Work Text:
First thing in the morning at Rafayel’s studio, the walls themselves amplify the dawn. The white responds so intensely to light, the space bright as soon as the sun is over the horizon, absorbing its yellows and its glow. Before her alarm, she wakes just to the brightness against her eyelids, and the sounds of the gulls, and the waves.
She stirs in the white sheets, pushes her hair out of her face and glances over her shoulder to look at Rafayel on the other side of the bed. He’s still fast asleep, tousled with one arm flung across his eyes, snoring softly. There doesn’t seem to be a tense muscle in his body, draped in the bed like a sculpture, or a fountain. She’s glad he doesn’t seem to have nightmares, not like she often does.
Not that she did last night, come to think of it. She dreamt just of the ocean, lapping gently at the foot of the bed, and of smearing paint across Rafayel’s cheek until he turned into a rainbow on the horizon. Something about a kelp forest and an inquisitive, familiar gaze.
Blinking the sleep dust out of her eyes and checking the time on her Hunter’s Watch, her heart sinks a little. Her alarm is due to go off in fifteen minutes. It’s not worth closing her eyes again. Once she’s awake, she stays awake. Besides, she’ll need to get up, and work out, and then make breakfast and then be on her way. Even though she’s been given today off by Captain Jenna, after a couple of weeks of one tough mission after another, she has her own investigations to pursue, and her free time is precious and sparing.
When she hears her name, she turns back again.
Rafayel’s squinting against the sun, the other half of his face still buried in his pillow. His voice is rough with sleep, something a little hoarser over his usual sweet, higher tone. It always makes her smile that he usually sounds so close to laughing, but this feels like home in a different way.
“What time s’it?”
“It’s just past six,” she replies.
He groans and insists, “Back to sleep.” Reaching out, he ttugs at the edge of her shirt with one lazy hand, eyes already slipping closed again. “Sleeeep.”
“Rafayel…” She tugs out of his grip and hesitates, thinking of all the work to catch up on, the clues to follow, the Wanderers that might materialise in some unassuming neighbourhood. “I really should get up.”
His pout is impressive, even for him, and especially considering he doesn’t open his eyes again to give her any pleading look. “It’s so early,” he mumbles pitifully. To be fair, to him, six in the morning is basicaly the middle of the night. Unless he’s stayed up all night, then it’s like his midday, she guesses. “And we were up so late last night.” They had been, giggling like children as they painted together, him showing her just how to spread the brush so that what should’ve looked like smeared paint turned into beautiful leaves, fish’s tails, and waves. By the time they tumbled into bed, still giggling and describing their artwork to each other right up until they dozed off, it must’ve been past midnight.
She knew she’d pay for it today, knew the core in her isn’t forgiving when she disrupts her pattern with sleep, or her food, or her body temperature, or anything at all out of her routine. Her body takes any normal strain and multiplies it, panics at any change of script. It’s why Dr. Zayne’s always on her back. Someone has to be, or she won’t be able to function.
“And you work so hard all the time.” Rafayel knuckles his eye and then makes a grabby hand at her, long fingers curling helplessly into the empty air where her shirt hem just was. “Aren’t you still tired?”
She wants to snap at him not to be stupid, of course she’s still tired! – And then the guilt rushes in, like that thought opened the floodgates for its arrival. She’s not suffering because of her job, she has to remember that. She’s lucky to have an Evol at all, and it’s her duty to use it to help people who can’t protect themselves like she can. Sure, the Protocore Syndrome gives her a lot of unwanted symptoms, but it’s also probably the source of, or at least an amplifier for, her power. Whenever she stays in bed past her alarm, she ends up feeling so lazy and useless that she regrets it for the rest of the day.
Rafayel doesn’t look burdened with that sort of weight. In fact, he looks entirely guilt-free, sprawled and lounging like a satisfied housecat in a patch of sun, though she knows he’d hate that comparison. If there’s one thing she can credit him with, he can luxuriate like no one else. He enjoys every bite of an amazing meal, and every glimpse of a beautiful sunset – if the weather is perfect, he’ll mention it a hundred times, and then again if he doesn’t feel she was listening to him the first hundred. He knows how to savour, and how to take his time with something.
“Come back to bed?” he whines, when she goes so long without replying. He rolls over with a melodramatic shiver. “I’m cold now that you’re gone, and my fingers are gonna get all stiff. What good will that do anyone? I’ll just have to quit being a painter altogether and move to live on the Plushie Shelf with Copper…”
She snorts, despite herself. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he’s never had a worry, or a fear, or a sense of obligation. That he’s never felt pain or grief, that he’s always here, where he belongs, glowing in the sun and comfortable in bed, no concern bigger than her leaving him alone. But she does know better.
Instead of setting her alarm again for half an hour’s time, she switches it off. When she wriggles back under the thin cotton sheet, he loops an arm around her and pulls her close, so she can hide her face in his shoulder. He says something muffled like there we go, that’s my girl, but she doesn’t hear him clearly enough to be sure. It makes her feel warm inside anyway.
There are other Hunters. And other days to solve problems. And if anyone really needs me , she reasons to herself, they’ll call.
The whole world is bright, and white, and safe. It’s okay that her body is still exhausted, because she isn’t going to make it go run, or fight, not right now. Rafayel’s breathing evens out quickly, a sign he’s fast asleep again, and she listens to it, like the waves on the sand. She feels like the moon, if the tide controlled its waxing and waning and its rhythms instead of the other way around. If the moon loved the ocean so much it decided to orbit a planet just to see the currents each day. His chest rises and falls. In and out. In, and out. She gets back to sleep okay after all.