#livewriting

(It doesn't hurt that he can play kind of okay lacrosse)

Hey hey

At 8 PM EST (about two hours from now my time) I am going to do a Trainee!Peter LiveWrite! Working Title:

I Can Make You Hate Todd Even Though He's Not In This Scene

Link to Google Doc here! 

Until I start writing, it will just have some content warnings and basic blocking to help me when I get started. I’ll reblog this when I am ready to write!

Nothing appeared in Laura’s summoning circle. Which was… not great. Okay, it was terrible. Laura knew she’d summoned something. She’d felt the tug at the other end of her firmly imagined cord. Her heart still sputtered in her chest like an engine running on fumes. She’d used her powers before, she knew what the drain felt like.

Life to bring life. Laura didn’t quite have a grasp on what she was trading, but she knew it was important. Hopefully it wasn’t years off her life. Though at this point, it may as well have been. If whatever she’d summoned wasn’t contained, she’d likely kick it here and now.

A cheerful thought. Laura was great at those, ever since she’d accidentally brought back her roommate back from the dead a year ago. She’d practiced — the necromancy, not the pessimism. Though the two seemed to be inextricably linked. Maybe Laura was trading positive energy?

Laura took a deep breath, held it, and released it in a gush. In the silence after, she paused, gathering her senses. If she was lucky — ha — she might be able to sense the cord that bound her to the-

Crinkling. Someone was in the warehouse with her.

Laura spun. And there, at the table where she’d set all of her materials, was a girl. Her age, about, though she seemed to have a serious case of fake 1800s, given the ridiculous corset she was wearing. Was it made of leather?

“Cupcakes?” the girl said. Laura couldn’t quite place her tone. It was somewhere between amused and disdainful, with a nice dash of mockery. “You come to an abandoned warehouse in the outskirts of Styria and you bring cupcakes as your one food item? Listen, cutie, that’s just not practical.”

“Hey!” Laura stormed forward and ripped the half-eaten cupcake out of the girl’s hand. The girl raised an eyebrow at her, and reached beside them to grab another one. “Those are mine!” A moment later, when the sheer irritation had faded a little, Laura stepped closer and prodded the girl. “And how did you get in here? I thought I locked the door you… you raging bad person! You broke in!”

“Carmilla,” she said, and popped the whole next cupcake in her mouth at once. “How did you get in?”

Laura’s mouth malfunctioned. Carmilla just snorted, and licked icing off her finger. It was… distracting. Which was ridiculous. “I- That’s not the point!”

Carmilla nodded, and went for another cupcake. Laura slapped her hand away. “You’re right there, cupcake.” Carmilla smiled, and Laura didn’t like the look of it. “That isn’t the thing you should be worried about. How about you try that summoning circle? Have you realized what went wrong yet?”

“Okay, listen, you can’t just barge in and try to tell me how to do my job!” Laura paused. “My skill! Ability. Life calling?” She shook her head, a few more wisps of hair flying free of her tight braid. “It doesn’t matter. How would you know-”

That’s when Laura noticed the closed door. The chain was still in place, and the thick dust on the floor still contained only one set of footsteps. Her gaze swung back to Carmilla, and then down at the half-eaten cupcake in her hand. The outline of teeth was marked clearly in the stiff icing — many, many teeth, all needle sharp.

Cold trickled down Laura’s spine. She hadn’t thought of that. The cupcake inside the circle was from the same batch as the ones she’d brought for a snack — the same ingredients, brewed and cooked at the same time, and wrapped in paper cups from the same package. Magically speaking, she’d basically offered whatever she’d summoned a ticket out of the circle.

This was why Hogwarts needed to exist. Learning magic on your own sucked.

alternatively, “I told my friend about you, the cute lifeguard, and now they’re trying to convince me to drown myself in order for you to come save me. From the weird looks you’re giving me, I assume you overheard.”

“Drown yourself,” Laf suggested. They took a sip of their lemonade, the paper umbrella only half-scorched from whatever they were doing before they came to the beach. They seemed to think this suggestion was helpful, somehow. “It’s foolproof.”

“Um,” Laura said, and took a huge gulp of her lemonade to keep from saying something inadvisable. “In what way, exactly?”

“A fool couldn’t do it.” Laf winked at Laura. Laura felt vaguely complimented, but the potential for disaster overruled the emotion. Handily. 

“That’s…” Laura said weakly. “That’s not what foolproof means.”

“Sure it is.” Laf stirred their lemonade, then set it down. Laura saw the umbrella catch fire briefly, but Laf didn’t seem to notice, so she didn’t say anything. Maybe coming to the beach with the inventor of the world’s best technology and the world’s worst ideas wasn’t the smartest thing Laura had ever done. “It’s foolproof because no fool would try it.”

“Uh huh.” Laura sighed, and resisted the urge to stare off at the lifeguard stand again. It was ridiculous, and something out of an Archie comic, but she really, really wanted to talk to Carmilla. Maybe talk was an understatement. She wanted to kiss Carmilla. She wanted to make out with Carmilla. Sleeping through the first half of the summer had been amazing because it had given her energy for the second half, but Laura was beginning to think it was too much energy. “Laf, I think I’m going to buy you a dictionary for the nearest possible occasion.”

“Sweet! I needed some more tinder for the alchemy club membership creation.” Laf looked pensive. “Not that you need to know about that.” They grinned. “Now,” Laf said sternly, “Drown. You’re not a fool, Hollis. You can do this.”

“As a lifeguard,” the person behind Laura drawled. It was a very familiar voice. One Laura had been listening to from a distance for going on a week now. “I’m going to have to advise against purposefully drowning. See, I’ve heard it’s unpleasant. And then if you were dead, I couldn’t get your number, could I?”