This is the first time he's seen Oz really smile. Mostly Oz has micro-expressions, quirks of eyebrow and mouth that Giles isn't yet sure how to read. It's like the writings on Easter Island--an unknown script for an unknown language. Yet Oz's body is as mobile and legible as his face is still and mysterious.
Giles likes his smile. Likes to have inspired it. "Definitely."
He pulls reluctantly away from Oz, switches off the downstairs lights, takes him up to the loft. For a long moment they stand by the bed, looking at each other, and it should be awkward but isn't. Oz smiles again, takes off Giles' glasses and sets them on the dresser. "Thank you," Giles says, and somehow it's already become a joke between them.
When they kiss, it's shallow, lips skimming and dipping and hovering, and Giles thinks of hummingbirds. Their touches are shallow too, light fingertips over cloth. Giles unbuttons Oz's shirt slowly, just grazing the skin beneath, and pulls it off his shoulders and away. He wants to learn everything, wants to pore over Oz and memorize him, wants to read him slowly and thoroughly. Wants to comprehend.
Giles touches him with the air around his fingertips, rearranges the atmosphere over his skin, and Oz tries to match it. Wants that care and gentleness, wants to learn Giles from the outside, the air he displaces and the molecules he breathes out. Sometimes you breathe in something Caesar exhaled, a syllable Joan of Arc spoke, just like a butterfly can shift in its sleep and bring up thunder in Tokyo. Oz thinks about connections, about areas and networks, corners he didn't know until he saw Giles onstage.
"Feel good," he says quietly, touching, hating words, because it's more than feeling and it's way more than good.
Girls' shirts button the other way, and Oz hasn't been with a new guy for months, so he takes this even more slowly, like this is a first time, because it is. It's always a first time, even if he's just fooling around with Devon for the gajillionth time, always different. He slides his palm up the center of Giles's chest, between the curve of ribs, over hair, to a hickey he left on the collarbone.
Soothing it with his thumb, backing up, pulling Giles's shirttails like a magician removing the tablecloth, leaving all the plates and silverware in place, Oz tries to kiss him again, too.
Wants too much, because he stumbles against the bed and loses contact, and he's about to laugh when he sees Giles's chest deflate, hears him gasp, and Oz knows, suddenly and clearly, what he looks like. Sprawled on his back, shirtless and skinny, and he can't look away.
Panic is a bottomless well, a cup that runneth over and over and bloody over. There's always more.
When Oz collapses on the bed, grinning, shadows collecting in every hollow of his thin chest and undeveloped shoulders, he's not a changeling. He's a boy, and Giles is a liar and a criminal and a useless fucking excuse for a man.
And it gets worse; there's more than one monster swimming, long-fanged and hungry, in this deep deep well. There's a reason he's stayed away for decades from anyone so young. Even when he was young himself, even when it didn't make him a pervert.
Ethan's been in his mind all night, and no matter how often Giles tells himself Oz is different, there's no resemblance, no similarity at all, Ethan won't go away. It's true, but it's not enough to set him free.
Giles's face doesn't collapse, and his tone is still fairly steady, but Oz slides back from him anyway, as if he'd yelled and turned red. Swung a fist. Retreat, he knows.
All kinds of nakedness here tonight, and right now he's bare and cold and trying like hell not to cross his arms over his chest. He's exposed and stared at and he's starting to get why clothes are as important as good manners. They protect you. He sits up and knows enough not to touch Giles, so he pats the quilt as far from himself as he can reach. Crosses his legs and straightens his shoulders.
"You're what?" Forty-two, a librarian, with bad eyes and a great guitar who kisses like conversation and thought and Oz isn't sure what else Giles can possibly *be*.
"Don't say you're sorry," Oz says as Giles just stands there, slump-shouldered and beautifully sad, shadows on his face, only the rims of his glasses visible.
"I like you. A lot." And sometimes he doesn't hate words, because sometimes he doesn't know how he feels until he says it.
Giles sees Oz teeter on the edge of fear and then pull back, and it's enough to make him wonder who's the adult.
"I like you too," he says, sitting down. Even now, he wants to sit closer. "I don't like many people." Automatically his hand reaches up for his glasses, and it's a surprise to find he's not wearing them. How often in a day does he make that nervous gesture, that it feels so familiar?
"And I want you. And you're very young." Oz starts to protest, but stills when Giles shakes his head. "I know. It shouldn't matter. I agree with you." Now that he's got over the latest shock, he does. Rationally.
"These things get harder, you know, as you get older. When there are more memories."
Oz is perfectly still, and Giles isn't sure if it's wariness or concentration. "I have some very bad memories."
It's too hard to meet Oz's eyes. Giles stares down at the stripes on the blanket and makes himself continue. "I was nineteen. He was fifteen. I talked him into running away with me. And things got bad. Worse than you can imagine."
Memory feels like sickness. It's hard to breathe, and his head aches. "It's all a very long story. Someone was killed, one of our friends. And it was partly our fault. And he . . . Ethan, my lover, it ruined him. I ruined him."
He glances up, catches a glimpse of Oz's unreadable face. Looks away again. "You're not at all like him. But looking at you just now, I remembered."
The story's half-told at best, stripped of meaning, naked as a tree after a storm. Even when Giles wants to be honest, he lies.
"I know I've been behaving strangely. That's why."
Oz knits his fingers together and flexes his hands open and closed. Giles is too far away and very hoarse, speaking as if he's dragging words through blood and dirt, and Oz understands one thing at least. That Giles doesn't have to say any of this, could just tell him to leave, bluster about making a mistake and wrongness and everything else. Knowing that is enough to keep Oz quiet, quieter than usual, fingering Giles's words and sketching out questions. There's time to ask them, he knows, later, and he feels time open in front of him. Like a highway, and maybe he's watched too many David Lynch movies, but he can see time, suddenly, a highway at night, endless in the cones of the headlights.
He wishes he knew how to tell Giles that.
The bed must be new; it barely squeaks when Oz shifts over, a little closer to Giles, and he's *not* trying to distract them. Really. He just can't do this - talk, discuss, feel - and see someone shuttered and small as Giles is, and not touch.
"Must have good memories, too," Oz says. The closer he gets, the brighter Giles's eyes are, and he pats Giles's shoulder lightly. Unthreateningly.
Until Oz touches him, he doesn't realize how cold he is. Oz's hand sets off a wave of shivers. They don't stop until he unfolds the blanket at the foot of the bed and drapes one end over his shoulders. He offers the other end to Oz, who wraps himself up in it.
"I'm glad," he says. "Surprised, but glad." Not least, he's surprised that Oz can still like him despite how ridiculous he's been. "I'm not always this difficult, by the way."
Oz smiles a little at that, and rubs his arm gently. Like he's petting a nervous animal. "And I do have good memories. A lot of them. Even of Ethan." The good memories of Ethan can be worse than the bad ones, but now's not the time to say so.
He's going to tell Oz everything: Ethan, the Council, the Slayer, all of it. Not tonight; he can't burden Oz with so much all at once. But eventually.
"I don't know if you still want to stay, after all this melodrama. But I'd like you to. And I'd like to shut up and let you talk for a while." There's so little he knows about Oz, even after all this. "I'd like to lie down, and hold you, and hear about your life."
He never says things like this, but it's much too late to be embarrassed.
They sit there for a bit after Giles finishes talking and Oz lets the blanket warm him and the sound of Giles's voice slip deeper inside him and it feels good. Or right. Something you put in capital letters or needlepoint onto canvas and hang on the wall, like Home, something he's not usually - ever - comfortable with.
"Not melodrama," he says first, leaning back to untuck the sheet and quilt. He wonders why Giles is surprised; why wouldn't you continue liking someone, especially after they tell you secrets and memories? If he asks that, though, he's pretty sure Giles will remind him of the age thing, and that's one thing Oz *can't* change.
He waits for Giles to lie down, because it's his bed and Oz doesn't know which side to take. The sheets are cool and soft, as new as the mattress, and he's still wearing his jeans.
Open-ended questions. Lying down he can do, holding he can definitely do, but autobiography? He's going to sound like a Playmate bio. Oz likes thunderstorms and mellow guitar grooves. His pet peeves include racism, high school, and the continuing criminalization of marijuana.
"What do you want to know?" He figures Giles already knows the important things. Guitar, bi, reads a lot. "Born here, live with my mom. Used to have a stepdad."
He slides his palm up and down Giles's side, warming the skin there, getting more comfortable. Lying on his side, head pillowed on one arm, close enough that Giles doesn't have to squint.
"Um. Can you ask me a question? 'Cause I can talk, but usually prompting's good."
Of course Giles should ask questions, but his mind has blanked the way it does when he meets people at parties. He wants to be quiet, touch, think about Oz instead of himself. Lull his fears back to sleep.
There are things he doesn't want to hear about just now, like Oz's family life, school, college plans. Reminders. The age difference is too steep a mountain to climb straight up. The path over it needs to circle and zigzag, to travel gently.
Lying this close, Giles can see the tiny crinkles in Oz's lips and the ginger roots of his hair. Oz's eyes are greener towards the pupil, bluer towards the outside. Giles brushes his thumb over rough, reassuring stubble, follows the slope of his throat, palms his chest and tries to feel his heartbeat.
Questions, trivia. Surfaces. When you read a book, you go from the outside in. Even if the story starts somewhere in the confusing middle.
"Tell me about a happy memory," Giles says, hand moving up the curve of Oz's ribs. It's a simple question, obvious, the way skin is obvious. Until you touch it, feel textures and temperatures, learn how it changes against your mouth and hands and body. Even surfaces are never really simple.
Giles's touch brings confidence with it, trails it soft and slow, leaving paths over Oz's skin and Oz breathes through his mouth, just enjoying, while he lets his mind bring up something.
"Good question," he says.
Considers and discards a lot - first kiss, Reading Rangers award his fourth-grade summer from the public library, the Spinanes show he caught a couple months ago in LA where Rebecca gave him the set list, her pick, and a kiss he felt for days - because even though he trusts Giles, trusts him not to laugh or sneer, Oz trusts this moment more, feels it hovering over both of them, already engraved in memory, and wants to make it count.
"Day my pupa broke and I got to see a monarch butterfly," he says finally, because it is probably his happiest memory. "Third grade? Yeah. Ms. Dougherty. Doing the life-cycle, and I found a pupa and she let me bring it in and it was recess but it was raining so I stayed inside and the pupa was shaking. I used to hang out with it. Play my recorder for it, 'cause -." Babies like music. Dork. "Anyway. And it broke out, and its wings were all wet and grody. Clumped and oozy. Got to watch them unfold. It was like -"
Giles's skin is as smooth and perfectly tight as the pupa's, and Oz touches his arm and shoulderblades with his whole hand. It feels burnished, rubbed down, and if that's age or experience, Oz is all for it.
"Takes a while for the wings to unfold right, it has to flap them really slow and dry them out. Got to watch the whole thing."
Keeping things in fishbowls and glass boxes doesn't appeal to Oz. Feels like you're making the world a zoo, arranging the pretty and pieces of nature for your own entertainment. He's still glad he got to see it.
He turns his hand, curling his fingers into a loose fist and running his knuckles up the half-sunken bones of Giles's spine.
Giles shifts until his forehead rests against Oz's, closes his eyes, lets the moment be. He'd like to thank Oz for this, but some gifts are like good fairies that disappear if you speak of them.
After enough time has passed, after the wings have dried and the butterfly has taken to the air, he says, "Another time, I'll tell you one of mine." It ought to be too soon to mention other times, future times, but it's not.
He works his fingers through Oz's hair, imagining it fresh from the shower, soft and unstyled. Another time.
They move at the same instant and nearly bump noses, and Oz is still laughing when Giles kisses him.
Oz thought he was the only one who believed you can press your foreheads together and think in tandem, let capillaries and pores open and share ideas and memories. So close, Giles's face was blank like the morning sky, eyeslashes a smudge, lids crinkled and thoughtful, and Oz thought of toasts, of clinking glasses, hoped Giles heard this one.
His words are a promise, and Giles seals it with a long kiss that thrums and beats against Oz, and as his laughter starts to slow and twist around, it makes him think of windsocks and banners in breezes. His hand fits around the edge of Giles's jaw, fingers curled around his ear, stroking his hair. Invisible, only touched, it feels like frayed rope, wind- and sunbeaten, full of knowledge and experience.
Another time, and Oz believes it. Not used to thinking about the future except to scoff at it, and he likes that there will be more than time to come, that it's not the next time, just another one. Like highways again, endless, as many exits and rest-stops as there are dashes down their center.
In his hair, Giles's fingers are tracking secrets over his scalp, carving new things into him, and Oz doesn't have that much to share in return, but he can kiss, wants to keep kissing Giles and tasting the rhythm of his breath for as long as he can.
The kiss goes on for a long time. There are little pauses and shifts, like rests in music, but it's still the same kiss. It seems Oz likes to kiss. Giles is learning the things he enjoys most: light flicks of the tongue, nibbles to his lips, slow back-and-forth between their mouths. Deep kisses make him sigh, toothy ones make him squirm and take sharp breaths.
Oz must be studying him too. He's learned to catch Giles' tongue between his teeth, to lick the inside of Giles' lips until he pants.
The kiss doesn't so much end as expand to new territory. Oz shivers when Giles licks his earlobe. Giles kisses down to his neck, bites lightly, and Oz arches and groans and grips his head so he can't move. So he stays, making a line of little bites, wanting to hear those sounds again and again.
His skin heats up and tightens under Giles's teeth, and Oz can't seem to catch his breath, can't reconcile something so precise and at the same time almost-animal feeling so good, and he digs his nails against Giles's head, his shoulder, hears him groan in reply, feels the noise shudder and spread through his own skin.
He arches farther back, tries to catch Giles's eye, scratches slowly over warm skin and presses closer. The heat is spreading and thickening inside him, going from the long, tasting kiss warmth that was like red wine into something brighter and stronger, tequila, maybe, or one of those liquors you do by the shot to prove your masculinity, and he clutches Giles's shoulders, feels the joint pressing back against his palm, presses him back against the pillows.
Giles opens his eyes and Oz shakes his head, his mouth too full, too hot, to try and speak. Lowers his face to the spot where Giles's neck curves into, becomes, his shoulder, and tastes all the older kisses there, then hot skin going slick under his tongue. Tries biting, scraping his teeth back and forth, and feels Giles shiver under his hold. So much to touch, and for a moment Oz is too warm, too needy, to remember there's plenty of time, and he slides his palms down Giles's chest, tries moving his nails over the small, flat nipples and looks up, checking Giles's face.
Dark eyes regarding him, mouth open, and Oz remembers. So much to touch, but plenty of time.
Giles likes his smile. Likes to have inspired it. "Definitely."
He pulls reluctantly away from Oz, switches off the downstairs lights, takes him up to the loft. For a long moment they stand by the bed, looking at each other, and it should be awkward but isn't. Oz smiles again, takes off Giles' glasses and sets them on the dresser. "Thank you," Giles says, and somehow it's already become a joke between them.
When they kiss, it's shallow, lips skimming and dipping and hovering, and Giles thinks of hummingbirds. Their touches are shallow too, light fingertips over cloth. Giles unbuttons Oz's shirt slowly, just grazing the skin beneath, and pulls it off his shoulders and away. He wants to learn everything, wants to pore over Oz and memorize him, wants to read him slowly and thoroughly. Wants to comprehend.
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"Feel good," he says quietly, touching, hating words, because it's more than feeling and it's way more than good.
Girls' shirts button the other way, and Oz hasn't been with a new guy for months, so he takes this even more slowly, like this is a first time, because it is. It's always a first time, even if he's just fooling around with Devon for the gajillionth time, always different. He slides his palm up the center of Giles's chest, between the curve of ribs, over hair, to a hickey he left on the collarbone.
Soothing it with his thumb, backing up, pulling Giles's shirttails like a magician removing the tablecloth, leaving all the plates and silverware in place, Oz tries to kiss him again, too.
Wants too much, because he stumbles against the bed and loses contact, and he's about to laugh when he sees Giles's chest deflate, hears him gasp, and Oz knows, suddenly and clearly, what he looks like. Sprawled on his back, shirtless and skinny, and he can't look away.
"Come here?"
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When Oz collapses on the bed, grinning, shadows collecting in every hollow of his thin chest and undeveloped shoulders, he's not a changeling. He's a boy, and Giles is a liar and a criminal and a useless fucking excuse for a man.
And it gets worse; there's more than one monster swimming, long-fanged and hungry, in this deep deep well. There's a reason he's stayed away for decades from anyone so young. Even when he was young himself, even when it didn't make him a pervert.
Ethan's been in his mind all night, and no matter how often Giles tells himself Oz is different, there's no resemblance, no similarity at all, Ethan won't go away. It's true, but it's not enough to set him free.
"Oz, I-" Shouldn't. Can't. Sorry sorry sorry.
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All kinds of nakedness here tonight, and right now he's bare and cold and trying like hell not to cross his arms over his chest. He's exposed and stared at and he's starting to get why clothes are as important as good manners. They protect you. He sits up and knows enough not to touch Giles, so he pats the quilt as far from himself as he can reach. Crosses his legs and straightens his shoulders.
"You're what?" Forty-two, a librarian, with bad eyes and a great guitar who kisses like conversation and thought and Oz isn't sure what else Giles can possibly *be*.
"Don't say you're sorry," Oz says as Giles just stands there, slump-shouldered and beautifully sad, shadows on his face, only the rims of his glasses visible.
"I like you. A lot." And sometimes he doesn't hate words, because sometimes he doesn't know how he feels until he says it.
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"I like you too," he says, sitting down. Even now, he wants to sit closer. "I don't like many people." Automatically his hand reaches up for his glasses, and it's a surprise to find he's not wearing them. How often in a day does he make that nervous gesture, that it feels so familiar?
"And I want you. And you're very young." Oz starts to protest, but stills when Giles shakes his head. "I know. It shouldn't matter. I agree with you." Now that he's got over the latest shock, he does. Rationally.
"These things get harder, you know, as you get older. When there are more memories."
Oz is perfectly still, and Giles isn't sure if it's wariness or concentration. "I have some very bad memories."
It's too hard to meet Oz's eyes. Giles stares down at the stripes on the blanket and makes himself continue. "I was nineteen. He was fifteen. I talked him into running away with me. And things got bad. Worse than you can imagine."
Memory feels like sickness. It's hard to breathe, and his head aches. "It's all a very long story. Someone was killed, one of our friends. And it was partly our fault. And he . . . Ethan, my lover, it ruined him. I ruined him."
He glances up, catches a glimpse of Oz's unreadable face. Looks away again. "You're not at all like him. But looking at you just now, I remembered."
The story's half-told at best, stripped of meaning, naked as a tree after a storm. Even when Giles wants to be honest, he lies.
"I know I've been behaving strangely. That's why."
He makes himself look up and wait for an answer.
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He wishes he knew how to tell Giles that.
The bed must be new; it barely squeaks when Oz shifts over, a little closer to Giles, and he's *not* trying to distract them. Really. He just can't do this - talk, discuss, feel - and see someone shuttered and small as Giles is, and not touch.
"Must have good memories, too," Oz says. The closer he gets, the brighter Giles's eyes are, and he pats Giles's shoulder lightly. Unthreateningly.
"And, um. Still like you."
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"I'm glad," he says. "Surprised, but glad." Not least, he's surprised that Oz can still like him despite how ridiculous he's been. "I'm not always this difficult, by the way."
Oz smiles a little at that, and rubs his arm gently. Like he's petting a nervous animal. "And I do have good memories. A lot of them. Even of Ethan." The good memories of Ethan can be worse than the bad ones, but now's not the time to say so.
He's going to tell Oz everything: Ethan, the Council, the Slayer, all of it. Not tonight; he can't burden Oz with so much all at once. But eventually.
"I don't know if you still want to stay, after all this melodrama. But I'd like you to. And I'd like to shut up and let you talk for a while." There's so little he knows about Oz, even after all this. "I'd like to lie down, and hold you, and hear about your life."
He never says things like this, but it's much too late to be embarrassed.
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"Not melodrama," he says first, leaning back to untuck the sheet and quilt. He wonders why Giles is surprised; why wouldn't you continue liking someone, especially after they tell you secrets and memories? If he asks that, though, he's pretty sure Giles will remind him of the age thing, and that's one thing Oz *can't* change.
He waits for Giles to lie down, because it's his bed and Oz doesn't know which side to take. The sheets are cool and soft, as new as the mattress, and he's still wearing his jeans.
Open-ended questions. Lying down he can do, holding he can definitely do, but autobiography? He's going to sound like a Playmate bio. Oz likes thunderstorms and mellow guitar grooves. His pet peeves include racism, high school, and the continuing criminalization of marijuana.
"What do you want to know?" He figures Giles already knows the important things. Guitar, bi, reads a lot. "Born here, live with my mom. Used to have a stepdad."
He slides his palm up and down Giles's side, warming the skin there, getting more comfortable. Lying on his side, head pillowed on one arm, close enough that Giles doesn't have to squint.
"Um. Can you ask me a question? 'Cause I can talk, but usually prompting's good."
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There are things he doesn't want to hear about just now, like Oz's family life, school, college plans. Reminders. The age difference is too steep a mountain to climb straight up. The path over it needs to circle and zigzag, to travel gently.
Lying this close, Giles can see the tiny crinkles in Oz's lips and the ginger roots of his hair. Oz's eyes are greener towards the pupil, bluer towards the outside. Giles brushes his thumb over rough, reassuring stubble, follows the slope of his throat, palms his chest and tries to feel his heartbeat.
Questions, trivia. Surfaces. When you read a book, you go from the outside in. Even if the story starts somewhere in the confusing middle.
"Tell me about a happy memory," Giles says, hand moving up the curve of Oz's ribs. It's a simple question, obvious, the way skin is obvious. Until you touch it, feel textures and temperatures, learn how it changes against your mouth and hands and body. Even surfaces are never really simple.
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"Good question," he says.
Considers and discards a lot - first kiss, Reading Rangers award his fourth-grade summer from the public library, the Spinanes show he caught a couple months ago in LA where Rebecca gave him the set list, her pick, and a kiss he felt for days - because even though he trusts Giles, trusts him not to laugh or sneer, Oz trusts this moment more, feels it hovering over both of them, already engraved in memory, and wants to make it count.
"Day my pupa broke and I got to see a monarch butterfly," he says finally, because it is probably his happiest memory. "Third grade? Yeah. Ms. Dougherty. Doing the life-cycle, and I found a pupa and she let me bring it in and it was recess but it was raining so I stayed inside and the pupa was shaking. I used to hang out with it. Play my recorder for it, 'cause -." Babies like music. Dork. "Anyway. And it broke out, and its wings were all wet and grody. Clumped and oozy. Got to watch them unfold. It was like -"
Giles's skin is as smooth and perfectly tight as the pupa's, and Oz touches his arm and shoulderblades with his whole hand. It feels burnished, rubbed down, and if that's age or experience, Oz is all for it.
"Takes a while for the wings to unfold right, it has to flap them really slow and dry them out. Got to watch the whole thing."
Keeping things in fishbowls and glass boxes doesn't appeal to Oz. Feels like you're making the world a zoo, arranging the pretty and pieces of nature for your own entertainment. He's still glad he got to see it.
He turns his hand, curling his fingers into a loose fist and running his knuckles up the half-sunken bones of Giles's spine.
"Good?"
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After enough time has passed, after the wings have dried and the butterfly has taken to the air, he says, "Another time, I'll tell you one of mine." It ought to be too soon to mention other times, future times, but it's not.
He works his fingers through Oz's hair, imagining it fresh from the shower, soft and unstyled. Another time.
They move at the same instant and nearly bump noses, and Oz is still laughing when Giles kisses him.
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His words are a promise, and Giles seals it with a long kiss that thrums and beats against Oz, and as his laughter starts to slow and twist around, it makes him think of windsocks and banners in breezes. His hand fits around the edge of Giles's jaw, fingers curled around his ear, stroking his hair. Invisible, only touched, it feels like frayed rope, wind- and sunbeaten, full of knowledge and experience.
Another time, and Oz believes it. Not used to thinking about the future except to scoff at it, and he likes that there will be more than time to come, that it's not the next time, just another one. Like highways again, endless, as many exits and rest-stops as there are dashes down their center.
In his hair, Giles's fingers are tracking secrets over his scalp, carving new things into him, and Oz doesn't have that much to share in return, but he can kiss, wants to keep kissing Giles and tasting the rhythm of his breath for as long as he can.
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Oz must be studying him too. He's learned to catch Giles' tongue between his teeth, to lick the inside of Giles' lips until he pants.
The kiss doesn't so much end as expand to new territory. Oz shivers when Giles licks his earlobe. Giles kisses down to his neck, bites lightly, and Oz arches and groans and grips his head so he can't move. So he stays, making a line of little bites, wanting to hear those sounds again and again.
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He arches farther back, tries to catch Giles's eye, scratches slowly over warm skin and presses closer. The heat is spreading and thickening inside him, going from the long, tasting kiss warmth that was like red wine into something brighter and stronger, tequila, maybe, or one of those liquors you do by the shot to prove your masculinity, and he clutches Giles's shoulders, feels the joint pressing back against his palm, presses him back against the pillows.
Giles opens his eyes and Oz shakes his head, his mouth too full, too hot, to try and speak. Lowers his face to the spot where Giles's neck curves into, becomes, his shoulder, and tastes all the older kisses there, then hot skin going slick under his tongue. Tries biting, scraping his teeth back and forth, and feels Giles shiver under his hold. So much to touch, and for a moment Oz is too warm, too needy, to remember there's plenty of time, and he slides his palms down Giles's chest, tries moving his nails over the small, flat nipples and looks up, checking Giles's face.
Dark eyes regarding him, mouth open, and Oz remembers. So much to touch, but plenty of time.
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