Monster Parade
The thing about things that go bump in the night is they're things, not people. Not human. Not souls, not ghosts, jostling for recognition in a world where they're invisible but things, sleek animals that chase each other through the darkness in the immortal rhythm of predators, blood longing for blood, beasts devouring beasts.
The thing about beasts who haunt the darkness is, when they are beasts, when they're no longer men -- when Oz isn't a hollow boy holding a guitar pick any longer, when Oz isn't, when there's no there there, no place for a musician philosopher drop-out bi nerdcool boyfriend, no room in the wolfsuit for any consciousness but the wolf's -- the thing about beasts is there's nothing secret about them. They're just terror, that simple.
So he's become the creature kids fear, joined the parade: zombie, ghoul, werewolf, vampire. There's no banner, no pride, no announcement of their impending march; they're more like an army that way. They don't fight fair. Wake up one morning and discover you're dead, and under the bed, someone like Oz, fur receding, human again, just in time for warmed-over breakfast.
The thing about the wolf is, it can be divorced from Oz, a separate entity with its own instincts and desires and fears. But the other thing about the wolf is, it's never entirely gone, even when the moon is new and Oz should be sane. That's the hardest time, when he knows it can't be the lunar pull that's drawing him outside, but something is, and if not the moon, what? Something inside him, where the real monster is.
That may be the first, easiest reason: when Angelus is inside him, the monster has a name and a tangible form, jerks into him predictably, with the predictable response. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck orgasm, and Angelus's version of sweet nothings against his ear, because the vampire can't quite believe he's back, can't believe he controls his own voice again. Or maybe just cuz he gets off on praising his cock. Either way, he mumbles in this quaint, Victorian-porn way, about his manhood and his stiffness and Oz is into it, rocking back against Angelus, trying to deepen the thrust, trying for... control. Not dominance.
"You like this," Angelus says, one time, after. "You fucking like this."
Oz shrugs. "Yeah. Yeah, I do." It's kind of an uncomfortable acknowledgment even though it's obvious from the way he tracks Angelus, lets Angelus track him, the way their paths cross, regular like the moon. "What can I say? You make me weak-kneed." And empty-headed. It's a stupid, dangerous risk (says Giles's voice), the kind a stupid, dangerous animal would take. But hell. It's taken.
"Why don't I kill you? Would that solve your moral dilemma?"
"No thanks, and no. My ethics aren't your business."
"You want something from me, though. Some release."
"I have a girlfriend," Oz changes the subject to one where factual statements are possible.
"Really? Do you bite her?"
"We -- have an agreement about that, actually."
"Uh huh. She's not really yours then."
"By your freakish definition, apparently not. I like to think --"
"You think too damn much, boy."
"We can call the whole thing off," says Oz. "Anytime it's not fun for you."
"This isn't fun," says Angelus.
"Oh?"
"It's practice."
"There are things your harem won't do for you?"
"Yeah. They can't be human, and they can't be afraid." For a second the yellow in Angelus's eyes is a horror, and then -- it's not. He sinks back into the realm of the familiar, domesticated and safe.
Maybe, yeah. Maybe he's just a substitute human, same height and build as Buffy, same supernature but less deadly with a stake, more monstrous in form, a scapegoat till Angelus can get his cock where he really wants it.
Or maybe it's not. Maybe it has nothing to do with Buffy. Maybe it's the second reason, for both of them. I like your smell would be the animal way to say it, the wolf way, the easy way. Sniff, nuzzle, pounce. He doesn't want to think about the wolf having sex. The bestial aspect is painful wrong, but what guts him is the simplicity. Even with Angelus, even when he's ass-in-the-air slutty and one shiver away from calling Angelus "Daddy," when it could be a scene from any porno and being is totally absorbed in body, there're still complications.
Monsters are complicated, more than people think. Well, hey. Here they are, exhibit A and B, full of love and twistiness and clichés. Werewolf lore is frigging absurd; Giles has a whole cordoned-off section on them and that's just the stuff people thought to write down in books. But wolves -- wolves are simple. At least Oz's wolf is.
Oz's wolf wants to pounce, all the time, to bite and tear, to reach across the careful compromise they've made right into Angelus's chest, rip out his heart, plunge into his ass, make him suck cock and submit, whimpering, mewling, coming to heel. The wolf doesn't understand -- about anything, but especially about dogs, or about untamed men. It doesn't understand that Angelus isn't like the boys at SHS. Nothing like.
That's why Oz can risk himself on Angelus, like he can't anywhere else, not even with Willow, where he's fighting harder every day to hold back something that springs into unrestrained delight when he's with Angelus. When they press mouths together (not a kiss), when Angelus's fangs find, not boyteeth, brushed and flossed and flourided, but the sharp, carnivorous incisors of the wolf -- just for a moment, just long enough for teeth to scar tongues, for blood to leak, for them to struggle and for Angelus to pin him, squirming, to a brick wall. Then Oz hauls his legs up Angelus's and wraps them around his waist, pulling, pushing, rubbing, hoping, maybe, that orgasm will come quickly this time, and then succumbing to the reality of hand on hand on hip against knee, and two cocks, and two monsters, the kind children fear. The kind Oz fears, or loves.