Fred is busy, busy, busy. Busy like a humming little bee. She is humming an absent tune as she works hard into the deep, dark night.
The lights are low. Shadows drape themselves all over the equipment. It is an unnatural look for the lab and vaguely menacing.
Fred scratches down equations with her scritching little pen.
The tinny, little noises of the night and the constant background buzz of insomnia are all she hears.
"'S almost ... has to be," she thinks so loud her voice speaks, quiet and slurring into the vibrating air.
She puts down her pen, starts rifling through a pile of papers. She turns around, looks up, sees --
Lilah.
Lilah wears the shadows like an expensive gown.
She is a warped mirror image. Fred has a dress just like that; only her hips and breasts don't push at the edge of it the way Lilah's do. Fred hasn't worn her hair like that for sometime now and she rarely wears glasses any more. Plus, there is the neck scarf. All the same, Lilah is done up like a Fred doll, a perfect mockery in blue.
Lilah schools her expression into one of perfect innocence. "Like what you see?"
Fred does not like this and she does not find it funny.
"I hope I look nice, Fred," Lilah says in a false voice.
"You're not funny, Lilah. You're just pathetic. If I were you I'd just go."
"Is that what you'd do if you were me?"
Fred intends to ignore her, so she turns back around and looks back at her papers. She tries to concentrate, harder, harder. She picks up her pen and twists it around in her fingers, taps it against the desk, then puts it down again. She stares at the paper, at the negative space where her writing ends. She takes a deep breath. She turns around.
Lilah is still there. She is, apparently, not the hallucination of a tired mind. This is no comfort to Fred.
"Would it be better if I wore a lab coat?" Lilah asks.
"Why are you here?" Fred asks.
"I thought it would be nice to see you."
"No, you didn't. You thought it would be funny to torment me."
"I wouldn't do such a thing, Fred," Lilah says in a most ridiculous accent. The badly feigned innocence in her eyes allows the deep amusement underneath to shine through. "We are on the same side now."
"We are not. I've got nothing in common with you and nothing to say to you."
Lilah moves closer, grace and sensuality apparent even through the uncertain walk. Lilah is coming too close to Fred for comfort and Fred backs against the cool, white table. Her curving wanton mouth rests against the edge of Fred's ear and her hand against the table traps Fred in.
"It's all right, Fred. You don't have to talk."
Fred feels like she can't breathe as Lilah licks the shell of her ear.
In a moment Fred gets a hold of herself and pushes Lilah away.
"No, this is not happening," Fred declares, and she's sure enough, now, of her grip on reality to say that for certain.
"Why not?"
"Because it's -- That's a stupid question. Why do this at all?" Fred asks. She hopes she doesn't look as frightened or strangely curious as she feels, but suspects she does.
"Because I want to know what it is they're all falling for." There is something vicious and wounded in Lilah's answer.
Lilah pounces on Fred like an angry wolf and Fred is backed up all the way against the microscope. There is no escape.
Lilah's lips on hers are cold but soft, and strangely soothing. Fred opens to her automatically. Lilah's mouth is cool and wet. She tastes like slowly melting ice and she is slippery smooth and silent in the coolness of her mouth. Fred likes it there and thinks for a second she wants to stay.
Lilah's cool, smooth hand is abruptly on her neck, further dishevelling Fred's hair.
Fred is overwhelmed and shocked and a million little things she'd like not to be. Lilah is so seductive, even with her cold, dead skin and the strange tilt of her head, that Fred is powerless to resist. Or so she feels.
Fred kisses back desperately. She can hear the humiliating breathy moans she makes when Lilah rubs at the base of her neck just the right way. Lilah's other hand travels up her thigh, pressing hard against the skin like a punishment, pushing up the flimsy, useless material of her skirt and stopping near but not quite where she wants it (and doesn't want to want it).
She finally gathers up the courage to put a hand on Lilah's back, gently placed against the skin. Lilah is a writing, wild animal against her, and Fred's hand skitters about madly.
"You want this now."
Fred doesn't answer with words, but just whimpers.
Lilah kisses her neck, sharply, as if wanting to tear her open. Fred lets her head roll back and looks at the ceiling, at the flickering, buzzing, neon light. She feels like Lilah is breaking her apart, like her eyes want to roll back in her head, like someone's been putting drugs into the Wolfram and Hart coffee.
With a shuddering breath she rolls her head forward just as Lilah licks her way up Fred's cheekbone. Their lips connect on the corner, sucking and rolling with the kiss. Fred pulls Lilah up so that the glasses don't bang against her face and Lilah is surprisingly pliant.
The flash of blue catches the corner of her eye. That scarf is suddenly... distracting. It looks wrong. It doesn't match the costume at all. The colour is right but the scarf is too sophisticated to quite match.
They are not the same.
Fred can't help herself. Her hand reaches up of it's own volition.
Lilah's hand inches up Fred's thigh towards that ultimate goal, that place of damp, wet heat, just as Fred tugs and...
The scarf comes undone.
The wound looks angry and vivid on Lilah's neck.
She pushes away from Fred, her face angry and hurt, twisted and grotesque like a dead animal. She backs away, clutching the gently fluttering swirl of blue in her hands. Lilah disappears back into the shadows.
The lab seems silent now. Fred's papers are scattered.
END