Summary: Darla is a connoisseur.
Spoilers: 2nd Season, Reunion
Disclaimers: I make no claimers on this material
A/N: this is a trunk story.

***

Darla brings him a glass of wine, dry and red. Lindsey drinks and like
waking from a nap, realizes he hasn't moved in hours.   Is still
standing just where he'd been when Angel had pulled the doors closed.
Can still hear the echoed scrape of the bolt in his memory, like no time
has passed.

But of course he knows it has.  A lot of time.  There had been screams
and worse.  His mind replays it now, as if he hadn't heard it all
before: the wet crunch of teeth through tendons;  curses, prayers.  The
curdled sound of his name as Lilah's voice lost it's human qualities,
became an animal's scream.   The stink of fear and shit.  All around
him, behind him, to the sides.  He had seen none of it.  Although,
looking down now he can see that there are bodies within easy sight.
The floor is awash with red - blood and wine, strangely immiscible.  And
still he hasn't moved.

Not from fear, though.  There had been no fear then, is no fear now,
just the stiffness of his neck, the warmth of the dry red wine in his
throat.  Good wine. The electric tingle of Darla's bloodsticky fingers
under his collar, loosening it, tugging at his tie.   No fear at all.
Just the emptiness that has always been there and the echo of Darla's
touch, a kind buzzing inside like a fly in a fluorescent fixture.
 
 

"You're still smiling," Darla says. "So are you."  Her lips are still so delicate over the fangs, under the sharp vampire ridges.  Her monster face is somewhere between cruel and ironic.  She looks angry but that's all right with Lindsey.  Someone has to be angry here.  "You think I'm going to turn you," she says.  She's moving around him, cat-like, toying.  Her mouth is very near his neck.  He has to admit, the thought has crossed his mind.  Not particularly tonight though.  Not until she mentions it and then he feels something stir inside.  Flutter of fear, excitement.  Fly on the hot bulb, sizzling.  "You like the idea." Her hands are on his hips, his hipbones.  She's behind him now, pressing herself against him.  Pressing him back against her.  Her hands are like corded steel.  He can feel the bones on the edge of creaking.  If she breaks him will anything spill out?  He feels so light, so dry inside.

"I don't hate it," he says.  Darla laughs and suddenly lets him go. Wine
sloshes in the bowl of the glass but he keeps his footing.

"You're a *rock*, Lindsey."  She's taken a step back.  "You know what
they say about rocks..."  Lindsey waits, but she doesn't tell him and
she doesn't come around to face him.  Unbreathing, unliving she fades
from his perception.

It's a long time before he admits to himself that she is gone.

*