Title: Want Versus Need
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Spoilers: Incorporates and immediately follows "Darla."

He slowed to a saunter, then peered around the hall as nonchalantly as possible.

Nobody was even looking at him sideways.

"Holland," he whispered, a sub-vocalization that barely disturbed the air.

Plans and counter-plans, wheels within wheels, and he was a step behind, as always. He took the stairs up to his office, not the elevator. He needed the time to think. Not that he had much to offer, by way of explanation. I acted on my instincts? I didn't want to see her dead? I thought the project was more important than a single, pushy, incredibly stupid and now very dead guard? We can't use her as bait for Angel if we kill her? If we had to raise her again the schedule would be thoroughly fucked?

Lindsey still didn't have a single idea what he was going to say when he opened the door to his office to find, as expected, Holland Manners leaning against his desk, not-smiling at him. He had a complacent air about him, as if Lindsey had done precisely what was expected of him. Normally, that air reassured Lindsey. At the moment it gave him the jitters.

Holland was holding a remote in his hand. There was a large television/VCR on a wheeled cart in the middle of the office. Lindsey had a sick feeling he knew what tonight's feature film would be. When he'd cracked, in the privacy of his office, that he and Darla should have their own series, this wasn't exactly what he'd meant.

Holland waved him to a chair. "Have a seat, Lindsey. There's something I'd like to show you."

He watched in stoic silence. It was as pathetic as he'd expected it to be. Himself, at an impasse, losing control of Darla, of the guard, of the whole damned situation. Darla blindsiding him, himself staggering around like an idiot, then grabbing her up and lurching out the door. It'd make a good keystone kops comedy if it hadn't been real. Lindsey felt like throwing up. His head dipped and he cradled his aching forehead in his hand.

"You not only allowed her to escape, you facilitated it." Holland sounded more resigned than angry. Lindsey's nerves quivered.

"Things were confusing." It was a typical McDonald understatement, the best he could come up with under the circumstances. His life was a mess and his head was exploding, and he more than half expected Holland to call in Phil and have Lindsey's head blown off for real this time. The way he felt at the moment, it might be an improvement.

"Things are often confusing for you, aren't they, Lindsey?"

Smug son of a bitch. There were times when he entertained the notion that killing his boss would be worth the hell he'd go through afterward. Usually right after he'd done something amazingly stupid and Holland was calling him on it. Like now.

"Especially, it seems, when it comes to this woman. You've allowed yourself to be ruled by your emotions."

There wasn't a thing he could say to that. Deciding it was time for a change of subject, as much as possible, Lindsey asked, "What about the guard?"

Holland was offhand. "Family's been notified. The police have a suspect in custody. It's handled." He straightened away from the desk and walked to the door. Lindsey didn't look up. So the next words took him by surprise. "You're off this project, Lindsey."

His hand raked his hair back from his face as he stared up at his boss. "I can find her!"

"You don't have to find her." Holland was looking amused again. "We picked her up two blocks from here."

Unable to stop himself, the words tumbled out, "She's safe?"

The amusement changed to exasperation. "We won't discuss it any further."

It was too much. After everything he'd gone through, everything he'd lost on this project, Lindsey couldn't contain his anger. "If you're thinking of handing this project over --"

Holland interrupted him again. Lindsey was getting used to never getting the chance to finish a sentence.

"This situation has gone too far out of control. I'm terminating the project." There was finality in Holland's voice. It stopped Lindsey in his tracks.

"Terminating?" He was impressed, distantly, that his voice didn't shake. Holland gave him a disgustingly kind look.

"Go home, Lindsey. Get some rest. We'll start fresh tomorrow."

He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watched Holland leave, silently closing the door behind him. It was a combination of failure, unfulfilled expectations, and the difficulty of thinking hard through a headache that threatened to incapacitate him. Taking a deep, calming breath, using his underlying anger to fuel his determination as he'd done his entire life, he faced the inevitable.

There wasn't another damned thing he could do. He had to call Angel.

Gathering his briefcase, he fished for his cell phone in the side pocket and headed slowly for the elevator. Ignoring the 'Good night' from the guard in the lobby, he shouldered his way through the door and walked through the quiet, late night stillness of the parking garage. He was nearly to his car, balancing his briefcase with his prosthetic hand and listening for the ring connecting him to Angel Investigations, swallowing his pride in his fear for Darla and his need for Angel, when the floor went out from under his feet.

His head threatened to explode from the strain of the cord around his throat and the lack of oxygen. Angel's voice purred in his ear as his feet scrabbled for purchase on the concrete.

"Where is she?"

Choking around the garrote, Lindsey tried to tell him. "I was just -- " The cord pulled tight, taking him to his toes, cutting off his air. This was even worse than being interrupted by Holland. At least his boss let him breathe. Most of the time.

"Nope," Angel drawled. "You get just enough breath to tell me where she is. My advice? Don't waste it."

God, but the vampire could be stupid sometimes. In total frustration, unable to talk around the garrote cutting into his throat, exacerbating the bite wound Darla had given him that afternoon, Lindsey held the cell phone up so Angel could hear the tinny voice coming from it.

Cordelia Chase's perky voice sounded utterly out of place. "Angel Investigations! We help the helpless! How may we help you? ... Hello?"

The cord finally eased and Lindsey gasped for breath. "I was trying to call you. They're gonna kill her. You gotta stop it. Alright? She needs you. Please."

The cord tightened. His feet were dangling off the floor again. He was getting damned sick and tired of this.

"We both know you're a liar." Angel obviously needed some reassurance. He loosened the cord and Lindsey hastened to give it to him.

"It's true!" He put every ounce of sincerity he'd ever owned into the words. Angel glared at him.

"Where?"

Lindsey talked as fast as he could, given the circumstances. "At an abandoned bank on Figueroa and Ninth. Wolfram and Hart own the building. I'm pretty sure that's where they're gonna take her." As expected, even before he could finish the damned sentence, the cord tightened again. He gurgled and choked. Fuck, that hurt.

"You're pretty sure?" Angel sounded incredulous. Lindsey lost his temper, flailing his arms around in exasperation, unable to do much but hang there and splutter.

"I'm not exactly in the loop on this, alright?" If his tortured throat could have allowed him to yell, he would have. "That's where they do this sort of stuff. It'll be underground where the vaults used to be!" He could feel the cold bulk of Angel at his back, hand rock-steady on the cord that was strangling him. Angel was staring at the length of his neck, arched back and stretched by the pull of the garrote. Lindsey couldn't believe it, but he was actually getting hard. He wanted to cry. Wanted to cuss. Wanted to disown his traitorous body and kill something.

Starting with Angel.

Those eyes never left his throat. "If this is a trick," Angel growled in his ear, "just know I'll be coming back for you."

He finally dropped the cord, and Lindsey with it, right at his feet. Lindsey slid down the trunk of his car, hand going automatically to rub at his constricted throat, staring up at Angel through the hair falling in his face with a complicated mixture of lust, anger, appeal on Darla's behalf and pure hatred on his own. Angel stared first at his neck, then down at his ass. Lindsey shivered.

"Hell, I just might come back for you anyway."

Angel turned on his heel and stalked away. Lindsey stared after him, not sure if that had been a threat or a promise. He hated him. Wanted him. Hoped he got to Darla before the thugs could kill her.

More than half-hoped Angel'd come back for him after all.

It was a very long drive home. It was an even longer time before he dropped off to sleep. When he did, he dreamt of want, and need, and death, and blood, and strong hands holding him down.

Fresh would not be the best description for him the next morning. Death barely warmed over was much more apt.

Still angry, still on edge, both exhausted and wired, it took a second for the sight that met his eyes at the receptionist's desk to register.

Holland. Shaking hands with a smiling, balding, hook-nosed man. A man he remembered very clearly. A dead man whose body he'd stepped over in the course of Darla's botched escape. He stood there, rooted to the carpet, until Holland looked over at him.

Lindsey left the door open, dropping his briefcase on the desk and turning to watch his boss walk into the office. He put his hand in his pocket so the fist he couldn't unclench wouldn't be quite so noticeable. Holland turned to face him, mouth starting to move, and Lindsey beat him to the punch.

"You re-notify the family?"

There was that pseudo-fatherly gleam again. Lindsey wanted to gouge Holland's eyes out with a letter opener.

"Lindsey -- "

This time he interrupted Holland. "You played me. You played her."

Holland looked impressively reasonable. "We had to make you believe it, Lindsey."

Lindsey wasn't buying it. "Why?"

"Because she had to believe it. Because Angel has to." Holland exuded sincerity. It was grotesque. "The crisis needed to be real."

Rage burst the dam on his tongue, and words spilled out. "You think that now that you've driven her back to him that she's going to give him that perfect moment of happiness? That he's going to come over to our side? Won't happen. He's noble. He'll never take advantage of her. Not in this state. Not now." He wasn't the only one who'd fucked up here. Holland didn't appear the least perturbed. He never did. Lindsey was more convinced than ever that the man wasn't human.

"Lindsey, you don't understand our friend at all. We know there's no prospect for physical intimacy here, so you needn't torture yourself."

Over Darla? Or over Angel? Lindsey didn't ask, and Holland didn't press the issue. He stepped forward toward his boss, who straightened up to face him, recognizing a challenge when he saw one.

"Then what do you expect him to do?" He was as calm and reasonable as Holland himself. Lindsey saw the light of approval in his mentor's eyes.

"What he will do. What he must do." He smiled. "Save her soul."

Holland smiled genially and walked out. Lindsey stared after him in disbelief. Save her soul? What the hell was he talking about? Slowly, mind spinning, Lindsey walked over to his desk and settled into his chair. Angel had to come through. Had to save Darla's life. But save her soul?

The soul she called a cancer eating her from the inside out?

That wasn't what Darla wanted. Darla wanted to know who she was again. Darla wanted to be Darla again, not some quivering, fear-filled, fully-soulled human. Lindsey stared at the documents on his desk, watching the words that made no sense blur into a hieroglyphic tangle.

How on earth did Holland expect Angel to save Darla's soul?

The question was still biting at him that night as he parked at home and walked into his living room. Exhausted by the last few weeks, especially the last two days, Lindsey tossed his briefcase on the table and consigned Wolfram and Hart and all its schemes to hell where they belonged. He was going to bed. Maybe in the morning his subconscious would have made some sense of all this nonsense.

Then again, it was one of Holland's plans. He'd probably never figure out what the hell was going on.

The touch of soft lips against his bruised throat pulled him out of a formless nightmare. There was a body in bed with him, soft, slender, feminine. Warm hands ran over his chest, sweetly-scented bright hair brushed over his jaw. A tongue swabbed lightly over the bite mark she'd left behind, and he took a deep breath.

"He got there in time."

The mouth stilled against his skin. Darla raised her head and stared down at his face. He brought his hand up and touched her cheekbone gently, tracing a bruise.

"Let's not talk about him, Lindsey." Her voice sang seduction to him, and he allowed himself to be drawn under by it willingly. They made love slowly, with a tenderness that was foreign to him and studied to her. Her hands were everywhere, knowledgeable, wanton hands that perfectly complimented her equally wicked and knowing mouth. When she finally pinned him against the linens and straddled him, he was panting, skin sheened with sweat, hair falling in his eyes. She smiled down at him as she sank down on him. He barely held a scream back behind his teeth.

"Lindsey. Lindsey, my pretty boy. My lovely, lovely boy, Lindsey. Such potential, my Lindsey, my lovely Lindsey."

The words were in cadence with her movements, and his world narrowed to the feel of her around him, her fingertips on his mouth, the weight of her breasts in his hands. Her thighs flexing over him, the hot slick clench of her around him, her voice winding through his mind, bending his thoughts to her will as her body subjugated his to hers.

In the dark, holding her against him in the aftermath, kissing her temple, her cheek, burying his face in her hair, he heard her whisper against him. "You have to help me, Lindsey. You will help me get what I want."

"Anything you need," he murmured back to her, and felt her smile against his skin.

When he woke the next morning, she was gone. He had a gut feeling she'd be back.

The work day passed in a productive haze. Energized from some of the best sex he'd ever had, vaguely upbeat about the future, he cut through his workload as if he was a demon himself. He argued a plea bargain down to the absolute minimum and one of the Firm's most useful clients walked out the door a free man, well, demon. He hammered out contracts that freed up for purchase two properties that would be extremely useful to Wolfram and Hart, one for the profit potential, one for the hidden wellspring of Power that could be put to use there. He found an incantation he'd been researching for months, and Holland was actually legitimately impressed with him. For the first time since the Raising, since he'd lost his hand, since he'd discovered that lust was as strong a tie from him to Angel as hatred, Lindsey felt like himself again.

That feeling ended abruptly at the door to his garage.

At least this time Angel didn't have a garrote at his throat. Not that it mattered. Big hands clamped on to his shoulders and pinned him to the wall. His feet still left the pavement. Lindsey barely managed to get his arm up in time to keep his face from bashing into the stone molding on the side of the wall. His prosthetic hand pressed into his cheek, the unyielding knuckles bruising his skin.

"Where is she?"

Deja vu all over again. Lindsey closed his eyes. He knew that Darla had escaped the Firm. Knew that Angel had let her down, even if he wasn't sure how. Knew that any moment Angel would put it together. Figure it out.

Smell her on him.

"I know about your clever little plan to trick me into making her a vampire again."

Lindsey froze. Holy shit. So that's what Holland meant when he said that Angel would save her soul. Create in her an implacable enemy, an enemy who knew every one of Angel's defenses and wouldn't stop hammering at them until one of them was dead or both of them were vampires. If he hadn't been in shock, Lindsey would have found the whole thing funny.

"It didn't work."

Of course it did, you simple-minded idiot, just not the way you think. Lindsey growled into his plastic hand. Thankfully, the words were garbled. Angel moved up close against him, holding Lindsey to the wall with his body as much as his hands. Then his head lowered, and Lindsey could actually feel Angel staring at the bite mark on the side of his neck. In the silence, the only thing he could hear was his own heart beating and Angel.

Sniffing him.

Lindsey closed his eyes. This could get very ugly, very quickly. Angel was the territorial type. Darla was definitely his territory, even when he didn't, couldn't, give her what she wanted. Lindsey wanted to say something to distract Angel, but he couldn't think of a word, and even if he could, his face was still smashed against his prosthetic hand, and nothing he said would be heard. In the only self-defensive movement left to him, Lindsey went completely still.

"She laid with you."

Angel growled the words directly over the bite bruise on his neck, and he shivered. He was getting hard, and he closed his eyes in surrender. He couldn't fight Angel. He sure as hell couldn't fight Angel and his own body at the same time.

Long fingers closed over his windpipe and began to squeeze. He struggled, uselessly, instinctively, bucking back against Angel, hand scrabbling for a hold, muffled sounds escaping his throat. Angel's other hand slid down below Lindsey's arm, over his chest and down to his groin, grabbing his incipient erection and squeezing it as hard as his throat. Lindsey convulsed, instantly, utterly aroused.

"You are twisted." Angel's voice, yet not Angel's, lighter, a definite brogue to it, the slightest tinge of admiration in it. Lindsey gurgled, and the pressure at his throat eased as the pressure on his cock tightened. He bucked again, into the hold this time, not against it.

The head ducked once more, and this time Lindsey felt the unfamiliar ridges brushing his jaw below his ear. A harsh tongue rasped over the bite Darla had given him, and teeth -- fangs -- closed over the skin. This time he couldn't quite keep the keening wail from escaping.

Angel didn't bite all the way down, didn't tear the side of his throat out as Lindsey had half-expected. He clenched his jaw just enough to draw blood, just enough to torment him with the sting, holding him there like a cat would hold a mouse, enjoying his struggles.

The only problem was Lindsey wasn't quite sure why he was struggling. He didn't know if he wanted Angel or Angelus; if he wanted to live or die; to have the vampire walk away or fuck him right there against the wall. If Holland thought Darla confused Lindsey, it was a damned good thing his mentor couldn't see him with Angel. He'd have Lindsey committed.

Lindsey was pretty close to agreeing with that, himself. Angel was making him insane, finishing the job he'd started all those months ago. They'd been dancing around one another for over a year, and anticipation had mixed with arousal and anger until it was more unstable than nitroglycerine. One good jolt and they'd go up like a Beltane bonfire.

Angel ripped his jacket and shirt off his back with one inhumanly-strong jerk.

Hello, jolt. It was a damned good thing he'd taken his tie off on the road home, or the bastard'd've broken Lindsey's neck. Cold air and cold solid flesh blanketed him; a strong hand milked him; fanged jaws worked at the side of his throat.

Lindsey came in his pants against Angel's palm as Angel bit into him again. Angel's other hand slid from the ruins of his suit jacket down to his belt, stripping his pants off Lindsey as efficiently as he'd stripped the top half of him. Lindsey felt a hand swiping at his still-spitting cock and couldn't do a thing but hang there, shoved against the wall, tasting his own tears on the cold plastic of his prosthetic hand, as Angel used his own semen to slick and loosen him.

The first thrust felt like it would rip him apart. The second and third went deeper, lifting him off his feet and scraping his chest and belly against the side of the wall. He wasn't surprised to feel himself relax and open almost immediately, and start to get hard again soon after that. Lindsey was getting almost accustomed to his body doing whatever the hell it wanted with Angel and leaving his brain behind.

His thoughts were in a fugue state, a temporary flight from reality being the only way he could deal with reality. His body was Angel's, as it had been Darla's the night before, only even more strongly. Angel had the prior claim and the longer history with him, more time to weave the thread that bound them together. There was hatred and anger in Angel, as well as in Lindsey, tempered in both by lust and need neither wanted to admit.

It made for a volatile combination, inherently unstable and explosive. Angel was Angelus and they both were fucking Lindsey, who knew it and took it and reveled in it and rebelled against it, and couldn't do a damned thing but bear it until it was over. He came the second time, splattering against the wall, Angel's hands on his hips, his feet barely skimming the ground, his pants around his ankles, Angelus' fangs barely breaking the skin of his neck.

Blood was trickling slowly down over his collarbone and fluids were trickling down the inside of his thighs. The world had tilted on its axis and he was looking up at Angel, who wasn't Angelus anymore, who wasn't buried in him anymore, who was standing over him. Looming.

Again.

What was it with tall guys and looming? It got fucking irritating. The thought stung him that none of this, including himself, was rational, and his mind stopped its little fugue dance and snapped back into place.

"This is your fault," Angel told him shortly, and Lindsey wondered wildly where the hell he'd gotten that from. "She should never have been raised."

Oh. Darla. Right. "Don't you think I know that?" His voice was painfully rusty. Too much screaming lately, too many attempts by Angel to choke him to death. His throat was strained both inside and out. Like the rest of him.

"Take care of her when you find her," Angel instructed him, then stared down at him for a moment before turning and striding away, his coat billowing behind him.

Lindsey looked after him resentfully. He was lying on his own pathway in his own mess, feeling like a truck had run over him, and Angel looked completely untouched. Lindsey didn't want to think about the fact that the whole time Angel had been fucking him, he'd been completely dressed while Lindsey himself was stripped and pinned to the wall. His cock twitched.

"Give it a rest," he rasped down at unruly flesh, and painfully dragged himself upright. So much for the world going right. Every time he thought that, something, usually Angel-related, hit him like a brick and left him in pieces.

The next day before work he hosed down the side of the garage. There was no way he needed the Firm's gardeners gossiping. Not that he expected his little escapade to go unnoticed. Wolfram and Hart videotaped everything. Orwell had been an amateur next to his bosses.

Putting the whole doomed project from his mind, he went in to the office the next day and proceeded to prove why the Firm had put such confidence in him for the last few years. Nobody would suspect that he was living on pins and needles waiting for Angel to come back, or Darla to return, or any other Angel-tainted disaster to knock him on his ass again.

After a week, he relaxed a fraction. Not completely. Never completely. Not where Angel was concerned.




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