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You’ve been lying awake for a while now, unable to sleep. You are alone in the bed with only your thoughts for company. Beau is downstairs having a moment with Fjord. You expect – hope – that she’ll come join you soon. You miss her even if it has only been a short while without her. You miss her and want to feel her body curled against yours.
Sometimes you wonder if you have spent your life touch-starved. Or, if not touch-starved exactly, then deprived of physical connection in the ways that you crave. You want love, acceptance, and a tender embrace. You are a battle-hardened barbarian with muscles of steel, but you cannot deny the gentle longings of your heart.
This is what you begin thinking of as you are waiting for Beau. You roll onto your back and stare up at the curtains above you. It is Beau’s room in the tower, with a mirror hiding behind that fabric. Your lips quirk in a small smile at the sight of it before your attention slips inward.
If you were touch-starved for most of your life, how would you know? You begin to think back at the life that you’ve led...
You suppose it would have started with the touch of a mother, but you don’t remember yours. You don’t remember if there was a maternal figure who birthed you, who held you, who cradled you in their arms. Was that the beginning of this touch deprivation? Was that the first thing that contributed to the hunger in your chest?
Come to think of it, you don’t really know if you had a father either. Biologically, you assume so, but like your mother, he doesn’t even exist in a memory. Had he been present, could he have provided some form of comfort? A pat on the back, a firm clasp of arms? Could he have staved off the starvation that clings to your bones?
You sigh heavily and roll over. One way or another, those opportunities are long gone. You don’t remember a family, but you do remember the tribe. There was no mother to cradle you or father to carry you. Your earliest memories of touch are in training for battle. Wrestling, sparring, beating other kids to a pulp. Was that the first thing that your hands were ever good for? Causing pain? Making bruises?
And then, like a ray of light in the darkness, there was Zuala. If you truly were touch-starved then she was an oasis in the desert, a meal after fasting. There had been touch then. You had learned about it in a way you’d never experienced before. The comfort in holding her hand to your heart, the thrill in pressing your lips to hers, the touch of two lovers who curl around each other at night. It was pure and it was new and it was entirely yours. But it was a secret, too. It was the kind of touch that could be shared only in private. You could never put Zuala’s touch on display.
Did that contribute to the starvation; was it a meal only half-eaten? You shake your head to yourself. It’s not fair to Zuala to think of it that way. She offered you every part of her heart, wholly and unconditionally. No... not a half-eaten meal. Your time with Zuala was one of the rare times in your life - perhaps the only time until now - where that kind of touch was so freely given.
What did that teach you? Was it your touch that killed her? Had you never touched her, never kissed her, never held her at night, would she still belong to the land of the living? Was it your touch that left her lifeless and cold?
Without Zuala, you were lost, alone in the darkness. Then came Obann, with a touch like an oil slick on water. Oh, it could be soft, but in the most sinister way. It left you powerless within your own body, watching through eyes at hands that didn’t seem to be yours. You suppose that, back then, that had almost been a relief. An escape from the grief and the shame and the anger. You watched from the inside while he used you like a tool, turning the power of your touch into an instrument of pain.
Can you become touch-starved within your own body? If you can’t feel the heat of your own skin, control your own movements, do you lose the ability to comfort even yourself?
You push those thoughts aside and continue forwards. The Stormlord set you free, and the first thing you knew afterward was Molly. A burst of colour after so long in the dark. If there was any kind of touch that he offered you, it was the tending of wounds. The smoothing over of your ugliest scars. You did your best to offer the same in return, and together you built yourselves up from the rubble of your former lives.
You joined the circus. There was touch there, if not always directed your way. There were companions and lovers and those who were little more than friends, and in that hodgepodge of people you carved out your home. But you think that, by then, so much of your life had been spent in touch-deprivation that it hardly bothered you anymore to be one woman alone. Oh sure, you had friends and acquaintances and people you cared for, but you also built walls and dug trenches to prevent anyone from getting too close.
After your childhood and Zuala and the time spent with Obann, you could be happy but you could not be open. You were an island. Molly was the land-bridge that connected you to others, but even then he could only do so at low tide.
And then you met them: the companions who would one day form the Mighty Nein. And Beau, who, on only your second interaction, demanded your attention and asked for your touch. A simple thing really, to carry her in your arms, and not at all the sort of thing to feed your starvation. Still, had there been some hint then of how she would change you? How she would worm her way into your heart and remind you of love?
Beau, more than anyone, should shy away from your touch. At least, that’s what you used to believe. You seem to have fought each other more times than you can count, but never of your own volition. You remember Beau punching you, fighting you while you were under Obann’s sway. Even though you were trapped in your mind, you felt every hit in the depth of your soul.
Not your fault, not your fault. So everyone has told you. You believe it now too, even if you didn’t always.
You remember swinging a sword, driving down, flesh and bone parting beneath the steel of your blade. You nearly killed her. You needed some form of comfort following that, and you think you gravitated to the only kind of touch that’s remained familiar to you all these years. In the pit fight, you let that touch wash over you. Fists bruising you, breaking blood vessels. You had become so touch-starved that a punch to the ribs was a form of comfort.
Yes, you think to yourself as you rustle beneath the blankets. Yes – you have been touch-starved for most of your life.
Beau’s voice sounds in the hallway outside the closed door. It’s muffled but you think she’s saying goodnight to Fjord. It’s such a simple thing but it has warmth flooding through you. You smile into the darkness.
You think about carrying Beau at the circus, so long ago. You think about your flight together, with her cradled in your arms. You remember the way she reached for your hand when you found Molly’s grave empty. You smile at the memory of her pulling you closer that night in the Blooming Grove. Despite everything, Beau has never shied away from your touch.
You remember Caleb telling you to let yourself a little happiness. Caduceus gently suggesting that you think on your future. Jester reminding you that it’s okay to be happy, that wanting to kiss Beau shouldn’t make you feel bad.
The bedroom door clicks open. Beau sneaks inside, no doubt thinking you’re asleep. When she reaches the edge of the bed, she strips off some layers and climbs in next to you.
You’ve rolled onto your side so she snuggles up behind you. You feel the confidence in her hand when she slides her palm across your waist. You feel the sureness in the way that she pulls you tight to her. When she wiggles even closer, it is lazy and indulgent, not fidgety and uncomfortable. When she nuzzles her nose against your back, it’s with a contented sigh, not tensely-held breath.
You almost let her think you’re asleep then. She seems happy to curl up against you and call it a night. Instead, you can’t help but roll over. She huffs in surprise but easily adapts to the change in position. You wrap your arms around her but leave enough space between you to look into her eyes.
“Hi,” you whisper.
“Hi,” she breathes back.
You could tell her all the things you’ve been thinking tonight, about touch and starvation and all the darkness in your life. Instead what falls from your lips is rather simple.
“I love you.”
She grins at you, albeit sleepily. “I love you too, Yasha.”
You kiss her softly and she sighs into the touch. You pull back, kiss her nose, and tighten your arms around her. The motion ends up burying her face in the crook of your neck. She breathes deeply and presses a kiss to your throat. You drag your fingers softly along her back in order to lull her to sleep.
Up until a few months ago, you had spent your life touch-starved. What little physicality you encountered was usually violent and hard. No one had shown you how to use your hands for anything but hurting, except for one woman who wound up buried in the dirt.
But then Beau came along, and now touch comes freely. Love comes freely. You can hold Beau’s hand, you can kiss her in public. You can carry her in your arms and you could ask her to dance. There is a hunger in your bones that has persisted for ages, but Beau’s touch settles it like no fistfight ever has.
You are a battle-hardened barbarian with muscles of steel, but you cannot deny the gentle longings of your heart. You pull Beau closer, feel her warmth against your chest, and know you won’t have to deny them ever again.