Giles remembers. His whole body remembers in a flooding, drowning instant. Oz's mouth tasted of the mango sorbet he'd been eating, his skin was sunburn-hot, and he lay splayed out on the steps as Giles explored him. "I remember. Everything. The smell of your clothes. The creak of the bannister because you were pushing at it while I sucked you. You had a line of bruises up your back afterwards from the edges of the stairs."
In Giles' memory, that summer (the only summer, not the first, although he's not going to bring that up now) is the essence of all summers, heat and desire and joy, Oz wading in soaked jeans or naked and trembling under Giles' body. He scarcely remembers any unhappiness, except for the ends of their two trips away, the sharp bereavement that came with seeing the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign. "I could almost be nostalgic for that summer," he says. Everything, then, was the first time. Everything was the bliss of discovery. And Oz was younger then, more easily happy, not yet touched by lycanthropy or guilt.
Oz looks thoughtful, and his lovely flush is paling back to normal. Giles kisses between his brows, and wonders when, exactly, that gesture came to mean don't worry. "But now is better." Now is permanence and trust, growing security, knowledge of each other that's deep instead of merely new.
The brush of Oz's hand on his arm makes Giles shiver, makes his slightly waning erection stiffen again. Dropping his voice back to a whisper, he says, "Or it will be when we're home and you're licking my cock and I'm tugging your hair and begging you for more."
Oz's backbone twists and knocks him against Giles before he knows what's happening; his hand claws at Giles' knee, clenching hard, before he can take a breath.
It's not just the words themselves - the image, though, that's fucking *glorious*, the red sweaty sheen to Giles' face, his hands in Oz's hair pulling too hard, so sharply that tears spring up in Oz's eyes, and the ache in his jaw and the *taste*, pure Giles and boiling-hot - but the breathiness behind the words, like Giles has to fight to get them out.
Tightening his hold on Giles' knee, the possible stares of other passengers skimming over him, Oz nods and swallows. "Like that," he whispers back, eyes locked on the safety folder tucked into the back of the seat in front of Giles. Perfect blue waves and inflatable rafts bobbing on top of them, like a crash is just an extra stop. Concentrate on that, he thinks, and get the words out. "Like that a lot. Knees flattened out on the floor, you like ten feet tall over me. Pulling my hair but I'm still just licking like it's ice cream. Waiting for you to start cursing."
Giles and filthy words: It's something like alchemy, all these guttural old words in *Giles'* voice. Oz holds his breath, fingertips going numb on Giles' leg.
Oz has a beautiful mouth, soft and generous and somehow expressive. Giles loves to watch him eating, hungrily or slowly, nibbling and tasting. There's something about Oz's mouth that yearns after pleasure, that hints at the sensualist under his stillness.
And inside . . . inside it's more than hints. Inside, Oz's mouth is slippery and hot, welcoming to Giles' kisses, eager and yielding to his cock. Inside there's a cushiony sliding tongue, a swirling flexible experimental tongue, a tormenting delicate knowing tongue. So fluid, and then the delicious shock of the hard places, the ridged roof of Oz's mouth, his sharp gentle teeth.
Giles closes his eyes, dry from staring, and takes a slow breath that doesn't help at all. "Jesus, Oz." He hears a soft laugh, and wants to kiss Oz impossibly hard and deep, kiss that laughter at the source. "You wouldn't have to wait long."
Lifting Oz's clutching fingers off his knee, Giles tries to find a way to sit comfortably. His cock feels bruised from the pressure, the confinement and need. "Much as I'd like to continue this conversation, I think perhaps we'd better not." Already he's losing his scruples against lavatory sex. But in this nervous atmosphere, embarrassment would be the least of it. People would probably think they were arming a bomb in there.
Giles takes another sip of water, thinks about spilling the rest onto his lap, and smiles ruefully at Oz. "Who were you, anyway? In the game." It's bound to be someone he's never heard of, and there'll be explanations. So long as he doesn't look at Oz's mouth while he talks, that should take his mind off his aching erection.
Interlacing their fingers, Oz squeezes Giles' hand. "Sorry," he whispers first, disturbed by the dark flush high on Giles' cheeks and the choked, clipped quality to his voice. "Um, I was Calderón. Guy who wrote Life is a Dream?"
He'd already done Hank Azaria and Jackie Robinson, and went with Calderón hoping that Giles would guess it. Oz tries to recall the soliloquy he likes so much from Act II, the one he memorized when he had to return the book to Jorge after having had it for four months, but the words, in both Spanish and English, aren't coming.
He's too aware of...*everything*. His skin, stretched taut and overheated, and the narrowness of the seats, and the impossible proximity of Giles, and Giles' discomfort.
"Hungry," Oz finally says. "Want some curry or something. Something homey."
Giles bends down, carefully, and digs in the plastic shopping bag under his seat, the one's that's heavy with too many magazines and dubious paperbacks. "Will you settle for the leftover half of my cinnamon bun?" Oz takes it, licking his fingers as he peels away the sticky paper. They should have bought some sandwiches--Oz is always hungry, and dull, meager airline meals will barely take the edge off--but most of the airport snack shops were still closed at seven this morning. "I expect they'll be bringing lunch soon." There's some clattering in the galley that sounds hopeful.
"I think I'm hungry for anything that we cook ourselves." Giles shakes his head when Oz holds out a bit of the pastry. "I want to watch you slicing peppers into perfect strips or adding those tiny little pinches of salt to the pan. I want us to wash our own crockery and make our own bed." Bed brings up thoughts he's trying to suppress, so he adds, "I want to be in a room with bookshelves again. And our souvenirs and pictures." The most important part of home is Oz himself, but the rest matters too. It's their snail's shell, an extension of themselves and their protection from the world.
Oz hasn't cooked since they left London. He's made sandwiches for Dawn, helped Tara assemble casseroles, concocted some pasta for Xander, but he hasn't settled into a kitchen with Giles within reach and ingredients spread out everywhere. He hasn't squinted at a pile of produce or stripped fat off a steak, hasn't been able to nudge Giles with his hip or shimmy past him to the sink. He's made food, but he hasn't *cooked*.
"Want to cook --" He breaks off, overtaken by a seemingly-endless yawn, then grins when Giles rubs his neck. "Want to cook, definitely. And see books not written by Leon Uris or published by Time-Life --" Mrs. Summers was a nice lady, but her taste in casual reading left a lot to be desired. "And...yeah."
Slumping a little in his seat, crossing his legs and tilting against Giles' shoulder, Oz rubs his face on Giles' arm and squints up.
"Should make beef stew when we get back," he adds. Neither of them has mentioned what it will be like when they return; the most they mentioned about home was that it wasn't Sunnydale. Superstitious, maybe, not wanting to hex yet another place; it was probably a good idea to be cautious. "And sleep, too."
"Lots of sleep." There were hardly any nights in Sunnydale when Giles slept well, and these last few days he's been sore-eyed and nauseated, every muscle tense and painful. He squeezes Oz's shoulder gently in his hand, fingers gripping and flexing like starfish legs. "We'll laze about like great idle lumps, and do nothing but sleep and cook and read." Oz lifts his head, and Giles amends, "And one or two other things. You know. Some scrabble, a bit of television." Oz burrows more firmly into Giles' neck, and Giles feels a slow, sleepy laugh roll through Oz like the earth-rumble of a passing truck.
The little blue rectangle of blanket has slipped half into the aisle; Giles tucks it around Oz, keeping it off himself as he's already too warm. "Rest. You must be knackered, all that driving after two hours' sleep." For himself, Giles knows there's no point in trying. Even exhausted, he sleeps like an insomniac, oversensitive to any difficulty. And there are difficulties in plenty--the dim and electric irritation of balked desire, the noise and cramped space, his returning nervousness, and even the pain of fatigue itself.
For now, he'll wait, read, guard Oz's rest. He can sleep when they're home.
His sleep is sharp. One minute he's awake, the next he simply *isn't*. This is the kind of sleep that only comes to Oz during travel: Unspeakably deep and blank, yet he can wake at every knock of turbulence or stop of train or bus.
There isn't anything to wake him here, though, and he doesn't dream so much as *see* things. The metal rectangle of the washroom's mirror - the shadows under Giles' jaw and the glint of light on his spectacles - the back of the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign in the pearly predawn light - images, but not dreams. Not quite memories, either.
Oz snaps awake when Giles gently shakes his shoulder and presses his lips against his forehead. He inhales, eyes still closed, and smells ozone, old plane air, and Giles - salt and cologne and worry.
"Whoa," Oz says thickly and rolls his tongue against sour, sticky teeth. He wants to burrow into Giles' arms and never open his eyes. "Time is it?"
"I'm not sure," Giles says, experimentally stretching his numb right arm, where Oz has lain for hours. His watch is still set to California time, and he's at the stage of tiredness that makes the thought of any unnecessary effort, even simple addition, painful and distressing. "The middle of the night, anyway. We'll be landing soon."
Oz yawns again, knuckling his eyes, and mutters thanks when Giles helps straighten his shirt and rearrange his hair. "Did you sleep well? It seemed very sound." Oz didn't wake during turbulence that knocked Giles out of the light doze he'd managed, or even for meal service or the couple of times Giles got up to use the lavatory. He slept, far stiller than his ordinary sleep, peaceable and childlike and enviable. The sleep of a pure conscience, Giles thought once a few hours ago, when he couldn't stop himself fretting yet again about how Buffy will cope, whether she'll forgive him, whether she'll be too angry to ask for his help if she needs it. Whether Willow is treading the same path as Ethan, and what can possibly be done if she is.
He hands the immigration and customs forms to Oz, who's twisting each shoulder in turn and running his tongue over his teeth with a frown. "I filled out most of them for you, but you need to sign and put your passport number on."
The plane is descending; Giles has to yawn to clear his ears. When it touches down, the longest goodbye of his life, the goodbye that's dragged on for months, will finally be over. It ought to feel momentous, but he just wants to get quickly through the bureaucratic necessities, find a taxi, and go home.
While he's fully awake, moving and grabbing his rucksack from the compartment and taking care not to let the crowd come between him and Giles, Oz still feels thick with sleep. Like dreams are clinging to him, stickier than cobwebs, though he didn't dream, not that he can remember, but the jostle of bodies, even the shock of air-conditioning as they enter the building, nothing quite wakes him up.
Maybe he should say something, about going home, or homecoming, something with *home* in it, because Giles looks as dazed as Oz feels. They're both walking gingerly on shockingly hard floors, like sea creatures come to earth, testing new, unformed legs and longing for the current. The crowd stretches out into a series of clumps and the light, sharp as an aquarium, burns Oz's eyes as they approach the passport control lines.
Squinting, his passport bending in his hand, Oz tries to make out where he needs to go. More security, more sense of vague guilt gathering at the back of his mind: He hates these line-ups. It's the only thing Oz hates about travel.
"I think I go --" he says, catching Giles' hand and gesturing to the left. "Since I'm, you know. A foreigner."
Giles slides his hand up to Oz's elbow and squeezes. "Ordinarily, yes. But, well, the Watchers have an arrangement with the government. Come on, it'll all be very easy."
Normally Giles just waits in the queue. He's never taken advantage of the stamp and special barcode inside his passport; it seems rude. It's the something he suspects Quentin Travers does whenever he travels, and that's reason enough to hold back. But this isn't simply for his own convenience, tired though he is and reluctant to wait. There's a real chance that Oz, with no job and no return ticket to America, might be denied entry. It's surprising he got into the country in the first place.
Holding Oz's arm in a way that he hopes is reassuring for Oz but ambiguous to observers, he goes straight to the head of the queue. Before the irritated official can send him back, he hands her his open passport and says, "Official business. And he's with me. He'll need a six-month entry stamp."
Frowning (official business or not, she clearly doesn't like queue-jumpers), the woman holds the stamped page up to the light, tilts it back and forth to check the color-changing inks, scrutinizes Giles' photo and his face, scans the barcode with an electronic wand, and finally says, grudgingly, "Of course, sir." She stamps his passport and Oz's, taking her time about it, and then they're through.
Giles feels mutedly, sleepily gleeful. "Active Watchers have certain privileges," he says to Oz, who looks confused, or possibly just exhausted, as they approach the customs check. "I could bring anything, or anyone, into the country. We're not supposed to do so for personal reasons, of course, but it happens all the time. There was a chap, years ago, who brought back a fortune in Persian antiquities. The Council chucked him out eventually, but it didn't stop him buying a country house." They're waved through customs without questions or inspection.
On the way to the baggage claim, Giles takes Oz's hand again. "We'll have to see about getting you residency. Right of abode, it's called." That goes beyond Giles' privileges, and the Council might not help with it. Ridiculous. If they could marry there'd be none of this nonsense.
Oz blinks, seems about to answer, and yawns. "It's nothing we have to worry about right now," Giles says, and gazes blearily at the moving belt of the baggage track, willing their cases to appear. Bags, taxi, home, sleep. No worries for a good long while.
Oz is still working out the utter 007-heights of coolness that gets you a special barcode in your passport as they pause before the rotating baggage and scan for their own bags. Special passports are like robot servants and souped-up MGs, things out of bad, flashy, *wonderful* movies.
"Right of a boat?" he asks and wonders, briefly, why he would need a boat to be a Briton. Something about the Navy, he thinks, before Giles squeezes his hand, ducking his head and smiling. Luckily, it looks like Giles thinks he made the joke on purpose. "Cool. Want a dinghy, then. Or a dugout canoe -- hey, there's your --"
Giles' worn leather suitcase, big enough to smuggle a crate of books in, wobbles past and Oz squirms between the woman in the Halloween shirt and the very sad-looking old man to grab it. His shoulder aches, pulled funny, as he sets it down between them.
He has a stamp in his passport. He can *stay*. Realizing that fact is like catching a shiver: at first he's not aware of it, but then, gradually, he is. They're in the back of the big black taxi by then, his passport safely in his front pocket and he's leaning against the door, facing Giles, watching the highway lights paint silver and red over the surface of his specs.
"Any other perks?" Oz asks, but an ambulance, screeching its strange British mating call, hoots past just then, and Oz doesn't need to know. Just get home, lugging the big case up the flight of stairs as quietly as he can, and lean against the door, smiling at Giles as he trudges up the last three stairs.
"Welcome home," Oz says, arms going around Giles' neck and kissing him. "For, like, real."
Giles could happily just sink down here at the top of the stairs, wrap his arms around Oz, and sleep with his head pillowed on the suitcase. "Nearly home," he says. Dealing with his keys feels like some kind of cruel endurance sport, especially since the stairway light is burnt out and it takes him multiple attempts, and some cursing, to fit the right key to the lock.
The flat smells stale, and he wonders if air sours like milk left out. But it smells like home, too, as though some essence of their breath and bodies lingers in the upholstery and paint and the grain of the wood. Even the dust is their dust, smelling different from the dust in the shop or Buffy's house.
Oz drops the suitcase by the bed with a groan and leans wordlessly against Giles' chest. "That's better," Giles says, and Oz makes a vague, sighing sound and works his arms under Giles' coat. They can sleep properly, lying in their own bed, and they can touch without inhibitions for the first time in too many hours. They're home.
The answerphone is blinking, and all their clothes will wrinkle if they're not unpacked tonight, but Giles is too tired, bone and soul tired, to care. Only the desire to kiss Oz some more gives him the energy to brush his teeth.
Two bottles of water from the fridge, clean pyjamas from the dresser, soft sheets and a duvet that Giles knows no stranger has bled or spit or come on. Good comfortable things, and Oz sprawled on top of him and a slow kiss that tastes of mint, and this feeling of coming home is almost worth the misery of travel.
In Giles' memory, that summer (the only summer, not the first, although he's not going to bring that up now) is the essence of all summers, heat and desire and joy, Oz wading in soaked jeans or naked and trembling under Giles' body. He scarcely remembers any unhappiness, except for the ends of their two trips away, the sharp bereavement that came with seeing the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign. "I could almost be nostalgic for that summer," he says. Everything, then, was the first time. Everything was the bliss of discovery. And Oz was younger then, more easily happy, not yet touched by lycanthropy or guilt.
Oz looks thoughtful, and his lovely flush is paling back to normal. Giles kisses between his brows, and wonders when, exactly, that gesture came to mean don't worry. "But now is better." Now is permanence and trust, growing security, knowledge of each other that's deep instead of merely new.
The brush of Oz's hand on his arm makes Giles shiver, makes his slightly waning erection stiffen again. Dropping his voice back to a whisper, he says, "Or it will be when we're home and you're licking my cock and I'm tugging your hair and begging you for more."
Reply
It's not just the words themselves - the image, though, that's fucking *glorious*, the red sweaty sheen to Giles' face, his hands in Oz's hair pulling too hard, so sharply that tears spring up in Oz's eyes, and the ache in his jaw and the *taste*, pure Giles and boiling-hot - but the breathiness behind the words, like Giles has to fight to get them out.
Tightening his hold on Giles' knee, the possible stares of other passengers skimming over him, Oz nods and swallows. "Like that," he whispers back, eyes locked on the safety folder tucked into the back of the seat in front of Giles. Perfect blue waves and inflatable rafts bobbing on top of them, like a crash is just an extra stop. Concentrate on that, he thinks, and get the words out. "Like that a lot. Knees flattened out on the floor, you like ten feet tall over me. Pulling my hair but I'm still just licking like it's ice cream. Waiting for you to start cursing."
Giles and filthy words: It's something like alchemy, all these guttural old words in *Giles'* voice. Oz holds his breath, fingertips going numb on Giles' leg.
Reply
And inside . . . inside it's more than hints. Inside, Oz's mouth is slippery and hot, welcoming to Giles' kisses, eager and yielding to his cock. Inside there's a cushiony sliding tongue, a swirling flexible experimental tongue, a tormenting delicate knowing tongue. So fluid, and then the delicious shock of the hard places, the ridged roof of Oz's mouth, his sharp gentle teeth.
Giles closes his eyes, dry from staring, and takes a slow breath that doesn't help at all. "Jesus, Oz." He hears a soft laugh, and wants to kiss Oz impossibly hard and deep, kiss that laughter at the source. "You wouldn't have to wait long."
Lifting Oz's clutching fingers off his knee, Giles tries to find a way to sit comfortably. His cock feels bruised from the pressure, the confinement and need. "Much as I'd like to continue this conversation, I think perhaps we'd better not." Already he's losing his scruples against lavatory sex. But in this nervous atmosphere, embarrassment would be the least of it. People would probably think they were arming a bomb in there.
Giles takes another sip of water, thinks about spilling the rest onto his lap, and smiles ruefully at Oz. "Who were you, anyway? In the game." It's bound to be someone he's never heard of, and there'll be explanations. So long as he doesn't look at Oz's mouth while he talks, that should take his mind off his aching erection.
Reply
He'd already done Hank Azaria and Jackie Robinson, and went with Calderón hoping that Giles would guess it. Oz tries to recall the soliloquy he likes so much from Act II, the one he memorized when he had to return the book to Jorge after having had it for four months, but the words, in both Spanish and English, aren't coming.
He's too aware of...*everything*. His skin, stretched taut and overheated, and the narrowness of the seats, and the impossible proximity of Giles, and Giles' discomfort.
"Hungry," Oz finally says. "Want some curry or something. Something homey."
Reply
"I think I'm hungry for anything that we cook ourselves." Giles shakes his head when Oz holds out a bit of the pastry. "I want to watch you slicing peppers into perfect strips or adding those tiny little pinches of salt to the pan. I want us to wash our own crockery and make our own bed." Bed brings up thoughts he's trying to suppress, so he adds, "I want to be in a room with bookshelves again. And our souvenirs and pictures." The most important part of home is Oz himself, but the rest matters too. It's their snail's shell, an extension of themselves and their protection from the world.
Reply
"Want to cook --" He breaks off, overtaken by a seemingly-endless yawn, then grins when Giles rubs his neck. "Want to cook, definitely. And see books not written by Leon Uris or published by Time-Life --" Mrs. Summers was a nice lady, but her taste in casual reading left a lot to be desired. "And...yeah."
Slumping a little in his seat, crossing his legs and tilting against Giles' shoulder, Oz rubs his face on Giles' arm and squints up.
"Should make beef stew when we get back," he adds. Neither of them has mentioned what it will be like when they return; the most they mentioned about home was that it wasn't Sunnydale. Superstitious, maybe, not wanting to hex yet another place; it was probably a good idea to be cautious. "And sleep, too."
Reply
The little blue rectangle of blanket has slipped half into the aisle; Giles tucks it around Oz, keeping it off himself as he's already too warm. "Rest. You must be knackered, all that driving after two hours' sleep." For himself, Giles knows there's no point in trying. Even exhausted, he sleeps like an insomniac, oversensitive to any difficulty. And there are difficulties in plenty--the dim and electric irritation of balked desire, the noise and cramped space, his returning nervousness, and even the pain of fatigue itself.
For now, he'll wait, read, guard Oz's rest. He can sleep when they're home.
Reply
There isn't anything to wake him here, though, and he doesn't dream so much as *see* things. The metal rectangle of the washroom's mirror - the shadows under Giles' jaw and the glint of light on his spectacles - the back of the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign in the pearly predawn light - images, but not dreams. Not quite memories, either.
Oz snaps awake when Giles gently shakes his shoulder and presses his lips against his forehead. He inhales, eyes still closed, and smells ozone, old plane air, and Giles - salt and cologne and worry.
"Whoa," Oz says thickly and rolls his tongue against sour, sticky teeth. He wants to burrow into Giles' arms and never open his eyes. "Time is it?"
Reply
Oz yawns again, knuckling his eyes, and mutters thanks when Giles helps straighten his shirt and rearrange his hair. "Did you sleep well? It seemed very sound." Oz didn't wake during turbulence that knocked Giles out of the light doze he'd managed, or even for meal service or the couple of times Giles got up to use the lavatory. He slept, far stiller than his ordinary sleep, peaceable and childlike and enviable. The sleep of a pure conscience, Giles thought once a few hours ago, when he couldn't stop himself fretting yet again about how Buffy will cope, whether she'll forgive him, whether she'll be too angry to ask for his help if she needs it. Whether Willow is treading the same path as Ethan, and what can possibly be done if she is.
He hands the immigration and customs forms to Oz, who's twisting each shoulder in turn and running his tongue over his teeth with a frown. "I filled out most of them for you, but you need to sign and put your passport number on."
The plane is descending; Giles has to yawn to clear his ears. When it touches down, the longest goodbye of his life, the goodbye that's dragged on for months, will finally be over. It ought to feel momentous, but he just wants to get quickly through the bureaucratic necessities, find a taxi, and go home.
Reply
Maybe he should say something, about going home, or homecoming, something with *home* in it, because Giles looks as dazed as Oz feels. They're both walking gingerly on shockingly hard floors, like sea creatures come to earth, testing new, unformed legs and longing for the current. The crowd stretches out into a series of clumps and the light, sharp as an aquarium, burns Oz's eyes as they approach the passport control lines.
Squinting, his passport bending in his hand, Oz tries to make out where he needs to go. More security, more sense of vague guilt gathering at the back of his mind: He hates these line-ups. It's the only thing Oz hates about travel.
"I think I go --" he says, catching Giles' hand and gesturing to the left. "Since I'm, you know. A foreigner."
Reply
Normally Giles just waits in the queue. He's never taken advantage of the stamp and special barcode inside his passport; it seems rude. It's the something he suspects Quentin Travers does whenever he travels, and that's reason enough to hold back. But this isn't simply for his own convenience, tired though he is and reluctant to wait. There's a real chance that Oz, with no job and no return ticket to America, might be denied entry. It's surprising he got into the country in the first place.
Holding Oz's arm in a way that he hopes is reassuring for Oz but ambiguous to observers, he goes straight to the head of the queue. Before the irritated official can send him back, he hands her his open passport and says, "Official business. And he's with me. He'll need a six-month entry stamp."
Frowning (official business or not, she clearly doesn't like queue-jumpers), the woman holds the stamped page up to the light, tilts it back and forth to check the color-changing inks, scrutinizes Giles' photo and his face, scans the barcode with an electronic wand, and finally says, grudgingly, "Of course, sir." She stamps his passport and Oz's, taking her time about it, and then they're through.
Giles feels mutedly, sleepily gleeful. "Active Watchers have certain privileges," he says to Oz, who looks confused, or possibly just exhausted, as they approach the customs check. "I could bring anything, or anyone, into the country. We're not supposed to do so for personal reasons, of course, but it happens all the time. There was a chap, years ago, who brought back a fortune in Persian antiquities. The Council chucked him out eventually, but it didn't stop him buying a country house." They're waved through customs without questions or inspection.
On the way to the baggage claim, Giles takes Oz's hand again. "We'll have to see about getting you residency. Right of abode, it's called." That goes beyond Giles' privileges, and the Council might not help with it. Ridiculous. If they could marry there'd be none of this nonsense.
Oz blinks, seems about to answer, and yawns. "It's nothing we have to worry about right now," Giles says, and gazes blearily at the moving belt of the baggage track, willing their cases to appear. Bags, taxi, home, sleep. No worries for a good long while.
Reply
"Right of a boat?" he asks and wonders, briefly, why he would need a boat to be a Briton. Something about the Navy, he thinks, before Giles squeezes his hand, ducking his head and smiling. Luckily, it looks like Giles thinks he made the joke on purpose. "Cool. Want a dinghy, then. Or a dugout canoe -- hey, there's your --"
Giles' worn leather suitcase, big enough to smuggle a crate of books in, wobbles past and Oz squirms between the woman in the Halloween shirt and the very sad-looking old man to grab it. His shoulder aches, pulled funny, as he sets it down between them.
He has a stamp in his passport. He can *stay*. Realizing that fact is like catching a shiver: at first he's not aware of it, but then, gradually, he is. They're in the back of the big black taxi by then, his passport safely in his front pocket and he's leaning against the door, facing Giles, watching the highway lights paint silver and red over the surface of his specs.
"Any other perks?" Oz asks, but an ambulance, screeching its strange British mating call, hoots past just then, and Oz doesn't need to know. Just get home, lugging the big case up the flight of stairs as quietly as he can, and lean against the door, smiling at Giles as he trudges up the last three stairs.
"Welcome home," Oz says, arms going around Giles' neck and kissing him. "For, like, real."
Reply
The flat smells stale, and he wonders if air sours like milk left out. But it smells like home, too, as though some essence of their breath and bodies lingers in the upholstery and paint and the grain of the wood. Even the dust is their dust, smelling different from the dust in the shop or Buffy's house.
Oz drops the suitcase by the bed with a groan and leans wordlessly against Giles' chest. "That's better," Giles says, and Oz makes a vague, sighing sound and works his arms under Giles' coat. They can sleep properly, lying in their own bed, and they can touch without inhibitions for the first time in too many hours. They're home.
The answerphone is blinking, and all their clothes will wrinkle if they're not unpacked tonight, but Giles is too tired, bone and soul tired, to care. Only the desire to kiss Oz some more gives him the energy to brush his teeth.
Two bottles of water from the fridge, clean pyjamas from the dresser, soft sheets and a duvet that Giles knows no stranger has bled or spit or come on. Good comfortable things, and Oz sprawled on top of him and a slow kiss that tastes of mint, and this feeling of coming home is almost worth the misery of travel.
Reply
Leave a comment