Darlafic!

For swmbo, whose musings on the nature of ficathons have made me intensely worried that she'll hate the fic I've written for her. Ah well. The rest of the Darlafics are here.


Convalescent

Darla’s arms were draped over the back of the sofa, and she rested her head between them as she murmured, “No, don’t go shower now. Wait a while.”

He turned around in the act of taking off his jacket. He had that look of hope in his eyes she’d been trying to drum out (except in her moments of weakness, when she luxuriated in it – but even that did no harm, kept her hold on him more secure) and he dropped down in front of her, taking her dangling hands in his whole one.

He thinks I’m lonely, the fool. Well, she was lonely, but lonely meant the same thing as bored, and she was bored shut up in Lindsey’s surprisingly dull apartment, so bored she’d begun to watch TV when he was safely away at the office and couldn’t see her failing to strike the right note of tragedy.

That man would do anything for her, if she played him right.

“Bend over,” she said softly.

A quick look of surprise, and he bowed his head.

Darla stretched out and relaxed her chin on the nape of his neck. So vulnerable! She licked up tiny beads of sweat from the arched knobs of his spine, and he quivered under her, sinking to his knees with a groan.

His blood hummed just below, a skin’s thickness away. She grew fangs and pressed ever so lightly on a vein – ah. Oh, he was so fierce in his surrender, this one. She could see why Angel wanted him.

“Would you give me your blood, Lindsey? If I needed it? I’d only take a little...”

He held his breath in hesitation, and then nodded furiously, his hair stirring up to caress her face.

Darla’s jaws clamped down on his neck.

Vampires don’t keep their promises, little Lindsey, she could have told him. But she kept this one. Perhaps because she preferred the subtler pain she could inflict. Perhaps because he was taking care of her. Perhaps because she didn’t want him to die, just yet.

*

He went to a whore one day before coming home; she could smell it. Whiskey on his breath, shame in his stance, and a cheap woman’s cunt on his crotch.

“Did she look like me, Lindsey?” she called out sweetly as he turned the keys in the door. “Did you tell her to pretend she was living in Virginia four hundred years ago? I hope you weren’t too authentic, Lindsey – it’s hard to protect yourself from syphilis during colonial-style sex. Especially when there’s a succession of men in and out from between your legs, day in, day out...”

“Shut up!” Lindsey turned around and shook his keys impotently at her. “I don’t want you to be a whore.” His face was mottled with rage.

Darla laughed out loud. It was true. He really did think of her as pure, in a way – pale and pure and wounded. Good, evil... what do those matter so long as there’s elegant, sweet-smelling purity?

“Don’t worry, Lindsey,” she purred, reclining on her sofa. She knew the effect his name in her voice had on him, and used it at every opportunity. “I couldn’t go back to being a whore, not now that your firm have so thoughtfully made me a vampire again. Men want a warm, living body to wrap themselves around, not a cold snake like me.”

“You’re not...” His hands shook. “You’re beautiful,” he finished.

“Ah, but most men aren’t freaks like you.” She smiled as his hand clenched. Around the keys, no less – that must hurt nicely. “Always staring so hungrily at me and Angel – did you like Drusilla too, Lindsey? She does get fond of blue-eyed weaklings... you could have been her pet.”

He’d crossed the room to her now, looking plainly terrified. “Turn me,” he pleaded, the drawl of his voice broken and hollow. He didn’t seem to recognise the words tumbling out of his mouth. “Make me like you.”

Darla put her arms behind her head and shook out her hair. “Now, why would I want to do that?” she asked lazily.

He stared at her, wildly, and then bolted for the shower.

Darla sighed and got up to find his briefcase. Now she had to rummage for her jar of evening blood herself. Nuisance.

*

On Wednesday, he came home at midnight. He was wearing an expensive-looking suit with a blue tie, and his hair was mussed, curlier than usual. Darla could feel him soaking the air with adrenaline.

“Come here,” she commanded.

He raised an eyebrow. “What is it, Darla?” He walked over to the sofa without any apparent hurry.

She stretched out a finger and touched his cheek. “You’re so full of life today. Can I have a little? Just to give me some strength?”

“I’m still healing from the last time.” He shook his head, but she kept her finger on his skin. “We’re not like you. We don’t heal straightaway, as soon as someone’s got into our blood.”

Is he complaining that he’s got me under his skin? How sweet. And irritating. “I could use a different vein,” she pointed out.

He stood up abruptly, all his strange humour turned sour. “I’m not some goddamned junkie with an addiction, Darla. I’m not gonna fuck up all my veins till there’s nothing left to use!”

“Are you certain you don’t want me to shoot you up, Lindsey?” She asked with a smile, but her teeth were bared.

A crooked smile. “Sure, sweetheart. Put those teeth away and we’ll get high sometime, the old-fashioned way. Door’s open.” He unknotted his tie and pulled it from his throat with a flourish.

Darla watched, fascinated, as he sauntered into his bedroom. Is he crazy? Is he actually trying to get me to leap for his throat and pin him down and suck all the life out of his precious veins?

She didn’t know. Through the doorway – true to his word, the door was wide open – he was defiantly taking his shirt off. For a moment, Darla was tempted to join him. She could have him begging for her teeth in there.

Lindsey turned his light off, and soon after appeared to be asleep. Quicker than Darla had expected. It was... perturbing. Could she have pushed him too far? Could he actually be thinking about abandoning her? No! He was besotted with her – she’d felt him giving himself up to her, that night in the wine cellar.

And he would be too afraid, surely.

Still, she was weak. Not as weak as Lindsey believed, but she needed to lie low here for a little longer before confronting Angel. Here she had safety, and some amusement, and human blood, and access to Wolfram & Hart’s plans. Antagonising Lindsey was a bad idea. Delightful as it might prove for both of them, killing him wasn’t an option either.

From his breathing, he didn’t appear to be too deeply asleep.

She slid into his bedroom. “Lindsey?”

He sat up instantly, rubbing his eyes. “Darla? Are you – coming to kill me at last – all right?”

Darla sat on the bed. His breath caught as she leaned in towards him.

She remembered the night he had seen her approach with an unafraid gaze, when sex and death had been so perfectly mingled in his mind that he would have taken either at her hands with the same quiet gratitude. Even then, she had played with him as she always did, and given him almost one and not enough of the other.

Darla nestled down on the bedspread, and cradled Lindsey’s face in her hands.

“I’ve been snapping at you a lot, Lindsey. I didn’t really mean it – I’ve just been afraid, after what that bastard did to me and Drusilla...” She stopped as if overcome. “A month ago I was human and dying, and now I’m weak again...”

“We’re doing what we can to find Drusilla.” He was stroking her hair, letting his fingers comb through it to graze her cheek. “And I won’t let Angel find you.”

She kissed him, gently: a virgin’s kiss.

When he moved his hand down to her breasts she jerked deliberately, so that his fingers struck the burned patch of skin, and cried out.

He withdrew immediately. “Darla! Darla, did I hurt you?”

“I’m sorry, Lindsey,” she whispered. “I still have all these burns...”

“I know.” Soothing. He took her arm carefully, and insisted on helping her back to her sofa.

I’m a china doll, Darla thought. Too delicate to fuck.

Lindsey laid her down solicitously and went back to bed, and she lay in the dark remembering Angelus, who tore at her clothes and held her down, who snarled in her face and bit her shoulders, and who, in a hundred and fifty years, never asked her permission.

She found him two nights later. She watched him wake amid a sprinkling of broken glass. Until another man looked out from Angelus’ eyes, pitiful and confused, and whispered to her, “I’m sorry.”