He grows easier with the touch of her hair than her hands. He has no memories bound up in a woman's hair. And hers has a weight, a grace that makes him feel grounded and weightless all at once. He doesn't recognize the feeling it gives him, but it lives in a pinpoint directly in the middle of his chest. It settles him.
People notice. There were whispers when he stopped wearing the gloves, though not when he was still in the room. Not after a quick slash of his cane, a crushed cheekbone.
But this. Somehow this pinpoint feeling in his chest speaks louder to those around him than his unveiled hands. Criminals fidget more, cheat less. The bouncers have less work to do.
There's something distinctly unnerving about a dangerous man who feels safe.
Whatever is comforting him, they instinctively fear it. And they should. She's more dangerous than any of those gutter rats have ever dreamed of being.
And yet, when her hair is draping his body, he can kiss her. She can undress him now, every night, and everything from his sensitive ankles to the jut of his hipbones has felt the silken drug of her hair. She's slept, once, with her cheek laid between his shoulder blades.
His back knows her, like she once said.
They learn that the pads of her fingertips can trail across his skin, once it has been calmed by her hair. She starts to watch for what makes him smile.
It starts as a little relaxing in his eyebrows. The way his eyes aren't as sharp. It's months before his smile makes it all the way to his mouth. He looks utterly different from his ruthless, hardened self when he smiles like this. Utterly the same.
He reminds her of the way she loves her knives. They're freedom from those who would sell her. They're safety and the yet they hold the risk of losing herself. They weight in her palms with possibility. Of slicing through her values and separating her from her saints. But when she clasps them just right, they bring her back to her truest self.
She can kiss him now, in places that aren't his mouth. Just a few, but it matters. When he trembles now, it's for an entirely different reason. She thinks, if this is as far as they ever get, it's a future she can curl up inside.
And then one night, he reaches back.
