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“Arleth Eisner, stop moving or I will strap you down to the chair.” a young voice snapped. The brush tugged harshly against her wild hair, caught again in a monstrous knot.
The girl in question stiffened instantaneously. “I’m not moving Bylin, you’re the one tugging me around!” She retorted back to her twin, fighting to turn her head around to stare
Bylin grabbed both sides of her head and sharply turned her back around. “I wouldn’t have to tug you around if you just brushed your hair more than once a month, Arleth!” He exclaimed, grabbing a fistful of strands and stubbornly ripping the brush through the unyielding locks.
Her arms flung up into the air and landed with a smack on the dorm bed. “All that matters is that my hair is clean! No one cares whether or not it looks like a rat's nest, the long hair hides it anyways.”
Bylin argued back with clenched teeth, “The prank won’t work if one of us looks far more disheveled than the other, dear sister of mine.” He tugged perhaps a bit too harshly on the next knot, “I did not grow out my hair over break just so you could ruin it all by looking like you walked through a tornado and back.”
“I mean I probably did with Dad when-“
“It's. A. Phrase. Dammit. Stop. Moving.”
Silence settled over the twins, broken only by the wispy harsh sounds of knots being defeated by a sure hand. Steadily, they fell away one by one and the brush gave way to fingers loosely combing through stray locks.
“Bylin, you think mom would have done this for us? Brush our hair, tie it up and everything?”
His hands paused for the barest of heartbeats. “Yeah. If not to save us from Dad’s clumsy manhandling.”
The statement was met with a snort as Arleth pulled her legs up and rested her chin on top of them. “I bet she would have put us in matching hairstyles for the fun of it.” she wondered, her voice taking on a soft tone and fingers twirling around a loose tuft.
Scratching through Arleth’s hair in thought, Bylin quietly stated “That had to be why he asked that old lady by Remire to teach him to put our hair up properly ages ago. And then tried to replicate it every day for a month on both of us.”
“And we were both too lazy to actually do our own hair?”
“And we were both too lazy. But at least my hair’s neat. Unlike a certain sister of mine.”
A loud smack reverberated in the room, followed by a wounded yelp. Truthfully, Bylin’s hair had grown beautifully. Between the nurturing cradle of hair products and the gentle hold of a good brush, he had managed to cultivate a glistening waterfall of silk.
“Mom would have put it up beautifully.” She murmurs, fingers tracing the pattern in her tunics, twisting in the robes. Very unaccustomed was she to the extra fabric swaying above her knees, but it was a welcome change in pace.
“…yeah. Or at the very least made you take care of it. My hair remains superior.” Bylin accompanied this truth with a flip of his mane as continued to ensure the smoothness of his sister’s hair.
“We have the same hair?!” Arleth indignantly cried, tore out of her brother’s grip and turned around to glare at him.
Bylin scoffed. “That comparison was an insult to all hair havers.” His eyes bore into her stormy blue eyes, declaring challenge.
Those same blue eyes flicked up and down, an accompaniment to Arleth's smirk. “At least I look better in your tunics than you do in my everything.”
With an offended gasp, Bylin stood tall with his hands on his hips. “I declare that I pull off the world’s most oddly shaped corset far better than you ever will. And that’s a fac-”
“The shorts are barely holding your butt in!” Arleth shouted, snatched up a pillow, and threw it at Bylin’s waist.
“That’s a good thing!” He crowed undaunted, ducking to avoid the first strike.
She wretched up a second pillow in irate hands. “No it’s not!! You’re going to rip-”
A sharp knock rapped against their door and a familiar gruff voice sounded through.
“Byleth? Are you two awake? You missed breakfast.”
The twins looked at the door and back at each other in silence, Arleth’s pillow still poised to attack. In unison they chorused:
“Come in.”
The door creaked open to two pairs of identical eyes and blank faces staring down their grinning Professor, leaning against the doorway like a lounging cat. His own brown tresses served as a textbook example of a bird’s nest, but his hawk eyes scoured the room for any signs of trouble.
“You cannot trick me by wearing each other's clothes.” quirked Claude, barely holding a smile back.
Arleth groaned, flinging her pillow to the ground and herself spread eagle on the bed. “How did you know we switched?!”
Claude crossed his arms and looked at them with a Cheshire grin. “The brush is in your hand Bylin, and Arleth,” he waved his hand in the vague direction of Arleth’s head, ”doesn’t look like a hurricane hit her. Clearly, you, Bylin, were brushing Arleth’s hair. Not even Arleth brushes Arleth’s hair.”
Throwing the brush onto the fallen pillow, Byleth muttered “Damnit Arleth.” and threw himself next to his sibling. A ripping noise could be heard through the air as he shifted, and both twins grimaced at the thought of patching it up.
“But to your credit, you two could easily be mistaken for each other.”
And just like that, two green heads popped up like meerkats with excitement gleaming in four eyes.
“Ha! See? Prof Claude, come on, let us do it, it'll be fun!”
“I will convince Sylvain to stay away from my sister. Or that he’s bi. One of the two.”
Claude’s grin twitched into a diabolic smirk.
“I never said no.”