FIC: "Becoming/Unbecoming," PG-13 for niuserre
Niu, sweetie, I'm so sorry this is late! I had jury duty, and also I'm dumb, but it's here now, and I really hope you like it.
TITLE: Becoming/Unbecoming
AUTHOR: Lamia Archer
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Gunn/Lindsey. Kind of.
WORD COUNT: 1,278
SUMMARY: Gunn and Lindsey get a little too close, without getting very close at all.
SPOILERS: Through “Time Bomb,” and you need a lot along the way.
PROMPT: Requested was wood splinters, tattoos and spirits (alcoholic or the other kind), with not a lot of cowboy stuff. (I got everything in but the wood splinters. I'm sorry!)
DEDICATION: Written for niuserre for the seventh round of maleslashminis.
Gunn knows that Lindsey is Angel’s quarry, and that if there is such a thing as honor among thieves, he’s violating that. But they’re not really thieves - well, okay, he is, sometimes, and there’s no telling what, exactly, Angel is - and he ain’t exactly sure how far he believes in crap like moldy old maxims, anyway. And he ain’t sure how far he can trust Angel, either. Not really. For little things, sure, but at the end of the day, you can trust one person: the guy staring out at you from the mirror. And that pale bastard don’t even reflect.
What he is sure of is that tiny, flouncy-haired lawyer’s up to no good, the kind of evil he definitely doesn’t need in his streets. And if Angel’s not going to keep him clued in to what’s going on . . . well, then, he’ll just have to take matters into his own hands, as per usual, honor notwithstanding.
***
What the fuck could you do with one hand? Gunn respects Angel - he’s done for him, and he doesn’t talk too much - but there’s something that ain’t right with what he did to that man’s hand. Ain’t sporting, or something. Kill a man or don’t, but to take his hand? That’s a teeth move. Something an animal does, and Gunn knows that there’s more than Angel than meets the eye-hell, he’s always known that, but you can see it for a moment, with that pansy lawyer’s hand. He wonders what Lindsey saw, when it happened. If he was alert enough to see anything but the pain, to see Angel’s beast surface. Not that ugly ass wrinkly-foreheaded thing, but the true beast lurking inside. Gunn would have been, he knows this. He sure as hell wouldn’t have let anything as minor as getting his hand cut off let him miss that show.
***
So the guy got his hand back. Good for him. Having one hand’s such powerlessness. Gunn doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost one of his. Which is, let’s face it, a job hazard in his chosen profession. He’d rather go down altogether than have bits of himself lopped off. But hands, man. Hands. They’re important. What separates us from the beasts, or something. Except the beasts that crawl the streets, creating job hazards.
Gunn never would have pegged Lindsey for a musician, for having any soul of any kind, for that matter. But, to be perfectly honest, he’s moved by the performance. Ain’t all gangster rap and shit, after all. Gunn has always been intrigued, inexplicably touched by art he doesn’t understand. At twelve, he’d lifted a wallet and, when the mark had discovered the theft much earlier than desired, he’d hidden in the Getty, where a traveling exhibit of Munch’s work was on display. Gunn had meant to move on, to dump the evidence, pocket the cash, and buy something substantial for himself and Alonna to eat, but he’d ended up trapped before the paintings. He was mesmerized, unable to comprehend the hugeness of emotion trapped in such tiny canvases.
***
Gunn should be in there. Screw this hocus pocus crap; he should be in the thick of the fight.
He’s uncomfortable, suddenly, in the conspicuousness of his fine suit. The collar chafes at his neck, and he rolls the sleeves off his forearms to give himself room to work. He needs to feel things, to feel the motions of his hands, and the fabric mutes this. He isn’t sure when he was relegated to the sidelines; if Lindsey had come back at them last year, all super-sauced and tattooed like some aborigine or some shit, would he have gotten to fight then?
***
Gunn isn’t sure how long he’s been becoming Lindsey McDonald: since he put on this necklace? Since he put on a suit? Since he stepped into the white room was accepted by the conduit?
Since he sold out his friend, and jeopardized his soul?
After all, Lindsey, too, was once a poor kid trying to make his place in the world. Trying to put his life of hard times behind him, and make a name for himself.
There’s a name for them both, and it’s Judas.
***
The first time Gunn and Lindsey are alone together, it feels too close. Gunn knows too much about him; he knows what happens when you go into the basement, and no one should know that. It’s not like a reunion of Holocaust survivors, but, rather, like a support group for rape victims. No one wants to be there.
At least, Gunn doesn’t want to be there.
“Do you want a drink?”
Lindsey’s smiling. He’s always smiling, like a wolf, or a snake. They’re in Angel’s room; Just stay here while I take care of this, Angel said, like Gunn wasn’t able to take care of things. And then he left him alone in there, with Lindsey, like he was safe to be around. Or like one of them was negligible. Gunn isn’t sure what, exactly, Angel was thinking, because he isn’t sure what anyone’s thinking these days. His mind is frenetic, frenzied and distracted. He’s thinking all the time but never really connecting to anything.
“No.”
Gunn can’t eat or drink, anything without thinking, Fred’s never going to eat anything ever again. Angel told him it’ll keep him awake for the rest of his life, and he’s beginning to think that’s true. In a strange way, he hopes it’s true, Fred haunting him like the sinewy, sad ghosts lurking in Munch’s paintings. Everywhere, brighter than the colors. Never letting him forget.
Lindsey pours them both drinks. He shoves the squat, cool glass into Gunn’s palm before he can protest. Gunn looks down into the golden tide of alcohol so he doesn’t have to watch Lindsey smirking at him.
“Enjoying being back?” Lindsey asks.
“I guess it’s better than having my heart cut out every day.”
Lindsey laughs. “You’re a real glass is half full kinda guy.”
Gunn looks up to see Lindsey emptying his glass in one smooth movement. Lindsey grins at him from over the empty glass, like a beer commercial, like a predator. He isn’t sure which one, but he’s uncomfortable. He brings his own drink to his lips; it’s warm and slightly woody, but smooth. He keeps going until he’s drinking air.
“Angel has good shit,” Lindsey remarks.
“Yeah,” Gunn says. “Well, he’s old.”
Lindsey laughs. Gunn sets his glass down. It scatters the room’s low light over the wood of the table, not in a prism, but into two bent curves of white light.
“You’re more use here than in a hell dimension,” Lindsey says.
“I don’t need a pep talk from some evil guy, thanks.”
Lindsey sneers. “Okay. The small talk was exhausting me, too. What I really wanted to say was, ‘Thanks for taking my place. I really enjoyed-’”
Gunn looks up from the broken light. “I didn’t do you any favors.”
Lindsey opens his mouth, but Gunn speaks before he can.
“And I won’t.”
Lindsey smiles. “We’re on the same team now, chief. Maybe-”
Gunn shakes his head. “No, we’re not. Maybe you’re pinch-hitting for the white hats so you can go through the locker room during downtime, but we’re not on the same team. And we won’t ever be again.”
Lindsey starts saying something, but Gunn’s not listening. It’s just some evil propaganda, and he’s over it. Above it. He may have nightmares - ghosts - for the rest of his life, but he’s never been stupid, and he won’t make the same mistakes again.
There are differences between them, in that.