Fray’s question is short, concise, and direct.
Unfortunately, this does nothing to aid Right in understanding it.
“What?” they ask, unable to conjure any other response. When the person you have accidentally begun to care about is humiliated and punished before a group, when that person vanishes for three days, when that person then reappears in your tent moments before you were about to fall asleep—what else do you say?
In the dim half-light of the tent, Right can read lines on Fray’s face that they have never seen before. It might be due to the new skin tone, a striking cadmium orange, though here in the darkness it’s a pale ember. It might simply be due to how deep and dark they are, how every part of him seems to sag from ears to tail. Under their gaze Fray mouths something sharply to himself and awkwardly steps all the way into the tent. It’s clumsy and nervous, like a newborn foal, and Fray only has the benefit of two hooves, not four. “How,” he repeats as he yanks the flap closed behind him. When Right looks at him now they can only see desperation. “These,” he says, touching the base of one of his elegantly arching horns. “Can’t sleep. How?”
It’s late enough and Right was near enough to sleep that it takes them long seconds to put together Fray’s actual question. “How do you sleep with horns?” they try, and Fray nods furiously. “I don’t—do they hurt?”
A shake of the head. “Can’t get comfortable.”
Right’s mouth forms something that is less an “O” and more a lopsided “Q”. They’ve heard of this, of tieflings with horn formations that make conventional sleeping difficult. Right is a back sleeper. They’ve never had a problem. “It’s … I think Karlach could help you better, or Wyll, even. My horns aren’t like yours.”
They feel stupid, having this conversation now, here, after Fray’s vanishing. The last time they saw him he was puffy-faced from holding back tears, mere hours after the Revealer’s version of justice. Right had searched Last Light Inn tip to toe after he disappeared and found him in the old storeroom-cum-jail beneath the foundations. In what was either an act of supreme self-awareness or a lack of any kind of understanding of subtlety, he had shut himself in one of the cells. It was not locked, but he would respond to neither requests to come back nor threats to have him dragged back.
All of which is to say, they have not yet had a chance to speak to Fray about what happened, and why.
So to be talking to him about horns—
Right’s stream of thought breaks apart when Fray’s face contorts. It’s a pained, naked thing, an expression of hurt and frustration. Right clamps down a grimace, waiting to see what they’ve upset him with.
“Want you,” Fray says, so quietly Right must pull their ears forward to hear him. Fray drops his head, letting his hair fall over his face. His next word is even quieter. “Sorry.”
“Fray,” they start, fumbling for their words. “I just—I mean, if it’s okay—”
“Please. I—I am—afraid.”
Right’s head spins. They clamp their jaw shut, and after a moment’s sleepy, anxious consideration, they simply open their arms in wait.
They do not wait long. Fray is pressed against them in an instant, no longer cool to their touch but warm. He buries his face in their neck, grabbing hold with fingers that do not yet know they must mind their claws. They give a more gentle returning embrace. “Did … did you sleep at all?” they ask, unsure of the path here.
“Once. Passed out.” His voice is tight and muffled against their skin. “’m so tired, Right. Right …”
Closer, deeper, and as his shoulders start to heave Right feels hot tears begin to kiss their throat. “Tired,” Fray says again, and then loses any control he might have had over his voice to the way his sobs wrack his new body.
Right sits there stock-still, simply holding him. Letting him weep. They aren’t built for this, for comforting. They reach back into their memories, trying to remember things done for them in the past. They rub Fray’s back and kiss his temple and try not to rush him, even when their spine grows stiff with the awkward position. “Sorry,” he keeps saying. “Sorry. Sorry I’m not stronger, Right, I …”
They shush him. They do not yet tell him that at least in this he has done no wrong in their eyes, that he has no need to apologize for reacting badly to such bald-faced cruelty. That will come in time. Instead, slowly, they ease him down until his head is cushioned on their thighs, and begin to stroke the edges of his ears. “Try to sleep,” is all they can think to say. “We’ll handle it come morning. Try to sleep, pigeon.”
In a mercy, his tears do not last long. With Right’s hands upon him, gentling him, it is less than five minutes before the former Frayed Saint quiets, and less than ten before his breathing evens out into tell-tale slumber. Right, of course, is wide awake; but Fray is warm and solid and alive.