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I taste you on my lips and I can't get rid of you
So I say damn your kiss and the awful things you do
Yeah, you're worse than nicotine
Laura knows she’s in trouble the moment her new partner struts into the department. She’s trouble in a leather jacket and black boots, shrouded in wisps of cigarette smoke and with an aura of danger that shines through in the set of her jaw and the curl of her lips.
Laura could easily have mistaken her for one of the delinquents the department worked so tirelessly to take down.
Laura isn’t happy, and she can tell that her partner – Carmilla – isn’t either, if she even knows the word at all. Cold, dark eyes settle on her, flash and then move away, leaving Laura’s skin crawling.
Laura doubts she’s made a great first impression, but she’s been in the job far too long to care. She started out as one of the dreamers, signed up to the police force with hopes of changing the world but ended up diverting traffic. It’s been a long, hard slog working her way up from traffic to organised crime and drugs, and it’s taken a lot of the fight out of her. Because what’s the point pulling criminals off the streets when a hotshot lawyer is going to put them right back out there again?
So maybe the fire in Carmilla’s eyes irks her a little, because Laura remembers having fire, misses it. But she knows it’ll probably die soon, extinguished under the weight of all the sickos and saddos and psychopaths that worm their way through the system and back into the world time and time again.
They make the worst of a bad situation, working away in the grimy police office and hitting the streets night after night in search of new information. Carmilla is either the best partner Laura has ever had or the worst, Laura is never quite sure. She’s cold, cruel, sarcastic, rude, ruthless, and altogether a horrible person to work with. But she’s also relentless, committed, thorough to the point of obsession, so Laura can see past the less-than-perfect personality. After all, what Laura needs is a colleague, not a friend.
The drugs ring they’ve been trying to penetrate for the last six months is a fortress of secrecy, and they hit dead end after dead end. Yet the fire never leaves Carmilla’s eyes, and that scares Laura a little. But, even more worrying, is that she thinks it might be spreading.
They’re getting closer to a breakthrough, and the whole department senses it, like wolves catching the scent of blood on the wind. People start coming forward with information, names, places, and the dots start to connect.
Laura wakes one night in a cold sweat with the case spinning around and around in her mind, sure that there’s a key piece to the puzzle they’ve all missed. It’s three in the morning, and the city sparkles as Laura pulls on a coat and trudges through the rain and back to the office, because she knows she’s never going to get to sleep if she doesn’t check.
She smells the cigarette smoke and knows, knows without even turning on the lights.
Carmilla is slumped over her desk, dead to the world, her pile of paperwork serving as a pillow.
Laura smiles to herself a little. Carmilla is almost cute when she’s asleep, even if she’s drooling a little. Almost.
She taps on her shoulder a few times, and Carmilla stirs.
“What are you…” Carmilla yawns. “…doing here?”
“The same thing as you, I guess. Working on the case.”
Carmilla blinks at her, still half-asleep. “Since when did you start caring?”
Laura stills, and a weight drops inside. She doesn’t know the answer.
She learned a long time ago that caring in this career is never a good idea. Or at least, she thought she had learned.
She looks at Carmilla, who is rubbing sleep out of her eyes with one hand and tousling her unspeakably messy hair with the other, and wonders what has changed. Carmilla looks back at her, still squinting a little, but something has changed in the way she looks at Laura, and it does strange things to Laura’s stomach.
“So do you want to help me with this or not?” Carmilla asks gruffly.
They work through the night, and the next, and the one after that, because the taste of victory is so close they can feed off it. Laura understands now why Carmilla is always in such a bad mood, because God, commitment is exhausting.
Laura still can’t figure out when she started caring, or why, but it’s becoming a nuisance that she can’t quite put a stop to.
On the third night she dares suggest sleep.
“But the answers are in here somewhere! I know it!” Carmilla snaps. “How can you be so complacent when we’re so close?”
“There’s only so long I can survive on coffee! I need sleep, and so do you!”
“Don’t you dare pretend that you care about me. You just want this to be over so you can go back to sitting at your desk all day tapping away at a computer with those dead eyes like the rest of them!”
“No! I do care!”
“Why? Why care about this case? What’s so special about it?!”
“You care about it.”
Carmilla’s mouth presses shut, her eyes wide. Laura’s heart pounds in her chest, because where did that come from?
Then she realises it’s true.
“I haven’t had a partner like you in years. One so dedicated, so determined…” Laura bites her lip, her hands shaking. “You remind me of how I used to be.”
Carmilla exhales heavily. A strand of hair falls across her face. “…you do the same.” She replies bitterly.
Laura frowns. “What do you mean?”
Carmilla looks away, her eyes roaming across the rows of empty desks and abandoned piles of work. They have a small desk light, but it only emphasises the shadows that crawl from every corner of the room.
“I used to be just like you. I’d come in, earn my pay check, leave. It was just a job.”
“What changed?” Laura asks quietly.
Carmilla turns away from the desk, her face hidden in shadows. “I was – there was – a girl. She meant a lot to me.”
Laura doesn’t need a diploma in investigation skills to figure out where this is going. “Did something happen to her?”
There is a long pause.
“They did it. This drug ring. There’s never been any proof, but-”
“I’m sorry.” Laura pauses, before gently placing her hand on Carmilla’s. Her heart stutters, as if surprised by her own actions.
For a moment Carmilla is still.
“Sorry doesn’t change anything. Nailing these bastards does.” She jerks her hand away sharply.
Laura breathes out heavily. “I lost someone too.”
Carmilla looks back at Laura, and her eyebrows raise a little. Then her usual pout slips back into place. “Who hasn’t?”
“She was my first partner. She was stabbed by some junkie while we were on duty.” Laura has started talking, and now it feels like she can’t stop, not with Carmilla’s eyes on her the way they are. “After that it was just easier to stop caring.”
Carmilla nods her head slightly, and that’s all it takes for the weight that’s been on Laura’s shoulders so long she’s stopped noticing to lift.
“Ell.” Carmilla mumbles. “Her name was Ell.”
“Danny.” Laura replies. “My partner. Danny.”
They exchange a look of understanding. And then they return to work.
Laura has to admit she’s missed it – the thrill of really getting into a case, the all-nighters, the painful dead ends, the euphoria of every little breakthrough. It almost reminds her of why she became a cop in the first place.
And Carmilla is still her grouchy, brooding partner, but now when she slinks into the office in her cloud of cigarette smoke pretending she hasn’t been there all night there’s two cups of coffee in her hands instead of one.
Laura doesn’t notice the warning signs. The way she feels inexplicably warm all over when Carmilla falls asleep on her shoulder. The strange jittering feeling when, waiting to meet a contact on the corner of a street on a particularly cold night, Carmilla drops her jacket over Laura’s shaking shoulders with an exaggerated sigh. The flush that creeps across her face whenever Carmilla gets a little too close, or looks at her a little too long. The clues are there, but (useless, useless detective) she misses every last one until it’s too late.
The case isn’t the only thing she’s started to care about.
Laura remembers the first time she met Carmilla, knowing she was trouble the second she stepped through the door, but it’s only now she understands exactly how this girl with the leather jacket and the fuck-you expression is going to wreck her life.
Then she remembers what happened the last time she cared about a partner. And she panics.
But Carmilla is impossible to avoid, impossible to ignore, and Carmilla notices everything.
Laura can tell she’s noticed. She’s not sure what she’s noticed, but she’s found something in the way Laura no longer quite meets her eyes and shifts her hand to avoid contact when Carmilla hands her a coffee. Carmilla knows something has changed.
But she says nothing. Laura is grateful.
They track down one of the cells to a seedy club on the outskirts of town. The department decides to storm the building. Laura is hopeful that the arrests they make could lead to more. They’re getting closer and closer to the top.
Laura and Carmilla aren’t part of the team to charge in – that’s not what they’re trained for, after all. They wait at a safe distance as the SWAT team gets to work. It isn’t long before they’re pulling people from the building. The way the captured shout and kick, Laura almost feels bad – but then she remembers the trail of murders and disappearances that lead them to these people, and her sympathy evaporates.
Carmilla is watching the scene with quiet satisfaction beside her, a cigarette in one hand. Laura coughs a few times, and Carmilla finally drops it and grinds it out under her heel. All the time, there’s still a smile playing with the corners of her mouth, mischievous, but at the same time a little feral.
“At least one of these guys must have the information we need to get to the top.” She doesn’t try to hide the triumph in her voice.
“Hmm.” Laura shifts slightly, and their arms rub together a little. She immediately moves back, flushing red.
Carmilla whips her head around, her eyes flashing. “Knock it off.”
“What?”
“You know what. Don’t patronise me. You keep distancing yourself, and it’s pissing me off.”
Laura bites her lip. “I’m sorry.”
Carmilla snorts. “Don’t apologise when you’re not sorry. If you hate me that much just put in a request to switch partners.”
“That’s…” Laura closes her eyes, feeling a cold wind that smells of diesel and humanity. “That’s not why I’ve been doing it.”
Carmilla’s eyes narrow. She waits expectantly.
Laura breathes in deeply. “I can’t start getting attached again, not in a job as dangerous as this. I’m not going to put myself through that. But when I’m with you…” She trails off, swallowing. “I have to distance myself. It’s the only way, and it’s for both of our sakes.”
Carmilla’s eyes are wide, like a startled animal. She’s so still it’s as though she’s stopped breathing entirely.
Laura can’t take the silence any longer. “I’m sorr-”
She’s cut off when Carmilla steps forwards, pressing their lips together with a kind of desperation that Laura understands completely. There’s a second between their mouths making contact and Laura’s back slamming into the wall behind her when Laura considers resisting, pushing Carmilla away and running as far as her feet can carry her until her clothes lose the smell of cigarette smoke and the wanting stops, but it’s gone in a flash as she simply melts. She feels Carmilla’s hands moving to cup her face, to run through her hair, and it’s all Laura can do to pull Carmilla closer, sighing into her mouth.
Laura is weak. Laura is attached. Laura is vulnerable.
But Laura is going to let it happen anyway.
Processing the dozens of arrests takes forever, and getting every morsel of information from each con takes even longer.
The names start flooding in, the places, the facial composites.
It’s hard to say who matches the sketch to the face first, but the news sweeps around the office faster than lightening, and the chief soon calls Carmilla to her office with a grave expression.
It takes a while for them to piece it all together, how Carmilla managed to go from minor pawn in the drugs industry to police detective, but the sketch is unmistakeable. The dark-haired dealer is sure of it, picks her face out in a line-up easily.
Carmilla used to be one of them.
There’s a flurry of interrogations and accusations which Laura won’t go near, because the sour taste in her mouth gets worse when she so much as thinks about it.
Carmilla made her care. And then she did this.
Laura is furious.
She hears about lawyers and loopholes, and then Carmilla’s cleared on the barest technical terms. Because she never really dealt or distributed, she was a minor, just there while her adoptive family got on with it, and it’s not quite enough to prosecute her. But all the same, she’s off the case, and unlikely to escape with her job.
That doesn’t mean Laura stops being furious.
She’s heading home from work, and for once she’s left early enough to catch a glimpse of the sunset. With Carmilla gone, there’s little motivation to work through the night any more. She can’t take her anger out on Carmilla so she takes it out on the case instead, the case Carmilla made her care about despite being up to her neck in it, fuck. Laura is really pissed.
When she feels the hand grab her arm, her first reflex is to attack. She’s a cop. Naturally she’s defensive.
Laura whirls around, grabbing the arm with one hand and pulling back to attack with the other.
She stops short when she sees who her supposed attacker is.
Then she tears her hand away. “I don’t want to talk to you, Carmilla.”
“I wouldn’t have come to you if it wasn’t important.” Carmilla has to jog a little to keep up as Laura storms down the street. “It’s about the case.”
“Of course it is. It always is. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Will knows more than he’s saying.” Will. The boy who gave Carmilla’s description. Laura’s blood boils.
“How can I trust you? How can I trust anything you say, ever?! You lied to me, you hid this from me!”
“It’s not like that, it was never like that!”
“Then explain yourself!” Laura whirled around in the street. “Because I’m dying to know!”
Carmilla grits her teeth, but it’s not in anger – it’s in pain, like she’s pulling out a splinter. One the size of a dagger. “I was fostered when I was a teenager. My foster family were…were in the business. I’m not sure why they took me in, maybe just because the money was good, I don’t know. I tried not to get involved, but I knew what was going on.” She trails off, her eyes fixed on a point above Laura’s head. “Ell was one of their customers.”
There’s a moment of suffocating silence.
“I loved her. I did stupid things with her, for her. I was just a kid. I never thought.” Carmilla bites her lip, her gaze moving to the ground. “She got into debt with my mother. Badly. I tried to help her get out of it, tried covering for her. I could get into accounting and records books, move a few numbers around, and for a while it worked.” Carmilla sighed. “But she kept wanting more. She was addicted. And by then, so was I. And when my mother found out what I’d been doing, how much I’d hidden and stolen…”
Another silence.
“Big people got involved. Important people. So we ran. But we didn’t get far. They got her. And they killed her. For that, I’m going to destroy them. Every last one.” Carmilla looks up, and Laura’s never seen the fire burn brighter and she feels like she’s going to burn.
“What is it you need to tell me?” Laura answers at last.
“Will gave up every person he could to get a shorter prison sentence. I saw the list. There was only one person from our old circle missing. But the only reason he would miss someone out was because they had become very important, made their way right to the top. Someone in a position to make sure he ended up dead if he mentioned their name.”
“Who?” Laura breathes.
“My mother.” Carmilla pauses. “I think that she’s had something of a career advancement since we last met. I think she might be running the whole operation now.”
Neither of them moves. The smog of the city envelops them, turning the world to dark grey.
“You have to help me stop her.” Carmilla’s voice cracks. “Please.”
Laura bites her lip. She nods.
In a way, Carmilla being off the case is liberating, helpful even. She no longer has to abide by the strict regulations of investigation. She can get answers by her own means. Laura doesn’t ask questions, just takes the information, worries about the mysterious cuts and bruises Carmilla has acquired in the process and hopes nobody notices when these clues and tip-offs appear on desks as if from thin air.
It sometimes feels like they’re chasing a summit they’re never quite going to reach.
It’s been some time since Laura last saw Carmilla, but Laura knows she’s up to something. Call it the senses of an experienced detective, call it lucky guesswork, but when Laura stumbles into her dusty little flat to find Carmilla bleeding out on her couch, she isn’t even particularly surprised.
But, oh God, that’s a lot of blood.
She’s at Carmilla’s side in an instant, pulling out her phone with one hand and putting pressure on the shoulder wound – which, if she has to guess, was made by a bullet – with another. But Carmilla’s hand grabs her wrist before she can dial for emergency services, leaving a smear of blood on her arm. Her gaze is unfocused, but the shake of her head is clear.
Laura does the best she can, fixing Carmilla’s hasty attempt at a dressing (Carmilla making her way to Laura’s apartment and finding the spare key under the fire hydrant with a bullet inside her is a feat in itself, but to top it off she even found the first aid kit under the sink, Laura is impressed) but there’s only so much Laura can do, especially with the bullet still in there.
“You’ll have to pull it out.” Carmilla whispers huskily, her eyes closed with the effort of staying conscious.
“No way. This isn’t the kind of thing I can just pick up from a Youtube tutorial.”
Carmilla snatches Laura’s hand in hers, wincing in pain from the movement. “Laura. You have to.”
Laura knows Carmilla is right, but that doesn’t stop her from being downright terrified.
Carmilla insists on staying conscious, although Laura isn’t sure if it’s to act as support or because she’s worried she’ll wake up with one limb less than she fell asleep with if she doesn’t keep an eye on Laura.
She has a hard enough time keeping her hand still, but it’s harder still to stop herself from retching, because she knew from the start that police work was a messy business, but digging a shell out of her partner’s twitching body is still waaaaay out of her comfort zone.
Carmilla is biting down hard, but she still can’t hold back the whimpers and twitches as Laura prods around with the tweezers.
“A-Any day now would be just – ah! - just swell, cupcake.” She grunts through her teeth.
“I’m doing my best.” Laura grumbles. Carmilla gasps in pain as she nudges the bullet. “Crap, sorry.”
It takes some tricky manoeuvring to get to the bullet, and with every nudge Carmilla’s grip on the couch tightens. She bites back a string of curses, and Laura wonders if her nails might actually tear through the faded fabric.
“Carmilla, I’m almost ready to pull it out, but you have to be really, really still. Can you do that, Carm?” Laura’s voice is shaking, and Carmilla’s eyes are screwed shut, so she has no idea if anything she’s saying is getting through. She’s damp with sweat, her breathing laboured.
Laura cups her cheek with one hand. “Carm?”
“You’re going to have to…” Carmilla panted, eyes still closed. “…hold me down somehow.”
“Carm…”
“Just DO IT.”
Laura wipes at her eyes while she knows Carmilla isn’t looking before getting herself into position. She’s pushing down on Carmilla’s good shoulder with one hand while leaning on her chest with her knee, and with the other hand she’s poised with the tweezers.
Laura takes a deep breath, trying to force back the wave of nausea that’s sweeping over her. “Ready?”
Carmilla nods.
When Laura wrenches the shell out from the clump of flesh it has buried itself in, Carmilla yells, wild and unrestrained, and Laura has to press down with all her weight to stop her from bucking and writhing. But the job isn’t done yet, and while Laura slowly tugs through tendrils of muscle and fat, wincing when she feels the metal scrape past bone, Carmilla’s whole body spasms beneath her.
At last the bullet is out, and Laura wonders for a second how something so small can cause such agony.
Then she’s brought back to reality as Carmilla whimpers again – she’s been beyond speaking for some time – and immediately Laura starts doing what she can to seal the wound up and stop the bleeding.
With half a drugstore’s worth of painkillers in her, Carmilla’s eyes flutter closed. Once the blood and bandages are cleared away it’s all Laura can do to join her on the couch, lying her head on Carmilla’s chest carefully to avoid the wound.
She’s just drifting off to sleep when she feels a hand run tentatively through her hair.
Carmilla stays safely hidden in Laura’s flat while she recovers, and turns out to nobody’s surprise to be the world’s worst flatmate. She leaves used bandages on the floor, steals all of Laura’s clothes, has her gun lying on the table while she eats, wanders around the flat in nothing but a t-shirt and underwear – it isn’t good for Laura’s heart. She also insists on smoking.
“Do you have to do that in here?”
“Gotta smoke something.”
“I wish you didn’t.”
“So do I, creampuff.” Carmilla looks out through the window and across the city, her gaze distant. “Some addictions are better than others.”
Laura doesn’t bring up the smoking again.
She also sleeps in Laura’s bed, but that’s one thing Laura isn’t going to complain about.
“I found her.” Carmilla whispers to Laura. The city is still shaking off the icy winter, but together they’re warm enough to need only a thin sheet over them as they curl up together, all entwining limbs and gentle hands. “I found my mother. I was right, she’s in charge now. Right at the top.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Laura frowns. “I could have taken the information in, we could have gone after her.”
“Because even if you charge in and grab her, you’ll never get enough information to tie her to the case. She’s too clever, too well-protected.” Carmilla brushes a strand of hair out of Laura’s eyes.
“So what, we sit back and do nothing?!”
“No. Just be patient. I’ll think of something.” She presses a kiss to Laura’s forehead, but Laura can’t help but get the feeling that this is only done so she can avoid looking Laura in the eyes.
When Laura wakes up the next morning to an empty bed, she feels like she should be surprised, or worried, but mostly she’s just hurt.
When the news comes in that things are kicking off in one of the buildings under suspicion for links to the ring, Laura knows immediately who is behind it.
It isn’t long before the whole department is swarming all over the building, and Laura’s there too, even though she probably shouldn’t be. It’s not a dive like the other places they’ve investigated, it’s a swish office-type building, and the armed goons are well dressed, all designer suits and elegant but no less deadly weaponry.
Laura reaches the top floor before anyone else, and she knows she really shouldn’t be here, certainly not alone, but in the chaos of the arrival of the police in addition to whatever was happening here before they arrived, there’s no time to stop and wait for backup.
She steps into the office, which is huge, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a thick carpet. There’s only one desk.
Carmilla is in the middle of the room. An older woman with a ruthlessly professional, now somewhat ruffled haircut and a suit to match is on the floor before her, staring at the gun in Carmilla’s hand with cold eyes that refuse to show fear. The woman’s own gun, a small silver pistol, has been dropped a few feet away in the midst of some sort of struggle. Carmilla’s lip is bleeding, her hair tousled, but there’s still ferocity in her eyes, and Laura doesn’t doubt that Carmilla has infiltrated this building single-handedly.
“Carmilla?” Laura breathes. Carmilla looks up, and then several things happen at once.
The woman grabs her gun. There’s a deafening bang. Pain tears its way through Laura’s gut. There’s a second bang, this time from Carmilla’s gun, and the woman hits the floor in the same moment Laura does.
Then Carmilla yells. “LAURA!”
It’s the first time Laura can remember Carmilla using her actual name.
Carmilla is with her in seconds, hands moving frantically over Laura’s body, and Laura can tell by her face that it’s bad. But Laura isn’t thinking about herself right now, Laura’s thinking about the entire police department that’s going to storm into the room any second.
“ …alright, you’re going to be alright, just stay with me, Laura…” Carmilla’s voice fades in and out, and it’s all Laura can do to listen to the half-sentences that flow from her mouth.
It takes more strength than she knew she had to open her mouth and speak. “Run.”
“What?!”
“Run. If the cops find you here…you have to run.”
“I’m not leaving you here!”
“I’ll be fine.” It’s the worst, most obvious lie Laura has ever told. “Just go!”
“No…” Carmilla’s voice breaks, and Laura feels something wet land on her cheek. She blinks blearily up at Carmilla, and when she sees the tears rolling down her face she feels a sob welling up in her own chest too.
Instead it comes out more like a cough, and she can taste blood in her mouth.
In the distance she can hear shouting, and footsteps. The voices are swift, commanding, organised – the cops have taken down the resistors. Right now, they’ll be cuffing everyone on the sight, taking names, pushing the wheels of justice into action. And for that reason, Carmilla can’t be there.
“Please. Leave me. They’ll arrest you-” Laura coughs again, and Carmilla presses harder against the wound with a hand that shakes.
“Never.” Carmilla says quietly.
The door bursts open a few minutes later and Laura hears more shouting, yet she can’t quite stop her eyes from fluttering closed. But one voice stands out above the rest.
“No! I’m not leaving her, I’m not leaving her, I’m not-!” For a moment Laura feels Carmilla pulling her in against her chest, feels a strand of her hair tickling her cheek, catches one last breath of cigarette smoke-
Then Carmilla is pulled away, and Laura’s last thought is that she was right all along. Caring is a mistake.
That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t do it all again.