Archie Kennedy had a secret. One that was slowly growing to the point
where he would have to share it, but for the moment, he could keep it to himself. For it
was a deliciously naughty secret.
It was the hands that had kept him alive. Even before he had
consciously made the choice to go on living, he had noticed those hands. At first, it was
just the graceful, constant motion; they way they waved and gestured to accompany the
words being spoken. Archie couldn't always focus to follow what was being said, but the
hands held his attention.
As things progressed, those hands consumed his world. He stopped
eating, but still he clung to life day by day just for a glimpse of them. Until the day
that he could feel himself slipping away....
Horatio had taken him from the cell, and he had spent hours in the warm
little room before he felt like acknowledging the world. Horatio was lecturing him, but it
was those hands as much as the voice that kept his attention. Those hands, touching,
comforting, so close, hovering, lying on his bare skin. It was the thought of just where
else those hands could touch, what other pleasures they could bring that brought Archie
back from the bank of the Styx.
Since then, he had made careful study of those wonderful hands. They
were strong, wide in the palm, with long fingers. The fingers ended in square nails,
giving a balance between strength and grace. They could fly and flutter like birds' wings,
they could lie in restful repose in Horatio's lap, they formed intricate patterns of
interclasped digits when Horatio became aware of them, and oft times in moments of intense
thought or stress they were clenched at his sides or behind his back. Archie felt that he
would know those hands anywhere, anytime - even blindfolded, by feel alone. Daily, Archie
became driven by an overwhelming desire to have those hands on his body, to feel those
exquisite fingers stroking his body rather than the air or a book, to feel the strength
and tenderness that had been bestowed upon him as he laying healing.
Then, the hands, nay the whole, were ripped away. The thought of
Horatio in the hole made him want to weep, but Archie knew that in that release lay
madness, for once started his tears would never stop. Instead, Archie had to keep
the men together, to try to do what Horatio would do if their positions were reversed. But
in the back of his mind was the constant reminder of those hands, in the wet, getting
cold, fending off rats, providing the only comfort Horatio would have for days. And Archie
vowed that if, no WHEN Horatio was released, it would be Archie's hands that comforted,
Archie's hands that provided a focus, Archie's hands that reassured that human kindness,
compassion and tenderness still existed in the world. And if his touch was not denied,
then Archie would reveal his secret, for having lost what little he'd had, he knew he had
to take the chance to fight for what could be. And it always came back to those hands.....
THE END