Mirajane would never admit to it, the strange weakness of hers.
"Not too short." Freed fretted, sitting on a stool in front of her. The whole guild could potentially be witnessing this train wreck, but they were outside, enjoying beautiful summer weather an a large, recently reinstated pool.
"I won't." she soothed, circling him, wondering where to begin.
It was such an odd thing to want. Something she would normally berate herself for being obsessed with, though "obsessed" was a slightly strong word. She didn't think about it all the time; just sometimes, during daydreams. It brought her pleasure to imagine, but now, faced with the actual thing, her courage was rapidly waning, replaced by a nervous-giddy-scared-hollow-hungry feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She snipped her scissors once, and Freed winced preemptively. "Shouldn't you wet it first?" he pleaded.
Mirajane cut his hair tie, and all of it, the glorious silky mane, the color of Apple Dapples and new leaves and everything nice smelling, tumbled down around his shoulders. She had to bite back a smile. "Yes, we'll get to that." she said, forcing herself to be the calm and rational person that she was expected to be. Haircuts could be nerve-wracking, after all, as she knew from experience being the one sitting on the stool.
But, before any of that, she allowed herself the luxury of running her fingers through it once.
It was so soft. Smooth and cool under her fingers, only tangling slightly at the ends and yielding under her coaxing fingers at once. Perfection. Mirajane bit her lip and went for a bucket of water, though she suspected that she herself was going to need one soon.
"Seriously? A fetish for long hair?" Erza snickered as her longtime friend and rival brushed by her.
Mirajane startled. "How long were you standing there?"
"Long enough to see the unrestrained desire in those pretty blues." Erza shoved off from the wall and fell into pace with Mirajane. There was a taunting smile on her face. "So the love bug finally got to you. I've been waiting."
"This is about me giving you a hard time about Jellal, isn't it?" Mirajane grumbled.
"I just can't believe the love of your life comprises of follicles and conditioner."
"I'm not having this conversation." In the large kitchen of the guild, Mirajane dug a bucket out from under a stack of pots and pans and stuck it in the sink to fill it with water. She pointedly did not look at the other girl.
Erza leaned against the counter so that she could fold her arms and regard her friend. "I know everyone has their own taste, but, really. He's so . . . girly."
"I'm not in love with Freed, all right?" Mira demanded, banging open the hot water a little more forcefully than necessary. "He's just a friend."
"A friend with hair that you loooove." Erza stretched out the word as Happy would, and Mirajane stuck her fingers under the stream of water and flicked a handful at the redhead.
Erza jumped back, out of the range of fire. "Only a matter of time." she taunted, smirking, before Mirajane shooed her back outside with some threatening looks and a plate of cookies to take to their guildmates.
Shutting off the water, she leaned against the counter for a second and sighed. Leave it to Erza to pick up on the one thing in her head that she didn't want anyone else to know about. She could only hope that the requip mage wouldn't be seized by the urge to share the information. Mirajane shuddered. That would be humiliating.
She heaved the bucket of water out of the sink and hauled it back into the guildhall, where Freed was fidgeting on his stool. He was kind of cute, she had to concede, especially when nervous, but really it was just the hair. Not him. Erza was right about him being too girly. Mirajane preferred men like her brother(to a certain non-gross point). She supposed he was more like a sister, the sister that she was robbed of when Lisanna declared her intentions to keep her hair short and ungroomable. Mirajane had almost fainted from disappointment when she heard that-and then Freed had asked her to cut his hair, and the sky had started shitting rainbows again.
Mirajane hummed to herself as she wet his hair; holding up the bucket so that he could tilt his head back and immerse his scalp in the warm water. She ran her fingers through it a couple times to make sure the water really soaked in, and then lowered the bucket to the ground, grabbing two hanks of hair and squeezing them together to drain out useless her apron as a makeshift towel, she roughly dried it to the point where it was workable and fingered through it until all of his hair hung down his back in a more or less even mass.
"Not too short." he repeated. His normally deep voice was an octave higher than it should be.
She sighed. "I've done this before, you know."
"I know. I just-yes. I know." He was fidgeting again; and the battle inside his head to stay calm was practically tangible. She had to put her hands on his shoulders to still him. It amused her, that a man would be so freaked out over a little hair. Granted, it was a gorgeous, soft, alluring mane of hair; but still.
He went as stiff as a statue, and Mirajane resumed adjusting the strands of hair trailing in scraggly, rebellious clumps around his shoulders. She pulled a comb out of her waistband and quickly ran it through his hair once. Still humming, she set about trimming the ends.
It took a pitifully short time, and she was almost disappointed that she was so efficient about it. "You know," she began, when she was almost done. "A bob would look pretty cute on you."
There was a long pause, and then he said, a bit testily, "I'm not a girl."
"I know, I know!" She hastened to placate him. "I just thought-"
"I like my hair as it is."
"Okay. Sure. That's fine." She combed through his hair in silenced. It was almost forest green when wet. It couldn't be his natural color, and yet there wasn't a discolored root to be found. Well, some people got all the genetic luck. She was almost hypnotized by the motion of the strokes of her comb, and several quiet moments passed before Freed spoke again.
"You don't think I'm a girl, do you?" Under his affronted demeanor, there was a sliver of anxiety in his question. Mirajane, who specialized in people, heard it plainly.
"Of course not." she soothed, feeling rather like she was talking to Elfman when he was younger. "You're plenty manly. Just not in a way that people see right off."
"Oh." The way he acted, he might have been ten or eleven, not a twenty-year-old man who put a whole new spin on badass-especially when asked by Laxus to do something.
Mirajane gave up the pretense of making sure all of his ends were even and started combing his hair in earnest. She rather hoped that he would let her brush it, too, once it was dry. Mirajane had never dreamed of having a pony as a little girl-she had dreamed of having one of the hair dummies that stylists used in cosmetic school, and Freed's hair was an especial treat. It reminded her of the hair of a princess, though at this point she knew better than to tell him that.
"You protect your friends," she said, her words a lullaby to go with the rhythm of the comb against his scalp. "You think one, two, three steps ahead of your enemy, which is clever. You open doors for girls. You don't let anyone change who you are. You don't care about what anyone else thinks, even when it's that you're gay or ridiculous or not strong. You keep doing the things that make them think that because it makes you happy, or your friends happy. That takes courage. And you have the courage to change, too, but only when you decide to. You don't let anyone coerce you into anything." She was nearly around to face him, now, and viewed enough of his face to see his eyes half-closed, head tilted like a cat receiving attention. His breathing was very shallow and his dark green lashes almost brushed his high cheekbones. Had his face always been that striking?
Mirajane's heart sped up. This had somehow become much more intimate than she intended. She combed the last portion of his hair quickly and stepped back, smoothing down her damp apron and regarding the mess of wet hair under the stool with distress. "Um-done." she said, hating the slight hesitation in her voice. Unspoken laws of social etiquette dictated that awkward moments shouldn't be acknowledged, in case the other party didn't sense the awkwardness. Just because she got a little flustered, being so close to a man after how-many-years-now of maintaining a set distance away, didn't mean she had to broadcast it to the world.
Freed opened his eyes, saw the mess, and got to his feet immediately. "I'll-I'll get a broom." he said, slightly unsteady, and hurried off. Mirajane stared after him, her hands knotted in front of her. Her heart was still pounding in a fluttery, not-quite-constant way that made her a little dizzy and a little excited. She hadn't felt like this in a long time, not since her last crush, which was so long ago that she had been wearing leather skirts and had showed her affection by punching him in the head. Just a haircut, she chided herself. Don't get all worked up.
Freed came back, more calm, and swept up the hair. Mirajane fetched a trash can to dump the pile in, and when that was done, there was nothing to focus on but each other.
"Well," Freed said, a little raggedly. "Thank you." He sketched a bow, but it was nothing more than habit, and his eyes never left hers. They were the same color as the ocean in the south; of cat's eyes and bottle glass and the mint syrup that she drizzled in her Fairy Hills Special every weekend.
"You're welcome." She knew she was staring, and knew she had to stop, but, feeling childish, she thought rebelliously, I'll stop when he does!. She stepped forwards and brushed her slim fingers against his cheek.
He drew back, startled, one hand flying to his sword. Jumpy as a stray tom.
"Ah-sorry." She waved a hand nonsensically. "You had some hair-" She forced her gesture to become useful, pointing out the spot, and, frowning, he swiped at it.
"No, here." Well-used to mothering after raising two siblings and a number of rowdy guildmates, Mirajane stepped forwards again and caressed her thumb across the place.
His eyes bored into hers. They had darkened in just the few moments of their exchange, twisted like a kaleidoscope lens and sparked with mysterious points of light. How could one pair of eyes do so much? She supposed it was because of the magic that ran through them, which made them no less enchanting- and, in fact, utterly captivating.
She swallowed, thumb still on the corner of his narrow mouth. The other fingers of that hand were lightly brushing his jaw and neck. His skin, under hers, was pricked with goosebumps and she could feel the throb of his pulse in his neck. Slowly, she drew her hand back, and then absently fingered it through his hair in a casual caress; having escaped danger only to plunge headfirst into it again.
His eyes slid closed again, and, relieved of the intensity of his stare, Mirajane allowed herself to indulge in her weakness again, slowly running her fingers through the strands, playing with them, stroking it like the pelt of a wildcat. She brought her hand back to the top of his head, and started again, using her hand instead of a comb to cut through the soft waves.
His head was tilted again, and the look on his face was so entirely content that it made the bottom of her stomach drop out. He enjoyed it, she realized, and it was dizzying, the effect that thought had on her. It was frightening. He enjoyed it, and the implications were too large for her to want to think about.
She didn't stop, either because she was too brave or too foolish to give in to her mind's scolding. She liked caring for living things, and she liked the look that he had. Disarmed, relaxed, unlike the uptight man who usually wore the beautiful face inches from her own. Comfortable. She liked seeing him like this, undone. She got the feeling that not a lot of people had the privilege.
At some point, he leaned his head into her hand, most exactly like a feline, and she made a noise of surprise. His eyes opened, and he seemed to realize what was going on. How long had they been standing there? Mirajane couldn't tell, but it felt like eternity.
His hand came up and halted hers just above his shoulder. She had enough thinking capacity left to process that his fingers were larger, sturdier, and stronger than hers. Unmistakably male hands. She doubted that she would ever compare him to a princess again.
"Don't stop." he said, voice quiet, and rusty.
"You just stopped me." she replied, her throat dry from tension and lack of speech for so long and sheer nervousness which was strange because she was Mirajane, dammit, and she never felt uncomfortable, not even when she had cause to be. She certainly didn't feel uncomfortable around the likes of him.
Freed looked at his hand as if surprised to find it there, clutching at hers. "Oh." he whispered, apparently unaware of his restraint, but he didn't have time for anything else because she stopped his speaking abilities altogether.
Maybe it was to relieve the tension, or she really did have some inner desire for him. Maybe Erza was right and she had finally fallen in love, or maybe it was just because sometimes she got lonely. Mirajane herself didn't know why she kissed him at that moment, except that it seemed so spectacularly right that one of them had to do it, and she doubted-or maybe feared-that he make the first move.
Most boys smelled like soap, or else some flowery cologne, or sometimes BO. Mirajane had dealt with a lot of boys, and men, and had kissed a number of them out of total boredom. She was used to unpleasant, strong, or downright strange smells; but Freed was not like any of these. He smelled like wet hair, metal, and skin-normal, innocuous, not the kind of scents that should be sending panicked signals to her brain. His hands clamped on her hips moments after she initiated the kiss; not firmly, but enough that she was aware of it. He almost seemed afraid to touch her, which was something else new. It was a funny kind of kiss-the kind that was so soft, so gentle, because neither of the parties involved wanted to be the one to break the other. What she noticed most about it was his breath on her cheek, and how just the gentle touch he was giving made her want to throw herself on him in a very undignified way. She kissed him again, and his lips slid over hers carefully, hesitantly.
She pulled away, and Freed let go of her. His eyes were still closed, and his face was red. His hands, at his sides, were in loose fists.
"Um-" Mirajane began, because someone had to say something. This, too, was unlike anything that had happened before. Usually after she kissed a man, he either wanted more or-well, wanted more. Some of them were quite boorish about it, too. Indifference-if that was what this was-was not an emotion she was used to.
Freed shook his head, once, tightly, and said, "Go." He was so stiff he was almost shaking, and his voice brooked no argument. Even though she hated being ordered around, she went.
She didn't turn around, not even when she heard him collapse into the stool with a loud thump.