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“Has anyone ever braided your hair?”
The question comes from the sleepy voice across the table, and Dolce has to look up from her teacup at Clorica to verify that the butler is being serious. Oh. She is.
“When I was a child,” Dolce answers, “but not since.”
The afternoon is a bright one for fall, sunlight streaming in through the windows as they both sit at the dining room table. The light renders her friend’s hair a beautiful, pale lilac. Downstairs the faint noise of the clinic can be heard, but rather than being bothersome it just adds to the homely ambiance around them. It’s one of the things Dolce has genuinely come to enjoy while living here, though she wouldn’t say as much out loud.
“Ah,” Clorica responds, perfectly calm. “Would you like me to?”
“To what?” Dolce asks, deadpanning, because if Clorica is going to suggest something like this Dolce wants to hear it spelled out. She will make no assumptions and jump to no conclusions.
“Braid your hair.”
Before Dolce can respond to that, the sound that is perhaps the genuine embodiment of all things irksome— likes nails scraping on a chalkboard condensed into one sing-song voice— comes ringing to her ears.
«Ohhhh yes yes yes!» Pico cries as she comes springing up through the floorboards, from where she had no doubt been bothering Jones, Nancy, as well as whatever poor soul is in the clinic at the moment. «Dolly looks soooo cute with, well, any hairstyle! But I think braids would look beautiful. What are you thinking, double braids, french braids, fishtail brai— eeeeEP!»
Pico is cut off with a screech as Dolce throws (and misses, sadly) a talisman charm at her. After that the ghost opens her mouth as if to say something, but when Dolce calmly procures another one from the many folds of her skirt, Pico decides to dive back through the floorboards instead of finishing her thought.
Dolce puts the talisman away and faces Clorica again. The off-duty butler has a smile on her face that is softer and more amused than it has any right to be, given what she just witnessed.
“As you were saying,” Dolce prompts, delicately picking up a tea cookie from the platter at the center of the table and taking a bite.
Clorica blinks. “Ah. Yes. Would you like me to braid your hair?”
A blush, unbidden, dusts itself on Dolce’s cheeks. She can’t bear the embarrassment of it, though, so she averts her gaze from Clorica’s kind, honest one.
Dolce thinks about it. Clorica’s delicate, skilled hands running across her scalp, down her long tresses of hair, carefully arranging it into meaningful patterns. The thought alone is enough to make Dolce’s traitorous blush brighten.
“You don’t have to,” she mumbles, sounding more upset than she means to.
Clorica clearly sees through it and takes no offense. “It’s not that I have to, but that I’d like to! I think it would be fun. But if you don’t want me to then I won’t.”
Dolce musters up as much courage as she can to say something, which comes out at a perfectly acceptable volume that should be easily understandable by itself, thank you.
“I’m sorry?” Clorica asks, politely. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch that.”
She sighs, and repeats, “Then, if you really want to, you can. I wouldn’t hate it.”
Clorica beams a wide, serene smile at her, the kind that makes Dolce always think of sunrises— the way it’s so bright, yet so peaceful.
Ugh. These kinds of thoughts, which have been plaguing Dolce for too long now, are what make this situation all the more difficult. She’s already not good at maintaining friends— actually, she never even thought she would need friends. Dolce refuses to ruin this with errant feelings.
Clorica, for her part, has stood up and made her way to Dolce’s seat across the dining room table, holding out a hand. Dolce doesn’t need help standing up, of course, but she thinks (with some small amusement) that this must be another side effect of Clorica’s job as a butler: she’s always incredibly polite. It makes Dolce think of her time before she was a guardian.
Dolce puts her hand in Clorica’s and stands, too focused on the way Clorica’s warm fingers curl around hers to pay attention as to where she’s being taken. That actually happens to be her bedroom, and Clorica stops before the bed to turn back and look at Dolce— with her impossibly warm, kind brown eyes.
“Is it okay if we sit here?”
From this close Dolce can see every smooth plane of Clorica’s cheeks, and the way her hair falls softly along her jaw before being tied back into braids, only highlighted by the warmth she feels from where their hands are still joined.
She wishes she could expel these thoughts with a talisman, the way she can with Pico.
“Sure,” Dolce says, somewhat quiet as she tries to temper down her embarrassment. Where is all of this coming from? Dolce is supposed to be a very calm, rational person. (She can, of course, just hear Pico’s sing-song voice in the back of her head calling it all out as just an act, but Dolce at least has enough practice ignoring those thoughts to do so easily).
Carefully taking off her shoes and setting them next to the bedroom door, Clorica follows suit as Dolce makes her way to the bed. The two of them sit, legs folded, and Dolce tries to lose herself in the methodical, well-practiced motions of taking off her hat, setting it on the night stand, and undoing her pigtails. The long, wavy pale pink of her hair falls over her shoulders and down her back; Dolce has always liked the way that feels. She does this every night— this should be easy. But she usually does it alone, not with a beautiful person— er, friend — staring at the back of her head.
“Oh wow,” Clorica says, her normal, calm tone mixed with admiration. “Your hair is really beautiful.”
Luckily, at least, from here Clorica can’t see the impudent blush that refuses to leave Dolce’s cheeks.
“Thank you,” Dolce manages to say calmly to the wall in front of her, despite everything. “Well— I suppose for now it’s all yours. Do whatever you’d like.”
Dolce doesn’t mention how rarely she lets anyone touch her hair, how this is an act reserved for very few, not only for people she trusts but for people she trusts a certain way.
“Hm…” Clorica lets out a pondering noise. Dolce can’t see her, but she can practically hear the way she’s tapping her finger against her chin in thought. The thought puts a small smile on Dolce’s lips. “Is there any particular type of braid you want? I know quite a few of them.”
Dolce thinks about it for a moment. “Hm. Honestly, I don’t really care. Mom used to spend hours doing all kinds of difficult braids on me, but I can’t remember any of the particular names.”
That’s not true. Dolce remembers most of them. Actually, the moment she had realized that some were slipping through her memory she had gone out and bought a book on hairstyles from her time period, then took the time to commit each and every name to memory. Even if she can’t braid her own hair that well, or at least doesn’t like to spend the time and effort doing so, she wants to hold on to that piece of her mother. She doesn’t admit any of this out loud, though, and Clorica just lets out a noise of affirmation.
“Okay then. I’ll just do…”
She trails off, and Dolce can feel Clorica start to section off pieces of her hair.
The room is peaceful as Clorica falls into a rhythm, and Dolce— who is very comfortable in silence— finds her nerves calming down. She doesn’t want to think about how soothing Clorica’s fingers are as they trace down her scalp and through the long strands of her hair, or how it feels to have the woman so focused on a delicate task like this; those thoughts would require Dolce being too honest with herself.
(She cares about her hair more than people realize, and something about Clorica showing that same level of care as she dedicates herself to each strand, each twist, makes Dolce feel things she didn’t expect to feel in this time, things that might override, might erase, her past, things... she doesn’t want to feel, thank you very much).
So she doesn’t. It’s as simple as that; Dolce has her feelings and her emotions under control.
She chooses instead to simply focus on the softness of her sheets beneath her, on the distant buzzing of activity downstairs in the clinic, and on the contrast of the warm, quiet presence behind her.
Actually, after a little over a quarter of an hour passes she realizes that that presence is very quiet. A bit too quiet, even for Dolce. She strains to listen more closely, and hears the sound of soft, even breathing. With a knowing feeling she glances over her shoulder and sees that Clorica is asleep, eyelids fluttered gently shut in a perfectly serene expression, even as her hands continue to braid Dolce’s hair with the same level of gentle dedication as she had while awake.
Dolce can’t help the smile that drifts onto her lips, and with no one (conscious) there to bear witness, she doesn’t try to hide it.
Maybe… this is nice. Maybe she can accept this softness, just this once.