This embrace is more deliberate, less desperate, but it hurts just as much. It could be tomorrow, Francis says, and a hard rush of air leaves Raju like he’s been punched in the stomach. The dread in tomorrow is a sharp burst of something like terror, the dread in years is slow and acrid at the bottom of his stomach, acid creeping into his throat. He winds his arms tight around Francis’ back, hiding his face against Francis’ hair, and doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want any of it, doesn’t want to go back to the uniform thick and hot around his skin, the unforgiving, inflexible stiffness in his back as assessing eyes move over him, horrors pressed tight inside him crowding into empty airless space. He doesn’t want to sail up to the bank of the river again and feel the weight of all the eager gazes, the certainty only in him, the desperate need that only he can lead them to all set against the impossible reality of him, all the weakness and fault lines in him that all their need can’t ever be allowed to see. For a moment he doesn’t want to be from anywhere, or going anywhere. All he wants is to be here, where there’s someone whose eyes fill up with the same tears that his do, where there’s someone who thinks it’s right to wrap their arms around him and hold him up.
Francis will keep him well. He always has. Raju doesn’t know how to say so. He pushes a mess of brief, blurry impressions at Francis instead: the gratitude and relief of the arms around him now, the image of Francis drunk and hurting not knowing why his husband has forgotten and abandoned him but carefully settling food every day out for him anyway, of thighs under his shoulders and looking up at Francis through a brittle sagging exhaustion and feeling the comfort and care of fingers running cool water through his hair. Francis rubbing Raju’s hands warm, tending so carefully to his feet— a million other things, the care and love in Francis’ every movement.
Raju had reassured Seetha when he had left, when he hadn’t known the reality of what he was leaving her to. He knows now, and doesn’t have any reassurance to give. Francis old enough and practical enough to know better, anyway; he wouldn’t believe it even if Raju could. But Raju’s grateful. Raju’s grateful and the love of him, being allowed here to build a life on top of it, is a river through him washing at the grime and sludge of years. The riverbed is ugly and polluted still but under the current, in tiny, invisible layers, its excess is washing away. He doesn’t have any reassurance to give but he has that. He couldn’t tell him half so well if he had to squeeze it into words, he couldn’t tell him any time but now, he feels the arms around him and he wants Francis to know it.
There are a lot of sentiments squeezed into just a few breaths between them, but Crozier is a little dizzy from how much there is and how deeply Ram feels it. He takes a sharp, ragged breath - seeing himself as Rama sees him, feeling the way Rama feels about him, seems like a different person entirely. But it’s not a different person, it’s him; Ram feels these ways about him.
Even if he wanted to move on from it all he finds himself tripping over a word that somehow latched onto his brains Husband. Husband. Crozier’s husband. Married, Rama feels like they’re married, uses the word husband-
He repeats the word in his head, stilling as his embrace loosens enough for them to both breathe, though the intensity doesn’t lessen. He wouldn’t let him go now.
It shouldn’t be so significant. It’s just a word, just a symbol of what they already are to each other, but he’d never imagined being one in the first place. It brings back those rejections, the awkward weddings of friends, the marriages of his brothers and sisters, his own longing for that life he’d never have for himself. Somehow he’d fallen into a marriage and hadn’t even realized!
Husband. Raju knows the word has struck Francis in that odd new way of simply feeling it instead of being told; the word repeats itself in Raju’s mind somewhere. The repetition of it brings something calmer and settled in itself closer to the fore even as it hurts.
He and Seetha had held themselves separate from some part of it, hadn’t they? He’s always thought the two of them lived like they were married, but there’s something here they hadn’t had. The shared house is part of it, of course — even if Francis had been a woman there’d be no need to play at chastity with him, at his age. And with Francis there’s no great looming thing appending itself to every word that even hints at any future outside the necessary one, the as if they’re married here not exactly the same kind. Raju isn’t sure just what the difference is, but it’s there. He hadn’t thought almost like when he’d been thinking that moment that’s struck Francis so, hadn’t he? He’d thought himself as Francis’ husband, as simple as that. The fact of it feels settled, long established and true.
He’s going to leave Francis anyway.
He squeezes his eyes shut tighter for a moment, chest tightening, nauseous. But Francis is happy. There’s that much, too: Raju can’t tell Francis that he’s going to stay. But what he could say is a thing that’s made Francis happy.
Husband. Raju finds one of his hands running slowly up and down Francis’ back, realises he’d wanted to do it because touching Francis this way, as if to comfort, is comforting itself, to do it and feel the broad warm back under his hand.
“Husband.” He turns his face far enough from Francis’ head to say it. The word comes out cracked and unsteady; he swallows and settles himself closer to the rush of feeling running through Francis just now and leans back enough to see him, with a smoother teasing voice and a watery smile. “I’m not always sure if it’s the right word. But I like the way it sounds out loud, I think. It really surprises you that much?”
Despite their lock-step emotions and shared thoughts, Ram’s own misgivings can’t anchor his own happiness and surprise at the word. He’s loved enough to be someone’s husband - hell, someone wants him enough to bind themselves to him in that way. It was an outlandish prospect for him not too long ago, but it feels so natural and so right that it’s almost funny how gobsmacked he really is by it.
They’ve lived like spouses for ages now; the only surprising thing should be that it took him this long to realize it.
He pulls back slightly to wipe the damp from his face and smooth back Rama’s normally perfectly-kept hair. “Yes,” he admits, voice just as rough and thick with the weight of his own composure still breaking. “Yes, it’s surprising! I’ve been turned down so many times, and here I am at the end of the world and I’ve somehow…well. Stumbled into a marriage, I suppose.”
Who on earth does that?
And perhaps ‘husband” isn’t the correct word, but then what else would Ram be to him? And in a place with no rule of law or society to place judgement, who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? They make their own rules here. The happiness of this realization, that he may be a husband yet, takes the air out of his grief for one day losing this man that he loves. Who has time to think about such things now?
Francis smooths back Raju’s hair and Raju’s eyelids flutter nearly shut. He leans into Francis’ hand in the moment it’s there, the burst of feeling, of wanting the touch he always feels at a loving hand at his hair stronger just now with so much that feels precisely the opposite moving through him. His eyelids are heavy when it’s over an instant later but it’s easy to focus on Francis; the whole of Raju is already turned that way, and the shocked happiness he can tell Francis is feeling is refreshing. That’s as much of a relief as the touch was, in its own way; it isn’t often Francis feels quite like this, even while Francis’ face is damp, while his voice is rough. Francis is too happy to think much about Raju leaving him, just now; Raju’s made him too happy to, only by putting a word to what they are. Strange, that Francis can forget it. It isn’t in Raju to forget, quite, but connected as they are just now he can duck his head under the current of that rare, pure happiness, feel it running over his skin.
“Everyone who turned you down were idiots,” he declares, thinking some echo of what he’d shown Francis before, all those acts of dedication and compassion and care. The way his voice sounds, the way his face looks when he’s gentle. Raju’s voice is quieter now, tired, but very confident. His moving hand shifts from Francis’ back to his side, protective and careful over his ribs and firm over his stomach and then back up again, and then back down. “Look at what they missed.”
Then with a warm little smile, pleased at how the word pleased Francis, Raju corrects himself: “The husband they all missed.”
‘Look at what they missed.’ The cynical piece of himself responds with wordless, not-so-nice sentiments about his own middle-aged body, but the happiness knocks it all back from actually forming coherent thoughts. If Ram says so, then he needs to trust in it.
“They didn’t think I would be a good match for them,” he smiles, still radiating joy. He leans down and tries to find Rama’s cheek with his lips, pressing a gentle, tired kiss to his skin. “I must have just been waiting for you.”
As he says it he has to turn his head to quietly yawn. As much as was and wasn’t resolved, waking in the middle of the night still isn’t ideal. But they’ve already stoked the fire, and it’s lovely and warm on the floor, so Crozier pulls himself back and climbs to his feet. “Stay there.”
Raju expects Francis to say something in defence of whoever it was — there was that woman he’s mentioned and, it sounds like, someone else — but Raju means it anyway, even knowing that. Francis wouldn’t be the man he is if he’d agreed. And insulting the strangers Francis cared about isn’t why Raju had said it, anyway.
Raju thinks maybe he really can feel the joy of this man he loves — the man he’s married and tied this life to — moving over him, warm and clear and pure. Francis’ lips press it into Raju’s cheek.
When Francis stands after that Raju rocks forward, still trying to lean into the feel of it before he has to catch himself. He looks up, not quite plaintive but not having expected the sudden shift away from him, either. “Don’t need blankets that much,” he mumbles, rubbing at the side of his face and trying to swallow the remains of the thick, acid feeling down his throat. “But you’d better get anything else you want while you’re at it. Once you’re back I’m not letting you up again.”
“That’s what I figured,” he calls over his shoulder, laughing as he goes. The moment for their cozy bed has passed, but they can make floor in front of the fireplace as comfortable as it was before they were sleeping on a proper mattress.
Oh, those early days, when the roof was still covered in holes and they practically lived in front of the fireplace. They had no idea what they were in for, did they? Crozier would have never guessed, that’s for damn sure. There’s more fondness and a hint of nostalgia that radiates from him as he gathers up the furs from their bed, and he pauses in the doorway for just the briefest of gazes towards the fireplace before he joins Rama once again. It’s hard to be worried about the future when the present has been so good to him.
Huddling up in the furs he sits back down beside Ram. “You were saying something about not letting me back up again?”
Raju leans to spread out the other one of the furs, huffing at him. Francis is laughing, nostalgic, and Raju’s not quite able to keep a faint smile off his face long enough to complain properly about Francis having walked off.
Once he’s got the one fur spread he answers Francis by grabbing at his shoulders and pulling, not concerned how they end up lying on down together so long as they do. “How can you be nostalgic for something happening now?” he asks, off the tenor of Francis’ thoughts a moment ago as he’d stopped to gaze at Raju and the fire. The furs are soft, as they always are; he tugs at the one Francis is huddled in, trying to unwrap it and make him share. “The only thing different then was that it was colder in here.”
Crozier ends up mostly sprawled out on top of Rama, very happily breathing a laugh into his neck as he entwines a leg with his. “Excuse me for being nostalgic for those early days. We were such idiots.”
Another laugh, breathed against Raju like a gift. Wrap it close enough around him and Francis’ happiness is beginning to seep in. Or maybe what Raju’s feeling is his own, something grown just from having him near, from seeing him like this. Maybe now it’s all the same, the feeling running through all the same places.
Francis is wrapping a leg around Raju’s and Raju curls it tighter, using the motion to pull the two of them that much closer. “Hm?” he asks, focused on their legs, and on working one arm between Francis’ neck and the fur over the floor. “Why? It was perfectly comfortable down here, and it’s warm. If you wake up sore I can always rub your back.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he chuckles, basking in the feeling of his body like a lazy cat sprawled out in a sunbeam. “But I’ll never turn away a back rub.”
Or any other kind of rub.
“I meant the two of us,” he continues, “sleeping practically in each other’s laps in the beginning. It was so…innocent, wasn’t it?”
Raju frowns and takes a moment to think about it. Describing it that way wouldn’t have occurred to him. It’s easier to think about those things now, unimportant things made important by its meaning to the man saying them, with the whole of Francis wrapped warm around him keeping the future away.
“You would know better than me,” he decides, resettling his head against his outstretched arm and curling his fingers to try and tickle at the back of Francis’ neck. “Once I left home I only met one man I cared enough for to get to know, and he had a home to get to when it got late. You didn’t act like you thought it was strange, sleeping next to me.”
Crozier idly swats at Ram’s fingers. “I didn’t act like it because it wasn’t strange. Not in any sense that I was used to trying to survive out in the cold.”
His gaze falls on Rama’s face, soft at the moment, and darling and dear. “But you’d lay your head on me like a pillow. How could I not be charmed?”
The swat at his fingers gets a faint, satisfied look out of Raju; Francis is lucky Raju isn’t really in a teasing mood. Then he bites at the inside of his lip, half-smiling against a rush of embarrassment. Francis had loved him as a husband after all so there’s no harm done — he can feel just now Francis gazing at Raju like a treasure, seeing something precious, and the flush on Raju’s face is coming as much from feeling that in such a strangely personal way, like looking out from Francis’ eyes himself, as from anything else — but another man sleeping next to Francis for warmth wouldn’t have done it that way, and all that time Raju hadn’t known it.
Still, of course Raju had slept that way: “That time, when you first let me sleep here, the aurora was...” He remembers the way it’d felt, the dread winding up tight in him. Raju’s free hand slips just under Francis’ shirt to brush its fingertips over Francis’ side and the comfort the moment he does it runs over him, unwinding the knot. He sighs, relieved. “…hard. I was…” Afraid. Habit is all that keeps him from saying it; of course Francis knows and knew that he was. “I thought all of it might come back. You lay next to me and held my hand. I felt… better, sleeping that close to you. I always do.”
He recognizes the need to self-soothe in Rama by the way he tries to find ways to touch him. He only somewhat understood it before, assuming there was something about the touch that made the anxiety lessen. Now however he senses there’s something more to it - he’s solid and whole under Ram’s hand, and some of this is a quick search to prove it.
He knows Ram was afraid. He was afraid for him, but how glad he is that even something so simple as a touch of a hand had helped as it did.
It’s the same for him. The nightmares, though still very much persistent, don’t haunt him for days on end when they appear. Rama takes away the pain and moves his focus away from the hurt.
They’ve been good for each other in that way, in so many ways.
“There’s something to be said about not facing these long nights alone.”
“You’re right.” Raju had spent so long working himself hard enough that he could drop, too exhausted to react to or remember his dreams, into a small bed in a barracks full of men who made the closed up thing inside him lock up tighter, closing him in on every side, and he’d learned to call it sleep. The idea of going back to that doesn’t bear thinking of; his mind flashes back to the familiar narrow frame of it and the feeling there, but the thought is easy to dismiss just now. He’s warm here laying wrapped up in a man who lights up like the sun at the chance to call him husband, and that happiness makes it easy to make this now the only kind of sleep he knows. He brushes the memory of that other life aside, lifting his hand from Francis’ stomach to his forehead, brushing Francis’ hair back from it.
“Go back to sleep, Francis,” he murmurs. “I’ll try not to wake you up this time.”
He gets a hint of those lonely barracks in the back of his mind, the extreme isolation and imprisonment laying on his chest like a heavy stone. Rama doesn't linger on the thought long though, and Crozier's back to the soft happiness that had been shared between them. He yawns quietly into the back of his hand.
"If you can't sleep, at the very least don't leave me," he relents quietly.
The request, the words Francis uses to ask, wraps itself around the core of him and gives a tug. His throat is tight, and so is his chest. It hurts, and it feels wonderful, radiating out into every place Raju can feel the press of Francis’ body against his. The feeling pushes him forward to kiss Francis, hasty enough that the press of their lips together is clumsy, insistent. And then Raju settles back, free hand still spread loosely over the back of Francis’ head, feeling the softness of his hair. Raju’s gaze darts over Francis’ face here and there, intent, memorizing him. But he keeps coming back to Francis’ eyes and then he settles himself there, in the deep blue with that hint of brown just around the centre, like touching down at the bed of a river.
“I won’t get up,” Raju answers and after another moment says it out loud, running his fingers slowly through the hair under them, feeling this man around and through him: “Where else would I want to be?”
There are so many places that Rama could wish to be instead of freezing his bullocks off in this freezing wilderness, but the sentiment is understood and appreciated in his typical silently grateful way. Grateful to be loved and cherished, grateful for this man in his life, grateful for every moment they have together.
He locks eyes with Rama for a second or two longer, those crystal-brown eyes with the obscenely long lashes, and then closes his in tired contentment. He smiles his response, letting his quiet happiness say what he might fumble in words, and allows himself to fall asleep again.
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Francis will keep him well. He always has. Raju doesn’t know how to say so. He pushes a mess of brief, blurry impressions at Francis instead: the gratitude and relief of the arms around him now, the image of Francis drunk and hurting not knowing why his husband has forgotten and abandoned him but carefully settling food every day out for him anyway, of thighs under his shoulders and looking up at Francis through a brittle sagging exhaustion and feeling the comfort and care of fingers running cool water through his hair. Francis rubbing Raju’s hands warm, tending so carefully to his feet— a million other things, the care and love in Francis’ every movement.
Raju had reassured Seetha when he had left, when he hadn’t known the reality of what he was leaving her to. He knows now, and doesn’t have any reassurance to give. Francis old enough and practical enough to know better, anyway; he wouldn’t believe it even if Raju could. But Raju’s grateful. Raju’s grateful and the love of him, being allowed here to build a life on top of it, is a river through him washing at the grime and sludge of years. The riverbed is ugly and polluted still but under the current, in tiny, invisible layers, its excess is washing away. He doesn’t have any reassurance to give but he has that. He couldn’t tell him half so well if he had to squeeze it into words, he couldn’t tell him any time but now, he feels the arms around him and he wants Francis to know it.
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There are a lot of sentiments squeezed into just a few breaths between them, but Crozier is a little dizzy from how much there is and how deeply Ram feels it. He takes a sharp, ragged breath - seeing himself as Rama sees him, feeling the way Rama feels about him, seems like a different person entirely. But it’s not a different person, it’s him; Ram feels these ways about him.
Even if he wanted to move on from it all he finds himself tripping over a word that somehow latched onto his brains Husband. Husband. Crozier’s husband. Married, Rama feels like they’re married, uses the word husband-
He repeats the word in his head, stilling as his embrace loosens enough for them to both breathe, though the intensity doesn’t lessen. He wouldn’t let him go now.
It shouldn’t be so significant. It’s just a word, just a symbol of what they already are to each other, but he’d never imagined being one in the first place. It brings back those rejections, the awkward weddings of friends, the marriages of his brothers and sisters, his own longing for that life he’d never have for himself. Somehow he’d fallen into a marriage and hadn’t even realized!
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He and Seetha had held themselves separate from some part of it, hadn’t they? He’s always thought the two of them lived like they were married, but there’s something here they hadn’t had. The shared house is part of it, of course — even if Francis had been a woman there’d be no need to play at chastity with him, at his age. And with Francis there’s no great looming thing appending itself to every word that even hints at any future outside the necessary one, the as if they’re married here not exactly the same kind. Raju isn’t sure just what the difference is, but it’s there. He hadn’t thought almost like when he’d been thinking that moment that’s struck Francis so, hadn’t he? He’d thought himself as Francis’ husband, as simple as that. The fact of it feels settled, long established and true.
He’s going to leave Francis anyway.
He squeezes his eyes shut tighter for a moment, chest tightening, nauseous. But Francis is happy. There’s that much, too: Raju can’t tell Francis that he’s going to stay. But what he could say is a thing that’s made Francis happy.
Husband. Raju finds one of his hands running slowly up and down Francis’ back, realises he’d wanted to do it because touching Francis this way, as if to comfort, is comforting itself, to do it and feel the broad warm back under his hand.
“Husband.” He turns his face far enough from Francis’ head to say it. The word comes out cracked and unsteady; he swallows and settles himself closer to the rush of feeling running through Francis just now and leans back enough to see him, with a smoother teasing voice and a watery smile. “I’m not always sure if it’s the right word. But I like the way it sounds out loud, I think. It really surprises you that much?”
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Despite their lock-step emotions and shared thoughts, Ram’s own misgivings can’t anchor his own happiness and surprise at the word. He’s loved enough to be someone’s husband - hell, someone wants him enough to bind themselves to him in that way. It was an outlandish prospect for him not too long ago, but it feels so natural and so right that it’s almost funny how gobsmacked he really is by it.
They’ve lived like spouses for ages now; the only surprising thing should be that it took him this long to realize it.
He pulls back slightly to wipe the damp from his face and smooth back Rama’s normally perfectly-kept hair. “Yes,” he admits, voice just as rough and thick with the weight of his own composure still breaking. “Yes, it’s surprising! I’ve been turned down so many times, and here I am at the end of the world and I’ve somehow…well. Stumbled into a marriage, I suppose.”
Who on earth does that?
And perhaps ‘husband” isn’t the correct word, but then what else would Ram be to him? And in a place with no rule of law or society to place judgement, who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? They make their own rules here. The happiness of this realization, that he may be a husband yet, takes the air out of his grief for one day losing this man that he loves. Who has time to think about such things now?
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“Everyone who turned you down were idiots,” he declares, thinking some echo of what he’d shown Francis before, all those acts of dedication and compassion and care. The way his voice sounds, the way his face looks when he’s gentle. Raju’s voice is quieter now, tired, but very confident. His moving hand shifts from Francis’ back to his side, protective and careful over his ribs and firm over his stomach and then back up again, and then back down. “Look at what they missed.”
Then with a warm little smile, pleased at how the word pleased Francis, Raju corrects himself: “The husband they all missed.”
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‘Look at what they missed.’ The cynical piece of himself responds with wordless, not-so-nice sentiments about his own middle-aged body, but the happiness knocks it all back from actually forming coherent thoughts. If Ram says so, then he needs to trust in it.
“They didn’t think I would be a good match for them,” he smiles, still radiating joy. He leans down and tries to find Rama’s cheek with his lips, pressing a gentle, tired kiss to his skin. “I must have just been waiting for you.”
As he says it he has to turn his head to quietly yawn. As much as was and wasn’t resolved, waking in the middle of the night still isn’t ideal. But they’ve already stoked the fire, and it’s lovely and warm on the floor, so Crozier pulls himself back and climbs to his feet. “Stay there.”
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Raju thinks maybe he really can feel the joy of this man he loves — the man he’s married and tied this life to — moving over him, warm and clear and pure. Francis’ lips press it into Raju’s cheek.
When Francis stands after that Raju rocks forward, still trying to lean into the feel of it before he has to catch himself. He looks up, not quite plaintive but not having expected the sudden shift away from him, either. “Don’t need blankets that much,” he mumbles, rubbing at the side of his face and trying to swallow the remains of the thick, acid feeling down his throat. “But you’d better get anything else you want while you’re at it. Once you’re back I’m not letting you up again.”
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“That’s what I figured,” he calls over his shoulder, laughing as he goes. The moment for their cozy bed has passed, but they can make floor in front of the fireplace as comfortable as it was before they were sleeping on a proper mattress.
Oh, those early days, when the roof was still covered in holes and they practically lived in front of the fireplace. They had no idea what they were in for, did they? Crozier would have never guessed, that’s for damn sure. There’s more fondness and a hint of nostalgia that radiates from him as he gathers up the furs from their bed, and he pauses in the doorway for just the briefest of gazes towards the fireplace before he joins Rama once again. It’s hard to be worried about the future when the present has been so good to him.
Huddling up in the furs he sits back down beside Ram. “You were saying something about not letting me back up again?”
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Once he’s got the one fur spread he answers Francis by grabbing at his shoulders and pulling, not concerned how they end up lying on down together so long as they do. “How can you be nostalgic for something happening now?” he asks, off the tenor of Francis’ thoughts a moment ago as he’d stopped to gaze at Raju and the fire. The furs are soft, as they always are; he tugs at the one Francis is huddled in, trying to unwrap it and make him share. “The only thing different then was that it was colder in here.”
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Crozier ends up mostly sprawled out on top of Rama, very happily breathing a laugh into his neck as he entwines a leg with his. “Excuse me for being nostalgic for those early days. We were such idiots.”
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Francis is wrapping a leg around Raju’s and Raju curls it tighter, using the motion to pull the two of them that much closer. “Hm?” he asks, focused on their legs, and on working one arm between Francis’ neck and the fur over the floor. “Why? It was perfectly comfortable down here, and it’s warm. If you wake up sore I can always rub your back.”
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“That’s not what I meant,” he chuckles, basking in the feeling of his body like a lazy cat sprawled out in a sunbeam. “But I’ll never turn away a back rub.”
Or any other kind of rub.
“I meant the two of us,” he continues, “sleeping practically in each other’s laps in the beginning. It was so…innocent, wasn’t it?”
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“You would know better than me,” he decides, resettling his head against his outstretched arm and curling his fingers to try and tickle at the back of Francis’ neck. “Once I left home I only met one man I cared enough for to get to know, and he had a home to get to when it got late. You didn’t act like you thought it was strange, sleeping next to me.”
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Crozier idly swats at Ram’s fingers. “I didn’t act like it because it wasn’t strange. Not in any sense that I was used to trying to survive out in the cold.”
His gaze falls on Rama’s face, soft at the moment, and darling and dear. “But you’d lay your head on me like a pillow. How could I not be charmed?”
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Still, of course Raju had slept that way: “That time, when you first let me sleep here, the aurora was...” He remembers the way it’d felt, the dread winding up tight in him. Raju’s free hand slips just under Francis’ shirt to brush its fingertips over Francis’ side and the comfort the moment he does it runs over him, unwinding the knot. He sighs, relieved. “…hard. I was…” Afraid. Habit is all that keeps him from saying it; of course Francis knows and knew that he was. “I thought all of it might come back. You lay next to me and held my hand. I felt… better, sleeping that close to you. I always do.”
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He recognizes the need to self-soothe in Rama by the way he tries to find ways to touch him. He only somewhat understood it before, assuming there was something about the touch that made the anxiety lessen. Now however he senses there’s something more to it - he’s solid and whole under Ram’s hand, and some of this is a quick search to prove it.
He knows Ram was afraid. He was afraid for him, but how glad he is that even something so simple as a touch of a hand had helped as it did.
It’s the same for him. The nightmares, though still very much persistent, don’t haunt him for days on end when they appear. Rama takes away the pain and moves his focus away from the hurt.
They’ve been good for each other in that way, in so many ways.
“There’s something to be said about not facing these long nights alone.”
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“Go back to sleep, Francis,” he murmurs. “I’ll try not to wake you up this time.”
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He gets a hint of those lonely barracks in the back of his mind, the extreme isolation and imprisonment laying on his chest like a heavy stone. Rama doesn't linger on the thought long though, and Crozier's back to the soft happiness that had been shared between them. He yawns quietly into the back of his hand.
"If you can't sleep, at the very least don't leave me," he relents quietly.
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“I won’t get up,” Raju answers and after another moment says it out loud, running his fingers slowly through the hair under them, feeling this man around and through him: “Where else would I want to be?”
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There are so many places that Rama could wish to be instead of freezing his bullocks off in this freezing wilderness, but the sentiment is understood and appreciated in his typical silently grateful way. Grateful to be loved and cherished, grateful for this man in his life, grateful for every moment they have together.
He locks eyes with Rama for a second or two longer, those crystal-brown eyes with the obscenely long lashes, and then closes his in tired contentment. He smiles his response, letting his quiet happiness say what he might fumble in words, and allows himself to fall asleep again.