Note: Set at the beginning of "Fredless" Chapter 2

Fred made herself small and watched as the others re-arranged the weapons chest. She had tried to help, but she always seemed to just get in the way. Besides, she liked to build weapons, that didn't mean she knew enough to follow Wesley's strict system of organization. So she was happy to watch and think of Angel.

They were all on pins and needles, dying of curiosity. Fred wasn't very curious, not in the way they were. She didn't care what they were saying, or doing, as long as Angel came back soon—alone.

The memories of the night before were still sharp and fresh in her mind, coated with heat and chocolate. She hadn't been able to sleep at all, but she didn't feel tired now. She almost felt peppy. All she could think about was the kiss. The kisses. Plural. He had kissed her twice.

Her mind had gone off a million different directions throughout the night. Fantasies created fantasies. Desire beget genuine, heart stopping, lust. Oh the dreams she had, and she never fell asleep. Some were pretty wild, and she blushed at the very memory of them. Some were more sedate. Some were down-right innocent—nothing more than what a silly school girl would entertain herself with.

Fred didn't dare mention what happened to anybody. She didn't know if they would even want to know and it wasn't their business anyway. Besides, Cordelia would not approve, and then maybe she'd have to have another talk with Angel, and Angel would remind her that he's very fond of her, really, but he can't be more than just a co-worker…

Sudden panic seized her. What if that's what he did think?  Maybe he had been suffering from some sort of crazy brain disease. Or he was being controlled by a demon. She didn't know of any demons that possessed vampires and made them kiss girls in dark kitchens on their way to their long-lost lovers, but that didn't mean they didn't exist. There were lots of demons she didn't know about.

Or maybe when he saw Buffy,  he forgot all about Fred, and the way they kissed, and what he had said. Maybe she should care about what was going on. Maybe she should be curious. Or maybe she should just forget about it…She folded her arms across her chest and sighed.

"So - now that she's alive again, are they gonna get back together? Angel and that girl with the goofy name?" She hoped she just sounded curious in a friendly, non-interested sort of way. She didn't want to say anything at all about the situation, but she had to know what they thought.

"Well - Fred - that's a difficult question. I think it's fair to say - no. Not a chance, never, no way, not in a million years, and also 'nuh-uh,'" Wes answered.

Unfortunately, his answer wasn't enough to quiet the doubt and quell the butterflies in her stomach. "But you said he loved her. And of course she's gonna love him back, because he's so strong and handsome and he really listens when you talk. I-I mean, if you go for that sort of thing, why wouldn't it work?"

"Let me break it down for you, Fred," Cordelia announced. Fred smiled slightly at the following show, but she didn't really understand it. It did make her feel slightly better…slightly.

"Bite me!"

"How about you both bite me," Angel said, startling all of them. 

Fred's heart lodged in her throat, and she jumped to her feet. "You're back!" Maybe the exclamation was too excited, too desperate, too surprised.

What happened, they all asked. Like it mattered. Who cared what happened? "Personally, I don't care at all what happened," she announced. Because you came back, by yourself, and that's all I really care about.

"Shut up, Fred."

"Actually, you know what I need right now?  Ice cream." He looked at Fred with a slight smile. "You wanna get some ice cream?"

Fred's heart stopped and then pounded in her chest, as fast and light as a hummingbird. She didn't expect to talk to him so soon. Not at all. She thought he would want to go up to his room and maybe brood for a bit, or kill things, or talk to Wesley, or well, anything. "I like ice cream," she blurted, senselessly. It wasn't the most intelligent thing she could have said, but it was the truth.

Fred followed Angel happily out of the lobby. They'd take the sewers to Baskin-Robbins. Fred liked the sewers. She felt comfortable there. With Angel. He didn't talk as they walked through the sewers, but that was fine with her. There'd be plenty of time to talk later. She was happy just to walk with him.

"So you really don't care what happened?" He finally asked as they neared the man-hole cover.

Fred shrugged. "Not really."

Angel carefully pushed the cover away and reached for Fred's hand. She knew that he just meant to help her up. He did the same thing every time they went through the sewers. It was polite and helpful, and he held her fingers for too long. It all seemed to move in very slow motion, and she thought he might kiss her again.

He didn't. He just held her hand too long and helped her to the surface. He crawled out behind her into the alley—the sun was low enough that he was safe in the shade of the buildings.

"I think I stepped in something," he muttered, examining the bottom of his shoes.

She smiled. "Well, we were in the sewers…"

"Yeah but this is…neon purple…"

"Demon?"

Angel shrugged. "Probably. I'll have Wes check it out later…Come on."

He opened the side door—the door that was meant only to be a fire escape—and invited her to enter with a bow. She giggled a little, and when she walked by him, her shoulder brushed his chest. It amazed her how every little bit of contact thrilled her. She never thought about it before—never wanted to focus on every brush and every bit of contact—but now it seemed like a very big deal.

Angel put a hand on her shoulder and gently guided her down the hall into the ice cream parlor. Fred's senses were going haywire. Now she was confused. Before the contact had been casual and friendly and normal…and maybe this was casual and friendly and normal too. Maybe she was reading too much into it…Maybe she wanted it too much…

"What do you want?" Angel asked.

"What? What? What do I want for what?" She asked, startled.

"What flavor do you want?"

"Um…Strawberry. No. Chocolate. Oh! They have cheese cake!" She pressed her hands against the glass and examined the wide array of flavors. When she saw the toppings, her eyes widened even more.

"Get a scoop of each," he suggested.

She smiled. "Oh, I couldn't…well…maybe I could."

"Waffle cone?"

"Definitely."

Angel stepped forward to order, careful to avoid the patch of sunlight next to the counter. The girls made eyes at him. They giggled and tried to flirt, and he seemed completely oblivious to the attention. He just ordered and paid, and Fred wondered how the girls would react if she walked up and put her arm around him, rested her head on his shoulder, teased him a little. Would they be jealous?

Fred thought they would be.

"Here it is," Angel announced, handing her the large cone. "Chocolate, strawberry, cheesecake in a waffle cone with sprinkles on top."

"I didn't ask for sprinkles."

"I thought you might like them."

Her smile widened. "I do. What have you got?"

"Just vanilla." He showed her the single scoop on a small sugar cone.

"Why just vanilla? It seems kinda strange to come all this way just for vanilla."

"I really didn't want any ice cream," Angel admitted.

"What? Who doesn't want ice cream?" Fred licked her cone with relish, gliding her tongue along the top layer—chocolate. She noticed he was watching her, and for a moment, their eyes clashed. She thought she felt a spark leap between them, and suddenly, her ice cream lost its flavor.

"Here…sit over here, out of the sun." Angel motioned for her to sit down in the far corner, near the escape exit they entered. She took the seat facing the window because she remembered Cordelia mentioning that sometimes the light hurt Angel's eyes.

Angel studied his vanilla ice cream silently, and Fred moved quickly to stop hers from dripping all over the cone and down her hand. She lapped at it enthusiastically. Her emotions were a jumble and her body a war zone of conflicting responses, but the ice cream held a high priority.

"It didn't go well," Angel finally said softly.

Fred looked up sharply, her ice cream temporarily forgotten. "It didn't?"

Angel shook his head. "I missed her but…seeing her again, I didn't…It wasn't like I thought it would be."

"Oh?" Fred said neutrally.

"Every time we see each other, it's clear we've grown further apart," he said, and Fred thought he was talking himself, not to her at all.

"Why?"

"Why have we grown farther apart?"

Fred nodded. "Cordy said…"

"What did Cordelia say?"

"That…Buffy….was…is…your True Love. But if she's your true love, how could you have grown apart? Shouldn't that be enough to, you know…keep you together? Isn't that what love is for? How can it be like the fairy tales if it's not enough to keep people together?"

Angel sighed. "It's more complicated than that, Fred."

"Everything's always more complicated…too complicated. Things aren't complicated Angel, not if you know how they go together. Not if you understand the smaller bits, the way things break down. You have to look at things in pieces and put it all together, not at one big huge picture, or you'll get overwhelmed, and that's when things get complicated…."

"Fred…"

"What?"

"Your ice cream is melting."

Fred smiled sheepishly. "Oh…right." She licked the chocolate-strawberry stream of melted ice cream off the back of her hand, and then the rivulets off the side of the cone.

"That strawberry looks good…are there real strawberries in that?" Angel asked.

Fred tilted the cone in his direction. "Yep, big chunks of them."

"Maybe I should have got that instead."

"You can have some…"

Angel put up his hands. "No, no, that's ok." When he put his hands down again, he rested one casually on the top of hers.

Fred smiled warmly. The moment didn't last for long though. Angel lifted his head, as though he was listening for something, and just a second later, there was a loud crash as a demon burst from the ice cream cooler.

"It's a durslar," Angel announced calmly. "Fred…watch out!"

She jumped to her feet and backed against the wall, just as the demon grabbed for her. Angel brought his chair down hard on the back of the durslar's head and then punched him in the face. He moved to kick the demon's legs out from under him, but it scurried away.

"It's going to the sewers," Fred shouted, excited.

Demons were monsters…horrible…they'd crush you, enslave you, destroy you, eat you, and that was if you were lucky. Fred knew what demons could do. Fred's first reaction would be to run the opposite direction of the monster, even if that was into the sunlight and the open where her skin crawled and she felt overwhelmed by all the space around her. But she knew she didn't need to run as long as Angel was with her. Angel wouldn't let any monster hurt her. She'd get to hurt them, for a change. Or watch while he hurt them.

"Come on, Fred! We can still catch it."

Fred raced after him, clutching her cone tightly in her hand, out of the building, and down into the sewers. For a moment she thought she would lose him. He was running too fast—his legs were so much longer than hers, not to mention the vampire speed. He'd leave her alone in the sewers, by herself, and she knew the way back to the hotel by herself, but maybe she didn't and…

"Fred. Stop. We'll catch up to it later."

She skidded to a halt, nearly running into him. "Did you lose sight of it?"

"Yeah…it'll be easy enough to find. Come on, let's track it."

"Oh, you dropped your ice cream…"

"It's ok, I don't really like vanilla anyway."

"You can still have some of mine."

She expected him to turn it down again, but he didn't. Instead, he gently took the cone from her hand and nudged out a piece of strawberry with his tongue. "It tastes good with the chocolate."

"Most things do," she agreed.

"You drank the chocolate sauce right from the bottle last night, didn't you?"

Fred felt her cheeks turn a slight pink. "You saw me."

"No."

Her blush deepened and she felt her heart speed up again. "Oh…Oh, I see."

Angel stopped and turned towards her. "You sound nervous."

"I'm not," she protested.

He rested his hand on her shoulder, his thumb caressing her pulse point—which was hammering wildly. It jumped erratically beneath his touch, and she tilted her chin up naturally. Her hands curled around the lapels of his jacket…The kiss wasn't soft, or hesitant, or gentle at all. It felt like Angel wasn't to taste every part of her, wanted to know her mouth completely.

Fred wasn't surprised, but she was surprised. The taste of the strawberry lingered in his mouth and exploded on her tongue, and the strength of his kiss, the force of his mouth, made her dizzy and flustered. And it just went on and on, increased, and Fred thought she tasted a hint of desperation.

He pulled away suddenly, and left her breathless and swaying on her feet. She delicately touched her tongue to her bottom lip—it felt like it was already swollen. Her legs were weak, and her blood turned to lava in her veins. A hunger settled deep in her body—the sort of hunger she felt in those early days in Pylea when they refused to feed her and she didn't know how or where to find her own food. Hunger so deep, so insatiable and it felt like a curse worse than death. There wasn't enough food in the world to satisfy it, and the ache started in her bones and worked its way out.

"Fred, can you get back to the hotel by yourself?"

She blinked, not sure if she heard him correctly. "I…yeah. I think so. 128 meters back, eastward fork, 207 meters to the southward fork, hang a right, 12 meters in. Why?"

"We're near the Durslar's lair. I can hear it, up ahead. Around the bend. You go on, I can take care of it myself."

"But shouldn't we call Wesley first and maybe, you know, the army?"

"Nah. Durslar beasts are pretty Faulknerian. Lotta sound, no fury."

It sounded reasonable enough, and his words were softened with a smile, but it still felt a lot like rejection to Fred. Like he was…dismissing her. Maybe he was. She just didn't know.

"Are you sure you don't need me? Because I can stay. I don't mind."

"I'll be fine," he promised.

Fred didn't feel like she was fine, and her body was still a twittering mess of excitement and need. She turned around on shaky legs and hurried back to the hotel as fast as she could. She liked the sewers, a lot. They felt comfortable to her. Like home. But she didn't like being alone in the sewers when there were demons lurking around every corner. Demons she didn't know. Demons she couldn't fight because she stupidly didn't bring any weapons.

"Angel's right behind me, Angel's right behind me," she whispered to herself and quickened her pace. "Angel's right behind me, and he won't let anything happen to me…"

When she reached the hotel and emerged from the sewer into the sunlight triumphantly, she noted with disappointment that her ice cream had been lost in the excitement.