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Tending to hair is a kind of a foreplay, Ed has always thought. He’s been a man with long hair for longer than he’s been a man without it, and has learned some things during that time. Tracked patterns like he tracks clouds. Inconsequential things, at a glance. Things which only bloomed with meaning when it was their time.
The pull at the roots when a comb catches in a tangle; the tug tug tug at tender scalp as the knot is carefully worked out and freed. The release of the comb’s teeth as it skates through then, always a pleasurable sort of anticipation to the sensation. Waiting for the next knot to pull it up short, to spark pain at the root, the gentle tug back of his head with the motion. Sat cross-legged between a man’s knees with his hair entrusted to their hands, Ed finds himself doll-like, and pliant. In his anxious dreams, his hair falls out readily, clump by silvery clump. By daylight, he oils it, inspects his hairline, bares teeth at Izzy whenever he dares suggest vanity.
Ed’s mother always told him he was too tender-headed. As a child he wore his hair cropped close to his skull out of ease. He liked to gather up the black clumps of shorn hair that littered the floor after a haircut, and gather it into a soft feathery clump between his palms. To press his nose close to it; short strands tickling at his nostrils. It always smelled like something intimate and familiar; his own pillow, the inside of his hat, the white soap his mother scrubbed him head to toe with. Warm and human. After he killed his father, he stopped cutting his hair. Men called him beautiful. Women began to glitter with envy. It made him hot and itchy on summer nights.
Stede is very gentle with him. The most gentle out of all the men who’ve combed and washed and pulled and knotted their fists in Ed’s hair. If Ed’s learned anything from his long life, it’s that some men seek to hurt what they find beautiful; stupefied by the emotion, laid bare by it. Others only seek to nurture it.
“Come closer,” Stede says, and, “Lean back.” A sluice of hot water, the scent of lavender soap a far cry from the harsh white bars of Ed’s childhood. The bathroom is steamy and very close; the sensation of being up to his chest in water while in the middle of the sea a strange one. The bathwater is dotted with foamy islands of soap. Ed casts a hand through them. Dutifully tips his head back and closes his eyes when Stede urges him, murmuring, “There we go,” as his hand cups at Ed’s hairline, keeping the soap from his eyes.
When Ed was twenty, his hair had caught alight. The smell of it bitter in the air. Izzy had dumped a bucket of putrid bilge water over his head and saved Ed from being burned. But nobody’s ever covered his eyes from soap before.
“Lovely,” Stede says, when Ed’s hair rinses out dark and clean; heavy and long with the weight of the water. Then he shuffles away; out of the damp bathroom, away into the dark slice of bedroom that Ed can see through the door. Shadowy shapes of furniture, the orange glow of the fire skating off table legs and polished metal. Ed wrings out his hair. Steps out of the tub to trace a sea snake on the steamed-up mirror. Sometimes the air feels so thick and wet in here that Ed feels like he’s underwater. Skin tacky with it. He likes it in the same way he knows any amphibious creature would.
Stede flits back in; quiet without his shoes. Feet pale and bare, the turn of his ankle elegant. In his hand, the same oil he rubs onto Ed’s nipples, his cock, his ass. A slow-moving amber liquid that smells like nothing at all. He smiles at Ed’s drawing on the misty mirror. The glass bottle of oil is starting to fog with the heat of the room.
“You must have done your tattoos yourself.”
Ed peers at him from under his brow, probing for anything teasing there in Stede’s expression. “I did,” he says, when he sees none. He passes a hand over his jaw; the short stubble he finds there always a shock to a hand that expects a mass of hair. “Some of ‘em.”
“The best ones, I’m sure,” Stede says, and his eyes crinkle. Ed blinks at him, feeling very bare in a way that has nothing to do with his nudity, with his dripping, carefully washed hair. Gesturing to a stool, Stede adds, “Come, sit.”
Ed sits. Cups a hand over the soft shape of his cock when he smells the non-smell of the oil, and loses himself to the pull and tug of fingers through his hair. That pleasant flush of pain when Stede finds a knot and eases it out by hand. Somewhere, water drips. A quiet, repetitive sound. Ed closes his eyes. Leans into Stede’s touch.
Haircare is to foreplay what animosity is to sex. A sweet precursor. Stede oils Ed’s hair and then braids it; weaves the thick, wet strands together in a long rope. Then he lays him out in bed and fingers and toys with him until he comes; his braid heavy, hanging over his shoulder and making marks on the sheets just as he does. Stede touches him gently through it all. Never once uses Ed’s braid as an anchor, not even when he slips inside of where Ed is open and wet from his fingers, his tongue, that bottle of oil. All he does is nose at Ed’s nape, panting breathy praise out against the skin there as the sea air cools the sweat on their skin.
Afterwards, Ed rolls a cigarette on the windowsill. Smokes it while Stede unties his hair and braids it again; ashing between his knees as he lets his head roll on his shoulders. He feels pleasantly flayed open. Sore in all the best ways. Scalp, body, heart. Then Stede touches his shoulder. Smiling, Ed turns his face up to be kissed.
The next morning sees his hair dried wavy. The salt wind takes it, tangles it. Ed makes no move to tame it.