OCEAN, SALT & WOUNDS —
rafe cameron x reader
warning :: divider made by @cafekitsune !! <3 || strong language . suggestive content . mention of drugs . kinda angst, tried my best . unconventional!reader but not in a bad way . rafe is an unstable mentally loser </3 || no real description of reader, just that she has quite a husky voice, with a subtle rasp.
synopsis :: when rafe cameron meets a strange woman on the docks, the night clings to him like smoke—sharp with cologne, salt, and the ache of something he’s been trying to forget. there’s powder on his breath, tremor in his hands, and his eyes, glassy, burning, don’t know whether to drown in the sea or in you. maybe it’s the same thing. maybe he’s already sinking.
it was pretty late when rafe cameron stormed out of a burning house party at topper’s place. maybe around three-thirty. maybe less, maybe more—rafe didn’t know, and he sure as hell didn’t care. his mind was hazy, lost in the thick fog of the white powder he’d snorted like it was his lifeline, and at the same time, the only fucking way out of it all. his eyes, blue like the ocean, glassy as hell, looked like they were always one blink away from shattering into tears. and god, had he cried. so many fucking times, when no one was watching.
and no one was watching. no one gave a shit about who he really was. who rafe cameron was—not cameron. not the name. not the goddamn last name that came with money, power, legacy, all thanks to his dad, his company, his grip on the island. rafe existed only through that name, and outside of it, he was fucking nothing. people had made that crystal clear. fuck, he even wondered sometimes if topper and kelce actually gave a damn about him, or if he was just another shiny trophy for them—a walking badge of popularity and chaos.
rafe swore under his breath, brows furrowed as he wiped a salty tear from his cheek, already bitter from the chill of the night. not that cold, really, but it still felt like he’d been tossed into the fucking ocean. rafe was sinking.
his feet had carried him to the docks, where his dad’s boat was docked, so not that far from home, technically. not that it mattered. they could all go fuck themselves anyway. every single person who claimed to be family but never gave a shit about him. his father. rose. that bitch sarah… not wheezie, though. wheezie got it. she knew what it felt like to be the black sheep, the odd one out, the fucking sad little joke no one took seriously.
he was about to sit down at the edge, dip his feet into the water, cry his fucking eyes out—maybe do another line or two, and finish off the bottle of vodka he’d been clutching like it was the goddamn love of his life. his vision was already going fuzzy, and he was halfway through cursing the sky, ward, rose, sarah, and every single fucking pogue ruining his life even more with their dumb little melodramas. and don’t even get him started on sarah’s little rebellion.
sarah, sarah, sarah.
even when he was supposed to hate her with every inch of his soul, rafe couldn’t stop saying her name like a fucking prayer.
“why do you always choose sarah over me?” “what does sarah have that i don’t?” “she betrayed us, and you still treat her like she’s fucking better than me?!” “dad, for fuck’s sake—look at me! me, rafe! your son!”
he remembered screaming those words at his father. he remembered the punch that followed, quick and brutal, eyes full of bitter disappointment, like ward wished he’d never been born in the first place. just the memory of it, raw and hot in his chest, made his stomach twist and his heart ache like hell. he rubbed his temples with the fingers of the hand not wrapped around his bottle like a lifeline.
you know, the one that hadn’t been claimed by the goddamn alcohol yet.
“are you cryin’?”
the voice came out of nowhere—husky, almost raspy, but unmistakably feminine. “you’re too pretty to be cryin’…” it added, softer this time, almost syrupy.
rafe’s head dropped, eyes scanning toward your silhouette already sitting at the edge of the dock, shoes kicked off beside you. the night was too dark to make out your face, but the moon lit your body like a stage light. he saw the lines of your collarbones, your tits—of course he noticed that, this was rafe after all—your neck, your lips, your nose, and those sharp, unsettling eyes.
who the hell was this girl? and who did she think she was, asking him some dumbass question like that? because no, rafe wasn’t pretty. rafe was broken. ugly on the inside. rotten to the fucking core.
“who the fuck are you?” his voice came out slurred, but the chill in it cut clean through the air. he wiped a tear off his cheek roughly with the back of his hand before taking a sip of water.
vodka. it was always vodka.
you didn’t say anything. just stared at him—through him—and rafe swore to god it felt like you were peeling back his skin, his bones, digging into whatever was left of him. fuckin’ creep, he thought bitterly, sniffing hard, nose still burning from the last few rails he’d blown through.
should he sit next to you or walk the fuck away?
actually, what were you even doing here? this was basically his family’s property, and he’d never seen you before in his life, not on this dock, not on this island.
“you’re trespassing,” he said, pupils blown wide, looking pathetic—no, worse than the word ‘pathetic’ itself—but still trying to intimidate you. or something like it, anyway.
“so what if i am?”
blink. silence.
the words hung between you like smoke, thin, curling, a little dangerous. rafe stayed rooted where he stood, unsure whether to laugh, lash out, or fall to his knees. he should’ve been pissed. really pissed. should’ve threatened to call security, drag you off cameron property by the fucking wrist if he had to—not that that was very gentlemanlike.
but he wasn’t exactly a gentleman, was he?
instead, he moved. not with grace, not with confidence. just that chaotic rafe kind of momentum, like the wind had shoved him forward. he kicked off his shoes in a clumsy, half-drunk mess, stumbling once—twice—muttering something under his breath that might’ve been fuckin’ hell. then he flopped down beside you. maybe too close. maybe not close enough.
your presence felt like static, like a low hum just beneath his skin. he could already feel the heat of you against his side, tracing lines down his spine even though you hadn’t touched him. not once. he, on the other hand, felt cold to the bone. not just cold, empty.
antarctic, if antarctica had vodka and daddy issues.
he didn’t look at you. not yet. just stared out at the black water in front of him, bottle resting between his legs like a warning sign. fuck, what was he even doing?
“you’re not feeling too good, baby, are you?”
you asked after a minute of silence, your eyes still fixed on him like they saw something deeper than bone. rafe felt like your gaze was sketching every line of his face, dragging across his skin like fingertips or blades, he couldn’t tell. and yet there was no judgment in it. not even a flicker.
in fact, that slow-blooming smile on your lips—the one that crept in without warning—jump-started something in his chest, something long dormant and rusted. it still sputtered, still coughed like an old engine with no oil, but it moved. god, he still couldn’t fucking breathe properly. he felt too light, like the wind could lift him straight off the dock and drop him into the dark water. hollow, like he’d been scraped out from the inside.
wait—baby?
you just called him baby, like you’d known him for years. like you’d seen the rot in him and stayed anyway. like you already knew the damage he’d done, all the fucked-up shit that clung to him like a second skin. then rafe parted his lips, something like a word catching in his throat. but it dissolved as quickly as it came, and he clamped his mouth shut again when he felt tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
“hey…”
your voice was too soft for someone like him. too gentle. and when your hand slid toward his arm and settled there, it sent something sharp and warm straight through him.
a jolt. not quite pain, not quite comfort. like you’d lit a match and pressed it to his ribs. he couldn’t explain it. wouldn’t even try. but he felt it, the heat from your skin bleeding into his. something passed between you—something he didn’t fucking understand.
what the actual fuck… the thought barely formed before his mouth went dry like sandpaper, and he tried to mumble something back but nothing came out. and mechanically, like muscle memory, his fingers curled tighter around the bottle. he took a long swig. vodka dribbled down his throat, and one stray drop slid along his neck, catching the moonlight as it traced the sharp rise of his adam’s apple.
“you’re crying,” your voice came again, soft and strange, your hand still resting on his bicep like it belonged there. “want me to lick off your tears?”
you smiled then slow, deliberate, showing just enough teeth to blur the line between tenderness and something far less innocent.
rafe didn’t know if he should laugh or scream, didn’t know if you were completely fucking insane or if this was the exact moment to fall apart in front of a stranger. he didn’t even bother wiping the tears sliding down his cheeks, now flushed pink from the cold. instead, he looked at you—really looked—like maybe you’d say something else insane and he’d have no choice but to believe it.
“w-what the fuck are you even sayin’?” his voice cracked right in the middle, humiliating and sharp, and he wanted to dig a hole and bury the sound six feet under. a pathetic sob caught in his throat, and he pressed the back of his thumb under his nose, still sore from the coke, still burning. “you don’t even fuckin’ know… m-me, and you’re sayin’ stupid shit like that?”
he snapped—hard, fast, unfiltered.
it was easier that way.
easier to yell at someone who meant nothing to him. easier to throw his pain at you like it was your fault, like it would help if he made you carry some of it. rafe liked easy, even when it was ugly. especially when it was ugly.
he tried to breathe in deep, but his lungs felt like they were collapsing in on themselves, crushed under a weight that had no name—only pressure. he was sinking again, slipping under the surface, mouth open but no air getting in.
you blinked. that was all. still calm, still watching him like he wasn’t shattering into sharp little pieces. your face, though—it softened with every word he hurled at you, like the angrier he got, the gentler you became. it made no sense, none of this did. it was messy, incoherent, one big fucking fever dream. and yet you looked at him like you knew. not the details, not the facts, but the storm. as if you were just waiting it out, not trying to fix it, not scared of the rain. but the storm wasn’t going to pass.
rafe was the fucking storm.
a tsunami of emotion with no anchor, no map, no goddamn end. and fuck, he didn’t make sense, he was irrational. he wasn’t okay, and you weren’t running.
and because the whole situation was already wildly, impossibly irrational, you leaned in a little closer, so subtly it could’ve been mistaken for a breeze shifting direction. until your face was near his, your fingers reaching out to catch his chin between them, tender and slow, like he was made of fine porcelain and might not only crack but shatter everything around him too if you touched him the wrong way.
and then he felt something warm and wet glide along his cheek, tracing the exact path where a single tear—no, several—had carved their way down his skin.
rafe choked on the sound rising in his throat, his hand instinctively gripping the fabric of his shorts so tight his knuckles turned bone-white, eyes blown wide and reddened, the rims raw and sore.
he was dreaming.
no—worse.
he was hallucinating. this was a fucking fever dream, and you were nothing more than some embodied version of comfort his brain had made up to keep him from completely falling apart. he couldn’t even see your face properly. not really. not clearly enough to trust it was real.
“shit,” he breathed out with a half-laugh, something bitter, something hollow, something stretched too thin between disbelief and the urge to break down completely. his voice cracked again, folded over itself like a dying thing.
and then your lips, soft and impossibly gentle, brushed the top of his cheekbone, the corner of his eye, the curve of his eyelid—so delicate he wasn’t sure whether it was happening or if his mind had finally snapped. the touch didn’t feel like something grounded in reality. it was too light, too slow, like smoke on skin.
but fuck, it felt good.
his face, so cold just moments before, began to warm in small increments, like your mouth was coaxing life back into it one kiss at a time.
and then he smelled you. something salty. something like the ocean, not the sea air he knew from childhood summers but something closer, something wilder.. like you’d come crawling out of the water itself, carrying its memory on your skin. he could taste it now, even on his tongue. it lingered on the roof of his mouth, too vivid, too intimate.
that’s when it really hit him—
you weren’t real. you couldn’t be.
you turned his face toward yours, slow and careful, like you were guiding a wounded animal or something more fragile than skin and bone. and then you leaned in, not to kiss him, not yet—but just to rest your forehead against his, the bridge of your nose brushing gently against his like you already knew every dark corner of him, every thought he didn’t say out loud, every inch of hurt clinging to the inside of his ribs.
your hands, warm and barely there, settled on either side of his neck, your thumbs ghosting over his pulse like you were trying to remind him that he was still alive.
rafe didn’t move. he couldn’t.
he just let his eyes close—because if he kept them open, something in him might splinter for good. the silence was thick and sacred and unbearable all at once. you weren’t doing much of anything. not fixing. not talking. just being. and somehow, that was the first time in what felt like years that he didn’t want to run.
his breath hitched, then slowed. and for a second, a single, suspended second, he wasn’t the fucked-up mess everyone thought he was.
he wasn’t ward’s disappointment.
he wasn’t the cokehead, the ticking time bomb, the boy with too many ghosts.
he was just… rafe.
a boy with salt on his skin, tears on his face, and someone—you—who hadn’t flinched once when he broke open in front of you.
“why are you here?” his voice was barely a whisper, like the question had slipped out on its own, too tired to carry any bite. you didn’t answer right away. you just breathed him in, fingers still pressed to his neck like a lifeline.
“maybe,” you murmured, lips brushing the corner of his mouth without ever fully touching it. “you needed someone to see you… and i was the only one who did.”
“ l’appel du vide ”
