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| a.connor a.doyle a.lindsey a.oz a.spike a.wesley a.xander a.other three.somes het.fic character.study |
| Title: The Chronic Author: Gloss . Pairing: Angel/Oz Rating: PG-13 Setting: S3-ish AU Oz has nothing against the habitual and the routine. He thinks, in fact, that these things are underrated. After they win tonight's fight, Gunn drives them back to the hotel in his truck. Literally in the back, because shitty as his ride may be, 'no way are they fucking it up worse' by cramming into the cab and bleeding and staining the upholstery. Oz leans against the back of the cab, hand gripping one rusty side for balance against the jolts and bumps, and smiles. Gunn has the windows open and some vintage Dre blasting on the tapedeck. Warm, thick beats pulse and scroll through the chilly night air. Angel and Wes are reviewing the entire fight, start to finish, with the obsessive attention to extraneous detail of any fanboy. If they weren't plastered with ruddy orange goo thick as insulation foam, and scraped up, with eyes alight and voices gone hoarse, they could be executives judging the minutiae of a marketing campaign. Hushed, excited tones, gentle corrections, hasty interruptions. "No, the Ziliq rushed from the far right --" Angel checks on him every so often. Raps his shoulder, awkwardly tries to drag Oz into the conversation. "Kicked ass," Oz will say. Or readily agree that he too was shocked but pleasantly surprised that while the broadsword made little difference, a flick of the Zippo scared the Dunaidin sorceress into temporary submission. He never was much good at these post-mortems. Devon and Eric *lived* for the bitch sessions following gigs. So do Angel and Wes, like it's nearly as good as fighting. And Oz gets that. Even if he can't contribute much, he gets a kick out of the infectious buzz. Hotel, and he hops out of the truck over the side. This is another part of the whole post-fight routine he loves -- slapping Gunn's shoulder goodnight, wishing Wes sweet dreams (blue eyes in his grubby face never fail to widen at that), then slipping upstairs. Carefully not touching anything, because even if the goo only makes him slightly itchy, god knows what it might do to the furniture; scratching at the scrapes and bruises; testing his shoulder from the hit he took rolling out of range. Oz runs the shower good and hot, leaves his clothes in a neat pile under the sink, and climbs into the massive tub. He tilts his face into the spray and thinks about gratitude for surviving another night. *This* is his routine. Soon enough, Angel's there, opening the bathroom door too wide, sending a cold draft right down Oz's back. "Hey," Oz says over his shoulder when the door's closed again. Angel's stripping and it's tai chi all over again. All this restrained power, force channelled into filigrees of motion, care taken with the smallest movements. Unbuttoning, unzipping, tugging. "Feel all right?" Angel asks, climbing in and Oz hands him the soap. "Yeah. You?" Angel nods, squinting through the steam. He frowns. "Nasty cut right there -" He traces the gash on Oz's side. "It'll heal," Oz says. "'Sides, you're slathered in noxious goo. Don't think you can talk." Angel grins. "Took a good shot, didn't I?" Oz soaps up his hands and leans over to work the goo off one calf. So it can soak through denim; that's pretty disgusting right there. He glances up. "Oh, yeah. If by 'good', you mean full in the face." Angel shrugs and rubs his chin. Smiling almost nostalgically but still peering at Oz, at the cut. Oz straightens up. "I'm okay. Really." Angel touches the splash of goo over Oz's shoulder. Scratches at it with his nail, frowns when it doesn't so much as flake. "It's coming off," Oz says. "No, let me -" Angel reaches for the loofah and Oz ducks out of the way. Man's definitely Victorian, even Sadean, in his definition of a 'gentle scrub'. He manages to grab it out from under Angel's hand and waves it a little in victory. "Turn around." Angel leans against the wall, moves the spray aside, and sighs. "Tired?" Oz asks. "Nah," Angel says. Thick-voiced, barely enough energy left to shrug. He's lying. Really badly. Oz bites his lip so he doesn't smile *too* broadly while he works the loofah through the lather on Angel's chest, peeling the goo off in chunks and flakes until his hands are safety-orange but Angel is clean. Sleepy, slightly pink in the steam and water, his hair plastered back into the waves it would take if it grew, Angel looks about twelve years old. Just really tall. Oz rinses off his hands, soaps up the washcloth, and scrubs down again. Angel's eyes are wide and dark, shining through the steam. Like this, bone-weary, victorious, almost glowing, he's just - beautiful. All the more so for how ordinary the moment is. Oz supposes most people would see the beauty in Angel leaping or whirling in a fight, and he does, too, it's just - this is quieter. Not rare, not at all, but somehow special all the same. Oz has to grin at the thought, at how his own personal aesthetics have always been more than slightly askew, chronically strange, and as he stretches to reach the shampoo, Angel touches his hand. Raises his brows, lets his lips part and curve. Asks without saying anything. Oz just smiles back, shrugs a little. He rubs the shampoo through his own hair and Angel slides his palm up to Oz's shoulder. Dips his head. Just the way they do things. Oz shampoos first, then gives Angel the suds. Same way Oz rolls the socks and Angel folds the boxers. First mug of blood in the morning gets nuked nine seconds longer than any other, Angel returns from any errand with an apple in his pocket. It all makes Oz think, every single time -- because memory and routine twine together, branch and furl in hundred of associations -- of pea plants growing in white styrofoam cups. Set out on the windowsill of his third-grade classroom, one plant per kid, names inked on tongue depressors stuck in the dirt. Row after row of identical cups, all the same but every single one slightly different. Angel tips back his head and rinses out his hair. Then he presses Oz forward, his hand rising from shoulder to Oz's forehead to cover his eyes from the soap, and now it's Oz's turn. Familiar sequence, delicate green shoots. Tiny, ordinary, loved. Three strokes of Angel's long fingers through Oz's hair. "Love you," Oz says. Half-hears it, echoes trembling over his tongue, then hears it fully. Blinks. Something he learned from the wolf: Emotions *will* manifest themselves in the world, catch you by surprise. Sometimes it happens in the transformation, sometimes in words. Startling either way, but neither can it be resisted. Once it happens, though, you go with it. Angel's forehead creases, drops his brows over his eyes. That he doesn't pull away or, really, move at all, is a tiny miracle. "Why?" Oz wrings out the washcloth and scrubs his face. "Just do," he says. "'Cause you're -" Angel shakes his head, puzzled, confused, worried. His lips are flattening and tightening millimeter by anxious millimeter. "Oz, I'm -. See, I'm not -. And it's -" "Yeah," Oz says. He hangs the washcloth over the tub faucet and shuts off the water. Comb comes next, then towelling off. Steam blossoming inside his chest, warm and safe. "Still. I do." "But you -" Angel keeps blinking. There's a droplet of water caught, shining, at the tip of each delicate clump of wet lashes. "It's not -" Oz shakes out his hair, combs it, and reaches for the towel. "Angel. Not like it's really *news*." He can see Angel suck in one cheek, knows Angel's biting down on it the way he does when Wes gets going on varieties of demonic miscegenation. His empty hands close, open, twitch at his sides. "Okay. But I'm -" Turns of the mala, walking meditation, showers. Pea plants, chord changes, loving Angel. Listening to him. It's the grace in repetition, riffs that seep and swirl out into improvisation, that suits Oz more than anything. He loops his arms around Angel's waist and watches for a bit as Angel's mouth keeps trying, failing, to form audible, intelligible, words. "You're not a great human," Oz says for him. "You fuck up a lot. You're not exactly the best vampire, either. You want to try to be better. But a lot of the time you don't believe you *can* be, let alone that there's any point. You hurt, break, and ruin everyone you care about. You're not worth it." Angel nods along, almost mouths the words, and he looks half-grateful, half-surprised that Oz knows this all, says it on his behalf. "Know what?" Oz asks. "In case you haven't noticed, I don't care." "But you -" Oz closes his eyes for a moment. Feels steam in his throat, round and full. Warm. "I'm not like you. I can't really understand what it's like. Supposedly I'm better than you." When he looks back, Angel's shaking his head and nodding simultaneously. Water's running off his hair as it starts to spike and curl upwards. "You've got your version," Oz says. "Let me have mine?" Angel has -- he does -- he does this *thing* whenever Oz asks for something, where his lids droop a little, his lips part, and his whole face smoothes out. Goes fractionally softer. It's one reason Oz doesn't ask for much. He doesn't *need* much, and he just can't take advantage of something so instinctively kind. "Okay?" Angel asks, like a kid caught daydreaming and lacking homework, really fervently hoping the teacher won't notice, that he just answered the question he didn't really understand correctly. Oz taps his fingers against the small of Angel's back and smiles all the way. "Love you," he says again. Angel nods. Spark in his eyes, late sunset gold through deep water. Oz kisses him, kisses the water off Angel's mouth, lets them go quiet. Sighs a little when Angel kisses back as shyly as a girl at the eighth-grade spring dance. He tucks his face against Angel's collarbone. Smiles, still, always-already, chronically, when he feels Angel's arms go around him, when Angel rests his cheek against the crown of his head. -End Feedback |