A Slight Change of Plan, an Angel/Lindsey story by Glacis. Rated
NC17. No copyright infringement intended. Direct sequel to His Place in the World. Spoilers for To Shansu in
Finding the Oracles slaughtered had been unnerving, even for him. Being
a vampire with a soul, an abomination to his own kind, engaged in a quixotic
quest for redemption, he'd seen some doozies. Talking with the Spirit of the
female Oracle had pretty well topped the list.
Angel knew what he had to do to save his friends, his surrogate family.
He tracked his prey to its lair, interrupted a Ritual in progress, and
proceeded to play Obi-Wan Kenobi with the Beast in the role of Darth Maul.
Somewhere behind him as he kicked and slashed, ducked and parried, a wind
kicked up. He was vaguely aware of Lindsey McDonald's voice snarling Latin, and
screaming at the goblins to "say it!", when he kicked the Beast into
the middle of the Acolytes and left Lindsey to raise hell all on his own.
He was disappointed, but he had no doubts the lawyer could do it.
Flinging himself out of the way of the scythe the Beast swung like a
baseball bat, Angel crashed into a group of humans dragging a big wooden box by
chains. The humans went over like bowling pins and he grabbed the chains,
swinging them up and over to catch the scythe on its downward swing and divert
it into the side of the box. He had a brief impression of movement, the echo of
a feral howl, and something dove from the box, landing on one of the fallen
humans. He didn't have time to check, although the howl sounded oddly familiar.
The haft of the scythe caught him across the top of his right shoulder,
numbing his arm down to his fingertips, and the pain combined with an
adrenaline rush brought his demon to the fore. Angelus screamed out, left hand
curving around the top of the blade where it attached to the handle, and with a
vicious sideways yank he buried the tip of the curving blade dead center in the
Beast's chest. The metal slid through bone and flesh like they were water, and
the body cavity flowered open. The stench nearly knocked him over, and maggots
boiled out of the eviscerated torso. The shock jolted him back into human form,
and he tumbled over sideways to avoid the mass of the now-dead Beast as its
corpse toppled forward.
Panting from exertion, Angel shook his head to clear it, clenching and
relaxing his right hand, trying to regain use as soon as possible. Braced for a
further fight, he rolled to his feet and crouched, ready for an attack from any
quarter. Eyes gold-tinged, nostrils flared, mouth slightly open, he rocked on
the balls of his feet and growled out warning.
No attack came.
The humans in the room were either dead, clawing at the door to get out,
or unconscious. A smell he recognized caught his attention and he pivoted,
looking for the source. Terror. Lindsey's terror, to be specific. A sound like
a scream trapped behind clenched teeth accompanied the scent. Scanning the
trail of corpses, he saw a slight, fair-skinned female vampire land on Lindsey,
bearing him to the ground as the mortal was reaching out for the Scroll.
Ah, good. Two birds, one stake.
Launching himself forward, Angel triggered the sheath along his left
forearm and threw himself at the female. In one fluid move, he staked the
vampire from behind, dusting her with a spare inch between the sharpened end of
the stake and Lindsey's breastbone, and scooped up the Scroll with his right
hand, thankful he had enough strength left to grip it. As the female
disintegrated he felt a tearing sensation in his own chest, and Angelus shook
inside him, nearly breaking Angel's iron control.
"Darla!" he screamed, unable to hold it back. The loss of his
sire, twice, by his own hand, scorched him, and he found himself curled over
the remains of her dust, scattered over Lindsey's startled face. For an
instant, he howled, a short, uncontrollable burst of grief, then he pulled
himself off Lindsey and ran shakily for the door. An older man got in his way,
and he threw the unfortunate human halfway across the room in his urgency to
escape.
He had the Scroll.
No one need know the price he had paid to get it.
Except, perhaps, Lindsey. Who knew what he'd seen in Angel's eyes?
Ignoring the thought, he made his way to the hospital. He had to get the
Scroll to Wesley. Had to heal Cordy. Had to figure out what to do next. Had to
forget Darla.
Again.
Lindsey held the torn remains of his jacket against the wound along his
collarbone, trying to staunch the blood flow, thankful Darla hadn't taken him
down at just the right angle to rip his throat out. At least some of his fabled
luck was still intact. Not that he'd had much since Angel had shown up on the
scene.
He was gonna kill that son of a bitch. He didn't know how, or when. But
that was the plan. He was going to find a way to permanently kill that undead
do-gooding son of a bitch. He resolutely ignored the fact that the last time
he'd taken that particular vow he'd ended up sleeping with the undead
do-gooding son of a bitch instead.
Staring across the room to where
Taking a deep breath, a little light headed from blood loss and feeling
gritty from the Darla-dust scattered all over him, he pushed himself to his
feet and went to meet his fate.
More than a little pissed off, too.
"I'm sorry,
Had he?
Putting that thought away, to take out and examine at a less dangerous
time, he held out a hand to help steady
"My office,
Lindsey swallowed dryly. That wasn't encouraging. Although he hadn't
been killed immediately, which was encouraging. A delicate pat to his
unmangled shoulder by Lilah, and he nodded shortly. Wrong move. The world spun,
and everything went black.
When the lights came back on again he was in the in-house infirmary at
the Firm. Doctor Preston was taping gauze over his shoulder and onto his chest,
and he felt pleasantly numb. An ache in the back of his right hand drew his
eye, and he saw the nurse remove a canula, attached to a tube from a now-empty
bag of blood.
"How many pints?" he asked, mildly annoyed at the weakness in
his voice.
"Three units," the doctor answered, no surprise anywhere to be
seen on him. Then again, triage after a demon sortie wasn't an unusual occurrence
at Wolfram and Hart.
"How many casualties?" Not that he cared, particularly, but
one of the clerks Darla had eaten had been assigned to him, and the man hadn't
been as stone stupid as most of the underlings he got stuck with. Now he had to
break in a new one.
If he wasn't too busy being broken, himself, of course. The thought
distracted him, and he muttered a token, "Hm," when the doctor gave
him the stats. Only five down, not bad for a Ritual as badly botched as this
one had been. He went to rise, and the doctor pressed him back down again.
"You're not going anywhere. Overnight stay, so we can keep an eye
on you."
Unspoken, but understood by everyone in the room, was the rider "so
you can't run." Lindsey sighed. An understandable precaution, given his
previous behavior in the Brewer case. But it didn't help the fact that he hated
hospital beds. He'd be in no shape to face whatever
He had all night to think of one.
It was a very long night, or so he thought until it was over.
Morning came too damned early.
Night passed too quickly. He'd thanked Gunn sincerely, and sent the
young man home with his men and women to get some rest. Cordelia was coherent
again, exhausted and distraught but no longer locked in her own mental hell.
Wesley was recovering nicely, bouncing back with a resilience that surprised
Angel. He left them in hospital, admonishing them to listen to their doctors
and get some rest, then trailed home through the tunnels as dawn was breaking
over the city.
It had been a hell of a night, in a series of hellish nights. As he
collapsed onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling, he finally allowed himself
to remember the details of the fight. The scythe, the cyclone wind, Lindsey's
chanting, the dead humans sacrificed to Wolfram and Hart's schemes, the maggots
pouring from the belly of the Beast.
Darla.
Slaying his sire ... again. Feeling the beginning of the bond, wrenched
apart, stillborn by his own hand. The shock on Lindsey's face. The pain
contorting his own. The silken feel of the dust of his progenitor coating his
hand, his face, settling into the creases of his clothing. The heat of
Lindsey's body burning into his own. The smell of his terror. The scent of his
blood.
Dimly, he could feel Angelus raging. If the demon escaped, truly
escaped, there would be Hell on Earth for those who had done this, had brought
her forth only to cause him to kill her again.
Twice damned.
He rolled over onto his side, eyes staring blindly, lost in
sense-memory.
Doomed to love the people he could never have, should never want.
Thrice damned.
Settling into his memories, he gathered the darkness around him and let
himself sink. It was better to remember the past than to think of the future.
His future was the present, fighting to redeem the unredeemable, save the lost.
Always damned.
Lindsey sat in a comfortable leather chair at the end of a long table in
a conference room he'd never seen before. He never wanted to see it again,
either. He was the only one in the room.
The walls moved.
More precisely, they writhed. Barely seen at the edge of his field of
vision, never directly, they bled, too. It was unnerving. He'd seen a lot of
things, participated in quite a few of them, and he'd washed blood from his
hands up to his elbows. But he'd never been the center of the vast malevolence
he served. It made him feel powerless.
Something he'd vowed never to be.
It also made him feel like a loser. Something else he'd vowed never to
be. The thought stiffened his spine, and kick-started his brain. There'd been
the outline of a plan teasing at his mind all night, and it was starting to
gel. If he could just keep the sheer gut-liquefying terror suppressed long
enough to finalize it, he just might have figured a way out of this mess.
Then the walls started to talk.
The sound reverberated inside his head, seeming to surround him, coming
at him from all sides at once. His skin crawled and his stomach turned over.
His brain felt like it was on fire. His fists clenched and he arched in the
chair, holding on to the bare essentials of his composure with everything he
had in him. He wouldn't scream. He wouldn't cry. He sure as hell wouldn't wet
his pants, no matter how much he felt like he had to.
The cacophony finally muted from the anguished screams of anger and pain
to a single trumpeting call, singeing his nerve endings. There were no words,
but he understood every emotion plainly. He was a failure. A disappointment.
He'd shown promise, but he'd not fulfilled that promise. He'd obtained a
shadow, and that shadow had overturned Prophesy. They required a sacrifice.
He would be it. Pain so sublime it would be bliss before he melted like
slag under the onslaught. An object lesson of the fruits of failure.
The plan came together with a near audible snap in his mind.
"Bliss!" he yelled. The sounds in his head stilled. The walls
froze.
As the pressure began to build again, he clutched at his skull with both
hands, physically trying to retain enough mental ability to make them
understand. "I can turn him! Angel is our -- my -- nemesis. Angelus would
be our strength!"
The walls moved again, and he read a question in the sibilance swelling
around him. He licked lips so dry they were cracking, and struggled to make
sense.
"Angel can be destroyed by reclaiming Angelus. Angelus can be
reclaimed by providing Angel with perfect bliss." The pressure subsided
just enough for him to take a deep breath, and when he continued, his voice was
calmer. More certain. This would work. It had to work. It was his only chance.
"His file shows that he's drawn to lost causes. He saved Faith, the rogue
slayer." He winced at the small surge of anger all around him, and hurried
on. "He thinks he can save me, thinks he can redeem me. I can play into
that. Seduce him." He took another deep breath, and consciously allowed
himself to remember sex with Angel, knowing they were reading his mind.
"There's an attraction there. I can work with that. Make him fall in love
with me. Give him that perfect moment, and destroy his soul."
An image came into his mind then, of Angelus tearing him into bloody
pieces.
"I'm willing to risk it." What was the alternative, after all?
"Angelus would be an asset to Wolfram and Hart, as much of an asset as
Angel is a liability."
The noise swept around him again, high pitched chittering piercing his
brain, and this time he couldn't keep the cry of pain back behind his teeth. He
curled up into a fetal ball in the chair, knees up to his chest, arms wrapped
protectively around his head. Fighting not to whimper, he focused completely on
Angel, on revenge, on sex, on anything but the urge to run far and fast.
He wouldn't get ten feet, and he knew it.
An eternity and a near-migraine later, swaying on his feet from the
sleepless night, aftermath of the battle and close encounter with the senior
partners, Lindsey found himself in his office. He had no memory of getting
there. Slumping into his chair, he stared dazedly at his daytimer. The pages
rustled with an invisible breeze, and he gulped. The book flipped open to
Friday, and a word appeared on the page.
"Bliss."
So much for killing. He'd painted himself into a corner, so there was
going to have to be a slight change in the plan. There were no other options,
not if he wanted to keep breathing. He didn't know how much time they'd give
him, but he had his orders. Swiveling around in his chair, he stared out over
the city and wondered how in the hell he was going to pull it off.
Angel heard the quaver in Wesley's voice and wholeheartedly agreed.
Life. His reward for fighting the good fight, redemption, was to be life. As a
human. No more torment. No more eternity.
Death had never sounded so good. Real death, final death, after real
life, human life. He smiled, faintly, too overwhelmed to say much. Popping the
lid on the plastic container of blood, he absently raised it to his mouth and
took a swallow.
Yuck.
Cow was bad enough. Chilled cow was truly disgusting.
Catching his grimace before it could escape, knowing Cordy wouldn't
understand, he forced himself to swallow and quirked a reassuring half-smile at
his friends. Cordy beamed back, and Wesley smiled more sedately, but with a
gleam in his eye that gave Angel the uncomfortable feeling Wes knew precisely
what he was thinking. That thought brought the other side of his mouth up, and
he gave them both a small but real smile before heading off into the kitchen to
put Cordelia's microwave to good use.
The rest of the week was quiet. Angel thought of thanking the Powers
that Be for it, but every time he thought of Them he remembered the Oracles. So
he tried not to think too much, tried not to wonder what would happen now.
Tried not to dwell either on the darkness behind him or the uncertainty ahead,
and took the rare luxury of enjoying the present. On Friday afternoon, he got
at least a partial answer to his mental questions.
Cordy had a vision.
As he eased the trembling girl down into a chair, he couldn't help
quietly rejoicing that the visionary purgatory the Beast had delivered her into
hadn't burned out whatever part of her mind it was that received the visions.
He also sent up a quick thanks to whomever might be listening that the Powers
that Be hadn't turned their backs to him when he'd failed to protect the
Oracles. Wesley brought over Excedrin migraine tablets and a notepad,
scribbling clues down as Cordy grumbled them out.
Three miles away he and Wes cornered the pack of Mipok demons, fought
and slew them, and got covered from hair to shoe soles in sticky lime green
goo. Again. Life was back to as even a keel as it ever got in L.A. Stumbling
wearily into the office a little after midnight, they tossed a quarter for who
got first shower, and Angel won. For once, he was glad of the toss. Vampiric
noses were very sensitive, and the lime goo stank. Badly. It was sheer bliss to
scrub the crap off. Wrapping a towel around his hips, he shooed Wesley into the
shower stall with a courtly bow. Wes broke land speed records getting under the
water.
Hm. It would appear human noses found it as appalling as vampiric noses
did.
Angel grinned and stepped out of the towel, shrugging into his robe. It
hadn't been a long battle, but it had drained him, and he wasn't completely
over his fight with the Beast earlier in the week. Placing a beaker of blood in
the microwave, he pushed the button and leaned against the counter, closing his
eyes.
A change in the air brought his head up and he opened them again to see
Lindsey standing in front of him.
The lawyer didn't look much better than Angel felt. He could see the
outline of a bulky bandage along the man's left shoulder, running down over his
collarbone. He was pale, green eyes red-rimmed, slumped with exhaustion. Even
his hair looked tired.
Before either could say a word, Wesley wandered out from the shower, a
towel around his waist and another over his head, rubbing his hair vigorously.
Angel watched as Lindsey started, stared back and forth between the wet, naked
Wesley and the robed, obviously retired for the evening vampire. For an
instant, Angel thought he saw what looked like betrayal in those wide, startled
eyes, then a shutter fell down over them, leaving them blank, completely
expressionless.
"I'm sorry."
Wesley stopped dead at the sound of Lindsey's voice, pulling the towel
from his head and staring at the lawyer. He looked rather like a surprised
hedgehog poking his head out of a bush. His mouth opened but nothing came out.
Angel could relate to the feeling.
"This is ... a bad time. I'll just go." Lindsey turned to
leave. He made it two steps toward the stairs before Angel could shake off his
weird paralysis and move. He caught Lindsey by the arm, ignoring the hiss of
pain as Lindsey's injuries were jarred by the movement.
"No. Why did you come?"
Behind them in the bedroom, Angel could hear Wesley moving around, the
rustle of cloth as he dressed, the thump of shoes and slap of wet toweling on
the floor. All the noises were incidental to the sound of Lindsey breathing.
His heart beating. He sounded trapped.
Funny thing. Angel could relate to that, too.
Hesitant footfalls paused behind them.
"Would you like me to stay?" Wesley's question was only the
first layer. Do you need back-up? Should I break out the sword or the crossbow
or just hand you a cudgel to beat him to death? Should I let you have him or
may I kill him myself? Such support, all unspoken. Angel grinned. It wasn't a
pleasant expression.
"No. Thanks, Wes. Go home." I can handle it. Him. I want to
handle him.
There was too much truth in that thought for the smile to remain. It
slipped, leaving him staring as wide-eyed at Lindsey as Lindsey was staring
wide-eyed at him.
Clearing his throat, Lindsey finally forced some words out, just when
the silence was becoming oppressive. "You okay?" The southern accent
was pronounced, and Angel could tell by the slight flush in Lindsey's pale cheeks
that he heard it and was discomfited by it.
"Why are you here?" The heat was seductive, and Angel shoved
Lindsey away from him before he could give into temptation.
Lindsey shrugged gingerly, settling the suit jacket back in place over
his shoulders. His slight grimace of pain was quickly hidden. He didn't answer,
choosing instead to wander further into the room. He picked up the short sword
Wes had used that night against the Mipoks, sniffing curiously at the layer of
goo along the edge. His nose wrinkled.
God help me, Angel thought. He's cute. He's amoral, vicious as a
cornered wildcat, too damned smart for his own good and stupid as a plank when
it comes to seeing where his plans were leading him. He's running down the road
to hell of his own accord, refusing to be turned from his path, and taking
everyone and everything he can along with him for the ride. And I want him.
Anger burst through the confusion in his thoughts, and he found himself
leaning over Lindsey, pushing him onto the sofa, knocking the sword from his
hand to the carpet, growling down into his face.
"What do you want, Lindsey? You said you wanted out, then
you chose to go back. You took over the bloody spell to raise my Sire,
then forced me to kill her again to save your miserable life. You want to win!
Well, fine! Go back! Leave! What the hell are you doing here?"
"I want you."
The whisper cut across his tirade, robbing him of momentum, taking his
breath. He stared down into those unblinking eyes, trying to read the lies
there, seeing nothing but shadows.
And truth.
Lindsey was speaking again, and Angel forced himself out of those
shadows long enough to hear what the man had to say. Not that he would believe
it. Not that he could.
"Wolfram and Hart is the only thing I've known since I was nineteen
years old. They've been my home for fifteen years. My mentor's there, the only
person who has ever shown an interest in me, ever put himself out for me. Ever
believed in me. I don't agree with everything they do, and sometimes they scare
the hell out of me, but I didn't want to leave."
Angel nodded, noting both the past tense in the last sentence and the fact that
he'd finally heard Lindsey admit he was scared of something. It was progress,
of a sort. "And now?" he prompted.
Lindsey bit his lip and turned his head away slightly, staring off into
the distance over Angel's shoulder. He shifted against the cushions, and Angel
instinctively moved with him, pressing closer while at the same time moving his
weight further down Lindsey's body. This took the pressure off the wounded
shoulder. It also ground their pelvises together. Angel growled under his
breath and shook off the distraction.
"The Raising was my last chance," Lindsey admitted, still not
looking at him. "As you know, it was a fiasco. The Beast was killed, the
Raised was killed, hell, half the senior clerks at the Firm got eaten." He
finally looked back at Angel, and this time it was easy to read the expression
in his eyes. Trepidation. Strong trepidation. "I don't know what new plans
they have for me, but I have a feeling my days are numbered. I need a bolt hole
for when the time comes to run, and I'm willing to pay for it."
He moved his groin against Angel's, the message unmistakable. Angel
snarled at him. "I knew lawyers were whores, I just never knew one who'd
be so eager to admit it."
Lindsey surged underneath him, trying to escape, growling back,
"Fuck you!" Angel pinned him easily, one hand clamping into the
bandages over his collar bone. He could feel the stitches, the hot fevered skin
beneath the gauze. Lindsey gasped and fell back against the sofa cushion, not
fighting any further.
"If it's not your body you're offering, then what is it?"
Angel asked conversationally, ignoring his own growing arousal.
"Information," Lindsey hissed at him. "I want to turn a
losing hand into a winning one."
"Is that all this is to you?" Angel couldn't help asking.
"A game, to win or lose?"
There was a long silence, and he stared down into Lindsey's face.
Expressions chased themselves across the normally stoic features, alarm,
uncertainty, resolve. Desire.
"No," he finally admitted. Electricity was practically
visible, crackling between them.
"What about this?" Angel prompted him again, pressing his
firming erection against Lindsey's. The heat coming from Lindsey's body
ratcheted up several degrees, and he could smell the want in the air. Coming
from both of them.
"That's between us," Lindsey said very softly, more an
exhalation than a whisper.
Angel's eyes flashed yellow as he read the message, loud and clear. He
leaned in closer, the heady mix of blood and arousal coming from Lindsey
drawing him in. He opened his mouth, set to make him explain, clarify exactly
what he meant, when Lindsey hooked an arm around his neck and drew him down
into a kiss.
Thought evaporated. Tension that had been building since he'd followed
the lawyers to the crypt for the Ritual the night before exploded between them.
Open mouthed kisses sucked bruises on pale flesh, needy hands stripped wool and
linen and cotton from Lindsey's body, heedless of the pain inflicted, as he
drowned in the need washing over him. Lindsey wasn't protesting. On the
contrary, his own hands were pulling ruthlessly at Angel's robe, stripping him
as efficiently as he was being stripped.
The hands were too distracting, and as soon as shirt and jacket were
tossed on the floor Angel pulled Lindsey's wrists behind his waist and looped
his thin leather belt around them. Then he pulled Lindsey flat on his back on
the sofa and ran his palms from the rounded buttocks to the back of Lindsey's
knees. Crouching over him, Angel clamped Lindsey's bent legs against the sides
of his ribs, holding them in place with his elbows, leaving his hands free.
Lindsey was whimpering and squirming beneath him, thrusting up against
him, his erection slapping against his belly. Angel leaned down and sucked him,
once, hard, and the whimper broke into a sharp yelp. Then Angel reared back,
spread Lindsey's buttocks with his hands, and thrust home.
The yelp escalated to a scream.
Momentum built, and Angel slammed into Lindsey, rocking them both,
jolting the sofa. It was hard and faster than he would have liked, but neither
one of them could stop themselves. A tiny stain began to spread through the
bandage at Lindsey's collar bone, and the fresh blood from the torn stitches
roused Angel to fever pitch.
Loosening his grip on Lindsey's knees, he let the man's legs slip around
his waist and leaned in further, his hands going behind Lindsey's back to pull
his wrists further down, throwing his shoulders into stark relief. The small
stain grew rapidly, and Angel bent over, ripped the bandage off with his teeth,
and fastened his mouth over the newly opened wound.
Lindsey screamed again, pain mingled with pleasure, and bucked harder
against him. Between their bellies he felt Lindsey's cock spit, and felt his
own caught in a vise grip in response to the orgasm. He growled, knowing he was
shifting form, unable to stop himself. His fangs bit deeply into the wound his
Sire had made as his climax ripped through him, and the circle was complete --
fluid streaming from him, fluid streaming into him, life given and received.
The struggles against him weakened rapidly until Lindsey lay unmoving
beneath him. Calling on every reserve of strength he had, Angel reined in the
demon, and cautiously extracted his fangs from Lindsey's flesh.
He didn't want to leave. Not the blood, not the ass, not the arms now
draped limply over his back, belt dangling uselessly from one wrist. Angelus
was shrieking, wanting more. Angel was shaken, too close to losing everything.
He forced himself to withdraw from Lindsey's body, slowly and carefully.
Peering intently down at the unconscious man, Angel was relieved to see
a faint pulse at his throat. He climbed gingerly off the sofa, lifted Lindsey
with care and brought him over to his bed. The warmth was still there, faded
but intact. Angel took a deep breath. Slipping Lindsey under the covers, easing
the belt from the limp arm and tossing it away, he stared down at the now quietly
sleeping man. So fragile, this way. So mortal.
Angel turned away abruptly and headed for the kitchen. When Lindsey woke
up he was going to need lots of fluids. Orange juice, water, apple juice,
whatever. Angel licked his lips and tasted Lindsey's blood.
So sweet.
He shook his head viciously. Too sweet. Too tempting. Too utterly wrong.
Lindsey said he wanted out -- again. He might just mean it this time. But
caring for him -- falling in love with him -- would be the second stupidest
thing Angel had ever done in his life. He had to make sure it didn't happen.
Again.
Lindsey woke late Saturday morning feeling like he'd been plowed by a
ten ton freight train. He bit back a groan as he rolled over, careful of the
freshly bandaged shoulder that felt like it had been through a meat grinder.
His mouth was sore. His ass hurt.
He hadn't felt this content in so long he couldn't remember.
A glass of orange juice appeared in front of his face and he started.
"What the hell?"
"Drink it. You need the fluids."
He took the glass from Angel's hand and peered over the rim of it as he
drank. The vampire looked haunted.
Good.
"How are you going to swing it?" Angel asked abruptly. Lindsey
cocked a brow at him. "The mind readers."
Lindsey grinned. "By the time I get back to the Firm, I'll firmly
believe we're makin' love because I'm infiltrating your organization."
"Sex," Angel ground out.
"Huh?" He drained the juice and sat the glass down, licking
the last drops from his lips. Angel's eyes followed his every move.
"It's sex. Not love. I don't love you."
Lindsey nodded slowly, then pulled himself out of bed and got dressed in the
clothes Angel thrust at him. Not yet, he thought triumphantly, noting how Angel
watched him like a hawk the entire time. But soon.
Pausing at the entrance to the tunnels, he looked back over his shoulder
at Angel, who was brooding against the wall, watching him leave. There was
hunger in the dark eyes.
He smiled. "Later," he said softly. Angel simply nodded. And
watched.
Step one. Complete.
The next month was strange. Lindsey contacted Angel once a week, and
Angel found himself lurking around the Wolfram and Hart offices much more than
he probably should. He found himself listening for Lindsey's heartbeat.
Shadowing him on the way home.
Watching through the windows as he went to sleep.
Cordy had another vision, and he and Wes had another night of demon
hunting. Gunn and his gang kicked up a hornet's nest and he plowed in to help
the kids against the vampires. Kate rang him up once and ranted at him. He hung
up on her. Wesley ate him out of house and home, and Cordy went shopping.
Lindsey showed up late on a Thursday night and kissed him. He couldn't
stay. He'd dropped off a packet of papers, on a client of Wolfram and Hart who
was planning to push up the flow of tainted heroin among the street kids, a
Pu'tr'ser demon who fed on hallucinations and violence.
Angel killed it. The pipeline was closed before it could even open.
Wesley was cautiously optimistic, seeing the latest activity as an
indication that Lindsey meant it when he said he wanted to change. Cordelia
summed up her opinion pithily, "When did hell freeze over?" Angel
forced himself to be neutral. It was hard, when the only thing he really wanted
to do was bury himself in Lindsey again and forget everything. Suspicions,
frustration, expectations, disappointment, everything.
The third Saturday night of the month, about eleven, Lindsey knocked on
the door from the tunnels. Angel let him in. He barely got his mouth open on a
greeting before Lindsey's tongue was filling it.
When they broke apart, not much, but enough for Lindsey to speak, what
he said surprised Angel. "Thanks.
"For what?" he managed, distracted by Lindsey's hands on his
ass, Lindsey's breath on his throat, Lindsey's warmth in his arms.
"You're the only thing I have left I can depend on," Lindsey
told him. Angel had no idea what the man meant by that cryptic remark.
"Are they coming after you?"
"Soon, I have a feeling," Lindsey muttered around a mouthful of
Angel's chest through the thin silk shirt he wore. Every nerve in Angel's body
sparked at once.
It was unlike any other time they had ever had sex. Time slowed down.
Textures, tastes and scents absorbed them, turning their usual frantic rut into
a nearly ritualistic dance. Angel was lost in the taste of Lindsey's mouth, the
silk slide of Lindsey's hair through his hands. The curve of biceps, the
scattering of crisp curls on his chest, the heaviness of his sac, the length of
his shin. The fleshy palm of his hand, the hollow at the base of his throat.
The sweet strength of his thighs, parted and clenching around him. The strength
of the line of his spine, arching below Angel's chest. The nape of his neck.
The underside of his wrists. The almost silent moan that escaped when he came.
When it was over, they lay together, wrapped around one another in
Angel's bed. He made a move to pull away and Lindsey caught his arms, pulling
them back around him. "Stay?"
It was a request with the edge of command behind it. Angel paused,
staring at the contrast between his pale, muscled arms and the warmer skin tone
of Lindsey's chest. "Why?"
Lindsey stilled. After a long moment, he said softly, "You make me
feel safe."
Angel took a deep breath, tightened his arms around Lindsey, and allowed
himself to be drawn back into the web being spun around him.
Choose your own ending -- pick your poison -- Go to Plan A or Plan B