Touch
a/n: i love quinlan jfc. he’s hard to write, but this was buzzing in my head.
11/18/2022 edit: don’t mind me; just cleaning up formatting.
summary: in quiet moments, quinlan touches you gently. quinlan x gn!reader.
cw: gn!reader, no pronouns used. just some fluff.
wc: 324.
When you had first started your relationship with Quinlan, you soon realized that the distance that he showed the group did not extend to you, especially when it was only you and him in a room.
He was much touchier than you had thought.
But it wasn’t about sex or possessiveness. It wasn’t about lust or jealousy.
In those quiet moments, he never touched you with hunger, but with a curious tenderness.
Minutes after the room was empty, as if he was waiting to make sure no one would return, Quinlan would then move to be beside you, or pull you into his lap, or peer over your shoulder at whatever it was you were doing, and his hands would smooth over your shirt or your skin, memorizing dips and dives in your curves, searching for arches in your back and finding laughter in your sides.
It was intimate, but not sexual. He only wanted to know. His hands, though coarse, never gripped you in the tight and fierce way they held his sword. He always touched you softly, and sometimes a little timidly.
Perhaps he touched you in this way because he could, because someone finally wanted him to. Perhaps he was trying to learn how to touch someone gently, that there could be a way to touch someone without the need to twist their neck, that there could be a need to touch someone simply to touch, simply to feel the warmth of their stomach against the palm of an honest hand.
When he heard people come, Quinlan returned to the other side of the room. Your body buzzed from his disappearance. You wondered if his fingers vibrated in the same aching way, though it was never something you thought you had to ask. The moment everyone left again, he crossed the room to re-familiarize himself with the way your skin was always warmer with his hand on it.