Title: Best Laid Plans a Lindsey story
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.

Apocalypse. Well, that explained a lot.

Lindsey'd always known, in the back of his mind, that he was expendable. So it didn't come as much of a shock when Mr. Hart, senior partner and heavy dabbler in some of the stranger Moon Magick, informed him of the fact to his face. He felt Lila flinch beside him.

She'd always had delusions of grandeur and a mistaken belief in her own longevity.

Lindsey was different. He didn't believe he would be sacrificed to the greater good, because he didn't believe in a greater good. He knew damned well he could be sacrificed to win. Winning was, after all, the only thing that counted. He'd known that since he was four years old. The risks had simply grown.

So had the rewards.

In the hours after Hart and Lila left, the shadows grew long outside his office window. Not that he noticed. He was so used to living in the shadows it felt like night even in broad daylight. Perhaps that was why he hadn't minded when he thought Darla was going to kill him. Not because he thought she might love him.

He wasn't that stupid.

But because it hadn't felt right. He'd thought he was going to die, but something was unfinished, something important, and so when he regained consciousness he hadn't been as surprised as he expected. Pleased, yes. A little relieved, no doubting that. But not particularly surprised.

Whatever was waiting in the wings was big, and it wasn't finished with him quite yet.

Lindsey stared into the deceptive halo created by the lights below and around him, leaning his forehead against the cool pane and letting his gaze rove over the nightscape of Los Angeles. The city of the angels, and Angel's city. Proven once again, not by the fighters of the Good Fight, but by the leaders of the dark forces. He grinned suddenly.

Sounded like bad advertising copy. Even to himself.

Plans chased themselves in loops through his mind, tying his thoughts into Gordian knots and leaving him trussed in the tangle of illogic that planning around Angel always produced. Lindsey had a sharp mind, and a devious one. Angel had more practice, and if his recent actions were any gauge, just as few scruples. Lindsey winced internally at the mental image he'd gotten when he'd read the report of the latest rampage. Killing a dozen bloodthirsty demons was one thing.

Deliberately torching both his sire and his childe was something altogether different.

Something very like Angelus. Completely unlike Angel. Yet the vampire hadn't gone on a rampage. Hadn't sought vengeance. Appeared to be making complicated, solitary plans, and executing them with clear-eyed precision, while still nominally in the service of the Light. That was the hallmark of Angel's soul, not Angelus' cunning.

All of which led Lindsey precisely where he'd started. With no good idea at all to ensure that Angel stayed in the shadows until the final showdown, then came through when it counted. For the Firm. Against the Light.

Gusting out a sigh, then drawing squiggles in the resulting fog on the glass with the tip of his finger, he broke the problem down, peeling away superfluous layers. At the heart of the struggle was the final goal. Angel had to be brought to Wolfram and Hart's side. Or at the least, drawn away from the Powers that Be. Now that the Oracles were dead and the current Messenger wasn't a conduit to the Powers, merely an instrument of Them, there was a small communication gap in the infrastructure of Angel's organization.

He could work with that.

Running Angel's history through his mind, before and after the advent of his soul, both times, Lindsey manipulated facts like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle until a pattern began to emerge. Angel's soul was a hardy one. It had survived a trip to hell, losing every vampiric love he'd had and walking away from the only human love he'd admitted. Angelus' demon was a wily one. It was chained by the soul but not defeated by it, or Angel would never have been able to wreak the havoc he recently had on Darla and Dru. It was also insatiable. Debauchery and bloodlust barely held in check by the thin thread of Light binding it in place.

He could work with that, too.

Lindsey smiled, no humor but a great deal of appreciation in it. Angel couldn't be bribed into falling off the righteous path. He couldn't be forced into it without it backfiring on everyone around him. Lindsey's mind replayed the recent debacle of a fund-raiser which should have netted his Firm two million dollars and instead left them in the red and his own credibility in jeopardy. Angel couldn't even be tricked into it, although Lindsey had a sneaking suspicion Lila was hard at work trying to find a trick that would work.

Angel had proven he could be tempted into it. Seduced into it.

Examining that thought from every angle, a seasoned eye probing a multifaceted gem for any fatal flaw, Lindsey felt his smile broaden into a grin. With proper planning and careful execution, sprinkled with a few Oscar-worthy performances, he could pull this off. He knew he could. And when he did, Angel would be precisely where the senior partners wanted him to be. Lindsey would be on top. Lila would be dead.

Life would be good.

Turning his back on the glow of midnight LA, Lindsey got to work.

The first opportunity to put his plan in motion was crucial, and he spent a lot of time and effort to ensure that it would go exactly as planned. A nest of Iounier demons was sacrificed to the cause, not that they or anyone other than Lindsey himself knew they were a sacrifice. As far as they knew, they were acting on orders, and only Lindsey knew they'd never collect their pay. Frugal as well as efficient. As far as the bait knew, he was meeting a cute girl behind a bar to continue their conversation and maybe bang up against the wall. As far as Cordelia Chase knew, her vision was true, and the gang was saving an innocent.

While they were playing White Knights in Hancock Park, Lindsey was springing a simultaneous trap in Boyle Heights. Dru and a few friends were playing with the remains of her dinner just off the corner of 6th and Mathews. Three high school jocks wouldn't see another sunrise. Darla was scouting for more tender meat at a Junior High a few blocks down, and the coast was clear.

It paid to have spies. Lindsey's intelligence network was a thing of wonder.

The Grolek demons Dru had been feeding bits of scalp and fleshy bones to snarled in unison at Angel's intrusion. He took out the first two relatively easily, but the third one had a stake. It also had orders from Lindsey. It ignored Dru's high-pitched demands to leave her sire alone, exactly as it was supposed to do, and back-handed her hard enough to break her neck, shutting her up for a little while. Taking her out of the action.

Lindsey's cue.

Angel twisted in place, knocking the Grolek to its knees before it could stake Dru, also as ordered. Two more Grolek came out of the shadows. The timing was impeccable.

Caught in a three-pronged attack, protecting his childe from the stake, unable to allow another to kill her as he was unable to kill her himself, Angel left a hole in his defense. It nearly caused a hole in himself. Regardless of the extra training he'd no doubt been doing, as Lindsey'd never seen him move so quickly and surely, the odds were simply too high. The third and fourth Grolek were down when the fifth put his stake directly where Angel's heart should have been.

Lindsey stopped it with a single gunshot that shattered its hand an instant before the stake could impact its target. Angel took advantage of the Grolek's distraction by ripping out its throat, ending the howl it gave before it could fully escape.

Hunched over Dru's slowly-healing body, Grolek esophagus in one hand and spike dripping gore in the other, Angel stared silently at Lindsey. Lindsey stared back. Then he turned and walked away. Without saying a word.

First objective met. The plan was in motion.

He allowed fifteen days to pass before he moved again. Patience would win him this race, if nothing else could. Well, patience and imagination. And sheer balls.

The second time Lindsey put Angel in danger was a reverse sting. He set himself up as bait. Carefully leaked the time and place of a gathering of Pelter demons, at the bequest of Wolfram and Hart, in a place Angel was sure to overhear it. His planning was meticulous and his performance was stellar.

Pitching his voice to carry to the edge of the shadows where he knew Angel was lurking, Lindsey schooled his expression to impassivity and stepped up on a handy crate. With the streetlight in the alley shining down on him he felt a moment of vulnerability and let it fill him. He had to sell this. Had to make damned sure Angel bought it. Patience was all well and good, but he didn't know how much time he had left and he needed to get this plan in motion.

"The target is a detective with the LAPD," he lied smoothly. The Pelter gang perked up. They liked bashing cops. Bright orange eyes gleamed up at him. "She's getting too close, and she needs to be shut down before she gets any closer. Her name's Lockley."

As if reading from a script, Angel picked up his cue beautifully and stepped menacingly from the shadows to flank the pack of demons. "I don't think so, Lindsey," he growled softly.

Lindsey let his eyes widen then narrow, allowing a sneer to pull his lips into a grimace. "Get the hell out of here, Angel, this isn't your fight!"

Responding like a well-trained Rottweiler, Angel snapped, "It is now!" and swung into battle. Lindsey jumped off the crate an instant before it was crushed to splinters. Ducking behind three struggling bodies and weaving through the crowd, he hesitated, bouncing very lightly on the balls of his feet, waiting for the right moment to intervene. For once, luck was on his side, and his demons did precisely what was expected of them. They almost all died.

Almost.

The second to last Pelter standing whipped a mace from the side of his jacket and flung it directly at the back of Angel's head. Lindsey timed it perfectly, launching himself at Angel and rolling him over and out of the way of the deadly blade. They landed, Angel sprawled flat on his back and Lindsey draped over him like an octopus, just as the final Pelter threw his knife at the place where Angel had been standing. The mace that should have decapitated Angel hit the knife-throwing Pelter with a dull thud, splitting him open like ripe fruit, and the knife he threw impacted the mace-throwing Pelter in the center of the throat, drowning him in his own blood with the next breath he tried to take.

Perfect.

Breathing shallowly through his mouth, in part from the adrenaline rush and in part to keep from gagging on the stench of Pelter gore, Lindsey buried his face against Angel's chest for a minute and let himself shake. The best lies were those which held a kernel of truth, and the kernel that would sell this to Angel was Lindsey's own reaction. So for once he let himself ride the wave of emotion and didn't try to stifle it completely.

Besides, it gave Angel a moment to reflect on what had just happened. He'd just had his ass saved from death at the hands of Wolfram and Hart demonic soldiers ... by Lindsey McDonald. Again. After several moments of waiting and trembling Lindsey finally heard Angel clear his throat.

"Why did you save my life?" The obvious question. Of course. It was Angel, after all. Lindsey managed not to smirk.

"'Cause I'm hot for you, what'd you think?" He managed to sound like a smart ass while thinking the steamiest thoughts he could, trusting Angel to smell the arousal on him, no doubt mixed with sweat, fear, maybe even some of that stinky mortal terror he'd described before. Not waiting for an answer, Lindsey pushed himself up off Angel.

Who sat up, stared at him like he'd just grown three heads, then shook himself like an oversized dog coming in from the rain. Lindsey allowed himself to blush. Then he left with well-calculated embarrassed haste. He could feel Angel watching him all the way around the corner. Down the street, into his car. He even felt those curious eyes on him as he let himself into his new apartment.

He didn't allow himself to smile until he could bury it in his pillow where his invisible onlooker couldn't see it. The plan was well and truly underway. He didn't want to blow it now.

The next eleven days were busy. In his new position he didn't appear in front of a jury any longer, but keeping up with Lila was easily as stressful as a full caseload had ever been. Now that she realized, as he did, that the only chance she had of survival was to hitch her wagon to Angel's star, Lindsey had his hands full keeping her schemes from interfering with his. In addition, he was hitting the books harder than he'd done since he was cramming for the Bar. Every plan needed a little insurance. He knew he'd have to find a way to bind Angel to him even if seduction fizzled. So he looked to the Dark Arts for any option he could find to lead Angel away from the Light.

Magick wasn't Lindsey's strength, but he could sling a potent spell when the need arose. Hopefully it wouldn't explode in his face the way the last major spell had. He couldn't afford to lose too many more body parts. When he combined what he knew of Angel's history with what he found in the Books of Shadows, what he discovered was fascinating. The original curse had been relatively hurried and generally non-specific. Angel found happiness, Angel lost his soul, Angelus came roaring back.

The spell the Rosenberg girl had cast, while based on the same Gypsy Magick, came from a different source and as such had slightly different characteristics. Angel couldn't find sustained happiness without risking his soul. That rarified emotion existed only where perfect love and perfect bliss combined without the taint of the everyday world, the grounding of earthly concerns to smudge the perfection.

In simpler terms, he couldn't give his heart into the keeping of another without sacrificing his soul. Lindsey stared down at the flowing script, tapping the yellowed page with his fingertip. If Angel hadn't been in love with Buffy ... but he had been, and that had been the end of it. There had been one instance where he'd been drugged by a client too foolish with lust to realize what she'd been doing, and Angelus had been allowed a short romp before his posse chained him to the bed until he sobered up. Unfortunately, that lapse had nothing to do with a soul in jeopardy and everything to do with rampant loss of inhibitions. Otherwise the Firm would simply put an LSD drip on Angel's blood supply and he'd be theirs for the taking.

For a bare instant the thought captured him, then he regretfully shrugged it off. The problem with a drug-freed Angelus was the same problem he'd have with a love-freed Angelus. Eventually he'd sober up, and it was still Angelus.

Which led to the major drawback of his primary plan, the underlying reason for his desire for insurance, and the pressing need for Magickal binding. Lindsey didn't trust Angelus not to rip his throat out, drink him dead, then roar off into the darkness leaving Wolfram and Hart on its own for the Apocalypse. The only way Lindsey was going to make it through this alive was to ensure that keeping Lindsey alive was what Angel wanted. If sex wasn't enough to do it, then spells would have to be.

Bright eyes stared through the barrier between the planes of existence, studying the intent posture of the lawyer as the mortal sought the best way to build an unbreakable trap. This wasn't the thing, simply wasn't the thing at all. They'd have to do something about this. The eyes closed, thick dark lashes fanning against porcelain pale cheeks, then sweeping up again as Light traveled through the watcher, bathing the watched, unseen.

This one had depths to him. Could be useful. Could be dangerous. While he'd be a grand ally he posed too great a threat to the Warrior to be allowed to continue on his present course. Not without some changes, at the very least. Damned shame, it'd be, to let all his scheming go to waste, but then, if he'd persist in pissin' in the wind, he was bound to get wet.

If the mortal wouldn't exist in the service of the Powers that Be, then he wouldn't exist a'tall. Steps would have to be taken.

A flash of Light, a rolling of those bright eyes, a fervent wish for a bottle that was never heeded, and the Servant of the Powers that Be got down to business.




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