Work Text:
“So-chan,” Tamaki-kun hollered, “this is ridiculous!”
Sogo sighed, focused on tweaking the Mezzo schedule in front of him.
“Tamaki-kun, can you please not shout in the dorm?”
“I can’t even see your eyes!”
“Well,” Sogo replied evenly, “I can still see the schedule, so it’s fine.”
Technically, Sogo could only see the bottom half of the schedule, the fringe in front of his eyes obscuring his view of the paper, but he wouldn’t dare brush it out of his face now. Then Tamaki-kun would shout more and Sogo was, quite frankly, already at his limit.
“I don’t understand, then,” Tamaki-kun continued, “are you emo now?”
Sogo bit back the urge to roll his eyes. “No, I’m not emo now. I just haven’t had time to go get it cut, lately. I’ll go when our workload lightens up a bit.”
Tamaki-kun placed his hands on the table, leaning low to make excited eye contact. “Then I’ll cut it for you!”
“You’ll what?” Sogo replied, blanching at the mere idea of Tamaki-kun holding a pair of scissors near his head.
“I’m really good!” Tamaki-kun insisted brightly. “I used to do it for all the younger kids at the orphanage.”
Sogo rapidly shook his head, using the excuse to get a few strands out of his line of sight as well. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“This is perfect!”
“I am perfectly content to wait a few more days until I can book an appointment, Tamaki-kun. I'm sure you’re busy with other-“
“So-chan’s always doing things for me, so now I can return the favor!”
Sogo paused, another hasty denial sitting heavy on his tongue.
Tamaki-kun looked so…excited. And not at the prospect of wielding scissors near an innocent scalp but to help Sogo.
“…you said you’ve cut hair before?” Sogo asked hesitantly. “At the orphanage?”
Tamaki-kun nodded. “There were a lot of us, so sometimes it was easier to just do it myself when the adults got too busy.”
Sogo slowly nodded, biting his lip. “Well…if that’s the case, then I suppose you could-“
“Yes!” Tamaki-kun cheered, throwing his hands up in victory. “I’ll go get the scissors!”
Sogo’s heart sank in his chest as he contemplated just how big of a mistake he was about to make. Suddenly arrested with images of Tamaki-kun’s poor attempts at potato peeling, he rose awkwardly from the table.
“Actually, maybe we could-“
“You go wait in the bathroom, So-chan!”
Sogo looked despairingly between his junior and the hallway leading to the dorm bathroom. “I…”
Sogo was still picturing the potatoes, but Tamaki-kun’s peeling had improved. After…threatening him…with a knife…
Sogo winced internally.
Maybe this was his karma.
“Yeah, okay,” he told Tamaki-kun. “Just make sure not to use the kitchen scissors, alright?”
Tamaki-kun shot Sogo a thumbs up before disappearing into his bedroom.
Sogo looked despairingly at the schedule still resting on the kitchen table- their idol work needing more adjustment than Sogo’s hair- before resigning himself to his fate and trudging towards the bathroom.
The light beneath the door was on, though, so Sogo raised his hand to knock, all too familiar with the fact that Nagi-kun hardly ever turned it off on his way out and that causing a 3-man line outside an empty bathroom because Sogo wanted to be on the safe side was not allowed.
“Come in,” Mitsuki-san called.
Sogo gently pushed open the door and poked his head inside, finding Mitsuki perched on the countertop, leaning close to the mirror.
“Am I interrupting?”
Mitsuki-san squinted as he applied a star-shaped patch to his chin. “No, but if you need privacy I’m gonna need about two more minutes.”
Sogo merely shook his head and took a seat on the closed toilet lid, pulling a clean hand towel into his lap while he waited for Tamaki-kun.
Sogo smiled mildly as he watched Mitsuki-san struggle with the sheet of adhesive, star-shaped patches. “I’m sure Iori-kun would have your head if he saw you sitting on the counter like that.”
Mitsuki-san scoffed, applying another star- orange, Sogo noticed- to his face, this time in between his brows. “Good thing he’s at a photo shoot right now, huh?”
“Lucky man,” Sogo agreed.
Mitsuki-san groaned as he continued to examine his face in the mirror. “He’s the lucky one, with his stupid flawless skin. I mean, he’s the teenager so why isn’t he the one getting stress acne?”
Sogo shrugged. “Maybe he isn’t stressed?”
Mitsuki-san paused his mirror examination to shoot Sogo a look of utter disbelief.
“Maybe…maybe he has secret skin care products in that box in his room?” Sogo amended. “Like, that snail mucus stuff.”
Or the tears of that unorganized office assistant Iori-kun lectured the other day.
Mitsuki-san snorted, placing a third star on his cheek. “You mean that black box that says Do Not Touch?”
Sogo hummed softly. “Maybe it’s chemicals.”
Mitsuki-san smiled warmly. “Nah, that’s just his stuffed animal collection. Refused to leave home without it, but he’d probably jump in a pit of lava before admitting that.”
“Oh,” Sogo murmured, both surprised and endeared.
That is, until the rest of the sentence caught up with him and then Sogo was left wondering if Iori-kun would throw someone else into a lava pit for knowing his adorable secret.
“I won’t tell a soul,” Sogo promised seriously.
Mitsuki-san merely hummed. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve already told everyone else.”
Before Sogo had time to worry if Mitsuki-san was at risk of imminent, lava-shaped demise, the bathroom door was thrown open, revealing an overly-excited Tamaki-kun with his hands full of the promised scissors (thankfully clean) and a spray bottle full of water.
“I’m ready!”
“Tamaki-kun, please don’t throw open the door like that. You’ll dent the wall.”
“Whatever, are you ready So-chan?”
Sogo sighed quietly. "Yes,” he lied.
“Great!” Tamaki-kun cheered, moving to stand in front of Sogo. “Turn around then.”
Sogo caught Mitsuki-san’s eye in the mirror as he spun, the older member hesitating with a star patch held half an inch from his nose. “What’s happening here?” he asked slowly.
“I’m cutting So-chan’s hair, Mikki.”
“Uh huh,” Mitsuki-san replied, eyes darting between Sogo and Tamaki-kun like a particularly stubborn puzzle.
Sogo cringed as Tamaki-kun began spraying his hair down, a few stray water droplets winding their way down the nape of his neck before he could finish wrapping the hand towel around his shoulders.
“Hey Sogo,” Mitsuki started, his skincare mission all but abandoned as he turned to face his juniors more completely, “didn’t I hear that you walked all the way to the storage room yesterday to hunt down a step stool in order to grab your mug from the top shelf, even though Nagi was right there and had offered to grab it for you?”
Sogo wished, suddenly, that the misting of water dripping from the ends of his hair was enough to drown himself in.
“I suppose you could describe it that way, yes.”
Tamaki-kun reached into the drawer beneath Mitsuki-san for a comb- thankfully Sogo’s- and began carefully pulling it through Sogo’s hair, pace unhurried. His fingertips bumped against the shell of Sogo’s ear. Sogo let out a quiet sigh of relief when no King Pudding residue was left behind.
“That’s weird,” Tamaki-kun said, “why didn’t you just let Nagicchi help you? He’s pretty tall.”
Sogo bit the inside of his lip, sending Mitsuki-san a sidelong glance.
Mitsuki simply raised his eyebrows, as if to say he’s got you there.
Maybe, Sogo thought, if he couldn’t be drowned out of this conversation by the spray bottle, then Iori-kun could anonymously discover his brother’s secret-spilling passtime.
Eye for an eye.
“I didn’t need to ask Nagi-kun since I could do it myself,” Sogo replied evenly.
“Mm, could you though?” Mitsuki-san challenged doubtfully.
“I got the cup, didn’t I?” Sogo shot back, smiling tightly.
“True,” Mitsuki-san conceded, scooting across the counter to be closer to Sogo, smiling wide. “But you can cut your hair by yourself and you still asked Tamaki-kun to do it.”
“I didn’t ask,” Sogo denied quickly, temper flaring. “And I can’t, actually. I always go to a salon to get it cut.”
Mitsuki-san held his hands up in sudden surrender and Sogo hated that he couldn’t go back and take a do-over of his response. Mitsuki-san might have deserved it, but he was still Sogo’s senior.
“No need to snap,” Mitsuki-san said kindly. “‘S just interesting, is all.” Then he grinned. “Iori always says I’m too nosy.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Tamaki-kun asked, combing more gently through the knots in Sogo’s hair than Sogo or his mother or the hairstylist had ever done.
Sogo tried not to think about that too hard.
“Well, it’s not very polite-”
“I think it depends,” Mitsuki-san interrupted. “I think if your friend, for example, is showing worrisome behavior in one case but not in another it’s only natural to want to understand why. Especially if it might help you be a better friend to them.”
“Oh,” Tamaki-kun said. “That sounds pretty good, then.”
Embarrassed heat flooded Sogo’s face. “Mitsuki-san, I…” Sogo attempted to bow his head in guilt, but Tamaki-kun’s hands tilted his face back up.
“Stay still, So-chan. I’m gonna start using the scissors now.”
“I…okay. Sorry.”
Sogo held his breath, eyes shut tight as the scissors approached his head.
There was a quiet snip. Then another. Gentle fingers. Falling hair.
Not a single ounce of pain.
Slowly, Sogo relaxed, lulled by the repetitive snip, snip, snip stealing the excess weight from his head.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Mitsuki-san asked.
Sogo blinked his eyes back open, having almost forgotten he was there, too. That they had been squabbling just a moment ago.
“Having friends,” Mitsuki-san clarified. “People who you trust enough to let them help you every once in a while.”
Sogo’s eyes burned, and he quietly blinked the water from his vision, the desire to drown further away than it usually was.
“It is,” Sogo whispered. “I…”
Snip, snip, snip.
Weight falling from his shoulders like a winter coat shrugged off at the entrance way of a warm home.
“It’s not how I was raised.”
“We know,” Mitsuki-san murmured, his hand briefly patting over Sogo’s head the way he always did for Iori-kun. “Still…”
Sogo released a shaky, grateful breath.
“Let us cut your hair every once in a while, So-chan,” Tamaki-kun finished. “Otherwise you’ll be all emo and get more holes in your stomach. Okay?”
Sogo sniffed, careful to keep his head still. There was still more weight to cut away, after all.
“Okay,” he promised quietly.