#i gave them all names and classes weekssss ago. i'll post about them one day

[beedreamscape]

(Third instalment of me being obsessed with hair tending as a form of affection, but also background for some personal lore/fanon exploration. Laerryn/Loquatius. Pre-marriage. 2.4k words)

"Would you like some help, dear?"

Loquatius' not wearing shoes, rarely does at home despite the nice slippers Nydas gifted him, which is why she doesn't hear as he walks into the room.

Laerryn blinks and takes a moment to process his words, hair brush held still mid-pull. Yes, she did spend the night tangled in his arms and legs, yes, she tasted him, but the sight of him --- especially now with his honey-gold velvet robe falling over one shoulder, teacups on a silver tray, and hair ungroomed falling over his forehead --- never fails to leave her mesmerized.

He places the tray on the still messy bed and steps behind her where she sits before her vanity, placing one of the teacups before her amongst the mess of beauty products and jewelry, patting down the voluminous tangled mess the bed made of her hair. Well, the bed and Loquatius.

She lowers her hand from her hair with a half puff half chuckle. "What do you know about braiding?"

He gently takes the brush from her hand with a toothy smile. "I've been every type of person, you really think I didn't teach myself a few braiding techniques?"

She adjusts her posture to get more comfortable, knees to her chest. "Doesn't mean you know mine."

"I've looked at you enough hours to have it figured out. It'll kill the curls if I brush through, is that what you were planning?"

"Yes, I'll wash my hair tonight, don't worry. I'm just trying to get it controlled for work."

He acknowledges her words with a nod and so begins brushing, careful and dextrously enough to not pull much on her scalp without sacrificing speed, working his way up from her tips.

She looks at his focused face through the mirror, the tip of his silvery grey tongue poking from between his lips. "Tell me something, and don't lie."

He smiles. "It's not like I could."

"Have you turned into me before?"

The answer is instantaneous and his tone without shame. "Of course I have."

"Quay!" She laughs, scratching her knees.

"I have turned into you a few times before but only because I missed you and I wanted to bring you to memory, I didn't do anything inappropriate. I do it to every relevant person I meet, I keep an archive in case of... necessity, both mental and on paper."

It was almost out of necessity, he thinks. If she were ever to leave his sights forever, if she ever told him she didn't want to see him ever again, he couldn't possibly stand to live a life where he couldn't see her.

It took him some time until he was able to piece her together accurately, it started the first time she smiled at him and it became complete the fourth or fifth time they slept together completely naked, the night when neither of them slept and he spent the intervals between fucking, admiring her as she laid spent on the bed.

"What would you need to turn into me for?"

"No idea but I'm always prepared." He stops, sighs, and places deliberate kisses from the tip of her ear inwards. "You are an exceptionally beautiful woman," he whispers... in her voice.

She jumps in her seat. "What the actual fuck!? That's uncanny!" And he laughs back with his voice which, in the end, mingles with her laughter. "I hate that that turned me on a little."

He nuzzles behind her ear. "We can have a little fun someday."

Her eyes are wide as her head swings to look at him. "Seriously?"

"Yes." And pulls back, straightening up.

She laughs even louder but Laerryn, who is very far from being a shy person, can't help hiding her heated cheeks behind her hands.

"I love you, Loquatius."

And he can't gauge the weight she places in her words but it's irrelevant to his heartbeat that skyrockets in a blink of an eye or his face that glows like a nightlight which she wouldn't have noticed so fast had he not fallen silent so suddenly.

A sigh falls from her lips. This man, who spent that previous and several other nights loving her down to the bone, blushes at the playful confession of her affection and Laerryn can't help the surge of butterflies just below her lungs.

"Quay," she calls to get him to look at her. There's a hit of wicked satisfaction in her smile as their eyes meet. "I mean it."

He licks his lips before looking back at the work at hand. "I know."

She reaches back and nips his hip. "I love you, silly goose."

He both winces and laughs. "Oh, my... Thanks, that woke me up. Don't say that ever again."

She raises a finger. "Then don't force me to say it!"

He grabs her shoulder and sets her straight. "Stop moving or I'll take longer!"

It's hard to sit still while pondering the possibility and technicalities of banging him as herself --- How would he taste and smell then? How would he moan? It'd have the potential of being awkward, but she's just the right amount of narcissistic to make it work.

"Am I an easy or hard person to turn into?"

"Well, no shift is technically hard unless the person has too many little details, scars, beauty marks, facial hair distribution, or hair that is... something, or tattoos, I can never reproduce those perfectly."

He considers for a second, stressing on a specially tangled section.

"No, I lied, any species too far-fetched is a struggle. Eisfuura? Dragonborns? There's a pattern, a precision to the texture and disposition of feathers... As for humanoid standards, you're easy because I'm familiar with every inch of you."

She regards the concept, tracing her jawline while observing her reflection in the mirror. Of all her face, she's particularly fond of her eyes, deep set, sharp edges, and golden irises, most times she puts her makeup to work on accentuating them.

She knows she's good-looking given the technicalities of symmetry and convention, but when she stops now, thinking of herself through the lens of Loquatius' eyes, it's as if she never really stopped to look at herself too deeply. He can be whoever he wants, she'll have to sit with this face, mostly unchanged, for dozens maybe hundreds of years to come.

And yet he chooses her, solely her, again and again.

He gathers her hair in a bunch having finished untangling it and takes a deep breath before tackling the mess of her vanity in search of clips and a hair band.

"How do your siblings look like?" He asks in a fit of curiosity and his inability to remain silent.

She sighs and tries bringing them to memory. She doesn't think of her family very frequently and definitely doesn't see them as often as she did around thirty years ago which wasn't that often even then. She has all fond emotions towards them and a collection of good memories, but she was the one who flew the furthest away from the nest. They all stayed back in Domunas while she followed her place of birth and destined home as it traverses the world.

She never called any aspect of her life a product of destiny.

Then she met Loquatius.

But now she thinks of them as if looking through a photo. Through, not at, because within the second all pieces would move and change and shift.

"We look quite a bit different, I'd say. Izar looks like my mom, his skin is imperceptibly lighter than mine but his hair curls more. Golden eyes, big mouth, not just lips. About the same height as me. He's often frowning for some reason but I often heard how people thought him handsome."

He starts braiding, first, the side braids she likes to sport extended to the back of her head, converging to a point.

"He's the one that's married, right?"

"Ten years now. She's a sorcerer."

He almost laughs at her tone of poorly concealed disdain. "Nieces and nephews?"

"Not that I know of."

"Aw." Which makes her laugh, she tries weighing her feelings on the scene of little toddlers calling her aunt and it comes inconclusive, it would be an every seven years occasion either way. Quay's giggling when she refocuses on him. "I like children...! Sporadically. I'm sorry, darling, go on."

"Me..." She looks at her reflection once more, smiling now. "I'm a pretty good mixture. I got dad's features, the eyes, nose, lips, but the overall shape is hers. Dad was very tall and mighty, very handsome with dark skin and even darker hair." She smiles with her teeth which she rarely does. "It was unnaturally black like tiny kinky threads of obsidian, made the gold in the eyes pop out. He was an extremely magical person."

His hand stops at the crook of her neck. "Darling..."

He's not smiling anymore when she lifts her eyes. "What?"

"You never told me your father..."

"Oh... it never came up."

"You don't have to talk about it."

She waves it off. "Don't worry, it's been a long time since he passed. He was already an old elf when he met my mom. He's the reason I got so interested in the engineering of magic."

"And what about the younger ones?"

"The twins look like him, decidedly, except for the most striking features, the eyes and the height. Coily hair, really dark skin, perked up ears, slender. Warvely's hair is so long and puffy, she does works of art with it since she was very young, she's a kindred spirit to you in that aspect."

"What about the boy?"

"Keeps it close to the scalp. He's an aberration in that aspect. We're all very meticulous with our appearance and he's... a mess. Or was the last time I saw him. They're young elves, it's all I have to say." She bites her lip and tries to observe what Loquatius' doing without moving too much as he starts braiding the other side of her head. "Not to sound narcissistic, but I think we're a pretty good-looking bunch."

He laughs heartily. "I have no doubts about that. I can't wait to meet them next time we land."

"Please, do not tell them I said that. I need to humble them, not feed their ego."

"I've no doubts you're the humblest of the pack."

She reaches back to the hand he has in her hair and skims her palm up to his elbow. "It's your fault, you spoil me."

"Guilty. Well, I'm especially excited to meet your mom. A runecrafter... if you're unbearable as an abjurist, I can't imagine how much of a brainiac she must be. I wanna see the kind of woman that births Laerryn Coramar."

"I probably came out her with a fist stretched out."

"That sounds... painful."

She puffs. "I... can't believe I'm saying this, but she'll love you. You're the perfect amount of flourish and charm to satisfy her, she's as extroverted as you. Which I inherited none of."

"Well, you were precisely the right amount of extroverted to get with me, and that's excellent by my standards." A smirk curls on the corner of his lips all of a sudden. "And how will you introduce me to her, huh?"

She shrugs. "That depends on how you'll behave until the next replenishment."

"Oh, I promise I'll be good to you."

And as the conversation fizzles out, she occupies herself with her makeup as she has already showered off the remnants of the night before, emanating a soapy scent of violets. She opts for the familiarity of her palette of metallic eyeshadows and dark brown lipstick, every now and then catching Loquatius' eyes watching her before sharing a smile.

Now with both sides braided to her scalp, he takes the loose extension of it and unites it into a single chunky braid. He ties the end with a small dark hairband and decorates the top braids with hair clips of tiny golden flowers that, as he takes a step back, look like specks of gold.

He places both hands on her shoulder and leans down, watching as she brushes her eyebrows into place. "You didn't finish your tea, now it'll smudge your lipstick."

She purses her lips and swirls the teacup. "It must be cold by now anyway."

"So is mine." They just look at each other in silence and Laerryn decides that this, this moment, every single one of those slow mundane moments she's spent with him matters, being near him simply breathing the same air matters. He smiles, brushes the back of his fingers against her cheek, and she has to clench her jaw to keep herself from kissing him. "So, did I do a good job?"

He takes a curved table mirror and holds it up so she can see the back. She doesn't even dare to touch it, for a second considers never again touching her hair, keeping the work of his hands forever there whenever someone asked she'd tell them it was Loquatius who put it together, who took half an hour of his day to focus solely on her.

But then if she did he wouldn't be able to bury his fingers in and she quickly discards her reverie.

"Your hair is a full thick blessing, there's so much we could do with it."

"We?"

"Didn't you like my job here?"

"Of course I did, it's beautiful. Would you want to help me with my hair again in the future?"

"Of course, whenever our schedules allow us, I will love to do it again. Maybe you could show me the hairdos you like most or that you always wanted to try, if you have any you haven't tried at 138."

"Oh, trust me, there are many."

"So it's decided. There's a beauty catalogue Zenith used to publish, it's been out of publication for a while now, but I kept a few of them for inspiration. I bring it here and we can flip through the hair section of it."

And, for reasons he doesn't understand, she bursts out laughing, full of joy and levity, before turning around and wrapping her arms around him.

She pulls back her head without unwrapping her arms. "Quay, Quay, only you to get me to do things like that. Meeting my family, flipping through beauty magazines, tea trays in the morning. I'm a grown woman, I'm an Architect to be... but I guess I'm also a fool."

The kiss he places on her painted lips is cloud soft. "Don't worry, darling, all your secrets are safe with me."