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.
He covers Giles' hand with his own and breathes out against the sudden surge of fear and worry. Giles sounds calm, and Oz believes that he believes in what he's saying. He closes his eyes, pictures just what kind of shocked expression Buffy would wear when she found out. And, despite everything, all the tension and the worry that seeps around them all, all the time, lifts and relaxes for a moment as he smiles.
"Love you," he says and kisses the side of Giles' neck. "You know, my birthday's like right around the time we met."
He's been planning what to get Giles and what to make him for dinner on that night. He hesitates to call it an anniversary, even if, technically, that's what it is. It's just that this, whatever this is that he has with Giles, it doesn't seem like other relationships that you measure with gifts and random dates.
Lamb, probably. Giles likes lamb, so that's what he's going to make.
"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.
"You know, your birthday was the day I arrived in Sunnydale." Thinking of it as an omen would be ridiculous, so Giles tries not to. "Did you close your eyes and wish for an English librarian?" They're pressed so close that Giles can feel the vibrations of Oz's laugh.
Just a few hours ago, it seemed like all the laughter in the world had run out. Thinking of the wolf still makes Giles' chest hurt and his stomach flutter. But remembering their despair gives Giles a sense of averted catastrophe that's close to joy. It's what he thinks of as the brush-with-death feeling. "I love you. And . . . I'm sorry about this morning." He wonders if Oz feels it too, this deep relief, this flushed delight at having survived.
"Nah. What I wished for, actually, was a ten-speed. Or a pony," Oz says. "But you'll do."
When Oz blinks, he can feel his lashes brushing against Giles' skin. He still feels the laughter simmering through him, lightening his chest and warming his skin. He'd like to know how Giles does it, how he manages to tease and hold so soon after being so dreadfully scared and nearly sickened. It's the question Oz always asks, because Giles helps *him* do it, too, and that's the most amazing gift in the world.
"Don't apologize," he says. He squeezes Giles' hand and holds it against the base of his throat, right over his pulse point. "Just glad it's over."
Giles was scared and angry, and now he's loose and happy again. Oz is more glad about that than anything else; he'll change next shortly before their anniversary, and anxiety grabs him by the scruff of the neck, shakes him cold and hard for a moment. Giles murmurs something, presses his lips to Oz's temple, and Oz exhales against the worry.
He'll deal with that later. Now, he wants to sink into an endless moment where it's warm and Giles is here and he can forget and enjoy.
"But if you want to get me a pony *this* year, don't let me stop you."
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.
"I'm pleased that I make an adequate substitute for a pony," he says. "Not quite as entertaining, but much easier to house and feed." He presses his fingers lightly against the hollow of Oz's throat, then bends his head to kiss there. Feeling the thrum of Oz's pulse under his lips is like getting inside Oz's skin, kissing him at the source, kissing his heart and heat and life.
On Giles' birthday, a few months back, Oz baked him a tiny, two-person cake. Over Giles' protests about the dignity, after a certain age, of a single candle, Oz somehow found room on top for forty-three of them. And when Giles managed to blow them all out in one go, he added it to his furtive stockpile of good omens.
His wish has come true so far. He still has Oz.
"If, on your birthday morning, you find a pony tethered to the van door," he says, winding a bit of Oz's hair around his finger, "you'll have only yourself to blame."
"Maybe I could find *you* tethered to the van door," Oz says, tugging against Giles' hold on his hair and smiling. "That'd be kind of cool."
Giles gives him one of his wide, but secretive, smiles, where his eyes just barely crinkle but narrow all the same and look back at Oz with intent and determination. Oz's own smile slows and stretches and a flush blooms up his chest, over his throat and face. Someone's breath catches, maybe both, and Giles' chest rises against Oz's side as Oz reaches up and traces the angle of one smile-line with his index finger.
He's never going to be able to find the words for how Giles' skin *feels* against his own. He'd say velcro, thinking of how the two pieces interlock, but that suggests scratchiness, which is just about the opposite of the sensation. Like bath salts dissolving in warm water, the boundary between his skin and Giles' silky and invisible, shifting and soft.
"Never really was convinced I'd make it to eighteen," Oz says softly and has to close his eyes for a second. "I mean, odds aren't exactly *good* around here. So it's going to be amazing."
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."
Oz squirms a little against him, and Giles realizes he's holding tight enough to hurt. "Sorry." His muscles resist when he tries to loosen his grip. He wants to keep Oz close, lock him up, keep him safe. "Slight attack of nerves."
Oz is holding his hand tightly and dotting kisses over his neck, and after a couple of minutes Giles manages to relax again. Collector of omens though he is, he's going to ignore his fear that Oz has jinxed himself. "It is going to be amazing. An amazing birthday, an amazing life to follow." A long life, preferably spent well away from Sunnydale.
Giles tilts Oz's chin up and kisses him, slowly and deeply. "I can't promise to tether myself to the van. But more discreet tethering could be arranged, if you fancy." He doesn't think it was entirely a joke. Not the way Oz dropped his eyes, suddenly shy, when he said it, and the way he blushed afterwards.
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.
"Yeah, I fancy," he says. He's feeling everything so much more immediately, more sharply than usual, and it's not like he's usually dulled or anything, but with all the fear of the past several days, the occasional clutches of sudden tension, like Giles' just now, it's as if they set off the simple, good things -- laughter, lust -- and sharpen and brighten them almost unbearably.
Giles, shirtless, khaki's undone, arms bound behind him: The image grows and looms, silver-bright, and Oz can *hear* the gasps that Giles makes when Oz moves his hands over him, tastes and licks, strokes and scratches. But arranging those gasps, orchestrating them, that's something altogether different, and he's flushing again, seeing Giles' shining eyes and wet, open mouth.
"Oh -" Oz squirms; he can't help it, his skin is tightening and his breath's already rasping through his chest. "Oh, *man*. Could work both ways, yeah?"
Giles likes to hold him down, likes to draw things out with looks and the firm pressure of his hands, and now Oz is starting to think about making that explicit. About tying down and being still, and Giles moving over him, fierce and needy and in control.
He covers Giles' hand with his own and breathes out against the sudden surge of fear and worry. Giles sounds calm, and Oz believes that he believes in what he's saying. He closes his eyes, pictures just what kind of shocked expression Buffy would wear when she found out. And, despite everything, all the tension and the worry that seeps around them all, all the time, lifts and relaxes for a moment as he smiles.
"Love you," he says and kisses the side of Giles' neck. "You know, my birthday's like right around the time we met."
He's been planning what to get Giles and what to make him for dinner on that night. He hesitates to call it an anniversary, even if, technically, that's what it is. It's just that this, whatever this is that he has with Giles, it doesn't seem like other relationships that you measure with gifts and random dates.
Lamb, probably. Giles likes lamb, so that's what he's going to make.
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"You know, your birthday was the day I arrived in Sunnydale." Thinking of it as an omen would be ridiculous, so Giles tries not to. "Did you close your eyes and wish for an English librarian?" They're pressed so close that Giles can feel the vibrations of Oz's laugh.
Just a few hours ago, it seemed like all the laughter in the world had run out. Thinking of the wolf still makes Giles' chest hurt and his stomach flutter. But remembering their despair gives Giles a sense of averted catastrophe that's close to joy. It's what he thinks of as the brush-with-death feeling. "I love you. And . . . I'm sorry about this morning." He wonders if Oz feels it too, this deep relief, this flushed delight at having survived.
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When Oz blinks, he can feel his lashes brushing against Giles' skin. He still feels the laughter simmering through him, lightening his chest and warming his skin. He'd like to know how Giles does it, how he manages to tease and hold so soon after being so dreadfully scared and nearly sickened. It's the question Oz always asks, because Giles helps *him* do it, too, and that's the most amazing gift in the world.
"Don't apologize," he says. He squeezes Giles' hand and holds it against the base of his throat, right over his pulse point. "Just glad it's over."
Giles was scared and angry, and now he's loose and happy again. Oz is more glad about that than anything else; he'll change next shortly before their anniversary, and anxiety grabs him by the scruff of the neck, shakes him cold and hard for a moment. Giles murmurs something, presses his lips to Oz's temple, and Oz exhales against the worry.
He'll deal with that later. Now, he wants to sink into an endless moment where it's warm and Giles is here and he can forget and enjoy.
"But if you want to get me a pony *this* year, don't let me stop you."
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"I'm pleased that I make an adequate substitute for a pony," he says. "Not quite as entertaining, but much easier to house and feed." He presses his fingers lightly against the hollow of Oz's throat, then bends his head to kiss there. Feeling the thrum of Oz's pulse under his lips is like getting inside Oz's skin, kissing him at the source, kissing his heart and heat and life.
On Giles' birthday, a few months back, Oz baked him a tiny, two-person cake. Over Giles' protests about the dignity, after a certain age, of a single candle, Oz somehow found room on top for forty-three of them. And when Giles managed to blow them all out in one go, he added it to his furtive stockpile of good omens.
His wish has come true so far. He still has Oz.
"If, on your birthday morning, you find a pony tethered to the van door," he says, winding a bit of Oz's hair around his finger, "you'll have only yourself to blame."
Reply
Giles gives him one of his wide, but secretive, smiles, where his eyes just barely crinkle but narrow all the same and look back at Oz with intent and determination. Oz's own smile slows and stretches and a flush blooms up his chest, over his throat and face. Someone's breath catches, maybe both, and Giles' chest rises against Oz's side as Oz reaches up and traces the angle of one smile-line with his index finger.
He's never going to be able to find the words for how Giles' skin *feels* against his own. He'd say velcro, thinking of how the two pieces interlock, but that suggests scratchiness, which is just about the opposite of the sensation. Like bath salts dissolving in warm water, the boundary between his skin and Giles' silky and invisible, shifting and soft.
"Never really was convinced I'd make it to eighteen," Oz says softly and has to close his eyes for a second. "I mean, odds aren't exactly *good* around here. So it's going to be amazing."
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Oz squirms a little against him, and Giles realizes he's holding tight enough to hurt. "Sorry." His muscles resist when he tries to loosen his grip. He wants to keep Oz close, lock him up, keep him safe. "Slight attack of nerves."
Oz is holding his hand tightly and dotting kisses over his neck, and after a couple of minutes Giles manages to relax again. Collector of omens though he is, he's going to ignore his fear that Oz has jinxed himself. "It is going to be amazing. An amazing birthday, an amazing life to follow." A long life, preferably spent well away from Sunnydale.
Giles tilts Oz's chin up and kisses him, slowly and deeply. "I can't promise to tether myself to the van. But more discreet tethering could be arranged, if you fancy." He doesn't think it was entirely a joke. Not the way Oz dropped his eyes, suddenly shy, when he said it, and the way he blushed afterwards.
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"Yeah, I fancy," he says. He's feeling everything so much more immediately, more sharply than usual, and it's not like he's usually dulled or anything, but with all the fear of the past several days, the occasional clutches of sudden tension, like Giles' just now, it's as if they set off the simple, good things -- laughter, lust -- and sharpen and brighten them almost unbearably.
Giles, shirtless, khaki's undone, arms bound behind him: The image grows and looms, silver-bright, and Oz can *hear* the gasps that Giles makes when Oz moves his hands over him, tastes and licks, strokes and scratches. But arranging those gasps, orchestrating them, that's something altogether different, and he's flushing again, seeing Giles' shining eyes and wet, open mouth.
"Oh -" Oz squirms; he can't help it, his skin is tightening and his breath's already rasping through his chest. "Oh, *man*. Could work both ways, yeah?"
Giles likes to hold him down, likes to draw things out with looks and the firm pressure of his hands, and now Oz is starting to think about making that explicit. About tying down and being still, and Giles moving over him, fierce and needy and in control.
"Jesus."
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