Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Laura grabbed another cookie from the package sitting next to her on the couch without taking her gaze away from laptop. Tossing it in her mouth unceremoniously, she let out a groan of exasperation and double tapped the button on her mouse. She had spent the better part of the last three hours siphoning through her email and she was no closer to accomplishing her goal now, than she had been when she started. It was driving her nuts.
It was the same fruitless result as yesterday and the day before that, and day before that, and so on for the last two and half weeks. Ironically, when she first came up with the idea it had seemed so simple. Now she regretted even placing the damn ad in the first place. But, what choice did she have? It was too late to do anything about it now. She was almost out of time. Three weeks. She only had three weeks to make this work, or she was screwed.
It’s seven o’clock on a Friday night and should be out with her friends having a good time, not stuck in her apartment, scrolling through her email like life depended on it. But no, that would be to easy. It’s her own darn fault really. Why did she have to open her big mouth? One small little lie, hell it was more an omission of the truth, that’s not really a lie right, had led her to this.
“Agh...you gotta be kidding me,”she voiced her frustration before grabbing another cookie and shoving it in her mouth in an attempt to calm her nerves. “How can it be this hard? I just need one, just one decent response. Is that too much to ask for?”
She double tapped on the mouse again to go back to her inbox. Her eyes squinted as she scanned the numerous emails she still had yet to go through. She tried to be optimistic, telling herself maybe the next one would be better. Maybe the next one would be exactly what she is looking for.
Deep down Laura knew she was lying to herself, but she wasn’t about to give up. It wasn’t in her nature, to let herself be defeated. She was too stubborn for that. Try, try, and try again that was her motto. She might be small physically, but she was strong mentally, persistent. If there was one word that could be used to describe her, it was determined. Being tenacious got her through the hardest times in her life, when the darkness wouldn’t recede and gloom threatened to take hold, Laura was not about to let it fail her now.
“I can do this!” Laura reaffirmed, blindly reaching for, yet, another cookie. She was far too stubborn to give up, which was probably her best and worst quality combined but, whatever.
With a renewed sense of determination, Laura once again, set her sights on accomplishing her goal. She’d be damned if she let herself give in to failure.
...
“To weird,” she muttered clicking through to the next message. “That’s so not gonna happen.” She clicked again her eyes almost bulging out of her head. “Oookay, that’s just...wow...I don’t even have words to describe it.”
She barely noticed another two hours fly by, her eyes never leaving the computer screen as she continued to peruse her email, occasionally mumbling out loud. Her eyes were hurting and her vision was beginning to blur but she refused to call it a night.
Laura was so caught up in her mussing that she barely paid attention when her roommate entered the apartment and tossed her keys in the dish on the table by the door.
“Hey,” She said to Laura on her way to the kitchen.
“Hey,” Laura replied distractedly before getting lost in the contents of her email, and her own internal monologue again.
She was an adult, living on her own, well kind of, with a roommate and, but still. She was independent (of her dad’s incessant hovering, though he still sent her day of the week bear spray) paying her own rent, and she would have been paying her way through school to, if it weren’t for her scholarship. Hell, she was going to graduate in the spring with a degree in communication with an emphasis in journalism. She all of the freedom she could possibly ask for, and still, she couldn’t completely break away from the desire to please her dad and the rest of her nosy family. And, okay, maybe that’s a little bit harsh. But she’s frustrated at the moment, because they are the reason she’s putting herself through all of this. Laura can’t help but wonder. Why she had to be the kind of person that cared so damn much about what other people thought of her? Why...
“Why does life have to be so hard?” She didn’t realize that she had said that out loud until her roommate replied.
“What are you going on about?”
“What? Oh, no, n-nothing.” She stammered finally taking her eyes off the screen to look at her roommate.
“Right!” Her roommate rolled her eyes sarcastically. “That’s why you’re so twitchy.”
“I’m not twitchy,” Laura said, gestured wildly with her hands as she spoke. “There’s an absence of twitching.”
“Sure! Whatever you say, Cutie.” Carmilla put her soy milk container back in the fridge, taking her glass to flop down on the couch next to Laura eyeing her best friend curiously.
“How can you drink that stuff?” Laura asked with a frown, her nose scrunching in distaste, watching her take a huge sip from her glass.
“That face you make is hilarious, buttercup.”
Laura rolled her eyes, cringing when Carmilla leaned in closer as she took another long drink from her glass.
“What? It’s not that bad.” Carmilla rolled her eyes, her lips playing up in a smirk at Laura’s reaction. “Besides, it was on sale, way cheaper than regular milk.”
...
Carmilla tried to take a glance at her laptop, but Laura quickly turned it away before she had a chance to see what she was up to. With a sly grin, she grabbed the package of cookies sitting between them and took out the remaining four cookies threatening to shove them all in her mouth at once, smirking when Laura whined, her gaze moving back and forth between the last of her tasty treats and Carmilla’s mouth.
“Carmilla, y-you wouldn’t...”
“You think so?” She quirked an eyebrow at her, accepting the obvious challenge. “Are you willing to bet your last four cookies on that?”
“Carmillllla!” Laura whined again as she lifted her hand (slowly) edging the cookies closer to her mouth.
“Let me see, or I will eat them and I know you don’t have any more stashed away.” She said looking pointedly at Laura.
“Fine!” Laura, muttered, “sucky best friend,” under her breath as she turned her laptop for her to see and quickly snatched the cookies out of her grasp, tossing one in her mouth while cradling the rest in her hand, like they were precious gems.
Carmilla rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help laughing at the antics of her best friend before she turned her attention to the computer screen in front of her. She skimmed over a few of the emails in Laura’s inbox, before clicking on one of the messages and reading it carefully, her features drawn into a confused frown. Her lips pressed together in a hard line.
“What is this?” Her gaze shot up to fix Laura with a hard stare.
“Oh, um - it’s, it’s not a big deal.”
“Seriously, Laura,” Carmilla glanced at the screen again then back up at her. “What the fuck.”
Sighing, Laura muttered, “I took out a personal ad, okay. It’s really no big deal.” She leaned over to open a word document on her computer and showed it to Carmilla.
The personals ad was pretty cut and simple:
Fake Girlfriend Needed
I have an event to go to on November 24th and
I need a girl to pose as my girlfriend. No questions asked.
Being gay isn’t required as long as you’re okay with pretending.>
It won’t be anything to major just hand holding and stuff. But
you’ve really got to be able to sell it, ya know.
If you are interested you can
contact me at: [email protected].
My name is Laura by the way.
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
“What?” Carmilla glared at her, as if to say seriously. “You don’t understand.”
“Damn right, I don’t.”
“Look,” Laura sat up straight and met her eye refusing to feel guilty or ashamed for what she’d done. Her hands began flailing wildly as she spoke. “My cousin’s engagement party is coming up at the end of next month. And, that wouldn’t be an issue, if I hadn’t lied to my dad a few weeks ago, and told him that I had a really hot girlfriend, because he was pestering about needing more than school and work in my life. He’s always saying that I spend so much of my time focused on getting my degree that I don’t have time for a relationship. Which is so not true, by the way, I just haven’t met anyone worth the effort lately. Anyway, he started going on about how, I’m going to end up letting true love pass me by and I won’t even know it until it’s too late.”
Laura stopped for a moment in the middle of her ramble to catch her breath.
“I was gonna tell him, that if someone really loves me then they would be willing to wait. But then, he comes out and says, “I just want you to be happy. I want you to find the kind of love and joy and happiness I had with your mother”, and I just couldn’t do it. So I told him that I had met someone and that she is really amazing and perfect and I’m totally crazy about her, just to make him feel better.”
She threw her arms in the air in frustration, but kept right on talking, because now that she had started, she couldn’t stop, she needed to get everything off her chest, and hopefully clear her conscience in the process.
“I never expected him to tell the rest of the family but, I guess, I should have known that he would. Now, everyone is expecting me to bring said girlfriend to Sarah’s engagement party. And, obviously, I’m not actually seeing anyone, so I had to do something. I mean of course, I thought about tell everyone, we broke up, but the way I may my dad believe, the way I know he embellished it, I knew that would never work. And, my family knows all of my friends, well except for you because you’re so anti-social you never wanted to go with me when I went back home, so I couldn’t ask one of them. So I took out the stupid personal ad hoping I would find someone who would be willing to play along. Because, I really don’t want to have to go home for the party and embarrass myself, by telling my family it was all a lie, that I don’t have a girlfriend and haven’t even dated in months. But I never thought it would be like this. I never thought I would end up with my email flooded with a bunch of pornographic images and request for lewd sexual acts...”
Finally finished with her speech, Laura looked to Carmilla expectantly twisting her hands in her lap. Despite being nervous she waited patiently for her to process everything that she had said, while Carmilla just stared at her blankly for a several minutes.
For most people it would be damn near impossible to understand Laura once she went off on one of her rambles, but Carmilla had known her for a little over three years (and had lived with her the same amount of time), so she found it relatively easy to keep up. Understanding it, though, took more time. What Laura had told her kind of blew her mind.
Carmilla didn’t really get the whole family dynamic. She’d never really had anything like it, growing up, being the product of a fucked up foster care system and all. She’d been bounced around from home to home from the time she was six until she turned fourteen, that’s when her mother, a kind elderly lady, (took pity on her) and kind of adopted her, though it wasn’t legal, she kept her in her home until Carmilla aged out of the system and the checks stopped coming so she couldn’t afford to take care of her anymore. Carmilla guesses, in a way she was luckier than most, she’d been a fuck up when she first graced, Lilita Morgan’s doorstep, smoking (cigarettes and pot) drinking fighting, but that woman always let her know that she cared about her no matter how much she fucked up, and maybe eventually Carmilla started to believe it. Eventually, she had realized she wanted to make her mother proud of her, her personality didn’t change, but she got her life on the right track. She stopped smoking pot and drinking, the cigarettes were a litter harder to give up (she occasionally has relapses even after all this time) and started going to school, which surprisingly she was really good at, pretty damn smart, (must have been all the books she read to occupy herself when she had to hide away when she was younger), but it got her into college with a partial scholarship and the help of financial aid. She used to go visit her mother from time to time, until she died a couple years ago.
Carmilla didn’t want to think about that right now. She did however, want to help Laura, her best friend, the only real friend that she’d ever had. She’d never been good with people a youth spent in the system hadn’t made it any easier; it had essentially jaded her view of people, the world and humanity in general. But, Laura is different; she’s special, always bubbly and full of energy, like sunshine all bottled up in a tiny package and Carmilla would do anything for her because she loves her. Not loves like love, platonic love.
“I’ll do it.” Carmilla said nonchalantly. Not wanting Laura to make a big deal of it.
Prepared to defend herself from more of Carmilla’s scathing remarks about how idiotic her plan was, Laura started talking almost as soon as she Carmilla opened her mouth without really hearing her. “I know it was stupid, Carm, you don’t have to...” Finally registering what she just said Laura stopped mid-sentence and stared at her confused, “...wait. What?”
“I said, I’ll pretend to be your girlfriend.” Carmilla replied.
“You would do that for me?”
“Why not,” she shrugged, “how hard can it be?”
“You do realize we’d have to be all couple-y, right,” Laura’s hands were moving in tandem with her mouth again as she tried to make sure she understood what she was getting herself into. “I mean, you’d actually have to pretend to like like me.”
“I’m a natural flirt. Won’t be a problem for me,” She regarded Laura with a seductively teasing lilt, her eyes slowly trailing over her body as her tongue darted out to lick her lips before she captured the bottom gently between her teeth and met her gaze again. “You on the other hand, Cutie...”
“Shut up!” Laura elbowed her playfully in the side, unable to control the blush rising on her cheeks from her teasing. Sometimes she hated that Carmilla get her flustered so easily.
Carmilla tried to contain her laughter as Laura’s turned a crimson color that seemed humanly impossible. She really did, but failed miserably. Carmilla knew she shouldn’t tease her as much as she often did, but it was too damn easy and so much fun. She just couldn’t help herself; the expressions Laura made were always priceless, and, honestly, kind of adorable.
“So, now that that’s settled,” Carmilla took Laura’s laptop from her and closed out of her email before bringing up her Netflix account. “What are we watching?”
“You’re not going out tonight?” Laura asked unable to hide her surprise.
Carmilla almost always went out on the weekend (it was her favorite time of the week with no classes to attend and only work to worry about sometime in the afternoon), usually to hook up with some random chic that she never talked to again, no matter how much those girls might seek her out. Not that she had to wait; girls practically fell in her lap on a regular basis. But, that was none of her business. Laura didn’t judge. Carmilla is who she is. It was one of the many things she liked about her, Carmilla’s a free spirit who preferred to live in the moment, rather than spend her time focusing on what the future might bring.
It wasn’t always this way though. Laura let her mind wonder back to how things used to be for a moment. When they first met freshman year they couldn’t stand each other. Having to adjust to living with someone who was rude, messy, and nocturnal with a copious amount of study buddies over at all times of day or night wasn’t easy, and for Carmilla having to adjust to someone living with a “naïve provincial girl” as she use to put it (and a neat freak) wasn’t easy either for her either. But, eventually they had found a common ground and have been best friends ever since.
“Uhuh,” Carmilla motioned for her to move over so she could lay down beside her, “too tired. Work was a cluster fuck, it wore me out.”
Laura uncrossed her legs and shifted so her head was resting against the arm of the couch making room for Carmilla to stretch out next to her and resting her head on Laura’s shoulder like she always does. The couch was big enough but there wasn’t very much room, so the length of their bodies ended up being pressed together. Not that either of them minded, they always ended up cuddled up like this at some point during when they had a movie night.
“You’re such a big softie,” Laura teased, as she draped her arm around her waist, chuckling softly.
“Shut up!. And play a damn movie, Cupcake,” Carmilla muttered glaring up at her, “before for I make you pay for that.”
Chuckling again, Laura quirked her head to the side a little bit in a silent challenge, daring her to give it her best shot, a decision she quickly regretted. Carmilla flashed her a sly smile, moving the arm she’d wrapped around Laura’s waist to wiggle her fingers mockingly against her ribcage, arching an eyebrow at her, the threat clear.
“No, Carm, don’t...” Laura squirmed under her hand, biting her bottom lip to contain the laughter threatening to break free, “please, don’t tickle me.”
“Mhmm, that’s what I thought.” She patted Laura’s side before letting her hand rest there.
It took Laura a few minutes to click through the selection until she found a movie that they could both agree on. “Now You See Me” was one of the movies that had just enough mystery and suspense, with a little romantic element, that suited each girl’s personality. Though, they had seen it a couple times before they didn’t mind watching it again.
“Hey, Carm,” Laura said not long after the movie started. “Thanks.” There was no need to elaborate Carmilla already knew exactly what she was grateful for.
“No problem, Cupcake.” Carmilla said snuggling closer, her arms tightening around Laura.