Watching
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: S3 BtVS
Author's notes: Giles/Oz prequel to Kissing Ass. For Glossing. Thanks to Jane Davitt for the beta read!
Feedback: Mer
Almost anything can come to feel normal if you do it slowly enough. Giles had taken to arriving a few minutes before the proper start to the work day on full moon nights, to check on Oz before they were likely to be interrupted by students or janitors or Principal Snyder on yet another fishing expedition. It was purely a practical decision. And if, once he'd ascertained all was well, Giles let the boy sleep as long as possible, well, that was only an act of ordinary mercy. Which was not a crime, regardless of the opinion of the Council. It had nothing to do with the boy's naked form, glinting like a tangle of silver wire in the morning sun.
It was chance only, a restless night of dreams of fire turning sand to glass, that brought Giles in a full hour earlier than usual one such morning, with a larger-than-usual cup of coffee and a simpler-than-usual book. Giles truly sought nothing more than the comforting smell of book dust, a reason to abandon sweat-soaked sheets and seek the reassuring embrace of ties and tailoring. He checked on the boy out of habit, and duty, if those were even different any more.
And discovered why Oz looked so relaxed, all those mornings after. He lay full in a patch of sunbeam, like a cat, his legs tossed apart and laced with the shadow pattern of the wire cage. His eyelids, blue and violet with veins and faintly trembling, were still closed. Nothing indicated he was not asleep, except the hand slowly working between his legs.
It was not unusual, Giles reminded himself, for a boy of that age to wake with a piss hard on. Not unheard of even in a man of Rupert's advanced years. It might well be that Oz had forgotten, in that state between dream and wakefulness, where he was. Certainly he believed he was alone.
The wire of the cage bit into Giles' fingers, and he twisted them, courting the pain as an incentive to let go. Walk away, damn it, go into the office, give the boy some privacy, he's little enough dignity left.
His quickening breath was so loud, it seemed impossible that the boy didn't hear it, or the polished leather of his step, or the irregular jolts of his heartbeat as every butterfly twitch of Oz's eyelids promised discovery. The impromptu curtains hung across the front of the cage were meant to protect against casual glances from across the room, not this devouring gaze. Giles easily peered above them, his erection pressing ludicrously into cloth and metal. The image of his disembodied cock poking through the bars, demanding service, came to him then, obscene as a glory hole without even the grace of anonymity. You could still see his eyes.
If Rupert wanted to be a thoroughgoing bastard, he needn't even resort to anything so crude as force: he had the key. He doubted Oz gave a damn for missing classes, any more than he had at that age, but there were no facilities in the cage. Giles wished the image of making this cool, impervious boy piss himself or plead to be released didn't send another jolt of heat through his cock. Good people didn't see fine porcelain and get off imagining the crash.
But Giles was not good people. And that pale skin cried out to be marked.
Finally, finally, the boy came, and Giles found himself trembling with the need to lick those deft fingers clean. He could taste the way painfully short, scrubbed nails would feel under his tongue.
Surely now Oz would stretch and open his eyes. The flush of anticipated humiliation mottling Giles' cheeks wasn't doing anything to abate his aching erection. The circumstances - the boy having to explain his lycanthropic difficulties to the school board, for instance - probably debarred any official censure. But he would know, and Giles would see it in those clear, disconcerting eyes. Giles wish he could take his cock aside for a quiet word and explain that being branded as a dirty old man was not, in fact, a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Oz only sighed softly, curled onto his side in a loose fetal lump, and threw one arm up over his eyes. His arse was thin and pale as the rest of him, and his hips were sharp. Giles staggered with shaken steps into his office and made sure the door was well closed before he took care of his frustration, biting his lip to keep silent.
After that, it wasn't at all difficult for Rupert's subconscious to engineer another troubled night. Awake or asleep, Giles' head rang with reproaches, and if he dropped off it was only to awake soon after with a start. It was one thing to fuck a beautiful 17-year-old when he himself was 19 and possessed no authority save that conferred by a leather jacket and a well-rehearsed sneer. And Ethan had never been innocent. To do the same at 40, when he was employed in a position of power, would be something else altogether.
To be sure, as far as the Council was concerned, he'd already committed the unforgivable sin in allowing Oz to learn of their existence. Merely buggering the boy bloody wouldn't even rate a memo. But the California public schools were likely to take a rather more extreme view. And even if he could shuffle that off as American sexual panic, with the accurate enough excuse that Oz scarcely appeared to regard official disapproval as a matter of much moment - the power of exposure was a more serious concern. There was no way he could be sure that any advances he made were accepted freely. All disturbing fantasies aside, Giles did not think he could forgive himself that. He only wished that Willow could say the same. Her forgiveness would be coals of fire. And he could picture all too clearly the look of betrayal blooming on her face.
Why was he even considering the notion enough to repudiate it? What the hell was it about the boy that made a career, a friendship, and a trust in pieces look even for a second like a fair trade for a few quick thrusts of the hips? Truly sex makes fools of us all. Giles groaned and pulled the pillow over his face. But he was back in the library early the next morning, watching the muscles of Oz's arm slide over one another and his thighs jerk and shudder.
Giles pushed it from his mind in the month after. There were demons to fight, as there always were. A new shipment of books to catalog. Various social upheavals in his little team to weather and ignore. But when the full moon came around again, Giles found his the first car in the faculty parking lot.
He hadn't bothered to open a book, this time. And when Oz's eyes flickered open mid-jerk and caught his own, they didn't seem surprised. Giles' mouth opened to say something, he hardly knew what. I'm sorry, it's not my fault, you're beautiful, I'll be going now, it won't happen again. But Oz's eyes flickered shut so fast that he couldn't be quite sure he hadn't imagined it, or that they hadn't merely opened, unseeing, in his sleep. Surely if the boy knew he was watched he would be leaping up, covering himself with the heap of carelessly discarded clothes in the corner, accusing? At least stopping? If anything, Oz's fingers slid over his cock a little rougher, a little faster. His other hand slid up over visible ribs to toy with a high, hard nipple. Giles sucked in a breath.
And after, when he sat in his desk chair with his head thrown back and relived every gloriously far-too-slow stroke, stretching it out to make it last, he felt eyes on his face. Looked up to see Oz, who should be safely in his second period class, watching him through the glass in his office door.
Giles jumped and pulled himself forward to hide his aching erection under the desk. "Come in, Daniel, may I help you with something?" Please God, nothing which involved standing up.
Oz came in and, unusually, closed the door behind him. He shrugged. "Don't have to stop."
Giles blinked. He could feel his face taking on the mask that Buffy referred to as British. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
Oz flashed a grin. "Hey, it's cool. Turnabout."
Is fair play, Giles' mind completed automatically. Oh, yes. Well. That rather answered the question of what Oz had or hadn't seen of his ...spectator that morning. Giles could feel all the blood in his body rushing to either his face or his prick. He doubted he could have stood at that moment if his life had depended on it.
"I... um. Yes. I suppose I ought to apologize."
"No," Oz said patiently, and for a moment Giles had the disorienting impression that he himself was the younger of the two. "It's easier if you close your eyes," he added helpfully, and Giles finally realized what Oz wanted.
"Oh. Dear God." Giles cleaned his glasses.
Oz took them out of his hand and put them on the desk. "I'll go outside," he said. To watch through the door, as Giles had watched him through the cage. It made a skewed sort of sense, Giles supposed. Thank God for small mercies.
With Daniel gone he couldn't do something foolish, like plead just to lick the taut stomach where white drops had scattered. Wouldn't have to endure the humiliation of a refusal, or worse, acceptance, having the boy see him come from that alone.
Giles groaned. He could do this, if he didn't think about it too hard. His hand crept back under the desk to ease the ache. But that felt cowardly. Oz hadn't had the option of anything to hide behind. Giles' legs straightened almost without his volition, sending him back enough to give anyone who might happen to be watching a clear view. He hiked the flapping tails of his white shirt out of the way. Giles couldn't imagine why the boy would want to look at his 40-year-old body - unavoidably loosened, lined and scarred despite keeping his hand in with a sword. But it made him feel dissolute, exposed in all his dirty glory before this clean-minded youth, and that was enough to push him over the edge. His balls tightened and warmth poured down over his knuckles like honey.
Giles fumbled for his glasses with his left hand. The boy was still outside, watching, his face solemn and innocent. Giles turned away.
But as the whole childish troop left the library that afternoon, Oz turned back momentarily.
"Anytime after dawn is cool," he said generally to the air in the library. "I like to change alone."
That set the pattern of it. They never touched, much less kissed. And they were never unclothed around one another without something between them - mesh, glass, once a loaded bookshelf with Giles peering through the cracks like a schoolboy. Sometimes Giles would touch himself as Oz did, imagining the boy's hands cool and small, but mostly they took turns. Giles never failed to flush hot with humiliation. Oz never failed to look unflappable and mellow, exactly as if he were alone.
Giles never watched Oz dress, after. It seemed too domestic, somehow. Presumptuous. He would go out for bagels or donuts for the two of them, and come back to let him out of the cage as if greeting him for the very first time.