The girl he'd just met was reciting poetry to Rupert, leaning close to his ear to make herself heard over the Bowie. She was in the middle of an elaborately obscene thing about a phallic vine, twining around the poet's mistress. Rupert giggled, nose to nose with her. She was lovely, all huge masses of dark hair over a mobile face, pale skin against her black turtleneck, clouded over by blue cigarette smoke. And obviously she had brains. He was almost certain she was making a pass at him. Perhaps he could try putting a hand on her shoulder. He edged a little closer.
Another boy ranged up behind and put an entire arm around her shoulder. "Connie, Connie, what hapless victim are you debauching with poetry now? Didn't you promise to debauch me tonight? Come away, come away."
The new fellow looked as if he and Connie had been stamped from a single mold. He ran one quick hand through his hair to push it away from his face, and looked up to meet Rupert's eyes. His hand froze, and he seemed to change what he had been intending to say even as he opened his mouth.
"Introduce me to this charming youth, Cons."
Rupert wanted to bristle. This boy was his age, if that.
"Rupert, this is my friend Ethan. Don't believe a word he says." Connie rolled her eyes, and flicked ash at Rupert's feet.
Ethan removed a hand from Connie's shoulder to shake Rupert's. Ethan's fingers were hot against his palm. He grinned, and launched into rapid conversation, about something Rupert didn't entirely catch. Ethan was in constant motion, twitching, jiggling in place, dancing a little now and then, like someone had overwound his high E string and it was about to pop. He settled as he got deeper into the jam jar of wine he was drinking.
Wine never settled Rupert. Rather, it uprooted him. His rugger mates gave him one or two when they wanted him to dance, or to talk. Not that he felt like dancing now. The Bowie had been replaced by something proggy and self-indulgent in 7/8 time. And still too loud. He leaned closer to hear what Ethan was saying. He was expounding on modern economics, and the role of financial institutions in maintaining social inequities. There was something about what that lopsided smile did to his face. He looked mischievous.
"Burn them all. Scatter their assets in ashes and dust! But enough about my life goals. Who are you?"
"Beg pardon?" Rupert tugged his jumper down nervously. The hem was starting to fray, and he was afraid the ragged edge of dark wool would show against his jeans.
"You. Who are you? You've got the build of an athlete and cheekbones I'd kill to have. But those glasses don't quite fit. What's your surname, anyway, Rupert?"
Ethan flashed a smile at him that Rupert couldn't help but return. He found himself unable to stop looking at that mouth. It promised something to him. He didn't know what. "I, uh... Giles."
"The patron saint of cripples, and those who fear the night. You look proof against both ailments. College?"
Connie said, "I'll just get another drink," and stepped away. Rupert, reminded of the existence of the glass in his hand, took a gulp, and slid a little further out of the slow grasp of his daily self.
"College? Come on, man, it's the catechism. Tell me where you are, what you're reading, where you came from, and we'll get it all out and then talk about something interesting."
"Um, Merton, history, St Dunstan's."
"Oh, ho! Watcher boy, then. And indeed, one who makes the night safe for us weedier types."
"Oh!" said Rupert. Then, "Oh. So you, uh, know about..." He trailed off, making a vague gesture with his fingers.
"You could say that," said Ethan, with that corkscrewed smile. "I'm an adept." He snapped his fingers and let a flame dance on his palm. He closed his hand over it.
"I'm not, but, er, I, um, I know all about it."
"I doubt that," said Ethan. He turned aside to put his jam jar down. Rupert was afraid he'd lost Ethan's attention already. Though he wasn't sure why that bothered him.
"So what about you? The catechism."
"Balliol, economics, some place you've never heard of. Now, wasn't that dull?"
"Yes, actually." The pair smiled at each other.
Somebody put the Bowie on again, louder this time. Fourth time of playing, Rupert thought.
"Bloody loud in here," said Ethan, leaning close to make himself heard.
"I've got a bottle of wine in my rooms," Rupert said, blurting it out. Then he stuck his hands into his back pockets and said, more casually, "Drinkable, I think."
Ethan nodded, equally casual. "Let's go."
No sense making goodbyes to their host in that din. They extracted their coats from the pile at the door. Ethan had a pea-coat. Rupert had worn his motorcycle jacket, thinking to impress if he'd managed to get anybody to leave with him. Which he supposed he had, though not in the way he'd been hoping. Down the creaking stairs, out the front door, onto the street.
"Christ!" said Rupert. It was pissing rain. Cold rain, nearly sleet, freezing in places on the street. He did the snaps at the neck of his leather jacket. Ethan buttoned his pea-coat and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. The pair scurried through the wet streets, Rupert leading the way to his tiny flat near his college. Barely worth the name, more of a bedsit, really, but it was what he let himself afford since his father's death had turned things upside down. He wasn't really in difficulties. The Council gave him a stipend, and he had some inherited money that he didn't want to touch. If he let the London house, he'd be beyond comfortable. But he wanted that house to be there when he finished his degrees. It was all he had left of his father.
He fumbled with numb fingers for his key, and let them both in. Even the chilly stairs felt like a refuge after the cold and the wet. Two flights up the dim staircase, down the hall. Rupert unlocked the door, stepped inside, and switched on the lamp that stood next to his bed.
"Nothing much, I'm afraid."
He wished he'd let himself afford better rooms. Ethan had to be sneering. At least they were neat and clean, orderly except for his desk. Rupert liked to know where everything was. But Ethan said nothing, just hung his dripping pea-coat on the coat-rack. He unlaced his boots and left them just inside the door. Rupert did the same, then padded over to his kitchen nook. Ethan followed. Nothing much there, either, but he could cook a proper meal in it.
Rupert pulled down the bottle from the cabinet. A Bordeaux, modest but indeed drinkable. Or so his friend Evans had said. Thank goodness he had real wineglasses. He pulled his utility knife from his pocket and folded out the corkscrew. Sliced the tip through the lead foil, tugged off the cap, crushed it and tossed it to the side. Twisted the point in, striving to look as if he did this routinely.
Ethan watched this process with elaborate indifference. "So you're a Watcher?"
"Studying to be one." Rupert tugged the cork out, and spun it squeaking off the screw. He repocketed his knife. Ethan had already poured full glasses for them both.
There was only the one chair, at Rupert's desk. Ethan ignored it in favor of the floor, his back against Rupert's iron bedstead, one knee folded up against his chest. Rupert sprawled down onto the center of his tatty Turkey carpet. The bottle stood between them. He tasted the wine. It was better than what they'd been drinking at the party.
"What does one study to be a Watcher?"
"Languages, mostly. As well as weapons. I'm, er, handy with a sword. Could kill you with my bare hands." Rupert shrugged. Though he had grown up assuming that everyone around him could do the same.
"Isn't the Slayer meant to do the fighting?"
"In theory. In practice anyone who's near the fight needs to help."
"Dangerous. Though magic is, too, 'course." Ethan delivered his own shrug. "How'd you decide to be a Watcher?"
"I didn't. It's, um, it's a destiny. My destiny."
Ethan laughed. "Is that what they told you? What a recruiting line."
"I wouldn't expect you to understand," said Rupert, in a huff. Outsiders rarely did. Even Councilmen sometimes seemed not to understand what Rupert felt when he saw a Slayer, or even one of the Potentials. That deep pull inside him. The longing to fight alongside her. The least Ethan could do, Rupert felt, was not mock what he didn't understand.
Ethan seemed to notice his annoyance, because his next words were, "How do you know Connie?"
Rupert put down his wineglass and idly turned it on the carpet. "I'd just met her. Had she really promised to debauch you?" Rupert's ears burned as soon as the question was out of his mouth. He'd just been impossibly naive. But Ethan did not seem to notice.
"She hadn't, alas! I find it's an effective technique, with women. Tell them they've sworn to do that which they long to do, but are too coy to ask for. Not that Connie is coy. Not one to make you wait a vast eternity." Ethan sighed happily.
Rupert was suddenly glad he hadn't hooked up with her. "So you and she already, er."
But Ethan said, "No, no. Nothing like that. I've known her for a while. Intelligent woman. She had a breakup a week ago, and I was hoping she'd look my way tonight. Just my type." He cocked his head at Rupert. "Not your type, probably. Were you plotting to take her home?"
"I was hoping. I thought maybe. Probably she went home with Michael." Rupert reflected that if so, she'd had her fun brainless. A roll with a magnificent specimen, who liked his pleasure simple and straight. Unlike the man sitting across from him now.
"Do you often take perfect strangers home?"
"No!" Rupert blushed again.
"Really? Not blazing a trail across Oxford's bedrooms?"
"No! No. I wouldn't do that."
"I do believe you. You seem like a rank sentimentalist."
"And you're too cynical."
"At such a young age, too," Ethan said. He leaned forward to refill Rupert's glass, then re-coiled his limbs in his spot against the bed. "The last St Dunstan's lad I knew was even stiffer than you. Was utterly shocked when I told him there'd been girls at my school. And no compulsory chapel."
Rupert smiled into his wineglass. "I'll wager more shocked by the chapel than by the girls. Even if Dunstan's were mixed, we wouldn't be allowed to speak to each other."
"Sounds strict. I take it your head boy didn't deal."
"What?" Rupert laughed, nervously. "No. Dear Lord, no. They'd have killed him. Probably literally. And made us all watch," he finished, in a murmur.
Ethan made a thoughtful noise. Rupert looked up, and saw that Ethan was gazing at him intently. "Not a place that brought you much joy, I take it."
Rupert had never thought about it that way, or even considered the possibility. He shrugged. "It's done with. I'm happier here. More freedom. And mates who aren't obsessed with vampires." He stretched himself out on his side on the carpet. "'Course, I don't know that being obsessed with women and rugger is much better."
Ethan laughed, and joined him on the carpet. "What are you obsessed with?"
"Studying? I do love the languages. And the history. I could be happy if-- Well."
"And this? Obsessed with this, too?" Ethan came up from the floor holding something. Rupert squinted. A tortie pick. He took it and pocketed it guiltily.
"Yes, a bit."
"Are you good?"
"Fair to middling. I can sing," he added, with a flash of bravado.
"Oh my, more going on inside that handsome head than I'd thought," said Ethan.
Ethan was easy to talk to, easier still as the wine bottle slowly emptied. Rupert was happy, lying there on his carpet, drinking and bantering with his new friend, his quick-witted friend with the beautiful hands. Rupert watched them gesture and flex as they talked. He learned that Ethan was pagan, that he took his magic seriously. Rupert told him about his Christian faith in return, and a little about what Watcher's magic was like. They talked about music, and who'd seen what band recently. Ethan told him about the breakup of his most recent affair, with an American girl who'd gone back to finish her degree at Columbia and hadn't replied to Ethan's letters. Rupert expressed proper sympathy, then his own wish that he might someday have a relationship that lasted for more than two weeks.
Ethan slid down onto his side, head propped up on one elbow. "Your first kiss. Tell me about it."
The answer stuck in Rupert's throat at first. He rolled flat onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "My, my father's Slayer. Under the mistletoe one Christmas. Think she knew I was mad for her and took pity on me."
"Is she pretty?"
"She was. Beautiful. Every Slayer I've ever seen has been beautiful. Even the Potentials. Never known why, but it's so. And she was... stunning." He clenched his left hand and rubbed his thumb against the signet ring.
"I see," said Ethan, quietly.
Before he could continue with questions and sympathy, Rupert hurried on with, "And you?"
"The head boy. I was short of cash, and he took the balance out in snogging. A sadly limited currency, though prevalent in closed societies. Not very liquid."
"Oh," said Rupert. "Oh."
"How old were you the first time you made love?"
"Nineteen."
"And how old are you now?" Ethan asked, with a touch of amusement in his voice.
"Nearly twenty. Next month." Rupert suddenly felt as if that weren't nearly old enough. "And you?"
"I'm a month younger than you. But I was fifteen for my first time. The head boy again."
"Er, short of cash again?"
"Entirely skint."
Rupert laughed, but he wondered if Ethan were as easy about it as he made himself seem.
"Dammit, the bottle's empty and I'm thirsty." Ethan sounded plaintive.
Rupert uncurled himself to his feet, gracefully. He carried the bottle to his little square of kitchen counter. "I can make some cocoa, if you'd like."
"Cocoa? On what?"
"Got a gas ring."
"Huh. Very handy for magic. Heating up cauldrons for the odd steaming potion, sort of thing. Never occurred to me to use it for cooking."
Rupert eyed Ethan narrowly, but he appeared to be serious. "I cook on mine. I wish I lived someplace with an oven. Or even where I had two burners to cook on. One's a bit limiting."
"Alas, your prowess with the two-pan cocoa technique must be displayed on another occasion. I should be dragging myself home like the disreputable tomcat I am."
Rupert nodded. Four in the morning. It made sense. He stood in his stocking feet on the tiny square of kitchen linoleum and watched Ethan tie his boots.
"What's it doing outside?" Ethan asked.
Rupert stepped over and leaned against the window, hands cupped around his eyes to block out the light.
"Still pissing down," he said. "Freezing on the street. You don't want to go out in that. Stay, ah, you can just kip here." Once again blurted, and he wasn't sure why. He had the idea that if they were separated, even for an hour, whatever was happening would stop. He didn't know what was happening, other than that he liked it. He liked Ethan. Rupert rubbed his fingers through the mess of his hair, striving again for that casual do-what-you-like attitude, and probably failing.
"Thanks," said Ethan. "You're a prince."
He sat on the edge of Rupert's bed and began unlacing his boots again. Rupert took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve. He hadn't thought this through all the way, obviously. Where would Ethan sleep, if not in his bed? It wasn't as if he had a sofa. Rupert coughed, and took himself off to the lav to clean his teeth. He didn't have a spare toothbrush for Ethan. He thought he ought to lay one in, in case this happened again. He had no idea what was going to happen next, but he already thought he'd like it to happen again.
He washed his hands and slipped out into the flat's single room. Ethan nodded to him and came past to replace him in the washplace. He'd taken off his shirt, revealing a slim body under a singlet. Rupert stood frozen in the center of the room. He swallowed. Butterflies, suddenly, in his stomach. He forced himself into motion. The chest at the foot of the bed held a spare wool blanket and maybe another pillow, though he thought he owned only the two. He spread the blanket out on the bed.
Ethan returned, wiping his hands on his jeans. He went over to the bed and got in. He left the covers folded back. Rupert pulled his jumper over his head, exposing the worn Gibson t-shirt underneath. He folded the jumper and tucked it away in a dresser drawer, then turned back to the bed. He hesitated.
Ethan grinned at him and slid himself hard against the wall. "There's room for the both of us. Unless you thrash in your sleep."
Rupert swallowed and got into bed, jeans still safely on. He reached up and pulled the chain on the lamp. The light faded out. His eyes adjusted slowly. A dim glow from the streetlamp outside, caught in the streaks of rain sliding down the window. The warped pale rectangle the window cast on the ceiling. The dark arch of the foot of the iron bedstead against the wall. Now that the wine-glow had faded he could feel the chill in the room and the warmth of the body next to him in the bed. He folded his arms across his chest.
"I'm not going to bite," said Ethan, almost in his ear. Rupert wrapped his arms tighter around his chest. "Seriously, Rupert. Relax. Go to sleep."
He sighed, unfolded his arms, and turned onto his side, facing Ethan. The other man's eyes were closed. Rupert felt a tiny pang of regret. He was caught between fear and a hope he hadn't yet named for himself. Though he knew, secretly. He knew. Rupert watched Ethan's face relax into sleep, then allowed himself to follow.
Rupert woke alone, and after a moment remembered why this was a disappointment. His usual patch of morning sun made a bright square on the white wall at the foot of his bed. Rain had stopped, then. He sat up and rubbed his face. Mild hangover, residual effects of about three hours of sleep. He touched his feet to the floor and choked back an oath. The floor was cold. The room wasn't terrible, but it could have been warmer. He stood and stretched.
The bog went, and the door creaked open. Ethan appeared, rumpled in the singlet and yesterday's jeans, hair everywhere.
"Oh! Good morning."
"Thought I'd buggered off?"
Rupert shrugged, and pulled on his socks. Ethan thumped down next to him and found his shirt balled up at the foot of the bed. He buttoned it up, hiding himself away again. Rupert watched Ethan's fingers work the buttons. Clever long fingers. He sprang up to go wash his hands before Ethan caught him staring.
When Rupert came back from the lav, hair wet at the edges, Ethan was poking around his bookshelves, at the paltry collection of demonologies. "Lesser and Greater Wards, an Introduction. Huh." He opened it and began flipping.
"My father has a better library," Rupert said. "Or did. It's mine now, I suppose. Going to have to put it in storage."
Ethan returned the book on warding, and peered at his bottom shelf. "Cookbooks?"
"I like to cook. And read about cooking." He couldn't do much in this flat.
"You like to cook, you've got cheekbones that could kill, you play sport, you're a nice straight-laced church-going boy. Why has some woman not snatched you up?"
Rupert stared, and stuttered out something about not having met anyone yet.
"Even the stammer is endearing. Good thing I drove Connie away or she'd have them posting banns this morning. Oh, do close your mouth, Rupert." Ethan nudged him with an elbow. "Brekkers? Shall we go out?"
"Haven't got time for it. Tutorial at ten. Cocoa's still on offer. Or there's Wheetabix."
"Cocoa'd set us up. Ta."
Rupert busied himself with the routine of making cocoa. Ethan lounged against the wall and watched him. Two tin mugs set out, twice the usual milk from the tiny icebox. Sugar, cocoa, measured carefully because someone else was drinking with him. Pan on the flame turned low, to avoid scalding the milk. He stirred with a battered spoon.
"Like doing magic."
"Beg pardon?"
"You're doing a working. Are you paying attention to how you stir? Three clockwise, two anti-clockwise, then three the other way. Ritual. You have a cocoa ritual."
Rupert flushed. He seemed to be spending half his time with Ethan embarrassed out of his mind. Now that he paid attention, he supposed he did have a bit of an unconscious routine. A meditative thing. He caught himself testing the temperature his usual way, with a little finger dipped into the milk. Ethan didn't appear to mind. Rupert poured from the pan. The milk hissed as it ran over the lip of hot metal, loud in the quiet room. Then the sound of filling mugs. Then Ethan's voice, "Aqua vitae. Distilled by gas-ring."
Rupert looked at him over the rim of his own tin mug. Their eyes met. Rupert held his gaze steady this time, though his heart was pounding as if he'd sprinted a mile. Then Ethan tipped up his mug. Rupert watched his throat work as he swallowed.
His wool coat today, Rupert thought, no more messing about with trying to look good while it was so bloody cold. He followed Ethan down his own stairs to the street. Sharp slicing wind, pale sun, pinched faces huddled in scarves, red noses. Rupert squinted against the sunlight. His head was still bad.
"Filthy," said Ethan, and Rupert couldn't argue. The pavement was crusted with ice, melted to gray slush where the sunlight had lingered. The pair crunched their way along toward the university. Ethan shared a house across town, he said. They stopped at the corner where their ways parted. Rupert was reluctant to let Ethan go without expectation of seeing him again.
But Ethan spoke first. "What's your plan for the day? After your tute. Meet for lunch?"
Rupert thought over what he needed to do. Tutorial, home to bathe and change, then a paper he needed to read by Monday. "Can't. Work. I need to do some reading at the Cam. Meet there? Entrance? Say, at four?"
"You'll be there?" Ethan kicked at the ice under his foot, not looking at Rupert.
"Yes! Yes, I'll be there." Rupert was relieved to realize that Ethan was as nervous as he. Ethan touched a hand to Rupert's elbow, then trotted away. Rupert checked his watch. "Vae!" he said. He spun and broke into an all-out run down the treacherous pavement.
...
Rupert spent the afternoon asleep face-down on his notebook, the paper on pre-Roman copper and bronze casting techniques going neglected. His resolution to study had come to naught. He came to with a start and checked his watch immediately. He sighed in relief. Fifteen minutes yet before he had to meet Ethan. He rubbed at his face. It wasn't like him to fall asleep studying, but he hadn't been sleeping well for months. Not since his father and Angelina had died. At first it had been nightmares about their bodies, all torn and bloody on tables in the Council morgue. Recently his dreams had been troubled by images of demons, shadowy things creeping out into the world. All his fault, in the dreams, because he'd failed his Slayer.
He'd slept all right last night, though not for long enough. No dreams.
Ethan was already there in the entrance when Rupert appeared. He worried he was late, had kept his friend waiting. But no: they were both early. Ethan spotted him, and they smiled at each other as Rupert hurried across. Rupert flushed again, because he was sure he knew what his face betrayed. And was that an echo he saw in Ethan's?
Ethan just touched his elbow, as if in greeting, then gripped it to hold Rupert still. He rose on tiptoes.
"Your face is bruised. Did someone hit you?"
Rupert shrugged. Ethan's fingers touched his face, brushing against the place where his tutor's wedding ring had caught his cheek.
"Going to tell me you ran into a door?"
"No. It's nothing."
"It's something. What? Rupert..."
"My tutor wasn't pleased with my performance this morning. Not enough sleep, I suppose." Four mistakes in translation, which were four more than Rupert usually made. And four more than were allowed. The Slayer couldn't afford to have fools serving her, they always said. Exhaustion didn't matter. The Watcher had to function in any circumstance.
"Rupert. One's tutor is not allowed to hit one."
"When he's a Council tutor, he is." Rupert shrugged again. He hadn't ever thought about this. It was the way things were done. It was more humiliating than painful, of course. Rupert played rugby for fun, for goodness' sake. Though the humiliation today had been sharp, with his three fellow Watcher-candidates there, to overhear the lecture about oafs who neglected study for sport, lackwits who traded on the reputations of their famous fathers. Rupert's Slayer would be dead, his tutor had said, hand raised for the second blow. The words had hurt more.
"Come on, then. Cafe for us. You look like you need a bit of something." Rupert allowed himself to be dragged away, out onto the cold streets. He'd been unable to eat lunch after that dressing down, but now he thought he might be able to. Ethan swept him along with a hand tucked through his elbow, around to his own neighborhood and what he said was his usual cafe. Ethan bought him tea and a muffin, and insisted on paying.
"I am in funds just now," Ethan explained, "thanks to a small investment that worked out rather well. When the next one fails, you can return the favor." He had an odd smile on his face when he said that, a little sharper than his usual.
Rupert took the tray. White ceramic cups on saucers. Two plates with muffins in paper. Rupert poured milk into his tea from the common jug and carried the lot over to a table against the wall. He pulled off a piece of the muffin and ate it. A few swallows later he realized he'd eaten the whole thing. Ethan grinned, and passed over his muffin as well.
"When did you eat last, oh world-devouring one?"
"Er, yesterday lunch," said Rupert, thinking back. "I forgot dinner."
"This'll never do. How are you to maintain those muscles like that?"
"S'rather good," Rupert said, once he'd chewed through most of Ethan's muffin. He had some tea to wash it down. The tea was only middling, but it was tea and therefore soothing. He sat back, feeling much better about his life and about his prospects.
Ethan was looking down at the little wooden table, picking at the edge with a thumbnail. "Did you know I had my horoscope done the other day? No, really, by quite a good astrologer. You should get a consult done."
Rupert played with his teaspoon. The Watchers didn't approve, though it was just as legitimate as any other kind of divination, when the diviner had power.
"It was fascinating. I didn't understand half of what she said about the whys and what was in what house retrograde, never do, but she said a number of things about Mercury. Mercury rising in Aquarius means good things for occultists. Also, she predicted the start of a new, ah, friendship. Tumultuous. Intense. Life-changing."
"Oh," said Rupert.
"Indeed. It's all too complicated for me. Give me a pack of Tarot cards over the star charts, any day. But I rather think the first of her two predictions has come true."
Rupert smiled hesitantly over his cup. "Never thought of myself as tumultuous before. What's the second?"
"Loads of sex," said Ethan, wickedly.
Rupert snorted into his tea. "Good luck with that." He drained his cup. "What's the plan for tonight?"
"I hadn't really thought that far ahead."
"See a film? Or a friend of mine is hosting something later."
"Two of those parties in one weekend? No, thank you. Um. I know. Cook for me." Ethan muttered it.
"Beg pardon?"
"Cook dinner for me. The house where I room has a kitchen. All the gear you could want. Gas cooker and all that."
Rupert grinned. His chance to impress. "You're on."
Ethan led the way again, out onto the street, with cold air and the sky aflame from the setting sun. The slush had frozen again under their feet. Ethan's nose and ears were red with cold before they'd gone two blocks.
Rupert assumed that Ethan's kitchen had nothing in it, nothing at all. Ethan trailed around behind him in the market, basket over his arm, while Rupert found the olive oil and spices he needed, then searched out what produce January offered them. Not much. Shallots, at least. The off-license for a bottle of something German, white, and a little sweet, and the butcher's for a bit of meat. Ethan again insisted on paying, again mentioning his recent good luck. Then they were crunching and sliding their way across town again. The packages nestled in Rupert's shoulder bag, next to his books on pre-Roman metallurgy.
Ethan shared his house with four other students, he said. Only one was in evidence, a scruffy man with the beginnings of a beard, sprawled out in the common room with a textbook in the flat yellow and white of Springer-Verlag. He didn't appear to notice their arrival, and Ethan didn't speak to him.
Rupert spread their purchases on the kitchen table while Ethan cleared off the counter. It was surprisingly clean. Perhaps his housemates cooked, because Ethan himself seemed never to have attempted it. Rupert inventoried the cabinets and drawers, looking for pots and pans. Not much. One skillet that would do for the chicken. The knives were all dangerously dull, but Rupert was more than expert at sharpening. He did that first, bringing the least battered up to a tolerable edge. He spun it in his hand, showing off just a little. He could do a few things with a knife that would raise Ethan's eyebrows. He checked the impulse to show off further.
Ethan opened the wine and poured. Rupert tasted it, distractedly. It would do. He set his glass on the counter, ready to use. Ethan sat at the kitchen table, glass in hand. Rupert felt him watching. He turned now and then to meet Ethan's eyes.
He didn't know why people were mystified by this. Cooking was easy. It wanted method, and attention to detail. Rupert, trained by the Watchers from a young age, had never known what it was to be aimless and sloppy. He prepared, laid all his tools out, held a match to the burner, and began. Wash, chop, and dice. Warm the oven. Slice the bread. Bleu cheese and a dollop of honey on each. Ethan looked dubious, but Rupert knew what he was about. The cheese again, with walnuts and segments of orange, with vinegar and olive oil, ready to dress the bit of lettuce he'd found acceptable. Heat the pan, oil and butter onto the hot metal, shallots into the oil, moving quickly now. Saute the chicken, set it aside. Put the bread in the oven to melt the cheese. Rupert deglazed the pan with the contents of his wineglass. More of the honey, and some of the dried rosemary and marjoram.
"Nearly done," he said. "Have you got any plates?"
"Half a mo." Ethan had his head and shoulders deep inside a cabinet. He emerged with a pair of sorry-looking red china plates and a flat box. Rupert looked over his shoulder. Ethan opened the box and extracted a fork.
"Dented pewter and cracked china! That's the theme of our dinner."
"No, this is actual silver," Rupert said, surprised. He held up a butter knife to the light. "It's just badly tarnished. Wants polishing."
Ethan busied himself with rubbing up two forks, two knives, and two spoons while Rupert finished his sauce.
"And thus we both make the base sublime," said Ethan. He ranged up behind Rupert at the stove. Rupert held out the wooden spoon he was using to stir. Ethan blew and tasted, then broke into the smile that made Rupert's chest thrill. "I like yours better."
It was time to serve on the cracked plates, sit at the rickety table, and blush again. It should be good, for something Rupert had never made before. It was a collection of standard techniques he'd used before, cooking for his amused father. And his memory of the recipe, read once in a cookbook and dreamed over, was never in doubt. Rupert watched Ethan taste the bread and grin. Once he saw his friend eating, Rupert let himself eat. It was good.
Rupert had used at most a glass of the wine, so there was plenty for them to drink. But neither man seemed inclined to do more than sip. In Rupert's case, it was because he wanted to keep his head for whatever happened later. He'd begun to wonder what Ethan wanted, if it was at all the same as what Rupert wished for. All those shared looks might mean something else to Ethan. But the looks continued, through dinner and the washing up, slowed into thoughtful deep silences, until Rupert would blush, and look away. They stood side-by-side at the sink, brushing against each other at hip and elbow. Rupert stopped wondering.
When the kitchen was neat again, Rupert took the wine bottle and the two empty classes and followed Ethan down the hall. The man in the common room had vanished, along with his textbook.
Ethan opened a door onto a dark room and gestured Rupert in. He smelled nag champa and candle wax and, if he was not mistaken, bitter ritual herbs. A match flared, and Ethan lit a candle. Rupert looked around. The room made him ashamed of his hospitality the night before. Bookshelves spilling over, a desk piled high with papers and books, more stacks of books on the thick nap of the throw rug. A little statue of a two-faced god on the windowsill. Rupert set the bottle and glasses next to it.
There was a wide bed, strewn with pillows, messy and unmade. Rupert sat on the edge and ran his hand over a silky-smooth blanket. Pleasures of the body and the mind, everywhere here satisfied. Ethan moved around lighting red pillar candles and lastly a stick of incense. The room glowed warm.
"Get comfortable," Ethan said. He kicked off his shoes and sprawled himself onto the bed next to Rupert.
Rupert leaned forward and unlaced his boots, slowly. His breath was already coming short. There was still time to change his mind and leave. He risked a look at Ethan. The crooked smile on his face said that he knew exactly what Rupert was thinking, had known all along. He leaned forward. Rupert leaned forward to meet him.
Ethan kissed him. One brief kiss, then they both pulled back. Ethan searched Rupert's expression for something, seemed to find what he was looking for. He took Rupert's face in his hands and kissed him again. He tasted wonderful, of the wine and their dinner, but with something tangy and sweet far below. Angelina had tasted as good, in that one thrilling kiss she'd bestowed on him. Though this was different. Muskier. Saltier.
And forbidden. Men may not lie with men, by the law of the Council. But the law of the Council had scored a bruise across his face, had left his father and Slayer unsupported and alone in front of a pack of hellhounds.
Rupert let himself dissolve into Ethan's arms, spin out into dizzy touch. Kisses and soft laughter when their noses bumped, when Rupert's glasses were knocked askew, when they both reached for Ethan's shirt buttons at the same moment.
Rupert pulled his shirt over his head. Ethan gazed at his chest, and smiled. "You young god. Give me a hundred years to praise that chest." Ethan himself was as slim as he'd seemed under his singlet last night, all tight wiry grace. They settled next to each other on the bed again, fingers now brushing against bare skin. Ethan fingered the gold cross on its chain that Rupert always wore, against his skin.
"Power," he murmured. "Molten metal and flame and blood and sacrifice. You carry your god with you." He moved it aside gently, then kissed Rupert's chest. Ethan pushed at his shoulders, and Rupert let himself topple backwards onto the bed. Ethan followed him down, rolled alongside him.
Rupert had been in this position before, with the two girls he'd made love with. With them the touching had all been prelude to the moment when Rupert entered them, the act of joining bodies. With Ethan, the play of his fingers on Rupert's body was everything. He showed no signs of needing or wishing for anything else. Ethan touched and stroked and teased, and tightened him into a pitch of arousal he hadn't realized possible. He tried to do the same for Ethan, but his hands were trembling too hard. He gave up and gripped Ethan's shoulders and pressed his face into his shaggy hair.
"Please, Ethan."
"Please what?" Ethan mouthed his earlobe.
"Please, tell me. I need..."
"I'll give you what you need. Give you everything."
Much later, Rupert slipped out of bed, leaving Ethan drowsing slack on the pillows. He sat on the floor, back to the bed, thinking. He closed his hand over the crucifix. What had just happened to him? What was he now? He didn't feel at all the same man that he'd been only a day ago. He hadn't known he was capable of this, that he had wanted it.
He got up and moved quietly around the room, blowing out candles. Hot candle wax, incense, and now, below them, the smell of sex. He returned to bed in darkness and the afterimage of flames. Rupert pressed himself close to Ethan and pulled the blanket over them both. So good to hold someone else like this, someone he'd just made love to. Rupert kissed his forehead, stroked a slow thumb over his damp temple. Watching Ethan's pleasure, hearing Ethan's half-slurred words of satisfaction and gratitude, had been as sweet as his own pleasure had been. He was exhausted, exultant. In love. Could it possibly happen that fast? Eyes meeting at a party, then fire and his heart melting and reforming?
It must be possible, Rupert thought. Must be, because that's what had just happened.
Giles finished The Magician's Nephew too quickly, even though he'd been reading with strict attention to prose style, as slowly as he could. It was losing its power to comfort, he thought. Not that a story about a world created in corruption ought ever to have been comforting. Could a fall from grace ever be considered a good thing? Giles stretched out his legs in the bay window seat, bracing his bare feet against the opposite sill. He'd gone running that morning and had done his five-mile course at punishing speed, and his legs still ached.
Water slid down the pane of the glass at his elbow. It had been spattering on and off all day, broken by fitful moments of clear spring sunlight. His seat in the window nook was cozy. He'd insisted that he and Ethan take the flat when he'd knelt in it and looked down at the little garden in the back of the house.
He really ought to return to his reading of the Mabinogion. He'd broken down part-way through "Culhwch and Olwen", and fled to refuge in Lewis. His Council tutor had told him he'd be expected to start a translation of the Council's edition on Saturday, the version with the story of Bedwyr that they hoarded away from outside scholars. His command of the medieval Welsh was advancing, had advanced greatly that morning when Giles had memorized a swathe of vocabulary. Not far enough to satisfy the tutor, Giles was sure.
He couldn't bear the thought of studying any more.
Ethan was asleep on the sofa, long slim legs in faded jeans stretched out, knuckles on his hand brushing the floor, some dreadful economics treatise open face-down on his chest. Giles could get up and make tea for the both of them, but the noise would disturb Ethan. And he couldn't bring himself to move.
Ethan stirred in his sleep, and the heavy book slid to the floor. He cried out and sat up.
"What?" He looked around himself as if startled to find himself in their flat. Ethan always woke up like that.
"You dropped your book."
Ethan leaned over the edge of the sofa to locate the text on the floor, then left it there, face down, pages bent. He sat up and stretched. "Time?"
"Just gone five." Giles was disappointed to discover it. He'd hoped the day were further advanced, nearer the time he could reasonably put himself to bed under soft blankets. Though he could always just go to bed anyway. Giles considered this plan. It had the disadvantage of requiring motion. He stared out the window, eyes unfocused.
Ethan had gotten up and come over to stand at Giles' elbow. "How's the work? Ah. Not working. Reading that again. Second time this week."
"I know, I know. The thought makes me want to... it's just an endless bloody list, of every horse and dog the fool writer felt like name-dropping, and every one of them important. Worse than the catalog of ships." Giles let his head fall back against the wall.
"Come on. Let's go get a few pints into us."
"I've got to--"
"You've probably done three times what your tutor wanted from you, as usual. You could stop work entirely right now and still waltz away with a First in a month."
"That's not the exam that matters." Ethan groaned. They'd argued about this before.
"Come on. Up with you."
Giles allowed Ethan to pull him up from the window nook, groaning. Which was absurd: Giles was all muscle, the student athlete. Ethan was languid softness in comparison, a willow next to Giles' oak. Giles bent to touch his hands to the floor, stretching stiff leg muscles. Socks, boots. They shouldered on their leather jackets, no raincoats for these brave boys, and Giles followed Ethan down the narrow stairs to the street.
"So what has you in a state today, Rupert? You were all right last night."
"Jerry came round while you were out. The team wants me back."
"And you said?" Ethan zipped up his jacket against the damp and buried his hands in the side pockets.
"That I couldn't, of course."
"There's no 'of course' about it."
"Ethan, please." They stood together at a corner, waiting for a break in the traffic. Ethan was leading away from their usual haunts near the Cowley Road.
Ethan sighed. "Who gives a fuck if it's useful for training a Watcher? You love rugger. So play it."
"I can't go against a direct order like that."
"Yes, you can. Stand up to them. Ignore them, curse them, kill the lot of them. Whatever. Rupert. Please."
Giles hunched into his jacket and pulled his hands up into the sleeves. "I can't. It would be wrong."
They walked through residential streets for a few minutes in silence. At the next corner, Giles spoke again. "I know you think destiny is rot. But I can't escape it. I might as well make a good job of it."
"It's killing you."
Giles cast a sideways glance at Ethan."We've had this conversation before. If I don't know what I'm doing, the Slayer dies. Not me."
"That's why your father is-- oh, fuck, sorry, Rupert. I didn't mean..."
"I know what you meant," Giles said, quietly. His father had died with his Slayer, just over a year ago. Horribly.
"But you don't have to. Somebody else can do it. All right! I'm dropping it."
The neighborhood they wandered through now was working-class. Giles hadn't been to this part of Oxford before. Ethan had explored considerably more of the city than he had, and was always dragging Giles to new places. This pub didn't look welcoming. The Oak and Thorn. Ethan held the door for him. Dark inside, smoky, decent custom, mostly male. It claimed to brew its own, which was something. Ethan sent Giles to sit while he got drinks. Ethan never had money when it was time to stand a round for their friends, but he always seemed to have it when Giles needed tending. He came back with four pints. He slid the ale in front of Giles and kept the cider for himself. He lounged across the opposite bench. Giles took his first gulp. Bitter in the mouth, heavy in the stomach, but sweetness and light in the head. Or it would be as soon as he finished the first. A different sort of numb indifference would follow. The glow was in his blood and in his head already, the beer opening the gate for temporary escape.
Food appeared on the table about the time Giles was finished with his first pint. Greasy stuff, fish and chips, the sort of thing Giles avoided when he was in training for rugby. Which he wasn't any more, so why not? He'd eaten nothing all day. He poured on the vinegar and ate, and drank his second pint. Ethan poached a few chips, but otherwise just watched Giles eat. He lounged with one foot up on his bench. He drank little. He hadn't even made a start on his second pint by the time Giles was down to the last inch of his.
Ethan pulled out the cigarettes he'd begun smoking recently and lit up. Giles made a face. He hated the taste of ash in Ethan's mouth. It was otherwise a wonderful mouth, clever, whether talking or caressing Giles. Giles finished his beer. He stared at Ethan's mouth and imagined what it would feel like on him later. How it would taste. Giles loved Ethan's face entirely. Pale under the shaggy dark hair, sensual, cruel at times, but always with intelligence shining out. And for some reason Ethan liked quiet, shy Rupert Giles.
Ethan basked in the stare for a little, then curled his mouth in that impish smile Giles loved. "What are you thinking?"
"Just trying to work out what you taste like. Nobody else has tasted like you do."
"Magic. Most likely. Sweet and tangy at once? Fizzing?"
"Not exactly, but it's something..."
"Magic. You taste of it yourself, you know."
"Get out."
"Don't you know? Haven't you... what have you been studying in all those extra tutorials, if not magic?"
"Demonology, mostly. And languages."
"What the fuck do you do with all your power, then?"
"What power?"
"Bloody hell, Ripper! It was practically the first thing I noticed about you. I mean, after I saw that the girl I'd had my eye on all night was hanging around your neck, and that you were prettier than she was. After I got over that, I could smell it on you. Can taste it every time I kiss you. You've got a lot of power."
Giles stopped chewing his mouthful of chip. "Five months ago I was reliably informed that I have an only marginal magic talent. Not worth training at all. Though in the modern Council, that's no disadvantage. Father... my father would have been disappointed. He had hopes."
"Reliably, my skinny arse."
"I can recite to you the report I read about it, written by no less than Quentin Travers, sub-director of field operations for England. I have little magical aptitude."
Ethan reached across the table to poke Giles in the chest. "Utter rot. You're dripping with it. Like honey from the comb, you and the magic."
"Not according to the Council's evaluation."
Ethan stared at him. "You're terribly dense for such a smart boy, you know, Rupert? They were either flat wrong or lying to you. And given the way they treat you, I'm going with lying. Though why, I have no idea."
Giles upended his second pint. "Precisely. Why would they bother? So therefore they are not lying, and you are wrong."
"Come 'round here. Taste me."
Giles obediently moved to Ethan's side of the booth. Ethan stole a kiss, right there in the pub. Not the sort of pub where that was wise. Ethan seemed not to care. He leaned closer and bit at Giles' ear. Giles slipped an arm around Ethan and kissed him again. Sweet cider. Tobacco. Salt from the chips. Ethan's tongue in his mouth, so different from a woman's tongue. Broader, more insistent than any girl Giles had been with. And yes, it was sweet and sharp at once. Giles could imagine kissing this mouth every day for the rest of his life. He sighed happily.
Something smacked the table. Giles disengaged from Ethan to look up. There were two of them. Mid-thirties, townies. Fags still in the corners of their mouths. The one in front was beefier.
"You, nancy boy! Stand up."
Giles deliberately picked up Ethan's second pint. He drained it in long swallows. He put the glass down, then turned on the bench.
"Were you addressing me?" He enunciated every word clearly, in his plummiest voice.
"Yeah, you fuckin' fairy."
Giles stood and swayed on his feet, just a trifle. The handicap wouldn't be enough to make the fight interesting. He could see by the way the punter stood, un-centered, with his fists held in a movie fighter's posture. Giles stepped away from their booth to give himself a little more room, and held himself ready, loose and balanced.
"Yes, I do think I heard that the first time. Did you have some kind of point about fairies to make?"
"Don't want you here in my pub. Keep yourself to the fuckin' university." The man took a swing. Giles leaned aside easily and let his elbow intercept his victim's nose, almost as if by accident. Giles threw his own punch and caught the man's eye. His third blow was to the stomach, to make the idiot double over and provide an easy opportunity for a knee to the groin. That one was out and Giles wasn't even winded.
The second flung himself at Giles, which was a pure gift. All that momentum! Giles stepped aside, and kicked high. The man flipped onto the table beyond and rolled. His shoulders hit the window. He fell backwards and out, screaming, trailing showers of glass and splintered wood. Giles followed, leaping onto the ruined sill and out, smashing more glass with boots and leather-armored elbows. He grinned and bent to haul up the lout, to finish the job.
Ethan was there, however, pulling him aside and away. He had his hands in the air, casting a spell Giles was learning to recognize. He chanted something quickly, twice, and brought his palms together. The people emerging from the pub shouting turned away from the pair of them and clustered around the man on his back, bleeding. Ethan tugged at Giles' elbow. They walked briskly away, Giles leaning on Ethan as the third pint hit his blood. He hadn't hit the second one enough to be truly satisfied, but the sound of breaking glass had been fantastic.
"Do you feel better?"
"Lord, yes. That was brilliant." Giles pulled Ethan close and kissed him. "Can we find something else to beat up? Vampires?"
"Not in Oxford, love. Let's get you home, then," said Ethan, and was that a note of worry in his voice? Ethan had nothing to worry about. Giles was fine. More than fine. Why hadn't he thought of doing this before?
Once in the flat, door locked behind them, Giles pinned Ethan against the staircase wall and kissed him until he could taste it again, whatever it was in Ethan's mouth that he hungered for. Then he tugged Ethan the rest of the way up to the flat and into the bedroom.
Giles had liked it sweet. On those first nights with Ethan, the first times he'd touched another man, he'd been perfectly happy to rub himself against Ethan's body. That way he could hold Ethan close, and kiss him, and look into his eyes when he came. In the four months since, Ethan had taught him other things, other ways of pleasing and of taking. His sexual horizons had expanded dizzyingly. Ethan's were still further out; he kept trying to coax Giles into things Giles was certain he wouldn't enjoy. But he was an apt pupil in this, as in everything. He'd learned that on these nights, after fights or scrums, Ethan liked it rough. Ethan wanted the feeling of Giles' cock inside, transfixing him, Giles' weight on his back, covering him. Giles obliged. He gave Ethan what he wanted, a hard fast ride, one hand braced on Ethan's hip, the other reaching around to grab and pull. Ethan's cries at climax triggered his: a moment in suspense, then release and he was falling onto Ethan's back, collapsing into blackout.
A few shuddering breaths and he returned to himself. He rolled off Ethan, sweaty and spent and hollow. Sobriety was binding itself around his head again. And fear. The words of his Council tutor came to him, the lecture he'd received early in his schooling, about the dangers of Pagan friendships. Temptation and corruption and moral decay. He hadn't understood it at the time. All of this was forbidden: the magic Ethan cast, the sex. If they knew, they'd make Giles leave. Or they'd do something to Ethan to make him leave. How long would he be allowed to enjoy this?
"You're still wound up, aren't you," Ethan said. He was leaning on an elbow, studying Giles.
"I can't-- I keep-- Everything I like, they take away."
"They can only take away what you let them. Ripper."
"Rub it in, why don't you." Giles tried to sit up. Only his rugby teammates called him that.
"Hey! Hush. I'm not needling you. I just like thinking of you playing. Muddy and bloody and so fucking magnificent. Shirt torn half off. My Ripper. That's who you are to me. Who you were in the pub tonight. Gonna call you that, to remind you." Ethan ran his hand over Giles' chest, then down his flat belly. That wasn't who he was. Giles knew it. But if Ethan wanted to believe it, if Ethan wanted him to be that man, Giles could do it. That was a small price to pay for the caresses Ethan was tickling over him now.
"Sorry. God. Ethan. Sorry. I'm such a berk."
"I've got an idea for you. I think it's time you worked it all out. Cleared out the lumber from the attic in your brain."
"What?" said Giles, suspiciously.
"Let's go on a little holiday this weekend. Get out of town." Ethan rubbed circles around Giles' navel.
"I can't. Got to do that translation for the Council--"
"Yes, you can."
Giles sighed. "Where?"
"Glastonbury."
"Why there?" Giles turned onto his side, mirroring Ethan.
"I know you were reading about the site there, the lake village. I saw the papers on your desk last month." Giles smiled and looked away for a moment. Nobody had ever paid as much attention to him as Ethan did. "And it's soaked with magic because of the Tor. If you can't feel it there, then I will believe you're inept."
Ethan pushed him onto his back again, and knelt up next to him.
"I can't get away this weekend."
Ethan's questing hand had found its goal in Giles' half-hard cock, still messy with lube and his own come.
"Yes, you can. And you will. Won't you, Ripper?" Ethan straddled Giles' thighs, and wrapped both hands around him. Giles was hard again in two breaths. He reached up over his head and gripped the posts on the headboard. He strained upward under Ethan's weight, struggling to thrust. Ethan had perfect control over him, had him pinned. He'd do whatever Ethan wanted. He always did. Left to himself he'd just hide in the flat and work. Ethan could take him outside himself.
The Triumph was running well enough that Giles wanted to ride it down to Somerset. It was still spitting rain, off and on, though, and Ethan didn't want to get wet. Giles had been going frantic with the need to be outside and moving, inside his skin and not inside the books. He'd been living on the memory of that moment when the pub window broke, the sight of the man flying through it, the feeling of the glass under his boots. If he couldn't have that again, he wanted to ride. And in this instance, he got his way. So they were two up, Ethan's hands on his waist, both in leather jackets and boots, their supplies for the weekend in a rucksack on Ethan's back.
Ethan did a screening charm over them, to keep the worst of the rain off. He had to renew it periodically as they rode. He groused every time.
Giles wrung the Bonnie's neck and kept it as fast as he felt was sane, given the wet roads and the fact that they were two up. He scraped pegs in the more open corners. This was almost as good as playing rugger, or brawling. Leaning into the turns, the bike an extension of his body, the breathless thrill of watching road sweep into view around the curves. He almost wished Ethan weren't there, so he could go all-out and see what that felt like. Do his best Mike Hailwood. Maybe break his neck, scatter his body and the bike across the road, but there was no one left to care about that. Only gray men in suits who'd shake their heads and mark him down "failed" on their clipboards before banishing his records to the dead files.
Ethan would care. Giles could feel Ethan snugged up against his back. Hands tight on Giles' waist, thumbs threaded through his belt loops, his thighs warm against Giles' hips. Grounding him.
Around noon, the landscape opened out, and flattened. They were in the Somerset Levels. The road wound through flat, treeless pastureland. Glastonbury Tor crept into view across the fields to the south miles away, even through the rain-haze: a terraced keel jutting above the moor, the only hill.
Giles slowed to look at it. It was strange. He knew the geological reasons for the formation, so it ought to seem mundane. But it wasn't. It was an entrance to the underworld. Not a hellmouth, but a portal to the realm of true gods. Its summit had boasted many sacred sites to them. A ruined Christian church was visible there now, graceless stone walls erupting straight up.
They were near the town, now, a little maze of streets crowded at the foot of the Tor. Giles relaxed his wrist and took them into town at a staid putter. Ethan directed him through the streets to their lodging with taps on the arm. He braked neatly in front of the inn and waited for Ethan to dismount before kicking down the sidestand. He pulled off the helmet and stretched. The last twenty miles had been a trial on his legs.
Ethan shoved a wad of notes into Giles' hand. "Do the talking, would you, Ripper? Do your best young don imitation. The middle-aged ladies eat that up from you."
So Giles went in, and offset the bike and the leather with a nervous push of his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose, and a bit of Oxbridge stammering. Ethan liked to pretend that it was an act, that Giles hid behind the donnish persona. Giles knew well enough that the shy smile he gave to the innkeeper and her pretty daughter was genuine. Pretend he wasn't an academic. Pretend he was a rugger thug. Escape from himself. Giles was along for that ride.
"Here to walk up the Tor, then?"
"I was hoping to take a look at the lake village. It's, ah, my field. At university."
And the woman was indeed charmed, and happy to show the two nice young men the room they'd asked for when they'd phoned a couple of days ago. One room with a single bed was fine; they were pinching pennies.
They dropped their gear and puttered off on the bike again to see the lake village. They wandered around the site for what remained of the afternoon. Their student status and Giles' name-dropping his tutor got them more access than the few tourists present had. Giles was thrilled with the site. He'd read a great deal more than just the papers Ethan had seen on his desk, of course, since Britain's early history was his specialty. He was afraid he wittered on too much, given the indulgence that had crept into Ethan's smile.
"Are you bored?"
"My idea to come here, Ripper. You look happy." Ethan stuck his hands into his jeans pockets, and rushed on. "Besides, if the details of pottery design are less than, ah, fascinating, I can always just soak in the power. It's nearly strong enough for a mundane to feel it, I should think. There are few places in England where it's this close to the surface."
The hair had risen on the back of Giles' neck more than once as they'd walked, but he wasn't sure if that's what Ethan meant by power. He asked.
"So you truly didn't know."
"No. But I think I'm beginning to get an idea."
They walked in silence for a while. "And here I thought you'd been holding out on me, and was working up to a royal snit about it. Well, well."
"So I can sense something. I still don't believe I have any power."
"I can prove it."
"How?"
"Tomorrow. We'll visit the abbey site and climb the Tor. I'll give you something to make you more receptive. If you see visions on the Tor, you'll know you're an adept. Mundanes can't."
"Ethan..."
"If you're not an adept, you'll just get stoned and have a good time. Which is why we're here."
"Ethan... I don't know."
"Do you trust me?"
Giles just looked at him sidelong, and began leading the way back to where they'd left the bike.
They had a nice dinner that night, something better than pub food, from one of the restaurants catering to tourists. Ethan paid from a surprisingly thick wallet. Ethan had a pair of absent-minded parents somewhere in London, who paid his tuition and board, but not much more. Giles supposed he should be asking where Ethan had come up with the dosh, but he set aside the problem. It was Ethan's business.
Back in the room, Giles got what he wanted. Nothing complicated, just simple mutual head, which he thought had to be his favorite thing in the world. A long, slow worshipful caress with lips and tongue. Sweet.
Afterward, lying sated with Ethan's taste in his mouth, with the taste of Ethan's sorcery in his mouth if what Ethan said was true, Giles said, "All right, I'll do it."
Gray light filtered in through open curtains. Car tires splashed through puddles; rain pattered on the street. Another wet day. Giles sat up and rubbed his face, then slipped out of bed. He pushed the window sash down to keep the wet out, then sat on the sill, yawning. He watched Ethan sleeping: on his stomach, head wedged between the pillows, turned toward where Giles had been. Ethan's bare knee poked out out of the sheets. One hand rested across the hollow Giles' body had left. Slim, graceful, palm scarred from magic. Giles had to suppress an urge to climb back in with him, wake him, spend the rest of the morning sighing under that hand. Writhing under it. Instead he crept out of the room and found the bath down the hall. He washed and dressed in the shirt and tie he'd brought, over his jeans and boots.
He walked down to the high street through a drizzle to attend the early service at St John's. He entered the church and stood just inside the door to polish the rain away from his glasses. He nodded to the innkeeper, there with husband and daughter, and tucked himself into a pew at the back. He drew in the scent of churches: incense and wood and dust. Dry and familiar, comforting. But now that he thought about it, he could smell something else as well, something similar to what he'd tasted in Ethan last night. If that was not a sacrilegious thought. But there was something in that frankincense, or maybe in the air itself over the altar. Giles couldn't be sure.
As a child he'd always thought he could see things in the air, something flickering over the priest's head. When he was a teenager, at the Watcher prep school, he'd watched carefully in chapel to catch any hint of that blue shimmer he thought he remembered. But he'd seen nothing. Childish imagination. Until now. Perhaps a sense other than sight? Giles closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, under the familiar sounds of the Sunday service.
"For you, O God, have proved us; you have tried us just as silver is tried."
Nothing.
Giles sighed. Why was he here? This was something he did every week that puzzled Ethan. What had the Christian god ever done for Giles? Ethan could point to a number of interesting things Janus had done for him. Giles had no answer for this. Ethan's paganism seemed to follow different rules than Christianity. Ethan cut his palm, offered blood, and was given power. Giles went to church and was offered what? The Three Powers of Christianity were real; only a fool doubted that. Men proved it fresh every time they raised the cross in the face of a demon. But They were otherwise silent. Giles sat here now, making the responses, because he always had, because his father had taken him and had seemed to think it significant. And because the Council required it of him. That was why he was here. So he could tell his Council tutor that he had remembered his duty, even on his weekend escape. Dutifully, he took communion, head down, kneeling at the altar rail.
The smell of the smoke choked him. He had to restrain twitches, his knee jumping, fist clenching. He needed to get out. Now. A vivid image of himself, flinging the vicar through the great window, then following him in a shower of colored glass and lead. The pub window, smashing. The window in his flat, spraying down onto the garden, his books following. Christ, what was wrong with him?
He left a fiver from Ethan's questionable stash in the collection. He half-ran back to the inn, scrubbing rain from his face, desperate to get back to Ethan. Ethan was awake when Giles returned, and dressed. He was sprawled out on the bed, across the rumpled sheets, reading a biography of Kropotkin. Giles calmed the moment he saw him. He shut the door of their room and leaned back against it, letting his breathing slow. Climb back into bed now and never get out?
But Ethan wound himself around, tossing his book aside and twitching up to a seated position, knees clasped against his chest. He watched silently while Giles changed out of his button-down shirt and tie to t-shirt. He twisted his face in a sardonic smile.
"Did you eat anything?"
"Just the communion wafer."
Ethan rolled his eyes. "Good. You'll want to skip breakfast, or it'll come up again." He slipped off the bed onto the floor and rummaged in their rucksack. He handed Giles a cellophane bag with something dried. Mushrooms. "Eat these."
"Just like this?"
"Don't be a baby. They taste fine."
Ethan took the baggy back and opened it. He tipped a mushroom into Giles' mouth. He chewed. Not unpleasant. A little sweet, a little almondy, fibrous. Ethan fed him another and brushed his fingers across Giles' lips. Giles kissed Ethan's hand, on cue. Ethan fed him everything in the bag, even the scraps. By the time he was done, Giles was hard, rubbing himself against Ethan's leg, licking his scarred hand. Ethan pushed him away, however, and wiped his palm on his jeans.
Giles sat back obediently and looked around their little room. It looked normal. "Is anything supposed to be happening?"
"Give it half an hour. Here, give me your specs. You're not going to want to worry about them." Ethan tucked them away into a pocket of his jacket.
They walked across town, shoulder to shoulder. Late Sunday morning, quiet. Some tourists milled about the abbey car park, but the sporadic rain kept most of them to more sheltered pursuits for the day. Giles didn't mind the rain, now that he had his leather on. It smelled good. Fresh. Clean. It lightened and lifted as they stood looking at the great cross near the entrance to the grounds, leaving the air sweet.
Ethan brushed a hand against Giles', discreetly. "Seeing anything yet?"
"Don't think so."
"You will soon. That was a bit of an heroic dose I gave you."
"What's that mean?"
"It'll be good. That's all you need to know. And I'm here for you."
Now that Giles was looking at the cross, he thought that maybe he was seeing something. Colors. Everything was looking more intense. Sparks. Red and green and blue tracers, faintly running over everything. He looked more intently, leaning close and running his hands over the crosspiece. Yes. Definitely something was happening. He grinned at Ethan. "Brilliant!" He led Ethan all over, examining everything, searching for more hints of that color. Decorations on stone caught his attention: the knot-work had his mind chasing itself around in intricate patterns. It was all so vivid and beautiful. Bright figures moved in the periphery of his vision. Animals. Ethan trailed after him, grinning, while Giles wandered across the wet grass, jeans soaked halfway to his knees, questing among ruined pillars, fragments of walls, the remnants of the abbey. Giles followed streams of sparks. Power. This ground was holy. Truly holy. Whatever he'd smelled in church had been nothing compared to this.
The tourists were more plentiful now, as the day rode on toward noon, and the rain held off. The two university boys were joined by Americans with Polaroid cameras, church groups with pamphlets, a weekending historian from a red-brick university, and one or two other fellow seekers with blown pupils and secret smiles. Giles tried to keep himself composed as he stood near them, gazing at the decorations on a stone arch, to look like he wasn't having the most amazing experience of his life, like he wasn't hallucinating so hard he couldn't tell reality from vision. It was all just the drug, he knew, every bit of it. He knew Ethan well enough to know that he might have made up the business about magical ability just to coax Giles into this. But Ethan had his interests at heart. Giles was grateful. This was wonderful.
It changed when they moved within the shadows of the ruined lady chapel and descended into the crypt. What remained of the walls rippled, breathing. They closed around him. No sun at all, not the cloud-filtered wet sunshine. No streams of power. The crypt was cloaked in deeper shadows. The animals fled, as unwilling to enter as Giles was. He took a few more steps forward across the ruined wet floor. He clutched at Ethan's arm and stopped. Ethan was looking up, at the walls standing on three sides, at the rail over which tourists peeked down, at the grass poking up between wet stones. Giles saw none of this, only shadow. Then forms resolved.
Watchers. Men in sober suits and ties. A few women. Dressed as he'd seen them all dress for his father's funeral last year. Giles thought he recognized faces, faces of men who'd visited his father often when he was a boy, less often in the years when he had a Slayer, but he wasn't sure.
Those visits. The men would hang their coats in the hall and lock themselves away in his father's study, and raised voices would leak from around the door. Giles and Angelina would listen, pressed as close to the door as they dared. Angelina with her Slayer hearing would catch more than he could.
"They don't like how he's handling me," she'd whispered to him, grinning mirthlessly. "They're threatening to fire him." Giles had stared.
When they left, his father turned from the door and glared at the pair of them. "You heard everything, I suppose. I am a disgrace to the name of Giles." He grimaced, then smiled a private smile at Angelina. "O felix culpa!" Angelina shrugged slightly and returned the smile. The smile that ought to have made Giles feel left out, but instead made him long for the day his own Slayer would smile at him like that. The smile he could never properly explain to Ethan.
In the end Angelina had survived Cruciamentum and made it past twenty, unheard of in modern times. Barely twenty-one last year, when something had shredded her. And his father. Bodies so mutilated that the Council mortician had fought him when Giles had demanded to see them. Hellhound pack, they'd told him. They'd talked out of the other sides of their mouths at the funeral, telling young Rupert what an example his father had set for them all.
Those men. Disapproving Councilmen. They were the ones present in the crypt of this ruined chapel.
The Councilmen stood in a tight circle around something Giles couldn't see. Something on a table. No, a bier. Giles did not want to see what it was. He desperately did not want to see it. Not again. But they stood aside, made a path for him. He walked up to it. No choice. Never a choice.
The body of a Slayer lay on it. Giles moved closer. Many Slayers. All dead. A stream of faces flickering, awash in blood, drained white, broken, crushed. Then it changed, and was the body of a blonde girl, a little thing, face bright even in death, in a party dress stained with water. Giles didn't know her. The current Slayer? A Slayer long dead?
"Do you know what to do with her?" The nearest Watcher was speaking to him. "There are rules to follow. You have to know them. Your job is to end up here, with your Slayer right there. You're not following the rules, Rupert. Your father didn't either. It's why he's not here."
Giles didn't know what to do. Whatever it was he wanted, it was not to end up here, staring at the body of his dead Slayer for eternity. Better never to know one, than this. He fell to his knees in a puddle, shaking.
"How are you doing, love?" Ethan was next to him, arms around him. Giles leaned against him.
"They've followed me here," Giles said, pressing his hands over his face. "They can't even let me take a holiday."
"What? Who, love?" Ethan held him close and stroked his face, pushed the damp hair back from his sweaty forehead.
"Watchers. Men in tweed. And a dead Slayer." Giles let his hands fall. He leaned his head against Ethan's shoulder. The touch helped. Ethan was warm.
"It's just the drug. Just the drug. They're not actually here. You're hallucinating, love."
"But I see them. Dozens of them. They're upset with me."
"The mind is its own place," Ethan said to him, a little amused. "Let's not make a hell of this heaven. They'll have to come through me to get you, love. And they won't. Come on. I think you'll do better away from the ruins." Ethan helped him up.
"It's not ruined, you know. It's still standing. We'll have to go out this way." Giles led the way out of the crypt.
"Holy hell," said Ethan, but he followed Giles anyway, as he threaded through half-seen aisles. "Let's get away from the tourists, then."
Giles paused at the battered doorway, and ran his hands over posts he thought he'd seen chipped, crumbled. "I don't remember the doors," he said to Ethan. Heavy wooden doors, solid, thick, studded with bent-over iron nails. He grasped the ring and hauled, straining against reluctant hinges. Rust flaked. Wood scraped on stone. Giles released the ring, flexed his fingers, gripped again. He strained and the door yielded.
Ethan was watching him, bemused. He'd already passed through, somehow. He stood on the other side of the threshold, on bare grass in pale light, smiling, holding out his hand. Giles stepped through after him and felt his mood lift. Ethan led him gently away from the buildings, toward the far corner of the grounds, away from the groups of tourists. He did indeed feel calmer the further they got away from the site of the crypt. He kept hold of Ethan's hand, though.
They followed the path of a stone-flagged walk. Though from the sound of his footsteps on grass, it wasn't really there. Giles stood still a moment, tugging Ethan to a stop. He considered the change in his vision. Now it was not so much about the color, and the animal figures moving just out of his view. It was grayer and sharper. Giles knew he was seeing something different now. He was seeing this place as it had once been. The very sunlight was different here. Silver and aged and ageless and from some world not this one.
He turned back to the abbey building, and saw it whole, great walls arching up. It was lovely. He smiled. "The abbey," he said to Ethan. "It truly is intact. Or at least I'm seeing it that way. A vision of the past, I think. Astonishing."
Ethan studied his face. "You seem... together again."
"Mm," said Giles. "It's different now. Power. I can feel it."
Ethan perked up. "Yes?"
"There's power all over," Giles said, dreamily. "Blue and red and green lines streaming all over everything. The holy spirit walks here with us." He followed a trail of something, some spark in motion, toward the sight of water. He led Ethan clear across the grounds, toward the track that led up the Tor. He stood waist-deep in grass at the edge of a pond. It seemed murkier than it ought to be. He wondered how deep it was. He backed away from the edge and worked his way around.
Ethan followed, bemused. "Duck pond, Ripper. A lot of ducks."
"Yes, ducks. And other birds. And there's something underwater." Giles stepped out onto a rock that jutted out a little ways into the pond. He flung himself onto his face across the rock, looking down into the pond. Something gleamed, deep down. It rose, and came into clear view: a pair of swords, crossed, wrapped in leather, the hilts just inches below the surface. A pair? Why was he hallucinating this?
"Two swords," he said to Ethan, who stood just behind him on the rock. "I'm seeing two swords. They're beautiful. No jewels, or any of that rot. All business. I could do a lot with one of those."
"Swords in the lake. Oh, Ripper. You have Arthur on the brain."
"No. Can't think of any legends about this. And Arthur was never here anyway. That's tourist nonsense." Giles reached in, soaking his arm up to the elbow. The water was warm. The swords receded from his fingers, but remained, shimmering several feet underwater. Which was odd, because he hadn't thought the pond was that deep. He pushed himself up onto his knees and looked around. The pond had become a lake. It stretched out south and east, nearly to the foot of the Tor itself. Mist rose from its still surface. Reeds rustled along the edges. A world other than the one Ethan was in had closed over his head. He swam in the deep water of the visions Ethan had promised him, and was far beyond the shallow sparks and colors of the earlier hallucinations. This vision was knife-sharp. He could see the lake and the reeds, smell the scent of the forest below them, hear the cry of the water-birds. The past, the present in another world, pure hallucination? The past, he thought.
Giles stood, and followed the sparks away from the water, around the shore to what appeared to be a trodden path. The power he'd been sensing all morning came from somewhere up that path. Giles followed it away and up.
"Hey," said Ethan, snatching at his arm. He hauled Giles back to his side. "Watch the road."
"I can't see it. You'll have to lead me." Ethan gave him an odd look, but led him with his arm crooked through Giles'. Giles walked when Ethan walked, stopped when Ethan stopped, and tried to keep his wide-eyed gaze at the land around him in check. But it was difficult. It was so marvelous. The modern road obviously tracked the iron age road he seemed to walk upon, but his road led through open fields not a town, then into the strip of trees at the foot of the hill. They emerged onto the slope of the Tor. Cattle and sheep grazed.
"Here we are, Rupert. Should be safe now-- it's just the walk up the hill."
It was steep. Ethan noticed the climb more than Watcher-fit Giles did, breathing freely and sweating. Giles stopped to wait for him more than once, at the crest of the first ridge, beside a cow that existed in both the worlds they walked through, placidly cropping grass. They had a ways yet to climb. He drew Ethan along with him, tugging at his hand. He could see their destination now, somewhere within St Michael's, erupting from the crest of the Tor. The power was streaming out and down from a point inside the ugly walls.
Giles and Ethan could both sense it, and were drawn to it for their separate reasons. As were others on the hill. Even the ones with inner senses stopped up could feel it.
Giles outpaced Ethan again, and reached the summit before him. He stood at the crest, absorbing the view. He turned to look downhill, at the flat plains of the Levels, watching the rain sweep across the landscape toward them. Ethan caught up to him, dark hair plastered to his face with sweat and rain. Giles hugged him close.
"How are you doing?" Ethan asked him.
"This is... it's marvelous, Ethan. Lovely. So eerie. I'm seeing the underworld, I think. The visions you promised me."
Ethan pulled away for a moment to look him up and down. "Can't believe you're so lucid, honestly, Ripper. The dose was..."
"You didn't need to do this to prove anything, did you. You could have just taught me to cast something." Ethan opened his mouth as if to defend himself, but Giles held up a hand. "S'all right."
Ethan turned to look at whatever version of the Tor he was seeing. "I wanted to give you a holiday."
"Mm. Thank you. Ethan. I, you. God." Rather than stammer out something that didn't say half of what he wanted, Giles slipped his arms around Ethan's waist again and snugged up to him from behind. Ethan leaned back against Giles' chest. He was warm. The breeze up here was chilly through Giles' damp jeans.
"Come on, then," said Giles, after a time. "Let's look inside this dreadful church."
Somebody murmured something that Giles couldn't catch.
"What was that, love?" Giles said.
"Didn't say anything."
The voice spoke again, in a language like Welsh, yet not quite. The language he'd been reading earlier in the week, though the vowels weren't quite as his tutor had pronounced them. And it spoke again. This time Giles realized it was coming from behind them.
He spun and nearly overbalanced. Ethan held him up, alarmed. "What?"
A man stood on the path. Grayed out, with hints of color in his tunic, with a faint crystalline gleam over him. A shock of dark hair, a pale face, a thick mustache. He was armed. He wore a torque around his neck and leather bracers on his arms. Giles placed him as a noble. The dagger in his belt would be iron. Giles could rattle off a thousand facts about his people, and where he had lived, and what he had eaten, and none of them meant anything when the man was standing ten feet away from him. Breathing. Watching him cautiously.
He spoke again, this time impatiently. Giles shook himself, and muttered over what the man had just said, then it fell into place. He'd just asked Giles who they were, that wanted to walk upon the sacred ground.
Giles gave his name, and was given the ghost-man's name in return: Mael the son of Roycol. Giles suppressed a groan, and resolved not to tell Ethan where he'd heard the name before. He pulled himself together, and did his best to be polite in a language he had only just learned. They exchanged greetings, and small talk about the beauty of the view from the Tor. Giles praised the richness of his torque.
"Who are you talking to, Ripper?" Ethan sounded a little indulgent, still. Giles recalled that Ethan had no idea what Giles was seeing.
"Um, there's a Cornish or Welsh noble standing on the path. At least he's speaking some variant of medieval Welsh."
"Coincidentally, the language you've just been studying. So there's a man here, standing right here talking to you."
"Yes, about ten feet in front of you." Ethan took a few steps up the path and waved his hands. "Yes, just there. He can see you, you know."
"Can he."
"We're being rude to Mael." Giles dipped a shallow bow at the twilight man.
"Mael?"
"That's his name. Uh, he's asking where is my killer, my demon-hunter. Oh. He's asking me where my Slayer is."
Giles told Mael that he had no Slayer. Mael laughed. Giles glowered.
"What? What's the imaginary bloke saying to you, Ripper?"
"He's laughing at me. I'm stuck as your companion instead of a warrior-girl's. He, uh, he knows that we're, um, lovers. He, well. I should have a demon-hunter in my bed, not a demon-caller. What? Must have that wrong. And now he's saying... Um." Giles thought the last thing he'd said had been uncomplimentary to Ethan's manhood.
"Tell him to fuck off from me, would you?" Ethan cocked an arm in the direction Giles was looking. Mael seemed to know what it meant, or at least to know that Ethan meant insult.
"Bugger, my vocabulary isn't good enough. Jenkins was right. I need to study more. Let's see..."
Giles apologized, saying that his companion did not believe that Mael was present, since he could not see. He then asked Mael what proofs they could offer his companion that Mael was truly there, speaking with Giles. The man considered for a moment, then smiled. There was something in the smile that made Giles nervous, and it wasn't just the glitter of the ghost-world.
"I have a gift for your lover," he told Giles. He removed a ring from his hand, and tossed it onto the ground. A silver thing, with a watery gem, with the crystalline sheen that shimmered over Mael. Giles bent over it, but his fingers closed over nothing.
Mael laughed. The laugh had begun to wear on Giles.
"Ethan. There's a ring here he says is for you. But I can't touch it."
"Under your hand here? I can't see it at all. Not all the way into this world, then. You can bring it all the way over. If you'd like to try some magic."
"I... How?"
"Crash lesson time," Ethan said, a thoughtful finger on his lips. "No time for theory. Here's a, well, a spell for you, for lack of a better word. Tantum visum, transi et corporasce. Concentrate on the object, and, um, exert your will on it. And say it."
Giles brought his brows together and considered the ring. "Tantum visum, transi et corporasce." Nothing happened. Mael laughed at him again. He looked down and pressed his lips together, containing his anger.
Ethan laid a hand on Giles' shoulder. "You can do it, Ripper, love. You've got the power and you know it. Find that place in yourself where it lives."
Giles opened his eyes again and met Ethan's gaze. Find the place in himself. Where was the magic? He searched. Profane memory: Ethan's taste in his mouth last night, hot and salty and bitter and sweet and fizzing with something... There. Giles bent his will on the ring, and spoke the command again. He felt something go out of himself, then return. A surge of something, passing through him. Power, in his hand. In his blood. His power. He was strong. He was as strong with this as he was with the sword. With the fist. This was his. He spoke the words again, and this time he knew.
The ring glittered on the grass. It was silver, with a red stone. Giles reached down and picked it up. He nodded at Mael, with savage triumph. He handed it to Ethan, who was grinning at him.
"There's my boy, my Ripper," Ethan said. "I told you." He dug a fist into Ethan's shirt and yanked him close for a moment. They kissed, right in front of everyone. Giles didn't care.
Ethan slid the ring onto his thumb and blinked. "Janus! You've been seeing this all along? There's an entire damn abbey here! And a bloody lake! And a bloke in costume, with a dagger."
Giles shook with silent laughter. "Now you see!"
Mael stepped close to Ethan. Too close. He said something.
"Get out of my face, you!"
Ethan lifted his hands to push Mael away. Giles stopped laughing. Mael shoved Ethan. Ethan shoved back.
The warrior shouted something Giles couldn't understand, then leapt. Ethan dodged. Mael swung a fist and connected with Ethan's jaw. They fell together and tangled in the mud, battering at each other.
"Fucking hell! Ripper, help!"
Giles snatched at Mael's hair, but his fingers closed on nothing. Ghost. But he was hitting Ethan hard enough, which meant--
"Throw me the ring!"
Ethan wrenched it from his hand and tossed it at Giles. He stabbed out a hand and caught it.
The twilight warrior drew his dirk and slashed it across Ethan's throat. Giles gasped a warning, too late. Ethan didn't seem to notice. He'd slumped back onto the grass, and was rubbing at his barked knuckles. Taking off the ring had saved him.
Giles was angry now.
He slipped the ring onto his forefinger of his right hand. The world rippled and came into deeper focus. The crystalline shimmer over everything vanished. Giles did not pause to consider this. He launched a kick at Mael's head, and sent him flying across the grass. Before he could recover, Giles was on him, driving him down into the mud. He grabbed the knife hand, fingers wrapped around the thumb and thumbnail digging between the second and third knuckles, twisting the arm like a screwdriver kote gaeshi and the dirk flew to the side. Mael spat out a curse.
Giles rolled, and came up with the dirk in his hands. He backed a step away, cautiously, watching the other.
Mael pushed himself up and showed his teeth to Giles. He said something Giles couldn't follow, and produced another dagger from somewhere.
"Bloody hell," said Giles.
"Ripper, what's going on? What are you doing?"
"Stay back. Keep out of my way."
They circled each other, feinting, testing each other out. Giles had better reach. But Mael was unafraid. He'd been fighting all his life, in real battle, and he must have known a thousand dirty tricks. Giles didn't know any. No, wait, he knew one. Giles let the corner of his mouth lift. He let the ring slide down to the last joint, holding it in place with his thumb. Next pass...
Mael feinted. Giles allowed their blades to touch, then let the ring fall into his palm. He rolled straight through Mael's body, came to his feet turning. He thrust a fingertip through the ring. Reality shimmered, and Giles struck.
Chain under the shirt.
Mael's counterblow caught his upper arm and sheared through his leather jacket. Bright pain. He staggered. Mael closed for another blow, but Giles had already let the ring slide off again. The Welshman stumbled this time. Giles felt blood trickle down his arm. Not pumping, at least. He might live.
Ring on again, and circling. Mael shifted his feet. Ring off, step inside his guard as he swung at Giles, ring on.
Giles stabbed upward into Mael's exposed armpit, through the gap in the chainmail. Blood sprayed. Giles twisted the dirk viciously, thinking of Mael slashing across where Ethan's throat had been. He ripped the blade out. Mael crumpled writhing onto the blood-spattered grass. Giles howled in triumph, dagger upraised.
"End it," said Mael, voice thick. "Or would you have me die slowly?"
Giles returned to himself. He fumbled for the words. "Why? Why fight me?"
"To show you what you are. Now end it."
Giles hesitated, then knelt in the mire. He leaned forward and opened the carotid with the dagger point. Blood, for a moment, then a reality-shimmer. Mael sat up, whole.
"You're blooded now, young one. You must kill that which she cannot. Remember that."
He vanished. Giles stumbled back. His knees failed him and he sat on the grass in a heap. He put his swimming head down and breathed. Adrenaline was still pumping. The smell of blood, on top of whatever it was Ethan had fed him, conspired against his stomach.
"Fucking Council's good for something, eh, Ethan? All that weapons training..." Giles closed his eyes.
"Sweet Janus," Ethan said. He scrambled over to Giles. "Ripper. Ripper! You're covered in blood. Or something. What the hell is this?"
Giles looked down at himself. His t-shirt and jeans were spattered in black. "The blood of a man who's been dead a thousand years. A guardian. A figment of my imagination."
"That's your blood! Shit, Rupert, he got you."
"Not badly. Surface wound. Just needs to be cleaned."
Ethan stripped off his jacket roughly and bent to Giles' arm. He pressed it with his fingers and swore.
"Can't you magick it or something?"
"With chaos? No." Ethan searched out the inevitable handkerchief from the inside pocket of Giles' jacket and tied it across the slash. It was clotting already. That would do until they got back to the inn. Would have to do.
Giles held up the blood-stained dirk. Iron, as he'd thought. Garnets at the crosspiece-- Mael was indeed a noble. "Can you see it?" he asked Ethan.
"Uh, not really. A moment." Ethan raised his hands, fingers spread. His eyes went glassy. "I can see something faint in your hands. Like white smoke. A ghost-blade. I saw that fucking dagger well enough when I had the ring on."
"Tantum visum, transi et corporasce." Giles said it almost casually. The power surged in him again. The dirk flared bright, then solidified. He wiped it on the grass.
Ethan took it from Giles and turned it in his hands, ran his fingers over the blade. "Oh, we're going to go far, Ripper, my friend. You and I."
"Brilliant," said Giles, showing his teeth. He took the dirk back and slipped it into the pocket inside his jacket, the one he'd had made for stakes. He put the jacket back on. The ring went into his hip pocket.
Ethan stretched out a hand and lifted Giles to his feet. Giles rose, then swayed. He groaned. The drug was gone from his blood. The second sight had abandoned him. His stomach was uneasy. The anxiety he'd felt in the chapel ruins gripped his throat again. He took an unsteady step. Ethan wrapped an arm around his waist and helped him up the last rise, to the ruins of St Michael's. They passed within the gray walls they'd been climbing toward all day.
Ethan came to a halt and lounged, hands shoved into jeans pockets, just where the altar would have stood. "Here we are. Portal's here. I don't know how to use it."
Giles looked around, and saw nothing. But he could feel it, now. Power and possibility. Potential. The place where the barrier between worlds had worn away.
He fell to his knees at Ethan's feet and heaved. Ethan danced aside. Giles tried to laugh. Ethan knelt beside him and held him close until he stopped shivering. Giles pulled away and slumped onto his back on the rain-wet grass, breathing hard. He stared up into the clouded sky. The rain spattered onto his face and slid down. But he smiled when Ethan leaned over him, worried. A secret smile.
"The portal's open," he told Ethan.
Xander wrapped Giles' good arm over his shoulder and half-carried him out of the mansion. Giles was gasping in pain, but Xander was in too much of a rush to be extra-gentle. Once they were outside, in the early morning sunlight, Xander felt less panicked. Though getting a good look at Giles' face in better light made him nervous again.
Xander drove to the hospital in the Citroen, which he'd snagged from the school parking lot in the middle of the night. Never had he been more grateful to know where Giles stashed the spare set of keys. He parked in the best spot near the emergency room. It was sad that he knew the fastest ways into the hospital, the secret parking spots, but he did. It paid off sometimes. Giles was having a hard time walking. Muscle cramps, or something. He was gray in the face and looked a million years older than he usually did.
Xander got him inside, sat him down, and did the admissions paperwork. Giles had a frequent flyer card with these guys, so there wasn't a lot of paperwork. They took him into an exam room almost right away to start assessing the damage. Xander was there for some of it. He took charge of Giles' clothes when they started getting serious. He was sorry he saw stuff like them popping Giles's shoulder back into place. Giles swore when they did that, saying words Xander had never heard from him before. The nurses threw him out eventually, when they moved on to another part of the exam. Xander zoned for a while on a plastic chair in the corridor.
It had been long enough now that if the world was going to end, it would have ended. Buffy had won the fight with Angel, or Willow's spell had worked. Xander was expecting Buffy to show up any second.
Some woman not in scrubs came out and asked him if he was Giles' son. Xander said yes; what the hell. Explaining the real sitch would just be too confusing. She said some stuff to him about assault, and medical evidence, and DNA testing, and police reports. Xander told her he'd make sure his father made decisions tomorrow, when he was clear-headed. She let him in to see Giles.
They were waiting for a wheelchair so they could take him to get x-rayed. Giles was pissed off that they weren't letting him walk there under his own power. Of course, he wasn't looking like he was about to get up. They'd shot him up with something so he couldn't feel his fingers any more. His right hand had been fucked up. They had done something to it right after they admitted him, but now they had to get somebody in to set it properly or something.
Giles looked pretty out of it now, in the wheelchair. Painkillers had probably kicked in. Xander bundled up Giles' clothes. He put Giles' wallet and keys into his own pockets. He took the folder the counselor had left as well. He fidgeted with it while waiting for the attendant to arrive to do the pushing. Opened it. Read a pamphlet idly. Shit. Poor Giles. Xander knew that this was nothing Giles would ever talk about left on his own.
The transporter arrived. Xander trailed after the wheelchair, feeling worse than he'd previously believed possible. Where the hell was Buffy? Giles had let the Scoobies in a little bit after Angel had killed Miss Calendar, but Buffy was the one he was really close to. Buffy was the one he'd talk to, if he was going to talk to anybody. Maybe it was too many of those touchy-feely talk sessions that Principal Flutie had run way back when, but if Xander knew anything, he knew that you had to talk about stuff like this.
He was pretty damn happy to think of Angel dying to close the portal. If that's what had happened. He was less happy to think of Angel with a soul again, running around with Buffy. Wherever she was.
Xander was starting to get a good mad going.
Now it was some more waiting, this time for the specialist to show up and splint up Giles' fingers. Giles, stretched out on an exam table, was talking quietly. Xander pulled a chair closer and sat down near his head.
"Pillocks. No need to dose me up. Nothing much wrong with me."
Xander ticked things off on his fingers. "Dehydration, dislocated shoulder, broken fingers, that stuff on your wrists and ankles, and bruises all over. Cracked ribs, right? Seems to me you deserve the good painkillers."
"No, can't. Must talk to Buffy."
"Buff's not here."
"Where is she?"
"Ah, we're not exactly sure, G-man."
"Why not? Is she angry with me? Oh, Buffy. I'm sorry."
Xander wished he hadn't heard that. Giles was always in control. Always calm. He sure wasn't now. He was talking more, muttering really, saying things about how he'd failed, caved in, let his Slayer down. And then some stuff about Jenny. And then pleading with Buffy, who wasn't here to help. The drugs had ripped the lid right off Giles. Xander wanted to leave, wanted not to hear it.
Then he made his decision. If Buffy wasn't going to be here, Xander was. Giles deserved to have somebody with him. Willow would do it too, Xander knew, but Willow was in her own hospital bed. Xander stuck his hand out and found Giles' good hand and hung on tight.
"Are you real?" Giles said.
"Xander Harris here, as large as life and twice as natural. I am your source for stupid cliches!" Softer, "I got you, big guy. You're gonna be okay now."
"They showed me Jenny."
Xander wasn't sure what that meant, and didn't know what to say. He settled for squeezing Giles' hand.
"I thought-- I believed-- I told her. I told Jenny the secret. But it was Drusilla. I should have known. I failed. I always fail. Never good enough. Buffy deserves a better man."
"Buffy has the best man there is," said Xander.
"Sorry, so sorry. I should have refused to come, let them send somebody better. Buffy, please."
"Hey, hey. It's okay. We know she came through. No vortex sucking in everything. It's okay now, big guy."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure." Xander stroked Giles' shoulder through the hospital gown, the one without the ice pack. "Relax, okay? We'll hook up with Willow and Buffy at school." Xander kept stroking until he felt Giles' good hand go slack in his. Giles was asleep, and thank God for that.
Xander wandered out to the vending machine and got himself some Ho-Hos. Maybe Will was still in her room. She was just a couple corridors over. He popped his head in, but the room was obviously empty. Will was sprung. Back to keep an eye on Giles, then.
Xander plunked himself back down in the chair next to Giles' exam table, still chewing on his second Ho-Ho. Giles was zonked. Xander considered him. He didn't look like a librarian with the glasses and tweed out of the way. Giles looked tough. Something about his shoulders, and the muscle he had in his back. His face looked a lot better than it had when Xander had pulled him out of the mansion. He wasn't gray and sweaty any more. He looked like he needed about a week of sleep, all big dark smudges under his eyes. And one actual black eye, which made him look even tougher.
Xander fished the pamphlets out of the folder and started reading. He had nothing else to do, and maybe they'd help him not be insensitive guy, which he had a feeling he might be anyway out of sheer ignorance. He thought, though, that nothing mattered to Giles as much as thinking he'd failed Buffy. Xander wondered how long he'd have lasted, in Giles' place. Probably five minutes. Giles, no matter how superhuman he'd been, was beating himself up anyway. What was the guy's story? What had happened to him to convince him he was no good?
He pulled Giles' wallet out of his pocket. Might as well do some snooping. The guy was never gonna volunteer anything. Nice leather, worn just enough to have comfortable creases. California driver's license, decent photo. 1957, huh. Resident alien card. Sunnydale High faculty ID. ATM card, a couple of credit cards, AmEx gold. A wad of cash, way more than Xander had expected. Photos, just two: a shot of Buffy grinning in sunshine, then to Xander's surprise, one of him and Willow mugging for the camera. Then a pile of other stuff, like insurance info, a stamp card for a local cafe, a card for some library at Oxford, one for the Sunnydale public library, and an ID card for the Watcher's Council of Great Britain, with a photo of a younger Giles looking sadly into the lens. A UK driver's license, which looked like the worst sort of fake ID cobbled up by college students. Then, in a pocket, a couple of green guitar picks and a condom. Xander could identify, though it was a little weird to think about Giles hoping to get lucky. Xander hadn't seen him make moves on anybody other than Miss Calendar. He somehow thought that Giles hadn't. It was just Mr Caution Man in action. The guitar picks, now that was new intel. They looked used, the turtle logo mostly worn off.
Put 'em together, and they spelled... Xander wasn't sure. Watcher guy who played guitar and cared about the three of them. A brave guy, who let himself get tortured to save the world but hated himself for not being perfect. Maybe plain hated himself.
Where the fuck was Buffy? Why wasn't she here fussing over Giles? Probably she was off cuddling up with Deadboy. Xander had really hoped she'd just killed him, that she'd let rip with the fighting before Will's spell could fire off. But if that had happened, she'd be here with them all now.
The guy finally showed up to take care of Giles' fingers. They woke him and showed him the x-rays. Xander sat there and steamed at Buffy. It distracted him from watching them set the bones and put splints on and tell Giles he was lucky not to need surgery.
They discharged Giles pretty soon after that, probably just to get rid of him. Once the rush of whatever they'd shot him up with had faded, he was itching to go and grumpy. Xander went off to get his prescriptions filled while Giles was harassing the staff, and came back in time to see the IV getting taken out. Giles had a little trouble dressing because of the shoulder. He flinched away at first when Xander came near to offer help. Xander thought about that a second. Then he pretended he wasn't there, was just happening to hold out the shirt for no particular reason without looking at Giles. That seemed to do it. Giles' back and ribs were looking pretty bruised, all the colors starting to turn dark. He covered them up with the shirt, which had dried blood on it. Ugh.
Giles did his own buttons, slowly. "I think," he said, "the fool believed I was right handed." He said nothing more. Xander helped him into the tweed jacket, then again with the sling.
The Citroen got them back to Giles' flat again. Xander always got a kick out of driving the Citroen. It was so funky. Driving it smoothly, which Xander could do, was a real display of skill. Giles had let them all drive it on weekends while they were in the learner's permit stage. He'd sat in the passenger seat and mostly kept his cool. Willow was too timid to be any good, too bollixed up by the stick shift, but Buffy was plain scary. Xander had overheard Giles muttering something about how Slayers were never any good with machinery.
He got Giles into the house. He was still pretty shaky on his feet, and Xander stuck close to him. He guided Giles to the bathroom. The guy needed a shower and fresh clothes, stat. Xander wasn't sure he was going to be able to step into that tub on his own. Getting Giles through this was going to be tricky. He might go all stiff-upper-lip at Xander and refuse to be helped. Xander had a plan for that. He'd just ignore whatever Giles said and do the right thing.
Giles ended up not complaining all that much. He'd kinda freaked when Xander had tried to help with the trousers, so Xander just backed off and made himself busy adjusting the temperature of the shower. New, improved, sensitive Xander. He got Giles in and left him to it. When he heard the water shut off, he handed in a towel, then accidentally made an arm available for Giles to grab. Then he just happened to walk up to the loft, very slowly.
Giles came down the stairs afterward, hanging onto the railing. He was dressed in fresh layers of tweed, a shirt that wasn't bloody. How he could wear that sweater vest in this weather was beyond Xander. He moved over to his desk and stood looking at the phone, kinda hunched in on himself. His collar was open, and he hadn't done his tie. Xander went over and kinda casually did it. Or started to. He made Giles sit down, then reached around from behind and did the easy half-windsor. Giles probably usually did a four-times-windsor traveling overhand clove-hitch with his eyes closed.
Xander found the duffle with clean clothes he kept in Giles' hall closet for the times when he found it better not to be at home. "Gonna take a fast one," he told Giles. "Be with you in a second. We can be in school by sixth period." Giles just nodded.
The shower made him feel a lot better, though he still found it tricky keeping his wrist cast out of the spray. What a week. All of them all battered up. He emerged pink and fresh and smelling like woody Giles-soap. Giles was standing again, looking at something in a notebook on his desk. "Did you eat anything? No? Need some tea, English guy?" Giles gave him a ghost of a smile then. "Look, there are a few things I have to tell you. I need to get you caught up. Sit down, okay?"
"Buffy?"
"Buffy's okay. She came into the mansion with me."
Xander got Giles settled in his armchair. He told Giles how the attack had ended. about Kendra being dead, about Snyder thinking it was Buffy who'd done it. About Willow's second try at getting Deadboy's soul back. And that when he'd last seen Buffy, she was fighting Angel.
Giles said, "Mansion. We must check the mansion. Buffy might..."
"Yeah."
Xander grabbed some fruit from the kitchen before they left. He handed Giles a banana. Giles held it for the whole drive up to Crawford Street, like he'd never seen a banana before. He left it on the dashboard when they got out.
Xander looked around the main area. Pretty quiet. A couple of piles of ashes. Some bloodstains on the floor, maybe some other stains as well. The statue was there, looking pretty much like it had looked in the morning, only without the sword sticking out. That was on the floor right in front.
Giles was retching in the corner. Xander got there fast and held him up. There wasn't a lot in Giles' stomach to bring up. Giles finally stood under his own steam and wiped off his mouth with the ever-present handkerchief. His face was white again. Xander wished he could do something. "The sword," Giles said. Xander ran and grabbed it, took it back to him. "This was in Acathla. The portal... "
"Yeah," said Xander. "Let me take a look around. You stay right here, big guy." Xander didn't want him going into the room where that chair was. He did a quick spin through the house but couldn't find anything. No sign of Buff or Deadboy. He said as much to Giles.
"School," said Giles, who was obviously stuck in some pre-verbal mode. When they were pretty close to the school, he spoke again. "Xander. My boy. Thank you." His voice was closer to normal, though still too quiet. It must have been nine kinds of hell to be in that mansion again.
"Hey, no big. You'd do the same. You have done the same, come to think of it. C'mon, let me get that door for you."
They walked from the parking lot to the front of the school. Giles wasn't walking quite right. Xander could see a wheelchair with Will's red hair sticking out above it. He steered them in that direction. Giles seemed to come a bit to life when he saw Willow. "Are you sure you should be out of bed?" he asked her.
"Look who's talking."
Giles actually worked up to a smile in response to her. Xander knew Giles had a major soft spot for Willow. But however soft that spot was, it was nothing compared to how Giles felt about Buffy.
"You guys haven't seen her either?" he said. Cordy and Willow hadn't.
Oz said, "But we know the world didn't end, 'cause, check it out."
Giles said, "Well, we, uh... we went back to the mansion. I-it was empty, um... and Acathla was, was... dormant."
"I think the spell worked. I felt something go through me," said Willow. Cordy said something about the orb glowing. Xander was torn between being happy for Willow doing a pretty tough spell, and sad that it might have worked.
"Well, maybe it wasn't in time. Maybe she had to kill him before the cure could work." A guy could hope, anyway.
"Well, then, she'd wanna be alone, I guess." Oz made one of his little faces.
Willow said, "Or maybe Angel was saved, and they want to be alone together."
"Perhaps." Giles didn't sound like he thought it was so. He was looking around oddly, as if he sensed something. Then he slumped down again. He put his glasses back on, wincing a little as he did it.
"Let's get you an ice pack for your shoulder," said Xander. "You have some in the library, right?" He led Giles off, walking slowly. He didn't actually touch him, since Giles still seemed to flinch a lot when Xander got too close without warning.
By the final bell, it was clear that Buffy wasn't going to be showing up. Xander met Willow at her locker. She was standing up. He leaned in to her.
"Hey," he said. "Look. We gotta take care of Giles. It was pretty bad. He's gonna be okay physically. Nothing really serious there. But Angel messed with his head something fierce. He's kinda fucked up. Thinks it's all his fault. I'll tell you more later. Not here." He looked around nervously.
"Library, in about ten minutes," Willow said. "I'm supposta meet Mr Bentley to get my physics assignments right now."
Xander nodded and booked. Library check time. Nobody there, as per usual, just the hush and the smell of books. And some small sounds coming from Giles' office. Xander tamped down his body language, trying to seem calmer than he felt. He went to the door and looked in. Giles had his head down on his folded arms on the desk. His shoulders were shaking. Xander touched his arm. Giles flinched, then controlled himself. He turned away from Xander, handkerchief out.
"What's up, big guy?" Xander said, gently. It was horrible to see this man, the guy who took care of them all, who had all the answers, such a mess. Xander didn't like it, but he knew that what he'd have to do was pick up the slack.
Giles turned back. "I just spoke to Buffy's mother," he said, stammering as badly as Xander had ever heard him stammer. "Buffy left her a note. She's run away. I think, I think, we may conclude that Angel did not, um, survive." He looked up at Xander. "Mrs Summers blames herself. She apparently told Buffy not to come back home right before, before... She also learned about the Slaying. She's very angry with me. For encouraging Buffy's delusions." Giles' voice went funny at the end there.
"Yeah, that's one popular self-defense mechanism," said Xander.
"I shall have to find her," Giles said. "It's not Mrs Summers' fault at all. It's mine. For failing. For telling the secret."
Xander was having a hard time keeping his mad down. He knew it would be bad to show it to Giles. Giles would just get freaked out and flinch again.
"It's not your fault. Buffy should have come to you," Xander said. "Didn't matter if her mom threw her out. Buffy should have run straight to you. You need her. She needs you."
"My dear boy," said Giles, with that funny voice again. "She doesn't see it that way."
Xander shut up, then, and concentrated on getting Giles a fresh pack for his shoulder. Giles had a little dorm fridge in his office, for Buffy's sport drinks and those blue reusable cold things and milk for the ever-present tea. Xander left him in the office and went out to talk to Willow. They sat at the end of the table farthest from the office and whispered. He told her everything he knew, and she told him what had happened with the spell. Xander badly needed some Willow time. Just quiet, no stress, no demands, Willow talk time. His wrist was aching a bit, and itching under the cast. He felt like he hadn't had a peaceful moment in years.
Willow cried a little when he talked about what Giles had said about Jenny. And about the counselor. "I think we're supposed to be non-judgmental and supportive. Give him space to talk," she said.
"Like he's going to talk to us."
"He might. I could try. Maybe a girl would be easier for him."
"What he needs is Buffy. Who's taken off."
"Do you think maybe some of that mad belongs on Angelus and not on Buffy?"
"Oh, I'm mad at him too. But he's dead now. Which is good. Buffy should have killed him in January. Buffy shouldn't have been screwing around with him to begin with. Buffy should be here. Now. To clean up her mess."
"You're not being fair, Xander. I think it was probably pretty hard on her, to have to kill her boyfriend."
"Not her boyfriend. Not. Just like Jesse wasn't Jesse when I staked him." Xander realized he was crying. He leaned up to Willow and they cried together for a while. He felt better afterward. Less angry. Less stressed out.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get Giles home. I'm gonna camp on his couch for a bit."
"Won't he feel hovered over?"
"Don't care," said Xander. "He needs help because of his fingers. And he needs somebody making sure he doesn't lost-weekend it to cope, like he did before." He looked at Willow. "I'm pretty sure Giles would like it if you were around, if you want to hang out. Maybe he'll talk."
"I'll get Oz to drive me and that stupid chair," said Willow. "Meet you there."
Giles's apartment was weird. First there were the books, no surprise there, but then there were the contraptions on the walls. And if you got near some of the stuff on his shelves, Giles would start throwing nervous glances at you, not saying anything, but just making sure you weren't going to do anything with that jar of strange sand. Or the lump of crystal with the shifting patterned blob in the center. But it was the homiest place Xander had ever been in. It smelled good, like incense, tea, plants, leather, cookies, Giles.
It felt homey even now, when its owner was sitting hunched at his desk in front of a bottle of whiskey and a glass. As far as Xander could tell, Giles hadn't actually started drinking yet. He was just sort of staring at it. Or at the address book open next to his phone. Or maybe just at the desk.
"You can't drink that stuff and take your pain pills," Xander said. He picked up the bottle and the glass and stuck them way up in a cabinet that Giles was going to have a hard time reaching for a while.
"Don't need the pills," said Giles.
"I've had broken bones before," said Xander, holding up his wrist in its cast. "And I say you do. You gotta take 'em with food, though. When did you eat last?"
As far as they could find out, Giles hadn't eaten since way before he was taken by the vamps, which made it almost two days. Willow rummaged in his fridge and found some stuff and started clanking around in the kitchen. She was okay on her feet for a little while. Xander knew what sort of cook he was, so he concentrated on what he could do with Giles. Which was, pretty much, bug him. He got Giles moved from the uncomfy desk chair into his cushy armchair and plunked himself at Giles' feet.
"Tell me about crossbows," Xander said. "What makes your good crossbow good?"
Giles stared at him for a few seconds. Then he started talking about composite materials and the shoulder-cock mechanism. Xander grinned, and kept the questions coming. How long did it take to reload? What could you put on the bolts to make them more harmful to vampires?
"Will you teach me to shoot with them?" Xander asked.
"I... Yes. Of course."
"I have some more ideas," Xander said, a little embarrassed. "About weapons. I need to understand how some things work first. Like holy water. Can you put it into anything? Or does the container have to be special in order for it to stay holy?"
Giles launched into a discussion of the properties of holy water, on the impact other sacred materials had on vampflesh, his voice still much quieter than usual, but not shaky any more. He was in full swing when Willow appeared with the pasta she'd put together. Willow handed Giles a plate, which he took with an actual, real smile. Willow grinned at Xander, and he nodded back. He knew it would take a lot more than one distracting conversation, but it was a start.
He got up and tapped out a pill from each of the bottles and handed them to Giles. Giles dry-swallowed the pile before Xander could reappear with a glass of water. Willow came out of the kitchen with two more plates. Xander watched Giles carefully. He was eating. Not a lot, but something.
Willow called Oz later on, while Xander was washing dishes. They were both going to stay the night, and she wanted to let Oz know. Giles had started to object to this plan when they'd told him, but Willow had practiced her new resolve face on him. And stroked his hair, and told him that they were going to take care of him for a little while. Xander made up the couch for Willow, and dragged Giles' sleeping bag out of the closet for himself. None of them had slept much last night, and he figured they should hit the sack soonest.
Something woke him up. Xander sat up straight on Giles' floor and looked around. Then he heard it again, a sharp cry followed by whimpers, from over his head in the sleeping loft. He untangled his socked feet from the sleeping bag and thumped up the stairs. Hit the light switch at the top.
"No! Please! Oh, god."
Giles was hunched on the bed, knees up, hands crossed before his face. He was shaking and panting. Xander came closer, slowly, and sat on the edge of the bed. Giles flinched again, a reaction that Xander was very sorry to be getting used to.
"Xander?"
"Yeah, big guy."
"Is that really you?"
"Yeah, I'm afraid it is." The humor seemed to help Giles. Xander supposed if he'd been serious Giles wouldn't have trusted it was him. He reached out, very carefully and slowly, and stroked Giles' arm. Giles gradually relaxed his guard and put his hands down. Willow came up the stairs, then, quietly. They got onto the bed with Giles, one on each side of him, and held on. Giles rested his head on Willow's shoulder.
"Breathe slowly," Willow said. "Deep, slow breaths. Yeah, like that."
"You're not alone," Xander told him. "We're with you."
Even a year ago this would have been deeply weird. Sitting on his high school librarian's bed, holding him because he'd been tortured and raped by a vampire, then abandoned by his Slayer. Xander being the in control guy, the guy who knew how to make things better and help the people around him. It wasn't weird, though. Sucky, but not weird. Giles was family, the way Buffy had become family, the way Willow always had been. He remembered how it had been when it was him and Willow and Jesse, piled up on the bed in Willow's room. This was like that, only higher stakes. Instead of worrying about Xander's parents on a bender, they were worried about psycho vampires killing people. Xander knew he was doing the right thing, and it felt okay. The last time he'd decided to do the right thing, it was because he was pissed off about Jesse. It felt better this time. He was doing this not for revenge, but for the sake of a living, feeling Giles. The remedy for Giles was love, and Xander could do that.
They slid Giles down onto the pillows and got the covers pulled up over him. Xander looked at Willow. She shrugged, and let Giles stay snugged up to her, with his head leaning against her. Xander stayed, too. Gradually Giles' breathing smoothed out, and he was asleep.
Xander and Willow conked out on the bed right there, with Giles held warm between them.
