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It was maybe a bit Rayla’s fault for being as reckless as ever but mostly it was the fault of the surprise attacker on the freaking wyvern, and Callum knew he shouldn’t have shouted at her, just… she kept doing it, kept jumping off cliffs and onto wyverns and kept slipping below little lapping waves and away-
Her blue-tinted lips were pressed tight together. Even with the fire, she wasn’t getting warm while covered in several layers of sopping wet clothes.
“Take mine,” he said, ordered, basically, undoing the clasps of his coat as he spoke.
“It’s summer. I’ll survive a bit of nighttime splish-splashing.” Her teeth clattered, despite the flippant tone.
“It’s midnight; it’ll get colder than it is now; the moon is setting already and will be gone soon. What’s your point, again?”
“That I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t trust you.”
She flinched.
Ow.
He ignored it, because he had no idea how to fix this, or… fix anything except the simplest issue at hand - that she was cold.
He reached out to start undoing the too-many belts and buckles and overlapping layers of wet cloth of her unfamiliar clothes.
It barely even registered what he was doing until the first bit of pale skin was bared, and then it definitely registered.
It registered hard.
He turned away from her.
He couldn’t just undress her; her being wet and cold and unbelievably stubborn didn’t mean he could do that.
Even if her hands had shaken because she was so cold, even if her numb fingers had slipped against the too-many clasps and buckles.
Her not stopping him didn’t constitute permission, that was some depraved thinking, and he was damn well brought up better than that.
Even if it was not sexual in the slightest, he-
She prodded his shoulder. “I’m done.”
She was sitting by the fire when he turned around, curled around herself, her body outlined in shimmery brightness by the backlight of the fire. Bouncing off bare skin.
A lot of skin.
She shifted, turning her head to look back at him over her shoulder, and long strand of silver hair slipped from her half-undone bun to tumble down her back, ending at the dip of her waist-
It was not ‘not sexual in the slightest’ was it?
With the way she flushed and looked away from him, when he grazed her bare shoulder to put his coat around her, lingering longer than he should have, wanting to flatten his hands against the soft skin and rub away the goosebumps-
With the way her annoyingly-adorable little hands barely peeked out of his sleeves and the way he wanted to press them between his palms until they weren’t so cold and then kiss-
With the way her long legs weren’t at all covered by his coat, the firelight reflecting off pale thighs and purple underwear-
No.
They weren’t together; he was the reason they weren’t, and it didn’t matter what she’d done to him or how hurt he was or how beautiful she was; he didn’t get to push her away for weeks and then use her like that, like some… unconsenting object for his wank fantasies.
Her brows were knit, her white teeth worrying her lower lip and her gaze turned to the fire and not to him and the graceful length of her neck and too-sharp jut of her collarbones and purple underw-
He turned away.
She had just… no right to look so unbelievably hot, right after being dumped in a frigid lake.
And his brain had no right to just… insist on showing him a perfect image of what he had just turned away from, as clearly as if he was still looking at her.
It was ridiculous. She was not putting on a show for him, she was fucking cold.
Not hot.
Her long hair, coming down from the bun, damp strands falling over her shoulders and sticking to her cheeks, drying to brighter white at the tips.
Her lips and cheeks had been tinted blue.
Her legs had glinted in the firelight, the smooth, pale length broken up by scrapes and bruises.
Her toes had been pink and curling against the radiant heat of the fire, the paler line of an unfamiliar scar along the inside of her right foot.
Her underwear had been purple, a little sliver of it visible at the top of her thighs, soft, thin fabric that would be easy to-
His hand, resting against the grass, clenched around a tuft of it, almost pulling it loose from the soil.
Callum couldn’t even look at her.
It’d been two weeks and she knew he was well within his right to want nothing to do with her still or… ever.
But it hurt.
She still wanted him.
So, so badly.
It was just mean, too, that he had given her his jacket, because it smelled like him, her nose full of him now, and if that wasn’t enough, now he wasn’t wearing it, his shoulders and arms were left bare to her gaze, and that he wasn’t looking at her just meant she could look at him and-
She hugged her legs to her chest.
He wasn’t hers to want anymore.
It didn’t matter what she wanted, that was the whole fucking point, her heart and her body could want things, and oh, it did, but… that didn’t mean it mattered.
He was tugging at the grass now, probably just to torment her with how it made the small muscles along his right arm shift, glistening in the firelight.
She wanted him to care enough to consciously torment her, but… that was probably also wishful thinking.
“Callum?”
“What?” He sounded strained, even just saying a single word to her.
“Nothing.”
He sighed. “It’s never nothing, with you. Especially not when you say it is.”
“Can you at least look at me when you give me shit?” she snapped.
“No.”
“Fine.”
“It’s not though. Is it?”
“No.”
He did turn back around, but he still wasn’t looking at her, his gaze fixed somewhere behind her, on some random tree or whatever that he found preferable.
“Are you feeling warmer now?” he asked. He smiled slightly, but that was strained, too.
His undershirt bared a bit of his upper chest, different to what she remembered, broader and more toned.
She felt very warm, and how dare he ask her that, when he had to know how he was making her feel-
“Yep,” she said curtly, pulling his coat off. The chill of the night air against her skin was… probably for the best, considering she’d already had a cold bath today and that hadn’t exactly been any help.
He turned abruptly back around.
His cute, round ears were red though.
Maybe… he did-
“I didn’t m-mean…” he stammered. And oh, yeah, he cared alright, he was just a big dummy, and she knew that. “You don’t have to give it back until your clothes are dry.” That’d be… tomorrow morning at the earliest, which he had to know, too.
It was an incredible relief, that he was still such a dummy. That she still knew him. That he still cared.
That some part of him, at least, wanted her like she wanted him.
“Thank you,” she said, with, for the first time tonight, no illusions.
He sat down close to her, this time, still turned away, but… she knew why this time.
She leant against the slope of his back, her head resting between his shoulder blades.
His heartbeat pounded against her ear.
His hand reached backwards, open, an offer.
It closed around hers when she took it.
Her breaths had slowed, she was slack, warm weight against his back now.
Maybe she was asleep.
Maybe it was just him, utterly unable to relax.
Maybe that was fair.
He was the one who had kept up the distance neither of them wanted, he was the one who had to close the last bit of it.
But he knew… once he did, there’d be no pulling away.
It would unleash two years of desperate yearning, two weeks of tearing at his own heart with every time he hurt her and wanting so badly to-
“Can I kiss you?” It was his thoughts but not his voice. She was looking at him when he turned around, bright, beautiful hope, and-
“Wha-“
“Sorry,” she said. “Just… forget it-“
“No, I… Rayla no-”
“I got it,” she snapped, turning back to the fire.
“No, you don’t.” They’d been here before, in the Oasis, and she still didn’t get it. “I meant… I don’t want to forget. I don’t want you to apologize. I want you to kiss me. I want to kiss you. That never really… stopped being what I wanted. And I think… we should just… do it. Do what we both want. I know we’re doing important stuff and shouldn’t get distracted, but… I don’t know about you, but for me… I’m already plenty distracted, I don’t really think it would be possible to be more distracted by you-”
“Shut up.”
...
Wow.
Maybe he could be more distracted, after all.