If anyone had asked Fred – and the only person around to really do so was Spike, and he was unlikely to do so – she wouldn't have been able to pinpoint exactly when their lives together had shifted. She couldn't even definitively describe the change, although some symptoms were apparent.

In the early days they'd been rather like two roommates who never saw each other, living together for efficiency's sake. The analogy fell apart, of course, when you considered that they'd screwed each other silly, but a similar distance was there. Two people living together without any real connection.

Things were different now, though. Perhaps they'd both grown bored with the constant solitude. Perhaps they'd both seen the supreme silliness of hunting all night, working all day, and avoiding the other at all costs, except for the occasions during which they came violently and passionately together. Or perhaps those few personal moments they'd shared even in the earlier days had magnified exponentially, leading inevitably toward this current comfortable companionship.

Fred wasn't sure, and she really didn't care all that much. All she knew was that she didn't feel alone anymore, and that was better than the way she had been. It was probably an illusion, she realized, like that false companionship she'd thought she'd known at Angel Investigations. They hadn't known the secret darkness within her, and when they'd finally seen what she could do, they'd shunned her. Spike hadn't shunned her when she'd first met him, and he didn't know about the man she'd murdered. She was of a split mind as to how he'd react. She severely doubted he'd chastise her as Angel had done – the height of hypocrisy – but he might not respect her as much.

She simply didn't know. There were a lot of things she didn't know – about him and herself – she was coming to realize.

"Call."

Spike smirked, leaning back on his elbows against the pillows at the head of the bed, and laid his hand down. "Threes and jacks."

Fred frowned. "Dammit!" she swore, laying her hand down slowly. She watched the victory light up brighter in his eyes as she closed in for the kill. "'Cause if I hadn't gotten that last diamond, I wouldn't have a flush right now."

His victory turned to a low snarl when he saw that she'd bluffed him out again. "You lied to me," he accused huffily.

"You mean that part about how I said I'd never played before, but I really meant I'd been the dorm champion all through college and grad school?" Fred teased, savoring her moment.

He grumbled. "Deal." Never one to back down from a challenge.

She just smiled to herself and shuffled the cards neatly. No point in pretending she didn't know all those fancy cards tricks now. She showboated for him a little until his growl was a deep rumble that filled the room. "Cut," she asked sweetly.

Sullenly, he did so.

She hadn't spent that day working, instead opting to continue their card game from the night before. He'd stayed home to watch reruns of the A-Team, and she'd mocked him and watched right alongside him, munching popcorn as she did so. Yeah, friendly roommates wasn't a bad analogy. They kept each other company when they were bored, went out to eat, talked and argued.

Of course, their conversations never turned to the time before. That was an immense, concrete wall between them – or perhaps around each of them? – never to be breached.

Fred had been feeling bolder lately, though. And sometimes boundaries could be fun to play with. He'd taught her enough about that in bed...

She dealt out their hands.

"What?" he finally inquired, noticing that she'd been silent, thinking hard and obviously not about the cards.

"Do you ever think about how much easier this is?" she asked quietly.

He frowned, puzzling over her comment. Asked for two cards. "What's easier?"

She snatched two cards for herself. Damn. Pair of tens and nothing else. "Living now, as opposed to..." her voice quieted to a whisper, "y'know, living with them."

"Never lived with your lot," he reminded her.

She shrugged. "Same difference. They were both the same... I mean, they drove you out somehow." She watched his frown deepen. "And they drove me out. For the same reasons, I'll bet." She sighed. "They didn't understand the good you were doing, either, did they?"

"You're trying to distract me from my game," he accused, changing the subject.

She was relentless. "Were they the ones who told you all that? That 'monster' rant of yours?"

"Why," he retorted snidely, "they tell it to you, too?"

She bit her lip. "Oh yeah..." she agreed with a sigh.

He blinked up at her, obviously surprised. "Call."

"Pair of tens."

"Three sixes."

She handed the deck over to him. They didn't have enough money to really play, so they were using M&Ms as chips. And if the 'chips' kept getting eaten at this rate, they wouldn't have anything to play for soon.

He dealt silently, and she watched his hands. Raised her eyebrows when she caught him cheating. He shook his head slowly and shuffled again. She didn't catch anything amiss this time. That didn't mean that he hadn't pulled some trick faster than her eye could see, though.

"Were they outta their minds?" he finally asked.

"Mmm?" She had forgotten what they were talking about, caught up in the game and dark memories.

"I mean, you're not exactly Angelus, luv," he retorted. "What could Angel possibly have against you? Soddin' hypocrite."

She shrugged. "You might be surprised." She didn't want to answer that now, not yet. Some part of her felt as though she were clinging to these moments of... Not happiness, exactly. Not even peace, really. Just...acceptance. Being. She wasn't ready to find out what the truth about her past would mean to their arrangement. She probably shouldn't have brought up this topic of conversation then, she realized.

He seemed to sense her reticence, though, because he dropped the matter. They played one hand, two. Fred won the deal back on the third. As she dealt the cards, she could feel Spike's eyes on her, and they felt like a weight bearing down, peering inside and trying to ferret out her darkest secrets. She remembered suddenly, with a panic, that some vampires had telepathic abilities. Was he one of them? Was he reading her thoughts, even as she tried to conceal them?

A near hysterical little giggle escaped her lips. "'Can you read my mind?'" she half-sang, her voice as lousy as she could manage it.

She hadn't expected a response, hadn't expected that he would get it. But then he cracked up, laughing deep within his chest, the corners of his eyes crinkling with little smile lines.

"Bloody horrible scene, that was," he shuddered.

"When I was a kid, I actually cheered when Lois Lane died." She still snickered at the thought.

"Well, she was right annoying, wasn't she?" he retorted. "Unfair bringin' her back like that. Ruined the whole flick. Well, that and that horrible song."

She smiled at him softly. Laid out her pair of kings. He had nothing. Her deal again.

He was silent for a moment, contemplating. "Whatever they said about you," he finally began.

She looked up, curious and maybe a little afraid.

"'S nothing," he insisted. "Angelus wouldn't know what's right if it smacked him on the forehead. Makes the woman he claimed to love miserable forever out of some stupid martyr complex. Ruins lives just as much now as he did before. More, maybe. Since his victims never used to live on..." He trailed off as if remembering some past horror.

"You're still here," she pointed out slowly.

He frowned. "'m one of the few," he countered, then shook his head. "Anyway," he insisted, "'ve seen you all these months. And I can't imagine what you could've done to piss 'em all off. You even gave a creature like me a chance, and some of the best," he said that word sarcastically, like he'd used to believe it was true but didn't anymore, "wouldn't give me that."

She bit her lip. "You don't know what I've done..."

"And you don't know what I've done," he retorted. "I can guarantee you, mine's much worse."

She didn't have anything to say to that. After all, he was a vampire. He'd probably managed atrocities she couldn't even think of. She tried to think of the worst thing she could imagine, and instead of bloody murders, she saw Wes' face, promising her protection and salvation and imprisonment. Saw the delighted light in his eyes that she'd been cast aside, too, so that he could finally snatch her up. His perfect little doll. There was madness in there, obsession.

She looked back up at Spike. "Maybe," she agreed, "but it's not the worst I've seen."

Bonus points to whoever gets the joke reference in the middle there. ~_^ More to come soon...