Midnight Blues
Rafayel x Reader || Mild Insomnia, Comfort || 1 184 words
a/n: my toxic trait is pretending im a singer and compiling songs into albums and naming them and midnight blue is the name of the hypothetical album that encapsulates falling in love with rafayel and i guess i could make a playlist bc thats the normal thing to do but i just name fanficitions after them ig. also this is based off his treasure secret time - idgaf about the mensturation i only care about the fact that hums your ass to rest and the lore drop that is rafayel calling you at night when the two of you first start met bc it would help you sleep
You can hardly remember what nights were like before without the sound of his voice in your ears.
You sigh as you sink into your bed, staring up at the ceiling after doing another quick lap around the house to try and tire yourself out. Your body is tired, you know it is. You just wish that you could sleep, not at all excited about the prospect of having to go to work tomorrow after being unable to sleep all night.
You’re about to start your nightly routine of tossing and turning when your phone suddenly starts to ring. A smile makes its way onto your face as you recognise the caller ID, putting your phone against your ear and humming lightly to alert the other side to your presence.
“You’re still awake, huh?” Rafayel’s teasing tone asks through the phone. The two haven’t known each other long but that didn’t seem to bother Rafayel in the slightest.
“Yeah,” you sigh, putting your phone on speaker next to you on the pillow.
All it took was falling asleep one time in a conversation with him for Rafayel to pounce on that and decide to take advantage of it. You swore up and down that it was a mistake, that it wasn’t because of Rafayel that you fell asleep but deep down you know that something about that silky smooth timbre of his voice made your worries go away. You’d never slept so soundly, mortified at the teasing text that he sent you when you read it in the morning.
However, you had to admit defeat and let the man do whatever he wanted. Even before you met him it was clear that Rafayel didn’t care much for whatever the people around him want. He does as he pleases and now, it seems that he’s convinced you won’t sleep without him talking to you.
“If you wanted me to call you all you had to do was ask,” he says after a while, letting you get settled in bed.
“I’m grown. I can take care of myself,” you reply, Rafayel imagining a slight pout on your features as you did so.
“Ah, I see. So you don’t need me to talk you to sleep then? I’ll hang up then.”
“Wait!” you shout quickly, shooting out of bed and grabbing your phone.
“Don’t…don’t go. Please?”
“Begging now? I guess if you’re that desperate for my company I’ll give it to you.”
You can hear how smug he is, rolling your eyes at how obvious his tells are. You wonder how Thomas hasn’t figured him out yet – Rafayel isn’t nearly as sneaky as he seems to think he is.
“Are you driving?” you ask after a second, settled back into bed again and listening carefully to his end of the call.
“I’m heading back from an exhibition. I could have booked a hotel but I didn’t feel like staying the night there so I’m making the long drive home. I called you to see if you’d keep me company.”
You tug your blankets around yourself, losing yourself in their warmth as you yawn. The exhaustion begins to sit on your shoulders again but this time, it feels more manageable. His voice swims around your head as he starts rambling about the exhibition. You’re glad to hear that it went off without a hitch, having declined his invitation yourself due to a more urgent task of the day.
“Are you even listening to me?” he asks, bringing your attention back to him.
“Hmm? Yeah, sellers bullying you, people hitting on you, same old same old,” you mumble, burying yourself further into your bed.
“If you didn’t like it that much, why didn’t you just make something up to get out of it?”
“I couldn’t bail on Thomas again. I felt bad for him constantly fielding off journalists and this show was supposedly a big deal so I decided to do him a favour. Plus, I blew off all the shows so far this month so I might as well make myself seen at a more important one.”
Leave it to Rafayel to make doing his job seem like a favour to someone else. Even if he acts like he’s got his head in the clouds you know he’s genuinely kind – if you’ve got the patience to go digging through the layers that make up the enigmatic artist. You feel thankful that the world brought you to him, even if you weren’t sure what the budding feeling in your chest is.
“You had a long day, huh? I can hear it in your voice.”
You give him another hum, not wanting to bother with any words.
“Even if I ask you a question you don’t need to reply. It’s getting late and I won’t be home for at least another hour. I really did just want your company you know. I’m glad that you answered my call. It would have been miserable if I had to drive home all alone.”
It doesn’t take Rafayel much time to start rambling at you again. You don’t know how he manages to find anything and everything to say to you and keep himself entertained, laughing at his own jokes and taking the soft noises you make as jumping off points to completely go on a new tangent.
When he hears your light snores and steady breathing, he smiles to himself. The sound of your breath surrounds him in his car and if he weren’t such a responsible driver, he’d close his eyes just to pretend that he’s laying in bed with you.
Normally, Rafayel was perfectly content driving home in silence, finding the long expanse of road the perfect opportunity to ground himself after all of the cameras and people in his face. Honestly, he only left when he did to make sure he’d be able to call you at the same time he did every night. Your inability to sleep well worried him and even if you didn’t fully understand the extent of his feelings towards you, he wouldn’t let that get in the way of taking care of you. You make him happy after all, especially when he hears you try to rouse yourself from sleep in a desperate attempt to show him that you’re listening to him. The mental image of your sleepy eyes trying to focus on his face makes his heart melt, impatiently tapping his finger against the steering wheel at the annoyance of being unable to call you his just quite yet.
Even when he gets home, he doesn’t hang up on you. He’s careful to do his nightly routine quietly, using the sound of your breathing as his favourite symphony and he settles down for the night himself. He even continues to speak to you softly, wanting to make sure that his voice lulls you into a truly restful slumber. He thinks about you a lot and being able to help you in any form always makes his heart feel so full.
He won’t admit that talking to you on these late nights makes him sleep well too, putting his phone on the pillow beside him before falling asleep to thoughts of you.
80 notes
·
View notes
im choosing ignorance for right now but will cover it at the end of this (this being a whole essay 💀)
So, it looks like Baylan has a green kyber crystal in his belt. This post and others have pointed it out
Obviously, this begs the question of whom did it belong to? Immediately the thought would be Baylan’s. He was a padawan of the Jedi Order, trained into knighthood, and eventually a general during the Clone Wars. He created his own lightsaber hilt and (maybe, idrk exactly how it works forgive me) chose his own crystal. And, even if he didn’t, it was still a part of who he was for that portion of his early life.
We learned last episode he misses the idea of the Order. With Baylan, there’s a heavy amount of sentimentality associated with the Jedi, especially if we believe (which I do wholeheartedly) that he lost a padawan.
But that’s what begs the other question—is the crystal from his padawan? Did he take it from his padawans lightsaber and keep it for himself to carry on the memory of that kid (who i like to think was a female but that’s the girldad lover in me speaking)? Was it motivated by grief? Has he allowed himself to grieve at all, and if not, was taking the crystal his way of avoiding that emotion?
Or was it motivated by grief? There is no emotion, only peace. Is that when he ditched the code? How could he have any sort of peace after losing his padawan? Or, did he find that peace in keeping the crystal?
But then there’s my other question—what’s the significance of it? Dave Filoni, from what I’ve seen, is intentional. I don’t think adding what looks like a green kyber crystal in Baylan’s belt is just some sort of happenstance that didn’t have any thought behind it.
And, with Baylan’s character, it’s way too significant. When it comes to how he feels about the Jedi, how he seems to actually feel a little bad about having to kill Ahsoka in episode 2. His relationship with Shin. The padawan braid. It all screams significance to me.
So, when it comes to significance, what role is it going to play by the end of the show? I really cannot see it being included and making Baylan’s character so nuanced and intriguing and then not doing anything with it.
Mundi and I were talking about this earlier today. I mentioned these main two points, but also this-
And then Mundi had to drive the stake further through my heart and twist it around by basically saying what if Baylan’s dying act was giving Shin his crystal (still thinking about this mundi THANKS)
I said a stretch at first, but it doesn’t seem too far-fetched anymore (except for her becoming fully good). Now, I don’t want Baylan to die. He’s the last character I want to die and I love him, BUT…
How he dies? I have no idea. Thrawn, Morgan, Enoch? Ahsoka, Sabine, Ezra? Betrayed by Shin? (very doubtful i feel) I think there’s a lot of options of how it could happen, if the cards are played right.
So if we think that’s the case, Shin is around when he dies or mortally wounded. Maybe she sees it happen to him like how he saw it happen to his last padawan. Shin is distraught, the most emotion we see from her because, well, it’s Baylan who’s trained her and borderline raised her, and they have a moment together before he passes. Baylan makes her take the crystal (which would hit a lot harder if it is his original one and did not belong to his padawan) and they have some sappy goodbye that’ll have me crying for six weeks.
We’ve also all talked about how Shin and subtext from some of her lines that indicates some sort of… longing or curiosity regarding the Jedi. If, within the last two episodes, those are confirmed or it’s revealed that Baylan could sense that feeling in Shin, i think (assuming he does die in this way) giving her his crystal makes sense.
Maybe she keeps it as sentimental in her own belt as I don’t see her turning fully to the Light in the show. But, if there’s another season, who knows.
Going back four paragraphs, I believe if it were Thrawn or Morgan who killed him or orchestrated his death, Shin would not follow them back. She’d go with Ahsoka and the Gang TM home in the purrgil mouths. She clearly hates Peridea and, if Ahsoka and the crew are there to witness Baylan’s death (for whatever reason), they could have sympathy on Shin maybe and help her home.
OK. I hope that covered those thoughts in a somewhat coherent fashion. Here’s where that chosen ignorance comes in.
Shin’s braid. An anon actually sent a link to a tweet with both this AND the Baylan one in one post, so thank you nonnie for that!
Anyway. Shin’s braid. Three (four?) green kyber crystals.
Why.
Did they, for some reason, come from Baylan? Did he just have a cluster of them and he gave her a few to include in her braid?
If the braid was her idea, did she want them included in it? Did they still come from Baylan if that’s true? Did she want to feel that connected to the Jedi from the start of her apprenticeship with Baylan to include them in her braid?
If the braid was Baylan’s idea, did he include them? Weave them through the strands? Did he talk to her about including them? Including crystals in a padawan braid wasnt traditional, to my knowledge (not that they are traditional jedi). Was it some sort of selfish choice? Was the ghost of his padawan still lingering in the middle of these two that he felt he had to?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN. WHY ARE THEY THERE. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE.
I NEED THEIR WHOLE STORY RIGHT NOW
31 notes
·
View notes