Six of crows imagines

pocket watch

There are days where touching another being makes Kaz feel like he's going to implode. That their touch would burn right through his flesh like hot acid and break his bones. The thought alone is enough to make his hair stand on end and stomach twist, cheeks filling to the brim with saliva just before the bile that was creeping up his esophagus is pushed back down.

Other days, it's a little strange. The concept of touching is foreign on his skin, the waters ever present but never breaching past his ankles. It's manageable, tolerable, maybe even enjoyable on rare occasions when the water is only a puddle just below the soles of his shoes. It's new, terrifying, and even a little invigorating.

He can't tell what today is.

Over the years the progress that has been made on his touch aversion has been mind-numbingly slow.

He can do just about anything with his gloves on. that wasn't much of a problem before. Powering through the feeling of the pressure of somebody's hold on his hands was basically a necessity for business. The only thing he had to work on was longevity.

Without gloves, though, was where the problems truly began and where most of the work resided.

It started small, bare fingertips dragging over bare fingertips. The sweaty oily feeling of his skin dragging over yours was new, and he could feel the callouses that came with your line of work. He could feel the grooves that make up your fingerprint catching on his own, each individual line forever marking themselves in his own skin.

Eventually you would drag your fingertips over his palm and he would do the same. He memorized the creases and palm lines like a map, feeling the muscles shift as your fingers explored his palm in the same way he was exploring yours. It was slightly sticky, the base of your hand warmer than the center-

And that's where he began to learn. Learn the little things he noticed a long time ago.

Cold flesh triggered his flight, too similar to that of a buoying corpse. He's noticed it before, but not like he's noticed it since this whole journey started. That's probably something he's never going to be able to get past.

So when your skin feels too cold, he retreats, and you let him. When your cold skin is slick with rain water, he doesn't even consider allowing you to touch him. Because he knows the result.

But the actions morphed, and got bigger. You would place your hand against your neck, warming the skin and muscles before reaching out and looking. Looking for a nod or a shake, and placing your hand against his or on his back or arm.

It was incredibly foreign, the feeling of hands gliding over his shoulder blades and being absent of malice. But it was welcomed- albeit very, very slowly.

Bile would still rise in his throat when you lingered too long, a heaviness plaguing his chest. He would shrug his shoulders and without question you would retreat.

After years of this over and over, the bile would rise slower and later, the waters like a stream instead of a river. The progress he made was noticeable when he looks where he started and where he's at now.

Every step in this journey of his you came and went at his discretion.

But that's the problem, isn't it?

You have always been the one to reach out, to ask, to give. You give and give and listen when the giving becomes to much, and save the rest for a later date when he's ready to receive once more. But Kaz has never, not once, given anything in return.

He takes and he takes. Yet you don't have a problem with that. He takes your touch, soaks it in, and then shrugs it off with a grateful nod and a look he hopes reads "thank you, for sticking around" and not "Please stop, please leave."