A Quick Character Study

So I wrote a little thing with Ozzie and Dante. Exploring more of what makes (and doesn't make) Ozzie, Ozzie. Probably won't make much sense and I can't really go into detail as to why this is written how it is but it has made me see Ozzie clearer and the juxtaposition is incredible for me. Hopefully you'll enjoy. I'll post more of these as I do them.

Study 1: Ozzie and Dante

“Hey,” Dante grabbed Ozzie by the crook of his willowy arm, “we—we don’t have to do this.” He said, stopping them from rounding the corner, and god was this whole compassion thing annoying, “we can back out if you’re not… cool with it.”

Ozzie frowned, a barely there twitch of the lips, his eyes roving arbitrarily across the point where Dante’s hand was wrapped around his elbow. He huffed out a breath before coolly looking back up, his mouth settling into something blank. On the face he was wearing, (Samantha Dickens, Dante reminded himself, or rather Samuel wearing Samantha if you were a stickler for details like Ozzie apparently was) with the makeup and lashes and contacts and wigs that distorted and transformed him into something completely different; the expression looked wrong.

Ozzie rose one of Samantha’s perfect little eyebrows. Or maybe it was Sam lifting an eyebrow like Ozzie. Dante didn’t know. “Does it matter?” He-they-she-asked. Does it matter if I want to leave? Does it matter if I don’t? Does it matter that I’m more comfortable in someone else’s skin than my own?

“Yes.” To all of the above.

Ozzie hmm’d. “Then I’m fine,” he brushed off Dante’s grip and took a step back. “Gimmee a sec,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. He pulled the strap of the studded purse off his shoulder and onto the cracked pavement below. Dante could see the muscles in Ozzie’s forehead aching to scrunch into a frown, “let me get in character.”

Dante nodded, then remembered Ozzie couldn’t see him. “Okay.”

“Shhh,” Ozzie’s forehead quivered and drooped for a second. “Dammit. Be quiet. Please. You’re going to make me fuck up my make-up.” He said completely deadpan.

Ozzie waited another moment and when Dante said nothing else, he began. Dante could see it. It started with a simple twisting of the neck. Then it was a shaking of the hands. A breath. An inhalation where Ozzie seemed to make himself seem even smaller, less obtrusive than he was and then he exhaled. He exhaled and Ozzie grew bigger and broader and—

“Dante, could you be a dear and pick up my bag,” Samantha knocked her palm against her forehead, because either Sam didn’t know about smudgy makeup or she didn’t give a flying fuck. Either way the thing Ozzie had been complaining about two seconds ago didn’t seem to matter all that much now. “God I’m such a clutz aren’t I. I mean I was just walking and bam! there goes my purse, right there on the floor! Don’t even know how it happened! Omg, it’s totally cause I’m blonde isn’t it? Knew I should’ve gone with the red! Everyone loves a ginger!”

Dante blinked. “Uhh,” he said intelligently.

“Ohh, fuck it, just you here anyways,” Sam (because at this point Dante really didn’t want to think of Ozzie saying or doing any of the things he was doing and for his own mental stability Dante was just dealing with… Sam… yeah) tittered-tottered?-wobbled?- and bent over grabbing the handle of her purse and was that?

Yep.

That ladies and gentleman would be a thong.

Dante didn’t even want to know the prep that went into making all of that... extra somehow inconspicuous.

It was going to be a long night.