For the cheer Kita campaign '03.
*
For the sprawling but overcrowded city of quartz, the abbey is strangely secluded. Tucked under one of the bluffs that shear up randomly from old floodplains, slashed on one side by a freeway extension and abutted on the other by a series of water-treatment facilities, it cannot be said to be prime real estate.
Yet it does sport nearly seven undeveloped acres of old-growth olive and citrus trees just crying out for zoning, prissy renaming, and the founding of homeowner's associations. The rambling wood and stone main building attracts a different sort of developer -- Japanese tourist concerns, the Landmark Forum, of course the Scientologists -- looking for large meeting halls.
The abbess takes the frequent calls from developers with her usual mild smile, the one bordered by deep furrows descending from the side of her nose. She listens to the nearly-identical pitches, thanks them for their time, and hangs up. She hates argument, loathes saying no, so she simply lets them talk themselves out of whatever foolhardy plan they were so revved up about.
This is the same tack she took the evening after she found Oz.
The murmured arguments from the sisters made him sleepy, their voices low, sweet, purer than silver and just as deadly: "but our vows...our chastity...our peace..." He rocked back on his heels, keeping close to the curtains, while the abbess nodded and smiled. She let them have their say, let their curiosity flicker over to him, let them notice how small and unthreatening he was.
Then she told her story.
When she found him, he was passed out, naked, brambles in his hair, hideous gashes up and down his torso. Like a petite Jesus, apparently, or so said one of the sisters. The abbess woke him as gently as she could while keeping a firm grip on the pruning shears just in case.
She has told the story many times since. She says that she was already half-convinced that he was no threat by his pallor and skinny frame. When his eyes fluttered open, her mind was made up.
Old eyes, she said, eyes from which she had nothing to fear.
She dropped the shears then and helped him sit up. He touched each arm in turn, wonderingly: All his bracelets were gone.
Not just the Tibetan beads, but the lumpy papier maché ones Willow made when she was exploring her creative intelligence; the thin chains Dev stole from his sister and slipped into his locker, one present among many to knock him out of his funk after the whole Xander Harris fiasco; green crystal baubles a warlock in Romania claimed were congealed mer-person ichor; all the string, cords, and lariats he'd picked up over the years that shrank in the shower and dug into his skin. Vanished.
She handed him the cotton sweater she'd tied around her waist when the morning cool started to burn off. He seemed comfortable naked; it was out of her own modesty that she urged it on him.
When he was clean, his wounds dressed and stomach filled, she presented him to the sisters. They whispered objections and cited precedents, she smiled, and eventually, he was here to stay.
*
The abbess *always* talks developers out of their plans. It's one of her favorite pastimes. So Oz can fairly be deemed startled one morning at breakfast when she tells him they'll be driving downtown to meet with an interested party.
He places his spoon perfectly perpendicular to his empty bowl of oatmeal, and nods. Nods some more when she instructs him to dress 'appropriately'. He's been wearing whatever the sisters have in random closets and what he can salvage out of the donations boxes. It's nice, because it's not that much different from what he used to wear.
Appropriate, then, translates into a blue shirt that *just* buttons around his chest and the black cords he's been wearing all week. He looks for a tie, but the only one he finds has a painting of a Stepin Fetchit jazzman with sax under a lamppost, and it makes his stomach hurt to look at, let alone wear.
In the garage, the abbess nods at his getup, once, shortly, but it's enough, so Oz helps her into the front seat and relaxes as he goes around to the driver's side.
They're big on nodding here. He likes that. Entirely too much energy is wasted on speaking, and all you get there are lies, usually. Harder to lie with a lift of the chin or twist of the neck. No wonder he gets along so well with her.
Oz drives well. He's always been able to handle L.A. traffic and doesn't understand why people complain about it so much. In New York, people complain about drivers, but he got that - they're all insane. Here, it's not anyone's fault that there are too many cars and too few lanes. People just need to relax a little. He eases the minivan around and through traffic, treats blaring horns like cues in a good jam session, and gets the abbess to her appointment with time to spare.
"You'll come in," she says. "Make yourself comfortable. I may be awhile."
*
The huge doors are glazed glass with pseudo-Celtic grave etchings on them: A wolf, a sheep, a deer. Oz knows the wolf, at least, is anatomically wrong. Torso's too short, back legs too long, almost rabbit-long, a tail that could wrap around the poor thing twice, almost.
The abbess is hustled off to an invisible bank of elevators.
So Oz has a visitor's badge, time on his hands, and an official tour to take.
He wanders off instead. Official anythings are bad for the soul. One glance at the white-light expanse of the lobby, he knew he'd be taking no tour today.
Place looks like a mall. *Exactly* like a mall, like the Galleria in Fullerton, actually. Or the mall in Sunnydale. Wide plate-glass windows that look in on people working, desks, typing, lots of ringing phones instead of shiny consumer goods. Same odd hush in the air, like you just missed the end of a track of Muzac and everyone's holding their breath waiting for the next one. It clashes with the hustle-bustle of work behind the windows. Or accompanies it perfectly. One or the other. Maybe both.
Oz sticks his hands in his pockets and wanders. No one really pays any attention to him. He's not sure if this is something he picked up in Tibet along with wolfsbane and mantras, or if life's always been like this, just him, stringing along like one link on the mala, unnoticed and happy for it.
He approaches the stairs that remind him a little too closely of the ones at the Sunnydale mall, so he skirts the spot where he found that blue demon's arm. Still makes the scar in his own bicep throb whenever he thinks about that. Up on the second floor, the hush is thicker. Quieter, but more intense. Smoky windows you can't quite see through that remind him of the tanks at a dirty aquarium in Timisoara. He'd kill afternoons there; must have spent a week and a half waiting around for the old mage who finally sent him on to the monks. Thick, fibrous looking fish with dull eyes would occasionally bump against the glass, tossing up smoky clouds of dirt, before slowly swimming back into the gloom. He couldn't read Romanian. For all he knew, maybe this was a post-Chernobyl exhibit of affected wildlife.
There are hallways radiating off the mezzanine. What Oz takes to be hallways, since they're covered with double-wide doors that have access-key scanners and vaguely-but-politely threatening warnings etched onto quiet burnished chrome plates.
He circles twice before he's completely bored. He's done six turns of the new, 54-bead mala that Sister Esperanza helped him make from leftover occupational therapy beads, but something's interfering with the calm. The hush, maybe.
He keeps an eye out for the washrooms and finds them when a flock of white-coated mad scientists emerges from one hallway. They really do look like mad scientists: big crazy hair, heavy old black plastic glasses, the odd hump and withered limb.
Oz slides past them, finds the men's room, and gapes.
It's - it's nicer than most places he's lived. Than most places people he's known have lived. Smooth granite, gently running water. Birdsong. Hummingbirds? Can't be hummingbirds. Soft silvery lights playing from recesses in the walls.
Yes, hummingbirds, hovering around several tall, spiky flowers almost as big as shrubs. Jewelled wings, needle-long beaks.
Oz backs out very slowly. It'd be like peeing in a Shinto shrine or something. Just wrong on so many levels.
Backs right into something - no, oof, some*one* tall and solid.
"Sorry --"
Oz tries to move, but he's caught between the washroom door easing closed with a gentle metallic sigh and this huge wall of person.
Grey pinstriped arm helps him turn.
"Hello, Oz."
"Angel." Oz blinks a couple times. "You're in a suit."
Angel glances down and smoothes his lapels. "Uh-huh. You like?"
"Give me a minute."
It's a nice suit, that's not the problem. Well-tailored, not cut too wide that Angel would look blowsy and puffy, but not too tight either. Subtle. Contrasts nicely with the very strange maroon and dark-purple shirt he has on underneath.
"So?" Angel asks.
"Since when do you wear a suit?"
Angel takes Oz's arm, like they do this every day, and guides him farther down the hall. "Lots to catch up on, I guess."
*
Apparently, yes.
Oz perches on the edge of a black leather couch twice as long as he is tall and lets Angel catch him up. Steals glances around the office, all the old ritual masks and truly frightening implements of killing that hang on the walls, the desk that's almost as big as the couch and spotless. Varnish that Angel strokes like a lover as he explains the random stroke of luck that befell a once-humble P.I.
Oz can't sit still. Washroom hummingbirds beat tiny wings in his chest. It's all too rich, too layered and unfamiliar. He wanders. Touches tribal masks with thumb and forefinger. Sniffs ancient blood caught in the handles of swords and daggers. Like a museum, but interactive. Angel's eyes follow him, though, better than any minimum-wage security guard.
"Corporate," Oz says when Angel's finished. "Probably good. Get daycare, right?"
He sits on the edge of Angel's desk, one leg swinging. Angel looks at him, little crease deepening between his eyebrows. As if Oz suddenly started speaking Mandarin.
"Daycare," Oz repeats. "For the rugrat?"
"Excuse me?"
"The kid. Tyke. Toddler? He's a toddler by now, right?"
Angel's face clouds for a moment. He recomposes himself subtly, quickly, so that when he looks back at Oz, everything is normal. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Heard you had a--. Forget it."
Angel smiles then, wide and toothy, something Oz has never seen before. Angelus's smile snaked and spread; this one's different, very L.A., perfectly insincere. Except Angel's eyes are crinkled up like he's sincerely pleased by whatever thought is amusing him.
"Check this out," he says, twisting in the big overupholstered chair, reaching for the curtains behind him. Oz reaches with him, batting his hand away, and Angel actually laughs. Chalk that up to the unimaginable column, too.
He's laughing still as the curtains open with a mechanical whisper and Angel tilts back in his chair, sunlight pouring over him. Eyes closed, lips parted, hands slack on the arms of the chair. Renaissance David, post-orgasm.
Oz slides off the desk, touches the window. He thought he was on the second floor, but he's looking down at traffic at least ten stories below.
"Glazed?" he asks, looking over his shoulder. Palm on the glass.
Angel's eyes open. Sunlight makes them amber for a second. "Yeah. Pretty amazing, huh?"
"Need a setup like this for moonlight," Oz says. Knocks his forehead against the glass, watches toy cars and insect-people crawling.
Wonders how he got so far up.
*
Angel calls someone to get lunch for Oz. His own blood is delivered, steaming, in a steel travel mug with the Starbucks insignia.
Oz has never seen a cheese sandwich he couldn't get his hands around.
Angel spins in the chair, back turned to Oz, mug in hand. Oz spins him back - the chair is pretty cool, he has to admit that, and he pets the leather for a second while Angel looks down.
"Drink," Oz says. Takes apart his sandwich until he can hold it and actually bite into it.
Angel's eyes close as he sips, ridges rippling and fangs catching a gleam of light.
When he's finished, he ducks his head, rubbing his forehead. When he looks back, he's human again. Then he yawns.
Enormous, earth-shaking, well past bedtime yawn that would put Cousin Jordy to shame.
"Thought you were like CEO," Oz says, shredding the crust.
Angel nods, toothy smile again, no crinkles at his eyes. Toothy smile kind of pink with blood and Oz smiles back. That tremble he's been feeling down his back and in his hands, he realizes, is sadness.
He's sad for rich corporate Angel. "Can't the boss keep his own hours?"
"More on earth," Angel says. His hand circles. "You know."
"Nope," Oz says. "Don't have a philosophy, for one thing."
Angel looks around. They're alone in the office, god knows how many stories up, it's silent, but he checks over his shoulders as if they're sharing secrets in the middle of the grade-school cafeteria.
"Sometimes," he says, leaning close, "I take a nap."
Oz nods slowly, pushing the plate away across the slick varnish of the desk. "On the couch."
Angel smiles. Small, twitchy, sincere smile. "Yeah. Or the chair. Right here."
Quiet time in first grade. Put your head down on your desks and think about what you've done. Johnny Levinson and he would giggle, never able to get through quiet time without cracking up and tossing crap at each other. Unless they were really tired. Johnny snored like a puppy. The next year he got left back because they thought he was slow; Oz always figured it was because they'd been split up into different classes and Johnny was as lonely as he was.
A whole year of head-on-desk, alone.
He wonders how Johnny's doing.
"Need a nap?" Oz asks instead. "I can get out of your hair."
Angel, he realizes, is still leaning over. Chin in hand, looking at Oz. Blinking sleepily. The sunlight picks out the spikes in his hair, makes them russet and gold. If he unfocuses his eyes, Oz can see it as a ruddy orange halo over Angel's head.
He smiles at that, both literal and impossible all at once. Angel blinks again. Face shadowed, eyes black: How he used to look, all the time.
Oz scoots in, kisses Angel's forehead. Doesn't have time to pull back like he'd been planning because Angel's head falls back and now he's kissing Angel's mouth. Moist lips that taste like blood and whiskey, strong arm pulling him up onto the desk, then forward, and Oz is propped up on one elbow, kissing Angel.
Kissing Angel. More for the implausible category. It's getting fatter by the second, growing by leaps and bounds.
Pleasantly implausible, though, and Oz hasn't touched anyone else, let alone kissed them, since he woke up in the orchard. Well before that, too, all the time he lost, before *that*, on the road back from Tibet. In the monastery itself. Chastity, he'd learned to his infinite disappointment, being something that spans most world religions.
Angel's tongue is broad and soft, surprisingly soft, and Oz hums against it, the sad trembling quickening and going into something way nicer, faster and warmer. Angel kisses him thoroughly, too, surveying and cataloging, and when Oz catches his tongue on the hint of a fang and keeps kissing, he hears Angel sigh. Almost whimper, then redouble his efforts.
"Taste like meat," Angel says when Oz nudges him away to breathe. Half-changed, longer incisors, small golden centers at his eyes. Bone and skin fluttering, melting, on his forehead. "Like smoke."
Oz shrugs, squinting against the glare of sunlight. "Wolf."
"Yeah." Angel hoists himself onto the desk, pulling Oz over him, and Oz grips his jaw, bone heavy and thick in his palm, kissing him again, other hand squirming to undo both sets of shirt buttons. Angel pushes him up by one shoulder until Oz is kneeling there, precariously balanced, swaying, as Angel undoes the buttons one by one. "Look like a little kid, though. Like it's your Confirmation."
Oz grins as his shirt opens, has to close his eyes against the rush of dizziness when Angel palms his chest, running his fingers over Oz's ribs. Opens them again when Angel's hand stills, looks down, sees Angel just - looking. Looking at light and shadow on bare skin. Touching his own bare chest, then Oz's.
Oz rocks his hips against Angel's, guides him down and runs his fingers through Angel's too-short hair. Feels hard cock against his own, kisses Angel's eyebrows, nose, blood in his mouth again.
"Warm in here," Oz says. "Bright."
Angel nods, rubbing Oz's hips and thighs. "Bright."
"Happy?"
"Getting there."
Oz ought to be worried. He kneels again, works open both their flies, tugs down old corduroy and murmur-soft flannel. Angel's chest is golden in the sunlight, not a healthy glow so much as autumn, slanting light on bare trees, firelight on bone. Unhealthy, but beautiful. Angel says Oz is pink in the light, traces freckles with his fingertips until Oz shudders and moans. Gets private-label moisturizer from one drawer, slicks Angel's hand, falls against his chest, kissing Angel's neck, licking empty veins and spreading his legs. Groaning in Angel's ear, breath disturbing the fine, short fuzz along his hairline when Angel's fingers circle, press, breach him. Biting at Angel's tongue, kissing him wet and deep, tasting new blood while Angel's hand works him, rocks him, speeds up his breath and pulse until he sees white starbursts and purple spots before his eyes.
Ought to worry about sex, happiness, sunlight.
Ought to.
Doesn't.
Holds onto Angel's shoulders, head fallen forward like a narcoleptic, lip in his teeth, while Angel's fingers dig bruises into his hips, fucking him slowly at first, then faster, rougher, and Oz doesn't worry.
Everything's so wrong here.
Could do with some shaking up.
Clouds, edged with shining silver, cover the sun, the room darkens, and Oz's head falls back when Angel starts jerking him off, lifting him up, pushing him down, and there's a demon there in the dark, feral catface and pulsing cock, kneeling over him, teeth scraping Oz's collarbone as it wraps one of Oz's legs around its waist and screws in deeper. So fast, hint of claws jerking him off, dick huge and almost ready to tear.
Oz's head bounces against the desk. The varnish. Not so slick now. Sticky with his sweat, some blood, harsh cat-tongue lapping at the scratches on his chest, and Oz wraps his other leg around the demon's thigh.
Hears a moon-worthy howl from his lips that builds as his gut tightens and flares and when he comes, the Angel/demon howls too, lower, meaner, and shoves in deeper than ever before.
*
"Didn't change," Angel says later. Cleaned up, the sun bright again, a new suit and shirt hanging loose, unbuttoned, on his body.
"Sound disappointed." Oz is curled up on the couch, a suit jacket over him.
Angel shakes his head. "Just thought you might -"
"Wolf out?"
"Yeah."
Oz sits up. His confirmation shirt is ruined, and he's wearing the maroon and purple shirt. Swimming in it; the tails reach almost to his knees. He runs a sticky hand through his hair. Smiles.
"Maybe next time?" he offers.
Angel smiles. For real. "I'll have them pencil you in."