Raju watches him, appreciative even without Francis making it a show, watchful of any of the signs of pain he's become too familiar with. But Raju, at least, can leave and do other things when he needs to escape the reminder of what'd almost happened. Francis can't.
Time passes, and Francis continues to handle the whole thing fairly well, considering. Maybe because things do change, even if too slowly - The bruises change colour and continue to fade. Francis moves a little more quickly, a little more easily. Raju finds himself imagining what Francis looks like under his clothes, and remembers the way he'd disregarded those kinds of thoughts before without so much as a decision about what they were, and doesn't know what that says about him, or whether he needs to do something about it.
But Francis is here, and Raju knows now how he feels about the man and what he wants with him, more or less. Not all of it has to do with sex.
Francis' hair gleams in the sunlight coming from the window. The sight of it is beautiful, in the way it's always beautiful, and picks out every individual uneven strand in a bright halo of light. It's been growing untamed long enough that the texture is starting to change, frizzy and dry in a way that might suit other men perfectly well but the man who in all other ways Raju looks at with desire stirring inside him...
"You said I could trim your beard a couple weeks ago," Raju says after a minute or two of steady staring, from his place leaning against the wall. "Do you remember? Do you still mean it?"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-07-20 02:26 pm (UTC)Time passes, and Francis continues to handle the whole thing fairly well, considering. Maybe because things do change, even if too slowly - The bruises change colour and continue to fade. Francis moves a little more quickly, a little more easily. Raju finds himself imagining what Francis looks like under his clothes, and remembers the way he'd disregarded those kinds of thoughts before without so much as a decision about what they were, and doesn't know what that says about him, or whether he needs to do something about it.
But Francis is here, and Raju knows now how he feels about the man and what he wants with him, more or less. Not all of it has to do with sex.
Francis' hair gleams in the sunlight coming from the window. The sight of it is beautiful, in the way it's always beautiful, and picks out every individual uneven strand in a bright halo of light. It's been growing untamed long enough that the texture is starting to change, frizzy and dry in a way that might suit other men perfectly well but the man who in all other ways Raju looks at with desire stirring inside him...
"You said I could trim your beard a couple weeks ago," Raju says after a minute or two of steady staring, from his place leaning against the wall. "Do you remember? Do you still mean it?"