Fic: Blowing Smoke (Smoke and Mirrors #9)
Title: Blowing Smoke
Series: Smoke and Mirrors #9
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Gunn/Lindsey
Spoilers/Timeline: During S5, post-Destiny
Summary: Two men in a bar, yo. This is how it ends. Kinda sorta.
*
Gunn knows better. He honest to God does. Knows better and yet he *still* finds himself parking his car a block away from the bar by the temporary offices he, Wesley and Cordy set up after Angel fired them. Still finds himself opening the door to the bar and letting it fall closed behind him as he stands there and waits for his eyes to adjust.
Sees the figure sprawled arrogantly in a chair at the usual table in the center of the room, a tight little smirk pulling at his lips. Lindsey gestures at the chair across from him, and Gunn realizes that Lindsey is sitting in Gunn's usual chair.
The hair is long again, falling against the sides of Lindsey's face, the ends brushing his skin like Gunn's fingers used to. Gunn's gaze tries to burn a hole through the black t-shirt Lindsey's wearing, like he's suddenly developed x-ray vision and will somehow be able to see those marks on his chest.
He can't, of course, and so he moves his eyes to Lindsey's. Even across the room, those eyes stand out. Electric blue in the dimness, bright against the blackness of his shirt. Gunn doesn't look away as he walks forward, and then takes a seat across from the other man.
Settles back, and still keeps looking into the familiar eyes he knows too damn well. The attitude. The unmet sense of entitlement. The dry humor. The anger. It's Lindsey, through and through. Couldn't be anyone else.
"Why?" Gunn asks finally, his voice faint and blurred around the edges. "Just--why?"
Lindsey shrugs, reaches out to the table to nudge a glass of beer in Gunn's direction, then lifts a half-full glass to his mouth and calmly downs the contents.
"Come on, Gunn," Lindsey drawls, a mocking amusement under that smoky voice that Gunn thinks should let loose with the blues instead of country, because if there was ever a voice made for blues, it's Lindsey's.
"You can't be this surprised," Lindsey continues, half smile on his full lips. "If you are, then I definitely pegged you wrong from the start. Since I don't think I did, why don't you drop the betrayed act. Doesn't suit you, anyway."
Gunn closes his eyes, blocks everything out and forces all the chaotic bits of himself to settled down where they belong. Forces himself to shed the slick lawyerly bullshit he's gotten coated with over the past few months.
Looks at Lindsey again, and knows his face has pulled and tightened into something hard and cold. "Why?" he asks sharply.
It's a different question this time, and Lindsey nods in approval as he picks up a bottle on the table and pours himself another measure of liquid.
"Still asking questions you already know the answer to. Bet that's what makes you the best and brightest at the new and improved Wolfram & Hart." Lifts his glass in a toast that Gunn doesn't meet, grins wryly and takes a sip from his glass.
Gunn's tired suddenly. Down to his core like he hasn't been in years. Sinks back on his chair and rubs the top of his head. Yeah, he knows why. He really fucking does. It gets in the blood, poisons from the inside out, and it's not as easy as walking away. It never is, and Gunn used to know that like he knew his own name.
Picks up the beer and shoots back half the glass. He's breathing deeply when he sets the glass back on the table, his movements precise.
He feels like he's in some bizzaro universe. They've switched places, and not just at the table. Gunn's now working at Wolfram & Hart, and Lindsey's trying to take it down. Except, not really. Lindsey's really just still trying to take Angel down. So maybe everything's the same as it used to be. Everything except Gunn and Lindsey, who are still exactly the same as they've always been, no matter what they try to tell themselves.
His eyes go to Lindsey's again, and there's layer upon layer of everything in those blue eyes. Thousands of layers, it seems to Gunn's tired eyes. And even though they're stacked neatly, one on top of the other, it's like they're transparent. Like Gunn can look from one to the next, see them all at once.
And the only one of them that's worth seeing is buried at the bottom, so far down that it's hard to make out. It never used to be. Gunn remembers when it was somewhere in the middle, and he remembers when it started getting closer to the surface. Closer, but never quite there.
"What the hell happened, Linds?" he asks quietly, bypassing his beer and reaching for the bottle. Yeah, and how well Lindsey knows him is there on the table in the guise of a second glass, just waiting patiently.
Gunn doesn't need to glance at the bottle to know it's whiskey. It's always whiskey. He fills the short glass almost to the top, brings it to his lips, and grounds himself in the burning sensation of half the liquid sliding down his throat.
"What always happens, Gunn?" Lindsey dismisses with a shrug, and for the first time since Gunn walked in, there's nothing arrogant, or cocky, or smug in Lindsey's voice. "Does it even matter?"
"Does it even matter?" Gunn repeats harshly, his eyes going wide. "You're jerking us around by the short hairs. I'd say it matters a whole hell of a lot."
Lindsey's eyes flare. "Ask Angel how much it matters," he grinds out, his teeth all but clenched. "Ask him how much a phone call means compared to his all-mighty decisions." His lips pull back from his teeth. "Doubt you'll get an answer, though."
Gunn shakes his head. "Typical Lindsey bullshit," he replies. "Your life gets jacked to hell and back *again* and you put the blame on someone else *again*."
There's a lot that Gunn never said to Lindsey back in the day. For a lot of reasons. But it bubbles to the surface, and he lets it loose.
"You want a newsflash, Lindsey?" he says, leaning forward and lowering his brows. "It's a few years late, but it still hasn't sunken in, so here it is: your damn hand wouldn't have gotten chopped off if you hadn't taken a job with Satan's Pet Attorneys in the first damn place. And another--Darla wouldn't have made a huge ass fool of you if you hadn't brought her back from the dead."
Shakes his head, leans back and watches Lindsey glare and snarl at him.
"You bring up Angel and, yeah, he's a big part of it. But you're the bigger part. You always are. And that's why your life is *always* going to get jacked to hell and back. Again and again. Because you bring it on yourself."
"You think you're so damn smart all of a sudden, don't you?" Lindsey hisses, and Gunn shrugs his shoulders. Lifts his hands. "Let's take a look at you, Gunn. Two fucking minutes of eye gazing with the Conduit, and you turned your back on everything you stood for and signed your damn soul away."
Gunn freezes, goes still and doesn't even blink. Trust Lindsey to voice what he's been afraid of.
"Then there's your brand spankin' new 'law degree'," Lindsey continues, the sibilance leaving his voice until it's just a hard, cold sound that rips into Gunn. "Eve makes a few loaded comments, gives you a card and--bam!" Lindsey slams a fist onto the table. "You let some quack shove shit into your head. What the *hell*? Your gave the Senior Partners access to your *head*." Lindsey points emphatically at his own temple, his face incredulous.
"You still don't even know what the hell they did, or what the consequences are, but you're not even thinking about that. And why the hell should you, when you traipse up to see the pretty cat every day."
Gunn starts, and there's a mean, knowing smile from Lindsey.
He lifts his first two fingers and points at his own eyes, then stretches out his hand so that the fingers point in the general vicinity of Gunn's. And damn it if Gunn doesn't see some kind of hazy line drawn between them.
"You cover your ass good. No one knows just how often you take the elevator to the White Room. Hell, according to my sources it's only once a week--and my sources are damn good. But we both know better than that."
Gunn is still frozen, and Lindsey's eyes lock on his as Lindsey brings his glass to his mouth, tosses back the last of the whiskey, then slams the glass down on the table.
"You think it comes without a price?" Lindsey asks rhetorically. "Think you won't have to pay with anything important when it's all said and done?" He laughs harshly. "Think you already haven't? Who's lying to themselves now, Gunn?"
Gunn takes a deep breath. Shit, he'd known better. He honest to God had. "You're right," he concedes calmly. "About all of it." Lindsey looks surprised, and Gunn casually picks up his drink, takes a sip. "You think that means I'm you, from back in the day. Thing is, I'm not."
"Yeah?" Lindsey asks, black humor dripping from his words. "Why is that? Because you're one of the good guys?"
Gunn shakes his head. "No. Because I give a damn about where it's going to take me, and you never did. Not until it was too late."
Lindsey runs a hand across his face. "Fuck. You think that matters? It doesn't mean jack shit, Gunn. Not *jack shit*."
Gunn's elbows come to rest on the table, and then his face is buried in his hands. "I know, all right? I know."
***
Lindsey curses under his breath. Had he really thought he'd be able to see Gunn and keep up some kind of half-assed distancing bullshit? He wasn't even able to do it when he called Gunn a couple of weeks back. Just two damn minutes on the phone and he was the old Lindsey again. Too damn close to it all. Too damn close to Gunn.
"What do you want me to say, Gunn?" he asks tiredly.
There's something close to a bitter laugh from Gunn, and Lindsey clenches his hands. Fuck. If there's one person who doesn't deserve to get stripped down to all the ugly stuff, it's Gunn. Lindsey remembers Gunn cleaning and fixing him up after Angel beat the crap out of him. Gunn doesn't deserve this. At all. But there's no getting around it.
"What do I want you to *say*?" Gunn says lowly and lifts his head, one small increment at a time. Precise. Deliberate. Just like his voice when he starts talking again. "I want you to say that you'll let this shit go, once and for all. I want you to say that you're leaving town again, and then I want you to say hello when you call me from some stupid roadside attraction."
Lindsey flinches, and Gunn closes his eyes briefly.
"Mostly, though, I want you to say that you're not Lindsey, that someone is squatting in your body."
"I can't say that," Lindsey replies stiffly.
Gunn regards him steadily. "Which one?"
Lindsey's hands tighten so much that he can feel his nails breaking through the skin of his palms. "Any of them. There are things--"
"Fuck things," Gunn bites out, eyes glittering irately as he leans forward. "Especially fuck things that 'Gunn doesn't understand'. Because I was sick of that two years ago, and I'm still sick of it. It's bullshit that's going on, and you know it. Don't blow smoke up my ass, Linds."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Lindsey says with a smile, and Gunn glares at him. "Goddamn, I've missed you."
Gunn's eyes widen. "*Don't* even go there. If it's just business, then you damn well keep it that way."
Lindsey wonders if he should be envious of, or disgusted by, what Gunn's just said. "Nothing is ever just business. Not for me."
"I see. It's just more important to get back at Angel for shit that was your fault, too, than it is to give a damn about me."
And Lindsey remembers the best part of his brief time away from all of this: no conflict. He wasn't hurting someone he actually gave a damn about--and if he wants to be honest, he more than gives a damn about Gunn--in favor of doing a dirty job.
"I'm sorry," he tells Gunn, and his voice is a whisper.
Gunn's face doesn't change, just stays set in hard lines. "I actually believe it," he says sharply. "But the words alone? They don't mean jack shit, Linds. Not jack shit."
Lindsey goes still, because condemnation from Gunn doesn't make him angry, the way it would from someone, anyone, else. It just makes him hurt for all the messed up shit both of them stepped into and can't escape. Even if they wanted to.
"Why'd you come here, Gunn? Just to ask me why?"
"I came here to see *you*," Gunn says simply. "But I don't know you anymore. Guess I never did, huh?"
Lindsey slashes a hand through the air, dismissing that immediately. "Not true. You knew me then, you know me now. You just want me to be irrevocably on your team, even though you know damn well I ride the fence."
Gunn's eyes sparkle, a glitter of stars in their dark depths, and Lindsey wants to shove the table out of the way and lose himself in Gunn.
"I used to wonder," Gunn says carefully, eyes still intense and starry. "Just the two of us. Some place where there wasn't an ocean of gray. Just nice and simple things."
Gunn's face sinks down, softens around the edges, and Lindsey knows that face so well it almost brings tears to his eyes. The face of the man who used to take up Lindsey's entire field of vision when Lindsey was sweating and panting beneath him.
"Somewhere," Gunn goes on, his voice low, "that it was safe for you to be you."
Oh fucking God. Lindsey can't breathe for a moment, and he can't blink. He can only stare at Gunn like he's some sort of apparition that he's been waiting for his whole goddamn life. Finally gulps in a lungful of air, and his lids slam shut.
It's all about the moment when something's possible, and it comes down to recognizing it as it happens. Hindsight is a vicious bitch, and Lindsey wants to tear her to pieces. Gunn could have come with him when he left, or joined him right after. And everything in the world would have been different.
But the moment's gone. Long gone. All Lindsey has to show for it is an ache in his chest for what could have been if only he'd been paying attention.
When he opens his eyes, he finds a stricken look on Gunn's face that he can feel mirrored on his own. But Gunn looks away, and Lindsey sees his profile slide into a mask of impassiveness. Lindsey doesn't even bother trying to school his own face to not show his feelings. It's a hopeless cause at this point, and he knows it.
"Do you need help, Linds?" Gunn asks flatly, the arch of his brown indicating that he knows what Lindsey's answer will be.
Lindsey shakes his head. "No, Gunn, but it means a lot that you asked. All things considered."
Gunn nods once, then looks around. "I won't be back."
And he won't be making another offer to help Lindsey out of the latest mess, Lindsey knows.
"Think about what I said," Lindsey tells him. "About the cost. Watch your back."
"You do the same."
Everything in Lindsey's life goes to shit, and Gunn's right about Lindsey having a hand in it all. He watches Gunn walk away and knows that the next time he sees the other man, he'll only be an adversary. There won't be anything left between them.
It sucks, and there's not much Lindsey wouldn't do to change it, except follow in Angel's footsteps and rewrite history. Mostly because he doesn't know how to get it rewritten, but also because he knows he'd just fuck things up again.
Lindsey knocks back another drink. There are machinations and schemes flying every which way, and they leave no place for anything but themselves. It's the story of his life.
.End
Next Story in Series - Ashes and Glass 1/3
Series Listing in Memories here.
Series: Smoke and Mirrors #9
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Gunn/Lindsey
Spoilers/Timeline: During S5, post-Destiny
Summary: Two men in a bar, yo. This is how it ends. Kinda sorta.
*
Gunn knows better. He honest to God does. Knows better and yet he *still* finds himself parking his car a block away from the bar by the temporary offices he, Wesley and Cordy set up after Angel fired them. Still finds himself opening the door to the bar and letting it fall closed behind him as he stands there and waits for his eyes to adjust.
Sees the figure sprawled arrogantly in a chair at the usual table in the center of the room, a tight little smirk pulling at his lips. Lindsey gestures at the chair across from him, and Gunn realizes that Lindsey is sitting in Gunn's usual chair.
The hair is long again, falling against the sides of Lindsey's face, the ends brushing his skin like Gunn's fingers used to. Gunn's gaze tries to burn a hole through the black t-shirt Lindsey's wearing, like he's suddenly developed x-ray vision and will somehow be able to see those marks on his chest.
He can't, of course, and so he moves his eyes to Lindsey's. Even across the room, those eyes stand out. Electric blue in the dimness, bright against the blackness of his shirt. Gunn doesn't look away as he walks forward, and then takes a seat across from the other man.
Settles back, and still keeps looking into the familiar eyes he knows too damn well. The attitude. The unmet sense of entitlement. The dry humor. The anger. It's Lindsey, through and through. Couldn't be anyone else.
"Why?" Gunn asks finally, his voice faint and blurred around the edges. "Just--why?"
Lindsey shrugs, reaches out to the table to nudge a glass of beer in Gunn's direction, then lifts a half-full glass to his mouth and calmly downs the contents.
"Come on, Gunn," Lindsey drawls, a mocking amusement under that smoky voice that Gunn thinks should let loose with the blues instead of country, because if there was ever a voice made for blues, it's Lindsey's.
"You can't be this surprised," Lindsey continues, half smile on his full lips. "If you are, then I definitely pegged you wrong from the start. Since I don't think I did, why don't you drop the betrayed act. Doesn't suit you, anyway."
Gunn closes his eyes, blocks everything out and forces all the chaotic bits of himself to settled down where they belong. Forces himself to shed the slick lawyerly bullshit he's gotten coated with over the past few months.
Looks at Lindsey again, and knows his face has pulled and tightened into something hard and cold. "Why?" he asks sharply.
It's a different question this time, and Lindsey nods in approval as he picks up a bottle on the table and pours himself another measure of liquid.
"Still asking questions you already know the answer to. Bet that's what makes you the best and brightest at the new and improved Wolfram & Hart." Lifts his glass in a toast that Gunn doesn't meet, grins wryly and takes a sip from his glass.
Gunn's tired suddenly. Down to his core like he hasn't been in years. Sinks back on his chair and rubs the top of his head. Yeah, he knows why. He really fucking does. It gets in the blood, poisons from the inside out, and it's not as easy as walking away. It never is, and Gunn used to know that like he knew his own name.
Picks up the beer and shoots back half the glass. He's breathing deeply when he sets the glass back on the table, his movements precise.
He feels like he's in some bizzaro universe. They've switched places, and not just at the table. Gunn's now working at Wolfram & Hart, and Lindsey's trying to take it down. Except, not really. Lindsey's really just still trying to take Angel down. So maybe everything's the same as it used to be. Everything except Gunn and Lindsey, who are still exactly the same as they've always been, no matter what they try to tell themselves.
His eyes go to Lindsey's again, and there's layer upon layer of everything in those blue eyes. Thousands of layers, it seems to Gunn's tired eyes. And even though they're stacked neatly, one on top of the other, it's like they're transparent. Like Gunn can look from one to the next, see them all at once.
And the only one of them that's worth seeing is buried at the bottom, so far down that it's hard to make out. It never used to be. Gunn remembers when it was somewhere in the middle, and he remembers when it started getting closer to the surface. Closer, but never quite there.
"What the hell happened, Linds?" he asks quietly, bypassing his beer and reaching for the bottle. Yeah, and how well Lindsey knows him is there on the table in the guise of a second glass, just waiting patiently.
Gunn doesn't need to glance at the bottle to know it's whiskey. It's always whiskey. He fills the short glass almost to the top, brings it to his lips, and grounds himself in the burning sensation of half the liquid sliding down his throat.
"What always happens, Gunn?" Lindsey dismisses with a shrug, and for the first time since Gunn walked in, there's nothing arrogant, or cocky, or smug in Lindsey's voice. "Does it even matter?"
"Does it even matter?" Gunn repeats harshly, his eyes going wide. "You're jerking us around by the short hairs. I'd say it matters a whole hell of a lot."
Lindsey's eyes flare. "Ask Angel how much it matters," he grinds out, his teeth all but clenched. "Ask him how much a phone call means compared to his all-mighty decisions." His lips pull back from his teeth. "Doubt you'll get an answer, though."
Gunn shakes his head. "Typical Lindsey bullshit," he replies. "Your life gets jacked to hell and back *again* and you put the blame on someone else *again*."
There's a lot that Gunn never said to Lindsey back in the day. For a lot of reasons. But it bubbles to the surface, and he lets it loose.
"You want a newsflash, Lindsey?" he says, leaning forward and lowering his brows. "It's a few years late, but it still hasn't sunken in, so here it is: your damn hand wouldn't have gotten chopped off if you hadn't taken a job with Satan's Pet Attorneys in the first damn place. And another--Darla wouldn't have made a huge ass fool of you if you hadn't brought her back from the dead."
Shakes his head, leans back and watches Lindsey glare and snarl at him.
"You bring up Angel and, yeah, he's a big part of it. But you're the bigger part. You always are. And that's why your life is *always* going to get jacked to hell and back. Again and again. Because you bring it on yourself."
"You think you're so damn smart all of a sudden, don't you?" Lindsey hisses, and Gunn shrugs his shoulders. Lifts his hands. "Let's take a look at you, Gunn. Two fucking minutes of eye gazing with the Conduit, and you turned your back on everything you stood for and signed your damn soul away."
Gunn freezes, goes still and doesn't even blink. Trust Lindsey to voice what he's been afraid of.
"Then there's your brand spankin' new 'law degree'," Lindsey continues, the sibilance leaving his voice until it's just a hard, cold sound that rips into Gunn. "Eve makes a few loaded comments, gives you a card and--bam!" Lindsey slams a fist onto the table. "You let some quack shove shit into your head. What the *hell*? Your gave the Senior Partners access to your *head*." Lindsey points emphatically at his own temple, his face incredulous.
"You still don't even know what the hell they did, or what the consequences are, but you're not even thinking about that. And why the hell should you, when you traipse up to see the pretty cat every day."
Gunn starts, and there's a mean, knowing smile from Lindsey.
He lifts his first two fingers and points at his own eyes, then stretches out his hand so that the fingers point in the general vicinity of Gunn's. And damn it if Gunn doesn't see some kind of hazy line drawn between them.
"You cover your ass good. No one knows just how often you take the elevator to the White Room. Hell, according to my sources it's only once a week--and my sources are damn good. But we both know better than that."
Gunn is still frozen, and Lindsey's eyes lock on his as Lindsey brings his glass to his mouth, tosses back the last of the whiskey, then slams the glass down on the table.
"You think it comes without a price?" Lindsey asks rhetorically. "Think you won't have to pay with anything important when it's all said and done?" He laughs harshly. "Think you already haven't? Who's lying to themselves now, Gunn?"
Gunn takes a deep breath. Shit, he'd known better. He honest to God had. "You're right," he concedes calmly. "About all of it." Lindsey looks surprised, and Gunn casually picks up his drink, takes a sip. "You think that means I'm you, from back in the day. Thing is, I'm not."
"Yeah?" Lindsey asks, black humor dripping from his words. "Why is that? Because you're one of the good guys?"
Gunn shakes his head. "No. Because I give a damn about where it's going to take me, and you never did. Not until it was too late."
Lindsey runs a hand across his face. "Fuck. You think that matters? It doesn't mean jack shit, Gunn. Not *jack shit*."
Gunn's elbows come to rest on the table, and then his face is buried in his hands. "I know, all right? I know."
***
Lindsey curses under his breath. Had he really thought he'd be able to see Gunn and keep up some kind of half-assed distancing bullshit? He wasn't even able to do it when he called Gunn a couple of weeks back. Just two damn minutes on the phone and he was the old Lindsey again. Too damn close to it all. Too damn close to Gunn.
"What do you want me to say, Gunn?" he asks tiredly.
There's something close to a bitter laugh from Gunn, and Lindsey clenches his hands. Fuck. If there's one person who doesn't deserve to get stripped down to all the ugly stuff, it's Gunn. Lindsey remembers Gunn cleaning and fixing him up after Angel beat the crap out of him. Gunn doesn't deserve this. At all. But there's no getting around it.
"What do I want you to *say*?" Gunn says lowly and lifts his head, one small increment at a time. Precise. Deliberate. Just like his voice when he starts talking again. "I want you to say that you'll let this shit go, once and for all. I want you to say that you're leaving town again, and then I want you to say hello when you call me from some stupid roadside attraction."
Lindsey flinches, and Gunn closes his eyes briefly.
"Mostly, though, I want you to say that you're not Lindsey, that someone is squatting in your body."
"I can't say that," Lindsey replies stiffly.
Gunn regards him steadily. "Which one?"
Lindsey's hands tighten so much that he can feel his nails breaking through the skin of his palms. "Any of them. There are things--"
"Fuck things," Gunn bites out, eyes glittering irately as he leans forward. "Especially fuck things that 'Gunn doesn't understand'. Because I was sick of that two years ago, and I'm still sick of it. It's bullshit that's going on, and you know it. Don't blow smoke up my ass, Linds."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Lindsey says with a smile, and Gunn glares at him. "Goddamn, I've missed you."
Gunn's eyes widen. "*Don't* even go there. If it's just business, then you damn well keep it that way."
Lindsey wonders if he should be envious of, or disgusted by, what Gunn's just said. "Nothing is ever just business. Not for me."
"I see. It's just more important to get back at Angel for shit that was your fault, too, than it is to give a damn about me."
And Lindsey remembers the best part of his brief time away from all of this: no conflict. He wasn't hurting someone he actually gave a damn about--and if he wants to be honest, he more than gives a damn about Gunn--in favor of doing a dirty job.
"I'm sorry," he tells Gunn, and his voice is a whisper.
Gunn's face doesn't change, just stays set in hard lines. "I actually believe it," he says sharply. "But the words alone? They don't mean jack shit, Linds. Not jack shit."
Lindsey goes still, because condemnation from Gunn doesn't make him angry, the way it would from someone, anyone, else. It just makes him hurt for all the messed up shit both of them stepped into and can't escape. Even if they wanted to.
"Why'd you come here, Gunn? Just to ask me why?"
"I came here to see *you*," Gunn says simply. "But I don't know you anymore. Guess I never did, huh?"
Lindsey slashes a hand through the air, dismissing that immediately. "Not true. You knew me then, you know me now. You just want me to be irrevocably on your team, even though you know damn well I ride the fence."
Gunn's eyes sparkle, a glitter of stars in their dark depths, and Lindsey wants to shove the table out of the way and lose himself in Gunn.
"I used to wonder," Gunn says carefully, eyes still intense and starry. "Just the two of us. Some place where there wasn't an ocean of gray. Just nice and simple things."
Gunn's face sinks down, softens around the edges, and Lindsey knows that face so well it almost brings tears to his eyes. The face of the man who used to take up Lindsey's entire field of vision when Lindsey was sweating and panting beneath him.
"Somewhere," Gunn goes on, his voice low, "that it was safe for you to be you."
Oh fucking God. Lindsey can't breathe for a moment, and he can't blink. He can only stare at Gunn like he's some sort of apparition that he's been waiting for his whole goddamn life. Finally gulps in a lungful of air, and his lids slam shut.
It's all about the moment when something's possible, and it comes down to recognizing it as it happens. Hindsight is a vicious bitch, and Lindsey wants to tear her to pieces. Gunn could have come with him when he left, or joined him right after. And everything in the world would have been different.
But the moment's gone. Long gone. All Lindsey has to show for it is an ache in his chest for what could have been if only he'd been paying attention.
When he opens his eyes, he finds a stricken look on Gunn's face that he can feel mirrored on his own. But Gunn looks away, and Lindsey sees his profile slide into a mask of impassiveness. Lindsey doesn't even bother trying to school his own face to not show his feelings. It's a hopeless cause at this point, and he knows it.
"Do you need help, Linds?" Gunn asks flatly, the arch of his brown indicating that he knows what Lindsey's answer will be.
Lindsey shakes his head. "No, Gunn, but it means a lot that you asked. All things considered."
Gunn nods once, then looks around. "I won't be back."
And he won't be making another offer to help Lindsey out of the latest mess, Lindsey knows.
"Think about what I said," Lindsey tells him. "About the cost. Watch your back."
"You do the same."
Everything in Lindsey's life goes to shit, and Gunn's right about Lindsey having a hand in it all. He watches Gunn walk away and knows that the next time he sees the other man, he'll only be an adversary. There won't be anything left between them.
It sucks, and there's not much Lindsey wouldn't do to change it, except follow in Angel's footsteps and rewrite history. Mostly because he doesn't know how to get it rewritten, but also because he knows he'd just fuck things up again.
Lindsey knocks back another drink. There are machinations and schemes flying every which way, and they leave no place for anything but themselves. It's the story of his life.
.End
Next Story in Series - Ashes and Glass 1/3
Series Listing in Memories here.