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darcydodoToday, the story's for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stakebait's Back-in-the-Day ficathon are due. Since it's today in my world, despite my not having yet gone to sleep to divide today from yesterday, I'm going to impatiently post my story.
It was written forkindkit, who requested Season 3 Giles, with the specification "I tend to like angst, but I'll do as I'm told. :-)"
The fic is the precursor to a drabble I wrote many weeks ago, now. The drabble was entitled Remembered Items Bid During an Apparently Drunken but Lucid Game of High Stakes Verbal "Trivia Poker," as Overheard During Observance of the Leonid Meteor Showers, High Atop Skyline Boulevard in the Hills of Oakland, California. This may go a small ways to explaining the story. :)
Oh, and the title kind of sucks, so any better suggestions would be appreciated. As, of course, would comments. Always, always, and they make me love the people who give them.
Giles shut the suitcase that lay on his bed, zipped it closed, and leaned against it heavily, supported on his palms. He sighed and stayed there for a minute, head hanging. Head throbbing, too, and he put his hand to the still-healing gash on his temple. Then he stood, grasped the handle of the suitcase, and carted it down the stairs to the sofa, where he dropped it again with a small sigh of relief. Picking up the phone, he dialed Buffy's number.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. "Yes, ah, hello Mrs. Summers. Giles here. Could I possibly speak to Buffy?" Paused, listening to the reply. "Ah, well, thank you, it's not important." He replaced the receiver onto its cradle and cursed softly under his breath. He had to learn to talk to Buffy's mother again without wincing. They interacted too frequently to dance around on this level of awkward embarrassment. And really, he did need to leave a message for Buffy, saying that he'd be gone for the weekend and a bit of the next week. But he could phone her again from the airport, or from Oakland. It wasn't too urgent.
Having reached this unsatisfactory but temporarily acceptable conclusion, he picked up the suitcase again and carried it outside, locked the door, and headed down the steps, where he threw the suitcase into the back of his Citroën. The door on the driver's side stuck when he tried to open it, and he kicked it solidly, with perhaps a bit more viciousness than was strictly necessary to free up the latch mechanism. He patted his coat pocket briefly to reassure himself of the tickets' presence, started up the car, and pulled away from the curb.
As he drove, he tried to convince himself that he really was only visiting Peter this weekend because he'd promised over a month ago; that hearing his old friend's voice on the phone the previous evening, the fortuitous availability of a ticket on this evening's flight up to Oakland, hadn't been more cheering and timely than he'd like to admit. Maybe, he thought, he shouldn't be leaving right now, so soon after the fiasco with Gwendolyn Post. Also, on Friday the thirteenth; but that date's poor reputation was mostly superstition, and sod it all, he was glad to be getting out of Sunnydale, not least on account of bloody Gwendolyn Post, and also putting space in between himself and Joyce. (Mrs. Summers, he corrected his mental voice, firmly.)
And then he was at the airport, and then on the plane, and suddenly arriving in Oakland in such a short hop that it really seemed ridiculous to fly. But as Gwendolyn had painfully reminded him, he was perhaps becoming rather American, and he'd just as soon not spend several hours on the road, in the dark, with the sun setting so early these days. Peter picked him up at the baggage claim, with wife and two small children in tow, and they greeted Giles warmly enough to make him instantly glad that he'd come up here, away from the problems and stress of the Hellmouth and, he admitted to himself, his life in general.
The weekend passed in a happy, sunny, slightly nippy blur; hiking in the volcanic preserve along the road from Peter's house, dining at ethnic restaurants down in Berkeley and Oakland that he could never find in so small a town as Sunnydale, even driving over to San Francisco on Monday so that he felt supremely like a tourist and could make a desperate attempt to forget the headaches waiting for him the moment he returned home. Over Irish coffees at a small restaurant near Ghirardelli Square, he relayed to Peter a few of the events of the past months, garnered acid commiseration over the Gwendolyn Post affair that soothed his wounded pride, but carefully left out any mention of the incident with Ethan and Joyce. Peter had been part of their circle back in the day but had left university before the fateful summoning of Eyghon; he was, so far as Giles knew, still on friendly terms with Ethan, and despite his hatred of the warlock, he didn't want to be the one to place a wedge between the two men.
When they returned home that evening, he rued his easy dismissal of Ethan, for the man was sitting in a chair in the kitchen, chatting amiably with Peter's wife. Ethan looked up at their entrance, grinned.
"Hallo, Ripper," he smirked. "Fancy finding you here. Haven't seen you in what, a whole week?"
Giles ground his teeth. "What are you doing here, Ethan?" Behind him, he heard Peter coming into the hall, hanging up his coat by the door.
"Why, I'm here for a sociable visit, like yourself. Peter invited me up to watch the meteors tomorrow. Surely you're staying around that long?"
Peter rescued Giles from a very awkward reply by entering the kitchen. "Ethan, glad to see you found the place. The roads up here can be positively hellish at night. Leastwise it's not been raining." He moved to the stove. "Tea, Rupert?"
Feeling mildly betrayed, and certainly furious that Ethan was here wrecking his idyllic vacation, Giles sat down heavily. "Please."
He had to sit through a family dinner, too, with Ethan smirking casually in his direction across the mashed potatoes and roast chicken, toasting him mockingly yet unobtrusively with slight tilts of his wineglass. They kept their discussion to mundane matters such as politics, the ridiculous Clinton impeachment and the cock-ups of Tony Blair, and Giles reflected to himself how nice it would be sometimes to live like Peter did, with a nearly complete abandonment of the mystical world they actually inhabited. Instead, he had his Watcherly duties to attend to; and while he loved his work on the whole, at the same time he'd happily toss his past, present, and future out the window when they brought him torture in the form of Ethan Rayne. Or evil, snooty, holier-than-thou ex-Watchers, he added considerately, taking another swallow of wine, and gleefully imagined Ethan burning in the same white crackle of lightning that had consumed that Post woman.
After dinner they sat around the fireplace in the living room, playing at civilized adults in distinct contrast to the children, who squabbled pettily on the floor over a game of Spit until Peter shooed them off to bed. He then pronounced himself tired as well, saying that he thought he'd turn in and get an early night, seeing as how they'd be up so late tomorrow. Giles hastily followed his lead, glad of an excuse to depart Ethan's company without shattering the mostly peaceable mood of the household.
Ethan's face hung in his dreams that night, and given what he remembered of them when he awoke, he almost wished for the embarrassing memory of Joyce that had been haunting his sleep for the past week. He stiffened his lip and went to breakfast, asking Peter if he could give him a lift into Berkeley that day, as he wanted to check a text that was supposed to be in the Bancroft. Peter raised his eyebrows.
"Working holiday, Rupert? I thought this was time off."
Giles shrugged, managed to look indifferent. "It's an awfully rare text, and this might well be the only chance I have to look at it," he offered. It wasn't a lie, either. Just he was also fairly sure that the late translation he had of it was accurate, and he couldn't very well tell Peter that he'd happily give any excuse he could come up with to avoid Ethan for as long as possible. Peter said that was fine, and Ethan said he'd join them and poke around the various magic shops that dotted Berkeley. Privately, Giles thought that was a recipe for disaster, but he was just as glad to have Ethan off his back.
The text that Giles had gone to look at was indeed as useless as he'd expected, so he spent the majority of the day browsing the library's extensive collection of Americana, finding a manuscript that detailed the Druidic rituals that had been performed in Breaker's Woods a century or so before, where he knew he'd be heading in a couple of weeks.
When Peter picked him up in the late afternoon, the sun just setting behind the distant spires of San Francisco, Ethan was ensconced in the car, looking like a cat in the cream.
"I found some very useful ingredients," he told Giles, practically purring. "Just love these ex-hippie shops. Was your search fruitful?" Giles could have sworn at that moment that Ethan knew just how much of a front his research in the Bancroft had been.
"Oh yes," he replied breezily. "Tremendously helpful texts there. Lovely Americana collection, I must see about finding some of those volumes for my own library." Ethan shot him a suspicious glance, but Giles merely gazed back at him with perfect complacency.
The silence in the car on the way home was strained, leaving Peter to shoot curious glances at them, but Ethan was sitting in the front seat, and Giles feigned sleep that turned into a real light doze over the half hour that it took them to reach Peter's hilltop dwelling.
Inside, the children were bundled up in warm clothing, clutching mugs of hot chocolate bedecked with marshmallows, eagerly bouncing about getting to watch shooting stars. Their mother glanced patiently at Peter, with a slightly accusing "why weren't you home earlier?" stare. He had the grace to look ashamed, kissed her hello, and went to the liquor cabinet.
"Eighteen-year Macallan," he told the two men who stood in the doorway radiating antagonism; he extracted a tall bottle and set four glasses on the counter alongside it. "Not every night deserves as much celebration as this. Two friends I haven't seen properly in next to forever, and a display of depthless and portentous power, to boot." His wife didn't even blink, and Giles wondered if she knew more about the magic that Peter used to practice than his old friend let on. Silently, he accepted the glass that Peter handed him and followed the others out to the balcony. Peter flicked off the lights before shutting the door behind them.
Far below them, the bay spread out its expanse, the two bridges glittering with the passage of headlights, the Golden Gate lit too by softly illuminating lamps. The cranes of the Oakland docks hung suspended from their daytime employ, and the houses of the three islands flickered blue and gold as distant lights are wont. Mount Tamalpais was a blacker shape against a black horizon, and the stars were crystal sharp in the fogless sky.
"I can see why you live up here," Giles told Peter. "The view's positively amazing."
Peter laughed. "I hear they're planning to build a development over on Diablo. You could join in the fun." Then he grimaced in the darkness. "Those houses will sell for millions, if they ever actually get them built."
The biting scents of eucalyptus and pine drifted on the breeze, and Giles downed his glass of scotch. Peter refilled it, silently. Then one of the children screamed excitedly, and they all saw a bright streak of white cross the heavens. More followed, coming thicker and faster, and more scotch was drunk. After a while, Peter's wife excused herself, ushered the children inside and to bed. Peter fetched another bottle of scotch, the quality far less superior, but the alcohol content just as high.
"Bet you the Queen's cock that you don't know the capital of Mauretania," Ethan proffered rather tipsily. Giles and Peter both blinked at him owlishly.
"The Queen hasn't got a cock, you tosser," said Giles, feeling much more amicable with a good portion of scotch inside him. "And it's Nuakchatt."
Ethan grimaced. "Score to you, but you're wrong, you know. There's this statue in Birmingham…." They all giggled drunkenly.
"That's a cracking good game, though," said Peter. Giles looked blank. "Never played it? Trivia poker; still not actually figured out why it's called poker, but the ante's of imaginary or mystical objects. You lose your stakes if you can't answer the question."
"Right, then," said Giles. "I'll see you your Queen's cock, and raise you a rat king. Third-to-last Roman emperor, counting from Romulus Augustulus."
"Glycerius," said Peter. "I read History, didn't I?"
Giles shrugged. "Doesn't mean you'd remember. Your bid."
They continued in this vein for a good few hours, their antes growing steadily more outrageous, and steadily less fantastic. It was a topsy-turvy world, Giles thought later, when the length of Prester John's foot and a hair from the Great Cham's beard were safe bids, pure literary wank, while a unicorn horn was not. He actually ended up owing Ethan the latter, as well as far too many other precious or risky objects. Somehow, Ethan got away with owing much less. It was, Giles told himself grimly, just like that weasely bastard to carefully plan his bets and answers in order to limit his losses. But he knew, too, that it was his fault, for betting so recklessly when this drunk. It didn't make him feel much better.
So when Peter headed inside to his bed and his wife, Giles gripped Ethan by the collar, leaned over him, whiskey souring on his breath.
"You may not have cheated, Ethan," he growled, "but I'm still going to thrash you. Call it retroactive payment, and advance medication for my hangover come morning."
Ethan stayed silent, looked like he was trying to slide out of his chair but couldn't quite manage. Giles pulled him upright, slammed his fist into Ethan's chin with not quite as much force as he might have had when sober. Even so, Ethan staggered back into the redwood railing of the balcony, causing it reverberate.
"Careful, Ripper," he said, laughing softly, hand cupping his jaw. "You might have to pay damages."
"Come out front then," answered Giles. "I can hit you just as easily out in the open. And maybe you'll get run over by a car, and I'll never have to see your meddling face again."
Ethan just kept laughing. "You'd miss me, Rupert," he answered. "You know you would."
Giles' brow furrowed angrily, and he jabbed his fist into Ethan's face again, causing the man's head to snap back.
"Don't be so sure of that, Ethan," he whispered, lips close to the other's ear. "You've caused me more misery in the last few years than you ever caused me pleasure." The alcohol was buzzing along his spine, spreading into the extremes of his limbs. "But I know what you really want, why you keep coming back."
He didn't mean to still be talking, and he wanted to stop several sentences ago and simply beat Ethan until he could stop talking. But he'd formed the words, said them out loud, and Ethan was smirking at him, eyes black in the night's shadows, red marks already showing dark against his skin. And he could hear the sarcastic reply forming behind Ethan's lips. So he stopped it, crushed his own lips hard against Ethan's mouth, encountering the tang of whiskey and maybe a cigarette and a familiar taste that he remembered from half a lifetime ago.
"Is that what you want?" He raised his head, a faint coppery trace of blood on his tongue. He didn't know whose lip he'd cut. There was no answer, and he grabbed Ethan's collar again, pulled him away from the railing. "Is this what you want?" His voice was louder now, jarring his own ears, and he wondered if he was going to wake the sleeping family inside, lowered his tone back to a hoarse whisper. "I'm through fucking you, Ethan. And I never want to see you again in Sunnydale, meddling with the people I care about, or I will kill you."
At this, Ethan jerked himself free from Giles' fists, stepped back a few paces and straightened up. "That's as it may be, Ripper. But maybe I'm not through fucking you." He flashed a pained but mischievous grin and slipped inside, tossing an airy "Night, then," over his shoulder.
Giles stood there for a moment, hands still clenched so tightly that his knuckles whitened, seething over the effect that Ethan could have on him after all these years by his mere presence. He dared not think on what he wanted, was afraid of what he might find lurking in his subconscious. Instead, he went to his room, studiously refusing to glance at Ethan's closed door as he passed.
The next afternoon, when he finally stumbled out into the light of day, he bid farewell to Peter and his family, thanked them for a fine visit, and was unsurprised to hear that Ethan had been summoned away unexpectedly earlier that morning. But he knew that he'd not seen the last of Ethan, despite his threatening words the previous night. After all, he owed the man a unicorn's horn and a Ramallian orb, not to mention several other rare artifacts that he suspected were not as lost as rumor had it. And Rupert Giles was a man of his word, in all ways.
stakebait's Back-in-the-Day ficathon are due. Since it's today in my world, despite my not having yet gone to sleep to divide today from yesterday, I'm going to impatiently post my story.It was written for
kindkit, who requested Season 3 Giles, with the specification "I tend to like angst, but I'll do as I'm told. :-)"The fic is the precursor to a drabble I wrote many weeks ago, now. The drabble was entitled Remembered Items Bid During an Apparently Drunken but Lucid Game of High Stakes Verbal "Trivia Poker," as Overheard During Observance of the Leonid Meteor Showers, High Atop Skyline Boulevard in the Hills of Oakland, California. This may go a small ways to explaining the story. :)
Oh, and the title kind of sucks, so any better suggestions would be appreciated. As, of course, would comments. Always, always, and they make me love the people who give them.
Lions of the North
Giles shut the suitcase that lay on his bed, zipped it closed, and leaned against it heavily, supported on his palms. He sighed and stayed there for a minute, head hanging. Head throbbing, too, and he put his hand to the still-healing gash on his temple. Then he stood, grasped the handle of the suitcase, and carted it down the stairs to the sofa, where he dropped it again with a small sigh of relief. Picking up the phone, he dialed Buffy's number.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. "Yes, ah, hello Mrs. Summers. Giles here. Could I possibly speak to Buffy?" Paused, listening to the reply. "Ah, well, thank you, it's not important." He replaced the receiver onto its cradle and cursed softly under his breath. He had to learn to talk to Buffy's mother again without wincing. They interacted too frequently to dance around on this level of awkward embarrassment. And really, he did need to leave a message for Buffy, saying that he'd be gone for the weekend and a bit of the next week. But he could phone her again from the airport, or from Oakland. It wasn't too urgent.
Having reached this unsatisfactory but temporarily acceptable conclusion, he picked up the suitcase again and carried it outside, locked the door, and headed down the steps, where he threw the suitcase into the back of his Citroën. The door on the driver's side stuck when he tried to open it, and he kicked it solidly, with perhaps a bit more viciousness than was strictly necessary to free up the latch mechanism. He patted his coat pocket briefly to reassure himself of the tickets' presence, started up the car, and pulled away from the curb.
As he drove, he tried to convince himself that he really was only visiting Peter this weekend because he'd promised over a month ago; that hearing his old friend's voice on the phone the previous evening, the fortuitous availability of a ticket on this evening's flight up to Oakland, hadn't been more cheering and timely than he'd like to admit. Maybe, he thought, he shouldn't be leaving right now, so soon after the fiasco with Gwendolyn Post. Also, on Friday the thirteenth; but that date's poor reputation was mostly superstition, and sod it all, he was glad to be getting out of Sunnydale, not least on account of bloody Gwendolyn Post, and also putting space in between himself and Joyce. (Mrs. Summers, he corrected his mental voice, firmly.)
And then he was at the airport, and then on the plane, and suddenly arriving in Oakland in such a short hop that it really seemed ridiculous to fly. But as Gwendolyn had painfully reminded him, he was perhaps becoming rather American, and he'd just as soon not spend several hours on the road, in the dark, with the sun setting so early these days. Peter picked him up at the baggage claim, with wife and two small children in tow, and they greeted Giles warmly enough to make him instantly glad that he'd come up here, away from the problems and stress of the Hellmouth and, he admitted to himself, his life in general.
The weekend passed in a happy, sunny, slightly nippy blur; hiking in the volcanic preserve along the road from Peter's house, dining at ethnic restaurants down in Berkeley and Oakland that he could never find in so small a town as Sunnydale, even driving over to San Francisco on Monday so that he felt supremely like a tourist and could make a desperate attempt to forget the headaches waiting for him the moment he returned home. Over Irish coffees at a small restaurant near Ghirardelli Square, he relayed to Peter a few of the events of the past months, garnered acid commiseration over the Gwendolyn Post affair that soothed his wounded pride, but carefully left out any mention of the incident with Ethan and Joyce. Peter had been part of their circle back in the day but had left university before the fateful summoning of Eyghon; he was, so far as Giles knew, still on friendly terms with Ethan, and despite his hatred of the warlock, he didn't want to be the one to place a wedge between the two men.
When they returned home that evening, he rued his easy dismissal of Ethan, for the man was sitting in a chair in the kitchen, chatting amiably with Peter's wife. Ethan looked up at their entrance, grinned.
"Hallo, Ripper," he smirked. "Fancy finding you here. Haven't seen you in what, a whole week?"
Giles ground his teeth. "What are you doing here, Ethan?" Behind him, he heard Peter coming into the hall, hanging up his coat by the door.
"Why, I'm here for a sociable visit, like yourself. Peter invited me up to watch the meteors tomorrow. Surely you're staying around that long?"
Peter rescued Giles from a very awkward reply by entering the kitchen. "Ethan, glad to see you found the place. The roads up here can be positively hellish at night. Leastwise it's not been raining." He moved to the stove. "Tea, Rupert?"
Feeling mildly betrayed, and certainly furious that Ethan was here wrecking his idyllic vacation, Giles sat down heavily. "Please."
He had to sit through a family dinner, too, with Ethan smirking casually in his direction across the mashed potatoes and roast chicken, toasting him mockingly yet unobtrusively with slight tilts of his wineglass. They kept their discussion to mundane matters such as politics, the ridiculous Clinton impeachment and the cock-ups of Tony Blair, and Giles reflected to himself how nice it would be sometimes to live like Peter did, with a nearly complete abandonment of the mystical world they actually inhabited. Instead, he had his Watcherly duties to attend to; and while he loved his work on the whole, at the same time he'd happily toss his past, present, and future out the window when they brought him torture in the form of Ethan Rayne. Or evil, snooty, holier-than-thou ex-Watchers, he added considerately, taking another swallow of wine, and gleefully imagined Ethan burning in the same white crackle of lightning that had consumed that Post woman.
After dinner they sat around the fireplace in the living room, playing at civilized adults in distinct contrast to the children, who squabbled pettily on the floor over a game of Spit until Peter shooed them off to bed. He then pronounced himself tired as well, saying that he thought he'd turn in and get an early night, seeing as how they'd be up so late tomorrow. Giles hastily followed his lead, glad of an excuse to depart Ethan's company without shattering the mostly peaceable mood of the household.
Ethan's face hung in his dreams that night, and given what he remembered of them when he awoke, he almost wished for the embarrassing memory of Joyce that had been haunting his sleep for the past week. He stiffened his lip and went to breakfast, asking Peter if he could give him a lift into Berkeley that day, as he wanted to check a text that was supposed to be in the Bancroft. Peter raised his eyebrows.
"Working holiday, Rupert? I thought this was time off."
Giles shrugged, managed to look indifferent. "It's an awfully rare text, and this might well be the only chance I have to look at it," he offered. It wasn't a lie, either. Just he was also fairly sure that the late translation he had of it was accurate, and he couldn't very well tell Peter that he'd happily give any excuse he could come up with to avoid Ethan for as long as possible. Peter said that was fine, and Ethan said he'd join them and poke around the various magic shops that dotted Berkeley. Privately, Giles thought that was a recipe for disaster, but he was just as glad to have Ethan off his back.
The text that Giles had gone to look at was indeed as useless as he'd expected, so he spent the majority of the day browsing the library's extensive collection of Americana, finding a manuscript that detailed the Druidic rituals that had been performed in Breaker's Woods a century or so before, where he knew he'd be heading in a couple of weeks.
When Peter picked him up in the late afternoon, the sun just setting behind the distant spires of San Francisco, Ethan was ensconced in the car, looking like a cat in the cream.
"I found some very useful ingredients," he told Giles, practically purring. "Just love these ex-hippie shops. Was your search fruitful?" Giles could have sworn at that moment that Ethan knew just how much of a front his research in the Bancroft had been.
"Oh yes," he replied breezily. "Tremendously helpful texts there. Lovely Americana collection, I must see about finding some of those volumes for my own library." Ethan shot him a suspicious glance, but Giles merely gazed back at him with perfect complacency.
The silence in the car on the way home was strained, leaving Peter to shoot curious glances at them, but Ethan was sitting in the front seat, and Giles feigned sleep that turned into a real light doze over the half hour that it took them to reach Peter's hilltop dwelling.
Inside, the children were bundled up in warm clothing, clutching mugs of hot chocolate bedecked with marshmallows, eagerly bouncing about getting to watch shooting stars. Their mother glanced patiently at Peter, with a slightly accusing "why weren't you home earlier?" stare. He had the grace to look ashamed, kissed her hello, and went to the liquor cabinet.
"Eighteen-year Macallan," he told the two men who stood in the doorway radiating antagonism; he extracted a tall bottle and set four glasses on the counter alongside it. "Not every night deserves as much celebration as this. Two friends I haven't seen properly in next to forever, and a display of depthless and portentous power, to boot." His wife didn't even blink, and Giles wondered if she knew more about the magic that Peter used to practice than his old friend let on. Silently, he accepted the glass that Peter handed him and followed the others out to the balcony. Peter flicked off the lights before shutting the door behind them.
Far below them, the bay spread out its expanse, the two bridges glittering with the passage of headlights, the Golden Gate lit too by softly illuminating lamps. The cranes of the Oakland docks hung suspended from their daytime employ, and the houses of the three islands flickered blue and gold as distant lights are wont. Mount Tamalpais was a blacker shape against a black horizon, and the stars were crystal sharp in the fogless sky.
"I can see why you live up here," Giles told Peter. "The view's positively amazing."
Peter laughed. "I hear they're planning to build a development over on Diablo. You could join in the fun." Then he grimaced in the darkness. "Those houses will sell for millions, if they ever actually get them built."
The biting scents of eucalyptus and pine drifted on the breeze, and Giles downed his glass of scotch. Peter refilled it, silently. Then one of the children screamed excitedly, and they all saw a bright streak of white cross the heavens. More followed, coming thicker and faster, and more scotch was drunk. After a while, Peter's wife excused herself, ushered the children inside and to bed. Peter fetched another bottle of scotch, the quality far less superior, but the alcohol content just as high.
"Bet you the Queen's cock that you don't know the capital of Mauretania," Ethan proffered rather tipsily. Giles and Peter both blinked at him owlishly.
"The Queen hasn't got a cock, you tosser," said Giles, feeling much more amicable with a good portion of scotch inside him. "And it's Nuakchatt."
Ethan grimaced. "Score to you, but you're wrong, you know. There's this statue in Birmingham…." They all giggled drunkenly.
"That's a cracking good game, though," said Peter. Giles looked blank. "Never played it? Trivia poker; still not actually figured out why it's called poker, but the ante's of imaginary or mystical objects. You lose your stakes if you can't answer the question."
"Right, then," said Giles. "I'll see you your Queen's cock, and raise you a rat king. Third-to-last Roman emperor, counting from Romulus Augustulus."
"Glycerius," said Peter. "I read History, didn't I?"
Giles shrugged. "Doesn't mean you'd remember. Your bid."
They continued in this vein for a good few hours, their antes growing steadily more outrageous, and steadily less fantastic. It was a topsy-turvy world, Giles thought later, when the length of Prester John's foot and a hair from the Great Cham's beard were safe bids, pure literary wank, while a unicorn horn was not. He actually ended up owing Ethan the latter, as well as far too many other precious or risky objects. Somehow, Ethan got away with owing much less. It was, Giles told himself grimly, just like that weasely bastard to carefully plan his bets and answers in order to limit his losses. But he knew, too, that it was his fault, for betting so recklessly when this drunk. It didn't make him feel much better.
So when Peter headed inside to his bed and his wife, Giles gripped Ethan by the collar, leaned over him, whiskey souring on his breath.
"You may not have cheated, Ethan," he growled, "but I'm still going to thrash you. Call it retroactive payment, and advance medication for my hangover come morning."
Ethan stayed silent, looked like he was trying to slide out of his chair but couldn't quite manage. Giles pulled him upright, slammed his fist into Ethan's chin with not quite as much force as he might have had when sober. Even so, Ethan staggered back into the redwood railing of the balcony, causing it reverberate.
"Careful, Ripper," he said, laughing softly, hand cupping his jaw. "You might have to pay damages."
"Come out front then," answered Giles. "I can hit you just as easily out in the open. And maybe you'll get run over by a car, and I'll never have to see your meddling face again."
Ethan just kept laughing. "You'd miss me, Rupert," he answered. "You know you would."
Giles' brow furrowed angrily, and he jabbed his fist into Ethan's face again, causing the man's head to snap back.
"Don't be so sure of that, Ethan," he whispered, lips close to the other's ear. "You've caused me more misery in the last few years than you ever caused me pleasure." The alcohol was buzzing along his spine, spreading into the extremes of his limbs. "But I know what you really want, why you keep coming back."
He didn't mean to still be talking, and he wanted to stop several sentences ago and simply beat Ethan until he could stop talking. But he'd formed the words, said them out loud, and Ethan was smirking at him, eyes black in the night's shadows, red marks already showing dark against his skin. And he could hear the sarcastic reply forming behind Ethan's lips. So he stopped it, crushed his own lips hard against Ethan's mouth, encountering the tang of whiskey and maybe a cigarette and a familiar taste that he remembered from half a lifetime ago.
"Is that what you want?" He raised his head, a faint coppery trace of blood on his tongue. He didn't know whose lip he'd cut. There was no answer, and he grabbed Ethan's collar again, pulled him away from the railing. "Is this what you want?" His voice was louder now, jarring his own ears, and he wondered if he was going to wake the sleeping family inside, lowered his tone back to a hoarse whisper. "I'm through fucking you, Ethan. And I never want to see you again in Sunnydale, meddling with the people I care about, or I will kill you."
At this, Ethan jerked himself free from Giles' fists, stepped back a few paces and straightened up. "That's as it may be, Ripper. But maybe I'm not through fucking you." He flashed a pained but mischievous grin and slipped inside, tossing an airy "Night, then," over his shoulder.
Giles stood there for a moment, hands still clenched so tightly that his knuckles whitened, seething over the effect that Ethan could have on him after all these years by his mere presence. He dared not think on what he wanted, was afraid of what he might find lurking in his subconscious. Instead, he went to his room, studiously refusing to glance at Ethan's closed door as he passed.
The next afternoon, when he finally stumbled out into the light of day, he bid farewell to Peter and his family, thanked them for a fine visit, and was unsurprised to hear that Ethan had been summoned away unexpectedly earlier that morning. But he knew that he'd not seen the last of Ethan, despite his threatening words the previous night. After all, he owed the man a unicorn's horn and a Ramallian orb, not to mention several other rare artifacts that he suspected were not as lost as rumor had it. And Rupert Giles was a man of his word, in all ways.
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Date: 2003-11-12 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 08:54 pm (UTC)