Giles sets down the spot-cleaner, notes that Oz's suit does not seem to have acquired any blobs of purple nail varnish, notes that Oz's nails exactly match the color of a small bruise on his hip, and only then notes that Oz is naked and rosily fresh-scrubbed and stretched out on the bed. When Giles left the room he was towel-draped and seated, painting his nails with great concentration
( ... )
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
( ... )
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
( ... )
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.
"Thanks. Yeah, purple -" He found the nail polish in a little shop off Oxford Street, a few hours before he picked out the waistcoat. Giles suggested he get a black one, too, just as back-up. The purple seemed, then, like a beautiful congruence, dark and eggplant-y and very lush. Earlier tonight, though, he wasn't so sure about painting them, not with all the dressing-up and the tension and the weird, forced jocularity between them.
But it's better now. Much better, with Giles' touches lingering and sliding, a pat on the back when Oz slips on the waistcoat, then leans over the dresser to figure out which earrings to put in.
"Waist-coat, right?" he asks, still hunting for the last silver ring. "Not weskit, even if that's what the cleaner guy called it?" Giles makes a soft, affirmative noise, and Oz grins. Dressing up really is an entirely new language, with codes and details and syntax he's learning as he goes along. The semantics of it is still escaping him; all he knows, really, is that they both look good. Upright, formal, and *
( ... )
Giles shakes his head and brushes a speck of black lint from the front of Oz's waistcoat. "Don't thank me. It wasn't a gift, it was just something you needed." Oz has his own checkbook now, a cashpoint card and a credit card, but he still tends to think of the money as Giles' money. When it's spent on him, he's both grateful and uncomfortable. "Now, if we'd put diamonds in the lapels like you wanted, then you could've thanked me
( ... )
Olivia's flat, vast and modern, with its spare-lined furniture dotting the space with color, its brushed aluminum and glass block, always makes Giles think of a particularly beautiful airport. The people jostling around the buffet table, as people always do at parties, could be an especially well-dressed crowd queuing at a Heathrow ticket counter
( ... )
It's strange, being able to tell the truth (or most of it) about Oz, but lying about everything else. In Sunnydale, Giles got used to being around people who know he's a Watcher. In London, no one knows but Olivia, Paul, and a few senior people at the British Library whom Giles hasn't seen in years
( ... )
Until now, Oz hadn't realized how weird it was, being separated from Giles like this. He's coming back down to earth, introducing Sophie to Giles and his friend, shaking Meaghan's hand, inching a little closer to Giles all the while, just to feel his familiar bulk for a second or three
( ... )
"Well enough," Giles says. Oz's arm around him feels like a glass of cold water on one of those burning California days--something between comfort and survival. "Although I think I've already had enough small talk. D'you think we could mingle without-"
"Rupert," says a voice to his left, light and charming and more familiar than he'd have thought, after so long. "You know, I didn't quite believe Olivia when she told me you'd be here."
"Paul. How are you? You look well." His hair's gone entirely grey now, fine and silvery, and the good bones of his face show just a little more clearly than they used to. He looks . . . distinguished, but without the faint insulting implication of having outlasted his looks. "And Martin, hello. It's good to see you both." Martin, still as black-haired and shaggy as ever, nods
( ... )
It must be an Ella Fitzgerald mix, and he's heard this one countless times, but everything's different. Only you beneath the moon or under the sun and it's true. Giles is holding back, Oz can feel it, his body graceful under the suit, almost-but-not-quite dancing. Swaying, holding him close, and when Oz opens his eyes, they're near one of Olivia's huge windows and they really are floating over the city.
It's night now, a long bright-lit night, dark as Giles' suit and bright as his eyes when he smiles down at Oz, and then tomorrow it will be day again and a whole new year, and it's all in the rhythm, the beat beat beat of the tom-tom and the drip drip drip of the raindrops. Dancing, staying, living.
The song ends, another one comes on -- "De-Lovely", maybe -- and Oz doesn't quite hear it. He's listening instead to the pulse of Giles' heart and whisper of his lungs, and he squeezes Giles' hand and doesn't stop dancing.
"You're good," he whispers as Giles slows down and edges them back toward the party. "Like, really good."
Oz looks a little dazed, heavy-lidded and soft around the mouth, just as he does first thing in the morning. "Oh yes. All three hundred and sixty-five days of it." Waking up slowly has become one of their luxuries. They kiss and stretch and run their hands over each other as though their memories have gone fuzzy in the night. Every morning Giles still feels a spreading joy--domestic as tea and jumpers, sacred as monastic silence--at the weight of Oz's body glued to his and the first flicker of his opening eyes
( ... )
Oz loves watching Olivia and Giles interact; he always compares them to his memory of Buffy telling them about finding Giles in his apartment with a girl!, like it was something seedy and unbecoming.
It's hard to think of them like that, almost as hard as it is to think of Olivia as a girl. They're like siblings, actually, in how they talk to each other, extremely fond and very easily irritated with each other; it's almost like Buffy and Dawn, or Faith and Buffy before Faith got totally crazy. It's the familiarity between them, the thing that lets them say a lot silently, that Oz loves observing
( ... )
At the thought of Olivia's face if she caught them fucking in the guest room like a couple of drunk students at a house party, Giles laughs, nearly chokes, and has to be pounded on the back a few times by a rueful Oz. "I don't-" he coughs again "-don't think I'd care to risk Olivia's wrath in any case. Or, well, not wrath, but a good deal of mockery
( ... )
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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 ( ... )
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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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But it's better now. Much better, with Giles' touches lingering and sliding, a pat on the back when Oz slips on the waistcoat, then leans over the dresser to figure out which earrings to put in.
"Waist-coat, right?" he asks, still hunting for the last silver ring. "Not weskit, even if that's what the cleaner guy called it?" Giles makes a soft, affirmative noise, and Oz grins. Dressing up really is an entirely new language, with codes and details and syntax he's learning as he goes along. The semantics of it is still escaping him; all he knows, really, is that they both look good. Upright, formal, and * ( ... )
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"Rupert," says a voice to his left, light and charming and more familiar than he'd have thought, after so long. "You know, I didn't quite believe Olivia when she told me you'd be here."
"Paul. How are you? You look well." His hair's gone entirely grey now, fine and silvery, and the good bones of his face show just a little more clearly than they used to. He looks . . . distinguished, but without the faint insulting implication of having outlasted his looks. "And Martin, hello. It's good to see you both." Martin, still as black-haired and shaggy as ever, nods ( ... )
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It's night now, a long bright-lit night, dark as Giles' suit and bright as his eyes when he smiles down at Oz, and then tomorrow it will be day again and a whole new year, and it's all in the rhythm, the beat beat beat of the tom-tom and the drip drip drip of the raindrops. Dancing, staying, living.
The song ends, another one comes on -- "De-Lovely", maybe -- and Oz doesn't quite hear it. He's listening instead to the pulse of Giles' heart and whisper of his lungs, and he squeezes Giles' hand and doesn't stop dancing.
"You're good," he whispers as Giles slows down and edges them back toward the party. "Like, really good."
Giles is ( ... )
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It's hard to think of them like that, almost as hard as it is to think of Olivia as a girl. They're like siblings, actually, in how they talk to each other, extremely fond and very easily irritated with each other; it's almost like Buffy and Dawn, or Faith and Buffy before Faith got totally crazy. It's the familiarity between them, the thing that lets them say a lot silently, that Oz loves observing ( ... )
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