february ficlet fest: affection
rated t for suggestive content
s5 au where rayllum were intimate at the inn
It’s not that Callum minds, but—
Her lips keep going lower…and this doesn’t feel like it’s just Rayla kissing it better anymore.
It’d been one thing happily letting her take the washcloth out of his hand and another when she’d just—so sweetly—brushed her lips over the cut on his cheek, but maybe—
A loose little lock of hair brushes his belly, there at his navel, while she kisses a bruised rib better, and—
Even considering the weird whatever-they-are they’ve had going on since the inn?
That’s why he hadn’t panicked, of course, when she’d found him half-undressed here below-deck, when she’d trailed the wet cloth behind her lips on his cuts and scrapes, when she’d kissed him—for real:
They’d been far more intimate than this that night—and in fits and starts since—and when she’d shown up down here, offering to tend to his wounds…well, he’d couldn’t help himself.
“Five minutes?” she’d whispered, forehead against his, with gorgeous heartache shining in lantern-glow-lit eyes…
Yeah, he could let her love him for five minutes, hurt and lies aside.
After all, it’s clear as ever.
After the inn, after the Bookery, after the last couple of days—
—but her breath there on his stomach seems like more than the five minutes they’d bargained for.
Like she knows it is too, without a word, Rayla detours to his wrists, finding the dents and cuts that rough metal cuffs had left behind, and—
A lump grows in his throat.
He wouldn’t have done it otherwise.
—and Callum’s stomach churns at the thought of telling her of the dark magic he’d done.
She kisses a wrist’s sensitive underside and traces her way around it—oh-so gently—and he shouldn’t let her keep on without the truth of what else had happened below-deck, but—
It’s so nice—watching her take care of him the way he only lets himself dream about, feeling her gentle warmth passing over places that ache…and—best of all—knowing that all of it is a comfort to her, too.
Rayla gives him his hands back after a long, frowning examination of his purple knuckles and he knows her eyes are back on his body in search of more aches and pains to kiss better.
The bruise lower than his ribs: at his hip, halfway hidden.
Callum watches her swallow, watches her lick her lips—
—and watches her kiss her own fingertips, then press them there over his hip, light and brief, with a breathtakingly knowing smile.
Their time is up—or it is too much, after all?—and Rayla resignedly sighs:
She kisses him again, though, in one swift movement, and…five minutes may be up, but she stays there after, anyway, forehead pressed to his—
—and Callum doesn’t mind.