Doves and Peacocks

Long before Ruthenia realised the true reason for her mind’s constant wandering, she found herself curiously enjoying touch for the first time.

Typically, skin-to-skin contact was nigh intolerable to Ruthenia. Really, gestures of care only served to unsettle her, and they came in their most discomfiting forms where prolonged contact was concerned. It wasn’t the sensation of touch that bothered her; it was what it meant. It was a show of open vulnerability. It meant that someone trusted her.

She did not want to be trusted, nor to trust in return. She wanted to be an individual, complete and whole in herself. Having someone hang onto her could only create unnecessary dependencies, reduce her freedom, or double her vulnerabilities.

She had been cast aside enough times to know it wasn’t worth the risk.

She wanted to owe nothing, to no one, and to be the sole decider of her own fate.

Or so that was what she had believed, before this.

A few afternoons ago, Ruthenia had met Aleigh at the classroom doorway before the tea break. This was not unusual: they had walked to the cafeteria in each other’s company for months now. It had been raining lightly, and much had been simmering in her thoughts, and who else would she have chosen to disclose her misgivings to but he?

Perhaps she should have been warned by the fact that this had ever become a habit at all. That Aleigh had become her first consultant on any and all matters of import, or that she’d even elected one. That they had somehow drawn up an unwritten contractual agreement, to make meeting at the doorway a part of their tea break routines.

But as it turned out, while they had been coming to all these agreements, the feelings of trust and openness had been planted in her and then taken sturdy root. And when they had boarded the lift yesterday had she become aware that those feelings had begun to flower.

Specifically, their arms had touched. And not in an incidental, careless brushing-past like most of the touches Ruthenia had exchanged with others (all uncomfortable) had been.

They had been in the corner of the lift and Aleigh had (perhaps accidentally) stood too close, such that leaning against him had been almost inevitable. And lean against him she had, drinking in the warmth, surprised at her own enjoyment.

The unprecedented nature of her reaction hadn’t quite struck her until that evening. She didn’t let people touch her, much less extend it herself. Why was she making an exception for him?

Two days later, they had entered an explosive argument about her task and his brother and how little she truly knew. Momentarily she had begun to feel the bonds slip as she had been overcome by the beastly fear that he, like all others, meant to leave her behind.

Then he had apologised, as if he had been the one saying terrible things, and once again reached out to touch her hand--in a gesture of remorse and concern.

And again Ruthenia had felt no misgivings about the gesture, which she had understood, clear as day from Aleigh’s expression, to be intimate. Surely this curious joy had been a product of the moment. The relief of being bereft of terror.

Enter their second visit to the milkshake stand.

Now Ruthenia could not even begin to deny what she had thought and felt, watching Aleigh smile at the sky beyond her. He must have been entertaining distant thoughts of his own, while she had noticed, for some stupid reason, that he had been close enough to her that she could have engulfed him in an embrace if she’d dared.

She had almost dared, too, the urge tugging at her nerves and nudging at her impulses. But she had stopped herself, a cascade of questions attacking her, such as, why are you thinking these things?

Why did it not frighten her? The thought of being bonded, of being bound, by sentiment or otherwise, had always been her deepest fear. Why was she not afraid of him?

Her beliefs had not changed, she decided after some self-interrogation in the safety of her own work shed. It was simply, she began to see, that Aleigh was opening her to a new notion about how it worked. She was beginning to believe that one could trust another without giving one’s agency away.

In short: she trusted him, like she’d trusted no one else, like she’d never known herself capable of.

And she knew he trusted her, too, with his feelings and vulnerabilities, things that she knew he otherwise guarded like priceless treasures.

The thought barely frightened her. It felt right, and it felt inevitable. And Ihir, she wanted to feel his touch, again and again, with increasing conviction and intimacy, in gestures imbued with trust complete, if only--