Someday I'm Gonna Be With You (Carmilla One-Shots)

Popcorn

This is somethin' I've been working on for some time. It might be something I'll continue. I have ideas.

Tags: Hollstein, Soulmates, Fluff

I wake up alone and lay in bed listening to the hum of the refrigerator in the next room until the alarm on my phone goes off and it's time to get up and get ready for work. I do so lazily. I love my job, but some days I'd rather stay in bed watching Doctor Who re-runs rather than go out of my way to look good for some cameras, and today is one of those days. I have a strong feeling that it will be just as ordinarily dull as any other day, and that feeling doesn't diminish once I get to work and look at the lineup of reports for today.

It's a Sunday, an ordinary Sunday for everyone else, but at News station 307 it's 'Soulmate Sunday', always said with a hint of awe in the mouths of my co-host and crew and everyone else watching, but from me it's always with exaggerated flare because all in all, it's nothing but a story. It's something society created to tell kids so that they'll focus on academics and stop trying to fall in love too soon. Other than the people I interview every Sunday -- who could very well be actors for all I know -- I've never met anyone who's ever met their soulmate. Not even my parents, who loved each other so much that it killed them.

So I do the ditzy interviews and suppress my frown when a doe-eyed girl with a southern accent tells her story about how she met her husband at a casino when they accidentally touched hands and the slot machines and ATM's went haywire and started spitting out coins and money through the 'power of love' and 'soulmate's first touch'. They got married last week using the money they got from the slots. Where do they find these people?

Something like that could never be real.

I love my job, I really do, but when it comes to soulmates I have a hard time getting that journalistic edge, and it makes me question whether I should be in front of the camera at all. Maybe I'd do better out in the field, or going out to do interviews and write articles. Anything would be better than reporting nonsense. It stopped being fun when I realized that I'm the only one who thinks the whole soulmate thing is fake. I feel like the only one in the entire world.

When the clock strikes one, the replacements step onto set and we switch out.

"Hey, great job today, Laura!" my co-host, Bob, says to me. He's a very tall man with curly brown hair, and when he smiles his mustache stretches with it and it lights up his friendly blue eyes. Some would say his positivity is infectious, but today I don't feel it. He belongs on the news more than I do. He towers by me while we remove our wiring.

"You too, Bob," I reply and try my best to smile, but I feel off today and my facial muscles aren't working like they should.

"Can you believe that casino story? Man I can't wait for that to happen to me!" He's his usual excited self, and it hurts that I can't be like that too. I wish I could be so blissfully unaware. Maybe then I would feel like I fit in with everyone else who's soulmate obsessed.

"Yeah, me too," I say as I force my lips to smile wider until it feels like my face is going to split in half and reveal the monstrous, festering ball of negativity that rests inside. Soulmates are like Santa. You can't just tell a kid that Santa doesn't exist. You have to let them have hope and joy in believing that there's this mystical thing that gives you everything you want in life simply because you are alive.

We go our separate ways without much else to say other than goodbye.

The moment I leave the station, I instantly dread having to go back to my apartment and spend the rest of the day alone. Work is a nice distraction, but I have so little else in my life that I find myself floundering around searching for something to do to occupy my time whenever I'm not working. Today I decide to go to the movies.