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Language:
English
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Published:
2024-01-21
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1,007
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
13
Kudos:
38
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Summary:

Immediately post-canon, Raju doesn't know how to treat himself well yet. His two favorite people have to do it instead.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Bheem notices the way Raju's holding himself: upright, dignified. Someone that Seetha can lean on, the way she has been since Bheem placed Raju's hand in hers. In the truck, Raju had been falling asleep. He had been fighting it, in the way that he does. His head had kept dipping toward the window and then jerking back upward, and he'd told Bheem that he couldn't let himself sleep yet. Not yet.

When? Bheem wonders, watching him. Soon, he answers himself, because Raju is the same man that he always was, in spite of everything. Bheem might not have known all of Raju back in those sunny, simple, awful days full of worry and twisting, sour fear for Malli and bright relief of seeing his good friend the student Rama Raju and, for a while, not having to think about anything else, but the parts that he knew were real. He's never seen Raju hold himself quite this way, like the noble hero in some street theatre, but he knows what his friend is intending underneath it. Raju will go like this until he drops.

Raju's uncle and his fiancee, they both seem worried when it happens, but not surprised like everyone else. Bheem isn't surprised by it either. Bheem's made certain to stay close enough to catch him, and he does. He reassures everyone that they can keep going, that he can carry Raju as long as his friend needs him to, and they all go on that way.

Seetha slows to walk beside him, and for a while they both look down at Raju's sleeping face.

"Thank you," she says, and Bheem wonders that all that emotion can fit into her voice, as quiet as it is. "For being here. For taking care of him."

For a moment, Bheem only keeps looking at her. He thinks about the despair he'd heard in her just now, mixed up among everything else. "Here, move his arm from there," he says to her, nodding downward. "His shoulder will be stiff when he wakes up otherwise. I don't have enough hands to take care of it all myself."

And Seetha lifts her hand slowly, brushes the pads of her fingers over Raju's skin and grasps his arm slowly, as if she isn't sure whether it's underneath her hand. Bheem watches the way her grip moves to Raju's hand after, and stays, and tightens, watches their hands linked together that way and feels embers come alive and grow, warm and welcome inside his chest. He smiles at the man in his arms, and the smile spreads to his fiancee.

"He won't know where he is when he wakes up," Bheem says to her. "I'm sure you know how he gets in the mornings. I saw him try to feed a clean shirt he was holding into his typewriter once."

Seetha doubles over in laughter, the two of them keeping steady hold of Raju while they walk and talk together. She has a few stories like that of her own; the two of them pass a part of the evening that way while the others speak among themselves, until they all come to a stop to make camp. Raju wakes nearly as soon as they do, as soon as Bheem sets him down. It surprises Bheem. Raju never used to, would sleep from being picked up straight into the morning.

But expected or not, Raju is awake, and insists groggily on joining the evening chores. Gathering food, for those who can recognize what's edible, and cooking what stores they've brought. Gathering wood and water for everyone else. Raju makes more trips for the latter than he should, then insists on scouting the area to make certain that it's safe, and when he takes too long in coming back Bheem finds him in a small, clumsy huddle at the base of a tree, looking like he's fallen that way. He raises a hand to wave, beckoning Bheem closer.

He looks up at Bheem with the type of tightly polite smile that means he's embarrassed. "Bheem," he says, very casual, and raises a trembling hand that expects to be clasped, asking Bheem to help him to his feet. "Pull me up, won't you?"

When Bheem lifts Raju's whole body into his arms instead Raju's arm lifts instantly to hold Bheem's shoulder and he complains, though not loudly, and not for long. Soon his head is dipping, rising, then dipping again, trying to rise one more time but drifting down to rest against Bheem's chest, where Bheem can see the hints at the corners of his expression, the places it tries to tighten each time Bheem's other arm moves Raju's legs too much, his knees.

When Bheem comes back into the camp he smiles widely, so everyone knows not to be afraid of the sight they make. "Walked too long," he explains, not amending it even after Raju's half-awake, wordless noise of complaint, and moves carefully to set Raju down. Raju doesn't like how Bheem sits him up against Seetha, keeps trying to sit up on his own instead of putting weight on her, complains with half-aware incoherence about the weight crushing her, that she shouldn't ever have to hold him up. That it should always be the other way around. Seetha is quiet, listening, and the look on her face is sad. But when Raju is distracted saying it someone slips food into her waiting hand, and she slips it into Raju's mouth, and the look on his face when he's cut off by dinner mid-word puts a hint of a smile on hers.

The whole business distracts Raju nicely from Bheem preparing more poultices to put on his knees, and gives them all something else to focus on from the hard twitch of his legs once Bheem starts, from the half-pain, half-relief strangling in Raju's throat. Bheem looks up and Seetha is looking at him already, and they share the look, each a little sad, and grateful for the other, and smiling.

Notes:

Bheem/Raju/Seetha supremacy. I'll convert you all.

(I'm joking. Mostly.)