Lilah was a professional whore. A whore with a 75-dollar French manicure, a whore who wore Prada suits, Borrachi shoes and carried a Gucci handbag, a whore who drove the newest model BMW. But a whore never the less.
Fred was the opposite of a whore. She'd had sex for the first time in college, with a frat boy who'd never called her again, and not again until Charles. Handsome, sweet, funny Charles. Her protector, her safety net.
Lilah believed in sleeping her way to the top, women were inherently disadvantaged in business so you had to grab every opportunity to keep up with slimy bastards like Lindsey and Gavin. Sex was for getting ahead, for proving points. It was a competition, and Lilah was proud to say she was a winner in that particular competitive sport. If you were lucky, sex may even sometimes be about lust, but never love; there was no such thing as love.
In Pylea, there was no place for love. It was impossible to love in a place where you were treated as little more than an animal. To Fred it seemed like ever since returning to this dimension she had always been in love, Angel: the hero, Cordelia: the princess, Charles: the protector. And Lilah: the enemy at the gates.
Lilah had tried fighting the Angel investigations team, she'd tried manipulating them, she'd tried conspiring with demons, and she'd even risked her neck by going against the senior partners. After all that, was fucking them that ludicrous? Angel had been a quick almost fuck on a desk. Wesley had been a whirlwind of anger and bitterness, Lilah had enjoyed screwing his brains out, but in the end he was a good fuck but useless at helping to destroy Angel. Loyalty was not a concept Lilah understood, loyalty was in the same league as honesty and morals, they were all characteristics that would lead to your mutilated body being found in a glue factory in Sun Valley. So the loyalty Angel's friends showed to him, even in their worst moments vexed her.
To Fred, Angel would always be her white knight carrying her off to safety on horseback, she would never betray him. Never, well not on purpose at least. To Fred, Lilah was dangerously beautiful, being with her provoked the same rush of conflicting emotions as stealing one of her fathers cigarettes to smoke on the porch at fourteen had. Knowing you were doing something you shouldn't be, feeling guilty and exhilarated at the same time.
Lilah fed off innocence the same way vampires fed off blood. If innocence could be bottled Fred would bathe in it every morning, it was one of the reasons why she had taken this particular route into the heart of Angel investigations. It had almost been to easy to lure Fred's heart into her hand, and after that it wasn't hard to lure Fred into her bed. Fred had so much pain, had suffered so much evil in her five years in Pylea, she bottled all this suffering up as if she believed it would contaminate her friends if she let it out.
The problem with hiding a part of yourself from your friends is that you are extremely vulnerable to anyone who can see the buried part of you. And so Fred fell head over heels in love with the first person who saw beyond the rambling, eccentric girl to the pain inside her. Lilah.
It had been going on for over a year, none of Fred's friends knew anything about it she had made sure of that. She knew they would never understand why she loved Lilah; they would think she was being manipulated, used. Fred knew they'd probably be right, but she had loved so many people in isolation, hiding herself from them, she couldn't not be with the one person who saw her completely, even if she was being used.
Lilah was now a partner in the firm thanks to her excellent case record, and the information she'd received about Angel Investigations. Both were courtesy of Fred, Fred had an excellent mind, if the watchers council knew about her they'd have snapped her up years ago, if you put a challenge to her she couldn't help but solve it.
Fred would never consciously betray her friends, Lilah had learned that only a few hours after meeting her. But unconsciously Fred babbled during sex, an unexpectedly hard thrust of Lilah's fingers, a flick of her tongue over Fred's clit sent Fred muttering barely coherently about things she wasn't even aware she was saying.
Lilah had taken to placing a Dictaphone under the pillows before one of their rendezvous, she would give the tape to files and records who would write up all the pertinent information and hand it to Lilah, ensuring her the highest success rate in Wolfram and Hart.
Fred knew Lilah didn't love her, some of the time she wasn't even sure if Lilah liked her. But it was nice to be able to have someone she loved, unlike Angel and Cordelia whom she loved from afar, unlike Charles who she could touch but never really have. When Lilah was lying underneath her and Fred's tongue was on her sex whatever professional reason's Lilah might have for being with Fred became meaningless and Fred lived for those moments.
"You aren't using me to get to Angel, are you?" Fred questioned from the king sized bed of the expensive hotel suite, her voice full of insecurity.
"Of course not." Said Lilah carefully avoiding Fred's eyes. Calling Fred's eyes puppy dog would be an understatement they were more like the eyes of baby seals, the ones you saw on the discovery channel looking sad just before being clubbed to death. Even Lilah, Queen bitch of evil lawyers could not look in them when she lied. "Stay here and get some sleep, the suite's paid for until tomorrow." There was going to be an attack on the Hyperion hotel in less than an hour, Lilah knew this because she had authorised it.
If she was being honest with herself Lilah wanted Fred here so she would be out of harms way, but as a lawyer she was very rarely honest to anyone least of all herself. Fred was here so she didn't get killed because Lilah might need her at a later date. Lilah was a professional whore; she didn't develop feelings for the people she fucked, least of all eccentric physicists, that was the quickest path to that glue factory in Sun Valley.
Fred was snoring softly when Lilah grabbed her jacket and bag on the way back to the lobby, time to get back to plotting Angels' downfall, while forcing her emerging feelings for Fred back down to the bottom of her soul where they couldn't get her killed.