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Dean has lots of different hands.
There are the hands that grip his clipboard, the presidential metacarpals and phalanges that wrap around hard plastic and paper full of numbers and names and strategies. These hands are powerful, maybe a little terrifying to those swimmers who can see in the way they tense that Dean is disappointed.
There are other hands that pat shoulders, firm in their support and warm enough to serve as a replacement for the words that Dean doesn’t often use. These hands are kind, caring, friendly in celebration of a job well done or commiseration over a challenge not yet overcome.
Dean’s hands also offer polite greetings, or pick up dropped belongings and return them to the strangers who almost lost them, or flip Win off after he says something crass. More often, Dean’s hands pull away from a lingering handshake and decline invitations to touch. The hands for other people are, like Dean, careful and restrained.
Pharm gets hands that are just for him. The hands that only Pharm gets are the ones that cradle his face, that hold him like he’s spun sugar, that tremble when they touch him. Those hands reduce the world to the space - at once small and unending - between their skin
Those hands are Pharm’s favourites.
The first time Pharm touches himself after meeting Dean, it’s to flashes of his hands. Touching himself like this isn’t something Pharm does often, because the come-down is usually accompanied by a vague sense of unease, of something unsettling and not quite right, which isn’t really the mood Pharm prefers. But sometimes...sometimes, his nerves produce a need that overrides the feeling of names on the tip of his tongue and he brings himself off to imaginations more felt than seen. Now that he’s met Dean, though, he sees. He sees long fingers held tight in a fist, betraying passion held in check. A hand reaching up in a wave that is too excited, too pleased to see Pharm. Gentle fingers tucking stray hair behind Pharm’s ears in a gesture that speaks of love before their tongues do. When he imagines a thumb pressing past his lips, a broad hand on his stomach, fingers curled loosely around his shoulder, it’s a sensation his body remembers even if Pharm doesn’t.
He has the thought that his fingers aren’t long enough to feel like he imagines Dean’s would, and it surprises him. Not that his fingers are smaller, but that he’s thinking about what Dean could do with the length, where he could reach. Unbidden, his mind conjures a vision of Dean opening him up, his soft voice rolling words like so good and I'll take care of youover Pharm’s body. When Pharm wraps his own hand around his cock, his mind supplies Dean’s instead and his body reacts as though someone tall and quiet is leaning over him, covering him and hiding him from the rest of the world. The sounds of the apartments on either side of Pharm are muffled, because Dean’s voice in his ear is louder than the clanging of dishes behind his wall. He imagines Dean’s fingerprints all over his body, claiming bits of skin as his own, invisibly but indelibly: his temple, his jaw, his neck. His hip bones feel like they belong to Dean, even though Dean hasn’t yet pressed his thumbs into them. Pharm strokes his cock, and it's imagining Dean’s thumb swiping precome over the head that pushes him over the edge. His own fingers feel his cock throb with his orgasm, and it's the wrong fingers that are covered with his come.
After, he has to remind himself that he and Dean have barely even spoken, because his body wants to curl into Dean's side, wants Dean's body to wrap itself around him.
Dean’s hands seek Pharm before they know each other well enough to touch. They reach for him even when there’s too much space between them, the gulf wider than fingers can bridge. From the stands and across the pool, Pharm waves at Dean then wonders why he’s done it – they’ve barely met and certainly don’t need to greet this way. Manaow is waving at Team, which is what Pharm should have done, but he and Dean made eye contact and something in Pharm wanted to reach. Dean returns the wave. They keep their hands in the air longer than appropriate, both hesitant to end this moment of connection.
Pharm lowers his hand first and watches as Dean’s fingers twitch, then squeeze into a fist before shaking out to release the tension. Dean lowers his arm to his side, but his fingers are restless and they draw Pharm’s gaze. Pharm misses the start of the match, his eyes unable to focus on anything but the movement of Dean’s fingers: around his whistle, on a swimmer’s shoulder, through his hair.
As they get to know each other more, Dean’s hands start making contact. Sometimes, Pharm can’t tell if Dean means to, and he finds himself wondering if there are twinned atoms in their bodies that call to each other, from his skin to Dean’s hand. Maybe the atoms were born in the same star and then thrown galaxies apart, alone and unstable until they met again on Earth, in Thailand, in a grocery store, in a dry goods aisle, between two bodies that recognized each other, switching places when Dean brushed his thumb on Pharm’s cheekbone to wipe away tears.
Now that they’ve reunited, it seems cruel to keep them apart. Maybe that’s why Pharm’s body buzzes with electricity when Dean is near: the atoms are trying to cross the infinite distance between them so they can be together. It’s a silly fantasy, one that Pharm calls up when he feels the unsettling recognition of something impossible in Dean.
When they’re apart, he can dismiss it: it still feels like something is missing, but he can convince himself that it’s just the way his brain has decided to interpret his crush.
But when they’re together, it’s harder to believe that there isn’t something deep within him that longs to be near Dean. When they’re together, it’s harder to remember that the world exists outside of their eyes meeting, their shoulders leaning against each other, their hands gripping underneath the cover of a table. When they’re together, it’s too easy to imagine that their bodies are calling to each other, that there’s something in them that directs their movements in a dance choreographed by their unconscious desires.
In the moment, it feels magical and beautiful. When they eat breakfast together, Dean’s hands seem reluctant to be used to carry the spoon from bowl to mouth. Instead, they want to reach across the table and lay their fingertips near Pharm’s. Pharm can feel the wanting from Dean's bones and muscle as his thumb to swipes sauce from the corner of Pharm’s lips and his middle and pointer finger tangle in the fabric of Pharm’s sleeve, as his fingertip taps out a rhythm on the bones of Pharm’s wrist. When they wash the dishes together, Pharm lets their fingers meet as he hands a bowl for Dean to dry. He suppresses a shiver when Dean wraps his hands around Pharm’s to rinse them of soapy water.
But they aren’t always together, and it’s the parting that’s harder and harder these days. After they leave, Pharm struggles to remember if he made the choice to curl his fingertips against Dean’s in goodbye, or if his body did it without consulting him. After, Pharm can’t remember letting Dean press a palm at the back of his neck, only that it happened and his skin welcomed the light tapping touches of his fingertips. It’s uneasy, to be always wondering if you chose to touch someone, or if touching them is just a state your body requires, if being touched by them is a need like air, so that your body seeks it out for you if you fail to do it yourself.
Watching Dean’s hands, then, becomes a defence mechanism. It’s a natural consequence of needing to be aware of where they are at all times, because he can’t take being surprised by them anymore. Dean’s lips form a half-grin, shaky, concerned, when Pharm squeaks at the feeling of warm fingertips on the back of his neck or a firm palm at the base of his spine. Not because he doesn’t desperately want Dean’s hands on him, but because echoes of something unnameable ripple through his body at Dean’s touch. These echoes reverberate and feed back and amplify each other, building and building until there are too many layers of something sharp and discordant and buzzing that threatens to shake his skeleton apart.
So he learns to keep track of Dean’s hands in space and time, to be aware when he hasn’t seen them in a while, to be attuned to their smallest twitch and movement. He doesn’t like the way Dean’s face falls when he anticipates a hand on his arm and shifts away before Dean can make contact. The thought of denying Dean opens a deep pit of dread in Pharm’s stomach, but equally impossible and terrifying is the thought of holding on, those days when the buzzing sounds like screaming.
Other days, the buzzing is more like background radiation, something he can overwrite by focusing on something else. Usually, he can direct his mind to the newest dessert he’s trying to recreate, so that the buzzing humming fuzziness feels more like a light fog than an angry storm. When Dean is around, he has to try harder not to let it build. It helps, again, to focus his attention: if he closes his eyes and tries to sense the position of Dean’s hand in space and time, he doesn't have to react to the words under the buzzing of electricity in the back of his mind that he can't quite make out.
Sitting on his bed to watch a movie together, Pharm’s body heats up with Dean’s proximity, though it’s unclear if it’s because they’re sharing and amplifying their body heat or if it’s because the atoms in Pharm’s skin are jumping in recognition. Their sides are pressed together, as they lean on each other and Pharm’s headboard, and Pharm can feel the twitch of Dean’s muscles as he stops himself from touching Pharm.
Dean waits for an invitation, these days.
Pharm leans his head on Dean’s shoulder and presses a kiss to the bone as permission.
He feels the shift of muscle and joints as Dean lifts his arm enough to rest his hand on Pharm’s knee, as the muscles of Dean’s forearm and hand activate to absentmindedly massage the joint. Pharm finds himself wishing the fingers would move up - move up and touch me caress me hold me. He wants the hand to travel up his leg and squeeze the muscle, to trail even further to press and tease. He wants it so urgently and intensely that he feels the ghost of fingers on his inner thigh, but, in reality, fingers dip around his leg to curl into the back of his knee. Gentle pressure pulls his leg up, bending it so that Dean’s hand can reach Pharm’s ankle, fingertips gentle on the bone and tendon. Pharm’s awareness travels up Dean’s fingers, his wrist, his arm hooked around Pharm’s inner thigh, his elbow infinite millimetres away from Pharm’s cock. As Dean’s fingertips play at the cuff of Pharm’s sock, Pharm can’t pay attention to a single word of dialogue coming out of his TV speakers, but he also can’t pay attention to the way the buzzing in his mind has the cadence of sobbing.
He hears a soft breath of laughter and turns to face Dean, whose eyes are glittering with joy as he lifts his other hand to Pharm’s cheek. Dean’s palm is cool against his face, which is strange, because Dean’s hands are usually so warm. You're blushing, Dean whispers. Pharm tries to turn his face away, but Dean’s hand doesn’t yield. Pharm doesn’t try that hard to move. It's cute. He lets Dean pull him into a kiss.
Over time, the unnameable thing becomes nameable, becomes whispers and murmurs from memories that are less and less distant, that are still terrifying. Now, Dean’s hands dissipate them before they become overwhelming. Dean’s hands stop the feedback loop that makes the buzzing loud and painful, so it’s easy to go from watching Dean’s hands to waiting for them. Easier, still, to go from knowing where they are so he can slip his body out of the way, to knowing where they’re about to be so his skin can be there first. At night, with the lights off and the space between their pillows as vast as the space between stars, even as Dean’s hand rests on Pharm’s hip, he musters up the courage to ask if this is why Dean touches him so much. Has Dean been trying to stop his own echoes from breaking his body down? Did Pharm’s hesitation cause him pain? I don't feel it like you do, Dean whispers from his pillow on the other side of the universe, his fingertips on Pharm’s hip bone. Then...why? Pharm asks, and immediately regrets the question, because he shouldn’t be asking his – his Dean why he touches him. Whatever they are, touches are allowed, expected, wanted. Dean touches him because he likes to, because he enjoys it and because Pharm enjoys it. Because I have to. The words float from Dean’s lips. Because it makes the world real. Fingertips dig into his skin. Because it hurts not to.
Later, Dean will whisper about the need to reach past skin and bone, to grasp something that’s inside Pharm, to pull it into his own chest. Pharm reaches across the bed to bring Dean into his arms. He lets Dean cry warm tears that soak through Pharm’s t-shirt as Dean’s fingers dig under fabric to clutch and sink into Pharm’s waist.
They share a bed in a floating cabin, and Dean’s hands are on Pharm the moment the door closes behind them. They roam over his face and his back and pull his thighs up against Dean’s hips, and they press his shoulders into the mattress and undo his buttons and push his bangs out of his eyes. Dean’s hands pull clothing off Pharm’s body and warm the cooling skin. Dean’s hands follow Dean’s eyes from Pharm’s knee to the join of his legs to the softness of his stomach. Dean’s fingers find the valleys of Pharm’s body, follow the rise of his muscles, make a path from his neck to his cock. It feels like Dean has an extra pair of hands, because how else can Pharm feel a hand on his cock and fingers on his own, and the brush of fingertips on his lips and a grip on his waist? He tries to return the onslaught, tries to get his hands on every part of Dean’s body, but he keeps getting stuck at Dean’s jaw. He can’t seem to move his hands away from Dean’s face. Even as Dean leans in to kiss him, to mark the thin skin of his collarbone, Pharm keeps his hands where he can feel Dean’s jaw move, the muscles of his face shifting as his mouth opens, as he uses his nose to tilt Pharm’s head up to give him access to more skin.
He wants to bring his hands down to their cocks, but Dean’s body is faster, is already there, and he loses himself to the feeling of Dean’s broad palm pressing their cocks together, as Dean thrusts against Pharm’s body. He clutches Dean’s jaw like it will keep him tethered to this world as Dean’s fingers and lips create little galaxies of sensation across his skin.
He bursts into little pinpricks of light and energy when Dean presses a slick finger inside him.
He reforms into a body when Dean puts him back together: he draws his hands down Pharm’s arms to collect his fingers and place them at the end of his palm. He paints Pharm’s skin back on with hands that stroke from Pharm’s hips to his waist and up to his neck. He gives Pharm back his sight when he pushes away Pharm’s sweaty bangs and kisses his forehead.
The hardest thing Pharm has ever done is to ask Dean for space. He feels the distance between them like a tearing of flesh and hates that it’s worse for Dean. Dean’s fingers are the last thing to leave, like they can’t bear to let go and Dean can’t bear to make them, but Pharm sees the moment Dean makes his muscles loosen his grip on Pharm’s fingers. He sees the choice that Dean makes, to trust Pharm to come back to him. Pharm almost relents in that moment, almost calls Dean back to him, to beg for hands on his face on his neck and his arms and in his chest around his heart. But he needs to know that he can be alive without Dean’s hands on his skin. He needs to know that the thing that calls him to Dean isn’t just the overlapping echoes of someone else’s memories. He needs to know that his world is bigger than the space between their bodies.
The buzzing that he suffers now is the vibration of his phone. Dean’s fingers can’t jolt him out of a reverie, but the thrumming through cloth and skin and muscle and bone does, as his phone notifies him of a good morning <3 fro m his pocket. He feels the weight of Dean’s fingertips as he watches Dean type out a response to the good luck Pharm sent from the stands. The answering buzz (I don't need luck when you're here) feels exactly like Dean’s hand in his.
When they finally meet each other again, they both freeze in indecision. They’re face to face for the first time in weeks, and the desire to touch and be touched is overwhelming, but where? How? Dean could curve his hands around Pharm’s face, or he could snake his fingers under Pharm’s shirt to flatten his palm against Pharm’s back, or he could take Pharm’s hands in his, or he could dig his fingers into Pharm’s hair. Pharm wants all of those touches, and he wants them all first . He wants Dean’s fingers against his scalp and his hands on his cheeks and his palm against his spine andtheir fingers intertwined. He can tell that Dean is in the same limbo. Dean’s fingers twitch towards Pharm and his hand raises half-way towards him. His arm extends but can’t decide where to go.
So Pharm moves first.
The desire for Dean’s hands everywhere all at once is impossible, but the need to pull Dean’s face to his for a kiss is desperately possible, infinitely doable. He steps forward and lays his palms on Dean’s cheeks, tugging him down gently into a kiss, which breaks Dean’s indecision: Dean’s hands make their way from Pharm’s waist to his back, and one reaches up to thread through Pharm’s hair. They pull each other close and exchange electricity and breath and tongues. Dean’s fingers curl against Pharm’s spine, dig at his shoulder-blade, press and soothe the muscle of Pharm’s back.
Pharm watches Dean as Dean watches his hand move up Pharm’s body.
Even though they touch like this all the time now, even though they know each and every touch that makes them lose their grip on their bodies, Dean still touches him like it’s the first time. He reacts to his hand on Pharm’s skin like he isn’t the one deciding where it goes, when to pause, when to press and caress, and his eyes widen in what looks like surprise when his fingertips make Pharm shiver. When Dean’s hand strokes down Pharm’s arm, Pharm watches knuckles bend around his own fingers and part of him wonders if it’s possible to come from hand-holding. He laughs at the thought, and has to shake his head at Dean’s tilted-head confusion, his furrowed-brow concern for Pharm, because how do you explain a thought like that? He tries and fails to press his lips against the words that want to come out anyways, because it’s impossible to hold them back from Dean.
Pharm sets his laughter free when he sees the determination in Dean’s eyes.
Pharm doesn’t come from hand-holding (Next time, Dean threatens, joy flushing his cheeks), but it’s terrifyingly close. Dean directs his considerable focus to Pharm’s hand, the soft skin of his inner wrist, the over-sensitive nerves that can feel the ridges of Dean’s fingerprints against his own. He traces the veins below Pharm’s skin, draws their future in his palm, and follows the rises and falls from thumb to pinky. His fingers go over and over the edges and surfaces of Pharm’s hand and Pharm feels lovingly studied.
Pharm senses, more than understands, that it’s important to Dean to catalogue this part of Pharm’s body, to archive it his own body’s memory. Pharm’s been hard since Dean traced his finger down the middle of his palm, and he can’t resist using his other hand, the one not held like glass in Dean’s hands, to press against his own erection. It’s enough until it isn’t, because Dean adds his lips to his fingers. He dips his hand underneath his pants and strokes himself as Dean lifts Pharm’s hand to his face, as Dean looks at Pharm while he presses kisses to each finger tip. It’s his own hand on his cock, but it doesn’t feel that way. He comes to the feeling of Dean’s fingers threaded through his own and Dean’s tongue around his fingers. He comes with his fingers in Dean's mouth, and it's like he can taste his own skin.
Pharm's favourite hands are whenever Dean's hands touch Pharm, which is lucky because Dean’s hands are always on Pharm.
When they’re within touching distance, Dean keeps Pharm as close as he can. Sometimes, that means wrapping his body around Pharm’s, his legs and arms pulling Pharm close while they lay in bed. Other times, it means a fingertip resting against Pharm’s pinky finger as they study together.
The best hands are in the kitchen, because Dean follows him in a little dance that keeps them in contact even as Pharm moves around to make their dinner. At the small of his back, Dean’s hand is a reminder that they’re both here, that they accept the thing that calls their bodies together. While Dean is touching him, he can almost feel the press of the countertop against Dean’s hip and the cool air on Dean’s skin when he opens the fridge.
When Pharm moves away from where Dean is standing, to the pantry and back to the counter, Dean’s hand slides from his back to his waist, lifts briefly to capture Pharm’s fingertips, then makes its way back up Pharm’s arm to his shoulder. When Pharm lifts a spoon to taste the simmering broth, Dean’s hand wraps around Pharm’s and redirects the spoon to Dean’s mouth instead.
He’s never been happier, as he moves more slowly around his kitchen, as he forgets ingredients and his knife skills, as he spills too much of a spice into their food, because Dean’s hands keep him off-kilter. They pull his focus away, until his world narrows to the warm weight of Dean’s fingers on Pharm’s body.
One day, Dean puts a ring on Pharm's finger. The metal is cool, then warms from their body heat as Dean slides the ring over Pharm's knuckle. There must be other people in the room reacting to it, but Pharm only hears Dean's breath as it leaves his lungs in a sigh, of awe, of relief. Later, when they can't be together every day, when they have to part and exist in the world separately as they build the life they want together, they'll feel that heat as it travels from one ring to the other. The warmth of the gold around Pharm's finger is Dean's hand in his, from across the city.