Work Text:
i.
You can’t hold his hand because when you were four or five years old—when you were an age when age didn’t really matter to you, too preoccupied with days filled with sun and brimming with laughter, days you, foolishly, thought were limitless—you learned something the hard way. Your small hands fit so perfectly in the palms of your parents’, and their hold was as warm and sure as bedtime stories and lullabies, and you foolishly thought this was limitless, too. When you were an age where everything seemed to stretch out for endless forevers, one dream after the other, you learned what it felt like to wake up.
—Because you learned that holding onto someone eventually means having to let go.
ii.
You can’t hold his hand because the growing pains etch themselves into your skin, your bones. One day, you grow up from a fool to a man. Though that’s not really any better, is it? …Nor is it particularly true. You didn’t feel like a man the first time you had to pick up a gun. You didn’t feel like a man the first time you had to feel the breath of a target slowly wheeze into nothingness right there under your palms. Your fingers became accustomed to the feeling of a trigger right under it, your palms accustomed to the weight of a firearm in its hold, your hands well-practiced at the routine of reload, aim, fire. When it’s not a gun, it’s a knife. Or a rope. Or just your hands, bare and bloodied and ugly as sin. You make a cadaver out of the young weepy child you were and you forge something else in its stead. A man? You have to laugh. You feel like the response to an order, the weapon to a cause. Blunt force, razor wire. Jaws snarling around jagged teeth, skin stretched over a heart forgotten. Wash your hands all you want, the evidence won’t ever come off. You can see it, can’t you? Every time you look at your palms, you know you can’t ever hold anyone.
—Because your hands aren’t made for softness, they’re made for ruin.
iii.
You can’t hold his hand because the damage sets itself deep into the scaffolding of your body. Nodes pressed to your scalp, electrodes and needles, inconclusive results that have you clenching your fists hard enough that his nails pierce through the callouses on your palms. Every episode is a nightmare; agony overwhelming every nerve in his body, leaving you shaking and trembling like the pathetic child you swore you’d never be again. Rounds of medication can only dull the aftershocks but can never take out the source. You’re falling apart at the seams and inflicting yourself onto anybody would be cruelty. This truth settles in your heart like a rot; with enough time, it’ll eat at everything you are.
—Because your hands rattle with decay, with a death sentence that will consume you whole until nothing else remains.
iv.
You can’t hold his hand because even if the rest of that never happened—even if you could wipe your slate squeaky clean and be normal and regular and not a weight chained to a shackle—nothing can get rid of the hesitation in your fingers. Like how feral mutts belong in an alleyway, how scars belong across the expanse of your body, your indecision finds a home in your hands. You reach out, you falter, you pull back. An endless dance, a push and pull as constant as the tides and the sun setting into dark dusks every single day. But he gives you all the chances. Make no mistake on that, he gives you the openings and the beginnings, soft and small like early morning whispers and late night secrets, miniscule and casual enough to, probably, hopefully, keep you from reeling back in fear, but you do so anyway. He has the hands of an artist, and you have the hands of a child, a monster, an inevitability. You’ve never been adept at letting yourself have what you want.
—Because, plain and simple, you’re a coward.
Always was and always will be. And there’s no fixing that.
v.
But he seems to think otherwise.
Because one day he’s at your shop, unannounced, of course, because when he does announce himself you have the horrid habit of making half-assed excuses about how you can’t hang out (you falter, you pull back), but he’s lived in a world of masks all his life, so he can see through yours like it’s child’s play. He sits across from you at your workstation and he starts sketching while you start taking apart your improvised gadget of the week, and the sounds of graphite against paper intertwines with the whirr of your tools, the silence between the both of you feeling, against all odds, comfortable: well-worn like a yellowed photograph, like a memory you know you’ll keep coming back to when the moment passes.
He’s beautiful, by the way. You can’t help stealing glances, feeling like a criminal for each one, but you’d gladly shoulder the guilt to see him like this. Your eyes trace the peaceful expression on his face framed by the navy blue locks of his bangs, careful not to linger for too long, careful not to take too much. He must know he’s being watched, but he doesn’t look up from his sketch to meet your eyes. …Which is a mistake, in your humble opinion, because it emboldens your greed to take in every detail, to take in more.
Your gaze flits to where his fingers are wrapped around his pencil, etching beauty onto the page, into the world, and this is why him not calling you out is a mistake. Because his hands are a marvel to this world. You don’t realize it, but your own hands stop working on what you’re supposed to be working on, too enthralled, too consumed by the sight of a creator in his element. His lines are clean and confident, not an ounce of hesitation, and you’re struck by how pristine his hands look too. Aside from the artist’s callus on his middle finger, his hands are unmarred. His hands have probably never touched a weapon, never been stained with blood, never been wrought with tremors. Even if those did happen, it wouldn’t suit him, not like how it suits yours. And that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? He’s made for better than you and there’s no changing that there’s no changing him or you or the world you’ve both been through because his hands are—
Because your hands are—
Because it’s just—
“Got a thing for my hands, detective?” Marius asks with a smirk. He hasn’t looked up from his sketchpad yet, but you know you’ve been caught red-handed.
Like always, his teasing brings warmth to your cheeks and you want to look away—too vulnerable, too seen—but you can’t seem to. At the very least, he’s allowing you to look without him looking back.
(he gives you all the chances, he gives you the openings and the beginnings)
“N-No.” Is your pathetic response. “I just…”
After a beat of silence, he hums contemplatively. “Just what?”
“You’re… good at drawing, is all.” Pathetic. Again. “Your hands are… made for it.”
He doesn’t laugh at you like you were expecting him to. But he does look up. His gaze is curious, open, glittering seas under night’s shine.
“Made for what?” He asks.
“Made for making beautiful things.” You say, your voice soft as a whisper.
He quirks a small smile. “And what are yours made for then, detective?”
“Mine?” You breathe out a laugh, gesturing at the gutted mess you’ve made of your own project, bits and bobs scattered about after you went through the mechanisms and pulled them out piece by piece. Your hands are made for ruin, for destruction, for— “For taking things apart. Obviously.”
You’re waiting for him to laugh. It’s a joke. It’s the truth. It’s funny. It’s—
He doesn’t laugh.
He—
(he gives you all the chances. you falter. he gives you the openings and the beginnings. you pull back.
but what would happen if he reaches out instead?)
Your hand is in his and you can’t breathe.
“You’re such a cynic.” As he speaks, he turns your palm facing upwards: rough and calloused, adept at destruction and decay. “Do you wanna know what I think?”
It takes every ounce of your courage to nod.
“Look around, detective.” His fingers curl over your own as you follow his order, and you don’t know what he’s talking about. It’s just your shop. Just antiques and photos, things broken and forgotten, things you gave a home because you know what it feels like to be something past saving, it’s just—
“You’re made for putting things back together again. For making things whole.”
You think you stop breathing for a moment. Hell, you think the entire world stops for a moment, and you couldn’t care less, because this moment is when he’s smiling at you, playful and gentle in equal measures, and your hand is in his, and you can’t, you can’t, there are so many reasons why you can’t, but—
Your fingers twitch. Hesitation is muscle memory, cowardice is hardwired. But in spite of it all, you manage to squeeze his hand back.
And his expression blooms like a moonflower under the starlight.
You can’t hold his hand.
There are countless reasons why you can’t.
But right now, all those reasons fade away, a nightmare slipping past your grasp after waking up in the morning.
All you can feel is this; your hand in his, warm and sure.