= = = = =

Lindsey’s ice blue eyes snapped open suddenly, cutting short his slumber. Blinking once to adjust his vision to the darkness, the young man lifted his head off of his desk, rubbing his cheek slowly and letting his eyes fall shut as he sighed to himself. How long ago had he fallen asleep doing his work?

Yawning softly, and then re-opening his eyes, Lindsey was startled to come face to face with Angel, dressed in a handsome charcoal grey suit, watching him silently, his hands flat on the desk.

Lindsey slowly got to his feet, seeing Angel straighten up as well. “What are you doing here?” he asked groggily, a little too sleepy to be very startled that the dark-haired vampire had gotten into his office without his knowing.

There was a little sparkle in Angel’s dark eyes that Lindsey could honestly say had never been there before, and his lips quirked up into the smallest of smiles. Reaching out slowly, Angel cupped Lindsey’s face with both hands, drawing the mortal closer to him to press their lips together gently.

Lindsey was a little surprised, but he didn’t protest. Closing his eyes, he brought his hands up -- the hand that Angel had cut off had been replaced with a mechanical prosthesis months before -- and laid one on the lapel of Angel’s suit, while the other tentatively tangled in the thick brown hair as the vampire and the lawyer slowly kissed.

Angel opened his mouth against Lindsey’s after a moment, his tongue venturing out to brush across the younger man’s lips. Yielding to the unspoken request, Lindsey met Angel’s cool tongue with his own. The kiss grew steadily deeper as their tongues slid against each other erotically, tangling together as their mouths mated for what seemed like forever.

Lindsey paused for an instant to take a breath, but quickly reclaimed Angel’s lips, kissing him more passionately. The vampire moved his hands from Lindsey’s face to wrap around the back of his neck and cover the prosthetic hand on his chest with his own--

A gentle hand weaving through his soft hair roused Lindsey from his sleep, putting an end to the surprisingly delicious dream he had been having. Frowning slightly, he opened his eyes...meeting Angel’s calm gaze.

Angel’s dark head lay on the pillow next to Lindsey’s, his pale skin shimmering in the moonlight streaming through the open window, the dark curtains blowing softly in the night breeze.

The strong fingers left Lindsey’s hair to brush across his collarbone, making Lindsey suddenly aware that neither of them were wearing any clothing, though the dark blue sheets of the lawyer’s double bed lay lightly across their hips.

“Mine,” Angel murmured, his voice barely a whisper.

For some reason, Lindsey felt a pang in his chest at the quiet word, the strange happiness reaching his eyes. “Yeah,” he replied, “yours.”

Angel leaned closer to claim Lindsey’s mouth in a searing kiss, which he readily returned. He wrapped his arm around Angel’s neck to get closer, even taking it further when he slipped his tongue into Angel’s mouth to probe gently, feeling the other man doing the same unhurriedly.

After a moment, Angel broke the kiss to lower his mouth to Lindsey’s neck, his tongue passing over his throat slowly, lips caressing the skin lovingly. Lindsey gasped just a little when he felt the sharp fangs piercing his neck, but not in pain. His mind registered that Angel wasn’t just drinking from him -- he was claiming him as his own, just as he had said before.

Angel gradually pulled away to kiss Lindsey once more, and the young lawyer tasted his own blood on his lips, before--

Lindsey bolted upright in a rush, jolting his kitchen table and shaking the cup of coffee sitting a couple of inches away from where his head had been. He looked around quickly, expecting to see Angel someplace, waiting to kiss the life out of him again...but he frowned when he saw no one there.

Just as he was dismally thinking about how much it sucked that he was awake again, he felt large hands on his shoulders, just barely massaging the tense muscles under the skin. Angel leaned forwards, lightly pressing his cheek against Lindsey’s, who heard himself sigh with a relief he hadn’t expected to feel at Angel’s presence.

“I’m still here,” Angel whispered to him, his lips gently brushing the corner of Lindsey’s mouth when he turned his head to look at him.

Nodding a little, Lindsey smiled when the vampire captured his lips in a chaste kiss, parting his warm lips with his tongue when barely two seconds had passed. Turning in his seat without breaking the powerful kiss, Lindsey rose, and Angel followed, kicking the chair away before bringing their bodies up against the table. Angel pressed Lindsey back up against the wooden surface, and his coffee was knocked over, but neither of them noticed, and neither of them really seemed to care for anything but the incredible kiss locking their mouths together.

Lindsey’s arm went around Angel’s neck, his other hand going to his face, as he felt Angel’s own fingers sliding beneath the hem of his dark blue sweater to trace the hard muscles of his abdomen--

When his blue eyes fluttered open, Lindsey got an eyeful of polished oak, and his brow furrowed. He carefully pushed himself up, wondering where in the hell he was now. He had been half expecting to see Angel, but when he noticed the older man’s face barely an inch from his, resting on the underside of his wrist from the way he was sitting, leaned over in the big leather chair, arms folded on the oak table, he visibly started.

“Were you expecting to see someone else?” Angel asked softly, his lips curving up into a devastatingly charming lopsided smile.

An expression of confusion crossed Lindsey’s face, as he tried to ignore Angel’s purposeful seductiveness and look around. “Wolfram & Hart?”

“The battlefield,” Angel chuckled. “You knew we would take it back here eventually.”

Nodding slightly, Lindsey was then able to place the room as one of Wolfram & Hart’s many large meeting rooms. The long oak table and padded leather chairs weren’t unfamiliar to him, now that he had gotten his bearings.

“Which battle are we fighting?” Lindsey wondered aloud, his eyes flicking back to Angel’s.

“Somehow, I think you already know.”

“I had a feeling that you were the really cryptic sort,” Lindsey replied with a little smirk, as Angel lifted his head to cover his’s mouth with his own.

Lindsey felt an overwhelming mix of contentment and pleasure rushing to his head, and he didn’t hesitate to pull Angel closer with a firm hand on his arm, feeling Angel moving to slide his fingers through Lindsey’s wavy, longish brown hair. The other found the neatly knotted tie around the lawyer’s neck, and deft fingers slowly undid it before tossing it aside and untucking Lindsey’s black shirt so he could concentrate on the buttons.

Angel initiated a deeper kiss as he slid the shirt off Lindsey’s shoulders, his tongue sweeping across the other man’s palate, earning a sharply inhaled breath from him. When Lindsey leisurely started unbuttoning Angel’s shirt, revealing inch by inch of pale skin, the vampire growled in the back of his throat, impatiently tearing it open, sending buttons flying everywhere, a few of them clattering across the wooden table.

As their lips twisted together hungrily, the kiss growing more passionate, Angel slid his hands slowly down Lindsey’s chest, feeling smooth, supple skin and hard muscle just beneath. A little teasingly, he pinched the younger man’s nipples, which Lindsey readily encouraged with a quiet moan of his name, pressing himself closer to Angel’s firm chest. Angel just growled again, a deep rumbling sound in his chest, and pushed Lindsey back on the table, their lips never separating--

Lindsey wasn’t even stunned when he was dragged away from the unbelievable physical sensations he had been sharing with his nemesis to wake up in yet another location.

But this time, he didn’t find himself in a bed or at a desk or table; he was standing in the middle of the huge foyer of the new Angel Investigations building. Angel stood before him, fully dressed in his usual black, stylish attire.

Lindsey couldn’t hold back the mischievous twinkle that flickered in his icy eyes, but he didn’t say a word.

“Pleasant dreams?” Angel asked him, his face reflecting the same impish expression as he smirked at Lindsey.

“Yeah, although I must admit that I’m finding all this relocating kind of...”

“Intrusive?”

“Something like that.” Lindsey grinned in spite of himself, and then cocked his head, raising an eyebrow. “Any idea what that’s all about?”

“It’s your head, Lindsey. Not mine.”

“Apart from the obvious factor of me fantasizing about my enemy, can you at least tell me what the hell this is supposed to mean?”

Angel just smiled his usual seductive, yet infuriating smile of his. “Dream on, boy.”

Swimming up out of sleep for the millionth time, Lindsey suddenly became acutely aware that there was the point of a pencil digging into his cheek, and that this time, he was waking up for real. He wasn’t sure how he knew, exactly...he just did.

He scowled to himself, sitting up at his desk, where he had fallen asleep, and tossing the pencil aside...and promptly froze when he finally noticed the tall, handsome vampire going through his filing cabinet.

“What the--” he began, before trailing off, unable to finish.

Angel glanced up at him, not at all bothered that he had been caught snooping, and flashed a smile. “Guess you finally decided to join us in the land of the living,” he said cheerfully, going back to the task at hand.

Lindsey was barely able to believe his eyes, and he was completely, utterly powerless against the pleasantly warm tingle that swallowed him whole upon seeing the man of the quasi-erotic fantasies he had just surfaced from. This was...this would’ve been almost too good to be true, if it hadn’t been so damned unnerving for him.

Angel looked back at him when he received no response, which was unusual for the normally sharp-tongued young lawyer gaping at him from his desk, hair cutely tousled, sky-blue eyes swimming with confusion. The older man slowly straightened, raising his eyebrows.

“Uh...pleasant dreams?” he tried, hoping to get some sort of a reaction; even a mob of security guards ordered his way would be better than the dazed silence of the huge office.

Lindsey blinked once, and then exhaled slowly, feeling his cheeks flaming with embarrassment, though a little part of his brain tried to remind him that Angel didn’t know about the dreams. But...suddenly the three words penetrated his bewildered mind, and he placed them instantly as the first few words of his last conversation with Angel in his dreams.

The young lawyer made a barely audible sound of surprise, falling back against his high-backed, plush leather chair weakly, his eyes looking heavenwards in a mix of realization and disbelief.

Was someone upstairs trying to tell him something?

THE END