loaded

Mine
by Amz

Oz smiled a little to himself. Giles watched him from the couch. They'd both been fairly quiet this afternoon. No words or music to drift through the small apartment. Just breathing and being content and now Oz, smiling.

"What is it?" Giles finally asked, smiling too.

"I'm just thinking about you," Oz shook his head. He pressed a hand to his forehead and exhaled in amusement.

"Oh." Giles said, not sure what else to say. Oh and newspapers. Giles had one open on his lap and had been engrossed in some of it for some of the afternoon. His forehead wrinkled slightly as he looked at Oz and then returned to his paper. Not reading. Just thinking.

Oz smiled again and casting his eyes to his feet, turned very serious. "I feel giddy," he began slowly. "I kind of want to giggle, a lot. Or something. It's like ... I'm about to burst with excitement. And I probably shouldn't try to put it into words." He grimaced.

"Why not?" Giles leaned forward.

Oz shrugged a little and frowned. "This kind of thing doesn't make much sense out loud." He watched Giles a little longer. "Dance in the street." He said softly, averting his gaze to the newspaper. "Take an ad out: Giles is ..." He looked away suddenly.

The watcher immediately raised his eyebrows. "Is what?" He asked.

Oz bit his thumbnail and was quiet for a moment. "I dunno how would you describe me?"

"Ah." Giles nodded, understanding.

"I'm 'ah'?" Oz smiled, stretching out on his back.

"Extremely. Do you ever get bored?" Giles wondered suddenly, turning the page.

"No." Oz said, rolling forward. "Pretty much at my happiest. You?"

Giles considered the ceiling before turning his eyes to Oz. "I'm am more content than I have ever been." He said. "I do worry about Buffy though."

"I worry about Willow." Oz admitted. "Does that bother you?"

"Should it?" Giles smiled.

"I love you." Oz said.

Giles smiled again, blinking in surprise. Oz seemed surprised too. "I feel exactly the same," Giles said. "Quite."

Oz rubbed his chin. "It's ... scary." He mused.

"The words?"

"The words," Oz agreed. "The waking up and having you next to me and the being afraid that one day you might not be. The not saying it and regretting it or the saying it and losing you and then not being able to pretend that this was never real." He grimaced again. "Out loud ... wrong."

"Not wrong at all." Giles disagreed quietly. "I feel much too old for you sometimes. And other times I forget about the age difference completely. That's rather unrelated to what you just said. I wanted to bring it up."

"Do you ever miss not having children? That's not related. I wanted to bring that up."

"Often no. Sometimes incredibly. I am awfully thankful. There's time for you," Giles folded the paper. He presumed Oz would understand what he meant. Oz was rather random himself.

Oz shook his head. "I don't want children," he said, pausing. "I do but I don't. I would have liked to."

"Before this?" Giles set the newspaper down on the coffee table and spread out on his stomach on the couch. Oz laid on the floor between the couch and the legs of the table and Giles reached out to stroke his cheekbone. "With Willow?"

"Maybe," Oz sighed. "I didn't mean before this though." "Oh."

Oz pulled himself up off the floor and onto the couch, wanting to be closer to Giles. "Is this the way you expected things to turn out?"

"With us?" Giles struggled again. Oz was so much easier to understand when he was silent, sometimes.

"Okay." Oz shrugged, stroking Giles through his shirt.

Giles brushed his lips across the wolf's forehead and took a guess. "I stopped expecting things to happen a long time ago."

Oz seemed satisfied with that answer. "You can have things turn out not how you expected them to, even when you didn't expect anything at all." He said.

"I love you." Giles said.

"You said that." Oz smiled.

"No, I didn't," the Watcher grinned. "I said I feel exactly the same. It's not the same."

"Well that could be confusing." Oz said.

"Indeed." Giles chuckled, smoothing a strand of his boy's hair away and pulling him closer.

Oz smiled again. "Giles is mine."