Title: Internship

Author: Jinni (druscilla@cox.net)

Rating: PG13 for language

Pairing: W/Lindsey

Genre: BtVS Fanfic.

Disclaimer: All things BtVS belong to Joss Whedon, et al.

Distribution: WLS, WLF, NHA, BMP, Aislin.

Author’s Note: Pairing #108 at The Quickie Challenge: http://quickie.moonlitpaths.com - Come write and read!!

Notes2: This assumes that Angel doesn’t know where Willow is interning and that she has no clue who these people really are, of course. Just take it for the fluff it is and leave it at that.

~*~

"Rosenberg! Get your ass in here!"

Willow winced, grabbing her notepad and a pen and racing from her desk to the office of her ‘boss’, Lilah. If she had been alone and had thought that name, the red headed witch would have shuddered and started trying to think happy thoughts to rid herself of the utter coldness that crept into her at the thought of the other woman.

But she was not alone.

She was at work.

And at work she didn’t have the luxury of ‘thinking happy thoughts’. In fact, it was downright impossible to think of anything even remotely happy while being summoned into Lilah’s office.

"Yes Ma’m?" She murmured upon entering the room, forcing her face into an expression of pure neutrality instead of the grimace of disgust she would prefer.

"I thought I told you not to call me that?" Lilah snapped, her dark eyes piercing Willow’s with a glare. "It makes me sound so old. Sit down. I have an assignment for you."

Willow nodded; mentally bracing herself for whatever this new ‘assignment’ was to be. So far her assignments had included everything from getting coffee for the entire floor to playing personal valet at an important function. She could only imagine that things could and would get worse.

"Lindsey is up to something," The lawyer began without aplomb, diving right into the heart of the matter. She had a sneer on her face, something that Willow felt made her look like the wicked stepmother in a Disney film. The kind of woman that would shove poison down your throat and then stab you in the back. "He needs an assistant and I’m going to ‘lend’ you to him for the rest of the week. See what you can find out."

Willow raised an eyebrow, only to lower it almost immediately when Lilah repeated the action with a hundred times more venom. So, that was it. Spy on the handsome lawyer man she had seen coming and going out of Lilah’s office on a regular basis.

Piece of cake.

She hoped.

~*~

Twenty-four hours later, Willow had found out that this wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as she had hoped. This had to be the worst internship she had ever gone through. First she was assigned to the evil bitch queen from Hell, and now she was doing what appeared to be an impossible assignment for said bitch queen – an assignment that she was just shy of failing miserably. If she failed at this she just knew that Lilah would give her a total failing rating for the entire internship, thus ruining her work-study this semester at school.

But Lindsey was just too secretive.

He knew that she was here to spy on him. In fact, he had told her that he knew in no uncertain terms from the moment she had walked into his office. She had just smiled and denied it, claiming that she was here as a gift from Lilah, to make his life easier for the rest of the week.

Okay, so apparently Lindsey was well aware that the evil bitch queen would never do a damn thing to make anyone’s life easier. He had just smiled and told her that he’d be watching her.

So here she sat, at a desk, doing absolutely meaningless paperwork that she was sure didn’t help him in any way but kept her busy for her nine to five shift.

Stupid lawyers. Maybe her next internship would be in a veterinarian’s office, she couldn’t imagine that they were very secretive or covert in their dealings. But she doubted that she’d get something that easy. Next time she’d probably end up interning as a front desk assistant in a hospital. After all, this was a sociology class she was doing work-study for, and you didn’t get to observe many people in a veterinarian’s office.

So here she sat, in a lawyer’s office, doing meaningless paperwork but getting to observe lots of people. Big ‘yay’ for her.

"Willow? Could you come in here for a minute, please?"

The red head blinked down at her intercom, surprised to hear Lindsey ask for her and doubly surprised that he was so much nicer when he spoke to her than Lilah could ever be. She hit the button and replied that she’d be right there, grabbed a notepad and a pen, and walked into his office.

His office, while still that of a professional, was much nicer than Lilah’s. He actually had little things around the room that reminded her that he was a human being, whereas she doubted Lilah even was human in any way, shape or form.

She gave him a hesitant smile and sat down in the chair he indicated, carefully avoiding those warm brown eyes that she knew for a fact were a good way to get her blushing in no time flat. He was far too handsome for his own good, with that baby face that just made her want to pinch his cheeks.

Well, and kiss them too – maybe even lay a little smoochage on those pretty little lips.

And that was the wrong thing to think, now she was blushing. She hid it by looking down at her pad, pen poised as if prepared to write.

"I need you to accompany me to dinner tonight."

"Wha--?" Her head shot up, blush fading to the ghastly pallor of shock. "As your valet? Or --?"

"As my date," he corrected her gently, just a hint of a smile on his lips. "Do you think you’re up to that?"

Willow bit her lip, her blush returning at the idea of being his date even for one evening. "Is this a formal event, private party, social event. . ."

"It will be dinner – just the two of us. A little Thai restaurant. What you’re wearing is fine and we’ll leave right after work. I’m just trying to throw Lilah off, in case you’re wondering. She’s been wanting to do the whole dinner thing for months now."

The red head nodded, struck dumb at the idea of going to dinner with Lindsey. It was going to be just the two of them.

She stood up when he dismissed her, wandering to her desk in a haze that would later leave her wondering how she had gotten back without tripping over her own feet or running into something.

Her mind was boggling over the idea of having dinner with a handsome man, even if it was just one of those overly complicated little lawyer-esque plots that she didn’t quite understand. There was only one thing that grated at the edges of her nerves, making her leery of the entire situation.

Lilah was going to be pissed when she found out.

~*~

It took a glass and a half of wine before Willow relaxed enough to just enjoy the time she was spending with Lindsey and get Lilah out of her head. If the evil bitch queen wanted to get bitchy about her going out with Lindsey, well then so be it. There wasn’t anything Willow could do about it – and it wasn’t as if the woman liked her to begin with anyway.

"So – you’re majoring in sociology?"

Willow nodded, setting down her glass and licking her lips.

"That’s why the whole work-study thing. I’m observing people. Next month I’ll probably be at a senior center or something. This is how aspiring sociologists learn the observational skills – or so I’m told. Somehow I doubt working for Lilah is what my Professor had in mind."

Lindsey chuckled.

"Be careful what you say – don’t want to get on her bad side."

Willow snorted.

"That would, of course, assume that I’m on her good side to begin with. She’s been nothing but mean to me since my first day. Ordering me to get coffee and do all of these menial chores. As if I don’t already have a degree in computer programming and could handle so much harder things."

"Really? I didn’t know that. Why are you studying sociology, then?" He seemed genuinely interested, and Willow felt her stomach flutter just a bit. A man was interested in something she had to say. A handsome man, at that. She was just scoring all over the place today.

"Well – sociology because I’ve always been interested in the human reaction to a variety of stimuli. Such as death, pain, grief."

"Not happiness and love?" Lindsey prompted.

Willow shook her head. "Who cares how people react when they’re in the most optimal of situations? I want to see how they tick when they’re at their worst. I want to figure out why we react the way we do and then pass that information on to companies that can make drugs to counteract our more negative feelings."

Lindsey nodded, thoughtfully. "That’s very noble of you."

She grinned. "Not noble, I just don’t like being around sad or evil people, really. It’s purely selfish, I assure you."

That just made him laugh, and the dimples in his cheeks made those flutters in her stomach turn into full-fledged rumbles of lust. How could any one man be this handsome?

"Well, this night didn’t turn out like I thought it would," Lindsey admitted some time later, the bottle of wine long since gone, both of them feeling lightly buzzed. The atmosphere, Willow decided, was warm and fuzzy, just like her head.

"Really?" she questioned, raising her eyebrows. "And just what did you expect?"

He shrugged. "A boring dinner where we acted like we liked each other to throw off the spy I’m sure Lilah has observing us in that car across the street."

Willow glanced discreetly out the window in the direction Lindsey tilted his head in, agreeing with a muttered ‘mm hmm’ that it was definitely one of Lilah’s ‘people’.

"And, instead," he continued along, reaching across the table to grab her hand. "I find that you are someone that I would very much like to take to dinner again – but next time just because I want to and not because Lilah won’t like it."

"I think I’d like that," Willow blushed, averting her eyes from his. She felt a graze of warmth and wetness across her hand and knew he had just kissed it. A happy sigh escaped her lips, her mind already racing forward to the next date and what she would wear.

Supposing she survived Lilah’s wrath next week, of course.

~*~The End~*~