Giles clasps his hands in his lap, squeezes them into tight, joined fists. "You couldn't-?" Tighter, harder, because if he lets his hands go they might grasp Oz's shoulders and shake words out of him. Shake him loose from that quiet that Giles always thought was honesty. "How long have you known? How long have you been lying to me?"
If he stays on this sofa, if he hears another fragmented answer that doesn't tell him anything, he'll do something awful. And he doesn't want to hurt Oz, not really. Whatever lies Oz has told.
Giles gets up, takes the mugs into the kitchen, scrubs them clean with steaming water and blobs of pink detergent. Scrubs until bubbles drift into the air, until his hands are tired. Scrubs the anger away, or most of it, lets it flow down the sink and away to pollute a stream somewhere. Scrubs until the urge to shake, to hit, goes away, and he just feels tired and sick.
No wonder Oz didn't tell him.
When Giles comes back into the living room, he sits at the other end of the sofa. Best to keep Oz out of arm's reach, just to be safe. "What happened, Oz? Please tell me." He wonders if he'll even recognize the truth when he hears it.
Giles is like the weather right now. Changing and cold and mean.
Oz stopped wishing he could shrink awhile ago. Now he's just frozen, wrapped so tightly in the blanket he might as well be in a straitjacket. He looks at the dirty tape on his finger, the bandage from Jordy's bite. Somehow, after everything, it's survived the transformations, changing back and forth that cracks his skeleton and warps his skin. But the bandaid's all right.
"I'm sorry," he says first. The best he has, all he can say. Giles works his jaw and Oz watches him stare straight ahead. He picks at the bandage and feels his breath click and rattle around his chest. "I got bit. By my baby cousin, and I didn't know he was. One of them. No one thought it was serious. The bite."
Giles closes his eyes, briefly. When they're open again, he's still staring at the fireplace.
The words aren't making any sense to Oz. His throat's ground up and Giles won't look at him and he's very, very cold.
There are tears in Oz's voice, tears and broken glass. His voice scrapes over Giles' skin and then drips salt into the wounds, and Giles can hardly think for the pain. Giles folds his arms, tucks his hands in over his ribs, only just stops himself from rocking. Oz needs him, needs his hands and arms and he can't, he mustn't. If he touches Oz, his hands might remember coarse fur and distorted limbs.
His eyes wander over the brick walls of the fireplace. They keep talking about having a proper fire some evening, but Giles never gets around to buying logs. He's never actually even checked that it's a working fireplace and not just a façade. Some of the bricks are darker, from soot maybe. Perhaps it is real.
Oz's words echo for a while in the empty, dark space inside Giles' head. Then the strange sounds turn, inexorably, into meaning. "Your cousin. Your baby cousin . . . is a werewolf?"
No one thought . . . Oz didn't know. Why . . . "For God's sake, tell me. Oz." There's more to this, more straw to heap on a back already broken.
The brat inside Oz, the one he hasn't heard from since shortly after meeting Giles, the lazy, obnxious, mouthy kid wants to snap back: I just told you.
He tightens his hold on one fold in the blanket and stops looking at Giles. No point there; the man's just going to stare at the fireplace until flames spontaneously catch. Better to lose himself in the strict, regimented pattern of the blanket, the fraying edge of the bandage.
"My baby cousin Jordy's a werewolf. His dad's my mom's brother. He's a, a wolf, too. Locks himself up every month, never hurt a soul -" And for some reason, he needs Giles to understand that more than anything, that this isn't a total death sentence, he's not going down the road Angel's on. "No one told me because the bite wasn't serious. I called and checked. I caught it from him. Could have inherited it from my mom. Didn't. It got me anyway."
When he exhales, the breath in his lungs tastes like blood. Heavy and metallic, and Oz turns his face away. Looks at the side-desk, squints to make out the titles on the spines.
"It's not your fault," Giles says automatically. His mind has split, fractured into layers like sandstone. In one layer he's angry again; somewhere else, further down, he might be crying. At the top he's thinking, because he can never stop for long.
There's uncertainty, among experts, about genetic lycanthropy. Giles was always a skeptic. He's seen mystical transformations: vampires animating human corpses; power speaking through tranced seers; Eyghon in Randall's body, in Diedre's and Philip's and Ethan's. But it's . . . mystical. It's soul and mind, not DNA. And lycanthropy, monster and human dwelling together--lycanthropy's not an inheritance, it's a contamination. Or so he thought.
Once again, Giles' training is wrong. Somehow he'll have to write this up for the Council. Change the details, leave out the names. It's his duty to pass along this knowledge.
Knowledge that Oz has always had. Has hidden for almost a year. Knowledge that Oz didn't trust him with. One layer of Giles' mind hurts, thinking of that.
"You didn't tell me," Giles says, uselessly. "I wouldn't have-" and there's no way to finish the sentence, because he would have. Would have been bothered. Would have been afraid. Would have looked at Oz differently.
Oz knew. Oz knew this could happen, and he still . . . If he'd just been careful, he wouldn't be a werewolf now. The disease passed him by, he was clean of it. Except, maybe, down in the DNA, down in a recessive gene that they could have gone a lifetime not knowing about. But now it's there, the fact and the knowledge, and every month Giles will have to remember. Every minute, he'll be unable to forget.
"I didn't want you to know," Oz says. "Liked you too much."
Those early days, when Giles struggled to explain things, what he did, that vampires were around, who a Slayer was, Oz listened and listened. Giles kept asking if he had any questions, but he didn't. Giles was clearer than clear: There are evil things. Monsters, and they need to be eradicated.
There was nothing to ask. No way to say to a man he just met, who he already liked more than he should, who was trusting him with all of this heavy-duty, life-and-death information, Hey, maybe not all monsters are all evil.
Thing is, Oz doesn't even believe that himself right now. Giles is smarter, older, more experienced; he knows better. All Oz knows is how much he hurts, how fear leaves behind ice tracks in his body, ripping him apart like glaciers and icebergs, how Giles is never going to look at him again. He doesn't deserve it anyway.
Since Oz woke up, Giles hasn't quite looked at him. But he has to, now, when Oz talks in that soft, soft voice about going.
Oz doesn't look the same, not at all. There are blue-black smudges under his eyes, dark as bruises, and Giles remembers it's three nights since Oz slept. He's sickly pale, bloodlessly pale under that black-dyed hair that makes him look so horribly like Ethan. Pale as a drained corpse. And old. Giles can see, on that white skin, hints of lines that will be wrinkles in thirty years.
Oz looks away and pulls the blanket up around his shoulders, although it's not cold in the flat.
"Don't go," Giles says. Oz must be so tired, and so frightened. "Stay here, please. I'll call in sick so I can stay with you."
Giles loves Oz. He won't leave him alone with this unbearable knowledge.
Giles loves Oz, and Oz is the same person he's always been.
"You don't have to -" Oz starts to say, but the ice inside him shifts and groans again and he has to close his eyes against the pain. All he wants right now is the firm warmth of Giles' bed, tucked up under the ceiling like a kid's, and sleep, and food.
He knows he's so hungry because of the wolf, because it never fed, because of the change back and forth, but he can't say that. Giles sounds thin and strained, crepe batter poured over a hot pan, and Oz just wants to keep him where he is.
The weird thing is that Giles looks - younger, or something, when Oz glances at him. His face is smooth, his eyes even bigger, and his expression's just about unreadable. Maybe that's what anger does to him, rejuvenates him, returns him to his former self.
"I'd like that," Oz says finally and lets himself turn all the way around so he can see all of Giles. He still can't look directly at him, but at the fourth button on his shirt. "And I'm really sorry. I am."
It hurts to look at Oz. So hopeless, half gone into despair, eyes shallow and bleak as a dying animal's. Giles wonders if he looked like that while he waited for Eyghon. And if so, how Oz bore it.
Oz is never like this. He's never needed much looking after. It's always been the other way around, Oz tending Giles' bruises, his concussions, his grief. And now Giles isn't sure what to do.
Practicality. That's always Oz's solution. Food, water, sleep, ease for the small pains that somehow salves the larger ones, too. "I'm going to make us something to eat," Giles says. On his way to the kitchen he rests a hand on Oz's hair, just for a moment. The anger's far, far down now, and it's safe to touch him. And if Giles remembers the roughness of the wolf's pelt, well, that'll pass.
He makes oatmeal, simple and easy, and rings the school while it cooks. It's still too early for anyone to be there, thank God, so he leaves a message on Snyder's voicemail. No doubt he'll get a little lecture tomorrow about irresponsibility.
Sugar's supposed to be good for shock, so Giles covers the surface of Oz's portion with melting brown crystals, then, as an afterthought, does the same to his own. He adds a little cream for good measure, carries the bowls to the living room, then two glasses of water, and then he's run out of things to do. So he sits down, a little closer to Oz than before, and eats.
Oz wonders if he'd be half as freaked out as he's felt for the last few days if Giles *wasn't* in his life. He's been wondering about that a lot, and he has to admit that he wouldn't be. If he didn't know Giles, he would have done everything the same, chained himself up, and no one would have cared if he happened to miss another couple days of school a month.
He never, ever thought there would be a drawback to knowing Giles.
The oatmeal's hot, sweet and delicious, but it tastes like metal and sweat on Oz's tongue. But Giles is slightly closer, and he's eating enthusiastically, so Oz keeps spooning the mush into his mouth. Swallowing it down against the shivers, against his throat that wants to close up, and despite himself, when the bowl is empty, his stomach feels better. Full and warm, no longer empty but hard and cold as a stone.
They've moved into the caretaking phase of things, what they do best, and Oz doesn't know how this works, if this means that argument is over. He can still hear Giles accusing of him lying, and he knows that they're never going work that out, even though it's the worst thing you could accuse someone of. Someone you love. Or say you do.
Oz drains his glass and shifts half an inch closer to Giles. They're still not touching, and he thinks it's going to be months -- if Giles gives him that long -- before they touch like they used to.
"Thanks," he says softly and hands Giles his own glass of water. "Hit the spot. You're not going to get in trouble at work?"
"I doubt it." Snyder hates him, but this is the first sick day Giles has ever taken. Even after Eyghon he went in to work, although the black eye and still-fresh bruises on his face made everyone stare.
Oz seems a little better now, steadier, more awake, not quite so desperately sad. Giles hopes he's really feeling better, but he knows how well Oz can hide things. "Do you want more to eat?" Oz shakes his head, so Giles takes the bowls to the kitchen and, after a moment's hesitation, leaves them unwashed in the sink.
"We should get you to bed," he says, coming back into the living room. Sleep will help. That's what people always say.
Oz has drawn the blanket back up around his neck. When Giles puts a hand on his wool-covered shoulder, there's something between a shiver and a flinch. Maybe more of Giles' anger showed than he thought. He ought to explain about his temper, how it flashes and fades, but now really isn't the time.
"Come on, let's go upstairs." Tired as Giles is, he can't quite imagine sleeping. Not for hours, days. But Oz shouldn't be alone.
Oz grips the arm of the couch and pulls himself to his feet. Leaving the blanket down here suddenly feels like an unbearable idea, akin to sliding off his own skin and stepping away. So he wraps it tightly under his arms and shuffles toward the stairs, picking up the trailing blanket between his fingers like a society lady at a ball in an old movie.
Giles shadows him, hovers awkwardly, and Oz feels cold, slick and tight and hollow inside, at how awkward he's made everything. How Giles can hardly bear to touch him, how every gesture -- touching his head, his shoulder -- seems like it's premeditated. Like it's something Giles is doing because he *ought* to, not because he wants to.
On the landing, Oz has to pause for breath. He leans against the wall and Giles waits with him. Always at a respectful distance.
"Giles?" he asks as he moves up the last part of the stairs. His muscles feel like they're clacking together, cold metal against colder. Then he doesn't have anything else to say. He sits on his side of the bed -- he has a *side*, and that has never felt quite as strange and odd as it does right now -- and Oz shivers, hard.
Giles stands right at the stairs, gripping the banister. Oz can't see his eyes behind his glasses.
Oz keeps pulling that blanket tighter around himself, like it's the only warmth and safety left in the world. It strips a little warmth from Giles every time, leaves him barer and colder. Oz doesn't trust him. Instead of opening, he hides, buries himself in blankets and silence and lies.
It's only a few feet to the bed. Giles could go to him, hold him, coax him, kiss him. Bare him, bare them both down to skin, down to bodies that don't lie. Only they do. Bodies hide secrets, hide wolves. Oz's body isn't the same anymore. Maybe it will feel different, smell different, taste different, and if it does Giles isn't sure how he'll cope. How he'll survive.
Oz kicks off his shoes and lies down on top of the quilt, with his back to Giles. He's shivering. "Oz," Giles says. "You're cold. Get into bed, you'll feel better." There's no answer; Oz just curls up, pulling his feet under the gray wool cocoon.
"I'll be downstairs if you need me." It seems like a very long walk down the stairs, and a longer one to the sofa. He's cold, too, and Oz has all the blankets.
Giles' voice is flat. Like old silverware, buffed and scratched, no shine left it, and it clinks against Oz's back, rattles his spine, thuds dully in his ears.
He takes a breath, holds it, and hauls himself over onto his back. Everything hurts, every shiver, every breath, and the blanket tangles around his legs.
"Do you have to?" he asks. Keeps his eyes closed, because maybe Giles is already gone. He doesn't want to know that just yet. He can't remember asking like this, asking Giles for something he can't give, but if he doesn't do this now, he knows, down to the cold marrow in his bones, that it's already over. "Maybe -" He swallows, tastes brown sugar and blood, and tries again. "Maybe you could stay for a little bit?"
If Giles is already gone, he hasn't lost anything by asking. If he's still here, then either he's trying to make up his mind, or he's shaking his head slowly, regretfully, the way Giles does when someone talks nonsense. Oz is too tired, too cold, to analyze fully just what he's risking right now.
"Don't have to," Oz says. "Just - it'd be nice?"
Questions feel like hyperventilating. Short, pointless breaths that make him dizzy.
If he stays on this sofa, if he hears another fragmented answer that doesn't tell him anything, he'll do something awful. And he doesn't want to hurt Oz, not really. Whatever lies Oz has told.
Giles gets up, takes the mugs into the kitchen, scrubs them clean with steaming water and blobs of pink detergent. Scrubs until bubbles drift into the air, until his hands are tired. Scrubs the anger away, or most of it, lets it flow down the sink and away to pollute a stream somewhere. Scrubs until the urge to shake, to hit, goes away, and he just feels tired and sick.
No wonder Oz didn't tell him.
When Giles comes back into the living room, he sits at the other end of the sofa. Best to keep Oz out of arm's reach, just to be safe. "What happened, Oz? Please tell me." He wonders if he'll even recognize the truth when he hears it.
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Oz stopped wishing he could shrink awhile ago. Now he's just frozen, wrapped so tightly in the blanket he might as well be in a straitjacket. He looks at the dirty tape on his finger, the bandage from Jordy's bite. Somehow, after everything, it's survived the transformations, changing back and forth that cracks his skeleton and warps his skin. But the bandaid's all right.
"I'm sorry," he says first. The best he has, all he can say. Giles works his jaw and Oz watches him stare straight ahead. He picks at the bandage and feels his breath click and rattle around his chest. "I got bit. By my baby cousin, and I didn't know he was. One of them. No one thought it was serious. The bite."
Giles closes his eyes, briefly. When they're open again, he's still staring at the fireplace.
The words aren't making any sense to Oz. His throat's ground up and Giles won't look at him and he's very, very cold.
"I'm sorry. That's what happened."
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His eyes wander over the brick walls of the fireplace. They keep talking about having a proper fire some evening, but Giles never gets around to buying logs. He's never actually even checked that it's a working fireplace and not just a façade. Some of the bricks are darker, from soot maybe. Perhaps it is real.
Oz's words echo for a while in the empty, dark space inside Giles' head. Then the strange sounds turn, inexorably, into meaning. "Your cousin. Your baby cousin . . . is a werewolf?"
No one thought . . . Oz didn't know. Why . . . "For God's sake, tell me. Oz." There's more to this, more straw to heap on a back already broken.
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He tightens his hold on one fold in the blanket and stops looking at Giles. No point there; the man's just going to stare at the fireplace until flames spontaneously catch. Better to lose himself in the strict, regimented pattern of the blanket, the fraying edge of the bandage.
"My baby cousin Jordy's a werewolf. His dad's my mom's brother. He's a, a wolf, too. Locks himself up every month, never hurt a soul -" And for some reason, he needs Giles to understand that more than anything, that this isn't a total death sentence, he's not going down the road Angel's on. "No one told me because the bite wasn't serious. I called and checked. I caught it from him. Could have inherited it from my mom. Didn't. It got me anyway."
When he exhales, the breath in his lungs tastes like blood. Heavy and metallic, and Oz turns his face away. Looks at the side-desk, squints to make out the titles on the spines.
"I'm sorry."
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There's uncertainty, among experts, about genetic lycanthropy. Giles was always a skeptic. He's seen mystical transformations: vampires animating human corpses; power speaking through tranced seers; Eyghon in Randall's body, in Diedre's and Philip's and Ethan's. But it's . . . mystical. It's soul and mind, not DNA. And lycanthropy, monster and human dwelling together--lycanthropy's not an inheritance, it's a contamination. Or so he thought.
Once again, Giles' training is wrong. Somehow he'll have to write this up for the Council. Change the details, leave out the names. It's his duty to pass along this knowledge.
Knowledge that Oz has always had. Has hidden for almost a year. Knowledge that Oz didn't trust him with. One layer of Giles' mind hurts, thinking of that.
"You didn't tell me," Giles says, uselessly. "I wouldn't have-" and there's no way to finish the sentence, because he would have. Would have been bothered. Would have been afraid. Would have looked at Oz differently.
Oz knew. Oz knew this could happen, and he still . . . If he'd just been careful, he wouldn't be a werewolf now. The disease passed him by, he was clean of it. Except, maybe, down in the DNA, down in a recessive gene that they could have gone a lifetime not knowing about. But now it's there, the fact and the knowledge, and every month Giles will have to remember. Every minute, he'll be unable to forget.
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Those early days, when Giles struggled to explain things, what he did, that vampires were around, who a Slayer was, Oz listened and listened. Giles kept asking if he had any questions, but he didn't. Giles was clearer than clear: There are evil things. Monsters, and they need to be eradicated.
There was nothing to ask. No way to say to a man he just met, who he already liked more than he should, who was trusting him with all of this heavy-duty, life-and-death information, Hey, maybe not all monsters are all evil.
Thing is, Oz doesn't even believe that himself right now. Giles is smarter, older, more experienced; he knows better. All Oz knows is how much he hurts, how fear leaves behind ice tracks in his body, ripping him apart like glaciers and icebergs, how Giles is never going to look at him again. He doesn't deserve it anyway.
"I should probably go."
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Oz doesn't look the same, not at all. There are blue-black smudges under his eyes, dark as bruises, and Giles remembers it's three nights since Oz slept. He's sickly pale, bloodlessly pale under that black-dyed hair that makes him look so horribly like Ethan. Pale as a drained corpse. And old. Giles can see, on that white skin, hints of lines that will be wrinkles in thirty years.
Oz looks away and pulls the blanket up around his shoulders, although it's not cold in the flat.
"Don't go," Giles says. Oz must be so tired, and so frightened. "Stay here, please. I'll call in sick so I can stay with you."
Giles loves Oz. He won't leave him alone with this unbearable knowledge.
Giles loves Oz, and Oz is the same person he's always been.
Almost.
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He knows he's so hungry because of the wolf, because it never fed, because of the change back and forth, but he can't say that. Giles sounds thin and strained, crepe batter poured over a hot pan, and Oz just wants to keep him where he is.
The weird thing is that Giles looks - younger, or something, when Oz glances at him. His face is smooth, his eyes even bigger, and his expression's just about unreadable. Maybe that's what anger does to him, rejuvenates him, returns him to his former self.
"I'd like that," Oz says finally and lets himself turn all the way around so he can see all of Giles. He still can't look directly at him, but at the fourth button on his shirt. "And I'm really sorry. I am."
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Oz is never like this. He's never needed much looking after. It's always been the other way around, Oz tending Giles' bruises, his concussions, his grief. And now Giles isn't sure what to do.
Practicality. That's always Oz's solution. Food, water, sleep, ease for the small pains that somehow salves the larger ones, too. "I'm going to make us something to eat," Giles says. On his way to the kitchen he rests a hand on Oz's hair, just for a moment. The anger's far, far down now, and it's safe to touch him. And if Giles remembers the roughness of the wolf's pelt, well, that'll pass.
He makes oatmeal, simple and easy, and rings the school while it cooks. It's still too early for anyone to be there, thank God, so he leaves a message on Snyder's voicemail. No doubt he'll get a little lecture tomorrow about irresponsibility.
Sugar's supposed to be good for shock, so Giles covers the surface of Oz's portion with melting brown crystals, then, as an afterthought, does the same to his own. He adds a little cream for good measure, carries the bowls to the living room, then two glasses of water, and then he's run out of things to do. So he sits down, a little closer to Oz than before, and eats.
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He never, ever thought there would be a drawback to knowing Giles.
The oatmeal's hot, sweet and delicious, but it tastes like metal and sweat on Oz's tongue. But Giles is slightly closer, and he's eating enthusiastically, so Oz keeps spooning the mush into his mouth. Swallowing it down against the shivers, against his throat that wants to close up, and despite himself, when the bowl is empty, his stomach feels better. Full and warm, no longer empty but hard and cold as a stone.
They've moved into the caretaking phase of things, what they do best, and Oz doesn't know how this works, if this means that argument is over. He can still hear Giles accusing of him lying, and he knows that they're never going work that out, even though it's the worst thing you could accuse someone of. Someone you love. Or say you do.
Oz drains his glass and shifts half an inch closer to Giles. They're still not touching, and he thinks it's going to be months -- if Giles gives him that long -- before they touch like they used to.
"Thanks," he says softly and hands Giles his own glass of water. "Hit the spot. You're not going to get in trouble at work?"
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Oz seems a little better now, steadier, more awake, not quite so desperately sad. Giles hopes he's really feeling better, but he knows how well Oz can hide things. "Do you want more to eat?" Oz shakes his head, so Giles takes the bowls to the kitchen and, after a moment's hesitation, leaves them unwashed in the sink.
"We should get you to bed," he says, coming back into the living room. Sleep will help. That's what people always say.
Oz has drawn the blanket back up around his neck. When Giles puts a hand on his wool-covered shoulder, there's something between a shiver and a flinch. Maybe more of Giles' anger showed than he thought. He ought to explain about his temper, how it flashes and fades, but now really isn't the time.
"Come on, let's go upstairs." Tired as Giles is, he can't quite imagine sleeping. Not for hours, days. But Oz shouldn't be alone.
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Giles shadows him, hovers awkwardly, and Oz feels cold, slick and tight and hollow inside, at how awkward he's made everything. How Giles can hardly bear to touch him, how every gesture -- touching his head, his shoulder -- seems like it's premeditated. Like it's something Giles is doing because he *ought* to, not because he wants to.
On the landing, Oz has to pause for breath. He leans against the wall and Giles waits with him. Always at a respectful distance.
"Giles?" he asks as he moves up the last part of the stairs. His muscles feel like they're clacking together, cold metal against colder. Then he doesn't have anything else to say. He sits on his side of the bed -- he has a *side*, and that has never felt quite as strange and odd as it does right now -- and Oz shivers, hard.
Giles stands right at the stairs, gripping the banister. Oz can't see his eyes behind his glasses.
"Thanks. I know this sucks."
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It's only a few feet to the bed. Giles could go to him, hold him, coax him, kiss him. Bare him, bare them both down to skin, down to bodies that don't lie. Only they do. Bodies hide secrets, hide wolves. Oz's body isn't the same anymore. Maybe it will feel different, smell different, taste different, and if it does Giles isn't sure how he'll cope. How he'll survive.
Oz kicks off his shoes and lies down on top of the quilt, with his back to Giles. He's shivering. "Oz," Giles says. "You're cold. Get into bed, you'll feel better." There's no answer; Oz just curls up, pulling his feet under the gray wool cocoon.
"I'll be downstairs if you need me." It seems like a very long walk down the stairs, and a longer one to the sofa. He's cold, too, and Oz has all the blankets.
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He takes a breath, holds it, and hauls himself over onto his back. Everything hurts, every shiver, every breath, and the blanket tangles around his legs.
"Do you have to?" he asks. Keeps his eyes closed, because maybe Giles is already gone. He doesn't want to know that just yet. He can't remember asking like this, asking Giles for something he can't give, but if he doesn't do this now, he knows, down to the cold marrow in his bones, that it's already over. "Maybe -" He swallows, tastes brown sugar and blood, and tries again. "Maybe you could stay for a little bit?"
If Giles is already gone, he hasn't lost anything by asking. If he's still here, then either he's trying to make up his mind, or he's shaking his head slowly, regretfully, the way Giles does when someone talks nonsense. Oz is too tired, too cold, to analyze fully just what he's risking right now.
"Don't have to," Oz says. "Just - it'd be nice?"
Questions feel like hyperventilating. Short, pointless breaths that make him dizzy.
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