Between Oz's reassurances and the look on his face--jaw clenched, skin stretched tight around his mouth, eyes that dart to meet Giles' and then quickly away--Giles isn't at all sure he wants whatever it was that Oz handed him and then snatched back.
"Yes, I . . . " He's too confused to say anything else, and can only stretch out a hand for the thing, the book, that Oz is holding just out of his reach. The book. Small, square, black-bound. Familiar-looking.
Oz gives it back, carefully, as though it's liable to blow up if mishandled. Time bomb, parcel of dynamite, and they've only just got everything in order. Staring at the waterstained cover, Giles hardly notices as Oz tugs him down onto the sofa and settles in next to him.
It's certainly been in the wars. The corners are rubbed crooked and raw, the spine is badly cracked, and it smells of mildew, dust, and paper disintegrating back into wood pulp and rags. Giles lays a hand flat on the slightly sticky leather and closes his eyes. The cover felt smooth when it was new, and the heavy cream pages took ink beautifully.
"Dear god. This is . . . " He remembers Oz's hands unwrapping it, and how his fingers traced the shapes of the letters, and how he smiled when he came to the blank pages at the end. He remembers reading to Oz from it, pretending he didn't already know that everything was over.
Giles' hands tighten on the book, and he can't look at Oz, although he wants to. "You kept it, all these years." He hadn't even known Oz took it with him until later, when he couldn't find it anywhere.
"Course I did," Oz says. He sits carefully next to Giles, close enough to reach if Giles wants to, but not clinging like the ivy he wants to be. The book's been molded to his pocket and the inside of his knapsack for so long that it looks strange out here in the clean, well-lit room, cradled in Giles' wide palms. The book is small and dirty.
Just like him.
"I, um. It's got stuff in it. I filled it up, took it with me. And I thought, like -" He looks down at his own hands, tiny, the nails gnawed down, and breathes.
He looks up so quickly that Giles half-flinches and blinks rapidly.
"Know you're wondering where I went. Why. So I wanted you to look at it."
Like being flayed open on an operating table, naked and swabbed with blood-yellow antiseptic and everyone watching, poking, laughing.
Decades ago, not long after Giles started primary school, his father showed him how to use the encyclopedia. The volumes were too big for him, and the desk in his father's library too high, so he sat on his father's knee and looked at the massive pages with their columns of small type and their black-and-white photographs. "Any questions you can think of, this will answer," Dad said. And of course he thought of question after question, less for the information than for the privilege of sitting there proudly while the tobacco-scented wool of his father's jacket prickled his skin every time he moved.
Any question you can think of is answered in a book somewhere. And in his hands now, Giles has the encyclopedia of Oz. More answers, perhaps, than he wanted. Delight and terror splash through him, swirl hot and cold but somehow never blend into anything comfortable.
He's been silent, Giles realizes, for quite a long time, and Oz is gnawing ferociously on a fingernail and watching him stare at the book. "Thank you. I'd like to see it." Useless polite words, exactly what he'd say if Oz had given him a newspaper. Oz abruptly drops his hand into his lap and folds the other one over it, as though he's holding it down. He's shrinking, drawing in his shoulders and his limbs, the way he's mostly stopped doing when they're on the tube or in a crowded shop.
"Oz, please." Giles holds out his arms in invitation, and only just stops himself from pulling Oz forcibly into his lap. "Come here, and let's look at it together."
His knee pops when Oz stands and slides onto Giles' lap, and it feels like it takes too long to settle, but then his back is against the arm of the couch and his head is on Giles' shoulder and the position, at least, is familiar. Comfort will follow, soon as he can breathe right and manage to open his eyes.
His mom's older sister used to go to consciousness-raising groups when his mom was a teenager, and they'd do things like look at their own genitals in the mirror to get a feel for their womanhood. Oz doesn't want to look at himself like that, doesn't want to revisit the pages he made; he's read the pages Giles wrote over and over, so he's memorized the sequence, starts hearing Auden as he finishes the excerpt from Midsummer-Night's Dream. But he skips past his own pages, every time.
Giles kisses the top of his head, then rests his cheek there, and Oz isn't the only one who's freaking out. He slides his arm across Giles' chest and pats him in slow, wavery circles.
"Sorry it's so beat up," he says, a little croakily, and coughs into the soft wool of Giles' sweater. Giles rubs the back of his neck and Oz takes a deep, shaky breath, concentrating on the gentle familiar touch. Relaxation tugs at the edges of him and he tries to let it in. "Tried to take care of it, but. Not so good with stuff. Fuck it up."
He'd have to be a fool not to know what Oz means, but Giles works his thumb softly up and down the rigid muscles on either side of Oz's vertebrae and pretends that he only heard the literal. "It's rather battered, but that's because you kept it with you. And you . . . you used it. Read it over, added your own things. That's what I hoped you'd do." Half a truth at best, because when Giles made the book, he hoped (tried to hope, tried to believe, although he knew something was terribly wrong between them) that the things Oz added would be things they'd shared.
Oz's neck loosens a little as Giles works at it, and his breathing gets steadier and deeper. This is the best comfort, Giles' hand sliding up into Oz's hair and Oz kissing his collarbone through the fabric of his shirt. There's no other comfort, no answer in words for what Oz said. He did fuck up. Little by little he turned away Giles' love, left him one agonizing inch at a time. Probably, certainly, Giles fucked up too; somehow he hurt or scared or neglected Oz. Certainly it was his fault too, but Oz was the one who left, over and over, always putting more distance between them.
Not going anywhere, Oz said just now, and Giles holds him a little closer, a little tighter, trying to make it true.
He rests the book on Oz's knee, the way he always used to read with Oz in his lap, and opens it towards the middle. Oz's half seems bigger, bulging instead of flat; there must be things pasted in. After the last of Giles' own entries, a love poem by Donne to bookend the one he began with, there are the lyrics and tablatures to "Dear Prudence." When he turns to the page, Oz, who's been very still, tucks his head tighter under Giles' chin, as though he's hiding.
Letters and numbers fill the page like a secret code, concealing memory within. Oz cross-legged on the hearth, playing, and afterwards there were tears in his eyes and a smile that was full of apologies, regretful and implacable. The handwriting is shaky, far worse than Oz's usually is, and Giles wonders if Oz went home that awful morning and wrote this down, the goodbye that he never actually managed to say.
The paper is rippled and uneven, as though it's been wet, and for an idiotic moment Giles imagines Oz weeping over the book like a Victorian maiden. And then he turns the page.
Rust-brown handprint, as simple, as brutally direct, as the ones in ancient caves, assertions that cut across twenty thousand years and make it nothing. I was here; I made this; remember me. But this is no painting in red ochre, made safe by the mediation of art. Giles has seen enough dried blood to know what it looks like.
"Christ, Oz." His voice is rough, louder than he meant, and Oz presses his face hard into Giles' chest. "Sweetheart, Oz . . . " He kisses Oz's hair, waits until they've both stopped shaking, and then says, "Why? Talk to me, please. Tell me what it means, what you felt. I want to know."
Oz rubs his hand, the palm he cut, over the curve of Giles' shoulder. It was a shallow cut, never scarred, but it throbs now. He couldn't play for over a week, and Devon got so pissed off.
"It's me," he says, tasting ice and looking up at Giles. Hard bones, motionless face, near-liquid eyes. "I felt -" Ice-shards in his chest, cataract-cloudy vision, and when he tries to breathe, nothing happens. Giles tightens his embrace even more. "It's me. Blood, and, and the wolf. Knew I was going to kill you." He can't see much more than the angled curve of Giles' cheekbone and the deep line around his mouth. "Felt so sick. Filthy. Had to protect you."
Lies and truth, the past tense tissue-thin over the truth. He will always feel sick and dirty, always need to save Giles again, over and over.
"Sorry?" Stupid words, stupid head for believing this would make things better, would help him or Giles or both of them. All it's doing is reminding him how nothing's different, will never change. "It's me."
Fragments, half a sentence here and there, and sometimes talking to Oz reminds Giles of piecing together a rotting manuscript. Scraps and snippets, ink so faded it's only visible under special lights, and great gaping holes that always interrupt the crucial bits. Meaning's necessarily half a guess, mixed probability and hope.
Wolf, blood, Oz. "I don't think I understand," Giles says quietly, hand on Oz's cheek to keep him from looking away again. Faint burr of afternoon shadow against his palm, soft skin under it. It's been a long time since Giles has thought about the wolf pelt that can sprout from that skin, the poison in his blood. Commonplace pains, like a knee that aches in damp weather, familiar and forgettable.
Oz moves suddenly, shivering or hiding or making the first tiny step towards slipping off Giles' lap and vanishing out his door, and Giles locks both arms around him. Not going anywhere. He rubs Oz's shoulder and the hollow of his back, and says, "What did you mean, that you thought you might hurt me?" That's not exactly what Oz said, but Giles wants to rearrange, reinterpret, put the fragments together differently and make them mean something else.
Patience is soft and tight, outgrown pajamas and too much hot cocoa, and Oz closes his eyes for a second. Giles' voice is so steady, and he's trying so hard to listen, that Oz is swamped with light and fear.
"Not might," he says and opens his eyes. Curls his fingers into the shoulder-seam of Giles' sweater. "Would hurt."
On his knees, he was on his knees and Giles was fucking him gloriously, and Oz felt so happy, bursting and crackling with love, alight with hope and certainty that things were going to be all right. The wolf sprouts when he feels the simplest, most basic emotions: Love and hope then, grief when he saw Giles, broken, on his hospital bed, fear and anger when Tara tried to walk away. Whenever he was most human, that was the worst.
Giles' brows draw together, his eyes narrowing and lips pursing, and he's about to argue, or, worse, ask Oz again to be clearer. Oz's cut palm skates up Giles' neck, over the curve of his skull, and the ice inside his chest shifts and creaks. Tell you anything, he said the first night he came back, and if he pretends he's talking to himself, to anyone *not* Giles, he can do this.
"The change," Oz says. "It wasn't always the full moon. Like Ver-. Like *she* said. Knew sooner or later I was going to bite you. Eat you or turn you." The heat in his throat boils over and fills his eyes, thunders in his ears. "Wanted to save you."
Oz's voice is a muddy croak, shame-thickened, like pond water green with algae and the slime of decaying weeds. His hand roams over Giles' jumper, plucking pills and then worrying new ones up, but the rest of him doesn't move at all. Giles catches his nervous hand and kisses it a few times, slowly, giving himself time to breathe. Firm tendons and flexible bones, scattering of hair on the knuckles, the soft uncallused spot at the center of the palm. Beautiful and familiar.
It's absolutely human, Oz's hand, with a clever opposable thumb and not a single claw. It couldn't rip Giles down to the bone, any more than Oz's teeth could open his throat and bleed him out in an instant.
"Oz," he says finally. Proper names are like pins, fixing things in place. "Why did you think that? About us. It's not the same. When you were angry and . . . and jealous, you changed. Or when they hurt you." Eyes closed, Giles curls in around Oz, forehead rocking against his skull, but it only brings the images up more vividly. Oz bruised and burned, terrified, hopeless, and Giles never even saw any of it; he heard about it afterwards, from Buffy. What Giles did see, later, was human blood coating the Initiative's white floors and dripping down its walls, and the joy of it appalled him.
Humans and monsters. So hard to keep track.
Giles pulls away a little and looks at Oz, who swallows and swipes the back of his hand across his eyes. "Did I-" A breath and a shudders, and he tries again. "Did I hurt you somehow? What happened?" Every answer breeds questions, hydra heads springing fresh with every sword stroke, and Giles feels farther from understanding than ever.
"*No*. Jesus, no," Oz says. Giles stays where he is, not blinking, his lips bloodless, they're pressed so tightly together. "No, you didn't. Not ever."
The dreams he's had since the first night he changed, wolfish hunger threading through a gut-twisting ache for Giles, resolving into moonlight on silver fur and howls streaming in harmony, those dreams he still has. Not every night, maybe not every week, but regularly. All the more clearly now that he *doesn't* change any more. He touches the hollow of Giles' temple now, shifting a little forward on his knees, and traces the route of a vein up into the silvered brown hair.
"I wasn't *jealous* then, you know," he says softly. "With Tara." Giles' eyes squeeze closed and Oz ought to know better, ought to stick to one massive fuck-up at a time. Wolf, *then* Willow.
His finger follows the bony swell of Giles' skull, up to the crown of his head, so thick and sturdy, protecting such brilliance. "It's not pain, changing. That's not the trigger. It's, I don't know the word. Passion. Passionate whatever. Almost changed when I saw you in the hospital, too. But the first time was -- remember the tie? With the tie, and we weren't fighting any more, and I was so happy."
He's squinting so hard at Giles that Oz can't see much more than a blur. But he can feel the rocket of Giles' pulse in the veins wrapping around his skull, and he can smell the fear piercing up through Giles' pores like weeds, bitter and sharp. He doesn't know if any of this is helping, if he's just drowning Giles in more impossible, unwelcome facts, but the words are scratching on Oz's tongue and he wants -- for whose sake, he doesn't know -- to get them out.
"The more I tried to stay all human and cage it up, the worse it got."
So happy. The tie. Sky-blue silk knotted around Oz's wrists, long rattling groans and Oz shouted when he came, and afterwards he was shaky and quiet and Giles thought he was still worried about their quarrel. He made him cocoa and held him all evening, whispered silly things in his ear until he smiled. That night, when Oz pulled away from his kisses, told him no for the first time, Giles tried to believe he was just tired.
It happened then. When he was inside Oz, fucking him, loving him and so happy, Oz . . .
"Jesus." Giles' hands have gone still on Oz's body, all of him frozen, and he can't do anything but watch the fear slide across Oz's face, twist gradually into shame and then pain like the first shiver of death.
Human and monster, love and blood-hunger, all knit together. Close as the virus in the blood, close as the wound in the flesh. Passion, Giles thinks vaguely as he tries to touch Oz, to say something, originally meant suffering.
Desperate, ice crystallizing in his veins and spreading white-feather trails across his skin, Giles holds on to what he knows. "But you never changed, with me. Never. Even that first time, when you didn't know it could happen." That must mean something. There must be a way out of this, because Oz is here now, not saving Giles by leaving him.
Cold slush pushes through Oz, so slow and sluggish he might as well be dead and buried. Giles' voice is small and thin, like something hammered out, cheap tin or brass. His eyes are dark and still, looking through Oz, and Oz's hands have dropped into the space between them, heavy and useless.
"I didn't," Oz said. "Didn't change with you, but. Giles, I wasn't there, either. I thought it'd be okay if I stayed but, like, hid inside myself. That was almost as bad. For you, I mean. And I didn't know, I thought it was going to happen, any minute."
Giles blinks. His lids are wrinkled slightly, thin skin creased and tender. Oz tastes salt, old salt and cold water, and coughs until his ribs rattle. Giles has gone perfectly still and the fear is choking them both.
"Used to think there was a line," Oz says. He could sing Milarepa's song, welcome the demons and praise the emptiness, but Giles is too afraid for a theological digression. "Between me and it. Tried so hard to stay on the human side -" Stay there, be normal date a girl, go to college. "It's everywhere, it's me. I don't change any more because I'm already there. Always, everywhere."
Koans and dohas, cryptic puzzling things for meditation and enlightenment. Exactly the kind of thing Giles dedicates himself to deciphering, analyzing, understanding. Explaining so it can be fought and defeated.
Oz cups Giles' face - such smooth, well-worn skin and deep, intelligent eyes - in both his palms and says, "Not going to change. That's leaving, too. Promised you I wouldn't."
On the rare nights when Giles couldn't avoid "wolfsitting," as Willow insisted on calling it, he used to watch Oz turn back, monster melting away to reveal the naked, sleeping boy. It was like the end of a fairy tale, the prince unenspelled and restored, and Giles always wanted to believe that Oz would never grow fangs and fur again.
And now he won't, because they're always there, invisible. Oz is always and never the wolf; always human, never only, purely human. Giles lays a hand very lightly on Oz's hair, strokes it, touches his forehead and cheeks and lips, the knob of his jaw and the bony arch of his nose. Oz, taking quick, uneven breaths, trembling as though he's barely holding back from running away, looks up into his eyes. Fear there, glinting sharp in the soft reflected light, and whatever Giles' training (bigotry, Ethan called it once, and he wasn't entirely wrong) may say, Oz is not a monster.
"That's right," Giles says, "no more leaving." Oz nods, and Giles runs his fingers over the curve of his ear and the cropped hair above it. "The last time was bad enough."
Memories flicker by, rapid and jumpy as a film, brilliant technicolor bursts that Giles can't even close his eyes to, and in the last couple of weeks he's grown heartily sick of being at the scant mercy of the past. All those times when Oz was there and not there, all that long unease that grew so inexorably into despair, so that it was almost, for an instant, a relief when Oz finally left. "I didn't understand what was wrong. The things I imagined . . . You should have - I should have made you tell me. Never should have let you leave without a word."
Touching him, brushing dry fingertips over his face and skull, Giles returns feeling into Oz's skin, sends gentle whispers through the numbness and tension, and it's a relief, no thaw, no pain, just return.
But history keeps coming back, pouring through the cracks words, past everything they don't say - without a word, the story of Oz's entire silent life right there - pushing Oz away, making Giles more and more distant. Giles veers from blame and accusation, entirely true and so painful because they *are* justified, to self-doubt and fear. Nothing was his fault, but he'll always shoulder the responsibility, whether it was Oz leaving or Buffy jumping.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Oz says, shifting a little closer, pushing his hand slowly under the back of Giles' sweater. Warm in here, close and comforting. "It was my fault. The bite, then everything else. I didn't know what to say."
Giles is nodding vaguely, as if agreeing, as if looking to move on, but Oz doesn't believe him at all. History and memory aren't the guards at the Tower of London, spotless uniforms and helpful suggestions; they're the river sloshing through the basement, dark and cold.
"I'm so sorry. For leaving, for --" Staying around. "For everything. Leaving, staying. Everything."
Oz's hand, layered between jumper and shirt, is a muted warmth on Giles' back. Infinitely frustrating to touch through cloth, to muffle the bare honesty of skin. And this is what they've been doing these last weeks, keeping silence and evasion between them like heavy coats, sacrificing contact to the fear of being naked.
Sorry for everything, Oz says, but that's just another way of saying nothing.
Giles works a hand inside the sleeve of Oz's jumper, heel of his hand pressed to Oz's wrist, fingers circling his arm, and makes himself say the word Oz won't say. "Willow." His throat's dry, and the name emerges like a puff of dust. "You - at Jenny's funeral, not two fucking weeks later, you were holding her hand. And she cried and you put your arms around her and I . . . Christ, I . . ." He looks up from Oz's sleeve and waits until Oz meets his eyes. "If the wolf . . . if you were afraid of - of changing, why were you with her?"
It was the only explanation that ever made sense. Oz left him for Willow, for a sweet, pretty girl, the sort of person he should have been with all along.
So much anger, and pain, always inside Giles, and it's not history; it's alive and darkly bright, and Oz deserves it all. Oz curls his fingers into his palm and breathes through his mouth against the frictionburn grip of Giles' hand on his arm. That day still jangles with all the others around it, one shard in the kaleidoscope, bright and meaningless. Oz remembers Giles' haircut, sunlight off his glasses, the speed from the tab of acid rocketing through his system.
"Liked her," Oz says, and the rough sound of his own voice makes him wince. "Couldn't be alone. Couldn't not see you. Safe with her." He wishes he knew what to say, how to describe the steps Giles' face is taking as it shuts down. Giles is starting to look just like he did back then, shuttered and boarded-up, empty except for rats inside. "Not like, not like. Didn't trade, not like that. Nothing like that. Safe with her, no -"
Too many words, none of them right, and they're dull and small like lead in his mouth. Oz leans back, tilting his head, and when he catches Giles' eye, it still doesn't seem to make a difference.
"Hug a lot of people," he says. Takes a breath between each phrase and thinks of rock-climbing, constant search for handholds and safety. "Or I used to. I was scared. And lonely. And drunk and other shit. Couldn't not see you, and she was nice, and the wolf stayed quiet."
When he closes his eyes, the kaleidoscope's twirling out of control, and it's less scary to open them and see Giles' still, flat expression.
"I'm sorry. Thought I was helping you by leaving. Thought I was helping her by staying. Should've just gone. So sorry."
"Yes, I . . . " He's too confused to say anything else, and can only stretch out a hand for the thing, the book, that Oz is holding just out of his reach. The book. Small, square, black-bound. Familiar-looking.
Oz gives it back, carefully, as though it's liable to blow up if mishandled. Time bomb, parcel of dynamite, and they've only just got everything in order. Staring at the waterstained cover, Giles hardly notices as Oz tugs him down onto the sofa and settles in next to him.
It's certainly been in the wars. The corners are rubbed crooked and raw, the spine is badly cracked, and it smells of mildew, dust, and paper disintegrating back into wood pulp and rags. Giles lays a hand flat on the slightly sticky leather and closes his eyes. The cover felt smooth when it was new, and the heavy cream pages took ink beautifully.
"Dear god. This is . . . " He remembers Oz's hands unwrapping it, and how his fingers traced the shapes of the letters, and how he smiled when he came to the blank pages at the end. He remembers reading to Oz from it, pretending he didn't already know that everything was over.
Giles' hands tighten on the book, and he can't look at Oz, although he wants to. "You kept it, all these years." He hadn't even known Oz took it with him until later, when he couldn't find it anywhere.
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Just like him.
"I, um. It's got stuff in it. I filled it up, took it with me. And I thought, like -" He looks down at his own hands, tiny, the nails gnawed down, and breathes.
He looks up so quickly that Giles half-flinches and blinks rapidly.
"Know you're wondering where I went. Why. So I wanted you to look at it."
Like being flayed open on an operating table, naked and swabbed with blood-yellow antiseptic and everyone watching, poking, laughing.
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Any question you can think of is answered in a book somewhere. And in his hands now, Giles has the encyclopedia of Oz. More answers, perhaps, than he wanted. Delight and terror splash through him, swirl hot and cold but somehow never blend into anything comfortable.
He's been silent, Giles realizes, for quite a long time, and Oz is gnawing ferociously on a fingernail and watching him stare at the book. "Thank you. I'd like to see it." Useless polite words, exactly what he'd say if Oz had given him a newspaper. Oz abruptly drops his hand into his lap and folds the other one over it, as though he's holding it down. He's shrinking, drawing in his shoulders and his limbs, the way he's mostly stopped doing when they're on the tube or in a crowded shop.
"Oz, please." Giles holds out his arms in invitation, and only just stops himself from pulling Oz forcibly into his lap. "Come here, and let's look at it together."
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His mom's older sister used to go to consciousness-raising groups when his mom was a teenager, and they'd do things like look at their own genitals in the mirror to get a feel for their womanhood. Oz doesn't want to look at himself like that, doesn't want to revisit the pages he made; he's read the pages Giles wrote over and over, so he's memorized the sequence, starts hearing Auden as he finishes the excerpt from Midsummer-Night's Dream. But he skips past his own pages, every time.
Giles kisses the top of his head, then rests his cheek there, and Oz isn't the only one who's freaking out. He slides his arm across Giles' chest and pats him in slow, wavery circles.
"Sorry it's so beat up," he says, a little croakily, and coughs into the soft wool of Giles' sweater. Giles rubs the back of his neck and Oz takes a deep, shaky breath, concentrating on the gentle familiar touch. Relaxation tugs at the edges of him and he tries to let it in. "Tried to take care of it, but. Not so good with stuff. Fuck it up."
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Oz's neck loosens a little as Giles works at it, and his breathing gets steadier and deeper. This is the best comfort, Giles' hand sliding up into Oz's hair and Oz kissing his collarbone through the fabric of his shirt. There's no other comfort, no answer in words for what Oz said. He did fuck up. Little by little he turned away Giles' love, left him one agonizing inch at a time. Probably, certainly, Giles fucked up too; somehow he hurt or scared or neglected Oz. Certainly it was his fault too, but Oz was the one who left, over and over, always putting more distance between them.
Not going anywhere, Oz said just now, and Giles holds him a little closer, a little tighter, trying to make it true.
He rests the book on Oz's knee, the way he always used to read with Oz in his lap, and opens it towards the middle. Oz's half seems bigger, bulging instead of flat; there must be things pasted in. After the last of Giles' own entries, a love poem by Donne to bookend the one he began with, there are the lyrics and tablatures to "Dear Prudence." When he turns to the page, Oz, who's been very still, tucks his head tighter under Giles' chin, as though he's hiding.
Letters and numbers fill the page like a secret code, concealing memory within. Oz cross-legged on the hearth, playing, and afterwards there were tears in his eyes and a smile that was full of apologies, regretful and implacable. The handwriting is shaky, far worse than Oz's usually is, and Giles wonders if Oz went home that awful morning and wrote this down, the goodbye that he never actually managed to say.
The paper is rippled and uneven, as though it's been wet, and for an idiotic moment Giles imagines Oz weeping over the book like a Victorian maiden. And then he turns the page.
Rust-brown handprint, as simple, as brutally direct, as the ones in ancient caves, assertions that cut across twenty thousand years and make it nothing. I was here; I made this; remember me. But this is no painting in red ochre, made safe by the mediation of art. Giles has seen enough dried blood to know what it looks like.
"Christ, Oz." His voice is rough, louder than he meant, and Oz presses his face hard into Giles' chest. "Sweetheart, Oz . . . " He kisses Oz's hair, waits until they've both stopped shaking, and then says, "Why? Talk to me, please. Tell me what it means, what you felt. I want to know."
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"It's me," he says, tasting ice and looking up at Giles. Hard bones, motionless face, near-liquid eyes. "I felt -" Ice-shards in his chest, cataract-cloudy vision, and when he tries to breathe, nothing happens. Giles tightens his embrace even more. "It's me. Blood, and, and the wolf. Knew I was going to kill you." He can't see much more than the angled curve of Giles' cheekbone and the deep line around his mouth. "Felt so sick. Filthy. Had to protect you."
Lies and truth, the past tense tissue-thin over the truth. He will always feel sick and dirty, always need to save Giles again, over and over.
"Sorry?" Stupid words, stupid head for believing this would make things better, would help him or Giles or both of them. All it's doing is reminding him how nothing's different, will never change. "It's me."
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Wolf, blood, Oz. "I don't think I understand," Giles says quietly, hand on Oz's cheek to keep him from looking away again. Faint burr of afternoon shadow against his palm, soft skin under it. It's been a long time since Giles has thought about the wolf pelt that can sprout from that skin, the poison in his blood. Commonplace pains, like a knee that aches in damp weather, familiar and forgettable.
Oz moves suddenly, shivering or hiding or making the first tiny step towards slipping off Giles' lap and vanishing out his door, and Giles locks both arms around him. Not going anywhere. He rubs Oz's shoulder and the hollow of his back, and says, "What did you mean, that you thought you might hurt me?" That's not exactly what Oz said, but Giles wants to rearrange, reinterpret, put the fragments together differently and make them mean something else.
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"Not might," he says and opens his eyes. Curls his fingers into the shoulder-seam of Giles' sweater. "Would hurt."
On his knees, he was on his knees and Giles was fucking him gloriously, and Oz felt so happy, bursting and crackling with love, alight with hope and certainty that things were going to be all right. The wolf sprouts when he feels the simplest, most basic emotions: Love and hope then, grief when he saw Giles, broken, on his hospital bed, fear and anger when Tara tried to walk away. Whenever he was most human, that was the worst.
Giles' brows draw together, his eyes narrowing and lips pursing, and he's about to argue, or, worse, ask Oz again to be clearer. Oz's cut palm skates up Giles' neck, over the curve of his skull, and the ice inside his chest shifts and creaks. Tell you anything, he said the first night he came back, and if he pretends he's talking to himself, to anyone *not* Giles, he can do this.
"The change," Oz says. "It wasn't always the full moon. Like Ver-. Like *she* said. Knew sooner or later I was going to bite you. Eat you or turn you." The heat in his throat boils over and fills his eyes, thunders in his ears. "Wanted to save you."
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It's absolutely human, Oz's hand, with a clever opposable thumb and not a single claw. It couldn't rip Giles down to the bone, any more than Oz's teeth could open his throat and bleed him out in an instant.
"Oz," he says finally. Proper names are like pins, fixing things in place. "Why did you think that? About us. It's not the same. When you were angry and . . . and jealous, you changed. Or when they hurt you." Eyes closed, Giles curls in around Oz, forehead rocking against his skull, but it only brings the images up more vividly. Oz bruised and burned, terrified, hopeless, and Giles never even saw any of it; he heard about it afterwards, from Buffy. What Giles did see, later, was human blood coating the Initiative's white floors and dripping down its walls, and the joy of it appalled him.
Humans and monsters. So hard to keep track.
Giles pulls away a little and looks at Oz, who swallows and swipes the back of his hand across his eyes. "Did I-" A breath and a shudders, and he tries again. "Did I hurt you somehow? What happened?" Every answer breeds questions, hydra heads springing fresh with every sword stroke, and Giles feels farther from understanding than ever.
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The dreams he's had since the first night he changed, wolfish hunger threading through a gut-twisting ache for Giles, resolving into moonlight on silver fur and howls streaming in harmony, those dreams he still has. Not every night, maybe not every week, but regularly. All the more clearly now that he *doesn't* change any more. He touches the hollow of Giles' temple now, shifting a little forward on his knees, and traces the route of a vein up into the silvered brown hair.
"I wasn't *jealous* then, you know," he says softly. "With Tara." Giles' eyes squeeze closed and Oz ought to know better, ought to stick to one massive fuck-up at a time. Wolf, *then* Willow.
His finger follows the bony swell of Giles' skull, up to the crown of his head, so thick and sturdy, protecting such brilliance. "It's not pain, changing. That's not the trigger. It's, I don't know the word. Passion. Passionate whatever. Almost changed when I saw you in the hospital, too. But the first time was -- remember the tie? With the tie, and we weren't fighting any more, and I was so happy."
He's squinting so hard at Giles that Oz can't see much more than a blur. But he can feel the rocket of Giles' pulse in the veins wrapping around his skull, and he can smell the fear piercing up through Giles' pores like weeds, bitter and sharp. He doesn't know if any of this is helping, if he's just drowning Giles in more impossible, unwelcome facts, but the words are scratching on Oz's tongue and he wants -- for whose sake, he doesn't know -- to get them out.
"The more I tried to stay all human and cage it up, the worse it got."
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It happened then. When he was inside Oz, fucking him, loving him and so happy, Oz . . .
"Jesus." Giles' hands have gone still on Oz's body, all of him frozen, and he can't do anything but watch the fear slide across Oz's face, twist gradually into shame and then pain like the first shiver of death.
Human and monster, love and blood-hunger, all knit together. Close as the virus in the blood, close as the wound in the flesh. Passion, Giles thinks vaguely as he tries to touch Oz, to say something, originally meant suffering.
Desperate, ice crystallizing in his veins and spreading white-feather trails across his skin, Giles holds on to what he knows. "But you never changed, with me. Never. Even that first time, when you didn't know it could happen." That must mean something. There must be a way out of this, because Oz is here now, not saving Giles by leaving him.
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"I didn't," Oz said. "Didn't change with you, but. Giles, I wasn't there, either. I thought it'd be okay if I stayed but, like, hid inside myself. That was almost as bad. For you, I mean. And I didn't know, I thought it was going to happen, any minute."
Giles blinks. His lids are wrinkled slightly, thin skin creased and tender. Oz tastes salt, old salt and cold water, and coughs until his ribs rattle. Giles has gone perfectly still and the fear is choking them both.
"Used to think there was a line," Oz says. He could sing Milarepa's song, welcome the demons and praise the emptiness, but Giles is too afraid for a theological digression. "Between me and it. Tried so hard to stay on the human side -" Stay there, be normal date a girl, go to college. "It's everywhere, it's me. I don't change any more because I'm already there. Always, everywhere."
Koans and dohas, cryptic puzzling things for meditation and enlightenment. Exactly the kind of thing Giles dedicates himself to deciphering, analyzing, understanding. Explaining so it can be fought and defeated.
Oz cups Giles' face - such smooth, well-worn skin and deep, intelligent eyes - in both his palms and says, "Not going to change. That's leaving, too. Promised you I wouldn't."
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And now he won't, because they're always there, invisible. Oz is always and never the wolf; always human, never only, purely human. Giles lays a hand very lightly on Oz's hair, strokes it, touches his forehead and cheeks and lips, the knob of his jaw and the bony arch of his nose. Oz, taking quick, uneven breaths, trembling as though he's barely holding back from running away, looks up into his eyes. Fear there, glinting sharp in the soft reflected light, and whatever Giles' training (bigotry, Ethan called it once, and he wasn't entirely wrong) may say, Oz is not a monster.
"That's right," Giles says, "no more leaving." Oz nods, and Giles runs his fingers over the curve of his ear and the cropped hair above it. "The last time was bad enough."
Memories flicker by, rapid and jumpy as a film, brilliant technicolor bursts that Giles can't even close his eyes to, and in the last couple of weeks he's grown heartily sick of being at the scant mercy of the past. All those times when Oz was there and not there, all that long unease that grew so inexorably into despair, so that it was almost, for an instant, a relief when Oz finally left. "I didn't understand what was wrong. The things I imagined . . . You should have - I should have made you tell me. Never should have let you leave without a word."
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But history keeps coming back, pouring through the cracks words, past everything they don't say - without a word, the story of Oz's entire silent life right there - pushing Oz away, making Giles more and more distant. Giles veers from blame and accusation, entirely true and so painful because they *are* justified, to self-doubt and fear. Nothing was his fault, but he'll always shoulder the responsibility, whether it was Oz leaving or Buffy jumping.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Oz says, shifting a little closer, pushing his hand slowly under the back of Giles' sweater. Warm in here, close and comforting. "It was my fault. The bite, then everything else. I didn't know what to say."
Giles is nodding vaguely, as if agreeing, as if looking to move on, but Oz doesn't believe him at all. History and memory aren't the guards at the Tower of London, spotless uniforms and helpful suggestions; they're the river sloshing through the basement, dark and cold.
"I'm so sorry. For leaving, for --" Staying around. "For everything. Leaving, staying. Everything."
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Sorry for everything, Oz says, but that's just another way of saying nothing.
Giles works a hand inside the sleeve of Oz's jumper, heel of his hand pressed to Oz's wrist, fingers circling his arm, and makes himself say the word Oz won't say. "Willow." His throat's dry, and the name emerges like a puff of dust. "You - at Jenny's funeral, not two fucking weeks later, you were holding her hand. And she cried and you put your arms around her and I . . . Christ, I . . ." He looks up from Oz's sleeve and waits until Oz meets his eyes. "If the wolf . . . if you were afraid of - of changing, why were you with her?"
It was the only explanation that ever made sense. Oz left him for Willow, for a sweet, pretty girl, the sort of person he should have been with all along.
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"Liked her," Oz says, and the rough sound of his own voice makes him wince. "Couldn't be alone. Couldn't not see you. Safe with her." He wishes he knew what to say, how to describe the steps Giles' face is taking as it shuts down. Giles is starting to look just like he did back then, shuttered and boarded-up, empty except for rats inside. "Not like, not like. Didn't trade, not like that. Nothing like that. Safe with her, no -"
Too many words, none of them right, and they're dull and small like lead in his mouth. Oz leans back, tilting his head, and when he catches Giles' eye, it still doesn't seem to make a difference.
"Hug a lot of people," he says. Takes a breath between each phrase and thinks of rock-climbing, constant search for handholds and safety. "Or I used to. I was scared. And lonely. And drunk and other shit. Couldn't not see you, and she was nice, and the wolf stayed quiet."
When he closes his eyes, the kaleidoscope's twirling out of control, and it's less scary to open them and see Giles' still, flat expression.
"I'm sorry. Thought I was helping you by leaving. Thought I was helping her by staying. Should've just gone. So sorry."
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