Chapter Text
Nostalgia
noun
- A sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past
The dream was pleasant, at some extent.
It was more like a sensory dream. No images or actual things happening, just a colorful clutter of shapes dancing and disappearing behind her eyelids. No memories, responsibilities or expectations. Her only job was to watch the shapes take form and then go away. Nothing to feel conflicted about it.
It was peaceful.
And of course it couldn’t last forever.
The disruptive sound started as buzz in the background until it grew to a full annoying beep, leaving her with no other choice but to snap out of her placid land.
Carmilla Karnstein woke up with a displeased groan, reaching blindly for the source of the noise that brought her back to reality and resisting the instant urge of tossing her phone – and in that very moment, morning tormentor - across the room.
The logical opposite of breaking the phone was, of course, answering it.
"Yes?" She greeted, raspy voice and equally raspy tone.
"Carmilla, where in heaven are you? Do you have any idea what time is it?" Lola Perry’s high pitched voice immediately caused a twinge of annoyance in an already grumpy Carmilla.
"Too early for you to be calling me, ginger spaz." Carmilla shot back, stubbornly keeping her eyes closed as if that was going to change the fact that she was fully awake.
For a moment, the only sound on the line was Perry’s heavy and certainly pissed breathing, but it was a very short moment.
"We have a meeting with your new editor in 30 minutes!" Perry said finally, completely exasperated. "You have a contract to fulfill with your publishing company, remember? The publishing company that pays you so you can enjoy the expansive king size bed you’re currently lying on!"
Carmilla sighed dramatically. It was a really nice bed indeed.
"Okay, okay, Betty Crocker. Text me the address again, I promise I’ll be there in 20… Just try not to burst any veins while you wait for me."
"Carmilla Karnstein, I swear to god-…"
"And don’t forget my coffee." Carmilla smirked, hanging up.
Perry, the obsessively nervous agent. Carmilla was sure she would give the ginger an aneurysm someday, but she just couldn’t stop. Stuttering and red as a tomato Perry was just too fun to watch.
She didn’t actually mean any harm to her agent – and friend, Carmilla would unwillingly admit in some days. Perry had been with her since her first book of short horror stories, that sold less than 100 copies – 50 being bought probably by Perry herself – and now that Carmilla managed to write a big success, Perry was still by her side. They were a good team, even though Carmilla would never say that out loud.
She took deep breaths while she lazily stretched herself in the bed and finally opened her eyes. There was a dim light of sunshine glowing in the room, slipping through a tiny crack in the blackout curtains. Carmilla was in the middle of big yawn when she felt an arm sneaking across her stomach.
"Good morning, sexy…" Ell said with a sleepy voice, her warm breath tickling the sensitive skin of Carmilla’s neck where she was nuzzling her head.
"Morning, beautiful." Carmilla smiled, turning to the side so she could embrace her girlfriend. She snuggled Ell’s long blonde hair and breathed in the familiar scent of shampoo. "Sorry for waking you."
"Mmmn… What was that about?" Ell asked, her voice giving every indication she wasn’t planning on staying awake for much longer.
"I have a meeting with my new editor." Carmilla answered, nonchalant, trying to hide her general displeasure with the idea.
Ell let out a chuckle.
"I can feel your disgust from miles away, Karnstein."
Carmilla sighed for the second time that morning.
"Well, one must attend its obligations." She said, landing a small peck on Ell’s forehead, gently pushing away from the girl’s embrace and getting up.
"Yes, go… Thou, the big best seller author." Ell smiled, eyes still closed, while she hugged the pillow Carmilla had just raised from.
Carmilla rolled her eyes, stopping at the door frame of their bedroom to look at Ell over her shoulder.
As if she knew she was being watched, Ell’s smile grew wider.
"Love you, kitten…" She said, clearly ready to go back to sleep.
"Love you too, princess." Carmilla smiled.
Laura Hollis had her coffee in one hand and the utter realization she was screwed in the other.
Being late to the first meeting as a new editor in the publishing company that just recently hired you is not exactly what you can call a good start, but she just couldn’t find her damn keys that morning.
"Why does this have to happen today?" She mumbled, just a pinch of resentment with the universe in her voice, while she scanned every surface of the apartment for the fifth time.
To complete her total justifiable nervousness of first day in a new job, Laura knew exactly zero things about the author she was supposed to work with, because Ms Belmonde, her boss – insisting said author was “oh Lord in heaven, such a big deal” – decided that the first encounter should be a fun surprise for Laura.
She wasn’t having the slightest bit of fun so far.
"Keys, keys, keys, keys…" Laura called in a low, weirdly sweet voice, that would make any uninformed observer think she had cat named Keys.
Just then, her phone started vibrating in her pocket, while blasting the first notes of Boss by Fifth Harmony.
"Oh crap!" She cursed, looking at the name on the caller ID. "Good morning, Ms Belmonde!"
"Oh please, Laura, enough with the 'Ms Belmonde', just call me Mattie..." Her boss greeted, surprisingly cheerful and blissfully unaware her new employee was running late. "I’m just calling to make sure you know we are hosting today’s meeting in the top floor, not in the usual conference room."
Laura knew that very well, since Mattie made a habit out of repeating that to her at least thirty times in their last meeting while emphatically reminding her of the importance of the mysterious author.
"Absolutely, Ms… I mean, Mattie!" Laura assured her, with the greatest excitement she could gather despite being so profoundly nervous. "I’m on my way right now!"
I might be a little totally late thought, she thought to herself as she searched around her loft once more, because I had a little inconvenience with my keys. My keys… She looked next to her coffee brewer to a shiny object that was remarkably similar to her missing keys. My keys that I just found…
"Splendid!" Mattie continued in her sheer state of morning energy. "Your new author should be here soon too. I can’t wait to see this cute little face of yours when you realize who it is…"
Laura smiled, grabbing her keys from the counter and heading out. Mattie was sure acting like an excited child on Christmas about this meeting, almost like the secret author was Mattie’s younger and dearest sister.
Laura couldn’t quite figure it out why Mattie’s excitement made her exponentially more nervous, but she wasn’t about to kill the buzz of her new boss.
"I can’t wait to meet them!" She said before hanging up.
Who knows? Maybe she was on the verge of working with an author she actually admired. Maybe she would have the time of her life at her new job.
She swallowed her tense smile and hoped for the best.
"Do you really need to keep this on?" Perry asked, making a vague and yet clearly hassled gesture towards Carmilla’s worn down sunglasses. "We are indoors."
"Aren’t you a genius of spatial notion?" Carmilla bit back, sweet and sarcastic, spinning around the chair she has been slouched on since they arrived.
"It’s incredibly impolite." Perry warned, her lips closing into a thin tense line as soon as she finished speaking.
"You clearly know etiquette too..." Carmilla sighed dramatically (she was very good at sighing dramatically). "God, is like you know everything!"
Perry’s jaw clenched, swallowing her next reply, and she moved to sit even more uptight that she already was.
They were in the top floors of a huge business skyscraper downtown, more precisely in the fanciest conference room of Belmonde’s Publishing Co. Everything was made either of glass or cold silver metal and the excessive amount of light coming from the excessively big windows was giving Carmilla an early headache. She and Perry were sitting in the end of a rectangular table that – surprisingly enough – consisted in glass and metal. Across the room - where there were no windows, of course – there was framed best-selling book covers. Carmilla’s first novel – Poisoned Butterflies - among them.
An attentive observer would notice that Carmilla would stare at pretty much anything in the room, except for the framed reminder of her own book. Perry was an attentive enough to know this, but smarter than to comment on it. Carmilla’s relation with her hit success was always troubled. She pretty much just wrote the words and never looked back. Which, Perry guessed, had a lot to do with the fact that the words written were very, very personal.
Not that Carmilla would ever admit that.
Completely unaware of Perry’s internal speculation about her feelings about her own book, Carmilla sipped her black bitter coffee and let out the thirtieth annoyed sound of the morning. Just when she was about to suggest her own departure, the massive metal doors swung open and Matska Belmonde – in all of her imperial glory – entered the room.
Ms Belmonde wasn’t someone you could easily ignore while sharing a space with her, and even Carmilla – the apathetic grumpy cat – couldn’t resist the urge to lower her glasses and take a better look at the beautiful slim woman.
She was only wearing a black leather dress, with her usual large pendant resting between her exposed collarbones, but her confidence dominated the whole room effortlessly.
"Well, well… Look what the cat just dragged in." Mattie said, standing by the doors, her smile partly amused partly predatory.
"We have a meeting scheduled." Perry spitted out, her face turning completely red, as it always did when Mattie was around.
"Of course we do, Lola…" Mattie basically purred, flirtatious. "I would never forget."
"Of course." Perry mumbled, completely mortified, while Carmilla only smirked at the interaction.
"Maybe I should just leave you two to your… Business." Carmilla offered, putting her sunglasses down on the table and raising a very suggestive eyebrow to her agent.
Mattie’s smile widens and she turns her gaze to Carmilla.
"No need, Ms Karnstein." She replied, gracefully taking a chair on the opposite end of the table. "I’ll just join you while we wait for your new editor. Let’s not overlook the fact that you’re the star here…"
"Let’s not." Carmilla nodded, her smirk turning a little bitter at Mattie’s sickeningly sweet tone.
"A star that made her last editor cry into voluntary dismissal…"
Perry cleared her throat.
"And where would it be this new editor of yours, Ms Belmonde?" She asked, straightening her back and enlacing her hands together over the table, in a clear attempt to pull herself together and avoid the subject of the crying previous editor.
Mattie seemed to ponder over the question with her index finger tapping her mouth lightly and glistening eyes staring directly at Perry.
"She should be here at any minute now." She conceded, smiling again.
As if those words were a cue, the doors opened again and a flash of honey brow hair surged through it.
"I’m so sorry!" A short girl, professionally dressed in a blue blazer and a black skirt, started to ramble to Mattie. "I’m so sorry, Ms. Belmo-… I mean, Mattie. I swear this will never ever happen again! I just couldn’t find my keys this morning which is why I am late, but I promise this is not a usual thing… I’m almost never late, and I take my job very seriously, specially a big job like this one and-…"
"Sweetheart…" Mattie raised a finger at the girl, her amused smile back into place. "Breathe."
The girl stopped at her tracks, finally remembering oxygen was a much needed thing. She inhaled and exhaled deeply and then smiled.
Mattie nodded approvingly at her and gestured towards the other side of the room. The girl’s eyes followed the direction her hands were pointing, her gaze falling first in a smiling Perry and then in a very shocked and very pale Carmilla Karnstein.
"Laura?" Carmilla breathed out, the volume of her voice barely above a whisper.
The girl’s smile – Laura’s smile – died immediately.
It could not be.
"Laura?" Carmilla repeated, same tone as before, breathed and low.
Laura stared at her, recognition all over her wide brown eyes.
It couldn’t be, but it was.