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Untitled
Author: Mirax
Rating: PG
Pairing: Angel/Illyria
Summary: Angel can't help but wonder where Illyria stops and Fred begins.
Feedback: mirax @ dark-shines.net

He'd never call it love. Because it wasn't. Not really. Not when you broke it down into its smallest pieces, sifting them through your fingers, looking for a deeper meaning that just wasn't there.

But it was solid, reliable. It filled the tiny gaps and holes, provided that connection that Cordelia had been so concerned about, all those years ago.

It was a relatively warm body lying next to his when he woke, the odd bit of conversation, odd bits of conversation, clothes that weren't his filling one half of the closet, comfort when he needed it, distance when the world and everything in it became too much to bear. Fred's smiles delivered with Illyria's sense of timing, Illyria's cold reserve with a warm and slightly squishy Freddish center.

Sometimes he wondered, if given enough time, would Illyria eventually become Fred? Or did she not quite have the complete set of all those indefinable things that made up one Winnifred Burkle? Would she ever develop a love for tacos, or a habit of scribbling on the walls?

He didn't think so, didn't hope so. It was heart-wrenching enough when Illyria decided to dress up as Fred for a day, flouncing around with a pretend song in her heart, flowered and cheap cotton dress flowing around her, never quite settling. Coral pink nails on slim fingered hands that reached out to undo the buttons on his shirt, tentatively sliding underneath with a shyness that Illyria had never possessed.

It was all just a game to her, like a little girl that had stumbled across a trunk of her mother's old clothes. She tried them on, one by one, everything from Fred's jewelry to her mannerisms, seeing what made Angel hard. What made him smile. What made him cry. What made him scream and throw things. What made him kick her out for a week at a time, because he was just that fucking angry.

But it was never more than a week, and it wasn't like it would've mattered anyway; Illyria was like a bad luck boomerang, or a particularly persistent leech. Not that Angel was any better.

He'd called out every name but her own, that first agonizing year. She'd never showed any signs of caring, but he'd been around long enough to know better. She'd been willing and there, and it had all been one big haze of loss. Of running, always running, never stopping once to look over his shoulder, because they were coming for him, for her, for them, they had to be.

They hadn't been, which Angel had learned only after they'd reached Louisiana. There had been, however, an incident involving Illyria and a pair of very angry alligators.

But that's another story.