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"Oswald. My love. I was born a girl."

Said with infinite patience, but no shortage of confused amusement.

...

...

...

"Good mercy on high I am- I shan't call you it ever again, Giles I- I cannot be sorry enough-"

You ever find out you've been casually misgendering someone for over a hundred years?

"No, it's not-" Giles's rush to reassure Ossie is drowned out by honest to god laughter, and he has to stop to get his breathing under control before he can start again, "I don't mind, it's sweet in its own way, and I honestly thought it was supposed to be a subtle acknowledgement that you knew and weren't concerned."

"Well of course I'm not bloody concerned- you're you and I love you for your own sake-" winces at that phrasing- "you could be a fresh gender every day of the calendar month and twice every second Sunday and I'd adore you for it. But- this is-"

Ossie wishes he could be laughing at it himself right now.

"The reason I asked in the first place is because I- it's preposterous that I've known you for this long, that we're entangled and I didn't know your bloody given name until a month ago. And now- now this?"

Right, there was something at the heart of this wasn't there.

"There wasn't any reason for you to know Before, and after our return I..." Giles pauses, looking down at his hands. Watching the way his skin indents with soft press of nails, "I had grown unused to being referred to by anything other than my family name. I think I tried to use it for less than a month before someone asked if it was really necessary and I just... Stopped."

A long breath and he looks back up,

"I'm sorry, I should have told you sooner."

"And it wasn't... you weren't keeping it from me?" he asks, cautiously now.

"I know I shouldn't- that Ginger didn't know you as you actually are, it's just as I said, my mind wouldn't stop turning it over. If the thought were a pint of milk we'd have progressed past butter and into a fine mozzarella by now."

"I wasn't. I don't want to keep secrets from you, my love. It just doesn't always occur to me that what seems perfectly clear and obvious to me might not be from the outside."

This, at least, is an easy reassurance he can give.

"But if you ask, I will always answer, and perhaps the milk can be saved before it even becomes butter."

"Oh, my love," has Ossie mentioned that he loves when Giles uses his silly little metaphors. Because he does. Adores it so much that he reaches to hold onto Giles' lapels, pulling himself into kissing distance.

"I really ought to be better at asking before I start fretting."

Giles hums in agreement, and closes that final bit of distance to kiss Oswald lightly.

"I shall try to be a little more forthcoming, my dearest." He brushes his hand gently over Ossie's cheek, "Was that all that was weighing on you?"

"More or less," Ossie leans into that hand like a cat starved of affection, "the majority of it at least. A solid eighty percent, shall we say."

...

"Or, er, sixty I suppose if we were to be really carrying the zeroes and going by the ol' slide ruler."

...

"It's rather embarrassing, it's... another thing that bloody Ginger said- no doubt I despised the man in whatever fantasy world the git was living in. Utterly intolerable."

"I'm not sure you'd have liked the man I knew either" It's not quite a shudder or a sigh that Giles says it with, but something lies subtly between the two, he doesn't want to think about chaos that likely would have ensued if the two had ever met back in the day.

"What was it that he said?"

"That... you believed me incapable of cruelty."

Ossie's hands tighten ever so slightly on Giles' lapels.

Giles frowns, blinks, starts to say something, stops again, and repeats the process a few more times. How is he supposed to answer that? A reassurance of the truth of such a statement, the opposite, something inbetween?

"I'm not sure I'd say incapable as such, but is that..." He tilts his head to one side, watching Ossie carefully as he speaks "A problem?"

Ossie sighs, leaning to press his forehead to Giles' collarbone.

"I... where to begin... You understand better than anyone what was done to me in Arcadia, what I did to survive. Certain... acts of cruelty were rewarded, and... as you know, what is written is... difficult to erase, even upon our escape."

Deep, shaky breath.

"I'm a sadist, Giles. I'm not ashamed of it, and I know I'm not a monster for it, I just thought you knew."

"I can't say it comes as a surprise, but no I didn't know. Not really."

Though there's nothing of it in his voice, with Oswald so close the way Giles's heart races is evident. His eyes flick briefly to the door that had appeared and quickly been forgotten with everything that happened over the course of the last two months, but he pulls his attention back to Ossie just as quickly, and lays a kiss in his hair.

"I love you as you are, my dear, and I'm glad you're not ashamed."

Ossie sighs a little, happily.

"Thank you, my dear. Obviously it goes without saying that it's not something I ever need- I am of course more than contented with things as they are," he traces the back of his nail down Giles' immaculately ironed lapel.

"I don't think I ever could've believed I could be this happy."

"I don't think I could have either, my love"

Despite the soft words, his mind keeps circling back around, and Giles is keenly aware of all the ways his body can betray his thoughts. Heart, cheeks, eyes, he's just glad there isn't any loose glamour to be picked off him and lay things even barer.

"But if you wanted, I-"

Giles clears his throat rather than finish that thought. Please don't make him say it.
Or...
Maybe do.

"You don't need to do anything to keep me happy, Giles. Really- as I said, I'm perfectly contented with how things are."

You remember how Ossie's dumb as shit?

He's going to need to be clear.

Eyes closed, Giles takes a long centring breath before he locks his gaze firmly on Ossie

"If you wanted to indulge in such things I would..." He clears his throat again, and takes another breath "I would very much enjoy it."

"...Oh!"

Well, that's a very different situation entirely. Of course his nerves bat about in his stomach like a great seething horde of butterflies with tiny knives strapped to their wings, but...

"You're sure?"

"Yes. Very."

If anything, Ossie's shift towards nerves makes Giles more confident.

"You know you're hardly the only one to come out the other side with desires shaped by the things done in Arcadia. I am a masochist, my love, though I have tried to hide it."

Edited (didn't quite sit right) 2022-12-17 02:15 (UTC)

"Not overly well, I must say," Ossie gently teases back, not wanting to be outdone. A hand snakes up to cup the back of Giles' head, his immaculately maintained nails pressing gently into his scalp. In the earlier days of their relationship, he would've balked at the very idea of this. At hurting Giles purposefully. But he's learned the joy that can come from being the happy recipient- of allowing Giles to do things for him. This is... the same, in reverse, really. The prospect of seeing welts on Giles' skin...

"Carry your darling up to the bedroom?"

Any response Giles might have to the teasing abandons him entirely with the press of nails, his mouth falling slightly open with the promise it brings.

The request is answered with a hungry kiss as he scoops Ossie up easily into his arms. He doesn't rush exactly, but there is a distinct urgency in his steps as he carries Oswald to the bedroom.

Edited (eternally cursed with missing words) 2022-12-17 23:03 (UTC)

Ossie half-cackles, reaching his arms around either side of Giles' neck to help hold himself up.

"My handsome man- oh I bet that brilliant mind of yours is just racing with ideas, isn't it? My darling boy. If I bite your ear, do you think you'll make it up the stairs?"

Giles growls, eyes dark as he looks down at Ossie. He genuinely doesn't know the answer to that question, because, yes, his mind is racing and in the best way possible. Anticipation and the newly opened possiblities blending into a cocktail of pure need.

"Why don't you find out?"

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