Giles hasn't been afraid in months. Not since the moment before Buffy dived off the tower, fell eighty feet and infinite dimensions, and died. He thought she took his fear with her. When his flight to London hit a storm, with wind rocking the 747 and lightning skittering and bursting along the wings, he felt nothing.
But when Oz sways and crumples, Giles is afraid. Fear repossesses him, jolts him awake, and for the first time since May, he's not tired. Only the hard grip of Oz's hand keeps him still, makes him sit and listen instead of trying to pick Oz up off the floor. And the touch doesn't freeze him, burn him; it doesn't even bruise. It's only skin, only flesh and bone, only Oz. Oz, who is shaking and thin as a junkie, whose pupils are wide in dull eyes that keep fluttering half-closed.
"I don’t hate you. I don't." It would be a lie, though, to say he never did. He's hated Oz, although never as much as he sometimes, unfairly, hated Willow. "I promise that I don't." The obvious thing, the kind and natural thing, is to lay his free hand over Oz's, and so Giles does. It feels right, once he does it. It feels natural, and that ought to make him more afraid, but instead it calms him.
He draws his palms lightly up the insides of Oz's arms, wondering if there are track marks hidden under the long sleeves. "Let's get you up off the floor, hmm?" When Giles stands, his head aches and his belly lurches and complains, but he manages to help Oz up and guide him over to the settee. Oz lies quietly, curled up in the too-small space, while Giles goes to the bedroom for a blanket to spread over him and then to the kitchen for another glass of water. Some whiskey might help to steady Oz, but Giles isn't sure and he doesn't want to risk it.
Oz sips at the water, lifting his head just enough to swallow and then settling wearily back down. "Oz, how long since you've had anything to eat?" Giles asks. He's sitting on the floor, holding the water glass and stroking Oz's greasy hair. "I've got nothing in the flat. Will you be all right for a few minutes on your own, while I go out to get some things?" The Curry House isn't open yet, and anyway, prawn vindaloo is probably not what Oz needs.
Giles will have to get up, find his coat and shoes and keys, then walk down the stairs, out the door, down the street to the little newsagent/grocer's shop. He'll have to buy things and carry them back. Just the thought makes him feel tired again, but Oz needs to eat.
Giles's hand in his hair is air and water and food, simple things you never think about until you're choking, drowning, starving. Oz tilts into the touch before he thinks about it, and then it's too late *not* to.
"Um. Had something in -" He was going to have a basket of chips on the ferry ride across the Channel, but it cost too much and he left the counter before he had to pay or got to eat. "Amsterdam. I think."
His eyes are closed, and it's not until he stops talking that Oz quite realizes this. Opening them, he sees Giles's face, lined and stubbled, the whorls of fingerprints and specks of dusting clouding the lenses of his glasses. He reaches over to touch the rim of the glasses and Giles doesn't move back.
"I can go and get something," Oz says, lifting the glasses off Giles's nose and sitting up a little so he can blow on the lenses and clean them on his shirt-hem. "You're not -."
He stops and hands the glasses, not all that much cleaner, back. Giles doesn't hate him. He said so, and it's been ten minutes since he looked quite so angry; either Oz is hallucinating or Giles is telling the truth. At any rate, he's on a soft piece of furniture, not rolling end over end down the stairs.
"I'll be good on my own. Or I can come with you. Whatever you want."
Giles's hand is on his shoulder now, big and curved. He hasn't touched anyone since he shook hands with Jorge. It feels weird, heavier than it should, and Oz's skin is dulled and aching. He doesn't want Giles to take his hand back.
Under Giles' hand, Oz's shoulder bones feel as smooth and fine as good porcelain, the kind that lets the light through. Giles always liked Oz's thinness, the neatness of his body, the comfortable lapful he made. Now, touching the twig-and-onionskin fragility of a boy who hasn't eaten since Amsterdam, the memory makes Giles want to turn his face away in shame.
The skin under Oz's eyes looks bruised and delicate as wet paper, and the only color in his face is the sore redness of windburn. Even if Giles were inclined to let him go out, he'd probably collapse in the street. "No, that's all right. Stay here and rest. You look done in." Giles isn't quite sure when he last ate either-sometime yesterday, he thinks-but at least he had the choice.
Oz looks embarrassed and starts to protest, but Giles shakes his head. "You're not going anywhere until you've had a meal." The words echo a little too loudly, full of significance Giles doesn't think he meant to give them, and he realizes he's still touching Oz. Touching him as though he has a right to, as though he still has a lover's freedom. He takes his hand off Oz's shoulder, closing his fingers around the memory of bones and warmth and soft cotton.
Before he leaves Giles forces down three paracetamol and a swig of that nasty pink stuff that's meant to soothe the stomach. His keys turn out to be in his coat pocket; his shoes are in the entryway, and there's a thin layer of dust on them. It's been a long time since he left the flat, perhaps two weeks.
Hand on the doorknob, he turns back to Oz and says something he knows is idiotic. "Don't . . . don't go anywhere, while I'm gone. Don't leave. Please."
He knows promises aren't worth anything, not coming from him, but he doesn't know how else to say it. He holds Giles's eyes, promising with everything he has, fingers squeezing the blanket as hard as he can, until Giles nods and opens the door. Leaves.
Everything Giles says might as well be you left. It all translates back to that, just like everything Oz says translates down to I'm sorry. But at least they're talking, at least he's still here, with a blanket that - he checks, presses his face into his folds - smells like Giles, and he's out of the rain and Giles hasn't kicked him out yet.
The whiskey is across the room, hunched and still.
Oz squirms against the settee's arm, turning on his back, and breathes in and out through a short cycle of the Padmasambhava mantras. Thirty-seven for the scholar and mage, and when he is finished, Oz can sit up without much dizziness.
He rolls his shoulders, Giles's touch still pressed there, warm and reassuring, and stands to retrieve his rucksack from the floor by the door. He has a drum for Giles, and the prayer bowl that he never had a chance to give him last time. Oz sits back down, pulling the blanket around his shoulders, holding his presents in his lap, and waits.
He's good at waiting.
You left. It could be a mantra of its own. You left. Come back. Sorry. Left. Back.
It's not until he steps out into the cold, drenching rain that Giles realizes he's forgotten his umbrella. Walking back up three flights for it hardly seems worthwhile. Getting wet will hardly make him look worse than he already does, and anyway, he expects he could do with a wash. The shock of it stops him from thinking, too. And he doesn't want to think about the feel of Oz's hair, or the way he cleaned Giles' glasses on the hem of his shirt, or whether he'll still be there when Giles gets back.
The shop is empty except for a bored teenage assistant with platinum-blond hair and a pierced eyebrow. She watches him constantly as he moves through the aisles, and it puzzles him until he catches a glimpse of himself in the glass doors of the refrigerated case. He looks like a homeless drunk, the sort who'd undoubtedly try to slip a packet of biscuits under his coat.
There isn't much in the way of fresh food, but Giles buys anything that seems remotely nutritious: apples, orange juice, tinned tomato soup, bread, butter, milk, bright-orange cheese that masquerades as Double Gloucester. Then he adds Hob-Nobs and every variety of chocolate bar the shop carries. Although he tries, he can't think of anything cutting to say to the surprised-looking assistant when he hands her a twenty-pound note.
The off-license is just down the next street, but his hands are already full of heavy bags, so he walks back to the flat. The rain plasters his hair to his face, dribbles into his eyes, and coats his spectacles until he's half-blind. He's already breathless before he even starts to climb the stairs, and he has to stop on the second-floor landing and sit down for a minute. His headache has faded, from the paracetamol or the fresh air, but his stomach still feels unsettled and slimy.
When he trudges back into the flat, exhausted and sore-armed, Oz is still there. At the sight of him, sitting awkwardly in the middle of the settee, the muscles in Giles' neck loosen and the last of his headache finally goes away. "Hello," he says. "It's not exactly nice food, but at least it's food." Feeling stupid again, he peels away his wet coat and tries to smile.
"Hey," Oz says and smiles back. His face doesn't quite work that way, his skin's too thick or something, so he ducks his head and fingers the presents on his lap. They weigh too much, and he's not sure what to do with them, not now, when he should be getting up and helping Giles with the bags.
"Have stuff for you -" He taps the center of the kuldrun, center of the four quadrants, where human beings are. Gets a reassuring thump back. "But let me help first?"
Leaning over to set the drum and the bowl on the floor takes his breath away and sends the black wasps back over his vision, but when he straightens back up, Giles is still there, soaked through and peering at Oz like he's about to fade away. Oz smiles again; it's early, too early to just smile at Giles, but he looks half-drowned and lost in his own house and Oz can't help it.
"Maybe you should dry off? I could set up some food. Here, kitchen, whatever."
An apple rolls out of one of the bags, chased by another, and Oz's mouth waters, springs full of spit, before he can help himself.
Through the droplets of water on Giles' glasses, Oz prisms and fragments into half a dozen skinny boys with shy smiles. Giles takes them off, and while he rubs them uselessly on his jumper, Oz is only a blur. That's a little easier: vagueness instead of multiplicity. It's a different uncertainty, softer and less urgent, easier to bear.
When Giles puts them back on, Oz is still blurry from water-film and the lingering oils of fingerprints. It's how he looks in Giles' memories. This could almost be a memory, except for the beads around Oz's wrist where the bracelets used to be, and the cool dullness of the London light. And except for Giles, four years older, infinitely more tired, with a man's blood on his hands. And Buffy dead.
"Yes, thank you," he says at last. "There's bread and cheese and things. Soup, as well. I thought you might want something hot." Blurrily, fending off memories, he helps Oz carry the bags into the kitchen and shows him how to turn on the cooker.
As Giles towels off and changes into dry clothes (clean clothes, thank God-he wonders how Oz can stand to be near him) he can just hear the familiar kitchen sounds, the clinks of pots and plates. For the first time since he's been back, the flat seems like home. And that's dangerous, deadly, because he'll only feel worse when Oz leaves.
The kitchen is brighter than he remembered, warmer, and the smell of tomato soup is almost enough to make him hungry. It's all Giles can do not to turn and go back to the bedroom. "Thank you," he says again. "You found bowls, good. There are a lot of things I haven't unpacked yet." Oz, with a tea-towel flung over his shoulder, is ladling out soup. He's so beautiful, so clear and sharp and solid, that Giles can hardly look at him.
Oz wants to ask how long Giles has been back; dust on the plates and glasses contradicts the lack of unpacking. The apartment smells lived-in, or existed-in, but hardly anything works and Giles moves around the edges of things as if he's not sure where they end. He's a little stooped, and grizzled, and sad. More handsome than ever, and Oz keeps looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Whenever Giles blinks, Oz stares for as long as he can.
He's eaten an apple and smushed two pieces of buttered bread together and eaten that, too, but the soup feels like the first real thing to hit his stomach in weeks. Hot and sweet and thick, and Oz closes his eyes for a second as he takes another sip.
Across the table, Giles is eating hungrily, too, eyes lowered, and Oz wants to ask another question. How long it's been for him; Giles is fleshier around the jaw, but if he has been eating, it hasn't been anything good.
All these pointless questions, all of them too rude, too prying to ask. So Oz passes the plate with bread and butter he softened over the burner and some slices of neonbright cheese. He holds the plate longer than he has to, just so Giles's fingers have to brush his own, and then he sighs at himself.
He didn't come here to cheat and steal touches.
"Thank you," he says. "For the food, and, like -"
He leaves his hand between them and takes a long sip of orange juice. It tastes better than anything he's ever had.
"Yeah." He puts the empty glass down and looks at his hand. He tried to scrub the grime from his cuticles before he cooked, but they're peeling and raw now. "Thanks."
At first Giles isn't sure he's going to be able to eat. Eating has been difficult, lately. The curries he orders lie heavy and acidic in his belly, and sometimes he gives up and eats plain rice instead. Every day his hung-over nausea lasts a bit longer.
The soup is good, though. The sweet-sharp warmth of it flows through him, almost like whiskey, but gentler. Giles eats the whole bowlful without feeling sick, and then most of a slice of bread. He's painfully grateful to Oz for going through the complicated process of opening, heating, serving-all the things that are far too difficult for Giles to manage, lately.
His fingers burn where they touched Oz's; he'd have liked to kiss Oz's hands and thank him for not leaving while he was at the shop. Instead he says, "You're welcome. Are you feeling better now? You frightened me, earlier." Then he reaches over and pours Oz another glass of orange juice.
Oz rolls up another piece of bread and takes two bites before using it to sop up the rest of the soup from the edges of his bowl. Giles's arm is right there, little curls of hair below his shirtcuff.
"Didn't mean to scare you -" he says and has some juice. It tastes a little different from the OJ at home, in California, whatever he wants to call it. Flatter, maybe, like the flavor lost something getting all the way to London. Like it bears the traces of distance. He loves it.
"Haven't really been around people, and then travel, and I didn't realize -"
Oz makes himself stop talking.
Giles has his hand curled around his own glass of juice and it occurs to Oz that they're eating the kind of food you give to children. Tomato soup, and juice, and bread. Like they're starting over at the real beginning.
He touches the side of Giles's hand, the knob of his thumb knuckle, and taps it like he did the drum. Testing things for response.
What speech is to most people, touch is to Oz. Simple, instinctive, and often casual. It can mean nothing more than hello, how are you, nice weather we're having. In the hallways and the library Oz was always touching people, always greeting with his hands.
That's what it is, Oz's hand on Giles'. A greeting, commonplace and meaningless. If it feels like a shout, a declaration, a poem, the error is in Giles, who touches no one casually.
Yes, I want more.
Over the last few months, Giles has almost forgotten he has hands. He's almost forgotten his body, except when it hurts. And now, with Oz's fingertips lying on his knuckles as lightly as angels on pin-heads, he remembers.
He's not sure he'll ever forgive Oz for this. Turning up on his doorstep, touching him, making him remember. Doing it all as though it means nothing, as though there's nothing to remember but hello and how are you.
"No," Giles says. "I'm all right. But you should have more, if you're hungry." The touch makes all his bones ache, but it will only be worse if he pulls away. So he doesn't.
If Oz eats anything else, he's bound to be sick very soon. He's pushing his luck as it is with the juice, depending on the thick, soft bread to absorb all the shock.
Giles is looking at his - their - hands, light sticking to his glasses' lenses. Head bent, inclined like one of the monks in a woodcut in the books they used to do research in. Still do research in, Oz is sure, just other people, other Watchers.
Skin fine as paper, soft and tearable, and Oz swallows drily, drawing his fingertips up to Giles's wrist. Fine, strong skin. Still here.
"Not gonna leave -" he says softly, leaning in, over, closer. Circling his fingers around the breadth of Giles's wrist, loosening Giles's hold on the glass. He turns Giles's palm to the light, soft plump pale skin, unhoused crabs and babies' feet, and all the bruises are on the inside.
"Giles?" he says, bringing that palm to his face, to his mouth, and when Giles looks at him, smeared cloudy eyes trying to comprehend, Oz kisses the center of his palm, start of everything. He tastes of smoke and rain and Giles.
"Here now. Sorry."
Giles's palm on his cheek now and Oz is ready to kneel again. Do anything.
"Don't. Don't." The kiss is still there in his palm, turned to bright, vivid memory the way terrible things always are. A kiss like water, like feathers, like steel wool, like a nail piercing the muscle and pushing apart the bones. Like Angelus' gentle voice and the sound of fingers breaking, like the dream kiss that emptied Giles and made him nothing.
When Giles woke to find Drusilla on his lap, he'd have let Angelus break all his bones to have that kiss back.
"I've told you before. I don't want your pity." His voice sounds calm, and his hand doesn't shake when he pulls it away. This is what Buffy's death has given Giles, this inner flatness, this gray fog that's almost peace. It doesn't take much to keep it. Half a bottle a night and sense enough not to answer the telephone.
He's not going to trade it away for a kiss. And that's all Oz will spare for him: a kiss, a night, a little pity. "Please. Please don't do this to me." There's a catch in his voice now, a pleading. It's lost already, his peace, his nothingness. He's given everything away, and now he's waking to agony and shattered bone.
Giles is unbearably strong. So strong that Oz can hardly believe, he never could, that he was capable of hurting Giles. He's nothing, stupid and thoughtless, and even the idea that he'd make Giles feel anything - happy, tortured, *anything* - has never been comprehensible to him.
"Don't pity you," Oz says. "Never did. Never were pitiful."
Shattered conversations and swallowed apologies and the tense line of Giles's jaw: No pity there, only agony, borne silently and strongly, and Oz would give anything to have a piece of that strength, to know how not to run away.
Giles jumps a little when Oz pulls his chair around the table's corner and leans in. Oz did this, made the first break, hurt him with the first few drops of water. Angelus, Buffy: They hurt later. Guilt enfolds Oz, always has, and he wasn't lying when he said he didn't want to hide.
Oz can't do this without touching. He rests his fingertips over Giles's and leans even closer, trying to see through the glasses, trying to see Giles.
"Don't want to hurt you. Don't want anything from you," he says, voice coming soup-slow and steadier than he would have expected. "Can't hide, Giles. Not from you. Won't leave until you tell me to."
After the dream kiss, after the endless walk out of Angelus' mansion, after the ambulance and the X-rays and the splinting of ten broken fingers, there were more dreams. Sedated and helpless, Giles floundered in dreams, drowned in them. He dreamed that Oz came and touched his bandaged hands, said love you and kissed him on the forehead. And he dreamed that it was a dream, that he was still lost in Drusilla's lying kiss, that Oz had never been there. But Oz was there. One of the nurses asked, later, if Giles had enjoyed his son's visit.
That was the last time Oz touched him.
All that summer, when Buffy was missing, Giles wished he had died. Sometimes remembering Oz's kiss made it worse. But sometimes it helped.
He's not a child. A kiss won't make this better, won't mend whatever's broken. Won't bring Buffy back. Won't be anything except a kiss.
He strokes a fingertip across Oz's knuckle, again and again, feeling the folded skin and the knobby bone. Strange, that it should matter so much that this is Oz's knuckle and no one else's. That a centimeter of flesh could open him, hollow out what he thought was empty, turn him to vacuum and lack. Break his peace.
"Oz," he says, eyes still closed. "Four years. And now you . . . I don't know what to think. If you want to start again . . ." It's too easy, too cowardly, saying this in the dark to no one; he opens his eyes. He can't quite look Oz in the face, but his eyes are open. "Yes. But not if you're trying to help me."
If Oz is doing this out of pity, Giles hopes he has the decency to lie. Because if Oz goes now, there'll be no peace and no mending.
When he was with Giles, whether he was walking home alone with his arms folded over his chest, or sleeping next to him, or kicking water at him at the beach, Oz didn't have words for how he felt. It took ages to drag love from his mouth, not from reluctance but because he just didn't know.
And that's when he was a better person. Now, now he really doesn't know how to speak, what to say.
"I -"
Four years, and Giles doesn't want his help, but does want something. He can give Giles something, maybe, finally, something that's not just sorry.
Oz turns his hand, brushes the side of his thumb over Giles's palm. Skin rubbed smooth from effort and living, lined and pure.
"Came to be with you. Couldn't be back - there. Home, Sunnydale, whatever. My fault, not you. Me, my fault -"
There's no sense, not in his words, not in his thoughts. Looking at Giles now, the white clouds are back, swelling in the back of Oz's head, creeping around the corners of his vision. He's carried them with him for four years, felt them creeping and ebbing under his skin. Fear and pain joining the wolf, feeding it, nourishing it. Oz hasn't eaten since he left Giles; he's drunk, he's chewed food, never tasting it. But now, now, Giles is almost looking at him, almost listening, not shutting down, now and it's not too late.
"You," Oz says again. Speaking through static and cold arid winds that want to down him. "Me. Not pity, not Buffy. Want you -"
His hand has slid up Giles's arm, to his elbow, sharp point of bone under nubbly cotton. He can't stop leaning in, touching, asking. When Lilin gave him the news, it was Giles he wanted, thought of, needed.
But when Oz sways and crumples, Giles is afraid. Fear repossesses him, jolts him awake, and for the first time since May, he's not tired. Only the hard grip of Oz's hand keeps him still, makes him sit and listen instead of trying to pick Oz up off the floor. And the touch doesn't freeze him, burn him; it doesn't even bruise. It's only skin, only flesh and bone, only Oz. Oz, who is shaking and thin as a junkie, whose pupils are wide in dull eyes that keep fluttering half-closed.
"I don’t hate you. I don't." It would be a lie, though, to say he never did. He's hated Oz, although never as much as he sometimes, unfairly, hated Willow. "I promise that I don't." The obvious thing, the kind and natural thing, is to lay his free hand over Oz's, and so Giles does. It feels right, once he does it. It feels natural, and that ought to make him more afraid, but instead it calms him.
He draws his palms lightly up the insides of Oz's arms, wondering if there are track marks hidden under the long sleeves. "Let's get you up off the floor, hmm?" When Giles stands, his head aches and his belly lurches and complains, but he manages to help Oz up and guide him over to the settee. Oz lies quietly, curled up in the too-small space, while Giles goes to the bedroom for a blanket to spread over him and then to the kitchen for another glass of water. Some whiskey might help to steady Oz, but Giles isn't sure and he doesn't want to risk it.
Oz sips at the water, lifting his head just enough to swallow and then settling wearily back down. "Oz, how long since you've had anything to eat?" Giles asks. He's sitting on the floor, holding the water glass and stroking Oz's greasy hair. "I've got nothing in the flat. Will you be all right for a few minutes on your own, while I go out to get some things?" The Curry House isn't open yet, and anyway, prawn vindaloo is probably not what Oz needs.
Giles will have to get up, find his coat and shoes and keys, then walk down the stairs, out the door, down the street to the little newsagent/grocer's shop. He'll have to buy things and carry them back. Just the thought makes him feel tired again, but Oz needs to eat.
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"Um. Had something in -" He was going to have a basket of chips on the ferry ride across the Channel, but it cost too much and he left the counter before he had to pay or got to eat. "Amsterdam. I think."
His eyes are closed, and it's not until he stops talking that Oz quite realizes this. Opening them, he sees Giles's face, lined and stubbled, the whorls of fingerprints and specks of dusting clouding the lenses of his glasses. He reaches over to touch the rim of the glasses and Giles doesn't move back.
"I can go and get something," Oz says, lifting the glasses off Giles's nose and sitting up a little so he can blow on the lenses and clean them on his shirt-hem. "You're not -."
He stops and hands the glasses, not all that much cleaner, back. Giles doesn't hate him. He said so, and it's been ten minutes since he looked quite so angry; either Oz is hallucinating or Giles is telling the truth. At any rate, he's on a soft piece of furniture, not rolling end over end down the stairs.
"I'll be good on my own. Or I can come with you. Whatever you want."
Giles's hand is on his shoulder now, big and curved. He hasn't touched anyone since he shook hands with Jorge. It feels weird, heavier than it should, and Oz's skin is dulled and aching. He doesn't want Giles to take his hand back.
"Sorry?"
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The skin under Oz's eyes looks bruised and delicate as wet paper, and the only color in his face is the sore redness of windburn. Even if Giles were inclined to let him go out, he'd probably collapse in the street. "No, that's all right. Stay here and rest. You look done in." Giles isn't quite sure when he last ate either-sometime yesterday, he thinks-but at least he had the choice.
Oz looks embarrassed and starts to protest, but Giles shakes his head. "You're not going anywhere until you've had a meal." The words echo a little too loudly, full of significance Giles doesn't think he meant to give them, and he realizes he's still touching Oz. Touching him as though he has a right to, as though he still has a lover's freedom. He takes his hand off Oz's shoulder, closing his fingers around the memory of bones and warmth and soft cotton.
Before he leaves Giles forces down three paracetamol and a swig of that nasty pink stuff that's meant to soothe the stomach. His keys turn out to be in his coat pocket; his shoes are in the entryway, and there's a thin layer of dust on them. It's been a long time since he left the flat, perhaps two weeks.
Hand on the doorknob, he turns back to Oz and says something he knows is idiotic. "Don't . . . don't go anywhere, while I'm gone. Don't leave. Please."
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He knows promises aren't worth anything, not coming from him, but he doesn't know how else to say it. He holds Giles's eyes, promising with everything he has, fingers squeezing the blanket as hard as he can, until Giles nods and opens the door. Leaves.
Everything Giles says might as well be you left. It all translates back to that, just like everything Oz says translates down to I'm sorry. But at least they're talking, at least he's still here, with a blanket that - he checks, presses his face into his folds - smells like Giles, and he's out of the rain and Giles hasn't kicked him out yet.
The whiskey is across the room, hunched and still.
Oz squirms against the settee's arm, turning on his back, and breathes in and out through a short cycle of the Padmasambhava mantras. Thirty-seven for the scholar and mage, and when he is finished, Oz can sit up without much dizziness.
He rolls his shoulders, Giles's touch still pressed there, warm and reassuring, and stands to retrieve his rucksack from the floor by the door. He has a drum for Giles, and the prayer bowl that he never had a chance to give him last time. Oz sits back down, pulling the blanket around his shoulders, holding his presents in his lap, and waits.
He's good at waiting.
You left. It could be a mantra of its own. You left. Come back. Sorry. Left. Back.
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The shop is empty except for a bored teenage assistant with platinum-blond hair and a pierced eyebrow. She watches him constantly as he moves through the aisles, and it puzzles him until he catches a glimpse of himself in the glass doors of the refrigerated case. He looks like a homeless drunk, the sort who'd undoubtedly try to slip a packet of biscuits under his coat.
There isn't much in the way of fresh food, but Giles buys anything that seems remotely nutritious: apples, orange juice, tinned tomato soup, bread, butter, milk, bright-orange cheese that masquerades as Double Gloucester. Then he adds Hob-Nobs and every variety of chocolate bar the shop carries. Although he tries, he can't think of anything cutting to say to the surprised-looking assistant when he hands her a twenty-pound note.
The off-license is just down the next street, but his hands are already full of heavy bags, so he walks back to the flat. The rain plasters his hair to his face, dribbles into his eyes, and coats his spectacles until he's half-blind. He's already breathless before he even starts to climb the stairs, and he has to stop on the second-floor landing and sit down for a minute. His headache has faded, from the paracetamol or the fresh air, but his stomach still feels unsettled and slimy.
When he trudges back into the flat, exhausted and sore-armed, Oz is still there. At the sight of him, sitting awkwardly in the middle of the settee, the muscles in Giles' neck loosen and the last of his headache finally goes away. "Hello," he says. "It's not exactly nice food, but at least it's food." Feeling stupid again, he peels away his wet coat and tries to smile.
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"Have stuff for you -" He taps the center of the kuldrun, center of the four quadrants, where human beings are. Gets a reassuring thump back. "But let me help first?"
Leaning over to set the drum and the bowl on the floor takes his breath away and sends the black wasps back over his vision, but when he straightens back up, Giles is still there, soaked through and peering at Oz like he's about to fade away. Oz smiles again; it's early, too early to just smile at Giles, but he looks half-drowned and lost in his own house and Oz can't help it.
"Maybe you should dry off? I could set up some food. Here, kitchen, whatever."
An apple rolls out of one of the bags, chased by another, and Oz's mouth waters, springs full of spit, before he can help himself.
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When Giles puts them back on, Oz is still blurry from water-film and the lingering oils of fingerprints. It's how he looks in Giles' memories. This could almost be a memory, except for the beads around Oz's wrist where the bracelets used to be, and the cool dullness of the London light. And except for Giles, four years older, infinitely more tired, with a man's blood on his hands. And Buffy dead.
"Yes, thank you," he says at last. "There's bread and cheese and things. Soup, as well. I thought you might want something hot." Blurrily, fending off memories, he helps Oz carry the bags into the kitchen and shows him how to turn on the cooker.
As Giles towels off and changes into dry clothes (clean clothes, thank God-he wonders how Oz can stand to be near him) he can just hear the familiar kitchen sounds, the clinks of pots and plates. For the first time since he's been back, the flat seems like home. And that's dangerous, deadly, because he'll only feel worse when Oz leaves.
The kitchen is brighter than he remembered, warmer, and the smell of tomato soup is almost enough to make him hungry. It's all Giles can do not to turn and go back to the bedroom. "Thank you," he says again. "You found bowls, good. There are a lot of things I haven't unpacked yet." Oz, with a tea-towel flung over his shoulder, is ladling out soup. He's so beautiful, so clear and sharp and solid, that Giles can hardly look at him.
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He's eaten an apple and smushed two pieces of buttered bread together and eaten that, too, but the soup feels like the first real thing to hit his stomach in weeks. Hot and sweet and thick, and Oz closes his eyes for a second as he takes another sip.
Across the table, Giles is eating hungrily, too, eyes lowered, and Oz wants to ask another question. How long it's been for him; Giles is fleshier around the jaw, but if he has been eating, it hasn't been anything good.
All these pointless questions, all of them too rude, too prying to ask. So Oz passes the plate with bread and butter he softened over the burner and some slices of neonbright cheese. He holds the plate longer than he has to, just so Giles's fingers have to brush his own, and then he sighs at himself.
He didn't come here to cheat and steal touches.
"Thank you," he says. "For the food, and, like -"
He leaves his hand between them and takes a long sip of orange juice. It tastes better than anything he's ever had.
"Yeah." He puts the empty glass down and looks at his hand. He tried to scrub the grime from his cuticles before he cooked, but they're peeling and raw now. "Thanks."
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The soup is good, though. The sweet-sharp warmth of it flows through him, almost like whiskey, but gentler. Giles eats the whole bowlful without feeling sick, and then most of a slice of bread. He's painfully grateful to Oz for going through the complicated process of opening, heating, serving-all the things that are far too difficult for Giles to manage, lately.
His fingers burn where they touched Oz's; he'd have liked to kiss Oz's hands and thank him for not leaving while he was at the shop. Instead he says, "You're welcome. Are you feeling better now? You frightened me, earlier." Then he reaches over and pours Oz another glass of orange juice.
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Oz rolls up another piece of bread and takes two bites before using it to sop up the rest of the soup from the edges of his bowl. Giles's arm is right there, little curls of hair below his shirtcuff.
"Didn't mean to scare you -" he says and has some juice. It tastes a little different from the OJ at home, in California, whatever he wants to call it. Flatter, maybe, like the flavor lost something getting all the way to London. Like it bears the traces of distance. He loves it.
"Haven't really been around people, and then travel, and I didn't realize -"
Oz makes himself stop talking.
Giles has his hand curled around his own glass of juice and it occurs to Oz that they're eating the kind of food you give to children. Tomato soup, and juice, and bread. Like they're starting over at the real beginning.
He touches the side of Giles's hand, the knob of his thumb knuckle, and taps it like he did the drum. Testing things for response.
"Do you want some more?"
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That's what it is, Oz's hand on Giles'. A greeting, commonplace and meaningless. If it feels like a shout, a declaration, a poem, the error is in Giles, who touches no one casually.
Yes, I want more.
Over the last few months, Giles has almost forgotten he has hands. He's almost forgotten his body, except when it hurts. And now, with Oz's fingertips lying on his knuckles as lightly as angels on pin-heads, he remembers.
He's not sure he'll ever forgive Oz for this. Turning up on his doorstep, touching him, making him remember. Doing it all as though it means nothing, as though there's nothing to remember but hello and how are you.
"No," Giles says. "I'm all right. But you should have more, if you're hungry." The touch makes all his bones ache, but it will only be worse if he pulls away. So he doesn't.
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Giles is looking at his - their - hands, light sticking to his glasses' lenses. Head bent, inclined like one of the monks in a woodcut in the books they used to do research in. Still do research in, Oz is sure, just other people, other Watchers.
Skin fine as paper, soft and tearable, and Oz swallows drily, drawing his fingertips up to Giles's wrist. Fine, strong skin. Still here.
"Not gonna leave -" he says softly, leaning in, over, closer. Circling his fingers around the breadth of Giles's wrist, loosening Giles's hold on the glass. He turns Giles's palm to the light, soft plump pale skin, unhoused crabs and babies' feet, and all the bruises are on the inside.
"Giles?" he says, bringing that palm to his face, to his mouth, and when Giles looks at him, smeared cloudy eyes trying to comprehend, Oz kisses the center of his palm, start of everything. He tastes of smoke and rain and Giles.
"Here now. Sorry."
Giles's palm on his cheek now and Oz is ready to kneel again. Do anything.
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When Giles woke to find Drusilla on his lap, he'd have let Angelus break all his bones to have that kiss back.
"I've told you before. I don't want your pity." His voice sounds calm, and his hand doesn't shake when he pulls it away. This is what Buffy's death has given Giles, this inner flatness, this gray fog that's almost peace. It doesn't take much to keep it. Half a bottle a night and sense enough not to answer the telephone.
He's not going to trade it away for a kiss. And that's all Oz will spare for him: a kiss, a night, a little pity. "Please. Please don't do this to me." There's a catch in his voice now, a pleading. It's lost already, his peace, his nothingness. He's given everything away, and now he's waking to agony and shattered bone.
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"Don't pity you," Oz says. "Never did. Never were pitiful."
Shattered conversations and swallowed apologies and the tense line of Giles's jaw: No pity there, only agony, borne silently and strongly, and Oz would give anything to have a piece of that strength, to know how not to run away.
Giles jumps a little when Oz pulls his chair around the table's corner and leans in. Oz did this, made the first break, hurt him with the first few drops of water. Angelus, Buffy: They hurt later. Guilt enfolds Oz, always has, and he wasn't lying when he said he didn't want to hide.
Oz can't do this without touching. He rests his fingertips over Giles's and leans even closer, trying to see through the glasses, trying to see Giles.
"Don't want to hurt you. Don't want anything from you," he says, voice coming soup-slow and steadier than he would have expected. "Can't hide, Giles. Not from you. Won't leave until you tell me to."
Giles's eyes are closed, his fingers cold.
"Never pitied you. Never. Let me help. Please?"
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That was the last time Oz touched him.
All that summer, when Buffy was missing, Giles wished he had died. Sometimes remembering Oz's kiss made it worse. But sometimes it helped.
He's not a child. A kiss won't make this better, won't mend whatever's broken. Won't bring Buffy back. Won't be anything except a kiss.
He strokes a fingertip across Oz's knuckle, again and again, feeling the folded skin and the knobby bone. Strange, that it should matter so much that this is Oz's knuckle and no one else's. That a centimeter of flesh could open him, hollow out what he thought was empty, turn him to vacuum and lack. Break his peace.
"Oz," he says, eyes still closed. "Four years. And now you . . . I don't know what to think. If you want to start again . . ." It's too easy, too cowardly, saying this in the dark to no one; he opens his eyes. He can't quite look Oz in the face, but his eyes are open. "Yes. But not if you're trying to help me."
If Oz is doing this out of pity, Giles hopes he has the decency to lie. Because if Oz goes now, there'll be no peace and no mending.
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And that's when he was a better person. Now, now he really doesn't know how to speak, what to say.
"I -"
Four years, and Giles doesn't want his help, but does want something. He can give Giles something, maybe, finally, something that's not just sorry.
Oz turns his hand, brushes the side of his thumb over Giles's palm. Skin rubbed smooth from effort and living, lined and pure.
"Came to be with you. Couldn't be back - there. Home, Sunnydale, whatever. My fault, not you. Me, my fault -"
There's no sense, not in his words, not in his thoughts. Looking at Giles now, the white clouds are back, swelling in the back of Oz's head, creeping around the corners of his vision. He's carried them with him for four years, felt them creeping and ebbing under his skin. Fear and pain joining the wolf, feeding it, nourishing it. Oz hasn't eaten since he left Giles; he's drunk, he's chewed food, never tasting it. But now, now, Giles is almost looking at him, almost listening, not shutting down, now and it's not too late.
"You," Oz says again. Speaking through static and cold arid winds that want to down him. "Me. Not pity, not Buffy. Want you -"
His hand has slid up Giles's arm, to his elbow, sharp point of bone under nubbly cotton. He can't stop leaning in, touching, asking. When Lilin gave him the news, it was Giles he wanted, thought of, needed.
"Please?"
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