Title: Evil a Lindsey story in the Angelverse
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: no copyright intended.
Spoilers: For Dead End. I love this show.

Calling himself every kind of coward, he had a cup of soup for dinner. He didn't trust himself with a fork in case his hand decided to stab him with it. Dim memories from an old Michael Caine movie about a possessed hand that went around killing people kept creeping up on him and creeping him out.

Demons he could handle. Smile at them, sign contracts with them, shake their hands and buy them drinks. Most of them were the epitome of evil, or they wouldn't need Wolfram and Hart's services. It didn't bother him. It was just business. But when it was moving through his own hand, it was too goddamned close for comfort.

By eight that evening, Lindsey was starting to chastise himself for being paranoid, ridiculous and borderline insane. His hand felt perfectly normal. No urges to reach for his gun and blow his own brains out. He looked down at his hand, then over at his desk, then back at his hand.

Maybe it just wrote evil things, didn't do them.

Deciding it was worth a shot, if only to keep himself from going completely around the bend, he sat down at the desk. Pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen. Held the pen loosely in his right hand and waited for it to channel a killing impulse.

Nothing happened.

He poked it with his left hand. It sat there. Inert. No spirit-writing. No blood lust. No nothing.

He frowned at it. Maybe it had been a random impulse? He'd had random murderous impulses before. Usually around Angel. He beat them down just as he beat down the random sexual impulses. Either would be stupid, and he strove not to be stupid.

Calling himself an idiot, he dug his letter opener out of the drawer and took a deep breath. Stuck the point of it into his right hand.

Other than a prick of blood standing out against the fine skin of his new, odd hand, there was no response. He stabbed it again, twice.

Nothing.

Going for broke, he flipped the letter opener around until it was pointing in the general direction of his chest and waiting for the impulse to strike out. His heartbeat was loud in his ears, but nothing happened at all.

Dropping the opener, he stared at his hand. It didn't look evil. It looked … normal. "What are you?" he asked softly. Later, thinking back on it, he couldn't help but feel grateful he lived alone. If anyone had seen him asking his hand questions, they'd've had him carted off to the loony bin.

It didn't matter. The hand's evil remained in a state of hibernation. Sighing deeply, he went into the kitchen and rinsed off the spots of blood. Flexing his fingers absently, he straightened his shoulders and made a decision. He couldn't figure this one out on his own, and it was too important a question to leave unanswered.

Grabbing his guitar on the way out the door, he made his way to Caritas. Lorne would help him out. He had to.

The demon collecting cover charges had changed, but he sensed no hostility from Lindsey and waved him through. Lorne stood at the bar in a truly atrocious quilted silver metallic jacket that only Lorne could have carried off. He looked up from the bar, his deep red eyes brightening when he saw Lindsey making his way through the early evening crowd.

"Sweet pea!" he crowed. Lindsey winced. Darla had called him that. Lorne frowned, picking up on the mental image and its residual pain. "Sorry, honey. But it's great to see you! And with your instrument, too." He glanced down at Lindsey's right hand. "Both of them. That's wonderful."

"Hi," Lindsey answered shortly. He liked Lorne, but he was too strung out to be polite. It had been a rough couple days. Empathic as always, Lorne patted his shoulder and led him directly to the stage.

"I can tell you're more than up for this. Well, be my guest, babycakes. We’ve missed you around here." He sounded sincere. Lindsey smiled at him.

"Thanks." He couldn't say he'd missed it. It would have been too painful to be here and not be able to make music.

"Of course," Lorne answered the emotion, not the spoken word, as he often did. "Make yourself at home." He bounded gracefully onstage and addressed the audience as Lindsey moved a stool and the microphone stand into position. "It's my very great pleasure to welcome to the Caritas stage your favorite and mine. Blue eyes is back!"

Since it had been some months since the last time Lindsey had sung, the announcement was met with tepid applause from the majority of the crowd and two wolf whistles from a couple long-time regulars. Lindsey smiled briefly, mainly at Lorne, as the host placed the microphone on the stand and waved him elegantly into the spotlight.

As always, the light blanked out the faces staring at him, and he soon lost himself in the sway of the song. The background noise faded, as the audience got caught up with him. He sang lyrics he'd written months ago, before the night of the Raising that had ended so disastrously. It was the first time he'd sung it anywhere outside his bedroom walls.

"Pretty girl on every corner, sunshine turning the air to gold. Warm, it's always warm here. I can't take the cold." He never had been able to. It was one reason why he'd come west -- he'd hated the Oklahoma winters. Cold meant death, of people, of hopes, of dreams. "This whole world shines so brightly," not that the warmth was any closer to life. It covered more evil than he'd known even as a child. Dreams could, and did, die as harshly in California as they did in the Panhandle. He fought back the thoughts and concentrated on the music.

"Pretty, as a picture, settles me with love and laughter. I can't feel a thing." When had he lost the ability to feel? He'd thought he'd regained it with Darla, but she'd been a substitute. For what, he wasn't sure. Maybe some of those dead dreams.

Maybe Angel.

"There goes me with love and laughter, and I can't feel a thing." Hell, when was the last time he'd even laughed, and meant it? His voice held a cry that added poignancy to the lyrics. "Sky's gonna open, people gonna pray and crawl." And it won't do them any good at all. "Sky's gonna open, gonna rain down in lightning. Sky's gonna open, people gonna pray and sing." And it won't do us any good at all. "Oh, I can't feel …"

He flashed his hand across the strings in the final chord, and bowed his head. He felt naked, like he'd shown much more to Lorne, and all of them, than he could afford to show. The wash of applause was quite a lot more enthusiastic than that which had greeted him. He barely acknowledged it. That wasn't why he was here.

He made a beeline for Lorne, who greeted him with a wide smile, white teeth vivid against red lips and green skin. "Golly, pilgrim, it sure is good to have you back in the saddle." Lindsey ignored the cowboy humor. Lorne had needled him kindly with that since the first time he'd sung. Then he handed Lindsey a drink. "Your favorite. TnT. The imported."

Impatient with the civilities, Lindsey took the glass and stared up into Lorne's face. "Look, I got a crazy man's hand here, wants to kill … someone, maybe me. What do you see?"

As usual, he didn't have a clue how to interpret the answer he got. "Well, you know what they say." Lorne took Lindsey's shoulder and steered him toward the bar. "The hand is quicker than the eye. You'll get that later." His expression must have made it clear he hadn't understood.

Confused but undeterred, Lindsey barely repressed desperation as he told the host, "Look, I need help." He was startled when Lorne didn't answer.

Angel did.

"I'll say. You might want to start with his singing."

Lindsey glared over at Angel. He was vaguely aware there were others on the periphery of his vision, but he concentrated on Angel. It always seemed to be that way.

A girl stepped up close to him, and he glanced briefly at her. She looked stunned.

"Hi, you probably don't remember me. Cordelia. I know you're evil …" There was that word again! After a little pause when he didn't react, she kept going. "… and everything, but that was just so amazing."

He continued to not react. He was too busy glaring at Angel. A Black man to the left of Angel piped up. "That was kinda tight." Lindsey absently tagged him as Gunn but didn't answer.

Then the Englishman peered around Angel's shoulder. "Terrific. Really." Wesley. He sounded terribly sincere. Angel didn't appear to appreciate all their appreciation.

"Is everyone drunk?"

Lindsey continued ignoring everyone but Angel and addressed the host. "What's he doing here?" He could no more keep the snarl out of his voice than he could voluntarily stop breathing. "Huh?" He turned to challenge Angel directly. "What are you lookin' at?" He could hear his accent thicken, but also as usual when it came to Angel, he couldn't do a thing to control it.

Lorne threw his hands up. "Easy, easy, children. I don't allow violence in my club. Angel's here for the same reason you are."

Instantly suspicious, Lindsey shared a glare between the host and the vampire. "How's that?"

"Two enemies, one case." Lorne sounded almost dreamy. "All coming together in a beautiful, buddy-movie kind of way."

Gunn gave voice to Lindsey's thought before Lindsey could. "They supposed to work together on this?"

Lindsey could hear his voice hardening and rising as he responded, directly the vitriol at Lorne. "Work with him?" He glared over at Angel again. "Work with him?!"

This time, Lorne sounded wistful. "Am I the only one here who saw 48 Hours?"

It was more than Lindsey could take, on top of the day he'd already had. The host made a lousy matchmaker. "I've got a murderous hand on me, and you're telling me to team up with the guy who cut mine off in the first place?"

Lorne shook a finger in his face. Lindsey was irresistibly reminded of his mother doing the same thing to him more times than he could count. "I'm telling you what's what, sugar. What you do with it is up to you."

What he had to do was get the hell out of there before he did anything really stupid, like try to stake Angel in the middle of Caritas and have Lorne's bouncers get medieval on his ass. Taking a single gulp of his drink, he slapped it on the bar next to Cordelia. Turning away from Lorne, he glared daggers at Angel and shouldered his way through the crowd toward the steps leading out of the club.

"If I see you outside the club, I'm going to kill you." Angel smirked at him.

Lindsey stomped up the stairs and out into the blessedly cool night with Lorne's voice following him out the door, something about resentment being an ugly emotion. Yeah, well, ugly was what he was going to visit on Angel if he got in Lindsey's way on this one. He made his way back to his car. Since he hadn't been able to get any help from Lorne, he's going to have to do it the old fashioned way.

Break, enter, cast and steal.

Heading back to the firm, he made a short stop at a small supplies shop on one of the darker side streets off the Strip. Paying for his purchases in cash, he nodded his thanks to the Greilor demon in Judy Garland drag at the cash register and continued on his way to Wolfram and Hart. Once there, he climbed up the side staircase toward his office. Safely inside, he locked the door and placed his small shopping bag with the embossed pentagram on the side in the middle of his desktop. Taking a deep, head-clearing breath, he calmed his thoughts and centered himself.

Casting the circle was second nature. Adding the layers of protection that would enable him to wrap a glamour around himself was tougher, but doable. He pulled a blank identification card from his wallet and laid it to the side of the small bowl of indigo and cream powder in the center of his desk.

Chanting softly in Aramaic, he watched the powders swirl together. They traced words in the air that he committed to memory, then laced the magnetic strip along the back of the card, sinking into the black ink until they disappeared. He waited respectfully for the encryption code spell to finish, then opened his laptop and blessed it. The metal and plastic hummed under his hand, the reassuring buzz of live magick.

Reed's own password was too deeply protected to steal, but Charlie Spenser's hadn't been. Using Charlie's account, he hacked into the secure server and stole Reed's password. Backing out as delicately as he'd hacked in, careful to leave as few traces as possible to cover himself and ensuring that the few traces he left would lead to the other man, Lindsey powered down his computer.

The final spell was multi-layered and trickier to pull off. The glamour he cast to disguise his image as Phil's to the security cameras worked with no problem, and he slid through the halls like a ghost, secure in the knowledge that any stray electronic eyes pointed his direction would see a guard, not a lawyer. The enchanted identification card worked like the charm it was, and the door opened to his touch. Once at the threshold, the secondary layer of magickal defenses kicked in. Spells shifted over and around him, disguising his presence to the myriad of unearthly defenses Reed had erected throughout his office.

It would put a real crimp in Lindsey's plans to suddenly go up in a shower of sparks, or disintegrate into a pile of ashes, just because he tripped the wrong invisible wire.

Once at Reed's desk, the final glamour cut in. His fingerprints disappeared as he booted up the computer, and the electrical circuits pulsed after each bit of data he retrieved, covering his prying completely. The file on Lilah was the first he opened, out of sheer curiosity, as well as to see what the Firm had on her plans for himself. It confirmed his suspicions.

Lilah was scheduled to become demon kibble by noon on Friday.

Always intent on checking his facts, the better to manipulate them, Lindsey opened his own file next. Promotion was definitely on the agenda. Along with future plans, and he didn't like the looks of them. He was well-respected, yes, but one of the main reasons he was scheduled for promotion over destruction was due to Angel's continuing interest in him. Wolfram and Hart remained intent on the final turning of Angel, and Lindsey would either orchestrate it or be the bait for it. It was immaterial to the Firm which option had to be taken.

It made a world of difference to Lindsey.

'No way in hell, not again,' rang through his mind as he closed the file and ran through Reed's to-do list until he found a folder for the clinic where he'd gotten his apparently evil hand. Perhaps it was evil with periods of suspended animation. He shrugged. One way or another, he'd get the answers he needed. He was good at digging.

A few moments later he found payment records for a flunky named Roy Berger, used by the Fairfield Clinic, paid by Wolfram and Hart. Paid handsomely, too. He checked the cross references. The man was a parole officer. Lived in an apartment in Culver City. Not far away. Memorizing the address, he powered down the computer, muttering a few words of archaic Greek over it to set the confusion spell in the circuitry.

Slipping out of the office, he dissipated spells as he went. He'd been careful when casting them to ensure that his trace signature mirrored Lilah's, so if the Shamen did catch anything, it would smell like her, not himself. Out in the hall, he was turning toward the back stairs to leave when he heard a movement. Reaching out with his mind, he felt the residual brush of magick. Knowing he was still Phil to the cameras, he tracked the sound to the file room.

Somebody else was working late.

Lilah, looking more desperate than was becoming but not as desperate as the circumstances would warrant, was going through files Lindsey himself had copied months before, during the Brewer case when he'd thought he was going to leave Wolfram and Hart and would need protection when he ran. He wondered if she knew about the records on computer disks down in the vault, then shrugged it off. She'd get the protection she could find. It would have to be enough.

Maybe.

Turning options over in his mind, he backed away from the file room and left her to her work. Once out of the Firm's camera range he said a few words and sketched a figure in the air, effectively dispersing the final spell. Climbing into the Jag he headed for Culver City.

Parking outside the apartment building where Roy lived and glancing around critically as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, Lindsey mentally calculated bribes. Judging by the surroundings, it shouldn't cost him much for the answers he needed. The guy'd probably be glad for the money.

Stopping outside number 34, he knocked firmly. After a moment, the sound of the television inside muted and he heard a muffled voice.

"Who is it?"

Lindsey put confidence and harmlessness in his voice. "You don't know me. My name's Lindsey McDonald. I work for Wolfram and Hart."

The door opened, and suspicious dark eyes in a boxer's face peered over the chain at him.

"What do you want?"

Looking as innocent as possible, Lindsey answered, "I want to talk to you. Just for a moment. Can I come in?"

Roy let him in, watchfully. Lindsey glanced over his shoulder and caught the man peering out into the hallway.

"No, it's okay," Lindsey reassured him. "I'm alone."

"Professional habit." Roy closed the door and followed him into the room, still watching him suspiciously. His hands were behind his back. Lindsey suspected they were either bunched into fists or holding some sort of weapon. "I see a lot of lowlifes."

Lindsey made himself as non-threatening as possible, while still projecting confidence. "Yes, I guess you would, being a parole officer." He switched into persuasive mode, a strategy that had given him the best won-cases percentage in the Firm. "Listen, this is completely off the record. I had a procedure done at Fairfield Clinic. I know they've paid you to do things for them in the past. And I don't care about that. What I do care is finding out where they get their body parts."

Roy didn't look persuaded, and his reply didn't make sense. "What's the code?"

"Code?" Lindsey asked, confused by the question.

"Well, if you're with Wolfram and Hart, you'll know the code."

Lindsey was getting impatient. "Look, I'm a lawyer there, but this is not my case. I don't know the code. We don't need a code. I can pay you-"

Wrong answer. Roy slapped Lindsey hard enough to send him reeling across the room and slamming into a table. As he tried to rise Roy punched him to the floor. Before he could get his breath back, Roy yanked him up by his shirt and pinned him against the wall, bringing a gun up to point it between his eyes at point-blank range. So that's what he'd had behind his back. Lindsey felt himself getting light-headed from the blows and wondered what the fuck had just happened. Trying to focus on Roy's now-explicitly threatening face, tasting blood from a split lip trickling down the right side of his mouth, Lindsey tried to regain some control of the situation.

"Now you got three seconds to tell me what the game is," Roy growled.

Giving up on persuasion, Lindsey tried pleading. "There is no game, all right? This is about me!"

Wrong answer again. Roy wasted no more time beating Lindsey up. He simply cocked the gun and said, "Good-bye."

Lindsey involuntarily shut his eyes, knowing he was about to die. A crashing noise distracted them both as a crate came flying through the window. Roy plucked Lindsey away from the wall, using him as a shield with an arm around his neck and holding the pistol rock-steady at his temple. He dragged Lindsey over to the window. Apart from the rage and terror roiling through him, Lindsey had a sick feeling he knew precisely who was responsible for that crate.

"Friend of yours?" Roy asked him unpleasantly.

Not if he's who I think he is, Lindsey thought, then choked out, "No, he's -" Lack of oxygen and Roy's impatience cut him off before he could say more.

Putting his head out the now-open window, Roy yelled "Hey! I'm about to put a bullet in your buddy's brain here!" Getting no response, he made the idiot mistake of leaning to look out the window. "I got him," he muttered, more to himself than to Lindsey, who would have told him better if he'd been able to squeeze a word out past the beefy arm clamped around his throat. "I know I got him."

The choking noise Roy made as a rope came out of nowhere and made a noose around his neck was one of the sweetest sounds Lindsey had ever heard, regardless of the fact that the source of the rope was the biggest pain in the ass Lindsey had ever met. Still, he took advantage of Roy's sudden inattention to twist out of his grip and take the gun away from him. Whirling away out of reach, he saw exactly who he expected to see holding on to the ends of the rope.

Angel.

Lindsey still yelped at him incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

As sarcastically as usual, Angel replied, "Gee, I don't know. Saving your life?"

Instantly incensed, Lindsey barked back, "I don't need you to save my life!" Not sure who he wanted to hurt more, he waved the gun wildly between Angel and Roy. Now it was Roy's turn to look nervous.

"Hey! Watch it with that thing!"

The sarcasm got thicker as Angel continued, ignoring Roy for the moment to concentrate on Lindsey. "A little gratitude, Lindsey, goes a long way."

By that time Lindsey was so pissed off he couldn't make his tongue work right. Sputtering, his accent back with a vengeance, he howled, "You've got no business -- why -- why aren't you tryin' to kill me?!" Fighting to control himself, he tried not to wave the gun, but the need to move was too strong to resist. He punctuated his words with fierce chopping motions, wishing the gun was a stake, wishing Angel was on the end of it.

Angel sounded ridiculously offended. "Excuse me. I'm on a case here, Lindsey. Does everything always have to be about killing you all the time?"

Roy chose that moment to try to make his move. In as conciliating a voice as he could manage while arched over a windowsill between a madman choking him and another madman holding his own gun on him, he said in a patented hostage negotiator's tone, "I can see you guys got issues, so I'll just -" Angel pulled back on the rope, choking his voice off.

More than half afraid Angel would accidentally yank Roy's head off before he could learn anything useful, Lindsey reacted with pure unadulterated fury. "That's my lead! You're choking my lead!!"

Angel's mocking response added fuel to the fire raging through Lindsey. "He's my lead! He's my lead!" he sang in a sickening falsetto. "What, are we on the school yard around here? Now look, if you want to get to the bottom of this, you're going to have to learn to play with others." Lindsey could feel himself starting to shake. Angel spoke directly to Roy. "Okay, look. I'm going to loosen the rope here, and you're going to tell me all about your parolee Bradley Scott."

Caught off-guard, Lindsey asked "Who?"

"The guy whose hand you're wearing," Angel informed him gleefully. "You might want to listen up."

This, of course, rendered Lindsey instantly furious again. Even as he was yelling, he wondered why his much-vaunted self-control always seemed to disappear around Angel. "You don't tell me what to do!"

Angel told Roy, aimed directly at Lindsey, "He's so immature."

Fed up to the back teeth, Lindsey screamed, "Shut up!!"

As usual, Angel ignored Lindsey's fury and told Roy, "We're waiting."

Roy was not any more forthcoming with Angel than he'd been with Lindsey, a fact that cheered Lindsey up disproportionately to the situation. "I'm not telling you zip. You can kill me but Wolfram and Hart'll do a lot worse."

"Kill you? Why would I kill you," Angel vamped out and leered evilly at Roy, "when I could live off you for a month?" Then he pinched Roy's cheek and asked Lindsey happily, "Can't you just taste that butter fat?"

Roy's obvious panic deflated Lindsey more than he cared to admit. Torn between repulsion and awareness of just how much he got off on Angel vamping out, he blurted, "You are really gross, you know that?" It was always like that. Something about Angel, the menace, the power, shit, maybe the juvenile humor, something about him turned Lindsey on. It was enough to make Lindsey wish he'd staked Angel the very first day he'd shown up at the Firm. Except even then he hadn't been able to do it.

Damn it.

Back in the present, Roy was freaking out. Not unexpected, given the option of becoming a living blood bank for a maniacally cheerful vampire. "I'll tell ya! I'll tell ya! Scott stole some bearer bonds. Went to jail. When he got paroled, Wolfram and Hart had him assigned to me."

Lindsey listening, fascinated, thinking hard. When it came right down to it, he didn't care …much … who got the information as long as he found out what he needed to know.

Angel continued to grill Roy. "According to your file, he was a fugitive no-show. But you saw him, didn't you?"

Roy gasped "Just once."

Trying to make sense of this, Lindsey probed, "You took him to Fairfield Clinic?"

The answer surprised him. "No, I didn't take him there."

"Where?"

Roy made a helpless sound. "Just some address! I don't know what they do there, and I don't want to know."

Angel pulled Roy backward through the window, tossed him over his shoulder and headed down the fire escape, calling over his shoulder to Lindsey, "Got any duct tape?"

Lindsey stepped over to the window and stared down at the shape effortlessly hauling ass down the ladder. As was par for the course where the vampire was concerned, he felt two steps behind the action. Taking a deep breath, he pivoted on his heel and headed for the stairs. Meeting them at the car, he watched Angel tie Roy up and toss him in the trunk. Angel gave him a bright, interrogatory look. Lindsey glared back.

"Must've left it in my other suit."

Angel shook his head in mock despair, then pulled a roll out from under Roy, saying cheerfully, "That's why I always come prepared!" as he ripped off a strip and plastered it over Roy's mouth. Then he stuffed the hapless man down flat in the trunk and slammed the lid closed. Lindsey didn't wait for him, simply stomped around to the passenger side of the convertible and threw himself in the seat. He felt like a little kid, all pissed off and nobody to hit.

At least, nobody he could hit who wouldn't hit him back, a hell of a lot harder.

They sat at the curb for a moment, Lindsey steadfastly refusing to meet Angel's stare. Eventually, Angel reached over, grabbed his chin in an iron grip and jerked his head around. Before Lindsey could move or protest, Angel darted forward and licked away the streak of blood from his split lip.

Lindsey's breath caught in his throat.

He didn't get the chance to react before Angel let go of him, put the car in gear and pulled out into traffic. Unable to think of a thing to say, Lindsey ground his teeth together and glared out into the night. His mind kept replaying the rasp of tongue against his skin, and every time it did he got a little angrier.

His attitude didn't impact Angel in the least. As they drove, he kept up his irritatingly cheerful attitude. Lindsey wanted to stake him. Or fuck him. Or something. Not sure what would come out of his mouth if he opened it, he kept it clamped shut. Finally Angel must have gotten bored, because he started a one-sided conversation.

"Beautiful night, isn't it? I love it in May, before it starts to get real hot, but after the April showers. Not that I see much of the May flowers, being out at night and all, but it's still nice."

Great. Stuck in a car with Angel, who'd just made the vampiric equivalent of a pass at him, and they were talking about … the weather. Lindsey could feel Angel looking at him, but he continued to stare straight ahead. Doing his best to ignore Angel's babbling, he tried to sort out his tangled emotions. He mentally cursed the fact that nearly getting killed always seemed to leave him with a hard-on, and he determinedly blamed the adrenaline rush for his arousal, not Angel's surprise lick-attack.

"A funny thing happened the other day."

Lindsey tried to tune out the storyteller pestering him from the driver's seat. It didn't work, but he didn't let it show. No need to give Angel any encouragement, when he obviously needed none.

"A guy picks up a butcher knife. Sticks it in his own eye. Yow!" Lindsey barely controlled his start at the yelp. Angel continued, oblivious. "I guess he went to the same clinic you did." A chill ran down Lindsey's spine. "Your hand hasn't been doing anything …funny lately, has it?"

He couldn't stand it any more and gave in, shooting Angel a killing glare. It bounced right off. Typical. Angel continued to ooze false sympathy. It was making Lindsey feel a little sick.

"It's none of my business, but you don't seem all that happy."

This being more than any human could stand without responding, and not having a stake at hand, Lindsey finally broke. His accent thick as maple syrup, he growled, "Y'know, I know you're mister Save-a-Soul now, but at least you used to throw down with your enemies. What do you want to do now? You want to share?" He infused the word with every ounce of disgust he could muster. Angel gave him a sympathetic look and Lindsey barely restrained himself from walloping the bastard upside the head.

His voice tantalizingly gentle, pissing off and turning on Lindsey simultaneously, Angel mused, "I guess it's a lot to carry. I mean, losing Darla, and even me, in a way," the world fuzzed out as Lindsey considered how bereft those words actually made him feel, before Angel continued, "as a place to focus your rage."

Rage? Lindsey groaned silently. Angel had no idea! Rage was only one tiny little part of a whole bucketful of things Lindsey focused on him.

"It's ironic. I mean, here you are." Angel kept up the brisk patter, unknowingly giving Lindsey the chance to catch his breath from the mental images of all the different kinds of attention he'd like to focus on Angel. Manacles, satin sheets, and stakes all had their place. Angel droned on. "Young and healthy, good job, new hand. It seems like the more you get the less you have. Am I getting through here?"

Lindsey stared determinedly ahead, not sure what he'd do if he actually allowed his tensed muscles to respond. Kill him? Kiss him? Tough call.

"You just keep on moping. You're good at that."




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