#raeley

Raeley AU - Anatomy of the Heart

It's been a year since Rae's death. Riley thought she was long gone, but somehow Rae ends up at Riley's door. Alive.

[ooc: I'M AWAKE ALYSSA. I WAS WRITING THIS OK. I GOT STRUCK BY AN IDEA AND HAD TO PUT IT DOWN.]

Losing Rae was... she can't really describe it, not in words. Or images or anything, really. She expresses it with anger and apologies and taking weeks off of work after her girlfriend dies. She lashes out at Vivian because the redhead doesn't even flinch when she finds out, calls her a bunch of profane names and says a lot of things she wishes she could take back, but it doesn't seem as if Vivian really cares. Vivian doesn't care about a lot of things, she notices, and she starts wondering if that's what Rae saw. If that's what Rae finally began to see but kept hanging around. And, then comes the realization that there's so many things left, so many loose ends that her girlfriend hadn't tied up. Lyla comes to her door one night, taking off a chain around her neck. There's a ring on it - a wedding band that looks like it has a matching pair somewhere out in the world. She hands it to Riley and murmurs, "I- um, I went to her place to give this back to her family, but they- they said it belonged to you. They said s-she was going to use it t-to p-p-pro-propose." Riley doesn't know what to say; she and Lyla just sit on the couch for a few hours. Lyla looks off elsewhere a lot whenever Riley cries silently for a few minutes, but she can see that her friend's crying, too. She knows Rae and Lyla had been close, and she knows that quite a lot of people are feeling the loss, too.

It's all over her girlfriend's bedroom. All the writing and stuff. Riley had been scared that she'd lose Rae like she lost Billy, and when Sarah had shown up at her front door, she was afraid that had been the case because nothing else could be so urgent that Rae's cousin would hunt her address down when the two barely even carried an hour's worth of conversation in total. That hadn't been the case. It was a car accident, and the old Camaro Rae's Uncle Tyler had passed to her was completely unrecognizable in the pictures of the scene. There had been ice on the road, and she had lost control of the wheel, driven into a pole. Metal had wrapped around metal, something went off and created a miniature explosion. "Such a tragedy" was what Riley heard a lot, but that was a fucking lie. She thinks it wasn't a tragedy. It was a catastrophe, an apocalypse. Her world without Rae - that didn't exist, at all. And, suddenly, it did. She hates it.

Riley wears Rae's chain around her neck, wears the ring she made her for Christmas around her finger. She talks to Sarah and finds out that Rae had another matching band made - one specifically for her. She wears that one on her opposite hand, and it's like she's carrying a piece of her broken heart everywhere she goes. It's a heavy weight on her shoulders, dragging her down, but she likes the weight. She doesn't want to let go. As the months pass, she talks to Sarah and her husband a bit more, even though she wasn't too close with them before. There's something about death of a mutual loved one that brings strangers closer together, maybe. And she talks to her own family, calls them, visits them for her first Christmas without Rae. She ends up on the back porch, curled up and crying. It hurts so much, and she can't make it stop.

What's worse is Rae's room. It hadn't been a suicide, but it could've been. She pieces together the puzzle along with Sarah right after Rae's death. There's writing all over the room in Sharpie, on the walls and the ceiling. All the posters and pictures and the bookshelf are down to make the wall unobscured. They're letters, some to people Rae hadn't even been too particularly close to like Sophia or even Kayden. And then to all these family members Riley's never heard of and some she has - an Eli who went through a divorce and whom Rae wants to "Keep your head on straight, okay? You'll find someone just right for you soon," and Adam who she wants to "listen to your parents, stay in school, don't do drugs, don't drink. Don't give them a hard time." and then there's a long one to her Mom and Dad that literally takes up all the three walls of the bathroom that are covered with paint and not shower tiles. That one makes Riley hurt, so she stops reading after the first wall. It just gets sadder after that. There's anger somewhere in the whole mess of Sharpie, but it's a sort of self-anger. Riley keeps seeing the same phrases over and over. "I shouldn't have been stupid and kept it in." "I've been so fucking stupid." She sees these degrading phrases - homophobic slurs and anti-post-human slang and mean labels for mental disorders - that Rae uses to refer to herself, and Riley wants to take cleaning supplies and rub them off the wall. She wants her girlfriend to not think like that because if nobody else will, then she'll tell Rae that she's perfect and beautiful and lovely and intelligent and amazing and maybe that'll bring her back.

What's worst is the letter on the ceiling. Riley doesn't know how Rae managed to get it all up there, but she has to lie on her bed to read it and that hurts enough. The sheets still smell like her girlfriend, the pillows like her fruity shampoo. Even after dozens of washes, she's still there. And forever in the room.

It's one whole letter on the ceiling. Riley tries to focus on the words, but she just cries after a few seconds. The process repeats until Sarah comes in, offers her a cup of tea, and tells her to go home. Get some rest. She can't. But she does so, anyway, and comes back the next day and every day after that. She still can't read the letter; it's sad and heartbreaking and she just can't.

Riley helps Sarah clean out Rae's room - they really just put all of her stuff into storage. She keeps a few items, and Sarah gives her full access, just in case she ever needs to just dwell on some things. They don't paint over the walls or the ceiling. Just keep it the way it is because it's the last thing left, even if it's a sad thing.

It wasn't a suicide, but Riley knows it could've been one. That day, probably. The day Rae died was probably going to be it since Sarah recalls to her that Rae spent the whole morning and afternoon in her room and popped out around eleven in the morning and came back with a pack of more Sharpies. It wasn't, but it could've been. And she knows that she'd feel this way either way - empty. Confused. Lost.

Six months pass. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Then, eleven. And, then, a year.

She tries counseling but only ends up saying some more things she wishes she could take back.

It's been one year, two months, a week, and four days.

She thinks she hears a knock at the door and forces herself to get up and open it.

At first, Riley doesn't even recognize her because it's been so long, but she knows those clothes. That baggy turquoise hoodie with the drawstrings neatly evened out, the broken wristwatch, the running sneakers in terrible condition. The slouch against the doorframe that's so ever casual, a small grin like there's some joke she gets but everyone else doesn't, the long, flowing strawberry blonde hair. Hazel eyes that she has dreams and nightmares about every sleep cycle.

Riley drops whatever she was holding, but she's not even sure what that was since her mind's a bit preoccupied.

"Sorry I'm late. The people upstairs weren't cool with me visiting you too early - said you'd develop some dependence issues or something bull like that."

Riley thinks those 'people upstairs' were right.

Disclaimer: I know little about how the supernaturals are in the Being Human US universe and so I went on their wiki and some of my questions were left unanswered, like are the vampire's cold, do they have heartbeats? Do they sparkle? So just keep in mind this is an AU.

-

Riley and her pack frequented a bar not far from her place. They would have a couple of drinks and would then move onto the pool table and play a couple games. Sometimes they'd get a little rough with each other, something that they further settled during a full moon. It was never anything too deadly, just some rough-housing to show the other who's boss. No one would dare mess with the leader of the pack, but rarely was there a time where his position actually mattered. As they had their nightly round of pool, the bar was busier than usual, Riley picked up on various scents, but all of them were in the back of her mind as she focused on hitting the cue ball. She was so intent and was sure she was going to hit it when a scent assaulted her nose and she missed. The pack laughed, but Riley had already turned her attention to that smell. She looked up and attempted to find the source, which was difficult since the area was crowded. She slightly backed away from her pack, now focused on finding who that smell belonged to. It was like nothing she smelled before. She wanted nothing more than to follow that scent, but her pack was calling for her attention and she turned to them, slightly annoyed that they would bother her. Was it her turn already?

"Look who's at the bar-top. Never seen her before." One of them said.

Riley turned to look, somewhat uninterested, but once she saw strawberry blonde hair glitter in the dim light at the bar, she picked up her head and wondered if that was who the smell belonged to. It didn't take much egging from her pack for Riley to go up and talk to her. As she neared the smell got stronger and Riley was sure it belonged to her. She sat on the stool next to the other woman, who wasn't paying any attention to her.

"Can I buy you a drink?" Riley asked with a smirk, even though the other girl had yet to look at her. She then turned away from Riley and told her to leave her alone.

"I'm not interested."

Riley tried a couple more times, but the girl never even looked at her through it all. She was all for playing hard to get, but she understood when the person completely wasn't interested. She was also a bit rude. Without a word, she left and went back to her friends who laughed at her for being rejected. She rolled her eyes at them, letting them laugh it up.

-

The following nights Riley noticed she kept coming in and she wanted to go up and introduce herself again. Every time she entered the bar, Riley's attention went to her and her skill in pool dropped. The pack told her to just forget about her, especially their alpha. If Riley wasn't so interested in the girl at the bar she might have noticed just how serious her alpha was when he told her to forget about it.

Nonetheless, after a while, Riley did decide to drop it, her attention slowly going back to her friends and pool. She still had her thoughts on the other girl, but they weren't as dominant as before. However, one night when Riley was playing pool and believed to be invested and focused on the game, the stranger came up to her and just like that any focus on anything besides her was shattered.

"I'm still waiting on that drink."

Riley was quick to drop the game and headed back to the bar to buy her a drink. She found out that her name was Rae, but she didn't speak much about herself. She was the one who had Riley do the talking. Even then, they didn't do much talking. Within a half hour Riley had her pinned against the bathroom wall. Little did she know what the vampire had in store for her. Riley was naive when it came to supernatural beings. She knew others existed, but had been sheltered for almost her whole life and only met her own kind. Being the only pure-breed in her pack, she was able to smell something in Rae, but she didn't know what that was. However her alpha had come across vampires before and didn't trust the other woman, which was rightly so.

She wanted to rip this dog to shred while she was still in human form. She smelled them the moment she walked in that first day. When Riley came up to her she thought she was teasing her and trying to get the vampire to lower her guard, however as she frequented the bar she realized the werewolf didn't know anything at all. She thought she was the perfect victim. All... all she had to do... she had... If there was one good thing the mutt was, she was talented. Rae couldn't think, much less act at the moment. But as Riley's hand turned south, she stopped her right in her tracks.

"Not here."

Riley obeyed and instead took her to her apartment, which when entering, she slightly regretted. It was a mess and she was embarrassed to bring Rae to it. It wasn't really her apartment in the first place. "My friend rents it out for me, I pay 'im whenever I can." By her friend, she meant her alpha. Her embarrassment was cut off when Rae kissed her, bringing them back to where they left off. What better place to leave her dead then at her apartment? However, Rae wasn't going to deny herself or the dog to any last pleasures. Not that Riley would be great in bed, but she was sure she could make Rae feel something. Besides, she figured the mutt would tire out, making the killing even easier.

Rae expected it to start of slow, but slow wasn't in Riley vocabulary when it came to this. All she knew was that she wanted Rae, all of her. Even as Riley's heartbeat pounded in Rae's ears, which would usually trigger her blood lust, she could smell the toxicity in her blood. She knew just one drop would kill her. As they went at it Riley's breath started to come in short pants, she became red in the face and a layer of sweat coated her body. Rae asked if she was tired, her voice slightly panting, but not as much as Riley was. She shook her head defiantly and managed to pull Rae under her.

And so, it started all over again. In the next set of rounds Rae paid attention to Riley's heartbeat. It was beating rapidly, that was for sure. It sounded like it would pop right out of her chest. It was incessant and loud. Pretty soon all she heard was that steady rhythm. Even though Riley was tired, her heartbeat pounded and she kept going. It was annoying at first, but then Rae started to love the sound of her heartbeat. She fell in love with the strength of the heart inside of Riley. She looked up at Riley with a new set of eyes.