The First Hand Hold

It took the two of them months, nearly half a year, before they finally held hands. They began dating, in some form of the word, only a few weeks after meeting for the first time, making that fact even harder to believe. They had hugged and kissed before, sure, but they never held hands.
Jack was always quite ... nervous about hand holding, for a lack of a better word. Never in his life had he been a romantic person - he hadn't even developed feelings for Alan yet when they started dating - so what seemed to be the simplest of romantic gestures stumped him. When Jack had finally developed feelings for Alan enough to want to express them, he was at a loss. He should be able to, he attempted to reason to himself, just grab Alan's hand and continue from there. He had easily hugged and kissed him, so this shouldn't be any different.
And yet, it was. Jack had always equated kissing has a more- somewhat- sexual act. That kissing was more of an act of desire than passion, at least in most cases. This is why Jack had no trouble with kissing Alan, the few times he had; Jack had the ability to have desires for somewhat-sexual acts whenever his body felt like it. This was not the case for romantic feelings.
What made this even worse, Jack mused as he tried to figure out how to approach the desire to hold hands, was that his partner was the exact opposite. Alan was hopelessly romantic, and Jack could tell it secretly ate him up inside that the affection he wanted was never quite gained. He always denied this, saying that he had no trouble waiting for Jack to become comfortable with romantic things; it was the same as Jack waiting for him to become comfortable with sexual things.
Jack knew he was right, of course. That was the main thing they agreed on upon dating, and both men respected it fully. But that didn't stop the guilt he didn't know he had from eating Jack away.
He finally had feelings he could share with his partner, that his partner would love to receive, and he couldn't muster the way to do it.
As he mulled the desire over more, Jack glanced over to the man next to him, or more specifically, his hands.
Alan had his laptop nestled into his lap, his fingers still uncomfortable typing on it. They pulled back each time a sentence was complete, only to quickly return to jab the backspace bar.
It had still amused Jack that Alan had never learned proper keyboarding. In that particular moment, however, he was more focused on the soft fingers pushing against the cold keys. Or, at least, he assumed they were cold.
And that was the moment he knew how he wanted to hold hands.
It wasn't going to be an intertwined kind of hand hold, but a grasp, one where his palm would wrap around the side of his partner's hand. Jack figured that would be the most warming kind of hold, and thinking about it practically like that helped him move forward with the idea.
A slow forward, anyway. Jack dragged his fingers across the bed, nervously anticipating how Alan might react. He didn’t want to grasp his hand too hard and scare him, but he didn’t want it to be a flimsy grasp that didn’t show his true feelings either. Before he could fully decide what he wanted to do, his fingers had brushed up against Alan’s free hand, which he had set down when he paused to look over his work.
Right after Alan turned his head to say something, Jack found himself quickly placing his hand onto Alan’s, causing him to go quiet. He then looked away, face heating up. Alan’s face also heated up a bit, but in a lighter shade of red. Unlike Jack, however, it wasn’t out of embarrassment, but instead surprise. He enjoyed the surprise, but it was a surprise none the less.
Jack showed no sign of ever wanting to look back. In his mind, he had royally messed up the one time he actually had affection to give, and he didn’t want to face the music for it. He ignored the fact that Alan hadn’t shoved his hand off yet like he expected.
The two men sat in an awkward, yet blissful moment. Jack had subconsciously began to worm his fingers into an intertwined position with Alan’s, as if his body knew more about acting out his emotions that his brain. Alan allowed this to happen, and responded by putting his other hand into Jack’s free hand, following the same motion.
This got Jack to look back towards him. Eye contact wasn’t exactly made, but that didn’t seem to matter. Alan had a warm smile on his face, and didn’t seem bothered that Jack didn’t. Instead his bottom lip was bit, trying to keep words from fumbling out. He was still afraid he could make it worse. Alan must have sensed this, and attempted to rest his forehead on his partner’s. Jack allowed it, but still avoided eye contact.
Alan was just fine with that, and with the little finger-rubbing game Jack had started. It didn’t seem like Jack fully knew what he was doing, but being able to feel Alan’s softness between his fingers certainly calmed his nerves. It allowed him to feel what it was like to express feelings in such a subtle way, to accept its legitimacy. His brain finally understood that is activity meant him no harm, and quickly destroyed the words that wanted to spring out and ruin the moment.
Only after that did Jack give eye contact and a small smile. To his pleasure, Alan gave him the same reaction back, never pulling his hands away.