Slip Sliding
by Jana Kay

DISCLAIMER: All characters mentioned belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the WB, and 20th Century Fox except for Steven Walters. He belongs to me. No monetary profit is being made.
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Probably up to Reunion, but the mass slaughter hasn’t happened yet.
SUMMARY: Nobody ever said life was easy for a Wolfram & Hart employee.
DISTRIBUTION: Email me first please and I guarantee I’ll say yes.
FEEDBACK: What writer doesn’t like feedback?

"Are you alright, Lilah? You’re drifting off there."

Steven Walters is 35, a doctor, handsome, charming as all Hell and sweet to boot. This is their first date and he seems to be even more wonderful than her first impression had told her.

She’d met him at the firm’s annual Christmas party. He’d come as an escort for one of the junior associates dressed in navy, and for all her style and high quality facade, she’d been drawn to his peaceful face, the way her name sounded as it came from his lips, the letters rolling around sensually on his tongue.

Weak, weak little girl, she’d always been drawn to the things she couldn’t have, wanting to own, possess, love and crush with everything inside of her.

The fact that right from wrong and black from white was clearly distinguishable to him, while it was murky and muddy to her hadn’t been taken into account, because really, could you imagine the relationship lasting?

Yeah right. Lilah Morgan, a white picket fence, two point five children and a family pooch. Just as conceivable as the Pope turning a coin at high class pornography, and stating that contraception was indeed allowed in the Roman Catholic Church and should be freely used.

Well he may as well show all his excellent qualities now at dinner, lay all his cards on the table for her inspection and who knows? Maybe she’ll even take something away as a memento, a kiss perhaps or a light touch, a joke he told over the menu after he’d held her chair out for her or the memory of his hair curling adorably at the nape of his neck, because there isn’t a high chance of there being a second date and that burns her more than she can say.

Not that she doesn’t want a second date mind you. She does. There’s a hidden ache for normalcy tucked so far inside her not even Darla can smell it, and Lilah thought she’d lost it long ago, back when she was waitressing to get through college because her rich parents had done a runner to Europe for things that were never fully explained to her.

The law at her fingertips now and years of knowledge and experience behind her, she’s guessing most probably it was tax evasion, maybe even extortion. Her parents never had been the peaches and cream type so there are no surprises there for her. No savagely ripping away a blindfold of love and adoration to show the true faces of the people who’d birthed her.

When she was young and went to stay at friend’s houses, she’d seen the way the families interacted. Not cold, not indifferent. Affection in every gesture, anger sometimes yes, but underlying it was love and fear of safety or failure, fear of loss and shame because these parents knew their children and knew they could do better.

And with no maid at their house to fuss over her when she was growing up, it was always just Lilah, alone even as her mother dutifully pulled her close, cold hugging her all around as a chill began to grow in her heart.

She denies she desperately wants it, instead plotting ways to get the corner office with the majestic view taken away from Lindsey and delivered straight to her. A pessimist through and through, she knows if she ever manages to touch normalcy, it will do one of two things. Shrivel up and die, or leave her. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to take the realisation that after being normal for a time, she’ll have to start looking over her shoulder again for souled vampires and hitmen sent after her by colleagues. The implied knowledge of the peace she’ll lose is devastating.

And little girl Lilah grew up a long time ago.

The only person allowed to leave now is her.

Besides, she knows there’s no point in wanting it. Her soul’s already gone and the papers are piling up on her desk, and no matter how busy she is, engagements are a life or death matter and ass-kissing is always a necessity. Not just from her either, but from whomever she chooses to be with, for better or for worse, and she understands that nobody deserves that.

Wrapping the serpent around your neck knowing it can bite you and stepping on it unawares are completely different things. And she never did like being told who she could and couldn’t date anyway, words of stern reprimand taking her back to days when she liked the underdog in highschool but was allowed to date nobody but the Homecoming King, arrogant and supreme in his letterjacket glory; she hated it.

Well look how she’s turned out. Jill to his Jack, Snow White to his Prince Charming, and the use of fairytale references seem slightly obscene when associated with her. After all, there is no innocence here, no purity, no naiveté and idealism.

Fluttering hard beneath her ribcage is the stern voice telling her to look but not touch, let the perfection she doesn’t deserve slip-slide through her fingers like silk and then just walk away, move only in the dark circles Wolfram & Hart specialise in rather than get lost halfway back to the light and be forever stuck in limbo, ordering the murder of the mother but putting her life on the line to save the child.

She’s seen Lindsey go through that and doesn’t want to place herself in those shoes. The only reason Lindsey got away with it was because he was Holland’s favourite boy. So eager, so willing, so cruel and ruthless and above all, smart ... until he suddenly grew a conscience, which was decidedly not smart.

Well, that could always be put down to the hay in his upbringing; the scent of it was bound to catch up to him sooner or later.

But if she did it, what would be her excuse?

"Lilah?"

She traces her fingers over the elegant wine glass stem, fingernails glimmering jade in the soft candlelight, mind plummeting back to the here and now and she’s inwardly horrified at where her thoughts were going.

Cat-like smile she perfected during college on her waitressing breaks, as she imagined just exactly what she’d turn out to be so she could grind the ungrateful customers beneath her sharpened stiletto heel, and she lowers her gaze, a lifetime of playing too ingrained for her to act naturally now. "I'm fine, Steven. I’ve just got a lot of work piling up. It’s starting to interfere with my social life."

A charming smile and a soft twinkle in his eye. "Well I hope it doesn’t interfere too much, I’d like to get to know you better, if it’s alright with you?"

She’s saved from answering by the waiter arriving with their main course, and that’s lucky for her because the warmth in his gaze makes up her mind. The only thing he’d be hearing from her was a rejection, because he’s just too damn wonderful.

Therefore this is only a one time thing.

Throwing herself into her work sounds like a much better idea.

Certainly one that will save her from getting shot in the back of the head like Lee, who’s blood splattered all over her even though she wasn’t standing next to him.

It took her days to get the dried, crimson stains out of her suit jacket and skirt, and then she finally threw them out as she broke down in tears at the prospect of wearing them again.

No great love for Lee of course, he was a true slimeball, but an encroaching fear of her own mortality. There were monsters and vampires behind every corner out in the big bad world, she was a good girl, she was supposed to hide from them, wasn’t she? But instead Lilah was taking them to work with her, taking them out for dinner to discuss lawsuits and that just wasn’t right, but what could she do about it?

Nothing unless she felt like being dead.

She certainly didn’t feel like that.

Goodbye Steven Walters. She wishes they could have had more time.


The End.