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Minimally Sufficient
by eyesdarker
EMAIL: eyesdarker@operamail.com
DISTRIBUTION: wherever
SPOILERS: Up to S2 'Dead End'
CLASSIFICATION: Angel/Lindsey
SUMMARY: Epiphany?
RATING: NC-17 for Angel's thoughts
FEEDBACK: yes
DISCLAIMER: They belong to Joss Whedon and some very large companies
DEDICATION: 1) Thanks to the 'forlorn' expert for beta, gamma, delta
2) Greek alphabet notwithstanding, this one's for The Alpha
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Epiphanies aren't as easy as they sound.
Angel can lie awake in the bitter light of day and say to himself
that everything has changed. He can inhale scents of demon gore and
of the hopelessness of long-gone hotel guests. He can be the
employee, rather than the employer. He can tell himself, tell the
world, tell the nice lady detective who lost her job because of him
that he just wants to help. He can tell everyone that living for the moment is all that matters. He would love to believe that, but he can't.
Angel lies face-down in bed, looking hard at nothing, careless of his
hair as he props head on hand, thinking as he tries to handle the
changes that have hit him lately. No way will he be able to deal, or
come to terms, less still 'share'. He knows that despair seduces and
will never drive off to find its roots. Now that Lindsey has left,
his life has changed unexpectedly: what could have, should have
happened did not happen. Lindsey was more to him than just another
soul worth saving. He had an extraordinary capacity for love, a
brightness, and such a willingness to go down fighting and match
alphavamp with alphamale at every opportunity. Angel finds his
sunshine in strange places these days and with Lindsey gone, there is
no future he can see that won't have the greyness of loneliness
falling all over it like the ash of a newly-staked vampire.
He walks to the kitchen, perfect muscular control worn lightly, makes
a cup of coffee. Bitter, thin drink for bitter thoughts: blood would
be too rich and too satisfying at the moment. Thinks back to his
first, his second, meeting with Lindsey, desire written all over the
boy's face the first time Lindsey saw the enemy in 'his' armour,
black Armani suit and silk tie. Remembers how he heard Lin's voice,
with the whisper and the warmth of a summer breeze over the
cornfield, saying to himself, "Just when I think I've got you figured
out". Can imagine so clearly how the laughter-lines round Lin's
eyes, so seldom seen, crinkled up at that moment as Lindsey grinned
to himself with pleasure. Angel looks down to see his own hands
whiter than bleached bone, he's gripping the kitchen worktop so hard.
Wanders back to the bedroom, coffee-cup in hand. Promises himself
that this is the last time he indulges in thoughts of Lindsey, knows
with the experience of two centuries that he cannot hold to that
promise. The seduction of Lindsey above all was that he called to
every facet of the vampire-with-a-soul. The caring, wildly-romantic
Lindsey who loved Darla, called to Angel. The six-figure son of
Wolfram and Hart, slashing and burning up from poverty to success,
called to Angelus. And something else called to the
not-Angel-nor-Angelus who could burn his own Sire and his Childe:
Lin's mixture of dark and light and the willingness to do what he
thought was needed and to hell - or the Home Office - with the
consequences. Angel remembers a time when the stun-gun's sparking
was the topline over the point and counterpoint of the fugue of
emotions in a room where his Childe remade his Sire. At that time,
Lindsey looked into Angel's eyes and asked him if it could possibly
have ended any other way. Not with Lindsey as the driving force, it
couldn't.
Take the beauty of Buffy, the sexual power of Darla, the balance of
weak and strong that is William and Spike and the intelligence of
Wesley and who have you got? Right. Throw in a voice that holds a
promise of future happiness, a warm, rough voice that resonates in
Angel's head all the time, a face he wants to kiss more than he ever
wanted to hit it and a body that Angel can still all too easily
imagine naked, and you have one guitar-playing ex-lawyer reason why
epiphany is hard.
Last time, right? Not thinking about Lindsey again after this.
After this, we live for today and save endless unworthy souls. So
now, Angel thinks about him, just this once, the way he wants to.
Thinks how he would unknot Lin's tie, unbutton the starched white
shirt. How all his senses would be hit at once, with the sight
of the golden skin of Lindsey's strong neck; with the "fuck-me"
fragrance of expensive aftershave; with the unnecessary sound of a
vampire's breathing; with the taste of summer on sunburned skin in
the fragile hollow at the base of Lindsey's neck. Thinks how he
would tear the expensive shirt right off, owe him another one, see
the body he has dreamed of more perfect than he could imagine it:
defined power of the muscles, unexpected in someone who earned his
money with his mind; blue of bruises from his own beating of the man
like an abstract painting against the sunlit skin.
In his mind, Angel's vision drifts down to Lindsey's hand, and he is
lost in emotion so intense that the coffee-cup breaks in the hardness
of his grip, falls without him even noticing it. The most erotic
moment of your death-in-life will do that to you. Not sure he could
explain to anyone, not Sire, not Childe, not anyone, what that moment
felt like, when he threw the axe and saw Lindsey's hand cut from his
body. Seeing was the least of it. Of the things they don't teach
you in death business school, number one has gotta be the intensity
of blood. Not spicy, that's a myth. Blood has a taste all of its
own, mixes the richness of life with the metallic tang of a
death-giving sword blade. Smell, taste, all one to Angel, when he
stood gasping after he had mutilated Lindsey, inhaling the heady
fragrance of arterial blood as deeply as possible. Blood so
oxygen-rich the scent slammed into him and drove right through his
soul. Blood of an enemy, too. Blood of an enemy on whom Angel has
smelled desire more often and more strongly than he has ever smelled
fear. Funny really, there he was in the depths of Wolfram and Hart,
who knows what brought back from the dead, and all he wanted to do
was to get down on his knees and lick the floor, lick up the blood of
his beautiful enemy. You don't get used to the blood-need, you learn
to hide it.
Angel questions where it all went wrong, where he could have tried
harder. Knows Lindsey was a force for change at least, that Lindsey
changes the lives of those around him. Remembers their meeting when
Lindsey tried to kill him, running the truck over him again and
again, then hitting him with all the strength of his unlawyerlike body. Remembers seeing Lindsey's eyes: three shades darker and a whole lot colder than the deepest glacial cave. Feels his fingers tingle at the thought of hitting Lindsey again and again, hard hands trying their hardest to bruise that beautiful face, split the pouting lips, take the flavour of Darla-need out of Lindsey's scent, put the
Angel-need back in.
Darla. Darla, Darla, Darla. There really isn't a polite way to tell
the love of your life, your one-time master, your long-time mistress,
why she didn't give you perfect happiness. Prolly worse than
anything else would be to tell her that you came three times thinking
of slate-blue eyes (not hers), dark gold hair (not hers), a
vulnerable mouth (definitely not hers). That you kissed her and
tasted him, that you fucked her cold mouth with your tongue and
thought about his heat and the twist of his lips, the look in his
eyes when he once, only once, came to you for help. That you held
her softness and felt his hard muscular strength. That you thrust
inside her again and again, her whore's body writhing under you, and
thought all the time how it would be if he was under you and you
were surrounded by his tightness and heat, and he was smiling at you
with, okay, not love, never love, desire would suffice, in his eyes.
Angel stares at the floor, little broken pieces of coffee-cup making
no kind of pattern at all. Knows he tried and failed to save a soul
that mattered, knows he's lost the man who made him think of
sunlight. Evil? Maybe. Evil comes with a tan these days. Knows
that Lindsey called to all the extremes of the Angel-Angelus
continuum like no-one else. His beauty, his brightness, his darkness
all creating a dangerous, heady mixture of enmity, desire and
childe-need. Knows that he loved the sweet pain of his enemy's
attack, loved even more the scent of Lindsey's blood as he slammed
into bone and tore skin. Knows the darkness aroused in him won't
fade away under the strain of choosing the right sandwiches for
Cordelia.
There is only one touch of comfort, one handshake-they-didn't-have,
one kiss-they-didn't-share in all this. When they parted (and Angel
mentally kicks himself again for the childishness of that stupid sign
on the truck: it seemed the best way to keep his mood light), Lindsey
gave him a gift. Lindsey gave him all he had to give. Lindsey gave
him the expert's advice on handling Wolfram and Hart. Angel doesn't
know how he can use that advice but wraps his mind round the gift as
though he was wrapping his arms round a lover, giving and receiving
comfort. Thinks about the empty do-gooder days ahead. Thinks that
when Lindsey went, so went the sunshine in his life. Thinks that
only good ol' Wes-speak describes his need: that the power of that
one memory to get him through death one day at a time might just be,
will just have to be, minimally sufficient.
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