Olivia lets several minicabs go by. "After what happened earlier, I think I want a cabdriver who's possibly looked at a map of London once or twice." A black taxi passes by, already taken, and then a free one pulls over for her. "It was lovely to see you, Rupert," she says, hugging Giles tightly. "And I'm pleased for you," she adds in a whisper. "I like him, and you seem . . . so much happier."
Giles nods and kisses her on the cheek. "I am." He's not always happy, not when grief can still fall on him like a sudden storm, unexpected and drenching. But he's happier. "Oh, before I forget, once the flat's ready, we'd like you and-" it takes him a moment to dredge up the name of her boyfriend, although she's been dating him for months "-and Peter to come round for dinner. I'll ring you."
"Good. I'm desperate to see the result of all this painting and moving things about." The taxi driver guns the engine impatiently, and Olivia lets Giles go and gets in. "Goodbye, Oz," she says before shutting the door. "I hope to see you again soon."
"You will," Oz answers, slipping an arm around Giles' waist. As the taxi pulls away, Giles thinks of asking him what that was about, but he can make a fairly good guess. Doing the best friend thing, Oz called it. It's funny to think how furious Olivia used to be when he'd offer a friendly warning to one of her boyfriends.
Giles draws Oz back, away from the street, and kisses him the way he's been wanting to for the past hour and a half. "It's all right," he says, feeling the slight tension in Oz's posture. "We'd have to do a lot more than this to be conspicuous in Soho." Oz laughs, relaxes, and Giles takes his hand and sets off towards Dean Street.
The film doesn't start for another hour, and Giles is happy to meander, look in shop windows, and tell Oz tidbits about the area's history-how French resistance leaders used to congregate in that bar during the second world war, how the gangsters and the sex trade came in during the 1960s, how pubs and clubs and restaurants have blossomed here since the mad money years of the 1980s. Oz, who for once seems comfortable despite the crowds, keeps pausing to look down sidestreets and craning his neck to watch people go past.
Giles steals long, covert glances at Oz, beautiful in the dark gray coat that Giles is sure he only picked because it was cheap. But the color shows off his pale skin and his bright hair, so perhaps it wasn't a bad choice after all. In the day's pearly, indirect light, Oz's eyes are a transparent silvery-green, like the undersides of linden leaves. If he could, Giles would just sit and stare at him for hours, days, tracking light and shadow across his face the ways the Impressionists did with haystacks and cathedrals. Oz gets shy when he's watched, though, even for a minute or two.
When Oz stops suddenly in front of a record-shop doorway, Giles nearly bumps into him. It's a moment before he notices where they are, and then he squeezes Oz's hand and grins at the memories. "Oh, I haven't been here in years. They sell real records on real vinyl. Do you want to go in?"
Nodding, Oz pulls the heavy door, clotted with decades' worth of fliers and posters, layered and peeling, and steps inside. The shop smells just right - vinyl and old cardboard - and looks perfect, creaky wooden shelves loaded with albums, looming over even Giles's head, and mazes of narrow aisles between bins of cassettes and CDs. Giles follows him, hand on the small of his back; Oz feels a bit like the native guide he never got to be, leading the white man into the wilderness.
Which is weird, he thinks, going up on tiptoe to scan the import shelves, since this is *Giles's* place, not his. They have a pretty mindblowing selection of Japanese and American imports, some albums he's never heard of, until he checks the release dates on a few. And remembers he has been away for a year and a half. It's not like Calvin Johnson and Ira Kaplan were the ones who ran away to Patagonia; they kept working.
"Giles?" he asks, having reached up and up and still only having grazed the next shelf with his fingertips. "Can you -" Giles straightens from his crouch over a bin of psychedelic albums - Pink Floyd? Really? - and joins him. "The blue one. Le Tigre?"
In the dusty, cavernous shop, far taller than it is wide, Giles looks perfectly at home. *This* is another one of his libraries, and Oz watches him reach easily and retrieve the album, a little twist to the waist and squint of his eyes. He rests his hand on Oz's shoulder, looking at the back of the album.
"Looks interesting, huh?" Oz asks and Giles nods. A neutral nod, the one he gives when Oz suggests spinach salad for dinner instead of meat. Grinning, checking the tracklisting, he mutters, "it *could* be interesting."
Giles cuffs his elbow and bends over the bin behind them. Oz cradles the album in his hands, savoring its heft and breadth. He doesn't particularly want *this* one, but it feels good to hold an album, any album, again. Plus, he's kind of stuck with it now, since the shop's not interested in serving the shorter segment of the population.
"All ready?" Giles asks a few minutes later and Oz slides the album onto the nearest shelf.
"I'm good. You?" Giles seems slightly embarrassed as he shows Oz the live bootleg of Richard Thompson in Munich, but Oz doesn't know why. Money-thing, probably; Giles doesn't want to get something if Oz won't. "Cool. I was thinking this -" He retrieves a red American pressing of Yo La Tengo he considered earlier and follows Giles to the counter.
Outside, it's still not raining, which Oz is pretty sure must be some kind of record for London, although Giles fake-scowls and shakes his head in mock exasperation when Oz says this. "What, you get to complain about California's constant sunshine but I can't poke fun at the weather? Which, actually, I kind of like?"
He feels - giddy's not quite the word. Not that hyper, but definitely slightly carbonated and light in his shoes. Happy. Hand in hand, they walk a couple more blocks south and find the theater right on the next corner. The bright-blue marquee floats just above the sidewalk and Oz squints, but can't detect any evidence of the porn theater Giles swears it used to be.
At the box-office, Oz steps deliberately in front of Giles and takes out his wallet. "I've got it," he says, and digs out his last five-pound note and a two-pound coin. It's the last of the money he arrived in London with; he has a couple ten-pound notes Giles gave him yesterday, but he wants to do this.
"Happy birthday. Again." He hands Giles his ticket and kisses his cheek. Again. He likes the repetition; like memorizing verb endings in Spanish class, it's all about the repetition to make it real.
"Thank you." Again, Giles adds mentally as they walk through the lobby, which has been transformed since his last visit into a glittery, red-velvet-and-chrome bar. Oz has said happy birthday half a dozen times since they awoke, as though he's afraid Giles will forget if not reminded. And of course he's right. Left to himself, Giles drifts into sorrow like an unmoored boat; Oz is simply keeping him tied to the day, to happiness and celebration.
Oz heads towards the double doors, but Giles tugs him back. "Let's go up to the balcony instead." Something in Oz's face shifts fractionally, his eyes widen and his mouth re-forms into a soft and predatory smile whose heat Giles can feel on his own mouth, and then on his whole skin. "I don't think I meant it like that," he manages to say, but Oz is already bounding up the stairs and dragging him after.
He's been to theaters converted to music venues that had balconies, but Oz has never been to a theater that was still a theater with a balcony before. He pauses at the top, teetering on his toes, scanning the dark, empty space in front of him until Giles joins him.
"So very cool," Oz whispers. Big buildings - church, museum, theater - always make him whisper. He's torn between taking the very first row with its high, protective railing, so he can float over the rest of the theater, and taking advantage of the balcony's total dark and quiet.
"Middle part okay?" he asks and Giles just squeezes his shoulder. Oz takes that as an assent and picks his way to the middle of the middle row. He sits almost sideways in the plush seat, hoping it's new since the porn days, so his head rests against Giles's shoulder. Slides for local art exhibits and health-food stores occupy the screen, so Oz looks upward. In the dim, Giles's jaw is bright and sharp, but his eyes look blurred and distant.
No one's here, and Giles *did* say it was Soho, like Soho's the magic word for comfort and freedom, so Oz reaches across his chest and, curling his hand around Giles's neck, pulls his head down into a kiss. Longer than their kiss on the curb, it's warm and relieved; Giles's mouth presses against his and Oz twists and pushes upward, pours himself forward and up.
"Like it up here -" His voice is rougher, but softer, and he can see the light from the screen curve over Giles's eyes. He remembers like a series of scars all the things they used to wish they could do, and Oz smiles, bumping his forehead against Giles's cheek. "Hey, two wishes down - restaurant and movie. We're doing well."
One thing Giles learned in Sunnydale is that it's always the wrong wishes that come true. Wishes for safety, quiet, love dissipate into the ether like the wasted breath they are, while vengeful wishes fall on attentive ears. Anya used to talk incessantly about her vengeances, about the over 8000 cases of leprosy she'd stricken men with and the countless thousands of pricks she'd caused to drop off. She was convinced they were funny stories, and never noticed her audience flinching.
The wishes that come true are the wishes like Cordelia's, that come trailing death and nightmare. Anya only told that story once, and Giles still wishes she hadn't.
Giles tilts his head down and breathes in the scent of Oz's hair, warm skin overlaid with shampoo and gel. "The third wish, if I recall, was to kiss you in the school hallway. We're a bit too late for that, but kissing you in a London cinema ought to count, I think." Oz seems to agree, because he tugs Giles forward until he's half-lying on the armrest and kisses him again, and doesn't stop until they hear footsteps on the balcony stairs.
These wishes, kissing Oz, living with him in London where they're safe and free, these wishes don't come true. There's no possible world in which Giles is sitting in this slowly-filling cinema with his arm around Oz's shoulders and the taste of Oz's kiss lingering in his mouth.
As the lights go down and the first advertisement begins, Giles brushes his lips to Oz's temple and says, "Three out of three." They're a long, long way from the hellmouth, and perhaps it's time to start forgetting some of what he learned in Sunnydale.
Oz settles in the corner of his seat, arm crossed over his chest and fingers closed around Giles's wrist. He feels safe, and he's not sure why that's so important, here at the movies with the audience's coughing and rustling the only dangers, and those just to his concentration. Not that he has to concentrate all that intently - it's comforting, too, hearing Spanish spoken after several weeks of hearing only English (in English accents, to boot), and even if Mexican Spanish is faster and choppier than what he grew used to in the mountains, it's close enough (and sounds a bit like Telemundo back in Sunnydale).
The movie is stunningly bright, reds and yellows chlorine blues and the dark eyes of the boys, and Oz drifts a little, as if his eyes are in the movie but most of him is elsewhere. Elsewhere, savoring the quiet closeness of Giles next to him, relishing the calm with which Giles's breathing is going, and Oz can't help but shiver.
It hasn't even been that long, just three days, since the fragile calm they'd started to enjoy froze like Giles's face when the news broke. Everything went hard and cold, trapped under perfect ice, and it was after only a couple minutes of watching black smoke-silver towers-red fire and people falling like bits of ash that Giles booked for the bathroom. And vomit was green and brown on porcelain Oz had scrubbed the day before and time slid like snakes under ice, breeding in the cold, and Giles shook and Oz held on and it must have been hours and hours before everything came out, everything in New York and everything in Giles's memory. Oz still doesn't know which is more horrific, and thinks that there are incommensurable horrors, that planes into skyscrapers and Giles's hand on Ben's mouth are somehow, somewhere, just as awful, and Buffy falling from love - flying, Lilin said, and Oz believes that and maybe someday Giles will, too - presages stockbrokers and janitors leaping from fear.
Shaking and crying is just as scary as freezing and hiding, and Oz held on, keeps holding, burrowing his head into Giles's shoulder and shifting against the warmth spreading over his skin from the sight of the boys joking and shirtless. Everything's a jumble, and right now, he's more glad than he can say for the quiet, and the dark, and Giles.
Onscreen, two boys flirt awkwardly with the girl and unknowingly with each other, aware of nothing but the imperatives of desire. Such a luxury to be that self-absorbed, to live as though there is no world. Or only a world seen through a car window, silent glimpses of poverty and crime and politics that flash by in an instant and touch nothing.
It's irony, Giles knows, and critique, but he's happy to push the irony out of his mind, to watch three beautiful people try to find a beach. Or better still, to look aside and watch the splotches of light and darkness flicker across Oz's face like reflections in glass. Fragments of images, broken and meaningless, and after all the film is just a game played with light and sound. It only seems real if you look at it directly.
Giles strokes Oz's palm and wrist with his fingertips, not quite lightly enough to tickle, and leans in until their heads touch. A luxury, a wish granted, a privilege had at someone else's expense. And it's true that Giles doesn't want to bother with the world anymore, doesn't want to help save it again. The world is someone else's responsibility now, and he'll avert his eyes and watch Oz's face until the guilt goes away. It's true, too, that he wished for this, but he never wished Buffy to die to make it possible. Oz has told him over and over that it's not his fault, and Giles is trying to believe it. His guilt need only be general, eased by multiplicity and distance, like his guilt for sweatshops or Rwandan genocide. He doesn't need to look at it directly.
Desire, love. It's enough in itself, a new and strange world, and Giles has barely got off the plane. He's still checking his maps at every streetcorner and puzzling out the accents, and there's a lot to learn before he can feel like he lives here.
The boys and the girl have finally made it to the beach, and then to the bedroom together, and beside him Oz's breathing is faster and less steady. His own, too, and when the boys kiss it heats him through and he's holding his breath, clutching Oz's hand. If this were the kind of cinema it used to be he'd spread his coat over Oz's lap, watch the screen while his fingers worked and tugged, let desire take over and be everything.
Ana's going to die and Tenoch gives Julio a last, confused look, and Oz knows that look, knows they're never going to talk again, not after what they found themselves doing. His throat's bitter and his eyes burn; from beauty and sex to awkwardness and loathing is way too easy a jump, and he's yanked out of the soft seep of desire into something sadder and more jagged. Giles sighs, rough and broken, and Oz looks up, only to find Giles looking down at him, almost surprised that Oz is looking back.
Kind eyes, lights sliding over their surface in the dark, and Giles's gaze is so steady, so full of something like confusion and wonder, that Oz can't even smile. Warmth slides again through him, strengthening and settling, sifting down and pooling in the center of him, and he squeezes Giles's hand. Much better, this steady warmth of love, and the only awkwardness is what he lets himself feel; it's not situational, Giles is never going to push him away conclusively.
"Was going to take you out for cake," Oz whispers, even though the last of the credits are playing and everyone's pretty much left. "But now I just want to get you home. Okay if we delay cake a little?"
Giles nods and his throat works as he swallows. As they stand and thread down the row, then down the steep stairs, Oz feels thick and certain, knowing they're going home, just needing for it to happen soon, to get inside where it's private and theirs and try with fumbling fingers and anxious tongue to show Giles everything he's feeling.
Bright and glaring outside, jazzfast movements of pissy Londoners, but, somehow, wonderfully, Oz still feels that steady certainty inside. He holds Giles's hand and steps to the curb to hail a cab.
"Home soon," he says, and Giles is tall and handsome and hopeful beside him, blinking against the glare, wind ruffling through his hair. Oz's palms burn and itch, past steadiness, into need. "Really want you home. And out of the clothes."
"I like that idea." Giles feels slow and a little dazed, as though he hasn't quite adjusted to the sunlight and movement, as though he's still half caught in the story, like a dreamer surfacing to day. The film's ending came as--not a shock, but a sad and banal inevitability, like the end of a holiday. He'd like to fix it somehow, rewrite it to the kind of story where going home isn't a defeat.
But of course he knows that the film is no omen, nothing to do with him and Oz. If he didn't, there are reminders everywhere--Oz's voice giving the address, their address, to the cabdriver, the encircling clasp of Oz's two hands around his, the way Oz points out shops they should explore and restaurants they should try. This is no escapade, no holiday fling, nothing that they'll hate the memory of later. Foolish and miserable as they've sometimes been, it was never that. It was always home, even when it was secret, even when it ended.
The flat, with its solid door and heavy locks that Giles is relieved to finally click into place, is an emblem of home, although not the thing itself. Emblem and protection, and Giles loves this flat more than he ever used to. "Thank god," Giles says, leaning against the entryway wall and pulling Oz close. "Why is it that we go out when this is so much better?"
"Dunno," Oz says as he slides his palms up to Giles's shoulders and works his jacket down his arms. "Because it makes getting back feel so good?"
It feels better than good, actually. This morning, he had felt the walls of the apartment starting to close in on them, thought he could smell Giles's tears through the stink of new paint, and wanted nothing more than several hours outside, away, under the sky and out in the air. But in their absence, the walls have returned to their usual places, the smell of paint has lessened, and Giles has his arms looped around Oz's neck. He smells like cardamom and custard from the pudding, like home and sweetness, and Oz kisses down his neck, leading with his tongue until Giles shudders against him and tightens his arms and makes a low, pleading noise in the back of his mouth.
"Does feel good, doesn't it?" Oz says against Giles's chest.
Not answering, Giles kisses the top of Oz's head as Oz reaches and hangs up the jacket, then takes a deep breath as Oz tugs his shirttails free from his waistband. The heat reviving under his skin, drying the back of his throat and burning the centers of his palms, Oz looks up and runs his hands under the shirt, holding Giles's waist. Warmth tightens his cheeks even as he's smiling wider.
Giles's breathing goes rougher as Oz looks up at him. He can smell the desire starting to steam out of Giles's pores, gingery and sharp, ripe cedar and lime cordial and all eleven berries in a good brand of gin. Oz grips Giles tighter and reaches upward with his other hand, brushing his fingertips over Giles's cheeks and mouth until his lips part.
"Promised to get you undressed," Oz says, hand sliding to the small of Giles's back, where the skin is tight and hot, pulling him forward so Giles's head knocks the wall and two fingers slide past his lips. Warm and slick inside Giles's mouth, and it just makes all the heat inside Oz double back and reach higher, deeper. Swallowing drily, Oz grinds their hips together.
Greenbrown eyes, the color stormy and jagged, flashing down at him when Oz grinds a little harder. Years to the day since he led Giles upstairs, teeth gritted with determination and an almost laughable sense of purpose, but Oz feels just like that now, full of need and firm intent. Giles tries to suck his fingers deeper into his mouth but Oz drags them out, down chin and throat, and starts undoing the buttons until Giles's shirt falls open and Oz draws his lips and teeth through the curling hair on his chest.
"Want you," he's saying. "Want you, Giles, want you so much."
Childish questions whirl through Giles' mind, stirring anxious dust-clouds that dry his throat and, for a moment, obscure everything. How much?, he thinks, cupping the back of Oz's head and guiding Oz's kiss over his chest, and why? Unanswerable, and unaskable too, and Giles wishes he could stop thinking of these questions day after day. There's no reason Oz should want or love him, but he does, and it's selfish of Giles to need an explanation.
Oz wants him; there's proof enough in the way Oz's lips close around his nipple, the way Oz sucks and scrapes lightly with his teeth, the way he holds Giles hard by the waist and presses him to the wall with every thrust. Maybe, through some miracle, Oz feels it as much as Giles does, this fascination of skin, this shaky, starving need to lick and touch. Giles slips his hand into Oz's collar and rubs the nape of his neck, explores down his spine as far as he can reach (such little bones, lovely as a string of pearls) and says, "Whatever you want, I want you to have."
A murmur from Oz, and his lips slide wetly over the scar on Giles' chest where the knight's spear struck him, a few months back. He could have died; he could have missed all this. The thought makes him harder, makes him pull at Oz's shirt and bare his skin, makes him whisper and nibble at Oz's ear. "So good. You feel -" and then Oz stoops, dragging his tongue along Giles' ribs, and Giles can't talk, can only clutch at Oz's shoulders and pant at the oil-and-fire heat that spreads over his skin. "Oh, Christ. Do that some more."
Against Oz's lips, Giles' skin has always felt smooth, scoured, scarred and tender and taut. It stretches as Giles takes in another breath and there are openings everywhere, small holes and tiny temples. Pore to pore, Oz glances up and smiles.
"Do this?" He pulls his lips up along the rise of Giles' last rib, dragging covered teeth as Giles squeezes harder at his shoulders. Giles' bones are thicker than Oz's own, full and strong, difficult to break. "Or this?" Oz drops a little lower, rolling his forehead in the concavity beneath the arch of ribs and kissing the fluttering, shivering skin of Giles' belly. Tastes like pure dark things here, steam and mint and cinnamon, and Oz's own skin continues to shrink, cling to his bones, ratchet up his hunger. "This?"
When he looks up, because he can never look away for long, Giles' head is tipped back, his mouth twisting wetly, and then he looks down, light brightening his glasses, blinding Oz. Oz skims his tongue down the center of Giles' stomach. Skin is full of holes and shadows and if he can just kiss right, barriers will melt and slide away and they'll be in the silent center, past words, wrapped in gesture.
He rises then, tasting the scars and memories of bruises everywhere on Giles' skin - he remembers all the bruises, pansybright and nightdim, their heat and sallow healing - until he's wrapping one arm around Giles' neck, pulling him down into an open wordless kiss.
His other hand rests on the small of Giles' back, fingers pushing under the waistband, sweeping over hot, tense skin and pushing lower.
"Bedroom," he says when he can breathe again, knotting Giles' hair around his knuckles. Urgency that teeters past gentleness, but Giles' eyes are wide, his breathing rough and shallow, and it's all right. "Do everything you want. Bedroom."
"Yes," Giles says, and follows when Oz tugs him forward. Something's gone wrong around his knees, eagerness making him weak and clumsy, and Oz looks back and smiles. There's a look on his face, desire and determination and a kind of urgent tenderness, that Giles remembers from his last birthday (four years ago, but it feels like the last). Oz looked like that walking up the stairs, looked like that kneeling over Giles and stroking himself and coming so he could last longer the second time, so he could fuck Giles as slowly and well as they both wanted. It's his gift-giving face, half sweetness, half ferocious will to succeed. The only difference now is that he doesn't look scared.
Not scared, Oz doesn't seem scared at all, he's kissing Giles again and maneuvering him onto the bed, hand on his back and another working at his belt. "So beautiful," Giles says, scrambling and half-struggling until he's got Oz out of his coat, finally. "So strong." He reaches for one of Oz's hands, which are strong hands, square and still rough with whatever labor he did in Patagonia, and pulls it to his mouth. Kisses to the palm, up the insides of his fingers, and then Oz groans when Giles slides his lips over the tip of Oz's thumb and sucks it. Tongue stroking the fleshy pad, teeth gliding and scraping on the nail, and Oz starts to moan and quiver and pulls at Giles' hair with his free hand, but Giles takes all five fingers in turn. Salt and grassy tastes and something Giles thinks is the scent of his own skin, and he licks, wraps his legs around Oz's squirming body, and swallows the spit the floods his mouth and tastes of desire.
Inside, the first place inside Giles, the cavern of his mouth is hot and slick, soft tongue and sharply-edged teeth, dark and unknown. He murmurs a little as he suckles and the sensation throbs up Oz's arm and down the center of his cock, twists his hips and drops open his own mouth. First places, first times, origins looping back like birdflight. Stories and truths.
"Never felt that before," Oz whispers as Giles kisses the inside of his wrist and Oz tugs his shirt over his head without unbuttoning it. "Remember? First night, and I thought I was going to explode, feeling that -" Giles says something, words going right to Oz's veins, sound and sense intertwined and Oz can't stop his hips rolling. Can't stop the sound translating out his own mouth, speaking as he kisses Giles' neck. Giles' face is shocked, eager, intense. "Showed me my body, made my skin, gave me all this -"
Shirtless, sweating already with the heat pounding through his skin, Oz pulls back, running his hands down Giles' sides and opening his belt and fly. "Used to keep warm, imagining this. You know that? Picturing you, your skin and your body, needing you so much, aching -" Words and touch, gifts and beginnings. Giles inside him, on his tongue and his palms, and Oz wants more, taste and texture and all. Giles helps Oz with his own pants and his touch sizzles through fabric. "Know what I need, Giles? Need this, need you, need you wanting and feeling good, better -" He slides his mouth over the waistband of Giles' briefs, pungent desire piercing the soft thick cotton, waits for the strangled mutter he knows is coming and then presses down Giles' arching back. "Need to know what you want. Need to give you that."
It all feels good, better. So much better than the dead thing Giles has been--Oz's hands reshaping him, Oz's kisses breathing life into cold dead clay. So good to push air in and out of his starving lungs, so good to move and to feel. So good to be awakened, remade, reborn.
The heat of Oz's mouth sears Giles' cock even through the underpants he still hasn't lowered, and his hands hold Giles down, mold his muscle and bone to stillness. So many things in Oz's hands--stillness and calm and safety, need and pleasure. They're all there in Oz, body and mind and deeper, in the untouchable soul Giles reaches for with every touch, every kiss.
"Don't know," he says, pushing out the words between gasps as Oz touches him, mouth and hands and all that strength. "I don't know what I want." Oz lifts his head and slides up Giles' body to kiss and hold him. Slippery warmth of him and the smell of sweat, friction of their skins and the melting blur of kisses and Giles can barely find words. Doesn't want them now; Oz can talk for them both. "I want . . . want you to decide. Anything, just-" One hand in Oz's hair, the other thrown across his back, pulling him closer and closer while Oz licks his neck and his fingers traces looping patterns across Giles' body. "Just touch me. Show me my body, my skin, everything."
"Can't stop touching you," Oz says, nipping at the soft skin at base of Giles' throat, tugging Giles' pants down off his hips, then his own. "Always touching you -"
Giles looks like he's underwater, face rippling from joy to need and everywhere in between, and his hands open and close on Oz like something marine, dark and needy. Down in the crevices, where currents slow and the light is dusty, and Oz kisses, touches, tells everywhere he can reach. The rough puddle of skin over Giles' elbow. Palm that tastes like butter, the long twining cord of bicep muscle and the breadth of his chest, short curling hair and half-sunken nipples that peak under the rasp of Oz's teeth.
Giles shakes beneath him, around him, and Oz replies with the pressure of his hands and squint of his eyes. He meant to give Giles words, the stories about his skin and voice that Oz subsisted on for so long, but the words aren't coming. Dammed up behind wanting and urgency, speeding him now, rushing his mouth over the crease of Giles' thigh, the tendons on either side of his knee, so tight they're about to snap. Stories about creation, about the first night when Giles pressed him down and flooded him with pleasure, drowned him in it.
The hollow behind Giles' knee is hot with rushing blood and he moans louder when Oz licks him there. Pulse and life, sweet and delirious, and hunger cyclones through Oz's gut, parching his throat. His hands shuffle and shudder over Giles and he has to close his eyes. Far away, wolves howl and rending flesh, sprays of blood. All very far away; this is hunger for pleasure, for touch-taste-love, and when Oz runs his hands down the inside of Giles' thighs, Giles parts his legs and lifts his hips. Literal desire now, red cock and quavering balls, secret openings. Passages.
"Anything, now -" Oz hears his own husky voice, shipwrecks and surf, and when he pushes his mouth over Giles' balls, curling his tongue under them, he tastes it all for the first time. Salt, hunger, Giles. Giles cries out, harsh and rough, legs and stomach quivering with the effort not to thrust up as Oz pushes his legs further apart as he glances up. "Want to fuck you, Giles. Want to be inside you, fuck you hard and deep, feel your whole body on me. All of you. Always been you -"
Torrents of words now, emptying him out, rushing. He tastes the slick, untouched skin between Giles' legs, delicate as leaves, full of life and muscle, and moans himself hoarse as he teases.
Giles nods and kisses her on the cheek. "I am." He's not always happy, not when grief can still fall on him like a sudden storm, unexpected and drenching. But he's happier. "Oh, before I forget, once the flat's ready, we'd like you and-" it takes him a moment to dredge up the name of her boyfriend, although she's been dating him for months "-and Peter to come round for dinner. I'll ring you."
"Good. I'm desperate to see the result of all this painting and moving things about." The taxi driver guns the engine impatiently, and Olivia lets Giles go and gets in. "Goodbye, Oz," she says before shutting the door. "I hope to see you again soon."
"You will," Oz answers, slipping an arm around Giles' waist. As the taxi pulls away, Giles thinks of asking him what that was about, but he can make a fairly good guess. Doing the best friend thing, Oz called it. It's funny to think how furious Olivia used to be when he'd offer a friendly warning to one of her boyfriends.
Giles draws Oz back, away from the street, and kisses him the way he's been wanting to for the past hour and a half. "It's all right," he says, feeling the slight tension in Oz's posture. "We'd have to do a lot more than this to be conspicuous in Soho." Oz laughs, relaxes, and Giles takes his hand and sets off towards Dean Street.
The film doesn't start for another hour, and Giles is happy to meander, look in shop windows, and tell Oz tidbits about the area's history-how French resistance leaders used to congregate in that bar during the second world war, how the gangsters and the sex trade came in during the 1960s, how pubs and clubs and restaurants have blossomed here since the mad money years of the 1980s. Oz, who for once seems comfortable despite the crowds, keeps pausing to look down sidestreets and craning his neck to watch people go past.
Giles steals long, covert glances at Oz, beautiful in the dark gray coat that Giles is sure he only picked because it was cheap. But the color shows off his pale skin and his bright hair, so perhaps it wasn't a bad choice after all. In the day's pearly, indirect light, Oz's eyes are a transparent silvery-green, like the undersides of linden leaves. If he could, Giles would just sit and stare at him for hours, days, tracking light and shadow across his face the ways the Impressionists did with haystacks and cathedrals. Oz gets shy when he's watched, though, even for a minute or two.
When Oz stops suddenly in front of a record-shop doorway, Giles nearly bumps into him. It's a moment before he notices where they are, and then he squeezes Oz's hand and grins at the memories. "Oh, I haven't been here in years. They sell real records on real vinyl. Do you want to go in?"
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Which is weird, he thinks, going up on tiptoe to scan the import shelves, since this is *Giles's* place, not his. They have a pretty mindblowing selection of Japanese and American imports, some albums he's never heard of, until he checks the release dates on a few. And remembers he has been away for a year and a half. It's not like Calvin Johnson and Ira Kaplan were the ones who ran away to Patagonia; they kept working.
"Giles?" he asks, having reached up and up and still only having grazed the next shelf with his fingertips. "Can you -" Giles straightens from his crouch over a bin of psychedelic albums - Pink Floyd? Really? - and joins him. "The blue one. Le Tigre?"
In the dusty, cavernous shop, far taller than it is wide, Giles looks perfectly at home. *This* is another one of his libraries, and Oz watches him reach easily and retrieve the album, a little twist to the waist and squint of his eyes. He rests his hand on Oz's shoulder, looking at the back of the album.
"Looks interesting, huh?" Oz asks and Giles nods. A neutral nod, the one he gives when Oz suggests spinach salad for dinner instead of meat. Grinning, checking the tracklisting, he mutters, "it *could* be interesting."
Giles cuffs his elbow and bends over the bin behind them. Oz cradles the album in his hands, savoring its heft and breadth. He doesn't particularly want *this* one, but it feels good to hold an album, any album, again. Plus, he's kind of stuck with it now, since the shop's not interested in serving the shorter segment of the population.
"All ready?" Giles asks a few minutes later and Oz slides the album onto the nearest shelf.
"I'm good. You?" Giles seems slightly embarrassed as he shows Oz the live bootleg of Richard Thompson in Munich, but Oz doesn't know why. Money-thing, probably; Giles doesn't want to get something if Oz won't. "Cool. I was thinking this -" He retrieves a red American pressing of Yo La Tengo he considered earlier and follows Giles to the counter.
Outside, it's still not raining, which Oz is pretty sure must be some kind of record for London, although Giles fake-scowls and shakes his head in mock exasperation when Oz says this. "What, you get to complain about California's constant sunshine but I can't poke fun at the weather? Which, actually, I kind of like?"
He feels - giddy's not quite the word. Not that hyper, but definitely slightly carbonated and light in his shoes. Happy. Hand in hand, they walk a couple more blocks south and find the theater right on the next corner. The bright-blue marquee floats just above the sidewalk and Oz squints, but can't detect any evidence of the porn theater Giles swears it used to be.
At the box-office, Oz steps deliberately in front of Giles and takes out his wallet. "I've got it," he says, and digs out his last five-pound note and a two-pound coin. It's the last of the money he arrived in London with; he has a couple ten-pound notes Giles gave him yesterday, but he wants to do this.
"Happy birthday. Again." He hands Giles his ticket and kisses his cheek. Again. He likes the repetition; like memorizing verb endings in Spanish class, it's all about the repetition to make it real.
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Oz heads towards the double doors, but Giles tugs him back. "Let's go up to the balcony instead." Something in Oz's face shifts fractionally, his eyes widen and his mouth re-forms into a soft and predatory smile whose heat Giles can feel on his own mouth, and then on his whole skin. "I don't think I meant it like that," he manages to say, but Oz is already bounding up the stairs and dragging him after.
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"So very cool," Oz whispers. Big buildings - church, museum, theater - always make him whisper. He's torn between taking the very first row with its high, protective railing, so he can float over the rest of the theater, and taking advantage of the balcony's total dark and quiet.
"Middle part okay?" he asks and Giles just squeezes his shoulder. Oz takes that as an assent and picks his way to the middle of the middle row. He sits almost sideways in the plush seat, hoping it's new since the porn days, so his head rests against Giles's shoulder. Slides for local art exhibits and health-food stores occupy the screen, so Oz looks upward. In the dim, Giles's jaw is bright and sharp, but his eyes look blurred and distant.
No one's here, and Giles *did* say it was Soho, like Soho's the magic word for comfort and freedom, so Oz reaches across his chest and, curling his hand around Giles's neck, pulls his head down into a kiss. Longer than their kiss on the curb, it's warm and relieved; Giles's mouth presses against his and Oz twists and pushes upward, pours himself forward and up.
"Like it up here -" His voice is rougher, but softer, and he can see the light from the screen curve over Giles's eyes. He remembers like a series of scars all the things they used to wish they could do, and Oz smiles, bumping his forehead against Giles's cheek. "Hey, two wishes down - restaurant and movie. We're doing well."
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The wishes that come true are the wishes like Cordelia's, that come trailing death and nightmare. Anya only told that story once, and Giles still wishes she hadn't.
Giles tilts his head down and breathes in the scent of Oz's hair, warm skin overlaid with shampoo and gel. "The third wish, if I recall, was to kiss you in the school hallway. We're a bit too late for that, but kissing you in a London cinema ought to count, I think." Oz seems to agree, because he tugs Giles forward until he's half-lying on the armrest and kisses him again, and doesn't stop until they hear footsteps on the balcony stairs.
These wishes, kissing Oz, living with him in London where they're safe and free, these wishes don't come true. There's no possible world in which Giles is sitting in this slowly-filling cinema with his arm around Oz's shoulders and the taste of Oz's kiss lingering in his mouth.
As the lights go down and the first advertisement begins, Giles brushes his lips to Oz's temple and says, "Three out of three." They're a long, long way from the hellmouth, and perhaps it's time to start forgetting some of what he learned in Sunnydale.
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The movie is stunningly bright, reds and yellows chlorine blues and the dark eyes of the boys, and Oz drifts a little, as if his eyes are in the movie but most of him is elsewhere. Elsewhere, savoring the quiet closeness of Giles next to him, relishing the calm with which Giles's breathing is going, and Oz can't help but shiver.
It hasn't even been that long, just three days, since the fragile calm they'd started to enjoy froze like Giles's face when the news broke. Everything went hard and cold, trapped under perfect ice, and it was after only a couple minutes of watching black smoke-silver towers-red fire and people falling like bits of ash that Giles booked for the bathroom. And vomit was green and brown on porcelain Oz had scrubbed the day before and time slid like snakes under ice, breeding in the cold, and Giles shook and Oz held on and it must have been hours and hours before everything came out, everything in New York and everything in Giles's memory. Oz still doesn't know which is more horrific, and thinks that there are incommensurable horrors, that planes into skyscrapers and Giles's hand on Ben's mouth are somehow, somewhere, just as awful, and Buffy falling from love - flying, Lilin said, and Oz believes that and maybe someday Giles will, too - presages stockbrokers and janitors leaping from fear.
Shaking and crying is just as scary as freezing and hiding, and Oz held on, keeps holding, burrowing his head into Giles's shoulder and shifting against the warmth spreading over his skin from the sight of the boys joking and shirtless. Everything's a jumble, and right now, he's more glad than he can say for the quiet, and the dark, and Giles.
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It's irony, Giles knows, and critique, but he's happy to push the irony out of his mind, to watch three beautiful people try to find a beach. Or better still, to look aside and watch the splotches of light and darkness flicker across Oz's face like reflections in glass. Fragments of images, broken and meaningless, and after all the film is just a game played with light and sound. It only seems real if you look at it directly.
Giles strokes Oz's palm and wrist with his fingertips, not quite lightly enough to tickle, and leans in until their heads touch. A luxury, a wish granted, a privilege had at someone else's expense. And it's true that Giles doesn't want to bother with the world anymore, doesn't want to help save it again. The world is someone else's responsibility now, and he'll avert his eyes and watch Oz's face until the guilt goes away. It's true, too, that he wished for this, but he never wished Buffy to die to make it possible. Oz has told him over and over that it's not his fault, and Giles is trying to believe it. His guilt need only be general, eased by multiplicity and distance, like his guilt for sweatshops or Rwandan genocide. He doesn't need to look at it directly.
Desire, love. It's enough in itself, a new and strange world, and Giles has barely got off the plane. He's still checking his maps at every streetcorner and puzzling out the accents, and there's a lot to learn before he can feel like he lives here.
The boys and the girl have finally made it to the beach, and then to the bedroom together, and beside him Oz's breathing is faster and less steady. His own, too, and when the boys kiss it heats him through and he's holding his breath, clutching Oz's hand. If this were the kind of cinema it used to be he'd spread his coat over Oz's lap, watch the screen while his fingers worked and tugged, let desire take over and be everything.
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Kind eyes, lights sliding over their surface in the dark, and Giles's gaze is so steady, so full of something like confusion and wonder, that Oz can't even smile. Warmth slides again through him, strengthening and settling, sifting down and pooling in the center of him, and he squeezes Giles's hand. Much better, this steady warmth of love, and the only awkwardness is what he lets himself feel; it's not situational, Giles is never going to push him away conclusively.
"Was going to take you out for cake," Oz whispers, even though the last of the credits are playing and everyone's pretty much left. "But now I just want to get you home. Okay if we delay cake a little?"
Giles nods and his throat works as he swallows. As they stand and thread down the row, then down the steep stairs, Oz feels thick and certain, knowing they're going home, just needing for it to happen soon, to get inside where it's private and theirs and try with fumbling fingers and anxious tongue to show Giles everything he's feeling.
Bright and glaring outside, jazzfast movements of pissy Londoners, but, somehow, wonderfully, Oz still feels that steady certainty inside. He holds Giles's hand and steps to the curb to hail a cab.
"Home soon," he says, and Giles is tall and handsome and hopeful beside him, blinking against the glare, wind ruffling through his hair. Oz's palms burn and itch, past steadiness, into need. "Really want you home. And out of the clothes."
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But of course he knows that the film is no omen, nothing to do with him and Oz. If he didn't, there are reminders everywhere--Oz's voice giving the address, their address, to the cabdriver, the encircling clasp of Oz's two hands around his, the way Oz points out shops they should explore and restaurants they should try. This is no escapade, no holiday fling, nothing that they'll hate the memory of later. Foolish and miserable as they've sometimes been, it was never that. It was always home, even when it was secret, even when it ended.
The flat, with its solid door and heavy locks that Giles is relieved to finally click into place, is an emblem of home, although not the thing itself. Emblem and protection, and Giles loves this flat more than he ever used to. "Thank god," Giles says, leaning against the entryway wall and pulling Oz close. "Why is it that we go out when this is so much better?"
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It feels better than good, actually. This morning, he had felt the walls of the apartment starting to close in on them, thought he could smell Giles's tears through the stink of new paint, and wanted nothing more than several hours outside, away, under the sky and out in the air. But in their absence, the walls have returned to their usual places, the smell of paint has lessened, and Giles has his arms looped around Oz's neck. He smells like cardamom and custard from the pudding, like home and sweetness, and Oz kisses down his neck, leading with his tongue until Giles shudders against him and tightens his arms and makes a low, pleading noise in the back of his mouth.
"Does feel good, doesn't it?" Oz says against Giles's chest.
Not answering, Giles kisses the top of Oz's head as Oz reaches and hangs up the jacket, then takes a deep breath as Oz tugs his shirttails free from his waistband. The heat reviving under his skin, drying the back of his throat and burning the centers of his palms, Oz looks up and runs his hands under the shirt, holding Giles's waist. Warmth tightens his cheeks even as he's smiling wider.
Giles's breathing goes rougher as Oz looks up at him. He can smell the desire starting to steam out of Giles's pores, gingery and sharp, ripe cedar and lime cordial and all eleven berries in a good brand of gin. Oz grips Giles tighter and reaches upward with his other hand, brushing his fingertips over Giles's cheeks and mouth until his lips part.
"Promised to get you undressed," Oz says, hand sliding to the small of Giles's back, where the skin is tight and hot, pulling him forward so Giles's head knocks the wall and two fingers slide past his lips. Warm and slick inside Giles's mouth, and it just makes all the heat inside Oz double back and reach higher, deeper. Swallowing drily, Oz grinds their hips together.
Greenbrown eyes, the color stormy and jagged, flashing down at him when Oz grinds a little harder. Years to the day since he led Giles upstairs, teeth gritted with determination and an almost laughable sense of purpose, but Oz feels just like that now, full of need and firm intent. Giles tries to suck his fingers deeper into his mouth but Oz drags them out, down chin and throat, and starts undoing the buttons until Giles's shirt falls open and Oz draws his lips and teeth through the curling hair on his chest.
"Want you," he's saying. "Want you, Giles, want you so much."
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Oz wants him; there's proof enough in the way Oz's lips close around his nipple, the way Oz sucks and scrapes lightly with his teeth, the way he holds Giles hard by the waist and presses him to the wall with every thrust. Maybe, through some miracle, Oz feels it as much as Giles does, this fascination of skin, this shaky, starving need to lick and touch. Giles slips his hand into Oz's collar and rubs the nape of his neck, explores down his spine as far as he can reach (such little bones, lovely as a string of pearls) and says, "Whatever you want, I want you to have."
A murmur from Oz, and his lips slide wetly over the scar on Giles' chest where the knight's spear struck him, a few months back. He could have died; he could have missed all this. The thought makes him harder, makes him pull at Oz's shirt and bare his skin, makes him whisper and nibble at Oz's ear. "So good. You feel -" and then Oz stoops, dragging his tongue along Giles' ribs, and Giles can't talk, can only clutch at Oz's shoulders and pant at the oil-and-fire heat that spreads over his skin. "Oh, Christ. Do that some more."
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"Do this?" He pulls his lips up along the rise of Giles' last rib, dragging covered teeth as Giles squeezes harder at his shoulders. Giles' bones are thicker than Oz's own, full and strong, difficult to break. "Or this?" Oz drops a little lower, rolling his forehead in the concavity beneath the arch of ribs and kissing the fluttering, shivering skin of Giles' belly. Tastes like pure dark things here, steam and mint and cinnamon, and Oz's own skin continues to shrink, cling to his bones, ratchet up his hunger. "This?"
When he looks up, because he can never look away for long, Giles' head is tipped back, his mouth twisting wetly, and then he looks down, light brightening his glasses, blinding Oz. Oz skims his tongue down the center of Giles' stomach. Skin is full of holes and shadows and if he can just kiss right, barriers will melt and slide away and they'll be in the silent center, past words, wrapped in gesture.
He rises then, tasting the scars and memories of bruises everywhere on Giles' skin - he remembers all the bruises, pansybright and nightdim, their heat and sallow healing - until he's wrapping one arm around Giles' neck, pulling him down into an open wordless kiss.
His other hand rests on the small of Giles' back, fingers pushing under the waistband, sweeping over hot, tense skin and pushing lower.
"Bedroom," he says when he can breathe again, knotting Giles' hair around his knuckles. Urgency that teeters past gentleness, but Giles' eyes are wide, his breathing rough and shallow, and it's all right. "Do everything you want. Bedroom."
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Not scared, Oz doesn't seem scared at all, he's kissing Giles again and maneuvering him onto the bed, hand on his back and another working at his belt. "So beautiful," Giles says, scrambling and half-struggling until he's got Oz out of his coat, finally. "So strong." He reaches for one of Oz's hands, which are strong hands, square and still rough with whatever labor he did in Patagonia, and pulls it to his mouth. Kisses to the palm, up the insides of his fingers, and then Oz groans when Giles slides his lips over the tip of Oz's thumb and sucks it. Tongue stroking the fleshy pad, teeth gliding and scraping on the nail, and Oz starts to moan and quiver and pulls at Giles' hair with his free hand, but Giles takes all five fingers in turn. Salt and grassy tastes and something Giles thinks is the scent of his own skin, and he licks, wraps his legs around Oz's squirming body, and swallows the spit the floods his mouth and tastes of desire.
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"Never felt that before," Oz whispers as Giles kisses the inside of his wrist and Oz tugs his shirt over his head without unbuttoning it. "Remember? First night, and I thought I was going to explode, feeling that -" Giles says something, words going right to Oz's veins, sound and sense intertwined and Oz can't stop his hips rolling. Can't stop the sound translating out his own mouth, speaking as he kisses Giles' neck. Giles' face is shocked, eager, intense. "Showed me my body, made my skin, gave me all this -"
Shirtless, sweating already with the heat pounding through his skin, Oz pulls back, running his hands down Giles' sides and opening his belt and fly. "Used to keep warm, imagining this. You know that? Picturing you, your skin and your body, needing you so much, aching -" Words and touch, gifts and beginnings. Giles inside him, on his tongue and his palms, and Oz wants more, taste and texture and all. Giles helps Oz with his own pants and his touch sizzles through fabric. "Know what I need, Giles? Need this, need you, need you wanting and feeling good, better -" He slides his mouth over the waistband of Giles' briefs, pungent desire piercing the soft thick cotton, waits for the strangled mutter he knows is coming and then presses down Giles' arching back. "Need to know what you want. Need to give you that."
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The heat of Oz's mouth sears Giles' cock even through the underpants he still hasn't lowered, and his hands hold Giles down, mold his muscle and bone to stillness. So many things in Oz's hands--stillness and calm and safety, need and pleasure. They're all there in Oz, body and mind and deeper, in the untouchable soul Giles reaches for with every touch, every kiss.
"Don't know," he says, pushing out the words between gasps as Oz touches him, mouth and hands and all that strength. "I don't know what I want." Oz lifts his head and slides up Giles' body to kiss and hold him. Slippery warmth of him and the smell of sweat, friction of their skins and the melting blur of kisses and Giles can barely find words. Doesn't want them now; Oz can talk for them both. "I want . . . want you to decide. Anything, just-" One hand in Oz's hair, the other thrown across his back, pulling him closer and closer while Oz licks his neck and his fingers traces looping patterns across Giles' body. "Just touch me. Show me my body, my skin, everything."
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Giles looks like he's underwater, face rippling from joy to need and everywhere in between, and his hands open and close on Oz like something marine, dark and needy. Down in the crevices, where currents slow and the light is dusty, and Oz kisses, touches, tells everywhere he can reach. The rough puddle of skin over Giles' elbow. Palm that tastes like butter, the long twining cord of bicep muscle and the breadth of his chest, short curling hair and half-sunken nipples that peak under the rasp of Oz's teeth.
Giles shakes beneath him, around him, and Oz replies with the pressure of his hands and squint of his eyes. He meant to give Giles words, the stories about his skin and voice that Oz subsisted on for so long, but the words aren't coming. Dammed up behind wanting and urgency, speeding him now, rushing his mouth over the crease of Giles' thigh, the tendons on either side of his knee, so tight they're about to snap. Stories about creation, about the first night when Giles pressed him down and flooded him with pleasure, drowned him in it.
The hollow behind Giles' knee is hot with rushing blood and he moans louder when Oz licks him there. Pulse and life, sweet and delirious, and hunger cyclones through Oz's gut, parching his throat. His hands shuffle and shudder over Giles and he has to close his eyes. Far away, wolves howl and rending flesh, sprays of blood. All very far away; this is hunger for pleasure, for touch-taste-love, and when Oz runs his hands down the inside of Giles' thighs, Giles parts his legs and lifts his hips. Literal desire now, red cock and quavering balls, secret openings. Passages.
"Anything, now -" Oz hears his own husky voice, shipwrecks and surf, and when he pushes his mouth over Giles' balls, curling his tongue under them, he tastes it all for the first time. Salt, hunger, Giles. Giles cries out, harsh and rough, legs and stomach quivering with the effort not to thrust up as Oz pushes his legs further apart as he glances up. "Want to fuck you, Giles. Want to be inside you, fuck you hard and deep, feel your whole body on me. All of you. Always been you -"
Torrents of words now, emptying him out, rushing. He tastes the slick, untouched skin between Giles' legs, delicate as leaves, full of life and muscle, and moans himself hoarse as he teases.
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