He chuckled at the gentle bullying, the insistance that he needed to open up his mind to the prospect of being cared for. It was the easiest thing he had ever welcomed into his life. “I’ll try, honey,” he said, freeing a coil of hair that bounced almost vertical and stayed there, “but I don’t want to take you for granted.”

Eyes narrowing, he squinted into the vanity mirror, trying to see what Alex was talking about.

“I hadn’t. You’re turning into a silver fox on me, now, huh?” Alex’s hair could be green with pink polka dots. He still fucking loved it.

Alexei Ivanov

Memo frowned.

“Yeah, it. Does that.”

Eventually, his whole head would look like one of those stupid electrostatic balls that you touched to make the lightning jump to your fingers. Just a mess.

“This is why I keep it in ‘locs.”

If he stabbed the next snarl with a little more violence, who was to blame him?

“How can you be-- partially albino?” he asked, mind swimming back to the basic level genetics he was taught in gradeschool. “Aren’t you just-- white?”

Alexei Ivanov

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen anyone with Alex’s eye color except for Alex. It was one of his favorite things about his boyfriend, along with, you know, everything.

“You’d look cute in glasses,” Memo said, wrenching through a particularly nasty snag. It was a slog but it was slowly starting to come together, his textured hair popping and springing up in all directions.

He winced into the mirror. “Gah. I look like a clown.”

Alexei Ivanov

“Yes, Alex, it does that,” he said, one hand sliding against his scalp to shake out his roots. The desire to just ball it all back up and forget about it was growing by the minute.

He frowned into the mirror.

“Sometimes I wonder why I don’t just shave it off.”

Alexei Ivanov

It’s a valid question. He runs a hand through his damp curls, running amok over his head.

“Right now it’s long enough to do stuff with. If I cut it off it would go through a long period of being short.”

He rolled his eyes and smiled because, yes, obviously, that was how hair worked.

“I’d look like a poorly shorn Wooloo.”

He was allowed his little (big) vanities.

Alexei Ivanov

"Not fast enough," he says, giving his head one last shake, as the remnants of the tangles and locked pieces of hair broke free and exploded into their spring-shaped final form.

He made eye contact with himself in the mirror and groaned, affectionately.

"I guess if it doesn't bother you... it doesn't bother me, as much."

Alexei Ivanov

For some reason, Alex calling him bald put the fear of god in him, and he shook his head harder.

“No, no. This is fine.”

It was, he supposed, a part of… learning. Learning to be okay in his own skin. Learning to take advantage of his new life, while being able to pick and choose the parts of his past one that he wanted to show through.

Learning to be himself.

“It’s better than fine. It’s good.”

Why fight it? Something harmless, that rooted him back in times that, while they weren’t happier, were no less a part of shaping him-- just without as many sharp edges?

“Thank you for your help. I think I’ll leave it down for… a bit.”

Until it got annoying and he twisted it again. But that was always going to be a part of him, and he was going to have to stop running away from it, and things like it, sooner or later.

Why not start now?

Alexei Ivanov