#larma

There were things Lauren knew she was good at. School, for one. Being a daddy’s girl, for another. Math and English and Biology for three more. And performing.

She couldn’t forget performing.

No matter how hard she tried.

For Lauren, performing wasn't just acting or singing or dancing - not that she didn’t kick absolute ass at all of those (and not that she didn’t still want to know who the fuck Oliver was) - but, for her, performing had long since stopped being just those moments on the stage or the dance floor, or in front of a microphone.

Performing was Lauren’s day. No, not just her day. It was her day after day after every other same motherfucking day. It was every single thing she did, every word she said, and every ‘friendship’ she made (and those were so much more than air quotes.) Virtually every human interaction she ever had was a performance of one kind or another.

She memorized the lines, learned the steps, found a way to hit all the right notes. She knew what was expected and just how to deliver on all of it. On being the kind of girl - the fucking show pony - her father wanted, or the evil step-sister Amy expected, or the Queen Bee Hester needed (Shane was an excellent Queen, but not the right kind). Lauren mastered the art of showing the world what (who) it wanted, just the way she did in every one of those pageants, when she paraded herself across all those stages, acting for all the world like it wasn’t slowly killing her, like she wasn’t actively Horcruxing little bits of her soul by letting those fuckwits and asshats judge her.

And there was another of those things she was good at: using terms like fuckwit and asshat.

“It’s a skill,” she told Karma once. “Do it wrong and you come off juvenile and petty like, you know… Booker.”

That they were both mostly undressed - tops undone and bottoms gone and that was as much as they’d ever been at that point - and that Lauren had emphasized that name just a little more than she had to did not escape Karma’s attention.

And the utter lack of reaction from the redhead didn’t escape Lauren’s.

(One point for Karma.) (And yes, Lauren was totally keeping score.)

“You have to mean it,” she said, warming to the chance to pass on some of her insult wisdom and to having such an eager (and mostly naked) (can’t forget that) pupil. “You’ve got to live it, which I know sounds so weird, but it’s true. Words are weapons.”

Karma nodded, only sort of (read: completely) distracted by the way Lauren’s fingers - which, apparently, had something of a mind of their own, even then - felt as they gently moved over her… um… you know…. her ’there'… (and that was the only word Karma could even think at that point without blushing beyond her hair.)

“And they’re just like any other weapon,” Lauren said, seemingly not even realizing what her touch was doing. (And it was just seemingly cause she knew full fucking well.) “It’s all in how you use them.” The same idea, Karma thought - in those few brief moments (seconds, really) when she could think - could easily be applied to Lauren’s fingers. And to her lips. And to her tongue and, oh fuck, pretty much all of her.

(Score one for Lauren.) (Or maybe two, if Karma was lucky.)

(She so was.)

“If,” Lauren continued, “you use them wrong, you may as well have brought a squirt gun to a gangland shootout. But use them right… ”

Use them right and you’d get the job done and - judging from the way Karma’s back arched beneath her and the way her eyes screwed shut like she couldn’t stand the light and the way she bit down on Lauren’s shoulder to keep from crying out - it was quite obvious that this was one job Lauren had definitely completed.

She took great pride in that, in the finishing of something, anything, really. But it was a special kind of pride this time - and not just because that something she finished was Karma - about a lot more than just an arching back and some screwed shut eyes and bite marks she’d wear like a fucking medal for days. It wasn’t all that.

It was after.

It was the moment Karma collapsed back onto her pillow, her eyes still closed and the skin of her chest still flush and her breath still coming in slightly labored shudders. It was the way her hand found Lauren’s, the way their fingers slipped together like a key and a lock.

It was the smile that curled her girlfriend’s lips as Karma pulled Lauren down to her, wrapping her up tight and mumbling something about 'payback’ and 'later’ and 'I’ and 'you’ and that four letter word in the middle and that was something still so fucking new, a four letter word that wasn’t meant to cut or wound or damage.

Words, she’d said, are weapons. And seeing them as anything but that…

Well… that was one thing Lauren wasn’t quite good at yet.

Not like she was good at letting her words rip like razor blades, like Katana steel slicing through fools like they were tissue paper (cheap Walmart tissue paper too, not the good stuff, like she got at Target or Costco) and oh, how she was good at that. Fuck good, she was great, she was a fucking ninja. But, for all her linguistic ninjitsu skills, Lauren still wasn’t all that good with some words, especially not when those words were about or to or for her girlfriend and weren't dirty and extra especially not when those words were the two (not three) she absolutely knew Karma wanted to hear.

“It’s your fault, you know,” Lauren said and no, those weren’t those two words.

That was five, can’t you count?

To her credit (and Lauren's amazement) Karma didn’t flinch. She didn’t bat an eye or arch a brow, hell, she barely looked in Lauren’s direction. Instead, she leaned back on the long lounge chair on the deck of the pool, gazing up at the clear blue sky and somehow - Lauren was never quite sure how - not rolling her eyes, not even a little.

If Lauren had been her, her eyes would still be spinning.

Lauren sat in the other lounger, the one across from Karma, her legs all criss cross applesauce and even thinking that just made it all more… ugh.

Seriously? Applesauce? Sauce? Juice or apple - make up your fucking mind.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said and that did earn her an eye roll, a 'oh, you so fucking did and we both know it’ spin and yeah, Lauren knew. She knew all too fucking well. She didn’t say things she didn’t mean.

Something else she was good at: being honest. Painfully, at times.

Except… well… that wasn’t being honest. Because Lauren knew that what she frequently called honesty, other people called being a bitch. Being mean. Being self-centered and dismissive and not giving even the single tiniest of fucks what other people thought or felt and yeah, that was her.

Right up until it wasn’t.

“I’ve always been good at cutting people down,” she said, turning away from Karma and staring into the depths of the pool, all the better to avoid the look of sudden surprise criss cross applesaucing its way across her girlfriend’s face. “Especially,” she said, “when they say something… true. Something right. You know… about me.”

She was good at that. It was a skill, one she’d honed from years of having to. For so long, for so very fucking long, Lauren had always lived with knowing that she was one careless whisper, one slipped secret, one wrong choice about who to trust from needing every word to be a weapon.

“It was a shield,” she said. She still wouldn’t look at Karma, but she could feel the other girl’s eyes burning into her and that was wonderful and painful in equal measure. “It was my armor, my protection against…”

Lauren trailed off with a slow shake of her head and a shrug of her shoulders, the 'everyone’ that should have ended that sentence fading into the silence between them.

She didn’t want to explain and she didn’t want to… defend herself. She shouldn't have to. So what if she used her words (knives) and her tone (a razor of sound and sarcasm and snap) and her… herness… to push back against everyone, even those who hadn’t once pushed her?

There was a look in her eyes, one Karma could see even then, even when those eyes were dancing across the water. It was a challenge, a dare.

Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m stupid and immature and not giving anyone a chance has always been the single biggest reason I’ve been so lonely and so lost and there was no reason I ever should have been so afraid.

Go ahead. Tell her. We’ll wait.

…

…

…

No? Yeah. Thought so.

Karma sat up in the chair, swinging her legs over the side, fully intent on telling Lauren just exactly that.

But she couldn’t. Thoughts of Theo and cop cars and jail cells danced in her mind. Memories of the looks as Lauren ran from the courtyard that day, after outing herself - and who could have known that she’d end up being her own worst enemy? - and yeah, that had turned out… OK… but still…

Karma knew better than most. It’s always that 'but still…’ that gets you.

“From the moment I was old enough to know anything,” Lauren said, “I’ve known that I’m not like other girls… most other girls, anyway.” She ran her bare foot across the cold concrete of the pool deck. “And I’ve known that, to most people, different does mean less, no matter what my father or the counselors or the afterschool specials tried to tell me.”

Karma wanted to argue. She wanted to point out to Lauren how accepting everyone had been, how - once the shock had worn off - so many of their classmates had embraced her. She so very much wanted to say all that. But, for all her faults, Karma’s always been smart enough to know one simple thing. Hester might be their world, right now, but it’s not the world.

And the world, maybe now more than ever, is, as Amy once said, such a bunch of dicks.

Karma wanted to say all that but she wanted even more than that not to lie, so… “So you learned,” she said softly, not really surprised when Lauren still didn’t turn her gaze away from the pool. “You figured out that the best defense was a good offense.”

Lauren nodded, but inside she knew that it wasn’t that simple. A good offense, she knew, was only worth as much as your willingness to use it and to use it early and often and utterly without hesitation or mercy. She’d gotten good at that over the years, good enough that there never were any of those careless whispers or slipped secrets or wrong choices.

Except (and when had her life become filled with so many excepts?) she knew that 'never’ wasn’t quite true. Not anymore. Not since Theo and Amy and Shane and, God help her, Booker.

Not since Karma.

“I didn’t mean it,” Lauren said, and this was the truth. “I didn’t mean to push you away or focus so much on Amy. I didn’t.” She looked at Karma then, hoping her girlfriend might be able to just see it in her eyes, like something out of one of those Godawful movies she liked so much. “I’ve just been so…”

“Broken hearted,” Karma whispered and Lauren couldn’t help but nod, even if that one little phrase seemed so vastly inadequate. “I get it,” Karma said, “I do. I miss her too, you know. I mean she was…” She shook her head, knowing it was the worst thing to say, just about the pettiest way she could imagine putting it, but also the truest. “She was mine first, Lauren. And longer. And… more. So, believe me, I understand. But…”

“But I made my choice,” Lauren said, reaching out to take Karma’s hand in hers, relieved when the other girl didn’t pull away. “And you made yours and Amy made hers.”

It was Karma’s turn to nod, and she let Lauren hold her hand, but she didn’t return the gesture, not just yet. “Yeah,” she said. “We all did. But lately… when you’re with Shane all the time and the two of you are so obsessed with Amy’s new secret girlfriend -”

Lauren’s eyes widened, her last oh so carefully guarded secret suddenly spilled out for all the world to see. “You know?”

Karma shrugged. “Like I said,” she mumbled softly. “She was mine first. Did you and Shane really think I wouldn’t see the same signs? I know sometimes I can be a bit… blind… when it comes to Amy, but even I’m not that oblivious.”

That, Lauren knew, was a discussion for a different time.

“You didn’t say anything,” she said. “I figured you didn’t know cause you didn't…”

“Chase after her?” Karma asked, slowly encircling two of Lauren’s fingers with her own. “Throw some kind of jealous fit?” She ran her thumb across Lauren’s knuckles, a silent admission that yeah, that might not be the most ridiculous thing ever suggested. “Maybe you would’ve liked it better if I’d sung some ridiculous song under Amy’s window? Or maybe shoved some bland as white bread fuckboy at her in a clearly desperate attempt to feel like I wasn’t being replaced?”

Lauren shook her head. “No,” she said, with a soft chuckle. “But you didn’t do… anything or seem like you even cared. Shane and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure out who it is or where Amy could have met someone. We know all the people she knows.”

Something flickered behind Karma’s eyes, something Lauren couldn’t name and maybe, she thought, that was for the best. “Sometimes,” Karma said, “it’s the people you think you know best that surprise you the most.”

And ain’t that just the motherfucking truth.

Karma stood from her chair and took the two quick steps to Lauren’s lounger, settling down next to the other girl, their entwined hands resting in her lap. “I didn’t say anything about it or try to do anything about it because it - she, whoever she is - doesn’t matter,” She turned on the seat to face Lauren. “At least not to me.”

Words. Fucking weapons.

“Karma… it’s not like that,” Lauren said, except (again with the fucking except) she truthfully couldn’t say it wasn’t like that cause didn’t know what it was like. “This is all new for me,” she said. “And I don’t mean being with a girl or being with you. I mean being the one who’s getting pushed away, the one getting cut off. Being the one someone doesn't…”

Need. Want. Love. Worship or desire or admire or… care for.

Take your fucking pick.

“I don’t know why it matters,” she said. “Hell, I don’t even know when it started to. One day Amy was just there. The girl across the hall, the insta-step-sister, the annoying trespasser fucking up my life. And then…”

And then she’d cared. Amy had cared. It wasn’t sudden, it wasn’t a flood, it wasn’t a dramatic speech or a some ready for the movies moment with swelling music in the background and perfect soft lighting. It was real and Lauren could count on one hand the number of reals she had in her life. It had been nothing but a trickle, a slow and intermittent blip-blop-bloop that had, somewhere along the way, become a steady stream that Lauren had, against her own better judgement and almost with her even knowing, gotten used to it.

She’d come to like it. She’d come, she realized now, to depend on it.

And that was something Lauren wasn't good at. Not at all. She was, in fact, outright fucking bad at it. Almost as bad, as it turns out, as she was at dealing with that - with Amy - being suddenly gone.

Or with it being all her own fault.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lauren said, slipping her hand free of Karma’s and standing up from the lounger, not that she had anywhere to go or anything to do. She just couldn’t sit there, letting herself wallow, not for one more minute. “I told you,” she said, as if that would put an end to that. “We all made our choices.”

Karma looked up at her and what she saw, it was… odd. In all the times she’d hurt Amy, all the times she’d unknowingly driven a wedge between them, Karma couldn’t remember ever actually seeing Amy’s walls go up.

She couldn’t fucking miss Lauren’s.

The words were on Karma’s tongue - something about yes, they all had, but maybe all of them weren't quite as… comfortable… with those choices as they’d thought - but she didn’t say them, she didn’t say anything. If there was one thing Karma had learned from Lauren (one thing that didn't involve a much greater lack of clothing) it was that she was right. Words, at least the wrong ones, the not carefully planned and well thought out ones, were weapons.

And maybe, Karma thought, there’d been enough wounds for one day.

“What are you doing here?”

Or, maybe, they were just getting started.

Karma glanced around Lauren to find an incredulous, and somewhat alarmed, Shane standing just over there, a bright blue Speedo dangling from his hand, and oh, how those words - Shane, Speedo, and dangling - were ones Karma hoped to never think together again.

“I live here, Shane,” Lauren snapped, the serrated and steely edge back to her words and Karma was almost reassured by that and yeah, that should have made her nervous.

Except Shane seemed to be doing - seemed to be being - that enough for all of them.

He kept glancing back over his shoulder, at the door back into the house, the one he had quite clearly had to come through, which meant he’d been inside and that meant… voices. Behind him. Not hers and not Lauren’s and not Shane’s. Two of them. Coming from inside the house and the moment she heard them, everything started to make so much more sense to Karma.

Or, you know, not a fucking lick of it, because those voices? Well… that just couldn’t be.

Except (fucking except) then she heard them again and couldn’t be or didn’t want to be or just shouldn’t be didn’t matter - not even a teeny tiny bit - cause it was painfully clear that it was.

There was a sudden sinking sensation rolling through Karma’s stomach, one she hadn’t felt in something like forever. This was a very particular, very specific feel. It wasn't the feeling of a betrayed and broken heart crashing down inside her, like when Liam confessed. And it wasn't the rush of anger and terror she’d had when she thought she had lost Lauren.

This was that night. The night of the wedding. The moment when - in one slow aching 'oh my God, how did I miss it’ rush - the words of Amy’s toast had sunk in. Karma hadn’t thought anything could ever feel like that again.

One of these days, she’d get used to being wrong.

“You’re supposed to be on the field trip,” Shane whispered, ignoring, as Shane would, the very simple fact that so was he and so was Amy even though he was clearly here and - judging by the laughter coming from inside the house - she was too. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said to Lauren before looking past her, to Karma. “And you,” he said, peeking over his shoulder again in something just short of a panic. “You shouldn’t be here.”

For once, Karma found herself in complete agreement with Shane.

She stood up from the chair, snatching up Lauren’s hand, flush with a sudden desperate urge to be on that trip, to be on any trip, to be anywhere but here. Karma tugged lightly on Lauren’s hand, trying to move her. But then they all heard those voices again. Both of them. And any chance she had to make Lauren move fizzled away into the ether.

“She’s here,” Lauren said. “Mystery girl is here, isn’t she?” She wheeled on Shane and oh, Karma had never been so glad to be behind Lauren as she was in that moment. She almost pitied Shane.

If she hadn’t been so distracted by that voice (couldn’t be) (just… couldn’t) she might have even tried to save him.

“She's here,” Lauren said - and it was more of a snarl than a said - taking one long step toward Shane before Karma’s grip on her hand slowed her progress. “She's here and you’re here and that means that you know who she is.”

Lauren left off the 'and you didn’t fucking tell me and now I’m going to eviscerate you with your own Speedo’ but, really? They all got the message. Loud and oh so fucking clear.

“I only found out about her a coup… yesterday,” Shane said (like any of them believed that bit o'bullshit.) “And then Amy was all 'come on over and we can hang and skip the stupid trip and it’ll be awesome, my two besties meet…”

Until the day he died, Shane was never completely sure if it was the look of sheer unmitigated rage on Lauren’s face or the one of total devastation on Karma’s face that made him shut up.

Or why he didn’t do it sooner.

He opened his mouth (always his first mistake) to say something else, but the sound of those voices cut him of. They were louder, moving, coming closer and closer and then there was the unmistakable sound of Amy’s laugh from just inside the door and that sound had never once made Karma want to run and, really, it still didn’t.

It made her want to fucking disappear.

If Lauren hadn’t been holding so tight to her hand, Karma might well have bolted, making a mad sprinter’s dash for the gate at the far end of the fence. As it was, she was desperately wishing that teleporters were real or she had a pair of ruby slippers or knew whatever the fuck spell it was that made Harry Potter vanish in a cloud of smoke. But there was no science for this, no magical spells, and she was fresh out of fancy footwear.

In short, there was nothing to save her.

And then, in shorter, it was too fucking late anyway.

The door swung open and Amy stepped out onto the deck. She took two, maybe three steps, before she froze in place, her eyes locked on her sister and her best friend and Karma had to wonder, not for the first time, if, when this was all said and done, she and Amy would ever think of each other like that again.

And then she remembered what Shane had just said and realized that maybe she ought to be wondering if Amy thought of her like that now.

Shane looked at Amy and then back to Lauren and then back to Amy, before he slowly stepped back, edging his way closer and closer to the fence, like he was seeking any shelter he could find and, really, Karma couldn’t blame him. He looked at her and mouthed a silent 'I’m sorry’ but it fell on deaf ears.

It wasn’t his fault, after all.

“I thought you’d be on the trip,” Amy said, the sound snapping Karma’s attention back around.

“We skipped,” Lauren replied and this time there was no bite, no knife’s edge to her voice and her words… they were just words. She smiled at Amy, as real and as genuine and as hopeful as she could manage, and offered a slight shrug. “Great minds, right?”

Amy had just long enough to nod - which was just long enough for Lauren to savor the most communication they’d had in weeks and just long enough for Karma to almost forget what was about to come - before the door swung open behind her, bumping Amy in the back and sending her stumbling forward.

“Oh, I didn’t know we were gonna have company. Cool!”

The voice was just as Karma remembered it. Excited and happy and always teetering on the edge of annoyingly chipper and cheery and oh, who the fuck was she kidding? It - she - had toppled over that edge for Karma a long fucking time ago. Karma’s hand clamped around Lauren’s but her eyes… they only saw Amy. Who, not surprisingly, was doing everything she could to look everywhere but Karma’s way.

“Babe," she said, bumping Amy with a hip. A hip in the shortest pair of cut offs Karma had ever seen, just under the best abs she’d seen (this side of Amy’s) and of fucking course the years had treated her kindly, if by kindly you meant like a fucking supermodel. "Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Amy looked up and then down and then to Shane (who was intently studying the fence) and then at her and then at Lauren and then, finally, at Karma.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Karma could feel Shane’s eyes on her and she could see Lauren’s looking her way, clearly realizing that she was missing… something. But not for long.

“Karma?" she said. "Oh my God, is that really you?”

Lauren’s head swung back around, staring at the new girl and if Shane knowing who she was had been bad… “You two know each other?”

“Of course, we do," she said, before darting across the deck and grabbing Karma up in the most ridiculously over the top hug ever. "It’s been so long," she said. "Amy didn’t mention you two still hung out.”

Words. Weapons. Fucking hell.

Lauren cleared her throat and Karma wasn’t sure if she was more annoyed at being the last to know or that she was touching her girlfriend and, really, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Shane dropped a hand on Lauren’s shoulder as he passed the table she was sharing with Karma. And God, was that weird.

The Shane hand thing, not the sharing a table with Karma thing. Although, honestly, a month and half hadn’t done much to make that particular bit of reality any less weird. But it was a weird Lauren could embrace and enjoy (much like she embraced Karma) (and enjoyed her) (enjoyed her quite thoroughly and regularly and thank God Molly and Lucas kept on finding reasons to not be home.) But that Shane thing… it was weird. It wasn’t much, just a small gesture, the tiniest of tinies. It was the sort of thing friends did, a gentle way to remind you

that someone’s there, someone’s thinking of you, someone cares.

So, yeah, weird.

Weird and wrong. If Lauren and Karma has been number one on Hester’s ‘frenemies who will always be 'less fren and more emies’ list, then she and Shane were, at worst, number two, and an argument could certainly be made for a tie. So, yeah, weird. Weird and wrong and, worst of all?

Noticeable.

Everyone saw him do it. Brandi, sitting over by the computers, like she even knew how to turn the damn things on. Vashti, chatting up the librarian like that was some sort of believable cover cause everyone knew that she was really just lurking, laying in wait for the next Tumblr worthy scene. Even Liam saw it, from over there in the corner, trying desperately to figure out how to work the pencil sharpener.

And let’s not forget Karma. (Though Lauren had, with increasing frequency, and that frequency meant like right fucking now, but that’s getting ahead of the story.)

Karma, sitting across the table, definitely noticed it. She kinda couldn’t miss it, even if she kinda (or more than kinda) (like a lot more) wished that she could. It wasn’t as if she just didn’t like Shane… OK… it was totally that she didn’t like Shane. She didn’t like him and she was pretty sure she never would, but, even more, she didn’t like this connection he suddenly seemed to have with Lauren.

And she liked that that connection seemed (more than fucking seemed) to center on Amy even less.

So, Karma noticed and Karma frowned. It was the deep kind, the kind that, normally, Lauren would notice and, normally, would remind her that that sort of frown was the kind to give you early wrinkles and early lines (“frowning like that will age you like ten years in a day, baby”) (and yeah, Lauren calling her 'baby’ was still fucking weird too) but that was all, as noted, normally.

And, as also noted, this wasn't normally. No universe in which Shane Harvey and Lauren Cooper were the kind of friends who touched, like even a little bit, like at all, could ever be considered normal. Not in the fucking least. So, yeah, the sight of Shane’s hand brushing against her girlfriend’s shoulder, hell, the sight of Shane anywhere near Lauren, especially

if that near seemed even more emotional and not just physical, well, that made Karma feel some kind of way.

And not some kind of good way. Just in case that wasn’t clear, you know, from the frown and all.

Then, when she noticed that Lauren hadn’t noticed, that she wasn’t not commenting on her wrinkly frown out of politeness or love or a deep aching need to get some later that afternoon, Karma frowned again. Deeper and harder (and yes, that’s totally 'what she said’ and can you seriously stop thinking about sex for like two minutes?)

(Thought the girl with a foot resting comfortably against her girlfriend’s bare leg under the table.)

Karma realized, in that moment (and probably before, even if she didn't admit it) that Lauren’s silence wasn’t polite. It was preoccupied. It was busy elsewhere with elsewho (and no, Karma did not give even one single tiny fuck if that wasn’t an actual word.) And Karma had had just about all of that she could take.

She didn’t need to follow Lauren’s gaze to know where (who) she was looking (at). Karma knew that her girlfriend’s eyes and mind and probably just about every other part of her (except that leg) (maybe) were focused on that other table, the one in the back, the one far enough removed that neither of them could actually hear anything. But, Karma knew, that didn’t matter.

What Lauren couldn’t hear, she could see. She could imagine. And what Lauren could see was Shane, settling down at that table, taking the spot just to Amy’s left, the chair she had slung her backpack over, clearly marking her territory, clearly saving the spot.

That should have been Lauren’s spot. Or Karma’s. But Lauren wasn’t thinking about that, she was thinking about the sister she’d lost and not so much (like at all) the friend (best friend) that Karma had. In fact, as was becoming less and less of a momentary glitch and more and more of a habit, Lauren wasn’t thinking about Karma at all.

Despite Karma’s best efforts.

And there were efforts. There was the low cut top and there was the leaning forward on the table to accentuate said top. And there was the short skirt paired with the cute pumps and there was, of course, the one pump now resting empty on the floor under the table and the one bare foot running up that one bare leg.

But, unlike Shane’s hand on Lauren’s shoulder, all that seemed to go… unnoticed.

Except by Liam. He couldn’t stop staring. And as annoying as that was, there was a part of Karma that didn’t mind.

At least someone was paying attention.

She tapped her pen in a steady beat against her open notebook, the one she’d filled more with doodles and half formed song lyrics than notes on American history. But Karma was too busy for history (and God, how she wished for that to stop being a part of everything and everyone she did.) She was studying a far more complex and layered subject. She was fully enrolled in Lauren Cooper 101. And despite a pretty good understanding of the tiny blonde’s history (and there it was again), Karma was fairly certain she was flunking the class.

Miserably.

There was a time, Karma knew, when all Lauren wanted was to be noticed. A time when she would have craved Shane’s attention and all the other attentions that would have followed. If Lauren and Shane had become friends then, well, then Lauren would have been popular, she’d have been the queen of all she surveyed. She and Shane would have been the most perfect (platonic) couple, the most perfect team.

Karma knew all that. And she understood all that. Because, once upon a time, that was her.

But this was once upon a much different time, once upon a now, a now without popularity and without power (and without Amy, the one person Karma had always expected to share that once upon with) but, in a bit of an ironic twist, Karma and Lauren both now had the one thing they thought they’d always wanted.

Attention. And a fuckload of it.

“I’ve heard the whispers,” Karma said to Lauren one night. They were on a blanket in her backyard, staring up at a cloudless Austin sky, silently holding hands in the dark, at least until the silence had started weighing on Karma, like that sky pressing down on her and making it hard to breathe. “Everyone’s talking about us, and they think we don’t know it.”

Lauren had squeezed her hand and scooted closer, tugging Karma’s arm around her and laying her head against the other girl’s chest. “They know,” she said. “They always know. They’ll try to deny it, they’ll say they thought we couldn’t hear or we were too wrapped up in each other to even care. But trust me,” she said. “They know.”

Karma nodded. Lauren had forgotten more about how the high school gossip food chain worked than she would ever know, so she took her word for it. And now, ever since Lauren and Shane have been… whatever the hell it is that they are… since they’ve spent weeks glued together at the hip, trying to figure out what’s up with Amy?

Those whispers have gotten louder. Loud enough to almost be shouts, loud enough so that Karma knows: no one is pretending anymore.

See, it’s escaped no one’s attention, except maybe Amy’s (and Karma isn't sure about that, like at all, cause sure it isn’t Amy’s style to be manipulative, but damn does this have 'plan’ written all over it in big neon letters) that Shane is now basically splitting almost all his time between the sisters. And now people were doing less whispering and even less shouting. Now?

Now, they were talking.

Which, Karma had noted over and over and over again, was something she and Lauren were doing less and less of. And as much as she enjoyed the other… stuff… they did, maybe, she thought, it was time to change that. Maybe it was time for more talk and less inaction. But that meant she would have to get her girlfriend’s attention.

“Are you cheating on me with Shane?”

Lauren’s head whipped around so fast, Karma was shocked it didn’t snap right off but, hey, that was kinda the point, right?

“Shane?” Lauren stared at her across the table and Karma tried not to think of how rare that had become lately, how often Lauren didn’t seem to see her at all. “Did you just ask if I was cheating with Shane?”

It sounded ridiculous. It sounded stupid. It sounded impossible.

But then, so had 'Larma’. And so had Karma choosing Lauren over Amy and Lauren choosing Karma over Amy and yeah, maybe that second one seemed a little less… certain… of late, but it had still happened.

Lauren seemed… bothered. Not so much by the question, but more by the interruption, as if talking to her girlfriend was cutting into her stalking time and well, it kinda was. She replied to Karma as she would to anyone else, in that… tone. Her special tone. Her Lauren tone, the 'are you fucking kidding me, right now, with this’ tone, the one that most (read: all) people knew translated whatever she actually said into 'ooooh, I’m about to whip somebody’s ass.’ All of Hester, hell, the world, feared that tone.

Except, apparently, Karma.

She was unimpressed and so, she didn’t flinch or stammer, not she probably would have just a few months ago. That Karma, the one who hadn’t seen Lauren at her most vulnerable, at her most scared (and most semi-naked) would have caved in and cowered and slunk away.

This was not that Karma.

This Karma met Lauren’s glare with one of her own and didn’t even think about backing down and there was a part of Lauren that was impressed (and more than a little turned on) but this, she knew was a problem. Not just a problem, but the problem.

The problem with love.

Love, Lauren knew, made you weak. It made smart people dumb, brave people cowards, strong people weak. It made your powers fade and it made your threats (even the ones that were only implied by your tone) hollow and it rendered you totally incapable of using your wit and your words to remain in control.

And if there was one thing Lauren liked more than attention, it was control. Yet, that seemed to be slipping further and further from her grasp and more and more into the hands (or feet) of her sister and her girlfriend. And that, Lauren had decided somewhere between watching Shane take her seat and Karma’s so utterly ridiculous question, would just not do.

So, she did what she always did and stood her ground, doubling the fuck down on that very tone. “You do remember that Shane's gay, right? And that he's sure of it?” And maybe if she’d left it there… “Not everyone is as sexually confused as you were, Karma.”

Once upon a time (a long time ago) when Karma still thought of herself as nothing more than half of AmyandKarma (and in a galaxy far, far away, where no one had toes) or when Lauren herself hadn’t seemed a touch… confused, she might have struck a nerve with that one.

But in this time and galaxy, Karma had learned a thing or two (or, you know, a dozen), things about Lauren and things about herself and things about how to use those things she’d learned to her advantage.

Things like exactly how Lauren reacted when Karma’s foot slowly traced its way up her leg. A slow trip from ankle to calf, a delicate and deliberate and so very very painstakingly slow drift from calf to thigh, the fabric of the hem of Lauren’s skirt brushing against her toes.

Lauren’s face flushed and Karma was almost certain that she could see her girlfriend slowly slipping further down into her chair, moving closer, urging on the contact even as she held her glare.

Until it faltered. Just the tiniest bit. Just enough.

Point, Ashcroft.

“First of all,” Karma said, leaning forward, her elbows resting atop the notebook, hands clasped together just under her breasts and why, no, she wasn't intentionally pushing them upward, threatening to tumble free, nope, she wasn’t doing that at all. “There are more ways to cheat than just sexually, and we both know it.”

That foot slipped a little higher and Lauren managed a nod - there was no way she could, you know, speak - as Karma tugged her chair closer to the table, giving herself a bit more… leg room. A fact that was not lost on Lauren (or her thigh) (or her… a bit higher up thigh) and she bit down on her lip. Hard.

“Second of all,” Karma said and Lauren waited for her to finish, but it turned out that 'second of all’ was much less about words and much more about a slight twitch of Karma’s ankle which had Lauren grabbing onto the edge of the table and simultaneously proved two things.

One: Lauren had… forgotten… underwear today. (The discovery of which meant Karma’s were pretty much ruined and pointless in a matter of moments.)

Two: When it came to control? Karma had it all.

“You know,” Karma said and yes, that was the very faint ring of gloating in her voice. “When I suggested you wear a skirt today, it was really just so I could stare at your legs.” She smirked, flexing her toes and smiling as she felt Lauren’s thighs clamp around her foot. “But I have to admit, there are other… benefits.”

Benefits like her girlfriend paying attention to her. Total undivided attention and so what if it was only because Karma was giving her the one thing Shane (or Amy) (or her reconciliation with Amy fantasy) couldn’t?

A victory, not matter how small or sexual, is still a victory.

It was taking everything Lauren had (and a bit she didn't know she had) to not just give in, settle back in her chair and enjoy the ride. Sure, everyone in the library would know (one thing Lauren had learned in the last month was that Karma brought out the… loud in her) but Lauren was about three seconds - and five toes - from officially being out of fucks to give about that.

And then Amy giggled. She was staring at her phone, like that was new - the fucking thing was a third hand at this point - and giggling.

Giggling. Like… giggling. Cheerful. Happy. Not sad or miserable or missing, you know, anyone, in the slightest giggles. The sound echoed through the quiet library, earning the blonde a 'hush!’ from the librarian and pulling Lauren’s eyes back there like a black fucking hole sucking up everything within sight.

It wasn’t noticeable, it wasn’t like Lauren lept from the table and darted back there to see what the fun was about. She didn’t even turn her head, it was just her eyes and just for a moment.

But that moment was enough.

Karma sighed and let her foot drop from between Lauren’s legs, finding her shoe on the floor and slipping into it. She shoved her books in her bag and pushed back from the table, noting, ironically, that now she had Lauren’s attention again.

“Karma -”

“You’re right,” Karma said, cutting her off in mid-apology (assuming Lauren’s next few words were actually going to be an apology) (which, as far as Karma was concerned, wasn’t a safe bet at all.) “That was just silly of me, the you and Shane thing.”

She glanced back once at Amy, who just happened to pick that moment to look up, their eyes meeting for the first time in forever. And for the first time in even more forever, Karma didn’t want to stay there, she didn’t want to let her gaze linger.