Addams Family/Angel fic: Her Beauty and Her Terror (Wednesday/Harmony)
So you know Harmony from Buffy/Angel? And how the same actress (Mercedes McNab) also played Amanda Buckman, Wednesday's Camp Chippewa nemesis in 'Addams Family Values'? Yeah. In my head, this is the most awesome pairing ever. Possibly to others it's just random weirdness. Obscure crossovers for the win.
ETA: ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
hyel made fan art! Wednesday/Harmony, and Morticia. Go see the pretties!
Title: Her Beauty and Her Terror
Fandom: The Addams Family/Angel
Pairing: Wednesday/Harmony
Rating: teen
Words: 1999
Notes: Set around the fifth season of Angel.
Summary: Amanda Buckman moved to California, changed her name, and became a vampire. Wednesday can't help but approve.
Wolfram and Hart suits Wednesday. A seventh level shamaness with a masters degree in communications, they snapped her up right out of grad school, and her career has been progressing as planned ever since.
Until the day someone unexpectedly and excitedly calls her name.
"Wednesday? Oh my god, Wednesday Addams! Small world, huh?"
Wednesday turns. After a moment, she is able to place her: blonde, big teeth, pure evil. "I don't know you," she says.
"Sure you do, god, you haven't changed even a bit. It's me Harmony - oh, I go by my middle name now - Harmony. Amanda was so east coast. When my mother remarried we moved to Sunnydale and - hey, so Camp Chippewa. It's been like forever, huh?"
It has in fact been a decade since Wednesday had Amanda Buckman tied to a stake and doused with kerosene. She remembers the fear in her eyes as she struck the match.
Wednesday may not have changed - though she is older and her chest finally filled out, a lot - but Amanda, she can see, is truly no more. The soul is gone, and in its place is something darker, older. It's quite disturbing to think of that girl, that pretty, blonde girl, as she knew her that summer, becoming a creature of the night.
Wednesday, naturally, approves.
"You're a vampire," she says.
"Last couple of years, yeah. Oh! It's so great to see you! How have you been? We should get together sometime - drinks or coffee or something. Ooh, girls night!"
"Are you asking me out?" Wednesday asks sombrely.
"Like on a date?" Harmony looks confused for a moment, then brightens and gives a happy little shrug. "Sure! Good idea - that's totally in right now. I mean have you seen Portia de Rossi?"
"No," Wednesday says, and returns to her office. She can use the copy machine later.
--
Three times in one week, Harmony inexplicably manages to find Wednesday on her lunch break and insists they eat together - even going so far as to offer to share her pigs blood and wheat thins.
The fourth time, Wednesday is ready, and rises when she sees Harmony approaching.
"I was wondering," she says, "If you would help me with a project I'm working on."
Because some things, she has decided, can only be put off for so long.
--
"Don't move," she instructs, once Harmony is stretched out in the middle of the circle of power. "It will be much easier to remove your scalp that way."
"My what?"
Wednesday hoists her heavy, ornate ritual blade in the air. She smiles just a little.
Then a hand shoots out, faster than her own eye can track, and she finds Harmony has broken her bonds and is sitting up, gripping her by the wrist.
"That's not funny," Harmony insists.
"It will be," she says.
Harmony, though, just rolls her eyes. "Are you new? Don't you know all requisition of body parts for use in ritual magic, except blood, and teeth for some reason, have to go through the Occult Services division, and then through Human Resources?" She lets go of Wednesday with a petulant little huff, and pulls out her cell phone. "Look, do you want me to set it up for you? Does it need to be vampire, or just any body that's ever been a live human, or what?"
Wednesday looks down at her arm, where the imprint of Harmony's hand can still be seen. There will be a ring of bruises there in a few hours. "It needs to be pale," she says. "The scalp."
"Okay," Harmony shrugs, and makes the call.
--
They try dating for a while.
Wednesday takes Harmony to a séance in a graveyard. Harmony takes Wednesday out dancing, and flirts with the bartender as he serves them rounds of colourful drinks with umbrellas in them.
They decide to stay in more often.
--
"I remember the child," her mother says, during her weekly telephone call home. "She had an unhealthy glow about her."
"It's gone," Wednesday says.
"How interesting." Wednesday pictures her mother seated, serene and pale as moonlight, her hair a fall of polished obsidian over the receiver as she speaks. "Would you like to say hello to your brother Pubert?" she says.
"Of course."
"I'll let him out of his cage."
--
"Harmony," she manages, her words muffled by Harmony's lips, "I'm working."
"So you're on a break. No one'll even know."
"Just because there isn't anyone else here, doesn't mean no one will know."
"No one who cares will know - the senior partners are a bunch of pervs from what I hear. Doing me on your desk could land you a promotion."
Everything that comes out of Harmony's mouth sounds smarter when she's nibbling on Wednesday's neck.
"All right," she says. "But no biting. I'm leading a ritual to invoke the goddess Megaera this afternoon. I can't be low on blood."
"Okay," Harmony shrugs happily. "How about you bite me instead?"
Wednesday considers this for a moment. "That would work."
--
The next day, Wednesday arrives to find she's been moved to a corner office.
She starts taking breaks more often.
--
"I love your bedroom," Harmony says, as they recline back against aged satin pillows. "It's like something out of Moulin Rouge. If Nicole Kidman was goth and everything was covered in cobwebs. Plus shabby chic is so hot these days."
Spending time with Harmony is a lot easier since she has adopted the habit of ignoring at least half of what she says. "Thank you for the candles," she trusts is an appropriate response.
"Neat, huh? Black. So they go with your stuff." She wriggles closer, and walks her fingers up Wednesday's arm. "And thank you for whatever that was you just did to me."
The icy touch of deadly nightshade still lingers on her tongue. She can still taste it on Harmony's pale skin when she turns her head and presses her lips to Harmony's throat.
Harmony sighs, and they are still for a moment.
"Hey," a voice shatters the silence, "Can I feed your piranha?"
It is Wednesday's turn to sigh, but then she nods. "There's a box in the bottom of my wardrobe."
Harmony crosses the room, naked and lovely and Wednesday suddenly doesn't mind the interruption quite so much.
"Wednesday. There's a bunny in the box."
"Yes. They prefer live food. Don't you?"
"It's a bunny!"
She sits up and stares at Harmony, who in turn stares back in horror. "You eat pig."
"Pig's blood. Pig!"
"A pig won't fit in the tank," she explains calmly. She already tried. And cats put up too much of a fight - the last one got water everywhere. "A rabbit -"
"The bunny is coming home with me."
She raises one cool eyebrow. "You're suggesting I let my pets starve to death?"
"No." Harmony frowns. Then brightens. "But my neighbour has a chihuahua - all it does is bark."
--
"I named the bunny after you," Harmony pants, as Wednesday presses her back against the door of her office.
"I named the chihuahua after you," Wednesday replies.
She suddenly finds herself turned swiftly, her shoulders and head slamming into the door. Wednesday's mouth twists a little at the pain, as Harmony drops to her knees.
"I'll need to go to the pound this weekend," she says. "Do you want to come?"
But Harmony's mouth is busy, and she can't reply.
--
"This is becoming serious," Morticia says. "You must bring her to visit. Perhaps for Thanksgiving."
"She won't appreciate the irony."
But she decides to ask, anyway.
--
Harmony has other ideas.
"It's not you," she sighs, flipping through a magazine as she reclines in her bed. "I'm just in a place where I need to surround myself with positive energy. I had my aura read the other day - I'm a mess, Wendy, can't you see that?"
If she's being broken up with, it means she doesn't have to put up with that asinine endearment anymore. "Don't call me Wendy."
"You see? You're so negative. And it was hot for a while but I need to consider my emotional health."
"You're ridiculous."
"You're stifling me!"
Ridiculous and blonde, Wednesday thinks. "Fine. It's over."
"Good! And don't even bother telling people you broke up with me, no one will believe it!"
Wednesday leaves without looking back. She doesn't slam the bedroom door on the way out - that's the sort of thing Harmony would do. A mirror in the hall shatters as she passes, however - the one with unicorns dancing around the frame - so at least the evening isn't a total loss.
--
Monday morning at Wolfram and Hart, Wednesday goes to the fifth floor and locates the third-rate Seer whom Harmony has recently been consulting on all relationship and wardrobe-related dilemmas.
Then she goes to the break room down the hall and locates the 'World's Best Psychic' mug the third-rate Seer always uses for her coffee.
--
Wednesday is crossing the main foyer when the confrontation occurs.
Harmony is bright red in the face - something of an accomplishment for someone without much in the way of circulation - as she screams about psychic consultants, and oozing boils, and how no one will sit with her at lunch anymore.
Arms folded over her chest, Wednesday remains poised and dignified and not entirely unsatisfied in the face of this very shrill and very public meltdown.
Until Harmony goes too far.
"- And I want my Jessica Simpson CD back!" she shrieks.
Wednesday lowers her arms to her sides as she summons the powers of the ancestors and contemplates the best way to reduce Harmony to a small pile of dust. A dark, swirling maelstrom about the size of a sombrero forms above her head. Her fingertips crackle with energy.
Harmony, sensing her imminent demise, vamps out, and goes for Wednesday's throat.
Several minutes later, the foyer is being cleared of broken furniture, a small fire near the stairs is being doused, and Angel is looking sternly down at the two of them as he explains that the cost of repairs will be coming out of their pay checks.
Wednesday goes home that night with a black eye and several lacerations. The next day she returns to work to find she's been promoted again.
--
"Spurned love, how marvellous. Wait till I tell your father. Is it very painful?"
"No. Yes."
"Oh, my dear, it simply isn't worth it if you aren't enjoying it. That's what torture is for. Have you tried it?"
"Let me speak to Pubert."
--
Less than a month later Wednesday is in the elevator, transporting the contents of her office down to her hearse, when the doors part and Harmony is standing there.
"Oh, hey," she says, stepping on.
The next few seconds are silent, as every awkward elevator ride should be.
"Leaving, huh?"
"Yes."
More seconds pass. The numbers above the door slowly descend.
"Hey, I'll help you carry your boxes if you'll give me a ride to the bus station," Harmony offers, smiling winningly and with just a touch of desperation. "Or out of town. Anywhere, really. Do you think it would be hard to steal a plane? And a pilot, I guess?"
Wednesday passes her the top box, containing her laptop and shrine to Kali. "I'm going to my parent's home."
"Is that in LA?"
"No."
"Good. Seriously." Another few seconds of quiet. The elevator stops and they emerge into the underground parking garage. "So I guess... I'll go with you?"
Wednesday nods. "My mother wanted to see you again," she says. "She told me before we broke up."
"Really? That is so nice."
"There hasn't been a vampire in the family in two generations," she adds.
Harmony considers this for a few seconds. "Gay marriage is so in right now," she says.
"I know," Wednesday replies. And smiles.
