Genre- Darla/Angel/Lindsay
Rated: R
*Characters belong to Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, etc.

Not a Whore

by Tara Ann Stridh

Don't look for me again. Her words. Then she had run away. How could he not look for her, though. She was in his blood, and he didn't need to be reminded of it. He would find her, wherever she had run to, and he would help her. Maybe not the way she wanted him to, but he would try again and again.
He opened the door to his room, and she was there. Darla. Sleeping beneath his sheets, her breathing steady and tranquil. Tranquil and lonely. Lonely and sad. Quietly he knelt beside the bed and stroked the side of her cheek. her violet eyes opened, and she smiled, her beauty worn and tortured.
"Angel." Her voice was soft. "Don't say anything. Just sleep beside me. Please."
His eyes studied her, tender and glistening dark.
"Darla."
"Please. Just sleep. That's all I want right now. Don't touch me. Just to sleep."
The vampire with the soul stood up and took off his black leather coat, draping it over the chair. Before sliding into bed beside her he removed his shoes. He was a bit surprised by her nakedness under the cotton, but he did as she said and did not touch her. Darla turned to him, her straight blonde strands tussled as she smiled again. Her fingers touched his smooth face. Then she closed her eyes.

"Angelus." He stayed with her all night that way, and in the afternoon when he awoke, she had left him again.

The unsuspecting knock at the door led to an even more unsuspecting presence standing in his doorway. She held her wrist in one had, her head slightly lowered and her eyes shadowed lavender.
Lindsey spoke.
"Darla."
"Please, Lindsey. I have no other place to go. Can I stay here?" The dark-haired lawyer held the door open, staring at her.
"You look tired, Lindsey." The melody of her voice had almost returned. So do you, he thought. Then he gestured for her to come inside.

On the coffee table in his living room was an empty glass of red wine. His skin was warm because of it; he had obviously drank more than one glass in the course of the day.
His voice was just as soft as hers as he observed her surveying the darkness and the emptiness of his home.
"Are you hungry? I was just going to order some turkey and brandy from a restaurant."
"Turkey?"
"Yes, it's Thanksgiving."
"Oh yes, right. Somehow I didn't know. I had to leave him again. I couldn't stay there. Not like this. Not with this pounding in my chest." Lindsey looked at her, sighing to himself. Then she looked at him oddly, her head tilted to the side. Her violet eyes divinely sad.
"Don't you spend Thanksgiving with your family, Lindsey? Where are they? Why are you alone?" He smiled faintly.
"I'm not alone now."
"Do you always have Thanksgiving from a restaurant?" He nodded.
"And I watch The Muppets Take Manhattan."
"The Muppets? Hm, strange. I had a family once, but I'm not a part of them anymore. This living body could never be a part of them. They're motherless and fatherless, except the father left a long time ago. Before I left."
She tugged at the burgundy sleeves of her low, V-neck shirt. Lindsey took a step forward.
"Are you cold?" The smile on her face was tiny like her voice and petite body.
"A little."

He picked up the phone as if it was an excuse for him not to touch her, as if he was afraid to touch her.
"I'll call for the food now." Darla nodded.
"Okay. No brandy. Just wine. White."
"Okay."
He wanted to kiss her soft lips, but he dialed the numbers, listening to the ringing as he looked at her standing in his apartment. In the darkness.

"Darla?"
Lindsey placed his jacket over the couch, eyeing the lighted candles on his dining room table. Dark blue candles. Her dress was a lighter shade of blue. The petite body seemed to glide to him, and her smile was adoring and sweet, her violet eyes intoxicating
. "Darla, are you all right? I got your phone call today at work, but I got held up. You sounded, it sounded urgent."
His hazel eyes skimmed over her body for any signs of self-inflicted wounds. The sobbing, pitiful voice that had called him earlier was non-existent in every gesture and look she gave him. Darla radiated loveliness. Sexiness. She walked to him, touching his face gently.
"Lindsey, why don't you rest. You've had a long day at work, haven't you? People telling you what to do. Holland getting at your nerves? Wouldn't you just love to kill him? Take his place."
Her soft hand collided with his good one, and she embraced her fingers with his. Her eyes twinkled with seduction, the way she had been before she had felt the pounding.
"I'll help you relax, Lindsey. You can tell me all about your day, and I'll listen."
She led him to the couch, forcing him to sit down with tender hands.
"All you have to do is tell me, Lindsey. Tell me you want me to take care of you, and I will. Darla will take care of you as long as you need her."
He gazed up at her, her straight blonde strands falling past her shoulders. Then he noticed the tears in her eyes. "Please Lindsey. Tell her you need her. Please, I took care of him for so long. Let me take care of you."
He opened his mouth to talk, and she silenced him with a deep kiss. Her fingers clutched at his shoulders.
"Don't say anything now. Just let me screw you, Lindsey." She kissed him again and loosened his tie.
He hit the button on his answering machine to erase the sound of Lilah Morgan's voice. He had been erasing her voice often in the past few days. Darla lay stretched out upon the couch, glowing in her beauty.
"You haven't told the wolves I'm here." Her melodious voice was firm and almost spiteful
He looked up at her, his gray dress shirt undone, revealing spent flesh.
"Why would I do that?"
"You still haven't told me about your day, Lindsey?" His eyes studied her, daring her to do something, but the something was unidentifiable.
"It was bad. There was a mind sweep." Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"A what?"
"They read our minds from time to time. Whenever they want. To find out who's betraying them. If they find someone they blow their brains out." She shifted upright on the couch, her face steady.
"How could you work for such animals?" Lindsey's eyes did not break from her.
"They know you're with me. I'm with you. I tried to hide it, but I couldn't."
"They didn't kill you." He laughed faintly.
"They like me."
"He's using you."
"Lilah told me I wouldn't be able to block you from them, and she was right. That's why I didn't answer your call. I was stopped in the sweep. Then Holland."
"What did he say?"
"That you're distracting me."
"Am I?" Darla stood up. "Am I distracting you?"
"It wasn't supposed to be like this, Darla. I wasn't supposed to care so much. I've never cared so much for anyone before."
"I never know if I can believe you."
"I'm telling you."
"What do you see me as, Darla? What am I to you?"
"I don't know what you mean." He approached her.
"I wake up in the mornings, and you're next to me. It's nice to wake up next to someone."
"Sex after work is nice, too?"
"It's nice, but I'm not talking about sex, Darla. I'm talking about us. More than screwing. Don't you think we can have more than that? Don't you want more than that?" All affection in her voice was drained away.
"I don't have to stay here anymore. I can get my own place." "No, I want you to be my, for lack of a better word, girlfriend."
Her eyes narrowed at him. "Your girlfriend. Because you take me to the candy store and buy me dinner?"
"Look, you live here with me and we fuck, we might as well have a relationship."
"In all the years I've lived I don't think anyone has ever wanted me to be their 'girlfriend.' What would all the little bees think? You wanting me to be your mate?"
"I don't care what they think.
"I've never met anyone like you, Darla, and I don't care if I had to bring you back from Hell to find you, but-"
"Can I think about it?"
"Of course. You know you can do anything you like."
After a brief hesitation and silent gazing, she made a decision.
"I'm going to take a shower. And I no, I can't do anything I like."

He stood in the doorway as Darla stepped out of the shower, the silver-violet cotton towel wrapped around her petite body.
"I had to search forever to find the razor. To shave my legs. I absolutely hate hair." Her eyebrow arched at him.
"I hid it from you. Didn't want you to hurt yourself."
Darla turned to look at herself in the mirror. As she studied her face she seemed to be waiting for Lindsey to step into the bathroom. When he didn't she pushed her wet blonde strands behind her tears.
"Do you know what my father did for a living, Lindsey? He printed Bibles. Of all books he printed the big bad book of stories. He also spit in the soup if he didn't like it, and he would make my mother eat it . . . Cold."
She turned to him, her eyebrow arched at him, challenging him.
"Every moment of her life my mother was crying. Because of my father. I wasn't going to be like my mother."
"You remember your past."
"Bits and pieces. Everything but my name." A pause. "When my father died the tears stopped, but not the crying. And while she went to church on Sundays to pray to the Lord I was entertaining husbands and clergymen - on my back. At the end of every week I would buy her a new dress. Soon enough I could buy myself a new dress. And shoes. Of the finest silk. None of the other women in the colony wore the gowns I wore, and you better believe that I flaunted my goods in the open when I wasn't taking customers. And no one ever protested. They only prayed for my soul because they knew I was a sinner. They also knew I was fucking their husbands, and if they hated me for it I didn't care.
"My mother, Isabelle. That was her name. Her last words to me, while on her deathbed, were, 'If it makes you happy, pursue it.' She said my name, whatever it was, and she told me to wear a gown of scarlet and lavender silk at her funeral. And I did."
"Your mother loved you."
"No, she hated me. She envied me, but I loved her.
"She was long dead when I killed my baby. The child belonged to the minister. He came to me one evening, all distraught. He said he needed to know what it felt like to sin so that he could better understand the Lord and the ways of the Devil. He said God had made me what I was to help him understand. I became pregnant, something I had tried to avoid for as long as I had been working the sheets, but I slipped up. I knew I couldn't have it. I didn't want it. I didn't need it. Especially if it was a boy, so I got a potion from a woman named Miranda in the woods. I stuck a needle into my stomach, and the next morning it just bled out of me. Everywhere, and I cleaned it all away, all by myself. Tossed it out like it was nothing. "Over the next few weeks I became sick. It was mid-afternoon when there was a knock at my door. A boy of no more than sixteen. Young and sweet. His father sent him to me for the teachings of life. You should have seen his face as I started to undo my corset, coughing but still beautiful. Then I invited him to finish. my fingers were tired. His eyes became so alive at that moment as he approached me. That was when I collapsed.
"And for the next month or so I wasted away until I could no longer get out of bed to look out the window at my garden full of jasmine. Somehow the jasmine never faded. But I did, and I was alone, withered and diseased. Until he came to me and sang to me. He had the most lovely voice. It was The Master who had cared for the jasmine in my garden, and it was The Master who stayed by my side as I died.
"Then I died again, and you brought me back. Was I brought back to be that whore again? To be your whore?" His pause seemed too long.
"No."
"I was rarely ever happy in Virginia. Except in my garden at night. On my quiet nights. No one to stare at me, no one to lick me, no one - Do you remember what it feels like to touch with the hand he took from you?" Lindsey looked down at his plastic substitute hand.
"Not really."
"Do you miss it?" She looked at him, her eyes harmless, her voice soft as always. "Touch me, Lindsey." She let the lavender towel drop to the floor. "Touch this body before it withers." Slowly, he stepped into the bathroom, approaching her nude petite body. He looked into her violet eyes as his good hand touched her breast. Darla took hold of his plastic hand. "Touch my heart, and tell me what you hear, Lindsey. Lindsey. I love to say your name. It sounds sweet on the tongue." She tilted her head to the side. "Why did your mother name you Lindsey? She had daughters before you." "I was the baby. She knew I was going to be the last child she ever had so she named me Lindsey. If you ever remember your real name promise you'll tell me."
"Maybe, but I owe it to another."
She pressed her finger against his lips before he could say her child's name. His fingertips against her chest were gentle. She looked up into his eyes, her breathing increasing as her violet eyes drifted close.
"What do you feel, Lindsey? What do you hear in the pounding?" The Wolfram and Hart lawyer did not answer her. When she opened her eyes his lips parted.
"As long as you're standing here naked I should give you something." He led her out of the bathroom into the bedroom and gave her a white rectangular box. "Do you know what my favorite item of clothing is for a woman?" His eyes always appeared glazed with hesitant detachment. "The bra. It makes everything so perfect, but what's in this box suits you more."
"Sometimes I miss corsets." "I picked this up for you when you said you liked it in the store."
Pushing the lid aside, Darla held up a long, white silk nightgown.
"it's beautiful. Slip it on me." Silently he slid the cold silkiness over her smooth, flawless body, pushing her blond strands away from her eyes.
"I'd like to be your girlfriend, Lindsey. Can you give me everything? Can you promise me the view?"
"The view?" She looked away from him, frowning.
"No, it's better you don't. You'd only break it. It's better to just taste the simplicity of our bodies."
"There's nothing simple about you."
"Really. That's refreshing, Lindsey." Her delicate fingers twirled through his dark strands, caressing along the side of his face. "Do you think you can be my boy? You should cut your hair. Angelus never let me brush his hair."
"You don't like it this way?"
"I do." She shrugged. "You should cut it is all."
"Are you hungry?"
"You always ask me that. Why?"
"I don't know."
"I didn't eat anything all day. I thought if I didn't eat anything I could purge the pounding from my chest."
"If I could I would make it go away."
"Would you?"
He leaned into kiss her unpainted lips and she just as eagerly accepted his own lips. Her fingertips rubbed adoringly over his mouth.
"You have such soft lips. It's like kissing a woman." He smiled faintly.
"You've kissed a woman?" "Darla's fingers still lingered upon his lips.
"I like kissing you, Lindsey. You're softer than I am, when you want to be. Maybe you do have it in you."
Her lips met his again, uncalculated and sincere. He forgot what he was going to say to her, and he made love to the woman in the white silk nightgown.


The next day she had left another.