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Title: Frozen
Author: Elizabeth
Pairing: Angel/Lindsey
 Rating: R
Setting: S3, Through 'Blood Money'



The greeting is always the same. He gets a hand on his throat, squeezing--a not-very subtle reminder of what was done to him, of what he's lost.

Although, to be fair, sometimes there's variation, a subtle change. Once there was a garrote involved. Occasionally he's met with that same hand curled into a fist and planted into his chin or his jaw before it moves to his throat.

"Where is....?" All Lindsey hears past that is a dull roar, the throbbing in his throat rising up past his ears, past his eyes; it's everywhere. A hand to your throat makes you forget about everything but the fact that you need to breathe--he's learned this lesson well. The pressure vanishes as suddenly as it arrived, though the echo of the feeling remains, locked within. There are ringing circles of pain falling down inside him as he tries to swallow.

Hello, Angel. He'd say that, if he could, but he's currently concentrating on inhaling all the air he can through what feels like a permanently bruised throat.

He'd met a client last week who told him that he had a very sensual voice. "It takes a lifetime of hard living to produce a voice like that," the client said, hints twirling in her eyes, dropping from her voice--a wish for Lindsey to play barbarian lawyer and pillage the body sitting across from his desk, the body ensconced in a designer suit and filled with ill-will towards a husband suing for divorce. "You must like to flirt with death." Lindsey looked down at his plastic hand, felt a smile creep across his face. "Something like that."

Flirting with death. Is that what he does?

The pressure is back on his throat again. "Where is...?"

Maybe.

Lindsey's vision is turning gray, then black around the edges. Where is what? He can't hear what Angel is asking for, though he's willing to bet that it's probably some old moldering sword or scroll or worse, a fuzzy-headed gray-faced demon. Just once, Lindsey would like to be in possession of a Barbie-doll featured succubus, or an enchanted assault weapon or maybe even a cursed beachfront condo. "I don't know."

He can breathe again. His vision fills out, the corners shading in with color. Still gray though, and Lindsey remembers that he's in the parking garage of Wolfram and Hart. Seconds from his car, seconds from leaving the building and driving home to his anonymous apartment that can't be accessed by certain vampires because they haven't been invited inside.

Angel's voice is very soft against his throat. "The Book of Amar--where is it?" The last t lingers and Lindsey feels it prickle against his skin. It's enough to make him shudder slightly, the cross around his neck jingling uselessly.

"Book?" Not a total lie. The Book of Amar is actually a scroll--Lilah came into his office in the afternoon, waving it around like some sort of promise. She laughed when she saw him flinch. Lindsey has bad memories involving scrolls. And Angel.

"Don't...I'm not in the mood. I need the book." Angel says, and his hand is back on Lindsey's throat again, fingers running over and under the chain looped around Lindsey's neck. "Nice."

Lindsey turns his head to the side as much as he can. Angel is looking down at Lindsey's neck and his mouth is registering boredom--there's slight downward derisive curve to it, as if he's just killing time before rushing off to do whatever it is Angel does that irritates the senior partners so. Lindsey has seen that expression before. Countless times. It always bothers him. "It was a gift."

It wasn't, but Angel doesn't know that and Lindsey is very good at lying.

Angel's eyes move up, away from his neck. The pressure on Lindsey's throat increases again. "The book," Angel says. "Where," he presses a little harder and Lindsey's eyes close, conditioned response. "Is," and Angel leans in more. Lindsey can feel his shoulder pressing into Angel's, the lines of the right sides of their bodies almost matching from shoulder to hip. He can hear the toes of his loafers (just polished this morning, dammit) scraping the ground. Angel likes to show off, prove how strong he is. "It?" His mouth is so close to Lindsey's neck that if Lindsey turns a little more....he does. The t falls away with Angel's mouth freezing on his skin.

Lindsey shudders, head to toe, eyes closed shut and plastic hand hanging uselessly at his side. His briefcase makes a thud as it lands on the cement floor. "I haven't---can't..."

"What?" Angel says and Lindsey notices, for the first time, that Angel's voice is even lazier than usual. Heavier, slower, lined with an edge that isn't....human.

"I don't know where..."

The fingers resting against his throat shift, curve. Instead of pressing into skin they skim it. The tips of Angel's fingers are very cold against his flesh. Numbing? He wishes. He swallows and feels those cold fingers trace the path of his throat, arcing over his Adam's apple, a touch hard enough to be almost painful. Almost, and maybe it is.

"Is it just me Lindsey, or do you seem to spend more and more time not knowing anything these days?" Angel's voice is definitely different. Usually he's all short terse phrases, economy of motion in everything he does. But now he speaks against Lindsey's neck, fingers working delicately over the flesh he's just bruised and he sounds...there. Not like he's just passing through, caught in whatever crisis he's immersed himself in. But like he's right where he wants to be. Like he notices who he's talking to.

And in return, Lindsey feels what little balance he has float away, fall down his throat and past his stomach, slide burning into his legs and out the soles of his feet which still dangle right above the ground. "I don't know..." he says again and he's horrified to hear his accent thicken, to hear the vowels in his words lengthen, fill with sound. Eye for I. And his o's sound like the beginnings of moans.

The fingers on his throat press in again, but this time they have chain knotted around them. Lindsey feels the metal scratching against his skin, can almost hear the cross at the end of the chain thumping against his throat in time to the beating of his heart. It's beating so loud that he can hear it, a rushing sound in his ears. It's so loud that he knows Angel hears it too.

"I know," Angel says and then he shifts, pushing Lindsey back against the wall more, sliding them both into the shadows that can't be penetrated by the lights used to keep the night at bay. "I can smell it on you."

Lindsey spends very little time wishing. Mostly because it seems so pointless and also because it seems like such a weakness. So he confines himself to seconds, flashes, quick moments of hazy fantasy broken into fragmented segments. Easily digested and hopefully more forgettable.

Imagine:

Angel dead. That brings joy. Darla, in his office, not pulling away from him to talk of self and re-creation. Heat. Better than Angel dead; Angel broken, lost--at the firm's mercy. Better still, at *his* mercy, the thick carpet of his office under his feet and Angel's hands reaching upward, pleading. Mouth open and when Lindsey reaches his hands out, there isn't any plastic resting where flesh should be.

Light pressure against the front of his pants makes him start, snap forward into now.

Real?

He swallows and the burn in his throat convinces him -- this is reality. Looking down, seeing pale hands he knows as well as his own (aren't they always at his throat, after all?), seeing $600 pants --he purchased them two months ago, part of the first custom-tailored suit he's ever owned. He paid for them without blinking an eye in the store, saved his smile for when he got outside, for when he was safely in his car. For where no one could see him because he's not supposed to still be awed by where he is. He's not supposed to be that country boy any more.

He's...he's forgotten...forgotten because the pressure of Angel's hands has increased, he can feel the firm slide of fingers down the zipper, a teasing glide over metal, light pressure into the skin beneath. A butterfly touch, a promise. Lower now, sliding down to between his legs, a slow glide that makes his entire body shudder again, his hips jerking forward.

"Lindsey," Angel says, the word so low that it almost can't be heard. Almost with a trace of an accent and Lindsey thinks of the firm's file on Angel, of an Irish boy that lived hundreds of years ago, who gained knowledge that Lindsey can only dream of. Say my name, Lindsey wants to say. Say it and mean it. But he can't speak because he can't breathe. There's no hand on his throat but there might as well be.

The sound of his zipper lowering. Not too slow, not too fast, just enough for Lindsey to reach a hand, his only live hand, out in a plea, fingers trying to reach the tip of Angel's ear, the edges of his hair, the curve of his cheek and have it pushed back. He should care that he can't move. He doesn't. He just wants his zipper open and cool fingers sliding over skin, lifting and Angel's mouth...

There. And there. And oh god, there.

Lindsey can hear himself and he's--he's not terrified. He wishes he was. But he's not even surprised. He's nothing. Doesn't Angel always reduce him to this? He can't remember. He's not even moaning, he's not even begging. Instead he's making sounds that can't be named, that are almost inhuman. Hitching sounds rising from his chest and coming up out of his throat, sounds that are past a level of pleasure into something almost like pain. Hitching sounds he and Angel have heard before--on the night Angel cut off his hand.

Below him, Angel is still silent. No breathing, just the soft stinging whisper of his mouth, just the quick scrape of teeth--a fast lesson in the joy of pleasure/pain. Lindsey tries to move--he wants something to mark this as real, something to mark what's happening as tangible, to make it different from closing his eyes and imaging when it's late at night and the liquor bottle he's opened is emptier than it should be--but he can't. His lower body is pinned, boxed in by Angel's. His dead hand is resting against his side, partially twisted behind his back; useless as leverage and Angel has pressed his other hand into the wall. No skin contact, just brutal pressure against his wrist so that he can feel his pulse beating below that point. Trapped blood everywhere. Containment. Just where Angel wants him to be, he thinks. Captive, and glad to be.

Cold falling over him, eyes watching as touches land. There. And there. And -- "please" whispers falling from his mouth--there.

He comes. Not like he wants to--not in a slow satisfying descent that leaves him light-headed and almost dizzy, but in a wave so strong that his entire body jerks forward and then back just as quickly. He comes so fast that he forgets to breathe for a moment, and he snaps back into himself as the back of his skull meets the wall, inhaling on a "huh!" -- sound that expands his lungs and brings a white-hot burst of pleasure coated with pain out behind his closed eyelids, a thousand colors all blurring and splintering in no time at all. He comes and can't register what happened. He can't remember the feel of Angel's mouth, he can't remember the sense of how cold it was or how wet or how right it was. He wants to go back, rewind and do it again. And again. And again.

But then Angel stands up and Lindsey sees the smile on his face. Tiny smile, mouth curled upwards too far. Amusement. Derision. Mockery because Lindsey thought he was getting off but all that happened was that he got fucked.

He's still trying to focus; he's still trying to remember to breathe. He's standing there, exposed--dick hanging out of those $600 pants he's so proud of--and Angel isn't doing anything. Not breathing, not moving. Angel wasn't the one who did anything, in the end. He just let Lindsey throw himself off a ledge and he helped. Watched. Maybe even enjoyed it, a little. But not enough.

"The book..." Lindsey says. He's been here before--in court, in life--it seems he spends most of his time in the firm this way--at a loss, thinking he's somewhere but finding he's nowhere. Given everything and watching as the gilt edges fall off to reveal tarnish underneath and the tiny print of words 'Sorry, no returns.'

Angel's smile gets bigger. More real. He looks down at his watch, wiggling his fingers just slightly. Another reminder for Lindsey. "I'd say as of...oh, I don't know--a minute ago.." The smile is even crueler now and Lindsey feels himself flush for the first time in years, "the book isn't in your office. In fact, I'd say that as of right about now it's on its way out of the firm. In fact--you know what? I gotta go. By the way, great timing Linds--I still have time to get home *well* before sunrise, don't I?"

And then Angel is gone. For once, Lindsey is glad for the way he vanishes in a second. He fixes his pants and picks up his briefcase, tucking it under his arm so that his fake hand rests against it. He walks to his car and gets inside, drives home. He makes small talk with everyone in the elevator on the way up to his apartment, cheerful comments on the weather, the mail, and the crazy tenant in 2F whose cat yowls to be let in every night around four in the morning.

Inside his apartment he puts everything away neatly. Briefcase in the front closet. Papers inside, taken out and put on his desk. Shoes in the closet, lined up with the pair beside them. He feels frenzy build inside him when he gets to his hand but forces himself to take it off slowly, to rest it on the dresser by his bed.

He goes into his living room and opens the blinds, looks out at the nighttime skyline. All those lights. Almost bright enough to be daylight, maybe. He pours himself a drink and sits down. He looks out at the lights and chews on the ice that he put in his glass, breaking the cubes apart with his jaw and swallowing the jagged broken edges--so cold--down. Down his throat, and lower still.

Freezing, and still not cold enough.

END


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