Wilkins Park was badly laid out in the first place: too few paths, not enough trees, the cavernous bandshell a little too close to the highway, so hardly anyone under the age of twenty went there. And this was just fine with those under twenty. Located near both the junior and senior high schools, but off a side street that never saw much traffic, it's been transformed into a damn good skate park. No half-pipes or anything, but the benches and steps do just fine.
Oz loves it here, and can't believe the summer's ending already, that he won't be able to spend all afternoon, every afternoon, swooping and rushing around. It's not going to be the same when school starts, when he'll only be able to stop by after class or on the weekends. It's like over the summer this different society sprang up here, where you can just be yourself and hang for hours with people whose names you might not necessarily know, but they smile back and slap your hand, and it's just all good.
If you can skate, that is. If you're a girl, you're kind of exempted, although there are some girls who skate better than Oz could ever dream of, and he looks at them with this tingle in his stomach that's part awe but mostly terror. Most girls, though, sit cross-legged on the grass, sometimes watching, sometimes deliberately not watching, and there's a whole unspoken *thing* about what it means to be watched, not watched, apparently not watched but actually watched, and on and on. It makes him dizzy.
But those are the rules for the girls. If you're a guy hanging here, you better know how to skate. At least be able to stay upright and throw two or three moves. That's just the most basic rule of the place. If you can't skate, and you're a guy, what are you doing here?
Take that loping, shaggy-haired kid over there. He sucks, he really does. He holds himself way too tense, his feet are never far apart enough on the board, and curves are his mortal enemy. Actually, straight-outs are his enemy, too, because he doesn't seem to know how to slow down. He picks up too much speed way too fast with his overenthusiastic kicking--pawing at the ground like a bucking bronco or something--and then doesn't know what to do. Can't keep his balance, can't slow down, so usually he just falls over.
So he sucks, big time. But he's here every day anyway, doggedly pawing up the speed, shooting around on these bizarre vectors like he got shot out of a cannon, and it's all beyond his control.
He's cute, too, looks kind of like a scarecrow, even if he does have the flexibility of the Tin Man. Built long and lean, even if he hasn't gotten used to his height yet so he moves all jerky. Super megawatt smile when he gets something right, or when he's cruising, like a kid with cake. Tan and dark-haired.
So obviously, yeah, Oz has been watching him if he knows all this. He knows even more, too, except he doesn't have the vocabulary to say it right. How the muscle behind the kid's kicking knee stretches and tenses like a bow drawn over a cello. How long and darkly tanned his hands are, the way they make Oz wonder how'd they look against his own fishbelly-white skin. How there's this triangle between the bottom of the kid's nose and his upper lip that's never quite the same shape or width moment to moment.
Oz can notice all this, and not feel weird about himself. He figures it's just the way his heart and his eyes work, so who is he to flip out?
Everyone else thinks he's weird, but he's good.
Still, Oz is pretty sure the kid has no idea he's being watched like this. He'd be even stiffer and clumsier if he knew. To him, Oz is just part of the shifting crowd of good skaters, the crowd that the kid edges around but never looks at straight-on, the crowd that makes him cringe for a second if they get too close or too loud.
Thanks to the kid, Oz is starting to see how the park's not quite the utopia it should be. Everyone talks a good game about love and respect, but they're mouthing along. The park is zoned, just like school and the rest of life, cut up into slices occupied by status, boundaries never crossed without instantaneous punishment, and that just sucks. So the kid's no good at skating, but he's still trying. He's been trying all summer, and when he's cruising and hasn't fallen yet, he looks way happier than the experts would ever let themselves be.
It's getting late. The dark's starting to creep through the grass, leaving only the top of the blades still lit, and the shadows are gathering under the benches, and any Sunnydale native with half a brain knows it's time to go home. Oz kicks up his board into his hand and wanders away from the crowd, glad to have an excuse to leave.
Down the path and around a particularly nasty sharp curve, he hears a cat crying, kind of mewling and gasping. Except as he gets closer, the sound just gets louder, and no cat's that big. Well, there are cats that big, but he figures a puma or something wouldn't sound like a housecat. Oz steps carefully over the loose gravel sprayed into the grass inside the curve and looks around into the shadows.
"Hey," he calls softly. "Anyone there? Human, I mean?"
The mewling stops in mid-gasp and everything goes silent.
"It's okay," Oz says. "Just me--"
"Ow," someone whispers, over to the left behind a broken-down, taped-off bench. The sound is so quiet, it's almost as if he doesn't want to be heard.
Oz finds the scarecrow kid there, bending over the knee drawn up to his chest, his other leg flung out and streaked with dark blood. Oz whistles under his breath and crouches down on the kid's good side.
"You okay?"
The kid shakes his head. "Ow. Really, really hurts." His knee's all torn up and Oz hopes that the light's playing tricks on him, because if it's not, he just saw bone.
Oz nods, knowing he needs to stay calm. Like in Backdraft or ER, he has to keep the victim from panicking and making it worse. "Looks like you took a major digger there."
"Yeah. Flew like Superman." The kid starts to laugh but clutches his chest and wheezes. "Ow. Ribs hurt, too. 'Cause I'm not Superman."
"Lift up your arms, okay?"
The kid looks at him like Oz just suggested he run a marathon: big eyes, mouth going all twisted in confusion.
"What's your name?" Oz tries. This really is getting to be an _ER_ episode. Except Carter probably doesn't sneak looks at the patients the way Oz would like to--something about ethics, probably, since he can imagine Carter swinging both ways pretty easy.
His own chest feels all tight and hot. He thinks it's sympathy for the kid and his pain. His mom says he's the emotional Bounty towel, the quicker-picker-upper for other people's feelings, and she might be right. But the heat and tension are also just the natural effects of being almost all the way up against the kid. Getting little mouthfuls of the hot air around him, so close he can see the red tones underneath the black hair. Watching lashes brush tan cheeks like soft baby caterpillars.
"Xander." He looks down when he answers, both hands kind of scrubbing and grasping at the grass.
"Oz. Look, is it okay if I check your ribs? 'Cause one could be poking into your lung or something."
Xander's face whirls around, hearing that. Oz squeezes his shoulder gently, once for sympathy, once because despite the gathering dark, Xander's skin is still burning from being out in the sun all day. "Kidding. But it can't hurt to check."
Xander tugs up his shirt and works it off over his head. It sticks a second on the nape of his neck before Xander wriggles free. Shirtless, that's way more than Oz had asked for, but he's not complaining. Xander leans back on one elbow and bites his lower lip while Oz palms his ribs. It's not like Oz knows what to feel for, but he figures that if something feels wrong, he'll know. Christ. Oz bites his own lip, eyes averted from Xander's face, tracing the soft lines of ribs and pecs and tiny dark nipples with every molecule of attention he has.
Xander feels all right, more than all right. Not just that all his ribs are in place, but they're packed in tight under all that hot, tan skin, and the way he's breathing, slow but gaspy, tells Oz this is okay, too, the way his palm's lingering a couple beats too long on his sternum.
He's just about totally hairless, and even though he's tall, that doesn't mean much. It suddenly occurs to Oz that this, um, touching, not to mention the thoughts going faster and faster through his mind, might not be okay. This might be very not okay.
"Xan?"
"Huh?" Sounds like he went away there for a minute. Oz can't really blame him.
"How old are you?"
The kid grins at him. "Doing my whole chart now, doc?"
Oz shakes his head and feels his fingertips slip a little in the sweat on Xander's chest. "Yeah. Need your whole history, dumbass."
"Sixteen," Xander says. "Well, in October, anyway."
"That's good," Oz says. Xander looks at him kind of sideways, like he's thinking of asking just what the hell that meant. Not a question Oz would like to answer, so he pulls his hand away and leans down to check the knee. "This still hurt?"
"Ow!" Oz hasn't even touched him yet.
"Taking that as yes, then." Oz can see the muscles jumping in Xander's thigh, he's holding himself so tense against the pain. "You need to relax, man."
"I'm dying! I get to whine." Xander's voice is high and breathy again, and when Oz glances up, those big smeary eyebrows are drawn tight and low over his eyes.
"Not dying. Just bleeding. A lot." He's seen worse ripped-up knees, but that doesn't mean much. No bone in evidence, just lots of gashes, deep and shallow ones. It's gross and fascinating the way the blood's getting all gummy and tacky, still fresh, on top of the older, darker dried blood. Like art or something.
"Dying here!" Xander whimpers. "A little sympathy?"
"You'll live," Oz says. "Knee wounds just bleed a hell of a lot."
"Isn't that head wounds?" Xander's starting to relax, Oz thinks; his leg's not twitching any more, and he sounds a little more normal.
"Those too." Oz rests his weight on the hand between Xander's legs and tilts his head against his shoulder. Xander looks like he's going to argue, but then he catches Oz looking at him, and bites his lip again. Damn, his lips are--pillowy? Nice and pillowy. Also, pink. "Who's the expert here?"
"If you're the expert," Xander says, eyes going downward, then widening when he notices he's shirtless, "um, then--" His voice falters a bit as he hitches in a breath. Oz is ready to move away. He doesn't *want* to move away, but the kid's getting a little too nervous for his liking. Then Xander looks back up, wide dark eyes staring right through Oz. "Then make it better."
The air gets really cold when Oz hears that, and it's impossible, but he thinks it's also darker all of a sudden. And none of this bothers him, because he's leaning a bit against Xander's folded leg, repositioning his hand on the other side of his hurt leg, and Xander's repeating himself, making it go higher, making it a question.
"Make it better?"
Oz feels little crackles shooting between them. He can't see them, but thinks they'd look like miniature lightning bolts that don't burn, just pull him closer. Xander's hair is flopping over his eyes and Oz reaches out, watches his disembodied hand kind of float and glow for a second before he brushes the hair, not even moving it. He hears his heart pounding, big kettle bass drum that stops for a second, widens and swells, and his fingers brush Xander's forehead. The skin there is moist and warm like a mouth.
"I could," Oz whispers. "Want me to kiss it better?"
He knows better than his own name that Xander wants this. He *knows*. He feels it radiating out of his pores, catching and dipping his voice, shining at the bottom of his eyes, nudging his lips apart for something other than a breath.
"Whoa, whoa--" Xander's scrambling back on his ass, scooting and falling, desperately pulling away. Panic scratches his voice high and wheezy. "No, man! Not better! Not--not with the kissing and the--"
Oz doesn't move but it feels like he's falling forward into this endless black whooshing well. He stays still, hand outstretched and hanging there, and just keeps falling as Xander moves back.
He gets up on his good knee, wavering, trying to find his balance, finally getting to his feet. Almost falling, arms flailing like broken windmills, breath coming fast and harsh before he steadies himself. Holding his hurt leg out stiff and angled, he limps away as fast as he can.
Oz hears his heart again, still swelling, still booming, still going strong.