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when you first met rafayel, you thought him to be the type of man who acted all suave, trying to impress you by catching a fish. he was rather good looking, anyone with eyes could see that, but you could barely hide your grimace at the tone of his voice. you don't want to say you aren’t like other girls, so the saying goes, but you also don’t want to be the type of person to trip over any pretty man who flutters his eyelashes and shows off. he probably does this to anyone and everyone, you think wryly.
nonetheless, you watched with surprise as he caught a fish against the net in a single motion, showing it to you with a neutral expression, though you note the slight tinge of pride in his eyes with amusement. the slight dread you felt had all but dissipated, making room for curiosity and the unfortunate infatuation you seemed to have with anybody these days. you listen to his words intently, the information unfamiliar and you feel a brief flash of shame for not looking more in-depth into lemurian mythology, but his voice is soft, his smile small but no less adored in these brief moments between you. and then, for a moment, you thought him to be the loveliest man you’d ever set your sights on. he was interesting, for a tourist. the man was unlike anyone you’d ever met before and while he seemed like any other douche at first, you had to admit that his confidence and smooth cadence could have easily buttered you up and have you eating right from his palm. there’s no shame in admitting it, if only to yourself.
that was until he left you behind mid-sentence, the fish he’d caught, that you gave to him, mind you, in hand and cardigan falling off his shoulder, like some type of pre-cataclysm hipster from 2016. and the irritation you initially felt swallowed up any romanticized thoughts you had about the man, leaving you to scoff and frown for a few days after your chance encounter.
you remember bemoaning the whole interaction with tara over the phone, thinking it to be quite a shame that nearly every handsome man you met always ended up being an asshole in some way or another. her laughter echoed in your ears as you pictured the way the setting sunray enhanced the purple tinge of his hair, the way his eyes sparkled, the pink and dark blue hues enticing you and causing your heart to race, the curve of his mouth. you were not an artist by any means, but the way the sun outlined the frame of his body, alighting the tips of his hair with its orange flames, softening his face, and leaving you breathless—he looked like he belonged in a framed picture, or a monet painting
strangely, (though you kept this to yourself, not wanting to encourage tara’s teasing over your easy, fickle heart) you felt as though you knew him from somewhere, like some sort of deja-vu, or a half-forgotten dream.
“jenna wouldn't treat you like this,” tara had said with a dreamy sigh, and you knew you only had seconds before you completely lost her to the insanity that was tara’s steamy jenna fantasies. you’ve long since been desensitized to tara’s audacity to speak about your captain, your employer, in such a way. by now, it’s a familiar and well-discussed topic between the pair of you. “jenna is a perfect gentlewoman, and she would have taken care of you the whole night, and walk you home.”
“she would,” you’d agreed, humoring tara for the moment as you rummaged through your pockets, struggling to find your missing apartment keys. your own brief infatuation with captain jenna before seeing cupid's arrow notched into tara’s heart was blissful. for ten seconds, you’d pictured a picket white fence, two children, and two cats with the captain. not the craziest scenario you’ve come up with, but definitely the fastest. “but she’s also a workaholic, and too busy to tolerate your lovesick crying. so you’re stuck with me and my tourist problems.”
tara complains as you smirk slyly. tara, for all her lesbian yearning and doomed pining, doesn’t understand your infatuations, doesn’t get how you can bounce from person to person after a week-long obsession. and, sure, you’re left constantly yearning for people you only catch glimpses of, but you’re used to the revolving doors of your heart. it is, after all, how you managed to never maintain a solid relationship lasting more than a month, and you’ve made peace with it.
contrary to popular belief, by the way, you’re not afraid of commitment. in fact, you’re very committed to commit to someone. you’re an extreme advocate for committing in a relationship, especially after a not-so-fun casual-situationship-unlabeled-sort-of-dating-but-not-really in your first year of university. you just haven’t found the person that makes your heart stop, that opens the door to your heart and shuts it closed, lock and key and all. if that makes any sense.
“it doesn’t,” tara says, not unkindly, but you know she would support you through your troubles anyhow.
-
you’re running behind one morning, hastily shaking your keycard out of the jumbling mess that was the set of house and car keys when your usual radio station starts rambling about a nearby art exhibition. you half-listen near the entryway, slipping on the uniform-required combat boots, knowing you’ll likely be put on the field again today. the show host gushes over the featured artist named rafayel, rambling on and on about his countless canvases filled to the brim with oceansides, coastal plains, and islands. you briefly wonder what could be so exciting about looking at paintings of water, and question if the artist ever gets tired of doing the same damn thing.
for some reason, as you park your car in a nearby metro station and board the bus to get to the office, his name echoes in the back of your head. there’s a familiarity behind the vowels and consonants, the sound of his name stabbing your chest repeatedly. you feel hot flashes near the dimples of your back, trailing your spine like ghostly fingers taunting you. you glance behind you in case someone is messing with you, checking your wrist for any changes of metaflux, dreading the idea of a wanderer appearing with you on the bus, but you see no one, feel nothing. the faint sensation of someone’s breath brushes your ear, and you reach up to brush away a strand of hair that must have gotten untucked. you curse your paranoia, breathing in slowly as you hope you’re not experiencing premature menopause.
that would truly suck ass.
what sucks even more is having to deal with the heat curling against your spine while having to deal with an accused murderer. who also happens to be the guy who walked away with your fish with his stupid half on half off cardigan, and his irritating purple-tinted hair all in his eyes. who also happens to be the artist from this morning’s radio show segment.
go figure.
—-
but really, between yourself and your midnight actions, who can blame yourself for the way your eyes start to linger around his well-built frame, for accompanying him in his private studio despite your countless protests that are nearly always made in vain. you find yourself looking forward to watching rafayel paint the sceneries you once thought were boring, coming to life at his talented hand and beneath his calculated gaze. you’ve come to appreciate the meticulousness and peace it brings the both of you on days where the world seems like too much, and all you need is his company.
rafayel has become many things to you in the coming weeks; he’s mouthy, incredibly so, and has no care for the perception other people have of him, not even you. any snide remark you make is countered by one he makes, just as snide, twice as sassy, with a haughty air that makes you feel like an ant sometimes. he could care even less for the critics that tear apart what few paintings he puts up on display, only gets heated himself when they use wrong descriptors for his work and point out all the wrong things in their analytical remarks.
(once, you made the mistake of reading an article you found online about an exhibition where someone had made a replica of one of rafayel’s paintings. instead of being upset that someone had tried to pass off their work as his, he’d been more upset about the fact that they used the wrong shade of blue for the murky waters of a distant island halfway across the world. he’d paced for ten minutes, ranting your ears off about the blending technique and the incorrect number of brushstrokes when it came to shading the color of the clouds and skies.
“i bet they’ll have never known the difference between persian blue proper and persian indigo had i not emailed them four pages worth explaining how incredibly different those colors are!” his hands are on his hips, the furrow between his brows deep and his frown digging lines into his face. you’ll be hearing about his whining about getting wrinkles in a series of text messages later that night. for now, you watch amusedly as his voice gets louder, his huffy attitude making him look like a fluffed-up cat. “seriously, do they not see the little flakes of the darker blue in this canvas versus the other one? amateurs, they never get any of my colors down correctly.”
you also don't know the difference between persian proper and persian indigo. according to your research, persian indigo is slightly more purple than persian blue proper. perhaps painter’s eyes see these differences easier than most people.
side note; you think rafayel’s hair color in the current lighting looks somewhere between hexcode #504350 and #433843. maybe a bit more purple than that. you’d have to give these paint swatches another look.)
anyways, all that to say is that rafayel the artist takes pride in his abilities. he knows he’s good and so does everyone else, but everyone else doesn’t count to rafayel the artist. here, in his studio, there is no one else in the room besides him, his brushes, and his countless tubes of paint at his side. whatever confessions he smudges in between the waves of the water as he paints with guilty eyes and a shameful downturn of his mouth, is between him and his wooden palette. sometimes, when you catch him in these contemplative moods, when he can't hide his sadness from you fast enough, you hope he can trust you to confide in instead.
rafayel explained to you, once, that his art is always up for interpretation, because it may mean different things to other people. some may look at the waters he paints and lose themselves in their memories, and others may look at the waters as though they’re searching for a sign. rafayel doesn’t care for what other people think when it comes to himself or his art, just as long as they feel something genuine. that’s not to say he doesn’t care for what you think about rafayel the person.
as the sun sets and douses the room in a red-orange you’ve come to attribute to rafayel and the first time you met, you watch his hands create nothing out of thin air, the picture in his mind transferring to the blank canvas in front of him. he’s lovely to look at, this you’ve established since the moment you locked eyes, especially in the washes of the golden light. today, while not hard, was busy as always for you, and rafayel is always willing to show off his prowess in front of you. you had been typing up a report jenna required from you, due tomorrow night, but rafayel’s figure had distracted you, and you had paused in your typing to consider the man in front of you.
for one, rafayel is incredibly vigilant, though he hides it behind a mask of pettiness and petulance. he’s always watching his surroundings, not with paranoia like you, but simply that. he enjoys watching the breeze making the trees sway, the grass dancing in time the chirping of birds, and the sand blowing away in huge clouds during hurricane season. his eyes, wide-eyed, tinged with pink, and always so expressive, are one of your favorite things about him. they slant in suspicion when you make a thinly veiled prod about him, and they squint in irritation at the summer sun, cursing the light for making his bare shoulders burn red. they also go soft when they see you, though this took you a while to see with your own eyes.
his eyes are as fiery as his personality, boisterous and loud, but something about you makes them round out, his pupils dilating when he’s pleased with the sight of you, eyelids closing and curving upwards when he finds something you’ve said funny, or simply just enjoying your company. you like him best like this, when rafayel is at his most content, his most relaxed. and if being around you helps him out, then okay, fine, you’ll spend days just puttering about his home, your heart cheering at the domesticity of it all.
for two, rafayel is just fun. he’s a fun guy to be around, and the longer you stick around, the more you know about him each day, much to your heart’s delight. he likes to play games with you, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, and he comments so out of the park that you burst into laughter at the sight of his confused face. sometimes, rafayel says things at your expense that are so foul, you gasp and have to fight yourself from smacking him, but after a while thinking back on the moment only makes you giggle to yourself.
each morsel of rafayel that you discover, your heart takes it and hides it away into its endless cave like a raccoon to a shiny trinket. you do this with just about everyone in your life-–from celebrities your heart claims as your own to the neighbor down the hall you’ve made conversation just a few times. your heart burrows into wikipedia pages and autobiographicals and grasps onto anything it deems valuable, and seers that information into your brain like a brand. to this day, you can name entire interview titles, and quote things people have said offhand like they didn't expect you to remember their exact words; all of these things that have happened to you years ago will never leave you now. they've become one with the fingers on your hands and the joints of your bones.
you knew yourself well enough to admit that, two weeks into this odd friendship with rafayel, every like and dislike will become hidden away in the folds of your brain, ready to come out when you do something for him in the confines of his home, like making him tea the way he likes it or cleaning the tiny, hair strand paint brushes used for detailing with gentle dabs of a clean rag. in ten years, or even in fifty, these facts about him, even if they shift and change, will permanently become something you’ll anecdote to a future lover, or to rafayel himself, your words coated in nostalgia.
(“i remember,” you’ll say to a young girl who’ll come and sit beside you, feeding the pigeons with you as you recall one of your many first loves. this time, you’ll smile besottedly as you think about the strange man with eyes older than any war veteran, with a face that doesn’t age and a smile so devastating you can’t bear to think about him without crying, mourning lives you won't remember but that he’ll tell you about, in due time. but you’ll remember how happy he made you, how adored you felt with him, however short or long you had left in this life. “i remember how he liked his coffee, and then how he liked his tea when he finally stopped depending on caffeine to stay awake. i would make him lavender tea, both because it was a color he loved to use when he painted me, and because it was a lovely flavor that helped him sleep.”)
for three, you love watching him work at his craft. rafayel is passionate about painting, about sketching, and sometimes he veers away from his usual medium and dabbles in alcohol markers and colored pencil drawings. to no one’s surprise, he’s just as good at crosshatching and shading with graphite and wax as he is at blending dry acrylic and watercolor. rafayel makes it look easy, presenting finished paintings to you like it was nothing, but you’ve caught the way he rubs his aching wrists, the way he shakes off the numbing pinpricks when his fingers go to sleep, the flaking acrylics underneath his nails and skimming the sleeves of his light fabric blouses, no matter his precision and carefulness.
it’s a lot like how he presents himself to you, you note, staring at how the bright sun lightens up his face and shows off the bags under his eyes. it's how he hides the tension in his shoulders in favor of picking at you, in favor of making you laugh with his cheating schemes in card games and scrabble. it's how he uses the night to send you home, both of you knowing he won’t sleep while the moon is out, the shadows the front light makes hiding the look in his eyes as you walk to your car. it's how, sometimes, rafayel’s words come out sharper than intended, his snark less of a dull butter knife and more like a pointed javelin, stuck on your throat and leaving you two staring at each other helplessly before moving on and ignoring the thick tension.
you’re dancing around each other now, this strange duet of parallel lines. you're never touching, never intersecting, and you wonder if you ever will. if one of you will be brave enough to brace the impact and stick the landing, regardless of what heartbreak you’ll inevitably face.
and you know so many things about rafayel’s mannerisms–-his likes, dislikes, the brand of paint he likes to use, the mini canvases he keeps in his pockets when he gets a vision in his head and has to paint it right that second, the way his eyes glisten in the sunlight and his mouth curls into a contented smile, watching you run towards the ocean waves when you invite him to the beach on your days off.
but you don't really know rafayel. not his hometown, not his family, if he has any friends besides thomas, his siblings, his childhood, how he was as a teenager. oh sure, he’ll tell you stories that’ll allude to who he was before the both of you meeting, filled with possibilities and what-ifs and always, always coated in heartbreak so strong your heart threatens to jump out and land in his hands, as though your heart would be enough to replace the heaviness of his own. sometimes you don’t want to find out what lies behind those dark eyes, scared of what you’ll find.
(you’ll never be scared of rafayel, though. you don’t think anything about him could scare you away, even if some of his morals end up more grey-leaning than you’d like.)
and finally, for four, in all honesty, you can't find it in yourself to regret the friendship you managed to strike with the whiny artist. he drives you nuts sometimes, the way he can switch between moods like a chameleon and leaving you gasping in disbelief half the time is incredibly hard to keep up with sometimes. he’s nosy, possessive, easily jealous, and petulant, but just as easily pliant beneath your fingers as he melds himself against you, your shoulders pressed against each other like perfect jigsaw puzzles.
is that to say you’re both perfect for one another? probably not, and you can definitely say for certain that rafayel’s mouth would get him in trouble just as much as it’ll get him out of it. but you fit together like a well-worn glove, like a snug pair of shoes, like a ring that has left an indention on your finger. you're both not without your flaws, and you are far too pushy for your own good, too impulsive, and too harsh when it comes to people you love getting hurt. but rafayel is someone you could find yourself mooning over for the rest of your life, and you’re already halfway in love with him. your fickle heart too, usually jumping from person to person, leaving people behind as quickly as it picks them, has settled down, content with rafayel in a way that your aches and pains are satiated just at the thought of him.
the vision he paints before your very eyes right now, the glow of the makeshift pointed halo the sun makes, highlighting the lines of his figure like an angel come to earth-–you want to keep this for you to relive for the rest of your dying days, savoring it each night before you go to bed and waking up each morning after.
hopefully, rafayel, what with his lack of filter and tendency to blurt things out without a second thought, will be brave enough for the both of you to confess, to fit his heart next to yours and fuse them until they become one. and you’ll explode in a flash of golden light, wrapping around him in a blanket of stars, and he’ll carry you in his eyes and in the shine of his skin, the marks of his moles until he finds you once more, in an even happier lifetime.
hopefully, you have enough time to live out this one first.