Afterward, Now - BtVS - R - Giles/Oz
Title: Afterward, Now
Author: glossolalia
Email: glossolalia_01@yahoo.ca
Pairing: Giles/Oz
Rating: R
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Whedon, ME, Kuzui & Fox. Their appearance in this piece of fan fiction implies no claim whatsoever.
Summary: Oz makes his way into the cage.
Author's Notes: Written in 65 minutes for b_a_improv #5 (lie - cheat - steal - forgery) and the contrelamontre 'worst moment' challenge. The Oz and Giles in this story are the same as those in a previous work (Book of Daniel) but this is a stand-alone story.
*
This is not the worst moment of his life.
Oz is sure of that. Fairly sure. Sure in the sense that he's still young, so odds are, something bad will come along later. Something much, much worse.
But this year alone, he's already been shot and bitten by a werewolf. He may actually have used up his ration of bad luck. Maybe it's all downhill from here, coasting fast with the sun coming up over field after field of iridescent, psychedelic poppies, canola, and daisies. Blue skies, that kind of thing.
Yeah, it's me. I'm the wolf, he'd said. That was hard. Harder, though, was the after. The now that comes after.
Maybe this is the worst moment of his life. He's willing to cheat fate, the longer he has to look at the after-image of Giles turning away, hand over his mouth, shadow of grief-worry-terror washing over his face. Shoulders slumped and head bowed.
It's a bad picture. It lasted only a second, really, because Giles is nothing if not self-controlled and responsible; he remembered they were in public, remembered that the rest of them were still staring, and he straightened up, squared his shoulders, and pressed his lips together.
But it's the moment that lingers. Like bad Indian food roiling around in his gut, the oil of it thick and sour on Oz's tongue, impossible to wash away. Like a home movie stuck on a single frame, and the projector's lamp is *just* about to start burning the film, but hasn't. Not yet. That's the moment, and Oz wants to throw up.
Or apologize.
Impossible, though, to apologize to a man who won't look at you. To a man who used to lie beside him in the dark, slightly drunk, chuckling low in his throat, the reverberations knocking gently against Oz's ear and cheek, pillowed on his chest. To a man now standing straight as a flagpole and lecturing-instructing-hectoring them in the precautions that now must be taken.
As if he knows anything. Willow had to remind him that the moon's technically full for three nights. Not one. What the fuck would Giles know about any of this?
*
School's out. Sports teams have showered and peeled off out of the parking lot. Even the sad-sacks in detention are gone.
Oz is still here, still turning over his chances, the shitty run of luck that's not luck, it's just life, still sitting in the library.
Sunset soon.
It is funny, isn't it? When you get right down to it, taking someone who barely talks and gets itchy-antsy-freaked around people and turning him into a wolf who howls and craves a social hierarchy: That's funny. Or ironic, which may or may not be the same thing.
Xander thinks it's funny. Xander offered to steal him a muzzle and choke-chain like they use on Rottweilers in case he and Will wanted to take a stroll.
Xander thinks everything's funny. Oz sees it in his eyes, though, that he's more terrified than the rest of them put together. By stuff they don't even know about. He tasted it once, before he ever met Will, when he was in that weird post-Giles, pre-Willow suspended animation period of his life that felt like it lasted forever and several weeks but was only, *maybe*, a month and a half. Some party, Oz was wasted and Xander was lost, and it was dark, Xander was dark, and Oz - Oz just slid in next to him on the couch to touch dark pink lips and soft dark eyebrows and when he kissed him, Xander tasted like sweat and panic. So sharp it could have cut Oz's tongue.
Now Xander has one more reason to look at him like Oz doesn't belong. Because he's older. Because he likes Will. Because he's freaky bi guy. Because he's a wolf.
Oz sits on the edge of the big library table, legs swinging aimlessly, turning over the pages of Matin's Demonology. Remembers just enough Latin from CCH and his brief stint as an altar boy to pluck out the details. Lingers, of course, on the wolves. On the wolves who rape maidens and eat their hearts. On the wolves who run in packs and impregnate nuns with half-demon spawn. On the one wolf who lived undetected near Tours for almost a decade until the abbé caught him one full moon, howling, and plunged a silver candle-stick into one of his eyes.
"T-that's a forgery," Giles says.
Oz keeps studying the etching. Black ink for the wolf's blood. White paper for the silver. Wolf in agony, half-turned back to man, pelt and skin battling for control. "Seems pretty accurate."
"Maybe so," Giles says. Oz's mouth and nose flood with a scent he recognizes: Limes and sadness and cheap, acidic black tea. "I think I'd know."
"So why do you keep it around?"
"Entertainment value?" Giles' laugh is dry like pebbles, kicked up, spraying through the air. Oz glances at him. No laughter on his face.
He closes the book and sets it aside. Grips the edge of the table and swings his legs hard, pumping, like if he can just kick hard enough the table will rise and send him flying out into the sun.
"So what's the deal here?" Oz asks.
"I've been researching, and there's not much we can do. Silver, of course. And keep you caged, if only until we know what more might be done. Sources seem to agree that it's only a bite that can -"
Oz slides off the table and cranes his neck, going up on tiptoe to check the angle of the sun. There's a shiver, fast and light, running all over under his skin, fingers over harpstrings, plucking out something too rapid to recognize. "Meant here, now," Oz says and turns back. "Think the cage'll be enough?"
Giles' shoulders go back down into their slump. Sharp angles on either side of his neck, enough to make Eddie the Eagle weep. "I certainly hope so."
Oz's mouth twists and he steps forward. Just close enough, testing, letting scents of old books and Giles fill his mouth, stroke his tongue. Giles doesn't move. "Believe in karma, Giles?"
Shake of the head, cut of gaze away, to the door, then down to the floor. "No," Giles says, and Oz can tell - now, of all times, why he couldn't before is a mystery for the ages - that he's lying.
"I do."
Oz tugs off his t-shirt, moving closer to Giles, inch by inch, or, since Giles is a Brit and will never give *that* up, millimeter by millimeter, until he's pressed up against scratchy shirt and knit tie. He keeps his arms at his sides and looks up at Giles.
Smells limes again, and tears, and shooting through the haze of all of that, the sharp, clear alcohol of desire.
"Daniel -" Giles says. Breathy, helpless, lost.
Oz nods. Pretty much what he figured, but it was worth a try. "It's okay, Giles. Not going to bite you."
Giles' eyes close as he steps backward, then out of the way. He reaches behind him, fumbles at the door to the cage, and swings it open.
Oz stays where he is. The harp's moving faster, if that's possible, both closer to the surface of his skin and deeper, deep like arteries and bone marrow, and he's pretty certain that he's shaking. That you can see it.
He looks down at his arm, just to check, then back to Giles. Giles is still holding the door open, like Oz is a lady and he a gentleman with the best possible manners. Oz smiles then and moves forward.
"Thank you, kind sir."
Pauses, one foot in the cage, one outside of it, and turns his head. Looks Giles over, from stormy eyes that won't stop moving to pencilled-thin lips and rigid, set jaw. Oz yanks open his belt, tugs down the zipper, and when he steps forward and he's all the way into the cage, he's naked.
Giles swings the door shut. Sighs. "This isn't easy."
"Nope," Oz says. "Pretty much sucks, actually."
*
His skin shreds, and tears, and rips apart when the sun sets. It's worse, though, when the sun rises. Then his body shakes grand-mal style and each hair in his pelt is yanked out by the root with rusty tweezers and his shredded skin knit back together with a blunt needle handled by a nurse with cataracts. His jaw aches, his throat is sore and raw from howling, and his fangs chip away under a shaky chisel, and he's alone.
This, he thinks, might count as the worst moment.
Until he catches sight of Giles at the table. Asleep, head pillowed on one arm, mouth open. Glasses askew.
Oz backs up against the wall, cold and shivering. Goosebumps mottle his chest and arms and legs. All his bones feel broken, multiply fractured, reset by arthritic hands.
It can't count as the worst moment, because it will happen again. And again.
And when Giles wakes up, he's still not going to look at Oz.
He'd howl at the thought, but he can't. He's human again. Besides, there's no moon. Just an old man whom he disgusts and a rash of cold he can't shake.