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When it’s all over, Laura is trembling like a leaf, about to shake to pieces with the shock of it the fight. And Carmilla is empty-eyed, holding the Blade of Hastur, coated in viscous black blood that makes her want to stand under a waterfall-strength shower for approximately ten years. Of course she struck the final blow, fueled by such hatefire for her mother and this ritual and this non-autonomous life force to be bait for innocent girls, fueled by years of mourning Ell and now a fierce protectiveness for Laura that gave her the incredible strength necessary. She feels it sap out of her limbs now, sending the sword clattering to the ground, exhausted eyes turning to the other girl.
Who is already looking at her, those big, sweet eyes full of tears, and Carmilla feels a surge of ineffable tenderness, staggering towards her. “I would…” she starts, stopping herself from taking the girl into her arms on account of the horrific goop she’s covered in.
“I don’t care.” Laura has other ideas—a little thing like disgusting monster blood is not going to stop her from lurching forward, the first sob racking her body as she folds herself into Carmilla’s arms. “I was so scared,” she gasps, burying her face in Carmilla’s neck. “I th-thought you were going to die, I thought I was going to die…I…I…”
“Ssh,” Carmilla comforts her, pressing her lips to Laura’s temple, trying to soothe her hiccupy crying. “Ssh, Laura, ssh, it’s all going to be okay.” She pulls back, gently takes Laura’s face in both her hands after wiping them as best she can on the one patch of her dress that’s not also soaked through with the awful substance. “It’s all over now. And we are going to go back to the room, and we are going to shower this hell liquid off, and it’s all going to be okay. We won’t leave the room for days.”
Laura sniffles, bringing one of her own shaking hands up to cup Carmilla’s, running her thumb across the back of the vampire’s pale, bruised knuckles. “Days?” she repeats.
“Days,” Carmilla confirms, and smiles at her, a real, sweet smile that has Laura mirroring it without really thinking about it.
“What are we gonna do?” she asks, and even with the exhaustion soaking her bones, the pure and unadulterated relief at having Laura alive and unscathed and unpossessed in front of her, Carmilla still manages to muster up a smirk.
“We’ll think of something,” she says, and she leans forward, kisses the girl on the forehead.
They walk back to the dormitory building together, hand in hand, looking like two absolute frights but not taking notice of anyone around them—they are of a singular mindset, to get back to safety, to their room where things make sense, where Carmilla has blood in the fridge and Laura has tea and cocoa to make, and there are books, and pillows, and blankets. When they finally get there, Carmilla locks the door behind them, which Laura is grateful for. She really isn’t in the mood for Perry’s fussing tonight, and Carmilla knows this.
“You shower first,” says Carmilla, ceding that privilege to the other girl even though she’s got much more monster goop on her, perhaps a remnant of the gentlewoman’s grace she’d once been taught, perhaps just because she’s always going to put Laura first between the two of them. For more…sentimental reasons.
“What are you, crazy?” Laura is not so accepting of this chivalry, largely because Carmilla is literally dripping black onto the hardwood floor and is looking so miserable that it’s the only thing she can say. “You go first. I’ll just ruin a towel or something, throw these clothes away. I don’t think there’s any hope for them. Yours are already black, so…I don’t know. Anyway, shower.”
“Ugh,” murmurs the vampire, and carefully picks her way across the room and into the bathroom, shedding bloodied dress, socks, and shoes as she goes, dropping them squarely into the trash can. Once she’s standing on the tile floor, she pokes her head back out. “You know, you could join me,” she offers, and then proceeds to shedding her bra and underwear, binning those too before reaching out to turn on the water.
Laura stands speechless between the beds for a long moment, reeling from the offer, which is mostly made out of convenience, but there are undertones that she can’t deny. She’s not sure if a traditional reaction to narrowly escaping a messy death by an ancient evil alongside your vampire roommate who you’ve also been heavily flirting with throughout the entire affair…is to immediately get into a shower with the aforementioned vampire roommate. But then again, these past few months have turned everything Laura knows about tradition on its head, and right now, with the adrenaline rushing out of her and leaving her limp and exhausted and uncomfortable with the blood stickily drying on her skin…
By the time she steps through the bathroom door, she’s shed to her undergarments, though Carmilla’s already behind the shower curtain, thankfully rinsing the thorough dose of hell liquid off her pale skin. “Coming in,” she says, lingering self-consciously for only a moment before dropping the last of her clothes to the floor and joining Carmilla under the shower stream.
Carmilla isn’t ashamed about looking, one of her finely plucked eyebrows arching as Laura steps into the small space. “I’ll appreciate this properly,” she says, “once my hair is not matted.”
So it’s less romantic than it might have sounded at first proposition, because Carmilla’s swearing as she’s combing shampoo and conditioner through her dark hair, and Laura’s trying to help her but can’t stop sneaking looks at her lissome, unadorned body. At least at first. Because when finally Carmilla is satisfied with the lack of unnatural substances in her hair, they rotate positions and it’s Laura’s turn to stand under the full force of the stream. The vampire, now not worried about her hair being permanently dreadlocked by blood, runs her eyes up and down Laura’s body, her soft, concave stomach, her thighs and bare feet, the way her wet hair streams over her shoulders and breasts and makes her look like one of those Godiva mermaids.
“Stop looking at me like that, I’m going to burst into flames,” Laura murmurs, and Carmilla laughs. She’s too tired to get up to any real mischief, but she steps forward, relieving the other girl of the shampoo to gently wash her hair, combing long fingers through it, all the while bending to kiss at her shoulder, with closed mouth, no teeth, nothing but tenderness. Laura lets her.
When the shower’s done, both of them clean and soap-smelling and glad to be rid of monster goop, it’s a quick process to change into sleeping clothes, Carmilla into a t-shirt that comes to the tops of her thighs and underwear, Laura in flannel pants and a tank top. “Should I…” Laura gestures to her bed weakly, and Carmilla, who is towelling her hair dry with her head tilted to the side, snorts.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, throwing the towel in the general direction of the laundry hamper and then pulling back the corner of her own duvet.
“Good,” Laura says, relieved twofold—first, the horrid sights that they’ve seen today still running around her mind are essentially recipes for nightmares that she would love to keep at bay. And second of all, with all of this body possession and kidnapping and procuring of ancient and dangerous weapons, frantically writing term papers and doing readings, the two of them haven’t had time to have an honest freaking talk about what the hell they are. Just a waltz, a lot of almost-kisses, a mutual shower, and now this.
They curl up in bed together, facing each other in the darkness of the room. Outside the window, thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, briefly illuminating their faces to each other. Carmilla lays a hand on Laura’s cheek, stroking just under her eye with her thumb.
“It’s going to storm,” Laura comments in a whisper.
“It is,” Carmilla murmurs to her, and then they’re leaning towards each other, kissing as the first patter of rain falls outside the window, nestling into each other like they’re meant to be there. Carmilla’s still cupping her cheek, and Laura has an arm around Carmilla’s slim waist to pull her closer, and they stay like that for long minutes, exploring each other’s mouths. Carmilla traces her tongue along Laura’s bottom lip, and Laura takes Carmilla’s between her flat human teeth for a few seconds. It’s sweet, and gentle, and when they finally break apart, both of them are drifting off, exhausted from the events of the day.
“You’re so beautiful,” Carmilla murmurs to the girl in her arms, who hums, satisfied, and then tucks her head under Carmilla’s chin, nestling at the hollow of her throat.
They sleep for so long that it’s well into the afternoon when Laura stirs, opening her eyes and realizing exactly where she is, in a bed that’s not her own, using Carmilla’s modest bosom as a pillow, legs tangled up with hers. When she shifts, she wakes up the vampire, who flinches at the bright light from the lamp that Laura reaches up to turn on.
“Sorry,” the girl murmurs, and flicks it back off again. It’s still storming in full force outside the window, rain lashing against the window and thunder rumbling every so often. Definitely not a day to be outside. Definitely a day to stick to their promised activity of not leaving the room.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Carmilla says, with a sleepy sort of smile, and pulls Laura back down, greedily holding her closer, though can it really be defined as greed, Laura wonders, if she’s totally and completely willing?
“We should probably fill LaFontaine and Perry in on the adventure,” Laura says, but there’s no conviction in it, especially when Carmilla’s hand is stroking up and down her back, rubbing small circles in the skin through her tank top. This time, it’s she who initiates the kiss, and it evidently surprises Carmilla, who takes a second before she responds. When she does, though, it’s with great enthusiasm, pressing back against Laura, pulling her as close as possible. Face to face. Chest to chest. Everything to everything, in fact.
“How ridiculous would it be to spend the entire day making out with you?” Carmilla asks between breathless kisses, at the point where Laura’s ended up half on top of her, the duvet tangled around them.
Laura leans ever so slightly away, propping herself on her elbows and looking down at her with a sweet smile on her kiss-darkened lips, mischief in those eyes. “Well, LaFontaine and Perry can easily be texted, and it’s raining too hard to leave this building, so I would say that would be very low on the ridiculous meter. Besides, if I recall, you were the one that said we’ll think of something to occupy our time. Well, I’ve thought of something, and it just happens to involve a lot of…” Her hand comes up, gestures wildly to their general position, with her on top of Carmilla, between her bare legs, still tasting her on her mouth. “This.”
Carmilla laughs, her hands moving to grip at her waist, thumbs on the spikes of her hipbones. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
And with that, Laura leans back down, kissing Carmilla. It’s a very different kind of kiss than it had been that night, given that they’d been incredibly exhausted and more marveling at the fact that they’re alive to kiss each other than anything. Now, that novelty is wearing off, and Laura is feeling a whole lot like a college girl with raging hormones, and Carmilla is feeling a whole lot like she’s getting everything she’s ever wanted—freedom, happiness, this girl she’s grown so fond of…with some of those hormones thrown in, too. So they’re kissing, and it’s getting messier and messier as time goes on and the rain continues outside the window.
Carmilla plays with the hem of Laura’s tank top while the girl is kissing down her neck, playfully biting her (“You’re not the only vampire in this relationship!”). “This should come off sometime in the near future, if you’re agreeable,” she murmurs, into Laura’s ear, kissing the lobe a second after she finishes speaking. Laura is agreeable, and she pulls back enough to help Carmilla pull the shirt over her head, tossing it unceremoniously to the floor. They’ve pretty much thrown the duvet off of them at this point, though it hardly matters because they’re warming each other.
Gently, Carmilla turns them over, so that Laura is lying on her back on her bed. Carmilla’s dark hair splashes over her bare chest when she leans down to kiss her again, all the while letting the hand not supporting herself wander, sliding up Laura’s stomach, fingers dancing over each of her ribs, before she gets to her breasts. Carmilla is a tender lover, and it occurs to Laura right about the time that the vampire is moving down to ever so gently mouth at her chest that she’s had many, many years to practice. And about the time Carmilla’s straddling her hips, and Laura thinks she might faint as she feels the girl grind slightly against her, nothing but underwear and a t-shirt adorning her body.
“Are we going to…?” she asks, which prompts Carmilla to cease her motions, meet her eyes and tilt her head.
“If you want to,” she says. “I’m perfectly fine with just playing. Of course, I don’t mean to brag, but I am pretty good with my hands. And mouth.” A wink, and Laura’s even more flushed than she already was from the attentions that Carmilla has been dealing to her.
Laura bites her lip, feeling a flash of heat course through her body. Carmilla smirks like she can feel it. “I…I want to,” she concludes, as though her hungry eyes weren’t already telling of that, the way she can’t resist tilting her hips up against Carmilla’s. “But this is so unfair.”
“What’s so unfair, cupc—” the vampire starts, but Laura’s already leaning up and coaxing Carmilla’s shirt over her head, sitting up so that Carmilla’s in her lap now, the difference in height pretty much perfect for her to start giving exactly the type of long, hot, dragging kisses to her neck and chest that Carmilla had been administering to her. Carmilla’s skin is sensitive, and she can’t help but let out a little noise as Laura tongues at the hollow of her throat, a little clumsy but making up for it in enthusiasm, whereupon the girl looks up with a wicked smile.
“I have a feeling I’m going to love making you do that,” she says, and before Carmilla can respond, she’s kissing her again, with a purpose, slipping her tongue between her lips and opening her mouth to the vampire, who is ever so careful with her teeth, kissing Laura with the intensity that she wants with none of the added pain of lips snagging on sharp vampire fangs.
It’s a game of push and pull, give and take, ebb and flow until they’re struggling Laura’s pajama pants off her body and Carmilla’s kneeling between her legs, kissing down her stomach and taking the waistband of her underwear in her teeth and freaking tugging. “Good with your mouth, huh?” Laura’s gasping, and Carmilla looks up and gives her a sly wink before decimating the undergarment with a few choice nips.
“Hope you didn’t like those too much,” she says with a smirk, though she’s mostly focused on ridding the bed of the ripped pieces of fabric and kissing along the line of Laura’s inner thigh, the skin impossibly soft under her mouth and hands. Laura’s watching her, and Carmilla can feel her eyes on her, and okay maybe she’s showing off a little bit with the swirls of her tongue that are getting ever higher. “Tell me if you want me to stop, beautiful,” she breathes against her hip.
“There are literally zero things on this earth that could make me tell you to stop right now,” says Laura, combing a hand through Carmilla’s hair, getting it off her face. Her voice is breathless, and she’s teeming with desire like she’s never felt, and the vampire can sense it, through smell and the way her body tenses under Carmilla’s touch. She only regrets that she can’t see Laura’s face when tongues her way inside her, given that she’s pretty focused on the actual act of going down on her.
Carmilla has been in this position a fair amount of times throughout the centuries. When one is acting as bait and uses one’s good looks and feminine wiles to lure girls around, one tends to do her share of seducing. She knows how to please a woman. But something about this is different, and she knows what it is—it’s the fact that she loves the girl she’s with, wants to make this as good as possible for her just because. And the noises that Laura’s making, soft gasps, whispers of “Okay, okay, it should be illegal for something to feel that g—oh, God, Carm…”
She surfaces just long enough to smile, blowing her a kiss before she flicks her hair behind her shoulder and moves back down. Laura’s leaning up against the headboard, sitting half-up, her knees spread apart so that Carmilla can lie on her stomach between them. She varies her techniques, teasing, laying her tongue all the way inside her, stimulating her clitoris first with her tongue, and then with her thumb, leaving her entirely to move back up her body and kiss her, replacing her mouth with her hand, slipping two fingers easily inside her.
Laura’s gasping against her mouth, opening her legs wider, arching against her. “God, can you not be so good at everything?” she asks, annoyed and frazzled and absolutely wrecked.
“What would be the fun in that?” Carmilla murmurs to her, quirking a brow as she crooks her fingers, the heel of her hand at her clitoris. As fun as using her mouth on her is, she definitely appreciates being able to watch Laura’s face while she pleasures her. It’s so delightfully expressive, such that Carmilla can tell when she’s about to climax to the second, right before she shudders, groans Carmilla’s name and tenses around her fingers. The vampire coaxes her through it, waiting until she’s gotten through her aftershocks before finally withdrawing her hand from between her legs, making very deliberate eye contact as she delicately licks her fingers clean.
“I feel like you’re entirely too proud of yourself,” Laura grips when she remembers how to speak again, breathing heavily. “And I would comment more about that but I’m really not thinking all that clearly right now.”
Carmilla snickers, kisses her forehead lovingly, stroking her hair out of her face and smiling. “That was the goal,” she says, laying a hand over her stomach and feeling her breathing slow back to normal, listening to the raindrops patter on the window and the sidewalk outside.
“Okay, well, I don’t have the advantage of decades of practice, but…I feel like you should be getting something out of this encounter too,” Laura says, sitting up. Carmilla’s still wearing her black underwear, though they’re feeling pretty damn soaked through by this point, which of course makes Laura smug when she runs a hand up the dark-haired girl’s leg and realizes this.
“What can I say? You’re hot when you’re in the throes of passion,” Carmilla jokes. “Does things to a girl.”
“Clearly.” And Laura makes short work of relieving Carmilla of the offending garment, while the vampire watches in fascination. “You’d think no one had ever done this to you before,” she says, laughing.
Carmilla shrugs. “I mean. Most of the time I wasn’t doing it for me, so, there wasn’t a whole lot of reciprocation going on. This is kind of a novelty, actually—oh.” Unexpectedly, Laura’s slipped her fingers inside her, and Carmilla’s eyes go hazy for a second.
It becomes abundantly clear in the next several minutes that yes, what Laura lacks in experience she makes up for in enthusiasm, and it also further proves the idea that it’s not the skill of the person you’re with, it’s just the person you’re with that makes for sexual pleasure, because though Laura feels like she’s fumbling her way through this whole thing, hardly able to keep her mind on what she’s doing because she’s so focused on the new and powerful feeling of doing something like this to Carmilla, not to mention Carmilla herself. Aloofness might be her way most of the time, but when she’s fifteen seconds from orgasm, she’s reduced to a gasping, swearing mess, finally coming with her dark hair thrown across Laura’s yellow pillow, which mysteriously made its way over to this bed sometime the night before, and her back arched, Laura an inch away from her lips to kiss up her soft pants that puff from her lips when she’s spent.
“Storm’s still going strong,” Laura comments, while they’re laying together, naked and intimate.
“’Tis,” responds the vampire, with a playful smile. “We’re alive and the day’s shit. We’ve got all the time in the world, cutie.” And as Laura nestles into Carmilla’s arms more completely, she’s thinking that she feels happier right here than she has anywhere, before coming to Silas or in her time her. And as Carmilla lets her, she’s thinking much the same thing, only stretching centuries back, and back, and back.
The rain, they think, can last as long as it must.