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"This is new," he says roughly, feeling Francis' mouth on him. His fingers twitch in a way that, happily, brushes his fingertips over the curve of Francis' chest. He runs his hand slowly along it. He thinks of digging his short nails in a little to make some marks of his own but it doesn't feel right now, not even on Francis' undamaged skin. He likes feeling this part of it healthy and whole too much, doesn't like the idea of causing Francis any pain. Biting would be different. Biting is going to have to wait. "The marks. Marking you. I've never— not since I was younger."
“Seems like a young man’s game,” he agrees. It’s not something he’s ever been eager to do - it would be unseemly, even perverse behavior in certain circles if one showed up with a love bite, and it’s not something Sophia would ever allow.
Because she was never his, of course. But Raju…
“An impulse,” he adds softly, fingers tracing down the slope of his neck and down to his shoulder. Just touching, caressing, exploring. Learning the things he could only look at by touch. “But one I’m rather enjoying.”
With that he bites again, this time on that same elegant curve of his neck.
But he's almost used to having so many layers all the time by now, unfortunate as it is at this particular moment, so it's an idle thought. His hand drifts up the side of Francis neck as he says it and up behind his ear and he leans forward a little more, so Francis won't have to put as much effort into moving close enough to bite that way.
He stops his slow, inch-by-inch claiming of what Raju can afford to expose to the air to agree. He makes a soft noise, solitary hand slipping underneath the hem of one of those many layers of his.
Not the level with skin. Damn, he chose poorly, must be one of those silly shirts.
“As much as I’d hate to move you off my lap, it is warm in our furs…”
And then Raju could touch him again in that appreciative, playful way of his. If forced he’ll admit that even the roomy trousers are now becoming tight and uncomfortable, and Raju is bearing the brunt of the weight on one arm to keep them touching without hurting him.
“Then maybe I could convince you to take some of this off, and you could touch my chest without the pretense of a washcloth in hand.”
For a moment he grins, and then the grin softens into something tender. "But the furs are on the floor. And the floor is worse for your back, and your ribs." His thumb rubs back and forth over Francis' temple. "I won't make healing harder for you. Not even for this."
But then his gaze moves lower, lingering on the sweater and the tight way it sits over the body beneath him—
Raju only realises he's sighing when he feels himself do it. "Maybe if I pull a mattress out here," he murmurs as the movement of his thumb slows, gaze going distant and eyes narrowing. "But I'd have to clean it first, we haven't used it since I came here..."
Crozier smiles softly despite the burning, pulling Raju’s head down to kiss him soundly. “I won’t ask you to freeze on my behalf, and you won’t compromise my healing. Sounds like we’re at an impasse,” he murmurs against the side of his mouth. He hopes to sound sweet and reassuring rather than disappointed, even if his body screams in protest. He can quiet it, he knows how.
He pulls back just enough to look at Raju’s face as he traces along his strong jaw. “A project for another time. We can…”
He laughs softly. “I’d say we can wait, but I know how little we both want that.” And to prove his point he attempts to push his hips just a little from up off the chair, hand dropping to the round muscle of his arse and bringing them together. He sucks a breath through his teeth and tries to kiss him again, though he’ll settle for dropping his head onto his shoulder as he holds him tightly.
Francis' hips bring an abrupt end to that particular train of thought. The pressure punches a thick, surprised noise that's muffled at first by his closed mouth and then by Francis', morphing from surprise to a groan inside their mouths. "Thank goodness your hips are alright," he breathes against Francis' lips, "so I can..." And he rolls his hips, pressing the two of them together wherever they might touch. Francis shouldn't have to do all the work here, after all. It's only helpful.
He could calm them, attempt to untangle the two of them so they’re both warm and Crozier himself spared from any potential hurt, but Raju groans into his mouth and bucks his hips right back, and Crozier feels so alight with desire Raju may as well set him on fire.
He wants this, has wanted it. He didn’t know what he even wanted, what he craved, but he has some idea now. He wants to feel the vibrations of his moans against his skin and see what he looks like when he comes undone completely. He doesn’t want to stop; there’s a nagging little voice at the back of his head telling him this chance may not come again. Absurd, utterly, but old habits die hard.
He gasps very quietly, the same way he’d done in the bathtub, as they brush together still in their trousers. Christ, but he wants to see him. It seems cruel that he can’t.
“That’s…that’s good,” he whispers. It’s rutting, like two boys having a stumble behind a barn, but who ever said that wasn’t a good time?
"Then let's keep going," he rasps, still breathless. His free hand presses against the chair behind Francis' head, taking some of the strain off his arm and his stomach to hold himself at just the right distance. It leaves him with no hands to touch with but he still has his mouth and ducks his head, takes his teeth very, very gently to the skin of Francis' neck before pressing a lingering closemouthed kiss to it. Raju remembers cleaning this spot before. It still smells like soap, it feels soft and clean and alive. "Just like this. I'll find you new trousers after. Nice ones, if you grab my arse that way again."
The mouth against his neck would be enough - the heat of his breath and the voice in his ear, the feeling of being completely surrounded by this man he adores, it all would be enough to send him spiraling into oblivion, but his body isn’t as quick as it used to be. It might be the one good thing to come from aging and being as ill as he had.
“Coming in our pants, like we aren’t two grown men.” He laughs very softly and goes to find the waistband of Raju’s trousers, fingers pushing in past all the layers seeking skin. He bucks forward again, just a gentle tilt of his hips, willing to do this much if Raju just keeps trying to devour him like the best meal he’s ever eaten.
But the surprise made him bite down a little harder than he'd meant to; he makes a soft noise and kisses the spot, then kisses it again. Then another time, and he starts to feel a little better about it. "What do you want, Francis? Tell me."
Crozier makes a strangled little noise, feeling the jolt from the bite travel right between his legs, but keeps his hand wandering. It seems to have been a good reaction, and he certainly didn't mind it. A little bitemark, just for him, because of him.
"Don't..." He sighs, feeling warm skin under his fingers, the slow curve. Crozier eagerly sinks his fingers into the muscle and massages, unabashedly just feeling every little bit of Raju he's admired over the past few months. He tries again, "don't mistake that for a complaint. I want you just as you are, right here and right now."
He has questions about experiences, what they know and what might be unfamiliar, but nothing matters in the moment except continuing on just like this.
"You're vocal," he thinks to add. "I adore it."
Right on time, just as Francis compliments the noises he's making Raju finds himself making another one, half-cut off in his throat. "I don't mean to be," he rasps, low. "I just—"
He feels Francis' nails in his skin and he squirms again, letting out a rough, hard breath. That probably says more than trying to end the sentence on purpose would, so Raju lets it go in favour of sensation. This feeling should go somewhere, back into the man beneath him somehow. You're the only one allowed to mark me, Francis had said, and so Raju tries, ducking his head to put his teeth gently to Francis' skin, sucking the spot gently, kissing it carefully after.
He lets out a breathy noise, something like a sigh or a laugh that’s tangled up in desire, as Raju moves his mouth over his neck. He thinks briefly of Sophia, her guiding hand and soft yet stern commands, Ross’ steady embrace and chaste kisses to his head after those storms in Antarctica, his hand on Fitzjames’ neck - tenderness in all its many forms, joyful and bittersweet and sad and lovely, lovely. Raju doesn’t quite fit into any category he’s experienced before; he’s wholly unique, someone who will protect him for a change.
He smooths his palm over one of Raju’s perfectly rounded cheeks and hooks his hand underneath, grinding them together with his steady hand. “Jesus, Raju…” he groans, voice dropping low and deep. “I imagined having you for so long…you’re so beautiful, my Raju.”
"Rama." His voice is husky and still rasping, and he can feel the breath of it against Francis' skin. "That's my name. The rest of it. Say it again. Call me Rama."
Before he finishes speaking he's lifting a hand to find Francis' waistband and slip it underneath. He doesn't move it toward any spot in particular, at least not right away; he wants to feel skin under his palm, skin that, like Francis' hand on him now, hasn't been touched in too long, skin that's private and warmer under the soft clothes that Raju had found for him. Beneath Francis' stomach, over his hip. Raju's fingers are spread, and his palm is warm.
He pauses, groaning through bitten lip as Raju’s hand snakes into his trousers. His hand holds tightly to him, his head ducking to press a kiss to his head.
“Rama,” he repeats softly, head falling back to rest against Raju’s arm. “Rama.”
It’s as though one more veil has fallen away from this man. Perhaps the last one, that final wall between officer and protector and hero and just…Rama. As himself.
“You’re so beautiful, my Rama.”
You’re so beautiful, my Rama, the beautiful voice says, and Raju’s breath out sounds almost pained, and he realises he’s panting. “Francis,” he breathes, helplessly. He doesn’t know what to say that could give back what Francis has given him just now.
“My Francis,” he rasps through his tight throat, trying anyway. It’s hard to look into those eyes just now, he doesn’t know why, but he does it anyway. Looking makes his eyes sting and grow hot, and once he’s doing it he doesn’t want to look away.
His hand twitches over the soft skin just between Francis’ hip and thigh. There’s something, at least, that he could do. It isn’t enough, but he wants to do it. “Can I touch you?”
It’s a little hard to meet Rama’s eyes as well, his fingers brushing dangerously close to where he’s currently straining against his clothes for him. He tries to swallow the lump in his throat, handless arm sliding over Ram’s shoulder as he tilts his chin up at the question.
Touch him…touch…?
He feels like his heart’s about to leap up from his chest and jump out his mouth. He wants to touch him, not just caress and explorer and hold as they’ve been doing. Crozier sucks in a very slow breath and nods.
“Yes,” he murmurs, his hand easing its grip slightly. He slides back to hold Rama’s hip, attempting that answer again in case his voice was too soft. “Yes, please.”
Not guilty.
Every single one.
What was it he’d said? Why are we pretending to be a community at all if each time one of us has a bad feeling, we're going to allow them these abominations without any consequence? That’s what he’d said. And he’d been assured there was an ideal outcome — labour, enforced rebuilding, something. Something.
The tension’s been building in him since before he’d stepped inside the Hall today. It’s a wonder nothing’s caught on fire yet. The fireplace, a couple times, has acquired a second, oddly flickering, oddly shifting flame behind it, but now—
He’s pacing in front of Francis. He hasn’t thought about tending to himself, too busy watching the battered body of the man beside him now to make sure he really wasn’t about to die, and his nails have grown too long. They dig into his palms. He knows the feeling now, the fire building inside him, even if it sometimes takes him a while to realise that it’s there. He closes his eyes. His breaths don’t lighten at all, but they lengthen. When he opens them up again he sees the people standing up there, the people between him and the accused who are practically handing them the weapons to do all of it again—
Deep breaths. Hard breaths. His mind coats itself in a heavy quiet, everything that wants to fill it heaving at the walls in the same way his chest is heaving for breath. The wall beside him begins to smoke. So does the floor beneath his feet. He turns to Francis, puts a very gentle hand on the uninjured side of his back.
“Come on.” He can’t leave without him. Not even for a moment, with a single member of this useless— “We need to go home.”
He was argued down by a child. He thought his point clear, his evidence solid and tangible, his demands for recognition of these heinous crimes (with nothing said of punishment) enough for them to come together. Surely, surely they could recognize what is right and what is just and what should not be forgiven, at least agree on that if nothing else!
But he was argued down by a child. Accused of bringing past grievances to the meeting. Of fueling a false trial, misjustice, wasting time. Christ. He came all this way to town with a punctured lung, only to be told by these people, his so-called community, that he was wasting time with this.
He can't look at Harry Goodsir or John Irving, the men Hickey'd mutilated and stabbed before, his honest-to-god former victims. He's failed them yet again. He came on too strong, didn't argue it correctly, misjudged his audience - maybe all three mistakes, perhaps more.
Alarm bell ringing, no one to listen.
It will happen again, and again, and again, until they're all...
The touch to his back jolts him out of his thoughts of ice and shale. Christ, they're still here. He blinks slowly and holds out his hand for assistance. "Take me around the side so I don't have to speak to anyone. Please."
Cowardly? Yes, but it's apparent to him how little good he can do here.
"I've never touched a man this way," he murmurs. His throat is a little sore; that means he'd have been crying, he realises, if crying was easier. Was it the name, hearing it again? He tries to figure it out, to call the feeling up again, and only feels a wash of softness and warmth easing through him, and some powerful wave of something underneath that. My Rama, the thought comes again.
"My Francis," he answers it, and his thumb moves down the skin on the other side, very slowly, to settle his hand in a very loose grip. His fingers curl, brushing fingertips over the base, through wiry hair.
Maybe worried isn't the word.
He takes Francis' forearm, so Francis has the whole sturdy line of it to lean on instead of only a hand. He presses the things inside of him flat and waits, patient, for his friend's broken body to move, and nods to his request, and leads him to where he needs to go.
Raju can still move through this place as familiarly as if he stayed here every day. He used to. It's a stranger thought than ever now, incongruous with the reality behind him, the crowd of people who would have preached forgiveness and blind mercy even if—
A flame flickers beneath his boot, and Raju's mind goes quiet, and the flame dissolves into smoke. Raju opens the door. He leads Francis through it. The snow is bright, and the cold is sharp over his skin. He'd forgotten to wrap the blanket properly over his neck and head. It doesn't matter. He only remembers it.
The more steps they take away from the building and all its flammable wood, the deeper Raju's breathing gets again. The snow begins to melt in a circle around his feet.
"We're farther from the wheelbarrow here." It needs to be said. His hand is careful on Francis' shoulder, steady on his forearm. His voice is flat, so that it won't be anything else. "Do you need me to bring it to you?"
While the goal is to slink out unnoticed, Crozier's cautious to keep himself mostly upright and moving without wincing or grimacing. He doesn't want to look any more pathetic than he already feels. Only once outside and moving down the snow-covered street does he start to slow up, breath heavy with each step, leaning on Raju more and more until most of his weight is pressed into his friend's side.
"No," he says, walking through one of the slushy puddles at his feet. "No, we'll walk. The bridge."
He can't do it yet. People will undoubtedly be going back to their homes in the town, Hickey and Gibson back to theirs somewhere near here - he won't let Hickey see how low he's sunk.
"Wait until we're past the bridge," he says again, this time warning Raju to keep himself in check. They can't set the town on fire, even if they're both angry enough to watch the whole thing burn. They can't destroy even if others seek to do precisely that.
He can hear the sound of Francis' strained breath even better now. The wheezing is a familiar sound, one he's started to consider a reminder, and the smoke in the air stays clear of Francis' face, the heat rising from the ground is split by the progress of his feet. His skin, now that he knows to pay attention to it, is hot in a way that, even now, he registers as strange, sharp cold hitting it from the outside with something else heating it from within.
The bridge. That's what Francis has asked. It doesn't matter why. So he'll keep this up until the bridge. That's all he needs to think about now, that and guiding the slow and precious weight of Francis leaning against him. He can do all that.
Crozier finds Rama’s face with his lips, pressing soft, reverent kisses to his forehead, his nose, along his salty cheeks. Has he been crying? Had he missed the signs? He’d been so overcome by Rama’s request - use his name, it’s only his to use, no one else’s - he hadn’t realized how significant the moment truly was for Rama. For his Rama.
Even though he hasn’t been touched in ages, even though Rama’s slightly calloused hand, so warm and strong but now delicately wrapped around him, feeling with something like appreciation (for him? he still doesn’t understand how), he tries to kiss him again. He attempts to use his wrist, this useless thing attached to him that’s always been a burden, to slide around his neck and hold him. If anyone could tolerate being held by a scarred stump it would be Rama.
Crozier bumps their noses together, then their foreheads, pulling in a shaking breath at the hand holding him. “You’re doing well so far,” he says, smiling softly. “It’s been….it’s been a long, long time for me. I might not…”
Perform, is the word he’s looking for. Last. He’s already trying not to squirm under his hand.
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