Work Text:
Ash’s hair is, like, really soft. Much softer than she’d expect from someone who probably brushes his hair, on average, once a year. It’s sort of slippery, which makes it hard to handle, but there are almost no tangles and the strands glide under her hands easily.
“Mallow?” Professor Kukui prompts, and she looks up at him. “What are you doing to Ash?”
His eyebrows are furrowed, but he doesn’t look mad. Mallow really likes having Professor Kukui as a teacher, because he never really gets mad. He’s good at keeping the class in line when they do, admittedly, get a little rowdy (particularly Sophocles, who can be really annoying sometimes), but it’s never anger. It’s just this sort of stern disappointment and no one, Mallow included, wants to disappoint him. She’s pretty impressed, honestly.
“I’m braiding his hair! Don’t worry, I already finished my classwork!”
One of his eyebrows cocks, and he stares at them for a moment. She’s pretty sure he’s trying to make sure Ash is okay with it, but he’s not saying anything and Mallow can’t see his face, but he hasn’t tried to move away, so she’s assuming he is. Professor Kukui does that with Ash. He does it with all his students - he always makes sure they’re doing okay, which is another reason why he is the best teacher she has ever had - but particularly with Ash. It makes sense, anyway; they live together. Also, as Mallow and her friends have noticed, Ash tends to not say when anything is bothering him, like, ever. And it’s not even like he’s pretending it’s not bothering him, it’s more just, like. It doesn’t occur to him to voice when he’s uncomfortable. Which is why she hopes he is okay with this.
Usually, though, Pikachu is a good indicator. He’s really in tune with Ash’s emotions, and even when Ash seems fine with something, if Pikachu looks annoyed then Ash probably is too. But Pikachu looks happy, blinking slowly and curled up on the edge of Ash’s desk, Mallow is pretty sure she’s in the clear.
As for Ash himself, he’s got his head bent over the classwork that she already finished. He’s working really hard at it. He tries really hard at everything, even the stuff he’s not good at. It’s really admirable. Sometimes, when Mallow wants to motivate herself to be a little more confident, a little braver, a little more hard-working at things that aren’t cooking, she thinks: What would Ash do?
That usually spurs her on.
His hair has gotten sort of long, which means she has enough of it to leave little braids in it, so that’s what she’s doing. The braids slip out as soon as she lets go of them, though, so she reaches into her bag to pull out some bobby pins.
There. That’s better, Mallow thinks, once she starts securing them with the pins. Soon, the entire back section of his hair is braided into little sections. “Can I join?” Lillie asks, in that shy way she always does. Like she’s so scared she’s overstepping a boundary.
And Mallow gets it, really. It’s sort of just Lillie’s personality. But Mallow just likes to do stuff - for example, braiding Ash’s hair. It’s only once she’s doing it that she prays to Tapu Koko that she hasn’t crossed a boundary.
Mallow nods, and when Lillie gingerly slips her hand into the side of Ash’s hair, he doesn’t really react, which she takes as a green light. “Go ahead,” Mallow says.
Professor Kukui is looking at them again. It’s more of a fond exasperation this time. “Lillie, did you finish your work?”
“Yes, Professor! In fact, I finished it about ten minutes ago!”
“Wow,” Sophocles comments from where he is still bent over his work. “Show-off.”
“I wasn’t showing off!” Lillie protests, but she still says it in that quiet way.
“Okay, okay,” Professor Kukui says. “Sophocles, has Lillie ever shown off?”
Sophocles grumbles, and Mallow tries to restrain her giggle. “No, she hasn’t.”
“She was just answering a question of mine.”
Sophocles grumbles again, but then he goes back to his work, so the class goes quiet again.
Ash still hasn’t said anything since she started playing with his hair, which is unusual for him, and Mallow looks to Pikachu again. He’s completely relaxed; she and Lillie are in the clear.
Mallow moves on to the other side of his head, and by the time class is about to end, his whole hair has a bunch of little braids and her supply of bobby pins has been exhausted. “You look so pretty, Ash!” She says, when the bell rings. At first he doesn’t respond, holding up his paper with a triumphant “Finished! Woohoo!” Pikachu high-fives him with his tail, and Ash runs over to Professor Kukui to give it to him, a jump in his step. “Look, Professor, I finished it!”
There is his boundless enthusiasm, and any of Mallow’s worries dissolve. He goes back to his seat and starts to grab his stuff. He looks up at Mallow and Lillie and smiles at them. “Oh - thanks, Mallow, for the compliment! I said it in my head and I just realized I didn’t say it out loud. You’re so pretty too, you know! And you, Lillie! Everyone’s pretty!”
A few months ago, a comment like that probably would have had Mallow blushing - after all, if a boy says stuff like that to a girl, most of the time he’s flirting. But she’s known Ash for long enough to know that’s just the way he is. He’s just that nice.
And besides, even though Mallow can barely even admit this to herself, she’s kind of got her eye on Lillie.
Lillie does blush, though, but Mallow is pretty sure it’s not, like - a crush blush, just more of just an embarrassed thing. Lillie gets pretty easily overwhelmed by that stuff.
Not like Mallow watches her particularly closely, though. She just - notices that sort of stuff about her friends. Yes. Her father says she is very observant, and she loves to take care of her friends, and that is just as true for Lillie as it is for the rest of them.
“I never asked if it was okay to touch your hair, Ash - sorry if I made you uncomfortable!”
Ash tilts his head, and smiles, and his hands are moving around a little bit. He laughs. “What? No, you’re good at that stuff! It feels really good, you know?”
“You don’t mind?” Lillie asks. Mallow purposefully keeps her eyes on Ash because she doesn’t want to look at Lillie too much - and definitely not more than she looks at any of her other friends. Ash’s smile is easy. “Nah, not at all! Kinda reminds me of my mom, you know? And Pikachu likes bein’ pet so much, and I kinda assume it feels similar to what you guys were doin’.”
Mallow thinks that’s really sweet. So sweet, in fact, that she resolves to braid Ash’s hair all the time, now.
She gets a little sad, sometimes, when she thinks about Ash. She knows he probably wouldn’t appreciate it, so she doesn’t do it too much, but every so often it crosses her mind. How he’s been traveling since he was ten. How he doesn’t live with his mom, even though when she was here for the Open House he was really happy. How he says things, sometimes, that make her realize she takes her own life for granted. Man, it’s so nice to be inside while it rains, he said, one time, after arriving to class soaked from the downpour. It looks so much nicer than it feels.
She’s always looked at the lives of traveling trainers from other regions with a sort of distant admiration. That’s really cool for them, but Mallow doesn’t want to leave her family behind, or the restaurant, or her friends and nice warm bed. But having shelter from the rain is a remarkable thing to Ash.
Or the time he came to school sick. He’d sneezed almost as soon as he’d entered the classroom, and Professor Kukui had rounded on him. “I thought I told you to stay home today, Ash,” he’d said. Personally, if Mallow had been on the receiving end of that stern gaze, she probably would have immediately relented. But she wasn’t Ash, and Ash had just smiled, and said, “Well, it’s not like you can let a little cold keep you down, huh?”
Professor Kukui had pulled Ash aside, then, apologizing to the rest of the class. He told them to work on some workbook assignment - she can’t remember the specifics - but she and all her friends just listened in. “Ash, you need to take care of yourself,” the professor had said. Ash had countered, saying “I am! I know when something’s bad enough to take me out. This isn’t that.”
“Ash,” he’d started, his tone getting a little more frustrated. “What is ‘bad enough’ to take you out? A fever?”
And then, to Mallow’s surprise, he’d said. “Not really! Well, it depends on how high it is, I guess. As long as I can see straight then I’m probably okay!”
There’d been a little more hushed discussion, then, and she couldn’t quite pick up on all of it, but eventually Ash had admitted to the fact that when you were on the road, you couldn’t exactly take a sick day, unless you were so bad you couldn’t walk.
She thought again, then, about the fact that Ash didn’t really ever think it necessary to mention if something was bothering him.
Mallow once saw a thing on the internet that if you take a wet toothbrush to a skitty’s head, you remind it of when its mother used to lick it. Someone made a video about it, and when they did it to their skitty, it started crying. At the time, it had made her cry. Sometimes, pokemon are separated from their families very early. For some, that’s just the way of life.
She can’t imagine being separated from her family like that.
When Ash says the thing about how her playing with his hair reminds him of his mom, all she can think about is that skitty who started crying at the wet toothbrush.
Yeah, sometimes she gets a little sad when she thinks about Ash.
But here he is, smiling in front of her and Lillie, and she smiles back to him. And she files that information to the back of her head and thinks that friends take care of each other. Sometimes, all a friend can do is the little things. Remind Ash of his mom, even if he doesn’t live with her. Braid his hair, and call him pretty.
And, of course, try not to stare at Lillie.
Professor Kukui is pretending not to stare at the three of them. Lana, Kiawe, and Sophocles have already left the classroom, and so it’s just Mallow and Lillie and Ash, smiling at each other, and the professor smiling into the papers he’s pretending to grade.
Ash comes to school the next day with the braids still in his hair. “Some of them fell out,” he says, voice a little sad. “I tried to keep as many of them intact as I could, but I guess I move around a lot when I sleep, and…”
“Hey, it’s okay!” She reassures him. “I can redo them right now! Besides, I brought some mini hairties, which is way better than bobby pins! Also, you should take them out at night! If you don’t, it might damage your hair. I mean, not like I think you care about that, but still! Plus, it means I get to redo them! Win-win!”
Ash’s slightly downtrodden expression perks up. “Yeah?” He asks, that familiar bright smile growing. “Okay!”
Ash’s hair really is so slippery. The morning braids fall out by lunch, so she redoes them - not like she minds - and she does them once more before he leaves at the end of the day. And it’s like that, day after day; her and Lillie braiding Ash’s hair together. It grows a little longer, and he doesn’t cut it. And she and Lillie scooch their desks a little closer together, and Lillie starts looking at Mallow more often, and then, one time, Lillie asks if Mallow can braid her hair, and Mallow is so happy she nearly bursts.
Lillie’s hair is finer than Ash’s, and a little less slippery. It has a little more texture, which means it holds the braids better. Mallow is as soft as she can be, trying with all her might not to pull Lillie’s hair. She tries to keep her hands from shaking and her cheeks from burning right off her face. She’s not quite sure how much she succeeds, because Professor Kukui is ducking his head into the papers he’s grading, smiling knowingly, which is just so embarrassing, but it doesn’t matter all that much to Mallow because Lillie’s hair is in her hands.
And Lillie comes to school the next day, the braids still in her hair, and she asks to braid Mallow’s hair, and this time she is sure that she is so obvious. Professor Kukui is smiling again, and the rest of the class is looking at her like they know (except for Ash, but he’s always the exception), but it’s okay, anyway. There are Kalosian braids in Mallow’s hair and she didn’t do them herself. It’s a tiny thing but Mallow makes way too much of little tiny things like this. There are braids in her hair and Lillie did them.
Mallow is never unbraiding this.
She wonders if that’s why Lillie kept her braids in, too.
She teaches Ash how to braid hair, and his fingers are clumsy at first, but then he figures it out pretty quickly.
Professor Kukui comes to class the next day, different sections of his hair messily braided, and she hides her smile.