Disclaimer: This is set AU before season 3. There is no Conner, Angel and Cordy are not aware of their mutual love for each other, Fred is not a full-fledged member of the team yet. Lindsay has not left L.A.
I do not own these characters, they are sole possessions of Joss Whedon.
The sun was setting in L.A when Lindsay McDonald exited his shower and wiped the steam off his mirror. He had dark circles under his blue eyes and those eyes immediately looked at the fading scar on his wrist. He looked at the hand that wasn't his and he thought of the one man he truly hated. Angel and his stupid "Angel Investigations". Angel and his stupid champions. He ran their faces and names through his head. Wesley, the nerdy Brit with pastey skin and bad hair. Gunn, the street thug-turned-gallant knight for the innocents. Lorne, the freakish lizard-man who sang like Barry Manilow three octaves higher. Some new girl named Fred, a waify hermit. Cordelia, Angel's tawny, talentless hack who was lucky enough to be a direct link to the powers that be. Lindsay literally spit when he recounted the lot of them.
He stared at his handsome face in the mirror. The only one of Angel's team that didn't induce instant vomiting was Cordelia. A face that pretty and a body that hot could never make someone vomit. Her tongue was another issue, that snarky snide attitude that poured out of her mouth. Tongues could be cut out though. Lindsay smirked when that visual entered his mind.
Lindsay tied a towel around his waist and entered his bedroom where his clothes were laid across the bed. Jeans, a blue oxford shirt, underwear, socks, and boots were his standard non-work gear. As he dressed, Lindsay looked at his guitar case leaning against the far wall. Tonight he would play at a club called Blue Moon. That is where he played to give his hand a workout ever since Caritas was put under renovation. Like Caritas, Blue Moon was bespelled to prevent violence and thus made it a safe haven for shady individuals such as Lindsay to hang out in.
Once he was done dressing, Lindsay exited his apartment with his guitar in hand. He drove his trusty pickup truck to the club and parked it along side the building. Inside the club, there was no smoke in the air and some female was singing on stage. She had choppy pink hair and long legs. She might have been cute if it weren't for the antlers coming from her head and the conspicuous goatee on her chin. Blue Moon was not the place one came to find human dates. Lindsay talked to stage manager and had his name added to the list, he then went to bar to get a beer.
As he was drinking, he heard a familiar voice greeting another person in the club. He turned and saw Lorne hugging some spikey-faced demon. He heard a female voice then and saw Cordelia enter with that new Fred chick. Fred looked pale, mousey, and possitively intimidated. Especially next to the always cool and confident Cordelia Chase. Cordelia led Fred up the bar, sat her in a stool, and walked away presumeably to the ladies room. Lindsay nodded towards Fred who immediately blushed and looked down at her hands that were neatly folded in her lap. She wore a simply cotten summer dress smattered with flowers and her wavy hair hung limply down her back. She was pretty in that doe-like way. All eyes and skinny legs. Lindsay's gaze was drawn back to the returning Cordelia who looked like a chic bronze goddess in a red satin sheath. Her hazel eyes thinned as she glared right at Lindsay, those eyes averted to Fred as she spoke none-too-softly.
"ewwwww. Scumbag lawyer alert!"
Lindsay would have cringed at those words if he honestly cared what some bratty little nobody thought of him. He simply smirked her way and took a sip of his beer.
The rest of the evening played out with more comments from the Cordy Peanut Gallery, Fred's weird singing, Aretha Franklin from Lorne, and a haunting tune from Lindsay that left even Cordelia Chase weak in the knees.
Lindsay went home that night, lay in his bed with his hands tucked behind his head, and thought of how Cordelia's lips parted oh-so sensually when she listened to him play and sing. Her lower lip was dewey and her chest heaved slowly in defiant attraction. He knew she was at home that very moment cursing her body's own betrayal. Lindsay snapped back into reality and his face grew tight and grim. He hated her. Her arrogance, her sass, her dismissal, the fact that she believed her attraction to him to be disgusting.
Lindsay switched his thoughts to his favorite topic...thwarting Angel and plotting his downfall.
Back at her apartment, Cordelia cuddled her pillow and frowned when she thought of Lindsay McDonald. What a waste of beautiful talent on such a sociopath. It didn't seem fair that someone like him was blessed with such a gift and he chose to do evil rather than become the star he ought to. Cordelia wanted to break his guitar over his head. She smiled at that thought as Denis the ghost pulled her down comforter over her and tucked her in. Lindsay and Angel were night and day. The irony that the human was more evil than the vampire. Angel, Cordelia's white knight. He who had saved her on more than one occasion. Angel who had fought nearly to death to rescue her from Lorne's homeworld. Angel, who risked his fragile soul for her. She felt a stream of tears down one cheek when she also remembered how she could never have him. It wasn't meant to be. She hated Lindsay for distracting her from her own fantasy involving Angel.