“No it isn’t.” Raju’s answer is low and quick, instant on the heels of Francis’ quiet, mournful acceptance. Some part of him knows that Francis must be right to accept it, that Raju should keep accepting it too, but all of it hurts too much to bear being calm about it. “It isn’t!” he goes on, shaking at the fabric in his hands as if shaking the man himself. “You should have better than this! How is it right that I, I have to—“
Raju stares at him, jaw set stubbornly and brow drawn, but dread creeping into the look in his eyes. He has the sense of teetering on some ledge, outstretched arms and wobbling balance the only thing keeping him from finishing the thought out loud. Or from having it at all. How is it right, that I have to—
He feels Francis’ shirt wound in his fists. He feels the fire fierce and hot behind him. He sees the room behind Francis, the light and dark there shifting with the flames. He sees the face of the man he’s built a life with, a strong and handsome face, thin shapely lips and long sloping nose and high forehead, golden hair and blue eyes dark in the room’s deep shadows, and feels his lungs filling quickly with his quick breaths, and doesn’t think about anything else.
“You do,” he insists, still angrily but a little weakly too, now. But it’s safer ground, this part. It’s natural for a man to want to give his— who he’s made his home in every gift that he can think to, whether or not he can actually do it. “You deserve everything. You don’t understand that? The way that I see you?”
Still soft, still gentle, his hand rising to cover Ram’s still gripping his shirt so hard that he worries he’s going to burst into flames.
He sees how he loves him. He sees it, he understands it. It isn’t fair, and all things aren’t equal. He’s at the end, Ram’s still near the beginning.
“But you have to live.”
That’s the crux of it; Rama has to live. He has love still waiting for him, a mission, duty, a life that could be lived just as fully. Crozier left those things and chose his isolation. There’s nothing for him after this, and that’s by choice. That’s how it must be.
If you go back tomorrow, I will have been happy. Gratitude among the sorrow, sweet nostalgia paired with loneliness. Both things can be exist inside a man’s brain.
Raju’s gaze dart here and there over Francis’ face, eyes narrowed, thinking. “I told you,” he decides, “that I… I knew what it was to want… to die. And I told you how I beat a man— I tortured him. He wasn’t the first. But this time, there weren’t any guards. Only me. When I stepped out he managed to capture a snake. I don’t know how. It bit me, and he said… he said I had an hour, and then I would die. And I was… I…”
But he’s already danced closer to the edge than this, hasn’t he, just in the last minute? Maybe that’s why he’s hesitating. It would have meant something different spoken on its own, without that damning How is it right that came before. He says it anyway, feeling his way through to the right word.
“I was… grateful. Relieved… Happy. I was happy, for the first time in… I don’t know. Years. Maybe longer. But here, I’m happy to live. I want to live. Because I’m here.” He’s shaking at Francis’ shirt again, or trying to with Francis’ hand over his, but even as intent as he is on convincing Francis to… on convincing him, a part of Raju is already asking what could happen after that. Francis agrees with him, says it isn’t… fair — a safer word than right, it could be right and still not fair — that all of this isn’t fair, and then… what?
Raju keeps pushing anyway, for agreement, or maybe for something more than that, no matter how impossible it might be. He can’t bear to do anything else.
“Here, where it doesn’t hurt. With you.” His gaze is darting over Francis’ face again but this time urgently, looking for something. Understanding, or agreement, or anything other than that mournful, loving acceptance that Raju can feel from him now. For Francis to fight. If Francis agrees Raju should fight this then, then… then something. Something he could put into words if only it was right to do it, if only the thought of it didn’t make all the heavy sludge and inward pointed knives and everything he feels on looking at that thread out to his home try to crawl back up his throat.
It doesn’t hurt with him. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard a compliment so beautiful or so profound - when they’re together it doesn’t hurt to live.
He inhales sharply and answers Ram’s searching glance by tugging him forward, right into his arms. He tugs him tightly right there on the floor, afraid for him, afraid for them both, and sad that things couldn’t be less complicated.
Rama has to go back if given the opportunity. It’s the right thing to do, even if it means facing all those things that can slowly kill a man’s soul. He doesn’t want that life for this man, this person that lightens his own burdens and makes him feel human, not like a shadow or a ghost. His loss would haunt him just as keenly as any other loss, if not more so. He’d be losing a part of himself this time.
He can’t argue it. He can’t, and it pains him to not be able to fix this.
Raju’s tugged against Francis’ chest. His arms are bent against it, hands still fisted in Francis’ shirt, and his face falls naturally against the crook of Francis’ neck. Francis’ arms are tight around him, smothering Raju’s desperate need to hear—
—something Francis could never give him, Raju realises, not wanting to know it but unable to help it held against the gentle warmth of him, the fire sounding faint behind the echo of Raju’s gasping breaths against Francis’ skin. You never would have asked, would you? He isn’t sure how much of the message makes it through — the thoughts he gets seem to be more impressions than words and his own now, as much as any idea can be, is quiet — but it isn’t something Raju could admit to out loud, the desperate, selfish shame of what he had been looking for. You’d sacrifice everything to help someone else, even people you’ll never meet. Asking for what you need instead never even occurred to you, did it? It never could have been different; that’s why I love you, after all.
His breath shudders in the small, damp space between his face and Francis’ neck, and his eyes burn. He can’t tell if the wetness on his cheeks is his own sweat or if it’s tears. He closes his eyes, and doesn’t try to figure it out.
Crozier can’t fix this. He can’t soothe the hurt or change the outcome if Ram ever were to go home. He can’t tell him he’d do differently, or that he wouldn’t be devastated or lonely if he did go. It’s frustrating and terrifying, and he grits his teeth and squares his jaw to keep himself from crying.
He can’t do anything but hold him, feeling the damp of sweat and tears and general misery as he leans his head against his. He silently apologizes, though he isn’t sure what he’s most sorry for - that he can’t fight for him, or that he’s willing for the both of them to suffer if it means Ram keeps his promise.
I want to live. I want to live, and I want you by my side, but I couldn’t live with myself.
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.
Even feeling the adoration behind the comparison makes him feel low. He’s not better, he’s a coward who’s tired of fighting. He wants to keep Rama for himself, for always, but how could he be so selfish? What does he really have to offer him? He can’t fulfill him like a wife might, and this place is freezing and miserable, and he’s quite a bit older, and so how many years does he actually have —
He realizes too far into the spiral that Rama might be able to hear all this inside his head, and he quickly tries to stop himself from falling into old habits. Ram doesn’t need to hear all that self-inflicted misery.
“Don’t be sorry. I would,” he whispers. I would love you forever, dreams and longing and burdens and all. Rama shouldn’t need to apologize for being pulled in two directions, or thinking of his own happiness for a goddamned change.
The horror of having allowed I don’t want into reality, into words, using those words to find excuses, of having tried even for a moment to convince a moral, dutiful man to hand him even a hint at those excuses to hide himself away from what has to be is starting to sink into him. A faithless, arrogant son, he knows, to avoid what his father’s ordered, a weak coward to want to ignore the needs of so many who—
There are thoughts in his mind a little ways behind those, running alongside them in parallel spiraling lines. These thoughts aren’t quick and sharp and hot; they aren’t his. Raju’s breathing quiets abruptly, still quick and shaky but startled away from whatever it’d been moving into. He’s a coward, the slow certainty that isn’t his had said, and a little of the distress twisting Raju’s face turns to focus as he tries to listen, pay enough attention to notice the rest of it. Selfish, the thought goes on, more of that bizarre paralleling of Raju’s own. Selfish, he knows, to want Raju — Rama, isn’t it, for Francis he’s Rama — to stay for himself, for always, when he doesn’t have anything to offer, too old, too… too something Raju can’t quite catch, not enough somehow, offering only something worse. And then Francis follows that one with a thought that must be purposeful, one Raju feels and has to close his eyes against the pain and the beauty of it.
He pulls just far enough back from Francis to look at his face with a steadying breath in through his nose. His expression is focused and determined; Francis’ face is blurry for a moment through the tears caught in Raju’s eyelashes until he blinks them away, lifting his chin for a closer-to-even look into Francis’ eyes. “You can say that and not know? It isn’t just that I don’t— that it’s going to be… hard to be there again. What don’t you have to offer me, Francis? You’ve given me everything.”
“Temporarily,” he says, voice hoarse. Everything is temporary and frail, because Crozier’s own existence feels so temporary and frail.
It doesn’t seem fair to bring this up now. Ram has too much in his mind, too much inner and outer turmoil for Crozier to now lay this burden on him. But he asked, and Crozier can only be honest. He pulls back and touches his hand to Ram’s face, so very aware of the lack of wrinkles on his handsome face. There’s maybe a gray here or there in his hair, but nothing apparent, no real marks of aging aside from the stress that he wears in his muscles.
He should speak plainly. “I can’t give you permanence. I’m older, Ram, and not in the best health. I can’t promise you tomorrow or the next day, not with any certainty.”
He can’t deny that he’s made Rama happy, because he can feel it in every touch and see it with every smile. But he isn’t the wise choice, he isn’t the one who can provide a solid future. What if he dies and leaves Ram here in the frozen wasteland alone? It’s nothing that he wants, for himself and for Rama, but it’s too real to be outright ignored.
Temporarily. The word seems in line with the inevitable thing they’re finally talking about now. Raju feels the empty space where the pressure of Francis’ arm had been around him, watching Francis’ eyes while he touches his hand to Raju’s face instead, and doesn’t realise what Francis means until he goes on.
Raju’s eyebrows pinch together. The distraction from his own weakness has moved that disgusting, disgusted feeling back in him a little but it’s there, the grief and dread are more bearable just now but closer to the surface than they’ve been in some time and he’s drained, weakness and exhaustion biting at the edges of him the way it always does when the fire in him burns too hot for too long. In the day, after more sleep, maybe he’d have something different to say about this. Right now the only thing he thinks is, No, and it feels right to follow it.
“You’re not that old,” Raju insists, sharply. His fists uncurl from Francis’ shirt and he runs his palms briskly down Francis’ sides and then back up again. He’s solid and healthy and alive under Raju’s touch. No illness, no injury. His ribs are all whole and healed — but even reassuring himself of that sends the hard edged reality in that memory of the long days when those things hadn’t been true shivering across Raju’s shoulders and down into his chest. But that was a while ago, the eternity it’d taken Francis to heal and then plenty of time after, and Francis is healthy and strong now. No matter what he’s convinced himself of. “You’re talking like you’re about to fall over dead right here.”
He’s sturdy and solid now, but his insides…the rot in his bones, the scurvy in the muscles, the unseen damage to his organs. He has to be a realist about his health now, a middle-aged man who was poisoned and starved for years can’t possibly thrive.
But Seetha. Seetha is still young and vibrant, and yes the struggle remains for those two lovers to overcome, but he doesn’t doubt that Ram can accomplish what he set out to do. Rama seems like this invincible creature, powerful and driven, and whatever impossible things await him will be conquered.
“Not today or tomorrow…but I won’t be able to see you into old age. I’ll be here for as long as I’ll be here, but it’s not nearly…” He chokes on the words. “It’s not nearly what you deserve.”
“I deserve you.” Raju’s shaking him a little, again. He realises what he’s said; it doesn’t matter what he deserves. Not when it comes to what he has to do. Wanting so badly to doubt that, being so nakedly aware now of the weakness in him, makes it all the more essential that he not allow himself to so much as consider it now.
He’s almost breathing hard again, looking at Francis. He realises, with relief like a clean breeze blowing onto sweat soaked skin, that that isn’t why he wants to argue with Francis this time. He remembers the current of Francis’ thoughts, coward and selfish to want a man he’s so settled in devotion to to stay; it can’t be endured. The way Francis chokes on the words not what you deserve as he says them shouldn’t be endured.
“I’m going back.” Raju’s hands don’t clench over Francis’ sides. They don’t even twitch there. It’s some distant marvel that he can say it matter of factly, evenly even with the fact of it still clenching at the inside of his throat. Easier to do when he shuts the reality of it away from himself a little, and focuses on the fact that one was leading up to: “But not because you’re not enough to be worth staying for. What do I care about getting old? What does old mean to a man like me, a life like mine? It’d be a privilege, to live a life here with you. That’s what you give to me, Francis. And that’s enough.”
His eyes— they were burning, and he didn’t notice until now. He swallows, and blinks the blur in his vision away. It should be enough. It’s hard to figure out how to speak about this, to say should and have it mean the right thing, not a betrayal of the people he has to go back to, but just… just should be, that’s all. He wants it to be. But it’s not because of Francis, of all things, that he can’t afford to stay.
Raju can’t help but go on, his calm of a moment before eclipsed by desperation again. His hands do grip Francis’ sides this time. “I don’t give a damn how old you are,” he insists, voice coming out low and rough. “I’d stay anyway.”
It feels like it should be a victory - Rama will go back home if and when this place allows it. Crozier won't have to put up a fight or beg for Ram to see reason; one day the aurora will open up and Crozier will do as he's always done: he'll say goodbye. It should be a relief, but that would mean cutting himself off from the joy that's been living in his heart all these months.
He'd stay anyway. Rama would choose him if he could. It's not like Sophia at all, who wouldn't choose to be his wife even if the world hadn't been so judgemental. Ram would have him, age and one-hand and constant nightmares and melancholy and all.
Christ, he's a lucky man. It makes him a little sick from the whiplash of the emotions, some of his own, some of Ram's. Maybe he is what Rama deserves. Maybe he can believe he's of some worth still, even if he has to claw the idea out from his self-loathing and sadness.
Crozier brings his fingers up to Ram's cheek, his own vision blurring around the edges as he wipes the damp from underneath his eyes. Ah, damn it all, he can't cry too. He smiles instead, watery and pathetic, and he tries to bring him into another embrace, this one slightly less awkward in the way they're twisted together. "We won't know when you'll get the opportunity to leave. It could be tomorrow, it could be in months. Years. I'll keep you well until we have to part." And be grateful for every single moment until then.
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.”
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Raju stares at him, jaw set stubbornly and brow drawn, but dread creeping into the look in his eyes. He has the sense of teetering on some ledge, outstretched arms and wobbling balance the only thing keeping him from finishing the thought out loud. Or from having it at all. How is it right, that I have to—
He feels Francis’ shirt wound in his fists. He feels the fire fierce and hot behind him. He sees the room behind Francis, the light and dark there shifting with the flames. He sees the face of the man he’s built a life with, a strong and handsome face, thin shapely lips and long sloping nose and high forehead, golden hair and blue eyes dark in the room’s deep shadows, and feels his lungs filling quickly with his quick breaths, and doesn’t think about anything else.
“You do,” he insists, still angrily but a little weakly too, now. But it’s safer ground, this part. It’s natural for a man to want to give his— who he’s made his home in every gift that he can think to, whether or not he can actually do it. “You deserve everything. You don’t understand that? The way that I see you?”
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“Of course I see it, of course.”
Still soft, still gentle, his hand rising to cover Ram’s still gripping his shirt so hard that he worries he’s going to burst into flames.
He sees how he loves him. He sees it, he understands it. It isn’t fair, and all things aren’t equal. He’s at the end, Ram’s still near the beginning.
“But you have to live.”
That’s the crux of it; Rama has to live. He has love still waiting for him, a mission, duty, a life that could be lived just as fully. Crozier left those things and chose his isolation. There’s nothing for him after this, and that’s by choice. That’s how it must be.
If you go back tomorrow, I will have been happy. Gratitude among the sorrow, sweet nostalgia paired with loneliness. Both things can be exist inside a man’s brain.
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But he’s already danced closer to the edge than this, hasn’t he, just in the last minute? Maybe that’s why he’s hesitating. It would have meant something different spoken on its own, without that damning How is it right that came before. He says it anyway, feeling his way through to the right word.
“I was… grateful. Relieved… Happy. I was happy, for the first time in… I don’t know. Years. Maybe longer. But here, I’m happy to live. I want to live. Because I’m here.” He’s shaking at Francis’ shirt again, or trying to with Francis’ hand over his, but even as intent as he is on convincing Francis to… on convincing him, a part of Raju is already asking what could happen after that. Francis agrees with him, says it isn’t… fair — a safer word than right, it could be right and still not fair — that all of this isn’t fair, and then… what?
Raju keeps pushing anyway, for agreement, or maybe for something more than that, no matter how impossible it might be. He can’t bear to do anything else.
“Here, where it doesn’t hurt. With you.” His gaze is darting over Francis’ face again but this time urgently, looking for something. Understanding, or agreement, or anything other than that mournful, loving acceptance that Raju can feel from him now. For Francis to fight. If Francis agrees Raju should fight this then, then… then something. Something he could put into words if only it was right to do it, if only the thought of it didn’t make all the heavy sludge and inward pointed knives and everything he feels on looking at that thread out to his home try to crawl back up his throat.
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It doesn’t hurt with him. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard a compliment so beautiful or so profound - when they’re together it doesn’t hurt to live.
He inhales sharply and answers Ram’s searching glance by tugging him forward, right into his arms. He tugs him tightly right there on the floor, afraid for him, afraid for them both, and sad that things couldn’t be less complicated.
Rama has to go back if given the opportunity. It’s the right thing to do, even if it means facing all those things that can slowly kill a man’s soul. He doesn’t want that life for this man, this person that lightens his own burdens and makes him feel human, not like a shadow or a ghost. His loss would haunt him just as keenly as any other loss, if not more so. He’d be losing a part of himself this time.
He can’t argue it. He can’t, and it pains him to not be able to fix this.
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—something Francis could never give him, Raju realises, not wanting to know it but unable to help it held against the gentle warmth of him, the fire sounding faint behind the echo of Raju’s gasping breaths against Francis’ skin. You never would have asked, would you? He isn’t sure how much of the message makes it through — the thoughts he gets seem to be more impressions than words and his own now, as much as any idea can be, is quiet — but it isn’t something Raju could admit to out loud, the desperate, selfish shame of what he had been looking for. You’d sacrifice everything to help someone else, even people you’ll never meet. Asking for what you need instead never even occurred to you, did it? It never could have been different; that’s why I love you, after all.
His breath shudders in the small, damp space between his face and Francis’ neck, and his eyes burn. He can’t tell if the wetness on his cheeks is his own sweat or if it’s tears. He closes his eyes, and doesn’t try to figure it out.
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Crozier can’t fix this. He can’t soothe the hurt or change the outcome if Ram ever were to go home. He can’t tell him he’d do differently, or that he wouldn’t be devastated or lonely if he did go. It’s frustrating and terrifying, and he grits his teeth and squares his jaw to keep himself from crying.
He can’t do anything but hold him, feeling the damp of sweat and tears and general misery as he leans his head against his. He silently apologizes, though he isn’t sure what he’s most sorry for - that he can’t fight for him, or that he’s willing for the both of them to suffer if it means Ram keeps his promise.
I want to live. I want to live, and I want you by my side, but I couldn’t live with myself.
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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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Even feeling the adoration behind the comparison makes him feel low. He’s not better, he’s a coward who’s tired of fighting. He wants to keep Rama for himself, for always, but how could he be so selfish? What does he really have to offer him? He can’t fulfill him like a wife might, and this place is freezing and miserable, and he’s quite a bit older, and so how many years does he actually have —
He realizes too far into the spiral that Rama might be able to hear all this inside his head, and he quickly tries to stop himself from falling into old habits. Ram doesn’t need to hear all that self-inflicted misery.
“Don’t be sorry. I would,” he whispers. I would love you forever, dreams and longing and burdens and all. Rama shouldn’t need to apologize for being pulled in two directions, or thinking of his own happiness for a goddamned change.
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There are thoughts in his mind a little ways behind those, running alongside them in parallel spiraling lines. These thoughts aren’t quick and sharp and hot; they aren’t his. Raju’s breathing quiets abruptly, still quick and shaky but startled away from whatever it’d been moving into. He’s a coward, the slow certainty that isn’t his had said, and a little of the distress twisting Raju’s face turns to focus as he tries to listen, pay enough attention to notice the rest of it. Selfish, the thought goes on, more of that bizarre paralleling of Raju’s own. Selfish, he knows, to want Raju — Rama, isn’t it, for Francis he’s Rama — to stay for himself, for always, when he doesn’t have anything to offer, too old, too… too something Raju can’t quite catch, not enough somehow, offering only something worse. And then Francis follows that one with a thought that must be purposeful, one Raju feels and has to close his eyes against the pain and the beauty of it.
He pulls just far enough back from Francis to look at his face with a steadying breath in through his nose. His expression is focused and determined; Francis’ face is blurry for a moment through the tears caught in Raju’s eyelashes until he blinks them away, lifting his chin for a closer-to-even look into Francis’ eyes. “You can say that and not know? It isn’t just that I don’t— that it’s going to be… hard to be there again. What don’t you have to offer me, Francis? You’ve given me everything.”
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“Temporarily,” he says, voice hoarse. Everything is temporary and frail, because Crozier’s own existence feels so temporary and frail.
It doesn’t seem fair to bring this up now. Ram has too much in his mind, too much inner and outer turmoil for Crozier to now lay this burden on him. But he asked, and Crozier can only be honest. He pulls back and touches his hand to Ram’s face, so very aware of the lack of wrinkles on his handsome face. There’s maybe a gray here or there in his hair, but nothing apparent, no real marks of aging aside from the stress that he wears in his muscles.
He should speak plainly. “I can’t give you permanence. I’m older, Ram, and not in the best health. I can’t promise you tomorrow or the next day, not with any certainty.”
He can’t deny that he’s made Rama happy, because he can feel it in every touch and see it with every smile. But he isn’t the wise choice, he isn’t the one who can provide a solid future. What if he dies and leaves Ram here in the frozen wasteland alone? It’s nothing that he wants, for himself and for Rama, but it’s too real to be outright ignored.
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Raju’s eyebrows pinch together. The distraction from his own weakness has moved that disgusting, disgusted feeling back in him a little but it’s there, the grief and dread are more bearable just now but closer to the surface than they’ve been in some time and he’s drained, weakness and exhaustion biting at the edges of him the way it always does when the fire in him burns too hot for too long. In the day, after more sleep, maybe he’d have something different to say about this. Right now the only thing he thinks is, No, and it feels right to follow it.
“You’re not that old,” Raju insists, sharply. His fists uncurl from Francis’ shirt and he runs his palms briskly down Francis’ sides and then back up again. He’s solid and healthy and alive under Raju’s touch. No illness, no injury. His ribs are all whole and healed — but even reassuring himself of that sends the hard edged reality in that memory of the long days when those things hadn’t been true shivering across Raju’s shoulders and down into his chest. But that was a while ago, the eternity it’d taken Francis to heal and then plenty of time after, and Francis is healthy and strong now. No matter what he’s convinced himself of. “You’re talking like you’re about to fall over dead right here.”
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He’s sturdy and solid now, but his insides…the rot in his bones, the scurvy in the muscles, the unseen damage to his organs. He has to be a realist about his health now, a middle-aged man who was poisoned and starved for years can’t possibly thrive.
But Seetha. Seetha is still young and vibrant, and yes the struggle remains for those two lovers to overcome, but he doesn’t doubt that Ram can accomplish what he set out to do. Rama seems like this invincible creature, powerful and driven, and whatever impossible things await him will be conquered.
“Not today or tomorrow…but I won’t be able to see you into old age. I’ll be here for as long as I’ll be here, but it’s not nearly…” He chokes on the words. “It’s not nearly what you deserve.”
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He’s almost breathing hard again, looking at Francis. He realises, with relief like a clean breeze blowing onto sweat soaked skin, that that isn’t why he wants to argue with Francis this time. He remembers the current of Francis’ thoughts, coward and selfish to want a man he’s so settled in devotion to to stay; it can’t be endured. The way Francis chokes on the words not what you deserve as he says them shouldn’t be endured.
“I’m going back.” Raju’s hands don’t clench over Francis’ sides. They don’t even twitch there. It’s some distant marvel that he can say it matter of factly, evenly even with the fact of it still clenching at the inside of his throat. Easier to do when he shuts the reality of it away from himself a little, and focuses on the fact that one was leading up to: “But not because you’re not enough to be worth staying for. What do I care about getting old? What does old mean to a man like me, a life like mine? It’d be a privilege, to live a life here with you. That’s what you give to me, Francis. And that’s enough.”
His eyes— they were burning, and he didn’t notice until now. He swallows, and blinks the blur in his vision away. It should be enough. It’s hard to figure out how to speak about this, to say should and have it mean the right thing, not a betrayal of the people he has to go back to, but just… just should be, that’s all. He wants it to be. But it’s not because of Francis, of all things, that he can’t afford to stay.
Raju can’t help but go on, his calm of a moment before eclipsed by desperation again. His hands do grip Francis’ sides this time. “I don’t give a damn how old you are,” he insists, voice coming out low and rough. “I’d stay anyway.”
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It feels like it should be a victory - Rama will go back home if and when this place allows it. Crozier won't have to put up a fight or beg for Ram to see reason; one day the aurora will open up and Crozier will do as he's always done: he'll say goodbye. It should be a relief, but that would mean cutting himself off from the joy that's been living in his heart all these months.
He'd stay anyway. Rama would choose him if he could. It's not like Sophia at all, who wouldn't choose to be his wife even if the world hadn't been so judgemental. Ram would have him, age and one-hand and constant nightmares and melancholy and all.
Christ, he's a lucky man. It makes him a little sick from the whiplash of the emotions, some of his own, some of Ram's. Maybe he is what Rama deserves. Maybe he can believe he's of some worth still, even if he has to claw the idea out from his self-loathing and sadness.
Crozier brings his fingers up to Ram's cheek, his own vision blurring around the edges as he wipes the damp from underneath his eyes. Ah, damn it all, he can't cry too. He smiles instead, watery and pathetic, and he tries to bring him into another embrace, this one slightly less awkward in the way they're twisted together. "We won't know when you'll get the opportunity to leave. It could be tomorrow, it could be in months. Years. I'll keep you well until we have to part." And be grateful for every single moment until then.
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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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