∆ TOGETHER ∆ - sender entwines receiver’s hand in theirs as they are walking sabelle @ rachael || OLD MEME CLEANOUT
Rachel’s reflexive response to the sensation of fingers intertwining her own was to freeze on the spot. It was a terrible response in any situation, and she could hear Scott’s voice in her head chastising her for it but, honestly things like this were not something her brain processed well. Superpowered villains? Sure, easy. Spontaneous physical touch from an unknown source and in what could be deemed a rather intimate manner? Nope. Nope. Does not compute.
She glanced down to see her hand was splayed open in the other’s grasp, clearly in agreement with her brain on the matter, and then she looked up at the owner of the hand. “Uh...can I help you?” she asked, already slipping her hand out of theirs.
I just read the latest installment of Captured and had a Thought. If San is aware that he needs to be shaved and haircutted and wants to try to be able to put up with a barber in the eventual future, what if he and Tristan did that thing that friendly cats do? Like, Tristan holds his hand out and San experimentally lays his face in it.
This is an adorable association- friendly cats. I do know what you mean- the way it's best to allow an animal to choose if they want to be touched or not especially when you first meet them.
When and if Alsander is ready to try working on his severe aversion to touch, he might try something like this. Just test how long he can stand it if he's the one in control of whether or not there's contact.
Until then, he'll probably let his hair grow out a bit more. It's awfully short and choppy, and a little more growth will give him room to actually have it styled to a look later.
What do you think is the best way to comfort San these days?
Hard to say. Holding Tristan's hand seems to be as much contact as he can stand to make most of the time. Offering him a nice fluffy bed and a hot cup of tea would go a long way.
Whumptober No. 28 - IT’S NOT JUST IN YOUR HEAD “Good. You’re finally awake.” | nightmares | panic
CW: Nightmares, panic, touch aversion, PTSD triggering, non-specific reference to past trauma.
@alittlewhump thank you for being my magnificent beta-reader and muse.
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April 30, 2011
I always heard her wake herself up from whatever bad dreams she was having. A throaty gasp or a half-voiced cry that would snake across the apartment and wrap itself around my chest. I always listened for it because it meant she would come into my room and crawl under the blankets, letting the tension I made by lying on top of them act as a substitute for the comfort that I knew she craved. I didn’t dare ask if she wanted to talk but she’d reach out to catch the hem of my t-shirt and fall asleep with it pinched between her fingers. I hated it. It underlined everything that was wrong with me and perfect about her and unbalanced in our arrangement.
Tonight, I heard her mumbling for a while and waited for the sound that would flood me with relief and dread at the same time. But it never came. She only got louder. Voice shifting to something more desperate, choked with sobs, lungs struggling under the heaviness of unconsciousness to properly scream. My feet had carried me to her room minutes ago, hours ago, I had no idea. I was just hanging, whatever pain she was in cutting off everything and anything else until something snapped.
My hands were on her. Impossibly. Tilting her face toward mine, shaking her shoulders, lifting her into my arms.
“Emma, Emma, Emma,” I heard my voice plead, half-consumed, not even mine, all hers.
And then it came, the sound I’d been waiting for that struck right through my core.
Her cry cut off as her eyes flew open. “No, no, not again.” She thrashed away, sitting up.
I stumbled off the bed, my back hitting the wall.
She pressed herself against the headboard, panting and sobbing.
I was holding my breath, waiting for the aftereffects of holding her but they weren’t coming, she still filled all of my senses.
“Wyatt?” She called like she didn’t know I was here. Like she needed me closer to believe it. Like it didn’t count if she couldn’t touch me.
“I’m here.”
“I—I—Wyatt, can you—can you hold me?” She could barely get out the words. Like somehow she was in pain.
“Emma—” My voice broke. “I—No.”
“Wyatt, please.” She begged, crawling across the bed, into the column of light coming from the muted light in the living room. “I know you can—I—I—need—I need—” She was incoherent, shaking and clutching the tangled mess of bedding to her chest. Maybe still half in the nightmare. One of my shirts hung off her shoulder, her legs were bare, her arms full of blankets. Why was there so much of her? Why was it always there? Thrumming, humming, wanting, needing.
“Emma, I can’t. I—I can’t. Just—it’s okay.” I stepped forward, off the wall. “You can—you can come lie next to me, like always, and go back to sleep.”
“No!” She coughed a sob and shook her head. “I can’t—I can’t—I don’t want to. I’m scared. Wyatt, I’m scared. Please, please, please.”
Who was she? Where was the swearing, defiant, everything-and-everyone-can-get-fucked Emma that I knew? What was she so afraid of? Who was she so afraid of?
“Okay, okay.” I wrung my hands.
God, but there was just so much of her and I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t do it. I could already feel it all, like acid in my veins, even the thought. How could she be so tiny and so consuming and so destructive and so everything? All at once. Always all at once. She was impossible. And she was falling apart, crumbling before me. Even more impossible.
Something else fractured inside of me. I didn’t care.
“Come on. Just—come out here. It’s okay, Emma. You’re okay, you’re okay.” I backed out of the room and she slid off the bed to follow, balled up comforter and sheets still clutched in her arms, trailing between her legs, making her stumble.
She blinked when she stepped out into the light. Eyes wide, red, and rimmed with dark circles. Shifting into something else more awake now that she’d left whatever shrouded her in the bedroom.
I stopped as her gaze intensified.
“Why can’t you—what is wrong with you?”
I swallowed.
She wasn’t even blinking. She threw the blankets down and stomped straight over them. Feet leaving deep divots in the down.
I backed up but she kept advancing.
“Why won’t you hold me? Why do only you get to decide when you touch me?”
“Emma—” She kept coming. I almost tripped over the side table next to the couch. I was running out of space.
“The other day on the balcony, there wasn’t any problem. You’ve pinned me against a wall. Basically, strip-searched me. What. The. Fuck. Why can you only touch me when it’s some kind of power play? Is that what you get off on?”
“Emma, no—I—I don’t know. I’m sorry—” My back hit the wall. “Please. Please. Don’t—” I held my hands out as if that might stop her.
She fumed in front of me. Judgment hung between us. But she was quickly closing the distance. “Do you want to hurt me first? If I let you hit me, can I get what I want?”
I had to pull my hands back. Elbows hitting the wall, palms out, shaking, no real defense. “I’m—I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then what will it take?”
“I—I don’t know.”
She slapped me.
“Emma!”
She hit me again. Her tiny hands jabbed and slapped and punched and pinched. “Why can’t you do anything? Why won’t you do something? Do something. Do something! Wyatt—” She was sobbing again, assault getting weaker and weaker and more desperate.
I wasn’t even really sure how I was reacting, what I was feeling, it wasn’t like I’d ever been attacked by someone begging me for closeness at the expense of pain. I captured her wrists and spun her so she was against the wall.
Her breath huffed out. And her eyes were—
“No. No.” I stepped back, releasing her. “Emma, I can’t.”
She deflated, sinking into a sobbing ball on the floor. “I hate this.”
I was ‘this’.
Something else broke inside me and I fell to my knees in front of her. “Emma. Oh, Emma.” I clasped my shaking hands together. I wasn’t above begging or pleading for her forgiveness anyway. “Emma, no. Emma, please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Don’t—don’t cry. Please, I’ll—I’ll try, okay? But I can’t—I need you to calm down. I can’t—when you’re like this—it’s—it’s too much.”
She blinked at me, sniffling, and nodded. Hiccuping as she tried to reign herself in.
I swallowed.
How was I going to do this? I couldn’t be the kind of monster she thought I was, the very kind of monster that had made me, hurting her to fix something in myself. Especially not her.
“Come—come here,” I stood and backed away.
She picked herself up off the ground, one delicate hand on the wall. I tried not to look at all of her as she unfolded. She was so much easier to take in when she was curled in on herself, small and manageable and fragile.
It made my skin teem. I needed to find a way to do this and to separate us and control her hands and her limbs and her. I shook out my hands. God, it was already starting. I was so weak.
“Wyatt?” She was standing, swaying by the couch, lip caught between her teeth. Arms wrapped around her torso like she was holding herself together. Her cheeks shone in the lamplight.
I balled my hands into fists. “Just…sit. Sit down.” Stop moving.
She wordlessly folded onto the couch, drawing her knees up under her chin. But her legs were still impossibly long. How could they be that long when she was so tiny? Her arms wrapped around them, more impossible skin, and her eyes followed me as I paced.
I grabbed her duvet off the ground and wrapped it over her shoulders, pulling it closed around her. “Here.” Stop wanting.
Emma didn’t look so menacing balled up inside the white blanket. I knew I’d still feel everything. She blinked up at me. Waiting patiently but her lip was trembling and she was still disintegrating. Stop needing.
I sat down on the coffee table in front of her and took a deep breath. “I will try but—you—you have to promise me something.”
“What?”
I swallowed. “Don’t try anything.”
“What?”
“Don’t try anything if you want me to hold you. I can’t do that. It’s never going to happen and if you want me to be able to touch you, you need to promise.”
“I don’t understand why,” she whispered, voice quivering. Like denying her that was just as bad, if not worse than not being able to hold her.
“It doesn’t matter if you understand or not. Promise.”
“But—you look…like you could…”
I stood up and doubled the space between us. “What—you—”
“Fuck, Wyatt.” She rolled her eyes. She was angry again. “It’s been months and you’re so weird about it. I was curious. So, once, when you were in the shower—”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Emma.”
She let the blanket fall. Raked one hand through her braids. “What? I thought maybe you were just being shy, like if you were different or—”
“Emma.” I couldn’t—I couldn’t—
“But you’re fine. I don’t get it.” She looked me up and down. “Actually, you’re better than fine.”
My stomach rolled. “Stop. Emma. You make me sick talking like that.”
“Talking like what? You compliment me all the time. I can’t say you’re hot?”
I counted my breaths. “No. Not like that. Please, Emma. Please. Do you want this to work or not?”
“Yes. Fine.” She clicked her tongue like she was irritated but her eyes gave her away.
I made myself sit down in front of her again, speaking softly. “Emma, you have to promise.”
“Ugh. Okay, fine. I promise.” Her voice broke with need on the last syllable.
I counted to one hundred. One hundred beats of my heart.
Emma had pulled the blanket back on. She knew.
I sat down next to her.
Counted to one hundred again.
Put my arm around her shoulders.
One hundred.
Added my other arm.
One hundred.
I pulled her against me.
One hundred.
And then her head was on my shoulder and I couldn’t stop. I just kept counting. I focused only on the numbers. I didn’t know where I was, except where she was touching me.
It was consuming, pouring over every sense like an endless stream. But she was still there, physically blocking the onslaught. I knew I would survive, but it still registered as drowning. I knew I wouldn't perish but it made no difference to my survival instincts.
Would I ever assimilate? Or did I need a distraction—her pain—to make it tolerable?
I hated the idea. No, it couldn’t be that.
“Emma?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was steady and even against me.
I labored to match my breath to hers.
Her smell wafted out of the blankets mixing with whatever perfume she wore and the scent of my clean shirt and the fragrance of my soap. New and familiar at the same time.
“Emma, Emma, Emma.”
It felt so good to say while she was in my arms, while she was mine to hold.
Mine alone. But I didn’t deserve her.
“Emma, I’m so sorry.” It was possible to admit since she was asleep. “I’m not good enough for you. I’m broken and damaged and you’re so perfect even with all your pain. I let everyone who ever—whoever hurt me take something else, too. And it was—it was more than half of my life, Emma. They took and took until nothing was left, but look at you. So much pain, so much more than I ever—and you're still-— you're everything, Emma. My Emma. You're so incredible.”
I listened to her breathing, our breathing, in time.
I wondered if she would sleep more soundly in my arms. Or if maybe she’d be proud of me in the morning.
“Emma, I promise I’ll be better. I’ll be anything you need. I’ll do anything for you.”
CW: Touch aversion, past noncon drugs, past captivity mention
🖖 - if your character needed to communicate peaceful or helpful intentions to someone else through touch, how would they go about doing that?
The most San can currently bear to do is squeeze someone's hand or briefly touch their clothed shoulder or arm... Tristan being the one exception, and then only sometimes. After everything he's been through he's picked up a serious aversion to touch.
🤙 - how does your character's relationship with touch change if they get tipsy or otherwise chemically unbalanced?
If that happens to him now it'd be against his will. He was drugged during captivity and will now avoid any similar sensation. I think if it happened he'd be even more touch averse and curl up in a corner until the world stopped moving.
✌️ - are there any gestures or touches that your character shares with a friend/team/loved one that are a type of code between them?
Not really. Tristan does seem to understand the little hand squeeze San manages to give as an unspoken kind of affection that Alsander has never been very good at, and now it's the most contact he can bear to make.
I was just reading what you wrote about touch aversion and it was really helpful. I do feel that need to rub and touch to comfort even though I hate touch myself sometimes but I got in the habit of just making the rubbing motion a few inches away from people’s skin I find it really helpful cause it lets me express the desire to help and be there for them without invading people’s boundaries but I don’t know if that would be odd or still uncomfortable to some people
Thanks, I do realize it is culturally ingrained and I have felt the urge to do that myself as I’ve been, well, trained to mimic typical cultural things like that in order to make people around me comfortable. I know it’s what people are “Supposed” to do, according to the local culture here. I just have limited tolerance for it from personal history reasons, but finding other ways to connect with people is a good idea- you never know who doesnt want to be touched until you ask.
Alec The Tiefling is too afraid. (the Tiefling: Strange Brothers)
Alsander/Harrow absolutely does not want anyone to touch him. He could probably tolerate a hug from Tristan, and his 3 immediate family members, but not for very long, and not touching any skin. (Captured)
David would lean into it, he craves contact. (Guard Dog: David)
Yves would go a bit stiff and ask you what you were doing. (Blackthorne Hall)
Audren would bearhug you back. He’s a good hugger.
