#the constant internal war between traumatic touch aversion and existing touch starvation/need for physical comfort/reassurance

[altschmerzes]

🌹any bit of angsty comfort from the torture fic?

oh you know it!! thank you i'm excited to share some of this :)

got uh. got A LOT of that coming up, so here's a section from shortly after they've been allowed to take mac home from medical. it's a long fic so this is gonna be a bit of a long clip sldfkj, enjoy!! gonna put it under a cut bc of, well, It Is From The Torture Fic, though he's home and nothing further bad is like. actively happening to him.

specific content warnings: a Lot of references to murdoc pulling mac's hair and the whole Pliers Situation from part 1. (also a generalized like... sense of shame and having been somehow Ruined by what happened to him.)

--

Jack is sitting there on the couch with him and has been since they got home, paying only nominally more attention to whatever is happening on the screen than Mac is. Most of his attention is on Mac himself, even though his eyes are on the movie. He’s got a hand on Mac’s head moving his fingers through Mac’s hair in slow strokes. The callouses on his fingertips brush Mac’s temple when he reaches the ends and starts over again.

It’s gentle and affectionate, the sort of thing that, on a good day, might make Mac blush and look away while he privately stowed the memory somewhere he’d always be able to retrieve it whenever he got to wondering if anyone had ever really loved him at all. That’s how it makes him feel when Jack touches him like this - loved. Safe, and important, and loved. Like he’s someone’s family. Someone’s son, he might even dare to allow himself to imagine sometimes.

Right now, though, it doesn’t feel like it usually does. Right now, Mac is fighting against a simmering panic that’s threatening to grow too large to tolerate the longer it continues. He knows that it’s Jack sitting beside him, knows who the hand on his head belongs to and even further knows that person is someone who would quite literally die before intentionally harming him.

Even so, the fear is strong and thick, taking over everything else until it’s all that’s left. Nausea stirs in his gut and dread hammers at the inside of his skull until Mac is certain that any moment the gentle stroking is going to turn into a vicious grip, yanking on his hair to twist his head back and around, wherever his captor wants him, because his body doesn’t belong to him and there’s nothing he can do to stop-

“Please don’t pull it,” he manages in a faint, nearly inaudible whisper when the vortex of anxious anticipation grew too strong to fight any longer and the only other option was lashing out in a desperate bid to get the man touching him to stop. The hand on his head goes very still, and Mac’s chest feels like it’s cracking into pieces. He closes his eyes and feels the hot trickle of a few tears coursing down the side of his face.

“What?” The question comes after a long beat of silence, and then Jack pulls away entirely. His hand leaves Mac’s head and Mac grieves acutely for its loss. A few more tears make it out through his squeezed-shut eyelids despite his efforts to stifle them. “Do you- Should I stop? If this is uncomfortable for you- if anything I ever do is uncomfortable for you, if it’s freaking you out, then I don’t have to-”

“No!” Mac doesn’t know where he gets the strength to say it, except that he feels like the alternative would be so much worse. “I mean, no, you don’t… You don’t have to stop, just- Don’t pull on it. Please.” The tone on please is practically begging, so close to the way he’d begged Murdoc to stop hurting him when he’d cracked and been unable to help himself, and Mac feels so ashamed of himself he might drown in it. Murdoc had laughed when he’d broken and started to plead, and it hadn’t even brought him any relief. If anything, the pliers had clamped down tighter, a thought that makes his side pulse in remembered agony.

You're not there, he tells himself, and tries to believe it. You're not there. You're with Jack and you're safe. He wouldn't do that to you.

“Okay,” is the response when it finally comes, delivered in a thick voice after a few moments of heavy silence. “I promise. I swear on my daddy’s grave, kid, I will not- I will never pull your hair.” The last part of the oath wavers, like maybe Jack was somewhere near being about to cry himself, and Mac’s throat throbs in a way that’s unrelated to the deep bruises ringing it.

So long passes with only the sound of the movie for Mac to pick up on, eyes still closed and face still turned nearly into the back of the couch, that he begins to feel strangely alone. He wishes he hadn’t said anything at all because the fear of his hair being suddenly and cruelly yanked is better than this. He would take that over the detached cold of feeling like he’s been split open and ruined so thoroughly that nobody could bear to let their skin come into contact with his when reminded of it. And then, just when he was halfway convinced that it never would, the touch returns. It’s even gentler than before and Mac’s chest hitches with something that might have been a sob of relief if it had the energy to be anything more than a slightly jagged breath. The hand brushes through his hair a few times, then Jack flattens it to the top of Mac’s head, his thumb stroking Mac’s temple.