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As the first whispers of dawn caressed the earth, the sun emerged from its deep sleep, a fiery artist painting the horizon in strokes of gold and crimson. The ocean became its mirrored canvas, reflecting the beauty back to the heavens. Sapphire waves glittered like diamond, the deep blue of the ocean cresting and foaming pearlescent white as the water lapped at the shore. The sun poured its molten honey over the sea, amber rippling and blending with the varying shades of blue; cobalt, azure, navy, teal, and cerulean. Quicksilver twinkled beneath the gentle caress of the dawn.
The clouds drifted lazily across the sky, barely awake, roused by the sun’s too-early cheekiness. The wispy cotton puffs took on hues of lavender and pale peach, partially veiling the sun, but they still allowed its rays to seep through, a celestial spotlight on a lazy world.
Seagulls took flight, their silhouettes little more than blackened sky ships sailing through the air against the stunning backdrop. Their calls echoed like laughter in the early morning. The air was infused with the scent of salt and tranquility, the sign of a peaceful day.
You supposed you were grateful to have been woken up early enough to enjoy the view. Pulling up on your motorcycle and killing the low-rumbling engine allowed the softest of sounds to reach your ears. You unbuckled your helmet and tossed your hair about in the salt-laden breeze, eyes focused on the tides rocking back and forth with the world.
Still, a few extra hours in bed would have been nice too.
Guiding the bike through the open gate to his mansion, you parked it just on the inside, on the well-worn patch of grass that had been long-flattened by your bike’s tires. The mansion stood like a beacon, the white sandstone and stucco reflecting the rising sun’s light back out into the world. The windows gleamed, pristine, and immaculately clean. Plants and flowers lined the short path that led to his front door. You sighed.
Left open. Again.
Hand pressing gently against the wood, it creaked as you let yourself inside, as if welcoming you home. He had texted you, asking you to come over, which he would undoubtedly use as his excuse for why the main gate and front door had been left open. Your phone screen had blared harshly into your exhausted eyes in the darkness of your room, but he had been insistent, demanding that you come over at the crack of dawn. He said he’d text you again to wake you and remind you.
And he did.
Fuchsia and indigo streaked overhead through the glass dome ceiling of his magnificent home where the golden sun hadn’t quite reached yet and twilight still clung on. Your boots clicked gently like a slow-ticking clock against the marble floor of the foyer as you crossed into the living room.
The smell of turpentine and coffee mixed together, filling the breezy space with a scent that had become all too familiar to you. The chemical sting was sharpened even further by the bitterness of the brewed coffee. There was a mug already brewed and steaming beneath the Keurig for you. Wrapping your hands around it and blowing against the scalding surface, you cast your gaze around the room; he wasn’t there… but there was evidence to suggest that he had been.
Chaos swarmed in one corner of the living room space that had turned into the open studio. A floor-to-ceiling size canvas dwarfed the entirety of one wall, streaked with white and every shade of blue possible. The paint was so thick you could see it jumping off the canvas, textured brush-strokes imprinted in the colour. A ladder stood before the unfinished painting, a small dirty cloth hanging over one of the rungs. An obstacle course of cups littered the ground, but not a single one was knocked over; each was filled with a bouquet of paintbrushes, every brush-end pointing skyward, well-kept and each one loved. An artist station sat nearby, its surface and open drawers bearing the weight of countless tubes of paint. There was a pestle and mortar too, with crimson dust ground as fine as glitter resting in the basin. Paint stained the floor and seeped between the cracks and the grooves of the wood where spatters had missed the canvas sheet laid on the ground.
The door leading out to the terrace was open. The netted curtain fluttered in the wind as if beckoning you toward it.
Lingering in the doorway, leaning against it as your eyes fell on him, you brought the coffee to your lips to take an invigorating sip.
Rafayel swirled the brush delicately against his palette and hesitated in the air before pressing it against the canvas. Each stroke had a thought and purpose behind it. And even though you couldn’t see his face, you knew his brows were knotting and unknotting relentlessly, torn between concentration and relaxation.
He must have heard you shift from your space and step onto the concrete veranda. His head twisted over his shoulder just slightly.
“Did you get lost or did you just decide to take your time?” came his playful voice and you could see the very corner of his mouth tilt up in a teasing little grin.
“I don’t think my answer matters,” you replied casually, giving a shrug. “Whatever I say you won’t be happy with.”
He lowered the palette to his lap, turning around more on his wooden stool to face you. The sun cast a golden halo around his lavender hair, bathing him in a warm light. The wind blew gently, causing shadows to flutter over his face which he tried to set into a disapproving scowl. His mauve and phlox eyes glinted with a mischievousness that betrayed the sour look he was trying to give across, huffing his cheeks, giving a shake of his head.
“I’ve been waiting an eternity, you know.”
“An eternity is a very long time.”
“I would know - I’ve been waiting that long,” he pouted.
You let a breath escape your nose, peering around your ‘employer’s’ glare to look at his canvas. It looked both realistic and impressionistic all at once; you could clearly tell it was the scene before you and yet, Rafayel’s signature style bled through every brushstroke on the canvas. The sunrise, a breathtaking spectacle in its own right, seemed to leap off the fabric, a juxtaposition of reality and whimsy. The golden orb of the sun was captured mid-rise, perched just above the horizon like a bright coin tossed into a wishing well, begging for dreams to blossom. Each cloud was a gentle whisper, lavender lullabies swirling into the blush of soft coral pink. Somehow, he had managed to make some of them transparent so that the light filtered through and dappled on the sea. The water’s surface appeared as glass, mirroring the sky, transforming into a canvas of moving jewels.
Your gasp mixed with the ocean’s breeze.
“Rafayel… it’s beautiful.”
His cheeks flushed the most delicate shade of pink, the very tips of his ears also tinting the same colour at your effusive praise. He turned back toward his work, unable to look at your face for much longer.
“... of course, it is,” he said. “At least you have excellent taste.”
His playful sarcasm hid a deeper layer of thought. You watched the maestro at work as he swept his thin brush through cadmium yellow, mixing it with a touch of coral pink to create a shade that seemed like a bird at dawn. Delicately, he brushed it along the underside of a cloud and suddenly, somehow, it seemed as if the sun was breaking through the soft cotton. It was like watching magic unfold before your very eyes.
Curiosity welled within you. Taking a sip of your coffee, you sucked the invigorating bitterness through your teeth.
“Why these colours? These aren’t your usual blues and whites. What’s behind the onslaught of yellows and pinks?”
For a moment, he paused, brush suspended in the air as he contemplated your question. The ocean breeze swirled around you, carrying a sense of anticipation, and you could see the metaphorical gears turning in his mind.
“... it’s a commission. For some pompous actor,” he said, his voice and hand as steady as one another. He dragged another swipe of colour along the soft cloud, bringing it to life, as if he was bringing the sun’s rays through the very canvas.
You knew he wasn’t telling you the whole truth. He avoided your gaze, keeping his eyes instead focused on the painting before him. To diffuse the tension, you placed a gentle hand atop his head, tousling his already windswept locks.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll be more than happy when it’s finished. It’s stunning.”
Rafayel gave another scowl, shaking his head as if trying to escape your touch without moving too much. “Oh please. Compliments won’t earn you a pay-rise.”
You couldn’t help but smile at his playful jab, but as your eyes moved back over the vibrant sunset, something shifted. Something felt askew. The palette he had chosen -brilliant yellow, playful pinks, sweet tangerines, dreamy lavender- whilst all startlingly accurate, lacked the depth you had come to recognise and cherish in his works, where cerulean swirls and cobalt whispers spoke their own language.
The usual flair and teasing lilt in his tone had changed too - a tightness had taken residence in his voice, and his smile faltered ever so slightly.
You bit your lip, thumb rubbing at the edge of your warm mug, wondering if you should push further.
Perhaps just a small nudge.
“Is that really the reason?”
“Of course,” he snapped back, sharper than you had expected. He caught himself immediately, the edge of bitterness slipping through his facade. He shook his head. “I mean, it’s not like I get to choose, right? As if I could say no to another fame-hungry socialite.”
“You’ve said no plenty of times before.”
Rafayel’s lips tightened. “I’m… experimenting with colour.”
It was clear that his answer was meant to pacify you, hiding whatever truth lay beneath the surface. “Uh-huh,” you nodded.
“Thomas said this guy was particularly pushy. Someone who thinks they know colour better than I do,” he stated, his voice tinted with bitter ridicule.
The man who so often embodied playful vivacity became more sullen as he returned to his canvas, lost once again in the glimmering swirls of paint. His focus shifted and so did his energy. The vibrance of his colours felt muted in contrast to his sudden quietude, mirroring something deeper within him, something hidden like a forgotten treasure resting beneath layers of sand.
You sighed softly, setting your half-finished coffee down beneath his stool so that it wouldn’t get knocked over. You knelt directly on the ground, dawn-warmed concrete not too harsh against your knees. One of your hands fell to his thigh, warm, compassionate, and patient. Rafayel didn’t flinch. He instead just kept staring at the canvas as if waiting for it to complete itself, his hand lingering in the air as if hung on a marionette string. From this angle, you could look up into his face.
“Rafayel,” you prodded gently. “This… as beautiful as it is… doesn’t feel like you. What’s really going on?”
For a moment, the veil lifted, revealing a flicker of vulnerability. His shoulders sagged and the arm that had been suspended returned to the palette, bathing in unused paint. His eyes fell to the floor and the stupor he had been in broke. He blinked and pinched the bridge between his nose and eyebrows, trying to find the right words. You waited.
“It’s about remembrance,” he said, almost cryptically. “Sometimes the colours of my past are too heavy to wear on my canvas. This is lighter - more digestible to the masses. People prefer… this.”
He gestured with an empty palm toward the stunning painting. He looked at it without love, without that sparkle of passion twinkling in his profoundly deep eyes, a hollowness descending over gaze.
It’d taken some time for you to figure out what exactly Rafayel’s paintings meant. You knew he had a motif, a trademark, a signature style: abstract blues and impressionistic ceruleans streaked across gigantic canvases with what you had initially perceived as a smear of crimson misplaced somewhere in the painting. If the painting had that blur of scarlet, you knew it belonged to Rafayel. But not only that, there was passion in every stroke - sometimes agony. Some paintings were peaceful. Others conveyed an endless sorrow and sense of grief you just couldn’t explain especially when all there was were streaks of blue and red bleeding into one another.
“Since when have you ever cared about the opinions of others?” you prompted.
“Maybe I didn’t before,” he replied slowly, an undercurrent of frustration and vulnerability flowing with his words. “But things change. The world is always changing. I can’t just ignore how people perceive me forever… It was going well up until now.”
“You’ve never conformed to anyone else’s vision,” you urged gently. The hand on his thigh squeezed reassuringly and finally, Rafayel’s gaze shifted, falling to your hand. “You paint from your heart. Those who appreciate art, your art, can see and feel what it really means. At least, I can.”
A melancholic smile crossed his face. He pushed his thumb through the grip on his palette to hold his brush in place, freeing his other hand. He reached for the back of your head and tugged it in closer to himself as he simultaneously leaned down. The gentle waft of his warm breath fanned against the crown of your head like a shell opening up.
“That’s why you’re different. That’s why… I care about your opinion.”
His lips pressed to your hair and he held you there, unmoving for a few long seconds. You let him.
You had never seen Rafayel like this before. You had never heard him doubt himself or his ability before. Artists often grappled with the fine line between authenticity and the need to appease an audience; up until that point, Rafayel had discarded the opinions of others and continued to paint. Mercifully, his paintings were always well-received with very little criticism. He was always booked out, travelling to various places to attend galleries and auctions, eagerly returning home to repaint and create a new plethora of artworks to promote. He had always embodied the spirit of freedom, one to go with the flow, to follow his own heart. Why allow the opinions of outsiders -of those who were ignorant- to cloud his brilliance?
“With each brushstroke, I ask myself… if I’m telling their story. If I’m telling it right. If I… If I’ve lost myself.”
He glanced at the canvas, and you followed his gaze. For the briefest of moments, you caught a glimpse of the storm swirling beneath the surface - an artist torn between the need to honour his people, his legacy, and the weight of expectation from the world beyond the shore.
“I guess…” he continued, sounding more contemplative than ever, “it’s easy to lose sight of that when the world shouts louder than the whisper of your own heart. My people… they’re not just a memory for me; they’re my world. But sometimes… it feels like I’m painting for someone else entirely.”
His shoulders slumped again. The sun had risen higher, a ball of unforgiving light in the sky, illuminating and highlighting the twisted agony in Rafayel’s face. Steadily, you rose to your feet. Rafayel’s head lifted with you, his eyes never leaving yours, a simmering pain boiling beneath the surface of those boundless eyes. Your hand cupped his cheek and for a moment, he didn’t move. But when you pressed your palm to his skin and the scent of the sea filled his lungs, he leaned into your touch.
“I miss the blues,” you whispered.
The simple statement hung in the air, a bridge that extended between you. Rafayel’s head turned more toward your palm, his heavy eyes sliding shut as he kissed at the heel of your hand, once, twice, and then he hesitated before the third time.
“But your people… your story, they can be a part of this painting too,” you said gently. “Infuse the yellows and the pinks with stories of the sea. It’s in your blood, Rafayel.”
“It… won’t be the same.”
“That’s not a bad thing. It can be different.” You hesitated before venturing to speak again. “How many times have you put your pain in your paintings?”
“... too many to count.”
“Maybe you can put something different into this one.”
The sun’s golden halo eclipsed the heavenly amethyst of his wondrous gaze as he blinked his tired eyes open. The dawn had barely crested and yet he looked exhausted. Still, he gazed at you, transfixed, scanning your patient expression. Golden streaks crossed the back of the canvas and awakened the colours with new life. Ths shift came again where the dull muteness of the canvas filled with contrast and saturation.
“You know,” he murmured against your skin, pressing that third gentle kiss against the inside of your wrist, tugging slightly to pull you closer. “I used to think of colours as secrets. That whatever shade I was using was a cover for what I was really trying to say. Maybe I don’t need to hide it anymore.”
Rafayel sat upright in his stool, sliding a hand along your arm. His touch glided over the sleeve of your shirt and skimmed your shoulder, leaping the distance over your collarbones to find the gentleness of your face. Your skin was slightly cold, chilled by the sea-breeze, and his touch was warm against your skin. You leaned into him as he had done to you. His thumb stroked just under your eye, over your cheek, and finally, finally, a smile returned to his face.
“Not just a bodyguard and a hunter but also a source of inspiration, huh? Is there anything you can’t do?” he teased.
You laughed gently, the sound of cresting waves blending with the warm rumble in your chest. “I can’t paint like you, that’s for sure.”
“I’ve seen your work… it’s not… bad. It just leaves a lot to be desired.”
With a newfound determination lighting his eyes, Rafayel turned back to the canvas, the earlier gloom replaced by a surging sense of inspiration and purpose. “Bring me the red coral pigment.”
You nodded, sensing the shift in the atmosphere and quickly retrieved the glittering ground stone in the pestle and mortar. The sun-kissed crimson hue sparkled like fire under the sun’s orange glow, as if it had been lit, as if embers danced in the marble bowl. As you handed it to him, your heart swelled with anticipation. He took the bowl from your hands, balancing it in his lap with his palette and he admired it for a moment. You knew what it meant. You knew what that daub of scarlet that had seemed so out-of-place at first was a symbol of.
The artist dipped his brush in ruby, the dust bleeding immediately along the bristles.
He streaked the carmine harshly through the cerulean waters, a vicious streak at first. But, without cleaning his brush, he swept up phthalo blue and blended the two colours together, prussian violet expertly mixed and then incorporated into the background waters. He added deeper sapphire tones at the edges, layering the scarlet colour on top until the layers of paint were thick and prominent. The fragments of his memories bubbled to the fore, leaping from the canvas.
The contrast between the bright yellow skies, dusty rose horizon, cobalt ocean, and startling sanguine created an almost heart-like pulsation, life and energy bursting from the painting.
“That’s what it was missing,” Rafayel remarked.
As you drank it all in, the painting transformed into a landscape of breathtaking vibrancy. It pulsated with emotion, a diaphanous veil of soft airy lavender and yellow kissed by bold streaks of coral red.
He lowered his arm, his brush poised to dapple white over the seafoam one last time before he decided that, no, it didn’t need it. It didn’t need a single other thing. A quiet, almost reverent pause filled the space between you as you savoured the moment. The sea whispered back and forth, its voice ebbing and flowing, the seagulls long gone and fled to the city. Far away, along the shore and glistening sands, a hermit crab scuttled past.
“Is it finished?” you asked.
“Yeah. It’s finished,” Rafayel replied and the unsettling weight he had been carrying melted away, replaced by a peaceful tenderness that softened his features. The finality of his words solidified the moment.
With a gentle groan, the artist finally stood, stretching his legs. He set his palette on his stool and really admired his painting, as a viewer, and not as an artist. He stood beside you.
“And to think you were going to miss all of this, Miss Bodyguard,” he said. Even now, he couldn’t help but tease you. “You’re lucky I woke you up to witness the birth of my masterpiece.”
“Well, I’m honoured.” You were. Really, you were.
He sensed the sincerity in your voice and looked at you. His paint-stained fingertips rose and tickled along your jaw and chin, his eyes following the soft edge of your face. His touch spread further, back to cupping your jaw as he had done before, gratitude and warmth spreading along your skin. The sound of your heart began to pound in your chest louder than the waves.
In that instant, the rest of the world seemed to fade away. The sound of the sea became distant, the rustle of the wind through your hair was insignificant - all that mattered, all that you could focus on, was Rafayel standing before you. His open shirt fluttered in the breeze, showing off that pale skin where the sun kissed at it and made him glow.
Rafayel then realised just how important you were to him; not just a bodyguard or a hunter, you were so much more than that. And at first he had tried to deny it, had tried to ignore the voices in his own head telling him that you had come back to him, but with the way you were gazing at him -so earnestly, so innocently, so… perfectly- he could deny it no longer. Your presence had become as vital as the colours on his palettes. Your eyes were as boundless as the sea. Your laughter, like the bells of distant coral reefs, was his favourite sound.
Closing the distance, Rafayel brought you to him. With a soft, deliberate grace, he leaned in closer, his breath mingling with yours, the smell of paint and the sea moving as one. His lips met yours in a kiss that was gentle, apologetic, thankful: a startling collision of complicated emotions that mere words could not express. It was soft, almost reverent, and he savoured the sweetness of your contact - like the taste of seawater infused with the sweetness of sun-warmed fruit.
He kept you against him in a featherlight touch that invited consent. He didn’t grip possessively, no; Rafayel was content to have you delicately balanced in his touch, a precious little bubble. You kissed him in return, deepening it, a quiet promise of love and unwavering support.
With each breath, he poured his gratitude into the kiss - a silent thank you for your unwavering faith in his creativity, for your understanding of his journey, and for finally, finally, coming back to him.