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“This is your life now, deal with it.” Ezran’s arms are crossed, his round face uncharacteristically stern. “Or don’t, and stay in sweater jail indefinitely. You can take it off when you go an hour without sniping at each other.”
Ez doesn’t usually… put his foot down like this.
This trip was supposed to be a vacation for the Winter Solstice, and the king of Katolis doesn’t get many of those, but when they had arrived at the Moon Nexus… Rayla had been there, just… there.
He's been wrecked for months thinking she could be dead or captured, and she’s just here again.
And they had been constantly sniping at each other, and for days, he couldn’t dispute that, it just… kept happening, because he was… is… so angry at her, and she was just walking around, making jokes, being the same old Rayla he had loved and still did… acting like nothing at all was wrong when everything was wrong-
And it hurts to not be able to follow the sappy and overpowering bloody yearning whenever he looked at her and he was aware he had maybe… over-corrected in the course of avoiding doing what his heart wanted.
She crosses her arms, and it tugs at the sweater and pulls him sideways into her, almost unbalancing him. “Ez, we’re fine. We’ll-“
“You’ll stay in your get-along-sweater until you’ve learned to get along, is what you will! And that’s Allen’s Solstice sweater his mom made, so don’t wreck it!”
Ezran stomps off, without another word.
“Stop squirming!” she snaps. “It’s super annoying!”
“Well, we’re kinda squished together if you hadn’t noticed, and your stupid, unnecessary armor is poking me.” They weren’t in danger here, they hadn’t been in danger back in the castle and she still… she hurts him for no reason-
“Fine! If it’ll stop the bloody wriggling!” She squirms mightily under their shared sweater, and damn right it’s annoying, he supposes he can give her that.
Her pauldrons and chest armor drops out of the bottom of the sweater.
She’s a much comfier sweater-mate now.
Softer.
This… might actually be worse.
“This is your fault!”
“You started it at breakfast!” Sure… he had shouted at her and even Ezran had told him to go stick his head in a snowdrift until it was cooler, but… she had started it, he was sure! “I wouldn’t have started drama at breakfast; confinement to shared sweater-prison is getting off lightly where I’m concerned, you realize Ez is my brother and Amaya is my aunt and interrupting breakfast gets you banished in my family-“
Banished.
Family.
Rayla flinches.
She catches herself and straightens up, turning her always-so-expressive face away from him and he would have probably not noticed, if they hadn’t currently been wearing the same sweater, but as it is, he does notice, and now he’s seen it… he can’t unsee it. Or unfeel it.
Her hand letting go of the definitely-pragmatic-only grip on his waist under the sweater, to clench in the non-existent space between their bodies.
Her shoulders trembling.
His heart is pounding and she can probably feel that, tugging at him to… pull her closer and tell her it’s okay, that he forgives her and still loves her and-
But he doesn’t lie to her.
He does still love her.
He forgave her long ago.
But it’s not okay.
“Let’s just… sit down?”
It’s somehow really tiring, to fight all the time.
It’s like an unspoken accord, when they sit, leaning into each other. Her head drops to his shoulder, her hair tickling his neck.
There’s redness around her eyes he wouldn’t have noticed except for how close they are.
A still-pink line of a healed cut at the side of her neck, which he wouldn’t have noticed either. It’s faint and she must have mostly avoided harm, but… it’s close to her throat too, so it was possibly… a lot of harm she mostly avoided.
Maybe he’s catastrophizing, and it was just a scratch from a thorny branch or something.
Maybe he’s not.
He doesn’t know, because she doesn’t tell him things, and pulls away and… and now she can’t do the second, but she’s sure still pulling off the first with fucking aplomb, her beautiful lips a tight line.
Then they aren’t, for just a moment he would have missed too, pre-sweater-jail, when her teeth worry her lower lip, and it’s not a tease or arousing, it’s horrible and sad.
She’s not mean. She’s never been cruel, not even a little bit.
She’s never been cold, except on the outside.
And also her adorable, tiny hands that always seemed to-
He finds one under the sweater, small and cold and fitting perfectly between his fingers, like they click right back into place-
There’s a little sniffling inhale and he doesn’t know if it’s him or her, and doesn’t know if it matters, just pulls her even closer, and how could he ever have been annoyed about the inconvenience of the sweater when it feels so right-
He’s out of breath and out of words.
He’s said the most important ones, anyway, and so has she.
She laughs, and it vibrates against his chest where she’s pressed against him.
The sweater hangs loose around them now.
Clearly, getting closer was the logical solution to the uncomfortably tight sweater-jail confinement.
She sighs, and it tickles his lips.
Callum blinks against the dusty sunlight, poky white dots filling his vision, before closing his eyes again.
The world clearly doesn’t want him to get up, anyway; there’s resistance to his attempt, his right arm trapped, twisted in fabric and weighed down.
But inside, he feels free, like he can breathe, and talk to her like a not-shouty-asshole, and tell her all the things he needs to tell her without shouting or crying, because some important things have already been said and are there, having been said, like a solid and comforting foundation for the other stuff.
He takes a very deep breath, and is pretty sure it’s her hair in his mouth, and no matter how in love he is, that’s not pleasant, but… he doesn’t care.
They had needed to sleep at some point, and sure it had been pretty difficult to get ready for bed while remaining sweater-bound, and they had definitely gone an hour without sniping because they had gone at least two without talking and… they could have probably argued to absolve the sweater-jail, but… they hadn’t.
And he’s not quite awake and he thinks it’s her breaths, slow against his neck, and he knows he feels warmer and calmer than he has in days or months, but-
He fumbles in the soft, knitted, warm and wonderful confined space, finding… her.
Still there.
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