Familiar Echoes
Ethan's fingernails scraped down his chest, the sharp edges cutting into his skin until Giles seized his wrists with a grunt and forced Ethan down, flat on his back.
"Well," Ethan said, his eyes tinged a strange yellow from the bedside lamp, "this is familiar."
It had been raining all afternoon that March day in Oxford, but by six o'clock the rain had stopped, although the streets were full of muddy puddles. Giles cursed as one deceptively deep pool dirtied his trousers; his lecturer on the Carolingian Period had kept them late and now he had to hurry down the High Street to do his evening's training.
An outstretched finger halted him. It belonged to a boy Giles didn't recognise; he was thin, with sharp cheekbones and oddly compelling eyes. He seemed to be having a laugh at Giles' expense.
"What... what... who are you?" Giles spluttered.
The boy who'd laid his finger across Giles' chest shrugged. "Just wondered where you were rushing off to, mate."
"I'm not your mate," Giles snapped. He felt something more was needed to puncture the boy's knowing air and added, "So fuck off." But he didn't feel very certain about it.
The boy didn't raise his eyebrows, but from his tone it seemed as if he had. "Re-ah-lly? Oh, you wouldn't want that now, old chum."
"I said," Giles snarled, "fuck off." He ripped the boy's finger off his shirt and thrust it away, causing him to retreat a step.
"And to think I didn't believe them all in London when they told me Oxford students were violent snobs," the boy remarked.
Giles pushed him against the wall; not hard, just enough to get him to leave him alone.
The strange boy laughed. "Repressed anger is a terrible thing. You should really find a way to deal with it."
"Oh, I think I've found a way," Giles said. He let his mouth hover an inch above Ethan's and bared his teeth. "Would you like me to release your hands?"
Ethan pursed his lips quixotically. "And spoil this beautiful moment? Surely not."
Giles pressed his mouth down on Ethan's crushingly hard, voicing his frustration by taking away Ethan's breath, forbidding him to give a maddening reply.
Of course, Giles himself ran out of breath eventually.
"I knew it," Ethan said, with a satisfied, lascivious air. "You'd stop really wanting to hurt me once I let you fuck me again."
"Shut up, Ethan."
The boy hurried up behind him as Giles stalked away.. "Off to a shindig of some sort, are you? No place like Oxford for fun. Ballrooms, seedy little clubs, formalwear, casual wear, no wear at all... every night of the week, you can find at least three marvellous dos on. Pity you're not going to any of them, isn't it?"
"I told you to shut up," Giles threw behind him. He risked a glance at his watch, but the long-winded lecturer had left him no time to spare. Pity, that. He hadn't had a good fight in a long time, and this insolent bastard was really asking for it.
"Poor little Watchers don't get any time to play, do they?"
For a moment, the boy's words didn't register properly in Giles' head, and then it hit him. He stopped in his tracks, feeling the adrenaline coursing through him, that special caught out! fear in his veins. Then, slowly, he turned around.
Some early revellers stumbled past them, a girl sandwiched between two men and all of them wearing a single long string of wooden beads. Giles tried to look at them, to give himself a chance to think - even entertained a second's frenzied thought of calling out to them for help - but the boy's inexorable gaze held him.
"Who are you?" Giles said at last.
The boy extended his hand. "Ethan Rayne, dissolute mage." His eyes flicked up and down Giles; whether approvingly or not, Giles couldn't quite tell. "And you're Rupert Giles, bored Watcher-in-training."
"Yes," Giles half-whispered.
"Terrible name, really," Ethan said in a muffled voice. He was alternately biting and sucking on the skin above Giles' left collarbone. "I don't know why you don't revert to Ripper."
"Because I prefer a name less reminiscent of serial rapists and killers?" Giles suggested. He was having trouble speaking himself.
"A good point, yes, but it's still better than what Rupert evokes." Ethan lifted his head back, leaving a saliva-slick patch on Giles' shoulder that seemed to shiver in an eddy of air, seeking Ethan's warm tongue again. "Oh, but I forgot. You enjoyed being a librarian."
"I'm not training to be a bloody librarian!" Giles shouted. He had expected a conspiracy, forces of evil, psychiatrists on the lookout for mad fantasists... something dangerous, when Ethan had revealed that he knew his secret.
He hadn't expected an accusation of dullness.
"Yes, yes, you're training so you can lead the Chosen One," Ethan said dismissively. "But let's be realistic here. How many trainee Watchers are there? Not to mention all the ones who are fully trained."
Giles stared at him.
"You do know that only one Watcher is assigned to the Slayer, don't you? Which leaves rather a lot of you out in the cold with nothing better to do than to fuss over the records and argue over your petty little code of conduct. Now, I know they do tend to neglect mathematics in favour of languages in the Academy, but a smart boy like you can surely realise that you don't have much chance of hitting the jackpot."
Ethan stretched his arms out theatrically. "Feel that sweet air. Do you really want to waste so many nights training to be a Watcher? There are so many better things you could be doing."
"You never did understand that it's possible to live a useful life and still enjoy oneself, did you?"
Ethan smiled in amusement. "You're trying to defend your workaholism during sex. I think I've already won this argument."
"You're the one who started talking about libraries," Giles pointed out. He grazed his fingers over Ethan's hipbones, and saw with satisfaction Ethan's eyes twist up and heard a lust-filled breath escape his throat.
Ethan opened his eyes a fraction and looked at Giles seductively through his shadowing eyelashes. "You're right, Mister Giles, I do have something of a library fetish." He spread his legs. "Could you please explain the Dewey system to me? Unless you prefer... Library of Congress?"
Somehow, Giles couldn't help laughing. "That was a truly terrible joke." He moved his hand to Ethan's cock and began pumping in a slow, sure rhythm.
"It got a good response from the audience."
"All right!" Giles found himself shouting. "I spend all my time in lectures or in Watcher training and it's boring me now and it's probably going to bore me for the rest of my life, and I hate the bloody dreaming spires because everyone else is having a good time and I don't have any damn time - is that what you want me to say?"
Trembling with rage, he saw Ethan smile. "Yes, I quite like that response."
"Well, I'm glad one of us got something out of this evening," Giles spat. "Now if you'll excuse me..."
But Ethan's hand was suddenly on his shoulder, and Giles didn't move.
"Magic doesn't have to be boring, you know," Ethan said softly. "Keeping it trapped in books is unnatural. Magic is wild and free, and it carries those who know how to ride it with its flight."
"It would burn you out..." Giles murmured. He felt transfixed, as if moving from Ethan's touch would dispel something, something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Ethan laughed suddenly, and it seemed to transform him, from an intent young mage to an almost cartoonish figure. "Oh, we need somebody like you in London! You can keep us all grounded, until the day we pry away your fingers and you fly up - yes!" Giles felt a quick touch at his waist and then Ethan released him.
"Be seeing you," Ethan said with a mocking little bow, before vanishing into a dark alley.
Giles felt at the pocket on the seat of his trousers, and withdrew a piece of paper with a London address inscribed on it in faux-runic script.
"Be seeing you," Giles repeated, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of Ethan's diminishing figure.
Giles strained, letting his eyes roll back in his head as he thrust his cock into Ethan's willing mouth. Ethan's tongue was working him deliciously, unpredictably... chaotically, perhaps, Giles thought with a rueful grin.
At least now I've worked out how to make the wanker shut up.