FIC: "The Role of Fred Burkle...." (AtS; Harmony/Fred; donation-fic)

Title: The Role of Fred Burkle Will Be Played by Charlize Theron
Author: Mireille
Fandom: Angel
Pairing: Harmony/Fred
Rating: mild NC-17
Summary: It was a good thing Harmony was sober, or things might have gotten out of hand.
Disclaimer: They belong to Joss. All I own is a big pile of math books.
Notes: Written for karabair in exchange for a contribution to the_fund. This is pretty much a goofy fic, but it's pretty much a goofy idea to begin with. Also, Harmony's opinions are all her very own. *pats her on the head*


The problem with trying to be friends with a science nerd, Harmony decided, was that she was...well...a great big nerd. So even after Harmony showed up at Fred's door with a bag of videos, her smallest makeup case--because Fred totally needed someone to show her what to do with her eyes--and assorted other vital equipment for a night of bonding over Antonio Banderas, Fred just stood there, looking confused and stammering a lot.

"We're friends, right?" Harmony said, trying not to wrinkle her forehead. She might not ever have to worry about age lines, but she wasn't sure about what excessive frowning could do to a vampire's skin. Though probably not much, or Angel would look like a raisin by now.

"Um, yeah, of course, Harmony," Fred said, pushing her glasses up her nose. Harmony took in the sweatpants and the ratty t-shirt Fred was wearing and realized that she'd taken Fred under her wing just in time. Fred might have two of the hottest guys at Wolfram & Hart--if you went for the geeky type, anyway--after her, but once they saw her looking like this, they'd run for the hills.

"Friends hang out. So here I am, ready to hang." She beamed at Fred, holding up the bag from Blockbuster. "I brought movies."

"And that's great. And you know, I'd just love to go for drinks or something again sometime, especially if nobody gets murdered afterward, but tonight is bad. I have all this paperwork to catch up on..." She waved her hand toward the couch, where it looked like an entire filing cabinet had exploded. If Angel found out she'd been over here, she'd probably get blamed for it. Even if it had only happened to her once, and it was not her fault that no one had told her that cabinet was booby-trapped.

"But we're friends," Harmony repeated. "You can work tomorrow night. Tonight is Girls' Night." In her best coaxing tone, she added, "I brought wine, and chocolate, and I was going to give you a makeover. And you won't send me back home alone, will you? A girl walking alone in L.A. after dark...."

"Harmony, you're a vampire," Fred pointed out. When Harmony pouted, Fred sighed. "Fine. If you wanted to kill me, you could do it at work, and I guess I can always get Wesley to un-invite you tomorrow. Come in." She stepped out of the way to let Harmony into the apartment.

Harmony gave the place a once-over while Fred was clearing stuff off the couch. "If you want my advice, you should get the geek books out of sight. A guy gets one look at them and--No, wait, Knox probably thinks physics is hot."

"You came over here to talk about guys?"

"Duh." Harmony set the videos and makeup case on Fred's coffee table. "Isn't that what you do with your friends?" Not that Harmony had had many friends since she'd been a vampire, but it was what she'd always done with Cordelia and Aura and the rest of them.

Fred shrugged. "It's kind of been a while." She put the papers away in a bag Harmony had seen her carrying into the office. "Can I get you something?" she said finally. "I mean, since it looks like you're staying. I think I have some leftover Chinese food--"

"I brought my own," Harmony said, taking off the backpack she'd been wearing and holding it up for Fred to see the contents: three bottles of wine and a plastic container of blood--with extra otter, since it was a pig-out-on-junk-food kind of night.

Fred frowned at her. "You walked over here with a bottle of blood in a clear plastic backpack? Wasn't that kind of obvious?"

Harmony shrugged. "A girl's got to eat. Now come on. Antonio's waiting for us."

Fred gave her a vaguely confused-looking smile and reached for the backpack. "I'll get some glasses," she offered.

***

They were on the last videotape and the third bottle of wine when something Harmony said gave Fred a fit of the giggles. Harmony didn't even know what it was, but she started laughing too, after a minute, and then she couldn't stop. She hadn't done that in years; the last time was at a sleepover at Aura's, and she'd laughed so hard she'd actually snorted, which had been the most humiliating thing in her life. Come to think of it, since she hadn't met Spike and his freaky Slayer fetish until after she was dead, it really had been the most humiliating thing in her life.

At least she didn't have to worry about that any more, since she didn't have to breathe or anything, but she still couldn't stop giggling, and she collapsed against Fred, laughing helplessly. Fred had her hair pulled back--she really had been going for the "sloppy and overworked" look tonight--and that meant that her neck was exposed. Harmony could almost see the blood pulsing through veins; she could hear it, could smell it, and she had to work hard at not going into vamp-face. Eating friends was a bad idea, she told herself. Besides, she'd get fired if she failed her breath test, and getting fired from Wolfram & Hart tended to involve actual fire. Or a stake, at the least.

But her mouth was right there and Fred's pulse was right there and she had to do something, so she pressed her tongue against a vein, feeling the pulse that beat there and not letting herself bite down, because friends did not drain their friends' blood.

Fred had gone extremely still, and her pulse was racing. It was kind of sucky that her only friend didn't trust her, but it wasn't that bad--Harmony hadn't ever been good at scaring people even back when she was eating them, so it was a nice change. "No human blood, remember?" Harmony said, but she didn't move away from Fred's neck. The pulse was way too interesting.

"I have weapons," Fred warned her. Her voice was steady, but Harmony could smell a little fear.

"God! I'm not going to bite you!" She wanted to, but that didn't count if she didn't intend to do it.

"Okay, so what're you doing?"

Harmony rolled her eyes. "Licking your neck. What does it look like?" She giggled again.

"Oh." Harmony counted off four heartbeats before Fred said, "Why?"

"Your pulse is cool," she said, following it along one of the veins in Fred's neck.

"It is?" Harmony looked up; Fred's face was scrunched up and confused-looking. And blurry. But everything had gone kind of blurry after the last glass of wine, so that was probably okay. It had been really cheap wine. Maybe there were weird additives that affected vision.

"Yeah," she said seriously, tracing it down a little further. "It feels all tickly on my tongue."

"That is so...weird. But kind of sweet," Fred said, leaning forward to get her wine glass from the coffee table.

Harmony let her pull away, sitting up and draining her own glass. She thought about going out to the kitchen to heat up the last of the blood she'd brought, but she wasn't really hungry. She just liked the feel of a human heartbeat, even if she wasn't going to bite.

Fred set her empty glass down, and Harmony went back to the vein on her neck, following it past the neckband of Fred's t-shirt. It wasn't as easy to see there, even when Harmony pulled the shirt away from Fred's neck, but she could still feel it, strong and steady.

"Uh, Harmony?" Fred began. "This is getting kind of weird. Weirder." Her voice was just a little bit slurred; she'd had way too much wine. Good thing Harmony was still sober; she could look out for Fred. Not that she could probably get into too much trouble in her own apartment.

"It's okay," Harmony said. "I'm not being a pervert or anything. I just want to feel your pulse."

"Oh," Fred said, doubtfully. "I guess that's okay. I want to be a good friend, 'cause you're kind of nice, for an evil vampire. And friends help each other, right?"

"Right," she agreed, and Fred pulled away again. "Hey, I thought you said--"

But Fred was pulling her t-shirt up and over her head, grinning at Harmony. She was still kind of blurry, but Harmony was getting used to that. She should have bought better wine. "Lots more veins," she said.

That was true. Harmony found the one she'd been licking before, beginning to follow it again. Fred hadn't been wearing a bra, so she could trace it easily, following branches that took her closer and closer to Fred's heartbeat. It wasn't nearly as good as actually drinking from the veins, but it was still kind of neat.

Fred squirmed a little bit, and Harmony realized she'd just followed the flow of blood all the way to the thin pale skin on the curve of Fred's breast. "It's okay," Harmony promised again. "I'm completely not into girls. Except maybe Charlize Theron." And Fred was definitely not Charlize; she was a nerd. Harmony liked her; she was nice, even if she was kind of a geek, but she wasn't the kind of person Harmony would make an exception for. She just had good veins and a strong pulse.

A strong, really fast pulse, and as Harmony followed the vein over the top of Fred's breast, it got even faster. "You like this," she accused.

"So do you!"

"Not like that," Harmony said. "I'm a vampire, not a lesbian!"

"Yeah, 'cause drinking blood is so much better than having sex with girls."

"We're not having sex." To prove her point, she took the branch of Fred's vein that led her up to Fred's collarbone before tracing it back down to the breast. If they'd been having sex, she wouldn't have done that, would she?

Fred squirmed again, and that put her nipple under Harmony's tongue, which would have been really gross if it hadn't done interesting things to Fred's pulse and the way she smelled.

And then Fred's hands were between them, cupping Harmony's breasts through her blouse, and if Fred really wanted to do the thing she was doing now where her thumbs were rubbing over Harmony's nipples, Harmony wasn't going to argue. Fred was drunk, and arguing with drunk people was kind of dumb. Also, what she was doing felt good, if Harmony pretended it was someone else doing it. Good enough that maybe she ought to do Fred a favor and let her tongue swipe over Fred's nipple again.

Fred's reaction was to slide her hands under Harmony's shirt, unclasping her bra so she could repeat what she'd been doing before, this time on bare skin. Okay, again, if Fred wanted to, that was okay, because Harmony was busy focusing on still following all the veins she could find. They were kind of pretty, really, blue under white skin, and Harmony was starting to like the way Fred's skin tasted.

"Oh, god, Harmony, that is not a vampire thing," Fred gasped, hot fingers pinching Harmony's nipples, almost but not quite hard enough.

"Shut up," Harmony murmured, her tongue flicking out again. This wasn't as fun as biting, not at all, but Fred was definitely liking it a lot better, and being a good friend involved compromising. She'd read that in enough self-help books to know it had to be true.

She didn't bite down, even though she thought she could and Fred wouldn't mind. Even though she wanted to, and it didn't have anything to do with blood, just the way Fred gasped when Harmony covered a nipple with her mouth. Friends did favors for friends.

"Hey! No fair," she whined when one of Fred's hands came out from under her shirt. It didn't matter who'd been doing it; that had felt really good.

Fred just grinned. Her glasses were slipping again, and Harmony wished she'd just take them off. She might be kind of accidentally making out with a girl, but she still had standards. Fred looked prettier--less nerdy--without the glasses.

"Hey!" Harmony said again, this time because that hand had just gone under Harmony's skirt, sliding up her thigh and rubbing her through the lace of her underwear.

Fred just kept grinning. It was an incredibly loopy grin, and Harmony thought that it was really too bad that Fred couldn't hold her liquor. Harmony was sober, and she'd had way more wine than Fred. You could tell she was sober, because she wasn't the one suddenly turning all lesbian. It was Fred who'd pushed Harmony's underwear out of the way now, and Fred's fingers that were pushing into her, and Fred's thumb that had found exactly the right spot to rub in tiny circles so that it was Harmony's turn to squirm now.

Fred giggled suddenly; Harmony felt it against her mouth even before she heard it. "Room temperature," she said. "That's different."

Duh, Harmony was about to say, but then Fred moved her fingers and Harmony was too busy pushing against Fred's hand, trying to get her to do that again. She could still hear Fred's heartbeat, but she forgot all about finding the pulse in Fred's chest. She wasn't the best at multi-tasking, and right now, Fred had her attention. Maybe they taught this at nerd college or something, because she was good at it--her fingers moving in and out of Harmony faster now, thrusting in harder and deeper and oh, wow, this would have been the best sex ever if it had actually counted as sex Which it didn't, because Fred wasn't a guy. Harmony didn't worry about what this was or wasn't; she just closed her eyes and concentrated on how good it felt, until she tilted her head back, gasping and whimpering and letting stars explode behind her eyelids.

When she opened her eyes again, Fred was giving her a kind of weird look, and Harmony realized she'd vamped out. "Oh, damn!" she wailed, concentrating until her face changed again. "Now my makeup's going to be all smeared."

Fred stopped giving her the slightly-freaked-out look and just laughed. Then, after a minute, she said, "You forgot all about my pulse."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry?" She gave Fred the smile that got her out of trouble with everyone but Angel.

It worked, because instead of complaining, all Fred said was, "You know, there's a really big artery in my thigh. 'S called the femb-- famo-- the one in your thigh." She wrinkled her nose. "I think I'm kind of drunk."

Harmony knew that. Not just that Fred was drunk, but about the artery. She'd made a D-minus in biology, so she didn't know what it was called, but she knew what it was. And Fred was pulling down those ratty gray sweats, and then her underwear--which wasn't as cute as Harmony's own, but wasn't as dorky as Harmony would have supposed. If she hadn't been evil, she might have felt bad about taking advantage of someone so obviously drunk when she was sober. But she was a vampire, after all, so she pulled Fred around on the couch so that Harmony could kneel between her thighs and start looking for the pulse again.

Fred didn't seem to mind being taken advantage of; she was making a lot of noise, but none of it sounded like "no." And oh, she was right, there was so much blood, rich and red, just under the skin, and it wasn't at all fair that she couldn't bite.

Fred's hands were in her hair, stroking it and probably messing it up completely, and guiding Harmony's mouth farther up her thigh--and then between her legs, where it was warm and wet and actually a lot more pleasant than Harmony had expected. Maybe Fred had more in common with Charlize than Harmony would have thought.

She talked dirtier than Harmony would've expected her to, too: lots of "fuck" and pleas for Harmony to go faster, to press harder, to put her tongue in--oh god, she'd used the C-word. Yuck.

But Fred really seemed to like what Harmony was doing; Harmony could feel her getting slicker and wetter and arching her hips up toward Harmony's mouth, and literally screaming--which Harmony liked the sound of even if it wasn't in mortal agony--as she squirmed and bucked and clutched at Harmony's hair.

"Wow," Fred said dreamily, after a little while, sprawling back against the couch cushions.

Harmony sat up, wiping her face with Fred's t-shirt and noticing, from the lipstick smear she left on the fabric, that her makeup really was wrecked now. She'd have to wash her face and completely redo it before she went home; someone might see her.

Maybe she should do that now, so that when Fred stopped doing her impression of a jellyfish--Harmony couldn't think of anything else without bones--they could get on with her makeover.

Harmony got up, reaching for her makeup case and heading for the bathroom. The room was still blurry, and her head was kind of spinning, which she was blaming on Fred.

And she bet Fred didn't even realize how lucky she was. What if Harmony hadn't stayed sober? Things really might have gotten out of hand.