Work Text:
“Hi.”
Laura startles at the unexpected greeting, the book in her hand nearly falling through fumbling fingers as she whips around to find a woman lounging against the bookshelf, eyes dancing with mirth even as she resists the smirk tugging at her lips.
“Uh… hi?” Laura questions, despite the fact that a quick look around tells her that the stranger couldn’t possibly be addressing anyone else - unless she’s got an imaginary friend lurking in this section.
The woman trades her blooming smirk for a smile instead, pulling herself away from the shelf to approach Laura. “So this is probably gonna sound really weird, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway,” She says, her husky voice laced with amusement.
“Um,” Laura’s still clutching her book, still wondering if the stranger is actually talking to her, and still totally and utterly confused. “Go for it,” She encourages with a weak laugh, slightly bemused by the situation despite herself.
“Well, first of all,” The woman holds out her hand, “I’m Carmilla.”
Clutching her book in one hand, Laura sticks out her free hand to shake Carmilla’s - of course the pretty stranger has a pretty name. “Hi, I’m Laura,” Her eyes catch Carmilla’s as she introduces herself, and for some reason she spends the next ten seconds staring into those eyes and repeatedly shaking her new acquaintance’s hand until Carmilla pointedly clears her throat.
“Oh, right,” Laura quickly drops her hand. “Sorry.”
Surprisingly, Carmilla’s smile remains (seemingly) natural, showing no sign of discomfort at Laura’s odd behavior. “Anyway, Laura, I was wondering… May I buy you that book?”
Out of the four dozen scenarios Laura had been idly imagining in the back of her mind, none of them had involved this very, very attractive stranger coming up to her and offering to buy her a book. (And only twenty-eight of them had ended badly, with outcomes ranging from “pretty stranger distracts me while her accomplice pickpockets me” to “pretty stranger uses pretty powers to lure me out to the back alley and tries to kill me”.)
“Oh,” She finally says, after a good minute has passed and Carmilla’s smile has lost some of its easy confidence. “Um. Why?”
Carmilla shrugs, her smile fading into a barely-noticeable curve of her lips. “You’ve been glaring at that book for the last ten minutes, presumably for its audacity to be so ridiculously overpriced.”
“Wait, how-”
“I did quite a bit of glaring back in my day,” Carmilla shares with a conspiratorial glint in her eyes, her lips finally curling into that smirk from earlier. It’s a pretty attractive smirk, Laura finds herself thinking – objectively. It’s objectively attractive. These are things that her brain just takes note of. It’s not like she’s having trouble stringing together an appropriate reply or anything. And certainly not on account of the smirk.
Unfortunately, Carmilla takes her silence as encouragement, and her smirk only widens as she comes even closer. “Plus, the chances of me ever running into you again are probably pretty slim. The chances of me running into you someplace where I can buy you a drink? Non-existent, I’d say. So a book it’ll have to be.”
Oh, crap. The pretty stranger she is most definitely not crushing on is hitting on her. Her, Laura Hollis! And being Laura Hollis, there’s only one thing she can blurt out in response.
“Did you steal that from Tumblr?”
Carmilla cocks her head to the side in a questioning manner and- oh no, it’s adorable. She’s adorable. Crap. Laura.exe has officially crashed. Crushed. Whatever.
“There was this post on Tumblr,” She hears herself saying, even though she’s so out of it she can’t even feel her lips forming the words, “that suggested some people would rather receive books than drinks. It’s pretty much a foolproof way to hit on book nerds. Like me. Not that I’m a nerd,” Laura hurriedly adds, much to Carmilla’s growing and evident amusement. “Okay, maybe I am. Just a bit,” She holds two fingers apart by the slightest margin to demonstrate just how mildly nerdy she is, hoping she’s well under the amount of nerdiness required to seem lame.
“Just a bit, huh?” Carmilla laughs, and it’s low and scratchy in the best way possible, which is really not helping Laura right now. She’s flustered. Laura Hollis is officially flustered by a complete stranger. Somewhere a few thousand miles away, her dad’s stranger danger senses are probably tingling.
“Yeah,” Laura says weakly, her mind finally catching up to her word vomit. She can feel her cheeks coloring under Carmilla’s watchful eyes, resolutely focusing on the book in her hand instead of the other woman’s eyes or lips or anything.
A hand appears in her line of sight. “Well?” Carmilla asks, and when Laura looks up, she’s met by an expectant look and a bright yet endearingly shy smile. “Are you gonna let me hit on you Tumblr-style or not?”
“Oh,” Laura blinks. “Right,” And to her horror, she thrusts the book out with both hands and stares at the ceiling while Carmilla gently pries the book out of her white-knuckled grip, chuckling under her breath all the while. Seconds later, the book is out of her hand and Carmilla is tossing a casual “you coming?” over her shoulder as she saunters away, prompting Laura to scoop her backpack up from the floor and hurry after her.
An instantly-recognizable shock of red hair comes into view as they approach the counter, Danny Lawrence towering over most of the shelves and customers milling about. To Laura’s surprise, she greets Carmilla with recognition and the tiniest hint of disdain.
“Karnstein.”
“Lawrence,” Carmilla returns with a smirk. “How’s the old girl doing?” She nods at the cash register.
“Still cranky,” Danny huffs with a glare at the machine, “like you before noon,” She adds with a smirk of her own, and Laura watches with interest as the tension begins to seep out of this odd conversation. “Your little trick still works, amazingly.”
Carmilla laughs at that. “Two knocks on the side and an open-palmed thump on the top? Yeah, that’ll do the trick.”
It doesn’t take Laura long to realize what’s going on. “Wait,” She turns to Carmilla. “You used to work here?”
“Yeah, I-”
“Laura!” Danny calls, with a significant increase in enthusiasm compared to her earlier acknowledgement of Carmilla. “Hey, I didn’t see you there.”
“Yeah, well,” Laura forces out a laugh. “You’re all the way up there, I’m all the way down here,” She teases, pushing down the remnants of an old crush and the slight tinge of hysteria and nervousness that threatens to color her voice.
Danny’s laugh is a little off as well, Laura notes, then marvels at her own fickleness when her effect on the redhead doesn’t awaken the dozen or so butterflies resting in her stomach. Up until two months ago, even mixed signals from her TA would have turned her into an incoherent, hopeful mess. Now it’s the raven-haired mystery woman next to her that’s reducing her into a spaced-out, babbling tween girl with every word and action.
“How have you been?” Danny asks her as she begins ringing up the book Carmilla has handed her, and Laura is actually glad for the distraction because she still hasn’t figured out how the hell you’re supposed to behave while someone buys you a book.
“Just, you know,” She mumbles, suddenly aware of Carmilla’s eyes on her, “the usual.”
“Right,” Danny says, wary gaze shifting between her and Carmilla. “So, how do you two know each other? I thought you were supposed to be long gone by now, Karnstein.”
“What can I say?” Carmilla shrugs, taking her card back from Danny and handing the book to Laura. “This place has its charms,” Her smirk is back again as she shoots Laura a pointed look.
“We, uh,” Laura stammers, fully aware of Danny’s continued presence. “We just met today, actually. Carmilla offered to get me a book!” She points out unnecessarily, holding out the paper bag Danny had just seen Carmilla passing to her. “Because she can’t get me a drink. Because I’m nineteen,” At this she turns to Carmilla. “By the way, I’m nineteen. So you wouldn’t have been able to buy me a drink anyway.”
“Aren’t you a little goody two shoes,” Carmilla drawls, her eyes twinkling with amusement as she brushes past Laura. “See you around, Lawrence,” She throws over her shoulder, and Laura watches in horror as she heads for the door.
“Bye, Danny!” She says with a hint of panic in her voice, scurrying after Carmilla without waiting for her TA to say anything in return. It turns out that all that panicking was for nothing, because Carmilla is leaning right next to the door when Laura bursts out of the shop.
“You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you, cupcake?” Carmilla laughs. Laura isn’t in love with her (yet) because she doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but she’s low-key in love with that laugh and she isn’t afraid to admit it. To herself, at least.
Laura flushes under her gaze. “Just, you know. Better safe than sorry. Don’t think I’d ever see you again if you left now. Which would really suck,” She mumbles that last bit under her breath, but judging by the pleasantly surprised look on Carmilla’s face, she must have some kind of supernatural hearing, like those vampires from that show Laura’s roommate keeps going on and on about.
“Anyway!” Laura says after a painfully awkward beat of silence, wincing a bit at how loud that ended up being. “Since you bought me a book – but also because you made me crave cupcakes – I was wondering if maybe I could buy you a drink? And a cupcake? Over there?” She points at the café down the street, the one with huge floor-to-ceiling windows she likes to people watch from and nice, comfy chairs she likes to spend hours reading in.
Only this time, she’s hoping to do something other than stare at strangers and get lost in a good book and oh god, did she just ask a total stranger out? Somewhere out there, her father is breathing into a paper bag and wailing where did I go wrong?
Carmilla tilts her head in a considering manner, the way a cat might size you up. Laura panics a little bit, and then a little bit more, and then a whole lot more – until a slow smile spreads across Carmilla’s face and she holds her hand out to Laura and leads her down the street.
“You can get the drinks. I’ll get the cupcakes, creampuff,” She says, and Laura can’t help but laugh at Carmilla’s confectionary-themed nicknames and her bold, weird way of hitting on strangers in a bookstore and the fact that her traitorous brain is already thinking this would be a great story to tell our grandkids.
It does, in fact, end up becoming a great story that they tell all of their grandkids.