"Doesn't taste like chicken," Oz says after he swallows. "So there's that. Does it taste right to you, carnivore?"
Meat is flesh and flesh is muscle and blood and blood is life. He wipes his mouth and nods, smiling as he watches Giles dig in. Impeccable table manners, of course, but real hunger there, and pleasure. It's how Giles does everything, with care and grace but also devotion, interest.
Thoughts of the butcher shop, of pigs' blood and vampires, need to be put away, and Oz turns his hand palm-up, touching Giles's arm before taking up his knife and slicing his beans. They do things differently - Giles keeps his fork in his left hand while Oz switches back and forth, Giles went to school for more years than Oz has been alive, Giles loves meat and organs and strange sausages while Oz really does think miso soup tastes good - but it ends up the same. Food gets eaten, things are learned, and the surface differences fade and blur.
That's all Oz wanted to say, all he meant about friendship. They can talk to each other, and they're talking now as they eat, about Snyder's short-lived hairpiece and the occupation of the West Bank and whether the Talking Heads went overboard on their world-music obsession, and that's something Oz hasn't ever known. Not really, not aside from Eric and Devon and now Willow, but that's different. Easier to talk to someone you have classes with, who you've seen almost every day since you were in diapers. It means something more to talk to Giles, to know he's being listened to, that Giles wants him to speak, think, analyze. Cares enough to share his own thoughts.
When Oz is full and Giles is finally slowing down, the rib bones are nearly bare, streaked with dark drying blood, not as white as the skeletons hung in the bio lab but actually kind of ivory, pitted and ugly.
He tries not to look at them, tries very hard not to think about limbs and bloodlust and animals. Looking at Giles helps. It always does; Oz can get lost in the lines of his face, more complex than any map, constantly shifting, leading new places. It doesn't help the worry that probably (definitely) after tomorrow, after he goes, friendship will be as dead and tasteless a thing as sawdust.
Giles takes a last bite of lamb, savoring the richness and the texture between his teeth. Seeing the denuded rib bones on the platter, he realizes he's eaten rather a lot. "Sorry to be so gluttonous," he says to Oz, who stopped eating a while ago. "I didn't eat lunch." Or breakfast, either; he was too nervous even for toast.
Oz has left most of the meat on his plate, and is sitting a little to one side so that the bones aren't in his line of sight. "So much for my hopes that one bite of meat would convert you." Oz shakes his head and smiles, and then looks intently at the flowers. "Let's clear this away, shall we?" Giles says, picking up the platter and taking it into the kitchen, where he scrapes the bones into the trash. When Oz comes in with an armful of plates and silverware, he's looking a good deal happier.
Giles washes the dishes and Oz dries, so that Oz won't have to deal with grease and meat juices. Every pot and pan Giles owns seems to be dirty, and it takes a while. But when Oz is with him, Giles likes dishwashing even more than cooking. It doesn't require any thought, so they can talk. Somehow a discussion of the mayor's "Drug-Free Sunnydale" campaign turns into a debate over whether Titanic had any redeeming features. Giles tries not to think about how much he's going to miss this.
As Oz is reaching up into the cupboard to put away the last dish, Giles wraps his arms around his waist, kisses the nape of his neck and then, when Oz turns, his cheek. "Oz, it was lovely that you wanted to cook something I like. But you shouldn't do anything for my sake that upsets you. Anything that you don't like."
Giles only meant to talk about the meal; he didn't want these undertones creeping in, not now. Time enough later to dig up whatever's gone wrong and haul it into the light. "So, what shall we do with our evening?" he asks, hoping that this time Oz will choose something they both will enjoy.
The kitchen looks better than it did when he arrived this morning, shining in the dim light and neat enough to be in a magazine. It helps, somehow, to dull one blade of the worry, to see things clean and organized. Oz twists in Giles's arms so that he's facing Giles and leaning against the narrow counter. His hands are shaking a little from the wine as he cups Giles's cheeks.
"Thanks," he says to the first part. "I know, but thanks. Never had lamb before, so I didn't know. If I liked it or not." Giles starts to smile and Oz smiles back. Cheeks flushed with food and wine, and it's easier to smile than it has been in weeks. "And the rest of the night? Thinking music. Thinking music, and guitars, and -"
He wriggles a little until Giles's hold loosens, then drops one hand to hoist himself up onto the counter. Much better: Eye level, and he parts his legs, pulls Giles in. Kisses him softly, tasting detergent-wine-meat on Giles's lips, and keeps it soft even as he winds his arm around Giles's shoulder and leans in closer. Doesn't ask or urge anything, just wants to feel that smile against his own skin and let another moment stretch and sway.
Giles has to tilt his head up a fraction for the kiss, which he hasn't needed to do since he was seventeen and hadn't got his full height yet. James, he remembers, was tall, and his mouth tasted of the Silk Cuts he used to smoke on the sly. The ground behind the music building, where they used to meet, was strewn with spent matches and fag-ends. When Giles started to smoke, that Christmas, cigarettes tasted like kisses.
"That sounds ideal. There's rather a lot of stuff I'd like to do with you, tonight." Three times is nothing at Oz's age; Giles can surely make him come once or twice more. His desperation to make Oz gasp and shout, to make him feel, is gone, though. He wants more kisses like this one, even softer and slower than the last, just the brush of lips like secrets whispered mouth to mouth. This is what they need now, speaking touches, intimate confidences of the body.
When the kiss trails off into silence, Giles rests his head on Oz's shoulder. "I like this," he says, tightening the embrace a little more. This close, all he can see is the texture of Oz's skin, tiny pores and close-shaven hairs. Oz is a whole landscape, a whole world. "It's rather like being on your lap."
Oz kisses the top of his head, and Giles recognizes one of his own gestures. It's strange and yet not. Giles is older than Oz, taller, heavier; standing, Oz can tuck his head under Giles' chin; sitting, he fits in Giles' lap. Yet that's only the body, only the literal. Nothing to do with the truth.
Giles wants to stay here, sheltered in Oz's arms and legs, but after a while Oz shifts his weight and lets his legs slide down Giles' hips. The countertop can't be a very comfortable seat. "Come on, then," Giles says, stepping back to let him get down. "Let's have some music."
A few weeks ago, Oz bought a new pressing of Cale's Music for a New Society, reissued with an extra track. He was poking around the towns to the north on the interstate, skipping school, trying to forget for an afternoon about everything.
It hadn't worked, and as he unsleeves the LP and sets it on the turntable, he feels a little guilty. Always feels guilty when truancy and Giles come into contact, even the mental kind, but it's also not having shared this record with Giles yet. He could try and pretend that he'd been saving it for tonight, but a month ago, he would have driven straight from the store to Giles's apartment without even thinking about.
"Do you want something to drink?" he asks as he rises and the first few notes in Cale's melancholy baritone start to catch and melt.
Giles is on the couch, and before he can answer, Oz is next to him, one leg drawn up under him and his arm across Giles's chest. The cufflink catches the light and shines like a candle.
"On the other side, there's a song called 'In the Library of Force'," he says. "Would've bought it for that even if the singer was like Garth Brooks or something."
"There aren't nearly enough songs about libraries," Giles says. "In fact, I can't think of another one. Terrible injustice, really."
He's never been much of a John Cale fan. The music's too bare and strange for his taste; it reminds him of the French films that Olivia used to drag him to, all jump cuts and tilted cameras but no story. No flesh on the bones, no feeling on the theory.
Still, Oz bought the album because a title reminded him of Giles. That's reason enough to love it. The music's not just a lot of odd tempos, it's Oz thinking of him, missing him, the way he used to.
Usually Giles pays attention to music, but he finds himself listening past Cale's voice and guitar, concentrating instead on the sound of Oz's breathing and the occasional rustle of cloth on skin when he moves. Those are the interesting things: Oz's sounds, the weight of his arm, the angles and hollows and shadows of his face.
"In the Library of Force" turns out to be interesting in its own right. As Giles listens, he thinks of literate monks fed by illiterate peasants, of Alexander reading Homer and dreaming of conquests. Of how vellum was made from skins, so that the first word was always death. Oz wasn't wrong, to see the title and think of him. Books and death: these are the things Giles knows. The things he's made of; whatever life is in him, he owes to Oz.
For a while after the record ends, neither of them gets up to shut it off. Listening to the hiss of the needle, touching Oz's hair, Giles remembers the other record, last year. All night they've been recapturing, repeating, coming full circle. Making an end.
Giles's fingers are soft as wind against his scalp and in his hair, and Oz yawns before he can catch himself. He kisses Giles's cheek in apology and pulls himself up to switch off the record. Just black vinyl spinning, grooves in grooves, endless spirals: Analog has always been more confusing to him than digital. Digital makes sense; you chop up the sound or the text and then reassemble it.
He doesn't know how the record holds sound.
Giles coughs behind him, and Oz realizes he's just been staring down at the spinning platter. Hypnotized. No one knows how or why the Velvets disbanded; no one can even agree on a date. Lou left sometime in 1970, but Sterling and Cale and Mo Tucker still hung out and performed for a couple years after that. Oz has always thought that the band ended just like one of their songs, just gradually fuzzing out, so slowly and indistinctly that there's no single endpoint. Not until you get to the solo albums, anyway, and as he lifts and resleeves this particular one, he glances over at Giles.
Half-smile on his face, one arm slung over the back of the couch, glasses slid a little too far down his nose.
Oz gets a flash of what it's going to be like this time tomorrow night, lying alone on his narrow bed, hating himself, regretting everything. Wondering what Giles is doing. And it's only going to get worse the next day, and the day after that.
Which is why right now he can't afford to ponder the mysteries of analog or the intricacies of Lou's heroin addiction.
He settles next to Giles without putting on another record. Touches his far arm and lifts his shoulders, asking to climb into his lap. Close and held, and maybe a fraction of Giles's courage will seep into his skin or something.
"Love you," he whispers against Giles's neck and hates himself already.
There's something in Oz's voice, a quiet like the silence between the song and the empty groove, like the space between the last words and the bottom of the page. A finality.
I love you more, Giles thinks, half-lifting Oz onto his lap. Ethan used to say that to him, joking, his boy's face dressed in a knowing smile like black leather on a cherub. What a surprise for them both when it turned out to be true.
Giles picks up the manuscript book from the side table and pages through it, finding the things he wants to read out loud. The things he needs Oz to hear and remember him by. The wanwood leaves in Hopkins' "Spring and Fall"; Rat and Mole's riverside picnic; a Basho poem that's echoed in Giles' head for twenty years:
With dewdrops dripping I wish somehow I could wash This perishing world.
Oz is utterly still and silent, but Giles knows he's listening. Between fragments, Oz kisses him softly on the cheek or neck or ear, and that makes Giles remember the Catullus he almost talked himself out of including. He wrote down the Latin and the English both, because he wanted Oz to see it in the untouched original, but he reads the translation. When he gets to the lines about kissing-"Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred / Then another thousand, a second hundred / And yet another thousand, and a hundred"-Oz shifts and looks up at him. He's smiling so widely that Giles wants to kiss him right then, wants to drink the smile up and swallow it, but he waits until the end of the poem.
Sweet kisses, sweeter than ever, and Giles is drowning in honey-warmth. Drifting, tumbling, settling on the sea floor until they're both motionless, mouths joined.
Time ought to stop then, but it doesn't. And so, after a while, Giles pulls back just enough to say, "Will you play for me?"
Oz fixes the tilt of Giles's glasses, breathing slow and deep, ribbons and tassels of warmth spreading and braiding their way through him. Leaving his hand on Giles's cheek, smoothing his thumb down the crease that drops from his nose to his mouth.
"Okay," he says, and almost asks what Giles wants to hear. But Giles blinks rapidly, confused for a moment, and Oz has to smile again. "What? You look surprised."
Usually he takes a lot more convincing, but he doesn't want to waste any more time, especially not on his own retarded hang-ups. Giles opens his mouth, starts to say something, but Oz slides his fingers back through Giles's hair and kisses him again. Like an echo, not nearly as deep or sweet as the one they just shared, but paler and thinner.
He knows what he's going to play, and stretches his hands on his way over to his guitar case, already half-humming. With the strap slung over his neck and his fingers running through their warm-up chords, Oz pauses beside Giles, looking around, letting the moment settle into him. Like dust sifting, or rain blowing through a screen door, it's all soft and dispersed and temporary.
Finally, he decides to sit on the floor, facing Giles, looking up at him. Kind of looking up at him; Oz doesn't need much persuasion tonight, but he's always going to be shy playing in front of Giles.
His throat snags and his fingers catch on that little word. *Always*. More like never again, and he looks away, toward the stereo, squinting past the burn in his eyes as he starts to play. He coughs out the tension in his throat and looks back at Giles. Full-on, not nearly as scary as he thought it would be, and he even tries to sing.
"Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play -" Maybe it's a cheesy choice. Maybe Giles will laugh at him. But Oz loves this song. He learned to play guitar so he could play this song.
He's never understood why Oz is so reluctant to sing. True, his voice is uncertain, and it'll never be pretty, but Giles doesn't much like pretty voices anyway. For years he wished his own singing voice was deeper and rougher, more like Lou Reed's.
Such a sweet song, but Oz's voice scuffs it up a bit, brings out the longing. After the first few lines he seems to gain confidence; the slight quaver and strain go away and he's really singing now, without his usual shy suppression of melody. Giles closes his eyes and tries to slow time as he listens. Closes his eyes harder, because tears are stinging them. This is the least of the things to regret, that he won't hear Oz play anymore, won't ever hear the musician he's becoming, but Giles feels the loss like a layer of skin peeled away.
After the song ends, he has to keep his eyes closed for a little while and wait until the raw pain fades. "That was beautiful," he says finally. "Really. Thank you."
Oz smiles and starts to put the guitar back in its case, but Giles reaches for it. "May I?" His own guitar is only a few steps away, but he wants to play Oz's again, like he did last summer when they drove out to the mountains and he forgot to bring his own.
Oz hands it over, and Giles plays a few random chords, re-learning the feel of it. "You've heard me play this before," he says, smiling although his eyes are burning again. "But now it always makes me think of you, so . . ." His fingers feel ready, loose on the strings, and he starts the fast, tricky melody of "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."
As he listens, Oz has to hold himself very still, rationing breaths and blinks, because this is - this is almost too much. Giles holds his guitar, the side of his hand brushing the first Sweet J decal Oz ever drew, like it's a body. Like it's Oz, and it almost kind of is. And Giles's face is slightly downturned, so overlaying the sight in front of him is the memory, sharp-edged and bright, of Giles onstage at the Pump.
With every pause in his heartbeat, he sees the memory more clearly than the present; then the sights switch, and he sees Giles in front of him shaded by the memory. By the last verse, the one in the hospital, the one last kiss and the gift, Oz is holding himself tightly around the waist, bent nearly double, blinking wildly, not caring any more. He stays like that, craning his neck, watching and blinking, long past the moment when the last chord has reverberated into a hush.
Giles slides the guitar aside and Oz lurches forward, grabbing his hand, pulling himself until he's clinging to Giles's knees and rubbing his face against one of Giles's thighs.
"Saddest. Song. Ever," he manages to croak out and hauls himself up, moving the guitar out of the way and wrapping both arms, one leg, around Giles. "Thank you."
There's shaking down in Giles' bones, tiny little tremors like faultlines shifting, and he holds Oz tight and tries not to let any of it surface. When it comes it'll be devastating, off the Richter scale. Buildings shaken down to dust, cars crushed under pancaked freeways, the earth splitting into vast deep wounds. And he can't let Oz see that. Not when he can already feel Oz shaking, can taste salt in the corners of his eyes and ashes on his lips.
He scatters kisses over Oz's face, hundreds and thousands. Shores them both up with kisses, stilling the earth, holding back the sea. "I didn't mean to make you sad," he says. But it's a lie, because even as he kisses and rubs Oz's back and presses him closer, he wants Oz to break. Wants him to hurt, wants him to shatter and sob and need. Wants him to cling harder.
Wants to make leaving so painful that Oz can't do it.
The first time he kissed Giles, Oz was certain. Full of confidence, watching Giles's lips form the words of the lyrics, that he could lean in, continue the silent conversation with gesture and touch.
This time, a year later, he's done almost everything with Giles, seen every pore and mole and scar on his body, tasted each one, kissed him so many times that there are probably branches of higher math dedicated to counting that high. But he's scared now, and he's different and worried and Giles is shaking. *Giles* is shaking.
They're not even shaking in the same rhythm. Giles is sucking in his trembles, transmuting them into a vaguely jittery stillness. Oz feels like he's trapped in his own skin and he's flailing, fighting, to get out.
Maybe that's how the wolf feels all the time. Caged twice-over, skin and bars, growling and dripping spit.
Oz relaxes the bruising hold he has on Giles's neck and tries to rub away the pain. Giles is looking at him like he's a stranger, curious and new. He didn't even look at Oz like that when they first met.
Maybe Giles is thinking about the monster inside him, too, studying him, turning observation into text and facts.
"Sorry I freaked out," Oz eventually says and wraps one arm around his waist again. Like his guts are spilling out. "Sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry for," Giles says. "Nothing." Not yet, anyway. If Oz leaves, if that's what tomorrow is bringing, then Giles wants him to be sorry. If Oz leaves he should mourn and regret, he should cry himself sick, he should pine and lie sleepless, and then he should come back. Say sorry again, and stay.
Oz is hugging himself, rubbing his own skin like he's trying to strip it away, and his eyes are red-rimmed and too wide. Frightened, not quite rational. "Come here, don't do that, don't shut me out again." Giles pries his arms open and pulls his down, rocks him just a little. Rocks himself, too, because the shakes are still worming around inside him. It's comforting to hold Oz, to comfort him.
"I love you," he says. "Love you, love you, love you." Tries to make it sound gentle and soothing, not like the mad rant he hears in his mind. That's what he'll be tomorrow, a madman, rocking back and forth in a corner, holding empty air, whispering to a phantom.
"Yes," Oz says, his mouth on Giles's shoulder, wet and hushed - Jordy after a tantrum.
If he could dissolve his skin and melt over Giles, stay inside his embrace for the next several months, Oz might be okay. He doesn't want to have to breathe or move, doesn't want time to do anything but click off and go away and leave him alone.
"Not shutting you out -" he starts to say, but it takes too much to talk and breathe and think. To lie, because of course he has been, he's locking himself away from Giles, away from everything that makes him *feel*. And it's cold in here and even if it is for the best, that doesn't make it any easier. Makes it much worse, actually.
"Giles?" he asks, pulling back his head and searching Giles's face for - *something*. A clue about what to say, a hint of what Giles is feeling, an escape hatch from this. I have to go.
The look on Oz's face-determined and uncertain, the look of a climber sizing up a mountain-always means he's about to make himself talk. And normally Giles loves that, loves the bravery and honesty that Oz finds in himself. But tonight he doesn't think he wants Oz's honesty, doesn't want Oz setting foot on the mountain. There's no more love at the top, not this time. There's only loneliness and death.
He kisses Oz slowly, shallowly. No more honey, only bitterness and dust, but he keeps kissing. The silence is almost sweet, golden and syrupy-thick, not empty and echoing the way it will be after Oz leaves.
When he breaks the kiss Oz stays quiet, stays still. There are secrets in his eyes, secrets wrinkling his forehead and twisting his mouth, but they stay inside Oz. Giles has always wanted to know every secret; he could almost laugh.
"Oz, could we, could we just go to bed? I want to be in bed with you, holding you. Tomorrow-" the word almost chokes him, it's huge and foul and leaves a filthy tastes in his mouth. "Tomorrow we'll talk. Not now." He strokes the corner of Oz's mouth with his thumb, trying to rub the lines smooth, but he can't.
Meat is flesh and flesh is muscle and blood and blood is life. He wipes his mouth and nods, smiling as he watches Giles dig in. Impeccable table manners, of course, but real hunger there, and pleasure. It's how Giles does everything, with care and grace but also devotion, interest.
Thoughts of the butcher shop, of pigs' blood and vampires, need to be put away, and Oz turns his hand palm-up, touching Giles's arm before taking up his knife and slicing his beans. They do things differently - Giles keeps his fork in his left hand while Oz switches back and forth, Giles went to school for more years than Oz has been alive, Giles loves meat and organs and strange sausages while Oz really does think miso soup tastes good - but it ends up the same. Food gets eaten, things are learned, and the surface differences fade and blur.
That's all Oz wanted to say, all he meant about friendship. They can talk to each other, and they're talking now as they eat, about Snyder's short-lived hairpiece and the occupation of the West Bank and whether the Talking Heads went overboard on their world-music obsession, and that's something Oz hasn't ever known. Not really, not aside from Eric and Devon and now Willow, but that's different. Easier to talk to someone you have classes with, who you've seen almost every day since you were in diapers. It means something more to talk to Giles, to know he's being listened to, that Giles wants him to speak, think, analyze. Cares enough to share his own thoughts.
When Oz is full and Giles is finally slowing down, the rib bones are nearly bare, streaked with dark drying blood, not as white as the skeletons hung in the bio lab but actually kind of ivory, pitted and ugly.
He tries not to look at them, tries very hard not to think about limbs and bloodlust and animals. Looking at Giles helps. It always does; Oz can get lost in the lines of his face, more complex than any map, constantly shifting, leading new places. It doesn't help the worry that probably (definitely) after tomorrow, after he goes, friendship will be as dead and tasteless a thing as sawdust.
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Oz has left most of the meat on his plate, and is sitting a little to one side so that the bones aren't in his line of sight. "So much for my hopes that one bite of meat would convert you." Oz shakes his head and smiles, and then looks intently at the flowers. "Let's clear this away, shall we?" Giles says, picking up the platter and taking it into the kitchen, where he scrapes the bones into the trash. When Oz comes in with an armful of plates and silverware, he's looking a good deal happier.
Giles washes the dishes and Oz dries, so that Oz won't have to deal with grease and meat juices. Every pot and pan Giles owns seems to be dirty, and it takes a while. But when Oz is with him, Giles likes dishwashing even more than cooking. It doesn't require any thought, so they can talk. Somehow a discussion of the mayor's "Drug-Free Sunnydale" campaign turns into a debate over whether Titanic had any redeeming features. Giles tries not to think about how much he's going to miss this.
As Oz is reaching up into the cupboard to put away the last dish, Giles wraps his arms around his waist, kisses the nape of his neck and then, when Oz turns, his cheek. "Oz, it was lovely that you wanted to cook something I like. But you shouldn't do anything for my sake that upsets you. Anything that you don't like."
Giles only meant to talk about the meal; he didn't want these undertones creeping in, not now. Time enough later to dig up whatever's gone wrong and haul it into the light. "So, what shall we do with our evening?" he asks, hoping that this time Oz will choose something they both will enjoy.
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"Thanks," he says to the first part. "I know, but thanks. Never had lamb before, so I didn't know. If I liked it or not." Giles starts to smile and Oz smiles back. Cheeks flushed with food and wine, and it's easier to smile than it has been in weeks. "And the rest of the night? Thinking music. Thinking music, and guitars, and -"
He wriggles a little until Giles's hold loosens, then drops one hand to hoist himself up onto the counter. Much better: Eye level, and he parts his legs, pulls Giles in. Kisses him softly, tasting detergent-wine-meat on Giles's lips, and keeps it soft even as he winds his arm around Giles's shoulder and leans in closer. Doesn't ask or urge anything, just wants to feel that smile against his own skin and let another moment stretch and sway.
"And stuff. How's that?"
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"That sounds ideal. There's rather a lot of stuff I'd like to do with you, tonight." Three times is nothing at Oz's age; Giles can surely make him come once or twice more. His desperation to make Oz gasp and shout, to make him feel, is gone, though. He wants more kisses like this one, even softer and slower than the last, just the brush of lips like secrets whispered mouth to mouth. This is what they need now, speaking touches, intimate confidences of the body.
When the kiss trails off into silence, Giles rests his head on Oz's shoulder. "I like this," he says, tightening the embrace a little more. This close, all he can see is the texture of Oz's skin, tiny pores and close-shaven hairs. Oz is a whole landscape, a whole world. "It's rather like being on your lap."
Oz kisses the top of his head, and Giles recognizes one of his own gestures. It's strange and yet not. Giles is older than Oz, taller, heavier; standing, Oz can tuck his head under Giles' chin; sitting, he fits in Giles' lap. Yet that's only the body, only the literal. Nothing to do with the truth.
Giles wants to stay here, sheltered in Oz's arms and legs, but after a while Oz shifts his weight and lets his legs slide down Giles' hips. The countertop can't be a very comfortable seat. "Come on, then," Giles says, stepping back to let him get down. "Let's have some music."
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It hadn't worked, and as he unsleeves the LP and sets it on the turntable, he feels a little guilty. Always feels guilty when truancy and Giles come into contact, even the mental kind, but it's also not having shared this record with Giles yet. He could try and pretend that he'd been saving it for tonight, but a month ago, he would have driven straight from the store to Giles's apartment without even thinking about.
"Do you want something to drink?" he asks as he rises and the first few notes in Cale's melancholy baritone start to catch and melt.
Giles is on the couch, and before he can answer, Oz is next to him, one leg drawn up under him and his arm across Giles's chest. The cufflink catches the light and shines like a candle.
"On the other side, there's a song called 'In the Library of Force'," he says. "Would've bought it for that even if the singer was like Garth Brooks or something."
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He's never been much of a John Cale fan. The music's too bare and strange for his taste; it reminds him of the French films that Olivia used to drag him to, all jump cuts and tilted cameras but no story. No flesh on the bones, no feeling on the theory.
Still, Oz bought the album because a title reminded him of Giles. That's reason enough to love it. The music's not just a lot of odd tempos, it's Oz thinking of him, missing him, the way he used to.
Usually Giles pays attention to music, but he finds himself listening past Cale's voice and guitar, concentrating instead on the sound of Oz's breathing and the occasional rustle of cloth on skin when he moves. Those are the interesting things: Oz's sounds, the weight of his arm, the angles and hollows and shadows of his face.
"In the Library of Force" turns out to be interesting in its own right. As Giles listens, he thinks of literate monks fed by illiterate peasants, of Alexander reading Homer and dreaming of conquests. Of how vellum was made from skins, so that the first word was always death. Oz wasn't wrong, to see the title and think of him. Books and death: these are the things Giles knows. The things he's made of; whatever life is in him, he owes to Oz.
For a while after the record ends, neither of them gets up to shut it off. Listening to the hiss of the needle, touching Oz's hair, Giles remembers the other record, last year. All night they've been recapturing, repeating, coming full circle. Making an end.
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He doesn't know how the record holds sound.
Giles coughs behind him, and Oz realizes he's just been staring down at the spinning platter. Hypnotized. No one knows how or why the Velvets disbanded; no one can even agree on a date. Lou left sometime in 1970, but Sterling and Cale and Mo Tucker still hung out and performed for a couple years after that. Oz has always thought that the band ended just like one of their songs, just gradually fuzzing out, so slowly and indistinctly that there's no single endpoint. Not until you get to the solo albums, anyway, and as he lifts and resleeves this particular one, he glances over at Giles.
Half-smile on his face, one arm slung over the back of the couch, glasses slid a little too far down his nose.
Oz gets a flash of what it's going to be like this time tomorrow night, lying alone on his narrow bed, hating himself, regretting everything. Wondering what Giles is doing. And it's only going to get worse the next day, and the day after that.
Which is why right now he can't afford to ponder the mysteries of analog or the intricacies of Lou's heroin addiction.
He settles next to Giles without putting on another record. Touches his far arm and lifts his shoulders, asking to climb into his lap. Close and held, and maybe a fraction of Giles's courage will seep into his skin or something.
"Love you," he whispers against Giles's neck and hates himself already.
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I love you more, Giles thinks, half-lifting Oz onto his lap. Ethan used to say that to him, joking, his boy's face dressed in a knowing smile like black leather on a cherub. What a surprise for them both when it turned out to be true.
Giles picks up the manuscript book from the side table and pages through it, finding the things he wants to read out loud. The things he needs Oz to hear and remember him by. The wanwood leaves in Hopkins' "Spring and Fall"; Rat and Mole's riverside picnic; a Basho poem that's echoed in Giles' head for twenty years:
With dewdrops dripping
I wish somehow I could wash
This perishing world.
Oz is utterly still and silent, but Giles knows he's listening. Between fragments, Oz kisses him softly on the cheek or neck or ear, and that makes Giles remember the Catullus he almost talked himself out of including. He wrote down the Latin and the English both, because he wanted Oz to see it in the untouched original, but he reads the translation. When he gets to the lines about kissing-"Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred / Then another thousand, a second hundred / And yet another thousand, and a hundred"-Oz shifts and looks up at him. He's smiling so widely that Giles wants to kiss him right then, wants to drink the smile up and swallow it, but he waits until the end of the poem.
Sweet kisses, sweeter than ever, and Giles is drowning in honey-warmth. Drifting, tumbling, settling on the sea floor until they're both motionless, mouths joined.
Time ought to stop then, but it doesn't. And so, after a while, Giles pulls back just enough to say, "Will you play for me?"
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"Okay," he says, and almost asks what Giles wants to hear. But Giles blinks rapidly, confused for a moment, and Oz has to smile again. "What? You look surprised."
Usually he takes a lot more convincing, but he doesn't want to waste any more time, especially not on his own retarded hang-ups. Giles opens his mouth, starts to say something, but Oz slides his fingers back through Giles's hair and kisses him again. Like an echo, not nearly as deep or sweet as the one they just shared, but paler and thinner.
He knows what he's going to play, and stretches his hands on his way over to his guitar case, already half-humming. With the strap slung over his neck and his fingers running through their warm-up chords, Oz pauses beside Giles, looking around, letting the moment settle into him. Like dust sifting, or rain blowing through a screen door, it's all soft and dispersed and temporary.
Finally, he decides to sit on the floor, facing Giles, looking up at him. Kind of looking up at him; Oz doesn't need much persuasion tonight, but he's always going to be shy playing in front of Giles.
His throat snags and his fingers catch on that little word. *Always*. More like never again, and he looks away, toward the stereo, squinting past the burn in his eyes as he starts to play. He coughs out the tension in his throat and looks back at Giles. Full-on, not nearly as scary as he thought it would be, and he even tries to sing.
"Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play -" Maybe it's a cheesy choice. Maybe Giles will laugh at him. But Oz loves this song. He learned to play guitar so he could play this song.
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Such a sweet song, but Oz's voice scuffs it up a bit, brings out the longing. After the first few lines he seems to gain confidence; the slight quaver and strain go away and he's really singing now, without his usual shy suppression of melody. Giles closes his eyes and tries to slow time as he listens. Closes his eyes harder, because tears are stinging them. This is the least of the things to regret, that he won't hear Oz play anymore, won't ever hear the musician he's becoming, but Giles feels the loss like a layer of skin peeled away.
After the song ends, he has to keep his eyes closed for a little while and wait until the raw pain fades. "That was beautiful," he says finally. "Really. Thank you."
Oz smiles and starts to put the guitar back in its case, but Giles reaches for it. "May I?" His own guitar is only a few steps away, but he wants to play Oz's again, like he did last summer when they drove out to the mountains and he forgot to bring his own.
Oz hands it over, and Giles plays a few random chords, re-learning the feel of it. "You've heard me play this before," he says, smiling although his eyes are burning again. "But now it always makes me think of you, so . . ." His fingers feel ready, loose on the strings, and he starts the fast, tricky melody of "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."
He wishes it weren't quite such a sad song.
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With every pause in his heartbeat, he sees the memory more clearly than the present; then the sights switch, and he sees Giles in front of him shaded by the memory. By the last verse, the one in the hospital, the one last kiss and the gift, Oz is holding himself tightly around the waist, bent nearly double, blinking wildly, not caring any more. He stays like that, craning his neck, watching and blinking, long past the moment when the last chord has reverberated into a hush.
Giles slides the guitar aside and Oz lurches forward, grabbing his hand, pulling himself until he's clinging to Giles's knees and rubbing his face against one of Giles's thighs.
"Saddest. Song. Ever," he manages to croak out and hauls himself up, moving the guitar out of the way and wrapping both arms, one leg, around Giles. "Thank you."
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He scatters kisses over Oz's face, hundreds and thousands. Shores them both up with kisses, stilling the earth, holding back the sea. "I didn't mean to make you sad," he says. But it's a lie, because even as he kisses and rubs Oz's back and presses him closer, he wants Oz to break. Wants him to hurt, wants him to shatter and sob and need. Wants him to cling harder.
Wants to make leaving so painful that Oz can't do it.
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This time, a year later, he's done almost everything with Giles, seen every pore and mole and scar on his body, tasted each one, kissed him so many times that there are probably branches of higher math dedicated to counting that high. But he's scared now, and he's different and worried and Giles is shaking. *Giles* is shaking.
They're not even shaking in the same rhythm. Giles is sucking in his trembles, transmuting them into a vaguely jittery stillness. Oz feels like he's trapped in his own skin and he's flailing, fighting, to get out.
Maybe that's how the wolf feels all the time. Caged twice-over, skin and bars, growling and dripping spit.
Oz relaxes the bruising hold he has on Giles's neck and tries to rub away the pain. Giles is looking at him like he's a stranger, curious and new. He didn't even look at Oz like that when they first met.
Maybe Giles is thinking about the monster inside him, too, studying him, turning observation into text and facts.
"Sorry I freaked out," Oz eventually says and wraps one arm around his waist again. Like his guts are spilling out. "Sorry."
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Oz is hugging himself, rubbing his own skin like he's trying to strip it away, and his eyes are red-rimmed and too wide. Frightened, not quite rational. "Come here, don't do that, don't shut me out again." Giles pries his arms open and pulls his down, rocks him just a little. Rocks himself, too, because the shakes are still worming around inside him. It's comforting to hold Oz, to comfort him.
"I love you," he says. "Love you, love you, love you." Tries to make it sound gentle and soothing, not like the mad rant he hears in his mind. That's what he'll be tomorrow, a madman, rocking back and forth in a corner, holding empty air, whispering to a phantom.
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If he could dissolve his skin and melt over Giles, stay inside his embrace for the next several months, Oz might be okay. He doesn't want to have to breathe or move, doesn't want time to do anything but click off and go away and leave him alone.
"Not shutting you out -" he starts to say, but it takes too much to talk and breathe and think. To lie, because of course he has been, he's locking himself away from Giles, away from everything that makes him *feel*. And it's cold in here and even if it is for the best, that doesn't make it any easier. Makes it much worse, actually.
"Giles?" he asks, pulling back his head and searching Giles's face for - *something*. A clue about what to say, a hint of what Giles is feeling, an escape hatch from this. I have to go.
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He kisses Oz slowly, shallowly. No more honey, only bitterness and dust, but he keeps kissing. The silence is almost sweet, golden and syrupy-thick, not empty and echoing the way it will be after Oz leaves.
When he breaks the kiss Oz stays quiet, stays still. There are secrets in his eyes, secrets wrinkling his forehead and twisting his mouth, but they stay inside Oz. Giles has always wanted to know every secret; he could almost laugh.
"Oz, could we, could we just go to bed? I want to be in bed with you, holding you. Tomorrow-" the word almost chokes him, it's huge and foul and leaves a filthy tastes in his mouth. "Tomorrow we'll talk. Not now." He strokes the corner of Oz's mouth with his thumb, trying to rub the lines smooth, but he can't.
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