Date: April 10, 2004
Notes: Begun for the contrelamontre "war" challenge; finished out of completist urges. Source notes for title and section headings follow the fic. For Tesla, Dol, and Kita for various good reasons.
*
If there is a suspension of action in war, that is, if neither party wills something positive, there is rest, and consequently equilibrium, but certainly an equilibrium in the largest signification.
Angel reads Clausewitz and Sun Tzu for fun. There are times, sometimes days at a stretch, when nothing's happening. When the loudest noises are Cordy hunting-and-pecking and Gunn sharpening swordblades. When you can think about fun, or at least relaxation, such as it is.
Oz tries to remember these moments and days the rest of the time. Because usually it is crisis-time, urgent and intense and crackling with fear. Chasing down leads, tearing through Wes's entire library, running towards danger. Crashing deliberately into all the humped and slimy things that go bump in the night.
They say, just like other people said back in Sunnydale, that he is mellow. Freaky with the calm, according to Gunn.
Maybe he is; Oz doesn't think he's in any position to make that call. After growing up on a hellmouth, and now doing whatever it is that they do in LA - aid Angel's redemption, help those in need, he doesn't know if they're the same thing or just happening to coincide - he's in no position to judge whether he's reacting appropriately.
*
Strategy forms the plan of the War, and to this end it links together the series of acts which are to lead to the final decision, that, is to say, it makes the plans for the separate campaigns and regulates the combats to be fought in each.
Angel paces the length of the office, not like something caged but like just what he is: A man who has to move in order to think, who has to feel things and pound the air to know he's alive. "We're just reacting. Cordy gets a vision and off we go - is that how it's always going to be? There's got to be something we can do, make a move, make a play, make something happen."
Wes puts down his pencil and sighs. "It's not as if we have a choice, Angel. I mean, really -"
Oz came in here looking for something to read. He'd sprained his wrist a few days ago hacking the tentacles off a Florsheim demon or whatever it was called, so he couldn't practice his guitar. Antsy, he figured there had to be something to absorb him on Wes's shelves.
Now he's sitting very quietly on the edge of a settee, trying to let them hash out whatever's going down. Empty-handed, too.
"Not good enough," Angel says, reaching the wall, slapping the wainscoting and turning on his heel. "That's not good enough. There's got to be another way -" He stops in his tracks.
In the silence, Oz can hear himself humming. Nirvana, there's gotta be a way, a better way. He does that a lot; sometimes the music stays in his head, but it can dribble out before he knows it.
"Oz?" Wes asks. Softly and politely.
"Mmm?" Oz looks at Angel, not Wes; Angel, he can deal with. Wes looks at him like he's a specimen, like he'd be better suited to the operating table or floating in a cloudy jar. "Sorry. Song in my head."
"What are you doing?" Angel asks him.
"Humming -" Oz starts to say, but Angel shakes his head. Minutely, but it's clear. It occurs to Oz that Angel didn't even quite realize that Oz was here. "Oh. Looking for a book -" He stands up. "I'll leave you guys alone."
Angel squeezes his shoulder as Oz passes, then shuts the door behind him. The latch clicks sharply.
*
Because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time--it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized 'on the wing'.
In the quiet times and the off-hours, Oz can breathe. He doesn't really breathe when they're in full-on crisis mode, whether researching or fighting. He *must*, of course, because until that thing with the tentacles slapped him in the face with some kind of noxious chloroform goo, he'd never passed out, not once.
He explores the hotel all over again, feeling like he's a kid again during the longest summer ever, consciously amusing himself rather than just plain enjoying himself.
Angel finds him in a room on the top floor.
"Everything okay?" Oz asks as Angel grabs his hand and tugs him forward, to the dropcloth-sheathed bed.
Angel sits on the edge, drawing Oz between his spread knees, and kisses him, arms wrapped loosely around his shoulders. Almost eyelevel like this, almost the same. Angel tastes like blood and scotch, both of them dark and thick, and Oz breathes him in.
"Now it is," Angel says, pulling Oz's head down against his neck and tightening his hold. "Getting there."
"Good." Whispered like a secret in Angel's ear.
Angel tips Oz's head up by the chin, tracing with his thumb an eyesocket, the center of Oz's nose, his lower lip. "Feels like a dream, sometimes."
"It's not, though." Oz kisses his forehead, palm on the back of Angel's skull, and wriggles a little closer until one knee's planted on the bed next to Angel's thigh. "Swear."
"Just - always on the go. Go, go, go. And then it's over, but you know it's just going to start up again. Don't know when. Never know when."
As he talks, Angel gathers Oz against him, fingers skimming through his hair, down his chest, over his side. Oz nods along, sliding his hand under Angel's sweater, palming skin that will not scar.
"Tires you out, huh?" Oz asks.
"You know," Angel says. "You know what it's like."
Supposedly he ought to know; he's gathered that much from how Wes talks about Angel. Angel as a battleground of demon and man and soul, so many factors, impossible to calculate precisely. By the same logic, Oz is a smaller field of battle, wolf and human being, wrestling together, locked in some unending struggle.
He's probably looking at things wrong, but that's just not how it feels.
It must be like that for Angel, though, considering how different he can be at different times. Not just when he's good versus when he's evil, but when he's thinking versus when he's talking, when he's alone versus when there are people around. There isn't one Angel who's real and another, or several others, who are imitations. Oz is starting to understand that now. Angel's fluid inside his skin, always shifting between and among the three poles.
"I don't," Oz says. Leans back a little so Angel can pull his shirt off over his head, then replaces his hands on Angel's shoulders. "I really don't."
Angel doesn't answer. He has his mouth on Oz's throat, tongue running over the jugular until Oz starts to tremble. Then he looks up, smile glimmering at the corners of his mouth, and grips Oz's waist.
"Keep saying that," Angel says, yanking Oz closer so hard his head falls back like his spine's just a piece of old rope, "and I might start to believe you."
"Sir, yes, sir," Oz says.
Angel stiffens a little at that, the smile vanishing, his shoulders lifting in equal measure to his eyebrows lowering and knitting together. His fingertips dig into Oz's skin, hit bone. He likes Oz talking like this. Man's got legions of kinks, and if Oz was immortal, he'd have the time to learn them all.
As it is, he's learning as he goes along.
*
Over and above the result of the calculation of space, time, and quantity, we must allow a certain percentage which boldness derives from the weakness of others, whenever it gains the mastery. It is therefore, virtually, a creative power.
Just two hands and some extraordinary strength, and Angel flips Oz over onto his back, the dropcloth sending up cloud after cloud of foul dust. Everything speeds up, hands and mouths and legs wrapping, pulling, clinging, until Angel's crouched over him like one big cat. Lion or leopard, smiling at its snack, and Oz arches up.
Under black eyes and that smile that's not entirely kind, he can't help himself.
Angel pins Oz's wrists over his head, holds him still. Reaching between Oz's legs, jerking him fast and rough until Oz twists back and forth in his hold, melting fast beneath skin that's shrinking with every heartbeat.
Sometimes they take it slow, but usually it's this, caught and yanked, pushing close as they can to the edge, until even Angel is gasping, and the curse is always there. Slow and sweet or quick and dirty, it's anyone's guess what'll trigger the happiness, what will mark that last slide.
Angel's human teeth in his skin, two of Angel's fingers inside him, and Oz can't stop breathing, can't stop feeling, twisting and opening and asking for more.
"That's right, so good, just like that -" Angel crooning against his chest, into his ear, as he pushes inside and pushes Oz down, hips up, shoulders into the mattress, and pretty soon, Angel's not talking either. Just raking fingernails up Oz's arms and down his chest, fucking fast and deep.
If the curse breaks, then there won't be any more questions. No more awkward waltz and constant response to visions and cries in the night. Without the soul, Angel will revert to the simpler variation, two notes in harmony, demon in human body.
*
One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes win, sometimes lose.
After he comes, Oz is a sack of syrup, nothing firm enough for thought or calculation, just twitching warmth and overflowing sensation. The world is weighted with lead, darkest in the corners and brightest just before his eyes. It takes hours, or the physical equivalent of hours, to wipe the sweat from his eyes and actually see.
Angel lies on his side, arm over Oz's chest, forehead pressed against Oz's ear. He's shaking, tremors breaking out over his skin like light from behind sunrise clouds.
"Love you," Oz whispers, dragging the dropcloth over himself, twisting onto his side to face Angel. A smear of dust the shape of Idaho on Angel's temple, and Oz rubs at it with a licked finger.
Angel doesn't answer. He squeezes his eyes shut and keeps shaking.
Oz doesn't expect an answer. The shaking, though, is something new.
"Hey -" He squeezes Angel's shoulder, muscles shifting under his palm. "Hey."
Angel curls more tightly into himself, slow-motion recap of someone getting kneed in the balls, and shakes his head. Oz tries to work his fingers under Angel's chin, but it doesn't work.
"Angel."
During the fights against demons, Oz's fear gathers somewhere around his knees and reaches up inside his spinal column. It's cold then, thick but breakable like mercury. Right now, however, fear's in its normal configuration, thousands of cold goosebumps all over Oz's body, and hands cold and galactically far away.
Angel's shaking speeds up and he buries his face in the cloth, pushing away from Oz.
"You still there?" Oz usually asks that when Angel starts to doze off, but it's a multipurpose question. Take the stress off of there and put it on you. "Angel?"
"Here," Angel mutters. Later, at last; time's fucked and broken up like the goosebumps as Oz has stroked his hair and swallowed dry spit, gritty and sour. "Always fucking here."
His voice is bitter, his jaw set when Angel sits up and shakes away the last of the tremors. Bitter like dandelion stalks, like resignation.
Oz isn't the only one who looks to fucking as an opportunity for an honorable defeat.
*
Each was to each the Pink Redoubt --
They rise, and shower, and dress. Oz ices his wrist all over again and Angel opens a book -- someone feudal on something brutal -- until nightfall.
No vision this time, just a gang of extra-dimensional thugs harassing Lorne and his club's patrons. Gunn and Angel can handle it. Oz watches them from behind the counter.
Cordy elbows him, stage-whispers about the green-eyed monster, and maybe she's a little right. Angel and Gunn, whipping on their coats and checking their weapons: The sight is perfect. Comrades, brothers in arm, true fellowship. Oz doesn't feel jealous -- he's done jealous, it's a desperate parade of shivers down his backbone, pelt splitting open his skin, fingers lengthening into claws, and it tastes like burn sage and clouds of perfume -- but he does feel distant.
Or they feel distant, pulling away fast, netsuke-small, flat and light as scraps of vellum. Both of them, Angel and Gunn, tiny where they're standing on the steps, and getting smaller, lighter.
It's the same kind of vision that told him when to leave Tibet and now, blinking fast, grabbing a crossbow and his keys to hide his lack of balance, now it's how he knows to leave the hotel, hurry after them.
He can't play his guitar, not with his wrist throbbing like this, but he can drive, and fight. Or play back-up anyway, sit with the motor running as the guys disappear around the corner into an alley.
He can wait, and wait. Finger the bolt in the crossbow, run through several cycles of meditation.
And wait. He can hear thumps and slashes of metal, hisses and whispers and Gunn's muttered curses. Angel's yells, and the slick smack of non-human flesh on concrete. He can smell Gunn's blood -- several scratches, nothing major -- and demon lymph, nasty as gallons of turned milk.
Sense-memory or -precognition, he's not sure what it is, but just before Gunn screams his name, Oz is already opening the door, running toward the alley.
Gunn's backed up against an overflowing dumpster, slashing his axe at a wraith that ducks and parries quicker than smoke.
Couple more wraiths, now opaque and light as steam, now solid and wet as sea monsters, are advancing on Gunn.
No Angel. No scent, no sight, nothing.
"Distract 'em!" Gunn yells. "Fuck, Oz, anything -"
Smells like sour milk and sun-ripened kelp back here. The demons turn their heads all at once -- hive brain, pack intelligence -- and there are faces, sort of, just three crude black gashes, then there aren't, just blank, glimmering slime.
Oz drops the crossbow and shakes once, twice, before dropping to all four paws and springing forward. Toward the one closest to Gunn, swiping claws at another as he passes.
Claws in upholstery, in late-winter slush, snagging, then hauling the thing with him, as the center demon ducks away, down to the side, then falls under the wolf's weight.
Wrestling air, then flesh, fangs in rottenness, seawater and milk, chewing on against the stink.
This is hunting for someone else; he'd never eat something this disgusting.
Claws in its chest, closing around an egg-sized clump that stays solid as the gas moves around. Shredding it, and the creature starts to twitch, screams, then goes still.
No scent of Angel-lord-friend, and the wolf fights on, tears out another gristly heart and chews until its owner fades into a scream.
Quiet then, just his own heavy panting over rancid tongue. And Gunn's breathing as he chops the last heart away. Nothing of Angel. The wolf turns with a howling call, one yelp extended, and searches the dark.
"Oz!"
Ignoring Gunn, the wolf pads onward, panting gradually slowing, nose flaring, sifting the dark for any trace of Angel.
In broken glass, against bright bricks, Angel lies like a shattered doll, clothing torn, his demon's face rippling in and out. A silver trail of something over his chest, snot-thick and bitter as the monster's hearts.
Angel is here but there is no trace of him. No motion, no scent, nothing. The wolf noses him, paws at his side, but gets no response.
It licks at the bright slime, sneezes at the taste, but Angel stirs once. It licks faster, huffing out breath, cleaning the broad human chest until there is no more slime. Merely luminous skin, soft to the tongue.
Angel twitches and shakes, groaning angrily.
Oz wrenches back, naked and human, the change's pain flaring over his vision and sheeting down his skin. Bare soles of his feet on the glass, small useless hand on Angel's arm.
"Hey," he says softly, settling his weight onto his heels, ignoring the glass.
Angel twists away from him, then, like he's being shocked, twists back, throwing his arm over Oz's waist, shaking worse than he was hours ago, knocking Oz's balance for a loop.
Nothing, he's mumbling. Nothing and more nothing. Over and over, and the night air is stealing across Oz's skin like mosquito bites, again and again. Oz wraps his arm around Angel's shoulder, hand in his hair, and tips his face against the crown of his skull.
"Ssh," Oz whispers and Angel pulls closer, curling into Oz, crawling almost into his lap. "Hey, it's okay. Ssh -"
Angel rocks against him, back and forth, mumbling, his fingers digging into Oz's shoulder-blades. Oz holds Angel's head against his neck, lips on the upper curve of his ear, Angel's tremors creeping under his own skin. Cold and shivery like nothing he's ever felt.
"Sshh," he whispers again. All he can think of is Jordy after a nightmare, sweaty with the chills, murmuring and whimpering, clutching at him. And Angel's not Jordy, not Willow, Angel's huge and scared, and that just makes the fear worse. Bigger. Oz pets the back of Angel's hair and keeps crooning. "Sssh, baby, it's all right -"
Gunn finds them there, yanking the hardening slime from his clothes and cursing under his breath. He makes a show of hiding his innocent eyes from Oz's nakedness, but helps them up anyway. He and Oz get Angel, dazed and limping, to the van and Oz tosses him the keys.
In the back of the van, Oz pulls Angel against him, and he doesn't have clue one what he's doing. Just holds and pets and whispers that it's going to be all right. He pulls on a spare pair of jeans but he's still shivering with cold even as Angel calms down.
"I'm okay," Angel insists as they rattle around to the back of the hotel. "I'm all right." But he won't let go of Oz, keeps his arm firmly around his waist, fingers bruise-deep in his hip, as they shuffle inside.
"Upstairs," Oz says and Wes is emerging from his office, book in hand, slamming it shut when he sees them. "Slimy and insubstantial. Sucked the life force," Oz tells him. "Gunn'll catch you up."
"Oz, I really think -"
"All over it, English," Gunn says. "Let 'em be."
"What happened?" Wes calls after them. "What did this?"
"Don't really care," Oz says, jabbing the elevator's up button.
Morning's starting to break, all Cat Stevens-y and gentle, as they make their way into Angel's - their - room. Shafts of bunnysoft pink light, the bed looking wide and white as a cloud.
Threads and ribbons of blood, carnation and wavering, in the bathwater, unspool from Oz's feet as he tugs out the shards of glass. The tweezers keep slipping from uncooperative fingers and his chest hurts, stone-heavy with residual fear. He works fast, holding his breath, but it's still too long before he gets back to Angel.
He's curled on his side, curtains drawn more firmly closed, but the light's softening the corners of the room, blushing over his bare skin above the sheet. Oz pulls on dorky athletic socks, thick and soft on his aching feet, then folds himself against Angel.
Resumption, maybe, taking the position he had in the back of the van, or something entirely new. Angel's eyes are dark gold in the light, wide and still, regarding Oz as he slips under the sheet.
"It's all right," Oz says again. Nothing better to say, nothing truer. "Promise."
Angel slides his hand, long splayed fingers and almost-warm palm, over Oz's cheek, into his hair, pulling him closer. Until Angel's kissing him, open mouth and hesitant tongue, curling his fingers around Oz's skull. Fitting.
There don't have to be victors and vanquished, grand strategies and cunning tactics. Not all the time, at least. Sometimes, when the sun's coming up and he feels like he's still dreaming, even if he's been awake all night, like tonight, Oz can twist into an embrace and know that Angel's here. That's enough.
There doesn't have to be anything larger than the expanse of skin and grip of hands, reach of mouth and sparks off nerve-endings. Nothing that's even big enough to be called love or comfort, because those are abstract, and now, with Angel rolling onto his back and pulling Oz over him, this is all there is. Shelter and warm pink light, skin on skin, shivers slowing into mutual, undulating motion.
There should be fear, slow and sweet as this is, but there's memory, too. Against everything that's happened, everything Angel's done, this is nothing. Less than a moment, and never perfect. Just good enough.
Good enough, clouds passing like scenery and his hands on Angel, and Angel opens his legs. Oz preps him with mouth and fingers, then lotion, always the same as the first time they did this, and time swirls around. Backward, so there's no first time or last time, everything resuming. Just half a moment as he pushes inside and Angel arches, opens, meets him.
When Angel groans and grips him, pulls him all the way in, Oz bites Angel's lower lip. All right now, baby, all right.
Title from Roget II's definition of tactical: "Designed or implemented so as to gain a temporary limited advantage."
Section headings, in order, from:
Clausewitz, On War. Book Three, Chapter XVIII: Tension and Rest.
Clausewitz, Book Three, Chapter I: Strategy.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.
Clausewitz, Book Three, Chapter VI: Boldness.
Sun Tzu, Chapter 3: Planning Attacks.
Dickinson's #1529, "'Tis Seasons since the Dimpled War".