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."
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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