Muke Fluff

Sad Hair

“Your hair looks sad,” is the first thing Luke says to Michael in three weeks.

Luke still waits for him by the gate, even though Michael’s boyfriend drives him to school. He still sits under the science window, even though Michael watches his boyfriend play football at lunch. He still stays up until three in the morning with his phone on his chest, even though Michael has someone much better he can call.

But, one day, today, he walks into school with brown hair. Plain brown. No stripes, no swirls, no tips. Just brown. People whisper, wondering what happened, and Michael looks so sad that Luke pushes off the wall and starts towards him, but by the time he’s halfway over, curly is already there. Luke hears curly-head, Harry; tell Michael that he is beautiful and that the new color suits him and that he should consider keeping it that way. Luke disagrees.

***

At lunch, he sits alone, as has become usual for him, and he half-heartedly plays Flappy Bird while contemplating the idea of making a crown out of the wilting flowers above his head. He’s just getting used to being by himself again, like he was before he came with his hair and his games and his friendship, when he hears running feet, and suddenly he has a lap full of sobbing Michael.

Luke doesn’t really know what to do as he wraps his arms around Luke’s neck and clings like he’s going to melt away when Michael bawls into his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the little cartoon bird hit a pipe and die, and he slings his arms around his waist and rocks him gently. When he’s just sniffling and hiccupping into his collarbone, he rests his head on the chocolate hair that stills smells like chemicals from all the hair dye.

“Your hair looks sad.” Luke tells him again. Michael lets out a watery laugh, and intertwines his fingers into the short hairs at the back of Luke’s neck.

“All of me looks sad, Lukey.”

“Don’t be upset,” Luke murmurs into his hair. “You’re too shiny to be sad.”

Michael is actually laughing now, shaking in Luke’s arms, his eyes are still leaking, but his cheeks are flushing for a happy reason and he’s giggling so hard he starts snorting and Luke has never heard anything more beautiful. “That doesn’t even make sense, you dork!”

Luke lets him cuddle in his chest a little more before he asks why. Nothing specific, he just opens his mouth and whispers “Why?”

Slowly, he tells Luke that his mother actually looked at him that morning. “‘Now you look like a proper gentleman; no man wants someone who reeks of bleach day in and day out,’” he mocks to Luke’s neck. “Harry said that his parents didn’t approve of me because my hair made me look like a clown, so I tried to change for him, but I can’t do it, Luke! I feel so plain and boring. I’m not plain and boring, am I Lukey?” He doesn’t bother waiting for an answer before continuing. “This color is so suffocating! It’s like everyone is suddenly finding me, and I’ve lost myself! What do I do, Lukey?” Michael looks up at him hopefully, and his eyes are so green behind the flat curtain of brown that Luke gets lost in the forest of his eyes.

“Be with someone who loves your crazy hair, and who loves your not-crazy hair. Who doesn’t mind that you spend all your free time with a video game controller in your hand, and that half the time you don’t know what day it is because you haven’t slept for two days,” he reaches up for a flower to tuck behind his ear because that’s a romantic gesture that always works in the films. But he gets a handful of wilting petals instead, so he shrugs and throws them over both of them until they’re giggling against each other. “Find someone who’ll play bad music with you, who’ll make flower crowns with you, who’ll love you for you and not what you look like.”

He huffs and drums his fingers on Luke’s chin. “Who would be stupid enough to do that?”

Luke is about to say ‘I would’, but a loud “Michael?” interrupts him, “Michael, where did you go?” and curly head, walks into sight.

Michael scrambles out of Luke’s lap, a guilty blush on his face, and he raises a hand to brush the flower petals out of his hair as his boyfriend catches sight of him. Then he freezes, hand still above his head, and looks back at Luke like he’s had an epiphany.

When Harry gets to him, he pulls him to his feet gently, swiping his fringe out of his eyes. “So much more beautiful now,” he tells Michael.

Michael looks at him seriously and asks, “What day is it today?”

He rolls his eyes and begins to say “If you slept like a normal person, you’d know…”

Luke gets to his feet, taps Michael on the shoulder, and murmurs “Tuesday.”