oh sinnerman.

𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐝 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐲     ⸻    ❝ i sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind. ❞

Another day, another charity dinner. Rafael has been attending these functions for thirteen years, and they never change; it’s just an excuse for his high society peers to get together and congratulate each other for doing the bare minimum, while consuming as much champagne as possible. Donating one’s money to a worthy cause does serve a purpose, there’s no denying that, but... personally, he’d rather just get on with it - there’s really no need to devote an entire evening to standing around tossing each other off. Still, Rafael’s presence had been expected at the event tonight, and he has a reputation to uphold, even if he does wish he were anywhere else.

With the dinner finally over and the party in agreement to adjourn to the hotel bar for drinks, Rafael had taken the opportunity to quietly slip away from them, venturing into the private garden for the cigarette he’s been craving all evening. It’s ironic, really, that Meagan Finley hates smokers so much, when spending any significant amount of time around her while she’s standing on her soapbox is enough to drive even the most commited of non-smokers into the nearest packet of marlboros.

Letting his eyes slip close as he takes the first, grounding drag of his cigarette, Rafael sighs as the events of the day wash over him. It’s cold out here in only his dinner jacket, but he finds he doesn’t mind - it’s still better than spending another moment inside, deprived of nicotine and forced to listen to the inane prattle of somebody’s poor, drunk second wife, who really shouldn’t have been invited in the first place.

His brief window of respite is gone in an instant, the click of the door alerting him to somebody else’s presence in the space. Rafael opens his eyes, his expression instinctively flattening into his usual effortless neutrality as he observes the intruder: the latest in the Prime MInister’s line of loyal guard dogs.

“Oh dear, caught red-handed,” Rafael says, not seeming sorry in the slightest as he expels a smoky breath into the freezing night air. “Have you come to chastise me, Sergeant Harris?”

-

Phee felt the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly at the simplicity of the ‘yes’ compliment from her boss. It was no surprise to her that she enjoyed praise, even if it came as a one worded reply to an easy question she herself had set up, “I know I am, don’t you forget it.” As much as she needed to hear her brief stint away from her job(s) left a void no one else was able to fill, Phoebe could tell in certain ways around the office and the casino crowd that her presence had been missed. Even down to the way the filing cabinet had looked upon her return - even as frustrating as it had been to reorganise - the blonde felt as if it somehow solidified how necessary her position was in certain ways. 

Her blue eyes rolled as Rafael explained why the doorstop of a human would be staying at the office for far longer than either of them wanted him to, groaning in clear disapproval, “Luke’s father should have been sterile,” she commented softly, her eyes flicking through emails still as they discussed the other man. She couldn’t help but chuckle when he mentioned the specificity of Luke’s professional farewell, “We both know you see enough of me to not want to get that involved in the betting scene, don’t we?” As good as she was at her job as an assistant, Phoebe found she excelled even more in her job as in asset retrievals… and to a certain degree she enjoyed it more. Her brain was tickled by the nuance of her other job and the day job helped to centre her from the chaos each week day. 

“You’ve never had coffee from the machine in my apartment,” she replied, unable to stop herself from disagreeing with him for the sake of a playful argument, “Elite beans, elite machine – everything will taste like dirt in comparison.” Phoebe’s ego had been bruised by her arrest and incarceration, so something as simple as a thank you from Rafael caused her spirits to lift slightly, praise having always been the quick way to lift her spirit. She pushed herself off the corner of the desk and made her way over to sit in her favourite of the seats in Rafael’s office as she probed for more information, “Are we for or against said indiscretions?” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” Rafael answers, his voice carrying the faintest note of amusement as he goes back to his report.

“There’s certainly an argument to be made in sterility’s favour,” he agrees, “But without Luke, I would be having a significantly more difficult time keeping the front page of every major newspaper occupied with stories about the Duchess of Sussex or Prince Andrew - whichever one they happen to hate most at the time.” In so many words, he’s been working with Luke’s father to keep Malachi Liddell’s name out of the press - it won’t be forever, but he hopes it will make some small difference in the Jabberwocks’ favour. It’s the least he can do. The reminder of Phoebe’s other line of work inspires a quiet huff of air through his nose, which might be a laugh, or something close to it. “Fair point, well made. I rather like my assets, both financial and personal, where they are, so I suppose I’ll leave the betting to the degenerates at the Rose.”

“You’ve never invited me to your apartment,” Rafael counters, “And I, like Dracula, would be remiss to enter somebody’s home without their permission, regardless of any superior coffee facilities they may possess.” Making a quick, final note on the folder he’s been examining so thoroughly, he sets it aside and immediately picks up another in its place, frowning at the way its been organised.

.

She flasheda little smile of thanks his way as he swapped over to just using herfirst name, she wasn’t sure what it was but there was just somethingabout formalities that set her on edge. Probably a feeling like she was about toget a row or something. “I’d hate to think yous all went to such a bother forwee old me” It wasn’t that urgent, right? She hadn’t meant to make it soundthat way either. It could’ve waited for a bit as long as it got seen toin the end. “If that’s awrite with you” Respectfulness was an odd lookon her but she was trying.

Shetakes the cigarette when it’s offered, pulling her lighter from her pocketlighting up and taking a drag before answering his question. “No so much me goingto them but my team pointed me their way, said I needed to get folks to help metry an’ sort out my mess but I was no quite a fan of how they wanted to goabout it” A bit too much of playing the blame game for Eilidh’s taste. Puttingall of it on her and suggesting something akin to an apology tour. Itwasn’t right. Wasn’t her. “Like a know I party a bit much, but that’s my charmor something I dunno. That arrest though? No one ever listens to the fact thatthe charges were dropped. No it’s aw about the photos” At least she looked greatin those.

“And I would hate for you to consider yourself a bother,” Rafael replies. “If this meeting is successful, Eilidh, and we are to continue working together, I will make myself available to you whenever you have need of me. I am a busy man, it’s true, but I will find time for you, and you will be provided with the means to contact me directly.” It isn’t something he offers lightly - Rafael has a huge amount on his plate already, and he’s at the point in his career where he rarely takes on new clients himself, but his instincts are telling him that a connection with Eilidh O’Dea will serve its purpose some day. He doesn’t mind playing the long game - he’s a very patient man.

Once Eilidh’s cigarette is lit, Rafael lights his own, allowing her a moment to gather her thoughts. “Would you like to tell me about your previous experiences? You don’t have to, of course, but any conversation between us would be confidential, and it would perhaps give me a better idea of how best to proceed.” He suspects he already knows how to proceed, but part of that is letting Eilidh feel as though they are equals, as if she has some control. Whether or not that is actually true is... negligible.

When his eyes did hit her, it was worse than she imagined. He looked the same as he always did, her beautiful, stoic Rafael, but he knew.  Of course he knew, what did she expect? For Theo to keep her sins a secret? Of course the whole Jabberwock organization knew. They probably all discussed, mostly gossiped about, the entire situation. It made her wonder, what did Rafael have to say about it all?

Lilliana could not tell you of a time in her life before Rafael Gracey because he had always been apart of it in some form or another. From the time she was ten years old, it seemed like her gaze followed Rafael wherever he went. He then being mature seventeen year old boy, she kept her heart full through doodling nothings in journals, hearts with their initials, and tracing the words Lilliana Byrne-Gracey in her diary over and over to see how it looked on paper. While time went on, Lilliana never forgot about Rafael. Her school girl crush followed her into adolescence then womanhood. At twenty one, she decided to finally go for it with Rafael in the way she did best. Gentle touches, cheeky smiles, and flirtatious eyes.  She got bits and pieces of what she wanted from him, but never fully. She took the bits he gave her and clung to them. If friendship was all that he’d give her than she would take it. In the meanwhile, she tried to show him she was worthy of more. She did this through the way she looked, always tailored and perfect. In the way she spoke, always thoughtful and articulate. In the way she listened, deeply and intently. In the way she loved him, from a distance because she knew that’s what he wanted. In the end, she was never able to convince him. Even so, for a long while after, she still sometimes looked in her old diary, to see if she still liked the way Lilliana Byrne-Gracey was spelt.

This past year, she had thought of Rafael very little. She had finally moved on from him, from whatever didn’t happen between the two. Now, she stood before him because she was desperate, she needed some sort of knowledge of what was going on with Theo and the Jabberwocks. Some sort of intel. She would have saved herself the trip if he had answered when she called. All she had gotten was a disconnected number robot on the line.

“Rafael, please.”

Lilliana tried her best to wedge her foot in the opening, to give herself sometime, but any force of Rafael’s part would easily push her away.  “If you have ever cared about me at all,” she started in a rushed whisper, “You won’t turn me away.”

If Lilliana had gotten what she wanted out of Rafael all those years ago, they would have still been spending tonight together, but it would have gone so much differently. They’d be a couple, married by now, living in a house not a flat. They have a baby, it’d be a boy, she would have just put him to bed. She’d be jumping into the shower, Rafael would be following her in shortly. They’d go to bed to do it all over again tomorrow. They’d be happy. They’d be whole. They’d be together. But Lilliana didn’t get what she wanted. It seemed like she never did.

“Please, Rafael,” she said again. “I need my friend.”

The version of Lilliana that stands before him now is little more than a stranger, a changeling, at once achingly familiar and entirely divorced from the girl he’d known. There was a time, not so long ago, that Rafael would’ve observed the small differences in her appearance with the kind of discernment that only comes from the sincerest of affection. The lightness of her hair, how thin she seems, the smattering of freckles across her nose where she’s been touched by the Spanish sun - these are the things he would've noticed simply because he cared about her, and now they only serve as a reminder of all that has transpired, the distance between them that can never be reclaimed.

Lilliana catches her foot in the door, and Rafael immediately stops trying to pull it shut - he would never hurt her, even now. It seems the sentiment is not mutual, and though his expression doesn’t change, his blue eyes flash when she has the audacity to invoke his feelings for her in such a way. Does she truly believe he didn’t care about her?

He loved her. Cold as he may appear, Rafael isn’t in the business of denying his feelings, and though he had never allowed the thing between them to truly progress, that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. When Lilliana made her intentions towards him clear, he’d allowed himself to entertain the idea of their future together, of marrying her, of having a partner to share his life with, but... the timing wasn’t right. So he put his feelings away, tucked into some secret drawer inside himself to be brought out and looked at later - but there never was a later. There was always something else that demanded his attention, and then it was too late. She found somebody else.

“Your friend?” He repeats, the quirk of his eyebrow dismissive and incredulous. “Any friendship between us was concluded the moment you chose to abandon your family and pursue that girl. How little it must have meant to you, to have discarded it so easily.” In Rafael’s eyes, it’s the ultimate betrayal, an unforgivable stain on her character. What she did to the Liddells, to Theodore, to Weston, makes him sick to his stomach - family is everything to Rafael, and it seems clear to him now that their core values were never truly in alignment. It appears as though he may have dodged a bullet, so why isn’t he relieved? Why does it hurt? Why does he still love her?

None of this matters. He knows what he has to do and, god help him, he will do it, no matter the personal cost. “Coming to my door was a mistake, Lilliana. There is nothing for you here.”

The office is silent. The sounds of sin stop dead at the doorstep and even the ajar door manages to stifle the cacophony of the casino. Rafael appears at the threshold, a little less like Raphael at the gates and a little more like Charon at the river. 

“Looking for leads.” Theo bites out in reply. Right now it’s a print out of the casino’s security detail for the last few months. His eeking exhaustion means just about everyone oozes suspicion and Theodore is this close to a murder spree, to hell with any due process. Better safe than sorry, eh? He tosses a ledger of obsolete codes onto the desk and opens another. In the mahogany lacquer of his office, Theodore is no longer constrained by the shackles of his controlled demeanor. He de-muzzles around Rafael, allows himself to snap and snarl, bare his teeth, all he wants. He scoffs at his comrades’ assessment. A bitter sound with a razor’s edge. “If one more look-out comes up with some tin-foil hat conspiracy of what happened to Malachi, I’m going to blow my fucking brains out.” He mutters darkly, just loud enough for him to hear. Theo holds out a paper — for the other to take a look. “Dead end, yeah?” 

It’s as good an invitation as any. Rafael steps into Theodore’s office and quietly pulls the door back into place, as if he’d never passed through it at all. It’s a privilege to see the other man anything less than composed - Rafael understands this, because the same could easily be said of himself. They’re similar in a lot of ways, have experienced a number of the same milestones, but he doesn’t envy Theodore the position he finds himself in now. All Rafael wants is to make things as easy for him as he possibly can. “That would be a terrible waste,” he comments mildly, as close to joking as he ever really gets, “And it would ruin the rug.”

Approaching the desk, he takes the paper Theodore offers him, his forehead creasing in an almost imperceptible frown as he skims the contents of the look-out’s report. The other man’s assessment is correct, of course. “Yes,” Rafael says, nodding his agreement, “I wouldn’t trouble yourself for such a vague physical description. All of our people ought to know that they’re looking for a man with a burn on his hand - anything less is a waste of your time.”

“For my part, I’ve been working with my connections in the media to keep Malachi’s name out of the papers - at least until we have an acceptable story to tell them.” It won’t last forever. Journalists are like sharks, and they already have the scent of Malachi’s blood from his childhood disappearance. All Rafael can do is hold them off, provide the gang with the gift of time-enough to explain things on their own terms. Time the Jolly Rogers hadn’t had before the news of Eliza Crawford’s arrest had broken.

Having yet to take a seat, Rafael instead rests his hand on the back of the vacant chair, pausing for a moment as he considers how best to proceed. Honestly, is the only answer his mind supplies him - as if he isn’t always candid with Theodore in matters such as these. “I must confess, I didn’t come here today to speak about Malachi,” Rafael says at last, his expression grim. “Lilliana came to see me. Last night.” He feels no guilt over the admission - he knows he hasn’t done anything wrong - except for the fact that he’s adding something else to Theodore’s already overladen plate.

“Ye can just call me Eilidh, that works fine for me like” They’re the first words out of her mouth after she’d stepped into the office. Before any pleasantries or anything that would’ve been more proper, formalities extended to herself always sitting so off with her that she just couldn’t help it. she caught herself and what she supposed could’ve been seen as a lack of manners as she slipped into the seat he’d gestured to. “No but thank you, Mr Gracey, for making the time an aw that” Flashing a small smile as she tried to make herself comfortable, completely unsure of where to put her hands. “A mean if you’re offerin’ am no gonna say no to a cigarette”

“Eilidh, then,” Rafael agrees with a respectful incline of his head, not hesitating for a moment over the pronunciation of her given name. He’d done his research, of course, having no desire to look foolish or underprepared in front of a prospective client (or, indeed, anyone at all). "You really ought to thank my assistant - she’s rather adept at finding time where I was previously certain there was none,” he says, his voice carrying the faintest note of amusement. “And you can call me Rafael, if that would make you more comfortable.”

Phoebe wasn’t about to admit it to anyone except the annoying nagging voice in the back of her head, but she had missed working. Being banged up on a rather pitiful extortion charge for a few months had really cramped her style. As usual, she was thankful for the simple fact that she had money to solve the issues for her and with some strings pulled by her father, she’d gotten away with a few months in lock up, a ‘fine’ to pay back what she’d managed to get out of the stupid old man her claws had sunk into and a community service order. She had missed working her two day jobs, but she’d missed her other work more. Community service be damned, Phoebe wasn’t about to miss anything else moving forward without her. 

Slipping back into her work routine had been easy, taking the first week to trash as many emails she’d been needlessly CC’d in on and reassert her dominance in the administration and reception teams. The week just gone had been her first productive week back in society and Phoebe was ready to slip back into being her usual dramatic self… and of course that started with harassing Rafael over doing her actual work, “Are you calling me a good assistant?” she asked gently, a clear way of fishing for any compliment her senior would give her. Her eyes rolled softly and Phoebe couldn’t hold back the scoff at his thoughts on Luke, “Don’t tell me my brief holiday up north is the reason he’s still here. If he’s a glorified doorstop now, are we expecting him to improve?” 

The hand not stabilising her laptop on her knees ran through her blonde hair, shaking the soft curls into submission before chuckling softly, “It’s not even good coffee,” she warned softly. 

“Yes,” is Rafael’s simple response, given with no hint of irony. In all honesty, he had rather missed Phoebe while she’d been away serving her sentence - largely because he’s something of a control-freak, and hates changes that impede the productivity of his business. Phoebe knows all of his idiosyncrasies by now, and though he is a patient man, trying to explain the way he likes things to a glorified receptionist who seemed genuinely afraid of him quickly grew tiresome. Phoebe isn’t afraid of him, and that is why she continues to hold the desk right outside his office, even after a term in prison. He likes having her around.

He shakes his head at her comment about Luke. “There’s a way these things have to be managed, Phoebe,” Rafael says, “It’s about maintaining our relationships with the right people - Luke’s father is an important man, and there’s no telling when an important man might become the ace up your sleeve, so to speak.” Especially when said man is in the newspaper game, and you have a missing person to keep out of the headlines. “In any case, I have a strange feeling that opportunity will come knocking for our professional doorstop soon enough. If I were a betting man, I suppose I’d say sometime in the next... forty-six days, twenty-two hours and sixteen minutes, even.” Not that he's counting.

“I’m starting to suspect there’s no such thing as good coffee,” Rafael replies, taking the first painful sip of his americano. It’s too hot, which means the beans are burnt, and any potential the beverage may have once had has gone up in smoke. “But thank you for going out all the same. Now, if you're going to stay in here, would you kindly relocate yourself to one of the many available chairs in the room? You're sitting on top of the PI photographs of Mister Wellington in flagrante.”

𝐟𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐧

a well-made suit is the armour of the modern gentleman. it’s a lesson rafael learned as a young man, one who sought to commandeer the respect of those both older and more experienced than himself, knowing he would have to look the part in order for anybody to take him seriously. a man’s clothing is as much an expression of his values than anything else, and rafael’s wardrobe paints a picture of reliability, solemnity and attention to detail.

you will find no obvious labels or logos on any of rafael’s clothing - the ostentatious display of one’s wealth is something better left to a different class of person. he prefers classic, clean silhouettes in dark, tasteful colours, and has a generalised dislike for loud patterns.

in his down-time (what little he has), his taste in clothes only relaxes incrementally. in these rare instances, rafael dresses sensibly for the british weather, favouring jumpers made of fine wool, slacks, and boots instead of his usual oxfords. he hasn’t owned a pair of jeans since he was a teenager.