Rafe Cameron Imagines

love

Love.

A foreign feeling for the Cameron boy.

He had never felt love. Not from his parents, not from his sisters, not from a girl, not from friends, not from anybody.

He didn't know what love was, what it was supposed to feel like. He only ever knew toxicity, possessiveness, listening to his father and doing exactly what was asked of him, no questions asked ever.

When you came along, it was as if he had received a fresh breath of air, a new reason to live and be better, someone to finally love him like he needed to be loved and cherished.

You had known from the beginning that being with Rafe would be a very different experience from any relationship you had had up to that point. Knowing his background, you expected things to be different. 

Your love language was most often physical touch and words of affirmation, but the problem was that Rafe was very inexperienced at the latter. 

It took him quite a while to get used to the idea that he had an actual girlfriend, that he actually needed to put in some effort and maintain a serious commitment to someone, having previously been used to only having flings with different girls almost every other night.

His inability to express his feelings towards you or even remotely show you any kind of gesture that would tell you how he felt about you caused a lot of doubts about your relationship from the very beginning.

"Rafe?" you had asked after a couple of weeks of being together, confused about where you were standing in his life.

"Hm?" he hummed, not looking up from his phone.

You were silent for a moment, playing with your fingers while you thought how to convey the problem in a gentle manner.

"What do you think about us?" the question made him look up from his phone, his fingers having stopped typing away on it.

"What do you mean?" he was confused, that much you could tell, but you couldn't figure out anything from the tone of his voice.

"I mean, how do you feel about our relationship? What do you think about it?" your voice was small, your gazed stuck to your hands playing with the hem of your shirt in your lap.

He readjusted his position on the couch, now turned so he was facing you.

"It's something new, for me especially, but I think it's going well. Why are you asking? Did I do something wrong?" even though his voice wasn't conveying it, he was freaking out on the inside.

Your question had caught him off-guard. He knew he lacked experience in the display of affection department, but he had thought that things had been going well. Had he been wrong?

"No, no, you didn't do anything" you shook your head and gave him a small smile, but it wasn't enough to make him believe you.

"Y/N, I know you. Something's bothering you, you wouldn't have asked me otherwise. What's going on?" he pressed, now rubbing your knee in comfort.

It was little moments like this that would prove to you that Rafe could be soft, he could be romantic, but then it would all disappear and make you doubt everything once again.

"I just... Sometimes it's hard to read you. Your emotions, I mean. I know you aren't used to this and it's foreign to you, but oftentimes because you're not familiar with this, it makes me think that you don't want this. Like, being all romantic and stuff, telling me how you feel or just holding me. It would be nice if we could try that sometimes" you finally felt relief as you spoke, being able to get everything off of your chest after weeks of holding it in.

Rafe didn't even know what to say. He knew that everything you had just said to him was the truth, he hadn't been doing anything that he was supposed to. He rarely held you in his arms just because he wanted to feel you close, he rarely let you in on how he was feeling, he hadn't been a good boyfriend to you.

"Oh, baby" he gently maneuvered you so you were sitting on his lap, wrapping his arms around you in a tight hug as he rocked you back and forth.

You settled in his arms, enjoying the warmth radiating from his body as you wrapped your arms around his torso and buried your face in his chest.

"I know I still have a lot to learn about this relationship thing and I haven't been doing a good job until now, but I promise you that I'm going to do my best to be the best boyfriend I can be from now on. I don't want you to ever doubt yourself or our relationship" he promised, kissing your hair before resting his head on yours.

You nodded, burying your face deeper into his chest and inhaling his scent, the scent that you had started to call home.

True to his word, Rafe had done a 180 degree change from that day. It was like he was a whole another person.

Dates had become a regular thing, Rafe taking you out on a date every 2 or 3 days, planning the most romantic dates that you could ever dream of going on.

He had also started spoiling you rotten, buying you so many things and always using the excuse that everything he had bought you reminded him of you. Even though you frequently told him that he didn't need to spend money on you because you weren't with him for his money, he always insisted that buying you things brought him happiness because he loved seeing you happy.

He got better at expressing his feelings also. He had quickly realized that communication was the key to any relationship, so he had been slowly opening up to you about his life, his feelings, his childhood, his family, everything.

He had been slowly letting you in, each time becoming more and more comfortable around you. In no time, he was professing his love for you like it was nothing, like he had been doing it for years and it had become second nature to him.

Loving you changed him. It made him change his life around, become more independent and reliable, it made him want to become a better man in the future, be the man that you deserved to have by your side.

All for love.