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A seemingly endless rain storm covers the city and two full days of radio silence from Rafayel have passed — no visits, no calls, no messages.
The last you heard of him was a message he sent after returning from a business trip. I’m back, it gleams even now — you’ve been reading it over and over as if that allowed for you to discover some kind of hidden truth, deducted from two simple words. Take care with the rain. I’ll rest up. Is he tired, you asked, and Yeah, very, he responded. That was it. You told him to replenish his energy, to let you know if he needed anything, but nothing else ever popped up except for a little ‘read’ note under your last message. Messages, you should clarify, having sent a few more aimless good mornings and good nights.
Usually, Rafayel becomes eager to meet after any time apart. He wants to show off the trinkets he brought just for you, show the pictures he has taken, share his experiences. (Which all is to say that he wants to show you he missed you without actually saying it, because he surely is not one to do so unless you press him or say it first.)
Now, there was but silence from Rafayel’s side, and the rain prevented you two from meeting up the way you usually do after either of you has been gone for a few days or even weeks. For the past two days, you have been silently cursing the clouds for so selfishly emptying themselves with no end in sight, keeping everyone, including you and Rafayel, locked up at home. Keeping you separated.
To say you’ve been worried about him would be an understatement. After all, he has always had the tendency to shut everyone, including you, out when feeling his worst.
So, when day three does not appear with the cracks in the sky’s ceiling finally fixed and instead offers but further rain and wind violently tearing through the city, you decide that enough is enough — you will make the journey to your boyfriend’s to ensure that he is alright, whether you’d arrive at his place in one piece or not.
What somehow manages to escape you is the notion that an umbrella will be useless in this weather. That, in fact, an umbrella will break from a single gust the moment you reach the taxi that is supposed to take you to Whitesand Bay. But the taxi is warm and even though your hair is a mess and clings wetly to the cold skin of your face from where you try to pull its strands away, the worry you feel is what urges you to endure.
In the end, it is Rafayel who opens the door before your shivering fingers even manage to punch in his security code.
He doesn’t look sick, which relieves you. He does look tired, which doesn’t quell your worries. Has he slept at all these past two days? Judging by the dark circles you can make out even in the low glow of his studio haloing him from behind, he hasn’t. Not much, anyway.
When Rafayel doesn’t speak, you sniffle and clear your throat, clothes wetly clinging to your skin. “Are you okay?”
He blinks slowly as if he didn’t expect you, or like he can’t quite make out if you’re really standing in front of him right now or not. If you’re real in front of him.
“…Can I come in?”
“You—,” he tries. His voice is hoarse, and he lowers his face and steps aside, holding the door open for you. “Of course. Yes. Why are you here?”
Are you here? is what you hear.
“You haven’t been answering my messages in days,” you offer and brush past him, into his studio which somehow is just as cold as the air outside, and as the atmosphere settling around the two of you. “I’ve been worried. Did something happen?”
“I didn’t realise it’s been days,” Rafayel says and closes the door to his heart. “The trip was exhausting, and you know how it is sometimes, cutie. I’m sorry for not having responded to your texts. I figured my darling bodyguard would be far too busy.”
Rafayel doesn’t even look at you.
“What were you doing? Your eyes are red.”
“I just got back from a swim.”
“In this weather?”
He looks outside, as if needing to confirm for himself that the weather was, indeed, not quite suitable for ‘a swim’. Like he isn’t even aware of the weather in the first place, and only now realises the rain and stormy gusts rattling at the large floor-to-ceiling windows at the other end of the open space of his studio.
“Yes.”
“You’re Lemurian, Rafayel,” you counter, keeping your voice gentle despite your slight exasperation at him believing he could lie to you. “I doubt that’s how it works. Also, you’re completely dry, head to toe.”
Rafayel’s lower lip tugs upward into a small frown at your words.
“You’re completely soaked, cutie,” he diverts. “How about you join me in a bath to warm you up, hm? I was just about to take one to wash off the salt.”
Against your best attempts to remain steadfast, to not let him overshadow your worries with his own, a shudder does travel down your back and you sniffle inevitably. The lack of his touch — of a hug, of his warmth — somehow makes you feel colder than your half-soaked clothes already are.
You look at him, try to figure out what it is he’s thinking.
He speaks up whenever he considers there to be any issues. Whether it is arguments, misunderstandings, or playful back-and-forth — Rafayel is honest when you are involved. But it’s in his eyes that secrets linger now, just how he once taught you — so long as he doesn’t speak with them, he can pretend to be fine. He avoids your inquisitive gaze and instead shifts his to look towards the stairs leading upstairs where the bathroom is.
When has he become such a horrible liar? He always had you fooled at first, and you used to be unsure of how to approach him even if he was always there to catch you no matter what despite his own ambiguity. He knows of his own faults. Luckily, he has become predictable, much to your relief — and to his dismay, most of the time.
Impatient, Rafayel glances back at you — briefly, already half-turning to walk towards the stairs. “Come on. I’ll even let you boil me, cutie. Aren’t I nice?”
By now, the tension is palpable. Not one between the two of you, but rather one you were but helpless witness to — a tension within Rafayel himself, between forces you can do very little but to accept as they are, because you certainly cannot know of their exact makeup, let alone understand them. He doesn’t let you. Especially not when he already is strung up as much as he is right now. All you can do is estimate the extent of his pain and offer to soothe what has crumbled.
You shudder when the heat of the water touches your chilled skin and slip into the tub in front of Rafayel with a trembling sigh of relief.
The water is indeed far warmer than during your usual shared baths — perfect for you, even though you know Rafayel will likely start complaining very soon. Then again, perhaps today, he won’t. After all, he hasn’t been saying much this entire time, and all he does once you lean back against him — which was an almost tentative reach of yours for intimacy, seeing if he would meet you on equal grounds where at last words aren’t needed — is to immediately wrap his arms around you, like he, too, was waiting for you to take that last step towards him. Like he needed to be granted permission to hold you when he feels the way he does now, experiences the thoughts he has now — whatever those may be.
“Do you want to talk about it?” you try once stillness has settled around you.
You’re not pushing. You have learned early enough that forcing the man to open up only ever results in him shutting down further. Before you got together, he would scoff; later, he would simply play it off, try to convince you he was fine when you knew he definitely wasn’t. And as much as you understand his inclination to keep things from you, it frustrates you more than anything, because like this, what is it that you can do to help him? How can you hope to assuage feelings you aren’t privy to?
“Do I have to?”
Rafayel’s voice is fragile, hurt. He sounds scared. Would you force him? You know he would inevitably open up if only you told him to.
You shake your head. “Not if you don’t want to.”
“Thank you.”
His arms around your waist tighten until you are pulled fully flush against him where you are settled between his legs. Resting your head back, Rafayel’s thumbs rub into your skin on each side of your torso where his fingers were gripping you so tightly you think he might fear you disappearing otherwise. The rain outside hasn’t let up and creates a steady lull as it patters against the window, joined by the echoing of water ripples surrounding your bodies. The symphony makes you feel sleepy despite yourself, even if you remain keenly aware of the man pressed against your back, crushing you against him, his skin cool where the heat of the water doesn’t reach you.
Rafayel has been hurt in ways that have desensitised him to most things appearing in extremes of any kind — that much you have long come to understand, because it is in your presence that any black-and-white binary as well as Rafayel himself grow softer into one muted mass of warm and pliant grey. And while he does indeed still often try to distract you from most of his ailments, especially those of his haunted mind, he has learned that he can rely on you more. But despite his growing comfort in your presence and him trusting you to carefully tend to his scars, it is his silence you still aren’t fully used to. And you don’t want to get used to it. Rafayel’s silence, too, speaks of a need for comfort and closure, and you would never want to deny him this. If silence is how he communicates it, then so be it. His trust is still evident in how he allows you to be with him despite the fears eating away at him.
But still, you always worry — what can you do about any of his struggles? You can love him despite. You can let him hold you. You can let him hide himself within your warmth. But isn’t there more? Can’t you do more?
Coolness brushes against your chest and your eyes follow the sensation until you understand it is Rafayel’s hand resting atop of your heart. No, not merely resting — he is pressing his palm against you, like wanting to ensure he can really feel the steady pulsing there. His hand trembles slightly under yours when you cover it and you offer him a gentle squeeze.
You can be here with him. You can soothe him in ways only you could, even if, to you, it never feels like it is enough. But it is.
“I just feel so angry,” Rafayel murmurs into your skin, the sound of his voice seeming far louder than it truly is in the quiet echoes of the bathroom.
“...I don’t think I’ve ever experienced you being angry before.”
“I don’t feel it often. It’s... ugly.”
A lie. He doesn’t show it often. You’ve seen the paintings he leaves scattered after long nights, and you don’t need to be an art critic to understand their inherent value of having come into existence through means of nothing but pure catharsis. They certainly are not meant to be seen by anyone but his own heart. His anger is silently violent like that.
“It’s not ugly,” you say quietly. The rippling echo carries your voice despite. “It’s just sadness that sits very very deep and has no other way of coming out than by being this consuming and exhausting.”
Rafayel seeks more comfort in the crook of your neck and his breath tickles down your collarbones as tousled locks softly kiss your cheek.
“I was very angry when I was younger. I didn’t know what to do with all of my anger — it went everywhere. Towards others, towards the world, myself. Honestly, there was no point for any of it to become so… vile.” He rubs his nose and lips into your skin to hide the way his voice breaks slightly upon saying, “No one even did anything wrong. It was all just on me.”
You have to swallow the lump forming in your throat. No matter how many times you are faced with the guilt Rafayel has been carrying for far longer than you can ever hope to comprehend, you never feel ready whenever confronted with the immensity of it.
“That’s not true. Anger exists for a reason.” And, sensing more to his words, you add, “So does grief.”
You can almost feel him flinch as if with your words came a physical blow, and Rafayel’s breathing stills for but a moment before resuming with a deep inhale, and an exhale, catching and steadying himself.
You know that he hides his fearful mourning well.
Grief, you know too, runs far deeper for him than most.
“Cry some more,” you coax softly.
“What... Do you want to harvest pearls from me?”
“Not unless you’d like me to.”
Rafayel smiles into the crook of your neck and melts into a soft grey at your understanding of the heaviness pulling at his body. You reach for him and hold him, despite. His colours — whatever they may be in a given moment, ever-changing as they are — are not something you would ever want to dilute, even if Rafayel asked you to to make himself more deserving of your love.
The water dissolves your thoughts into stillness, as if the very notion of the intimacy of your bodies co-existing is enough to sustain the two of you until Rafayel is ready to unfurl his emotions. Until then, water will carry and nourish them, will eventually turn them into something else altogether. Perhaps then, he will be willing to talk about any of it.
“Rafayel.” Your soft voice echoes and a gentle hum sounds from beside you. “You told me before that my feelings are like the ocean.”
You let your words linger — you know he understands, even if the deeper meaning remains unspoken.
Eventually, Rafayel gives another low hum, but doesn’t say anything further. Your reminder has done what it was supposed to.
Emotions like the ocean — the steady ebb and flow coming and going. It swallows the land over and over again, but is pushed back just as repeatedly. Endlessly so. And even if the waves threaten to pull him under, even if he can no longer see the horizon amidst the storms surrounding him, you are keeping him anchored until the sun eventually returns. When the next clouds inevitably shroud the skies once more, you will be there, too.
Outside, the rain slowly calms into a softer patter against the window.
“Let me hold you for some longer?”
“Of course.”
He has you, forever, and he will be okay.