"I didn't mean to make you cry," Carmilla said hesitantly. "I don't ever want to make you cry."
She stared down into her red-tinted coco and Laura knew her roommate was nervous. After centuries of suppressing her feelings, Laura thought, she must have a pretty hard time talking about them. Gotta fix that one of these days.
"Carm," Laura started. "I know you've been through a lot recently. We all have, but there's some stuff we need to address. You and I, I mean."
The vampire continued to gaze into her drink, fidgeting with the handle and looking highly uncomfortable. After she'd burst into tears earlier in the afternoon, Laura had convinced herself that a chocolate packet and water would be just the right way to get her thoughts together. It was becoming increasingly harder to think with Carmilla around. Before they had settled on her bed with steaming mugs of what she could only describe as "a level of deliciousness that stands unmatched," Laura never realized that Carmilla could also be nervous around her. She was just a "naïve, provincial girl," after all. Just a child with next to no life experience in any field but YA literature and television dramas with just a few too many seasons. However; if she'd learned anything from Law & Order, it was how to tell when a person of interest was avoiding the topic at hand. The journalism major pushed on. She certainly had the interviewing skills for the situation.
"Hey, you broody little bloodsucker. Look at me. Look at me."
The third sentence had contained a strong enough hint of pleading to persuade Carmilla to lift her eyes to the face commanding her attention. The only face she thought she ever wanted to look at again. She readjusted her position so that she was mirroring Laura, crisscrossed and facing her. Taking the movement as a signal to continue, Laura did.
"I understand that it's hard for you to talk about how you feel. I do. Despite that understanding, I really need you to tell me exactly what you meant earlier. 'I love you' can have a lot of different meanings. My dad tells me that he loves me, but it's not the same as when Perry says it. That, in turn, isn't the same as when my grandma says it or when my best friend from high school does. I need to know what it means when you say you love me because it's really going to suck if you meant that you're glad I'm your roommate and you have platonic affection pointed in my direction. If that's what you meant, you have to tell me right now. If I don't get an explanation, I don't know if I can keep from…keep…keep from…" Laura trailed off.
She had trusted herself not to ramble and to just say what she needed to say but, of course, that didn't exactly happen. She had gotten lost in her own words, just like she always did. She could feel Carmilla's stare boring holes into the top of her head as she looked down into her own cocoa, still sitting almost at the brim of her TARDIS mug. She took a deep breath in.
"If I don't get an explanation, I don't know if I can keep from telling you that I love you. No, I don't just love you. I'm in love with you. And I know that you probably think it's stupid and I don't know what I'm talking about and I can't possibly know what love feels like at 19 and only knowing you for a couple of months, but…You're wrong if you do think that. I'm in love with you, Carmilla, and if you can't reciprocate then I need you to tell me so and I can leave."
Carmilla only smiled.
"What could possibly be amusing to you about that?" Laura half-shouted. Then, she experienced one of her more secret pleasures. The frustration fell from her face as she listened to Carmilla begin speaking in her native tongue.
"Du dumme , dumme Kind," she said with a grin. "Du bist so blind manchmal . "
Laura raised her eyebrows as if to say, Oh, really?
"Creampuff," she continued. "Ich bin so in dich verliebt dass ich manchmal denke, ich werde explodieren."
Carmilla brushed Laura's hair out of her eyes and looked at her expectantly. Laura had taken German for four years in high school and still took classes online to help her get along at Silas. She understood fully what Carmilla said and, yet, she felt so confused.
"You're in love with me? You're sure?"
"Ja."
"In English."
"Cupcake, I'm in love with you. I'll tell you every day in every language I know if it'll make you believe me. I love you more than you could ever begin to imagine."
Laura woke up and stretched her hand out expecting to brush against Carmilla's skin. When that didn't happen, she slowly opened her eyes and sat up. Then she realized.
For the millionth time in the past two weeks, Laura cried tears of misery. Half of her wished the dreams would stop. The other half wished for them to be real.