The laughter discharged some last, staticky tension, and now Giles feels loose and deliciously empty, his belly muscles aching in a way that amplifies his warm, post-orgasmic languor. "Bondage," he echoes, and the images the word conjures--Oz shined and opened by a thousand kinds of pleasure--heat him gently, like sunlight or bathwater. "I didn't know if you still . . . " It turned out badly the one time they tried it, or rather too well. But there's no reason not to try again.
"Yes," Giles says, leaning forward to kiss the rim of Oz's ear, then up into his hair. Yes is their watchword now, their motto, after years of no piled on no. "My god, Oz. There's so much we can do. So much to try." From Oz's smile, almost sly and fully flirtatious, he looks to be totting up the possibilities.
Giles touches a purpling love bite on Oz's collarbone--there are so many, more than he remembers making, and later he wants to kiss them all, trace constellations with his tongue--then takes Oz's hand and slides his fingertips down Giles' own chest. He follows the invisible lines that Oz scraped up with his teeth. "You know, you'd have to bite me terribly hard before you'd break the skin. And you've never drawn blood on me, not even . . ." For a moment Giles doesn't say it, but it's wrong to avoid the word. Wrong to let it be, again, something unspeakable. "Not even before you were a werewolf. I don't want you to hold back with me, Oz. We both know how that ends."
If Giles is wrong, if the worst happens . . . it would be bad. The change was always agony for Oz, and not changing isn't much easier. Giles isn't sure he could learn Oz's complicated disciplines, either. But they need, imperatively, non-negotiably, to be free with each other.
Nudging Giles onto his back, one arm circling and supporting Giles' head, Oz retraces the patterns on his chest. Just the scratch of a nail is enough to make Giles, sleepy and honey-slow as he is right now, shiver and whistle in a breath. They used to use their mouth on each other all the time, teeth and lips and tongue; Oz would walk home at night thinking about the stellar patterns he left on Giles' chest, looking forward to touching the warm, tingling bruises on his own skin. And at home, he'd strip off and look at himself in the bathroom mirror, study and memorize what the bruises looked like. He'd wait to touch, picturing Giles' mouth, recreating the sucking and nibbling, until his palms burned and he had to touch, had to.
"Won't hold back," Oz says, pressing two fingertips against a hickey on Giles' neck. His gums ache a little, but it might be warning or excitement; he can't tell. "Scared, though. What I'd do, how it would --" Giles murmurs something and Oz blinks hard. "Change you, hurt you. Something." He squeezes his eyes shut and lets the air slide out his lungs. Giles' hand comes up Oz's back, slow gliding circles, and Oz rolls his lips together.
"Used to have these dreams -- nightmares, something, where I turned you and we could --" He can see them now, Giles uncaged and howling, and his cock hardens a little even as his skin crawls. "Be free." Opening his eyes, Oz tries to smile. "Not that I *wanted* to, I don't think. Just, like, it'd be easier. Better."
Giles' eyes are unreadable, his expression so still, that Oz wants to flee. Apologize, take it back, erase it.
Giles hasn't seen Oz's other shape, the monstrous one that doesn't even really look like a wolf, in years. After that first long night when, so numb with horror that it felt like clinical dispassion, he watched the werewolf--Oz--sleep, he tried not to look at it. But now, looking up into Oz's anxiety-frozen face, Giles remembers the muzzle, the teeth, the fur. And how the beast stretched and re-formed, breakneck evolution, into a drugged and naked boy, pale as a dead thing under the fluorescent lights of the library.
"Oz," Giles says, and pulls him down hard, as though he's trying to bruise his chest with Oz's chin. "You must've been so lonely." Did the dreams come after Oz left him, or before? It could have been before; there was plenty of reason, already, for Oz to feel lonely. Cradling Oz, hand on his head as though he's a baby, Giles wonders what it's like not to be quite human. What things Oz can't tell him because language was never made for it. How vast and deep loneliness could go when it's down in the blood, in the genes.
Giles tilts Oz's chin up to look at him again. "Perhaps you should have done it." Oz wouldn't have left him, then. Wouldn't have thought of himself as a danger Giles needed protection from. "Perhaps . . ." Hands splayed over the lovely curves of Oz's skull, Giles kisses him and tastes the dry sourness of his own mouth. "Perhaps you still should. There shouldn't - I don't want anything keeping us apart. I love you." Just a little pain, a little broken skin, his blood in Oz's mouth and Oz's saliva in his blood, and they could be closer than they've been since before Oz was turned. Closer than they've ever been, maybe.
Giles sounds gentle and urgent at the same time, coaxing and needful, and his eyes are shining wetly, even as he tries to smile. Oz can't move -- it's like his skin's shrunk down to his bones and he's just rock now, a weird collection of fossilized twigs held up by Giles' hands.
"No," Oz says, and Giles' eyes close, his face starts to twist, and heat floods through Oz all at once, animating him again. "No, Giles, please --. Just listen, okay?"
He can see the distance already trying to paint itself over Giles' face -- the set, glittering eyes and the tightened jaw, the same mask Giles wore every day after their anniversary, all the way through the time Oz left Sunnydale the second time. He can see it, and Oz can't let it happen *again*. He shifts back a little, putting both hands on Giles' chest, pressing firmly, the way you do for a wound or during CPR, and takes a breath.
"I love *you*. Way too much to ever, ever -- do that. To think that would do anything but hurt you. Destroy you." Before Giles can say anything, Oz adds, "It would. It's -- it's not like something we can do together. Like a hobby, or, or -- moving to London or something. It's --" Every morning, he still has to *make* himself kneel to his meditations, make lighting the candles and drinking the marifasa mean what they can mean. He has to see the cage again, taste Veruca's flesh and hear her gurgling howl as she died, to do it and keep doing it. "I love you. We couldn't survive that, Giles. No one could."
The heat's steaming away into a kind of clammy warmth, sticky on the inside of his skin, and Oz's face aches with the effort of staring, of not breaking eye contact. "Need you *you*. I'm not you, I couldn't --. I love you for *you*."
Giles has seen Oz angry, frightened, hopelessly sad, but never as appalled, as horrified, as he is right now. His eyes have gone all to whites and pupil, just the thinnest blue-green ring around the black, and he's pressing on Giles' chest as though he's stuffing comprehension in, holding it there until it takes.
Something's gone wrong. Giles has buggered it up, slapped Oz when he meant to hold out a hand. "I'm sorry," he says, laying his hands over Oz's. "I didn't-"
I'm not you, Oz said. One undeniable truth, one thing Giles can answer amidst so much he doesn't understand. Must answer. "No, perhaps I did. It's - I suppose I do want to be you, in a way. Or for you to be me." He's sliding his hands up and down Oz's forearms, a too-tight grip, like handcuffs; he makes himself stop. "It's not fair, wanting that. We're not . . . not one person, even one of the doubled people in the Symposium. I'm sorry." Shame makes him hot all over, makes it hard to look at Oz, and Giles thinks greedy. His mother's word, half teasing and half not, for those times when he wanted a biscuit before dinner or one more story before bed.
He can't behave like a child. Can't hold Oz suffocatingly close, like a puppy loved to death.
Quietly, like an adult, like himself, like the man Oz needs him to be, Giles says, "There's something I need to ask you, though." Some tension, some terror, seems to go out of Oz, taking the waxwork, steel-skeleton rigidity with it. Giles lets one of his hands move again, up to Oz's shoulder, kneading the muscle. "That girl." Veronica? Virginia? "The one . . . She was a werewolf. And you - is that what you need, Oz? Another werewolf?" Werewolves are rare, but not so rare that Oz will never meet another.
"Last thing I need," Oz says, "is another --. No."
This is why he's better at being quiet. At cooking, at sex, at anything that doesn't require him to use his brain and his mouth.
He reaches up and covers Giles' hands with his own, interlacing their fingers and pulling them down to rest on Giles' chest between them.
"Bear with me, okay?"
Giles nods; his face is spotted with flushed patches, but everywhere he's not flushed, he looks too pale. Dead, fishbelly-white pale, and Oz swallows hard.
"Not you -- I meant, you're a good person. Much better than I am, and you *still* love me, even with this. After all of this. I don't know if I could do that." He blows out the breath in his chest and rolls his shoulders against the clinging, harsh memory of the change. "Veruca -- it wasn't that she was a werewolf. Or just that she was. *She* thought that, but it was -- it was more complicated than that. I could move to, like, Wolftown, and it wouldn't matter. I want you." He should swallow the next words, pebbly and sour, but he can't. "Always did. Don't need something else. Getting this chance again, that's more -- that's more than anything I thought I'd get."
They're both quiet and Oz can hear both their heartbeats thumping away.
"Did that make sense?" he finally asks and squeezes Giles' hands.
Oz's heart beats fast, a rush of thumps like the lead-in to a drum solo. Even when he's calm, sleeping, it beats faster than it used to before he was a werewolf.
"Yes," Giles says. Gently, he frees one hand and slides it into Oz's hair. Such a primitive thing, a bare refinement on apes grooming for fleas, but it feels as much like love as the most exquisite sex, the wildest knot of naked limbs. "Except for the bit about me being a better person than you, which is clearly some strange delusion." His voice is too bright, a little shaky with the kind of laughter that's simply the surface ripples of hidden, unshed tears.
He doesn't really want to be a werewolf, but if Oz forgets some night, bites too hard, he doesn't think he'd grieve. Unless Oz couldn't bear it afterwards.
When he puts his arm around Oz's shoulders, Giles can smell his own sweat, rank with sex and fear. "We're both a bit messy, aren't we? Shall we have a shower? No, wait. A bath. Have a bath with me, sweetheart." A slow, impractical bath, lounging in hot water like palpable love. They can wash each other, sink back into the peace the day began with.
"Yes," Giles says, leaning forward to kiss the rim of Oz's ear, then up into his hair. Yes is their watchword now, their motto, after years of no piled on no. "My god, Oz. There's so much we can do. So much to try." From Oz's smile, almost sly and fully flirtatious, he looks to be totting up the possibilities.
Giles touches a purpling love bite on Oz's collarbone--there are so many, more than he remembers making, and later he wants to kiss them all, trace constellations with his tongue--then takes Oz's hand and slides his fingertips down Giles' own chest. He follows the invisible lines that Oz scraped up with his teeth. "You know, you'd have to bite me terribly hard before you'd break the skin. And you've never drawn blood on me, not even . . ." For a moment Giles doesn't say it, but it's wrong to avoid the word. Wrong to let it be, again, something unspeakable. "Not even before you were a werewolf. I don't want you to hold back with me, Oz. We both know how that ends."
If Giles is wrong, if the worst happens . . . it would be bad. The change was always agony for Oz, and not changing isn't much easier. Giles isn't sure he could learn Oz's complicated disciplines, either. But they need, imperatively, non-negotiably, to be free with each other.
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"Won't hold back," Oz says, pressing two fingertips against a hickey on Giles' neck. His gums ache a little, but it might be warning or excitement; he can't tell. "Scared, though. What I'd do, how it would --" Giles murmurs something and Oz blinks hard. "Change you, hurt you. Something." He squeezes his eyes shut and lets the air slide out his lungs. Giles' hand comes up Oz's back, slow gliding circles, and Oz rolls his lips together.
"Used to have these dreams -- nightmares, something, where I turned you and we could --" He can see them now, Giles uncaged and howling, and his cock hardens a little even as his skin crawls. "Be free." Opening his eyes, Oz tries to smile. "Not that I *wanted* to, I don't think. Just, like, it'd be easier. Better."
Giles' eyes are unreadable, his expression so still, that Oz wants to flee. Apologize, take it back, erase it.
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"Oz," Giles says, and pulls him down hard, as though he's trying to bruise his chest with Oz's chin. "You must've been so lonely." Did the dreams come after Oz left him, or before? It could have been before; there was plenty of reason, already, for Oz to feel lonely. Cradling Oz, hand on his head as though he's a baby, Giles wonders what it's like not to be quite human. What things Oz can't tell him because language was never made for it. How vast and deep loneliness could go when it's down in the blood, in the genes.
Giles tilts Oz's chin up to look at him again. "Perhaps you should have done it." Oz wouldn't have left him, then. Wouldn't have thought of himself as a danger Giles needed protection from. "Perhaps . . ." Hands splayed over the lovely curves of Oz's skull, Giles kisses him and tastes the dry sourness of his own mouth. "Perhaps you still should. There shouldn't - I don't want anything keeping us apart. I love you." Just a little pain, a little broken skin, his blood in Oz's mouth and Oz's saliva in his blood, and they could be closer than they've been since before Oz was turned. Closer than they've ever been, maybe.
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"No," Oz says, and Giles' eyes close, his face starts to twist, and heat floods through Oz all at once, animating him again. "No, Giles, please --. Just listen, okay?"
He can see the distance already trying to paint itself over Giles' face -- the set, glittering eyes and the tightened jaw, the same mask Giles wore every day after their anniversary, all the way through the time Oz left Sunnydale the second time. He can see it, and Oz can't let it happen *again*. He shifts back a little, putting both hands on Giles' chest, pressing firmly, the way you do for a wound or during CPR, and takes a breath.
"I love *you*. Way too much to ever, ever -- do that. To think that would do anything but hurt you. Destroy you." Before Giles can say anything, Oz adds, "It would. It's -- it's not like something we can do together. Like a hobby, or, or -- moving to London or something. It's --" Every morning, he still has to *make* himself kneel to his meditations, make lighting the candles and drinking the marifasa mean what they can mean. He has to see the cage again, taste Veruca's flesh and hear her gurgling howl as she died, to do it and keep doing it. "I love you. We couldn't survive that, Giles. No one could."
The heat's steaming away into a kind of clammy warmth, sticky on the inside of his skin, and Oz's face aches with the effort of staring, of not breaking eye contact. "Need you *you*. I'm not you, I couldn't --. I love you for *you*."
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Something's gone wrong. Giles has buggered it up, slapped Oz when he meant to hold out a hand. "I'm sorry," he says, laying his hands over Oz's. "I didn't-"
I'm not you, Oz said. One undeniable truth, one thing Giles can answer amidst so much he doesn't understand. Must answer. "No, perhaps I did. It's - I suppose I do want to be you, in a way. Or for you to be me." He's sliding his hands up and down Oz's forearms, a too-tight grip, like handcuffs; he makes himself stop. "It's not fair, wanting that. We're not . . . not one person, even one of the doubled people in the Symposium. I'm sorry." Shame makes him hot all over, makes it hard to look at Oz, and Giles thinks greedy. His mother's word, half teasing and half not, for those times when he wanted a biscuit before dinner or one more story before bed.
He can't behave like a child. Can't hold Oz suffocatingly close, like a puppy loved to death.
Quietly, like an adult, like himself, like the man Oz needs him to be, Giles says, "There's something I need to ask you, though." Some tension, some terror, seems to go out of Oz, taking the waxwork, steel-skeleton rigidity with it. Giles lets one of his hands move again, up to Oz's shoulder, kneading the muscle. "That girl." Veronica? Virginia? "The one . . . She was a werewolf. And you - is that what you need, Oz? Another werewolf?" Werewolves are rare, but not so rare that Oz will never meet another.
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This is why he's better at being quiet. At cooking, at sex, at anything that doesn't require him to use his brain and his mouth.
He reaches up and covers Giles' hands with his own, interlacing their fingers and pulling them down to rest on Giles' chest between them.
"Bear with me, okay?"
Giles nods; his face is spotted with flushed patches, but everywhere he's not flushed, he looks too pale. Dead, fishbelly-white pale, and Oz swallows hard.
"Not you -- I meant, you're a good person. Much better than I am, and you *still* love me, even with this. After all of this. I don't know if I could do that." He blows out the breath in his chest and rolls his shoulders against the clinging, harsh memory of the change. "Veruca -- it wasn't that she was a werewolf. Or just that she was. *She* thought that, but it was -- it was more complicated than that. I could move to, like, Wolftown, and it wouldn't matter. I want you." He should swallow the next words, pebbly and sour, but he can't. "Always did. Don't need something else. Getting this chance again, that's more -- that's more than anything I thought I'd get."
They're both quiet and Oz can hear both their heartbeats thumping away.
"Did that make sense?" he finally asks and squeezes Giles' hands.
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"Yes," Giles says. Gently, he frees one hand and slides it into Oz's hair. Such a primitive thing, a bare refinement on apes grooming for fleas, but it feels as much like love as the most exquisite sex, the wildest knot of naked limbs. "Except for the bit about me being a better person than you, which is clearly some strange delusion." His voice is too bright, a little shaky with the kind of laughter that's simply the surface ripples of hidden, unshed tears.
He doesn't really want to be a werewolf, but if Oz forgets some night, bites too hard, he doesn't think he'd grieve. Unless Oz couldn't bear it afterwards.
When he puts his arm around Oz's shoulders, Giles can smell his own sweat, rank with sex and fear. "We're both a bit messy, aren't we? Shall we have a shower? No, wait. A bath. Have a bath with me, sweetheart." A slow, impractical bath, lounging in hot water like palpable love. They can wash each other, sink back into the peace the day began with.
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