"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."
"I'm glad you like it," Giles says, and leans over to kiss him. The fear and the terrible cold are fading into memory, and he wonders how he could have been so stupid. The wolf he recalls more vividly; he'll never get that picture out of his mind, and he'll be seeing it again all too soon. Just twenty-six days before Oz will turn again.
But the wolf is not Oz. The wolf is a disease that hurts Oz and frightens him.
"You're not clingy." And then he has to laugh, because Oz has an arm around his shoulders and is trying to eat one-handed. "Well, no more than I am. If we could possibly eat with you in my lap, I'm sure we would be." If he could arrange it, he wouldn't let Oz out of arm's reach for weeks.
After a few more bites, he decides he's had enough, so he turns to watch Oz instead. Oz has left the shirt untucked, loose over his narrow hips, and rolled the sleeves up past his elbows. Lost in all that white cotton, he looks a little like a boy trying on his father's clothes, and Giles wants to ruffle his hair. But Oz looks like something else, too, something slightly rumpled, just shy of innocent, boyish in another way entirely, and Giles wants to unbutton the shirt with his teeth and lick the skin under it.
Giles swallows, and through the tingle of spices in his mouth he can taste Oz. The memory of Oz, anyway; he needs to refresh his memories, confirm and renew them.
He picks up a bit of cauliflower from Oz's plate, eats it, and smiles at the puzzled look Oz gives him.
"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.
Reply
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.
Reply
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.
Reply
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.
Reply
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.
Reply
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?"
Reply
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."
Reply
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."
Reply
But the wolf is not Oz. The wolf is a disease that hurts Oz and frightens him.
"You're not clingy." And then he has to laugh, because Oz has an arm around his shoulders and is trying to eat one-handed. "Well, no more than I am. If we could possibly eat with you in my lap, I'm sure we would be." If he could arrange it, he wouldn't let Oz out of arm's reach for weeks.
After a few more bites, he decides he's had enough, so he turns to watch Oz instead. Oz has left the shirt untucked, loose over his narrow hips, and rolled the sleeves up past his elbows. Lost in all that white cotton, he looks a little like a boy trying on his father's clothes, and Giles wants to ruffle his hair. But Oz looks like something else, too, something slightly rumpled, just shy of innocent, boyish in another way entirely, and Giles wants to unbutton the shirt with his teeth and lick the skin under it.
Giles swallows, and through the tingle of spices in his mouth he can taste Oz. The memory of Oz, anyway; he needs to refresh his memories, confirm and renew them.
He picks up a bit of cauliflower from Oz's plate, eats it, and smiles at the puzzled look Oz gives him.
Reply
Leave a comment