Plus send me a number with a ship and iāll write itĀ (accepted ships are tdp canon ships + rarepairs (claudiez, sopreli, corvus/terry, sorvus)
He gets nightmares on the way to the Starscraper.
Callum won't say so, but Rayla knows. She's taken to always waiting at night to hear his soft adorable little snores before she lets herself drift off, too, and with every night that passes since they've left the castle, it takes longer and longer for him to fall asleep. He wakes up close to noon with bags under his eyes, blankets tangled up along legs from thrashing in the night.
The first time she wakes him up, he whimpers and pushes her away, and won'tāfor the first timeāaccept her comfort. It hurts more than any cold shoulder ever did upon her return.
The second time, his eyes are wild, staring like they don't recognize her at first. Then the terror fades, warmth amid the clammy quality to his skin seeping back into his eyes, even if he still shies away from her touch and twice as much from her words.
"It's nothing you can help with," he mumbles regarding the hell in his head.
Her heart squeezes painfully. Something she can't protect him from.
Maybe that's why he never lets her comfort him back to sleep, lie with him on the mattress, nor hold his hand to ward off the monsters that hurt him so. He doesn't want her close, and she can't understand why, but... Rayla is the last person to question wanting space or to demand closeness.
She doesn't tell him that she lies awake on her mattress after each terror, watching over him while he sleeps, because that's something she can do.
It's their last night in the creaking boat before they reach the shoreline. Before it will just be a long, snowy trek to the Starscraper.
Tonight, when he thrashes, she shakes him away as her name escapes her lips, his desperate cry twisting her heart painfully, and when his eyes fly open, they look at her with only teary-eyed relief. "Raylaā"
"It's okay." She kneels by the side of the bed, taking his face in her hands. Brushing away his tears best she can. "We're okay."
His breathing slowly calms, helped by a few small sky incantations, before he removes her hands from his cheeks and they fall to her sides again. She wants to hold him. She wants to help him. But if heā
"Do you want to talk about it?" she offers, even as she has her suspicions: Aaravos, a puppetmaster. And whatever Finnegrin had done to him on that cursed ship. Not for the first time, she wishes she could kill Aaravos herself, just to put him at ease; that Finnegrin being in the belly of a sea leviathan was enough to calm the roiling storms in her best friend's mind.
He shakes his head. "No."
She straightens, pursing her lips, turning to leaveābecause ever since coming back, she still can't quit stay, because it will take more time for the distance he's enforced to dwindle and that's fine, really, it isā
He snags her wrist. "Wait," Callum croaks, and Rayla turns back around. Waiting. Watching. His thumb strokes over the place her binding used to rest. "Don't leave."
Believe me, I want to go down there with you... You've got to stay with me... Really, that's it, just ā goodbye? You're going to stay here and die out of... But would it be alright, maybe, if I stay?
He's never asked before. Not like this.
She steps closer. "Callumā"
"I want you to stay," he states, looking up at her. A beat. "Please."
Rayla crawls into the bed beside him and wraps him up in her arms. He settles, forehead pressed to her neckāfaintly listening to her heart, she thinks, as she holds him tight.
If he wants her to... if he wants her, thenā
Rayla kisses his forehead. "I'll never leave again," she promises.
She'll keep it this time.
