Giles is out of it. Like, drifting along on his own thoughts, dreamy yet tense around the mouth and in his shoulders, completely abstracted. Oz isn't sure if this is Giles' social face around grown-ups, but he suspects it has more to do with the specific party, the specific crowd. The best thing Oz can do - and it's good that it's the best, because it's also the *only* thing he can do - is remind Giles that he's okay. Home and loved and safe.
"Not Scottish, though," Oz says, swinging himself up onto one knee and rubbing Giles' shoulders through the robe. "So I'd kind of be a poseur."
Ducking his head, Giles nods and lets out a long sigh. Oz had hoped the shower would drain away his nervousness, but no such luck. He tilts his head and kisses Giles' chin, then his mouth, lightly, until some of the tension eases out of Giles' neck.
"As it is -" He pulls back a little, sliding off the bed and looking around for the bag of new underwear he bought a few days after Christmas. He finds them unpacked and set in the top drawer of the bureau, on top of his usual white briefs. "I should get dressed."
The new briefs are black - formal, he figured, went all the way to first layer - and small like a girl's, but they fit nicely and look pretty cool. Kind of transgressive without being creepy.
Over his shoulder, as he smoothes out the elastic band, he adds, "Are *you* doing the naked thing? 'cause, no fair."
The thin black cotton pants hug the lovely curve of Oz's backside, and when he turns around, Giles mouth goes a bit dry and he has to swallow. They're cut, somehow, to accentuate the bulge of Oz' cock. In fact they're designed to make other people want to take them off, and it certainly seems to work.
"Beautiful," Giles says. It's strange, both exciting and a little disconcerting, to see Oz wear something that heightens his beauty instead of masking it. He'll decorate himself in small ways--dye his hair, paint his nails, pierce his ears--but usually he hides his body under clothes like empty sacks. "And no, I'm not, er, doing the naked thing. Though I am tempted to wait and watch you dress."
Sadly, though, Oz is already pulling up his trousers. Giles will have to wait out the evening before he'll have another look at him so deliciously almost naked.
It's a good thought, though, a thought to settle him, and the jangle in Giles' stomach is calmer as he puts on his own pants (plain old y-fronts--perhaps he ought to have followed Oz's lead and got something sleek and new) and takes his dinner jacket and trousers out of the dry cleaner's bag. There's no reason to be nervous. This is a chance to see Oz in his smart new suit, that's all.
Underwear he can do. Trousers, too, even if he's scared that every movement is about to wrinkle them irreparably. The shirt, though. That's a whole other thing.
Oz shrugs it on and it is - "God, this is like *silk*," he says, turning, the tails lifting and trailing after him like wings. There's Giles by the bed, pants open on his hips, head slightly cocked.
"There are fiddly little things," Oz says, holding out one shirt-tail. "No buttons and could you -"
Giles' hair is still damp, waving off his face, and he looks suddenly like a grown-up. Even half-dressed. Like someone handsome in a movie, offering you a sip from his flask, leaning in with cupped palm to light your cigarette, and Oz swallows hard.
"Thank you. So are you," Giles adds, doing up his trousers. "I'm glad you let me talk you into all this." It took some doing; Oz wanted, at first, to scour every Oxfam and market stall in the city for a secondhand suit. They came entirely too close to quarrelling before Oz, puzzled by Giles' insistence, gave in.
One of these days, Giles thinks as he finds the shirt studs, he's going to put a thousand pounds into Oz's pocket and tell him not to come home until he's spent it all on himself. That should cure his squeamishness about money.
"Perfect," he says when the last stud is in. The mother-of-pearl surface barely shows against the shirt; there's just a faint shimmer when Oz moves. "Now, there's a tab on the shirt--here, see it?--that fits a button inside the waistband of your trousers. It keeps the shirt in place." Unnecessarily, Giles buttons it for him, so he can tickle Oz's belly and make him laugh, and kiss him afterwards.
In the high collar, with his hair falling soft against his forehead, Oz (even with the purple nail varnish) looks wonderfully old-fashioned and innocent, like a schoolboy dressed up for chapel. "Very nice." He hands Oz a pair of new cuff links, mother-of-pearl bars with a silver chain, that Giles has hidden among his own to save for this moment. "Here. No paper clips for you this time." Another kiss to take the sting out of the memory. "The gold ones are yours, too, the ones you wore that night. But they wouldn't go with your shirt studs."
"Yeah? Thanks -" Oz looks up at Giles, closing his eyes when Giles brushes the hair off his forehead, opening them when Giles rests his hands on his shoulders. "Probably need to find more shirts with fancy cuffs, then."
The last time he dressed up like this, Oz was taking Willow to prom. That was a rental, the fabric kind of shiny and definitely worn, and the bow tie clipped on. Now he has the World's Most Expensive Suit and two pairs of cufflinks cradled in his palm. They're tiny and slightly glinting and in the back of his mind, he's trying to figure out how to turn them into earrings.
"You doing better?" he asks as he sits on the foot of the bed and wrestles with the cufflinks. The shirt's cuffs keep flopping out of reach. "Because here's what I'm thinking - look at the parties we've gone to. Arm in a box. Zombies. Mean little fear demon. What could be worse?"
Finally, the link catches and Oz sits back, resting his cheek against his shoulder, watching Giles button up his own shirt. More and more, he looks *glamourous*, and as he tucks in his shirttails, Oz stands up to help him.
"Why do I keep thinking you look like a grown-up? Like it's a surprise or something."
Giles stops fiddling with a reluctant shirt stud and turns his attention to the shirttails, where Oz's helpful fingers are getting rather too enjoyable. "Well," he says, nudging Oz's hand away from his flies, "if you've started mentally taking twenty-five years off my age, I can't say I'm going to complain." There, he's dressed at last, and something about it puts him more in the mood for the party. Formal clothes are a kind of uniform, just like the tweed suits he wore as a Watcher--they focus one's mind, ease one into a role.
"Help me with these?" He hands Oz his own cuff links. "It's awkward, doing them one-handed. I read somewhere that cuff links are an inducement to have a lover, so that there's someone to fasten them for you." Of course, that's only true in modern times, since valets got hard to find. It must have been odd, long ago, having servants help one dress and undress. Perhaps familiarity took the edge off, or perhaps all the gentleman and their valets, ladies and their maids were shagging like mad.
He can't quite explain when Oz asks what he's laughing at, so he reaches for their ties instead. "Ready for the mystery of the bow tie?" On the way to the bathroom mirror, he says, "And I'm all right, I think. It's been a long time since I've gone to a party. A grown-up party, I should say, and one far from the hellmouth at that. I worry a bit that I've forgotten how to talk to people about normal things." He worries, too, that Oz will be bored, that he'll look at Giles' friends and finally notice that Giles is far too old for him.
Before the mirror, Oz has to grin. Forget the cufflinks and shirt studs and super-top-secret pants button; *this* sight, with him in front of Giles, the tie hanging loose around his neck, is the one where he's revealed to be a complete poseur at all of this.
In the mirror, Giles looks down at him, eyebrows going up inquisitively.
"You'll be fine at the party," Oz says and feels the smile kind of slide off his face. "I'm the one who's, like, undercover."
It's true. He's playing dress-up, and that's usually fun, but he could mess all of this up without even trying.
Frowning, Giles reaches for the ends of the tie.
"Gimme a sec," Oz says, and twists around so he's not talking to the reflection. Seeing his own face as he talks is more than creepy. "I'm going to be cool there, right? Olivia doesn't hate me, and her friends - your friends, I guess - they must be pretty cool."
He bites his lip so he stops himself from adding, Right? Giles is dressing him, touching him; he doesn't have to reassure him, too, even if that's what Oz needs right now.
"Oz." Giles cups his face and looks at him, relieved when Oz doesn't look away. He should have noticed Oz picking up his nervousness, misinterpreting it. "This is not a matter of seeing whether my friends approve of you. And I'm sorry that I gave you that impression." He tips his forehead against Oz's and wraps his arms around Oz's waist, feeling him take a deep breath.
If going to this party feels strange to Giles himself, for Oz it must be like taking a walk on Mars. They'll nearly all be older than him. They'll have strange accents, unfamiliar histories, interests Oz isn't likely to share. "What I'm nervous about . . . it's complicated." Giles takes off his glasses and rolls his face against Oz's, so close that their eyelashes brush at every blink. "That you'll find them--and by extension, me--too old and dull. Or that they'll look at how young you are and think . . . well, the sort of things people think about an older man living with a boy half his age. I want-" Closing his eyes, he kisses Oz's cheek. So smooth--he shaved very carefully. He's been trying hard to get everything just right. "I want them to see how marvelous you are."
One more kiss and a rib-crushing squeeze, and then he turns Oz around and goes back to working on his tie. "If you don't have a good time, we won't stay. We'll go to a concert or something, or we'll be the best-dressed people in the cinema."
Other people can think what they like. He and Oz know the truth.
"Oh, I'll have a good time," Oz says, watching Giles' hands work like a magician's over his tie. Just hands against black and white, like something out of Mummenschanz, twisting the fabric around and plumping the bow up. "I'm not bad at mixing."
Resting his chin on the top of Oz's head, Giles just sighs, his breath tickling Oz's hair, making it move over his forehead. With his glasses back on, Giles looks more public, like they're shields, just as much as the tuxes and bow ties are costumes. He's still underneath, though, still smells like Giles and holds like Giles, and Oz covers Giles' arms with his own and squeezes back.
"Let me try?"
Giles' eyes widen. He doesn't protest when Oz turns him around to lean against the sink, just waits patiently as Oz reaches for the ends of his tie. Something to do with his hands is more than welcome, and he tests the tie, straightens it, before attempting the knot.
"Quick study," Oz says, knotting it up and making sure it's straight. "And thanks. I *want* to meet your friends. I just --" He doesn't want to embarrass Giles, which is *stupid*. Maybe reasonable, but still stupid. "Whatever they think, though. That's them. I just want to go out with you. And try Olivia's pomegranate juice so maybe she'll shut up about it."
It's not a bad knot, especially for a first try. Oz turns Giles back around and leans his head on his shoulder.
"Check it out. Like William Powell times two. One of us shrunk in the wash."
"Nicely done," Giles says, giving the tie a small nudge to get it perfectly straight. "We are indeed the height of old-fashioned glamour. Although you could just as easily have said that one of us is too bloody tall." It is a little strange, though, seeing Oz in smaller versions of his own clothes. Doing up Oz's tie, Giles couldn't help remembering his father teaching him the secrets of a well-made knot. Going to the tailor's, too, brought to mind having his first suits made, when he was twelve and about to go away to school.
He smiles at Oz's reflection in the mirror. At least their faces aren't very alike. Not that that's saved them, in the past, from being mistaken for father and son.
Leaning down, he nips Oz's earlobe, which is tender and tempting with its little row of empty holes. "Don't forget your earrings." Oz took them out before their shower, which he never does. Giles hopes he hasn't somehow got the idea that Giles wants him to be dully respectable.
On the way back to the bedroom he holds Oz's hand. They'll have to be a little restrained, tonight, and Giles wants to stockpile touches now, like eating a big breakfast before a busy day. "You're wearing the purple waistcoat, aren't you? To match your nails?" Oz was strangely hesitant about painting his nails, too; Giles tries to put an apology in his smile. "It's a lovely color," he says, finding the right hanger and offering it to Oz.
"Not Scottish, though," Oz says, swinging himself up onto one knee and rubbing Giles' shoulders through the robe. "So I'd kind of be a poseur."
Ducking his head, Giles nods and lets out a long sigh. Oz had hoped the shower would drain away his nervousness, but no such luck. He tilts his head and kisses Giles' chin, then his mouth, lightly, until some of the tension eases out of Giles' neck.
"As it is -" He pulls back a little, sliding off the bed and looking around for the bag of new underwear he bought a few days after Christmas. He finds them unpacked and set in the top drawer of the bureau, on top of his usual white briefs. "I should get dressed."
The new briefs are black - formal, he figured, went all the way to first layer - and small like a girl's, but they fit nicely and look pretty cool. Kind of transgressive without being creepy.
Over his shoulder, as he smoothes out the elastic band, he adds, "Are *you* doing the naked thing? 'cause, no fair."
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"Beautiful," Giles says. It's strange, both exciting and a little disconcerting, to see Oz wear something that heightens his beauty instead of masking it. He'll decorate himself in small ways--dye his hair, paint his nails, pierce his ears--but usually he hides his body under clothes like empty sacks. "And no, I'm not, er, doing the naked thing. Though I am tempted to wait and watch you dress."
Sadly, though, Oz is already pulling up his trousers. Giles will have to wait out the evening before he'll have another look at him so deliciously almost naked.
It's a good thought, though, a thought to settle him, and the jangle in Giles' stomach is calmer as he puts on his own pants (plain old y-fronts--perhaps he ought to have followed Oz's lead and got something sleek and new) and takes his dinner jacket and trousers out of the dry cleaner's bag. There's no reason to be nervous. This is a chance to see Oz in his smart new suit, that's all.
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Oz shrugs it on and it is - "God, this is like *silk*," he says, turning, the tails lifting and trailing after him like wings. There's Giles by the bed, pants open on his hips, head slightly cocked.
"There are fiddly little things," Oz says, holding out one shirt-tail. "No buttons and could you -"
Giles' hair is still damp, waving off his face, and he looks suddenly like a grown-up. Even half-dressed. Like someone handsome in a movie, offering you a sip from his flask, leaning in with cupped palm to light your cigarette, and Oz swallows hard.
"Hey. Looking good."
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One of these days, Giles thinks as he finds the shirt studs, he's going to put a thousand pounds into Oz's pocket and tell him not to come home until he's spent it all on himself. That should cure his squeamishness about money.
"Perfect," he says when the last stud is in. The mother-of-pearl surface barely shows against the shirt; there's just a faint shimmer when Oz moves. "Now, there's a tab on the shirt--here, see it?--that fits a button inside the waistband of your trousers. It keeps the shirt in place." Unnecessarily, Giles buttons it for him, so he can tickle Oz's belly and make him laugh, and kiss him afterwards.
In the high collar, with his hair falling soft against his forehead, Oz (even with the purple nail varnish) looks wonderfully old-fashioned and innocent, like a schoolboy dressed up for chapel. "Very nice." He hands Oz a pair of new cuff links, mother-of-pearl bars with a silver chain, that Giles has hidden among his own to save for this moment. "Here. No paper clips for you this time." Another kiss to take the sting out of the memory. "The gold ones are yours, too, the ones you wore that night. But they wouldn't go with your shirt studs."
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The last time he dressed up like this, Oz was taking Willow to prom. That was a rental, the fabric kind of shiny and definitely worn, and the bow tie clipped on. Now he has the World's Most Expensive Suit and two pairs of cufflinks cradled in his palm. They're tiny and slightly glinting and in the back of his mind, he's trying to figure out how to turn them into earrings.
"You doing better?" he asks as he sits on the foot of the bed and wrestles with the cufflinks. The shirt's cuffs keep flopping out of reach. "Because here's what I'm thinking - look at the parties we've gone to. Arm in a box. Zombies. Mean little fear demon. What could be worse?"
Finally, the link catches and Oz sits back, resting his cheek against his shoulder, watching Giles button up his own shirt. More and more, he looks *glamourous*, and as he tucks in his shirttails, Oz stands up to help him.
"Why do I keep thinking you look like a grown-up? Like it's a surprise or something."
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"Help me with these?" He hands Oz his own cuff links. "It's awkward, doing them one-handed. I read somewhere that cuff links are an inducement to have a lover, so that there's someone to fasten them for you." Of course, that's only true in modern times, since valets got hard to find. It must have been odd, long ago, having servants help one dress and undress. Perhaps familiarity took the edge off, or perhaps all the gentleman and their valets, ladies and their maids were shagging like mad.
He can't quite explain when Oz asks what he's laughing at, so he reaches for their ties instead. "Ready for the mystery of the bow tie?" On the way to the bathroom mirror, he says, "And I'm all right, I think. It's been a long time since I've gone to a party. A grown-up party, I should say, and one far from the hellmouth at that. I worry a bit that I've forgotten how to talk to people about normal things." He worries, too, that Oz will be bored, that he'll look at Giles' friends and finally notice that Giles is far too old for him.
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In the mirror, Giles looks down at him, eyebrows going up inquisitively.
"You'll be fine at the party," Oz says and feels the smile kind of slide off his face. "I'm the one who's, like, undercover."
It's true. He's playing dress-up, and that's usually fun, but he could mess all of this up without even trying.
Frowning, Giles reaches for the ends of the tie.
"Gimme a sec," Oz says, and twists around so he's not talking to the reflection. Seeing his own face as he talks is more than creepy. "I'm going to be cool there, right? Olivia doesn't hate me, and her friends - your friends, I guess - they must be pretty cool."
He bites his lip so he stops himself from adding, Right? Giles is dressing him, touching him; he doesn't have to reassure him, too, even if that's what Oz needs right now.
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If going to this party feels strange to Giles himself, for Oz it must be like taking a walk on Mars. They'll nearly all be older than him. They'll have strange accents, unfamiliar histories, interests Oz isn't likely to share. "What I'm nervous about . . . it's complicated." Giles takes off his glasses and rolls his face against Oz's, so close that their eyelashes brush at every blink. "That you'll find them--and by extension, me--too old and dull. Or that they'll look at how young you are and think . . . well, the sort of things people think about an older man living with a boy half his age. I want-" Closing his eyes, he kisses Oz's cheek. So smooth--he shaved very carefully. He's been trying hard to get everything just right. "I want them to see how marvelous you are."
One more kiss and a rib-crushing squeeze, and then he turns Oz around and goes back to working on his tie. "If you don't have a good time, we won't stay. We'll go to a concert or something, or we'll be the best-dressed people in the cinema."
Other people can think what they like. He and Oz know the truth.
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Resting his chin on the top of Oz's head, Giles just sighs, his breath tickling Oz's hair, making it move over his forehead. With his glasses back on, Giles looks more public, like they're shields, just as much as the tuxes and bow ties are costumes. He's still underneath, though, still smells like Giles and holds like Giles, and Oz covers Giles' arms with his own and squeezes back.
"Let me try?"
Giles' eyes widen. He doesn't protest when Oz turns him around to lean against the sink, just waits patiently as Oz reaches for the ends of his tie. Something to do with his hands is more than welcome, and he tests the tie, straightens it, before attempting the knot.
"Quick study," Oz says, knotting it up and making sure it's straight. "And thanks. I *want* to meet your friends. I just --" He doesn't want to embarrass Giles, which is *stupid*. Maybe reasonable, but still stupid. "Whatever they think, though. That's them. I just want to go out with you. And try Olivia's pomegranate juice so maybe she'll shut up about it."
It's not a bad knot, especially for a first try. Oz turns Giles back around and leans his head on his shoulder.
"Check it out. Like William Powell times two. One of us shrunk in the wash."
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He smiles at Oz's reflection in the mirror. At least their faces aren't very alike. Not that that's saved them, in the past, from being mistaken for father and son.
Leaning down, he nips Oz's earlobe, which is tender and tempting with its little row of empty holes. "Don't forget your earrings." Oz took them out before their shower, which he never does. Giles hopes he hasn't somehow got the idea that Giles wants him to be dully respectable.
On the way back to the bedroom he holds Oz's hand. They'll have to be a little restrained, tonight, and Giles wants to stockpile touches now, like eating a big breakfast before a busy day. "You're wearing the purple waistcoat, aren't you? To match your nails?" Oz was strangely hesitant about painting his nails, too; Giles tries to put an apology in his smile. "It's a lovely color," he says, finding the right hanger and offering it to Oz.
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