Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1286182.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Allison_Argent/Lydia_Martin
  Character:
      Lydia_Martin, Allison_Argent, Scott_McCall, Derek_Hale, Chris_Argent,
      Stiles_Stilinski
  Additional Tags:
      Hurt/Comfort, Revenge, Pack_Feels, Hair_Braiding, Feminist_Themes
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-03-08 Words: 5160
****** Battle Braids ******
by JoCarthage
Summary
     Allison’s head lay bleeding in Lydia’s lap, hair loose. The hunter
     who shot her crept closer to the fallen log behind which they’d taken
     cover. Lydia held her body over the other woman, careful not to
     jostle the bolt still in her shoulder or touch her bleeding forehead.
     The hunter fired a bolt just over the visible sliver of Lydia’s
     auburn hair and she hunched closer, but couldn’t move without
     Allison, and Allison was weak with blood-loss. Breath hushed, body
     compressed, Lydia traced out blood and leaves and chunks of dirt from
     her friend’s hair, unwinding knots with a shaking finger. She
     whispered over and over again:
     “This will never happen again.”
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
Allison’s head lay bleeding in Lydia’s lap, hair loose. The hunter who shot her
crept closer to the fallen log behind which they’d taken cover. Lydia held her
body over the other woman, careful not to jostle the bolt still in her shoulder
or touch her bleeding forehead. The hunter fired a bolt just over the visible
sliver of Lydia’s auburn hair and she hunched closer, but couldn’t move without
Allison, and Allison was weak with blood-loss. Breath hushed, body compressed,
Lydia traced out blood and leaves and chunks of dirt from her friend’s hair,
unwinding knots with a shaking finger. She whispered over and over again:
“This will never happen again.”
Lydia heard Scott’s roar and chanced a glance up. She caught the hunter’s wide
mouth as the beta took a chunk out of his shoulder. The teen sliced his throat
open with a wide-spread claw and ran back to the main fight on the other side
of the hill.
Battle moving away from them, Lydia raised herself up to assess the damage to
the woman in her lap. She shucked her cream-colored sweater and folded it to
stabilize the bolt in Allison’s shoulder. This was supposed to have been an
after-school reconnaissance trip, and an unscheduled one at that. They were so
unprepared. 
Lydia could see Allison keeping her pain to herself, but as she smoothed back
her hair it was clear in the crinkles of her closed eyes.
“You’re going be just fine, just keep awake, girl, just keep awake.”

“Okay, Lyds, I will,” and there it was, that fluttering, sassy-ass smile. 
Lydia kept smoothing her hair back and then some worry-pattern from early
girlhood used her hands to start braiding. She kept a monologue about how she
was going to make sure this never happened again, voice quiet and catching, but
her fingers moved with confidence. 
Once most of the snarls were out of the hair she could reach, she started
separating it into three plaits, then braiding them back away from Allison’s
face. It was an awkward angle, and the braids wouldn’t lie flat, but she got
them away from the wound. She started in on the next temple, using her forearm
to keep pressure on Allison’s head-wound.
“We’re going to get you to Melissa’s and get you fixed up. You probably won’t
even scar,”
“It would be pretty badass if I did though, Lyds.”
Lydia knew she should have chuckled, but it just didn’t seem possible. She
heard a cry—it sounded like Scott. She leaned lower and kept talking, detailing
what they would do to any survivor of this battle. She didn’t have anything to
tie the braids off with so she made the braid itself into an overhand knot. 
She looked at her handiwork, her low threats pausing for a moment. She hadn’t
gotten all of the leave and twigs out and they were spiking up out of Allison’s
braids. With the blood and the paleness of Allison’s face and her wide
wandering eyes, she thought the wildness they brought evened her back out to
her usual levels of badassery.
Just as she was moving her hand down Allison’s cheek again, trying to keep her
centered, she heard a spluttered human scream as the last hunter died, choking
on his own blood. She called out:

“Allison’s hurt, she needs Melissa.”
In an instant, two concerned were-faces and a uniquely-Stiles-face were peering
out over the log at her, and then Scott was loading her up on his back and
sprinting towards civilization.
—
Growing up, Allison had a deal with her mother. She could grow her hair as long
as she wanted to, if she never screamed when they combed it. She never did,
though the tugging hurt and the plastic bobbles smacked her in the face when
she bowed in karate and the bobby pins for sparring always scraped her scalp.
She never whined or complained, and her hair grew long and black and her mother
braided it every morning, twisting ribbons through her waves.
—
They were sitting in a huddled semi-circle around Allison’s hospital bed when
she awoke. The nurse’s hadn’t undone Lydia’s braids, but in the past 6 hours
they’d gotten frayed. Her eyes startled for a moment at the strange sounds and
smells of the room, but Scott’s hand tightened on her arm and black runnels
came racing towards his heart. Her breathing slowed, but her eyes kept
searching, even as he took some of what the oxy couldn’t.
Then her eyes found Lydia’s.
“Lyds,” she coughed out, and Lydia moved to the edge of her chair.
“Lyds, we get ‘em?” Lydia reached up the tuck a messy braid behind Allison’s
ear:
“Yeah, girl, we did.” Allison smiled and her eyes drifted closed, eased by
Scott’s hand on her arm but her face towards Lydia.
—
They wheeled her out a few hours later, the cost-benefit of staying in the
hospital having worn through, and Allison’s hands kept drifting up to her twin
braids. She undid the overhand knot and redid it, even as Scott and Stiles
talked over her head about their fears, where they would need to bury the
bodies, who they needed to update on what had happened.
They reached their cars and Lydia took over—neither boy had a working ride of
his own and Derek was still on clean-up. She helped them get Allison into
Lydia’s musty bucket-seat, then they set off at a jog.
The door shut and Lydia turned, pulling the braid from Allison’s worrying
fingers. It was still chunked with dried blood and leaves.
“Your house or mine?” She asked.
“Yours. I don’t want to explain this to Dad until the bruising goes down.”
Allison leaned against the door, head gingerly on the window. Lydia huffed in
agreement and started up the car. She threw on the radio and heard the wheeze
of the Boss’s Nebraska. She nodded and started to drive.
They arrived and Lydia eased Allison’s arm over her shoulder, taking more than
an even amount of her weight as she stumbled along. They moved through her
parent’s professionally-managed front lawn, Lydia propping Allison up against
the doorpost to get her keys out.
Door open, Allison tried to walk through it under her own power. On the first
stumble Lydia muttered: “Stubborn,” and scooped her arm up to distribute her
weight between them. Allison smiled and replied “You know it,” in a whisper.
Lydia considered stopping at the sweeping white couch her parent’s interior
designer had flung into the only room wide enough for its expanse, but the
thought of cleaning Allison’s blood out of it involved more emotions and
cleaning products than she wanted to interact with today. She turned the
weaving woman towards the back hallway, leaning her away from the walls of
family frames.
“You’re soft,” Allison muttered, head nearly buried in Lydia’s shoulder and
absolutely not looking where they were going.
Lydia hipped the door open and pivoted Allison to sitting on the bed. She
flopped over, burrowing under the pillow with the top of her head. Lydia got
the family first aid kit out from under her bed and checked the bandage on
Allison’s forehead while her eyes were closed and she’d started to drowse. It
was doing fine, the right color and not too much.
Lydia wet a washcloth in the bathroom and returned, to find Allison’s arm flung
over her eyes. Not as asleep as I’d thought. She pulled the girl’s hand away,
and began to clean her off, over her nails, between her fingers. She went to
the kitchen to get a hot bowl of water and kept going, moving in slow, soft
strokes.
She only touched those parts exposed by Allison’s black school clothes, but
they were dirty enough. Allison twisted fitfully at first, but then soothed.
Lydia scooted up, settling Allison’s head in her lap, and began slowly easing
the dirt off her face, avoiding the bandage.
That done, she considered her hair. Allison was still dozing, but her hand had
crept up to hold onto Lydia’s wrist. At first, she thought it was a sign to
stop, but Allison pushed her wrist back and forth in amove, dammit motion, and
so Lydia leaned over to pull her hairbrush from her bedside table. 
She began by unraveling the braids in Allison’s hair, then brushing them off.
She crinkled her nose at the detritus that was now littering her lavender
bedspread, but figured if the worst she got out of this was a hefty load of
laundry, she wasn’t too bad off.
Braids undone, Lydia started pulled the brush through, starting with the ends
and working her way up. Gentler than she ever was for herself, she caught a
tangle that was tightening rather than subsiding and she set the brush aside to
ease it apart with her fingers. 
And so she worked, reaching everything up but the back third of Allison’s hair.
For that, she scooted herself under her, lifting her torso. She settled her
snuggled-weight against her body, letting her head tip forward just enough to
brush the back third of her hair. Allison’s breath stayed steady the entire
time, sometimes catting into her touch.
Lydia could feel the dirt pinging out of Allison’s hair and onto her top, but
kept going until the hair in her hands was smooth. Then she began to brush her
hair back from her face until she had a good handful. She wondered for a brief
moment if this was doing more to keep Allison’s from getting the rest she
needed, but when she paused the other girl head-bumped into her shoulder. With
a secret smile, Lydia made quick work of a french braid into a braid and then a
herringbone down her back.
When she finished, she tipped the other girl onto her side and lay down beside
her, letting the slow rhythm of their breathing lull them.
—
Allison woke to a warm pressure behind her back. Reaching down, she brought the
hand resting on her belly-button to her blurry eyes. Gunmetal-gray nails,
probably not Scott. She brought her hand to touch the bandage on her forehead,
then the tightness on her scalp brought her fingers to a tight french braid.
Smiling, Allison eased herself out from under Lydia’s arm, letting her keep
hogging the middle of the bed. She began to unwind the braid as she wobbled
towards the shower, smiling to the mirror at the waves it brought to her hair.
—
“That will never happen again.” Lydia’s voice was sharp in the round-backed
diner booth.

“We need a system in place for identifying hunters before they come after us.
Allison—” the woman had been watching her friend’s sharply-lined red lips but
she managed to snap her eyes up to her eyes.
“Yes?” She said, startle-response only a little too obvious.
“Can your Dad get us access to that information in a systemic way?” Lydia’s
face set as mountain snow.
“I can try—but we might want to cross-reference it with Stiles’ Dad’s access to
boarder-patrol record, so we can catch families flying in from abroad.”
“Is that common?” Stiles asked, head resting against the wall of the diner
booth, hands tapping a rhythm known only to himself on the table.
Allison was getting ready to give a lecture of hunter culture, when Lydia held
up a red-nailed hand. 
“Allison, Stiles, can you get together to form a proposal for how we’ll do
this? We’ll want a complete database of hunters rated by how likely they are to
come after us. Maybe an algorithm searching for the most commons crimes hunters
end up with on their records. The likelihood ranking could include any local
reportage that might have gotten their attention.” She turned to face Derek:
“I need you to network with other packs, to borrow protocols and assess
potential threats. How do they handle this?”
Derek closed his eyes and read aloud off the backs of his eyelids for 10
minutes. He gave them the security protocols for the half-dozen packs he and
Laura had home-stayed with after the fire. Lydia noted all of them on her white
iPhone, thumbs tapping almost too fast for Allison’s human eyes to trace.
When he finished Lydia said: “Right.” Then a long pause, while Allison waited
for her to continue. It looked like she was rereading what she wrote. Scott was
just about to break in, when Lydia snapped her eyes up, scanning the group and
saying again: “Right.”
She looked each member of the pack in the eyes, staring until each sat up
straight, bodies active and ready. Even Stiles was still.
“They all think we are prey. We have been prey.” Her hand reached under the
table to grip Allison’s wrist. “We will no longer be prey. Accept that, and we
will control what is about to happen to us.”
She clicked her phone off and stood, then dangled her hand down towards
Allison’s fingers:

“Let’s go.”
Allison stared at them, and she could feel Scott’s eyes hot on her cheek. She
let that settle in her mind, and then raised her hand to trail her fingers up
and into Lydia’s. She found an anchor in her skin and bone stronger than she’d
anticipated. She rose at a small tug, and followed as they walked out. The pack
watched and, knowing this, Allison let a small smile tug onto her lips as she
walked out.
—
Allison was at Lydia’s for a final afternoon of fight-prep. They took the time
they had to stretch, to breath, to go over their tactics and their roles. And
to weave their battle braids.
Lydia had ordered a book of images of female fighters, from lady knights, to
female olympic wrestlers, to MMA fighters and commandos. She lay on her
lavender bed, heels kicking, while she flipped through their pages.
“This one.” She said, tapping her shorter, blood-red nails on the face of a
woman with intersecting loops binding her long hair tight to her head. The
caption said she was a Celtic queen preparing for battle.

Allison kneed over on the bedspread, abandoning her nearly-honed knife set to
peer down into the book. Their hair mixed around the pages as it fell before
each of their faces. Absently, she trailed her fingers through their hair to
touch the picture.
“Ok.” She said, moving to sit behind Lydia’s back. She had a wrist-full of
strong black elastics, a pocketful of bobby pins.
She fell into an easy rhythm once she figured out the pattern, and Lydia didn't
complain at her tugging and pulling. Instead, she rehearsed her speech. When
Allison finished, Lydia stood and shook her head. When not a tendril sprung
free she began to head-bang, until Allison tumbled off the bed with laughter.
Allison’s turn now, Lydia pulled together a simpler, tight french-braid better
suited to her hair’s whisps. Lydia got the base in and then stopped. She moved
from behind the other woman, walking over to the open weapons’ case. She came
back with 2 stiletto knives, still in their sheathes, and a few thongs of
leather that had started life as arm-guards and been cannibalized. She worked
them into Allison’s hair along with the major strands of her braids, so she
could draw them from over her ears.
When she was done tugging and looping and pinning and prodding, she reached her
hand out and lead Allison to the mirror. They stood together, sunlight
streaming over their shoulders, dark and bright hair locked in and immovable.
Allison with hilts shining over her ears and Lydia with a monarch’s bearing,
they looked like queens from no fairy-tale they’d ever read.
Then the sun shifted and with the softening of the light Lydia’s hand curled
around Allison’s, and they became in their mirror just what they were: two
teenaged girls. They saw in each other’s eyes that these faces were the last
their enemies would ever see.
—
The pack met at the edge of the reserve at dusk, a mile’s rough hike from where
they’d tracked down the hunters’ RV down on disused access road. They spoke
quietly, respectful of the graveyard they were about to create. 
Scott and Derek raced out first, silently circling in opposite directions. They
had dim-screened-phones to share any changes to their plan and for the
broadcast. Lydia and Allison walked with cloth-muted boots down one path while
Stiles and Chris took another. They held hands through their matte-black
leather gloves in the wandering dark, and even their breath was in sync. 
At the first check-point they paused, listening, heard nothing. Lydia checked
her phone and then gripped Allison’s biceps. She nodded and drew her bow,
notching but not pulling back her arrow. Lydia unclasped the snaps holding in
the smoke-bomb, the sedative dart, and the taser from her belt. She nodded and
they started in.
They caught the first glimpse of the hunters’ fire moments later, and behind
that the flash of Scott’s eyes from around the corner of the trailer. Lydia
released Allison’s hand and stepped behind a largish oak tree took a deep
breath. Allison slipped in her ear plugs and Lydia began to scream.
Allison winced, but as soon as the hunters jolted from their low-chairs around
the fire she tossed in the timed flash-bang and squeezed her eyes shut,
covering them with her hands. Through her strobing pink-lids she could see the
chaotic flashes and the muffled screams of their prey. She counted to 3 and
opened her eyes, already starting to run into the overrun campsite.
There were men stumbled and crawling around her, and she took a moment to kick
one of them in the head as she vaulted up the external ladder of their camper
and took her archer’s perch. She notched an arrow and drew down, selecting the
most-aware target. A bear of a man, he was fumbling behind his back for his
sidearm. She took him in the throat.
The next was a younger man, maybe their age, maybe Derek’s. He was on his feet
but still bent over, hands on his ears, shouting something, pointing towards
Lydia’s hiding place, eyes still closed. She took him in the calf and he fell,
his screaming coming to her ears in gouts as her ears tried to adapt to Lydia’s
scream and the plugs. 
She winged another as he drew down a machete from his back-sheath and looked
murder at Scott, who was in full beta and digging his claws into the chest of a
man Chris’s age. At her shout Scott yanked his blood-soaked paw free and sliced
the tips of his claws through the attacker’s throat.
Allison surveyed the scene. 15 men had slept, napped, or kept watch here 5
minutes ago. Now, 5 were dead, 3 on the ground. She saw one start to look up,
ducked as he saw her. Chris’s throwing-knife took him in the shoulder. She lay
on her belly, bow parallel to the ground, and sank 3 arrows into the falling
man’s heart. As she was confirming her kill, she saw the smallest of the men,
maybe Chris’s age, crawling on his belly towards where Lydia’s voice was aching
and echoing over the valley.
She aimed and hit him in the ass, and as he curled around his pain she stuck
him in the eye. Derek was working his way from the outside-in, cutting throats
and confirming kills. Stiles worked the other direction, and she saw him
bending over the smaller one she’d caught in the leg, hand on his throat,
bearing down, shouting something. She saw something loom behind him and was
about to take the shape out, when it materialized into Scott, beta contortions
melting away. 
He put his hand on Stiles’ where he was choking the young man. Stiles thrust
himself away, only to watch Scott kick the coughing man onto his stomach and
kneel into his back as he twisted in pain. Scott pulled one of his arms up
behind his back and the youth on the ground kicked out but couldn’t get a
purchase. Stiles caught his other arm and together he and Scott bound them
behind his back. He was still too stunned or scared to scream anymore, but
Scott shoved a cut strip of an older dead man’s t-shirt into his mouth to
dissuade him.
Allison took a final survey. There were 12 unmoving, 3 men clearly alive and 
bound in various states of lucidity. Lydia was pacing to the edge of the
firelight, flames echoed in her eyes and the curves of her battle braids,
highlighting the blades of her cheeks.
Her eyes held not the warmth but the conviction of a forrest fire. They lifted
to Allison’s perch and connected. She gave a sharp nod and the two werewolves
each hoisted a man onto their shoulders while Chris and Stiles split the young
man between them. They began the walk back to the truck. Lydia stopped at the
edge of the firelight and yanked a piece of matte metal off—a cellphone glued
to a spike shoved deep into the tree’s bark. She let it get a good look at her
face and then turned it to survey the blood-swept dirt and bodies.
Allison secured her bow and crossed to the opposite side of the circle from
where Lydia stalked, bringing the phone to the faces of the dead. She
extricated her own phone from the tree where Scott had lodged it and began a
counter-clockwise circle, mirroring Lydia’s own progress. When they’d
documented each face, each wound, they faced each other, camera’s recording
over the top of the fire.
The flickering light left the skin of their faces black and then lit by uneven
spikes of color. Their red lips were black in the dark light, but their eyes
held fiery murder.
They took a breath, slow and loud. In sync they said:
“This, to any who threaten the Hale pack. This, to any who set unpermitted foot
into our territory. This, to any hunter, human or creature who seeks to undo
our balance.”
Another deep breath and then each teen smiled. Well, bared her teeth:
“We bring Death to any who disturb us.”
Then they shut off the livefeed.
—
The matriarchs of hunter families from around the world sat in silence as the
livestream went dark. Hours earleir, they had not expected to receive an
anonymous email linking them to a dark net video-streaming site. The first
comment appeared, from Italy:

Was that real?
No one dared answer. The next, from Saudi Arabia:
Are those girls human?
No one replied. Then:
This is the Alpha of the Hale Pack. This video was taken on my orders. The men
whose corpses lie cooling in the forrest came with the purpose of killing
myself and my pack. Proof.
The video went live again. It was the youth Stiles had been choking.
A mother in Nevada gasped low and tight, watching her son struggle against the
ripped and bloodstained t-shirt in his mouth. Her sisters  stood behind her,
gripping the knives on their belts and waiting.
An unseen hand pulled the shirt from his mouth as the shot zoomed out. He was
unbound, sitting in the back of a pick-up truck.
“Why did you come to Beacon Hills?”
The voice was young, and the video pulled back to reveal a whippy, pale
teenager with a buzz cut holding the rag of a shirt. His dark hair not nearly
as dark as his eyes or the gun in his hands.
“Fuck you.”
The captive’s face blurred, and when the video stabilized he had a cut across
his cheekbone and the gun was moving out of the camera view.
“Your mother is watching. Tell her why you came.”
The youth’s eyes widened and then steeled.
“We came to kill the Alpha. No dogs in our claimed territory.”
The dark-haired teen’s voice was as sweet as honey: “But we are not in your
territory.”
The youth froze and his head dropped. Then it yanked back up, the youth gripped
it and forced him to look into the camera, hissing in his ear:
“Is it?”
The video feed went black.
Another comment: 
This is the Hale Alpha. We will not bring war to any who offer peace. We will
not grant peace to any who offer war. 
No responses.
This is your only warning.
The mother in Nevada reached for the keyboard, then pushed her sisters’ hands
away as they tried to stop her.
I beg for my son’s life.
No response.
—
Allison arrived to find the youth still alive, mouth stuffed again with the
silencing t-shirt.
Her arm rested around Lydia’s waist, fingers working their way under her tight
t-shirt. Her skin felt like she gone into and out of a hot sponge bath. She
needed to be in her room, preferably with Lydia.
Lydia spoke to Derek: “The decision is yours, but you know my voice.”
Derek nodded. “He lives, as do the other men. They will confess to the murder
of the others. Or they die.”
Stiles nodded and closed his laptop.
“We’ll keep them at Hale House until they’ve woken and healed enough to
testify. I have enough to convince them. I’ve also privately emailed their
families with this information. There will be a prison-break—those walls are
clearly not up to code—and they will be back in Nevada by the end of next
week.”
Lydia nodded and wrapped her fingers around Allison’s.
“Get some sleep everyone. This is just the beginning.”
—
The mother in Nevada curled around her computer, gasping in relief at the proof
of life she’d just received. Rage for her dead brother burned in her heart, but
the pure pragmatism of her role as clan leader sang out: We’d attacked them
when they were weak. We were wrong. They will hold their territory.
For now.
—
Lydia laid Allison out on her bed, cream thighs spread, hair still held tight
in her braids. Sucking a long line of marks into her side, over to the crest of
her hip, fingers between her folds. There was no rush, no hunter glaring over
their shoulders. They’d left the boys behind and hadn’t left any confusion as
to what they were leaving to do.
Allison was still, her breathing controlled and sure. Lydia wanted to break
that control, wanted to shatter her calm exterior into a puddle of want and
quaking gasps. She slid a second finger through Allison’s folds just to hear
the other woman gasp in anticipation.
She leaned down, her face drawing near to Allison’s secret scents and textures,
before pressing her mouth to the place where her fingers where just brushing
Allison’s insides. Allison jerked up, her hips staying flat but torso popping
off the bed at the new sensation. Lydia kept pressing her closed mouth closer
until she could feel her lips press against her teeth. She kept on, until her
cheekbone was pressing into her Allison’s, the pinch tight.
Both were too close to the edge for any pain to feel wrong. Lydia let her
tongue out, not in the quick lick she might have, but a full-tongued slurp.
Allison’s hand was gripping her shoulder, nails digging in, and Lydia gave
mercy, increasing her pressure around her clit, pressing and rubbing in as
Allison bucked into her hand and mouth, coming with a jolt and a shock like she
was being electrocuted.
As she breathed it out, Lydia crawled up her body, disengaging Allison’s clawed
hand from her shoulder and weaving it between her own legs. She spread the
woman’s hand flat between her thighs, using her own fingers to press Allison’s
into her, rubbing until her juices covered their nails. With a hitched breath
Allison resumed control of her hand, leaning up and over, pressing her mouth
down onto Lydia’s while she pressed the tips of her fingers into her. Lydia
howled at the contact, shoulders shimmying and hips nearly pushing Allison off.
She finally threw a leg over and straddled Lydia’s knees to keep her from
bucking off. She kept the pressure on, hand moving fast and sure.
Lydia was vocal but muffling herself with a forearm. Allison could see her
taking teeth to herself and swooped down to capture those lips. Her kiss was
full of teeth, her tongue sharp and filling the other girl’s mouth. Undeniable
as an avalanche. 
Somewhere between the press of tongues and bodies and fingers Lydia started
coming, hands locking behind Allison’s back and rolling them, hands pushing,
wrestling for a grip, laughing at the struggle. They collapsed in a heap of
exhausted flesh, each breath scented by the other’s body.
Moments and minutes later, Allison felt Lydia’s fingers in her hair, picking
apart her braids. She relaxed her neck, letting it rest in the curve of Lydia’s
stomach. There were tugs and slips of feeling as she took the braids down, as
she worked out the knots and the slopes as they touched her head. She felt her
hair slip over her ear, trailing between Lydia’s thighs. She kept her head
still, eyes closed, feeling the movement and slow pace of Lydia’s fingers
taking her apart in a another way.
Eventually, her hair was hand-picked apart, tresses laying down, unstressed and
as clean as careful finger-combing could make them. Then she rolled over,
letting the silk of their falling strands cover her face. She watched as the
dark edges of her hair trailed over Lydia’s ribs and breasts. Her body arched
up towards her as her hair trailed over his nipples. Then she captured her
mouth, easing against her, sliding her thigh between Lydia’s thighs, sitting
carefully on her leg. Mouth never leaving Lydia’s, she began to work her hands
into her hair.
She worked and tugged and pulled, making space where there was none before, and
the whole time exploring Lydia’s mouth, pushing in and sweeping her tongue when
she hit a snarl, mixing up pain and pleasure in every way she could. 
It was a lot messier, but the tinges of pain just added a heat to her kisses.
She worked her fingers under the braids, loosening their grip on her skull, and
then worked a given strand out of its tri-braid. Then she unwound the remaining
two braids and moved to the next. Once she’d removed every ounce of
organization from Lydia’s hair, she lifted herself up, slowly watching her hair
mingle with Lydia’s.
“We did right tonight.” There wasn't a moment of give in her voice, not a shade
or shape of it. 
Lydia’s eyes held hers for a considering moment, and she gripped the back of
her neck, pulling her into a toothy-kiss. Then she rolled her off and stood to
get the light. The morning was almost dawning, and they needed to prepare for
their next steps.
“Yes, we did right for the pack.”
End Notes
     I started this for fem!slash February and just finished editing it. I
     usually have one or two songs that I listen to on a loop while
     writing, and they can add depth. Here they are:
     http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=NwcOhOv4fho
     http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=UkOKCWDJ4iA
     The idea of battle braids came from a lovely Legolas/Gimli fic where
     they braid each other's hair that I'm trying to find again. Also,
     because I realized I'd written 25 fics and most of them had no women.
     Which, as a feminist, is a BAD THING. More on that here: http://its-
     you-i-cant-lose.tumblr.com/post/76698810620/so-im-trying-to-decide-
     what-ill-cosplay-as-i
     Also, like the boy-boy sex I write, I have not had girl-girl sex, so,
     well, if I got anything basic wrong let me know in the sexiest terms
     possible in the comments. As a cis-girl, I think I've got it covered,
     but I'm willing to be over-ruled.
     And the thing with braids: I like taking feminine-coded behaviors and
     interests (sewing, fashion, braids) and showing how they are badass
     (it's engineering and project management, it's the history and
     sociology of how we present ourselves, it's an incredibly practical
     way to mix-and-match your presentation based on circumstances). I
     like a lot of masculine-coded things, but I wanted to take creative
     action to show that feminine-coded things can be part of being a
     strong woman. Because, we've always been strong women, others are
     just starting to notice.
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