The music's still twanging up Oz's arms and through his gut well after the band finishes their set. Despite the ache in his wrist, he thinks he kept up pretty well, if the clap on the back from the drummer and the wide, slow smile from the singer are anything to go by.
It's been a long time since he played in public, even longer since he played country music. He's missed this -- the camaraderie afterwards, packing up while the music still clangs in his ears, the jabber of the crowd returning, seeping in to replace the notes. Working out the kink in his strap shoulder, a pain he'd completely forgotten, he's caught in both the moment and in memory. Memory's physical and emotional and a mixture of both.
He feels good, but -- there's always a but.
Nothing feels quite real. He can't put his finger on it, but the atmosphere feels too constructed, the music too deliberately chosen.
It's like there's a layer of irony over everything, distant and slightly mocking. Their set was Haggard and Hank Jr., Glen Campbell and Loretta Lynn, played by guys Oz's age and sung by the tall woman with a buzzcut. The bar wants to be cool, too, Chinese-red walls and flocked curtains, tin and neon signs for beers that haven't been made in thirty years. Lots of dress-up, very little substance.
The crowd's real enough, though. Forty percent hipsters who make arrogance out of naivete and sixty percent people who take the music seriously. Sneakergazers of all genders in sober neutrals mix with guys in choppy mullets and low-hanging bellies, frosted girls in pink denim skirts. Might be a recipe for disaster.
Across the room, over by the bar, there's some shouldering and posturing, voices getting raised, but Oz figures it's just restless drunks.
He wouldn't be *surprised* if a fight broke out, but he'll be happy if it doesn't. He slaps Tony's hand again, goes up on his toes for a kiss on the cheek by Laila the singer, and only really tunes in to the room when a sort-of familiar voice goes, "C'mon, buddy. You're not gonna puss out on me, are you?"
Even up here on the dinky little dais, Oz can't see much, just some shoving and the restless motion of the crowd as it tries to both get out of the way and grab a better angle.
The crowd rotates like a carousel around the central attraction, and Oz glimpses a dark head and broad shoulders ducking and weaving messily, jabbing at a taller, heavyset guy's chest. It just sounds like Xander -- he wants to believe that. Not that it *could* be Xander; it's just one of those tricks of memory, phenotype masquerading as personality.
Oz is, after all, four hours by freeway from Sunnydale and two years gone, and Xander was never the type to pick fights. Let alone fights he can't win.
"Pussy?" the bigger guy says, and as Oz slides through the crowd, guitar case heavy on his back, all he can hear is the rumbling argument. Not yet full-blown, and he shouldn't even be getting involved. Just because this guy reminds him of Xander, that's no reason. Fighting, making peace, those are things he left back in Sunnydale.
The bigger guy's tall and blond, hipster through and through. Droopy hair not seen since Blur's second album and heavy black glasses like Willem Dafoe in _Mississippi Burning_, and he's leaning back out of reach, laughing with his friends at the dark-haired guy trying to get a punch in.
"Pussy, asshole. Step up and --" the dark guy throws a left hook that goes wild.
"*Pussy*?" Hipster asks again and leans in. Oz is stuck behind a big girl in a black cheomsang, and he can't see anything, just hear. "Fucking townie, who you calling pussy?"
Not good, because if that is Xander, he's going to explode at being called a *townie*.
Oz shoves past the girl, apologizing as he goes, and then he's in the center of the ring, grabbing Xander -- or guy who reminds him of Xander, he still doesn't know -- by the sleeve while one of the big hipster's friends yanks at the strap on his guitar. Fucking guys.
The Xander-guy whirls and tries to duck out of Oz's grasp, his fists going again, and he manages to make contact with the hipster's belly. The friend yanks harder on Oz's shirt, pulling him back, and Oz can't shake him off. "Let go, man, I'm just trying to --"
Help. Calm things down. But the hipster's moving in, his fist the size of a melon from the angle Oz is being held at. and it connects with Xander-guy's face, squelching and cracking meatily.
"*Fucking* leave off --" Oz yells, wrenching free, his shirt tearing as he goes forward, tackling the Xander-guy around the waist.
Finally, *finally*, the guy turns around and Oz lets go.
Blood around his eye, the skin swelling, and red in the cheeks, pasty everywhere else, he looks sick. Feverish and furious, and it really is Xander.
Bigger and softer than Oz remembers, but Xander all the same. Recognition slaps Oz right in the chest, right on top of his breastbone, and resounds, shivering and clinking, through him. Xander.
Xander's glittering eyes finally fasten on Oz as Oz straightens up, and then blink.
Oz can almost hear the click of recognition.
Xander's mouth works for a second before he says, "Oh, *shit* --"
Not the response Oz would have hoped for. "Xander --"
Xander stumbles as he turns away, tries to run, but the crowd's pressing in and there's nowhere to go. Oz lunges after him just as the blond hipster grabs Xander around the neck.
"Where do you think you're going?" hipster asks as Xander flails.
Oz weasels in between them, hand on each of their chests, and tries to catch his breath. "It's okay," he tells the guy. "He's just -- my friend had too much. Sorry."
"Not your friend --" Xander says and Oz pokes him hard.
The hipster looks them over and shakes his head as he releases Xander. "You in the band?"
"Yeah," Oz says.
"Good set. Like the whole redneck thing," he says.
Of course you do, Oz thinks, but he just nods. "Thanks. Sorry about --"
"Bit of local color," the guy says, shrugging. "We're cool."
"Cool," Oz says. "Thanks." He turns to Xander, who's just standing there, head down, fists at his sides, like a kid sent for time out. Blood is drying in a dark curve down his temple and past his ear. "Hey, man. Want to get out of here?"
"Sure," Xander says flatly. He won't look at Oz, but he follows obediently, the crowd making way for them, and they're out on the sidewalk in the muggy night air before Oz breathes again.
Usual busy Saturday night in the Gaslamp, hipsters and those with enough money that they can pretend they're hip out strolling, music of the world -- Peruvian winds, Cuban jazz, Estonian pop -- filtering out of bar after bar. Usually, Oz makes fun of his neighborhood -- it gives him plenty of material -- but he does love it here. Loves how all of its ridiculous pretension coats a real and bizarre history of land speculation and institutionalized vice and decadence. Loves how the worst evil is gentrification and vampires are only seen in midnight kitsch screenings at the Bijou. Loves how no one notices you if you don't want them to.
Oz breathes and considers his situation.
Considers what he's found himself embroiled in, bar fights and class warfare and history rearing its shaggy, pretty handsome head. Considers Xander Harris sagging against a parking meter, knuckling his eyes. Though he's bigger, thicker around the middle and across the face, than he used to be, he somehow looks exhausted and starving.
"Let's get you something to eat," Oz says. First things first, and maybe later he'll figure out why Xander doesn't think they're friends.
For a moment, Xander doesn't react. A group of girls walking three abreast and tittering like birds as they pick their way past on high, *high* heels, passes between them, and Xander just keeps sagging in place.
"Ripped your shirt," he says finally.
Oz fingers the collar and the exposed skin on the back of his shoulder. "Yeah." He glances down the street, trying to figure out where someone in ripped clothing and a big drunk guy with blood on his face can get seated.
"That my shirt?"
"Yours, ours, yeah," Oz says. "C'mon."
Xander follows again, quietly, like he just doesn't have anything better to do. He follows, hands in his pockets and head down, as Oz cuts down Sixth and across to the little French diner where his friend Tess works.
She puts them in the corner of the patio, shaded by the awning and flush against the railing, and brings them chicory coffee without needing to ask. Hamburger and double order of frites for Xander, more coffee for Oz, and they share the uneasy quiet.
The dim light back here, interrupted only occasionally by the stripe of headlights from a passing car, makes Xander look a little better. Not quite so wrecked, anyway, and he eats hungrily.
Oz sips his coffee, keeping his other hand protectively on the neck of his guitar case.
Xander wipes the plate clean with the last piece of his bun and reaches for his coffee. His color's smoothing out a little, or maybe it's just the lack of light.
"Xander Harris," Oz says quietly.
Xander wipes his mouth. "Oz -- Oz."
The building blocks of magic are right here, naming things and people. Naming to try and fix them, understand them. Magic, and science, too, is all about identification, nomenclature, taxonomy.
Oz smiles. "Xander. Good to see you."
"San Diego, huh?" Xander says. "Never imagined you'd be --"
"What?"
Xander blinks and a shadow of his old surprise washes over his face, the surprise he'd get in the library when Giles asked him to pay attention. "Huh?"
"What'd you imagine?"
"Oh. Guess -- like, you. Out on the open road. Big blue skies, amber waves of grain. Oz and the eternal roadtrip."
"Cool," Oz says. It sounds perfect. Impossible, but perfect all the same.
"Never knew where you were. You could be --" Xander cuts his hand horizontally. "*Anywhere*. Really cool."
"Always knew where you were," Oz says. He should apologize for not writing, for letting Xander stay in the dark. He can't, though, not yet. He's still figuring out what it means that Xander *did* think about him.
"Yeah." Xander's looking down at his plate, dancing two fries together. "I tend to stick to the hellmouth. Or it sticks to me. Longterm relationship kind of thing."
"Nah --" Oz starts to say. "I meant --"
Xander looks up and grins. "Except now."
"Exactly," Oz says. He doesn't quite know what he's agreeing to, but Xander's smiling. Oz sits forward, elbow on the table, finger circling the top of his mug. There are hints of the old Xander -- surprise, grin, loss for words -- that hover around his face and make Oz look harder.
Xander blinks and looks away, and Oz realizes he was staring. "Xander --"
"So where *did* you go? No one knew. It was like this -- this big No-Go Area, danger, danger, Will Robinson Area 51 topic."
That makes sense. They never talked about the ones who left, whether it was Buffy that long summer after Angelus, or Angel himself the next summer. That's a kind of magic, too, reversed and inside-out. If you don't name something, it never existed. You never felt anything for it, either. "Giles knew."
"Giles?"
Oz shifts his weight and looks around for Tess. "Kept in touch. Did some buying for his store last year."
Sitting back so heavily that his chair scrapes a little, Xander says, "Kidding me."
"Nope." Oz curls his fingers around the neck of the guitar case and squeezes against the heat building up through him. It might be embarrassment, it might be shame. "Haven't heard from him in a while, though."
"England," Xander says. "He went back."
"Ah, cool." Giles also told him Xander was engaged, but that seems to have evaporated. Because Xander's here and Giles wouldn't miss the wedding of one of the kids. Oz isn't all that surprised. Things have a way of turning inside out and upside down on the hellmouth.
"Not really." Xander taps his knife against the rim of his plate. "He just cleared out. Up and left."
They have the patio to themselves now, and Oz shifts again. There's too much in what they're saying, in what they're not saying. Xander's not looking at him, but his voice is heavy and flat, a paving stone that sits on Oz's chest and will not budge.
"Which we should think about doing," he says and Xander looks up, startled again, eyes wide. His cheeks are flushing again and Oz wonders if he isn't just drunk but sick, too. "Leaving, I mean."
"Right," Xander says, scraping his chair even further back. When he digs in his pocket, Oz coughs.
"I've got it."
"I can pay for it."
"Sure you can," Oz says. "But I've got it."
It's nothing, not compared to the weight in his chest and the heat of unspoken apology threading through his veins. He leaves a twenty next to his coffee cup and lifts his guitar onto his shoulder again. Xander's got his hands in his pockets again, shoulders bowed, as they make their way through the empty restaurant. Tess is at the till behind the counter, pencil between her teeth as she punches impatiently at a calculator. Oz lifts his hand to wave goodbye and then points back at the patio. Grinning, losing the pencil, she blows him a kiss.
"She your girlfriend?" Xander asks when they're back on the sidewalk. Oz isn't sure what to say -- *once upon a time* or *could've been*, but neither is quite accurate -- but before he can say anything, Xander shrugs. "Forget it. Look, it was nice running into you, but --"
"Xander," Oz says.
"Oz."
Naming again. "You can crash with me."
Xander's looking away, up the street, his jaw working and lips paling as they press against each other. Oz waits him out.
Finally, Xander says, "Really going all out, huh? Dinner *and* a bed."
His mouth is sour from all the coffee, puckered like he's been sucking lemons, and Oz nods. "Something like that. That okay?"
Xander doesn't answer. He's still gazing up the street, squinting, like someone trying to do long division in his head.
Oz touches Xander's elbow, lightly enough that it could be an accident, but it doesn't have to be. Ambiguously. "Let's get you home."
Exhaling noisily, Xander studies his feet. "Yeah, sure. Why not?"
"Can't argue with that enthusiasm," Oz says and elbows him lightly. Xander's half-grinning, deliberately and determinedly, when he looks back up. "We can walk it. C'mon."
Walking, he hopes, will dispel some of the anxiety that's hovering and crawling over Oz like bugs. Like mosquitoes, a swarm of tiny bites in unexpected places. Each bite pricks at something new, guilt and nostalgia, missing Xander and not understanding him, and more guilt.
He doesn't remember feeling *guilty* about leaving Sunnydale; he remembers feeling relieved, and mournful, and really fucking sad about it, but never guilty, not really.
He made sure of that, though, if he's going to be honest. He made sure guilt wasn't an option by making himself forget about Xander. He forgot about Willow, too, but that was a longer process, more arduous and self-conscious.
The horrible thing is that he could always half-forget Xander when he had to. Whatever they had, some strange hybrid, infertile like a donkey, of friendship and sex, was supposed to be secret from the get-go. It had to be forgotten to keep on working, so once he was out of Sunnydale, it was scarily easy to put Xander out of his mind. Slot him into a category with Freddy Iverson and goth Michael, a box of "guys I knew in high school".
Xander and Sunnydale were twinned in his memory, the town matched to Xander's body, the taste of his mouth and the grid of its streets. Coextensive, somehow, eucalyptus trees and baggy shirts, big hands and the neon sign of the movie theater.
And now, walking next to Xander, occasionally brushing his arm, Oz feels like shit about that. All of that. They stop at the public parking lot to get Xander's bag from the trunk of his car, and still they're silent.
It would be faster to take the trolley, but Oz keeps walking, watching blue and white lights on Xander's profile, listening to the rattle of his heartbeat and smelling old laundry and new blood coming off him. Silently, and Oz wonders what Xander's thinking about. What brings him here and why he's so angry.
The thing about guilt, though, is that it's just as fake as the wanna-be dive bar, as the hipsters playing country music. Fake and self-satisfying, a really good way to call attention to yourself and your extreme, superior sensitivity.
Oz shudders, making that connection, and Xander looks over at him. "Sorry. Little cold."
He never forgot about Xander. He just didn't let himself think about him, and if he feels guilty about that now, there's no point. Xander's back, angry and bloated, but he's still himself.
Oz owes both of them a better try this time.
*
"Here, huh?" Xander looks up at the three-story green stucco apartment house that used to be a motel and shakes his head. "Never would've thought -"
"Roof and four walls," Oz says, unlocking the gate to the stairs.
"Yeah, guess so." Xander sounds almost disappointed, and his face shows it, too. In the stairwell, waiting on the narrow balcony while Oz unlocks the door, and then inside, his face is drawn, eyes slitted and head ducked.
Especially inside, where Xander stands on the threshold, taking in the apartment -- kitchenette in one corner, Oz's bed nook in the other behind amber bead and painted bamboo curtains, the closed door to his roommate Rich's room, and the wide window that overlooks more red roofs and the anonymous blank backs of buildings and, off to the right, a strip of green tinsel that's the ocean. When it's day, anyway; right now, it's all just a muddy silvery dark.
Xander takes it all in as Oz toes off his shoes, stows his guitar behind the couch, and flicks on the lights.
Something's off about Xander, about how still he's holding himself, about the look of disappointment clouding his face. Something off, and Oz feels the prickle of displaced anxiety down his back and in his hands.
"You were expecting the honeymoon suite?" Oz asks lightly and reaches for Xander's bag.
Xander chokes -- nothing dramatic, but the sound is quiet, gurgling, astonished. When Oz glances up, Xander's wiping a twisted grimace off his face and squaring his shoulders.
"It's homey," Xander says. "You're doing well, I guess?"
"Guess so. Just living, really."
"All settled down and everything," Xander says, more to himself than anything. He's still adjusting, apparently, to the lunatic idea that Oz pays rent, doesn't sleep in national parks, lives like anyone elese. Oz pats Xander's elbow and moves into the kitchen. "Where're you going?"
"Tea," Oz says, unlatching the lid to his Mason jar of marifasa and other anti-wolf herbs and filling the kettle. He digs up a heaping spoonful of herbs and drops it into the chrome teaball.
"Can I have some?" Xander is right at Oz's elbow. "Man. That *reeks*. Never mind."
"Yeah," Oz says, tapping his fingers on the edge of the counter, waiting for the kettle. "Not your grandmother's tea."
Reeking tea for Oz, a big glass of OJ for Xander, and they do a little dance, awkward and jerky, as the space of the apartment jangles and shifts around them. To the couch, Xander fidgeting with his glass, the seam of his pants, a patch of stubble on his neck.
Oz closes his eyes and drains the tea in three searing swallows.
The couch has never felt so small before. He's shared it with his roommate, with friends, and never noticed how nearly every movement brings his elbow against Xander's side, how the cushions dip and slide whenever someone sits back, how *close* two people can be, how discomfiting that closeness is.
Conversation is as jerky and shifting as their bodies; nothing quite sticks, no real questions -- *where've you been?* and *why're you here?* -- get asked. Oz tips his head back into the cushions and realizes that the impossible has happened.
More impossible than lycanthropy, or running into Xander in the first place, than Slayers and vamps and the gathering forces of darkness.
He's making *small talk* with Xander.
And once he realizes that, he starts to smile and his chest shakes a little because he's trying to hold in the laughter.
"You okay?" Xander asks, breaking off his story about some guy on his construction crew who mixed up Preparation H and toothpaste.
"Yeah," Oz says. It's easier to smile, now that he can see just how ridiculous this situation is. Xander's smiling a little. Oz wants to kiss him. Just push in and kiss him, do it all over again. It's just a fact, like his nose being cold or his stomach empty: he wants to kiss Xander. First, though, he pushes himself to his feet and sways a little. "Give me a minute."
In the bathroom, he scrubs his teeth and tongue with toothpaste and splashes his face. Peering at himself in the mirror, sparkling with water and pale under the overhead light, Oz can only think how *weird* it is, how impossible, that Xander Harris turned up in his bar, started a fight, ended up back here in his apartment.
How much he missed the big guy, fidgets and tangents off tangents and sad crinkle around the eyes and all.
"Sorry," he says as he drops back onto the couch. "Emergency."
Xander's flipping through one of Oz's roommate's copies of _Maxim_, and he shrugs. He tosses it back on the side table and twists to face Oz. "Where were we?"
Oz just looks at him.
In the dark, Xander's eyes are bright. Dark light, if that's possible. This is all eerie and it's making Oz think about the first time he met Xander, on another couch, in another dark. Same eyes, looking out at him from a changed face.
The anxiety's that been hovering around him, it's this disconnect from the Xander he pretended he'd forgotten and the Xander in front of him. The swarm of little biting things, that's nostalgia, or missing, something small and insistent, brought out by the *flashes* of the old Xander, the one he misses.
When Oz leans in to kiss him, Xander doesn't move. Oz holds his neck and presses his mouth against Xander's. Just lips, closed and a little sour from alcohol and coffee, until Oz rubs his thumb over the soft skin behind Xander's ear, and then it's lips and tongue. Still awkward, like Xander's forgotten how to move, his elbow digging into the cushion, the back of his hand resting on Oz's chest.
"This was a bad idea," Oz says as he draws back. "Sorry."
Oz pulls back a little but Xander turns his hand, pushes it up until his fingertips brush the ripped neck seam.
"Give me a minute," he says, and his hand is warm on Oz's neck. "Christ. Poor shirt."
"Been through the wars." Oz tilts a little closer.
Xander's palm slides over the back of Oz's neck, soft and warm. "Can't believe you still have it."
"Kind of a packrat." Oz squirms closer, and Xander doesn't seem to mind. His mouth burns dully, like he used too much toothpaste, but it's not toothpaste. It's kissing, aborted too early.
"Packrat, homebody -- learning all sorts of stuff about you tonight."
"Multilayered," Oz says. "That's me."
Xander's hand pushes up through Oz's hair, curving around his skull, then combing out to the ends. Oz feels like he's being studied, *learned*, physically and maybe it ought to freak him out, but it's pretty cool. "Where'd you go just now?"
"Hmm? Oh. Brush my teeth."
Licking his lower lip, Xander nods. "Your tea's nasty. You know that, right?"
"Yeah," Oz says. "Wanted to get rid of it before I kissed you."
"Really?" Xander's smile deepens in the corners of his mouth, and he tugs lightly on Oz's hair. "So it was premeditated?"
"Full malice aforethought," Oz says. "Except not malicious. And the tea, see -- it's not tea-tea. It's for the wolf."
Xander's hold tightens on Oz's hair. Probably reflexively, and it's not like Oz can blame him. The wolf's never been something he can be all that proud of. If he can't talk -- yet, whenever -- about leaving, about apologizing, the least he can do is talk about the wolf.
"Herbs the monks gave me," he continues. "Drink 'em up morning and night, just to be sure."
"It's still working?" Xander asks, his voice low. He hasn't moved back, which is good. He might even be a little closer than he was.
"Yeah. No big toothy guy for twenty-two months now."
"Glad," Xander says, and he's definitely closer now, face hovering over Oz's neck, sniffing and kissing lightly. "About the wolf, yeah. But really glad you don't drink that stuff because you like it."
Oz is laughing now -- relief, and Xander's mouth is tickling, and his arm's going around Oz's waist -- and it feels better than anything.
Xander's body is bigger than it used to be and his hair's longer, but his eyes are just the same, and sometimes, like now, he talks like he used to. Talks like the guy in Oz's memories, and his eyes look at Oz the same way, widely, with questions and jokes spinning like pinwheels in the dark light. Oz kisses him again, lips scraping over stubbly cheek, meeting Xander's open mouth, and this is better than laughter.
Xander's hand is up under the shirt, *their* shirt -- a thought that makes Oz tilt the other way, grinning into the kiss -- and his other arm's around Oz's neck, and Oz has a knee in Xander's lap as he presses forward.
When he was younger, Oz always thought kissing had to *lead* somewhere. Like a prologue, or the first few bars of a song, it set up something longer and better and more important. It's not that he's old and wise now, but this, just this, right now it's enough. Just the slick heat inside Xander's mouth and the thick squirming of his tongue.
Right now, there *aren't* apologies to make or things not to say, and that's a relief and a gift all at once.
"Oz," Xander says, pulling away, leaving his hands, suddenly hot and heavy, on Oz. "Oz, I --"
"It's okay," Oz says, even though he has no idea what's stopping them.
Xander's eyes are closed, looking down into the dark between them, and his mouth is twisting. "Should stop, that's all."
"Okay," Oz says again. It's not okay, his hands and the rest of his body are warm as candlewax, soft and easy to mold, and he doesn't want to lose that.
"Just -- should stop."
It's their refrain. *Should stop*, repeated every time they ever fooled around. Usually ignored, but it was like an obligation, a duty to something or someone, to at least say it.
Xander's saying it for some other reason now.
Untangling his hand from Xander's shirt, Oz shakes it out and rolls his shoulders. "Late anyway," he says and pulls back to his side of the couch. "Probably should turn in."
Xander looks at him, then at the cushion between them, and pats it. "I can stay out here --"
Oz stands up. "Yeah, don't be stupid. Sleeping with me."
"I don't --"
"This is a loveseat." Extending his hand, Oz pulls Xander up to his feet. "I've got a double. Easy math."
Laughter shades into sadness, and memory's all over everything, but Oz feels okay inside. Disappointed, definitely, but Xander's so *strange*, so preoccupied he might as well have thought balloons blooming all around his head, that he's probably right about stopping.
Sharing a bed with Xander is something he hasn't done since before Buffy came back from LA, but the couch is tiny and there's no reason not to.
Even if he's lying here now on his back, evaluating if it'd be rude to turn on his side to look at Xander. Even if he's going over the night, minute by minute and gesture by gesture, looking for clues like some brain-damaged Holmes.
Even if sleep feels very far off and Xander's body is radiating warmth that draws Oz a little closer.
*
So when Xander starts to talk, sometime later, while Oz has been holding himself still and staring into the dark, he almost jumps. He's been watching the floaters and spinning fireworks in front of his eyes and thought Xander was asleep.
"Last I saw you," Xander says, like he's considering it, trying to get it right, "Riley was taping you up."
That's not jealousy flattening out Xander's voice, souring it. It can't be -- not jealousy, not bitterness.
"He left, too," Xander adds. "Riley."
Maybe it is bitterness.
"Last I saw *you*," Oz says, and takes a deep breath, "You were --" In the basement, with Anya curled around him, leg thrown over Xander's, Xander's hand in her hair and his cheek pressed to the crown of her skull.
Neither of them has anything to be jealous about, no basis in -- in anything. Jealousy's what comes with regular, normal relationships. It's like a perk of normal, and they never had that. What they had -- or what they *have*, it's not like Oz knows -- is different. Kind of marginal, but not in a bad way. Oz knows he likes *these* kinds of relationships better, made up of friendship and closeness and *touching*, than the center-stage exclusive super-drama ones.
That it took him two murders to figure that out is really pretty enormously sad. Or, to be accurate, one murder and one attempted murder. One and a half murders?
It's not important.
Oz tilts his head a little so he can catch Xander's eye. Xander, who's lying on his back, arm under his head, looking over at him.
He takes another deep breath. "You were in the basement, asleep with Anya."
Xander's lashes flutter and he rolls onto his side, knee nudging Oz's. "What? When?"
"Came back," Oz says. "Later that night."
"You came back?"
"I did. And then, I --"
"Yeah, you left, but --" Xander says, still flat, almost mad but not quite. Oz has forgotten how Xander -- anyone, really, it's been a long time since he's talked this much to anyone -- can have fourteen different emotions all layered together in one statement. "You spied on me?"
Oz's face *was* hot, but he only realizes that now, when a chill hits him. "That's not really the point --"
"Sure it is." Xander grins, real and broad, front teeth catching what light there is in the room. "You spied on me. How long?"
It was cold in the Harrises' back yard, and Oz only had a t-shirt on, but he peered through the window in the door until he hated himself. "Ten minutes?"
"Wow," Xander says, still grinning, nodding a little to himself. "I've got a stalker. Well. I *had* a stalker, but it's still pretty cool."
"Wasn't stalking you, Xander, I --"
"You were stalking me. You were *so* stalking me."
The chill ripples away, and there isn't heat in its wake, just sleepy, fuzzy warmth. Oz finally smiles. "I was totally stalking you."
"Told you."
"Can't argue with the truth."
"No, sir, you can't," Xander says.
It feels good, now, lying here under his flea-market quilt, listening to Xander breathe, feeling his body just a couple inches away. Relaxation slips over Oz, so quicksilver-fast he doesn't know what's happening until his eyes are closed and his hands unclench.
Having someone close by, someone he missed without even knowing it, that's all this is. Xander rolls in his sleep, tossing an arm across Oz's neck, and warmth slips through Oz all over again.
Just closeness, the simplest thing of all, the realest, and he's enjoying it all the way up to the brink of sleep and over.