A/N: Buonasera, everyone! I know this chapter took a while to have in, and I'm terribly sorry about that, but I got sidetracked by other things...lots of other things. Anyways, I did finish it...um, either last week or two weeks ago, and I hadn't found time nor patience to sit down and type it...but now, I have! So I hope you all enjoy the chapter, and thank you to The Brat Princess, SpeedDemon315, and two new reviewers, IdiotSavant8009 and Bonofacio, for their reviews!

Disclaimer: I still don't own Fred and Wes. Or anyone from Angel. And I think the chances of Joss Whedon handing over the copyrights is about a billion and a half to none. So...yeah...

"In the brightest hour of my darkest day

I realized what is wrong with me

Can't get over you

Can't get through to you

It's been a helter-skelter romance from the start

Take these memories that are haunting me

Of a paper man cut into shreds

By his own pair of scissors

He'll never forgive her, he'll never forgive her.

Because days come and go

But my feelings for you are forever

Because days come and go

But my feelings for you are forever."

-"Forever" by Papa Roach

Chapter Four: The Genuine, Authentic Product

"I can't believe you all moved back to the Hyperion," Fred said as she roamed the upper halls. Wesley followed not even a foot behind her, a constant shadow that stared at her in awe.

"From what I understand, Wolfram and Hart was destroyed-the building, at least," the Englishman explained. "This is the only place we had left to go."

"I thought you had your own apartment." Fred stopped, glancing over her shoulder. "Why live here?"

He shrugged. "Quicker commute. No traffic. No rent. Relatively quiet neighbors, provided Illyria's in a good mood and Nina and Angel are asleep."

She giggled. "It's good to see he's not brooding over Cordie-I mean, obviously, no one's ever going to take her place in Angel's heart, but at least he's not dwelling on it."

"Although, I can understand why he's brooded over some women in the past-Buffy, Darla, Cordelia," Wesley confessed. "When there's a woman you'd give up all that you are for, who you think about ninety-nine point nine, nine, ad infinitum percent of the time, and she's suddenly torn viciously from your arms, you tend to get a bit…broody."

Suddenly, a pair of slender arms encircled Wesley's frame; looking down, he found that Fred had embraced him. He opened his mouth to speak, but she placed a finger over his mouth, silencing him. "Hey, hey, hey," she murmured gently, her voice sweet and gentle. "Let's not think about that, Wesley. I'm back, and I'm here now, and that's all that matters."

He slipped his arms around her. "I know. It's still a little hard to believe, though…"

"I realize that," she assured him, looking up at him. "Let's change the subject, shall we? Where's your room at, Wesley?"

"Two more doors down, on the left." Throwing an arm around her shoulders, he began to guide her towards said room. "I…I have something for you in there."

"A present? For me?" she asked, a smile lighting up her delicate features. "Aww, Wes, you shouldn't have!"

"It's not exactly a present, per se." With his free hand, Wesley seized the doorknob, jimmying it slightly to rotate the sticky knob, before opening the door to his room. "It's more some things you left behind."

"Really, now?" She wandered around, peering at the bed with the gray coverlet, the desk devoid of papers, the books lined up in an orderly fashion on the bookcase. A small giggle escaped her. "Gosh, Wes, you're so organized! And yet, you chose to pursue something as chaotic and sporadic as magic!"

"I'm a man of many surprises," he replied, opening his closet. There, on the floor, amongst various shoes and boots, as well as a crumpled leather jacket from his days as the iconic bad-boy rogue vampire slayer, was a box simply labeled "Fred" in bold, black Sharpie letters. He lifted it up, carrying it over to his bed.

"What's this?" she asked, tapping the top of the box.

"What you left behind."

Reaching into the box, Fred drew out a rolled-up poster. A smile spread over her face as her slender fingers unrolled it, revealing a Dixie Chicks poster. "Hey, I remember this! This used to hang in my office!" Placing the poster on the bed, her hands dove back into the box, resurfacing with a small wall plate decorated with cowboys, a token purchased by her parents and hung in her nursery before she was even born. "This did, too! I remember how the sun always seemed to hit it best at 3:46 every afternoon…"

She sat the plate down, too, before her hands disappeared into the box once more. This time, they drew out a coffee cup, yellow with a blue, flowered strip around the mouth of the cup. Vibrant azure butterflies danced on the yellow part of the cup. "Hey, my favorite coffee cup!" she cried jubilantly. Her brown eyes lit up even more as she spotted smeared traces of red lipstick on the rim. "It even still has lipstick on it-I know this is going to sound strange, but it brings back memories. I remember you would bring me coffee sometimes, and it would always taste perfect, and how I secretly loved the gesture-I wanted to tell you all along how much I loved it. How much I loved you..."

Wesley nodded, a trace of a smile pulling on his lips. "I recall that, very much so. But…there's something else in here, something I know you'll love."

He dipped a hand into the box, digging through the newspaper-wrapped trinkets and bumping against the cardboard sides until his fingers finally closed around something worn and soft. He gently tugged it out of the box, before presenting it to Fred.

"Feighbaum!" She grabbed the worn plush rabbit, holding it against her chest. "I thought I'd lost him-I remember, just before the end…oh, I wanted him so badly, but I didn't know where he was. And then, I didn't know who he was at all." She gently nuzzled her cheek against the worn toy's head, before throwing her arms around Wesley. "Oh, thank you Wesley! Thank you for keeping all this!"

He gently returned her embrace. "I couldn't bear to get rid of it-it was all a part of you, Fred." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I felt as though, if I got rid of it, I was getting rid of you, trying to erase what was once you, what was once Fred. My Fred."

Fred looked up at him, her chocolate eyes meeting his stormy ones. "Even if you had gotten rid of my things, I still would have been there, Wesley. I wouldn't have gone anywhere." Her arms tightened around him. "I'm not going anywhere."

A pregnant silence fell between them as they simply stood there, trapped in an embrace, staring into each other's eyes. Feeling her petite frame pressed against him, molding oh, so perfectly, was enough to have Wesley's blood boiling; he swooped in, claiming her lips with his own, earning a surprised squeak from the Texan woman. That squeak evolved into a sharp intake of breath as his lips ventured further south, down her neck, and, had it not been covered by her shirt, her collarbone.

"W-Wesley? What are you d-doing?" she stammered out.

"Something I've wanted to do for a long while, Fred," he murmured huskily against her throat. His hands, having a mind of their own, snaked under her shirt, caressing her smooth stomach, sending a shiver down her spine. "Tonight, I don't want any interruptions. Tonight, we're not magical experts or beautiful, genius physicists. Tonight, we're only lovers." He looked down at her, his hands coming to a rest on her waist. "Is that all right with you?"

She grinned, one hand tightening into the fabric of his shirt as though she was ready to yank it off. Her other hand moved to his face, taking his glasses by the bridge and pulling them off. "That's the best idea you've ever had."

***

"Mind telling us what the hell that was, Gunn?"

Glancing up from his hand of cards, the man in question faced Angel's inquiring visage. "What the hell was what?"

"You know what Captain Forehead's blathering about," Spike drawled, laying down two cards before taking a swig of beer. Nina dealt him two more cards, which, once glanced at, put a grin on his face. "Oh, very nice."

"Spike, you have the worst poker face ever," Angel retorted, clearly taking a dig at the blonde in return for the Captain Forehead remark.

"Don't know what you're talking about," Gunn replied quickly.

"How you practically took off out the door when Fred tried to hug you," Spike reminded him, anteing up by tossing a chip into the center of the table. "You looked ready to climb out of your skin when she did hug you."

"You all noticed that?"

"I'll see your five, Spike, and raise you two," Nina said, throwing a few more chips into the pot. "And yes, Gunn, we did."

"So, you mind telling us what caused this little freak out?" Angel inquired, anteing up after Nina with a few chips of his own.

"Don't any of you find it suspicious that out of nowhere, Fred turns up, alive, awake, and separate from Illyria?" His dark eyes scanned the faces of his friends. "Well?"

"Well, it is a bit unusual," Angel agreed. "But we've had much more unnatural. We've had Spike, remember?"

"Hey!"

"But don't you remember what that doctor back at Wolfram and Hart said?" Gunn questioned, glancing at his cards before folding, laying them down on the table. "He said that Fred's soul had been destroyed in the Fires of Resurrection or some crap like that. There was nothing left of her!"

Angel looked nonplussed. "So?"

"So how did she come back?" he blurted out, leaping to his feet and nearly overturning the flimsy table they had set up to play at. "What if that thing Wesley's upstairs doing God knows what to or with isn't the genuine, authentic Fred?"

"What else could it possibly be?" Nina asked.

"It could be a zombie."

Spike snickered. "Didn't know old Percy was into necrophilia."

"Spike, don't be disgusting," Angel warned.

"It could be a robot, or a cyborg. Remember that incident with Wesley's dad and the cyborg ninjas? It could very well be a robot Fred from the very same people."

"See?! I told you that sex with robots was more common than you thought!" Spike declared triumphantly, a cocky smirk spreading over his face.

"Spike!"

"Look, Gunn," Nina said, placing her cards face down on the table and fixing her dark green eyes on him. "I know it seems weird, but maybe it's just one of those things where we can't explain it-it's just happening, and we have to accept it."

"Like a miracle, you mean," Angel added in. Everyone at the table threw him confused looks, clearly not expecting the optimism or his admission that something as faith-based as miracles existed. "Hey, just because I'm a vampire doesn't mean I don't believe it God. I did once, remember?"

"As I was saying, maybe Fred's just…back. I mean, given what I've heard from all of you, the Powers That Be are notoriously fickle."

"They are," both vampires agreed simultaneously.

"I don't know," Gunn said hesitantly. "I still think something bad is going to go down."

"Just let it be for now, Gunn," Angel ordered. "Fred's back."

"And Wesley is happy, for once," Illyria added from her seat, her intense cerulean eyes unblinking as she stared at the table, the chips, and the cards in everyone hand's.

"So let's just leave it at that and bloody play poker, all right?" Spike finished emphatically, taking another gulp of beer before returning his attention to his cards. "Angel, Nina, you two in?"

"In." They both laid their cards on the table at the same time. Spike smirked as he glanced at their hands, before laying down his own.

"Read it and weep," he declared smugly, flaunting a nine, ten, Jack, King, and a wild ace in the place of the Queen. "I win."

"You sure do," Nina replied with a sigh, pushing the contents of the pot towards Spike.

"Damn," Angel hissed. "Good thing we don't play for money."

"You are frustrated," Illyria announced, her eyes flickering to the dark-haired vampire. "Over the loss of brightly-colored circles of plastic. Why?"

"It's a long story, love," Spike replied, counting the chips he'd gained with an expression of unbridled glee. "We'll tell you later."