“Ah…“ Raju looks away toward the window. Fire still takes up a good part of the view from between the curtains but it’s flickering wildly now, rather than steady the way it has been, and he can see hints of sun between the firelight. That doesn’t really help him tell the time. But it’d been a little darker before, hadn’t it?

“A… day, maybe, since you, ah...” His eyes flicker down Francis and back up again, needing to make sure nothing’s changed in the seconds he’s been looking away. His lips, at least, are more or less as they’ve always been, and Raju wants to kiss him very much. It probably isn’t a misfire, the thought, not feeling the way he feels now with any kind of physical release the very last thing on his mind. He wonders dimly if any of those other thoughts, when his priorities had been different, hadn’t been misfires either. Or, if they had been, whether that matters any now next to simply wanting to. He has the thoughts, but doesn’t know what to do with them after. They drift around inside his mind, as unmoored and slow as everything else.

He realises he hasn’t finished his sentence. He hadn’t wanted to say— well, he can’t say ‘died’. Then he’d forgotten he’d been saying it.

“…Fell asleep,” he finishes. “The second time.” The hand on Francis’ face drifts down to his neck, and then his shoulder. He frowns a little, realising what had drawn his eye to Francis’ lips in the first place. They’re dry. He’d been licking them.

“You—“ He remembers realising nothing he could do for Francis would do any good. He could ask now and be told ‘no’ and have to realise it over again, and feel it again. He asks anyway. The thrill of hearing anything from Francis, putting more of Francis’ words between him and what Raju had been sure would be his last coherent ones, makes it worth it to say almost anything.

“You want to drink something. Or eat? You haven’t eaten in… a while.”