| "Born on the Bayou" comes on, the song that Oz thinks makes everyone
who hears it secretly want to have been born there, too. Nate jumps in softly,
a rough and obviously untaught tenor.
"Wish I was back on the bayou..." And then Giles jumps in, strong in the way people with trained voices
can't "... a'rollin' with some Cajun queen..." Giles' voice rings, like a tuning fork struck on his breastbone. Oz knows better than to inflict his voice on the others and just nods his head. Listens. Drives. It's another hour before anyone says anything. Giles has switched
to some folky guitar music. Nate is touching Oz's mind, curious and active
in a way Looking around, calling up memories here and there, or parts of them. Looking at Oz's favorite-song file, until it suddenly becomes the ultimate stereo system and he can hear Iggy Pop *through* the song on the radio, smell sweat and way too much weed and that special metal-and-home scent that's his old van. Abruptly nearly drowns in Willow-scent, and has to concentrate on not driving into trees for a while. *sorry sorry I'll be more careful want to know you* *It's okay.* And it is. Starting to know Nate's touches to his mind the way he knows the sweet ache of Nate inside him, so deep. Nate laughing at the flood of awful images he calls up to avoid getting immediately hard. Nate pushing against the driver's seat with his back, a needful little caress that makes Oz long for nightfall, and the skin of him against his own. *love you Oz* *thank you* Soft wail in his head against the music. Deftones' "Be Quiet and Drive." Soft crackle of Nate's laughter in the back of his mind. Oz doesn't think this is rude to Giles, not really. This isn't a conversation he'd ever have in front of the man. In front of anyone. If he had to do it out loud, maybe not at all. But this is less like talk than like touch, a kind of mental reflection of Nate's mass pressing against his seatback. They aren't on the highway anymore. Oz wasn't, when they came
for him. Long, flat light runs across the desert. Nate digs in Oz's
mind and comes up with the secretly beloved cover photos from The Joshua
Tree. Little knotted riff from the beginning of Where the Streets Have
No Name. And Giles looks up. "I saw them, you know." Oz raises an eyebrow. "In London, in a club, just before I came to America. They were children." "Were they good?" *What's he talking about, Nate?* *U2* "They were dreadful. They were children." He drums on the window in a half-speed counter-rhythm. "He was there with me." "Ethan?" "Yes. I hadn't seen him in nearly a year, but he showed up
on my doorstep "Pretty good spell." "Ethan is very talented. Was. Is." Giles lapses into silence. Oz cuts Nate off from letting the album run into "With or Without You." *How'd you *do* that?* *There are a lot of residual radio waves out here. All I had to do was find the right ones.* *Nate...* *It's just... I could see a connection between you and Giles that neither of you knew was there. You don't know what that feels like. Two things that should be together and aren't, like --* Oz receives an image of Nate holding two powerful magnets apart from each other. *I just... let go.* *Warn me. I can't specify this enough. *Warn* me.* *Sorry, right, yes. Talk to him, Oz. He needs it.* The song on the radio switches to something with a lot of cheerful guitar that makes Giles rummage in the tape box again. Seemingly picks one at random, and when the music starts it's Cream. "Bloody *hell*." Giles hits the eject button again, turns the radio off. Puts his head in his hands. "Giles? Do you need me to pull over somewhere?" "Oh, I think that's the worst possible thing you could do right now, Oz, thank you. No, drive. I just need to. Get this under control." "Maybe you don't. I mean, not just yet." "It was supposed to be a spell that killed him. One final summoning, a carelessly broken circle. A bloody angry *mob*. Bloody anything but *this*." Nate shifting to put a hand on Giles' shoulders, sharing the stiffening and release of muscles and it makes Oz almost caress the steering wheel. "I left a letter, you know." "Yeah?" "The shop for Anya. Something to start her out in the world. I felt she would... appreciate it in several different ways. The books to Willow and Tara... Tara's a steadying influence on her, Oz, much as you were." Oz nods, tries to project *listening* to Giles even as he keeps his eyes on the road. "This rather changes things, doesn't it." Not a question, so Oz doesn't bother to answer. "Ethan... was it so wrong to want it... that way? An ending to everything we started, all those years ago, one way or another. I'm the only one left to do it anything like justice. Ethan always did appreciate a grand gesture. "I'm so afraid to see what he's become." "I could say that I understand, but I'm gonna take a wild stab at
things and Sad laugh. "Oz... you have been sorely missed." Support and worry vibes from Nate, and suddenly an image in his own mind, the three of them curled up like wolves in a low cave, snarling at whoever came close. Weirdly satisfying feel to it, and Oz doesn't like what that says about his mental state. *Everybody needs a safe place.* *Yeah, but would my cave talk to me when I got lonely?* *Does rock have a lot to say?* And this time Oz *does* feel guilty. To have this, someone to be
with him, "Giles. I know we haven't lived half as much as you have, but we *have* lived. Everybody back home, too. I know you don't think we understand that you need, you know, actual *adults* to talk to, but we do. Even Xander." *Maybe especially Xander.* *Yeah, there are some issues there I'd like to deal with.* *Can't fix everybody, Nate.* *I can try.* Oz sends a kiss, gets a little lost in the sending he gets in return and misses part of what Giles says. "... not as flexible as I could've been, or as kind. I confess to often not having the faintest clue on how to relate to all of you, what is and isn't appropriate." "Maybe you should worry less about what we should hear and more about what we need to hear. Nate thinks you just want us to have a childhood, and maybe he's right, but you can't be the one who decides that. Wow. I'm talking a *lot*. Weird." "Well as long as you are..." "Mmm?" "Tell me about Nate. Or have Nate tell me about himself.
I'm afraid I find Nate asks, "Was there something specific you wanted to know?" "You could tell me your last name. It would give us that aura of true acquaintances." Nate looks at him for a second. Oz can't actually see him doing it, but he gets the edges of whatever Nate's seeing more and more of the time. And he feels Nate move. Gets up onto his knees and scoots forward so he can see up between the bucket seats. "Grey." Gets Giles' raised eyebrows. "My last name is Grey. Sort of. I didn't used to have one, but I picked Jean's a bit after I met her, while I was still figuring out she was my mother. Mostly because I couldn't get along here without one." "And your power is genetic?" "Yep. My earth and a couple of the ones on either side are
given to rapid, intensive genetic mutations. So that in one generation
everyone's normal, "Is it recessive?" "Nope. And yeah, I know it should be, but there's only one case anyone's come across where Alpha-level mutant parents produced a normal human child." "How did he take it?" "He organized hate groups." "Ah." "My family's produced four of that world's dozen or so major telepaths, if you count me." Soft, reassuring, oddly scientific explanations, Giles questioning like the softest-possible-voiced inquisitor and Nate answering. Oz brushes a question and Nate offers images of labs. Some of them sickly awful, some of them oddly homey. A soft-shouldered mountain of a being in a lab coat, blue-furred and cat-faced, carefully splitting cells. A tiny, bespectacled woman in a kind of Scottish castle filled with impossible machines. Geneticists, all of them, and Nate as a kind of fascinating puzzle for them. It's something for him to think about. That Nate, in spite of his impulsiveness, in spite of his magical, translucent quality, was *created*. Somebody was capable of imagining this much power in one person. And remembers sitting in his old van, in New Mexico, with this *mountain* of books that he had at the time. Sitting cross-legged with an Oppenheimer biography in his lap, thinking about the way things break open when you don't expect. Nate says, "Am I allowed not to like the atom bomb ref?" Giles looks startled, then settles in for whatever this is. Oz says, "What?" "Oppenheimer. I don't want to be his baby, if you don't mind." Oz flinches. "Yeah, not really your thing. Sorry." Miserable for about two minutes while he thinks about all the things he keeps trying to make Nate be. Until Nate says, utterly brightly, "I think I'd rather be Schroedinger's cat." Giles stares. Oz goggles. Nate says, "I mean, I'd like to see you prove that I'm here when you're not looking at me." And Oz wants to answer something flip, keep the mood light. Doesn't know if it's his own intuition or the link between them, just knows that he can't. "You're here." "Am I?" Link closed, like the sudden slamming of a door he didn't know was
there, "Oz, what...?" -- as the only person there, the *hurting* person that he could
maybe help, "Nate?" Sending, mind and voice. Like the prayers he'd tried out
as a child, Depthlessly strange to realize that he is, truly, the only connection Nate really wants. Needs. Loves. And oh, God, Oz needs that so badly it *aches*. "You're here, in me, right now. And I need you." **Oz* Yes, need me and I'm yours just need me* "I do need you. I do." The spectacle of unfolded space and Nate's somberly joyful smile as he floats crosslegged in the now incredibly tri-dimensional space of the van. Nate changes things just by being. Maybe everyone does. Finally pulling over to the side of the road to save them all from a fiery crash, and Nate's in his arms, in his lap, kissing him and kissing him. Reaching out for Giles hand, somehow *tugging* it into his own. Squeezing it as Giles cries silently. Grieves. Oz wonders if he should pull back, if they should stop this. Some odd sense of propriety at open war with the bone-ache of need. Elemental creature against him, and Nate must understand, because he's just cuddled down into Oz's lap. Keeps holding Nate. Keeps holding Giles' hand. And somehow less intimidated than he's ever been before by adult grief. And maybe finally grasping what it is and how it works. Terrible exactly because it's fully articulated. Comes with a comprehension of exactly what you've lost. Stroking Giles' hand in his. Very still, breathing the smell of Nate's body. Watching the sky lengthen and the smoked colour of the night come seeping out of the ground. Everything very clear through it for long minutes before it gets dark. Nate disentangles himself gently. Takes Giles' hand out of
Oz's and kisses Shallowness of the desert. The road without ditches, so that
he can just drive off it. Goes walking on his own for half an hour,
picks up small sticks and dried weeds and anything that he thinks might burn.
Comes back and Giles and Nate are sitting together with their backs against
a tire and Giles' head resting on Nate's chest. Very white fingers
in the tangled, "Hey. You guys all right?" Nate nods, stays stroking Giles' hair. Without his glasses on, Giles looks nothing like the librarian Oz remembers. He's not as old as he thought. Soft cheeks, soft lines around his eyes. Raw skin everywhere he's rubbed at his face. *I'm sorry. I wanted us together tonight. He's just...* *I know* And crouched there, making this fire. Old, dry newspaper and the cigarette lighter, and in any place more humid than this one it wouldn't work. But it lights. And suddenly there's this *glow* around them. Nate looking at him steadily and Giles almost asleep and Oz can see the Shaman, the adult, in Nate. There's a cardboard box behind the driver's seat, next to where Nate was sitting. Two sealer jars with lemonade in them and two with water. Sandwiches. Chocolate sour cream muffins. Soft, warm, bruised fruit. Newspaper wrapping it and his mother's smell all over it and he's so startlingly *grateful*. He rips the plastic bag open and just sinks his teeth into the top sandwich on the pile. Pastrami. All the spices in it hanging in his nose and when did he get so *hungry*? Starving. Bolts half of it before he can even breathe again. And then has to calm down before he can haul the box out and feed everybody else. And he gets to discover that Nate eats like a teenager. Appreciative, but mostly just terribly, terribly hungry. Might be feeding his power; Oz doesn't know. Wonders if this is the source of Nate's adoration of his mother. Nate sends him an image of sitting at the kitchen table while Oz's mom packs food. Eating and adoring her on the most basic level of a starving child. He gets Giles to wake up enough to eat. He wrinkles his nose
a little at the smell of the sandwiches, but there's a very soft peach that
Oz manages When Oz looks back, Nate's crouched in front of the fire, boiling water in a small metal pot that definitely wasn't in the van. Little defiant look when he raises an eyebrow at it, and a second later Oz catches the tea-smell, catches the image of Forge bent over a campfire in a completely different universe, teaching a twelve-year-old Nate to do this. Hot tea and sugar when he can get it and just anything to keep from freezing. He brings it in a cup to Giles. Lays it in his hands and lays his head on Giles' shoulder. Nate says, "If I asked you to sleep with us tonight, would you?" What's most shocking about it is that Giles *doesn't* seem shocked at all. Just looks at Nate steadily, holding his tea at a ruler-straight angle. Not a drop will spill. And Oz finds himself wanting Giles to say yes, if only to be allowed to get around the fact of his body, his ludicrously small body. Wants to take all the grief and alone-ness, share it. *ask him to link with us Nate, let him feel us* *'kay* Again the little shocked motion as Giles registers the telepathy.
Shakes his It's almost a little lonely -- And instantly Nate's hand is on his leg, warm and solid on the cap
of his knee. Shaman. A moment to feel his smallness that Oz shakes off before
it Moment of absolute stillness, when it seems the only thing living is whatever is between the three of them. The feeling of them all like a beacon to anyone listening. *we're safe here Oz* Oz can feel Giles surrender in the moment before he nods, and the
sudden Giles. *Oh... how can you be so open, all the time?* and *Yes, Oz you can touch me* and "so *young** Giles reaching out to cup Nate's face, accepting the second kiss
to his palm *fear* *Don't be afraid of me, please.* Soft, very gentle kiss that Nate lays on him while Oz watches. Baby mouth and manifestly adult one. And not even exactly sexual, just. This is how Nate heals people. Compassion and affection and you have to *know* the people you take care of. Tribal. Something utterly not of the pack, all the hope and protection of the group resting in one individual able to crack the universe open. Nate wraps his arms around Giles and hugs him. Kneeling upright over his lap and holding Giles' head against his chest. Clinging. Fragments of love and fear and Forge and warmth and the very still life that Nate had during those traveling years. A half-dozen bodies in the players' wagon, all sleeping as close as they could in the cold and all of their minds open and stroking, blanketing Nate's. *Just want you to sleep with us. You need this shouldn't be alone right now.* Giles rubs his face tiredly against Nate's chest, then turns to look at Oz, who nods carefully. This, at least, is familiar. All the members of the pack curled together, noses and tails and body-warmth. Sense-memory of snow. He comes over. Kisses Nate, carefully kisses Giles.
And oh *strange*, not He goes and finds the blankets in the back of the van. Unzips a sleeping bag and lays it open on top of the rough carpeting, buries his face for a moment in its flannel plaidness. Then piles blankets, pillows, kicks off his shoes and sits cross-legged in the midst of this cave and waits for the others to join him. Giles first, Nate behind him. Both of their shoes off, clothes
on. Fitting Giles against his own smallness. Face in the curve
of that neck, and he can Giles gradually opening through the link. Shredded images
of London and The point at which Giles broke, crawled back to the Watchers, and the time after that when he gave up the hugest part of his power. And the times later when Ethan would appear on his doorstep, bruised and sweet-skinned and *wanting*, offering gifts of concert tickets and hallucinogens and books and artifacts and himself. And the two of them wrapped around each other in bed. In England. In America. New York and Wyoming and Los Angeles. Three nights in a Hong Kong hotel. Cairo. Oz finds himself just stroking Giles' body. Not even sexual, just some kind of recognition of this neglected need. Of his grief. Of his horror of the dead/not-dead nature of his lover. "Twenty *years*. Thirty." *I know.* Rocking him between them until he drifts and sleeps. Sense after long minutes of fractured dreams that Nate quiets. Nate's fingers reach out and catch Oz's chin. *Love you* Thumb in his mouth that he sucks almost instinctively. Rubbing
the tip of *Nate we can't do this.* *Please Oz need to touch you.* Rustle of the air around them while Nate moves across to curl against Oz in the dark. Presses lips to his temple. Mouth on his mouth. *Giles will--* *--understand. Please Oz need you.* And he does. Crawling, answering need in Oz. Long day, and his nerves are frayed. He's wanted this since early morning. Nested and mating. Sheltered. *If we're quiet.* *okay just need you* Kissing slow, licking away the extra spit. Shallow kisses as Nate settles on top of him, both of them still clothed. Like remapping each other, shapes in the dimness, the weirdly steady glow of Nate's left eye. *what's with that, anyway?* *dunno, just kinda there, you know? I can shoot psychic fire out of it* *dragon* *yours Oz just kiss me* Deeper now and still very slow, kissing that can be done for hours, save for the want that flares and wanes when Nate sucks his tongue, higher every time. The deeply true and selfish realization that he doesn't want to be quiet, never does with Nate. Thrusting his tongue into that hot, wet suction as Nate's hands start to roam. Pulling out of the kiss just to touch Oz, kneeling up and bracing
his hands Wants to be a part of the healing, if only for Nate. *don't need you to fix me* *why do I always want to change you?* *you want me to be happy you want to love me it's okay it's okay I don't mind* *Nate touch me* Sudden flare of heat as Nate catches both nipples and pinches, making Oz arch and gasp. *love the way you move respond to me love to touch you Oz* Nate down again on him and kissing, hands beneath him and Oz realizes that they're basically levitating, only just high enough to keep the van from rocking. Invisible, impossible hands unbuttoning his pants and Nate's as well. Pushing them down and letting them press together. Naked, incredible heat. Rocking together now, Nate's hands on his ass, Oz's on Nate's own. Pulling each other into position and just caressing. Squeezing soft skin, Nate's want as deep as his own. Sweating in the desert cool, tiny pool of it just at the base of Nate's spine. Sucking his throat and gathering sweat with his fingers. Stutter-slide down the cleft of Nate's ass, feeling it like it's his own and nearly groaning. *what you do what you do* Circling and tracing Nate's hole and Nate mirroring him. Residual ache flaring to life and Oz thrusts his finger in and Nate thrusts his finger in and they can't move much but it's rough burn scratch want moving faster, rough with each other and needful. And Nate's knees drop down around Oz's hips. Pulls them so close together, whimpering and hissing while Oz rubs hard inside him, rubs desperately against him. Kissing and needing and careful of the ghosts of pain inside him. *Wanna fuck you. I know I can't, I still want you.* Kissing and mauling Nate's neck. So close to just *biting* him, making him, wanting to see what'll happen. *You can't hurt me, Oz, I promise.* He has these half-dreams of hunting, of running through the desert and coming back and *Nate* there, fucking him. Licking the bare line of his throat. Holding him down and just *taking* him, all the lines between animal and man blurred. Nate's arm slides under the back of Oz's head. Nate's legs around his hips. Just the thinnest breath of air holding them up, stroking them both, and he's going to come, just from this. Kissing and rubbing and the small touches inside him. The slide of Nate's cock against his, catching him just under the head, makes him bite into his own lip. Blood in his mouth and Nate still kissing him, fearless and focused and *clinging*. Not nearly as brave as he wants to be, but trying. Very hard. He breathes hard into Nate's mouth and groans. Can't entirely silence himself while they do this. Little strokes still inside him in spite of both Nate's hands being busy elsewhere. *What good's telekinesis otherwise?* Long, fierce strokes across his prostate, exactly what he needs, and the breath he sucks in as he comes is the loudest silent noise of his life. Twisting and bucking in Nate's arms, resisting all his efforts to keep them still and quiet. And after, when he's just sobbing quietly against Nate's skin, he can rearrange them, slide a hand between and stroke Nate over the edge. Playing gently with the slit and rolling the looseness of the foreskin in his hand. Flips his hips and manages to get them moved to their sides, nudges Nate's leg up onto his hip and works him. Holds him and brings over, hangs onto him during the nearly convulsive silence and tries not to laugh when they end up landing *hard* in the blankets. The same kind of shock you get from waking suddenly, having dreamed that you're falling. "Mmm. Oz?" Turns to look over his shoulder into the bleached blue of Giles' gaze. "Oh. Hey." Rolls onto his back to look with what might be marginally more dignity, and Nate follows him, climbing on top of him and burrowing his face into Oz's chest, so that he's sure all that Giles can see is a kind of mussed brown-auburn cloud. He can't bring himself to be sorry. He needed this so badly. Comfortable right now with Nate laid between his spread legs, pushing up his shirt to his neck and licking his chest occasionally with a kind of sleepy concentration. "Sorry. We didn't mean to wake you." "You're forgiven." He reaches out and trails a hand over Nate's back. Slides it under the shirt and moves back up. Oz opens himself again, feels for intent and finds only sleepy animal
need. Crawls over and straddles him, walls down and he knows he's in some
way *beautiful children* Nate sends a hush, and is probably helping Oz with Giles' sweater, because Oz feels singularly graceless at the moment. Boneless and humming a little with residual sex. T-shirt, too, and Giles' skin is warm and dry. Rough grained and *interesting* to Oz's fingers. Soft silky hair and blood flowing to small, hard nipples. Oz pulls off his own t-shirt and settles on Giles' chest. Steady heartbeat, scent of careless alpha. Good to be close to him, half on top of him. One of Giles' arms wraps easily around his waist. He doesn't mind being thought of as a child if he can have this. Giles soft and wondering in his head. "Oz, if I'd known..." *shhh* And he's not sure which of them sent that. Dozes idly until something in the link changes, undefinable until
he wakes Easy for Oz to see the simple enjoyment of salt and skin and man on Nate's face, the almost agonized softness on Giles'. Need and reluctance in the air, in his mind. *Nate, don't* *hmmm I can feel him Oz I can make him forget we can --* *Giles doesn't want that* *he can... I can --* **no** *Wha...?* And Nate snapping back to full awareness, slowly letting Giles'
fingers slip *it's alright, Nate, really, you were only trying to help* and then they're hushing each other, laughing quietly. Settling in. Oz's arm brushing Nate's over Giles' torso. Sleep like a weight. Oz wakes in the pre-dawn. Still curled around and half on top of Giles, with Nate's hand reaching up to rest in the small of his back. He's the only one of them who's naked. Jeans in the corner beyond Nate's hips, t-shirt by the door. All the responses of his skin are jacked up right now; he can feel the textured denim of Giles' jeans and the lines in Nate's palm. Smell both of them. Restless and thirsty and in the end he has to get up. Slow, careful process of it, trying not to disturb either of the people holding him. Manages it, finally, and when he turns from the passenger's seat he climbed forward into, Nate's moving closer. Messy head on Giles' chest and one big hand coming to rest on it. He goes outside. Barefoot and naked in the desert cold. He couldn't reach his clothes, but he thinks his skin would rip open right now if he had to get dressed. Crouches in the dust and runs his fingers through it. Almost morning; there's light but no shadows, no sign of the sun. Vague pull at him, like insubstantial fingers hooked into his shoulders. Looks up and sees the big full moon crouching over the horizon. And he *knows* this isn't part of him any more, but his brain's still wired to the phases of the moon, even if his lycanthropy isn't. And he never had a chance to do this before. Daylight and desert and the big white body just hanging there like it might fall. He changes and runs. This is as close to full-wolf as he's been in years. Different kind of transformation from the stress-induced one, different than the forced one of his high school nights. Just animal, suddenly. Stretching out and running. He wonders what happened to sound. Everything a peculiar kind of muffled that his ears can't get used to. Hugely restless. Running. Belly low in the scrub grass where there's ground cover, long on the dust-pan valley floor. Aware of the smells of dust and air and rock flowers and water in the distance. Animals closer. Some kind of soft deer animal. Hoofs and narrow horns and legs like breath. Not sure what to make of him until he's very, very close. Bends its antlered head and *stares*, huge liquid eyes and all he can think is *prey*. It tastes so good. Blood in his mouth and all over his fur, after. He hadn't even finished eating when the scavenger birds came. Vague instinct in him to tear some part of the animal loose and take it home, howl until he isn't alone in this feeding. He watches a graceful wreak of a California Condor tear at the remains, half of him resting and half of him fascinated by the hugeness of the bird, glorying in seeing one. It's massive and awkward, and the human part of him's sure it'll never get off the ground. Stunned when it does, and rises, and makes a huge, forbidding cloud for a moment before leaving. Farther up the mountain, there's water. Not much, but glacial, enough to make it worth shifting back to human form and washing down. He doesn't think it would bother Nate, particularly, if he showed up naked and covered in blood, but it might give Giles a chill. Crouched and pale and scrubbing at his arms, and on some level he must be connecting his wolfen form with the Initiative labs, because he looks down and finds he's picked up a handful of wet sand and starting grinding it into the skin of his arm. Big, ugly raw place that he absently licks at. Changes back, eventually. Runs. Coming down the ridge with the sun a rapidly heating disk behind him. Nate on the rocks ahead of him. Smells so *good*. Warm, soft boy, Oz-smell all over him and
edges of the If he jumped... Four seconds in the air, three before Nate notices him and one after he does. Moment of huge shock before Oz lands, sends them both rolling into the dirt. All his weight on Nate's chest to hold him down, and something between a welcome and a threat in his growl. *Oz?* Holding him down, trying to decide what to do with him. The vaguely human portion of his brain insists that he couldn't hurt Nate if he tried, that all Nate has to do is blink and vanish and leave him here. Oz leans in and mauls Nate's throat, gently. Letting him feel the fangs but not actually driving them in. *Oh god, Oz* Shifting under him, and he finds he can shift back just far enough into human form to regain his own softer mouth. More arch to the hard palate, something different about the texture. Wondering vaguely if the roof of his mouth is mottled and what that says about his personal qualities, if it is. Leans in and kisses Nate fiercely. Nate wraps both arms around him. Brings his knees up and lays them out to the side and just *opens* himself, mind and body. Feeds Oz the world in his own level of detail. Shadings in the rock, in the sand, in Oz's fur. The new chemical life of the ashes from last night's fire. Movements in the atmosphere. Animal life and human pollution and the constant, slightly elevated radiation that still blows in from Los Alamos. Oz pulls back and slides as easily as he can into his human face. Still seeing everything in monochrome and heat, huge pupils that hold Nate's attention. *Where's Giles?* *He wanted to take a walk.* Wave of Nate's misery. Guilt and worry and a kind of cyclic fear over the line he crossed. *I can't figure out how to tell him I'm sorry.* *Just tell him. He'll forgive you.* *He won't--* Oz reaches out, as carefully as he can, and pulls up Nate's image
of Forge. Nate presses his nose into the side of Oz's neck. Enough to
make him wonder which one of them, exactly, is the animal. It's still
cold, and Nate's This stroking. Oz is very aware, suddenly, that he's naked, that whenever he shifts closer to human he's exposing bare skin. Crawls back and crouches, stares at Nate until he gets up and stares back. *Tell me what you want me to do.* *Get rid of your jeans. Bend over the rock.* Nate starts. Then stands, carefully, and unbuttons his jeans.
Pushes them *Which ones of those are real?* *They're all real. Some of the ones on this body got there
before it was me *And your old ones?* *They kind of follow me around. They manifest when I'm not paying attention.* Oz reaches out one still-furred hand and trails a claw along a jagged line running from one side of Nate's belly down and across to the opposite thigh. *This one?* *I remember getting it. I don't know if it's real. Sinister told me that nothing I remember from before I was twelve or so was real. That he just made me that way.* *How do you remember getting it?* *Could we not?* *Tell me. Please.* *The way I remember it is that I got thrown against the wall, and
I hit something sharp sliding down. But he said I was too valuable to
injure, so *You couldn't scan him* Trying to tone it down from a question in his mind, wants to push but not shove and a sudden image in his mind, something between cartoon vampire and way-too-well put together cyborg. Lots of sharp teeth. Power coming out of him like some huge, leaking battery. Labs. Oz shudders, realizes that he's curling in on himself, but not in any way that he can stop. So, the answer to that non-question would be no. *He's the one who... designed me.* *God, Nate --* *I killed him. He built me to be his ultimate weapon, so I killed him.* *Have you killed many people?* *One way or another...* Strange tone to it all, somewhere between casual and sick. Grinning red harlequin with a sword in his mind, vivid and predatory. Huge, lion-bear like thing. *You didn't get second chances at a lot of things, Oz.* *Yeah, I guess not.* *Is it easier with the vampires? Knowing there's something not-human inside?* *It's the only way* *The only way *you* know. I felt you hunting, Oz. The animal in you... it's wonderful. Strange. Are you done looking at my scars?* *They're part of you.* *Which me?* Anger there, formless and circling around Oz's mind. *I'm sorry.* Sudden, convulsive movement and Nate's head is thrown back, staring at the sky. Morning desert breeze fluttering the ends of his flannel shirt. *Nate?* *I'm here, I'm here. Just. It would be so much easier if I could just... if you would let me. If Giles would let me. It's what I *know*.* Oz reaches out and finds his balance off. He's still in wolf form, and the fact of his consciousness snaps him away from Nate. Leaves him wondering, a little, and staring at the claws on the tips of his paws. He feels... like himself. No more animal urges than usual, even in this body. *Before you ask, you're doing it yourself. When I held you stable
while you *Thank you.* *Even for messing with your head?* *You told me first. And I agreed.* And Oz wonders on the power in Nate. What it must be like to be
fully aware of your powers at all times, like air that you breathe, or the
armchair *Like if Willow was cutting herself to shreds with a pair of old scissors and told you to just watch, and wait.* *Ouch, okay, Nate, it's part of being human.* *Not for me.* *You didn't have to go after all your old memories. You could've
killed that *I had to *know*, and oh, fuck. Oz. It would be easier if I didn't know that I could just *make* you happy.* Little shiver at that, image of himself smiling endlessly at Nate's side while everything burned to ash. *But you want me, not a doll.* *I *love* you and you wouldn't be a *doll* and alright, okay, I'm getting this, I am. I swear. I just... don't want to.* *That's okay.* Nate's just sitting there. On the rock. Without his
pants and with his shirt unbuttoned. Like the Thinker covering up against
sunburn. And he's Oz walks back with him, human and naked, both of them barefoot. Not touching, but Oz is aware of Nate's mind on the edge of his. Finds Giles waiting for them, crouched over a new fire and making tea. Who only looks at Oz and offers a cup, not commenting on the array of bare skin. Later, thinking they should go. Sitting in the van's door with one of Nate's feet in his lap, picking out a couple of thorns. Wonderful feet, actually. Nate looks like he's spent a lot of his life barefoot. Calluses, but also a kind of extra flexibility. Whatever small things are trying to get under his skin, he's not feeling it. Oz is just exploring. Strokes along the rough line of the sole to Nate's arch. Thinner skin there. Veins showing. Little shiver as Oz rubs his thumb hard down it, back towards the heel. Bigger shiver the next time he does it, and a little convulsion in Nate's body. His eyes are closed, and his mouth looks like he's begging. Oz files that information away for later. Offers the keys to Giles. Who takes them from him with this serious kind of nod. Leaving Nate to run the radio from shotgun -- just safer for Oz's nerves if he's actually *touching* the source of the music. Oz in the back. Or something. Sitting up close to Nate's seat with his back against the side of it. Close enough to catch Nate's hand and rub it against his cheek every couple of miles. Stays there, leaned back and quiet, almost dozing while Nate rubs along his collarbone under his t-shirt. Mutters something to Giles. Who turns them, and after another silence of miles they hit pavement. Almost sleeping with Nate's fingers in his hair and on his face. Soft conversation between Nate and Giles that he doesn't have to listen to, to appreciate. He's a lazy kind of full from hunting, like he could just crawl down into his cave and sleep for twenty-four or thirty-six hours. He wakes sometime in the day when's the sun's very, very high, stretched out in the back with Nate beside him, head propped up on one arm and looking down. Brushing his chest. *You ready to be awake?* *I think so. Why are we stopped?* *Rest stop. They're traditional.* *Where are we?* *Some kind of place off the highway. It's almost a town. There's a couple of Indians who make the *best* jewelry about a hundred yards from here.* Bends over and kisses him. For a long time. Wet and deep and demanding. And pulls back when Oz reaches for him. *Get up. I want to buy you things.* *Giles?* *Wandering. He forgives me.* *Told you.* *Wonders what he would've done if it had been *you* sucking his fingers.* *Wow. Let's not go there.* Something like a giggle, tickling rush over Oz's mind that finally completes the process of waking him up. Out into the town proper. Village doesn't sound like a word for the desert, even if it's probably more accurate. Nate heads straight for one of the jewelry places -- there are several -- and actually gets almost inside one before he notices Oz isn't following. *I *swear* no one's gonna miss the money.* *Not that.* *What...?* Nate looks over all the pieces in the front display case, eyes widening in a way Oz has to laugh at, a little. *Silver.* *And lots of it. I don't think I could go in there without shifting.* Retching, killing, burning, dying. *Fuck! Dammit, I wanted... wait --* Nate folding Oz's hand into his own, wandering three streets over until there isn't really anything that could be defined *as* a street. Old man and a paint-spattered card table. Little radio, tinny country music blaring out at them. The old man has the most interesting face Oz has ever seen, lined and folded again and again, eyes burning out of the seams, though not really focusing on anything. *He's mad. I'm not fixing him, see? But more importantly --* Gestures at the table with something of a flourish, but Oz is already looking. Bone. Some of it carved crudely, most of it left to itself. Bleached white and desperately appealing. Short necklace of tiny vertebrae, set on woven twine. The edges worn smooth, but just barely. Nate drops money in the small cookie tin and gathers the necklace and a small lizard skull for himself. Flips the hair out of his eyes un-self-consciously and ties the necklace on Oz's throat, just tight enough. Smiles at him hugely and takes his hand again, leading them off toward a trailer in the distance. *What now?* *Quick, irrevocable decisions.* *Good to know.* The trailer turns out to belong to a woman of that perfectly definable
class Huge, face-obscuring sunglasses and a wide, sleepy smile. And tattooing equipment. *I don't know if I can trust a tattoo artist with no visible tattoos.* *Wait five minutes.* So they settle in with her. Iced tea and pot brownies -- "I really shouldn't make them. You just eat and eat and *eat*, but then I realize I'm buying into these awful standards of beauty... still, sometimes I think neurosis has been bred into women by generations of men only choosing the retiring sort to mate with." "People should be more like wolves," Nate mumbles around his mouthful of chocolate, spicy bad-ideaness. "Oh, yes! I feel a special affinity with wolves. Some part of me born to hunt. I was kicked out of a commune once for sneaking in White Castle hamburgers. Me and Teddy, alone in the middle of nowhere, laughing our fool heads off and threatening those tight-assed flower munchers with our greasy fingers." Oz has to choke on the image. The horror that is animal fat. They
probably *One of them owns a string of meat-packing plants.* *You are very scary, and very cool.* Nate smiling at him, reaching out to take his hand again. Earning them both the world's most stoned grandmotherly smile. "Awwww... I never could resist young love. "What can I get for you two today?" "Um... I'm not sure --" And just then the entire trailer *lurches* to one side and the largest man Oz has ever seen *we have got to get you back to the mansion at some point* sort of *wedges* himself inside. "Oh, Teddy, meet our new guests! And have a brownie now or we'll all be baked beyond recognition while you're still sober." Teddy is a biker. Teddy is the apotheosis of bikers, complete with chest-length beard, long hair tangled with bones -- possibly, just possibly on purpose -- and every inch of bare skin visible covered with ink. From the expected skulls and hearts on his biceps, to tribal patterns,
runes *love you* Teddy smiles and nods at them both, showing many huge, white teeth
in the process. "You boys here to get inked? Vera's always been an artist.
You "So. Which one of you boys?" Oz blinks, and Nate says, "Me first. Then him." "Where?" she asks. Touching him. And it should look bad, like Mrs. Robinson or molestation, but it only seems like she's reading him. Finding textures and whorls in the flesh. He turns his arm outward. Offers her the inside of his upper
arm. Skin so "Hey hun." Oz looks up from playing boredly with Nate's fingers. "Yeah?" "Can you swab him down for me?" "Ok, what?" "Your boy's pretty warm. I need you to soak something in the rubbing alcohol and wipe him down." Absently. She's got her eyes as close to his flesh as she can get without danger. So he wipes Nate down. Old, very clean cloth, and rubbing
alcohol. Nate's *Want you Oz* *This isn't the best moment, I think. If she gets that wrong, you're gonna look funny for a long time.* *Want to bend over the front of the van and have you fuck me. Grab my ankles on my knees on my back any way you want me at all. Want you to fuck me.* Hard in his jeans, trying to ignore it. Wondering it it's possible for anyone as powerful as Nate to succumb to something as stupid as heatstroke. Wondering whether they're both sweat-slick enough for him to slam Nate over onto his chest and take him right here. Swabbing Nate down and desperately sweating himself and how can she *live* like this? Like being wrapped in tin foil and thrown into the fire. Teddy says, "Why don't you take your boy outside? This used to be a lake bed, so there's groundwater. It's pretty cold." Lays a beefy hand on Nate's shoulder. "Come on, I'll help." "I thought we weren't supposed to get it wet." Teddy nods at Vera, who's wrapping the fresh tattoo in plastic wrap and tape. "It'll be fine for the next hour or so." So. Outside with Nate between them. Almost passed out and muttering to himself and frighteningly warm. Not sweating anymore. Wrapped uselessly around Oz while Teddy opens the valve on this rusted-out shell of a hydrant and starts to fill the shallow tank. "It used to be a tub. Vera found it." It's true. Clawfoot bathtub. Little ring on it where the shower pipe can stand up. He has to get both arms around Nate's body to wrestle him in, and then it's like waking a sleepwalker. Howl and mad struggle, and Teddy has to come hold him down, too, until he relaxes. Holding Nate's head out of the water while his jeans just soak and his sandals hang over the side. Gradually cooling. Oz cups water sometimes and pours it over
Nate's face. "Oh god. What did I do?" "You passed out. It's kinda warm in there." Pours a palmful of water into Nate's hair and laughs softly when he sputters. Crouches in the soft mud that grew out of the dust and kisses him. *See, Nate, there's this thing called sunblock, especially designed for us pasty folk. There's another thing called water, which is good to drink.* *Sarcasm does not become you.* *Deadpan laconicism or nothing, hunh?* *Is my tattoo done?* *Nope.* *Then let's go!* Sloshes around a little in the tub, and only them seems to notice Teddy, which Oz thinks is kind of odd. Teddy is kind of his own attention sink. "Easy there, kid. Vera likes her customers to stay conscious. I told her that takes away half the drunken fraternity brother custom, but she's set in her ways. Lemme get you some water." Oz settles Nate back a little, tugs his t-shirt down from under
his armpits and then just rests his hand there. Cool against all the heat,
amazing to be *We could fix that...* *We're not having sex in front of the nice people who will mark us for life.* *What are you getting, Oz?* *I don't know yet. Don't peek in my head, it's a surprise.* *See, I'm getting conflicting signals from that.* *Stay out of my head, Nate. Please.* Bends in and kisses him. Gets wet when Nate's arms wrap around him and he's suddenly got a soggy, cheerful shaman clinging like a limpet. Has to march back toward the trailer with Nate stuck to him like that. Considers picking him up and piggy-backing him and wonders whether Nate's feet would drag on the ground if he did. Girls have their moments, he thinks. They don't tower over him, for one thing, and they're a lot easier to pick up. *No, sorry. I'll change my hair colour and my body shape and my age and my religion for you, but I'm not becoming a girl.* Gently teasing. A wet hand ruffles Oz's hair from behind, and Nate pushes carefully off him to stand on his own feet. Teddy looms back into their universe and hands Nate a sealer jar. Nate sniffs it. "Um, this kinda smells funny." Teddy nods. "The ground water. There's minerals all over in here. And there's some lemon in there, just to cover the taste." Long moment while Nate looks at him. Longer one while he looks at the water, and Oz isn't sure whether or not he sees it shimmer. Nate drinks. Oz goes to warn him about drinking too fast, and it's fairly clear that Teddy was headed the same way, but Nate's careful. Drinks in small gulps, breathes between. Keeps carrying the sealer and drinking until they get back into the shade. Then nods slightly breathless thanks and hands it back to Teddy. Oz glances over at him. Nate's bent with his hands braced on his knees, shaking the rest of the water out of his hair like a dog. *?* *Heard the expression, 'Don't drink the water'?* Nate sends him an image of rivers so polluted that he got sick even crouching near them. Forge's occasional attempts to build something that would clean out enough water to drink. Tiny filter mechanisms that they sold and bartered and gave away for the next hundred miles. Oz hums three bass chords and shares television images of Amazonia. Sings Dave Matthews under his breath while he follows Nate back inside. Vera's set out fans, and she has all the windows and doors open. It's a little better. Nate's eyes stay focused. Oz finds himself tracing out patterns on his thigh, and finally has to ask Vera for paper. After that sits and makes rough sketches of a thing he's never seen. Only looks up when Vera sits back and nods, and under the blood-sheen on Nate's arm he can make out the line-drawing of a wolf. Ratty and rangy, more coyote than lupus, nothing like the dramatic pictures that most people get out of the arctic. He wonders how Nate would react if he were to come over there and kiss him all over, starting with the tops of his feet. Nate pays Vera, hands her extra cash with a nod at Oz, and goes. Just the faintest psychic kiss across their link, almost overwhelmed by his expanding curiosity and the insistent want stemming from not knowing what Oz plans. Oz hands the paper to Vera, and shows her where he wants it. So that it's only later that Nate finds it. Both of them barefoot
again in the dust, and Oz is seriously starting to understand how much Nate
doesn't like wearing shoes. Shaggy, messy kid happily curling his toes
into the dirt and randomly groping Oz to see if he can find the bandages.
His own tattoo's already healed. He presented it to Giles earlier with
a kind of Sitting across from them now, watching Nate with his brows tight together and a kind of studious expression that makes Oz want to tap some kind of musical force into the man's brain. Drinking some fairly passable whiskey out of a coffee cup. Nate keeps making dives for the bottle and getting blocked, mostly by virtue of Oz's grip on the back of his jeans. Something about underage/ancient shamanic beings that he'd rather see Nate stoned than drunk. He doesn't even really want to see Giles drunk, but he's understood for a while now that 'want' isn't really part of that equation. He's seen Giles drink to fight misery and loss and frustration and envy and boredom and knows it's been worse in the past than it is at the moment. Nate smells good. He came back for Oz cheerful and once more dehydrated, and startlingly sunburned. Which he only shrugged over, and Oz supposes he had a point. But Vera made him sit and take his shirt off while she rubbed aloe vera into his shoulders and neck and arms. Just out of an unlabeled jar, and it took Oz a minute to spot the plants in the corner. Somehow humid despite the dryness, under plastic with open water containers evaporating and condensing from the sunlight. Two healthy-looking pot plants, a couple of flowers, a pair of big tomato vines, and the glossy leaf-sheen of aloe vera growing. Healthy, green, *wet*-smelling gel, and Teddy snorted when he came in. Said something teasing about keeping her boys' skin supple, and settled into a kitchen chair to carve something. Oz feels better with the vertebrae necklace. As a teenager
he was addicted Nate coaxes Giles to tell him about London. Persistently. For hours. Until Giles finally empties his glass and glares at Nate for a minute. And then *grins*. Sings. Oz identifies it -- later, when his brain's working again -- as
"Cocksucker Blues". Old Rolling Stones song. And the catalogic
part of his brain that knows music supplies *provided by the Stones to London/Decca
Records to By the time he gets to "where can I get my cock sucked/where can
I get my And Giles finishes, gets up, stretches dramatically enough to expose his navel, and walks away. Soft feet in the desert on the edge of night. Nate pulls Oz over on top of him. Lies back in the too-fine dirt with his hair spread out and holds Oz around the waist. Strokes his leg with long, prehensile toes. Pauses at the ankle, when Oz gasps. *What? Did that hurt?* *Um, yeah.* *Hah! Found it!* Flips Oz under him and scrambles down his body, catches one foot in his hands and skins the jeans leg upward, toward Oz's knee. Raises Oz's bandaged ankle like an offering. *Will you let me see it?* Oz nods. Nate strips the bandage off, carefully. Vera used surgical tape to secure the gauze, and she did it with the resigned acknowledgement that boys walk through the world like a train wreck, waiting for chaos to descend. The wrappings are a tangled pile on Nate's lap by the time he's got Oz's skin exposed. *Oz what is it?* Twisted band around his leg, double-stranded and cross-linked. *I thought you'd recognize it.* *Yeah but...* *Did I get it right?* Nate nods. *Actually, as far as I can tell, it's perfect. How long did you study genetics?* *Um, I think we took a couple of bio classes on it in high school.* *Where did you get the *map*?* *?* *Genome.* *Nate, we haven't *got* the human genome mapped.* Nate traces the lines with his fingers. Four colours in a kind of mathematical tangle. *It's perfect.* *You showed it to me earlier. It seemed appropriate.* Nate stares at him. *You tattooed my DNA onto your ankle.* *Looks like it.* *This is the map of my powers.* Touching carefully. Nucleotide sequences in a double-helix like Celtic knotwork, banding his ankle. Nate's kiss in the hollow between bone and tendon at the back. On his knee, on his belly, on his chest. On his mouth.
Laid on top of him Out of the dark, Spike says, "Quite a show, mutt." *!* Nate up and moving, *flying* at Spike, sending something out of that glowing eye, something like fire that wraps Spike, lifting him entirely off the ground. Oz considers, rejects telling Nate to stop. Oz didn't smell Spike coming at all, and the vampire's hit his senses with a smack. Leather and cigarettes and nasty, walking death. Something curious to a young werewolf, anathema to an older. And the reek of dark magic, paid for with more death. And yet Spike had, at last notice, a general reprieve from staking. *There's something strange about his thoughts, Oz, I can't touch them at *all*.* *There's a spell on him, and I'm guessing it's to prevent detecting him in any way.* *What should I do?* Kill him. Thought too quickly for Oz to stop, and there's old, bleached wood hurtling towards Spike's chest and *Wait.* *Why?* *We should maybe find out why he's here.* *We won't be able to tell if he's lying.* "Why is Spike suspended above the ground and glowing?" Giles, back abruptly and cleaning his glasses. As nervous habits go, Giles is really pretty consistent. *You're having reality issues again, aren't you?* *I really, really am.* "He just kind of showed up, Giles. There's a spell on him. Nate can't read him at all." "And the suspension and glowing?" Nate, pausing mid glowing glare to turn to Giles. "This is pretty much my coping mechanism." "Ah. Spike's looking especially tortured. Do carry on. Let's just see what I've got in my bag..." Giles rummages in the van for a while before coming out with a small,
ragged stone in his palm. Spits on it and "Diffugiunte, illudia. Glams
are notoriously expensive to perform and really quite easy to break, so long
as Spike screaming, howling almost and Oz is glad they're parked relatively far away from the town. Not that it helps. Oz can see lights coming on in the distance, dark shadows of people in motion. They're about to be singularly unwelcome. *Nate, put him in the van and let's go. Now.* *God, this *thing* in him is vile, but there are these weirdly human spaces--* *Nate, *now** On the road and moving in minutes. Oz has got the wheel again, Nate
and "Get that bloody telepath out of my *head*!" "Once again, you seem to be misunderstanding your position, Spike. Now tell me why you were tracking us." "Sod off!" Screams and thumping from behind them. Oz knows that Giles didn't have to ask Nate to do anything to change Spike's mind. *Some things just come natural, Oz.* *I'm sorry* He can almost hear Nate's head snap around, and there's a crackle
of *fuck And he doesn't want to be driving. Wants to stop, wants to get out and run. Come back and fuck Nate and finish the kiss he was getting fifteen minutes ago. And he does pull over, finally, but he doesn't run. Just gets out and goes and sits on a rock and watches Giles haul Spike out of the van. Very pale skin with a darkening bruise; Spike's going to have a black eye by morning. Except. That wasn't Giles. Nate's standing there, just at the edge of the light the van casts. Shaking. Both hands balled into fists. One set of his knuckles is just red enough that he has to have hit someone. He's shaking and. Crying. He looks very, very young. But just stands there, and he looks just threatening enough. While Giles drops Spike in the dirt and lays a boot across one of those white hands. Invisible hands that must be Nate holding the rest of him down. Spike says, "How are you bloody *doing* that?" Silence from Nate. "Telepaths aren't supposed to be *able* to see vampires. Like mirrors." Which is, come to think of it, an interesting question. Enough to be distracting just for a moment. While Giles looks over at Nate, who shrugs. "I think... I don't think that what I do as a telepath is quite what you're used to. Mirrors don't see you, but eyes can see you, and the looking I do is direct." Weird. He sounds a bit puzzled, a bit curious, very calm. Giles looks like he wants to take notes. Like it's something that might be worth discussing for a lot of hours. With tea. "Really?" "Um, yeah. Through a glass darkly or face to face." Spike rolls his eyes. "Real interesting. Want to lift your foot, Roo?" Giles drops the ball of his foot onto Spike's fingers. The vampire howls. Giles moves his foot. Crouches and drops his knee onto the same hand that his foot just left. Tilts Spike's face toward him and stares hard into it. "What do you want, Spike?" Sigh. "I want this bloody chip out of my head, but I'm thinking that's not going to happen." Grind of the knee. "Spike." "Red thought I should come." "*Why*?" "Screaming bloody *jesus*! You want my help you'll get off my damn *hand*!" Giles lifts his weight, keeps it hanging over the now-bloody digits. Spike whips the hand away and pops his knuckles into his mouth. Nate giggles. "What?" Giles bends over and pulls the fingers out of Spike's mouth. Spike glares at him. "I said I can help you with your wizard!" Curls up on himself and pushes back a bit to sit up. Cradles the injured hand against his belly and glares at all of them. "How?" Very soft, very low. Giles' voice like something that pools in Oz's groin. "Got information." "You'll forgive me if I don't believe you." "You could wait for your minions. They're about ten miles back plus however long it takes them to find us again after the mutt's little run-like-hell performance." And when Oz turns, he can just. Just barely smell it.
Long, low, fast wind Willow. Makes his hair stand up. Makes him, actually, pretty pissed, despite everything he could say about the notes Giles' left behind, and how it's a good sign when your friends care about you this much. The thing is, they had something *going* here. A tentative link with Giles. A clearly-defined mission. A rolling home and Oz's second chance at moving on. Doing it the right away. Nate is silent in his head, and Oz is grateful for that. Something like raw need to bitch and moan with at least the illusion of privacy, time to patch up all the irrational spots and be himself. Giles, looking up at them, one fist curled and ready for Spike. "Is this true?" "Yeah." Nate and Oz answering pretty much at once. "I suppose I should have known better than to expect to be left to this." The weariness is back in Giles' voice, and though Oz knows logically that the weariness most probably extends to him and Nate as well, it's satisfying. Giles has his own outsider status, after all, though he's closer to the rest of them than Oz is. "Which leaves only one question, sadly enough. Spike, if you were with them when they left Sunnydale, what were you doing so far ahead of them?" "Was out hunting, you bloody pillock, what d'you think? Caught your scent and decided to follow it instead. The sooner we found your wandering arse, the sooner the bloody Slayer'd get off me back." Giles sighs, stands up fully. "I suppose you'd better let him up, Nate." Nate just continues to stare off in the direction the rest of the gang will be coming from for a long moment, though. "None of you even really know why you're keeping him alive. You've got some vague notions of helplessness, more about the information he could give you, but the... demon *rules* him. Always will. Why can't I just kill him?" Giles scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Because he is both helpless *and* occasionally useful." "He'd kill all of you in a heartbeat, just because you've seen him like this. He has issues about helplessness and humiliation." "You do have a point, of course. Spike, promise you'll exact no revenge against us or our loved ones, should you ever become able to do so." "Like hell I will! I'll bloody well feed the Slayer your poisoned old liver and dance on your bloody --" "And in return, we will treat you with precisely the same amount of respect with which you treat us." Silence. Oz is expecting Nate to argue, but he just looks shocked. *He knows, Oz* *What does he know?* "You can't make promises for everyone, Rupert." Spike's voice is low, serious. Accent evening out into something entirely different. "No, they'll have to make their own." *He knows Spike'll keep his word, if he makes a promise. Giles just chose to... ignore that.* Oz thinks about that. He's forgotten how *cold* Giles looks when he's upset. Unflappable, deliberate. Something Oz can't quite wrap his brain around, that control fusing with violence. He's never been able to do that. More an either/or proposition. *Why?* *He didn't want anyone to come. He didn't even really want us to come.* *But he came.* *Oz, the inside of Giles' head is *really* a strange place to be.* Snaps his eyes over. Wonders how deeply, exactly, Nate's reading. *Nate.* Nate's got his eyes closed. Breathing really deeply like he's trying not to get hysterical. *Oz, he hasn't got any shields at *all* right now. It's like ... you think it's like sound, but I keep telling you it's not. More like this *light* coming at me. So fucking *bright*...* *Are you gonna be OK?* *I think...* And he can almost *see* the shimmer as Nate shields. Sudden silence in his mind, during which he gets to understand that shielding for Nate, at least at the moment, means shielding from *him*, too. It's disorienting. He didn't realize how used he was getting to having Nate's soft murmur in the back of his mind. Like nothing touching him, suddenly. Giles says, "Promise us, Spike." Spike nods. Stares at them with furious eyes. Oz walks off. As soon as he's upwind of Giles' fury, and Spike, he can smell her again. Dry and brilliant, like driving with the windows down. The skin-crackle of her power. And he's still angry that they're coming, but. Something so fundamental about her. He wants to change, run out and meet her. Run alongside and watch her. This desert and the car lights. He stays crouching there, and eventually he can smell others. All of them. Two cars, he thinks. Different fuel and oil smells. Xander and Anya. Buffy. Tara. Whirl of something, smell and air, above him. Makes him twist and look up, but he can't see anything. Like a second's hiccough in the universe. He's still crouching there when the cars come. Dirt sliding through his grip, eyes huge. Feral like he could kill something, and when Willow gets out she just leans against the car and stares at him. Female and terror. He gets up and leads them back to the van. And realizes what the hiccough was when he sees that Nate's gone. Momentary irritation followed immediately by the memory of his own thoughts. Fuck. Too much, all at once. The desert suddenly way too full of people and thoughts and regrets, head too empty. Giles is watching him and his scent is tense. They all smell tense, actually, and Oz recognizes that he's in that middle-state again. Colors faded and half-changed, scents loud and bright and. He doesn't want to be there for this. For this Scooby claiming of a mission that shouldn't have had anything to do with them. "Oz?" Willow, tentatively reaching for him. "I'll be back." Gently as he can manage, and then he pulls his senses back long enough to strip without embarrassment and shifts the rest of the way, bone necklace snapping and falling to the ground. He'll be back for it. Runs into the night blindly at first, only opening his senses again when he's a good distance away from them. Looking for Nate. Doubles back on a thread of scent and heads east, unsilent. Huffing, growling barks he doesn't bother to hold in, sending and sending *coming for you* until he can feel himself answered by the re-establishment of the link. Cold desert wind through his fur as Oz cuts through an arroyo. Something wonderfully temporary about land here, perfectly fleeting and dangerous. Trust Nate to find himself a geographic metaphor. Doesn't slow when he sees him, just keeps running, full-tilt. *Oz?* Peels his lips back from his teeth and growls, coming in low and forcing Nate to jump aside. Spins and comes at him again because this is and Nate can't keep and you don't *do* -- Nate jumping up and up into flight, too high for Oz to catch. Doesn't stop him from trying. Up on his hind legs and clawing at the psychic fire surrounding him. Just one more thing, one more stupid game to singe his fur against and Nate's eyes are so wide. Like maybe one more ineffectual swipe with his claws and he'll cry. *Come *down* here* *Why do you want to hurt me?* And Oz settles back on his haunches and laughs, chuffing barks that end on howls until he just gives up and does it. Loud and helplessly mournful and answered by the coyotes he can half-feel in the distance. It's good to howl. Open and honest and Oz realizes that it's something he's maybe needed to do for a while. Even beyond the Willow he can't have and the Giles he never knew and the amazing disappearing boyfriend. *Oh, God, Oz --* *You can't keep *doing* that* *You want her so fucking *much*!* *It helps that I know she's not going to suddenly decide to leave this dimension, Nate.* Nate explodes into the air at speed, higher and higher until he's just a fiery speck below the stars, then down again in something almost like freefall before he stops just above the ground, kicking dust everywhere. Oz curls in on himself against the worst of it before sitting up again. Staring Nate in the eye and waiting. *What do you want from me?* He sounds discouraged. Maybe just exhausted. He isn't crying, but the touch of his mind feels like it's been wrung out into something thin and off-colored. Oz avoids thinking about exactly how spectacular that particular tantrum was. *I want you to stop disappearing.* *I had to get *out*--* "You put this *wall* up between us." Said out loud. Less calm than he wants it to be. Frightening silence in his head, and yeah, at least some part of him is *more* than used to this telepathy. He'd needed this, maybe, and it feels like a tease for Nate to keep giving and taking away. None of that loss of self he'd feared when Buffy could hear all their thoughts, just the difference between alone and not. Some part of him never wants to be alone again. Him and the wolf and this layer of *instinct* that's getting to be less and less focused. "Giles was so bright..." *And then you were gone.* As thoroughly as when he'd folded the universe around himself in the van. Nate stares at the ground. The lizard skull around his neck is a cold mark in the midst of his heat-image. Oz realizes he's still looking out through wolf eyes. This is bad. He's forgetting. So easy to slide... Everything about the night is suddenly vivid and distracting. *Nate? Can we go somewhere else for a bit? Please.* *Yeah. That's maybe a good idea.* It's messy. Or, well, *abrupt*. Like somebody spliced two pieces of film together, so that they just leapt from one to the other. Night desert and night kitchen. Oz still crouched on the floor, expecting to see the moon when he looks up. Nate drops himself into the breakfast nook and pulls his feet up in front of him. "My parents..." Breaks off. Just looks uncomfortable for a bit. Bites at a nail and finishes the gesture by just sucking on his fingertip absently. "My parents have a permanent psi-link." Just offered, like that, into the stillness. Oz notices that outside the kitchen, it's raining. Low and quiet, and there's a sound like trees rustling. The sliding window over the sink is slightly open, making a draft across the floor and ruffling his fur. He changes back. Stays half-lying on the floor, naked and aware of his own paleness against the linoleum. One of his fingernails is torn, and a lot of the nail polish is gone, and he wonders how much of that he did while he was running. Watches while the small bloody place where the nail is missing heals. Understands that this was an offer Nate was saving for whenever someone loved him. Whenever *Oz* loved him. And it's hard, suddenly, to push it. To ask something like this of a boy who hasn't had much time to learn to trust anything. On the one hand, it's only asking what Nate's already had of every unshielded person in the multiverse, on the other... it's exactly what Nate has to give. The one thing that means anything. *don't pity me, Oz* *I don't want to. Not the best foundation for a relationship.* *You still want me. I can see all the reasons why, even the ones you think are bad. Selfish. That's the foundation I'm using. God, Oz, I'm trying...* *I know. Part of me wishes I didn't need you to push.* *Did you know that you wish you'd met me later? That you wish I'd been more adult? You try not to think it, to hide it from me, but you can't. No one can really hide from me for very long, whether they want to or not.* Oz debates going over to Nate at this, tries to figure out his own motivations, make them *clear* for once. Tries to imagine living in a state of absolute truth. *Nate, I think I'm getting why you need to run sometimes, but I need to know I'm going to be able to find you when *I* need you.* *I already made the link permanent.* *Oh.* *It would take... a lot of power to break it.* *Nate... thank you.* And he can feel it now. At the back of his head. Less like Nate's touch, more a kind of open line. Silver-white, almost tangible. Follows it back and finds himself touching Nate's mind. And maybe he's right, about it being light rather than sound, because what he's getting is layers of colour. Green-grey at the edges, shading into a very dark blue. This kind of knotted misery, wanting and not having and awareness of having just given his only gift. Cosmos, huge around the self-Nate. Stars and a tangled spiral of worlds and this place, slightly outside. Quiet reassurance of it that Nate's clinging to and the awareness of Oz. Awareness of Oz and Oz looking into that awareness. Infinity like a three-way mirror. It's not that long a reach, and when he gets hold of Nate's ankle, Nate follows his tug. Slides off the seat's vinyl and onto the floor, lets Oz pull him into his lap. Longer legs across Oz's, and this very soft, very red mouth under his as they kiss. Warmth in his body and Nate's, and a psychic echo between them that crawls right up his skin. Lays Nate back on the floor, lies beside him and keeps kissing. Leaning over onto his chest to reach. Hands on either side of his head. Mental touch trying to push the green-grey aside long enough to *touch* him. One hand between Nate's shirt and belly, rubbing up to the edge of his floating ribs and then down inside his jeans to rub at his pubic hair. Warm awareness of his touch echoing. *Nate* All of him just *there* against his body. Kissing gently back. Tongue in his mouth and soft, wet face that Oz manages not to look at. *feel so good* *want you Oz god I love you* *can we just* *Yeah* Ripple of existence that lays them out on Nate's bed. Warmth and rain through the cracked-open windows. Pushing Nate's shirt up and over his head, struggling with his wrists and holding him down and *kissing* him. Gonna take him. Oz bends, chews gently on Nate's belly. Teeth marking a tight path. Gets a hand down into his jeans and grips him. Thinking about the warmth down there. The tattoo on Nate's arm. Catches one pale wrist in his fingers and raises the arm over Nate's head and licks the tattoo, loving the shiver it draws out. His. Just stares at the tattoo for a while, tracing its lines with his eyes. More complex than it appears at first sight. Oddly broad strokes with the needle creating a sense of movement. Something almost runic about it, evocative. *I didn't tell her anything, really. Just that I wanted a wolf. She'd been designing this for years, meant it for Teddy's niece.* *It's beautiful* *I wanted you on me. *In* me. I still do* Open need in Nate, familiar now. Not frightening so much as desirable. To be that important, make a mark. Some old theory on immortality and hubris, and it's all such a *gift*. All Oz needs to do is take it. Holds Nate down and moves back to his throat. Marks him thoroughly. Devouring there, half-careless of the touch of blunted teeth. Scrape and bite and suck. Wants Nate all over. Rubbing skin to skin, naked to the waist and safe here, alone and quiet. Open wide to the space all around, furniture and room, all inside of Nate. Real enough for the moment, for Oz. The fortress is satisfied and solid. Beautiful to be able to please, and taste at will. *all yours Oz please don't stop* *want to tie you down* Almost blushing to think it, Oz has never really... different games than the ones he usually likes to play but he *needs* this. Watches as the sheets twist around Nate's wrists, liquid and strange, unnatural motion to the fabric. Nate lets the sheets pulls his wrists apart, open and high. Bends to gnaw at the inside of an elbow. Nate's eyes closed not so much in denial as in focusing. Feeling Oz, seeing him another way. *you want me so much *more* now* Oz's hands all over Nate's body, tugging at arms held fast, roving up and over ribcage and chest. Tight rose nipples and a hard belly. Scrapes short human nails over the muscle, watches it jump and flex. *do you want my legs tied, too?* Image of it, Nate spread-eagled and helpless, held open perfectly, waiting... Groans and twists Nate's nipples hard and no, no, he wants Nate's legs free, it's just... The sound of Nate's voice in his mind, softly rough like velvet. Low and needful: *Anything you want.* *Leave them loose. Can you turn over?* Biting carefully at his shoulder. Long muscle shaping it, heavier than Oz always thinks it is when he sees Nate wearing a shirt. Generations of superheros into one messy, gorgeous kid. *Yeah. Yes.* The sheets just soften, and he's loose. Goes to turn over, but then sits up. Leans in and wraps his arms around Oz's chest and hugs him tight for a minute. Lips on the line of his throat moving constantly without making any sound. Wet tongue drawing runes and shapes he doesn't have names for. He hugs Nate back, hangs on until he feels him shift. Nate rolls down onto his belly. Still in his unbuttoned jeans, pale denim that Oz now notices has a couple of small holes in the back, just around the pockets. Bare skin underneath that he bends and kisses, then reaches up along Nate's body and holds his wrists until the sheets reach up and bind him. Kissing down his back. Muscle and scar tissue and pale skin. Little damaged spots. One magically erogenous spot at the base of his ribcage that makes him moan and twist into the bed. The jeans part when Oz reaches under Nate's belly and into them. Straddling his thighs and rubbing, sliding the clothes all down his hips, such *white* skin underneath. Like he's never been in the sun. Pink edge of a sunburn on his arms and shoulders making them look raw in contrast. Oz skins the jeans down Nate's legs, helps him kick them off. Comes back and kisses him, on the base of his spine, on both cheeks of his ass. Rubbing his beard stubble into them and loving Nate's hiss. Rubbing with a thumb along his perineum to hear the moan it rips out. *Gonna take you, Nate.* *yes* Spreads his legs, gets his knees under just enough to push his ass up as an offering. Flash of his erection between his legs as he lifts. Straining to hold like that, and much as Oz just wants to watch him, he's gonna do this *hard*. Finds a couple of pillows pushed back against the wall and eases them under Nate's belly. Enough to hold him up. Sliding along the link into the part of Nate's thoughts that indulges the small luxury of this place, things he used to dream of in the cold of his first universe. Oz rubs a thumb along the top of Nate's cleft. Gets an answering shimmer. *Where can I find...?* *On the floor oh god Oz please* Slick in a jar, not much like what he's seen before but softly gelled and warm to the touch. Easy to get at in a way that just lets him sink his fingers in, get all of it he wants and smooth it along the length of his cock. Thinking small, dirty, very clear thoughts about what he's going to do to Nate next. Rubbing one slick thumb against his hole, just barely pushing the tip of it in. Brief clench and then open again, Nate's breathing broad and rapid. Gets a thumbful of slick and smears it casually around Nate's hole, pulling a little. Dipping inside for that heat but not stretching him. Vague idea of wanting Nate to feel what Oz felt that night in his bed, but more of the wordless want. This much is easy with Nate, accepting each other completely, Nate always seemingly just this close to begging Oz... God, can't wait. Tip of his cock drooling a little. Holding Nate's cheeks open and just pushing into the cleft. Teasing them both. Nate trying to push back and impale himself, struggling in the makeshift bonds and *wanting*. Pure rush of it in the back of his brain, low in his belly. Nate's back flushed and bare. So naked. Hunger like the only truly real thing in the world and Oz pushes in without thought. One hard thrust, brutally tight and incredibly hot and Nate screams, high and loud. Something cracking in Nate's throat and Oz stills there. Balls deep and stroking Nate. Smooth skin and rough, humps and pits of scars all wonderful to his palms. Man-shaped alternate history and need beneath him, surrounding him. All his. Link steady, shaking with Nate's pain and lust and fear, vibration of it going straight to his cock and taking up residence. Oz feels huge and itchily happy. So close to what he wants. What Nate wants, too. *On your knees, you said* *yes god Oz --* *anything I want* Nate jerking, clenching around him. Something like a sob bitten off into the pillow. *yesyesyes* Oz pulls out almost all the way, whole body tightening at the 'ahhh' noise Nate makes. Slicks his cock a little more and then *drives* back in. Again. Again. Nate struggling to get his ass higher, change position and Oz just holds him there. Holds his ass wide open and fucks it hard. Not slow, but not fast enough that Nate can't feel every stroke. Struggling against Oz and crying out every time he slams in. *too much Oz too much no don't stop let me Oz* Skin flushed red, blood close to the surface, wolf close to the surface, but Oz holds back for as long as he can, human and nearly punishing Nate. Giving them both what they need -- -- slap of Oz's balls against Nate's ass loud and obscene, wet slide and moan and grunt and push. Deep and hard as he can go, stroking his cock brutally with Nate's body and they're moving together now, driving each other, shift making them both scream as Oz feels himself *grow* inside Nate, stretch him wide, wild. Careful with his claws but with nothing else. *free yourself* Pulling Nate up over his knees, both upright and sinking even deeper inside. One furred arm around Nate's chest, muzzle buried against that pale, salt throat. Blood in Nate, just under his skin. Smells so good. Nate shivers every time the fur slides over him, twists towards the new angle. Oz pushing almost straight up into him, deeper every time Nate pushes down onto him. Hugely wide eyes that Oz can just make out. Slides out the tip of his tongue and licks at Nate's throat. Can't bite him too easy to hurt him, but he *wants*. Back and forth shift of Nate's ass that elicits a growl from the deepest part of Oz's throat and makes Nate *scream*. And he can *feel* it. Feel himself inside Nate, this connection like a slide between them. Pressure in his belly, pushing up hard like it could rearrange everything inside him. Pain/pleasure merge and this love under it that Nate's trying to hang onto. Trembling at the pressure and the new size. Stretching him, hard burn of it running through him and oh god deeper than anything he could have imagined it wasn't ever like this before no god no Oz *please*. Slams back into himself to find Nate working himself down into his lap. Breathless and. Laughing. Arches back and lays his head on Oz's shoulder and Oz *feels* his cock strike Nate's prostate. Convulsive pleasure and he wants to kiss him. Pulls his head around, feels Nate's shock at the strangeness and goes to shift. *no don't change just new* Slides his tongue in. New shape, new layers of taste and smell. Nate keeps working himself and Oz clings to him. Holds him back. Slides one soft-furred hand down that belly and wraps it around Nate's cock. Jerking him and licking him and Nate slides all over his senses. Digs into the wolfen part of his brain. *Mine* *god yes yours all yours* *Whose were you before you were mine?* *nobody who wanted to keep me god yes please don't stop please please please* *Who had you?* Little sob and a second in which Nate slides away from the question. Shivers at the slide of claws over his chest. Works himself down and deepens the kiss and reaches up to cling to the fur around Oz's skull. Fast splash of images into his head, of first kiss and first messy fumbling time and almost immediate shattering rejection, of a sweet and fumbling single night, of Oz naked and watching him on the other side of his bed. Ragged breathing in time to Oz's little thrusts. Little sounds Nate keeps making low down in his chest. Doesn't understand how anybody could not want him. Poor aching boy who keeps *begging* for this. Utterly pliant when Oz releases the kiss and bends him down forward. Weight onto his forearms and head down on top of them, ass still in Oz's lap, hard and deep and both of them gasping as Oz's cock shifts inside Nate's body. Kneels up and pulls Nate further up on his knees, pulls out and slams in *hard*. Out and in again. Pushing towards the rhythm of Nate's breath, of his whimpers, little vocalizations, frantic and just running on the edge of meaning. "Yours yes yours all yours god take me Oz fuck me yours I'm yours nobody ever wanted me like you do love you god I love you it hurts don't stop yes please please please please..." Overlying the images flooding Oz's head. Frantic and fucking him and jerking him and this one is *his*. Entirely. Edges of pain and want and one more little shift and he *knows* he's hitting Nate's prostate every time he goes in. Words gone and just a long begging scream pouring out of Nate's mouth. He's so *tight*. Hot and slick and wanting and Oz *slams* in. Fucks him hard and fast and Nate's coming, pouring over Oz's hand and clamping desperately onto his cock and twisting in his arms and for a few seconds the fabric of the Nate-created world around them pulls along its weft. Snaps back. Oz smells tears, salt, semen, thin faint edge of blood, sweat, Nate, *his*. This boy is *his*. Imprinted entirely on his brain while he drives in again, deep as he can, feels the grip on him, howls, and comes. Driving in still, until he just *can't*. Until his knees give and he's pushing forward, all his weight sliding down on Nate's back. Nuzzling and licking him, tasting the sweat. Hears Nate crying softly and the happier, incoherent murmur of Nate inside his skull. Slips out and licks Nate thoroughly, all over. Cleaning and tasting, lingering at the few small folds of flesh until Nate shifts and moans. Licking him raw in places. Behind his ear and behind his knees. The crease of thigh and buttock. Cleft. Thinnest edge of blood and his own come. Nate shuddering and pushing back into his touch, sleepily amused complaint that *he* hadn't gotten to shower first. Oz growls as menacingly as he can manage at the moment, but it comes out as more of a canine purr. Waves of *don't leave me* underneath everything. And he won't. Can't honestly see anything happening that would separate him from Nate, not for long. Sudden image of Willow, smiling at him that may or may not have been his own creation. Oz licks a long stripe up Nate's spine and settles on top of him, blanketing him with hot fur and himself. Willow doesn't want him anymore. *Mating sort of implies a certain mutuality, Nate.* *She's young, she can change her mind. She changes her mind about a lot of things.* *So do you.* *Not about this.* *You can't *know* that.* *Oz, I can *make* it true. I can make it so I'll love you forever. I'll do it if you asked me to. It would feel *good*.* *God, *Nate*! I don't want you... programming yourself. Building a Better Lover. I want *you*, OK?* *And if Willow were right here instead of me, begging you to get back together, showing Tara the door... what then?* *Don't you already know the answer?* *You're not sure.* *That's the answer. It's the only one I can give. And since, barring quasi-divine interference, Willow *isn't* going to come begging me to take her back, I think we can just shelve this little talk. It doesn't go anywhere. I need more *time*, Nate.* *You had more time, you just can't feel it now.* And Oz seizes up a little, but it would be one way to just end this. Image of himself on the other side of all that pain and torture. Healthy and free of everything but this boy who loves him, and all the world he can stand. *How long would it take?* Nate squirms under him, and Oz lifts up, holds his weight off until Nate's rolled onto his back, then lays back down. *To get past it? I don't know.* *You must know. Hours? Weeks?* Nate closes his eyes. *Maybe years. Maybe never. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.* Hands trailing along Oz's back, massaging gently at the soft place where his ass back back meet. Purring in soft appreciation at the gradual shift from fur to skin, echoing startlement as he follows Oz's eyesight from heat back to light. *Could you give me, you know, pieces of it?* *Oz...* *I need to know. Please.* Because it feels like there's this *hole* in his head, and every time he looks into it he's scared. Nate nods. Tilts Oz's head up and kisses him. Gently, licking his mouth and petting him, and Oz is getting to love these after-sex make-out sessions. Makes him want to take Nate home again, date him and goof around with him and make out on the couch after school and on the back porch swing in the evenings. All this wonderful sensation of just playing and kissing and touching. Coaxing him for half an hour to get his shirt unbuttoned. That little thrill the first time he kisses that chest. Slowly, into the middle of that warm safety, a couple of new/old things crawl. White walls, white ceiling, too much light. Ethan Rayne's voice, clearer than before. The bruises under his eyes and the scars on his arms. And yeah, it's bad. But not fatal. He shakes and Nate hangs onto him and stays kissing. Rubs his back and wraps around his brain. Very safe, very quiet place, and yeah, eventually it settles. Because it's familiar, these things all connect to other things in his brain with that peculiar need of the repressed. *Nate?* *Mmm* *Are they OK?* *Are you?* *For now? I'm good.* Mouths Nate's chest. *Later I might need to cry on you or something.* Nate nods. Kisses him. And sits up, hanging onto Oz so that Oz ends up sitting in his lap. Little shift underneath him that lets him know exactly how raw Nate still is. Curl in his belly at the thought, something like satisfaction. Doesn't want to let go, but he's relaxed enough to be worried, now. *I'm sensing a contradiction* *Nate, are they OK?* *More or less. And they're just about talked out.* Pause. Kiss. *You want me to take you back.* Not a question. *You want to keep me here.* *There's a lot of here to see.* *Yeah, I kinda guessed that. I love your huge, fucked-up brain.* Earns a kiss and a more-or-less steady stream of vistas, from dystopic cities to scarred jungle to endless suburbs to great oceans. *beautiful, Nate* Could think that without the comma. Does. *I want to see what's up with them. Giles maybe doesn't need us anymore.* *He needs friends.* Brief urge to set Nate loose on Giles' brain, rewire him to give him the ability to actually bond with the rest of the Scoobys. Some kind of happiness. But Giles really has to do that on his own, Oz supposes. Something like understanding about the power. Wonderings about whether he'd really object to Nate fixing -- helping -- people he doesn't know and care about in all their fucked-up, unhappy glory. *Don't think about it as making people happy. Think about it as showing them the way to be happy. And I don't even charge a fee.* *Yeah, but it's *Giles.* Would he thank us?* *Would he have to know?* Morality like a greased snake. Never leaving, impossible to catch between man and civilization and wolf and pack. Buffy has her soldier. Willow has her little witch. Xander has his ex-demon. Giles has... a dead chaos lord. *That's the whole point of it. Why they came. Well, other than to keep Giles from committing suicide. They think Ethan's soul is still there, that it can somehow defeat the demon.* *Ethan was kind of on the evil side even *with* a soul.* *He's all Giles has. And *that's* pretty much the conversation they had. Willow was all for helping Ethan restore his soul and sending him off to do his thing. Anya wondered why they didn't just kill him. And Spike, too. She's really weird, but I like her.* *Yeah, Anya's kind of... bracing. Like good aftershave or something.* *Xander would kick your ass if you said that.* *Xander's in love. Wow. You have any idea how heavy that is, Nate? Xander's been... all his life, you know. I sometimes wonder what it would've been like if I'd met him before Willow. If I'd been able to see him the way I saw her... I'd spent so much time in high school just drifting through. The band and homework. But Xander's in love. And he's got a job now?* *Yeah. He's a carpenter. He's got... like, art in his head, Oz. He's gonna make beautiful things.* Tries to send all his warmth to Nate. All of that vague, hopeless *hope* he'd had for Xander, trying to find his cool. *You should have had a chance to be closer friends.* *Yeah, well. Life. So what does Giles think?* *He wants to stake Vampire Ethan now. Just get it over with. Move on with his life. He wants a chance to really talk about it, but he knows Ethan's made his vows to Chaos, and he can't really get around that. He wants to not be in love with him still.* *What's he going to do?* *Right now, he's thinking that it's best to go along with whatever 'the children' decide. Buffy's wants to do whatever Giles wants, and hopes it involves kicking Ethan's ass. Giles is. He's giving up, Oz. He's telling himself that he's just rolling with the punches, but he's giving up on ever having a life of his own. It's... it's *close* to becoming closer to the Scoobys, but it's... it's hard to explain.* *Yeah. Damn. Suggestions?* *We make a grand entrance, I twist a few things in Giles' head, we leave them to handle Ethan, I introduce you to my parents properly. We get some more food at your parents' house at some point. Your mom can maybe bite me again.* *Wow, you were doing great until that last bit.* *Your mom's hot.* *Yeah, well, so's yours.* *Ewww...* *Exactly.* *I think I may be getting this, Oz.* *I knew there was hope. We should also maybe visit your house. It's lonely.* *Even when I'm not? Damn...* *Yeah.* Oz glances around, vaguely. In one corner, beside the boxes of clothes, someone's been drawing on the walls in pencil. Elaborately. Focuses a little more and it's the beginning of a jungle scene. Detailed in pencil. Shadows of leaves. Paint boxes on the floor. *Did you do that?* He can picture Nate sitting in that corner, drawing. Just quietly, cross-legged. Hiding, just a bit, from the rest of the universe. Like the ultimate agoraphobe. *Um, actually no.* DON'T MIND ME, says the wall, in pencil. I'M FINE. Oz boggles. He's not going to get used to that. Very quick warm feeling, like a kind of universal kiss. The wall bibbles into sketches of lush, elaborate flowers. And Oz gets up and starts digging for clothes. Still bent over and working his way into the jeans when Nate comes over and kisses the small of his back. Long, wet caress that makes him shiver. Think about dragging Nate back to bed and taking him several elaborate ways, and only giving up and re-entering the real world when they're both utterly raw and exhausted. Nate continues kissing him. From the middle of his spine down to the top of his ass. *I hate to tell you this, but I'm already too raw to do it again.* *Sorry* Nate makes several serious kisses spanning from one hip to the other. *S'okay. You might've noticed me screaming and loving it.* *Okay, see, if we're going to go out and be people, you have to stop -- oh god -- doing that.* Nate straightens up and hands Oz a t-shirt. It says WEREWOLF. As soon as he's dressed, the universe slides. And he's facing Nate, in jeans and runners and no socks and a t-shirt that he strongly suspects says PROUD YOUNG LUTHERAN under a hoodie. Hooded sweatshirt. He tries to picture Nate picking up homeboy speech patterns. Cringes in horror. White Gangsta Man. *X-Man, thank you.* *What?* *My code name is X-Man.* *Very original.* Mental raspberry. And when he turns, the van's there. There's a huge, primitive kind of fire that for some reason has Buffy's fingerprints all over it. She's crouched to one side of it. He wonders whether she hunted something down and is now slow-roasting it in its skin. "Hey." Everyone turns to look at him. Giles looks very tired. Anya looks vaguely like she's been crying. "Oz. Thought we were going to have to send out the game warden." "You have clothes on now. I liked you when you were naked." Anya gazing at him expectantly, as though it's now time for Oz to remove his clothes again. There isn't really anything he can say to that. Oz wonders vaguely what level of surreality she's reached with Xander as a conversation partner. "Are you both alright?" Giles asks. And the thing is, it sounds like a real question. Maybe is one. More details required than just a *yes* or *no*, but he doesn't really want to explain every bit of that in public. "We're cool." "Yeah, you kinda are. Good to see that you didn't, you know, get lost. I, um, like Nate's sweater." Willow's little smile, the one that does and doesn't lock in his stomach. Soft friendliness of it, reaching out, and even if it's not to him anymore, it's still very much there. Nate turns to show her the back of the sweater. It says FREAK. "Oh! I mean, I don't think... It's just..." Nate grins at her. "Thanks." And gets this little, very pretty smile from Tara. And Oz can *feel* Nate's attention hooking. Like watching television. He shrugs. Comes and sits in the van's open doorframe. "So. We miss anything good?" Giles looks at him hard. "I suspect you already know the answer to that." Oz shrugs again. "We checked in every so often, yeah. But I don't know what you decided." "And Nate?" He has no idea how much Nate knows. Possibly everything. *I don't, you know. I mean, I can find out just about anything, but sometimes it takes a while, and I have to look hard.* "Him too." "I think we're gonna go with you," Buffy says. Looks at Giles, who nods tiredly. Making Oz wonder how much about Ethan Buffy actually knows. How far she registers that Giles loves him. And he's about to ask Nate when *soft breathing Willow cold hope Mr Giles is going to be alright not sure we should be here not sure Buffy understands warm red Oz's boyfriend's been crying Oz familiar/scary power yes easy to see how Willow loved him* Flashes of mother and family and glittering knowledge. Soft edges to things and new grey shades that Oz has never seen or noticed before. This *craving* for knowledge. This need to heal the ache she can almost see glowing out of everyone around her. Nearly animal awareness of everything around her. Tara. Willow. Willow as scholar. Willow as burningly powerful witch, this potential just now cracking open. Willow as comedian. As friend and guardian. Willow as adult. Willow as she's going to be in twenty years. Harder, sharper, powerful in a way that twists the mind, slightly. Powerful the way Ethan Rayne is powerful, but not like him. Red and bright and clever and fierce and intelligent. Tara. What he's getting is the bright edge of whatever Nate's getting, reading the mind of Oz's ex-girlfriend's girlfriend. Odd concept. Fascinating results. Willow says, "I have some spells I think will help. If we can get close enough... Ethan's powerful enough that his soul's probably still got a foothold. If we can just wake it up. And I have a couple of banishing spells that'll work if he's fighting the demon too." "Do you think he'll fight it?" It's a real question, but it's partly to himself. Thinking about Ethan, the parts he can remember, trying to decide whether the Ethan he knew *would* fight the demon. "I think he would not surrender easily." Giles, speaking with knowledge, and Oz can't help but look for the scary punk boy of Ethan's stories. "I think if they wanted to hold a Chaos Lord, they shouldn't have used a bloody stupid fledge." "Spike? Shut up." "Anything for you, Slayer." "You think you could've done better?" Xander. Something between shut-up-Spike-ness and genuine curiosity. "I'm four generations out from the Master." Spike plays with his cigarette. "You might've noticed that we get less and less personality, farther out." "Wouldn't that mean that Angel's more interesting than you are?" "Fuck off, blue collar boy." And in his ear, Nate says, "You lost your necklace." Soft purr of it that crawls straight up his spine like spiders. Nate's tongue almost in his ear, and an arm hooked across his chest. Enough to make him close his eyes and lean back just slightly. Rustle of bone, and Nate ties the necklace back onto him. Rubs his throat with a thumb. Kisses his jaw. He's staking a claim. Not subtly. But every claim is one more reason for Nate not to bolt, next time, and he can't bring himself to reject it. Sends Nate an image of himself on a leash, fully glammed. Lipstick and eye-shadow and huge studded collar to show off his smallness. Nate trips and glares at him. The silence is a little awkward, not far from what Oz was expecting, but he knows that was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. He and Nate are *linked* now. For whatever version of forever they can manage. Wow. "Right, so when are we getting on the road? Nothing worth killing in the bloody desert." |
Continued in Part Four