bullet

edit: i added a bit of colour for funzies:]

edit: i added just a liiiittle more colour to humour myself

imagine how important touch itself is to din. he knows it well, he knows what punches feel like, the sting from a bite or scratch, the white hot pain of a burn, the rupture of blood vessels, the break of a bone or two, his skin splitting if he lands on hard ground, or the way a blade of a knife can sink into him like cutting through fog, displacing the flesh. he knows the agony touch can cause, and ache that lingers, that seeps deep in his bones and doesn't leave for weeks or months on end.

touch is important, because it is painful, and din isn't too much of a fan of pain.

then you come along and bring a new type of touch, a feeling that isn't as foreign to din as he thinks it is, that later, when he's familiarized himself with the creeping nostalgia, that reminds him of a distant, long-past childhood on aq vetina—

your touch is fleeting, brief, and often hesitant— not in that you're unsure, but more in that you reach and will waver, will pull back like the tide and move in like weeds in a garden. you don't retract or forget the motion altogether, but you do wait until the time is right. your touch is careful, considerate, and so warm.

din first feels your touch on his bicep, when you brush past him on the razor crest one day. to get by him, you place your fingers on the cloth of his flight suit, muttering a low, polite "excuse me" as you go by, and just when the words end and your two steps in front of him, your hand pulls away. it stops din his his tracks, briefly. then he inhales, exhales, and continues.

in all reality, that shook him to his core.

instances like that happen with more frequency, some more bold than others, but all of them tender nonetheless. sometimes it’s another hand on his bicep, or one that briefly rests on his back, or a teasing one on his chest, or that one time you were so happy and excited to see him after a hunt that drew on longer than you’d both anticipated that you wrapped your arms around his waist and hugged him like you meant it.

or, on one painful, scary night, it was both of your hands pressed to his side to stop the blood flow (the only time your touch has ever brought din pain).

after that, in a weird sequence of events, din craves your touch. he wants you to feel him everywhere, to familiarize himself with the palms of your hands on every muscle and square inch of skin on his body in every way imaginable. he actively seeks out ways to ensure that you touch him, like standing in the middle of a doorway or squeezing himself into a too small space with you— just to feel you.

he’s elated when you reciprocate every time, and apparently both of you gather enough courage one night and din gets to have you, feels the way you touch in an entirely new light, feels sensations unlike any other— under the shadows of his cramped bed quarters and you with a blindfold on, of course.

that’s the night he realizes that he loves your fingers running through his hair, and the night he realizes that he can’t ever not touch you again— or you him.