Work Text:
When Indiana Jones thinks of him he thinks of sunlight.
Especially at night.
Indiana rarely has nightmares.
He rarely even dreams, or rather his slumber is filled with unclear images and ghosts of memories.
But he will snap awake in the middle of the night at times and lays listening to the dark, mind full of vague memories, his whole being half awake half asleep.
When this happens middle of nowhere on an adventure it's easy enough to focus on something. Listen to the footsteps outside of his hotel room door. Look into the dark jungle to see if he is being hunted. Breath in the scents of the abandoned temple. Either his life is in danger and he will spring into action or everything is fine and he can drift back into slumber, feeling safe after satisfying the mental urge that has alerted him.
But in his own bed back in his house he can only lay awake and hope the sleep will catch him once more.
Lay back, stare to the ceiling and remember.
And think of sunlight.
Lately, it seems, he is in habit of remembering screaming. It is hot. Light, like a living sun flooding from nowhere to pierce the night is embracing him as he closes his eyes in the memory to save himself.
He can almost hear the screams. He would rather not remember René like that, even with everything that happened.
So he digs into his older memories that are as painful but for different reasons.
The happy sunlit days, or that is how he remembers them now.
Himself, arriving to Paris to continue his studies. The Sorbonne university that bathed in summer sun the first time he saw it. Staying in the small sunny Paris flat with René-
Indiana wonders if that friendship was ever genuine. It was from his point of view, but René-
When René sat next to him on a sunny day at the park and listened to him talking about some new archaeological find, or complain about some lecture, had the smile he had given Indy ever been genuine?
Indiana wonders how much of that had ever been the real him. If the person young Indiana had been close to had been but a mask. And he wonders now...
And he has to admit, he didn't just like him, back then.
I was attracted to him.
It is something Indy has known for a while now. Back then he was young, and naive, and only had experience with women. So he did not recognize the warm feeling in his chest for what it really was.
He thinks of a specific afternoon, when he almost did get it. They were sitting in the school library, working on some essay. Or rather were supposed to. Instead their discussion had turned into the new finds in Egypt and the revolutionary work Howard Carter was doing. Indiana had explained it to René, and even with him knowing it all already he had listened. And smiled fondly. René's fingers brushed against Indy's as he leaned forward.
And at that moment, the thought he might kiss him crossed Indy's mind.
Of course it did not happen.
In the moment Indiana had felt shame in some vague way, for ever even suspecting René might do that. That René would be-
That he could possibly want that from Indiana.
Would he have?
If at that moment, Indiana crossed the distance and brought their lips together-
Nonsense.
René had moved back, and sun had shone from the window into Indy's eyes, snapping him out of it.
And just few weeks later René had betrayed him, plagiarized his work, broken off their friendship, and then disappeared into the criminal underworld.
But Indy thinks of afterwards, of René asking him to work with him-
Had that been genuine? A weird trick he tried to play on Indiana? Did he know? If Indiana said yes would he have laughed on his face?
For some reason Indiana didn't want to think so.
But it was too late then. Too many things Indiana couldn't forgive had happened.
Or maybe I was just stubborn.
There is the more recent memory of René's fingers brushing against Indy's.
“Do you know what the Ark is, Jones?”
Like a twisted mirror image of the memory from their youth. The dusty bar in Cairo. A conversation between two old friends.
And one of them was grieving over thinking he caused a death of someone he loved, and the other one was preparing to kill the other. Even the sunlight felt different, the stifling heat of the desert seeping into the bar.
It had almost erupted into violence.
Would he have really killed me?
Indiana doesn't know. Or if he had really wanted René dead when he pulled out his pistol.
“I am a shadowy reflection of you,” he had told Indiana then.
And Indy wonders.
Because when he thinks of him he remembers sunlight.