Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time that the doctor mentions Alzheimer's, you panic a little bit.

After you attend a conference that discusses it, it gives you nightmares.

It's scary, the idea that this could be living in your brain, like a time bomb ticking away, and yes, the odds of you developing it are low even despite the fact that it's genetic and your Mom had it, but you've always been a little bit afraid of the things you have absolutely no control over.

But Carmilla, she's - 

She gives control back to you bit by bit. She lets you decide when you want to go to the doctor's again to ask him about prevention and then she lets you pick what kind of brain simulating activity you want to do on what night. 

You are amazed by the fact she's with you despite all of your shortcomings.

You're not the ruler of a country by any means, but you are the symbolic leader of a Commonwealth, and you know that comes with a bit of power to wield. You've always planned to, at some point, speak out about your sexuality because so many young people struggle with it and it'd be worth a million speeches if you can make even one of them realize there's nothing wrong with them.

The night before you leave for Switzerland, you lie in bed beside Carmilla, who is drifting in and out of consciousness and you reach down to take her hand and give it a squeeze. She squeezes back.

"Carm." You say and she makes a sound as if to say 'go on'. "Why aren't you coming to Switzerland with me?"

"I didn't think you wanted me to."

"Can we agree that from now on out, you should just assume I want you with me everywhere? Because I want you everywhere."

Carmilla turns her head and you feel her sleepy smile against your shoulder.

"I don't have clothes for the cold." She says and you nudge her so you can look at what she's wearing right now.

"You do know you've been wearing my clothes for the past month and a half, right?" You tug on the Vancouver Angels shirt she's got on - it's really a pity you didn't keep a jersey because boy, would she ever look hot in that - and sneak a finger under the waistband of a pair of skinny jeans she's wearing that haven't fit you comfortably since you were sixteen. "What's another week?"

"Your pants are too short on me."

"Oh please, you are only like an inch taller." You know she's teasing, but you want her to say she's coming so you press your lips to hers and she sighs and sinks back into the pillows. "So that's a yes? You'll pack all of my black pieces of clothing into a bag and come with me?"

"Obviously." She mutters, pulling your mouth to meet hers again. "What time do we have to be up?"

"Does it matter?" She's managed to pin you to the mattress without you realizing and you groan at the fact you're both still wearing clothes. "Just please get naked."

She laughs your favorite throaty laugh that makes your toes curl and then she's shimmying out of your jeans and underwear and is about to pull the shirt over her head when you stop her.

"Keep that on."

She quirks a perfect eyebrow up at you.

"My my, Laura Hollis." She grinds her hips down and you grab a fistful of her - your - shirt because you're quickly losing your composure here. "Does someone have a thing for girls wearing their hockey t-shirt?"

"Just you." You say, pulling her down so her front is pressed against yours. "God, you're hot."

"I've told you before that I prefer your highness."

"Carm." You whine when she snakes a hand down between the two of you and underneath your pajama pants. "I swear to god if you don't move your hand right now - "

Your eyes roll back so far at the feel of her fingers that you're pretty sure you can see your brain.

"I want you everywhere, too." She says and how is she even talking right now? "And I want to move all my things here, but I just can't seem to leave you long enough to do so."

"I love you." You tell her, trying to pull her closer because she will never be close enough for your liking.

"I love you too, Laura."

You don't consider yourself a fantastic public speaker, but you do know you're above average and you've spoken at a mental health convention before about how your therapist has helped you with your grief. You've spoken to millions of people about something you've kept private before.

But somehow, this feels different. Maybe because you know the world's eyes will be on you in a matter of hours, maybe because you've never really had to come out to anyone your whole life, but here you are telling the world.

You can see Carmilla clearly from where you're standing. She's wearing a simple black dress with her hair up in a bun. She smiles and nods in encouragement as you begin to talk into the microphone.

You focus on keeping your voice steady. And when your hands begin to shake just as the words 'I'm a lesbian' are about to leave your mouth, you lace your fingers together under the podium, look up at Carmilla, and keep going.

It's oddly relaxing, finally being able to say your piece after having mulled over it for a month and it's nice knowing that people finally know who you are completely. Carmilla stands and claps her hands when you're done speaking and so do Perry and LaFontaine. It takes you a few moments to realize the rest of the crowd has gotten to their feet as well and are applauding for you.

It makes you tear up and Carmilla has to pull you into a bathroom to help touch up your eye make-up before you leave the building and face the giant crowd of media waiting for you outside. She taps her foot impatiently as she works.

"I don't understand why you insisted on not bringing your make-up man." She says, using the side of her finger to wipe away eyeliner that has smudged. "He's better at this than I ever will be."

"Maybe I just like your hands on me." You say and it comes out a little weak because there is still a lump in your throat from earlier. Carmilla stops what she's doing and steps back from you.

"You know how proud I am of you, right?" She says, a slow smile beginning to light up her face. "You are - when it comes to things like this, you have this look about you that just - I honestly think you are the embodiment of the perfect monarch."

You return her smile and you almost start crying all over again.

"Thank you." You reach out to hug her and she meets you halfway. "You kept me sane throughout that whole speech."

"I hope someone puts up a video of it on YouTube." She resumes her cleaning up the smudged lines of eyeliner. "Perry threatened to roundhouse me if I took out my phone to film it."

You laugh at that because you would have completely lost it and started laughing if you had been met with the sight of Carmilla holding up her iPhone to record your speech.

"You laugh now, but if that woman ever actually roundhouses me, you'd be stuck with a wife who's got a dent in one side of her head - "

"I really like how that sounds."

She pauses what she's doing to smile and pull you in for a brief kiss.

"I'm going to be your wife soon." She says and you can't contain your grin. "And you're going to be mine."

You kiss her again before you leave the safety of the bathroom and once again just before you exit the building because somewhere along the way, Carmilla's kisses have started making you feel like you could take on the world.

The next few weeks are, for lack of a better word, a complete circus.

You have met Elizabeth, your head Public Relations person or whatever she's called, about five times, twice to talk about the implications of you coming out to the world, in the last five years that you've been queen. She usually sends one of the people under her command to check up on you every afternoon, but after Switzerland, you get used to seeing her in person about five times a day.

You get interview requests from just about every media outlet in the country and social media blows up with GIFs, Carmilla kindly explained to you what they are and what their purpose is, and videos of your speech. Carmilla's favorite thing ever is when the GIFs freeze and stop at a frame of you looking like you're making faces at the camera or possibly holding in a burp, one would never know. She sends you screenshots when this happens and you so wish that the middle finger emoji exists.

Carmilla goes to Berlin a couple of days after you get home from Switzerland because she keeps running out of her fuzzy socks to wear at night. She only brought three pairs to London originally and the fact that fuzzy socks are what finally drives her to go back to her apartment and get her own clothes makes you laugh and love her even more.

While she's gone, you try and focus on picking a credible magazine or paper to do an interview, your first since Switzerland and the most important one you've done in your life most likely, but your mind keeps running away and planning a wedding instead.

Elizabeth isn't very happy with you at all.

You do a Sudoku puzzle by yourself on Sunday morning. Carmilla's on the phone with you the whole time and you laugh when you realize she's contributing as much not even seeing the puzzle as she normally does.

"I want to bring my bed there." She says and you pause for a moment, focusing on writing down an 8 in one of the blank spaces.

"Your bed?"

"Yeah, it's IKEA. I can disassemble it and get it shipped over."

"Carm." You say, glancing over at the four-poster from where you're sitting on the floor. "You know this bed has been in my family for like a hundred generations."

"And that fact doesn't strike you as strange? Your great grandparents probably fucked in that bed."

"Carmilla!" You scold her, but she does have a point. It is kind of weird now that you think about it. "You want to replace my antique, priceless four-poster bed with a bed from IKEA."

"Do you have something against IKEA?"

"I have something against assembling one of their beds."

She's silent for a moment.

"Can we at least replace the mattress?"

You roll your eyes.

"Fine. Fine."

"Good. Now what numbers have already been filled in on the third row?"

"Eight, two, and six."

"And the fourth?"

"Two, seven, and six."

"I think you need more fours, and nines. Maybe a few less twos."

"Okay." She's quiet for a good five minutes. You fill in a one, a two, and a four. You move down another row and manage to work in another two and a five and then find yourself scribbling in a zero before scratching it out. You move over a column and fill in a seven, a five, and a six. A three, five, and another two later, you're looking at the mostly finished puzzle, trying to work out how to place a seven, a four, and yet another two.

"I have absolutely no idea how to help you solve this." Carmilla finally says.

You laugh so hard that you have to put her on speaker.

"You can't do that." Elizabeth says when you finally are able to pick an interview you won't be opposed to doing.

"Why not?"

"That person has no media credentials."

"Of course she doesn't have media credentials, she's not even out of high school yet."

"Exactly!"

"But." You say, holding up the envelope a high school girl aspiring to become a journalist had sent you. "She wrote me a letter and asked nicely which would be the highlight of my week if it wasn't for the fact that Ellen DeGeneres called me yesterday - "

"Your majesty." You don't think you've met anyone in this palace who has addressed you with as much contempt as Elizabeth Anne Spielsdorf does and you are forever thankful for lucking out and hiring her because she's the kind of badass you want in your corner. "You are talking nonsense."

"Okay well what about you let me do this interview that I like and in exchange, you get to pick one that I'll do without complaint?"

She narrows her eyes at you.

"Five."

"One."

"Three."

You soften because why the hell not.

"Fine. Three."

She nods.

"Where do I get a hold of this interviewer girl?"

"Well, Elizabeth, there's this great thing called a return address - "

Elizabeth scowls at you, grabs the envelope out of your hands and turns to leave the room.

"Three interviews of my choosing this week, your majesty." She calls over her shoulder.

You turn back to the documents you're supposed to be reviewing instead of replying.

Carmilla comes back less an a week after she left. She drags her suitcase into your closet and you watch her from where you're sitting on the bed, scrolling through pictures of wedding dresses on Pinterest.

"Hey to you, too." You say after she disappears into the closet and doesn't come out for a substantial amount of time.

"I didn't know I had so many clothes." She says and then you hear a grunt and a thud. You put the iPad down on the bedside table.

"Carmilla Karnstein if that was the sound of my jewelry box hitting the ground - "

"Relax, creampuff, relax." She saunters into your bedroom with a smug grin on her face and you immediately get up and kiss her. "It was strange not having you around."

"Is this you telling me you missed me?"

"This is me telling you I missed you." She says and then she's gently pushing you down on the bed and slowly, slowly peeling your clothes off of your body. She smells like airplane and peaches and you missed her beyond what you even thought possible. Considering that you've spent the majority of your lives apart before she finished school you thought you could handle not having her for a short period of time, but it's so much more difficult.

She's in a painfully patient mood. You can tell right away that she won't be rushing anything tonight. Her movements are all smooth and slow and you think you might just die if she doesn't get to it.

"I missed you a lot." She says against the skin of your hips. "I don't know how I survived without you before."

You don't know how you survived without her either.

"Carmilla."

Carmilla looks up at that and you thread your fingers through her hair with one hand and stroke her cheekbone with the other.

"I'm sorry." You say because between the hints Will dropped and your own intuition, you know you've caused her a few tearful years. She shakes her head at you.

"Stop apologizing."

"Okay."

You don't apologize for those years ever again.

You finish the interviews you committed to on Wednesday night and then you spend the rest of the evening sitting on the floor of your office, flipping through bridal magazines that Perry had so graciously gone out of her way to get you.

You haven't set a date, but Carmilla's mother has called you twice now to talk about details. She's told you that under no circumstances are you allowed to spend a coin on this wedding and you are grateful for her financial support, but you know it's really her approval that matters for Carmilla, so you try and get her to split costs, but she's got the will of her daughter and the charm of her son so you've barely started the argument when it becomes clear you've already lost.

Carmilla walks into your office while you're contemplating hiring a wedding planner and she drops a kiss on your cheek before picking up one of the magazines you've already searched through.

"Are you getting married?" She asks, rolling her eyes at the pile of wedding related things on your desk and the dozens of magazines scattered on the floor around you.

"Yes." You go back to your magazine. "Yes, I'm getting married to the asshole standing where you are."

"Well, then." She plops down on the ground too.

"I'm sorry, I just don't even know where to start with the planning."

She's quiet for a few minutes.

"A friend of mine." She says slowly. "In Berlin. A friend of mine in Berlin is a wedding planner."

"I'll ask Elizabeth to look into it. She's appointed herself the head of background checks now too."

"Elizabeth?" Carmilla's confusion turns into recognition after a moment. "Oh, Betty. Yeah, I'll give her Danny's number."

"She'll claw your eyes out if she ever hears you calling her that." You point out. "Elizabeth Anne Spielsdorf is basically catwoman."

"She scares me about as much as that vampire twerp who sparkles in that shitty movie we watched other night." Carmilla says. "I just thought I'd come check if you were ready to do a crossword."

"I'll just clean all this up." You say, gesturing to the mess in your office. "And then I'll give Elizabeth a call. Then after that, we can do those crosswords you love so much, nerd."

"Says the Queen of Sudoku."

"I said that once."

She gets up and rolls her eyes at you as she starts picking up magazines. You're kind of touched by the fact that she's voluntarily doing some tidying for you.

It's a lot easier to get excited about the wedding with Danny aboard. The woman takes care of everything you could ever have thought to take care of. She even catches the fact that the princess of Sweden is allergic to the flowers you originally planned to have.

After Elizabeth snarls at Danny a few times for encouraging you to take time considering and re-considering the date you want your wedding to take place, you finally come to a decision and so your Head of PR sends out a press release about your engagement and organizes a day in which you and Carmilla do nothing but pose for photographs in different rooms of the palace and even out and about London.

You save all the photos after and rotate which one gets to be the wallpaper of your computer. Carmilla is smiling in all of them, which her mother points out is miraculous in the email you get back after sending her the photos. It makes you smile every time you think of it.

You ask Will to go dress shopping with you on multiple occasions and Kirsch, by extension, comes along. Perry and LaFontaine are there too and Perry cries when you walk out to the viewing area wearing the dress.

"I watched your parents get married on television." She says sobbing into LaF's shoulder and you feel tears prickling in your eyes too. "I'm so happy for you, Laura."

You step down from the pedestal in front of the mirror and you throw your arms around the both of them and there's a lot of crying and clutching at each other for several moments. You love them so much and you tell them so multiple times with Perry's hair in your face and LaFontaine's elbow digging into your ribs. It's perfect.

Things get a bit trickier when it comes to the wedding's location. Your advisers point to London as the obvious venue seeing as the Abbey has seen many royal weddings. But you haven't forgotten the way Carmilla's eyes light up when she's in Monte Carlo.

Danny leaves the venue of the wedding totally up to you, but she does follow you around for a day asking random questions about your relationship with Carmilla. Things like 'where did you meet?' and 'where was your first date?' and that kind of thing. She says afterwards that she has the perfect place in mind for the reception.

And that's well and good, but you have no clue how to decide where the two of you will get married.

It doesn't help that Carmilla completely leaves it up to you, either.

"All I care about is that I get to marry you." She says, placing a kiss against the side of your neck while you're doing a Sudoku puzzle. She's getting better at Sudoku and crosswords are becoming easier for you so you asked Perry to buy more advanced exercise books when the two of you finished the last ones.

"But you must have a preference." You insist. "Monte Carlo or London?"

"You know the answer to that." She says, penciling in a few numbers on the puzzle.

"Ugh. You're no help."

"I was the one who had to sit down with Danny, Betty, and my mother through a conference call to go over the seating arrangements at the reception." You can feel her grimace against your shoulder blade. "The amount of tension in that room for a full two hours almost suffocated me."

"Fair enough." You double check the completed puzzle before closing it and placing it on your bedside table. Carmilla tosses her pencil over as soon as you've set your pen down.

You get up from the bed and curl your fingers around hers to lead her to the bathroom so the two of you can get ready to sleep. You comb your hair in front of the mirror while Carmilla rinses her toothbrush.

"Every single time I brush my teeth." She says conversationally. "I remember that I'm marrying a weirdo."

You throw your head back and laugh because every time she opens her mouth, your are reminded of how lucky you are that this girl chose you.

In the end, you pick Monte Carlo because Carmilla loves it and the two of you will be living your whole lives in London anyways. Her entire face lights up when you tell her of your decision late one night and she sighs happily against your hair as she wraps her arms around you and you know for certain that you've made the right choice.

You wake up in the middle of the night with a thought that you can't get out of your head.

"Carmilla." You say, tapping her collarbone beside where your head rests on her shoulder. "Carm."

She grunts in response and you sit up to look at her.

"Who are you going to ask to walk you down the aisle?"

She blinks sleepily up at you and there is a mix of confusion and exasperation on her face.

"When we get married." You clarify, ghosting your lips against her shoulder - bare because of her oversized shirt slipping down her arm - to keep her awake. "Who is going to walk you down the aisle?"

"Why?"

You take a moment to try and organize your words, but they all come out in a rush anyways.

"Because I was thinking of asking Will do to do me the favour. And I know he's your brother and that you get dibs on him - "

She leans down and presses a kiss against your lips.

"I'm going to be waiting for you at the altar." She mumbles, falling back onto her pillow. "Ask him. He's yours as much as he is mine."

You fall asleep with a smile still on your face.

You call Will the next day in between meetings.

He says hello much like his sister does, but now that you're better acquainted with their mother you realize a lot of his mannerisms are originally hers. Carmilla is slightly different from the two of them, but they're still not a mushy feely type of family. The three of them show affection in the same gruff way that makes you grin.

"Will." You say. "I have a favor to ask."

"Shoot." He says.

"Would you kindly give me away at my wedding?"

There's a moment when you're not sure if he heard you because all you hear from his end is breathing.

"Will?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course." He clears his throat. "You - Laura, yeah. Yeah. I'm - that's - thank you for choosing me."

"No. Thank you." You're getting a bit emotional and it's only ten in the morning for goodness sake. "I'll see you soon."

"Yes." He says, laughing. "Yeah I'll see you soon, Laura. Thank you."

You hang up and try to wipe at your eyes without ruining the eyeliner you've got on. LaF walks over to you with a Kleenex.

"Thanks." You say. Perry is nowhere to be found. "No Perry today?"

LaF smiles.

"She's with the tall wedding planner and Betty. Perr's starting to take over."

"Why does everyone call her Betty? She told me she prefers Elizabeth on her first day on the job!"

LaFontaine laughs and then goes to sit in the chair in front of your desk. You have a question to ask them, too, so you watch them settle in before clearing your throat.

"Spit it out, Laur."

"Uh." You can't help but fiddle with the corners of the papers in front of you. "I know Carmilla is asking Kirsch to be her best man and I figure Perr will be sitting with Carmilla's mother crying about the ceremony so will you be, um, will you be my person?"

"What?"

"My person. For my wedding. You'll probably need to make a speech, I mean you don't have to!  But - "

"I'd love to, Laura." LaF nods once. "I'll be your person."