Aoyagi loves Teshima's hair. He's never told the other boy so, at least not directly, but after they met Teshima hasn't more than had it trimmed occasionally, so at this point it's like a visual representation of the amount of time they've known each other. It gets tangled when Teshima leaves it down, like he usually does when they're riding; usually Aoyagi is the one to work the knots out, by hand more often than not and more incidentally to the action of stroking his fingers through Teshima's hair than on purpose. But Teshima doesn't complain, says that Aoyagi's fingers are gentle enough that it doesn't hurt, and that means that the other boy will lie with his head in Aoyagi's lap for an hour or more, smiling slightly while fingers slide through his hair, and there's not a lot that Aoyagi loves more than that.
Aoyagi shouldn't rationally feel threatened when Teshima shows up at the Interhigh with his dark curls pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. And he's not threatened, or at least not only threatened; he's kind of charmed too, at the way the tie collects all of Teshima's dark hair into one spill of inky shadow against the back of his neck, at how pale Teshima's skin looks next to it above the collar of his T-shirt.
Still. "You changed this," Aoyagi says, or thinks about saying, and when he reaches out to touch the bare skin Teshima has exposed the other boy looks at him and smiles like he understands.
"What do you think?" he asks, dropping his shoulder an inch like he's offering his skin for Aoyagi's touch. "I thought it was time for a change." He clears his throat and doesn't look away from the sidelong glance he's giving Aoyagi, because Aoyagi knows the mostly-hidden pain in his eyes. There's no need to hide from a mirror. "After the training camp."
Aoyagi nods, jerkily, shifts his fingers to Teshima's hair proper. The curls feel heavier all together like this, a physical presence instead of the usual feather-light touch they have. "You didn't cut it," he doesn't say, and "Of course I didn't cut it," Teshima says, sounding faintly shocked. "Why would I do something like that?"
Aoyagi just smiles at him, and when Teshima reaches out to loop his arm around the other boy's waist Aoyagi lets his fingers slide loose, drops his arm around Teshima's shoulders and leans his head in to press his nose to Teshima's hair and breathe in the usual warm texture of it against his lips.
Later that night, after the first day is over and the adrenaline and the disappointment and the delight have all ebbed away into drained exhaustion, Teshima lies down with his head in Aoyagi's lap. He lets him take his hair down, lets him wrap the smooth curls around his fingers and pull free nonexistent tangles, and Teshima smiles slightly, and Aoyagi doesn't feel threatened at all.