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He craves touch.
She has no idea how long she has known this about him; the knowledge slipped in while her mind was elsewhere. She wonders what else she has learned that she does not yet recognize, scattered and broken as she is.
He will not admit that he wants it. She is sure of that, at least, because he is either too proud or does not realize it. She thought at first that it was because of his time in the Void, long days and weeks of darkness and solitude and things she cannot fathom and does not want to. A year between his fall from Bifrost and the wormhole, and if he remembers correctly, which he is not sure that he does, the Other found him within a few weeks. Time is different in the Void, and he does not know how long it lasted. It might have been hours, or years.
But the more she watches him, the more she sees that it is not just the Void. His need has been there for far longer than that.
He fears touch.
She can tell it in the way he moves sometimes, the way he bends and warps himself around others when they stray too close. The way he smiles when he needs space. It is not as kind a smile as it seems on the surface, and it invariably creates the tiniest of cushions between him and everyone else. She has seen it happen and has even felt herself slip along its edges, though not for a very long time. She cannot remember when he let her in. He would tell her, if she asked, but she doubts that he knows exactly. One moment she was outside with the others, the next she was not, and that is just the way of things.
Only once has he pulled away from her. The moment he fled from the briefing room and she followed without thinking, dragged behind him by the invisible threads that even then had bound them. She had knelt next to him as he crouched against the cold steel wall, reaching out to touch his neck. He had flinched, shivering violently under her hand like a frightened animal, and her heart had broken for him.
He needs touch.
Needs it more than breath, more than water, more than anything else she can offer him. She glances over at him. He sits in the passenger’s seat staring out at the desert around them, and there is a tiny bit of wonder on his face. She slides her hand behind his neck, feeling him lean fractionally into the touch as he continues to drink in the wild country around them. Trailing her fingers down his shoulder and along his arm, she takes his hand. His smile grows a little deeper, and he rests their twined hands on his leg, trapping hers beneath his without a thought and without even sparing a look at her. She knows then that she’s not getting it back for a while, and it’s all right with her.
That’s just the way of things.