Yes, yes, twice now with the broken ribs. It’s not like he went looking for that second occasion! He scoffs quietly at the sardonic little grin, his own amusement falling when Rama can’t seem to see himself.
“Ridiculous,” he says, “completely ridiculous. Valor needn’t be limited to being chased by goddamned wolves.”
His hand slides over Rama’s, up over his outer thigh until it finds a place to settle on his lap. “You walking into the cold with bare feet to spare the others from the flame, how you begged me to keep away from you, even though you were in horrendous pain. The way you dug me out from the collapsed ice with your bare hands. How carefully and dutifully you’ve cared for me. Does that not speak to selflessness?”
He knows he’s right, and he can’t keep the slight smirk off of his face.
As Francis starts explaining Raju looks up from Francis’ hand on his lap, frowning thoughtfully. It sounds very obvious when Francis says it all that way. Not that Raju could have done anything else any of those times, not and keep any of his honor, his self respect. But that doesn’t mean Francis is wrong. It means that Raju forgot.
“You see more clearly than I do,” he smiles, hand wrapping itself around the back of Francis’. “I’m lucky to have you.”
Then his warm smile curls with amusement, and the hand at the back if Francis’ neck makes a pinching motion at the corner of that smirk. “Or that’s what I would be saying, if you weren’t looking so smug about it. Besides, when I went into the snow in bare feet I didn’t know what a pain healing the damn things would be. Maybe now I’d take the time to put two layers of socks on each foot and lace up my shoes, and everything would be burned up by the time I left.”
“That’s why we keep the bucket,” replies Crozier dryly. “Throwing water at you whilst you fiddle with your shoes, that’s our method.”
But speaking of uncontrollable fire, Crozier briefly glances down at the char marks on the wooden floor. They formed a kind of circle around the chair where they’d…been together, just like the wall of flames that formed the night of the town meeting.
These flames had burned brightly and then calmed by the end, disappearing into smoke and smeared ash on the wooden planks. Harmless, in the end. Horrifically symbolic though, almost poetic. He glances at Rama, smug look softening into quiet affection. He hadn’t worried about their safety while it happened, not one bit.
Raju looks surprised and then warm and he lifts Francis' hand, his turn now to press a slow kiss to the back of it. His smile is soft as he lifts his head away, looking steadily into Francis' eyes. "Any way you want me," he murmurs, then amusement curls at the edges of his expression again. "Though, it's a relief you want me this way after all. I've always loved you, of course, but the rest of it might have been a problem. I needn't have worried about what to do with it at all. You already knew what you wanted to do."
His face is burning hot now, his gaze dropping to the their hands so he doesn't have to keep looking into Rama's very beautiful eyes. Always loved him, but the rest... "I knew how to start, but not what to do after," he admits, laughing very quietly. That's a problem for the future - tomorrow, at least.
Crozier moves a little closer to Rama on the bench, letting their thighs touch together. He holds his hand in his, thumb moving over Rama's still-healing knuckles. "Did you languish very long, trying to understand what to do with it all?"
Raju smiles down at their thighs, their hands. Sitting like lovers. But that's what they are, isn't it? It's a strange thought. One that seems both strange and perfectly natural, by turns, but no matter how strange it is or isn't there's something very right about it. "I've been keeping busy. I didn't, ah..."
His gaze darts to Francis' face, then away to their hands with the faint, false amusement on his face of a man trying to look less embarrassed than he is. But Francis won't mind the lapse, will he? The magnitude of what Raju's missed about himself and for how long is... offputting, but Francis has a way of making the lapses and imperfections not seem as... as dire as they might otherwise be. "I didn't... realise until you were, ah... and then once you were going to live, there was so much to do. But so much time to just sit there thinking. Thinking myself head first into a brick wall. I wanted you, finally figured that much out, but once I knew—"
He shrugs, sighing and looking at Francis again with a rueful little smile. "And you?" His hand in Francis' curls over his fingers. He'll have to touch Francis' face again in a moment, or kiss him, or something. He wants more of that blush, somehow, and only touching it will do. But in the moment, a question: "You knew your own mind already, today. You've been thinking about it. When?"
He waits for Rama to collect his thoughts, happy to do so, patiently smiling and running his thumb back and forth over his knuckles. He could sit like this all night - if his body allowed that sort of thing - and be happy, so long as Rama stayed beside him.
His answer is surprising - and more than a little heart wrenching. Rama’s only started to realize things when he’d showed up in the snow so beaten that it seemed like he would die. He’d only puzzled things out when Crozier was on death’s door, and then after he’d slept and slept and slept…and when he’d started to heal he’d still been fragile. Hell, he’s still fragile now, unable to move long distances by himself or wash his own hair. Rama had all these weeks to mull over his thoughts, but even as he watched him slowly get better he hadn’t known what to do with said thoughts.
His smile, vaguely sad as he thinks about the man he loves ruminating and suffering all for his sake, turns just a little more bashful. Of course he had to ask, and Crozier needs to be truthful in turn to honor Rama’s vulnerability with him. “I…ah.” He laughs a little, looking away from him briefly. When was the moment exactly? There had been a thousand little moments, all of them converging eventually into what he feels for him now. But he knows when he first let himself think it, right down to the minute.
“When your feet were still healing,” he says, recalling when it all locked into place for him. “And we’d come from town and happened upon the cairns. That was when I knew.”
Rama had been….he’d been everything that day. He bowed his head to cairns and made space for his grief, and then after they’d sat in front of the fire and laughed and teased each other. He’d been smitten from that moment on.
"You've known that long?" Raju sounds pleased, puzzled. If he'd had to say when he'd started wanting what he does, feeling what he does, Raju isn't sure what he would decide, even now. And knowing that is strange. Offensive, but more than that, just strange. He's always trusted his own mind more than anyone else's. But if he should realise someone isn't only more learned than he is about survival here but is wiser, too, wise enough to be that much more aware of his own inner life and his own heart, that someone should be Francis. And of course it would be. That would be the person looking at him this way, holding his hand. Lucky isn't the word.
But, the cairns. An important moment, in more ways than Raju had known. Raju's brow wrinkles a little as he thinks over it. "You didn't mean to take me there, but showed me anyway. We stayed. What about it? I was grateful — I am grateful — that you showed me, but I don't remember doing anything spectacular."
He doesn't remember doing anything spectacular - of course he doesn't. "That's what makes you..." he trails off with a fond, soft sort of sigh. "That's why I'm so drawn to you."
Rama is spectacular even while doing perfectly ordinary things. The way he acts is considerate and with careful thought. He's loyal to a fault, quiet in his observations and astute in what connections he tries to make. This place is unfamiliar and horrifying at times, but Rama has always been courageous in the face of it, unwilling to give up even when the odds are stacked against him.
"That day you asked to pay your respects. You didn't cast judgement or think my efforts silly or without merit; you understood enough to let me have my mourning, and joined me in it, and then not long after you had me laughing and smiling again. That's...it's..." He trips over his own tongue; he has so much to say to him, and yet he struggles to find the words. He felt it, that's all he knows.
"You've seen all sides of me, and never once spurned me. I was smitten."
Raju listens. Of course he wouldn't judge Francis' efforts to grieve his enormous losses in whatever way he could; of course he would join that mourning if he were allowed to; of course he would try, once Francis was ready to leave, to make him smile. Francis has never forgotten his responsibilities to or his love of the people who needed him, even when that responsibility and that love and the grief it wrecked inside nearly destroyed him. Of course Raju would help a man like that in any small way that he could. It's the least of what Francis deserves.
But these simple, obvious facts performed because of course he would, of course Francis deserves them and so someone should give them to him, and of course Raju can, and would, and should be the one who does, recited sound like acts of love in Francis' mouth. As he hears them Raju feels it inside his chest warm and deep, deeper than he could chart without a map, and realises that they are.
You've seen all sides of me, Francis says, and never once spurned me, and Raju's other hand cups the side of Francis' face.
"I feel the same." His voice is thick, throat suddenly tight. His gaze is fixed to Francis' eyes, smile faint and helpless to be anything else. "You've never turned away in disgust. Even when... when you could have. Maybe you should have. But you were loyal, and patient, and kind."
He’s never seen any reason to condemn Rama or turn him away in disgust, even if there are sins and moments of shame in his past. He’s not without guilt either, and their burdens are numerous and troublesome even without the added pressures of just surviving every day. If Rama can see past the bad in Crozier, then Crozier can and should do the same for Rama.
Not that it was ever in question.
But he seems to understand, his eyes bright and his hands warm and comforting against his face. He looks to Crozier - looks into him, through him, right down into the soul of him - and Crozier’s lip lifts in a lopsided echo of Rama’s own smile. “I’d found a friend in a terrible place,” he says, voice just a notch above a whisper. “You’ve been a gift.” It’s a simple statement, and doesn’t say nearly enough, but yet…
Yet it says what it needs to. He’d found a treasure in the bleakness of the Arctic, someone who went out of his way to make him smile and protect him. He’s never deserved any of it, but it came his way all the same. A gift. Someone to love.
Crozier covers Rama’s hand with his own and tries to swallow the hard lump in his throat. He can feel it making it difficult for him to speak already. “How unexpected for us both,” he tries, just a hint of a laugh in his voice.
Raju looks at him. Listens to the roughness in his voice, feels his skin. “You called me Rama earlier,” he murmurs, roughly. “Even after the heat of the moment was long over. When you didn’t have to. That’s a part of myself I…”
He lets out a slow breath, looking away and catching sight of his wrist. “That’s why I wear that,” he nods toward the cord, his half of Seetha’s pendant. “So I didn’t forget it was waiting for me, that some day I should be Rama again. But I’d started to think… I’d buried it too long, and maybe it’d suffocated there. I’d realise I’d forgotten I was wearing it, that I’d ever been anything else, and it was…”
It wasn’t anything. He’d realise it and soon after his mind would be empty. He hadn’t been able to afford anything else. The horror of it only comes now, after. But there’s too much else in him for horror to keep a foothold for long. Raju’s troubled gaze, then fixed on the pendant, moves now to Francis’ face again, smile small but growing, fixed on Francis, relieved. “But here I am. I see Rama again, with you. That’s a gift, too.”
He locked Rama away when he left his village. He had to, he had a mission to complete, a promise to his dying father to fulfill. Everything was wrapped up in being Raju, it was life or death, and Rama had been buried under the weight of all that. He’d nearly lost himself entirely - Crozier can understand that all-too-well, that fear of losing yourself completely in the need to be something or someone else.
But the thought that he’d brought Rama back - he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen a divide, Raju versus Rama - but he can feel his heart thundering in his chest knowing this beloved man feels that way. If he sees Rama, then that’s who Crozier loves. He loves the man with the pendant and heart that would give all of himself and leave nothing left to save his people.
He smile fades ever-so-slightly as he leans forward, bringing their foreheads to rest against each other. He blinks softly; Christ, is he crying? He couldn’t even feel it. “Here you are,” he murmurs. “I love the man that you are, Rama.”
The British saw the officer, of course, A. Rama Raju; the superior officers and their families must have loved one another, but they certainly didn’t love him. They only saw what he could do. They saw the officer with the hard face and the spotless uniform, and they used him.
The people at home, they saw a hero. They saw Rama and they loved him, loved their savior when he encouraged them to keep hoping and keep living and keep waiting for the day when their great hope Rama would win them weapons so they could finally fight, and then win them their freedom. They love the man who keeps himself strong, and keeps them strong, and so soothes their fear and their rage and their hope and their need.
Francis sees the man. Francis needs… well, only a man. The man that he is. Francis watches everyday acts and sees, somehow, something extraordinary. The spectacular act of heroism Francis needed was Raju going quietly to his knees in front of the monuments to Francis’ grief, and staying with him after; Francis’ great need is only for Raju, not as an empty soldier or a larger than life hero or an upright and faultless husband, some source of unyielding force and unending strength. But as a man. That’s what’s so monumental to Francis to send those tears down his cheeks now.
Raju’s throat hurts a little. It’s everything, it’s all of it, but the thing that trips him over into tears is Francis’ own, some kind of permission there, and Raju feels Francis’ forehead against his own, and lets out a hard, rough breath, voice thick with their tears. “I love you, Francis. Everything that you are.”
His breath hitches and he smiles on the hard exhale, corners of his eyes crinkling. “Thank you.”
He loves him. He loves him. He replays the words in his mind over and over again. Everything that he is, all the bad and all the good, all the spite and envy and missteps and guilt, all the pieces of him that are broken and never will be properly mended - he loves him, not in spite of all those things, but perhaps because he is all those things. He's been loved but not tolerated because of the things he is and isn't - Irish, middle bred, no ear for politics, a sailor who keeps but a single drawer when on land.
It's all of him, not just the acceptable pieces. He sees the ghosts that haunt him and has stayed. They're a fitting pair, aren't they? Both of them plagued by their pasts and unsure of their futures. But they work, they make each other smile and laugh, they hold each other when things are difficult and try to protect each other from the ills of the world.
Crozier slowly brings his hand up brush his thumb under Rama's eye, catching any tears that might have fallen, then tilts his head back oh-so-gently to press a kiss to his lips. He lets him feel the brief smile that spreads across his face, then angles his head to fit them together properly, inadvertently sharing the sigh that escapes him. He tastes a little salty, a little sweet, lips still just as lush and indulgent as they'd felt when he'd first kissed him earlier that evening. His fingers trail down to his beard, along his jaw, pulling back to press smaller kisses to his lips and over his cheeks and nose.
Odd to smile as he feels those little kisses there and feel the wetness at the edges of his eyes at the same time, to know it's at the corners of Francis' too even if Francis' face isn't far enough away now to see. One hand cups the back of Francis' head gently while the other clutches at his arm, and Raju does smile, darting little kisses back wherever the movement of Francis' head allows it. And it's odd to do this, kiss like this only for the sake of it; this, too, he hasn't done in a long time. Longer than since he's had sex, surely. Things between them had been serious and solemn in those later years, when he'd been home long enough to be the husband she'd needed. Even with the crying, though, this is anything but.
Raju gives a satisfied sigh, hand moving from Francis' arm to his shoulder to his side, and then running itself down that very slowly, soaking in the shape of him. He doesn't say anything; everything important has already been said. He wants to feel.
The tears start to dry up and he continues to kiss and be kissed, hand staying on Raju's head to keep his face nice and close. He pushes his fingers through his beard and then up to his hairline, tender and deliberate as he caresses along his temple and over the shell of his ear.
His chest is starting to ache though, and not in the lovesick kind of way. He hates it, but he needs to end the moment and get them back on track. With a gentle nip to his lower lip he pulls back, smiling apologetically as he meets Rama's eyes and drops his hand down over his heart.
"I need my chest wrapped," he reminds him, sorry to even have to say it.
"Mhm." Raju nods, still smiling as he takes the sight of him in. Looking at him feels new, even if nothing outside of them — or inside of them, for Francis, in a very literal sense — has changed. Raju will need to do the same chores, prepare the same food, wrap the same bandages in the same way. Everything has changed, even if some of it hasn't.
Raju steals one more quick kiss that becomes just a little less quick than he'd intended as he bites Francis' lip, and he's smiling in a playful, self satisfied sort of way as he pulls back from it. He watches Francis for a moment. Then he stands, finds himself running a hand over Francis' hair, huffs out an amused noise at himself. Even as he picks the bandage up again, his smile only dims. It's still there, and the pleasure is still there, some sharp, excited quality to the warmth inside him.
"Are you ready?" he asks, less because he thinks Francis isn't and more to give him a chance to brace for it. Wrapping this isn't pleasant, but it's necessary, and that's alright. Not so long ago in this very room, Raju was going to lose everything. But he has more now than he'd dreamt he could. The setbacks are worthwhile, compared to that.
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Yes, yes, twice now with the broken ribs. It’s not like he went looking for that second occasion! He scoffs quietly at the sardonic little grin, his own amusement falling when Rama can’t seem to see himself.
“Ridiculous,” he says, “completely ridiculous. Valor needn’t be limited to being chased by goddamned wolves.”
His hand slides over Rama’s, up over his outer thigh until it finds a place to settle on his lap. “You walking into the cold with bare feet to spare the others from the flame, how you begged me to keep away from you, even though you were in horrendous pain. The way you dug me out from the collapsed ice with your bare hands. How carefully and dutifully you’ve cared for me. Does that not speak to selflessness?”
He knows he’s right, and he can’t keep the slight smirk off of his face.
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“You see more clearly than I do,” he smiles, hand wrapping itself around the back of Francis’. “I’m lucky to have you.”
Then his warm smile curls with amusement, and the hand at the back if Francis’ neck makes a pinching motion at the corner of that smirk. “Or that’s what I would be saying, if you weren’t looking so smug about it. Besides, when I went into the snow in bare feet I didn’t know what a pain healing the damn things would be. Maybe now I’d take the time to put two layers of socks on each foot and lace up my shoes, and everything would be burned up by the time I left.”
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“That’s why we keep the bucket,” replies Crozier dryly. “Throwing water at you whilst you fiddle with your shoes, that’s our method.”
But speaking of uncontrollable fire, Crozier briefly glances down at the char marks on the wooden floor. They formed a kind of circle around the chair where they’d…been together, just like the wall of flames that formed the night of the town meeting.
These flames had burned brightly and then calmed by the end, disappearing into smoke and smeared ash on the wooden planks. Harmless, in the end. Horrifically symbolic though, almost poetic. He glances at Rama, smug look softening into quiet affection. He hadn’t worried about their safety while it happened, not one bit.
“I’m lucky to have you, Rama. Truly.”
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His face is burning hot now, his gaze dropping to the their hands so he doesn't have to keep looking into Rama's very beautiful eyes. Always loved him, but the rest... "I knew how to start, but not what to do after," he admits, laughing very quietly. That's a problem for the future - tomorrow, at least.
Crozier moves a little closer to Rama on the bench, letting their thighs touch together. He holds his hand in his, thumb moving over Rama's still-healing knuckles. "Did you languish very long, trying to understand what to do with it all?"
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His gaze darts to Francis' face, then away to their hands with the faint, false amusement on his face of a man trying to look less embarrassed than he is. But Francis won't mind the lapse, will he? The magnitude of what Raju's missed about himself and for how long is... offputting, but Francis has a way of making the lapses and imperfections not seem as... as dire as they might otherwise be. "I didn't... realise until you were, ah... and then once you were going to live, there was so much to do. But so much time to just sit there thinking. Thinking myself head first into a brick wall. I wanted you, finally figured that much out, but once I knew—"
He shrugs, sighing and looking at Francis again with a rueful little smile. "And you?" His hand in Francis' curls over his fingers. He'll have to touch Francis' face again in a moment, or kiss him, or something. He wants more of that blush, somehow, and only touching it will do. But in the moment, a question: "You knew your own mind already, today. You've been thinking about it. When?"
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He waits for Rama to collect his thoughts, happy to do so, patiently smiling and running his thumb back and forth over his knuckles. He could sit like this all night - if his body allowed that sort of thing - and be happy, so long as Rama stayed beside him.
His answer is surprising - and more than a little heart wrenching. Rama’s only started to realize things when he’d showed up in the snow so beaten that it seemed like he would die. He’d only puzzled things out when Crozier was on death’s door, and then after he’d slept and slept and slept…and when he’d started to heal he’d still been fragile. Hell, he’s still fragile now, unable to move long distances by himself or wash his own hair. Rama had all these weeks to mull over his thoughts, but even as he watched him slowly get better he hadn’t known what to do with said thoughts.
His smile, vaguely sad as he thinks about the man he loves ruminating and suffering all for his sake, turns just a little more bashful. Of course he had to ask, and Crozier needs to be truthful in turn to honor Rama’s vulnerability with him. “I…ah.” He laughs a little, looking away from him briefly. When was the moment exactly? There had been a thousand little moments, all of them converging eventually into what he feels for him now. But he knows when he first let himself think it, right down to the minute.
“When your feet were still healing,” he says, recalling when it all locked into place for him. “And we’d come from town and happened upon the cairns. That was when I knew.”
Rama had been….he’d been everything that day. He bowed his head to cairns and made space for his grief, and then after they’d sat in front of the fire and laughed and teased each other. He’d been smitten from that moment on.
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But, the cairns. An important moment, in more ways than Raju had known. Raju's brow wrinkles a little as he thinks over it. "You didn't mean to take me there, but showed me anyway. We stayed. What about it? I was grateful — I am grateful — that you showed me, but I don't remember doing anything spectacular."
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He doesn't remember doing anything spectacular - of course he doesn't. "That's what makes you..." he trails off with a fond, soft sort of sigh. "That's why I'm so drawn to you."
Rama is spectacular even while doing perfectly ordinary things. The way he acts is considerate and with careful thought. He's loyal to a fault, quiet in his observations and astute in what connections he tries to make. This place is unfamiliar and horrifying at times, but Rama has always been courageous in the face of it, unwilling to give up even when the odds are stacked against him.
"That day you asked to pay your respects. You didn't cast judgement or think my efforts silly or without merit; you understood enough to let me have my mourning, and joined me in it, and then not long after you had me laughing and smiling again. That's...it's..." He trips over his own tongue; he has so much to say to him, and yet he struggles to find the words. He felt it, that's all he knows.
"You've seen all sides of me, and never once spurned me. I was smitten."
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But these simple, obvious facts performed because of course he would, of course Francis deserves them and so someone should give them to him, and of course Raju can, and would, and should be the one who does, recited sound like acts of love in Francis' mouth. As he hears them Raju feels it inside his chest warm and deep, deeper than he could chart without a map, and realises that they are.
You've seen all sides of me, Francis says, and never once spurned me, and Raju's other hand cups the side of Francis' face.
"I feel the same." His voice is thick, throat suddenly tight. His gaze is fixed to Francis' eyes, smile faint and helpless to be anything else. "You've never turned away in disgust. Even when... when you could have. Maybe you should have. But you were loyal, and patient, and kind."
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He’s never seen any reason to condemn Rama or turn him away in disgust, even if there are sins and moments of shame in his past. He’s not without guilt either, and their burdens are numerous and troublesome even without the added pressures of just surviving every day. If Rama can see past the bad in Crozier, then Crozier can and should do the same for Rama.
Not that it was ever in question.
But he seems to understand, his eyes bright and his hands warm and comforting against his face. He looks to Crozier - looks into him, through him, right down into the soul of him - and Crozier’s lip lifts in a lopsided echo of Rama’s own smile. “I’d found a friend in a terrible place,” he says, voice just a notch above a whisper. “You’ve been a gift.” It’s a simple statement, and doesn’t say nearly enough, but yet…
Yet it says what it needs to. He’d found a treasure in the bleakness of the Arctic, someone who went out of his way to make him smile and protect him. He’s never deserved any of it, but it came his way all the same. A gift. Someone to love.
Crozier covers Rama’s hand with his own and tries to swallow the hard lump in his throat. He can feel it making it difficult for him to speak already. “How unexpected for us both,” he tries, just a hint of a laugh in his voice.
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He lets out a slow breath, looking away and catching sight of his wrist. “That’s why I wear that,” he nods toward the cord, his half of Seetha’s pendant. “So I didn’t forget it was waiting for me, that some day I should be Rama again. But I’d started to think… I’d buried it too long, and maybe it’d suffocated there. I’d realise I’d forgotten I was wearing it, that I’d ever been anything else, and it was…”
It wasn’t anything. He’d realise it and soon after his mind would be empty. He hadn’t been able to afford anything else. The horror of it only comes now, after. But there’s too much else in him for horror to keep a foothold for long. Raju’s troubled gaze, then fixed on the pendant, moves now to Francis’ face again, smile small but growing, fixed on Francis, relieved. “But here I am. I see Rama again, with you. That’s a gift, too.”
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He locked Rama away when he left his village. He had to, he had a mission to complete, a promise to his dying father to fulfill. Everything was wrapped up in being Raju, it was life or death, and Rama had been buried under the weight of all that. He’d nearly lost himself entirely - Crozier can understand that all-too-well, that fear of losing yourself completely in the need to be something or someone else.
But the thought that he’d brought Rama back - he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen a divide, Raju versus Rama - but he can feel his heart thundering in his chest knowing this beloved man feels that way. If he sees Rama, then that’s who Crozier loves. He loves the man with the pendant and heart that would give all of himself and leave nothing left to save his people.
He smile fades ever-so-slightly as he leans forward, bringing their foreheads to rest against each other. He blinks softly; Christ, is he crying? He couldn’t even feel it. “Here you are,” he murmurs. “I love the man that you are, Rama.”
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The people at home, they saw a hero. They saw Rama and they loved him, loved their savior when he encouraged them to keep hoping and keep living and keep waiting for the day when their great hope Rama would win them weapons so they could finally fight, and then win them their freedom. They love the man who keeps himself strong, and keeps them strong, and so soothes their fear and their rage and their hope and their need.
Francis sees the man. Francis needs… well, only a man. The man that he is. Francis watches everyday acts and sees, somehow, something extraordinary. The spectacular act of heroism Francis needed was Raju going quietly to his knees in front of the monuments to Francis’ grief, and staying with him after; Francis’ great need is only for Raju, not as an empty soldier or a larger than life hero or an upright and faultless husband, some source of unyielding force and unending strength. But as a man. That’s what’s so monumental to Francis to send those tears down his cheeks now.
Raju’s throat hurts a little. It’s everything, it’s all of it, but the thing that trips him over into tears is Francis’ own, some kind of permission there, and Raju feels Francis’ forehead against his own, and lets out a hard, rough breath, voice thick with their tears. “I love you, Francis. Everything that you are.”
His breath hitches and he smiles on the hard exhale, corners of his eyes crinkling. “Thank you.”
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He loves him. He loves him. He replays the words in his mind over and over again. Everything that he is, all the bad and all the good, all the spite and envy and missteps and guilt, all the pieces of him that are broken and never will be properly mended - he loves him, not in spite of all those things, but perhaps because he is all those things. He's been loved but not tolerated because of the things he is and isn't - Irish, middle bred, no ear for politics, a sailor who keeps but a single drawer when on land.
It's all of him, not just the acceptable pieces. He sees the ghosts that haunt him and has stayed. They're a fitting pair, aren't they? Both of them plagued by their pasts and unsure of their futures. But they work, they make each other smile and laugh, they hold each other when things are difficult and try to protect each other from the ills of the world.
Crozier slowly brings his hand up brush his thumb under Rama's eye, catching any tears that might have fallen, then tilts his head back oh-so-gently to press a kiss to his lips. He lets him feel the brief smile that spreads across his face, then angles his head to fit them together properly, inadvertently sharing the sigh that escapes him. He tastes a little salty, a little sweet, lips still just as lush and indulgent as they'd felt when he'd first kissed him earlier that evening. His fingers trail down to his beard, along his jaw, pulling back to press smaller kisses to his lips and over his cheeks and nose.
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Raju gives a satisfied sigh, hand moving from Francis' arm to his shoulder to his side, and then running itself down that very slowly, soaking in the shape of him. He doesn't say anything; everything important has already been said. He wants to feel.
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The tears start to dry up and he continues to kiss and be kissed, hand staying on Raju's head to keep his face nice and close. He pushes his fingers through his beard and then up to his hairline, tender and deliberate as he caresses along his temple and over the shell of his ear.
His chest is starting to ache though, and not in the lovesick kind of way. He hates it, but he needs to end the moment and get them back on track. With a gentle nip to his lower lip he pulls back, smiling apologetically as he meets Rama's eyes and drops his hand down over his heart.
"I need my chest wrapped," he reminds him, sorry to even have to say it.
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Raju steals one more quick kiss that becomes just a little less quick than he'd intended as he bites Francis' lip, and he's smiling in a playful, self satisfied sort of way as he pulls back from it. He watches Francis for a moment. Then he stands, finds himself running a hand over Francis' hair, huffs out an amused noise at himself. Even as he picks the bandage up again, his smile only dims. It's still there, and the pleasure is still there, some sharp, excited quality to the warmth inside him.
"Are you ready?" he asks, less because he thinks Francis isn't and more to give him a chance to brace for it. Wrapping this isn't pleasant, but it's necessary, and that's alright. Not so long ago in this very room, Raju was going to lose everything. But he has more now than he'd dreamt he could. The setbacks are worthwhile, compared to that.