A/N: SO. I did a thing. Wrote this bcz Carm in an amusement park equals lulz. Also, I'm a horrible person for uploading this before updating Tainted. Don't worry my lovely rainbow turtles, it'll get to it soon. Anyway, enjoy :3
-Also, I totally did not listen to Hirohashi's Disney Piano Collection whilst writing this. Nope.
Part one of two that has already been written. Will be uploaded later today.
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If it was ever possible for anyone besides a grumpy two-year-old to look so displeased while at the Happiest Place on Earth, Carmilla would, of course, be the one who could make it a reality.
Her current situation involved being dragged around by an overly excitable, honey hair-colored, grinning 19 year old girl who was weaving her way through a massive crowd of amusement park goers to look at absolutely everything. Carmilla exhaled gratefully when Laura had stepped into yet another quaintly colorful souvenir shop and had allowed Carmilla to wait outside. The brunette huffed and leaned casually on the side of the small building, looking around at the similarly styled vibrant stores on the other side of the cleverly fraudulent street. Although her features gave off slight disgust, she internally praised the creators of the park for this cleverly upfront profit technique. The merchandise was all placed very close to the entrance of the park, so as attract guests upon their arrival and serve as a reminder to buy as they left.
"Shove it in their face first, then remind them about it later to make sure they've got it in their heads." Carmilla mumbled appreciatively. Her dark eyes, covered with black sunglasses to protect against a brightness that wasn't there, turned to scan the crown instead. Laura had picked the perfect day for their outing, as it was almost completely cloudy overhead but there was no call for rain. This saved Carmilla from some otherwize needed coverup, but it had not saved her from cancelling Laura's choice in location altogether.
"Hey Carm?"
Carmilla raised a perfect brow at the beautifully familiar voice calling her own name from inside the store, she lowered her shades down her nose an inch before Laura was at her side at the entrance of the shop, in her hands what appeared to be two mouse-shaped button pins, each one exactly the same despite the slight color variation. The brunette continued to look at the slightly shorter woman questioningly.
"Which of these is better? I mean I know they're the same, but the color really matters with different contrasts and-" Laura started, holding each pin up to examine them individually, before Carmilla interrupted.
"Sweetheart, you know you're not allowed to take those out of the store before buying them, right?" Carmilla chuckled when Laura's brows shot up.
Laura gave a nervous laugh as realization flashed across her face. "Right! I should, um, get back inside then. I just wanted your opinion, just in case they looked stupid, or…"
Carmilla huffed and nodded back at the store with the ghost of a smile on her lips. "Go ahead and buy them."
The honey-brunette grinned and rushed back inside, leaving Carmilla to skulk again. Not even two minutes in and already being suckered into buying some useless junk- ow.
Carmilla frowned at the sudden strike to her thigh. She tilted her head down to see a miniature pirate child by her side, who was currently using all of his four-year-old strength to slice her leg in half using a plastic cutlass that was clearly too big for his size. She raised a brow as he struck her again.
"Ahrg, I'm a pirate! So move out of the way lady, cause I can't see Captain Sparrow!" The little boy huffed as he realized his efforts were futile, and decided to run back to his mother who was waiting on the other side of the Main Street road. Carmilla frowned as he watched his little legs trample their way back to his parents, then she looked behind her when she remembered his comment. She then realized she had been standing uncomfortably close to a large Jhonny Depp poster, the actor himself sporting his famous pirating get up, an advertisement for a similarly designed boat-ride on the other side of the park. Carmilla grimaced and stepped away from it. She huffed, daring to peek her head inside the now-full store to search for her little honey-blonde, but saw no sign of her through the masses now flowing freely into and out from the store. Carmilla frowned when she heard her name being called again, this time from outside the store.
"Carmilla!"
She scanned the street but easily spotted the two redheads trotting towards her. Perry was clinging to LaFontain's arm as they wove through the crowed to get to the impossibly bruiting young woman on the other side. Both had long, sugary churros in their unoccupied hands, and they seemed to be emitting an aura of nostalgic joy.
The two had gushed about their joint family trips together many years ago, where LaFontaine had apparently discovered their love for velocity and speed of roller coasters, which in turn had branched into a love for science. Meanwhile, Perry had prefered to stay ground-ridden and followed all the park regulations. Their lively descriptions of the times they spent together as adolescents explained their close bond that still held true. Carmilla had briefly wondered how unusual it was for two people who were quite different from each other had remained so closely bound. But upon further divulgence, her thoughts were brought to a sudden realization about her connection with Laura, who was so wonderfully different from herself.
"Where is Laura?" Perry questioned first when the pair reached Carmilla, because LaFontaine was currently silenced with a mouthful of sugary bread.
The brunette gestured to the store behind her. They both nodded and LaFontaine stepped a bit closer to Carmilla. "Oh by the way, your 'supplements' are in Perry's bag when you need them."
Carmilla nodded once, and she hoped it was an enough of an appreciative gesture for LaFontain's genuinely intelligent move of bringing extra blood for Carmilla on the group trip.
Carmilla's own stash had been questioningly taken away by the park security guards, and the already grumpy vampire had been forcefully patted down by one of the more suspicious female guards. Carmilla had caught Laura attempting to stifle her laughter as the brunette was trying her best to restrain herself from attacking the dutiful worker. Once they were inside the park, Carmilla's dislike of the place had increased ten-fold. The only thing that kept her from storming off, quite pathetically, was a light tug on her sleeve and a soft "Please?" coming from Laura.
Carmilla had glared at the two snickering redheads as an overly-exited Laura had dragged her past the entrance of the park. And thus began the start of their day-long trip to hell.
Perry and LaFontaine rushed into the store behind Carmilla with curious smiles plastered on their faces. The brunette sighed again, readjusting the dark shades on her face before walking in after them.
In retrospect, she had decided that staying outside would have been the best plan of action. The little shop, though miniature looking on the outside, was actually quite large in its interior, as it was connected to other aligning buildings. It was very brightly lit; the walls were an eggshell white and most of the metal aspects were painted a bright gold to match the exterior of the shop. The various collage of eccentrically colored items on the shelves weren't helping with her ever-growing headache. She retreated back into herself like a teenager whose mother had opened the curtains a little too early in the morning. Her eyes quickly scanned the crowd of adults and children alike, finding herself straining again. She took a sharp turn around one of the centerpieces to avoid a couple of galloping children simulating some sort of cowboy characters. Carmilla ran a hand through her hair before placing her index fingers on her temples. She definitely wasn't cut out for all of this colorful eccentricity, and felt some satisfaction in knowing she cut through it with her dark choices of clothing.
Toys of all variations sat motionless on shelves and racks, usually accompanied by others of the same franchise beside them. She approached one cautiously; a small, bright yellow bear that sported a dark red shirt that only covered half of it's pudgy body. It was placed next to what appeared to be some sort of grey, sad donkey with a bow halfheartedly attached to it's tail. It was only slightly bigger than her hand she'd realized when she picked the bear up, poking its black beady eyes in with her fingertip. It had a sort of smug smile on it's cheery face as it held a felt honey pot by its plush feet. Carmilla sighed and continued to search.
Finally, she spotted Laura waving her down from the other side of the store, LaFontaine and Perry browsing by her side.
Carmilla could not figure out for the life of her how those two dimwits could have possibly found Laura before she herself did. She rubbed her nose. Maybe the overwhelming combined scents of tooth-achingly sweet candy and hundreds of children was blurring out her sense of vampirically enhanced scent tracking capabilities. She tried her best to hide her displeasement as she walked over.
Laura gripped a small, colorful plastic store bag in one hand, and waved to Laura with the other. "Hey you. Sorry we took so long."
Carmilla waved it off with her free hand as well.
"Were you...planning on buying that?" Laura inquired, gesturing toward Carm's occupied hand .
Carmilla glanced down; she hadn't realized that she'd been gripping the yellow soft toy in one hand. In a flustered, though quite sharp movement, she placed the toy back on a random shelf; it was now an out-of -place blotch of yellow plush sitting between some kind of spaceman action figures. "No, why would I?" Carm's brows raised a fraction when she noticed Laura's hopeful expression fall slightly. The brunette's brows inclined at the change, and her hand unconsciously moved back towards the toy on the shelf. "Did you-"
"Sorry we took so long!" Perry's cheery voice rung out from behind Laura, and Carmilla pinched the bridge of her nose.
Laura shrugged in front of her. "No problem. So, we hitting the rides?" she asked, a bit more upbeat as LaF threw an arm around her shoulders and have gave her a nod.
"Yep!" they answered. "But first Perry wanted to check out the-"
"LaFontaine! I did not want to check out the princess." Perry spoke from beside Carmilla, the redhead's arms crossed and her face turning a peachy color. "You know I just want to relive some of our childhood memories of better times and-"
LaF chuckled. "Okay, Perr. Whatever you say." They removed their arm from around Laura to step forward and link arms with Perry. "Let's go check out those princesses!"
Perry groaned as she caught questioning people glancing their way, and LaF led the way out of the shop. Laura and Carmilla fell into step behind them.
The day had, thankfully, yet to clear up overhead. The park seemed it's fullest during the afternoon; the bustle of people tried their best to navigate past each other while still managing to help their children along. Everything seemed to radiate happiness, and it would be just the location Laura would have chosen given her somewhat limited childhood experiences due to her father's overprotective tendencies. A recent complication with their university had caused the school to shut down for a while, and allowed some much-needed vacation for the students at Silas. Carmilla, who had hoped to spend the break simply lounging around with Laura and possibly completing a marathon session of her Aristotle collection that had begun to catch dust on her book shelf, was less than pleased when one-half of the ginger twins suggested that they use the month to travel.
Laura twiddled her thumbs as she walked, looking anywhere than the direction in which they were heading. Carmilla had only noticed Laura's behavior until after they had reached the so-called Fantasy Land and particularly so when they had eventually spotted one of the princesses. Perry gasped and whipped out her small orange Coleman camera, shoving it into LaFontaine's hands before running over to pose with a blonde crowned princess with a flowy pink dress. (Or, was it blue?)
Carmilla didn't care much for the character spawned from the Walt Disney franchise. In all truthfulness, she had found the little steamboat mouse amusing at first, finding it curious that the humans had discovered moving pictures, but the so-called princess branch of the Disney tree never quite appealed her. Not only were they quite historically innacurate, (she's noticed that they'd left out quite a large chunk of the particularly gorey portions, although she understood this was done to keep from scaring innocent children) but they'd failed to represent any sort of lady-loving ladies, even in the most G-rated sense. It had still disappointed her now that the comforting thought of the world becoming more accepting grew, but children's media had yet to embrace it.
Carmilla crossed her arms over her chest, expecting to hang back with Laura until the ginger twins hand finished, but she heard a strange, strangled noise come from the girl beside her. Her mouth twitched and she turned towards the smaller honey-brunette. She followed her gaze a while away, where a beautifully figured false-brunette with a blue dress and matching apron was taking photos with a group of smaller children. Then, the vampire's amused gaze turned back to Laura, who was still staring at the princess from afar. "Staring only serves to either capture attention or draw it away." Carmilla leaned down to Laura's ear. "And in this case the former seems to be winning."
Laura snapped out of her trance to clear her throat and glance at a now very close Carmilla, then she turned her attention back to the character a few yards away. "Do you think it would be ok to take a picture with her?" Laura began in a small voice that gradually got more frantic as she went on. " Like it wouldn't be weird or anything, right? Like I know that the character isn't an actual person but she's right there and it's ok because it's her job to do these kinds of things and stay in character no matter what, so-"
Carm let out a small chucked at the babbling blonde attempting to justing her own wants. "Laura, I'm trying very hard not to personally judge your crush on a fictional Disney princess."
Laura's eyes widened before she looked away. "It's not a crush!" she pushed her pointer fingers together. "I just- I really admire her intellectuality and her fearlessness is all."
Carmilla nodded dismissively, a visible smirk on her face. "Sure cupcake, sure."
Laura looked like she was about to attempt and defend herself, but she went limp with a defeated sigh, and stared back at the chattering princess. "Kind of a familiar situation, don't you think?" Laura asked absentmindedly, after Carmilla had decided to lounge atop a waist high brick wall. The blonde clambered up to sit beside her and dusted her hands on her grey high-waisted shorts. "I mean, the whole shut-out beastly thing needing love to set him free," Carmilla's gaze turned to Laura. "and the only thing able to get through to him in unexpected circumstances is a lively, understanding young woman." Laura smiled cheekily at Carm with a raised bow.
Carmilla huffed fondly, staring down at the ground now. After a moment of listening to the white noise chatter of people and the melodious instrumental music mixed in, Carmilla reached towards her small black travel bag to whip out her smartphone. Laura looked at her curiously, glancing between the phone, of which Carmilla was sliding the screen up to activate the camera function, and the princess still a while away.
"Come on, sweetheart." Carmilla sighed as she hopped off the wall and turned to hold a hand out for Laura. "Let's go meet your idol."
Laura grinned widely and slid her hand into Carmilla's own, taking the initiative to lace their fingers together and haul Carmilla over to the awaiting princess.
"Hold still!"
Laura fluttered around Carmilla's face, licking her own thumb again in a more efficient attempt to smudge the lipstick off Carm's right cheek.
The vampire grimaced, attempting to pull away but Laura held the collar of her shirt in a surprisingly vice-like grip. Carmilla unwillingly held still as Laura wiped away the last of the excess makeup. The blonde huffed in annoyance.
"I can't believe she kissed you!"
Carmilla chuckled at Laura's adorable expression. Her nose was scrunched up along with her narrowed brows, and those perfectly pink and shapely lips were jutted out in an excruciatingly cute pout. "Cupcake," Carmilla began, doing her best to contain her endearment for the girl. "It was just a peck on the cheek. I'm sure they do it all the time for the kids."
Laura's pout remained despite the attempt at reassurance. "Yeah, they do it for the little kids." she finally had released the vampire after she made sure the last traces of red were absolutely gone. "It's different when they do it to a fully taken woman!"
Carm raised a brow. "Don't you mean fully grown woman?"
Laura crossed her arms. "No."
A grin broke out on Carmilla's face before she spotted two redheads jogging up to them.
"Hey guys, we're all done." Laf spoke first, nodding towards their other two companions.
The group left together, unusually quiet as they glanced around the location-themed buildings around the park, acting quite nonchalantly and taking in all the sights and sounds, when in reality they'd made a silent pact not to speak of either pair's adventures with Walt's princesses.
They unanimously decided to go on rides after Perry had insistently shot down the suggested idea of eating before they did anything else to save the group from later upset stomachs.
"Perr likes traditional rides." LaFontaine explained, leading the group around with an oversized and colorful map. "Meanwhile yours truly," they pointed a thumb at themselves, letting one half of the map fold over on itself, "enjoys the faster velocity variety."
Laura turned to Carmilla, and couldn't exactly picture the broody vamp having fun on one the more intricate rides.
"I'm like Perry in that sense." Carmilla spoke up suddenly, almost as if reading Laura's contemplations. "Traditional ones are more my style." The group paused again, surprisingly quiet now that it was one of the rare times Carmilla spoke freely to the whole bunch. The brunette seemed oblivious to their shift of curiosity. "Throughout the years I'd always found that the more experimental amusement rides, those that began to test the limits of feeble human capacity had become less appealing once the realization that they could go no further set in." Carmilla shrugged. "They wanted to see how far they could go. But you creatures are so feeble you don't even realize.
"Hey, those feeble humans shaped the world with inventions and religion and philosophy-" Laura appealed to Carmilla's rambles.
"And how many of those humans are still alive?" Carmilla cut in with a small smile. "Humanity as a whole is astoundingly powerful. But humans as individuals will forever be fragile."
Laura huffed, giving Carmilla a light shove with her shoulder as they continued walking. "Well not everyone can be an immortal vampire badass."
Carmilla grinned and threw an arm around Laura. "True."
"So you have been to an amusement park then?" Laura covered her mouth with exaggerated surprise. "And actually enjoyed it?"
Carmilla smirked, actually feeling a bit charmed with Laura's reflective sarcasm. She tugged the slightly shorter woman closer to her, and Laura reached up to intertwine her fingers with the ones resting on her shoulder. "Once or twice. County fairs were quite popular throughout the late 1800's. However," she stepped away from Laura but kept their hands linked to spin Laura around once under her arm. "I still preferred the grand masquerade balls of Versailles for selective entertainment."
Laura's nose crinkled as she grinned when Carmilla pulled her close to her chest again. They gazed longingly at each other for a brief moment, leaning in-
"Settle down, sex kittens! There are children in this park!" LaFontaine smirked at them with their arms crossed, Perry looking around worriedly.
Laura groaned and immediately buried her reddened face in Carmilla's shoulder. The brunette rolled her eyes at the grinning ginger, subconsciously placing an arm around Laura. "Like these kids haven't seen worse already."
LaFontaine just shook their head and giggled, continuing to walk. Laura sighed and pulled away from Carmilla, but not before the vampire leaned down to kiss the top of her head gently. Laura smiled at the gesture, returning it with a small peck on the side of Carm's mouth before almost jogging to catch up with Perry and LaF.
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A/N: This will be updated into one whole fic instead of two chapters later today, so be on the look out! Just wanted it up for early-morning Thursgay risers!
-Hopefully we'll get a better look at what Carm and L interact in their actual relationship once S2 comes out. Right now their reactions are based solely off S1 and a glimpse of their relationship as a couple in the Christmas special.
-Also, please tell me a Beauty and the Beast AU has already been written. If not-imma get on that shit. Because this piano arrangement is beautiful.
R&R if you get the chance :3