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Sihtric shaves his head one impulsive early morning, staring at his reflection in the gleaming edge of a knife. It's getting long - untamed where it falls in ruffles around his chin, dropping into his eyes. He takes that same knife to it, scraping the hair back and watching it fall in a black puddle around his feet. It feels a little like rebirth, renewal, the farewell of winter and the coming of summer, saying goodbye to what was and welcoming what can be with open arms.
It's tricky, on his own. The first time he shaved it, untying his braids and letting the full length ghost across his back, he'd asked Sigdeflaed to aid him. He'd sat between her knees, pressing kisses to the inside of her thighs, and she used a blade to shave the hair on the sides of his head, and when he pressed her up against a wall in repayment, she'd threaded her fingers into the new, shorter length and kissed him back twice as hard.
Now, with the dawn pouring over the horizon and painting the sky in oranges and pinks, Sihtric presses the knife to the side of his head and closes his eyes. He relies on his senses to guide him. He focuses on the feeling of his blade dragging across his scalp, the pinch and pull of hair caught beneath the sharp edge and dusting his bare shoulders like snowfall. He focuses on the sound, the scrape-scrape-scrape of the knife dragging across the bristles until it meets his bare scalp. He dusts the fine hairs from his fingers, wipes his knife on his pants, and sweeps the discards out the front door.
He meets the others in the courtyard, dressed for the day, and it feels strange, the morning chill ghosting across his bare scalp. But he likes it. It makes him feel as if summer has come, as if he has shed the skin of the old Sihtric and a new man has taken his place.
Osferth, the perceptive bastard, is the first one to notice. He looks up from his morning meal and smiles at Sihtric. It takes him a single breath before his eyes widen and his smile stretches even wider, something fond softening the corners of his eyes. "Sihtric," he greets, moving aside on the bench to make room. "You've cut your hair."
"Very perceptive, Osferth," Sichtric teases, ruffling Osferth's hair as he sinks onto the bench beside him. "Indeed I have. I wanted a change."
"Your poor wife," Finan laughs. "It's bad enough that she has to wake up to your ugly face every morning, and now you've gone and done that to yourself."
It's not meant to be insulting, and Sihtric knows Finan better than to be offended. His voice is too light, his smile too genuine, his gaze too admiring as he tilts his head and cranes his neck to get a better look. His foot reaches out to knock their boots together under the table. "She didn't marry me for my looks," Sihtric tells him. "But they're certainly a reward."
Uhtred doesn't say anything because he, too, is a Dane. Born a Saxon, maybe, but he understands Sihtric's decision better than Osferth and Finan ever can. The shedding of one's skin and the donning of another. So Uhred doesn't say anything - he inclines his head and grins. That is all that Sihtric needs to know that he made the right decision.
That night, he braids the beads into his hair. He's carried them for a long time, certainly many summers. He feels his way across his scalp and plaits a thin braid along the decisive section where the bare part ends and the rest of his hair begins. He's been braiding his own hair for as long as he can remember. It is easy to fall back on that muscle memory even blind. The beads are cooling against his skin, and he likes the weight of them, the reminder of what he carries.
And it helps that Sigdeflaed is quite smitten with it.
When Sihtric braids Finan's hair, they are both exceptionally, roaringly drunk.
Finan is slumped against Sihtric's side, one hand raised to curiously brush against the beads in Sihtric's hair while the rest of him is sprawled loosely across the ale-sticky table. The alehouse is busy and loud, and yet, it feels as though it's just the two of them in their private little corner, isolated from the rest of the world.
"Have you always braided your hair?" Finan asks absentmindedly, voice muddied from all the drink. "I've only seen Danes do it."
"Our young ones don't braid their hair," Sihtric tells him. He has to fight to latch on to any of his swimming thoughts. "Once I came of age, I started braiding."
Finan hums. "You've had braids for as long as I've known you."
"Have you ever worn any?" Sihtric asks around the lip of his cup. His ale is running out, and he isn't sure if he should summon the barmaid for another one. The hour is late, and if he and Finan are occupying themselves by talking about their hair of all things, then maybe they truly have had enough. "I don't know enough about Gaels to know."
"No, never long enough for braids," Finan is looking at Sihtric, but his gaze is far away, as if he's seeing through him into something distant, not in space but in memory. "That's a lie. It was long, once. But never again."
Sihtric knows enough about his time on the slave ship with Uhtred to not ask questions. The feeling of Finan's fingers against his scalp is repetitive and soothing, and he fights to stay awake; he wonders if Finan even knows he is doing it, still caught in a memory. He kicks Finan in the shin under the table hard enough to jolt him. "Would you ever want some?"
"Want what?"
"Braids, you fool."
The laugh froths out of Finan like a mug of ale filled too high. "No, no," He says. "Braids have meaning to Danes, right? They're important to ya'. Don't think it'd be, uh, proper. Might get my head kicked in. Besides, don't got enough hair on my head for any sort of proper braid. The hair between my legs, however…"
Sihtric is a Dane. They have meaning to Sihtric. Sure, maybe Finan putting braids in his own hair would be frowned upon and would surely earn him a black eye before any sort of praise. But the braids of a Dane are supposed to mean something, to represent the beginning or ending of a journey, or a reminder or a warning, to mark a marrage or a coming of age, to claim a kill and defend your status and, in Sihtric's case, to shed the skin of the man he was and welcome the man he wants to be with a clean slate, unmarred and ready to be broken in. But in all his years, Sihtric has never heard the rule that a Dane's braids can only be in their own hair…
"Come here," He tells Finan. He takes hold of his chair and drags it towards him, and Finan almost chokes on his ale as he is jostled, the squeal of the chair legs almost loud enough to be heard over the laughter and music of the alehouse. "Sit still."
"What're you doing?" Finan demands as Sihtric combs his fingers through the back of his hair - it's longer than Sihtric has ever known it to be, soft with new growth, glossy like a horse's mane at the back of his neck. He tries to swat at Sihtric, but his movements are as clumsy as his words, the drink making his hands heavy and his tongue too big for his mouth. "Oi, cut it out."
"Quiet now," Sihtric says lightly as he portions a small section of Finan's hair, right behind his ear, and carefully weaves it into a braid. Even being so short, it's easy, the muscle memory guiding Sihtric's fingers on the right path even as he wonders how to braid a Gael's hair. Gaels, Saxons, Pagans, they're all tender-headed with hair made for simple styles and short cuts, and he doesn't know at first if Finan's hair will accept the braid, or if it will just fall out, too glossy and soft to be put in its place. But Finan sits quietly against him, letting Sihtric work, and he ties the braid off with a length of twine from his pocket without any trouble.
But it doesn't look right. No, this is a Dane's braid, one of Sihtric's braids, and he fumbles in his pocket for the beads he carries with him. They're simple things made of plain metal and a basic ripple of decoration, but Sihtric has always found them beautiful in their commonality, like a sunrise or the world moments before a thunderstorm. He pulls a few from his pocket, jiggles them around in his palm, and clumsily adorns them to Finan's braid. It is only long enough to fit three beads, but Sihtric feels a bloom of pride at the sight.
"There," he pulls away and goes back to his ale as if nothing has happened. Finan takes a moment before he shakes himself and reaches back to feel for it. "What do you think? Is it what you hoped for?"
"I know I'm drunk, but I don't think I ever hoped for that," Finan grumbles, but Sihtric can see the side of his face and the smile tugging at the corners of his lips as his fingers dance across the three beads there. "But aye. It can stay."
It's the closest Finan will ever get to saying thank you, Sihtric. I like it, even while drunk. Sihtric hides his smile by downing the dregs of his ale. "You know, some Dane families all wear the same beads," he tells him. "It's a way of calming each other. It's like tattoos, or family crests. It says, 'we are all of the same'. It is something that marks us as belonging to the same brood."
"Huh," Finan says, his hands still fiddling with the beads. "A claim, eh?"
They don't say anything else about it. If Finan feels some type of way about being 'claimed', he doesn't mention it. He finishes his ale, gets lost in his thoughts, and keeps his fingers on the braid and the beads for the rest of the evening.
When Sihtric braids Uhtred's hair, it is entirely different, on a hill overlooking the rising sun and the air crisp where it sits in their lungs.
Uhtred is half-naked, his drawers hanging low around his hips and his tunic slung across his shoulder. He has just bathed in the stream that runs around their camp, and his bare skin is still slick with its water, and in the early morning light, he re-braids his hair.
Somewhere behind them, at the campsite nestled between the trees, Osferth and Finan slowly wake. Sihtric can hear them - Finan complaining about the cold and the early hour and his hunger, Osferth replying quietly in sleepy tones, barely awake and yet coherent enough to put up with Finan's chaos so early in the morning. Sihtric pays them no mind as he sinks down beside Uhtred with a sigh. The quiet is nice.
He's content to watch Uhtred work, his fingers dancing effortlessly across the strands of his own hair, head tilted to the side to watch the rising sun. When Uhtred speaks, it is quiet, barely loud enough to break the stillness of the morning. "I see Finan has braids in his hair," he says. "And, if I am not mistaken, those are your beads he wears?"
"He was curious," Sihtric tells him. "I didn't see the harm."
"No harm," Uhtred assures, and Sihtric feels himself relax, releasing a tension he hadn't known he was holding. "Does he know what it means?"
"I told him. We were pretty drunk, though. I don't know how much he understood," Sihtric smirks. Uhtred huffs a laugh at the thought, expression fond. He watches as Uhtred braids the layers on the top, ties it back into a knot at the back of his skull. Behind them, Osferth squawks and Finan breaks out into loud, uncontrollable laughter. "He hasn't taken it out, though. I think he understands enough."
It's common for Dane families to wear a set of matching beads, in their hair, in their beards, in their clothing. Not Sihtric; he never had any family to share them with, nobody he thought was worthy. But he gains a heady sense of satisfaction at seeing that braid at the back of Finan's hair, the beads glinting in the light whenever he turns his head. He's always thought that he'd never share them - now he has brothers, and a wife, and someday hopefully a child. He has more family now than he's ever had in his entire life. It fills him with a perverse amount of joy to know that no matter where they go, they will be known as the same.
Uhtred has left some of his hair loose from his delicate work, and Sihtric frowns at it - that's unusual for him. "Do you have any beads left?"
"Yes," Sihtric doesn't have to check. "What for?"
"You are going to braid Finan's hair and not mine?" Uhtred's tone is cutting, but his expression is fond, teasing in the tilt of his lips, the crinkle around his eyes. "At least I'm a Dane. You insult me."
"Didn't think you'd want any, Lord," Sihtric admits. It's all he can do to bully down the flare of delight that threatens to drown him, strangling it and shoving it back behind his ribcage. "You don't tend to wear them."
"These are different," Uthred says. "These are yours."
Sihtric weaves two braids into Uhtred's hair, right up against his hairline, falling behind the same ear that Finan's sit. On the end of each braid he attaches a bead, and he watches it glint in the rising sun. He stares at it for a moment - now, the three of them are bound with something more than blood and oath and faith; in metal, in hair, in family ties.
They are all men who came from somewhere as someone and want to shed the skin of who they were on the journey of where they're going. It's a Ragnarock for the soul.
"That's better," Uhtred says. He climbs to his feet, offers a hand, and heaves Sihtric up. "We'd better get back. We wouldn't want to leave our poor Baby Monk to fend for himself while Finan seems set to begin the day with bedlam."
"You do not mind?" Sihtric heades. He wants to be sure. He does not want these beads - his beads, their beads - to be something that he will regret once given more thought. "It does not feel like you are being… owned?"
Uhtred throws his arm around Sihtric's shoulders, his fingers sinking into the meat there, almost to the point of pain. He laughs, a ghost of breath across his cheek. "Owned? Never again," he says. "But claimed? By you, my brother? I welcome it."
Well, Uhtred understands the most. Unlike Osferth, so open-minded and curious, and Finan, ready and willing for anything and everything, Uhtred actually understands the meaning of the braids, of the beads, knows the words that Sihtric cannot find the gall to voice, knows the meanings that Sihtric doesn't possess the courage to admit.
They return to camp, swaying against each other, and turn the corner just as Osferth, still in his small clothes, pours his waterskein over Finan's head where he works to get the morning meal started. The sound Finan makes as the cold water hits him and drips down his back is loud enough to wake all the critters in the forest for miles.
Unlike the other two, Sihtric does not braid Osferth's hair.
They are all lounging together at the top of a hill, surrounded by tall grasses for the horses to graze on, filled with these pretty little flowers that dot the landscape, these little flecks of colour that break up the endless green and brown.
Osferth is walking in a slow, meandering lap around where the rest of them lie together under the sun, weaving the stems of the cute little flowers into a laurel. He notices the beads in Finan's hair when he moves, shifting so the sun bouncing off them catches his eye, and he freezes, blinks, and smiles, slow and shy. "You're wearing Sihtric's hair beads," he says. He turns to Sihtric to ask him, and sees the same beads in Uhtred's hair, sitting right behind his ear. "So are you!"
"About time, Baby Monk," Finan says. "You catch on slow."
"Why?" Osferth asks, expertly ignoring Finan with the ease of someone who has been doing it for many years.
Uhtred tilts his head back and squints up at him. "It's a Dane thing."
"Oh," Oserth says, satisfied, before he narrows his eyes and points a finger at Finan and asks, "Then why's Finan wearing them? Last I checked, he wasn't a Dane, unless things have changed and you've forgotten to tell me."
"That was one time!" Uhtred protests.
It is Sihtric who takes pity on their monk, who tugs on the end of his robes as he walks past to halt him. "Oftentimes, Danes use beads to represent members of a family. With these beads, I claim them as my kin."
Understanding makes Osferth look younger as realisation sets in. "I see," He says. His hands have been working tirelessly on his laurel as he works, and now he sets the completed thing down on Sihtric's head where it sits perfectly above his ears, a crown made of yellow daffodils and white daisies. "I didn't know that about Danes. I thought the beads were just for decoration."
"Aye, maybe if you're a good boy, Osferth, Sihtric might give you some," Finan winks. "Stick a few braids on that head of yours."
"I don't think I have enough length for braids," Osferth flops down beside Finan with a sigh. Sihtric cannot say, but maybe, just maybe, he sounds a little wistful. Uthred is looking now too, glancing up from where he is cleaning his sword to watch Osferth. "Holy men keep their hair short."
"You could always grow it out," Uhtred suggests lightly. "You're of age. You've fought in the shield wall. You've killed."
"And you're not exactly a holy man anymore, are you?" Finan adds. They're all watching Osferth, now. For a man who was raised his entire life in the rigid walls of the church, the most devout of Christians, it is always fascinating to watch Osferth entertain other prospects. Not as though anyone expects him to turn his back on his God, but he counts Danes and Pagans and Saxons and Gaels as his family - something from somewhere is bound to sink its claws into him every now and then. "You could do whatever the hell you wanted. Not like anyone would stop you."
Osferth's smile is sad. "I will always be a holy man, Finan."
It's true. Unlike Finan's hair, Osferth's is much too short to form any sort of braids, especially nothing long enough for one of Sihtric's beads. Just from looking, he thinks that Osferth might have even more delicate hair than Finan, might be even more tender-headed than Gaels, and the last thing he wants to do is hurt him for something that should be wonderful. He won't even try it.
But the thought makes him sad, the idea that Uhtred and Finan will have this little piece of Sihtric but Osferth won't. He's just as much his family as the others are, and nobody will ever know it, when he wants to scream it from the tallest hill and announce it in every town they ride through - behold, my family, the toughest sons of bitches you ever did see, a Lord and an Irishman and a warrior monk, but bastards, the lot of them.
When he riffles through the belongings that hang off the side of his horse, his hand falls into the pocket that holds his beads. He has four of them left. He searches a little further and comes up with a few thin strips of leather, off-cuts left over from repairing the threading on the scabbard that hangs from his hip a few days ago, but durable, the kind of thing that he knows will last a long while.
He glances back over to look at Osferth, lying on his back in the grass with his eyes closed and his hand crossed behind his head. The laurel of daisies and daffodils slides from its precarious balance at his temple to drift in front of his eyes, the petals brushing against his nose, Osferth obscured by his creation.
Sihtric sits on his butt in the grass with the beads in one hand and the leather in the other. He can feel Finan and Uhtred watching him, silent as the night, but he pays them no mind as he plaids the strips of leather into a braid, tight and durable, simple unless you know how to look, with the four beads interspaced throughout. The beads are cool against his palms, and seeing them find a new home on the leather braid feels a little like letting go and a lot like the start of something new, as if these beads always belonged here and he is simply the last to know.
When he's satisfied, he ties off the end and holds it up to the light. The beads glint against the sun and the leather is durable, the kind of thing that Sihtric knows from experience will last a good long while. Uhtred and Finan watch on, appreciative, smiling. Finan whistles, low and slow, and it's the sound that jerks Osferth out of his doze, huffing a garbled sound and dragging a hand down his face.
"Wake up now, Baby Monk," Uhtred says, and there's so much pride in his voice that Sihtric could drown in it. He could die right now with the knowledge that his Lord is proud of him, that he has done something to make it so. "I think our dear Sihtric has something for you."
Osferth is barely sitting up before Sihtric throws the braid at him. It hits him square in the forehead, and while he's busy reeling back, it slides down his face, bounces off his nose, and lands in his lap. "What?" He asks, screwing up his face as he picks it up and holds it aloft. "What is this?"
"Can't have you going without," Sihtric says. "How else are people going to know that you are one of us?"
"We could always tell them," Finan adds. "But where's the fun in that?"
"Nobody would believe us anyway," Uhtred's smile is quiet, gentle, but the kind that lights up his whole face, makes him look younger, like for a moment his burden has been lifted from his shoulders. "A monk, leaving his congregation to be a warrior for Uhtred of Bebbanburg? They will never believe you."
But Sihtric doubts that Osferth is even listening. He's turning the braid over in his hands, running his fingers over the weaving, fiddling with the beads, his head downturned so they can't see the way his jaw wobbles and his lips tremble, so overjoyed that it has nowhere to go but out. He does him the honour of not mentioning it, though, and he feels his own heart soar as Osferth wastes no time in tying it to his belt, looping it around once, twice, three times. It won't be going everywhere. It will bounce against his thigh with every step, a constant, ever-present reminder.
"Thank you, Sihtric," He utters quietly, broken up by barely contained emotion. He clears his throat before he continues, sounding moderately steadier. "I don't know what to say."
"Nothing," Sihtric tells him, and means it. "But don't forget, Baby Monk - we all belong to each other. We are bonded, now. Claimed."
"Aye," Finan says quietly. "There are worse things to be and worse people to be them for."
Uhtred doesn't say anything, but Sihtric knows he believes the same.
Whenever he sees the braids and the beads shining in their hair, on their waist, Sihtric feels such a deep sense of belonging, of contentment, of pure and undulated joy, that he fears it will rise up and consume him. He sees them during battle, during long rides, at the alehouse, and he feels himself rally every time. Once he was a bastard with nothing and nobody to his name, and now he belongs to so much more than he ever thought possible.
A bastard, bonded through braids and beads, with brothers who mean the world to him. Sihtric can't ask for anything more.