❤️🩹 Rafayel's grief hasn't always been able to be assuaged quite as definitively. Before love, there was but the fear of light.
💫 ao3, 1.4k words
info: Rafayel's grief and guilt, illuminated by light | prior to reuniting with MC.
trigger warning:
full below
The sunset suffuses everything with a pale yellow haze and it’s beautiful and feels like coming home, yet Rafayel knows he will never arrive anywhere and will feel out of place on whichever ground he stands — and that no amount of love he is given will ever make up for that he failed to receive. He could take his life right now and would feel no different about it ending than he would in five or ten years. Alone, he watches time pass by day-by-day and the grief remains insurmountable, only grows heavier, as if there were always more of it than he can carry. It becomes an unbearable weight that he cannot be absolved of for he is the sole reason it exists to begin with.
Rafayel doesn’t think he will ever be loved in a way that would matter. Nothing has ever passed before — nothing he could hold — except for the traces of love he now is no longer privy to. Was the love still there, he would have something to hold onto, to hold out for — but with it long gone, all that awaits is the dull absence of everything that once was and never will be again.
He inhales the salty air slowly, forces it deeper than it wants to go, until his lungs sting with the stretch.
Basked in gold by a sun that touches everything on this planet, his body settles. He's grown softer towards his grief over the years, has let it soak in warmth to the point that darkness no longer scares him — but light does. And as every evening spent like this, the setting sun unravels him entirely, strips him of any defences and his insistence that he can continue standing on his two feet when really all he wants is to finally lay himself to rest. Twilight is when he feels raw enough to create. But where the sun still touches him now, his shadow extends; behind Rafayel, no light reaches.
Nowhere feels like home.
Not the city and its artificial brightness and noise and people amass walking around always having places to be, always having loved ones to return to; not the sea with its cradling warmth akin to a mother's embrace filled with the vivid colours of his childhood and the scent of a life lost; not the shore, of which he will forever remain the sole inhabitant.
No matter where he is, the light exposes all he lacks, puts his faults and the holes of his being into stark relief. Should Rafayel ever be allowed to watch the sun drown in the sea and not be overcome with a longing so deep he wishes for the darkness to crest and crash into him with solace, he is certain it could only be a dream.
But at least in his dreams, he can still see rainbow-coloured schools of fish swim past his home; he can still feel the excitement of slipping away to swim to the surface with all the might a little boy can muster and see the sun — warm, real, yet oh so far. In his dreams where he is not yet scared of the light, where he is still able to be assuaged by love, he reaches his small fingers towards this brilliance that makes him squint. He has never seen anything as bright in his short life and feels that, if only he could reach that light, he might be able to take it with him and bring it back home as a souvenir, to show everyone that the land isn't as scary as they try to make him believe. Only in his dreams, he can still look forward to the next and the next and the next day of possibilities of exploring the intertidal zones and the beach where critters are existing in more nooks and crannies than his eager eyes can take in.
Awake or asleep, Rafayel remembers the freedom of this time vividly — it was an utter ease of existence. He knew returning home would mean the promise of tomorrow, where he could still encounter a new kind of love, and would ensure he would hold onto it for as long as he possibly can.
By now, Rafayel is certain he no longer can.
Even love offered to him on a silver platter — by his kin, by admirers of his art, by strangers during mundane encounters that once were filled with the marvel of novelty — has lost its shine, has become something he can only feel guilty over. It is given to him so freely and yet it lacks all meaning to him. What is he supposed to do with any of it — all these feelings of other people weighing him down, leaving no room for his own. And even when he does have the space to truly feel — there is nothing left but pain.
And so he avoids love, as much as he avoids the small hours surrounding sunrise and sunset nowadays. He paints, he converses, he throws himself into what he deems productive and to be helping him towards some sort of grander goal (what goal?) — all in order to be able to quiet the inevitability of succumbing to his grief. Because Rafayel knows he will, eventually. There's only so much a single person can hold.
After all, for now, he's not just a single person. He has to push back against what tries to drown him. He is more than a single life, bears others as his, and needs to ensure his job is one well executed before finally returning to the sea. It's all he can do, which arguably isn't very much, and he hates himself for it. Although he has vague plans, there should be more, right? There should be certain things he can do to bring back that which has been lost; there should be certain words he can speak to revert everything to the past.
Perhaps a prayer.
Prayers to gods who would listen to a god, though would they care? When the sea dries out, leaves behind nothing but death and tidal ripples edged into the sands, who will fill its basins and take care of its very heart?
There should be a version of him that can become very small and very insignificant to allow for him to enter the rivers of time and live his life (and all the others) again. It's but another current he could surrender to, as he once did the sea. Perhaps this time, he wouldn't fall for the vague promise of attachment. Perhaps then, he could turn his back to his heart and rule with his head and avoid all the pain that inevitably follows.
It's stupid.
He would never truly wish for it yet it is in moments like this that he finds himself ruminating about a version of himself that, really, wouldn't be Rafayel at all anymore — which is impossible, considering how love so often changes a person for the worse.
Is it truly so horrible of him to wish for things to be easier? Whenever he catches the conceited perception of his self declaring that he has never once had an easy life (because had he not?), Rafayel cannot help but shut any further thoughts down.
He has had it easy. Like any child, he was scolded for not listening to his elders — yet he still possessed that freedom of seeing the world through pure wonder. The kind of wonder that only a free-spirited child could possess. He's long lost it now, but surely those days must have been easy. They were tranquil and bright, they were warm, and they were home. And they'll never return.
The only one he has to blame for it is himself. Because he refuses to let love in again, refuses to go home— wherever this might be now. Many of his kin have found it, so it is certain to exist, yet here he is.
Alone.
At dusk.
The sun has sunk below the horizon, but still soaks the sea in the remaining opulence of gold and purple. Just above the horizon: a single star, a glimmer in the darkening ink of the sky. Reminiscent of sea sparkle, at least this he can still pin his hopes too. Just like the sea once did, the darkness of the world will cradle him tonight. Rafayel turns, back warmed by the lights of diluted royalty, and heads inside.
a/n: insanely self-indulgent little thing from a few weeks ago. i'd genuinely forgotten i wrote this <3
💌 Rafayel x Caleb x reader AU
How do you love when you're frightened?
💫 ao3, 3/29 chapters
💫 'the love you need' masterpost
chapter summary: Rafayel would never consider himself lonely, and yet everyone around him constantly seems to insist on it. Talia for one keeps trying to be his wingman, which is definitely not needed.
But he owes her, doesn't he?
info: friends (idiots) to lovers, slowburn, angst, eventual smut, alternating POVs, roommates Rafayel and Caleb (dancer Rafayel, auto mechanic Caleb), you/your and she/her pronouns for reader-insert
tag list: @beaconsxd 💫
The first time they met again after college was on one of those nights in late summer where it was far colder than it should have been given the heat of the season still lingered. The daily rain had just cleared, and Rafayel was freezing his ass off handing out flyers by Lemuria when Caleb passed by with a group of his friends. Rafayel had just started taking up work there, and despite him not feeling particularly ashamed of his job, he winced the moment the other's eyes met his — his job was a difficult one to explain. As much as he had been enjoying it so far, prejudice ran deep and people coined opinions before he even managed to so much as open his mouth to introduce himself by name first. Luckily, Caleb had never been one to be uptight like that.
"Rafayel?"
"Oh, hey," Rafayel said, instinctively turning the flyers in his hands face-down. A useless gesture, really. Caleb had probably already seen enough of the dramatic costumes and carefully posed photographs to draw his own conclusions about the kind of place Rafayel worked at now. "What a surprise to meet you here."
"Wow, yeah, it's been ages. How have you been?"
Caleb spoke with the kind of enthusiasm Rafayel still remembered from their college days — easy and natural, like curiosity carried him everywhere and each new fact or connection left him quietly satisfied.Socialising had always come easy to him like this. It's something Rafayel had always envied. After all, he himself was the kind of person to leave an impression, yes, but never to linger physically. He was easy to remember but difficult to hold onto, slipping quietly out of people’s lives before they could ask him to stay,and he was okay with it. It'd always been this way.
"I've been alright," he replied after a few beats of debating on whether this was a situation calling for small talk or honesty. He decided for the former. They hadn't seen each other since graduation — a year and two months had passed, somehow. "Night out with friends, huh?"
"Yeah," Caleb agreed and watched as his friends — Gideon, Rafayel still recognised — slowed and turned to see why he'd stopped walking.
"How have you been? How's your shoulder?"
"My shoulder's all good. Stress makes it flare, but the surgery— Oh, I had another one, shortly post grad. I'll spare you the details, but it's helped a lot. I take it easier now. I can even play basketball again."
Caleb gave Rafayel the kind of assured smile that flooded him with nothing but pure warmth, and that he couldn't help but reciprocate despite how the whole situation felt like a punch to his gut. It's contagious like that. He'd missed it, missed seeing the other's face light up in such an easy-going manner, even if he'd never admit to it out loud. He wasn't the kind of person for it, and Caleb knew.
"That's good to hear." It really was. "Well, I don't wanna keep you. Have fun."
Caleb's friends were starting to grow impatient, but no one was saying anything. Rafayel felt awkward: some kind of weird messy feeling in his stomach that he didn't like. Even though he'd trained well under Talia to know how to entertain guests, with friends... with former friends, rather, he still felt like a fish out of water.
"It was great seeing you. You look good—," Caleb said but caught himself. Rafayel saw his gaze dip briefly to his outfit — and felt suddenly grateful for the slacks, even if the rhinestone-studded sheer top still left little of his torso to the imagination — before Caleb forced his attention back to Rafayel’s face. "I mean, in general. I'm glad, after— I mean... You know. I'm glad. Really."
Rafayel tried for a smile but knew it appeared as more of a grimace — to Caleb, if he could still read him just as well as he'd used to, anyway. "You too."
"Do you still have your old number? I'll text you and we can meet for coffee some time."
"Yeah. Coffee sounds good. I'll see you around."
"It's chilly tonight. Don't catch a cold standing out here."
Before Rafayel could decide whether to nod or wave goodbye, Caleb had already turned on his heel, jogging after the somewhat impatient little group of his friends. Rafayel pulled his gaze away, didn't need to see everyone's eyes linger on him as the other man made up excuses for the kind of place Lemuria might be (no one ever got it right on first glance) and explained their relationship. College friends who had lost touch after graduation — it's a common story after all. Despite everyone having made promises left and right to stay in contact, to meet up every now and then for little reunions, and to ensure everyone would be doing well, Rafayel hadn't spoken to anyone in over a year.
"Do you not care about being seen as a loner?" Talia asks as she settles into the bar stool next to him with a sigh — the kind of sigh that sits somewhere between disappointment and concern. But with her, it also always has that slight lilt of teasing to it. Bullying, even. There's a reason Rafayel's own banter is filled with playful taunting.
It's also the exact kind of tone she uses when she 'has things to discuss', which never is something you want to be confronted with.
"I'm not a loner," Rafayel retorts, nursing his whiskey sour — tart and just sweet enough, exactly how he likes it. A mere month into him having worked for Lemuria, all bartenders had already stopped asking for what he wants anymore. They just make the drink without any further comment, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and Rafayel appreciates not having to waste his energy on socialising before work even starts. Even Caleb, on the odd occasion that he comes over, knows exactly what drinks to order for Rafayel. It's easy. It's nice.
"You're not a loner," she repeats, her tone amused. "Right. I've actually been your cousin this whole time — has anyone ever told you?"
"Some people are introverts, you know?"
"Even introverts have friends."
"I have friends."
"Yeah? Who?" Talia's voice carries a challenge, like daring her nephew to spill all of his secrets — of which there are very little with her. She knows him better than anyone. "Caleb?"
❤️🩹 Dreams, paintings, memories — none of them are reality. There are many ways to hold onto something, and Rafayel has spent a long time learning the wrong ones.
Some griefs are too large for one heart to carry alone.
💫 ao3, 2.1k words
info: Floral Promise inspired first kiss.
full below
Rafayel knows his dreams only equal reality for as long as he lets them. Of course he does — but when he witnesses the lonely reality after having dreamed of home, it's hard to rely on even his most protective beliefs.
He wakes in sweat after seeing everyone leave. He remembers the feeling in his hands, between the gaps of his fingers: these hands that are meant for delicate brushes and vibrant pigments, and how they felt clumsy and heavy when he tried to mend the broken spirits of his people.
He has always felt he could paint beauty, but he doesn't know how to preserve it, even in his art.
Especially in his art.
Dreams, paintings — both are attempts to hold onto what refuses to stay. But neither are reality. They're only reflections of it.
What is real is his name — despite being such an abstract thing. It is something that carries no meaning unless it is spoken by another. By her. But oh, how it is spoken by her: how her lips curl around the name as if it was the most precious thing in this world. Perhaps to her, it is. He is still trying to figure her out as much as he is trying to understand himself. Why did she break their promise? Does she love him? How much does he love her? Would he die for her? How can he keep everyone from leaving, time and time again?
Although the most pressing one these days remains, what does a name mean to a human like her?
Is it a means of getting what she wants, especially now that she's learning about how their bond equals his ultimate weakness? Or is the care lacing her tone when she speaks those syllables the only thing she is trying to convince him of?
Rafayel supposes that their bond itself is the answer to all of his questions. If she didn't truly love him, he would not even be in the position of needing to question his autonomy like this. Her love is real, and it is true. There is no point in running himself into the ground with endless what-ifs incited by his fears.
Instead, he focuses on the hazy paleness of light surrounding the two of them in the garden. A singular dark cloud sits haloed at the horizon past the treetops, outlined by the dip of the sun. Hard contours of liquid gold streak across the blue sky until, above them, it dilutes the sky into a pale mint. A flock of birds circles — flies this way and that, disperses, rejoins one another.
Even here, the wind is a warmth carrying him through lifetimes. It contains all memories of the sea. From his dreams to the very tips of his fingers: no matter where he is, how much he has lost, or who he is with — the sea reaching for him, he will never lose.
Though recently, it is not the wind nor the sea that have been putting him at ease, but her presence. For days now, his weakness has been showing. And truthfully, Rafayel is embarrassed by it — would she tease him for it; would she outright make fun of him if she knew the whole truth? He is convinced she would be kind about it — she is with everything, after all —, but the smallest bit of doubt naturally lingers. He isn't immune to wounded pride.
"What do you see around us?" she asks.
Hand intertwined with his, they walk through the garden overflowing with all sorts of fragrant blooms. Rafayel is acutely aware of the warmth of her palm in his, the gaps between his fingers filled with life.
"The same as you. Flowers, butterflies..."
This doesn't seem to answer her question. It doesn't deter him, even as she lets go of his hand — she remains right by his side, crouches down. Her fingertips brush against ocean-blue petals, and Rafayel's gaze lingers. It travels from the curve of her lips to the fragile petals and back again, as though he wishes to commit both to memory. Some part of him is always trying to preserve her. Not on canvas, not in pigment, but somewhere deeper. Somewhere no loss can reach.
Perhaps that is why he looks at her the way he does, why he commits every fleeting expression and every shift of light to memory without even realising it.
He has no other way of conveying his love than through observing her, and observing the world.
Because the world, at its core, is unbearable in its beauty. It's too great for his small heart to hold — and yet he tries. He takes everything in with a patience that perhaps belies someone who often finds himself detesting the very life he inhabits, especially when alone, especially at night. But it's beautiful here. It really is. He's failed to bear it so many times before, but he's stronger now, and braver. He has his beloved even if he's still unsure how much of her he is allowed to keep close. And for how much longer.
But it doesn't matter. If she sees how his worries edge themselves into his face, she will pity him which would only hurt him more than his own feelings already do — because he's used to them. But he's not used to seeing them mirrored back at him with such genuine care and love that it might just break him.
She inevitably always looks at him that way, and he can never deny her when she does.
"Do you remember your first impression of me?" Rafayel asks.
"Why this all of a sudden?"
"Oh, cutie, come on... Are you trying to say you don't even remember something that has happened not all that long ago? Your memory is worse than that of a goldfish."
When she huffs, it's with a soft indignation that shows him that no matter his fears, she will accept all of him — annoying as he can be at times.
"Of course I remember," she insists. Her gaze wanders across the sea of flowers as she thinks back to days gone by. "I don't know what the first thing I had an impression of was, but I do know what I thought about the most after."
"Which was?"
"Your eyes," she states simply. "How attentively you observed the little fishies, and then me. How you make someone feel like they're all that matters to you while they're held by your gaze."
Rafayel has to avoid her eyes when she stands and looks his way. Sometimes being seen feels unbearable. He feels the weight of her words, and the honesty in them — a slow pulse warms the skin just below his collarbone.
"And how I wished to see your eyes in a brighter light, rather than during sunset," she continues, and Rafayel catches the golden rays that now, too, blanket everything around them. "I really wanted to take in their colour and then, when I did get a closer look later, I just fell for their siren call, I guess... They constantly shift with your moods or the light or even just the smallest tilt of your head. It's really intriguing. They're very pretty."
For a long moment, the only sounds surrounding them are those of nature — evening birds singing their quiet song, the breeze travelling through the leaves. The compliment hangs in the air, unmoored and luminous, striking a chord in Rafayel that resonates deeper than his dreams could. With her, they can never touch him entirely.
He meant to tease her and poke at her a little — revenge for the constant summoning of the past days. But he didn't expect for her to be so genuine, so vulnerable. Stripped of teasing and wrapped in the quietude of the warm evening, her words feel sacred. She sees his love, and returns it.
Rafayel feels a lopsided smile grow on his lips and lets out a soft breathy sound — one that is achingly tender.
"Funny," he says, his gaze now searching hers, "because when I first saw you, the colours didn't matter at all. Everything else was just... noise. All the shades of the sky, all the lights of the city... They all paled in comparison to the way you looked standing there, soaked in golden pink. It was like the world suddenly gained a hue it had been missing for a very, very long time."
Rafayel reaches for her hands and lifts one to his lips, pressing a soft, lingering kiss right to her palm. He lowers his gaze for but a moment, suddenly flustered by his own honesty, before holding her within it once more.
"If my eyes are so beautiful, it's only because they were reflecting you."
Her particular shade of pink fans out in front of his eyes once more until it surrounds him entirely.
The sound of her responding groan — part exasperation, part overwhelmed affection — is music to his ears. Rafayel can practically feel the heat rising to her cheeks himself. Avoiding his gaze, watching her retreat without actually going anywhere, brings a triumphant, wicked little grin back to his face.
He has her. He has successfully dismantled her composure, and he intends to savour the victory.
"What?" he teases. "Was it too much truth for one single conversation? You started it, you know?"
Relenting, Rafayel wraps his arms around her waist. He lets her step into his space first and then draws her in until there is no daylight left between them.
"You can't just drop a bomb like that and then hide, cutie," he murmurs against her hair, even as he shelters her from the consequences of her own actions. "Now you've gone and made me want to say even more ridiculous things. Or is this your way of telling me to shut up?"
"If I wanted you to, I could just tell you to, right?"
"That's not how the bond works... But sure. Let's say you're right. Would you?"
She seems to think for but a moment. Rafayel can tell she is merely pretending.
"It's nice to have you give me food or carry me. But I don't ever want to cage you like that."
He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it before any word can leave his lips. His face melts into a small smile of solemn acceptance.
He wants to tell her.
I know it is a cage. And it's more than terrifying, letting myself be trapped like this.
But for you, I will be brave.
For you, I will let myself be loved.
"...I won't mind," he offers instead, voice quiet. "Not if it's you."
Her presence feels like the cool wetness of wind after a downpour: caressing his skin like summer; stealing his breath like spring — by entering him, by eviscerating him.
And he lets it.
He inhales the feeling so deeply it might just take him back to the reality of his dreams. If he waits for the sting in his lungs to settle into that familiar sore ache, then maybe the novel colours of the sky can replace the dulled tint of his heart.
Truly, golden light glows; another day ends.
In his eyes, he holds his beloved. And beneath his fingers isn't the blood of love, but the warmth of her body. With worship, they reach to brush against her jaw. A tremor in her breath signals her surrender to the moment. Her body leans in instinctively, and his follows her summoning without even meaning to.
Their lips meet in the softest whisper of a kiss — because Rafayel long knows that holding onto anything too much means he will inevitably lose it. And yet, some part of him leans into her all the same. It's an exquisite, fleeting little thing that feels less like a physical act and more like a shared secret, the body remembering what the mind hasn't even caught up to yet.
She's art — and just like his dreams, she too is real if he makes her real. And with his name falling so freely from her lips, even if it is to tease him, she is the one singular manifestation of comfort in a world that he wants so deeply to be held by, and to love. Because it really is so beautiful here, all around — even more so when there is someone who calls out your name.
They will remember you, no matter what shape or form you take, forever.
a/n: floral promise inspired little thing bc i felt insanely soft after playing through it for the first time yesterday <3 yay <3
I am counting days before I am going on my short bday weekend trip to Berlin :3 But before that, an in between Erased and thinking what to write next - a cute small thing with fishie! <3
“Rafayel…” you squirmed one more time, letting a heavy sigh out before admitting defeat. You couldn’t really do much more than accept your faith and simply roll your eyes as your barnacle of a boyfriend clung to you with his arm around your waist.
“Nu-uh, cutie. I am not making the same mistake again” he pouted, fingers flexing on the side of your hip, squeezing the love handle a bit too much to be just an adjustment.
“It won’t happen again, c’mon, Raf. It was just a second” you wiggled your hip, adjusting the grip on your wheeled travel pack to your side — a fish charm with a bell jingling with every bump in the airport’s floor.
You didn’t know if Rafayel was just extremely clingy today, or was it because of the last few weeks of intense travel — jumping from place to place, long hikes, even longer hours strolling around foreign towns and galleries and what felt like days spent on the road in a rental car.
He was fine this morning, teasing you as usual, making sure all your souvenirs are secured and packed, sea shells in small boxes, bottles of sand packed in socks (on your request which made Rafayel laugh full heartedly), postcards, magnets, albums of printed photographs and local art. You even had some time to get some food, so it wasn’t that he was hungry…
“For a second? I thought someone kidnapped you! Took you and sold you off! I was having a full blown monologue here thinking you were right by me!" he exclaimed, swaying dramatically, his voice telling you everything without the need to gesticulate as both of his hands were occupied.
“There was a photobook…” you pouted, trying to explain yourself, matching his look and making you both look like two pufferfishes clinging to each other by a thread of seaweed.
“Over a photobook…. Just say you hate me cutie. Abandon me for a piece of paper. I don’t know what’s worse, the thought that you THINK we didn’t take enough pictures, or that you think some random photographs are better.”
Your cheeks got warm thinking of the many memory cards filled with memories captured by his camera on this trip. Maybe it was just the holiday fever getting to you, the need to look at things that you could get to hold onto the moment a bit longer.
“I will make our own photobook once we are home, you don’t need another one” he squeezed your hip to get your attention and leaned in, expectation in his eyes. A sly fishie wanting a deposit payment — a two kiss per page you could bet — for his hard work at making a book worth for any publishing house. You shook your head ready to pay the high price for mister Rafayel’s latest artistic creation…
There's a chance MC at like 12 waltzed into Josephine's home and declared she has a boyfriend and he's a magical prince from the ocean and they're going to get married one day and than skipped upstairs all happy, and I think thats adorable.
you have no clue half the things rafayel thinks about you because it's all in lemurian (and it's so incredibly romantic)
the most profound, thought-provoking compliments are all in lemurian. they describe everything about you in a way no other language can, they attempt to encapsulate every single color you are and yet are not because not even 300 million colors can be a fraction of what you are to him
sometimes he'll just mutter in wonder about you things he can't describe or explain. it can be the most mundane of things, and sometimes you'll ask what he meant. and he'll just brush it off, say it's nothing or that he was just humming.
when rafayel uses lemurian to describe you, it's because no other words can. because all other words fail in comparison, do you no justice. and lemurian is the closest damn thing he can use to verbalize it. it cannot stay in his mind forever, he needs the world to hear it, even if a whisper, his song of praise for you.
even you, in your most mundane, at your most vulnerable, in your deepest depths of despair are the most ethereal being he has ever met. you are his anchor, his tether, his heart and soul.
no spoken word can ever get across the thoughts he thinks when it comes to you, but lemurian sure comes damn close.
if you resonate with him though, you can understand. not what the words mean, but how those words feel.
because you overflow rafayel's heart every time. and he cannot contain it.
and when you resonate with him while he's rambling in lemurian about you, you feel like crying. because it's all filled with such love, devotion, and admiration that you can't comprehend.
and because when you're there, he also feels like crying.
because he's so lucky to have someone like you by his side, and he's cherishing every single bit of you in every single way.
romaincrisis
janainaart
origamiaround
gummygunk
areudirty
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
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