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For liekable’s whole life: touch has never been a good thing.
Whether it was his mom, who used to hold his hand in her last dying moments, telling him to be strong when she ultimately passed. Or his father, who had used physical discipline as punishment to many times for either of them to remember. Or even his ex, cherzi, who would touch him in places he did want her to touch and did things that made him shiver just thinking about it.
Long story short, touch was never a good thing. It was always a “you messed up.” In bright big neon letters. And for a unbelievably long amount of time, liekable was content with this mindset. He never hugged often, or any other thing that really involved physically touch. he knew that if kept inside of his bubble, everything would be ok.
That is, until he join the 101st killing game.
Within a matter of days, liekable was thrown head first into ‘touch’, and at the same time nearly drowned in it.
Whether it was Cid, Peter or Cheeta, who patted his back or ruffled his hair when they chatted. Or mrB, test tube, Michelle or Libby, who would on somewhat common occasion gravitate their bodies accidentally to lean on liekable when they sat close. Or even Adele or jade, who would on extremely rare occasions, enter his room in the middle of the night saying they can’t sleep. Only to eventually sleep in the brunettes arms, all safe and sound.
Longer story short: the word touch now meant something completely different, it wasn’t a omen of pain nor misery. It was something greater. Something liekable couldn’t describe in words even if you held a gun to his head. And greedily, he wanted more.
A part of Liekable knew that once they escaped, these feeling of safety and love would completely disappear. Only to be replaced with that awful feeling of craving to be cared for, and being cared for was something that seems unending within these walls.
But while liekable was greedy, he was also terrified of being know. He was taught by his father to never be greedy, which is fine and all until you never learn what the lines are between greedy wants and greedy needs. Which only hurts you more than it helps you.
It took liekable some years to reprogram himself into asking for basic things. But asking for something as simple yet complex as to be held? to be loved?
It felt down right embarrassing.
So he never did, he just took whatever touch was given to him throughout the day and replayed the moment in his mind like it was the only VS tape around the house. The moments of hugs and gentle shoulder touches and tickle fights that left him in a giggling mess, all kept in filing cabinets in his mind. And whenever his body and mind felt the torturous hunger of wanting to be held, liekable would simply replay those moments of bliss. This worked well for quite sometime.
That is until today: where liekable whole body felt like screaming for the warmth of a human like thing, and his brain was an awful mixture of foggy and staticky, and everybody felt so far, too far for him to be with, to far away to hug or hold or-
“Mr urbz? Is everything alright?”
Liekable jumped slightly when he heard mrb voice next to him. Oh right, it was still morning and everyone was still having breakfast. Liekable looked up from his uneaten pancakes to mrb. He hummed groggily and stared at him of a second. Trying convey a sentence in his mind.
Unfortunately, maybe he took too long. Mrb moved his hand to rest on liekable’s shoulder, asking again calmly and sweetly “I-is everything alright liekable? You look unwell.”
Almost instantly liekable flinched, bringing his shoulder up and away from the warmth of mrb’s hand. The cat’s hand recoiled back towards him, a look of slight worry painted on his face.
“Sorry.” Liekable said slowly, fighting the randomly appearing lump in his throat. “I’m fine, I just… didn’t get enough sleep last night…” which was true, he barely got any sleep that night thanks to a couple of reoccurring nightmares he been dreaming of.
“I believe it,” jade sneered from across the table “you look like a zombie.” She giggled as she took another bit of her pancake.
“Oh shut it!” Adele defended from the other side of the table, “you looked like a plastic wrapped Barbie, goofball overhear looks more human then you’ll ever be.” The ginger stared bullets at blonde, who quickly return to look.
Liekable chuckled quietly as he finally found the strength to cut and eat his pancakes. But his mind was still clouded on the whole ‘touch starvation’ thing, trying desperately to come up with a plan to get rid of these awful feelings.
There were three options layed out infront of liekable urbz, and choosing one could save his life (or at least his day)
One- go to his room and wait until these feelings subsided, hug a pillow and cry in it until he moved on. fortunately, he didn’t want his mental health to plummet even lower than already is. So he quickly shoved it as a plan Z.
Two- go about his day as normal, hoping that his friends would take kindly on his silent begging and give him any sort of physical contact. But it would only come in small sample. which on any other day he was fine with, but not now.
And three- ask a poor soul to hug/cuddle/whatever, nothing romantic, touch was never a romantic thing for liekable. But just the thought of asking made his cheeks go pink from embarrassment and his body crave it more.
But it was either that or suffering for the rest of the day.
So as liekable finished his plate and helped thorn with the dishes, the brunette set out on a somewhat embarrassing mission. To find someone to help him put these feelings away.
But first, he needed to figure out who would be the lucky/unlucky victim of his burning question.
Liekable started going down the list. Adele’s out right off the bat, she would make fun of him for this stupid problem. Which leads him to cut out vendetta, jade and probably peter (who would make a handful of sex joke related to this). Y/n was never a touchy person, so their out. Along with thorn, Karen and he who must not be named by the author. Cheeta and cid were out, and so was Michelle and Libby, even though all four would be more than happy to give him the attention he needs, he didn’t want to burden them with this. He wanted to ask someone who was close to him, and reasoned that it would be easier to ask if they were close. (baby steps of course)
So it went down to three: test tube, B and flower. Unfortunately fortunate for liekable, test tube was busy in her lab and the incident he had with mrb this morning made the thought of asking him the question near impossible. So in the end, he set off looking for flower. which he couldn’t complain, she always gave the best hugs.
After a torturous ten minutes of searching the two floors for flower, liekable finally found her in the garden. She was stitting under the massive tree in the middle of the room, casually drawing in a glittery pink notebook. Sometimes her eyes would wander up to the branches and their vibrate green leaves, only to dart back down to the pages to quickly add something new.
“H-hey flower.” Liekable said cautiously as he stepped into the room. “Are you busy?” A small part, the part of him raised by his dad, wanted her to say yes, but everything else was begging her to say not at all.
Luckily, Flower looked up from her notebook and smiled, not a ounce of malcontent on her face or voice, “oh- no! I was just doodling in this super beautiful notebook I found. You wanna hang out? It’s getting a little lonely over here.” She chuckled.
Liekable nodded, trying to fight a grin that was trying desperately to form. He walked over and sat next to flower as she continued to doodle endlessly in the book.
They then sat in silence for sometime. it wasn’t bad silence but content and whole, something that liekable was still getting used to.
But liekable had other things to deal with, for he was lost in thought. how does someone start a sentence for the soul purpose to cuddle? And more importantly, how to not sound like a weirdo.
‘Hey is it ok if we hug?’ No, that sounds to robotic.
‘I want to cuddle, can we?’ To blunt, to forward and to weird.
‘I want to touch y-‘ NO. NO. A HUNDRED PERCENT NO. WHAT THE FUCK WAS HE THINKING?! GROSS GROSS GRO-
Flower could feel liekable uncontrollably staring at her, piercing her with his silver eyes. She hummed awkwardly and glanced at him, “y-you know, if I have something on my face you can just say it.” She said, a tone just inches away from annoyance.
Liekable blinked, snapping himself out of his daydream. He darted his eyes and head to a patch of grass in front of him. “Oh no- it was just- uh- well-“ he scrabble for his words.
“Well what is it?” Flower asked, her tone was now just annoyance. She then let out a dramatic gasp. “Are you looking at staring at me because you think I’m ugly?!” Her tone drop to an overdramatize worry.
“W-what-! No-!”
“So why are you starting at me like I am?! Hmp! W-well I get it! I guess I’ll just leave so y-“
“NO.” Liekable basically yelled, the lump in the back of his throat return as he slammed his eyes shut. Flower paused in the middle of getting up from her seat to quietly looked at him with a mixture of worry and sadness. He repeated the word, his voice became cracked and hushed. “no…”
Flower dropped herself back down to the floor, a little closer to liekable. “Oops…Sorry…” she mumbled, a look of genuine on her face.
Liekable kept his eyes shut, he let his shoulders sink and his hand grabbed onto the grass. He paused, thinking of how he wanted to phrase his question. Finally he took a breath. “No… it’s just that… can I ask you something?”
“Yeah…” she answered cautiously.
“Um well,” liekable turned his head away from flower, he tried desperately to keep his voice loud enough for her to hear. “I was just wondering… if you want to…” screw it, liekable should just rip it off like a bandage. “Can we cuddle?”
Flower looked at him with a mixture of surprise, confusion, and fluster-ness. She sat there blankly, not muttering a single word.
As for Liekable, he continued, stammering and stumbling on his words. “I-it doesn’t have to be that long and- and we can just do it as friends- godthatsoundswierd. What- what I mean is that—“
liekable was cut off swiftly by flower, who and had wrapped one arm from his back to his side. Her other arm grabbed her own and pulled. She wrapped herself around him in a sorta side hug, and nuzzled the side of her head into his body.
“That… would be fabulous…” she said softly.
The rest of Liekable’s words were shot and killed before he could even get them out. He sat there frozen for a second, his body felt like it was shock by a wave of electricity. But as quickly as these feelings came, they subsided and replaced with warmth.
Liekable wrapped one of his hands around flower and pulling himself into her. His eyes relaxed into a calm close form. He rested his chin on the top of flower’s head. It just hit liekable that flower (no joke) smelled like a Bouquet of roses and camellias.
“Thank you…” liekable nasalized, he paused, then asked in a low and nervous tone “are you sure that… it’s okay if you…don’t…”
“N-no!” She whisper shouted, then moved her voice to a not-so-whisper “I mean, this is nice… and I- you- we- really needed this. So yeah, this is nice.” She squeezed him like a pillow, making sure he’ll never leave her side.
The brunette slowly and warmly grinned into flower petals. “Thank you…so much.” He mumbled, almost happily and lazily.
And so they cuddled. But Liekable wasn’t there anymore, he was gone, died and was never coming back. What was there in his place was a pile of warmth and love and touch. The only sounds were the gentle steady breathing of the two and flower’s heartbeat, which beat in an equally slow steady rhythm. The only thoughts that float through his brain were blissful, and the only thing he could feel was the warmth of flower, her gentle touch, the touch that didn’t scream ‘I will hurt you’ or ‘you’re nothing but your body’ or ‘goodbye forever’. No, This one said softly and truthfully ‘you are my friend and I care’
Liekable and flower stayed like that for sometime, neither knew how long, for they both soon slipped into a dreamless and blissful slumber.
And Liekable hope for the rest of his life, touch would be as great as this.