I worked the boots off, held the stinking socks at arms length as I tossed them into the hamper, and then managed to untwist him from his jacket. The Bowie knife thudded into the growing pile of equipment as I stripped Duo down to his sleep shorts, and then took them off as well when I saw that they were days old and in the same shape as his socks.

Duo was bruised, scraped raw here and there, and hastily stitched in a few minor places. The mission had been rough and long. He deserved his sleep, deserved to stink up the sheets and not be bothered with a shower. He also deserved not to wake up and have to deal with hair that would take hours to untangle.

Retrieving a comb from the bathroom, I sat on the edge of the bed, and went to work. I found things sticking to the strands, I didn't want to recognize, besides the mud, leaves, and bits of debris from explosions. I worked the braid loose, mapped out a mission plan, and began tackling it one handful at a time.

Duo's hair wasn't a softer side of his nature, it was as tough and as uncompromising as Duo was himself. No one could say it 'feminized' him. He managed to make it masculine, a part of his raw energy and daring personality.

I knew better than to call it conceit, his madness in keeping it that long in his line of work. Everyone knew the story behind it, knew the pain in his life it represented. While I could complain, beg him, even, to cut it shorter for safeties sake, I knew that asking him to do more was out of the question.

So, I sat, more often than he realized, and performed this duty. He would wake the next day, yawn, and take himself to the shower. He would wash the unruly mass and maybe never wonder why it wasn't as abused as the rest of him. It didn't bother me, that lack of notice. I didn't do it for a fanfare, after all. I did it simply because I loved him.