Gilbert took a slow first drag of his cigarette, the sharp tang of tobacco stinging the back of his throat as it filled his lungs. He hadn't smoked in months, but the craving had overwhelmed him as he lay unable to sleep, and he had relented.
The smoke twisted into pretty strings as he exhaled, and for the umpteenth time, he wondered if it was time to give up quitting and accept his addiction. He was fairly sure that, if he were going to get lung cancer, it would have happened sometime in the past fifty years. He'd be better off learning to blow smoke rings and staining his teeth than he was in this cycle of almost moving on.
If he was stuck with the vice either way, wasn't it better to save effort and stop resisting?
He grimaced as he took another drag. Next to him, a light flashed through the window. Someone in the street was waving a flashlight around as they gestured to a friend. Another reveler on their way to the moonlit countryside.
There was supposed to be a meteor shower that night, but the night sky was invisible from Gil's city apartment. Whatever beauty lurked between the stars was drowned out by countless lamps lit up across the town, by all the people like the kid in the street with the flashlight. Half the city had trickled out of their homes to watch the sky fall in the country, but Gil couldn't bring himself to leave.
He missed the endless nights above the country house he had shared with Oz as a child, and he knew that not even a shooting star could compare. It wasn't worth the journey just to see a subpar sky.
He took another drag from his cigarette, beginning to adjust to the sensation again. The relapse felt like coming home, shameful and messy and utterly him. There was no space for candy substitutes in the life that he had made.
If Oz were with him, still glittering and earnest and alive, Gil was sure he would have quit ages ago. There was no space for bitter tobacco on his tongue between the words he wanted to say to his old friend.
But he was alone, and only a handful of stars could pierce the glow above Reveil. If he was to see Oz again, it would not be for another half-century, and it would not be the version of him that he most longed for.
Old, bitter magic would preserve his friend halfway between an ageless rabbit and a fifteen-year-old child. Gilbert, despite his appearance dragging its heels in his wake, had aged, and would continue to do so. His mind did not work the way it had when he was fifteen and staring at an Oz that was taller than him, the way it had when he was twenty-four and watching the incuse tick its way along the skin of Oz's chest. A reunion with his childhood companion would be sweet, but it was nothing compared to the dream of having an Oz that had changed by his side. An Oz that was allowed to grow up.
Gilbert tensed his fingers, unwilling to inhale again just yet. The waving flashlight had been in such a hurry, and nobody had passed by his apartment in the minutes since. If the stream of people was drying up, it had to be too late for anyone to bother journeying into the land beyond the city. If they hadn't begun already, then the shooting stars would be falling at any moment.
Somewhere not-too-far but unreachable, the sky would come alight in majesty, and Gilbert would remain on the bench in his window depriving himself of sleep.
He forced himself to relax his grip as he took yet another drag from his cigarette. The tension was almost as bad for him as nicotine, he knew. Tension led to stress, and stress led to dreams of Oz. On a vulnerable, star hungry night, his old master was the last thing he wanted to dream about.
As he exhaled again, he turned his eyes to the sky above the narrow alley that held his home. The few distant stars glittered above him as always, mocking him with the purity of their light. The meteor shower was nowhere to be seen amid the light pollution, but somehow, in the pit of his gut, Gil could feel it. There was old magic in astronomy.
Against his better judgement, he strained his eyes against the blurry night. He could not see the shooting stars, but he could feel the way they tugged at his subconscious, making him feel childish and longing.
If he tried, he could taste his old, childhood fantasies about Oz laid down thick beneath the taste of pollution on his breath. The buzz of nicotine beneath his skin, which had once made him feel so adult, now made him feel childish and dreamy. His old fantasies were rearing their heads. For as long as Oz had been taller than him, he had dreamt of being swept off his feet like a princess and carried away. For as long as Oz had been taken from him, he had dreamt of waking up in that country house, the decades since his teen years nothing but a dream.
He knew that kind of fantasy hardly suited a grown man, but beneath the invisible promise of raining starlight, he couldn't help but notice the way that the pit in his stomach still ached. He had just begun to let himself dream of Oz when he'd been banished to the abyss, and when his master had returned ten years later, the change had been too great. The cheeks that Gilbert had once longed to caress suddenly looked so soft and far too youthful, the neck that he'd dreamt of hiding his face in so delicate and far away.
His Oz, the Oz that would have been, was gone. He knew it in his guts, in the scar of his severed arm, in the depths of all the hidden places his teenage self had dreamt of being touched. He was at home with the emptiness; he had lived a good life despite his longing.
As he smoked, exhausted but buzzed, that old desire began to claw its way up his throat. That deep part of him, the same childish part that used to dream of being maiden-like, was taking hold again, and despite his better judgement, Gil began to wish.
The meteors were there, visible or not, and if he let himself regress down deep enough, he could let himself believe in their power for just long enough. He could let himself make a wish.
Gil closed his eyes, hand tense around his cigarette again. He wanted to dream of Oz that night after all, it seemed, and as he painted the shooting stars across the sky in his mind, he let himself believe.
He wished for Oz at first, nothing more or less, but that hardly felt right as the whisper left his lips. He wished next for Oz to come back to me, but even then, as the invisible heavens judged his request, he feared that that too was skirting too close to the vague.
Wishes thrived in specificity.
He opened his eyes, turning them up to the sky again, to the place that the magic should have been. Old longing lay bitter at the back of his tongue, a sensitive need building up at the base of his throat.
I wish I could meet an Oz that's my age. A version of Oz that grew up.
That would do.
Some time later, though it couldn't have been long, Gilbert woke up stiff. He'd fallen asleep on his narrow window bench, head pressed against the glass, and his limbs were groaning in protest.
He sat up slowly, swinging his legs to the ground and grimacing as his eyes caught sight of the singe mark on his shirt. He must have dropped his cigarette. He was lucky he hadn't burned.
He stood, allowing time for his joints to creak and crackle as they extended. His apartment was dark, a surefire sign that he couldn't have slept for more than two hours at the most, but the pose had taken its toll all the same. Baskerville or not, his knees were catching up with his age.
He moved forward when his body had caught up to him, scanning his eyes across his apartment. The shame of his lapse, the regression into both smoking and dreaming, was catching up with him, and he needed to think about anything else. The clock in the kitchen was too far to read through the shadows, and Gil accepted that as his temporary mission. Unless it was close to sunrise, he would crawl back to bed and try his best to forget the promise of the meteors.
He crossed the room, focusing on the furniture as he did. It was silly, but some vague part of him felt the need to anchor his view to reality, lest his mind drift away into dreamland again. Oz was in the Abyss; his couch was in his living room. Such was life.
In the darkness of the night, in the fog of Gil's grogginess, he almost thought there was a figure sprawled along his sofa. He really did need more sleep.
He retreated to the kitchen, finally reaching the clock's message of 3:34. Early enough to sleep. A sigh of relief slipped from his lungs, and he turned to retrieve a glass of water from his sink. His grogginess was a blessing now; his mattress promised an easy retreat.
He turned to his living room as he drank, looking across from the kitchen counter to the grand window where he had napped. He was more coherent than he had been a moment before, but the dark shadow of presence on his couch remained.
That was bad.
He set down the glass and tiptoed forward, eyes straining hard against the dark. It really did look like a figure there, a stranger sprawled out, legs over the side of the armrest. As Gil got closer, he could make out light hair, a white shirt, and pale skin outlined against the gloom. Something twisted deep inside his chest.
The person there was skinny and young—not short, but not tall either. Messy, shortish blonde hair hung around the soft lines of his closed eyes, and a smile pulled at the edges of his sleeping mouth. If it weren't for the age, the adult-ness of this person's jaw and shoulders, he would have looked exactly like Oz. Gil but his lip and swallowed down his panic.
There was a man in his apartment. Not Oz, but a stranger, and something had to be done about it. He looked upsettingly like Oz, who looked upsettingly like Jack, but neither, Gil reminded himself, was possible. The man was an unwanted intruder without a doubt, and something had to be done about it.
He tried to reach out and shake the man awake, but found he couldn't move his arm. He opened his mouth, trying to speak, but no sound made it out of his throat. Gil couldn't have imagined a more perfect older Oz if he'd tried. And oh, he had tried
The stranger shifted slightly in his sleep, his lips parting in just the same way that Gil had seen Oz's do countless times before.
Finally, with great effort, Gil choked out a high, whining "um?"
The stranger shifted again, blonde eyelashes fluttering softly over closed eyes.
"Um," Gil tried again, voice stronger now, "hello?"
That did it. The stranger, the person, the man that looked like Oz, opened his eyes.
"Gil?"
Fuck.
The man's voice sounded just like a deeper incarnation of Oz's, and he knew his name.
Gil said nothing—he couldn't— and the stranger began to sit up, blinking the sleep from his eyes.
"Gilbert, that is you, right?"
"Who are you?"
Gil's voice came out raspy and raw.
"What are you talking about?" His eyes scrunched up in what looked far too much like genuine confusion. "It's me."
Gil shook his head.
"No you're not."
"Yes, I am."
"That's impossible. You're—Oz is in the abyss."
The fake Oz smiled, wide and familiar. Gil tried his best to resist the urge to scream. He didn't know who or what this was, but he absolutely could not let himself believe. He refused it. He had learned long ago that indulging in these dreams led nowhere good.
"There's old magic in astronomy, Gil. Between that and the intention of the abyss, who knows what might happen?"
"Not this." Gil shook his head. "Anything but this."
His fingers twitched and clenched at his side, yearning for something to tense around between them. He wanted a cigarette, but he didn't dare light one in front of the fake.
Almost Oz looked up at him, his expression almost sad.
"You can't do this. You can't be this."
"But I'm here, Gil."
Almost Oz stood, taking Gil's hand. His skin was soft, the mark of wealth. He lifted Gil's hand and placed it against the crook of his neck. Gil could feel his pulse and the warmth of his body. He could see that familiar impossible blend of kindness and smugness in the man's smile. He could smell the same cologne that Oz had been wearing to parties since he was thirteen. He'd called it his 'secret weapon.'
If this wasn't Oz, it had to be a dream. Nothing else but his own mind could have built an illusion so accurate. Nothing else could have played so easily into all his deepest wants and memories.
The maybe Oz loosened his grip on Gil's hand, and despite himself, Gil let it drift up to touch the side of Oz's face.
"Did you miss me?"
"You can't be real."
"But did you miss me?"
Gil clenched his jaw. Oz's eyes had lost some of the childlike roundness that used to define them, but they still glittered as bright and as green as starlight.
"More than anything."
"Oh?"
Oz guided Gil's arm away from his face, but he kept hold of his hand, intertwining their fingers between them. Gil, barely able to think, nodded once. The contact of their skin was sending fireworks up and down his entire nervous system. He had lived and experienced plenty in Oz's absence— it hadn't all been lonely mourning—but he couldn't remember the last time somebody had held his hand.
"I missed you more than breathing."
Gil pulled softly on the man's hand, and Oz (oh god, was he calling him Oz now?) let him pull him to his feet. When he was standing, and standing close, Gil wrapped his arm around Oz's shoulders, pulling him close.
"I missed you more than life itself."
Oz's arms wormed their way around Gilbert's torso, completing the hug.
"Do you believe in me now?"
"I'm too tired not to."
"Good."
Oz pulled back far enough for Gil to see his face, see the smugness of his smile.
"What'll you do now that you have me?"
"I—tell me where you've been."
Gilbert resisted the urge to chew on his lip or reach for a cigarette. Was he really accepting that this was Oz? It seemed the only option, unless some unknown power had managed to both read his mind and reconstruct an image from his fantasies in tangible space. Luxuriating in the realistic contact, Gil pulled his arm away from Oz's back, intertwining his fingers with Oz's once again.
"Tell me what you've been doing all these years you've been away."
"I don't know." Oz tugged softy on Gil's hand once again, guiding him to sit down on the couch. "Tell me what you think I've done."
Gil sat, caressing Oz's hand gently with his thumb. Giving into the temptations around him, he let his mind dip back into the shameful vault of fantasies and fix-its.
"You've been traveling the abyss with Alice, going on all sorts of adventures."
Oz beamed.
"Exactly right. It's been a great time, but I missed you the whole time. I finally got Alice to give me a night off from keeping her company, so I figured I'd come visit."
"What kind of adventures? What's the abyss like now that everything's over?"
Oz leaned forward, placing his free hand on Gil's shoulder. Though they'd been this close countless times before, something about the vision of Oz in front of him made Gilbert's heart flutter in a way that it hadn't in years. Not since the time that the girl from his favorite bar had brought him home and—
"I don't think that's what you really want to ask."
Gil fought the feeling of pink rising into his cheeks.
"What do you mean?"
Another glimmer of smugness passed over Oz's face.
"Do you remember when we were kids and I found out you'd never been kissed?"
"What about it?"
"Remember how I swore I'd find you a girlfriend worthy of my valet, but I turned fifteen before we ever worked that out?"
Gil grimaced. It wasn't that he didn't like women (he'd dated plenty over the years), but at fourteen, the prospect of a girlfriend had not appealed to him at all. Nothing had appealed to him compared to that repeated dream of being swept up and kissed and spun around by Oz.
"Unfortunately."
"We sure were stupid, weren't we?"
Oz swung his legs up onto the couch, shifting his position to kneel toward Gil, who tried his best to ignore his rapidly increasing pulse.
"That's the most rational thing you've said all night."
"I mean I was a real idiot as a kid. I liked you so much, but it never even occurred to me that a boy could like another boy like that. I thought everyone found you as cute as I did!"
"You thought I was cute?"
"Of course! You still are, silly—a real blushing mess if I've ever seen one."
"I'm not. I don't—"
Much to his chagrin, Gil could feel himself turning red.
"But I mean really, I spent so much time before my birthday thinking about which girls I knew might be good to set you up with. It never even occurred to me that I could be your first kiss myself."
Gil's breath caught in his throat. He'd been denying the thought until Oz had pushed his mind in that direction, but now there was no escape. For perhaps the first time, and at least the first time since Oz's fifteenth birthday, the two of them were on equal ground. The vision of Oz before him was handsome, mature, enticing. He was a vision straight out of Gilbert's dreams, and fifty years' repressed desires were rushing to the surface all at once. There was a real, tangible, grown up Oz in front of him, and Gil wanted nothing more in the world than to hold him. To kiss him. To—
"C'mon Gil, cat got your tongue?"
"You can't just go around saying you wanted to kiss me. It's not right."
Oz moved closer, and Gil, not knowing what else to do, allowed himself be guided into reclining, his head on the armrest, his lifelong friend above him, kneeling on either side of his legs.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm just a servant Oz. It's cruel to play with me like this."
Oz hit Gil in the shoulder, laughing and shaking his head.
"You're an idiot, you know that?"
Gil took a deep breath, trying to reign in the wild racing of his heart. Oz was so close, he had to know what he was doing to him. Right? Was this really going where he thought it was?
"And you're cruel."
"I am not cruel."
Oz leaned down, bracing an arm above Gil as he loomed above him.
"You're just really, really stupid."
Gil swallowed hard as he watched Oz's face, now far too close to his own, twist into that obnoxiously handsome smirk once again. As he spoke again, Oz's typical teasing felt somehow intimate, though gil was sure that was just his imagination running wild once again.
"You're part of a dukedom yourself now, remember? Who better to be with a Nightray than a Vessalius?"
Gil wanted to say something, wanted to reach up and touch the figure above him, but he could muster the will for neither.
"And besides, even if you were still just a servant boy, you're my servant boy, and that should be good enough. Right, Gil? You wouldn't disappoint me with more bullshit about being unworthy would you?"
"Of course not."
"That's better."
Finally, finally, Gil found the nerve to reach up, to caress the side of Oz's face with his hand.
"Now tell me Gil, do you still want to kiss me?"
Gil still didn't know if he was dreaming, but he was sure that it no longer mattered. He was sure that he had never wanted anything more than he wanted to be close to this figment of Oz.
"Yes."
Oz kissed him, his lips soft and sweet. The first kiss was clumsy and brief, the angle awkward, but as they laughed and shifted their heads and tried again, Gilbert's throat began to tie itself in knots. There was a hand, Oz's hand, resting against his head, fingers tangled in his hair. They stopped, took a breath, and before Gil's anxiety could catch up, Oz kissed him once again. There were firecrackers lighting along his spine.
Then far too soon, Oz pulled away.
"Is it as good as you always imagined?"
Gil let his hand drift from Oz's cheek to his shoulder, marveling at the newfound broadness, the subtle muscle that the added years had gifted him.
"Even better."
Oz licked his lips, which sent another shiver through Gil's body.
"Your mouth tastes like cigarettes."
"Sorry."
Gil let out a quiet gasp as Oz planted a kiss against his jawbone, then another in the crook of his neck, before laying down above him, head in the crook of his neck.
"It's been hard to keep busy with you gone all this time. Smoking's a good distraction."
"Weren't you going to quit half a century ago?"
"Weren't you going to be gone for a half century more?"
"Touché."
Gil wrapped an arm around Oz's middle, letting their legs intertwine as he shifted in search of a comfortable position on the narrow couch. Even now, Oz was still slightly shorter and thinner than Gil, and the weight of his body was welcome, almost blanket-like. For a long moment, they were silent, Gil drinking in the heavenly feeling of companionship as much as he could.
With a whisper soft touch, one of Oz's hands began to creep under the wide collar of Gil's shirt, the touch making him shudder again. He had waited so, so long for this.
"Gil," Oz whispered, "what will you do with me now?"
"I don't know." Gil toyed with the hem of Oz's shirt, admiring the silkiness of the fabric. "How long will I have you?"
"How long does a wish last?"
Never long enough.
Gil let out a quiet sigh, resigning himself to the fact that this was a temporary reprieve. There was nothing to do but make the most of this impossible dream.
"If you'll kiss me again, maybe I'll decide."
Oz kissed him again, and in the dark, on his couch, the whole world faded away.
For the second time that morning, Gilbert woke up feeling stiff. He'd dozed off on his back, head on the couch cushion, ankles propped up on the opposite armrest. Golden light poured in through his curtainless window. One of his feet was asleep.
He sat up with a groan, blinking away the sleep as he tried to remember what had happened the night before. He'd woken up on the window bench after looking for the shooting stars, and after that—shit. Gil took a frantic look around his apartment, but sure enough, he was undoubtedly alone. Oz, if that had really been Oz, was long gone. He rose to check the bedrooms and bathroom, wincing at the pins and needles as he walked, and sure enough, there was no sign that anyone had ever been there. Had anyone been there?
Grateful for the half-full water glass waiting on his counter, Gil drank as he tried to gather his thoughts. The dream of Oz had felt so real, but as he watched the apartment in the daylight, it was difficult to imagine that it could have been. Everything was as it has always been; there was no evidence at all of some magical resurrection. The abyss, as it would be for the next fifty years, was as closed as ever.
Unwilling to give up and start his day just yet, Gil returned to the bench in front of his biggest window. The city was waking up, and even the narrow alley that hid his apartment was beginning to come alive. Gil shifted, catching sight of his wild bedhead reflected in the glass, and in that moment, two things hit him all at once. It had been hours and hours since he'd touched a cigarette, and he'd been awake for long enough, but he hadn't so much as thought of smoking until that moment. That was utterly unlike him, even on the days he was clean, and even stranger, he was wearing the wrong shirt. He was certain he'd spent the night in a loose black shirt, a favorite of his, but the one he wore now was stark white and fastened with buttons. When he raised his hand to his face in confusion, the silky fabric strained around his shoulder. Even unbuttoned, the size was a sliver too small.
Gil turned again, scanning the room in search of his missing shirt. There was nothing. He picked at the hem of the one he was wearing, trying to remember where it had come from, where he would have found something so ill-fitted and overly fancy. It surely wasn't from his wardrobe, and as he cast his mind back, only one thing came to mind. This was the shirt that his dream of Oz had been wearing the night before. Eighty different thoughts flooded Gil's mind all at once. He was confused, he was aching, and somewhere in the storm, he began to feel something that almost might have been contentment.
The night's relapse, the fall into the land of dreams and fantasies, had been more than it appeared. Oz, if it really had been Oz, had left a tangible impression on his world. In at least one meaningful sense, Oz, that beautiful, loving, grown up Oz had been real.
For the first time that morning, Gil allowed his memory to drift back into the details of the previous night's dreams. He could still feel the whisper touch of Oz's hands on his skin, of Oz's weight above him, of Oz's lips against his own. After over half a century of dreaming, it had happened.
With a wider smile than he'd indulged in quite a while, Gil set about getting dressed and making breakfast. The morning was warm, the sky above Reveil was clear, though he had never quite managed to make it before, he had a new goal in his heart. His cravings were lessened, replaced by the memory of that impossible night on that couch. He was going to stop smoking.
This was 100% one of those fics that you get forced into writing because you are desperate for more of a specific content niche that others haven't filled. Canon really wrenched my heart out by giving me the perfect setup for a super devoted childhood friends dynamic (aka, my favorite shit), then dropping in a massive timeskip that makes a real relationship impossible. Imagine spending a decade trying (and only partially succeeding) to get over your first love/best friend, only to have the teenage version of that first love dropped into your life again as a 25 year old. Fuckin heartache man. Don't even talk to me.
But all that said, a lot of Ozgil content makes me deeply uncomfy for, y'know, what should be obvious reasons. It's time for ethical Ozgil in 2021! More tragedy, less weird porn of a 15 year old and an adult-ass man. Gil is better than that, and he deserves better too.