Smile For Me

Chapter 3

When you came to you felt the cold nipping at your skin, you slowly stretched out your frozen bones. The cracks from stiff joints were the only thing that pierced the silence, and the grunt of pain that slipped from your cracked lips.

Yeah you’ll probably be feeling this for the next week and a bit.

You pull yourself up from the ground… well more like try to pull yourself up. Your arms gave way and you came crashing back down again, another wave of pain pulsed through your body. It took you a few more tries to actually get up. The question now was;

Where do you go? Surely you can’t go back to your own dorm room; you didn’t want to disturb Carmilla’s sleep. No, you needed to go to someone you knew would still be up.

Lafontaine.

You hadn’t publicly come out to anyone; hell you didn’t even think people knew you were gay. You had been in one relationship while being at Silas, and that hardly lasted a week, she was an experimenting girl who didn’t know what she wanted. It wasn’t like you wanted to hold a pride parade.

It took you about 10 minutes to get to Laf and Perry’s room, and most of that time was just trying to get up the stairs without your ribs screaming in pain. Perry ushers you into the room and lays you down on her bed straight away, she removes your shirt (after you give her approval) and starts to poke and prod you, asking “does that hurt?” multiple times.

Laf is at the counter by the sink mixing a brew that Perry had probably shown them how to make, and knowing Perr it is going to taste like shit. Mind your French.

--

They both insist that you stay for the rest of the night, Perry mentioning that it’s dangerous out there alone and you were in no way to walk back to your dorm room. You laugh it up and tell her that you’ll be fine and you’ll text them both when you get back.

You just want to collapse into bed and forget about this whole ordeal.

The sun is starting to peak over the mountain tops, the warmth the sun rays give you are a welcome feeling to your sore body. You pull out your phone and check the time, 5:38 am, Carmilla probably wouldn’t be up yet… actually she probably won’t be up for another 7 hours. In recent days you’ve noticed that she enjoys sleeping in a little too much, how she is keeping up with homework you’ll never know.

You climbed the flight of stairs that lead to your dorm room, hobbling up each one while wincing ever so slightly at the sharp shoots of pain that ripped across your side.

The door was locked, which doesn’t happen often, but you locked it when you decided to go for a walk last night and left a sleeping Carmilla alone in the room. Your hands shuffle around in your jacket pockets to try and find the key, hoping to god that it didn’t drop out while he… well you’d rather not think about that.

You expected Carmilla to be asleep, but when you opened the door you saw her sitting on your bed, hugging your yellow pillow tightly to her chest. She turns to look at you when she hears the door shut, and you can see that she hasn’t slept.

“Cupcake,” she put down your pillow and moved to sit on her own bed, “You were gone for a while…” You have a feeling she wanted to say something more than that, but she cut herself off.

“Yeah I guess I lost track of time,” You discreetly (or as discreetly as you can with throbbing ribs) walk towards your computer chair and sit down, wincing ever so slightly.

“Hey…” She contemplated continuing, “You okay?”

“Oh, yeah, just defrosting from the winter air that nearly froze me last night!” You say with smile. Truth be told you’ve already defrosted and now the winter jacket that covered your body—and the bruises that surely have now formed, not to mention a few jagged cuts—was generating too much heat.

You move to take off your jacket, it isn’t like Carmilla is going to even care, it isn’t like she noticed the bruise that had formed around your eye, dark purple and quite hard to miss. Anyway she’s probably gone back to sleep by now anyway, you haven’t turned around to check since 5 minutes ago. Once it’s off, with only minimal pain, you focus back on your computer and writing a paper.

The next thing you know, delicate cold fingers trace lightly over a certain sore point—which was probably a bruise, you remember Laf had told you that they seemed to be everywhere—on your back.

She turns you slowly around in your computer chair, standing in between your legs and gently laying her hands on your shoulders. She looks pissed, but not at you, no there is a certain kindness in her eyes that you can make out.

“Laura…”

A/N: Sorry little late updating. Have another cliffhanger. :)