"You sure you want to do this, L? This girl could be a psychopath for all we know." LaF's voice came through the other end of the phone.

"Then I'll be murdered in my sleep. I can't live at home anymore, I need to get out."

LaF knew this, they had sat up many nights when they could be skyping Perry, to listen to her go on and on about how suffocating her father was.

"Well, I guess go for it then. It's a good thing you're meeting her for coffee first."

Laura nodded her head along to what her friend was saying. She looked at the clock on the dash and interrupted them, "I've got to go in now, don't want to be late and leave a bad impression."

"I'll talk to you later then, don't get eaten."

Laura went to say she wouldn't, when she heard LaF chuckle to themselves. "I'm hanging up now." Laura said, hitting the end call button. She sighed, leaning back against the headrest. In the next five minutes she would be meeting her possible new roommate.

XXX

Twenty minutes, the girl was twenty minutes late.

Laura figured that she decided against having a roommate after all and just wasn't going to show for obvious reasons. She was just about ready to stand up, throw out her second hot chocolate, and go home. When LaF asked later about how it went, she would say that the girl and she just didn't get along. Maybe she would even call her a psychopath.

She was about ready to do all of this, when someone sat down; scratch that, flopped down into the chair opposite her.

Laura needed a minute, or ten to take all of her in.

The brunette looked at her as if she knew exactly what she was thinking. How could she not though with all of that skin-tight leather and see-through shirt? Her eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner, eyelashes perfectly splayed. Her eyes were dark, almost entirely pupil as she looked Laura up and down. It reminded Laura of a wolf that hadn't eaten for days; that or like a giant black cat to match her attire.

Laura cleared her throat, holding her hand out to shake, "Laura Hollis."

The brunette stared at her hand long enough that Laura started to awkwardly retract it, just as the girl snatched it up when she nearly had it back at her side, pulling it back toward the middle of the table to limply shake. It was an odd gesture, one that if Laura wasn't so caught up in her appearance, would have catalogued it as creepy and wrote it on the list of reasons not to move in with this attractive stranger.

"Carmilla Karnstein." She said, and oh boy that voice. It was the perfect combination of rasp and sex. The girl herself was dripping sex appeal; not only in her appearance, but the way she carried herself as well.

Carmilla leaned back in her seat, one arm draped over the back, while the other was lying flat on the table. For someone not much taller than her, she sure liked to take up space. Everything about her screamed rebellion and the typical 'bad girl,' but the twitch in her lip would give away how uncomfortable she was.

Laura didn't notice that though, in fact she was hell-bent on making sure Carmilla knew she had been waiting for her. "I figured when we had agreed on three, we'd both be here at three."

Carmilla looked back from where she was peering over at the register. "Do you want to get something?" she asked as if she hadn't heard Laura at all.

Laura blinked, a vein stretching out against the skin of her neck. "I already had two hot chocolates while waiting for you." There was a bite in her tone, one that would remind you of a tiny dog yapping at a much larger one.

Carmilla's expression didn't change; where guilt normally would have been was amusement. "Suit yourself, I'm going to get a coffee."

Laura watched Carmilla get up and walk over to the counter. She may have had imaginary steam coming out of her ears and nose, but she didn't fail to stare at her leather-clad ass as it sashayed away. She shook her head; she couldn't believe this. Here she was thinking that the person she was going to meet had even just the slightest degree of thoughtfulness to show up on time and be a slightly decent human being, and she is gifted with the queen of snark, or more likely the up and coming punk version of Aphrodite.

Carmilla sat down a couple minutes later, slurping noisily at her coffee. Now that she was back and Laura wasn't stunned by her looks, she was able to take in the safety pins that were stuck in her ears as makeshift earrings, and one of the boots she was wearing had paint splatters on the toe of it; a painter maybe? Laura was growing more desperate every moment that the silence continued. She really wanted this apartment.

Carmilla looked up from her coffee, one brow raised in question when she saw Laura staring hard at her ear. "It's a safety pin, surely you've seen one before." She said; the words clipped to leave no room for interpretation. She didn't mind the ogling, but when people started looking at her like they owed her some form of pity towards the way she chose to dress, that's when she lost her patience, and any ounce of understanding.

Laura's eyes slid away from Carmilla's ear and somewhere near her chin. "Sorry."

Carmilla shrugged, flipping the top off of her coffee and drinking it from the brim instead, not caring when she came away with a foam mustache. She brushed it away with her thumb before licking it off. "It's all good, cutie." she said casually, the iciness in her tone gone.

Laura's lip twitched at the nickname, something that Carmilla noticed as she leaned forward in her chair and set her cup down. "You've never lived on your own, have you?" she asked.

Laura fidgeted, trying to focus on how Carmilla lacked any form of manners, slurping her coffee, being late, and ignoring her when she spoke. There was already enough reasons for Laura to get up, walk out, and forget the apartment all together; she could find another place. Carmilla was rude and arrogant and messy. All of this Laura picked up in just the ten minutes they've been sitting together. Laura didn't like her at all, maybe even beginning to hate her a little bit. She wanted this apartment though, she wanted to prove to everyone back at home that she could handle being on her own, she wanted to prove to herself that she could be on her own. Laura decided in that moment that no matter what Carmilla did to get her not to take the roommate contract (which is what she had to be doing, nobody is this rude when meeting someone for the first time), she would ignore the purposeful jabs, allowing herself to be the metaphorical punching bag her father had taught her not to be, in order to land this apartment deal.

"No, I haven't." She said, looking down at her fingers as she played with the edges of a napkin. She looked up again to make eye contact. She would not come off as weak in this situation. She had spent enough time being viewed as the lesser of two. She was her own person, not just a name attached to the end of her father's name. It was moments like this that she missed her mother most.

Carmilla continued to watch Laura, looking closer like she was cracking a code or trying unsuccessfully to solve a Sudoku puzzle, before nodding her head. "You got a deal."

Laura sat up straight, what? It was that easy? "Wait, really?" she found herself asking.

Carmilla nodded, standing up from her seat and stretching, her pierced navel visible as the shirt lifted the slightest bit before settling back down at the hip. Laura needed to divert her eyes, if only to be able to tell herself later that she wasn't that attracted to her new roommate.

Carmilla reached into a back pocket and tossed a key onto the table. "Move in whenever you want, rent is due the first."

Laura opened her mouth to speak, but when she tore her eyes away from the intricately carved metal, Carmilla was already halfway out of the cafe's door, the bell ringing to announce her departure.

Laura leaned back in her chair, not even finding it in herself to care as she turned the key over in her hand, a melded 307 embossed into the head of it. She was ready for this, now she just had to tell her dad.