Comments | gilesozrpg: Sunnydale, 10/01: An Oz only a mother (and Giles) could love

glossing in gilesozrpg

Sunnydale, 10/01: An Oz only a mother (and Giles) could love

Aug 11, 2004 21:16

When Oz takes a right out of the Magic Box's alley, instead of the usual left, Giles looks surprised. Oz bites his lip and keeps his eye on the road, weaving up Main Street, then cutting across Calendula, and Giles' brows are lifting and he's about to open his mouth and ask where they're going as Oz slows to nab a parking space ( Read more... )

Comments 47

kindkit August 12 2004, 01:42:31 UTC

"Of course," Giles says, without letting himself think about how he actually feels. This was his idea, but he'd hoped for a day or two's advance notice and a chance to plan out what he's going to say to Oz's mother. The mother of the boy he . . . thinking from her perspective, he stumbles over words he hasn't considered for a long time. Seduced. Molested ( ... )

glossing August 12 2004, 01:51:44 UTC

The glass in the door is still frosted and carved, just like it was when they moved in, but through it, Oz can see something blue and red moving closer. Calling, but even with his good hearing, he can't tell if it's just a minute or jello tins. He picks at the droopy fronds of the fern hanging over the door and holds his breath.

Oz glances at Giles, mouthing love you and thanks, just as the door opens ( ... )

kindkit August 12 2004, 02:16:06 UTC

Right now Giles knows exactly how Oz feels when he's tongue-tied. Events move faster than language, red-shifting past and disappearing into the distance while his words jog along hopelessly. "Hello," he manages, extending a hand that she takes for half a second before hugging Oz again. Pleased to meet you doesn't sound right, and he's not sure whether to call her Teresa or Mrs. Osbourne, but mercifully she's not paying much attention anyway ( ... )

glossing August 12 2004, 02:27:15 UTC

It smells the same in here, potpourri and patchouli and old pot and lemon Pledge, and his mom looks the same, but Oz isn't reassured. He keeps swinging between the need for Giles' hand and the urge to run out the back door and keep going.

"I got your postcard from Mexico," his mom says, pulling him down, and Oz finds himself in the guest chair, while Giles and his mom are on the couch. "And Devon said at one point that you were moving on south. Surely you didn't pick up this delicious Dutchman in South America?"

She's just the same and the guilt explodes under Oz's skin, leaving only comfort, bright and silly. He tries not to laugh, but, even more importantly, not to look at Giles, which *will* make him laugh. "English, Terry. He's English."

"Ohhh," she says, turning to look at Giles more appraisingly. "Really ( ... )

Thread 13

glossing August 21 2004, 23:39:56 UTC

"It's Devon," Oz tells Giles, and glares at Terry again. He's forgotten, these months with Giles, that he *can* play-act, be the aggravated kid, keep her at ease and meet her expectations. When Terry's attention does swing his way - he's always thought of it like a lighthouse, except her lamp's off-kilter and doing its own thing - he's pretty good at being the kid she expects to find. With Giles, he's never been able to, let alone wanted to, pretend to be anyone he isn't ( ... )

kindkit August 22 2004, 00:30:02 UTC

Giles, already blushing and choking back a laugh, manages not to say that he likes Oz's hair this way. Teresa was joking, as parents do, about the nonsense of children, just as Oz seems much younger when he talks to her. But it's not a game Giles can join in, because he'd inevitably be on the wrong side, an adult to Oz's child ( ... )

glossing August 22 2004, 00:46:41 UTC

The frame is light, breakable, in his hands, and Oz concentrates on the messy globs of hardened glue and the smeary fingerprints before looking at the picture. His breath slows down from the spike it gave at Giles' touch and whisper, and he tilts his head. Old things are so delicate, whether they're Giles' books or Oz's crappy crafts projects ( ... )

kindkit August 22 2004, 01:34:57 UTC

Giles presses a quick kiss to Oz's cheek and says, "You're just not . . . glib, that's all. Not brimming over with chatter that doesn't mean anything." Out of the corner of his eye he sees Teresa smile, approvingly or perhaps indulgently ( ... )

Thread 14

glossing August 28 2004, 01:42:32 UTC

Terry actually set the table, which is something new and just as strange as the thought of her cooking. Mismatched plates, which Oz would never have known to notice before Giles, and his dead grandmother's Irish linen napkins with the little shamrock embroidery ( ... )

kindkit August 28 2004, 02:37:56 UTC

Giles reads the wine label, manages not to sigh, and reluctantly opens the bottle. It's one of those watery merlots that are so popular in America-wine for people who don't actually like wine. It won't go with the food, either ( ... )

glossing August 28 2004, 02:58:16 UTC

Oz rattles through his mindfulness prayer, which Giles knows to wait for, but his mom digs in. Widening her eyes at the mala he's turning over his fingers and wrist, she says around a big mouthful of eggplant, "Are you still doing that Zen thing, Danny?"

Oz cracks pepper liberally over his brown rice and hands the shaker to Giles. "Nope. Tibetan."

"I thought you went to Argentina?"

And so it goes, Giles kind of glaring at Terry out of the corner of his eye like he used to do with Xander, but staring openly, widely, at Oz when their eyes meet, and Terry chattering about the job prospects for hypnotherapists just as soon as she gets her degree, and Oz swings back and forth between them until he's dizzy. Giles is ground and turned earth, solid and warm in the sun, and Terry's always been one of those high, high bridges made out of balsa and matchsticks over rocky rivers at the bottom of canyons, and Oz can barely eat ( ... )

kindkit August 28 2004, 04:02:07 UTC

Teresa looks . . . betrayed. Not just hurt or disappointed, but righteously angry. She's tight-lipped, still, and something in her rigid posture makes Giles think of the cinema, of every wronged wife who's ever wept enormous tears on a forty-foot screen. She takes her hand out of Oz's and says, very quietly, "I see ( ... )

Thread 13

kindkit September 5 2004, 22:31:19 UTC

Families. Giles sips his Coca-Cola, rediscovers that he doesn't like it, and tries to puzzle through the word. For once Oz seems surer of language than Giles is.

The Sunnydale group was (is?) a family, of course. A loose one, shifting around the edges like smoke or a flock of birds. A variable one, where he can be Buffy's father or mother or something utterly undefined, where no one's role is ever quite fixed. A family that pushes--he won't say twists--the word family almost out of recognition, to the limits of meaning ( ... )

glossing September 5 2004, 22:51:31 UTC

Giles is blushing, and his words are coming out in a sort of stammery rhythm, so Oz turns his hand and covers Giles' hand with it, tucking his thumb inside as he smiles back.

"It's okay," he says. "I mean, I guess.... Like, I didn't know what to call you, right? Boyfriend or whatever. They're all such stupid words. But family works, because that's you and Buffy and Xander and also Jordy. People I like, you know?"

Oz swallows another gulp of Coke and checks over his shoulder. When he used to come here, people would shift back and forth from table to table, a great shifting crowd of faces, and you were always on the lookout for new arrivals. It kept him on edge, then, whereas now he just feels curious.

"Didn't mean to freak you out. With Terry, or the family thing. Just glad it's over." Hurt, Giles said Oz was hurt. He's still puzzling that out, and he could ask Giles, but that would be weird ( ... )

kindkit September 5 2004, 23:52:19 UTC

"That's another very good word," Giles says. "Love." In so many ways, they're off the map of language. Family is a strange word for them, but Oz is right that it's not the only one. Giles can't imagine calling Oz his boyfriend, although he was pleased, earlier, when Oz said it to Teresa. But it's people Oz's age who have boyfriends and girlfriends. At Giles' age it sounds faintly sordid, as though it involves expensive presents, the promise of a career head start, and perhaps a messy, highly-publicized divorce.

Partner, on the other hand, sounds of golf games and contract negotiations, while lover is a bedroom word, not something to be said to strangers.

Oz, thoughtfully chewing a bite of his cheeseburger, makes one of his few imperative gestures, a wave of the hand and lift of the eybrows. Eat, it means. Giles steals a chip off Oz's plate, although there's an identical, untouched pile of chips on his own, and eats it, then tries his own burger. It really is very good: juicy, salty, and just greasy enough to satisfy that deep ( ... )

glossing September 6 2004, 00:20:01 UTC

Oz swipes the napkin over his mouth, and exhales beef and grease; his head is already starting to swim from the massive meat-infusion, and he can only nod for a few seconds. "It's pretty damn good," he says, and grabs another onion ring from right under Giles' fingers. "Haven't been to the other two counties, though. Wanna come with ( ... )

Thread 7