Of course he doesn't want to tell Oz. Not telling him is terribly, terribly important. Not telling him, because he's happy.
Guilt goes into happiness like blood into water. There's no making it clean again, afterwards.
Flaw in that thinking, somewhere. Monumental stupidity in it. Must be, because Oz wants to know. Must be, because Giles is drunk, stupid, cowardly, and Oz is holding him and saying love.
"Dream about-" No, that won't do. His face is pressed to Oz's neck, speech slurred even to his own ears. Giles lifts his head a little, just enough to talk, eyes closed. "All those people in New York. Who died. I dream . . . they come back to life. Wrong, demonic. And." He must be shaking, because Oz is holding him tightly, so tightly he can feel it through the numbness. "And I have to kill them. Every single one." Bloody hands slipping on the sword-hilt, and there are so many, and their families are screaming, begging him to let them live.
"And Buffy. I dream about her. Dying. Calling for me. Calling and calling." Sounds so little, in words. A child's nightmare to shake off in the morning. No words for how it feels.
Eyes closed, specs smeared with fingerprints and sticky with the light, Giles resembles a seer, Tiresias or somebody, reciting the horrors that lay ahead. Shamans get drunk, do psychotropics and other things, in order to induce the visions; that's who Giles is right now, except he's in his own vision.
Trapped there, and Oz kneads the iron-bar tension in Giles' shoulders, shivering against the fragments of horror gathering around them. He dreams of the towers, too, dreams of searching for Giles on a sunny morning, getting lost in an elevator or trampled in a stairwell. He dreams of dying; Giles dreams of surviving. Of living on, being responsible, never getting to rest.
"Not your fault," Oz says now, slowly and distinctly as a kindergarten teacher so Giles will listen. "None of that's your fault. You're good at what you do, good at watching, good at loving Buffy. She's not mad at you."
He said all of this endlessly in those horrible days after the towers fell and Giles collapsed, kept collapsing. It's different now; everything's different now. Buffy's alive, Giles isn't alone.
"Love you. Buffy loves you. It's not your fault, none of it is."
A mantra, repeated enough that it seems to lose sense, is where the truth is. Oz squeezes Giles' neck and tries to believe that.
The problem with not telling Oz is that then he doesn't know. Says well-meaning things, loving things, and thinks they're true. "I rang her," Giles says. "A few days ago. First night I couldn't sleep." Oz's hands go still on his neck and back, and Giles wants to push against him like a puppy, a spoilt housecat, demanding to be petted some more.
As though Oz hasn't touched him as much as ever these last days, kissed him, sat in his lap, come in his mouth and his hands, slept in his arms. Good, always good, but not a cure for this.
Taking Oz's hands in his own, Giles sits up. "She put the phone down. Wouldn't talk to me at all."
Unfair of him, really, to be so hurt. It's a way of blaming her. Burdening her with what's his, and she's got responsibilities enough of her own. "She'll get over it," Giles says quickly, in case Oz is about to be angry at her. "I know. But she - she will die. And I won't be there. I chose." He kisses Oz's hand, not sure if it's his lips or Oz's fingers that are so cold. "I chose right. Just need to get through this. And stop being stupid. I'm so sorry, Oz." So much went into choosing Oz--years of wanting, years to feel all his old mistakes. And tonight, for a while, he chose drink instead.
Oz wants to bark at Giles. Shake him, shout that he's not stupid, *something* to rile him up and get him out of this...this *fog* that's clogging his words and forgiving everyone else so he can shoulder more blame.
That is, however, absolutely the last thing Giles needs. Oz goes back to stroking long, slow circles over Giles' shoulderblades and tilts his head against his upper arm.
"Wish you'd told me," he says gently, then rolls his face so he can kiss the side of Giles' hands. Strong hands, long fingers that hold guitars, Oz, books just as confidently as they hold swords and battle-axes. "Glad you *did* tell me, just wish --." He lifts his eyes and looks steadily at Giles, summoning all the calm he can, hoping some of it transfers to Giles. "Don't apologize. It's talking to the Watchers, isn't it? That, and --"
Buffy. He can't be mad at her; he's never been mad at her so much as he's loved and resented her. She brought Giles to Sunnydale; without her, he'd never have met Giles. But she kept Giles away, too.
"Just love you so much."
Anger's wrong. He's not angry, he's grateful. He should thank Giles for choosing. Thank Buffy for bringing Giles to America. Thank *someone* for keeping everyone alive.
"The Council's not best pleased with me, no." Two days of bloody meetings, Incidents Committee and Disciplinary Committee and Executive Committee and a private chat with that bastard Travers as well. Two days of explaining himself, justifying himself, impossible when he daren't mention Oz, and then Travers shutting the door and looking him in the eye and saying We know about the American boy, Rupert. The one you've got living with you. That was always your weakness, wasn't it? Boys.
They did everything to break him, shame him, just like when he was twenty-one and had called up a demon and murdered a man.
Last time was different. Last time he deserved it.
Giles scrubs his hands over his face, wishing he could rub inside his skull, scour away the exhaustion and the whiskey. He's steadier now, with the initial dizzy slide into numbness over, but he's still drunk. Everything a bit sideways, logic chasing its own tail, words like merry paths leading nowhere.
"I love you," he says, because it's something he is sure of. "Don't - don't think I regret this. Please don't." It's hard to tell, from Oz's still and gentle face, if he ever did think it. "It's . . . a reason why I didn't tell you, I think. Didn't want you to misunderstand." It shouldn't be possible to make the right choice and still feel guilty. But it is.
"I think I need some tea." Tea will help. Tea's the opposite of whiskey. It's home, conversation, a truer and more lasting warmth. "Could we make some tea, Oz?"
Holding Giles' elbow (unexpectedly sharp, even through the double layer of his pajamas and robe), Oz helps him up, then slides his arm around Giles' waist as they make their way through the dark to the kitchen.
He sits Giles at the table, kissing the top of his head before moving over to the counter to fill the kettle and plug it in. His hands are shaking. Regret is a word, a state, that hadn't occurred to him until just now.
Regret is implacable, seeping into your head, revising history again and again, uselessly and endlessly. That neither of them does regret is something of a miracle.
Oz takes out the scones he made yesterday afternoon, three batches more than he'd planned. He's been nervous, too, for over a week now; the cupboards and freezer are crammed with baked experiments. He added crushed butterscotch chips to these, just to use them up.
"What did they say?" he asks, joining Giles back at the table, bringing the scones with him. "The Watchers? Or don't tell me now, I just --"
The whistle sounds, eerie mechanical shriek in the dark, and Oz almost falls out his chair, heading to get it.
"Assam okay?" he asks over his shoulder, lifting two mugs from the drainer. Giles nods vaguely and Oz smiles at him. "Okay. Eat something. They're sweet and un-sconey."
He brings back the pot, dangling the mugs from his fingers, the jug of milk and jar of sugar tucked into his arms.
Oz does everything so well. Such neat competence in his hands, such attention as he spoons sugar and pours milk into the mugs, removes the tealeaf-filled strainer from the pot, pours and stirs. Oz makes tea as though he's glad to be doing it. Lovingly. Giles wonders if the teapot feels grateful for Oz's attentions, as grateful as he himself does.
Oz sets a mug in front of him, and a scone on a plate, and clears his throat in reminder. Giles is supposed to be eating. So he eats, closing his eyes for a moment to fully taste the scone (sweet as a slice of cake), sipping at the milky tea between bites. He eats, as best he can, gratefully.
When he's eaten half the scone, he says, "The Council threatened to sack me if I don't go back to Sunnydale." Like the dreams, it doesn't sound like much. Oz doesn't say anything--just keeps sipping at his tea, then refills Giles' mug and his own--but even so, even in the dark, without touching, Giles knows it's not a skeptical silence. Just a sympathetic, patient one. Oz will always take him on faith. Won't assume he's being ridiculous.
"The problem is that they . . . they . . . they know about us. You. Not the wolf," Giles adds hastily when Oz takes a quick breath and holds it. "That you're here. I'm afraid they might have you deported."
The Council has influence in every country in the world. Giles used to be proud of that.
Standing up, Oz embraces Giles with one arm, just briefly, just long enough to lean down and press his cheek against the top of Giles' head and take a deep breath.
He refills the kettle and rinses out the teapot before he says anything. Deport is such an ugly word, conjuring up images of bombed-out piers and broken ships, something Napoleonic and post-apocalyptic all at once.
"Did they say that?" he asks as he sits back down and covers Giles' hand with his own. "About me, I mean."
It shouldn't be a surprise, Oz supposes, that the Watchers know about him. The Watchers can get you a passport, they can kill the Slayer. They can basically do whatever they want.
"And the other part..." Oz leans back in his chair, flooded with heat that's something like shame, a little like anxiety, that matches exactly the intensity of sun on a California morning. "We can go back if you have to."
Giles turns his head, looking at Oz, working his lips together.
"Not that I want to," Oz says. "Or that you do. But if you have to -- Yeah. I'll follow you."
Giles grips Oz's fingers hard, as though he might be dragged off to the airport at any second. "They didn't say it exactly. But they didn't need to." Travers' sneer, the easy contempt of a man who's never loved anything, not even his timid frump of a wife. Love's a tool to him, a manipulable weakness, and what is it about the Council that it's always run by these nasty little Iagos? "Last year they threatened to deport me from America if Buffy didn't submit to all kinds of tests and nonsense."
Oz would go. Back to the hellmouth, back to everything he's ever wanted to get away from. And that makes deciding easier somehow, makes Giles a little less afraid. "Shouldn't have let them try it on." There seemed no refusing, then. Until Buffy, clever brave Buffy, refused. It's long past time that he learned from her. "Not again. I won't be blackmailed. I'll send them a letter tomorrow. Resignation letter."
His voice sounds thick and hesitant, his heart's pounding, but it's not like the slow, glacial despair he felt when they sacked him a few years ago. Perhaps amputating a rotten limb feels like this, pain and a clean freedom.
The kettle whistles (Oz, being Oz, likes the old-fashioned sound and never uses the electric kettle) and when Oz gets up to make more tea, Giles pulls him close for a moment and kisses his cheek. Not on the mouth, not reeking of whiskey as he must be. "Thank you," he says.
"Welcome," Oz says, wrapping his arms around Giles' neck and kissing his beard-rough upper lip. Giles has been a Watcher his whole life; even as a kid, Oz always imagined, he was intent and careful. Joyful, too, but smarter than most people, more loving but also more analytical.
When they fired him, Giles sagged like a rotten wooden bridge, swinging perilously over a chasm.
"Resigning's a big step," Oz says, swishing the hot water around the pot, then dumping it and refilling. "You good on scones?"
There are still five on the plate, but Oz wants to check. Giles nods and Oz brings the pot back to the table.
"Love you," he says, sliding back into his seat. He leans forward, both arms on the edge of the table, looking Giles over. Weary, unshaven, exhausted, and Giles *still* looks incredibly handsome and eminently lovable. "All the time, a little more. You said that thing about getting to know me? Better, or whatever. It's true."
Giles warms his hands on the teapot for a minute, then loosely grasps Oz's fingertips, curling his own fingers over them. Knowledge grows every day, it's true. Tonight he's learned that Oz can make tea in the dark, that he can sit in a cold kitchen with bare arms and bare feet and not notice his own shivers, that he'll meet Giles' foolishness with love.
"Not a big step. Resigning. Not really." Closing his eyes, Giles strokes the pads of Oz's fingers and the bitten nubs of his nails. Beautiful hands he has, small and precise and strong. "It's just the last step." Giles started walking away from the Watchers years ago. Perhaps on that first morning with Oz, when Giles explained about vampires and Slayers and himself. Or perhaps earlier, the night before, when he asked Oz to stay instead of sending him home and forgetting him.
Eyes closed, he can feel Oz looking at him, but he opens his eyes to look back. Too dark to see, really, but Giles knows Oz's expression without seeing it. Love, and mercy, and that little worried wrinkle between his eyebrows, that slight tension at the corners of his mouth. "If they do deport you, I'll follow. Not to Sunnydale. Somewhere else, wherever you want." Deportation was probably just a threat, but Quentin Travers in a punitive mood can be even nastier than usual.
There's a shift in Oz's face that might be a smile, and he squeezes Giles' hands before loosing them and pouring out more tea. Less sugar in the cup this time, as though he's bringing Giles back to normal, little by little. They don't talk for a while, but there's something comforting and good in the faint sounds of chewing, sipping, swallowing.
Tired as he is, and drunk, Giles' thoughts start to loop and hover and fade, forming with random suddenness and then disappearing again, like a stage magician's doves and coins. Halfway through the currant scone that Oz let him substitute for the too-sweet butterscotch one, Giles remembers something. "Oz, what were the other things?" Oz makes a puzzled sound. "You said - earlier, you said that after we split up, you drank. And other things. What were the other things?"
There's a bloody handprint in the memory book. Oz bled, and drank, and what else?
Guilt goes into happiness like blood into water. There's no making it clean again, afterwards.
Flaw in that thinking, somewhere. Monumental stupidity in it. Must be, because Oz wants to know. Must be, because Giles is drunk, stupid, cowardly, and Oz is holding him and saying love.
"Dream about-" No, that won't do. His face is pressed to Oz's neck, speech slurred even to his own ears. Giles lifts his head a little, just enough to talk, eyes closed. "All those people in New York. Who died. I dream . . . they come back to life. Wrong, demonic. And." He must be shaking, because Oz is holding him tightly, so tightly he can feel it through the numbness. "And I have to kill them. Every single one." Bloody hands slipping on the sword-hilt, and there are so many, and their families are screaming, begging him to let them live.
"And Buffy. I dream about her. Dying. Calling for me. Calling and calling." Sounds so little, in words. A child's nightmare to shake off in the morning. No words for how it feels.
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Trapped there, and Oz kneads the iron-bar tension in Giles' shoulders, shivering against the fragments of horror gathering around them. He dreams of the towers, too, dreams of searching for Giles on a sunny morning, getting lost in an elevator or trampled in a stairwell. He dreams of dying; Giles dreams of surviving. Of living on, being responsible, never getting to rest.
"Not your fault," Oz says now, slowly and distinctly as a kindergarten teacher so Giles will listen. "None of that's your fault. You're good at what you do, good at watching, good at loving Buffy. She's not mad at you."
He said all of this endlessly in those horrible days after the towers fell and Giles collapsed, kept collapsing. It's different now; everything's different now. Buffy's alive, Giles isn't alone.
"Love you. Buffy loves you. It's not your fault, none of it is."
A mantra, repeated enough that it seems to lose sense, is where the truth is. Oz squeezes Giles' neck and tries to believe that.
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As though Oz hasn't touched him as much as ever these last days, kissed him, sat in his lap, come in his mouth and his hands, slept in his arms. Good, always good, but not a cure for this.
Taking Oz's hands in his own, Giles sits up. "She put the phone down. Wouldn't talk to me at all."
Unfair of him, really, to be so hurt. It's a way of blaming her. Burdening her with what's his, and she's got responsibilities enough of her own. "She'll get over it," Giles says quickly, in case Oz is about to be angry at her. "I know. But she - she will die. And I won't be there. I chose." He kisses Oz's hand, not sure if it's his lips or Oz's fingers that are so cold. "I chose right. Just need to get through this. And stop being stupid. I'm so sorry, Oz." So much went into choosing Oz--years of wanting, years to feel all his old mistakes. And tonight, for a while, he chose drink instead.
Stupid.
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That is, however, absolutely the last thing Giles needs. Oz goes back to stroking long, slow circles over Giles' shoulderblades and tilts his head against his upper arm.
"Wish you'd told me," he says gently, then rolls his face so he can kiss the side of Giles' hands. Strong hands, long fingers that hold guitars, Oz, books just as confidently as they hold swords and battle-axes. "Glad you *did* tell me, just wish --." He lifts his eyes and looks steadily at Giles, summoning all the calm he can, hoping some of it transfers to Giles. "Don't apologize. It's talking to the Watchers, isn't it? That, and --"
Buffy. He can't be mad at her; he's never been mad at her so much as he's loved and resented her. She brought Giles to Sunnydale; without her, he'd never have met Giles. But she kept Giles away, too.
"Just love you so much."
Anger's wrong. He's not angry, he's grateful. He should thank Giles for choosing. Thank Buffy for bringing Giles to America. Thank *someone* for keeping everyone alive.
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They did everything to break him, shame him, just like when he was twenty-one and had called up a demon and murdered a man.
Last time was different. Last time he deserved it.
Giles scrubs his hands over his face, wishing he could rub inside his skull, scour away the exhaustion and the whiskey. He's steadier now, with the initial dizzy slide into numbness over, but he's still drunk. Everything a bit sideways, logic chasing its own tail, words like merry paths leading nowhere.
"I love you," he says, because it's something he is sure of. "Don't - don't think I regret this. Please don't." It's hard to tell, from Oz's still and gentle face, if he ever did think it. "It's . . . a reason why I didn't tell you, I think. Didn't want you to misunderstand." It shouldn't be possible to make the right choice and still feel guilty. But it is.
"I think I need some tea." Tea will help. Tea's the opposite of whiskey. It's home, conversation, a truer and more lasting warmth. "Could we make some tea, Oz?"
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Holding Giles' elbow (unexpectedly sharp, even through the double layer of his pajamas and robe), Oz helps him up, then slides his arm around Giles' waist as they make their way through the dark to the kitchen.
He sits Giles at the table, kissing the top of his head before moving over to the counter to fill the kettle and plug it in. His hands are shaking. Regret is a word, a state, that hadn't occurred to him until just now.
Regret is implacable, seeping into your head, revising history again and again, uselessly and endlessly. That neither of them does regret is something of a miracle.
Oz takes out the scones he made yesterday afternoon, three batches more than he'd planned. He's been nervous, too, for over a week now; the cupboards and freezer are crammed with baked experiments. He added crushed butterscotch chips to these, just to use them up.
"What did they say?" he asks, joining Giles back at the table, bringing the scones with him. "The Watchers? Or don't tell me now, I just --"
The whistle sounds, eerie mechanical shriek in the dark, and Oz almost falls out his chair, heading to get it.
"Assam okay?" he asks over his shoulder, lifting two mugs from the drainer. Giles nods vaguely and Oz smiles at him. "Okay. Eat something. They're sweet and un-sconey."
He brings back the pot, dangling the mugs from his fingers, the jug of milk and jar of sugar tucked into his arms.
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Oz sets a mug in front of him, and a scone on a plate, and clears his throat in reminder. Giles is supposed to be eating. So he eats, closing his eyes for a moment to fully taste the scone (sweet as a slice of cake), sipping at the milky tea between bites. He eats, as best he can, gratefully.
When he's eaten half the scone, he says, "The Council threatened to sack me if I don't go back to Sunnydale." Like the dreams, it doesn't sound like much. Oz doesn't say anything--just keeps sipping at his tea, then refills Giles' mug and his own--but even so, even in the dark, without touching, Giles knows it's not a skeptical silence. Just a sympathetic, patient one. Oz will always take him on faith. Won't assume he's being ridiculous.
"The problem is that they . . . they . . . they know about us. You. Not the wolf," Giles adds hastily when Oz takes a quick breath and holds it. "That you're here. I'm afraid they might have you deported."
The Council has influence in every country in the world. Giles used to be proud of that.
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He refills the kettle and rinses out the teapot before he says anything. Deport is such an ugly word, conjuring up images of bombed-out piers and broken ships, something Napoleonic and post-apocalyptic all at once.
"Did they say that?" he asks as he sits back down and covers Giles' hand with his own. "About me, I mean."
It shouldn't be a surprise, Oz supposes, that the Watchers know about him. The Watchers can get you a passport, they can kill the Slayer. They can basically do whatever they want.
"And the other part..." Oz leans back in his chair, flooded with heat that's something like shame, a little like anxiety, that matches exactly the intensity of sun on a California morning. "We can go back if you have to."
Giles turns his head, looking at Oz, working his lips together.
"Not that I want to," Oz says. "Or that you do. But if you have to -- Yeah. I'll follow you."
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Oz would go. Back to the hellmouth, back to everything he's ever wanted to get away from. And that makes deciding easier somehow, makes Giles a little less afraid. "Shouldn't have let them try it on." There seemed no refusing, then. Until Buffy, clever brave Buffy, refused. It's long past time that he learned from her. "Not again. I won't be blackmailed. I'll send them a letter tomorrow. Resignation letter."
His voice sounds thick and hesitant, his heart's pounding, but it's not like the slow, glacial despair he felt when they sacked him a few years ago. Perhaps amputating a rotten limb feels like this, pain and a clean freedom.
The kettle whistles (Oz, being Oz, likes the old-fashioned sound and never uses the electric kettle) and when Oz gets up to make more tea, Giles pulls him close for a moment and kisses his cheek. Not on the mouth, not reeking of whiskey as he must be. "Thank you," he says.
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When they fired him, Giles sagged like a rotten wooden bridge, swinging perilously over a chasm.
"Resigning's a big step," Oz says, swishing the hot water around the pot, then dumping it and refilling. "You good on scones?"
There are still five on the plate, but Oz wants to check. Giles nods and Oz brings the pot back to the table.
"Love you," he says, sliding back into his seat. He leans forward, both arms on the edge of the table, looking Giles over. Weary, unshaven, exhausted, and Giles *still* looks incredibly handsome and eminently lovable. "All the time, a little more. You said that thing about getting to know me? Better, or whatever. It's true."
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"Not a big step. Resigning. Not really." Closing his eyes, Giles strokes the pads of Oz's fingers and the bitten nubs of his nails. Beautiful hands he has, small and precise and strong. "It's just the last step." Giles started walking away from the Watchers years ago. Perhaps on that first morning with Oz, when Giles explained about vampires and Slayers and himself. Or perhaps earlier, the night before, when he asked Oz to stay instead of sending him home and forgetting him.
Eyes closed, he can feel Oz looking at him, but he opens his eyes to look back. Too dark to see, really, but Giles knows Oz's expression without seeing it. Love, and mercy, and that little worried wrinkle between his eyebrows, that slight tension at the corners of his mouth. "If they do deport you, I'll follow. Not to Sunnydale. Somewhere else, wherever you want." Deportation was probably just a threat, but Quentin Travers in a punitive mood can be even nastier than usual.
There's a shift in Oz's face that might be a smile, and he squeezes Giles' hands before loosing them and pouring out more tea. Less sugar in the cup this time, as though he's bringing Giles back to normal, little by little. They don't talk for a while, but there's something comforting and good in the faint sounds of chewing, sipping, swallowing.
Tired as he is, and drunk, Giles' thoughts start to loop and hover and fade, forming with random suddenness and then disappearing again, like a stage magician's doves and coins. Halfway through the currant scone that Oz let him substitute for the too-sweet butterscotch one, Giles remembers something. "Oz, what were the other things?" Oz makes a puzzled sound. "You said - earlier, you said that after we split up, you drank. And other things. What were the other things?"
There's a bloody handprint in the memory book. Oz bled, and drank, and what else?
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