-> summary: you have a little fixation on Steven's hands. It was supposed to be private, but apparently you weren't as subtle as you once thought
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It was a little secret you had. No one else knew. No one else had to know. Ever. You were perfectly happy keeping it to yourself. Until it started to affect your friendship with your next door neighbour. You hadn't seen him in a couple days, narrowly avoiding him on the stairs, barely saying hello as you passed him while leaving your apartment. Steven being Steven, thought he'd done something to offend you. But it was quite the opposite. Not that you'd ever let him know that.
Steven Grant had been your neighbour for almost a year now. He was quiet, a little too quiet. If you didn't see him leave his apartment every morning at the same time as you, you'd think that nobody lived there. Not that you were complaining; it was better than having an obnoxiously loud one. But every morning you would say hello, maybe even grab coffee on the way to your individual workplaces. You knew he worked in a museum, which you found incredibly attractive alone. But that was basically all you knew about your neighbour. Oh, and Gus, of course. His one-finned fish. On one or two occasions he had asked you to feed the fish while he was away, and you had happily obliged. No one else had ever really set foot in Steven's apartment except for you, so you felt sort of honoured that he allowed you into the privacy of his home.
Making your way up the stairs, you kept your eyes down, focused on your phone. Your work team had come up with a new system on rotation plans that you were looking over, completely perplexed by the design of it all, but not caring enough to comment on it. Scanning through the documents, you made it up the stairs and down the hall to your apartment without looking up once. Slipping your phone into your back pocket, you pulled out your keys and fumbled with the lock, but before you could open your front door, the door beside your apartment clicked open. The man you'd been avoiding for a little while stepped out, meeting your gaze.
"Afternoon," he smiled, sweet as ever. You smiled back, keeping your eyes on his face, not letting them drift down.
"Hey, Steven. How have you been?" You made small conversation with him, tightening your hand around your keys as you noticed him messing with his own fingers, cracking and popping them slowly. He way his hands moved, gliding along soft skin, skilled fingers intertwining with one another. Fuck. Stop thinking about it. You tried to focus on the conversation instead.
But you kept coming back to it. Eyes drifting down to his hands, thinking about how skilled his fingers could be. How the veins stretched along the back of his palm and up his forearms, disappearing behind his rolled up sleeves. His hands looked soft, not calloused or rough, just as you expected. His fingers were long and thick, precise and careful with their movements. Delicate hands to handle delicate artefacts. But you didn't want him to be delicate, not with the way you wanted him to handle you. You wanted those thick fingers of his to be put to use, to feel all of you. His large hands to grab at you, mark you with his fingertips.
His movements were always so precise. His fingers curling so perfectly around things, how big they were, making the objects in his hand seem so much smaller than when they're in your own. You wondered how big his hands would feel if they held you, how small your hands would be in his as he held them, intertwining his thick fingers with yours. Fuck, it was consuming your every waking thought.
You'd imagined this before. A lot. A lot more than you would ever admit. But your little crush on your neighbour had turned into long nights of thinking about him. About what you wanted him to do to you. You knew it was wrong. To think about a friend like this, it should feel wrong. But honestly, you couldn't deny how good it made you feel. To see how his fingers flexed, how the muscles in his forearms moved, how large his arms looked as they crossed over his body. You often pictured how they would wrap around you, hold you up as he-
"Hey, you alright?" He was closer now, you hadn't noticed just how close until you blinked out of your dirty thoughts. You forgot how to speak for a few seconds, caught by surprise at how close his body was to yours, towering over you.
"Yeah, yeah I'm okay," you tried to play it off, doing your best to meet his piercing eyes. He didn't believe you though, seeing your reddened cheeks as a sign that you were perhaps not feeling well. "I'm just a little tired from work is all."
"You sure? You look a little flushed." Then his hand came up to your forehead, feeling the heat off your skin with the back of his palm. You practically didn't breathe the entire time. Then his palm moved to your red cheeks, his soft fingers drifting across your skin so gently. You could barely handle it anymore, liking the feel of his large hands on your skin a little too much.
"I'm sure, just probably need to get something to eat and go to bed," you smiled, doing everything in your power not to lean into his touch. He just nodded, dropping his hand from your face and stepping away. "Okay," he said, "as long as you're alright." Fuck, he was so sweet it hurt. You both said your goodbyes and Steven headed towards the staircase while you made your way hastily inside your apartment. He cast one last look at you as you pushed yourself through your door with a smile on his face. He could see it in your face the whole time he was talking to you. How you fixated not on his face, but on the ministrations of his hands. He didn't notice it at first, until he started playing with his keys, twirling them deftly between his fingers, seeing how your eyes followed his movements like a magpie to shiny objects. He knew you weren't tired. You were flustered. He knew exactly why. Steven made a mental note to fluster you as much as possible in the future.
