Oz would like to fold in on himself. The whole way over, he kept trying. If his body can go huge and furry, why can't it shrink the other way? Bring him down to the size of a pea, small and inconsequential, let him roll away, out of the way
( ... )
"Everyone's fine." Oz closes his eyes at that, takes a deep breath. Giles can look at him then, look at a face that isn't at all monstrous. Then Oz's eyes open, meet his, and they're too much. Too much the same. Giles looks at the woven geometries of the blanket instead, at Oz's smooth, small hand resting on it. "Y- the wolf didn't hurt anyone. We . . . used a tranquilizer gun. It should wear off soon."
Giles' untouched tea has turned cold; he gulps it down anyway, and the whiskey is a kind of warmth. "Why didn't you tell me?" His voice goes high at the end, insistent and shrill. Angry. It's a surprise; he didn't know he was angry. One more secret, among so many. One more deception, as though there aren't enough. As though deceptions aren't piled to the ceiling, trailing out the door. As though Sunnydale isn't built on deceptions, all its foundations and beams and stucco nothing but lies. Houses, shops, churches, the school, lie upon lie. The only truth in Sunnydale is the hellmouth, down under the deceptions, invisible to the eye.
Giles is mad at him, and it's new. Different. It's not frustration, or weariness, or anxiety. It's real, actual anger and it's colder than anything. Cuts right through the soggy haze that must be the tranquilizer and wraps around his aching bones.
He traces the nested squares on the blanket with the tip of his finger; he knows this blanket well. He thinks Giles got it in Germany, that it's boiled wool and therefore twice as strong and warm. Four shades of gray, charcoal to silver, building around and out of each other like an Escher design.
Giles hates monsters. Hating monsters is what brought him here in the first place, what keeps him here, what makes him himself. The thought of telling him was like the idea of walking to the edge of the flat earth and jumping off. Impossible, suicidal.
"Couldn't tell you," he adds, because Giles still isn't saying anything.
Giles clasps his hands in his lap, squeezes them into tight, joined fists. "You couldn't-?" Tighter, harder, because if he lets his hands go they might grasp Oz's shoulders and shake words out of him. Shake him loose from that quiet that Giles always thought was honesty. "How long have you known? How long have you been lying to me
( ... )
The words seem to come from some far, interstellar distance, attenuated to the faintest whisper against the background crackle of quasars, pulsars, solar winds. It takes Giles a while to decipher them, and longer to climb the four steps he'd descended, to traverse the light years of empty space to the bed and Oz
( ... )
Giles' body is the most familiar thing Oz knows, the most welcome warmth. Right now he smells sharp, like worry and despair and sweat. He's strange and different, and Oz feels ice building in his chest. He keeps his eyes closed and holds onto Giles as tightly as he can without frightening him.
"Love you," he says into Giles' neck. And he does, and the words taste warm and dark in his mouth. They feel right, right in a way that Giles' own voice still doesn't feel. Giles sounds so flat and dull, going through things by rote, out of duty, and it makes Oz's head want to cave in.
"Have to make it all right," he says a little later, when he can't help it, when Giles' stillness and silence start to overwhelm him. "Want to make it better."
He's always missed Giles, no matter how close they were; it's how they helped diagnose the fact that he *loves* Giles in the first place. Oz wonders now what the opposite of missing is, what Giles is feeling that isn't missing, isn't the feeling of lack, but of too much, smothering, drowning.
Giles wonders what would make it all right, how Oz could possibly fix this. Could he invent a cure, a vaccine to kill the wolf, cleanse him of it, make him entirely himself again? Could he build a time machine, go back and not be bitten? Or further back, to the moment when he could have told Giles everything, and didn't? Could he cure the lie that's been between them all this time
( ... )
When Oz dares to open his eyes, Giles' face is too close to be recognizable. His skin is rough, this close, the pores like gnats, the wrinkles around his eye harsh and crumpled. He kisses Giles' cheek again, because there aren't lies with gestures.
Oz trusts words even less than ever right now. He doesn't believe Giles, but he knows why he's saying these things. Why he's trying to be reassuring and optimistic. He doesn't know why Giles won't believe him, though; why not telling him about his mother's family counts as a lie.
"Want it to be," he whispers and pulls back until he can see Giles more clearly, see the face that lives behind his lids, the one he aches, daily, to see and touch and kiss. "Tell me how to help. Tell me what to do."
Giles looks like he's keeping a secret, like he wants to tell Oz something but won't let himself. More than that, he looks happy, almost at ease in his yellow shirt, open at the collar and sunny, even in the brightness of the apartment. His hair is askew, his eyes crinkling up as he ducks in and kisses Oz's cheek
( ... )
When Oz kisses him, Giles realizes how quickly memories dull, how they lose color and scent and life, like flowers pressed in a book. What he remembered was just an image of this, no more like the real taste of Oz than brittle, compressed petals are like a garden. This is sunlight, color, the rising scents of rosemary and lavender and rich earth after the rain
( ... )
Oz slides his palm into Giles' open collar, slowly pressing and rubbing against the warmth of his skin, curving his hand to fit the rise of his collarbone, then slipping down, cupping one pec, concentrating until he can feel Giles' heartbeat against his palm. Steady, always there, sound beneath words and far more trustworthy
( ... )
"I know. I'm sorry." It's not easier. It's harder, having Oz just a few feet away across the library conference table, so close and utterly untouchable. It leaves Giles perpetually nervous, worse than he's been since the early days. Even the mention of Oz's name sends adrenaline waterfalling through him
( ... )
Comments 46
Reply
Giles' untouched tea has turned cold; he gulps it down anyway, and the whiskey is a kind of warmth. "Why didn't you tell me?" His voice goes high at the end, insistent and shrill. Angry. It's a surprise; he didn't know he was angry. One more secret, among so many. One more deception, as though there aren't enough. As though deceptions aren't piled to the ceiling, trailing out the door. As though Sunnydale isn't built on deceptions, all its foundations and beams and stucco nothing but lies. Houses, shops, churches, the school, lie upon lie. The only truth in Sunnydale is the hellmouth, down under the deceptions, invisible to the eye.
Reply
Giles is mad at him, and it's new. Different. It's not frustration, or weariness, or anxiety. It's real, actual anger and it's colder than anything. Cuts right through the soggy haze that must be the tranquilizer and wraps around his aching bones.
He traces the nested squares on the blanket with the tip of his finger; he knows this blanket well. He thinks Giles got it in Germany, that it's boiled wool and therefore twice as strong and warm. Four shades of gray, charcoal to silver, building around and out of each other like an Escher design.
Giles hates monsters. Hating monsters is what brought him here in the first place, what keeps him here, what makes him himself. The thought of telling him was like the idea of walking to the edge of the flat earth and jumping off. Impossible, suicidal.
"Couldn't tell you," he adds, because Giles still isn't saying anything.
Reply
Reply
Reply
"Love you," he says into Giles' neck. And he does, and the words taste warm and dark in his mouth. They feel right, right in a way that Giles' own voice still doesn't feel. Giles sounds so flat and dull, going through things by rote, out of duty, and it makes Oz's head want to cave in.
"Have to make it all right," he says a little later, when he can't help it, when Giles' stillness and silence start to overwhelm him. "Want to make it better."
He's always missed Giles, no matter how close they were; it's how they helped diagnose the fact that he *loves* Giles in the first place. Oz wonders now what the opposite of missing is, what Giles is feeling that isn't missing, isn't the feeling of lack, but of too much, smothering, drowning.
Reply
Reply
Oz trusts words even less than ever right now. He doesn't believe Giles, but he knows why he's saying these things. Why he's trying to be reassuring and optimistic. He doesn't know why Giles won't believe him, though; why not telling him about his mother's family counts as a lie.
"Want it to be," he whispers and pulls back until he can see Giles more clearly, see the face that lives behind his lids, the one he aches, daily, to see and touch and kiss. "Tell me how to help. Tell me what to do."
Tell me what I did, he wants to add.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment