This may not be possible using just CSS alone buuuut let's give her a whirl.
For example: I have an image with certain margins. let's say something like this:
img {
margin-left: 1em;
}
What I want to do, (I'll write it in pseudo code) is something like this:
img:hover {
margin-left: [take original non-hover state margin, then -1 from that to make 0]
}
Hopefully I'm making sense here if it's even possible - I've really tried to simplify that example down.