Work Text:
“Hey, Europa? Could I speak with you?”
They were hidden away in the Asteroid Belt, orbiting slowly around the Sun. Surrounding her was a swarm of smaller moons belonging to various planets. She’d taken on the job of watching them while Ganymede and Titan had left to talk tactics. Titan being here now, alone, must’ve meant they were done.
“Go, go, little ones,” she cooed, waving her arm. Titan jumped as he watched them run past him, lifting his arms up to avoid the ones by his sides. Even Phobos and Deimos broke off to join them. “Play over there while we speak– and take care of each other!” Europa continued, before turning to Titan with a frown.
“What is it?” She said. “Is Ganymede being mean again? You know you shouldn’t take it so personally.”
“No, no,” he replied, following after her as she began to move through the Asteroid Belt. The sun shone in the distance, illuminating her face and striking through Titan’s cloud coverage. “No, it’s something else. I– Do you think you could… please…” She turned to face him, urging him with narrowed eyes to spit it out. “...help me with my hair?” He finished.
Europa’s gaze softened. Her eyes went wide and pursed lips replaced her previous frown as she looked him up and over, gaze finally landing on his hair.
It was unruly and tangled, thrown haphazardly into a bun with a thousand loose ends spilling out from in between hair ties. She thought back to the Titan of a few months ago; the one she’d first met in the depths of the Asteroid Belt when he’d been concocting his ridiculous peaceless protest plan. His hair had been neatly tied back in a large braid, with bits and pieces of jewelry like pearls and gold strewn in between. Now that she remembered it, his hair had been beautiful. Looking at Titan now, however…
“I never realized how much you’d let yourself go,” she said bluntly. He gasped, crossing his arms over his chest as if to shield himself from her words.
“I haven’t let myself go! I just…” He trailed off, his atmosphere beginning to bunch around his eyes and cheeks. Her eyebrow perked upward.
“You just?”
Titan’s lip quivered. Whatever his secret was, it must’ve been embarrassing. If Europa was a good moon, she would’ve taken that as her sign to leave him alone about it, but, ever the lover for gossip, she instead glided nearer to him, situating herself in a position that allowed her to make eye contact despite his face being pointed downward. “You just what, Titan?” She continued to prod. “Why have you let yourself go?”
He shuddered. “I– I’ve never,” and then a swallow, “done my own hair before…”
“...”
He swallowed again. “Uh, Europa?”
“...Really?”
“Please!” He cried, waving her away, but she only came closer. “Don’t laugh. I just haven’t. I grew it out because Saturn wanted me to. He always did the brushin’ and the braidin’. I think it…” He trailed off again, but one look into her big, curious eyes caused him to break, picking his sentence back up with a sigh. “I think it helped him destress, y’know? Doin’ someone’s hair. So I always just let him.”
Europa grinned, picking herself up and circling around the larger moon to get a better look at him. “That’s a fancy excuse.”
“Hey! It’s not an excuse!” He whined, turning away. “If you don’t want to help me I can just ask–”
“Who? Callisto? Blegh,” Europa’s nose scrunched and her tongue hung from her mouth as if she’d tasted something rotten. “Callisto can’t do your hair, Titan. I’ll do it for you, since you asked so nicely.” She cooed the last bit, placing her hands on his cheeks and squeezing just slightly as she turned his face to meet her eyes again. She’d never seen his atmosphere so dense. Maybe a time or two had she been able to fluster Ganymede enough for thin clouds to begin to well around the surface of his face, but Titan was comparatively a hundred times easier to tease.
Titan seemed taken aback for a moment, his eyes wide and his breath uneven, but within a few seconds he was smiling and– a bit awkwardly– hugging her, a string of thank you’s falling from his lips.
“Don’t you worry about it,” she smiled. “Just sit down, sit.” And in an instant he was sat, or at least suspended with his knees crossed and his hands clammily shifting in his lap.
It made sense that Titan would come to her first for something like this. She’d seen him the past few days; poking around through asteroids, watching her interactions with the smaller moons, many of which had been her picking out their clothes and doing their hair. She’d honestly just thought that Titan was a little weird, but she couldn’t help but laugh to herself at the thought of him shyly working up the courage to speak to her about this. And, again, he said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know this must be an odd request,” to which she waved him away, insisting that she could do it. She wasn’t judgemental– or, well, she was, but not toward Titan. He was too… she suddenly stopped her quiet laughter as the thought of Titan being… cute entered her head. Europa shook that off. Cute. He was just a moon of Saturn’s who she’d gotten involved with for… political reasons. She couldn’t think he was–
“Alright!” Her sudden loudness made him jump. She grabbed at the ties holding up his sorry excuse for a bun and pulled them around her wrists. In one smooth motion, his hair fell down his back, reaching his hips. She ran her fingers through it. “What products did Saturn usually use?”
“Er… products?”
“You know,” she waved her hand. “Shampoo, conditioner, any essential oils?” Europa continued to brush it out with her hands. It was surprisingly soft, considering how long it’d been since he’d done anything to it.
Titan slumped forward, more embarrassment settling on his shoulders. “I’m… not sure. I never asked. I’m–”
“Don’t apologize. I told you,” she patted his shoulders lightly, before grabbing and squeezing them a bit harder, “it’s fine. I must’ve washed other moons’ hair a thousand times since this whole… thing… started. I can figure out what works for you, don’t you worry.”
Before he could speak again, her wrist flicked, and in an instant, he was surrounded by bottles and boxes and tools. Titan gulped.
“I really don’t want to trouble you this much, Europa–”
“Enough, enough, enough. Lean your head back, Titan.”
He did as he was told, leaning his head back ever so slightly while keeping his lower half rooted. He kept his gaze trained downward so as not to sheepishly catch her eyes as she ran her fingers through, pulling hair out from around his ears and scratching ever so slightly at his scalp in a manner so relaxing that he was almost forced to let his guard down completely. A deep breath escaped him, and his shoulders abandoned their stagnant rigidness in favor of comfortability.
“You want another braid, right?”
From above, she could see his expression falter. A braid is exactly what Saturn would’ve given him– as per the usual– and if Titan were at all interested in reinventing himself into a coldhearted revolutionary like he ought to be, he’d steer away from that style. Europa could see it, though; the pain etched in his expression as he slowly nodded up and down– “Yes, a braid will do me just fine, Europa. Thank you.”
She let the water from beneath her surface shoot up through cracks and tunnels and valleys, and soon enough a steady flow began to secrete from her hand into his hair, wetting it at its roots and traveling to his ends.
“You have a lot of hair, Titan,” she said.
“I’m–”
She cut him off before he could apologize again. “It’s pretty.” Her voice was soft, sweet. His atmosphere began to shroud his cheeks once more.
“P-pretty?” He laughed nervously.
“Do you like it grown out?”
He seemed to think for a moment, biting at his lip. “Yeah, I do.” And Saturn liked it, too.
The words they exchanged thereafter were sparse, save for Europa’s occasional questions about what kind of hair he had or what Saturn might do after a certain step in the process, to which Titan would always respond with confusion and unknowing. Beyond that, she let him relax, because it only took a few seconds of staring at the creases in his face and the frenzied movement of his atmosphere to see that he was stressed. Europa almost felt bad. When she’d first met Titan, she could tell quickly that he wasn’t the tough leader he pretended or, at least, wanted to be. It was no wonder he was struggling.
He was sat up now as she brushed the remaining tangles out after the wash. She’d already thought it was pretty before, but after a fresh cleaning? His hair was silky, smooth, and long. She was almost jealous.
“Maybe at the end of all of this…” Europa spoke through the silence as she brushed. “If everything works out for the better, you know... I can ask Saturn for some tips about how he does this… Because, wow. It really is beautiful.”
Titan choked at that. “Oh, no, no. I mean– yeah, Saturn is good. But it’s not– I’m not–”
“Just take the compliment.”
“Thank you,” he exhaled.
Before long she’d separated his hair into two even sections, slowly beginning to work her way down while pulling thinner strands over the two larger. She occasionally loosened up his strands, or pulled hair out from where it’d been securely fixed in order to make it messier; a contrast to Saturn’s usual neatness. Something to separate him from his planet, she thought, while still keeping them close. Titan’s attachment to Saturn even in the midst of war was definitely an… issue… but she couldn’t be too upset with him for it. He was still doing his job. That’s what mattered.
“I wanted to add something a little different since I don’t exactly have any of those fancy pearls Saturn puts in your hair.”
“Of course! What are you…?”
He could hear the slick whisper of silk being pulled from her pocket. She held it out in front of him so he could see it; a shiny pink ribbon. Titan’s eyes widened.
Europa, having tied off the loose end of his hair, slowly began to tie the ribbon into a bow. Her knees were pressed against his back as her hands methodically worked with his hair, and although he couldn’t look behind him to see, he knew there was a warm smile on her face as she finished him off. It made him… happy.
“There…” She smiled, pulling on the finished braid slightly. “Pink goes well with green.”
His face flushed. “Y-yeah–” Titan replied, although he couldn’t see the finished product. “I suppose it–”
“GANYMEDE!” Europa yelled, cutting him off, and Titan shrieked as her sudden anger caused her to yank down hard on his hair.
He whipped his head around toward where she was looking– at Ganymede turned away from them, arms wrapped around himself and moving up and down as if to look like…
“Ow, ow, ow, Europa– ow–” his cries went unnoticed as she threw her brush at Ganymede, hitting him in the back. The larger Galilean moon couldn’t stop laughing despite the objects his girlfriend continued to hurtle his way. Eventually, he glided away from the two of them, a few beauty products clinging to his gravity as he went while a string of snide remarks about the two of them were left in his wake. Such a childish demeanor was incredibly different compared to the stern, calculating Ganymede that Titan had spoken to just an hour earlier.
Even though she was only gripping his hair, he could feel the heat coming off of her as she seethed, letting go of him with a huff.
“If you’ll excuse me, Titan, I have a moon to maim–” She growled, waving her hand and causing the rest of the bottles around them to disappear in a flash: dematerialized. “Goodbye–”
“Wait!” Titan said, grabbing her wrist. She whipped around to face him, eyes darting from his hand on her to his eyes. Titan’s breath hitched, and he let go of her quickly. He didn’t mean to be so bold. “ I just…! Thank you, Europa. I truly appreciate it,” he stammered. “You’ve been a huge help with the whole revolution and the other moons and I—” He trailed off, embarrassed. Goodness, what was he doing? “You, you can go after Ganymede now,” he laughed. “I just wanted to say it.”
Finally, the anger in her eyes subsided just slightly. At least, long enough for Europa to smile partially and, in one quick motion, press a kiss to Titan’s cheek. His mouth fell open.
“Don’t worry about it, dummy. We’re friends, we help each other.” And with that she was off, flying in the direction Ganymede had disappeared into. All the while Titan’s hand clung to his cheek as though holding Europa’s kiss there so that he’d feel it forever.
“Friends,” he mumbled. “Right…”