Fic: Crazy random happenstance 2/2 --- Fred/Kennedy.
Disclaimer in previous post.
For a goodbye kiss though it was getting a little involved.
“Um, did you forget we’re still on the street,” she asked breathlessly as they took a split-second oxygen break.
Her arms were tight around Kennedy’s neck and she was definitely kissing back so she was aware she was in danger of sending a mixed signal or two but, well, they were kinda on the street. Not even kinda, she supposed, but actually. There were people walking past them and any second now she just knew a car was gonna honk, someone would yell ‘Get a room’ or something else incredibly witty and original like that and wasn’t kissing in the street illegal? Or was that public nudity? Either way, they might be on the run from the police for all they knew so calling attention to themselves by kissing in public should probably be a no no, and they definitely shouldn’t start taking any clothes off, and boy was she starting to want to take some clothes off.
She stepped back abruptly from the heat of the kiss. She’d known this girl all of…what? Well, it was probably a whole forty-five minutes now. A little soon to be thinking about taking off so much as her jacket let alone…
Kennedy fell forward at the sudden interruption and righted herself, running quick fingertips over her lips. “Sorry, you’re just so kissable.”
“I know, I mean, you too, or we are, um… It was a nice kiss. I’m just not real comfortable with public displays of affection. At least, not this public.” She waved her hand around.
“No problem. Private displays of affection only from now on then. So, I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay. Take care.”
Fred turned from the sound of her voice to look fuzzily around. That there was definitely a wall, and they were on the corner so there should be a street sign somewhere around… She found the brighter rectangle of white against the grey of the building and stepped forward, closing one eye and squinting the other.
“Are you okay?”
Darn, she’d thought Kennedy had gone. “Oh, sure, I’m just getting my bearings. I’ll see you Friday.”
She leaned even closer to the wall until she could make out the name of the road. Right, now that she knew where she was, she knew how to get home. She started walking slowly. Fifty-eight steps to the end of this street, turn left, twenty five steps and she’d be on the west corner of the park. Cut diagonally across the grass and then she was only thirty steps and four lanes of busy traffic away from being home safe and…
“Hey.”
Fred turned to the fuzzy shape of the vampire slayer. “I’m okay, honestly, I just always look like this when I’m doing math in my head.”
“What? Like you’re about to walk into the back of a telephone booth?” Kennedy took her arm and steered her around the obstacle. “Actually, come to think of it, math kinda makes me feel like that too. So, you really needed those contact lenses, huh? ”
Fred ducked her head. She had always had less than perfect eyesight but her stay in Pylea, having to wear the same out of date prescription for five years, had really strained what little she did have.
“Let me walk you home.”
“No, you really don’t have to do that. It’d take you out of your way and…”
“Right now, I don’t have a way, so you can’t take me out of it.”
“Right. Well, if you’re sure. It’s not too far. We actually ran in the right direction. That’s unusual, normally in a blind panic people run in the most unhelpful direction possible.”
“Slayers don’t panic that easy.”
“But you didn’t know where I lived.”
Kennedy, smirking, shrugged, “Ok, maybe blind luck cancelled out my blind panic. So, which way?”
Fred started to lead the way to the Hyperion. It wasn’t the same as it had been before, now everyone was too busy at work to go back there except from time to time, but for now it was still where her heart was.
“So where’s home?” Kennedy asked, easily falling into step beside her, sliding her palm down the inside of Fred’s arm to take her hand.
“Just down here.”
“No, I mean originally. You don’t sound like an LA native any more than I do.”
“Oh. Texas. I grew up in Dallas and moved out here for graduate school.”
“And you liked La La Land so much you couldn’t bear to leave?”
Fred pulled a face. “That wasn’t really my plan but…there was some stuff that happened. It sucked me into a bad place for a little while.”
“How did you turn it around?”
“Some good people saved me. I’ve been working with them ever since. Helping them save other people who need it. That’s why I’m here. How about you?”
“New York.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“I wasn’t. Up until a few days ago I was in Ohio but after the break up…” She chuckled. “I nearly did the whole ‘Run home to Mommy for ice cream therapy and TLC’ thing, but then I thought, screw that. I’m a hot nineteen year old slayer and I should be out there, breaking hearts and kicking ass, yunno, not crying into Mom’s two hundred dollar authentic Martha Stewart apron, especially as it’s just been hanging on the peg in the scullery ever since my stepdad brought it for her.” When Fred looked at her quizzically, Kennedy added. “We have a chef.”
“O-okay.”
“So I’m out here finding myself. Caught a Greyhound from Cleveland to LA and I figure I’ll work my way back up the country. Should make it to New York in time for Christmas with the family.”
“That sounds like fun. You know, apart from the break up side of it.” Fred noticed something. Something she hadn’t thought anything of until she’d heard Kennedy’s plans. “Your luggage! Did you leave it on the bus?”
“Nope, I’m baggage-free. I’ve got all I need in here.” Kennedy held up the rucksack over her shoulder.
“That doesn’t even look big enough for a pair of pants!”
“It’s too warm for a pair of pants.”
Fred eyed her sceptically but started walking again. The casual attitude Kennedy had towards luggage probably applied to hotel rooms too and she wondered if Kennedy would want to stay with her, just for the night at least, until she was able to settle somewhere tomorrow. Not with her, with her, obviously, but in the hotel. It would be nice to have someone else around, and even nicer if that someone happened to be Kennedy.
“So, you know my job: Slayer. Where do you work?”
“I-I work for a law firm.”
She had grown leery of giving the actual name these days. It tended to make people make assumptions. They either thought she was the best thing ever - which meant they were evil - or… they thought she was evil and weren’t very thrilled by it. Kennedy being a slayer, she had to have heard of Wolfram and Hart, and Fred didn’t want to put her off by mentioning it. At least not until they’d gotten to know each other a little better and there was more chance Kennedy would be susceptible to her side of the story.
“So you’re a lawyer? I get that. You have like this intelligent aura or something,” Kennedy grinned. “Smart chicks are hot.”
“No, I’m not a lawyer.”
“Oh,” Kennedy laughed quietly and watched the sidewalk as they walked. “Well, brains are over-rated.”
“I’m a Physicist.”
Kennedy turned to her, mouth open in surprise. When she finally managed to close it again it was with another grin. “See, hot!”
Fred blushed again. She’d always thought she was the only woman in the world who found quantum physics so appealing. They were at the hotel now, standing at the entrance to the gardens.
“Well, here we are.”
Kennedy looked up at the place. “You live in a hotel?”
“Uh huh. Well, I live in one room of it. It belongs to a friend of mine. Everyone else has moved out now but, well, it feels like my little bolthole from the world, you know? And I don’t think that’s such an unhealthy thing to have.”
“I’m not big on boltholes. Too easy to get trapped. Unless it’s stacked with crossbows, then they’re not so bad, you know, just like target practise with a solid wall at your back.”
Fred shrugged, conceding, as she led the way through the garden. “Well, my bolthole isn’t stacked with crossbows but for what it lacks in the projectile weaponry department it makes up for in broad swords, short swords, maces and I think we still have a third century ceremonial Sancteus dagger lying around somewhere.”
“Okay,” Kennedy nodded a few times. “Well, sounds like you’ve got that angle covered. So, do you think you can feel your way up the walls from here?”
Fred smiled. “I can probably manage, but if you wanted to…to see your chivalry through to the end,” she said nervously, “you could come in for a while.”
Kennedy didn’t hesitate or sound nervous. “Sure.”
“Sure,” Fred repeated with a squeak in her voice; she hadn’t ‘entertained’ another girl like this since before the portal incident. “That’s good, sure is good. So, uh, I should probably finish opening the door, huh?”
She felt presumptuous taking Kennedy straight up to her room, but in all honesty she was mostly just thinking of her vision-impaired-ness. She would feel too odd talking and maybe even flirting with her if she couldn’t stop squinting.
Kennedy didn’t seem to read much into it. After taking a look around the room and nodding appreciatively, she leaned casually against the wall as Fred went to the dresser to find her spare glasses.
“You can take a seat if you want or wait for me in the lobby if you prefer. We sorta used to use that like a living room anyway and I can make you some tea. Or order some Chinese food. You said you haven’t eaten and there’s this great little place around the corner.”
“That all sounds good but I’ll wait for you. Unless you want to get changed or…”
“No, you’re fine. I just…” Fred fiddled awkwardly with the glasses in her hands. “I just wanted a minute before you saw me.”
“Saw you?” Kennedy frowned. “You’re not about to turn into a demon, are you? Only so far you’re ticking every box, but if you’re hiding horns and a tail under all that pretty. . . I’m not sure we know each other well enough yet to reveal every secret. Yunno?
Fred laughed, “No, I’m not a demon, I’m just…”
Fred slid her old glasses onto her nose. Kennedy continued to frown at her and she ducked her head.
“Not exactly flattering, I know.” Fred touched the thick-rimmed black frames self-consciously. “They’re my emergency pair. I don’t usually wear them on dates. Not that this is a date! Or anything. But I’d still prefer to have my other ones…”
Kennedy came closer and Fred grimaced in apology, sure she was now completely unattractive to the pretty slayer.
The girl gazed at her for a long time before nodding. “I think they suit you.”
“Because the rest of me screams nerd too?”
Kennedy chuckled. “No, because before you were just beautiful. Now you’re quirky and beautiful. That’s a real turn on for a girl.”
Fred ducked her head again but she was smiling now. “Oh no, I’m not beautiful. I’m just ordinary.”
“Nothing about you seems just ordinary so far.”
She blushed at the compliments and Kennedy trailed a finger over her hot cheek. When she smiled in response to the ticklish feel Kennedy leaned into her, going up on tiptoes just enough to make kissing easy.
Fred slid her arms around her neck again, holding her loosely, and she felt the scrape of Kennedy’s rucksack against her forearm as it was dropped to the floor. Fred was just losing herself to the moment when Kennedy pulled away enough to look intently at her face again.
“Are the glasses really that much of a turn on?”
Kennedy laughed. “I was actually just checking that you hadn’t turned into a man.”
Fred’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry?”
Laughing again, Kennedy shook her head. “You didn’t, so it really isn’t important.”
“Okay,” she mumbled against Kennedy’s lips and asked between kisses. “Do you want to get that Chinese food now?”
“Only if you do.”
“They’re open ‘til one.”
Fred wasn’t sure which one of them was behind it, maybe it was a joint venture, but they were moving sideways across her room. Getting closer to the bed. Fred was sure she’d trip with the way her eyes were closed and her co-ordination off on account of the kissing, but Kennedy’s feet were sure and the strong arms around her steered her safely to the edge.
Kennedy pushed her coat off of her shoulders and Fred had already stopped worrying about whether they knew each other well enough for this so she let it fall. Kennedy caught it behind her before it could drop to the floor and threw it neatly over the chair on the other side of the room without breaking their kiss to see what she was doing.
“That hard candy will keep me going until at least twelve-thirty.”
Fred grinned, but not at the joke. As her slender hands pushed under the World’s Sexiest Slayer t-shirt she’d finally found something that could make Kennedy breathless.
Kennedy nodded at the neatly made bed. “You want to?”
Fred smiled. “Sure do.”
Untangling herself from the t-shirt, she crawled onto the centre of the bed. Kennedy was by her side, arms already around her before she had properly turned herself around. They kissed as they lay down, bodies sliding together comfortably with no trace of the awkwardness of where to put what limb that Fred had experienced with previous new partners.
Breaking the feverish kiss for a moment to catch their breath before, Fred hoped, taking off their clothes, they gazed at each other and she felt the electricity pass between them.
Kennedy ran a light fingertip along the thick-rim of Fred’s glasses. “They’re a little steamed up.”
She chuckled. “I’m not surprised.”
Smiling, Kennedy moved down the bed so that, as she pushed Fred’s top slowly upwards, her lips could follow its path on her skin.
Fred rolled more onto her back, sighing, smiling. She never would have believed using Los Angeles public transport could be such a positively enriching life experience.
The end