summary: damian wayne is at a total loss in the matters of love and winning over your heart, so much so that he dreadfully ends up on each brother’s doorstep seeking love advice.
pairing: damian wayne x fem! reader (featuring dick, tim & jason)
content: flufff, absolute chaos and only one bat brother comes out on top in teaching damian the ways of yearning, not that he needed help for that in the first place.
“You—” Dick’s grin is barely repressed, chest puffed in pride of being the first confidant Damian thought of. “—seek dating advice?”
Damian makes a non-committal shrug. “I admit that I may harbour feelings towards her that differ from my usual disdain to the average person.”
Dick’s laugh escapes his lips, but quickly conceals itself into an overly serious nod when Damian’s glare pierces through him.
“And you… travelled all the way to Blüdhaven to ask me for help?”
Damian would much rather be stabbed with a jagged-edged blade than admit that. There was always a price to pay for relying on others, especially when it came to his tooth-grinning brothers.
“Would you like to tell her.. about these feelings?” Dick tries again, settling for a more emphatic approach.
Damian winces, averting his gaze—trying to displace the sudden lodge in his throat. “I assumed there were more steps that entail to a courtship. You’re clearly well-versed in them.”
Dick clears his throat. “It isn’t like a routined dance, Damian.” At Damian’s furrowed brow, he continues. “Falling in love—dating, it comes naturally between two people. It’s the million little moments, built upon each other that no practiced motion can recreate. It happens regardless of choices, and that’s the beauty of it.”
“Naturally.” Damian tests the word on his tongue, but like he suspected, it ran off with a bitter taste. While he has been deemed a prodigy, a perfect weapon—being a normal human was not something trained into his veins, but rather suppressed.
“Maybe it is for you, Grayson—but where I was raised, details of courtship and emotional connection with another person were never discussed. My body is not programmed to have these natural decisions come forth to my mind, and I-”
It feels like swallowing glass when he mutters. “I require your assistance to explain it to me.”
Dick’s gaze softens in pity, which weighs heavier, worse than his laughter earlier. “Hey, we actually started off on the same boat. If anything, at least you didn’t have to experience Bruce’s attempt at explaining it. He’s more an expert than any of us when it comes to emotional suppression.”
“Love..” Dick ponders. “It hits you when you least expect it, but spending time together does test if the feeling is reciprocated.”
“I suppose there are some steps that you could follow.” Dick murmurs, thumb trailing his chin in thought. “Alright, here’s the plan.”
Damian may not be well-versed in the matters of courtship. However, standing stiffly in competition with the street lamp beside him, his nose buried into his green scarf more so to hide his shame rather than from the winter cold, his regret grows tenfold with every passing minute for even agreeing to this.
You're bound to arrive at any moment, and he'd rather suffer in his regrets than leave you stranded on a date his brother suggested. Not that he used that term, he could barely handle deeming it a hang out.
In his earpiece, Dick’s voice echoes with irritating amusement.
“Damian, you need to relax. You look like an assassin waiting for your target to appear.”
“Train to be one from the moment you were born with a family legacy on your shoulders and see how that affects your posture.” Damian grumbles.
“It’s okay if you’re nervous. I’ll guide you if you freeze, remember?”
“I’m not nervous—”
His peripheral vision recognises your silhouette before he can even finish his retort. All sound seems to fade past the stuttering in his chest, including his brother’s teasing, and maybe time slows too—he wouldn’t put you below that possibility. You’re busy with your scarf that’s loosened enough to reveal your lips, and you don’t even notice that you’re speed-walking right towards him.
It’s instinctive, not at all pleasing when his hands reach out just in time to grab onto your shoulders before you slam face-first into his coat.
Your eyes widen comically, but it doesn’t appease the thundering of his pulse, not especially when you smile at him like that, bashful and sweet. “Damian! Fancy bumping into you here." You tease.
“Perfect meet-cute.” Dick whispers to himself. “Tell her it’s fine—that you actually think it’s cute.”
“What?” He snaps, feeling ashamed at the mere suggestion.
You blink twice at his sudden reaction. He needs to recover quickly, say something.
“Watch where you’re going.” He slips out.
He can hear the sound of Dick slapping his own forehead, echoing in his eardrums.
Thankfully, you don’t seem deterred by his slow-witted response, grin still in-tact. “Apologies for almost ruining your luxurious scarf. Though I’ll must say, green looks really good on you.”
He tenses. This is the moment, he must say something right this time.
“Brings out the colour of my eyes.” Dick offers through a sigh.
Perfect. Something witty, and completely appropriate for the situation.
“Brings out the colour of my eyes.” Damian’s delivery is completely robotic, unlike the one he heard in his ears, carrying none of the light-hearted tone that made it sound right.
Miraculously, it only cracks a laugh out of you.
“She’s an angel.” Dick groans, almost pitifully.
He winces, letting you go before offering his hand. “The snow’s slippery.” His excuse is well-rehearsed, recovering back into the steps Dick gave him.
Your expression brightens, taking ahold of his hand. It’s a perfect fit, your glove in his and a warm glow is forming behind his ribs—an unsteady, pleasant feeling, almost enough to forget the mistake he made.
“Smooth recovery.” Dick comments in approval. “Bring her to the next location.”
If Damian could, he’d mute Dick's channel immediately if he was going to be reminding him every second. It was distracting and nerve wracking to be multi-tasking two tasks at once, especially when you easily compelled him to lose all train of thought.
The skating rink is crowded, more than he’d like, but he wasn’t up for improvisation after his earlier attempt. It’ll have to do, and he’s sure his withering glare can clear enough space for the two of you.
“I’ve always wanted to try ice skating.” You’re brimming with glee with your gaze glued to the ice, and his eyes trail over your excitement with a tender patience. He’d like to sketch it out when he was back home, but even the thought of ending this moment was incomprehensible, so he settles on bending down to tie your skating shoes.
”Just to warn you—” Your joyful glimmer falters into a rare bundle of nerves. “I’ve never skated—like ever. You’ll need to teach me the ropes.”
His lips quirk the slightest lift. “You have the best teacher in all of Gotham.”
“Really?” You tease, leaning down slightly that he feels the warmth of your breath over his nose, sending goosebumps down his arms. “That’s a bold claim.”
“I was raised on snow mountains since I was an infant. A skating rink in Gotham is a small feat for me, and it shall be for you.”
“Less bragging, more swooning.” Dick’s voice echoes in his eardrums.
Damian’s expression clamps shut as he leads you towards the ice. He takes the first step and balances himself perfectly on the naturally formed ice. You enter immediately on the wrong angle, and slip. He doesn’t think, his free hand wrapping around your waist before you fall.
He freezes, and you do too. Caught at the entrance of the rink in the corner where no one is watching, you’re wrapped so closely in his embrace—his body instinctively shielding and protecting you. He feels his entire face burning up from the lack of distance.
“Maybe ice and me are less compatible than you think.” You whisper, as if the ice would crack and swallow you whole if it heard you.
It’s enough to kick him back into his senses, and he quickly lifts you back up to your feet. Gently letting go of your waist, he ignores the jittering in his fingers by taking hold of your hands instead.
“Hasn’t been proven yet.” He answers, looking down at your feet. “Mirror my stance.”
Your own gaze shifts down, and you adjust the blades of your shoes into the same V position. You’re shuffling less, which is already a sign of improvement.
“Alright, now one step forward, and the other leg lifts like a kick.” Damian instructs.
You try, but your feet wobble at your first kick, making you fall into his arms again. Not that he minds.
“You’re lifting too early.” He notes. “You’ll have to glide with your other foot first.”
Your brows furrow together, an adorable concentration creased in the centre as you try again. You manage it the second time, and he finds it despite himself, vulnerable to smiling when you let out a huff of joyous laughter as you glide with him, his hands still holding onto you.
“I guess you proved yourself right.” Your focus is still on your feet, but when you lift your gaze, you’re leaning close to him just like before when he had caught you—with such pure, content bliss that the word ‘beautiful’ fails to describe your features. “You are a good teacher.”
Dick’s muttering something in his ear, but the erratic signals shooting through his brain fries all comprehension of what he’s supposed to do next other than stare at you speechless like a bumbling fool.
He messes up his next step, and before he knows it, he’s tumbling down to the ice, and you fall down with him through your connected limbs. His body shields you from the freezing ice, but nothing protects him from the shame that drowns his entire conscience—of falling onto the ice which he has never done in his lifetime, and dragging you down with him.
He hears Dick clearly now, laughing so hard that it stings his eardrums from the high frequency.
“Damian!” You call out, and your gaze is half worry, half shock. “Are you okay?”
His ears flush with blood at your question, most likely reddened as if there wasn’t enough to mope about.
“I would very much like for the ice to swallow me whole.” He mutters dryly. “Other than that, I am uninjured.”
“I so have that captured.” Dick howls through the earpiece. “I’m calling it, this is going to be the topic of discussion for our next family dinner.”
Damian discreetly rips his ear-piece out and shoves it into his coat’s pocket when your gaze averts to an elderly couple stopping by the two of you like his fall is some tourist attraction, asking if he needed any help to get back to the entrance.
He is never asking Grayson for help ever again.
The Bat-Cave, Wayne Manor
(Drake’s Secondary Home)
“You sure you have the right person?” Tim guffaws, his expression a mixture of horror and fascination. “Haven’t you tried—”
“Grayson, yes. He has failed.” His scowl has dug deeper if possible, the faint memory of Dick’s laughter still penetrates his eardrums when he isn’t preoccupied with his responsibilities.
Pointing an intrusive finger to his new prey, he speaks. “You are to prove yourself more worthy than he is, as the next best in line for successful courtships.”
Tim raises a brow. “Didn’t know you kept track.”
Damian scowls. “Your methods are unconventional, but there are no other better alternatives.” Imposing and distracting with his crossed arms, casting a shadow over the littered papers, his presence eventually forces Tim to detach from the case he was working on.
“Alright, what’s her name?” Tim sighs, his fingers switching to a new tab where the identity search bar flickers.
Damian stiffens, defensive. “Why would you require her name?”
“To search for her, genius.” Tim comments as if it’s obvious that an illegal identity search is the best course of action. “I can have her interests, dislikes, and her entire profile mapped out in less than five minutes.”
“That’s dishonourable.”
“It’s efficient.” Tim fires back. “Or else we’ll be here all day. Why waste time on the uncertainties when you can already mould everything to go perfectly?”
“My respect for you shrinks by the second, Drake.”
Tim snorts. “As if you had any in the first place. Don’t act like you haven’t done your own illegal searches. Suddenly, it’s your crush and I’m not allowed to look into it?”
The back of Damian’s neck grows hot at the mere use of the word ‘crush’, dumbing his feelings down to something so.. pathetic. “Fine, I’ll do it myself. You’re not allowed to so much as glance at her.”
Tim’s hands raise in mock surrender. “I would never.”
As Damian settles into the seat, given the privacy as Tim launches himself into the spare chair, spinning it backward with his back facing the Bat-computer, he can feel the latter brewing with something to say.
“Spit it out.” Damian huffs.
“I just—” Tim starts. “Never thought I’d live to see the day of you softening up for someone. I mean—it’s even made you come all the way for my assistance.”
“I did not come for assistance.”
“Advice is practically the same thing.” Tim remarks. “You may have called it dishonourable, but can you truly claim you love a person if you don’t know them fully? I think falling in love means having a curiosity so strong for someone that you would like to know them as deeply as they know themselves. Isn’t that what it means to love?”
Damian’s gaze flickers to Tim who yawns widely, tucking his head into his elbows over a long drought from sleep after staying up for two days straight. It… resonated with him, his never-ending greed to learn the intricacies of your emotions and actions, to know the depths behind each story you held in your mind.
He’s spent long, treacherous months avoiding even the mention of your name anywhere outside the confinements of his mind, aside from the occasional scribble and tear of his paper, and his hunger has become an obstacle that even he can’t tackle any longer. With a mental push, the mere action of typing your name numbs his fingers from the anticipation.
Your social media accounts pop up—one is public with your name listed, and another is a photography account. There’s not many photos, but there’s enough that it feels like he’s peeking into something intimate, a catalogue of your life that has his heart quickening.
He remembers vividly of you asking to exchange social media accounts when you had first met, before he quickly shut it down, commenting that he refused to have such useless applications.
Yet, here he was—frozen, mesmerised at the sight of your smile captured on your digital camera, unable to scroll further past your most recent post. It didn’t capture the true essence of your joy like he remembered so clearly from that failed date, but it still struck him all the same.
Even his denial falls silent when he’s looking at you, because he’d be a fool to pretend away the quick pattering of his heart, or the small smile etched into his lips caused by you. His mind has formed a despicable habit—a quiet, dreadful longing whenever he envisions even a frame of you in his mind.
He has fallen for you quietly—strongly, and even as he scrolls further, to the latest bookstores you’ve frequented, or your blurred snapshots of sunsets along the Gotham horizon, he’s not satisfied. What is the use of seeing these images if he wasn’t there to witness it or hear from you in person?
He wants to be in your life, not just a mere bystander, but he doesn’t know how to say it.
“You’ve been deathly silent for ten minutes.” Tim comments. “It’s kind of making me curious—”
“I will gouge out your eyes myself, Drake.”
There’s only one person he has left to ask, and as he pierces a coffin-burying glare into Tim’s prying gaze, he wasn’t sure if he’d get the answer he needed.
89, Skirley Apartments, Park Row (Crime Alley)
(Todd’s Rebellious Man-Cave)
Jason whistles, leaning against the door to his mess of an apartment. “You must be desperate if you’ve come to see me.”
The disgruntlement in Damian’s expression comes mostly from embarrassment and partly from the state of disarray he finds from one single swipe past the gap of Jason’s shoulder and the door frame. Motorcycle gear is splayed out over the scratched floorboards, signaling another random side project.
Barely lived in, and somehow a complete mess that would have Alfred over in a snap with his emergency cleaning set.
“Grayson’s overly optimistic and Drake’s downright creepy.” Damian huffs.
“And that leaves me..?” Jason’s brow raises, a taunting smirk on his lips.
“As the last option.” Damian grits.
Jason steps back, his back pushing against the wood to allow Damian into his less-than-adequate living quarters.
“Well, sorry to break it to you, kid—” Jason plops down onto the couch, and the pillow-seat sinks under his weight. “But my understanding of love is barely any better than yours.”
“You’re still the second oldest.” Call it desperation, Damian isn’t sure if he’s above that anymore after the failure of his two other brothers. “You must’ve had some experience.”
“Now, age matters?” Jason mocks. “Well—if you want my two cents, I suppose I can give it.”
“There’s no point beating around the bush.” Jason states. “If you really like her, you just have to say it. Even if it hurts, especially if you’re scared it’ll hurt. That means there’s something worth to lose, and to never ask, it’s always gonna hurt worse than knowing.”
“That’s the whole point of love. It takes being brave, and realising the possibility of something real right in front of you—and fighting for it. You only have so few chances in the world to experience it, and you’re going to waste something like that over fear of what—rejection?”
“Have a heart-to-heart. That’ll always mean more than some hidden message, hoping she’ll notice and give in first.” Leaning back, Jason eyes Damian with a rare look he doesn’t recognise, because there is no possibility in the world that wisdom could exist in that big-head of his. “If she doesn’t return how you feel, that sucks. You’ll live barely, then it’ll heal and you move on. If you never answer the question? It’s gonna haunt you for life. The one that got away.”
The thought of losing you to cowardice, of being a permanent outsider to your life, nearly ruins him. Damian can’t afford that, not when there’s never been a person he desired for more than you. This week has made sure of that.
Even more of a horrifying realisation is that of all people, Jason Todd was the one that got through to him. His trained eyes scan the perimeter for any signs of a secret partner, a reason for this sudden shift in his usual, thick-headed sibling. “Where did you obtain such knowledge?”
Jason’s lips quirk up. “Jane Austen, you should try her sometime.”
135, Kane Street, Otisburg
(Damian's Last Resort)
Damian has only felt the urge to puke on two occasions this past year. Firstly, when he discovered old photos of Dick’s first Nightwing costume in an old album, and had to wash his hands twice with anti-bacterial soap. Secondly, when a rare poison seeped into his bloodstream that he had not already trained to be immune to.
Never had the nauseating feeling of nerves scale till the point of trembling fingers and stiff legs. He just needed to tell the truth, so why did the matter seem so petrifying?
He’s been standing outside your door, letting the winter frost bite at his exposed skin—like a pathetic loser for the past fifteen minutes and if he stood there any longer, he might as well brand himself as one. His hand comes up to knock in three measured beats, and he waits with the patience of Dick’s pit-bull for a belly rub.
The door unlocks, and your tousled hair greets him first. His heart tugs at the sight of you in your home attire, with your loosened shirt and pajama pants dragging against the floor. You’re utterly beautiful, even as you’re slapping your cheeks lightly to coerce yourself awake. It takes a few seconds for the realisation to hit your half-asleep features before your eyes nearly pop out.
“Damian? It’s five in the morning! What are you doing here?”
“I have romantic feelings for you.” He blurts with the subtlety of a ramming gun.
“If you reciprocate, I would like to..” He pauses, his thoughts competing with the rapid pace of his heartbeat. “Wait, I didn’t think this through.”
You blink slowly, shock blasted over your face, before a soft, warm smile creeps over your lips. “No-no, go on.”
He wants it to be perfect, but his words were too direct, too harsh. He wasn’t like Dick, who was naturally charismatic with others, or Tim who thought two steps ahead for every interaction, or Jason who bulldozed through without a care in the world. He doesn’t want to risk losing you over his own incompetence. “No, I feel like I’ve started it all wrong.”
“It’s five in the morning, even Damian Wayne is human enough to mess up his words at this hour.” You tease. His shoulders sag in relief at the sound of your comforting voice, which he suspects is the purpose of your teasing. To calm him, tell him it’s okay.
“Right.” He mutters. “May I start over?”
“I’m all ears.” You grin.
He cracks a soft smile in return. It is difficult for him to be human, to feel his faults bubble to the surface, but in front of you, he is willing to try. “I am unfathomably, undoubtably.. and completely in love with you. Romantic feelings don’t even come close to describing the knowing in my heart that it has chosen you from the very moment you entered my life.”
“When I am around you, it’s as if the world disappears, and all I envision is you.” He admits. “From the moment you approached me with your maddening smile and charming wit, I don’t believe I could have ever fought against it, against you.”
“Your laughter brings joy to me, your sadness distracts me of all my senses, and your very existence is a gift in my life that I cherish deeply and.. I’m terrified at the idea of losing that, losing you.”
“Love..” He hesitates. “..is a difficult concept for me to understand, because it has never been shown to me outright. So when I felt this desire—this constant want to be in your presence, I sought for understanding.”
“I see now—that love can’t be explained in just mere words. It is the shared moments between us that I replay in my mind, the small details I find myself noticing of you and cherishing deeply, and the fear of losing that privilege of knowing you. I realised.. that I can’t fathom continuing my life without you in it.”
“I don’t know if I deserve to be by your side, but I would like to try.” His gaze finds yours, and he hopes. So desperately, he hopes. “Would you have me, even if I am a fool who doesn’t know the right things to say?” His plea is quiet against the silent rustle of the trees, the dark twilight sky that watches over them.
Your eyes soften, filled with warmth and that same, brimming happiness he has memorised from the time spent on the ice. “You’re only an idiot if you think you didn’t say all the right things, Damian.”
His chest, tight till the point of rupturing, feels like it’s finally able to breathe.
Leaning in slowly, right across the barrier of the doorstep that separates you from him, you gift him with a soft kiss pressed against his lips and his entire world falls apart, not that it ever truly existed before you.
He takes you into his arms, lifting your feet off the doorstep as his boots crunch against the melted snow when he kisses you back. He has never kissed anyone before, but the feeling of wanting you so close to his soul only feels natural when you’re here in his arms.
It’s sweet, clumsy—and out of all the moments he’s spent with you, he truly wished he could replay this over and over.
When you break the kiss, he has to remind himself to not follow after you when you whisper softly against his lips. “You never finished. What did you want to do if I reciprocated?”
Visions, blurred and incoherent, flash through his mind but it’s nothing compared to the real thing right in front of him. “Everything. As long as you’re mine, the possibilities are endless.”
“Of course I’m yours, Damian.” Your eyes crinkle into that puddle of warmth that melts through all his defences. “No one has ever come to my doorstep, at five in a winter morning, professing their love before.”
His brows furrow, lips nearing to a pout. “Has anyone ever tried professing their love in other ways?”
You laugh, and he can get used to that. Making you smile and laugh as if it’s his one purpose on this planet. “No—I think my heart was too busy being taken by the person in front of me, who just conveyed what love is so perfectly that I can never think of anyone else.”
He relaxes at that, feeling his own smile deepen at the relief of finally having you in his arms, and in the comfort of the warmth shared under the dim streetlights, he thinks he’ll have to temporarily bump Jason to the number one spot in his long line of siblings.
Not that he’d ever tell him that—but he supposes if a limited edition of Jane Austen's collection ends up at Jason's doorstep tomorrow, it would have simply been the universe's divine gift.
likes, reblogs, and comments are highly appreciated! <333
pairings: rafe cameron x fem!reader, topper thornton x fem!reader
summary — rafe cameron has never wanted something he couldn’t take. it’s not his fault topper’s girlfriend turns out to be one thing he can’t stop thinking about.
word count — 18.1k (i know!!!!)
warnings — not proofread so sorry;; fem!reader, ooc topper, emotional infidelity, physical cheating, complicated love triangle (best friend’s girlfriend), relationship conflicts, alcohol use, drug use (cocaine), physical violence, description of blood and injuries, emotional manipulation through emotional vulnerability, power imbalance, sexual tension, making out/kissing, very impaired judgement due to intoxication, aggressive-ish behavior, explicit sexual tension, infidelity/cheating, emotional cheating, ambiguous consent due to intoxication and emotional state, power imbalance, controlling parents, possessive behavior, manipulation, guilt and shame due to intimacy, objectifying internal monologue, imagination of reader in explicit sexual scenarios, sexual fixation on reader, reader mentioned wearing dresses, makeup, embodying “perfect girlfriend” role. lmk if i missed any!!
part one part two part three part four
Topper had never quite gone against the grain most kids on Figure Eight did—sneaking coke at Midsummers, fucking in someone’s parents’ beds during charity galas, stealing boats just to see if they could—once in a while. His entire being relied on his foundation of good breeding and the optimism that came from being a part of the 1%. He had never needed anything. The best way Rafe could describe him was by saying he was a golden retriever in human form. He was loyal, eager to please, and just smart enough to know he wasn’t the smartest person in any given room, and that made him try harder at everything else. Being kind. Being decent. Being exactly what his mother had raised him to be.
Which was why—Rafe supposed—Topper had gotten the girl.
You were laughing at something Kelce said. Rafe hadn’t been listening, too busy tracking the way the June sun caught your hair, turning colours that probably had names that sounded like they belonged on paint chips. They were sprawled across the Thorntons’ perfectly manicured lawn like they were in some Ralph Lauren ad. Topper, Kelce, Ruthie, you, and Rafe. He’d shown up because Topper had texted him and what else was he supposed to do? Say no? Admit he’d rather be literally anywhere else than watching his best friend play house with his girlfriend of two years? Sitting at Tannyhill waiting for Ward to notice him long enough to be disappointed? At least here he could pretend he had friends; had a place; had something resembling a normal fucking life.
But lately he couldn't stop cataloging the small things. The way you tucked your hair behind your ear when you were thinking; it was always the left side. How you always brought those homemade cookies to parties, the ones you always wrapped in the same blue cloth each time. The kind that actually tasted like they were baked in a home oven rather than in a commercial kitchen that used bleached flour and measured everything with no real meaning behind it. You used real butter and too much vanilla, and he supposed that was the imperfection that came from someone who actually gave a fuck. The little gold anklet you wore that caught the light when you moved. Stupid things. Things that shouldn't matter. Things he noticed anyway and filed them away into what started as a small nook in his brain and turned to an overpowering compartment.
Two years. Christ.
“—and I told my Dad there’s no one behind me, what does it matter?”
“It matters because you could hit someone,” Ruthie said, barely looking up from her phone.
“I passed my driver’s test—”
“Then why are we talking about this?” Ruthie’s thumb moved across her screen, nails clicking. She was always bored, yet she always showed up. How much is there to do here?
Topper laughed, genuine, and shifted so you could lean back against his chest. You fit there like you’d measured for the space. His arms came around your waist, casual and propriety, the way someone would hold something they knew was theirs. Something nobody else would try to take.
Rafe took a pull from his beer. It was warm and disgusting now. He was nursing the drink slowly given that Kelce’s parents were home. If he stopped focusing on drinking slowly, he’d be on his fifth by this point because Rafe had never learned moderation.
“Rafe, back me up,” Kelce said. “You’ve seen me drive—”
“You drive like shit,” Rafe said, and there was the stupid, perpetual edge in his voice he couldn’t smooth out. It always made the people around him shift uncomfortably and that reminded him why Ward always kept him at arm’s length.
“Wait, what?”
Rafe shrugged. “You drive like shit,” he repeated, then picked at the label on his beer bottle, watching it tear in damp strips. “You almost hit a mailbox on Sea Breeze last week.”
“The mailbox was in my blind spot—”
“The stationary mailbox? The mailbox that couldn’t move was in your blind spot?”
You, Topper’s girlfriend—god, even in his head he couldn’t call you by your name, like saying it would make this whole thing more real—made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. It was soft and musical and Rafe briefly felt something crawl up his throat that was most likely disgust at the way he’d begun thinking. Your head was tipped back against Topper’s shoulder, face turned toward the sun. You looked like you were exactly where you wanted to be.
You probably were.
“I’m a great driver,” he said, but he was grinning now, playing it up. “You’re all just jealous of my Jeep.”
“We all have Jeeps,” Ruthie said, raising a brow.
“Yeah, but mine’s nicer.”
“It’s literally the same car,” Ruthie said, voice lowering towards the end like she couldn’t be bothered to argue.
From inside the house, Mrs. Thornton appeared at the French doors, waving with enthusiasm Rafe was sure he’d perfected from Junior League training. Perfect hair, perfect smile, perfect everything. “Lunch is ready, kids! Hope you’re hungry—I made way too much pasta salad.”
“You’re a saint, Mrs. T,” Kelce called back.
“Oh, stop,” she said, but looked pleased. Her eyes lingered on you and Topper, together, appropriate, and exactly what a mother would want for her son. The look on her face was satisfaction. Pride, even.
Rafe had seen that look before. On Rose’s face when Sarah did something worth bragging about at the club. On Ward’s face when he talked about Topper getting into Chapel Hill, about how good a kid he was, how he had his head on straight. Never on Ward’s face when he talked about Rafe.
"Come on," Topper said, standing and pulling you up with him in one smooth motion. You stumbled slightly—the grass was uneven or maybe you'd been sitting too long—and he steadied you with a hand at your waist. He was laughing, and so were you, and your fingers were tangled together like they were stitched together. "Careful."
"I'm fine," you said, but you were smiling, and your fingers were still linked with his.
Rafe watched the stumble, the catch, the laugh. He watched the way Topper looked at you like steadying you was the easiest thing in the world, like he'd do it forever if you needed him to. And you looked up at Topper with this expression Rafe couldn't quite name. So unguarded and soft like this trust didn’t have to be earned was so uncomplicated, and the thought of earning it had never even occurred to you.
What the fuck would that be like? To look at someone and just—trust them? To not have to calculate every word, every move, every expression to make sure you didn't give too much away? For someone to look at Rafe, of all people, and feel that way?
Rafe stood too, brushed grass off his shorts. His hands were shaking slightly—not from the beer, barely half-finished—but from something else. Something that felt too much like anger but wasn't. Couldn't be. What did he have to be angry about? Topper was his best friend. You were Topper's girlfriend. This was how it was supposed to be.
You and Topper walked together, shoulders touching, your sundress—pink today, always some shade of soft—swishing around your knees. Your little gold anklet caught in the light. You looked like something out of a catalog selling a lifestyle Rafe’s family already had but somehow always felt a little out of reach. He was twenty and only just realizing that—truly—some things couldn’t be purchased in the same way Ward bought boats and houses and buildings. Some things you had to deserve.
“You good?” Topper said, dropping back to walk beside Rafe.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know, man. You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
Topper laughed shortly. “No, you’re always talking shit. Quiet’s different.” His brows furrowed, concerned and probably genuine. Girls like you made boys like Topper genuine, made sure he didn’t want to be anything other than what he appeared to be. “Everything good with Ward?”
Rafe’s jaw tightened. “It’s fine.”
“Cool. Cool. Just—you know you can always talk about stuff, right? If you need to.”
Rafe’s brows furrowed and shook his head. “What the fuck are you saying?”
Topper chuckled, shaking his head too. He had lost that quality of getting defensive and irritated too quickly when he started dating you. “Don’t know. But I mean it, yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.” Topper clapped his shoulder, reassured, and jogged ahead to catch up with you. You’d stopped to wait for him, leaning against the doorframe, and when he reached you, you smiled. It wasn’t the polite smile you gave everyone else, it seemed more private. Just for him. For Topper. Rafe filed that away without meaning to, the way your eyes crinkled at the corners when it was real..
Inside, Mrs. Thornton had set out enough food for thrice their number. Pasta salad, finger sandwiches and normal-sized sandwiches, chips, fruit, cookies that looked homemade. The kind of spread that said she cared and wanted them to feel welcome and that this was a home where people were fed and happy and safe.
They loaded their plates and settled around the Thorntons’ dining room table. Real plates, cloth napkins, and a lunch with structure. Rafe’s house was never like this. Rafe’s house was never like this. Rose tried, sometimes. She’d set out cheese boards when Ward had important colleagues over, she arranged things the way magazines told her to. But Ward was always working. Sarah was always out. Wheezie was always watching TV in her room with the door closed. Rafe was usually too high to sit through a meal, or too angry, or just too something. The Camerons ate in shifts, quietly, or not at all.
“So,” Mrs. Thornton said, perching on the edge of the chair with her own plate, “what are you kids up to this summer? Besides laying around my backyard like a bunch of lazy seals.”
“Mom,” Topper said.
“What? You are.”
“Not much,” Kelce said seriously. “It’s important we don’t get burned out too early.”
“Burnt out of what?” Ruthie asked.
“Of… summer. Having fun.”
“You can’t get burnt out of summer. It’s not a race—”
“Everything’s a race—”
Rafe tuned them out. He was watching you, sitting across from him, carefully spreading mayo on your sandwich. You had this way of doing things, and even making a sandwich required your complete attention. Or maybe Rafe was just imagining things? Your nails were painted the same pink as your dress. You wore a little gold necklace with your initial on it; it was delicate enough that Rafe hadn’t noticed until now. Everything about you was coordinated and deliberate.
"What about you, sweetheart?" Mrs. Thornton asked, and it took Rafe a second to realize she was talking to you. "Any fun plans?"
"Oh, just the usual. Volunteering at the library on Tuesdays. Hanging out with friends. There's that charity thing at the club next week—"
"The children's hospital benefit," Mrs. Thornton said, nodding. "Your mother mentioned you're on the planning committee."
"Just helping where I can."
"She's being modest," Topper said, squeezing her hand where it rested on the table. "She basically organized the whole thing."
"I didn't—there's a whole committee—" Rafe watched the fluster creep into your cheeks.
"You made all those decorations yourself," Topper insisted. He looked at his mother and said, "She stayed up until like 2 AM cutting out paper flowers."
"They're for a good cause," you said, and there was something in your voice that sounded firm. Like you needed them to know you weren’t doing it for praise and that the doing itself was enough.
Rafe took a bite of his sandwich. It was good. Everything in this house was good. That was the problem.
"That's wonderful, honey," Mrs. Thornton said warmly. "We need more young people who actually care about giving back. Don't we, Topper?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Rafe, what about you? Are you helping with the benefit?"
Every eye at the table turned to him. He swallowed his bite of sandwich and took his time with it, feeling the bread stick to his throat. "Haven't really thought about it."
"You should come," you said, offering. Your eyes met his across the table and Rafe’s gaze involuntarily froze on you. Something uncomfortable and scalding set in his ribs. "We could use the help. It's next Saturday, six to nine."
"I might be busy."
"Doing what?" Kelce asked, taking a bite of his pasta salad.
"Stuff."
"Stuff," Ruthie repeated flatly, one eyebrow raised.
"Come on, man," Topper said. "It'll be fun. Open bar for the parents, which means nobody's paying attention to what we're doing—"
"It's for charity," you said, shrugging slightly like you weren’t sure if it was your place or not.
"It can be for charity and fun. Multitasking." Topper grinned slightly, shameless, and you rolled your eyes but you were smiling. You were always fucking smiling.
Rafe watched. The easy back-and-forth, the way you’d developed your own rhythm after two years together. The way you let Topper be annoying and he let her be serious and somehow it worked. Somehow you’d figured out how to be two people who actually liked each other.
"I'll think about it," Rafe said, even though he wouldn't.
"That's a yes," Kelce decided.
"That's a 'I'll think about it.'"
"On Figure Eight, 'I'll think about it' means yes. It's like when your mom says 'we'll see'—also yes."
"Sometimes 'we'll see' means no," you said quietly.
"Only if you've been bad," Mrs. Thornton said, reaching over and patting your hand gently. "Which I'm sure you never were."
You smiled down at your plate. "I had my moments."
Rafe tried to imagine you having ‘moments.’ He couldn't quite picture it. You seemed like the kind of kid who'd colored inside the lines and done your homework without being asked and never talked back. The kind teachers loved, parents bragged about, boys brought home to meet their families.
You were the kind of girl Ward would approve of.
The thought came unbidden and unwelcome. Rafe shoved it away, took another bite of sandwich. Fuck. He knew that Ward would approve, because when Ward had seen you with Topper, he’d said to Rafe, “Now that’s a nice girl. Why can’t you find someone like that?
They ate and talked, but it was mostly Kelce and Ruthie bickering, you and Topper sharing food off each other's plates like you’d been married for twenty years, Mrs. Thornton interjecting with questions and comments that kept the conversation moving. It was painfully normal and painfully nice.
Rafe's phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it under the table: Barry asking where he was, if he was coming by today. Three texts, actually, each more impatient than the last.
He should go. Should make an excuse and get out of here and go pick up what he needed to take the edge off this feeling, this crawling, itching feeling that said something was wrong, that he was in the wrong place, that everyone here was playing a game where they knew how to navigate and he didn’t.
But Topper was laughing at something you had said, and Mrs. Thornton was offering seconds, and Kelce was stealing a cookie before he'd finished his sandwich, and for a second—just a second—Rafe let himself imagine this was his life. That he was the one with the uncomplicated girlfriend and the mother who gave a shit and the kind of problems that could be solved by showing up to a charity event.
The phone buzzed in his hand again. bro?? He locked it and pushed it into his pocket.
"Rafe?" you said. He realized you’d asked him something—were still asking him something—and everyone was sitting around him waiting for his response again.
He swallowed nothing. "What?"
"I asked if you wanted more pasta salad. You've barely eaten."
You were looking at him with those eyes he’d memorised, head tilted slightly, concerned in that soft way you had. Not pitying—you were too careful for that—just genuinely wondering if he was okay. Like you cared and like you actually gave a shit whether or not he ate lunch.
"I'm good," he said.
"You sure? Mrs. Thornton made a lot—"
"I said I'm good. Stop asking.”
It came out harsher than he’d meant. You blinked, drew back just half an inch, and Topper’s arm came around your shoulders automatically, protective like Rafe was a predator and you were his next meal.
“Dude,” Topper said.
“What?”
“She’s just trying to be nice.”
“I know.” His jaw was clenched so tight his teeth ached. “I’m good. That’s all I said.”
The table went silent. Mrs. Thornton cleared her throat, Ruthie studied her phone, and Kelce suddenly found his sandwich fascinating. You were looking at him from the corner of your eye with what he assumed was hurt or concern. Your hand moved to your necklace and twirled the initial around once, then back around twice.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to look at you. “Sorry,” he said, eyes meeting yours, almost shamefully. “Didn’t mean to—sorry.”
Your eyes widened slightly. Maybe you were surprised he’d apologized at all. He didn’t blame you. “It’s okay,” you said quickly, gently, which somehow made him feel worse. Were you that forgiving with Topper, too? Would you forgive Rafe that quickly if you were his, because he knew he’d fuck up a lot. “I didn’t mean to push.”
“You weren’t.”
𖦹
Rafe almost didn’t go. He had his truck pointed towards Barry’s and everything with his cash in pocket and the familiar itch under his skin that said he needed something to take the edge off Ward’s recent disappointment (this morning delivered over breakfast like a side of shitty cold eggs (“I assume you’re not going to the L/N’s charity event tonight”)) But then he’d driven past the country club on his way and seen the parking lot filling up with cars that cost more than people’s houses (Range Rovers, Mercedes, that asshole Jenkins’s new Porsche) and something in him—maybe it was boredom, maybe spite, or just the kind of restless energy that came from doing too much coke the night before and not enough today—made him turn in.
He told himself it was to prove Ward wrong. And also because Topper had texted him three times, ever the supportive boyfriend. Or because he had nothing better to do on a Saturday night in June when the whole island felt like it was suffocating under humidity.
He did not tell himself it had anything to do with you.
The country club itself looked like someone had thrown up pastels all over it. Pink and yellow streamers twisted around the columns, balloons clustered by the entrance in a way that was almost scary, and those fucking paper flowers—hundreds of them, maybe thousands—strung up everywhere, the ones Topper had mentioned you stayed up until 2 AM making, which Rafe had filed away without meaning to because apparently his brain was keeping track of shit like that now.
He was adjusting his shirt—had put on something with buttons for once, though he’d left the top two undone because he wasn’t a complete fucking sellout—when he saw you.
You were outside the main entrance with a clipboard, which was so perfectly on-brand it almost made him laugh. Your hair was pulled back in something already falling apart, little pieces sticking to your neck in the heat. You wore a lavender dress that hit just above your knee and clung in ways that made Rafe’s mouth go dry. It was fitted enough that he could see the curve of your waist, the flare of your hips, and the line of your legs.
You were talking to two guys in catering uniforms, gesturing with your free hand—sharp and short moments that weren’t like you—and even from across the parking lot Rafe could see you were stressed. He could see it in the set of your shoulders and the way you kept pushing those loose pieces of hair out of your face and the rigid way you were holding the clipboard.
You looked like you could use a drink. Or a Xanax. Or someone to tell you it was fine. Or maybe just someone who could fuck the tension out of you until you remembered how to breathe normally.
Not that he was volunteering. His hand tightened on the steering wheel. Except he was apparently walking toward you instead of toward Barry’s, so maybe he was.
“—by five-thirty at least,” you were saying as he got closer, voice strained but still disgustingly polite. “That’s what we were told. So I’m not sure why—”
One of the catering guys—older, maybe forty, with a mustache—cut you off with something that Rafe didn’t catch but could guess from the gesture; you were just a kid to him with a shit-ton of money playing event planner (in other words: absolutely nothing to take seriously).
“I understand that,” you said, and there was a barely perceptible edge to your pageant voice now. “But we have a hundred-and-fifty people arriving in forty-five minutes and we don’t have—” You stopped, closed your eyes briefly, took a breath, and when you opened them you looked steadier, as though you’d shoved everything messy into whatever box you kept it in.
Rafe felt something uncomfortable watching you pull yourself together in real time.
“Okay. Can you at least tell me when—”
“Problem?” Rafe said.
You turned, surprised. You blinked at him like you couldn’t quite place why he was there, which was fair because he wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Rafe,” you said, and he liked the way his name sounded in your voice. “I didn’t—I wasn’t sure you were coming.”
“I wasn’t, either,” he said honestly, and your mouth twitched like you found it funny. He looked at the catering guys, who were both studiously avoiding eye contact now that someone else was there. “You having problems?”
“No, there’s just been a miscommunication about the time.”
“So, yes.”
“Rafe—” you said, slightly flustered at his presence and the situation.
“What’s the problem?” The catering guys looked like they’d rather be anywhere else.
“No problem, man,” one of them said. “We’re just waiting on—”
“Half the equipment is missing,” you cut in, and yeah, there was definitely an edge now. You were pissed now. Trying very hard not to show it, but pissed. “The tables are wrong, the setup’s behind schedule, and nobody mentioned it until thirty minutes ago.”
“So fix it.” Rafe shrugged.
You looked at him. “I’m trying to fix it.”
“Try harder.”
The catering guys looked between them like they were watching a tennis match. You opened your mouth—to tell him to fuck off, maybe, which was very unlikely but would’ve been incredibly hot—then closed it. Then looked down at your clipboard, back at the guys, then Rafe.
“Can you give us a minute?” The catering guys couldn’t leave fast enough.
When they were gone, you turned to Rafe fully and stepped closer, close enough to smell your floral perfume that probably cost more than his expensive coke habit, he got a better look at you up close. The dress was even better at this distance; thin straps, sweetheart neckline, the kind of thing that was technically modest but didn't feel that way when you were looking at it. Or when he was looking at it. At you.
You weren't wearing much makeup, just enough to look polished, and there was a small stain on the hem of the dress that you probably didn't know about yet. It was probably coffee or those tiny chocolates they served at these things. You’d be horrified if you noticed, so Rafe kept the stain to himself. You looked stressed and like you'd been running around in heels for too long, which you had, judging by the way you kept shifting your weight.
"What are you doing here?" you asked.
"You invited me."
"That—I didn't think you'd actually come. You said you’d think about it.”
“Thought about it,” he said. “Decided to show. Here I am.”
“Why?” Your eyebrows knitted together, like you were sure he had an ulterior motive like ransacking the entire place as soon as guests began walking in.
"Guess I'm full of surprises." He pulled out his cigarettes, offered you one out of habit more than any expectation. You shook your head, predictably. He shrugged. "So what's actually wrong?"
"I just told you—"
"What's the actual problem?"
You stared at him for a second, and Rafe watched you recalculate. Decide whether to bother explaining or just tell him to leave. He could see it happening behind your eyes, the cost-benefit analysis, the weighing of options.
"The DJ canceled," you said finally. "Last minute. And the tables they sent are the wrong size, which means we have to completely rearrange the layout, which means the floor plan I spent three weeks on is useless, and everything else has to shift, and the photographer's going to be here in thirty minutes and we're supposed to start in forty-five and I still have to check on the auction setup and make sure the kitchen has everything they need and—" You stopped, pressed your fingers to your temple. "Sorry. You don't care about any of this."
"Not really,," Rafe agreed. "But this seems like it'd be bad for the sick kids or whatever."
You almost smiled at that. Almost. "Very compassionate."
"I try." He lit his cigarette, took a drag, buying him a second to think. "You got a backup DJ?"
"My phone and a speaker from 2015."
"That'll work."
"It won't—"
"Nobody's here for the music. They're here for the open bar and the tax write-off. You could play the same song all night as long as the drinks keep coming and nobody would notice."
"That's very sad."
"Doesn't make it wrong."
You looked at him like you were trying to figure out if he was fucking with you or actually trying to help. Rafe wasn't entirely sure himself. "The tables—"
"I'll move them."
"You don't have to—"
"Jesus,” he breathed out, letting some annoyance creep in because you were exhausting and Rafe couldn’t keep playing at this for much longer. This would’ve been his one good deed of the year. “You want help or not?"
That made you stop. Blink. "You're offering to help."
"Don't make it weird."
"It's already weird. You hate events like this. You’ve said that.”
Had he? Yeah. Probably. At the club, or at one of Top’s things, or somewhere else where you’d been in earshot and he’d been running his mouth.
Well, you’d been listening. Something about that—about you paying attention to what he said, filing it away the way he filed away everything about you—made his chest feel tight.
"I hate most things. Doesn't mean I can't move a table." He took another drag, watched you process this. "Tell me what to do and I'll do it. Or keep going crazy. Your call."
You bit your lip—nervous habit, probably, or maybe just the lip gloss was bothering you—and Rafe's eyes caught on it. On your mouth. On the way your teeth pressed into your bottom lip and the little indent it left when you released it. He wondered if you did that during sex. If Topper had ever noticed. If—
Stop.
"Okay," you said, and Rafe refocused, eyebrows moving slightly up. "Okay. The tables need to go along the back wall, but first we have to move everything that's already there, and then rearrange the chairs, and—"
"Got it."
"I didn't finish—"
"Don't need you to. Tables go there, chairs go somewhere else, I can figure it out."
"Are you always this—"
"Helpful? Yeah,” he said sarcastically.
You shook your head, but you were almost smiling again, and Rafe decided that was worth more than whatever he would've gotten from Barry anyway. He didn’t feel completely useless. "Come on. I'll show you."
He followed you inside, where the situation was exactly as much of a shitshow as you'd described. Tables stacked wrong, chairs everywhere, decorations half-hung. The guys who were supposed to be setting up looked like they'd collectively given up on life. Rafe could relate.
"Okay," you said, clipboard up, and Rafe noticed your nails were painted the same color as your dress. Coordinated. Everything about you was coordinated and deliberate and probably planned three weeks in advance. "So we need to—"
"I got it," Rafe said, because you were about to go into a detailed explanation complete with diagrams and he could see the basic problem from here. Tables needed to go there, chairs were in the way, move the chairs, move the tables. Easy.
He grabbed a stack of chairs. Started hauling them to the side.
They were heavier than they looked—real wood, not the cheap plastic shit—and by the third trip he'd worked up a sweat. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back. Could feel you watching him from across the room where you were directing someone else, and when he glanced over he caught your eyes on him. Specifically, his arms, on the way his biceps flexed under his shirt sleeves as he carried the chairs. You looked away quickly when you realized he’d caught you, face flushing.
Interesting.
Rafe smiled to himself, guilty but satisfied, and moved another stack of chairs. Then another. Fell into a rhythm of lifting, carrying, setting down, repeat. Simple. Clear.
"You're really good at that," you said from somewhere behind him.
He turned. You were closer than he'd expected, making him straighten his back too quickly.
"At moving chairs?" Rafe asked, setting them down because holding them with you being this close felt awkward.
"At just doing things." You tucked a loose piece of hair behind your ear. It immediately fell back out. "I would've spent twenty minutes thinking about how to move them.”
"Sometimes you just gotta move the fucking chairs." Rafe said simply.
You laughed, surprised.
You were standing close enough now that Rafe could see the mascara was slightly smudged under your left eye. Could see a small scar on your collarbone he'd never noticed before. Maybe from childhood.
You were watching him too, your eyes tracking over his face, his shoulders, down to where his shirt was sticking to his chest.
"You got something—" He reached out without thinking, thumb brushing under your eye where the mascara had smudged.
You went very still. "What are you—"
"Mascara. Hold still." He wiped it away, the pad of his thumb against your skin, and felt you inhale sharply. Your eyes were locked on his, pupils dilating, and for a second neither of you moved. He was close enough to see the texture of your lip gloss and count your eyelashes if he wanted to. Close enough to kiss you.
Then you stepped back. "Thanks."
"Mhm."
You touched your face where his thumb had been unconsciously, your hands slightly shaking.
"I should—" You gestured vaguely toward the rest of the room. "There's still so much to—"
"Go. I got this."
You hesitated, then nodded and disappeared to handle something else. Rafe stood there for a second, thumb tingling where he'd touched your face, then went back to moving chairs because that was easier than thinking about why he'd touched you in the first place.
Tables next. Heavier, but he'd rather work alone than try to coordinate with the setup guys who all looked like they'd never seen a table before. He got the first one moved, then the second, then—
"Jesus, Cameron, you trying to give yourself a hernia?"
Kelce's voice. Rafe looked up to see him standing in the doorway with Ruthie, both of them dressed like they were here for the event rather than the setup.
"Should you be doing this?" Kelce asked, gesturing at the tables. “Like actually. Isn’t this what we pay people for?”
"They were being useless,” Rafe said. “Someone’s gotta do it.”
"Yeah, usually not you." Kelce looked genuinely confused now.
"Fuck off."
"No, seriously." Ruthie came closer, studying him like he was a science experiment. "Where's Rafe? What'd you do with him?"
"I can help without it being a whole thing—"
"It's definitely a thing," Kelce said, grinning. "You hate events like this."
"I hate most things. Doesn't mean I can't move a table." Rafe moved another one into place, wiped sweat off his forehead with his arm. "You gonna stand there all day or help?"
"I’m here for moral support," Ruthie said, examining her nails.
"Useless, got it."
But Kelce did grab one end of the next table, and together they got the rest moved in half the time. Ruthie mostly watched from a chair she'd pulled over, occasionally offering commentary that ranged from unhelpful to actively detrimental, but whatever. At least it was entertaining.
And Rafe could keep half an eye on you as you moved through the space, fixing things, directing people, climbing onto a chair in your dress and heels to adjust a banner that someone had hung crooked. He watched you wobble slightly and had to physically stop himself from crossing the room to steady you. You were fine. You got it fixed and climbed down and immediately moved on to the next thing.
“Dude,” Kelce said quietly so Ruthie couldn’t hear. “You’re staring.”
“Shut up.”
“Like, really, obviously staring.”
𖦹
You’d been to enough Figure Eight parties to know the entire song-and-dance. Ruthie would alcohol that could feed Figure Eight and The Cut, but three times over; people would set up a station to play very wrong, ruleless beer pong; someone would get in a fight; someone would call the cops and Ruthie would socially exile them for the next six months or until she conveniently forgot about it. Tonight was tracking perfectly to schedule: the handles were half-finished by eleven, there were red Solo cups floating in the pool, and you’d watched two guys argue about whether a bounce shot counted as a double for the past ten minutes even though there was literally no one keeping track.
You were nursing the same drink you’d picked up off the counter half-an-hour ago. The Truly can—Wild Berry, the only flavour that had been left by the time you arrived—was getting warm in your hand, condensation making the label peel in little strips. You kept picking at it without thinking, rolling little soggy pieces of tissue and dropping them into the can where you imagined they floated like dead flies. Topper was in the middle of some story about golf. Something about his swing, the ninth hole at the club, and his dad’s advice; you’d stopped tracking the details about seven minutes in. The thing about dating Topper was that all his stories had the same shape to them; something happened, his dad had an opinion about it, and he agreed or planned to prove it wrong. The details changed—golf, school, Jeep—but the shape, as a whole, was identical. You’d memorized the blueprint.
You were good at this, at least. You nodded at the right moments, you made small affirming noises, and laughed when his voice lifted in that way that indicated something was funny. You could do it in your sleep at this point. You were worried that you had been, that you’d actually been asleep for months and it had gone unnoticed because you were always nodding at the perfect times.
“—he won’t listen. He’s convinced it’s my follow-through—” Topper took a pull from his beer, gestured with the bottle, nearly hit Kelce in the face. “Babe, you’re not listening.”
You blinked, refocusing. “I am.”
“What did I just say?”
“Something about your follow-through.”
“Before that.”
You didn’t know. You were watching Ruthie across the room, the way she was laughing at something with her head thrown back, completely unselfconscious, and not worried if her laugh was too loud or fake or if the angle made her head look wrong. She was just laughing. When was the last time you laughed like that? You didn’t know.
“I’m sorry,” you said, touching Topper’s arms lightly, apologetically. It was the kind of touch you’d learned said that you were there, you cared, and that you were paying attention now. “I’m just so tired. The week was long.”
“You feeling okay?” He shifted immediately to boyfriend-mode, which was sweet, and was one of the first things you’d learned to love about him in the first place. He cared. He worried. He made sure you’d eaten, had water. Most times it felt like being cared for. “We can leave if you want.”
“No, I’m fine. Keep telling your story.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He kissed your temple—quick, casual, and the kind of kiss that marked you as his in public—and turned to Kelce, picking the story back up from wherever you’d lost the thread. You took a sip of your drink; it was warm and disgusting, but drinking gave you something to do with your hands.
You loved Topper. You did. You loved him the way you loved Outer Banks summers and Sunday dinners at the club and the worn-in comfort of your childhood bedroom that looked like it belonged to a 30-year-old woman with very specific specifications for her interior design. You loved him in a way that felt familiar, safe, and exactly what was supposed to be.
He was kind and reliable and everyone loved him and your mother almost cried—shed a tear—when you’d brought him home for dinner junior year. He was exactly the kind of boy you were supposed to end up with. Figure Eight royalty, good family, going places. He talked about the future like it was something you’d built together brick-by-brick: UNC next fall, he’d major in finance, you’d major in something you hadn’t decided, but everyone assumed something that involved helping people because that’s what you were good at. After graduation, you’d move back here, get a place on the water, start planning a wedding. His mother already showed you the venue book. Twice.
It was perfect. All perfect.
“I’m getting another drink,” you said, even though you weren’t.
“Want me to come?” Topper asked, turning back to you, ready to follow.
“No, I’m good. Keep talking. I’ll be right back.”
He nodded, already turning back to Kelce. You could’ve said you were going to the moon for a second and he would’ve believed it.
You pushed through the crowd of Figure Eight kids, mostly. They were all people you’d known since elementary school, plus randoms from The Cut who’d heard about the party and showed up anyway because Ruthie didn’t check who walked through the door. The house was too hot, too loud, the bass from whatever song made the windows rattle in their frames. Someone had spilled beer on the hardwood that nobody bothered to clean it up, and your sandals kept sticking to it slightly with each step.
You dumped your drink in the sink in the kitchen and grabbed a red solo cup that you filled up with water from the fridge dispenser. You drank half of it standing there, forehead pressed to the cool stainless steel. When you turned around, Maddie was there, drunk, hanging on your shoulder.
“Oh my god, you look so cute tonight,” she said. “Is that new?”
“No, I’ve had it—”
“I love it. We should go shopping next week. There’s a new collection at that place on the Mainland. The one with the dresses? You look so good in dresses. You should wear dresses more.”
“Sure,” you said, the word noncommittal, because the thought of stores with fluorescent lighting and their helpful salespeople and their pleasure to find things that fit you right made you want to crawl out of your skin.
“How are you and Top? You guys are so cute. Like actually. I was telling Cas the other day, you’re like the perfect couple.”
“We’re good. Thanks—”
“Are you guys thinking of schools together? Because I heard he got into Chapel Hill early and you’re obviously going to get in. You’re so smart—”
“Hopefully.” You smiled tightly; you hadn’t finished your applications yet, every time you sat down to work on your essays you ended up staring at the blank screen until your eyes hurt.
“You will. And then you’ll get married and have the cutest babies—”
“Madi—”
“What? You would! Could you imagine? Little Topper running around—”
You excused yourself before she could finish the thought, pushed back into the main room where the party was getting louder, messier, more of what was always going to become. Someone had turned up the music. Someone else was doing a keg stand in the corner and people were counting—”Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen”—and you felt tired. So tired.
You found Topper right where you’d left him. Still talking to Kelce. Still gesturing with his beer. You slid back under his arms like you were supposed to and he kissed the top of your head without pausing his sentence and you realized—for the hundredth time—this is your life now, and this is it. The thought should’ve been comforting. It wasn’t.
“You okay?” Topper asking, looking down at you with those eyes that were genuinely so concerned that it made you feel guilty for not being okay. “You look weird.”
“I’m okay.”
“You sure? Because we can really leave if—”
“I’m fine.” It came out harsher than you’d intended. His face did a combination of something complicated (hurt, confused, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong). “Sorry, I’m just—it’s hot in here.”
“Let’s go outside then.”
“No, you’re talking to Kelce—”
“Don’t care. Come on.” He was already steering you towards the back doors, hand on your lower back, and you let him because that was easier than arguing. Outside the air was cooler but not by much, humid and thick with that almost-rain feeling. The pool was glowing blue, and there were people in it even though nobody had suits on, just jumping in with their clothes because that’s what you did at Ruthie’s.
“Better?” Topper asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been kind of off all week.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m just—” His lips flattened, like he was trying to find the right words for a moment. “Are you stressed about your school stuff? Your mom?”
“A little.”
“It’s gonna be fine. You’re gonna get in everywhere you apply. You’re so fucking smart.” He wrapped his arms around you from behind and rested his chin on your shoulder. “And we’ll be together. That’s what matters, right?”
“Right.”
“UNC is gonna be perfect. We can get an apartment off campus junior year. Somewhere with two bedrooms so your parents don’t freak out but we both know—” He laughed, squeezed you tighter, and his hands moved from your waist to hips, pulling you further back against him. “It’s gonna be so good, babe. I can’t wait.”
You could hear it in his voice, he meant it all.
You could feel him getting hard against your back. Of course. Topper had a one-track mind at parties. A few beers in, and suddenly everything translated to being foreplay. Your hand in his. You laughing at his jokes. Existing in his orbit. All of it translated, in his mind, to we should have sex now.
His lips found your neck, kissing that spot below your ear that he’d decided early on was your spot, even though you’d never actually told him it did anything for you. It was fine. It didn’t not work. It just—it was fine. Which was the saddest way you could describe your boyfriend’s touch. Fine, really? Not electric or the kind that made you forget your own name. You were so tired of just fine, but you were also not courageous enough to admit that.
“Baby—” you started, but his hand was already sliding under the hem of your tank top, thumb brushing the underside of your bra.
“Ruthie’s got that pool house,” he murmured against your back. “Nobody’s in there. We could—”
“There’s like seventy people here, Top.”
“So? That’s never stopped us before.” He turned you around, and his eyes had that look he conveniently gets when he wants something. “Come on, it’s been like a week.”
Had it been a week? You tried to remember the last time. Lask weekend, maybe. At his house, in his bed, with the door locked and the lights off because you always asked for the lights off even though he always wanted to see you. It had been fine. Good, even. Topper was considerate in bed, always asking if you were okay, if this felt good, if that made you finish even though sometimes you faked it just to move it along. Sometimes your brain wouldn’t turn off long enough to get there and it was easier to pretend.
“I don’t know,” you said. “I’m kind of tired.”
“I’ll do all the work.” He grinned, hands sliding down to your ass now, pulling you closer. “Come on, I’ve been thinking about you all week.”
You smiled, even though that only made you feel tired. “Okay.”
“Yeah?” His whole face lit up. “Yeah, okay. Come on.”
He grabbed your hand, started pulling you toward the pool house, and you followed because what else were you going to do? Explain that you didn’t want to but couldn’t articulate why?
The pool house was unlocked, dark, smelling like chlorine and the musty scent of furniture that spent too much time in humidity. Topper flicked on the lamp in the corner—dim, throwing everything into shadow—and pulled you to the couch.
He kissed you immediately, hands everywhere, enthusiastic in that golden retriever way he had about everything. You kissed back, let your hands go to his hair, his shoulders, the places you knew he liked. This was familiar. Routine. Two years of practice. You knew exactly how he liked to be touched and the sounds he made when you did it right. There was a rhythm and choreography to it.
He pulled you down onto the couch, climbed over you, and his mouth moved to your neck. Started kissing, then sucking, and you knew he was leaving marks. He always left marks when he was drunk, got possessive in this puppyish way that should've been endearing. His hand slid up your shirt, palm hot against your ribs, and he was grinding against you now, hard through his shorts.
"God, you're so hot," he murmured against your collarbone, kissing lower. "I love you so much."
“I love you too.”
He sucked harder at the spot where your neck met your shoulder—definitely leaving a mark there, you’d have to cover it tomorrow—and his hand was working the button of your shorts when his phone started to ring. He ignored it. Kept kissing. The phone stopped, then immediately started again.
“Babe—” you said.
“It’s fine. Just—”
It rang again.
“Topper, just check it.”
“Fuuuuck,” he groaned, pulled back, fumbled for his phone in his pocket and squinted at the screen. “It’s my dad. Again.” He sat up, ran a hand through his hair like his dad could see him through the phone. “Shit. He called earlier and I—hold on. I’ll just.”
He answered it. “Hey, Dad… Yeah, I know. Sorry, it’s loud here… What? No, I can—” He stood up, walked to the door, and you could hear his dad’s voice on the other end, irritated and tiny. “I know. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow… Yeah… Okay… Yeah, she’s with me… Okay…”
You sat up, buttoned your shorts back up, and tried to fix your hair. Your neck felt hot where he’d been sucking, and when you touched it, your fingers came slightly damp. Great. That would be purple by morning.
Topper hung up, turned back to you, and his face had a guilty look. “I’m sorry, babe. My dad’s pissed about—there’s this thing with the club. I was supposed to call someone back—” He stopped and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I gotta call this guy really quick. Five minutes, I swear.”
This happened a lot. Topper’s father calling, needing something, and Topper drowning in everything to handle it. You understood it and resented it in equal measure.
“It’s okay.”
“You sure? Because I can—”
“No, it’s okay. Make your call. I’ll just meet you back outside.”
“You’re the best.” He kissed you quickly, already distracted and mentally somewhere else entirely. “Five minutes. Then we can—” He gestured vaguely at the couch with a tip of his head. “—continue?”
“Sure.”
Outside, you noticed a crowd dispersing and before you could try to make sense of it, Ruthie’s palm grabbed your shoulder and pulled you aside.
“This is the third fight he’s started this month,” she said, sentence coming out quickly like she was in the throes of stress.
“Who?”
“Rafe.”
You swallowed quickly, shaking your head. “Is he okay?”
“What? Rafe? He’s fine. He’s always doing this shit.” But she was frowning, scanning the crowd. “Where’d he go?”
“Maybe inside?”
“Great. He’s probably bleeding all over my mom’s white couch.” She sighed, then looked at you. “Can you go check on him?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. He’s Top’s best friend. And you’re like, good at the whole—” She gestured vaguely. “Thing.”
“I really don’t think—”
‘Please? I need to find the guy he beat up and make sure he isn’t going to make it a big deal. Rafe’s probably in one of the rooms. Just make sure he’s not dying or bleeding anywhere that isn’t expensive or visible.”
Given that Ruthie lived in an open-space concept house with nothing that cost less than four figures and very few doors to hide behind, that narrowed the list down to the bathrooms and maybe her dad’s office. The latter goes with the assumption that Rafe had the good sense to pick a room with wood or tile instead of white linen and glass.
She was already walking away before you could argue with her. You could find Topper, tell him what happened, and let him deal with his best friend. That’s what you should do. That’s what made sense. But your boyfriend was on the phone with his dad; Ruthie had asked you, and something about the situation made your chest twist uncomfortably.
𖦹
Rafe needed to get laid. Or high. Or hit something until his knuckles split. Twenty years of his life had taught him that when there isn’t one thing wreaking havoc over his life, he hyperfixated on the impossible. Self-sabotage, probably. The impossible being, currently, his best friend’s girlfriend the image that had been burned into his retinas and showed no signs of stopping no matter how much cocaine he shoved up his nose or how many drinks he threw back or how many times he told him he was just being a fucking idiot.
So, he picked a fight. With who? Didn’t matter. Some guy. A random fucking guy who had the misfortune of existing in Rafe’s vicinity at the exact moment Rafe had watched you disappear into Ruthie’s pool house with Topper, watched the door close behind you both, and felt something ugly and acidic rise up in his throat that tasted like very cheap vodka because he’d spent two years wanting something he couldn’t have. Two fucking years of seeing Topper touch you like it was easy, like you were some cosmic lottery he’d won just by being himself.
Now he was sitting on the closed toilet in Ruthie’s upstairs bathroom with blood drying on his knuckles and his face throbbing and the bass from downstairs making the floor vibrate under his feet, trying very hard not to think about what you and Topper had been doing in the pool house. The bleeding had mostly stopped. His right eye was going to swell shut by morning. His lip was split. Could've been worse. Had been worse, plenty of times. This was manageable. He was trying and failing, because his brain—traitorous, obsessive, completely fucked—kept supplying images; Topper’s hands on your waist, your hips, your head tipped back, the sounds you probably made, whether you’d let him keep the lights on, whether you were any good at it or whether you just laid there perfect and pretty while—
The door opened, and his eyes snapped up and there you were, standing in the doorway like a fucking hallucination, like something his substance-soaked brain had conjured because it hated him, too. You were backlit by the hall light in a way that should’ve been corny but wasn’t. You looked real solid there. Rafe thought there was no fucking way this was happening.
“Get out,” he said.
You didn’t get out, and Rafe was mad at the world because this was probably the first fucking time you didn’t do what someone else asked of you. Of course you chose right now, when Rafe was barely holding himself together, to stop being obedient.
You stepped inside instead, and the bathroom suddenly felt about three sizes too small, and Rafe could smell you, that perfume you wore, floral and clean and so aggressively innocent it made him want to break something. He could smell it all over the metallic tang of blood and the chemical burn of Ruthie’s fancy hand soap and his own sweat.
“You’re bleeding,” you said.
“Yeah, no shit.” His voice came out harsher than he’d meant, but what-fucking-ever. Harsh was good, and that would make you leave. “Where’s Topper?”
“On the phone with his dad.”
Right. Topper. Your boyfriend, the guy whose hands had been all over you. The guy who got to touch you whenever he wanted because you were his, officially his, had been for two years while Rafe stood on the sidelines watching and acting like he didn’t care.
“Cool. Go wait for him somewhere else.”
“Ruthie asked me to check on you.”
Obviously she fucking did. Of course Ruthie—who’d watched Rafe watch you for two years, who’d made pointed comments Rafe had ignored, who definitely knew more than she should—would send you up here like a deer to slaughter. She would put you in a room alone with him when he was high and drunk and had just beaten someone bloody because he couldn’t handle himself in his body like a normal person.
“Mm, you checked. I’m fine. Door’s right there.”
But you were closing the door instead behind you. Locking it. The lock was so obscenely loud that Rafe’s body went rigid and his head snapped in your direction. Every muscle in his body tensed and coiled. You’d locked yourself alone in a bathroom with him. What were you thinking?
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“You need help.”
“What I need is for you to leave.”
“Rafe—”
“No, I’m serious. Get the fuck out.” He stood up too fast, the room tilted, and he had to brace one hand against the wall while his vision did something complex and unstable. Everything went bright and sparkly around the edges the way it did when he mixed uppers and downers; his body was in a constant state of figuring out whether he should be flying or crashing. The coke was hitting him all weird, and that probably meant he had to do a bump in less than five minutes, mixing with vodka in ways that made everything bright and too close. He probably looked like shit.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
Because Topper probably had just fucked you. Because Rafe could still see that middle-school-hookup-hickey on your neck, all red and obvious and making him want to punch a hole through Ruthie’s bathroom mirror. Because you were standing there looking at him with genuine concern on your face like Rafe was someone worth for you to worry about, like you hadn’t spent the last hour with your boyfriend, like you had any business being so close to him when Rafe was barely holding onto his self-control with both hands, bloody and beat-up.
“Because I’m telling you to.”
You were already kneeling down though, opening the cabinet under Ruthie’s sink, and Rafe watched your ass in those jean shorts and thought that this was hell. This was actual hell and he was in it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, voice coming out gruff. “I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t need your help.”
“Your face is bleeding.”
“Really.”
You ignored him, and pulled out Ruthie’s first aid kit. It was the expensive kind that came in a hard plastic case with actual organization inside, not just a jumble of Band-Aids and expired Advil, and stood up with it tucked under your arm. You wet a washcloth at the sink—one of Ruthie’s monogrammed hand towels—wrung it out, and looked back at him. You met his eyes for just a second, long enough for Rafe to catch the stubborn determination on your face.
And then—holy fuck—you stepped between his legs.
Just fucking stepped right between his legs like that was a normal place to be, like you had any fucking idea what that did to him. You, standing right between his legs, so close that if she shifted about two inches forward, you’d be pressed right to him. His jaw clenched tight.
You didn't know. Of course you didn't. Because you thought Rafe hated you. Thought he'd been an asshole to you for two years because he didn't like you, not because liking you was the problem, had always been the problem, would continue to be the problem until Rafe died or moved to another country or developed severe amnesia.
"Sit down," you said. Soft. Like you were talking to a scared animal.
He should say no. Should physically remove you from the bathroom. Should do literally anything other than what he did, which was sink back down onto that toilet seat like his legs stopped working. He even let you step closer, close enough that your knees bumped his, close enough that he could see the freckles scattered across your shoulders like someone had flicked a paintbrush at you.
"This might sting," you said, and reached up to touch his face.
Your fingers made contact with the cut above his eyebrow—gently, so fucking gently—and Rafe's entire nervous system went haywire. Every nerve ending firing at once. Every muscle in his body locking up trying to keep still, keep from grabbing you, keep from doing something catastrophically stupid that he couldn’t take back. He felt like he’d forgot how to breathe. Your touch felt branded, like every place your skin met his was burning.
Nothing about this was sexual. That was the fucked up part. Yeah, there was the fact that Rafe's brain had a one-track mind when it came to you and that track involved significantly less clothing than you were currently wearing, but this was worse. This was your hand on his face, gentle and careful like he was worth being gentle with. Like he was something other than Ward Cameron's greatest disappointment and the guy who got too fucked up at parties and picked fights for no reason.
"Sorry," you murmured when he flinched. "I'm trying to be gentle."
Rafe let out something between a laugh and a choke at how oblivious you were. “Yeah, that—” He swallowed, cleared his throat, then tried again. “I know.”
Stop talking. Seriously, stop talking.
His hands were gripping his thighs. He was gripping them hard enough to hurt, hard enough his knuckles—already fucked from the fight—were screaming at him. But it was either grip his thighs or grab you, and grabbing you was not an option. Grabbing you was the opposite of an option.
“You don’t have to do this.” His voice came out tight and strained. Nothing normal.
“I know,” you said quietly.
“Then why are you?”
You dabbed at the cut again, concentration evident in the way that you were biting your bottom lip. “Because you’re hurt,” you said like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Was that reason enough for you to do this? “So?”
“So, someone should help.”
“And it had to be you?”
“Ruthie asked—”
“Ruthie’s not here.” His fingers were going numb now from how hard he was gripping his legs. “It’s just us. You can leave. I don’t think Ruthie meant you had to do all of this.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
Because you were Topper’s, and Topper was Rafe’s best friend, one of his only real friends, if Rafe was being honest, the only person besides Kelce and Sarah who didn’t see Ward’s DNA walking around making the wrong choices. Because twenty minutes ago you’d been in a pool house with Topper doing things Rafe had no right to think about, and now you were touching Rafe’s face with fingers that probably still smelled like Topper’s cologne. Because if you didn’t leave right now, Rafe was going to do something unforgivable.
He opened his mouth to say some version of that—to say anything that would make you leave—when you spoke first.
“Because you don’t like me, right?” you said quietly after a moment, and Rafe’s brain stuttered to a complete stop.
“Huh?”
“You don’t like me. You never have.” You weren’t looking into his eyes anymore—and Rafe realized he missed having your eyes on him—and were focusing very intently on the washcloth. “Since I started dating Topper, you’ve been—you act like I’m annoying you all the time.”
Rafe stared at you. At your face, all concentration and hurt poorly hidden, and felt something in his chest twist sideways. You couldn’t meet his eyes, like you were embarrassed to have said it out loud.
You thought he didn't like you. You actually, genuinely thought that the reason Rafe had been cold and dismissive and sometimes cruel was because he didn't like you. Not because he'd spent two years watching you be Topper's perfect girlfriend and wanting you so badly it made him physically ill. You didn’t think it was because every time you smiled at him or laughed at something he said or looked at him like you were looking at him right now, it took every ounce of self-control he had not to cross whatever line existed between being Topper's best friend and being the asshole who wanted his girlfriend. You had zero idea liking you was so much worse than not liking you that Rafe had chosen cruelty as the easier option. If you were anybody else, Rafe would’ve been irked at how much having one person dislike you hurt you.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he managed.
“Don’t I?” You pulled back slightly, met his eyes. “Because I’ve spent two years trying to be nice to you and you act like I’m—I don’t know. Like I’m a problem.”
"Maybe you are."
You flinched. Good. Flinching meant distance meant you'd leave meant Rafe could get his head straight and stop thinking about all of this. You put an inch of space between the two of you. Good. Except it also made him feel like the piece of shit he was and suddenly, he wanted to apologize, take it back, and explain.
“I’m trying to help you,” you said, and there was an edge to your voice now. Your hurt was bleeding into anger. “The least you can do is not be an asshole about it.”
“Nobody asked you to help.”
“Ruthie—”
“Fuck Ruthie.” Rafe leaned back against the wall, putting more distance between his face and your hands because if you touched him again he was going to lose it. “I don’t need your help. Don’t want it. So you can go back to your boyfriend—” He paused at the word to make sure you could feel the weight of it, even though he knew your intentions were all innocent, “—and your best friend and tell them I’m fine.”
You were still standing there, between his legs, and close enough that Rafe could see the way your pulse was jumping in your throat right below that hickey Topper left like a fucking brand. Like he pre-anticipated all of this, and wanted to plaster a reminder on your body to remind Rafe whose you were.
“Fine.” Your voice had gone flat. “Bleed, then. I don’t care.” But you said it while standing between his legs without moving, your hands still hovering over him like you were fighting the exact same battle he was: stay or go, touch or don’t touch.
Someone pounded on the door. Hard. Three times in rapid succession. You jumped—actually jumped, startled—and stumbled slightly backward, and Rafe’s hands moved before the circuits in his brain caught up. They shot out and caught your hips, steadying you, pulling you back between his legs where you’d been standing.
His hands were on your bare skin. He pushed down the groan forming in his throat.
“Yo. Yo. Someone in there?” A guy’s voice, drunk and completely impatient.
Rafe’s hands were on your hips. On your bare skin where your tank top had ridden up slightly. His fingers were spread, wide, thumbs pressing just above your hip bones, and he could feel you breathing fast—with your whole body—underneath his palms. This was the first time he’d touched you—he thought—skin-to-skin, and it felt like every bad decision he’d made in his life had led him to this one final straw.
“Occupied,” he called out. His voice came out steadier than it should’ve.
“How long you gonna be, man? I gotta piss—”
“As long as I fucking wanna be.”
“Dude, come on—”
“There’s a fuckin’ bathroom downstairs. Use that one.”
The guy on the other side muttered, groaned, and they heard the footsteps retreat down the hall. Silence. Rafe’s hands were still on your hips. Neither of you were moving. Rafe could feel your pulse underneath his thumbs, he could feel it racing, jackrabbit-fast, and his own wasn’t much better. He could feel the heat radiating off your skin, the softness of it, the way you fit perfectly under his hands like you’d been designed for them.
This was bad. This was so, so bad. He should let go. He should move his hands back to his thighs where they belonged. He should laugh it off and put distance between you to pretend his hands weren’t burning where they touched you.
“Rafe,” you said quietly, almost breathless.
“Yeah?” he said quickly.
“Your hands.”
“You’re good,” he said, and his thumbs moved fractionally, just a tiny shaft to see if you’d pull away.
“Rafe,” you said again, voice on the edge of concern.
He tilted his head to look down, and he could feel your body jerking slightly as his hair brushed against your torso. “Just—give it a second.”
A second for what? Why were you giving him a second? You weren’t pulling away, and you weren’t telling him to let go. You were just standing there, looking down at him with your eyes too wide and lips parted slightly and that hickey on your neck that Rafe wanted to cover with his mouth, wanted to replace with his own mark, wanted—
Rafe’s thumb moved just slightly. A small circle against your hip bones. He tilted his head up slightly to meet your eyes, watching your face to see if you’d pull away, if you’d slap him, if you’d do anything to stop him before it became something neither of you could take back. He had to see if he was crossing a line he couldn’t uncross.
You inhaled sharply but you didn’t pull away.
“What are you doing, Rafe?”
“Don’t know.”
“Okay,” you said, but your voice was unsure.
His thumb kept moving. Small circles. Hypnotic. He could feel the exact moment you stopped breathing normally. Your body tensed underneath his hands. Your hands had come up at some point, were hoving near his shoulders like you weren’t sure what to do with them, like you wanted to touch him but didn’t know if you were allowed.
And that—that fucking uncertainty, that unnamed want—that was going to be Rafe’s undoing.
Because he could keep his hands on your hips and pretend it was nothing. He could tell himself he was just steadying you, just making sure you didn’t lose your balance. But if your hands touched him—if you made the choice to touch him back—then this becomes something else. It would become something mutual. Something that couldn’t be explained away by the cocaine or the alcohol or the general fucked-upness of the night. It would become a choice and it would be your choice.
Your fingers brushed his shoulders lightly and tentatively. Rafe’s breath stopped short, and the realization that you were indulging him hit him like a fucking brick. If he didn’t let go right now—right this second—he was going to kiss you. Your fingers pressed slightly harder against his shoulders.
And Rafe let you go.
He dropped his hands like your skin had burned him. He pushed himself up the toilet so fast his vision swam, the bathroom tilting sideways in that way that said he’d moved too quick, that the drugs were still very much in his system. He stumbled slightly and caught himself against the wall. He put three feet of space between you and him in the span of three seconds.
“You gotta leave,” he said. His voice came out all wrong. Too rough, too raw, like he’d swallowed glass.
You were staring at him like he’d grown a second head. Your hands were still raised slightly, frozen in the air where they’d been about to touch him. He wanted to tell you to put your hands down, but he also wanted to grab them and pull you closer. Your face was doing something Rafe couldn’t look at, because your confusion was bleeding into hurt once again.
“What—” you started.
“Just go.”
“But you—”
“Go.” He couldn’t look at you right now. He looked at the wall instead. He focused on the expensive floral wallpaper that probably cost half the price of the house as a whole. “You need to leave. Right now.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Topper’s probably looking for you.”
“He’s on the phone—”
“He’ll be off the phone soon. And he’s gonna wanna know where you are.” Rafe made himself look at you, and he made himself see the confusion on your face, the way you’d wrapped your arms around yourself like you were cold even though Ruthie’s bathroom was stuffy and warm. He tipped his chin in your direction, feigning as much carelessness as he could. “What are you gonna tell him?”
You blinked. “What?”
“When he asks where you were. What’re you gonna say?”
“I’ll—I’ll tell him I was checking on you. Because Ruthie asked me to?”
“That’s it?” He heard himself push; he was being cruel again because that was safer than being honest.
“That’s it, yeah. Yeah.” But your voice wavered slightly on the words. “That’s all that happened.” He could hear the uncertainty in your words, like you were trying to convince yourself.
“Good. Tell him that.”
You were still standing there, still looking at him with those eyes that saw too fucking much, and Rafe could see you trying to working through it, trying to figure out what had just happened, what it meant that his hands had been you, that his hands had been moving in circles against your skin, that maybe for a minute there something had shifted between you that couldn’t be unshifted.
“Did I do something wrong?”
The question hit Rafe in the chest all wrong. You thought you’d done something wrong, like any of this was your fault. Like you’d been the one to grab on, to hold too long, to move your thumbs in ways that had nothing to do with steadying and everything to do with wanting.
“No,” he said, having to push the word out. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then—”
“Because I’m high.” His voice came out flat now, matter-of-fact. He’d found his voice again, the one that made everything sound meaningless. The lie was easier when he didn’t look at you, he realized. “I’m high and drunk and not thinking straight. That’s all this is.”
“Okay.”
Maybe it did make sense to you; you wanted it to be that simple. If 1+1=2, then high+drunk=temporary insanity. Nothing more complicated than chemistry and bad decisions.
𖦹
A week had passed since the party at Ruthie’s, and you’d gotten very good at pretending nothing had happened. You’d seen Rafe twice—once at the country club when your families had overlapping dinner reservations, once at Topper’s house when you’d shown up and he’d been leaving—and you’d smiled politely, said hello, and acted like everything was completely normal. Both times, he’d barely looked at you. He nodded in your general direction, mumbled something that might’ve been a greeting. And left as quickly as possible.
Which was fine. Good, even. Exactly what was meant to happen. Except you couldn’t stop thinking about his hands on your hips, the way his thumbs had moved in small circles. About the look on his face when he’d let go, like he’d done something he couldn’t take back. You wished you could try talking to Ruthie about it, but you also knew that if you slipped on the wrong word or revealed the tiniest detail, she’d catch onto it like a vulture and somehow figure out exactly what happened.
And now you were at Sunday brunch with Topper and both set of parents, and your mother kept looking at you like she could tell something was wrong. Topper kept reaching for your hand under the table, and all you wanted was to be literally anywhere else.
“—so, we’re thinking late April for the engagement party,” Topper’s mom was saying. She had her phone out, scrolling through her calendar with one hand while cutting eggs Benedict with another. “That gives us plenty of time to plan something before you two leave for school.”
You looked up from your untouched fruit salad. “I’m sorry, what?”
“The engagement party, hon.” Mrs. Thornton smiled at you warmly. “Nothing official, of course. You’ll do the actual engagement after graduation, I’m sure. But we thought it’d be nice for both of you to have a celebration before you head to Chapel Hill. Really cement things.”
Your mother made an approving sound. “That’s a lovely idea, Cynthia.”
“I just think it’s important to acknowledge these milestones,” she continued. “Topper and—” She said your name like it was already hyphenated with his. “—they’re so good together. And with our families being so close together, it just makes sense to start planning now.”
“Mom,” Topper said, and there was a hint of embarrassment in his voice. “We haven’t even—I mean, we’ve talked about it, but—”
“Oh, I know, sweetie. I’m not trying to rush anything. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page about the timeline.” She looked at you expectantly. “You are planning on going to Chapel Hill, aren’t you?”
Four sets of eyes turned to you. Topper's parents. Your parents. Topper himself, looking hopeful and nervous and so certain that the answer would be yes because of course it would be yes, why wouldn't it be yes?
“I haven’t decided yet,” you said.
Everyone went very still.
"What do you mean you haven't decided?" your mother asked. Her voice was light but there was an edge to it. "Your applications were due weeks ago."
"I applied to other schools too."
"Yes, but—" Your mother set down her fork with a soft clink. "We've discussed this. Chapel Hill makes the most sense. It's a good school, it's close enough to visit, and—" She glanced at Topper. "—well. It makes sense for other reasons too."
“I know what reasons you mean, Mom.”
You could feel Topper’s hands tighten around yours under the table. You could feel the anxiety radiating off him even though his face stayed neutral. “Babe,” he said quietly. “I thought we talked about this.”
“We did talk about it.”
“And I thought—” He stopped. Started again. “You said you were fine with Chapel Hill.”
"I said I'd think about it."
"That's not—" He stopped again. Glanced at his parents, at yours, clearly not wanting to have this conversation in front of an audience. "That's not what it sounded like."
"Maybe you heard what you wanted to hear."
That came out sharper than you'd meant. Topper's face did something complicated. His hurt bled into frustration bled into confusion. Your mother made a small sound of disapproval. Mrs. Thornton looked like she wanted to say something but wasn't sure if she should.
𖦹
You were drunk. Not falling-down drunk, not blacking-out drunk, but drunk enough that the bonfire had halos around it and the sand felt unsteady under your feet and when Topper talked it took you both an extra second to process what he was saying. Topper was drunker. He had been drinking since before he’d picked you up, had kept drinking in the Jeep on the way there, had been working his way through a twelve-pack since you’d arrived at the beach an hour ago. His movements kept getting looser and more expansive, and he’d told the same story about the golf tournament twice in the past twenty minutes.
You were sitting in the sand near the bonfire, backs against a piece of driftwood, Topper’s arm heavy on your shoulders. The party was in full-swing around you. Sixty kids scattered across the beach, music thumping from someone else’s truck, the ocean dark and loud behind all of it. Someone was taking shots. Someone was throwing up behind the dunes. Madi was making out with some guy from The Cut. It was all normal.
"I don't get why you're being so weird about this," Topper was saying. Or had been saying. You'd lost the thread of the conversation somewhere around your third drink. "It's not a big deal."
“What’s not a big deal?”
“Chapel Hill,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re acting like—it’s all this huge thing. It’s just college.”
Oh. This again. The conversation from brunch wasn’t over despite both of you pretending it was for the past eight hours.
“Can we not do this right now?”
“Do what?”
“This. The college thing. I’m really tired of talking about it.”
“Well, I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on with you.” Topper’s arm over your shoulder tightened. Insistent. “You’ve been weird for like a week.”
“I haven’t been weird.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? ‘Cause it feels like you’re mad at me.”
"I'm not mad, Top. I'm just—" You stopped. Tried to find words through the alcohol fog. "I'm just trying to figure stuff out."
"What stuff?"
"School stuff. Future stuff."
"Our future?"
"My future."
“Same thing.” He said that, too, like it was obvious. There was no version of future that didn’t have you and him together. “Right?”
You took another sip from the drink in your hands. Was it? It couldn’t be the same thing. You were a person separate from him, separate from “you and Topper,” separate from everyone else’s plans. You did exist outside your relationship, right?
“Right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” He pulled his arms away from your shoulders. “What does that mean? We talked about this. We made plans.”
"You made plans. And I just—I went along with them because everyone was so happy about it and I didn't want to—" You gestured vaguely. "I didn't want to ruin it."
Topper stared at you. "Ruin what?"
"This. Us. The whole—" You stopped again. Nothing was coming out right. "Everyone's so sure about everything. You're sure, my parents are sure, your parents are sure. And I'm just—I'm not."
"Sure about what? About me?"
"About everything."
"That's not—" He stood up suddenly, swayed slightly, caught himself. "That's not an answer. Do you want to be with me or not?"
"I do—"
"Then what's the problem?"
"The problem is I don't know if I want everything else that comes with it! The engagement party planning, the apartment hunting, the whole—" You stood up too, because this conversation felt wrong sitting down. "Everyone treating us like we're already married when we're nineteen."
"So you don't want to marry me."
"I didn't say that—"
"That's what it sounds like."
"That's not—Topper, you're not listening—"
"I am listening. You're saying you don't know if you want a future with me."
"I'm saying I don't know what I want for my own future! Period! Not just the part with you in it—the whole thing!" Your voice was getting louder. A few people nearby were starting to look over. "I don't know what I want to study or where I want to go or who I want to be. And everyone keeps acting like those are already answered questions and they're not. Not for me."
Topper ran both hands through his hair. "Okay. Okay. So you need time to figure it out. That's—I can give you time."
"It's not just time—"
"Then what is it? Just tell me what you need and I'll—I'll do it. Whatever you need."
"I need space." The words came out before you could stop them. "I need room to think without everyone—without you—asking me what I've decided every five seconds."
The second the words came out, you wanted to take them back. You did mean them, but you could see what they did to Topper’s face.
His face did something awful and twisted. Like you'd physically hit him. "Space."
"Not—I don't mean—" You stopped. The vodka was making everything harder. "I just mean I need to figure this out on my own. Without everyone weighing in."
"Everyone meaning me."
"Everyone meaning everyone. My parents, your parents, you—"
"So you want to break up."
"That's not what I said—"
"That's what space means."
"No it's not—"
"Then what does it mean?" He was angry now, genuinely angry. Topper never got angry. "Because from where I'm standing it sounds like you want to break up but you don't want to say it."
"I don't want to break up!" You were yelling now. "I love you! I just—I need time to figure out what I want that's not about us. That's just about me."
"But I'm part of your life. We're—we're together. You can't just—" He stopped. Shook his head. "You know what? Fine. You want space? You got it."
“I love you,” you said, because that was meant to be grounding. That was supposed to fix things. Love was supposed to be the answer to it all, wasn’t it? And you needed him to hear that. You needed him to understand that this wasn’t about not loving him. “I love you. Isn’t that what matters?”
Topper looked at you for a long moment, and his face was doing something you'd never seen before. He looked hurt and frustrated and something that looked almost like resignation. "I don't know anymore," he said quietly. "Maybe it should be enough. But right now it just—it doesn't feel like it is."
His words hit you like a physical blow. You opened your mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“I need a break,” Topper said. He wasn’t yelling anymore. He sounded like he was just tired. “Not from you. Just from this. This conversation and this night. I—I can’t do this right now.”
"Okay," you said quietly.
"I'm gonna stay here. At the party. But you should go home." He looked at you, and there was something almost gentle in his expression despite everything. "You look exhausted, babe. You should go home."
"I can stay—"
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think both of us need to cool off. Think about shit. And we can’t if we’re both here drunk and—” He gestured vaguely between you two. “—doing this.”
“How am I supposed to get home?” you asked, because he had drove you and apparently he was insistent on being the one that stayed at the party.
“I’ll figure it out. Just—give me a second.” He turned his back to you, looking around the area. “There.” He pointed. “Rafe’s here. He’ll drive you.”
Your stomach dropped. “He doesn’t have to—” Your voice came out wrong, high and panicked. Topper didn’t notice.
“He can drive. He’ll drop you off.” Topper was already walking toward Rafe standing at the bonfire. “Yo! Rafe.”
Rafe looked up to see Topper, then you standing a foot behind him.
“What’s up?” he called back.
“Do me a favour?” Topper reached him and put a hand on his shoulder. You followed him close behind, hesitant of your steps. “Can you give her a ride home?”
Rafe’s eyes flicked to you, an eyebrow raised, then moved back to Topper. “Something wrong with your car?”
"Nah. I just—we had a thing. She needs to go home and I'm staying here and I don't want her to drive." Topper's voice was still doing that too-casual thing, that trying-to-hold-it-together thing. "You're good to drive, right?"
"Yeah." It came out too quickly.
"So can you take her? Please?"
Rafe looked at you again and held your gaze for a beat too long. Or maybe you were imagining that?
"Yeah. Sure. No problem." He shrugged.
"Thanks, man. I owe you." Topper turned back to you, and his face softened slightly. "Get home safe, okay? We'll talk tomorrow. When we're both—" He gestured vaguely at himself. "—not like this."
"Okay," you said.
"And I do love you. You know that, right?"
"I know."
"Good." He kissed your forehead—quick, careful, almost formal. "Text me when you get home."
And then he walked back toward the bonfire, toward Kelce and the others, and left you standing there with Rafe.
The silence stretched out. You could hear the ocean, the music, people laughing somewhere down the beach. Could feel Rafe not looking at you, determinedly staring at something over your shoulder.
"You don't have to—" you started.
"My truck's in the lot," Rafe said, cutting you off. His voice was flat. Careful. "You ready to go or do you need to say goodbye to people?"
"I'm ready."
"Okay."
He started walking and you followed, and the distance between you felt like miles even though you were only a few feet apart. Neither of you said anything as you crossed the beach, as you climbed the short path up to the parking lot, as you reached his truck.
He unlocked it. You got in. He got in. Started the engine. He quickly pulled out of the lot and onto the main road.
The silence in the truck was suffocating. You could hear your own breathing, could hear the road under the tires, could hear the distant thump of the bonfire music fading behind you. Could feel Rafe's presence next to you like a physical thing; it was too close and too far away at the same time.
“Thanks for doing this,” you said finally.
“It’s fine.”
You watched streetlights pass through the windshield, painting the cab of the truck in alternating light and shadow. Rafe's hands on the steering wheel. His jaw clenched. Everything about his body language screaming that he didn't want to be here, didn't want to be doing this, didn't want to be alone in a truck with you.
Which was fair. You'd both been doing a good job of avoiding each other all week. And now here you were, trapped together, and the air between you felt electric and dangerous and wrong.
“You guys good?”
“Yup.”
Your throat went tight. You pressed your forehead against the cool glass of the window and tried to breathe evenly and tried to think about what on earth had just happened. The fight. Topper’s face. The way he’d looked at you like he didn’t know who you were. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe you didn’t anymore either. Your eyes were burning; you blinked and felt the wetness on your lashes. Great. Perfect. You were crying now; drunk-crying in Rafe Cameron’s truck after fighting with your boyfriend who you loved but maybe didn’t love enough or maybe loved in the wrong way completely. You didn’t even know anymore.
A tear slid down your cheek, and then another. You tried to wipe them away quickly but they kept coming, and your breath was hitching in that embarrassing way that meant you were about to properly cry, and you turned your face more toward the window so Rafe wouldn’t see.
“Hey,” he said, his voice was flat and careful at the same time. “You sure you’re good?”
“I’m fine,” you said, but your voice cracked on the words.
“You’re crying.”
“I’m not.”
“I can see you crying.”
“I’m fine. I’m just—” You wiped at your face again. “Drunk. Just drunk. It’s stupid.”
Rafe remained silent and kept driving. His jaw was doing that thing it did, and his hands stayed on the wheel, and you thought maybe he was just going to ignore it and drive you home in silence while you cried quietly in the passenger seat like some pathetic drunk girl who couldn’t keep her relationship in check.
But then the truck slowed and his turn signal clicked on. He took a right down a side road you couldn’t place in your haziness, one of those residential streets that branched off the main drag, lined with scrub pine and chain-link fences and houses set back from the road. It was dark and quiet and empty. He put the truck in park and cut the engine.
You could hear every single thing now; you could hear your breathing, still hitching and uneven, the tick of the cooling engine, the distant sound of the ocean even though you were blocks away from the beach.
“I’m sorry,” you said, and your words came out shaky. “I didn’t mean for this to—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be—I’m fine. Really. You can just take me home. I’m sorry.”
Rafe let you talk without interrupting.
“I’m just drunk,” you continued, because in your mind stopping would mean actually feeling and sitting in the silence and acknowledging what had just happened with Topper and what was just happening in the truck. “And I got into this argument with Topper, but it’s fine. We’re fine. We fight sometimes. It’s normal. I love him. I do—”
Your voice cracked again. You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes, trying to stop the tears, but they kept coming anyway.
“He's such a good person. And he loves me and he's never done anything wrong and I love him but sometimes I feel like I can't breathe around him and I don't know if that's normal or if that means something's wrong with me or if I’m just crazy—"
You were rambling. You knew you were rambling. But you couldn't stop. The vodka and the tears and the week of avoiding thinking about any of this had cracked something open and now it was all spilling out in Rafe Cameron's truck and you couldn't make it stop.
Rafe still hadn't said anything. Was just sitting there listening. Which was unusual. Rafe didn't listen. Rafe interrupted, Rafe made snide comments, Rafe left the room when conversations got uncomfortable. But he was just sitting there. Letting you empty it all out.
“I’m sorry,” you said again. “I shouldn’t be saying this. You’re—you’re his best friend. I shouldn’t be—”
“I don’t think you’re being crazy,” Rafe said, almost shrugging.
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “Anyone would feel like that. He doesn’t wanna deal with shit he doesn’t wanna hear. It’s about him, not you.”
You looked at him from the corner of your eye. “I’m not trying to make him the bad guy.”
Rafe let out a short laugh. “I know.”
“He’s not. He’s good. He’s—”
“I know he is.”
“Then why—”
“‘Cause good doesn’t mean he’s right,” he said.
You felt your breath hitch slightly and felt more tears coming. You hugged yourself without realizing it. You wrapped your arms around your middle like if you could just hold yourself together physically, you can keep it together mentally.
Rafe’s hand left the steering wheel and settled on your thigh assuredly. Not brushing the hem of your shorts, but close. His hand was close enough that you could feel the heat of his palm through the denim. His fingers spread, thumb, resting at the edge where the fabric ended and your bare skin began. Suddenly you thought that the shorts were too short, too much leg showing, too much everything. You should tell him to move his hand.
“Are you okay?” he asked again, but you had a feeling he didn’t mean your situation with Topper as much as the situation with your bodies touching.
“Yeah,” you said quietly.
“Good.”
Rafe didn’t know what he could blame his actions on. He didn’t have a reason in Ruthie’s bathroom, but now, he had no reason. None. You were crying to him about Topper; he wasn’t catching all your words because you were rambling more than talking, but he could’ve sworn you mentioned the word love and loving Topper about three times throughout your entire monologue. But was it his fault when you turned to meet his eyes—was it his fault when you looked at him like that?
Because you did. Because you looked like everything he'd been trying not to think about for two years, everything he'd been mean about and cruel about and dismissive about because acknowledging it would mean admitting that Topper's girlfriend was the prettiest girl Rafe had ever seen and also the one girl on this entire fucking island he couldn't have.
Your eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, mascara smudged underneath that should’ve been messy but only made him think you were letting him see something more real and something nobody else got to see. Your cheeks were flushed from crying and probably the alcohol, that pink spread down your neck to your collarbone, and Rafe’s eyes followed it without permission. He cataloged and memorized it. Your lips were glossy; it was probably the lipgloss you always wore that Rafe had watched you apply about a hundred times at parties, that you reapplied obsessively like it was a nervous habit. It was now smudged at the corner from where you’d been crying and wiping your face and Rafe wanted to fix it.
Or ruin it more. He hadn’t decided. Both maybe. Fix it by ruining it. Ruining it by touching it.
Your hair was falling out of whatever you’d done to it earlier and you looked vulnerable in a way that made Rafe’s chest twist uncomfortably because he shouldn’t be looking at you like this. He shouldn’t be cataloging the way your tank top had rode up slightly when you’d turned toward him, showing a strip of your skin that was rising and falling too fast. He shouldn’t be noticing that your breath was still uneven, and your chest was rising and falling too fast, and the strap of your bra was visible under your top (white, lace-edged), and Jesus Christ, he needed to fucking stop. But his hand stayed exactly where it was.
But Rafe couldn’t stop because you were looking at him in a way he couldn’t name. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. He only knew you were looking at him with those eyes—red and wet and too wide—and your lips were parted slightly and you weren’t pulling away from his hand on your thigh and this was so fucking dangerous.
“You gotta stop looking at me like that,” he said through a rough chuckle.
Your throat moved when you swallowed. “Like what?”
Like you want me to kiss you. Like you’ve forgotten Topper exists. Like I’m not the worst possible person you could be alone with right now.
“You know.”
And he knew you knew. It was evident in the way your breath caught, the way your eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second before flicking back up. He could tell in the way you didn’t pull away when his thumb moved against your thigh. He should move his hand. He should drive his truck and take you home and never be alone with you ever, ever again. He should do literally anything other than sitting here in the dark with his hand on your thigh thinking how easy it would be to slide it higher, to find out if your skin was as soft as it looked, to make you make a sound that wasn’t crying.
But you were still looking at him and not pulling away. You were sitting there with your lips parted and eyes glassy and that fucking lip gloss catching the light from the streetlamp and Rafe’s brain had officially short-circuited.
This was Topper’s girl. Topper’s perfect girlfriend who baked fucking cookies and volunteered and lead charity events and smiled at everyone. She was soft and sweet, everything Rafe wasn’t. And now you were here, in Rafe’s truck, looking at Rafe like that, and Rafe was only human. He was only twenty and fucked up and good at making horrible decisions.
His hand moved again higher this time. Just enough to feel where denim ended and skin began. It was enough to make you inhale sharply.
“Rafe,” you said. You only said his name, and he was sure he’d heard you say it about a hundred times before, but the way you said it breathy and uncertain made every rational thought in Rafe disappear. Not stop. Not don’t. Just his name.
“I know,” he said. “We can’t. I know this is—” He stopped. His hand involuntarily tightened on your thigh. “I know.” He took in a sharp breath. “You’re crying. And you’re looking at me like that. And you’re—” He shook his head. “Fuck.”
You only looked at Rafe and he watched you try to figure out what to say, how to respond, what any of this meant.
“Rafe,” you whispered finally. “We can’t.”
“Iknow.” The words came out quickly. “I know all of it. I should move my hand and drive you home and never be alone with you again.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“‘Cause I don’t wanna.”
The words hung there. Too honest. Too raw. Rafe watched you process them, watched your face do something complicated, watched you bite your bottom lip—that nervous thing you did—and his eyes locked on your mouth.
On that lip gloss. On the way your teeth pressed into your bottom lip. On the little indent it left when you released it.
God, he wanted to kiss you. Wanted it so badly he could barely think straight. Wanted to know if you tasted like strawberries or if that was just the gloss. Wanted to know if you'd kiss him back or push him away. Wanted to know if you'd been thinking about him the way he'd been thinking about you.
Wanted to know if that moment in Ruthie's bathroom had meant something or if he'd imagined the way your breath had caught when his hands were on your hips.
“We’re gonna regret this,” you said quietly.
Oh, Rafe wasn’t sure about that part. Rafe's thumb moved again. Slow. Deliberate. Drawing a circle against your skin right where your shorts ended, right where he could feel how warm you were, how soft.
"Rafe," you breathed.
His voice came out low. Rough. "Tell me to move my hand and drive you home and I will."
“You should—”
“Not what I asked.” His eyes locked on yours. “Tell me to stop.”
You opened your mouth. Closed it. Rafe watched you struggle with it and watched you try to find the words, try to be good, try to do the right thing.
"I can't," you whispered finally.
And that was all Rafe needed. He leaned in slowly, giving you time to pull away. He wanted to give you time to say no, he almost needed you to say no. He wanted to give you time to remember you had a boyfriend because the time he got (two years) was enough to make him not care about your boyfriend being his best friend. You didn't pull away.
You weren’t even breathing. He could tell because his chest had stopped moving and you’d gone completely still under his hand like a deer that didn’t know whether to run or stay.
You only sat there frozen as Rafe closed the distance between you, as his free hand came up to cup your face, as his thumb brushed across your cheekbone right where the mascara was smudged.
"Last chance," he murmured. His lips were an inch from yours. Less. "Tell me no and I'll stop." His thumb traced your cheek once, and then again. He wanted to give you time. He wanted to give you an out.
Your eyes were huge and locked on his. Rafe could see you warring with yourself and he could’ve sworn he saw the moment you made the decision, the moment you stopped fighting it.
"I don't want you to stop," you whispered.
Good. He kissed you, slow at first. Like he was testing, giving you one more second to change your mind. His hand rested on your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone because he couldn’t stop touching you. His other hand tightened on your thigh. You made a small sound, maybe it was surprise, but he hoped it was want. Your body turned further toward him, and his fingers rested between the skin of your thighs, warm and soft and fuck.
Then you kissed him back, and something horrible in Rafe snapped. His lips worked harder and his hand slid from your face into your hair—fisting it, tangling in it—tilting your head back to get a better angle, so he could kiss you better, the way he’d been thinking about for two years. You made a small, surprised sound, and Rafe swallowed it whole.
“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth. “We’re so fucked.”
Your hands found his shirt, fisting the fabric and pulling him closer even though there was nowhere closer to go in the cab of his truck. The center console dug into his ribs but he didn’t care. He would’ve climbed over it if he could.
“Rafe—” you gasped when his lips moved to your neck.
“Hm?” His teeth grazed your pulse point.
“Rafe,” you said again, voice breathy and all perfect.
He hummed against your skin. “Yeah, baby?”
You shivered against him.
“I’m sorry.” Your hands went up his back and landed on his neck, nails softly grazing against the skin under his hair. The touch was so light it almost hurt Rafe, as though you weren’t allowed.
“Don’t.” Rafe’s lips met the corner of your jaw before he pulled back just enough to look at you. He rested his forehead against yours, breath uneven, and his hands stayed in your hair, fingers still tangled like he’d forgotten how to let go. Maybe if he held on long enough, this moment wouldn’t end and tomorrow would never come. “Don’t apologize to me. That’s not what this is.”
Your hands stilled on his neck, and the barely-there touch made all hairs on his body rise.
“What is it?” you asked softly.
Rafe laughed once, but all humor was devoid. What was it? Fuck if he knew. A really, really good mistake. He’d wanted this so long that it didn’t even feel real now that it was happening. His thumb slid along your jaw, tilting your face back toward him so you had no choice but to meet his eyes again. “You’re upset.”
He leaned back and in, kissed you again. It was shorter this time, firmer than before, like he was reminding himself what it felt like rather than losing himself in it; he would likely never have you in this position ever again. So he memorized it, your taste and the way your mouth fit against his and the sounds you made.
When he pulled away, his hand slid back down to your thigh, thumb pressing there, grounding both of you.
“You gotta breathe,” he murmured. “You’re gonna make yourself sick.”
You let out a breathy laugh. “You’re one to talk.” Rafe liked your voice too much.
“Hey,” he said, voice now slightly playful. “I’m not the one crying.” He cleared his throat when you didn’t respond. “You okay?”
You nodded.
“Good,” he said, and forced himself to pull away. Your hands stayed on his neck—fingers still curled there, warm—and he had to physically remove it. He took your wrist and gently guided your hand back to your own lap. “Because if we keep going like that, I really can’t take this back.”
He forced himself to start the truck because he wasn’t sure how true his words rang. His body felt like it was boiling about twenty emotions together at once; how could you take this back? He’d made you cross a line. He’d pulled you across it, really. The engine turned over. The headlights cut through the dark. Rafe put his truck in drive because if he sat there one more second looking at you with your swollen lips and smudged mascara and his fingerprints still visible in your hair, he was going to do something even more unforgivable than what he'd already done.
The drive to your house was silent. It was heavy and loaded with every single thing that had just happened and couldn’t happen again. Rafe kept both his hands on the wheel this time because he couldn’t trust himself to do anything else.
You sat with your arms wrapped around yourself, staring out the passenger window, and Rafe couldn't tell if you were crying again or just thinking. Either way, he didn't ask. He didn't know what he'd say if you were. He’d have to acknowledge what he’d just done if he asked.
Your street appeared too quickly. The familiar houses, the broken streetlight, your driveway with your parents' cars parked in it. All the normal pieces of your normal life that had nothing to do with what had just happened in Rafe's truck on some random side street.
“I should—” you started.
“Yup.”
You reached for the door handle. Stopped. Your hand just rested there on the metal, not pulling, not opening. “This didn’t happen?”
“Okay.” He kept his eyes on the steering wheel, suddenly feeling a hundred times smaller. “Didn’t happen.”
“We can’t—this can’t happen again.”
“I know that. So go inside.” His hands tightened around the steering wheel. “Text Topper. Tell him you got home safe. Forget about this.”
“Will you forget about it?”
No. Absolutely fucking not. He’d probably remember this for the rest of his life; he’d remember the way you tasted, the sound you made, the way you’d kissed him back. He’d remember all of it and it’d torture him everytime he saw you with Topper, every single fucking time he had to pretend this never happened, every time he had to be Topper’s best friend and not the guy who’d kissed his girlfriend in a parked truck after she cried.
“Yeah,” Rafe said, nodding. “I’ll forget about it.” For some reason, the lie tasted worse on his tongue than the truth would’ve.
You stared at him for a long moment before opening the door. You climbed out onto the sidewalk, and Rafe watched you smooth down your shorts, fix your hair, try to put yourself back together into the girl you'd been before you got in his truck. You leaned in before closing the door. “Thank you,” you said. “For the ride and listening and—” You stopped yourself. “Just thank you.”
Rafe nodded once, sharply. You turned away from him and went inside. He sat there for a long time. Staring at your dark house. Trying to process what he'd just done. Trying to figure out how he was supposed to look Topper in the face tomorrow knowing that he'd had his hands in your hair and his mouth on yours and you'd kissed him back.
His phone buzzed.
Topper: she get home okay?
Rafe stared at the text. His best friend's name on the screen. At the trust implicit in that question, the assumption that Rafe had done exactly what he'd been asked to do and nothing more.
Calm Waters... Probably... - Cameron Cassmore x Female Reader
briefing: Cameron rents a boat and two jet skis for what he insists is a completely casual summer outing between friends. Somewhere between safety videos, emotional support snacks, and teaching you how to steer across open water, the day starts becoming something a little harder for both of you to ignore.
words: 9.3k
warnings: Just some mild anxiety/panic around trying new things and water activities, plus lots of soft yearning, accidental emotional intimacy, mutual pining, kissing, and Cameron Cassmore being painfully in love without fully realizing how obvious he is about it.
author note: tried a different writing style for this one! Let me know what you think of that and the story! :D
Cameron was beginning to think late-night decisions should legally require supervision. Because there was impulsive, and then there was whatever this was.
Two jet skis. A boat rental.
An entire confirmation email is sitting in his inbox right now with an amount of money attached to it that made him briefly consider pretending his debit card had been stolen.
He stared at the email again from where he sat slouched on his couch, one sock half-off, laptop balanced dangerously on his knee.
SUNSET MARINA RENTALS
Reservation Confirmed!
Jesus Christ.
What had started as a perfectly normal search for “things to do near Seattle in summer” had somehow spiraled into:
reading Yelp reviews at one in the morning
watching a ten-minute jet ski safety video
convincing himself this was “probably easy”
and finally clicking Reserve Now before he could think too hard about it
In his defense, the website had made it look very romantic.
Not romantic. Fun. Casual. Normal friend activities. Totally normal things people did with people they were definitely not quietly in love with.
Cameron groaned softly and scrubbed both hands over his face.
“Idiot,” he muttered to himself.
And yet…
He looked back at the confirmation email.
He could already picture it:
sunny weather, open water, music playing quietly somewhere, you laughing at him when he inevitably messes something up.
The image settled warmly in his chest before immediately making him nervous again. Because now he actually had to ask you. His phone sat beside him on the couch cushion like a threat. He picked it up. Put it back down. Picked it up again.
What if you thought it was weird? Too much? What if you immediately realized this was dangerously close to a date?
Because honestly, he was trying very hard not to realize that himself.
Cameron opened your text thread anyway. Stared at the blinking cursor.
Typed:
hey wanna maybe do something saturday
Deleted it. Too vague.
Typed again:
So hypothetically how do you feel about watercraft
Deleted that immediately.
Jesus Christ.
Finally, before he could overthink himself into another hour of pacing, he hit record on a voice message.
“Okay, so don’t laugh,” he started immediately, already laughing a little himself in that nervous way he did when he knew he sounded ridiculous. “But I may have accidentally rented jet skis.”
The message was sent before he could stop it. He dropped his head back against the couch cushion dramatically.
“Great,” he sighed at the ceiling. “Perfect. Super normal.”
Three dots appeared almost immediately. His stomach flipped.
Then your reply came through:
Accidentally?
Cameron barked out a laugh so suddenly he startled himself.
He hit record again before he could think too hard.
“No, okay, in my defense,” he said quickly, sitting forward now, “the website made it seem really easy. And there were reviews. People said it was fun. Nobody died in the reviews, which feels important.”
A pause.
Then, because nervousness always made him ramble:
“And technically, there’s also a boat involved? Which I maybe should’ve led with because now it sounds like I rented rogue jet skis off Craigslist.”
Another pause.
“Which I didn’t. For the record.”
He sent that one too. Then immediately stood up and started pacing his apartment.
Because this was insane.
You were going to say no. Not rudely. You weren’t a rude person.
But you were definitely going to say: “Cameron, absolutely not.”
His phone buzzed again.
He snatched it up too fast to see your message,
I have literally never been on a jet ski in my life.
A grin spread across his face before he could stop it.
He typed back:
Great news.
Me neither.
A full minute passed before your next reply.
He spent the entire minute convincing himself you were trying to figure out how to let him down gently.
Then you respond:
Cameron Cassmore.
He laughed under his breath.
He typed:
That’s not technically a no.
Another pause.
Then finally:
…okay.
But if I die, I’m haunting you specifically.
Cameron smiled so hard his cheeks hurt.
Warm.
Bright.
Immediate.
Hopeful in a way he hadn’t let himself feel in a while.
He looked around his apartment at the pile of unnecessary supplies he’d already started gathering earlier:
sunscreen
towels
chips
bottled water
Dramamine he bought “just in case”
a Bluetooth speaker he wasn’t even sure worked
It suddenly felt less stupid.
Less like another impulsive attempt at becoming someone else.
And more like maybe—
maybe this could actually be something good.
By the time Saturday morning rolled around, Cameron had managed approximately four hours of sleep.
Not because he’d been busy.
Because apparently his brain had decided this was a life-altering event worthy of a complete psychological breakdown.
At two in the morning, he’d gotten up to make sure he actually had sunscreen.
At three-fifteen, he remembered people probably needed towels.
At four, he spent twenty minutes reading an article titled:
“Top Ten Beginner Jet Ski Mistakes.”
Which had honestly made things significantly worse.
Now, just after eight in the morning, he sat outside your apartment gripping an iced coffee like it was medically necessary.
Baseball cap pulled low.
Sunglasses on despite the fact that the sun was barely fully up yet.
One elbow hanging out the open driver’s side window like he was somehow cooler than he actually felt.
Which was not cool at all.
His stomach had been doing nervous flips for the last twenty minutes.
The inside of his car looked like a small sporting goods store had exploded in it.
There were:
towels piled in the backseat
sunscreen in two different SPF levels because he panicked and bought both
chips shoved into a reusable grocery bag
bottled waters rolling dramatically every time he hit the brakes
a tangled Bluetooth speaker cord hanging halfway out of another bag
He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror.
“You need to relax,” he told himself quietly.
Then immediately checked his phone to make sure he was at the right building, even though he’d been here before.
A minute later, the apartment door opened.
And there you were.
Cameron straightened automatically.
God.
Maybe renting jet skis had been worth the emotional devastation after all.
You smiled the second you spotted his car, and something warm twisted painfully in his chest.
He leaned across the passenger seat to push the door open before you could reach for the handle yourself.
“Morning,” he said, trying for casual.
It came out slightly too fast.
You slid into the passenger seat with a sleepy smile and immediately stopped short.
Your eyes moved slowly around the inside of the car.
The towels.
The snacks.
The bags.
The speaker cord.
One water bottle rolled sadly across the floorboard.
A smile pulled at your mouth.
Cameron suddenly became intensely aware of every single item in the vehicle.
“What?” he asked defensively already.
You looked at him, amused.
“You packed snacks.”
He scoffed softly and started the car before you could see him getting embarrassed.
“People need snacks,” he muttered. “That’s just science.”
You laughed quietly beside him, setting your bag at your feet.
The sound settled warmly somewhere beneath his ribs.
God, he liked making you laugh.
Too much, probably.
He pulled out onto the street, one hand drumming nervously against the steering wheel.
“You sleep okay?” you asked.
“Fantastic,” Cameron lied immediately.
You looked over.
He grinned sheepishly.
“I read, like, six jet ski articles.”
“Oh, my God.”
“In fairness, some were safety-related.”
“Some?”
“Well.” He adjusted his sunglasses. “One was titled ‘Jet Ski Etiquette,’ which honestly felt important socially.”
You laughed again.
There it was.
That stupid little spark of victory he felt every time he managed it.
The early morning traffic thinned as they headed farther from the city.
Sunlight filtered gold through the windshield.
Music played low for approximately thirty seconds before Cameron changed the station.
Then changed it again.
Then again.
You glanced over slowly.
“Do you hate every song on earth?”
“What? No.” Another station switch. “I’m curating a vibe.”
“You’ve changed the vibe four times.”
“That’s because none of these people understand summer.”
You snorted softly beside him.
Cameron smiled to himself, tapping the steering wheel again.
Then, quieter:
“You nervous?”
You exhaled dramatically.
“Yes.”
“Fair.”
“I’ve never even been near a jet ski.”
“Neither had I until forty-eight hours ago.”
Your head whipped toward him.
“Cameron.”
“What? I watched videos.”
“That does not help.”
“It helped the guys in the comments section.”
“The comments section?”
Cameron grinned.
You stared at him another second before laughing despite yourself and leaning back into the seat.
The nervousness still sat visibly in your shoulders, though.
He noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
So Cameron kept talking.
About everything.
A weird billboard.
A dog he saw hanging out of a truck window.
The marina reviews.
A guy online who claimed he proposed on a jet ski.
“That feels unsafe emotionally,” you said.
“Right? Like if she says no, now you’re stranded on water.”
You laughed again.
And Cameron—
still sleep-deprived, still anxious, still pretending he had any clue what he was doing—
felt something loosen quietly in his chest.
Because this already felt good.
Easy.
Like maybe the day didn’t actually have to be perfect.
Maybe he just wanted more moments exactly like this one:
You beside him,
sunlight pouring through the windows,
Both of you laughing before the day had even really started.
—
The marina was already busy by the time they arrived.
Not crowded exactly, but alive in that distinctly summer way.
Boat motors hummed somewhere out on the water.
Music drifted faintly from a dock farther down.
People in sunglasses and swimsuits wandered between rental slips carrying coolers, towels, and folded chairs.
The whole place smelled like sunscreen, lake water, and gasoline baking gently in the sun.
Cameron parked crooked on the first attempt.
Then pulled forward to fix it.
Then made it slightly worse somehow.
You pretended not to notice.
He killed the engine and immediately reached for his coffee again, as if it might contain confidence.
“Okay,” he said, exhaling hard. “This is gonna be fun.”
You looked at him.
“That sounded like you were convincing yourself.”
“I contain multitudes.”
You laughed softly and climbed out of the car.
The sunlight hit warm immediately.
Bright enough that Cameron adjusted his sunglasses before grabbing approximately six things at once from the backseat.
“You know,” you said carefully as he nearly dropped the speaker bag, “most people usually make two trips.”
“Nope,” Cameron said, struggling under three towels and the cooler. “That’s weakness.”
A water bottle fell out of the grocery bag and rolled under the car.
You bent to grab it while Cameron stared upward dramatically.
“This is humiliating.”
“You packed enough supplies for a week.”
“What if we get stranded?”
“You rented these for an afternoon.”
“You don’t know what could happen on the open water.”
He said it with complete seriousness.
You stared at him.
Then laughed again.
God.
That sound.
Cameron smiled despite himself and finally managed to get everything balanced well enough to start walking toward the rental office.
The marina office itself was small and sun-faded, with handwritten signs taped crookedly near the register advertising bait, cold drinks, and emergency ponchos.
A teenage employee behind the counter looked deeply uninterested in existing.
Cameron immediately stood up straighter.
Cooler.
More confident.
Like a man who absolutely rented boats all the time.
“Morning,” he said casually, setting the rental paperwork on the counter. “Here for the, uh… water vehicles.”
You looked down instantly to hide your smile.
The employee blinked slowly.
“The jet skis?”
“Right,” Cameron said smoothly. “Obviously.”
The guy nodded once.
Then launched into what was very clearly a rehearsed safety speech.
“Okay, so the throttle’s on the right handlebar. The kill switch clips onto the vest. Stay outside buoy markers—”
Cameron nodded with intense concentration.
Way too intensely.
Like he was trying to absorb the information through sheer eye contact.
“—and no sharp turns at high speed unless you know how to counterbalance properly.”
“Yep,” Cameron said immediately. “Totally.”
You glanced sideways at him.
He kept nodding seriously.
“Dock back at Slip Four when you’re done. The boat key stays separate from the ski keys. Any questions?”
Cameron paused for one dangerous second, like he was considering pretending he did have questions.
Then:
“Nope. Crystal clear.”
The employee looked unconvinced.
“Cool,” he said flatly.
A few minutes later, once the paperwork was signed and life vests were handed over, the two of you stepped back outside into the bright sunlight.
The second the office door shut behind them, you looked at Cameron.
“Did you know any of that already?”
Cameron adjusted his sunglasses calmly.
“Not a word.”
You burst out laughing.
He grinned immediately, pleased with himself.
“I understood maybe…” He held up two fingers close together. “Five percent.”
“You acted like you were getting briefed for a military operation.”
“That’s because confidence matters.”
“You called them water vehicles.”
“In fairness,” Cameron said, shrugging into one of the life vests, “that’s technically what they are.”
You laughed harder.
And Cameron—
standing there in the middle of the marina parking lot with sunglasses slipping down his nose and sunscreen already smeared badly along one arm—
felt warmth spread through his chest again.
Because this.
This right here.
You laughing beside him in the sunshine while he made an idiot of himself.
This was exactly what he’d wanted.
The rental dock sat just beyond the marina office, sunlight flashing gold across the water in shifting patterns.
Up close, the jet skis looked significantly larger than they had online.
Which felt unfair, honestly.
You stopped walking.
Cameron noticed immediately.
His smile softened a little beneath his sunglasses.
“Uh oh.”
You crossed your arms loosely over your chest.
“I don’t like how aggressive they look.”
“They look friendly.”
“They look fast.”
“That too.”
One of the skis bobbed lightly against the dock, the engine already giving occasional low mechanical sounds as another employee prepared the rentals nearby.
Your stomach flipped.
Cameron noticed that too.
Of course he did.
He shifted the towels he was holding under one arm and stepped a little closer.
“Hey,” he said lightly, “we don’t have to do anything insane.”
You looked out toward the water again.
It was beautiful.
Wide open lake.
Blue sky.
Gentle breeze.
And still—
the idea of climbing onto one of those things felt mildly horrifying.
“I’m serious,” you admitted quietly. “I’m kind of scared.”
The teasing expression on Cameron’s face disappeared instantly.
Not dramatically.
Just softened.
Warmer.
He set the towels down on the dock bench beside the life vests and reached for one.
“C’mere,” he said gently.
Something in your chest tightened a little at the tone.
You stepped closer.
Cameron shook the vest out once before holding it open for you automatically, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
You slipped your arms through.
The vest hung slightly loose around your sides.
Cameron frowned in concentration immediately.
“Nope. That’s not right.”
He stepped closer before you could answer.
Very close.
Close enough now that you could smell sunscreen and coffee lingering faintly on him beneath the lake air.
His fingers carefully found the front straps.
“Hold on,” he murmured.
The buckle clicked softly.
Then another.
Cameron crouched slightly to tighten the lower strap, his fingers brushing accidentally against your waist in the process.
Your breath caught before you could stop it.
His hands paused for half a second.
Just enough to notice.
Then Cameron cleared his throat softly and focused very hard on the buckle, as if it had suddenly become the most important task of his life.
“Safety first,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
You smiled despite the nervous flutter building low in your stomach now for entirely different reasons.
The sunlight caught against the edge of his sunglasses as he looked up briefly.
“So,” he said, still adjusting one strap carefully, “on a scale from one to ten, how much are you regretting agreeing to this?”
“Currently?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Like… seven.”
Cameron winced dramatically.
“Ouch.”
“You told me you’d watched videos.”
“I did watch videos.”
“That’s somehow making this worse.”
He laughed softly under his breath.
Then his expression gentled again.
“Hey.” His voice quieter now. “You don’t have to prove anything today.”
The words settled warmly into the space between you.
Cameron tugged lightly on one last strap, checking the fit.
“We can literally just float around out there if you want,” he continued. “I don’t care.”
And he meant it.
That was the thing.
You could hear it immediately.
This wasn’t him trying to pressure you into being adventurous.
Wasn’t him trying to look cool.
He just wanted you there.
Wanted you happy.
Something in your chest ached unexpectedly at the realization.
Your eyes flicked toward his.
Cameron was still standing close enough that if either of you leaned forward even slightly—
He blinked suddenly like he’d realized the exact same thing.
Then immediately fumbled the strap in his hands despite already tightening it.
“Okay,” he said too quickly. “Great. Perfect. Very secure. You’re, uh… survival-ready.”
You laughed softly.
His ears turned slightly pink beneath the baseball cap.
Cute.
Dangerously cute.
Cameron straightened fully, rubbing one hand awkwardly against the back of his neck before grabbing his own vest.
“Besides,” he added, trying very hard to recover his normal teasing tone, “if anything happens, I saw at least three separate people online say these things are beginner-friendly.”
You stared at him.
“Online?”
“Well,” he said defensively, “where else would jet ski experts gather?”
Getting the boat away from the dock took significantly longer than Cameron had implied it would.
There had been:
one failed attempt at reversing
a brief moment where the employee had to shove them away from the dock manually
and Cameron muttering, “Okay, that one wasn’t my fault,” under his breath while you laughed hard enough to nearly lose your sunglasses.
But eventually—
Eventually, the marina noise faded behind them.
And the lake opened wide.
The water stretched endlessly blue beneath the morning sun, sparkling so brightly in places it almost hurt to look at it directly. Small ripples rocked gently beneath the boat as Cameron guided it farther from shore, the steady hum of the motor blending with the soft slap of water against the hull.
Out here, everything felt quieter somehow.
Softer.
Even the air felt different.
Cool against sun-warmed skin.
You sat beside Cameron on the bench seat near the console, one knee angled toward him without really thinking about it.
The boat wasn’t large enough for much personal space anyway.
Not that either of you seemed particularly bothered by that fact.
Cameron rested one hand loosely on the steering wheel, sunglasses slipping slowly down the bridge of his nose every few minutes before he pushed them back up absentmindedly.
For the first time all morning, he seemed genuinely relaxed.
The nervous energy had eased out of his shoulders little by little once they’d gotten onto open water.
No crowds.
No dock employees.
No paperwork.
Just the two of you.
And honestly?
Cameron thought this might be the nicest thing he’d done in a very long time.
You opened the bag of chips between you carefully as the boat drifted over a small wake.
Immediately, Cameron reached over and stole one.
You looked at him.
“Those are mine.”
“I bought them.”
“You packed them for me.”
“That feels speculative.”
You laughed softly and nudged his shoulder with yours.
The contact was brief.
Casual.
But Cameron felt it anyway.
Felt all of it lately, honestly.
Every accidental touch.
Every smile.
Every time you laughed at something dumb he said like it mattered.
He glanced toward you for half a second longer than necessary before quickly looking back toward the water.
Dangerous.
This whole thing was becoming dangerous.
“You know,” he said casually, “I think I’m actually kind of good at this.”
“You almost hit a dock.”
“That was environmental.”
You snorted.
“And the employee literally grabbed the boat.”
“He overreacted.”
Your knees bumped lightly as the boat shifted again.
Neither of you moved away.
The breeze tugged loose strands of hair across your face, and Cameron looked over automatically.
His fingers twitched briefly against the steering wheel before he stopped himself.
Too much.
Way too much.
Instead, he reached for another chip.
You smacked his hand away this time.
“Unbelievable,” he muttered.
“You have your own snacks.”
“Yeah, but yours are psychologically more appealing now.”
The lake widened farther around them as Cameron guided the boat toward quieter water away from the marina traffic.
The farther out they got, the calmer everything seemed.
No loud voices.
No crowded docks.
Just sunlight dancing across the water endlessly.
Cameron exhaled slowly without realizing it.
And for once, his brain finally shut up a little.
No spiraling thoughts.
No constant low-grade panic about his life.
No trying to figure out who he was supposed to become.
Just this.
You beside him.
Summer air.
Open water.
Easy.
He started talking again eventually.
Not because he was nervous now.
Just because silence with you didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore.
He pointed vaguely across the lake.
“I read a review that said somebody saw an otter out here once.”
“One otter?”
“Apparently, it was memorable.”
“That’s your selling point?”
“There are layers to this experience.”
You smiled, leaning back slightly against the seat.
Cameron glanced sideways again.
The sunlight caught warm against your skin.
Your life vest sat slightly crooked from where the straps had loosened.
Your sunglasses had slipped low enough that he could see your eyes when you looked at him.
Something tight pulled unexpectedly in his chest.
God.
This felt dangerously close to a date.
The realization settled slowly and heavily in your stomach at almost the exact same moment.
The snacks.
The lake.
The quiet.
The way Cameron kept looking at you when he thought you weren’t paying attention.
This wasn’t just two friends hanging out anymore.
Or maybe it never had been.
Cameron cleared his throat lightly and looked back toward the water before he could embarrass himself by staring too long.
Because the truth was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
He didn’t just want this day to go well.
He wanted this to mean something.
Wanted you to mean something.
And maybe—
judging by the soft smile still lingering at the corner of your mouth as you looked out across the lake—
Maybe you already did.
—
By the time Cameron finally slowed the boat, they were far enough from the marina that the rest of the lake traffic had faded into distant specks across the water.
The open lake stretched endlessly around them now.
Blue.
Bright.
Quiet.
A light breeze skimmed across the surface, turning the sunlight into glittering patterns that shifted every few seconds.
Cameron eased back on the throttle.
The motor quieted gradually before he finally cut it completely.
Instantly, the world softened.
No engine noise now.
Just gentle water lapping against the side of the boat.
The faint creak of movement beneath your feet.
Wind is moving lazily through the open air.
For a second, neither of you said anything.
Then Cameron looked over at you from behind his sunglasses.
A grin tugged slowly at the corner of his mouth.
“Ready?”
You blinked at him.
“For what?”
He stared at you for one dramatic second.
Then pointed toward the back of the boat where the two jet skis floated tethered behind them.
Your stomach dropped instantly.
“Oh,” you said weakly.
Cameron laughed immediately.
Not loudly.
Not meanly.
Fondly.
Like your reaction was exactly what he’d expected.
“Oh, Cam,” you groaned, already pulling your knees closer to your chest instinctively. “I’ve never ridden one. That’s a terrifying thing. Those things look so unsafe.”
Cameron’s grin widened.
“Baby,” he said, laughing softly now, “what do you think the life vest is for?”
You reached over and smacked lightly at the bill of his baseball cap.
He leaned away dramatically like you’d wounded him.
“Violence. Interesting.”
“You brought me into the middle of a lake under false pretenses.”
“I literally told you there would be jet skis.”
“I thought you meant emotionally. Like… conceptually.”
Cameron barked out another laugh at that, dropping his head briefly.
God.
You were cute when you were nervous.
Which was becoming a problem.
Because every time he made you laugh, some tight anxious knot inside his chest loosened a little more, too.
It was easier to breathe around you lately.
Easier to stop thinking so hard.
Cameron stood carefully, the boat rocking lightly beneath him.
“Okay,” he said, rubbing his hands together once with completely fake confidence. “Here’s the plan.”
“That sentence alone made me nauseous.”
“Wow. Okay. Hurtful.”
You laughed despite yourself.
Victory.
Cameron pointed toward the jet skis again.
“We start slow.”
“How slow?”
He considered this.
“…lake slow.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means very safe and responsible.”
“You almost hit a dock this morning.”
“In fairness,” Cameron said, stepping toward the back platform of the boat, “I feel like you’re really holding that against me.”
“Because it happened.”
“One time.”
“The employee physically intervened.”
“That guy had trust issues.”
You shook your head, smiling helplessly now as Cameron crouched near the back of the boat to start untying one of the skis.
Even now, even while clearly bluffing portions of this entire experience, he looked weirdly happy.
Relaxed.
The sunlight warmed the back of his neck beneath his cap.
His sunglasses kept slipping down his nose every few seconds.
He kept talking while working, half to you and half to himself.
“I watched a video about this part specifically,” he informed you.
“That’s not reassuring.”
“No, it actually was a really good video. Very educational. The guy had over twelve thousand subscribers.”
“Cameron.”
“I’m just saying credentials matter.”
You laughed again, quieter this time.
And Cameron smiled to himself automatically as he climbed carefully down onto the back platform.
Because this—
this right here—
You teasing him while the lake drifted quietly around you—
felt better than he’d even imagined it would.
Dangerously better.
Watching Cameron attempt to untether the jet ski while maintaining his illusion of competence became entertaining almost immediately.
“There’s no way this is as graceful as the videos made it look,” he muttered, crouched awkwardly near the edge of the boat.
The ski bumped lightly against the side again.
Cameron reached for the rope.
Missed it entirely the first time.
You pressed your lips together hard.
“I can feel you judging me.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He finally caught the rope with an unnecessarily triumphant:
“Ha.”
Then immediately almost lost his sunglasses when the boat rocked beneath him.
You laughed outright this time.
Cameron pointed at you accusingly while steadying himself with the other hand.
“See, this is why people don’t try new things.”
“You rented watercraft at one in the morning.”
“And yet here we are.”
Somehow—
through a combination of luck, stubbornness, and deeply questionable technique—
he managed to get the first jet ski lowered fully into the water beside the boat.
It bobbed gently against the side.
Cameron stared at it for one long second.
Then at you.
Then back at the ski.
“…okay.”
“That sounded uncertain.”
“No, no. That was a confident okay.”
“You looked scared.”
“I contain depth.”
You snorted softly as Cameron climbed carefully down onto the swim platform at the back of the boat.
The movement made the whole thing rock lightly.
Immediately:
“Oh my God,” you whispered.
Cameron looked up.
“You’re fine.”
“You say that while standing on a floating death machine.”
“It’s technically two floating death machines.”
“That’s worse.”
He laughed again.
God, he loved this version of you.
All nervous energy and sarcasm and reluctant amusement.
It made him feel strangely light.
Cameron swung one leg carefully over the jet ski seat.
For a brief second, he actually looked kind of cool.
Then he accidentally hit the horn.
A loud HONK burst across the lake.
You startled violently.
Cameron froze.
Then slowly looked up at you.
“…warning honk.”
You laughed so hard you had to grab the side rail for balance.
Even Cameron doubled over laughing at himself.
“Okay,” he said finally, wiping under his sunglasses dramatically. “That one was rough.”
“You’re doing amazing, sweetie.”
“Wow. Mockery. From my own team.”
Still smiling helplessly, you carefully climbed down toward the swim platform while Cameron steadied the ski beside the boat.
The closer you got, the more nervousness returned.
The water suddenly looked very far away.
Very open.
Very deep.
Cameron noticed instantly.
His teasing expression softened again.
“Hey.”
You looked over.
He held one hand out toward you.
Simple.
Easy.
“C’mon,” he said gently. “I got you.”
Your stomach flipped for an entirely different reason this time.
You reached for his hand carefully.
His grip closed warm and steady around yours immediately.
And despite the rocking boat and your nerves and the fact that you were about to climb onto what still absolutely looked like a mechanically advanced dolphin designed for violence—
You trusted him.
That realization hit quietly.
Dangerously quietly.
Cameron helped guide you onto the seat behind him, one hand braced lightly at your waist to steady you as the ski shifted beneath your combined weight.
“There you go,” he murmured.
The closeness hit immediately.
Your knees pressed along either side of him.
The warmth of his back against your chest.
The clean smell of sunscreen and lake air and Cameron.
Then—
without really thinking—
you wrapped your arms tightly around his waist.
Cameron went completely still for half a second.
Oh. Oh no.
This felt… Nice. Like really nice.
Way nicer than it should’ve.
His brain short-circuited briefly as your arms tightened instinctively around him again when the jet ski rocked.
Dangerous. Dangerous development.
Cameron cleared his throat softly and forced himself to focus very hard on the controls.
“Okay,” he said, voice slightly rougher now. “So. Professional jet ski operation.”
“You watched one YouTube video.”
“It was a playlist, actually.”
“That’s not helping.”
He grinned despite himself and hit the ignition.
The engine sputtered once.
Died immediately.
Silence.
You stared at the back of his head.
Cameron stared forward.
“…okay.”
You burst out laughing again.
He pointed ahead dramatically without turning around.
“That was a warm-up start.”
“Sure.”
“Very common in professional water sports.”
Second try.
The engine roared properly this time. The entire ski vibrated beneath you.
Immediately, your grip tightened around Cameron’s waist.
He absolutely noticed.
But he absolutely tried not to notice.
The ski eased slowly away from the boat.
Very slowly. Painfully slowly.
Still:
“CAMERON,” you yelped instantly into his shoulder. “SLOW DOWN.”
He laughed loudly this time, the sound carrying across the water.
“Baby,” he called back over the engine noise, “this is slow.”
“This feels illegal!”
“We’re moving like four miles an hour!”
Wind tugged lightly at your hair as the ski skimmed farther across the lake surface.
The motion was smoother than you expected.
Not gentle exactly—
but exciting.
Your heart hammered wildly somewhere between terror and adrenaline.
Meanwhile, Cameron couldn’t stop smiling.
Not because of the jet ski. Because of you.
Your arms around him.
Your laughter mixing with nervous shrieks.
The way you buried your face briefly against his shoulder every time the ski bounced over a wake.
It felt stupidly good.
Better than the lake.
Better than the weather.
Better than the whole idea he’d built up in his head.
“You okay back there?” he called.
“No!”
“That’s promising.”
“Cameron!”
“You’re still alive though, right?”
“Barely!”
“You haven’t thrown me off yet, so honestly? Huge success.”
You smacked lightly at his side.
He laughed again.
And the farther they drifted from the boat—
wind in their faces, sunlight glittering endlessly around them, both of them laughing too hard to be self-conscious anymore—
The more Cameron felt something unfamiliar settling warmly in his chest.
Not panic.
Not loneliness.
Just happiness.
Simple.
Immediate.
Real.
Eventually, somewhere between your fourth threat to throw yourself voluntarily into the lake and Cameron nearly laughing himself off the jet ski after one particularly dramatic scream over a tiny wake, the fear started easing.
Not disappearing completely.
But softening around the edges.
The lake didn’t feel quite so terrifying anymore.
And Cameron—
warm beneath your arms, laughing every thirty seconds, constantly checking on you—
felt safe.
Which honestly might’ve been the bigger problem.
The jet ski slowed again until it drifted gently across calmer water.
Cameron glanced back over his shoulder slightly.
“Okay.”
You narrowed your eyes immediately.
“That tone means something.”
“It means,” he said carefully, “you’re driving now.”
Absolutely not.
You tightened your grip around him instantly.
“No.”
He laughed softly.
“C’mon.”
“No, Cameron.”
“You’re ready.”
“I literally screamed because of a wave like two minutes ago.”
“In fairness, it was an aggressive wave.”
You snorted reluctantly.
Cameron smiled at the sound before carefully guiding the ski into a wider idle circle.
“Okay, look.” His voice gentler now. “I’m not throwing you into the deep end here.”
“This is technically all deep end.”
“You know what I mean.”
You did. Unfortunately.
Cameron shifted slightly on the seat to look back at you more fully, one arm draped loosely across the handlebars.
The sunlight caught warm against the edges of his sunglasses.
“You trust me, right?” he asked.
And there it was again. That dangerous softness.
The thing Cameron did sometimes without realizing it—
where all the joking dropped away for just a second, and suddenly he was painfully sincere.
You swallowed once.
“…yeah.”
His smile softened instantly.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Then we’ll go slow.”
The switch itself was awkward and mildly chaotic.
At one point:
the ski rocked alarmingly
you grabbed Cameron’s shoulder in panic
Cameron laughed so hard he almost slipped sideways into the water himself
“Okay,” he wheezed, “that would’ve been humiliating.”
“You would’ve deserved it.”
“Probably.”
Eventually, though, you ended up seated carefully in front of him.
Immediately more nervous.
The handlebars sat beneath your hands now.
The open lake stretched ahead.
Cameron sat close behind you, one knee braced lightly along either side of the seat to steady both of you.
“You’re fine,” he said automatically, noticing your shoulders tense.
Easy for him to say.
Then his hands settled gently over yours on the handlebars.
And every coherent thought in your brain disappeared instantly.
Oh.
His palms were warm.
Steady.
Close enough now that every breath you took seemed to pull in the clean scent of sunscreen and lake water and Cameron himself.
“You basically just steer like this,” he explained softly near your ear, guiding the handlebars slightly left.
Your pulse skipped stupidly.
“And this controls speed.” His fingers tapped lightly near the throttle. “But we’re not touching that aggressively because I enjoy surviving.”
You laughed nervously.
Cameron grinned immediately at the sound.
“There you go,” he murmured. “See? You’re already a natural.”
“I’m literally not moving.”
“Confidence matters.”
“You said that before the dock incident.”
“That feels unrelated.”
You shook your head, smiling helplessly despite yourself.
Then slowly—carefully—you nudged the handlebars.
The ski shifted slightly across the water.
Tiny movement.
Barely anything.
Still, Cameron lit up behind you like you’d just landed a plane.
“No, no,” he said immediately. “That was incredible. Honestly? Top five jet ski moments I’ve ever witnessed.”
You laughed. “I barely moved.”
“Exactly. Precision. Control. Vision.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“A little,” he admitted. “But also not really.”
And that was the thing. Underneath the teasing, he genuinely looked proud.
Like every tiny success from you mattered way more than it reasonably should.
It settled warm and fluttering somewhere low in your stomach.
Cameron guided your hands gently again.
“Okay, little more this time.”
You tried again.
The ski curved wider now across the open water.
Not graceful exactly.
But movement.
Real movement.
“Oh my God,” you breathed.
“You’re doing it!”
“I’m doing it?”
“You’re literally operating machinery right now. This is huge.”
His excitement was impossible not to laugh at.
Cameron laughed too, sounding almost boyishly delighted behind you now.
For someone who claimed this was casual, he looked absurdly invested in your success.
Then, because he was Cameron, he immediately got distracted halfway through another explanation.
“So apparently,” he started, “there’s this guy online who tried to ride one of these with his dog—”
The jet ski drifted sideways slightly.
You looked back immediately.
“Shouldn’t you be watching where we’re going?”
Cameron glanced around.
Paused.
“…probably.”
You burst out laughing again.
The sound bounced softly across the open lake.
And Cameron, arms still loosely around you while helping guide the handlebars, sunlight warming both of you beneath the endless blue sky, felt something shift quietly inside him.
Because somewhere between the nervousness and the teasing and your hands trembling slightly beneath his, this had stopped feeling like pretending.
Stopped feeling like him trying to orchestrate some perfect summer memory.
Now he just wanted more of this.
More of you laughing.
More of you leaning back against him unconsciously.
More of this strange, light feeling in his chest every time you smiled at him like he mattered.
The longer the two of you drifted across the lake, the less terrifying it became.
Not normal exactly.
You still felt one badly timed movement away from accidental death.
But manageable.
Especially with Cameron sitting close behind you, talking you through every tiny adjustment like you were attempting something far more dangerous than slowly steering across calm water.
“A little left,” he murmured near your ear.
You adjusted carefully.
“Perfect.”
“That did not feel perfect.”
“No, that was genuinely solid.”
“You say that every time.”
“Because you keep doing great.”
The praise came so easily from him.
Too easily.
Like he couldn’t help it.
Every tiny thing you managed made him grin immediately afterward, like he was personally invested in your success.
Which, judging by the warmth in his voice every time you got something right, he probably was.
The jet ski skimmed lightly across another small wake.
You tensed automatically.
Immediately, Cameron’s hand settled lightly against your side.
“Relax,” he said softly. “You’re okay.”
Your stomach flipped stupidly.
Not because of the movement.
Because of him.
Because his voice had gone low and warm again.
Because he was close enough now that every word brushed against the side of your neck.
Because every reassuring touch from him seemed to linger longer than it should.
Dangerous. Very dangerous.
“Okay,” Cameron said after another minute or so. “Try a little more speed.”
You looked back at him immediately.
“Absolutely not.”
He laughed softly.
“C’mon. Just a little.”
“That’s what people say before accidents happen.”
“That feels dramatic.”
“You brought me onto a mechanical torpedo.”
“It tops out at like sixty.”
Your eyes widened in horror.
Cameron immediately laughed harder.
“We are not going sixty!”
“Oh my God.”
“Baby, we’re going, like… bicycle speed right now.”
“That feels false.”
His grin softened again.
God, you were cute.
Especially like this—nervous but trying anyway.
Cameron had honestly expected today to be fun.
He hadn’t expected this constant aching fondness sitting heavy in his chest every time you laughed or looked back at him or trusted him enough to keep trying despite clearly being terrified.
It made him feel weirdly protective.
Not in a macho way.
Just…
careful with you.
“Okay,” he said gently. “Tiny bit more throttle.”
You inhaled once.
Then carefully squeezed.
The jet ski surged slightly faster across the water.
Not fast.
Just enough to feel the difference.
Wind pushed stronger against your shoulders now.
Your eyes widened instantly.
Cameron grinned behind you.
“There you go!”
“This feels illegal!”
“It literally isn’t.”
The ski curved lightly again beneath your hands.
This time smoother.
Cleaner.
You actually laughed a little.
And Cameron—
hearing that sound carried away by the wind while sunlight glittered endlessly around you—
felt ridiculously happy.
“Okay, okay,” he soothed immediately, one hand settling lightly over yours again to steady the handlebars. “We’re switching.”
“Nope. Done. I retire.”
“You had a beautiful career.”
“I almost killed us.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“I saw my life flash before my eyes.”
“That was a ten-degree turn.”
“It was violent.”
Cameron laughed again, quieter this time.
Then softened immediately when he saw the lingering nerves still sitting tight in your shoulders.
“Hey.” His voice gentler now. “You did good.”
You looked back at him skeptically.
“I’m serious.”
And he was.
There wasn’t even teasing underneath it this time. Just sincerity.
“You tried,” he continued softly. “That’s the hard part.”
Something in your chest tightened unexpectedly.
Because there was no disappointment in his voice.
No frustration.
No pushing.
Just warmth. Patience.
Like spending the afternoon teaching you mattered more to him than whether you were actually good at it.
The realization settled deep. Dangerously deep.
Cameron shifted slightly backward on the seat again.
“C’mon. We’ll switch.”
The process was awkward all over again.
More wobbling.
More grabbing onto each other for balance.
At one point Cameron had to grab your waist quickly to keep you both from tipping sideways.
You laughed breathlessly.
“This feels unsafe.”
“We’re thriving.”
“Define thriving.”
“You haven’t fallen into the lake once.”
“That’s your standard?”
“At the moment? Yeah.”
You shook your head, smiling helplessly again as you settled carefully back behind him.
Immediately safer.
Immediately warmer too somehow.
Your arms slid around his waist automatically now without hesitation.
Cameron went quieter again for half a second.
Still not used to that.
Still liking it way too much.
Then he cleared his throat lightly and restarted the throttle.
“Alright,” he announced. “Back to professional mode.”
“You were never in professional mode.”
“That feels unnecessarily honest.”
By the time the two of you drifted back toward the boat again, the afternoon sun had shifted warmer overhead.
Everything felt softer now somehow.
The nervousness.
The awkwardness.
Even the teasing had settled into something easier.
The lake rolled gently beneath the jet ski as Cameron slowed them near the boat again, letting the engine idle low while the water rocked lazily around you.
Your arms still rested around his waist.
Neither of you had really acknowledged that you’d stopped pulling away from each other hours ago.
Cameron definitely noticed, though.
Unfortunately.
Because every time your fingers tightened lightly against his stomach when the ski shifted, his brain short-circuited a little.
He cut the engine again.
Silence settled around you almost immediately.
Just water moving softly beneath the ski.
Wind brushes across the lake's surface.
A distant boat somewhere far off.
You exhaled slowly behind him.
“I think I’m getting better.”
Cameron turned slightly.
“See? Natural talent.”
“I almost threw us into the ocean.”
“We’re on a lake.”
“Same emotional experience.”
He laughed softly.
Then shifted carefully on the seat.
“Okay, hold on. Lemme stabilize this thing before we switch again.”
You loosened your arms enough for him to move.
Cameron twisted around awkwardly to brace himself better while steadying the handlebars—
and somehow ended up sitting backward on the seat facing you.
For a second, neither of you moved.
The position was ridiculous.
His knees bumped against yours automatically from how little space there actually was.
One hand still rested loosely near your hip where he’d instinctively steadied you during the shift.
You looked at him.
Then laughed softly.
“What are you doing?”
Cameron opened his mouth immediately.
Paused.
Looked at you properly for maybe the first time all afternoon.
The sunlight caught warm gold against your face.
Wind moved softly through your hair.
Your smile still lingered there—
easy now.
Comfortable.
And suddenly Cameron forgot every coherent thought he’d ever had in his life.
“…honestly?” he admitted quietly. “Forgot what I was doing.”
You laughed again. Smaller this time.
Closer.
And something changed in the space between you. Not dramatically. Nothing huge or cinematic.
Just the teasing eased back slightly.
The air grew quieter somehow.
The lake drifted lazily around you.
The warmth of the afternoon sun settled across both your skin.
You were close enough now that Cameron could feel your breath every time you laughed softly.
Too close to pretend this was still nothing.
His eyes flicked briefly toward your mouth before he could stop himself.
Then back up.
You noticed.
Your stomach flipped immediately.
Cameron swallowed once.
God, say something normal. Anything.
Instead: “So this is probably the point in a movie where somebody falls into the water.”
You smiled helplessly. “Probably.”
“Which would honestly ruin the moment a little.”
“The moment?”
Cameron blinked once like he’d accidentally said that part out loud.
“…yeah,” he said softly.
And there it was. That dangerous sincerity again. No jokes covering it this time. No nervous rambling.
Just Cameron looking at you like he wanted something and hadn’t figured out how to hide it anymore. Your heart started pounding hard enough you were sure he could hear it. Neither of you moved at first.
Then Cameron did the most Cameron thing possible: he kissed you carefully, like he still wasn’t entirely sure you wanted him to.
Warm. Tentative for half a second. Slightly breathless immediately afterward, like he’d surprised himself by doing it at all. But the second you kissed him back something in him melted completely. His hand slid instinctively to your waist to steady both you and himself as the jet ski rocked lightly beneath you. The kiss deepened naturally after that. Not polished. Not cinematic perfection. Just soft and warm and overdue. Like every almost-moment between you had finally caught up all at once.
Cameron smiled against your mouth halfway through because he physically could not help himself. You pulled back just enough to see it immediately. That dumb, bright, completely smitten grin spreading slowly across his face beneath the sunglasses slipping down his nose.
You laughed softly, still close enough that your foreheads nearly brushed.
“And you wanted to work today.”
Cameron snorted quietly, still smiling so hard it almost looked painful.
“In my defense,” he murmured, “I think I got very distracted.”
After the kiss, neither of you seemed particularly interested in jet skis anymore. Not that either of you said that out loud.
But suddenly there was a lot less steering, teaching, near-death commentary.
And a lot more sitting close together while pretending you still had important water sports business to attend to.
Eventually, Cameron maneuvered the ski back toward the boat again, both of you laughing quietly when he nearly bumped the side too hard trying to dock it.
“That absolutely did not happen,” he muttered under his breath.
“It definitely happened.”
“Fake news.”
You smiled against the lingering warmth still buzzing low in your chest as Cameron tied the ski off again with deeply concentrated seriousness.
Mostly because he kept glancing back at you every few seconds like he still couldn’t entirely believe he’d kissed you. Or maybe that you’d kissed him back. The expression was dangerously cute.
The two of you ended up sitting on the back edge of the boat afterward with your feet dangling into the lake water.
The sun sat lower now. Warmer. Everything was painted gold around the edges.
The water lapped softly against your calves while the boat drifted lazily with the current.
Cameron handed you a bottled water from the cooler before twisting open one for himself.
His sunglasses had finally been abandoned somewhere near the console.
His baseball cap sat backward now after being adjusted approximately thirty times throughout the day.
He looked relaxed in a way you hadn’t seen before. Not performatively relaxed. Actually relaxed. Like somewhere over the course of the afternoon, he’d stopped trying so hard to be anything.
For a while, the two of you just sat there quietly. Comfortably quiet. The kind that felt full instead of awkward.
You stole a chip from the open bag resting beside him.
Immediately: “Wow.”
You glanced over innocently. “What?”
“That was my emotional support snack.”
“You stole half of mine earlier.”
“That was before we entered a committed relationship.”
You nearly choked laughing. Cameron grinned immediately at the sound, ducking his head slightly like he couldn’t help himself.
God.
Everything about this felt frighteningly easy now.
The teasing. The closeness. The way his knee kept bumping lightly against yours without either of you moving away.
You glanced out across the lake again. The water glittered endlessly beneath the lowering sun.
“It’s really pretty out here,” you said quietly.
Cameron looked at you instead of the lake.
“Yeah,” he said softly.
Your stomach flipped again. Dangerous. Very dangerous.
You smiled faintly and nudged his shoulder with yours. “You’re getting smoother.”
“No, I’m absolutely not.”
“That was almost impressive.”
“I panicked halfway through saying it.”
You laughed quietly again.
Cameron watched you for another second before leaning back slightly on his hands. The breeze moved softly through his hair beneath the backward cap now. For once, he didn’t seem desperate to fill every silence immediately. When he finally spoke again, his voice came quieter. More thoughtful.
“I actually spent…” He huffed a small laugh at himself. “Way too long researching stuff for today.”
You looked over. His expression had softened again. That same open honesty he slipped into sometimes when he forgot to hide behind jokes.
“Like embarrassing amounts of time,” he admitted. “There were spreadsheets involved at one point.”
You stared at him. “Spreadsheets?”
“In fairness, I immediately realized that was insane.”
“But you still made them.”
“Briefly.”
You laughed softly, shaking your head. But your chest ached a little now, too.
Because suddenly the whole day rearranged itself in your mind:
the packed snacks
the towels
the sunscreen
the nervous chatter
the way he’d watched your reactions to everything
how hard he’d tried to make sure you were comfortable
This hadn’t been random. This mattered to him. A lot.
Cameron picked at the label on his water bottle absently before speaking again. Still looking out at the water this time.
“I dunno,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to do something good with you.”
Simple. No performance underneath it. No attempt to make the moment bigger than it was. Just honesty. And somehow that hit harder than anything else he could’ve said.
Your throat tightened unexpectedly.
Because Cameron looked almost nervous again after admitting it.
Like maybe he’d said too much.
You reached over without really thinking and nudged your shoulder gently against his.
“You did,” you said softly.
Cameron looked over immediately. Something warm and vulnerable flickered across his face so quickly it almost hurt to look at directly.
Then, because he was still Cameron, he ruined the emotional tension within approximately three seconds.
“Good,” he said with exaggerated seriousness. “Because if you hated this, I was gonna have to fake my own death and move.”
Eventually, the sun began slipping lower toward the horizon. Slowly at first. Then all at once.
The bright afternoon light softened into deep gold across the water, turning the entire lake warm and glowing around them. The distant shoreline blurred hazy beneath the sunset while long streaks of orange reflected across the surface in shimmering ribbons.
Cameron looked out across the lake and sighed quietly.
“Okay,” he admitted. “This is kinda insane.”
You smiled beside him. “The spreadsheets paid off.”
He snorted softly. “Don’t validate the spreadsheets.”
Still, he looked pleased with himself. A little shy about it too.
Eventually the two of you packed things back into the cooler and untied the jet ski from the boat again, though this time there was no rush to get anywhere.
No nervous energy left. No pressure. Just the quiet understanding settling between you now. Something had shifted today. Something real.
Cameron started the boat again, the motor humming softly beneath the golden evening air.
You settled naturally beside him on the bench seat this time.
Closer than before. Not because either of you acknowledged it. You just did.
Your thigh rested lightly against his now with every gentle movement of the boat.
The lake had gone quieter at sunset. Most of the other boats were distant now, reduced to tiny silhouettes near the shoreline.
Only the steady hum of the engine and the soft rush of water followed them across the lake.
For a while, neither of you spoke much. The silence felt different now. Full. Comfortable.
Cameron kept one hand loosely on the wheel while the other rested near his knee, sunglasses abandoned completely now as the wind pushed softly through his hair.
You watched the sunlight flicker gold across his face for a moment before looking back out at the water again.
Everything about this felt suspended somehow.
Like one of those moments you already knew you’d miss before it was even over.
The boat drifted over a small wake. Without really thinking about it, your shoulder leaned lightly against Cameron’s. He glanced over instantly. Not startled. Just soft.
Then, carefully, almost like he was checking whether it was okay, his hand found yours resting between you on the seat. Warm fingers. Slightly tentative at first. You intertwined them immediately.
Cameron exhaled softly through his nose. Something about that tiny movement nearly undid him. Because this, right here, felt bigger than the kiss somehow.
Not dramatic. Not overwhelming. Just real. Steady. Like maybe neither of you were pretending anymore.
He rubbed his thumb absently against the back of your hand while steering one-handed with the other.
“You know,” he said eventually, voice quieter in the evening light, “I really thought there was a strong possibility we were both ending up stranded out here.”
You laughed softly.
“You absolutely thought that.”
“I brought emergency granola bars.”
“That’s not survival equipment.”
“It is emotionally.”
You shook your head, smiling.
Cameron grinned too, but it faded softer this time as he looked back toward the lake stretching gold around them.
For the first time in a long time, his chest didn’t feel tight with panic about the future.
Didn’t feel hollow.
His life still wasn’t figured out.
He still didn’t know exactly where he was headed.
There were still pieces of himself he was trying to put back together.
But sitting here with your hand in his while the sun sank slowly across the water, for once, none of that uncertainty felt unbearable.
Because he wasn’t alone inside it anymore.
You rested your head gently against his shoulder after another quiet minute passed.
Cameron went still for half a second.
Then smiled.
Small.
Private.
Almost disbelieving.
The kind of smile that only happened when he forgot to hide what he was feeling.
The boat carried the two of you slowly across the glowing water toward shore while the last light of summer evening wrapped softly around everything.
And somewhere deep down, beneath all the noise Cameron usually carried around inside himself, hope settled quietly for the first time in a very long while.
This was a request: “yandere Reiji Sakamaki x reader please! 💙💙”. This is definitely one of my favourite works I’ve ever written. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!🤍 Reposted from my other blog: @cutelittlechiroptera
Synopsis: Obsession is brimming underneath the perfectly polished surface of the spectacled vampire.
Masterlist
Warnings: yandere, obsession
The table was set with the finest silverware and with elegant plates with dark blue flowers painted on with perfect precision. Lit candles were thoughtfully placed across the table. The room was dimly lit, with only lighting from the lamps that hung on the walls. The large curtains were open, giving the outside world a clear look inside the carefully crafted façade. The sky was moonless and the stars seemed dull, even so you couldn’t help but long for them in a way child would long for their mother.
At the head of the table sat the dark haired vampire. His attire was elegant and without even the tiniest specks of dust. His white dress shirt was almost fully buttoned up, save for the two upper buttons. His dark red waistcoat had an old watch hung from its pocket in an old fashioned way. Silver glasses were resting on his nose as his deep magenta eyes bored into your doe-like eyes.
Yet again he was able to read you like an open book. He pried you open and peered inside you as much as he liked, because there was nothing you could keep secret from him. You were a vulnerable thing and he cherished that dearly.
Reiji lifted his wineglass without leaving your eyes and took a sip. The bloody colour of the wine a reminder of who was sitting to your left. He swirled the wine and let the liquid swish like the unruly tides of the Japanese coast. You could picture yourself onboard a boat inside the red ocean. Struggling against the waves, trying to hold onto your life lest it would fall out of your control.
Your fingers found the stem of your wineglass and you clutched it. Your eyes didn’t leave his and you imagined what would happen if you broke the fragile glass. He would be sure to make your life hell on earth.
“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t find out?” his dark voice oozing of authority. It was like lightning, crashing down into a fragile dying tree. Its branches breaking as a result of its strength and brutality. “Do you take me for a fool? Is that it? Have I not been perfectly clear?”
You swallowed and looked down, because you did not dare to face the wrath lurking within his beautiful magenta eyes that glared at you through silver spectacles. Your chest heaved irregularly as the sound of his cutlery stilled.
A storm was brewing, and you were in the midst of it with no escape.
“I told you specifically to not converse with a man without my presence. What if-” Reiji cut himself off, but his words hung in the air. What if the man had hurt you? Was the words the vampire had been meaning to say.
His anger was visible as you finally found the courage to look at him. Veins were popping out of his forehead and his neck. A furious redness had overtaken his usually pale skin and his eyes were small and laced with fear and fury.
You watched silently as he struggled with his conflicted emotions. He was furious, afraid and ashamed. He had no control over his feelings and that scared him. Greatly. You carefully reached out and touched his hand that was buried in his dark locks. You stroked his skin with a soothing circular motion. You watched as he gasped for air. It was the first time you had touched him gently willingly.
His eyes shot to yours as he gaped at you like a fish washed up ashore. Finally you had found foothold in the storm.
You leaned forward and whispered with a hushed tone “I’m alright, Reiji. It was just a polite conversation. You have nothing to worry about”.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed harshly. His breathing was quick as he started at you. His mouth opened and closed as if he was unsure of what to say. Soft fingers brushed over his cheekbone.
You had finally gotten hold of the helm. The waves calmed, but the waters were still not clear of any dangers. Beneath your feet stirred a dark monster. It’s tentacles wrapped around the vessel, but still letting it sail. At least for now.
I warn you, babe, each night, as sure as you're born
You'll hear me howling outside your door
Don't you hear me howling, babe?
It's been three days.
Three days of sleeping in 30 minutes bursts; the kind of sleep where your brain fades before you mean to let it, waking up in a dazed fright. You expect him to be above you, hands around your neck, blood in his mouth. Three days of hearing your poor chickens cluck, you horses whinnying, your pigs starting to snuffle as they wonder where their food is. Poor things, they’re in the same boat you are.
Your pantry is going empty. The day you went over to check up on….it, had been your final day of procrastinating before making the hour long drive to the grocery store. Hindsights a bitch, your last box of saltines making you want to go back and slap yourself across the face; tell yourself you’ll never see an emergency coming, just suck it up and get your keys and drive.
There’s a lot things you’d say to yourself, actually
You thought about calling the police. But each time you reached for the phone, your mind went back to the scene of the crime. Of how Arthur had beaten your car to your house, how you had seen his spindly body moving through the trees like a trick of the light. How he hadn’t left the property for three days, patient as the dead. His stomach didn’t seem to be rumbling, his eyelids didn’t seem to be sitting heavy. You think of the one cop that would surely arrive in forty five minutes after your call, with one Glock and not nearly enough practice to shoot something that fast. If they even came, if they even believed you.
So you sit in your room; Window shutters closed, doors barricaded and the cracked sealed towels, blankets, and sheets. You know it can’t stop him, but its less about him and more his voice.
He keeps talking to you. With the sweet tang that reminds you so much of Diane, poor Diane whose mangled body is probably buried somewhere on her property. Probably the same spot the mailman will end up, if all goes according to whatever plan that thing has.
He talks to you like he did before. Like this is all some funny joke, some big misunderstanding. He tries to shoot the shit, comment on the weather, asking whether or not you can leave your poor animals unattended for this long. It makes you want to throw up, how familiar it all sounds. You try to drown it out with the TV, fans, even blast some music from your phone, but his voice finds a way of crawling through the floorboards and in between your ribs.
But that isn’t the worst of it. When he isn’t talking, he sings.
At first you don’t recognize the songs. Their languages long dead, feelings buried in the past of time. But he switches in between old and the new, hopping from continent to continent. You finally get the gist when the familiar notes of La Vie en Rose come out from behind your blasting TV.
Love songs. He’s serenading you.
One night, on the edge of falling asleep, a tapping on your window jolts you out of unconsciousness. Your heart kickstarts in your chest, pulling up the covers as if they could protect you. From behind your shudders you hear him, lingering. You’re on the second floor, but you know he’s out there.
“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do~” Nails scratch down the window, the screech of glass somehow in perfect harmony with that terrifying, melodic voice. “I'm half crazy, all for the love of you.”
You hide in the closet, hands pressed to your ears. You fall asleep half-curled into the hangers, digging into your ribs. You fight the urge to hurl. Can’t be wasting what little food you have.
—
He must know you’re reaching your limit. It wouldn’t surprise you if he had catalogued the insides of your panty, used whatever creeping senses he has to track your feeble human limits. Like a wolf when it chased a rabbit into a corner, mouth salivating knowing it has nowhere to run. His dialogue changes from small talk to pleading.
“Please, just let me in.” He whispers from the beneath the cracks in your doors, the microscopic seams between the window glass and the walls. He presses his whole, monstrous body against the outside of your house, and begs. “Let me take care of you. You don’t need to go hungry.” A nail scratches down the wall, the noise etched into the inside of your skull. “I’ll feed you. Like you fed me.”
You wish he’d just give up. That he’d leave you alone, wouldn’t force you to do all this; force your shaky hands to still and load the shotgun shells. Force yourself to think about hurting him, the man who you let into your home, the thing who you thought was your friend. Force yourself to push past the stomach-curling guilt of looking into his eyes and trying to kill him.
Your entire body trembles, all your concentration forced in keeping your hands steady on the gun. Every step you take towards the front door seems to creak, the air suffocating you with anxiety. Leaving the safe haven of your room is an odyssey in itself, the dull light coming from your living room windows making you feel like your very insides are exposed.
Your eyes dart around on the slow, steady trek to the door. Looking for him, for it. Part of you wishes you saw it skittering around, crawling on the walls like some kind of cockroach. Let you see it for the monster it is, and not the thing you cradled in your arms. Not the man whose smile haunts your dreams, whose laugh made your chest feel airy and light, whose pie you savoured on sad nights.
But he isn’t there. You know where he is, waiting patiently. He just hasn’t rung the doorbell yet.
The seconds it takes for you to reach to the doorknob and open the door feel like eternity. But the following moments are unnaturally quick. Arthur doesn’t have time to say anything before the barrel of your shotgun is in his face, and your finger is pulling the trigger.
The kickback hurts you more than the bullet hurts him, a terrifying realization as you find yourself ass-backwards on the floor, gun fallen to the side. The shells obliterated your doorway, Arthur’s long, pale hand still up in its deflecting move. He’s smiling.
You're scrambling backwards before your senses fully return to you, heart thundering in your ears. A throb ricochets through your head, and you can’t tell if the tears streaming down your face are from that, or from before. From your blurred vision you see Arthur step over the threshold, sighing as he does, and your hand lunges for the shotgun. Your choking before you realize it, a hand pinning you down to the ground, already above you, having crossed the distance with frightening ease. With his free hand Arthur bends the shot-gun’s barrel in half, tossing it behind him and out the door. Before you can beg for mercy, realize your oxygen deprivation, the pressure on your wind pipe eases. Long fingers still cage around your neck, holding you in place by sheer intimidation.
“Please, don’t.” It’s raspy voice begs, and you hate how much it sounds like him. How it still has that twang, surely fake, that makes your heart yearn for the past couple of months.
When you finally catch your breath, your terrified brain forces you to look in its eyes.
Black, like the night.
You can only appreciate them for a moment, because in the next the creature is laying its entire body weight on top of you, your face now in its chest. You struggle to breathe, wondering if this is like the tactic you’ve seen polar bears use on the Discovery Channel, bearing down on their prey until they’re crushed. The few breaths you can take are filled with laundry detergent, sweat, and Arthur. Fresh tears pool out from your eyes, readying for your own death.
Nails, long nails, graze the top of your head. The pads of its fingers follow, rubbing circles into your crown. A cross between a purr and a coo rumble out from Arthur’s throat. When a gasping, unintentional squeak leaves your lips, it tuts its lips.
“Don’t be scared.” The thing hums, its voice crackling like TV static. “I would never hurt you.” Its limbs curl in, tightening its hold around your body. Fingers thread through the hair at the base of your skull. “You let me in. You saved me.” It’s throat catches, words breaking. Hints of that animalistic rasp creep in.
You think you might pass out. Your heart pumps so hard you can feel it, convinced the amount of force it exerts is enough to make it explode. Every inch of your body shakes, and the thing shows no signs of letting go.
“All I knew was darkness, all I knew was the cold.” Tips of nails graze against your scalp. “I only knew the warmth that filled my belly. I needed it, craved it, but it never stayed.” Arthur chuckles, jolting your body. “It may have kept me alive, but I was empty for so long.” A chilling, hacking breath blows atop you. “Until you.”
Arthur’s faze nuzzles down, neck craning so his nose can press into the side of your face. Only it doesn’t feel like a nose, not really. It feels more like a snout.
“ You are what I needed, you are what I have been searching for. I can’t-” Something sharp brushes against your cheekbone, quickly retracted. The creature’s head trembles for a second, but quickly sharpens back into focus. It sucks in a steadying breath. “-I can’t exist without you. I know too much, I know better now.” The creature’s back arches, like the mere thought forces its body to physically repulse.
Your hands twitch, inherent prey-instinct begging you to flee, to claw, to fight or do something. But you can’t, limbs so thoroughly pinned that even the strongest push couldn’t move him. You know it, and he knows it too.
“Please.” Arthur’’s voice cracks again, the large body trembling so violently that it vibrates down through you. You nearly buzz off the hardwood. “I’ll be good for you. I promise.”
You still, muscles giving out under you. Your brain has realized the futility of this fight and stepped off the gas. You have no more adrenaline to pump, no last reserves to push through. You’re finished.
You think of Diane, of your mailman. The last two people who saw you alive. Whose own lives were snuffed out in an instant. Effortlessly they were ripped from this world, all by this thing on top of you. You can’t know if they put up more of a fight than you did, but the outcome should be the same nonetheless.
Should be.
Your eyes wrench shut, a final tear slipping down your cheek. You think you know what you have to do.
Your hand, currently pinned to your chest, presses against its stomach. The gentle pressure is hardly enough to move him, but the creature’s body gives way anyway. He lets you crawl your palm slow and surely up his chest, sneak your hand arm past his shoulders. Your hand rests around the back of his head, and fingers furl into the copper curls at the base of his skull. Cradling it, your mouth curls in a whisper.
“I understand.”
Arthur smiles.
You let it in.
—
Marcus is learning to love his new route.
There’s a certain peace to more rural areas. Sure, he has to make longer drives in between deliveries, risk getting chased by an under-socialized dog defending its shitty porch with its very life, but Marcus finds he doesn’t mind it all. The radio plays old blues, something he can sing along too during the dead time. The nature and views aren’t too bad either, and it allows him to imagine himself as a postman of long ago, making the long trek with vital messages sent across battlefields, not just impulse buys and spam. It makes him wonder why the old mailman left his post so suddenly. After all, this seems like the perfect retirement run.
Maybe he couldn’t handle the heat, Marcus thinks. Sweat pools around the collar of his shirt, already in need of a wash despite it being so early. The humidity is what gets you, thats for sure.
He hums an old country song as he walks the path up to your front porch. He’s thankful you seem to keep your front lawn in better shape than the last delivery, as the refrigerated box requires two hands to carry, leaving his abilities to stomp through water logged lawn grass a bit lacking. In fact, your lawn is immaculate, the cut grass so clean it has Marcus admiring the fortitude of early birds. Someone must have been up at the crack of dawn to maintain this yard.
The front porch is a picture of country domesticity. Hanging planters flush with multitudes of flowers, herbs and other greens fill the space with life. A fresh pie sits on the windowsill, the smell of fresh-baked pastry and cherry filling wafting through the thick air. From the front door Marcus can hear the clucking of chickens, belaying their must be a hutch, or maybe even a barn, in the backyard. He feels like he stepped onto a revival of Little House on the Prairie, the soft bliss of it all adding a pep to Marcus’ step. He doesn't even mind having to finagle the styrofoam box on his hip so he can press the doorbell, the chiming noise only adding to the vibe.
The gentle pitter patter of footsteps has him reshuffling the package into his arms, readying the lines in his head. “Package for 1344 Rocking St. Please Sign here.”
The door opens, but only a half-inch. The face that peers through is…tired. You greet him with an obviously fake smile, barely reaching the corners of your heavily sagging eyes. Marcus doesn’t take any offense, having gotten used to the beleaguered look of people up far too early.
“Package for 1344 Rocking St.” Marcus hoists up the box label outwards so you can see the name on it. Your shoulder slumps downward, lips quiver for just a second, but quickly jolt back up.
“Thanks.” You slide open the door only an inch more, enough for you to slide your arms out and grab the box. Despite the balmy heat, they're covered by a knitted cardigan, all the way down to your wrists. Your fingers brush as he hands the package over, your skin colder than he expected.
Probably poor circulation, Marcus reasons.
He hands out the pad for you to sign, wordless as you lean your body out, still keeping the door tight to your side. It’s only when you put the pen back that it cracks more, letting Marcus get a glimpse of the inside. It’s just as cozy as he would expect; Radio playing near the couch, numerous throws and homemade quilts on a well-loved couch, the sounds of someone cracking eggs in a small kitchen around the corner. A humming melody accompanies the staticky-sound of the radio, surely your partner making you both some breakfast.
“Hmm, something smells good.” Markus hums, head peering over your shoulder for a better look. “Better than my breakfast, that's for sure.”
The view inside is gone as quick as it comes, your hand coming quickly to squish the door shut, flush to your body. The whites of your eyes seem brighter, your fake-smile struggling to stay put. Marcus stands a little straighter. Weird, usually people out here love small-talk, especially when it comes to food.
“Thanks.” You hastily say, fiddling with your sleeve. The cuff had slipped down, the mark clear enough that even Marcus can pick it up.
The indent of teeth, a bite mark. Not just a bruise either, but something that broke skin. Hard enough to scar.
Marcus eyebrow raises. Weird, he didn’t hear any dogs barking on his way up-
“Honey, everything alright?” A deep, southern drawl calls from the kitchen.
“Yes, my love.” You call back, but don’t turn away from Marcus. Your cheeks grow flush with how hard your cheeks are curling. The door trembles under your grip keeping it closed, “Have a good day.”
“You too.” Marcus nods, slipping his pad into his side and turning around. He doesn’t hear your door close until he’s sliding into his truck. Not shut with a slam, but deliberately gentle
Marcus continues where he left on his song as he buckles his belt, not too perturbed by your curt nature. Perhaps he interrupted your blissful morning with your partner, too locked in love to stay away for even a second longer. It would explain that weird smile you had too; Southern hospitality conflicting with the want of him gone.
The radio flips on when he flicks the ignition, an old country love song that harks on the good old days. With a final glance on the idyllic house, he’s headed off to his next stop on the route.
He enjoys his life, his small bachelor pad, but Marcus can’t help but envy the small snippet of life he just saw. A house to call your own, animals to tend to, a partner to cuddle in bed after a long hard day of working the land. A carved out private paradise, just you and your significant other and the world to keep you company.
I can't remember who and where I saw it but someone said that Ford after he finds out his affections are recuperated becomes the #1 Wife Guy and I can't help but agree on this 110%.
Ford would be such a wife guy to Stan once they got together BUT because they are brothers, Ford does have to go under the radar and disguise himself as a #2 Brother Guy instead. (He can't claim #1 because that belongs to Stan, no competition. He will argue about who the better brother is until he's dead in the ground and even then, he'll find away to argue in the afterlife. But that's just that #2 Brother guy/#1 Wife Guy mentality.) I also love that Ford is a Wife Guy, not a Husband Guy because he Stan to him is "Wife" and not "Husband".
The problem with this is that the only thing he changes is that he only refers to Stan as his brother/twin but changes nothing else. Very low effort, very "testing the boundaries" type of action. What this means is that outsiders are constantly being harassed by Ford about how much he loves his twin, which ranges from "Normal, platonic, Familia" to "Oh he wants to bone his brother right now".
There's also like a bunch of smaller #1 Wife Guy/#2 Brother Guy HCs that are in my head:
Ford has no less than 11 photos of Stan on his person at any given time. The boat photo is not one of them however, as it is framed and mounted at the Shack and a copy is on the boat. (He can NOT risk losing it.)
Ford would be so anti-"I hate my wife" jokes/mentality and will not be silent around men like that. Especially when they start dogging on their wives while actively reaping the benefits of having a wife (clean house, clean clothes, cooked meals, free sex, emotional labor). Ford sees himself in some of these guys with how he used to view or treat Stanley during their time apart and it makes him sick to hear it from other people now knowing he once sounded like that (Maybe not a perfect match but that doesn't matter to Ford when he can make too many connections on his own and fabricate the rest. Unreliable narrator type shit). He also could never imagine himself being "Anti-Wife" when being with Stanley, his WIFE, has made him happier than any other time in his life.
Ford always introduces Stan to anomalies with a title like, "My husband", "My wife", My love", "My better half", "My beloved", "My sun", because it's very important that they all know that Stan is 1. Taken and 2. Cherished. He changed it for humans with, "My twin", "My brother", "My other half", "My shadow", "My First Mate", "My partner in crime".
If Ford could get away with it, he would wear clothes with Stan's face on it. Stan has forbade it because it's tackey and he can only handle so much tackey-ness at one time.
Ford's day is ruined if he doesn't get his Stan kisses in the morning.
Ford still acts like every kiss from Stan is his first/gets really lovey-dovey with them.
Ford's favorite phrase is, "My husband/wife/brother..." because he loves to talk about Stan to anyone or anything he can get to listen. This includes bad guys who they have had to apprehend for one reason or another. With the bad guys, Ford tends to not filter as he would with regular people because he enjoys making them squirm with the taboo (and making them jealous).
Speaking of jealousy, he enjoys making people jealous over Stan. Anytime Stan has an audience or someone interested in him, Stan always chooses to spend the majority of his time with Ford, even if it means leaving drinks on the floor (though he will stay for cash. Ford doesn't care about that because Stan at heart is a man made for money and will always spend it on himself, Ford, the kids, or wind up losing it before it is spent.) If Ford is hearing to someone having spousal troubles, he'll brag about how he doesn't have a spouse but he does have the most amazing, fantastic, wonderful, intelligent, handsome brother in the world who would do and has done everything for him ever. He's got no fear of making it known that Stan is taken to intelligent anomalies because many of them got a bad habit of hitting on Stan or himself. Uh, hello, HE'S OFF THE MARKET AND MINE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, FIND SOMEONE ELSE!
His journals are filled to about 60% with just Stan. Drawings of Stan, notes about Stan, love letters to Stan, apologizes to Stan, fantasies about Stan. He does have some of his hair taped to a page.
Since getting with Stan, his priorities have shifted. It goes, "Stan, Kids, Research" and everything else is at the bottom.
Some of his "#1 Wife Guy" habits dip into the darker aspects of ownership and worship. He feels like shit about it but Stan finds it hot so they can roleplay most of the scenarios out in the bedroom where most of those feelings are quelled and mute.
Stan Shrine. He's not taking it down. No, Fiddleford THIS IS NOT LIKE MY BILL SHRINE!!! IF ANYTHING, I WANT STAN TO CONTROL ME, AT LEAST I WOULD KNOW I WOULD WAKE UP IN MY BED AFTER BEING FED AND SHOWERED!
Fiddleford is the only human that knows Ford's #2 Brother Guy" persona is a disguise of Ford's "#1 Wife Guy" persona. He suffers but he's used to it.
The bragging this man does to anyone within ear shot is scary. He holds nothing back with anomalies and only holds back the explicit stuff from humans. That doesn't mean he won't brag about Stan's strong grip or his barrel chest or his sexy, gravelly voice. It's honestly a gamble if whatever Ford is talking about is 18+ or not because he'll just slip them in the middle of regular bragging or a conversation.
This is definitely one of my favourite works I’ve ever written. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!🤍 Also posted on my other blog @lavandulawrites
Synopsis: Obsession is brimming underneath the perfectly polished surface of the spectacled vampire.
Masterlist
Warnings: yandere, obsession
The table was set with the finest silverware and with elegant plates with dark blue flowers painted on with perfect precision. Lit candles were thoughtfully placed across the table. The room was dimly lit, with only the lamps that hung on the walls. The large curtains were open, giving the outside world a clear look inside the carefully crafted façade. The sky was moonless and the stars seemed dull, even so you couldn’t help but long for them in a way child would long for their mother.
At the head of the table sat the dark haired vampire. His attire was elegant and without even the tiniest specks of dust. His white dress shirt was almost fully buttoned up, save for the two upper buttons. His dark red waistcoat had an old watch hung from its pocket in an old fashioned way. Silver glasses were resting on his nose as his deep magenta eyes bored into your doe-like eyes.
Yet again he was able to read you like an open book. He pried you open and peered inside you as much as he liked, because there was nothing you could keep a secret from him. You were a vulnerable thing and he cherished that dearly.
Reiji lifted his wineglass without leaving your eyes and took a sip. The bloody colour of the wine a reminder of who was sitting to your left. He swirled the wine and let the liquid swish like the unruly tides of the Japanese coast. You could picture yourself onboard a boat inside the red ocean. Struggling against the waves, trying to hold onto your life lest it would fall out of your control.
Your fingers found the stem of your wineglass and you clutched it. Your eyes didn’t leave his and you imagined what would happen if you broke the fragile glass. He would be sure to make your life hell on earth.
“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t find out?” his dark voice oozing of authority. It was like lightning, crashing down into a fragile dying tree. Its branches breaking as a result of its strength and brutality. “Do you take me for a fool? Is that it? Have I not been perfectly clear?”
You swallowed and looked down, because you did not dare to face the wrath lurking within his beautiful magenta eyes that glared at you through silver spectacles. Your chest heaved irregularly as the sound of his cutlery stilled.
A storm was brewing, and you were in the midst of it with no escape.
“I told you specifically to not converse with a man without my presence. What if-” Reiji cut himself off, but his words hung in the air. What if the man had hurt you? Was the words the vampire had been meaning to say.
His anger was visible as you finally found the courage to look at him. Veins were popping out of his forehead and his neck. A furious redness had overtaken his usually pale skin and his eyes were small and laced with fear and fury.
You watched silently as he struggled with his conflicted emotions. He was a very, afraid and ashamed. He had no control over his feelings and that scared him. Greatly. You carefully reached out and touched his hand that was buried in his dark locks. You stroke his skin with a soothing circular motion. You watched as he gasped for air. It was the first time you had touched him gently willingly.
His eyes shot to yours as he gaped at you like a fish washed up ashore. Finally you had found foothold in the storm.
You leaned forward and whispered with a hushed tone “I’m alright, Reiji. It was just a polite conversation. You have nothing to worry about”.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed harshly. His breathing was quick as he started at you. His mouth opened and closed as if he was unsure of what to say. Soft fingers brushed over his cheekbone.
You had finally gotten hold of the helm. The waves calmed, but the waters were still not clear of any dangers. Beneath your feet stirred a dark monster. It’s tentacles wrapped around the vessel, but still letting it sail. At least for now.
It’s that time of the year again, time for me to dump a bunch of random headcanons! All of which relate to the holiday season cause I love this time of year!
Huey holds the record for most homemade Christmas presents given during the holidays thanks to his JWC skills. Webby is second
Louie wishes that homemade gifts were banned in the gift giving circle.
Dewey always hosts his annual Dewey Dew Night Holi-Dew Special in the Foyer in front of the Christmas tree, much to Beakley and Scrooge’s chagrin
Donald always insists on being the one to decorate despite the many accidents and holiday slapstick he gets involved in every year. They say, the amount of Holiday Slapstick Donald has been in could fill the entire ABC Holiday Special line-up
Now that Santa is no longer banned from McDuck Manor, he always stops and says hello the Duck family on his yearly delivery. Scrooge occasionally joins him and sometimes Scrooge’s Christmas ghost friends help out too
Bentina Beakley always makes the best hot chocolate with the right amount of marshmallows
The kids always go sledding with their friends on Killmotor Hill when the snow is perfect for sledding
Della still puts up a couple of traps every year “for old times sake”. The traps then immediately get taken down the very second Donald gets caught in one of them
Webby is the best gift giver
Huey, Dewey, and Louie got their “Picture with Santa” poses nailed
When given gift cards that are $15 or less from relatives, Huey, Dewey, and Louie will sometimes agree to combine their gift cards to buy something they all want
Drake, Launchpad, and Gosalyn are Jewish and all celebrate Hanukkah but one of their yearly traditions is watching The Darkwing Duck Christmas Special because Drake and Launchpad insist on watching it every year
Gandra Dee doesn’t celebrate Christmas, in fact she’s entirely anti-Christmas, but still chooses to celebrate Christmas with Fenton and his m’ma cause it beats being alone
M’ma Cabrera definitely watches a bunch of Hallmark Christmas movies. So do Huey Dewey and Louie. Also Donald. You know what, especially Donald
Donald’s favorite Christmas movie is It’s A Wonderful Life. It gets him emotional and he always breaks down when George Bailey is proclaimed “The Richest Man in Town”
Della’s favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard. It was her favorite pre-Moon, but the whole John McClane going through hell and trying to make things right with his family just hits a little too close to home these days. Also she says she could totally go through what John did
Dewey’s favorite Christmas movie is Home Alone. In fact he has even set-up a few Mccalister style traps in Donald’s boat house before. They weren’t perfect but they still worked on Donald. He was not the intended target.
Huey seems like A Charlie Brown Christmas kinda Duck
Both Donald and Della know it was Dewey who traveled back in time that one Christmas. Only problem is they don’t know what year it was he went back in time. They just assume it must’ve been on Christmas Eve cause that’s when they saw him. So now until Dewey looks a little bit older they will always be sure to greet Dewey with a mysterious “Welcome back” that sounds like it has multiple meanings whenever they see him after not seeing him for at least 5 min. on Christmas Eve. It’s a bit odd for Dewey to experience, ngl
Dewey and a few other family members will visit Launchpad and co. in St. Canard during one of the nights of Hanukkah to celebrate with them
Matilda always goes to Castle McDuck for the holidays
Donald usually sails back to Duckburg for Christmas, but on the years he can’t Della makes it her duty to FaceTime him on Christmas Eve
And now: The Worst Gift Givers of Clan McDuck
5. Louie, he’s a kid so I’ll cut him slack, but he should put more effort in his gifts. But he won’t
4. Goldie. Don’t ask her why the store security tag is still on
3. Gladstone Gander: King of the Last Minute Gifts, he’s lucky enough to get good deals that cost him next-to and sometimes nothing. Unfortunately the quality of gifts are “Acceptable.”
2. Gyro Gearloose. Just seems like someone who sees something and goes “Well that’s fine enough.”
1. Scrooge McDuck. Rich people suck at giving gifts. It’s a commonly known fact
Also this whole post was a ploy to read my holiday theme DuckTales anthology fic that shows some of these headcanons in action. Enjoy!
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