Rain
He was drinking and so, naturally, he was thinking of forbidden things. It was his disease, the addiction for which no twelve-step program existed. The alcohol was not the problem; he could take it or leave it. It was really just an excuse for the licence he allowed himself on those rare occasions when he was alone with only his own mind.
Despite his familiar and mildly hated label of 'grown-up friend', he was still that which his charges chose not to acknowledge; a human male with all the weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that implied. In his sane and rational hours he was, more or less, exactly what they thought him: staid; responsible; neutered.
But when the rain fell against the window and the scotch fell against the side of his glass, he was himself again. He was a man who ached with loneliness and burned with passions. Memory and fantasy merged for him then, never confused but allowed to intermingle. His mind roamed free, past to present, present to impossible future; all the things that his daytime self denied existence. The wild magic of youth, when he thought he was immortal; the sweet, dark passion for a man who was now his enemy; the drugs that had coursed through his much younger body and sometimes still did; the glint of golden hair on a pillow. Or red hair. Or brown.
His thoughts were dear to him in these hours. Sometimes memories of past glories, but more often dreams of a very different present where they turned to him, not for advice, but for comfort, or passion, or satiation.
On over-bright California days he sparred with Buffy, training and guiding her, but on nights like these he pulled her against the body of his mind, fisting his hands in her hair and feasting himself on her golden youth. He was neither shepherd nor father figure when his skin could feel the burn of hers and he could consume her.
In sunlight he guided Willow, advised her, watched over her explorations into the realm of magic. With rain drumming against the roof like too-quick heartbeats, his mind rehearsed every heady piece of sex-magic he knew, tapping a vast reservoir of knowledge gained during his 'electric Kool-Aid groove'. The pictures in his mind burned with the cold fire of remembered power as he imagined burying himself in soft flesh. Sometimes Willow alone. Sometimes Tara's strong body as well, twisted and writhed beneath him.
Xander, in Giles' sober hours, was his friend. The young man looked up to him, perhaps not as a father, but at least as the only stable influence in his life. At the bottom of a bottle, Xander's chocolate brown eyes looked up in a very different way. Then he allowed himself to wield the power the boy's trust gave him. He could see that firm young body splayed out before him, tied up, manhandled and willingly submissive. He could press bruises against the skin and kisses against the lips.
It was ironic, really, that only his daylight self had ever seen the naked body of one of his charges, and that that body was gone now, from his charge and from his reach.
He could recall with perfect clarity a dozen mornings in the library when the break of dawn brought the emergence of boy from beast. Surely his daylight self had not looked, had turned away. Yet in the dark of night he remembered every line of taut young muscle, the curve of thigh and angle of shoulder. He could feel the suppleness of flesh beneath his touch as he handed the day's clothes to Oz and his hand lingered just a little too long. The warm scent of skin was in his nose as he stood too close for courtesy, but nothing was said. His ears still held the echo of quick breaths brushing across his shoulder.
These were the memories that he treasured on his dark nights. He kept them fresh and polished through much handling, turning them over and over in his mind; smooth, spicy, warm. Each minuscule piece of data gathered by his senses was built upon in his imagination; a fleeting touch became a caress; a glance an embrace; a greeting, ribald words moaned against his skin.
The sweetest memory of all was the look in Oz's eyes on so many of those mornings. Even now his skin remembered the burn as the boy's eyes tracked his movements. At these times he knew beyond doubt that an advance wouldn't have been rejected. Indeed would have been met and matched.
But that implicit permission had always been offered in the mornings when the sun was shining and the liquid in his cup was tea. The times when sanity and conscience ruled, when no such offer could be accepted or even acknowledged.
On dark nights when one hand held his scotch-filled glass and the other his blood-filled cock he could take, and did. Could unleash his own beast, sate desire, caress, hold, dominate, thrust, kiss, lick, bite, have, own, betray, belong.
In the morning there would be guilt and repression, but for now there was only the bottle, the rain and the contemplation of flesh.