When they first started studying together, Eva quickly realised that Alyssa needed something to fiddle with in order to focus. There was something about who she was that made her completely unable to just sit still. Eva, of course, could not stand this and immediately focused her attention on finding something quiet for Alyssa to play with so that they could study in peace.
From a young age, Eva’s mother would braid her hair whilst she did her homework, an activity that was mutually de-stressing from a long, focused day at their dentistry office and private school, respectively. Remembering this and knowing that she’d still be able to focus, she gave Alyssa permission to sit behind her and play with her hair whilst they read together, to help her concentrate.
This went down like a charm! They would sit together and study in their shared dorm room. Eva sometimes liked to lie down on her front on the carpet with her copy of SICP in front of her to work, so Alyssa would sit down beside her and run her fingers through her hair every day. This arrangement also had the unintended side effect of Alyssa learning new and interesting ways to tie up her own hair after years of mostly letting it flow down her back and get knotted throughout the day.
She tried every new hairstyle she could think of on Eva -- braids, ponytails, pigtails, space buns: if you can think of it, they had discovered it together. Most of them ended up looking horrible, but that was more because of Eva’s sensibilities rather than Alyssa’s craftsmanship, which ended up being quite impressive after a while; she was always focused and gentle. This settled them into a routine for a while, and it would mean Alyssa would often blast through her work with a tight focus in order to finish quickly and have both hands free to play with Eva’s hair, and even led to her grades improving.
That is, until exam season. Eva tried and tried to focus but the anxiety was killing her and she just couldn’t manage on her own. Something was just fundamentally wrong, and she wasn’t able to work with the focus she did in the months before and she couldn’t understand why.
It hit her like a tonne of bricks one day: around this time of the year, she would always be tugging at her own hair to destress, but now she couldn’t: Alyssa was doing that instead. Not wanting to tell Alyssa and risk her feeling bad, Eva secretly tried any alternative she could think of: chewing gum, biting the ends of pens and pencils but nothing worked. She was stumped.
Alyssa wasn’t always the most perceptive girl when it came to other people’s emotions, but it was hard not to notice when Eva was stressed about something, so she asked her what was bothering her when they were studying (or failing to) one day. Eva immediately came clean about how she was no longer able to focus but she didn’t want to risk Alyssa’s ability to study, especially at exam season, and that they had become so synchronized to each other’s study schedules that working privately was no longer an option -- not that either girl wanted to.
“I have an idea,” Alyssa gently told Eva after thinking for a moment. She had them switch places, Alyssa lying down to work on the ground, with Eva sat cross-legged next to her. Eva didn’t understand how this would help either of them at all, and so she sighed in frustration and tried to attack that paragraph she was stuck on for the fiftieth time.
But just like that, Eva realised she was suddenly able to work again. In fact, she had been for an entire hour! She blasted through the whole chapter, copied all her notes up and down and across, learned and relearned her abstractions and compositions -- she worked more consistently than she ever had before. It wasn’t until she was finished that she realised how: she had been running her free hand through Alyssa’s silky hair the whole time without even noticing. She looked down at her. Alyssa was still working; it seemed as if the sensation of having Eva’s fingers drift through her hair had been enough to placate her fidgets as well. Eva smiled to herself, and continued to play with Alyssa’s hair long after they both finished studying.
From then on, neither of them had any problems studying ever again.
**
braiding credit: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22191877