Kintsugi: joining with gold.

RAFE: I need you to wait for me. You're it for me. You're my fucking heart.

TABITHA: Rafe...—

RAFE: You're my fucking heart.

♰

  𝖂hen Tabitha woke up, it was as a fly in a spiderweb of tubes, smothered in this mycelium of white, fresh linen and her mother's overbearing love—Maren's holding her so tight, it's like she wanted to reach marrow and never leave. (Mother must miss it, Tabitha thought, the embryonic days—when Tabitha was all hers, untouched, safe from it all: within her).

  If her touch didn't, her words reached bone, and that's all really mattered. Her voice, thready with guttural desperation, trembling, telling her only daughter that if she didn't fix herself, she was going to end up like her brother. Tabitha was no longer a fly in a web, she was a girl of fourteen, bruised knees, and a worried, bleeding mouth at the altar of Kildare Chapel, delivering a eulogy about the first person she had ever known to a church full of people with crocodile tears, damp handkerchiefs, and pity wounds. Her mother's begging her, her brother's gone and—if you don't fix yourself, you'll end up like Daniel.

  No one ever tells you how difficult it is moving on, probably because the suffering was unfathomable, and not everything feels like something else.

  Tabitha returned hollow, tender-hearted—she will flinch at everything now, like some bathing, fawnlike creature—and Outer Banks hadn't changed at all. It's like it had been holding its breath, waiting for her to come back. The teeth of it try to take a bite of her sweet flesh, but there's not enough left to satiate. It's fine, though. It'll take from others. Tabitha's not the only tortured girl in Kildare, and she left plenty of friends just like her for it to swallow up whole.

  It won't be her. Her mother's lost enough.

  She knew how many people she'd be fucking over when she left for the Seasons. But she had to be selfish to be selfless, that's another thing Maren told her. It was mauling her—the hungry island, her grief, unwinding white lines, Rafe. It's whatever. They would've killed each other, anyway. When Tabitha left, she thought he might leave it all behind—callowly, she told herself that they were the worst of it, and with her gone, Rafe might get better too. What they had was shameless, brutal, and all kinds of wrong. Obsessive, almost. Being an addict in love with another addict was a bit like being in a lamb on the killing-floor of an abattoir, and Tabitha wasn't going to let her mother lose another kid all because Rafe Cameron depended on her. She left him, her friends, that whole lifestyle, behind—and salted the fucking earth behind her.

  He didn't get better.

  Fuck it. Rafe Cameron's worse than ever. Half rotten, Tabitha's surprised that she didn't come back to Outer Banks to find maggots digging into his skin. And he's still got this sick fantasy of him and Tabitha being like that forever—she heard through the grapevine (his resentful half-brother) that he has been going around telling anyone who'll hear that it's them, it's always going to be them. He'll dig his grubby, greedy fingers into the cartilaginous knots of her and pry all the best bits of Tabitha Cross out until there's nothing left—until she's just like him.

  A good dog always returns to its home, and a bad hound never forgets the thrill of sweet flesh when its got a taste of it.

  In other words, Tabitha and Rafe will fucking kill each other.

Taylor Russell ♰ Tabitha Cross

I. Every Single Night, Fiona Apple ╲
II. Baby Come Home 2/Valentines, The Neighbourhood.

Drew Starkey ♰ Rafe Cameron

III. All I Need, Radiohead ╲ IV. Life of the Party, The Weeknd

Ayo Edebiri ♰ Magdalene Heyward

V. Strawberry Swing, Frank Ocean.

Mike Faist ♰ Charlie Byrd

VI. I'm Your Man, Mitski.

Nika King ♰ Maren Cross

VII. Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), John Lennon.

Nicholas Chavez ♰ Alex Cameron ╲ Mariano.

VIII. Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away), Deftones.

Dylan O'Brien ♰ Jesse

IX. Dealer, Lana Del Rey.

&.

Cailee Spaeny ♰ Iris Cameron ╲ Mariano.

X. Terrapin, Clairo.

As described, Daniel Cross ♰
Mikey Madison, Maxine Sweeney
Lana Parilla, Carmen Mariano
Austin North, Topper Thornton
Deoin Smith, Yves "Kelce"
Nicholas Cirillo, Barry
Frankie Corio, Phoebe Cameron ╲ Mariano.

🫀

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

    i. before luca guadagnino even tries, i did the Taylor Russell Drew Starkey angstfest first. ik he's eyeing up their numbers in his phonebook with his fist in his mouth but i beat him to it!!!!!!

    ii. anyways, this is Kintsugi. a semi-au sister story to my jjpope/oc fic, June Gloom - in which the characters are the same, but for spoilers' sake, the plot lines aren't. take the similarities with a pinch of salt, i just love the Cameron/Mariano siblings too much to not have them here. for anyone who's not read it, u don't have to!! the context is - ward has an affair with his pogue childhood sweetheart, Carmen Mariano, and they have three children together: Alex, Iris, & Phoebe. as u can imagine, this definitely adds to why rafe is The Way He Is.

    iii. continuing on from that — im prefacing this entire book with the obvious sentiment that Rafe Cameron is not a good person, nor is it my intention in this fic to romanticise his behaviour whatsoever. im sure it goes without saying - as none of the dark themes in my fics are even written with the purpose of glorification - but it just needs to be said. and this fic is gonna be very dark. it's very "Sound of Metal," and Tabitha is very Rue from "Euphoria." im going to be putting Rafe Cameron under a microscope - i.e. looking at his mental health, his drug addiction, etc. in more detail than certain readers may be comfortable with. please, prioritise your own mental health over the sake of a fanfiction. if topics such as murder, drugs, overdose, etc. will trigger you in anyway, leave at any time, or now.

    iv. this fic, whilst not purely the tabitharafe show, does focus a lot on an incredibly toxic relationship - where the high of drugs often gets confused for love, limerence is at the rotten heart of it, and they're both really quite awful to each other, using, manipulating, gaslighting, etc. they're not kind to each other, nor themselves. here, im gonna be trying to refine rafe into a more realistic character - i think he has borderline personality disorder, and i think a lot of the time the show doesn't really know what it's doing with him. one minute, theyre dipping their toes into some weird enemies to lovers shit with kiara, the next he's almost cartoonish villain. idk. he'll be different here - not necessarily a better person, but a more realistic one. again, this isn't a romanticisation of Rafe Cameron. he's not about to be the terrible guy with a soft spot love interest. that's not what this is.

    v. Content Warnings ╲ Please read: descriptions of overdose, addiction, substance abuse, a very toxic relationship, murder, violence, classism, untreated mental health problems, disordered eating, etc. Only read at your own discretion.

EST. Dec, 2024.