Rating: R
Author: Trekker
Pairing: Ethan/Oz
Fandom: Buffy
Ethan sat on the floor beside his bunk, hugging his knees to his chest, staring into space. Just staring, unmoving. Stillness was an art form. Almost like meditation, almost like magi-
Beyond the bars, there were soldier boys, cloaked in fatigues and stoicism, with big guns. Standard fare for this hallway; their arrival merited little of Ethan’s interest. No, even ripped young bodies and manly square jaws grew dull after awhile, and the dust moving in the light of the bare bulb on the wall was far more interesting and expressive than they were. It was even more likely to make conversation. Or it would have been, if Ethan could just...
Then a loud and too-close clank did draw his attention. Oh. His cell door was open, thick gun barrels were leveled in his direction. And then a little pale naked scrap of flesh was deposited without further ceremony on the floor of his cell. Another clank, and the door was closed and the soldier-boys were gone, leaving their little bundle behind.
Ethan didn’t bother to move anything more than his eyes.
“Well, well, well. Looks like the stork has come and left me a little present.”
The pale body quivered, and drew in a little closer on itself.
“Not the talkative type, I suppose. Oh, it must be the *trauma*. Well, I’m in an uncharacteristically generous mood so I’ll give you, let’s say... an hour... to *get over it*.”
The huddled thing stirred a bit, then twisted its head up to look back at him. Its eyes were as pale as the desert sky that he’d glimpsed just before he’d been buried in this tomb. For a moment, they regarded each other, both impassive, and then the boy spoke, in a voice roughened in a way Ethan knew came from screaming.
“Don’t I know you?”
Ethan peered a little closer at the lost soul that was curled on his attractive stained tile floor.
“Possibly. Although, if I have seen you before, I’m fairly certain you were significantly less naked. You’re not really my type.”
Ethan himself still had his jeans and sleeveless undershirt... both torn and dirty, but something, at least.
“Ah... yeah, probably. I’m usually more into the clothes thing. Actually, I’m quite a big fan... of clothes.”
Ethan reached up and dragged the sheet off his cot and shoved it in the boy’s direction. There was a flash of gratitude in those sun-bleached-sky eyes, as he caught the sheet and pulled it around himself, then sat up cross-legged with the fabric wrapped tight around his shoulders and spilling all around him like a veil.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Please.”
“I swear I know you from somewhere...”
“So, tell me, I’m dying to know. You wouldn’t happen to be the sort that eats people, would you?”
The boy startled for a moment, almost as if he were about to ask,’how’d you know that?’ and then, the mask of calm descended again, and he said, “Only three nights a month. Werewolf. Although, actually I’ve mostly got it under control now... or... I did...”
“Hmm. Comforting. The last poor bugger they had in here was a scared little Wicca girl. Didn’t last a week.”
The werewolf was silent, gazing down at the floor somewhere between them.
“So,” Ethan spoke again when it seemed the boy wouldn’t, “Do you have a name? Or shall I just call you ‘anonymous’?”
The pale eyes lifted again.
“Oz.”
A hand emerged from within the white cotton cocoon, extended towards him. Ethan eyed it, but made no move to reach for it as he said, “Ethan. Rayne.”
The hand disappeared quickly back into the sheet.
“Oh. Oh, hey.” Silence for a moment, and then, “I know Giles.”
“Ah. So, you’re one of Ripper’s little charges, then. He let them take you, too?”
“Well, no. I mean. I don’t think let is the right word... I mean, it just sorta happened. They got me out once... but then... Hey, if you’re Ethan Rayne, why are you even still here? Giles always made it sound like you were a wicked powerful sorcerer. Why don’t you just-”
At this juncture, the young man poked a hand out again long enough to make a swirly gesture. Ethan grimaced, and pulled his knees a little closer to his chest.
“You know, I’d really rather not talk about that.”
He didn’t realize he’d lifted his hand until he felt his own fingertips lightly brush his brow. He flinched and lowered his hand.
“Ah. I think I can guess. You’ve been chipped.”
“Chipped?”
Well, didn’t that sound grotesque?
“Yeah. I almost wish they’d do it to me. Hey, maybe they have. They put a chip in your head. Makes it so you can’t hurt people. Or do magic, I guess.”
Ethan just scowled.
“I don’t know about any chips, but I if I so much as say abraca-”
The blinding agony cut him off mid-sentence and when he got his senses back, he was on his knees, one hand on the floor, the other gripping his forehead. The world seemed to pulse with the fading aftershocks.
“Oh, Janus,” he gasped, and the name of the god set off another blast.
The pain never burned quite as bright as the hatred, though. They were trying to take away the rock of his existence. He was a son of Chaos. That was who he was. Bastards. *Bastards*!
“Must be pretty bad,” the toneless voice said, soft and just a foot or so away from his ear.
He turned his head, found those calm eyes on him again.
“I’m fairly certain I could still kill you,” Ethan replied, and rocked back onto his heels, shut his eyes and took a long deep breath. Then, he sat back down against the wall and drew his knees up to his chest, and watched the dust dancing in the light.
Those little sparkling particles embodied the essence of chaos. Right there in his cell. The soldier boys didn’t realize it, and even if they did, they couldn’t possibly prevent it, anyway. He clung to it, out of sheer desperation, the knowledge that right there in his cell was a system so wild that even the most talented mathematician in the world could never hope to completely model it. That was chaos. Unpredictability. Freedom. Something that dust motes had and that now he had lost. Possibly forever.
“Hey.”
He was beginning to hope this cellmate wouldn’t last any longer than the last.
“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to belittle it. You’ve lost something. Something important. Vital even. I’m not gonna say I know how you feel, but I know what that’s like. I mean, I’ve been there. Recently. It’s like having your soul ripped out with a rusty knife.”
“How poetic,” Ethan murmured darkly. But, he looked away from the dust, and met the boy’s steady gaze. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, after all.
***
Time passed strangely here. Most of it was a blur, of the dark cell and then the bright white lights. He feared the light now, because it brought pain, and worse, it brought the blackouts. And he knew. Knew what those were. The wolf.
They were playing with the wolf. Whatever it was they did to him to bring it out, it left him aching all over. And whatever it was they let the wolf do, it left Oz exhausted and far too satiated. And they never fed him. Not while he was aware.
But the worst part was just after, when they’d dump him back in his cell, and he’d huddle up against the wall. Because, lately, he’d been remembering, like Veruca had said he would. Flashes that felt like fever dreams. White walls and red and shrieks.
The growls of a predator, that he knew were his own, and the bone-deep thrill of the hunt.
His cellmate at first had avoided him at times like those, hanging back as far away as he could, as though Oz were something slimy and disturbingly organic washed up on a shore. He still did, mostly, but now, at least, he’d get close enough to drape a sheet over him, give him a little warmth against the chills that had nothing to do with temperature.
And then, when the worst of it had passed, and Oz could sit up, could pull the sheet around himself, Ethan would acknowledge him again. Sometimes with merely a nod. Sometimes they spoke to each other. Sometimes they would sit, still and intense for hours, playing a chess game all in their minds, with nothing but murmurs of simple things, like “Rook to E4.”
Because the real enemy, as Ethan had explained one day, was not so much the Initiative as it was boredom. Mental stagnation.
It helped, Oz thought. The chess, the conversation, the mind games.
Because every day, his memories grew a little clearer.
“They’re making me a weapon,” he said, one day, still coated in cold sweat and trembling under the sheet.
Ethan didn’t answer, but his head inclined ever so slightly, telling him to go on.
“I get these flashes. Of, like, white rooms. And... dogs. Mostly. Sometimes other things. Pigs. And they have these... symbols or something. Or colors. Something. The wolf... it doesn’t really... get those things, so... I know... when I remember it I know it’s something that means something, so I think symbols, I think colors. It’s like... when you have a dream and you *know* that someone is your Aunt Betty, even though they look like your mother.
“They’re trying to condition it or something. Cause they do this shock thing sometimes. And not other times. Sometimes they just let it kill things. Sometimes they try to stop it. But it kills things anyway.”
He slowed to a stop and saw Ethan eyeing him with skepticism. He waited, and Ethan finally spoke.
“So sorry to hear that. It sounds awful.”
Nobody did insincere quite like Ethan Rayne.
Oz was a bit nonplussed for a moment. Then he shook it off. Ethan didn’t care. Not a bit. And this really didn’t surprise him.
“So,” he said, eventually, evenly, “Chess?”
***
He hadn’t set out to care for him. In fact, he would have set out to *not* care for him, only, at the beginning, he hadn’t even cared enough to think that he should distance himself from the boy.
And yet he was, unfortunately, only human. And this time when they shoved the boy back into the cell, he looked like they’d hosed him down. And he looked shattered. Just let himself fall where they left him, didn’t even creep to his corner.
For a moment, Ethan wanted to let him lie. Thought it easier on both of them, to just let him die, or whatever he was planning on doing there. Hardly even moving, except to flop over onto his stomach, to press his face into the dirty floor.
Thin white shoulders trembling with tears.
He lasted maybe a minute or two before he rolled his eyes and insulted himself and then went to him. Comforting had never been his deal. He’d never received it, never really given it. He just wanted this pathetic sniveling to stop, really.
Because it was doing things to his heart that just weren’t... normal.
He grabbed a skinny arm and planted a hand on sharp ribs and hauled the boy up, half into his lap, and instantly, Oz was curling into him, pushing his face into his armpit and gripping his shirt.
Shuddering with nearly silent sobs. Melted like he was molded to fit against Ethan’s body.
And it suddenly hit him that he was holding a completely naked, rather attractive young man in his arms, and that all he was thinking about was getting said young man to stop crying.
“Oh, hush now,” he said, a little harsher, perhaps, than he intended. “What’s got you in this state, anyway?”
His hands were on Oz’s back, on skin, and the boy was cold as ice, and trembling harder every moment.
He told himself that it would be unpleasant sharing a cell with a cellmate dead from hypothermia as he reached for the sheet and wrapped it around them both.
Oz never answered him, though. He just cried, his tears soaking through Ethan’s shirt, and then drifted off to sleep, leaving Ethan sitting in the middle of the cell, unable to move lest he wake him.
When he finally did awaken, Ethan had a sore back and arms, and was nearly insane from the boredom of sitting and not moving a muscle for... hours it must have been.
The boy pulled away from him, blinking and only half-conscious. He took the sheet with him, and wrapped it tight around himself as he moved, finally, over to his corner, settled against the wall.
“Sorry,” he said, and then, “Thanks,” and that was all.
***
More time passed. The concept of day lost its meaning. Time now was marked completely in the shifts of the soldiers on watch outside their cells. He could never quite predict when they’d next take him. Sometimes, it seemed that maybe they’d lost interest in him, and would let him be. Those may have just been the days that time moved slower.
Lately, his memories had been clear. He could remember the snap of canine bones in his jaws, the crying yelps. Fur on his tongue.
The first time he’d really remembered... well, it had been bad. It had gotten better though.
That was scary.
Today the soldiers came as they did. He met them at the door of his cell, and walked with them without protesting or trying to escape, because there was no reason to. He wouldn’t even know where to run to if he could.
They brought him to the room. It was up the elevator, he wasn’t sure how far, because there were no floors marked. Getting into the elevator, he’d been surrounded by dreary, dirty, greyish-greenish tile. Getting out was stepping into a world of pure white. Tiled floors, clean walls, bright lights. The lab.
No one stared at his nudity. No one even looked at him. He was a nonentity here. He may as well have been a specimen in a petri dish. Or maybe they would have paid more attention to that.
In any case, they opened the door, and he walked into the room, as he always did.
But today, something was different. Today, he wasn’t alone.
He felt a tension run through his muscles, a small spasm of get-me-out-of-here, but the door was already closed behind him.
She was just a girl. Woman, maybe. Maybe a year older than him. Dark hair and dark eyes and she was huddled against the back wall, looking at him through her lashes. Her clothes were tattered.
Funny, cause his first instinct was to say it was all right, that he wasn’t going to hurt her. Which was utterly ridiculous because the moment the soldiers did whatever it was they did, he was going to hurt her. Probably going to rip her to shreds, like the dogs, and the pigs.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might be about to throw up.
And then, the girl stepped away from the wall, and she kind of... rippled.
Oz had about a split-second to think *demonic possession*, and then she was something other, no longer a girl. Something with claws and scales, and he felt the wall slam into his back and her slam into his front, and he felt curls of heat--claws--sinking into the muscle around his collar bone, clicking against bone--
And for the first time, he wished to change.
And then he did. So suddenly he almost didn’t feel it. All he knew was one second the demon was killing him, and the next, he was killing *it*.
He shifted back, just as quickly, and still tasted rank blood in his mouth.
She’d changed back, too. She was just a dead girl.
They had to carry him back to his cell.
***
Oz had been touchier lately. Not touchy as in moody. He was more physical. No longer would he simply retreat to his corner in silence. Now he would stay near Ethan. Subtly, sometimes, doing things like sitting with his back against the same wall. Touching Ethan’s foot or knee as they sat across from each other.
Much less subtle at other times. Leaning against him. Sleeping on the same cot. Running his hands over his hands, his arms. Crawling into his lap, even. Sometimes not even after one of his trips out into the wide world beyond the bars.
Also he had this odd thing with... sniffing him.
Of course, it had been a slow progression to this point. And of course, Ethan had rather tried to discourage him.
Ok, no he hadn’t.
In fact, the only issue Ethan had with Oz’s new tendency to be in his personal space was that the one and only time he’d tried to move things to the natural next level, Oz had immediately retreated back to his corner. Said “Not here.”
Ethan wondered where exactly else Oz thought they’d ever be.
And then, one day, Oz told him.
He was leaning against his side, then, idly running one hand up and down Ethan’s arm, with his chin resting on Ethan’s shoulder.
“It’s like... the border’s blurring. Between me and... it.”
His breath was soft on Ethan’s throat. Damn the boy. Ethan could feel a stir of interest down southward.
“Hmm. Comforting, that, what with your teeth being so conveniently near my jugular.”
And this only served to make him nestled his face in a little closer. Ethan wasn’t really concerned about the teeth thing. However, the sexual tension--with no real hope of resolution--he could do without.
“No, it’s like... it works both ways. I mean, it’s like I’m more wolf, and it’s more... me.”
Those words were hot and damp on his earlobe, and Ethan shut his eyes as Oz’s hand pushed up his arm, curled around his bicep, fingers tucked down in his armpit. Tip of his nose was in Ethan’s hair, and he could hear him sniffing again.
“So... I... think maybe... I can get us out.”
Ethan’s eyes flew open, and Oz whispered, “Don’t,” and then nipped at his earlobe. “Don’t react.”
Fortunate that he was only talking about reacting to the escape plans. Wasn’t much he could do about reactions to other things. Especially when Oz’s soft tongue slowly traced around the rim of his ear.
Jan-- it had been so long since anyone had... He let out a shuddering breath, half a groan, and then Oz whispered, breath chilling damp skin, “I can change, anytime I want. They don’t know that. Next time they bring me back, when they open the door...”
“You eat me?” Ethan murmured back. “Brilliant plan, my dear boy.”
“Nah,” Oz said, and breathed deep again, and shifted his hips, his body a little closer, “You’re imprinted on me now. You’re like, pack or something.”
“Right,” Ethan said, and the skepticism pushed back some of the arousal.
And then Oz’s hand was on his cheek, turning his face to the side, and he had nowhere to look but into Oz’s eyes. Far too close, too intimate. He fidgeted a bit, but Oz’s grip was firmer than he’d expected.
“Me, the wolf. More and more, we’re one and the same. And it knows you. I know you. You... look, I know you don’t like this kind of thing, but you’ve kept me alive in here.”
Ethan *didn’t* like this sort of thing, and moreover, it was hardly true. All he’d ever done for the boy was use him as a source of entertainment. Nothing to merit this disconcerting eye-contact. Oz was up on his knees over him, holding him steady with both hands now.
Ethan wasn’t quite sure what to do with his own hands, since touching him right now at all seemed a rather bad idea.
Then Oz was kissing him. Dry lips and that soft tongue. He couldn’t pull away. He tried, though. But when that failed him, he had nothing to do but give in. Let soft boy-tongue sweep lazily between his lips. Slim fingers buried in his hair.
His arousal swelled again and suddenly he was wondering what the hell had been holding him back. Naked. Attractive. Kissing him.
He grabbed the boy’s own head then, soft, crisp hair crinkling under his hand. Leaned up, took over the kiss.
Reached for Oz’s cock, soldier boys be damned, and then it was all over. Oz was pulling away, sitting back away from him. Not even really all that hard.
“Not yet. Not here,” he said, again.
Ethan huffed in disgusted frustration.
“Please. You really believe they care what we do in here?”
Oz shook his head.
“Just don’t want it to be here,” he said.
Foolish optimist, he is. But--damn it--beautiful.
When the soldiers took Oz to the lab that day, for the first time, Ethan realized he hated them. Not for his own sake. He’d always hated them for that. Now, though, he hated them for Oz.
***
He couldn’t help but think of Veruca as the soldiers led him back out of the room. He understood now. The wolf, it was there all the time. More than there. It was him. He was it.
It was in the way his sense of smell had grown more vital to him than sight. It was in the way a flash of movement would catch his eye, make him tense for the chase. The way his cellmate had grown into his packmate. The way these soldiers, human like him, like he was supposed to be, felt alien.
As the elevator descended, he could pick Ethan’s scent out almost before the scent of mildew. Could almost *feel* the wolf go on guard inside of him. It knew. He knew. No more cages soon.
The walk down the old dingy corridor was strange, like a nightmare, but it was over soon. The keycard was swiped, the lock beeped, and the cell door was opened.
He changed.
It was like being high. There, but one step removed. No inhibitions, no rational thought. Just instinct.
He fought and he killed until the threat was gone.
Then he shifted back to human, and Ethan was pressed against the back of the cell. More unsettled than Oz had ever seen him, but alive. And unhurt.
When Oz inclined his head towards the elevator and then began walking, Ethan followed.
The human remembered the access codes. The wolf scented the way to freedom.
***
Ethan wasn’t given to whimsy, but the way Oz looked now, nude in the cold light of a desert half-moon, was otherworldly. Not human. He was part of the moonlight, part of the shimmering desert sands. His pale skin didn’t so much seem to reflect the light as to emanate it.
The dark bloodstains laid on his body like war paint, and he wore them with simple ease.
When he changed, bounding on ahead, lupine, it was a curious form of not-difference.
He returned a half-hour later, and skidded to a halt in front of Ethan, wolfish and down on all fours, and then shifted back to his human form as easy as shrugging off a coat of wiry wolf-hair.
“Road’s about a mile that way. There’s a motel.”
Ethan just nodded, and Oz fell into step beside him.
“I doubt they’ll come after us,” Oz added, and it was the last thing either of them said all the way to the motel.
Ethan paid for the room with cash lifted from the bodies of the soldiers, and went back out into the night, around the side of the building, to unlock their room. Oz appeared from the darkness, sliding into the room a moment later, silent and sleek as a shark. He pushed the door shut behind himself and switched on the lights, and then they were looking at each other across an old, nicotine-stained motel room. In the artificial light, Oz had lost some of the magic of the desert night, and the blood was only old blood, and his paleness was only the result of months locked in a sunless cell.
“Shower?” he suggested, and Ethan noted the irony of his own silence next to Oz’s near-verbosity.
But instead of following when Oz brushed past him, headed for the bathroom, Ethan grabbed his arm. Pulled him against him.
“Or, possibly not a shower,” Oz said, a small flicker of amusement in his moonlight eyes.
He dragged Oz with him back to the door, turned the lights back off, drew open the shades. Let the moonlight shine into the room. Oz blinked once, the only sign of his confusion, and then he understood, and his body relaxed, his arm muscles went soft in Ethan’s grip, and he tilted his head to the side, ever so slightly. Offered his throat. Wolf-speak for submission. For invitation.
When Ethan let him go, he backed the few steps to the bed and eased himself onto it, lying down, belly up, eyes still on Ethan, silver moon glow shining on his chest, his stomach, casting deep shadows in the hollows of his rib cage.
Beautiful, wild, free. Finally free.
***
In the dark, Ethan seemed less defined by light than by shadows, deep and jagged, like a jumble of broken obsidian. When he stepped up to the bed, he didn’t lean in to kiss him. He knelt, instead, gripping Oz’s thighs and pushing them apart.
Oz just breathed, feeling a stirring in his groin from anticipated pleasure, even if it wasn’t attraction, exactly. It felt right to have Ethan there.
But, just before Ethan’s tongue touched him, he said, “Wait.”
Dark eyes regarded him from between his knees.
“I-- sounds corny, but... I think I kinda mate for life.”
For a heartbeat or two, he watched dark eyes regard him from between his pale knees.
Then Ethan said, “So do I. But not with you.”
Oz had to smile at the irony.
“I wasn’t talking about you, either.”
Ethan truly seemed taken aback, even if it was just for a moment, rearing back just slightly, his eyebrows tensing. He recovered quickly, though, and then merely looked quizzical.
Oz thought of Willow. So expressive, so feeling. She’d never be his.
He would always be hers.
“But this works,” he added.
Ethan’s lips quirked in an ironic smile. Then he gripped Oz’s hips and put his mouth to better use.
***
The next day, in stolen clothes and a stolen car, they started down the freeway with the sunrise at their backs.
The End