His height had intimidated his peers even when he'd been thin as a twig, bones bruising him from the inside out, so it was no surprise to him when his shoulders broadened and muscle grew and people stopped touching him. He got used to his only physical contact being hugs from his grandmother, practically kneeling to curl his arms about her, lean into the stroke of her hand over his head, the warm squeeze of her fingers around the swell of his shoulder.
He split at the seams at her funeral, face red and streaked with tears, hands on his ribs like he was trying to physically hold himself together or maybe trying to keep from collapsing in on himself. No one came to comfort him.
He worked at an animal shelter full of dogs like him, big and abandoned, scarred from loneliness. His coworkers wouldn't let him handle the smaller animals for fear that he would hurt them, put him in charge of those turned vicious from abuse and neglect because they didn't care if animal or man was injured. He remembered nursing the starving kittens his neighbour had found, rubbing his fingertips over their tiny, vulnerable bellies to soothe them in their distress and swallowed around the suffocating tightness in his throat.
He got used to the barrier, the separation between him and everyone else. They had no reason to be wary or scared but they insisted on the distance and he never said anything, never spoke up, afraid that all that would escape would be the animal sounds of his pain.
He thought to himself, probably too often, that he wouldn't mind if it came from fists or feet or fingers pressed rough to his throat, he just wanted to be touched. Wanted to hold someone's hand, be held, feel the warmth he hadn't known in so long. If it came with a side of bruises and blood, well. He was okay with that.
It wasn't hard when he was at college, finding someone his size. He made himself mean, twisted his mouth into a vicious slice across his face, revelled in the sharp press of knuckles, the bloom of purple over his skin, the drag of blood from the cut on his cheekbone. He wished it could compare, wished it was what he really wanted.
Even after, when he knew he looked like an overgrown child playing at being a scientist, tried to hide his size along with his bruises and scars in thick folds of fabric, there was no contact beyond the split second handshakes with people who could barely hide their disdain, their condescension.
So, really, he'd been completely prepared for being aboard the Prometheus, had so far avoided offering touch that he knew would be rejected, hunched his shoulders, curled in on himself as if he could make himself small again, kept his breaths short and slow and his head tilted down.
He didn't know why he tried to initiate contact with the red haired man with the wolf eyes. His body was thin, bones protruding like rocks from a cliff face, eyes wary of not just Millburn but everyone, legs tense like he was ready to run at a moment's notice.
He smiled through the pain of the man's words, eyes dulled back to their usual blankness, trying not to notice the gleam of light over the mess of his mohawk, the sharp angles of his fingers, the slow swell of his carotid. The man was a predator, eyes as sharp as the lines of bone through his skin, and he noticed.
But with the craving for touch came the fear of it, of sensation and, by his own hand, the feeling of another manipulating his body. The hole at his core gaped open when Fifield touched his shoulder as he made to leave the mess hall, the muscles of his abdomen tensing, heart leaping. His shoulders didn't move, held stiff but lax enough that he hoped the man wouldn't notice.
He did.
His only reaction was to give a squeeze, stroke down to the middle of his back, halted by the chair Millburn was in.
He fled to their quarters, burrowed into a corner. His shoulders shook, chest feeling tight, spine aflame with the ghost of the geologist's touch. He suddenly wished he'd stayed on earth in the confines of his misery, where the highlight of each day was feeding his fish and watching their scales shine in the morning light. Loneliness was better than this, this stupid fear of being touched after having longed for it since childhood.
He had shaken himself into a panic attack by the time Fifield entered the room, curled into a tight ball, a tightness in his chest and a lightness, breathlessness in his collarbones.
He choked when the man climbed onto the bed with him, pulled his glasses away and set them aside, tucking his fingers under his jaw to lift his head from his chest. He closed his eyes tight but let himself unfold, trembled as Fifield shuffled close to lay against him, ribcage against ribcage, thumbs stroking along his jaw.
The sound that escaped him then was one of pure pain, an animal wail that sheared at Fifield's insides.
His breathing calmed quickly but his heart pounded as their foreheads pressed together, noses touching, vision blurred as they tried to look each other in the eye. His chest hitched and he closed his eyes, moving to pull away, trying to settle the blankness back over his face. Fifield gave a soothing little sound, as animal as Millburn's, and pulled him back in, cradled his head against his shoulder, nuzzled along the curve of his ear.
If he cried, if they both cried, well.
It could stay between them and the pups.