written by theylovedudaa
outer banks, rafe cameron x reader
summary. He only comes at night.
After the parties. After the drugs. After everything else falls apart.
Rafe doesn’t ask for love, he asks not to sink.
labels. she/her pronouns, reader with no physical description, Rafe Cameron, friends to something messier, emotional dependence, unhealthy coping, hidden relationship, late-night visits, addiction metaphors, vulnerability, intimacy without commitment, comfort over love, canon-typical behavior
author’s note. english isn’t my first language. This piece explores emotional dependence and unhealthy comfort.
You could hear the familiar knock on the window late at night.
It was always like this, always after parties, after getting high and drunk, he would come crawling back to you.
He climbed through the window clumsily, leaving it open behind him and heading straight for the bed. You didn’t look at him yet, but you could feel the other side of the mattress sink under his weight. No asking. No looking. Just taking space, warm arms wrapping around your waist, fingertips brushing the strip of skin where your shirt had ridden up.
You could feel how close he was, Rafe’s heat clashing with the cold sheets, the contact enough to make you shiver as the smell of cigarettes and alcohol filled your senses.
His touch was always confusing. Always hidden. Always when there was no one around to notice.
He whispered things about missing you at the party, asking why you hadn’t gone, inching closer until his lips met yours in a messy kiss, hungry for affection, for touch.
Enough to catch you off guard. Something you would probably never fully get used to.
You would rather lose someone than use them.
You pulled away to question him, to ask what the hell was going on, but he was already shaking his head no.
“Don’t do this to me.” He whispered, moving closer again as if he needed your lips the same way someone needs air to breathe.
Friendship seemed to dissolve with every touch, every caress, every pleading murmur as Rafe leaned in again.
“It’s just me…” he reassured, like a desperate excuse for you to give in.
It was one of the few moments he seemed to feel alive.
Affection, to him, was like one of the drugs he used: addictive.
The same doubts began to eat at your mind. Did he even know what he was doing? He wasn’t completely sober now, truthfully, he never was.
It was as if your lips hesitated to respond, as if your body took longer to react, while he was already breathless from so little.
Suddenly the bed felt too small for him, as if you were an anchor keeping him from drifting away. He wanted something that would stop him from sinking without asking him to swim.
Rafe avoided questions. Avoided any pause that might make you change your mind or say he was too high. That explained the desperate way he searched for your mouth, the way his hands held onto your skin like rafts keeping him afloat.
He wasn’t naive.
He chose the shortcut of the body to escape the conversation.
It was hard to breathe, or deny him, when he was this close, whispering pleas between your thighs, unconcerned about making noise or alerting his parents in the next room.
Rafe only needed you, in your most imperfect, raw form.
He needed you to accept him.
To hold him when his world felt like it was falling apart.
You were the balm he clung to.
He needed your warmth in a world that felt relentlessly cold.
Deep down, it was two broken people trying to fit into each other’s cracks, not to be fixed, but to hurt a little less for a few minutes.
Not love.
Not salvation.
Just a quiet kind of comfort that existed while the world outside remained cruel.