the promised lambs sex magic smut
I'll have you all know I totally killed my word count for the night writing this. But oh, it was so worth it.
I'm not footnoting the Hebrew. It'd take too long. Just mentally insert a whole bunch of Scripture if you don't speak Hebrew. :P
(Also, standard rough draft warning.)
When Lance got home, there was the sense of disruption about his wards, the sense of someone present in the house. It wasn't malicious or malevolent; it was someone the wards recognized, so he let himself in, then cast out a question and got the answer back: Justin.
Where, however, took him a moment to figure out; he finally tracked the Justin-sense to upstairs, where he found Justin sound asleep on the bed, napping in a puddle of sunlight. Justin had spread out to encompass the whole bed, which really was a trick given how big Lance's bed was. He'd pulled off his shirt and thrown it over his eyes to block out the light; his expression was calm and peaceful, but the curve of his muscles spoke of exhaustion.
Lance sat down on the side of the bed and brushed his hand over Justin's head. "Justin?" he asked softly, figuring if it had been important enough for Justin to come over instead of calling, he should probably find out what it was.
Justin stirred, making a sleepy unhappy noise. The t-shirt fell away from his face, and he squinted a little, then opened his eyes and blinked. "Mmm?" he asked.
Lance kept his hand on Justin's skin. It felt warm, fever-bright. "Is something wrong?"
"Mmm," Justin said again, then stretched out, turning on his side and draping one of his arms over Lance's legs. He tucked one hand between Lance's thighs, pulling him closer; for a minute, Lance felt like a teddybear, like the way they'd used to share a bed in Germany when they'd both been homesick beyond all belief and never willing to admit it. It startled him to remember. Sometimes it seemed like they'd never been that young. "Couldn't sleep. M'house was too empty. Came here."
At least it wasn't a bigger problem, Lance thought, and shifted his weight on the bed, making himself a little more comfortable. "My house was empty too," he pointed out.
"Knew you'd be coming home eventually. Figured I'd wait for you. Fell asleep while I was here." Justin's voice was indistinct; Lance could hear the drawl he'd worked so hard to rid himself of. "Your house is warm. Safe. C'mon and nap with me."
Lance hestiated for a minute, then stretched out next to Justin. Justin sighed and threw one leg over Lance's thighs, one arm over Lance's chest. Lance slid his hand along Justin's back, automatically, and asked, "Any particular reason you couldn't sleep?"
Justin's voice sharpened a little, came more into focus. "Haven't been sleeping much lately. You know. Busy. Shit to do. Don't make me wake up, man."
"You'll just fall right back to sleep the minute you can," Lance said. He'd been victim to one too many random acts of Justin-nap. He stroked Justin's skin, fingers whispering over the tense cords of muscle, then frowned and dug his fingers a little more tightly into one of the knots he found there. His angle was bad, but they'd all learned enough about massage, and Justin moaned something indistinct and went limp and boneless.
Lance laughed. "Okay, okay. Roll over."
"Don't have to tell me twice," Justin said against the pillow, and spread himself out face-down against the bed.
Lance reached over to the nightstand and opened the drawer; it took him a few minutes of rooting around until he found the massage oil, which had been tucked back in a back corner and nearly forgotten. It didn't get much use when they weren't all on tour. He poured some of it into his cupped palm, then rubbed his hands together to warm the oil with their friction.
Justin tensed at the touch, then relaxed into it. Lance could feel the muscles unknotting under his palms, but he knew it was only the surface tension; there were years of self-abuse under that skin, written deep into the lines of muscle and bone, the same way there were under his own. They'd gotten Justin totally relaxed, once. It had taken five hours of shiatsu, two pairs of hands on his body at all times, trading off one by one as hands gave way to exhaustion. It had lasted for all of three hours before the knots had started to re-form.
"You've got about ten years to stop doing that," Justin mumbled, and let his eyes drift shut.
Lance chuckled. "You just hush," he said, and straddled the backs of Justin's thighs. He leaned his weight through his palms, the way the personal trainer -- what the hell had been that guy's name, anyway? -- had taught them all to do, and let his hands slide up from the small of Justin's back to curl around his shoulders. Justin made a soft noise in the back of his throat, the way he sounded when he was about five minutes away from coming. Lance couldn't help but chuckle; if they could only record the noises Justin made, they'd be able to make millions on eBay.
"Stop laughing at me," Justin said, indistinct against the pillow.
"Shh," Lance said, and worked the side of his palm into the knots at the base of Justin's shoulderblade. Justin moaned again, a breathy, feathery sound. "You just relax."
"'M trying," Justin mumbled, and then fell silent. Lance worked his palms over Justin's back, along his shoulders, digging into the worst of the knots one by one and trying to get them to release the surface tension before he went back and narrowed in on each of the lines of muscle. Justin's muscles gave up quickly, loosened from slabs to cables, until Lance could feel each of the individual lines and knots. He knew those would take much longer to conquer.
It was almost meditative, after a few minutes. Justin's soft sighs, the tiny noises he was making, the narrowness of focus and concentration. Lance didn't set out to put magic behind it; healing magic was good for sudden trauma, but the only thing for years of chronic bodily abuse was muscle, determination, and time. He could mask the symptoms with magic, but not remove them entirely. Lance had done this with various and assorted friends, people he knew casually, dancers and band and other people who filled life on tour. Backrubs were currency for life on the road, traded and re-traded based on whomever was in the most need at a given time.
None of it was like working on Justin. With Justin he could press his body up against Justin's, use his weight for leverage, tuck one leg around Justin's hips, press his chest against Justin's ass and lean his elbows into the knots at the small of his back. With Justin, there was always that soft accompaniment of sighs and moans, reedy whimpers, the groan when Lance hit a particularly sore spot and ran his fingers over it. With Justin, there was hard steel yielding to soft pliancy under his palms, and the warmth of Justin's bare skin against his his hands.
Slipping into a light trance was almost second nature. Lance caught himself humming under his breath, feeling the energy seeping from his palms, feeling Justin's body sucking it in and using it to mend. Not magic; something more elemental than magic, something more basic. Call it chi, or life-force, or whatever label one wished to pin on it; psychic, not sorcerous, the fundamental level of awareness of being part of an interconnected whole and the links that bound the world together.
And something was wrong with Justin's.
Lance's hands stilled as he realized, as the sense of imbalance grew strong enough to seep into his conscious mind. Justin objected with no more than a soft whimper; Lance shook himself and let his hands keep moving, roving over Justin's skin, while he took a look with those other eyes and then sighed.
"You're wearing yourself down to nothing," he said. He could hear his own voice cutting through the haze of relaxation between them.
It took a moment before Justin could summon enough presence of mind for speech. "'M busy," he said, blurrily. "Promo. Tour prep. Shit."
And he hadn't been sleeping, and Lance would wager he'd been living off caffeine and adrenaline, and it was a pattern he'd seen so many times before, but this time it was worse. Maybe because Justin was working solo this time. Lance had always tried to feed the rest of the guys, bolster them before they got this low, provide enough to keep them going even through the worst of it. "I'd like to try and heal this," he offered. Expecting Justin to say no. "May I?"
Justin shifted a little, and then tried to summon enough energy to shrug. It came out as nothing more than a slight stirring of one shoulder. "If you can fix it, more power to you," he said.
It startled Lance, but nobody ever knew what was going on in Justin's head, and he was no exception. "Just lie there," he said. "Turn off your mind. Relax."
"So not a problem," Justin breathed, and let his eyes slip shut again.
Lance took a moment to call to his magic, dip into the well of power that slumbered underneath his heart. It came to his hand easily. He didn't get to heal, often; it was a small magic, a building magic, a construction of building and growing and safety. When he looked with those other eyes, Justin's body was a mass of points of light: some white and glowing, some dark and sluggish. More dark than bright, like someone had turned the gain down, like Lance was looking through a filter. Stagnant. He rested his fingertips on either side of Justin's spine, whispered a word of blessing and protection, and let his power seep through his fingertips and into that system.
"Oh," Justin breathed on a soft moan. It was a good noise, a warm noise. Lance could feel it catch beneath him, feel the thread of power slide beneath Justin's skin, seek out the unmoving pools, whisper to them and slip through down to Justin's center. It started slowly. Just a trickle at first, barely noticeable, one thin rivulet carving its way through channels that were nearly dry.
So easy to forget that magic could do this, too. Or rather, so easy to forget there were magics like this, too; small magics, magic one could learn, magic one didn't need to be born to. Lance ran his fingers down the sides of Justin's spine, working in small circles. He let his eyes close, blocking out this world to concentrate on the other, the world where Justin was an outline of chi beneath his hands. He could feel the flow of power: him to Justin, through the stream of Justin, trickling through to the center, where it pooled for a moment, then made its way to ground. With one fraction of his attention Lance followed it, until he could almost feel what it was like to be under Justin's skin, whispering through Justin's body.
It was like Justin's body was starved for it, parched in the middle of the desert, walking for miles with no oasis in sight. The energy flowing into Justin from the ground, from the earth, from the world, was nowhere near enough to replace the energy his body was burning. Lance drew the flow up from the ground with one hand, adding it to the slowly-building stream he was providing, weaving it all together into a blanket of light, a net he could cast around Justin's lines and hold them all together. Hyper-aware, hyper-sensitive, he could feel every shift and slide of energy, every turn and twist that made up the whole of Justin beneath his hands and his senses.
The clothes were more of a distraction than they should have been, and Lance spared a moment to pull off his t-shirt, toss it over the edge of the bed. "You can't keep doing this to yourself," he murmurred, more breath than voice, and stretched himself out over Justin's back, arms spread-eagled, circling around Justin's wrists and pulling slowly back, sliding his hands along Justin's arms, trailing energy behind him as he went. It caught, took hold, bloomed. He could feel the blazons echoing behind him, like blood returning to a limb that had been cut off for far too long, and he coaxed it along the way he would nurture a flame he was trying to kindle into a bonfire. He slid down Justin's back, feeling the play of muscle beneath him on a physical level even as he felt the play of power beneath him on the metaphysical, and stopped just over Justin's center to nudge the power down to ground, draw more back, tie it into the building flow. Then slid down to Justin's ankles, took a deep breath, and began again.
"Warm," Justin murmurred. "You're so warm. Feel like I'm floating."
"Shh," Lance said, and slid his hands up Justin's legs. The denim was rough beneath his palms, but he didn't need to be touching skin in order to touch deeper. He worked his way upwards, inch by inch, drawing energy from his ground himself as he went. Bringing it into his skin, stamping it and branding it his own, then letting it loose to slide into the slowly-reawakening body beneath him.
It wasn't enough. It was almost enough, could almost have been enough, but the drain was too much, the damage too old and deep-seated. It would help for now, in the short term, but Lance knew it would be too little to hold once he turned his own attentions elsewhere. If it had been anyone else, Lance would have kept going, poured himself through his fingers and his palms and hoped it would suffice. With Justin, though, there was another choice.
He leaned over, his breath ghosting across the back of Justin's neck. Justin was so relaxed he didn't even tense, didn't shiver, just rocked his shoulders back a little, pressing back against Lance. "Will you let me work on you?" Lance asked. "Work with you?"
"Mmm," Justin said. Lance took it as assent.
"Turn over," he said, and slid away from leaning his weight against Justin's long sleek lines.
It took a moment before Justin could move, and when he did, it was in one legato roll, arms and legs falling where they landed and resting there. Lance straddled Justin's hips again, leaning over to press a kiss to Justin's warm and pliant lips, and Justin hummed wordless notes of appreciation.
Lance lifted his lips, replaced them on Justin's forehead, and let the syllables resonate through both their bodies. "Ateh," he hummed, one note, the note he sometimes heard in his sleep. Justin let his head loll backwards against the pillow, relaxing into it.
So easy to slip into the right frame of mind, make the one tiny shift to concentrate on awareness, on being, on touch. Lance slid down Justin's body, bringing his lips down again, over the curve of denim between Justin's legs. "Malkuth," he hummed, feeling it, feeling it connect and catch in them both. Justin shifted his hips a little, sighed, breathed out on the third and in on the fifth.
The muscles in Justin's right shoulder danced beneath Lance's lips, not knowing what to do once they had released the tautness they held on to as easily as moving. "V'geburah," Lance breathed, and this time Justin breathed with him, filling in the harmony the way they'd done a thousand times before. Lance rested himself on his palms, one knee between Justin's legs for balance, and brought his lips down on the left shoulder. "V'gedulah." Justin's hips were rocking against him, tiny little shifts, as he started to feel the building power. Lance touched his lips to the center of Justin's chest, right below his heart, and sang out "l'olam" until he felt it take root inside Justin and catch fire, then kissed Justin again, this time more slowly, more deliberately. "Amen," he said against Justin's lips.
Justin lifted one languid hand, let the fingers brush against Lance's shoulders, and then it fell again, spent of the energy necessary to move. Lance rested one finger across Justin's lips, telling him without words: shh, be still, be at peace. Justin made another small sound, barely audible beneath his steady rasp of breath, and Lance lowered his head to trace the lines of the spell against Justin's chest with his tongue.
Justin tasted of salt, of sweat, of something dark and sleeping. Lance could feel him coming to life beneath his mouth, beneath his fingers; shifting, moving, tiny ebbs and flows like rocking against the waves of the sea. Lance marked the letters against Justin's skin, line by line, and by the time he was done Justin was shuddering and whimpering. He could feel it, Lance knew. Even if it was nothing more than warmth, than arousal, Lance knew the way it was vibrating inside Justin, coaxing him to submit to the tides.
"Son of man, be thou blessed," Lance whispered. He knelt between Justin's legs, placed his palms on Justin's stomach, wove what they were building into protection, into healing, then let his fingers trail lower, slide under Justin's waistband. Justin's hips rose to meet his touch; Justin rolled his head from side to side, softly vocalizing, nonsense syllables which lacked the force to become true words. Lance traced the characters against the lines of Justin's belly, feeling the spell take shape with each minute stroke. "Be thou healed. Be thou whole."
He slipped into Hebrew, the words rolling from his tongue even as his fingers made short work of the button, the zipper, of Justin's jeans. "Yedid Adonai yishkon lavetach alav chofef alav kol-hayom uveyn ktefav shache." Justin's hips rose again, and Lance slid his hands around the peaks of Justin's hipbones, savoring the heat, the warmth, as he drew the fabric down. Always different words, always the same power behind them. "Ki heharim yamushu vehageva'ot temuteynah vechasdi me'itech lo-yamush uvrit shlomi lo tamut amar merachamech Adonai."
"Lance," Justin whispered, wild and wonderous, sliding into the spaces between Lance's words like a counterpoint.
"Noten laya'ef koach ule'eyn onim otsmah yarbeh," Lance murmurred, breathing across Justin's thigh like ruakh Elohim breathing across the face of the waters. Justin's hands closed on the sheets. Lance brushed his fingers along Justin's length, gathered together Justin's arousal, his own power, and whispered, "Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh," as he closed his hand around Justin's skin and closed the energy, the healing, around Justin's body.
"God," Justin cried, the sound falling from his lips, not oath but prayer.
Lance let it build, let it crest, feeling the tide come crashing to shore, shaping and directing it, nudging it to nurture and protect. He called to the magic -- the magic he held, the magic they were building -- and breathed "Baruch hagever asher yivtach b'Adonai vehayah Adonai mivtacho" before lowering his head and tasting Justin's skin again.
Lance closed his eyes, seeking out the sense of Justin, concentrating on each of Justin's tiny variations of response. Touching, touched, drawing and building and shaping it all, raising the power and directing it, weaving it, transforming it into wordless command. Be blessed. He was only dimly aware of Justin arching his back beneath him, crying out in broken and re-formed pieces. Synthesizing Justin's arousal into awareness, his pleasure into protection, his sparks into strength. Be healed. Be whole.
He built each line of the spell with each stroke of his lips, each glide of his fingers, and when Justin finally came apart underneath him, re-formed in the cruicible of their magic, he lifted his head and pressed one light kiss against Justin's stomach, whispering "Selah" so softly it was little more than a bare breath.
Justin was still for a moment, before he lifted his head and let it drop again. "Nguh," was all he could manage.
"Shh," Lance said, and rested his head against Justin's thigh. "Just let it settle."
Justin picked up one hand and let it drop onto Lance's shoulder. Lance could feel the snap behind it, the spark, like the bonfire had caught root and would burn without tending, like the river had broken free of the dam and raced to bring water through the drylands. Lance stretched out next to Justin, feeling the racing beats of Justin's heart underneath the arm he threw over Justin's chest, and rested his cheek against Justin's shoulder. He could feel Justin's lips curve in a smile against his hair before Justin closed his eyes and slid over the edge into sleep.
I'm not footnoting the Hebrew. It'd take too long. Just mentally insert a whole bunch of Scripture if you don't speak Hebrew. :P
(Also, standard rough draft warning.)
When Lance got home, there was the sense of disruption about his wards, the sense of someone present in the house. It wasn't malicious or malevolent; it was someone the wards recognized, so he let himself in, then cast out a question and got the answer back: Justin.
Where, however, took him a moment to figure out; he finally tracked the Justin-sense to upstairs, where he found Justin sound asleep on the bed, napping in a puddle of sunlight. Justin had spread out to encompass the whole bed, which really was a trick given how big Lance's bed was. He'd pulled off his shirt and thrown it over his eyes to block out the light; his expression was calm and peaceful, but the curve of his muscles spoke of exhaustion.
Lance sat down on the side of the bed and brushed his hand over Justin's head. "Justin?" he asked softly, figuring if it had been important enough for Justin to come over instead of calling, he should probably find out what it was.
Justin stirred, making a sleepy unhappy noise. The t-shirt fell away from his face, and he squinted a little, then opened his eyes and blinked. "Mmm?" he asked.
Lance kept his hand on Justin's skin. It felt warm, fever-bright. "Is something wrong?"
"Mmm," Justin said again, then stretched out, turning on his side and draping one of his arms over Lance's legs. He tucked one hand between Lance's thighs, pulling him closer; for a minute, Lance felt like a teddybear, like the way they'd used to share a bed in Germany when they'd both been homesick beyond all belief and never willing to admit it. It startled him to remember. Sometimes it seemed like they'd never been that young. "Couldn't sleep. M'house was too empty. Came here."
At least it wasn't a bigger problem, Lance thought, and shifted his weight on the bed, making himself a little more comfortable. "My house was empty too," he pointed out.
"Knew you'd be coming home eventually. Figured I'd wait for you. Fell asleep while I was here." Justin's voice was indistinct; Lance could hear the drawl he'd worked so hard to rid himself of. "Your house is warm. Safe. C'mon and nap with me."
Lance hestiated for a minute, then stretched out next to Justin. Justin sighed and threw one leg over Lance's thighs, one arm over Lance's chest. Lance slid his hand along Justin's back, automatically, and asked, "Any particular reason you couldn't sleep?"
Justin's voice sharpened a little, came more into focus. "Haven't been sleeping much lately. You know. Busy. Shit to do. Don't make me wake up, man."
"You'll just fall right back to sleep the minute you can," Lance said. He'd been victim to one too many random acts of Justin-nap. He stroked Justin's skin, fingers whispering over the tense cords of muscle, then frowned and dug his fingers a little more tightly into one of the knots he found there. His angle was bad, but they'd all learned enough about massage, and Justin moaned something indistinct and went limp and boneless.
Lance laughed. "Okay, okay. Roll over."
"Don't have to tell me twice," Justin said against the pillow, and spread himself out face-down against the bed.
Lance reached over to the nightstand and opened the drawer; it took him a few minutes of rooting around until he found the massage oil, which had been tucked back in a back corner and nearly forgotten. It didn't get much use when they weren't all on tour. He poured some of it into his cupped palm, then rubbed his hands together to warm the oil with their friction.
Justin tensed at the touch, then relaxed into it. Lance could feel the muscles unknotting under his palms, but he knew it was only the surface tension; there were years of self-abuse under that skin, written deep into the lines of muscle and bone, the same way there were under his own. They'd gotten Justin totally relaxed, once. It had taken five hours of shiatsu, two pairs of hands on his body at all times, trading off one by one as hands gave way to exhaustion. It had lasted for all of three hours before the knots had started to re-form.
"You've got about ten years to stop doing that," Justin mumbled, and let his eyes drift shut.
Lance chuckled. "You just hush," he said, and straddled the backs of Justin's thighs. He leaned his weight through his palms, the way the personal trainer -- what the hell had been that guy's name, anyway? -- had taught them all to do, and let his hands slide up from the small of Justin's back to curl around his shoulders. Justin made a soft noise in the back of his throat, the way he sounded when he was about five minutes away from coming. Lance couldn't help but chuckle; if they could only record the noises Justin made, they'd be able to make millions on eBay.
"Stop laughing at me," Justin said, indistinct against the pillow.
"Shh," Lance said, and worked the side of his palm into the knots at the base of Justin's shoulderblade. Justin moaned again, a breathy, feathery sound. "You just relax."
"'M trying," Justin mumbled, and then fell silent. Lance worked his palms over Justin's back, along his shoulders, digging into the worst of the knots one by one and trying to get them to release the surface tension before he went back and narrowed in on each of the lines of muscle. Justin's muscles gave up quickly, loosened from slabs to cables, until Lance could feel each of the individual lines and knots. He knew those would take much longer to conquer.
It was almost meditative, after a few minutes. Justin's soft sighs, the tiny noises he was making, the narrowness of focus and concentration. Lance didn't set out to put magic behind it; healing magic was good for sudden trauma, but the only thing for years of chronic bodily abuse was muscle, determination, and time. He could mask the symptoms with magic, but not remove them entirely. Lance had done this with various and assorted friends, people he knew casually, dancers and band and other people who filled life on tour. Backrubs were currency for life on the road, traded and re-traded based on whomever was in the most need at a given time.
None of it was like working on Justin. With Justin he could press his body up against Justin's, use his weight for leverage, tuck one leg around Justin's hips, press his chest against Justin's ass and lean his elbows into the knots at the small of his back. With Justin, there was always that soft accompaniment of sighs and moans, reedy whimpers, the groan when Lance hit a particularly sore spot and ran his fingers over it. With Justin, there was hard steel yielding to soft pliancy under his palms, and the warmth of Justin's bare skin against his his hands.
Slipping into a light trance was almost second nature. Lance caught himself humming under his breath, feeling the energy seeping from his palms, feeling Justin's body sucking it in and using it to mend. Not magic; something more elemental than magic, something more basic. Call it chi, or life-force, or whatever label one wished to pin on it; psychic, not sorcerous, the fundamental level of awareness of being part of an interconnected whole and the links that bound the world together.
And something was wrong with Justin's.
Lance's hands stilled as he realized, as the sense of imbalance grew strong enough to seep into his conscious mind. Justin objected with no more than a soft whimper; Lance shook himself and let his hands keep moving, roving over Justin's skin, while he took a look with those other eyes and then sighed.
"You're wearing yourself down to nothing," he said. He could hear his own voice cutting through the haze of relaxation between them.
It took a moment before Justin could summon enough presence of mind for speech. "'M busy," he said, blurrily. "Promo. Tour prep. Shit."
And he hadn't been sleeping, and Lance would wager he'd been living off caffeine and adrenaline, and it was a pattern he'd seen so many times before, but this time it was worse. Maybe because Justin was working solo this time. Lance had always tried to feed the rest of the guys, bolster them before they got this low, provide enough to keep them going even through the worst of it. "I'd like to try and heal this," he offered. Expecting Justin to say no. "May I?"
Justin shifted a little, and then tried to summon enough energy to shrug. It came out as nothing more than a slight stirring of one shoulder. "If you can fix it, more power to you," he said.
It startled Lance, but nobody ever knew what was going on in Justin's head, and he was no exception. "Just lie there," he said. "Turn off your mind. Relax."
"So not a problem," Justin breathed, and let his eyes slip shut again.
Lance took a moment to call to his magic, dip into the well of power that slumbered underneath his heart. It came to his hand easily. He didn't get to heal, often; it was a small magic, a building magic, a construction of building and growing and safety. When he looked with those other eyes, Justin's body was a mass of points of light: some white and glowing, some dark and sluggish. More dark than bright, like someone had turned the gain down, like Lance was looking through a filter. Stagnant. He rested his fingertips on either side of Justin's spine, whispered a word of blessing and protection, and let his power seep through his fingertips and into that system.
"Oh," Justin breathed on a soft moan. It was a good noise, a warm noise. Lance could feel it catch beneath him, feel the thread of power slide beneath Justin's skin, seek out the unmoving pools, whisper to them and slip through down to Justin's center. It started slowly. Just a trickle at first, barely noticeable, one thin rivulet carving its way through channels that were nearly dry.
So easy to forget that magic could do this, too. Or rather, so easy to forget there were magics like this, too; small magics, magic one could learn, magic one didn't need to be born to. Lance ran his fingers down the sides of Justin's spine, working in small circles. He let his eyes close, blocking out this world to concentrate on the other, the world where Justin was an outline of chi beneath his hands. He could feel the flow of power: him to Justin, through the stream of Justin, trickling through to the center, where it pooled for a moment, then made its way to ground. With one fraction of his attention Lance followed it, until he could almost feel what it was like to be under Justin's skin, whispering through Justin's body.
It was like Justin's body was starved for it, parched in the middle of the desert, walking for miles with no oasis in sight. The energy flowing into Justin from the ground, from the earth, from the world, was nowhere near enough to replace the energy his body was burning. Lance drew the flow up from the ground with one hand, adding it to the slowly-building stream he was providing, weaving it all together into a blanket of light, a net he could cast around Justin's lines and hold them all together. Hyper-aware, hyper-sensitive, he could feel every shift and slide of energy, every turn and twist that made up the whole of Justin beneath his hands and his senses.
The clothes were more of a distraction than they should have been, and Lance spared a moment to pull off his t-shirt, toss it over the edge of the bed. "You can't keep doing this to yourself," he murmurred, more breath than voice, and stretched himself out over Justin's back, arms spread-eagled, circling around Justin's wrists and pulling slowly back, sliding his hands along Justin's arms, trailing energy behind him as he went. It caught, took hold, bloomed. He could feel the blazons echoing behind him, like blood returning to a limb that had been cut off for far too long, and he coaxed it along the way he would nurture a flame he was trying to kindle into a bonfire. He slid down Justin's back, feeling the play of muscle beneath him on a physical level even as he felt the play of power beneath him on the metaphysical, and stopped just over Justin's center to nudge the power down to ground, draw more back, tie it into the building flow. Then slid down to Justin's ankles, took a deep breath, and began again.
"Warm," Justin murmurred. "You're so warm. Feel like I'm floating."
"Shh," Lance said, and slid his hands up Justin's legs. The denim was rough beneath his palms, but he didn't need to be touching skin in order to touch deeper. He worked his way upwards, inch by inch, drawing energy from his ground himself as he went. Bringing it into his skin, stamping it and branding it his own, then letting it loose to slide into the slowly-reawakening body beneath him.
It wasn't enough. It was almost enough, could almost have been enough, but the drain was too much, the damage too old and deep-seated. It would help for now, in the short term, but Lance knew it would be too little to hold once he turned his own attentions elsewhere. If it had been anyone else, Lance would have kept going, poured himself through his fingers and his palms and hoped it would suffice. With Justin, though, there was another choice.
He leaned over, his breath ghosting across the back of Justin's neck. Justin was so relaxed he didn't even tense, didn't shiver, just rocked his shoulders back a little, pressing back against Lance. "Will you let me work on you?" Lance asked. "Work with you?"
"Mmm," Justin said. Lance took it as assent.
"Turn over," he said, and slid away from leaning his weight against Justin's long sleek lines.
It took a moment before Justin could move, and when he did, it was in one legato roll, arms and legs falling where they landed and resting there. Lance straddled Justin's hips again, leaning over to press a kiss to Justin's warm and pliant lips, and Justin hummed wordless notes of appreciation.
Lance lifted his lips, replaced them on Justin's forehead, and let the syllables resonate through both their bodies. "Ateh," he hummed, one note, the note he sometimes heard in his sleep. Justin let his head loll backwards against the pillow, relaxing into it.
So easy to slip into the right frame of mind, make the one tiny shift to concentrate on awareness, on being, on touch. Lance slid down Justin's body, bringing his lips down again, over the curve of denim between Justin's legs. "Malkuth," he hummed, feeling it, feeling it connect and catch in them both. Justin shifted his hips a little, sighed, breathed out on the third and in on the fifth.
The muscles in Justin's right shoulder danced beneath Lance's lips, not knowing what to do once they had released the tautness they held on to as easily as moving. "V'geburah," Lance breathed, and this time Justin breathed with him, filling in the harmony the way they'd done a thousand times before. Lance rested himself on his palms, one knee between Justin's legs for balance, and brought his lips down on the left shoulder. "V'gedulah." Justin's hips were rocking against him, tiny little shifts, as he started to feel the building power. Lance touched his lips to the center of Justin's chest, right below his heart, and sang out "l'olam" until he felt it take root inside Justin and catch fire, then kissed Justin again, this time more slowly, more deliberately. "Amen," he said against Justin's lips.
Justin lifted one languid hand, let the fingers brush against Lance's shoulders, and then it fell again, spent of the energy necessary to move. Lance rested one finger across Justin's lips, telling him without words: shh, be still, be at peace. Justin made another small sound, barely audible beneath his steady rasp of breath, and Lance lowered his head to trace the lines of the spell against Justin's chest with his tongue.
Justin tasted of salt, of sweat, of something dark and sleeping. Lance could feel him coming to life beneath his mouth, beneath his fingers; shifting, moving, tiny ebbs and flows like rocking against the waves of the sea. Lance marked the letters against Justin's skin, line by line, and by the time he was done Justin was shuddering and whimpering. He could feel it, Lance knew. Even if it was nothing more than warmth, than arousal, Lance knew the way it was vibrating inside Justin, coaxing him to submit to the tides.
"Son of man, be thou blessed," Lance whispered. He knelt between Justin's legs, placed his palms on Justin's stomach, wove what they were building into protection, into healing, then let his fingers trail lower, slide under Justin's waistband. Justin's hips rose to meet his touch; Justin rolled his head from side to side, softly vocalizing, nonsense syllables which lacked the force to become true words. Lance traced the characters against the lines of Justin's belly, feeling the spell take shape with each minute stroke. "Be thou healed. Be thou whole."
He slipped into Hebrew, the words rolling from his tongue even as his fingers made short work of the button, the zipper, of Justin's jeans. "Yedid Adonai yishkon lavetach alav chofef alav kol-hayom uveyn ktefav shache." Justin's hips rose again, and Lance slid his hands around the peaks of Justin's hipbones, savoring the heat, the warmth, as he drew the fabric down. Always different words, always the same power behind them. "Ki heharim yamushu vehageva'ot temuteynah vechasdi me'itech lo-yamush uvrit shlomi lo tamut amar merachamech Adonai."
"Lance," Justin whispered, wild and wonderous, sliding into the spaces between Lance's words like a counterpoint.
"Noten laya'ef koach ule'eyn onim otsmah yarbeh," Lance murmurred, breathing across Justin's thigh like ruakh Elohim breathing across the face of the waters. Justin's hands closed on the sheets. Lance brushed his fingers along Justin's length, gathered together Justin's arousal, his own power, and whispered, "Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh," as he closed his hand around Justin's skin and closed the energy, the healing, around Justin's body.
"God," Justin cried, the sound falling from his lips, not oath but prayer.
Lance let it build, let it crest, feeling the tide come crashing to shore, shaping and directing it, nudging it to nurture and protect. He called to the magic -- the magic he held, the magic they were building -- and breathed "Baruch hagever asher yivtach b'Adonai vehayah Adonai mivtacho" before lowering his head and tasting Justin's skin again.
Lance closed his eyes, seeking out the sense of Justin, concentrating on each of Justin's tiny variations of response. Touching, touched, drawing and building and shaping it all, raising the power and directing it, weaving it, transforming it into wordless command. Be blessed. He was only dimly aware of Justin arching his back beneath him, crying out in broken and re-formed pieces. Synthesizing Justin's arousal into awareness, his pleasure into protection, his sparks into strength. Be healed. Be whole.
He built each line of the spell with each stroke of his lips, each glide of his fingers, and when Justin finally came apart underneath him, re-formed in the cruicible of their magic, he lifted his head and pressed one light kiss against Justin's stomach, whispering "Selah" so softly it was little more than a bare breath.
Justin was still for a moment, before he lifted his head and let it drop again. "Nguh," was all he could manage.
"Shh," Lance said, and rested his head against Justin's thigh. "Just let it settle."
Justin picked up one hand and let it drop onto Lance's shoulder. Lance could feel the snap behind it, the spark, like the bonfire had caught root and would burn without tending, like the river had broken free of the dam and raced to bring water through the drylands. Lance stretched out next to Justin, feeling the racing beats of Justin's heart underneath the arm he threw over Justin's chest, and rested his cheek against Justin's shoulder. He could feel Justin's lips curve in a smile against his hair before Justin closed his eyes and slid over the edge into sleep.