Second Chances

Angel watched Lindsey stalk out the Emergency Room doors, brushing past harried ambulance drivers. Seeing Lindsey climb stiffly into the convertible answered the question as to whether he expected Angel to continue as chauffer after transporting the shell-shocked people from the Wolfram & Hart body storage to the County Hospital. Frowning slightly, Angel briefly considered complying with the admitting nurse's request that he wait for the police to arrive so that he could answer their questions about the disoriented patients that had been delivered without explanation. But even the prospect of irritating Lindsey further by leaving him to stew could not entice Angel to face fabricating a reasonable explanation to one of Los Angeles' finest, who would no doubt be someone firmly in the pocket of Wolfram & Hart. Shaking his head at his compulsion to needle the lawyer, he slipped out the doors and joined a silent Lindsey in the car.

Neither spoke as Angel pulled from the parking lot into traffic. Glancing over, Angel frowned as he noticed Lindsey staring at his right hand and flexing fingers open and closed. He purposefully focused back on the road, refusing to speculate on what might be going on in Lindsey's head.

"Where am I dropping you?" Angel maneuvered onto the 10 West, heading back toward downtown. When no answer was forthcoming, he continued, "Office? Home? Dark alley in Watts?"

"You think that would play well with your little band of do-gooders?" Lindsey sneered.

"They probably don't expect you to live through the night. After all, the last night out I had with lawyers, the survival rate wasn't good," Angel replied conversationally.

"I don't remember you having much to do with that body count. Locked a couple doors and walked away. Yeah, you're bad."

Angel glowered, insulted but not sure that he should be. Silence reigned in the car, and Angel drove on auto-pilot, finally arriving at the Hyperion before realizing that Lindsey had never given any indication as to where he expected to be taken. He decided that he had no intention of driving Lindsey around the city, so he exited the car and walked to the hotel without looking back.

Inside, he liberated the whiskey from his desk and sloshed a generous measure into the mostly clean mug he found on the shelf. He slammed back the whiskey in an attempt to blot out the memories of Lindsey's confused suffering in the dark medical facility. The horror of those bodies preserved for spare parts had been nauseating and appalling even to Angel's own darker impulses.

The door banged open as Lindsey strode over to the Hyperion's desk and slapped his right hand down on the surface. "This is your fault."

Angel poured another drink. "You might want to get some help for this little fixation of yours."

Lindsey leaned forward and snatched the bottle, taking a long drink. "You cut off my hand, you self-righteous bastard, and now I'm stuck with this!" Lindsey gestured with his new hand.

"You chose Wolfram & Hart." The accusation surfaced from months of disappointment over Lindsey's return to the law firm in the wake of their attempt to help him escape.

"You couldn't offer me what they could, and that's not the point." Lindsey paced and took desperate swigs from the whiskey bottle.

"Grow up, Lindsey. I gave you a chance to get out, but you decided that a six-figure salary soothed your under-developed conscience." Angel walked around the desk to reclaim the whiskey bottle before the remainder disappeared down Lindsey's throat.

"You know nothing about my conscience, and you made it clear that you didn't give a good god-damn about my life."

Angel took a shallow drink to stifle his immediate response. He had often regretted his dismissive response to Lindsey's tale of childhood woes. The truth of the man's pain had been evident in those words as he had struggled to justify his reasons for joining Wolfram & Hart, but Angel had refused to admit to feeling compassion. That would have brought him too close to admitting his desire to rescue Lindsey and protect him from the inner demons that pushed him to seek refuge in power and wealth at the expense of his heart. He had hoped that the horror Lindsey had felt at being involved in the murder of children would be enough to lead him to walk away from the promises of the Senior Partners. Only when he watched Lindsey return to the law firm did Angel realize that compassion may have been a more affective method to help.

"So tell me about your conscience."

"Don't play like you give a shit about me. You're not my champion. You're the bastard that cut off my hand."

"I'm also the bastard that helped you find out where that new hand you're sporting came from." Angel stalked closer to the agitated lawyer. "I'm the bastard that worked with you to destroy that horror show. You're feeling guilty about wearing your buddy's hand, fine, but that's not my doing. Talk to your bosses about that."

"Talk to my bosses? Are you fucking nuts? They're gonna have my balls for this. There's no way that they're not gonna have heard about our little adventure tonight." Lindsey swayed a bit as the whiskey took effect, and he staggered to the circular couch in the middle of the lobby, sitting down heavily.

Cautiously, Angel followed, drawn by the pain that radiated from the man. He spared a momentary thought that the Powers might be giving him another chance to reach out, and he decided that he would not make the same mistake a second time.

"I'm so fucked." Lindsey leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at his hands that hung down listlessly.

Angel knelt in front of the couch, setting the bottle aside on the floor. He took Lindsey's hands in his own, turning them as they both watched.

"Can you see that they're different?" Sorrow cracked Lindsey's voice even as his heart sped up with Angel's proximity. "That one of them isn't mine?"

Turning Lindsey's hands palm-upward, Angel considered the question. No scars existed to show where the new hand had been attached, but there were slight differences in skin tone. He released Lindsey's left hand to hold the right with both of his hands, sliding his thumbs over the smooth skin, studying the warmth and lack of callusing.

"Maybe you should just cut this one off. Then it won't matter that it's not mine." Lindsey tried to pull away, but Angel held fast.

"You want to make his sacrifice meaningless?" He barely kept the growl from his voice as he responded to the bitter request.

"What sacrifice? They butchered him for parts. He wanted to die so much that he had me writing "Kill, kill" over and over till I actually killed him!" Lindsey's eyes burned with a rage and pain that Angel recognized all too well.

"You might have been the one to pull the plug, but it was Wolfram & Hart that put him in that machine. They're the ones who did the butchering. You set him free from that." Angel met Lindsey's gaze squarely.

"So what do I do now? Just accept it and move on? Ignore the fact that it's his hand brushing my teeth, holding my pen, playing my guitar? I can't live with this."

"You have to." Angel squeezed Lindsey's hand tighter. "Anything less would diminish what he suffered."

"And who gives a fuck if I suffer, right." Lindsey pulled his hand away, and this time Angel countered by using his greater strength to advantage.

"I didn't say that."

"Angel," Confusion and want colored Lindsey's expression before he flicked his gaze away.

"Yeah, you'll suffer. There will be times that you'll hate yourself for being a part of what Wolfram & Hart did to someone you knew and maybe even cared about. But I didn't say that I didn't care or that you have to suffer that alone." Angel returned to rubbing Lindsey's palm lightly with his thumbs and breathed in the increasing arousal that the gesture engendered.

"I can't go back there, can I?"

"Much as I'd like to answer that for you, you're going to have to make that choice for yourself. But if you want to know that someone cares about what you decide and what consequences it brings if you walk away, I can tell you that you have that."

"You don't care what happens to me," Lindsey spoke flatly. "You just don't want to get any more black marks on your champion record."

"If you want help, I'm offering. You want to sit around feeling sorry for yourself, then you're on your own."

Lindsey's involuntary clenching of Angel's hand gave the vampire his answer. He switched his grip to take both of Lindsey's hands and brought them to his lips. Slowly, he breathed in, taking in the slight difference in scents before he parted his lips to taste one hand and then the other.

"Not much difference," Angel said softly. "Someday, there may not be any." He looked up. Lindsey's eyes had widened and the scent of arousal increased dramatically. With a heated look, Angel moved their linked hands to Lindsey's groin, enjoying the growing erection he found there. "I'll bet they both work the same here," he rubbed Lindsey's compliant hands against the human's cock then moved them to his matching erection, "and here."

"Fuck," Lindsey breathed, eyes closing.

"Is that what you want?"

"Is that what you're offering?" Lindsey challenged.

Angel answered by releasing Lindsey's hands and surging forward in a kiss that he had imagined far more often than he wanted to admit to. Lindsey pressed into the kiss with a fervor that soon deepened the embrace, bringing tongues and teeth into play.

"Upstairs," Angel growled, pulling Lindsey to his feet and grasping his ass to pull the man closer as they suddenly stood groin to groin. Lindsey's rocked his hips in a sensual promise that had both of them throbbing.

"Fuck, yeah," Lindsey breathed.

"Gonna fuck you till you see you're not alone."

"Please."

In that single word, Angel heard all of the need and loneliness that he had seen in this man who had fought so hard to establish himself that he had lost that sense of self somewhere along the way. More than he wanted the hard body in his arms, Angel wanted to help the broken human find his way back to the man that he had the potential to be.

With a short hard kiss, Angel answered Lindsey's request and led him up the stairs to the bed that waited. He meant the promise to fuck some belief into Lindsey, and perhaps that belief would give the lawyer the strength to choose a different path--one that they could walk together.