Published by @jg-firefly in response to a prompt from @ukulelekatie in the #Prompt channel in the SLC Discord Server earlier today:

Carmilla and Laura are competing food truck owners

She was late, and she knew it. Never mind that it was only 6:58 AM, or that the top parking spot didn’t open until 7 on the dot. She was still two minutes away, even pushing the limit around the narrow city turns, and she knew full well who would be circling like a shark, her timing impeccable, her eye-liner perfect...

6:59

Laura let out a growl of frustration as the light ahead of her turned yellow, a hatchback already pulling to a halt ahead of her. A woman in a pencil skirt crossed the sidewalk, gaze buried in her phone. An empty school bus on the way to its first stop grumbled past.

Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”

Craning her neck, she watched the crosswalk counter tick down to zero, the cross traffic light turning yellow and then red.

“C’mon.”

Her light went green, and the hatchback slowly rolled forward... and then waited. Blinker on, tail sticking in the road and blocking her route. A pair of baristas were crossing the other way, fumbling with their green aprons and taking their dear time.

7:00

The hatchback pulled through, and Laura hit the gas, eyes scanning the road for any foolish pedestrians as she hummed just over the recommended city speed. She took the last turn, the buildings familiar with their big blue graffiti lettering, their Great Gatsby style eyeglass portrait reigning three stories up... and there it was.

Cosmic Cookies splashed in purple across the side, the brake lights just clicking off.

In her space.

The greatest tragedy in the moment, though, was not the lost parking, or even the lost revenue she was going to face when she had to find a home for her truck over in the West End. No, the worst part was that there was no way to turn around without driving past the other chef.

“Oh, hey, Hollis!” Carmilla called, waving a casual hand out of her window. The other reached up to push her sunglasses—absurd accessories that they were, given the early hour—down the bridge of her nose. She raised an eyebrow. “Fancy seeing you here!”

She let Big Cheese roll to a halt, glaring across the narrow gap between their vehicles.

“You’re in my spot.”

Carmilla’s mouth dropped open in mock shock, a clutch-my-pearls level gasp falling off her lips. “Your spot? I must have missed the big ownership sign...”

Laura rolled her eyes as the other woman leaned back and forth in her seat, as though she were scanning the nearby area for this supposed sign.

“I’m here every Tuesday! My customers are going to be confused!”

“I mean... not any more confused than they were last week. Or on Friday, or yesterday... What’s that make the score, cupcake?”

“I hate you.”

“I think it’s... four to two?”

“You sabotaged me!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Laura huffed. “You hid all of my coffee last week. And then my keys on Friday—and don’t try to tell me that I put them in the freezer; I’m not that scatter-brained!” Carmilla was merely grinning. “And this morning! I got in the truck and found that my seat was all the way back, all the mirrors were out of alignment, and the windshield wipers would not stop going.”

“Huh, imagine that.”

“Carm!”

“I don’t remember there being rules. I just remember you promising me naming rights, and something about best out of seven... and I also noticed you didn’t include yesterday in your list of complaints against me... can’t imagine why...”

Laura could feel her face flushing red, Carmilla’s wide-eyes somehow both innocent and seductive as they blinked back at her.

“Yesterday morning wasn’t... that’s not... we aren’t naming our cat Socrates!”

“Ah-ah, I don’t remember there being a ‘we’ in the rules...”

“Caaarm,” she whined.

“It won’t be Socrates.”

“Thank you.”

Carmilla flipped her sunglasses up, settling them on top of her head, and grinned softly. “I got LaF to save you a spot on River Street. Just, y’know... FYI.”

Something curled warm in her chest, and Laura bit her lip around a smile.

“Oh. Thanks.”

Her girlfriend turned to fumble in the passenger seat, and a moment later returned to extend her arm across the distance. Laura accepted the pastry-parchment-wrapped offering.

Confetti cookies. And still warm.

“Still hate me?”

@ukulelekatie this is for you: The idea here was ‘Buzzfeed quiz results are so random. Maybe a dateability quiz is actually how compatible you are with the author.’ - @jg-firefly

“No one will know.”

Betty quirked an eyebrow, glancing over the top of her nail file at Laura. She had arrived much like she always did—unexpectedly, with bubblegum already smacking. Sometimes, Laura wondered when she had time to do her actual job, but, more often than not, she accepted that Betty was just going to be... Betty.

“I’ll know,” she scoffed, her fingers pausing their path across her keyboard. It was far from hard-hitting journalism, but she had an article on potted plants that looked like celebrities that she needed to turn in by that evening, and a How Dateable Are You quiz, of all things, was low on her radar.

Besides, that was generally Betty’s area.

“The quizzes are nonsense, anyway. How does picking a color determine which Doctor Who character I am?”

“Right, coming from Miss ‘Pottermore-says-I’m-a-Gryffindor.’”

Laura knew it was childish, but she was sorely tempted to stick out her tongue. She settled for rolling her eyes.

“Doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”

“You just said it yourself: it’s nonsense. So what’s the big deal?”

“It’s got to be some sort of... I don’t know, ethics violation.”

“Right. Because it’s against the Geneva Convention to skew an internet quiz.”

“What would be the point, though?” Laura gave up on her article entirely, waving her hands and letting them fall into her lap. She kicked out her desk chair and turned it to face Betty more solidly. Her neck had enough of a crick already, from where she’d been sleeping on Perry’s couch.

Damn termites. Damn shitty landlords.

“Fun, Laura. The point would be fun. Now c’mon, just answer a few questions!”

She glared, but it was without any real fight. Betty gave a little hiss of triumph, scooping up her notepad and running the eraser-end of her pencil down a list she had been careful to keep hidden.

“Alright. First date. What’s the worst possible thing they could order?”

///

“Hey, 52% is respectable, Perr,” Mel said. She tossed back another swig of Corona. “Better than LaF.”

“Broke my heart,” LaFontaine agreed, their voice dropping into somber, dramatized tones. They pressed a hand to their chest. “Only 11% compatibility... I’m not sure I can go on.”

“It’s because you answer every question with the worst response on purpose.”

“I still say diffusing a bomb would make for a memorable anniversary.”

“Hence the 11%.”

LaFontaine put on a pout, but it vanished immediately in the face of the cookies Perry set before them. Laura put three on her plate, watching the rest vanish in a flurry of grabby hands.

Only Perry would serve baked goods with drinks.

She really hadn’t expected the quiz to turn into anything more than a few laughs with Betty. But then Betty had reported results from across the office, each announcement rife with personal commentary, and Laura hadn’t been able to contain her amusement when LaFontaine had declared their offense at ‘not being dateable.’

So she had clued them in. And with them had come everyone they knew.

Which was how Laura knew that she should absolutely not date any of her friends.

“I can’t believe any of you would order seafood on a first date,” she complained. “It’s like you don’t want to have a goodnight kiss.”

“Oysters are hot,” shrugged Mel.

Laura made a face. “Not visually, they’re not.”

“Well, Charlotte thinks so. And, not that it matters, but we got the exact same score.” She raised her bottle to no one, smirking, and took another hearty swig.

The back door swung open without warning, the sound of suburb crickets wafting in as Carmilla clomped her boots over the threshold. She set a six-pack on the counter, offering only a nod in greeting.

“About time,” said LaF.

“Shoes,” declared Perry.

Laura busied herself with collecting the empty bottles and moving them into the recycling, pretending it was for Perry’s benefit and had nothing to do with the jump in her heart rate or the sudden heat behind her ears.

Carmilla was always in leather, but tonight she also had her helmet slung casually under one arm, her hair parting so easily as she swept a hand through the raven tresses. It would be impossibly easy for Laura to lose herself in the sharp cut of her eyeliner, let alone in the perfect curve of her jaw.

It was still bizarre to her that they were even in the same circles. Carmilla had been the nameless ‘hot bartender’ at Redd’s long before she had become ‘Mel’s friend Carmilla,’ and Laura was almost certain that Carmilla still had no idea they had met before, despite making her whiskey sours every weekend for the better part of three years.

Now, she was just... around.

All the time.

Quirking an eyebrow at Laura’s jokes, calling her all sorts of snarky, cutesy nicknames seemingly just to watch her babble and sputter in reply.

And it would have been a dream come true, were it not for the fact that Carmilla was certainly not interested in dating her. She didn’t appear to be interested in dating anyone, when it came down to it. She collected numbers with a graceful ease, barely even trying when they went out for drinks—the girls always just came to her, sliding numbers to her on napkins, letting their fingers brush on her thigh—but she never went out for coffee or bothered with dinner, as far as Laura could tell.

To her infinite relief, Carmilla did not ask what she had missed, and no one prompted her into answering quiz questions the moment she claimed a seat.

Instead, they dove into discussion about the fight at Redd’s the night prior, and how Carmilla had been forced into calling the cops to break it up. And, when the details there had been exhausted, it was on to a mishap with LaF’s intern at the lab, and before Laura knew it they had segued into a segue and she was telling the room—at LaF’s eager prompting—about the time she had worked fast food in college, when a particularly rowdy customer had bit her.

“He didn’t leave in a body bag?” Carmilla asked, her lip curled just slightly at the corner. The others were turned to LaFontaine, already giving their witness’s rendition of the events, but Carmilla’s eyes were locked on hers, glinting and warm. She had peeled half the label off of her beer with practiced fingers, and the way her elbows were splayed put her right nearly touching Laura’s left. “I imagine you don’t take well to biting.”

Laura’s cheeks were dusted pink before the words were even out, but it was easy, when she was on the dregs of her third glass of sav blanc.

“Not that kind of biting, no.”

Carmilla’s eyes widened. And then so did her grin.

But Perry was insisting that they start the movie, now that everyone was present, and so they allowed themselves to be herded into the sitting room and handed homemade popcorn in Perry’s cutesy little tins... and Laura tried not to sulk—at least not externally—when Carmilla wound up on one of the floor poufs while she was stuck on the couch between LaF and Mel.

It had been months, since they’d been properly introduced. She knew she should be over this, whatever this was... a crush, certainly, and nothing more... but the feeling persisted, despite her efforts. A nagging to just spend more time in her presence, if only to get more chances to see her laugh.

She was pathetic, really. And that was a fact hammered home by the amount of time she spent side-eyeing Carmilla rather than paying attention to what was on the screen.

It was just that she had seen Mamma Mia! before, and it was far more entertaining to watch Carmilla’s face contort into various grimaces, her annoyances kept at bay solely by the plates of food Perry nudged her way, every five minutes or so.

(Laura suspected this was the main reason she had attended, in the first place.)

Mel was already shouldering her coat, when the credits finally rolled. She offered a salute and a click of her tongue rather than a proper farewell before she ducked out the door, and Perry started tidying at once, collecting the blankets that Laura had been using to turn the couch into a bed for the past several evenings.

Carmilla hesitated, weighing her helmet in her hands, and then raised an eyebrow at Laura, almost expectantly, and tipped her head towards the exit.

“Need a ride, cupcake?”

Her ears were hot again, immediately, even before she was shaking her head. They lived on the same block, and they had gotten an Uber together, once—a ride of mostly silence as Laura attempted not to blurt out something along the lines of ‘you’re super pretty’—so it was hardly a reach for her to offer, now.

But termites.

Fucking termites.

“Uh, actually, no. I’m sort of... staying here.”

Carmilla frowned. LaF and Perry vanished to the kitchen, almost on purpose.

“Why?”

“Pest control. My apartment is sort of under a big blue tent at the moment.”

“Well that sucks.”

Laura laughed at the bluntness. “Yeah... like, a lot.”

Slowly, Carmilla surveyed the living room. Laura saw her eyes latch, for the first time, upon the various things that did not belong in the space—her suitcase, for one. Her brow furrowed even further as she noticed Perry’s started attempts at making her bed.

“Here like... on the couch?”

She grimaced. “Yeah. I mean, it’s not ideal, but you know Perry is renovating the guest room, and then LaF’s office doesn’t have space, and I’m just grateful for all the free food. And for not having to pay for a hotel.”

“You work on the other side of town.”

It was a statement, not a question, and a surprising one, at that. “I didn’t realize you... knew that.”

Carmilla’s lip quirked, but there was less of an air to it... there was something disappointed. Or maybe that was just in the way her eyes dropped, and her shoulders lifted.

“I pay attention,” she said, her tone unreadable. And then she cleared her throat, and played her fingers over the curve of her helmet like a drum solo. “I... happen to have a spare room.”

Laura stared, not comprehending.

Carmilla raised an eyebrow.

“Oh! Oh.” She blinked, her mouth abruptly going very dry. “That’s... are you offering..?”

“If you’re interested. I don’t promise to wake you up with a Michelin Star breakfast, of course. But you also wouldn’t need to catch three buses to get to the office.”

She opened her mouth, ready to say how sweet that was, but how she couldn’t reject Perry’s kindness—how it would only be another day or two, anyway—but she didn’t get the chance.

“Carmilla, that’s lovely of you!” Perry beamed, clasping her hands in the kitchen doorway. “I’ve felt so terrible that we could only offer a couch, and I hate inconveniencing Laura like this...”

“Perry, you’re doing me the favor—”

“And I’ve been a terrible host. You’re such a dear, Carmilla.”

///

Laura still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. One moment she had been ready to crash on Perry’s couch after a traditional movie night, and the next she was being herded out the door with only a backpack of her things and a promise that the rest would be delivered the next day.

And then she had been on the back of Carmilla’s motorcycle, her arms around Carmilla’s waist, and she had been certain that, yes, this must be a dream.

But it was not. Because they arrived at Carmilla’s place, and it was very real.

“It’s not as clean as Perry’s, I know.” Carmilla grinned sardonically, as she tossed her coat onto the back of a chair and turned to rest her elbows on the kitchen counter. “But it’s home.”

It was nicer than Laura’s place, certainly, and it raised a multitude of questions—most of them along the lines of ‘how much do bartenders make, exactly?’—but she asked none of them. Instead, she let herself roam in a small semi-circle through the main space, taking in the artwork on the walls, the stuffed bookcases, the artifacts and trinkets that looked to have come from all over the world.

She was right about it not being exactly clean, though.

Carmilla seemed to have trouble with putting things back where they came from. There were books littered on various surfaces, some with bits of paper stuffed in to the pages, others left spine-up where she had apparently last been reading them. There was a clear layer of dust on most of the horizontal surfaces. Her sole potted plant looked extremely dead.

Still, overall, it felt very... Carmilla.

“I like it,” she offered.

“Glad to have your approval,” Carmilla teased. “Did you want the grand tour? It costs extra.”

“Ha-ha.”

She showed her to the guest bedroom and the adjoining bathroom, and, despite her commentary earlier, she appeared to have a fully stocked kitchen with the makings of a Perry-style breakfast, after all.

“Are you a secret chef?” Laura questioned, eyebrow raised, when she had finished returning the water pitcher to its shelf, her glass in hand.

Carmilla had said to help herself, and she was usually good at that.

“What were you expecting? A takeout fortress?”

It was what she had at home, and she felt herself flush.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Nice to see you hold me in such high regard,” Carmilla said, but there was teasing in the words, her eyes sparkling that way that they did sometimes, and Laura’s grin in return was easy.

“Never said I didn’t. I just... didn’t exactly picture... all of this.” She gestured to the apartment, and then hurried to soften her words, panic jumping up her spine, “I mean, not that that’s a bad thing. I mean, when I say my place is under pest-control, that should... that should give you a pretty solid indication that I’m not... that—”

“Don’t hurt yourself, cutie.”

“I just mean that it’s surprising... in a good way.”

Carmilla’s smile was still in place, head tipped just slightly to the side, the way it only seemed to do when it was Laura she was talking to. She tried not to read into it.

“Surprising that I’m a slob? Or that I eat vegetables?”

Laura snorted. “The second one.”

“I’ll have you know,” Carmilla declared, reaching around her to get a glass of her own from the cupboard—and very much invading her personal space in the process—“That I am a perfect 50% omivore. Thank you very much.”

Laura swallowed, watching her every move as she reached into the fridge, fingers wrapping around the pitcher handle, back arching and her ass—

Nope, nope, don’t look! Bad Hollis...

“That’s... specific,” she forced out.

Carmilla bent again, to return the pitcher, and Laura suddenly found the dead plant on the counter of deep interest.

“Well, it was according to one of your little quizzes, so it’s clearly certifiable.”

“One of mine?”

“Buzzfeed.”

Laura’s eyes went wide, her mouth working but no sound coming out, and she clutched the cold of the glass a little tighter and took a forced sip.

“Right, yes. I work there.”

Carmilla chuckled. “Again, your opinion of me is dreadful, cutie. Amazed I don’t live in a cave, fascinated at the concept of me owning food... and surprised that I pay attention to where my friends work.”

Laura wanted to supply a retort, but she was fresh out of them. Carmilla wasn’t wrong.

But, then, it wasn’t like they had spent that much time together.

And she hardly thought Carmilla had noticed her, of all people. Even if they were friends with the same gingers.

“I’m teasing you,” Carmilla supplied, when Laura’s case of goldfish-face became much too apparent.

It did not help her blush. “Yes, right. I know.”

Carmilla flicked a switch to dim the lights, padding in the direction of her own bedroom with apparent intentions to get some sleep. But, before she stepped through the door, she turned back.

“Oh, and I’ll have you know I took another one of those little quizzes the other day, and you really shouldn’t be so surprised that I’m a functioning adult. Your company seems to think I’m 100% dateable.”

She pulled the door shut softly behind her, a cocky grin on her lips.

@jg-firefly also decided to have a crack at the Backspace Challenge with the same wedding prompt (Girl has broken up with her girlfriend but now needs a date to her parent’s wedding this weekend! Who could possibly step in…) for #WisdomWednesday and this is what she came up with for us:

It was weird. That was the decision that Laura had come to, after much deliberation. And yet, despite the weirdness, she had made the call, had gotten the unexpected yes, and now there was nothing to do but put on the dress and the makeup and pretend that it was absolutely the height of normal to attend your father’s wedding with your childhood crush that you hadn’t spoken to in five years.

Totally, super, extra normal.

“That’s great, sweetie,” Sherman had said, in response to the news of Carmilla’s attendance, and then: “I know you two were close.”

He hadn’t, though. Or, at least, she hoped to Hufflepuff that he hadn’t, because there was nothing quite so mortifying as the idea of her father being in the know on the events that took place every Sunday afternoon in his basement.

When they were meant to be studying or playing one of the board games from her massive collection in the corner.

The events that even they had never spoken of—not while they were happening, and certainly not in the years that followed, when Laura took off to college and Carmilla... didn’t.

A very brief social media stalking had proven that she had gone to get a degree of some sort, though. Something from Silas Commuter, if the singular photo from graduation were to be believed, and now she was doing the exact thing she had always sworn she would never do.

Working for Lilita.

We were having our daily Hogwarts AU conversation in The Library a while back, when this happened:

@agentzakura : Carm would probably only convince the sorting hat after seeing Laura

@jg-firefly :

Hufflepuff Carmilla thought, eyes pinched shut under the brim of the hat. It was heavy, the brim bent down nearly to her shoulders, but more so than that she could feel the weight of the stares.

Everyone in the Hall was watching her.

Waiting.

Expecting Slytherin like every Karnstein before her.

Hufflepuff. Please, Hufflepuff...

The hat responded with a dusty chortle, the echo inside her head making her jump. The stool scraped a millimeter to the side.

An odd request, that one... I see many things in your potential, you know. A thirst for knowledge, desire to prove yourself, even a dash of bravery...

She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, picturing a very specific face even without meaning to.

Hufflepuff. I don’t care what you see just give me Hufflepuff...

The dusty voice returned without hesitation.

Ah, she is in here quite a lot. A history, indeed. And she changes things... yes, I see the alignment. You could be great, with the right nudge... if you’re sure, then it better be

“HUFFLEPUFF!!”

The last word broke through the cracked brim, popping her ears as a very specific quarter of the Hall broke into raucous cheers.

The hat was tugged from her head, a hand nudging at her shoulder, and she stepped as if in a daydream forward and up the row, eyes locked on her target.

Swallowing past uncertainty, she cleared her expression as she had done countless times before, and swung her legs over the bench beside a beaming Laura Hollis.

Pining!Carm and Oblivious!Laura are friends who are donating at a blood drive - delivered by @jg-firefly

The first year that Silas Inc. had hosted their annual blood drive, there had been approximately three donors, all of whom had been instrumental in organizing the thing in the first place. The goody-goody type, the sort that believed in charity for the sake of doing good, they had set up the damned thing again every year that followed, with an extra dose of guilt-tripping at each subsequent event.

When this had still not turned out quality results, they had resorted to a far more tried-and-true method.

Bribery.

Which was how the whole of Silas Inc., from designers to programmers to accountants, were bundled in sweaters and scarves, hands shoved deep in their pockets, in the parking lot on a blistery Tuesday morning.

An hour off of work had been a lot to promise, but it had certainly done the trick, once Perry had sorted out the paperwork and pushed the issue up the HR ladder. There was a camera crew from some nobody local station, a collection of balloons, and an assortment of food trucks. The whole thing was practically a fall carnival, if they just threw in a few rides, and it was nearly enough to make Carmilla turn on her heel and stride back inside.

If it weren’t for the veritable ray of sunshine working her way through the crowd, she might well have.

“They had pumpkin and apple, and I didn’t know which you’d like, so I got both,” Laura said, beaming. There was whipped cream on her lips, no doubt from the sugary coffee drink she had tucked awkwardly in her elbow, and it took a very real effort not to reach out and thumb it away.

She focused her attention on the proffered pastry, plucking one from Laura’s grasp with a shrug.

“Either is fine, cutie.”

The nickname, even after years of use, still managed to tug a blush up into Laura’s cheeks. It was a sight that Carmilla could not imagine growing tired of, but one that pained her all the same.

Laura had hated all of Carmilla’s pet names, when they had first met. Every time they met—sometimes there were days in between, but more often weeks, and, once, months—she would insist that she was not a confectionary and that she deserved to have her real name used like any other coworker.

It was not until they were put on the same team, Laura the lead writer to her head of graphic design, that Carmilla actually backed off, and she had never meant for the names to come back. Laura had made her lack of interest quite clear, between her righteous indignation and her multitude of serious relationships, and Carmilla was hardly the type to waste her time where it was not welcome… but somehow they had become friends, and the names had crept back onto her tongue, and Laura had smiled and rolled her eyes as though this was an amusing inconvenience rather than a cardinal sin.

So, she kept using them.

“I can’t believe we actually got you out here, y’know,” said Laura. She has settled onto the steps, and Carmilla slid down beside her with a great, shivering awareness of the closeness in their shoulders.

“Mm. Does that mean you lost the betting pool?”

Laura’s eyes blew wide. “Wait, you know about that?”

“Accountants don’t know the meaning of subtlety, cupcake,” she offered dryly. Careful of the scattering crumbs, she peeled a bit of the crust off of her turnover and tossed it into her mouth. “They’ve been doing this every year. They’ve got one for whether or not I’ll join the Secret Santa exchange, too.”

This seemed to momentarily stun Laura, whose mouth opened and closed in a charming impression of a goldfish before she stuttered out, “Well, you’ve lost me a lot of money, just so you know.”

Carmilla, eyes widening in startled wonder, was spared the need to form words by the call of “Laura Hollis!” from across the lot.

“Oh, that’s me!” Laura cried, bouncing to her feet. She hesitated a moment, the uncertain shift of her toes on the pavement drawing a stutter into Carmilla’s pulse, but a moment later she merely thrust her half-eaten pastry forward and shattered any ill-advised hope. “I don’t think I can take this… could you hold it, Carm?”

She nodded—still lacking the capability to speak—and nearly caved in on herself when Laura’s fingers brushed against her own in the exchange of napkin-wrapped sweets.

Laura noticed none of this, giving a dorky little salute before she dashed off.

She was entirely too good for Carmilla, and Carmilla knew it, but every now and again she said something, did something, that challenged all of the foundations of reality. She would nudge an elbow into Carmilla’s side when she wanted to share something funny, or tilt her head just so when she was about to ask if everything was okay. She would send a text whenever she saw something that reminded her of Carmilla, or recommend a song that she thought Carmilla would enjoy, and every now and again she would look at her with a warmth that Carmilla had no way to explain.

And every time she found a new girlfriend, there was a piece of Carmilla that fractured.

There had been approximately two months between Laura starting at Silas and the start of her year-long relationship with an obnoxiously nerdy women’s rugby player. After that (messy) break-up, she had spent six weeks moping before she showed up at the office in a ridiculously chipper mood for a Monday, babbling nonstop about the perfect girl that had bought her coffee. That had lasted seven months, before Laura had broken it off, and she had spent three months going on dates before a one-night-stand turned into yet another year’s worth of flowers and drop-ins and joint photo-ops. That had ended, at long last, only because of her feelings for Danny, and it had been over a year and a half before that, too, fizzled out.

She had been single, now, going on five months. It was the longest Carmilla had seen her without a girl’s photo on her phone lock screen, without their work lunches interrupted by giggly visits, without her tossing in ‘oh let me see if insert-girlfriend’s-name can come, too!’ whenever the staff was planning an outing.

Carmilla would by lying, if she said she had not been waiting for the moment when it would start all over again. There was always another beautiful girl waiting in the wings, another girl with a supportive family and a real education and an encyclopedia of knowledge on all Laura’s favorite television shows.

Eventually, as much as the idea made her stomach churn, she’d meet the right girl—the girl that she would never break up with. The girl she would marry.

She’d probably invite Carmilla to the wedding.

It was with this rather nauseating thought in mind that Carmilla stood to follow the call of her name onto the donation bus, and she only managed to dull the ache with the image of Laura’s beaming face that was waiting for her.

“Carm! Look!” she declared, holding her arm up halfway in apparent pride at the thick, red tube that was sticking out of her elbow.

Carmilla grimaced, which apparently only served to amuse Laura. The nurse was less thrilled. She shoved a clipboard into Carmilla’s arms, directed her onto a cracked plastic bench, and then set about attending to one of the interns (who was looking pale with a full bag of blood hanging out of him.)

“You look nervous.”

Her pencil pausing halfway through her personal information, Carmilla raised her gaze to find Laura craning to see her. It was not a pose that looked particularly comfortable, but it did nothing to affect her temperament. Her eyes sparkled just the same as ever.

“I’m not nervous,” Carmilla scoffed. She returned to the papers, scowling as she took in just how many pages were involved. What did it take to give blood, a doctorate in medical science?

“You haven’t done this before, have you?”

How she always seemed to know these things, Carmilla would never understand.

“No. But it seems fairly straight-forward.” She tapped the clipboard, “Step one, fill out ridiculous permission slips,” she pointed to Laura’s arm, “Step two, part with half my blood supply. For free, apparently.”

“There’s a t-shirt.”

“Peachy.”

She turned back to the paperwork.

“Why do they care if I’ve been to England?”

“Mad cow disease,” Laura offered knowledgably.

“All of this seems unnecessary.”

Laura’s expression turned into a pout. “I swear, you better not give up on this over the paperwork. At least let it be over the needle, if you’re going to cost me my fifty bucks.”

There she was again, casually believing Carmilla was capable of more. Casually betting on her doing good.

The nurse stepped between them, surveying Carmilla’s answers and setting them aside, and then she found herself offering a finger to be stuck for what was apparently an iron deficiency test (something Carmilla could not help but think should have happened prior to the invasive questioning) and by the time she was settled onto the crinkly paper of a donating couch, Laura was being bandaged up.

Timing always had been a bitch.

This next one belongs to @jg-firefly <3

Prompt: Carmilla has dinner with Sherman

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059804