He feels the depth of it when Francis thinks it, just what it’s like to feel that way. Wanting it and mourning it and regretting that he can’t do anything else but honour what someone who he loves needs of him even when making the sacrifice for it hurts that way. There’s something pure in it. He doesn’t think it feels that way inside Francis but once the feelings move into Raju’s mind they stand out, shining bright against the grime and the muck built up over years and the low, unrelenting refrain of I can’t, I can’t, I can’t and the cold knowledge of how false that refrain really is. Francis didn’t question what he needed to do. Francis didn’t try to argue Raju into changing his mind.
You’ve always been better than me Raju thinks at him, admiration with barbed-wire failure twisting inward at the edges of it, and gratitude and love all the way through. His breaths are louder now and he shudders, the horror of his own selfish want beginning to come home to him. I shouldn’t have— and then comes the tight-chest feeling of holding his breath, the bare sensation of a completely empty room, the absence of what he’s all but admitted to but can’t bear uncovering completely even now.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, throat tight, his thoughts now too specific to trust with sending any over, at least on purpose. But sorry feels true so strongly that maybe some of that leaks through anyway. It’s what he should be saying in a dozen ways; for asking Francis to convince Raju of something so selfish, for having the dream in the first place and not being good enough at hiding it, sorry with the whole of his home standing on the edge of the water watching him and growing smaller with every second passing, sorry on his knees with his feet bare in the snow and fire all around him all that time ago to a man whose final words have always been very clear. And Francis deserves to hear it, anyway. Raju’s arms pressed between them are starting to ache with the angle they’re bent at and Raju couldn’t bear to move, and he should be comforting Francis right now, and he shouldn’t have let any of this come out at all.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-02-13 03:07 am (UTC)You’ve always been better than me Raju thinks at him, admiration with barbed-wire failure twisting inward at the edges of it, and gratitude and love all the way through. His breaths are louder now and he shudders, the horror of his own selfish want beginning to come home to him. I shouldn’t have— and then comes the tight-chest feeling of holding his breath, the bare sensation of a completely empty room, the absence of what he’s all but admitted to but can’t bear uncovering completely even now.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, throat tight, his thoughts now too specific to trust with sending any over, at least on purpose. But sorry feels true so strongly that maybe some of that leaks through anyway. It’s what he should be saying in a dozen ways; for asking Francis to convince Raju of something so selfish, for having the dream in the first place and not being good enough at hiding it, sorry with the whole of his home standing on the edge of the water watching him and growing smaller with every second passing, sorry on his knees with his feet bare in the snow and fire all around him all that time ago to a man whose final words have always been very clear. And Francis deserves to hear it, anyway. Raju’s arms pressed between them are starting to ache with the angle they’re bent at and Raju couldn’t bear to move, and he should be comforting Francis right now, and he shouldn’t have let any of this come out at all.