Cowboys
Summer 2000
Oxnard, California
The Fabulous Ladies Night Club
"Stupid car. Stupid parents. Stupid job. Stupid Elijah for getting stupid meningitis and being too hospitalized to come in today."
Alexander LaVelle Harris was having a very bad day. Well, to be fair, he was having a bad week, a bad month, and a bad summer, but this day seemed to be the pinnacle of all this unpleasantness. So as he sat sorting through piles of rather unusual laundry, he went through a laundry list of his own, damning all the things in his life that were the cause of his unfortunate situation. His car he damned because really it was the most to blame: if his engine hadn't quite literally fallen out of his car before it had chugged him less than four hours from Sunnydale, he would be out on the road discovering America, and not forced to wash dishes in this sub-rate strip joint in Oxnard. His parents he damned because they refused to front the money for him to fix said car, the job he damned because he despised the degradation of needing to spend eight hours a night listening to catcalls, and Elijah he damned most of all, because it was his fault that his immediate situation was unbelievably worse than just being stranded and broke and humiliated.
The immediate history was this: he'd come into work early, because he was a considerate person and a good worker and - apparently - dumb as a damn rock. He'd tied on his apron and prepared for the day ahead of him; really, washing dishes wasn't so bad. Yeah, it was gross and surrounded by an unpleasant atmosphere of dishwashing detergent, pulsating music that shook the dishes in the shelves, and the aforementioned catcalls, but it was honest work and mostly people left him alone, which was just fine with him. Okay, to be honest, he'd been spoken to only in grunts by Roy, the fabulous piece of work that oversaw the kitchen staff, and thus in the month and a half he'd worked there he hadn't traded more than six words to anyone, but - hey. He liked the quiet.
Things changed today. He'd come in, tied on his apron, and turned around to come face to face with Jewel, the club's owner. Jewel was not the sweet, delicate thing her name would suggest. She had been once - true - but after twenty years of stripping 'herself', she was now a different creature altogether. Her hair was too bleached and too teased, her makeup was too gaudy and thick, her skin had leathered from her face to her hands to the sagging breasts that she let hang from clothes that were too revealing for a physique that had started to sag and wrinkle. She wore bright red inch-and-a-half acrylics, chewed gum open-mouthed like a dumb cheerleader or a cow, and smoked and drank too much, which had given her a lovely unfeminine growl. She was also diamond hard, the only resemblance to her gem name that she retained.
"Well hello there, handsome," she crowed, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen in a position that would have been attractive had she been fifteen years younger.
Xander nodded awkwardly. "Hey."
She looked vaguely around the kitchen. "You the only one here?"
"Yeah. I'm early."
She nodded absently. "I was looking for Roy..." She snorted. "Not like his lazy ass would ever be early."
"Roy's okay," he said laconically. He'd been trying out Oz's short, non-committal thing. It had been working nicely, even if it made him feel like he was a little slow.
She lit up a cigarette and puffed on it a bit, which Xander was sure was against the health codes somewhere. "Elijah called in sick. Idiot's caught himself meningitis." She rolled her eyes, and Xander ran the name through his head. It wasn't like he hung with, or even spoke to, any of the strippers, so it took him a moment to register. "Told him to use a rubber," she continued. "But does he listen -"
"I, um, don't think that meningitis is an STD," he said dully, not knowing what to say.
She narrowed her heavily lined eyes, looking at him intensely. "No?" She shrugged. "Hey, look at you. Smart guy." She looked at him in a way that reminded him very forcefully of The Graduate, and he started to panic until she spoke again. "Anyways, I'm down a stripper."
"Oh." He wondered if he ought to act sympathetic. "And you want Roy to... fill in?"
She raised an eyebrow and laughed a little. "Yeah, that'd really bring in business." She shook her head. "No, I'll let that fat bastard go. I was hoping one of his boys could sub..." She trailed off, studying him oddly.
"He's not here yet," Xander said hurriedly, anxious to be rid of her. "But I'll be sure to tell him you dropped by -"
She cocked her head a bit, regarding him. "Of course, since you're already here..."
He looked at her, confused. "Huh?"
She extended a clawed and bejeweled hand and squeezed his bicep. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Um, Xander."
She smiled; Xander noticed lipstick on her stained teeth. "How about doing me a little favor, Xander?"
"Um, anything for the team," he replied dumbly, fully aware of how much he needed to keep his job.
And with that mistake, he was roped into his present situation: pawing through g-strings and little bow ties, trying to find something that would fit his not-quite-a-stripper physique and cursing God and everyone else.
Lindsey McDonald was nothing if not levelheaded. He was not given to flights of fancy, and prided himself on conducting his business and everything else with class and professionalism.
However.
That did not mean that he was impersonal or impassive or... sexless. He was, in fact, very much aware of this last one at present, feeling the ache of his cock against his tight jeans with every step. He puzzled over his sex over a cup of bad coffee at Dinah's, the shitty little diner directly across from his shitty little hotel. Normally, he'd just bide the time until his meeting with the shaman tomorrow in his hotel room, watching Pay-Per-View pornography and making much use of the guitar string calluses on his right hand. But then the cute little girl serving more of the horrible brew - not Dinah; the nametag over her perky chest said Molly, which he deemed an entirely suitable name for her freckles and bright eyes - responded to his lame chitchat about local attractions with the name of a club. First he'd chuckled at the wannabe posh name, but as he paid for the motor oil he'd just ingested and started back across the street, his interest had been piqued.
Thus, he found himself in a small round booth in the shadows at the Fabulous Ladies Night Club, nursing an American beer out of the bottle and wondering dully if he was out of his fucking mind. And then deciding that he even if he was, he didn't care. Business trip or not, unseemly or not, he was going to remain human and in control of himself, if for no other reason than to piss off the Senior Partners.
Besides - and he admitted this to himself with a bit of an ironic smile, on him - he was a man, damn it, and he was, at times, ruled by the voices in his pants instead of the ones in his head.
"Damn right," he murmured to himself, and signaled the waitress for another beer.
While he waited for her to return, he scrutinized the other patrons. Show time wasn't for half an hour, so the crowds hadn't really come in yet; there was only a handful of other people there. Through the dim light, he determined them all to be female, something that didn't bother him in the slightest, although there was the nagging suspicion that it should.
The waitress returned with another brown bottle, swiveling her tight little ass attractively under her tight little skirt. Lindsey smiled and tipped his bottle to her, but didn't return the flirty, lingering look she tried. This was also not something that bothered him, even as she left from his table with an adorable pout and an attractive wiggle. Although definitely a lovely creature and not undeserving of being taken back to his hotel room, she was simply not what he was interested in, and not what he'd come here to see.
He tapped his boots, took a deep draw off his beer, and checked his watch. Fifteen minutes till show time. Languorously, he leaned back in the cheaply upholstered but adequately deep booth and waited.
Xander fidgeted uncomfortably in his cheap terrycloth robe. The other boys, as Jewel had referred to them, were bustling around preparing for the show, talking and laughing and being completely at ease, like they weren't all of them all but naked under their robes, like they weren't going to go out onstage in a minute and get even more naked in front of a live studio audience.
Andre adjusted his fireman's helmet, flexed his muscles in the mirror, and then uncapped an eyeliner and started making careful applications. From this pursuit, he looked over at Xander, huddled against the wall, and smiled compassionately. "It's all right. Don't even worry about it."
Xander tried to look cool. "What? I'm not worried."
Andre raised an eyebrow that Xander was sure he'd had waxed. "No?"
Xander looked down at himself. He seemed to be shaking a bit; he hadn't realized. He shrugged this off and tried to relax his position against the wall to look more Fonz than escaping prisoner. "Sure. I'm fine. In fact, I'm naked in front of crowds of strangers all the time."
Andre chuckled and started sponging on some dark makeup onto his face and chest to make it look like he'd just escaped from a towering inferno. "Uh huh." He took a silver flask from his vanity and offered it to Xander. Unsure of what to do but desperate for some sort of action, he uncapped it and took a deep draw. He flinched, and Andre chuckled again; it tasted like varnish but was warm going down and seemed to relax him, so he took another drink.
"Don't take too much of 'that' medicine," Kyle advised from the other end of the room, where he was affixing his sword to his side. "You'll fall of the stage."
Everyone laughed and Xander, now worried about something else, took a much smaller drink and then handed the flask back to the fireman.
The door beside him opened, and he jumped half a foot in the air; Jewel poked her head in, seemingly oblivious of the delicacy Xander thought she should be demonstrating. "Five minutes, boys." She smiled another Mrs. Robinson smile at Xander and exited, the door shutting.
"Almost show time," Andre murmured, reopening the door and exiting.
Xander's heart fell from his burning chest into the pit of his churning stomach. "Great."
The house lights turned themselves off entirely and some colored spotlights came up around the stage. A husky, slow voice came over the PA and welcomed everyone to the show and informed them that, had they not already ordered, the buffalo wings were great, and please don't leave your cigarettes burning anywhere other than the ashtrays, because the fire department had to be called last week, and the scorch marks in booth five were still visible. Lindsey checked dully to see if he was sitting in booth five, but he was disappointed if he wanted to see the extent of the fire damage; he was in booth three. He took a sip of his fourth beer as a power ballad from the uglier part of the seventies came on too loud over the speakers and the curtains parted.
Xander watched Kyle undulate around the stage from his jail breaker position as far in the left wings as he could be without being seen by the audience, his terror growing. Further behind him, the other boys were laughing and drinking and chatting and 'Jesus God', were they not aware that on the other side of those curtains a man was undressing in front of a wolf pack of drunk, rabid women? He felt like the next in line for the firing squad, and was horrified that his compatriots failed to realize the danger, even when it was being advertised really loudly by the horrible music and the squeals of the crazy women.
Lindsey watched with some interest as Zorro, who had a very flat stomach and a killer smile, pranced around the stage to horrible, American rock and roll. Zorro stripped down to a g-string but refused to remove his mask, smiling that smile and collecting wads of cash from the delirious redhead in the front row. He did a neat trick with his foil and then took a low bow and made an exit from the stage.
Lindsey slowed his drinking and ordered a basket of the buffalo wings from the cute waitress who, although still pouting, was very quick with his order. The next dancer was much more attractive than the first, nicely tanned and very well muscled, particularly in his impressive chest. Dressed as a fireman although not in dress code - Lindsey doubted they were allowed to come to work not only without protective gear, but also without a shirt - he performed some fairly obscene acts with a hose that immediately stemmed Lindsey's interest.
Andre returned sweaty, grinning, and loaded down with a new bulge in his pants that probably equaled several hundred dollars. Xander nodded absently at him, then swallowed his tongue as he watched Jeff disappear beyond the curtains. Andre patted his shoulder with enough force that Xander's immediate instinct was to bend at the knees, and said in what Xander was sure he meant as an upbeat, jocular manner, "Up next? Good luck; you'll do fine."
He disappeared into the dressing room and therefore missed Xander's panic-stricken stammering.
The buffalo wings were actually pretty good. Lindsey ate half his basket with another beer and wondered, as the cute black boy in the top hat and tails twirled his cane, if this show was really intended for women, what with all the phalluses the dancers seemed to brandish.
"Okay," Xander muttered to himself, watching Jeff do a little soft-shoe, "you can do this. You're a man; you drove here all by yourself, you're living on your own, you've killed demons and helped stop the end of the world a couple times. You can do this."
He didn't really have much time to convince himself; Jeff's song ended and he came prancing into the back, and then gave Xander a good solid push out into the spotlights, wishing him good luck and artfully removing his robe in one smooth motion.
The light-hearted tap number ended and something came over the speakers that reminded Lindsey very strongly of the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It broke into a more modern, faster paced bluegrass that heated Lindsey's blood a little, and he probably wouldn't have thought too much about anything more than how much he was enjoying the song had the next dancer not tumbled onto the stage. It took Lindsey by surprise, and he straightened in his seat to get a better look.
The stripper was, appropriately, dressed in a Western garb: dark-colored Stetson, vest over a bare chest, suede chaps, and a gun belt slung around his slim hips, complete with a pair of very shiny six-shooters. He looked younger than the others, and - unless Lindsey was very much mistaken - scared out of his mind. Beyond the fear, though, he was gorgeous: well toned and broad-shouldered and possessing a quick and attractive mouth. A bit clumsy, though; he fell over himself a couple times while trying to figure out the dimensions of the stage, which were ever changing due to the participation of the audience immediately adjacent. Also, not much of a dancer, but it was a lack of rhythm that was less pathetic than it was amusing. Lindsey laughed, entirely taken.
When the song ended, Xander all but ran off the stage, dodging the grabbing hands of the crazy women in the audience. He dashed past the other boys backstage, completely ignoring their congratulations, and ran to the dressing room, slamming the door behind him and then leaning against it, breathing heavily.
He might have stayed like that forever had his frenzied thoughts not been interrupted by a gentle knocking on the door behind him. He wanted to tell whoever it was to go the Hell away, but he couldn't seem to remember how to speak, so he just waited a beat for them to leave. They didn't; the knocking came again and, reluctantly, thinking it might be Jewel or Roy, he turned and opened the door.
It was definitely not Jewel or Roy.
His heart twisted up in his throat, and he tried to cover himself as best he could, immediately aware of how naked he still was. And in front of a stranger again. He didn't know the man from Adam; it wasn't one of the other strippers. He still couldn't remember how to talk, so he just took a moment and studied the visitor. He was a little shorter than he was, and a little older, kind blue eyes and an easy smile. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots and looking somehow wise and confidant.
"Hey," he said. His voice was low and slightly drawn, and very pleasant.
Xander's jaw twitched a few times, and he squeaked maybe once, before he remembered how to speak. "Hey," he replied, sounding a little like Peter Brady.
The stranger smiled. "Sorry to bother you."
"Oh, no," Xander said casually. "You're not bothering me. Except I'm almost naked and so you are."
The stranger smiled a crooked half smile. "I'll let you get dressed. But I'll be at Dinah's... the diner down the block...? If you want to let me buy you a cup of coffee."
He nodded once and turned and walked away. Xander closed the door hurriedly behind him and got dressed faster than he ever had in his whole life.
Xander left to his hotel before anyone else could catch him. He puzzled over the stranger; he hadn't expected that, hadn't even seen any men in the club...and yeah, maybe his voice was strangely warm and tingly in some places, and yeah, he knew exactly where Dinah's was because it was right across from the hotel where he'd been living for the past month and a half, but still... that was insane. All he wanted was a shower and then to sleep until he forgot about tonight.
Lindsey had a few cups of black coffee to take off the light-headedness of the drinking he'd done, and waited. He wasn't really anxious about it; he would very much like to have a couple cups of coffee with the stripper as company, but if that didn't pan out, he could always go back to the club and ask that waitress home... and then there was Molly, who had a sweet face and nice breasts... and of course there was always his usual. So he watched casually for the cowboy to show up, and then when he hadn't shown after twenty minutes, Lindsey paid his bill and walked back to his hotel alone, deciding that girls were entirely out of the question tonight but that there would definitely be enough time for a little one-on-one.
He was halfway down the hall to his room when something thoroughly surprised him, which was something that rarely happened. The cowboy was walking down the hallway toward him, dressed in street clothes and looking very world-weary. He looked up briefly; when he caught sight of Lindsey he stopped cold, looking at him.
"You followed me home?"
Lindsey shook his head, trying not to smile at the ridiculousness of the question. "No. I'm staying here, Room 115." He nodded toward the direction of the door and held up his key as proof. "You live here?"
"Lately," he said. He sounded tired.
Lindsey walked toward him, but mostly because that was where his room was. He stopped in front of the door to 115, about three feet shy of the cowboy. He started to unlock the door then paused, becoming very aware again of the brush of denim against his erect cock. "Wanna come in? I'll pour you a drink."
Xander hesitated a moment. He really wanted to go to bed, but he remembered the pleasant warmness of Andre's flask and found himself nodding and following the stranger into his room.
Lindsey smiled and showed him into the room, locked the door behind him.
Xander sank to sitting on the bed while the stranger went through the business of pouring drinks. "What'll you take?" he asked in his soft, gorgeous voice.
"Anything," he said, fighting the urge to lie down on the bed and close his eyes. "So long as it's hard."
Lindsey forced himself not to laugh at the cowboy's inadvertent slip and rifled through the mini bar. He ended up with two plastic cups full of scotch, which he brought over to the bed. He handed one to the cowboy, then sat beside him and took a small drink of his own.
The cowboy took a drink and winced heavily; Lindsey took no small pleasure in this, smiling into his cup.
"Good stuff," Xander gasped, feeling a fire run from his chest down through his loins. The stranger chuckled, and Xander realized that he should stop thinking of him like that, seeing as he was in his hotel room having a drink with him. "Xander Harris," he said, then paused. "Is me," he added for good measure.
The stranger chuckled. "Lindsey McDonald." He took a drink, but only to accommodate a pause. "Tonight your first night onstage?"
"Could you tell?"
Lindsey shrugged. "You just looked terrified, is all. So I wondered."
"So Lindsey," Xander said, trying to sound casual. "Tonight your first time picking up a strange man in a strip club?"
Lindsey smiled a little. "No." Xander blushed, which made Lindsey smile more. "Although it's not really what I'd call standard practice."
"I'll bet you say that to all the boys," Xander joked lamely, trying to regain his cool.
"So Xander," Lindsey said, imitating Xander's tone of earlier and ignoring his quip, "Tonight your first time going home with a strange man from a strip club?"
He blushed again. "Yeah." Lindsey started to say something, but Xander continued so he stopped cold. "But it's not my..."
"...first time going home with a man," Lindsey guessed.
Xander blushed some more. "No," he admitted. "But that doesn't mean I came here looking for sex, because I didn't, I just came here for -"
Lindsey shut him up by taking him roughly by the back of the neck and kissing him hard. Xander didn't struggle, first because he was taken completely by surprise, and then because Lindsey was a good kisser, and he felt himself go warm beyond the liquor's influence.
"Oh," he said when Lindsey had let him go. The other man looked a bit hurt for a moment before Xander held up a hand in defense or surrender and added, "Let me just finish this." He downed the rest of his drink and then dropped the cup to the floor; Lindsey did the same, then took Xander in his arms, kissed him again. He tasted like the liquor and like something warm and spiced beyond that, and after a moment Xander got a feel for the music and kissed him back.
Lindsey realized after a moment of having Xander in his arms and in his mouth that, prior experience or not, he was going to be very shy about this, so he took the initiative and raised his hands to unbutton Xander's shirt. He apparently appreciated these remonstrations, because once his shirt was off his shoulders and pooled around him on the bed, he arched into his touch on his chest, his back, his shoulders. Lindsey let his palms come to lying flat over Xander's ribs, felt the hard muscles, the warmth of his skin, the beat of his heart...very fast.
Xander figured that he should probably give Lindsey a hand, because at this rate it would take about an hour and a half to get both of them naked, and anyway, it was polite. So he gingerly removed his arms from the hug they had around Lindsey and moved his big hands to Lindsey's shirt, unbuttoning slowly, letting his knuckles run a line down the hard curves of the other man's chest. He was enjoying doing this so much that he almost didn't consider that Lindsey might be enjoying it too, and didn't realize until he heard him gasp. He grinned sheepishly and also with a bit of pride, and slipped Lindsey's shirt from his shoulders. Then, encouraged by Lindsey's gasp, he pressed his mouth to the other man's sternum; he kissed tiny kisses from his breastbone to where the skin ended at his jeans.
Lindsey was taken completely by surprise again - he was starting to think that this might be a regular occurrence with Xander, and that suited him just fine - by Xander's sudden show of initiative vis-á-vis the stripper's perfect, alcohol-warm mouth tracing a line down his body. Taken by surprise, and also warmed and teased to the consistency of pudding; moaning slightly, he slowly sank to his back on the bed. This was also not something he was accustomed to, and he was surprised yet again when he realized that he was looking up at Xander from the flat of his back.
Since he was out of skin now, Xander decided that the obvious next step involved finding more. So the obvious next step was - obviously - to unbuckle Lindsey's belt and unzip his pants. So he did. By this time, Lindsey was lying a bit lazily on the bed, staring up at him with those gorgeous blue bedroom eyes and moaning quietly every time Xander touched him. He knew the feeling; he felt like he was bursting out of his skin, and it was so tender from the swell that he thought he'd die every time Lindsey touched him.
Xander was unbuttoning his pants. He was dizzy with alcohol and sex, so it took him a minute to figure out what he was doing. Of course, when he realized it, there was another shoot of sex and he got dizzy again. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, tried to collect himself... his eyes were only shut about five seconds, because they flew open again when he felt Xander pull his jeans halfway to his knees and the stripper's mouth on his swollen cock.
'Okay, I can do this... 'Xander wasn't really used to giving head without explicit directions, so he was a bit nervous, unsure of himself. 'Just... don't do anything you wouldn't want someone doing to you, 'he reasoned.
Lindsey gasped and sat up, which jerked him some in Xander's mouth, causing the stripper to cry out a little in surprise. "Sorry," he apologized hoarsely, and took Xander by the back of the head, guiding him.
Lindsey's change in position was a big change in position; Xander just about choked as Lindsey sat up and effectively thrust halfway down Xander's throat. He was considering biting down in retaliation when Lindsey's lush husky voice broke through his thoughts. Even if it hadn't been an apology, that gorgeous voice sent fire through Xander's veins... and since most of his blood was currently being used to keep his cock pulsating and erect, he figured forgiveness was in order.
Xander wasn't very creative when it came to this particular pursuit, but that was okay: he was good at what he did. He sucked him hard, running his tongue along the bottom of Lindsey's straining member while his cheeks, teeth, and the roof of his mouth created friction on all other sides. Flushed and coming very close, Lindsey's bucked his hips against Xander's mouth, fucking his face.
With a long, low grunt, Lindsey came. Xander, feeling suddenly flushed like Lindsey had just let molten metal pour into him, swallowed and then came up and sat beside Lindsey on the bed, where he was sprawled on his back again, panting and red.
"Christ," Lindsey said, bringing his eyes to him - with some difficulty, it appeared.
"Yeehaw," Xander commented, grinning like a maniac at his apparent sexual prowess.
Lindsey slanted a diamond-cut sapphire gaze over at him. "Your turn, cowboy," he said, and came painfully to his hands and knees and crawled over to Xander.
The sun was starting to steal through the windows, sneaking its way through spots unguarded by the hideous curtains and lighting the room in little scattered stars of gold and red. Lindsey was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting on his shoes; Xander watched him. He'd said he had a meeting, and Xander believed him. He was a lawyer with some prestigious law firm Xander vaguely remembered the name of. He'd learned this about him last night. He'd learned a lot about him last night; beyond really properly screwing the life out of each other, they'd also talked for hours, hot and sticky and tangled up in the hotel's scratchy bed sheets. Lindsey'd told him that he was a lawyer, and some about his growing up in Oklahoma, and about how he played the guitar. Xander had told him about how he'd come to work at the Fabulous Ladies Night Club, and about Sunnydale and his previous... experience. Lindsey had gently asked him about it, head propped on one elbow, looking really adorable and sexy with his blue eyes all full of actual interest and a slight smile on his lips. Xander hadn't really expected to want to talk about it, but somehow he did.
"It was only a couple times," he'd said, not feeling as awkward as he'd expected. "This guy... well, he's this guy that was kind of... like a mentor to me? He was actually the librarian at my high school -" He'd laughed, starting to feel foolish and trying to lighten it up. But Lindsey hadn't laughed, and he'd felt a lot less foolish and told him about the few times he'd gone home with Giles, and the once in the library after hours. Lindsey'd listened to him quietly and when he'd finished, he'd told him about sleeping at a professor his sophomore year of college, and Xander's felt a lot less naked.
Lindsey finished tying his shoes, then walked back into the bathroom to check that his tie was straight. He came back into the main part of the room, stood quietly by the bed for a moment without speaking. Finally, he said, "I'm sorry I have to go. I'd reschedule, but this meeting is 'actually' a life or death kind of situation, so -"
Xander sat up and shrugged. "It's fine. Not like I was expecting a commitment, here."
Lindsey lowered his eyes for a minute. "I didn't mean... well, I didn't mean to like you so much, I guess." He shrugged and smiled a little sheepishly.
Xander smiled. "Yeah, well..."
Lindsey started to say something about how he didn't want to leave him thinking that he was a one night stand, but Xander cut him off. "Look, Lindsey," he said. "It's not like we're going to be picking out china together. In another time or place, maybe we would do more than fuck once -"
"Three times," Lindsey said with a slight grin.
"-than three times and never see each other again. But as things stand, we're never going to see each other again... and I'm all right with that. Because I'm grateful for the experience anyway I have to take it."
Lindsey raised an eyebrow. "Which experience?"
Xander sighed. "The experience of 'you', dumbass." He shook his head, smiling despite himself. "Big smart lawyer guy and can't even pick up on context clues -"
Lindsey wasn't smiling. He came and sat beside Xander on the bed, kissed him gently on the temple. "Look, Xander, I want to leave you something." He reached a hand into his coat and came up with a black wallet. Xander frowned; he frowned more when Lindsey removed several bills from the wallet and handed them to him. He took them numbly, but didn't look down to see what exactly Lindsey was offering him.
"I don't know what kind of boy you think I am, Lindsey..." Xander started, his voice dead.
The lawyer frowned. "It's for you to get your car fixed." Xander looked at him, his expression softening. "I'm not paying you off or anything..." He came to his feet, a small smile blooming on his face. "You're just too pretty to strip."
"I can't accept this."
"Sure you can." He adjusted his coat and grabbed his briefcase. "I'm a lawyer, I make a lot of money. And I'd much rather it was spent on fixing your car and getting you home than on... well, just about anything else."
Xander rose and walked to him, which was by this time a necessary measure to command his attention; he was on his way to the door to leave. "Thanks," he said, feeling a little awkward standing fully naked in front of a lawyer in a three-piece suit. "Not just for the money, but for -"
Lindsey shut him up by kissing him, then hugged him briefly and went to the door, opening it and stepping out into the hallway and away from Xander. He smiled.
"See you later, cowboy."