Oz sips his cider carefully, squinting through the steam, as he wraps his fingers around Giles' thumb. It's weird, these gestures in public; they're so small, but he likes them this way, like shadows and fabric-ends. When he was with Willow, he was touching her all the time, holding her on his lap, braiding her hair, plucking at her shirt. His affection, he thinks now as he looks at Xander, who's straightening his shirt, fixing his headband, glancing at Anya and Dawn and his beer and all around the room, was fidgety. Flighty. Because he was drunk, and lost, and she fidgeted a lot, too.
But he's sober now, the cider burning down his throat, and with Giles, he's not fidgety so much as...close. Small things aren't tiny or meaningless with Giles.
Big things, though. Big things like marriage and Giles, those might be enough to make him fidget.
"White satin kind of washes me out," he tells Dawn, and her nose scrunches up before she gets it.
Giles hasn't pulled away, but his face is hard to read behind the red plastic cup, and he seems to be deliberately talking to Buffy.
Xander drops his arm around Oz's shoulders and pulls him toward the couch; over his shoulder, Oz can see Giles peering after him, eyes dark and illegible. "You're the relationship man here," Xander's saying, piloting Oz toward Anya. "Tell her."
"Tell me what?" Anya scoots over, making room for Oz. "I've had the most experience of human relationships, actually. Probably ten times all of you put together."
"What am I telling her?" Oz asks Xander, but Xander's moving away, raising his beer to the ceiling and singing something that's probably supposed to be a pirate song. Or maybe "Here Comes the Bride". "Hey, Anya. Congrats."
"Thank you," she says and takes the mug out of his hands and sips it. "I'm very excited, and contrary to what I know they're probably saying, it's not just the presents and financial stability. It's getting to be with my best friend, you know?"
Across the room, Giles is stooping slightly, talking to Buffy and smiling at Xander. He looks at home here, sometimes, when Oz isn't around, like this is where he belongs. Even if Oz knows, and he *does*, that that's not true, it's a hard image to shake. "Yeah," Oz says. "That's probably the best thing of all."
"And the tax benefits are simply stunning. Like icing on the eight-tier cake!"
Dawn, it seems, has strong opinions about bridesmaids' frocks. "Not seafoam green, okay?" Xander nods enthusiastically, in that overemphatic way he's had all evening, his eyes too wide and his gestures too big. He's probably got no more idea than Giles himself of what shade "seafoam" might be. "My friend Ashley had to wear seafoam at her brother's wedding, and I think she's scarred for life. She wouldn't even show us pictures. And no bows in the back-that's so bad prom dress."
Giles nods occasionally and watches Oz-discreetly, he hopes-over Dawn's shoulder. Every so often Oz looks over from whatever earnest conversation he's having with Anya, and when their eyes meet Giles feels a catch in his breath, like the nicotine jolt of a cigarette. Ten feet of distance and it's as though Oz has gone unbearably far, unbearably long. And, too, as though Oz is someone he doesn't know, a charming stranger to make one's pulse race at a party, to make every other conversation dull because nothing matters but talking to him.
Glances back and forth, smiles, half flirtation and half secret signal (lovers, spies, it's all secrecy), and it's a game to keep them occupied all night. No need to think about serious things, about alcohol and marriage and what Oz meant by his joke about white satin. Whether the word marriage has brought the truth of it all home to him, made him rethink those promises they've both made so freely.
"-any chocolate?" Xander's saying, and Giles pulls his attention back. "What this beer really needs is some Oreos." Dawn rushes off towards the kitchen, muttering something about experiments that has Buffy shaking her head sternly.
"Dear lord, Xander," Giles says. "I'd never have thought that growing up could possibly make your eating habits worse." Buffy's cough into her fist doesn't quite cover a laugh.
"Says the guy who eats deep-fried Mars bars."
"I do not. And that's not even English, that Scottish."
Xander grins cheekily, happily, and says, "Same difference. Just with worse teeth and a weirder accent."
All evening time's been behaving strangely, past and present blurring into one another like colored clays twisted together. Everything is hued with memory, and Xander could be sixteen years old again, ridiculous and infuriating and brave. Lonely, begging for attention with jokes.
Of course Xander's not sixteen anymore, but it's only the sudden contrast that lets Giles notice changes that have been accruing for years. Xander is older, changed, heavier in more ways than the physical. They all have more weight on their spirits, since Buffy died. Since . . . who knows when it began?
"Come on," Buffy says in the pause, and grabs Giles' arm and Xander's. "Let's see if Anya's already decided on seafoam or if there's still time to talk her out of it."
Oz smiles when they come over, and if he's having second thoughts, they don't show on his face.
Giles looks shy suddenly, as he arrives with Buffy and Xander, and Oz stands up, making room, and for a second, in the shuffle of bodies, Xander joining Anya, Buffy sliding up onto the couch's far arm, he considers plopping onto Giles' lap. Static in the air between them, distance multiplied by the presence of too many people, too much history, and for that second, all he wants - and he wants with a sharp, magnetic *heat* - is for Giles to open his arms and pull Oz onto his lap.
But there're so many people around, it would embarrass both of them, and it would feel weirdly obscene. Like letting Dawn watch them make out, or having to help Xander have sex with Anya: obscene, and also just impossible.
"Seafoam's a lovely color," Anya's saying, and Oz finally stops hovering as he perches on the arm, close to but not *on* Giles, "and traditional, too. But I've always been partial to magenta. Everyone just *glows* in magenta."
"Which one's magenta?" Xander asks.
"Cordy's lipstick, my first year here," Buffy says.
Everyone's distracted, especially as Dawn returns, a bag of Oreos in her teeth and her arms wrapped around *another* big bowl of chips, with Tara behind her. Exhaling, Oz slumps slightly and slowly slips his arm around Giles' shoulder. It's not nearly the same, but he feels Giles lean a little more against his leg, and pushes his luck by rubbing wide circles on the side of Giles' neck with his thumb.
"I don't have to do anything, do I?" Xander's asking. "Like, I just pay for stuff but you girls choose everything?"
Anya and Buffy and Dawn answer him, chatter twisting and jangling around them, and Oz doesn't think he's imagining that Giles is leaning more heavily against him. Outside the circle, holding a jug of punch, Tara shifts her weight from foot to foot and doesn't really make eye contact with anyone.
She looks miserable. She looks like Oz feels on and off all the time here in Sunnydale, right in the center of his chest, lost and lonely, and there's no one leaning on her. Willow's nowhere in sight.
The girls are dancing now, and Xander's joining them, leaving him with Giles in the couch's corner.
Oz drops his head close to Giles'. "We're good," he whispers quickly. "Don't worry. Please?"
Giles tilts his head a little, letting Oz's fingers reach the tense spots at the top of his neck, and if that also brings his face closer to Oz's, well, nobody's looking at them anyway. "I'll try." With a sideways smile that he's not sure Oz can see, he moves in just a little farther, rolling his cheek against Oz's and pushing the earpiece of his glasses up to his temple. "But you know me and worry." Another press of cheek against cheek, a flutter of his fingers over the small of Oz's back, and he sits up straight again.
Buffy, dancing with her sister, looks genuinely happy, with none of the little tensions and unhappy shadows that usually mark her face. She's even laughing as Anya tries to teach her a dance that Giles vaguely remembers from about 1972. It reminds Giles of his own hillwalking years, movement working its mysterious palliation on the emotions. Buffy's been training hard, patrolling a lot, and no doubt feels better for it. Kicking butt, he remembers her saying once, is comfort food.
"W-would you like some cran-apple juice?" Tara asks quietly from his other side, making him jump. He'd forgotten she was there. She's so unassuming, so still, so easy for the eyes to pass over without noticing. It must be something she learned, something she needed once; Giles remembers meeting her father.
When Oz murmurs a refusal, Tara looks so uncomfortable, cradling the pitcher in her arms, that Giles can't help nodding. "Yes, please." He finishes the warm sparkling water in one overlarge swallow and lets her fill his glass. "Do sit down, Tara," he says, as though she's a guest. She seems like a guest, a nervous one, standing stiffly like she's unsure where to put her arms and legs for fear of knocking something over. But this is her home. She's lived here for months, and Giles remembers her comfortable here. Central, the sun and gravitation of the household, holding everything together.
Tara sits on the farthest edge of the sofa, one arm folded self-protectively over her waist, free hand still clutching the handle of the pitcher. She smiles nervously at Giles and Oz and pretends-Giles isn't sure how he knows it's pretense-to watch the others dancing. Oz shifts and inhales as though he's about to say something, but doesn't, and when Giles tries to ask her what's wrong, he can't get a word out either. This is another problem he can't fix. When Willow finally appears from wherever she's been keeping herself and joins the dancing without a look in Tara's direction, Giles is even more sure of it.
"A bit hot in here," Giles says, although it's not, and stands up. "I think I'll step outside for a little air. Oz?" He holds out a hand, and Oz, after a sideways glance at Tara, takes it and hauls himself to his feet.
On the front porch, the air smells like eucalyptus and far-off rain and sugar; the kids are out, moving in small, messy squads up and down the sidewalks, shouting to passing comrades. Oz wiggles in between Giles and the porch railing, bending over so he can see the next intersection.
"Always hated Halloween," he says, pulling himself upright and leaning against Giles' chest. "Around here, I mean. Spooky enough town any day of the year."
Giles wraps his arms around Oz's chest and plants his chin on Oz's skull. The fragile calm between them since their car ride is still clinging and Oz breathes shallowly, superstitious about disturbing it.
"What're you worrying about?" he asks the street and the lone little kid dressed like Frankenstein's monster trooping over the Summers' yard. "'cause we're good. I promise."
Above him, behind him, Giles is still and warm. When he sighs, it tickles Oz's forehead. Oz covers Giles' arms with his own and answers the sigh with one of his own. He's telling the truth; however much crap *he* has to deal with, it's not about Giles.
"And if it's marriage and everything," he adds, feeling his chest go hollow and papery, "don't. I'd walk down the aisle for you in a heartbeat."
Truth can sting as well as comfort, send wasps swarming up his spine, and Oz closes his eyes, lets Giles set their breathing rhythm. He doesn't want to go anywhere, not ever.
"It's like Anya said. Getting to be with your best friend is the best kind of deal."
"Anya said that?" Giles fans his fingers over Oz's side, feeling the ribs swell and then sink as he breathes. Such a basic, necessary rhythm, more primal even than sex. This is what love is, surely, wanting to feel the other person breathe. How, he wonders with a sudden uncomfortable squirm in his belly, could Buffy possibly have loved Angel-unbreathing, silent and motionless at the heart, and cold? Pushing the thought away, he says, "So she does have feelings after all. Still . . ." He leaves the rest unspoken, sighing into Oz's hair instead. The children's dates and crushes and love affairs, even Buffy's, were never his responsibility. And especially not now, adults as they all are.
Giles has no responsibilities in Sunnydale anymore. Buffy is coping. She does her job as well as ever, certainly, and anything she needs from him, he can provide over the telephone. It ought to make leaving easier.
"Sorry," he says when Oz tilts his head back inquiringly. "Thinking again."
"Worrying," Oz says softly, and laces his fingers in Giles'. "Don't."
"I wish you could teach me how to stop." Giles kisses his temple and tries not to think. For a while he watches the costumed children instead, but that reminds him of the perverseness of the hellmouth, that Halloween night should be the safest of the year. "Should I start planning our wedding instead? Shall we dress poor Dawn in seafoam or magenta? Or maybe seafoam and magenta?"
It's good to hear Oz laugh, good to feel his chest shake and shoulders curl forward. "Because you have let yourself in for being asked, if it's ever possible." Stripped of the ridiculous images-a church decked in flowers, an uncomfortable vicar changing the pronouns of the service, Oz in white satin and a veil (and why is he thinking of Oz as the bride anyway, when it could just as easily be himself?)-it sounds like a good idea. Or at least not a bad one. Private promises respoken in public. Open commitment, marked with ceremony, with rings that they'd never take off. Belonging to each other officially, finally.
"Forever . . . forever's a bloody long time, Oz." Giles' voice croaks a little; he clears his throat and holds Oz closer. "And you're so young." The oldest worry, and he's a little ashamed at having said it.
Within Giles' tight hold, Oz twists, wiggling around, until his face is pressed against Giles' chest. He takes a deep breath and pulls himself up onto the railing, then pulls Giles back in.
The porch-light paints Giles' glasses almost opaque, bright tinsel and gold, and the lines around his mouth are deep and black. His mouth twists into a frown, curving with regret.
"Forever's just a whole load of moments, one after the other," Oz says, one arm reaching up around Giles' neck, smoothing the edge of his hair. All that sour worry and sick hatred that animated him in the car is gone, emptying him out, and each breath he draws hurts a little. "And I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. And my age? I'm just me. Like you're you."
Giles starts to shake his head and Oz squeezes his neck, stopping the motion.
"I'm older than I used to be," he says, and that's true, too, even if sometimes since going to London he feels like he's starting all over again. "And I might ask you first, you never know."
He tilts back his head and looks Giles over, chin to forehead, and feels himself smiling. Light, and warmth, sliding over his lips, feeling happy a moment and a half before he realizes he is. Happy. With Giles' hands clasped around the small of his back, not letting him fall, looking at the face he's known for four years but loves a little more each time he opens his eyes.
"I talked to *you* first, after all. I'm sneaky like that."
"True." Oz's smile is wide and hopeful, so full of love that it makes Giles ache even as he smiles back. Oz, smiling, is irresistible; a calculating person would've learned to use that, but Oz is the farthest thing from calculating. "You were remarkably forward. For such a shy boy." Giles kisses his forehead, which is slightly greasy from the eyebrow pencil, and sits next to him on the railing.
What's really worrying him could be explained in a few words. When Oz is thirty-five, a young man still, Giles will be sixty. Old. In what should be the richest years of his life, Oz will be stuck with an old man, grey and wrinkled and easily tired, maybe impotent as well. And from there it'll only get worse, Giles sliding into broken health and senility while Oz is no more than middle-aged. Unless (until) he dies and Oz is left alone.
They'll never have the lovers' dream of growing old together. They can't.
He shouldn't let Oz misunderstand, think Giles is worried about immaturity or fickleness or some other un-Oz-like fault. But Oz is smiling, holding his hand and pointing out a little boy in a werewolf costume, and it would be wrong to make him think about all this now. If he's never considered it, there'll be time enough, someday.
The door opens, making Giles blink in the sudden light, and Buffy leans out. "Giles, Dawn says I told her she could stay overnight at her friend Janice's. Do you remember me saying that? I don't think amnesia's a side effect of resurrection. And it's probably not a good idea, right, even on Halloween?"
"That's up to you, Buffy." Even if he were staying, he wouldn't want to start making decisions like this. He's not cut out to be a father-figure, and if he was one to Buffy, it only worked because he didn't really try for it.
Buffy looks at him for a moment, frowning, and then closes the door. In a moment, there's a little excited squeal of triumph from Dawn.
"I suppose we'd better go in," Giles says reluctantly. "The happy couple must be due for another round of congratulations."
When Oz opens the screen door, Dawn blows past them, tossing goodbyes and happy Halloweens over her shoulder, and he only has a chance to squeeze Giles' hand before they're back inside.
Xander and Buffy are lingering by the stairs, and Oz gets a weird whiff of high-school secrets whispered by the lockers. Which is still more comfortable than the living room, where Willow's talking to Anya and Tara's sitting on the couch shuffling a deck of cards.
"Some party," Oz says under his breath, but Giles must catch it, because he squeezes Oz's shoulder as they linger in the doorway.
"There you are," Anya says, hurrying over with a bowl of cookies in her arms. "Thought I was stuck talking to Willow all night, and *that* would have been a bad omen for sure. Where's Xander?"
Oz plucks a cookie -- chocolate chocolate-chip -- from the bowl and glances over his shoulder. "Outside, I guess."
"And where were you?" Anya's barely looking at him, but peering *around* Oz, through the big window over the couch, shooing Giles out of the way with her hand.
"I *was* outside," Oz says, and suddenly realizes who Anya reminds him of: Miss Calendar. It's the same hard-edged, demanding tone that's not all that interested in you as a person. He slips away from Anya and joins Tara on the couch. "Up for some War?"
Her eyes are big, shadowy, as she glances, startled up at him.
"It's the only cardgame I can remember," he says, munching his cookie, wondering how much longer they have to stay. He should have asked Giles when he had the chance, but when he looks around, Giles isn't there. Kitchen probably.
"Me, too," she says, dealing out the deck, smiling in the general direction of her lap. "How's the cookie?"
"Burned but edible."
She actually looks him in the eye, shaking back her hair, as she smiles. "Dawn's batch, then. Your turn."
He flips over his top card and licks the crumbs off his lips. He can *be* with Tara like he's known her as long as Giles, or Xander; it's strange to feel like that about someone he almost killed. He should avoid her, so he doesn't piss off Willow, so he doesn't scare Tara, so things don't become more complicated. But aside from Xander, she's the only person here his age he can talk to, and she's snarky when you get her warmed up.
Giles isn't sure what became of his cup, so he takes a clean one out of the plastic bag and rummages in the refrigerator for another bottle of water. A shadow crosses the light behind him, and Xander says, "Reach me another beer while you're in there, huh Giles?" After Giles hands him a bottle, he adds, "Buffy said to tell you she's gone patrolling. Guess she wasn't in a party mood."
There's a brief silence while they open bottles and pour fizzing drinks into cups. Xander offers Giles a bowl of Doritos, and grins when Giles takes some. Yellow-orange goo melting on his tongue, Giles decides that they're just as horrible as he remembers. But it gives him a little longer to try and gather his thoughts. "I'm sure you and Anya will be very happy," he ventures at last, lamely.
Halfway through Giles' sentence, Xander abruptly starts speaking, as though he's afraid to wait and lose his nerve. "Can I ask you something? In your official capacity as the Guy Who Knows Stuff?" He takes an enormous swallow and stares down at the cup, which looks almost small in his big hands.
Giles, wondering if he's in for the kind of questions that Xander asked Oz about their sex life, sits on a stool at the breakfast bar. "Only if you take off that eyepatch first," he says, rolling his aching feet over the rungs. It's not much of a massage, through the soles of his shoes, but it's better than nothing. "I can't have a serious conversation with a pirate."
Xander pulls off the eyepatch and tries to fasten it around one of the bottles of soda, but the elastic is too loose. "You and me having a serious conversation. Man, the laws of probability are strained tonight." He reaches for another Dorito, but doesn't eat it. "Okay, I'm just . . . is it different? With another guy, I mean."
Giles rubs intently at his orange-stained fingers and wonders why he's the one feeling embarrassed. "Xander, before I answer that, perhaps you ought to clarify what you meant."
"No! I mean, that's . . . I didn't mean the, you know, the sex parts." When Giles looks up at him, Xander turns away, blushing more brightly than Giles would've thought possible. "I figure the sex parts have gotta be different, because of the different . . . parts. Or, the same parts, which is different from normal. Oh, fuck," he says quickly, face in his hands, although Giles hasn't said anything. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant . . . sometimes I don't think I understand Anya at all, you know? And I was wondering if it was different with a guy. If you . . . get along better and stuff."
"Ah." A beer, Giles thinks, would really hit the spot about now. But he shouldn't think like that, and anyway he doesn't want to upset Oz any further. "Oz and I . . . we get on very well. Although it's early days yet, of course. And I think I understand him, insofar as it's possible to understand Oz." Xander grins at that, and again he looks terribly young. "But there was a time when we misunderstood one another so badly that we split up."
From the way Xander's nodding, Giles thinks Oz must have told him rather a lot. "But you got back together."
"Yes. After three and a half years. I wouldn't recommend it as a model to others." So much for not being a father figure. This seems to be his night for it. With Xander, though, it's complicated in ways Giles doesn't want to examine too closely. "I'm not sure gender makes a difference. Maybe it does-I've never been seriously involved with a woman, I don't know what it's like." Giles watches Xander twist the eyepatch elastic for a long moment, until he looks up sheepishly. "Xander. Forgive me for saying this. But . . . if you're not sure, you oughtn't to marry her."
"I love Anya," Xander says quickly. He stands up and grabs another handful of Doritos. "So you and Oz are . . . seriously involved?" The words sound hesitant in his mouth, strange and formal.
"Oh yes. Seriously. Happily."
"Huh. Cool." Xander stands shifting his weight for a moment, then turns and walks out the door. Whatever he was really asking, and whether Giles' answer was helpful or not, Giles doesn't know.
But he's sober now, the cider burning down his throat, and with Giles, he's not fidgety so much as...close. Small things aren't tiny or meaningless with Giles.
Big things, though. Big things like marriage and Giles, those might be enough to make him fidget.
"White satin kind of washes me out," he tells Dawn, and her nose scrunches up before she gets it.
Giles hasn't pulled away, but his face is hard to read behind the red plastic cup, and he seems to be deliberately talking to Buffy.
Xander drops his arm around Oz's shoulders and pulls him toward the couch; over his shoulder, Oz can see Giles peering after him, eyes dark and illegible. "You're the relationship man here," Xander's saying, piloting Oz toward Anya. "Tell her."
"Tell me what?" Anya scoots over, making room for Oz. "I've had the most experience of human relationships, actually. Probably ten times all of you put together."
"What am I telling her?" Oz asks Xander, but Xander's moving away, raising his beer to the ceiling and singing something that's probably supposed to be a pirate song. Or maybe "Here Comes the Bride". "Hey, Anya. Congrats."
"Thank you," she says and takes the mug out of his hands and sips it. "I'm very excited, and contrary to what I know they're probably saying, it's not just the presents and financial stability. It's getting to be with my best friend, you know?"
Across the room, Giles is stooping slightly, talking to Buffy and smiling at Xander. He looks at home here, sometimes, when Oz isn't around, like this is where he belongs. Even if Oz knows, and he *does*, that that's not true, it's a hard image to shake. "Yeah," Oz says. "That's probably the best thing of all."
"And the tax benefits are simply stunning. Like icing on the eight-tier cake!"
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Giles nods occasionally and watches Oz-discreetly, he hopes-over Dawn's shoulder. Every so often Oz looks over from whatever earnest conversation he's having with Anya, and when their eyes meet Giles feels a catch in his breath, like the nicotine jolt of a cigarette. Ten feet of distance and it's as though Oz has gone unbearably far, unbearably long. And, too, as though Oz is someone he doesn't know, a charming stranger to make one's pulse race at a party, to make every other conversation dull because nothing matters but talking to him.
Glances back and forth, smiles, half flirtation and half secret signal (lovers, spies, it's all secrecy), and it's a game to keep them occupied all night. No need to think about serious things, about alcohol and marriage and what Oz meant by his joke about white satin. Whether the word marriage has brought the truth of it all home to him, made him rethink those promises they've both made so freely.
"-any chocolate?" Xander's saying, and Giles pulls his attention back. "What this beer really needs is some Oreos." Dawn rushes off towards the kitchen, muttering something about experiments that has Buffy shaking her head sternly.
"Dear lord, Xander," Giles says. "I'd never have thought that growing up could possibly make your eating habits worse." Buffy's cough into her fist doesn't quite cover a laugh.
"Says the guy who eats deep-fried Mars bars."
"I do not. And that's not even English, that Scottish."
Xander grins cheekily, happily, and says, "Same difference. Just with worse teeth and a weirder accent."
All evening time's been behaving strangely, past and present blurring into one another like colored clays twisted together. Everything is hued with memory, and Xander could be sixteen years old again, ridiculous and infuriating and brave. Lonely, begging for attention with jokes.
Of course Xander's not sixteen anymore, but it's only the sudden contrast that lets Giles notice changes that have been accruing for years. Xander is older, changed, heavier in more ways than the physical. They all have more weight on their spirits, since Buffy died. Since . . . who knows when it began?
"Come on," Buffy says in the pause, and grabs Giles' arm and Xander's. "Let's see if Anya's already decided on seafoam or if there's still time to talk her out of it."
Oz smiles when they come over, and if he's having second thoughts, they don't show on his face.
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But there're so many people around, it would embarrass both of them, and it would feel weirdly obscene. Like letting Dawn watch them make out, or having to help Xander have sex with Anya: obscene, and also just impossible.
"Seafoam's a lovely color," Anya's saying, and Oz finally stops hovering as he perches on the arm, close to but not *on* Giles, "and traditional, too. But I've always been partial to magenta. Everyone just *glows* in magenta."
"Which one's magenta?" Xander asks.
"Cordy's lipstick, my first year here," Buffy says.
Everyone's distracted, especially as Dawn returns, a bag of Oreos in her teeth and her arms wrapped around *another* big bowl of chips, with Tara behind her. Exhaling, Oz slumps slightly and slowly slips his arm around Giles' shoulder. It's not nearly the same, but he feels Giles lean a little more against his leg, and pushes his luck by rubbing wide circles on the side of Giles' neck with his thumb.
"I don't have to do anything, do I?" Xander's asking. "Like, I just pay for stuff but you girls choose everything?"
Anya and Buffy and Dawn answer him, chatter twisting and jangling around them, and Oz doesn't think he's imagining that Giles is leaning more heavily against him. Outside the circle, holding a jug of punch, Tara shifts her weight from foot to foot and doesn't really make eye contact with anyone.
She looks miserable. She looks like Oz feels on and off all the time here in Sunnydale, right in the center of his chest, lost and lonely, and there's no one leaning on her. Willow's nowhere in sight.
The girls are dancing now, and Xander's joining them, leaving him with Giles in the couch's corner.
Oz drops his head close to Giles'. "We're good," he whispers quickly. "Don't worry. Please?"
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Buffy, dancing with her sister, looks genuinely happy, with none of the little tensions and unhappy shadows that usually mark her face. She's even laughing as Anya tries to teach her a dance that Giles vaguely remembers from about 1972. It reminds Giles of his own hillwalking years, movement working its mysterious palliation on the emotions. Buffy's been training hard, patrolling a lot, and no doubt feels better for it. Kicking butt, he remembers her saying once, is comfort food.
"W-would you like some cran-apple juice?" Tara asks quietly from his other side, making him jump. He'd forgotten she was there. She's so unassuming, so still, so easy for the eyes to pass over without noticing. It must be something she learned, something she needed once; Giles remembers meeting her father.
When Oz murmurs a refusal, Tara looks so uncomfortable, cradling the pitcher in her arms, that Giles can't help nodding. "Yes, please." He finishes the warm sparkling water in one overlarge swallow and lets her fill his glass. "Do sit down, Tara," he says, as though she's a guest. She seems like a guest, a nervous one, standing stiffly like she's unsure where to put her arms and legs for fear of knocking something over. But this is her home. She's lived here for months, and Giles remembers her comfortable here. Central, the sun and gravitation of the household, holding everything together.
Tara sits on the farthest edge of the sofa, one arm folded self-protectively over her waist, free hand still clutching the handle of the pitcher. She smiles nervously at Giles and Oz and pretends-Giles isn't sure how he knows it's pretense-to watch the others dancing. Oz shifts and inhales as though he's about to say something, but doesn't, and when Giles tries to ask her what's wrong, he can't get a word out either. This is another problem he can't fix. When Willow finally appears from wherever she's been keeping herself and joins the dancing without a look in Tara's direction, Giles is even more sure of it.
"A bit hot in here," Giles says, although it's not, and stands up. "I think I'll step outside for a little air. Oz?" He holds out a hand, and Oz, after a sideways glance at Tara, takes it and hauls himself to his feet.
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"Always hated Halloween," he says, pulling himself upright and leaning against Giles' chest. "Around here, I mean. Spooky enough town any day of the year."
Giles wraps his arms around Oz's chest and plants his chin on Oz's skull. The fragile calm between them since their car ride is still clinging and Oz breathes shallowly, superstitious about disturbing it.
"What're you worrying about?" he asks the street and the lone little kid dressed like Frankenstein's monster trooping over the Summers' yard. "'cause we're good. I promise."
Above him, behind him, Giles is still and warm. When he sighs, it tickles Oz's forehead. Oz covers Giles' arms with his own and answers the sigh with one of his own. He's telling the truth; however much crap *he* has to deal with, it's not about Giles.
"And if it's marriage and everything," he adds, feeling his chest go hollow and papery, "don't. I'd walk down the aisle for you in a heartbeat."
Truth can sting as well as comfort, send wasps swarming up his spine, and Oz closes his eyes, lets Giles set their breathing rhythm. He doesn't want to go anywhere, not ever.
"It's like Anya said. Getting to be with your best friend is the best kind of deal."
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Giles has no responsibilities in Sunnydale anymore. Buffy is coping. She does her job as well as ever, certainly, and anything she needs from him, he can provide over the telephone. It ought to make leaving easier.
"Sorry," he says when Oz tilts his head back inquiringly. "Thinking again."
"Worrying," Oz says softly, and laces his fingers in Giles'. "Don't."
"I wish you could teach me how to stop." Giles kisses his temple and tries not to think. For a while he watches the costumed children instead, but that reminds him of the perverseness of the hellmouth, that Halloween night should be the safest of the year. "Should I start planning our wedding instead? Shall we dress poor Dawn in seafoam or magenta? Or maybe seafoam and magenta?"
It's good to hear Oz laugh, good to feel his chest shake and shoulders curl forward. "Because you have let yourself in for being asked, if it's ever possible." Stripped of the ridiculous images-a church decked in flowers, an uncomfortable vicar changing the pronouns of the service, Oz in white satin and a veil (and why is he thinking of Oz as the bride anyway, when it could just as easily be himself?)-it sounds like a good idea. Or at least not a bad one. Private promises respoken in public. Open commitment, marked with ceremony, with rings that they'd never take off. Belonging to each other officially, finally.
"Forever . . . forever's a bloody long time, Oz." Giles' voice croaks a little; he clears his throat and holds Oz closer. "And you're so young." The oldest worry, and he's a little ashamed at having said it.
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The porch-light paints Giles' glasses almost opaque, bright tinsel and gold, and the lines around his mouth are deep and black. His mouth twists into a frown, curving with regret.
"Forever's just a whole load of moments, one after the other," Oz says, one arm reaching up around Giles' neck, smoothing the edge of his hair. All that sour worry and sick hatred that animated him in the car is gone, emptying him out, and each breath he draws hurts a little. "And I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. And my age? I'm just me. Like you're you."
Giles starts to shake his head and Oz squeezes his neck, stopping the motion.
"I'm older than I used to be," he says, and that's true, too, even if sometimes since going to London he feels like he's starting all over again. "And I might ask you first, you never know."
He tilts back his head and looks Giles over, chin to forehead, and feels himself smiling. Light, and warmth, sliding over his lips, feeling happy a moment and a half before he realizes he is. Happy. With Giles' hands clasped around the small of his back, not letting him fall, looking at the face he's known for four years but loves a little more each time he opens his eyes.
"I talked to *you* first, after all. I'm sneaky like that."
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What's really worrying him could be explained in a few words. When Oz is thirty-five, a young man still, Giles will be sixty. Old. In what should be the richest years of his life, Oz will be stuck with an old man, grey and wrinkled and easily tired, maybe impotent as well. And from there it'll only get worse, Giles sliding into broken health and senility while Oz is no more than middle-aged. Unless (until) he dies and Oz is left alone.
They'll never have the lovers' dream of growing old together. They can't.
He shouldn't let Oz misunderstand, think Giles is worried about immaturity or fickleness or some other un-Oz-like fault. But Oz is smiling, holding his hand and pointing out a little boy in a werewolf costume, and it would be wrong to make him think about all this now. If he's never considered it, there'll be time enough, someday.
The door opens, making Giles blink in the sudden light, and Buffy leans out. "Giles, Dawn says I told her she could stay overnight at her friend Janice's. Do you remember me saying that? I don't think amnesia's a side effect of resurrection. And it's probably not a good idea, right, even on Halloween?"
"That's up to you, Buffy." Even if he were staying, he wouldn't want to start making decisions like this. He's not cut out to be a father-figure, and if he was one to Buffy, it only worked because he didn't really try for it.
Buffy looks at him for a moment, frowning, and then closes the door. In a moment, there's a little excited squeal of triumph from Dawn.
"I suppose we'd better go in," Giles says reluctantly. "The happy couple must be due for another round of congratulations."
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Xander and Buffy are lingering by the stairs, and Oz gets a weird whiff of high-school secrets whispered by the lockers. Which is still more comfortable than the living room, where Willow's talking to Anya and Tara's sitting on the couch shuffling a deck of cards.
"Some party," Oz says under his breath, but Giles must catch it, because he squeezes Oz's shoulder as they linger in the doorway.
"There you are," Anya says, hurrying over with a bowl of cookies in her arms. "Thought I was stuck talking to Willow all night, and *that* would have been a bad omen for sure. Where's Xander?"
Oz plucks a cookie -- chocolate chocolate-chip -- from the bowl and glances over his shoulder. "Outside, I guess."
"And where were you?" Anya's barely looking at him, but peering *around* Oz, through the big window over the couch, shooing Giles out of the way with her hand.
"I *was* outside," Oz says, and suddenly realizes who Anya reminds him of: Miss Calendar. It's the same hard-edged, demanding tone that's not all that interested in you as a person. He slips away from Anya and joins Tara on the couch. "Up for some War?"
Her eyes are big, shadowy, as she glances, startled up at him.
"It's the only cardgame I can remember," he says, munching his cookie, wondering how much longer they have to stay. He should have asked Giles when he had the chance, but when he looks around, Giles isn't there. Kitchen probably.
"Me, too," she says, dealing out the deck, smiling in the general direction of her lap. "How's the cookie?"
"Burned but edible."
She actually looks him in the eye, shaking back her hair, as she smiles. "Dawn's batch, then. Your turn."
He flips over his top card and licks the crumbs off his lips. He can *be* with Tara like he's known her as long as Giles, or Xander; it's strange to feel like that about someone he almost killed. He should avoid her, so he doesn't piss off Willow, so he doesn't scare Tara, so things don't become more complicated. But aside from Xander, she's the only person here his age he can talk to, and she's snarky when you get her warmed up.
Also, she kind of kicks ass at War.
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There's a brief silence while they open bottles and pour fizzing drinks into cups. Xander offers Giles a bowl of Doritos, and grins when Giles takes some. Yellow-orange goo melting on his tongue, Giles decides that they're just as horrible as he remembers. But it gives him a little longer to try and gather his thoughts. "I'm sure you and Anya will be very happy," he ventures at last, lamely.
Halfway through Giles' sentence, Xander abruptly starts speaking, as though he's afraid to wait and lose his nerve. "Can I ask you something? In your official capacity as the Guy Who Knows Stuff?" He takes an enormous swallow and stares down at the cup, which looks almost small in his big hands.
Giles, wondering if he's in for the kind of questions that Xander asked Oz about their sex life, sits on a stool at the breakfast bar. "Only if you take off that eyepatch first," he says, rolling his aching feet over the rungs. It's not much of a massage, through the soles of his shoes, but it's better than nothing. "I can't have a serious conversation with a pirate."
Xander pulls off the eyepatch and tries to fasten it around one of the bottles of soda, but the elastic is too loose. "You and me having a serious conversation. Man, the laws of probability are strained tonight." He reaches for another Dorito, but doesn't eat it. "Okay, I'm just . . . is it different? With another guy, I mean."
Giles rubs intently at his orange-stained fingers and wonders why he's the one feeling embarrassed. "Xander, before I answer that, perhaps you ought to clarify what you meant."
"No! I mean, that's . . . I didn't mean the, you know, the sex parts." When Giles looks up at him, Xander turns away, blushing more brightly than Giles would've thought possible. "I figure the sex parts have gotta be different, because of the different . . . parts. Or, the same parts, which is different from normal. Oh, fuck," he says quickly, face in his hands, although Giles hasn't said anything. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant . . . sometimes I don't think I understand Anya at all, you know? And I was wondering if it was different with a guy. If you . . . get along better and stuff."
"Ah." A beer, Giles thinks, would really hit the spot about now. But he shouldn't think like that, and anyway he doesn't want to upset Oz any further. "Oz and I . . . we get on very well. Although it's early days yet, of course. And I think I understand him, insofar as it's possible to understand Oz." Xander grins at that, and again he looks terribly young. "But there was a time when we misunderstood one another so badly that we split up."
From the way Xander's nodding, Giles thinks Oz must have told him rather a lot. "But you got back together."
"Yes. After three and a half years. I wouldn't recommend it as a model to others." So much for not being a father figure. This seems to be his night for it. With Xander, though, it's complicated in ways Giles doesn't want to examine too closely. "I'm not sure gender makes a difference. Maybe it does-I've never been seriously involved with a woman, I don't know what it's like." Giles watches Xander twist the eyepatch elastic for a long moment, until he looks up sheepishly. "Xander. Forgive me for saying this. But . . . if you're not sure, you oughtn't to marry her."
"I love Anya," Xander says quickly. He stands up and grabs another handful of Doritos. "So you and Oz are . . . seriously involved?" The words sound hesitant in his mouth, strange and formal.
"Oh yes. Seriously. Happily."
"Huh. Cool." Xander stands shifting his weight for a moment, then turns and walks out the door. Whatever he was really asking, and whether Giles' answer was helpful or not, Giles doesn't know.
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