Chapter Text
The green numbers on her microwave clock flashed 07:45. Carmilla groaned. She wouldn’t be awake this early if she actually slept in her bed. But she didn’t do that because she gallantly offered it to Laura. Even if it was a queen bed, and even if both of them were small enough to fit in it without touching. She stretched as much as she could on her two-seater couch and her back muscles protested. Surely, this was a warning against chivalrous behaviour.
Carmilla sat up, getting a nice view of her big, comfortable bed. Laura was lying on her side, sound asleep, covers to her chin, and her face nuzzled into one of Carmilla’s pillows. God, she was cute. A dork, but cute… wait. Did Carmilla just admit that to herself?
She went to the bathroom to pee and rinse her face. She did a double take when she saw her makeup-free face in the mirror. Right, Laura had reminded her to take it off before she went to bed. Carmilla walked over to her fridge and checked what she had for breakfast. She began to pull ingredients out of her pantry when she heard the rustle of sheets.
“Morning,” Laura said groggily.
Carmilla looked at her. “Morning,” she said. She tried not to notice that Laura was adorable with her hair falling in all directions over her face. It made her want to go over there and gently stroke it back into place. “I hope you like oatmeal.”
“I like anything as long as there’s a lot of sugar in it,” Laura said. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like shit.” Her words were punctuated by the sound of oatmeal being poured into a pot.
“You have a big bed,” Laura said. “Why didn’t you just sleep next to me?”
“I was trying to be a gentlewoman,” Carmilla said. “I didn’t want you to suspect me of coming onto you or anything.”
“Hey, I believed you the first time when you told me that you didn’t have any—what was it that you said?” Laura narrowed her eyes as she tried to remember. “‘Untoward intentions.’” She chuckled.
Carmilla filled the pot with water and set it on the stove. She turned the heat on. “Gentlewoman,” she repeated.
“That couch looks like hell. I wouldn’t have minded if we had slept in the same bed if I had known that you were going to be uncomfortable,” Laura said.
“I’ll make sure to remember that for next time then.” Carmilla didn’t know how, or why, that slipped out, but Laura’s reaction made her immediately regret it. But before Laura could start sputtering, she made a show of putting the kettle on. “Do you want anything to drink? I’m dying for a cup of coffee right now.”
“Uh, do you have any hot chocolate?” Laura asked. “Or tea, tea’s fine. I avoid coffee. It makes me jittery.”
Carmilla raised an eyebrow. “You mean more than you already are?” She watched Laura squirm for a second before she reached into her pantry for her hot chocolate mix. “You’re in luck, buttercup. I only have soy milk though. My stomach goes funny with the real deal.”
“Yeah, that’s okay,” Laura said. “Need any help?” She started to get up and out of bed.
That was when Carmilla remembered that she had lent Laura some of her clothes last night: a threadbare SilasU philosophy department t-shirt from her third year, in the university’s crimson, and a pair of grey sweatpants. It really did not help with her attempts to resist her newfound attraction. “No, no, I’m all good,” she said. “Why don’t you sit at the table and wait until I have everything ready? I’ll give you the wifi password.”
But Laura was standing next to her now. “By the way, thanks for letting me crash here, Carm,” she said. “We had way too much fun last night.”
Carm? The way Laura said it caused a fluttering in her stomach. Jesus, she didn’t remember feeling this way last night. She needed to get herself together. “What do you mean ‘too much fun’? That was pretty tame by my standards,” Carmilla said. “But you’re welcome. And you’re welcome to crash here anytime.”
“I somehow doubt that,” Laura said wryly. "What if you're, you know, occupied?"
“Contrary to popular belief, I am not that much of a lady killer.”
Laura laughed. “I didn’t say anything like that. But why are you so defensive?”
Carmilla busied herself with fixing Laura her hot chocolate. She poured in a little soy milk and gave it a final stir before handing the mug to Laura. She ignored the sparks that set her brain off as their fingers brushed. “Sit down, shut your face, and drink your hot chocolate.”
While Carmilla was serving up the bowls of oatmeal, Laura took the chance to look around the studio apartment. It was tidier than she expected, and sparsely furnished. Nothing hung on the walls; the small bookcase and the window ledge were free of ornaments. She got the sense that Carmilla didn’t spend too much time here.
“This is a nice place,” she commented as Carmilla placed a bowl of oatmeal in front of her.
“Yeah, it’s sufficient.” Carmilla sat down across from her and spooned sugar into her bowl before pushing the jar of sugar towards Laura.
Laura stirred the sugar into her oatmeal and then blew into her first spoonful before putting it in her mouth. “So,” she said, after swallowing, “Will’s your brother, huh?” Carmilla’s eyes flicked upwards curiously, and Laura explained: “He and Kirsch are friends.”
“Didn’t you mean bros?” Carmilla teased. “But yes, Will is my brother. Half-brother.”
“Did you grow up together?”
“Yeah,” Carmilla said. “Torturing him was a lot of fun.”
“Ah, so he was the one you practiced on, then?” Laura tried to imagine a little version of Carmilla being as sarcastic and insufferable as the one sitting in front of her often was. “Poor kid.”
“Oh, he turned out fine.” Carmilla had a couple of spoonfuls of oatmeal before she spoke again. “How about you? I assume you’re an only child.”
“How do you know that?”
The smile on Carmilla’s face indicated to Laura that she was probably going to say something obnoxious. “You fell asleep smack dab in the middle of that queen bed, and I woke up and you were still in the middle. That tells me you’re not used to sharing.”
“So you’re a psychologist now?” Laura taunted, even if she recognised the truth in what Carmilla said. “I’ve always had my own room as a kid, so I never had to give up space on the bed. I mean, don’t you do the same thing?”
“Yeah, of course, but not so readily,” Carmilla said.
“That doesn’t prove anything though,” Laura responded.
“Okay then.” Carmilla stroked her chin thoughtfully. “What about your headstrong attitude? Your inability to compromise? The way your face bunches up whenever things don’t go your way? You were probably one of those children that people wished had siblings.”
“Excuse me!” Laura’s voice rose to a pitch too high for her liking. “I was known to be a delightful child!”
“Ah, so is that the truth coming out?” Carmilla was laughing, obviously enjoying herself, but not in the old way where she was motivated to drive Laura to her breaking point. “You are an only child!”
“Yes, I am,” Laura admitted. “But I like to think that my father socialised me properly.”
“I don’t think you can say that about any parent, ever,” Carmilla said. “But I do agree with you. Beyond the initial impression, I can see that he didn’t actually do a bad job.”
Laura frowned. “What are you trying to say, Carmilla?”
Carmilla laughed again, but this time, it was fuller, with no restraint. “Relax! It was a compliment.”
“It better be.” Laura glared at her in an attempt to make herself look threatening. But they both knew that it was ineffective, and so they ended up laughing together.
Carmilla let Laura clean up after breakfast because she repeatedly demanded, and Carmilla didn’t want to know what would happen if she didn’t let Laura get her way on this one. As Laura loaded the dishwasher, she remained seated at the table and surreptitiously checked the messages on her phone. None from jane-craig. She glanced at the time on the microwave. She was probably still asleep.
They got dressed and Carmilla walked Laura to the bus stop. As per the weather forecast, the chill had not subsided, but the sun was out, bathing their surroundings in picture-perfect lighting. From the stop, they could see the beginnings of the Saturday activities on campus. “Waffles and walks of shame,” Carmilla remarked.
“What if they really enjoyed their night?” Laura asked. “Would it still be the walk of shame?”
“I don’t know,” Carmilla shrugged. “I doubt there are fewer things more embarrassing than waking up naked in a stranger’s bed.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” Laura asked. And then she shook her head. “Don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to know.”
Carmilla snorted. “Not a lady killer, buttercup. I already told you that.”
The bus began approaching the stop. Laura turned to Carmilla. “I had a great time last night. Thanks for letting me stay at your place,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Carmilla said. It registered in her mind that Laura was smiling at her, the way she was smiling at Big Red that Sunday afternoon. Carmilla had trouble thinking of what to say next. Somebody should have warned her that being on the receiving end of Laura’s smile would feel like this. “So,” she finally managed, just as the bus pulled up, “are we going to start hating each other again?”
The doors of the bus hissed open. Laura’s smile had faded slightly. “I didn’t hate you,” she said softly, sincerely. She stepped on the bus and paid her fare. “See you around, Carm.”
“Yeah, see you.” The bus doors closed and it zoomed off onto the road. Carmilla watched as it got further and further away from where she stood. And she couldn’t believe it, but she was looking forward to getting her photocopying done next week.
She stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and made her way back to her apartment. Besides the neatly folded clothes on the corner of her bed, it was like Laura hadn’t even been there at all. She tossed them in the laundry basket as quickly as she could, fully aware that indulging too much in the process would imply that she enjoyed having Laura over more than she cared to admit.
Truth be told, Carmilla was a little confused. It was rare for her to be so out of touch with the direction her impulses were taking her. Something about Laura ignited a fire in her. While their interactions were rocky at best, she knew exactly where she stood. There was balance in the push and pull between them—but what did it mean?
She sat down on the couch and absently checked her phone. There was a message from jane-craig on Telegram: Hey, are we still on for brunch tomorrow?
For the first time in her life, Carmilla welcomed the distraction of setting up a social appointment. Sure. Meet you 11am outside the café?
The reply came instantaneously: Sounds good! See you then.
Carmilla’s excitement for meeting jane-craig felt more valid to her than whatever her deal was with Laura. After all, they had been talking for a number of weeks, and although she was a philosophy newbie, she was eager to learn and they had many invigorating discussions. It was natural for Carmilla to want to know more about this stranger. And the one thing she learned from spending last night with Laura was that it was about time for her to take that chance.
A wave of exhaustion came upon her, and she remembered how much her muscles were aching. She took a hot shower, and afterwards, promptly collapsed facedown on her bed. She tried to ignore how much it smelled like Laura.
It was still early when Laura arrived on campus, so she killed time by walking around. She enjoyed the cool breeze on her face and the crunching of leaves underneath her boots. She watched as people crossed the quads, the grass they were walking on covered in frost. She listened to the sounds coming from the cafeteria: the clink of cutleries against plates and the dull thud of footsteps on carpeted floors. It was another beautiful day.
Eventually, Laura walked over to the café at the School of Humanities, ten minutes before she was due to meet foucaultofyou. She peered inside. The line to the counter was getting long, and almost all of the tables were occupied. Laura swallowed nervously. Maybe they could just move somewhere less packed.
“Laura?”
Laura sought out the direction of the voice. At one of the outside tables sat Carmilla, reading a newspaper. She was wearing sunglasses, but Laura could tell, oddly enough, that her smile reached her eyes. “Carmilla, hey,” she said. “What brings you here?”
“They have good brunch,” Carmilla said. She stretched out a leg—she was wearing purple jeans—and nudged the empty chair next to her with her foot. “Come sit.”
“All right.” Laura obliged. “But I can’t stay. I’m just waiting for someone.” She noticed that Carmilla only had a cup of black tea in front of her. “What did you order?”
“Nothing yet.” Carmilla glanced at the time on her phone screen. “I’m waiting for someone, too. I’m not that hungry anyway. Anyway, you got home okay yesterday?”
“Well, clearly,” Laura said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, great, that’s excellent,” Carmilla said.
Laura noted that in any of their conversations, Carmilla had never uttered so many redundant words in succession before. She looked at the cup of tea again. It had hardly been touched. The newspaper? It was open to the business section, which Laura distinctly remembered Carmilla ranting about on the rooftop on Friday night. She realised that Carmilla was anxious about something. “Are you meeting your thesis supervisor?”
“Huh?” Carmilla frowned. “No?”
“You just seem a bit on edge, that’s all.”
“Keen powers of observation, Lois Lane,” Carmilla said wryly. She bit her lip. “But no, I’m not meeting my supervisor. I’m meeting a girl. Kind of.”
“Kind of meeting her or kind of a girl?”
Carmilla sighed. She was probably rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses. “The former.”
A slightly unpleasant sensation tugged at the back of Laura’s mind. For all her teasing about Carmilla’s way with women, a part of her didn’t actually want it to be true. Not after the other night. “Awesome!” she said, with the requisite enthusiasm. “So, like a date?”
“Not a date. But, she’s a bit a different than a friend,” Carmilla replied. “Hence the ‘kind of.’” She was shaking her head. “You know what? Let’s change the subject. Who are you meeting here today? Big Red?”
“Danny isn’t my only friend, you know.”
“Okay,” Carmilla said. “The Smaller Reds, then.”
“No!” Laura said. “It’s not any of them. It’s someone I asked for help on this thing for class. Speaking of which,” she took her phone out of her jacket pocket to check the time, “she should be here real soon. Hang on, I’ll check where she's at.” She keyed in a brief message to foucaultofyou, pressed send, and placed the phone down on the table.
And then Carmilla’s phone beeped.
They looked at each other with wide eyes.
Carmilla gingerly picked her phone up. Her jaw tightened as the read the message. She took her sunglasses off and stared hard at Laura. “Um,” she said after a moment, “workswithpens? jane-craig?”
Laura’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. “You’re foucaultofyou?”
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Holy shit!
Carmilla didn’t know whether to smash her cup of tea on the ground, run away, or grab Laura by the lapels of her jacket and kiss her like she wanted to several times over the course of Friday night. And Saturday morning. She snapped herself out of it. This was the absolute wrong time to think about kissing Laura.
She watched as different emotions flitted across Laura’s face, ranging from shock, to something she can’t quite discern, and eventually, to panic. “Well, this is weird,” she said.
“Weird? Of all the words you can think of, the first one that comes to you is weird?” Laura sputtered. “Of course! You’re a snarky, cynical philosophy grad student with a tendency to flirt. How did I not this work this out sooner?”
“Hey.” Carmilla straightened up. “That is a less specific description than overly cheerful, Habermas-hating nerd obsessed with Rachel Maddow.”
“We didn’t even talk about Rachel Maddow during the party!”
“You waxed lyrically about how you wanted to verbally eviscerate Habermas on the off-chance that he comes to deliver a guest lecture at Silas,” Carmilla said. “Also, you’re a lesbian media studies major. Liking Rachel Maddow is a given.”
Laura’s eyes ran over her, still frantic, but Carmilla couldn’t help but like the attention. “Black hair, brown eyes…” she said. “Holy crap.”
Carmilla shrugged. “Told you that you couldn’t pick me out of a lineup,” she said.
“I can’t believe this –”
“Neither can I, cupcake.”
“Cupcake!” Laura exclaimed. “It was right in my face all along!”
“And you want to be a journalist,” Carmilla said.
“Well, you didn’t figure it out either!”
“I’m not the one who wants to be a journalist.” Carmilla was as surprised as Laura was, but poking fun at Laura’s reaction seemed like the right activity to suppress her fight or flight response while she digested this revelation.
Laura leaned back in her chair. She let out a long, loud exhale. “Sorry,” she sounded much calmer now, “I’m a bit overwhelmed.”
“Me too,” Carmilla admitted. “We knew each other all this time.”
“And hated each other,” Laura said.
“I never hated you, Laura.” Carmilla’s head started to spin. Printing Station Girl was jane-craig, the girl who helped her remember why she enjoyed philosophy. Printing Station Girl was also Laura, the girl she never expected would be the perfect companion for a cold Friday night under the stars.
And, as of five minutes ago, Laura was jane-craig.
And it made sense.
“Really?” Laura held her gaze, and that was when Carmilla noticed how the sunlight brought out the gold flecks in her hazel eyes.
“Really,” Carmilla said. She reached into her bag for her wallet. “I’ll get us something to eat and then we can have a look over your philosophy paper, okay? You like waffles, right?”
Laura perked up for the first time since she realised Carmilla was her internet philosophy tutor. “I love waffles.”
foucaultofyou really sold herself short when she described herself to Laura in one of their first conversations. “Nothing to write home about”? She looked like Carmilla!
Well, she happened to be Carmilla.
Laura couldn’t stop watching Carmilla as she pored over the draft of her philosophy paper. She had a pen in her mouth, which she would relinquish to her hand whenever she had to make an annotation. Laura was finishing off the last of her hot chocolate when Carmilla finally put the pen down on the table.
“So?” Laura asked.
“Looks good. I do have a couple of things written here, though,” Carmilla said. She flipped the paper around and pointed to a couple of paragraphs that were marked with blue ink. “Have another think about how you’ve arranged the argument in those two paragraphs there. I think you make a good point but you’ve got to build it up and develop it, you know? Not just spit out what you know. I mean, yeah, Locke will think that you’re clever and you know shit, but the point won’t stick. And it’s a good point, so it needs to stick.”
Laura nodded. “And the rest?”
“Honestly?” Carmilla smiled. “I’m impressed.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Laura said. “Even if you were a pain in the ass in real life.”
They continued talking over the next few hours. At first, it was just about Nietzsche, and Laura’s term paper, and eventually they started talking about the lack of women philosophers in the syllabus. In the middle of a segue into a discussion about the post Carmilla wrote on Machiavelli and hegemonic masculinity in Game of Thrones, Laura got up to buy more hot chocolate for the two of them. They easily picked up where they left off as soon as she returned.
Laura was somewhat endeared by the enthusiasm underneath Carmilla’s prickly façade. Carmilla knew an awful lot of things about an awful lot of things, and she delighted in being able to talk about them at length in a droll, reflexive manner. Of course, Laura should have known that already from her correspondence with Carmilla’s online alter-ego. The initial shock from realising the coincidence had subsided, and all Laura could think about was how this felt like a natural progression.
A glance at her phone told her that she had fifteen minutes before her shift. “Hey, Carm, I’ve gotta go to work soon,” she said. She reached for her term paper and placed it in her bag. “This has been –”
“A surprise?” Carmilla said.
“A pleasant one,” Laura emphasised. “Thanks so much for everything. Well, maybe not the constant testing of my temper at work, but you know… for everything else. The philosophy help, the party, the brunch. Jeez, this is weird, that I’m saying these things. I mean, this doesn’t happen every day.”
“It really doesn’t,” Carmilla said. She ducked her head—oh god, was she getting shy?—before saying, in a quieter voice, “Would you think I was silly if I said that I’m glad this happened?”
“Of course not,” Laura said. But when Carmilla glared at her, she corrected herself: “Oh, I’d think you were ridiculous. Get it together, Carmilla.”
“Good.” Carmilla put her sunglasses back on. It was obvious that she was trying to fight a smile. “I’ll walk you to the information commons.”
That caught Laura off guard. “You don’t have to.”
“I was planning to come by and annoy you anyway, you know, for old times’ sake,” Carmilla said. “I might as well make it one trip.”
They were standing now, adjusting jackets and slinging bags on their shoulders. Carmilla stepped forward but Laura stayed in place, and the space between them dramatically decreased.
“You want to relive the good old days already?” Laura asked. “That’s… efficient.”
“You don’t? But we had so much fun, cupcake,” Carmilla said.
Laura, too aware of how close Carmilla’s body was to hers, was thinking of things that would be so much more fun. She cleared her throat. “I don’t wanna be late.” She started walking, and Carmilla had to catch up to her. When they reached the entrance of the information commons, Laura stopped outside the doors, and Carmilla did too. “Are you coming in?” Laura asked her.
“Nah. I don’t want you to get sick of me.”
“I think we already passed that point weeks ago,” Laura said. “You made it very hard for me not to get sick of you.
“Ah,” Carmilla took a step towards her, “so that’s how you really feel.”
“W–well.” Laura breathed deeply and got a lungful of the scent of Carmilla’s shampoo. “I’ve managed to build up a sufficient level of tolerance.”
Carmilla was smirking now, fully aware of the effect she was having on Laura. “Does that tolerance extend to seeing more of me outside of that stuffy printing station?” she asked.
“Carmilla, are you asking me out?”
“Maybe.” At least she had the decency to look slightly embarrassed by her forthrightness.
“Then yes,” Laura felt a grin coming on, “I can deal with that.” She jerked her thumb towards the information commons door. “I really need to go to work. I’ll talk to you later?”
“One last thing,” Carmilla said.
“What?”
“Can I kiss you?”
Laura answered her by placing a hand on Carmilla’s arm, just above her elbow, and closing the distance between them. She pressed her lips to Carmilla’s. They were slightly chapped, yet soft, and still had hints of the two mugs of soy hot chocolate she had at brunch. Carmilla’s hand cupped her cheek, and their lips moved slowly against each other, before pulling away. “You have no idea how good it felt to do that,” Laura breathed. Then she noticed the uncharacteristically dopey look on Carmilla’s face, and she’d never admit it, but that made her proud. “Or maybe you do.”
“Oh, I do,” Carmilla said. She leaned in for another one. Quick, chaste, yet at the same time, a promise. She smiled at Laura and ran her thumb along Laura’s jawline. “I’ll talk to you later, cupcake.” She turned around and walked out the way they came in.
And for once, Laura didn’t mind the stupid nickname at all.