In the silence, the waitress refills both their mugs of coffee and Oz finishes his bacon. "No," he says. Love and history and Giles are feeling too heavy, so he goes for a tease. "But the sex is really, really good."
Clicking the lid to the syrup pitcher erratically, almost annoyingly, Xander smiles tightly. "Guess I thought, like, older guy and you. Has to be the sex. Two guys, you know?"
Oz isn't sure where to *start* unpacking that. "We can talk about something else --"
"Nah," Xander says. He finally looks up and meets Oz's eyes. In the greasy light of the diner, he looks like he's wearing a mask. "You promised me gossip."
"Okay." Oz pushes his plate away and sips the scalding coffee. It's a million times better than the sludge the Pump overcharges for. "Hit me. Or I can --"
Xander leans in, knitting his fingers together, and Oz hopes that's relaxation in his expression. "So is he all Watchery? Lectures you, spanks you like a naughty schoolboy, uses the rep tie in new and kinky ways, that kind of thing?"
Oz has to clamp his napkin over his mouth. Giles has never hit him, but the tie's a little too close to the truth for comfort. "Nope. Not at all." Xander's still got his expectant face on, so Oz sets down the napkin and tries to explain. "Like - okay. Know how it is, how it feels, with someone you really like? Who doesn't make fun of you or expect stuff from you?"
"No," Xander says, then grins. "Okay, so not Cordy."
"Not Cordy. It's like that with Giles. Like, anything I'm feeling? Is cool. And most of the time, I'm more interested in what *he's* feeling. And it's like I can just say or do anything."
Xander's face tightens even more and his shoulders draw in. "Yeah."
He looks so haunted, like a ghost's creeping over him, and Oz doesn't know what to say. The only person Xander's ever felt like that with, Oz is pretty sure, is Willow. And that boat sailed a long time ago. "So, anyway --"
"Is he all Ripper, then?" Xander asks, his voice going a little high. "Like big thug guy, shove you over the hood of a car and ravish you? Make you take it, make you like it?"
"Dude," Oz says. It's an awesome image, even if Giles is nowhere to be found in it. He shifts a little. "You've got the weirdest, most porntastic ideas *ever*."
"Yeah," Xander says. He grins and shrugs. "Lotta noise in my head."
"I'll say." Oz glances over his shoulder at the clock above the counter; it's filmed in grease, and he can't tell what time it is. "You want to get going?"
Xander scratches his cheek. "You blowing me off?"
"Get down and dirty in the car," Oz says. Giles has been alone at Revello for way too long, and Oz feels itchy down the back of his neck. "Promise."
Xander doesn't actually want to hear any details, it turns out; he spends the ride back to town treating Oz to some of the ideas he's had. Real details wig him out, but jack-off fantasies - because that's what they are, no way could a guy think this thoroughly about Giles, Oz, and Giles and Oz without having gotten himself off in the process - are apparently fair game.
"- so, yeah, and then you undid the cummerbund and Giles fainted," Xander is saying as they pull into the driveway.
"Wow," Oz says, getting out. His head's thick with porn starring him and it's a very strange feeling. He coughs and adds, "You coming in?"
"Yeah, I'll follow you. Gotta check the dumpster first."
Oz climbs the stairs to the porch alone, then, and pushes the door open. You'd think a Slayer would have an alarm system or something. The house is quiet, water running somewhere - probably the basement - and Dawn's curled up on the couch with a Transmetropolitan graphic novel in her lap. She smiles at him and lifts her chin.
Giles is hunched over the little table in the far corner and something inside Oz's skin shifts and lightens at the sight of him.
"Hey -" he says lowly, wrapping his arms around Giles before he can jump. "Missed you."
Oz's chin is resting on Giles' shoulder, his face in Giles' neck, and he's taking long deep breaths. Sniffing him. "I've missed you too," Giles says, and turns to wrap his arms around Oz's waist, press his nose into a clean t-shirt. Nothing but the scent of detergent, until Oz bends down again and Giles can smell Oz's skin and his own cologne on it. Oz must have put some on, as he does sometimes.
Giles has always like scents, flowers or old books or the smell of brewing tea, but lately he's more attentive to them. Oz's sense of smell is immeasurably keener, and Giles will never experience the world as Oz does, but he'll push himself as far as he can.
When they let each other go, both Dawn and Xander (hovering at the farthest edge of the room, shifting his weight from foot to foot) are staring. Willow, mercifully, appears to have stayed up in her room. "Sorry," Giles says, and offers an apologetic smile that Xander looks away from, red-faced. "That concludes the one o'clock show." When Oz takes a half-step away, though, Giles reaches for his hand.
"You guys are so cute," Dawn says. "It's like a movie or something." Xander goes even redder and starts to cough, and there's a tremor of what looks like suppressed laughter in Oz's shoulders. "What? What did I say?"
"Is that a new comic, Dawnie?" Xander chokes out, and sits down next to her to read over her shoulder. "Let's have a look."
The expression on Oz's face is more neutral than usual, which Giles has come to associate with secret plans and private jokes. But this time it's something he and Xander share, and it's impossible not to feel left out. "Well," Giles says quietly, and he's glad when Oz turns back to him, "I'm ready to go if you are." He's got far enough through the bills to be sure that Anya's figures are correct. And there's nothing else to do here at the moment.
After promising Dawn that they'll come back later for dinner, they walk out to the car. Inside its false privacy, Giles kisses Oz slowly-too slowly and too deeply for this half-public place, but Giles needs this kiss. Deserves it. "I'm tired," he says. "Could we leave the tour of Sunnydale for another day?" He'd like to be alone with Oz, but the mere thought of the motel room makes him long for open space. "I don't know why, but I think I'd like to go to the beach. Sit in the sun and think about nothing. Watch you go wading with your trousers rolled up." Oz grins, and Giles realizes he'll never again be able to claim that he hasn't missed the California weather.
The kiss still sparking through his mouth and over his lips, Oz squeezes the back of Giles' neck and nods again. "Beach's good. Little sun, little surf."
That feeling that's sifting and settling through him, Oz realizes at last, is relief. Like dust motes and raindrops, falling slowly through him and returning him to himself. He went months at a time - a year - without seeing Giles, but a morning apart has left him slightly twitchy and out of sorts. Giles, on the other hand, doesn't look relieved at all; he looks like he's holding himself tightly, skin and bones drawn in, and his face is a little blanched around the mouth and eyes. It hurts to look at, even in the sidewise glances Oz can give.
"Hey," Oz says when they're a good couple miles from Revello as he puts his hand on Giles' thigh and lets it rest there. "How'd it go at the homestead?" He spots a convenience store up ahead and hits the turn signal. "Hold that thought."
In the store, Oz grabs the highest-SPF lotion he can find, pink-bottled and decorated with balloons and teddy bears, and two bottles of water. At the cashier, he adds a few candy bars to the pile before paying and hoofing it back to the car.
"Loot," he says, passing the bag over to Giles and shouldering on his seatbelt. He takes the back way to the beach, avoiding the highway, threading through subdivisions and the odd dirt road, and it lands them right on the little bluffs, several miles up from the piers, where Oz figures it will be much quieter.
"Made it -" He leans over and kisses Giles, and hopes that things are okay. "Need to lotion you up first, though, before I let you out."
Giles takes off his glasses and lets Oz coat his face, which feels a bit tight from this morning's sun, with a thick layer of cream. Oz has already moved on to his neck before Giles realizes that he could, in fact, have done this himself. But this is nicer. "You know, I've never been here before," Giles says, pushing up the sleeves of his jumper and holding out an arm for Oz to work on. He went to the pier a couple of times, investigating one demon or another, but that's strictly for teenagers and he was never tempted to stay. Glasses back on, Giles looks at the steep rocky slope leading down to a narrow stretch of sand. "It's pretty."
Oz's touch, functional though it is, gentles away most of the cold tension in Giles' body. By the time Giles has put sunscreen on Oz and followed him down the footpath to the beach, he feels better. Normal. It's strange that this pitch of worry isn't normal anymore, that he's grown accustomed to relative peace. That peace isn't really normal to him, he thinks; it's one of the gifts Oz gives, all unawares.
Surprisingly, the beach is almost empty. There are a couple of slow-moving joggers and, in the distance, a women with a little girl. Perhaps the breeze off the sea makes the day too cold by California standards. It feels warm to Giles, and when they sit down he takes off his shoes and slides his feet in the rough sand.
"Well," he says, turning back to the question he's left unanswered for half an hour, "I've had better mornings." Oz listens quietly to his account of what happened, pouring a bit of sand from hand to hand, his expression shading gradually into a frown. "It's a mess," Giles concludes. "Anything I say to Willow will only make her angrier, I expect. I'd like to have a word with Tara-she's a level-headed girl-but I'm not sure I'll get the chance." He touches Oz's cheek. "It's as well you weren't there. But I'm sorry about . . . well, how I handled that. I don't intend to start ordering you about, honestly." Remembering their conversation this morning, he thinks, my Oz, but smiles instead of saying it.
Out in the sun, breeze teasing at his hair, Giles looks like himself, relaxed and loose, and Oz leans into the touch. It used to be, when they got away from Sunnydale, that Giles, relaxed, looked like a version of himself. Not the real thing.
"You were in Watcher-mode," Oz says and shrugs. "Really not a big deal." When he closes his eyes, he tries to picture what Willow looked like, so angry and hard, but it's impossible; the closest he can get is that blank, dark look on her face when they did the curse on Angel in the hospital room. He shivers and shifts closer, so his legs are folded over Giles', his toes digging in the sand. "Sorry about Will, though. I didn't think it'd be this hard."
Giles opens his mouth, but Oz shakes his head. "Know it's not my fault. Feels like it is." Giles' hand circles his upper back, plucking at his shirt, sweeping down his shoulder-blades, and Oz drops his head forward, lets the touch seep more deeply inside. The sound of the water, heavy and steady, is something he's missed without realizing it, like lemon-scented dryer sheets, and Oz times his breathing with the waves.
"I stuffed my face and fended off Xander's X-rated questions," he says, looking sideways at Giles and smiling. "Wanna trade?"
"Good lord." Xander's red face and suppressed giggles make a lot more sense now. Giles would have expected him to shy away from the topic, indeed to refuse to notice more than he absolutely must, but then Xander has always baffled him. If Oz was astonishingly, impossibly kindred, Xander was the alien being Giles had assumed American teenagers must be. "No thanks. Except perhaps for the face-stuffing part. Tara offered me breakfast, but I couldn't quite manage it."
Oz digs in the bag and pulls out a Hershey bar, but Giles shakes his head and says, "Later." He leans back on one elbow and watches how the sun falls on Oz's face. His London-pale skin is almost transparent, showing fine blue veins and tired shadows under his eyes, but his mouth is relaxed, half-smiling, and he looks happier than he has since they left for Heathrow. Giles runs a fingertip along the curve of one ear, flicking at each earring in turn, and says, "This must be rather uncomfortable for Xander. He's very fond of you, you know. I know he missed you after you left."
It's not the best thing he could have said. Something like a wince crosses Oz's face, and the hand that's been rubbing Giles' arms goes still. Giles works his fingers into Oz's hair and strokes the bumps and hollows of bone above his ear. "Do I want to know what he asked?" He brushes a bit of sand off Oz's neck and kisses his forehead. Being open, he's finding, is almost as awkward as it is liberating. All their long secrecy seems to have left a vacuum that's now rushing to fill with covert glances and open stares, impertinent questions, and gestures of effortful tolerance.
Oz twists at the waist until he's lying on his elbow in the gritty sand, his free hand tracking slowly up and down the center of Giles' chest. Sun, and waves, and touch - these are all things he's always associated with Giles, with being at ease and away from it all.
"Dunno if you want to know," Oz admits, plucking at the neck of Giles' sweater, learning the texture of its ribbing with his eyes closed. He opens his eyes and smiles at Giles. "Think he missed me, yeah. And you. More than, uh, you might've thought. All kind of smorgasbordy in his weird, weird head."
Giles' fingers slow in his hair and Oz pulls one knee up to his chest as he wiggles back beside Giles. He slides his arm around Giles' back and tips his head on the woolly shoulder, squinting out at the waves. Endless, massive, uncountable gallons, all pulling towards land, and when they reach it, crashing and sucking backwards, back where they came. The only ones watching are a raggedy dog and Oz and Giles.
"Like Catalina, remember?" Oz asks, slipping his hand under the hem of Giles' sweater. "Getting away from it all. Except colder. And permanent, this time."
He doesn't know what to say about Willow, or Xander, or about much of anything. But there's a furrow building between Giles' brows, just over his glasses, and, leaning up, Oz kisses his jaw. If he doesn't know what to say, he's learned enough since the first time they went to a beach to *say* so, at least. Xander agreed that longterm relationships were of the weird, but maybe Xander was right that it's different with Giles; Oz hopes so, wants to make it so.
"Wish I knew what to say. About anything. Just -" His voice drops and he has to cough a little. "Love you. Kept thinking in the diner how surreal this is, except it's not. You're not."
Surreal. Odd and uncomfortable as the last day has been, it's not the word Giles would have chosen. Instead, it's as though reality has shifted into a new pattern, field and ground reversing, making the whole picture new. The change is in what he notices, what matters most.
"To me this feels very different from Catalina," he says, shivering a little as Oz's cool fingers slide along his belly. Catalina was a stolen pleasure, like phoning in sick to work or sneaking a look at the Christmas presents. Even at its best, as they sat alone on a hill above Two Harbors, kissed and watched the birds wheeling and the tiny sailboats gliding and bobbing in the bay, he couldn't forget the hours slipping away, the end relentlessly coming on. "Catalina-as you said, that was getting away from it all."
He rolls onto his back, pulling Oz along with him, and opens his eyes to the sky. It's the vivid blue of autumn, endlessly deep, a color that seems to generate its own gravity. With the rise and fall of the surf in his ears he's losing track of direction, and only the weight of Oz's body seems to stop him falling. "This . . . " Tracing the pebbly course of Oz's backbone, he stops worrying, for once, about the right words. "This is it all. You and I."
He's not Buffy's Watcher anymore, although he'll help her as much as he can. He's not the dutiful man who put Oz in second place. Her death freed him, as he always knew it would. It's not something he can say, even to Oz, but it's true.
"Permanent," he says, and settles his arm more firmly around Oz. "Yes." Not a holiday, not a distraction, but the real thing. The thing that matters most.
Clicking the lid to the syrup pitcher erratically, almost annoyingly, Xander smiles tightly. "Guess I thought, like, older guy and you. Has to be the sex. Two guys, you know?"
Oz isn't sure where to *start* unpacking that. "We can talk about something else --"
"Nah," Xander says. He finally looks up and meets Oz's eyes. In the greasy light of the diner, he looks like he's wearing a mask. "You promised me gossip."
"Okay." Oz pushes his plate away and sips the scalding coffee. It's a million times better than the sludge the Pump overcharges for. "Hit me. Or I can --"
Xander leans in, knitting his fingers together, and Oz hopes that's relaxation in his expression. "So is he all Watchery? Lectures you, spanks you like a naughty schoolboy, uses the rep tie in new and kinky ways, that kind of thing?"
Oz has to clamp his napkin over his mouth. Giles has never hit him, but the tie's a little too close to the truth for comfort. "Nope. Not at all." Xander's still got his expectant face on, so Oz sets down the napkin and tries to explain. "Like - okay. Know how it is, how it feels, with someone you really like? Who doesn't make fun of you or expect stuff from you?"
"No," Xander says, then grins. "Okay, so not Cordy."
"Not Cordy. It's like that with Giles. Like, anything I'm feeling? Is cool. And most of the time, I'm more interested in what *he's* feeling. And it's like I can just say or do anything."
Xander's face tightens even more and his shoulders draw in. "Yeah."
He looks so haunted, like a ghost's creeping over him, and Oz doesn't know what to say. The only person Xander's ever felt like that with, Oz is pretty sure, is Willow. And that boat sailed a long time ago. "So, anyway --"
"Is he all Ripper, then?" Xander asks, his voice going a little high. "Like big thug guy, shove you over the hood of a car and ravish you? Make you take it, make you like it?"
"Dude," Oz says. It's an awesome image, even if Giles is nowhere to be found in it. He shifts a little. "You've got the weirdest, most porntastic ideas *ever*."
"Yeah," Xander says. He grins and shrugs. "Lotta noise in my head."
"I'll say." Oz glances over his shoulder at the clock above the counter; it's filmed in grease, and he can't tell what time it is. "You want to get going?"
Xander scratches his cheek. "You blowing me off?"
"Get down and dirty in the car," Oz says. Giles has been alone at Revello for way too long, and Oz feels itchy down the back of his neck. "Promise."
Xander doesn't actually want to hear any details, it turns out; he spends the ride back to town treating Oz to some of the ideas he's had. Real details wig him out, but jack-off fantasies - because that's what they are, no way could a guy think this thoroughly about Giles, Oz, and Giles and Oz without having gotten himself off in the process - are apparently fair game.
"- so, yeah, and then you undid the cummerbund and Giles fainted," Xander is saying as they pull into the driveway.
"Wow," Oz says, getting out. His head's thick with porn starring him and it's a very strange feeling. He coughs and adds, "You coming in?"
"Yeah, I'll follow you. Gotta check the dumpster first."
Oz climbs the stairs to the porch alone, then, and pushes the door open. You'd think a Slayer would have an alarm system or something. The house is quiet, water running somewhere - probably the basement - and Dawn's curled up on the couch with a Transmetropolitan graphic novel in her lap. She smiles at him and lifts her chin.
Giles is hunched over the little table in the far corner and something inside Oz's skin shifts and lightens at the sight of him.
"Hey -" he says lowly, wrapping his arms around Giles before he can jump. "Missed you."
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Giles has always like scents, flowers or old books or the smell of brewing tea, but lately he's more attentive to them. Oz's sense of smell is immeasurably keener, and Giles will never experience the world as Oz does, but he'll push himself as far as he can.
When they let each other go, both Dawn and Xander (hovering at the farthest edge of the room, shifting his weight from foot to foot) are staring. Willow, mercifully, appears to have stayed up in her room. "Sorry," Giles says, and offers an apologetic smile that Xander looks away from, red-faced. "That concludes the one o'clock show." When Oz takes a half-step away, though, Giles reaches for his hand.
"You guys are so cute," Dawn says. "It's like a movie or something." Xander goes even redder and starts to cough, and there's a tremor of what looks like suppressed laughter in Oz's shoulders. "What? What did I say?"
"Is that a new comic, Dawnie?" Xander chokes out, and sits down next to her to read over her shoulder. "Let's have a look."
The expression on Oz's face is more neutral than usual, which Giles has come to associate with secret plans and private jokes. But this time it's something he and Xander share, and it's impossible not to feel left out. "Well," Giles says quietly, and he's glad when Oz turns back to him, "I'm ready to go if you are." He's got far enough through the bills to be sure that Anya's figures are correct. And there's nothing else to do here at the moment.
After promising Dawn that they'll come back later for dinner, they walk out to the car. Inside its false privacy, Giles kisses Oz slowly-too slowly and too deeply for this half-public place, but Giles needs this kiss. Deserves it. "I'm tired," he says. "Could we leave the tour of Sunnydale for another day?" He'd like to be alone with Oz, but the mere thought of the motel room makes him long for open space. "I don't know why, but I think I'd like to go to the beach. Sit in the sun and think about nothing. Watch you go wading with your trousers rolled up." Oz grins, and Giles realizes he'll never again be able to claim that he hasn't missed the California weather.
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That feeling that's sifting and settling through him, Oz realizes at last, is relief. Like dust motes and raindrops, falling slowly through him and returning him to himself. He went months at a time - a year - without seeing Giles, but a morning apart has left him slightly twitchy and out of sorts. Giles, on the other hand, doesn't look relieved at all; he looks like he's holding himself tightly, skin and bones drawn in, and his face is a little blanched around the mouth and eyes. It hurts to look at, even in the sidewise glances Oz can give.
"Hey," Oz says when they're a good couple miles from Revello as he puts his hand on Giles' thigh and lets it rest there. "How'd it go at the homestead?" He spots a convenience store up ahead and hits the turn signal. "Hold that thought."
In the store, Oz grabs the highest-SPF lotion he can find, pink-bottled and decorated with balloons and teddy bears, and two bottles of water. At the cashier, he adds a few candy bars to the pile before paying and hoofing it back to the car.
"Loot," he says, passing the bag over to Giles and shouldering on his seatbelt. He takes the back way to the beach, avoiding the highway, threading through subdivisions and the odd dirt road, and it lands them right on the little bluffs, several miles up from the piers, where Oz figures it will be much quieter.
"Made it -" He leans over and kisses Giles, and hopes that things are okay. "Need to lotion you up first, though, before I let you out."
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Oz's touch, functional though it is, gentles away most of the cold tension in Giles' body. By the time Giles has put sunscreen on Oz and followed him down the footpath to the beach, he feels better. Normal. It's strange that this pitch of worry isn't normal anymore, that he's grown accustomed to relative peace. That peace isn't really normal to him, he thinks; it's one of the gifts Oz gives, all unawares.
Surprisingly, the beach is almost empty. There are a couple of slow-moving joggers and, in the distance, a women with a little girl. Perhaps the breeze off the sea makes the day too cold by California standards. It feels warm to Giles, and when they sit down he takes off his shoes and slides his feet in the rough sand.
"Well," he says, turning back to the question he's left unanswered for half an hour, "I've had better mornings." Oz listens quietly to his account of what happened, pouring a bit of sand from hand to hand, his expression shading gradually into a frown. "It's a mess," Giles concludes. "Anything I say to Willow will only make her angrier, I expect. I'd like to have a word with Tara-she's a level-headed girl-but I'm not sure I'll get the chance." He touches Oz's cheek. "It's as well you weren't there. But I'm sorry about . . . well, how I handled that. I don't intend to start ordering you about, honestly." Remembering their conversation this morning, he thinks, my Oz, but smiles instead of saying it.
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"You were in Watcher-mode," Oz says and shrugs. "Really not a big deal." When he closes his eyes, he tries to picture what Willow looked like, so angry and hard, but it's impossible; the closest he can get is that blank, dark look on her face when they did the curse on Angel in the hospital room. He shivers and shifts closer, so his legs are folded over Giles', his toes digging in the sand. "Sorry about Will, though. I didn't think it'd be this hard."
Giles opens his mouth, but Oz shakes his head. "Know it's not my fault. Feels like it is." Giles' hand circles his upper back, plucking at his shirt, sweeping down his shoulder-blades, and Oz drops his head forward, lets the touch seep more deeply inside. The sound of the water, heavy and steady, is something he's missed without realizing it, like lemon-scented dryer sheets, and Oz times his breathing with the waves.
"I stuffed my face and fended off Xander's X-rated questions," he says, looking sideways at Giles and smiling. "Wanna trade?"
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Oz digs in the bag and pulls out a Hershey bar, but Giles shakes his head and says, "Later." He leans back on one elbow and watches how the sun falls on Oz's face. His London-pale skin is almost transparent, showing fine blue veins and tired shadows under his eyes, but his mouth is relaxed, half-smiling, and he looks happier than he has since they left for Heathrow. Giles runs a fingertip along the curve of one ear, flicking at each earring in turn, and says, "This must be rather uncomfortable for Xander. He's very fond of you, you know. I know he missed you after you left."
It's not the best thing he could have said. Something like a wince crosses Oz's face, and the hand that's been rubbing Giles' arms goes still. Giles works his fingers into Oz's hair and strokes the bumps and hollows of bone above his ear. "Do I want to know what he asked?" He brushes a bit of sand off Oz's neck and kisses his forehead. Being open, he's finding, is almost as awkward as it is liberating. All their long secrecy seems to have left a vacuum that's now rushing to fill with covert glances and open stares, impertinent questions, and gestures of effortful tolerance.
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"Dunno if you want to know," Oz admits, plucking at the neck of Giles' sweater, learning the texture of its ribbing with his eyes closed. He opens his eyes and smiles at Giles. "Think he missed me, yeah. And you. More than, uh, you might've thought. All kind of smorgasbordy in his weird, weird head."
Giles' fingers slow in his hair and Oz pulls one knee up to his chest as he wiggles back beside Giles. He slides his arm around Giles' back and tips his head on the woolly shoulder, squinting out at the waves. Endless, massive, uncountable gallons, all pulling towards land, and when they reach it, crashing and sucking backwards, back where they came. The only ones watching are a raggedy dog and Oz and Giles.
"Like Catalina, remember?" Oz asks, slipping his hand under the hem of Giles' sweater. "Getting away from it all. Except colder. And permanent, this time."
He doesn't know what to say about Willow, or Xander, or about much of anything. But there's a furrow building between Giles' brows, just over his glasses, and, leaning up, Oz kisses his jaw. If he doesn't know what to say, he's learned enough since the first time they went to a beach to *say* so, at least. Xander agreed that longterm relationships were of the weird, but maybe Xander was right that it's different with Giles; Oz hopes so, wants to make it so.
"Wish I knew what to say. About anything. Just -" His voice drops and he has to cough a little. "Love you. Kept thinking in the diner how surreal this is, except it's not. You're not."
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"To me this feels very different from Catalina," he says, shivering a little as Oz's cool fingers slide along his belly. Catalina was a stolen pleasure, like phoning in sick to work or sneaking a look at the Christmas presents. Even at its best, as they sat alone on a hill above Two Harbors, kissed and watched the birds wheeling and the tiny sailboats gliding and bobbing in the bay, he couldn't forget the hours slipping away, the end relentlessly coming on. "Catalina-as you said, that was getting away from it all."
He rolls onto his back, pulling Oz along with him, and opens his eyes to the sky. It's the vivid blue of autumn, endlessly deep, a color that seems to generate its own gravity. With the rise and fall of the surf in his ears he's losing track of direction, and only the weight of Oz's body seems to stop him falling. "This . . . " Tracing the pebbly course of Oz's backbone, he stops worrying, for once, about the right words. "This is it all. You and I."
He's not Buffy's Watcher anymore, although he'll help her as much as he can. He's not the dutiful man who put Oz in second place. Her death freed him, as he always knew it would. It's not something he can say, even to Oz, but it's true.
"Permanent," he says, and settles his arm more firmly around Oz. "Yes." Not a holiday, not a distraction, but the real thing. The thing that matters most.
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