Tis The Season
He finishes decking the halls at eleven.
There aren't that many halls to deck. His apartment is small, only a few rooms really, and most of it is covered in books he's either bought from dealers in alleys, or borrowed or stolen from friends he made when he was still part of the Watcher's Council. He only bought 200 lights, all of them white, to drape artfully around the living room. They surround the single stocking, blood red, with his name written in white puff paints so many years ago that all that remains is the second E and three quarters of the W.
Tis the season for memories.
Tis the season he would like to forget.
Tis the season he forces himself to remember.
He stares into the distance, or what would be the distance if his chair were more than five feet from the brick wall. As is, he stares ahead until the shining lights blur in front of tired eyes.
His grip on the bottle of scotch tightens. He's not going to drink. He's not like that. He knows how he gets with enough alcohol in his system. He knows what people can get like when they're drunk and miserable. Not for him. No.
He squeezes the bottle because if he loosens his grip, he knows that the bottle will end up at his mouth.
He can't afford to get drunk tonight.
He can feel his fingertips press together suddenly, and feels something sticky on his fingers. Without looking he realizes that the bottle is broken. He lets the alcohol clatter to the floor and licks his fingers, trying to clean the blood away enough to gauge the damage. He tastes a trace of scotch.
Fucking fabulous.
He feels liquid against his foot, seeping in through the hole by his big toe that he kept meaning to fix but never bothers to. A small pool of scotch is gathering by his feet. Sighing, elevating his hand above his head to minimize the dripping of blood onto his dark grey carpet, he goes to the kitchen to get paper towels.
In the kitchen he finds a large, half-empty package of napkins in addition to a new roll of towels. He wraps his hand with the towels, trying to maintain pressure and stop bleeding, as he walks back to the living room to toss the napkins on top of his drink.
He watches the liquid soak into the cheap paper napkins in new and inventive patterns. Upon realizing that his life can only get less pathetic from this point on, he reaches for the bottle and rights it. Slightly less than half the scotch is still left. He wishes he could mutter something witty about the situation, but his mind isn't working like that. He just raises the bottle and begins to drink.
The sharp corners hit his chapped lips, but the pain is a blessing when compared to thinking about anything, and it's almost immediately washed away by the drink. He hasn't drank much in a long time; he doesn't even finish off the bottle before he's falling-down drunk.
His eyes wander to the shards of glass peeking out from under the napkins. Suddenly, as if in a flash of drunken brilliance, an quote comes to him - crying over spilled scotch - and although he's not quite positive if it's funny, per se, he finds it hilarious. He leans back against the chair he had been sitting at. He's not quite sure when the laughter turns to slightly more sober hysterics, but he does realize that by the time the doorbell rings, he's slumped against the chair, feeling the alcohol soak into his thigh.
He curses slowly, low and repeated, and stumbles to his feet. His legs feel leaden. He can hear the slur to his voice as he announces that he's coming, he's coming, just give him a moment...
He realizes as he opens the door how he must look. He hasn't shaved in days, his eyes are glassy with lack of sleep, and his hair looks unwashed, most likely a result of not washing it. His shirt is old and torn, leaving an unwashed undershirt visible to the world, and his pants are old jeans which, currently, are soaked and reeking of scotch.
His eyes widen when he finally realizes who's at the other side of the door.
His hair is blue these days, just darker than his eyes, and he runs a hand through it at the sight of Wesley. "Um... hey," the boy says.
"Oz. Hello." Wes attempts to straighten his shirt to cover the most skin. He drops an arm abruptly to cover the dark stain on the pants. "Come- come in."
"Sorry to drop by unannounced. No one was where I thought they lived, and you were at least listed in the phone book."
"Oh."
"Yeah. I just figured that, you know, rain of fire, rain of toads... need anything?"
Wes smiles slightly. "Thank you, Oz. But I don't think there's really anything to do until we start recovering." He indicated his own injuries.
Oz nods. "What about the wolf?"
"What?"
"Me. With the... what does the apocalypse stuff do to the wolf? Even the Hellmouth makes me twitchy."
"Having never faced a true apocalypse before, I can't really say."
"So just the normal chains?" he asks.
"In a word. Five, actually." Wes laughs at this, harder than he probably should, and he realizes his breath reeks of scotch.
"Hey, can I put these down?" Oz asks, and Wes realizes for the first time that the boy is carrying a shopping bag of gifts.
"Of course, of course. Come in." He moves out of the way to allow the younger man to pass and then shuts the door and chains it. "Where are you living currently?"
Oz shrugs. "Whereever's free. I was staying with Devon in Santa Monica for a while, but then I realized Santa Monica sucks, so..."
"You'll stay here tonight, then." Wes nods. "You can have my bed."
"Wes, I can drive back to-"
"It's late, it's Christmas Eve, and you brought presents. The least I can do is let you spend the night here."
"Well, yeah, but most of the presents are for Cordelia."
Wes laughs. "I am entirely too drunk to have an argument based on coherent reasoning."
"Well, we don't really require coherency around these parts."
Wes smiles at the boy. He wonders if he would be this pleased with a surprise Christmas Eve guest if he were sober.
"Tis the season, hmm?" Oz asks, staring at the lights.
"Some might say."
"You like Christmas?"
"The parts of it I haven't already repressed." Wes's eyes fall onto the stocking he hung earlier. He wishes he'd thought to buy a new one this year.
"I know the feeling." Oz leans against the wall. "What spilled?"
"Just some scotch."
"You've got scotch?"
"Left? Not really, no. Some wine, if you want. And a six-pack of beer Lilah left here."
"Lilah?"
"Believe me, you don't want to know."
Anyone else would ask, but Oz just says okay. And then he takes a beer.
Wesley isn't sure exactly what's going on in his head. It could be the scotch he's already drank, or perhaps that it's almost 2 AM and it's Christmas, or maybe even the fact that it's been so long since someone who wasn't Lilah has been in his apartment.
But he takes a beer too.
They get drunk together.
And as the clock strikes three, Oz turns to him. "You know how people kiss at midnight on New Year's to culminate the new year?"
"Yes..."
And then Oz kisses him.
"It's not New Year's. Or midnight," Wes says quietly. But his mind is racing. It probably is at some part of the world, he thinks ruefully, regretting the decision to move away from the boy's mouth.
"How about that?" Oz asked.
"Good point," mumbled Wes, and he slid into the kiss again.
Over the past few years, Wes has kissed his share of girls; he's had sex with a few of them. This is different. Not new, per se -- he had gone to an all-boys' school, after all -- but different.
In only the best of ways.
The boy has talent.
"I may well be drunk," Wes murmurs.
"Is that bad?"
"I can't imagine why." Wes's hand reaches for the button of Oz's jeans, fumbling until he gets it open. He wonders if he's making a fool of himself. Wonders if he's being a creepy old man. Wonders if he's letting Oz whore himself out for a room. Wonders if he's doing the wrong thing, if he's doing the right thing, if he's-
Oz kisses him again.
And suddenly it's okay again.
Wesley reaches to tug Oz's pants off. Before he can reach him, though, Oz goes for Wes's, and the older man stops. Years of being a musician, whether particularly talented or not, has led to Oz being quite skilled with his hands, and with some talent that lies between dexterity and sexuality, he removes Wesley's clothing before the Watcher fully realizes what's happening.
And then Oz is kneeling in front of him and Wes isn't exactly sure what's just happened, but he's not opposed to it as Oz's hands slide up and down his cock, preparing him, hitting just the right spot until he feels light-headed, which is probably a result of all the blood in his head rushing straight down to-
Wes moans.
Oz is talented.
Now he's removing his hands, and Wes might be complaining if he weren't replacing them with his mouth, and first it's just a bit of exploration with his tongue, but then there's suction and...
Wes wants to verbalize a hell of a lot right now, but all he can do is moan.
And there's Oz, who's taking this all in stride, as though he isn't a boy giving head to another boy, as though he's been doing this his whole life, as though he didn't date Willow for longer than he's even known Wesley, as though this were all perfectly normal.
There's so much Wesley wants to ask him.
But not now, not when the only thing he can do is thank every god he knows of, every deity he's read about and several that he's only imagined, for not making him so drunk that he can't get it up.
Because to miss out on this feeling, this sensation, this everything-
Wes relaxes for a moment, but as the feelings rise, as his dick gets even harder than it has been (at least, harder than it's been in the last hour, and really, does he need to remember beyond that?), as his sensations swirl and if he weren't drunk he'd be feeling drunk right now anyway, "high on life" as it were, because Oz is definitely talented and he feels the musician reach up to stroke him as he sucks, and then...
Climax.
Oz is officially the best fuck Wes has ever had, because after everything he swallows, and somehow keeps sucking, and Wes isn't quite sure how he's managed to live this long and never have this kind of mind-blowing (pardon the pun) experience before, never have the feeling that sex, just sex, not sex for anything but the sake of sex, could be this amazing.
Oz slowly pulls back, licks his lips. "Haven't done that in a while. Like learning to ride a bike." Oz laughs. "Merry Christmas, Wes."
"Merry Christmas."
And for the first time in years, the season to be jolly actually... is.