Biiiiiiig thanks to Sockmonkeyhere for being my beta. Love ya!

Blah blah, I don't own any of the characters. ('Cept for Simon, Karen, Shannon, and Rob.)

-Clocky

Spike tucked his hands behind his head while he napped the following day. His mind was pleasantly clouded with half-sleep; half-thoughts and half-dreams flittered between his ears like a game of ping-pong.

Chasing a long-haired girl through a dark field, the waxing moon hanging above them. "Who are you?" He called.

"Come and find me!" Giggling, a rabbit that was half his size went bounding between them in the mist of his dream.

Running, running, running through a forest in the mist, catching glimpses of her as she flitted behind trees and peeked at him from her positions. "C'mon out, you saucy little minx!" He thought it might be Drusilla; this certainly seemed like something she'd do, and the face sort of looked like her, but it was hard to tell. So he followed her until she came from behind and wrapped her arms around his middle, hugging tight.

"Worth saving..."

Spike's eyes popped open, and he sat up quickly in bed. He glanced around the room, as if perhaps he had been caught doing something particularly naughty.

Spike made his way into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, and when nothing stared back he wondered what he had been expecting to see.

Only one person had ever outright informed him that he was worth being around, and with this little inkling burrowing into the back of his mind, Spike chewed his lower lip in thought.

The first place Illyria found was the remains of a club called 'Caritas'. It was abandoned, in disrepair, and the inside was in shambles. She kicked around the debris on the inside, shattered glasses and broken bottles, before working her way into the back room.

She'd ended up here by asking around at Wolfram and Hart. Some people who had worked for Angel were still employed there, and some of them were demons. One in particular, an Ano-Movic demon who worked in Accounting, Illyria thought his name had been Lloyd, informed her that Caritas had been a club that Angel and his friends once-upon-a-time had frequented, and to please let go of his neck because he kind of needed that to breathe, thanks very much.

So there she was, and there they weren't. She tore apart what was left of the back room, and found, amongst the charred and ruined remains, a business card.

"Angel Investigations," She read aloud.

Perhaps she would allow Lloyd to live after all.

The war had been waging for an uncountable amount of time now. Suspicious glances and subtle, quiet decisions, as if perhaps the other wouldn't notice when the first made their move. It was dangerous, this game they played, one false move and everything would fall apart.

"Your move, pet."

Spike's voice was quiet, husky and calculated. Fred clasped her hands in front of herself and looked him over, then down, up at him, down again- wait, there. Her move, perfect, she'd found it. Fred reached out a hand...

Tick, tick.

"Gotcha, king me."

"Bloody hell."

Angel looked on from the counter; Fred and Spike had been deeply engrossed in their game of checkers for around forty-five minutes, each move was carefully thought about before they made any motion.

However, with that final move she had turned the tides against him, two of his pieces were dragged over to her side, and her little plastic red chip gained another one on top of it.

Spike ran a hand over his mouth, and Fred crossed her arms, looking smug. "If you give up now, it'll be less painful for you."

"No! Not giving up, nope, not happening." Spike crossed his arms over his chest and peered down at the board; he really had no moves left.

Before he COULD make a move, the front door of the hotel opened, and Fred turned around in her seat at the front desk. In came a woman wearing a skirt and buttoned suit jacket. She caught sight of Angel and scuttled towards him, her heels clicking on the floor.

"Good afternoon, Mister... Angel, is it?"

"Uh, yes, what can I do for you?"

She held a piece of paper out towards him. "This is a request for you and your coworkers, to report to Wolfram and Hart's Los Angeles offices to handle a small problem with your contracts. The CEO would like to deal with it personally."

Angel peered at the paper, and then took it, reading over it. "Seriously?"

"Quite serious, sir. There are no hard feelings at Wolfram and Hart, in fact, many of us were quite pleased to be rid of both you and The Circle of Black Thorn. The number is on the bottom for you to schedule an appointment, but I must be going, I have other things to attend to." She bowed her head in a little nod to Angel, then turned on her heel and clicked out of the building.

Spike and Fred looked at each other, then abandoned their game and went to peek over Angel's shoulder at the letter. Angel's face twisted into a comical little expression of confusion, disbelief, and mild indigestion.

The letter read:

Dear Angel Investigations staff,

I apologise for the suddenness of my contacting you, what with your inexplicable and unecessary hiding from us. Would you believe we weren't even looking for you? Anyway, I would like to arrange a meeting with you to handle a mix-up with your contracts. You see, you can't just leave Wolfram and Hart, it just doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. But never fear, we just need you all to come in so that we can officially settle the contracts and fire you correctly, and it won't take very long, I promise you.

Silas Vail Esq.
CEO of Wolfram and Hart's Los Angeles Branch

There was a pause, and Angel read through the letter again. "We got fired?"

"They weren't looking for us? Hell, I never signed a bloody contract!"

Fred rolled her eyes. "Well, the rest of us did."

"Fired? Seriously, they're firing us?"

"Yes, Angel, they fired us. Vail... Silas Vail, isn't that the sorcerer guy that Wesley was sent to kill, Angel?" Fred took the letter from Angel's still perplexed hands and looked it over.

"No, that was Cyvus Vail... Think they're related?"

Fred shrugged. "Maybe. Think this is trustworthy?"

"Doubt it," Spike tapped the paper from his spot beside Fred. "I wouldn't trust them if they were the last people on Earth."

Angel ignored Spike, and faced Fred. "What do you think, should we go? I don't like the idea of ignoring something with those contracts, I mean I read mine but we might have missed something that could seriously mess with any of us."

Fred nodded. "I think we should, you're right, there's too much of a risk to just ignore it. But I think we should go prepared."

"Right, I'm going to go find Lorne and Gunn, see what they think on the matter."

Spike pouted. "Don't you need to hear my say?"

"You didn't sign a contract, remember?" Angel smirked, and disappeared down the hallway.

Spike scowled after him. "Ponce."

"Don't be too hard on him, Spike. He means well."

"Pff. Yeah, means to be a pain in my arse."

Fred smiled, and peered down at the board game. "I don't know what the root is of the whole 'I hate you', 'I can hate you more', 'Bugger that, I bet I can hate you even more', game. I can only assume what fueled the grump you've got going on, and you know what happens when people assume."

Fred mocking his accent nearly drove him to indignation, but her impish little smile washed that away fairly quick. "Yeah, I know. When you assume, you make an arse of 'U' and me."

After a moment they settled back into their game, and Fred smiled. "But you know what I've noticed... You two have been getting along better lately."

"Have not."

"Have too; when you bicker with each other, you're not nearly as bloodthirsty as you used to be." Fred placed one of his kidnapped chips onto the one he'd just gotten into her back row, and slid one of her red pieces towards a corner edge.

Spike didn't answer, but he seemed to be mulling over her previous statement, about his and Angel's dislike of each other. Fred had noticed that when Spike got very thoughtful, he got this very intense look in his eyes that made her legs feel a little wiggly. Time seemed to float by; they played several games of checkers and then a few rounds of Twenty Questions, ( "Is it Lorne?" "Lorne's not lime green, he's more of a forest-y kind of a color." "Well pardon me, Miss Technicality." ) but as the day waned and Angel still had not returned, silence crept in through the hotel.

Spike had that intense look on his face again, and Fred couldn't help but peer at him with little side-long glances. Though after a time it seemed he had caught her, for he suddenly looked at her, and Fred's ears turned red as she smiled, attempting nonchalance.

"Let's go someplace," Spike piped up.

"Where?"

"I dunno, where you wanna go?"

Fred seemed quite stumped by this, so she paused to think. "You think the aquarium is closed yet? I kept meaning to go there, but I kept forgetting..."

"Right, let's go, pigeon." Spike hauled her to her feet and strode towards the door, hands stuffed in his duster pockets.

Fred blinked, then hurriedly slid her feet into her shoes and rushed to catch up. "Wait, we're going now? But I'm pretty sure it's closed... Spike?"

Fred was completely positive that Spike had turned over a new leaf, once upon a time, and become a true-blue good-guy. Sure, he was no Angel, but he definitely wasn't what he'd once been.

However, Fred found that his feelings towards breaking and entering were... Well fairly nonexistent. He shushed her protests that they should really not be here at eight o'clock at night, as it was closed and if they got caught they'd be arrested. He ignored her, and scaled the wall to the roof, disappearing until all she could see was his sleek white head bobbing around on the side of the building. Finally it too vanished at the top, like a candle had been snuffed out.

She leaned against the building for what seemed like quite a long time, but might have only been a few minutes. In those moments, Fred cupped her chin in her hand and pondered the events leading up to this particular moment in her life.

Trapped in a hell dimension, subsequent rescue and time in crazyland, falling in love, falling out of love, Wolfram and Hart, falling in love again, dying, and resurrection. (Had it been resurrection, now that she thought about it, or was it just revival? She'd have to look up the difference.) Here she was, now, standing outside of the Los Angeles Aquarium while a vampire picked the locks to allow them entrance.

Life takes you funny places.

Her reverie was interrupted by the maintenance door opening off to the side, and out popped Spike's head.

"In here, stay quiet though, they got guards watching cameras, I think."

She scuttled in after him. "I really don't think this is a good idea, we're going to get caught..."

He led her down a short hallway, up a flight of stairs and through another door, until they came out onto a grated crosswalk over two massive tanks. The crosswalk led over the tanks, with one door directly ahead of them, and another off to one side. Beneath them, floating in thousands of gallons of water, sea turtles swam. Among them, large schools of drowsy, exotic fish and several sting rays gathered in the remains of a sunken ship.

In the darkness, they were illuminated by iridescent blue, melting and dancing across their faces in ocean waves. Spike took her hand again and led her off through the steel door ahead of them, and brought her down another flight of stairs, timing their movements to avoid the security camera's rotation.

She felt terribly naughty, skirting the very edges of propriety and sneaking into, of all places, an aquarium. She was reminded of sneaking around outside her high school in her senior year; giggly fumblings along the wall, sloppy adolescent kissing and fondling in the pitch-dark. In her mind, she hummed the 'Mission: Impossible' theme song and ducked along the hallways with Spike until they reached the main exhibits.

The fish were awake in the dim lighting, or at least she thought they were, Fred didn't know what fish looked like when they slept. Mostly, the torpedo-like forms floated through the water with weighted speed. They back-tracked until they came upon a viewing room.

It was covered entirely in black velvet to the floor, and it traveled around the ovular walls up into the dome of the building. This made the room inky black, lit only by the door they had come in through, and the great curved panes of glass which held sea turtles and fish on one side, a pair of Orca on the other. In the center of the room were several long wooden benches, and Fred sat quietly on one side of it; Spike slid in beside her.

"Spike. Why are we here?"

"Y'did say aquarium, right?"

She smiled. "I did, but I didn't expect right then... I'm glad though, this is really beautiful."

Fred lifted her feet and spun around on the bench to look over at the sea turtles, who flowed alongside brightly colored fish all colors and shades of the rainbow. The water reflected blue on everything in the room that was not dark, making wavy patterns across their skin, and the occasional flicker as the animals caused shadows to float across their faces. During working hours, Fred imagined that tinkling, chiming music would play through this room, music that sang of old libraries and warm fireplaces.

As if on cue, the two Orca let out their own haunting, echoing song. She leaned back in the bench and listened, eyes closed, and Spike shifted beside her.

"Y'know, y'look a peach in blue."

Fred's eyes popped open. "Hmm?"

"When y'had 'Lyria in you, your skin turned all blotchy blue and veiny, and... Y'didn't look right. Wasn't you. Now you've got the reflection." Spike gestured with one finger, and gently prodded her nose. "You look beautiful."

They were sitting awfully close, and suddenly the rest of the world didn't exist. Just them, this dark room, and the distant ocean that surrounded them, a whale's call echoed of ancient times and stories both told and as of yet to be told.

They didn't kiss, but they did press their foreheads together, blue eyes melting into brown wide with wonder. His hand laced with hers on the bench and they sat like that for some time.

Fred remembered, quite suddenly, a conversation she'd had with her mama once. She'd been fifteen, going into high school, and her mother had followed her around the house all morning talking to her about the birds and the bees.

"Freddi, darlin', y'gotta understand-"

"I know, mama, I know! Sex is the most intimate thing y'can do with a person, an' it's gotta be treated with respect. I know, mama, I'm not stupid." Hands on her hips, hair in a high ponytail, and with a look of trepidation and indignation that only teenagers have managed to perfect.

Her mother had taken her hand and smiled, corners of her eyes crinkling. "Honey, there are things so much more intimate than sex. Someday you'll know that. I just want you to be careful."

Fred hadn't understood then, but she thought she did now. The way they were just looking at each other... Then he moved a little, and their lips brushed against each other, and she felt a shiver of electricity jolt up and down her spine.

"Spike... I'm sorry, I-I can't."

The spell broke and though they sat close together, he frowned. "M'sorry, I shouldn't've, awh fuck..."

He turned to glare at the Orca, and his brow furrowed. Love's bitch, that was it, no, no, love's puppy, kicked and tossed around until it was scared to death of its own shadow. Cecily, his mother, Drusilla, Buffy, and now Fred, who had so truthfully and honestly believed in him, from the very start, whose smile and laughter made him warm inside and whose skin and smell made horribly uncouth things happen to his brain and nether-regions.

"Yet" Was the only word spoken.

"I can't yet, Spike. I'm so sorry. I feel... I feel. I do. But I can't, yet, Wesley's still in my head. Please, understand. I'm not ready, and I know it's selfish of me to ask you to wait..."

Spike lifted his head, quite simply startled. That... was not the usual answer he received. Just to wait until she was ready? Shit, he could do that. How the hell long had he waited for Buffy?

In the oceanic gloom, Spike lifted a hand and put it on her shoulder. "Pigeon, I'd always wait for you, I think."