Work Text:
Fate was a dick.
After about a year as the Slayer, Laura knew this to be true. Sometimes fate liked being a dick by throwing an ancient demon at her just as exams were coming up. Sometimes fate liked being a dick by putting the solution a potentially world-ending problem in some literal hell-hole that was almost impossible to reach.
Sometimes fate liked being a bitch just by ensuring that her duty as a Slayer put her at odds with her friends or somehow put them in danger. Those were fun.
However, this time fate apparently felt like kicking her in the teeth just as she was getting used to this whole slayer thing. It had been at least a month since she’d encountered any vampire or demon that had given her significant trouble, she wasn’t behind on her school work for once and pie dates with Danny were amazing.
That was when she first appeared.
A woman clad entirely in black and with a cloth mask and hood hiding her face. She moved with all the speed of a vampire and hit as hard as one too. Laura barely saw her coming before she’d been kicked in the head twice that first time.
If Danny hadn’t interrupted in her werewolf form, things could have gotten pretty bad.
Thankfully the vampire bolted and they didn’t see her again for a few weeks.
During that time Laura landed a position as an intern at Morgan Media. She mostly had to check the spelling of people writing the actual articles, as well as fact-checking and taking notes but at least it was a job.
That was kind of the only good thing about it. The people at Morgan Media either ignored facts entirely or twisted them until they suited management’s agenda and they basically ignored all the obviously supernatural stuff that was going on.
Granted, that was probably good because it kept Laura’s identity safe, but their wilful blindness still annoyed the crap out of her.
Worst of all was her boss and the editor in chief, Carmilla Karnstein.
She didn’t even seem that much older than Laura, so god only knew how she had gotten her position, but any respect for her was hard to come by as the dark-haired woman only spoke snark and sarcasm with a bit of disaffected apathy. Not to mention that she only came at 6 in the evening or later.
And apparently she couldn’t be bothered to remember Laura’s name.
“Cupcake, are you still not done fact checking Jones’ article? It’s only 50,000 words.”
“Creampuff, get me coffee. No, not from here, from that really shady place with that guy behind the counter who you swear is a demon.”
“Poptart, did you really miss these five mistakes in McCoy’s article? It’s not that hard.”
“Cutie, I know I look good in this dress, but please pick your jaw up off the floor.”
That last one was particularly annoying because whenever Carmilla wasn’t bitching at her she was flirting and that was not good for her tiny, gay heart.
…Look, yes, Carmilla was bitchy but she was also unfairly gorgeous and her voice was all husky and low and…it was just hard to focus on the bitchy part sometimes, okay?
The second attack came after a particularly frustrating day at the office, which wasn’t great for her mysterious attacker. The short Slayer lost her temper a little bit and took it out on the vampire, putting the force of her frustration behind every blow.
Clearly not anticipating this ferocity, the attacker was caught on the back foot for most of the fight. When Laura bounced her off of the third car, she caught the slayer in the stomach with a heavy kick and bolted while Laura was winded.
Sadly, things didn’t really quiet down after that. The mysterious stranger kept attacking her, though they never went for the kill, and it stretched Laura’s patrols out by at least an hour each time. Thankfully, Carmilla didn’t come to the office for personal reasons for three glorious days.
Near the end of the week, Perry unexpectedly dropped by with brownies.
“Oh Helga Hufflepuf, yes.” Laura all but trembled as she accepted the container from Perry. “You are a goddess and I’m not worthy to be in your presence.” She prostrated herself on her desk, while Perry blushed at the attention. “Well, I know you’ve been busy and you have…special dietary needs. Besides, Lafontaine is trying to make the magical equivalent of a flamethrower and I’ve had to put them out twice. Baking seemed like a nice, normal thing to do.”
Laura smiled wryly at her friend. Perry wasn’t only the den mother to the Slayer and her friends, she was also the resident witch. A rather reluctant one. After a rather nasty encounter with the queen of fairies, Perry much preferred it whenever everything was normal and she didn’t have to use her significant talent.
Before Laura could comfort Perry, Carmilla walked in and stiffly marched her way to Laura’s desk. “Creampuff, all of this colour in the office is making my eyes hurt.” She pointed at Perry. “Who is this?”
“Oh, this is my friend Perry.” Laura said, waving from her friend to her boss and back. “Perry, this is my boss, Carmilla.”
“Lovely to meet you. Laura’s told me great things.” Perry lied as she held out a hand.
“I’m sure.” Carmilla drawled, ignoring the extended hand. “Cupcake, we need to talk about your work ethic in my office.” She stomped away without another word and Laura and Perry looked at each other awkwardly.
“Okay, so you were right.” Perry muttered in a tight, clipped voice. “She’s pretty intense.” She looked at Carmilla’s office. “Also, why was she wearing an enchanted necklace?”
“That’s one word for it.” Laura muttered as she stood up. “Perry, I’m sorry, but-wait, what? Enchanted?” She’d seen the simple cat paw pendant Carmilla wore around her neck, but she hadn’t really paid it any mind.
“I think so.” Perry muttered uncertainly. “I mean, I think I felt some sort of concealment magic coming off of it.”
Laura made a thoughtful noise and looked around the office. As far as she knew, Carmilla was a bitch but not an evil one. Or at least not demon-level evil. Perry was rarely wrong when she sensed magic…but Carmilla wouldn’t be the first person they had encountered with a magic trinket if she even knew about it.
What would Carmilla need to conceal if she did know about the necklace, though?
The blonde sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Well, anyway, you’d better get going. I’ll see what crawled up Carmilla’s butt.”
When Laura entered her office, Carmilla didn’t look up until the door was shut. “Cupcake, I get that you’re just an intern, but this isn’t the place for you to organize play dates. When you’re here, I expect you to work.”
Laura resisted the urge to throw a stapler at her boss and settled for glaring. “Yes and since I’ve done that all day and it’s not 5:30 PM, I was basically done for the day.”
“Yes, I can see how done you are by the fact that there is still no spell-checked version of Myers’ column on my desk.” Carmilla drawled with a sarcastic look at the bare mahogany.
“That might have something to do with the fact that he handed it to me five minute ago.” The Slayer fired back through clenched teeth. Patience was a virtue, she just had to remind herself of that.
“So a lack of effort then.” Carmilla rolled her eyes and turned back to her computer as if that was the end of the conversation.
Okay, fuck patience. Laura could almost feel something snap in her soul and slammed her hands down on Carmilla’s desk.
“How dare you?! I have worked my ass off since my very first day here. I have dealt with this company's twisting of the truth, fact-checked the most boring stories ever and dealt with your snarky, demanding ass and all the while I’ve been juggling my classes and my…other stuff with this shitty job!” She was actually panting by the time the red mist cleared and she realized what she’d just said.
To her boss.
Well, crap.
Carmilla simply blinked at her for a moment, stunned. Then she turned to her computer, put it on standby and rested her chin on her palm. “So Cupcake, did you ever consider why I might be pushing you?”
“Because you’re a raging b-aaaad person?” Laura offered. Considering her situation, it couldn’t really get much worse anyway.
Carmilla raised a brow and chuckled. “That’s adorable. You can say bitch, it’s okay. But no.” She looked at Laura strangely for a moment and Laura felt the energy in the room shift. “Maybe it’s because I can still make sure you don’t pick up the bad habits around here. While your ‘white knight Lois Lane’ shtick is annoying at best, it’s nice to have at least one person who wants to report a fact rather than see how many ways they can twist it.”
“I…you...” Laura stuttered as she tried to process that. “That’s just…totally unfair. I mean, how was I supposed to know and-and you’re the editor in chief! If you don’t like how your people handle the truth, change it!”
The pale woman rolled her eyes. “Sweet, naïve Creampuff. What makes you think management would allow that even for a second?” She sighed and shook her head. “Being annoying to them is the most I can get away with.”
Laura opened her mouth to argue, but realized she kind of couldn’t. Management was…shady at best. The HR manager who had tried to bring up the fact that nobody had been paid for their overtime in three years was still missing and nobody had managed to remove the glowing slime on the walls of his office.
“It’s still not fair.” She finally said, crossing her arms. “Those people don’t deserve for you to look down on them just because they’re trying to keep their jobs, even if it means lying.” She shook her head. "They deserve better. Hell, even you deserve to be something more than this. Everyone deserves someone who sees the good in them.”
Blatant confusion and disbelief played out over Carmilla’s face for a few seconds, before they were replaced with derision. “That’s a dangerous line of thinking in your work, Cupcake.” She turned back to her computer. “We’re done here.”
“Well, I think empathy is an important part of journalism.” Laura muttered as she stomped her way over to the door. Honestly, she wasn’t sure what to make of the conversation.
“Journalism.” Carmilla chuckled, a knowing smile on her face. “Sure, Cupcake.”
Before she stepped out, Laura looked back at the dark-haired woman. “Are you at least going to stop riding me?”
Carmilla let out a bark of laughter and turned her most alluring grin on Laura. “Cupcake, if I ever lose the desire to ride you it’ll be a sad day indeed.”
Laura was halfway down the hall before the meaning behind those words in and she felt her face reach a temperature previously unknown to man. ‘Phrasing, Laura. Phrasing is important.’
The next two months were…weird.
The vampires in the area suddenly went very quiet and girls began to go missing for a day or two, only to come back changed and vanish entirely a week later. Even one of the female werewolves of Danny’s pack went missing and her sisters couldn’t even catch a whiff of her scent.
Even stranger was that Carmilla became a semi-decent human being.
She stopped hammering on Laura’s every mistake, though she still didn’t let her get away with any, and they had a few conversations that were genuinely nice. Hell, Laura found herself smiling when Carmilla walked in these days.For a while, she had considered having Perry check her for spells just in case.
The dark-haired editor could still be an utter pain in Laura’s ass, but she didn’t mind as much anymore. She spoke to Carmilla almost daily now, even about things that weren’t work related, and she’d learned how to shut the older girl down when she got into one of her moods.
Unfortunately, that did mean that the entire department tended to use Laura as the messenger whenever something went wrong.
The flirting, if anything, had only gotten worse. The problem was that Laura couldn’t quite remember why she had ever considered it a problem anymore. It made her feel special and not in the “You are the only thing that stands between us and the creatures of darkness” way.
It wasn’t bad to have a crush, right?
It did make pie dates with Danny pretty awkward, though. Laura talked about work too much and almost felt guilty whenever she brought up Carmilla. It was bad enough that she caught herself thinking about her dark-haired editor several times while she was out with Danny.
Honestly, she’d only just developed something that could actually be called a love life. Why did it already have to be complicated? What did a Slayer have to do to catch a break?
Speaking of complicated, the mysterious attacks continued too. The fights only got longer as they got more frequent as Laura and her opponent got more and more used to each other with each fight. These days the fights mostly ended either because the sun was coming up or just because they were both exhausted.
“Who are you?” Laura asked during a particularly nasty fight. “Why do you keep attacking me?”
“Maybe I just don’t like you.” A muffled voice answered as her mysterious attacker swung a blade that pulsed with an eerie energy at Laura’s head. “Or maybe I just want to see what you’re made of.”
In a weird way the fights had almost become routine. She would never admit it, but Laura felt a little weird on the nights that her attacker didn’t appear. Like she had missed something while out on patrol.
In fact, they had become so routine, she almost didn’t believe it when she suddenly had the upper hand.
Having lost her blade early on in the fight, the mysterious attacker bodily threw herself at Laura and took them both to the ground. They rolled around on the floor, clawing and trying to stab each other, when suddenly Laura came out on top.
She was straddling the vampire, one of her arms pinned under Laura’s leg and the slayer had a stake in her hands. She drove it down towards the vampire’s chest, only for the mysterious attacker to grab her wrist at the last second. They struggled against each other, but Laura had the use of both of her arms and her body weight behind the stake.
Slowly it moved closer and closer to her attacker’s chest and then the vampire suddenly stopped struggling and laughed. “Nice job, Cupcake. Took you long enough.”
Cupcake.
Eyes wide and realization stealing the air from her lungs, Laura numbly stared down at her black-clad attacker. Only one person she knew called her Cupcake. She tugged off the hood and ripped away the face mask to find what she already suspected.
Long, black hair and a frustratingly smug grin. Carmilla. “Hey, Cupcake. No hard feelings?”
“I…Why?” Laura felt herself slump a little, not sure if she was mad or hurt. “All this time….Why have you been attacking me?” She muttered, the stake still resting on Carmilla’s heart. “If you wanted to kill me…”
The trapped vampire chuckled and shook her head. “Laura, I don’t want you dead. I wanted you tested. I need your help.”
Yup, angry. She had no trouble deciding anymore. Laura Hollis had settled squarely on angry. “Help? You want my help?” The tip of the stake pierced Carmilla’s black shirt. “For months you’ve been attacking me! What sort of test is that? Do you have any idea how much sleep I’ve lost? I could have caught up on Game of Thrones but nooooooooo.” She ranted, glaring down at Carmilla. “Miss vampire decided to be all mysterious about it and ‘test’ me rather than asking for help like a sane person. Why the hell did you need to test me?”
“Because my mother is a pagan goddess trapped in human form who plans to open the gates of hell and unleash damnation upon the world.” Carmilla deadpanned. “Damned if I’m going to oppose that with a slayer who can’t even deal with me.”
“…Oh.” That was…honestly kind of a good reason. Also, very, very worrying. “And why should I believe you?”
“Would I let it get this far for a lie?” Carmilla asked, pointedly looking at the stake pressing against her chest. “Look, if mommy dearest succeeds, I’m utterly fucked too. I’m not doing this for you, or any of the mortals in this fucking city.” She sneered and batted the stake away, but made no other move to fight back. “I’m doing it because I like my undeath and I’d prefer it if the world kept turning because that’s where all of my stuff is.”
Of course. Honestly, expecting Carmilla to do anything out of the goodness of her heart was probably giving her too much credit. Laura sighed. “Okay. Pagan goddess. Gates of hell. Anything else?”
“It’s gonna cost you your job.” When Laura gave Carmilla a confused look, the vampire rolled her eyes and elaborated. “We’re dealing with my mother. Lilita Morgan? As in the CEO of Morgan Media?”
“Ah…right.” Laura muttered. She did like having a job even if it was just an internship, but honestly, it was kind of a terrible one anyway and this was probably a bit bigger than her professional future. “I’m kind of contractually obligated to stop the opening of any gates of and or portals into hell and I hate my job anyway, so I think this is a win-win. This might be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
They shared a grin and then suddenly Carmilla flipped them and Laura’s back hit the ground. Immediately, Carmilla leaned down so her mouth was next to the Slayer’s ear. “Friendship? How dreadfully dull.” She muttered, voice husky and full of promise.
A shiver went down Laura’s spine and she swallowed thickly. “I…Eh…”
The vampire chuckled and climbed off of Laura. “Come on, Cupcake. Don’t you have a watcher we need to talk to or something?”
Laura remained frozen on the floor for a moment, her body stuck somewhere between relief and disappointment. Just when she thought she’d gotten used to this whole Slayer thing, fate dropped a partnership with a flirty vampire and a goddess with an attitude problem in her lap.
Great.
She had no idea what she was supposed to do next, but all she did know was that this was basically the worst crush ever.