JOHN B ROUTLEDGE ( voiceover ) : 

that's my sister LUCKY! or jolene, if just happen to live across the hall from her, like myself

we call her lucky, 'cause well, she's lucky. she could tumble out of a car moving a hundred miles an hour and come out skipping. when we were six she fell right off our roof and somehow managed to not break a single bone

the nickname caught on a lot more when she started doing crazy flips off boats and stupidly dangerous odd jobs around town, like diving under the docks to snag crabs with her bare hands for guys too cheap to buy an actual trap 

the name caught on so much i'm pretty sure only about three to four people on the whole island actually know her name. jj's convinced its some really embarrassing like 'latrina' or 'belladonna', and kie tries to come up with some new, widely obscure, basically every day. of course i'm the lucky bastard who actually gets to know, which means i'm the one who gets railed with every possible question about it when people get sick of just asking lucky to her face

you need someone to do something just a little bit illegal and way too dangerous for the average human, lucky's your girl

she's my only family left on this earth who hasn't vanished into thin air or is too busy fucking off into the sunset to care to check up on us. she's my little sister, she's my everything

                           JOHN B ROUTLEDGE ( voiceover ) : 

and there's jasmine cameron, JAZZY, if you wanna keep all ten of your fingers. she's the odder half of kook princess duo, sarah's irish twin, or the 'evil' one if you ask topper

she's a pouge among kooks, if that makes sense. she's an oddball, a loose cannon, sometimes she's even crazier than jj, which is a damn near impossible feat. pope and i once saw her flying a kite during the middle of this crazy storm, laughing her ass of as the beach flood up to her knees

she's the outer banks' resident storm chaser. crazy weather? jazzy's probably out in her treehouse or competing with the pouges on who can surf the mile high waves better. legend tells she's been struck by lightning twelve times, give or take

jazzy's pretty much the only kook on the whole island the pogues respect, probably 'cause we're all just a little bit scared of her. the first real conversation i had with her was when we were thirteen and she elbowed jj in the face so hard she broke his nose after he tried to hit on her

                           JOHN B ROUTLEDGE ( voiceover ) : 

and that is one of my best friends in the whole world, VALERIE

she's been my best friend since the summer before third grade, when rafe cameron stuck gum her hair in the parking lot behind kie's restaurant. jj kicked him in the nuts and pope and i spent the rest of the afternoon trying to cut it out of her hair

val's probably one of the smartest people on the island, not like pope smart, like math and science and shit, but in a life or death situation, the first person i'd turn to would be her. she's been running this very sweet, just a little bit illegal, gig since like freshman year of high school, running all these definitely not licensed but very much worth it tours of basically everything imaginable across the obx

her mother's not the fondest of her daughter's not so legal pastime, but she also had val when she was like sixteen, and spends about eighty percent of the time sucking up to every 'hot', 'single', kook dad in the area, so she's not really one to talk

a lot of people think we're dating, but i'm pretty sure a little of val dies inside every time someone asks. mostly because she's probably the biggest lesbo in the outer banks, that and fact that she's  been in love with jazzy cameron since we were like twelve

the routledge siblings have nothing but the tight sibling bond they share. they have no money, they have no parents to look after them, they're on the verge of losing their house and being tossed into foster care, they've only got each other.

the cameron siblings have everything but a shared sibling bond. they have the world at their fingertips, a big house, friends who grovel at their feet like they're god, and more money than anyone needs, but any semblance of love that might've existed between them vanishes along with their mother.

rafe blames sunny, he blames her and her too red hair and freckled skin and her affair partner father. 'bastard child' he spits, he reminds of her of it every time he can, reminds that she's not a full sister, that she's not a real cameron, that she's a doll ward dresses up and tries to pass off as his own, even though everyone knows she's not his. rafe blames sunny for his inability to love his sisters, his real ones.

lucky blames her dad, she blames him for leaving, blames him for fighting with john b instead of properly saying goodbye, she blames him for choosing the worst time possible to sail out into the middle of ocean and never come back. she blames

him for her brother's overprotective big brother complex. she knows he loved john b more, and she knows it's because she looks too much like the woman who left him for the first man with a nicer car who breathed in direction, and she knows john b knew it too. he was bird and she lucky, he was the golden boy and she was the accident baby with her mother's eyes.

jazzy blames her father, blames him for never caring, for never being there, for seeing his children as trophies to be displayed and not living, breathing, people to be loved. she tried to pretend she didn't care, that she loves her family, loved being a cameron, even if she flipped every family photo with her in it every time down on it's face every time she passed it. she tried to pretend that she didn't notice the way her dad talked to her, like she was some kind of bad dog and not his daughter. she blames her father for tossing out every picture of their mother that ever existed the same day she died, not even an hour after they got home from the hospital. she blames him for handing off any responsibility of sunny to the person closest to him with a pulse and an ounce of dignity, like she was a piece of tupperware he'd borrowed at a potluck and not a member of the family, as illegitimate as she was.

sarah doesn't know who to blame, she doesn't blame her mom, she doesn't blame her dad, she doesn't blame rafe, she doesn't blame wheezie, she doesn't blame jazzy, and she definitely doesn't blame sunny. she doesn't blame her mom for sneaking off every other night when dad was away on business ( though, in her defence, rafe seemed to be the only one who was aware that was happening at the time ) she doesn't blame sunny and her bright red hair and her splay of freckles everyone and their grandmother knows isn't from ward or lydia. she doesn't blame jazzy for having to be a c section baby, for leaving their mother weak and tired and angry. she doesn't blame rafe for following in their mother's footsteps and trying to find the solution to almost all of his problems at the bottom of a bottle or inside a baggy of white powder. she doesn't blame her dad for being overprotective, even if she never seen him act the way he does with her with the rest of her siblings. she doesn't blame her family, as fucked up and broken as they are.

john b blames his mom, blames his mom for leaving, for hurting his dad, but mostly he blames her for giving lucky her eyes. john b isn't stupid, he see the way his dad looks at lucky, like he's a wounded animal and she's the one who shot him. he knows it's because lucky's eyes are the same striking blue their dad fell in love with all those years ago, he knows it because he's not sure he's ever seen their dad look lucky straight in the eye when he talks to her, it's always just above her head, down at his shoes or hands, or sometimes with his back facing her. lucky says it's fine, says she doesn't even notice it, but he knows it does, he says the way her eyes get glassy, how her gaze casts downward, how her hands clench into fists so tight her knuckles lose all colour. he sees the way lucky shrinks around him, like she becomes a shell of herself, a tiny, hollow, shell.

sunny doesn't blame her mom, and she doesn't blame her dad, even if he never looks at her, even if he ignored her, even if kept her upstairs every time people came over, even if rafe went on and on to him about how she 'wasn't really his kid' and how 'she's not family, she's not out responsibility'. she doesn't blame her dad, or at least she pretends she doesn't, she pretends that rafe's snide comments or the odd looks her dad's country club friends gave her didn't get to her, pretends that that the unknown identity of her real daddy dearest didn't haunt her late at night when she wanders into the bathroom and catches a glimpse in her own expression in the mirror, her pale skin, her dark freckles, everything that makes her distinctively not a cameron, everything that makes her a half sister and not a full one, everything that makes her lydia's last big 'fuck you' to her unloving, absent husband instead of just a normal six year old.

the cameron's have everything but love, and the routledges have nothing but it, and in the end the only thing they share is their inability to blame all of their problems on anyone but themselves.

that's what draws them together, that's rusted chain lodged deep in the chests of lucky routledge and sarah cameron, pulling them ever closer together no matter how much they fight and pull to stay apart. 

it's what will kill them all in the end, every last cameron and routledge, every last pouge rebel and kook princess, until there is nothing left but an ocean of warm, crimson blood, until's its impossible to tell what was once a cameron and what was once a routledge. until it's impossible to tell who was family and who was foe, who loved their siblings and who cared about no one but themselves. 

emily rudd  ✷  jolene  ' LUCKY '  routledge

luckiest motherfucker alive

ella purnell  ✷  jasmine  ' JAZZY '  cameron

storm chaser

courtney eaton ✷ valerie delaney

tourist trapper

madelyn cline  ✷  sarah cameron

kook princess

olivia cooke  ✷  natalie routledge

gone with the wind

lindsay lohan ✷ sunny cameron

nobody's daughter

florence pugh ✷ cassidy limbrey

the bloodhound

&&.

y ! simone kessell  rory delaney

joe keery                     tommy fester

cameron richardson   lydia cameron†

amy adams                      mother dearest

madelyn cline             sarah cameron

drew starkey                rafe cameron

chase stokes                   john b routledge

charles esten                ward cameron

charles halford                    big john routledge

elizabeth mitchell        carla limbrey

& the rest of the outer banks cast, as themselves

authors note.

ladies and gentlemen, welcome to heaven's on fire! named after the kiss song cause i'm actually a sucker for old dad rock and so is jazzy cameron!! something about this fic and just outer banks in general has been infecting my brain for weeks now ( which is insane ) like i don't usually like teen dramas like obx ( i love sabrina spellman but i actually can't stand the writing in caos sometimes ) but something about this silly billy boat show has me in the worst chokehold possible

the cameron and the routledge siblings have taken over my brain!! the parallels between john b and lucky and the camerons are insane!! valerie is also there and even if i don't mention her in the intro she's actually the biggest goober there is! her and jazzy are just silly codependent, clingy little guys and i need them to be put back into the microwave together!! i promise she's just as important, i just really wanted to compare the two families! 

i love the twisted dynamic the cameron sisters have!! if you know anything about me you know that older sister & little sister dynamics in any media are like heroin to me! sunny's a product of one of mama cameron's many, many affairs, and she dies during childbirth which only adds more salt into the wound because literally everyone knows she is definitely not ward's kid. she's literally just a baby! but she has to grow up so fast because her 'dad' and brother hate her guts despite the fact that she's literally like six! 'i was so young when i behaved twenty five'

lucky and sarah have this incredibly homoerotic one sided enemies to lovers type shit going on and their stupid slowburn makes me wanna kill myself! god you dumbsses just kiss already!! lucky sort of replaces john b in a lot of the narrative, like he's still on the boat with ward but she's the one running from the law with sarah. 

natalie and cassidy are also making out and having messy feelings this whole time, but it's very important to me that you know that almost nothing about their relationship is healthy. cassidy isn't a very good person by any means and even if she loves natalie in her own twisted sense their relationship should not be romanticized in any way and that's not what i'm trying to do, i just love toxic yuri guys it's like crystal meth ( also her, natalie, and sunny have their own little b plots in the future that i am beyond hype for )

finally writing this fic and where a lot of my motivation for writing this comes from this absolutely phenomenal piece cranewivesof literature that is better than shakespeare itself, june gloom by cranewives! if you want to read something amazing i would definitely recommend it because i'm in love with literally everything about it!

trigger warnings.

this fic will contain swearing, violence, substance abuse, cheating, mommy issues, daddy issues, verbal && physical abuse, possible sexual content, mild homophobia, and typical outer banks shenanigans

dedications.

thank you so much for taking interest!

cranewives S0NGBAIRDS invisiblestringed -venusflytrap ewwiee  taysprophecy lynnsbows bxrn-b00k -messageinabottle cupidsangelwp

have fun reading!!