hihiii Nox :D would you have any ravey thoughts??? :0
ravey!!! beloveds!!
i think they are somehow both total opposites and also very alike. both a little bit anxious-avoidant, not very used to being anyone’s first choice and used to overcompensating for that and also pretending not to care. they’re both insecure deep down, feel out of place in most places, feel this great sense of Otherness. they just deal with it in totally opposite ways — race in being loud and playful, the class clown, the joker; davey in being quiet and awkward, head down and devoted. both trying to make up for themselves.
so i think. there’d be this great sense of understanding between them. they’d see themselves in each other — and that too would be this exercise in self love, y’know? seeing their own behaviours and beliefs in the guy they love and. loving them, learning to love them when the same habits are in themselves.
race helps davey come out of his shell and helps him with that sense of alienation, this belief davey has that he’s never really a part of anything and is just spectating. race pulls him into it. they go to bars and the races and all sorts of off-the-beaten-path places that race knows, that davey would never see if it weren’t for him. they Do things, they talk to people, they have fun, and davey — sometimes without quite realising it — becomes part of it all. in the group, not on the edges.
and just the same, davey helps race with slowing down every now and then. race often feels this great pressure to perform, has this fear that he’s forgotten the moment his voice isn’t the loudest in the room. but davey proves to him he isn’t forgotten. sits with him in companionable silence and only pipes up when he finds something funny in his book, or thinks of something to say. takes him to the sort of places where they split up, and then davey comes and finds him again, with a couple new library books in his hands or a drink for both of them, and race sees firsthand that he isn’t forgotten.
which certainly is not to say that davey is Quiet. he is not. both of them can yap for their country, and sometimes that’s what they’re doing too. sitting together and just talking, and davey doesn’t have this pressure that he’s going to say the wrong thing, race doesn’t have this pressure that he has to be witty and funny. they get to be very honest with each other — and while i don’t think either of them are super openly affectionate, i think they’re affectionate in those moments. hands held between them, playing with each others fingers, leaning on each others shoulders. peeking up at each other and grinning when they meet eyes.
they also totally roughhouse when they’re alone together. and teach each other bits and pieces of their mother tongues. davey knows much more polish than race knows italian, but davey will gladly accept being taught curse words and random slang.
