Karma's A Bitch
Oz caught scent of Angel outside the mission where he'd been staying; he decided to follow the vampire on a fleeting whim. Oz was so accustomed to feeling nothing at all that he had an almost insatiable desire to act on any stray impulse of feeling for fear that maybe this time would be the last time he felt---anything. Anything human at least. Oz had plenty of animal feelings. He'd learned there was way too much truth to the fairy tales where wolves were concerned; Oz feared more than anything that he was not becoming more comfortable being a wolf but rather that the wolf was becoming way more comfortable pretending to be him.
He managed to track the vampire from a two block distance –safety first had become a motto Oz had learned to embrace while roaming the wide Earth alone in search for his cure- before Angel doubled back down an alley to confront him. Oz could hear the vampire waiting for him and chose to take it head-on rather than call out. He was always good for a fight. Fighting was one instinct Oz had firmly embraced.
Angel swung out hard and fast with a fist that would have broken a human's jaw but merely set Oz's sensitive ears ringing with the sound of his own feral growl. He half-shifted, teeth elongating, hair growing too fast too full on his face as his eyes sharpened along with his smile and his nails, then he sent his own blow out hard enough to send Angel back into the alley wall.
Oz let out a rusty bark of laughter at the look of incredulity being sent his direction by the normally stoic vampire.
"Some way to greet a friend. Can't say I mind much though. I like things a little wild these days."
"Oz?"
Oz quirked a brow and let his features relax back into their softer, human state.
"You really have to ask? I know it's been a while but," Oz shrugged, leaned against the opposite alley wall to keep a careless eye on the vampire setting himself to rights.
Oz wasn't concerned about Angel's reaction to him. He could fight some more if he had to or he could make nice; either way, it didn't really matter. Today, right now, it was all a momentary diversion from his solitary journey. Oz wasn't sure when his calm had changed from Zen to apathy but he knew the change had come some time after meeting Willow's new mate and realizing that while fairy tales were true, so were old adages: he could never really go home again.
"No, it's good to see you. It's been a while. I wondered how you were doing. Honestly," Angel ran a hand through his hair and darted a glance back to the mouth of the alley that Oz didn't have to check up on; his senses were so acute now, there was virtually no chance of catching him unawares.
"Tracking something?"
Angel nodded.
Oz felt a thrill run through him at the thought of putting his skills to use for something other than staying one step ahead of whatever hunter was on his trail lately. He followed that feeling as recklessly as he'd been following all others as they came to him.
"Want help?"
Oz suppressed the urge to howl in triumph when Angel nodded again. Instead he kept it inside, stuffed it down into the hole left by all the feelings he didn't have anymore, and thought about how nice it felt to feel again.
It was faster and easier than it should have been; Oz was used to disappointment by now but Angel was still bitter about it as they made their way back to the vampire's hotel. Oz hesitated at the doors because he wasn't sure what he was doing now that the job was over. He'd served his purpose and knew he should be going but---it'd been so long since he'd felt anything.
"You waiting on an invitation? I thought that was my issue, not yours."
Angel was almost caustic he was so snide. Oz took that as all the invitation he needed.
To punch the vampire in the gut.
Angel skidded back through the doors a handful of feet but he didn't go alone because Oz bounded after him immediately and from there it was all on. They tore into one another with a kind of desperation that spoke volumes of the lonely lives they both led. Neither of them was as careful as they should have been, knowing the other was capable of taking as much as they needed them to but still---there was enough holding back to let Oz wonder if they both didn't know that this fight could never fill up the hole they wanted, no matter how much blood either of them shed.
Oz didn't know how to back down from a fight. He didn't know how to concede. The wolf in him would never allow that. Angel had to be the one to call it.
Luckily, he chose to do that as Oz hooked a handful of claws into the skin of his throat.
It would have been unfortunate if he'd waited a second later to voice a concern.
"Oz!"
Oz dropped his fist and scuffled back off the vampire immediately. He knew he was panting and half-feral by now but he felt alive. He felt. He would have done anything for Angel for that alone.
"Had enough?" he gloated, voice a rough growl.
"I'll say," Angel nodded, wincing as he touched the gouges at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, "You know, I think I needed that. Thanks?"
They both laughed awkwardly and Angel sent another of his appraising glances Oz's way which made his spine twitter with another emotion he hadn't felt in a long time: arousal. He sniffed the air for pheromones before realizing---
"Vampire," Angel acknowledged, "We don't register exactly like humans as I'm sure you'd know if you were thinking a little more clearly. You remind me of someone."
He didn't look at Oz then but Oz felt as if he had; Oz felt as though Angel had stripped him bare and fucked him raw with the way Angel didn't look at him. Oz had a good idea who that someone was but he wasn't interested in that. He was interested in the feelings he could get right now from the vampire and he had enough apathy left in him to simply not give a fuck if he was getting used just as much in return. Karma was a bitch Oz was used to dealing with by now.
"Someone nice? Someone from better times?" Oz prompted.
Angel did look at him then and it was every bit as good as Oz had hoped. He wondered if the wolf would let him get fucked. The vampire had plenty of quirks to him but somehow Oz didn't think he'd relish being topped by a half-feral werewolf who was very capable of losing control and tearing out the rest of his throat in the throws of passion. Oz figured it was worth a shot. If nothing else, it'd be another glimpse of feeling, another break from the awful calm of nothing he had to live in to keep the wolf at bay and his humanity in place.
"Not better times really. Different times. I wasn't a nice man then."
"You weren't a man at all. You're still the same animal you always were, Angel. You might have a soul now but that body? It's still the same old meat."
Oz gave him a toothy grin that did what he'd hoped: drew the vampire closer to him. Angel traced the hard thrust of his jaw with a callused finger and stared at him so seriously, Oz wondered if the vampire weren't about to propose something more than fucking to him.
"I wasn't good at this then and I sincerely doubt I'll be good at it now. You want to go there anyway?"
Oz grabbed Angel's hair and jerked him into a biting, vicious kiss before licking at the lips he'd torn into. He panted into Angel's mouth and felt the vampire take his breath into himself and that was almost enough to send the wolf in him howling. Oz purposefully leaned down to sniff the closing wounds on Angel's shoulder –rendered there by his claws- and smelled himself all over the vampire. He wanted to have his scent everywhere the vampire had. All over him. Inside him like his air, in his wounds, his mouth, everywhere. Everywhere.
"Take your clothes off. I'm trying this. I want this. You don't have to be gentle with me. It's hard to break me. I'm hard to break," Oz emphasized, already out of his loose cargo pants, and struggling his way free of his worn t-shirt.
Angel hesitated before complying and Oz helped encourage him to strip faster by growing a set of claws long and sharp on one hand and tearing open all the buttons on the vampire's conservative shirt. He nuzzled his face into the deathly pale skin and warmed it with long sweeps of his tongue –licking him clean and coating him, as much of him as he could mouth, with his scent. Oz couldn't stop burrowing, rutting, humping against every inch of cold skin that Angel uncovered.
When the vampire was naked, Oz felt the heft of his erection butt against his own and fucked his hips up hard to prove a point before forcing himself to still and take it, fake it, feel it as Angel gently rubbed himself against Oz. Oz felt the vampire's lust in the tightness of his muscles, the hardness of his dick, the sharp bursts of breath he was forcing himself to take. He was only getting more frustrated the longer the vampire teased him. He snapped a bite into the vampire's nipple before calming himself as Angel jerked back with a shocked gasp.
"Sorry. I'm not. I don't want gentle. You don't have to be gentle. Fuck me. Okay? Now. Now," Oz demanded again, bucking up against the vampire until he could turn onto his knees and arch his back in an act of supplication that made his whole body vibrate with the need to fight back against this.
Oz was not entirely sure he was made for subjugation. He thought he'd die from his own internal struggle before Angel gave in and rubbed two fingers roughly across the tense pucker of his asshole. Oz whined at the feeling from both the intensity of the physical sensation and the intensity of the protest from the wolf inside of him at the same time.
"Fuck me. Please," he whispered low and breathless, breaking in a way he'd never imagine he could.
"This isn't going to be nice," Angel warned. He did something, bit something –himself, Oz realized as he scented the strange tang of vampire blood in the air-, then the fingers were thick and wet and forcing their way into him. Oz forced himself to take it. He felt it, felt it, and wondered why he couldn’t care that a vampire was fucking him with fingers coated in his own demonic blood when he, Oz, could fight back, could stop him, could stop this.
"I'm not nice. Do it."
Oz gave Angel a dark glare over his shoulder and the vampire's face flashed with an emotion Oz couldn't even begin to name; he vaguely hoped he never lived long enough to be able to define that look with his own face. He smelled the vampire's musk as Angel moved in closer behind him, felt himself being pulled back and knew his knees were getting torn up on the worn carpeting, and then all he could see was red because Angel was fucking his thick shaft into him with nothing more than spit and vampire blood to soothe the way.
It was a hip-thrust, fuck-thrust, whine-thrust workout until Oz was sure eternity had passed and then, only then, was he certain that Angel was as deep inside him as he could possibly ever get and then it wasn't even over. Oz wasn't sure he could feel enough for this.
There was a whining sound making his ears ring worse than the blow Angel had dealt him earlier. Oz's cramped fingers loosened their grip on the torn up carpeting as he realized the sound was him. Whining like a bitch as he got fucked by a vampire's cock. He couldn't breathe.
Then Angel wrapped a hand around his still-hard shaft and pumped hard and fast and Oz could still smell the blood on that hand and now it was mixing with his own darker, wilder musk. Oz fucked the hand in deliberate counterpoint to the cock fucking out his ass and had to push it a little farther, a little faster; he wanted to feel as much as he could before the nothingness was all he had again.
"Do I still remind you of him? Do you still think about him even now when you're fucking me, jerking my cock, breathing in the scent of me all over you. Me all over you. Do you remember him? Tell me how I remind you of him. Tell me."
Angel pressed his face startlingly, terrifyingly close to Oz's neck, breathed into the juncture of his shoulder and neck, in fact, and offered, "I never let myself think of him. Never. I'm a better man than that."
Oz leaned back to take more of Angel, to feel him that much deeper as the vampire's hand tightened that much more on his own need.
"You're still an animal. Same old meat. Same old animal."
"I'm not," Angel breathed, hips thrusting short, sharp staccato beats into Oz.
"You are," Oz insisted. He felt Angel shudder and had to push a little more because the end was nearing and with the end came the nothingness. Oz was always far, far too calm after. It was only during that he felt anything at all besides the calm.
"I want you anyway. I want you because you're that animal. I want you."
As the vampire's teeth tore viciously, spontaneously, into the meat of his shoulder, Oz came twice: once with a sweet, sticky finality that coated Angel's hand and then once more with a bitter, rusty end of bloody realization: this was not the vampire he wanted fucking him, fighting him.
The first release was welcome and warm and wanted but it was the second the brought the sharp smirk to his lips along with a bitter bark of laughter.
Oz couldn't help but see the irony in having gone –in the space of one hard fuck- from being a pack-less werewolf of no particular worth to anyone save himself to being special enough to cost a hero his soul. He'd finally gotten cosmic proof of his own worth only to most-likely be on the verge of his own death.
He'd only wanted to feel.
Now that was irony.
Angelus turned him to deliver a sharp blow to his face. Oz imagined he should feel angry about all that bitter irony but he still couldn't bring himself to care too close after the end. He smiled anyway, big and bloody, because fighting was a whole other animal to fucking and Oz was good at being an animal now. Even if it was the end and he couldn’t feel it, couldn't care, couldn't fill the hole inside back up with it so soon after emptying it out again, Oz could still fight.
Oz was a good animal who recognized well other good animals: Angelus was just a different animal who offered a different fight.
Oz thought that right up to the point at which Angelus covered him with his body and licked a blood-wet stripe from his sternum to his jaw, making his whole body tingle sharp and alive once more.
"You still want me, dog? We'll see. Oh, we'll see," the vampire cooed.
His skin practically crawled with awareness as Angelus tightened his grip on his arms, pinning him in place as effectively with his gaze as with his hands. Oz thought it was too bad he was likely going to die this time. He had a feeling that this was what he'd been looking for all along: Angelus.
One thing was certain, if he survived this, he wouldn't have to worry about feeling again. Oz couldn't fathom being unable to feel when confronted with Angelus.
This was not the vampire he'd wanted but it was the one he'd awakened, the one he'd found, and that made Oz wonder if that wasn't what Karma had wanted all along. Maybe Angelus was Karma's answer to his pleas to feel.
Angelus bit his nipple in sharp retaliation and Oz did let out a howl then.
"Oh you'll feel this, dog. I promise you'll feel all you want with me."
Yeah. It figured this would be his answer. Oz tensed for the fight he knew he had to go for now if he was ever going to go for it. He wanted to feel but he couldn't do it this way. The wolf in him wouldn't let him. Fucking Karma.
Oz went for Angelus with teeth and claws and cursed Karma for always being a bitch to him.