Work Text:
~~~
run, run, don’t stop
~~~
He stays awake for days, drives until his eyes burn with the strain of staying open. He can’t sleep until there’s no other option. It turns out that’s the key to keeping the wolf at bay – even it gets tired, even it succumbs to the need for rest when his man-self has been up for so long he’s lost count of the hours. It won’t work forever, but it does for now.
Looking toward the future isn’t healthy when you aren’t sure if you have one. Oz tries to live in the moment.
Where/what/when/why/how he is bleeds together: a man, a wolf, a barely-conscious set of hands at the wheel of a van that’s seen better days. Who has become an impossible concept to fathom. He only knows he can’t stop. He killed a person, maybe more than one (the wolf-self keeps secrets), but that in itself is not the problem. The wolf-self doesn't understand guilt, but the man-self should be sorry. He feels nothing but a hollowness where regret ought to be.
Shitty diner coffee is crucial to the non-life he’s leading nowadays. He likes diners, especially the grungy kind that smell of stale cigarette smoke, where the coffee ranges between kind-of-burnt and barely-drinkable. He likes the world-weary waitresses and the pancakes that taste like newsprint. Oz has never come close to emulating the art of what-you-see-is-what-you-get, so he drinks in short glimpses of this untainted Americana with a tourist’s wide-eyed wonder.
Stepping out into the baking desert sunshine is an adjustment after the blasting A/C inside. He shuts his eyes and welcomes the discomfort. He opens them only to have to squint against the light glinting off dirty sand-scarred metal. He moves toward the payphone without thinking, digging in his pockets for change.
Oz sets his to-go cup on the mostly-flat top of the phone’s casing. The warm black plastic of the receiver smells like strangers’ skin and turns his stomach. He dials the first number that pops into his head that isn’t Willow’s or his mother’s. No answer, but that’s okay. He’ll try again another time.
In the longest stretches of nighttime he’s started to wonder whether he’s even still alive. Some nights he gets caught in dreamlike musings on purgatory and neverending roads and what it means to be a monster.
Maybe he needs something concrete to look forward to.
~~~
don’t change, don’t change, don’t change
~~~
"Hey, Giles."
It’s only practice that keeps his voice from shaking when he speaks. It’s the middle of the night and he’s breathless, trembling, trying to breathe through the desperate fear that his wolf-self is going to resurface at any moment.
He wants to tell Giles everything. If he was a more open (braver) person he might confess it all, relieve some of the pressure on his worn-thin willpower. The wolf-self has become easier than ever to control, but Oz isn't sure anymore if that's a good thing. The moon tonight is a mere sliver, it should have been safe. So he picked up a hitchhiker, because sometimes he just needs to hear a human voice that isn’t his own or the radio. He wasn’t paying attention, buzzing from the uppers his last passenger gave him in exchange for the ride (Oz doesn't ask but he rarely turns down what's offered to him either). He didn’t recognize the vamp-scent on the guy until it was almost too late. His wolf-self was only too pleased to come to his rescue, tasting the snap of the vamp's neck before it could even scream.
He wants to tell Giles that vampires taste like the flesh equivalent of microwave pizza, nothing like the real thing but passable if it’s all you have on hand.
He wants to tell Giles that this is the first time he’s truly realized that he and the wolf are a team.
But the wolf-self is dormant now, not enough adrenaline in Oz’s system to keep it awake without the moon’s pull, and the taste in his mouth is stale and foul. He comes up with something else to say on the fly, just talks and talks until Giles is yawning into the receiver and it’s past time to say goodbye.
~~~
breathe in, breathe out, breathe in
~~~
He starts hunting. He can't help it.
No human casualties as far as he knows, but the mornings after he's killed his skin hums with pleasant sparkling aftershocks. On those days he needs his terrible coffee even more desperately, to wash the taste out of his mouth. Good or bad, the man-self doesn't want to think about it.
Instead he thinks up nice, impossible little futures. Nothing too elaborate, just enough to distract himself from the infinite highway passing under his wheels. Oz always thought it would be cool to go on a road trip with Giles. Giles likes fucking awesome music, and Oz can easily imagine the two of them sprawled together in the back of the van smoking up to Pink Floyd. The way he pictures it, Giles wouldn’t make a werewolf joke when Oz slipped Dark Side Of The Moon into the stereo, but it’d be implied by the sparkle in his eyes. Oz doesn’t think he’d mind.
At a truck stop he sees a rack of postcards and thinks, why the hell not?
~~~
stay alive, stay alive, stay alive
~~~
He plans his message carefully and makes sure his handwriting is decently legible. He writes wish you were here and means it. Giles won't ever know how often Oz stares blank-faced at another empty stretch of highway and aches to have Giles in the passenger seat, soothing Oz with his old-world accent and his new-world practicality. These days he could really use a friend with good taste in classic rock and who knows his way around a tranquilizer gun just in case.
If it makes him feel a little less lost, Oz doesn’t see any harm in the fantasy.
~~~
where are you, what are you, who are you
~~~
“There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.”