The words seem to come from some far, interstellar distance, attenuated to the faintest whisper against the background crackle of quasars, pulsars, solar winds. It takes Giles a while to decipher them, and longer to climb the four steps he'd descended, to traverse the light years of empty space to the bed and Oz.
"Of course I'll stay." Oz's eyes don't open when Giles lies beside him; he doesn't even move. Maybe he can't, the way the blanket's twisted around him. "I'm here. Let me in," Giles says, picking carefully at the tangle, loosening fingers and folds of wool, unknotting Oz bit by bit. At last Oz lets out a shaky breath and turns towards him. "That's it." Now Giles can weave their bodies together, arms around necks and waists, legs twined, someone's head on someone's shoulder, close and finally warm under the blanket.
So close, so close that Giles doesn't know why his chest still hurts, why cosmic static still pops and whistles in his head, why Oz is trembling and still hasn't opened his eyes. "I love you," Giles says, and then says it again, lips to Oz's temple, trying to speak directly to flesh and bone. "It's going to be all right," and he wonders if Oz hears, if the words travel the distance, if they make sense. If there's any scrap of truth in them. If Oz is listening at all.
Giles' body is the most familiar thing Oz knows, the most welcome warmth. Right now he smells sharp, like worry and despair and sweat. He's strange and different, and Oz feels ice building in his chest. He keeps his eyes closed and holds onto Giles as tightly as he can without frightening him.
"Love you," he says into Giles' neck. And he does, and the words taste warm and dark in his mouth. They feel right, right in a way that Giles' own voice still doesn't feel. Giles sounds so flat and dull, going through things by rote, out of duty, and it makes Oz's head want to cave in.
"Have to make it all right," he says a little later, when he can't help it, when Giles' stillness and silence start to overwhelm him. "Want to make it better."
He's always missed Giles, no matter how close they were; it's how they helped diagnose the fact that he *loves* Giles in the first place. Oz wonders now what the opposite of missing is, what Giles is feeling that isn't missing, isn't the feeling of lack, but of too much, smothering, drowning.
Giles wonders what would make it all right, how Oz could possibly fix this. Could he invent a cure, a vaccine to kill the wolf, cleanse him of it, make him entirely himself again? Could he build a time machine, go back and not be bitten? Or further back, to the moment when he could have told Giles everything, and didn't? Could he cure the lie that's been between them all this time?
"There's nothing . . . nothing you need to do." He rubs Oz's back, feeling the shivers that twitch through his shoulders and spine. One thin layer of cotton between his fingertips and Oz's skin, and it feels like so much more, like miles, like continents to be crossed on foot, like oceans to be swum. So far to go before they'll ever touch again.
It will take so long. Time heals, they say, but time is a strong drug, and maybe it only heals in small doses. Maybe more time, continent-hiking, ocean-swimming time does something else. Maybe you come home and everything looks different, the trees have grown and someone's repainted the house, and a stranger answers the door.
"It'll be all right," he says again. "In time." And this is familiar, this is home, Oz's warmth and weight and smell, and Oz is so far away, and maybe he's already a stranger.
When Oz dares to open his eyes, Giles' face is too close to be recognizable. His skin is rough, this close, the pores like gnats, the wrinkles around his eye harsh and crumpled. He kisses Giles' cheek again, because there aren't lies with gestures.
Oz trusts words even less than ever right now. He doesn't believe Giles, but he knows why he's saying these things. Why he's trying to be reassuring and optimistic. He doesn't know why Giles won't believe him, though; why not telling him about his mother's family counts as a lie.
"Want it to be," he whispers and pulls back until he can see Giles more clearly, see the face that lives behind his lids, the one he aches, daily, to see and touch and kiss. "Tell me how to help. Tell me what to do."
This is the first time they've ever shared this bed and not been happy. And that's the worst thing, the unbearable thing, worse than the wolf or the secret Oz wouldn't trust him with. Happiness has gone away, flown over those continents and oceans that Giles isn't sure he has the strength to cross. Maybe it's gone even farther, maybe it's sunk into the sea like Atlantis or buried like Pompeii under rock and rubble.
And Oz wants, no, expects him to find it again. Oz doesn't seem to understand that Giles can't read the map, that the compass is lost and the food's running out and it's getting so, so cold.
"I don't know," he says. "What you can do, what I can do." He pulls Oz closer, but however tightly they cling, he can feel the cold seeping in around them, between them. Never close enough, never. That's what love feels like, so why does this feel so different, so much like dying?
All he can think to say is trust me, but he's got no answers, no sure route to safety, and there's no reason Oz should trust him at all.
"Giles," Oz says, struggling up onto his elbow. Giles blinks back at him and there are icicles piercing Oz's chest and arms at the sight. He knows he's about to give up; he knows himself well enough to feel the fear creeping higher than hope, to feel his energy ebbing away. Giles doesn't trust him, and Oz doesn't know why, and neither of them knows what to do about this.
"Giles." Maybe it's like Beetlejuice. Maybe something spectacular will happen if he just says Giles' name one more time. "Giles."
He waits. Nothing happens, but he does have Giles' attention. Brilliant eyes on him, moving back and forth, reading him, and for the first time in ages, Oz doesn't know what Giles sees there. If he wants to be seeing this.
"Maybe if you tell me what you're scared of, I can tell you what I'm scared of. Maybe it'll help."
Oz holds his breath, lets Giles look him over like a waterlogged book, a damaged specimen.
Oz's eyes are strange in the dim light--vast black pupils in a thin blue-green ring, and a look like he's seeing things Giles doesn't. Visions, or truths, or secrets. Giles stares into his eyes, tries to see in but remains hopelessly outside.
It ought to be easier than this. They shouldn't need these words, these tiny boxes for vast elusive things. Being told isn't the same as knowing. Maybe it borders on knowing, but it's a well-guarded border, fenced and patrolled.
"I'm afraid . . ." That's what it is, this cold. Creeping, freezing fears, numbing him. Killing him. Killing them both.
And that's why words help, Giles remembers. They name things, give them qualities, give them boundaries and limits. Adam named the animals according to their natures, made their natures in naming them.
He touches Oz's cold cheek and then pulls him down. If he sees Oz's face, so tired and beautiful and nothing at all like the monster, he won't be able to do this.
"I'm afraid that . . . that I don't know you anymore. That you're different." A shiver runs through Oz and into Giles; he pulls the blanket tighter around them. "I'm afraid that I never knew you. You hid this from me. About your family, and then about. About you. You didn't trust me. I thought . . . Christ, don't you know how much I love you?"
Oz lifts his head, but Giles says, "Wait." Cups his neck, draws him down again. Giles' fingers venture up into Oz's hair. "It hurts, that you didn't, didn't tell me. And I'm angry, and afraid." It's so soft, Oz's hair, soft even with the layers of gel he uses. Softer even than Giles remembers, and then he thinks again of fur, and can't hold back another shiver.
"Talk to me, Oz, please. Tell me everything. Let me in."
Wrapped in Giles' arms, hiding his face, it's somehow slightly easier to listen, and hear, and think. Oz rubs his forehead against Giles' shoulder, feels his hand in his hair, and pictures comfort and love streaming out from his fingers, through Oz's skull, down deep where it's cold and empty.
"I do love you," Oz says into the warm dark between them. "I *do*. Don't know how else to say it. And I trust you, I just. Don't trust your fear. Your job and, and your training. Made it really clear that monsters are bad. Evil."
It's almost impossible to talk; his throat hurts and he's scared and Giles is gripping him like he's a drowning victim. But when he speaks again, the words are hot and he didn't know how sad he was that he sounds almost angry.
"Don't want you to be angry. Don't want to hurt you. Christ, Giles, it was an accident and. And I'm sorry I hurt you. Sorry for all of this. Sorry you're afraid." He's gripping Giles back, high on his arm, the arm with the tattoo, and his nails dig into soft skin and Oz realizes he's shaking. "So sorry. And I'm scared, too. Scared I'll hurt someone, scared I'm different now. Scared of everything."
He doesn't feel angry any more; he feels almost whiny with tiredness and fear, with the need for Giles to understand, with the suspicion that nothing he says is going to make any difference.
"Love you," Oz whispers. "And I'm so sorry. So scared."
"It's not your fault," Giles says, and for the first time he thinks he might believe it. It's an accident, a terrible chance, unpredictable and cruel, as random as disease. If Oz had leukemia or AIDS, Giles would never blame him, would love him just the same. And what's the wolf but a disease, an invader in an innocent body?
"You're not a monster." He can't hold Oz any tighter, but he tries to hold him more, frantic kisses in Oz's hair, hands slipping under his shirt to really touch him, to soothe away the shaking and the fear and the sadness. "Not a monster. Never. It . . . the wolf, maybe it's a monster. But not you. It is not you." Giles starts to shiver again. His face is hot and his eyes hurt and the words scrape his throat raw when he speaks. "You're still yourself. Still my Oz. Always. Always. My-" And then he can't talk, because he's starting to cry.
This won't help at all, Oz needs him strong and calm and unafraid. A few deep breaths and he can talk again, can pretend tears aren't burning tracks down his face. "I'll help you," he says. "We'll find a safe place for you, when . . . And I'll stay with you. You'll be safe, and you won't hurt anyone." Somehow he'll learn to bear the wolf, bear the sight of the monster, for Oz's sake. "Maybe there's . . . maybe there's something. A, a treatment, a cure even. I don't know much about. About this. But I can learn. Research."
Giles drags the back of his hand over his wet face, then rests it on Oz's head, fingers working over his scalp. Oz's harsh shudders have eased off a little, into a sort of low-grade tremor, and Giles hopes that's better.
"It'll be all right," he says again. Maybe he can find a way to defeat the wolf. To take Oz back from the monster. And if he can't, he'll make it be all right anyway.
Oz can't stop shaking. The last things he said, he didn't even mean to say, didn't know he was going to say anything like that. Barely knew it was the truth until he heard himself. And now Giles is touching him, touching him for real and talking to *him* again, not to some figure in a nightmare, and the cold is shaking through him like wind rattling bare branches.
When he tips back his head, trying to breathe through a clogged nose and aching throat, he sees the light from downstairs catch and shine on Giles' face. On his tears. Oz touches Giles' cheeks with his finger, half-disbelieving what he sees, but when his fingertip comes away wet, he kisses the tracks, kisses Giles' nose, his chilled skin, his mouth.
His own mouth is lemon-tight and sour with swallowed tears, his throat too rough to say much more. Oz pulls them back onto the pillow, tracing the curve of Giles' cheekbone with one finger.
"Love you," he says. "Won't hurt you."
He believes Giles more than he does himself. It will be all right, he'll make sure of it.
Giles takes a handful of tissues from the box on the night table, wipes the tears off Oz's face and his own. "I know," he says, cupping Oz's stubbled cheek in his palm. "I'm so sorry. It was . . . a bit of a shock, and I reacted badly." He kisses Oz's forehead, then his lips. "I do wish you had told me, but I think I understand now why you didn't."
Oz was right to fear the instincts Giles' training has fixed in him, the dichotomous moral world of the Watchers. Right to fear his fear of monsters.
Perhaps Giles won't send a report to the Council. Proof of genetic lycanthropy and a whole family of potential research subjects might be too much temptation for a group that, even at its best, is not humane.
"I love you," Giles says, pulling Oz's head down to its place on his shoulder. That's how they always go to sleep. "And I won't hurt you. You can trust me."
This feels better. Familiar again. This is the same Oz in his arms, barely trembling now as they lie body to body. This is home and safety. It's not happiness, not yet, but it will be.
"Go to sleep, Oz. You must be so tired." They ought to get into bed properly, under the quilt instead of on it, but they'll be all right as they are.
He's sure that he won't be going to sleep; Oz wants to extend this moment, remember just what it feels like to rest his head on Giles' shoulder, just the rhythm of Giles' breathing, the whisper of his lips against Oz's temple. All the same, his body is starting to warm up, thicken and grow heavy. Sleepy as he is, he often loses the distinction between his skin and Giles'; he knows them apart by texture, but everything grows blurry and melts slightly.
It's funny, then, how his mind is still going, working and spinning, even as his body sleeps. Or at least he thinks it is. Giles still loves him; he knows that now. And that is, after the wolf itself, the biggest fear. So now he's left just with the fear itself.
The wolf, staring him down, licking its chops, and Oz can see himself in its eyes. Then he can see *through* its eyes, and he's running, leaping, and there's no going back.
For some time Giles lies awake, feeling Oz twitch in and out of nightmares, but then exhaustion claims him. He sleeps restlessly, shallowly, waking every time Oz shifts or whimpers. Anxious dreams flicker behind his eyelids, full of shadows and nameless, sourceless fears. Sleep seems more effortful than waking, and finally, around mid-day, he stops trying. Oz is sprawled across him, and he mutters and sighs when Giles slips carefully out of bed, but then he goes quiet again.
After a shower, Giles tries to start reading up on lycanthropy. But the obvious books he checks don't tell him anything new, and after a while his eyes glide mechanically over the words without translating shapes into sense. When he's less tired, he'll have to do this properly, going back to original texts instead of relying on secondary sources. The accepted truths won't help him; he needs legend, rumor, unlikely stories.
It's been a long while since that early breakfast; he's starting to get peckish. Oz will be hungry, too, when he wakes, so Giles decides to make a meal. It's concrete, practical comfort, the kind Oz likes best.
He sorts through the crammed cupboards, looking for inspiration. They cook together a lot, since they can't go out, so Giles' pantry is stocked with all kinds of odd things that he'd never heard of before he met Oz. Quinoa, sheets of kelp to flavor Japanese broths, four kinds of dried mushrooms, spices like asafoetida and coriander. There are a couple of cartons of vegetable stock towards the back of the top shelf. Soup might be nice. Squash soup, to do something with the acorn squash that have been taking up space on the countertop since Oz pulled them out of his rucksack last week. There's a whole wheat loaf in the freezer, too, from the last batch Oz baked.
As Giles chops onions and peels squash, he wonders why Oz doesn't much like the sort of teenage food that Buffy and her friends seem to live on. He's never seen Oz eat a Twinkie or those cheese-flavored, fluorescent orange things that Xander's so fond of. Thank heavens. But it's astonishing, that he could grow up here, knowing the same people, going to the same school, playing the same games and watching the same programs, and yet be so different from the rest of them.
Cooking seems to take much longer without Oz working beside him, but at last Giles is done. Curried squash soup, cauliflower with cumin butter and parsley, bread and goat's cheese: Oz will like this, he thinks. It'll be something good, settling, after the horrors of the last few days.
It seems unkind to wake Oz, but if he sleeps all day he won't sleep tonight. Giles goes upstairs, lies down and slides his arms around Oz's sleeping body. "Oz. Wake up now, Oz," he says, and rubs Oz's back through the blanket as he stirs and yawns.
Waking comes slowly, the line cast by a fly-fisherman, looping and hanging for ages before it hits the water. Oz hears Giles, feels his touch, but it takes much longer than usual to turn and yawn and open his eyes.
Giles smells like soap, and curry, and he squeezes Oz tightly.
"Smell good," Oz mumbles, and Giles nods. Smiles. He helps Oz up, and down the stairs, and by the time they reach the first floor, Oz is a little more awake. It smells even better down here, and Giles shoos him into the shower while he sets the table.
Oz gets a sudden clutch of fear when he closes the bathroom door and finds himself alone. Alone, and he's peeling off slept-in clothes, and he's cold. Rocks tumble down his throat, around his chest, as he showers and scrubs away the sleep. He counts the tiles in front of him, replays Giles' reassurances in his head, and by the time he's clean and dry, he's not so scared any longer.
Of course, he's also about to rejoin Giles, and he can smell food, and his stomach's doing somersaults with hunger, so of course he's not panicking any more.
"Giles?" he asks, emerging from the washroom, suddenly, blazingly, convinced that Giles is gone. So much for the panic easing. "Where are you?"
Once the table's set, Giles goes upstairs to change out of the clothes he's worn for the last two days. He's on his way down again, an extra shirt in his hand for Oz, when he hears Oz's frightened voice calling from the hallway. "I'm right here," he answers, and then stumbles and has to catch himself.
Heart pounding from his near fall, he rushes the rest of the way down and finds Oz standing frozen outside the bathroom door. Oz tries unconvincingly to smile when he sees Giles, and then leans into his hug with a sigh that sounds painfully relieved. "I was upstairs," Giles says, rubbing the gooseflesh on Oz's arms. Suddenly he's very glad that Oz didn't wake alone in the bed while Giles was cooking. "I've brought you a clean shirt. I'd have brought trousers, too, but even with a belt I don't think that would work."
He kisses Oz, tastes sweet mint toothpaste and a sharp overtone of fear, and then closes his eyes and holds him. Oz really ought to stay here tonight. Ought to stay here for as long as they can manage. They need to remember each other, remember what being together feels like. "I missed you, while you were sleeping," he says. It's an absurd thing to say, but it's true, and he wants Oz to know.
Oz tilts his face up, and there's something close to a real smile there, although Giles can see the effort behind it. Another kiss, and then Giles lets him go and puts the shirt in his hands. "I hope you're hungry, as I've made far too much food."
"Really hungry," Oz says as he buttons up the shirt. If he can't hold Giles all day, which is silly *and* impossible, this is probably the next best thing.
Oz loves wearing Giles' shirts, and he's often wondered what that means, since it seems creepily close to the way cheerleaders like to wear their boyfriends' letter-jackets. Then again, he and his friends have always operated on a share and share-alike principle, so maybe this is just a natural extension of that. Anyway, Giles' clothes always smell like starch and lemon, the cotton feels finer, softer and crisper, and, even if they were rough as sand and smelled like sweat, they'd still be Giles'.
"Wow. *Wow*," he says, taking his seat, as Giles ladles out soup and slides the baking dish of cauliflower toward him. Oz heaps his plate, and everything tastes rich and spicy, and if the wolf's improving his tastebuds, he really doesn't want to know that right now. Giles sits beside him, eating almost as hungrily as Oz, and he doesn't seem to mind that Oz has scooted closer so their thighs are touching and he can rest his left hand on Giles' knee.
"Missed you, too," Oz says as he reaches for the ladle to refill their soupbowls. "I shouldn't be so clingy, I -" don't know what got into me: No, best not say that.
"This is amazing," he says instead and slides his chair closer so he can slip his arm around the back of Giles' chair. "Thank you."
"Of course I'll stay." Oz's eyes don't open when Giles lies beside him; he doesn't even move. Maybe he can't, the way the blanket's twisted around him. "I'm here. Let me in," Giles says, picking carefully at the tangle, loosening fingers and folds of wool, unknotting Oz bit by bit. At last Oz lets out a shaky breath and turns towards him. "That's it." Now Giles can weave their bodies together, arms around necks and waists, legs twined, someone's head on someone's shoulder, close and finally warm under the blanket.
So close, so close that Giles doesn't know why his chest still hurts, why cosmic static still pops and whistles in his head, why Oz is trembling and still hasn't opened his eyes. "I love you," Giles says, and then says it again, lips to Oz's temple, trying to speak directly to flesh and bone. "It's going to be all right," and he wonders if Oz hears, if the words travel the distance, if they make sense. If there's any scrap of truth in them. If Oz is listening at all.
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"Love you," he says into Giles' neck. And he does, and the words taste warm and dark in his mouth. They feel right, right in a way that Giles' own voice still doesn't feel. Giles sounds so flat and dull, going through things by rote, out of duty, and it makes Oz's head want to cave in.
"Have to make it all right," he says a little later, when he can't help it, when Giles' stillness and silence start to overwhelm him. "Want to make it better."
He's always missed Giles, no matter how close they were; it's how they helped diagnose the fact that he *loves* Giles in the first place. Oz wonders now what the opposite of missing is, what Giles is feeling that isn't missing, isn't the feeling of lack, but of too much, smothering, drowning.
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"There's nothing . . . nothing you need to do." He rubs Oz's back, feeling the shivers that twitch through his shoulders and spine. One thin layer of cotton between his fingertips and Oz's skin, and it feels like so much more, like miles, like continents to be crossed on foot, like oceans to be swum. So far to go before they'll ever touch again.
It will take so long. Time heals, they say, but time is a strong drug, and maybe it only heals in small doses. Maybe more time, continent-hiking, ocean-swimming time does something else. Maybe you come home and everything looks different, the trees have grown and someone's repainted the house, and a stranger answers the door.
"It'll be all right," he says again. "In time." And this is familiar, this is home, Oz's warmth and weight and smell, and Oz is so far away, and maybe he's already a stranger.
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Oz trusts words even less than ever right now. He doesn't believe Giles, but he knows why he's saying these things. Why he's trying to be reassuring and optimistic. He doesn't know why Giles won't believe him, though; why not telling him about his mother's family counts as a lie.
"Want it to be," he whispers and pulls back until he can see Giles more clearly, see the face that lives behind his lids, the one he aches, daily, to see and touch and kiss. "Tell me how to help. Tell me what to do."
Tell me what I did, he wants to add.
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And Oz wants, no, expects him to find it again. Oz doesn't seem to understand that Giles can't read the map, that the compass is lost and the food's running out and it's getting so, so cold.
"I don't know," he says. "What you can do, what I can do." He pulls Oz closer, but however tightly they cling, he can feel the cold seeping in around them, between them. Never close enough, never. That's what love feels like, so why does this feel so different, so much like dying?
All he can think to say is trust me, but he's got no answers, no sure route to safety, and there's no reason Oz should trust him at all.
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"Giles." Maybe it's like Beetlejuice. Maybe something spectacular will happen if he just says Giles' name one more time. "Giles."
He waits. Nothing happens, but he does have Giles' attention. Brilliant eyes on him, moving back and forth, reading him, and for the first time in ages, Oz doesn't know what Giles sees there. If he wants to be seeing this.
"Maybe if you tell me what you're scared of, I can tell you what I'm scared of. Maybe it'll help."
Oz holds his breath, lets Giles look him over like a waterlogged book, a damaged specimen.
"It can't hurt, right?"
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It ought to be easier than this. They shouldn't need these words, these tiny boxes for vast elusive things. Being told isn't the same as knowing. Maybe it borders on knowing, but it's a well-guarded border, fenced and patrolled.
"I'm afraid . . ." That's what it is, this cold. Creeping, freezing fears, numbing him. Killing him. Killing them both.
And that's why words help, Giles remembers. They name things, give them qualities, give them boundaries and limits. Adam named the animals according to their natures, made their natures in naming them.
He touches Oz's cold cheek and then pulls him down. If he sees Oz's face, so tired and beautiful and nothing at all like the monster, he won't be able to do this.
"I'm afraid that . . . that I don't know you anymore. That you're different." A shiver runs through Oz and into Giles; he pulls the blanket tighter around them. "I'm afraid that I never knew you. You hid this from me. About your family, and then about. About you. You didn't trust me. I thought . . . Christ, don't you know how much I love you?"
Oz lifts his head, but Giles says, "Wait." Cups his neck, draws him down again. Giles' fingers venture up into Oz's hair. "It hurts, that you didn't, didn't tell me. And I'm angry, and afraid." It's so soft, Oz's hair, soft even with the layers of gel he uses. Softer even than Giles remembers, and then he thinks again of fur, and can't hold back another shiver.
"Talk to me, Oz, please. Tell me everything. Let me in."
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"I do love you," Oz says into the warm dark between them. "I *do*. Don't know how else to say it. And I trust you, I just. Don't trust your fear. Your job and, and your training. Made it really clear that monsters are bad. Evil."
It's almost impossible to talk; his throat hurts and he's scared and Giles is gripping him like he's a drowning victim. But when he speaks again, the words are hot and he didn't know how sad he was that he sounds almost angry.
"Don't want you to be angry. Don't want to hurt you. Christ, Giles, it was an accident and. And I'm sorry I hurt you. Sorry for all of this. Sorry you're afraid." He's gripping Giles back, high on his arm, the arm with the tattoo, and his nails dig into soft skin and Oz realizes he's shaking. "So sorry. And I'm scared, too. Scared I'll hurt someone, scared I'm different now. Scared of everything."
He doesn't feel angry any more; he feels almost whiny with tiredness and fear, with the need for Giles to understand, with the suspicion that nothing he says is going to make any difference.
"Love you," Oz whispers. "And I'm so sorry. So scared."
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"You're not a monster." He can't hold Oz any tighter, but he tries to hold him more, frantic kisses in Oz's hair, hands slipping under his shirt to really touch him, to soothe away the shaking and the fear and the sadness. "Not a monster. Never. It . . . the wolf, maybe it's a monster. But not you. It is not you." Giles starts to shiver again. His face is hot and his eyes hurt and the words scrape his throat raw when he speaks. "You're still yourself. Still my Oz. Always. Always. My-" And then he can't talk, because he's starting to cry.
This won't help at all, Oz needs him strong and calm and unafraid. A few deep breaths and he can talk again, can pretend tears aren't burning tracks down his face. "I'll help you," he says. "We'll find a safe place for you, when . . . And I'll stay with you. You'll be safe, and you won't hurt anyone." Somehow he'll learn to bear the wolf, bear the sight of the monster, for Oz's sake. "Maybe there's . . . maybe there's something. A, a treatment, a cure even. I don't know much about. About this. But I can learn. Research."
Giles drags the back of his hand over his wet face, then rests it on Oz's head, fingers working over his scalp. Oz's harsh shudders have eased off a little, into a sort of low-grade tremor, and Giles hopes that's better.
"It'll be all right," he says again. Maybe he can find a way to defeat the wolf. To take Oz back from the monster. And if he can't, he'll make it be all right anyway.
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When he tips back his head, trying to breathe through a clogged nose and aching throat, he sees the light from downstairs catch and shine on Giles' face. On his tears. Oz touches Giles' cheeks with his finger, half-disbelieving what he sees, but when his fingertip comes away wet, he kisses the tracks, kisses Giles' nose, his chilled skin, his mouth.
His own mouth is lemon-tight and sour with swallowed tears, his throat too rough to say much more. Oz pulls them back onto the pillow, tracing the curve of Giles' cheekbone with one finger.
"Love you," he says. "Won't hurt you."
He believes Giles more than he does himself. It will be all right, he'll make sure of it.
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Oz was right to fear the instincts Giles' training has fixed in him, the dichotomous moral world of the Watchers. Right to fear his fear of monsters.
Perhaps Giles won't send a report to the Council. Proof of genetic lycanthropy and a whole family of potential research subjects might be too much temptation for a group that, even at its best, is not humane.
"I love you," Giles says, pulling Oz's head down to its place on his shoulder. That's how they always go to sleep. "And I won't hurt you. You can trust me."
This feels better. Familiar again. This is the same Oz in his arms, barely trembling now as they lie body to body. This is home and safety. It's not happiness, not yet, but it will be.
"Go to sleep, Oz. You must be so tired." They ought to get into bed properly, under the quilt instead of on it, but they'll be all right as they are.
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It's funny, then, how his mind is still going, working and spinning, even as his body sleeps. Or at least he thinks it is. Giles still loves him; he knows that now. And that is, after the wolf itself, the biggest fear. So now he's left just with the fear itself.
The wolf, staring him down, licking its chops, and Oz can see himself in its eyes. Then he can see *through* its eyes, and he's running, leaping, and there's no going back.
He hopes this is just a nightmare.
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After a shower, Giles tries to start reading up on lycanthropy. But the obvious books he checks don't tell him anything new, and after a while his eyes glide mechanically over the words without translating shapes into sense. When he's less tired, he'll have to do this properly, going back to original texts instead of relying on secondary sources. The accepted truths won't help him; he needs legend, rumor, unlikely stories.
It's been a long while since that early breakfast; he's starting to get peckish. Oz will be hungry, too, when he wakes, so Giles decides to make a meal. It's concrete, practical comfort, the kind Oz likes best.
He sorts through the crammed cupboards, looking for inspiration. They cook together a lot, since they can't go out, so Giles' pantry is stocked with all kinds of odd things that he'd never heard of before he met Oz. Quinoa, sheets of kelp to flavor Japanese broths, four kinds of dried mushrooms, spices like asafoetida and coriander. There are a couple of cartons of vegetable stock towards the back of the top shelf. Soup might be nice. Squash soup, to do something with the acorn squash that have been taking up space on the countertop since Oz pulled them out of his rucksack last week. There's a whole wheat loaf in the freezer, too, from the last batch Oz baked.
As Giles chops onions and peels squash, he wonders why Oz doesn't much like the sort of teenage food that Buffy and her friends seem to live on. He's never seen Oz eat a Twinkie or those cheese-flavored, fluorescent orange things that Xander's so fond of. Thank heavens. But it's astonishing, that he could grow up here, knowing the same people, going to the same school, playing the same games and watching the same programs, and yet be so different from the rest of them.
Cooking seems to take much longer without Oz working beside him, but at last Giles is done. Curried squash soup, cauliflower with cumin butter and parsley, bread and goat's cheese: Oz will like this, he thinks. It'll be something good, settling, after the horrors of the last few days.
It seems unkind to wake Oz, but if he sleeps all day he won't sleep tonight. Giles goes upstairs, lies down and slides his arms around Oz's sleeping body. "Oz. Wake up now, Oz," he says, and rubs Oz's back through the blanket as he stirs and yawns.
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Giles smells like soap, and curry, and he squeezes Oz tightly.
"Smell good," Oz mumbles, and Giles nods. Smiles. He helps Oz up, and down the stairs, and by the time they reach the first floor, Oz is a little more awake. It smells even better down here, and Giles shoos him into the shower while he sets the table.
Oz gets a sudden clutch of fear when he closes the bathroom door and finds himself alone. Alone, and he's peeling off slept-in clothes, and he's cold. Rocks tumble down his throat, around his chest, as he showers and scrubs away the sleep. He counts the tiles in front of him, replays Giles' reassurances in his head, and by the time he's clean and dry, he's not so scared any longer.
Of course, he's also about to rejoin Giles, and he can smell food, and his stomach's doing somersaults with hunger, so of course he's not panicking any more.
"Giles?" he asks, emerging from the washroom, suddenly, blazingly, convinced that Giles is gone. So much for the panic easing. "Where are you?"
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Heart pounding from his near fall, he rushes the rest of the way down and finds Oz standing frozen outside the bathroom door. Oz tries unconvincingly to smile when he sees Giles, and then leans into his hug with a sigh that sounds painfully relieved. "I was upstairs," Giles says, rubbing the gooseflesh on Oz's arms. Suddenly he's very glad that Oz didn't wake alone in the bed while Giles was cooking. "I've brought you a clean shirt. I'd have brought trousers, too, but even with a belt I don't think that would work."
He kisses Oz, tastes sweet mint toothpaste and a sharp overtone of fear, and then closes his eyes and holds him. Oz really ought to stay here tonight. Ought to stay here for as long as they can manage. They need to remember each other, remember what being together feels like. "I missed you, while you were sleeping," he says. It's an absurd thing to say, but it's true, and he wants Oz to know.
Oz tilts his face up, and there's something close to a real smile there, although Giles can see the effort behind it. Another kiss, and then Giles lets him go and puts the shirt in his hands. "I hope you're hungry, as I've made far too much food."
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Oz loves wearing Giles' shirts, and he's often wondered what that means, since it seems creepily close to the way cheerleaders like to wear their boyfriends' letter-jackets. Then again, he and his friends have always operated on a share and share-alike principle, so maybe this is just a natural extension of that. Anyway, Giles' clothes always smell like starch and lemon, the cotton feels finer, softer and crisper, and, even if they were rough as sand and smelled like sweat, they'd still be Giles'.
"Wow. *Wow*," he says, taking his seat, as Giles ladles out soup and slides the baking dish of cauliflower toward him. Oz heaps his plate, and everything tastes rich and spicy, and if the wolf's improving his tastebuds, he really doesn't want to know that right now. Giles sits beside him, eating almost as hungrily as Oz, and he doesn't seem to mind that Oz has scooted closer so their thighs are touching and he can rest his left hand on Giles' knee.
"Missed you, too," Oz says as he reaches for the ladle to refill their soupbowls. "I shouldn't be so clingy, I -" don't know what got into me: No, best not say that.
"This is amazing," he says instead and slides his chair closer so he can slip his arm around the back of Giles' chair. "Thank you."
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