Chapter 12—Fingers
He laid there, eyes closed, as he tried to clear his mind, needing to forget about the case they had worked on that day. As he was drifting off, something brushed against his cheek.
The first touch was so soft he was sure he had imagined it. On the second touch, he could feel her fingers trace his jaw line, slowly tracing his lips, his nose, his eyes, running through his hair and down to his neck where they slowly explored every inch of his skin.
He didn't need to open his eyes to know whose fingers were on him. They were the fingers he spent a large part of his day watching obsessively as they gently ran over delicate bones, covered by latex gloves as they explored every surface of the bone, memorizing every detail.
Those fingers tenderly pulled his tie loose from his neck, slowly moving to undo the buttons of his dress shirt one by one. They gently pulled his tie from his body, pushing his shirt off his shoulders and onto the floor, touching every piece of skin as it was exposed.
Pulling his tank over his head, her fingers explored his torso, tracing the outline of his well-defined muscles; gently, tenderly tracing the scars left behind from his childhood, from the war, from being shot and stabbed on the job, from the explosions of her refrigerator and the body of Caroline Epps. Taking in every inch of his body, learning his past, her fingers examined him.
They seemed to freeze just above the edge of his pants, and he knew what had stopped them. Her nimble fingers traced three circular patches of scar tissue, calculating the caliber that could have caused them. The touch was light, able to feel the healed ridges outlining the scars that sat on the right side of his abdomen, just above the pants line.
He almost groaned when her fingers removed themselves from his abdomen, suppressing it as they softly skimmed over the legs of his trousers. Untying the laces on his shoes, she removed them one by one, sliding his socks off as well. Her fingers explored his feet, rubbing them gently as she learned the scars there as well. The healed cuts and burns on the soles of his feet, the long, thin scar that disappeared into the leg of his trousers. She learned them all.
Removing her fingers once again, they moved to his belt, swiftly undoing the buckle and the button on his pants, sliding the zipper down before pulling them off his body, leaving him in his underwear as her probing fingers continued the exploration of his skin.
Moving back to his ankles, they softly traced the jagged line from his foot up the outside of his calf to his knee. Reaching his thigh, they traced over the dispersal of scar tissue, small portions of smooth skin randomly splashed across his leg. Finding the large patch of recently healed tissue on his inner thigh, the fingers slowed their exploration, softly tracing the still bruised and tender skin. They paused over the wound, as if contemplating; gently tracing soothing circles over the tissue.
After a few moments, they moved to his other leg, beginning at the ankle and gently, delicately, continuing their exploration. Pausing at his knee, they traced over the scar that ran diagonally across his kneecap, a wound from falling on a piece of glass as a child. The first time he had stitches. Continuing up his leg, she gently traced along the scars where skin had been removed for a graft. Large, shining patches of scar tissue covered his thigh, of which he was usually self-conscious, but he was comforted by her fingers. By seeing his scars, by feeling them, she was learning them, learning him, and accepting him, as well as his past. Her fingers stopped on his inner thigh, rubbing small circles as they danced over the silky skin, inching closer and closer to what he wanted her to take in her delicate fingers.
Removing her fingers completely from his body, she gently pushed against his side, urging him roll onto his front, which he did willingly, eyes still unopened.
Beginning in the hair at the base of his neck, her fingers examined his back, gently massaging and rubbing the muscles as the slipped lower and lower down his back. He knew she would stop when she reached the small of his back, and he was afraid she would ask. The scars were small and thin, as if made by a razor blade, delicate in their atrocity. "927108," forever etched into his skin, serving as a reminder of the days he spent believing his God had forsaken him. Her fingers slowly, calculatedly, traced over the numbers, knowing their meaning without asking; reading his scars as if they were words in a book.
Probing him to roll back over, she once again ran her long, nimble fingers down his cheek to his jaw line, stopping to trace her thumb over his full lips before removing her hand completely.
He had never been this intimate with anyone before. He had never let anyone see many of his scars, much less examine them with the intensity that she was. They were his secrets, his past. The things he never told anyone, the things he lied to himself to forget, the things that made him who his is. She knew him like no other person in the world did, his scars both inside and out, although there was still some she didn't know. He was a man of secrets.
When her fingers did not return to his body, he sat up suddenly, opening his eyes to take in his moonlit bedroom, the blankets and sheets from his bed kicked onto the floor, his clothes from the day neatly folded on the chair as always, and his glowing alarm clock, telling him that only 20 minutes had passed since he'd last looked at it.
This AN is just to clear up confusion about the significance of the number "927108." The number itself doesn't have any particular significance. Some cultures will brand the number into the skin for how many days the POW was held captive. Obviously this can't be the case with Booth. Other societies, as what happened during the Holocaust, brand a prisoner with a number to take away their identity. This is what happened in Booth's case. This number, as well as the sheer number of scars will be elaborated on in a much later chapter, so keep reading because I will come back to this topic on more than one occasion.
