Chapter 1

Author's note: I'm going to start this with a disclaimer: I did not watch the whole series. I super don't care about the evil university multi-vamp bit evil underlying plot, and I really only care about Laura & Carmilla. So, a really nice person uploaded a video of just the hollstein scenes and I watched that, so that's what we're working with here.

This story has no supporting characters right now from the series, unless I go back and watch enough to pick up their speech patterns and write them in. We're starting from them hiding in…what are they in? Some sort of hole or attic in a library? I don't know. They're hiding together. I think that's season 0, but I'm going to write this as a premature season 3 while waiting for season 3.

I know! I'm a terrible person! If you'd rather spend hiatus endlessly scrolling tumblr feeds, I understand and don't hold it against you.

But if you want more vamp-y adventures, please continue!


Day 6 In Hiding

Laura Hollis has exactly twelve different favorite snack foods. They are divided neatly into three snack categories: salty, sweet, and so salty/sweet that it counts as a guilty pleasure. She also made sure to list them in alphabetical order, for proper, organized listing purposes and to make sure to leave none of them out.

Laura Hollis also has two favorite seasons, fall and spring, had a stuffed bunny named Snuggie that she kept until she was 18 and her first roommate, Betty, pointed out that it was a bit much to come to college with a stuffed animal and still expect to be treated like more than a child. She has seen entirely too many Disney movies enough times to know the words to all of the songs, and hates gin due to one night of experiencing too many amateur-mixed martinis that she experienced on repeat in the Dorm A restroom and now even the smell makes her nauseous.

Carmilla Karnstein knows all of this about Laura Hollis because Laura will talk about any and everything to avoid talking about them.

Us. The plurality that kept weaving in and out of Carmilla's mind as Laura droned on and on about any and everything, avoiding what the vampire knew to be inevitable.

"I don't think that HD makes that much of a difference. Like if I download a movie in HD, and then watch some of it in regular in someone else's room, I can barely tell the difference." Laura droned on, munching on her vending machine feast.

This has got to stop, Carmilla thought, not willing to tolerate the dance around everything they wouldn't say.

"I suppose if it's like a nature movie, or something where the color of the sky really, really matters, I would get the HD version-"

Laura stopped when she felt Carmilla slip her hand into her own, gently intertwining their fingers, but saying nothing.

Laura swallowed, keeping her gaze in front of them. She took a breath, but didn't move her hand away. It felt like ages since she had last felt Carmilla's skin, and therefore had forgotten the affect it had on her.

"Or maybe the HD wouldn't even make a difference in how the sky looks."

Carmilla still said nothing, letting Laura finish her nervous babble, knowing the woman felt her palm and all of the terrifying realities of once again feeling her touch.

Laura swallowed again, looking at Carmilla, still letting their hands stay pressed together. She was suddenly out of things to say, waiting for Carmilla to acknowledge the contact, or at least give some indication as to what her intentions were.

"It is the same." Carmilla said after a moment, turning her head to look back at Laura.

"Not in HD?" Laura asked, aware that now face-to-face, their noses were only a few inches apart.

She noticed that Carmilla's scent, the one that had previously taken over half of their dorm room, was inescapably present. It brought up the same feelings of longing, yet now instead of wondering what it would be like to kiss Carmilla, she wondered what it would be like to let go of her heroic notions of simple good/evil dichotomies and keep holding onto the hand that was silently pressing for more attention.

"HD or no HD, I mean the sky always looks the same." Carmilla's voice was softer than it had been in the last couple of weeks. Laura waited silently for her to continue, feeling Carmilla take the hand she had already claimed and move it into her lap, still holding, but now stroking her fingers with the other hand.

"It looks the same no matter where or when you look up. Orion's belt and the Big Dipper are still there, whether you're looking up and you hear a wine-induced Francophone cacophony being spoken around you or if you look up from a lightly snow-covered mountainside with nobody around at all. It looked the same the night I had my first kiss as the night I had my first bite as the night before war was declared on fascist Germany."

Laura pondered the thought for a moment, taking in the words and the feeling of Carmilla's hands gently making her body as aware as her mind of her presence.

As Carmilla traced her knuckles, she tried to drink in the words that had been spoken.

If course. She's lived in at least thirty different countries in the last three hundred years, and here I am, clearly not impressing her with my knowledge of crème-filled pastries all night. The young woman sighed, once again in her life questioning her concept of reality.

"Laura, before Silas saw the inevitable release of every sort of being that nobody wanted to admit existed, have you ever truly experienced something terrifying happen in your lifetime?"

Carmilla had a way of asking a question in just the right way where she sounded genuine, not condescending.

Laura shook her head from side to side, looking at Carmilla in anticipation of anything else she had to say.

"I think that," Carmilla started, pausing for a moment to look away and take a breath before continuing, "I need to remember that."

"What do you mean?" Laura pressed nervously, hoping that Carmilla wouldn't notice her hand slightly fidget.

She had, of course noticed, along with the pulse that fluttered under her touch. She continued tracing invisible patterns on the hand in her lap, venturing up to a soft forearm.

"I need to remember that when you talk about Silas, it's the first time you've experienced these types of—situations. You've never seen a village burn to the ground or a war come and go, and then been around to see humanity carry on afterwards, sometimes so quickly that it seems callous. You can't imagine that Silas might come out alright, but that it might not, and either way the world continues on."

Laura nodded, trying to wrap her head around where Carmilla was going. Carmilla looked only a few years older than her with her hair pulled back. Only the gravity of the conversation gave an indication of the woman's age and less-than-human status.

"The sky stays the same." She said, looking at the dark, bold eyes of her former immortal lover.

"It does. I need to remind myself that all of these things that in my bigger picture seem less important, but for you, it's the whole picture." Carmilla looked down at their hands, openly rubbing her palm up and down Laura's arm. She was always drawn to Laura's skin, and in particular, the way Laura was letting her touch her skin.

"Carmilla, what are you saying?" Laura asked, choosing to keep her gaze on Carmilla's face, unaware that she was slightly moving closer.

"I'm saying you like cookies, creampuffs, pretzel sticks, cartoon movies for some unexplainable reason, the change from summer into the cooling of autumn and a lot of other seemingly mundane but somehow significant things. Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"What do these things make you feel?" Carmilla raised her gaze back to Laura's soft Hazel eyes, looking at her intently.

"Safe. Comfortable. Warm."

Carmilla nodded, gathering her boldness.

"And this?" Carmilla asked, raising up the hand she had been stroking for the last few moments, continuing to feel her way through the folds of Laura's fingers, demonstrating what she was talking about.

"Cared for. Confused." She paused to swallow. "Afraid."

Carmilla nodded, their faces now only an inch apart.

"Is that how I always made you feel, or just now?"

"Sometimes some of those feelings more than others, but yes, I guess always at least a little of the three." Laura was whispering now, even though they were the only two present.

"It's our sky."

Laura thought about it for a few moments, breathing in the same air as Carmilla, but staying silent. The electricity of being in close proximity to Carmilla was still present as it always had been, as if her skin were trying to stretch from her body to see if it could touch more of the older, paler woman.

It was slowly starting to seep in. Carmilla existed before her favorite cookies, and would probably still be alive if they went out of existence. But the feeling from them would still exist-even if in other ways, from other things.

She thought about it, stopping Carmilla's wandering touch to just hold their hands together, seeing Carmilla's brow furrow, waiting for a response.

"So, you might be my hero, or you might be a complete anti-hero, but you're always going to make me feel like this?"

"I believe that this thing that we feel," Carmilla motioned between them with her free hand, "the thing that's so hard to articulate, whatever it is that makes us move closer to each other bit by bit, that's what is really us."

Carmilla contemplated just moving in that last little bit and kissing Laura, just to really feel like an us again. But she knew that Laura was starting to get it, but still was too naïve to understand.

"I once asked you if we could, for one night, pretend we could just be us. We'd leave-"

"And just be you and me." In Love. She remembered Carmilla's exact words.

"The offer still stands."

Laura's eyes went wide.

"You're still asking me to abandon everything and everyone I've ever known?" Laura asked, the afraid in her starting to overpower the part that felt cared about simply from being in Carmilla's presence.

"No. Not if you don't want to. I just mean that I've been living here in your world, and you've started to see some of mine, but not really. I'm asking you to let me show you." Carmilla was still fighting every instinct she had inside of her to lean into a kiss. She could feel that Laura still desired her, but she was offering something much more vulnerable than her body.

Laura searched the black orbs, noticing her pupils had little flecks of white in them. She couldn't process everything that had happen to them in the last few weeks, but she also couldn't imagine not looking into Carmilla's eyes for another broken-hearted, sleepless night.

"Show me."