SUMMARY: Darla and Lindsey get acquainted.
SPOILERS: Nope. AtS Season 2.
CONTENT/WARNINGS:
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: I am not now, nor have I ever been, Numfar. Not even a
little bit. Any text inside quotation marks inside brackets is
from episodes & belongs to magnificent Jossverse writers. The characters
are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui,
Sandollar, and David Greenwalt Productions, 20th Century Fox, and whoever
else may have a hold upon them. The situation is
wholly mine, and I do not mean to infringe upon any copyrights
Lindsey liked to watch her eat.
He was drawn to her, fascinated by this fragile wisp of Angel's history,
this memory made incarnate at
the whim of Wolfram and Hart. His interest was viscerally personal
- Angel's memory was rendered flesh
in exchange for Lindsey's flesh made memory. She was a weapon, a puzzle,
a lever, a key - for whom
his blood had been spilt, for whom his right hand had been severed.
She was a mystery, sweet-voiced and
sinful and wholly self-contained. Fierce but achingly vulnerable in
her unholy new-formed flesh.
Shameless. She was a piece of Angel, of Angelus, his dark, hidden heart.
His weakness. Lindsey could
not take his eyes off her.
In the early days and weeks after they pulled her back into existence
Darla floundered in a sea of
memories. Her body was whole, perfect, but her mind was a baffled chaos
of sensation and shifting
recollection. Holland said there was nothing to worry about. She seemed
to recover from the trauma of
rebirth with impressive speed.
At first they kept her under close watch in a luxurious private clinic,
company-owned, of course - while
she adjusted. The doctors ran test upon test while she pulled the threads
of self back together again. It
was a little way outside LA in a secluded spot with an excellent sea
view, only the best for Wolfram and
Hart. Holland was there often, Lilah occasionally and Lindsey drove
out to visit her several times each
week (sometimes daily, when he could manage) all in the name of research,
diligently sifting through her
memories in order to get under Angel's skin and take him out of play.
Charted his mileage up to business
travel and handed his gas receipts in at the end of each month, but
Lindsey knew that he would have
found a way to visit her even if it had not been part of his job.
Holland commended his dedication but chose not to share any details
of the Senior Partners' plan with
him just yet. Lindsey didn't mind. It was enough to know that there
was a plan and that he could for once
combine business with pleasure. His employers seemed happy enough to
have him spending time with
Angel's Sire and that suited him just fine.
Most of the time she was perfectly composed and would discuss her past
with cool equanimity and sly
humour, with flashes of hunger and delight. She would talk about moonlit
gardens of night-blooming
jasmine in eighteenth century Paris and of convents turned into charnel
houses. Discussed the shifting
tides of fashion, the variations in hemline and waistline, the nuances
of dress that identified one's social
station. Recalled attending countless operas and concerts and plays
and, should the performance prove
disappointing, expressing her displeasure in no uncertain terms. "My
criticism was quite - pointed. The
understudies were always grateful," she laughed. At other times she
sat perfectly still and silent, staring
out at the sunlight with an unreadable expression.
He took her little gifts, worried that this was an adolescent impulse,
but she was an invalid of sorts and it
seemed appropriate. And he *wanted* to. Swiss chocolates. CDs. Novels.
Perfume. A silk scarf.
Sunglasses. Small, cliched offerings, he even took flowers once or
twice (orchids), but their very
banality made him feel safer. Less exposed. They were always impersonal,
casual-seeming little gifts,
things that he might have had a secretary pick out and written off
as expenses.Ê She seemed pleased, if
rather amused - took it as simply her due, like a queen languidly accepting
tribute. A glint in her eye
persuaded him that she saw right through his nonchalance, knew he had
agonised for twenty minutes over
whether she would find a Venus Fly Trap a tasteless gift or whether
it might make her laugh, before finally
settling on some safer, more prosaic knick-knack; had watched the salesgirl
gift-wrapping it and stopped
her from using the pink paper because it seemed too girlish and Darla
was a woman. Oh, he had it *bad*,
his professional demeanour the flimsiest of veils over the schoolboy
crush that was overwhelming him.
He was inordinately pleased when she wore the scent he had brought
her, it satisfied a pathetically
primitive sense of possessiveness somewhere in his soul, an urge to
mark out his own territory.
Lindsey was no stranger to dealing with vampires, was used to clients
who would happily eat him alive if
he weren't so useful; many of his non-supernatural clients were much
the same, truth be told. Darla still
carried herself like the predator she had been for centuries, but with
a difference, he wondered whether
the streak of vulnerability was calculated, or if it was an honest
reaction to her newfound mortality. The
vulnerability undid him, hard nosed professional that he was; the way
she would sometimes look at him
and make him feel that nobody else in the world existed for her, that
she depended upon him to protect
her from it all.
She must have been a *very* successful hooker, he told himself, scrabbling
unsuccessfully for the
protective shell of cynicism, knowing he was a sap but melting anyway.
Within a few weeks they moved her out into her own apartment. He wanted
to show her the city by
sunlight, take her walking on the beach in the middle of the day, marvelled
at the thought of all her
centuries of experience bereft of that simple pleasure. Wanted to take
her out to all the finest restaurants,
because food was something else that she was rediscovering. She had
mentioned how reduced her other
senses had grown, but taste was a revelation. Not an adequate compensation
for what she had lost, but
still a palpable source of delight. But working for Wolfram and Hart
did not exactly leave a person with a
surfeit of spare time for enjoying the simple pleasures, and even if
it had, there was the matter of
concealment.
Lindsey loved to watch her eat, to see her registering each new taste
and texture. He wanted to take her
out, but he didn't dare risk spoiling the game planned by the Senior
Partners. And besides, he didn't
want to share her with anyone, not even with waiters and fellow diners.
So instead Lindsey had the
restaurants send their finest delicacies to her. It became a ritual
of sorts, Friday nights he would be at
her apartment door with a couple of bottles of wine and half an hour
later room service would arrive
courtesy of a restaurant Lindsey had chosen. She let him choose and
this passive acceptance of his
authority excited him - even though he knew it was insignificant, even
though he thought it was probably
part of a game. Always half a dozen different dishes, so she could
pick at whatever took her fancy.
French, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Japanese, Spanish
- whatever style of cuisine Lindsey
had selected that week. Lindsey ate little himself, acutely conscious
of his missing hand and
embarrassed at his new-found awkwardness. He loved the fact that she
was perfectly made up when he
arrived, but that her lipstick had all gone by the end of the evening,
her mouth bare and a little swollen.
She made him hungry.
* * *
"Angelus was never very bright," she announced one evening, licking
sticky fingers with cat-like
neatness, a consciously seductive gesture. Lindsey couldn't help watching
her tongue dart out and
traverse the pale flesh. She watched him watching her and her moist
lips curved in a smile both warm and
mocking. He really never knew where he was with Darla, but Lindsey
found that he didn't care. She
dazzled him.
"Yeah, tell me about it," he agreed, thinking there was an understatement
if ever he'd heard one. He
found himself staring at her mouth and imagining it with fangs. Tiny,
fair, vivid where Angel was big, dark
and silent, but two sides of the same coin. It excited him beyond words.
Oh, they had him now. Flesh
that knew his flesh so intimately, a mind that knew precisely what
made him tick. Angel had no idea what
was about to hit him.
"I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be rude or nothin', but
what did you ever see in him?" She
flicked an unreadable look at him, quizzical, amused. Arched one delicate
brow.
"But he is so very beautiful, my boy, don't you think?" And there was
a teasing note in her voice, a very
knowing expression in her eyes that Lindsey really didn't feel like
analysing. He felt acutely conscious of
the artificial hand gleaming with its dull plastic sheen in the soft
candlelight.
"He may not be very *bright* but he was always beautiful. And he had
such a vicious passion for brutality,
such an exquisitely twisted imagination. Inflicting suffering was always
an art form for Angelus, something
to be savoured at length." She paused, gazing into a past only she
could see. Her voice was husky when
she continued: "I have never met anyone or anything that took greater
delight in darkness. He balked at
nothing, each depravity sweeter and bloodier than the last. It was
bliss."Ê
Lindsey's mouth was dry. He could feel himself hardening under the
table and had an uncomfortable
conviction that Darla knew it. He found himself licking his lips and
picked up his glass to take a gulp of the
Cabernet Sauvignon, his left-handed grip a little too tight. She smiled
at him through lowered lashes and
he had a very nasty feeling that he was blushing. Which was inexplicable.
God, he hated that man.
Vampire. Whatever.
"He tries to pretend that he is human, now, and it sickens me. Trying
to ingratiate himself with the food.
Playing at being good." Darla laughed. "It's beneath him. He isn't
good. He's still Angelus under the
skin, I *know* him. This dull, stolid mask of virtue doesn't fool me
for a minute. The fire hasn't gone, it's
just been contained. Inside he *burns*. He wants to rip and tear and
bite and drink hot human blood. In his
dreams he stops pretending."Ê Her voice was practically a purr
now and Lindsey's cock was straining
uncomfortably in his pants, but he felt quite sure that she would know
exactly what he was doing if he
shifted his position however discreetly.
"What does he dream of?" the lawyer asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
Her smile widened. She
delicately cut a piece of tarte au citron with her spoon, raised it
to her lips and devoured the morsel of
dessert with her eyes closed, clearly relishing the explosion of tartness
and the meltingly crisp sliver of
buttery pastry dissolving on her tongue.
"I don't know yet," she replied softly. "Not the details. But he dreams
of blood. I know he dreams of
blood."
* * *
Once the plan had been put into action he saw her less regularly. Angel
kept erratic and unsociable
hours. Still Lindsey managed to see her at least once a week, often
several times. He had little excuse
now, since the Senior Partners' plan for Angel was well under way and
so they presumably knew all they
needed to know, still, nobody had tried to prevent him from seeing
Darla yet.
"So what *does* he dream of?" asked Lindsey. The question had been
burning in his mind for weeks now,
along with the image of Darla straddling Angel while he slept. He was
torn between arousal and jealousy
but couldn't banish the thought of the two of them. The image cropped
up at the most inappropriate
moments, leaving him sitting in client meetings with a schoolboy hard-on
under the desk.
Her smile was secretive and wicked as she spooned golden sugar crystals
into black coffee and stirred.
"Blood. It's always blood. Blood and sex." She lifted the china cup
to her lips and peered slyly at
Lindsey over the rim as she drank. "My boy hasn't gone, he's still
right there." She smiled fondly.
"When I first made him he wiped out his entire village, left his parents'
house a dripping shambles. It
was beautiful. He would throw himself into bloodshed, revel in mayhem
and destruction. He was . . .
glorious. Angelus was always one for obsessions. It was always extremes,
always going a step too far
and then further still."
Lindsey was embarrassed but not entirely surprised to feel himself
starting to harden again as she spoke
ö it seemed to be pretty much par for the course during his visits.
He leaned forward a little and tried to
hide the telltale bulge with his coffee cup. Darla's attention was
not focused on Lindsey just then, but he
suspected she still knew the effect she had on him. The effect she
always had on him.
"I'm not surprised he's such a thorn in your side, with this *conscience*,"
her voice dripped unbridled
scorn, "he would have to be the noblest, the most self-righteous and
tedious of martyred saints. He
knows in his heart that it isn't true, of course, talk about over-compensating!"
She paused a moment and an impatient expression crossed her face. Her
fingers curled more tightly
around the coffee spoon.
"I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when he started sniffing
around The Slayer. She looks a little
like me, this one - although it always used to be Spike who had the
self-destructive streak; provoking
mobs, chasing Slayers. But I suppose there is a twisted logic to it.
*She* did this to him, though. " She
laughed humourlessly. "Who would have thought the little cheerleader
had it in her? But she's the one
that's got him trying to save the world." After a longer pause she
added with feeling, "I still cannot
*believe* he staked me for that simpering little bitch."
Lindsey drank his coffee silently. He was often silent around her,
odd for a man whose fortune was so
bound up in his words, perhaps, but she had that effect on him. He
grew tongue tied in her presence. He
couldn't begin to understand how Angel could have brought himself to
kill her. Bastard. Nor could he
understand why the much-vaunted soul made such a difference, he really
couldn't. The vast majority of
Lindsey's clients had been in full possession of souls, but it hadn't
stopped them from doing all manner
of terrible things to their fellow men. Lindsey really didn't get it.
For some reason he wanted very badly to know whether Angel dreamed
about him, but he couldn't quite
bring himself to ask. He had a suspicion that Darla knew it too, could
somehow detect the question
hanging unspoken in the air.
No power on earth would get him to admit it, but he too had been dreaming
about Darla a lot recently. And
about Angel. And blood. And sex.
"So it's working? You're getting to him?" he asked instead.
She laughed at the question.
"Oh yes. Yes, my sweet boy is coming apart at the seams. I've given
him a much more exciting
obsession than this thankless dark avenger kick he's been on. I'm opening
up the sweet dark places
inside." Her smile was serenely confident.
"My Angel is going to teach Lucifer how to fall."