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kindkit January 3 2004, 17:10:18 UTC
There are five bracelets on Oz's right wrist, two on the left. One is vaguely African-looking, warm woven earth-tones, and Giles doesn't remember having seen it before. He ought to pay more attention to these things.

At the time, it didn't seem strange that Dad was less bothered by the murder than by the fucking.

"I was sent to a psychiatrist. Council's orders. To cure me." It was a stroke of luck, really, to get the old-fashioned kind. A calm, precise Freudian, rather than the modern sort that believed in drugs and aversion therapy.

Oz's fingers tighten around his.

It was rainy that summer. Mostly too rainy to go out, and his parents' house was four miles from town. Giles stayed home, read history, studied Sumerian grammar, and went to the psychiatrist twice a week. Lay awake in the dark, missing Ethan.

Giles leans a little closer to Oz. "I returned to Oxford that fall. And the first week, I ran back to London. Back to Ethan. I wanted him that much." He won't call that dark, sticky need 'love.'

Magic led Giles to him, in a stinking squat filled with junkies. I knew you'd come back. I've been waiting. There were bedbugs in the mattress. But neither of them cared.

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glossing January 3 2004, 17:39:52 UTC
Closer now, and Oz can wrap his arm around Giles' shoulder, work his thumb in wobbling circles over the muscle, circles that match the ones drawn by his other thumb over Giles' knuckles. When he leans in, he can feel the moist heat of Giles' breath.

Wanted him that much. Oz turns the phrase over in his mind, feels it as rough and heavy as stones, just as true. He's seen Giles in the halls at school, straight-backed and distant, and the sight is always clanging and wrong, a bad impersonation of the Giles he knows, real and strong and full of want and need.

"How long did you stay?" he asks. "Were you glad you went back?"

He has no idea, now, when things ended with Ethan, if they ever did, if the want's still there.

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kindkit January 3 2004, 19:11:09 UTC
Thinking about it now, Giles itches and wants to wash. The bedbugs, the cockroaches, the dirty blankets. The skinny girl who offered to blow him if he'd help her find a vein. The sulfur smell of matches that hung in the air because someone was always cooking a fix. And Ethan, smiling and beautiful. The lily on the dunghill.

"It lasted four days." Giles puts his free hand on Oz's wrist, feeling cloth and metal and warm skin beneath. "No dark magic, we said. He promised me. And then I caught him doing a spell. Painting sigils on his body with his own blood." Naked in the candlelight, primed and sparking magic, hard, and Giles got hard too at the sight of him. For a moment.

"The expression on his face. Rapture. And nothingness." Nothing of Ethan left. Nothing knowable, nothing that love could reach. "He was . . . alien. An empty skin with a monster inside."

Giles' skin tickles and crawls. He lets Oz's wrist go and scratches over the tattoo, where the itch is worst. "He tried to use magic on me, to make me stay. I hit him. Over and over. Part of me wanted to kill him." He beat the monster unrecognizable, beat it until the awful semblance, the mockery of Ethan disappeared.

"I went back to Oxford. No one even knew I'd gone. I studied and trained. Got the Council to find me a local psychiatrist, and tried to be cured." He laughs, not looking at Oz. "It didn't take."

Where Oz is touching him, his skin feels cool and clean. "Oz. Please. I-. Come here. Please." He needs Oz closer, needs to hold him, needs to let him wash the scum of memory away.

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glossing January 3 2004, 20:36:34 UTC
His face, especially his eyes, burns and Oz isn't sure why - it definitely doesn't have anything to do with sex or desire, maybe it's just to release some of the awful heat - but he yanks off his shirt first before wrapping his arms around Giles and pulling himself closer, as close as he can, one knee up against the back cushions, the other leg over Giles', and he squeezes tightly, rubbing his face over Giles' shoulder.

Everything feels different, everything in his head, everything he feels, except for Giles himself, the broad span of his chest and the tickle of his hair against Oz's forehead. Like solving a calc problem, resolving a knotty piece of code, the answer that doesn't change anything feels cold and certain inside Oz's chest: He can't lose Giles, can't not have him.

Giles is holding onto Oz's arm, his head tilted over Oz's, and Oz isn't sure if Giles can even hear him when he says "I love you", twice, then three times, but his throat's on fire and he can't speak more loudly.

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kindkit January 3 2004, 21:22:24 UTC
Oz's bare skin is like water, cool and fluid and he smells sweet. Green and sandy, minerals and clean aquatic plants. River water, pure and slow-flowing, so clear you can see every pebble and every darting fish.

If they could just touch enough, Giles could be clean again. Washed, baptized, every smear and stain and odor taken away.

Giles works a hand between their bodies, unbuttons his shirt and opens it. Presses his face into Oz's hair and breathes in Oz, concentrated and perfect.

"Thank you."

He'd like to take Oz upstairs, lie naked with him between clean white sheets. But if Eyghon comes, he doesn't want Oz trapped up there.

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glossing January 3 2004, 21:48:34 UTC
"Welcome."

Oz slides over Giles, covers him as best he can with arms around his shoulders and chest pressed against Giles'. He might be imagining being able to feel Giles' heart beat against his skin, but he can definitely hear Giles' breath against his scalp, feel his fingers flexing and digging into his back, and it's close and real.

He can't fool himself into relaxing. He's almost in the same position he often is, gathered into Giles' lap, but everything else is different. Changed and fearful and he wishes he could hold tight enough, do something that would change everything back to the way it's supposed to be.

"Giles?" he asks and squeezes tighter. He doesn't have anything else besides Giles and I love you, so he hushes and rubs his knuckles over Giles' shoulderblades.

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kindkit January 3 2004, 22:29:05 UTC
It almost surprises Giles, how much he doesn't want to die. A year ago he could have accepted it, slid quietly into death without much complaint. A year ago he was just a manuscript curator and a translator for the Watchers. Anonymous, unknown, as minor a character as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Now, his part's expanded past all belief. If he's not Hamlet, he's certainly more than an attendant lord. He trains Buffy, guides her, teaches her how to bear the world's weight.

And now there's Oz. Giles has his own story now, and he's not ready for it to end.

He rubs his cheek against Oz's hair, tries and fails to pull him closer.

It's not safe for Oz to be here. In a little while, when he finds the strength, Giles is going to have to send him away.

And then he'll wait.

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glossing January 3 2004, 22:33:58 UTC
After some time elapses, continues here.

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