Title: Out of Context
Author: Fay Meadows
Rating: T, PG-13
Pairings: Angel/Owen, Angelus/Darla
Summary: Owen(osity) Thurman dreams in verse, and the vampires win. One-shot based on BtVS 1.05: Never Kill a Boy on the First Date. With Angel/Owen slash, Angelus/Darla fluff, and 53 quotes from the poems of Emily Dickinson.
Disclaimer: Don't own these characters, not doing this for money.
A/N: Written for the fantas-magoria community at LiveJournal, August 16, 2008. There was a challenge to use an Emily Dickinson quote in a drabble. Then this bunny went crazy on me, growing into a whole fic with dozens of quotes from Dickinson's poems - it was great fun to write.
The Dickinson quotes are shown in italics.
- - -
It's three in the morning, and Owen is not picking a fight in a bar. He's safely tucked up in his boring old bed, sleeping the sleep of the girl-dumped and thoroughly disappointed.
Perhaps that explains the dream - or the Hellmouth might have its ways of reaching out to those most inclined to play chicken with it. Whatever.
Owen Thurman, Sunnydale schoolboy, sleeps and dreams...
He's back at the Bronze, still tasting Buffy Summers as he watches her walk away, and thinking that there's something weird going on there: a mystery that's got him buzzing, a promise of thrills to come.
"She's the strangest girl!" he says to the guy beside him, who's also been watching Buffy leave with her friends.
"Much madness is divinest sense, to a discerning eye."
Recognizing the quote, Owen turns and stares - then smirks. "Experiment to me is every one I meet," he replies, coolly confident.
"Ourself, behind ourself concealed, should startle most." Angel - funny name, that! - moves a half-step closer, the challenge plain in his gaze. "I meant to find her when I came..."
Nothing Owen can't handle, easily. "Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?" he asks, grinning, and glides into a second quote: "Pink, small, and punctual... Though she stood me up last night, so maybe not so punctual, huh?"
Angel only smiles. "Bold little beauty," he says, quoting the same poem, then switches to another: "A neighbor and a warrior too."
"So satisfied to go where none of us should be," says Owen, with a small sigh. "Thought I might follow them, you know? See what's really going on."
"Demur - you're straightway dangerous..."
"Hey!" The next quote gets a touch of extra swagger. "To those who know the stimulus there is in danger, other impetus is numb and vital-less."
"I lived on dread," says Angel, moving closer still. "Decades of arrogance... Oh, I remember. I can wade grief, whole pools of it - I'm used to that. Power is only pain." His eyes are fathomless, utterly compelling. "Dare you see a soul at the white heat?"
The quiet question is like a spark to ready kindling: all at once, danger is right there with them, between them. Owen's heart is racing, but his voice is steady in reply: "Is bliss, then, such abyss, I must not put my foot amiss, for fear I spoil my shoe?"
A cold hand touches Owen's cheek, traces his neck, clasps his shoulder.
Then everything shifts, dreamlike, and he finds himself on the dance-floor, clinging to Angel as if they've been there forever, lost in a throng of bodies swaying together to slow aching music.
"Sweet hours have perished here - this is a mighty room," says Angel, looking at all the people around them. "I wonder if it hurts to live, and if they have to try..."
"Many hurt - but what of that?" Owen winds his arms around Angel's neck. "Heavenly hurt it gives us."
Angel shakes his head. "Not us, my friend. Listen, let me clue you in on something here... A death-blow is a life-blow to some - who, till they died, did not alive become."
Confusing, this. Is Angel telling him he's doomed, or what? Owen's so relaxed that his brain is numb, his thoughts too sluggish to puzzle it out.
"Oh. If I should die, and you should live..." The words trail off as he feels laughter ripple through the powerful body pressed against him.
"Don't worry, I won't. Here..." Angel takes Owen's right hand, brushes a kiss along the knuckles, and places the palm flat against his own chest. "Touch me. Know what I am... Futile the winds to a heart in port. Get it now?"
And Owen does get it: the heartbeat that isn't there. But none of it matters, weighed against the invitation to touch, and the dead man's breath tickling his ear.
"Oh, this is amazing," he whispers, both hands exploring Angel's chest, then moving to his back, pulling him even closer. "How cool the bellows feels!"
"I breathed enough to learn the trick - and now, removed from air, I simulate the breath so well - " And then Angel is neither breathing nor speaking any more, because Owen is kissing him, and keeps doing it for a damn long while.
Even for this, a quote. "The lips I would have cooled, alas! are so superfluous cold," he says, smiling. "But in a good way!"
"Lips unused to thee..." Angel looks a bit dazed. "I taste a liquor never brewed - the Slayer - Owen, wait..."
"What if I say I shall not wait?" Why are they still talking?
"I had been hungry all the years." Angel holds Owen's face between his hands. His voice is low, intense. "I and silence some strange race - wrecked, solitary, here."
Because this is the very nicest kind of dream, the music goes on and on, and nobody interrupts them or bumps into them. They're alone in the crowd, or perhaps on the Moon, and it really doesn't matter, not at all - he put the belt around my life, I heard the buckle snap - because wherever and whatever this is, it needs to keep happening; Owen knows he's never been quite this happy before.
"I'm a vampire," says Angel, "with a soul - the most agonizing spy an enemy could send. Look, I'd understand if you're - "
"Afraid? Of whom am I afraid? Not death, for who is he?"
One surprised and not-quite-believing vampire - looking good... Hot vampire. Cold hot vampire! Okay, not too coherent here. Owen's mind is chasing its tail, but his body doesn't need detailed instructions to keep doing persuasive things to a (wow!) vampire.
"I never hear the word 'escape' without a quicker blood," he says, teasing.
"Ah... a sudden expectation?"
"A flying attitude!"
The last quote does the trick, apparently: Angel's tongue in his mouth, Angel's suddenly inspired hands making free with his body, and - "Sorry I am dead," the vampire whispers - but he's not stopping, no - "Alas, that night should be to thee instead of morning!" - and so much for the vampire thing, and talking, and quoting - no more words, only this - and please, lots more of this, and this, and that -
"Mine, while the ages steal!"
Damn right. "Obedient to the least command thine eyes impose on me..." says Owen, cursing his need to breathe and gleefully diving back into the non-verbal.
And it's at this point that the best dream he's ever had goes all pear-shaped, turning nightmare.
It starts with a burning pain in his mouth - so sharp that he might have blacked out for a moment, because when he opens his eyes he's out in the alley behind the Bronze. His lips, his tongue... bleeding?
Angel pulling away. Angel's red-stained mouth.
Seeing a vampire's true face for the first time, Owen forces out the words through his pain: "A throe upon the features..."
"Doubt me, my dim companion!" Angel's laughter is harsh. Changed.
"And somebody has lost the face that made existence home!" He can't look away from those golden eyes. "...Angel?"
"Hate to break it to ya, kid, but Angel's not at home to callers any more. What liberty a loosened spirit brings!" Then the vampire raises his head and roars: nothing human in that cry, only a demon in the dark.
The next sound Owen makes is a strangled scream, as the vampire hooks an elbow around his neck and drags him up the alley. His attempts to wriggle free get him another nasty chuckle. "Do that again, boy! I like a look of agony, because I know it's true."
"Let me - Ow! - W-what - where...?"
"Oh, we're off to see a lady red upon the hill..."
Dropping Owen, the vampire shakes his head and his features turn human again, so Owen almost believes that Angel's back to normal - almost.
Another roar echoes through the night. A call. "I bring an unaccustomed wine - to lips long parching, next to mine - and summon them to drink!"
Silence. The vampire waits. Owen holds his breath.
Then - the click-click-click of a woman's heels, coming toward them. The vampire leans forward, intent on the sound.
She is small, blonde, striking in her little red dress. She keeps her distance. Her arms are folded, her expression grim - and when she speaks, her voice is ice.
"Soul, wilt thou toss again?"
"It is the gift of screws," the vampire replies. "The greatest gift! No rack can torture me - my soul's at liberty!"
For a moment the woman is absolutely motionless, her mouth open - and then she's approaching the vampire, slowly at first, then faster, running the last few steps.
"Angelus? My Angelus?"
At his nod, she flies into his arms with a cry of joy, her face transformed... literally. Yellow eyes, bumpy forehead... Holy crap: she's a vampire too.
Angelus spins her around and goes for her throat. Owen watches - fascinated, rather grossed out, and really confused - as the vampires bite and grope each other, laughing and growling. It's some time before they calm down.
Finally, Angelus steps back and just looks at her. "Long years apart - "
" - can make no breach a second cannot fill," says the other vampire, flashing him a brilliant fangy smile.
"Think of it, lover! I and thee - "
" - Permitted face to face to be - "
" - After a life, a death we'll say," Angelus makes a dismissive gesture toward the Bronze and whatever it represents. "For death was that, and this is thee."
"Oh, my boy... Now, what shall we do to celebrate?"
"Well, I brought us a snack..."
Owen's a smart guy, usually. It's only the sheer strangeness of this dream that's making him a little slow to pick up on things.
It's only when four glowing golden eyes lock onto him that he realizes the reason for his presence there.
All perfectly clear now. He's quoting Dickinson, he's exploring his sexuality, he's trapped in a dark alley with two vampires who keep finishing each other's sentences, and they're about to drink his blood...
Owen has never felt so alive!
"'Tis dying, I am doing - but I'm not afraid to know," he says, flashing the peace sign at the vampires.
Their fangs drive into his neck...
...and he wakes up.
Perhaps it's time to lay off the Dickinson, he thinks as he walks to school. Enough of the security blanket. Plenty of other great poets around, after all. Byron, Swinburne, Keats.
I have been half in love with easeful Death...
Good old Keats.
And Angel might show up at the Bronze tonight... Worth a look.
He is Owen Thurman, Sunnydale schoolboy, and life is good.
(End)