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[goingtobeunwell]

[Open post for RP - games, one-off threads, etc.]

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[goingtobeunwell]

It seems like resignation, sitting down in that chair, but it couldn’t feel more welcomed to his very tired body. He holds Rama’s hand tightly, so, so tightly, and refuses to let it go even as he settles back into his little prison in the form of respite.

Rama is worried. He’s trying not to let it show, but Crozier knows his face too well to not see the signs. It’s in his eyes, he always has trouble masking his anger or hurt in them, in the way his jaw and neck tightens. He’s worried but is fighting not to let it show.

“Yes,” he agrees, finally letting Rama take his hand back. “Yes, I could.”

He could do lots of things yesterday that he can’t tolerate today. God. He hopes this is only temporary.

He just needs to rip the bandage off now, not keep Rama waiting for an explanation. “I woke up sore, but to no obvious sign that I’d exacerbated my injuries or wounded myself. I assumed it was temporary, but as the hours passed the ache seemed to worsen.”

[load_aim_shoot]

Francis' grip on his hand loosens, but Raju can feel the ghost of how tightly he'd been clutching it and doesn't move his hand away. He crouches instead, letting out a long, slow breath as he thinks over Francis' words.

"It's very bad, isn't it?" he says softly, neutrality melting away bit by bit to make room for the crease deepening between Raju's eyebrows. He looks down from Francis' face, over his chest, as if he could see anything there that hadn't been obvious ten minutes ago. "You're sure it's only sore? Strained muscles?"

His hand moves down over Francis' ribcage, trying to find a balance between feeling their alignment there and pressing too hard. But he has to know. "Your ribs aren't..."

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Crozier knows what he’s feeling for, a bump where it shouldn’t be, a raised or depressed area where his ribs have fractured again. He covers Rama’s hand quickly and shakes his head, wanting to get as far away from that line of thought as possible. “No, nothing’s broken. I wouldn’t be able to move at all if that were the case, I promise you.”

He tries to ease that concerned look in his eyes with a slow nod; he promises, nothing is broken. He wouldn’t try to hide that from Rama.

He inhales softly, partially because he’d been holding his breath as Rama touched his chest, but mostly just to prove that he can still. It doesn’t ache, at least not terribly. “It feels like I overworked myself yesterday.”

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju holds his gaze while Francis gives him that slow nod. He could insist on checking, Francis had been trying to hide it earlier—

But Francis' manner is completely different now. And Francis isn't a child. He has to know that Raju trusts him. Raju takes a controlled breath and nods, and then nods a few more times, eyes roaming over Francis before he looks down, away, and leans back a little. He thinks over yesterday, with a very different eye this time to the way he's been thinking over it before.

"We didn't..." He stops himself, jaw tightening, frustrated. We didn't even do very much isn't the right way to think of it. Is, probably, the reason Francis feels this way now. He looks at Francis' face again, frowning, hand around Francis' a little tighter. "I should have been more careful. More gentle with you. I should have known better."

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He glances away. They didn’t…

He could guess what he was about to say next. He’s grateful that he doesn’t, that he seems to pause and rephrase his thought, but what next comes out of his mouth is the exact reason he tried to hide it in the first place.

“I wanted it too, Rama,” he tells him firmly. He made his decision then knowing the risk. Even if his judgement was a little clouded at the time, he still would have wanted it. “You’re not to blame for this.”

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Raju’s frown deepens. “I could have…” he insists, then pauses as he searches for a way to end the sentence. It’s true anyway, even before he figures out the details of what exactly he could have done. “Done more of it. Made things easier for you. I know you’re still healing. I could have… I don’t know.”

He shakes his head, gaze drawn to Francis’ chest again, sounding frustrated. “Done something differently and spared you this. You’ve spent enough time in pain already.”

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“It’s a sprain,” he argues, “I did too much too soon. Please, don’t blame yourself.”

He thinks about reaching for his hand again, but he wants Rama to know how much he means it: he’s not solely to blame for the state of Crozier’s body. It takes two, doesn’t it? So his hand finds Rama’s neck, holding him steady as he meets his gaze with something quietly stern in his own.

“I would have known if something was wrong in the moment, and I would have stopped.”

[load_aim_shoot]

Francis is asking Raju to trust him, to trust his judgment; Raju nods automatically, then keeps meeting that stern gaze for a long moment, trying to work something out.

It’s a strain. Bruises and muscles. Things that heal. Things Raju himself has worked through. Francis is telling him it isn’t serious enough to worry over, and Francis is a man who Raju respects and trusts, and so Raju should accept it. If any other man told him the same Raju would accept it, and doing it wouldn’t be this hard.

But if Seetha said it to him, he wouldn’t take her at her word, would he? Not in the same way. Seetha is his responsibility. Keeping her safe is his responsibility. And Francis…

“I know,” he says belatedly. “I trust you. But it…” He sets his hand on Francis’ knee, frowning at it for a moment before looking into Francis’ eyes again, like looking into the river. “You’re my responsibility. I know you can fend for yourself, but I’ve never loved a man like this before, and I can’t do it any other way. I should have been looking out for you.”

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Crozier frowns softly, though he does understand. This isn’t just one friend reassuring the other and promising to be more careful the next go around, it’s different now. Isn’t it? He has to think if things were reversed how he’d feel - if it were Sophia he’d beat himself up for failing to protect her. If were Rama…yes, he’d probably feel the same way there as well.

He nods softly. He doesn’t know any other way to love, and neither does Crozier. His fingers rub against the back of his neck sympathetically. “Don’t spend too much time beating yourself up over this,” he tells him quietly. “Let’s take it as something to be cautious about in the future.”

He hopes that says enough. He doesn’t want Rama to start treating him like he’s made of glass.

[load_aim_shoot]

"Cautious?" Raju sounds a little doubtful, not certain how he feels about the word. He can't seem to stop studying Francis' body; he wishes it were for a more pleasant reason. "I thought I was."

He runs his hand down Francis' ribs again, very gently this time, barely brushing his shirt. "I just..."

He sighs. It doesn't matter. Francis is tired of being in pain, too. "Snow and warm rocks," he says in a stronger, more businesslike tone, fingertips lingering over Francis' side. "Those should help until this passes. Do you think you'll be able to eat?"

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It’s just as he feared. They had been cautious, Rama had been so careful with him and yet this still happened. He’s going to blame himself, and Crozier can’t stop him.

He frowns and follows Rama’s line of sight down to his chest. No new bruises, nothing that wasn’t there the morning before. “I can eat, it’s just discomfort when I’m seated,” he says, finally relenting to the care he’s going to receive now. Worry worry worry, always the worry. What he wouldn’t give to be whole again.

He pulls his hand back from Rama’s neck with a fond little touch to his cheek.

[load_aim_shoot]

At the touch to his cheek Raju looks up, sighs out just a little of his tension, finds his lips curling with just a little bit of a smile. Francis might not have touched him so freely this way just yesterday, and he realises all at once that he's been missing it. Or something like missing. Can he miss something Francis has barely even made a habit of doing yet?

It's something. It doesn't change the fact that Raju's hurt him, and Raju's expression doesn't lift very much. Then he smells—

He rushes over to the fire, grasps the rag wrapped around the pan, pulls it close and grimaces, wedging the corner of the spatula between the burnt bottom of the fish and the pan. "You can eat, but you might not want to," he complains, frustrated, and then starts muttering to himself. "Could cover it up with berries, but that might be a waste..."

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Oh hell, the food! He grasps the armrest and leans himself forward slightly, looking through the smoke at Rama holding a very sorry-looking pan of fish. He sighs quietly.

“Keep it for bait,” he mutters, pressing his hand against his ribs and sitting back again. “We’ll eat from one of the tins tonight.”

His emergency-beyond-emergency stores, the things he’d found in some of the homes on the outskirts a while ago. He’s reluctant to eat from them only from his own poor history with canned food, but they’re modern and haven’t hurt anyone yet. He can push through the discomfort.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” he adds, offering Rama a soft smile. He’d distracted him away from the task at hand, it’s his fault their supper burned.

[load_aim_shoot]

Francis' soft smile gets a hard breath and a firming of Raju's jaw as he looks back down at the food. He's pushed and pushed for excellence in everything and it's set him apart, set him to accomplish all manner of impossible things. Things impossible for anyone else but him. How to speak and stand and dress and run and fight and think—

But not this small, essential thing. Not feeding a man who's too sore now to even sit forward without pain, let alone cook for himself. Not making sure that Francis doesn't get so sore in the first place, that he heals well, that he doesn't have to shove down memories of being slowly poisoned to have his meal just because Raju couldn't manage a fish.

"There's enough here for you," he declares, stubborn, as he pokes the spatula at it. "Half of each are still edible on the top side. I have berries and the tea, and some of that dried fish if I'm hungry later. Or a tin if I need it. You can have fish."

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Rama told him it would be this way - just a few moments ago, in fact. He is going to do everything in his power to take care of him, apparently including eating dried fish and tins so Crozier can have the fresh fish. Fighting it wouldn’t change his mind: this is how he loves.

Crozier nods softly in agreement. He’ll have the fish and Rama can find something else. He needs to learn to be cared for in this manner, at least until he can do the same himself.

“At least come sit with me whilst I eat.” A small but reasonable demand.

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju looks up from the pan, for a second or two visibly surprised. For all Seetha's streak of stubborn insistence that she knew best had softened around its edges as she'd gotten older it had never gone away, particularly not in private. Raju only realises he'd been expecting to have to push to give Francis the meal that he should be able to provide when he doesn't.

It isn't as good as being able to cook this properly would have been, but this way at least Raju can give him something. Not tins. Not feeling the way that Francis does about them. So it's easier to smile at Francis a little now, knowing he can take care of Francis in this one way and that Francis is going to let him. Raju does smile for a moment, nods, then he turns his attention back to separating the worst parts of the fish and pushing the rest onto a plate, pouring the tea, bringing it all over. During those first days after, once Francis was well enough to eat but not well enough for too much more than that, it'd been easier to use a piece of wood as a tray to put the food on his lap, with a hole cut the right size to at least keep the cup from tipping too far in one direction or the other. Raju is glad for it now, and glad he hasn't bothered to move it from its spot against the wall so it's still close.

"I'll pay more attention to it next time," he says, setting the tray on Francis' lap and putting everything in place. There's something in being so close to Francis now; thinking more about just what that something is can wait until the more important things are done. "Or make something different. I found a book on foraging that looks promising but I haven't looked at it properly yet."

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Ah, the plank of wood merges. He sighs a little to see it but says nothing, merely accepts his meal and the hot beverage with a grateful smile. Because for all of his complaining about being invalided all over again, he’s exceedingly grateful for Rama in everything he has done and will do.

“It’s a hot meal, I’ll never be upset when offered a hot meal,” he reassures him, reaching for the cup of tea first to let the fish cool off from being molten lava.

“You’ll surprise yourself yet, with all this foraging and hunting,” he adds after his first sip. It makes things feel oddly better, and he smiles a little more happily towards Rama. “Master this wilderness yet.”

[load_aim_shoot]

Easier still to return Francis' smile, watching him drink, and Raju settles onto the arm of the chair as he does it. He could sit some place else, but this is closer. And Francis' hair is closer; it's less that Raju makes the decision to run his hand over Francis' forehead, pushing back his hair, and more that his hand is drawn to it and drifts that way on its own. Raju's sigh is slow and satisfied, hand lingering on Francis' head as Raju feels a little bit more of the tension running out from him. He himself wouldn't have touched Francis this way yesterday, either. Not so freely, anyway. Not for no reason. He wonders how he'd managed without it.

"But it's so slow, all of it," he complains, watching Francis. "At least the fishing you know where you're going and what you're going to be doing once you're there. But I never know where the greens are going to be. Looking always feels like wasting time."

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Crozier only has the one hand to do anything with, but he has a second arm that easily leans on top of Rama’s lap. The vantage point is lovely too, he can turn his head and look up into his pretty eyes while he drinks his tea, wishing silently to have his hair touched once more.

“It only feels like it when you come home empty handed, but you’re mapping things out as you go. It’s just how things are.” He smiles sympathetically. “I know, you’d much prefer something a little more exciting. I appreciate your efforts, Rama.”

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"It's not—" he starts automatically and then stops himself with a huff and a noise of faint amusement, hand on Francis' head sliding down to the chairback behind his head, looking down at the arm in his lap. He hasn't touched this one very often. There's something about this kind of injury that feels as if it should be left alone, out of... respect, maybe. Or maybe something else.

But then there'd been yesterday. Raju hadn't noticed this changing in him too, but maybe it had. And maybe the rest of it is the warmth that spreads out inside him in a burst whenever he hears Francis call him that. He reaches out to Francis' arm, turning it a little so the underside of Francis' wrist is facing up, the easier to run his thumb over the skin there, exploring it while he thinks of how to explain.

"I'm just not... used to being here, I suppose. Even now. I used to skip over foraging altogether unless I ran across something edible by accident." Odd to think about that, now. His meals had been nothing but the tins. Francis has been changing things for Raju for even longer than Raju's known enough of himself to think about it.

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The urge to drop his head onto his lap as well is strong, but he's just as strong and can refrain. It just seems a shame to begin something and then have to maintain one's self-control the day after. But this level of affection is acceptable, a soft touch, the feeling of Rama's hand touching his ugly scar tissue, almost as though it's something to be loved and not reviled.

He nods softly. Rama feels as out of place as they first did on that fateful expedition - not knowing what to do, feeling like a fish out of water, like an intruder in this world. Rama is a capable man; not just capable, but he's the very best in all things, and he's struggling here.

"Does it help to know that's how I felt for a very long time?" He sets down his cup and eats a piece of the fish with his fingers. He doesn't bother with utensils now except for the occasional spoon for soup or a knife for cutting. "I was out of sorts, relying solely on the kindness of the men and women around me. I was like a child. The worst part was I couldn't do anything to help, I was still learning to us just my right hand.

"I know it's not the same, but...wanting to help, and just not knowing is exceptionally frustrating. But you've learned quicker than I ever did, and you know me, I'm not prone to idle flattery."

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju looks up from Francis' arm to watch him closely, sharply interested as he always is in anything about Francis' life from before this place. He imagines it: losing his own hand, having to learn... well, everything, after. Francis has been learning for years, and he still couldn't take care of his own sleeve that once, when he'd been too angry to take care with it. Raju tries to imagine that kind of loss, the loss of assurance in himself, that he'll be able to take care of those things, and can't quite do it. And the way Francis says it, it seems like that'd happened when he'd been new with the people who'd taken him in and taught him so much of that knowledge and skill that Raju so admires in him now.

He lifts Francis' forearm and spends a moment studying it. The impulse, always, is to avoid the stump at the end, the part of a body that shouldn't ever see the open air. Raju pulls at Francis' arm and ducks his head to press a slow, lingering kiss to it. It's a marvel how much better, calmer and more stable, he feels afterward. He wonders if it's always going to be this way, touching Francis in all the ways he hadn't been able to before. Or simply hadn't thought to.

"You know so much about surviving here." But being calmer doesn't mean he isn't still going to complain: "But I haven't really learned anything. Not properly. Taste that fish; I didn't even get the herbs on it before it burned."

Cooking had been something he'd trusted others to take care of, before. The cook at the barracks, Seetha at home. But he needs to be the one to do it now, and that means doing it well. He grimaces a little.

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Rama kisses his scar tissue, tenderly and sweetly, and for a moment Crozier's brain stops working. It's something to be ashamed of, a reminder of his greatest failure, something than makes him less capable and a figure of pity - but Rama holds it without disgust, kisses it without revulsion. His eyes grow wide and his mouth opens in slight awe; Rama must love him. He must, and it's just as much as a marvel now to see it was it was the night before.

"I've had decades to learn, Ram," he says quietly, voice a little lower with barely-restrained desire. God, he wants him now, ruined chest and all. He uses 'Ram' without thought, not knowing if it's taboo to shorten his name, but his very western habits aren't ignored so easily. "And you've kept us alive all this time. I couldn't do anything for myself, that was all you."

[load_aim_shoot]

The change in Francis' voice is small, but significant; Raju's gaze sharpens again. He recognizes that tone. His gaze moves to Francis' arm, then back to Francis' face. Is that how it is, there? He was aware of Francis' body before but he's aware of it now, too, its proportions, the way that his skin looks around the edges of the bandage. His expression is intent, and fixed on Francis'.

"I want to do more than keep you alive." Francis' voice isn't the only one, now, that's gone lower. His fingers curl over near the skin that he's just kissed. It feels natural, as he does, to move his other hand, brushing its fingertips over the back of Francis' neck. "I want to do something you like. Cook something better. But everything needs sugar or vinegar or honey or flour."

His long hours with nothing to do but research haven't borne much fruit, nothing really useful, and even now Raju is frustrated about it.

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“You do so many things that I like,” Crozier argues quietly, craning his neck ever-so-slightly. He wants to be kissed. He’s aching to be kissed by him, a sharper ache than anything in his chest. He refrains, because he must. Rama touches his neck and that should be enough. “You found me this little board, for instance. You make me tea before I even ask. You wash my hair. You wrap me up in furs when I’m cold.”

There are a thousand other things Rama does for him, and it just seems like such a shame he’s choosing to focus on cooking, of all things. He loves him in all these little ways, all of them heartfelt and thoughtful.