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“You should leave your hair down more,” Zagreus says.
“You have a fixation, Zag,” says Meg. But she pauses halfway to putting it back up anyway, arms freezing in mid-air with her hair cuff between two fingers.
Zag reaches for them. She lets him. He squeezes her bicep.
“Beep,” he says. Meg rolls her eyes. He’s still looking a little dazed, so she leaves him to it. Looking entirely too pleased with himself, he lets his arm fall back onto his chest.
He’s difficult like this, when he’s gazing at her this way. Reclining on his bed and studying every millimetre of her with those sharp eyes of his. They’re hard to get used to, even after all this time. He’s right about her hair. She lets it fall into a curtain across her face when she looks away.
Foolish. It’s Zagreus and she’s sitting on his mattress, well within reach of his grabby little bastard hands. He’s got his fingers peeking through her hair before she remembers he’s never taken ‘don’t touch’ to heart in his life and now he’s tucking it behind her ear, too tender, eyes still fixed on her.
“You okay?” he says.
“Should you be the one asking me that,” she asks him. He laughs. Rubs a hand self-consciously over the fresh scars across his chest and shoulder. He heals quick, nectar helps, better than those gyros he keeps plucking out of old urns. “I’m fine, Zagreus.”
“You have pretty hair,” he tells her.
“Thanks.” He shouldn’t be sitting up. She turns to press his shoulders back down and he resists, like he always does. “Zag.”
“I’m fine,” he insists. “Can I touch your hair?”
“You’re touching it now,” she points out.
Zagreus seems to notice this and lets it fall from his fingers. “Can I touch your hair?”
Meg rolls her eyes again. “No,” she says. “You’ll tangle it.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“What do you want to do with it.”
Zagreus evidently hasn’t thought this far. “You know,” he says feebly. “It’s soft.”
“You want to pet,” Meg deadpans. “My head.”
“Well, you know,” says Zagreus. “I’m quite good at it. You could ask Cerberus. He’ll tell you.”
“No, thank you,” Meg says. It’s a struggle not to laugh but she can’t—give him an inch and he’ll beg for six more. “Fine. Go ahead.”
Zag perks up. He reaches for her hair again, tentatively, like he hadn’t been touching it four seconds ago.
Meg hates to admit it, but he is good at it. He’s gentle, which shouldn’t be a surprise; combing his fingers through the strands in a way that’s altogether useless and is just going to frizz them out, but feels kind of pleasant nonetheless. She finds herself leaning into his touch, just slightly.
She hears his smile when he asks her, “Good?”
“Will you die without my praise, Zag,” she asks him.
“Maybe.”
“It’s nice,” she says. “You’ll make a mess of it.”
“I won’t!” He is. “Can I braid it?”
“You’re getting greedy, Zag.” She catches his wrist; his other hand immediately pauses, tangled halfway through her hair. She turns to face him. “I don’t understand your fascination.”
“It’s soft,” he says. “And I like being with you.”
His voice is clear, and his eyes don’t waver from hers, but she can feel him fidgeting slightly by her head. He’s toying with a strand, rubbing it between his fingertips.
“You’ll have to explain what being with me has to do with my hair,” she says. She’s still holding his wrist. He doesn’t seem to notice her rubbing her thumb across it, but the touch does seem to relax him.
“You know,” he says. When she looks at him he’s looking down, uncharacteristically shy.
“I don’t know,” she tells him. “You haven’t explained.”
“I just,” he says, and gives a little sigh. “Not that I don’t like what we do, here, Meg.”
“Don’t go soothing my feelings, there,” Meg says. “You think I need reassuring that you want me, Zag?”
Zagreus laughs, bright and sharp. Like his blood, she thinks. Then: no, not quite.
“I guess you’re right,” he says cheerfully. “Well. I only mean, don’t you think we only ever seem to spend time together when… well… it’s like this?” He’s so earnest it hurts, never said a word in his life he didn’t mean with his whole heart and then some. “I just like you, Meg. I like being with you.”
“And touching my hair is being with me?”
“Well, if your hair is here, the rest of you is, too,” Zagreus says. He’s combing through her hair again, smoothing down the parts which have—predictably—frizzed out. “How do you get it like this?”
“Just keep it clean.”
“Mine isn’t like that,” he says, almost petulant.
“You should grow it out, then.”
“Maybe I will.” He gathers a bundle of hair between his fingers, pets it down gently. Kisses it. Meg watches him. She feels a little raw in a way she can’t identify, or won’t.
“I like spending time with you, too,” she says.
His head jerks up. “What?”
“You heard me, Zag.” When he catches her tiny smile, his face lights up. He’s so warm, all of him, and she always has to fight the urge to jerk away from him. Instead she leans her bare shoulder against his, suppressing a shiver at the way heat shudders through her. Crackling, easy, friendly heat, so very Zagreus. His feet never burn her, though they could. “I don’t have to tie you up for us to spend time together. Is that what you thought?”
“Well, I thought you liked tying me up,” he says, so she pinches him. He doesn’t even flinch, just keeps fiddling with her hair. He’s working it into a little plait, since she’s not actively trying to stop him. Relatively neat. Randomly placed. It’s going to stick out. “Thanks, Megaera,” he says, and she finds she doesn’t mind it so much.
“What are you thanking me for,” she says, looking away. She knows he’s smiling again, so big it’ll blind her. He finishes with her hair, and she feels him looking around. “I don’t have a tie for you.”
“There’s a first,” he says mournfully. He lets the little braid drop, and it sits against the rest of her hair. “Keep it like that, Meg?”
“It’ll fall out.” It’s already doing so. Her hair is too silky to hold it long. She pinches it between her thumb and forefinger, somehow unwilling to let it slip.
“Leave it down, then?” Zag’s leaning into her, across her. Meg looks down to see him gazing up at her, mischievous and adoring. She huffs and it makes his hair flutter over his face.
“It’ll get in the way,” she says.
“It’s pretty.”
“I torture people, Zag.”
“You’re still pretty,” he says. He reaches up again, tucks another strand of hair behind her ear. He thinks he has permission now, apparently. His smile widens when she doesn’t stop him. “Beautiful, really. Leave it down, Meg?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Couldn’t hurt, I guess, just for a bit,” she says at last, and his face when he reaches up to kiss her might be worth the trouble.