Giles has to wait a few moments, blinking stupidly, deciphering, before he understands. "Slept around?"
Oz wasn't faithful to Willow. Even before that werewolf girl, Oz wasn't.
But Oz was faithful to him, while they were together.
The satisfaction of it is like scoring a hit in fencing, like watching a choice bit of sarcasm sink in. But he should be thinking of Oz now, not Willow.
"Who-?" Devon, maybe? But Oz wouldn't count Devon as "sleeping around." They'd been having sex since they were fourteen; Devon wouldn't be "sleeping around" because Devon was always there.
After Oz met Giles, he stopped sleeping with Devon. Stopped long before Giles dared to ask.
Devon must have been one of them. But not the only one.
Giles remembers the memory book again, a matchbook cover from a bar. "You - Weisse's. You were-" Picking up men there, sad and furtive men, and fucking them. Touching them. Letting them touch him. "Did you-?" Did you enjoy it?, Giles wants to ask, but he's afraid of how that would sound. Jealous, and he's not sure if he's jealous, not sure what this pain squeezing his lungs and his heart is made of.
There's incomprehension and comprehension sliding against each other in Giles' voice, the need to understand contending with desperation to back away, to not know, to erase.
Oz knows the feeling.
"Yeah, Weisse's," he says, and the filthy tinsel-dimness of the place, the disinfectant stink and old, recycled beer stench, it's not coming back to him. It's just there, hovering around them. Oz nods; he doesn't want to take any of this back, but he also doesn't know how much Giles wants, needs, to know.
"On gigs, too, you know. Just a lot of it, and --" He remembers it all, and most of the time, it feels like it happened to someone else. But he did it; he did it all. "I was always careful. Like I told you. Not just 'cause that place was disgusting in ways there aren't words for."
When he looks at Giles, all he sees is the vague glow of his glasses. Oz squints, raising one shoulder to scratch against his chin.
"I -- I don't do that any more. Not for a long time. Not again, either."
"I know." Whatever Oz did then happened, he's sure, because Oz missed him, not because Oz likes to deceive. And missing someone is like noise, like jackhammers and drilling. There's no ignoring it, only covering it with louder things like sex or blurring it with drink and drugs.
He doesn't want to think that Oz enjoyed it, enjoyed the feel and taste of all those other bodies, but it's worse to know that he didn't. That it was medicinal and desperate. "I . . . I did rather a lot of that myself. Sleeping around." And it was different. Not casual sex, not play and pleasure and an uncomplicated orgasm, but degrading somehow. Afterwards he always felt vaguely hung-over and deeply, specifically, incurably lonely.
"Once-" Giles holds on tight to Oz's hand and stares down at the teapot. It's the only way he can tell this, grounded and safe but not seeing how Oz reacts. "Once, in Los Angeles when I was meant to be looking for Buffy, I picked up a boy. A young boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen. A prostitute." Small and thin and red-haired. Giles had been drinking, or he'd have known better than to pick up anyone who looked like Oz.
Silence from Oz, even his breathing soundless, but he's rubbing Giles' wrist with his thumb. Gently. "I couldn't. He was an addict, there were track marks on him. And I, I couldn't even get hard." He'd wanted to fuck him, stroke him into coming with Giles' cock inside him, but he stayed limp even when the boy knelt between his legs and sucked him. "Paid him twice what we agreed. Because I could see he was scared that I might get angry. Hurt him." Sent him away and lay all night on the dirty coverlet of the dirty bed, listening to the sounds of fucking all around him.
"Jesus. Poor guy --" Oz ducks his head when Giles lifts his suddenly. He sounds croaky, sleep- and water-deprived, and coughs again. "Him, you."
That was the summer after they broke up. When Buffy was gone and the center of everything just dropped away, leaving them all standing alone around a crater, not looking at each other. That was the summer he and Giles were going to drive up north, to Oregon and Washington, maybe even Canada. That was the summer Giles kept travelling, alone, reporting in from motels, calling Xander or Willow, never Oz, reappearing in the library each time a little thinner and wanner.
The hairs on Giles' wrist are starting to rasp and burn under Oz's thumb, so he slides his grip up to Giles' elbow. Without planning to, he pulls Giles toward him, his other arm going around Giles' neck. Giles presses his face into the curve of Oz's neck and Oz pats him like a baby with gas.
"Missed you," Oz says. "So much. I'm so sorry."
Sorry sounds stupid. Retarded and pointless, but it's the only word Oz can think of. The only word in his head, reverberating as it slams against the walls of his skull, sorrysorrysorrysorry.
He kisses the curve of Giles' cheekbone, right up at his hairline, and sighs.
"It's all so stupid. In retrospect, I mean. Made sense at the time. Kept looking for guys who looked like you, except -- No one looks like you. Feels like you."
Giles wriggles in closer, twisting his fingers in the elastic waistband of Oz's pyjama bottoms, ignoring how the chair edge digs into his thighs. Oz smells good, like sleep and sugar and tea leaves spread in the sun, and Giles would gladly beg him never to leave again. "No substitutes," he says. He can smell the whiskey on his own breath, reflected back to him from Oz's skin, but it's fainter now. "Every time-" His voice snags and he starts again. "Every time I was with someone else, I just missed you more." What he missed wasn't fucking Oz, it was loving him. And there's no replacing that, no carob or chicory for an approximation that's almost good enough.
There was only absence, missing Oz more. Except the once, with Ethan, with the memory of love, but in the end that was just another betrayal.
Stupidity. "I'm sorry." Giles kisses Oz's neck, breathes sorry into the curve and salt. "Sorry for just now. Drinking. I hid it from you. The whiskey. I found it in the shop, back in Sunnydale, and I . . . sorry." He'd gladly beg Oz not to leave him, but he hopes he won't have to. Hopes his stupidity hasn't done them that much harm.
"It's okay," Oz says, combing Giles' hair backward, up from his neck, making it stick up and curl almost as much as his own does. Three syllables to go from the nape of Giles' neck to the crown of his skull. "It's okay, it's okay."
No more secrets, they'd told each other, and Oz knows they both meant it. But keeping secrets, holding them close enough to your chest that they prick and draw blood, that's habitual. Habitforming and hard to give up.
"Glad you told me now," Oz says, and if he wonders what Giles would have done if he *hadn't* gotten out of bed, he doesn't finish the thought. Hand on Giles' shoulder, Oz eases slightly back so he can see Giles' face. Downturned and shadowed, but still familiar and loved. "Back then, I'd've done anything, said anything, to feel you again. Know how it feels. Hiding from -- from everything you're feeling. It's okay. Not mad, Giles."
He looked for numbness and stimulation back then, feared seeing Giles as much as he *needed* to see him.
Relief has the same spreading, sinking warmth as sleep, and Giles lets his head sag down to his shoulder for a moment, resting his cheek on Oz's hand. "Thank you."
In these three months, Oz has seen him despairing three times, and hasn't given up on him. Giles doesn't want to test that miracle any farther. He lifts his head and says, "But it's not okay. I shouldn't . . . I was trying to protect you, I think. Hiding things. Treating you like a child." Which sounds so absurd that he could almost laugh.
"And . . ." He stokes Oz's forearm up and down, slightly chilly skin and a soft fuzz of hair. This is hard to say, harder than it should be. "I shouldn't drink anymore. At all. Neither of us should."
Oz wanted a drink of that whiskey. Giles shivers, realizing, and Oz pats his shoulder. Oz bought beer in Sunnydale and then didn't drink it. Almost stopped at the off-license, the day of Xander's engagement party, and then accelerated hard and sped away. They've both been dancing around temptation. "After everything, after all the ways we've been stupid . . . let's not be stupid about this. We can help each other."
No more whiskey, no more wine with dinner, no more having a pint at the pub. For a second Giles hates the thought. But he's left Sunnydale for Oz's sake. He's leaving the Watchers. This is a small thing, in comparison.
Resignation, transatlantic travel, hellmouths, all of them seem frail -- almost wispy and ridiculous -- in comparison to something like agreeing never to drink again. That suddenly looms, momentous and unscaleable, like joining a monastic order or rappelling down the face of Mt. Rushmore.
Except Oz hasn't had anything since dinner at his mom's house. He barely drank that wine *anyway*. Right now, it's more about Giles, about Giles asking for help and wanting to stay sober, and Oz realizes he's already nodding.
"Yeah," he says slowly. Maybe too slowly, because Giles is starting to squint and pull in his shoulders. "Yeah, okay."
He kisses Giles' forehead -- who's being treated like a child here? he wonders, then decides he doesn't care, because when he presses his mouth against Giles' face, the wrinkles smooth out and Giles tightens his arms around Oz's waist, and they tip together, awkwardly, like birch trees in a storm, and rest.
Oz sounds hesitant, almost reluctant. It's understandable enough--after all, it's not he who was drinking secretly in the middle of the night. Not he who's on the verge of turning into another old soak, like so many middle-aged Watchers.
But he said okay. He'll help, and Giles doesn't think he could do this without Oz's help. "Thank you," Giles says yet again. How many times has he said that tonight? Fewer than he's said I'm sorry, probably, and he likes thank you better.
He leans against Oz for a while longer, letting his body go heavy and calm and sleepy. But there are a couple of things that need doing. "I want to get rid of the whiskey." Oz nods, holds his hand as he fetches the bottle and the glass, stands at his elbow while he pours the whiskey down the sink and washes the glass four times with scalding-hot water and plenty of suds.
After he puts the rinsed bottle in the bin, Giles says, "I did this once before. The morning after you came back. I was never sure if you noticed or not. Although I suppose you must have seen the binful of old bottles."
It helps to *do* something. Despite every promise, well-meant and truthful, to talk more, Oz can't help preferring doing to talking. It feels realer. Heavier.
He puts his arm around Giles' waist and leans back against the counter, using the hem of his t-shirt to dry Giles' hands. Handsome hands -- and Oz smiles as he wonders if he's being redundant -- long fingers, broad across the knuckles, pink at the pads.
"Noticed them, sure," he says when he realizes he's been quiet too long. When Giles' hands are perfectly dry and Oz is just holding them in his own, working his thumbs back and forth like slow windshield-wipers. "Didn't know what to say."
He never knows what to say, that's the thing. Leaving one hand in Giles', Oz pulls away, far enough to reach the fridge and grab the carton of orange juice. White light, startling in all this dark, and it almost X-rays his hand as he reaches inside.
Three swallows of juice that drain it all, a rush of sugar and sun, and Oz sets the empty carton down in the sink.
"I just -- worry about you. And then I don't know what to say, and I start remembering other times I was worried or whatever, and it like -- clams me up even more." Coughing into the neck of his shirt, Oz squares his shoulders and looks up, meeting Giles' eyes. Glints in the dark like weird fish deep, deep down. "So I want to help. Anything. In case that wasn't clear. And I'm sorry about before, about, like. Weisse's and everything."
"Oz. You've got nothing to apologize to me for." Trying to think what to say, Giles fills two glasses with water, hands one to Oz, and drinks several long swallows from his own. He imagines it chasing out the alcohol, making him clean again. "You were safe. You protected yourself. That's all that matters." When Oz drinks, the glass distorts his features, masklike, turning him to a pale sheet and two dark, listening eyes. "I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me a little. But what bothers me, mostly, is that you were unhappy."
Both so unhappy, missing each other, and yet it took almost four years for them to find the obvious answer. And even now, for all their promises and good intentions, everything could go wrong again. Sometimes Giles feels the way he used to at the museum, when he unrolled a fragile scroll or sorted ancient clay bullae. One slip and disaster. But this is much more frightening, because it's his life he might drop.
He sets his water glass down and puts a hand on Oz's shoulder, right along the upward slope to his neck. Tension in the muscles, and Giles rubs gently. "As for the rest . . . you can just tell me. Tell me you're worried. Or, if you asked Olivia I'd think she'd recommend 'Rupert, you're being a fool.' Perhaps accompanied by a good hard kick to the backside." Oz takes a step in, closer, and Giles slides his other arm around Oz's waist. The best feeling in the world, this, or close to it. "I'll try not to put you through this again. I love you." He'd like to promise more, but he doesn't think he can and still be honest.
"Love you. And it's okay," Oz says into the folds of Giles' robe. At the soft, inquiring sound from Giles, he looks up and repeats it. "It's okay. And I *did* say I was worried. I'll tell you again."
Giles' robe has nice, deep pockets, warmed from the inside out by his body, and Oz slips his hands into them. He's not quite sure why he feels so -- weird. Slickly empty inside, his pulse too close to the surface of his skin, but clanging hollowly around his body.
All those afternoons in the library, over the summer, then back to the library, soaked with whiskey and sliced by sidewise glances: Oz doesn't ever want to go back to those days. It's just that they feel strangely close right now.
"Can we go back to bed?" Oz asks, and he realizes he sounds shy. Croaky as a little kid, and next thing he knows, he'll be rubbing his eyes and kicking up a fuss.
Giles is looking at him, starting to frown, just a slight deepening around the corners of his mouth, and Oz shrugs.
"I'm okay, I just -- I *will* talk, I am talking. Get self-conscious sometimes."
Giles stops himself from asking again if Oz is all right. He's tired, and he clearly doesn't want to talk anymore, and neither of those things is surprising. Poor boy, woken up from a sound sleep for this. "I'd like to have a shower first," Giles says. "Before bed. I feel . . ." Dirty, but it's too obvious to be worth saying. He doesn't want to wake up stinking of sweated-out whiskey, or to taste the slight sweet burn that's still there when he swallows. "Will you wait up for me?" Selfish of him, probably, but he doesn't want to get into bed and find Oz already lost in sleep.
Oz makes a movement against Giles' chest that might be a nod, and a small assenting sound. His hands, deep in the pockets of Giles' dressing gown, rub against the flannel. "God, you must be freezing. Here, I'm sorry." Giles takes off the gown and wraps Oz in it, and kisses his forehead in thanks before going into the bathroom.
He hurries through the shower as much as he can, but it still takes two head-to-toe scrubbings before he feels decent enough for Oz to lie next to him all night. Then a thorough toothbrushing and mouthwash, although he decides it would be silly to floss again. And then he's ready, as free of drink as he can be until his body digests it, turns it to sugar and water. He opens the door to the kitchen, where Oz is waiting for him.
Oz wasn't faithful to Willow. Even before that werewolf girl, Oz wasn't.
But Oz was faithful to him, while they were together.
The satisfaction of it is like scoring a hit in fencing, like watching a choice bit of sarcasm sink in. But he should be thinking of Oz now, not Willow.
"Who-?" Devon, maybe? But Oz wouldn't count Devon as "sleeping around." They'd been having sex since they were fourteen; Devon wouldn't be "sleeping around" because Devon was always there.
After Oz met Giles, he stopped sleeping with Devon. Stopped long before Giles dared to ask.
Devon must have been one of them. But not the only one.
Giles remembers the memory book again, a matchbook cover from a bar. "You - Weisse's. You were-" Picking up men there, sad and furtive men, and fucking them. Touching them. Letting them touch him. "Did you-?" Did you enjoy it?, Giles wants to ask, but he's afraid of how that would sound. Jealous, and he's not sure if he's jealous, not sure what this pain squeezing his lungs and his heart is made of.
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Oz knows the feeling.
"Yeah, Weisse's," he says, and the filthy tinsel-dimness of the place, the disinfectant stink and old, recycled beer stench, it's not coming back to him. It's just there, hovering around them. Oz nods; he doesn't want to take any of this back, but he also doesn't know how much Giles wants, needs, to know.
"On gigs, too, you know. Just a lot of it, and --" He remembers it all, and most of the time, it feels like it happened to someone else. But he did it; he did it all. "I was always careful. Like I told you. Not just 'cause that place was disgusting in ways there aren't words for."
When he looks at Giles, all he sees is the vague glow of his glasses. Oz squints, raising one shoulder to scratch against his chin.
"I -- I don't do that any more. Not for a long time. Not again, either."
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He doesn't want to think that Oz enjoyed it, enjoyed the feel and taste of all those other bodies, but it's worse to know that he didn't. That it was medicinal and desperate. "I . . . I did rather a lot of that myself. Sleeping around." And it was different. Not casual sex, not play and pleasure and an uncomplicated orgasm, but degrading somehow. Afterwards he always felt vaguely hung-over and deeply, specifically, incurably lonely.
"Once-" Giles holds on tight to Oz's hand and stares down at the teapot. It's the only way he can tell this, grounded and safe but not seeing how Oz reacts. "Once, in Los Angeles when I was meant to be looking for Buffy, I picked up a boy. A young boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen. A prostitute." Small and thin and red-haired. Giles had been drinking, or he'd have known better than to pick up anyone who looked like Oz.
Silence from Oz, even his breathing soundless, but he's rubbing Giles' wrist with his thumb. Gently. "I couldn't. He was an addict, there were track marks on him. And I, I couldn't even get hard." He'd wanted to fuck him, stroke him into coming with Giles' cock inside him, but he stayed limp even when the boy knelt between his legs and sucked him. "Paid him twice what we agreed. Because I could see he was scared that I might get angry. Hurt him." Sent him away and lay all night on the dirty coverlet of the dirty bed, listening to the sounds of fucking all around him.
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That was the summer after they broke up. When Buffy was gone and the center of everything just dropped away, leaving them all standing alone around a crater, not looking at each other. That was the summer he and Giles were going to drive up north, to Oregon and Washington, maybe even Canada. That was the summer Giles kept travelling, alone, reporting in from motels, calling Xander or Willow, never Oz, reappearing in the library each time a little thinner and wanner.
The hairs on Giles' wrist are starting to rasp and burn under Oz's thumb, so he slides his grip up to Giles' elbow. Without planning to, he pulls Giles toward him, his other arm going around Giles' neck. Giles presses his face into the curve of Oz's neck and Oz pats him like a baby with gas.
"Missed you," Oz says. "So much. I'm so sorry."
Sorry sounds stupid. Retarded and pointless, but it's the only word Oz can think of. The only word in his head, reverberating as it slams against the walls of his skull, sorrysorrysorrysorry.
He kisses the curve of Giles' cheekbone, right up at his hairline, and sighs.
"It's all so stupid. In retrospect, I mean. Made sense at the time. Kept looking for guys who looked like you, except -- No one looks like you. Feels like you."
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There was only absence, missing Oz more. Except the once, with Ethan, with the memory of love, but in the end that was just another betrayal.
Stupidity. "I'm sorry." Giles kisses Oz's neck, breathes sorry into the curve and salt. "Sorry for just now. Drinking. I hid it from you. The whiskey. I found it in the shop, back in Sunnydale, and I . . . sorry." He'd gladly beg Oz not to leave him, but he hopes he won't have to. Hopes his stupidity hasn't done them that much harm.
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No more secrets, they'd told each other, and Oz knows they both meant it. But keeping secrets, holding them close enough to your chest that they prick and draw blood, that's habitual. Habitforming and hard to give up.
"Glad you told me now," Oz says, and if he wonders what Giles would have done if he *hadn't* gotten out of bed, he doesn't finish the thought. Hand on Giles' shoulder, Oz eases slightly back so he can see Giles' face. Downturned and shadowed, but still familiar and loved. "Back then, I'd've done anything, said anything, to feel you again. Know how it feels. Hiding from -- from everything you're feeling. It's okay. Not mad, Giles."
He looked for numbness and stimulation back then, feared seeing Giles as much as he *needed* to see him.
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In these three months, Oz has seen him despairing three times, and hasn't given up on him. Giles doesn't want to test that miracle any farther. He lifts his head and says, "But it's not okay. I shouldn't . . . I was trying to protect you, I think. Hiding things. Treating you like a child." Which sounds so absurd that he could almost laugh.
"And . . ." He stokes Oz's forearm up and down, slightly chilly skin and a soft fuzz of hair. This is hard to say, harder than it should be. "I shouldn't drink anymore. At all. Neither of us should."
Oz wanted a drink of that whiskey. Giles shivers, realizing, and Oz pats his shoulder. Oz bought beer in Sunnydale and then didn't drink it. Almost stopped at the off-license, the day of Xander's engagement party, and then accelerated hard and sped away. They've both been dancing around temptation. "After everything, after all the ways we've been stupid . . . let's not be stupid about this. We can help each other."
No more whiskey, no more wine with dinner, no more having a pint at the pub. For a second Giles hates the thought. But he's left Sunnydale for Oz's sake. He's leaving the Watchers. This is a small thing, in comparison.
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Except Oz hasn't had anything since dinner at his mom's house. He barely drank that wine *anyway*. Right now, it's more about Giles, about Giles asking for help and wanting to stay sober, and Oz realizes he's already nodding.
"Yeah," he says slowly. Maybe too slowly, because Giles is starting to squint and pull in his shoulders. "Yeah, okay."
He kisses Giles' forehead -- who's being treated like a child here? he wonders, then decides he doesn't care, because when he presses his mouth against Giles' face, the wrinkles smooth out and Giles tightens his arms around Oz's waist, and they tip together, awkwardly, like birch trees in a storm, and rest.
"Okay," he says again. "Help each other. Yeah."
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But he said okay. He'll help, and Giles doesn't think he could do this without Oz's help. "Thank you," Giles says yet again. How many times has he said that tonight? Fewer than he's said I'm sorry, probably, and he likes thank you better.
He leans against Oz for a while longer, letting his body go heavy and calm and sleepy. But there are a couple of things that need doing. "I want to get rid of the whiskey." Oz nods, holds his hand as he fetches the bottle and the glass, stands at his elbow while he pours the whiskey down the sink and washes the glass four times with scalding-hot water and plenty of suds.
After he puts the rinsed bottle in the bin, Giles says, "I did this once before. The morning after you came back. I was never sure if you noticed or not. Although I suppose you must have seen the binful of old bottles."
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He puts his arm around Giles' waist and leans back against the counter, using the hem of his t-shirt to dry Giles' hands. Handsome hands -- and Oz smiles as he wonders if he's being redundant -- long fingers, broad across the knuckles, pink at the pads.
"Noticed them, sure," he says when he realizes he's been quiet too long. When Giles' hands are perfectly dry and Oz is just holding them in his own, working his thumbs back and forth like slow windshield-wipers. "Didn't know what to say."
He never knows what to say, that's the thing. Leaving one hand in Giles', Oz pulls away, far enough to reach the fridge and grab the carton of orange juice. White light, startling in all this dark, and it almost X-rays his hand as he reaches inside.
Three swallows of juice that drain it all, a rush of sugar and sun, and Oz sets the empty carton down in the sink.
"I just -- worry about you. And then I don't know what to say, and I start remembering other times I was worried or whatever, and it like -- clams me up even more." Coughing into the neck of his shirt, Oz squares his shoulders and looks up, meeting Giles' eyes. Glints in the dark like weird fish deep, deep down. "So I want to help. Anything. In case that wasn't clear. And I'm sorry about before, about, like. Weisse's and everything."
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Both so unhappy, missing each other, and yet it took almost four years for them to find the obvious answer. And even now, for all their promises and good intentions, everything could go wrong again. Sometimes Giles feels the way he used to at the museum, when he unrolled a fragile scroll or sorted ancient clay bullae. One slip and disaster. But this is much more frightening, because it's his life he might drop.
He sets his water glass down and puts a hand on Oz's shoulder, right along the upward slope to his neck. Tension in the muscles, and Giles rubs gently. "As for the rest . . . you can just tell me. Tell me you're worried. Or, if you asked Olivia I'd think she'd recommend 'Rupert, you're being a fool.' Perhaps accompanied by a good hard kick to the backside." Oz takes a step in, closer, and Giles slides his other arm around Oz's waist. The best feeling in the world, this, or close to it. "I'll try not to put you through this again. I love you." He'd like to promise more, but he doesn't think he can and still be honest.
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Giles' robe has nice, deep pockets, warmed from the inside out by his body, and Oz slips his hands into them. He's not quite sure why he feels so -- weird. Slickly empty inside, his pulse too close to the surface of his skin, but clanging hollowly around his body.
All those afternoons in the library, over the summer, then back to the library, soaked with whiskey and sliced by sidewise glances: Oz doesn't ever want to go back to those days. It's just that they feel strangely close right now.
"Can we go back to bed?" Oz asks, and he realizes he sounds shy. Croaky as a little kid, and next thing he knows, he'll be rubbing his eyes and kicking up a fuss.
Giles is looking at him, starting to frown, just a slight deepening around the corners of his mouth, and Oz shrugs.
"I'm okay, I just -- I *will* talk, I am talking. Get self-conscious sometimes."
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Oz makes a movement against Giles' chest that might be a nod, and a small assenting sound. His hands, deep in the pockets of Giles' dressing gown, rub against the flannel. "God, you must be freezing. Here, I'm sorry." Giles takes off the gown and wraps Oz in it, and kisses his forehead in thanks before going into the bathroom.
He hurries through the shower as much as he can, but it still takes two head-to-toe scrubbings before he feels decent enough for Oz to lie next to him all night. Then a thorough toothbrushing and mouthwash, although he decides it would be silly to floss again. And then he's ready, as free of drink as he can be until his body digests it, turns it to sugar and water. He opens the door to the kitchen, where Oz is waiting for him.
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