"That wouldn't have helped." Giles' fingers have clenched around Oz's arm, and it takes effort to loosen them, to touch Oz gently. "Nothing helped. I didn't feel better when you left Sunnydale. It was just a different kind of knife in my gut
( ... )
Giles embraces him like someone drowning, pulling Oz down and down, the questions just more currents and weight.
Questions ought to be life-lines, the rope tossed at the last minute, hauling you to safety. They never have been, not for Oz. Giles asked him once before if Oz loved Willow. Love a lot of people, he said; still in love with you, he didn't manage to get out. Questions wrap around his throat and clog his mouth
( ... )
Now that he's had honesty, Giles could almost beg for lies. You never loved her, tell me you didn't, tell me there was only me. Oz is watching him, worry and sadness furrowing his face until he looks twice his age, so transparently pale that Giles imagines if he looked closely he could see all the way to the skull
( ... )
You're here. Here, not there, and it's promise and threat all at once.
Oz can't see anything beyond the seam of Giles' sweater and a patch of skin on his throat, but he is still here, one little room that feels just the same as the one in Sunnydale, and it's an everywhere.
"Love you," Oz says softly. Everywhere is a place, worlds-big, that jolts and rumbles, like Giles' irregular breath and the grinding sound of his voice.
"Of course it matters. Hurt you so much." Oz digs his hand between Giles' side and the cushion, working and weaselling it deeper until his arm is wrapped as tightly around Giles as Giles' arms are around him. He tried so hard to be normal and human and right, and all he succeeded in doing was killing Veruca and nearly killing Giles and breaking Willow. He's nowhere now, broken and scattered, and he clenches his fist around a fold in the sweater.
"Want to stay -" Oz wriggles back a little, trying to see Giles' face. Brine drying to rocky salt on the back of his tongue and winds whipping through his chest. "Can't
"I don't want you to hide," Giles says, leaning forward a little to make room for Oz's arm behind him. "You were right to tell me. I only wish you'd told me then." He half-hopes that some old colleague of Anya's is close enough to overhear, to undo their awful mistake and give them back three-and-a-half years, but nothing happens
( ... )
Words and touch, swirling in the air and over Oz's skin, and Giles is being brave by letting go. Letting the words out, letting go of anger and hatred. Like he did last week, plummeting out of numbness into feeling. Oz opens his hands from their stony fists and pushes his palms over Giles' back and shoulder
( ... )
As slowly as floodwaters, Giles' fears sink and disperse. Some evaporate in the warmth of Oz's kiss and the stronger heat of his words--always loved you--that work on Giles like steamy, rainforest languor. Others, inevitably, seep back into him, cold and muddy, trickling along his spine and making him shiver a little even as he kisses Oz back and says, "I love you
( ... )
"Can try," Oz says, wriggling downward and daring himself to look at the next page. He has never been sure how Giles *does* that, how he manages to set aside whatever obstacles and private griefs there are and push on. Go where he needs to go and do what he needs to do. That he *hadn't* done that when Oz found him in London, had instead sunk farther and farther into the armchair and within himself, that was the scariest thing
( ... )
The left-hand page is almost blank, with nothing but the date and I'm sorry, in Oz's small, neat printing, which Giles has only ever seen before on the title lists of mix tapes, and once when he made a hasty, shamed foray into a notebook Oz accidentally left in the library. Pages of equations and computer code, sketches of classrooms in slightly incorrect perspective, and an unfinished note to Willow that Giles read trembling but that was only, as it turned out, about going to the Bronze that night
( ... )
Oz tilts his head, back against Giles' hand and against his neck, and nods. "Skanky spot, definitely," he says and turns the page. Too many downcast eyes and restless hands, watered-down beer, no Giles. He can't imagine Giles somewhere like that, soiled and hung with smoke and dusty tinsel, but he looked for Giles there, every night
( ... )
Giles has to laugh, and then he tries to make himself stop and explain that he's not laughing at Oz, but Oz grins and just looks slightly puzzled. "By the way!" Giles echoes, laughter bubbling up around the edges of the words. Whispering into Oz's ear now, lots of breath in it to make him shiver, Giles says, "By the way indeed." He nips the lobe - "Incidentally" - catches an earring between his lips and tugs it - "in case you were wondering" - swipes his tongue around the edge and then inside, so that Oz gasps and sways - "I just thought I'd mention" - licks his way to Oz's mouth and kisses him slowly - "that I'm tremendously in love with you
( ... )
"Have I?" Oz asks, the laughter still burbling warmly around his chest and in his mouth. "Cool by me."
He remembers being hungry, but it's like remembering a particularly bad fall skateboarding, or being shot: The pain is gone, and he can *tell* himself what it felt like, but mostly he remembers the situation, the circumstances, not the pain.
"Always think of you and food," he says, turning the page. The colors are brighter here, postcards and handbills from Turkey and India and the trek up to Tibet. Elephants both real and god-like, luscious goddesses with twisting lips, a recipe for lemon pickle that makes his mouth pucker with the memory of it, angry monkeys camping on telephone wires and a scrawled, half-literate signature from Tempa, who helped him get across the border. "Cooking with you, eating stuff. Missed it more than anything." He glances over, and Giles is frowning a little, tracing the line of one of Oz's shoulder-blades. "Well, almost anything."
Once he made it to Tibet, Oz was still hungry. He drank po cha all day
( ... )
A scent of tea rises from the gaudy paper, but darker and ranker than any tea Giles has ever tasted. It reminds him a little of decaying autumn leaves, and a little of the wide ribbons of kelp, speckled with crystallized salt, that Oz used to buy for Japanese soups, and which always made the kitchen smell of low tide. Probably the salt and yak butter made the tea taste rather better than it would have otherwise. "Do you drink tea now?" Giles asks. "I thought you drank sugared milk that had once been allowed to look at a tea leaf." Oz scowls exaggeratedly, pinches the tip of Giles' nose and then kisses it.
Happiness, Giles is learning, has a thousand shapes, and pouring out two mugs of tea is among them. So are seeing Oz's Save an Animal mug every day, remembering to keep milk and sugar on hand for him, drinking tea and eating meals with him. "I missed cooking with you, too," Giles says. "This will sound ridiculous, but when I thought about you, I thought about food and sleep. Sex. Talking." He cups Oz's cheek and smiles. "Necessary
( ... )
Necessary things: Giles is right about that, maybe more right than Oz can really say in words. He's hungry all the time, reaching for Giles, taking another helping, introducing a new topic. He is still gorging on food, conversation, *and* sex, enough that Giles has adopted a new smile, half-rueful, half-indulgent, when Oz butters another piece of toast or says something long after they've settled in for the night.
"I need to learn pride?" Oz asks. "Or vanity? Don't think I really want either -" Neither strikes him as a good thing, and both make him think of Ethan, sudden unbidden images of a laughing face and knowing eyes. Giles' account of Ethan, anyway, small threads and clouded remarks. Another black gap between them, persisting under its own power, while the rest are fading and closing. "'course, you did accuse me of being vain when I wouldn't cede the mirror this morning."
Giles squeezes his shoulder and Oz tucks his head against Giles' neck. Never been happier, Giles said the night before Oz left and made it a lie, the gap-
( ... )
There's a date that Giles remembers, from May of last year. He remembers everything about that day: sunshine and the cool air that streamed in from the open door; Oz's tentative stance in the doorway, a slight nervous smile twisting his mouth when everyone turned to stare at him; Willow's blank shock and Tara's sudden agitation, inexplicable then; how he couldn't manage to look Oz in the eye, and how Oz turned to Willow, walked over to her, didn't look at him again. He even remembers something he didn't know at the time: the copper bowl in Oz's knapsack, gift there was never a chance for, beginning of a conversation they never had
( ... )
"Pretty crappy luck, yeah," Oz says, rubbing his nose against Giles' cheek, inhaling tea and other Gilesy things, before he kisses Giles again, more firmly. Weird, how kisses, which slide and deepen and ache, also ground him, tug him back to earth and into the present. He slides his hand up the sleeve of Giles' jumper and strokes the inside of his elbow
( ... )
Reply
Questions ought to be life-lines, the rope tossed at the last minute, hauling you to safety. They never have been, not for Oz. Giles asked him once before if Oz loved Willow. Love a lot of people, he said; still in love with you, he didn't manage to get out. Questions wrap around his throat and clog his mouth ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Oz can't see anything beyond the seam of Giles' sweater and a patch of skin on his throat, but he is still here, one little room that feels just the same as the one in Sunnydale, and it's an everywhere.
"Love you," Oz says softly. Everywhere is a place, worlds-big, that jolts and rumbles, like Giles' irregular breath and the grinding sound of his voice.
"Of course it matters. Hurt you so much." Oz digs his hand between Giles' side and the cushion, working and weaselling it deeper until his arm is wrapped as tightly around Giles as Giles' arms are around him. He tried so hard to be normal and human and right, and all he succeeded in doing was killing Veruca and nearly killing Giles and breaking Willow. He's nowhere now, broken and scattered, and he clenches his fist around a fold in the sweater.
"Want to stay -" Oz wriggles back a little, trying to see Giles' face. Brine drying to rocky salt on the back of his tongue and winds whipping through his chest. "Can't
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
He remembers being hungry, but it's like remembering a particularly bad fall skateboarding, or being shot: The pain is gone, and he can *tell* himself what it felt like, but mostly he remembers the situation, the circumstances, not the pain.
"Always think of you and food," he says, turning the page. The colors are brighter here, postcards and handbills from Turkey and India and the trek up to Tibet. Elephants both real and god-like, luscious goddesses with twisting lips, a recipe for lemon pickle that makes his mouth pucker with the memory of it, angry monkeys camping on telephone wires and a scrawled, half-literate signature from Tempa, who helped him get across the border. "Cooking with you, eating stuff. Missed it more than anything." He glances over, and Giles is frowning a little, tracing the line of one of Oz's shoulder-blades. "Well, almost anything."
Once he made it to Tibet, Oz was still hungry. He drank po cha all day ( ... )
Reply
Happiness, Giles is learning, has a thousand shapes, and pouring out two mugs of tea is among them. So are seeing Oz's Save an Animal mug every day, remembering to keep milk and sugar on hand for him, drinking tea and eating meals with him. "I missed cooking with you, too," Giles says. "This will sound ridiculous, but when I thought about you, I thought about food and sleep. Sex. Talking." He cups Oz's cheek and smiles. "Necessary ( ... )
Reply
"I need to learn pride?" Oz asks. "Or vanity? Don't think I really want either -" Neither strikes him as a good thing, and both make him think of Ethan, sudden unbidden images of a laughing face and knowing eyes. Giles' account of Ethan, anyway, small threads and clouded remarks. Another black gap between them, persisting under its own power, while the rest are fading and closing. "'course, you did accuse me of being vain when I wouldn't cede the mirror this morning."
Giles squeezes his shoulder and Oz tucks his head against Giles' neck. Never been happier, Giles said the night before Oz left and made it a lie, the gap- ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment