Innate Darkness, an Angel story from Lindsey's perspective by Glacis. Rated NC17, no copyright infringement intended.

You don't learn that kind of darkness. It's innate.

She was a contradiction in terms. Lindsey stared through the shadows of his office at the ethereal beauty hiding four hundred years of experience, and wondered when the realization that she was human would kick in. If all went according to plan, Angel would crack, and Angelus would turn Darla back into the vampire she was meant to be long before her new-born soul could become a liability of any sort, either to her or to the Firm.

Things so seldom went according to plan. Especially where Angel was concerned.

He'd waited for her, as he had every night when she'd gone to visit Angel. They never spoke about what she did when she was with her wayward boy, but she was inevitably keyed up and aroused when she returned to Lindsey.

It was some of the most incredible sex he'd ever had.

The first time she'd stalked into his office after seducing Angel's dreams, she'd wrapped both arms around Lindsey's neck, straddled him as he sat in his office chair, and kissed him until he was light-headed. Then she'd reached down with one hand, unzipped his fly, done something wicked and a little painful to his penis, then sat down on him. It was wild, fast, and quickly over. He'd been in shock. She'd been extremely hungry. Neither one of them had said a word.

The second time she'd given him enough warning that he was able to clear his desk and lay her down on it. She'd put bruises over his kidneys with her heels that had taken a week to heal, and the bite marks on his neck had taken longer. Holland had smirked at him. Lilah had glowered. It had still been fast and furious. A pattern of silence emerged.

So it went. For days. After the first dozen times he lost track.

He was almost to the point of being blase about it. Darla went out, invaded Angel's dreams, whacked away at the walls holding his demon back, then slipped back into the Firm and fucked Lindsey blind at his desk. In his chair. On his carpet. Against his wall. Beside the file cabinet. If he hadn't known for damned sure that she was just working off excess energy, he'd've thought she liked him. As it was, he might as well have been an anatomically correct wind-up doll. An Angel stand-in. One more reason to want to destroy Angel. All this incredible sex, aimed at somebody else, was getting a little depressing.

Shrugging away the thought as unimportant in the grander scheme of things, he turned back toward his charge. She'd told him that Angel was close to falling apart. The plan was near fruition.

"That's wonderful," he complimented her, completely sincere in his appreciation. They exchanged some small talk about her knowledge of Angel, and he thanked her again for her help in fleshing out the file on the thorn in their side. She'd been invading Angel's dreams, chipping away at his defenses, for days now. It was only a matter of time before the plan would be launched, and Angel would be no more.

Angelus would be theirs. Or as much theirs as he had ever been anyone's.

"So, what is the plan, exactly?" Curiosity finally overcame her. He'd been waiting for it. "I tease him to death?"

She was standing very close to him now. She smelled sweet, and tempting. This time, she wasn't coming directly from Angel's bed. This time, it might be for him. He stared at her, weighing her silently. They were of a height, and she was looking directly into his eyes.

"We don't want him dead," he told her softly. "We want him dark. And there's no better way to a man's darkness than to awaken his nastier urges, is there?"

Angel had awakened his own nasty urges a long time ago. The bastard chopping off his hand had just solidified his desire to slice him into very small strips then stake each one individually.

Darla seemed to pick up on his emotion, moving closer and gesturing to his prosthetic hand. "He did that to you." Lindsey glanced down, giving a tiny nod. "What's it feel like?"

There was the edge of the sadist in her tone. He recognized it intimately. "It doesn't feel like anything." He was lying, of course. It hurt. Constantly. Not just in the hand that was no longer there. Deeper. Down to the bone.

"Can I?"

She was reaching for him even as he gave her permission with his eyes. She'd never touched anything but his shoulders and his crotch when they'd fucked. Once, she'd grabbed his hair, and held him by it while she rode him. This touch felt different. He couldn't feel her fingertips, of course, but the pressure transmitted itself through the straps to his forearm. Along his upper arm, down his shoulder into his torso. Straight to his groin.

"It's very smooth. You don't feel anything?" She sounded faintly incredulous and slightly aroused. He could feel the heat rising off her. One advantage of the human form over the vampire.

"Not in my hand," he answered honestly, his voice trailing off as he allowed her to glimpse his own arousal.

She smiled back at him, then moved away. He wasn't surprised. Whether it was teasing or building anticipation, Darla was a past master of the game. And, when push came to shove, he wasn't Angel. He watched her walk over and start fiddling with the scales hanging from the hand of the blindfolded Justice.

"How is it?" he asked abruptly, suddenly curious himself. "Seeing him again?"

Darla answered Justice, not him. "Strange."

When she didn't go on, he prompted her. "He betrayed you."

"Everyone betrays you." She sounded amused at his needling. "That's not what eats at you in the long winter's night."

"Yeah?" He didn't buy it. "What does?"

"Missed opportunities. He got a soul, and it sickened me." Her fingers pulled viciously at the scales. "All that power, wasted on a whiney, mopey do-gooder. God. I could eat his eyeballs."

The disgruntled tone, even more than her choice of words, nearly made him laugh aloud. "Our plans for Angel are a little more long-term than that." He couldn't resist adding, "but if you can't help yourself, then by all means, be my guest."

She pivoted on her heel and beamed at him briefly. "You're fun for a human!"

She'd just noticed? He ignored that errant thought, too, and tapped the manila envelope with the photograph of Angel's new abode in it, destined for a certain pawn in the police department. Time to put the denouement of the plan into action.

"I have a particular interest in this guy. A lot of people do."

Dipping his head quickly in good-bye, he walked out the door, leaving her to the shadows of his office, and the dreams of her eventual triumph.

Everything went perfectly when the time came to spring the trap. The police were primed; the background was in place; the back story was verifiable by objective witnesses; nobody would miss the actor. He listened to her screams for help over his speaker phone and took a healthy slug of fine single malt scotch.

"We should have our own series," he mused, grinning into his glass. This would do it. This would be the final thrust of the ax into the oak. Either it would fall, or it would rot.

If Angel followed his pattern, he'd not hurt the police pursuing him. If they took him into custody, maybe he'd get a East-facing cell and all their troubles would be over. If he escaped, well ... Kate the Obsessed knew where to find him. The mortals would close in on him until he turned or was taken.

There was a third possibility, of course. He could turn Darla, or kill her. In each of those scenarios, he'd still be theirs. He'd either be Angelus again, or wanted for murder and back to the cell or flight options. Lindsey had the brief thought that it would be funny if Angel ended up needing a lawyer, then toasted the air as he heard the police enter the house.

"You'll pay for this." Angel's growl was obviously ticked off and harried even over the line. It was music to Lindsey's ears. Then there was further ruckus kicked up, followed by the sincere voice of Detective Lockley promising Darla that they would find the one who'd done this, and he'd pay.

Lindsey snorted into his nearly empty glass. Pay, and pay, and pay, if he had his way.

He was reaching over to flip off the speaker when he heard a strange rustling sound, then a muffled squeak, followed by dead silence. He stared at the inanimate box for a long, hate-filled moment. He would be incredibly pissed off if Angel managed to worm his way out of this one, too. Then he realized what the rustle had been.

Leaves, or bushes, or some other sort of foliage. Cover. Angel had snatched Darla, no doubt to take her someplace quiet and 'make her pay.' Lindsey grinned ferally.

"Go, girl," he told the quiet of his office. "Take back your darlin' boy. Bring him home to daddy."

Lifting his glass in a toast, he noticed it was empty, and carefully set it back on his desk top, ignoring the part of him that wanted to throw it against the wall or keep filling it until the bottle was empty. This was what they'd been working toward. It was the way the plan should go. He should be anticipating triumph. Not sitting in the dark, desperately wanting more whiskey. Thinking about a demon with a soul.

Cradling a hand that wasn't there any more, that still hurt like hell.

He was putting the final flourishes on a brief when she stormed into the office mid-morning of the next day. Not wanting to lose four hours of hard work by being thrown across the computer peripherals and thoroughly used, he clicked 'save' and quickly pushed the keyboard tray safely out of the way. Then he braced himself for impact.

It didn't come. Instead of jumping him, as he'd expected from a victorious Darla, she paced. Snarled. Pawed at the attractive bruising along her right cheek, pulled at her tangled hair, and bitched. A low, angry hiss of invective that was as inventive as it was vituperative. He settled back into his chair, watching her warily, careful not to let the wariness show.

"He adored me! How the hell can he say that I never made him happy? The Slayer had nothing, was nothing. I was everything to him. For centuries. As if a soul could make that much difference! How dare he? That fool, that stupid, arrogant, weak, impossible, ignorant, self-righteous, ridiculous waste of potential. That boy will be sorry he ever crossed me. Sorry he ever dared turn his back on me. He will regret the day he ever laid eyes on me! He kissed me, held me, bit me, did everything but have sex with me, and then he had the unmitigated gall to tell me that I didn't have what it took to make him happy!"

Lindsey watched and listened patiently, wading through the skein of rambled words, searching for the logic beneath the rejection. Angel may not have been a mental giant, but he was cunning and had strong self-protective instincts. If he'd had Darla in his arms and hadn't turned her, he must have had a good reason.

Gradually, he began to form some hypotheses.

Angel wouldn't have sex with her, because he'd bite her, and she'd turn back into a vampire, and now that he had a soul he wouldn't make any more vampires.

Angel wouldn't turn her into a vampire, because then he'd fall back in love with her, or whatever thrall she'd had over him. Then he'd lose his fight to contain Angelus, lose his soul, and be right back where he'd been before he had it; side by side with Darla raising hell. All his efforts at redemption would be for naught.

He listened in for a few more minutes. She was still coming up with new ways to call Angel an asshole and declare war on him, so he tuned back out and returned to his heavy thinking.

She did have a point. Angel had been happy in his own nun-chomping way when he'd been Angelus and had been with her. If the conversations overheard through the bugs Wolfram and Hart had placed in his living quarters were to be believed, he still missed those days upon occasion. So he had to be lying when he said she couldn't make him happy.

A thought hit him, and he examined it from a couple different angles. What if that wasn't what Angel had meant? Lindsey had been around Darla long enough to realize how self-centered she was. Angel might well have said something else, and she could have twisted it around to make it about herself. There was a key buried in there.

He stared at her flushed face, admiring the swing of blonde hair accenting her delicate cheekbones, then blinked.

The soul.

Of course.

It wasn't that Darla hadn't made Angel happy. It was that Angel couldn't have sex with her while he had a soul, or he would be happy. Because he had loved her, or at least been obsessed with her, and obsession was a form of love. A sick form, but valid nonetheless. So, Angel wouldn't have sex with Darla because he'd lose his soul if he did.

Lindsey laughed out loud. Darla rounded on him and was over the desk with her hands wrapped around his throat before he had a chance to explain the joke. Fleetingly, he was thankful he'd taken the time to save his file and put the keyboard away. Then he removed Darla from his chest by the simple expedient of punching her in the jaw as hard as he could. She landed on the far side of the desk, unconscious.

Having only one hand, he couldn't afford to play around when attacked by someone with no conscience and four hundred years of experience. She'd be sorry she killed him, of course, once she calmed down, since he was her best and only ally. By that time it'd be too late for him, though, so he avoided the whole possibility.

When she came around, he handed her ice wrapped in a fine linen towel, and explained his deductive reasoning to her. She couldn't smile very well with a swollen jaw, but her eyes glittered. Content that she was on the same page as he, Lindsey outlined the next step in the plan to bring the innate darkness that was Angelus to the fore once again.

The powder was indigo, this time, not the fuchsia of the dream-controlling substance she'd scattered over him before. Lindsey watched the action on a small monitor recessed into his desk, courtesy of five new micro-cameras he'd ordered planted around the hotel in the first few days of the operation.

It had been enlightening and entertaining.

The first unwitting beneficiary of the sensuality spell had been Wesley, of all people. Lindsey bent forward over his desk, torts and infractions forgotten as he watched, hand covering his mouth, eyes wide with delight.

The Englishman sat, oblivious, browsing through a huge, dusty tome, as Angel's hand crept toward his hair. Stopped in mid-air, and reluctantly pulled back. Once. Twice.

The third time it connected, fingertips weaving through the slight curl in the dark hair at the side of Wesley's neck.

The man jumped a good ten inches out of his chair. The book went one way, his glasses flew the other, the stool fell over backward, and Wesley landed on his ass behind the counter. Angel's hand fell to the countertop, fingers tapping restlessly.

"Uhm, sorry," he mumbled. "You okay?"

Wary eyes under mussed hair peered at Angel over the top of the counter as Wesley laboriously pulled himself to his feet. He winced, then glared at Angel.

"What in Heaven's name was that all about?"

Angel tried to look innocent. It worked as well as it ever did : he looked as guilty as sin incarnate. "Nothin'," he lied through his teeth. Wesley's glare intensified.

Unseen, Lindsey started to crack up. He missed the next exchange, but regained his composure in time to see Angel sail away, as dignified as could be in his flowing duster with his ruler-straight posture. Lindsey watched with interest as Wesley's affronted look melted into rueful lust, quickly shaken away to show his usual politely interested expression. So, the ex-Watcher had a yen for the good vampire. That was unexpected. He filed the information away, in case it might be useful later.

Darla continued her fine work, and Angel continued to lose control of his impulses. The second time it happened, he made the mistake of sniffing Cordelia's neck. She showed excellent reflexes and, screeching "Personal space bubble, damn it!" she elbowed him in the eye.

Lindsey's ribs actually hurt by the time he recovered from laughing over that one.

It was four days post-Cordelia before the urges slipped the reins again. Charles Gunn, oblivious as he could be, ended up with an amorous Angel wrapped around him in the middle of what should have been a sparring session. Fortunately for Wolfram and Hart's future plans for the vampire, since Gunn was carrying a stake, the street fighter mistook lust for a wrestling hold, and squirmed around long enough for Angel to regain his senses. Then he broke the hold and escaped, head hanging as he stood with his hands on his knees, catching his breath, complimenting Angel on his technique.

If he'd had enough blood in him, Angel would have blushed. Lindsey howled. Darla walked into the office in the middle of the scene, and scowled over his shoulder.

"Oh, c'mon, Darla, you gotta admit, it's pretty funny," he coaxed.

She transferred her scowl from the screen to the back of his head. He watched her reflection in the screen. "He's supposed to be coming for me," she complained. He sighed.

"He will. He's strong, but he's not invulnerable. You've proven that. He's fighting it." He smiled winningly at her over his shoulder. "It'll make your eventual victory all the more sweet when he does give in."

She didn't look convinced. "If he does."

"He will," Lindsey insisted. He'd better, he thought, or both our asses'll be in a sling.

Patting his head once with sufficient force that it could be considered a slap, she turned and stalked back out the door. He shrugged and looked back at the screen.

Two days later, it happened again. Kate Lockley turned up in the lobby of the hotel, and proceeded to engage Angel in a shouting match that would put a pair of professional fishwives to shame.

"I don't care that she's gone! What did you do to her? I'll find a way to tie you to these deaths, Angel, and when I do, I'm going to take you down!"

"You need to get out more, Kate. Your threats are sounding like retreads from NYPD Blue."

She launched herself over to him, hissing in his face like a maddened snake. "It's the bystanders that I care about. The innocent ones, the ones you say you're trying to protect, the ones who always seem to die, those are the ones I give a damn about -- "

He grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her the rest of the way to him, cutting off the flow of words by kissing her like a starving man. Lindsey sat upright and leaned in, grinning, waiting for her reaction. He wasn't disappointed.

Just as Cordelia's horrified, "Boss!" rang out from the side entrance to the lobby, Kate tore her mouth away and swept up with one hand, catching Angel under the jaw and snapping his jaws shut. With the opposite knee, she put her back into a vicious jab, catching Angel in the crotch and felling him like a very large tree.

A very large tree that was currently curled up into a fetal ball, moaning faintly, holding onto his face with one hand and his groin with the other.

Kate swept majestically past Cordelia, throwing "Creep!" over her shoulder as she left the building. Chase stood stock-still, staring in abject fascination as Angel pulled himself painfully upright and limped out of the room. Her brow furrowed and she shook her head.

"That had to hurt," she murmured, then shrugged with her typical disregard for the comfort of anyone other than herself, and walked over to the filing cabinet. Very soon she was muttering her usual litany about paying customers and ridiculous standards as she dug through paperwork, Angel's humiliation and painful comeuppance completely forgotten.

"Gotta love a woman who's only a millimeter deep," Lindsey chuckled.

It couldn't last forever, no matter how much fun he was having, and he pulled Darla to the side the next time she came through the offices.

"Time to up the dose," he told her softly. She stared at him like he'd suddenly sprouted rouged horns and started crooning karaoke love songs.

"He can't handle what he's getting. What do you expect him to do if he's completely out of his mind?"

"Not what," he contradicted her sweetly, "whom. You, to be precise."

Her entire face lit up with a smile that defined evil enjoyment. "Finally!"

He watched her bounce away on her mission with a relatively evil smile of his own. Angel was about to get his, and when he did, he'd get Darla. And Wolfram and Hart would get Angelus.

Lindsey hated to spout 70's TV retro-speak, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, but he couldn't help it. He just loved it when a plan came together.

Of course, by definition, that meant it was time for it to explode in his face. This was Angel, after all.

It was the burning pain high in his left thigh that woke him. His arms automatically flew forward to cover himself protectively. At least, they tried. The thin nylon rope wrapped around him like webbing from the shoulders to the wrists, stretching both arms back over his head and holding him immobile, prevented any such movement in actuality.

That hurt, too.

His head whipped back from staring at his trapped arms and he glared down with disbelief at the dark head currently working between his spread thighs. A wrinkled, demonic face was buried deeply into the flesh of his leg, and he felt a pulling sensation that his mind automatically categorized as originating in or near the femoral artery. Then pain washed through him and drowned any other thought a-borning.

"Shit," was all he could groan, as the vampire sucking at his thigh took a good, long drink.

"Nectar," Angel's voice answered him, muffled by a mouthful of blood.

He felt the fangs move in his flesh and moaned again. Unfortunately for his composure, the pain and the fear were having a surprising effect on him. He was getting hard. As close as Angel was to his cock, there was no way he could help noticing.

With a last, luxuriant lick Angel left the gnawed place on Lindsey's thigh, running his tongue along his blood-smeared lips as he reared back far enough to grin up into Lindsey's face. It was the single most frightening thing he'd ever seen. It pissed him off.

It turned him on.

Angel smelled both rising from his body.

"You wantin' somethin', boyo?" he drawled, sounding much more like Angelus than Angel.

Lindsey, unable to actually form words, shook his head fiercely. Angel laughed at him, a low sound that sent shivers down his spine and made him even harder.

"You wanted me t' have sex so badly, Lindsey," Angel purred, dipping his head to lick at the blood trickling sluggishly from the thigh wound so close to his mouth. Lindsey shivered again. "I'm just givin' you what you want."

Desperation kicked his brain back into gear, and Lindsey found that his tongue was no longer stuck to the roof of his mouth. Since it could work again, he put it to use.

"What I want is for you to go to hell!" It wasn't, of course. What he wanted was for Angel to die, or fuck him, or turn. Leaving wasn't an option.

"Been there, done that," Angel answered laconically. He was painting abstract symbols on the pale skin of Lindsey's thigh with the blood. Lindsey squinted, trying to read them, then realized they were Indian love words. Obscene Indian love words. Directly from the Kama Sutra, if his memory served.

Wrenching his mind away from the intriguing possibilities inherent in Angel, in his bed, with the Kama Sutra on his mind, Lindsey grasped at the only straw he could think of at the moment.

"Wasn't Darla enough for you?"

He was rather proud of the thick sarcasm in the question. Angel didn't appear impressed.

"Darla was too much for me," he answered. He sounded like he was serious. "I can't have her. Can't have Buffy. Can't have anyone I actually care about." His face smoothed out, the vampiric ridges disappearing, and he stared soulfully up at Lindsey. "Thanks to you and your pretty little powder, I have to have somebody. Guess who's in the on-deck circle?"

Before Lindsey could think of any answer, much less the obvious one, Angel shifted back into full vampire face and bit him directly behind the testicles. Lindsey screamed. He'd never felt such ecstatic agony in his life. His thighs automatically clamped shut around Angel's head, and Angel sucked harder in response. At the flash-point of pain, he convulsed, climaxing, spilling all over Angel's bare shoulder as the biting traveled up from his perineum to his sac itself.

That's when it dawned on him, through the wash of red behind his eyelids, that Angel was naked. The perversity of the situation struck him anew, and he spasmed again. Angel hung on, drinking him throughout the orgasm, making him feel incredibly as if he was coming from both sides of his balls. Only when he was close to passing out did Angel withdraw his fangs and lick the torn flesh roughly. Lindsey whimpered.

"The only thing better than virgin blood is orgasmic blood," Angel whispered, sliding his hand through the mess on his shoulder and up onto Lindsey's belly. "You took the war to me, boyo. I'm just giving you what you asked for."

Smiling sweetly, a frightening expression on the demon-face, he leaned forward and hooked one fang in the slit of Lindsey's cock, slick and wet with semen. Lindsey's breath caught on the knife's edge between excitement and terror. If he moved, Angel might well bite down, and shred the end of his penis. If he didn't ... he might not be able to stop himself. He was hard again, his balls, thigh, and the tender skin between his legs aching deliciously, and he needed to thrust.

Couldn't.

Words were falling out of his mouth and he had no more control over them than he did his own heartbeat, which was raging so hard and so fast he expected at any moment to stroke out. Angel laughed, with Lindsey's cock still in his mouth, still caged by his fangs, and the sound broke what little control Lindsey retained over his body. Screaming even as he thrust, feeling the white-hot thread of sharp fang slice along the side of his glans, his entire body shook as he fought to get closer.

Escape.

Join.

He didn't know which he wanted more. He'd never known pain could feel so fantastic. He was still pleading with Angel to fuck him, to hurt him, to touch him, even as his very skin was itching, trying to crawl away from his attacker. Every twisted fantasy, every dark thought he'd ever entertained about Angel, and they were legion, held in him place and bade him wallow in it.

Eventually Angel took pity on him, or got bored, or most likely had to fuck him before he exploded himself, and flipped Lindsey over on his belly. He was almost out of his mind with a combination of pain and anticipation. His bleeding, drooling cock dragged against the linens, pulling another weak scream out of him. It echoed with a stutter when he caught his breath mid-howl to scream a second time, as Angel drove into him with no preparation, no lubrication. No care whatsoever.

Now his ass was on fire to match his cock. His arms twisted in their rope harness, and he let his head fall between his strained shoulders, burying his sweating face in his pillow. A clawed hand wove into his hair and yanked his head up, just as Angel pulled out and slammed back into place. Lindsey's spine arched like a bow in the instant before the archer let fly the arrow. It was an impossible position to maintain.

"Don't move a muscle," Angel growled.

Lindsey froze, a human sculpture in sweat- and blood-streaked quivering flesh on a frame of bones close to breaking. The growl transmuted to a laugh, then further into a groan, and Angel started pounding into him harder than it should have been humanly possible to withstand.

Beneath the impact, shuddering between the hand at his scalp, the body slamming into his hips, the raw scrape at his groin and the pull on his arms, Lindsey could feel his body singing as it had never sung before, ever, for anyone.

He'd been born for this.

No one had ever seen it. He'd never expected nor fantasized about it, not to this degree. Never had the slightest hint that pain could transcend the physical and burn out every thought from his head. Could still the voice that never, ever, shut up in his brain. Never imagined that the most incredible pleasure he'd ever felt would be inextricably bound with the most intense pain he'd ever experienced; that the lover who would find the true heart of him would be the one creature on Earth he hated like nobody else he'd ever met.

It figured. Anytime Angel was involved, life took a weird one-eighty.

The hand that wasn't trying to pull his hair from his head reached around his waist and began pressing at all the cuts the fangs had made in his cock. Not pulling or pumping, just squeezing. Lindsey had no air left for screaming, and his throat was too raw even if he'd had the breath, so he simply moaned, a deep sub-vocalization that rumbled out of his chest.

Then he was coming, more semen to mix with the fresh blood. His ass was clenching around Angel, and the vampire was coming as well. The fangs that had so recently been causing him torment returned, to the side of his throat this time, as Angel lost control during his own climax and clamped down.

Fire lit his throat, to match that racing down his legs, into his back, along his thighs and throughout his groin. Tears streamed down his face, the salt no doubt adding piquancy to the blood smearing Angel's face as he fed. The room gradually grayed out, his life's blood sliding down Angel's throat, his sperm smearing Angel's hand, his own mouth wide in a silent scream of satiation.

As he lost consciousness, he was barely aware of Angel pulling away from him. Blood-rich breath brushed across his cheek, and he heard a deep voice murmur, "Darla taught me many things, Lindsey. Things I enjoyed. Things I c'n never do to a decent human being again." Wet lips dropped a kiss at the side of his mouth, and he tasted his own blood with the tip of his tongue. "I'm so glad ye're not a decent human being, lad. I've really missed doin' all those things."

If there was more, he didn't feel it, or hear it.

He mustn't have been as close to death as he'd thought, because while he did wake up, it wasn't in the hospital. He awoke to Darla's shriek of rage.

"You bastard! You filthy son of a bitch!"

Movement at the corner of his eye warned him and he tried to raise his hands to shield his face, only at that point discovering that his arms were unbound. He was sliding in a pool of blood and semen, not necessarily a bad thing when the alternatives were either to be dead and unmoving, or stuck to the sheets in places where a man simply didn't want to have to unpeel dried linen.

Although after what he'd learned about himself that night, maybe he would. He really didn't want to find out.

Fists rattled against his forearms as he covered his head and let her hit him, unable to summon the strength to fight her off. He could barely understand her words; she was so angry she was slurring as if she was drunk.

She ranted about Angel coming to Lindsey instead of to her, and how the bastard wouldn't give her what she wanted. At this point, light-headed from lack of blood and hurting all over his entire body, Lindsey didn't know if the bastard she referred to was himself or Angel. He also couldn't find it in himself to care. Much.

Then her hands knocked his arms aside and wrapped around his throat. He pried his eyes open and stared up at her, not sure whether he wanted her to kill him or leave him to die on his own. She seemed caught by his ambivalence, staring back down at him, fingers encircling but not tightening on his windpipe. For the first time since she'd come into the room, she seemed to actually see him, and her eyes widened.

He read delight at his state in her fine blue eyes, and lust. The expression was pure as crystal. Gradually, as her fingertips dabbled in the blood oozing from the bite on his neck, painting the tendons with it, her expression clouded. First came confusion, as open as a child's when it first feels something it doesn't understand. Then a stronger emotion, and Lindsey realized that she really didn't understand it.

It had been a very long time since she'd felt guilt, after all.

"Damn him," she whispered, stroking his skin with a feather-light touch, almost as if she could heal it, where before she had been reveling in his pain. "Damn him, for making me go through this. This is his fault. This is all his fault." Her fingers, stained with his blood, cupped his cheek, and he watched as the first tear she'd shed in over four hundred years trickled down her face. "This is not my fault. Not my failure. His, and his damned soul."

Pulling her hands away from his face, she shifted off the bed and reached for the telephone. She dropped it on the sheet next to him and backed out of the room, still saying "damn him!" under her breath. Lindsey reached for the 'phone before he blacked out again, and hit the speed dial button for Wolfram and Hart's emergency team.

"Dispatch. State the emergency."

His voice was gone from screaming so long into the night, but he didn't worry. The line was open, and they'd trace it. They'd come. Patch him up. Get him back in the game.

He found the thought more disturbing than reassuring. It hit him, as he heard the first faint sound of the ambulance siren, that this might not be a game he could win. For the first time he wondered how much sense it made to awaken the darkness in Angel in the quest to regain Angelus. Especially now that Lindsey had discovered his own handicap.

Now he knew his own inherent darkness ran as deeply as Angel's. And Angel knew it as well, and wouldn't hesitate to use it against him.

He found himself grinning, and wondered when he'd lost his marbles, because the only thought going through his mind was let the games begin.

end