Author: Meltha
Rating: soft R
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Meltha
Spoilers: Through season 4 of Angel
Distribution: Fanfiction.net and the Bunny Warren. If you're interested, please let me know.
Summary: Lindsey needs a little help, and Wesley has a problem on his hands.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author's Note: Written for the second Wesley round at maleslashminis, for Morgana (darklingdawns) who requested Wesley/Lindsey, magic, newspaper, and Angelus, no fluffy bunny stuff, and no character death. I hope this works for you!

Proxy

Wesley went up to his room, utterly exhausted, worn out from the mind games Angelus had been playing with him in the basement. Automatically, he looked out the window, forgetting he would see nothing but darkness. It depressed him, and he sat down in a chair facing away from the window, rubbing his face in frustration.

The sharp smack of the newspaper hitting the coffee table in front of had him on his feet in a moment, a stake in each hand. The laughter that followed, though, was not the mocking chuckle of Angelus. This was higher, and it had the slightest touch of humanity in it.

“Lindsey McDonald,” Wesley said, not relaxing his fighting stance an iota.

“Good to see you again, Wes,” Lindsey said, grinning broadly.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, refusing to blink.

“Check the newspaper,” Lindsey replied, throwing himself casually into the other chair.

Pausing first to be sure that Lindsey wasn’t attempting to deflect his attention to take him off guard, Wesley glanced at the newspaper. It was an Atlanta paper, and its headline declared in huge letters “Bizarre Weather Turns L.A. into Sunless Wonder!”

“I’m surprised the media ran the story at all,” Wesley said, still not relaxing. “They usually turn a blind eye to this sort of thing.”

“Normally, they would have, but it’s been a slow news week, I guess,” Lindsey said.

“That still doesn’t explain your presence,” Wesley reminded him, taking a step forward.

“Easy there,” Lindsey said, covering the tense moment with another laugh. “I’m under a white flag. I come in peace.”

“Isn’t that usually what the aliens say in movies just before they attempt to exterminate humankind?” Wesley said, lowering his stakes but keeping one in his right hand.

“I don’t know. I never went for Science Fiction much. I like Westerns… oh, and anything with Angelina Jolie, of course,” Lindsey said.

“Of course,” Wesley replied with an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “Once again, I ask, what are you doing here?”

“Vacation?” Lindsey said, grinning.

“Try again, and by ‘again’ I mean answer the question or you will find yourself in a great deal of pain very quickly,” Wesley responded, his entirely calm tone of voice rather unnerving.

Lindsey’s grin faltered, and he got back to his feet, returning Wesley’s gaze.

“Alright, fine. I saw the story, read between the lines, and figured out there was something very, very nasty that had come to town.”

“And you ran towards it?” Wesley said sarcastically.

“Not towards it. Towards the cover it provides,” Lindsey admitted. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to hide from the Senior Partners? I haven’t spent two nights in the same place in over a year. With this much evil going on in the streets of L.A., they’ll never notice me.”

“Hiding in a crowd. How poetic,” Wesley said, still not smiling. “That explains your presence in L.A., but not in my room.”

“Did I not mention that I have a deal for you?” Lindsey said, his eyebrows rising as he dangled the bait. “Because I do, and it’s a sweet one. Totally guilt-free for you, saves my bacon, and nobody even has to die.”

“I still neglect to see how this would be advantageous to me,” Wesley said.

“I worked at Wolfram & Hart for years, Wes. I know things, things that could be very useful in your little Crusade for Good or whatever Angel’s calling it now,” Lindsey informed him.

“Such as?” Wesley asked.

“Such as why things are spinning so badly out of control, why the Beast seems to know what you’re doing almost before you do, and who you should be taking a closer look at, and why,” Lindsey said.

Wesley regarded him closely before setting his stake on the table.

“And what precisely is the price for this information?” he asked.

“Protection,” Lindsey said.

“You want Angel Investigations to protect you? Surely you don’t expect to live here or have us provide you with a personal bodyguard,” Wesley replied, a note of what could almost be termed amusement creeping into his voice.

“You think I want to live in this dinosaur? With you people… and whatever that green thing is? No, I want protection I can carry around with me. I read in our copy of the Watchers’ Diaries…”

“Wolfram & Hart has a copy of the Watchers’ Diaries?” Wesley interrupted, disturbed. At the same time, he inwardly noted that Lindsey still referred to Wolfram & Hart as “we.”

“We have a copy of everything,” Lindsey said dismissively. “If it’s written, it’s ours. Anyway, I know there’s a spell that the Council has performed a few times in the last century that’s meant to hide the subject from surveillance by enemies, some kind of magical camouflage.”

“Yes,” Wesley admitted carefully. “Part of our training does involve how to cast that particular spell.”

“Yeah, well, I want you to cast it on me,” Lindsey said firmly. “That’s my price. It’s nothing your goody-goody conscience would call immoral, and you’ll get useful information for it. Take it or leave it.”

Wesley looked at him for several moments before saying, “You’ve been waiting a long while for the opportunity to come here and ask for this, haven’t you.”

“Maybe,” Lindsey admitted, “but it doesn’t make it any less desirable an offer.”

Wesley tilted his head in consideration, then nodded once.

“Fine. Here are the conditions. The spell involves my marking you with a number of protective sigils on your skin. Prior to placing each sigil upon you, you must truthfully answer a question I place to you. If you refuse to answer, I refuse to continue. If you lie, the impurity of your answer will taint the spell and will render the protection it would have offered void,” Wesley explained firmly. “Is this arrangement satisfactory?”

“Not quite. How do I know you’re really casting the spell and not just pumping me for information?” Lindsey asked.

“You don’t,” Wesley said. “However, as I am, as you so charmingly call it, possessed of a ‘goody-goody conscience,’ you should feel confident in my honesty. At any rate, you have very little to lose.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

“Fine. Now remove your clothes and lie back on the bed,” Wesley said, turning around and opening a drawer which he began to rummage through, thus missing the shocked look that fleetingly crossed Lindsey’s face.

By the time Wesley had found the necessary ingredients, Lindsey had complied with his orders and was lying naked on Wesley’s bed, looking vaguely uncomfortable. Wesley took no notice but instead began to recite an incantation in a language that somehow sounded much older than Latin, Greek, or any other of the classical tongues that more common spells sometimes were written in. When the words were complete, he placed a finger on Lindsey’s shoulder. A soft thrumming seemed to emanate from it, making both men jump slightly.

“Let’s begin with how the Beast appears to know what we are doing so quickly,” Wesley said.

“That’s an easy one,” Lindsey replied as Wesley finger slowly moved across his skin, living a blue-black line in its wake. It didn’t hurt, but there was a definite feeling of magic prickling his flesh. “There’s a spy inside Angel Investigations, right in the inner circle.”

“I see,” Wesley said, finishing the first line of the design. “I rather thought as much. Now, who is this person?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsey answered, and Wesley’s fingers stalled in their movement of a sweeping, S-like pattern. “Really, I don’t. But I can tell you it’s not Angel, and it’s not Connor. The firm would love to get their hands on them, but Connor was a wildcard we didn’t know about yet when I left, and I know they already had plans in motion to create this little problem even back then. As for Angel, if he were Angelus instead, believe me, you’d know.”

Wesley flinched at the name, and Lindsey stared at him.

“The soul took a hike?” Lindsey asked, stunned. “And you’re not dead yet?”

“Angel’s soul has been removed temporarily and under controlled conditions,” Wesley said in as clinical a voice as he could manage. “Angelus is currently residing in a cage in the basement.”

“That’s got to be fun,” Lindsey said with a snort.

“Quite, if you find masochism enjoyable,” Wesley replied riley. “Now, what bait has Wolfram & Hart offered the person in question?”

“It’s not the simple,” Lindsey said, watching as Wesley’s finger skimmed lightly over his pectoral and attempting not to react to the touch. “They said they were planning on replacing one of you from the inside out with one of them, something similar to possession but a lot more subtle.”

Wesley nodded, suggesting he had confirmed a hunch of his own.

“And what else do you know about this plan?” Wesley asked as he moved to the other shoulder, leaving a pattern on the first that looked ancient and sinister. “All of it.”

“They don’t really expect it to work,” Lindsey said, following the path of Wesley’s fingers with his eyes. “They almost never do. If they got an apocalypse to actually succeed, I don’t think they’d know what to do with themselves. They like the chaos, and frankly, they like messing with Angel’s head. He’s almost the Senior Partners’ version of a hobby.”

“But they do expect us to stop it. They have no problems with the plan continuing through to a world-ending finish?” Wesley asked, curving his finger around another bend on Lindsey’s chest.

“They’re not going to intervene, if that’s what you mean. They just figure this one isn’t going to be enough to beat you,” he confirmed.

“Now, why are you here?” Wesley asked, looking fully into Lindsey’s eyes as he began to draw a line down the center of his chest.

“To get protection,” Lindsey said quickly.

“Yes, you are. And why else?” Wesley asked.

“Because I knew about the spell and that you were here and could do it,” Lindsey said.

“And why else?” Wesley insisted, and a grim smile was starting to turn the corners of his mouth. “You are bound to tell the truth, remember.”

Lindsey shot Wesley an angry look, then huffed in exasperation as he looked off into a far corner of the room.

“Angel,” he finally said.

“What about him?” Wesley said, his fingers still leaving a magical track across his skin, making it softly simmer.

“I,” Lindsey took in a deep breath. “I think about him sometimes.”

“What do you think about?” Wesley asked, unrelenting, stopping the movement of his fingers until Lindsey opened his mouth again.

“His scent,” he finally admitted. “It’s… appealing.”

Wesley said nothing for a moment, continuing with the sigils, and briefly Lindsey thought he was spared.

“Yes, I believe that. But what else do you think of?” Wesley said very quietly.

Lindsey shifted on the bed, a motion that made Wesley think for a moment that he might be considering walking out the door.

“I want him. Is that what you want to hear, Wesley?” he finally spat out. “That I have these ridiculous, obsessive thoughts about him that creep into my dreams and daydreams and every other kind of dreams. It’s annoying as hell, and I don’t like it but…”

“He haunts you, doesn’t he?” Wesley said, placing the palm of his hand over Lindsey’s heart, holding him down.

“Something like that, yeah,” Lindsey said.

“You can’t escape from him, and while you don’t like it, you also don’t quite want it to go away either. Is that it?” Wesley said, and his hand had ceased moving.

Lindsey didn’t respond, just looked at the other man’s face.

“But of course you know nothing like that would ever happen. You’ve made far too many mistakes ever to have a chance at Angel’s trust again, and even if you did, there is the infamous Moment of True Happiness clause to consider. You would have to destroy what you want to get what you want,” Wesley said, not bothering to look away.

“Not the only one, am I?” Lindsey said, smirking at him.

Wesley continued to look at him, slowly smiling a humorless smile.

“No, I suppose you’re not,” he said, leaning forward.

Lindsey didn’t react with surprise as Wesley’s lips touched his, nor when his hands drifted slowly down, grazing against parts of him that had been untouched by anyone else for a long time. There was nothing soft or sweet in their kiss. Instead it was a devouring of mouths, hard teeth scraping against tongues and lips, each one knowing the other wanted them to be sharper, more vicious.

They hated one another, and it was hate, not love, they made, a union of unrequited lust for a vampire who would never, could never belong to either one of them in any way. Hands pummeled, bruised, clawed. Wesley’s clothes were torn apart, the violence of it as satisfying to him as it was to Lindsey. This was not about pleasure or even pain. It was about anger and guilt and a thousand other dark things that lived in the corners of their all-too-human souls, even while both of them were driven into incredibly stupid, sometimes nearly suicidal desire for someone both knew they could never and would never possess. In the end, both of them cried out the name of the one they wanted, not the name of the one with whom they were choosing to forget, and for once, both knew there would not have to be any explanation for the slip. That was some small comfort.

A few minutes later, Wesley stood up, not bothering to look back at Lindsey’s outstretched form as he went to his dresser and took out new clothing.

“The enchantment should work. You’re veiled. Leave.”

He never looked back over his shoulder as he went into the bathroom, closed the door, and started the shower. Fifteen minutes later, when he emerged once more looking clean and impeccably dressed, the room was empty. Satisfied, he went back downstairs to confront the demon who had taken the place of the one he would never have.