My nervous strength is slipping away, my time, my courage, and I fail to catch with myself day after day, and am somewhere out of reach, full of flowers past their bloom, whose fading scents fill me with dead weight—it isn't so new for me, this feeling
RAINER MARIA RILKE / 1892-1910
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Living in Outer Banks was Layne Hetfield's one-way, non-refundable ticket to paradise. The ocean was far from shut down throughout the other nine months of the year when tourists overly even out the locals to tourons ratio within a matter of weeks. The calm before the storm arrives in May, when the locals can bask in the final moments before the streets are bustling with families from all over the country coming to enjoy Layne's normality. It also means that her job as a marina attendant amplifies from just seasonal charters to consistent and non-stop relaying of family boats, rentals, and keeping the kooks and tourons clear of dirty pogues like herself. (However, most kooks have their own docks that they don't need assistance with—she likes to think her job is one of a kind. Most tourons are too oblivious to notice the neverending class war on the island.) Layne doesn't mind the short solace away from home, until she returns in the evening and she's banished from the Figure Eight like a fly on their back.
So, naturally, Layne doesn't understand where the entanglement with Rafe Cameron even began.
She could say it began when they were children, and technically she wouldn't be wrong, when Layne found a frog hidden in the custard place in town, and accidentally dropped her chocolate cone on his white shoes. They were twelve, freshly twelve—right when Rafe started to slick back his hair and his (step) mom Rose would force him to wear Ralph Lauren button ups and freshly pressed slacks. Layne got the short end of the stick from him throughout middle school, until they were fourteen, and she heard that boys who were mean to you had a crush on you. (She will forever condemn whoever came up with that phrase.)
High school turned the tables for both of them. Freshman year, Layne noticed the sleeping tiger buried in his chest. Don't mess with Rafe, they had always heard, but she never got close enough to him to feel the flame. However, his consistent dependency on pleasing his father bled into every aspect of his life, and he couldn't for his life keep a girl at his side. Almost every girl was scared of him, the way he would ball his fists outside during lunch or when he stabbed a boy with his mechanical pencil in biology class. Layne wasn't too frightened of him—he was just a boy with a lot on his plate, like the rest of them. He just dealt with it in a different way from the rest of them. Maybe, just maybe, that was where it went from bad to worse, and Layne fell right into the trap Rafe set for her.
Her friends say he's got her wrapped around his finger. They aren't even dating, yet Layne would go to hell and back just to make sure he keeps his finger. She wore his secrecy like a badge of honor. Don't tell anyone. Our secret. Texting her late at night and leaving early in the morning. Then, knocking on her window at three in the morning when he's too high to go home or when he needs to hide from his dealer. Or when he gets himself in brawls at the country club and has blood caked on his nose and bruises littered across his jaw.
Layne liked to think she didn't need him. Or, quite frankly, that she didn't need anyone. That the class war on the island wasn't credible, or that her life in the Cut wasn't looked down upon by the only person that made her feel less alone on a bustling island. Some days Layne would find herself retreating into her peak solstice, only to crawl back to him the minute he beckoned his hands. Maybe Layne Hetfield was a fool for thinking Rafe Cameron wanted anything other than a maternal jihad to distract himself from his impending doom. But Layne was most definitely a fool for coming back time and time again. She was weak, and she knew it—hell would freeze over if Rafe Cameron was ever caught slumming it with a pogue, and Layne heard that enough from the quartet of pogues that came to her fathers surf shop nearly every day.
Layne Hetfield was a fool for playing Rafe's game, but she would lose over and over again if it meant she could play again.
Kristine Froseth ⋆☀︎｡ Layne Hetfield
Drew Starkey ⋆☀︎｡ Rafe Cameron
Rachel Weisz ☼ Rory Hetfield
As Described ☀︎ Kurt Hetfield
Brianne Tju ☼ Marian Lu
Lovie Simone ☀︎ Claudia Smith
Harris Dickinson ☼ Matty Scott
Rest of characters as described.
AUTHORS NOTE: yes i am writing another fic. yes this will be toxic as fuck. i do NOT condone any of rafe's actions at all, and i am definitely not trying to glamorize him or abusive relationships. i simply find his character interesting complex, and i want to expand him a bit more and look into how he would be in a relationship. but! i am not trying to romanticize any of this. he is a shitty ass person and will do shitty things!!!! it's just the truth!!!! (i also cannot write anything other than angst. i am sorry. it is my comfort genre ok.)
WARNING: this sorry will contain domestic abuse (verbal, mental, and sometimes physical), drug/alcohol abuse, sex/sexual situations, toxic relationships, cursing, infidelity, sexual assault, violence, eating disorders, self harm, depression, anxiety and other triggering topics. read at your own risk! i will place triggers before any chapter that contains heavy topics.