Ronan: To the Moon and Back

19. Rae Doesn't Like Sleeping Alone

TW

Rae has a secret. A small, not really important secret, but a secret all the same. When her house is dark and quite, when she gets home from a late night or double shift. When she comes back from the hospice after a long day, when her mother is still working and Kari is studying for upcoming exams and Liz is busy taking care of her four siblings. She hides it behind her smile, that mask she had crafted for years; Rae is lonely.

Not the kind of lonely where she constantly craves for attention or even for someone to love her in other ways her family and friends can't. She's just lonely when it's quite; which is more often than not. When the silence is so loud she can hear the buzzing of the stillness and her own blood pumping through her body. All she has are her thoughts. Her thoughts that swirl up a storm in her brain, dark clouds closing in on her. It's when the clouds close in on her (like that dark one that haunts her dreams) she begins to panic.

Panicking all alone takes her a while to come back to herself. No one there to gently hold her hands, to guide her. To softly instruct her to breath; inhale, hold for two, exhale, out for two. It leads her to her bed a night, lying wide awake just staring at the ceiling and the soft glow of the fairy light strung around the walls. She can put music on, the soft notes of piano and acoustic guitars, but on those nights when she feels it the most, all it does is keep her up more. 

Tossing and turning, and sitting up, throwing off the duvet and sheets, organizing her room and photos, just to lay back down. Eyes exhausted and tired, rubbed raw, yet still stares up at the ceiling. Staring for so long without blinking, the light around the corners of her eyes slowly fade into dark shadows. Creeping over her vision until all the light vanishes.

Maybe, just maybe that's why she can't sleep. After she blinks and realizes that the shadow was not of the Sandmans doing, but of her subconscious dreams seeping into her conscious state of mind. Some nights she doesn't want to fall asleep, for it brings her nightmare. Which has this fantastic habit of happening the night before a double shift. Her semi insomnia came whenever it felt like. The nights before a double shift, or an early morning visit to the Hospice to sit beside Ronan's during his eight hour chemo sessions. She just lies there until the sun breaks through the horizon and it's time for her to jump in the shower and get ready.

She hates it. She hates the way she feels so alone in those moments. How her chest clenches with spasms when her thoughts are just too much to handle by herself. Her nails scraping her skin while she tries to stop the pain. It's the silence, really. It all comes down to the absolute silence. She loathes it the most. She hates that empty feeling, almost like she was abandoned and she can't figure out why. Like how she felt after her father left. How she felt after her cousins death, coming home from the funeral with dry eyes, but a mauled chest under her dress. As if they took parts of her without caring about the hole it would leave behind. Sometimes her anxiety would flare and all she wants to do is reach out for someone, anyone. She finds herself actually doing so at times, before realizing no one was there, and her hand clutching at a pillow. No one is there, just the silence screaming in her ears.

Rae despises her secret.

Maybe that's why she is currently trying not to doze off on Harry. He has been telling her a story about his radio DJ friend as he is cooking her an early dinner. She had a horrible nights sleep beforehand, laying awake in bed, just over her flu with the sound of a lingering cough. Her sickness kept her up, despite constant care from Louis and spiked tea with whiskey.

Louis, after the fifth day of taking care of Rae, got a surprise visit from his girlfriend. Who apparently demanded that Harry let her in their flat, asking why Louis was out at such late hours. Which Niall, who was there at the time as well, countered with a "Why the bloody fuck are you here at such late hours? Was Starbucks close and you had nothing better to do?