"C'mon, Laura! Just pick one!" Carmilla whined, bouncing a little as she shivered in the cold autumn wind. That was another disadvantage to no longer being a vampire. Along with losing her heightened physical prowess, she was also susceptible to many mortal miseries, including the cold. "Just pick a pumpkin and let's go!" the ex-vampire continued to urge her girlfriend on.

"Hold on, Carmilla, hold on!" Laura insisted. "I have to pick the perfect one..." the blond trailed off as she continued to thoroughly inspect the three large pumpkins resting in the hay at her feet.

"Laura! They're all the same!" Carmilla pleaded again, furiously rubbing her arms to stave off the chill. How was Laura able to stand in such a bitter wind and not even flinch?

"No they're not!" Laura protested. "I have to take size and shape into account..." she trailed off again.

"They're all about equal size and shape!" Carmilla continued to whine. "And we're only carving Jack-O-Lanterns, not making pies, they don't have to be massive! We aren't trying to feed the entire floor! They're just Jack-O-Lanterns!"

"Jack-E-lanterns," Laura corrected, still inspecting the three pumpkins.

Being the girl she was, Laura had since started to call carved pumpkins "Jackie-Lanterns" just to promote gender quality. She was still working on a name that sounded good for nonbinary or gender-neutral individuals, however, and had come up with a few like Jay-o-Lanterns or "Jamie-Lanterns", but she had yet to decide upon which one was the best. Like now...

"Fine! Let's just get all three!" Carmilla finally threw up her hands, only to regret the action moments later as it exposed her body to more of the cold air. "Being an ex-vampire and ex-countess means I have a lot of money stored up. We could buy an entire patch if you wanted! And we could pay to have them hand-delivered home! Can we just go now? Please? Before I freeze to re-death?"

"Oh, quit being such a drama queen!" Laura scoffed disdainfully, but when she turned around, Carmilla could see her grinning. Inwardly, Carmilla cursed Laura for being such a little brat, but even deeper than that, Carmilla hated how much she absolutely adored that dorky little smile. She had to hide a smile as Laura eagerly tried to pick up all three pumpkins at once. What a dork.

30 minutes later, the happy couple had returned to their cozy little dorm room in Silas University. Laura had decided that they would carve two of the pumpkins secretly and individually, and then present them to each other as gifts before carving the third together. Carmilla had no idea what she was going to carve, having initially only joined Laura on her trip to the pumpkin patch for companionship, but there was no way she could deny Laura's request. Especially not when Laura used her stupid and, admittedly effective, puppy eyes. Curse those puppy eyes.

"Here you go!" Laura interrupted Carmilla's thoughts, shoving a carving kit into her hand. "See you in a couple hours!" she added, quickly kissing her girlfriend's cheek before dashing away to Perry and Lafontaine's room, pumpkin in one hand and an array of sharp, pointy objects in the other. Classic, stupid, accident-prone Laura. Carmilla could only scoff before turning around in her now-empty dorm to her face her own pumpkin. What was she going to carve?

A few hours later, Laura came back with a pumpkin whose cutting job was a bit... jagged... and skewered... and misshapen... and uneven...

"Ok. Maybe I should've looked up a How-To first," Laura admittedly sheepishly, handing the Jack-E-Lantern to Carmilla. Carmilla resisted the urge to make a snarky remark and instead chose to see what Laura had tried to carve in the pumpkin.

"Vampire fangs? Ha, ha," Carmilla rolled her eyes. How many times had her friends asked if she was going to dress up as a vampire for Halloween? She'd lost count. "That shouldn't have taken you as long as it did!" she added critically. "And my fangs were never that crooked!"

"Well, what did you carve?!" Laura asked defensively, snatching her pumpkin back.

"Nothing too special," Carmilla admitted, smirking as Laura held her pumpkin to her chest possessively, caressing it, offended by Carmilla's pretty criticisms. Then the ex-vampire surrendered her own Jack-E-Lantern.

"A crescent moon? And you say I did a lame job!" Laura scoffed as she inspected the pumpkin.

"What? You said I could carve anything!" Carmilla shrugged. "And at least the lines are smooth!"

"My mistake, I suppose," Laura teased. Then she set down the two carved pumpkins and turned to the third and final one, sizing it up.

"Maybe I'd better design this one too," she decided finally.

"Hey! No fair! If it's both of ours, we should get an equal say," Carmilla reminded. She may not have been into pumpkin carving, but Laura was NOT going to have all the fun today.

"I'm not doing another lame moon," Laura half-demanded, half-pleaded.

"Don't judge," Carmilla pretended to pout, hurt. Laura knew she was only teasing and she rolled her eyes.

"Fine. What did you have in mind?" she asked. Now it was Carmilla's turn to turn to the pumpkin.

After one mini-argument, five cookies, and several kisses, the two had finally chosen a design. Then, another few hours later, that design had come to life. It wasn't really much better than the messed up vampire fangs or the lazy moon and it had nothing to do with Halloween at all, but because of what it symbolized to the pair, that somehow made it all the better. The pumpkin had words instead of pictures and those words said "love is love". What really made it beautiful, however, was instead of just putting a candle in that one, Carmilla and Laura found a string of rainbow lights. Dorm 307 was a very happy, cozy room that night.

AN: Only wrote this for a little Wattpad competition. Also, don't forget that Oct is Queer History Month!