lmx_v3point3

So I realised that posting 50ish fics all at once would probably be a bit too much spam for you guys to forgive me for. I'm hoping to post these in batches of 20 points: (20x <150 words, 4x 150-500 words or 2x >500 words) Which means there will be 10 posts in all. Please let me know if this is too much for you guys and I'll date-displace them so they don't turn up on your f-list.

Fic Collection (Theme - Hands)
Part 1, 20 Points: Opposites, Bonfire, Victim, Apples

Author: LMX
Fandom: Angel the Series
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Wesley/Fred (Apples)
Spoilers: All of Angel The Series, up to and including the finale
Warnings: Inaccurate timelines
Edit: Betaed by chokolattejedi, despite other far more important demands on time ;) Thank you hugely.



001. Opposites (Lindsey, 240)

A hot day in Nepal, even at 8,000 feet above sea level, was not something that promoted Zen thinking and mental control. Giving in to the need to take a break from the constant training, and sweating in places he didn't know he could sweat, Lindsey collapsed onto one of the incongruous bench seats in front of the white plastic tables just outside the tea hut.

Not for the first time, he set his hands down side by side on the white surface and debated their similarity. For all that one of the pair wasn't his own they were almost perfect opposites, in shape and shade and in the dirt under his finger nails. He clenched the right and then the left, feeling the heat wash over him and his palms start to sweat immediately.

He slammed his hands down on the table and pushed himself up from the seat, ignoring the sluggish complaints from the ones he’d disturbed. A friend had died so that he could sit here and compare the two hands in front of him. Wolfram and Hart had tortured someone to until they begged for death, just to make him a more useful part of the company. There was no time to rest, no time to waste. He was going to need every minute he had to make himself strong enough for what was coming. Wolfram and Hart would fall. He went back to training.



002. Bonfire (Cordelia, 179)

Yawning absently, Cordelia held her hands out towards the blaze, trying to shake off the bone-deep cold that was starting to make her feel drowsy. The day had been full of sewers and monsters and people waving around swords and axes. Her shoes were ruined, her dinner date long missed, and frankly she was enjoying a brief rest before the next vision decided to violently attack her brain. She didn't feel she deserved the slightly disgusted look Angel was throwing her from the other side of the fire.

"What?" she demanded eventually, her hands tingling lightly in the waves of heat coming off the bonfire. "Have I got blood on me? Gloop? What?"

"Cordelia," Wesley started, his teacher-voice on. "You do realise that this is a funeral pyre? It's not generally considered good form to warm your hands using someone else's remains."

Abashed, Cordelia shoved her hands in her pockets and, when she was sure the others weren't watching, shuffled a couple of steps closer to the warmth. It wasn't as if the demon was going to care.



005. Victim (Unidentified runner, 201)

She was gasping for air already, panic making her lose track of those careful paced breaths she'd been training herself into. The goons chasing her were faster than she would have believed - fast enough they should have been running track themselves, not getting high beyond all recognition behind the gym on the high street.

She caught hold of the nearest wall, rough brick scraping at the skin of her hands as she used it to hurl herself around the corner sharply. She could hear them just metres behind her as she opened up into a dead sprint, knowing she didn't have much more in her. Fear and exhaustion made her breaths sob as she clenched her fists harder by her side, sweat stinging in the grazes.

She was cramping up and they were still shouting back and forth and laughing behind her, like they didn't need to breath at all. She stumbled and exhaustion dragged her the rest of the way to the pavement, falling into a crumpled heap. She caught herself before her face could hit the pavement, her abused hands complaining at their mistreatment. She stayed there a second, heaving for breath.

And then they were on her and nothing mattered any more.



011. Apples (Wes/Fred, 338)

Wesley has never felt so close to a serious coronary event. He had no intention of watching - of *letching* if he's being quite honest with himself - when he'd first sat down here with his first edition Rochankor manuscript, a small mountain of text books and his translations notepad. His intentions, as you might expect, had run more towards the swift and accurate translation of said manuscript.

The fates had intervened.

Fred and Cordelia had taken seats directly in his eyeline to take their lunch and were - in between some rather stilted but affectionate one-sided gossiping - slowly eating an apple each.

Wesley would, until this moment, have happily classified apples as a fruit completely without appeal other than in their nutritional value, but with Fred's attention held with such rapture at Cordelia's exuberant recital of the previous day's events, she had neglected the apple she had taken a bite from. Wesley had been close enough, sat behind the desk as he was, to watch a bead of juice swell to the surface from that bite and escape down the side of Fred's finger to pool in her palm.

Wesley had lost all interest in the translation.

As he watched Fred take a second bite, more juice escaping wantonly to join the rest in the cradle of her palm, he was also sporting a ridiculous hard-on, thankfully concealed by the desk supporting the neglected manuscript.

Fred swapped hands, delicately sticking out a tongue to clean her hand, still entranced by Cordelia's expounding.

"Wesley?" Angel's voice came out of the blue, surprise leading Wesley to leap from his seat.

"Apples!" he replied, clearing his throat quickly, "I mean... Angel. Yes?"

Angel glanced down, then quickly back up, and Wesley coloured.

"Never mind," Angel replied, heading for the door and leaving Wesley to slump back into his seat with relief and mortification.

He turned back to the desk, only to yelp when he found Fred suddenly *much* closer.

"Were you hungry?" she asked innocently, offering him an apple.