Disclaimer: I don't own Angel. It belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy.

A/N: I posted chapters 17 and 18 at the same time. Don't miss chapter 17! Thanks to fionnin, Blondi-Finny, angel-cordy, justawritier, --J, gopie, and YOUPIN for your reviews.

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"Gwen…" Gunn mumbled into the pillow. It was too damn early to be up, but Lil Miss Electricity was already out of bed and fussing with her hair.

"Hm?"

He could hear her hairspray going. All those loose curls took a crazy amount of work. The hairspray made them crunch when he ran his hands through them. He took a perverse pleasure in messing them up after she spent so much time on them. With a grunt, Gunn rolled onto his back so he could look at her. "Babe, you're wearing leather again."

She made another noncommittal noise and wrapped a blond strand around the fat barrel of the curling iron.

"You told me you only wear leather when you've got a job."

"Or when I'm going out," Gwen corrected. She pulled the iron free, and the curl bounced. His fingers itched to play with it now, before she shellacked it into submission.

"We going out today?"

"I'm meeting with a client."

"What's it going to be this time? Jewelry? Mystical artifact? Some high-tech gadget about to be sold at the lowest bid?" He'd meant that to be teasing, but it came out wrong, and his hands dug into the undersides of the pillows mounded around him in frustration.

Gwen pivoted to face him, one eyebrow crooking up like a mocking question mark. "You sound like you've got a problem with my career choice, Denzel."

"I just don't get why you gotta keep stealing—I mean, look at this place!" He gestured around at the luxurious furnishings of her safe house. Unlike the rest of the building—which looked like it was going to fall down around their ears if someone so much as sneezed—Gwen's little hideaway looked like something out of a James Bond movie with dark red paneling made of actual wood (not that particle board stuff) and tons of vases identified by the dynasty. Took some getting used to, staying here. He'd spent the first couple of nights scared he was going to knock over one of her knickknacks and break it.

Still, it was an awesome place to crash. Big screen TV, surround sound, X-Box. She'd whooped his ass at Halo 2. They'd moved over here to get some privacy. The Hyperion was nice…hell, it'd been his home for several years, but there just seemed to be too many people there for his tastes, lately.

"It's not about the money, Charles," she said, tilting her head to the side to pull the curling iron free of her hair. One perfectly curled lock bounced like a sprung spring.

"Then what is it about?"

She turned her back on him. "It's about proving to them that they can't keep their little trinkets safe from a freak."

"You're not a freak," Gunn muttered, just loud enough for her to hear.

Gwen snorted. "Not a freak? What else would you call me being hit by lightning fourteen times?" She grabbed the LISA case off the vanity counter and pitched it at him. It bounced off his arm and disappeared into the mound of bedclothes. "What else would you call me not being able to have sex or, hell, even touch someone unless I have that machine imbedded in my skin? I think that's pretty freakish!"

He'd hit a button. Somehow, they'd managed to go almost a month without hitting any of their particularly sensitive topics. She didn't ask about what he'd been doing for the past year, and he kept to safe subjects like movies and video games and sex. It'd been fun, but he'd known from day one that this affair wasn't going to last. Now, as he forced himself to sit up, the sheet pooling around his waist, he wished it was going to end on a slightly less angry note.

"I've never thought of you as a freak."

She gave him a look that clearly said she didn't believe him. "Oh, really—not even the first time we met in the auction house? When I killed you with my freak powers?"

"Babe, you have to remember who I was runnin' with at the time: a vamp and a girl who'd spent five years in a demon dimension. Electro-zappy powers pretty much fit right in with my life."

Gwen yanked the curling iron's plug out of the wall and stormed off into one of her walk-in closets. The girl had more clothes than Cordelia. "That doesn't mean anything, except that you've got a fondness for freaks," she snapped as she came back out, a red leather bomber jacket in the crook of her arm.

Gunn grabbed her arm (careful to touch only where it was covered by her gloves) as she tried to brush by the bed. "Hey," he said, trying to catch her eyes, "I can understand wantin' to stick it to the Man, but don't you think you're taking it a bit far?"

"You're not my boyfriend, Gunn," she snarled as she wrenched her arm out of his grasp. "Don't try and tell me what to do."