#raphael delarue

       “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here. With you.”

Take your boy to a beach day.

He turned his head to the side and caught sight of pale hair and the delicate outline of slightly parted lips. Raphael's breath came soft and slow, still lost to the deepest parts of sleep. Quicksilver eyes softened as they always did when they beheld that face. Even while asleep, Raphael was stunning. He'd thought it from the moment he'd seen the other and hadn't ever been able to drink enough to forget it.

A hand raised ever so quietly to brush hair away from Raphael's cheek, tucking it behind the slightly pointed ear. How exactly he'd gotten here - to this moment, so stupidly in love - he couldn't quite understand. Everything had been tangled from the moment they'd met and no matter how far they'd gone in opposite directions, they'd found themselves right back where they started. 

In an Alley. By chance.

But perhaps it was not chance that had seen Raphael tripping over his boots. Perhaps it was not random that Cassian's face hadn't been hard to recall - because Raphael hadn't forgotten it either. Maybe there was a reason that they'd met again in the same place - maybe they hadn't gotten it right the first time. 

There were too many thoughts in his head for him to rightly sort through them, so he just let them flow, examined each one and let the next come. He didn't believe in Fate. He never had. But some things were too coincidental to be simply coincidence. At a certain point luck no longer factored into the equation.

At a certain point, he fell in love. Deeply. Irrevocably. And now here he was, entirely broken and remade by the man sleeping next to him, unable to look away.

"I love you."