Trying to ignore the blatant stares of a group of teenage boys lounging against the wall outside the shop, Giles holds Oz's hand and rubs his tight-hunched shoulder. Oz looks shaken, misery twisting his mouth and brows into anxious curls, and if Giles were just a little braver he'd undo the seatbelt and hold him. But the boys are muttering and glaring, voices getting a little louder with each comment, words like "faggots" and "goddamn homos" carrying even over the traffic noise and the hum of the giant ice machine.
They won't try anything here, Giles tells himself, in this lighted parking lot on a well-travelled street. "Oz, what's the matter?" He should know; he would know if he'd been paying attention, if he hadn't spent the last five minutes trying to find a way to make Xander and Anya think twice without making them hate him. Going over subtle and not-so-subtle phrases, this is a surprise and you're both very young and perhaps you might be rushing things, and not noticing Oz, not noticing whatever has him almost hyperventilating and clutching the steering wheel with a white-knuckled fist. "I think this engagement of theirs is idiotic, but . . . "
Oz is watching him, staring with a wounded need and hope, and Giles didn't notice a thing until Oz turned the car, and one of the boys kicks an empty soda can that bounces off their tire, and Giles says, "What's the matter?" again and cups Oz's face in his hands and kisses his forehead, right over the lines of eyebrow pencil forming the Hebrew word for "truth."
This morning, when Oz was already dressed, he dug the liner pencil out of the bag from the pharmacy and joined Giles at the mirror in the bathroom. You know Hebrew, right? he asked, and Giles, absorbed in his shaving, murmured agreeably. After practicing 'emeth a few times on the motel pad, he sat on the edge of the bed and drew Oz in between his knees and cupped his cheek with his right hand while he *drew*, more than wrote, the letters on Oz's forehead.
Oz wants to be there again now, can feel the shivers of that ease and comfort hovering around them, would love it if Giles *could* read his mind and stroke the back of his head and remind him he doesn't need anything to numb out. But he's swallowing fast against the rush of spit that came up at the thought of whiskey, and there are losers outside the car doing the standard threatening-guy pose, preening and leering, and this is not the time.
"Off-balance," he says before Giles has to repeat himself. "Just kind of weirded out by marriage. And especially *Xander* and marriage. Plus, la jeunesse dorée out there. La? Le? Something."
"La," Giles says quietly, eyes tracking slowly over Oz's. He doesn't believe Oz, which is probably good. Intellectually, Oz knows that it's good, that there's still much more for them to talk over about Those Three Years. Right now, however, Oz wants to be believed, wants desperately, with a sort of tangled, painful yearning, for Giles' eyes to slide off him the way they used to during those years, wants to be alone.
"I'll go get some soda and beer." Oz undoes his seatbelt and squeezes Giles' hand. "Think they'll go through with it?" A pebble strikes the rear window and Oz tries to grin. "Xander and Anya, not Sunnydale's future."
Watching the teenagers, who strain forward like hunting dogs when Oz opens the door, Giles says, "I expect so." At the moment Xander and Anya are as vague as people he met once in an airport, and Giles doesn't care if they live happily ever after or spend the next fifty years throwing crockery and shouting the walls down. All that matters are the boys between Oz and the shop door and how small Oz looks next to them. Tiny, childlike, frail, and he could be on the ground and kicked half to death before Giles could stop it, and if one of those bastards has a knife or a gun Giles might see Oz die right now.
Of course he's being alarmist, of course he's panicking for nothing. Of course the boys posture for a moment, but then one spits on the pavement and laughs and they move off in a bunch, strutting and slapping each other's hands. Of course. And Oz is far, far stronger than he looks. He doesn't need Giles' protection to go in and buy some drinks.
Respect. It's simple respect, to let Oz go off on his own and not worry about him.
Giles folds his arms on the dash and lays his head down for a few breaths.
Is it respect, too, to let him hide whatever had him so upset a few minutes ago, to let him evade and say he's just surprised at Xander? Not to ask why he almost stopped at the off-license and then didn't? Not to ask, not to wonder, not to give any more shape to the formless, shadowy worry?
Giles sits up again just as Oz is coming out of the shop; he's fairly sure Oz didn't see. As Oz makes a right turn back onto Wilkins Avenue (amazing they haven't renamed it), Giles asks, "What did you mean, when you said especially Xander?" His voice sounds a little tight, a little formal. A little angry, and he's not sure he could explain why if Oz asks.
Out of the corner of Oz's eye, Giles' jaw is tight, painted by the oncoming headlights into something steely and flat, and his voice is just as bad. Oz slows the car for the left onto Revello and shrugs one shoulder.
"Dunno." He can't glance over at Giles, won't let himself. If they're going to argue, which would be *new*, at least then Giles won't ask about the liquor store, won't remember the stupid bottle of Scotch in his old desk, won't drag out Oz's various, ridiculous so-called coping mechanisms. "Always felt like marriage was stupid. Seeing Terry, all that, didn't exactly make me all rah-rah romance."
Just like your father, she said, because he left and Oz left and Giles heard that. It's been swimming around the back of Oz's brain for over a week now, those facts and the whiskey-thirst, and he feels it all tightening, inexorably as Giles' jaw. Just don't leave, Giles said so many times right after Oz came to London, because apologies don't mean anything, only staying is proof.
"Plus, Xander. I mean --" He's pulling into the driveway now, and through the curtains, the living room is lit up by something like Christmas lights. "Love Xander. Just never thought of him as -- Mr. Monogamy. Let alone Mr. 100% Straight."
Turning the key, Oz lets out a breath and turns to look at Giles. Weird language things going on -- drawing Hebrew, sorting out French genders -- and he has yet to figure out his own language. How to say what he means without fucking up. He leans over and lets his shoulder touch Giles' arm. A fight seemed like a good thing a minute ago, but now he's shivery and can't imagine Giles being mad.
"Love you," he says, almost under his breath, and closes his eyes. "Rah-rah about *you*, you know."
Giles feels hollowed-out, a bare frame of twigs and skin almost collapsing under its own weight. It's a feeling of disaster barely avoided, of braking just in time not to rear-end the car in front. He reaches for Oz's hand and squeezes it tight as they sit silent for a moment, looking straight ahead. "I love you," he says. "And I'll be glad when we're away from all this. Home. Sunnydale is . . . not a good place." They're leaving in eight days, and he still hasn't told Buffy.
London, home, and maybe whatever just happened won't follow them there. They're bound to quarrel eventually, people do, but not over mysteries, over silences that Oz seemed so desperate just now to guard. That Oz shoved him roughly away from, cynical words between them like a border wall, high sheer concrete and razor wire.
But it's better already. Oz leans a little against him, leans more when Giles turns, and then they're hugging fiercely. Better, anger ready to be forgotten, and Giles hooks an arm around Oz's neck, kisses him, and starts off the forgetting by saying, "I think you're right about Xander. He's too . . . flighty . . . to get married."
Xander's been with Anya for two years, which is more than he and Oz have managed. And Xander's only about six months younger than Oz.
Giles finds he doesn't want to break the hug and go inside, even though the others must be waiting. "And I don't think he's entirely heterosexual, either. But-" Something twists, cold and sharp, under Giles' ribs, and he clutches drowningly at Oz. "But you're not a hundred percent not-heterosexual either. Even I'm not, come to that. And we're all right." Giles thought it was a statement, but it hangs in the air like a question, like a noxious fog of insecurity.
Giles' fist loosens fractionally on the back of Oz's collar, but Oz butts in closer, hiding his face against Giles' neck like a sleepy, fretful baby. He's been so freaked out by drinking, by imagining Giles saddled with a drunk for a lover, that his past flexible sexuality has caught him completely by surprise.
He wishes he could draw the truth into Giles' skin, something like Eyghon but positive, and good, the promise not to leave and the assurance of his love sunk into Giles' pores, the best kind of tattoo. He wishes touch was enough.
But it's not, not for Giles, not even for Oz himself.
He pulls back, leaving his arm looped around Giles' shoulder, and bites his lip. Giles won't quite look at him directly; his eyes wander and dart, and he looks almost as surprised as Oz feels. "We're more than all right," Oz says, opting for the obvious and clear statement. Giles' eyes close and Oz squeezes the back of his neck. "We *are*. It's just, just this place --"
Now Oz has to close his eyes, but the lights from the house are painted on the backs of his lids, overlaying Giles' frowning, downturned face.
"We are," he continues, and the worst thing about Sunnydale is that there's nothing that's clear and obvious and trustworthy here. "I just don't feel good here. I should feel good anywhere, but --" When he inhales, the air tastes stale and sour, morning breath and hangover sweat. He kisses Giles again, replaces memory and worry with something more elemental, Giles' tiredness and tension and just plain *Giles*.
"Not straight, Giles. Never again, I promise." He wasn't in any shape to think how it must have looked to Giles, Oz sitting in the library, touching Willow, kissing her, right in front of Giles. He made sure he wasn't in any shape, though, and that's the worst thing. "We're good, and definitely not straight. Stake anything on it. Or I would, but. Superstitious around here."
Too many words and Oz wants to sag, emptied of them. Not until Giles looks him in the eye, though.
Hearing Oz stammer out promises, reassurances, Giles wants to hide his hot face in Oz's neck, flinch from his own fear and shame. "You're right," he says, forcing a laugh. "No taking chances. No wishing, no betting, no bloody costumes." He licks his thumb and quickly rubs the lettering off Oz's forehead, strips the tweed jacket (he's dressed as a Watcher, and he remembers that it seemed funny at the time) from his shoulders and yanks roughly at the sleeves until he's free of it. His movements feel jerky, and at the end he's agitated and breathing hard, like a small boy in a tantrum.
It must be Sunnydale doing this, making them out-of-sorts and fractious. Giles looks up from the badly-woven houndstooth pattern he's been studying (the jacket's uglier than anything he would ever have worn, and he reminds himself that it's a costume, that it was the only jacket at the Salvation Army that fitted, that it's no indicator of how Oz saw him in those days). Oz is looking back at him, traces of sadness and worry on his face like the words of a sun-faded text. "Sorry." Giles rests his palm on Oz's cheek, little finger stroking the hinge of his jaw, and sighs. "I know we're all right." There's a shift in Oz's expression, so slight it might almost be a flicker of the streetlights, except that Oz presses a forceful kiss into the base of his thumb as though he's trying to imprint it there. "I won't always be so-" Paranoid, he thinks, but he's never liked the glib psychology of words like that. "Hypersensitive."
The last thing Giles wants now is a party, but they're expected. His palm prickles with cold when he moves it away. "Let's go in, shall we?" He twists and reaches into the back seat for the sack to stop himself reaching for Oz again.
"Don't apologize --" Oz catches Giles' arm and squeezes. Under the ugly blazer, he's wearing a nice lambswool v-neck, dark-blue pre-dawn sky, one that's already elicited at least three comments from Xander on how Oz is affecting his sense of fashion.
Giles wasn't like this in London, and Oz *wants* to blame Sunnydale. It would help if it was only this town that made Giles tighten his shoulders and talk through gritted teeth, just like he did after Oz left him, whenever Oz tried to apologize. He can't blame Sunnydale, though, any more than he can blame Giles, or let Giles take the blame on himself. "Really, 'cause you're *not* hypersensitive. You're just --"
He can't think of the words, and Giles is opening his door, so Oz follows, locking the car and rubbing the traces of 'emeth from his forehead. Giles took it off, just like he took off the blazer; it's proof, small and solid, that Giles isn't irretrievably angry, that he's still thinking of Oz. So even if Giles is hugging the grocery bag up against his chest and striding toward the house a beat too fast, Oz has that fact to hold onto. In addition to the other bag cutting a welt in his palm.
Anya opens the door and grabs the bag from Giles. "Finally!" She peeks into the bag and hands it back to Giles. "I thought there were presents. But beverages are a good start."
Edging around the growing bottleneck -- Xander's joined Anya and Willow is hovering behind him -- Oz heads for the kitchen to stow the bottles in the fridge. Dark and quiet back here, and he exhales heavily before dropping the bag on the counter. Someone yelps, then Tara jumps up, brandishing a pizza-cutter.
"Sorry," Oz says, taking a step back, raising his hands. "I come in peace. With libations."
"S-sorry. I -- I'm just --" She puts the pizza-cutter down and scrubs her palms over her hips. "You know."
"Hypersensitive?"
She ducks her head, smiling. "A little."
Oz can't help but smile in return; there's weirdness and hypersensitivity all over the place, and he'd do best to remember that. Behind him, Giles lays a hand on his shoulder and asks quietly, "Do you need any help?"
"Drinks," Oz says, pointing at the counter and resting against Giles. "Myriad sodas, a couple kinds of beer. Don't know what everyone likes."
"I do," Giles says, and smiles at Oz's startled look. "I've hosted countless research sessions, all of which required soda and junk food. So I also know that Xander likes Canadian bacon on his pizza and that Buffy harbors a secret addiction to Pringles." He squeezes Oz's shoulder, briefly kisses the top of his head-Oz lets out a slow breath and his whole body seems to loosen under Giles' hand-and starts unpacking the bags.
Oz must remember more than he thinks, because he's picked the right things: root beer for Willow, a vividly orange soda for Xander and Dawn, diet Pepsi for Buffy and Anya. Tara doesn't drink soda, but the house is always well stocked with the juice and milk she does drink, so that's not a problem. Giles explains who drinks what, and Oz half-smiles, says something about his memory, and starts filling the enormous plastic cups that he bought.
In the second bag there are two six-packs of beer-one of ordinary American lager in tins, the other, strangely familiar-looking, a cardboard box of brown bottles paled with condensation. Giles feels a dim thump of surprise in his stomach and a moment's certainty that he must be mistaken, but he's not; it's the same brand they bought together, at another AM/PM, the night they met. Giles drank the four leftover bottles afterwards, one a night; the bittersweet ale and the cool smooth glass of the bottleneck made him think of Oz's skin, made his heart speed and his mouth water with memory.
Smiling, he looks over at Oz, who's somehow looking at him and past him at the same time, eyes showing nothing. "Oz-" At the touch of Giles' hand on his, Oz wrenches his face into a smile that only makes his eyes sadder and more distant. Wanting to hold him, wanting to ask again what's wrong, unable to do much of anything in Buffy's house with Tara standing a few feet away, Giles presses his hand a little harder. Oz shrugs, drops his head shyly, and Giles leans closer and whispers, "I remember." Perhaps all this business about the engagement has Oz feeling lonely. No one's exactly delighted with the news, but they're still more enthusiastic than they were about Oz and him.
"Hey, am I gonna have to turn the hose on you two?" Xander's voice. Oz jumps, but his fingers tighten around Giles'.
"Not just yet," Giles says, fighting off the impulse to move away from Oz or at least to let his hand go. He manages, barely, to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Xander doesn't mean any harm, doesn't mean to imply that his touching Oz is indecent. Handing him a brimming cup at random, Giles adds, "Here, have a soda. Or a beer?"
"Bring on the beer! For today I am a man. A gonna-get-married man."
"Certainly a beer-worthy occasion," Giles says and opens a bottle for him. He's about to open another one for himself when he notices a strange, furtive look from Oz.
Maybe that's what this is about. Maybe Oz doesn't want him drinking. And god knows Oz probably has the right idea there. He sets the bottle back into its cardboard square and takes Oz's hand again.
They won't try anything here, Giles tells himself, in this lighted parking lot on a well-travelled street. "Oz, what's the matter?" He should know; he would know if he'd been paying attention, if he hadn't spent the last five minutes trying to find a way to make Xander and Anya think twice without making them hate him. Going over subtle and not-so-subtle phrases, this is a surprise and you're both very young and perhaps you might be rushing things, and not noticing Oz, not noticing whatever has him almost hyperventilating and clutching the steering wheel with a white-knuckled fist. "I think this engagement of theirs is idiotic, but . . . "
Oz is watching him, staring with a wounded need and hope, and Giles didn't notice a thing until Oz turned the car, and one of the boys kicks an empty soda can that bounces off their tire, and Giles says, "What's the matter?" again and cups Oz's face in his hands and kisses his forehead, right over the lines of eyebrow pencil forming the Hebrew word for "truth."
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Oz wants to be there again now, can feel the shivers of that ease and comfort hovering around them, would love it if Giles *could* read his mind and stroke the back of his head and remind him he doesn't need anything to numb out. But he's swallowing fast against the rush of spit that came up at the thought of whiskey, and there are losers outside the car doing the standard threatening-guy pose, preening and leering, and this is not the time.
"Off-balance," he says before Giles has to repeat himself. "Just kind of weirded out by marriage. And especially *Xander* and marriage. Plus, la jeunesse dorée out there. La? Le? Something."
"La," Giles says quietly, eyes tracking slowly over Oz's. He doesn't believe Oz, which is probably good. Intellectually, Oz knows that it's good, that there's still much more for them to talk over about Those Three Years. Right now, however, Oz wants to be believed, wants desperately, with a sort of tangled, painful yearning, for Giles' eyes to slide off him the way they used to during those years, wants to be alone.
"I'll go get some soda and beer." Oz undoes his seatbelt and squeezes Giles' hand. "Think they'll go through with it?" A pebble strikes the rear window and Oz tries to grin. "Xander and Anya, not Sunnydale's future."
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Of course he's being alarmist, of course he's panicking for nothing. Of course the boys posture for a moment, but then one spits on the pavement and laughs and they move off in a bunch, strutting and slapping each other's hands. Of course. And Oz is far, far stronger than he looks. He doesn't need Giles' protection to go in and buy some drinks.
Respect. It's simple respect, to let Oz go off on his own and not worry about him.
Giles folds his arms on the dash and lays his head down for a few breaths.
Is it respect, too, to let him hide whatever had him so upset a few minutes ago, to let him evade and say he's just surprised at Xander? Not to ask why he almost stopped at the off-license and then didn't? Not to ask, not to wonder, not to give any more shape to the formless, shadowy worry?
Giles sits up again just as Oz is coming out of the shop; he's fairly sure Oz didn't see. As Oz makes a right turn back onto Wilkins Avenue (amazing they haven't renamed it), Giles asks, "What did you mean, when you said especially Xander?" His voice sounds a little tight, a little formal. A little angry, and he's not sure he could explain why if Oz asks.
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"Dunno." He can't glance over at Giles, won't let himself. If they're going to argue, which would be *new*, at least then Giles won't ask about the liquor store, won't remember the stupid bottle of Scotch in his old desk, won't drag out Oz's various, ridiculous so-called coping mechanisms. "Always felt like marriage was stupid. Seeing Terry, all that, didn't exactly make me all rah-rah romance."
Just like your father, she said, because he left and Oz left and Giles heard that. It's been swimming around the back of Oz's brain for over a week now, those facts and the whiskey-thirst, and he feels it all tightening, inexorably as Giles' jaw. Just don't leave, Giles said so many times right after Oz came to London, because apologies don't mean anything, only staying is proof.
"Plus, Xander. I mean --" He's pulling into the driveway now, and through the curtains, the living room is lit up by something like Christmas lights. "Love Xander. Just never thought of him as -- Mr. Monogamy. Let alone Mr. 100% Straight."
Turning the key, Oz lets out a breath and turns to look at Giles. Weird language things going on -- drawing Hebrew, sorting out French genders -- and he has yet to figure out his own language. How to say what he means without fucking up. He leans over and lets his shoulder touch Giles' arm. A fight seemed like a good thing a minute ago, but now he's shivery and can't imagine Giles being mad.
"Love you," he says, almost under his breath, and closes his eyes. "Rah-rah about *you*, you know."
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London, home, and maybe whatever just happened won't follow them there. They're bound to quarrel eventually, people do, but not over mysteries, over silences that Oz seemed so desperate just now to guard. That Oz shoved him roughly away from, cynical words between them like a border wall, high sheer concrete and razor wire.
But it's better already. Oz leans a little against him, leans more when Giles turns, and then they're hugging fiercely. Better, anger ready to be forgotten, and Giles hooks an arm around Oz's neck, kisses him, and starts off the forgetting by saying, "I think you're right about Xander. He's too . . . flighty . . . to get married."
Xander's been with Anya for two years, which is more than he and Oz have managed. And Xander's only about six months younger than Oz.
Giles finds he doesn't want to break the hug and go inside, even though the others must be waiting. "And I don't think he's entirely heterosexual, either. But-" Something twists, cold and sharp, under Giles' ribs, and he clutches drowningly at Oz. "But you're not a hundred percent not-heterosexual either. Even I'm not, come to that. And we're all right." Giles thought it was a statement, but it hangs in the air like a question, like a noxious fog of insecurity.
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He wishes he could draw the truth into Giles' skin, something like Eyghon but positive, and good, the promise not to leave and the assurance of his love sunk into Giles' pores, the best kind of tattoo. He wishes touch was enough.
But it's not, not for Giles, not even for Oz himself.
He pulls back, leaving his arm looped around Giles' shoulder, and bites his lip. Giles won't quite look at him directly; his eyes wander and dart, and he looks almost as surprised as Oz feels. "We're more than all right," Oz says, opting for the obvious and clear statement. Giles' eyes close and Oz squeezes the back of his neck. "We *are*. It's just, just this place --"
Now Oz has to close his eyes, but the lights from the house are painted on the backs of his lids, overlaying Giles' frowning, downturned face.
"We are," he continues, and the worst thing about Sunnydale is that there's nothing that's clear and obvious and trustworthy here. "I just don't feel good here. I should feel good anywhere, but --" When he inhales, the air tastes stale and sour, morning breath and hangover sweat. He kisses Giles again, replaces memory and worry with something more elemental, Giles' tiredness and tension and just plain *Giles*.
"Not straight, Giles. Never again, I promise." He wasn't in any shape to think how it must have looked to Giles, Oz sitting in the library, touching Willow, kissing her, right in front of Giles. He made sure he wasn't in any shape, though, and that's the worst thing. "We're good, and definitely not straight. Stake anything on it. Or I would, but. Superstitious around here."
Too many words and Oz wants to sag, emptied of them. Not until Giles looks him in the eye, though.
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It must be Sunnydale doing this, making them out-of-sorts and fractious. Giles looks up from the badly-woven houndstooth pattern he's been studying (the jacket's uglier than anything he would ever have worn, and he reminds himself that it's a costume, that it was the only jacket at the Salvation Army that fitted, that it's no indicator of how Oz saw him in those days). Oz is looking back at him, traces of sadness and worry on his face like the words of a sun-faded text. "Sorry." Giles rests his palm on Oz's cheek, little finger stroking the hinge of his jaw, and sighs. "I know we're all right." There's a shift in Oz's expression, so slight it might almost be a flicker of the streetlights, except that Oz presses a forceful kiss into the base of his thumb as though he's trying to imprint it there. "I won't always be so-" Paranoid, he thinks, but he's never liked the glib psychology of words like that. "Hypersensitive."
The last thing Giles wants now is a party, but they're expected. His palm prickles with cold when he moves it away. "Let's go in, shall we?" He twists and reaches into the back seat for the sack to stop himself reaching for Oz again.
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Giles wasn't like this in London, and Oz *wants* to blame Sunnydale. It would help if it was only this town that made Giles tighten his shoulders and talk through gritted teeth, just like he did after Oz left him, whenever Oz tried to apologize. He can't blame Sunnydale, though, any more than he can blame Giles, or let Giles take the blame on himself. "Really, 'cause you're *not* hypersensitive. You're just --"
He can't think of the words, and Giles is opening his door, so Oz follows, locking the car and rubbing the traces of 'emeth from his forehead. Giles took it off, just like he took off the blazer; it's proof, small and solid, that Giles isn't irretrievably angry, that he's still thinking of Oz. So even if Giles is hugging the grocery bag up against his chest and striding toward the house a beat too fast, Oz has that fact to hold onto. In addition to the other bag cutting a welt in his palm.
Anya opens the door and grabs the bag from Giles. "Finally!" She peeks into the bag and hands it back to Giles. "I thought there were presents. But beverages are a good start."
Edging around the growing bottleneck -- Xander's joined Anya and Willow is hovering behind him -- Oz heads for the kitchen to stow the bottles in the fridge. Dark and quiet back here, and he exhales heavily before dropping the bag on the counter. Someone yelps, then Tara jumps up, brandishing a pizza-cutter.
"Sorry," Oz says, taking a step back, raising his hands. "I come in peace. With libations."
"S-sorry. I -- I'm just --" She puts the pizza-cutter down and scrubs her palms over her hips. "You know."
"Hypersensitive?"
She ducks her head, smiling. "A little."
Oz can't help but smile in return; there's weirdness and hypersensitivity all over the place, and he'd do best to remember that. Behind him, Giles lays a hand on his shoulder and asks quietly, "Do you need any help?"
"Drinks," Oz says, pointing at the counter and resting against Giles. "Myriad sodas, a couple kinds of beer. Don't know what everyone likes."
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Oz must remember more than he thinks, because he's picked the right things: root beer for Willow, a vividly orange soda for Xander and Dawn, diet Pepsi for Buffy and Anya. Tara doesn't drink soda, but the house is always well stocked with the juice and milk she does drink, so that's not a problem. Giles explains who drinks what, and Oz half-smiles, says something about his memory, and starts filling the enormous plastic cups that he bought.
In the second bag there are two six-packs of beer-one of ordinary American lager in tins, the other, strangely familiar-looking, a cardboard box of brown bottles paled with condensation. Giles feels a dim thump of surprise in his stomach and a moment's certainty that he must be mistaken, but he's not; it's the same brand they bought together, at another AM/PM, the night they met. Giles drank the four leftover bottles afterwards, one a night; the bittersweet ale and the cool smooth glass of the bottleneck made him think of Oz's skin, made his heart speed and his mouth water with memory.
Smiling, he looks over at Oz, who's somehow looking at him and past him at the same time, eyes showing nothing. "Oz-" At the touch of Giles' hand on his, Oz wrenches his face into a smile that only makes his eyes sadder and more distant. Wanting to hold him, wanting to ask again what's wrong, unable to do much of anything in Buffy's house with Tara standing a few feet away, Giles presses his hand a little harder. Oz shrugs, drops his head shyly, and Giles leans closer and whispers, "I remember." Perhaps all this business about the engagement has Oz feeling lonely. No one's exactly delighted with the news, but they're still more enthusiastic than they were about Oz and him.
"Hey, am I gonna have to turn the hose on you two?" Xander's voice. Oz jumps, but his fingers tighten around Giles'.
"Not just yet," Giles says, fighting off the impulse to move away from Oz or at least to let his hand go. He manages, barely, to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Xander doesn't mean any harm, doesn't mean to imply that his touching Oz is indecent. Handing him a brimming cup at random, Giles adds, "Here, have a soda. Or a beer?"
"Bring on the beer! For today I am a man. A gonna-get-married man."
"Certainly a beer-worthy occasion," Giles says and opens a bottle for him. He's about to open another one for himself when he notices a strange, furtive look from Oz.
Maybe that's what this is about. Maybe Oz doesn't want him drinking. And god knows Oz probably has the right idea there. He sets the bottle back into its cardboard square and takes Oz's hand again.
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