Disclaimer: Inspiration for this fic came from a chapter in Scott J. Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and a good few lines were taken directly from the book. I mean no offence and this is purely for entertainment purposes. Go pet a puppy.
Summary: Angel POV in a quick AU one-shot. Slash. Angel/Lindsey with Buffy/Spike as a minor pairing
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The door was white and clean and there was a navy mat lying before it. I stared at it. I had only met Cordelia once before but from what I had gathered it figured that her welcome mat wouldn't say 'welcome' on it.
Buffy eagerly pulled me and Spike inside the door once Cordelia's face had appeared and greeted us.
Blonde Harmony sat like a chocolate bar wrapper—everything shiny and animate and edible—, perched on the seat of a gaudy violet comfy chair and chatting enthusiastically with a bemused man by the name of Charles Gunn.
Winifred called Fred, a twiggy woman, returned from the kitchen with a few drinks in hand. She smiled warmly at Buffy and Spike.
The doorbell rang again and the hostess rolled her eyes and answered it as though it was a bother to let in invited guests.
Buffy caught my retreating look and shook her head playfully, insisting I stay. She was deep-set in the belief that I needed to have more fun.
Looking out the window, I knew we were merely yellow windows towering over the darkened streets of the city. I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that evening, so everything happened with a dim hazy cast over it.
Sitting on Spike's lap, Buffy held a glass of amber in one hand and was agreeing with something her pretty friend Fred had said.
Just then, Cordelia reappeared with new company. Her sister, Eve, was a slender girl of about thirty with eyes like a snake and dyed blonde hair. She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately and told me she lived with a girl friend at another apartment.
Her husband, Lindsey McDonald was a pale man from the flat below. After introducing himself he informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later that he wrote songs and played them on his guitar. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had written twenty-six songs about her since they had been married.
"Honey," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most guys today will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you'd of thought she had taken my appendix out."
"I've never seen those earrings before today. I think they're adorable," Fred piped up.
Eve rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrows in disdain.
"They're just these old things I slip on when I don't care how I look."
"But I-I just meant they look wonderful on you, if you know what I mean."
It was nine o'clock—almost immediately afterwards I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Lindsey was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man in action.
Having little interest in small talk, I barely took in how many times my glass was refilled. The bottle of whiskey—a second one—was now in constant demand by all present.
I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair.
Lindsey awoke from his doze and started in a daze towards the door. When he had gone halfway he turned around and stared at the scene—Buffy had her legs locked around Spike's waist and they were utterly involved with one another and oblivious to everyone else in the room while in the kitchen Gunn was holding Fred's hair back as she threw up the alcohol into the sink with Harmony scolding her nearby. He didn't even glance to Cordelia and Eve before he turned and continued on out the door.
Taking my coat from the pile, I followed.
"Should come to lunch someday," he suggested as we groaned down the elevator.
"Where?"
"Anywhere."
"All right."
...his hands were underneath my shirt and his tongue was curling around mine...
...I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio of guitar songs in his hands.
"Turquoise Knife...Black Spice...Ex of the Order...Tip of the Flame..."
Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the train station, staring at the morning "Tribune" and waiting for the four o'clock train.