London, September 2001
Continued from here.
Words and a hand, both of them pale in the dark, both reaching for him, and Oz nods again, swallowing, moves forward. Pale, but more than he's had in years, way more than he deserves, but Oz isn't going to question what Giles is willing to offer. Not any more. Already he's received shelter and touch, food and quiet, gentle questions. So much.
He takes Giles's hand as he sits and holds it between his two smaller ones. You left, the mantra and the statement. Not an accusation, unless it's a bloodless one, drained and limp from overuse and exhaustion. When he left Sunnydale the last time, his head was sick, swirling drunkenly with shame, with the need to move, to flee. Escape and make a run for it, like it was the last chance he'd ever had. "Promise," Oz says. He lifts Giles's hand and kisses it all over again. "I promise I'll say something. I'll stay. Promise."
Giles rolls back a little, making room, and Oz slides under the sheet and blanket awkwardly, still holding Giles's hand, up in the air like a glass of water he's afraid of spilling. On his side, facing Giles, he brings it down between them and kisses Giles again. Dry lips, soft skin. Someday he'll explain what was going on, someday Giles will need to know and Oz will need to tell. But right now, doing that seems as absurd as breaking out a trumpet and playing the third movement to A Love Supreme, absurd and jolting and impossible. Right now Oz just wants to move closer and closer until their arms are bent at the elbow and their hands locked together between them and he can rest his forehead on Giles's shoulder.
Tip back his head and kiss his neck, jaw, mouth.
Words are forming, finding their shapes and gathering, then dispersing, in Oz's throat, on the back of his tongue, but he's still kissing Giles, slow and shallow, petting his damp hair and the words aren't important right now. Love you and I promise and here now rise and entwine as Giles tugs the blanket over Oz's shoulder and cups the back of his skull. Holds him like you hold up a baby's head.
Oz closes his eyes and presses closer. Still arriving, always coming back.
Whether it's the promise, or the way Oz's arm curves across his chest, or simply lying down in the dark, Giles feels better. The constriction in his chest, the tightness of his skin, and the sharp cold ache somewhere beneath his stomach have all eased, although they haven't gone away. Around the edges of him, in his lips and fingers and toes, he feels tingly hints of something else. Pleasure, or maybe even happiness.
He works his fingers over the back of Oz's skull, fine hair and thin skin and heavy protective bone, and somewhere beneath it, Oz himself. Not in brain or bone or blood, yet inhabiting all of them, animating them, sharing their life. Oz sighs a little, sleepily, and Giles kisses his forehead.
After Oz left him, Giles tried to reason himself out of grief by thinking about Oz's body. There was nothing special about it; it was meat and gut and bone, just like anyone else's. Sixty kilos of insides Giles would have been disgusted to see, held together by a few yards of moderately attractive skin. Nothing about it merited his pain; the knowledge that he'd never touch Oz's skin again shouldn't be enough to break him.
It didn't help. Giles knows, always knew, that it was a lie. Oz lives in, lives through his body just as Giles does, feels sorrow and happiness under his skin. And now he's here, his body warm and loose with sleep, and when Giles moves and their bare feet brush, it's truer than words. He's touching Oz, not meat.
Oz is here.
Giles would like to kiss him again, but first he thinks about the texture of Oz's lips, the taste of them, and then he's far too heavy to move, and he sinks unnoticing from thought to dream. At first he dreams of kissing Oz, and then he dreams that he and Oz are walking down Oxford Street with Buffy, and Oxford Street has mysteriously become part of heaven. "If I was alive, I'd be *so* grossed out by you two," she says. "But now I kinda think it's cute. Dead people are weird that way." They go into the Virgin Megastore, and Giles knows it's heaven because you can buy the records that Jimi Hendrix and Charlie Parker and Kurt Cobain would have made if they'd lived. "You can only listen to them here, you know," Buffy says. "You can't take them home with you. It's Customs regulations." Oz is just asking why heaven needs import/export laws when alarms go off and red lights begin to flash, and Giles wonders if the world is ending again, but this is heaven and so that ought to be impossible.
He wakes to the insistent shrilling of the telephone, then the click and murmur of his answering machine. It's Olivia's voice, although he can't make out the words. Tomorrow he really will have to ring her. The sound doesn't wake Oz, who lies unmoving, head resting on Giles' chest, and Giles tucks the blanket closer around him and falls asleep again.
For a long time his sleep is blank and peaceful, and then as he climbs towards wakefulness he begins to dream of Oz. Of kisses, of the depths of Oz's mouth and the way he shivers when Giles' tongue-tip flicks the insides of his cheeks, the way his lips redden and swell when Giles bites them. Oz cups his neck and holds him in the kiss, tugs him sharply closer so that their lips bruise. Sweet and rough and sweet again, Oz licking Giles' lips, teasing out his tongue and nipping at it, and then laughing when Giles catches him by the hair and sucks at his lips until he squirms.
So many kisses, so many ways to kiss, and when Giles awakens to pale dawn light, his lips burn with dreaming and need. He's warm everywhere, his skin eager, his cock heavy and half-stiff. Oz is still sleeping, and they've shifted in the night to lie like spoons, with Oz folded into the angles of Giles' body. Giles kisses the nape of his neck, licks at the salt of his skin, and works a hand under his shirt to stroke his hot, smooth belly. This is right, this is the body's truth, and Giles' body has remembered at last.