❛ we should be honest with each other , don’t you think ? ❜ for roman
roguish smile fades, then. olive hues shifting from lilac to rest somewhere around doctor’s chest. oh, how he wants to pretend, wants to forget the space between them - the raft that their separate lives have forced between them. every turn, every decision has pushed the two further and further away. oh, oh how desperately roman wants to tell odet to run away with him. that they could turn their backs on the world, on their own lives and make a new one. they could do that. it wouldn’t be difficult - they could have a life together. their own life, one they made themselves. something that belongs to them and only them. odet’s hand in his own, fingertips tracing creases of warm skin, his eyes watching closely as he memorises the feeling of odet in his hands. odet here before him. because roman knows he won’t have it for long.
he’s never let anyone tell him what he can’t have. not before now. not until it was the doctor stood there, before him - hands at his waist and soft look in his eye - saying that they couldn’t have one another. they couldn’t do this. not if roman kept going down the path he was headed down. not if vulpes would keep letting himself be dragged further into the shadows, letting himself seep further and further into his own bitter, spiteful existence. roman torchwick didn’t do simply surviving. he had to live, had to feel and experience and get the most out of what he was given. he thinks that maybe odet made him see that. that life had something more than the bitterness he chokes from it with both hands, that perhaps the specialist deserved more.
gaze shifts from odet’s hand, then finding the doctor’s lips with an impossibly soft expression. there’s no forced charm, no deliberate attempt to disarm or distract. no, it’s roman that looks to odet in that moment. it’s him, just him. possibly the most roman he’s ever been. and it’s for odet. only ever for odet. he wonders if dear doctor knows that, knows how much he trusts the swan offered up on a silver platter to the fox. for everything he’s ever done, all the hurt he’s ever caused or watched without doing anything. roman had convinced himself that the world is just like that - that he couldn’t do anything about it, so why try?
but here he is, watching as the one thing he truly wants slips from his fingertips. watching with a sad gaze as odet takes a step back and distances them again - pushes them further away. as the figure he holds so dear to previously icy heart starts down that path that so easily separates the two of them. maybe.... maybe things just weren’t meant to happen. they weren’t meant to be together. roman torchwick isn’t meant to be happy, isn’t meant to have anything he wants in life. and, maybe that’s okay. he’ll step back, so that odet can have the life he wants. he knows the doctor will, he’s just that kind of person.
“you mean i should be honest with myself? dearest, we’ve been running on borrowed time ever since we met, have we not? i suppose...” hands join behind his back, posture straightening as roman fixes that mask firmly back in place - gathers himself as he cants his head to the side oh so slightly and offers a weak, half baked, quirk of his lips upward. “we all have to play the act we’re given, doctor. even if it hurts more than anything else, hm?” a pause, a beat of hesitation flickering over made up features as he takes half a step backwards - away from the only thing he’s ever wanted, ever questioned his rules or his expectations for.
“i’ll see you around, then. look after yourself for me, don’t change. not for anyone.”
