26. Spiritually Appropriate Hairstyles and Other Accoutrement
Chapter twenty-six
Spiritually Appropriate Hairstyles and Other Accoutrement
Cass
The flannel smelled like Riot.
Cass hadn’t meant to take it. Riot had told him to rest while he made food after Dante and Orion left, and Cass tried.
He’d lain down on the bed and closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come.
But the sheets were cold and the room was too quiet and his body kept reaching for something that wasn’t there.
The flannel had been on the chair. White and black checks, soft from years of washing, still warm from Riot’s shoulders.
He’d just meant to hold it.
Now he was curled around, his face pressed into the collar, breathing deep, his whole body wrapped around the fabric like it was the only thing keeping him from floating away. It felt necessary in a way he couldn’t explain.
The desperate burning from before had faded softer, humming under his skin without demanding anything. He knew it would come back. But for now he could think.
He could also notice that there was something hard in the inside pocket.
His fingers found it without meaning to. Something curved, pressing against his palm through the fabric. He shouldn’t look. It wasn’t his. But his hand was already pulling it free before the thought finished.
It was... metal. Silver, maybe. Curved in a wide arc, thin and delicate, with little details along the edge that caught the light. It was pretty. Really pretty, but he didn’t know what it was.
A bracelet? Too big. It would fall right off his wrist.
Some kind of tool? But there were no moving parts.
He turned it over in his hands, watching the way the silver gleamed. It looked expensive. It looked careful, like someone had made it to be beautiful on purpose, not just useful.
Why did Riot have something like this in his pocket?
The door opened.
Riot walked in with a plate piled high with food, bread and cheese and some kind of meat, and half of something already crammed in his mouth. He was chewing fast, like he’d forgotten what eating was supposed to feel like and was trying to remember all at once.
Then he saw what Cass was holding and he stopped so fast he almost dropped the plate.
“I found this. In your jacket.” Cass held up the silver thing as his face went hot.
“I wasn’t trying to look through your things.
I just—the jacket smelled like you, and I wanted—and then I felt—” He was doing it again, the talking-too-fast thing that happened when he was nervous. “What is it? I don’t know what it is.”
“It’s, uh...” Riot set the plate down very carefully on the dresser.
His eyes were fixed on the silver arc in Cass’s hands, and his face was doing something strange.
He wasn’t looking at Cass anymore. He was looking at the wall, the floor, his own hands.
“It’s for your head. You wear it. Here.” He touched his own forehead, traced a line back toward his hair.
“It sits across here and kind of... tucks in.”
Cass looked at the silver curve again. Oh. Oh. He could see it now—the way it would rest across his forehead, the way the ends would disappear into his hair. Like a crown, almost. But more delicate.
“Why do you have it?”
Riot’s face went red. Actually red, color climbing up his neck and spreading across his cheeks, disappearing into the copper of his hair. He ran a hand through that hair, making it stick up in every direction. His weight shifted back on his heels, then forward again.
“Because I bought it,” he said to the floor. “For you.”
Cass’s brain stopped working.
“I know it’s stupid,” Riot continued, still not looking at him.
His fingers were twisting together, pulling apart, twisting again.
“I was supposed to be—you were hurt, and I was taking care of you, and I knew I was already in too deep, and I should have just—but then I saw it at a vendor in the Neutral Zone and I thought—” He made a rough sound.
“I thought it would look pretty on you. Like something a princess would wear. Which is insane, because we barely—I mean, you were—”
His hands flew up in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s a weird thing that I did. I wasn’t going to say anything. You can just—forget about it.”
He was fidgeting. Really fidgeting, like Cass had never seen him do before.
Riot, who had stood in front of Granny Lu without flinching.
Riot, who had growled at professional bad people to make them go away.
.. He was standing here in Lilac’s room, looking at the floor, twisting his fingers, unable to get a full sentence out.
Because he’d bought something pretty and kept it in his pocket and been embarrassed about it this whole time.
Cass looked down at the silver in his hands.
He thought about home. About the meditation beads that belonged to everyone, passed from hand to hand, communal property.
About the robes that were assigned based on size, not choice.
About Brother Matthias explaining that personal possessions encouraged attachment, encouraged ego, encouraged all the things that kept him from transcendence.
Nothing had ever been just his. Not really. Not ever.
His chest was doing a tight thing. Too tight. But not bad-tight. A different kind.
“You bought this for me,” he said. His voice came out strange. “Before. When you were already—when we were—”
“Yeah.” Riot’s voice was quiet. He still wasn’t looking up. “Told you it was weird.”
“It’s not weird.” The words came out too fast, too loud. Cass clutched the silver tighter. “It’s—I’ve never—” He couldn’t find the right words. There weren’t right words. “Nothing’s ever been just mine before.”
Riot finally looked at him.
Cass didn’t know what his own face was doing, but whatever it was made Riot’s expression shift. The embarrassment faded into something softer. Something careful.
“It’s yours,” Riot said simply. “Just yours. Nobody else’s.”
The tight thing in Cass’s chest cracked open a little.
“I want to put it on.” The words came out fierce. He heard himself and flushed. “I mean—is that okay? Can I—but I want to fix my hair first. It’s such a mess and this is so pretty and I want to look—I want to look right. When I wear it.”
“Yeah, princess. Of course.”
Cass looked around for—he didn’t even know. A brush. A comb. Something. He was about to say they should check the bathroom when Riot held up a hand.
“Hold on. Stay there.”
He disappeared. Cass heard the front door open and close. He sat on the bed, turning the silver over and over in his hands, his heart doing strange things in his chest. Riot came back out of breath, color still high in his cheeks, with a handful of small blue flowers clutched in his fist.
“Cornflowers,” he said. Like that explained anything. “They grow along the fence. I thought—for your braids. If you wanted.”
He was holding out wildflowers. He had run outside to pick wildflowers for Cass’s hair.
Cass’s eyes were burning. He blinked hard.
“They’re so blue,” he said, because he had to say something.
Riot found a comb in Lilac’s bathroom and he climbed onto the bed behind Cass and started working through the tangles with slow, careful strokes.
It felt...
Cass didn’t have words for how it felt. Good. More than good. Riot’s fingers in his hair, gentle and patient, not pulling, not hurting. The soft scrape of the comb. The warmth of Riot’s body behind him.
“You’re good at this,” Cass said. His voice came out quiet. Shy.
“I had four sisters.” Riot’s voice was just as quiet. “Before. They made me practice until I got it right.”
Cass didn’t ask more. He knew what pushing on doors did.
“Okay.” Riot’s hands stilled. “It should be good now. Do you want to do the braids, or—?”
“One each.” Cass turned enough to see him. “You do one, I do one?”
Riot smiled a weird smile, sort of lopsided. “Yeah. Okay.”
They worked side by side, fingers moving through the strands. Cass’s hands remembered the patterns—twist, cross, tuck, repeat. He’d done this a thousand times with Honey, but it had never felt like this.
“Here.” Riot held out one of the blue flowers. “Show me where.”
Cass guided his hand, tucking the stem into the braid where it would hold. The blue was so bright, like a little piece of sky caught in his hair.
They finished at almost the same moment. Cass reached up and touched the thin braids gently—two of them, one on each side of his face, each with tiny blue flowers woven through as he moved over to the big mirror on the dresser.
“Now the—” He picked up the silver. His hands were shaking a little. “Now this.”
He lifted it to his head. It took a moment to figure out the angle, how to settle it so it sat right. The metal was cool against his forehead. He tucked the ends into his hair at the temples, felt it catch and hold.
The person looking back was a stranger.
Not the Elysian missionary. Not the heat-wrecked mess. Someone else. Someone with blue flowers bright in his hair and silver across his forehead and eyes that were...
Wet. His eyes were wet.
The scars were still there. He could see them in the mirror—the bite on his shoulder where Riot’s shirt had slipped, the circles on his skin from the release sessions. All the marks Brother Matthias had put on him. All the places he’d been opened up and not allowed to heal.
But the silver caught the light. And the flowers were so blue. And Riot was warm behind him, watching his reflection with an expression that made Cass’s whole body ache.
“I don’t understand.” His voice cracked. “It’s so pretty. Why am I crying? I’m not sad.”
“Because you’re beautiful.” Riot’s voice was quiet.. “And nobody ever told you.”
The tears spilled over. Cass didn’t try to stop them.
He turned away from the mirror and found Riot right there. Solid. Real. Looking at him like he was something precious, so he reached up, getting on his toes, and pulled Riot’s face down closer to his.
Cass kissed him.
Not like before. Not the desperate, heat-driven, couldn’t-stop-if-he-tried kisses. This was slow. Deliberate. He chose it. Chose the softness. Chose the tenderness. He felt Riot’s small sound of surprise against his lips and felt hands come up to cup his face, felt the kiss returned just as gently.
No urgency. No chase. Just this.
When they finally pulled apart, Riot was flushed all the way to his ears. He laughed—soft and startled—and touched his own lips like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
Cass reached up and traced the line of Riot’s jaw. The roughness of stubble. The warmth.
“I love—” The word caught.
Too big. Too much. Too scary.
He swallowed.
“I love it,” he said instead. “The—the silver thing. I love it.”
“Good,” Riot said quietly. “Looks perfect on you.”
Cass buried his face in Riot’s neck and thought about the car ride. Days ago, a lifetime ago. Riot explaining about designations, about choice, about how the corporations manufactured everything and people used to decide for themselves what was real.
He thought about all the times Brother Matthias had told him he was choosing wrong. Wrong thoughts. Wrong feelings. Spiritually deficient. Broken in ways that maybe couldn’t be fixed.
But maybe, Cass thought, pressing closer into Riot’s warmth—maybe choosing wrong was just choosing different. Maybe broken didn’t mean bad. Maybe deficient was just a word people used when they didn’t understand.
Maybe everything about Riot was right.
He didn’t say it out loud. Some things were too new. Too fragile. Too easy to shatter if they were held up to the light.
But he held on tighter. And he felt Riot hold on back.