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Snow Tart
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Ricardo quiets down, listening. Pascal tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “Before this,” he continues, “actually, I… for that whole seventy years, more than that, I have not really even been touched at all. Not even in a friendly way. Anyone who cares about their standing with the Cradle won’t speak to me… anyone who doesn’t, like Minoru, will only speak to me because they are interested in the — the scandal of me, and I am so tired of that being the only thing anyone will ever talk about to me. So I avoid them.” He wets his lips. “Even Kel, who is kind to me — you know she is the type where… to be affectionate, maybe she will hit your shoulder a little, and that’s all, and it’s not the same. Touching food, when I cannot even stand the heat or texture of them, that is not the same, either.”
Ricardo is trying to comprehend nearly a century without touch, and he can’t. It’s not that his life before was full of affection — far from it — but there was his mother, at least. There were casual hands on arms, arms rested on shoulders, brushing past people, little reminders that he was alive and around others, even if he wasn’t particularly fond of it. Pascal inclines his head a little, and then he laughs. “Did you know… last night, when you came in, so angry and sudden — when you took me by my throat, I was almost a little relieved. I know that’s not charming of me. I thought, there, now at least I am near someone.” He pauses, then lifts his eyes to Ricardo again, intently. “Don’t take that as me saying I am so desperate I would do anything. I am still only doing this because I want to, and because I like it.”
“Yeah,” says Ricardo, quietly. He’s more glad for the clarification than he wants to admit. “Yeah, I know.”
“I just mean…” Pascal’s eyes have drifted back down. “When you go for so long being so alone like this, without anyone to even touch you, not even in the smallest ways… I think it chips away at your heart. It makes your chest hurt. And in that moment, even when you meant me harm, even when it was because of how I had done you harm, it made the ache stop a little.” He seems to catch himself, and he laughs again, very softly. “Oh, I am being so miserable. What a horrible thing to say! All I mean is that now, when you mean the opposite — oh, how do I say this. When we are actually touching each other on purpose, to make each other feel good, it’s so much better than that.”
He sniffles a little, alarmingly, and Ricardo is a fraction away from instinctive panic before Pascal speaks again and distracts him from it. “So I want to very badly.” His fingers flutter up to touch at the corners of his eyes, briefly, and this time his laugh has more substance to it. “If I have not ruined the mood entirely, by rambling and rambling! Or if it does not make you uncomfortable, for me to admit I have been sad without it. You won’t make that feeling worse, to say no, or to wait — I don’t want you to think so.”
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