For Caesar's Palace shipping week, day one. Prompt was falling snow. My ten minute drabbles are awful and I apologise in advance for this one. It's mostly tumblr's fault for bombarding me with way too many pictures of Elise in a beanie, tbh. Set at Silas (but either AU or ... really early s2? /shrugs).

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"Do you want to grab some coffee? Because I like you a latte." Laura stares at you expectantly, like she actually needs an opinion on the atrocity of a pick up line.

"That's appalling," you tell her, eyes still fixed on your battered book you're trying to read for your Philosophy class. "Kirsch's?"

She nods in confirmation, then laughs as you mime throwing up. "That was an actual offer, by the way."

"Couldn't pay me to leave this room, cutie." You laugh and she throws your jacket — and okay, it isn't supposed to be on her headboard, but, well, it was closer when you were changing — at you.

"Carm, this place makes good coffee."

Which is a compelling argument, to be fair, but, "It's snowing." Laura rolls her eyes at you and pulls a grey beanie on, leaving it sitting lopsided on her head while she searches for shoes.

You are a three hundred year old vampire. You have seen empires collapse, cities be sacked and razed to the ground, the erasure of entire civilisations — and you are not being swayed by a beanie, dammit.

"Fine." She finishes tying her second shoe and hops off her bed. "Want me to get you something, then?"

And, well. It's probably not snowing that hard. For the sake of your pride, you manage to make your sigh while you look for your boots last at least ten seconds, and then you're outside and have to take back your earlier assumption, because it is freezing. Snow spirals to the ground in soft flakes that dust the pavement an almost pristine white, and you adjust your jacket so you can hunch down inside it a little more.

"So, I was studying Lit with Kirsch today," Laura starts, tugging her beanie lower over her ears as she walks.

"Studying," you repeats dubiously, because in the centuries you've attended Silas, the Zetas have never really been known for academics.

"Yeah, well, he was testing chat-up lines on me for, like, an hour. But I did finish the essay."

"Congratulations."

"Mm." She lets your sarcasm wash over her, biting her lip in apparent consideration. "If you were a laser, you would be set on stunning." You look askance at this, and she flashes you a smile. "Hey, at least it's better than the coffee one."

"You have a skewed definition of better, cupcake."

"I've got vampire specific ones, too," Laura offers, bumping her hip against yours. "You know, if beauty were time, you'd be eternity." She smirks at the face of abject pain you make in response.

"I'm really not interested," you tell her, ignoring her dark muttering about spoilsport vampires, but at this point you reach the shop, so she stops bombarding you with increasingly awful lines for about as long as it takes you to order, and your drinks when they come are warm enough to occupy you both for a few minutes.

Your short respite ends as she notices you finishing your coffee — it's taken you less than five minutes and Laura may actually be right when she says you have a problem, but, like, it's not as if it can kill you or anything. "I must be a snowflake," she ventures as the two of you come in sight of your building.

You're used to hearing uninterpretable things from Laura, but this is a new kind of odd, and you don't equate it with the other lines for a moment. "Hm?"

"Because I've fallen for you?" Oh. She smirks in victory and then shrieks as you push her into the drift of snow piled high at the edge of the pavement.

You peer down at her, exaggerating the action. "You know, I've heard some truly horrific lines in my time, but that one takes the cake, creampuff."

Sprawled in the snow, Laura snatches her beanie off the ground and shivers, staring at the stain her not yet finished hot chocolate has made on the ground. "Oh my god, Carm."

You gloat, and her scowl intensifies. Revelling so early in your triumph turns out to be a mistake, however, since you forget to step back out of range, and she makes a wild lunge for your legs that has you tumbling down next to her — and holy hell, the snow is cold. Laura pushes you down the rest of the way, saturating your back — which is honestly probably going to give you a vampiric kind of pneumonia or something — and laughs at your horrified expression as the snow soaks into your hair.

You suppose it's lucky you'd finished your coffee, at least.

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