Oz still thinks things could have been different.
There were half-moments, snatches and snags of time that tore what-was and showed what-could-be, and those are the times he's thinking about now.
One afternoon he can't even place - was it toward the beginning? Middle? Close to the messy, moronic end of things? - spent sprawled on the couch under a trembling, loosely-woven cloud of blue smoke, listening to Neil. Oz on his back, slumped against the arm of the couch, bare feet over Lindsey's lap.
Lindsey wore pearl-gray trousers. The fabric was soft as flannel, but light, because it was summer, and it whispered against his skin when he moved. Lindsey was poured into the couch, plucking the hair on Oz's legs, tracing the bones in his feet. Smiling to himself.
"Ever been to Ontario?" he asked at some point.
"Yeah," Oz said. Watched himself not-lie and nodded in approval. "Not up north, though. Not where he's talking about."
Lindsey'd come home early, hence the trousers, and it had been their usual round of sniping and groping, neither really ever looking at the other. He just had his undershirt on now, though; Oz had ripped the buttons off the crisp white dress shirt when he shoved Lindsey against the wall.
Sky-blue eyes darkening, smirk spreading. Heat of Lindsey's body beneath the envelope of air-conditioned skin.
"You?" Oz bent one knee and slid closer. Lindsey ran his good hand up Oz's shin, cupped his knee, and paused there. Palm warm now, faintly sticky with old sweat and cum.
"First got on a plane when I was your age," Lindsey said. Turned and rested his cheek on his hand, against Oz's thigh. His hair fell back off his face. Felt heavy against Oz's fingers, thick and soft.
These moments, little snagged glimpses, Oz remembers bodily. How his palm molded over the planes of Lindsey's cheek, fingers in warm heavy hair, thumb resting on dry lower lip. Lindsey's eyes were bloodshot, ruby threads around the blue. He hardly blinked. Like a cat.
That kiss was as sudden as the rest of their kisses, but their inverse. Tugged inside out, a negative hung drying in a basement darkroom, silver where the blacks would be. Lindsey tasted like Oz, like weed and beer and salt, and Oz kissed him more thoroughly with more lip and tongue than he ever had or would again. Pulled Lindsey up, let him swing a leg over Oz's hips, let Lindsey cover and blanket him. Kissed him like the kid neither of them ever really was, running his hands up under his shirt, tracing the warmth radiating out from his spine, wrapping a leg around him and giving it his all.
A cloud or a helicopter or something passed outside, big and black, throwing jagged shadows over them, slicing through the smoke. Lindsey came up for air, lips swollen and flushed, eyes hooded. He started to say something; the corners of his mouth started to curl, but Oz was too busy licking the arch of his eyebrow and sucking out the taste of Lindsey's temple to hear.
Lindsey's eyes, Oz's eyes, everything went dark in the shadows passing outside. Neil wailed from his gut and his heart, and they hung there, suspended, fear and anticipation creeping over their skin.
Lindsey ran his lips over Oz's and whispered something. Music, and singing.
"Can't sing," Oz said. His voice sounded rough, half-formed, even to his own ears. "Never could."
They moved apart, Lindsey back on his heels, Oz up higher on the couch. The CD shut off with a click, the sky cleared, and even if Oz could still taste Lindsey on his tongue, he could pretend he didn't.
"Could try," Lindsey said. "Never know, baby."
It's no mystery why Oz is still thinking about these moments so much later, lying swaddled in blankets and sleeping bag, listening to chiru call to each other and beat their horns in battle and wind move through Tibetan forests. He still thinks things could have been different, and he thinks Lindsey probably thought so, too.