they're just blowing smoke,
i'll say what they won't,
i know everything they don't.
𝗜𝗡 𝗪𝗛𝗜𝗖𝗛,
ruby miller can always sniff out when things are too good to be true. her stepfather, ward cameron, is one of them.
𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥...
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Season I. Ch I.
starving children learn to lick love from knives.
TW: mature language.
୨୧
Ruby miller-cameron is many things. a friend is not one of them.
when she was six, rue nearly drowned in frigid new england waters. that feeling of being submerged and breathless seems to haunt her; every time someone gets too close, she drowns. her breath catches and heart tightens and she runs. a bolter, her father used to say; as though it was only a halloween costume, a temporary trait she could take off at any moment.
each time ruby thinks it may be different; she may be able to turn off the bolter, might be able to stay this time. but then a moment turns too vulnerable or a smile too soft and she's six years old again, plunging through sharp ice. each time, it slices her as she falls. rue isn't sure how many more times she can be cut before she becomes too weak to claw her way back to the surface.
but don't be fooled. ruby is not a coward, not by a landslide. in fact, she made quite the curious child; reviled by everyone except her own father. maybe that's her problem—deep in her bones, rue knows she is not easily liked. splendidly selfish, charmingly helpless, beautifully blunt, and excellent fun until you get to know her; then she's just greedy and vile and wrong. she realizes this first and runs like hell. a race to see who can get the furthest before it's realized: ruby miler is a fake.
rose cameron was one who had always seen ruby as she was, and she was all these things and worse. perhaps that is why rue thinks the way she does; she was never told otherwise. her mother is her biggest critic and worst enemy. i suppose that is where this story begins: mother and daughter at war, related only by the same hatred in their veins.
"ruby, will you get your sister for lunch please?" rose cameron calls up to her daughters bedroom. but she's not really her daughter; she only birthed her. blood does not mean shit on the island of outer banks.
rue grits her teeth. she does this so often she gets migraines. "she's notmy sister." and you're not my mother. not really.
"whatever. just get her." ruby has barely lived with her mother for three months and is already about to slit her fucking wrists.
rose cameron is insufferable and rue has just lost the one parent she could stand—her father. his heart gave out on him which rue found quite ironic considering his was the strongest she had ever known. if anything, rose's was weaker and more deserving. but this did not matter. what's done is done. devasted, ruby had been forced to reside with the cameron's on the island across the water. in the process, she gained two older step siblings; sixteen year old sarah and nineteen year old rafe. ruby hadn't made much of an effort to connect with either of them, instead keeping to herself locked away in the guest bedroom she'd been dumped into upon her arrival. in the midst of her grief, ruby had become angry at everyone and everything, especially targeting her mothers new family. she wanted absolutely nothing to do with the camerons, despite being one herself by association.
