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They reach the river - more of a stream, really, but wide and deep enough to swim in - around midday, and decide not to press their luck. The king and his steward have been on the road for three days, traveling to meet with various and sundry village-leaders to assess the kingdom’s state as peacetime policies begin to take effect, and they will be on the road for three days longer before they meet their next destination. The paths are muddy with spring rain, and their own bodies have fared little better; besides this, they are nearly out of fresh water. It is best, they decide, to stop at the stream, clean themselves, and refill their waterskins before continuing on.
While the king secures their horses and retrieves soap and oil and a blanket to dry themselves with, the king’s steward begins to unbraid his hair.
Aragorn has to fight to keep from staring - it is a fascinating process to watch, intricate and beautiful. Faramir’s fingers move quickly, undoing the silver lengths of hide that bind his braids and coaxing the strands apart as he sits on the bank. The people of Gondor have their own traditions and customs, Aragorn knows, regarding their hair - so he can guess at what this means to Faramir, the gradual unrolled flourishing of his inky black hair over these many months, from chin to shoulder to elbow bound up in braids, and now to the dip in his soft brown back as he slides into the gently rushing stream. It is mesmerizing, breath-stopping, to see his hair unbound and snaking out around him for the first time; it feels like a secret shared, a confidence given, a ritual of Gondor that for all his kingly honor he has not yet been privy to.
He disrobes and wades into the river after his steward, steeling himself against the bracing cold of the current. Faramir, turning to watch as Aragorn makes his way closer, betrays no discomfort at all in the chilly water; he looks perfectly at home, with his long hair falling about him in shining black sheets and his hands scooping idly in the eddies of the stream. With his dark eyes resting on his king, shining in that sort of solemn merriment that is so peculiar to him. Aragorn should like to have known him longer, he thinks - to know whether he was always so solemn.
“You look very happy,” he says, and watches Faramir’s lashes drop low, sheepish, to hide his eyes. “I do not know when I have seen you so before.”
Faramir smiles, still watching the water between them. “Surely you have seen me happy, my king.”
“Aye, but—” He considers, for a long moment; he traces with his eye a strand of Faramir’s hair that has uncoupled from its fellows to be whipped by the breeze. “You have become more easy with yourself. Since we met.”
“Hmm.” Faramir is still smiling. He looks as though he is somewhere far away. “I remember—” He catches his breath, suddenly seeming uncertain of himself. Aragorn inclines his head. “When I returned - that is how I think of it. When I returned, and felt your hand upon my brow, and saw you - I knew your face.” He laughs, small and nervous, like this is a secret he has finally told. “I knew you from the statues of your kin. When I saw you and— and heard you calling to me, in here —” He touches his own hand to his brow, two elegant fingers that leave a jewel-drip of water behind them. “I felt reborn. It was as if I had— as if you had cast off the cloak of my illness and sorrow, and made me new.”
They are close, now, in the water; Faramir’s hands are drifting slack before him, no longer playing in the stream. Aragorn grasps one hand in his own, feels the strange exchange of muted heat and the slickness of wet skin, and presses them together. He remembers the awful heat of Faramir’s brow, the fog of his mind within and the sweat-slicked strings of his shorn hair spread upon the pillow - so different from the man before him now. “That would be the work of a powerful healer indeed,” he says. “I have observed you these last months, Faramir, since we met. I have seen you flourish and grow away from the shadow that beset you. If you are made new, it is the chief work of your own heart.”
“Perhaps,” Faramir replies, suddenly serious. “But it was my king who called my heart to keep beating.”
Faramir’s hand is strong and sure against Aragorn’s own, pulling him forward - but Aragorn is troubled, as he has so often been, by such words from a man who is otherwise so dear and familiar.
“Why do you so often call me my king or my lord,” he asks, drawing back, “and use my name so rarely? I would not have you think you are— obliged. In anything.”
“Oh,” Faramir says - pulling away in turn, pressing one hand to his mouth almost unconsciously as he stares downstream. His hair pulls over his shoulder and fans out in the water, “Oh, no, I— It is not that, I assure you. But it is— somewhat shameful to admit.”
Aragorn inclines his head, waiting for Faramir to continue - he trusts his steward to know that he holds him too high in esteem to shame him for anything less dire than treason. And at length, he does speak again. “The truth is,” he begins, still looking away. He closes his eyes, distress rippling over his brow. “I have gained a certain sort of private gladness from naming you thus.” He looks at Aragorn then, and his face is open - anxious, but quite honest. “Not king, but mine.”
Aragorn cannot help but smile, he is so relieved. Sentimental, yes, but it is the very furthest thing from shameful. “I see.” He reaches once more for Faramir’s hand, which the steward gives him at once. “And what would you have of your king?”
Faramir blows out a breath. He looks half-wary, as if he did not expect to come this far, as if he suspects a trick. “If my lord Aragorn would,” he begins, “would bestow a kiss—”
He is in Aragorn’s arms before he finishes - held loosely at the elbows, brow pressed to brow, feeling the king’s beard on his skin and the king’s prominent and crooked nose against his flat and rounded one. Aragorn kisses him as he has wished to for long months - he had felt something for this man, he thinks, even as they first met, even as he lay dying. The experience of pulling someone back from the edge of shadow is not soon forgotten, and the look of wonder in Faramir’s eyes when he came to himself - Aragorn does not wonder that he felt himself reborn.
Now he is here, vital and beautiful, his encouraging hands pulling Aragorn closer to him until they are pressed body-to-body, skin-to-skin. His lips are soft, and his shaven face prickles against what part of Aragorn’s cheek is not covered by beard; his hair swirls around them, long and black and shining like a starlit night, soft against Aragorn’s bare flank. His belly is moving against Aragorn’s own in quick breath, and his waist gives under Aragorn’s hand as it roams to recognize all of Faramir’s body; the water is too cold for urgency, or for any hotter desire than the desire to hold, but he does want to hold, to be held, to know this man’s body as if it were his own.
Eventually his hand finds Faramir’s hair, falling in its wavy curtain down his back and into his face. He begins combing it through with his fingers, feeling it in his hands, enjoying the way it falls so softly against his rough skin. Faramir, evidently, enjoys such treatment also; he shivers against Aragorn and sighs, rubs his head into Aragorn’s hand. The king smiles - he finds he cannot stop smiling.
“You were going to wash your hair here, were you not?” he asks.
“Mm— Perhaps,” Faramir says into Aragorn’s shoulder, his brow knitting against the king’s neck.
“May I do it for you?”
Faramir melts against him, squeezing him tightly in his arms. “Yes, my lord,” he says, and then, “Please.”
He sinks low in the water, bends backwards, and lets Aragorn support him as he wets down his scalp; his shoulders are warm in Aragorn’s hands, having been out of the water thus far and sheltered by his hair. When he emerges Aragorn cards his hands once more through that sleek black sheaf - he spends a long moment just watching the rhythm of motion, Faramir’s hard-won starlight locks leaving wet trails down his pale palms, weaving between his brown knuckles. Faramir stands, his back to his king, and waits to receive.
The lather of soap goes into his hair bit by slippery bit; Aragorn does not need to wash his own hair so often, and uses the oil more than the soap on his tight curls, so he is somewhat unfamiliar with this step. But judging by the way Faramir has his head tipped back and his eyes closed, the gentle purposed movements of his hands on his steward’s scalp are still quite welcome. His hair is so soft - he tends to it so carefully, so far from the uneven crop it had been when first they met. Boromir, he remembers, did the same; his hands twitch in Faramir’s hair as he remembers how the man’s brother would tie and untie his hair in those same twin braids (though his excess hair was gathered to the top of his head, a fashion which he has never seen Faramir emulate), fix the locks in place with the same sort of silver fasteners which Faramir uses now. In Lorien Aragorn had watched the care and sorrow lift from Boromir’s countenance as he rubbed oil from the elves into the ends of his river-damp hair - it was obvious that the process held a ritual significance for him, but what it was Aragorn did not quite know.
Aragorn turns eventually to fetch the oil from the bank, and while he is turned away, Faramir - still scrubbing soap out of his hair - speaks. “While my brother lived,” he begins, and Aragorn feels the queer spike of unease that sometimes befalls him when Faramir says such things. He has carried conversations without the use of his voice before, he knows it is not a thing to be feared - not from an ally - but he feels a faint sense of embarrassment in his fixation on this custom, about which he feels he does not know enough. He does not know quite how far Faramir’s strange sense of clairvoyance extends, and he would prefer for the magnitude of his curiosity on certain things to remain private.
Faramir continues, apparently unaware of his king’s discomfort. “We both had quite long and beautiful hair,” he says. “He wore his hair— properly. As a man should. I preferred to wear mine unbound, when I could get away with it. Which was not often.”
He is looking away again. Aragorn knows this much, at least - that the men of Gondor bind and braid their hair in the front, while women tend to wear their hair free or more simply bound behind. He calls to mind the Denethor of twenty years ago, grieving a wife and even then obsessed with his younger son’s shortcomings - imagines how he may have responded to a son who would rather wear the women’s style than the men’s. His heart aches.
“When my brother died,” Faramir goes on. He steps closer, offering his head to receive the scented oil, but still he does not look at Aragorn. “It is proper in Gondor to cut the hair short in mourning. It is not—” Anger creeps into his voice, stung spite, an old wound. “It is not necessary. There are many who no longer follow the custom. But my father insisted.” Aragorn, his hands still busy massaging oil into Faramir’s hair, bends to kiss the crown of his head; it is all the assurance he feels he can offer. “I do not think it is what my brother would have wanted,” he says, as if Aragorn needs convincing.
“Nor I,” Aragorn says gravely. “You do not need me to tell you that your brother loved you very much. I do not believe he would have changed anything about you.”
Faramir makes a noise - a sort of choking sigh, half-broken in his throat. His hands tangle with Aragorn’s own in his hair, petting over the same length again and again. “I wear my hair like this to honor my brother,” he says. “And to honor myself.” He is looking at Aragorn now, at last, turned to face him with his brow set and resolution in his eyes.
Aragorn cups his face in still-faintly-oily hands and looks into the eyes that opened all those months ago in the Houses, that fell upon his face and rejoiced with love and unaccountable recognition. “You are a very worthy soul, Faramir of Gondor,” he says with quiet conviction. Faramir’s cheeks bow and stretch into a smile under his hands, shaky and new, and he cannot resist - he presses his lips to his steward’s once more, feeling Faramir’s smile graze his lip and resolve into an open, loving mouth.
The Steward of Gondor is flushed when he parts from his king, turning his brown cheeks intensely rosy in endearing patches. “Now,” Aragorn says, rubbing a bit of Faramir’s still-oily hair between his fingers, “will you permit me to rinse your long and beautiful hair?”
Faramir blushes even more fiercely then - but he turns, still smiling, and lets Aragorn comb chilly water through his hair until it drifts once more, unbound, in a pool about them both - tugged gently downstream to fan out free, as beautiful as the night sky.