warnings: i don't think there is any?? i'm not brave enough to delve into deep things so we're PG over here (for now)
The first time Rafe saw Margaret Partridge all grown up, he experienced whiplash.
She was lounging by the pool in some thinly strapped blue bikini when he rounded around the corner. Her head snapped up, her mane of natural, reddish curls bouncing with her. The few photos around the house of her was when she was dolled up for events, her hair pulled back or straightened and blown out with precision. With hundreds of curls preening under the water from the pool and frizzing up past her shoulders and settling behind her ears, he almost didn't recognise her.
The second difference was that her face was bare. For instance, Rafe had no idea the girl possessed so many freckles or that her skin held so many silvery scars—acne from her youth, perhaps. Rafe almost snickered at the thought; prepubescent hormones were no match for creams, lotions and drugs, he could imagine. She was also incredibly pale, her skin used to the overhead cloud of her English boarding school perhaps rather than the deep sun of the east coast.
On the contrary, Margaret recognised Rafe instantly and nearly curled up on herself. She blinked, eyes wide, blue and owlish as she waited for him to patronise her, or even worse, ignore her entirely.
"I thought you were at boarding school," he said plainly. His eyes briefly ran over her bikini and made note of that, yes, from the age of eleven to sixteen, girls did, in fact, change.
"They finish summer early for exams over there. Officially, I'm on study leave," she answered quietly.
"But you're sixteen. What exams?" was his dumb response.
She smiled softly and sat up, pushing at her sunglasses by the rim over her cheek. "Different education system, Rafe. We do exams at sixteen and eighteen."
He nodded and swallowed, squinting as he looked out at the garden. "When did you get back?"
"Yesterday. Managed to catch a boat before anyone refused to soldier," she laughed and tilted her head. "Are you looking for my brother?"
Rafe paused, forgetting completely about Adam. Then his brain caught up and he nodded, rubbing at his chin. "Yeah. Yeah. He was supposed to meet me out front and he didn't. So..."
"So you decided to let yourself in?" She was still smiling at him, a small quirk of her lips but a loud sparkle in her eyes. "I'd tell you to go up but he's in there with some girl. Hence why I'm outside."
Rafe practically shuddered. He scowled up at the house and huffed. "Asshole. We were supposed to— to hang out."
Margaret raised her eyebrows and pulled an expression that could only mean, 'really?' She exhaled and shrugged before moving back onto her stomach. "He should be down in a bit. They've been at it since Daddy left this morning, so."
He stared at her then with a quiet intensity. He nodded silently. Then he sat down on the sun-bed next to her.
"Are you back for good then?" He asked gently after a few minutes of comfortable silence.
"A few months. Then I go back for sixth form." Rafe stayed quiet and stared with his silent question. "Second set of qualifications," she supplied and he nodded even if she wasn't looking at him. "I thought you'd be at college but Adam said you didn't apply."
Rafe grimaced and laughed, his index finger rubbing between his brows. "Yeah. Wasn't— s'not really for me. I'm not an academic."
"You mean you're a nepo baby who's hoping your dad'll give you a job without a degree?" she said with a soft smile, sitting up again, her back arched.
He laughed and shook his head despite himself. "Don't make me sound like that. Nah, I'm gonna take a year off. See what's up, you know? Thinking about joining the military or somethin'."
"That's very physical. Can you handle it, Cameron? Can you handle the buzz cut?"
A bubble of loud laughter escaped fromhis throat and he shook his head. "I think I can handle a haircut, Miss Partridge."
Margaret's entire face scrunched up and she stared at him. "Are you actually thinking about it?"
Rafe suddenly turned shy and he fiddled with the ring on his finger. "Yeah, actually. I think the structure would kinda do me good, you know? Just, like, maybe don't say anything. My dad doesn't know."
"Are you gonna tell him?" She asked lowly, her eyes boring into his face from overtop of her glasses.
Rafe sighed and squinted off into the pool. "Honestly, I was thinking about just going. Leave a letter or some stupid shit." Margaret sat up and watched him silently, carefully looking at each of his tiny movements. He laughed uncomfortably. "Shit, Marg. Don't look at me like that. Looking in my soul and shit."
She smiled softly and shrugged. "Well, your soul happens to be a pretty sight, Rafe Cameron."
He coughed and stood up, wiping his hands on his shorts. He laughed under his breath and itched at his nose. He pointed at Margaret like he didn't know what to do with his hands. "It was– you're back and that's– that's good. It was nice to see you again. You look– you're good. You look good."
Margaret just laughed and shook her head, rolling back onto her tummy and waving lazily at him. "I'll see you around, Rafe."
The next time Rafe saw Margaret was at a party. She wasn't like she was in his horrible, evil dreams though. She wasn't not dolled up, hair slicked, makeup thick and her dress thinner. No, she wasn't wearing some kind of cotton pinstripe pants, a camisole with Snoopy embroidered onto her breast, her hair in two gatherings of curls in the form of french braids. She was not dancing and drunk on the table, instead forcing water down her brother's throat with her left hands and her keys in her right.
"Adam. Adam, come on. You need to drink some," she was saying, her eyebrows creasing prettily.
Rafe was leaning against the wall, nowhere near as drunk as Adam but perhaps a few drinks deep that his inhibitions were floaty and scarce.
She eventually got Adam into the backseat of her car, pushing him through the party and swearing at a few people who tried to stop them. Rafe trailed behind them as she did so.
"Do you want me to drop you home as well?" she asked as she turned to look at him. She gestured to the cigarette he was nursing, waving her hand towards herself.
He offered it out and she took it, holding it deep in her fingers and taking a long drag. "Adam said I could crash at yours tonight."
Margaret stared at him and frowned again. "You only live across the road."
"Rose and my dad are having a date night. Wanted the house empty." Her mouth rounded and she nodded while taking another inhale of smoke. She offered it back to him but he shook his head. "It was mainly for the aesthetic."
Margaret laughed loudly and her face softened. "You're so stupid." She shook her head and gestured for him to get in while she started the car and pulled out.
The radio was quiet and the windows open. Cold air blew over Rafe's face and he found it was strangely peaceful with Adam's soft snores and Margaret's soft humming to whatever jazz station she had on.
He remembered that about her. From when she spent more time on the island, he always remembered her being musical. A vague memory surfaced to the front of his head and he blurted it out. "Didn't you play in band?"
She turned and nodded, humming. "I still do. I play cello and the saxophone."
"I remember that," he said softly, as if he needed to affirm that he did once have that connection with her. "I went to one of your concerts so me and Adam could go to a baseball game."
"So I was a means to an end?" she grinned, her tongue poking out from between her teeth.
Rafe grinned and shrugged. "T'was a good show."
"Memorable," she said softly. Her eyes met with his before flicking back to the road.
Rafe had never really been struck by beauty. Most of the time, he was searching for it, desperately trying to find someone worthy for his affection, his attention, his lust. But he felt no stirring in his gut and only a kind of cathartic shame. How could he think a girl was unworthy of him when he was sharing a car with Margaret? Rafe suddenly felt shitty and made a redundant, drunken note to text all the girls he ghosted a sincere apology.
sorry, babe. i'm actually not as drop dead gorgeous as i thought i was. anyway, good luck or whatever, you still have no chance of a second date btw lol
"Yeah. Memorable. That's a good word."
She smiled, her eyes crinkled and his stomach swooped. Is this a crush? Did Rafe have a crush? God, who was he? How humiliating. This was mortifying. This was God Himself spiting him for every asshole thing he'd ever done. At least it was some feelings bullshit and not getting shot at. (Though he'd willingly put his name down for that.)
He was shaken out of his brief existential by Margaret smoothly reversing the car into her driveway. The car beeped and booped before she opened the door and flicked her brother's eyes to shake him awake. When that didn't work, she held his nose and he started before he was dragged upright.
"Woah, woah, woah. Maggie. No need for the aggression. I was getting there." He spoke with an irritating vocal fry and adopted an American accent in his inebriation. Despite his protests, she dragged him inside the ostentatious house.
The thing about Margaret's family was that if the Cameron's were rich, they were merely a drop in the sea of the Partridge's wealth. See, Margaret's family came from the generational wealth that had been around since before America was even considered to be a country. Her family had a crest for crying out loud, her parents were Lord and Lady and did business with Princes and Dukes. For Margaret, the Outerbanks was a summer home her father lived in to hide away from his wife and an escape from her varsity, private, boarding school. To her, the Cameron's were only playing at being rich.
She opened the door, (unlocked because who needed to lock one's door when everything was easily replaced by a tap of one's Amex?) and pushed Adam in. He was allowed to collapse onto the sofa, smoothly retrieving an old bowl and placing it beside him with some pain killers and water.
While Margaret tended to her brother, Rafe drifted into the kitchen where he found the lights on. Looking over his shoulder, he ventured in and found a laptop and about six books sprawled out on the counter. He closed the lid and was greeted by a set of stickers from various worldwide locations. He eventually surmised the mess belonged to Margaret and reopened the laptop, where he checked the Microsoft account and was proved right. The Word document was white and bright in the soft, pink light of the kitchen. The words were too clever for him after a few beers so he flicked through the books to the title pages and smiled to himself.
The doorway to the kitchen darkened, as did Margaret's cheeks when she caught Rafe. He looked up and smiled, shameless. "Are you doing a summer project?"
"It's a writing competition," she said quietly. "I get bored and restless and I work when I can't sleep. But I don't have any work to do right now. So I do these."
A smile crept onto his face and he laughed. His face was softer and his eyes more open than Margaret had ever seen them as he ran a hand over the papers.
"Do you want a drink?" she asked, already moving away to the fridge. "Not alcoholic, obviously. I don't want you passed out as well. I can deal with my brother being weird but you would be... I don't know."
"I'll have some water," Rafe said lowly, watching her.
The night was quiet and intimate as the two talked, and eventually it dissolved and light flooded through the kitchen doors. Margaret turned and blinked as the sun blinded her through the french doors. She laughed in disbelief. "Shit, I didn't realise it was like, morning."
His expression was soft as he turned to look at her. The sun pierced through the windows to lay a blanket over his tanned face and his blue eyes. Margaret's breath caught in her throat, she shamelessly let her eyes linger, locked with his. The moment was only broken by Adam retching in the living room. It happened to be Rafe who broke eye contact to turn around and watch his friend stumble into his kitchen.
He groaned and leaned against the counter, letting his cheek smash against the (genuine), cold marble. "Why did you let me drink so much?"
"I didn't let you do anything," Rafe said with a smile. "It was kinda difficult to get you to stop."
Margaret rubbed at her face as she sank back into the stool at the counter. "You rang me, Adam, to pick you up. You were literally about to get in the bath when I got there."
He groaned again, louder. "I'm never drinking ever again." He huffed and looked up, his eyes snapping between Rafe and Margaret. He pointed at Rafe before putting his head back down. "What're you doing here?"
Rafe laughed, the sound erupting from his throat without warning. "You said I could stay."
"Oh, yeah. For your– your dad's sex thing."
Both Margaret and Rafe cringed, faces scrunching up and identical groans sounding. Adam laughed and poked at Rafe's neck.
"C'mon, there was no need for that."
Adam lifted his head up and stared intently at Margaret. There seemed to be some kind of communication between the two that caused Margaret to huff and flick at his eye. Adam just laughed and Rafe frowned, the horrible feeling of being left out bubbling up in his stomach.
"I should probably head home now," he said quietly, suddenly realising that he did not belong in this big house, bigger than any he'd seen and yet still, somehow, full.
Adam walked him out, squinting at the sun as the door opened and offering a mumble in respond to Rafe clapping him on the back. He turned and saw Margaret leaning against the counter, she smiled and he nodded.
Rafe didn't see Margaret much for another few weeks after that but he thinks of her every time he looks up how to join the army—it's quite a simple process, he just needed to convince himself to achieve the 'Step One' the engine supplied for him. He saw Adam frequently though, which his father was happy about. But it wasn't about that, Adam was a good guy. He had his head on straight and he was actually decent despite the money his father so loved. The whole family was lovely, really. Mr and Mrs Partridge always welcomed him in and plied him with food, advice and even the throwaway comment that his "face shape couldn't handle his curtains." He had thought of Margaret in that moment and smiled, considering the buzz cut and whether he could "handle" it.
The funny thing was, even without seeing Margaret once in the last two weeks, he gathered a lot about her. The main fact was that she couldn't be anything less than lonely. Her parents always worried about her, always going on about how she kept to herself too much, she was too shy, she needed to branch out, Adam should take her to a party or something.
When Rafe asked why Adam never did what his parents asked, he had said, "Maggie isn't lonely for lack of trying. People just.. people just screw her over, you know? She's shy and she's kind and she's quiet. They don't know what to do with that, so they're horrible. I mean, obviously, I hope she finds her people one day and she deserves to but I'm not about to take her to a party where some guy is gonna try and stick his tongue down her throat and make her cry."
Rafe had nodded and shrugged. "Sarah's the complete opposite. She's a social butterfly, never needed my help with anything."
Adam hummed. "Maggie's a lot once you know her. Like a lot in a good way. But in the way that she is probably sat in my bedroom right now waiting for me so she can go on about some random shit she found in a research paper or something. Like it's cool, it's just.."
"She needs her own friends?"
"Yeah! Yeah! Like I love her and everytime she'd ring me from school, I was sat and ready to listen. Just bums me out that I'm her best friend." He had shrugged and moved on but it had stuck with Rafe.
In England, there was a certain ritual that came with hot weather and a long weekend. In Carolina summer, most weekends were hot and most were long if you were wealthy. So that ritual followed itself with the Partridges to their summer home and involved a barbecue, the masculine need to take his shirt off and a copious amount of alcohol. Their wealth made the replica slightly more classy than the common event, shirts perhaps kept on, a vegan option on the grill and a paid member of staff to man it, bougie cocktails rather than bad beer.
It was the first happy family gathering Rafe had attended for a long while and when he was invited by Adam, he hadn't quite believed he had achieved such status in their friendship.
("You actually want me there? Who else is going?" He had asked.
Adam had been stuffing his face with pizza at the time. "Like my mum, dad, Maggie. You know. Family."
"I'm not family," Rafe had pointed out.
"So?" Was Adam's only response, along with a throwaway shrug.)
That was how Rafe ended up sat rigid on the patio furniture with a drink between his fingers, wearing some of Adam's long jean shorts, a belt and some graphic t-shirt with a stupid cartoon on the back. There was music playing softly in the background, which Margaret was now arguing with her dad about.
"You've put on the shittiest—" A finger was pointed her way and she went red. "You can't just search 'jazz' and put on the first playlist you see. You have to—"
Adam had groaned and pinched at her arm. "Can't we just leave it on? Or put on some real music?"
Mrs Partridge, Andie, shook her head and walked away in exasperation, removing herself from the situation before her daughter got heated and unladylike.
Margaret had whipped around and glared at him. "Proper music? What like how you like to tell girls you listen to Fleetwood Mac 'genuinely'. Or when you didn't realise Daisy Jones wasn't even—"
"Woah, woah, buttercup," Mr Partridge, Mark, said smoothly, holding out a placating hand.
The continued on like that: with soft banter and careful considerations. Rafe learned to play backgammon, taught by Margaret in her soft voice. She was patient with him, but still giggled and called him an idiot when he blatantly broke the rules.
"Like that?" he would ask, deciding to just take all of her counters off the board.
She would shake her head and cover her mouth. "No, you idiot. You can't do that."
He would smile and break the rules again just to watch her insult him with that pretty smile on her face. It was that night, that gentrified version of a tradition that cemented to Rafe he was in fact human and could feel something other than lust or rage. He found that in the Partridges, in Adam's stupid jibes, Mark's laid back attitude about drinking, Andie's worry about his eating or his hair. He found that in Margaret's pretty face and the way she blushed when he tilted his head while she spoke.
Rafe wasn't too sure how it happened that Adam's head ended up in his lap as they passed a cigarette back and forth. Originally, it had been Margaret's but she had fallen asleep to the soft sounds of the fire crackling and the pool sloshing, so Adam had stolen it for him and Rafe.
"You like her, don't you?"
Rafe looked down at his best friend's face, illuminated by the glowing cigarette and the dying flame beside him. Despite the harsh shadows, there was no anger on Adam's face. Rafe nodded.
"Yeah. Yeah, I think I do."
Adam nodded and swallowed. "Don't break her heart. I don't think she'd survive that."
Rafe shook his head. "Nah. I don't think I'm gonna do anything about it," he whispered.
"You should," Adam whispered back, reaching up to poke Rafe's nose, earning a snort. "She deserves some love."
"You think I can do that?"
"I think you care enough to try."
Rafe shrugged and stared at the fire. "We'll see."
this is kind of really shit but i'm like doing this thing where i have confidence in myself or whatever. so, this is what came out of that. please like it. i guess it's a kind of prologue to something that's been rattling around my head?? 🤷♀️ i also don't know what to like call this, i am uneducated how the drabble/drizzle/blurb/bib stuff works so if anyone wants to help a girl out, please do
also i have NO IDEA how the american education or military system or anything works so suspend your belief 🙏 : its not real, please don't eat me
this also takes place prior to the show but like the show doesn't happen bc with mt plan, it would make NO SENSE 😋 (and i never watched past like s2 bc bitch PLEASE, the ship was difficult to believe and you want me to continue with this nonsense??)
i also have loads of these little ideas for loads of fandoms and characters. platonic and not platonic, if you're interested, PLEASE let me know
(i'll probably post it anyway unwarranted bc idgas 😧)
ANYWAY, if you read this and liked it, i love you (ill have your babies) and love and luck and life
(you can tell this is my first post bc i thought you just typed the tags at the bottom and it was just that. lol. then i tried to post it. whoopsies)