#between Magritte and Raf | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

painted-bees · 11 months ago

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[cw: explicit content🔞]

March 18th 2009

The top floor balcony of the humble recording studio overlooked a small backroad. It was just high enough to grant a view over the roofs of surrounding buildings, out towards the mountains, across the harbour. But thick cloud cover and the darkness of night collaborated to hide the Rockies from sight this evening. Instead, Raf’s gaze washed impassively over the array of city lights that extended across the harbour and disappeared into the distant North Vancouver neighbourhoods. He took a sip from the bottle of water in his hand and invited the evening chill to sober him up.

Behind him, the din of party revelry outcompeted the exterior ambiance of late-night city traffic. Hi-Note wasn’t usually so lively this close to midnight. Its business hours only ran until 8pm at the latest, and, save for the evenings when he used to jam here with Magritte, Raf usually had the place vacated and locked up within that same hour.

Today was a special occasion. It was the junior technician, Herbie’s, birthday. Since he had little where else to celebrate, Nels had hosted a surprise party for him in the studio. It wasn’t the first birthday Herb had celebrated in Vancouver, but it was the first birthday following a rather heartbreaking split with his once-steady girlfriend. The usually jovial lad had been, understandably, a lot more quietly introspective over the past few months. Once Nels had gained the knowledge that Herb had no big, exciting birthday plans this year, the rest was inevitable.

Raf had driven to work, and wholly planned to drive back home. Towards that end, he enjoyed his drink and smoke early, cut himself off early, and was now finally feeling clear minded enough to collect Margie and call it a night. Intending to do exactly that, Raf turned towards the sliding door of the balcony, downing his last gulp of water. And–discovered that Margie had found him first.

A smug grin and a playful wave preceded her sliding open the door. She stepped out onto the balcony, pulling the door shut behind her. “Ey, nice hiding spot, Ephrem!” She rubbed her hands together, watching her breath hang in the chilly air as she approached him.

Raf relented to leaning back against the balcony railing as Magritte dropped her elbows on it, beside him. “I was just about to go in and get you.”

She sighed and looked out across the harbour. “Past your bedtime?”

“Nah, the party’s winding down anyway. But I kinda wish I found you out here sooner. This view is really nice.” She sighed wistfully. “Glittery.”

He provided a self-depreciating smirk. You could set your watch to Raf’s night time routine and, typically, if he wasn’t in bed between eleven and eleven-thirty, he’d be grumpy if there wasn’t a good reason for it. A birthday, he supposed, was as good a reason as any.

“If you’re not ready to head home yet…” He allowed his easy capitulation to hang unspoken in the space between them.

Raf made no motion to herd her back inside. Instead, he placed his empty water bottle down by his feet and then settled further against the railing. He wasn’t worried about waiting much longer out here. Magritte had a low tolerance for cold, and the chilly March breeze would chase her back inside within a reasonable amount of time. Still, he didn’t want to give her the sense he was in any kind of hurry. Genuinely, he wasn’t.

“Yanno, this is the weirdest place I’ve ever worked at.” Magritte furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “Just a bunch of guys being pals, but also…not weird about it. And stuff gets done. And I–” She turned to look at him, “I help with that. Like, actually!” She turned her back to the landscape, electing to mirror Raf’s posture. “Okay, this sounds stupid but like…I’ve never felt good at a job before. Not just that, I’ve been proactive? I get to do stuff before someone has to ask me to do it? And, I do it properly? Wild. Nels even likes me!” She beamed up at him. “He called me ‘Supergirl’ today after hearing the vocal mixing I did for Cybele Fray.”

“Yeah…” Magritte pressed her palms against her cheeks and smooshed her face in a pensive gesture that wasn’t intended to look as silly as it did. “I’m worried I’ll lose interest and pitter out eventually. But until then, I’ll just enjoy feeling useful. And smart.”

Raf favoured her with a smirk, and wrinkled his brow in substitute for a shewed shrug. “Nels loved you the minute he saw you. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first job you feel competent at is the first job that has you working with audio and such. You’re doing what you like doing.”

And, Raf thought, employed by someone who actually knows how to manage you.

It’s true that Hi-Note made excellent use of Margie’s savant-like skills, but not all of it had been absolutely enthralling to her. A bored Margie was difficult to keep on task, but somehow Nels had managed to navigate her ‘on again, off again’ pattern of productivity. Largely, Raf noticed that Nels cycled her off monotonous tasks before they had a chance to bore her–no matter their state of completion. And then, he’d put her back on it as soon as she looked ready to smooth her brain on something simple and repetitive again. Raf had taken that observation–and applied it at home. Very quickly, he helped her build a habit of taking just one dish out of the sink, washing it, and putting it away, any time she found herself in the kitchen during a moment of aimless roving. Not always, mind you…but often enough. One thing at a time, and the order of it doesn’t matter.

Raf considered whether or not he ought to affirm to her for the umpteenth time that she was one of the most brilliant people he had ever met. But the window of opportunity closed when she continued talking.

“Life’s been really…easy this year, so far. Like, the easiest it’s ever been. I like it. A lot.” She turned her eyes up to him with an unspoken question that he couldn’t quite read.

“Same.”

“Really?” Her questioning gaze pressed further.

Raf measured her for a moment.

Yet–there she was.

Until she showed up, he had been living alone in a two bedroom, downtown apartment; a feat of luxury by Vancouver standards. He’d have described it as a relatively ‘small’ space; each room was big enough to fit a bed, a dresser, a night stand, and little else. But, two bedrooms were still two bedrooms. Near Yaletown, no less. Truth be told, the income he was making at Hi-Note would not have been enough to afford it, if he had to rely on it alone. But he had been rather uncompromising about having a spare room for guests–until Magritte moved in. Now, that room was hers; guests be damned.

It was a bit strange to think about. Generally, Raf preferred being alone. He found that living with anyone else always came with more stress than it was worth; whether it was with a steady romantic partner, or a family member. He was fairly certain that he’d never lend himself to the horrors of rooming with a friend who barely knew him. The very idea had felt like a violation against the sanctity of his home–the one place he could withdraw and hide into when he needed the peace and quiet to sort himself out. He didn’t trust family nor lovers to respect his space when he most needed it. A roommate as impersonal as a friend would have been much worse, and for absolutely nothing.

He had first invited Magritte to crash at his place on an impulse. Though he feared the precedent it may have set, she didn’t overstay her welcome. In fact, she had barely stayed at all. That hadn’t surprised him nearly as much as his resulting disappointment had. And so, he invited her again. And again. And again. And each time, he confirmed for himself that she was simply…good company. He slept easier on the nights she occupied the guest room. His mood each morning felt buoyed by her presence, even before she emerged to greet him in the kitchen. He just liked talking to her. The baseline of her mood seemed to always be several levels more pleasant than his own, and the way she carried her joviality made it infectious, not grating. Even on the mornings when she had shuffled into the kitchen muttering a preemptive apology for her irritable mood, she had been sweet about it.

Magritte did something to his brain chemicals that medications just couldn’t compete with. But what that was exactly, he had no god damn clue. The only other thing he could think of that would come close to eliciting the same kind of response from him–might have been something like…having a box of fluffy kittens gently dumped on him. Maybe that’s what she was to him; a box of sweet, soft, wobbly kittens–personified. It would certainly explain the cuteness-aggression she often provoked; that overwhelming desire to just scrunch her up into a little ball and tear her apart with his teeth…affectionately.

Oftenly, so did she.

Now she had her own key to the apartment and, over the winter, the guest bedroom had slowly been transformed into her disorderly, war-torn little nest. A true nightmare to behold for all the clutter and chaos; clothing haphazardly strewn across every inch of floor, and a plethora of dirty cups and plates on–and around–the nightstand by her bed.

Strangely, it didn’t bother him. She had warned him of her negligent cleanliness habits well in advance. In fact, she had initially cited it as her reason for not wanting to overstay at his place. In response, he had given her the room to do with as she pleased–on the sole condition that she kept the door closed and ensured her mess never breached containment. If he didn’t like it, he simply didn’t have to look at it. Aside from leaving dishes in the sink (and occasionally on the living room coffee table), Magritte had been pretty good at maintaining her end of the bargain. By and large, her messes stayed confined to her room.

When it came to the matter of Raf coveting his peace and quiet, Magritte had proven to be no trouble at all. That was remarkable, considering how loud she was in almost everything she did. But, most evenings after work, she straight up ignored him. She spent her time holed up in her bedroom, playing music and browsing the internet. Raf had once expressed appreciation for Margie’s unobtrusiveness–and was met with a mixture of disbelief and tremendous relief from her. Apparently, most others hadn’t found the same kind of comfort he did in a roommate that happily kept to themselves. She had grown accustomed to worrying that her ‘shut-in’ behaviour was excessive and inconsiderate, because if someone didn’t come and pull her away from her hobbies, she was liable to get lost in her solitary activities for hours. For Raf’s part, he was just content knowing she was there if he felt in need of company, but rarely did he feel compelled to call upon her for it. He liked her little routine of being present in the mornings, joining him for lunch, winding down with him for an hour after work, and then emerging once more for dinner before they both disappeared to their respective corners of the apartment for the rest of the evening–until bedtime.

While Magritte spent the days in her room, she developed a habit of spending most of her nights in his bed. He accepted the blame for that. Generally preferring to sleep in cooler temperatures, he neglected to consider that his love for a brisk chill wasn’t universally shared. To his quiet horror, he learned one morning that Margie’s feet were often corpse cold. The nail beds on her toes would turn purple from poor circulation, she’d get sensitive little blisters under the skin, and the ache of being chilled through the bone would keep her awake at night. Genuinely, the bones in her feet were colder than the ambient temperature. He wouldn’t have thought it possible if he hadn’t felt the impossible iciness of her skin with his own hands.

She had laughed, telling him that this was just how things always were for her during the winter months. It’s why she so greatly preferred the sweltering heat of summer. And that’s when Raf offered to let her cosy up in his bed. He always felt too warm at night, and she had literal ice blocks for feet. The solution seemed pretty obvious to him.

And so, she had spent most of the winter nights with her feet pressed against his back, tucked behind his knees, or sandwiched between his legs. That same arrangement led Raf to discover that sleep came easy when he had something–or someone–to curl his arms around at night. And just like that, over the course of three short months, Magritte had nearly extinguished his reluctant dependence on sleeping medication.

As far as roommates were concerned, Magritte was…an unusual one. If he had tried to explain any of the peculiar details about their mutual arrangements to literally anyone else, he knew what it all sounded like. He had considered that maybe he was attracted to Margie; head-over heels in love with her. The problem was, he had been in love before. It made him stupid. And it made him unmanageably paranoid. Weird elation tangled with exhausting, antagonising suspicion; the highest highs and lowest lows. Margie didn’t make him stupid nor particularly paranoid. In fact, he had been able to navigate her with a level of clear-minded ease that was somewhat unusual to him. Perhaps it was in the way she spoke plainly and honestly with him. Despite how hard he looked for it, there was never any hidden nuance to the things Magritte said, wanted, or felt.

Paranoia still sunk its hooks into him the same way he had grown to expect it–but a different part of him, a voice of reason that he had been working hard to cultivate, granted him a very small, very rare sense of satisfaction when he turned it to Margie’s defence. So he cared for her, at the very least. But she didn’t burden him with the dizzying gauntlet of infatuation. He wasn’t in love with her.

But she was easy to be with. And, under her influence, life had felt much kinder.

“Yeah, really.”

Raf watched relief wash over Margie’s features, and she let out a little chuckle. “Oh, good. ‘Cus, yanno…usually, if I’m having a good time, it’s ‘cus someone else is running themselves ragged for it. And I don’t want you to–”

“I promised I’d tell you if things ever started feeling off,” Raf cut in. “It’s been weird, but not off-putting. I’ve liked it, so far.”

Her eyes held him with an expression he couldn’t quite identify, something close to tearful. But there was a delighted, grateful reverence in her gaze that wounded him in a peculiar way. He felt compelled to soothe it.

“Hey.” Impassively, he pushed himself off the balcony railing to stand and turn towards her. “Can I try something?”

Her mouth twitched upward in a quizzical smirk. “What?” Raf tilted his head to one side, and leaned in just enough to spur a response from her, “Oh-! Yeah? Yeah!? Ok, yes!”

He kissed her.

If he liked it? If it made him uneasy? If it did anything for him, at all?

It was a soft, gentle, fleeting little gesture; he didn’t hold it for more than a second. It was just a taste, to see–

To see what?

He lingered as he considered it, and just barely had time to register the broad grin on Magritte’s face before he felt her warm hands cup his jaw. She pulled him into another, far more impassioned kiss of her own–and he met her lips with the energy to match.

As her fingers snaked around the back of his neck, he felt his hair raise beneath her touch. He leaned into her more bodily, bracing against the railing with a firm, steadying grasp. He hadn’t intended anything more than a chaste little peck, but he felt Margie’s soft lips part to invite his tongue, and was loath to leave her wanting. Her fingers ran up the back of his head, combing through his hair, and then curled back down to tenderly caress behind his ears.

A thrill of warmth originating from her hands shivered through his body–to his groin. It coaxed a surprised purr out of his throat, and he caught it in his mouth before turning into a snort through his nose. He broke the kiss, pulling away from Magritte’s grasp to drop his forearms onto the cold balcony railing beside her, curling over himself to rest his forehead atop them.

There was a moment of silence as Raf found himself more thankful than ever for the chill evening breeze. And then Margie’s tentative voice met his ear.

“S-sorry. I got…I got a little carried away.”

Raf reluctantly lifted his head to shoot her a self-deprecating smile. “Not just you.”

He watched her brow furrow with concerned bewilderment for a brief moment before the combination of details clicked in her mind.

“Oh-!” Her eyes grew wide with mischievous delight, “I gave you a boner!” The exclamation came as hushed as she could manage, but her triumphant grin spoke volumes.

He shut his eyes in a beleaguered wince. “Don’t sound so pleased.” He opened them again when he felt her lean against his arm.

She tilted her head to catch his gaze, and wore a cheeky smile. “We can go home and do something about it, if you want.”

Hold on, now. “Nnn…”

Well, maybe?

He cast her an incredulous look.

“Or not!” She pulled back with an exaggerated shrug. “I know people get weird about that kinda thing–or–maybe I’m weird about it. I dunno, I’ve never been bothered by, uh…” The sentence dissolved into a weak chuckle, and her cheeks flushed pink under the faint, warm lighting that emanated from within the studio.

Raf had never been one for casual flings. Some manner of romantic attachment had always been prerequisite before the idea of sex could carry any appeal to him at all. But then again, he never had a friend as openly straightforward as Margie before. She was as uncomplicated as they came, and Raf recklessly wondered if that would at all be compromised by taking up the offer she had just presented to him. It felt irresponsible to even consider it, but…

Your stupid fingers in my hair got me feeling some kind of way.

Embarrassing, how easily he had been turned on. But then again, it had been a fair few years since anyone had touched him like that and, woe betide him, a man was still a man after all.

It was wrong about Margie. And if it wasn’t, well.

And then there was the matter of Margie’s confidence. He liked the kiss–he obviously liked the kiss. Her ensuing proposition wasn’t a wholly unwelcome one, either. But, for someone who claimed she wasn't able to read between the lines with people, she was an expert adept at reading far too much into anything that could be perceived as a rejection. She had escalated things, but he had started it–and he didn’t want her to feel shame for reciprocating the way she had. The awful, feral part of his brain that he loathed screamed like a banshee; the usual chorus about ulterior motives and emotional manipulation. It was wrong, of course. It was always wrong.

Except for when it wasn’t.

If I die, I die. Fuck.

“Sure, let's try it on.”

Margie stared up at him with those wide, blue eyes, but her brow was tense with uncertainty. “Really?”

He provided a small shrug. “We already share a bed. This’ll just be another weird thing we do in our growing list of weird things. Maybe we’ll change our mind on the way home. But at the very least, I wouldn’t mind another kiss or few.” To illustrate his point, he leaned in and pressed his lips sweetly against her forehead.

When he pulled away, Margie stood up straight and bounced on her heels, holding her face in her hands. “Okay, okay! Yeah!” She darted towards the door and slid it open. “I’ll go get my coat, and–!”

She stopped short of scurrying inside, and turned to ensnare him in a tight little hug. Raf didn’t have time to close his arms around her in response before she broke away from him again to scamper down the hall. He stared after her for a bewildered moment as she disappeared around the corner, towards the stairs.

By the time he caught up with her again, she was already downstairs saying her farewells to the Hi-Note crew. She wrapped Herb up in an energetic hug that he happily reciprocated.

A large hand clapped Raf on the back before a familiar voice behind him asked, “Everything good?”

He turned to see Nels favouring him with a warm smile.

“Yeah, I was just…” He pointed a loose finger towards the ceiling, “taking a moment.”

Of everyone in the room, Nels was the only person who knew about Raf’s disorders. He was the first glimpse Raf ever had of what a ‘proper’ father was supposed to look like. The man was raising three daughters at home and brought that same air of patient, fatherly responsibility into the office with him each day. Raf, in particular, had been adopted by him as a kind of nephew. Nels was a best friend to his Uncle Bill, and Bill trusted him to help Raf settle into a good circle of friends and acquaintances. Raf had been reluctant to grow familiar with anyone who wasn’t his Uncle, but with a significant amount of encouragement from both his Uncle and his therapist, Raf stuck it out with Hi-Note through the several occasions he had been tempted to quit on a bad vibe, misinterpreted comment, or fearful hunch. So far, it had been working out favourably for him. The pay wasn’t great, but Raf didn’t need the income of a steady job. Rather, his therapist had been right to say that getting out of the house and expanding his ‘library of positive experiences’ was much better for his health than isolating himself at home, rotting under the grimey weight of his paranoid assumptions and suspicions.

“You got a piece of cake, right?” Nels fished for an excuse to keep Raf around.

“Nah, Margie scarfed down enough for both of us.”

Reeling back with a dissatisfied but good humoured growl, Nels insisted, “Oh, you gotta try this one. The icing is–”

“Too sweet,” Raf cut in with a defusing laugh. “I had a bite. It’s good, but a taste was plenty.”

“It’s already midnight,” Margie’s voice interjected, “If Raf had it his way, he’d have been in bed an hour ago. Cake ain’t gonna fix that.”

“Bah!” Nels waved them both off, defeated. “Fine, go. Get out of my building, you kids don’t know how to have fun anymore.”

“Fun? In this economy?” Margie clutched imaginary pearls before her expression of mock dismay dissolved into a grin and she opened her arms for a parting hug.

Nels swooped down to envelop her, and for a moment his broad body fully eclipsed her from Raf’s view. “Drive safe, be good. See you on Monday.” He pulled away from Margie, turning his gaze to make sure the sentiment landed with Raf as well.

Raf provided a lopsided smirk and a gesture that was something between a wave and a salute. A chorus of goodbyes followed him and Margie out the front doors of Hi-Note studio, and Margie waved back over Raf’s shoulder until the doors closed behind them.

“I like them,” she said with a happy sigh.

“Yeah.” Raf led the way to his little, dark blue sedan parked against the street curb and watched her shuffle gleefully towards the passenger side. “They like you, too.”

Hard not to.

He got into the car and turned on the engine.

–

The ride home was tricky for Magritte as she tried hard to temper her expectations. Raf was a skittish person by nature, and she had to be very careful about not overwhelming him or applying too much pressure with her eager enthusiasm. Any time he felt like he had put himself into a corner by overpromising or obligating himself too irrevocably to something, his instinct was to escape it–no matter what ‘it’ was. But there was nothing irrevocable nor obligatory about her offer to sleep with him tonight. Not ‘sleep’ in the literal sense of the word, for once. No, if he let her, she was going to suck his spirit out through his dick and fuck him into the ground. Good god, she had been wanting this for months.

But Raf, being Raf, was liable to change his mind at the very last minute. And if he did, she wasn’t going to take it personally. She wasn’t. Nor would she be upset, nor disappointed, nor in any way disparaging about it. The most she could do was make sure not to push the topic too eagerly on the way home, and to avoid offering up any obstacles that might serve to dissuade him.

…Which made it very difficult for her to bring up one particular topic of concern before they had passed by the last 7/11 and it was too late.

“I guess, um…Should we pick up condoms? I can run in and get them.”

She held her breath as she watched him consider the question for a moment.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t a matter of protecting against diseases. They both had a clean bill of health, and came to know that about each other when she experienced a rare episode of anxiety regarding the last guy she had stayed with. In her weird panic, she greatly overshared a plethora of details to Raf. He had been remarkably cool about it, and walked her through the entire process of getting tested–something he was no recent stranger to.

Rather, she didn’t want to tempt fate on getting knocked-up; not when life was just starting to become enjoyable again. The idea of pregnancy was a lovecraftian horror to her, and the stress of dealing with something like that to any extent just wasn’t worth the gamble. She was on the pill, yes…but even that wasn’t guaranteed protection. And, with how often she forgot to take it, she wasn’t sure it protected her at all.

“I mean…” Raf began, hesitantly.

Magritte spared him the trouble. “Or not, if it’s a pain in the ass.” She shrugged with a disarming little laugh. “It’s a bit out of the–”

Raf cut her off. “No, it’s fine, we absolutely can. It’s just that I’m–” Without taking his eyes off the road he produced a scissor-snipping motion with his fingers.

Margie stared for a bewildered moment before her brain picked it up. “Wait, what? Really? Why?” She had leaned towards him with that last question before realising it was probably a shitty thing to ask.

But, if it bothered Raf, he showed no sign of it. “I don’t want kids, and I had…an unpredictable ex.”

“Oh!” Margie had the good sense not to press him further, and leaned back into her seat. She couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Well, lucky me.”

She delighted in the humoured snort she coaxed from him. His easy smile and relaxed posture assured her that he wasn’t grappling with any second thoughts.

That won a sidelong glance from him. “So..?”

“Straight home, garçon!” She chopped one hand into the palm of the other with mock urgency. “The minutes are precious!”

And indeed, though he had kept his hands to himself for much of the ride home, and in the elevator up to his apartment, Magritte found herself pressed between his body and the door to his flat as he warmed her with a voraciously weighty kiss. She received it gratefully. The heat of him, the molten softness of his lips, the scruffy, tickling hairs of his chin–

She hadn’t realised that his free hand–the one not curled amorously around her body–had been busy unlocking the door. She’d have staggered backwards when it opened, had Raf not preemptively braced her with the arm that held her.

He broke the kiss in order to assure that their half-stumble into the apartment didn’t devolve into a full stumble. But still, he kept a steadying arm around her, and she rewarded the preservation of closeness by pressing a string of kisses down his neck and towards his collarbone. Her hands had found their way beneath both his jacket and t-shirt, the flesh of his torso hot against her forearms and fingertips.

She heard the door close shut behind them, and the familiar sound of the keys dropping onto the counter before the hand that had been holding them cupped the side of her head. She felt his lips press against the opposite temple.

She had been able to kick off her shabby, loose-fitting boots without pause, but she reluctantly peeled herself away from Raf in case he wanted to take his sneakers off with a little more care. And, perhaps…to give him some space to think. Taking the opportunity to remove her jacket, she chucked it haphazardly across the couch.

Raf was measuring her with a gaze when she turned back towards him.

“Second thoughts?” Her smirk carried a cheeky confidence that worked hard to cover the self-conscious tone in her voice.

“No.” His bewildered inflection and raised eyebrows explained plenty; he had expected to turn against the idea by now.

“It’s a bit impulsive,” Magritte conceded.

Raf provided a slow nod, “It is…”

“I’d really like it, though.”

“I want you to.” He seemed to chew on that for a moment, as though it had answered something for him.

There was an awkward standoff while neither of them moved, and in that brief moment, Magritte deeply regretted putting the space between them. Finally, Raf approached her and placed a kiss onto her forehead while his hands gently teased the elastic tie out of her nest of auburn curls. She wrapped her palms around the back of his neck as she felt her hair fall loose from the messy bun it had been wrangled into.

“Promise me this won’t fuck anything up.” His voice was low and quiet in her ear. The pleading tone was only amplified by the lingering manner in which his cheek rested against the side of her head. His warm breath against her slightly chilled skin inspired goosebumps.

She pulled back to look him squarely in the eyes. This was far from being her first tryst with a friend, and she knew herself well in this regard. “I promise it won’t! Not for me, but…” She offered an apologetic half-smile. “I can’t promise it won’t change things for you; I don’t control how you react. So, really. Really, really, really–if you’re not sure, then I’d rather…not. I like things the way they are. I like doing things with you. To me, this is just another thing I like doing that I think would be really fun to do with you. Not at the expense of anything else, though.”

He searched her features with a scrutinising stare, and she didn’t shy away from it.

“Nothing changes,” He asserted, “we’re just friends.”

“Good friends,” she offered back with an impudent grin.

He mirrored her expression with a scoff and a lopsided smirk of his own. “The friendsiest friends.”

“But, friends just the same.”

Her conviction was rewarded with another kiss, his lips melting against hers as she felt the tension in his muscles evaporate through a sigh. Her hands glided up his arms, over his shoulders, and around to the back of his neck. As she gently combed her fingernails through his hair, she remembered that delightful little noise she had coaxed out of him on the balcony. What had done it? Was it the kiss? Or…

Her fingers traced the contours of his scalp and, as she curled them towards her palm, they lightly caressed the back of his ears. Her thumbs smoothed over the muscles of his jaw, but before she completed the gesture, he broke away from her.

“Alright, friend.” He curled his upper lip to flash teeth at her in a playful snarl. “Get your lily white ass into the bedroom before the last brain cell navigating my good manners is starved of oxygen.” He turned her toward the hall, and a pat of his hand against her butt provided her with all the motivation she needed to oblige his request.

She whisked herself down the hall into his room, and left the door just slightly ajar for him. She knew he wasn’t going to follow her right away. He had his evening habits to tend to; checking the door, setting the thermostat, turning out the lights, and taking his meds with a tall glass of water. It would have been silly of her to think that the promise of tits and ass would throw him off routine.

Magritte took the opportunity to shed her clothes, throwing off her shirt and wiggling out of her tight tank top–a personal compromise for her disdain for bras. She shimmied out of her denim shorts and leggings both in the same gesture. Her underwear, though, was of a cute, boyish design and she decided she’d give Raf the satisfaction of peeling them off her, if he so wished to.

Wait, just the underwear? Is that weird? She considered putting the tank top back on, and failed to gather the motivation for it. And so, she settled upon a better idea. Grabbing one of his t-shirts out of the second drawer of his dresser, she pulled it on, over her head. Hell yeah, guys love this shit.

No sooner had she put on his shirt than he walked in to see her wearing it. She turned to him with a sheepish grin, tugging the bottom hem over her thighs.

Taking a sip from the glass of water in his hand, Raf clocked the shirt and favoured her with a humoured hum. “Comfy?”

She provided a coy nod, and, before she could do much else, he abandoned his glass on the top of the dresser to close the distance between them. His arms caught her up into more of a ‘scrunch’ than a proper hug, and he came down on her with a frustrated growl, burying his entire face into the side of her neck with the sound of exaggerated chomping. The combination of lightly grazing teeth and his rough chin against her skin elicited a startled yelp from her before sending her into a fit of uncontrolled giggles as she was effortlessly bowled over onto the bed.

“I changed my mind.” He snarled, “I’m gonna eat you, instead. Hungry, horny, it’s all the same.”

“It’s not, though!” Her words were barely intelligible, warbling with laughter.

As she struggled in vain to wedge a hand between the soft flesh of her throat and his coarse goatee, his mock gnashing softened into playful kisses. Regaining her composure and chasing away her giggles by clearing her throat, she snaked her hands beneath his shirt.

“I’m worth more to you undevoured, I promise.”

“Remains to be seen,” Raf muttered into the hollow beneath her ear.

“Well…let's see.”

Her thumbs smoothed over the trail of body hair from belt line to belly button, before her palms passed broadly over the front of his stomach, around his sides, and up his back. Digging her fingers into his shoulder blades, she tilted her chin back and drew in a long breath as his lips travelled down her neck, towards her collar bone.

Distracted by the pleasant textures of his mouth, Magritte’s attention hadn’t followed his travelling hands–until she felt the heel of his palm press broadly against her clit through the fabric of her underwear. Instinctively, her thighs tightened around him, and her hands abandoned their near-completed task of unbuttoning his jeans; grasping the waistline instead. She coiled into his touch as his palm lifted away to drag his fingertips lightly up, towards the top hem of her panties. From there, they slipped easily under the close-hugging fabric to sink into the warm folds between her legs.

Raf’s firm, steadying grasp around her ribcage slid up to appreciate the soft, pliable curves of her breasts hidden beneath the fabric of her shirt. His fingers teased the hardened nipples while she manoeuvred her lower body beneath him. She freed her legs out from under his lap so that her thighs hugged around his hips and, in swift order, she ghosted her hands down to find his belt. As she worked to unbuckle it, his mouth caught hers. His tongue teased her lips apart and she welcomed it with her own.

His kisses had a soft, buttery quality reminiscent of a girl she once loved, and it was a feeling she treasured. His lips, smooth and warm, melted against the tense contours of hers in a sensasion she could only describe as ‘creamy and comforting’.

She felt his fingers tease her apart, and they traced the contours of her sex with gentle confidence, exploring her geography. Though his mouth worked fervently against her lips, throat, and collar bone, his touch between her legs was restrained and methodical. She had expected him to plunge knuckle deep into the first hole he found–as men in her experience were typically inclined to. But his fingers only teased her entrance before gliding back up her moistened crease to find–

“Oh-!” Margie flinched as a shock jolted her body. Not painfully, but in a manner comparable to having an icecube suddenly pressed against her, unexpected.

Raf stilled the moment she had tensed.

“Sensitive.” His observation was murmured into the crook of her neck before he purred more audibly into her ear, “Sorry, love.”

She paused. His fingers had begun to work firm, broad circles around her clit in a way that, at first, didn’t feel like it was doing anything special for her. But quickly, she felt a building pressure begin to heat her core.

Sensitive?

She wasn’t, though. In the past, complaints had been made that she took too long to get off. Her previous fling had joked that only a jackhammer could provide the adequate stimulation she needed. When it came to sex, she knew herself as a veritable puzzle box of distractibility and dulled senses. It meant excellent stamina and fun sensations, but a proper orgasm delivered in a timely manner required her own effort more than the effort of her partner.

“No, no,” she began placatingly, “you didn’t–”

That same heat rose up to prickle her chest and cheeks. Margie pressed her mouth against the top of his shoulder to muffle a reverent, “Motherfucker.”

That was not the appropriate choice of words to praise him with, but that’s what forced its way out of her throat. He had found that sweet spot almost as easily as she might have found it herself, which led her to the realisation that she had been robbed–robbed–by previous lovers. What the everloving fuck.

She couldn’t help but let out a confounded little chuckle into the fabric of his shirt, and he responded with an amused little “Mmh.”

Without even meaning to, she had tensed her grip around him. Her arms held him tight, with handfuls of his shirt balled into her fists. Her legs had constricted around his waist and the leverage they provided allowed for the needy manner in which her hips writhed to meet his firm and steady touch. It was a greedy moment while she abandoned her attempts at reciprocation, intent on appreciating the way Raf kneaded her between his fingers. Her long drawn sighs of pleasure slowly devolved into a breathy panting–which fell into near perfect synchrony with his purposeful, hastening strokes between her thighs.

If she had been paying attention to her breathing, if she had noticed when her voice began releasing a single, ragged note every few breaths, she might have asked for pause. But, she hadn’t been paying attention to anything other than the growing warmth between her legs and the tense swell of pressure gathering in the very pit of her stomach. And it grew, hotter and hotter, with each purposeful, dexterous stroke of his fingers. Oh–she was sensitive, now. Between her thighs, she could feel every small vibration that met her. The way his fingers worked pleased not just her clit, but the rest of her aroused sex as well. Every small movement he pressed into her, she felt across the entire organ. Her thighs closed around his waist as she lifted her hips to find her pleasure against his fingertips. She felt the muscles of her stomach draw tight.

A sharp gasp preceded a short, trembling “Ah-!” that escaped with her breath. All that tension, that gathering pressure, broke like a wave through her body. It had built up so quickly that the orgasm took her by complete surprise, and she writhed against Raf’s fingers as she rode it out; her face buried into the crook of his neck, eyes shut tightly.

She didn’t relax her body nor lift her head as the ripples of pleasure subsided, but she felt Raf’s fingers withdraw from her.

“Hey.” Raf’s voice crooned in her ear, and his hands on her waist pressed her lightly back, coaxing her to release him from the death-grip she held him in.

Reluctantly, she unfurled from him, uncoiling her arms, and dropping her knees to hang off his outer thighs. The rough texture of denim against the back of her calves reminded her that he still had his pants on. She came, and he was still wearing pants.

She hazarded a sheepish glance up towards his face, and was met with a modestly small smile, made very smug by the upward arch of his eyebrows.

“That’s what you get for the balcony boner, you little shit.”

Raf lifted himself off her, but she grabbed the front of his shirt with flustered defiance. “We’re not done!”

“You sure?” His incredulity wasn’t the least bit sincere. “Because it seemed to me like you–”

“No!” She scrambled to sit on her knees atop his bed and jabbed a demanding finger towards his waist. “Take your pants off!”

He hesitated, and for a moment, Margie genuinely worried he’d say ‘nah’. But instead, he leaned in for another kiss and obliged her command. The sound of his belt clattering outcompeted the sultry feeling of his lips for her attention, and her eager gaze turned automatically to assess what she was working with.

She had expected to see an aching erection. Usually, by the time the pants came off, guys had been hard as hell and ready to go. Instead, the man who had just rubbed the easiest orgasm she’d ever experienced out of her appeared lightly fluffed at most. For a brief second, she wondered if her playful brattiness had ruined the mood. And then, she considered…that possibly…she just wasn’t attractive to him.

She returned her attention to their kiss as she chewed on that thought a bit. As far as girls went, she was a bit of a gremlin. A goblin, even. She wouldn’t dare call herself a ‘woman’ nor even a ‘lady’--those words gave her gender expression far too much credit. But even so, she was mostly comfortable with her appearance. Regardless of that, sloppy tomboys weren’t everyone’s preferred cup of tea, and it didn’t have to be. She had slept with people she didn’t personally find attractive before and it had been fine and dandy, all things considered.

You can be ugly and still give killer blowjobs.

She smirked to herself, and, as she combed fingers through Raf’s hair with one hand, she allowed the other to travel down his torso until her palm curled around the soft, warm skin of his shaft. Her fingertips coiled along the underside of it, tracing a firm, straight line towards the base of the glans, and she massaged the head against the ball of her thumb with gentle, coaxing strokes.

His body responded to her touch; the malleable flesh stiffened in her grasp and filled her hand substantially. In return, her caresses grew more broad and firm; the heel of her palm only abandoning the sensitive tip for the brief intervals when her fingers endeavoured to tease and cradle his sack.

She felt Raf’s fingertips trace lightly up her spine, beneath her shirt, in a manner that provoked goosebumps. Once they found the loose curls of her hair, they followed her locks up to the nape of her neck, and brushed passionately over the base of her scalp. He hadn’t pulled his lips away from her, except to nip lightly at her jaw and ear.

A small “Hmm” escaped him, sounding more contemplative than pleased, and it prompted her to pull her gaze back and assess his features. He only mirrored her measuring glance before bestowing a sweet little kiss on her nose.

"We good?" She asked as cooly as she could manage.

"Yeah?" His response warbled on a laugh, and it coaxed a reassured smile out of her. "I'd say so."

“...Gave you another boner."

"Oh." He glanced down and said with a sardonic tone, "Shit, thanks for telling me. I'd have never known."

By the time his gaze returned to her, Margie met it with a stony, straight face.

His amused expression wavered. "...What?"

Holding his gaze, she pressed down on his erection with a forefinger before turning her eyes to watch it as she let it spring upward in a marvellously undignified display of structural tension. The juvenile mistreatment of his manhood left Raf at a temporary loss for words and Magritte stifled her laugh into a snort. Before he could chide her, she shoved both hands beneath his shirt and lifted it, intent on freeing him of the garment completely. With a muffled exclamation, he complied, lifting his arms and finishing the job of pulling it off, over his head.

Taking the opportunity to plant kisses across his chest and down his torso, Margie didn’t glance up to see his expression as her mouth dragged hungrily past his belly button and over the strip of body hair that led her down, towards the prize waiting for her between his legs. She rested her cheek against him, atop the unruly patch of honey coloured pubes that crowned his crotch, and closed her hand around the length of him. She was hopeless at measuring the size of anything with just a gaze, but he filled her grasp with a satisfying heft and was certainly longer than her hand. Favouring him with a well-appraising hum and a few loving strokes, she lifted her head to face her challenge. She peeled back the foreskin with a tender downstroke, before kissing the sensitive pink tip.

The scent of him was far from unpleasant; a heady musk that excited her senses goaded her to take him into her mouth. Slick moisture met her lips when they pressed against his flesh, and, when they parted to draw him in, her tongue was quick to receive him. She held the head of his cock in her mouth as her tongue swirled and lapped hungrily over its smooth contours. He provided texture more than taste; his scent informed the flavour perhaps more than anything else. Inside her mouth, he was velvety, warm, and gratifying to explore. She pulled her lips back over the gentle curves until they came together to kiss the tip again. Her tongue flicked out to lap the head’s underside before the rest of her mouth followed, and she drew him in deeper than before.

She repeated that course, cherishing every bit of him with her tongue before pulling back to kiss the tip, and then drawing him into her mouth deeper with each successive round. Her thumbs had run up his inner thighs until they found the silky skin of his sack. She held and massaged it gently, appreciating the supple texture beneath her fingertips.

Initially, Raf’s fingers had teased and entwined themselves in her nest of curls somewhat languidly. But slowly, his hands grew tense against the back of her head, occasionally clenching into fists around handfuls of her hair. She thought–and hoped–that he’d start pulling, but any time he came close to doing so, he quickly released his grip. She could have lamented that, but she appreciated the same restraint applied to the motions of his hips. As a precaution, Margie placed a steading hand around one side of his waist, but she knew from experience that this was poor defence against an overeager thrust. Under her palm, she could feel his muscles tense and flinch. That, coupled with the slight, uneven rolling of his hips, betrayed his urge to buck against her mouth. For his considerate efforts, she rewarded him by trying to decipher and match the pace that his rigidly subdued movements suggested to her.

“...Christ.” His breaths had been coming up deep and steady and the muttered profanity was barely audible to Magritte, but she caught it with a thrill.

In response, she closed her eyes and pulled him into her throat so that her lips were flush against the hot skin of his lower abdomen. Her throat constricted uncomfortably around the intrusion that had smoothed over her tonsils, and she pulled back before it forced her to gag. Taking a deep, steadying breath through her nose, she allowed herself a precious second before swallowing him again. Her throat was no happier for it, but making a man's dick disappear was her favourite little party trick. Raf’s fingers brushed over her jaw in a gesture that permitted her to release him, but she ignored it in favour of challenging her gag reflex a third time.

“Margie–!” He cupped her face more firmly, and this time, she obeyed what was clearly a request, not a suggestion.

She pulled back, hollowing out her cheeks so that he left her mouth with an audible *pop*, and turned a sheepish smile up to him.

He met her gaze with a mix of awe and incredulity.“Holy shit, warn me next time.”

Providing him with an unrepentant shrug, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Too much?"

“I mean, not if you’re trying to get this done and over with real quick.”

To that, Magritte flashed her teeth in an impish grin. “Finish him!”

Her poor yet unmistakable Mortal Kombat impression caused Raf’s brow to crease quizzically before a bark of laughter escaped him. “No, why are you like this?”

He flattened his palm against her face, and she let out an ineffective chihuahua-like snarl as he irreverently pushed her backwards so that she laid flat on her bed. She landed with a fit of giggles, and she felt his thumbs hook into the waistband of her panties. He slid them down past her knees and Magritte was able to wriggle the garment down, off her ankles. Kneeling between her legs, Raf grabbed her by the waist and playfully dragged her towards him so that her hips met his.

As he descended upon her with a flurry of kisses, she felt his erection lay flat across her stomach–the slick coat of moisture it wore from her mouth cooled on her skin. She couldn’t help but writhe eagerly beneath him; one hand in his hair while the other grasped and clawed needily along his lower back. His hands worked much more purposefully. One arm coiled around her shoulders to brace the both of them as the other snaked down her belly, fingertips finding the warm, damp flesh between her legs. He teased apart her lower lips, pressing a firm thumb just above her clit and massaging it gently. His middle and ring fingers skated easily downward to find her opening; tender and wet with her arousal. He pressed a careful finger into her and, when it sunk in with ease, he inserted another. With gentle strokes and twists, he acquainted himself with her; winning pleased hums and a determined roll of her hips as he felt the boundaries of her interior. His breath came up in heavy sighs as he kissed, bit, and sucked the flesh of her neck. She was aware, too, of how his hips rolled against hers with a neediness that mirrored her own.

His fingers withdrew from her and, for a moment, so too did his lower body. With keen anticipation, Margie wrapped her legs firmly around him for leverage, sinking her heels into the back of his calves as she lifted her hips up to receive him. He didn’t leave her waiting. She felt his cock press against and part her flesh to make space for itself. Swollen with arousal, her body provided pleasant resistance before surrendering to envelop him. He sank into her with gratifying ease; fitting comfortably between her legs. A delighted gasp escaped her when he drew his hips flush to hers, eliciting a ripple of pleasure that radiated out from her inner flesh, down into her toes. Her muscles clenched around him instinctively, and her knees lifted to hold him as closely to her as possible.

At the sound of her breathy little mewl, a chuckle rose from Raf’s throat followed by another one of his contemplative hums. This time, though, an unmistakable satisfaction boiled in the low rumble of his tone.

In Margie’s opinion, this was one of the best parts of sex; the initial feeling of having that aching, hungry gap between her thighs filled the warm, hefty girth of her lover. But there was something uniquely gratifying about hosting Raf in this manner, and the reason wasn’t a mystery to her. Without question, he was the most good looking man to ever find himself between her legs. From the first day she met him in Granville Station, she had been charmed by his lopsided smirk, dorky goatee, and aloof demeanour. His torn jeans and goofy dollar store sunglasses hadn’t been able to outcompete the easy charisma and gentle kindness he carried with him. He had a handsome face, a nice body that he took care of, and a mindful confidence that belied the tumultuous anxieties that plagued him. As she had gotten to know him better, she only adored him more.

‘Adored’. Hah, who am I kidding.

She loved him, no revelation there. He didn’t have to rub an orgasm out of her and stick his dick in for her to realise that. She loved easily, and recklessly, and had known she was pooched after their very first jam session. He had been fun to play with, gave her kind praise and honest feedback, and made her feel like he genuinely enjoyed spending time with her. That and a pretty face was really all it took to win her loyal affections.

But he was a skittish creature, and she loved him enough to find joy in whatever form their relationship took. Otherwise, she’d have overcrowded and overwhelmed him, and he–like all the others before him–would have grown to resent everything he initially claimed to like about her. She likened herself to salt; best enjoyed sparingly, and never on its own. It’s why she had been so reluctant to move in with him, despite wanting to spend every minute of her time with him. Too much salt. She feared becoming unpalatable.

Well, now he’s balls deep in me, purring comfortably in my ear–which means I’ve got no choice but to make him cum so hard, he sees stars.

She had tried to moderate her behaviour and failed. She failed the very moment she accepted the keys to his apartment. She failed when he sweetly offered to let her snuggle him in bed so that he could help warm her feet. There had been mornings when she woke up to the maddening feeling of his stiffness pressed against the small of her back. She had remained very still and very quiet so as to not let him know that she had been awake before him, but good lord every muscle in her body had wanted to squirm against him. Without fail, the very moment he woke up, he’d carefully–very carefully–untangle his limbs from hers and turn away before getting out of bed to start his day. And without fail, she’d spend the consiquent morning too cumbrained to even see straight.

Just like she couldn’t say no to an apartment key and nightly snuggles, she couldn’t say no to a kiss. She couldn’t help but push it to see where it’d go. And now she was here. Remarkably. Unregrettably.

‘I couldn’t help myself,’ said the scorpion, ‘it’s in my nature.’

A bit too late, Margie realised that Raf’s satisfied rumblings in her ear had been forming actual vowels and consonants.

“Hm-?” She returned to the present moment with a flinch she hoped he didn’t notice.

“I like your little noises,” he replied.

“Oh.” Magritte blinked, running fingers through his hair. She used the back of her heel to caress the curve of his butt with irreverent affection. “Well then, giddy up, Mister Ephrem, and I’ll give you a cacophony!”

She felt him grin against her jawline before grazing it with his teeth and providing an affirmative little growl.

His hips withdrew, only to rock forward into her again. His first few strokes were of a careful, measuring pace until he repositioned his knees further apart and closer to her body. Dropping his forehead down onto the mattress, over her shoulder, he grabbed her waist with two firm hands and pulled her up closer to him. He curled his torso to plunge into her more deeply. The angle of his cock struck a pleasing cluster of nerves inside her body, and she inhaled sharply as it retreated over her swollen flesh to slam back in against it in steady rhythm. Each time, his dick slid out of her until she was empty save for the stretch where they met; the lips of her cunt covetously hugging the contours of the cock’s head. And then he’d part her walls again with a forceful, hungry thrust; smoothing the mounds of velvety muscle that constricted around him and resisted his departing strokes.

Every few thrusts forced a note of pleasure out of Magritte’s throat, carried on ragged huffs of breath. At first, her punctuated little cries only had to compete against the sound of Raf’s deep, steady breathing and the faint creaking of his bed. But, as her thighs became sticky and sodden from her arousal, the percussive sound of flesh on flesh began to drown out her little moans. Like the true musician he was, Raf searched for the right fingering to coax the sound he wanted out of her. His thumb pressed against the flesh right above her clit and rubbed it in quick, small circles as he continued to drive his cock into her.

The feeling of being kneaded firmly between his fingers and his dick provoked a strangled cry that bubbled out of her mouth before she even registered it. A sharp, quavering breath preceded another ecstatic wail, and then another. She curled her arms tightly around the back of Raf’s neck and attempted to muffle the chorus of her euphoria against his shoulder.

The mounting tension caused her muscles to clench. The way his dick pushed against the walls of her cunt as it constricted around him only intensified the pressure that welled up inside her.

“Oh, fuck. Fuck.” They were barely words, carrying the same quaking tone as her blissed-out yowls.

In response, Raf reached up to roughly smooth her hair back and cradle her head. He buried his nose into her hair, and pressed clenched teeth against her temple in a gesture that might have initially been intended as a kiss. His thrusts had grown desperate and uneven, but the hand that worked her clit remained fastidious in its efforts, bringing her so, so, so achingly close.

“Good girl.” His voice was a breathy growl against her skull. “Come on, now…”

Her legs had been wrapped around him so tightly that her muscles ached. But it provided the leverage she needed to buck against him with fervent need. He drove into her with short, rapid thrusts, barely withdrawing to slam as deeply into her as their bodies would permit; hitting up against her tightening core–until the dam of pressure burst to release a flood of sensation across every part of her. In the seconds leading up to it, Margie had fallen completely silent, drawing in a long breath that she held in her chest until the crashing wave of her orgasm forced it out of her. She felt the pulses of pleasure throb in her lower abdomen, caressing the man inside of her in a way that she never consciously could.

At some point during her climax, Raf’s hands had both found her waist again, gripping her rapaciously as he chased his own pleasure. His breaths came up in short, uneven bursts, and the undeliberate groans being drawn out of him composed the greatest piece of music she had ever delighted in hearing.

She writhed her hips to meet him at every feverish thrust. Slowing to longer, powerful strokes, he slammed into her once, twice, and with a quiet growl, he buried himself as deeply as their bodies would allow. His strong grip pressed her hard against him, holding her firmly in place as the force of his orgasm punched the breath out of his lungs. As he came inside of her, his hips strained against her body with the feral desire to empty himself deeper.

This, too, was one of the best parts of sex, Margie decided. She’d never gone about it without a condom before, and while the thrill was almost certainly a psychological one, the verdict was in; she very enjoyed the feeling of having her insides painted lovingly white. She liked it a lot. With the covetous squeezing of her thighs and abdominal muscles, she made it known to him.

The two of them remained locked together in a hot, messy, panting heap on the bed for an immeasurable moment before Raf nuzzled his face into the crook of Margie’s neck with a long, bodily sigh. She drew a hand up to affectionately caress his neck and the back of his head.

“W...we good?” Her voice came up raspy, cracking on the second word, and she couldn’t help but exhale a little laugh at herself.

“Mmh,” was the most Raf could conjure for a long while before he muttered semi-intelligible, “Magnifique.” He echoed her laugh with one of his own before bringing his arms forward to prop himself up, off of her.

As she allowed him to decouple from her, she curled her hands under her chin, reluctant to sit up with him…for reasons relating to gravity and fluids.

Sitting on his knees with her legs across his lap, Raf provided a mollifying grin that favoured one side of his face. “I, uh–shit.” He dropped his face into one of his palms with a self-deprecating laugh. “Ejected some of my brain cells there, I think.”

“A shower might help with that,” Margie offered with a broad smile that flashed her teeth. “I’ll take one with you.”

–

It had been as though they spent the evening doing any other typical thing. It could have been a night of board games, for how casually Magritte navigated the aftermath of their activities. Raf had expected some manner of uncomfortable, condolatory discussion that went long into the early hours of morning; how they had liked it, whether or not they’d do it again, what it meant for their relationship, if it meant anything at all. But that conversation never occurred.

Margie had made her enjoyment known while she shared a shower with him, and bestowed easy praise on his ‘excellent fingering’. In turn, he confessed that he could grow quickly addicted to the adorable little trills, yelps, and moans he had been able to coax out of her. Not to mention the other things she could do with her mouth. Dieu, mon fucking dieu.

The rest was clear enough to be obvious without discussion. Sex could just be another thing they did together when the mood struck–if it stuck at all. It hadn’t come with any promises or expectations, not any more than playing music or snuggles in bed had. It was the best Raf could have hoped for.

Magritte seemed wholly uninterested in applying the pressures of romantic commitment onto him. If there was ever anything she wanted, she could never help but to edge it into conversations one way or another–he knew that much about her. Instead, she seemed entirely set on making sure she didn’t bring up anything even approaching the matter. She said she liked things the way they were, and, while his brain could question the truth in that–or in anything she said–he was of much the same opinion. Perhaps they had both come to the same understanding. Something about love, especially romantic love, brought out the worst in people. It had always seemed like a battle of wills; two people trying to deconstruct and reshape one another to fit the impossible moulds that would ensure the longevity of their relationship. How could anyone endure that kind of transformation without poisoning the relationship with resentment? He’d never know. He didn’t have to find out.

Laying in bed at three in the morning, showered, satisfied, and cosy, with Magritte purring tiny snores in his arms, he couldn’t have asked for more. Whatever it was that he and Margie were enjoying together–friends with benefits?–suited him, so far. For all it mattered, she could decide to move across the sea next week, and he’d be unharmed by the decision so long as they remained on friendly terms. And that felt safe.

What they had…it felt safe.

#hi-note #rafael #magritte #it's balls oclock and no one is awake #post smut #I've never written a smut before lmfaoo I am so sorry about this

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painted-bees · 1 year ago

Text

September 23rd 2010

i) The tide was lower than Magritte had ever seen it.

Perhaps ‘seen’ was the wrong word to use. The inky darkness of night swallowed the barren, stoney features of Smelt Bay, as well as the ocean that lapped distantly at its shore. Rather, she heard it; the white noise of the waves breaking unusually far away. All the better, honestly. She wasn’t here to swim. In fact, Smelt Bay was a terrible beach for swimming. It wasn’t just that the frigid coastline lacked in soft, warm sand; the uneven and slippery rockbed that composed the entire stretch of bay was covered, acre by acre, in countless oyster shells. They adorned almost every rock they could cling to, and their razor sharp edges could slice easily through hand and foot like a warm knife through butter. Which is why Magritte plodded along, slowly and carefully, in her brand new hiking boots.

Raf had cautioned her against clambering around the beach so late at night and, usually, she heeded his anxieties about it. It wasn’t initially her intention to scramble down the bluff and onto the beach; she had only wanted to come out and watch the seafoam crash gently upon the stones. At night, under the moonlight, the contrast between white foam and inky water enchanted her with its otherworldly beauty. However, upon reaching the beach, the tide had been drawn out further than she could see. And so now, she was looking for it.

She had the good sense not to stumble forward in the dark, using her phone's flashlight to illuminate the path in front of her. She loved scouring the beach at low tide. Countless crabs of all sizes scuttled and scurried beneath the unnatural light of her phone. Her eyes met with the occasional, chubby pink and purple starfish that had been abandoned by the retreating ocean. Both the crabs and the brightly coloured starfish were a common sight on these beaches and, while she appreciated their company, they failed to make her pause. What did capture her attention was a fat, orange blob of a creature.

What are you? Magritte stopped to crouch down for a better look, lifting her phone to shine upon it. Oh, just another starfish… Well, no. Not really. It had one, two, three, four…eight…thirteen legs! She stared at it for a moment of deliberation before extending a tentative forefinger to poke its roughly textured, glistening surface. Before her finger could get within an inch of it, a gentle blanketing wave of frothy ocean fanned out between her and the creature, covering both it and her hiking boots in several inches of freezing water.

With a startled yelp at the stabbing cold, Magritte bolted upright as she found herself soaked to the ankles.

“Aw, shit-!” She lifted one foot out, and then the other in an awkward hopping skip, trying in vain to keep her feet up, out of the rogue wave. Apparently, the tide had been a lot closer than she thought. She continued her silly, wet, hop-scotchy walk back towards the bluffs with a self-depreciative chuckle. She expected the wave to recede.

But it didn’t.

Instead, another wave layered itself on top, swallowing her calves, and then another that submerged her past the knee. The arresting shock of the cold was outcompeted by the jolt of fear that kicked her into a frantic scramble. As she abandoned caution, the forceful current of the tide rose past her waistline, shoving her forward and off her feet. The water’s piercing chill bit through her chest, squeezing a sharp gasp from her just as her head was pulled beneath the waves.

Primal terror possessed her to reach forward with her hands and find purchase on any surface she could grab. Her fingers closed around fists full of jagged oyster shells that held like cement to the stones they were anchored to. As the ripping current suddenly dragged Magritte back, the soft flesh of her grasping palms may as well have been wet tissue for how well they maintained their structure. What little air she held her lungs escaped with the muffled scream that boiled out from her throat. She tumbled like a rag doll as she was pulled backward by the powerful riptide. Her knees and elbows painfully scraped across the oyster-laiden ground in intervals that only served to further disorient her.

Panic crescendoed, blackening the edges of her vision just in time for her head to break through the surface of the waves. She treaded water with wild, unevenly flailing limbs, drawing in a sharp gasp that was quickly strangled by a fit of wet coughing. Chest, hands, arms, knees, everything burned. And what didn’t burn felt as though it were being needled by cold knives. She couldn’t stop coughing. She couldn’t draw a proper breath. Her head rushed with the sound of waves. Or blood. Her eyes were useless as strangled tears obscured her vision.

Until, at last, her coughing subsided, and she drew in one…two…three shaky, shallow breaths. She held it for a moment, the best she could.

And…it was quiet.

The sound of water lapping at her jawline and behind her ears outcompeted the volume of waves across the distant shore.

The very distant shore.

She released her breath, surrendering to over-exerted panting. But, even her starving lungs were too constricted by the freezing water to draw in proper gulps of air. Her breaths were short, sharp, and uneven as she attempted to scan the landscape for signs of the shore.

She could not see land; not even the light of distant houses. Beneath the starry sky, the world around her seemed unnaturally dark.

A nervous laugh broke out of her throat, accompanied with a teeth-clattering, quiet little chant. “F-fuck, fuck, f-fuck, fuck.”

The searing hot pain of her oyster-inflicted wounds had, at least, subsided rather quickly. She didn’t attempt to move her fingers, let alone ball her hands into fists. She didn’t even dare to look at them. She could barely feel them at all.

Experimentally, she drew in as deep a breath as she could, and stopped treading water. She felt herself begin to sink, and with more effort than it was worth, she shrugged off her jacket and kicked off her boots. Or rather, her boot, singular. Apparently, she had lost the other one already. Her feet were so numb that she couldn’t feel the difference. Shedding the remaining boot hardly made her more buoyant, but it felt like it helped.

She attempted to curl her lips into a smile. “O-okay, w…well…If I had to choose…between f-freezing to d-eath or drowning, I’d rather freeze. S-so let's focus on that, I g-uess.”

Bleak.

Was there any point in swimming when she couldn’t see the shore? How long could someone survive in water like this? Was she afraid of dying?

Not nearly as afraid as I was just a few moments ago.

She should have felt…more upset than this. It seemed strange. Maybe she was just too cold to think properly, but most likely, the reality of her situation hadn’t set in yet. After all, the situation was salvageable. A boat could come along and haul her out of the water. The tide could wash her up onto the shore. There were lots of different little islands around here, she was bound to wash up on the shore of one, right? What were the chances of that happening before she could freeze to death?

…How long would it take for the hopelessness to set in? If she could keep making light of the situation, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

“And, yan-n-no…it’s been a g-good run.”

…Hasn’t it?

Truth be told, things had only just started getting really good. Well, kinda. This year was a rough patch. Uncle Bill’s passing in late April had really…thrown things askew. But the island was a perfect escape from the fake sympathies, the incessant phone calls, the social obligations…all the stress… It was gonna give them the peace, quiet, and space to properly grieve. We were gonna start playing music again. They had only been on the island for a week. The cottage Bill had left to Raf was so nice. It had a piano. It was cute. Warm.

Of all things, it was the thought of the cottage’s little black wood stove that made Magritte’s eyes water with a sudden stab of helpless dismay.

No, why? That’s so stupid.

Why the stove? Why not the grief of her parents? Why not the fact that she’d never be able to play music again? Why not–

“Raf.” It came out as a croak that she barely even recognized as her own voice. “S-shit. I’m sorry, Raf. M-man. This was my s-stupid idea. It was my id-dea to come here, it was s-s-supposed to be so good. B-but…th-this is r-really…gonna…wreck you, isn’t it.”

There was a long pause as Magritte bobbed uselessly with the waves, trying to will her numb, sluggish limbs to move in a manner that allowed her to survey her surroundings once again for any sign of land. Maybe she should just start swimming in a direction, would that have been better? Would it make her feel warmer? Or…would it just exhaust her faster?

She was already so tired.

I don’t want to be anyone’s traumatic loss, I just want to be warm.

How the hell did this even happen? What caused the ocean to hit her so suddenly, like a river?

It doesn’t make sense. What if this is just a really bad dream? I could wake up in bed, soft and warm, and held…coffee...and…eggs. Over easy in front of the wood stove. Pyjamas…slippers, but like…not the linoleum kind, it needs to have enough structural integrity for breakfast…to support the…workload and drive me to the–

-PIFFF-

Magritte hadn’t realised that her eyelids were closed, but the sudden explosive hissing that erupted right beside her caused them to snap wide open. For a second, she thought that something had fallen off the top shelf of her closet. But almost as quickly as she imagined that, the biting cold water encroaching on the corners of her nose and eyes reminded her of where she was.

-FIFFFFF-

The same sound again, slightly further away. Panic rejuvenated her for a brief moment until she saw the source of the noise. A jet of pale mist erupted from the surface of the water, and in its wake, a dark, triangular silhouette glided smoothly downward. The wet, rubbery flesh glistened in the moonlight before sinking beneath the rolling waves.

Whales.

Magritte attempted to lift her head enough to see if she could spot them again. Sure enough, three or four more of the creatures surfaced silently. The ghostly silhouettes of their dorsal fins were all that gave away their position. These must have been the orcas the neighbours had mentioned. Even Raf once managed to catch a glimpse of them from the shore, but Magritte hadn’t been with him to see it. She had wanted so badly to look at them…

“Oh…well, thanks for showing up, guys.” Her teeth weren’t clattering anymore, but she could hardly bring her voice above a whisper. For some reason, her throat felt so tight. “Please don’t toss me around like a seal… I’ve seen what you do to them…on t.v.”

The whales responded with a series of loud, spouting breaths; some nearby, others further away. As she recalled the image of a half flayed seal rag-dolling through the air, anxiety blossomed in the pit of her stomach, Magritte turned her gaze upward and hung it on the three bright stars of Orion’s belt.

If making noise is encouraged as a way of deterring bears from harassing hikers, maybe the same was true for whales and swimmers. I can be weird and loud, can’t I?

She attempted to sing a song. Her strangled voice rasped, fruitlessly struggling to be heard above the sounds around her.

“What are you hunting up there in the stars?

Is it beasts, or demons, or old battle scars?

Do you remember the warmth of my palm in yours

Is it buried in rubble from all of those wars?

You’ve lost yourself so far, far away

Searching for ghosts and impossible prey.

You’ve flown too far from the earth and the sea,

Please come back…come back…

…Come back to…”

As her words drifted, so too did she; down, down, into the cold, quiet void.

And it embraced her, lovingly.

ii)

Raf’s eyes opened to the sound of ocean waves and a dull ache in his neck. Light poured out from the cottage windows, pooling warmly across the sprucewood deck and the white, woven hammock that cradled him. An earbud filled his left ear, but no music played. Either his iphone had come to the end of his playlist, or it had run out its battery life while he slept.

With a tired groan, he sat up and stretched, gingerly tilting his head to loosen the painful knot in his neck. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but he should have expected it after a relaxing joint and some quality tunes. He wasn’t sure what had woken him up. Perhaps it was the chill. It wasn’t cold enough for his breath to hang in the air, but it was chilly enough for him to wish for a sweater–rather than a t-shirt–beneath his jacket.

Or maybe it was the concussive sound of the waves.

The ocean wasn’t visible from his cottage. There was a strip of dense forest that lined the property and separated it from the bluffs. Still, the white noise of the ocean could always be heard through the trees. The salt could be smelled on the breeze, and it could be felt collecting in his hair. It must have been exceptionally turbulent out there tonight, for he could hear the waves crashing with an unusually loud clarity.

Raf lifted his phone and turned on the LED screen to check the time. Its battery life was still good, but as he had suspected, his playlist had played through to the last track.

1:34 a.m.

The corners of Raf’s mouth twitched.

Magritte hadn’t woken him up to herd him into bed when she came home. Was she pissed off at him for declining to walk with her?

In fairness, he had been…difficult to manage the past half year. And it became increasingly obvious that Magritte’s bountiful patience had been running thin over the past month or two. She had begun to adopt his defensive snippiness–not at him, but at the things she knew infringed upon him. Phone calls, text messages, the gestures of concerned friends and colleagues reaching out to see if he was okay. The cold, prying interrogations–thinly veiled by hollow sympathies–querying for available pieces of his uncle’s estate.

The man’s body hardly had time to grow cold before Ephrem representatives began hounding Raf about the company shares he had inherited. His family in Monaco had gone so far as to request the retrieval of Uncle Bill’s body. “He should be put to rest on home soil”–but his will had detailed what was to be done. By his request, Uncle Bill’s body was kept here, in British Columbia. Raf had to take care of it all; the estate, the funeral, and the vultures.

All he wanted to do was hide.

And, in a way, that’s mostly what he did. He managed as much as he could, but once the funeral had been concluded, his energy and willingness to keep on top of things dissolved. He just couldn’t…deal…with the people. Any of them. At some point, they had all stopped resembling human beings, and felt more like a pack of feral dogs with no purpose greater than to sate their gluttony. Every interaction bloodied him with clawing, hungry teeth.

Magritte picked up the slack for him. It was…beyond her ability, honestly. But she did her best, at the expense of indulging her passions. While he isolated and avoided the torrent of his unwanted responsibilities, Magritte had lived those months constantly on the backfoot, attempting to hold things together and never quite managing to see any of it through properly. It was simply too many balls for her poor little arms to carry, and as she tried to pick up the ones she had dropped, more always spilled out.

Last month, it had finally driven her to tears.

Raf had been woefully inadequate at showing his appreciation for her efforts and, even as he watched her sob in frustration, he found it difficult to provide any meaningful comfort. Nothing broke his heart quite like seeing her cry, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to promise any fun distractions. He couldn’t tell her, in earnest, that things were fine. He couldn’t give her the reward of knowing that she had been able to make everything right and good for him. He could only tell her that he knew she was doing her best, that he was glad to have her with him, and that he loved her.

More than anything, he loved her.

Talk was cheap. He knew that better than anyone. But living in ‘survival mode’ left very little in the way of emotional resources, and he had become very cold, irritable, and distant. Still, Magritte sought out his company. She wished to share good experiences with him and did her best to take care of him despite his diminishing reciprocation over the past few months.

Retreating to Cortes Island had been her idea. She had never visited the place before, but when Raf described it as a tiny, isolated little community with no supermarkets nor chain restaurants, no hospitals nor police stations, and with the population of a small school, her eyes lit up.

“It’s perfect! We could just disappear there and take a year–or five–to just…recover from everything!” Her tone had taken on a conspiratorial tone when she added, “We don’t have to tell anyone.”

She had underestimated the scope of work that accompanied ‘disappearing to a small island for a year’. In contrast, the workload was all his mind could fixate on. But– a body of water separating him from the relentless chaos of the mainland was appealing enough for him to commit to the move. And so, they made their hasty preparations, packed up, and left without a word.

A week had passed since they moved into the small cottage, and Raf had to admit that the quiet calm of the island was…a relief.

He had asked Magritte for a month. A month of nothing; no outings, no plans, no obligations–just rest. It was the closest thing to hibernation he was ever going to experience, and she had agreed to it. It didn’t stop her, though, from inviting him out for walks, and to see the ocean with her. It was the bare minimum, and he should have obliged her more often than he did. But truly, all he wanted to do was stay home, smoke weed, listen to music, and sleep.

And that’s what he had chosen to do when she invited him to watch the waves with her, some time after 10pm. She didn’t seem bothered when he lazily declined to accompany her, but perhaps she had grown cranky about it during her time out. Seeing him passed out in the hammock, she probably left him to endure the natural consequences of his poor choices, and went to bed without him.

Honestly, catching a chill and a sore neck was negligible punishment compared to the guilt of disappointing Margie. On the other hand, he had asked her for a month–just one month–to be as lazy and absent as he wanted to be, and she had agreed to it. So if she was pissed off at him–

Her shoes were not at the front door.

Usually, Magritte kicked her boots off before entering the house, and rarely brought them inside. Raf opened the door, expecting to see them on the shoe rack, but they weren’t there either. Nor was her jacket strewn over the back of the couch as it should have been.

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and marched quietly up the steep, narrow little staircase to the second floor. Down the short corridor, his bedroom door was still open and he could see through to his window and the night sky that overlooked the foot of his bed. Peeking his head in, the blankets laid smooth and undisturbed across the mattress, folded over to expose the neatly arranged pillows.

Raf pulled himself back into the tiny corridor with a bewildered frown. “Margie?” It wasn’t a yell, but his voice projected loudly enough to be heard throughout the small cottage.

There was no answer, only the gentle hum of the fridge downstairs, accompanied by the rustling of leaves in the breeze outside. And the crashing of waves upon the unseen shore.

With an agitated groan Raf dropped back down the stairs, towards the front door, and hastily put on his sneakers. Something at the beach must have captivated her. Maybe some weird sealife, maybe partying campers. Either way, she had lost track of time, and now he had to go find her. At least she couldn’t be disappointed with him if she had chosen to stay out at a worryingly late hour.

The beach wasn’t more than a fifteen minute walk away, and all he had to do was follow the gravel road down the slope, onto Potlatch Road, and then down to Smelt Bay. There were no lamps lining the street, and so Raf found himself relying on his phone torch to light the path ahead of him. Despite the darkness, it wasn’t an eerie nor dangerous walk by any means. Accompanied by the singing of crickets, he was comfortably familiar enough with these streets, trusting them even with a lone, wandering Margie.

As he made his way briskly down the long, paved length of Potlatch road, his curiosity was tickled by just how close the sound of lapping ocean waves seemed to be. Perhaps it was the way it echoed off the treeline, but it sounded as though it were almost right in front of him.

Raf rounded the broad corner towards Smelt Bay–and stopped.

The pavement directly beneath his feet had become gradually more wet, as though a heavy rain had passed through recently. That would have been strange enough on its own. He’d have definitely noticed if it had been raining, and there wouldn’t have been such a clear, sudden border between dry ground and waterlogged asphalt. He lifted his phone light to shine it further down the road, and frowned.

Ahead of him, the street was covered in a thin layer of water, seafoam lapping over concrete and into the grassy ditch. As he continued a tentative pace forward, the water wasn’t quite high enough to spill over the rubber soles of his shoes. He walked until Potlatch met with Smelt Bay Road, where he was granted an unobscured view of the beach. The ocean’s waves broke over the bluffs, flooding the street and the grassy plots of land that faced the open bay.

“...The hell?” He muttered, barely above a whisper.

The ocean had to have risen a fair few feet in order for it to breach the bluffs. Was it possible for the tide to get this high? He watched as an empty bottle, tangled within a plastic bag, washed across the street alongside a random toque and a mess of uprooted reeds. Debris, both natural and unnatural, lined the waterlogged road. An enormous, sea weathered piece of driftwood that had spent years as a reliable landmark on the stony beach–now sat wedged askew in the ditch. A flash flood?

Tsunami.

Wait–

Anxiety closed its claws around his gut, and twisted.

“Margie?!” He barked out her name in the direction of the beach.

He took a few automatic strides towards the submerged bluff before halting, and he turned his phone over in his hand. Opening his contact list, he hit Magritte’s number and pressed the phone to his ear. Cell coverage on the island was spotty at best, but to his relief, the call connected. As it rang, he paced, his feet kicking up cold water into his shoes.

“Come on, answer your phone. I’m not gonna be mad at you, just answer your damn phone.”

He let it ring until the robotic voice of the phone operator made him hang up.

And then he tried again, to the same result.

What the hell could he do?

What was he supposed to do?

Don’t catastrophize, it’s not the worst case scenario, it never is.

Immediately, his brain had filled him with thoughts of Margie getting bowled over by enormous waves and dragged to sea. But, based on the fact that no one else was out inspecting damages or lamenting their losses, things probably hadn’t happened as suddenly nor as violently as his imagination pictured it. Realistically, she likely saw the tide start to come in and watched it from a distance, perhaps with some other folks who were hanging around the area. Plausibly, she was at a campsite somewhere, talking about it over smores and cheap booze. Or something like that.

But then, why didn’t she answer her phone?

Raf had already turned around and began walking in the direction of the camping lots. All he had to do was find one that still had a fire going at this time of night. But, as his feet left solid pavement and marched onto the dirt road of the Smelt Bay campsites, he found that the tide had flooded this area as well. The inch of water blanketing the ground turned it into a muddy mess. There were no tents pitched in any of the lots. No campfires, either. Two or three of the lots housed a parked RV, elevated off the ground. Dry, and oblivious to the seawater beneath their tires. None of them showed any signs of waking life. Magritte wasn’t here.

Coming upon one of the empty lots, Raf found a sturdy tree stump that had clearly been fashioned for seating, and dropped himself down on it. He buried his face into his hands with a fraught sigh. There had been tents here, he knew that much. The inhabitants likely packed up and abandoned the lots in favour of finding a dry place to spend the night. If the RVs and trailers were still here, clearly there couldn’t have been much of a panic. The waterline hadn’t risen catastrophically.

Still, Magritte was missing.

He tried to call her one more time, and was greeted unhelpfully by the operating system once again.

What if she had gotten home after he had left to find her?

The thought pulled Raf back onto his feet, and what started as a swift walk home hastened into an anxious jog.

The tide, he noted, was slowly receding. A length of road that had been submerged when he first arrived was exposed once again to dry off in the chilly night air. For some reason, the sight of it relieved his anxiety somewhat. There was nothing inherently dangerous about the strange tide; it wasn’t any kind of disaster. Likely, Margie was at home, worried and waiting for him. Her phone battery must have depleted. It would explain why she wasn’t calling him back.

It wasn’t long before he was walking down the long, rough, unpaved driveway; under the boughs of spruce and cedar trees and into the clearing of the cottage's wild, grassy property.

Approaching the house, he called out her name across the yard to no answer. The lights were still on in the living room and kitchen. He climbed the two steps of the porch up to the front door and, calling her name once more, he opened it.

No response.

Before stepping inside, he kicked off his muddy shoes and then closed the door behind him.

“Margie.” His volume was conversational as he scaled the narrow flight of stairs to the second floor and diligently checked each of the bedrooms.

No. She wasn’t here.

Then…where was she?

Not the ocean. Not the ocean. Not in the ocean.

Sitting down on the foot of the bed, Raf stared at the floor and tried to fight off a wave of despair.

There was no way.

There was no fucking way. It would have been beyond cruelty to leave him like this. He wasn’t gonna be able to…it wasn’t something he could handle.

Steadying himself with a deep breath, he scooted over to his side of the bed, took his laptop up off his night table, and unfolded it on his lap. A phone jack tethered it to the wall behind the nightstand and provided a serviceable internet connection. He opened a browser and typed into the search bar; “How long to wait before making a missing person report?”

Apparently the answer was “not at all”.

Raf looked up the appropriate number to call, picked up the phone, and dialled. >>part iii, iv, and v<<

#Hi-Note #this is just the beginning...there is more to come dw haha #Cortes meet-cute lmfao #if u can call it that #Rafael #Magritte #Cortes

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painted-bees · 1 year ago

Text

part i

Hitting a cafe during rush hour wasn’t Raf’s definition of a fun idea, and he was well practised in the art of saying ‘no’. Yet, for some reason or another, that skill failed to find him when the wide-eyed little Portasound busker insisted on treating him to a coffee.

The streets outside Granville Station were abuzz with traffic of all kinds. The wide sidewalks were, at least, accommodating to the amount of pedestrians that relied on them during the city’s busiest times of day. The same could not be said for the roads as cars rolled slowly forward, bumper to bumper. Still, the ambience was manageable despite all the bustle. Only the hissing, honking noises of transit bus breaks would coax the occasional wince out of him in their random, unpredictable intervals.

The little Portasound busker, ‘Magritte’, kept up beside him in lock step. She hadn’t stopped talking since they began their walk together and, in honesty, he preferred it that way. She was a disheveled little thing, more than a head shorter than he was. Her manner of dress was as sloppy as the thick bundle of curly, dark red hair that flopped loosely atop her head. Her grey sweater was several sizes too large, covering her to the knees. With sleeves that hung far past her hands if she didn’t scrunch them in her palms. Black leggings were tucked into knock-off ugg boots whose soles had eroded so severely on the outer edge, Raf was concerned she’d roll an ankle if he made her walk too briskly. She smiled so vehemently as she spoke, that her lips rarely closed around consonants, making it difficult to understand her at times.

“–so when my dad was like, ‘you can stay here and work, or you can move out and do your music stuff’, I moved out. That was like…oh–almost three years! I was eighteen. I just turned twenty-one today!” She accompanied that last sentence with a joyful little skip that caused Raf to turn his head and watch her.

“Well, happy birthday.” He exhaled a small laugh. “Vancouver’s an expensive place to live, but house hunting here probably already gave you the full story on that.”

“Rent’s insane,” Magritte echoed his small chuckle. “But the weather’s way more agreeable in the winter, which is what I’m after. And the music scene! I heard there were tons of musicians in Van, and look–I’ve already met two in the first few hours of being here!”

“Oh, you’ll meet more.” The way he said it made it sound more cautioning than he intended and he diffused it with a snort. “Guess the music stuff must have paid off after all, if you can afford a place in the city.”

There was silence between them and Magritte chewed the nail of her forefinger for a moment. “It actually hasn’t, I’m not a professional musician by any means. I’m just really good at finding a lot of short term work and stuff. Sometimes it’s music related, but not often enough to call it a living.”

“Mmh.” Raf glanced down at her. The bounce in her step had vanished and he watched her chew on her lip beneath a knitted brow. With a shrug he said, “You sounded good in the station, all things considered. You stopped, you listened, you came in at appropriate moments, you improvised really well. The pieces I played weren’t really…great for busking…and demanded a lot more than what your little keyboard could reasonably provide, but even your rests were composed and natural. You didn’t drop off abruptly any time the melody brought you past the range of your keys, you played into it.” He smirked. “I’m not gonna lie and say we did a great justice to Paganini today or anything, but I was very surprised by what you were able to pull off. I dunno, seemed like the chops of a professional to me.”

That brought the bounce back into her step, though she continued to chew on her lower lip. Raf was content to see her spirits buoyed at least somewhat by his sentiments. He hadn’t embedded a single white lie into his assessment.

They arrived at the cafe of his choosing; a popular spot, very near to the station, named Caffe Artigiano. The outside seating was full up with patrons, but Raf hoped the inside would be a quieter space to sit anyways. Opening the door, he followed Magritte in. It was busier than he would have liked, but he couldn’t have expected differently, considering the hour. Still, one thing he appreciated about the place was that it did not play music. Only the sound of numerous quiet conversations filled the air. Raf gravitated towards a freshly vacated table in a far corner, and Magritte followed him to it. Her gaze hung on the coffee menu that loomed above the counter.

He waited for Magritte to pick her seat before gently offloading his violin case onto the seat across from her. “I’ll go order. Was it a latte you said you wanted?”

“Actually…” She let out an indecisive little sigh. “A mocha, I think. I want…choco. Oh, but–!” She dropped her duffel bag onto the ground before unzipping a side pouch and pulling out the twenty dollar bill that had found its way into her upturned ball cap at the station. She held it out to him. “With this! Please?”

He hesitated before taking the bill from her. “Yes, ma’am.” There was no point in telling her that the twenty had been his before it became hers. The thought was what mattered.

The line at the counter wasn’t long, despite the busy patronage, and Raf soon returned to their table and evicted his violin case out of the seat across from Magritte. Finding an unused chair from a nearby table, he pulled it up next to him and sat his carrying case on it.

He reached over the table to hand Magritte the change, and she stared at it blankly for a moment before saying, “–Oh!” with a bit of a start. She turned her palm up to receive it.

Magritte stuffed the money back into the pocket of her duffel bag. “So, Question.” She sat back up and looked to Raf. “You say you’re not a professional, but you sound like...you know…Properly trained, or whatever.”

“Mmh.” It was a predictable topic, but not one he wanted to stay on. “Or whatever.” He laughed. “Yeah. Parents pushed it onto me a little too hard. I’ve got the training, but playing it is a chore and I kinda hate it.”

Magritte’s eyes grew wide and rueful and she shrank against the backrest of her chair. “Wait, really?” She covered her face with the sleeves of her sweater and threw her head back with a guilty little groan. “I’m sorry, I made you play so many songs!”

Raf patted the air in front of him in a placating gesture, “No, no. You didn’t make me do anything, relax.” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I did that to myself. I meant it, though, when I said it was fun. It was the first time in a long while where I actually enjoyed myself once things got going.”

Magritte drew in a deep breath, recollecting herself before tentatively asking, “Enough that you’d wanna do it again sometime?”

A beleaguered laugh escaped him, “No.” He had given her much of his time and energy already, and being asked for more put a bitter taste in his mouth. The arrival of his iced americano and her hot mocha couldn’t have been better timed. As soon as it was placed in front of him, he brought the drink to his lips and took a long sip.

Magritte sheepishly turned her gaze down to admire the little white hearts in the foam of her coffee before she started to drink it. She placed the cup back down but kept both hands curled around it. “Did you enjoy it when you were younger?”

“Music?” Raf shrugged. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter.” His gaze turned down towards her duffel bag as he grasped for a better topic. “Is your main instrument the piano?”

“Yeah! It’s what I had access to, growing up.”

“Who taught you?”

“Oh, I, uh…mostly just the internet and stuff. My parents didn’t wanna waste money on it, and my highschool didn’t have like…a music class or anything. Just choir. None of my friends played music.”

“...You learned online?”

“Well, like…on Myspace and LiveJournal. Lots of people share what they know there, and I made some really good online friends who tried to teach me things. We’d share music with each other and do weekly challenges and stuff. It was fun.”

“So, self-taught, more or less.”

“Mostly. Oh, except–!” Magritte ducked down to unzip the main pocket of her duffel bag and dove her hands into it. She rummaged around until she produced a small mp3 player and earbuds attached by a chord. “There was a year when I was living in Montreal, my girlfriend was a jazz pianist. And then we met other, um…friends who taught me more in that one year than I think I ever learned in my entire life. It was her and a whole lotta horns. They all let me use their instruments and taught me proper technique and stuff. I think they liked watching me stubbornly struggle with it. In the end, I was only able to record one song before I had to, um, move on. But I’m still kinda proud of it. I dunno if you wanna–it’s instrumental and kinda eclectic, but I loved making it.”

In response, Raf extended his hand, and Magritte spent a second scrolling through her library of mp3s before stuffing the little music device and earbuds into his open palm.

She performed an excited little wiggle in her seat as Raf wordlessly placed an earbud into his ear. “Just hit play, and it should be the right song.”

Raf wasn’t sure what he had expected to hear. He was, at least, perfectly comfortable with listening and offering his honest input. He didn’t believe in ‘bad’ music. There was skilled and unskilled music, there was music that fit his tastes and music that really didn’t. But none of it was bad. All music created deserved to be created and allowed to exist–if only for the satisfaction of the musician who produced it. He was prepared to tell her that the best music she could make is the music she enjoyed making, even if it didn’t resonate with his personal tastes. He pressed ‘play’.

What hit his ear was an uptempo half-time funk sound carried on a unison horn line; crystal clear, well mixed, high quality audio. Right from the jump, the sound had a quirky, catching character. He fitted the other earbud into his ear as a sustained note leapt into an energetic, off-beat ska groove. His brow furrowed deeply as he tried to discern the instrumentation. The drum fill might have been digital, but the winds sounded far too dynamic to be synthetic. And there were…three of them; the two horns he couldn’t quite specify, and then a baritone sax. The horns took centre stage, confident and playful, supported by a jaunty walking bassline and synthetic, bubbly organ accompaniment. Despite its G minor key signature, the character of the piece was lively and a little goofy, smart but playful; it was simply–fun. A smile lit across his face as the melody modulated G minor into G Phrygian for the bridge section. The effect was a jesting ooh gonna getcha vibe.

He listened to the end of the song before he began to comment on it. “Very cool. Your jazz friends weren’t sleeping on their music theory classes. I assume the organ is you?”

Magritte shifted nervously in her seat as her thumb smoothed over the handle of her coffee cup in small, repeated strokes. “I borrowed instruments for this one and recorded it in…um, my girlfriend’s parents' house. They had a music room where I was allowed to record things.”

“You borrowed–right. But the horns..?”

“Yeah.”

Raf levelled a measuring stare at her.

“I recorded each instrument separately,” she began explaining, “It’s uh, piano, trumpet, trombone, and–oh! The baritone sax was played by Sadie, one of my, um…jazz friends.” She let out a weak laugh. “And then, like…a bass, I also played. And a synthetic drum fill ‘cus…none of us knew how to actually play drums.”

“You played each instrument? Learned them and recorded this song within the span…of a year?”

“No, just the trumpet and trombone! I already knew piano and bass.” Confusion must have been apparent on Raf’s face, and she tried to address it by saying, “It’s all digitally processed, so it sounds a little more–”

“No, I–I know that.” Raf massaged an eyebrow with one hand. “You’re the songwriter too, I assume?” His tone was a little more sharp than he’d have liked it to be. It betrayed his incredulity.

Magritte picked up her cup and eyed him nervously over the rim as she sipped from it.

“No, I don’t know how.” She sounded embarrassed. “I can’t read or write music. I just sketched a bunch of it out digitally first, and then–”

“Fresh compositions? By ear?”

“Yeah. And then I recreated it with the correct instrumentation.” She chewed on the nail of her thumb. “It works, I think.”

“That’s still songwriting. It counts.” Raf sniffed and leaned back in his seat. “I gotta be honest, and don’t take this the wrong way but…it’s a little hard to believe.”

Magritte’s nervousness dissolved into a flattered grin. “Yeah?”

Raf’s brow twitched downward as he tried to read past her demeanour. He had expected a more sheepish response, if not a more defensive one. His doubt wasn’t intended as a compliment, but if she were being wholly honest with him, perhaps it made sense that she’d take it as one.

He drained the last of his americano. “So, you’re not pursuing this professionally, because..?”

“Oh, I am!” Magritte shrugged and turned her eyes to the upper right corner of the room. “It’s just been kinda…difficult.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” It was a stupid question he already knew the answer to. Music was more easy to find nowadays than ever before, but discoverability still relied on knowing how to promote the work and get the right ears onto it. And, across the entire spectrum of skill, this is what everyone tended to blame for the inability to live off their–

“Money.”

“M–!” The response was so sudden and matter-of-fact in tone, Raf couldn’t stop a bark of surprised laughter from escaping him. He’d have laughed the same way if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.

Magritte slapped her palms down on the table and leaned forward with wide eyes to state her defence. “Instruments are expensive, lessons are expensive, computers are expensive, software and sound libraries are expensive! Everything’s so expensive!” She slumped back in her seat, turning her palms over in an exasperated gesture. “If I could afford to go to school and actually like–learn music, and if I could afford to rent instruments and recording equipment and stuff, I could make more songs! I could upload like…whole albums! I’ve got all these doodles with my shitty midi libraries and they might sound actually good if I could just record them properly! But it’s been like…four years since I left home, and the only properly produced track I have to show for it is that one.” She flopped her hand towards the mp3 player on the table. “So, I just make my little digital doodles, and I come up with tunes that suit the sounds I have access to. I like it. I’m happy I get to make any music at all, but it’s a bit niche, you know? And I have all these other ideas in my head that need like…better, less…synthetic sounds. There are libraries that sound pretty convincing, but all the best ones are…expensive. And vocals are hard to record with the stuff I’ve got.”

Raf held up his hands in effort to placate her. “No, I know, you’re right–money. I just–” It wasn’t a struggle he had ever faced, and he couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a heel over the fact that he hadn’t even considered it as an obstacle to the extent that she was describing it.

“On the other hand,” Magritte’s voice took on a capitulating tone, “With the right skill, I should be able to produce bangers with whatever I’ve got, yeah? And,” she took up her coffee cup in one hand, staring into its contents, “if I was better at saving money, I’d be able to afford those really good sample libraries just fine, probably. I just like my sweet foamy lattes too much.” She sighed a little laugh at herself.

Raf let out a low groan of disagreement, but didn’t elaborate on it. “I kinda…want to listen to those ‘digital doodles’ you mentioned.” If nothing else, it’d give him an idea of how much input her jazz friends had over the composition of the song he heard. If the obvious compositional prowess flexed in that fun-loving jazzy ska piece were completely absent in her little sketches, he wouldn’t chalk it up to being just a fluke.

Drawing in a deep breath and holding it, Margritte reached for the mp3 player and scrolled through its contents before handing it to Raf. “You can just skip through these as you like. It’s all a little–” She wrinkled her nose and let out a grunt in place of any real adjective.

With an affirming little snort of his own, Raf took the little music player and put the earbuds into his ears once more. He pressed play, and immediately understood what she meant. The synthetic instrumentation was wholly lacking in dynamics, and the musical ideas present in the melodies begged for more colourful phrasing. As he skipped from one song to the next, he grew more frustrated. The compositional writing was good. Consistent with the first song he had heard, Magritte seemed to really love playing with eccentric progressions and modulations that were unconventional for the mood or emotion that the song was attempting to capture. And ever present in each little composition was this boundless sense of joy. But god, the instrumentation (or rather, the lack thereof) really, really held it all back.

As he listened, his lips pressed into a thin line. Finally, with a low groan that betrayed his thoughts, he took out the earbuds and handed the music player back. “Yeah, that sucks.” The end of that statement stuck in his throat as he sputtered to clarify, “Not the music–”

“Yes, the music.” Magritte’s giggle was one of genuine affirmation as she tucked the mp3 player away into her duffle bag.

“No,” Raf argued, “your toolset. There’s a lot of skill here, but the cheap synthy sounds aren’t doing it any favours. You went absolutely ham on those horns in the first song, and I don’t hear any of that in these sketches because it’s just not possible. There’s a lot of energy that is just…missing. Even watching you play at the station, yeah your keyboard suffers the same limitations, but at least in person I noticed you’ll even make use of like…the percussion of your fingers hitting the keys, which, you know…is dynamic.”

As he spoke, Magritte retained a smile and provided small nods before asking, “You like it, then?”

Raf leaned back, folded his arms and chewed on the question for a second before replying, “Yeah. I do. A lot.”

A lot.

There was a corner of his mind that begged him to get back home to his apartment and try out the melodies with an instrument that could do it proper justice. Jesus Christ, this actually makes me want to play the violin.

The realisation made his lip curl with a feeling in his gut that he couldn’t quite identify. “You know…”

Magritte, taking the last remaining sips of her latte, turned her eyes up at him with a little “Hm?”

There was a pause while Raf wrestled with himself. “I, uh…work at a recording studio not too far from here. Just down on uh…Powell Street.” He felt his jaw clench. There was no good reason for him to tell strangers about where he worked. There was no possible good outcome in doing so. Mentioning it felt too much like an open invitation for her to pop in at any time, for no good reason at all except to make things uncomfortable. “It’s called Hi-Note, and it’s got like…a pretty standard assortment of instruments to rent out and such. It closes early.” He wasn’t looking at her. Brow furrowed, he stared at the ice melting in his otherwise empty glass. “Swing by tomorrow night, after eight, and maybe we can jam for like..half an hour or something before I head home.”

He didn’t glance up to see her expression, but her voice was slow to rise to his ears. “..Wait, really?”

No. “Yeah.” What the fuck? “Really.” Unable to unfurrow his brow, he managed to at least turn his gaze towards her. Her eyes were so large on that petite face of hers, and her lips parted slightly, muscles tense with the anticipation of some kind of catch or condition. Or, perhaps she had picked up on his apprehension and was waiting for him to revoke the offer. For some reason, the idea of doing so suddenly felt…unconscionable to him.

In a small voice, she said, “I’d really like that.” The restraint of her response was belied by the way she wiggled in her chair. Beneath the table, her leg wagged restlessly like an excited dog’s tail. “Eight o’clock?”

“Mmhm.” Raf felt some of the tension in his browline relax as a slight smile passed his lips. “Let's see if we can revisit some of those tunes you have. Just–for fun. No recording, nothing serious.”

It seemed that Magritte could never keep a smile off her face for long, and once again, that broad, delighted grin of hers painted her features. “Yeah, yeah! I’d like that a lot!”

“Alright then.” Raf knocked his knuckles twice on the table like a gavel, before standing up.

As he reached to retrieve his violin case off the chair next to him, Magritte pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Hi-Note, eight o’clock.”

Raf favoured her with a lopsided smirk. “Don’t forget.”

“I won’t. I’ll see you there!”

He provided her with an affirmative little wave, but by the time she had realised he was taking his leave, Raf was already halfway to the door.

He heard her call out to him, “Thank you for the–um–everything!”

Looking back to her, Raf returned the sentiment with an appreciative nod before pushing through the cafe doors; exiting onto the busy sidewalk outside.

He wanted to get home before sundown…

To play his violin.

#Hi-Note #I'm not a very good writer I don't paint very well with words haha but this is at least one way to get the scenes outta my head!#rafael #magritte

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