Comfort and Security
Patiently Fred waited. Angel had explained why this "wasn't a good idea", Fred had listened, seriously considered his concerns, then calmly refuted them and did what felt right. That didn't mean she wanted to explain their sleeping arrangements to the others. So she waited.
Fred's nightmares had started it; Angel's had solidified it. The nightmares had started, not the day Fred had gotten back, no one had slept that awful day, but the next night. In her dreams Pylea was the only real world and LA was just proof of how little sanity she had left. The dream came, not once but every time Fred slept.
When Fred woke from the nightmare she would wander through the Hyperion's halls filling her senses with the reality of them, trying to prove to herself that the nightmare was only that. Nothing had ever convinced her.
One early morning Fred's rambles had brought her to Angel's door. Upon hearing sobs she'd paused, after a few minutes hesitation she'd tried the door. It hadn't been locked so Fred crept in.
She found Angel curled on his side, sobbing brokenly, fast asleep. Fred reached out to wake him but her hand stopped centimeters short of his shoulder. She remembered his embarrassment over the caterwauling in Pylea and that he hardly ever slept between doing the day to day stuff for the agency and looking for a way to make his Buffy not dead.
Instead of shaking him awake Fred took Angel's hand patting it comfortingly as she hummed a soft tuneless refrain that she remembered from her childhood.
It had been a surprise when Angel, without waking, had pulled her into his arms and wrapped himself around her warmth. Fred had been even more surprised to realize that his touch caused the tension she'd felt building in herself for weeks to loosen and begin to slip away. Angel was real to her, he'd proved himself real in Pylea and now he was here and so here must be real as well.
Fred continued humming and gently stroking the arm that encircled her waist until Angel's sobs faded into silence then, with a relieved sigh, Fred cuddled closer to him and fell asleep herself.
The next mid-morning Angel had been all confusion and embarrassment and can't-do-this. He'd told her the ins and outs of the curse; Fred had been confused, what did happiness have to do with last night? Then Angel had moved on to how she should get involved with other people-type people, not demon-type people, not with him. Which didn't make much more sense than the happiness thing. How was she supposed to relate to people when she wasn't even sure they were really real?
Still, there could have been factors she was over looking, so Fred followed Angel's wishes while considering the issue more closely.
Over the days that followed the tension caused by not being sure which world was dream and which was here crept back into Fred leaving her anxious and fidgety, jumping at every sound, even those only heard in her head. While Angel grew increasingly haggard from sleep that was too filled with what he refused to deal with during the wakeful hours to be called rest.
After several days Fred discovered a partial solution in staying up after all the others had left to help Angel research a way to bring Buffy back. The others were all muddled about his objective; The dead were generally better off left dead, so they weren't comfortable about what he wanted to do. On the other hand Angel knew all about the first hand and wasn't about to do something stupid so they couldn't really put their foot down about it. Then there was everyone's sneaking hope that Angel might actually be able to do it. But there was also the third hand where no one thought that this was a terribly healthy way for Angel to deal with Buffy's death. Which all added up to them simply turning a blind eye to the whole thing while they tried to be ready for whatever came next.
Fred didn't like that. She wasn't sure how she felt about what Angel was trying to do, plus she'd never known Buffy. But whether Angel failed or succeeded and whether or not he should even be trying to do this Fred was happier if he wasn't doing it alone.
So she helped and being with Angel made everything more real, which in turn made her relax. She usually ended up falling asleep over the books. She would wake up later; neatly tucked into her own bed, and sometimes she would even be waking up because it was time to get up rather than because of the nightmare. Sometimes but not always. The other times the nightmare would come back and maybe she'd go back downstairs and find Angel still pouring over his books or maybe he'd have gone to bed himself. Then Fred would end up standing outside his door, listening helplessly to his nightmares trying to do as he'd asked and leave him to them.
That didn't last long. Fred just couldn't stand to stand by while he was in pain and after a few more lectures from Angel when he woke up to find himself holding her like a teddy bear or a security blanket he quit mentioning it. Within a few more nights Fred began waking up in the pre-dawn hours when Angel usually had just gone to bed so that she could check on him whether or not she'd had her nightmare.
And things were, if not good, well they were okay, until Angel locked his door. After than Fred wasn't certain what was okay anymore. That uncertainty got worse, not better, when the lock was removed because then the door wasn't open because Angel wanted it that way now, it was open because the doorknob along with the lock was hidden in the bottom of Wesley's desk.
The status quo was gone and Fred didn't know what to do, so she'd asked, she'd given Angel the option and he'd let her back in a little.
A few nights after their first walk through the city Fred had awakened to find Angel watching her sleep, his expression absolutely miserable, unable to choose between the comfort she offered and the pain that felt like all he had left of Buffy.
Fred had gotten up and sat beside him on the floor, wrapping her arms around him. Wordless Angel had moved them both to her bed.
Since that night they'd slept together. They didn't talk about it, not about how Angel took to wearing lots more clothes when he slept, not about keeping their sleeping arrangements just between them, not about factors that would prevent them from ever having a full relationship even if his heart did eventually heal. Right now they were what the other needed and that was all that mattered.
Only things weren't really okay because Angel kept getting hurt and Fred didn't know why or how to stop it from happening.
Now she waited for Cordelia to finish tending to his latest injuries. Once the other girl had gone Fred would go to Angel and try to keep the foundation of her reality from falling apart.