Making the unread count link elsewhere was discussed and I believe has been ruled out, it’s just too small a target.
If the color or text alignment is an issue for you though I would encourage playing with the CSS on your own instance and reporting back as to how users have responded. The unread counts sit in .sidebar-section-link-content-badge and var(--primary-high) will match the text color of the link. If you unset margin-left on the same class it will bring the two side-by-side.