A/N: Consider this attempt #1 at anything Carmilla-ish for Rilaya, I'll try again with a more Carmilla based version, non-time loop.
The first time Maya Hart lives through being murdered is not even close to the worst.
It's her seventeenth birthday and Riley takes her to a club so they can have their first real party experience (dark red lipstick and five inch heels promise they're legal and the bouncer lets them in with a happy birthday). A boy in a beanie with a sweater loose on him smiles at her from across the room but her grip on Riley's hand tightens.
A smile, crinkled eyes, and not even a whisper before her grip slackens and dies.
She's kissing him under dark and vibrant lights, just out of sight, lips over necks and teeth scraping collar bones, within ten minutes. He mutters that he loves her as he yanks the sweater over his head and she chuckles before she asks how old he really is. The answer is too young for her taste and she doesn't grind her hips into his.
Riley is talking to a boy too tall and with shoulders too broad for Maya but just right for Riley when she slips out of the crowds, there's giggling and a bubbly drink and hair twirling. Her teeth grit and she walks out of the club alone.
11:59 PM.
The night's dark stretches out before her eyes, the stars disappearing. She slams against the ground, crumpled and lifeless. The blood pools up before all of the world slips away, her neck burning.
She wakes with a start in her own bed with the window cracked open. There are no marks on her neck, no pounding from liquor in her head, no blood around her. She checks her phone.
It's her birthday. It's her fucking birthday.
"... It was a dream. You know it was a dream. You didn't die, nothing bit you, you would have said goodbye to Riley. You would always say goodbye to Riley, she's too important not to," she whispers, her nails marking her wrist.
She puts on a dress Shawn bought her and curls her hair. It looks just like in the dream. She inhales too sharply and changes the lipstick and eyeliner.
"Nothing. Happened."
And then it's almost midnight and she's dancing with Riley and a boy in a beanie is eye fucking her.
She doesn't waste her time with him. She doesn't leave Riley's side. Their hands sweat against each other under the lights and her hair is a mess and Riley's pressed up against her.
"I love you, peaches," is whispered under the buzz of music and dancing.
She smiles, her lips tight. "I love you too, honey."
They walk home with their shoes in hand and alcohol in their veins and their hands never letting go.
And then Riley is bleeding from her neck and twitching on the sidewalk. Maya never even looks to see the hungry eyes or the teeth. All she can do is scream and scream and scream until her phone says 12:00 AM.
He lunges and she never sees.
She wakes up screaming with ice cold sweat down her forehead. Riley is dead. No. Riley can't be dead.
And she isn't.
Maya's phone reads 7 AM on her birthday. Her mother is knocking on her bedroom door to ask if she's okay and Gammy is making birthday pancakes for her.
They go to the club again and Maya makes them leave at ten. There's no pool of blood and no ice cold body tonight.
Her eyes close heavily, almost thudding shut. She's sure tomorrow will come.
(And then it doesn't.)
They don't go to the club this time. Maya tells Riley they should save a club for when they're twenty-one and Riley agrees to pizza in lip gloss and sneakers.
Everything is fine and they're going home at nine for a sleepover.
They run out late, forgetting their promises to stay inside, and decide to get candy and Maya promises herself everything is going to be fine.
everythingisfineeverythingisfineeverythingisfineeverythingis —
Burning, red, black skies for miles, screaming. Riley screams as loudly as she can but it all fades to echoes and the pain in her neck consumes her.
It's 11:59 again and the pain stops in just a minute.
She fakes sick for an entire day and locks her bedroom door.
"No one is going to die," she promises herself, "no one will die and tomorrow will not be my birthday."
She counts floor boards in her room and checks her phone a thousand times until it's 11:57. She watches the numbers until they hit twelve, praying to whatever there is to pray to that it will be tomorrow.
It didn't work and she wants to cry and scream. It's the sixth day. Maybe she just needs to die for real and it'll all stop ...
Her phone rings. Riley. Sweet, sweet Riley who lights her on fire.
She can't kill herself to end this.
"Hi, Riles," she says, her throat cracking. It's a happy birthday phone call like every day before. Maya doesn't cry. She won't let herself cry.
She ends the day with a burning neck and blood all around her again.
She grips Riley's hand too tightly and kisses her hard on the mouth. The lines aren't blurred today, she knows, she's known for a long time.
"Riley Matthews, I love you, I love you so much and you need to know that," she whispers, "even if you don't love me like that, you need to know."
There are hands holding her face and then lips crashing down on hers. "Maya, I love you too," she breathes between the kisses, "but why the sudden confession?" That giggling slides between her ribs and kills her more than anything has since this began.
"I just need you to know it," she says, desperately.
They kiss like they've never kissed before, hungry and greedy with swollen lips.
Riley whispers all the places they're going to go when tomorrow comes and Maya cries because tomorrow hasn't been coming. She says it's because she's waited so long, since they were as small as she can remember.
She's murdered as Riley walks her home and the burning is stronger than before.
She grabs all the money she can and decides she has to get out. Maybe somewhere else has tomorrow tucked away and she just needs to find it.
"Run away with me," she pleads, willing Riley to remember their kisses.
"Maya, I can't just run away, you know that, I have to get into Yale, I have to think about the future, I can't just gamble everything like this. Neither can you," Riley shakes her head.
There's no pushing this further. She leaves with a kiss on the corner of Riley's mouth and is sitting in the airport two hours later.
She buys a plane ticket to California (the lady she buys it from tells her she's insanely lucky to get a hold of it) and tells herself that it will be tomorrow when she gets there.
It's one of the nights she doesn't die but she has to turn seventeen again when her eyes open.
She goes looking for it. Whatever that demon is that kills her. She walks the streets of New York to find it until her legs ache and she needs to eat.
That's when she finds it.
(There are fourty-eight missed calls and sixteen voicemails and over two hundred texts in her pocket — too many are from Riley.)
It is a him with dark skin and dark eyes and a smile more charming than she ever wants to see. She knows him without ever having seen his face and that scares her.
He smiles wider when he sees her.
"You," she breathes out, "you're what ..."
"Zay Babineaux, at least that's the current name," he says, holding out a hand. She slaps it away. "Want to know what I want with you, Ms. Hart?"
Her head is nodding before she can stop it.
"Well, you see, you were supposed to be my meal at first, but Mother decided you had potential to be one of us. Don't pout, sugar, it's a compliment, she thinks you deserve eternal life," he tells her.
"That doesn't explain the time loop I'm stuck in," she growls, "why is this happening? Why does your — your mother, want me to be ... "One of you," whatever that means."
Zay smiles wider and she can all his sharp, jagged teeth, "if you want the curse to stop, don't run away. Give in to it. Be one of us." His hand slips around her wrist loosely and she isn't sure if he's even offering a choice.
"One of what? Why does she want me? What the hell is this?"
He laughs. He fucking laughs at her. "You really haven't figured it out? Wow, I thought you were smarter than that."
Her fist is swinging to strike him and then it's not. He holds it, much, much tighter than the grip on her wrist. The bones are starting to crunch, ever so slightly when his other hand is on her mouth.
"A vampire, Maya. She wants you to be a vampire so you can lure boys to the sacrifice. Well, I thought that, until I saw you with that brunette," he chuckles, "she looked real sweet."
Blue eyes widen, the eyelids stretched. "Don't touch her, whatever you do, whoever you hurt, don't fucking touch Riley. Kill me, for all I care — I've already died six times now, but don't you dare touch her, or anyone else I love," she says through grit teeth with shaking eyes undermining her threat.
"I won't lay a hand on her," he promises, "if you give in. Sure, you'll outlive her and you'll never see her again, but at least she'll be safe from me. In fact, if you become one of us, Mother will make sure no one ever touches her. You love her, right? Well, Maya, love will have its sacrifices."
She's silent. Contemplating. An eternity without Riley, or an eternity with her that will end the same way, every time.
"We don't have all day, sugar. Actually, that's a lie. But make a choice now or watch her die for the rest of your life. Over. And over," Zay tells her, sighing. "I don't wanna be the bad guy, and neither do you, but orders are orders."
She says yes and 12:00 is followed by tomorrow.
"Do you miss her?"
"Who?"
"Maya."
"Farkle, we don't know anyone named Maya."
"Oh. Right."