Title: Human Contact
Fandom: Foyle's War
Characters: Samantha Stewart, Paul Milner, Andrew Foyle
Word Count: 608
Rating: PG
Summary: "She likes to touch people, and likes to be touched by them."
She likes to touch people, and likes to be touched by them. She likes hugs, kisses to the temple, the forehead, the cheek. A hand on an arm. The brush of fingertips to the small of a back. Subtle, reassuring pressure. I'm here. You're not alone.
At home, affection was never a problem. Healing kisses for scrapped knees, pats on the head at the breakfast table. Arms linked, walking down country lanes. Her head in her mother's lap, while the wireless plays in the background and her father tries (painfully) to sing along. Hugs every morning, kisses every night.
In Hastings, there's none of that. She feels lost, disconnected from the world around her. She's starting to forget what human contact feels like.
Until, one day, she feels a hand on her back, leading her back to the car, away from a body no one wants her to see. And she wants to feel annoyed, that yet again she is being treated like a little girl. But she doesn't, because he has touched her and then he smiles at her, telling her to wait for them and she would wait forever, she thinks, if he would just touch her once more.
It becomes a game to her. How often can she get him to touch her? How often can she touch him? She starts spending more time with him outside of work. There is a direct correlation between his touches and the number of weeks his wife spends in Wales.
Their propensity for getting into scrapes allows for more touching, which almost makes the occasional bruise or cut worthwhile. He holds her at his side the night her house is bombed, as she shakes without knowing why. When he falls, chasing suspects, she applies disinfectant to his palms, holding his large hands in her smaller ones as she does so. She winces in sympathy as the alcohol sinks into his wounds, and squeezes his fingers in understanding, watching the liquid leak from his hand onto hers.
Almost a year has gone by before she realizes that what she wants from him is more than a hug, more than any act of friendliness, of sympathy. Andrew hugs her, kisses her, but it doesn't affect her the way she thinks she should be affected. If a hand on her back causes more butterflies, more blushes, than a brush of Andrew's lips against hers, what does that mean? She thinks she knows and, in a way, Andrew's relocation is a relief. The more she comes to know him, the more ill-suited she thinks they are. Even their greetings are more friendly than romantic: a kiss to the cheek, and even once, embarrassingly, the shaking of hands.
But if he, not Andrew, were to kiss her, it would be an entirely different matter. Even the prospect of it, however unlikely, makes her blush and catch her breath. With Andrew, she was always so hesitant. He was a pilot after all, fast and fearless, experienced in ways that she didn't even want to think about. She would never allow him too many liberties. In fact, the few times they did kiss, he always kept his hands at his sides which, practical and reserved as she was, she always thought rather cold.
She thinks that if she could convince him to kiss her, he wouldn't hold his hands by his sides. That he would touch her; hands in her hair, on her waist, encircling her wrists, running up and down her back, until she'd be too dizzy with feeling to know what was what and only too happy to let him keep touching her.