This Is the Safest Place I've Ever Known

2

A/N: Hello, I am back with another chapter. There's some worldbuilding here, and some hints at Lauren's backstory, but it's still not anything overtly descriptive. Still implied abuse though.

Hopefully you read and enjoy. :)

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Lauren groaned into her pillow as someone poked her shoulder over and over.

"Lauren, seriously, it's been like two minutes. I'm starting to worry that you're dead."

Lauren huffed and reached for one of her other pillows currently not in use and it threw it behind her.

A grunt told her she hit her target.

"What the fuck, Lauren?"

Lauren finally rolled over and glared at the intruder of her precious sleep.

Camila stood to the side of her bed, holding the pillow thrown at her and pouting. "Come on, wake up," she drawled out with a slight whine and stomped her foot lightly. "It's four in the afternoon, Lo. I wanna spend time with you." She glared slightly and crossed her arms over her chest. "As your bestest friend in the entire world, I demand you wake up."

Lauren blinked slowly and stared at the younger girl for a minute. "You're such a princess, you know that?" she finally asked, voice hoarse and gravelly from sleep.

"I do know that. But I know that it works on you." She threw the pillow back onto Lauren's bed. "Also, have you been asleep all weekend?"

"No, of course not," Lauren scoffed as she sat up and pushed her blankets aside. "I went to the library yesterday to do some classwork. I like quiet, but I don't like our apartment when I'm alone. It's not the good kind of quiet. Especially not after we had an argument." She fiddled with the corner of her blanket as she hugged her knees and looked at the other girl apologetically. "I'm sorry, by the way, for how bitchy I was Friday night. You didn't deserve any of that. That wasn't fair to you at all."

Camila gave a small smile. She sat down on the bed and hugged the older girl close. "I forgive you," she promised, pressing a kiss to Lauren's temple. "You could have told me you'd had a nightmare. I would have stayed with you."

"No, you deserve time to go be with your caregivers," Lauren argued. "I didn't want to keep you from that. I know how much you look forward to that especially since you couldn't go during the week."

"Yeah but if you needed me-"

"I could have called you," Lauren pointed out. "It wasn't fair of me to be super bitchy to you for no reason and then ask you to stay. I was fine once I got to sleep Friday night. And then I just worked on classwork yesterday until the library closed, and then I came home and cleaned up a bit before doing more work."

"You better not have messed with my room."

"I wouldn't have even if I wanted to. Your room is literally a hazard zone. How do you even function?"

Camila pouted and hit Lauren's shoulder. "It's organized chaos. I know where everything is."

"Sure you do," Lauren replied in a tone that indicated she didn't believe that for a second. "Well, now that you've so rudely woken me up, what are we doing tonight?"

"It's after four in the afternoon," Camila argued. "You wouldn't sleep tonight if you slept longer. You're lucky you don't have class on Mondays. But to answer your question, I was thinking we could get takeout and watch movies. I just wanna spend some time with you."

"Can we not get pizza though?"

"You're so lucky that Dinah and Normani ordered pizza for dinner on Friday," Camila said, pouting. "What do you want instead? Please don't say sushi."