#exes: phoebe and rafe

[n0-eyedtaissa]

Song of the Summer (OBX OC x Rafe Cameron): Bad Decisions

A/N: Trying my best to give Rafe some nuance and explore his ‘downfall’. Phoebe’s too. Nothing brings imminent downfall like parties, rivalries and insecurities. Featuring Hogan Bailey, King of the Kooks and Rafe’s sworn enemy. 

TW: drinking, smoking, drugs, illusions to hooking up...oop!

Like all bad decisions, it started at a party. 

Or, that’s what they would say when they got caught. It started a long time ago, if you knew where to look. It happened at a party. 

Rafe Cameron was on one that night. 

It was the middle of summer, the nights were long and the air was hot and inescapable. Everyone was drunk and dehydrated, too temperamental. The party at the Glisson’s house had thinned out after a fight broke out between Rafe’s friends and another group of fully-cooked Kooks with nothing to lose. 

“Can you believe that guy? Comin’ at me like that?” Rafe mumbles out despite the slit in his lower lip and the alcohol that made him feel like it took extra work to string his thoughts and words together. 

“You threw the first punch, Rafe, what did you expect?” Sarah responds, sounding exasperated. 

“That’s not helping” Rafe’s girlfriend, Phoebe Deluca, sighs as she holds the bag of half-melted ice up to the bruise forming under Rafe’s eye. 

“You’re taking his side?” Sarah’s tone gets sharp. “He’s being an absolute drunk asshole” 

Phoebe couldn’t disagree with that. She had been cast aside by Rafe and all of his friends hours ago, so she watched the whole fight brewing from the sidelines. The two groups of guys put a friendly wager on a game of BP that got too competitive once money got involved. 

That was one thing that Phoebe had learned from her time camouflaging amongst the ranks of Kooks: 

Money made everybody act a little bit uglier. 

“I’m on nobody’s side, alright, calm down. It’s not fuckin’ worth arguing over anymore; Rafe’s face is all kinds of fucked and I think Top broke that kid’s nose…” Phoebe rolls her eyes and grabs Rafe’s wrist to lead him away from the big group and thankfully he doesn’t resist. 

“My sister, man…little miss drama queen” Rafe mumbles. There’s a still-sealed bottle of some tequila that was discarded by the row of chaise lounges he and Phoebe sat down at. Rafe pulls the plastic off with his teeth and takes a hearty gulp, barely even wincing at the sting of the alcohol hitting his split lip. 

Phoebe laughs and takes the bottle from him, wincing through a mouthful of the liquid. “You two are just too similar.” 

“No we fucking aren’t” Rafe argues, sounding combative like a child. 

The backs of Phoebe’s bare legs stick to the lounge chair as she tries to scoot closer to Rafe to keep ice on his eye so that the bruise wouldn’t get a chance to darken. “Yes you are. You’re both some of the most hard-headed people I’ve ever met, and you hate being wrong...” 

Phoebe laughs again as she pushes Rafe’s sweaty hair away from his eyes. “And you always go for what you want, even if you do it in a really annoying way” She catches Rafe’s gaze and smiles, letting her cold fingertips linger on his flushed face. 

“That’s how I got you” Rafe nods, leaning into her touch. 

Something uncertain tugs at Phoebe’s stomach. She can’t bring herself to agree or disagree with him. She extends him a shaky, closed-mouth smile that Rafe wasn’t attuned enough to know was fake. 

Their relationship was new but only the formalities: technically she’d known Rafe for almost a year because Phoebe worked as a cart girl at the golf course that all of the Kooks played at. He flirted with her aimlessly, but he also made sure than none of the greasy older men who had never been told ‘No’ had the chance to harass her. It wasn’t that she needed any saving, it was more about Rafe saying something and defending her to people like him, men he still could grow up to be. Judgmental Kooks. 

He’d worn her down over a period of months, slipping twenty dollar bills into her tip jar with messily scrawled notes asking her for her number, or to take her out on a date. Much to Phoebe’s surprise, when she (repeatedly) turned him down, Rafe didn’t get angry, nor was he deterred. Maybe that’s what made him all the more appealing; He seemed to have an all-knowing sense of confidence, like he knew that if he pushed the issue long enough, Phoebe would be worn down with time. And she was. One day she made the snap-decision to say yeah, what the hell and take Rafe up on his offer. He was so taken aback that he asked Phoebe again, just to be sure. Their first date was good, much better than Phoebe had ever experienced with the few boys from the Cut who had the courage to ask her out. Rafe showed up with flowers, a tender formality, a gesture that made Phoebe’s mother say, “Baby girl, if you end up with a boy like that, you’d be set for life…” 

Rafe opened doors for Phoebe, pushed in her chair for her, walked on the part of the sidewalk that was closest to the street and kept a protective hand around her waist. When he dropped Phoebe off at home, he’d idle at the end of her driveway and wait until she got inside safely. He waited until the third date to kiss her.  Phoebe and Rafe had only been dating for four months, but he already said that he loves her. Phoebe didn’t know if she could love anyone or anything that fast, but somehow she knew that Rafe thought what he was saying was true. She’d give him that. 

The two of them sit there in silence watching the moonlight reflect off of the ripples in the pristine blue pool water. Rafe rests his heavy-feeling head in the crook of Phoebe’s neck and she tries to ignore the smell of his salty sweat. Rafe’s hand finds Phoebe’s bare thigh and he squeezes her knee. 

“Do you still have my shit in your purse?” 

There’s a beat of silence. Phoebe jerks her body away from Rafe. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” 

He scoffs. “I think it’s a very good idea” 

Instinctively, Phoebe tightens her grip around the strap of her bag. “This party’s basically dead now any ways, why can’t we just go home?” She moves Rafe’s hand further up her thigh in hopes to further entice him to leave. 

She hopes it works but she knows that it won’t. Phoebe doesn’t like the person that Rafe became when he was doing coke. It made him irrational and angry, which he was when he was sober but the drugs gave him an excuse to act on it and something to blame his behavior on. But she doesn’t say anything — she can’t — Phoebe can admit that she’s enabled Rafe more than she ever should have. She was the one who introduced Rafe and Barry, the first person who convinced Barry to sell her the coke on Rafe’s behalf. Phoebe knows deep down that it’s probably the reason that Rafe has kept her around for so long. She doesn’t think she’s particularly smart, or particularly interesting, just quiet in a way that makes other people think that she’s more mysterious than she actually is. Phoebe never really says much, but that’s because she wasn’t asked a lot of questions. She was an introvert by nature and Rafe saw that as something he could work with. Maybe all he thought about Phoebe was that she was pretty, blonde, and quiet; someone who could help him achieve the power and control that Rafe craved so desperately. 

“We can’t go home because I don’t wanna  go home” Rafe laughs, low and mean in his throat. 

“Right, cause it’s all about what Rafe wants” Phoebe rolls her eyes and stands up to sit on a different lounger. 

“You’re damn right it is, and what I want right now is my shit” Rafe’s tone is tight and emotional, like a toddler who was tiptoeing through the beginning stages of a tantrum. “It’s mine! I bought it, right? With my money — not that you’d have any idea what that was like…” Rafe tacks on the last part just to be mean and make sure that his words pack a punch. 

And they do. 

Phoebe doesn’t say anything, because she knew that if she did she would run the risk of saying something she couldn’t come back from. Because despite everything, her best efforts, however much self-awareness she had about Rafe being bad news, Phoebe knew that in a sick way she really did need him. Girls like her didn’t get out of the Cut without a little bit of help. And yeah Phoebe was smart, but she wasn’t that smart. Not smart enough for it to mean something, or clever enough, or athletic, creative, or pretty enough. And sure her mom ran the old bar out by the docks, The Watering Hole, but that lost more money than it made so the Deluca family really broke even. And Rafe’s family had more money than they knew what to do with, plus they knew how to use people…Phoebe just wanted to take a page out of their book. It wasn’t like she was fully using Rafe, just a little bit. She can’t lie and say she didn’t like reaping the benefits of being around the Cameron family, when the wealth and the status are extended to you by proxy. And it made her feel good sometimes, being able to hold her head up just a little bit higher when she was around certain people. But they called it privilege because that’s what it was. It was something that was granted to you, which means it could be taken away at any time. Phoebe couldn’t risk that. 

She stands up again and doesn’t bother to look at Rafe as she walks away from the pool, back towards the big deck filled with partygoers she had to weed through just to reach the front door. When she breaks through the amoeba of bodies Phoebe pauses in the shadows of the seven-car driveway and finally takes a breath. Fuckin’ Rafe…

Phoebe doesn’t particularly care about the fact that there were a bunch of Kook’s cars around, she hikes herself up onto the hood of the nicest-looking of the bunch and doesn’t care if she scratches or dents it. She rifles through her bottomless tote bag to find the dented-up Altoids tin that held her emergency stash of joints and the little ziplock baggie filled with Rafe’s leftover coke. It’s tempting, but she’s too sober and pissed off to think it’s a good idea, so she chooses to go with the organic stuff instead.  Phoebe lights up and inhales until she can’t anymore and leans her back against the windshield of the stranger’s car, exhaling the last of her worries. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” A deep voice calls out from the hedge line, not sounding upset as much as amused. He steps out of the shadows and Phoebe recognizes his familiar face and tall stature. 

“I know you!” Phoebe replies, unsure if her outburst was a stoned recollection or a preemptive deescalation tactic. But she did know him. He was Hogan Bailey, one of oldest sons of one of the richest families in the Outer Banks. Hell, his family made the Camerons look like a bunch of Pogues. “You punched my boyfriend in the face tonight” 

Which was true; It was Hogan and his friends were the ones butting heads with Rafe and the rest of his pastel army. Phoebe couldn’t even remember what started the fight that evening, maybe something about someone playing beer pong against regulation rules.

“Rafe’s your boyfriend?” Hogan’s eyebrow quirks up, clearly impressed. 

“Usually,” Phoebe rolls her eyes and sighs out a lungful of smoke, stubbing out the joint on the hood of Hogan’s jeep despite the paint job. “Right now he’s on my shit list” 

This makes Hogan laugh. He looks at Phoebe relaxing on the hood of his car, his gaze slow and calculated. “Yeah, you and me both” 

“I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve met you before” Phoebe smirks. She cranes her neck to look over at Hogan and has to pretend that she’s not gawking at his toned arms as on display as he cradles his head in his hands. “Rafe took me to one of the parties over at your guys’ house. I guess its true what they say, you know, out of all the Kooks the Bailey’s do throw the  best parties”

“I literally have no recollection of that” Hogan admits, sounding confused. “I feel like I would’ve remembered a face like yours.” 

Suddenly Phoebe is aware of how close the two of them are sitting and it makes her stomach lurch. On the off-chance that Rafe came out looking for her, seeing Phoebe with Hogan Bailey of all people would be the nail in the coffin. She’d be fucking done for. 

A concept that scared an excited her all in one. 

The rivalry between the Cameron’s and the Bailey’s was something of Kook legends, Phoebe learned. Ward Cameron raised through the ranks of the working class and broke that ceiling only to have to compete against men like Bill Bailey, Hogan’s dad, who hadn’t had to work hard to earn much in this life. Real Kook shit was having old-school money. Real Great Gatsby shit. The Bailey family had come from three generations of wealthy bankers and had a hand in building up the five-star hotels that lined both sides of Beach and Main. Everybody in Kildere County deposited tie money in a branch of Bailey Bank & Trust, everyone had sat through story time at the Lucy Bailey Children’s Library,  or sat on the Grant Bailey Remembrance Bench while they waited for the shuttle bus to the beach. The Bailey family name was woven so deep into the fabric of the Outer Banks that no one ever thought to challenge that until Ward Cameron did. Now, if Bill Bailey was Tom Buchanan, that meant Rafe’s dad was the Jay Gatsby…and everyone who’s read the book (or watched the movie) knows that story didn’t end  well for him. 

The Cameron family came from pretty humble beginnings, and after some pretty lucrative investments Ward made with an unexpectedly large sum of money that an estranged uncle left him, he actually started to bring in some good money. By 25 he founded Cameron Development and by 35 Ward had begun to leave his stamp on the island. And by 40, Ward was a pretty big deal. He became an even bigger deal when he bought Tannyhill and acquired all of the historical materials and artifacts that were left on the property — items he promptly donated to Chapel Hill to preemptively guarantee college admission for both Rafe and for Sarah. It wouldn’t matter much, though. A third generation of Camerons going to UNC Chapel Hill didn’t hold much weight to all four of the Bailey boys getting into Duke on a football scholarship, joining the four generations of Bailey men to attend before them. 

Touchdown. 

It was like no matter what happened, the Bailey’s and the Cameron’s always seemed to be neck and neck. If they weren’t competing to see who could buy the biggest house, or the best boat, they were competing to see who could be the biggest showboat in all of Kildere County. Phoebe knew that both Rafe and Hogan played into the whole family rivalry schtick. She also knows how easy teenage boys got jealous and territorial, Rafe especially. But she’s too fucked up to be thinking with the rational part of her brain so she decides to ignore the raised red flags. Because although she hates to admit it, but Hogan was handsome. He was tall, broad, and strong, his presence was more commanding than Rafe (who just expected to have things handed to him). Hogan was close enough where Phoebe can feel the warmth radiating from his body. He’s handsome and he smells good and Phoebe’s too drunk to care about this being a bad idea. 

Phoebe stays put, though. “You don’t remember?” She raises her eyebrow at Hogan, her head resting of the warm glass of his windshield. “We had a whole conversation, it was honestly quite the introduction. Rafe and I brought you guys a little, uh, party favor to liven up the rancid vibe at your house and it ended up with the two of you and your pals with the pastel shorts all comparing who has the best shit…like any of you really have any idea what you’re talking about.” Phoebe’s too drunk to hide the bite behind her words but for some reason she can’t help but think that Hogan doesn’t mind. 

“Oh, fuck you!” Hogan smirks as he starts to connect the dots. “I remember now. You guys were sayin’ that shit was from fuckin’ Guadalajara or some shit when we all knew it was from Barry the Basehead cause no offense, but you dont look like the type of girl to be able to get your hands on anything better.” He laughs, deep and low in his throat. 

“It was Yucatan” Phoebe corrects, even though it wouldn’t make a difference. 

“Fuck you” Hogan laughs again, but somewhat quieter and more fond. He looks over at Phoebe and lets his gaze linger. He thinks she’s pretty in a homegrown, regular kind of way. He likes her salty beach hair and the fact that she didn’t wear much makeup. And he likes that she has a sharp tongue and was quick witted in a way that Rafe Cameron probably couldn’t understand, let alone appreciate. And he’s drunk enough to be thoroughly entertained by sitting shoulder to shoulder with the girlfriend of the only person he’d consider a rival. 

“Did you want more?” 

The question surprises Hogan. “Huh?” He has to clarify, his mind in the gutter. He thinks that right now he wouldn’t mind some more of her, though.

Phoebe smiles like a sly cat as she reaches down into her tote bag to root around for the plastic bag of white powder that Rafe had left with her earlier that evening (that she refused to give back to him, knowing that he’d keep overindulging). “We can take a trip to Yucatan” 

Both of them know that it’s a bad, idea but it’s part of the appeal. 

Hogan smiles back at her and it’s a silent agreement that whatever was gonna happen would be kept a secret. He slides off of the hood of the jeep and pulls his keys out of his front pocket to unlock the doors. He opens the door for Phoebe to crawl in the backseat. 

‘Quite the choice, Hogan Bailey’ Phoebe thinks, though she doesn’t protest. 

When Hogan closes the car door behind himself, it’s like the two of them are encapsulated in their own little bubble. They can’t really hear the noise from the party, Phoebe can’t hear the noise inside her head that’s telling her this is a bad idea. She knows that Rafe is somewhere inside a few yards away, but he was too fucked up and pissed off to even wonder when Phoebe was right now. Hogan Bailey was there. He was only a few inches away from Phoebe’s face, she can feel his breath fanning over her collar bones. He was twisting a long lock of Phoebe’s blonde hair around his finger, grabbing an old Vampire Weekend cd case from the center console so he could dump out some of the white powder and clean it up into two messily cut lines. 

“Ladies first” Hogan mumbles, his face getting closer to the curve of Phoebe’s neck, pulling her hair out of the way. 

She takes the cd case and the rolled up dollar bill in hand and sniffs up the bigger of the two lines (something she does on purpose because she knows Hogan set that up for himself). The effects are quick and warm and suddenly Phoebe’s heartbeat feels fast and erratic like the rest of her did. Of course she’d done this before, mainly with Rafe, and Phoebe was aware of how much she liked it. It made her feel less nervous, like awkward, more compelled to say whats on her mind, made her not give a fuck about the consequences. And this? There would definitely be consequences. Phoebe knew that if Rafe saw her even saw her cast a second glance in Hogan’s direction, he would be white-hot angry and jealous. And for once, Phoebe thinks, ‘Let him’. Let Rafe be jealous. Let Rafe be hurt the way he’s hurt her plenty of times before this. Maybe right now she was hurt enough to be okay with being the bad guy. 

“You know nothing good’s gonna come of this, right?” 

Hogan snorts up the line of white powder and lets out a throaty groan as the chemical sludge drips down the back of his throat. 

“I don’t know about you, Deluca, but that kinda seems like the point” 

#fic: song of the summer #obx oc: phoebe deluca #obx oc: hogan bailey #this is Not a couple to ship #exes: phoebe and rafe #enemies: hogan and rafe #obx ocs #rafe cameon au #rafe cameron x oc

[vampiretendencies]

IDCNTLIKEDARNESS MILESTONE EVENT ★

RULES; 1. my anonymous option to submit requests in my ask box is back on, do not abuse the anonymous feature on my blog or you will be ignored. 2. you may either choose one lyric, a lyric and a scenario, or just a scenario. the scenario is left for you to choose, but you must specify (ex. helping them shave etc) you may also submit fully your own ideas if you’d still like to request and none of what i have below is suitable for you to do so. i’ll accept concepts too, and then elaborate on them. THIS IS FOR BLURBS ONLY. 3. i am writing for jj maybank and rafe cameron, if requests for timothee are sent in i will still do them but i haven’t gotten much for him lately. 4. do not rush me, you must have patience as i am only one person with one brain, i am also in college so i do what i can on my free time. whatever is not written, was because it didn’t meet my guidelines or because i didn’t have the time. THIS EVENT WILL BE HELD 2.28.38 to 3.5.23 REQUEST GUIDELINES

authors note; thank you to all that have followed, i will not disclose my follower count right now because i just want to bask in the reaching of it, not the amount. but just know that i have reached a milestone decent enough to hold an event.

LYRICS;

i. “i’ll say goodbye to love, no one ever cared if i should live or die” — goodbye to love by phoebe bridgers

ii. “ ‘cause i can’t imagine, a world where i die without you by my side, it won’t ever happen” — die for my bitch by role model

iii. “honestly, she needs a little loving, fuck it now i’m getting off the subject” — the walls by chase atlantic

iv. “everywhere i go you show, wherever” — single by the neighbourhood

v. “i could fuck with your head, like you fucked with mine” — three wheels and it still drives by glaive

vi. “i’ma take a one way ticket out of here, and if i want i’ll fucking disappear” — cages by maggie lindemann

vii. “driving round high, im my girlfriend’s ride” — bi by jesse rutherford

viii. “if you get a minute call me back, im so lonely and you’re the only one that knows me” — call me back by chase atlantic

ix. “i thought i only liked drugs, im surprised too” — lust by chase atlantic

x. “you’re the only reason, i don’t feel quite alone” — a little more time by role model

xi. “tell me how did i ever find you, babe, tell me now that you’re never gonna’ run” — heaven by the neighbourhood

xii. “let me have your kids, move a little faster im in love” — cross your mind by role model

xiii. “hold me til’ we both go cold” — assassin by beauty school dropout

#idldmilestoneevent ♯🪦 #outer banks #jj maybank #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank x y/n #jj maybank x you #jj maybank angst #jj maybank fluff #jj maybank blurb #jj maybank fic #jj maybank headcanons #rafe cameron angst #rafe cameron imagines #rafe cameron x reader #jj maybank one shot #rafe cameron one shot #rafe cameron smut #jj maybank smut #timothee chalamet headcanon #timothee chalamet x reader #timothee chalamet blurb #jj maybank imagines

[xanderchiummi-blog]

Biografia di Xander Chiummi

Xander Chiummi è un personaggio della soap opera statunitense Telenovela D'Amore, interpretato da Josh Swickard dal 2019. Universo Telenovela D'Amore 1ª app. in 1 febbraio 2019 Interpretato da Josh Swickard Voce italiana Sesso Maschio Professione Detective Parenti Louis Chiummi (padre) Lucas Chiummi (fratello da parte di padre) Luke Chiummi (fratello da parte di padre) Noah Chiummi (fratello da parte di padre) Lucky Chiummi (fratello da parte di padre) Luca Chiummi (fratello da parte di padre) Nathaniel Chiummi (fratello da parte di padre) Phoebe Chiummi (sorella da parte di padre) Rafe Gonzalez (fratello da parte di madre) Xavier Gonzalez (fratello da parte di madre) Jan Gonzalez (fratello da parte di madre) Alex Gonzalez (fratello da parte di madre, deceduto) Stuard Chiummi (ziastro) Wak Chiummi (ziastro) Michael Chiummi (ziastro) Max Chiummi Jr. (nonno) Max Chiummi (bisnonno; deceduto) Kally Chiummi Foresta (prozia, deceduta) Kerin Chiummi (prozia) Kally Chiummi (cugina del padre, deceduta) Caroline Chiummi (cugina, figlia di Stuard) Lucas Chiummi Jr. (nipote, figlio di Lucas, deceduto) David Chiummi (nipote, figlio di Lucas) Dylan Chiummi (nipote, figlio di Lucas) Donna Chiummi (nipote, figlia di Lucas) Arianna Chiummi (nipote, figlia di Luke) Adrianna Chiummi (nipote, figlia di Luke) Noah Chiummi Jr. (nipote, figlio di Noah) Belle Chiummi (nipote, figlia di Noah) Sydney Chiummi (nipote, figlia di Noah) Immagine=

Biografia del personaggio Il detective Xander Chiummi è il figlio di Louis Chiummi.

L’arrivo a Los Angeles e L’amore per Jasmine Horton Il detective Xander Chiummi arriva a Los Angeles per sostituire il suo fratellastro detective Alex Gonzalez alla stazione di polizia perché Alex è morto recentemente ucciso dallo psicopatico Rodrigo Wood. Xander scopre che suo padre è Louis Chiummi e che Xander ha 7 fratellastri da parte di padre: Lucas, Luke, Noah, Lucky, Luca, Nathaniel e Phoebe. Xander inizia a lavorare come detective alla stazione di polizia a fianco del collega Owen Light e fanno amicizia. Xander conosce Jasmine Horton e si innamorano ma Jasmine ha una relazione con Luke, fratello di Xander. Xander tenta di conquistare Jasmine la quale è incinta di Daniel Walter, ex marito di Jasmine.

#telenoveladamore #xanderchiummi

[n0-eyedtaissa]

Song of the Summer (OBX OC x Rafe Cameron) : New Beginnings

A/N: Saw that JPate and OBX writers are giving Rafe a romantic interest so I thought I better get on this sooner rather than later. This is not a couple to ship. These two characters are exes for a reason. There is no pro-Rafe sentiment here lol, just a character exploration as to how he ended up, well, Like That. 

(tagging @kiara-carrera​ for graciously letting me borrow her OC Max Zhu!)

***

“You’re not gonna believe me, but Rafe wasn’t always like that...” Phoebe starts, looking over at her new friend Max (who somehow managed to look elegant while stretching her limbs out across the ratty green couch). 

“Bullshit” 

“No, I’m serious!” Phoebe can’t help but laugh. “He used to be so good to me. Fuck, he really was. Those Kooks are onto something with their chivalry shit; Rafe would open doors for me and push in my chair, those little things that make you feel fancy and important...” 

Phoebe doesn’t know why she keeps going. Once she started talking, she didn’t want to stop. Everyone around the island thought that they knew what happened between Phoebe and Rafe, but they didn’t. It was all bullshit, made up. Ward Cameron greased the palms of the Sheriff’s department to ‘lose’ the police report. When he spins the story that the accident was Phoebe’s fault, that it was really her who was in the driver’s seat, no one ever bat an eye. What else were they to expect from a Pogue like her? 

“And we had fun” Phoebe nods animatedly, as if she can’t believe it even after all this time. “It was stupid stuff but it was fun. Tennis, golf, going out on the Druthers, shit, for awhile there I had more pictures of myself with Rafe’s family than I had with my own. But then it stopped being fun? Or maybe I just got tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t just because I wanted someone to like me?” Her voice gets tight when she thinks about it. 

“What happened then?” Max asks. She hadn’t been doing much talking, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t listening. She always was, more than people gave her credit for. There were some loose ends that she was starting to tie together, but she wasn’t really paying attention to those. Max could tell that right now Phoebe just needed to lay things all on the table for someone, to lighten the weight a little. 

Phoebe puffed a big breath of air out through her cheeks as she exhaled. “I introduced him to Barry” She nods. “Then everything after that was an absolute shit show.” 

Phoebe likes to think that she can pinpoint the exact moment that things went downhill but it wasn’t that simple. It wasn't bad all the time, if it was Phoebe wouldn’t have hung around for as long as she did. Actually, for the most part things were good. That’s what made the change in pace so daunting. Rafe was always jealous, but most guys were, so Phoebe didn’t pay much attention to that until she met Hogan Bailey. 

If introducing Rafe to Barry was Phoebe’s first mistake, then enabling the rivalry between Rafe and Hogan was her second mistake. 

“What do you know about the Bailey family?�� Phoebe turned to ask Max, who was puffing along on some weed from JJ’s cousin that made her feel relaxed and quiet compared to Phoebe, who was feeling chatty. 

“Not much” Max shrugs, stifling a cough. 

“The Bailey family makes the Cameron’s look like Pogues. They’re old money rich, fuckin’ awful people” Phoebe laughed in earnest. “Bailey Banking and Credit Union? It’s all owned by them. They have that whole nuclear family vibe going for them, big house on Figure 8, white picket fence, 4 boys. Two of them are already in college at Duke, but Hogan was my age. He and Rafe went to school at the Kook academy together, I assume. I met both of them when I was working at the golf course a few summers ago and that’s when we all kinda started hanging out. They started inviting me to their parties, you know, under the condition that I’d be bringing some shit from Barry with me....” 

Phoebe’s voice kind of falters as she starts thinking about how to explain this next part:

“And I did, of course, because I wanted these cool, rich guys to like me and to actually treat me like a person. But they didn’t, and I guess I tried to look past it until I couldn't anymore.” Phoebe sucks in a big breath. “You know, as much as I can say that drugs made Rafe a shitty person, made his problems worse, whatever...I can also say that about myself? And I’m different now so that feels find to admit, but being with Rafe made me feel like such a shitty person. Then it made me act like such a shitty person. Rafe wasn’t the root cause but he was the catalyst. I excused a lot of shit when I was with him and I shouldn’t have.” 

“Do you regret it?” Max says, sitting up a little bit straighter. She hadn’t known Phoebe that long, or heard much about her that wasn’t a rumor, so she knew that if Phoebe was trusting her with this information it meant that they really were starting to become good friends. 

Phoebe has to think for a minute. “Yes and no. But that’s a story for another day...”

#exes: phoebe and rafe #this is Not a couple to ship #fic: song of the summer #obx oc: phoebe deluca #obx oc: hogan bailey #obx oc: maxine zhu #amandas's oc: maxine zhu #rafe cameron x oc

[n0-eyedtaissa]

All cocktail oc asks for PFD

𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿 〜 if your oc can drive, what kind of vehicle do they have? do they have a dream vehicle?

phoebe can drive, but doesn’t like to drive by herself much since she was in the car accident with rafe. she had a small red mustang that got absolutely totaled. 

𝗯𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗻 〜 what does your oc wear to sleep? do they have a dedicated set of pajamas or do they just wear whatever?

phoebe gets super warm, so she’d always wearing as little clothes as she can get away with. that would also mean the same for pajamas! spots bra and shorts kinda girlie. 

𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗱𝗮 〜 if your oc has a bag or a purse, what are five things that’d be inside?

oh my god phoebe fuckin’ deluca is a Tote Bag Girl. and like all TBG’s, it’s absolutely impossible to find anything that you’re looking for in phoebe’s bag. 5 things that could (hopefully) be found in phoebe’s bag with ease would be: an alto’s tin filled with al lighter and an emergency joint, her metal tin of lip balm, her water bottle, the polaroid camera whit gave her, and a pair of sunglasses that was looking a little worse for wear. 

𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 〜 what was one of your oc’s favorite tv shows/movies as a child? do they still enjoy it now?

one of phoebe’s favorite movies as a kid was the goonies, and she definitely had a crush on the guy who played sean astin’s brother. she still loves that movie, though the novelty of the goonies has worn off now that she knows (via john b and rafe) that situations from the movie weren’t as unlikely as she thought. 

𝘄𝗼𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗼 〜 what’s their relationship like with their parent(s)/guardian(s)?

her parents shouldn’t have been married so they divorced early. her dad moved to baltimore, whereas her mom stayed in the outer banks. she has an emotionally-distanced relationship with both of her parents; they don’t know as much about her as they think. 

𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗮 〜 does your oc have any disorders or disabilities?

she definitely has depression and anxiety, along with a touch of ptsd 

𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗮 〜 who are some of your oc’s best friends?

maxine zhu (aka @kiara-carrera‘s oc) was one of the first real friends phoebe had made in along time. in another life, her and sarah were really close but weren’t anymore...for obvious reasons, tho sarah doesn’t blame her. 

𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗿 〜 describe your oc’s personality

she’s very quiet and reserved in a way that makes people think she’s more mysterious than she actually is. phoebe is very guarded, and it takes some time to get her to feel warmed up to folks, but once she does she will not shut up ever. 

𝗷𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝗱 〜 has your oc ever made any choices they regret?

how much time do we have? phoebe could easily provide a bullet-point list 

𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 〜 post some images or a moodboard that fit your oc’s aesthetic

𝗱𝗶𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗮 〜 post a song or a lyric that fits your oc

𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗶 〜 does your oc’s name or design reference anything? i.e. music, movies, etc

her first name came from miss phoebe bridgers. her last name was inspired by a) maria deluca from roswell, nm along with the last name of one of the khaki scouts from the movie moonrise kingdom! 

𝗺𝗼𝗷𝗶𝘁𝗼 〜 does your oc have any tattoos and/or piercings? if so, what are they? if not, do they want any?

she has her bellybutton pierced and a handful up her earlobes that were mostly done and home under the influence of too much alcohol

𝗱𝗮𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗶 〜 is your oc a smoker? (tobacco, cannabis, etc.) if so, do they plan on quitting?

she only smokes cigarettes if she’s been drinking, which was a rarity nowadays though that wasn’t always the case. but she’s definitely a weed girlie, it’s the only substance she’ll let herself indulge in given her past

𝗺𝗶𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗮 〜 has your oc ever committed any crimes? if so, what did they do? if not, what would they be most likely to commit?

she was charged with a hit and run, though she wasn’t actually the one who was driving, just the one who was found at the scene. 

𝘁𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗻𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 〜 what kind of hobbies does your oc enjoy? is there anything they’ve always wanted to do but never had the time/resources to try?

she likes reading and has been trying to get back into it. her new boyfriend, whit, is a photography fan and has been encouraging her to take more photos given her artful eye. 

𝗺𝗮𝗶 𝘁𝗮𝗶 〜 how was your oc’s life growing up? did they do well in school if they attended? do they have any awkward teenage memories?

she had a good childhood but things got rocky in her late teens and proceeded to go Further Downhill for awhile, but now phoebe’s on the upswing. she was good at school but just the Regular kind of good, she wasn’t valedictorian nor did she participate in any extra curriculars. 

𝗯𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗶𝗶 〜 does your oc speak any other language(s)? if they didn’t learn to speak the language(s) when they were growing up, when and why did they learn it?

she took spanish in high school thinking it would be useful but she’s forgotten most of it. she thinks that french would be a romantic language to learn, but she probably wouldn’t pursue it since it would take so much time to learn. 

𝗰𝘂𝗯𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗿𝗲 〜 if your oc wears any perfume/cologne, what’s their favorite?

i dont have anything specific to reference, but she’d definitely smell like saltwater, rose, smoke, and suntan lotion

𝗰𝗮𝗶𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗵𝗮 〜 what does your oc’s voice sound like?

phoebe’s fc, maika monroe, is all-around what i picture phoebe looking and sounding like. 

𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘆 〜 what does your oc consider to be their best feature? alternatively, what’s something they’re most self conscious about?

she thinks she has a nice smile and thinks that the years she spent wearing braces were worth all of the hassle in the end. 

𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗻 〜 what kind of people does your oc hate the most?

rafe cameron and anyone remotely like him. she’s not a particularly hateful person but she’ll fully make exceptions for him. 

#i fully love that everyone has adopted calling her PFD #obx oc: phoebe deluca #insp: phoebe #exes: phoebe and rafe #rafe cameron x oc

[n0-eyedtaissa]

song of the summer: rafe cameron

“How can I be the bad guy here? If it wasn’t for me, you would've never gotten out of the Outer Banks and you know it. You should be thanking me...” 

#obx: rafe cameron #rafe cameron x oc #exes: phoebe and rafe #this is Not a couple to ship #fic: song of the summer

[n0-eyedtaissa]

song of the summer: phoebe deluca

“I didn’t come back here for this all to start over again. I’ve moved on, I’m a different person now. A better one. But you, Rafe, you’re a lost cause” 

#fic: song of the summer #obx oc: phoebe deluca #obx fic #exes: phoebe and rafe #rafe cameron x oc

[n0-eyedtaissa]

find the word / gimme the word tag:

tagged by @waterloou, who may just get me out of my writer’s slump.

changing the rules (bc of aforementioned slump lol), and will be trying to write a sentence/blurb that contains the given words !

given words: tug, erase, feel, erode, personal, love

tagging:  @kiara-carrera (bc i mentioned her oc, max aka the loml), @veetlegeuse @humangrumpycat @thecaptainsgingersnap

if you want to find / gimme the word, here are yours: flat, trust, mirror, lighter, kitchen, music 

:-) 

The hot breath breeze blows in through the window, making Phoebe wake up disgruntled at the feeling of her long hair stuck to her sweaty neck. She tries to fall back to sleep but it’s of no use; one of the roosters in the neighbor’s yard was cawing angrily, telling Phoebe and the rest of the world that if it had to be awake this early so did everybody else. 

Phoebe sits up in bed too fast, the blood rushing to her head as another painful form of payback from the night before. She tugs her still-tangled hair into a ponytail in hopes that it’ll cool her off and makes her way to the bathroom. Between the heat, the leftover makeup, and the sheen of the still-developing hangover, Phoebe feels like she’s swimming in herself. She ducks her head under the faucet and drinks from the tap to cure her sandpaper mouth. Phoebe wipes at the leftover glitter and mascara smudged under her eyes. There’s a part of her that likes the look of it better than the night before when things were more pristine. 

The walk down stairs is slow and methodical, with Phoebe supporting herself on the wall so she can avoid the squeaky floorboards without stumbling. Her cell phone is tucked in the waistband of her shorts and Phoebe is scared to recharge it. She leans over the kitchen counter, relishing in the feeling of her hot skin against the cold countertops. Her phone buzzes to life and Phoebe can’t tell if it’s regret pooling in the pit of her stomach or if the 4loko she drank last night was about to make a second appearance. 

(2 missed calls) : unknown number 

(unknown number): Did you mean what you said last night?

Phoebe doesn't need to have the number saved in her phone to know who it is. She erases the notifications, tries to clear Rafe away from her mind. Her best friend Max snores softly from her spot on the shabby green couch and Phoebe feels like she’s throwing away some sort of damning evidence. 

“I feel like shit” Max mumbles as she wakes up somewhat, yawning and grabbing what was left of the joint from last night that was sitting in the ashtray. She sparks it up and hands it to Phoebe and the two girls partake in the quiet ritual. 

Phoebe laughed. “Yeah, tell me about it” 

 The Pogues might have been younger than Phoebe but they could hold their alcohol. Somehow John B goaded her into attempting a keg stand and soon after that, JJ bet Phoebe $5 that he could beat her in a shot-gun chugging contest. “My mom always said to never bet money on a Maybank” Phoebe had replied, though no one could stomach asking for more details about what led to that statement. 

“I wanna go swimming” Phoebe states. She’s desperate to wash this feeling off of her, she can feel it clinging to her like a second skin. 

“Then go swimming” Max replies redundantly from the couch, puffing away on the last of the weed with her eyes closed. Max wasn’t shaping up to be much of a morning person, but Phoebe wouldn’t put that past her. 

“I wanted you to go with me”  Phoebe tries to add some sweetness to her voice but Max either fell back to sleep or chose to ignore the request.

Shoving some odds and ends into her tote bag, Phoebe bounds out of the house without bothering to lock the front door. It’s a short walk to the water, Phoebe knows it so well she can do it with her eyes closed (something she was trying to do from under the shade of her big-framed sunglasses). There’s a spot she likes to frequent, there’s a rock just high enough so Phoebe could dangle her feet in the water while she sat. The rock is smoothed from where it had eroded with time and age, covered with a handful of crossed-off declarations of love that were once sharpie-d onto the stone. 

P.D. + M.Z.= B.F.F.’s  , the newest addition. 

There’s a blotch of red spray paint but you can see the ghost of where P.D. + R.C. was once written underneath, at a time far enough away that it meant something. 

Phoebe’s dunking her toes in the water when her phone starts ringing. 

“Hello?” She answers, confused but pleasantly surprised. 

“Yo, Deluca!” Gabriel Whitmer says loudly on the other end, making Phoebe pull the phone away from her ear a little bit. “I woke up to like 3 missed calls from you this morning, what did you get up to last night?” 

“Good morning to you too, Whit...” Phoebe doesn’t feel embarrassed at the prospect of drunk-dialing Whit, though she does feel bad about drunk-dialing someone else.

“You’re evading my question, Deluca, what were you dyin’ to tell me?” 

“I don’t even know at this point, I guess I was just feeling particularly chatty” She smiles, laying back into the grass and draping her arm over her eyes to block out the sun.

“Wow, was someone drunk and trying to get personal?” Whit laughs on the other line and Phoebe can her him smacking his chewing gum. 

Phoebe laughs. She doesn’t really know how she feels about the prospect of getting personal with Whit but she also knows there’s nothing to lose. She knows that this wouldn’t be another situation like what happened with Rafe. 

“I guess we’ll never know” She offers, trying to be coy. 

“What was on your mind last night, Deluca? Life, death, love?” Whit listed off the possibilities, topics he could go on long-winded missives about. The off-base questions he thought were the most telling about the people he met. 

“I guess we’ll never know” She repeats again. 

#obx oc: phoebe deluca #obx oc: gabriel whitmer #phoebe + whit #phoebe + rafe #exes: phoebe and rafe #friends oc: maxine zhu #obx ocs #obxhub

[n0-eyedtaissa]

Songs from That Summer (phoebe deluca x rafe cameron)

national anthem - lana del rey // super rich kids - frank ocean // pbr - girlhouse // boys from town - alaska reid // warm body - molly payton // go fuck yourself - two feet // mount everest -labrinth // barely on my mind - the regrettes // car crash - israel’s arcade // red roulette - dirty dishes // gibson girl - ethel cain // i’m not in love - kelsey lu

#fic: song of the summer #exes: phoebe & rafe #obx oc: phoebe deluca #rafe cameron x oc #oc playlist

[n0-eyedtaissa]

"are you trying to get us in trouble?" for clementine 👀

In Clementine's defense, the Pogues were a little too good at keeping secrets. She couldn't really blame them for that, though, because she had some secrets of her own. The difference is, she never let her friends get into trouble over the secrets that she was keeping.

Sure, she knew about John B. and Sarah, how they died in the storm at the beginning of summer and the Pogues were still holding onto whatever hope was left that they could still be alive. That was all she know, though. Clementine didn't know that Rafe was really the one who killed Sheriff Peterkin, that his dad blamed John B. and that was the reason he and Sarah were driven into the storm in the first place. She didn't know that the Chateau was still considered an active crime scene, that Shoupe's deputies were still patrolling the property to make sure that no pesky Pogues ripped through the sun-bleached caution tape crossed over the front door of the old marsh house.

That would've been nice to know.

Clementine finds this out the hard way, when her Pogues all convince her that a rescue mission for some old papers that John B.'s dad had written, some sort of scholarly articles he was in the process of publishing about the Royal Merchant and Denmark Tanny. Apparently John B. and Sarah's dads worked together to find it and the partnership was subject to an intense power imbalance due to the fact that Ward Cameron had all of the money that Big John needed in order to get his project off the ground.

"There must have been some sort of agreement, don't you think? A written contract, NDA's?" Pope asked the rest of the Pogues as they crouched in the overgrown brush line around the now-abandoned property.

"NDA's? Jeez, Pope, what do you think Ward is, some super-spy?" JJ tries to feign nonchalance, acting like he wasn't deeply uncomfortable being at the Chateau when John B. wasn't. Out of everywhere in the Outer Banks, the Chateau was the only place that truly felt like home to JJ. He and John B grew up having week-long sleepovers, swimming all day until their skin was red and tight-feeling from the sun and the salt, eating off-brand lucky charms for all meals and watching every old movie that Big John had a copy of. There was a certain warmth that the old marsh house exuded, a light that had gone out. 

Clementine didn't know John B, but she likes to think that she was familiar with what JJ was feeling. She knew what it was like to know someone who was missing, the stress that comes with not knowing what really happened to them and wondering about the likelihood of them returning home unscathed. 

“I dunno, JJ, remember what Phoebe said?” Kiara raises an eyebrow. She would never believe a single word out of Ward Cameron’s mouth, even though her parents rubbed elbows with him at the country club and thought he was a good man who contributed to the community. 

Phoebe Deluca was Rafe Cameron’s only ex-girlfriend, the only person who had ever seen what happened underneath the surface of their perfect Kook ecosystem. Word on the street was that the two got into a bad car accident and Phoebe was the one who was blamed, all because Ward Cameron tried to pay her family to be quiet. 

“I wouldn’t put anything past him...” Kiara says, ripping the ribbon of caution tape away from the threshold so she could duck her head inside the never-locked front door. 

“So what do we look for?” JJ asks, his nervous hands finding his hair so he can rake his fingers through the salt-tangled waves. 

“File cabinets, lock boxes, anything that looks super official. If there’s any sort of contract or legally binding document that both Ward and Big John signed, you know he’s gonna have it here. John B’s dad was a low-grade hoarder.” Pope is the first person to head inside the empty Chateau, a level of courage and forthcomingness that seemed out of character for him (but in a good way). 

JJ and Kiara are right on his heels, but Clementine stays put. “I’m uh, gonna stay put and keep watch.” She nods curtly and sits down on the front step, a grossly familiar feeling settling deep in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know John B, so she felt like it was wrong for her to go into a stranger’s house and rifle through his things to find something that she knew absolutely nothing about. It reminded her of the days after Kimber first disappeared, how the cops sat Clementine down to ask hundreds of complicated questions while the rest of the officers dug through Kimber’s bedroom and pulled out odds and ends they deemed useful evidence. It was invasive then and it was invasive now. Clementine didn't have to know John B to know that. 

“Give us the signal if you see anything, Clam” JJ nods and pats Clementine on the head before heading inside, despite the pull in his gut that was telling him not to. 

“And what’s the signal?!” Clementine called out after the Pogues but they had already begun their descent into the familiar, yet uncertain territory. 

She sits there on the front step of the Chateau for quite awhile. Maybe it was longer than she thought, maybe shorter. Time seemed to compress itself when you were focusing on the little things around you. Clementine’s ears aren't attuned to the little sounds, the squeak of the screen door and the whistle of wind in the trees. Every small sound sets Clementine off, making her whip her head around to find the source of the noise, no matter how small. 

It’s probably a good thing that she’s paying so much attention to everything around her, or else she wouldn't have heard the crunching sound of gravel under tires. Clementine pops her head up, cranes her neck around just enough to see the front bumper of a Kildere County Sheriff Department squad car sticking out from behind the surf shack. 

“Guys!” Clementine whisper-shouts, trying to catch the attention of her friends without calling attention to whichever deputy was now on patrol. She pops her head up high enough to see a stocky, thick-necked older man getting out of the squad car, his brow furrowed as he began to look around. “JJ what the hell was the signal?!” 

Clementine feels the panic brewing as she ducks down the best she can to stay out of the officer’s line of sight. She crawls towards the screen door and tries to open it as silently as possible, hoping that the officer wasn’t keeping his ears out. Clementine keeps crawling on her hands and knees, opening the front door and crawling through the threshold of the Chateau, trying to avoid being seen in any of the windows. 

“Guys!” She hisses again, growing both frustrated and concerned. 

Kiara pops her head out front one of the few doorways. “What are you whispering about out here?”

JJ pops his head out from what looked like John B’s old bedroom. “What, you finally want to pull your weight around here?” He chuckles, too loud for Clementine’s liking now that there was a deputy poking around the property. 

“Cops” She whisper-shouts, hoping that now her friends would take the situation more seriously. “Patrolling, walking around” 

“Could you see who it was?” Kiara asks as she drops to the floor, trying to stay calm enough to figure out an escape plan.

“Uh, very stereotypically cop-looking, dark hair, no neck, angry face...?”

“Oh shit, it’s Thomas...”

“Why didn’t you use the freakin’ signal?” JJ drops his voice in order to whisper back. 

“We never established a signal!”Clem hisses, shoving his shoulder. 

“Guys we gotta go...” Pope comes around the corner looking panicked, just as the front doorknob started rattling. 

“With haste, please!” Clementine begs as her and the rest of the Pogues crawled towards the back of the house to put some distance between themselves and Deputy Thomas before they could get caught.”

“There’s a door to the laundry room that’ll take us outside” Kiara devises a plan and the Pogues take off crawling, trying to go low and slow so that the old bones of the Chateau wouldn’t creak so badly. “JJ you’re fast, you go and create a distraction.” 

“Are you trying to get us in trouble?” Clementine questions. The plan sounds too broad and easy to go off without a hitch. 

“Yeah, do we really want the basis of our plan to rely on JJ’s ability to make a distraction so we can get away?” Pope rolls his eyes. 

JJ huffs. “Honestly I can’t believe you guys are doubting my skills at a time like this! Out of everything that I’ve done for you guys!” JJ could launch into a long-winded missive at a moments notice but clearly this wasn’t the time. 

“Just....get to distracting already, will you? I’m getting splinters in my knees” Clementine complains

“Ungrateful...” JJ shakes his head, pushing himself up to his knees so he can make a mad dash towards the door. “All of you, absolutely ungrateful!” 

#omfg thank you for the req! #ive missed these guys #obx oc: clementine adams

[n0-eyedtaissa]

☼ song of the summer ☼ phoebe deluca 

Phoebe Deluca doesn’t believe in love. Says its not meant for a girl like her, says she tried that once and still has the scars to prove it. And she did; There was an angry red line on her neck from where the seatbelt cut into her fragile skin when Rafe Cameron wrecked her car over a year before at Midsummer’s. Everyone thought they knew about what happened with Rafe. But not a word of it was true. 

At one point in time, Phoebe might have said that she was in love with Rafe Cameron, though she never could tell if he felt the same way about her. To Rafe, Phoebe was an easy way to piss off Ward and show off around Kook assholes like Hogan Bailey and the rest of his pastel army. When he had the opportunity to throw Phoebe under the bus, he did it without a second thought. That wasn’t love, it couldn't be. 

Phoebe and seen a lot of things, but she’d never seen love. Swore up and down that she didn’t know it. 

 But she didn’t know Gabriel Whitmer, and Whit knew a thing or two about love. 

Phoebe hated the cliche idea that one summer could change everything, but it really could. It was different when she came back to the Outer Banks, she was different too. 

#fic: song of the summer #exes: phoebe and rafe #obx oc: phoebe deluca #obx oc: gabriel whitmer #phoebe + whit #obxhub

[n0-eyedtaissa]

17. “Why did you do it?” Phoebe

It’s late and Phoebe’s drunk and stranded. The Boneyard party got broken up a handful of hours ago but she didn’t really feel like going home yet. Her house would be empty and she would be alone, just like she was right now.

A siren rings out from a few blocks away and Phoebe finds herself ducking into the shadows until she can’t see the blue and red lights in the distance. Shoupe had been taking his new title as Sherriff way too seriously these days, he and his juiced-up goon squad had broken up the party at the beach and were probably patrolling the area looking for stragglers to write up tickets for so they could meet their monthly quota.

Phoebe’s head feels too heavy and it’s taking her an annoying amount of effort to keep putting one leg in front of the other. She breathes through a wave of oncoming nausea and manages to sit down gracelessly on the stoop outside of whatever mom and pop shop she’d stumbled across. She giggles to herself as her head spins. Squinting a cautious eye open, Phoebe rifles through the vast expanse of her tote bag, pulling out lipstick tubes, her journal, and a dog-eared book before finding what she was looking for. The metal Altoid’s tin was cold in her hand and it wakes her up a little. Opening the lid, Phoebe retrieves herself a joint rolled in cherry flavored paper and her trusty pink lighter — a treat from Past Phoebe to Present Phoebe. She smiles as she tucks the joint between her lips and lights it, taking in a thick lungful of smoke and blowing it out in a white-grey cloud that hangs in the night air before finally dissipating.

Phoebe knows that her phone is just about dead but that doesn’t stop her from picking it up and checking her text messages, anticipating something from her friend Max, who she got separated from when the cops came to raid the Boneyard.

(Phoebe was only slightly salty that the reason her and Max got separated was because Max would have rather made out with John B. Routledge all night, but that was neither here nor there)

She smokes her joint down to the end, until it burns her lips, and tosses it aside. Fall was just around the corner and you could feel it in the air. The sea breeze felt less welcoming, colder and sharp enough to sting your cheeks and the tip of your nose when the wind really picks up. It was only a little after one in the morning but the fog was starting to roll in a thin wispy layer just over the cracked roads. 

 Phoebe crosses her arms over her chest and curses herself for not wearing more layers. She wraps her jean jacket closer to herself and weighs her options: walking home was doable but it was far and Phoebe was too cold and too fucked up to be able to make it, Max was preoccupied, and her mom wouldn't be done with her shift over at the bar for another few hours. 

She gets an idea that she knows she’ll regret in the morning. 

Unlocking her phone despite the last dregs of her dying battery, Phoebe dials the one number that she somehow still knew after committing it to memory a handful of years ago. It’s not a good idea to call him and Phoebe knows this. She should feel bad about it but she doesn’t. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or the weed, or something else completely, but she finds herself quickly dialing up the ten numbers and putting her phone to her ear and praying to Something that he’d pick up before the battery died. There’s a shuffling sound on the other line when he picks up the phone and Phoebe feels her heart skip a beat —her first and only indicator that this might have been an idea.

“Who is this?” He mumbles (or slurs? Phoebe wasn’t quite sure yet).

“It’s me” She giggles, waiting to see how long it would take him to realize who exactly he was talking to. 

“Me who?” 

“Phoebe” She reveals, looking up at the moon as she cradled her phone between her shoulder and ear. 

“Phoebe Deluca?” He asks, confused but sounding a lot more awake and intrigued. 

“Yes, Rafe Cameron, the one and only” Phoebe lets out half of a chuckle until she realizes that just the mere mention of Rafe’s name was enough to kind of make her nauseous (though the whiskey and cheap beer she has been drinking all night probably didn’t help. There’s a part of her that really can’t believe that she called Rafe of all people. That out of everyone, she somehow expected Rafe to be the one to save her, even after everything that happened between the two of them. Rafe didn’t have a track record of doing much saving...quite the opposite, actually. Instinctually, Phoebe runs her fingers over the scar on her neck. She knows that it’s probably psychosomatic but she swears that it starts burning. 

There was a beat of silence. 

“W-why are you calling me?” Rafe stutters, his voice managing to sound small and foreign. 

“Oh right” Phoebe laughs. The weed was making her feel warm and talkative but she was forgetful, losing her train of thought midway through. “Look, I need a favor. I know it’s late but my phone’s gonna die, I’m freezing, and stuck on the other side of the island...” Phoebe sighs, not wanting to ask Rafe for any favors even when she was basically out of options. “Is there any way that you could pick me up?” 

Phoebe can’t see it but in Rafe’s bedroom, in the second biggest house on Figure 8, he was sitting up straight in his four poster bed, in complete darkness save for the dusty moonlight that he could see through the slats of the window blinds. It takes Rafe a second to realize that this was real and that this time he wasn't too fucked up and dreaming. After everything he’d ever done, Phoebe was calling him, she needed him.

“Rafe?” Phoebe questions on her end of the line, not sure if he was awake or even listening. 

Rafe clears his throat. “Yeah, I’m here.” He shuffles out of bed and grabs his truck keys from the ceramic bowl on his desk. “Just, uh, send me your location and I’ll be there as soon as I can, alright? I’m on my way.” 

Phoebe barely can say “Okay” before Rafe hangs up the phone. She has just enough battery to drop Rafe a pin before her battery dies and she’s left sitting alone in the dark, arms wrapped around her midsection as she hopes that Rafe was actually going to be there any minute. 

Just as Phoebe convinced herself that Rafe was just messing with her and that he wasn’t coming, she can see the blue-white headlights of Rafe’s big truck as they cut through the night fog. She gets up suddenly, which makes her head spin even though she sobered up quite a bit as she was waiting. Phoebe’s silhouette is illuminated by the lights and for a second, her and Rafe just look at one another. They both remember the good time and the bad ones, the easier times and the unbearably hard ones. Neither one of them think too much about that fated night after Midsummer’s, although neither one of them had managed to forget the metallic crunch of the car veering off the road and crashing into the tree-filled banks. 

Phoebe takes a deep breath as she steadies herself before opening the door to the passenger’s side. “Hey” She says, somewhat lamely, getting into the car and reveling in the heat that was blasting from the vents. Rafe had always remembered how easily Phoebe got cold and would go and warm up the car for the two of them when they were leaving somewhere. It’s a small, insignificant gesture, but it was funny how easily some of those behaviors stuck around. 

“You alright?” Rafe asks, eyeing Phoebe up and down. He squints at her and she notices how dilated his pupils are. 

“Just peachy” She mutters, clicking her seatbelt into place as Rafe put the truck back in drive. 

“Rough night?” He tries to ask Phoebe another question, just because he wanted a reason to keep listening to her talk. 

She laughs. “You don’t know the half of it”

Phoebe turns to look out the window and watch the lights and telephone poles as they pass by. It wasn’t necessarily a rough night but it definitely was a long one. The Boneyard party was a little young of a crowd for Phoebe sometimes so she always felt like she had to keep the pace with Max and her friends when they were drinking. She drank too much too fast, beer and whiskey —along with some weird concoction that JJ Maybank gave to her in a red solo cup — smoked a lot of weed to try and counteract that but ended up getting into a weird verbal battle with that Kiara girl about plastic pollution. Max and John B. obviously had dipped out at that point and Phoebe remembered rolling her eyes at the not-so-sneaky pair, immediately getting to work on rolling another joint to make everyone around her a little bit more bearable.

It worked, a little. The weed made Phoebe lighten up and get out of her shell, it made her laugh more, made even the most basic kooks and tourons more interesting when they made small talk about their hometowns and sunburns. What made Phoebe break out of her shell even more? It wasn’t a what but a who,

Gabriel Whitmer.

He’d been looking real cute these days, and after half a summer of Whit being a thorn in her side, Phoebe was actually thinking about giving him a chance. He was sweet, home-grown in a good way — a Pogue kind of way. Whit knew boats and how to fix them, he knew how to talk in order to please the kooks or entice the tourists…he knew how to ask Phoebe questions that she actually wanted to answer and actually wanted to talk about.

That’s exactly what he did earlier that evening. Whit had plopped down next to Phoebe on the sand and asked her some ridiculous hypothetical question, launching the two of them into an animated conversation while they smoked what was left of Phoebe’s cherry-flavored joint. Within minutes Phoebe had formulated herself an astute (though very silly) observation and obviously had a strong opinion on the matter because Whit was laughing so hard that neither of them realized that the cops pulled up until people started running. A flock of broad-shouldered boys pulled Whit up by the back of his collar and they all took off before Phoebe could so much as say goodbye. 

Part of Phoebe thinks she should feel guilty for calling up Rafe for a ride after spending so much time with Whit, but she shakes away the feeling. She knows she doesn’t owe Rafe anything, not even kindness after all of the ways he’d hurt her in the past. She’d blame it on how she was drunk, how her only real friend got separated from her and Rafe was her last-ditch option. Yeah, that’s what she’ll tell him. Because Phoebe knows him well enough to know that he’ll ask. 

“You know, it’s nice to see you without your guard dog hanging around” Rafe laughed, clearly impressed with himself and his weak attempt to trash talk Phoebe’s protective best friend. He tightens his grip on the steering wheel when he realizes Phoebe isn’t laughing. “C’mon, Max is a bitch” Rafe tries again. Phoebe can’t tell if he think he’s being funny, or if Rafe was trying to get a rise out of her so she’d be forced to make conversation.

“You know that’s funny, she says the same thing about you” Phoebe actually starts to laugh now, knowing that if anyone thought Rafe was public enemy #1, it was her very own friend, Maxine Zhu. 

Rafe slams on the breaks and Phoebe feels herself being thrown forwards. “Are you high?” He asks, audacious. It was an ironic question coming from Rafe, who was someone in the habit of snorting lines like they were going out of style. His forehead was sweaty, his pupils were blown, and it seemed like Rafe could only focus on one thing for long before he had to jump to the next. Phoebe’s been around Rafe when he was high enough times to clearly recognize the tell-tale signs.

“I don't know, Rafe, are you?” Phoebe snarls, layers of hurt peeking through the cracks in her cool girl persona. She doesn’t know why she thought calling him would be a good idea. She was drunk and maybe looking in the wrong places, acting on old instincts and hating how easy she felt like she could fall back into old patterns. 

The conversation falls flat. Neither Phoebe nor Rafe have much to say. There’s so much that they could talk about that absolutely nothing comes out. 

Rafe sniffles, “So uh, where am I taking you?” 

“Home.” 

“Just like that? C’mon, my dad and Rose are gone on some stupid business trip for the weekend. Why don’t we go back to Tannyhill, keep the party going?” Rafe peeks at Phoebe from the corner of his eye as he rolls through a stop sign. “We’ll wake up Sarah to be bartender and she won’t even mind because she misses you” 

Phoebe sits up a little straighter in the passengers seat, feeling much more sober now. “That’s not a good idea, Rafe...” 

He smirks, quirking an eyebrow. “I dunno, that sounds like a pretty good idea to me, Phoebe. You used to like that, remember? We’d hit up Barry for a bag, steal a bottle from Ward’s collection and spend all night together...” 

Rafe snaps out of his trip down memory lane to add “Barry’s mentioned that you haven't been by to see him all summer”

“Yeah, that's probably not a good idea, either.”

“What, do you think you’re too good for all of us now that you spent some time on the east coast?” Rafe scoffs, turning the steering wheel sharply and gliding the truck around the close corner and picking up speed as they went along.

Phoebe pushes her hair out of her eyes, sighing. She figured that it was going to end up being a bad idea to drunk call Rafe for a ride, but she didn’t think it’d go sour this fast. Being in the car with Rafe when he was inching towards one of his scary moods was giving Phoebe an onslaught of panic. She knew exactly what could happen, having lived through the worst-case scenario. She knew that Rafe had a tendency to speed and to take his eyes off the road, or coast through stop signs and other traffic signals when no one was around to see it. Phoebe knew that when Rafe was like this people got hurt...

“I don’t think I’m too good for you or for anyone else, Rafe. I’m just trying to be better, alright? I’m trying to be better ” Phoebe turns her head to look at him, sliding her hand over where his was on the gear shift in hopes that maybe, just maybe, he’d mellow out and calm down. “Will you just take me home please?” 

“Phoebe, why’d you call me?” Rafe asks, voice wavering. “Why did you do it? Cause, you know, I get this call at one in the morning and you saying you need me and to come pick you up and now you don’t even wanna talk to me?”

Phoebe’s eyebrows shoot up as she listens to Rafe take her actions out of context. “First of all, I didn’t call you because I need you, Rafe. I needed a favor and that’s different. Second of all, why the hell would I wanna talk to you? Or hang out with you, given, like, history?” 

Rafe throws his hands up, slamming on his breaks in front of the dented stop sign. “You’re never gonna forget about that, are you?” 

“How do you suggest I go about forgetting that, Rafe? Really, any advice would be helpful.” Phoebe rolls her eyes. “You crashed my car and you left me in that fucking ditch! And instead of being a good person and owning up to the fact that it was you who got the drugs and you who caused the accident, your daddy was greasing palms with half of the sheriff’s department in order to get your ass out of trouble!” Phoebe’s voice starts to get louder the angrier she gets. She’s still drunk enough to want to give Rafe a piece of her mind and doesn’t feel bad at all for laying into him. 

“Oh! And let’s not forget that it was Ward who strong-armed my mom into signing a fuckin’ NDA so we couldn’t talk about shit! You were off telling Kelce and Topper and the rest of your Pastel Army how I was some trashy, Pogue, party girl who was hung up on you. I literally wasn’t allowed to defend myself as you were telling everyone we knew about how I was going off to rehab? Like, Jesus, Rafe”

Phoebe thinks that maybe she’s shut him up but Rafe opens his mouth to speak: “Okay well if I’m such a horrible person then why’d you call me, huh? You clearly trust me enough to have me drive way out here to pick you up, clearly I can’t be that bad...” Rafe lets out a slow laugh as if it somehow had the power to diffuse the tense situation. 

Phoebe glares at him, reaching for her tote bag by her feet and pulling it up into her lap. “You wanna know why I called you, Rafe? You were the only other option, alright? You were my last resort...And clearly this was a bad idea” She grabs for the door handle and wrenches it open, sliding herself uneasily off of the sticky leather seats. Phoebe slams the passenger’s side door extra hard because she knows that Rafe hates that and starts walking, even when Rafe’s truck starts to creep up next to her. 

He pretends not to notice the slight hitch in her step as she walks, another lingering remnant of the car accident. “C’mon, Phoebe, get back in the truck, alright? Let me drive you home, we’re halfway there already.” Rafe calls out from his open window. 

“I’ve got it from here, Rafe Cameron.” Phoebe shakes her head, remaining firm in her decisions. She resists her knee-jerk politeness that was telling her to thank him for coming out so late, but she knows that she doesn’t owe him any kindness. Phoebe sets her eyes downcast and doesn't look up until she’s walking up the street to her house.

The porch light isn’t on and no one is home. Phoebe knows that. The house feels just as cold and foreign as it always does as she pulls her keys out and wades through the dark to make her way towards the kitchen. She tips her head under the faucet and turns it on, gulping down the cold tap water like it could somehow cool down the anger inside her. She knows if she doesn’t eat something she’ll be hungover in the morning but she doesn’t really care. Phoebe stumbles towards her bedroom and flops down on her bed without taking her shoes off. She can feel the eyeliner smears under her eyes and the mascara crumbles weighing down her eyelashes but she doesn’t care anymore. Dealing with Rafe was sobering but exhausting and she knew that once she told Max what she did, Phoebe would surely be getting an earful.

Plugging her phone in and waiting for it to turn back on, Phoebe watches her missed notifications stack up. There’s a handful of missed calls from Max and a missed call from John B (she finally caved and saved his phone number in her contacts after adamantly refusing). Phoebe squints one of her eyes closed as she reads the text messages that were scrolling through her screen, wanting to catch up on anything important:

(max:) i’m home at the chat, did you have fun tonight with your future bf? ;)

Phoebe didn’t know how Max had even caught word of the fact that Phoebe spent a good chunk of her night at the bonfire with Whit, but Max had eyes everywhere. It was almost spooky how omnipotent she seemed to be, but it was something about Max that Phoebe couldn’t help but admire. Phoebe doesn’t respond to the message but she knows she doesn’t have to, she’d probably wake up to Max jumping on her bed and wonder why she ever thought it was a good idea to give Max a copy of the house key in the first place.

There’s two notifications specifically that catch Phoebe’s eye. 

(whit:) Hey did u get home alright? It was nice getting to hang out just us, sorry we got separated before I got to say bye 

Phoebe can feel the heat rushing up her neck to her cheeks as she feels the excitement bubbling. Whit was good. He could be good for Phoebe and then maybe she could be better too. Phoebe’s hopes are let down, though, as she reads over one final message from a familiar ten digit number. A phone number that she had committed to memory despite not having it saved in her contacts, Rafe’s.

(unknown number:) You should’ve let me drive you home, Phoebe...

The part of Phoebe that’s still not quite sober was itching to drafts out a long paragraph text message telling off Rafe for everything he’s ever done and gotten away with, but she’s not very good with words and it was Max that always helped her figure out what to say. She rereads the message and scoffs. Phoebe knows there's about a thousand things that she should’ve done, but that wasn't one of them. She should’ve thought about the consequence of calling him, how that meant that Rafe thought he would be owed some sort of favor now. Phoebe knows that there would be a time in the future where Rafe popped up again when she least expected it. If it wasn’t so late Phoebe would probably worry herself sick overthinking about what was gonna happen and when, but she’s too  tired and it’s been such a long night she can’t be bothered. 

Maybe that’s a good thing. 

Some things can wait to be dealt with tomorrow.

#exes: phoebe and rafe #this is Not a couple to ship lmfao #obx oc: phoebe deluca #amanda’s oc: maxine zhu #obx oc: gabriel ‘whit’ whitmer #rafe cameron x oc #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron #john b x oc

[n0-eyedtaissa]

car crash ☽ phoebe deluca x rafe cameron 

╰┈➤ I'm going on a night drive, I'm feeling kind of reckless. I might get in a car crash, I just want some attention

tagging: @kiara-carrera @hughstheforcelou @reggiemantleholdmyhand-tle @humangrumpycat

#exes: phoebe and rafe #this is Not a couple to ship lmfao #obx oc: phoebe deluca #rafe cameron x oc #rafe cameron edit #rafe cameron #obx oc #ocappreciation

[n0-eyedtaissa]

I’m sorry. I can't do this anymore.-Rafe and Phoebe

He liked to pretend that it was his idea to break up but it wasn't. He liked to tell everyone that it was Phoebe; that she was too clingy, that she was a stuck-up bitch, that she was the one who did everything wrong. 

That simply wasn’t how it happened, though. Phoebe knew how it actually went. 

It started two summers at the golf course, Phoebe worked as a cart girl and brought snacks and beer to the rich men who played there and wolf-whistled at her as she walked away twenty dollars richer. Rafe was nice — at first — he would smile at Phoebe and ask how her day was going, or shove whatever small bills he had in his monogrammed wallet into her tip jar. Or he'd call out all of the greasy older men who would say crude things to Phoebe when she came by to do her rounds. And it wasn’t like Phoebe didn’t appreciate it, she did. Phoebe couldn't help but like to lean into it, too. She liked to flirt. It got her better tips so it could never hurt too much. Rafe was handsome, Phoebe wasn’t blind. He was clean cut, polished, from a good family...everything that she wasn’t. But he didn’t have to know that. When she was on the golf course she was Kook Phoebe; with her high ponytail and her sun visor she blended in seamlessly with the rest of the club’s rich patrons. Rafe never had a clue. 

It took him about a month to ask her out. 

“You gentlemen need anything?” Phoebe lilts, stopping her golf cart in front of the tricky tenth hole. The group of young men in their pastel board shorts all look up at her as she pushes her sunglasses down her nose, batting her long eyelashes at them. 

Rafe sniffles and looks up at her, one eyebrow raised in a mischievous expression when he opens his mouth to say “Yeah, your number” All of his friends laugh and bump shoulders with him but she smiles. 

“I get off at four” Phoebe shrugs, evading the question but still promising something nonetheless. She hands Rafe a beer on the house before getting back on her golf cart and heading back to the snack shack.

It was fun for awhile, sneaking around the golf course and hiding in plain sight. Rafe would kiss her behind the snack shack and Phoebe would give him a sip off the flask she kept in her employee locker. Rafe lets Phoebe drive the golf cart, lets her drive the boat, takes her scuba driving with the gear from the Druthers. She rolls joints with cherry flavored papers and makes sure to keep eye contact with Rafe when she licks the seam closed. 

Phoebe keeps Rafe on his toes and he likes that. Liked that. Past tense, as in no longer liked after a while. Phoebe knew that she shouldn't have introduced him to Barry. He liked Barry because he was someone you could use if you knew how to sweet talk him right; he was a sucker for money, for opportunities. Barry thought he was so hard but he really wasn’t. He was pliable, moldable, someone to be molded and used by whoever wanted something from him. First it was Phoebe bribing him for rides, for dime bags, for 4lokos from the liquor store, but then Rafe had a request...

“Do you think your friend, your cousin guy, you think he can get us some coke?”

Phoebe looked up at Rafe curiously,  “Who, Barry? I mean, I dunno, I don’t think he deals shit like that.” She noticed Rafe’s face fall in disappointment and suddenly her stomach was turning, feeling ashamed, as though she did something wrong. “I can ask him though, just in case” Phoebe smiled weakly. 

“Cool” Rafe sniffed, the post-nasal drip making the back of his throat burn raw. “Maybe then this weekend I could take you to that party the Bailey’s are throwing” The Bailey family were the real kings of Kildere County, they were so rich that they made the Cameron’s look like Pogues. Everyone knew that Rafe Cameron was jealous of Hogan Bailey. That’s why Rafe wanted to take Phoebe to the party; to have a pretty girl on his arm and to have expensive drugs to offer to the  rest of the expensive looking Kooks.

Phoebe had smiled at him, not realizing how conditional her invitation sounded. “We should go, I’ll talk to Barry” 

It turned out that with enough money, Barry was always down to get his hands dirty. “I don’t want you fuckin’ around with this or with anyone who does this shit, you hear me?” Barry tried to scold her, sounding hypocritical as he hands her the plastic bag. 

“I promise” Phoebe rolls her eyes, her fingers crossed behind her back. 

Rafe was pleased with the development that weekend. Phoebe dropped the eight-ball of coke in it’s tied-up plastic bag onto Rafe’s desk and watched as his eyes lit up in excitement. “You fucking did it” He laughed, pulling Phoebe down onto his lap as he opened the plastic bag with his teeth, dumping some of the contents out onto his SAT prep book. Rafe pulls his ID out of his monogrammed wallet and starts cutting up lines of the thin white powder. He rolls up a twenty into a thin little tube and holds one nostril closed, sniffing up two of the small white lines. He goes to hand over the rolled-up bill to Phoebe but she tenses up. 

“Have you done this before?” Rafe asks her, his hand absentmindedly tracing shapes onto Phoebe’s tanned legs. There’s a smile pulling at the corner of his lips when Phoebe shakes her head, no she hadn’t. 

It felt juvenile of her to think about the lecture Barry gave her earlier. She’d been to all of the DARE assemblies in school, seen all of the after school specials about the dangers of drug use. Phoebe knew that it could be laced with something, or cut with something, and knowing Barry, it most likely was. But Phoebe liked Rafe, probably more than he liked her, so that made her want to impress him even more. Rafe pulls her long blonde hair back out of her face as Phoebe leaned down to snort up the leftover lines, going through the same motions that Rafe did. 

“Atta girl” He whispers, letting Phoebe’s hair fall back around her shoulders in a golden wave. 

She leans her head back into the crook between Rafe’s neck and shoulder, holding back a sniffle or a sneeze as she feels the hot itch of the chemicals dripping down the back of her throat. She’s taken aback by the sudden release of dopamine; her heartbeat is rapid in her chest and suddenly everything seems more important an exciting. Phoebe laughs, low and slow, comforted by the sound of her blood pumping in her ears and the weight of Rafe’s hand on her leg. 

“C’mon” Rafe whispers into Phoebe’s ear. “We can’t get too ahead of ourselves, we have a party to get to.”

Hogan Bailey threw the best parties in all of Figure 8, apparently. That’s what Rafe shouted into Phoebe’s ear over the deep bass of the house music that was so loud they could feel it in their bones. Phoebe smiled and smoothed out the wrinkles in her borrowed dress. Rafe introduced her to everybody and had a story about everybody he introduced to her. Phoebe didn’t care enough about any of these people to remember names but she was weirdly okay with being on Rafe’s arm all evening, paraded from room to room, pulled onto his lap when he sat down on the lawn chairs on the manicured back lawn. 

“Baby girl, if you ended up with a boy like that you’d be set for life.” Phoebe’s mother, Bonnie, had told her earlier that evening, wiping the corner of her daughter’s mouth where her lipstick bled.

Phoebe walks around Figure 8 with her head on a swivel, taking in all of the big houses and their various amenities. She steals the most expensive looking bottle of dark liquor from the stash on the Bailey’s big oak dining room table. Rafe smiles at her and grabs her by the hand, pulling her into one of the houses’s five bathrooms and cutting lines for them on the granite countertops. They fuck against the sink and they’re both too high to feel bad about it. 

When they decide to rejoin the masses, it’s like nothing ever happened. Rafe sends Phoebe a sly smile as they sit down with Hogan Bailey and the rest of his Kook army (guys that Phoebe had met before, like Kelce and Topper). He pulls out the coke and holds the baggie up in front of Hogan,

“You want some of this shit, man?” Rafe’s words are slurred and strung together, a product of the expensive whiskey and the blow he’d been snorting all evening.

Hogan laughs. “What good is that gonna do me?” There’s a china plate on the crystal coffee table that’s covered with a pile of fine white powder and a platinum credit card. “I think we’ve got it covered here, Cameron” 

Phoebe laughs and it catches Hogan’s attention. He raises a blond eyebrow at her as though he was challenging her to go on. “This is good shit, primo, shipped here on a boat from...Yucatan” Phoebe lies, faltering on that last part but Hogan’s too fucked up to notice. 

He gets up from his spot on the velvet couch and wraps a clumsy arm around Rafe’s shoulders, grabbing the baggie from his hand. “I like your girl, Rafe, why’ve you been hiding her from us?” 

Some switch in Rafe’s brain is triggered and immediately Phoebe can tell that there must have been some strange, convoluted history between the two of them. Hogan Bailey was so rich he thought everything was his for the taking, even Phoebe.

Rafe’s breathing heavy, pulling Phoebe along as he led her through throngs of drunk teenagers, out of the house and back towards his truck. He still opens the car door for her and shuts it behind her, still turns the heater on full blast because he knew how easily Phoebe got cold. But she could tell he was angry. He had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel as he flew down the empty streets back towards Phoebe’s house at the other end of the island.

Phoebe was too high to think about how dangerous it could have been that Rafe was driving. She would face the consequences of that, though, months later, when things were going from bad to worse. 

Nothing gold can ever stay, but even the most expensive gold would tarnish eventually. 

They always partied and they always drank more than they should've. He shouldn’t have driven and she shouldn’t have let him. Buying coke from Barry started becoming habitual, no longer saved only for special occasions. Coke made Rafe aggressive but he loved it, probably more than he loved Phoebe.

He shouldn’t have grabbed her the way that he did, hard enough to leave blue-green bruises in the shape of his fingertips on the underside of Phoebe’s delicate wrist. She doesn't talk to him for three days after and it would’ve been longer if Rafe didn’t show up at her house unannounced, reeking like alcohol. “I’m sorry. I can't do this anymore.” Phoebe stood calmly on the porch, night-air cooling her bare arms, listening to Rafe as he cried about how fucked up he was and how wrong he was. How he’d never do it again, that he needed her and that he’d do anything for her to be able to forgive him. 

He was so broken it almost was pathetic. But so was she, and somehow broken  pieces found a way to fit together. It wasn’t good, or pretty, but it was something. Phoebe feels her heart defrost just enough to naively believe that what Rafe was saying would be true; that he’d be better, that he needed her and would do anything for her. She steps closer to Rafe and he closes the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her torso and crying into her chest.

She wanted it to be better in the future. He did too. But it wouldn’t be, and neither of them would be prepared for how bad things truly would get. 

#obx oc: phoebe deluca #this is Not a couple to ship lmfao #exes: phoebe and rafe #rafe cameron x oc #rafe cameron

[n0-eyedtaissa]

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?” Rafe and Phoebe

Once Phoebe saw Rafe down at the docks she knew that it was only a matter of time before he showed up at her door. He had done it before, a long time ago, two summers ago when everything seemed too good to be true and the harshness of reality had yet to slap them both right across the face.

She remembered the first time it happened, when he threw rocks against her bedroom window to wake her up for the first of many late-night rendezvous. Phoebe could recall the exact time (1:47 am), how she woke up in a cold sweat from a bad dream and walked right into a worse one.

She hears the soft knocking of pebbles on glass and almost wants to laugh at how predictable it was. Phoebe knows that there was always the option of not giving into what Rafe wanted, to let him stand there looking stupid for thinking that after two summers nothing would have changed, that she’d still be at his beck and call despite the way he treated her. But Rafe had an unparalleled sense of determination that he got from his father, so Phoebe knows that he wouldn’t give up easy. 

Phoebe looks over at her best friend Max who was snoring softly on the futon across the room, knowing that she would be disappointed in Phoebe if she were to wake up right now. Max was the only person who knew all of the gritty details, all the times that Rafe had grabbed her too hard to try and shake her up a little, the times he was fucked up and crying while clinging onto Phoebe like a little boy. It comforted Phoebe in a way, knowing that Max was only a few rooms away and would wake up if she heard yelling. Maxine Zhu might have been younger, but she was strong and she was sprightly, and it seemed like she was never scared of anything. 

Especially not Rafe. 

Sliding into one of her oversized sweatshirts, Phoebe tiptoes around her bedroom, trying to be as quiet as possible as she steps over creaky floorboards and twists the doorknob open. Phoebe ducks out of the door, but not before taking a final glance over at Max, preparing herself for the inevitable lecture she’d receive. 

She doesn't have to sneak around the house, her mom wouldn't be home for a handful of hours, so she walks right out the back door towards the side yard where Rafe was still throwing pebbles against the window. 

“Phoebe!” Rafe slurs, somewhere between a whisper and a shout as he picks up another pebble off of the cold ground. 

“What?” She replies sharply, making him jump.

“Jesus you scared me, I didn’t expect...” Rafe trails off with a sniffle and a laugh, looking over at Phoebe with big, glazed-over eyes. It was eerie how childlike he seemed under the shell of it all, how broken he was. His broken pieces were jagged, though, prone to hurting anyone who tried to pick them up. 

“What do you want, Rafe?” Phoebe asks. She crosses her arms over her chest defensively, having lost the patience needed to deal with Rafe when he was like this. 

He looks up at her like she’s just asked a stupid sort of question. “To see you”

Phoebe scoffs. “Okay, you saw me. Now you can go home”

Rafe tries to take a step closer, to join Phoebe up on the porch, but she shuffles backwards a half step to keep some distance between the two of them. “C’mon Phoebe, don't be like that” Rafe’s voice sounds pinched and agitated like he couldn't believe she was resisting him. 

“Like what, Rafe? Tell me...” She rolls her eyes and wishes that she grabbed the joint that Max rolled before bed. Maybe then she’d feel uninhibited enough to really give Rafe a piece of her mind. 

“Like,” Rafe takes a big breath “Distant, and defensive” 

“Hmm, Rafe, I wonder why the fuck that is!” Phoebe starts to lose her temper. She can’t even believe he would do this, to have the guts to show up at her house after everything that happened. At the docks when Kelce and Topper were trying to poke fun at her for what they thought happened, it’d been the first time that Phoebe had laid eyes on Rafe in almost two years.

It’d been almost two years since that fated Midsummer’s, when he was too fucked up to be driving, when he was fighting with her about how she was dressed and the way she danced all night. Two years since he careened into the oncoming lane and was so preoccupied with berating Phoebe to notice the truck heading right towards them. Two years since he ran the car off the road and into that tree, totaling it, airbags deploying and the thin material of the seatbelt slicing into Phoebe’s neck.

She could’ve died that night, and here Rafe was trying to act like nothing had ever happened and that he didn’t walk away from the accident completely unscathed, though he left Phoebe bleeding in her car that he totaled.

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?” Rafe rolls his eyes as he runs a nervous hand through his greasy hair. He can feel the high wearing off now and he was jonesing for his next fix of the pressed white powder that created more problems than it solved.

“What do you think?”

“God, you made such a big deal out of nothing, Phoebe. You always did.” Rafe let’s out an arrogant laugh. “If it wasn’t for me, you would’ve never gotten out of OBX, you realize that right? You should be thanking me!”

“Thanking you?” Phoebe’s eyes blow wide with shock. She’s used to Rafe’s grandiose sense of self importance but this was just astounding. “I could’ve fucking died that night and all you cared about was not being there when the cops finally came. You didn’t want them to find out you were driving drunk and had coke on you, so you left me there in a fucking ditch, bleeding”

The commotion must have been louder than both of them had anticipated because soon Max is poking her head out of the warped screen door, coming to investigate just like Phoebe knew she would. “What’s all this?” Max asks, looking between an angry Rafe and an even angrier Phoebe.

“Nothing” Phoebe sighs, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. “Rafe was just leaving, weren’t you?”

Rafe opens his mouth to say something but Max hits him with a bone-chilling stare, as though she was amused and challenging him to further make an ass out of himself. “You know, screw you” He calls out over his shoulder, scuffing his boat shoes against the pavement. “And your guard dog too”

As soon as Rafe is out of eyesight, Max pulls a joint out from behind her ear and sparks it up. “I can’t believe you ever dated that guy” She shakes her head.

“Yeah” Phoebe agrees, “me either”

#exes: phoebe and rafe #obx oc: phoebe deluca #obx oc: maxine zhu #amanda’s oc: maxine zhu #obx oc #obx imagine #rafe cameron x oc #rafe cameron imagine #oc appreciation

[n0-eyedtaissa]

Don’t You Forget About Me

key pairing: rafe cameron x phoebe deluca

It’s a hot day at the docks and everyone is jonesing to get their boats out on the water. Phoebe sits down on her printed towel and rubs her coconut-scented sun tan lotion all over her tanned arms, hoping to catch some rays today. She needed the vitamin D, the sun wasn’t the same at her dad’s house in Baltimore. When Phoebe got back to Kildare County for the first time in two years, everyone remarked about how pale she’d gotten. She pushes her sunglasses up her nose and leans back, putting her earbuds in.

A shadow passes overhead and suddenly Phoebe is aware that she’s no longer alone.

“I thought I smelled trash” Kelce laughs meanly, rubbing shoulders with Topper and Rafe. The Kooks were out in full force that afternoon, trying to go for a spin in Topper’s boat now that it’d finally dried out. “Long time no see, Phoebe, how was rehab?”

It was a popular misconception that Phoebe Deluca left the Outer Banks for a brief stint in a rehab facility after she’d been in a car wreck after Midsummer’s, where the police found drugs in the car and in her system. Not true. Well, half-true. Phoebe was in a car accident, you could tell that by the slight hitch in her walk, the way that her right knee still clicked when when woke up in the morning and ached when it got too cold outside. She still had the angry-looking scar on her neck from where the seat belt dug into her tender flesh…another reminder.

It wasn’t Phoebe that was driving that night, though no one would ever believe her over the word of Rafe Cameron. Rafe was in the drivers seat but the car was registered to Phoebe. He was beyond fucked up, driving too fast on the long road because he was in one of his moods, yelling at Phoebe for how she was talking to other guys at Midsummer’s. That, of course, was after he got done yelling at her for her party dress, telling her that she looked like she was easy because her neckline was too low and the slit up the side was far too high. Rafe was angry and distracted, he didn’t notice that he had drifted into the oncoming lane and was too busy verbally berating Phoebe, who was desperately begging him to pull over. Phoebe had yanked at the wheel, trying the best she could to pull the car back over to the other side of the road, very aware of the car that was blaring it’s horn and threatening to potentially hit them head on.

When they crashed, Rafe left Phoebe in the car as he dashed away through the brush line, having heard sirens in the distance as the cops finally caught up to the crazy person who was driving on the wrong side of the road. The cops found Phoebe at the scene, passed out in the passengers seat of her car and bleeding from the seat belt and the air bags. When she woke up in the hospital and tries to explain to the cops that it was Rafe, it was all Rafe…but nobody believed her.

“Oh it was eye-opening! Giving myself over to our lord and savior Jesus Christ? Really great” Phoebe responds sarcastically, not even looking at Kelce. None of them change their minds anyways so she might as well have a little fun with it. “You really should try it, Rafe…”

The two of them lock eyes for the first time in over a year and suddenly Phoebe is bombarded by memories of the hurt. Easily she recognizes that Rafe is high. She knows that look, his pinpoint pupils, the way his gaze moved around rapidly like he was physically incapable of focusing on one thing for too long, the perpetual sheen of sweat on his face that couldn’t be excused by the North Carolina sun.

Part of Phoebe wants to laugh, she’s disappointed but never surprised.

#this is Not a couple to ship lmfao #exes: phoebe and rafe #obx oc: phoebe deluca #rafe cameron x oc #fic: don't you forget about me #dyfam: key pairing #rafe cameron