Title: Your Hands

Author: sharilyn

Rating: NC-17

Category: slash vignette

Summary: Jim receives an epiphany about Blair's hands

Disclaimer: don't own the show or characters, no copyright infringement intended, please don't sue.

Your Hands
by Sharilyn

When your hands go out,
love, toward mine,
what do they bring me flying?
Why did they stop
at my mouth, suddenly,
why do I recognize them
as if then, before,
I had touched them,
as if before they existed
they had passed over
my forehead, my waist?

Just as I can pick out his heartbeat in a crowd of a hundred people, so too do I recognize the touch of his hands--Blair's hands, sensitive scholar hands, guiding hands--unique and unmistakable among all the anonymous palms and grasping fingers that invade my life daily, his touch safe and familiar in the midst of the relentless sea of strange hands touching me, demanding things of me, asking, prodding, prying, sometimes overwhelming my tactile sense, even the lightest brush of an unfamiliar and unwelcome finger over my skin sometimes rasping and scraping like glass shards scoring my flesh...

But not Blair's hands; his hands never hurt me that way, never cause me distress; I could pick his sure but careful touch out of a hundred hands all grasping me at once, could tell from the merest glide of a fingernail over the back of my hand whether it's his fingernail doing the gliding. I sometimes think that I have known his hands forever, that before either of us walked this planet his hands were touching me, cradling me, grounding me on some other plane, in some other far-distant dimension.

When I wouldn't listen to him today at that crime scene--when rage at the senseless carnage spread out before me sent all my senses into a dangerous spike of blind fury and uncontrolled adrenaline--it was Blair's hands that brought me back to myself, Blair's gentle but persistent grip on my arms tugging me back toward daylight, toward sensibility. From some place far removed, I became dimly aware of his touch on my arms, found some part of my mind almost absently cataloguing the feel of his fingers sliding gradually up my biceps to knead my stiffened shoulder muscles before moving onward to check the pulse at my neck, some measure of his anxiety for me transmitting itself through the press of his finger against my carotid; I was aware right afterward of his palms briefly caressing my face, and then his fingers were digging into my cheeks just enough to transmit a warning, thumbs pressing in almost but not quite hard enough to bruise my jawline because I still wasn't listening to him, still wouldn't unclench my teeth and my fists and clear the red haze of psychotic rage from my eyes...

I didn't want to let go of my anger just then, didn't want him to take it from me, to douse the darkly satisfying but ultimately pointless fury boiling within me like midnight fire. But Blair knows me well, knows all the secret vagaries of my body almost as well as I know them myself; and he
recognized that I was entering dangerous territory, understood that if he couldn't bring me out of it and soon, I might end up lost inside a major zone-out that could see me doing time in a nice, padded room somewhere. And so he risked the gossip and speculation of the beat cops standing around, ignored the agitated questions being barked at him by Simon, tuned out everything around us and reached up to press his fingers to my lips, stroking both thumbs carefully but insistently along my bottom lip, talking to me in that low, steady tone he uses that seems able to draw me back to him even across the infinite reaches of space and time. But it wasn't so much the voice this time as the fingers, wasn't so much the half-demanding, half-coaxing tone drifting into my consciousness as it was the touch of those hands, caressing and beseeching and pulling me from inchoate rage to a lethargic, semi-confused state of awareness.

"That's it, Jim, come on back; get with the program, here...let's see you blink, or curse, or do both at once, huh? Can you feel this, Jim, can you feel my hand on your face? Yeah, that's it, I see daylight at the end of the tunnel now..."

And I did blink, forgot for a minute how to curse or even why I'd want to, as my gaze cleared and centered in on his blue eyes frowning up at me, my cheek tingling lightly, pleasantly, from the warm contact of his palm against my flesh. Aggravated relief sparked in his narrowed gaze as I gave myself a little shake, coming fully back into my body; and briefly--very briefly--his hand slid over my softly parted lips, sealing off anything I might say in this first, disoriented moment of returning sensibility. His palm pressed like a caress over my mouth, only fleetingly and then gone, his hand falling away from me when he was sure I was back in control and wouldn't blurt out something better left unsaid, maybe something about zoning, something that might raise suspicion in the listening ears around us.

My lips felt strangely bereft without the protective pressure of his fingers keeping them closed, keeping our secrets safely inside of me, inviolate and intimate between us; and I couldn't help the quick, furtive flick of my tongue along my bottom lip as Blair stepped back from me, the salty, not unpleasant taste of his palm lingering on my skin. It seemed to me that his eyes darkened suddenly as he watched me taste him like this, his heartbeat and respiration increasing inexplicably as his gaze zeroed in on the questing sweep of my tongue dancing along the faint trail of Blair pheremones still tingling along the sensitive nerve endings of my mouth. Maybe it was then that I realized just how much I love him; maybe, with that one touch, he began to realize it, too. And the very idea that I could be so completely and ruthlessly exposed before him suddenly became something terrifying, became a notion too unfathomably weird to even entertain there in the cold light of day. How could I think of love, how could I stand alone still yearning for Blair's hands on me while the bloody bodies of shot-up teenage boys lay sprawled in the street, graphic and terrible and forever lost to love, to redemption? Hopeless. All of it hopeless, and with anger returning, I spun away from the sight of death and violence and from the white blur of Blair's hands clutching pensively at the edges of his ratty jacket, fingers holding desperately to the frayed material as if they longed to be somewhere else, as if they suddenly knew a secret too profound to grasp.


Their softness came
flying over time,
over the sea, over the smoke,
over the spring,
and when you placed
your hands on my chest,
I recognized those golden
dove wings,
I recognized that clay
and that color of wheat.


That night, back at the loft, I couldn't settle down; prowling, restless, unaccountably perturbed, I roamed the confines of the living room and paced back and forth in front of the window like some caged animal until Sandburg finally looked up from grading papers and fixed me with a longsuffering, vaguely sympathetic stare.

"Those gang murders really got to you today," he murmured, the words both a statement and a query at one and the same time. "What was it about these particular killings that's bothering you, Jim; I mean, not to sound jaded or indifferent or anything, cause you KNOW how senseless tragedies like that usually get to me...but why this time for YOU, why today? It's not like you've never seen that shit before."

"Yeah; well, maybe that's why," I snapped irritably, suddenly and irrationally angry with him for being so calm, for sitting there looking so studious and so collected with his glasses perched on his nose and his blue eyes watching me so steadily, just waiting. "Maybe I just finally saw it all
one time too many."

He doesn't answer, just keeps studying me with that same, maddening patience; and I can feel real anger rising inside me, amorphous and unsettled and disturbing as hell. Dammit, it's always Sandburg who freaks at crime scenes, I fume silently to myself, always Sandburg who agonizes over the bereft families left behind to deal with the aftermath of all the senseless, mostly youthful dying going on all over town in the wake of the city's latest gang turf wars. I should be soothing HIM, should be giving HIM that expectant talk-to-me look. But tonight the tables were turned, and I sensed him waiting for my answer, waiting for me to confess all to him, to bare my soul to his discerning gaze. And I really wasn't in the mood.

"Maybe I'll go out for awhile," I said suddenly, brusquely, surprising myself with the idea. Blair looked surprised, too, and not in a good way; even before I could move toward the door, he was pulling his glasses off and tossing them carelessly atop a stack of graded papers, the rasp of his chair scraping backwards across the floor sounding painfully loud in the taut stillness that rose between us.

"Out? Kinda late for that, isn't it, Jim?" he began carefully, and suddenly I really WAS mad at him, the irritation that had just sparked to life within me flaring right up to borderline pissiness between one heartbeat and the next.

"I wasn't aware I had a curfew to meet, Chief," I bit out shortly, and before the silent wince that he does so well had time to expel itself from his pursed lips, I was heading again toward the front door, a distant throbbing starting up in my temples. "Just worry about your papers, Professor; I can take care of myself out on the street."

"Fine, Jim, whatever; but it's not going to go away, just because you run from it." Blair's words made no sense to me as they left his mouth, and the look in his eye stirred every early warning system in my already-tense body as he rose to his feet and took a step toward me.

"I don't have a fucking clue what you're babbling about, Chief," I rapped sharply and turned away from him, tearing my angry gaze from the dark knowledge glowing in his. "And why are you on my ass because I actually caved in and displayed some real human emotion for once at a crime scene? After all, you're always the one yammering at me about how I repress too much, how I stuff too much of the darkness and evil of what I see out there on this job way down inside me. So you'd think you'd be jumping for joy that Stone-faced Ellison actually let that callous facade crack a bit today, that I let some of the anger and grief and soul sickness at what I saw leak out of me. You know, I just don't get you, Sandburg; what the hell is it that you want from me? Just what do you expect?"

I hated this, hated that I was letting anger take hold of me, that I sounded so pathetically defensive under all the bluster and bullshit I was hurling in his direction; but he was advancing on me, eating up the space between us, closing in and crowding in till he had me backed up flush against the closed front door, my ass thumping against the hard surface behind me as Blair came to a silent, considering halt not six inches in front of me. God, why were his eyes so wide and blue, so filled with such knowing, such insight, pinning me in place, delving into my head, my soul, pushing me when he had to KNOW that that was a damned dangerous tactic for him to be using at this particular moment?

"Sandburg..." I growled, my tone low and ominous and tight with anger. But why, a voice murmured somewhere far back in my brain; why anger, why so fucking angry now? And why with Blair, your friend, your partner, your guide? He wouldn't hurt you, never hurt you, yet your heart is pounding nonetheless, you're terrified, on the edge of breaking, maybe going insane...

And then he touched me. Those hands...Blair's hands, palms soft but not at all feminine, fingers blunt and strong, knuckles lightly dusted with dark hair-- those hands were on me, thumbs pressing, holding me effortlessly in place as both palms smoothed themselves over the rigid wall of my chest, fingers stilling themselves over my tightly quivering pectoral muscles and holding steady there even though I could feel each digit trembling slightly with the need to move, to stroke, to explore the dark nubs of my nipples, to feather downward and trace the rippling curavature of my ribcage...His hands were fire on my body, two burning brands resting above my thundering heart, searing their way through the wall of my chest directly to the wildly pounding organ beneath.

And I wanted to shove him away from me, wanted to growl ugly imprecations into his face, wanted most of all to snatch his hands up in my own and crush his treacherous, tormenting fingers beneath mine, squeezing till he groaned and gasped for mercy and I was forced to make amends, forced to lift his throbbing, abused fingers and slide each one carefully, so carefully and
tenderly, into the hot, moist cavern of my mouth, sucking and licking all the hurt away, all the anger and confusion, feeling only need rising up in the both of us through the silent ritual of this healing...feeling the truth I'd glimpsed in Blair's eyes coalesce and solidify in the ends of his
fingers, in the hot, smooth glide of his palms cupping my face and pulling me down, pulling me in for that first, hesitant brushing of mouth over mouth, of lips against lips, hungry and seeking and tired, so tired, of waiting for so long...

"Don't," I croaked roughly, my body quivering like a reed beneath the onslaught of a sudden wind. "Jesus, Blair, don't..."

But it was too late, his hands were there already, I knew those hands, would know them anywhere, anytime, the hands of fate, of destiny, so needful and so generous; his hands were the world and he was whispering against my mouth, "Touch me, oh God, Jim, touch me..." and I realized that my hands weren't just hands anymore but had been transformed into sacred instruments, prepared before the world began for this holy task now revealed to them, sanctified for touching Blair, for loving Blair, every brush of my fingers against his skin a solemn vow, unsayable...eternal.

"Yes," I heard myself groan, and then again: "Yes..."

And our hands joined, clutched, writhed and stroked and loved as they led the way for our mouths, for our souls...and as we touched--tentatively at first but then with increasing ardor--memory returned to the both of us, sweet and full and rich with the truth we'd sensed almost from the first moment we came together here, in this place and time. Knowledge blazed from
his eyes, transmuted from spirit to energy to leap across the scant space separating us and lodge in my own stunned gaze.

"Blair..." I whispered, overcome with this wisdom, filled to brimming with the surfeit of this feeling rising and rising within me, making me dizzy and breathless and hard, oh God so hard with need, with growing excitement and exultation. "Chief, please!--"

And as always, as ever, his hands reached out to catch me; his strong grasp pulled me back from the abyss and we fell, together, into a place of safety. Into light and warmth and home. Falling and settling gently--gently--and my hands formed the cushion that rested beneath his head as he pulled me down to him, breathing love and completion into my willing mouth.


All the years of my life
I walked around looking for them.
I went up the stairs,
I crossed the roads,
trains carried me,
waters brought me,
and in the skin of the grapes
I thought I touched you.
The wood suddenly
brought me your touch,
the almond announced to me
your secret softness,
until your hands
closed on my chest
and there like two wings
they ended their journey.

I awoke this morning, eyes blinking gummily in the predawn dimness, to the sweet sensation of Blair's hands resting peacefully against my naked chest; snuggled together in the blissful warmth of one sleeping bag, the heat of our melded bodies rose around us and sealed in the alluring scent of sweat and sex and boneless comfort created from this intimate contact between us.
I knew I'd have to stir soon, my reluctant body driven from its satiated lethargy to answer the inevitable call of nature; but for now I was content merely to burrow more deeply into the delicious, Blair-flavored heat soaking into my skin wherever our bodies touched.

We'd just come off a harrowing week at work, our schedules relentlessly mired under by a sudden rash of robberies and carjackings, and two days ago Blair came dangerously close to losing half his head when the group of suspects we'd been tailing became spooked and went down shooting. Luckily no one died during the ensuing shootout, though two of the suspects sustained serious gunshot wounds when I returned fire on their semi-barricaded position behind a couple of parked cars. Some primitive part of me had wanted to kill the bastards for shooting at us--more specifically, for aiming at my partner; that protective streak that I can never fully restrain where Blair is concerned was in full battle cry that afternoon, intent on taking those slime balls OUT for daring to unleash that fusillade of bullets in Sandburg's direction. It was more luck than skill that kept the assholes alive; if I'd been able to get closer to them and had had the time to draw a bead on their individual positions with my senses, I know I WOULD have shot to kill, not just to wound and subdue them. Even with Blair hissing frantic imprecations from his protective huddle next to me for me to settle down, to stay cool and just do my job, I wanted to totally eradicate this latest threat to my guide, wanted to keep firing and firing until I was certain none of the four shitheads pathetically crying surrender would ever have the chance to endanger Sandburg's life again.

But Blair pulled me out of my rage-induced fugue, his voice, his hands grounding me as always, drawing me back from the edge of darkness to the salvation awaiting me in the light; he reassured me later that I don't really need him for that, that I'm a good man and would never willingly cross that line into some sort of renegade vigilante extremism. But sometimes I'm not so sure; sometimes I really am afraid that without Blair's steadying influence backing me up, I might just snap completely one day and plunge off the rim of civilized sanity into the lush savagery of a being much more primitive, much more brutal in securing the safety of the life more important to him than any other in the universe. When I get that close to losing it, when I feel the dark, formless terror of the possibility of losing Blair settling over my soul like a shroud, then I know I've had too much. Then I know it's time to step back, time to breathe, time to get my guide and myself the hell out of the city and away from it all.

And two days ago Simon obviously recognized that need in me; he took one look at my stiff, rage-swept countenance where I hovered over Sandburg like an avenging angel at the shooting scene and ordered the both of us to get our paperwork done and turned in and then to stay the hell away from Major Crimes for the rest of the weekend. Even Blair knew enough not to argue or make so much as a feeble, "Really, Captain, we're all right" protest; with his exhausted blue eyes fixed worriedly on my own, all he did was nod mutely and slide his hand into mine, allowing me to pull him up from the front seat of the patrol car he'd been sitting in while I gave Simon a brief rundown of all that had transpired. Uncaring what new rumors this physical
contact between us might arouse among the uniforms milling about, I kept Blair's hand curled in mine for one second longer than was truly necessary as I hauled him to his feet and extended my other hand to his shoulder to steady him.

"You've really gotta stop with this whole bodyguard routine, Jim," Blair murmured scoldingly as he cast a furtive look around us and then gave me a gentle shove in the direction of my poor, bullet-riddled truck. "Geez, it's not like we haven't been shot at before. I think you DO need some downtime, oh Mighty Sentinel of the city." The glare I gave him effectively cut off the remainder of his sardonic diatribe; but after I'd assured myself that my truck was still driveable and had bundled Blair into the passenger side without ceremony, he merely settled back against the seat with a weary sigh and murmured gently to me as I slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

"It's okay, Jim; this whole...lovers thing...well, it's still just really new, really fragile; and I think you're just responding to that, just trying to adjust to this new dimension of our relationship, trying to balance all the private emotions you feel for me when we're at work and need to be
professional..."

"Chief, you know I love you," I snorted a soft reply as we pulled away from the crime scene, both of us heaving silent sighs of relief as the pandemonium we'd been smack in the middle of receded behind us. "But right now I am so NOT in the mood for one of your philosophical lectures on Sentinel/Guide behavior, especially as it relates to two men making hot, furious love as often and as enthusiastically as possible when we're NOT at work."

"I love you, too, you incorrigible romantic," Sandburg growled affectionately, already half-asleep from the adrenaline crash-and-burn aftermath of surviving one more ridiculously insane work day with yours truly. "So...camping this weekend? With fishing, maybe?" he smiled, and I
could feel the instant, rock-hard surge of fierce arousal his seemingly innocent suggestion evoked in me.

"Fishing, sure...and sex," I agreed serenely, listening with the smallest frisson of sensual pleasure to the sudden hitch in my lover's breathing across the cab of the truck.

"Maybe some stargazing," he retorted evilly, his tone elaborately casual even as his temperature rose and his heart rate increased and the slow, sweet musk of his arousal rose in a heavenly wave from his rumpled body.

"Sure; fishing and stargazing, and then we'll have sex. Lots and lots of sex," I agreed complacently, and Sandburg gave a barking laugh of surrender before our eyes met and held, exchanging silent promises that spoke of things so much deeper, so much more precious and intense than words could ever convey.

Two days now of peace and quiet and privacy, I thought with quiet satisfaction as Blair suddenly snuffled against my neck and shifted his hands on my chest, his sluggish movements disrupting the snug arrangement of the sleeping bag enclosing us and allowing a tiny draft of chill morning air to drift down inside our heated haven. We'd had two days of sheer heaven so far, with one more day of shameless hedonistic relaxation still to go before the outside world reclaimed us again.

Grumbling in his sleep at the sudden trickle of damp coolness invading our sanctuary, Blair tightened his legs around mine where we lay tangled together; and the first, lazily interested surge of his groin against my own as he slid one leg between my thighs brought a gasp of startled pleasure from my lips. As my cock instantly responded to my partner's drowsy advances, I buried my face in the warm, sweet curve of Blair's neck and felt him smile into my hair as his hands began a slow, indecently sensual exploration of my chest and stomach.

"Mmm...must be morning already," he whispered against my mouth as I lifted my head to press a series of long, slow kisses to his full lips. We both had terrible breath, I was sure of it; but it didn't matter at all; this was perfect, this was real, and I'd never wanted him so badly.

"Mmm..." I agreed as he slid those sinfully talented hands of his up and down my arms, my torso, his fingers lightly teasing my sweat-sheened skin as they journeyed ever lower, circling and gliding and wringing one low, guttural moan of rising need from my throat. "That means...that means..." I gasped jerkily as his thumb found my eager hardness and pressed down, just so, in the one spot he knew would make me lose my mind.

"That means morning sex, huh, Jim?" he chuckled throatily as I gave a raw, muffled cry of ecstasy and arched up into his hand, his gorgeous, tormenting, loving hand so warm and solid around the girth of me, so enticing and yet so oddly reverent. "And then there's after-breakfast sex, and then the after-fishing sex and we'll probably have just enough time after lunch for some pretty intense after-lunch loving...oh, and don't forget the thank-God-we-made-it-home-in-one-piece, mindblowing sex once we're back at the loft tonight..."

"Jesus, Chief, at the rate we're going we'll need another mini-vacation to recover from this one," I groaned helplessly against him as he rolled over inside the enfolding cocoon of the sleeping bag and began to slide his sweat-slicked body up and down over mine, his blue eyes gleaming mischievously down into my pleasure-hazed face.

"So, does that mean you want me to stop?" he murmured, his lips nibbling up and down my throat, his tongue laving a trail of molten heat along my skin as those clever, clever hands brought me to the edge of a shuddering wilderness epiphany. "Cause that's fine with me, I'll stop right here and now, we can just pack up and head back early, I've got papers to grade, after all..."

"You stop now, and your loving Sentinel is going to go COMPLETELY primitive on your ass, Chief," I growled, fisting both my hands into the rioting mass of his hair; and as I pulled him so tightly against me that our two heartbeats seemed to meld and settle into one, Sandburg sighed luxuriously against the demanding pressure of my teeth and tongue at the portal of his mouth and breathed around a breathless laugh:

"Promises, promises..."

And then all four of our hands became very busy, and it was all good, so very good.


~End~