to talk about". She holds out her hand to him. "Do we have a deal?" She asks, and he laughs as he pushes his braid back behind him.
"Deal."