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Danny Lawrence only wallowed on rainy days.
It’d been that way for as long as she could remember. In elementary school, when recess would get cancelled because of freak thunderstorms, the other kids would head straight for the games shelf, whip out Monopoly and Connect Four and an assortment of card decks, and seem perfectly content to while away their free quarter hour with indoor activity. They were antsy, yes, but certainly content.
Not so for Daniele Lawrence.
Danny, pig-tailed, blue-eyed and freckled from forehead to ankle, sat grumpy and alone in the reading nook atop a saggy beanbag. Teachers and kids alike learned not to approach Danny when she was in her zone. Half the time, she didn’t even read the book she had open on her lap. Her eyes would move, scan the page for the sake of pretending, but the real appeal of the reading nook was its seclusion; seclusion is, especially for popular and charismatic people, a highly attractive concept. Danny knew well, even as a child, how the people around her helped to form her, helped to develop her character. She was a marvelous mirror. But sometimes she wanted moments of reflection, and the reading nook provided that. Offered her silence to negotiate just who she was on a rainy day when there wasn’t a soccer ball at her feet or a lacrosse stick in her hand.
She needed the soundless balance rainy days provided.
Most days, Danny Lawrence was too busy for reflection. She had shit to do, papers to grade, people to protect, activities to organize, monsters to fight. But every once in a while, when her schedule allowed and she let herself get sucked in, she found herself attached to someone who made her want to think about things a little harder. Ridiculous things, like… like the future.
It had happened her junior year of high school, with her first girlfriend. Lucy was a senior. Headed to the west coast for university, a ticket out of their hometown and unlikely to return. Danny had checked schools in Cali, in Oregon, even Washington state, just to be on the same relative longitudinal line as Lucy. Then Silas happened, and Styria along with it.
There was Mark, the second semester of her freshman year. She was less attached to him than she was to Lucy, but still, she wanted to make the effort to keep up with the guy. He’d been a great time, had taken her under his wing and showed her the Silas ropes. She still fondly recalled the night they’d broken into the caf and stolen armloads of rice crispies at midnight. They’d gone careening into the woods, tears streaming from the laughter, and had climbed trees with beer bottles in their pockets to get to his double-nest hammock. Sat high above the haunted terrain, they munched on snacks and lamented midterms, drank a few beers and made-out heavily. She woke up with a back ache after spending the night half on top of the guy in the hammock, but watching the sunrise with him made it all worth it.
Meaningful relationships had been few and far between since Mark. There’d been the odd guy or girl, eye-contact on the dance floor, a hot-for-teacher sort of a thing every semester since she’d gotten the TA gig. But nothing had really stopped her, had struck her so severely in years, as had one tiny bundle of bright with the given name Laura Hollis.
Laura was an achievement of sorts, reaching the tree tops and cats-in-the-cradle after years of practice; honey and bicycling and inquisitive cheerfulness; the kind of determination that made Danny weak in her knees; an honest-to-goodness chance at something real.
But not anymore. Laura was still all of those things; she hadn’t changed, hadn’t compromised, hadn’t given an inch, even when inch-giving… yard-giving… hell, mile-giving would have been the smart choice, when the gaggle of vampires had infiltrated and overtaken the administrative offices of Silas the previous semester. Laura did the exact opposite of what Danny would have done, and Laura had been right all along.
Danny wasn’t often wrong. Which is why she often didn’t wallow.
Except for rainy days.
Danny sat in a corner booth of the Red Raven, a dingy Styrian tavern with walls the color of an aged smoker’s teeth. The Red Raven was a favorite dive frequented by Silas faculty, renowned for its Thursday trivia games and exotic draft selections. There were cracks in the cool stone of the floor and walls, splits in the faded leather of the chairs, lines in the faces of the surly barkeeps. They wiped out cloudy glasses with stained rags while a fire burned in an open hearth on the far side of the building. Low-hanging wrought-iron fixtures provided just enough light to keep patrons from squinting at the minimal wine list. It was drafty and dim and old and secluded… and Danny loved it.
It’d been storming in Styria for three days; a freak bout of lightning discharges and gale-like winds had swooped over the wintry campus at the beginning of their second semester, bringing along with it raindrops the size of quarters and the occasional hailstone to crack an unlucky undergrad’s windshield. Danny was damp and dazed, and had set to drinking in the corner like a sopping Irish setter. She was nursing her third bourbon (a double) when Carmilla walked in and it all went to hell.
“Mircalla! Moja pridna, kako ste?”
The aged bartender had skin like burnt papyrus and loosened jowls, giving the appearance of a taxidermied wild hog. He was equally as gruff, likely to slice you apart with his tongue (if anyone could decipher the slurred Slovenian he threw at them).
“No, stric,” Carmilla clipped in a foreign tongue. Even in another language, her voice seemed lush as crushed velvet. “Kako ste?”
“Bolje zdaj, da ste prišli. Lahko kaj prinesem?”
“Iščem nekoga,” Danny saw Carmilla turn her head about the establishment, then continued her conversation. “Dekle. Visok, lasje kot ogenj. Ste jo videli?”
“Obstaja,” the bar tender answered her, and pointed toward Danny in the corner.
Danny averted her gaze toward the wall before Carmilla could catch her staring. The bar was pretty empty for a rainy Tuesday afternoon, so it was only reasonable that Danny would be attuned to those entering and exiting. But not Carmilla. She couldn’t take that cat-with-the-cream smirk, those jostling, wilted waves of jet hair, the almond eyes that promised whispered secrets in an intimidating, pleasant darkness.
Danny could hear the tromp of combat boots across the floor, saw the light flicker and fade as a figure hovered over her.
Three whiskeys in with rain pouring down and Danny couldn’t take it today.
Not today.
“You’ve got to stop staring at her. It’s just getting weird now,” Laura had said two nights previous.
Sunday evenings had turned into nights of strategy, of planning, of meet-ups and brainstorms and occasional study sessions when the Scooby gang sat down and realized that they weren’t just fighting the supernatural (they were also working toward that silly degree). Danny and Laura were perched in front of Laura’s computer, scrolling through research. LaF and Carm had been assigned ancient text duty, while Kirsch was helping Perry with snacks in the dorm kitchen.
“And asking her what she was reading?” Laura continued. “Since when are you interested in all of that philosophy stuff?”
“I’m not staring,” Danny insisted. Because, if Laura had really been paying attention, she’d have noticed Danny was staring (just not at Carmilla). “I mean, she’s a pain in the ass, but if you live a jillion years you probably get more than a couple’a wrinkles and a crappy disposition. She’s smart, for a Dead Girl. Even I can admit she’s got good lit taste.”
“Why Daniele, I didn’t know you cared,” Carmilla sing-songed sarcastically from her position on the bed. “But, in case you haven’t noticed,” Carmilla tilted her neck skyward, a column of marbled, very much eighteen-year-old flesh on display. “No wrinkles.”
Danny huffed, and inched as close to Laura as she dared with the bloodsucker in the room. She tried to turn her attention to the screen, but Laura was so close and Danny could just catch a whiff of her shampoo… Danny chanced it and inhaled discreetly. Laura still smelled like strawberries and cocoa, but a new undercurrent of cigarettes and patchouli oil set her freckled nostrils to flaring and sniffling.
Thankfully, the bloodsucker was too caught up in her designated task to notice.
Carmilla wasn’t really in the best position to observe Danny anyway; she was sitting on her bed next to LaF, her perpetually bored expression occasionally veering into quizzical amusement whenever the scientist’s theories concerning the resurrected Laphilformes grew increasingly outlandish. Danny would hear “syringe” and watch Carmilla’s brow jiggle, a half-grin curling her otherworldly features into something close to cordiality. Since she’d begun dating Laura, the vampire had grown more amenable to company. Danny would even be generous and describe her as cooperative, had Carmilla not taken every chance she could to poke fun at her for reasons unknown.
(“Oh, Red Vine, didn’t realize you’d planned on hanging around today. Guess that weed killer was money down the drain.”
“Sorry I didn’t make extra, thought you were attending the giant’s convention this weekend.”
“The latest spam mail from the university says lethal weapons are prohibited on campus, so we’ll see you later, Gingersnap.”)
The reasons for Carmilla’s distemperment were actually very known. An open secret. Laura and Danny had had more than one conversation about Carmilla’s insecurity issues, especially with Danny operating as a previous prospect for Laura’s affections. But Danny didn’t want to be shunted, especially considering her not-quite-ex-something’s involvement in all things eerie at Silas. So she’d take friendship with Laura, and existence with Carmilla in the meanwhile.
(“But me and you, we’re good now, right?” Laura had asked Danny.
And Danny had smiled cheerfully down and lied through her teeth. “Yeah, Laura. We’re all good.”
Bullshit, Danny said to herself later. When she was very drunk and very alone.)
It was after an unholy blow-up on Carmilla’s part that Danny had started trying to distance herself from the lovey-dovey pair. Danny had stepped outside of the dorm room during one of their strategy sessions and attempted to bum a cigarette off of Carmilla. But the vampire had turned, cruel and calculating with vicious intent, and had sent Danny reeling into the wall. Danny had apologized for the unknown offense and Carmilla had stepped back, startled, as if she hadn’t truly been present for the minor assault. Danny tried to talk books or music or innocuous chatter to calm her, to figure out what had set her off. Then Laura had popped up and Danny hadn’t ratted on Carmilla. She had hoped it was a show of good faith on her part. But even now, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Carmilla was always keeping a special eye on her wherever she went on campus.
“If I didn’t know you two any better, I’d say you had a crush on her,” Laura joked, clicking on an article J.P. had found in one of the online library databases. “Staring, figuring out what books she likes… I’d even say she had a crush on you. You’re constantly bickering, giving each other the side eye; if you ever wore pigtails, I wouldn’t put it past her to stick your hair in ink. You wouldn’t believe her preference for wells and feathered quills.”
“Let’s not give her any ideas. I’m still not on her good side, yet,” Danny replied.
“Because pulling her out of a pit and bringing her back to me wasn’t enough,” Laura replied absently, clicking away on the computer.
Danny deflated, struck by an inadvertent blow.
“Yeah, well…”
“Do I have anything to worry about?” Laura teased.
“No,” Danny rolled blue eyes skyward.
Laura typed a bit into the search bar, then turned slightly to Danny as the page refreshed.
“I never did thank you for that,” Laura said lowly, dropping her voice so Carmilla wouldn’t hear. “So, uh, thank you. Thanks for getting her out of there.”
Had Danny responded with the truth, she would have said: “I’d do anything for you.”
Instead, she just said: “You’re welcome.”
Laura nodded determinedly and turned back to the screen.
Danny had suggested they start doing their research online through the catalog indexes that Silas made available to students. J.P. was a great help, and it allowed them to avoid going to the haunted library armed with flame-throwers and a poorly executed plan after hours.
Laura had smiled and reiterated her assertion from the first semester that Danny was, in fact, a genius. Carmilla had mimed a gag behind her and Danny pretended she didn’t see it. Laura was happy. Carmilla was… Carmilla. And Danny just counted herself lucky to be in with the people protecting the grounds. Laura wasn’t with her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t good people. Same with LaF, and Perry, and even Kirsch. Carmilla… well, Carmilla wasn’t exactly people, now was she?
But best not to start dissension from within. If three-hour long Summer Society meetings had taught her anything, it was that personal prejudices needed to be put aside for the greater good. They needed to get everybody, if not on the same page, then at least on the same chapter.
“Then it’s a good thing you know us so well,” Danny tried to distract Laura by bringing the conversational trajectory back round. “Cause I don’t go for undead and broody. That’s your order,” Danny said, eyes scanning the screen.
She paused and brought her hand up over Laura’s on the mouse.
“How about this one?” She moved Laura’s small fingers under her own and clicked a .PDF link to an ancient-looking article. “Something about a potion that enhances human anatomy for combat tasks?”
“No way we’re letting Gingersnap go She-Hulk on us,” Carmilla idly flipped an ancient page and purred her condescension.
Danny turned around and released Laura’s hand immediately, staring down the murky distaste in the vampire’s countenance.
“Although, maybe the color-clash alone would frighten the guppy back underground,” Carmilla murmured menacingly.
“Carm, don’t—”
“Forget it, Laura,” Danny said, standing from behind Laura’s place at her dorm desk. “I’m not really helping here anyways. I’ll catch up with you guys this week and see what you’ve turned up. I’ll text you if I find any helpful articles. And you can always send me some to scan if you’re getting overloaded. I know you try to do too much on your own,” Danny said, attempting (and failing) not to throw a distasteful glance in Carmilla’s direction.
“We’ll let you know if we find anything,” Laura continued, so focused on the screen before her that she missed the exchange between undead and redhead. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? Kirsch is making pizza from scratch. I mean, he said he was going to put vegetables on it, but those won’t ruin it that much—”
“I’m fine Laura, thanks,” Danny said, grabbing her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. She threw Carmilla a disparaging glance, and hitched her pack higher on her shoulder in her frustration.
She didn’t see LaF studiously surveying the entire interaction.
Carmilla flopped down in the open slot of the corner booth at the Red Raven. She propped her muddy boots on the seat without a second thought.
Danny (knowingly unable to stomach a private conversation with Carmilla sober) downed the rest of her drink. Then she put her head in her hand and sighed, scratched at a carved initial in the shellacked wooden tabletop. The coaster her glass had rested upon was covered in condensation, a sweating cold ring that Danny ran her fingers through to prevent the inevitable fidgeting. She played at fingerpaints on the tabletop.
“Is there any bar in the country where you don’t know the owners?” Danny ground out. “And if so, could you point me in that direction?”
“Not the worst greeting I’ve ever received, Gingersnap,” Carmilla drawled, linking her fingers over her bent knee.
Danny sat back upright and waited for Carmilla to speak. After thirty seconds of tense silence, Danny set her glass aside and motioned for another.
“Bourbon?” Carmilla’s face shifted from bland to inquisitive. Danny watched her stare as the bartender took a black-labeled bottle and up-ended it into a clear tumbler, set it on a tray and made his way toward them.
“You want one?” Danny inquired, about to raise her hand.
“No, it’s just… I didn’t know you drank bourbon.”
“You like bourbon, don’t you?”
Carmilla shrugged.
“No,” Danny pressed. “That’s what you get, right? That’s your drink?”
“Why would you know that?”
Danny’s turn to shrug.
Danny knew why. Hell if she would admit it to herself, let alone Carmilla. For the longest time, she thought she was better than that. Better than the pettiness her recent actions suggested.
She turned her attention back to her drink; her vision was already blurry, but she grabbed it and brought it to her lips, swallowed, licked a runaway drop from the corner of her mouth and then followed with the cuff of her shirt-sleeve. Her lips had that punch-drunk feeling, just this side of numbness and looser than they should be. Her hands felt disembodied from her arms, as if the two wrists, two palms, and ten fingers poking out from under her dampened sleeves were two random pieces of anatomy that just seemed to be floating in relative proximity to her body. Her head felt full of helium, everything high and light, like Laura and balloons and kaleidoscopic swirls.
Carmilla looked so soft in the drunken dimness, almost like Laura looked all the time. Danny released a guttural, despairing moan and crossed her arms on the tabletop. Her head followed, so that she could shut out the soft, shut out the dim.
Shut out the feelings.
“What's wrong with you?” Carmilla snarked.
Danny didn’t respond. She just circled the lip of her glass with her finger, feeling emotionally ill-equipped for the forthcoming confrontation. Because the signs were all there: the rainy day, the dingy bar, her drunken state. Foreshadowing, of the saddest degree, of some crappy conversation with the undead and no resolution in sight.
“Look," Carmilla pressed, "I think you and I need to talk.”
“Luuuurrayeoooooum?”
“I speak many languages, but blithering idiot is not one of them.”
Danny twisted her head out of her hands, but left it resting on the table like a child in time-out.
“Laura made you come?”
“That’s not the point.”
“But it is. She’s… she’ll always be the point,” Danny admitted, blinking for clarity.
"Apparently, LaScience told Laura we looked to be having some... issues. Laura suggested I come chat with you."
The stuffing was coming out of the backs of the cushions. It was a little gross, a violation of seated intestines. She could only imagine what weapon had cut such a gaping slit into the booth. Probably a weapon with a wicked tip, something she might even find in the Summer Soc arsenal. Something she could ram through vampire flesh that wouldn’t do a damn thing.
And, if she were being totally honest with herself… she’d not want it to do a damn thing. Carmilla, for all her faults, had staked her claim last semester. She was an ally. Not supremely useful, but an ally when the chips were down. She was lazy, disrespectful, rude, messy, and Laura’s.
She was Laura’s.
Carmilla didn’t turn to Danny. The vampire’s fingernails seemed more interesting than the drunk girl currently having an existential crisis in her booth.
“Are you in love with her?” Carmilla asked after a long period of inactivity.
“No,” Danny said, because she wasn’t.
Infatuated, hung-up on, regretful, yes.
Jealous as fuck of the creature across from her? Hell yes.
“But you’re not over her?” Carmilla led, and Danny couldn’t answer.
“I saw you looking at her, the other day,” Carmilla mumbled. “I know it’s bad,” she smirked, dipped her chin against her chest, as if she’d said something particularly amusing. “Because that’s how I looked at her all of last semester.”
Carmilla’s focus had migrated to Danny’s glass, amber liquid over rolling ice cubes.
“I saw you take her hand, and that may very well have been inadvertent, but…”
Carmilla reached across the table and snatched Danny’s drink.
“Laura’s not a kid, and I trust her,” Carmilla whispered into the glass. “If that had bothered her, she would have said something. And she likes you, for whatever reason. She thinks you’re some fucking genius. But Danny, I just want to remind you that this is about Laura, not about you and me. This is her choice, and for the moment, she’s chosen me. She thinks very highly of you, and wants you on her side in this fight. I want you on her side, on... on my side, because we can take all the help we can get. But… for as long as she wants me, I’m going to want her back. And I want you to realize that. I’m not going to fight for her, she can fight for herself, but I am reiterating a point that needs repetition: she chose me.”
Danny had grown more alert during Carmilla’s monologue. She watched the vampire bring the drink, her drink, across the table and up to her undead lips.
But Danny was done with that passive shit. She reached across the table with surprising speed and agility for someone who’d determinedly gotten sloshed before five p.m. on a weekday afternoon. Her grip on Carmilla’s forearm was tight as a boa constrictor, her face mottled from drink and embarrassment.
“Can you… please… stop stealing the things I want,” Danny muttered, unwrapping Carmilla’s aristocratic fingers from her glass. She took the drink back and downed it, clutched the cloudy tumbler with barely-concealed rage.
“Bartender!” Danny barked, staring Carmilla down. “Could you please get this woman a double bourbon?”
Silent seconds later and the bartender had delivered the drink; Danny held a plastic card aloft in the air.
“It’s on me, and I want to close out my tab,” Danny said. The barman departed, and Danny gnawed the inside of her cheek. It stung of sweet bourbon, but the back of her throat tasted like cotton-mouth. She was in no right state to be addressing Carmilla, but when had that ever stopped her before?
“I hear you,” Danny brought her hands together, a gesture of placation on her part. “I’m trying to… to let Laura be her own person. And if the person she wants to be is a person that’s with is you, then…” Danny didn’t dare finish that sentence. She possessed a vague understanding of how it would end, and it just made her come across as pathetic and weak. “Whatever, it’s bigger than me and Laura, or you and Laura. I’ve just gotta get my shit together.”
“What do you mean it’s bigger than myself and Laura?” Carmilla questioned.
Danny got the receipt and scrawled her name in a sloping diagonal. Apparently tasks requiring coordination weren’t nearly as easy as hiding her feelings.
“Don’t push it, Carmilla. Please.” Danny stood from the table and inclined her head. “Just… if I’m not around for a while, it’s because I’m working stuff out. Enjoy your drink.”
Danny turned on her heel and escaped out the back exit into the rain. She wrapped her hands around her jacket and hugged the ally wall. It did little to keep her dry, but she was about to trudge across the Styrian streets in nothing more than her hoodie and Converses. The walk back would leave her sopping, but hopefully sober.
“Wait a minute!”
Danny found herself huddled beneath the fire escape, shoved against the ruddy brick wall by a drenched Carmilla. Carmilla, who looked every bit the disgruntled wet pussy-cat. In the rain, she was less intimidating, much less perfect. Her eyeliner was running and her smirk nonexistent. Her hair was tangled. Her jaw was tight and her eyes possessed an unfamiliar urgency as she blinked against the winds.
Danny herself harbored a strange cocktail of dread and adrenaline; an enticing, validating thrill, mixed with wholehearted misgivings.
They were simply feelings misplaced. There’s no way this was real…
“You need to explain better, Gingersnap,” Carmilla wasn’t shouting, but her voice picked up in volume and pace: “If you don’t show up after I come talk to you, it’s gonna look like I scared you off. I tried to be as civil as I could, because Laura… well, we all want you on this team. We need you to help us fight. And I…” Carmilla shoved her shivering hands into her pockets and stared at her boots. “I wouldn’t even fucking be here if it wasn’t for you. I wouldn’t be with her, and you know that. You knew that when you brought me back. You didn’t have to, but you did. So… just… whatever shit that’s between you and me, let’s just try to get over it, for Laura’s sake, okay?”
Danny let her head fall back against the wall. Carmilla was being too good, too nice, too freaking forgiving. It’s hard to hate her when she’s not being an ass. Hard not to… not to…
“I still think I need some time,” Danny said, face turned resolutely up toward the sky. It looked like some sort of prison, staring at the grey through the barred metal of the fire escape. There were shapes in the clouds and streaks of lightning breaking overhead. Thunder clapped and Carmilla jumped, knocking Danny off balance in the process.
She wiped her face and righted herself, but made the mistake of meeting Carmilla’s stare.
“Why do you need time?” Carmilla asked. And what's worse, Carmilla seemed like she genuinely wanted to know. Like she genuinely cared.
“I can’t explain it,” Danny muttered. It was taxing merely thinking it, how was she supposed to articulate it with clumsy, insufficient words?
“I don’t understand,” Carmilla said.
“That makes two of us.”
“Goddammit, Gingersnap, if you could just start making sense for all of—”
Danny grabbed Carmilla and turned her, stopped her talking with a drunken kiss. She stuck her hands at the base of Carmilla's neck, tangled her fingers in that scraggly black hair, and kissed Carmilla's lips to bruising.
Danny wanted nothing more than to know her own inferiorities, to understand what qualities she lacked, why she wasn’t good enough for Laura.
What was it about Carmilla, cigarettes and philosophy texts, that was more appealing? How could Danny be better? What more could she do?
Danny backed Carmilla against the brick and slipped her tongue past shivering lips and God, she even tasted like Laura. Underneath the bourbon was this hint of bright, of chocolate and gladness and honeysuckle smiles, and God, there’s a fucking reason she tastes like Laura.
Because Carmilla's been kissing Laura.
Danny broke away panting and clapped a hand over her mouth. She staggered backwards in the rain, shaking her head and reaching blindly behind her until she found the opposite ally wall and sank down against it.
“I’m sorry,” Danny muttered. “God, I’m… I didn’t… I’m so sorry. It’s—it’s not… it’s not what you’re thinking…”
Carmilla stood slack-jawed, not gaping, but undoubtedly flummoxed. She made to take a step toward Danny, then thought better of it, and stood still in the rain.
Danny took several deep breaths to gain some composure. The dampness in her Converse-covered toes was squelchy and thick. The unrelenting downpour struck chilling drops against her skin until she was covered in goosebumps.
From the rain, she internally insisted. Not the kiss. Never, ever the kiss.
“I can’t fucking explain it,” Danny said, trying to rake her fingers through her uncooperative mane of hair.
She brought her fingertips to her mouth and pressed, pressed down, as if she could push a kiss into her skin so she didn’t feel it tingling like sparklers in summertime.
“I just… you smell like her, so I just… sometimes I want to be close to you. I think about your perfume, because I know it’ll be like strawberries in summer, like Laura. And you taste… like, I want to kiss you,” Danny squeaked, because she’d never even admitted it to herself, much less thought of verbalizing it for Carmilla. “Because I know you’ll taste like her. And I’m jealous. I’m so fucking jealous that it hurts, because I spend every second that I’m not thinking about keeping Silas safe thinking about you two, you two together, and I just… I know how fucked up this sounds, believe me, I know.”
Carmilla shuffled closer, but Danny held a hand out to stop her.
“Danny—”
“Don’t,” Danny said. “It’s ‘gingersnap’ or ‘red vine’ or nothing.”
Carmilla wiped at her running eyeliner and sniffed into her jacket sleeve. “But… but Danny, we can… uhm…”
“Don’t, please, this is humiliating enough without you attempting civility,” Danny spat.
“Would you rather I be unfeeling and callous?”
“Yes, because then it’s easier for me to hate you.”
“It’s always easier to hate the monsters when they’re acting monstrous,” Carmilla answered. “Laura said that.”
“Fuck,” Danny muttered again. “I don’t know what to do. The only thing I can think of is to not see you guys for a while.”
“But we need you.”
“How useful am I going to be if I’m so caught up in you two?” Danny brought a fist up against the wall behind her and hardly felt the impact. She did, however, feel the sting across her vision... felt the damned tears forming.
“You’ll be better. You’re just drunk right now. You’re probably just pissed and you don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t… you don’t really feel this way.”
“Don’t presume to tell me how I feel,” Danny said.
“Look, Danny, there’s no way in hell you really want m—”
Danny surged upwards and kissed Carmilla again, and again, tried to pry open noncompliant lips and lift slim hips against the ally wall. It was raining and she was drowning, drowning in Silas and Carmilla and Laura and worthiness, because maybe she could make Carmilla want her. If Carmilla wanted her and Laura wanted Carmilla… there had to be some strange transitive association that left Danny with somebody.
“Danny—” Carmilla gasped.
Danny grasped Carmilla’s hip and inhaled cigarette smoke, remembered how Laura smelled two nights ago. She saw the red mark on Carmilla’s neck and went for it, because that’s where Laura’s lips had been. And if she couldn’t kiss Laura, maybe this was the next best thing.
"Shit," Carmilla moaned, and Danny felt her perfect spine arch into her fumbling hands. "Danny..."
Because they were both so small. Danny could fit both of them in her palms, lift them up and hug them close and touch them and love them...
“Danny!” Carmilla pushed her away, pushed her hard, brow furrowed in anger. Danny felt the hand, felt the wind ghosting as her neck snapped, felt the sting on her cheek, fleeting and insubstantial as a mosquito bite; but the shock, the sheer jolt of it, disoriented her more than the slap itself.
Carmilla was panting and dripping and there was finally a ghost of color in her cheeks. She held her hand aloft, seemingly stunned at her own action. Danny watched her take careful pains to breathe, to lower her arm, to meet Danny's gaze full-on in the ally and skew her face into a look on the edge of accusation.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said again. She shut her eyes and the tears fell and mixed with the rain. “I’m… I’m so… I don’t even know what to say anymore,” Danny shook her head and started for the entrance of the ally. “I’ve got to get out of this rain.”
“You’re shaking,” Carmilla commented, impassive and removed. “I’ll see you home.”
“I don’t think that’s best.”
“When have I ever done what you told me to do?”
“Fair enough,” Danny said, and started off toward the cross walk.
They didn’t speak for the rest of the walk back to campus. It was the most uncomfortable walk of Danny’s existence, and not just for the puddles and leaves slapping her jeans and tangling her hair. Carmilla would occasionally huff beside her and Danny would want to turn and yell at her, or push her, or pick her up and kiss her, but she didn’t do any of those things.
She walked up the back steps of the Summer Society lodge and shed her sopping outerwear, hoping and praying that Carmilla would just disappear in a column of mean-spirited smoke, eager to take her transgressions back and relay them to Laura. Then, she could just cut ties with the pair of them permanently. It would be so much easier than facing the two of them sober on a sunny day. But of course, Carmilla was never one to pay Danny any heed, so she found herself and the vampire stuck in her single room, staring each other down with a good ten feet of space and unresolved issues between them.
“We can’t leave it like this,” Carmilla said.
“I don’t even know what ‘this’ is,” Danny conceded.
“You need to get out of those clothes.”
“What?!”
“You’ll catch pneumonia if you don’t,” Carmilla amended, attacking Danny’s chest of drawers and hurling mismatched pieces at her.
Danny caught what she could and escaped to the bathroom, took her time to change and run a brush through her hair. She didn’t bother looking at herself in the mirror. She’d see hell half-cooked and she knew it. No use trying to fix it.
Carmilla was sitting on top of her bed, soaking her sheets through.
And thus the unbidden image of Laura and Carmilla assaulted her mind’s eye, perched on top of the bed, innocent, chaste, until Carmilla cast dark eyes at Laura and whispered in her ear, pulled her closer by her shirt collar and they connected, again, and again, safe in their dorm room with Danny far away, in another quadrant of campus.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Carmilla asked.
“Do you really want to know?” Danny countered.
“I suppose not.”
“Then let’s go with you’re getting my sheets soaking wet. Get up.”
Carmilla did so, slowly, reluctantly, and Danny traded places with her. She crashed into her pillow and turned on her side, astonished to find a full glass of water and two Ibuprofen resting on her bedside.
Well, fuck you for being a thoughtful monster.
“I can’t say anything else right now,” Danny spoke into her pillow. “You basically carried me home, and I did the same for you. Let’s call it square.”
“I can’t just forget what you said,” Carmilla leaned up against the doorway and stared at the floor for longer than Danny felt necessary. The silence stretched to the limits of discomfort, like a tendon on the verge of snapping.
“I know that,” Danny replied, smoothing out a wrinkle in her sheet. “But it’s just so hard knowing what you have… it’s really selfish, but I guess that’s just something I’ve got to work on.”
“How am I supposed to trust you with Laura, now?” Carmilla asked. Rightfully so, Danny thought. “Knowing you… knowing how you…”
“That’s why I need to stay away. You can tell her it’s me, tell her I’ve got issues with you, or whatever… because it is me,” Danny said. “I’ll back you, 100%. I’ll text or call but I don’t think I should see her, or you. I want to help you guys so much but it’s killing me. I’m trying to figure out philosophy and smoke poison and drink your drinks because maybe she’ll want me if I’m more like you and… and I know that’s not how it works. I know that. I’ve just got to process it.”
“Yeah,” Carmilla agreed, soft, even-tempered. “Yeah, you do that, Red.”
Danny nodded and stared at the ceiling. “I’ll still read. And keep the girls trained, if it comes to battle. I just… won’t be around as much.”
“I don’t think I’d like that.”
...
...
...
“You’d rather me hang around in your room without you there?" Danny questioned. "With Laura?”
“No, I…” Carmilla sighed this time, still tranquil, but the ripples of uncertainty were beginning to mar what Danny frequently categorized as a granite exterior. “I just… I don’t know what to do. You’re good for our group. In different ways, you’re good for all of us. I will vehemently deny it if you ever reference this conversation again, but... but I know you're good for me, too. In an odd, balancing sort of way."
Danny nodded into her pillow, registered the cotton against her cheek. Her sheets were bold purple, jersey knit, nothing like bright yellow sun or leopard print edge. They were all very different people, who worked exceedingly well together.
"And I know… I know there’s no Silas without you," Carmilla continued. "We have to have someone to act, and that’s you. I think time is necessary, but we’re going to need you back, eventually.”
“I’ll just try to figure something out,” Danny said. “I’ll give up alcohol, if that’s what it takes.”
“And I’ll take up drinking, cause one of us is going to have to be plastered to live with all this.”
“Yeah,” Danny chuckled wryly. “We’ll blame it on the bourbon.”
“Sure… Sure.”
“Carmilla?”
“Yes?”
“You can… you can tell Laura whatever you want. Just… a little heads up would be nice. I’ve seen her angry and it’s not pretty.”
“No, it’s pretty,” Carmilla smiled.
“Gorgeous,” Danny agreed.
“Just scary.”
“Right,” Danny nodded. “Scary.”
“I’m… goodbye, Danny,” Carmilla turned at the door, and Danny rolled back to stare at the ceiling. “For now,” Carmilla said pointedly. Danny didn’t hear the door click, so she turned to watch Carmilla’s exit.
"Carmilla?"
The vampire paused and studied the doorjamb, but Danny hoped she was listening.
"I just... I don't know where she ends and where you start," Danny whispered.
“I think you're more involved in this... in us, than you give yourself credit for, Gingersnap."
Danny couldn't be certain, but she thought she felt lips against her cheek hours later, in the thick of night, while rain pounded hard against the roof of the Summer Society lodge.