Also posted on archiveofourown under the same title/username
Timeline: set between Episode: s01e19 Bonds and Fallen Angels, with spoilers for Lockon and Setsuna's backstories
Inspired by a tumblr art post by ninthfeather of Lockon, Allelujah, and Tieria with their hair tied up and the caption "They might also look nice with their hair back, you know…" followed by Laora's comment "can i ruin everything and say that Neil looks a lot like Ali with his hair pulled back?" This one is really happy until it's Really Not
Title from the musical Guys and Dolls' song Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat
and the devil will drag you under
December 23, 2020
One of the things that everyone onboard the Ptolemy learned very quickly was that it was incredibly difficult to say no to anything Chris suggested, once she had really had her heart set on it.
Which was why, occasionally, members of Celestial Being's strike team could be seen going about their day with their nails painted in bright colors, or their hair braided or pinned back as length allowed. Most members of the Bridge Crew were regular recipients of Chris' experiments. As was Ian – though he had even less hair to work with than Lasse – and even Joyce could be spotted silently sporting a fancy new hair clip as he checked readouts from various machines in the Med Bay.
Most of her sessions seemed to be concentrated after returning from trips to Earth's surface, when her luggage was full-to-bursting with the fruits of all the shopping she had managed to fit into her spare moments.
Allelujah and Setsuna and Tieria knew to make themselves scarce whenever she came back from one of these trips, but, of course, that was no guarantee of safety, because she would reappear at incalculable intervals with a sparkle in her eye and packs of multi-colored hair ties in hand.
When she went on the warpath with purpose, no one was safe.
Lockon tried to work interception when she was hunting for fresh blood. That wasn't to say that he could fully protect the other Meisters from her makeovers, but he minded it far less than any of the others did when inevitably cornered by their resident bright-eyed hacker.
In fact, he suspected that one of the reasons Setsuna, who hated being touched even at the best of times, only came to him for haircuts at such regular intervals because he didn't want to risk his hair getting long enough for Chris to get any ideas.
Lockon had once offered to cut Allelujah's hair shorter for the same reason, thinking that the guy who skittered away whenever people got too close might not want to leave such an easy target for Chris. But Allelujah had clutched at the fringe of hair that fell in front of his face in such a panic at the offer that Lockon had to talk him down for a full thirty minutes before being able to cut any of his hair at all and immediately made a note to never bring it up again.
Tieria, was on his own. But then again, Tieria was perfectly capable of cutting his own hair at its regularly precise angles, apparently, since he never took advantage of Lockon's makeshift barber shop whenever he offered his services to the Ptolemy at large.
All in all, it wasn't too bad whenever Lockon got cornered by Chris.
She seemed to appreciate the fact that he'd let her put anything that she wanted into his hair without protest or complaint, and that he would casually walk the halls afterward still wearing whatever brightly colored sparkly accessories she could find.
He'd accepted her unicorn berets, and clips with so much glitter on them that he'd been dusting it out of the creases of his flight suit for days, and even the sparkling green nail polish she'd excitedly produced one March. He'd left it on beneath the gloves until it had nearly chipped off all on its own.
Chris would sit him down on a cushion on the floor of her cabin while she perched on the edge of her bed, playing with his hair until she was satisfied with the styling, asking for Feldt's opinion whenever she came to a crossroads if she was available.
Then they'd talk about all kinds of things – about Earth stuff, and new restaurants she'd gone to on her most recent trip to the surface, and super fancy dresses she'd admired in boutique windows but wouldn't ever have any opportunity to wear, and the latest earth tech that she'd managed to hack into within an hour of getting her hands on a model.
If she'd picked up any new music, she'd put it on in the background and if he closed his eyes, he could imagine that this is what Amy might have done, sitting on her bed at home while all three of them were home for the holidays.
It was nice, usually.
Until, sometimes, it wasn't.
Until, sometimes, the daydreams grew a little too vivid, went a little too long – when he would close his eyes and forget for just a couple minutes that he was in space, and that he was a Gundam Meister, fighting to wipe terrorism from the face of a planet that no longer contained a single person who cared for him. Or whether he lived - or died as an enemy to the united military forces of the entire world.
Chris could normally tell when he was reaching his limit. When his hands flexed so tightly in their gloves that the fabric would creak at the creases, and his throat tightened so much that he couldn't answer her questions, and he was minutes away from pushing up and walking out of the room, friendship and good manners be damned.
He wasn't sure how she could tell when he was done pretending to be a functional human being, how she knew to wrap up what she was doing within the minute, and let him go without a fuss. Or take out any pins that he wouldn't easily be able to find on his own before he left.
He really didn't have any clue how she could read him so easily when no once else could, but he appreciated it more than he could ever say.
These afternoons with Chris deploying new modes of fashion with cheerful abandon had become fewer and fewer after Celestial Being had announced themselves to the world. Once they'd started their interventions, the work was never-ending.
That wasn't to say that the impromptu makeover sessions never happened anymore, though, although Chris did manage to tone it down a little when she knew when someone's schedule was particularly packed. And even more so, when the world began to unite against them.
She could be downright efficient when she needed to be – and somehow managed to corner both Allelujah and Tieria one afternoon before Lockon had even gotten wind that she was in one of her moods.
She'd pulled both of their hair back and the effect was simple but striking, Lockon noted as he saw them both moving away from the living quarters with hairstyles that were certainly not of their own doing.
The top of Tieria's bright purple hair had been pulled back into a neat pony tail that left his field of vision clearer than usual. And Allelujah's had been done up in a loose pun at the base of his skull, leaving enough of his bangs to still fall in front of his face that he wasn't even fiddling with it as he moved down the hallway.
Lockon watched him leave and then realized that Chris had caught sight of him, and was enthusiastically waving at him from the end of the hallway to come have his done next.
He sighed heavily and chewed the inside of his lip – he really wasn't in a mood to make nice for an hour, or have anything done to his hair, or have any barely-buried fantasies resurface now that he could put a face and a name to the man who'd orchestrated the mall bombing, to the man who'd ultimately been responsible for the deaths of his family.
He hadn't been in the mood for much, lately, except late nights putting himself through simulation after simulation, blasting apart enemy machines with unerring accuracy until he could barely feel his fingers.
But then again, the part of him that was still on properly knew that Chris didn't deserve to have her day ruined just because he didn't feel up to anything anymore, not when she spent so much of her own energy trying to keep their crew together. If he wasn't able to pull his weight in that department for the moment, he should at least be able to hold himself together for fifteen minutes while she pulled his hair back.
So he plastered on the broadest smile he could muster and followed her back to her cabin.
He'd must have been doing an even worse job at hiding things than he thought, though, because after putting on some new music – a soft funky instrumental album that gently swelled to fill the room – she settled into their well-worn routine without saying a word and it was all over before he knew it.
He pushed up without even bothering to check his reflection in the mirror she offered, but did manage a quiet, "Thanks," before turning to leave.
Lockon passed his own cabin, reached the end of the hallway, and turned without a destination in mind.
The halls were quiet – most of the crew were at their posts, and he'd already passed half of the Meisters leaving Chris' rooms earlier. That still left Setsuna unaccounted for, but Lockon didn't expect to see him until the hallway ended in a T intersection and he was just there.
Setsuna gave him a short passing nod as he continued on his way before suddenly coming to such an abrupt stop that he let go of the transporter.
Setsuna's gaze was always intense, but Lockon didn't know what to make of it when he floated in place, staring straight through him for a long minute and then another.
"Uh, what is it?" Lockon asked, suddenly wondering what he looked like – if he'd been so out of it that Chris had managed to stick hearts in his hair or something in a misguided attempt to make him feel better.
One hand went to his head, quickly searching for stray clips but found nothing.
Setsuna eventually blinked back to himself with a shake of his head.
"Nothing," he said. "It's nothing.
Then, before Lockon could ask anything else, Setsuna kicked off the wall to catch up to the transporter that had left him behind.
Lockon was so unnerved by the reaction that he immediately turned around and pushed straight toward his cabin, eyes already looking for the small mirror on the wall before the door had hissed shut behind him.
He peered at his reflection as he finally touched down on the floor, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.
No clips, no glitter, no pink.
He slowly turned from side to side so that he could see as much of his hair as possible without one of Chris' second mirrors to help. But it looked fine to him, just a perfectly normal, simple, non-descript style that thousands of people wore on Earth -
And then he froze.
And stared, wide-eyed at his reflection, because the light had caught him at just the right angle that for a moment, just for a second, he thought -
He thought he'd seen the face of the man he'd been staring at in all the profiles and reports and special ops dockets he'd managed to unearth during the past two weeks, ever since he'd returned from that island with a name, ever since he'd finally gotten a target for the rage that had roiled inside him since he was orphaned at fourteen.
Ali al-Saachez.
He looked like Ali al-Saachez.
The man who'd killed his family, the man who'd bombed an entire mall filled with civilians shopping with their families, the man who'd overrun Kruges as he founded the KPSA fueled by child soldiers like Setsuna. A man who had committed unspeakable, unthinkable atrocities for longer than Lockon had been alive.
The blood drained from his face so quickly that he staggered even in the artificially low gravity, and had to reach out a hand to brace himself against the wall.
He blinked at the mirror, and the image blurred.
He reached up with his free hand to remove the tie from his hair, but it was more difficult than it had ever been, before, even when Chris used a dozen bobby pins and hair gel to hold it all in place. The strands had been twisted in such a way that his shaking hand couldn't manage to free it.
He was breathing hard, his chest heaving, before both hands finally managed to undo it and he could frantically run gloved fingers through his hair to erase any trace of what he had just seen.
He ran his hands through his hair again and again, his fingers digging into his scalp until all of it had fallen around his shoulders again in its usual formation, with no sign that Chris had ever touched it.
He was still breathing too quickly, the shallow rasps loud enough that they filled his ears.
He was, he was lightheaded.
He was –
One hand went up to his chest - his heart was pounding clearly even though all the layers of his uniform.
He rested a forearm against the cabin wall and leaned against it, not trusting that his legs would continue to support him.
It was steady. And cool. And didn't move.
He could breathe.
He needed to breathe -
His chest was heaving. It hurt.
He tried to concentrate on lengthening his breathing – in his nose and out his mouth – and rubbed at the ache in his chest until his racing heart finally began to slow.
Eventually, he started to come back to himself.
His hand had gone numb, the fingers tingly. He pinched them together, focusing on the feeling of pinprick static against his gloves as he finally pulled away and gave his blood a chance to start circulating again.
Then, he ran his fingers through his hair again, pulling it away from the grooves where it had embedded itself against his cheek and forehead.
He breathed in long and slow, and let it out again.
And again.
Once he finally felt sure that he wasn't about to fall over any more, he risked another glance in the mirror, just to be sure.
He was all messy hair and wild eyes against his too-pale skin, but at least he looked like himself again.
Lockon stared into the mirror for a long, long time before running a still-shaking hand over his mouth and finally turning away.
He never pulled his hair back again.