#oops all hyperfixation

I continue to be firmly upon my bullshit. RIP my hand.

Drawn in pencil, cleaned in PS, colored in CSP. No tablet, we die like men.

[fic excerpt below the cut]

Inuyasha sat around the secluded rear side of the hut with a bucket and a ladle next to the barrel of rainwater. As he poured it over his head to wet his hair, the water was actually pleasantly warm, heated all day by the summer sun. As he selected a section of hair and began scrubbing the soap against it until it lathered, there came a cautious knock on the wooden wall. Glancing up he saw Deidara standing in the doorway, curtain half pushed aside with a strip of grey cloth around his waist and nothing else.

“Mind if I join you, hm?”

Inuyasha scoffed and shrugged, nodding his head towards the spare stool on the opposite side of the barrel.

“Knock yourself out, kid. It’s not like you need to be modest.” They’d bathed together before. They’d even wrestled like idiots. There wasn’t any reason for Deidara to be shy about nakedness now. It was only a bath anyway.

Nodding and stepping down off the stoop, Deidara crossed behind him to sit on the spare stool, folding the cloth that had been around his waist a couple of times and tossing it aside. Of course there wasn’t any reason for modesty – he scoffed to himself pushing his bangs out of his face – it wasn’t like anything had changed between them since the cold spring.

“Just wanted to be sure if it was alright. I’d understand if this was something you’d rather do alone, hm.”

“It’s just blood.” Inuyasha grunted, shrugging off any conflicted feelings he might have about where the blood had come from.

Dipping the bucket in the rain barrel, Deidara poured it over his own hair, working a lather in his hands with another bar of soap from Kaede. The two washed in quiet, each too focused on his own cleaning to worry with conversation. Once he’d washed his hair thoroughly, and cleaned everything but the medicinal poultice off his body, Deidara sat back to let himself dry a moment. As he glanced over towards Inuyasha however, he noticed there hadn’t been much forward progress on getting the blood out. Mostly Inuyasha had just been irately rubbing the soap against this hair in a way that was tangling it more than cleaning it. He would have asked if Inuyasha wanted help if he thought he’d accept it, but at some point watching him put more soapy knots in his hair became too much to watch.

“Hey,” Deidara said as he pushed himself up off the stool, walking around in front of Inuyasha. “You’re making it worse hm. Here.” Crouching down in front of him, Deidara wet his hands in the bucket next to Inuyasha’s feet and reached up and taking the clump of hair out of Inuyasha’s hands. He growled and made a move to brush Deidara off at first, but persistence won out as Deidara combed his fingers through the hair and offered him a small smile. “Calm down. I know what to do with long hair. You just gotta start at the bottom, hm.”

Inuyasha’s brow furrowed, but he let Deidara continue, watching as he carefully pulled knots and tangles free. It took him a minute to get through the full length of Inuyasha’s hair but by the time he was done, his fingers slid all the way down through it without ever catching. Without asking, Deidara wordlessly moved on to the next section, giving it the same meticulous treatment.

“The soap doesn’t erase all the blood and dirt, just loosens it up. When you scrub like that you make the knots worse without actually getting your hair clean, hm.” He wasn’t sure why he was explaining all this – Inuyasha clearly didn’t prioritize caring for his hair. Maybe that was only because it frustrated him though, because he didn’t know how to keep it maintained. Deidara glanced up as he worked another tight knot loose, and his eyes met Inuyasha’s as he watched intently. Unsure what to make of the stare, he paused with his fingers threaded through Inuyasha’s silver hair. “Is this… okay?”

Inuyasha blinked a few times, taking a moment to process what he was being asked. Was it okay? It was weird. Nobody touched his hair because it was a mess and it always had been. The last person he remembered touching his hair like this was… maybe his mother… but it had been so long ago. He’d been on his own after that and never paid it any attention – it had been beyond manageable ever since. He’d been around women who took care of their own long hair, but none of them had been concerned by the state of his. The only one who had cared about his hair in almost 200 years had been that freak demon, Yura. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it. It was weird to have someone give more care to his own hair than he ever had. Weird… but also nice.

“Yeah…” Inuyasha finally admitted, bowing his head forward a bit. “It’s fine, kid. You can keep going if you want. I’ll maybe try working on the other side.”

With a small nod, Deidara shifted his stance, resting on his knees to be more comfortable as he worked soapy fingers through Inuyasha’s thick hair.

“That’s good,” he hummed as he started combing his fingers through another section of Inuyasha’s long hair, “because I have been dying to brush your hair for like, a week now, hm.” He chuckled to himself as Inuyasha glanced over his shoulder with a curious look. “Ever since I saw you picking sticks and leaves and shit out of your hair at the spring, and you said you never messed with it? This?” He grabbed a thick clump of Inuyasha’s hair and held it up showing the tangles were so thick it all practically moved as one mass. “This has been killing me.”

Inuyasha almost bristled to defend himself but wasn’t even sure what he was defending himself from.

“It just wasn’t ever a thing I worried about.” He shrugged, re-wetting the opposite side of his hair before working a lather in his hands and trying to follow as Deidara did, starting at the bottom and threading his fingers through. “Fussing over hair is fine for girls, I just never cared.”

He didn’t even have a moment to regret what he’d said before Deidara had grabbed a hold of one of his pointed ears and gave it a scolding tug.

“Taking care of your body is not just for girls, hm.” Letting go of Inuyasha’s ear he went back to combing his fingers through his silver mane. “Your hair is a part of you. Doesn’t make you girly or fussy to take care of it. Look.” Deidara held up the portion of hair he had worked smooth and clean already, showing the way it lay like white silk in his palm. “You have nice hair. It wouldn’t be so hard to maintain if you just brushed it once in a while hm.”

Inuyasha snorted. He heard what Deidara was saying though. It wasn’t that he thought washing and brushing long hair was girly, not really, women were just the only people he’d ever seen taking care of their hair that way. Once his hair had become too gnarled up to do anything with, he’d given up trying. The task had been too big and he’d have no idea where to even start.

“You really care a lot about hair, don’t you.”

“I’m an artist,” Deidara shrugged, “I like beautiful things.”

“You like blowing things up.”

“Blowing things up is how I express my artistic vision, hm. I can still think hair is pretty, even if it doesn’t explode.” He chuckled and shook his head, starting work on another section, slowly working his way around towards the back. “I promise it won’t emasculate you to be clean and look nice hm.”

Inuyasha couldn’t help but laugh at that, shaking his head a bit, though not enough to interrupt Deidara’s work.

“You’re a mystery, kid.”

“Mysteries are fun,” Deidara replied, smoothing another long tress out and draping it over Inuyasha’s shoulder.

The worst of the knots and dirt were in the far back where Inuyasha couldn’t reach effectually. Inuyasha had moved to sit in the grass and Deidara sat on the stool behind him, working the dense tangle undone with meticulous dedication. By the time all of Inuyasha’s silver hair had been washed and groomed, the sun had set and a humid evening settled in around them. With dexterous fingers weaving through his hair, Inuyasha had tipped his head back, almost nodding off several times. Weird. But nice. As he combed the hair out smooth, Deidara thought how pretty it would have all looked laid out in the moonlight, and what a shame it was that there was only a sliver left. As Deidara finished rinsing the last of the soap lather from his hair, Inuyasha resisted the urge to shake himself, if only barely.