Author: Laure/Lara
E-mail: lara[at]sunflower.com
Distribution: http://www.grapevine.net/~lwilson/btvs.html. If you have permission to put my fics up, you're welcome to it. All others, please ask.
Rating: PG14
Content: humor, slightly slashy, a bit of language, hints at future male/male
Spoilers: Set after You're Welcome (the 100th ep). See further author's note below. Don't read farther if unspoiled for You're Welcome or following episodes.
Disclaimer: Not mine, this is sad. They belong to the evil god Joss.
A/N: My Puppet Angel ficathon response for killerweasel who asked for Lindsey and Puppet Angel, possible romance, Mr. Gordo, and didn't want Connor, with the possibility of NC17. Well, I got everything but the NC17 (though, y'know, possibly a sequel with Manly Angel), and it's rather more snarky than romantic.
A/N 2: In this fic Lindsey didn't get sucked up by the Senior Partners at the end of You're Welcome, but was taken prisoner by Angel and confined to a suite in W&H. He revealed the truth about the apocalypse and Angel's distraction stuff earlier than on the show.

Two days had passed since they'd defeated the evil puppets and Angel's 'curse' had yet to wear off. Sitting at his desk--on top of several phone books--he grumbled and grumped as he went through his mail. Last was a box and he struggled with his puppet hands to wield a mat knife and slit through the tape.

Glancing at the various postmarks he wondered why the box had gone through Reykjavik, Kyoto, Vienna, some place he'd never heard of in the Sudan, and finally Bangkok before arriving on his desk. There were so many stamps and labels plastered over it, and quite possibly holding it together, that he couldn't
read the name of the original sender or the first postmark.

Muttering under his breath as he fumbled to open the box, he finally peeled away enough tape to pop the top. Peeling back layers of crumpled plastic bags used as packing material, he uncovered a familiar item.

Mouth dropping open, he lifted a faded pink stuffed pig from the box. A piece of paper fluttered to the desk, and as he cradled the pig to his equally stuffed chest, he read the note.

'I don't know what's going to happen, but outside of my friends and Dawn, these are the only two items I don't want to lose from Sunnydale. Please take care of them for me. I hope to retrieve them soon.'

It was simply signed 'Buffy'.

Setting aside the pig and the note, Angel stood on his chair and peered down into the box. The second item was a framed picture of Joyce, Dawn and Buffy, taken soon after they'd moved to Sunnydale.

A wave of emotion washed over him and he sank back down, holding the picture carefully. One of his fat thumbs brushed across the image of Buffy, and he wondered at how young and hopeful she looked.

Not at all as she'd looked last Spring--beautiful, but worn to a sharp edge, no longer a laughing girl, but a warrior with a determination that had nearly broken her.

Putting down the picture, Angel picked back up the pig and wrapped his arms around it as he let himself slip into daydreams.

Daydreams which were interrupted much later by a snicker and the sound of an aluminum tab popping.

"That's really...pathetic, Angel."

Angel opened his eyes and glared at his nemesis. "Who let you out of your cage, Lindsey?"

Lindsey perched his ancient jean clad hip on one corner of the disk and took a sip of his beer. "Spike. Don't get your fuzzy panties in a wad, you know I can't get out of the building, and thanks to you I'm powerless," he added quickly as Angel began to growl.

"Why did Spike," Angel spat the name, "let you out?"

"To, quote, irritate the great poof, end quote." Lindsey grinned and downed more beer, then pulled another one off the six-pack rings and set it in front of his puppet enemy. "Loosen up, Angel. We're stuck together until you figure out how to get out of your contract or we both end up brutally massacred. Might as well make the best of it."

"I thought that's why I stuck Eve in your overly comfortable prison suite with you."

Lindsey grimaced. "Yeah, well, there's only so much a person can take of her. She's so damn..."

"Annoying? Bitchy? Clingy?"

"All of the above. Pretty great in the sack though." The former lawyer's eyes turned calculating and a nasty grin crossed his face. "I hear we have that in common."

Angel growled again, but the sound was pretty sad coming from his large puppet mouth, and he gave up and grabbed for the beer. After fumbling with the top for over a minute, he shoved the can at Lindsey. "The least you could do is open the damn thing."

Trying not to laugh, Lindsey did so, then watched Angel pull a rubber can sleeve from his desk drawer. Lindsey slid it over the beer can and watched the vampire two hand the beer to his mouth. "Do I want to know how you're able to drink?"

"I don't want to know that," Angel stressed, then made a face. "This stuff sucks. Why are you drinking generic beer?"

"A gift from Spike. He said you'd never learned to appreciate the good stuff, so why waste it on you."

"Spike's just wracking up points on my bad side."

"Maybe he'll surpass me?"

"Only because he's been annoying me longer."

Lindsey laughed and chugged his beer. "This stuff really does suck. You gotta have a bar around here somewhere."

Angel punched a button on his desk console and a fully stocked beer slid out of the wall beside the flat screen television. Lindsey's eyes lit up and he headed across the room.

"I make a mean martini."

"Pour mine into that sippy cup."

Lindsey nearly fell over laughing.

*****

Several hours later both puppet and ex-lawyer were past the point of tipsy and well on the way to being drunk. Lindsey had an amazing capacity to hold his liquor and Angel, even in squishy form, was a vampire, so it was taking them awhile. They'd retired to the infamous couch about which Lindsey had ribbed Angel for only an hour or so until Angel'd threatened to sink his padded fangs into him and gnaw on him for a while.

"So, how long is that going to last?" Lindsey asked, gesturing with his martini glass at Angel.

"Hell if I know," Angel groused. "It should have worn off by now. I have Wesley looking into it. I mean, what kind of fighter of evil can I be like this?"

"Yeah, not exactly menacing. Not that I was ever afraid of you."

Angel snorted. "Yeah, right." He patted his nose. "Vampire, remember? Can smell everything, including fear. There were quite a few times when I'd grab you and your fear would spike. That and lust."

"What?" the human protested, flushing. "You arouse me? Never happened.

The vampire just grinned and took another sip of gin and vermouth.

"Stop looking at me like that. I don't swing that way."

"You're telling me that you didn't work your way up the corporate ranks on your back?"

Lindsey glared. "You have me confused with Lilah."

Angel grinned. "On your knees then?"

The lawyer blushed and the vampire crowed.

"A couple of times," Lindsey mumbled into his glass. "Had to make amends for all the times you put a crimp in my plans, so really it's all your fault."

More puppet snickering ensued.

"Well, everyone knows vampires do it with anything that moves."

"Ha fucking ha."

"It's just wrong for the word 'fuck' to come out of a muppet's mouth."

Angel shook his head and blinked blearily at his sippy cup. "No, what's really wrong is that all my parts still work, and NOW the girls all want to cuddle and kiss me."

"Wait a sec. You saying you can actually get a stiffy? A fuzzy stiffy? How the hell does something stuffed get hard?" Lindsey burst out laughing and Angel kicked him in the thigh which just made him laugh harder.

"Cut it out, McDonald or I'll make sure you never get one again, fuzzy or not."

Lindsey wiped the tears from his eyes as he snorted, "Yeah, sure. I wasn't the only one turned on during our various grappling matches."

"In your dreams."

"Wet ones." The former lawyer smacked his lips and avoided the next kick.

That argument quickly degenerated into silly name calling until Lindsey changed the subject. "So, what's up with the pig?"

"It's Buffy's."

"The Slayer?"

Angel nodded and sighed softly, resting his sippy cup on his stomach as he reclined back against the arm of the couch. "She sent me a couple things to keep safe for her before Sunnydale collapsed. Maybe she thought she wouldn't make it and she wanted these things to survive." He shrugged and continued, a
bit sadly. "She wrote that she'd come get them, but I haven't heard from her. She...doesn't trust me."

"Slayers are the good guys. You're in the temple of the bad."

"She should have trusted me."

Lindsey poured them each a fresh drink. "Girls are weird about some things."

"Cordy didn't like that I'd come here, either."

Softening his tone, Lindsey agreed, "Yeah. I'm sorry about her, Angel. She got screwed by both sides and didn't deserve that."

"You tried to kill her once."

"That was my job. I actually liked her. She was...real."

Angel nodded in agreement. "Yes, she was, and an original, too."

Lindsey lifted his glass. "To Cordelia."

"May she finally rest," Angel added and they clinked plastic to crystal before drinking to their toast. "You know, you're not so bad."

"Angel, I'm always bad," Lindsey grinned. "You get your body back and maybe I'll show you how bad."

"You always did look good bent over a car's hood."

"We could always re-Christen the couch."

Both laughed and took another drink.

End