Babblings of a Muppet-Loving Freak

Whew! Couple more to go. Hope this is okay.

Author: Meltha
Rating: FRT
Feedback: Yes, thank you. [email protected]
Spoilers: Through the middle of Buffy season 5, Angel season 2 (though it’s not canon)
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: A pairing and a crisis draw together two souls in turmoil.
Author’s Note: Written as backup for dolores's request in the Slash Wedding Ficathon, requesting Angel/Oz, a small ceremony, Joyce, slow dancing, no religious ceremony, and no drag. Hopefully, better late than never.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.

An Unexpected Song

Unexpected didn’t begin to cover it. Neither Angel nor Oz was the type of person to freely express to all and sundry what was going on in his innermost thoughts. When Oz had shown up after losing Willow to the shy, almost elven girl he had nearly killed out of rage, Wesley had blinked a few times and Cordy had, typically for her, spouted out, “Oz! Didn’t we already get rid of you and all that trouble you brought with you that nearly wound up in all our horrifying deaths a few months ago? Except Wesley’s, since he wasn’t here. Not that I’m blaming you… okay, I am, but still.”

Angel had just looked at him. As usual, not a word passed between them, but Oz could tell that Angel knew in that moment that Willow and he were separate entities now. A brief nod acknowledged the pain, dark eyes never leaving his own and seeming to somehow almost look through them and into the darkest corner of his mind, the place where he kept the thoughts and feelings he would never give voice. And those eyes didn’t condemn or accept, only look with perfect understanding at his naked soul and not look away.

Things had moved with slow, careful, tentative steps after that moment. Oz eventually became part of the group of do-gooders, champions, heroes, whatever the name of the week was for his job description. A long time passed before he and Angel were even in the office alone together, and when they were, they remained on opposite sides of the desk, reading silently from different texts. After an hour, Oz had realized he needed to check one of the notes against the book Angel was reading, and he had silently slid behind his chair, his eyes scanning the text rapidly.

“Did you find what you need?” Angel asked, his head never lifting.

“No,” Oz admitted. “Must be on a different page.”

“Pull up a chair, then,” Angel said, still not looking at him.

Oz had complied, dragging a mismatched chair next to Angel’s larger one and sitting beside him, the two reading from the same book, looking for answers that always seemed to be just beyond the next page, eluding them yet promising if they would only continue to search, they would find what they sought.

A hand had glanced across another that night, a mere skittering of flesh over flesh, cool over warm, as a page was reached for. Angel’s eyes had flickered to his for a moment, and Oz felt his mind stripped and bare again beneath that gaze that had seen more than he could imagine. That moment was gone again in the space of a heartbeat, but it hung in the air, whispering quietly of primal anger and the need for power, and of the souls trapped in the embrace of that enraged animal lust for refused innocent blood. There was sympathy and condemnation at the same time. They were alike and alone.

Seduction had come slowly for them, but Oz was nothing if not patient. He knew the risks, had seen the outcome first hand, and not just for Angel. He remembered what the pain of losing Angel had done to Buffy, the guilt that haunted her eyes even now when she passed the grave of Jenny Calendar. He knew the way she had moved mechanically in those days after her love for Angel had destroyed him and made him a monster, bits of her own soul seeming to die and go to wherever his had gone until at last what was left was a girl whose only mission was to kill what, in spite of herself, she still loved. He knew the consequences of letting his heart become entwined with the creature who sometimes seemed more human to Oz than all the others, even himself.

Months passed before the tentative kiss in the cage-like elevator leading from Angel’s apartment. No preamble had occurred. They had been going back up to the office, carrying an assortment of weapons for cleaning, when the ancient machinery had jolted to a halt and stuck a few feet below the floor. The silence lay heavy, and Angel had kept his eyes downward, cautious, self-denying but denying Oz as well, until the clatter of metal against metal startled the vampire into looking up when Oz dropped the collection of swords he had been carrying.

The smaller hands had brushed lightly over Angel’s face, moving with unaccustomed swiftness as though afraid that the moment would pass before he could act. Lips had sought one another on an instinct that was stronger than any of the others could have understood, nearly destructive in claiming what they wanted, and ending in Oz panting in a way that recalled the wolf within too clearly for his comfort.

Angel had pried open the elevator doors to his office with his bare hands, leaving the metal warped, and walked wordlessly through the office and out the door. He was gone for days, and when he had finally returned, he found Oz sitting calmly in his desk chair and regarding him without looking away, the others having left long ago at the end of the day.

“You’re back?” he had asked.

“Yes,” Angel had said, answering both of the questions he’d meant in those two words.

Oz did not leave the office that night, nor any night following, and though Wesley blustered at the pair of them for forgetting about the curse and putting their own pleasure ahead of others’ lives and Cordelia had simply stated that if either of them went evil she would kill them, beat them, then kill them again, the cage for Oz’s confinement was moved to Angel’s basement. They both knew the truth; Angel loved Oz, but there was no fear of losing his soul. His time with Buffy had convinced him for a moment that he could belong. Oz and he clung to each other in their isolation. Their times together were a respite in the relentless fight to control the demons within, but neither could ever truly forget that fight. In Angel, Oz had found the one strong enough to control the wolf. In Oz, Angel found his long-missing reflection.

When the old office burned to the ground and they found a new home in the Hyperion, Lorne entered all of their lives, and he brought with him something that none of them had realized they lacked: joy. Not the perfect happiness that would have been Angel’s doom, but the vital, lifting, bubbling happiness that knew there was darkness in the world and sang because there had to be a balance. Of course, Lorne would never have called it that. He just would have laughed and tried to get Angel to sing “Weekend in New England.”

But then word came from Sunnydale of Joyce’s illness, and a strange cloud had formed over the group. They weren’t certain yet of how serious it might be. Oz had spent time in the Summers’s home, and there had always been something about Joyce that he liked. His own mother had never really been there for him, and he’d often felt more like a burden than a son. He’d never met his father. But Joyce did little things, like making sure that she had each of the Scoobies’ favorite snacks in the pantry or actually asking them how their lives were going, and it had made him feel good. Angel told him about how she had asked him to leave, but the words he used told Oz more than that. He knew Angel had felt he should leave, and it was Joyce’s voice that had forced him to confront his own thoughts. In different ways, they had both needed her.

And then, blessedly, a telephone call from Willow said that all was well and Joyce was going to be okay. It was like they had all been holding their breath and were finally given permission to exhale. Lorne had declared a holiday was in order, and as a real one was coming up, the group threw itself into the Christmas spirit with abandon, decorating an enormous tree of shining lights and glistening baubles in the lobby and laughing as if all the laughter of the last few weeks was bursting forth in a cascade of happiness.

Two days before Christmas, Angel and Oz had a brief talk, and they realized they both felt the same. They left the hotel that evening for a few necessary items, and the next day, they called the others together.

“It’s nothing bad,” Angel said in answer to the immediate frown that creased Wesley’s face.

“Really,” Oz said, when Wesley didn’t seem to quite believe that.

“Okay,” Gunn said, automatically straightening a festoon of evergreens looped around the stair railing. “So if it isn’t the end of the world, what is it, ‘cause I’m noticing that ‘group meetings’ ‘round here don’t usually happen for any other reason.”

Angel and Oz looked at one another, and the world seemed to disappear for a long moment. It wasn’t until Lorne gave a sudden cry that they snapped back to themselves.

“Well, shoot, fellas!” he said, and slapped Oz on the back so firmly that he teetered. “You could have told somebody! I would have bought you a nice crock pot or something!”

“What the huh?” Cordelia asked, completely confused.

“They’re getting married,” Lorne said as if stating the obvious. “Their auras are so loud, who needs singing? Heck, who needs to be empathic? Just look at them.”

The rest of the group stared, then Cordelia spoke up.

“Uh… what?”

“Yeah,” Gunn said, “kind of with Cordelia here. How?”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Lorne said. “You know what marriage is? Two people, one promise, and usually a whole lot of therapy in a few years, but that’s another story.”

“But… when?” Wesley asked.

“Now,” Angel said simply, and he took a small box out of his pocket. Inside the small velvet box nestled two matching rings. He took the smaller one and slipped it on Oz’s finger, saying, “I love you and want no other. I am yours. This is my vow.”

Oz took the other ring and put it on Angel’s finger, echoing his words, “I love you and want no other. I am yours. This is my vow.”

They kissed to the stunned amazement of their friends, and when they finally let go, it was to face a sea of blinking faces.

“Am I crazy, or did we just go to a wedding?” asked Gunn.

“As legal of a one as we can get under the circumstances,” Oz said.

“This isn’t any wedding,” Lorne said with a wave of his hand. “It’s not a wedding until there’s music, but luckily, you’ve got me here, so you’re all set.”

With no accompaniment at all, he began to sing, a gentle rising and falling of notes, choosing a song that Angel would remember from long ago but that Oz with his love of music would still know in a heartbeat: “As Time Goes By.” As Lorne sang the soft ballad of the never-ending cycle of love throughout the ages, the lights of the Christmas tree bathed the lobby in a glow like candlelight. Gunn mock-bowed to Cordelia, then took her hand and began to waltz with surprising grace.

As Wesley tapped Gunn on the shoulder, cutting in and taking the lead in an equally graceful dance, Oz twined his fingers around Angel’s. A glance between the two of them led to another kiss, sweet and slow, the stuff of smoky movies from the 30’s, and as Lorne sang of a hope that one day the world would always welcome lovers, the newly joined pair swayed gently to the music.

“So… that one day… with the book…,” Angel finally said.

“Yeah?” Oz asked.

“Did you find what you need?” he said with a smile.

“Yeah,” Oz said, smiling back. “I think I did.”