"Mm."  Hopefully-probably that conveyed an appropriate level of 'that is nice you can definitely keep doing that'.

It seems so!  Slightly less tentative backrubs ensue.

Well, he'll just have to reciprocate, then, won't he.

This gets him a slightly lean-ier Hana.

Over the course of several moments, she trends upwards and eventually starts playing with the bottom of his hair.

A slightly lean-ier Hana is just what he wanted!  Or well not that specifically, but - definitely a desirable outcome, even if he hadn't been aiming for that in particular.

The bottom of Hana's hair is substantially lower than his own!  (He has a brief pang of jealousy.  It's not particularly salient, but it's definitely there for a moment.)  He turns his hand into a very wide comb of sorts and starts passing it through the tips of her hair, making sure to press gently on her back as well and being very careful not to pull at all.

Hana continues playing with his hair, and gradually works her way upward.

At the back of his head, she - hits upon something.

She gives a gently questioning "Mm?"

Oh shit the barrette.  Don't panic don't panic don't panic -

"Oh that?  It's just a - " pick a less girly word than 'barrette' " - hair clip.  Which I have."

She pulls back from the hug to look at him.

"For reasons."

Casually: "What are your pronouns, Ariel?"

"Uh," he she they he they she he they say.

"She/her."

Her expression is - not surprised, particularly, but also not the face of someone who knows what the right response to that is supposed to be.

"Congratulations?"  She immediately buries her face in one of her hands.  "Or - oh, that's probably not - I'm sorry . . .  Thank you?  For telling me?"

Conveniently for Hana, Ariel's internal monologue is entirely too occupied with aaaaaaaaaaaaaaas and oh shits to particularly care about, or even really notice, her awkward reaction.

"You're welcome.  I guess."

She closes the distance on the hug again.

Oh.  That's . . . surprising enough that it jars them out of their internal screaming for a second, and then once it's interrupted there doesn't seem to be much point in bringing it back.  This is fine, probably.

They hug back again.

She cards her fingers through their hair for several moments, avoiding the clip.

Eventually: "Do you want me to take that out?  Not - um.  Just, sometimes, when I have things in my hair, I want them out, if it's going to be touched.

"That's fine."

" - Are you sure?  You don't have to . . ."

"No, it's fine; I just needed a second to think about it."

"If you say so."

She unclips it from the back of their head and holds it out behind them to take a better look.

"It's pretty," she evaluates.  And, after a moment's thought, she once again unfolds herself from the hug, brushes his bangs to one side, and reclips the barrette onto them, relatively out of the way.

Hugs resume and a full-on scalp massage commences.

It's good that hugs resume (for more than the obvious reason) and also that their blush takes several seconds to fully set in.  (She was touching their face.  What.)

After a few seconds their brain repairs itself enough to figure it's probably polite to mirror the scalp massage.

It doesn't stay mirroring for very long, because from the moment they start, Hana's hand starts to slow, and then it slips down out of their hair, very gradually, and trails down their back until it falls to rest on the seat of the couch.  And that's just her hand; the rest of her is not particularly capable of supporting itself either.  Her head sinks into their shoulder and her whole body just sort of melts.

They pause the scritches long enough to ask, "Are you - or, is this okay?"

The noise she makes is somewhat hard to describe, but definitely complain-y, possibly even veering into whiny, and is pretty clearly about the fact that Ari stopped rather than her disliking the action.

She does not bother to take her face out of their shoulder for it.