riara oneshots | rafe x kiara

ill wear your sadness like its mine

Justice comes in the form of Rafe Cameron finding her secluded at the docks after Mike and Anna's anniversary party.

Kiara is planted there, the wooden planks below her feet ground her but the words replaying in her mind render her immobile. She's a statue with a tape recorder replaying the moment in her mind.

Like I love you, dude.

Thanks. Great. It's not gonna work.

She would crawl out of her skin if not for the unbearable weight of disappointment happily taking its rightful seat in her heart.

The celebration has cleared out at this point, and John B's little party trick ensured people left at a reasonable time. (Albeit in a scurry, much to her Anna and Mike's chagrin at the Pogues for, once again, ruining everything.)

She had been helping clean up when she found a moment to sneak away from her father's watchful eye to the docks.

For a moment it felt like freedom, to sneak away like she used to. That maybe she was gaining some control back in this situation with her parents— or even, they finally trusted their daughter enough to let her have this.

But that wasn't true, she was on a leash.

Everything was fucked and she couldn't even talk to anyone about it. There was no way to describe the pressure she was under and how hard she's been trying— it was never enough for either side because whatever she poured into one cup, took away from the other. If she followed her parents' rules, she was a terrible Pogue.

JJ would bitingly call her a Kook and later apologize and say he didn't mean it. She, even more than him, needed that to be true.

If she followed her heart, her parents would probably ship her away to some child labor camp disguised as a behavioural correction facility. 'It's for the best' they'd say.

With the way she was going, she would lose everything by holding onto nothing.

There had to be a right way to do things, a world where Kiara made all the right moves and it was easy.

She stared into the ebbing waves hitting the dock and imagined that world. Quantum jumping couldn't be that hard right? If she set her mind to it and changed her very molecular makeup, she'd be able to jump into a timeline where it all worked out.

Tomorrow she'd wake up with the carcass of her old skin and be reborn into the Kiara Carrera that has it together. Who says the right things and does the right things, who can be a Pogue but also a good daughter. A life where her parents trust her and love her.

God that last point was morbid, she's certain her parents love her. They just have a really inconvenient way of showing it.

Maybe in this world when Kiara tells JJ she loves him he'd click his feet in dopey excitement. Maybe he'd do a backflip and say something dumb and stupid that she'd roll her eyes at but secretly love. Maybe he'd say anything instead of this.

Thanks. It's not gonna work.

A bubble boils within her. It's transparent and grows with every breath she takes, it wants to pop but it also wants to scream.

She wants to scream.

But she can't. Not in this life.

And that's how Rafe finds Kiara. Deadpan and frozen, only her eyes moving. Distant and flicking through the potential of how things could've been different.

It's not cold by any means but the wind's picking up. He doesn't care to notice the goosebumps that cover her bare arms but he's a perceptive person.

The fact that he's this close and she hasn't immediately recoiled is concerning. He's not sure she's noticed him yet which does wonders for his grand entrance.