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His head rests gently on your lap, and you can’t seem to tear your gaze away from his slumbering face, the way he breathes softly, his expression one of contentedness that you rarely saw on him. You aren’t sure when this started happening, or when you started allowing it to happen so casually. Intimacy of any kind was something you’d always purposefully avoided – you didn’t need it. You didn’t need to break down the walls you’d so carefully built around yourself just to coddle someone or be coddled. You were independent, self-sufficient, and as such you didn’t need to use pretentious means of affection just to show you cared about someone.
…Needing and wanting are two entirely different concepts, as it turns out.
Maybe you don’t always want it. Sometimes the very idea of someone touching you, even in a harmless gesture like a pat on the shoulder, was repulsive enough that you couldn’t stand to think about it.
(Your culler touched you on the shoulder a lot, or ruffled your hair, or a plethora of other “harmless gestures”. Harmless as they are, the very thought of them makes you feel nauseous.)
Sometimes, like right now, it just sort of happens without it meaning to. It hasn’t always been this way, in fact, it’s rather recent development. He started out being so irritating that you almost didn’t want to be around him at all. Almost, because as much as you’re loath to admit it, you find yourself drawn to him in some weird, unexplainable way. And, as you’ve come to learn, he isn’t always terrible, at least not now that you’ve gotten to know each other better. Without even meaning to, really, you discovered that he’s in desperate need of physical affection, and… maybe you are, too. Maybe you don’t need it, but you want it.
It started with him asking if he could sit closer to you during one of your movie nights, and it had caught you off guard because nobody had ever asked permission to get in your personal space before. Reluctantly, you said yes, and all he did was scoot himself a few inches in your direction, enough that you could feel the heat radiating off of his body, and for some reason you found yourself unable to look at him. Out of what, shame? Embarrassment? Nervousness? Hell if you knew. You were half expecting him to reach out and smack you on the shoulder or something, as a “joke”, but he never did.
It only escalated from there, once he knew you weren’t going to push him away for suggesting it (unless you actually didn’t want to be touched, but that was usually through no fault of his own, and he never pushed it.) He asked if he could lean against you, and rested his head on your shoulder. You couldn’t remember if you’d ever been that physically close with anyone for that long.
Another time, he wanted to put his arm around your shoulder while you sat on the couch. (This, as you had learned from watching human films, was often seen as a romantic gesture, but of course you didn’t mention that. He likely would have just brushed it off as being an ironic thing.) You recall how nice and warm it felt, how safe you felt being there with him, and perhaps that was the beginning of the end for you.
One night, you’d both fallen asleep in his bed, and woke up pressed against each other in a tangle of limbs. You’d immediately panicked on instinct, and he was equally as frazzled, taking your reaction as a sign that you didn’t like it or that he’d done something wrong. No, you thought. I’m all wrong. The same thing somehow managed to happen nearly every time you ended up falling asleep in the same space, but gradually, you grew accustomed to it.
This, now, with his head in your lap, is nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but if you told your past self how comfortable you’d gotten with him of all people, your past self would’ve looked at you like you’d grown two heads. You suppose it would be a fair reaction, because you can hardly believe it yourself, either. Right now, though, watching him sleep, you don’t think you’d want it any other way.
Maybe you don’t need this, but maybe you want it regardless.