Part of that is him. There are people out there fascinated by Case 53s, even a furtive handful of people with a sick affinity for the Endbringers, but Krouse isn't one of them. He doesn't know for sure if Noelle ever came across them online, but it's hard to imagine that she didn't. He doesn't know how she felt about it; he knows he could only read so much before he tabbed away in a spurt of unexamined and complicated guilt.
Which is the other part of it. The part that's her, and how uncomfortable she was with herself long before anything happened. He had learned fast that mentioning anything about how she looked, ever, was a fraught minefield. It was like she preferred not to be reminded she had a body at all, especially not one other people could see. It was one of the first things that gave him an idea of what she was dealing with. So he adjusted, and it wasn't like she lacked other qualities to praise that he cared about more than how cute her nose was when she scrunched it in thought. Most of the time, he'd been able not to fuck it up.
Touch had been more complicated. There were so many sharp boundaries, the razor's edge of what was okay and what wasn't shifting at the influence of mostly unknowable factors. He'd still been figuring it out, before there was nothing left to figure out.
But the safest place had always been her hands, touched as gently as skittish wild animals. He'd thought about her hands a lot. Their little flinches, their awkwardness curled inside of his. The rare and perfect moments when something would click, and he'd feel her forget to not like knowing she had skin.
If her upper arms had been off-limits, and forget her waist, or hugging without enough insulating layers, how much more sensitive is this? A part of her not somehow imperfect in her mind, but glaringly mutated, every detail stark in the light?
She's asking him to touch her where it hurts, and he doesn't know how.
All of this goes through his mind in seconds, compressed to a sticky slideshow of regrets and fears. On the outside, he unclasps his hands, moving them without exactly knowing where they're going to go. He scrubs his palms on the legs of his jumpsuit to dry off half-imagined sweat, pulse thudding in freefall.
There's probably something he should say, but he can't think of what it is. He can only settle his fingertips on the scaled palm of her claws, a jolt of surprise arcing from them as soon as they make contact. He'd expected it to be cold and hard, but it's not. There's vivid warmth and slightly spongy give, the texture smooth on the caps of the scales and faintly rough at their overlaps.
He watches his fingertips slide over the bumps until they slot between her talons. He's seen this limb punch through a wooden door like styrofoam. She could wrench his arm out of its socket with one quick, clean clasp and pull, and he still doesn't feel like he's the one in danger. Carefully, gingerly, the way she taught him, he curls his fingers down to knit with hers. ]
Is that - ? [ His eyes flick up, wide and dark. ] Is that okay?
cw: eating disorder, ableism, fetishization
Part of that is him. There are people out there fascinated by Case 53s, even a furtive handful of people with a sick affinity for the Endbringers, but Krouse isn't one of them. He doesn't know for sure if Noelle ever came across them online, but it's hard to imagine that she didn't. He doesn't know how she felt about it; he knows he could only read so much before he tabbed away in a spurt of unexamined and complicated guilt.
Which is the other part of it. The part that's her, and how uncomfortable she was with herself long before anything happened. He had learned fast that mentioning anything about how she looked, ever, was a fraught minefield. It was like she preferred not to be reminded she had a body at all, especially not one other people could see. It was one of the first things that gave him an idea of what she was dealing with. So he adjusted, and it wasn't like she lacked other qualities to praise that he cared about more than how cute her nose was when she scrunched it in thought. Most of the time, he'd been able not to fuck it up.
Touch had been more complicated. There were so many sharp boundaries, the razor's edge of what was okay and what wasn't shifting at the influence of mostly unknowable factors. He'd still been figuring it out, before there was nothing left to figure out.
But the safest place had always been her hands, touched as gently as skittish wild animals. He'd thought about her hands a lot. Their little flinches, their awkwardness curled inside of his. The rare and perfect moments when something would click, and he'd feel her forget to not like knowing she had skin.
If her upper arms had been off-limits, and forget her waist, or hugging without enough insulating layers, how much more sensitive is this? A part of her not somehow imperfect in her mind, but glaringly mutated, every detail stark in the light?
She's asking him to touch her where it hurts, and he doesn't know how.
All of this goes through his mind in seconds, compressed to a sticky slideshow of regrets and fears. On the outside, he unclasps his hands, moving them without exactly knowing where they're going to go. He scrubs his palms on the legs of his jumpsuit to dry off half-imagined sweat, pulse thudding in freefall.
There's probably something he should say, but he can't think of what it is. He can only settle his fingertips on the scaled palm of her claws, a jolt of surprise arcing from them as soon as they make contact. He'd expected it to be cold and hard, but it's not. There's vivid warmth and slightly spongy give, the texture smooth on the caps of the scales and faintly rough at their overlaps.
He watches his fingertips slide over the bumps until they slot between her talons. He's seen this limb punch through a wooden door like styrofoam. She could wrench his arm out of its socket with one quick, clean clasp and pull, and he still doesn't feel like he's the one in danger. Carefully, gingerly, the way she taught him, he curls his fingers down to knit with hers. ]
Is that - ? [ His eyes flick up, wide and dark. ] Is that okay?