He should have known this would happen. Oz can sleep through traffic noise, music, nearby construction, but if Giles gets up to go to the toilet, Oz is usually awake when he gets back. Sleeping, Oz relies on him.
Oz looks so young, knuckling his eyes and yawning. Wrong of Giles to wake him, and Giles knew, must have known, he would. Selfish. If he'd waited, spent another night or two holding Oz and chasing blankness of mind, he'd have slept eventually.
Slept, and dreamed, and lain sleepless again, thinking about the bottle in his briefcase, the liquid miracle inside it.
"It's all right," he says quietly, face turned down just enough to keep Oz a peripheral blur. "Go back to sleep. I'll be in before long."
Oz slides all the way into the room, the after-image of Giles' face -- blank, dark pooling shadows where his eyes should be -- stuck in front of his vision.
"Yeah," he says as he rounds the corner of the table and plops down into the arm chair opposite Giles. "Not sleepy any more, though."
The bottle's right under the bulb, and the light is caught in the last of the whiskey. Maybe two fingers' worth left, transformed into amber flame that curves around the inside of the bottle.
Orange juice, no pulp, was his favorite mixer. Oz takes the bottle and holds it in both his hands, letting the liquid slosh slowly back and forth, breathing out the citrus-sharp *hunger* for a swallow.
"Used to have this much for breakfast," he says, passing the bottle back to Giles and drawing his knees up to his chest even as he sits forward on the chair. "What's your occasion?"
Giles looks at Oz, almost invisible in the dark recess of the armchair, and tries to think. The drink's creeping into his synapses like fog around the doorframe, shrouding and stifling. He could probably sleep now, wrap himself around Oz and fade to black, if Oz hadn't said that strange and terrible thing.
Oz . . . Oz used to like scrambled eggs for breakfast. Or sweet things, French toast, oatmeal with a melting crust of brown sugar. Orange juice or grape juice or milk.
Oz got sick once from red wine, and never had more than a glass or two after that. Oz tasted Giles' best Oban scotch once and hated it.
"What-" His tongue, enormous and sticky, turns the consonants into muddy squelches. Nothing to wet his mouth with but whiskey, so he takes a sip. "I don't - don't understand." Oz held the bottle, looked at it, in a way Giles knows. Held it like he was aching for a drink.
Fear is humming through, and off, Giles -- tightening his face, deepening the lines around his mouth -- and he sounds lost. Lost and confused, the words coming out like half-formed questions that curl, then hook and snag, down Oz's throat, inside his mind.
"Love you so much --" Oz tips a little against Giles and pulls him down, mouth on his cheek.
Every day for the next year, more than a year, they were breathing the same air and not *doing* anything. Being miserable together but separate. He watched Giles, watched as much as he could, but through the smear and fog of his own thoughts.
And anyway, back then, Giles never wanted to speak to him. So much time *wasted*.
"Not stupid," Oz is saying now, fingers moving in Giles' hair. "Never stupid. Want to tell me about the dreams?"
Of course he doesn't want to tell Oz. Not telling him is terribly, terribly important. Not telling him, because he's happy.
Guilt goes into happiness like blood into water. There's no making it clean again, afterwards.
Flaw in that thinking, somewhere. Monumental stupidity in it. Must be, because Oz wants to know. Must be, because Giles is drunk, stupid, cowardly, and Oz is holding him and saying love.
"Dream about-" No, that won't do. His face is pressed to Oz's neck, speech slurred even to his own ears. Giles lifts his head a little, just enough to talk, eyes closed. "All those people in New York. Who died. I dream . . . they come back to life. Wrong, demonic. And." He must be shaking, because Oz is holding him tightly, so tightly he can feel it through the numbness. "And I have to kill them. Every single one." Bloody hands slipping on the sword-hilt, and there are so many, and their families are screaming, begging him to let them live
( ... )
Eyes closed, specs smeared with fingerprints and sticky with the light, Giles resembles a seer, Tiresias or somebody, reciting the horrors that lay ahead. Shamans get drunk, do psychotropics and other things, in order to induce the visions; that's who Giles is right now, except he's in his own vision
( ... )
The problem with not telling Oz is that then he doesn't know. Says well-meaning things, loving things, and thinks they're true. "I rang her," Giles says. "A few days ago. First night I couldn't sleep." Oz's hands go still on his neck and back, and Giles wants to push against him like a puppy, a spoilt housecat, demanding to be petted some more.
As though Oz hasn't touched him as much as ever these last days, kissed him, sat in his lap, come in his mouth and his hands, slept in his arms. Good, always good, but not a cure for this.
Taking Oz's hands in his own, Giles sits up. "She put the phone down. Wouldn't talk to me at all."
Unfair of him, really, to be so hurt. It's a way of blaming her. Burdening her with what's his, and she's got responsibilities enough of her own. "She'll get over it," Giles says quickly, in case Oz is about to be angry at her. "I know. But she - she will die. And I won't be there. I chose." He kisses Oz's hand, not sure if it's his lips or Oz's fingers that are so cold. "I chose right. Just need to get
( ... )
For a moment, the dark trembles, like it's about to pull apart, going threadbare, stretching over a bright shine it can't possibly cover. Oz blinks hard, swallowing against the uprush of air from his lungs, and squeezes Giles' hand.
Knowing someone better is all well and good when you know the *good* stuff. How he takes his tea, what he looks like asleep when you slip back into bed after morning meditation, the sound of his voice from the bottom of the stairwell.
Confession, though, confession of mistakes and stupidity is -- Oz thinks it's a whole other realm, but it isn't. It's the same as sharing soap and making tea for someone.
"Other things...well, like drugs. Lot of acid, that kind of thing." It's dark between them, around them, but Giles' face is a shade less dark, a degree warmer, and Oz leans in. "Anything to, um. Stop thinking. So I drank. Tripped." He coughs into his free hand. "Sleptaroundalot."
Better to get it all out then make Giles *pull* it out of him, strand by filthy tendon-like strand.
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
( ... )
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
( ... )
Giles' robe smells like whiskey, sure, but it also smells like their bed, warm with skin and sweat, and *Giles* himself, everything from cumin powder to parchment and in between. Oz wraps it twice around himself and pulls the wide lapels up around his face. Until Giles stepped away, he didn't realize quite how cold he was
( ... )
At the moment, warm and clean and mostly sober, heavy with his own weight and Oz's, reassuringly sleepy, Giles believes that Oz really could chase the nightmares away. Oz knows mysteries, after all. Knows how to make Giles better, happier. Knows how to work miracles with tea and scones and touch. "Yes."
It's warm now under the duvet, and Giles slips a hand past the dressing gown and t-shirt to touch Oz's back, fold his fingers into the valley below his shoulderblade. He thinks, vaguely, of the crowds around saints and lamas, jostling for a brush of fingers or even the hem of a robe. "You're so good to me," he says, and softly presses his lips to Oz's. Reverence. In the marriage service, there's a promise to worship. They knew something, all those old priests and scholars.
He's falling asleep faster than he wants to. Strange, after so many nights hungering for sleep, despairing of it and fearing it. But right, necessary. He's not afraid. If he has nightmares, Oz will be there.
Eventually, Giles' head drops away, his forehead bumping Oz's chin, his mouth opening on the base of Oz's throat. Eventually, but it's a long time, his lips on Oz's, his breath stirring up with Oz's own, and it's almost like falling asleep. Sliding away and under, into dreams and comfort.
Almost, but Oz is still awake. His eyes are open, his fingers tight in Giles' pajamas, and he feels Giles sleeping against him, chest rising and voice murmuring occasionally.
He doesn't think he's particularly good to Giles. Not the way Giles means it, anyway -- as if he doesn't quite deserve it, as if it's a kind of mystery or plot that will change and lift at any moment. Oz is, he thinks, wiggling downward until his cheek is against Giles' forehead, just who he is
( ... )
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Oz looks so young, knuckling his eyes and yawning. Wrong of Giles to wake him, and Giles knew, must have known, he would. Selfish. If he'd waited, spent another night or two holding Oz and chasing blankness of mind, he'd have slept eventually.
Slept, and dreamed, and lain sleepless again, thinking about the bottle in his briefcase, the liquid miracle inside it.
"It's all right," he says quietly, face turned down just enough to keep Oz a peripheral blur. "Go back to sleep. I'll be in before long."
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"Yeah," he says as he rounds the corner of the table and plops down into the arm chair opposite Giles. "Not sleepy any more, though."
The bottle's right under the bulb, and the light is caught in the last of the whiskey. Maybe two fingers' worth left, transformed into amber flame that curves around the inside of the bottle.
Orange juice, no pulp, was his favorite mixer. Oz takes the bottle and holds it in both his hands, letting the liquid slosh slowly back and forth, breathing out the citrus-sharp *hunger* for a swallow.
"Used to have this much for breakfast," he says, passing the bottle back to Giles and drawing his knees up to his chest even as he sits forward on the chair. "What's your occasion?"
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Giles looks at Oz, almost invisible in the dark recess of the armchair, and tries to think. The drink's creeping into his synapses like fog around the doorframe, shrouding and stifling. He could probably sleep now, wrap himself around Oz and fade to black, if Oz hadn't said that strange and terrible thing.
Oz . . . Oz used to like scrambled eggs for breakfast. Or sweet things, French toast, oatmeal with a melting crust of brown sugar. Orange juice or grape juice or milk.
Oz got sick once from red wine, and never had more than a glass or two after that. Oz tasted Giles' best Oban scotch once and hated it.
"What-" His tongue, enormous and sticky, turns the consonants into muddy squelches. Nothing to wet his mouth with but whiskey, so he takes a sip. "I don't - don't understand." Oz held the bottle, looked at it, in a way Giles knows. Held it like he was aching for a drink.
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"Love you so much --" Oz tips a little against Giles and pulls him down, mouth on his cheek.
Every day for the next year, more than a year, they were breathing the same air and not *doing* anything. Being miserable together but separate. He watched Giles, watched as much as he could, but through the smear and fog of his own thoughts.
And anyway, back then, Giles never wanted to speak to him. So much time *wasted*.
"Not stupid," Oz is saying now, fingers moving in Giles' hair. "Never stupid. Want to tell me about the dreams?"
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Guilt goes into happiness like blood into water. There's no making it clean again, afterwards.
Flaw in that thinking, somewhere. Monumental stupidity in it. Must be, because Oz wants to know. Must be, because Giles is drunk, stupid, cowardly, and Oz is holding him and saying love.
"Dream about-" No, that won't do. His face is pressed to Oz's neck, speech slurred even to his own ears. Giles lifts his head a little, just enough to talk, eyes closed. "All those people in New York. Who died. I dream . . . they come back to life. Wrong, demonic. And." He must be shaking, because Oz is holding him tightly, so tightly he can feel it through the numbness. "And I have to kill them. Every single one." Bloody hands slipping on the sword-hilt, and there are so many, and their families are screaming, begging him to let them live ( ... )
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As though Oz hasn't touched him as much as ever these last days, kissed him, sat in his lap, come in his mouth and his hands, slept in his arms. Good, always good, but not a cure for this.
Taking Oz's hands in his own, Giles sits up. "She put the phone down. Wouldn't talk to me at all."
Unfair of him, really, to be so hurt. It's a way of blaming her. Burdening her with what's his, and she's got responsibilities enough of her own. "She'll get over it," Giles says quickly, in case Oz is about to be angry at her. "I know. But she - she will die. And I won't be there. I chose." He kisses Oz's hand, not sure if it's his lips or Oz's fingers that are so cold. "I chose right. Just need to get ( ... )
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Knowing someone better is all well and good when you know the *good* stuff. How he takes his tea, what he looks like asleep when you slip back into bed after morning meditation, the sound of his voice from the bottom of the stairwell.
Confession, though, confession of mistakes and stupidity is -- Oz thinks it's a whole other realm, but it isn't. It's the same as sharing soap and making tea for someone.
"Other things...well, like drugs. Lot of acid, that kind of thing." It's dark between them, around them, but Giles' face is a shade less dark, a degree warmer, and Oz leans in. "Anything to, um. Stop thinking. So I drank. Tripped." He coughs into his free hand. "Sleptaroundalot."
Better to get it all out then make Giles *pull* it out of him, strand by filthy tendon-like strand.
Reply
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 ( ... )
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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 ( ... )
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It's warm now under the duvet, and Giles slips a hand past the dressing gown and t-shirt to touch Oz's back, fold his fingers into the valley below his shoulderblade. He thinks, vaguely, of the crowds around saints and lamas, jostling for a brush of fingers or even the hem of a robe. "You're so good to me," he says, and softly presses his lips to Oz's. Reverence. In the marriage service, there's a promise to worship. They knew something, all those old priests and scholars.
He's falling asleep faster than he wants to. Strange, after so many nights hungering for sleep, despairing of it and fearing it. But right, necessary. He's not afraid. If he has nightmares, Oz will be there.
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Almost, but Oz is still awake. His eyes are open, his fingers tight in Giles' pajamas, and he feels Giles sleeping against him, chest rising and voice murmuring occasionally.
He doesn't think he's particularly good to Giles. Not the way Giles means it, anyway -- as if he doesn't quite deserve it, as if it's a kind of mystery or plot that will change and lift at any moment. Oz is, he thinks, wiggling downward until his cheek is against Giles' forehead, just who he is ( ... )
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