100 original fics prompt 038 "Touch"
Title: Touch
’Verse/characters: Wild Roses, Yasha (the Kid), Krovir Aodh, Kickback, Niamh Manannan Sabaey
Prompt: 038 “Touch”
Word Count: 464
Rating: Pg
Notes: Yasha is a relatively-recently adopted kid, and has been spending most of a year by this point trailing in Aodh’s wake. Kickback is the closest of Aodh’s lovers, Niamh one of the closest of Aodh’s cousins. Aodh’s appearance is rather . . malleable, and if you know him well enough, just that can be a cue as to how comfortable he is with someone.
If Aodh were someone else--just about anyone else, really--the way he used touch would have been uncomfortable. The sheer casualness, the backs of fingers against his shoulder or a palm between his shoulder blades to steer him around an unfamiliar kitchen was something foreign, odd and outré. Touch was something between lovers, or parents and children, sometimes (rarely) between friends or business allies. Yasha’s mother had only really touched him to make sure his clothes still fit and that his hair wasn’t too long, since he’d been eight. His father, long gone, was memories of gentle lips on his forehead or strong hands catching him as he began to fall.
But with Aodh . . all touch meant was that he cared. He didn’t do it to everyone he knew--not even close, considering how many people Aodh seemed to have at least a passing acquaintance with--just . . . the ones there was something else to.
Most people didn’t seem to notice that they didn’t get to touch, that Aodh was constantly moving and usually just barely out of arm’s reach. His smoke creatures got closer to people than he did, tiny blue dragons taking mock-bites from people’s ears or fingertips, or extravagantly-winged butterflies dissipating in someone’s hair.
Yasha had seen the sniper allowed to run a gentle hand up the back of Aodh’s neck from behind, and it was definitely allowed (encouraged), because he’d seen Aodh spin away from others’ casual touches, all laughing hand flickers and smiles.
The sniper got to see the braid, too, run his hands along the length and scratch at the places that made Aodh go all slitty-eyed and purry.
Niamh wasn’t so close as that. It was a small distance, mutually understood and agreed upon and no longer spoken of. So she and Aodh would lean into each other’s personal space when they were together, thighs and shoulders brushing unconcernedly, and lean against one another for long conversations.
She saw the short white spikes, and ruffled them easily while he’d tug her braid. Yasha doubted she’d ever seen her cousin’s (and the way either of them said it in relation to the other, you would think it meant something more ‘beloved’ than ‘relative’) hair its true colour, much less its true length. Small lies, long held and kept and no longer important.
But when either of the Sabaeys slid from the booth to dance with a stranger, touch became something else, less comfortable and comforting and something more like . . a challenge? More akin to the way Aodh smiled when he was looking at something impossible and dangerous, all points and brilliant hardness.
So Yasha allowed himself to be half-hauled into Aodh’s lap, or gentle hands to squeeze his shoulders and scruffle his hair. It marked him close, closer to Niamh, if not the sniper, inside Aodh’s head.
’Verse/characters: Wild Roses, Yasha (the Kid), Krovir Aodh, Kickback, Niamh Manannan Sabaey
Prompt: 038 “Touch”
Word Count: 464
Rating: Pg
Notes: Yasha is a relatively-recently adopted kid, and has been spending most of a year by this point trailing in Aodh’s wake. Kickback is the closest of Aodh’s lovers, Niamh one of the closest of Aodh’s cousins. Aodh’s appearance is rather . . malleable, and if you know him well enough, just that can be a cue as to how comfortable he is with someone.
If Aodh were someone else--just about anyone else, really--the way he used touch would have been uncomfortable. The sheer casualness, the backs of fingers against his shoulder or a palm between his shoulder blades to steer him around an unfamiliar kitchen was something foreign, odd and outré. Touch was something between lovers, or parents and children, sometimes (rarely) between friends or business allies. Yasha’s mother had only really touched him to make sure his clothes still fit and that his hair wasn’t too long, since he’d been eight. His father, long gone, was memories of gentle lips on his forehead or strong hands catching him as he began to fall.
But with Aodh . . all touch meant was that he cared. He didn’t do it to everyone he knew--not even close, considering how many people Aodh seemed to have at least a passing acquaintance with--just . . . the ones there was something else to.
Most people didn’t seem to notice that they didn’t get to touch, that Aodh was constantly moving and usually just barely out of arm’s reach. His smoke creatures got closer to people than he did, tiny blue dragons taking mock-bites from people’s ears or fingertips, or extravagantly-winged butterflies dissipating in someone’s hair.
Yasha had seen the sniper allowed to run a gentle hand up the back of Aodh’s neck from behind, and it was definitely allowed (encouraged), because he’d seen Aodh spin away from others’ casual touches, all laughing hand flickers and smiles.
The sniper got to see the braid, too, run his hands along the length and scratch at the places that made Aodh go all slitty-eyed and purry.
Niamh wasn’t so close as that. It was a small distance, mutually understood and agreed upon and no longer spoken of. So she and Aodh would lean into each other’s personal space when they were together, thighs and shoulders brushing unconcernedly, and lean against one another for long conversations.
She saw the short white spikes, and ruffled them easily while he’d tug her braid. Yasha doubted she’d ever seen her cousin’s (and the way either of them said it in relation to the other, you would think it meant something more ‘beloved’ than ‘relative’) hair its true colour, much less its true length. Small lies, long held and kept and no longer important.
But when either of the Sabaeys slid from the booth to dance with a stranger, touch became something else, less comfortable and comforting and something more like . . a challenge? More akin to the way Aodh smiled when he was looking at something impossible and dangerous, all points and brilliant hardness.
So Yasha allowed himself to be half-hauled into Aodh’s lap, or gentle hands to squeeze his shoulders and scruffle his hair. It marked him close, closer to Niamh, if not the sniper, inside Aodh’s head.