The Power of Persuasion

Jane Davitt and Wesleysgirl

Part Four

Giles couldn't catch Ethan in time; had to watch him crumple and fall, narrowly missing hitting his head on the counter as he slumped backwards, body jerking horribly, giving a scream that cut through his own pain-filled cry and ended only when Ethan's eyes rolled up and he went limp. Giles couldn't catch him because he was dealing with his own physical reaction to what Ethan had just done, a reaction that had sent him stumbling backwards as if the blow had been from a fist and not Ethan's mind.

He joined Ethan on the floor, going to his knees and doubling over as the seething mass of emotions nearly overwhelmed him.

He knew that they were exaggerated – that even at the height of his despair Ethan hadn't felt quite that murderous, quite that betrayed.

Because if he had, Giles really didn't think Ethan would ever have forgiven him enough to have been in the same room as him, let alone ask for help.

He tried to crawl to him and managed to make progress only when Ethan lost consciousness and the effects of the spell snapped off abruptly – God, he hoped he'd just lost consciousness anyway.

Even without the bombardment of emotions, Giles' head was still throbbing and he was close to throwing up, but he ignored both symptoms and reached Ethan's side, shoving his hand inside Ethan's shirt and searching for a heartbeat.

For a long moment there was nothing, and he found himself chanting, "Come on, you bugger, come on..." under his breath, feeling a bleak despair, but then he shifted his hand sideways and felt the reassuring beat press briefly against his palm.

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard before getting to his feet and soaking a tea towel in water. Kneeling down, he slipped his arm under Ethan, cradling his shoulders and lifting him slightly, and began to sponge away the blood dripping steadily from Ethan's nose.

This close, in daylight, there was nothing to hide the changes in Ethan, and Giles stared down at his gaunt, exhausted face, robbed of any animation now, and stopped doubting that Ethan was close to dying.

Ethan's eyes opened, slowly, reluctantly and Giles said in a voice he barely recognised, "If you ever do that again, Ethan, I'll –" Ethan blinked up at him as if he was trying to work out what had happened, and why he was on the floor, but didn't speak. Giles leant back against the cupboard and sighed, feeling the fury drain away. "Please don't," he said. "Just – don't."

Shifting position so that his legs were in front of him, he pulled Ethan closer, so that his head and shoulders were supported against his lap, and carried on cleaning his face.

For too long, Ethan lay there allowing it, occasionally opening his eyes before closing them again. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse. "Are you hurt?"

"No." It was a lie, but not that much of one. "What about you? Do you need a doctor?"

Ethan opened his eyes again. It looked as if he was having a hard time focusing them. "Wouldn't help," he said. "Give me a minute?"

Giles nodded, not bothering to suggest that he help Ethan to the couch. The kitchen floor wasn't all that comfortable, but Ethan didn't look in a fit state to be moved. A silence fell, strangely comfortable under the circumstances, and without thinking too much about it, Giles slipped one hand into Ethan's where it lay splayed out across his chest, and with his other smoothed Ethan's hair back off his forehead, repeating the slow, gentle movement when Ethan sighed, closed his eyes, and relaxed.

"Don't worry," Ethan said. "Safe for a good couple of hours now, if past events are any indication." He looked up at Giles and offered a crooked smile. "I'd forgotten what a nice pillow you make."

"A few hours..." Giles repeated. "How soon will you be fit to travel?" He met Ethan's gaze and said softly, "You're not going to be able to stop me helping you, Ethan. No matter what you do." A bit more shakily than he would have liked, he asked, "What the bloody hell was that?"

Ethan sighed. "Nice little trick I picked up at the Initiative. I'm not sure where it came from, exactly. Just... one day, there it was, offering up its meagre ability to pay my captors back for a tiny portion of what they'd put me through. I certainly wasn't about to refuse the opportunity."

Giles brushed the back of his hand against Ethan's face and couldn't stop himself asking, "Did you – do you really feel that way? Still? Hate me that much?"

Ethan shook his head slightly. "I don't hate you, Ripper." It seemed completely sincere, and he turned his hand under Giles' where they rested on his chest and held on. "I won't deny that there've been moments when I have –rather long moments, at times – but I don't really. Not deep down."

Giles sighed. "It's been easy to hate you sometimes, Ethan. Tempting, even. But deep down? No. I just – I can't." He felt his lips quirk in a small smile. "But if you want me to stop trying, can I suggest you find another way of telling me to back off? That wasn't very pleasant at all, even if I did ask for it."

His expression hardened for a moment then Ethan sighed again and gave Giles' hand a squeeze. "I'll try. I don't, even if all past behaviour points to the contrary, want you to hate me." His eyes went worried. "There, see? If you want to get me to agree to a round of true confessions, all you have to do is wait until I'm half dead with electrical shock. Apparently I'll say anything."

Giles glanced down at their linked hands which told him more than Ethan's words. "I don't even have that excuse," he murmured.  

"Clearly, we should quit while we're ahead," Ethan said, with a hint of his familiar cocky grin. But he did start to struggle to a sitting position, which he managed to achieve with Giles' help, although he slumped against the cupboard beside him and ran a tired hand over his face. "What now?"

"We should eat something..." Giles said reluctantly. He felt both hungry and nauseous, which wasn't an ideal combination. "Maybe later, though." He turned his head towards Ethan. "Will you let me find somewhere for us to go?"

He kept his voice undemanding with an effort, still cursing himself for forgetting how badly Ethan reacted to being pushed around. Even when it was with all good intentions. He'd been so horrified by the thought of the danger Ethan posed that he'd reacted instinctively with the plan to get Ethan anywhere as long as it was away from people.

But not away from him. Somehow, despite what had just happened, Giles still didn't feel that he was at risk. That belief was worrying in some ways, even inexplicable given that Ethan had every reason to hate him, but he couldn't seem to shake himself free of it.

Ethan nodded, wiping his upper lip and looking at his fingers as if inspecting them for blood. "Actually, if you can spare the hot water, I'd love a quick shower. This window of time is the only one in which it's really safe for me to take one." He gave Giles an appraising look. "I promise I'll do my best not to think of you when I'm touching my wet, naked body."

Giles stood up without answering and then reached down, taking a fistful of Ethan's shirt, minus some buttons now. Bracing himself with a hand on the counter, he hauled Ethan up to his feet and kissed him without letting himself think about the consequences, a brief, hard kiss that he ended before Ethan had time to respond. "Good luck with that," he said pleasantly.

"Bastard," Ethan muttered, but there was a hint of a smile as he turned away and disappeared into the bathroom, and after a minute or so Giles heard the shower start up.

Left alone, Giles went to work, dragging out a battered road atlas and trying to find somewhere that looked close enough to reach in a few hours – he'd have to ask Ethan how he'd been managing to travel; he didn't much like the idea of the electrics in the car he was driving shorting out while they were on the motorway – and isolated. The difficulty was that these days no one was likely to be renting cottages that didn't come equipped with all sorts of modern conveniences.

Picking up the phone and the Yellow Pages, he made a few enquiries and got nowhere on the cottage front, although he arranged for a rental car to be sent over from a company he'd used before. The sound of the water cut off and he bit his lip. He really wanted to get this sorted out before Ethan had second thoughts. A vague memory of a rather boring colleague surfaced – Dave Jackson at the Council, whose idea of fun was a weekend spent in a small boat, out at sea, fishing for whatever he could catch, and turning up on Monday with decidedly smelly packages of mackerel for people who didn't have the heart to tell him to stop. Dave, who owned a small cottage right by the sea that he was always planning to do up, but never did because that would mean missing the chance to fish.

By the time Ethan emerged, looking tired still, but far better than he had half an hour ago, Giles had arranged to rent the cottage – Dave had been bemused that anyone would want to pay to sleep in what seemed to be one step up from a cardboard box, but quite happy about the prospect of the hundred pounds Giles had promised him.

"You know it's just a wood stove, right?" he'd said. "You'll need candles... calor gas bottle, no, hang on, there should be a spare one in the cupboard under the sink... there's no hot water... well, there's a shower, but I've tried washing dishes in it, and it doesn't work..."

"That's perfect, Dave. Just want to get back to basics. What about collecting the key?"

Dave had snorted. "It's in a can under the front step. Never had anyone find it yet and there's nothing to steal if they did. Help yourself, Rupert." He sighed. "Won't be able to go down for at least another three weeks. Pity that..."

"Yes," Giles had said insincerely. "Now, tell me how to get there..." 

Now, he smiled at Ethan. "Found a place. It's about 90 minutes away, not far from Rye. I'll need to go by my office once they bring the rental car over, and pick up some books that might be useful." He remembered that he was still in the middle of a translation job and added, "And a commission I'm working on; I'll have to take that with me. We'll need to get some food, I suppose, and you'll want to pack..."

"Not to mention get into some clean clothes," Ethan said, looking down at what he was wearing with an expression of distaste. "I could go off and collect some things, meet you back here in an hour or so? Unless you'd rather I meet you at your office."

"I'd rather you didn't go anywhere without me," Giles said bluntly before he realised how distrustful that sounded. Something in him didn't like the idea of them being split up for some reason. He tried to soften it. "You still don't look well. Doesn't it make more sense to let me drive you to your digs? What part of town are you in?"

"Brixton," Ethan said. "But I can get my things on my own, truly. You can trust me."

"I know that," Giles said quickly. "But it's not a matter of trusting you – it's just faster if we stick together, especially if you say we've only got a few hours." He studied Ethan's wan face and sighed. "I'm not letting you deal with getting over to Brixton and back, Ethan. Not when you're barely able to stand. You'll simply have to put up with being coddled by me for a bit, no matter how much you hate it. Serve you right for scaring me half to death just now."

The expression on Ethan's face was difficult to read, but he nodded, seeming willing to concentrate on practical matters for the moment. "Did you say something about breakfast?" he asked hopefully. "Is there still time, before they bring the car?"

"For a fry-up?" Giles shrugged. "I don't see why not. Do you still drench your eggs in brown sauce? Because I've only got ketchup."

"I can live without brown sauce," Ethan said.

The twenty minutes or so that it took to fry up some rashers and eggs and make toast was well worth it to see the blissful look on Ethan's face when he put the first bite into his mouth. He sighed with something that seemed very close to pure pleasure and chewed with his eyes closed. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to Giles that Ethan ate every morsel on his plate and even stole a piece of toast from Giles' with a not particularly apologetic grin.

* * * * *


By the time they got to Giles' office, their final stop before the run to the coast, they'd already used up two hours. Ethan's place had turned out to be a room in a squat, the house so derelict that Giles had agreed to stay in the car without argument when told flatly that Ethan didn't need any help, thinking that if he didn't, the car wasn't likely to still be there when they came out.

Ethan had emerged in less than ten minutes, throwing a battered holdall onto the back seat. He stayed in the car while Giles shopped, staring moodily out of the window at the less-than-enthralling sights of Tesco's car park, only perking up when Giles tossed a handful of assorted chocolate bars in his lap as he got back in the car.

"Thought you might still be hungry."

Ethan didn't do more than nod by way of a 'thank you', but he'd eaten two by the time they got to Giles' office and he followed Giles up the stairs to the small room, glancing around curiously and looking more alert.

The answer phone was blinking, so Giles pushed the play button and listened as he began to collect a pile of books and papers that he'd need.

"Hello, this is Carlton; just checking in on the status of the work you're doing for me. I don't think I need to remind you that it's imperative I get that translation by Friday. If for any reason you're not going to be able to deliver, I need to know that as soon as possible. If I don't hear from you, I'll assume everything's going according to schedule."

"What a charmer," Ethan said, half sitting on the edge of the desk.

"He's not usually quite that brusque," Giles said, frowning. "And I really don't know what's so vital about it, but it shouldn't be a problem to finish it by Friday. Dave's cottage is a mile from a village and there's bound to be somewhere I can fax it to him." He scooped all the relevant paperwork into his briefcase and then nodded towards the bookcases around the room. "Help me sort out some texts that might be useful, will you? There's an empty box in the corner."

Ethan did as asked without comment, going over and sitting on the floor in front of one of the bookcases and beginning to look over them. It wasn't until several minutes had passed in silence that Giles looked up to check on him, only to discover that Ethan was clearly lost in the book he'd opened, staring at the pages with a rapt sort of attention. Giles cleared his throat and Ethan glanced up guiltily, quickly putting the book into the empty box and moving on.

Giles thought of the bag in the car and realised that it probably held everything Ethan possessed, and that it wasn't big enough to hold many – or any – books. He winced. Ethan had once owned some books the Council would have given their collective eye teeth to have in their possession; he guessed they'd probably been sold over the years, or lost, and it was clear Ethan didn't have much more than the clothes on his back now. Giles contemplated some of the ways Ethan used to use to acquire cash and decided not to ask him how he'd been feeding himself and paying his rent.

When they'd half-filled the box, Giles picked it up, grunting slightly at the weight, and let Ethan take the briefcase as they headed down to the car. He was too occupied with keeping the box from tilting as he fumbled for the keys in his pocket to look around, but he felt the prickle of awareness that told him someone was watching them.

When he'd closed the boot, he glanced up and down the street, but as far as he could tell, no one was paying them any attention. Ethan had already got in, folding his arms and hunching over slightly so that he wasn't in contact with the frame of the car, looking tense again.

Giles didn't waste any more time. Passing Ethan the scrawled directions, he started the car and pulled out into the late-morning traffic.

He didn't need help getting out of London proper, which left Ethan with nothing to do but play passenger in the seat beside him. Ethan was not good at having nothing to do, although it was clear from how still he was sitting as Giles drove that he'd got better at it in the past years. Or perhaps he was just too tired to fidget.

Ethan sat forward slightly and looked into the side view mirror. "Nice neighbourhood," he said,.

"Better than where you were staying, you mean?" Giles asked, not bothering to pretend he didn't know what Ethan was getting at. "Well, yes." They pulled up at a roundabout and he nodded at a small, neat garden in front of a terraced house. "But you know, I think I'd pick the squat over a place with that many garden gnomes." He shuddered. "They give me the creeps."

"They are rather... domestic." Ethan said the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. He looked in the mirror again then sat back in his seat, still being careful to keep himself within what seemed to be a small amount of space. He fell silent, and the next time Giles glanced over at him, his eyes were closed, his head tipped back slightly. He looked peaceful.

Giles spent a moment worrying that if he slept Ethan might lose control – most of the blackouts had been at night, after all, and he made a note of that as something that might be useful to investigate – but he didn't have the heart to wake him.

He drove out of the city, glancing over at Ethan every now and then when he was forced to stop for lights, or in traffic, but not letting his gaze linger.

With Ethan this vulnerable it seemed like an intrusion somehow.
* * * * *


Ethan woke some time later when his hand slipped down off his lap and fell between the passenger seat and the car door. Startled, he snapped awake, pulling his hand back up onto his thigh. "You shouldn't have let me sleep," he told Rupert angrily, feeling his heart racing.

"You didn't tell me that," Rupert said calmly, completing the turn into a quiet country lane that had woken Ethan up. "And it's only been about four hours since the last incident after all." He shrugged, giving Ethan a glance that seemed friendly enough. "But we're almost there so it's as well you're awake. I could do with your help navigating. We're deep into directions of the 'turn left at the red barn a mile after the field with the cows in it' variety, and I have a feeling we might miss a turning." He peered out at what seemed to be a lot of identical, flat, green fields. "Or possibly we already have."

It always made Ethan feel inexplicably irritated when Rupert responded to bad behaviour by acting calm and reasonable. "Where are we?" he asked, finding the piece of paper with the directions written on it. "Or is that the problem?"

"We definitely turned off the B3043 or whatever it was," Rupert muttered, slowing down to give a weathered signpost a hopeful look. "Does it mention anywhere called Petersham? That's a mile away apparently, over to the right. Dave kept correcting himself and I ended up just scribbling down anything that sounded useful. I think he knows the way so well he assumes the rest of the world does too."

Over the curve of a hill off in front of them, Ethan thought he caught a glimpse of the sea. "Turn left here," he said, frowning over the hastily written instructions. "That should put us on the right road. I think. Then we're looking for Ledham Lane." Within a few minutes, they had proof that his guess had been correct, and Rupert turned the car onto a road that appeared to be made of nothing but small rocks, with the occasional speck of dirt thrown in for good measure. "We really are miles from civilisation."

"Townie," Rupert said. "And that's the whole point, remember." The car jolted over a rather large rock and he grimaced. "No wonder Dave drives that battered old Jeep. We'll be lucky if we get there without losing the exhaust."

"At least it's not your car." Ethan was grateful for any number of things at that moment, including the fact that, so far, he hadn't done anything to damage the spotless little rental. He'd hitched rides on a few occasions only to have the cars die inexplicably, once when they'd been doing eighty on the M4. He and the two young men that had picked him up had nearly been killed before the driver had managed to wrestle the rapidly slowing vehicle to the side of the road.  "Oh, there. Is that it?" He pointed to a small, rather ramshackle looking shack with the sea behind it. "Please tell me that's not it."

"That's not it," Rupert said obediently. He gave Ethan a quick grin. "But I'm afraid it is, you know. Dave brought in some photographs once, and it looks depressingly familiar." He gestured towards the edge of the cliff – rather too close to the cottage, in Ethan's opinion. "But you have to admit it's a glorious view."

The car pulled up in front of the small building and Rupert switched off the engine. The sound of the sea rose to meet them, loud against the surrounding silence.

"I think I prefer very tall buildings and unnaturally bright neon lights," Ethan said, getting out of the car carefully and reaching into the back seat for his bag. He wasn't quite ready to admit that he'd put up with this place if it meant getting a handle on his magical problem, not to mention if it meant being with Rupert. But then, he didn't need to admit it, did he. His presence was proof enough.

The smell of salt in the air was very strong, and Ethan looked at the house – if one could call it that – with displeasure. Years of exposure had stripped most of the paint from the outside, and one of the front windows looked askew.

"Oh, look," he said. "Perhaps someone's broken in and stolen everything. We'll have to find the nearest B&B instead." He gave Rupert, who was taking bags from the boot, a hopeful glance.

Rupert snorted. "From what Dave says, 'everything' consists of a table, two chairs, a couch with a mouse nest in it and a bed. I think stealing everything would actually improve it."

"You do take me to all the best places," Ethan said. He went over and took one of the bags from Rupert by way of apology.

They made their way into the cottage, Rupert unlocking the front door with a key that had been hidden underneath a rusted tin under the front steps. Ethan felt automatically along the wall just inside the door for a light switch, not remembering until he found nothing that there was no electricity.

This was going to be so much fun.

Part Five

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