hands
by Velma
8-ball, Teddy Grahams, prescription, glue stick, hand lotion
Chris is fascinated with Lance’s hands. Has been for years, the long smooth length of his fingers, the soft palms. They’re not like his, which are cracked and a little worn around the edges and still have a small callus or two, echoes of childhood labor and a teenage life spent busing dishes. They’d be in a van in Germany, huddled together in the dark in the back, trying to stay warm, and Chris would take Lance’s hands in his, stroke his fingers over the top of Lance’s hands, then turn them over and brush along his palms. He always marveled at the contrast, his rough to Lance’s smooth. It was like what was different about them could be told in the story of their hands.~.~
Chris vomited twice before they did the show in the parking lot at the Wal-Mart his mom worked at. Lance was really concerned, had come in and out of the bathroom several times before he finally settled next to Chris, offering him some flat Sprite and a handful of Teddy Grahams because they were sort of crackers and he couldn’t find saltines. What Chris remembered most, though, even years later, were Lance’s hands cool against his forehead, light on the back of his neck, the blunt edges of his fingernails sending shivers down his spine as Lance rubbed his back.
~.~
He fancied himself something of an expert at practical jokes. He’d rigged a Magic 8-ball once, opened it up and replaced the piece inside with one he’d made himself, with his name on all sides of it. He’d tossed the ball at Lance, told him to ask it who Lance would end up marrying. Lance laughed, deep and slow. That wasn’t the type of question you asked these types of things. He asked, though, shaking it, rolling his eyes when he looked down at the answer.
“Funny, Chris,” he’d said, and he’d tossed the ball back at Chris. It came apart in Chris’s hands and he found himself covered in blue dye, smiling sheepishly.
“And the bride wore blue,” Lance murmured, walking up and wiping at Chris’s face with the corner of his t-shirt. Chris tried not to stare at his stomach. Or wonder if it was as soft as Lance’s hands, or what it would feel like under his fingers.
~.~
Then there was the time that he and Lance had decided to get in on a joke together, closing themselves in a hotel room with all the teenie magazines they could get their hands on and cutting out pictures of Nelly and wallpapering Justin’s bunk with them. Lance got really creative and cut out a few pictures of Justin himself and gluesticked them in compromising positions next to Nelly.
Afterward, as they stepped back and admired their handiwork, Lance pressed sticky hands to Chris’s cheeks and kissed him. As kisses go, it wasn’t much to write home about, light and fast, but Chris felt Lance’s hands on him for a long time after, and not just because the glue was hard to wash off.
~.~
Lance was really careful with his hands in a way that Chris didn’t entirely understand, but he certainly appreciated. Sometimes, when they were backstage, lounging around in the Quiet Room and waiting to go on, Lance would fish a bottle of hand lotion from his bag and squeeze a little in his hands, rubbing them together. If Chris was sitting nearby, Lance would reach over and close his hands over Chris’s, massaging the lotion into Chris’s hands, too, working carefully over the hard edges, dragging his thumb over the lines of his palms.
Chris always had problems getting the hackey done on nights like those.
~.~
When Chris broke his hand, Lance waited with him in the emergency room while he got it set. He drove Chris home, stopped at the drugstore and picked up his prescription for him. He slept with Chris that night, behind him, his arm pillowing Chris’s hand, his fingers curling over Chris’s. There wasn’t anything more to it than just the two of them sleeping that night but Chris, drugged out as he was and only semi-lucid, remembered thinking that Lance’s fingers were like silk, soothing and light and Chris didn’t think he would have been able to sleep without them.
~.~
Chris thought once to start using lotion himself, to whip his hands into shape. What he didn’t expect was for Lance to take the lotion away, to smile softly and shake his head.
“I like your hands how they are,” Lance said, lifting them to his face, brushing his cheek against them. “I like how they feel.”
Lance did, too. He’d tilt his head and arch his back and seek out Chris’s hands, spread wide across Lance’s chest, pale on gold, rough on smooth. Chris was breathless at the sight, watching his hands trace the path his mouth would follow.
~.~
What Chris liked best, though, were Lance’s hands on him, his fingers inside. Long and lean and seeking, finding places in Chris he didn’t even know were there. Opening him. Hot, so hot, Lance’s voice and his mouth and the rumble of his chest as he lowered himself over Chris, his nails, manicured and round and hard as they scraped at his back and pulled Chris closer until there was nothing left to separate them.
And after. After, when Lance would lie spooned against Chris’s back, his hands in Chris’s, Chris would marvel at them still. Run his fingers over the pads, mapping and memorizing until he could close his eyes and see Lance’s fingerprints there, what was uniquely Lance there in the dark, burned on his retinas.
He’d fold his fingers over Lance’s, twine them together and kiss the palms as Lance’s breathing evened out, pull the hands tight to his chest, velvet against his skin. When he dreamed, he dreamed of contrasts, dark and light and hard and soft and Lance’s green, green eyes reflected in his brown ones. The dreams were good.
- fin -