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Sky has never stopped to think about the hands of people before, not even his own.
He’s always thought of them as a mean to an end, as tools that allow him to wield his sword and feed his horses.
He knows Stella’s hands are those of a princess. Delicate fingers and perfect nails she likes to paint, and a ring that he knows is heavier on her than it looks. He knows they feel good on him. He knows that her strength lies in her magic and so the look of her hands has nothing to do with what she’s capable of.
He knows his own hands are rough. Big enough to hold both wrists of an opponent, callous fingers from hours upon hours of training and farming. He knows he has the kind of knuckles that people know can break their jaws just seeing them from afar.
Riven’s hands, though, Sky feels like they were made with the purpose of fooling people.
They’re all long fingers and bones that come to the surface with his movements. Swift and fast and skilled. He knows they have an outstanding precision when cutting leaves and arranging ingredients. He knows that people who watch him handle plants never think those hands could manage something rougher.
But Sky knows they’re also trained muscles and strong tendons that thrive under the strain. He knows they’re as capable of breaking jaws as his, that those delicate bones strengthen when making a fist. He knows that, with strength and dexterity combined, getting Riven to drop his swords is incredibly difficult. He knows that people who watch him on the punching bag can’t imagine the gentleness with which he handles a petal.
The first time he noticed Riven’s hands they had spoken less than a handful of times, not that Sky hadn’t tried. This boy that kept rolling his eyes at him and eluding his attempts at maybe a friendship with his roommate was standing opposite to him on the training platform, rolling his long sword from one hand to the other like he couldn’t decide which one he wanted to wield it with.
It was such a confusing sight for Sky, seeing someone doubting which hand to use, that he couldn’t help but stare at Riven’s feeling like the natural flourish of his fingers were magnetic. An hour later, Riven climbed off the platform with a purple cheekbone and a limp, but for Sky, his hands remained a sight seared in his mind.
He could see them in class, making a pen fly over his knuckles. In the courtyard, making a knife spin between his fingers. At the edge of the barrier, rolling a perfect joint without effort.
The first time Sky was paired with him in Herbology, he felt like the worst lab partner in the world, only being able to focus on how long Riven’s fingers were and how the boy who always came back to the dorm with a variety of bruises could have the laser precision of a surgeon with a knife in his hand.
The day Silva handed Riven a pair of short swords, Sky was the one to end the training with bruises. Silva didn’t even let Riven spar with anyone that day, just made him get used to the dual weapons stances and movements on his own, but Sky wasn't able to focus on anything else for the rest of the class.
Riven wielding both swords against the air, like having two weapons to worry about was easier than one, was at the edge of his field of vision constantly. Trying and trying until he could make them dance through the space without the blades clashing. By the end of the day, Riven was twirling both swords with a smile and Sky had made himself simply sit and watch to avoid a concussion.
Even the night of Ricki’s accident, part of Sky’s brain was thinking about how he had never seen Riven’s hands shake so much and burry so deep in his hair. Even when those hands were flying everywhere, demanding and accusing, when he remained at Stella’s side— he still thought they were stunning hands.
In fact, Sky had been so focused on his hands as an entity, that it wasn’t even until the end of their first year when his brain caught up with the fact that Riven wore rings.
He was putting his jacket on when the clinking of metal from the other end of the room made him turn towards Riven in time to watch as he set rings on his fingers and roll them with his thumb as to seal his work.
His eyes shamelessly followed the decorated hands’ movements until Riven squeezed his shoulder on his way to the door, the ring on his thumb touching the skin at the base of Sky’s neck and making him shiver.
“Last day in this shithole,” Riven said with a grin, even though Sky still wasn’t sure he liked where he was going during the Summer.
Sky swears he caught flashes of metal glint out of the corner of his eye all night, turning his head to see Riven move his fingers through the air, around a glass, around a joint or mesmerising someone else. Having to call every ounce of focus to him so he could score from time to time when Riven dragged him to become the kings of beer pong.
He even tried to feel what was so special about those damn hands when Riven clasped his as a goodbye the next day.
Sky thinks he could have written an essay on hands during that Summer.
Now, Riven allows himself to touch more. Sky can tell the difference clearly, like a defence barrier has been deactivated after a trial period.
He knows he gets the best hugs when they haven’t seen each other in a while. He knows he gets hands on his own when he can’t nail down that guitar riff they’re trying. That he gets a hand offered when he’s down and that he has to watch both sides for an attack when they’re sparring.
He gets a hand smoothly wrapping around his wrist when Riven wants to make a dramatic whispering of something to him, and the movement looks so fluid that Sky no longer knows if it’s Riven’s natural ability or something just between them.
Sky doesn’t realise when he starts to want to know more.
He thinks maybe it was the time Riven stopped his fist from hitting at a wrong angle after a heated argument with Silva. He was punching the bag in blind anger until Riven grabbed his wrist and looked at him with raised eyebrows. With Riven uncurling his fingers from a clenched fist and holding an ice pack over his hurting wrist, Sky was able to appreciate how delicate his hands looked at his own’s side.
Or maybe it was Riven steering towards the field medic path lately, which came with Riven being able to patch him up more often than not. His hands cleaning wounds on his arm and daftly wrapping bandages around him made Sky realise that Terra patching him up felt nothing like Riven doing it.
Whenever it was, there’s little curiosity left in how he feels when Riven’s hand wrap around his nape to shake him and the tip of his fingers bury in his hair for a second. Instead, there’s an urge of a different shape that stays with him until he goes to bed.
And the more that feeling infiltrates his system, the harder it becomes stopping it from spilling into reality.
That’s what Sky blames for how he can no longer pin Riven to the mat without his eyes fixating on how his hand can engulf both of Riven’s wrists easily. It’s a perfect opportunity to analyse how Sky’s hands could just cover Riven’s if he tried— assuming one ignores the whole training class taking place around them.
“Are you going to give me my hands back or...?”
Sky’s gaze startles as it drops in a rush towards Riven beneath him, arms up in his hold, chest heaving from the sparring and an expecting, raised eyebrow. Fingers jumping to release him, Sky clears his throat on his way back to his corner of the platform.
“Yeah. Sorry,” he murmurs, shaking his arms out and throwing a hasty grin over his shoulder. “Just enjoying the taste of kicking your arse.”
Riven points a sword at him and clicks his tongue, promising revenge, but he twirls both of his weapons at the same time in a flourish without taking his eyes off Sky, and if Sky didn’t know any better, he would confront him right there and tell him to stop using dirty tricks on fair fights.
He still has a feeble hold on himself, though.
Feeble enough to sometimes give the impression that it has disappeared.
Like that day when Riven’s shoving needle and thread through his side and all Sky can think about is how gracefully his fingers move, how long they look even stained with his blood. How grateful he is that the same hands that can stitch his skin back together are capable of carrying him back to safety.
It’s the last thing he remembers seeing before passing out and the first thing he sees after waking up again. He wouldn’t want to turn his head even if he had the energy to do so and he knows he would still be mesmerised by Riven’s hands even without the drugs in his system making the rest of the world melt away.
“Feeling alright?” Riven asks, pausing his work on the tall table of the infirmary to let his eyes scrutinize Sky in his entirety.
“Just watching you work,” Sky says back between slow blinks.
Riven scoffs a laugh and shrugs, turning back towards the plant samples. “Well, it’s not like you have anything better to do.”
Sky watches his fingers steady a knife against a couple of roots and the green shine of the blade seems to glint just for him. The weightlessness inside of him spreads a loose smile over his lips.
“Not better, no.”
His mumble just gets an amused frown and a shake of head, and he guesses he can just keep staring at his hands if Riven is going to blame it on the drugs anyway.
It takes Sky almost three years to let himself simply reach across the space between them and take Riven’s hand.
They’re on the back terrace of a pub in Blackbridge and Sky thinks it say a lot about them that the only thing Riven does in response is watch him through the smoke of his joint and wait.
He has a straight road to run ahead of him and no will to turn around at this point, so Sky reaffirms his hold and angles their palms up. He can see where the handles of Riven’s swords bite the hardest on the skin just at the start of his fingers and how his index has a cut that’s on its way to scar.
His thumb roams over where the skin is warmest and travels over the lines on Riven’s palm.
He startles out of his fascination when the hand in his shakes along with Riven snickering.
“Shit, did Flora teach you how to read palms?” Riven sounds ready to give him a list of questions about his future just to see him try.
Laughter escapes Sky before he can shake his head, starting to explain. “They’re...”
The words hang in the air while Sky tries to find some more to make them follow but can only come up with flashes of images and sensations.
Riven gives space to the silence until Sky starts scowling at their hands, then arches an eyebrow and tucks a joke in the corner of his half smile.
“Mine?”
Sky’s pensive frown relaxes in a blink, because it’s really that simple, isn’t it?
“Yeah.” He exhales the word and shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t have a word for it.”
Riven pauses with his joint halfway to his lips and gives him a look from the corner of his eye.
“Getting philosophical from second-hand smoking?”
No, Sky doesn’t think there's enough words in his head right now to be able to get philosophical.
Still, Riven blows the smoke towards the opposite direction and holds the joint farther away from him before letting his head fall back against the wall and angling his shoulders to face him with a grin.
Sky mirrors him, with the drumming of a pulse under his thumb.
“I don’t know shit about philosophy, Riv.”
He guides their hands palm against palm on the air between them, spreading his fingers until they cover Riven’s— and he can feel the intake of a breath that makes the rings shake against him. He basks in the sensation of the tip of his fingers reaching farther than Riven’s, letting him stare at their hands while taking a drag of the joint.
Sky holds his gaze when Riven’s eyes meet his, drowning in green as Riven lets smoke fall from his lips at the same time his fingers shift and thread through his. It takes him a second to make his own follow and fold.
It’s a new feeling, having Riven’s fingers intertwined with his in this arranged way. Their hands are usually a mess of movement when touching, clasping palms and crossing thumbs, often to lift each other up. The times the rest of their fingers get caught in the mess it’s in weird positions and uncomfortable bumps while they’re worrying about something else.
Sky has thought before about what it would feel like to have free rein to explore these hands outside of their routine.
There’s a stampede against his ribcage as he brings Riven’s knuckles to his half open mouth. The feeling of those paradoxical bones going willingly to his lips making his heart bruise from fighting his breastbone.
Sky would feel ridiculous playing gentleman to Riven of all people if his movements weren’t skinned raw from all the times the fingers under his lips have made his veins catch fire. He would feel ridiculous if he didn’t know that the bones touching the skin of his lips broke Luke’s nose last month. If the tendons he feels flexing hadn’t pressed his blood inside of him last year.
It would all feel different, if he weren’t intimately acquainted with what they’re capable of and how them burning against him feels exhilarating.
Riven lifts a single finger from his hold and traces what he can of Sky’s lips with it. His eyes hide under his lashes and the air coming out of his mouth sounds ragged and heavy.
Sky drags their hands down slowly to let his lower lip catch on Riven’s extended finger. It makes Riven run his tongue over his teeth and that’s all Sky’s resolve needs to pull from their hands and make Riven fall against him.
Sky finds Riven’s lips very similar to his hands. They’re all softness covering rough edges, they fit against his in the same way their hands do, they move in ways that captivate him.
They make the waves of a scorching storm surge inside his veins.
He feels Riven’s fingers soothe the crescent moons he’s left on the back of his hand when they break apart. Sky’s own knuckles are stiff from how tight he’s hold on himself to his hand and if he could think about anything else, it would make him laugh.
His forehead brushes with Riven’s and he stays there for a minute, relishing the breaths that caress his lips.
“Let’s go back early,” Sky murmurs in the quietness their heartbeats frame.
Riven’s lips twitch and he tries to hide it by brushing them against his one more time.
“You drive.” He aims for a teasing smirk while making a show of taking a drag of his half wasted joint, Sky thinks, but Riven ends up showing more teeth and making his eyes squint in a smile he can’t control.
It’s a contagious sight that makes Sky’s cheeks hurt as he leans back against the wall and watches Riven paint clouds of smoke in the night air.
He keeps Riven’s hand between his own like something precious.
And he doesn’t give it back until the next morning.