This chapter is a little longer than usual. Please enjoy and leave a comment
Chapter 12
Laura let out a squawk equivalent to that of some kind of dinosaur-seagull crossbreed, and her fingers flew from the hem of Carmilla's shorts as if the garment had been filled with scorpions. She dove under the covers, the heat from her cherry red face radiating throughout her body.
"DOES NO ONE IN THIS ENTIRE FUCKING SCHOOL UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF KNOCKING!?" Laura heard Carmilla roar, and her free hand tucked under the covers, prodding Laura with her crumpled up t-shirt.
"Oh my god!" Danny yelped, slapping her hands over her eyes, but promptly yelping and dropping the one that was wrapped in a large white bandage to support her broken wrist. Leaving one eye exposed, Danny clamped it shut, and began to spin towards the door. However, in her embarrassed haste (and, due largely to her eyes being closed) she overshot the spin and instead hightailed it directly into the large armoire that housed Carmilla and Laura's jackets. The sharp corner of the wooden structure cracked soundly against Danny's face, and sent the redhead reeling backwards.
Laura had no sooner poked her head through the top of her shirt (and internally pouted as she saw Carmilla was also now fully clothed) than she turned to see Danny, backpedaling until she bumped against the wall, and now clutching her forehead. Laura rolled her eyes, thoroughly irritated, but still needing to make sure the tall girl was ok. Although she may screw up on occasion (more frequently so in the last two days), Laura knew that Danny cared about her and her actions always came from a place of good, whether it be misguided or not.
"Danny, are you hurt?" Laura asked, climbing out of bed, ignoring the very purposefully audible grumble of I fucking hope so, from the vampire slumping down into the bed and crossing her arms huffily behind her.
"I think I might be bleeding," Danny groaned, pulling the hand away that had been nursing her forehead. Her palm was stained scarlet.
"Oh my gosh, Danny!" Laura cried, quickly darting into the bathroom to grab a towel and dampen it in the sink before hustling back past a thoroughly pissed off Carmilla to tend to Danny. Laura stood on tiptoes and reached up, gently dabbing away the blood that was trickling down Danny's forehead and nose. The redhead's pupils looked slightly larger and more unfocused than usual.
"Danny, I think you might have a concussion," Laura sighed, flipping the towel over to the non-bloodstained side and then returning to stopping the flow from Danny's cranium.
"That requires having a brain," Carmilla jabbed from her perch on Laura's bed. "And, generally, people with a brain knock before entering a room! Or is that not a component of social etiquette among the Amazons?"
"Oh, shut up, Morticia," Danny spat, using her un-bandaged hand to flip her middle finger at a glowering Carmilla. "You know, literally none of this would be happening if you hadn't barged your way into Laura's life," the redhead countered, her eyes locking firmly with Laura's, even though her words were pointed toward the vampire. "You sweep in here, all red lipstick and angst, and you just tear through Laura's life, taking what you want. Her cookies, her bed, her sanity, apparently, without even a consideration to how your actions effect her," Danny finished, her words sure and strong, as her slightly fluttering green eyes locked earnestly with Laura's soft, brown ones.
"So concerned with Laura's life," Carmilla said, her voice was low and restrained, but Laura could hear the edge, hear the poison ebbing at the levees. "You think I'm the one without consideration?" Carmilla asked, a smirk creeping over her lips as she climbed out of the bed and slowly walked towards Danny and her make-shift nurse. "No, Red, that's you," she growled, her voice dropping low and her eyes pinning Danny to the wall. "Yes, maybe I have taken some stupid, material things from Laura like cookies and a pillow, but I have never taken her freedom, her right to make a choice. I didn't convince her the only course of action was to try and kill her roommate. I didn't barge in here and try to murder you when I thought you might have feelings for Laura. I let her do what she wanted. Even if that had meant her picking you. If it had meant watching her be with you," Laura saw Carmilla swallow tightly around those words, her heated dark eyes faltering briefly and her voice wavering, but only for a second. "I wouldn't have done anything, because it's Laura's choice. It's Laura's happiness. And let's be real, Gigantor. That's what this is all about. Laura didn't pick you," Carmilla added emphasis onto the last word, her nose now inches from Danny's, Laura standing between them, her nervous eyes flicking back and forth between the fuming women. Danny's eyes shot from Laura to Carmilla nervously for a brief second, until her eyes squinted, her lips pursed in a hard line, and she stepped towards Carmilla, closing the distance, her chest roughly bumping the smaller girl's, who didn't give an inch.
"Maybe that's true. Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I'm overly protective. But at least Laura knows the real me," Danny hissed. Laura had never seen the redhead so heated, so willful in a verbal argument. Danny usually proved her point with muscle, with sweeping physical gestures, and so the pointed words emanating from her were a tactic, Laura knew, she was only adopting based on the physical reminder of her bandaged wrist about how well physical confrontations between her and Carmilla would go. She continued her onslaught, "At least Laura knows all of my faults, all of my shortcomings. But not you," now Danny was sneering, with a glint in her eye that Laura could only describe as menacing. The small girl's eyes darted to Carmilla, and her heart dropped in anticipation, (of what, she didn't know) when she found the deep, dark gaze was already clinging to hers. "Yeah, we all know you're a snide, sarcastic asshole," Danny pursued viciously, "but I happen to know a little more. I had a chat with your mother early this morning, and I have to say, the biography of Carmilla Karnstein is a lot more grim than I think any of us, especially poor Laura, would have originally expected," Danny's words snapped to a halt, and she straightened herself proudly, as if waiting in the wings for the havoc to unfold.
"Your mother?" Laura murmured, her eyes back on Carmilla again, whose now watering orbs had not drifted from her face. "Carm, what is she talking about?" Laura queried quietly, her voice rattling with the fear of the impending answer.
"The Dean," Danny trumpeted, "the Dean is Carmilla's mother. The one responsible for the missing girls. Although, not without Carmilla's help." There was that dropping again. That sickly plummeting of Laura's heart. The sudden lack of foundation, the hopeless, falling of a plane in an air pocket. The fleeting feeling of fear licking at the back of your neck as the seatbelt constricts around your guts, and every time you know it's the end, and it never is. And you feel silly when you level out, and no one has stirred, only your insides. This was the state of Laura's heart. An organ in turbulence and a soul in free fall, but only for a second. And when her mind leveled out once again and the fog lifted from over her eyes and her gaze returned to Carmilla, standing there pleading silently before her, she felt just as silly.