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Aug. 26th, 2008 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kohakuFirst public entry in a long time and story repost. :) Subtle changes made on the suggestions of the ever lovely J, thank you, sweetheart.
(No) Changes
When Angel looks up from his desk, there’s Cordelia at the door, looking almost spooked, cradling the phone to her chest.
“Customer?” he asks.
“You might want to take this call yourself,” she answers, handing him the phone and fleeing the room.
Angel puts it to his ear, letting out a sharp breath. Before he even can say a word, there is this pained sound at the other end of the line and the hairs at his neck stand up.
“Angel?”
And it sounds hoarse and broken, strained. Lindsey.
He wants to snarl at him, mostly for knowing it was him before Lindsey said a word. He does not want Lindsey to ever call, and not while sounding like this because no matter what, his first reaction was something stupid before remembering it is Lindsey.
“Please…”
Angel tries to stop his train of thought, tries to remember how to speak.
“Where are you,” is the first thing he manages, and Lindsey makes another sound.
“’Bout a block from my home. Please, can you…”
Please again. He heard a lot from the lawyer, but never please. Twice in a day had to be a personal record for the boy.
“What do you want,” Angel manages, listening to the static of the line and the hissing intake of each breath. There is another sound, like a stumble, a body not quite falling, and Angel stands up, pressing the phone to his ear, reaching for his coat.
“Lindsey,” he says, aiming at annoyed. “Talk to me. If you’re dying in some hole somewhere, I’m not going to drag your rotting carcass out.”
He waits for the snarl, the snapping, but nothing comes, just static noises.
It doesn’t take him long to get to Lindsey’s neighbourhood, but it takes him a while to find out which block away from Lindsey’s place is the right one. He finally sees Lindsey lying on his side in front of some alley, back towards the street and therefore towards Angel, looking crumbled and still. Angel gets out of the car, his body tense, telling himself that this is a trick, that nothing is ever what it looks like with Lindsey, that he probably isn’t even hurt, just a good actor, has to be, being a lawyer and all. Two steps closer Angel can smell blood.
He does not rush, tells himself that this one does not deserve rushing. He kneels down carefully, his mind still yelling trick at him. He turns Lindsey, who makes a quiet sound but does not open his eyes. Surprised, Angel makes a sound too, low and at the back of his throat, because Lindsey’s hair sticks to the left side of his skull, matted and black with blood. There is a crimson trail running from his hairline across his forehead to the side of his face, already partially dried. The region around his left eye seems to be swollen and bruised, not yet colourful but getting there and the way Lindsey curls his body even while not awake tells Angel more than he wants to know. He blinks, cursing under his breath, not wanting to care, willing himself to stand up and walk away. It would suit Lindsey right for not calling 911 but Angel. Like he was the only one that could help. He lifts Lindsey up easily, placing him into the passenger seat and wraps Lindsey’s coat firmer around his shivering frame before buckling him in. Lindsey chooses this moment to open his eyes and look at Angel, unfocussed and pretty much out of it. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but then only closes his eyes again. Angel curses, loud, flinching from the sound and then curses again, for not leaving him.
Back at the hotel, Angel carries him in, ignoring the face Cordelia makes and brings Lindsey into his own room. He throws him down on the bed, mouth curling into an unwanted grin at the sound Lindsey makes and then walks back to find Wesley.
“Did you bring Lindsey here?” Cordelia asks, wide-eyed.
“What do you think,” Angel says, walking past her and opening a cupboard. “I need bandages. Where are they?”
“Is he hurt?”
Cordelia is Captain Obvious, so Angel ignores her.
“Where’s Wesley?”
Cordelia holds a bandage in front of Angel’s face and when he turns he sees her expression changed to something soft.
“Do you need help?”
Back in his room, Cordelia helps him getting Lindsey out of his coat and jacket. He doesn’t know how they manage, with Lindsey being like a rag doll under their hands. Cordelia moves away with Lindsey’s clothes and shoes and leaves Angel to look at the cut on Lindsey’s right side, the one that freshly bleeds and again stains his white shirt. Angel growls at the sight and when Cordelia comes in again she looks at him but does not say a word. He registers the defensive wounds on Lindsey’s arms, not as deep as the one in his side, already closed and only angry looking. They look like claw marks and Angel’s jaw clenches. Cordelia hands him a damp washcloth, urges him to clean up all the blood first.
“He needs a hospital,” she says quietly while rubbing slow circles across Lindsey’s side.
“He called me,” Angel says.
“Probably because he has you on speed dial.”
Angel looks at her, but she does not smile.
“I don’t think hospital is a good idea.”
”What? You want to play nurse to Mr evil lawyer guy?”
And he wants to tell her no, wants to tell her that he wishes he would have left Lindsey laying in the dirt on that street, broken and clearly not able to get up by himself. He wants to tell her that this way they maybe would have gotten rid of him for good, hell, he knows that they would have because of the way the blood smelled, rich and too much. But then he would have to explain why he picked him up instead and carried him here and he does not know the answer for this. So he just sighs and shakes his head and does not look her in the eyes.
“He needs stitches, so I guess that means hospital after all.”
”How many,” Angel asks, neither looking at Cordelia or the wound, just washing off the blood on Lindsey’s pale face, rubbing against the skin at his left temple, avoiding the bruise forming on his cheekbone. He watches the movement of Lindsey’s eyes under closed lids, the knitting of his brow.
“Angel,” Cordelia says.
“Do we have thread? I’ll do it.”
“Angel,” she repeats, sounding sadder this time. He looks at her.
“I’ll do it,” Angel says softly.
It takes five stitches to close the wound because Angel sets them close to each other, a neat line.
Lindsey tosses on the bed while Angel sits next to it in a chair and watches. He wants to leave but there is the smell of nightmares and pain, and he stays and watches.
It takes a while for Lindsey to wake up, and Angel watches him struggle through it. Groaning, Lindsey reaches for his side, curling towards it, only stopping because of Angel’s quiet request.
“Don’t. Stay on your back.”
Angel had waited for Lindsey to wake up and now that he is awake Angel finds it hard to remember the clean clothes he set aside earlier, next to the painkillers and the water. Lindsey blinks at him, looking concussed and sleepy.
“Angel,” he manages, sounding almost like he did on the phone.
Angel picks up the t-shirt and holds it up.
“Let’s get you into these, all right?”
It’s awkward, because Lindsey stares at him as if he’s still dreaming, but somehow not the bad kind and there is almost gratitude in his eyes even though his jaw is set, the determined look of someone picking a fight. Angel thinks that maybe it’s because of the pain and Lindsey is fighting his body and not Angel, but he is not used to a thought like this, so he focuses on getting Lindsey out of the shredded business shirt and into the plain t-shirt. Lindsey falls back into the pillows and winces, not really helping with the trousers, becoming more pliant with each breath.
Angel throws the ruined shirt into the waste basket and folds the trousers. When he turns towards the bed, Lindsey is already asleep again. Angel looks at the pain killers and rubs his face.
The next time Lindsey wakes up, Angel makes him drink some water.
“What happened?” he asks, but Lindsey only makes a face and swallows hard, so Angel lets him have more water and then watches him fall asleep again.
Cordelia comes in the next day with a determined look on her face. Before she can say anything, Angel holds up a hand.
“No hospital. He stays. I’ll be down in a minute to…”
He motions with his hand and she gapes at him. She does not make any remark about the blood waiting for him, just nods, smiling a little. Her expression shifts into something he can’t read when she looks at Lindsey. She leaves quickly without saying anything.
He waits for Lindsey to open his eyes again, but he misses the moment Lindsey wakes because Lindsey keeps his eyes closed as if it all was too much of an effort.
“Why did you come,” Lindsey asks, still in that voice, the one that made Angel reach for his coat in the first place.
Because you needed help, my help, Angel wants to say, but out comes: “Because you said please.”
Lindsey opens his eyes then, and Angel thinks it’s because he wants to see if Angel is joking or lying. He is neither.
It takes Lindsey a long time to recover. Angel always thought Lindsey would bounce back quickly, he was up after their fights almost instantly, but then Angel had never cut him this deep. Just once, he flinches at the unbidden thought. Maybe this was repentance. But Lindsey is still pale and tired, not eating much, not wanting to move much.
“Why me,” Angel asks.
Lindsey pauses as if he needs to think about it. He seems softer now, maybe too tired to fight, and Angel tries hard to not lose his guard, because Lindsey will be back to his normal self as soon as he is healed.
“I don’t know,” Lindsey then says, slowly as if it surprises him too.
“Why not go to Wolfram and Hart,” Angel asks, needing to understand.
“Because I did a bad thing,” Lindsey answers.
Bad enough to send a demon after you, Angel wants to ask but doesn’t. He wants to press the issue, wants to growl at Lindsey and shake him until he tells him everything, but he feels as tired as Lindsey looks, so he doesn’t do any of the things he thinks of.
Lindsey looks at him the next time he is awake, and he is looking lucid and clear, albeit etched with pain. He lowers his eyes and speaks slowly, not looking at Angel but the blanket tugged around him. He tells Angel then, all that happened that night, the way he trapped a demon in his office to keep him from getting out and slaying, only he got the spell wrong, the old language tricky and not as easy as Latin, some guttural sound wrong, and the demon came after him, not only because of the betrayal but because a lawyer at Wolfram and Hart is supposed to do everything for his client.
Which apparently includes being a punching bag, Angel thinks. He’s surprised at Lindsey’s indifference about the incident and his own bitterness.
Lindsey’s voice shakes a little when he recalls the attack, and he doesn’t say that he thought he was going to die, but Angel can feel it. Lindsey quietly adds that he knows it’s probably nothing in Angel’s eyes, the way he wanted to help, the only way he knew how to, and he breaks off before saying anything else.
“You meant well,” Angel tells him, “I can acknowledge that.”
”It doesn’t change a thing, it never does,” Lindsey says. He sounds defeated and Angel bows his head, because no. It doesn’t. He will still send Lindsey away as soon as he is healed up enough to be on his own, just not yet.
Not yet.
He brings Lindsey food Cordelia prepared and is surprised when he finds Lindsey sitting up on the bed.
“You shouldn’t be up,” he says. Lindsey smiles, but there is no smirk in it, just a tiredness.
“I’m much better, thanks to you.” No sarcasm.
“You’ll only pull the stitches.”
“Angel.” No heat.
His own name makes him stop and look. There is colour back in Lindsey’s face, and he looks shaky but alright. They aren’t back to insults but close, the familiarity of it all itching under Angel’s skin.
“I don’t want you to leave yet,” he says. Immediately he wants to take it back, because Lindsey looks as if he had slapped him.
Angel sets the food down on the night stand and kneels next to the bed. He reaches up and brushes against Lindsey’s cheekbone, the bruise faded to a sickly yellow. He touches the healed cut at his hairline, the one that bled so much. Lindsey does not flinch, just closes his eyes halfway, looking at Angel through his lashes, leaning slightly into the touch.
Angel can’t bring himself to say it, so Lindsey does.
“Please let me go.”
He drives Lindsey home, stopping a block away from his apartment in case anyone is watching. He picked another block then the one Lindsey got attacked on and Lindsey smiles this smile again because of it. Lindsey does not thank him again, just musters up a smirk and pats Angel’s leg once before getting out of the car.
You’re running away, Angel wants to say. He can’t explain why or how he knows or why he wanted Lindsey to stay, this different Lindsey, the one he wants whole and healed, so he says nothing, keeps his hands on the wheel.
“Guess I’ll be seeing you around,” Lindsey drawls before walking off in his beaten lawyer clothes but Angel’s shirt and that means something to Angel, even if it changes nothing.
(No) Changes
When Angel looks up from his desk, there’s Cordelia at the door, looking almost spooked, cradling the phone to her chest.
“Customer?” he asks.
“You might want to take this call yourself,” she answers, handing him the phone and fleeing the room.
Angel puts it to his ear, letting out a sharp breath. Before he even can say a word, there is this pained sound at the other end of the line and the hairs at his neck stand up.
“Angel?”
And it sounds hoarse and broken, strained. Lindsey.
He wants to snarl at him, mostly for knowing it was him before Lindsey said a word. He does not want Lindsey to ever call, and not while sounding like this because no matter what, his first reaction was something stupid before remembering it is Lindsey.
“Please…”
Angel tries to stop his train of thought, tries to remember how to speak.
“Where are you,” is the first thing he manages, and Lindsey makes another sound.
“’Bout a block from my home. Please, can you…”
Please again. He heard a lot from the lawyer, but never please. Twice in a day had to be a personal record for the boy.
“What do you want,” Angel manages, listening to the static of the line and the hissing intake of each breath. There is another sound, like a stumble, a body not quite falling, and Angel stands up, pressing the phone to his ear, reaching for his coat.
“Lindsey,” he says, aiming at annoyed. “Talk to me. If you’re dying in some hole somewhere, I’m not going to drag your rotting carcass out.”
He waits for the snarl, the snapping, but nothing comes, just static noises.
It doesn’t take him long to get to Lindsey’s neighbourhood, but it takes him a while to find out which block away from Lindsey’s place is the right one. He finally sees Lindsey lying on his side in front of some alley, back towards the street and therefore towards Angel, looking crumbled and still. Angel gets out of the car, his body tense, telling himself that this is a trick, that nothing is ever what it looks like with Lindsey, that he probably isn’t even hurt, just a good actor, has to be, being a lawyer and all. Two steps closer Angel can smell blood.
He does not rush, tells himself that this one does not deserve rushing. He kneels down carefully, his mind still yelling trick at him. He turns Lindsey, who makes a quiet sound but does not open his eyes. Surprised, Angel makes a sound too, low and at the back of his throat, because Lindsey’s hair sticks to the left side of his skull, matted and black with blood. There is a crimson trail running from his hairline across his forehead to the side of his face, already partially dried. The region around his left eye seems to be swollen and bruised, not yet colourful but getting there and the way Lindsey curls his body even while not awake tells Angel more than he wants to know. He blinks, cursing under his breath, not wanting to care, willing himself to stand up and walk away. It would suit Lindsey right for not calling 911 but Angel. Like he was the only one that could help. He lifts Lindsey up easily, placing him into the passenger seat and wraps Lindsey’s coat firmer around his shivering frame before buckling him in. Lindsey chooses this moment to open his eyes and look at Angel, unfocussed and pretty much out of it. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but then only closes his eyes again. Angel curses, loud, flinching from the sound and then curses again, for not leaving him.
Back at the hotel, Angel carries him in, ignoring the face Cordelia makes and brings Lindsey into his own room. He throws him down on the bed, mouth curling into an unwanted grin at the sound Lindsey makes and then walks back to find Wesley.
“Did you bring Lindsey here?” Cordelia asks, wide-eyed.
“What do you think,” Angel says, walking past her and opening a cupboard. “I need bandages. Where are they?”
“Is he hurt?”
Cordelia is Captain Obvious, so Angel ignores her.
“Where’s Wesley?”
Cordelia holds a bandage in front of Angel’s face and when he turns he sees her expression changed to something soft.
“Do you need help?”
Back in his room, Cordelia helps him getting Lindsey out of his coat and jacket. He doesn’t know how they manage, with Lindsey being like a rag doll under their hands. Cordelia moves away with Lindsey’s clothes and shoes and leaves Angel to look at the cut on Lindsey’s right side, the one that freshly bleeds and again stains his white shirt. Angel growls at the sight and when Cordelia comes in again she looks at him but does not say a word. He registers the defensive wounds on Lindsey’s arms, not as deep as the one in his side, already closed and only angry looking. They look like claw marks and Angel’s jaw clenches. Cordelia hands him a damp washcloth, urges him to clean up all the blood first.
“He needs a hospital,” she says quietly while rubbing slow circles across Lindsey’s side.
“He called me,” Angel says.
“Probably because he has you on speed dial.”
Angel looks at her, but she does not smile.
“I don’t think hospital is a good idea.”
”What? You want to play nurse to Mr evil lawyer guy?”
And he wants to tell her no, wants to tell her that he wishes he would have left Lindsey laying in the dirt on that street, broken and clearly not able to get up by himself. He wants to tell her that this way they maybe would have gotten rid of him for good, hell, he knows that they would have because of the way the blood smelled, rich and too much. But then he would have to explain why he picked him up instead and carried him here and he does not know the answer for this. So he just sighs and shakes his head and does not look her in the eyes.
“He needs stitches, so I guess that means hospital after all.”
”How many,” Angel asks, neither looking at Cordelia or the wound, just washing off the blood on Lindsey’s pale face, rubbing against the skin at his left temple, avoiding the bruise forming on his cheekbone. He watches the movement of Lindsey’s eyes under closed lids, the knitting of his brow.
“Angel,” Cordelia says.
“Do we have thread? I’ll do it.”
“Angel,” she repeats, sounding sadder this time. He looks at her.
“I’ll do it,” Angel says softly.
It takes five stitches to close the wound because Angel sets them close to each other, a neat line.
Lindsey tosses on the bed while Angel sits next to it in a chair and watches. He wants to leave but there is the smell of nightmares and pain, and he stays and watches.
It takes a while for Lindsey to wake up, and Angel watches him struggle through it. Groaning, Lindsey reaches for his side, curling towards it, only stopping because of Angel’s quiet request.
“Don’t. Stay on your back.”
Angel had waited for Lindsey to wake up and now that he is awake Angel finds it hard to remember the clean clothes he set aside earlier, next to the painkillers and the water. Lindsey blinks at him, looking concussed and sleepy.
“Angel,” he manages, sounding almost like he did on the phone.
Angel picks up the t-shirt and holds it up.
“Let’s get you into these, all right?”
It’s awkward, because Lindsey stares at him as if he’s still dreaming, but somehow not the bad kind and there is almost gratitude in his eyes even though his jaw is set, the determined look of someone picking a fight. Angel thinks that maybe it’s because of the pain and Lindsey is fighting his body and not Angel, but he is not used to a thought like this, so he focuses on getting Lindsey out of the shredded business shirt and into the plain t-shirt. Lindsey falls back into the pillows and winces, not really helping with the trousers, becoming more pliant with each breath.
Angel throws the ruined shirt into the waste basket and folds the trousers. When he turns towards the bed, Lindsey is already asleep again. Angel looks at the pain killers and rubs his face.
The next time Lindsey wakes up, Angel makes him drink some water.
“What happened?” he asks, but Lindsey only makes a face and swallows hard, so Angel lets him have more water and then watches him fall asleep again.
Cordelia comes in the next day with a determined look on her face. Before she can say anything, Angel holds up a hand.
“No hospital. He stays. I’ll be down in a minute to…”
He motions with his hand and she gapes at him. She does not make any remark about the blood waiting for him, just nods, smiling a little. Her expression shifts into something he can’t read when she looks at Lindsey. She leaves quickly without saying anything.
He waits for Lindsey to open his eyes again, but he misses the moment Lindsey wakes because Lindsey keeps his eyes closed as if it all was too much of an effort.
“Why did you come,” Lindsey asks, still in that voice, the one that made Angel reach for his coat in the first place.
Because you needed help, my help, Angel wants to say, but out comes: “Because you said please.”
Lindsey opens his eyes then, and Angel thinks it’s because he wants to see if Angel is joking or lying. He is neither.
It takes Lindsey a long time to recover. Angel always thought Lindsey would bounce back quickly, he was up after their fights almost instantly, but then Angel had never cut him this deep. Just once, he flinches at the unbidden thought. Maybe this was repentance. But Lindsey is still pale and tired, not eating much, not wanting to move much.
“Why me,” Angel asks.
Lindsey pauses as if he needs to think about it. He seems softer now, maybe too tired to fight, and Angel tries hard to not lose his guard, because Lindsey will be back to his normal self as soon as he is healed.
“I don’t know,” Lindsey then says, slowly as if it surprises him too.
“Why not go to Wolfram and Hart,” Angel asks, needing to understand.
“Because I did a bad thing,” Lindsey answers.
Bad enough to send a demon after you, Angel wants to ask but doesn’t. He wants to press the issue, wants to growl at Lindsey and shake him until he tells him everything, but he feels as tired as Lindsey looks, so he doesn’t do any of the things he thinks of.
Lindsey looks at him the next time he is awake, and he is looking lucid and clear, albeit etched with pain. He lowers his eyes and speaks slowly, not looking at Angel but the blanket tugged around him. He tells Angel then, all that happened that night, the way he trapped a demon in his office to keep him from getting out and slaying, only he got the spell wrong, the old language tricky and not as easy as Latin, some guttural sound wrong, and the demon came after him, not only because of the betrayal but because a lawyer at Wolfram and Hart is supposed to do everything for his client.
Which apparently includes being a punching bag, Angel thinks. He’s surprised at Lindsey’s indifference about the incident and his own bitterness.
Lindsey’s voice shakes a little when he recalls the attack, and he doesn’t say that he thought he was going to die, but Angel can feel it. Lindsey quietly adds that he knows it’s probably nothing in Angel’s eyes, the way he wanted to help, the only way he knew how to, and he breaks off before saying anything else.
“You meant well,” Angel tells him, “I can acknowledge that.”
”It doesn’t change a thing, it never does,” Lindsey says. He sounds defeated and Angel bows his head, because no. It doesn’t. He will still send Lindsey away as soon as he is healed up enough to be on his own, just not yet.
Not yet.
He brings Lindsey food Cordelia prepared and is surprised when he finds Lindsey sitting up on the bed.
“You shouldn’t be up,” he says. Lindsey smiles, but there is no smirk in it, just a tiredness.
“I’m much better, thanks to you.” No sarcasm.
“You’ll only pull the stitches.”
“Angel.” No heat.
His own name makes him stop and look. There is colour back in Lindsey’s face, and he looks shaky but alright. They aren’t back to insults but close, the familiarity of it all itching under Angel’s skin.
“I don’t want you to leave yet,” he says. Immediately he wants to take it back, because Lindsey looks as if he had slapped him.
Angel sets the food down on the night stand and kneels next to the bed. He reaches up and brushes against Lindsey’s cheekbone, the bruise faded to a sickly yellow. He touches the healed cut at his hairline, the one that bled so much. Lindsey does not flinch, just closes his eyes halfway, looking at Angel through his lashes, leaning slightly into the touch.
Angel can’t bring himself to say it, so Lindsey does.
“Please let me go.”
He drives Lindsey home, stopping a block away from his apartment in case anyone is watching. He picked another block then the one Lindsey got attacked on and Lindsey smiles this smile again because of it. Lindsey does not thank him again, just musters up a smirk and pats Angel’s leg once before getting out of the car.
You’re running away, Angel wants to say. He can’t explain why or how he knows or why he wanted Lindsey to stay, this different Lindsey, the one he wants whole and healed, so he says nothing, keeps his hands on the wheel.
“Guess I’ll be seeing you around,” Lindsey drawls before walking off in his beaten lawyer clothes but Angel’s shirt and that means something to Angel, even if it changes nothing.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 09:56 pm (UTC)Actually, I did write more, not actually a sequel, but right now there are two more stories, one about their tension here (http://kohaku1977.livejournal.com/767422.html#cutid1) and one more lighthearted one here (http://kohaku1977.livejournal.com/778117.html#cutid1). Just in case you're interested!
I'm writing on a longish h/c right now, so maybe after that? Heh, thank you for the encouragement. <3 I'm quite in love with this pairing!
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Date: 2009-02-21 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 02:21 am (UTC)x