Author: Glossolalia
Website: Glossings
Pairing: Joyce/Oz
Rating: R
Summary: Oz and Joyce have a lot more in common than you'd think.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: For my beloved dolores in the Oz hetathon, part of the year_of_oz organized by katemonkey.

Someone dragged Joyce to the book club, one of the well-meaning neighborhood ladies who'd begun appearing a few days after Buffy's disappearance. She hadn't wanted to go, but it seemed easier to attend than to come up with a reason why she wouldn't. So she went, her copy of _She's Come Undone_ going damp in her sweaty hand.

They were a nice group. Mostly women around her own age, looking to stretch their minds and interact outside of their children's lives; a few divorced men with eyes constantly skimming the group, who'd clearly heard that this was the kind of place to pick up women; and a lone teenaged boy in a bright yellow shirt that washed out his already pale skin and auburn hair.

Joyce didn't talk much at that meeting. The book was hackneyed, but she found hers was a minority opinion, shared only with the teenager and one of the men; everyone else enthused at length over its drama and poignancy. The rosé that the hostess served went down easily, however. She remembered that much.

Afterward, she found herself buying a copy of _Father of Frankenstein_ for the next meeting, and surprised herself further by reading it attentively in the coming days. She hadn't read much fiction since the divorce -- since college, really, preferring _Art in America_ and biographies (though Huffington's biography of Picasso made her want to scream). But she read now with a mechanical pencil in one hand (pink, one of Buffy's, left scattered on her desk upstairs) and a glass of wine in the other. She read, and for a time, an hour or so, she managed not to think about Buffy, about herself.

The next meeting was more lively. Talkative, even argumentative. Gary, one of the cruising divorcés, with white in his beard and a splotchy sunburn across his nose, objected to how "queer" the book was.

"Well, I just read past that," Stacy, this meeting's hostess, said. "If you think of Boone as a woman, then it's easier."

Secret identities and shame, and bloodstains she soaked out without thinking. "You can't do that," Joyce heard herself say, and she kept her gaze fixed on the rug in front of her. "You can't ignore, can't change, what you don't like or don't understand about someone."

"Agreed. Plus, he's kinda hot," a quiet voice said across the circle from her. "Pictured him like a young Burt Reynolds."

It was the teenaged boy who spoke, slumping in a wing chair so overstuffed that it made him look even smaller than she remembered. He gave her a minuscule smile and Joyce nodded. Perhaps the wine -- actually, it was sangria this time -- was going to her head, but she felt flushed suddenly, with gratitude and something like fellowship. "Exactly!" she said. "The frustrated love story only makes sense if he's a man. A very attractive one."

"So all you want is an attractive man?" Gary spluttered and his friend, in a madras camp shirt a size too small, joined the argument.

"Of course not!" Stacy said and passed around the pitcher of sangria.

Joyce let them argue.

*

She was pulling out of the drugstore's parking lot a week or so later when she saw the young man loping down the sidewalk. Joyce stopped the car and tooted the horn, and he and his companion turned.

*Willow*.

Joyce thought, 'I don't know whether to laugh or cry', but that wasn't entirely true. She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and smiled her best mother's smile -- good for talking to Hank with on the phone and attending parent-teacher nights.

"Mrs. Summers!" Willow called and hurried over. Her friend hung a little back, rubbing his chin and almost-smiling. "How are you doing? I'm so sorry I haven't come over, I feel *so* bad, but --"

Joyce nodded and smiled and let Willow speak. This was why she preferred meeting new people to dealing with familiar ones. Anyone who knew her before, before Buffy left, could only talk about that.

"-- and Giles is in Chicago, or somewhere near Chicago, I think, he knows someone there who might know something and could maybe help --"

*Oz*, that was the boy's name. A lovely kid, a little shorter, even, than Willow. Just about as tall as Buffy.

"-- my *boyfriend*," Willow said when she remembered to introduce him. She spoke the word with pride and a strange note of formality, the way people pronounce foreign words in ordinary conversation.

Joyce swallowed before widening her smile. "Hello."

"Hey," Oz said.

She decided she must be hungry, or maybe in need of a nap; her head throbbed dully and she made her goodbyes.

She wanted, she thought, to keep her lives separate. It was every parent's fantasy, after all, to be an individual as well as someone's mother.

Not that she *was* a mother these days. She was, Joyce thought in her lowest moments, a relic, an ossified failure, what was left behind when her child fled rather than spend another minute in Joyce's home. Somewhere out there Buffy was alone in the world, small and fearless as she always had been. Joyce's nightmares -- which came in the day, in the night, whenever they could -- devised new and horrible ends for her baby as more time passed. If her mind could do that -- rape, torture, sex-slavery, mutilation after mutilation -- and she *loved* Buffy, who knew what disgusting things real monsters could dream up?

Buffy was right. There were terrible things out there, and inside us, darkness that Joyce had never let herself contemplate.

"It's a, a calling," Mr. Giles had told her, that first week of Buffy's disappearance, when Joyce was hysterical and demanding to know what a Slayer *was*, who her baby was. He never quite looked her in the eye. "A sacred duty, generation after generation. She's the chosen one."

He made it sound as if Joyce was Mary and Iscariot both, and after that, she didn't bother him any more.

Joyce tried to keep busy. She kept the gallery open and signed up for Elementary French classes and dreamt of Buffy and read for book club. The distractions only went so far. So much evil in the world, and it all wanted her little girl. And *she* had shoved Buffy out the door into the dark's embrace and there were entire days when Joyce honestly wasn't sure if she could go on.

The afternoon when the doorbell rang and roused her from an impromptu nap on the couch was not one of those days. It was, simply (as if there was anything simple about her life any more), an ordinary day, horrible and lonely. Automatically, she ran her fingers through her flattened hair and straightened her shirt before opening the door.

Oz stood on the porch, two plastic grocery sacks in one hand. "Hey, Joyce," he said, calm as could be. "Busy?"

"No, of course not," she said and tried not to grimace. "Please, come in."

He called her 'Joyce', not 'Mrs. Summers', and she appreciated that far more than he could know. He didn't fidget, either, not like Xander and Willow did on their infrequent courtesy calls. He simply strolled inside, took a seat when she offered, and set down his bags.

"Would you like something to drink?"

"No, thanks. Brought you something, actually --" Oz leaned over and extracted a large Mason jar, filled with a pale, honey-colored liquid and beaded with condensation. "Cantaloupe vodka. Noticed you really liked the sangria at Mrs. Lefkowitz's, so. Fruity."

"Thank you," Joyce said, accepting the jar. "But you're not old enough, are you? To be drinking?"

"I didn't *buy* it, don't worry. Made it for you, though."

If he was a child, Willow's boyfriend no less, she should thank him and send him on his way. But he was also -- and Joyce wanted to laugh, or snicker, to realize this -- something like her friend. An acquaintance, at least, oddly serene and self-composed whatever his chronological age, and very kind. She poured them each a glass, on the rocks, and stowed the jar in the freezer as he suggested.

When she returned to the living room, Oz had moved to the couch and was folding the chenille throw she'd napped under.

"Does Willow --" Joyce started to ask, but Oz raised his glass and interrupted her.

"To, uh. New friends."

"New friends," she echoed and tasted the vodka. Sweet, with an intense burn, and as the alcohol evaporated, just the strong flavor of spring mornings and rainshowers. She took another, less hesitant sip. "Oz, this is delicious. Thank you."

"Welcome. Does Willow what?"

"Excuse me?"

"You asked, just now. Does Willow what?"

"Know?"

Oz blinked and a smile stirred in the corners of his mouth. "Know what?"

He was flirting with her: The idea struck Joyce firmly. Soundly. The alcohol brought up a flush on his cheeks and he studied her wearing his constant, slight smile.

"That you're here?" she asked.

"Negative."

"What about book club? Does she know about that?"

"First rule of book club," he said, paused, and drained his drink before continuing, "is don't talk about book club. Speaking of which, brought you some videos. Want to watch?"

_Smokey & the Bandit_, its sequel, and _Gods & Monsters_: his taste in movies was as eccentric as the rest of Oz. Joyce had nothing else to do that day, and, she realized as Oz went to freshen their drinks, she wanted the company. Recently, she couldn't stand to be the focus of anyone's attention for longer than five or ten minutes. But she wanted this, his, company. Real company, not anxious, solicitous visitors who treated her like an invalid and abject failure, and real company was exactly what Oz offered. The idea sounded strange, even within the confines of her own mind, because what kind of company could an eighteen-year-old boy possibly offer a mother in her forties?

Perhaps she'd become one of those desperate housewives with negligee under their housecoats, the kind who starred in the pornography Hank used to hide in his tackle-box. A low-rent Mrs. Robinson, maybe.

She was laughing, already slightly stoned on the alcohol, when Oz returned. He carried not only fresh drinks but the jar itself in a champagne bucket she'd forgotten she owned and two large ham sandwiches.

"What's the joke?" he asked, setting down the tray and opening one of the videos. He slid it into the machine and settled next to Joyce on the couch.

"Nothing, nothing," Joyce said, still giggling.

"'kay." He handed her her drink and smiled. "Skol."

Oz was, Joyce thought as the movie began, unflappable and thoroughly *casual*. She couldn't imagine anyone else his age sitting next to her, chuckling at the movie and sipping his drink between hungry bites of his sandwich. Everything he did was eminently comfortable.

"Fine-looking man," Oz said at one point as the camera tracked lovingly up the Bandit's lean torso, hairy chest, and, finally, handsome, wickedly-grinning face.

"He is, isn't he? Used to have *such* a crush on him. My friend Jackie and I drove to another town to buy the _Playgirl_ with his centerfold."

"Yeah? Cool. Always wanted to see that."

Through the fruity haze in her head and the warm comfort of his small, neat body against hers -- and she wasn't going to let herself think about cuddling with Buffy right here, because if she could pretend to be *Joyce*, it was only fair to let Oz be Oz, not a Buffy-substitute -- facts and inferences began to arrange themselves, to clarify and make sense. Oz liked Burt Reynolds; Oz was not at all uncomfortable around an older woman; Oz was kind and thoughtful.

Oz brought her, he said, making her close her eyes, another present. Something light and tubular in her palm; when she opened her eyes, she saw a black-and-gold tube of MAC lipstick. 'Pure Pomegranate'.

"Slightly, *very* slightly used," he said as she turned the tube in her hands. "Didn't go with my friend's skin tone. Which I could've told him. But it'll look really good on you."

"Thank you," Joyce said eventually.

"I can put it on you if you --" Oz bit his lip and started to pull back his hand.

"I'd like that," she said and closed her eyes and pursed her lips.

She felt, first, the warm pressure of Oz's breath on her face and the weight of him leaning over her. The touch of the brush was almost an afterthought, drawn around her upper lip, then back across the lower lip quickly and confidently.

"There," he said quietly. "Looks -- Wow. Beautiful."

Joyce didn't want to open her eyes. Oz didn't draw back. They remained like that, suspended like the lacquer on her lips, for a long moment.

"Oz," she said and let her eyes open as she slipped an arm around his shoulders. "Oz, are you gay?"

He tilted his head to one side, looking up at her, and his smile was all in his eyes. "Yes," he said. "And no."

"I don't understand --" She didn't; it had all made sense, just a moment ago, but now that clarity was trembling and frosting over as Oz looked at her and touched her cheek.

He kissed her very gently, just cool lips on hers, as if he was afraid of mussing the lipstick, and slipped his hand into her hair and murmured something inaudible.

*

That afternoon, in all its hesitancy and gentleness, characterized their summer together. 'Nothing but good friends', Oz called it, and Joyce was happy to agree.

He was a sweet boy, a dear friend who cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lingeringly. Who squirmed, breathless and flushed and adorable, when she straddled his narrow hips and drew patterns in the sweat on his chest with fingernails he'd painted earlier. Who drove thirty miles each way to find her Torta del Miko, the Spanish cheese she'd mentioned in passing, and who woke her up one morning with muesli and fresh raspberries. Who put in hours, unpaid, at the gallery, cleaning and unloading shipments and manning the desk.

Who molded himself to her body as if he'd known her for years and moved inside her with a slow rhythm well beyond his age.

Joyce had *read* about relationships like this, but that was in novels, and they tended to be set on university campuses or in New York and London, places where people were intelligent and sophisticated and lonely. And even then, such stories seemed to end in subtle despair and pointless misunderstandings.

When she was apart from Oz -- as she was, more often than not, with the gallery and his band (and his girlfriend: but she wouldn't think about Willow, except to joke to herself that perhaps Oz was storing up experience with an older woman for Willow's benefit) -- she did not miss him, did not long for his company. And there was Buffy, always Buffy, to think about and miss.

When they were together, however, Joyce often wondered why she didn't miss him more. He was kind, and bright, and funny. In bed, he liked to kiss, to stroke her hair and kiss her mouth, her breasts, between her legs, for what seemed like hours.

"I don't think you're gay," she said one evening when she'd trembled back into reality from the heights of her orgasm and Oz had pulled himself up alongside her, head on her breast. She ran one finger over his sticky lips as they both smiled. "No gay man would be nearly so good at that as you already are."

Oz kissed her fingertip. "I'm pretty oral," he said. "And, like. Indiscriminate in what I do. Not indiscriminate. Um. Liberal?"

"Catholic with a small c," she suggested.

He nodded. "Yeah. Little c, none of the guilt. I like it."

*

He never mentioned Buffy to her; he never mentioned anything to do with Buffy, whether that was Willow, Mr. Giles, or Xander. They talked about books, and movies, and Burt Reynolds compared to Ewan MacGregor. About his music, and the songs he wrote for his guitar and never managed to finish.

She came out of the shower one evening and found Oz sitting cross-legged on the bed, guitar in his lap, the late sun painting his hair a vivid orange. Oz was bare-chested, a little hunched through the shoulders, and he looked at her in the doorway and smiled.

'I have a very young lover,' Joyce thought and began to laugh.

Oz squinted, looking puzzled, but kept smiling. He looked terribly young there, unlined and fresh, and so glad to see her.

Her laughter twisted, knotted, into tears and then weeping, and he set aside the guitar and held out his hand, pulling her onto the bed and wrapping himself around her.

"I-I'm *soggy*," she said, and meant the shower, but the tears, too.

"Beautiful," Oz said and tightened his arms around her. "So beautiful."

It was the kind of thing he said in bed, caressing her and tonguing her, and Joyce cried harder, the sound ripping out of her chest and she was helpless before it.

She wasn't a sensual, knowledgeable older woman then. Oz kissed her ear and neck and temple and did not say anything more, and she shook so hard with sobs and apologies she thought she would break apart at the seams.

She shook, and missing Buffy was a hole in her chest, in her gut, all the way through her, and Oz held on as best he could.

*
CODA

It's early enough in the morning that the school buses aren't running yet and Joyce is cleaning, pushing the broom around the entryway and alternating it with sips of strong, black coffee.

When the doorbell rings, she jumps; she's been slightly on edge ever since Faith stole Buffy's body -- and that's *nothing* she can explain to her friends.

She checks through the glass in the door before reaching for the deadbolt, and doesn't quite believe who she sees.

"Oz! Come in, please --"

He looks much smaller than he used to, his shoulders drawn in tight, and he moves awkwardly. Buffy had told her after Thanksgiving that Oz and Willow broke up -- something about another girl and Oz running away, and Joyce was surprised. If Oz were ever to leave Willow, she had always thought it would be for a man.

She'd missed him occasionally; when Buffy came back after that horrible summer, Oz dropped by infrequently for tea or dinner, but they'd never so much as kissed, not after that summer. 'Better that way,' he'd said, when he and Xander came by to fix the house after Buffy's disastrous homecoming party was overrun by zombies. He squeezed her hand and she nodded. Of course he was right.

"Hey, Joyce," he says now, hands in his pockets, his face drawn. "How've you been?"

She makes him sit in the kitchen, presses coffee and two eggs, with lots of buttered toast, on him. He's ill, that much is clear, and her instinct is always to feed the sick. "Your friends will be wondering about you," she says as she turns the eggs, and she's surprised at how light and normal her tone sounds.

"Saw 'em already," he says. "Did the reunion thing. On my way out of town, actually."

"So soon?"

"Not the greatest reunion," Oz says. He reaches for the carafe of coffee and winces at the effort.

"Are you hurt?"

"Wanted to see how you're doing," he says, ignoring her and reaching, then wincing, again. "Picked up some jewelry I thought you might like. For the gallery."

He manages to heft the carafe -- it's only half-full -- and the strain is evident all over his face and posture. Joyce takes his arm, liberating the carafe from his death grip, and his skin is damp with chilly sweat.

"Oz. You're hurt, aren't you?"

His mouth twists a little, a ghost and sick parody of his old, sweet smile. "All taped up, not to worry."

"Let me see."

"I'm okay."

"Oz." She can't help but use the Mother voice. He smiles again, effortfully, and lifts his shirt.

So many bandages, yards of them, nearly mummifying his chest, and bruises beyond the bandages, precise black burn marks and inchoate, blooming bruises. Joyce hears herself gasp.

Oz yanks down his shirt. "I'm okay."

"You need to lie down."

He looks up at her, his wide green eyes darker, stormier, than she ever remembers them being, and his cheeks are hollow, the circles under his eyes taut and dark as coal.

"Brought some jewelry," he says. "Nice stuff. For the --"

He wants to sell her some trinkets. He's sitting in her kitchen, five minutes from exhausted collapse, and he's talking about *jewelry*.

"Upstairs," Joyce says and when Oz stands, he tilts alarmingly against her. She wraps her arm around his bony shoulders and kisses the top of his head. His hair is dirty, almost sticky, with sweat and panic, and this close, she can make out the vague, silvery tear-tracks down his face.

She helps him up the stairs, to her bed, and he settles gingerly on his back. She slides off his sneakers -- he has no socks on -- and, holding her breath, clinically opens the button on his pants. Exhaling softly, she unfolds her wedding quilt over him, its garish late-1970s colors, burgundy and mauve and cornsilk yellow, clashing badly with his ill pallor.

Joyce kisses him again, one knee on the bed, her hands smoothing and tucking in the quilt, and Oz turns his head as he sighs. His lips are dry and rough against her own.

"Joyce --"

"Sleep," she says, and lies down next to him.

She is neither mother nor lover right now. She's everything, and something else, and there will be time later to find out what happened, where he's been, and she will pay him too much for his Tibetan necklaces and kiss him again before saying goodbye.

But that is later. Now, she holds him close as a friend should, and wills him to sleep.

[end]