Title: Me In You
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended
Author's Note: Set post-"Dead End." Quotes from matchbox 20's Mad Season CD.

Madness


You don't know me now -- I kinda thought that you should somehow


The plan had been to go by Caritas, say hey to Lorne, sing a song, find Angel, get in his face, or his pants. It was a flexible plan.

He tossed it out the window as soon as he cleared the city limits, and drove directly to Angel Investigations. Few of the lights were on. Few of the people were home.

"Hi, evil lawyer singing guy," Cordelia greeted him listlessly. Lindsey stared at her, pausing just over the threshold. She looked ... lost.

"I guess it's better than born-again boy. Are you okay?"

She shrugged a shoulder, staring down at the counter, tracing circles on the wood. "Why do you care?" Before he could think up an answer, because he didn't know himself why he'd asked, she glanced up at him. "What do you want? Trust me. Not a good time to pick a fight."

"Not here to fight." Here to fuck, but he didn't tell her that. Her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. "Bad vision?"

"Bad times," she said so softly he had to come further into the room to hear the words. Her eyes dropped back to her compulsively drawing fingertip.

He glanced around. The lobby was so empty it echoed. "Where is everybody?"

"Out. Working a case. Except Angel," she told the counter. "He's upstairs."

"Can I help?" Again with the impulses coming from nowhere. Her other shoulder shrugged.

"No," she told him bluntly. "Nobody can."

"Can I try?" He'd made his slow way to the counter now, and leaned an elbow against it. Her head came up and she looked searchingly at him.

"Might as well." Another shrug, and she gathered her purse, stepping around the counter and pointing with her chin over her shoulder. "He won't listen to any of us. Maybe consorting with the enemy will break through. I'm willing to try anything."

"I'm anything?" It should have been funny, but it felt tragic. Her eyes looked through him.

"Better than nothing." Her gaze hardened. "Hurt him and I'll kill you."

He believed her.

"I'm going home now. He told me to go two hours ago. I guess ..." her voice trailed off and she shrugged a final time, as helplessly as before. She walked out the front door, glancing once at him over her shoulder. He read her warning without having to hear it. Something bad had happened, bad enough to send the gang into depression and turn the vampire into a hermit. As she disappeared down the sidewalk, it dawned on him, too late, to ask who'd died.

It was easy to tell which room was Angel's. It was the only open door on the third floor, and the only one with a light on inside. Good thing, too, because there was no sound, no movement. Lindsey stepped up to the doorway and peered inside.

"Go 'way."

Drunk. Impressive. Considering the speed and strength of a master vampire's metabolism, it took enough whisky to cause fatal alcohol poisoning in a human to get him drunk. Lindsey stepped carefully over the bottles, intact and in pieces, scattered all over the floor.

Angel was slumped in a chair, looking out the window. Lindsey wondered if he'd have enough brain cells left undead to remember to pull the shades in the morning, or if he'd let himself sit there and become a torch. Silently, he walked slowly over to the hassock Angel wasn't using and perched on the corner. Angel continued to stare out the window.

Twenty patient minutes later, Angel said quietly, "I'm a bloody idiot."

Not having any idea what he was talking about, and willing to wait for further information before passing judgment in this instance, Lindsey sat and listened. A few minutes passed before any more words were forthcoming.

"I thought I knew what the order of things'd be. After she came here, it didn't work out, she went home, we didn't talk so much. Then Faith ... happened, and 'twas even less. Her mum passed on, and I went to her, and I held her, but we didn't really say a lot. Now ... don't know what to say now. Too late to say anything. She's gone, and I'm lost. Whatever there was inside me, fighting the ugliness, 's gone and never coming back."

Lindsey caught his breath. Buffy. It had to be the Slayer. Something must have happened to her. He shifted closer, unsure where the urge to comfort came from. Probably a holdover from his childhood. Angel seemed somehow broken, hopeless in a way he'd never seemed before. Younger than he could possibly be, as fragile as a child in a man's body, and Lindsey had never been able to ignore a child in pain.

"Why're you here, Lindsey?" Angel was slurring, but not as badly as before, already sobering up.

"You need me," he answered. Angel finally looked at him. Then laughed, a bitter, loudly mocking sound that hurt more than it should. Lindsey waited until the mild fit of hysteria was over, then continued firmly, "and I need you."

"Ye're outta yer fuckin' mind."

He didn't bother answering that one. He simply sat, and watched, and waited. Angel stared at him for a moment more, then went back to staring out the window.

"I think I get it, now," Lindsey said into the silence when it had gone on as long as he could stand it. "It confused me -- you confused me -- for a long time."

"Tha's no' hard."

Taking the interruption for the rote protest it was, Lindsey plowed on. "The insults, the punches, the threats." He took a deep breath. "Foreplay."

Angel was out of the chair and had knocked him to the ground before his mouth closed over the word. Lindsey lay back on the carpet, trying to catch his breath where the wind had been knocked from him, and stared at the fully-vamped-out Angel staring viciously down at him.

"You stupid son of a bitch. What the hell would I want with you when I've had everything I ever wanted?" And lost it. He didn't have to add that part. Lindsey knew already.

"Because you can want me and not love me." He was still gasping a little, but he managed to get it out clearly enough to cut through the haze of anger and pain clouding Angel's mind. Slowly, the ridged features smoothed out and the fangs retracted.

"It's crazy right now," he continued softly. Angel backed off far enough to lower himself to the hassock, watching without helping or interfering as Lindsey sat up, folding his legs and resting his elbows on his knees, cupping his chin on his hands and looking up from his seat on the floor into Angel's face. "No one can help you with what you're going through. But I can help you ... not think for a little while."

"Why would you want to?"

Lindsey licked his lips. At least Angel hadn't punched him or tossed him out the window. Yet. "Because we both want it. And right now, I think you need it." Angel started to growl, and Lindsey said quickly, "I know I do."

Angel didn't bother answering. He simply moved from the hassock to Lindsey, knocking him flat again. His hands slid under the hem of Lindsey's tee shirt, ripping it to the neck with one yank before pushing it, along with his jacket, down off his arms. Lindsey thought of protesting, for a whole two seconds, until Angel's hands pulled the buttons of his jeans apart and shucked them down his hips with an ease bespeaking long practice. They tangled around his boots, but that didn't stop Angel.

Didn't even slow him down.

Lindsey's hands clutched at Angel's shoulders, trying to get a grip on his shirt, but they slipped on the heavy silk. He made a frustrated noise deep in his throat, and Angel responded impatiently, tearing the shirt off, buttons pinging away all over the carpet. Lindsey let Angel get on with the shirt and concentrated on the trousers. The zipper was a challenge, since Angel was already erect, and was big with it. His fingers brushed hard against cool flesh straining behind white satin, and Angel hissed warning. "Softly," he growled.

"Far from it," Lindsey told him. Instead of the grin he half-expected, Angel growled again. Then he batted Lindsey's hands away and stripped himself, pinning Lindsey to the floor with his body weight as he squirmed out of his clothes. The pressure felt better than anything Lindsey had felt in so long he couldn't remember. Not thinking, getting lost in the feel of soft skin and tensed muscle lying over him, he hooked an arm around Angel's neck and drew himself up to kiss him.

Angel backhanded him.

The shock of the blow, knuckles across jaw reverberating through skull against floor, stunned Lindsey. Angel's face had vamped out again, and he was growling with every unnecessary exhalation. Lindsey opened his mouth to ask what was going on, and Angel moved away just far enough to flip him onto his stomach.

For the first time since he'd met Angel, Lindsey was afraid of him. This wasn't the being he knew. Angel in pain was closer to Angelus than at any other time, given that he wouldn't allow himself to love. It was a lesson Lindsey should have learned with Darla, and had forgotten. If he could cut off his family of friends and torch his sire and his childe when he was in pain, why the fuck wouldn't he rape and murder one insignificant ex-lawyer who'd proven to be an enemy more than once?

No reason. No reason at all.

Lindsey tensed at the first touch, but it didn't hurt. It wasn't Angel's cock, or his fist, or even his fingers. It was his tongue. The cool length of it, slipping into his body, slicking and opening him, nearly made him come, which surprised him, because he hadn't been thinking about his erection when he'd been fearing for his life, but he hadn't lost it as he expected. That said something about himself he wasn't ready to hear, so he concentrated on what was being done to him instead of how his body was reacting to the situation.

The preparation wasn't gentle, but it was prolonged, and if Lindsey had been able to stop moaning long enough to ask, he'd've wondered why Angel didn't just push his way in. Then Angel was pushing his way in, and he wasn't expecting it, and it hurt like hell, but he could handle it. Angel was lying along his back, and Lindsey couldn't breathe, but he didn't really need to, because every time he tried to draw a breath Angel thrust hard and he lost it again.

He was panting and the room was going around in circles. His chest hurt, his chin hurt, and he was getting carpet-burn on his cheek. Angel's hand was hard and knowing on his cock, and he was shuddering and keening through clenched teeth. His head felt like it was going to explode, but his body did before his mind caught up.

Orgasm hurt, was a relief and a burden, as Angel fucked him through it and kept fucking and stroking and pressing on top him until everything went blurry. His eyes closed and his body shook, his fingers dug into the carpet and tears on his face squeezed out through his lashes. He barely hung on to consciousness when Angel grunted and pushed into him, finally coming, finally easing up. There was the whisper of movement against the side of his neck, and Lindsey thought, at last, a kiss, of a sort, of any sort.

Angel bit him.

The sharp bright pain of the bite itself and the sucking sounds accompanying the pulling from the juncture of neck and shoulder all the way to the hinge of his jaw told Lindsey that he wasn't going to live through this. He was more resigned than he expected to be, given the survival instinct he'd always prided himself on, at the probability of death. Then blurry became dark, and the last thought he had as the world went away was that it wasn't supposed to end like that.


I've been changin' - think it's funny how no one knows


"Look what the cat dragged in."

The voice was too close, too loud. Lindsey flinched, hands coming up to shield his face. His entire body hurt, but the worst pains were in his neck, his knees, his jaw, the small of his back, and his ass. He didn't know dead people felt pain. He wondered for a split second if Angel had turned him, then opened his eyes to look directly into sunlight pouring through the windows of the hotel lobby. A shadow moved between his sun-dazzled, and therefore non-vampiric, eyes and the blinding window.

Gunn.

A second shadow joined him. "I thought you'd left town." Wesley.

"He came back last night," a sour voice joined the chorus. "Angel must've kicked him out but he only went as far as the couch before he crashed."

"Crashed is right," Gunn chimed in, leaning against the arm of the sofa and managing to look threatening without doing anything overt, a talent both innate and studied. "Looks like he went backward through the bushes a few times. Dragged by somethin' big'n'ugly."

Lindsey blinked up at him. Swallowed and tried to get his mouth moist enough to say something. Gave up on the effort when the three of them went right on talking around him. He tuned out and tried to figure out what the hell had happened.

Point one : he wasn't dead. Point two : he wasn't a undead, either. Point three : nobody seemed to know that Angel and he'd had sex the previous night. Point four : it was time to get the hell out of there and regroup. Because of point three. Partly point two. And most surprisingly, point one.

Ignoring the demands for explanation from Wesley, for information from Cordelia, and the continued looming from Gunn, Lindsey pushed himself up off the sofa and walked carefully out the front door.

That hadn't gone quite the way he'd expected. It was time to go back to his original plan. Find himself a bolt hole, sleep the day through, then head over to Caritas and figure out what the hell to do next.

Still operating on autopilot, he was surprised to find himself outside the club instead of pulled up in front of a motel. Too damned tired and confused to think any more, he pulled his aching body from the cab of the truck and half-walked, half-staggered to the private entrance. It wouldn't be the first time Lorne had taken in this particular stray; just the first time in a very long time.

He leaned against the doorbell and ended up sagging, not realizing the bell was shrieking endlessly inside. The door was pulled open abruptly, and Lorne stood there, ablaze with indignation. "I said I'm coming!" The words died and he stared down at Lindsey, who'd tumbled through the door when it was opened and landed against his chest. Lorne opened his arms automatically and caught him. "Sugar, what happened to you?"

Lindsey didn't have to tell him. Lorne read all the sorry details without having to hear the words. "Oh, honey. That's not good. For anyone concerned." Lindsey barely heard him. He was close to being asleep on his feet. "Come on inside, babycakes. Sleep first, questions after."

It sounded good to Lindsey. Gentle hands pulled him to a stop, carefully unwound the torn clothing from his body and tumbled him gently onto a bed that felt like it was an acre across. A body giving off enough heat to qualify as a furnace wrapped itself around him, and Lindsey burrowed into the warmth. Sleep came quickly, but not easily.

He was onstage at Caritas, but the tables were empty. Lorne stood at the side of the stage, his back to Lindsey, his head down, arms hanging at his sides. Rejection radiated from him. Lindsey reached a hand out toward him, but let it fall. Lorne didn't notice.

Picking up the guitar lying next to the microphone, he tried to pick out a melody, but the strings were broken. Closing his eyes, he tried to sing, but he couldn't remember the lyrics. Words came out, but they were gibberish.

Mocking applause came from the bar, and he looked up to see Angel, leaning against the counter, raising a glass of blood to him. Laughing. Snarling. Draining the glass, ignoring the rivulets of blood that leaked out the corners of his mouth, catching a fang on the rim of the glass then throwing it with sudden rage at the bottles behind the bar.

Throughout, Lindsey tried to sing. Tried to find his voice, his words, his melody. All he could find was tears, but wasn't that what Angel wanted? Lindsey dropped the guitar and clutched the microphone stand with both hands, staring desperately at Angel.

"I'm trying," he said, his voice breaking. "I'm stronger than you think, and I can do it. I can find my life, and I can live it, and I can be free. You can be free with me. I've changed. You know me. You know me now, and you know who I can be, if you go there with me."

Angel laughed harder, then turned and walked out of the club.

Lindsey had never felt more stupid in his life. Why offer? Angel didn't want him. He shouldn't want Angel.

But he did.