Email: neith@telia.com
Rating: R, dark themes
Pairings: Lindsey, Lindsey/Darla
Improv #23: come -- sun -- hip -- strike
Distribution: List archives, anyone else please ask.
Disclaimer: Joss owns everything. Doesn't share, either.
Note: Slash muse still on vacation -- even with promises of Lindsey-fic. Worrying, to say the least.

*******

It's still dark outside in the small hours of the morning, and the moonlight is streaming in through the open window. It falls through the thin curtain that separates the sleeping area on the floor from the rest of the room and turns his sisters' bodies into lithe silver forms in the darkness.

The air is hot and humid, and they have kicked the blanket down to the foot of the mattress. Their small frames are nestled against his chest and back as they sleep, chests slowly rising and sinking with their breathing. Sleep always comes easy for them at night.

Lindsey is still awake, listening to the bed in the corner creak. He fixes his gaze on flower print on the curtain, dahlias and roses, until they become nothing but pale blurry spots in the darkness and the bed is creaking faster. There are other sounds too of course, but he tries not to think of those, just focuses on the steady creak. He likes to think the wooden bed doesn't like what's happening either and that's why it's creaking; a sharp, grating sound of disapproval.

Momma does her best to earn money. And no one should blame her for it.

Not even Lindsey, even though he does, just a little bit.

****

He is nineteen when he moves into the city, working as a dishwasher and doing odd jobs to pay rent and food. The scholarship is putting him through law school, and he already has grand visions of how he will change the system, serve justice and maybe make the world a little better by helping the underprivileged and putting the bad guys away behind bars.

All while making good money, of course.

Yeah, maybe he was being a bit greedy, but wealth was not something a poor boy could simply forget. Strikes him that nineteen years of poverty has *earned* him that right. And contrary to the kids born with silver spoons in their mouths, he actually has to work for it. Work for the scholarship, work to excel in every class. Late night sessions with the books and black coffee was almost a daily habit now, as was studying in the restaurant and during the lunch breaks.

The money he makes is barely enough for his support, but the burden of rent is shared with his girlfriend of three months. Their bed is wooden and sometimes it creaks when they make love, but mostly it's muffled by the sound of her voice telling him in breathy whispers that she loves him as she comes.

Katrina loves the writings of Simone de Beauvoir and Dante, and poets he has never heard of. There's a sepia-coloured butterfly tattooed on her lower back and a scar on her stomach after having her appendix removed. She has flaxen hair that was silkier than anything he has ever felt. Sometimes there are still traces of Eastern Europe in her voice as she tells him stories of growing up poor on the streets in Warsaw and living on apples nicked from the trees.

Lindsey likes feeling her warm body tightly pressed against his -- the scent is different from his sister's, but the pressure of a small frame against his back is familiar enough to make up for it. She isn't the girl he will one day marry, but sometimes he thinks he still might love her too.

****

Of course, everything's a little different when he's twenty-seven and a whore. Lawyer technically, but still a whore. He had sold his body and his soul to the firm for a six-figure salary and an office with a nice view. Can't say he regrets it much, either. Perhaps money couldn't buy him happiness but it sure as hell could buy him some things that were even better.

Pride. Dignity. Respect.

With his best designer suit and a blazing red '66 Cadillac, he drives home, and somehow the town seems even smaller than it did before. He has no wish to relive this particular part of his past, but he owes it to his mother for each time she had to allow a stranger in her bed, sullying her body and white cotton sheets.

She smoothes her apron nervously when he steps inside the house, but the pride is fierce in her eyes as he tells her about his promotion and having been told by Mr. Holland himself that he "showed great potential." She hangs on to his every word, savouring them, and he knows she will still be doing so a long time after he has left.

Lindsey finds himself exaggerating, just a bit. Yes, Holland had hinted at senior partnership. No, there weren't any better candidates. And yes, he likes it very much at the firm. The last a blatant lie, but what else could he say -- "It's a shitty firm, but it pays well."

No. You don't ever tell your mother that you're a whore.

Because she is proud and deserves better than the embarrassment of having to receive a check in her hand, he leaves it in the jar in the kitchen where he knows it will be found. He has tried to set her up with an apartment in the city, but she always refused him. Strange that she would want to remain in a town where she is known as the whore, but he supposes there's still safety attached to it -- a place in which she was born and married and bore six children.

Two of them she later saw buried -- small bodies in wooden boxes from the convenience store because ordering caskets of that size would be *expensive* and no amount of whoring could ever earn them enough money to pay for it. They don't speak of this, by tacit agreement. There were simply some things that needed to stay in the past.

Jaw set and with a faint taste of bile in his mouth, he lets his foot remain firmly on the pedal until the town is just a tiny spot on the horizon. A small town, dusty and sleepy, but it still clings to him like a layer of dirty oil. Most of all, he just wants to step into the shower and scrub it off until there is no dust or trace of it left on him, scrub until the skin is red and raw and blessedly *clean* again -- dirt and sins all washed away.

In reality, they were a little more difficult to get rid of than that, of course. But it's a comforting thought.

****

There's another woman sleeping in his bed now, her hair the colour of the sun. But the bed is iron-wrought and does not creak when they make love, neither does Darla whisper that she loves him when she comes. He wonders if she's imagining Angel behind her clenched lids as she moans and trashes, biting down on his neck with small blunt teeth.

When she is asleep, lying on the far left of the bed, he slides his hand across the silky length of her hair, tracing the honey-hued curves of hip and back. Only when she is sleeping is he able to touch her like this. He doesn't quite love her, not the way she thinks he does, but rather how he has loved every one of them who has once lain next to him and pressed their bodies against his. In his mind, sisters and lovers all melt to one body, and it would always lie still beside him and comfort him without a sound.

She was a whore once too, centuries before he was even born. He tries to picture her dirty and bedraggled, offering her body in alleyways and hay lofts, but always fails miserably at it. When he asks her she merely arches an eyebrow and coolly corrects him, "Courtesan."

Darla has no shame. It's one of the things which fascinate him most about her. The woman could even manage to make selling her own body sound dignified.

****

There is no moral of the story. In real life, good guys get the raw deal and the bad ones all the advantages. No surprise in that. Lindsey has always been a realist, after all. He hears Wolfram and Hart is going national now, and that Lilah has a lovely apartment close to the beach.

Sometimes he envies her for having decided to remain a whore. Lilah's bed is surely soft and quiet, only the soothing sounds of the waves from the ocean lulling her to sleep. Perhaps even her dreams are restful. Perhaps she dreams of blood baths in wine cellars and cold hands caressing her skin. He doesn't really care much either way.

Mostly, he thinks he might still be at least a little better off like this. The new firm is smaller and doesn't pay nearly as well. Nor is he likely to ever become a senior partner in it. Nothing wrong with that. He's settled for just being content. To get some bit of peace, maybe.

Sleep comes easy at night. And that's good enough for him.