Lar ||| Buffy & Angel

Never Having to Say
by Lar

EMAIL: HERE
RATING: R
COUPLE: Lindsey/OFC
SPOILERS: None
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, Joss'.
SUMMARY: Self preservation ain't all it's cracked up to be.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:Written for tesla321, who requested "Lindsey, singing" and used this icon:


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He lets his hair grow long and shops at the Goodwill stores, hoarding his cash. He's not sure what for yet, but his mama never did let a penny go wasted and it seems that much stuck good and deep with him. The rules are something he makes up as he goes along, excepting the ones that he learned after he left his mama and stood behind Holland Manners a while.

He should credit some of those life lessons to Angel but he's damned if he'll give the son of a bitch anything more.

His hand still bothers him some, mostly when he thinks about the guy it belonged to before he let the firm steal it for him. Deep inside he had to know that there was no way they were collecting anything like that on the up and up, but it was pretty trivial to worry about one little old hand when he'd done bigger things himself. Rationalizations like this get him out of California and into Arizona without too much sleep lost.

One of those rules that he makes up, or one that he might have learned and just calls something new now, is not to settle down too long in any one place. Self-preservation dictates that as soon as the locals start saying hello and calling you by name, then you need to get yourself gone and fade in again.

Some towns give up a way to do that easier than others. Floyd Pass, Arizona is about the size of a good day's walk from end to end and it's hovering somewhere around the mark of getting popular with the city people who want to live where they can see flat land outside their windows and not more buildings. This means there's lots of jobs for someone who wants to take cash and who can handle whatever they shove into his hands - hammer or paint brush, broom or boxes of lunch to be delivered. Lindsey's found his smile gets him over with just about anyone, including the pretty brunette who works the Friday night shift at the corner dive. Her name is Fay and she thinks he's just about the sweetest thing ever. She just can't understand why a smart guy like him won't go on to the Community College and get himself a degree.

Lindsey tells her he's not much for books and when she points out that he shouldn't let that hold him back, he switches tracks. Tells her he's just waiting for his break to go and sing, which makes Fay's trusting little heart just about overflow before she finds him some bars that have open mike nights. He's a little surprised to find that he doesn't want to hurt her feelings. He's more surprised to find that he likes getting up there and singing for a bunch of strangers.

Two weeks turn into six months and he's pretty much settled in despite himself. There's steady money coming in, because word gets round that he's a reliable man to have on the job whatever the job might be. He doesn't ask questions and he doesn't talk too much, and the other men like him because he can bullshit with the best of them. He's got Fay to do the bump and grind with when the night comes down, and she might not be the kind of woman that he thought he wanted for himself but she's uncomplicated.

If it wasn't for the little itch that starts under his skin just the last night or two, Lindsey would say he's found his niche. But it's there when he wakes up from a dream about Darla and Angel and it won't go away. He can't drink it out or fuck it into submission no matter how willing Fay is to let him try, and he knows that in a few days he'll have to move on. The last night there, he sings right to her from the stage. Sings "Desperado" for her and wishes like hell he didn't know that he was breaking her heart when he slips out the back and gets in the truck. His bags are in there, stuffed behind the seat so he can make a clean break, nothing messy to have to deal with, no goodbyes to be said. He checks his rearview for a long time, way past the point where Floyd Pass is even a faint smear of light in the black horizon.

-end

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