Pairing: Caranthir/his wife (my OC Tuilindien)
Wordcount: ~1,350 words
Keywords: romance, mild sexual content, hair kink
Notes: A sequel to my long fic Your spirit calling out to mine but you don't have to have read that to read this.
I had a lot of fun writing this self-indulgent little fic.
Fascination
It is no grander occasion than a dinner at a friend's house that they are getting ready for, but Carnistir insists on doing her hair up in an intricate arrangement. Tuilindien lets him even though there really isn't time –they both got home late to change for dinner. She stayed too late at the palace library, and his negotiations with a merchant he has been dealing with on his father's behalf ran long.
Carnistir always wants to make her hair as beautiful as possible, whatever the occasion. Since his tastes run to the ornate and intricate in this matter, her hair these days is more styled at a family dinner than it was on their wedding day when she wore it down, tumbling freely down her back with only flowers woven into it by her mother. His own hair Carnistir cuts shorter as soon as it covers his shoulder blades, and when it is grown past his shoulders he always pulls into a careless ponytail and fastens it with a cord. He doesn't care enough to either do more himself or to allow her to spend any time on his hair.
And Tuilindien would rather let him spend the time tending to her hair anyway because he enjoys it so much. She loves looking in the mirror to see him behind her with a look of fascination and concentration on his face as he dextrously entwines her golden curls into complicated braids and designs he comes up with as he goes along. He threads in little gems, beads and rings of precious metals or ribbons of bright silk, crowning the look with delicate combs or a circlet.
There is an ever-growing collection of all of these on her dressing-table, and if she didn't know how clever he was with money and how prosperous they were to begin with, she would worry that his preoccupation with decorating her hair is making a dent in their finances.
In spite of the large collection of ornaments Carnistir never uses too many at once: his taste is impeccable and his creations never cross the line into gaudy unlike some others'.
Sometimes he uses flowers because he knows that she likes them, although it vexes him that he cannot enchant them to stay unwilted. Tuilindien does it herself like her mother taught her to, and doesn't mind having to do it.
Tuilindien also lets her husband do with her hair as he wishes because she loves it so much, his devoted countenance and his wonderful touch alike. Sometimes he pulls at a strand a little too tightly for comfort or accidentally jabs at her scalp with a sharp hairpin, but most of the time his large, strong fingers are gentle and skilful. Luxuriating in the touch, she often closes her eyes and feels all the tension in her body melt away as she relaxes to the point of limpness.
But keeping her eyes open is a good option too because then she can watch him in the mirror, his clever fingers moving swiftly and his beloved face simultaneously relaxed, happy and furiously focused. He has a facet to his generally impatient personality that can concentrate in silence for a long time on the smallest detail when he is truly absorbed in his task, and this side of him manifests itself when he brushes and styles her hair.
As she sits here now, both of enjoying themselves and each other, she slips quietly into a memory.
Carnistir's tending to her hair became a ritual of theirs from the very first time they went anywhere together as a married couple, which happened to be the day after their wedding and their destination was simply lunch in their own dining room.
Breakfast they had skipped; they'd woken up in the garden pavilion where they had had each other their wedding night, too impatient to go inside. They did make it to their bed in the early morning hours, sneaking back into the house in silver light, but once they made their way there different appetites had again manifested themselves and eating had been forgotten.
By the time they'd recovered from that second pleasure, it was lunchtime and they decided that they should put in an appearance in the dining room lest their servants get too much reason to make fun of them. Dressing took a long time since they would rather have been undressing each other again, but eventually they were decent and Tuilindien picked up her hairbrush to hastily start brushing her hair. After the night and morning they'd had it was a thorough mess from head to hips, though Carnistir had tenderly untangled it with his fingers at moments of afterglow.
He'd stepped behind her where she stood in front of the dressing-table and the tall three-panel mirror. For a moment he just watched as she brushed her hair, his gaze flickering between her reflection and the real her, and she enjoyed his gaze on her as she had learned to. Then he asked, his voice low, 'May I?' and held his hand out for the hairbrush.
A little surprised even after his frequent previous attention to her hair, but pleased, Tuilindien handed him the brush and sat down on the stool before the mirror. He surprised her by disentangling and brushing the long curly mess with more gentleness and patience than she had allowed herself. It also felt far more wonderful than she could have imagined – and with his touch and his undivided attention alike on her, it felt just as intimate as what they had had together on the silk sheets, and the cushions of the garden pavilion.
At one point Tuilindien realised she had just closed her eyes and moaned out loud, and, embarrassed, she opened her eyes quickly to see in the mirror what his response to her reaction was. Carnistir met her gaze in the mirror and she could see the dark flames lapping in his eyes that had already become familiar to her, the particular kind of flame that he only had for her. But then, instead of taking her back to bed as she fully expected him to do after that look, he only bent his head and kissed the top of hers, then returned to his task.
It was only when he had got rid of every snarl and tangle and her hair was again a wide river of gold down her back that he threw her onto the bed and made her his own again. Her hair twisted around his fingers almost to the verge of pain, he made her moan out her pleasure.
Remembering that first morning with a secret little smile, Tuilindien now looks at her husband of twenty weeks with love and desire. She would quite like to tell him to pause at his task and touch her elsewhere besides her hair, and to let her touch him. But there is no time, they are already late for dinner, so she stays still and lets him finish the unnecessarily complicated hairstyle, reminiscing that the first gift he ever gave her was a pair of ornamental hair combs, the gift that started their courting.
She knows that later tonight when they have returned from dinner and after Carnistir has unravelled the elaborate array of braids and ornaments, he will stare at the freely flowing golden locks for a moment, and perhaps he will have the patience tonight to brush them for a long time and bury his face in them and pet them, running his fingers through and admiring the colour like the light of Laurelin, or perhaps he won't.
Sooner or later, his patience will snap and he will take her with wild joy, and then after they will fall asleep in a tangle of limbs and hair, black and gold, his face always against her skin or in her hair.
Tuilindien smiles at her husband's reflection in mirror in happy expectation of the night.
'I adore you', she tells him.
His eyes meet hers before he returns to his work, and he kisses his hair. 'And I you.'
A/N: I am not even sorry that I wrote Caranthir a fascination with Tuilindien's hair that merrily gallops over the line to fetish territory. After all, all of Tolkien's elves valued lovely hair, and the Noldor thought the golden hair of the Vanyar beautiful (HoME X, HoME XII respectively). So this is just an extrapolation from that, right? In any case, Tuilindien is just as into it, so it's a happy thing for them.