Oz nods and he's halfway back to the van before he turns and waves. Half an hour to go, but it feels like he's waving goodbye for a transcontinental voyage. Sometimes, and he doesn't like to ponder quite how often, he's pretty sure he pisses Giles off. It could just be discomfort, and that's what he usually chalks it up to, but there are edges to Giles's voice that catch and snag Oz's attention. Make him worry. I can't work if I'm waiting for you: Could be a compliment, could be a complaint, and Oz just can't tell.
He drives home and showers. It might be well after four, but it feels like the day's just getting started; it's also a good way to use up ten minutes. Scrubs dry his hair and finishes off the roach in his ashtray before lacing up his sneakers - trainers, Giles calls them, though what Oz is in training for remains unclear - and setting off on foot.
Hoofing it saves him the trouble of finding a spot for the van, should ease the special crinkle of worry between Giles's eyebrows, and it gives him a chance to work out the last of the weird, crampy anxiety he's always feeling these days, the last remnants that the weed didn't smooth over.
He waits across the street, spiking his hair again and again with one hand - so much for easing the jitters - until the coast is clear and he can amble over to Giles's door. Knocks and waits and wishes again he *did* wear a watch, so he'd know if he was late.
Half an hour is just enough time to drive home, stow the books, take a shower and dress. Giles knows exactly how long these things take. His head's full of times and numbers. Oz's house is three minutes away if he drives, eleven if he walks. Between 3:45 and 5:30 Giles can ring Oz, because he's out of school and his mother's still at work. In ten-and-a-half months Oz will be eighteen.
"No Dancing" is the third track on My Aim Is True, and when it starts, Giles doesn't need to look at a clock to know Oz is late. It's no surprise. Oz loses track of time, gets absorbed in a book or a conversation, routinely turns up ten, fifteen, twenty minutes late and doesn't seem to notice.
Giles looks through yesterday's Washington Post and tries not to think about where Oz might be. About whatever trivial thing has caught his attention and is stealing away their time, minute by minute.
When the knock finally comes, Giles makes himself fold the newspaper carefully before he answers. The door can't be seen from the street, but he stands half-behind it anyway, and then double-checks the lock before he touches Oz.
In that first moment, the long tight hug that always comes before words or a kiss, Giles is as calm as he ever is these days. The world's safe for now, and Oz is here, and the countdown hasn't yet started to the time when Oz has to go.
Giles's door is heavily carved, and Oz's back has already learned its grooves and depressions, but every time he's here and he's holding Giles again, his skin prickles and spreads, absorbing every sensation, whether it's Giles or the door.
It's superstitious and silly, but until he's hugging Giles the next time, this never feels entirely real. Oz dreams about the texture of his skin, the brief, sharp glance of his eyes, the breadth of his chest and span of his back, but he doesn't trust his memory. He trusts his senses, though, and spends as long as he can touching, smelling, holding. Listening to the soft rasp of Giles's breath, twining through the clangy genius of Elvis.
Slipping two fingers through Giles's beltloops, Oz presses more tightly against him, inhaling the sharp, spicy smell of his soap and bringing his other hand up to Giles's damp hair. Tired, careworn, but almost - never wholly - relaxed, Giles blinks down at him, nearly smiling, and Oz goes up on tiptoe. He kisses the side of Giles's mouth and tips back his head.
Every time, like seeing him for the first time. New details - another spark of color in Giles's eyes, another curve to his ear, the shadow his jaw casts over his Adam's apple - always more to find and see and memorize.
"Missed you," Oz says. "Sorry about the parking lot. Just -. Yeah. Missed you."
Every time, Oz is a little different. There's a new haircolor or an extra braided bit of yarn around his wrist. Today his nails are purple and he's acquired two tiny hoops in his left ear, hoops that Giles wants to play his tongue over. Sometimes Giles imagines what the next alteration will be, what new discovery Oz's body holds in store; sometimes Giles wants to ask him to stop, to try being the same for a week or two.
They're really only superficial, these changes, and Oz is always Oz. It's Giles who's changeable, shifting and throbbing between his lives like Tiresias. Still, he'd like Oz to hold still for him, and hold him still. Anchor him.
"I've missed you too," he says just before he leans down for a kiss. The bitter marijuana smell that's clinging to Oz turns sweeter in his mouth, like incense or burning sage, and Giles searches it out with his tongue. Giles hasn't got high in years, hasn't even missed it, but now he wants the loose relaxed giddiness. Needs it. If they could get away from Sunnydale for a day they could get high together. Laugh and talk nonsense and have fantastic, half-hallucinatory sex. Be utterly irresponsible, and briefly free.
One kiss and he's already breathing hard. His cock's stiffening and his whole body itches and burns and craves. "Seeing you like that. In public. It's like being pulled apart. Shredded."
Holding his breath, Oz turns them around, walks backward, hands grasping Giles's waist, and shakes his head. So easy sometimes - all the time - to be selfish and bitter, think only about himself, imagine that just because Giles makes this look easy that it *is* easy for him. When it's happening, Oz doesn't even realize it, only afterward, when Giles looks at him sadly or says something, and then he doesn't even know what to say.
He only exhales when the back of his thighs meets the arm of the couch, and he sits, wraps one leg around Giles, and kisses him again. Scrolls apologies over and over his lips, in his mouth, against his tongue, and holds on tighter, arms hooked around Giles's neck, pulling him down, holding him still.
Thirst and apology and hunger, all these things running hot and empty through Oz's chest and gut, and he's gasping when he pulls away. Beneath the shiny scrub of toothpaste and mouthwash, Giles tastes like he always does, rich and secret, and Oz licks his lips. Never enough.
"Really sorry," he says. "Shredded's the perfect word."
Like hitting the asphalt bare-armed, coming out of a bad ollie, skin ripping away, gravel and dirt grinding in. He knows he feels like that, half the time, cramped and at the same time torn up, but knowing all over again that Giles hurts is even worse.
Oz runs his hand soothingly, stupidly, down Giles's chest and tips his forehead against the row of buttons. "Sorry."
Giles slides both hands into Oz's hair, through damp underlayers and out to the dry tips that are light and fine and floaty as dust motes. He could do this for hours, if there were hours to spare. If there were world enough and time. Day-long kisses, weeks nibbling and stroking and tasting every part. A month for the nape of Oz's neck, two for each nipple, and six months listening to his heartbeat, until the rhythm sinks into Giles and becomes his own.
"Don't apologize. Please." Oz tilts his face up at that, and Giles kisses him again. Maybe there are memories in his mouth, maybe the days they've been apart have left some trace there, maybe Giles can taste them, live Oz's days and keep them.
"I wish-" All the things he wishes for jostle and crowd inside him. He's full to bursting with wishes; they hammer against his ribs and push the air out of his lungs. Wishes are like parasites, weakening him to feed themselves. And Giles cherishes each wish, treasures it, willingly bleeds for it.
It's pointless, naming his wishes, but maybe they'll hurt less if Oz knows. Or maybe Oz just ought to hear them. "I wish we could see a film together," Giles says, running a hand over Oz's back, trying to feel his skin through two layers of cloth. "I wish we could go out. Have a meal in a restaurant. Go to a concert. I wish you could come to the library between classes and talk to me. I wish I could kiss you when I see you in the hallways."
Naming them seems to make them more painful, so he stops. Strokes up and down Oz's arms with cupped palms, trying to circle and enclose as much of him as possible.
Oz tilts his head, listening to the rhythm behind Giles's words and their meaning, both at once, teasing them apart, bringing them back together. The rhythm's like an orchestra tuning up, snatches rising, then cutting out. It's something he used to think everyone could do, like unfocussing his eyes and seeing two of everything, but when he's tried to explain it, no one gets it.
He suspects Giles would get it, but it's a tangent right now. He wants to concentrate on *what* Giles is saying, not how. So he tucks his hands into the back pockets of Giles's pants and nods. Giles wants to be outside with him. Doesn't want to hide him, and even if Oz knew this, and he did, somehow it's different, hearing his wishes.
"Could rent videos," Oz says. "Order delivery, listen to live bootlegs. The other stuff, not so sure about how to do that."
Giles's hands in his hair make him feel close and safe as a baby, as backrubs from his grandmother used to. He'd like to visit the library, too; it's more Giles's home than this apartment, or it feels like that, sometimes. There's got to be something Oz can do about that; he imagines Giles moves easily, confidently, through the stacks, around the kids who help him.
"Can tell me more about what you do," he says, standing up again, kissing Giles's neck. Lightly, no marks to be left. "Or ask me what kind of no-good mischief I get up to."
He's not sure that's the solution, if it would just make things worse, remind Giles of every possible reason to send him packing, to clean up this mess Oz brought with him.
"Or," Oz says, sliding around, kissing the other side of Giles's neck. "We could just hang. Like hanging with you."
It's so like Oz, that practicality. Offering the compromise solution, the best approximation of normality. But it's the approximations that are the problem. It's having no choice but to make do, it's planning and thrift and caution where there should be ease and plenty. Giles doesn't know how to explain, not without implying that Oz should grieve more for what they can't have.
Every one of Oz's tiny kisses on Giles' neck spreads out in shimmering ripples, like a stone tossed into a pond. Endless concentric circles until his whole skin seems in motion and little wavelets flow back, collide, arch out from new centers. "Oz," he says, and then he steps back, because if he doesn't he'll need to take Oz to bed right now. Anticipation and waiting make him desperate; he dreams about Oz, fantasizes about him, gets hard talking to him on the telephone. It's been years since he's wanted sex this much, wanted it all the time like a young man. But this isn't just sex, and he can wait a bit longer, to be sure Oz knows that.
He sits on the sofa and pulls Oz down into his lap, which is something he probably shouldn't enjoy so much. It feels wonderful, though, having Oz piled against him like this, having all of him in easy reach. "I like it too," he says. "Just being with you." The rest is just wishes; this is the thing he needs.
Oz's ear is temptingly close. Giles licks his earlobe, worries the hoops with his tongue, sucks at them until Oz moans.
"I'll tell you all about why demons and the internet shouldn't mix," he says, "if you'll tell me about your no-good mischief." There's still so much he doesn't know, so many blank spaces on his map of Oz.
"Deal," Oz says and leans over to unlace his sneakers and toss them on the floor. He settles back against Giles, digging his toes between the cushions and wrapping one arm around Giles's shoulder. He loves sitting here, almost cradled in Giles's lap, because he can see everything, feel Giles's chest rising against his side, hold his hand and talk and doze. Sometimes he sleeps like this; sometimes in his bed at home he dreams he's sleeping like this.
He rotates the hoops through the slightly-sore skin and kisses Giles quickly. "Still healing."
Tracing the fine spray of hair, silky and almost invisible, that peeks out from under Giles's cuff, Oz smiles to himself, lets his mind go blank and suggest a story to tell him.
"Mischief, huh? There's the earrings. Don't think Snyder likes them. Or me. Devon did it last weekend 'cause he claimed I was too symmetrical. Usually easier to let him do what he wants than argue." He shifts back so he has a better view of Giles's face. Kind and faintly smiling, and Oz smiles back. "Couple nights ago I went on this wild-goose chase with him and Eric. Eric swore up and down that his cousin had some pot plantation out along the railroad tracks and we were hiking for like hours with flashlights and didn't see anything. Find anything. Nada. Nice night, though."
Giles frowns and Oz squeezes his hand. "Brought the stakes, and, anyway, we were way past town. No beasties around."
He can't remember what he's explicitly told Giles and what he just assumes Giles knows. Assumptions usually bite him back; he spent a couple weeks assuming Giles knew who Eric was until it occurred to him to ask.
"And I sprayed some graffiti down on one of the warehouses. Mischievous enough?"
He wants to tell Giles everything he wants to know, find some method of transferring experience and memory that's quicker, more accurate, than words.
It's difficult not to think of Oz's other life as an elaborate fiction. Giles only knows it through Oz's words, and it's populated with people he's never met and events that are full of elusive significance. Three boys in the night, poking through the tall grass and scrub trees, questing and not finding; it could almost be a fairy tale, if it weren't so peculiarly American. And if the monsters weren't quite so real.
"Homegrown marijuana's never any good. So you didn't miss much, not finding it." Giles slides a finger under Oz's bracelets to stroke the thin soft skin, feel the tendons and bones. The blue veins show all the way up his arms, and Giles can't forget the blood in them. So close to the surface, so easily spilt. It would take so little-the wrong alley, the wrong shortcut, the wrong warehouse to spray graffiti on. Oz carries a stake, but he won't wear the cross Giles gave him. Some nights Giles lies awake thinking of the places Oz could be, and the ways he could be killed there.
"Please be careful." Probably Giles is nagging, but he can't stop saying it. Oz kisses him and settles against his shoulder, which as good an answer as any made in words. There's no way to be careful enough, in Sunnydale, and Oz needs to live his life. Probably Oz worries about him, too.
Giles tells him about Moloch's jump from book to computer and his brief internet spree, though he leaves out the part about Willow. The poor girl's quite embarrassed and wants to forget that her cyber-boyfriend ever happened. "Somehow the end result of it all is that I need to learn more about computers. Or so I'm told." On the whole, he'd rather rely on Willow's knowledge.
"Do you have anything planned for Saturday? If things stay quiet, I'm hoping we might get away for a few hours. Try for the drive and the picnic, again." They've tried twice to arrange it, and things keep going wrong at the last minute.
"Really?" Oz asks before he can help it. It's not that he doubts Giles *wants* to go, just that he knows there are much more important things going on, things that always manage to get in the way and disrupt plans. "Nothing doing on Saturday. Nada."
He has band rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, and some girl's birthday party afterward if Devon's still stringing her along, and possibly something later with his mom, whose plans evaporate even faster than Giles's. All of which boils down to exactly nothing in the face of getting to be outdoors with Giles.
"Don't think you need to know more about computers," he says a little while later, pulling himself out of a daydream where Giles parks his car in the woods off the interstate, Oz picks him up, and they flee town for sunshine and picnicking and lolling. All very covert and all the more exciting for that. They'll both need sunscreen, he realizes, kissing Giles's neck again; he's been in California almost three months but he's still the color of very milky tea.
"They're basically ridiculously stripped-down human brains, if our brains only calculated binary equations at megaspeed. Trick is taking them apart and realizing how they stupid they are."
Sunscreen's easy. He can buy Giles gallons of the stuff and rub it on him and feel like he's actually done something, instead of his usual jittery, helpless anxiety about the bizarre and the monstrous Giles seems to confront every day. Oz doesn't know how he does it, how he's a librarian and a warrior and Oz's friend, how he has the energy and courage to keep trying.
"Saturday, I'll teach you some jargon so they think you know about computers and leave you alone. That cool?"
It's not until now, watching Oz's expression shift infinitesimally to happiness--a lift at the corners of his mouth, a tightening of his eyelids--that Giles realizes how sad Oz has been lately. Sorrow flattens him, makes him smooth and quiet, and Giles has mistaken it for tranquility. Or worse, indifference.
Useless, now, to ask forgiveness; he plays with Oz's hair instead, rubbing the back of his neck the way he likes. And decides that nothing short of real danger to Buffy will prevent him taking Saturday off.
"Jargon might be helpful. But I'm a bit terrified of talking nonsense. As an undergraduate I was publicly humiliated for misusing the word ideology in a history essay." Not wanting to sound ungrateful, he adds, "So you'll need to coach me rather thoroughly." A lesson in computer-ese is a low price for Oz's company.
"Or perhaps a mnemonic, like 'thirty days hath September.' Could you find me some jargon that rhymes?" If he's silly enough, maybe Oz will smile.
"Can't imagine you ever using the wrong word," Oz says, and it's true, but when he says it, it doesn't sound right. It makes Giles sound stuffy and old-fashioned, like Oz's great-uncle, who's obsessed with finding grammatical errors in the newspaper and writing cranky letters to the editor. "I mean, you're like not built for that."
Giles's hand squeezes his neck and Oz dips his head, resting his forehead in the curve of Giles's shoulder. Feels strong and right, the way Giles touches him, like he's transferring calm and certainty and affection, recalibrating Oz's skin, dissolving all the chemical static he's half-sure gathers on him and clogs his pores.
"Rhyming jargon? Maybe one of those every good boy deserves fudge things." Oz approaches computers the way he reads books and plays his guitars; he browses and tinkers, figuring out what works and what doesn't, so explaining it in the abstract to Giles is going to require studying up and research. But Giles and research go together like Giles and tea, they're almost the same thing, just in different forms, so Oz figures he can handle it.
The daydream -- woods and rocky outcroppings, Giles in a loose shirt, untucked and half-unbuttoned, breeze in his hair -- keeps sneaking back to the front of Oz's mind, and he wonders if he should worry at its tenacity and insistence.
"Can you bring your guitar if we go?" It feels like forever since Giles was relaxed enough to play for him, and Oz is fully aware how silly that sounds, how much it makes him sound like a kid, for whom several weeks equal forever. "I can do the food and everything."
He drives home and showers. It might be well after four, but it feels like the day's just getting started; it's also a good way to use up ten minutes. Scrubs dry his hair and finishes off the roach in his ashtray before lacing up his sneakers - trainers, Giles calls them, though what Oz is in training for remains unclear - and setting off on foot.
Hoofing it saves him the trouble of finding a spot for the van, should ease the special crinkle of worry between Giles's eyebrows, and it gives him a chance to work out the last of the weird, crampy anxiety he's always feeling these days, the last remnants that the weed didn't smooth over.
He waits across the street, spiking his hair again and again with one hand - so much for easing the jitters - until the coast is clear and he can amble over to Giles's door. Knocks and waits and wishes again he *did* wear a watch, so he'd know if he was late.
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"No Dancing" is the third track on My Aim Is True, and when it starts, Giles doesn't need to look at a clock to know Oz is late. It's no surprise. Oz loses track of time, gets absorbed in a book or a conversation, routinely turns up ten, fifteen, twenty minutes late and doesn't seem to notice.
Giles looks through yesterday's Washington Post and tries not to think about where Oz might be. About whatever trivial thing has caught his attention and is stealing away their time, minute by minute.
When the knock finally comes, Giles makes himself fold the newspaper carefully before he answers. The door can't be seen from the street, but he stands half-behind it anyway, and then double-checks the lock before he touches Oz.
In that first moment, the long tight hug that always comes before words or a kiss, Giles is as calm as he ever is these days. The world's safe for now, and Oz is here, and the countdown hasn't yet started to the time when Oz has to go.
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It's superstitious and silly, but until he's hugging Giles the next time, this never feels entirely real. Oz dreams about the texture of his skin, the brief, sharp glance of his eyes, the breadth of his chest and span of his back, but he doesn't trust his memory. He trusts his senses, though, and spends as long as he can touching, smelling, holding. Listening to the soft rasp of Giles's breath, twining through the clangy genius of Elvis.
Slipping two fingers through Giles's beltloops, Oz presses more tightly against him, inhaling the sharp, spicy smell of his soap and bringing his other hand up to Giles's damp hair. Tired, careworn, but almost - never wholly - relaxed, Giles blinks down at him, nearly smiling, and Oz goes up on tiptoe. He kisses the side of Giles's mouth and tips back his head.
Every time, like seeing him for the first time. New details - another spark of color in Giles's eyes, another curve to his ear, the shadow his jaw casts over his Adam's apple - always more to find and see and memorize.
"Missed you," Oz says. "Sorry about the parking lot. Just -. Yeah. Missed you."
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They're really only superficial, these changes, and Oz is always Oz. It's Giles who's changeable, shifting and throbbing between his lives like Tiresias. Still, he'd like Oz to hold still for him, and hold him still. Anchor him.
"I've missed you too," he says just before he leans down for a kiss. The bitter marijuana smell that's clinging to Oz turns sweeter in his mouth, like incense or burning sage, and Giles searches it out with his tongue. Giles hasn't got high in years, hasn't even missed it, but now he wants the loose relaxed giddiness. Needs it. If they could get away from Sunnydale for a day they could get high together. Laugh and talk nonsense and have fantastic, half-hallucinatory sex. Be utterly irresponsible, and briefly free.
One kiss and he's already breathing hard. His cock's stiffening and his whole body itches and burns and craves. "Seeing you like that. In public. It's like being pulled apart. Shredded."
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He only exhales when the back of his thighs meets the arm of the couch, and he sits, wraps one leg around Giles, and kisses him again. Scrolls apologies over and over his lips, in his mouth, against his tongue, and holds on tighter, arms hooked around Giles's neck, pulling him down, holding him still.
Thirst and apology and hunger, all these things running hot and empty through Oz's chest and gut, and he's gasping when he pulls away. Beneath the shiny scrub of toothpaste and mouthwash, Giles tastes like he always does, rich and secret, and Oz licks his lips. Never enough.
"Really sorry," he says. "Shredded's the perfect word."
Like hitting the asphalt bare-armed, coming out of a bad ollie, skin ripping away, gravel and dirt grinding in. He knows he feels like that, half the time, cramped and at the same time torn up, but knowing all over again that Giles hurts is even worse.
Oz runs his hand soothingly, stupidly, down Giles's chest and tips his forehead against the row of buttons. "Sorry."
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"Don't apologize. Please." Oz tilts his face up at that, and Giles kisses him again. Maybe there are memories in his mouth, maybe the days they've been apart have left some trace there, maybe Giles can taste them, live Oz's days and keep them.
"I wish-" All the things he wishes for jostle and crowd inside him. He's full to bursting with wishes; they hammer against his ribs and push the air out of his lungs. Wishes are like parasites, weakening him to feed themselves. And Giles cherishes each wish, treasures it, willingly bleeds for it.
It's pointless, naming his wishes, but maybe they'll hurt less if Oz knows. Or maybe Oz just ought to hear them. "I wish we could see a film together," Giles says, running a hand over Oz's back, trying to feel his skin through two layers of cloth. "I wish we could go out. Have a meal in a restaurant. Go to a concert. I wish you could come to the library between classes and talk to me. I wish I could kiss you when I see you in the hallways."
Naming them seems to make them more painful, so he stops. Strokes up and down Oz's arms with cupped palms, trying to circle and enclose as much of him as possible.
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He suspects Giles would get it, but it's a tangent right now. He wants to concentrate on *what* Giles is saying, not how. So he tucks his hands into the back pockets of Giles's pants and nods. Giles wants to be outside with him. Doesn't want to hide him, and even if Oz knew this, and he did, somehow it's different, hearing his wishes.
"Could rent videos," Oz says. "Order delivery, listen to live bootlegs. The other stuff, not so sure about how to do that."
Giles's hands in his hair make him feel close and safe as a baby, as backrubs from his grandmother used to. He'd like to visit the library, too; it's more Giles's home than this apartment, or it feels like that, sometimes. There's got to be something Oz can do about that; he imagines Giles moves easily, confidently, through the stacks, around the kids who help him.
"Can tell me more about what you do," he says, standing up again, kissing Giles's neck. Lightly, no marks to be left. "Or ask me what kind of no-good mischief I get up to."
He's not sure that's the solution, if it would just make things worse, remind Giles of every possible reason to send him packing, to clean up this mess Oz brought with him.
"Or," Oz says, sliding around, kissing the other side of Giles's neck. "We could just hang. Like hanging with you."
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Every one of Oz's tiny kisses on Giles' neck spreads out in shimmering ripples, like a stone tossed into a pond. Endless concentric circles until his whole skin seems in motion and little wavelets flow back, collide, arch out from new centers. "Oz," he says, and then he steps back, because if he doesn't he'll need to take Oz to bed right now. Anticipation and waiting make him desperate; he dreams about Oz, fantasizes about him, gets hard talking to him on the telephone. It's been years since he's wanted sex this much, wanted it all the time like a young man. But this isn't just sex, and he can wait a bit longer, to be sure Oz knows that.
He sits on the sofa and pulls Oz down into his lap, which is something he probably shouldn't enjoy so much. It feels wonderful, though, having Oz piled against him like this, having all of him in easy reach. "I like it too," he says. "Just being with you." The rest is just wishes; this is the thing he needs.
Oz's ear is temptingly close. Giles licks his earlobe, worries the hoops with his tongue, sucks at them until Oz moans.
"I'll tell you all about why demons and the internet shouldn't mix," he says, "if you'll tell me about your no-good mischief." There's still so much he doesn't know, so many blank spaces on his map of Oz.
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He rotates the hoops through the slightly-sore skin and kisses Giles quickly. "Still healing."
Tracing the fine spray of hair, silky and almost invisible, that peeks out from under Giles's cuff, Oz smiles to himself, lets his mind go blank and suggest a story to tell him.
"Mischief, huh? There's the earrings. Don't think Snyder likes them. Or me. Devon did it last weekend 'cause he claimed I was too symmetrical. Usually easier to let him do what he wants than argue." He shifts back so he has a better view of Giles's face. Kind and faintly smiling, and Oz smiles back. "Couple nights ago I went on this wild-goose chase with him and Eric. Eric swore up and down that his cousin had some pot plantation out along the railroad tracks and we were hiking for like hours with flashlights and didn't see anything. Find anything. Nada. Nice night, though."
Giles frowns and Oz squeezes his hand. "Brought the stakes, and, anyway, we were way past town. No beasties around."
He can't remember what he's explicitly told Giles and what he just assumes Giles knows. Assumptions usually bite him back; he spent a couple weeks assuming Giles knew who Eric was until it occurred to him to ask.
"And I sprayed some graffiti down on one of the warehouses. Mischievous enough?"
He wants to tell Giles everything he wants to know, find some method of transferring experience and memory that's quicker, more accurate, than words.
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"Homegrown marijuana's never any good. So you didn't miss much, not finding it." Giles slides a finger under Oz's bracelets to stroke the thin soft skin, feel the tendons and bones. The blue veins show all the way up his arms, and Giles can't forget the blood in them. So close to the surface, so easily spilt. It would take so little-the wrong alley, the wrong shortcut, the wrong warehouse to spray graffiti on. Oz carries a stake, but he won't wear the cross Giles gave him. Some nights Giles lies awake thinking of the places Oz could be, and the ways he could be killed there.
"Please be careful." Probably Giles is nagging, but he can't stop saying it. Oz kisses him and settles against his shoulder, which as good an answer as any made in words. There's no way to be careful enough, in Sunnydale, and Oz needs to live his life. Probably Oz worries about him, too.
Giles tells him about Moloch's jump from book to computer and his brief internet spree, though he leaves out the part about Willow. The poor girl's quite embarrassed and wants to forget that her cyber-boyfriend ever happened. "Somehow the end result of it all is that I need to learn more about computers. Or so I'm told." On the whole, he'd rather rely on Willow's knowledge.
"Do you have anything planned for Saturday? If things stay quiet, I'm hoping we might get away for a few hours. Try for the drive and the picnic, again." They've tried twice to arrange it, and things keep going wrong at the last minute.
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He has band rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, and some girl's birthday party afterward if Devon's still stringing her along, and possibly something later with his mom, whose plans evaporate even faster than Giles's. All of which boils down to exactly nothing in the face of getting to be outdoors with Giles.
"Don't think you need to know more about computers," he says a little while later, pulling himself out of a daydream where Giles parks his car in the woods off the interstate, Oz picks him up, and they flee town for sunshine and picnicking and lolling. All very covert and all the more exciting for that. They'll both need sunscreen, he realizes, kissing Giles's neck again; he's been in California almost three months but he's still the color of very milky tea.
"They're basically ridiculously stripped-down human brains, if our brains only calculated binary equations at megaspeed. Trick is taking them apart and realizing how they stupid they are."
Sunscreen's easy. He can buy Giles gallons of the stuff and rub it on him and feel like he's actually done something, instead of his usual jittery, helpless anxiety about the bizarre and the monstrous Giles seems to confront every day. Oz doesn't know how he does it, how he's a librarian and a warrior and Oz's friend, how he has the energy and courage to keep trying.
"Saturday, I'll teach you some jargon so they think you know about computers and leave you alone. That cool?"
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Useless, now, to ask forgiveness; he plays with Oz's hair instead, rubbing the back of his neck the way he likes. And decides that nothing short of real danger to Buffy will prevent him taking Saturday off.
"Jargon might be helpful. But I'm a bit terrified of talking nonsense. As an undergraduate I was publicly humiliated for misusing the word ideology in a history essay." Not wanting to sound ungrateful, he adds, "So you'll need to coach me rather thoroughly." A lesson in computer-ese is a low price for Oz's company.
"Or perhaps a mnemonic, like 'thirty days hath September.' Could you find me some jargon that rhymes?" If he's silly enough, maybe Oz will smile.
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Giles's hand squeezes his neck and Oz dips his head, resting his forehead in the curve of Giles's shoulder. Feels strong and right, the way Giles touches him, like he's transferring calm and certainty and affection, recalibrating Oz's skin, dissolving all the chemical static he's half-sure gathers on him and clogs his pores.
"Rhyming jargon? Maybe one of those every good boy deserves fudge things." Oz approaches computers the way he reads books and plays his guitars; he browses and tinkers, figuring out what works and what doesn't, so explaining it in the abstract to Giles is going to require studying up and research. But Giles and research go together like Giles and tea, they're almost the same thing, just in different forms, so Oz figures he can handle it.
The daydream -- woods and rocky outcroppings, Giles in a loose shirt, untucked and half-unbuttoned, breeze in his hair -- keeps sneaking back to the front of Oz's mind, and he wonders if he should worry at its tenacity and insistence.
"Can you bring your guitar if we go?" It feels like forever since Giles was relaxed enough to play for him, and Oz is fully aware how silly that sounds, how much it makes him sound like a kid, for whom several weeks equal forever. "I can do the food and everything."
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