Rafayel (Gym)

Guys. am I spamming? I might be. 🤣 anyways. please share your comments, you're thoughts and your favourite conversation parts. is he as you thought he would be? anything you'd change?

Rafayel's POV Pt 8: My Love. I haven't called her that yet, saving it for when the words match the feeling completely. But they're approaching alignment with tidal certainty, rising toward some inevitable shore. For now, Cutie suffices. Cutie, who found me gasping on a treadmill and asked if I was okay. Cutie, who keeps my shells and my secrets and my increasingly hopeful heart.

Rafayel's POV Pt 7: When she left, late, streetlights reflecting wet from afternoon rain, she took my hand and said, "Next time, let's walk on the beach. You can show me what shells to look for." Next time. There will be so many next times. I'm painting now, energized in that way that follows genuine human connection. The Venice commission waits, patient. Tonight I'm adding gold leaf to her underwater portrait, catching light the way she caught me—unexpectedly, completely, transforming everything ordinary into something that shimmers.

Rafayel's POV Pt 6: But now I'm catastrophizing. What if the gift was too much? Too intimate for someone I've only properly spoken to twice? What if she thinks I'm one of those gym guys who chases every woman, despite my careful avoidance of exactly that reputation? Thomas came by the studio to check on the Venice piece and found me surrounded by rejected sketches, hair standing in purple disarray from frustrated hands. "You've gone full merman," he observed, stepping over discarded charcoal. "All dramatic sighs and pining."

Rafayel's POV Pt 5: She seemed to like the shell I gave her. A moon snail, iridescent interior catching light like captured rainbows. I'd found it at four in the morning during one of my insomnia walks, when the tide was low and the world felt borrowed from somewhere deeper than waking life. She turned it in her fingers, wonder softening her features, and said it looked like something from a dream. "I collect dreams," I told her, which was either poetic or deeply strange. She chose to find it charming, thank whatever ocean deities might be listening.

Rafayel's POV Pt 4: When she mentioned she's noticed me before—that she'd wondered about the "purple-haired guy who always looks like he'd rather be swimming"—I wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously. I've been so careful, you see. So convinced that my staring was one-sided, that my little gifts left anonymously on her locker would seem creepy rather than charming. The polished shell I found last month at dawn, the tiny watercolor of waves I slipped into her gym bag when she wasn't looking. I thought I was being subtle. She said she hoped it was me. She hoped it was me.

Rafayel's POV Pt 3: But her voice cut through my misery, and I swear for a moment I forgot how to form words entirely. I've painted portraits of strangers whose eyes held less warmth than hers did in that single question. "Just... finding my land legs," I managed, which sounded cryptic and weird but made her smile. That smile. It crinkled the corners of her eyes, and I felt something shift in my chest—not cardiac arrest, though I briefly considered that possibility too.

Rafayel's POV Pt 2: It was the cardio that did it. Thomas keeps telling me I need better cardiovascular health for "longevity in my career," which is his polite way of saying I'll drop dead before forty if I don't fix my lifestyle. So there I was, gasping like a fish truly out of water—which feels cosmically unfair given my supposed past life connections—when she asked if I was okay. I must have looked absolutely pathetic. Pale, sweating in that unattractive way, probably mouth-breathing like I'd never seen oxygen before.

Rafayel's POV Pt 1: The Treadmill Incident I almost died today. Okay, that's dramatic even for me, but Cutie—she actually talked to me. Me! After months of carefully orchestrated glances across the free weights section, of timing my water breaks to coincide with hers, of pretending I wasn't watching her reflection in the mirror while she did squats... she finally spoke to me.