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Lindsey Slashficathon
:blinks: This is entirely not the story I intended to write. Oh, well.
Title: The Monkey Grabbed His Neck and Said, "Now Listen, Jack"
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Angel/Lindsey
Rating: heavy PG-13 or light R
Notes: for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ficangel who wanted snark set after Soul Purpose. This is after You're Welcome but before Why Why Fight.
The singing was even better for getting to Angel than standing behind him and talking at him for hours at a time. Lindsey went through every song he'd ever heard and every song he'd ever written twice without his throat getting tired once. Benefits of not existing, he guessed.
Angel cried uncle on the second run-through of ten thousand bottles of beer on the wall. "Okay!" he roared, spinning on his heel. "Shut up, just… shut up!
Harmony looked around uncertainly. "I didn't say anything, I swear!" She held out a sheet of paper. Lindsey ambled to Angel's side to look at it, pleased at both Angel's glare and Harmony's askance look at her boss. "It's the results of that building sweep you wanted. Are you okay, bossy? You look all grrrry."
"S'okay, sweetheart, he was talking to me," Lindsey said. She didn't react, of course. Get kind of strange if Angel's secretary could see things that were only going on in his own massive head.
Angel let out a sigh that was too heavy and too long for somebody who didn't need to breathe. "I'm fine, Harmony. Just - long day. Has this been checked?"
"Like, triple-checked," she affirmed. "Post-Human Resources said they've been monitoring since that creepy guy who tried to kill Spike got all solidified, but there's been nothing." Angel looked defeated. "Can I go back to my desk?" Harmony asked timidly.
"What? Yeah." Angel walked slowly around his desk and sat in the executive leather chair. Looked comfy, kind of chair Holland Manners had back in the day. When Harmony was gone, door clicked shut behind her, he said, "You're not Lindsey MacDonald."
Lindsey - it was easier to think of himself as Lindsey than not - said, "Have to say, I'm impressed. Thought you'd chase the ghost angle for a while."
Angel picked up a pen, passed it from hand to hand. Man needed some of those little desk toys. Newton's cradle, maybe. "The real Lindsey's still wherever the Senior Partners sent him to," he said, the slow tone of somebody thinking aloud. "You're… an imprint, something left in the building…"
Damn. He'd been warm, too. "Maybe," he said. "Hell of a view. This used to be Charlie's office. The table and the TV weren't there, they must've knocked through a wall." He ambled over to the windows, passed his hand through the class. "Eve told me about the new architecture. Guess that was the deal-breaker, huh? Spend all your afternoons in the sun. Makes it easier to forget all those people dying in the dark."
He didn't need to look around to know that the quiet crack was the pen snapping in Angel's hand.
**
He'd been a lawyer once, or the guy whose memories he was made of had been a lawyer. Hair-splitting. He was Lindsey, except for the fact that he couldn't touch anything and was invisible to anybody but Angel. Call him an imprint or a simulation or a copy, if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck then there was little point calling it a turkey.
He felt like an intern again, shadowing his superior (not that Angel was that, not like he thought he was). Hours of meetings - same conference rooms, just changed faces and agendas. Lindsey didn't dance on the table during Angel's big 3pm meeting with the Huarwi clan. Programming or not, the singing was about as undignified as he was prepared to go. Anyway, the little sidelong looks and scowls Angel kept giving him said that he suspected Lindsey could do something any second, and that anticipation would keep him on his toes without the need for fancy footwork.
"Hard day at the office?" Lindsey asked, trailing him into the elevator - private, direct from the office to the penthouse. These days selling your soul came with even more perks. "Cramp a wrist signing all those contracts, maybe brood a while over pig's blood or otter's for lunch?"
"Why is this happening again?" Angel asked the strip-lights in the ceiling. "Didn't I just go through this exact thing with Spike?"
"Hey." Lindsey turned on his most winning smile. "Not a ghost."
"Which means you can't be exorcised," Angel muttered. "Terrific."
The doors slid open. Lindsey let out a low whistle at the space and the décor. "Look at that. Bet you could see right across the city from here."
Angel stalked to the liquor cabinet, poured himself blood from a crystal decanter. "Is there any point to asking you what you want?"
"Me?" He turned back to looking at the city lights. Up so high, they were just dots. "I don't want anything from you, Angel. Not a thing."
He could nearly feel Angel counting to ten, or doing whatever else vampires did for anger management. "What does Lindsey want?"
The look he shot back over his shoulder was heavy with amusement and mock surprise. "See, there's the question you should've been asking. Pretty simple. Senior Partners most likely got him in a hell dimension. There's a couple of places they keep specially for employees who stray."
"And he wants us to rescue him." Angel sounded like he'd rather have a swim through holy water. "Or what, you'll annoy me to death?"
"Sounds fun," he said, crossing to the couch and dropping casually onto it. Good to know he could sit on the thing without falling onto his ass, or dropping straight through the building. "That's not the plan, though."
Angel hadn't touched his blood. "So what is the plan, Lindsey?"
He raised his eyebrows. "What am I, a Bond villain? You're the champion," he gave the word all the irony it deserved, "you tell me what my evil scheme is." When no evil scheme was forthcoming, he asked, "How come your boy Wesley's not in on this? Figured he'd be the first one on call. Also figured he'd check the building sweep and start thinking you were crazy, but…"
Angel slammed down the glass and stormed out through the adjoining door. Lindsey felt himself get pulled along; the room blurred and distorted into a Picasso picture, and when it fixed itself he was sitting on a king-size bed and Angel looked even more pissed off.
"Oh, this is the plan, follow me till I give in and rescue you… him. I forgot you're nine years old." He unbuttoned his shirt, roughly enough that the buttons had to be in danger. Shame. It was a nice shirt, looked expensive. The jacket he tossed to one side.
Lindsey caught himself leaning forward at the tantalizing strip of bare chest. He'd had thoughts in this direction before, or the real him had, but they'd always been slammed down with fury and denial and, just recently, fucking Eve till he wasn't thinking of anybody at all. Now…
He hated Angel. Honestly did. But it had always been complicated, and he probably wasn't going to exist a week from now, so who in hell cared if he had thoughts on the line of his mortal enemy's mouth on his cock.
Who in hell, he thought. Wasn't that the truth.
"If you're gonna shower," he said, leaning back on the bed (was that black silk? Jesus, living the goth vampire cliche…) "really oughta warn you, I'll have to come in there."
Seemed it was back to ignoring him again. Without moving, Lindsey shifted to the bathroom, sprawled on the bed to leaning against the glass pane of the shower in less time than it took to blink. Angel froze in the doorway.
"Sorry," Lindsey shrugged. "Just how this works."
Angel made a low sound that might possibly have been a growl - the noise coiled around Lindsey's gut before it shot direct to his groin - and rubbed his eyes. "You're in my head. That's why you appear wherever I go."
So he had it, quicker than either Lindsey would have given him credit for. "Eve's idea. Acts like a girly-girl but," he shook his head fondly, "she did love Fight Club."
"The parasite," Angel went on. "That thing Eve put on me. It left something behind."
"Failsafe. Just in case something happened to Lindsey. All his memories, everything he ever did or thought. Right here." He tapped his temple. "Current up to the night the parasite was created."
The bathroom was half as big as Lindsey's whole apartment. It still wasn't designed for pacing. He stepped back to avoid being walked through.
"It's something magical," Angel said. "Tattoos or not, Lindsey's just a pissant little Texan, he doesn't have that kind of power. He had to have a source. Eve would have known. We find her, she tells us the caster's name…"
"Oklahoma, Angel, I'm from Oklahoma," he said, forgetting for the moment that he wasn't from anywhere except a warlock's casting circle. "And sure, find Eve, get her to tell you everything she knows. Torture the guy who did this. Get Wes to recreate the ritual. Still need the magic word, and even I don't know it. Only person knows what it is's the one who thought of it."
Angel stopped. "Lindsey." He said it grimly. "So to get rid of you… we have to rescue him."
He clapped his hands three times. Mocking applause. "See? I knew you'd get it all eventually."
Angel had been scowling for most of the conversation, but now he looked down in surprise at his own hand. It was twitching, the fingers clenching and easing spasmodically.
The Failsafe smiled.
"And this is where I do kind of have to do the Bond villain thing," he apologized, advancing on the frozen-in-place vampire. "First trigger: Lindsey disappears. I get activated. Only person who sees me is you. Second trigger…"
Angel choked out, "What are you…"
"Second trigger," he went on, "you figure out exactly what I am." He was right against Angel, now. He'd been this close before, but only with a cord wrapped around his neck. "That sets off the changeover." Angel's eyes darted left and right, but he didn't move. Couldn't. Lindsey could feel him try.
He looked down at Angel's hands, and a blink and an unneeded breath later they were his own hands. He flexed them, grinning, and wondered how that expression looked on Angel's face. Too bad about the lack of reflection. He touched Angel's - his - chest. The muscles were solid under the cool skin. Slid his hand further down and, just like he'd thought, men had much the same physical reactions, dead or alive.
In the back of his head, Angel twitched and was quiet.
Angel's team were going to wonder why their top priority was suddenly rescuing Lindsey MacDonald. His story was going to have to be damn convincing.
Hell, there was time for that shower while he thought it over.
END
Title: The Monkey Grabbed His Neck and Said, "Now Listen, Jack"
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Angel/Lindsey
Rating: heavy PG-13 or light R
Notes: for
ficangel who wanted snark set after Soul Purpose. This is after You're Welcome but before Why Why Fight.The singing was even better for getting to Angel than standing behind him and talking at him for hours at a time. Lindsey went through every song he'd ever heard and every song he'd ever written twice without his throat getting tired once. Benefits of not existing, he guessed.
Angel cried uncle on the second run-through of ten thousand bottles of beer on the wall. "Okay!" he roared, spinning on his heel. "Shut up, just… shut up!
Harmony looked around uncertainly. "I didn't say anything, I swear!" She held out a sheet of paper. Lindsey ambled to Angel's side to look at it, pleased at both Angel's glare and Harmony's askance look at her boss. "It's the results of that building sweep you wanted. Are you okay, bossy? You look all grrrry."
"S'okay, sweetheart, he was talking to me," Lindsey said. She didn't react, of course. Get kind of strange if Angel's secretary could see things that were only going on in his own massive head.
Angel let out a sigh that was too heavy and too long for somebody who didn't need to breathe. "I'm fine, Harmony. Just - long day. Has this been checked?"
"Like, triple-checked," she affirmed. "Post-Human Resources said they've been monitoring since that creepy guy who tried to kill Spike got all solidified, but there's been nothing." Angel looked defeated. "Can I go back to my desk?" Harmony asked timidly.
"What? Yeah." Angel walked slowly around his desk and sat in the executive leather chair. Looked comfy, kind of chair Holland Manners had back in the day. When Harmony was gone, door clicked shut behind her, he said, "You're not Lindsey MacDonald."
Lindsey - it was easier to think of himself as Lindsey than not - said, "Have to say, I'm impressed. Thought you'd chase the ghost angle for a while."
Angel picked up a pen, passed it from hand to hand. Man needed some of those little desk toys. Newton's cradle, maybe. "The real Lindsey's still wherever the Senior Partners sent him to," he said, the slow tone of somebody thinking aloud. "You're… an imprint, something left in the building…"
Damn. He'd been warm, too. "Maybe," he said. "Hell of a view. This used to be Charlie's office. The table and the TV weren't there, they must've knocked through a wall." He ambled over to the windows, passed his hand through the class. "Eve told me about the new architecture. Guess that was the deal-breaker, huh? Spend all your afternoons in the sun. Makes it easier to forget all those people dying in the dark."
He didn't need to look around to know that the quiet crack was the pen snapping in Angel's hand.
**
He'd been a lawyer once, or the guy whose memories he was made of had been a lawyer. Hair-splitting. He was Lindsey, except for the fact that he couldn't touch anything and was invisible to anybody but Angel. Call him an imprint or a simulation or a copy, if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck then there was little point calling it a turkey.
He felt like an intern again, shadowing his superior (not that Angel was that, not like he thought he was). Hours of meetings - same conference rooms, just changed faces and agendas. Lindsey didn't dance on the table during Angel's big 3pm meeting with the Huarwi clan. Programming or not, the singing was about as undignified as he was prepared to go. Anyway, the little sidelong looks and scowls Angel kept giving him said that he suspected Lindsey could do something any second, and that anticipation would keep him on his toes without the need for fancy footwork.
"Hard day at the office?" Lindsey asked, trailing him into the elevator - private, direct from the office to the penthouse. These days selling your soul came with even more perks. "Cramp a wrist signing all those contracts, maybe brood a while over pig's blood or otter's for lunch?"
"Why is this happening again?" Angel asked the strip-lights in the ceiling. "Didn't I just go through this exact thing with Spike?"
"Hey." Lindsey turned on his most winning smile. "Not a ghost."
"Which means you can't be exorcised," Angel muttered. "Terrific."
The doors slid open. Lindsey let out a low whistle at the space and the décor. "Look at that. Bet you could see right across the city from here."
Angel stalked to the liquor cabinet, poured himself blood from a crystal decanter. "Is there any point to asking you what you want?"
"Me?" He turned back to looking at the city lights. Up so high, they were just dots. "I don't want anything from you, Angel. Not a thing."
He could nearly feel Angel counting to ten, or doing whatever else vampires did for anger management. "What does Lindsey want?"
The look he shot back over his shoulder was heavy with amusement and mock surprise. "See, there's the question you should've been asking. Pretty simple. Senior Partners most likely got him in a hell dimension. There's a couple of places they keep specially for employees who stray."
"And he wants us to rescue him." Angel sounded like he'd rather have a swim through holy water. "Or what, you'll annoy me to death?"
"Sounds fun," he said, crossing to the couch and dropping casually onto it. Good to know he could sit on the thing without falling onto his ass, or dropping straight through the building. "That's not the plan, though."
Angel hadn't touched his blood. "So what is the plan, Lindsey?"
He raised his eyebrows. "What am I, a Bond villain? You're the champion," he gave the word all the irony it deserved, "you tell me what my evil scheme is." When no evil scheme was forthcoming, he asked, "How come your boy Wesley's not in on this? Figured he'd be the first one on call. Also figured he'd check the building sweep and start thinking you were crazy, but…"
Angel slammed down the glass and stormed out through the adjoining door. Lindsey felt himself get pulled along; the room blurred and distorted into a Picasso picture, and when it fixed itself he was sitting on a king-size bed and Angel looked even more pissed off.
"Oh, this is the plan, follow me till I give in and rescue you… him. I forgot you're nine years old." He unbuttoned his shirt, roughly enough that the buttons had to be in danger. Shame. It was a nice shirt, looked expensive. The jacket he tossed to one side.
Lindsey caught himself leaning forward at the tantalizing strip of bare chest. He'd had thoughts in this direction before, or the real him had, but they'd always been slammed down with fury and denial and, just recently, fucking Eve till he wasn't thinking of anybody at all. Now…
He hated Angel. Honestly did. But it had always been complicated, and he probably wasn't going to exist a week from now, so who in hell cared if he had thoughts on the line of his mortal enemy's mouth on his cock.
Who in hell, he thought. Wasn't that the truth.
"If you're gonna shower," he said, leaning back on the bed (was that black silk? Jesus, living the goth vampire cliche…) "really oughta warn you, I'll have to come in there."
Seemed it was back to ignoring him again. Without moving, Lindsey shifted to the bathroom, sprawled on the bed to leaning against the glass pane of the shower in less time than it took to blink. Angel froze in the doorway.
"Sorry," Lindsey shrugged. "Just how this works."
Angel made a low sound that might possibly have been a growl - the noise coiled around Lindsey's gut before it shot direct to his groin - and rubbed his eyes. "You're in my head. That's why you appear wherever I go."
So he had it, quicker than either Lindsey would have given him credit for. "Eve's idea. Acts like a girly-girl but," he shook his head fondly, "she did love Fight Club."
"The parasite," Angel went on. "That thing Eve put on me. It left something behind."
"Failsafe. Just in case something happened to Lindsey. All his memories, everything he ever did or thought. Right here." He tapped his temple. "Current up to the night the parasite was created."
The bathroom was half as big as Lindsey's whole apartment. It still wasn't designed for pacing. He stepped back to avoid being walked through.
"It's something magical," Angel said. "Tattoos or not, Lindsey's just a pissant little Texan, he doesn't have that kind of power. He had to have a source. Eve would have known. We find her, she tells us the caster's name…"
"Oklahoma, Angel, I'm from Oklahoma," he said, forgetting for the moment that he wasn't from anywhere except a warlock's casting circle. "And sure, find Eve, get her to tell you everything she knows. Torture the guy who did this. Get Wes to recreate the ritual. Still need the magic word, and even I don't know it. Only person knows what it is's the one who thought of it."
Angel stopped. "Lindsey." He said it grimly. "So to get rid of you… we have to rescue him."
He clapped his hands three times. Mocking applause. "See? I knew you'd get it all eventually."
Angel had been scowling for most of the conversation, but now he looked down in surprise at his own hand. It was twitching, the fingers clenching and easing spasmodically.
The Failsafe smiled.
"And this is where I do kind of have to do the Bond villain thing," he apologized, advancing on the frozen-in-place vampire. "First trigger: Lindsey disappears. I get activated. Only person who sees me is you. Second trigger…"
Angel choked out, "What are you…"
"Second trigger," he went on, "you figure out exactly what I am." He was right against Angel, now. He'd been this close before, but only with a cord wrapped around his neck. "That sets off the changeover." Angel's eyes darted left and right, but he didn't move. Couldn't. Lindsey could feel him try.
He looked down at Angel's hands, and a blink and an unneeded breath later they were his own hands. He flexed them, grinning, and wondered how that expression looked on Angel's face. Too bad about the lack of reflection. He touched Angel's - his - chest. The muscles were solid under the cool skin. Slid his hand further down and, just like he'd thought, men had much the same physical reactions, dead or alive.
In the back of his head, Angel twitched and was quiet.
Angel's team were going to wonder why their top priority was suddenly rescuing Lindsey MacDonald. His story was going to have to be damn convincing.
Hell, there was time for that shower while he thought it over.
END
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(Not that identityfuck is a kink of mine or anything.)
...I sort of want to see it continue.
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seriously.
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Off to read now!
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Mwah. Good, yummy, and the title made me blink and then grin.
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