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Title:  One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)
Author: Glossolalia
Pairing: Angelus/Oz
Rating: NC-17
Setting: S2 BtVS


Rehearsal runs late and Oz is sweaty and exhausted by the time he hoists himself into the van and turns the key. He takes a second to swipe his knuckles over his burning eyes and let the engine catch. When he lifts his head, there's a red spot glowing in the rearview mirror. Small and still, brightening, then dulling.

His eye sockets throb and his throat goes tight and sand-dry as he turns around. Angelus, reclining the back of the van, smoking a cigarette and regarding Oz with half a smile on his ridiculously handsome face.

They stare at each other as scorpions crawl down the center of Oz's spine.

"You -" he manages to say.

"Dropped in? Yeah," Angelus says, spreading his arms, hooking one over a speaker. "You'd hear me coming, smell me, wouldn't you? Can't sneak up on you. Wouldn't want to insult your canine intelligence."

"Good of you." His hands are cold but slick on the steering wheel. Shouldn't be surprised Angelus knows about the wolf, nor should he waste any time trying to figure out *how* he knows. But. "This a social visit? Or business?"

"Your call."

"Yeah," Oz says. Fear's paler than dropping fangs and sprouting the pelt, but that's so relative it might as well be meaningless. Fear's cold and rough as refrozen ice and he can't move. "Okay. Uh-"

"You seem nervous."

Fuck, yeah, you lunatic. "Pretty much, yeah," Oz says. Words have never seemed as important as they suddenly are now. Nor quite as distant.

"Don't be nervous, wolfboy. What's it gonna be?" Angelus is suddenly right there, right in his face, finger tracing Oz's shoulder. He smells like blood and cologne - midpriced cologne, not as bad as Old Spice, but something you could still buy at the drugstore. "Business? Pleasure?"

Oz squeezes the steering wheel and says the most ridiculous thing he's ever thought *or* spoken. "Can I drop you anywhere?"

Angelus chuckles, fake breath on Oz's face, and pats his shoulder. "Just drive. We'll chat, see the sights."

Oz drives. He can drive. His mind's going very, very slowly, which is weird. He would've thought having a homicidal madman in his van, arm wrapped around Oz's own seat, would make him panic.

Panic usually is depicted as really fast, trains going off tracks and needles skipping in records and heartbeats accelerating. This is syrup and amber, slow trapping things. Fear in suspension, hovering. Just like Angelus's lips, just behind Oz's ear.

"You're quite the puzzle, you know that?"

"Nope," Oz says. Drive and talk. If he's talking and you're talking, you're still alive. "Like to think I'm on the up and up."

"Lots of secrets. Still waters, all that hidden depth bullshit."

"You think?"

"I know."

"Okay." Oz bites down on the shivers; Angelus's lips are cool, their touch light and whispery, hummingbird wings and secrets shared.

"You see, Oz - your name *is* Oz, right? You see, hidden depths are for the birds. All we need to know about other people is in their skin. Their faces. Take their faces, right before you bite 'em: It's beautiful. Seriously, Bernini couldn't do it better in marble. Like they're having the best fucking orgasm of their pathetic little life. Or their hands, clutching at you, fingers skidding off. It's all there, right on the surface. But of course you know that."

Oz is nodding. His head's bobbing as he drives, as his fingers numb away into nothing around the wheel, but he doesn't know what he's hearing. Knows he doesn't agree. That he shouldn't be nodding. "I know that?"

Large hand, patting his shoulder, thumb rubbing the side of his neck. Artery there. Right under the thumb. "You do. Predator, just like me. Probably better at it, once you've had a little practice."

"No," Oz says, before he can help it. "I'm not like -"

"Exactly like-. Shit. Pull over here."

Oz looks around; they're a little outside town, where the houses are both larger and more sparse. Set back from the road, rich people can afford their privacy. Lots of trees, gravel on the side of the road as he rolls to a stop and cuts the engine. As he waits, he tries to breathe. Tries to remember how to breathe. Wonders whether the cross he carries is going to do any good at all.

Angelus swings into the passenger seat and out the door, pulling Oz by the arm behind him. He never releases Oz as they stand in the cool night air and he tilts his head up to the sky. "Nice night, huh? Miss the stars, though."

"Nice night," Oz echoes. Words like smoke, there and then gone. He moves his hand toward his front pocket, toward the cross.

"Whatcha doing?" Angelus asks, like he's honestly curious, leaning in and yanking Oz's wrist up. He's got both hands on Oz now, shoving him against the side of the van. The cross dangles from two of Oz's fingers. "Oh, nice cross. Big cross. *Thick* cross."

He squeezes Oz's wrist, hard enough for tendons to pop and bones to hit and start to grind. The cross falls and Angelus kicks it away.

"Should've left it in your pocket," Angelus says. He almost sounds disappointed. Moves in, pinning Oz's arms against the van. "Could have a whole 'is that a cross in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?' thing going. Pity."

The asshole's *flirting* with him. The realization sinks slowly through Oz, light through dusty attics, water in dirt, and he swallows bile and salt.

"Not the best bargaining chip," Oz says. "Buffy doesn't give a shit about me."

Brows lifting, mouth curving up, Angelus sighs like a mother with overly-taxed patience. "Oh, *her*. No, this - you - this is for me. Call me selfish, but sometimes I need a little *me*-time, y'know? Gets so old, all BuffyBuffyBuffy all the time. I deserve a little break, don't you think?"

Dark eyes, handsome face, and he's *crazy*, wrong, dangerous. Evil. And he's leaning in over Oz, working a leather-clad knee between Oz's own, fucking *smelling* his neck and face.

Oz swallows and stays still. Still as death and marble. Angelus has to get bored soon.

"Answer me." He squeezes Oz's wrists harder, twists Oz's arms until their shoulder sockets start to creak in protest. "Don't I?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course."

Angelus nods, a slow satisfied smile curling over his lips. "I do. I really do. Been so *busy*. I kill townspeople. I threaten her friends. I kill that gypsy bitch, and still - nothing. I'm beginning to think she doesn't love me anymore. A break's just what I need."

"And this break involves -?"

Angelus looks at him again, blinking and tilting his head. Like he forgot he just happened to have a kid pinned beneath him. Forgot that he's bent at the knees and waist, twitching his hips and brushing his crotch over Oz's. "Anything you want, baby."

Want to go home. Want to die and get this over with. Want -. "Want -"

"'cause you do," Angelus says, still husky, lowering his lids and drawing his lips over Oz's forehead. "You do, and I can smell it. All over you, little boyslut. Delicious."

"No, I -" Oz makes himself shut up, closes his mouth and turns his face away.

"You can pretend you don't," Angelus says, lightly, almost kindly. He nudges Oz's face back forward with his head like a puppy urging another to play and smiles. "It's fun, playing that way. You ever played that?"

His weight's almost unbearable, pressed against Oz, chest to knee, and he's pulling at Oz's wrist, pulling him until Oz slumps a little onto Angelus's knee and his cock brushes the lump in Angelus's pants.

"No."

Angelus licks the hollow of Oz's throat, cool tongue, not nearly as cold as Oz would've thought. He *has* thought about this, not for a while, but of course he'd thought about Angel. Couldn't exactly miss the guy, for one thing.

"You just let me know, okay?" Angelus tugs him forward until Oz's back is bowed, wrists and hands on the van, everything else flowing toward Angelus.

"Yeah, okay," Oz says. Hung here, like fucking Jesus on the cross, his hands floating on pins and needles and every time the asshole twitches his hips, Oz gets harder. Just friction, he's telling himself and not exactly believing it. Just friction, totally normal.

Angelus drops one of Oz's hands and slides his hand around the small of his back. Right over Oz's ass, and he smiles more widely, tongue caught between his teeth, as he grinds them together, more deliberately, faster, until Oz gasps, once. His cock's all the way hard now and he can't exactly breathe and there's yellow steam in his skull where his brain used to be.

"What're you doing with them, anyway?" Angelus asks, raking Oz's shirt up his back.

No air, just strangled sounds. "With who?"

"Buffy's gang. The kids and that creepy old perv. You don't belong with 'em."

Oz sucks in both his cheeks, tries to hold his breath and gnaw the insides of his cheeks, as Angelus undoes his fly, then Oz's, and wraps one big hand around both their dicks. The whole time, he's humming, then singing under his breath.

Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
Did you guess which thing just doesn't belong?
If you guessed this one is not like the others,
Then you're absolutely...right!

Last line, he pulls Oz forward and jerks him in earnest, covering Oz's mouth with his own, pushing his tongue inside. Tugging and smothering, pinning and pulling him, and Oz feels yellowjackets and fireflies inside his skin. Not bones or muscle, just tight skin and angry wasps, buzzing and swarming around inside him, in his chest and his throat and his brain.

Maybe this is panic, maybe this is lust. Maybe this is what it feels like right before you die.

He'll never know; Angelus releases him and Oz tumbles backward, against the van, pants around his ankles and hand covering his mouth. Empty mouth, sore and stretched open, hollow.

"Not like 'em," Angelus says, hand on Oz's shoulder again, pushing him down. So slowly, sinking like this, until his knees hit the gravel. "Don't belong, wolfboy."

Might as well ask, quiet the curiosity poking up under panic like violets and last fall's dog turds through melting snow.

Oz cranes his neck; Angelus is tall, huge, Sears-tower big over him, the night outlining the careful spikes of hair with little licks of silver and blue. "How -? How'd you know? About the wolf."

Hand splayed over his chest, mouth agape, Angelus takes a single step backward and shakes his head. "I'm *shocked*, shocked and disappointed and *hurt* that you don't remember. Our first meeting, I'll treasure it all my days, but you -"

"The mall?" Oz peers up, his neck aching, trying and failing to understand what the Judge getting blown to smithereens could possibly have to do with the wolf.

Angelus's brows wrinkle. "You were there? No, I meant -." He cocks his head one way, then the other, and Oz wonders vaguely if he's supposed to buy this parody of serious thought. Angelus drops to one knee, close all over again, hand braced on the van wall just beside Oz's head. "You really don't remember?"

His voice's low, a little sad. Oz shudders. He doesn't know why, nothing's different, but Angelus is trailing his knuckles over his cheeks. Looking at him with faked pleading in his eyes, mockery of hope and worry washing his face.

"No," Oz says. "You knew -"

Clucking his tongue, Angelus smoothes the hair off Oz's forehead. "Don't fret. You'll start remembering. Met the wolf. Bigger'n you, very intimidating. Fucking gorgeous." His hand ghosts over Oz's nose, down his chin and throat to the collar of his shirt and then down his bare chest. Shirt's still tugged up to Oz's armpits. Sweet cold things, slushies and mint and lemon sherbet, gather and slide in the wake of Angelus's fingers, and Oz is tilting towards the touch. Canting his hips, holding his breath. "Not like 'em at all, are you? No, no. Pretty little monster."

It's like Angelus is tugging out what Oz thinks, every little shred, about discomfort in the library and the fucking wolf and the urge to touch someone else's skin, he's pulling all these thoughts out of Oz's mind and turning them over. Holding them up to the light and crooning at them.

Leaves blow backward when a storm's coming. Pale undersides thundering together, ghosts and inversions.

Oz is going to die and no one's ever going to know why.

Angelus grasps Oz by the hips, pulls him forward, and Oz lets his head drop back. Loll, his eyes closed, and that huge deadly hand wrapping around his cock again, slicked now with bloodflavored spit. Pulling at him in time with the kids' song. Singing against Oz's mouth.

Three of these kids belong together
Three of these kids are kind of the same
But one of these kids is doing his own thing...

Hate is like fear, and panic, and it's slow and cold and Oz twists, arches against Angelus. His spine bows, breath rattling out his mouth, over a swollen tongue licking at Angelus's chin, his fingers clawing and grasping pointlessly on Angelus's broad shoulders.

"Good boy," Angelus whispers. "Just give in. Feels good, so pretty. C'mon, boy. Come for Daddy." He licks down Oz's neck and it feels like it's three miles long and part of Oz's dick, pulsing in Angelus's hand. Singing again, "Now it's time to play our game. It's time to play our game."

Glaciers sliding, snow pouring from the sky, Oz is coming and crying, hating the wolf, hating the hand on him, eyes open to the black and blue sky overhead, bruises on bruises and Angelus is laughing. Laughing at him, at the stupid kid, helpless, asking for it, just wants to go and dry up and finish coming.

Angelus drops him, thump of head on a rock, gravel shoving into his skin, and rises. Huge, everything big, standing over Oz and jerking himself until he's roaring, lions and hyenas and deadly, deadly things, coming on Oz like he's a piece of used kleenex, some trash blown on the side of the road. Cool lemon ice and sour, spattering Oz's mouth and his chest.

"God, that was *refreshing*," Angelus says, kicking Oz in the side. "Get up. What, you're going to lie around all night?"

Oz rolls onto his stomach, arm over his eyes. "Just - just kill me, okay?"

"What?" Crunch of gravel and Angelus is squatting next to him, patting his shoulder. "Sorry, missed that. What?"

"Kill me," Oz says. Salt and lemons in his throat, behind his eyes, tears springing out even though he doesn't really feel like crying. "Just do it already."

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you." Angelus sounds surprised, a little amused. "You thought I was going to?"

Ice on ice, layers of it, clouding everything as Oz sits up and wipes his face. Stupid, stupid kid. "What you do, isn't it?"

Hooking his thumb into his waistband and nodding, smiling, Angelus says, "Yeah, true. But you? Don't think so."

Oz tries to push himself to his feet. The gravel skitters around him and the horizon tilts, but he's still on the ground, still freezing.

"Nah," Angelus continues. "Wolfblood goes right through me. Like Indian that way, so, no. Won't be drinking you." He extends his hand and it floats like a flat white moon in front of Oz. Hating himself, weak and stupid and needy and sicksicksick, Oz grasps the hand and Angelus hauls him to his feet. "Maybe some other time, boy."

Trembling and cold, Oz sways a little on his feet. Angelus pats his head like he's a good puppy and turns around, coat flapping.

"You -" Oz tries. Why is he still talking? He's safe. Loathsome and stupid, all his thoughts inside-out and belonging to Angelus now, but safe.

Angelus snaps his fingers and raps his temple as he turns back. "Right, sorry. Where are my manners?" He kisses Oz, hard and deep, hand on his neck. "Thanks. Good boy. I'll walk from here."

Just touch the skin, just feel good, you don't belong. Oz leans against the van, head knocking hollow metal, tasting rotten citrus and shards of ice in his mouth. His hands flex and curl at his sides.

One of these kids is doing his own thing.


-End


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