Giles looks like he's keeping a secret, like he wants to tell Oz something but won't let himself. More than that, he looks happy, almost at ease in his yellow shirt, open at the collar and sunny, even in the brightness of the apartment. His hair is askew, his eyes crinkling up as he ducks in and kisses Oz's cheek
( ... )
When Oz kisses him, Giles realizes how quickly memories dull, how they lose color and scent and life, like flowers pressed in a book. What he remembered was just an image of this, no more like the real taste of Oz than brittle, compressed petals are like a garden. This is sunlight, color, the rising scents of rosemary and lavender and rich earth after the rain
( ... )
Oz slides his palm into Giles' open collar, slowly pressing and rubbing against the warmth of his skin, curving his hand to fit the rise of his collarbone, then slipping down, cupping one pec, concentrating until he can feel Giles' heartbeat against his palm. Steady, always there, sound beneath words and far more trustworthy
( ... )
"I know. I'm sorry." It's not easier. It's harder, having Oz just a few feet away across the library conference table, so close and utterly untouchable. It leaves Giles perpetually nervous, worse than he's been since the early days. Even the mention of Oz's name sends adrenaline waterfalling through him
( ... )
When Giles touches his scar, Oz feels the shivers shoot right down his arm and through his chest. Cold, cutting streamers that taste like fear and feel like scalpels. He settles a bit, like he always does, remembering Giles' hoarse, worried voice on the phone in the hospital, how just knowing that Giles knew about him somehow eased the pain
( ... )
"I remember," Giles says, lifting Oz's hand and kissing it. He's been trying for weeks to think of gifts, but none of his ideas seems quite right. Manufactured things are too cold, too common, and Oz isn't much interested in things anyway. Which is funny, considering the sheer quantity of things he carries with him everywhere. But Oz picks them for their meanings, and he's as likely to treasure a strange old button as a gem. Probably more likely
( ... )
Although he knows Oz is joking, Giles can't help picturing him with his eyes squeezed shut, blowing out the birthday candles and wishing those little-boy wishes. On his own seventeenth birthday he would have been starting a new term at Winchester; if he wished for anything, it was probably to kiss James Eccles. Which he did, in fact, not long before that year's Christmas holidays
( ... )
Things Giles never lets himself think about stir and clamor for notice: Oz drained by a vampire, mauled by a demon, shot dead in the school hallway. New images join the old ones, too. Oz in wolf form, killing and feeding, or killed by a hunter and skinned for the Sri Lankan fur market. Fear, slick and brittle as ice, crystallizes around his spine, and he pulls Oz closer. "I hate this place," he says. "Seventeen cemeteries, forty-three churches, and a hellmouth. And hundreds of children who don't think they'll live to grow up
( ... )
The kiss sinks and reverberates all the way through Oz, right down the center, deep and dark and warm; Giles' words, quiet and serious, accompanied by that careful squint, just twist the sensation that much deeper, that much hotter. Oz can only nod and kiss Giles again with a dry mouth and clattering heartbeat, his hand opening and closing in Giles' hair like a beached fish gasping for air
( ... )
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