At ten-thirty, Buffy called him, obviously apprehensive about settling in to sleep after her run of nightmares, and there was nothing for it but to promise his undivided attention in the morning to searching for an explanation of Angel's strange rebirth. Oddly, agreeing seemed to lift a weight off of Giles that he hadn't fully realized was there. The passion he'd manage to invest in hating Angel had been coexisting rather poorly with the deep-seated, if unobtrusive, passion he'd somehow cultivated over the years for sacrificing himself for his Slayer.

There was more than a hint of the martyr in his personality, Giles had to admit to himself with a dark little smile that only his tumbler of Scotch witnessed. Here he sat, preparing to go to the ends of the earth to win back Angel *Angel,* in the name of all things holy just because he couldn't get those wide, sad eyes out of his head, and the way her lip quivered while she said *losing him.* And here he sat, alone and drinking his second Glenlivet while trying to gauge if there was enough left in the bottle to go for three, just because

Just because of what? Because he hoped to buy some sort of karmic balance, Buffy's inevitable death in Sunnydale against Oz's future outside of it, both brought to you courtesy of Rupert Giles the Watcher? Or just because he was coming to crave the fierce clarity of pain, savoring the sense of loss that seemed to be becoming more and more integral to any fair definition of Giles' existence?

At twelve-thirty, Oz called him, and Giles let the answering machine pick it up.

"Giles?" That wind-soft, sand-rough voice could make Giles' heart rattle apart, just hearing it in the dark silence. "G, are you home? Okay, well okay. I think I'm not coming over on Friday. God, you're really going to think this is about earlier. It's not. I just got a call from my mom, and she and my dad are coming into Santa Fe for Christmas, just for a couple of days, and they wanted me to drive out. I think I should. I haven't seen them in a while. Plus, Christmas. So...I'll go first thing Friday morning. But I'll probably see you before then. Just thought you should know."

Giles could almost count the pause in the number of breaths he didn't take, waiting for the click of the line disconnecting or for more of Oz's voice.

So soft, low like a hypnotist's mellow, scripted intimacy. "I'm glad you came by."

He exhaled on the click.

At three minutes til one, Oz was at the door, and Giles was by no means martyr enough to keep from answering it. "Christmas present," Oz explained, holding something that looked like a small bowling ball toward him. As Giles stepped away to let Oz in the door, he realized it was in fact a coconut. Giles knew he wasn't hiding the bewilderment very well, squinting at Oz from behind his glasses.

Oz pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and held it out in his other hand. "And I got to thinking that maybe the Gilligan's Island reference threw you for a little curve, so I sort of wrote up a little thing about the show, which I've actually started thinking has a lot of parallels to our lives. I included those, too, even though I couldn't decide who would be Ginger. And you'll have to have to read the paragraph on the Professor, cause then this coconut thing, I promise, it'll seem really witty."

Bewilderment no longer quite covered it, but Giles took both the coconut and its footnotes and set them on the end table. "Thank you. This is very thoughtful."

"No problem."

Mainly in order to break the terrible silence, Giles said, "How nice that you'll be able to see your family over Christmas."

"Should be fun."

"Are you" Giles began, but without warning Oz seized him so tightly and pulled his head down to kiss him so passionately that whatever Giles had been about to say was instantly gone forever.

And *passionately* almost seemed too simplistic a word. Oz had always been forthright in their sexual relationship, but this was a level of naked desire that Giles had rarely had focused on him before, and never from Oz. It was searing, the heat of Oz's need melting him down to his base elements, and suddenly there was no more confusion. Oz's mouth, claiming his own so completely, had generated the sort of fire that separated the dross from from the good. *If Oz says you're the good, then you're it.* For the first time, Giles shared Devon's confidence completely. He felt...good.

Vaguely, Giles realized that Oz was leaning down over him, his mouth driving against Giles' from above, and then he understood that Oz was no longer on the floor, half wrapped around Giles and half supported by his arms, which were beginning to quiver with the strain. Oz's own arms were twined firmly around his neck, forming a bracket that gently held his head in place while Oz's tongue thrust deeply into his mouth.

It couldn't last, and at least Giles managed to pull away and give a mumbled "Look out, then" before they both dropped to the floor, borne down by their own weight. Taking this failure as an advantage, Giles immediately set about stripping Oz of his shirt; his own robe had long since come untied, and the erection beneath his boxers was showing clearly.

They made the process of undressing into foreplay as best they could, because it was glaringly apparent, at least to Giles, that neither of them were capable of much more than that. "I fucked up tonight," Oz said on a gasp as Giles' hand ran firmly up his narrow chest, making Oz's hips twitch in an unintentionally ruinous way against Giles' own hips.

"I may have been hasty. This is a...complex relationship, and it does bear considering from all"

He gripped Giles' hair roughly and pulled him down for a quick, violent kiss. "Say it again."

"This is a complex relationship?"

"No. Other thing."

Ah. "I love you," Giles murmured, and sealed it with a handful of warm, savoring kisses.

"I want to say it, but I can't. Do you understand? I'm trying, but it it just sticks. Jesus, Rupert. I'm...scared. I don't even know what I'm scared of."

"Hush, hush." He let his hand sweep playfully down Oz's face, as though brushing those words, that conversation away. "I think if you will consider your present position, you might feel more or less forgiven."

He laughed deep in his chest and drew his fingernails up Giles' spine. "I'll let you know how I feel after you fuck me, okay?"

"Okay."

Collecting Oz's saliva on his hand was a pleasure, collecting his precum even more of one, but it was all simply more of that rough, functional foreplay, making it possible to make one long slide into Oz. Giles knew the moment he was fully sheathed inside that incredible tightness that this encounter was likely to be brief but memorable, and he took a tight grip on Oz's cock, working up and down it with even more speed than his body was managing as it thrust in and out of Oz's. Slow should be slow, and fast should be very fast, or at least that was part of Giles' general philosophy of sex. Trust Oz to make a person evolve a philosophy about almost everything.

In the moments like these, when he could feel the orgasm building inside his lover, beating hard along with their synchronized pulses, when he was buried inside Oz and full of him in return the scent of his sweat, the little noises he made, half moan and half grunt, Oz's cock filling his hand and his tongue filling Giles' mouth Giles experienced the highly cliched sensation that nothing but the two of them existed. Far from mere delirium, however, it was a gift, a moment to treasure. With Oz twined around him and breathing deep into his thrusts, Giles didn't even believe in vampires.

Even the shattering impact of his orgasm didn't quite bring Giles crashing back to reality, mainly because it loosed the steel bands around his brain enough for him to concentrate on the look and the feel of Oz underneath him, caught up in his own final throes. He went rigid as he came, and Giles rubbed his fingers deep into the tense muscles through Oz's shoulder, making the fixed, serious look on Oz's face dissolve into a softer expression of relaxation. Giles quickly licked the semen off his hand and then kissed it off Oz's flat stomach, much more slowly.

Oz smoothed the fingers of one hand deeply through Giles' hair. "A very special holiday episode of Gilligan's Island. Things we never knew about Gilligan and the Professor."

"Not Harker and Van Helsing, then, I take it?"

He seemed to give that due thought. "Did they ever meet? Cause I think I could like being played by Keanu."

"I worry about you."

Too late, Giles realized that his statement might be construed as a flippant comment about the relationship between Oz's appreciation of Keanu Reeves and his mental state, but fortunately Oz seemed to understand him completely. "I know. I would, too, except that once I get started worrying, I never know where to stop. So I usually just skip the whole thing."

"I wish I had that talent."

"Glad you don't. It's not all it's cracked up to be. With no one who worries about you."

Giles put all the tenderness he could into a few kisses on Oz's lips and his eyelids. "Remember that."

Closing his eyes, Oz spoke even more softly than usual, so low that Giles had to tilt his head a little to catch the words. "My parents grew up in Sunnydale. I think they're afraid to come back. They never talk about it. They actually talk a lot, but not about anything in Sunnydale. Including me."

"I'm sure they're doing what they think best."

"Yeah, but I don't know if their parenting strategy would stand up to a lot of critical analysis. Hey, here's irony: my adolescent rebellion against my parents does not consist of being a vegetarian, playing in a rock band, or dyeing my hair, all of which they think is pretty cool. I just stay home a lot."

"All in all, not terribly self-destructive, as adolescent rebellions go. I think. Or perhaps more so than usual. I'm not entirely sure."

"Glad you approve."

"Well, it is one more command I won't have to bother training you to *stay.*"

The laugh started out silent, as usual, but it bubbled up without warning, a rich and variable sound, like scales played lightly on a piano. "It's kind of a specialty. That and *roll over.*"

"Now if only we can work on *speak.*"

"You really don't want me barking at the mailman."

"I want you any way I can get you."

It was a bit of a chance, pulling in the reins on this sudden drift toward companionable lightheartedness, but it seemed to pay off, as Oz slipped his hand warmly over the back of Giles' neck, pulling him down for another of those luxurious kisses. "Drive you to school in the morning."

"Very much appreciated."

Very much.

~end~