TITLE: Bachelor Boy
	AUTHOR: glossolalia
	EMAIL: glossolalia_01@yahoo.ca
	PAIRING: Angel/Oz
	SUMMARY: Oz keeps on flipping that coin.
	RATING: R
	WARNING: Vague spoilers for AtS s5.
	DISCLAIMER: Not my characters; they all belong to Whedon, ME, Greenwalt, 
	Sandollar, Kuzui, & Fox, among other fatcats.
	DATE: 04/29/04
	NOTES: Thanks (I think) to Dolores for teaching me everything I ever wanted 
	to know about Cliff Richard and for co-organizing, with Kate, the Angel/Oz 
	ficathon. This is for Voleuse, who requested "British musicians, a lot of 
	beer, and no wolf sex". My deepest apologies for the utterly imaginary 
	SoCal geography and highway system I've employed here.
	



It's one of those stories that Oz has told for years. It kept him company 
while on the road and during sleepless nights on cold grass, it once earned 
him a free plate of fries at a diner west of Madison, Wisconsin, and it 
still speaks to him of not only how far he'd come but how easy it would be 
to return.

He left fairly abruptly for one of his weekend retreats. Just himself, the 
van, a shoebox full of mix-tapes, a couple changes of underwear, and a 
half-ounce of some lower-Cascades-grown  greengold goodness rolled in his 
right sock.

Time to settle his head, let the road take him where it would, accept the 
contingencies of fate.

Also, get the hell out of Sunnydale and try to forget for another couple 
days about college starting up in the fall.

Willow was merrily ensconced in early-registration comp sci, Buffy was 
patrolling and lending a hand at her mom's gallery, Devon was doing 
community service for the county after an ill-advised shoplifting spree, 
and Xander was -- well, no one quite knew where Xander was. Oz hoped he was 
up in Alaska, making tons of dough hand over fist in the canneries, or 
maybe in Chicago, discovering the great American folk art of improv comedy.

Even Giles was doing something constructive with his summer: Visiting his 
mum in East Anglia.

Oz kind of missed having people around to talk to. Or, really, to hang with.

It was a beautiful day, blue sky just *aching* for him to drive into it, 
and no one was going to miss him anyway.

So he drove, his lucky 1923 nickel on the passenger seat, and he flipped it 
at every intersection.

Heads: South out of town.
Heads: South onto the interstate.
Tails: West on the old freeway.
Heads: No exit.
Heads, another seven times: Still no exit, getting closer and closer to LA.
Tails: Exit 83 to I-19.
Tails: Off the I-19 into the inner burbs, and then a sequence of 
tails-tails-heads that he was starting to suspect might be meaningful, and 
he parked in a public lot off Westwood. Tails, and, shouldering his guitar 
and knapsack, he turned left.

He found himself in front of a perfectly generic prewar office building. 
Thick curlicues of cement atop the windows and around the door, stunted 
attempts at Art Deco ornamentation that just made the place seem grayer and 
more boring.

Inside, he didn't bother looking at the directory board, just jabbed the 
elevator's up button. Lucky buffalo told him to get off at 3, but it was 
his own random whimsy - and 'whimsy' was a damn cool word, he made a note 
to remember it - that bypassed an immigration lawyer's office and a dental 
clinic. He knocked on the only blank door.

His nose twitched; probably laughing gas from the dentist's, all powdery 
but dark.

"Oz?"

Looking up, he realized it wasn't ether, just - "Angel. Hey."

"What brings you here?"

Oz looked at the nickel in his palm. "Fate?"

"You need some help, or -?"

Oz shook his head. "I'm good."

Angel didn't seem to want to let him in. He blocked the entrance, 
scrutinizing Oz from beneath those big eyebrows.

Shifting his guitar case to the other hand, Oz said, "Didn't know you'd 
landed in LA."

"You either."

"Me? No, just driving."

He'd never been sure if Angel was quiet because he was thinking things 
over, giving them their due consideration, or because he just didn't care 
and didn't even really hear you. Oz liked to think that *he* thought stuff 
over, but truth be told, sometimes he just liked to zone.

Finally, Angel opened the door another fraction of an inch. "Got a place to 
stay?"

"Not as such, no," Oz said. He watched Angel think: Brows furrowing, 
eyelids dropping, shoulders sagging, first one, then the other. It was like 
a choreographed performance, or someone in a silent movie. "Look, I'll get 
out of your hair -"

Angel pushed the door all the way open. "No, stay."

"But -"

"Stay?" Glancing over his shoulder into what looked to Oz like an empty 
office, Angel gripped the doorjamb. "Sorry. Haven't talked to anyone for a 
while."

Right, Oz thought. And this is news? He moved his guitar case back to his 
left hand and checked his nickel. Can't argue with fate, whether it's five 
cents or a wolf's bite. "Never knew you to be all that chatty."

"Yeah, well." Angel looked back at him and then it seemed to occur to him 
to move; he stepped back and said, "There's chatty, and then --. Stay. It's 
good to see you."

Oz met Angel's eyes and the gaze held for three accelerating heartbeats. 
Something there, something mutual. "Cool. Thanks."

He wasn't sure what Fate would have to say about the fact that he had to 
take another elevator back down to reach Angel's apartment. Did that negate 
the luck of going up to the third floor in the first place? It was entirely 
possible.

"Make yourself comfortable," Angel said, hovering at the elevator while Oz 
set down his bag and case. He waved at the little kitchenette off to the 
left. "I don't really have anything to offer you -"

"It's okay," Oz said, taking a step backward and looking around. 
Low-ceilinged, like most basements, but without that creepy dampness to the 
air. Not bad; heavily decorated and *dark*, but he figured that, after 
living in a ruined mansion with broken furniture and bedsheets that smelled 
like mildew, Angel was entitled to a little comfort. Lonely, though; 
stronger than the silence was the sense that one person, and only one 
person alone, lived here.

"No, I'll go get some - stuff." Angel nodded, as if to confirm the 
announcement to himself. "Be right back."

While he was alone, Oz poked around unobtrusively. Sharp weapons, some 
intriguing books with nice old spines - <i>My Secret Life</i>, an album of 
Lewis Carroll's private photographs of Alice Liddell, <i>Confessions of a 
German Maid</i> - and a *beautiful* turntable. Technics SL-1200, not an 
original but the later model with separate ground. His fingers itched to 
touch it, and he let himself stroke the headshell, then the pitch control 
tab, savoring the sleek plastic and barely-touched chrome.

The record player perched like a confident nesting bird on an open cabinet 
stocked with vinyl. Oz dropped to a crouch, eager to test the quality of 
Angel's speakers, but one glance at the LPs' spines sent him back to his 
feet and well across the room.

That, right there, was some truly horrifying music. Not just the Manilow, 
because you've got to be willing to give a guy the benefit of the ironic 
doubt, but Irish folk classics sung by Vegas rejects and "authentic!" Cape 
Breton fiddlers and what he *thought* was Engelbert Does Easter, but he 
wasn't willing to go back and check.

Angel returned then, thankfully; loaded down with sacks of groceries, 
enough for a large family for a week or two. Setting down one clinking bag, 
he passed another to Oz. Inside were three six-packs of beer. Molson, at least.

"Guys like you like beer, right?"

Oz twisted the cap off a bottle and sipped it. "Guys like me?"

"College guys."

Frat parties and beer bongs and midterms: He really wasn't looking forward 
to college at all. Somehow he knew it wasn't going to be turrets at 
Cambridge, intellectual liberation, and intense sessions of Elizabethan 
scansion. "Oh. Yeah, guess so."

Angel started unpacking another sack. Oz saw sausages and a slab of liver 
before he had to look away. Blood and intestines, and his stomach gulped 
disgustedly; several swigs of beer quieted the revulsion, but didn't remove 
it. "I'll cook. You - I don't know. Put some music on?"

"Yeah," Oz said. Bought some time by drinking down three long gulps of 
beer. "About that -"

"What?" Angel asked.

Shortest line's the straight one, and honesty was always the best policy. 
"You've been around a while. What's with the music?"

Angel ducked his head and stroked one of the sausages. When he spoke, his 
voice was rough and sad. "You don't like my music?"

Oz took his time explaining, lubricating his voice with generous sips of 
the beer. He used his hands, and his guitar, even played a couple snippets 
from Angel's collection. He didn't want to be cruel - the guy was, after 
all, giving him a place to stay for the night and dinner, even if by the 
smell of it he'd only be able to eat the salad - but when he brought up, 
just as an example, the British Invasion, Angel got really excited. He 
dropped the sausage he was flipping. "British music, I've got that. Cliff 
Richard. *Major* guy over there. You like him?"

"Thinking more like the Stones and the Kinks," Oz said carefully. "Who's 
Cliff Richard?"

Upside was, thanks to Angel's enthusiasm, the sausage burned irretrievably, 
so Oz just drank beer for dinner. Downside, he had to hear Cliff Richard. 
Several different albums, all the same horror. The guy made Mel Torme sound 
sincere, reached for registers and sentiments that would embarrass Celine, 
and wrapped it all in brassy pseudo-"Latin" arrangements that made Oz's 
molars throb.

"Yeah, okay," Oz said when Angel finally gave up both on cooking  dinner 
and converting Oz to fanboying Richard. "So we've got different - uh. Needs 
from our music."

"I like a good tune," Angel said, cracking open another bottle of beer and 
sitting gingerly down on the couch, half a cushionwidth away from Oz. 
"Maybe you just don't like Englishmen. I'd be with you on that."

"No beef with the English," Oz said. He was cradling his guitar in his lap 
and it occurred to him that he was using it as a shield. Or a security 
blanket. Maybe he was drunk. He couldn't really tell, not sitting down. 
"Syd Barrett's English. So's Keith. And Pete Townshend."

Rather than replying, Angel took another long sip from his beer. He looked 
hurt, and confused, and Oz reached over to pat his shoulder.

"Does that stuff even affect you?" His hand was still moving through the 
air, hovering very pale and small over Angel's black sweater.

"What, this?" Angel handed Oz the beer and Oz took a sip. "Yeah. Well, sort 
of."

He could taste Angel on the lip of the bottle, old vegetation, turned earth 
in the rain, and blood. Oz took another sip and realized that Angel was 
watching him. Intently. Dark eyes in the shadows of his eyesockets, kind of 
creepy but also pretty hot.

Raising an eyebrow - both, actually, so maybe he *was* drunk - Oz passed 
the beer back and set the guitar down on the floor. His skin felt thick and 
warm and his hands were shaking a little. Yeah. Drunk. He opened another 
bottle.

"...He claims he can get drunk," Angel was saying, "but Spike, Spike lies a 
lot. Known for it, in fact, so you don't really know if he's --"

"Angel -" Oz closed his hand around Angel's shoulder and shook a little, 
just to see if he could. "You're drunk."

Blinking slowly, Angel cocked his head. "No, I'm not. I'm just saying, 
Spike's a liar. Drinking and eating human food, claiming he can taste it, 
acting all drunk like it makes him --"

"You're talking," Oz said. His mouth was dry and he finished off the beer. 
It didn't exactly help. "A lot."

"I'm --" Angel stopped and frowned. "Am I?"

"Yeah."

"Why aren't you?"

"Why aren't I what?"

"Yeah," Angel said. "How come?"

"Dude," Oz said. Angel was leaning forward and Oz's hand was slipping 
across his back. Serious musculature there, bunches and cords under taut 
skin, and Oz bit his lip. Angel's eyes had a way of just fastening on you, 
black and bright, and a shiver crept up Oz's spine. "What?"

Angel grinned then, so he must be drunk; Oz had never seen such a wide and 
unguarded expression on his face. Not when he wasn't evil, anyway, and that 
wasn't a grin so much as an elegant sneer. Oz smiled in return and shook 
his head slowly, like that would dislodge the foam clouding his thoughts 
and let him get back to normal. Instead, it just made him dizzy.

Also, his hands felt like his fingerbones had turned to Pixie Sticks, 
hollow and half-filled with bright, sour sugar. He needed to do something 
with them before they effervesced right out. He drew one knee up against 
his chest and tugged the dime bag out of his sock.

"You smoke?" he asked, waving the baggie.

Finishing off the beer and rolling the bottle in his hands, Angel continued 
grinning, even as he squinted at Oz. "Only when I'm evil."

"I can go outside -" Oz smoothed out a rolling paper and concentrated very 
hard on tipping the buds into the paper's fold. He didn't want to go 
outside. He didn't, really, want to move at all, not from the depths of 
this couch with Angel's seriously *large* hand on his shoulder now and 
those eyes on him, watching like Oz was doing magic.

Angel sniffed carefully as Oz licked the seal and twisted the joint back 
and forth. "Oh -" He curled his fingers around Oz's neck and smiled again. 
Shyer this time, not quite meeting Oz's eyes. "That's -"

"Yeah," Oz said. "You want?"

With his free hand, Angel extracted a lighter from his pants pocket. So he 
didn't smoke, but he had a lighter? Interesting; man really was a knot of 
contradictions. Oz rolled his head against Angel's hand, fingers in his 
hair now, and lit up.

"C'mere," Oz whispered, since Angel hadn't exactly replied, yay *or* nay, 
just enabled the sparkage. Brows lifting, smile flickering around the 
corners of his mouth, Angel leaned in more closely, Definitely drunk, the 
both of them, and when Oz started to blow a stream of sweet smoke, Angel's 
mouth gaped like a fish's for a moment before settling over Oz's own.

Oz murmured in his throat and Angel pulled back enough for Oz to take 
another drag.

"Stoner's oldest seduction trick," Oz said, moving forward again until he 
held Angel around the waist and Angel tilted his head just right.

"Stoner?" Angel started to ask, but Oz was already shotgunning him again.

Smoke curled up between their faces, a thin foggy blanket, and Oz's lungs 
were emptying even as Angel's tongue pushed at his lips, nudging and 
asking. His hand tightened in Oz's hair as he kissed, softly at first, then 
more insistently. Foam swirling sloppily around his thoughts, his body 
doing its here-now-gone-then jig of beer and weed, slow flashes in and out, 
and Oz kissed back, gave Angel the wide, deep kiss he seemed to want, made 
it even better.

He pressed up against Angel's chest, nails digging into lambswool and tight 
muscle, building the kiss into something Angel would never forget. Even if 
it just made a footnote to three centuries' worth of perversion and 
exploration, Oz was drunk (lonely) enough to give it a go.

"Oz?" Angel asked as Oz kissed his way down the side of Angel's neck, then 
buried his face in the curve of Angel's shoulder. Angel rubbed the back of 
his head and Oz murmured something - even he wasn't quite sure which words 
it was supposed to be - in reply. "You okay?"

When he asked questions, Angel sounded more uncomfortable than ever, like 
they were chewable aspirin tablets, bitter and fakely sweet. His face 
looked like he was sucking on that aspirin, slightly puckered and 
distinctly uncomfortable. Oz stroked his knuckles over Angel's cheek, cool 
soft skin, unmarred by time. Amazing, the more he thought about it.

"Sure," Oz said, tilting back his head and reaching for the joint again. 
"Never better."

Angel watched him take another drag, deeper than the previous ones, then 
hauled him forward, sucking the smoke out of Oz's lungs. No words, which 
was a little creepy, but Oz was grateful for it. More grateful for the 
strength of Angel's kiss, the pressure of his lips and throb of his tongue, 
swallowing the words and erasing them.

The paper spluttered and spit between Oz's fingers and he was starting to 
choke on the need to breathe. Angel pounded his back, the joint dropped, 
and Oz both hacked up a lung and ground out the ember with the toe of his boot.

"Sorry. Thanks." Oz swiped the back of his hand over his watering eyes and 
took a shaky, wheezing breath.

"Beer?" Angel handed him a fresh bottle, already opened, and Oz nodded.

"Thanks," he said and raised the bottle slightly before drinking. It wasn't 
guilt tightening his throat and tangling in his chest, though making out 
with Angel did qualify for the <i>Boys I Kissed Recently</i> talk with 
Willow. It was - Oz searched for the word - the dark and the quiet all 
around them. It was coming to understand that solitude wasn't always good. 
That alone and lonely really were pretty closely related. "To bachelorhood."

"Huh?" Angel asked. His brows knit together and he leaned back into the 
corner of the couch. "You and Willow -?"

"We're good," Oz said. Tight, firehot aches branched through his chest in 
the wake of his coughing fit. "Aside from, you know. Me macking on the 
friendly neighborhood vamp. Or most any hot guy. And me going all rabid 
Yeti three nights a month. And -"

"Got it." Angel held up his palm. "*My* bachelorhood, then."

"'xactly," Oz said. He drained half the beer and it went straight to his 
bladder. One more sip, however tiny, and he would have to get up. He still 
didn't want to get up. It was a good couch, deep and soft, and Angel was 
*right* there, and Oz's bones had long ago reached the not-ready-yet-Jell-O 
stage, and he rested his cheek on the cushion and nodded a little. Maybe 
Angel was onto something; nodding *did* help him feel even more certain. 
"Your silent, unreachable basement dead-of-night bachelorhood."

"I get along all right," Angel said quietly, knitting his fingers together 
in his lap and staring hard down at his palms.

"Kiss like you're drowning, man."

"Yeah." Angel glanced over without raising his head. His shoulders looked 
they were caving in and Oz realized they'd reached the maudlin part of the 
evening.

Oz did a lot of moods, from lazy to interested to engaged to disaffected, 
but maudlin was definitely not one of them. He knocked a loose fist against 
the side of Angel's head and, when Angel finally looked up, closed his 
fingers in the neck of his sweater and pulled him forward. "C'mere."

Angel landed against him like several sacks of wet laundry, but when he 
looked up at Oz, his face was open, worried as a child's. "We're not going 
to smoke *more*?"

"Nah," Oz said. "I'll skip right to the kissing this time."

Oz liked this story.

There was more to it, a lot more; much more kissing and an awkward mutual 
handjob that stained Angel's couch and Oz's good pair of indigo cords and 
then some more kissing until they passed out and Oz woke up an hour later 
with the weight of an adult bear on him and his bladder screaming for 
release. He spent the rest of the night on the floor and Angel made him 
breakfast in the morning - the man worked some serious mojo with eggs and 
basil - before a shyly shared shower, a blowjob that just about 
exploded  every circuit in his hangover-addled little head, and some 
quality time spent with Angel's vintage porn collection.

But the story really did end there, because, for Oz, it was about refusing 
the easy way.

"All I'm saying is - no maudlin." Oz crosses his arms and leans back 
against the entirely-eerie necrotempered glass. "Fight the maudlin, find 
the joy."

"That's your big message? Find the joy?" Angel is even bigger these days, 
like a log caught in the winter runoff, plumping up with moisture from the 
inside out. "Isn't that a bumpersticker?"

"Dunno," Gunn says and Oz slides him a quick smile. Somehow, soon as he met 
the guy, he knew Gunn would get it. "Frodo here's got a point. Even without 
all the hot gay lovin'."

"Not Frodo," Oz says and uncrosses his arms. Years of meditation and 
solitude, thousands of miles clocked on the odometer, and he *still* hates 
talking in public. Never knows what to do with his hands. "Merry, *maybe*."

"Merry, yeah. Hence the gay stuff." Gunn grins and Oz slaps his proffered 
hand. "What d'you think, Angel?"

"Think this trip down memory lane's for the birds." Puffier now, so his 
eyes aren't nearly so deep and wide, and Oz misses their intent scrutiny. 
"Think there's a war on and an apocalypse coming and I just spent half an 
hour on The Dopehead's Guide to Life."

"Okay," Oz says, pushing off from the sill, clapping Gunn's shoulder, and 
pausing at the edge of Angel's massive desk. Angel's looking down at his 
blotter, his hands on its edges, fingers spread. Oz wants to touch the back 
of one hand, but he can't seem to. "You reconsider, Gunn knows how to get 
in touch with me."

He's got his hands in his pockets as he mosies out of the room and Oz just 
knows this isn't the last time he's going to tell that particular story. 
Knows it the way your fingers know the scales, your mouth knows a good 
kiss, and your nickel knows which direction to point you in.

Tonight, when the knock comes on his door, he'll kiss Angel before issuing 
the invitation.