Giles woke up before Ethan despite the fact that he'd had a lot less sleep. The early morning light was filtering through windows bare of curtains, but thick with grime, and it looked as if it was going to be a fine day.

He couldn't help wondering if that blue sky overhead would change to storm clouds once Ethan woke up.

It was stupid to be angry with Ethan, who was as he'd pointed out simply behaving true to form, but Giles was finding anger a more welcome alternative to hurt. He felt as if he'd made a fool of himself, which wasn't helping him to reach any sort of balance between his conflicting emotions.

During the night he'd ended up facing Ethan, although some instinct had kept them from getting close enough that they were touching, and he wanted to be able to reach out, carry on what they'd started – but they hadn't, had they? Or if they had, Ethan was clearly never going to admit to it. Which didn't make much sense, but Giles decided it was too early to try to decipher the enigma that was Ethan Rayne.

Not on an empty stomach anyway.

Tossing back the quilt, he got dressed quickly, ignoring the sleepy protest from Ethan as the cool air struck his skin, and started off a kettle of water before going to use the bathroom, which did at least have a shower, fuelled by a surprisingly modern-looking gas heater. Giles felt grubby, but he settled for splashing his face with cold water for now. He was starving and in desperate need of a cup of tea.

Returning to the main room, he glanced over at the bed to see if Ethan had gone back to sleep and was startled to find Ethan awake but utterly still, watching him.

It was difficult to find the ideal greeting with the memory of Ethan's body against his in the darkness seeming as distant as, well, Ethan. Giles settled for a nod and a smile that he tried to make neutral. "You're awake then," he said, giving himself a mental kick for the banality of the remark. "How do you feel?"

Ethan's eyes were dark, his expression difficult to read. "Cold. Come back to bed and warm me up?"

"I don't think so," Giles said, fighting back the urge to do just that and get a glimpse – if only a fleeting one – of the open, approachable Ethan who only seemed to surface when he was aroused, instead of dealing with this closed-off, cautious one. "But I'll make you a cup of tea."

"Fine," Ethan grumbled. "No point in lounging around if you won't join me." He got out of bed with his typical casual disregard for his nudity and retrieved his bag, taking out a clean shirt which he pulled over his head before disappearing into the bathroom.

"Unbelievable," Giles muttered to himself, feeling an all-too-familiar irritation building up. He could feel his lips tighten and made an effort to calm down. If they were going to spend the day doing experiments that could well end with one or both of them on the floor not breathing, it was probably best to not be – The kettle boiled over and doused the gas ring, interrupting his attempts to reason himself into a better mood. Giles cursed and dealt with the mess, scalding his finger in the process but managing to salvage enough water to make a pot of tea.

Ethan came back out of the bathroom fully dressed, which was a relief. "What can I help with?" he asked, rubbing his hands together briskly. He seemed determined to retain his apparent good mood.

Giles nodded at the stove, which had a small grill under the two gas rings. "You could start some toast if you like."

"Okay." Ethan found the bread and put a few slices under the grill, pulling a chair over so that he could watch them closely as they browned. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes," Giles said, pouring them both a mug of tea and adding some milk after giving it a cautious sniff. "Nothing like some meaningless sex as a soporific, is there?" So much for his good resolutions, but there'd been something so knowing about the way Ethan had asked that question...

Ethan glanced up at him. "I wouldn't call it meaningless."

"That's not the impression I got last night," Giles said. He gulped down some tea and set his mug down on the table. "Only you could have me discussing something like this at the breakfast table," he said ruefully, the comforting, familiar taste making his reaction seem a little overly dramatic. "Ethan, just let me know when you make up your mind what you want from me, and until then let's concentrate on your situation." He leant back in his chair and extended his hand towards Ethan. "Speaking of which –"

Ethan shook his head. "Not until this is out," he said, gesturing at the gas stove. "Not that it isn't fairly dangerous on its own without live flames, but I sincerely doubt either of us would be pleased if this place went up in a blaze." He looked around doubtfully. "Well... the owner wouldn't, at any rate."

Acknowledging that for once Ethan had a point, Giles let his hand drop. "Toast," he said, moving the conversation away from the awkward to the mundane. "I prefer mine light on the charcoal so I think those are yours."

Glancing at the stove again, Ethan swore and nipped the rather dark toast from under the grill, seemingly put out by the fact that it had gone from pale to nearly burnt in the few seconds he'd looked away. "I like mine this way," he said, putting the toast on a plate and starting some more bread under the grill. "Not everyone's quite as fussy as you are, you know."

Giles stood up. "Are you incapable of saying anything that isn't loaded with meaning today?" he asked with a polite interest he intended to be annoying. He got another plate, a knife and a tub of margarine advertised as being more buttery than butter, placing them on the table in front of Ethan. Trying to avoid another burn, he pulled out the grill pan and flipped his toast over. "Yes, I'm fussy as you call it. I take it you're less discriminating these days? Not too bothered about who you wake up next to as long as they don't expect you to remember their name, or anything sentimental like that?"

Ethan spread margarine on his toast and looked at Giles with what might have been mild surprise. "You do realise that your indignation at the fact that I haven't chosen to remain celibate during the years we've been apart comes across as jealousy, don't you?" He didn't sound displeased about it.

Giles rescued his toast and dropped it onto his plate. "Perhaps I am, a little," he said, reaching for the knife and scraping a thin layer of margarine over his toast. "Or perhaps I'm just –" He hesitated, unwilling, now it came down to it, to be quite as frank as he'd intended, given that Ethan would probably just use it against him. "I don't expect you to show restraint in any part of your life, Ethan. It's not the way you are. Excess in everything and the hell with the consequences." He gave an indifferent shrug which didn't match his feelings about that philosophy. "And I imagine you've retained enough sense to make sure there aren't any from picking up anyone who takes your fancy, or you wouldn't have wanted me to fuck you last night."  He took a bite of toast and met Ethan's gaze without looking away.

Sliding his chair a bit closer to the table, Ethan looked down at its rough surface. "I've been careful where it counted," he muttered, seeming uninterested in his food now. "I wouldn't put you at risk." He glanced up, a small, twisted smile telling Giles what he needed to know. "In any case, touching complete strangers seemed enough of a gamble without adding the potential spread of disease to the mix."

Giles felt a tension he hadn't known was there relax and vanish, and the smile he gave Ethan in return was warmer than he'd planned. "Did you ever – did anything ever happen to them?" he asked quietly. "You said sometimes people had been – hurt. Was it then?"

He felt as if he was being unforgivably intrusive, but the more he knew about what triggered Ethan's condition the better, and it  seemed likely that the heightened emotions – and loss of control, no matter how temporary – during sex would leave Ethan unable to control whatever was happening to him.

"No," Ethan said. "But I worried that it would." That twisted smile was still on his face as he traced the grain of the wooden table with one fingertip, making it clear that his earlier good mood had been temporary, a facade. "I'm sure you're surprised. Me, worry about anything but my own skin? It's a good joke, isn't it. Not, of course, that I wasn't worried about my own skin as well. I don't care for being nearly electrocuted with static shock any more than the next person."

Giles could tell that Ethan wasn't finished, so he kept quiet, waiting.

"There was a woman," Ethan said, his voice barely above a whisper. "At a corner shop. I touched her hand when I went to pay for my things – I didn't mean to. I knew what might happen. There was a jolt, and we both... and she... They said she wasn't in good health, that she'd been in hospital the year before and it was only a matter of time." He looked up at Giles, his eyes haunted, confused. "I killed her. The fact that I didn't mean to doesn't change that. And I know that I shouldn't care. I don't want to care. But I can't seem to help it."

"Of course you can't," Giles said, picturing Ethan's shock and feeling nothing but pity. "For all your faults, I don't think you've ever been someone who could kill casually, wantonly. And you didn't then. You know that as well as I do." He wrapped his hands around his mug of tea, pulling it towards him, needing something to hold. "You said last night you couldn't change," he said slowly, looking down at the gently swirling liquid. "But you have. You'd always have been a little sorry for that woman's death, but you wouldn't have let it affect you deeply. You'd have thought of it as the workings of Chaos, a perfect example of how one life can be disrupted by another. You used to love being that disruptive force, didn't you? Coming to jar me out of complacency, make me face my past..." He looked up at Ethan. "But now you're facing your future, and you're scared."

Ethan didn't respond at first, just continuing to look down at the table. Finally, he said, "I've never been any good at being alone with my thoughts. But knowing that I might actually have no choice but to be alone, especially when there might not be a great deal of time left..." He swallowed, and when he looked up at Giles again he'd managed to hide his feelings behind a jaunty grin. "Live life to the fullest, isn't that what they say?"

"Well, despite the fact that last night I was tempted to shorten your life rather than help you extend it, you're not alone at the moment," Giles told him. "And while you were being your usual slothful self, I did get a few hours of work done, and I think there're a few avenues we can explore." He stood up and cleared the table, dumping the plates in the sink but not bothering to do more than that. "What's the longest you've gone recently without an incident? Because it's been twenty-four hours now. Is that promising or normal?"

"It's not outside the range of normal," Ethan said, watching Giles cautiously. He shut his eyes for a moment as if taking internal stock. "I don't think it's built up the same way it usually does. I feel like I could go a lot longer without needing to, for lack of a better word, discharge."

Giles pursed his lips, thinking over the options. "Well, we could wait to see if that changes – I'm sure being out here's only slowed down the build-up, not halted it – or we can be a little more adventurous and have you try some magic and see what happens. What do you think?"

"I say we try it now and get it over with," Ethan said, after a moment's thought. "Did you have something specific in mind?"

"I did, actually," Giles told him. "Something simple, but something you'd normally need a fair bit of power to accomplish." He walked to the door. "And unless the place is crawling with tourists, I think outside is the best place to try it."

Ethan followed him outside, stopping at the top of the rickety steps and looking around. "There's no one nearby?"

Giles looked around. The cliff top was deserted, and as it was devoid of anything but a view which could be had at many more picturesque spots along the coast with the bonus of necessities for enjoying nature like benches, ice cream vans and pubs, he didn't think that was likely to change. "Doesn't look like it. Let's go over there; no sense in being too close to the edge."

He led them around the side of the house to a slightly sunken area that might once have been a garden of some kind. There was the trace of a path and stones delineating a flower bed, now a tangle of weeds amongst the thin, wiry grass.

Giles bent and picked up one of the stones, weighing it in his hand. It was about the size of a grapefruit, an unremarkable grey lump, smoothed by time into a rough sphere.

"Here," he said, handing it to Ethan and sitting down on the grass. "I want you to advance it; push it through to the point where it breaks down into sand. Nicely chaotic, without being unnatural; it'll require some power to accelerate what's happening to it already, but you're not initiating anything exactly. Think you can do that?"

"It's not a question of whether or not I can do it, it's a matter of what will happen as a result," Ethan said, sitting down as well with the rock cradled in his hand. "When I expend any significant amount of energy, the subsequent draw – usually from the electric, although that shouldn't be possible here – tends to knock me out." Ethan looked around and then shrugged. "Won't know until we try, I suppose." He concentrated for a moment, his eyes going slightly unfocused as he murmured under his breath then there was a flash of triumph across his face as the rock in his hand turned to sand and sifted through his fingers into his lap. Ethan's eyes met Giles' an instant before the sky above them crackled ominously, dark clouds threatening as if from nowhere, the tang of the air around them metallic on Giles' tongue. In that instant, panic set in, Ethan flinging his hand toward Giles and Giles, unthinkingly, reaching out to take it.

Ethan's hand smacked against his palm and Giles tightened his grip without waiting to see if it was safe to do so. The instinct to help Ethan went beyond rational thought or conscious decision. He'd felt the power Ethan had raised when the stone turned to sand like an itch under his skin; felt it flare to the point of being painful a moment later, but the instant their hands joined it retreated with a cessation so complete and swift that he was left with nothing to do but clutch at Ethan's hand and meet his wide-eyed gaze in silence under the once again clear skies.

"Did you feel that?" Ethan asked, jumping to his feet and pulling Giles along with him so that they were both standing in the ruined garden. Ethan's eyes were wild, and he shifted his weight back and forth as if unable to stay still. "It worked!" Exuberantly, he threw his arms around Giles and kissed him with so much passion that it took Giles' breath away.

It was impossible not to respond to the kiss and Giles didn't even try, but he returned it with part of his mind still trying to work out just exactly what had happened, and when Ethan broke the kiss, his eyes still filled with the exhilaration Giles himself shared, he stepped back.

"Ethan," he said, raising his hand. "Slow down. That was – I'm not sure what happened." He frowned. "I need – I need to just sit down for a moment, I think. Sorry."

He didn't feel unwell, or in any pain, but he could feel fatigue pulling at him as if he'd been awake for hours, dimming his vision and tangling his words. Reaching out, he grabbed Ethan's arm. "Help me get back inside," he said, hating the way concern replaced relief on Ethan's face. "Don't worry. I think I know what's happening –"

Ethan's voice was surprisingly soothing as his arm went around Giles' waist, supporting him. "Here, hang onto me." The ground felt uneven and rocky as if Giles were drunk. Or maybe it really <i>was</i> uneven and rocky; he couldn't remember, and wasn't sure he cared.

But he cared about reassuring Ethan. That seemed important, and he tried to explain what had happened, even if the darkness was swooping down and snatching away every other word as they made their way inside. "Not hurt – just – can't ground you – without it draining me. Think I can fix it."

He was proud of himself for getting that last sentence out whole as Ethan lowered him onto the bed. Closing his eyes with a sigh of relief that he'd managed to explain it, Giles sank into sleep as deep as Ethan's had been, that final datum clicking into place, so for an instant he understood it all perfectly.

Part Seven

Return to Home

Send Feedback