Randomly and on a whim I wrote this very quickly. I don't think I'll be writing much for Carmilla, but I tried my best for this little thing at my first shot of it. Hope you enjoy!

Dislcaimer: I do not own Carmilla.

Quiet

It was hard not to have questions when your "new" (aka, replacement) roommate was a god-knows-how-many-year-old vampire.

And, one you knew for certain who had tried to hit on you at least once, at that.

So naturally, Laura had a lot of questions. A lot. And it was getting more and more difficult to keep them to herself, or at least filter them. Sometimes she'd slip them casually into conversation, a tactic that never went unnoticed by Carmilla's uncaring yet perceptive ears.

She'd always reply with a deadpanned expression, an annoyed tone, and a trademark roll of the eyes. Heavy sighs were also quite common.

And yet, she couldn't help but feel… almost flattered, when Laura asked her things. Albeit it was often an accusatory process, but it made her feel like someone actually gave a damn about her for once in her immortal existence.

Laura was a loudmouth who always stuck her nose into the exact places it wasn't supposed to be without fail.

But she was also endearing, honest, and admittedly kind of cute. And her blood hadn't tasted all that bad, either.

She tried to deny it for the longest time, but Carmilla knew deep within the dusty, cobweb-coated confines of her soul that she was drawn to her - in more ways than one.

But the fact remained that more often than not, Laura was a pain in her neck - almost as much as Carmilla hoped she literally was to Laura.

It was one of those evenings Laura had called for her favorite redhead neanderthal, and Carmilla had promptly left the premises, though she never went far, always keeping her senses alert for any signs of potential danger. Well, anything more dangerous than she herself could prove to be, anyway.

But she found half an hour was all she could allow. Her feelings of possession toward Laura were gradually becoming borderline aggressive, like a wolf trying to chase off other predators to keep them away from a selected deer.

So she ventured back around midnight, stopping briefly in the courtyard outside to take in the stars, celestial bodies she could never get enough of no matter how many years she lived. There was something ethereal about them, and no matter how many hours she whittled away thinking about them, she could never quite place the mysteries they presented unto her.

It was hard to tear her eyes away, as it often was. But she managed the feat in lieu of getting back to her territory - back to what she'd claimed and marked as her own.

A growl crawled up the back of her throat at finding Laura alone in the room with that amazon. There was even an iota of fear, but she ignored it, forcing it down, swallowing it. Fear was useless. She'd learned that the hard way over the years. It only made her weaker.

But that was fear for herself, fear for her own vulnerabilities. This was fear for someone else, and rather than weaken her, she believed it made her stronger.

Or angrier. Probably angrier.

She stalked down the hallway to the room and opened the door without so much as a knock; after all, it was a courtesy no one else in the entire damn building had the sense to utilize.

She was surprised (and perhaps secretly delighted) when she found Laura alone in the room. But she made sure to keep the satisfaction out of her movements and voice as she stepped in, locking the door behind her.

"Oh!" Laura perked up and spun around in her rolling chair, dressed in her pajama pants and shirt. "You're back! …Why?"

Carmilla glanced over her quickly before scoffing a response.

"This is my room too, isn't it?" She dropped her bag down beside her bed and removed her shirt shamelessly - or perhaps she was still trying to seduce the girl. She liked to keep it ambiguous.

Laura shrugged and turned around in her chair, but peeked back over her shoulder just a little.

"Well, yeah I guess it is. Since we're still no closer to finding Betty…" she muttered. "It's just you're usually… out at night. Doing… I dunno. Vampire things."

Carmilla tossed her dark curls over one shoulder, keeping her voice uninterested and unimpressed.

"Yeah well, tonight I felt the need to come back early to keep an eye on you and your freakishly-tall girlfriend. Where is she? Not hiding in the bathroom, I hope."

"Okay, Danny's not my girlfriend. I think…" It was a thought Laura had mulled over for hours at a time and still found no surefire answer to. She still didn't even know if that was what she wanted or not. "And no, she's not in the bathroom. I told her I was tired so she left early."

"Good." Carmilla slipped a black tank-top over her shoulders and pulled her hair out, opting to keep the denim black Jean shorts on. She left the knee-high socks of a similar color as well, only removing her boots before plopping herself down onto her bed. She could feel Laura watching her, and was torn between smirking or hissing.

"Well?" she snapped. "Aren't you tired and gonna go to bed?"

"Depends. Are you gonna bite me again?"

Another heavy sigh.

"Do you want me to?"

"No!"

"Then shut up and go to sleep."

To demonstrate she herself intended to do just that, Carmilla turned onto her side, giving Laura her back, closing her off.

There was a silence, pregnant as though her roommate wanted to say something else, but eventually the girl shook it off.

"Fine." Laura stood and went to her own bed, pulling the covers down and slipping underneath. She turned off the lamp, leaving the room in seeping darkness. There was a moment of silence, and then a voice that was almost confused, as though she wanted to be civil and yet remind herself she was talking to a bloodsucking vampire. "Goodnight," she muttered simply.

It was an unexpected phrase, one Carmilla didn't get to hear often, considering she was usually absent at night. She didn't know how to reply.

Eventually, there was a reluctant murmur.

"Night."

She'd hoped it would end quietly with that, that they'd both just succumb to the silence and drift off till morning.

But of course it wasn't that simple with this girl.

In her countless centuries on earth, Carmilla had entertained a plethora of questions that couldn't be classified as anything more impressive than dimwitted.

In short, she'd heard a lot of stupid shit.

And she'd always react accordingly; snarly, snarky, snappy comments meant to shut people up so they'd think twice the next time they decided to open their yaps.

So why was it that her roommate seemed to be hitting her with the questions she'd never heard before? And why couldn't she feel that annoyance as strongly with her?

She had been trying to let go of her conscious when she heard Laura shift around, bedsheets ruffling as she turned over. Carmilla could feel the eyes boring into her back and prayed to all the gods she didn't believe in that the girl would keep her mouth shut.

But that familiar high-pitched voice then posed a query Carmilla had never been confronted with before.

"Does it beat?"

It was so random, so loud in the silence that had almost grown some semblance of comfortable that it had the dark-haired girl's eyes opening slowly, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She rolled over onto her back, turning her head to the side to seek out the girl who was wiggling excitedly around in her bed, waiting for an answer.

Her voice was the bark of a girl who'd been denied sleep.

"What?"

Laura fell silent for a moment, sputtering to herself.

"Oh! Um, sorry. Well, like… what I mean is-"

"Would you spit it out?"

"Your heart."

Carmilla's eyes flew wide open in disbelief, a feat not many mortals had managed in all this time. She moved just an inch to look toward the other bed, able to make out her roommate's outline in the faint moonlight. She then looked up to the ceiling and heaved a sigh.

"Seriously? You interrupted this heavenly silence to ask me that?"

But honestly, she was a bit shocked - just a bit. No one had ever cared to ask her about this topic before.

Part of Laura wanted to say "never mind" and roll back over, but she'd come this far, so she decided to go all the way.

"I mean, I was just wondering. I mean since you're what like, eight-hundred years old or something, right? So does your heart beat or does it just kinda sit there and do nothing? Has it been beating nonstop for however-many years?"

Carmilla's eyes went back to their usual half-lidded position again, her eyes rolling slightly and jaw hanging slack with her tart reply.

"Yah."

Laura perked up, happy and somewhat puzzled to have actually gotten an answer.

"Wait, what?"

"Well, aside from when I was murdered. But when I was turned, it started pumping blood again. So yeah, it beats," Carmilla snapped, and the next words came without her thinking them through. "Do you need proof?"

Silence.

But Carmilla could sense there was going to be more to this. In this case, she'd already literally dug her own grave, so she heaved another sigh and decided to bury herself.

"Come here."

An order.

She wasn't going to say it again.

But Laura didn't catch that right away.

"Um… what?"

A heavy sigh.

"You're going to keep pestering me about it - or worse, try to come up with not-so-subtle ways to find out for yourself - so just come here and get it over with now."

Laura hesitated, and to her roommate's despair, instantly went to suspicion.

"Are you… trying to lure me in so you can bite me again?"

The dark-haired girl hissed in frustration.

"You know what? Forget it. Don't touch me."

She turned over, back onto her side, facing the wall, one last mutter slipping past her fangs.

"I thought you actually cared…"

Laura didn't miss the tone in her voice, that sheer and utter loneliness. All her life - however long that'd been - Carmilla had never been trusted by humans. And Laura currently realized she was just as guilty of purposefully putting distance between them.

She was instantly overwhelmed with regret and sat up, slipping her legs off the edge of her bed as she stood.

"Carmilla, no…"

The vampire inhaled sharply and bit her lip.

Fuck.

Laura had said her name. Every time she said it, it sent an irritating little prickle through her chest and she didn't know how to feel about it. It was irksome, poignant, and-

-and warm.

She heard the soft, tentative patter of footsteps as Laura neared her bed, voice sullen and apologetic.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you all upset."

Carmilla was silent for a moment, letting the girl wallow in her guilt for that long.

Then, she turned over to lie on her back again, eyes open and boring directly into Laura's.

"Yeah, well you seem to be doing that a lot lately."

"…Sorry."

"Just shut up."

With one swift motion, Carmilla reached up and grabbed her wrist, pulling the girl down on top of her, earning an "eep!" Her strong arms locked around a tiny waist, using the girl as a makeshift blanket of sorts.

But Laura was nothing if not a mood-killer.

"C-Carmilla, what-"

But another glare through the darkness and a small grunt of disapproval silenced her.

"Could you… I dunno…" the dark-haired girl drawled. "Shut up for once in your life?"

It must've been a miracle, because after that, Laura clamped her jaws shut. She was understandably tense for a moment, a copious amount of questions and thoughts cluttering and buzzing around her mind.

But a gentle sound caught her attention and cleared all else away for the time being.

It was the proof she needed to stave her curiosity.

Her head rested sideways on Carmilla's collar, and beneath her ear she could easily distinguish the sound of a steady heartbeat. It was slow, full, and somewhat calming despite the situation. Relaxing even.

It made her think, profound things that would only come to her at night. Thoughts about Carmilla, alone for centuries, trying to rebel against her mother in subtle ways that wouldn't get her killed consequently.

All those years, forbidden to come into close contact with anyone for fear she'd hurt them-

-for fear they'd hurt her.

It made each thump of Carmilla's heart sound almost sad - aching - and Laura couldn't stop herself from slipping her arms around the other girl's sides to squeeze her gently. For an undead person, Carmilla was surprisingly warm.

Laura had nothing more to say, so she just let her mind wander, gradually loosening her tense shoulders. Carmilla's breath was quiet above her head, her perfume still clinging to her neck and collarbones. Her heartbeat maintained its rhythm, never faltering or picking up speed.

It reminded Laura that plunging a stake into this girl's chest had once been an option.

She felt herself slipping into unconsciousness and willingly let it happen, letting Carmilla's breathing and heartbeat lull her to sleep.

She could worry about the repercussions of all this in the morning.

Carmilla kept her eyes open for a while yet, tracing constellations she'd taught herself onto the ceiling with her eyes. She felt Laura's arms snake around her and nearly jolted; the fact that she didn't was a small blessing.

She was prepared to roll the girl off of her and shove her to the floor if she made so much as another peep. But Laura went limp on top of her, sleep being the only thing that could shut her up for more than six hours at a time.

Another blessing.

Carmilla flashed a quick glance down at her roommate as the girl went slack. And she held her there for a moment, possibly to humor herself, curling fingers through the girl's ponytail.

She couldn't begin to guess how many heartbeats she'd wasted in all her years thus far.

It was… nice to finally get to share them with someone.

She closed her eyes, making a mental note to wake again before daybreak to carry her roommate back to her own bed.

But for now she kept them both as they were, savoring the silence, the gentle warmth, the quiet breaths.

She'd heard a lot of stupid questions before.

But never before had she felt so liberated for providing an answer.

A/N: Welp I tried. Hope you enjoyed. Sorry it doesn't make much sense ahah

Please review!