Getting Our Feet Wet

[da_lilah]

Continued from hereWhen it was all over we clung to each other, our ragged breaths finally slowing. Lindsey was grinning like a cheshire cat, and I buried my face in his shoulder rather than try to return a smile that might look forced. I don't know why the hell I was having trouble with this. t's not like I hadn't done this sort of thing before.

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[da_lilah]

"No. Leave it for a few minutes."

I paused and finally turned around to look at Lindsey.

I'm sorry.

There was something in his eyes, an emotional pain deep inside that he was allowing me glimpse for that brief moment, before finally he dropped his gaze and stared at the blood on the floor. Linwood would've been rubbing his hands with glee at the sight of Lindsey dropping his guard and letting me in like that, had he been present.

"It hurts all the time. I'm not a good man. My younger brothers and sisters think I'm great, but if they knew who I really was, what I'm capable of, they wouldn't want to be around me any more."

Lindsey spoke so softly that I had to move in closer again, within reach. And yet some part of me wanted to bolt out the door, to not hear Lindsey's
cataloguing of his sins.

"I want to keep them safe, want to make sure they'll have a better chance, and I know that isn't going to happen as long as I'm with the firm. I hate it and I love it at the same time. If I'm gone, they'll be safe. But then I won't be around to make sure they grow up. If I stay here, I'll end up doing things I don't want to do, and I know if I screw up that they'll pay the price. It's too high of a cost and I don't know what to do any more. I just don't know."

I watched as he fell back onto the bed, his arm tossed over his face as if to shield himself or maybe cover the fact that he was about to cry. I tentatively reached out and touched the arm, but he didn't move it away to look at me.

"Lindsey...If you're dead, the firm will still have you. Unless you signed a very different contract from the one I did. And practically every other employee who has worked there. The skills you have? The knowledge and the contacts? They won't want to let that go to waste. They'll bring you back and even if you made them put it in writing that they wouldn't use your family against you...this is Wolfram and Hart we're talking about. We invented the phrase 'getting around the fine print is half the fun', remember?"

I sighed and then lay down on the bed beside him.

"We made our choices. And somewhere down the line we'll reap the benefits, or the consequences, of those decisions. You may think that dying will help your family, but in the end, all you are really doing is escaping your responsibilities. All I ask is that you don't just throw you're life away because it might make things easier. It might not. And I kinda like having you around, okay?"

[lindsey_lives]

I was having a very hard time keeping myself under control. It was as if my emotions had thinned down to size a string, and if someone ran their fingers over it, the string would just snap. If that happened, I was going to snap with it. I heard what she said, and Lilah did have a point.

The bed shifted a little as she laid down next to me. I was afraid to say something, afraid of how my voice would sound right now. The last thing she said seemed to thrum that little string inside. I rolled over onto my side, not taking my arm from my face and started to curl up into a ball, make myself smaller. Normally, this would be when Lilah dove in for the kill. There would be a pounce and then she'd use my bit of a breakdown against me gleefully. Except... she kinda liked having me around.

Made an attempt to clear my throat to say something, but the words were stuck now. I was trying so hard not to lose it, but I felt like I was drowning and I needed something to cling to. Someone to hold. She was right here, and part of me no longer cared about what her reasons were. I needed her.

With a sound that was a cross between a sob and a groan, I rolled myself over the rest of the way and wrapped myself around her. She stiffened so much at first that I thought I was laying on a full-body version of my old, fake hand. Then I felt her fingers on my back and that made it all okay. Felt my body shake, and I might have been crying, but I ignored that. Focused on the warmth of her body, the fact that she was still here, that she maybe actually cared.

"I'm sorry." I kept saying that over and over, and I wasn't even sure why I was so sorry. "I feel broken. Can you fix me?" Please, help me. Fix me. Make it all go away. Heal me. Save me.