Sunnydale, 10/01: An Oz only a mother (and Giles) could love

[glossing]

When Oz takes a right out of the Magic Box's alley, instead of the usual left, Giles looks surprised. Oz bites his lip and keeps his eye on the road, weaving up Main Street, then cutting across Calendula, and Giles' brows are lifting and he's about to open his mouth and ask where they're going as Oz slows to nab a parking space

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[glossing]

Oz slides into the driver's seat and drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Right now he wants ice cream, and milkshakes, and to drive at high speeds down cold, dead-of-night desert highways. He wants crazy teenaged things, scenes from Aerosmith videos, girls dancing on the hoods of cars.

"Burgers," he says, shifting into gear and pulling out. "I want to go to the Red Rooster and have a bacon cheeseburger. Never had one, but they're supposed to be the best in three counties."

Giles ducks his head, smiling, as he pulls on his seatbelt, and Oz drives across town without saying much more. He's got dead guilt sifting and settling inside him and he needs to let it happen. If he talks too soon, he might set the guilt in amber, preserve it long past the time it should have dusted away and vanished. He cranks the radio to KROQ and Giles doesn't even flinch, just rests his left hand on Oz's knee and keeps time with his fingers.

The Red Rooster is half-rundown drive-in/diner and half-attempted tarting-up of said drive-in/diner, so the neon is new and flamingo-pink but the paint on the sides of the building is peeling and faded. Oz has only ever gotten milkshakes here, averting his eyes while Devon and Eric and, later, Xander stuffed their faces with bacon burgers and chili-cheese dogs, but he's different now in almost every way.

"They've got chocolate malteds, too," he tells Giles as they enter the frigid fluorescent interior, so bright that Giles' skin looks like old linen. Hand in hand, and that's even better than the prospect of loads of hot, greasy food. "Like Maltesers, but cold. And liquid."

[kindkit]

Following the waitress to a red vinyl booth, Giles feels as though he's walking through a film set. This is the America he imagined as a young boy--the place that made rock and roll, where the Beatles went to become superstars, where life was fuller and freer than it ever could be in England. It's an America that never existed, one that even Americans mythologize into the source of dreams. And myths turn sour with such terrible ease. When he was nineteen and cynical, he saw American Graffiti with Ethan, and they laughed and shouted rude comments at the screen.

Still, he's grinning as he looks over a menu, smeared with ketchup and grease, of things he'd normally consider inedible. It's like being a boy again, cramming down forbidden chips and sweets and ruining his appetite for tea. "Bacon cheeseburger, you say?" he half-shouts over the pallid pop music (which he tries not to hear as it breaks the illusion) and the echoes of other people's conversations off the chrome and linoleum. Oz, who barely looked at his menu before putting it back behind the napkin dispenser, nods. All the tight signs of anxiety-rigid shoulders, set mouth, tiny creases around his eyes and heavier ones between his brows-have gone, which is good, but strange. This isn't normally the sort of place that would relax him, any more than it would make Giles smile in the dizzy, foolish way he knows he's smiling. But a couple of hours with Teresa is enough to turn anyone into a rebellious teenager.

After the waitress takes their orders (far too much food-cheeseburgers and chips and onion rings, sodas and a malted that Oz has promised to share), Giles reaches across the table for Oz's hand. It feels as different as possible from the same gesture at Teresa's table-an overspill of pleasure, not nerves and need. "Good idea," he says. "I'm glad we came here."

[glossing]

"Me, too," Oz says and turns his hand so his palm presses up against Giles' before sliding it free and lacing their fingers together and squeezing. His eyes are adjusting to the glare, and now he can really *see* Giles again, the real Giles - or as close as anyone gets to being real. Relaxed, eyes nearly disappearing in the width of his smile, glasses slipping halfway down his nose and glinting.

Oz bounces a little in his seat, testing the resiliency, and lets himself take a good, long look at Giles. Like they've been separated for several days, and he needs to relearn all the creases on his face, the dip of his left eyelid, the whorls at his hairline. The small details that rarely even show up in photographs, they're so faint and almost *private*. Maybe it's weird to feel private *here*, in the midst of a Top-40 power ballad, surrounded by high school students and families with squawling kids in high chairs, rather than in his mom's house, but however weird it is, it's still true.

When their drinks arrive, Oz takes a long, thirsty suck of Coke, relishing the peppery sweetness and its cold flood into his incredibly empty stomach.

"I'm glad, you know," he says, sitting back and slumping a little, pushing the glass away and toying with the sheath of his straw. "That you came. But it had to suck to be there for - for everything."

He ought to be stammering, Oz thinks, choking on apologies and gratitude, but that's for Terry. With Giles, he just needs to let the words come. He's finally acclimating, in fits and starts, to Giles' patience, feeling himself loosen inside in response to the readiness of Giles' grin, the steadiness of his eyes.

"Families suck," Oz adds. "Like the invented ones better. Like *you* better."