Assassination classroom one shots

Touch-starved

3rd pov

It comes as no surprise to Karma that he's touch-starved. Well, that's a lie. He was not surprised, but he certainly had a whole year where he had to struggle to understand and accept that he was touch-starved and there was quite a bit of panicking in that duration. He was not surprised when he found out, nor at any point during, though he found his sudden attentiveness to his touch to be rather horrible at times.

He had figured it out by the 2nd grade that he was touch-starved, and yet he could not do anything, because his parents are always out of state, and any other relatives he might have he knows not of their existence because he's never met anyone else in his family, if there is anyone else. It had certainly not helped that most of his childhood was only pain with touch, with bullies deciding that picking on the smaller kid with the weird name who acted different was the way to go. Yeah, he learned to fight back, but that just meant that the ideology that touch equal pain was further cemented into his head.

He started to unlearn that when he became friends with Nagisa in first year. He learned to love the touch - little bumps as they walked, a hand on his shoulder, his elbow, - that Nagisa provided, and he's already starting to doubt his 'touch is pain' that's been stuck in his body for years when he's suspended. He decides maybe he should actually look up a bit more than the vague research he had done when he first heard the term and digs deeper into what touch-starved is.

He learns as he goes and by the time he looks up from the computer or phone most nights it's 3 or 4 in the morning, though it's not like he's got anywhere to be for a while so he just sleeps in. He's learned that the depression he has - he's not stupid, he knows he's depressed, doesn't make fighting it any easier - might be a side effect of being touch-starved, as well as some of the stress he finds himself with. He discovers a possibility to why he got so many infections in his earlier fights, and why sometimes touch overwhelms him. 

He also notes how he'd been paler for a while now, something that had started happening when he lost contact - nice touches, not the pain filled ones he's used to - so he also links that to being touch-starved. He's finding that being touch-starved is affecting him far more than he had realized, even affecting his mind, which is not something he realized until he recalls how often he thought himself unworthy or wrong to try and seek contact from Nagisa before he drifted away from him. He closes another tab and looks at the time, feeling a spark of irritation when he realizes today's his first day back to school and it's already 5 in the morning. Damnit, his sleep schedule is so messed up.

He sets aside his phone, putting it on the charger, before setting an alarm for at least 11, before drifting off to sleep. He does not wake or move for several hours, only truly moving when the alarm goes off at 11:30. While Karma knows he's touch-starved and everything, he does not realize how bad it is until he's part of a pretty touchy feely class and a super bi?-tri? multi? polar teacher. He had never seen anything wrong with being touch-starved - just another part of his life that his parents fucked up, but it's not like they've got many parts where they did good ( the only real thing they have is bringing him into this world ) so he does not find it odd - and so he tries to avoid touching the others as often as he can, the feeling odd and tingly on his skin, while other times it's far too much and it takes all he has to act normal.

He won't lie to himself, he knows that he loves these guys, would do anything for them, even kill if it really came down to it, though he's never done it, and so he finds himself slowly leaning more and more into their touch, and giving it out more often as well. He does not realize he feels lighter and better than he has in years until he pauses one day while brushing his hair in front of his mirror and realizes he's not as pale and he no longer thinks he's unworthy of their touch. He grins to himself, happy about the progress, but there's literally nothing he can do and honestly he's starting to get scared, wondering how he's going to go from these constant hugs to nothing again when they graduate into high school.