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There is a line,
I’m yet to sever—
It goes from me
to you.
He was always doing this.
Pressing up against intangible boundaries was Rafayel’s favourite pastime, you suspected. It was the only explanation as to why he so often tested your patience, toed that invisible line between professionals and friends, grasped your wrist with that vice-like grip, pulled you close, running a thumb along the curve of your cheekbone, insisting on feeling your skin against his with flimsy excuses and a look that betrayed an emotion that ran deeper than the Marianna’s Trench.
It was the only explanation for the way he was looking at you now, tips of his fingers brushing the hot shell of your ear as he gently tucked an errant strand of hair behind it, touch lingering for far too long to be considered friendly, gazing at the dazzling gems decorating your lobes, wonderstruck.
You must have given him a strange look, because he stumbled to explain himself without his usual cheek.
“I like your earrings.”
Something about the cadence of his voice, the quiet ache in his words as he flitted his gaze from the subject of conversation to the planes of your face, searching for something lost to you, it made your throat run dry and a knife twist deeper in your chest.
“Thanks…they’re alexandrite, my—”
“—your favourite gemstone.”
An echo of a distant memory calling across the chasm of all these lifetimes rang in his ears, occupying every inch of spare space in his skull, eyes that held an unbroken dawn betraying an emotion that seemed far too serious to suit what you had come to expect of him.
‘They remind me of your eyes, Rafayel.’
A token of a lost lover, a glistening reminder of what no portrait nor photograph could capture in enough detail – you had once told him you had never seen anything more beautiful than his eyes, swore you could never forget them, even if you tried.
And here you stood, made anew once again, gazing at him as if for the first time, seeing him as nothing more than a client you had promised to protect, perhaps, tentatively, a friend. Slipping into the motions of doing that same sorrowful dance, one you had long forgotten the steps to.
He wasn’t sure why he still held on to a sliver of this mournful hope. Every time he dared to dream it might be different, something might have changed, a memory would have survived, you might be whole, but every time it was the same.
You, fated to forget while he was cursed to remember. Remembering brought him little comfort when time, that eternal devourer, had taught him that he was powerless to change things, for better or worse. The dance would be repeated, the moves already laid out; he would fall into your orbit and love you feverishly, consume whatever fraction of devotion you could muster to offer in this life, like a pining dog eating scraps beneath the table, and just when he would dare to hope that temporary paradise could last, he would lose you to time and you would forget him, again.
And again.
And again.
Damned to come back for more, for whatever he could take, chasing this foolish dream to the ends of the earth and back again until the sun finally set on your tale.
You blinked up at him, dazed and unsure, painfully aware of the warmth of his breath just ghosting across your face, drunk on the lingering whisper of sea salt and driftwood rising from the curve of his neck. Boyish charm and thoughtless flirtations were gone, replaced by the look of a man starved.
“Yeah…how did you know that?”
He didn’t answer.
There was a time
you swore forever,
and I am captive
to its pull.
The chill of the night pressed in, forcing you to seek out the warmth in front as you uncharacteristically stepped closer. Something about the slight dip in his brow, the parting of his lips, the ocean swirling in his eyes, pulled you in as the moon pulls the tide, beckoned you to cross that abyss that you could not come back from.
A familiar hand rested gently on your lower back, pushing your body flush against his as his heart thrummed within its cage, bearing a delicate longing that you might still want him, after all this time. A feverish flush crept up his neck, dusting his ears and cheeks a colour similar to the ribbon at his collar as he, as always, failed to resist the temptation before him.
Your mere existence, a siren’s song that called only to him.
“You love the tulips in the spring, and your favourite colour is blue,” Rafayel murmured, lips torturously close to yours as his hand shifted from caressing your ear to cup the apple of your cheek, thumb running across it tenderly. A weak heart fluttered fervently in response, pulse resonating in your ears and sending blood to the very tips of them as he drew closer, shuddering breath dancing across the line of your neck. “You’re afraid of thunderstorms and you dream of an endless desert. You go down to wait by the sea, but you don’t know what for…”
Whispers against your veins, his firm chest against yours, and a touch full of so much hunger clouded your head, set your heart on wings, pulled you beneath the surface, into his murky depths.
Too much.
He was always too much.
“Rafayel…”
He drew in a sudden, strangled breath, gripping you ever tighter, pressing his cheek against yours as a match was struck in his chest, setting it aflame at the invocation of his name from your lips, the softest command, the sweetest calling. Breaths came short and shallow, his chest rising and falling in turbulent waves, shoulders almost trembling with something that eluded you – apprehension, desire, sorrow? You could not say for certain which, if not a combination of all three.
“Yes, princess?”
“You’re wrong.”
He stilled and drew back a sliver, subtle frown creasing his features as he gazed across your face, feeling a featherlight touch against his temple. Your gaze, so warm and familiar and full of fondness, it made his soul ache, convulsing in pure desperation, begging to devote itself to you, to reunite with its other half. An eternal promise, a doomed dalliance, one heart in two bodies.
Maybe things would end differently, this time. Maybe he would be allowed to love you for a whole lifetime, maybe he could find a way to save you.
Maybe things wouldn’t have to end at all.
“My favourite colour,” your fingers entwined with soft strands of his lavender hair, nails scraping delicately against his scalp in a blissful motion, eyes following their movements as you caressed with a lover’s touch, so gentle and long awaited yet nowhere near enough, soft, eager lips a hair’s breadth away from his as you whispered against them, “it’s always been purple.”
If you were kind,
you’d cut the tether—
but I must ask you
to be cruel.