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jamil fluffp

Braiding his own hair had always been therapeutic. 

His hair had been the envy of many and was the sole item that gained him the most attention. Jamil was often identified by his long locks that cascaded down his back, tied up in a loose ponytail with delicate braids weaved within. The small bells that clicked softly with his footsteps grounded him when he needed it the most- the often cool metal bringing him back to the present so he could do what he needed. 

When he was young, his hair was identical to Kalim's. It was cut short, the choppy bangs making way for his narrowed steel-grey eyes. Jamil never thought much about it- he'd even enjoyed looking like his friend, even if only for a few months until it would be cut short again. His frustration would be taken out through dancing- when he realized far too young that he would have to be limited and could never be the best at something. 

The day he'd realized that his fate was predetermined, that he would be doomed to live in someone else's shadow for the entirety of his life, he began to despise his hair. He pulled at it in the darkness of his bedroom, gasping through sobs as he writhed on the mattress and his breath hitched with every pained wail as he tugged at his sore scalp, wanting nothing more than to change, to be different. He didn't want to be a copy of someone else, he wanted a chance to be better than what he was. 

Jamil had seen the toll it had taken on his parents- their weary gazes as they sadly told their children to keep their heads low, the way their lips quivered when both Jamil and Najma were forced to enroll in self-defense classes to protect the Al-Asims, their hushed reassurances when both children would come back from the aforementioned classes, bruised and bleeding, shaking as they gazed up at their parents. 

The Viper couple had always had an air about them- an air of hopelessness, of despair, almost. 

Jamil had wanted nothing more than to save them from that, to see his parents smile the way they had in their wedding photos. He would sometimes sit in his hallway and stare at those photos, trying to piece together what had gone wrong and why his parents never looked at one another like that anymore. Was it work? Was the constant pressure of being responsible for the Al-Asim's wellbeing getting to both of them? Jamil had sometimes thought about what it had been like for the both of them- born to servants, falling in love with servants and having children for the sole purpose of being servants. 

Jamil had known that they didn't have him and his sister for the purpose of being a servant. It was just... a coincidence. His existence was merely coincidence. 

A coincidence that had brought tears to his eyes when he first realized it, and one that he hopes his sister will never find out (he knows that she figured it out already, and he tried to ignore the way her muffled cries drifted into his room that night).

He had started growing out his hair in near-defiance. A way to prove his own freedom, to make his own decisions. He could do what he wanted to his hair- he could dye it, cut it, braid it. His hair was his freedom, and he had spent hours trying to find the right oils and shampoos to use, experimenting with different temperatures and seeing how the air around him affected it. He had tried hairstyles so late in the night that his arms ached from the effort well into the next morning. 

His hair by middle school was well past his shoulders and was already the object of his sister's whining and jealousy. His parents asked him why he didn't cut it, and he had fought them on it for weeks. 

Running his hands through his hair was his therapy, styling it was his own form of meditation when his heart felt as though it was going to burst from the pressure and the workload gave him migraines that pounded his skull until he took a well-deserved nap (which he rarely had the time for).